25325	----	None 
21528	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections) THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE Of Literature, Science and Art. VOLUME I. AUGUST TO NOVEMBER, 1850. NEW-YORK: STRINGER & TOWNSEND, 222 BROADWAY. FOR SALE BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. BY THE NUMBER, 25 CTS; THE VOLUME, $1; THE YEAR, $3. * * * * * CONTENTS: VOLUME I. AUGUST TO NOVEMBER, 1850. Advancement of Learning. Portrait of Sir David Brewster, 312 Advocate, The Young.--_Household Words_, 81 _Arts, The Fine._--Elliott's Portraits, 73.--Pictures by Mr. Kellogg, 78.--Osgood's Portrait of Captain Sutter, 73. --Horace Vernet, 112, 175.--Mr. Healy, in Paris. 141,-- Powers's Statue of Calhoun, 174.--M. Ingres and M. de Luynes, 207.--Gallery of Illustrious Americans, 207.-- Dr. Waagen, in England, 207.--Art in Bavaria, 269.-- Exhibition at Valenciennes, 269.--Darley's Illustrations of "Sleepy Hollow," 269.--Chaucer's Monument, 269.-- Lessing's new Picture, 269.--Mlle. Rachel, again, 270.-- Gigantic Statue by Schwanthaler, 270.--Publications of Goupil & Co., 270.--Mr. Powell's Picture for the Capitol, 270, 324.--German Views of Art in America, 323.-- Plans for the Promotion of Catholic Art in Rome, 623.-- Charles Muller's Group of Statues, 323.--A Hundred Statues in Paris, 323.--Powers and his Statues, 324.-- The Barberigo Gallery at Venice, 324.--Paintings and Sculptures of Early Northern Artists, 324.--A Statue to Larrey, the Surgeon, 324.--The Standish Gallery, 324.--Exhibition at Dusseldorf, 324.--Works in Antwerp Churches, 324.--Leutze's New Works, 324.-- The Colossal Frescoes of Kaulbach, 482.--Fine Public Groups at Berlin, 482.--The Dusseldorf "Album," 482. --Statue of Columbus, 483.--Monument to Frederick the Great, 483.--Philadelphia Art Union, 483.--Original Portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Isaac Newton, 483.--Kellogg's Full-Length of General Scott, 483.-- Mount's New Picture, 483.--Archæological Institute, 483.--Sarah Biffen, 484.--Statues of Herder, Oudinot, Professor Cooper, &c., 484. _Authors and Books._--Rev. Dr. Smyth, 13.--Gen. Pepe's New Work, 13.--Mr. Mayne Reed, 13.--J. E. Warren, 13.--Dr. Hawks, 13.--The Princess Belgioioso, 13.--Eugene Scribe, 13.--Alice and Phoebe Carey, 14.--Mrs. Oaksmith, 14.--Prof. Nichol on America, 14.--Dr. Croly, 14.--Sir James Alexander, 14.--Mr. James and Copyright, 39.--Albert Smith and "Protection," 39.--R. H. Stoddard, 39.--Inedited Correspondence of Goethe and Schiller, 39.--Margaret Fuller, 39.--Dr. Hoefer _vs._ Dr. Layard, 40.--Mr. Boker's New Play, 40.--George Sand, 71.--G. P. R. James, 71.--Botta's Nineveh, 71.--Arago, 71.--Miss Fenimore Cooper, 72.--Prof. Agassiz, 72.-- Dr. Layard, 72.--Rogers, 72.--Harro Harring, 72, 112.-- Dr. Gutzlaff, 73.--Literature in Paris, 73.--E. P. Whipple, 105.--Evelyn's History of Religion, 105.--Leigh Hunt and the Laureateship, 105.--E. G. Squier, 105.-- Monument to Wordsworth, 105.--Francis Bowen, &c., 105.--Mrs. Child, 112.--The Literature of Supernaturalism, 138.--Remains of Poe, 138.--Dudley Bean, 138.-- Mr. Young's "Beranger," 138.--Livermore on Libraries, 139.--Prof. Johnson, Charlotte Cushman, Elihu Burritt, Perley Poore, Mr. Mountford, &c., 139.--Rev. James H. Perkins, 175.--Mrs. Esling, 175.--M. St. Hillaire and his Spanish History, 175.--The Author of "Dr. Hookwell," 175.--John Mills, 175.--Mr. Prescott, 175.--Maginn's Homeric Ballads, 175.--George Wilkins Kendall, 176.--Mrs. Trollope and her Son, 176.--Dr. Wm. R. Williams, 176.--Dr. Buckland, 176.--Dr. Wayland's Tractate on Education, 176.--Charles Eames, 176.-- Chateaubriand, &c., 176.--Parke Godwin and his Translation of Goethe's Autobiography, 194.--A new Life of John Randolph, 194.--Scotch Bookseller's Society, 194. --Prof. Dickson's Return to Charleston, 194.--John R. Bartlett and the Boundary Commission, 194.--William C. Richards, 194.--Guilliame Tell Poussin, 194.--Dr. John W. Francis, 195.--Illustrated Edition of Gray's Poems, 195.--M. Libri, Burns, Dr. Wiseman, &c., 195.-- Wordsworth's Posthumous Poem, 196.--Miss Cooper's Rural Hours, 196.--Sydney Smith's Sketches of Modern Philosophy, 196.--Beranger and the People, 232.-- Audubon and Washington Irving, 232.--Seba Smith in Mathematics, 232.--M. Flandin, on Persian Antiquities, 233.--Girardin and Chateaubriand, 233.--Guizot's Poverty, 233.--History of Art, by Schasse, 233.--History of Spain, 233.--The Paris Academy of Inscriptions, 234.-- Leverrier on the Telegraph, 234.--Works of Rev. Dr. Woods, 234.--Orville Dewey, 234.--The Author of the Amber Witch, 235.--The Night Side of Nature, 235.-- Milne Edwards, 235.--Miss Strickland, 235.--Sir E. L. Bulwer, 235.--Mr. Herbert's Sporting Books, 236.-- Works in Press, 236.--Meyerbeer, 236.--A German Prince in New Orleans, 265.--An Arabian Newspaper, 265.--Mrs. Loud's Poems, 265.--Literature of Socialism, 265.--Ebenezer Elliot, 266.--Memorial to Mrs. Osgood, 266.--Rev. Walter Colton on California, 267.--Gallery of Illustrious Americans, 267.--Max Schlesinger, 267.-- Mayo's "Berber," 267.--French Periodicals, 268.--The Vienne University, 268.--Works of the Asiatic Society at Paris, 318.--The French Academy and its Prizes, 318.-- Edward Everett, 319.--Mackay's "Progress of the Intellect." 319.--Lamartine, 319.--Theodore Parker, 319.--Sir Edward Belcher, 319.--Guizot, 319.--John G. Saxe, 319. --Eliza Cook, 319.--Institute of Goethe, 320.--Books on the Slave Trade, 320.--Jules Lechevalier, 320.--The Doctrinal Tract and Book Society's Publications, 320.-- Novel by Otto Muller, 320.--New Translation of M. Rochefoucauld's Maxims, 320.--"Armanese," 320.-- Thackery on the Literary Profession, 321.--M. de Luynes on the Antiquities of Cyprus, 321.--Sir Robert Peel's Memoirs, 321.--John P. Brown, 321.-- Burnet de Pesle on Egyptian Dynasties, 322.--Washington Irving a British Subject, 322.--Arago and Cremieux in History, 322.--New Poem by Holmes, 322.--Mr. Duganne's Satire, 322.--South Carolinian Epics, 322.--John Neal, 322.--The Baroness Blaze de Bury, 322.--Dr. Elliot on Slavery, 322.--Dacotah Dictionary, 322.--Judge Breeze on the History of Illinois, 322.--Mr. Layard, 322.--Mr. Wilson's Transted Hindu Hymns, 322.--Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, 322.-- Paris Editions of Greek Authors, 471.--MSS. of Schiller and Goethe, 471.--Henry Wheaton, 471.--_La Hongrie Pittoresque_, 472.--Contributions to Science by French Surgeons, 472.--Walter Scott in France, 472.-- Herman Melville, 472.--The Original Dr. Faust, 472.-- Rev. Albert Barnes, 473.--Ledru Rollin, 473.--Mr. Bigelow's "Jamaica in 1850," 473.--Mr. Prescott in England, 473.--Dr. Schoolcraft's Great Work on the Indian Tribes, 473.--Schools in American Literature, 473.--Leon de Wailly's "Stella and Vanessa," 474.-- Alaric A. Watts, "in bankruptcy," 474.--"The Lily and the Totem," by Dr. Simms, 475.--Dr. Wainwright on the Holy Land, 475.--Mr. Raymond's Discourse at Burlington, 475.--E. V. Childe's Translation of "Santarem on Americus Vespucius," 475.--Dr. Latham on the Natural History of Man, 475.--John Britton, the Antiquary, 476.--Dr. Layard, 476.--The "Vladika," 476.--Mr. Bancroft, 476.--Hebrew Translations at Padua, 476.--Theories of Light, 476.--Mr. Hildreth's History, 476.--Hungarian Tales, 476.--Yankee Hill, 476.--Criticisms by Dr. O. A. Brownson, 477.--James Nack, 477.--New Volume of Poems by Bryant, 477.--Science in America, 477.--Shiller's "Anthologie," 477. Griepenkerl, 477.--Mr Kimball's St. Leger, 477.--Etchings by Ehninger, 477.--The Weimar Festival, 478.--M. Bastiat, 478--Edinburgh Review for October, 478.--N. Lenau, 478.--"The Eclectic" upon Mr. Melville, 478.--"Lonz Powers." 478.--New English Reviewals of Ticknor, 479.--M. Villaume's History, 479.--Longfellow Illustrated, 479.--Thackeray, 479.--London Medical Schools, 480.--Robberies of the Vatican, 480.--Mr. Gallagher, 480.--Mr. McLaughlin, 480.--Lamartine in England, 480.--Discoveries in Africa, 480.--Louis Nicolardet, 480.--Hebrew Library, 480.--Berlin University, 480.--New Books, by Parke Godwin, Miss Dupuy, Timothy Pitkin, Dr. Ruffner, Mr. Putnam, De Quincy, J. I. Bailey, Grace Greenwood, and W. W. Lord, 481. Author of "Ion," The. A Biographical Speech, 170 Balzac, and the Oration of Victor Hugo on his Death, 315 Beauty.--_The Leader_, 591 Belgian Lace-Makers.--_Household Words_, 123 Beranger, Jean Pierre. With a Portrait, 454 Brooks, Maria, and Southey, 67 Brougham, Lord, Anecdote of, 304 Brougham, Lord, Memoir of. (Portrait,) 305 Catching a Lion.--_C. Astor Bristed.--Fraser's Magazine_, 512 Chase, The.--_Miss Cooper's Rural Hours_, 77 Chemistry of a Candle.--_Household Words_, 292 Chinese, Remarkable Work by a 141 Church of the Vasa D'Agua.--_Eliza Cook's Journal_, 400 Class Opinions.--_Household Words_, 104 Cooling a Burning Spirit.--_De Vere_, 303 _Correspondence, Original_.--Letter from Dr. Layard, upon Ancient Art, 5.--Rambles in the Peninsula, by John E. Warren, 6, 37, 136 Count Monte-Leone, or the Spy in Society.--_From the French of Saint Georges_, 494 Crime, in England and France, 224 Csikos of Hungary,--_Max Schlesinger_, 258 Death and Sleep.--_From the German of Krummacher_, 255 _Deaths Recent_--Miss Jane Porter, 10.--Matthew L. Davis, 11.--Joseph S. C. F. Frey, 11.--Count de Vittré, 11.--Richard Wyatt, the Sculptor, 42.--Dr. Griffith, 104.--F. Mansell Reynolds, 104.--John Roby, 104.--Professor Canstatt, 104,--S. S. Prentiss, 140.--Nathaniel Silsbee, 140.--Sir Robert Peel, 172.--Boyer, Ex-President of Hayti, 172.--The Duke of Cambridge, 172.--George W. Erving, 173.--Professor John Burns, 174.--Horace Sumner, 174.--Mr. Kirby, the Entomologist, 206.--Rev. Dr. Gray, 207.--Augustus William Neander, 237.--Jacob Jones, U.S.N., 237.--Julia Betterton Glover, 239.--Madame Gavaudan, 240.--General Bertrand, 240.--Robert R. Baird, 250.--S. Joseph, the Sculptor, 240.--James Wright, 240.--M. Mora, 270.--B. Simmons, 290.--Louis Philippe, 338.--Dr. Judson, 340.--John Luman, 339.--Sir Martin Archer Shee, 341.--Gerard Troost, 342.--Professor White, 340.--Perceval W. Banks, 342.--Bishop Bascomb, 342.--Robert Hunt, 342.--John Comly, 342.--Count Pire, 342.--Admiral Dudley Oliver, 600.--Rev. Dr. Ingram, President of Trinity College, 600.--Professor Kolderup, 601.--M. Chedanau, 601.--Daniel Belknap, 601. Death's Jest-Book: The Fool's Tragedy, 229 Decay of Great Families.--_Burke's Aristocracy_, 260 Democracy.--_The Age and its Architects_, 592 Dom of Dantzic, The.--_Fraser's Magazine_, 43 Duke of Queensbury.--_Burke's Aristocracy_, 260 Duke Lewis of Donauworth.--_Madame Blaze de Bury_, 584 Dust, or Ugliness Redeemed.--_Household Words_, 243 Ebba, or The Emigrants of Sweden.--_E. Marmier_, 345 Egypt and its Government.--_Sharpe's Magazine_, 524 Eldorado.--_John G. Whittier_, 74 Excellent Opportunity, An.--_Household Words_, 249 Fashions, Autumn, (Illustrated,) 602 Fire in the Woods.--_Miss Fenimore Cooper_, 95 Fitch, John, Life of, by Miss Leslie, 68 Frank Hamilton.--_W. H. Maxwell_, 145 Fuller, Margaret, Marchesa D'Ossoli, 162 Estimate of her Works and Genius, _by E. A. Poe_, 162 Poem upon her Death, _by G. P. R. James_, 165 Garibaldi, Life of General, 224 George Sand and Chateaubriand, 65 German Criticism of English Female Writers, 161 Germany in the Summer of 1850.--_The Leader_, 594 Ghost Stories: The Female Wrecker, and the House of Mystery.--_Bentley's Miscellany_, 402 Greece and Turkey.--_Bentley's Miscellany_, 255 Grote's History of Greece.--_The Times_, 10 Gutzlaff, the Missionary, 317 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, the _Athenæum_ upon, 102 Henry Lisle: A Story of the Civil War.--_G. P. R James_, 555 High Prices to Artists of the Opera, 165 Hunt, Leigh, Autobiography of, 35, 130 Hunter, on the Pilgrims Fathers.--_Literary Gazette_, 599 Hussar of Hungary, The Wild, 263 Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages, 69 Irving, Washington, and Campbell.--_The Albion_, 230 Is Love Blind?--_The Leader_, 536 Ivory Mine. The, a Tale of the Frozen Sea, 117, 156, 210 Jenny Lind at the Castle Amphitheatre. Illustrated, 448 Jones on Chantrey: A Biographical Criticism, 413 "Junius," New Discussions respecting, 469 Jurisprudence of the Moguls.--_Spectator_, 271 Kanasz, The.--_Max Schlesinger_, 262 Kane's Discourse on the Mormons, 36 Kemble's, Fanny, Readings of. (Illustrated,) 310 Killing a Giraffe.--_Cummings' Adventures_, 304 Kolombeski, The Veteran.--__, 304 Lady Lucy's Secret.--_The Ladies' Companion_, 409 Lamartine's Apology for his Confidences, 314 Lamartine's Introduction to "Genevieve," 132 Lamartine's "Genevieve" Reviewed, 466 Lamennais, The Abbe. (Portrait,) 449 Landor, Savage, Letter from.--_The Examiner_, 271 Landor, Savage, upon Savage Haynau.--_Examiner_, 586 Last of a Long Line, The.--_Dickens's Household Words_, 373 Latham on the Aborigines of America, 467 Lessons in Life.--_Eliza Cook's Journal_, 241 Lewis, George Cornewell, 4 Literary Coteries in Paris, 97 Literary Prizes in France, 458 Literature in Africa, 311 Lorgnette, The. (Portrait,) 459 Loss and Gain.--_Maria J. MacIntosh_, 548 Love, Is it Blind?--_The Leader_, 536 Man Ever the Same.--_Pendennis_, 580 Mansfield, The Great Lord.--_The Times_, 419 Marks of Barhamville.--_Fraser's Magazine_, 7 Marriage Ceremonies of the Kandians.--_Sirr's Ceylon_, 590 Memnon, The Sounding Statue of.--_Fraser's Magazine_, 528 _Miscellanies_.--Lord Brougham, 8.--A Mock Guillotine, &c., 8.--Ledru Rollin on the Decline of England, 9.--The Catastrophe of the Griffith, 9.--Poetical Composition, 29.--Death-Bed Superstitions, 30.--Arab Game, 30.--Marriage in America, 30.--Arabian Nights, 31.--Ambassadors, 32.--Guizot, 32.--Canning, 32.--The Cell of the Bee, 41.--Letter from the Duke of Wellington, 42.--Laughing in the Sleeve, 64.--Antiquarian Discovery, &c., 64.--Circumnavigating a Pope, 78.--Curious Titles of German Papers, 79.--Remarkable Trio, 79.--True Progress, 79.--Coffee among the Savans, 79.--Bad Cookery, a Cause of Drunkenness, 79.--The Monkey and the Watch, 79.--A Syrian Christian and Philosopher, 79.--The British Hierarchy, 79.--French Eulogy, 96.--What's in a Name? 104.--Names High Inscribed, 104.--Golden Rules of Life, 128.--Progress of Milton's Blindness, 128.--Once Caught, Twice Shy, &c., 128.--A Street Character of Cairo, 142.--Mendelssohn's Skill as a Conductor, 142.--Manuel Godoy,141.--Superstition in France, 143.--Libraries in Cambridge, 143.--Romantic History of the Two English Lovers, 143.--Modern School of Athens, 255.--The _Athenæum_ on American Reporting, 443.--The Emperor of Hayti, 443.--Louis Napoleon at Lady Blessington's, 443.--American Mummies, 443.--Daniel Webster in England, 443.--Coffins of the Chaldeans, 444.--Ancient Prices of Labor, 444.--Making the Postman Wait, 441.--The Restaurant of the Sister of M. Thiers, 444.--Languages of Africa, 444.--Richardson, the Traveller, 444.--The Peace Congress at Frankfort, 445.--Project for a Zoological Garden, 445.--Is D'Israeli a Jew? 445.--Dr. Gross, the Surgeon, 445.--The Herder Festival at Weimar, 445.--The Wordsworth Monument, 445.--Revolutionary Stamps, 445.--Descendants of Warren Hastings, 445.--Mr. Pennington's Steam Balloon, 445.--Catlin, the Indian Traveller, 445.--Ages of Public Men, 446.--Ancient Discovery of California, 446.--Mr. Gliddon's Mummy, 446.--Rachel, 446.--India Rubber in 1772, 446.--Convenient Umbrella, 446.--Irish Emigration, 447.--Dwarkanth Tagore, 447.--Madame Boulanger, 447.--Traveling in France, 447.--The Lowell Institute, 447.--M. Libri, 447.--Guizot and Ledru Rollin, 447.--Dr. Southwood Smith, &c., 447.--Anecdote of Guizot, 601.--Dr. Spencer, as a Monk, 601.--Slavery, treated by _The Times_, 601.--Marshal Haynau and _The Times_, 601.--English Titles, 601.--Guizot on Politics, 601--Anecdote of Stenterello, 601. _Miscellanies, Scientific_.--Remingten's Bridge, 12.--Paine's Hydro-Electric Light, 12.--New Planet, &c., 12.--The Hair, 103.--Experiments by Lord Brougham, 112.--The Spanish Academy of Sciences, 264.--Improvements in the Telegraph, 264.--The British Association, 312.--American Association for the Advancement of Science, 313.--An American Academy, 313. Morris, George P. Review of his Songs, 487 Music, or Home and Abroad, 484 My Novel.--_Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton_, 439, 566 Mysterious Compact, The.--_Dublin Univ. Mag._, 185 New Prophet in the East.--_Athenæum_, 300 Nimrod, A Mightier Hunter than.--_Household Words_, 218 Numismatic Archæology, 257 Old Brank, the Forger.--_Dickens's Household Words_, 521 Old Churchyard Tree, The.--_Household Words_, 254 Old Man's Bequest, The.--_Dublin University Magazine_, 106 Oriental Caravans.--_Fraser's Magazine_, 42 Outspreading of the British People.--_Fraser's Mag._, 593 Peasant Life in Germany.--_The Leader_, 288 Peel, Life of Sir Robert.--_The Times_, 196 Phantom World, The, 76 Poe, Edgar A.--_Rufus W. Griswold_, 325 _Poetry, Original_.--The Bride's Farewell, _M. E. Hewitt_ 37--To ----, _Mrs. R. B. K._, 37.--The Child of Fame, _Mrs. Hewitt_, 73.--Bob Fletcher, _Townsend Haines_, 104.--Azela, _Alice Carey_, 135.--Country Sonnets, _William C. Richards_, 136.--Retrospect, _Hermann_, 170.--Horoscope, _Elizabeth Oakes Smith_, 264.--Friendship, _William C. Richards_, 264.--The Balance of Life, _Herma_, 264.--Leonora to Tasso, _Mary E. Hewitt_, 488.--Forest Burial, _Sidney Dyer_, 488.--The Passionate Pilgrim, _Mary E. Hewitt_, 489.--A Rainy Morning, _W. C. Richards_, 489.--In Absence, 489.--Cradle and Coffin, _Elizabeth Oakes Smith_, 489.--The Hermit's Dell, _Hermann_, 489. _Poetry, Selected_.--Nineveh, _Edwin Atherstone_, 16.--The Garden Gate, _Charles Mackay_, 29.--The Last Year's Leaf, _Philip Taylor_, 31.--The Ship "Extravagance," _Charles Swain_, 64.--Death, _Leigh Hunt_, 64.--Verses from the Bohemian of Wraitsell, 70.--"Press on," 92.--Flowers, 96.--Old Feelings, 112.--To the Memory of Mrs. Osgood, _Anne C. Lynch_, 114.--To W. G. R. with an Autograph of Poe, _R. H. Stoddard_, 192.--Our "In Memoriam," _Punch_, 192.--The Actual, _R. B. Kimball_, 192.--English Hexameters, _Walter Savage Landor_, 219.--Manuela, _Bayard Taylor_, 221.--Morning Song, _Barry Cornwall_, 241.--On a Portrait of Cromwell, _James T. Fields_, 271.--Summer Pastime, 287.--An Old Haunt, 303.--"Laugh and Get Fat, _John Kenyon_, 344.--The Speaker Asleep, Arminius, _Winthrop Mackworth Praed_, 230.--Legend of the Teufal Haus, Stanzas written under a Drawing at Cambridge, Ballad Teaching how Poetry is Best Paid For, Covenanter's Lament for Bothwell Brigg, Hope and Love, Private Theatricals, Alexander and Diogenes, _W. M. Praed_, 396.--Cassandra, My Little Cousins, _W. M. Praed_, 623.--The Convict, _Alice Carey_, 543.--Song, _George H. Boker_, 546.--Helen, _R. H. Stoddard_, 546.--Twilight, _Edith May_, 546.--The Tryst, _Alice Carey_, 546.--The First Doubt, _Grace Greenwood_, 548.--Sappho to the Sybil, _Mary E. Hewitt_, 548.--Thoughts at the Grave of a Departed Friend, Despondency, Thoughts on Parting, _John Inman_, 555.--Two Sonnets from the German of _Lenau_, 592. "Poets and Poetry of America."--_Fraser's Magazine_, 165 Poets in Parliament.--_The Leader_, 144 Pompadour, Madame de.--_Fraser's Magazine_, 389 Porter, Jane, Life of. Illustrated.--_The Art Journal_, 201 Portrait of Cromwell.--_By J. T. Fields_, 271 Pottery and Porcelain.--_The Spectator_, 596 Power of Mercy, The.--_Household Words_, 85 Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, 230, 372, 523 Present Religion of Persia.--_Lieut. Colonel Chesney_, 259 Prentiss, Sergent S., Reminiscences of.--_T. B. Thorpe_, 289 Railway Wonders of the last year.--_Household Words_, 583 Religious Sects and Socialism in Russia, 461 Report of the British Registrar General.--_The Times_, 588 Rollin, Life of Ledru.--_Fraser's Magazine_, 222 Russian Serf, The, 160 Santa Cruz, General.--_Illustrated News_, 40 Serf of Pobereze, The.--_Household Words_, 177 Serpent Charming.--_Bentley's Miscellany_, 470 Sketches of the Town.--_Engraving after Darley_, 33 Snow Image, The.--_Nathaniel Hawthorne_, 537 Society in Turkey.--_Princess Belgiviso_, 595 Something about a Murder.--_Fraser's Magazine_, 24 Spanish Senate, The.--_Clarke's Guzpacho_, 261 Spirit of the Annuals for 1851, 488 Spotted Bower Bird, The.--_Fraser's Magazine_, 386 Summer Night, The.--_From Jean Paul Richter_, 38 Summer Vacation.--_The Fourth Canto of Wordsworth's Posthumous Poem_, 208 Suwarrow, The Great Marshal.--_Fraser's Magazine_, 87 Tea Smuggling in Russia, 129 Telegraph from New York to London.--_Mechanics Magazine_, 587 Tennyson's New Poem, "In Memoriam."--_Spectator_, 34 The Theatre in Russia and Poland, 225 The Three Gifts.--_By E. Oakes Smith_, 646 The Three Visits.--_From the French of Vitu_, 490 The White Lady, 309 Tomb of Lady Blessington.--_Bentley's Miscellany_, 126 Tupper, Martin Farquhar, 2 Undertaker, An, to the Trade.--_Household Words_, 93 Versification, English, 485 Virginia Two Hundred Years Ago.--_The Athenæum_, 416 Ward, the Author of "Tremaine."--_Spectator_, 113 Warilows of Welland, The.--_Household Words_, 560 Weber, Miss, and her Writings.--_Miss Harriet Sargent_, 463 Webster, as a Statesman and as a Man of Letters, 297 Wilde, Richard Henry, and Dante, 2 Wilde, Sir Thomas, the New Chancellor, 240 Willisen, General, of the Schleswig-Holstein Army, 585 Window Love.--_By Charles G. Leland_, 544 Women and Literature in France, 193 Wordsworth's New Poem.--_The Examiner_, 271 +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ |The unusual format of VOLUME I. AUGUST TO NOVEMBER, 1850. is as in the| |original. | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY MISCELLANY Of Literature, Art, and Science. Vol. I. NEW YORK, JULY 1, 1850. No. 1. INTRODUCTION. Of the revolutions of the age, one of the most interesting and important is that which has taken place in the forms of Literature and the Modes of its Publication. Since the establishment of the _Edinburgh Review_ the finest intelligences of the world have been displayed in periodicals. Brougham, Jeffrey, Sidney Smith, Mackintosh, Macaulay, have owed nearly all their best fame to compositions which have appeared first in journals, magazines and reviews; the writers of Tales and Essays have uniformly come before the public by the same means, which have recently served also for the original exhibition of the most elaborate and brilliant Fictions, so that we are now receiving through them by almost every ship from Europe installments of works by Dickens, Bulwer, James, Croly, Lever, Reynolds, Mrs. Marsh, Mrs. Ellis, and indeed nearly all the most eminent contemporary novelists. So complete is the change, that all mind, except the heaviest and least popular, is likely to flow hereafter through the Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Quarterly Miscellanies, which compete with universities, parliaments, churches, and libraries, for ascendency in the government of mankind. In this country we must keep pace with the movements abroad. It will not answer that we issue literary productions as soon as possible after their completion. The impatient readers demand chapters by chapters, as they are spun from the brain and the heart of the author; facts, upon the instant of their discovery; and suggestions, as they flash from the contact of imagination and reflection. The INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY MISCELLANY will be a result of efforts to satisfy a plain necessity of the times. It will combine the excellencies of all contemporary periodicals, with features that will be peculiar to itself. I. A leading object will be to present the public, with the utmost rapidity and at the cheapest possible rate, the best of those works in Popular Literature which are appearing abroad in serials, or in separate chapters. With this view, we print in the first number the initial portions of the brilliant nautical romance now in course of publication in _Blackwood's Magazine_, under the title of "The Green Hand," by the author of the most celebrated fiction of its class in English literature, "Tom Cringle's Log;" and other works will be selected and carried on simultaneously, as they shall come to us with the stamp of sufficient merit. II. The foreign periodicals are continually rich in novelettes of from two or three to a dozen chapters, which--being too short for separate volumes--are rarely reproduced at all in this country. Of these the INTERNATIONAL will contain the choicest selections. III. Of the Quarterly Reviews the most admirable papers will be presented in full; and those works will in all cases be carefully examined for such valuable and striking passages as will be likely to interest the American reader, to whom the entire articles in which they appear may be unattractive. IV. The Literary, Religious, Political and Scientific newspapers and magazines will be consulted for whatever will instruct or entertain in their several departments. The leading articles in the great journals, upon Affairs, and Philosophy, and Art, which are now very unfrequently reprinted in America, will appear in the INTERNATIONAL in such fullness and combination as to display the springs and processes of the world's action and condition. V. But the work will not be altogether Foreign, nor a mere compilation. In its republications there will be a constant effort to display what is most interesting and important to the _American_; and in its original portions it will be supported by some of the ablest and most accomplished writers in all the fields of knowledge and opinion. VI. As a Literary Gazette and Examiner, it is believed that it will equal or surpass any work now or ever printed in the United States. It will contain the earliest announcements of whatever movements in the literary world are of chief interest to general readers; its Reviews of Books will be honest and intelligent; and its extracts, when they can be given in advance of the publication of the works themselves, will be the choicest and most valuable possible. Without cant or hypocrisy, or the influence of any clique of feeble-minded and ambitious aspirants in letters, the INTERNATIONAL MISCELLANY will in this respect, the publishers trust, win and preserve the respect and confidence of all who look to published critical judgments as guides for the reading or purchase of books. With a view to the more successful execution of the design to make the INTERNATIONAL MISCELLANY of the first class in Original Periodical Literature, as well as in Selections and Abstracts of what is already before the world abroad, contributors have been engaged to represent the various departments of Science, and to furnish sketches of manners, &c., from other countries, and the different sections of our own; the proceedings of Learned Societies will be noted; History, Biography, and Archæology will receive attention; and in foreign and American Obituary, such a record will be kept as will be of the most permanent and attractive value. MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER. The recent appearance of some half dozen editions--some of them very beautiful in typography and pictorial illustrations--of The Proverbial Philosophy of Mr. MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, reminds us of the observation of Dana, that something "resembling poetry" is oftentimes borne into instant and turbulent popularity, while a work of genuine character may be lying neglected by all except the poets. But "the tide of time," says the profound essayist, "flows on, and the former begins to settle to the bottom, while the latter rises slowly and steadily to the surface, and goes forward, for a spirit is in it." We are not without the hope that Richard H. Dana will one day be in as frequent demand as Martin Farquhar Tupper is now. The merits of this "gentleman of acknowledged genius and sovereign popularity," we have never been able to discover. If oddity were always originality, if quaintness and beauty were synonymous, if paradox were necessarily wisdom, we should be ready to grant that Mr. Tupper is a wise, beautiful and original thinker. But thought, after all, is an affair of mind, and though a man of genius may write what is far more brilliant than common sense ever is, yet no man can utter valuable truth on mortal and prudential subjects, unless he possesses a vigorous and powerful understanding. Now Mr. Tupper's art consists in contriving, not thought, but things that look like thoughts; fancies, in imitation of truths. The Proverbial Philosophy, in fact, appears to us one of the most curious impositions we have ever met with. When you first read one of the aphorisms, it strikes you as a sentiment of extraordinary wisdom. But look more closely at it; try to apply it; and you will find that it is merely a trick of words. What flashed upon you as a profound distinction in morals, turns out to be nothing but a verbal antithesis. What was paraded, as a kind of transcendental analogy between things not before suspected of resemblance, discovered by the "spiritual insight" of the moral seer, is in fact no more than a grave clench,--a solemn quibble,--a conceit; arising not from the perfection of mind, but the imperfection of language. Those conceptions, fabricated by Fancy out of the materials that Fancy deals in, and colored by the rays of a poetic sentiment, wear the same relation to truths, that the prismatic hues of the spray of a fountain in the sunshine bear to the gems which it perhaps outshines. It dazzles and delights, but if we try to apprehend it we become bewildered; and finally discover that we were deceived by a brilliant phantom of air. You may admire Mr. Tupper; you may enjoy him; but you cannot understand him: the staple of his sentences is not stuff of the understanding. Take one of Mr. Tupper's and one of Lord Bacon's aphorisms; they flash with an equal bravery. But try them upon the glassy surface of life. Bacon's cut it as if it were air: Tupper's turn into a little drop of dirty water. One was a diamond, the other but an icicle: one was the commonest liquor artificially refrigerated; the other was a crystal in form, but in its substance the pure carbon of truth. If these bright delusions which Mr. Tupper turns out to the wonder and praise of his admirers, were really _thoughts_, is it to be supposed that he would go on in this way, stringing them together, or evolving one out of the other, as a spider weaves its unending line, or as a boy blows soap bubbles from the nose of a tobacco pipe! Fancies, conceits, intellectual phantoms, may be engendered out of the mind, brooding in self-creation upon its own suggestions: but _truth_ is to be mined from Nature, to be wrung from experience, to be seized as the victor's trophy on the battlefield of action and suffering. The flowers of poetry may bud spontaneously around the meditative spirit of genius, but the harvest of Truth, though, to be reaped by mind, must grow out of Reality. RICHARD HENRY WILDE AND DANTE. It appears that our accomplished and lamented countryman, Richard Henry Wilde, whose "Researches and Considerations concerning the Love and Imprisonment of Tasso" have been made use of with so discreditable a freedom by a recent English biographer of that poet, is--if another pretender prove not less successful--to be deprived also of the fame he earned by his discoveries in regard to Dante. A correspondent of _The Spectator_, under the signature of G. AUBREY BEZZI, writes as follows:-- "The questions are, what share Mr. Kirkup had in the recovery of the fresco of Giotto in the chapel of the Palazzo del Podesta at Florence, and whether directly or indirectly I have been the means of depriving him, or any of the coöperators in that good work, of the merit due to their labors. I shall best enable those who take an interest in this matter to arrive at a fair conclusion, by giving a short history of the recovery of that beautiful fresco. It was Mr. Wilde, and not Mr. Kirkup, who first spoke to me of this buried treasure. Mr. Wilde, an American gentleman respected by all that knew him, was then in Florence, engaged in a work on Dante and his times, which unfortunately he did not live to complete. Among the materials he had collected for this purpose, there were some papers of the antiquarian Moreni, which he was examining when I called one day, (I had then been three or four months in Florence,) to read what he had already written, as I was in the habit of doing from time to time. It was then that a foot-note of Moreni's met his eye, in which the writer lamented that he had spent two years of his life in unceasing and unavailing efforts to recover the portrait of Dante, and the other portions of the fresco of Giotto in the Bargello, mentioned by Vasari; that others before him had been equally anxious and equally unsuccessful; and that he hoped that better times would come, (verranno tempi migliori,) and that the painting, so interesting both in an artistic and historical point of view, would be again sought for, and at last recovered. I did not then understand how the efforts of Moreni and others could have been thus unsuccessful; and I thought that with common energy and diligence they might have ascertained whether the painting, so clearly pointed out by Vasari, was or was not in existence: several months, however, of wearisome labors in the same pursuit taught me to judge more leniently of the failures of my predecessors. Mr. Wilde put Moreni's note before me, and suggested and urged, that being an Italian by birth, though not a Florentine, and having lived many years in England and among the English, I had it in my power to bring two modes of influence to bear upon the research; and that such being the case I ought to undertake it. My thoughts immediately turned to Mr. Kirkup, an artist who had abandoned his art to devote himself entirely to antiquarian pursuits, with whom I was well acquainted, and who, having lived many years in Florence, (I believe fifteen,) would weigh the value of Moreni's testimony on this matter, and effectually assist me in every way, if I took it in hand. So I called upon him, either that same day or the next; and I found that he, like most other people, had read the passage in Vasari's life of Giotto, in which it is explicitly said, that the portrait of Dante had been painted with others in the Palazzo del Podesta, and was to be seen at the time the historian was writing; but that he had not read, or had not put any confidence in, the note of the Florence edition of Vasari published in 1832--1838, in which it is stated, that the Palazzo del Podesta had now become a prison--the Bargello; that the Chapel had been turned into a _dispensa_, (it was more like a coal-hole where the rags and much of the filth of the prison was deposited); that the walls of this dispensa exhibited nothing but a dirty coating, and that Moreni speaks of the painting in some published work; the annotator concluding thus--'It is hoped that some day or other we shall be able to see what there is under the coating of the walls.' So everybody hoped that some day or other the thing would be done, but nobody set about heartily to do it; and it is inconceivable to me that Mr. Kirkup, who shows in this letter, if it be his, such jealousy for the credit of the recovery, should have lived so many years in Florence either entirely ignorant of that which every shop-boy knew, or knowing there were chances of bringing such a treasure to light, that he should have never moved one step for that purpose. That Mr. Kirkup took no active part in this matter at any time, is quite proved by two admissions I find in the letter of your correspondent. He first says, 'I remember that the first time I passed to the Bargello to see it, I found Marini on a scaffold,' &c. The fact is, that several months had elapsed between the first presentation of the memorial and the erection of the scaffold, during which Mr. Kirkup admits that he never thought of visiting the place, while I had spent hours and hours there, under not very pleasant circumstances, and had detected raised aureolas and other evidences of old fresco. But he continues--'Marini was permitted to return to the work on account of the government; and at that point Bezzi returned to England. It was _some months afterwards that I heard that Marini had found certain figures_, and soon afterwards the discovery of Dante himself" (sic.) These two passages sufficiently show the nature of Mr. Kirkup's labors, and how far he was really eager in the pursuit of this object, both during the time when I was most deeply engaged in it, and also for 'some months' after I had quitted Florence. But to resume: Mr. Kirkup, however ignorant, or culpably negligent, or a little of both, he might previously have been on the subject, yet when I brought it before him, he at once admitted its importance, and made a liberal offer of money, if any should be required, to carry out the experiment. Thus encouraged by Mr. Wilde and by Mr. Kirkup, I sought and found among English, American, and Italian friends and acquaintances, many that were ready to assist the plan. Then it was that I drew up a memorial to the Grand Duke; not because I am an 'advocate,' as your correspondent is pleased to call me, for that is not the case, but simply because, having taken pains to organize the means of working out the common object, the coöperators thought that I could best represent what this common object was. In the memorial, I stated that, according to what Vasari, Moreni, and others had written, it was just possible that a treasure was lying hidden under the dirty coatings of the walls of the dispensa in the Bargello; that a society was already formed for the purpose of seeking with all care for this treasure; that all expenses would be gladly borne by the society; that should anything be found, we would either leave the paintings untouched, or have them removed at our expense to the gallery of the Uffizi, and that we begged of the Grand Duke the necessary sanction to begin our operations. The answer was favorable, and I was referred to Marchese Nerli, and to the Director of the Academy, to make the necessary arrangements. Then the real difficulties began: first, I was put off on account of the precautions that were to be taken in working in a prison; then, the Director was ill, or unavoidably engaged, or absent; I found, in short, that the object was to tire me out, and that I had to contend with the same power that had defeated Moreni and my other predecessors in the attempt. This battle continued many months. I have already spoken too much of my share in the pursuit of this object, and I will not enter into further details--some of them ludicrous--of this contention; but I will say explicitly, that, besides his encouragement, and his repeated offers of money, (which were not accepted because money was not wanted, at least not to any amount, and what was wanted I furnished myself,) Mr. Kirkup did not afford me any assistance. At this stage of the business, I met indeed with a most valuable ally, without whom I believe I should have been beaten; and that was Paolo Feroni, a Florentine nobleman and artist, to whom I have before expressed and now repeat my best acknowledgments. At the end of this long contention against obstacles which often eluded my grasp, the Grand Duke, in consequence of a second memorial I presented to him, issued a decree appointing a commission to carry out the proposed experiments. This commission was composed of two members I had myself proposed, viz. the sculptor Bartolini, and the Marchese Feroni, of myself, of the Direttore of the Edifizi Pubblici Machese Nerli, and of the Direttore of the Accademia delle Arti, the two latter ex-officio: further, the decree declines the proposed voluntary subscriptions, and places at the disposal of the Commissioners a sum of money which proved more than sufficient to cover all the expenses of the restoration of the fresco. The Commissioners employed the painter Marini, and the happy result of his carefulness and ability is now before the world. "I will now conclude by asserting, that I had nothing to do with what has been said or written at Florence of this recovery, either in the _Strenna_, or at the meeting of the Scienziati, which was held in 1841, I believe, and at which the fresco of Giotto was naturally a great object of interest. I left Florence in May 1840, before the portrait of Dante was actually uncovered, so that I only saw a portion of the fresco. I have never heard, or read, or said, or written, anything tending to disparage the real coöperation of Mr. Kirkup, or of my late lamented friend Mr. Wilde, or of anybody else in this matter,--nay, that it was at my request that the editor of the English translation of Kugler's Handbook of the History of Painting, published in 1842, has in the preface of that book mentioned Mr. Kirkup as having assisted materially in the recovery. Besides the Marchese Feroni and the artist Signor Marini, there are many disinterested witnesses who have stated, and if called upon will repeat again, all the material points of my narrative; but, better than all, there is now in London an English gentleman, whom I am happy to be allowed to call my friend, who was in Florence part of the time, and saw with his own eyes the share I had in this laborious undertaking, which ought not to have brought this bitter contention upon me: he was an intimate friend of Mr. Wilde, with whom he had a long correspondence on this very subject, after Mr. Wilde's return to America." We believe Mr. Bezzi is in error as to the incompleteness of Mr. Wilde's Life of Dante. Mr. Wilde, more than a year before his death, informed us that his work was nearly ready for the printer; and at the same time he confided to us for perusal his admirable translations of specimens of Italian Lyric Poets. We hope the descendants of our learned and ingenious friend will place these works, so creditable to his temper, scholarship, and genius, before the world. GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS. A work on _The Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion_ has lately attracted much and apparently well-deserved attention in England. It is by George Cornewall Lewis, M.P. for Herefordshire, and Under Secretary of State for the Home Department. He is the eldest son of the Right Honorable Sir Thomas Frankland Lewis, Bart., M.P. for Radnor District, was born in London, in 1806, and received his school education at Eton, which he entered in 1819, and where he was a pupil of Doctor Hawtrey, the present head master. The _Illustrated London News_ furnishes the following particulars of his subsequent career: At Christmas, 1824, he left Eton, and in the following year entered Christ Church, Oxford, where as a student he was one of the few who gave attention to modern languages, and especially German, from which, jointly with Mr. Tufnell, he translated Müller's "Dorians." In 1828 he took his University degree as a first-class man in classics, and a second-class in mathematics. In the same year he entered the Middle Temple, and in 1831 was called to the bar, and joined the Oxford Circuit. He had studied for the bar with no less diligence than at the University; but in consequence of weakness of the chest, was obliged, after his first circuit, to abandon the profession, in which, had health allowed him, his success was certain. In 1835 he was placed upon the commission of inquiry into the relief of the poor, (on the report of which was founded the Irish Poor-law,) and the state of the Church in Ireland; and afterward drew up an able report on the condition of the Irish in Great Britain. In 1836 he was appointed, with Mr. John Austin, a Commissioner to inquire into the Government of the Island of Malta, especially as to its tariff and expenditure. The Commission laid an elaborate report before Parliament, in accordance with the recommendations of which, such reductions were made as rendered the tariff of Malta one of the least restrictive in the world, and materially extended its trade; and they succeeded in establishing the freedom of the press in the island. In January, 1839, Mr. Lewis was appointed a Poor-Law Commissioner, and held the office until July, 1847; when, determining to enter Parliament, he resigned, and was returned, with Mr. Joseph Bailey, Jr., and Mr. Francis Wegg Prosser, both Conservatives and Protectionists, without opposition, for Herefordshire. In November, 1847, he was appointed joint secretary of the Board of Control, with Mr. James Wilson, M.P. for Westbury, and early in the following year made his first speech in the House, in opposition to a motion for the production of papers in the case of the lately deposed Rajah of Sattara. In April, 1848, Mr. Lewis was appointed Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, and was succeeded in the secretaryship of the Board of Control by the Hon. John E. Elliot, M.P. for Roxburghshire. In his present office Mr. Lewis has served on the Smithfield Market Commission, appointed in November, 1849, which has just brought up its report; and upon that subject, the Irish Poor-Law, and Mr. Disraeli's motion as to local burdens, has spoken in the House. Last year he brought forward a road bill to consolidate the management of highways, and dispose of the question of turnpike trusts and their advances. The bill was not proceeded with last session, and has again been brought forward this year, with reference, however, only to highways. Mr. Lewis has earned reputation as the translator of "Boukli's Public Economy of Athens," which, as well as the "Dorians," has become a textbook, and passed through a second edition; and is known as author of an able essay on the "Use and Abuse of Political Terms," published in 1832; on the "Origin and Formation of the Romance Languages," published in 1835; on "Local Disturbances in Ireland, and the Irish Church Question," in 1836; on the "Government of Dependencies," in 1841; and "On the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion," in 1849. ORIGINAL LETTER FROM DR. LAYARD UPON ANCIENT ART, &c. We present in this number of the _International_ a communication from the most celebrated traveler of the nineteenth century, AUSTEN HENRY LAYARD, upon the sources of _Ancient Art_. It was addressed by the distinguished author to his friend and ours, Mr. MINOR K. KELLOGG, the well-known painter, who was for some time with DR. LAYARD in the East. * * * * * MY DEAR FRIEND: I frequently wish that you were here with me; I could find you subjects which would astonish you. However, I suppose you are desirous of hearing something about my proceedings. When I said that the arts may have passed from Egypt into Greece, I merely alluded to the popular opinion, without adhering to it. It is not altogether improbable that they came from another source. Phoenicia was too much of a trading province to devote any great attention to the higher branches of the arts, and I am not aware of any monuments existing which can be traced to that people, and show a very high knowledge of architecture or sculpture. The designs we have on their early coins, and particularly if the coins called "the unknown of Celicia," and those belonging to cities on the southern coast of Asia Minor, were introduced by the Phoenician colonists, evidently show that Phoenicia had borrowed from the Assyrians and not from the Egyptians. Indeed, as their language and written character (for the cuneiform, you must remember, appears only to have been a monumental character, perhaps Semetic, like the hieroglyphics of Egypt), coincided with those of the Assyrian, it is most probable that their sympathies were with that people. I assume that the language of the two nations was the same; this may have been the case at one period, but whether throughout the existence of the Assyrian empire, may be doubtful. At any rate, I believe the real Assyrians and the Phoenicians, like all the nations occupying Syria and Mesopotamia, to have been of the pure Semetic stock. I regret that I have not time to make you a sketch of a bas-relief. A specimen of this kind would at once show you how much nearer allied the arts of Greece are with those of Assyria, than with those of Egypt. One thing appears now to be pretty certain--that all Western Asia, Persia, Susiana, Media, Asia Minor, &c. were fundamentally indebted to Assyria for their knowledge of the arts. Persepolis is a mere copy of an Assyrian monument, as far as the sculpture and ornaments are concerned, with the addition of external architecture, of which, as far as I am yet able to judge, the Assyrians appear to have been almost entirely ignorant. There is no reason, therefore, to reject altogether the supposition that the Arts may have been transmitted from Assyria, through Phoenicia, into Greece, or, indeed, that the Arts may have passed into that country through Asia Minor. The Assyrians, in the extreme elegance and taste displayed in their ornaments, in their study of anatomy, and in their evident attempts at composition, had much in common with the Greeks. I think artists will be surprised when they see the collection of drawings I have been able to make, and that one of the results of the discoveries at Nimroud will be new views with regard to the early history of the arts. When I first came here, all the Arabs around told me that Nimroud was built by Athur, or Assur, and that it was the ancient capital of Assyria. Great faith may generally be placed in such traditions in the East. In Mesopotamia, and in the country watered by the Tigris and Euphrates, it is astonishing how names have been preserved, even when, during Greek, Roman, or other dominion, other cities were built on the site and named anew. The new names have long been lost, and the old are this day to be found in the mouth of the Bedouin. I need only mention Tadmor and Harran. In a religious point of view, there is no doubt that much important information may be expected from a careful investigation of the monuments of Assyria. During my labors, without being able to devote much thought or attention to the subject, I have been continually struck with the curious illustrations of little understood passages in the Bible which these records afford. In an historical and archæological point of view, I know nothing more interesting and more promising than the examination of the ruins of Assyria. One of the vastest empires that ever existed--the power of whose king extended, at one period, over the greater part of Assyria--whose advance in civilization and knowledge is the theme of ancient historians--disappeared so suddenly from the face of the earth, that it has left scarcely a trace, save its name, behind. Even the names of its kings are not satisfactorily known, and out of the various dynastic lists preserved, we are unable to select one worthy of credit. As to their deeds, we have been in the most profound darkness, and were it not for the record of their strength and greatness which we find in the Scriptures, we should scarcely credit the few traditions which the Greeks have preserved to us. After the lapse of two thousand five hundred years, a mere chance has thrown their history in our way, and we have now their deeds chronicled in writing and in sculpture. Were I much given to the explanation of such things by a reference to superhuman interference, I should be inclined to think that the Almighty had designedly kept these monuments buried in the Earth, until the time had arrived when man had sufficient leisure and knowledge to discover the contents of records, written in an unknown character, that He might prove to them how great was the power which He so suddenly destroyed, and how fully the prophecies upon the subject were fulfilled. Had these sculptures and inscriptions remained above ground, they would have utterly disappeared long ere any records could have been made of their former existence. Had they been casually discovered before the present century, they would most probably have been used for cement in the construction of the walls of a city. In fact, the moment for their discovery has, in every way, been most propitious. However, I will not enter into such speculations, but leave them to those who are that way inclined. A. H. L. _ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE._ WANDERINGS IN THE PENINSULA. GRENADA, May 18, 1850. MY DEAR FRIEND--It affords me much pleasure to write you from the midst of the terrestrial paradise into which my romantic wanderings have at length brought me. Almost every one who sets out from home with the object of travel, looks forward to some one or two spots, which, in the light of imagination, glitter like stars in the bright prospective. To me, the two cities which most aroused my curiosity and pleased my fancy, were first, Grenada, in which I now am, and Venice, to which I still look forward with a brighter hope, gilded with the rays of memory, and clustering with the rosebuds of coming days. In Grenada, my expectations, sanguine as they were, have been more than realized. It is the nearest approach to paradise that I have yet seen: a spot that cannot disappoint any one, as the best part of its beauty, like that of a beautiful woman, is of a nature, that not even genius itself can describe. I visit the "Alhambra" daily, and write a letter within its sacred precincts. Externally the "Alhambra" has a severe and forbidding appearance, like that of an ancient fortress, but within, it exceeds in beauty all one's preconceptions, however warm and extravagant they may be. The terrace which conducts to it, after having passed through the huge gate which opens into its jurisdiction, is embowered with tall, straight, and overhanging elms, nicely trimmed and of the richest foliage, while here and there a fountain marks the bends in the road. Along this enchanting walk marble seats are arranged, where one can repose for a moment to listen to the notes of the nightingales in the adjacent groves, and charm his fancy with the melodious rippling of water at his feet. If one has any feeling in his soul, in such a spot as this he is sure to find it. If he has a woman with him he is certain to fall in love, and if he has not, he may perhaps fall--_asleep_! Besides the "Alhambra," there are numerous objects of peculiar interest to be seen in Grenada. The Cathedral, though inferior to those of Seville and Toledo in magnificence and grandeur, is nevertheless a splendid edifice, and is rendered particularly interesting as being the last resting-place of Ferdinand and Isabella, the wisest sovereigns who ever ruled over Spain. Yesterday we visited the royal chapel, and beheld the beautiful monument erected to their memory. In its architecture it struck me as being exceedingly unique, the work of consummate skill and exquisite taste. It is of delicate alabaster, and was wrought, it is said, at Genoa, by Peralla. It is about twelve feet in length by some ten in breadth, profusely covered with figures and ingenious designs in relief, while upon it, as upon a bridal couch, the statues of Ferdinand and Isabella, in their royal robes, are extended side by side--their faces like those of life, in calm and beautiful repose, elevated toward heaven. Having examined the monument for some time, we descended into the little arched vault beneath, which contained the coffins of the deceased monarchs. These were of lead, strongly bound with iron, and the letter F., upon that of Ferdinand, was the only sign which distinguished them from each other. While in that small chamber of the dead, my memory ran back to the great events of the fifteenth century--the discovery of America and the conquest of Grenada--which owed their origin to the enterprise of the two famous personages whose ashes were inclosed in the heavy leaden cases at my feet; and I never felt more profoundly the insignificance of earthly renown, or the vanity of individual glory. "The paths of glory lead but to the grave." Coming from the tomb, we were next shown a sceptre and crown which had been used by the illustrious dead. Also a sword which Ferdinand himself wore in his battles with the Moors. Leaving the Cathedral, we proceeded along to the Moorish palace called "The Generaliffe." This edifice is not far from the "Alhambra," and is separated from it by a deep and romantic ravine. Passing through a level avenue of cypress and rosebushes, we arrived at its main entrance. The first view of the interior was ravishing. The virgin stream of the Daru, here collected in a narrow canal, was rushing with a musical sound through arbors of cypresses and files of flowery trees, arranged like fairy sentinels on either side. Passing on, we soon reached the "trysting-place" of Zoraya, the frail Sultana. This spot certainly is too exquisitely beautiful for me to describe. It is of a rectangular form, and bordered with beds of flowers and handsome trees. On one side is an arbor of gigantic cypresses, beautifully trained, the trunks of which were tastefully enamelled with delicate vines, laden with blooming roses. Within the square is an artificial pond of water, sparkling with golden fishes, in the centre of which is a fairy-like island, teeming with flowers of numerous kinds. The general effect of the view was like that of enchantment, or like one of those indescribable scenes that sometimes visit us in dreams, the beauty of which surpasses reality. But my time will not allow me to indulge very largely in detail. From the "Generaliffe" we proceeded to several of the churches, and afterward to an extensive mad-house. We were not a little amused. One old gentleman, _about_ the "_maddest of the lot_," who had formerly been a general in the Spanish army, told me he liked his present quarters very well, but that his companions were nothing better than a pack of fools! The grounds about this humane establishment are prettily laid out in gardens and handsome walks, and the patients themselves have a spacious and pleasant yard for their exercise and recreation. All this reflects favorably upon the character of the Spanish people, who are ever kind to such as are afflicted or in distress. They never scoff at human suffering in any form, however fond they may be of the savage ferocity of the bull-fight. They are compassionate to the poor, and even when the request of a beggar is denied, it is done in such gentle terms, that the denial is robbed of its sting. "Pardon me for God's sake, brother," is the usual form. I have found much to admire among the Spaniards. No nation, not even the French, exceeds them in true politeness or good breeding. When I left Madrid, a friend of mine procured for me an introductory letter, from a lady whom to this day I have never seen, addressed to her children living at Grenada. To my great surprise, the ladies called in their carriage yesterday and inquired for me, although I had not then presented my letter of introduction. To-day I called upon the family, in company with Mr. Wetmore, (a young American from New York, who has just reached Grenada from Madrid,) and was most hospitably and kindly received. One of the young ladies has perhaps the sweetest face I ever saw, and to her beauty her graceful manners add an indescribable charm. I am quite certain that it would be impossible for me or any other man to see her many times with impunity. The influence of such attractions with me, I confess, is quite irresistible. Beauty is more potent than any other agent of human power, and he who is able to resist it must be a heartless Samson indeed. Truly yours, JOHN E. WARREN. * * * * * BLACKWOOD ON DANCERS IN SMALLCLOTHES. --For a man to be fond of shuffling and twirling himself out of the dignity of step which nature gave him--picking his way through a quadrille like a goose upon red hot bricks, or gyrating like a bad teetotum in what English fashionables are pleased to term a "valse"--I never see a man thus occupied without a fervent desire to kick him. * * * * * Sincerity is like traveling on a plain beaten road, which commonly brings a man sooner to his journey's end than by-ways, in which men often lose themselves. "MARKS OF BARHAMVILLE." We were summoned one evening some three or four months ago to the house of an eminent New Yorker to hear read the manuscript verses of a gentleman from South Carolina, who was quite sure that he had earned for himself a name that should endure forever as a part of the national glory. We had good wine and the choicest company, and these kept us from sleep through numerous scenas and cantos, and if we formed any judgment in the premises we believe we did not express one. In due time Messrs. Appleton published the book, and as it has not been noticed much here, we copy from the June _Fraser_ the following paragraphs about it, premising that our author had no faith in American criticism, but was quite willing to abide the decisions of English reviewers: "The general fault of carelessness and clumsiness runs through the volume of poems, apparently, of a Trans-atlantic author, 'Marks of Barhamville.' The book is just three times as large as it should have been--as is usually the case nowadays. When will poets learn that 'brevity is the soul of wit:' and more, that saying a thing in three weak lines is no substitute whatsoever for the power of saying it in one strong one? Of the first poem in the book, 'Elfreide of Guldal,' we are unable to speak, having been unable to read it; but it evinces at least more historic information than is common just now among our poets, who seem to forget utterly that _ex nihilo nihil fit_, and that the brains of man may be as surely pumped dry as any other vessel, if nothing be put in to replace what is taken out. Mr. Marks cannot avoid, too, giving us, like every one else, a set of clinical lectures on the morbid anatomy of his own inner man, under the appropriate title of '_Weeds_ from Life's Sea-shore;' forgetting that sea-weeds must be very rare and delicate indeed to be worth preserving in a _hortus siccus_, instead of being usefully covered out of sight in the nearest earth-heap, there to turn into manure. He is, however, more objective than most of his self-exenterating compeers; but he wants the grace and cheerful lightness of the American school. A large part of his volume is taken up with 'Maia, a masque'--an imitation of Milton's manner, but not, alas! of his melody and polish; as, for instance:-- "'Not a warbler wakes his lay, Not a dewdrop pearls the spray, Not a fleecy cloud-rack sails 'Fore the warm-breath'd summer gales, Shedding blessings on the earth, But heavenward points its primal birth. "Hark! the green-sedg'd chiming rill, Weeding down yon cot-crown'd hill, The torrent's dash, the river's gush, The mighty wind-resounding crush Of the fallen monarch of the wood, Re-echo'd by the distant flood. "However, this masque is readable enough, though Flora and Zephyrus, Oberon and Titania, not much wanted anywhere in the nineteenth century, seem oddly out of place amid 'whippoor-wills,' and 'mockbirds,' and other Yankee nationalities, pleasing and natural as they are in themselves. How did they get into the Alleghanies? By liner or steamer? In the main cabin or the steerage? And were they, were they sea-sick? One would fear it from the unwonted huskiness of their new utterances. "The best thing in the book is 'Semaël,' though the plot is neither very apparent nor very novel, the imagery as trite as need be, the blank verse heavy and monotonous, without breaks, grouping, or relief, and the accents as often as not on the prepositions:-- "'_Thé_ felucca there With lateen-sail, seen _ín_ th' horizon-skirt Shaping its course t'ward _thé_ Egyptian shore, "(Which Egyptian shore?) "Gives _tó_ the moon the silv'ry foam, which breaks "(Could it give the foam _from_ the moon?) "'Gainst _thé_ sharp keel, and tracks the wave with light. While just beneath him bounds the lighter skiff With bird-like speed; and darting _tó_ the shore, Lowers _íts_ white sail, "(Not another bark's, mind!) and moors its painted prow "(Oh, schoolboy's phrase!) "Close _tó_ the cliff. Disporting _ín_ the sheen.... "And so forth. "And yet this whole passage, and what follows, is really imaginative and picturesque, but spoilt by carelessness, carelessness, carelessness. Either write verses, we say again, or prose. And unless the metre and accent coincide with the sense, and make music when read merely as prose is read, the lines are a makeshift and a failure, and neither worth writing or reading, though they were as fanciful and overloaded as Mr. Browning's, or as grandiloquent and sugary as Mr. ---- Who's?" * * * * * Lord Brougham, who next to the Duke of Wellington is now unquestionably the first man of the British Empire, a few days ago in the House of Lords complained of an instance of libel of a species which is extremely common in the United States, and which is of all species the most irritating and offensive. Lord Brougham observed, that no one who had lived so long as he had in Parliament had ever taken notice so seldom of any libellous matter published, or of any breach of privilege committed against him. He might also add, that no person had ever been more the object of the most indiscriminate, and he might say the most absurd and the most unfounded abuse. Nevertheless, in all such cases he had adopted a neutral course, and had left the truth to come out in the natural lapse of events. There was, however, one species of breach of privilege which he had never been disposed to pass unnoticed. Attacks one must undergo. To be exposed to attacks was the fate of all men who lived in public. No man ought to shrink from or be too sensitive to attacks; but, under pretence of stating what a lord had said in Parliament, to put words into his mouth which he had never uttered, for the purpose, the express purpose, of calumniating him,--words which the writer of the calumny must have well known that he had never uttered, to put such words into his mouth for such a purpose, formed a case in which he thought that the party calumniated was bound to bring the party so offending under the notice of their lordships. Lord Brougham proceeded to arraign the _Daily News_ for an example of this crime which would have done no dishonor to the inventive faculties of the _Literary World_. * * * * * A MOCK GUILLOTINE.--DELIRIUM TREMENS ON THE STAGE.--It is stated in _Galignani's Messenger_ that at the end of the late carnival two married women of Vidauban Department of the Var manufactured a lay figure, entirely in white, and, after attaching a chain round its neck, placed it in a small cart. Many of the inhabitants then paraded it through the village in solemn procession, accompanied by a crowd of men carrying axes, &c., and singing revolutionary songs. After a while they formed a sort of revolutionary tribunal, and the figure, which was called "Blanc," was gravely tried, and, by the majority of the votes of the crowd, condemned to death, the principal judge, a man named Arnaud, saying, "Blanc! you prevent us from dancing farandoles, and therefore we condemn you to death!" Thereupon, a man seized the figure, placed it on a plank, and at one blow with his axe severed the head from the body. A bottle of wine had been placed in the neck of the figure, and, this having been broken by the blow, a resemblance of blood was produced. The head was then cast into the crowd and torn to pieces by them. This scandalous scene created a most painful impression throughout the department. A few days afterward, four men who played a principal part in the affair, and the two women who made the figure, were brought to trial on the charge of exciting citizens to hatred of each other. The men pleaded drunkenness as an excuse--the women declared that they had only intended to amuse their children. Four of the accused were acquitted, and the other two, who had acted as judge and executioner, were condemned to four and three months' imprisonment. It is a pity that by the application of some such law, the disgustingly vulgar and brutalizing piece called _The Drunkard_, which has lately been played with "immense success" at Barnum's Theatre, (and in which the chief characters appear in all the stages of degradation until one of them is nearly dead with the delirium tremens), cannot be suppressed. With all its pretensions to morality, the play is irredeemably bad and base. * * * * * The CINCINNATI ART UNION advertises Powers's Greek Slave as one of its prizes, and publishes an engraving of it which should frighten away all subscriptions. * * * * * AMERICAN EXTENSION AND CONQUEST.--The Daily News thus opens an article upon the recent attempt to invade Cuba: "Shortly after the American war; a sapient French statesman, writing from Louisiana to his royal master in Paris, advised the French government to cultivate a close and intimate alliance with the Cherokee Indians, who, occupying as they did the defiles of the Alleghanies, would form a permanent bulwark between the young Anglo-Saxon republic and the French possessions on the Mississippi. But the permanent bulwark could no more resist the advancing wave than a lath and plaster breakwater could withstand the seas of the Channel. In a few short years not a vestige of it was to be found, and in less than a quarter of a century both French and Cherokees had disappeared from the scene. Not only were the defiles of the Alleghanies opened, but the Alleghanies themselves have since been virtually removed. Ever since the foundation of the republic, our American kinsmen have been anxious to emulate and surpass us in indulging that desire for territorial acquisition, which seems to be, for the present at least, the ruling passion of the Anglo-Saxon mind. Confined at first between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic, they gradually spread westward to the Mississippi, of both banks of which, from its sources to its _embouchure_, they possessed themselves as early as 1806. Their coast line, which, originally, did not extend beyond the St. Mary, was soon afterward carried round the peninsula of Florida, and along the northern shore of the Mexican Gulf, westward to the mouth of the Sabine. Not satisfied with this, they planted themselves in Texas, and some years afterward transferred their boundary to the Rio Grande. Oregon, New Mexico, and California, fell in quick succession within the grasp of the confederacy. The entire disappearance of the Spaniard from the continent is a consummation, not even doubtful, but simply awaiting the convenience of the encroaching Anglo-Saxon. For the accession of Canada, time is implicitly relied upon--the idea of conquest in that quarter being out of the question--and thus it is that even sober-minded men are beginning to believe that the time is not far off when the glowing prophecies of the most sanguine will be realized, that the boundaries of the republic would yet be the Isthmus, the North Pole, and the two oceans." * * * * * LEDRU ROLLIN'S new work, "The Decline of England," of which the first volume only has appeared, is, as might have been anticipated, savagely attacked in most of the British journals. The _Times_ observes: "M. Ledru Rollin professes to be a philosopher and a statesman, and, being induced by somewhat peculiar circumstances to reflect upon the condition of this country, he was, he tells us, driven to the conclusion that we are a declining people, destined in no short period to exhibit to mankind a fearful spectacle of misery and ruin. Some persons have thought, that the many manifestations of material wealth and power which must have presented themselves to the eyes and mind of M. Ledru Rollin, even on the most casual observation, should have induced him in his character of philosoper to hesitate in deciding so hastily, and with such emphasis, that our destruction is imminent. But in our opinion there are events of everyday occurrence connected with our social habits and customs--events which from their frequency cease to excite our attention--which should be deemed still more important and significant, and which to one really deserving the name of a philosopher would appear more powerful guarantees for the future happiness of a people among whom they occur than any afforded by mere proofs of great wealth, power, or skill. It is much the fashion with those who delight to deal in doleful vaticinations as to the future destiny of England, to dwell with great emphasis upon the amazing diversity of conditions to be seen here--to exaggerate the suffering of the millions of our poor, and to place them in a sort of rhetorical contrast with the extravagant wealth of a favored few. But there is still something in the mutual relations of all classes of society in this country that proves a healthy condition to exist in our body politic, that shows that we are really brethren, and that whether interest or kind sympathies govern us we are still one people--with great differences of opinion among us indeed, openly expressed by all, but still with a feeling prevalent in all classes of the community that we form one people, and that we are, from the most powerful to the most weak, bound together by ties of great regard as well as national brotherhood." * * * * * THE LATE CATASTROPHE ON LAKE ERIE.--Our whole country has been once more shocked by an appalling and unnecessary loss of life, from the burning of the steamer Griffith. We use the expression, _unnecessary loss of life_, not from any hasty impulse, or undue excitement, but in view of the evident and undeniable fact, that two hundred and fifty human beings have been sacrificed for a culpable neglect on the part of the proprietors of the steamer to furnish suitable protection. No one competent to judge will doubt that every individual on the Griffith might have been saved had she been provided with life-boats. The avarice of proprietors has generally prevented their use, though the cost of a sufficient number for each steamer would not exceed _one thousand dollars_. The lives of hundreds of men, women and children are of little account to a corporation, when weighed against a thousand dollars of their capital stock. Life-boats cannot save their _burning property_, and why impair their own interests for the saving a few hundred lives now and then? We have the approbation of every _disinterested_ citizen, when we suggest to Congress some law which shall compel steamboat owners to protect their passengers in case of accident, by suitable life-saving apparatus. Fire-proof paints and other incombustible materials are very wisely demanded, but our navigation is exposed to a thousand other dangers, which can be guarded against by no other means so effectually as by life-boats; and it should be within the duties of the inspectors to see that steamers are in all instances furnished with a sufficient number of them to contain their full complement of passengers. * * * * * M. LAMARTINE has left Paris to visit his estate in the East. _RECENT DEATHS._ JANE PORTER.--As in the case of the recent death of Miss Edgeworth, it is singular that so little notice has been taken of the demise of Jane Porter, one of the most distinguished novelists which England has produced. Miss Porter may be said to have been the first who introduced that beautiful kind of fiction, the historical romance, which has added such amusement and interest to English literature. The author of "Thaddeus of Warsaw" and "The Scottish Chiefs" has done much to deserve the lasting respect and gratitude of her country. The family of this excellent woman and able writer, according to the _Illustrated News_, is of Irish descent. Her father was an officer of dragoons in the British service; he married a Miss Blenkinsopp, of the Northumbrian house of Blenkinsopp, which Camden styles "a right ancient and generous family." Miss Porter's father died in the prime of life, and left his widow with five almost infant children, in slender circumstances. The great talents of this orphan family raised them to affluence and distinction. Three of the children were sons; of these, the eldest perished in a dangerous climate abroad, at the commencement of a promising career; the second (the present Dr. William Ogilvie Porter, of Bristol) became a physician, and practiced successfully. The third was the late Sir Robert Ker Porter, K.C.H., distinguished as an author, a painter, and a soldier: some of our finest battle-pieces are the work of his pencil, and he himself followed heroes to the field; he was with Sir John Moore when he fell victoriously at Corunna, and he earned a high reputation throughout the Peninsular war. He afterward became a diplomatist, and was latterly consul at Venezuela. His "Traveling Sketches in Russia and Egypt" procured him also an author's fame. Sir Robert Ken Porter died suddenly about seven years ago; he left by his wife, a Russian lady, an only daughter, who is married, and resides in Russia. The two sisters of these brothers Porter were even more distinguished. The younger of them, Miss Anna Maria Porter, became an authoress at twelve years of age; she wrote many successful novels, of which the most popular were the "Hungarian Brothers," the "Recluse of Norway," and the "Village of Mariendorpt." She died at her brother's residence at Bristol, on the 6th of June, 1832. The elder sister, Miss Jane Porter, the subject of this notice, was born at Durham, where her father's regiment was quartered at the time. She, with her sister, Anna Maria, received her education under a famous Scotch tutor, Mr. Fulton, at Edinburgh, where her widowed mother lived with her children in their early years. The family afterward removed, first to Ditton, and thence to Esher, in Surrey, where Mrs. Porter, a most intelligent and agreeable lady, resided with her daughters for many years, until her death, in 1831. Mrs. Porter was buried in the churchyard at Esher; and on her tomb the passer-by may read this inscription, "Here lies Jane Porter, a Christian widow." As a novelist Miss Jane Porter obtained the highest celebrity. Her three most renowned productions were her "Thaddeus of Warsaw," written when she was about twenty years of age, her "Scottish Chiefs," and her "Pastor's Fireside." "Thaddeus of Warsaw" had immense popularity; it was translated into most of the Continental languages, and Poland was loud in its praise. Kosciusko sent the author a ring containing his portrait. General Gardiner, the British Minister at Warsaw, could not believe that any other than an eye-witness had written the story, so accurate were the descriptions, although Miss Porter had not then been in Poland. The "Scottish Chiefs" was equally successful. With regard to this romance, it is known that Sir Walter Scott admitted to George IV., one day, in the library at Carlton Palace, that the "Scottish Chiefs" was the parent in his mind of the Waverley Novels. In a letter written to her friend Mr. Litchfield, about three months ago, Miss Porter, speaking of these novels, said:--"I own I feel myself a kind of sybil in these things; it being full fifty years ago since my 'Scottish Chiefs' and 'Thaddeus of Warsaw' came into the then untrodden field. And what a splendid race of the like chroniclers of generous deeds have followed, brightening the track as they have advanced! The author of 'Waverley,' and all his soul-stirring 'Tales of my Landlord,' &c. Then comes Mr. James, with his historical romances, on British and French subjects, so admirably uniting the exquisite fiction with the fact, that the whole seems equally verity. But my feeble hand" (Miss Porter was ailing when she wrote the letter) "will not obey my wish to add more to this host of worthies. I can only find power to say with my trembling pen that I cannot but esteem them as a respected link with my past days of lively interest in all that might promote the virtue and true honor of my contemporaries from youth to age." These eloquent words become the more touching, when we consider that within three months after they were written, this admirable lady quitted this life in the honored maturity of her fame. Miss Porter wrote, in conjunction with her sister, "Tales round a Winter's Hearth." She was also an indefatigable contributor to the periodicals of the day. Her biographical sketch of Colonel Denham, the African traveler, in the _Naval and Military Journal_, was much admired as one of the most affecting tributes ever paid to departed merit. Miss Porter was a Chanoiness of the Polish order of St. Joachim, which honor was conferred upon her after the publication of "Thaddeus of Warsaw." She is, in her portraits, generally represented in the habit of this order. Miss Porter died on the 24th ult., at the residence of her brother, Dr. Porter, in Portland-square, Bristol. That brother, so tenderly beloved by her, and so justly respected by all who know him, is now the last survivor of this brilliant company of brothers and sisters; and he, too, we are sorry to say, is in an enfeebled state from paralysis, aggravated by the recent shock of his gifted relative's demise. Except himself and his married niece in Russia, there remains no representative of a family which England has good cause to hold in grateful remembrance. * * * * * THE COUNT DE VITTRÉ.--The Paris journals announce the death of one of the most distinguished officers of the French army, General Count de Vittré, Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, &c. Charles de Raity de Villeneuve, Count de Vittré, was descended from an old and noble family of Poitou, was the comrade of Napoleon at the Military School, and took a glorious part in the campaign of Russia, where he was severely wounded. He also distinguished himself in the Spanish expedition in 1823, where he had under his orders General Changarnier, the Duke de Crillon, and M.A. Carrel, who, on account of his valor, gave him the surname of the Bayard of the 19th Century. General Count de Vittré was uncle to M. Hugues de Coval, a distinguished political writer of Paris. * * * * * GLOVER, THE PAINTER.--A Van Diemen's Land newspaper announces the death, at the advanced age of eighty-two, of Mr. Glover, the painter, whose pictures of English scenery are well known to lovers of landscape art. * * * * * MATTHEW L. DAVIS died on the 15th June, at the age of 84. He had been for two or three years enfeebled, and for the last year confined to his room, but he retained his mental faculties and his physical powers until after his eightieth year, owing, in great measure, to the temperance of his habits, his fondness for exercise, and his elastic, hopeful temperament. Mr. Davis was preëminently a politician through life, and aided to organize and give triumph to "the Republican party," so called, more than half a century ago, when the Federal or Washingtonian party was prostrated not more by its own follies than by the ability and tact of its leading adversaries. Half the good management and efficient activity that served to elect Jefferson would have sufficed to defeat him. And nowhere was the battle of Democracy fought with greater address or against more formidable odds than in this State and City, under the consummate generalship of Aaron Burr, of whom Davis was the untiring lieutenant and confidential friend. Though so long and so deeply immersed in Politics, possessing decided talents and a thorough knowledge of public affairs, Mr. Davis never held any prominent office. He did not seem to be an ambitious man. He was once wealthy, and became poor, but he never seemed elated by prosperity nor humbled by adversity. He was not a fortunate politician, and he seemed to love the smoke of the battle more than the plunder of the field. He was quite often on the unlucky side--for Crawford in '24--for Adams in '28--for Clay in '32,--and so on. His side was taken from impulse and personal liking, not from selfish calculation. He had known almost every man who figures in the history of our country since the Revolutionary era, and, while his faculties remained, his conversation was remarkably instructive and entertaining. In early life Mr. Davis was engaged in trade, and was moderately successful, but he gave up business to devote himself more entirely to politics, He reëntered commercial life before the last war with England, and his house (Davis & Strong) was fortunate in South American speculations, of the profits of which he himself received some $50,000, which, however, was soon lost. For half a century he was an industrious writer. He produced several very clever pamphlets upon men and affairs, and was for many years known as "The Spy in Washington" for the _Courier and Enquirer_, and "The Genevese Traveler" for the _London Times_. Burr bequeathed to him all his papers, and from these and his memoranda and recollections he prepared and published, in 1838, "Memoirs of Aaron Burr, with Miscellaneous Selections from his Correspondence," in 2 vols. 8vo., and "The Private Journal of Aaron Burr during his Residence of Four Years in Europe, with Selections from his Correspondence," 2 vols. 8vo. * * * * * REV. JOSEPH SAMUEL C. F. FREY, a well-known Baptist clergyman, died at Pontiac, Michigan, in the 79th year of his age, on the 5th of June. He was born of Jewish parents, in Germany, and was for several years reader in a Synagogue. When about twenty-five years old, he became a Christian, and soon after a student of divinity at Berlin. He was subsequently engaged nearly all the time in efforts to convert the Jews. It was at his suggestion that the London Missionary Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, was founded, in 1808. In 1816 he came to the United States, and was for a time pastor of a Presbyterian Church in this city, but changing his views upon the subject of baptism, he joined the Baptist Church, and was settled over congregations at Newark and at Sing Sing, until, through his means, the Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews was founded, and he became its missionary. He wrote several books, which display considerable learning and an amiable and honorable temper. The most popular of his productions is one entitled "Joseph and Benjamin," designed to illustrate the points of difference between the Jews and Christians. _SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANIES._ MR. PAINE'S HYDRO-ELECTRIC LIGHT.--All the past eras that are marked by especial characteristics and glories must yield before our own, the AGE OF DISCOVERY, which bequeaths to the new generations so many applications of steam and electricity, so many inventions in all the arts, and such vast enterprises undertaken and accomplished for the good of mankind. These, as the _Tribune_ eloquently says, are the immortal monuments of our times, and dwarf earlier performances into a very inferior position. What are the pyramids to a line of steamships? What is there in Homer or Plato worthy to be mentioned on the day when Professor Morse sets up his telegraph, and mightier than Jupiter, the cloud-compeller, with the lightnings of Heaven flashes intelligence from Halifax to New Orleans, as rapidly as the behests of the mind reach the fingers? How petty and narrow seem the ambition and desires of Alexander or Napoleon when the bold and prophetic genius of Whitney, dealing with continents and nations as with parishes and neighborhoods, stretches his iron road around half the globe and shows you, moving forward and backward over its rails, the flux and reflux of a world's commerce and intercourse, a sublime tide of benefits and universal relations! What poet, what artist, what philosopher, what statesman, has equalled in grandeur these conceptions of science, or the splendid results which have followed their practical realization? Not one. And the reason of this is plain. These things are filled with the spirit of future centuries, while our Art, Literature, Statesmanship, Philosophy, are either mere dead relics of the past, or the poor makeshifts of a present, not yet equal to the business Providence has given it to perform. It is claimed for Mr. Paine that he has found out the means of producing the greatest revolution which physical science can well be supposed to make in the business and comfort of society. As far as we apprehend his claim, it is that he has established as a new principle of science that electricity possesses the qualities of weight, compressibility and gravitation; that he has proved water to be in reality a simple elemental substance, which he can decompose or transform into either hydrogen or oxygen gas according to its electrical condition, and according as positive or negative electricity is applied to it; and that he has invented the means whereby from water he can produce at will either of these gases without any other than mechanical agency and with no expense save that of the machine, which will cost at the outset $400 or $500, and last for an indefinite period. If this is true, it is unquestionably the greatest discovery of modern times, and will produce a change in affairs of all sorts so profound and extensive as to surpass and bewilder the mind which seeks to imagine it. When with a pail of water you can without expense light and heat your house; when coal mines are useless, and steamships draw their fuel from the waves they traverse; then the comforts and luxuries of life, and the means of traveling will be diminished in price so as to come within the ability of every man; a great deal of the most toilsome and disagreeable work now performed will become unnecessary; and a vast step will be made toward a more just and equal distribution of social advantages. Mr. Paine is now engaged at the Astor House in preparations to light that immense hotel with his hydro-electric gas, and the result of his experiment is looked for with profound interest. We confess little faith in his success. * * * * * The story of an American inventor named REMINGTON--who a year or two since addressed to the late Mr. Senator Lewis, of Alabama, a history of his adventures, which was published in the _Merchant's Magazine_--must be well-remembered, for its intrinsic interest, and on account of the denials and refutations of portions of it by certain persons in London to whom allusion was made in Mr. Remington's letter. The invention, the Remington Bridge, seems now to be exciting no little attention both in England and in this country. The principle which gives to it its great strength, is the peculiar construction of its longitudinal supporters, investing them with all the tenacity that wood has when it is sought to be drawn apart. Thus it is capable of sustaining as great weight as would be required to _pull asunder the fibres_ of the longitudinal supporters. No wooden bridge can be built of so great a span. Mr. Remington believes that he can build a span at least 1320 feet in length, while the span of the old wooden bridge at Fairmount, near Philadelphia, which was one of the largest in the world, was but little over 300 feet. The annals of mechanical art afford few instances where a great invention has been developed and prosecuted under apparently more adverse circumstances. * * * * * NEW PLANET.--The _Tempo_, of Naples, publishes a letter from M. Leopold Del Re, Director of the Observatory at Naples, announcing that the celebrated astronomer, Don Annibale de Gasparin, late discoverer of the _Igea Borbonica_, has discovered a new telescope planet, being the ninth between Mars and Jupiter. It is a star of the ninth magnitude, and is at present in apposition with the sun. * * * * * IN SURGERY.--A correspondent of the _Lowell Courier_ claims for the late Dr. Twitchell, of Keene, the honor of successfully tying the carotid artery several months before Sir Astley Cooper made the attempt. The latter has always had the credit of being the first to achieve this extremely difficult and dangerous process. AUTHORS AND BOOKS. The Rev. THOMAS H. SMYTH, D.D. of South Carolina, whose work upon the Unity of the Human Races, suggested by the recent declarations of infidelity, by Professor Agassiz of Harvard College and others, has been published by Putnam, and received with a hearty applause by Christians and scholars, is not, as is commonly supposed, an American author, though he has long resided in this country. He was born in Belfast, in the North of Ireland, and educated at the Royal College in that city, pursuing afterward his theological studies in London, and at Princeton in New Jersey. He has been eighteen years minister of the Presbyterian church in Charleston, where he was married, and where he will probably always reside, while in this country; but his liberal fortune and inquiring spirit tempt him to frequent travel, and he is now absent upon a tour which will probably be extended to Nineveh and all the most interesting scenes connected with the history of religion in the eastern world. Dr. Smyth possesses one of the largest and most valuable private libraries in the United States, and has therefore been able to compose his learned works in theology, history, &c. under advantages but seldom enjoyed by our authors. His chief productions are, Apostolical Succession, 1842; Presbytery and not Prelacy the Scriptural and Primitive Polity of the Church, 1843; Ecclesiastical Republicanism; Ecclesiastical Catechism; Claims of the Free Church of Scotland; Life and Character of Thomas Chalmers, with Personal Recollections; Nature and Functions of Ruling Elders; Nature and Functions of Deacons; The Rite of Confirmation examined; Bereaved Parents Consoled; Union to Christ and His Church; The True Origin and Source of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, with a Continuation on Presbyterianism, the National Declaration, and the Revolution; Denominational Education; Pastoral Memento; Life and Character of Calvin; The Westminster Assembly; and the Unity of the Human Races proved to be the Doctrine of Scripture, Reason, and Science. Dr. Smyth has also written largely in the Biblical Repertory, the Southern Presbyterian Review, and other Periodicals. * * * * * THE VETERAN ITALIAN GENERAL PEPE, known in the book-world heretofore by his Personal Memoirs, has just published a Narrative of Scenes and Events in Italy, from 1847 to 1849. It comprises the most interesting particulars respecting the Revolutions in Naples, Sicily, and Rome; the Military Operations of Charles Albert; and the Siege of Venice, of which city General Pepe held the command. It also includes the details of the General's confidential communications and interviews with the Italian Sovereigns, &c. &c. * * * * * MR. MAYNE REID, who in sundry letters published in this city last year, claimed that he was the real hero of the Mexican war--in which he served as a lieutenant of the New York volunteers--has recently published in London a brace of volumes under the title of _The Rifle Rangers_. In his preface he alleges that all his statements offered as facts are strictly true, though at times highly colored for the sake of effect. This will be obvious to every reader, for the book is full of adventures of all sorts--perils by sword, fire, rivals, wild animals, bloodhounds, &c.--which are related in a lively, dashing style, varied at times with descriptions of the scenery, plants, and inhabitants of Central America. One of the London journals, in a review of it, observes, "We would not wish a more lively or interesting companion than Captain Reid,--a _thorough Yankee soldier_, combining humor, imagination, and dashing bravery in the highest degree." The thorough Yankee, like many others much quoted abroad, is a clever Irish adventurer, who was in the United States altogether some four or five years, engaged chiefly as a writer for the journals in New York and Philadelphia. * * * * * Among our frequent foreign correspondents the reader will be pleased to recognize the accomplished and adventurous traveler Mr. JOHN E. WARREN, whose work on South America, _Para, or Scenes and Adventures on the Banks of the Amazon_, has just been published, in two octavo volumes, by Bentley, of London. We present the first of a series from him in our initial number. * * * * * The Rev. FRANCIS L. HAWKS, LL.D. will publish in the autumn a collection of very rare and curious tracts, illustrative of our early Colonial History, with copious notes, &c. Dr. Hawks may be safely regarded as an authority of the very highest value, upon whatever relates to the religious and social history of the country. He adds to persevering and well-directed research the soundest discrimination, and a judicial fairness; and we trust an impression which has obtained within a few years, that he is engaged upon an extensive work that will illustrate his abilities in this field, is not without foundation. * * * * * The celebrated Princess BELGIOSO, whose achievements in the tented field, as in the showy salons of fashion, have long been familiar, has, as is well known in the gay world of Europe, been a successful cultivator of letters, and has frequently delighted the readers of French and Italian with brilliant sketches of society and manners. She is now traveling in Greece, whence she will proceed into the romantic and picturesque regions of Asia, and the proprietors of the _New York Tribune_ have engaged her as one of the regular foreign correspondents of that journal. * * * * * M. EUGENE SCRIBE, the writer of the libretto of _Tempesta_, just brought out in London, at the age of eighteen years, was placed under the care of M. Dupin, now the President of the French Legislative Assembly, to study the Roman law. Shortly after reaching his majority he began his dramatic career by writing a vaudeville for the Gymnase. His success here led to an engagement to write for the Theatre Francais, and to the establishment of his reputation as a dramatic author. He has composed ten comedies in five acts, and twenty in one, two, or three acts, for the Francais. He has written one hundred and fifty vaudevilles for the Gymnase. As a lyrical poet he stands unequalled for the number of his _libretti_, having written the poetry of forty grand operas and of one hundred comic operas. His works, exclusive of novels, are three hundred and forty in number. * * * * * The Literature of the Western States has not yet furnished any name that shines with a fairer and serener lustre than that of ALICE CAREY, several of whose poems, of "imagination all compact," and faultless in rhythmical art, will live among the contributions which this age offers to the permanent in literary creation. Her younger sister, PH[OE]BE CAREY, is also a woman of genius, and has written almost as largely as Alice, in a similar vein of thought and feeling. They are now on a visit to New York, and will pass the summer among the resorts in the vicinity of the city. * * * * * MRS. OAKSMITH, we are pleased to be advised, is engaged upon an epic poem, which has been meditated several years. The _Jacob Leisler_ of Mrs. Oaksmith is probably the finest specimen of dramatic writing of which we can boast. Her other tragedy, _The Roman Tribute_, is in rehearsal in Philadelphia, where it will be produced with a strong cast and the utmost scenic magnificence. Mrs. Oaksmith will pass the summer among the seaside retreats of Maine, with Fredrika Bremer. * * * * * PROFESSOR NICHOL'S sometime expected work upon the United States has just appeared, from the press of Parker, the publisher of _Fraser's Magazine_. It is about two years since Professor Nichol returned to Scotland, after giving his astronomical lectures in our principal cities, and traveling widely in the agricultural portions of the country. His book, we understood him to state, was to be addressed to the middling classes, and to treat principally of points connected with emigration. * * * * * BAYARD TAYLOR'S "El Dorado" is praised in all the English journals as the best book that has been written upon California. Bohn has published it in his "Shilling Series," and it is also issued by Bentley. * * * * * MR. CYRUS EATON, of Warren, Me. has in preparation a complete History of St. George's River, from its first discovery; of the early transactions, Indian wars, and especially the events at St. George's Fort and other military posts in the neighborhood; an account of the several settlements commenced under the Waldo Patent, up to the time of their incorporation as towns; and a full history of the town of Warren to the present time. The work to consist of about 400 pages octavo. * * * * * Among the American Books reprinted by Bentley in the last month are Bayard Taylor's "El Dorado," and "Letters of a Traveler," by "Bryant, _the American novelist_." His original books from this country, for the same period, are "Life in the Forest and the Frontier," by Alfred B. Street, and a very charming book by a daughter of Fenimore Cooper, entitled "Rural Hours in the United States." * * * * * The REV. DR. CROLY ON BAPTISM.--The Rev. Dr. Croly has again left poetry and romantic fiction for religious controversy. On the 13th June he published in London--we suppose in reply to the late work of Baptist Noel--a volume entitled, "The Theory of Baptism, or the Regeneration of Infants in Baptism vindicated on the testimony of Holy Scripture, Christian Antiquity, and the Church of England." * * * * * MAJOR HERBERT EDWARDES, the son of a vicar in one of the midland counties, who went to the East Indies a few years ago, and rose rapidly by military prowess, diplomatic skill, and learning, has lately returned to England, and Bentley announces for publication in the month of June, in two octavos from his pen, a "Narrative of Service and Adventure on the Punjaub Frontier during 1848 and 1849." * * * * * SIR JAMES ALEXANDER, who is well known in New York for his residence here during a considerable portion of the period described in his work on the United States, has just published in London, in two volumes, with illustrations, "Acadie, or Seven Years' Explorations in British America." * * * * * A Second Series of Coleridge's "Friend" has been published in London, in three volumes, 8vo., under the title of "_Essays on his own Times_," by S. T. Coleridge; edited by his daughter. It is made up mostly of his political contributions to the _Post_ and _Courier_. * * * * * A Complete Edition of the philosophical works of J. F. Herbart is announced for publication by Voss, of Leipzig. It will be completed in twelve volumes, 8vo., edited by Prof. Hartenstein, of Leipzig, and will be finished in about two years. * * * * * MR. BAIRD, of Philadelphia, has in press a richly illustrated edition of Gray's Poems. From the London Times. THE HISTORY OF GREECE BY GEORGE GROTE. Mr. Grote's history has yet arrived only at the close of the fourth century B.C., and the fall of the Thirty Tyrants. Two of the six compartments in which he proposes, to use his own quaint phrase, "to exhaust the free life of collective Hellas," still remain to be accomplished. But the history of Greece is written. Stirring events and great names are still to come; the romantic enterprise of Cyrus and the retreat of the Ten Thousand, the elective trust of Thebes, and the chivalrous glories of her one great man. Demosthenes has yet to prove how vain is the divinest eloquence when poured to degenerate hearts. Agis and Cleomenes have yet to exhibit the spectacle, ever fraught with melancholy interest, of noble natures out of harmony with the present, and spending their energies in the vain attempt to turn back the stream of time and call again into existence the feelings and the institutions of an irrevocable past. The monarchy of Philip is yet due to fate. Macedon is still to Greece what Russia, before Peter the Great, was to Europe--a half-unknown and barbarous land, full of latent energy and power, and waiting for the rise of a master mind to discern its embryo greatness and turn its peasants into the unconquerable phalanx. Alexander must arise to carry forth with his victorious arms the seeds of Greek civilization over the Eastern world. Aristotle must arise to gather up in one boundless mind the vast results of Greek philosophy, and found an empire vaster and more enduring than that of his great pupil in the subjugated intellect of man. But the history of Greece is finished. Athens and Sparta, the two great antagonistic types of Greek society, politics, and education, have attained their full development, passed their allotted hour of trial, and touched upon their doom. The shades of night are gathering on the bright day of Hellas. The momentous work of that wonderful people is accomplished; the interest of the great intellectual and moral contest has centred in one man; the last scene of the _Phædo_ has been enacted, and Socrates has died. The history of Greece is written, and the character of the historian is decided. Mr. Grote has achieved a noble work--a work which, unless the glory of classical literature is a dream, will well repay, in usefulness and in renown, the devotion of a scholars life. His book will be called great while Grecian story retains its interest. Even making allowance for the wonderful labors of the Germans and the extraordinary addition which their learned toils have made to our knowledge of the subject, we should say that the work before us has almost disentombed many portions of Greek life. We cannot sufficiently extol the wonderful knowledge of all the feelings, habits, associations, and institutions of an extinct people which every page exhibits, and the familiar mastery with which a mind steeped in Grecian lore analyzes, combines, criticizes, and unfolds the mass of heterogeneous and often conjectural materials on which it has to work. Not only have we been enabled to read Greek history with new eyes and a new understanding, but light has been poured upon its literature; and, to apply to Mr. Grote the compliment he pays to others, "the poets, historians, orators, and philosophers of Greece have been all rendered both more intelligible and more instructive to the student, and the general picture of the Grecian world may now be conceived with a degree of fidelity which, considering our imperfect materials, it is curious to contemplate." Two volumes more at least must be yet to come, but Mr. Grote's pedestal is sure; and nothing can diminish the satisfaction he must now feel at his decided and proclaimed success but the consciousness that the moment is approaching when he must part with the companion of many a sweet though toilsome hour, and experience the mingled feelings which Gibbon has so well portrayed in writing "the last page of the last chapter" of the history of Greece. It is pity that such high intrinsic merits should be marred, both as regards the pleasure and the instruction of the reader, by a fatal deficiency of style. It is pity, but it is true. Mr. Grote seems to have lived in the works of the Greek writers till he has almost forgotten the forms and cadence of his mother tongue. It is not only that he so frequently has resort to an uncouth Greek compound when he might easily express the same idea in two or three English words, if not one; there is a perpetual clumsiness in his construction of common sentences and his use of common words. Clarendon himself is not harder or more tortuous. Even in purely narrative parts, which ought to flow most easily, the understanding of the reader can seldom keep pace with his eye. Cyclopean epithets are piled together almost at random on any substantive which will have the complaisance to receive them. The choice of expression and metaphor is sometimes such as almost to rival the achievements of Castlereagh in his happiest hour. We have people existing, "not as individual names on paper, but simply as an imposturous nominal aggregate,"--Thucydides "reserving his flowers to strew on the grave of Nicias,"--the Athenians "sailing out" to action, having "left their sails at Teichiassa," and their "sailing back" to Teichiassa for their sails,--Athens, "the mistress and successor of the Ionian Confederacy,"--inestimable stepping-stones toward a goal, and oligarchical conspirators against popular liberty "tying down the patient while the process of emasculation was being consummated." We are sorry to say that these instances are taken from the last two volumes, so that Mr. Grote does not improve as he advances. In the first volume, when relating the legends of early Greece, we are glad he does not imitate the forced simplicity with which Dr. Arnold tells the legends of early Rome; but it is too flat to describe Atalanta as "beautiful and matchless for swiftness of foot, but living in the forest as a huntress, and unacceptable to Aphrodite." The redeeming point, and a great redeeming point it is, is the total absence of anything like affectation. All the peculiarities are genuine, and everything that is genuine in composition, though it cannot be admired, may be borne. But for this we should be compelled to class one of the best of English books among the very worst of English writings. Mr. Grote must remember that no man who writes for posterity can afford to neglect the art of composition. The trimmer bark, though less richly laden, will float further down the stream of time, and when so many authors of real ability and learning are competing for every niche in the temple of fame, the coveted place will certainly be won by style. It is this deficiency of art which can alone prevent Mr. Grote's history from completely superseding both the works already existing of the same magnitude. Neither the spirit of Mitford nor the solid sense of Thirlwall could long preserve them from eclipse. The light of the former indeed has long grown dim. He is always blundering, and his blunders are always on the Tory side. Arnold's good word has kept him a few years longer on our bookshelves. Dr. Thirlwall has higher qualities, but, not to mention that he has damaged himself by writing against Mitford instead of ignoring him, he is terribly dry, and Mr. Grote leaves him far behind in appreciation of all that belongs to Greece, in loving industry, in warmth of sympathy, and, well read scholars as they both are, in deep knowledge of his subject. The cheaper and more compendious histories of course are not affected. The light and credulous Goldsmith is still left to contend with the more correct but duller Keightley for the patronage of ingenuous youth. Perhaps both yield to the meritorious little work published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. But a place, and an honorable place, is still left for any one who can tell the story of Greece in a succinct and lively form, availing himself of the light which Mr. Grote has shed upon the subject, cultivating candor and right sympathies, cutting short the ante-historical period, bringing strongly out the great states and the great men, limiting himself to two moderate volumes, and addressing himself especially to the unlearned and the young. * * * * * UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK.--At a recent meeting of the trustees and faculty, the Rev. George W. Bethune, D.D., was unanimously elected Chancellor of the University, in the place of the Hon. Theodore Frelinghuysen. At the same meeting Mr. G. C. Anthon, formerly of the College of Louisiana, son of the Rev. Dr. Anthon of this city, was chosen professor of Greek language and literature. * * * * * NINEVEH By Edwin Atherstone. Of NINEVEH, the mighty city of old; The queen of all the nations. At her throne Kings worshipp'd; and from her their subject crowns, Humbly obedient, held; and on her state Submiss attended; nor such servitude Opprobrious named. From that great eminence How, like a star, she fell, and passed away; Such the high matter of my song shall be The vision comes upon me! To my soul The days of old return: I breathe the air Of the young world: I see her giant sons. Like to a gorgeous pageant in the sky Of summer's evening, cloud on fiery cloud Thronging upheaped, before me rise the walls Of the Titanic city: brazen gates, Towers, temples, palaces enormous piled; Imperial NINEVEH, the earthly queen! In all her golden pomp I see her now; Her swarming streets; her splendid festivals; Her sprightly damsels to the timbrel's sound Airily bounding, and their anklets' chime; Her lusty sons, like summer morning gay; Her warriors stern; her rich-robed rulers grave: I see her halls sunbright at midnight shine; I hear the music of her banquetings; I hear the laugh, the whisper, and the sigh. A sound of stately treading toward me comes; A silken wafting on the cedar floor: As from Arabia's flowering groves, an air Delicious breathes around. Tall, lofty browed, Pale, and majestically beautiful; In vesture gorgeous as the clouds of morn; With slow proud step her glorious dames sweep by And I look; and lo! before the walls, Unnumbered hosts in flaming panoply; Chariots like fire, and thunder-bearing steeds! I hear the shouts of battle: like the waves Of a tumultuous sea they roll and dash! In flame and smoke the imperial city sinks! Her walls are gone: her palaces are dust: The desert is around her, and within: Like shadows have the mighty passed away! Whence and how came the ruin? By the hand Of the oppressor were the nations bowed; They rose against him, and prevailed: for he The haughty monarch who the earth could rule, By his own furious passions was o'er-ruled: With pride his understanding was made dark, That he the truth knew not; and, by his lusts; The crushing burthen of his despotism; And by the fierceness of his wrath, the hearts Of men he turned from him. So to kings Be he example, that the tyrannous And iron rod breaks down at length the hand That wields it strongest: that by virtue alone And justice monarchs sway the hearts of men: For there hath God implanted love of these, And hatred of oppression; which, unseen And noiseless though it work; yet in the end, Even like the viewless elements of the storm, Brooding in silence, will in thunder burst! So let the nations learn, that not in wealth; Nor in the grosser pleasures of the sense; Nor in the glare of conquest; nor the pomp Of vassal kings, and tributary lands; Do happiness and lasting power abide: That virtue unto man best glory is; His strength and truest wisdom; and that vice, Though for a season it the heart delight; Or to worse deeds the bad man do make strong; Brings misery yet, and terror, and remorse, And weakness and destruction in the end. So if the nations learn, then not in vain, The mighty one hath been; and is no more! * * * * * The British Association will meet at Edinburgh, on Wednesday, the 31st of July, under the presidency of its founder, Sir David Brewster. * * * * * A lover gazed on the eyes of his mistress till she blushed. He pressed her hand to his heart and said--"My looks have planted roses on thy cheeks; he who sows the seed should reap the harvest." * * * * * IF I WERE A VOICE. If I were a voice, a persuasive voice, That could travel the wide world through. I would fly on the beams of the morning light, And speak to men with a gentle might, And tell them to be true. I'd fly, I'd fly, o'er land and sea, Wherever a human heart might be, Telling a tale, or singing a song, In praise of the right--in blame of the wrong. If I were a voice, a consoling voice, I'd fly on the wings of air. The homes of sorrow and guilt I'd seek, And calm and truthful words I'd speak To save them from despair. I'd fly, I'd fly, o'er the crowded town, And drop, like the happy sunlight, down Into the hearts of suffering men, And teach them to rejoice again. If I were a voice, a convincing voice, I'd travel with the wind, And whenever I saw the nations torn By warfare, jealousy, or scorn, Or hatred of their kind, I'd fly, I'd fly, on the thunder crash, And into their blinded bosoms flash; And, all their evil thoughts subdued, I'd teach them Christian brotherhood. If I were a voice, a pervading voice, I'd seek the kings of earth; I'd find them alone on their beds at night, And whisper words that should guide them right-- Lessons of priceless worth; I'd fly more swift than the swiftest bird, And tell them things they never heard-- Truths which the ages for aye repeat-- Unknown to the statesmen at their feet. If I were a voice, an immortal voice, I'd speak in the people's ear; And whenever they shouted "_Liberty_," Without deserving to be free, I'd make their error clear. I'd fly, I'd fly, on the wings of day, Rebuking wrong on my world-wide way, And making all the world rejoice-- If _I_ were a voice--an immortal voice.--_C. Mackay._ From Blackwood's Magazine. THE GREEN HAND. BY THE AUTHOR OF "TOM CRINGLE'S LOG." PART I. "Come, old ship, give us a yarn!" said the younger forecastle-men to an old one, on board of an Indiaman then swiftly cleaving the waves of the western Atlantic before the trade-wind, and outward-bound, with a hearty crew and a number of passengers. It was the second of the two dog-watches, and the ship being still in the region of evening twilights, her men in a good humor, and with leisure, were then usually disposed, as on this occasion, to make fast their roaming thoughts by help of a good yarn, when it could be got. There were plenty of individuals, amongst a crew of forty, calculated by their experience, or else by their flow of spirits, and fancy, to spin it. Each watch into which they were divided had its especial story-teller, with whose merits it twitted the other, and on opportunity of a general _reunion_, they were pitted against one another like two fighting-cocks, or a couple of rival novelists in more polished literary society at home. The one was a grave, solemn old North-Sea whaler with one eye, who professed to look down with contempt upon all raw head-work, on navigation compared with seamanship, and fiction against fact. As for himself, he rested all his fame upon actual experience, and told long dry narratives of old shipmates, of his voyages and adventures, and sometimes of the most incredible incidents, with a genuine briny gusto which pleased the veteran stagers beyond expression. They were full of points of seamanship--expedients for nice emergencies, tacks, knots, and splices. He gave the very conversation of his characters, with all the "says he" and "says I;" and one long recital of the old fellow's turned upon the question between himself and a newfangled second mate about the right way to set up back-stays, in which he, the sailor, was proved correct by the loss of the ship. The other story-teller, again, was a Wapping man; a lively, impudent young Cockney, who had the most miraculous faculty of telling lies--not only palpable lies, but lies absolutely impossible: yet they were so sublimely told often, and he contrived to lug into them such a quantity of gorgeous tinsel ornament, as, in his happier efforts, decidedly to carry the day against his opponent. The London hand had seen _life_ too, of which, with respect to what is called the world, his competitor was as ignorant as a child. He had his sentimental vein, accordingly, in which he took the last love-tale out of some "Penny Story-Teller" or fashionable novel he had spelled over below, and turned it over into a parody that would have thrown its unfortunate author into convulsions of horror, and his critics into shrieks of laughter. The fine language of lords and ladies, of romantic heroines, or of foreign counts and bandits, was gravely retailed and gravely listened to by a throng of admiring jacktars; while the old whaler smoked his pipe sulkily apart, gave now and then a scornful glance out of his weather-eye, and called it "all '_high-dic_' and soger's gammon." On this occasion, however, the group forward did not solicit the services of either candidate, as they happened to have present among them a shipmate, who, by general confession, "took the shine" out of both, although it was rarely they could get hold of him. "Old Jack," the captain's private steward, was the oldest seaman on board, and having known the captain when the latter went to sea, had sailed with him almost ever since he commanded a ship, as well as lived in his house on shore. He did not now keep his watch, nor take his "trick at the helm," except when he chose, and was altogether a privileged sort of a person, or one of the "idlers." His name was Jacobs, which afforded a pretext for calling him "Old Jack," with the sailor's fondness for that Christian cognomen, which it is difficult to account for, unless because Jonah and St. John were seafaring characters, and the Roman Catholic holy clerk St. Nicholas was baptized "Davy Jones," with sundry other reasons good at sea. But Old Jack was, at any rate, the best hand for a yarn in the Gloucester Indiaman, and had been once or twice called upon to spin one to the ladies and gentlemen in the cuddy. It was partly because of his inexhaustible fund of good humor, and partly from that love of the sea which looked out through all that the old tar had seen and undergone, and which made him still follow the bowsprit, although able to live comfortably ashore. In his blue jacket, white canvas trowsers edged with blue, and glazed hat, coming forward to the galley to light his pipe, after serving the captain's tea of an evening, Old Jack looked out over the bulwarks, sniffed the sharp sea-air, and stood with his shirt-sleeve fluttering as he put his finger in his pipe, the very embodiment of the scene--the model of a prime old salt who had ceased to "rough it," but could do so yet if needful. "Come, old ship!" said the men near the windlass, as soon as Old Jack came forward, "give us a yarn, will ye?" "Yarn!" said Jack, smiling, "what yarn, mates? 'Tis a fine night, though, for that same--the clouds fly high, and she's balling off a good ten knots sin' eight bells." "That she is, bo'--so give us a yarn now, like a reg'lar old A 1 as you are!" said one. "'Vast there, mate," said a man-o'-wars-man, winking to the rest,--"you're always a-cargo-puddling, Bill! D'ye think Old Jack answers to any other hail nor the Queen's? I say, old three-decker in or'nary, we all wants one o' your close-laid yarns this good night. Whaling Jim here rubs his down with a thought over much o' the tar, an' young Joe dips 'em in yallow varnish--so if you says Nay, why, we'll all save our grog, and get drunk as soon as may be." "Well, well, mates," said Jack, endeavoring to conceal his flattered, feelings, "what is it to be, though?" "Let's see," said the man-o'-war's-man--"aye, give us the Green Hand!" "Aye, aye, the Green Hand!" exclaimed one and all. This "Green Hand" was a story Old Jack had already related several times, but always with such amusing variations, that it seemed on each repetition a new one--the listeners testifying their satisfaction by growls of rough laughter, and by the emphatic way in which, during a pause, they squirted their tobacco-juice on the deck. What gave additional zest to this particular yarn, too, was the fact of its hero being no less than the captain himself, who was at this moment on the poop quarter-deck of the ship, pointing out something to a group of ladies by the round-house--a tall, handsome-looking man of about forty, with all the mingled gravity and frank good humor of a sailor in his firm, weather-tinted countenance. To have the power of secretly contrasting his present condition and manners with those delineated by Old Jack's episode from the "skipper's" previous biography, was the _acme_ of comic delight to these rude sons of Neptune, and the narrator just hit this point. "Ye see," began he, "tis about six an' twenty years gone since I was an able seaman before the mast, in a small Indyman they called the Chester Castle, lying at that time behind the Isle of Dogs, in sight of Grenidge Hospital. She was full laden, but there was a strong breeze blowing up that wouldn't let us get under weigh; and, besides, we waited for the most part of our hands. I had sailed with the same ship two voyages before; so," says the captain to me one day, "Jacobs, there's a lady over at Greenwich yonder wants to send her boy to sea in the ship--for a sickening I s'pose. I am a going up to town myself," says he, "so take the quarter-boat and two of the boys and go ashore with this letter, and see the young fool. From what I've heard," says the skipper, "he's a jackanapes as will give us more trouble than thanks. However, if you find the lady's bent on it, why, she may send him aboard to-morrow if she likes. Only we don't carry no young gentlemen; and if he slings his hammock here, you must lick him into shape. I'll make a sailor of him or a cabin-boy." "Ay, ay, sir," says I, shoving the letter into my hat; so in half an hour's time I knocks at the door of the lady's house, rigged out in my best, and hands over the screed to a fat fellow with red breeches and yallow swabs on his shoulders, like a captain of marines, that looked frightened at my hail, for I thou't he'd been deaf by the long spell he took before he opened the door. In five minutes I heard a woman's voice ask at the footman if there was a sailor awaiting below. "Yes, marm," says he; and "show him up," says she. Well, I gives a scrape with my larboard foot, and a tug to my hair, when I gets to the door of _such_ a fine room above decks, all full o' tables, an' chairs, an' sofers, an' piangers, an' them sort o' highflying consarns. There was a lady all in silks and satins on one of the sofers, dressed out like a widow, with a pretty little girl as was playing music out of a large book--and a picter of a man upon the wall, which I at once logged it down for him she'd parted company from. "Sarvint, ma'am," says I. "Come in, my good man," says the lady. "You're a sailor?" says she--asking, like, to be sure if I warn't the cook's mate in dish-guise, I fancy. "Well, marm," I raps out, "I make bould to say as I hopes I am!"--an' I catches a sight o' myself in a big looking-glass behind the lady, as large as our sky-sail,--and, being a young fellow in them days, thinks I, "Blow me, if Betsy Brown asked me that now, I'd ask her if _she_ was a _woman_!" "Well," says she, "Captain Steel tells me in this here letter, he's agoing to take my son." Now," says she, "I'm sore against it--couldn't you say some'at to turn his mind?" "The best way for that, yer ladyship," says I, "is to let him go, if it was only the length of the Nore. The sea'll turn his stomack for him, marm," I says, "an' then we can send him home by a pilot." "He wanted for to go into the navy," says the lady again, "but I couldn't think on that for a moment, on account of this fearful war; an', after all, he'll be safer in sailing at sea nor in the army or navy--don't you think so, my good man?" "It's all you knows about it," thinks I; hows'ever, I said there wasn't a doubt on it. "Is Captain Steel a rash man?" says she. "How so, marm?" says I, some'at taken aback. "I hope he does not sail at night, or in storms, like too many of his profession, I'm afeard," says she; "I hope he always weighs the anchor in such cases, very careful." "Oh, in course," says I, not knowin', for the life of me, what she meant. I didn't like to come the rig over the poor lady, seein' her so anxious like; but it was no use, we was on such different tacks, ye see. "O yes, marm," I says, "Captain Steel al'ays reefs taups'ls at sight of a squall brewing to wind'rd; and we're as safe as a church, then, ye know, with a man at the wheel as knows his duty." "This relieves my mind," the lady says, "very much; but I couldn't think why she kept sniffing all the time at her smelling bottle, as she wor agoin to faint. "Don't take it to heart so, yer ladyship," I says at last; "I'll look after the young gentleman till he finds his sea-legs." "Thank you," says she; "but, I beg your pardon, would you be kind enough for to open the winder, and look out if you see Edward? I think he's in the garding. I feel sich a smell of pitch and tar!" I hears her say to the girl; and says she to me again, "Do you see Edward there?--call to him, please." Accordingly, I couldn't miss sight of three or four young slips alongside, for they made plenty of noise--one of 'em on top of a water-barrel smoking a cigar; another singing out inside of it for mercy; and the rest roaring round about it, like so many Bedlamites. "No wonder the young scamp wants to go to sea," thinks I, "he's got nothin' arthly to do but mischief." "Which is the young gentleman, marm?" says I, lookin' back into the room--"Is it him with the cigar and the red skull-cap?" "Yes," says the lady--"call him up, please." "Hallo!" I sings out, and all runs off but him on the barrel, and "Hallo!" says he. "You're wanted on deck, sir," I says; and in five minutes in comes my young gemman, as grave as you please. "Edward," says the mother, "this is one of Captain Steel's men." "Is he going to take me?" says the young fellow, with his hands in his pockets. "Well, sir," I says, "'tis a very bad look-out, is the sea, for them as don't like it. You'll be sorry ten times over you've left sich a berth as this here afore you're down Channel." The young chap looks me all over from clue to earing, and says he, "My mother told you to say that!" "No sir," says I, "I says it on my own hook." "Why did you go yourself then?" says he. "I couldn't help it," answers I. "Oh," says the impertinent little devil, "but you're only one of the common sailors, ain't you?" "Split me, you little beggar?" thinks I, "if I doesn't show you the odds betwixt a common sailor, as ye call it, and a lubber of a boy, before long!" But I wasn't goin' to let him take the jaw out o' me, so I only laughed, an' says I, "Why, I'm captain of the foretop at sea, any how." "Where's your huniform, then?" says the boy, lowering his tone a bit. "O," I says, "we doesn't al'ays wear huniform, ye know, sir. This here's what we call on-dress." "I'm sorry, sir," says the lady, "I didn't ax you to sit down." "No offence at all, marm," I says, but I took a couple o' glasses of brandy as was brought in. I saw 'twas no use goin' against the young chap; so, when he asked what he'd have to do aboard, I told him nothing to speak of, except count the sails now and then, look over the bows to see how the ship went, and go aloft with a spy-glass. "Oh," says his mother, at this, "I hope Captain Steel won't never allow Edward to go up those dangerous ladders! It is my partic'lar request he should be punished if he does." "Sartainly, marm, I'll mention it to the captain," I says, "an' no doubt he'll give them orders as you speak on." "The captain desired me to say the young gentleman could come aboard as soon as he likes," says I, before goin' out of the door. "Very well, sir," says the lady, "I shall see the tailor this same afternoon, and get his clothes, if so be it must." The last word I said was, putting my head half in again to tell 'em, "There was no use gettin' any huniforms at present, seein' the ship's sail-maker could do all as was wanted afterwards, when we got to sea." Well, two or three days after, the captain sent word to say the ship would drop down with the morning tide, and Master Collins had better be aboard by six o'clock. I went ashore with the boat, but the young gemman's clothes warn't ready yet; so it was made up he was to come aboard from Gravesend the day after. But his mother and an old lady, a friend of theirs, would have it they'd go and see his bed-room, and take a look at the ship. There was a bit of breeze with the tide, and the old Indiaman bobbed up and down on it in the cold morning; you could hear the wash of water poppling on to her rudder, with her running gear blown out in a bend; and Missus Collins thought they'd never get up the dirty black sides of the vessel, as she called 'em. The other said her husband had been a captain, an' she laid claim to a snatch of knowledge. "Sailor," says she to me, as we got under the quarter, "that there tall mast is the main-bowsprit, ain't it? and that other is the gallant bowling you call it, don't you?" says she. "No doubt, marm," says I, winking to the boys not to laugh. "It's all right," I says. Howsoever, as to the bed-room, the captain showed 'em over the cabin, and put 'em off by saying the ship was so out of order he couldn't say which rooms was to be which yet, though they needn't fear Master Ned would get all comfortable; so ashore the poor woman went, pretty well pleased, considerin' her heart was against the whole consarn. Well, the next afternoon, lying off Gravesend, out comes a wherry with young master. One of the men said there was a midshipman in it. "Midshipman be blowed!" says I; "did ye ever see a reefer in a wherry, or sitting out 'o the starn-sheets? It's neither more nor less nor the greenhorn we've got." "Why don't the bo'sun pipe to man sideropes for him!" says th' other; "but, my eye, Bob," says he to me; "what a sight of traps the chap's got in the boat! 'twill be enough to heel the Chester Castle to the side he berths upon, on an even keel. Do he mean to have the captain's cabin, I wonder!" Up the side he scrambles, with the help of a side-ladder, all togged out to the nines in a span-new blue jacket and anchor buttons, a cap with a gould band, and white ducks made to fit--as jemmy-jessamy a looking fellow as you'd see of a cruise along London parks, with the waterman singing out alongside to send down a tackle for the dunnage, which it took a pair of purchase-blocks to hoist them out on board. "What's all this?" says the mate, coming for'ard from the quarter-deck. "'Tis the young gemman's traps, sir," I says. "What the devil!" says the mate, "d'ye think we've room to stow all this lumber? Strike it down into the forehold, Jacobs--but get out a blue shirt or two, and a Scotch cap for the young whelp first, if he wants to save that smooth toggery of his for his mammy. You're as green as cabbage, I'm feared, my lad!" says he. By this time the boy was struck all of a heap, an' didn't know what to say when he saw the boat pulling for shore, except he wanted to have a sight of his bed-room. "Jacobs," says the mate, laughing like an old bear, "take him below, and show him his bed-room, as he calls it!" So down we went to the half-deck, where the carpenter, bo'sun, and three or four of the 'prentices, had their hammocks slung. There I left him to overhaul his big donkey of a chest, which his mother had stowed it with clothes enough for a lord ambassador, but not a blessed thing fit to use--I wouldn't 'a given my bit of a black box for the whole on it, ten times over. There was another chockful of gingerbread, pots o' presarves, pickles, and bottles; and, thinks I, "The old lady didn't know what _shares_ is at sea, I reckon. 'Twill all be gone for footing, my boy, before you've seen blue water, or I'm a Dutchman." In a short time we was up anchor, going down with a fast breeze for the Nore; and we stood out to sea that night, havin' to join a convoy off Spithead. My gentleman was turned in all standing, on top o' some sails below; and next day he was as sick as a greenhorn could be, cleaning out his land-ballast where he lay, nor I didn't see him till he'd got better. 'Twas blowing a strong breeze, with light canvas all in aloft, and a single reef in the tops'ls; but fine enough for the Channel, except the rain--when what does I see but the "Green Hand" on the weather quarter-deck, holding on by the belaying-pins, with a yumbrella over his head. The men for'ard was all in a roar, but none of the officers was on deck save the third mate, The mate goes up to him, and looks in his face. "Why," says he, "you confounded long-shore picked-up son of a green-grocer, what _are_ you after?" an' he takes the article a slap with his larboard-flipper, as sent it flying to leeward like a puff of smoke. "Keep off the quarter-deck, you lubber," says he, giving him a wheel down into the lee-scuppers--"it's well the captain didn't catch ye!" "Come aft here, some of ye," sings out the third mate again, "to brace up the main yard; and you, ye lazy beggar, clap on this moment and pull!" At this the greenhorn takes out a pair o' gloves, shoves his fingers into 'em, and tails on to the rope behind. "Well, dammit!" says the mate, "if I ever see the likes o' that! Jacobs, get a tarbucket and dip his fists in it; larn him what his hands was made for! I never could bear to see a fellow ashore with his flippers shoed like his feet; but at sea, confound me, it would make a man green-sick over again!" If you'd only seen how Master Collins looked when shoved his missy fingers into the tar, and chucked the gloves o' board! The next moment he ups fists and made slap at me, when in goes the brush in his mouth; the mate gives him a kick astarn; the young chap went sprawling down into the half-deck ladder, where the carpenter had his shavin'-glass rigged to crop his chin--and there he gets another clip across the jaws from Chips. "Now," says the mate, "the chap'll be liker a sailor to-morrow. He's got some spunk in him, though, by the way he let drive at you, my lad," says he: "that fellow 'll either catch the cat or spoil the monkey. Look after him, Jacobs, my lad," says the third mate; "he's in my watch, and the captain wants him to rough it out; so show him the ropes, and let him taste an end now an' then. Ha! ha! ha!" says he again, laughing, "'tis the first time I ever see a embreller loosed out at sea, and but the second I've seen brought aboard even! He's the greenest hand, sure enough, it's been my luck to come across! But green they say's nigh to blue, so look out if I don't try to make a sailor of the young spark!" Well, for the next three or four days the poor fellow was knocked about on all hands; he'd got to go aloft to the 'gallant cross-trees, and out on the yard foot-ropes the next morning, before breakfast; and, coming down, the men made him fast till he sent down the key of his bottle-chest to pay his footing. If he closed his eyes a moment in the watch, slash comes a bucket full o' Channel water over him; the third mate would keep him two hours on end, larnin' to rig out a sternsail boom, or grease a royal mast. He led a dog's life of it too, in the half-deck: last come, in course, has al'ays to go and fill the bread barge, scrub the planks, an' do all the dirty jobs. Them _owners' 'prentices_, sich as he had for messmates, is always worse to their own kind by far nor the "_common sailors_," as the long-shore folks calls a foremast-man. I couldn't help takin' pity on the poor lad, being the only one as had seen the way of his up-bringing, and I felt a sort of a charge of him like; so one night I had a quiet spell with him in the watch, an' as soon as I fell to speak kind-ways, there I seed the water stand i' the boy's eyes. "It's a good thing," says he, tryin' to gulp it down--"it's a good thing mother don't see all this!" "Ho, ho," says I, "my lad, 'tis all but another way of bein' sea-sick! You doesn't get the land cleared out, and snuff the sea blue breeze nat'ral like, all at once! Hows'ever, my lad," says I, "take my advice--bring your hammock an' chest into the fok'sle; swap half your fine clothes for blue shirts and canvas trowsers; turn-to ready and willing, an' do all that's asked you--you'll soon find the differ 'twixt the men and a few petty officers an' 'prentices half out their time. The men 'll soon make a sailor of you: you'll soon see what a seaman is; you'll larn ten times the knowledge; an', add to that, you'll not be browbeat and looked jealous on!" Well, next night, what does he do but follows what I said, and afore long most of his troubles was over; nor there wasn't a willin'er nor a readier hand aboard, and every man was glad to put Ned through anything he'd got to do. The mates began to take note on him; and though the 'prentices never left off callin' him the Green Hand, before we rounded the Cape he could take his wheel with the best of them, and clear away a sternsail out of the top in handsome style. We were out ten months, and Ned Collins stuck to the fork'sle throughout. When we got up the Thames, he went ashore to see his mother in a check shirt, and canvas trowsers made out of an old royal, with a tarpaulin hat I built for him myself. He would have me to come the next day over to the house for a supper; so, having took a kindness to the young chap, why, I couldn't say nay. There I finds him in the midst of a lot o' soft-faced chaps and young ladies, a spinning the wonderfullest yarns about the sea and the East Ingees, makin' 'em swallow all sorts of horse-marines' nonsense, about marmaids, sea-sarpents, and sich like. "Hallo, my hearty!" says he, as soon as he saw me, "heave a-head here and come to an anchor in this here blessed chair." "Young ladies," says he, "this is Bob Jacobs, as I told you kissed a marmaid hisself. He's a wonderful hand, is Bob, for the fair!" You may fancy how flabbergasted I was at this, though the young scamp was as cool as you please, and wouldn't ha' needed much to make him kiss 'em all round; but I was al'ays milk-an'-water along side of women, if they topped at all above my rating. "Well," thinks I, "my lad, I wouldn't ha' said five minutes agone there was anything of the green about ye yet, but I see it will take another voy'ge to wash it all out." For to my thinkin', mates, 'tis more of a land-lubber to come the rig over a few poor creatures that never saw blue water, than not to know the ropes you warn't told. "O Mister Jacobs!" says Missus Collins to me that night, before I went off, "d'ye think Edward's tired of that ere horridsome sea yet?" "Well, marm," I says, "I'm afeard not. But I'll tell ye, marm," says I, "if you want's to make him cut the consarn, the only thing ye can do is to get him bound apprentice to it. From what I've seen of him, he's a lad that won't bear aught again his liberty; an' I do believe, if he thought he couldn't get free, he'd run the next day!" Well, after that, ye see, I didn't know what more turned up of it; for I went myself round to Hull, and ships in a timber-craft for the Baltic, just to see some'at new. One day, the third voy'ge from that time, on getting the length of Blackwall, we heared of a strong press from the men-o'-war; and as I'd got a dreadful dislike to the sarvice, there was a lot of us marchant-men kept stowed away close in holes an' corners till we could suit ourselves. At last we got well tired, and a shipmate o' mine and I wanted to go and see our sweethearts over in the town. So we hired the slops from a Jew, and makes ourselves out to be a couple o' watermen, with badges to suit, a carrying off a large parcel and a ticket on it. In the arternoon we came back again within sight of the Tower, where we saw the coast was clear, and made a fair wind along Rosemary Lane and Cable Street. Just then we saw a tall young fellow, in a brown coat, an' a broad-brim hat, standing in the door of a shop, with a paper under his arm, on the look out for some one. "Twig the Quaker, Bob!" my shipmate says to me. As soon as he saw us, out the Quaker steps, and says he to Bill, in a sleepy sort of a v'ice, "Friend, thou'rt a waterman, I b'lieve?" "D---- it, yes," says Bill, pretty short like, "that's what we hails for! D'ye want a boat, master?" "Swear not, friend," says the broad-brim; "but what I want is this, you see. We have a large vessel, belonging to our house, to send to Havannah, and willin' to give double wages, but we can't find any mariners at this present for to navigate. Now," says he, "I s'pose this onfortunate state o' things is on account of the sinful war as is goin' on--they're afraid of the risk. Hows'ever, my friends," says he, "perhaps, as you knows the river, ye could put us upon a way of engagin' twenty or more bold mariners, as is not afeard of ventering for good pay?" and with this he looks into his papers; and says Bill, "Well, sir, I don't know any myself--do you, Bob?" and he gives me a shove, and says under the rose, "no fear, mate," says Bill, "he's all over green--don't slip the chance for all hands of us at Jobson's." "Why, master," I says, "what ud you give them mariners you speaks on, now?" "Six pounds a month, friend," says he, looking up; "but we gives tea in place of spirits, and we must have steady men. We can't wait, neither," says he, "more nor three days, or the vessel won't sail at all." "My eye!" says Bill, "'twont do to lose, Bob!--stick to him, that's all." "Well, sir," I says, "I thinks I does have a notion of some't of the sort. If you sends your papers to Jobson's Tavern to-night, in the second lane 'twixt Barnaby Street and the Blue Anchor Road, over the water, why, I'll get ye as many hands to sign as you wants!" "Thanks, friend," says the young broad-brim, "I will attend to thine advice,"--so he bids us good day, and stepped into his door again. "Bill," says I, as he went off, "now I think on it, I can't help a notion I've seen that chap's face afore!" "Very like," says Bill, "for the matter o' that 'tis the same with me--them broad-brims is so much of a piece! But that 'ere fellow don't know nothing of ships, sure enough, or he wouldn't offer what he did, and the crimps' houses all of a swarm with hands!" "Take my word, mate," says I, "it's a paying trip, or he wouldn't do it--leave a Quaker alone for that! Why, the chap's a parfit youngster, but I am blessed if he don't look as starched as if he'd sat over a desk for twenty year!" Well, strike me lucky, mates all, if the whole affair warn't a complete trap! Down comes a clerk with the papers, sure enough--but in ten minutes more the whole blessed lot of us was puckalowed, and hard an' fast, by a strong press-gang. They put us into a cutter off Redriff Stairs, an' the next noon all hands was aboard of the Pandora frigate at Sheerness. The first time of being mustered on deck, says Bill to me, "Cuss my eyes, Bob, if there isn't the 'farnal Quaker!" I looked, and sees a midshipman in uniform like the rest, and so it was. "The sly soft-sauderin' beggar!" says I. "All fair in war, and a press-mate!" says one o' the frigate's men. All the while I kept looking and looking at the midshipman; and at last I says to Bill when we got below, giving a slap to my thigh, "Blessed if it ain't! it's the _Green Hand_ himself!" "Green Hand!" says Bill, sulky enough, "who's the Green Hand? Blow me Bob, if I don't think we're the green hands ourselves, if that's what you're upon!" So I told him the story about Ned Collins. "Well," says he, "if a fellow was green as China rice, cuss me if the reefers' mess wouldn't take it all out on him in a dozen watches. The softest thing I know, as you say, Bob, just now, it's to come the smart hand when you're a lubber; but to sham green after that style, ye know, why, 'tis a mark or two above either you or I, messmate. So for my part, I forgives the young scamp, 'cause I ought to ha' known better!" By the time the frigate got to sea, the story was blown over the whole maindeck; many a good laugh it gave the different messes; and Bill, the midshipman, and I, got the name of the "Three Green Hands." One middle-watch, Mister Ned comes for'ard by the booms to me, and says he, "Well, Bob Jacobs, you don't bear a grudge, I hope!" "Why," says I, "Mister Collins, 'twould be mutiny now, I fancy, you bein' my officer!" so I gave a laugh; but I couldn't help feeling' hurt a little, 'twas so like a son turnin' against his father, as 'twere. "Why Bob," says he, "did ye think me so green as not to know a seaman when I saw him? I was afeared you'd know me that time." "Not I, sir," I answers: "why, if we hadn't sailed so long in company, I wouldn't know ye now!" so master Ned gave me to understand it was all for old times he wanted to ship me in the same craft; but he knew my misliking to the sarvice, though he said he'd rather ha' lost the whole haul of 'em nor myself. So many a yarn we had together of a dark night, and for a couple of years we saw no small service in the Pandora. But if ye'd seen Ned the smartest reefer aboard, and the best liked by the men, in the fore-taups'l bunt in a gale, or over the maindeck hatch, with an enemy's frigate to leeward, or on a spree ashore at Lisbon or Naples, you wouldn't ha' said there was anything green in his eye, I warrant ye! He was made acting lieutenant of a prize he cut out near Chairboorg, before he passed examination; so he got me for prize bo'sun, and took her into Plymouth. Soon after that the war was ended, and all hands of the Pandora paid off. Master Ned got passed with flying colors, and confirmed lieutenant besides, but he had to wait for a ship. He made me say where I'd be found, and we parted company for about a year. Well, I was come home from a short trip, and one day Leftenant Collins hunts me up at Wapping Docks, where I'd had myself spliced, six years before, to Betsy Brown, an' was laid up for a spell, havin' seen a good deal of the sea. Ye must know the young leftenant was fell deep in love with a rich Indy Naboob's daughter, which had come over to take her back to' the East Indgees. The old fellow was hard close-hauled against the match, notwithstanding of the young folks makin' it all up; so he'd taken out berths aboard of a large Company's ship, and bought over the captain on no account to let any king's navy man within the gangways, nor not a shoulder with a swab upon it, red or blue, beyond the ship's company. But, above all, the old tyrant wouldn't have a blue-jacket, from stem to starn, if so be he'd got nothing ado but talk sweet; I s'pose he fancied his girl was mad after the whole blessed cloth. The leftenant turns over this here log to me, and, says he, "I'll follow her to the world's end, if need be, Bob, and cheat the old villain?" "Quite right too, sir," says I. "Bob," says he, "I'll tell ye what I wants you to do. Go you and enter for the Seringpatam at Blackwall, if you're for sea just now; I'm goin' for to s'cure my passage myself, an' no doubt doorin' the voy'ge something'll turn up to set all square; at any rate, I'll stand by for a rope to pull!" "Why here's a go!" thinks I to myself: "is Ned Collins got so green again, spite of all that's come an' gone, for to think the waves is agoin' to work wonders, or ould Neptune under the line's to play the parson and splice all!" "Well, sir," I says, "but don't you think the skipper will smoke your weather-roll, sir, at sea, as you did Bill Pikes an' me, you know, sir?" says I. "Oh, Bob, my lad," says the leftenant, "leave you that to me. The fellow most onlikest to a sailor on the Indyman's poop will be me, and that's the way you'll know me!" Well, I did ship with the Seringpatam for Bombay. Plenty of passengers she had, but only clerks, naboobs, old half-pay fellows, and ladies, not to speak o' children and nurses, black and white. She sailed without my seein' Leftenant Collins, so I thought I was to hear no more on it. When the passengers began to muster on the poop, by the time we got out o' Channel, I takes a look over the ladies, in coilin' up the ropes aft, or at the wheel. I knowed the said girl at once by her good looks, and the old fellow by his grumpy-yallow frontispiece. All on a sudden I takes note of a figger coming up from the cuddy, which I made out at once for my Master Ned, spite of his wig and a pair o' high-heeled boots, as gave him the walk of a chap treading amongst eggs. When I hears him lisp out to the skipper at the round-house if there was any fear of wind, 'twas all I could do to keep the juice in my cheek. Away he goes up to windward, holding on by everything, to look over the bulwarks behind his sweetheart, givin' me a glance over his shoulder. At night I see the two hold a sort of a collogue abaft the wheel, when I was on my trick at the helm. After a while there was a row got up amongst the passengers, with the old naboob and the skipper, to find out who it was that kept a singing every still night in the first watch, alongside of the ladies' cabin, under the poop. It couldn't be cleared up, hows'ever, who it was. All sorts o' places they said it comed from--mizen-chains, quarter-galleries, lower-deck ports, and davit-boats. But what put the old hunks most in a rage was, the songs was every one on 'em such as "Rule Britannia," "Bay of Biscay," "Britannia's Bulwarks," and "All in the Downs." The captain was all at sea about it, and none of the men would say anything, for by all accounts 'twas the best pipe at a sea-song as was to be heard. For my part, I knowed pretty well what was afloat. One night a man comed for'ard from the wheel, after steering his dog-watch out, and "Well I'm blessed, mates," says he on the fok'sle, "but that chap aft yonder with the lady--he's about the greenest hand I've chanced to come across! What d'ye think I hears him say to old Yallowchops an hour agone?" "What was it, mate?" I says. Says he, "'Do ye know, Sar Chawls, is the hoshun reely green at the line--_green_ ye know, Sar Chawls, _reely_ green?' 'No, sir,' says the old naboob, ''tis blue.' 'Whoy, ye don't sa--ay so!' says the young chap, pullin' a long face." "Why, Jim," another hand drops in, "that's the very chap as sings them first-rate sea-songs of a night! I seed him myself come out o' the mizen-chains!" "Hallo!" says another at this, "then there's some'at queer i' the wind!" I _thought_ he gave rather a weather-look aloft, comin' on deck i' the morning! I'll bet a week's grog the chap's desarted from the king's flag, mates! Well, ye know, hereupon I couldn't do no less nor shove in my oar, so I takes word from all hands not to blow the gaff,[A] an' then gives 'em the whole yarn to the very day, about the Green Hand--for somehow or another, I was always a yarning sort of a customer. As soon as they heard it was a love consarn, not a man but swore to keep a stopper on his jaw; only, at findin' out he was a leftenant in the Royal Navy, all hands was for touching hats when they went past. [Footnote A: Let out the secret.] Hows'ever, things went on till we'd crossed the line a good while; the leftenant was making his way with the girl at every chance. But as for the old fellow, I didn't see he was a fathom the nearer with _him_; though, as the naboob had never clapt eyes on him to know him like, 'twain't much matter before heaving in sight o' port. The captain of the Indyman was a rum old-fashioned codger, all for plain sailing and old ways--I shouldn't say overmuch of a smart seaman. He read the sarvice every Sunday, rigged the church an' all that, if it was anything short of a reef-taups'l breeze. 'Twas queer enough, ye may think, to hear the old boy drawling out, "As 'twas in the beginning,"--then, in the one key, "Haul aft the mainsheet,"--"is now and ever shall be,"--"Small pull with the weather-brace,"--"Amen,"--"Well the mainyard,"--"The Lord be with you,--Taups'l yard well!" As for the first orficer, he was a dandy, know-nothing young blade, as wanted to show off before the ladies; and the second was afraid to call the nose on his face his own, except in his watch; the third was a good seaman, but ye may fancy the craft stood often a poor chance of being well handled. 'Twas one arternoon watch, off the west coast of Africay, as hot a day as I mind on, we lost the breeze with a swell, and just as it got down smooth, land was made out, low upon the starboard bow, to the south-east. The captain was turned in sick below, and the first orficer on deck. I was at the wheel, and I hears him say to the second how the land-breeze would come off at night. A little after, up comes Leftenant Collins, in his black wig and his 'long-shore hat, an' begins to squint over the starn to nor'west'ard, "Jacobs, my lad," whispers he to me, "how d'ye like the looks o' things?" "Not overmuch, sir," says I; "small enough sea-room for the sky there!" Up goes he to the first officer, after a bit. "Sir," says he, "do ye notice how we've risen the land within the last hour and a half?" "No, sir," says the first mate; "what d'ye mean?" "Why, there's a current here, takin' us inside the point," says he. "Sir," says the Company's man, "if I didn't know what's what, d'ye think I'd larn it off a gentleman as is so confounded green? There's nothing of the sort," he says. "Look on the starboard quarter then," says the leftenant, "at the man-o'-war bird afloat yonder with its wings spread. Take three minutes' look," says he. Well, the mate did take a minute or two's look through the mizen-shroud, and pretty blue he got, for the bird came abreast of the ship by that time. "Now," says the leftenant, "d'ye think ye'd weather that there point two hours after this, if a gale come on from the nor'west, sir?" "Well," says the first mate, "I daresay we shouldn't--but what o' that?" "Why, if you'd cruised for six months off the coast of Africa, as I've done," says the leftenant, "you'd think there was something ticklish about that white spot in the sky to nor'west! But on top o' that, the weather-glass is fell a good bit since four bells." "Weather-glass!" the mate says, "why, that don't matter much in respect of a gale, I fancy." Ye must understand, weather-glasses wan't come so much in fashion at that time, except in the royal navy. "Sir," says the mate again, "mind _your_ business, if you've got any, and I'll mind mine!" "If I was you," the leftenant says, "I'd call the captain." "Thank ye," says the mate--"call the captain for nothing!" Well, in an hour more the land was quite plain on the starboard bow, and the mate comes aft again to Leftenant Collins. The clouds was beginning to grow out of the clear sky astarn too. "Why, sir," says the mate, "I'd no notion you was a _seaman_ at all! What would you do yourself now, supposin' the case you put a little ago?" "Well, sir," says Mr. Collins, "if you'll do it, I'll tell ye at once." At this point of old Jack's story, however, a cabin-boy came from aft, to say that the captain wanted him. The old seaman knocked the ashes out of his pipe, which he had smoked at intervals in short puffs, put it in his jacket-pocket, and got off the windlass end. "Why, old ship!" said the man-o'-war's-man, "are ye goin' to leave us in the lurch with a _short yarn_?" "Can't help it, bo'," said Old Jack; "orders must be obeyed, ye know," and away he went. "Well, mates," said one, "what was the up-shot of it, if the yarn's been overhauled already? I didn't hear it myself." "Blessed if I know," said several--"Old Jack didn't get the length last time he's got now." "More luck!" said the man-o-war's-man; "'tis to be hoped he'll finish it next time!" From Fraser's Magazine for June. SOMETHING ABOUT A MURDER. FOUNDED ON FACT. A Fair and gentle girl was Barbara Comyn, the only daughter of one of the strictest and sternest old ministers that ever adhered to Calvin. Yet Mr. Comyn was thoroughly conscientious in all his views; and when he frowned, he did it not through love of frowning, but that he hoped, by gathering a cloud upon his brows, to bring down from those eyes upon which he frowned such showers of repentance as refresh and make green the soul sin-withered and sere from the harsh and hot suns of vice. He was, in truth, a worthy and good man; somewhat narrow of mind and bigoted of creed, it may be, but utterly incapable of committing an ungenerous or dishonorable action. Still, greatly as he loved his winsome daughter, much as he prized her for that dead woman's sake, who, as long as she lay in his bosom, had brought him comfort, and happiness, and honor, he was something over-harsh with her, niggardly in the bestowing of caresses, and liberal in the gift of unnecessary rebuke. Very severe, then, was his displeasure, when she confessed to him, with many blushes, that she loved her young Episcopalian kinsman, John Percival. The cousins had not been reared together, nor had they even met before the youth had passed his twenty-fifth, the girl her nineteenth year. But we are not of the opinion that young people are the more prone to fall in love with each other for the being educated together in a sort of family domesticity. Such facts are contended for in fiction, but realities have convinced us that such things seldom happen; and if we ever have the fortune to possess children of our own, and wish a son or daughter to wed a particular individual, we shall take good care, not only to conceal our intentions from them, but to keep the pair apart from all brother-and-sister communism, until such time as each heart begins to have its natural craving for a congenial spirit,--when, in sooth, it looks for others than brothers and sisters to cling to. It is a very old, perhaps a very vulgar proverb, that "familiarity breeds contempt;" and we assuredly think, that the constant fireside association of young folks, trained up together in bread-and-butter ease, is more apt to generate calm friendship than warm affection. But, as we have said, our cousins were brought up asunder; he in England, of which country his father was an eminent physician lately deceased, who had bequeathed to his only son his professional ability, with ample means of commencing his career in a handsome manner. When he first came to Scotland to visit his mother's sister, he found her a corpse; and there, in the house of mourning, the consoler of the motherless Barbara, he learnt to love her with a sincerity of affection to which she fully responded. Great was his vexation and surprise to receive a stern denial of his suit from the minister, who, although he had never testified any degree of partiality for his wife's nephew, had, nevertheless, evinced no dislike of him. But when respectfully called upon to assign a reason for so unexpected a rejection, he briefly said, that "no child of his should with his blessing wed any man who was not a strict Presbyterian; and that, moreover, he had other views for his daughter." Nor were the tears of his child, nor the intercession in their favor of his kindhearted but timid old maiden sister, of any effect. His obstinacy was not to be subdued, nor his will opposed; and the unrelenting preacher, who taught humility, love, and concord from his pulpit, and who could produce not one sensible reason for thwarting the attachment of two amiable creatures, concluded the scene by flying into a furious passion, in which he gave John Percival clearly to understand, that he was no longer an acceptable, or even permitted, guest. The young man left the manse immediately, and was not slow in quitting Scotland; but love, which teaches many things, taught the kinsfolk means of keeping up, though at rare intervals, an epistolary communion--so frequently the one sustaining prop of two divided hearts! A year or more passed, finding them true to each other. Barbara refused several excellent proposals of marriage, nor did her father persecute her with expressed wishes for her acceptance of any of them; until, at length, he introduced to her one Mr. Bruce, a wealthy cloth-merchant from Glasgow. He was a man of about fifty years of age, of a well-favored and portly presence, and accounted a sure and somewhat sour follower of Mr. Comyn's favorite creed. Barbara had frequently heard her father speak highly of his Glasgow friend, but as no warning had prepared her, she was very far from dreaming of the character he was about to perform in her presence; and, indeed, the wooing of the honest clothier was neither very active nor oppressive--but, alas, for all that, it was steadfast and resolute. A wonderful deal of what they deemed "religious discussion" was carried on betwixt Mr. Bruce and the minister during the visit of the former at the manse, which, we have omitted to state, (though for certain reasons we do not intend to give it a name,) was situated out of the town of Aberdeen, in a retired strath or valley, full of hazels and sloe-bushes, with the Dee running through them like a huge silver snake. Although little more than half a mile from Aberdeen, and much nearer the church of which Mr. Comyn was minister, the manse seemed as lonely and quiet as if thirty miles lay between it and a busy, populous town. Now, though Mr. Bruce had hired a sleeping apartment in the cottage of Mr. Comyn's bell-man, or sexton, which stood hard by the kirk, he spent all his spare time with his friend at the manse, where his meals were invariably taken; and in addition to the wonderful amount of polemical palaver we have hinted at, a wonderful deal of whisky-toddy did the worthy minister and his guest contrive to swallow in the heat of their arguments. Many a time and oft did good, innocent Miss Henny Comyn declare, that when the shake-hands hour arrived, Mr. Bruce, "puir man, seemed to toddle aff to his cosie beddie at Davy Bain's marvellously fu' o' the spirit!" True it was; but the ancient virgin guessed not in her guilelessness, that the spirit was an evil one, and elicited by man and fire from the unsuspecting barleycorn. At last, as we have said, Mr. Comyn spoke out his wish--nay, his commands--that Barbara should prepare to receive Mr. Bruce as a bridegroom in six months thereafter. And now Mr. Bruce himself, a shy and dour man at other times, found courage one day, after dinner, to express his--"love;" so he really called it, and so we suppose must we, in our extreme ignorance of the precise category of nomenclature to which the feelings that actuated him belonged. Honest man! bigoted and selfish as he was, he was neither cruel by nature nor cross-grained; and he was even moved by the pathetic and frank avowal which Barbara made to him on the state of her heart. But, though touched by her tears, he understood them not, treated them but as the natural mawkishness of girlish sentimentality; nor had her assurance that she could never love any one but her cousin John, power to dissuade him from the prosecution of his suit. He was void of all delicacy of feeling, was neither hurt nor displeased with her confessed partiality for another, but satisfied himself by quoting, misquoting, and utterly perverting Scripture, and concluded by assuring her that it was her bounden duty to obey her father _before_ marriage--her husband _after_. He had no doubt she would be very happy as his wife, for "he was rich, and a steady Presbyterian!" And with this declaration, threatening a return in six months to claim her hand--which he had the audacity to kiss--he left her for his Glasgow warehouses. In this dire dilemma the poor lassie knew not what course to pursue. Her aunt, although kind, indulgent, and pitying her, (for in youth she had had experience of a blighted affection, and no woman-heart, that is not naturally sour, passes through such trial without becoming sweeter)--was bound in complete serfdom to her brother, and was quite unable to suggest any means or likelihood of release; so Barbara wrote a full account of her predicament to her lover. Not long afterward, so cleverly disguised by dress as to deceive even herself, Percival was again at Aberdeen--determined, should all other methods fail, to carry off his kinswoman on the very eve of the bridal; and many a twilight evening, when the minister sat over books or took his after-dinner nap, did those two young creatures meet, unnoticed and unsuspected, on the banks of the Dee. But those meetings must soon end, for six months have passed, and Mr. Bruce--once more lodged in the house of Davy Bain--is come to wed and take home his reluctant bride. One evening--it was cloudy and threatened foul weather, though the summer air was warm and surcharged with flower-scents--John Percival betook himself as usual to the customary trysting-place. It was a thick copse of hazel past which ran--heard but not seen--the river; which, where the shrubbery ended, formed a dark, deep pool, so garnished by overhanging nut-trees that it had acquired the name of the Nut-hole. Beyond this pool lay the road to the manse; but as the trees here ceased to offer concealment, the Nut-tree-hole became the limits to Percival's attendance on his cousin in her way homeward. The rustic seat in the centre of the coppice was still unoccupied, and he began to fear that something had transpired to prevent her from coming. It was no use to listen for the sounds of her light, advancing footsteps; for the Dee made so loud and incessant a sough as it tumbled from the steep bank that helped to form the Nut-hole, that it drowned all lesser sounds. He was, however, soon made conscious that there were sounds which no sough of tumbling waters could drown; for, on a sudden, neither remote nor suppresed, a fierce, a pitiful cry, like that of one in some dread life-peril, struck upon his ears, succeeded by the breaking asunder of the boughs of trees, and then a plunge in the water--a heavy plunge, that made itself heard above the monotonous murmur of the falling flood. Astonished, almost alarmed, he rose, and was hastening through the thicket toward the Nut-hole, whence the noise had proceeded, when, as he was about to cross the track that led from the manse to the main road to Aberdeen, he beheld flying toward him a dark-mantled figure: he knew it at once. Her hands stretched toward him, her face ghastly with the death-white of intense horror, Barbara staggered toward him, and with a sharp, short gasp, as if she dreaded to give utterance to deep fear by a louder sound, she fainted at his very feet. He thought no more of the Nut-hole, or of what might have happened there, absorbed in his solicitude for his beloved cousin, but his endeavors to restore her to animation were fruitless. The manse lay not two hundred yards distant; so at such a juncture, regardless of what the consequences might be to himself, he bore her in his arms; and not without some difficulty, for the track was narrow and broken up, and the night had darkened with falling rain. He reached the house. Fortunately, there was no one in the parlor but Miss Henny; and the startled maiden, seeing a stranger bearing the body of her niece, would have screamed, had he not at once whispered his own name, briefly explained what had happened, and entreated her to befriend them. "Gae awa', gae awa', laddie," said she, as she quickly brought some vinegar from the sideboard and bathed her niece's brow with the refreshing liquid. "My brither maunna see you; nor, if I can help it, sall he know acht o' this. Gae awa', Johnny dear; he'll be back, belive. She's beginning to revive. I'll get her to bed, and tell him she's too ill to attend prayers. God bless you, my ain dawtie, what's a' this?" added she, kissing the brow of the girl, whose eyes opened to perceive the retiring form of her cousin. If Barbara Comyn revealed to her good aunt the cause of her fright and consequent illness, it is very certain that Miss Henny kept the secret. Next morning, indeed, though with a wan face, Barbara appeared at prayers; and Mr. Comyn had concluded reading a portion of the Gospel, when a paper, falling out of the Bible, arrested his attention for a moment. Only for a moment, however; for, mentally supplicating forgiveness for that involuntary wandering of his thoughts from the act of worship in which he was engaged, the good man knelt and prayed with fervor. This sacred duty terminated, they sat down to the breakfast-table, and then the minister slowly opened the paper, glanced over it, turned deadly pale, and exclaimed, "The great and good God be around us! Let not the delusions of Satan prevail, but keep from us the evil spirits that make us see things that are not!" "What is the matter, brither?" cried the wondering Miss Henny, whilst, as though chained to the table, Barbara neither moved nor spoke. "Take this, woman," said he, in a tremulous voice, "and read it to me, that I may be sure the same awful words that meet my sight also meet yours." And the astonished Henrietta, taking the paper, read what follows: Last night, after leaving you, I was stopped by your sexton, my landlord, David Bain, who led me out of the highroad to the Nut-hole, under pretence of showing me a large salmon which he had hooked but could not land. He there felled me to the earth, robbed me, and flung my body into the river Dee. Pray for the soul of SIMON BRUCE. When the awe-struck Henrietta ceased, she found that Barbara had fainted; and the minister, in a whirl of distracting thoughts to which he was unaccustomed, ascribing his child's swoon to terror, placed the ominous paper in the Bible, and determined to make known the whole mysterious case at once to Mr. Craigie, the chief magistrate of Aberdeen. Not for a single instant did Mr. Comyn suspect a hoax, or imagine the affair to be only the mischievous trick of some idler. Indeed, such was not likely; the times were superstitious, nor were there any persons connected or at variance with the family who were liable to be suspected of having played off such a foolish and wicked jest at the expense of the minister, even if any motive for doing so had existed. The minister, therefore, hastened up stairs to change his coat, leaving the Bible containing the document from the dead on the table; while his sister, finding her niece better, left her to see that her brother's best hat and gloves were ready. We wonder what Barbara is about meanwhile. Presently Mr. Comyn returned to the parlor, and putting the Bible in his pocket, (for he dared not again look at the horrible piece of writing,) set off at a quick pace for the town. Nor, as he hurried on, did he give a passing glance at the track which diverged from the highroad toward the Nut-tree-hole. The magistrate was at home, and great indeed was his amazement when he heard the minister's story; but lo! when Mr. Comyn, reverently taking the Bible from his pocket, opened it to show Mr. Craigie the note, written as he declared in the peculiar handwriting of his friend, he found nothing where he had deposited it but a piece of blank paper, folded up in the same form, but utterly void. And then in truth the worthy magistrate waxed somewhat wroth; at first accusing Mr. Comyn of being credulously duped by some pawkie servant who owed him a grudge, and ending by setting him down as "clean daft, doited, and dazed by too mickle study," (and in his ire he had very nearly added, "too much toddy.") But, as in no amicable frame of temper the gentlemen were about to quarrel downright, the magistrate asking the minister what proof he could adduce of Mr. Bruce's not being alive and merry, a seasonable and loud knocking at the street-door interrupted them; and presently a servant entered to announce that a drowned man had been found in the Dee, and that his body had been brought to the door! With shaking limbs the minister followed Mr. Craigie down stairs to the lobby, now full of people. It appeared that some men employed in the salmon fisheries had, within the last hour, dragged their nets, in which they had discovered the corpse of a man whose skull had been literally smashed in twain by a violent blow. It was, in fact, the body of Mr. Bruce. Here, indeed, was confirmation strange of the statement which the mysterious and missing document had contained; and both Mr. Craigie and the minister, exchanging looks that expressed their mutual dismay, were sorely perplexed in their own minds how to account for these singular events. The body was reverently laid out in the hall, whilst the magistrate, summoning some of his officials, and accompanied by the clergyman and one or two of the fishermen, proceeded to the cottage of David Bain. The bell-man was not at home, having gone, they said, "to Mr. Comyn's, to inquire about his lodger, Mr. Bruce, who had not come home to his bed the night before, as was customary." Strange glances passed between the auditors; but a sign from the magistrate imposed silence, and they departed, determining to survey the Nut-hole, near which, in the river, the body had been found in the nets, after which they had no doubt they would find the sexton at the manse. As they threaded the thicket of hazel, at some distance from the pool, one of the salmon-fishers declared, that from a plot of white-thorn and bramble-bushes he had seen the eyes of a foumart or polecat glare out upon him; and in a low voice, directing the attention of a comrade to the spot, they both imagined they could detect the figure of a man crouching among the trailing shrubs. Whispering their suspicion to Mr. Craigie, he ordered the whole party to join quietly in a search, and follow him and the minister to the Nut-hole. Thither, then, the magistrate, attended only by Mr. Comyn, proceeded; and who, think ye, found they there? A young man, handsome and well-dressed, in the undisguised apparel of a gentleman, stood there, evidently unconscious of the advancing twain. He held a stout, club-like stick in his hand, which he was examining intently--for it was covered with blood, now dried, and amidst which stuck clots of hair! As the gentlemen came suddenly upon him he started, and dropped the stick; whilst Mr. Comyn, staring at him in wonder, for, as we have said, all disguise had been discarded, exclaimed-- "John Percival, is this you?" A question which the young man could have answered in the affirmative with strict veracity, but for the assertion from the magistrate which followed it up. "And you, sir, are the murderer of Mr. Bruce!" "Good God! what do you mean!" cried the horrified youth. "That stick, which you have just dropped, is covered with blood," said Mr. Craigie; "a foul murder has been committed, and we find you with the supposed instrument of that murder, near the very spot where there is ground to believe the act was perpetrated." A fearful pang shot through Percival's frame, but conscious innocence made it brief, and with a calmness of demeanor which guilt never could have assumed, and gravely smiling, he turned to his uncle saying-- "_You_ cannot believe that I am guilty?" "No, no, John!" answered the individual appealed to. "God forbid that I should judge you wrongfully, but--" "But," interrupted the magistrate, "not only does it appear that you have slain a man, but that, desirous of fixing your guilt upon another, you have written a letter, falsely accusing an innocent person of that crime." "Letter!" repeated Percival, "Sir, I do not even know what you mean." "Mr. Comyn," asked the magistrate, "this young man--the nephew of my lamented friend, your late wife--paid court, as I understand, to your daughter, and was by her rejected?" "By me, sir--by me, Mr. Craigie," answered the clergyman; "the lassie never rejected him, but _I_ did." "And the murdered man," slowly pronounced the magistrate, "was the betrothed husband of Miss Comyn?" Percival started violently, uttering an ejaculation of horror and wonder, for at last he saw the inferences which Mr. Craigie seemed willing to draw from circumstances that certainly looked suspicious. "As God is my judge, that is the truth," replied the minister, "and I had forgotten all about it. Oh! John Percival, as you are the nephew of my beloved Mary, answer me with truth, and say that you are innocent of this heinous deed!" "I am indeed innocent, my dear uncle," said the young man; "nor did I know until this moment who the unfortunate man was, of whose untimely death I am accused." "Here he is, gentlemen; we've got him safe and sound!" cried several voices; and dragging a wild and haggard-faced man, the fishers and officials of justice approached the trio who stood by the Nut-tree-hole. "The Lord be our guide!" exclaimed Mr. Comyn, "it is really David Bain!" and as the wretched sexton struggled to free himself from the arms that pinioned him, the minister, prompted by a sudden impulse, advancing toward him, and looking steadily in his face, said-- "David Bain, look not to deny your crime, but confess it, and implore your Maker's pardon, even at this the eleventh hour. In my Bible, this morning, I found a paper, written by the spirit of him you murdered here last night, and charging you with the commission of the deed." At these strange words, which in our modern times might have produced mirth, the guilty creature, losing all self-possession, uttered a loud cry, and pointing to the bloody cudgel which still lay at the magistrate's feet, exclaimed-- "I did it with that! I did it with that!" and fell back in a fit. It would be easy to lengthen out our historiette into one of circumstantial evidence, trial, condemnation, and ultimate discovery; but we have preferred telling it as it really happened. On the person of David Bain were found a pocket-book and purse, recognized as the property of the late Mr. Bruce, and containing bank-notes and bills to a considerable amount; the sight of which, in the possession of his lodger, had evoked the cupidity of the bell-man. He made a full confession, and in due time suffered the penalty due to his offence. Meanwhile the minister, in the thankfulness of his soul to find his nephew guiltless, embraced him tenderly, and freely permitted that courtship to proceed between his daughter and him, which he had before so strenuously opposed. One circumstance still remained a mystery, undeveloped to all save Barbara's aunt, Percival, and the worthy magistrate,--by whose advice, indeed, it was concealed from the minister; who, to his dying day, confidently believed that the paper he had found in his Bible had been placed there by supernatural interposition. But the hand of the dead had nothing to do with it, as we mean to explain. On the evening of the murder, Barbara Comyn sallied forth to meet her cousin, leaving Mr. Bruce and her father discussing punch and polemics. She was later than usual, and as she sped along, she became aware of the approach from Aberdeen of an individual, whom she could not avoid meeting if she proceeded direct to the tryst. She therefore stole into a different track, thinking to make a circuit which would occupy the time the stranger might take in passing the copse of hazels; but, unfortunately (or fortunately, was it?), she met a poor woman, the wife of a neighboring peasant, who was on her way to the manse to implore some black currant jelly for a child suffering from sore throat. The call of distress was never disregarded by Barbara, and she flew back to the manse, procured the jelly, and giving it to the woman, hastened amidst falling rain to the trysting-place. As she was about to round the point which hid the Nut-hole from view, she heard the sounds of struggling feet and wrestling arms; and, regardless of danger to herself in her fears for Percival, she forced her way through some bushes, and beheld two men, in no friendly embrace, staggering on the very verge of the pool. Before she could look again the one had fallen on the earth; and the other, with a desperate blow of his stick on the head of the prostrate man, uttered an oath in a voice whose peculiar tones were well-known to Barbara, and in the twinkling of an eye shoved the wounded man over the bank into the Nut-tree hole! Her blood curdling with horror, Barbara found no voice, no strength, to speak or stir; but she became, so to speak, all eye; and as the murderer, swiftly cramming into his hat and pockets something which she could not define, rose up, and forgetful of the cudgel, which lay blood-dabbled on the grass, rushed from the place where he had taken the burden of a deadly sin upon his soul, she saw his face, and recognized her father's sexton--David Bain. In terror, that found no tongue, she reached her lover, and became insensible; nor was it till her recovery, when she found herself alone with her aunt, that she felt how important to her future life might be the events of that night. She resolved, ere yet she spoke one word in reply to the questions of her aunt, to ascribe her swoon to anything but the real cause; and it was, perhaps, well she so determined, for she remembered that, in her flight from the fatal spot where she had witnessed the perpetration of so foul a deed, she had picked up a letter, which she had hid in her bosom, scarcely conscious of what she did, yet, perhaps, imperceptibly aware--with the foresight of inexplicable convictions--that it might yet prove of essential service. When she retired to her chamber, and had got rid of Aunt Henny, she took the paper from its concealment, and saw that it was the empty cover of a letter addressed to "Mr. Bruce, at the house of David Bain, Sexton;" and then the certainty struck her of the murdered man being her affianced husband. The character of David Bain was marked by extreme avarice, and Barbara's conclusions as to the instigating cause of the crime he had committed were easily formed. But what means could she pursue in order to convict guilt, without at the same time rendering her own appearance before a public court of justice necessary? from which she shrank nervously, since the cause of her presence in such a spot, and at such an hour, must of course be revealed. A sudden thought struck her--and, wild as it was, she put it into instant execution. She knew her father's belief in supernatural agency, and trusted strongly to the effect such a document as that which she now prepared would have upon him. She wrote the note which Mr. Comyn discovered in the Bible, imitating Mr. Bruce's hand, which was peculiar, as closely as she could; and then, when the minister left it there--a circumstance which, though she did not foresee, rejoiced her--she subtracted it thence, uninterrupted and unsuspected. But when it pleased the Almighty to make manifest the murderer by the means thus strangely suggested to her, she confessed the whole to the indulgent Henny and her lover, and by their advice took the magistrate also into her confidence. We have nothing more to relate, but that Barbara Comyn and John Percival were soon after united by the worthy minister; whilst Miss Henny was as busy as a bee in preparations for the wedding, and as happy in witnessing the happiness of others as if she had never known a care of her own. * * * * * THIERS has abandoned politics and history for the summer to visit England. Miscellanies. [From Charles Mackay's New Volume of Poems, "Egeria," &c.] THE GARDEN GATE. "Stand back, bewildering politics! I've placed my fences round; Pass on, with all your party tricks, Nor tread my holy ground. Stand back--I'm weary of your talk, Your squabbles, and your hate: You cannot enter in this walk-- I've closed my garden gate. "Stand back, ye thoughts of trade and pelf! I have a refuge here; I wish to commune with myself-- My mind is out of gear. These bowers are sacred to the page Of philosophic lore; Within these bounds no envies rage-- I've shut my garden door. "Stand back, Frivolity and Show. It is a day of Spring; I want to see my roses blow, And hear the blackbird sing. I wish to prune my apple-trees, And nail my peaches straight; Keep to the causeway, if you please-- I've shut my garden gate. "I have no room for such as you, My house is somewhat small: Let Love come here, and Friendships true I'll give them welcome all; They will not scorn my household stuff, Or criticize my store. Pass on--the world is wide enough-- I've shut my garden door. "Stand back, ye Pomps! and let me wear The liberty I feel. I have a coat at elbows bare-- I love its _dishabille_. Within these precincts let me rove, With Nature, free from state; There is no tinsel in the grove-- I've shut my garden gate. "What boots continual glare and strife? I cannot always climb; I would not struggle all my life-- I need a breathing time. Pass on--I've sanctified these grounds To friendship, love, and lore: Ye cannot come within the bounds-- I've shut the garden door." * * * * * POETICAL COMPOSITION.--If metre and melody be worth anything at all, let them be polished to perfection; let an author "keep his piece nine years," or ninety and nine, till he has made it as musical as he can--at least, as musical as his other performances. Not that we counsel dilatory and piecemeal composition. The thought must be struck off in the passion of the moment; the sword-blade must go red-hot to the anvil, and be forged in a few seconds: true; but after the forging, long and weary polishing and grinding must follow, before your sword-blade will cut. And melody is what makes poetry cut; what gives it its life, its power, its magic influence, on the hearts of men. It must ring in their ears; it must have music in itself; it must appeal to the senses as well as to the feelings, the imagination, the intellect: then, when it seizes at once on the whole man, on body, soul, and spirit, will it "swell in the heart, and kindle in the eyes," and constrain him, he knows not why, to believe and to obey.--_Fraser, for June._ * * * * * POETRY OF THE LAST AGE AND THE PRESENT.--A writer in the last number of _Fraser's Magazine_ says well that, "there is in periodicals and elsewhere, a vast amount of really poetic imagery, of true and tender feeling, and cultivated ingenuity, scattered up and down in the form of verse. We have no new great poets, but very many small ones--layers, as it were, and seedlings from the lofty geniuses of the last generation, showing in every line the influence of Scott, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, and their compeers, seeing often farther than their masters saw, but dwarfs on giants' shoulders. Not that we complain of this. Elizabethan ages must be followed by Caroline ones; and our second Elizabethan galaxy is past; Tennyson alone survives, in solitary greatness, a connecting link between the poetry of the past and that of the future. In poetry, and in many other things, ours is a Caroline age; greater than the first one, as every modern cycle in a God-taught world, will be nobler, richer, wiser than its ancient analogue; but still a merely Caroline age--an age of pedantries and imbecilities, of effete rulers, side by side with great nether powers, as yet unaccredited, anarchic, unconscious of their own laws and destinies--an age of formalisms and Pharisaisms, of parties embittered by the sense of their own decrepitude--an age of small men, destined to be the fathers of great ones. And in harmony with this, we have a poetic school of Herberts and Vaughans, Withers and Daniels, to be followed hereafter, it may be, by a Milton, of whom as yet the age has given no sign." * * * * * DEATH-BED SUPERSTITIONS.--The practice of opening doors and boxes when a person dies is founded on the idea that the minister of purgatorial pains took the soul as it escaped from the body, and flattening it against some closed door, (which alone would serve the purpose,) crammed it into the hinges and hinge openings; thus the soul in torment was likely to be miserably pinched and squeezed by the movement on casual occasion of such door or lid. An open or swinging door frustrated this, and the fiends had to try some other locality. The friends of the departed were at least assured that they were not made the unconscious instruments of torturing the departed in their daily occupations. The superstition prevails in the north as well as in the west of England; and a similar one exists in the south of Spain, where I have seen it practiced. Among the Jews at Gibraltar there is also a strange custom when a death occurs in a house; and this consists in pouring away all the water contained in any vessel, the superstition being that the angel of death may have washed his sword therein. * * * * * Old authors notice the training of camels to move in measured time by placing the animal on gradually heated plates, and at the same time sounding a musical instrument. * * * * * AN ARAB GAME.--The Arabs are far more amusable, far more jovial and open-hearted. They have their coffee-houses every night, and their religious festivities periodically; they play at all sorts of complicated games, resembling draughts and chess, and find means ingeniously to vary their sports. If they compromise their dignity, they succeed in whiling away their leisure time far more successfully than the pride-stuffed Levantine. One of their amusements--called the game of plaff--is worth mentioning, especially as it is not only indulged in by the vulgar, but formed the chief delight of the venerable Moharrem Bey himself. Two men, often with respectable gray beards, sit on a carpet at a little distance one from the other. All Easterns are usually dry smokers; but on this occasion they manage to foment a plentiful supply of saliva, and the game simply consists in a series of attempts on the part of the two opponents to spit on the tips of each others noses. At first, this cleanly interchange of saliva goes on slowly and deliberately--Socrates never measured the leap of a flea with more seriousness--but presently one receives a dab in the eye, another in the mouth. They begin to grow hot and angry. "I hit your nose," cries one. "No, it was my cheek!" replied the other. They draw a little nearer, in order to ascertain the truth by feeling; spit, spit, they still go, like two vicious old cats; their palates grow dry; their throats become parched; but the contest continues, and they exhaust themselves in making spittoons of each other's faces and beards. Hamlet and Laertes were not more eager and desperate. "A hit, a very palpable hit!" they exclaim, as they hawk up their last supply of ammunition. Each denies the truth; they mutually proceed to a verification, and the game of plaff often ends in a regular match of nose-pulling.--_Two Years' Residence in a Levantine Family._ * * * * * A MARRIAGE IN AMERICA.--A respectable farmer came in from some distance, and married the cook. The bridegroom was about fifty, and the bride was thirty years of age. The landlord and many of his boarders assisted at the ceremony, which was performed in the evening, and those of the boarders who had not been present were invited in afterward by the bridegroom to partake of wine and cake. After all were charged, he gave this sentiment, "Friendship to all, love to a few, and hatred to none." So systematically were matters managed, that next morning the bridegroom was sitting in the stove at the bar at seven o'clock, and at half-past seven breakfasted as usual at the public table, at which, of course, his wife, the cook, did not appear, and in the afternoon the happy pair left for their home. When I asked the landlord what the wife was like, he answered, "She is as pretty as a picture, and straight as a candle."--_Sir J. Alexander's "Acadie," just published._ * * * * * ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS IN OUR OWN TIME.--The Arabs, who have among them most imaginative and finished _improvisatori_, compare the elegant movements of a beautiful bride to those of a young camel. The _Thousand and One Nights_, like most clever fables, have some foundation in fact, as is well known to the friends of the Arabian man of rank, who keeps his professed story-teller as an indispensable part of his establishment. African travelers relate that these friends will assemble before his tent, or on the platform with which the house of a Moorish Arab is roofed, and there listen night after night, to a consecutive history, related for sixty or even one hundred nights in succession. The listeners on such occasions have all the air of being spell-bound, especially while hearing some of their native songs, which are frequently extemporized, full of fire, and appealing with irresistible force to the passions. "I have seen," says Major Denham, "a circle of Arabs straining their eyes with a fixed attention at one moment and bursting with loud laughter; at the next melting into tears and clasping their hands in all the ecstacy of grief and sympathy."--_Leaves from the Diary of a Naturalist._ * * * * * THE LAST YEAR'S LEAF. The last year's leaf, its time is brief Upon the beechen spray; The green bud springs, the young bird sings Old leaf, make room for May: Begone, fly away, Make room for May. Oh, green bud smile on me awhile, Oh, young bird, let my stay-- What joy have we, old leaf, in thee? Make room, make room for May: Begone, fly away, Make room for May.--_Philip Taylor_. * * * * * DIVINATION BY THE BIBLE AND KEY.--This superstition is very prevalent amongst the peasantry of this and adjoining parishes. When any article is suspected to have been stolen, a Bible is procured; and opened at the 1st chapter of Ruth; the stock of a street door key is then laid on the 16th verse of the above chapter, the handle protruding from the edge of the Bible; and the key is secured in this position by a string, bound tightly round the book. The person who works the charm then places his two middle fingers under the handle of the key, and this keeps the Bible suspended. He then repeats in succession the names of the parties suspected of theft; repeating at each name a portion of the verse on which the key is placed, commencing, "Whither thou goest, I will go," &c. When the name of the guilty party is pronounced, the key turns off the fingers, the Bible falls to the ground, and the guilt of the party is determined. The belief of some of the more ignorant of the lower orders in this charm is unbounded. I have seen it practiced in other counties, the key being laid over the 5th verse of the 19th chapter of Proverbs, instead of the 1st chapter of Ruth.--Godalming, April, 1850.--_Notes and Queries._ * * * * * SIR THOMAS MORE'S HOUSEHOLD.--The conduct of this great man's house was a model to all, and as near an approach to his own Utopia as might well be. Erasmus says, "I should rather call his house a school or university of Christian religion, for there is none therein but readeth or studieth the liberal sciences; their special care is piety and virtue; there is no quarreling or intemperate words heard; none are seen idle; which household that worthy gentleman doth not govern, but with all courteous benevolence." The servant men abode on one side of the house, the women on the other, and met at prayer time or on Church festivals, when More would read and expound to them. He suffered no cards or dice, but gave each one his garden-plot for relaxation, or set them to sing or "play music." He had an affection for all who truly served him, and his daughters' nurse is as affectionately mentioned in his letters when from home as they are themselves. "Thomas More sendeth greeting to his most dear daughters Margaret, Elizabeth and Cecily; and to Margaret Giggs as dear to him as if she were his own," are his words in one letter; and his valued and trustworthy domestics appear in the family pictures of the family by Holbein. They requited his attachment by truest fidelity and love; and his daughter Margaret, in her last passionate interview with her father on his way to the Tower, was succeeded by Margaret Giggs and a maid-servant, who embraced and kissed their condemned master, "of whom he said after, it was homely but very lovingly done." Of these and other of his servants, Erasmus remarks, "after Sir Thomas More's death, none ever was touched with the least suspicion of any evil fame."--_Mrs. Hall, in the Art Journal._ * * * * * THE "PASSION PLAY" IN BAVARIA.--This year, the foreign journals state, is the year of the passion play of the Ammergau in Bavaria. The last representation took place in the month of July; the spectators were betwixt eight and nine thousand, collected in an open air theatre; the corps of actors, three hundred and fifty in number, some of them, says a French account, men and women as old as eighty years. The play, which was written in 1633, and which had been recently retouched, is in twelve acts and eleven _entr'acts_ interspersed with _tableaux_. The representation lasted from eight o'clock in the morning, till four in the afternoon, was most elaborately prepared, and perfectly executed. At its close, the actors fell on their knees and recited prayers in which they thanked God that their performance had succeeded so well. They were of the peasant class, and almost all belonged to the Ammergau. "This same Ammer-valley," says the _Athenæum_, "lies in a most picturesque country, betwixt Munich and Innspruck--on the road by the Lake of Staremberg and Partenkirch." * * * * * AMBASSADORS.--Holland, Germany, France, America, Spain, send forth their eminent lawyers, historians, merchants, jurists, and publicists, to fill embassies and conduct negotiations; while we content ourselves with recruiting our diplomatic corps from the younger branches of the aristocracy, or from the sons of men of wealth apeing the manners and travestying the mode of life of the grand seigneurs, who conceive themselves made of "the porcelain of earth's clay." The Schimmelpennicks, the De Serres, the Rushes, the Wheatons, the Clays, the Adamses, the Jeffersons, the Rufus Kings, the Daniel Websters, the Dr. Bankses, have all been lawyers; the Washington Irvings, the Bancrofts, the Guizots, the Bunsens, the Niebuhrs, the Humboldts, the Ancillons, were men of letters before and during the period they continued ambassadors.--_Fraser._ * * * * * M. GUIZOT has been compelled to sell at auction a portion of his valuable and extensive library, and a London paper describes some of the more remarkable books, and states the prices for which they were sold. "Comte Auguste de Bastard, Peintures et Ornemens des Manuscrits Français depuis le huitième siècle jusqu'à la fin du seizième," 20 parts, all at present published, in five portfolios, Paris, 1835. This splendid work was described as the most sumptuous, unique, and costly book that has ever been produced. Each part contains eight plates, copied from the most superb examples known to exist; they are colored and finished with gold and silver equal to the exquisite originals; the whole series extends to 160 engravings in 20 _livraisons_, each of which was sold to subscribers only at 1800f., amounting in the whole to 36,000f., or in our money to 1,500_l._ No perfect copy of this production has been offered for sale in this country prior to the present time; it was sold for 200_l._ "Voyage de la Corvette l'Astrolabe pendant les Années, 1826, 1827, 1828, 1829, sous le Commandement de Capitaine d'Urville," containing copious descriptions of all the objects in science and history met with on the voyage, the whole being illustrated by splendid engravings, 30_l._; "Voyage Pittoresque et Romantique en Bretagne," one of the most magnificent and extensive works ever published on the scenery and antiquities of any part of the world; the illustrations to this were executed in the most superb style of lithography; the stones were broken as soon as the plates were printed; 26_l._ 5_s._ * * * * * SIR STRATFORD CANNING.--This eminent civilian and ambassador, whose former residence in this country is remembered with so much pleasure by his friends here, is thus referred to in a series of papers on the Diplomacy, Diplomatists, and Diplomatic Servants of England, now in course of publication in _Fraser's Magazine_: "He who has been forty-three years in the public service, who commenced his duties as precis-writer in the Foreign Office in July 1807, and who, having served as Secretary of Embassy to the Porte, as Envoy to the Swiss Confederation, as Minister to the United States, as Plenipotentiary on a special mission to Russia, as Plenipotentiary on a special mission to Spain, and as Ambassador three times near the Sublime Porte, is now serving with credit and advantage in that very Stamboul whose towers and minarets he first saw in 1808." * * * * * THE SEVEN-MILE TUNNEL THROUGH THE ALPS.--Dr. Granville says: "To give at once some idea of the boldness of Chev. Mons' undertaking, we may, in the first place, state that in its progress the tunnel must pass under some of the most elevated crests of Mont Cenis,--one, in particular, where there will be 4,850 feet of mountain, capped with eternal glaciers, over head, at the middle of the tunnel, so that not only will the workmen and machinery in construction, and the passengers and trains in transit, be buried to that depth in the heart of the mountain, but all idea of shafts, either to facilitate excavation, or to promote ventilation, must be out of the question. The breath of life itself must be respired, from either extremity, with artificial aid, in shape of currents of fresh air transmitted, and of foul air withdrawn, by mechanical apparatus ever at work, at least during excavation, which is also itself to be effected by machinery of a new and simple nature, worked by water-power of mountain streams whereby the trains are also to be run through the tunnel, which ascends, from the northern or Savoy side, at Modane, all the way to its exit at Bardonneche, with a gradient equal to 19 in 1000. The machine, once presented to the rock, projects into it simultaneously four horizontal series of sixteen scalpels, working backward and forward, by means of springs cased in, and put in motion by the same water power. While these are at work, one vertical series on each side works simultaneously up and down, so that together they cut out four blocks, or rather insulate four blocks on all sides, except on the rock behind, from which they are afterward detached by hand. It has been already ascertained that each of the two machines, at the opposite ends of the tunnel, will excavate to the extent of 22 feet a day, and it is estimated that the whole excavation will be completed in four years. The gallery to be perforated by the machines will be 13 feet wide by 7 feet high, and this once cut through, the bore will be enlarged by ordinary means to 25 feet in width and 19 feet in height, and a double line of rails laid. The estimated cost of this great tunnel is only 13,804,942f. It is to be immediately commenced at the north entrance." * * * * * Medicine has killed as many people as war. Powder and pills are as fatal as powder and ball. Be careful, therefore, how you allow people to shoot them into you. 
24902	----	None 
20955	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections). THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE Of Literature, Science, and Art. VOLUME V. JANUARY TO APRIL, 1852. NEW-YORK: STRINGER & TOWNSEND, 222 BROADWAY. FOR SALE BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. BY THE NUMBER, 25 CTS; THE VOLUME $1; THE YEAR, $3. ADVERTISEMENT. The April number of the INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE completes the fifth volume, and the series. The Publishers respectfully announce to its readers and the public, that from the issue of the present Volume, the Magazine will be blended with _Harpers' Monthly Magazine_, and, therefore, suspended as a distinct publication. To the numerous subscribers to THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE, the Publishers beg to say, that each one will be served with HARPER'S MAGAZINE to the end of his term; or, if preferred, furnished with any other Magazine to the amount of his unexpired subscription. The Publishers cannot take leave of the friends of the work, without expressing in terms of thankfulness their sense of the extensive and cordial support it has received during the period of its publication. They are happy to know that its good qualities will be perpetuated in the prosperous, admirable, and widely circulated periodical with which it will hereafter be united. NEW-YORK, _March 30_, 1852. CONTENTS. VOLUME V. JANUARY TO APRIL, 1852. American War-Engines: Colt and Jennings. (Seven Engravings.) 33 Ariadne, the Story of.--_By Erastus W. Ellsworth_, 45 Annuaries: A Series of Poems.--_By Alice Carey_, 87 Autumn Leaves.--_By John R. Thompson_, 188 Aztecs, At the Society Library. (Engraving.) 289 Army Private, A Word About The. 315 Ashburner, Mr., in New-York.--_By Frank Manhattan, Jr._, 324 Author of the Fool of Quality, The. 460 Adventures of an Army Physician in New-York, 496 _Arts, The Fine._--Kaulbach's Last Works, 133.--The Publication of the Works of Ingres, 133.--The Art-Unions, 277.--An Artist Sycophant in Naples, 277.--Kugler's History of Art, 277.--Copies of Ancient Egyptian Sculptures, 277.--Drawings by Schiller, 277.--Kaulbach, 277.--Greenough, 267.--Kaulbach's Cartoon of Homer, 424.--Gallaît's Last Moments of Egmont, 424.--Monument to Metastasio, 424.--New England Art-Union, Etching of Alston's "Witch of Endor," 425.--Drawing of the American Art-Union, 425.--Philadelphia Art-Union, 425. _Authors and Books._--Henry Heine turned Christian, 124.--Dr. Schmidt on German Romanticism, 125.--German version of Firdusi, 125.--Bulau's Secret History of Enigmatical Men, 125.--Historical Concert at Dresden, 125.--Leipzig Book Fair, 125.--History of Music, 125.--Works of Bach, 125.--Lachmann, the Philologist, 125.--German work on Jonathan Edwards, 125.--Dr. Andree's _Das Westland_, 126.--The Gotha Almanac, 126.--Fruits of Humboldt's Kosmos, 126.--Auerbach's Village Stories, 126.--Religious Novel by Storch, 126.--Schneider's House Chronicles, 126.--Mugge's new Book, 126.--Wells's Middle Kingdom in German, 126.--Geograpica Italiæ, 126.--German History of the British Empire in India, 126.--Reverence In Reviewing, 126.--Adolph Stahr, 126.--Countess Hahn-Hahn, 127.--Prince Windischgratz's History of the Hungarian War, 127.--Menzel's new Novel, 127.--Miss Bremer on the World's Fair, 127.--Frederick the Great, 127.--Kohl's last Book of Travels, 127.--Shakspeare in Swedish, 127.--New History of German Literature, 127.--Listz's new Operas, 127.--Haddock's Somnolism and Psycheism, 127.--Gervinus on German Poetry, 127.--Silvio Pellico, 127.--English Eclectic Magazine in Tuscany, 127.--Gioberti on the Regeneration of Italy, 128.--The Israel of the Alps, 128.--Christian Missions in China, 129.--New work on Horticulture in Paris, 130.--Laurent's International Law, 130.--Alexander Dumas, 130.--Prudhon's last Absurdities, 130.--M. Lefranc on the French Revolution, 131.--The Waverly Novels in France, 131.--The Photographic Album, 131.--Guizot's Moral Studies and Meditations, 131.--F. Arago, 131.--M. Ott, on Socialism, 131.--M. Reybaud, 131.--Lord Brougham, 131.--Hartzenbusch's Spanish Authors, 131.--The Grenville Papers and the new volumes of Lord Mabon's History of England, 131.--Sir James Stephens's History of France, 132.--Mr. Merrivale's History of the Romans, 132.--Memoirs of Dr. Chalmers, 132.--Alice Carey's Clovernook, Grace Greenwood's new volume of Tales and Letters, and Miss Cheesebro's Dreamland by Daylight, 132.--Daniel Webster, Mr. Bancroft, and Mr. Irving, on the Life of Washington, 132.--Baucher's Horsemanship, 132.--Heroes and Martyrs of the Missionary Enterprise, 132.--Gutzkow's Ritter Vom Geiste, 268.--Henry Taylor reviewed in the _Grenzboten_, 268.--Germany in the Revolutionary Period of 1522, 268.--Reading Poems, 268.--German views of Carlyle's Life of Sterling, 268.--Curious German work on Shakspeare, by Veshe, 269.--The Gothic Runic Alphabet, 269.--Fac Simile of an Ancient copy of the Gospels, 269.--German Historical Monuments, 269.--Hagberg's Swedish version, of Shakspeare, 269.--German version of Dunlap's History of Fiction, 269.--The Vagabonds, by Holtei, 269.--New German Poems, 269.--Richers on Nature and Spirit, 270.--German Domestic Legends, 270.--Fecknor's Zend Avista, 270.--Rappert's Negromancer Virgilius, 270.--German Temperance Tales, 270.--Nichl on Civil Society, 270.--Correspondence of Goethe and Knebel, 270.--New Collection of Eastern MSS. at Berlin, 270.--German versions of Longfellow, Dr. Mayo, and Bunyan, 270.--Recent German Historical Literature, 271.--German Booksellers, 271.--Wholesale system of acquiring Languages, 271.--Adolf Stahr's Prussian Revolution, 271.--Schleisenger's Wanderings through London, 271.--Arabic MS. of Euclid, 271.--New work by Baron Eötvös, 271.--Wagner's Journey to Persia, 271.--Continuation of Humboldt's Kosmos, 271.--German work on Kossuth, 271.--Cheever's Sandwich Islands, in German, 271.--Silvio Pellico, 271.--Clemens Brentano, 271.--New Books on Scandinavia, 272.--The Widow of Weber, 272.--Professor Nuytz, 272.--Maria Monk in Germany, 272.--Works of Kepler, 272.--Works Prohibited in Russia, 272.--Liebeck, on Landscape Gardening, 272.--Cotta's new edition of Faust, 272.--Writings of Spalatin, 272.--Scientific Works from China, 272.--Biot's Translation of an Ancient Chinese History, 273.--The Library of Cardinal Mezzofanti, 273.--Michelet, 273.--Nicolas and Ritter, 273.--Works of Paganini, 274.--Philarete Chasles on American Literature, 274.--Lafuente's History of Spain, 274.--New Paris edition of Fenimore Cooper, 274.--Guizot on Shakspeare, 274.--Paris by a Hungarian, 274.--Villegos, the Spanish Historian, 274.--Tranion on Land Tenure, 274.--Lady Bulwer's New Novel, 274.--New Works on French History, 275.--Count Joseph de Maistro, 275.--Don Antonio Saco, on Cuba, 275.--New edition of Turner's Anglo Saxons, 275.--John Howard Hinton on the Voluntary Principle in America, 275.--New Discussions as to Junius, 275.--Smith's Natural History of the Human Species, 275.--Bonynge's Wealth of America, 276.--The Past and it's Legacies, by J. D. Nourse, 276.--Head's Bundle of French Sticks, 276.--Legends of Alexander in the East, 414.--Hofner, on Dresses of Christians, in the Middle Ages, 414.--German Version of Popular Nomenclature of American Plants, 414.--German Works on History, 414.--Count Von Hugel on India, 414.--Von Rommer's Historical Pocket Book, 415.--The Art Journal, 415.--Beeker's Roman Antiquities, 415.--Ennemoser's Inquiries Respecting the Human Soul, 415.--New Edition of Brackhaus's Lexikon, 415.--Sources of Popular German Songs, 415.--Saupe's Schiller and his Paternal House, 416.--German Military Books, 416.--Thirtieth Volume of the Library of Collected German Literature, 416.--Biography of Karl Lachmann, 416.--History of German Literature, 416.--Ludwig Kossuth, 416.--Behse's History of the Austrian Court, 416.--Forty Questions addressed to Mahomet, by the Jews, 416.--Böckh's Political Economy of the Athenians, 416.--Hettner's Æsthetic Inquiries into the Modern Drama, 416.--Lepsius on Egyptian Theology, 417.--History of the Russian Empire, 417.--Bavarian Traditions. 417.--S. Didung, 417.--Zahn's Pompeii, 417.--Miss Bremer's American Homes, 417.--A German Wandering Jew, 417.--Mittermaier on American Systems of Punishment, 417.--History of Costumes, 417.--Amyot and the Old French Translators, 417.--Silvio Pellico's Works in France, 417.--History of the Bastile, 418.--Count Montalembert, 418.--Greek Professorship of Edinburgh, 418.--Dr. Smith's Pilgrimage to Palestine, 418.--Turkish Grammar, 418.--Bulwer's Poems, 418.--Lady Bulwer's Letters to the Morning Post, 418.--Memoir of Lord Jeffrey, 418.--New Candidate for the authorship of Junius, 419.--Unpublished papers of Torquato Tasso, 419.--Bancroft's History, 419.--Palfrey's Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities, 420.--Howadji in Syria, 420.--The History of Classical Literature by R. W. Browne, 420.--Thompson's Literature of the Southern States, 420.--Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed, 420.--New Book by G. W. Curtis, 420.--R. H. Stoddard, 420.--Schopenhauer's "Little Philosophical Writings," 549.--Wachsmuth's History of Civilization, 550.--German Theology, 550. Wagner's Journey to Persia, 550.--Roman Catholic Missions, 551.--Professor Brandes on the Mormons, 551.--Constitutions of the Country Towns in Saxony, 551.--Gottleib Fichte's Ethics, 551.--Memoirs Of the Margravine of Bayreuth, 552.--Fannbacher's Recollections of Greece, &c., 552.--Remains of Klaproth, 552.--Daumer's Poems, 552.--Gutzkow's Bitter vom Geiste, 552.--New Scandinavian Literature, 553. Philology and Politics In Denmark, 553.--Poems of Annete Von Droste, 553.--Jahn on Beethoven, 553. German Version of Byron, 553.--Wagner on the Opera and Drama. 553.--Record of Books on Goethe and Schiller, 553.--German Translations of English Ballads, 553.--New Additions to the Index Expurgatorius, 553.--Hettner's Modern Drama, 553.--Layard In German, 553.--The Tubingen Theological Quarterly, 554.--George Stephens in Sweden, 554. Eugene Sue, 554.--Villefort, 554.--New Book by Houissaye, 554.--Louis Blanc's New Volume on the French Revolution, 554.--Edmund Texier on Paris, 554.--The Catacombs of Rome, 554.--The Shelley Forgeries, 555.--Discovery of a corrected Text of Shakspeare, 555.--Sir James Stephen, 555.--Miss Vandenhoff's Play, 555.--Mr. Carlyle, 555.--Mrs. Robinson and William Hazlitt, 556.--Literary Men in the English Cabinet, 556.--Life in Bombay and the Neighboring Nations, 556.--Philarete Chasles on American Literature, 556.--The Standard Speaker, by Epes Sargent, 557.--Memoirs of Margaret Fulier, 558.--Bayard Taylor in Africa, 558.--Works by American Women In Press, 558.--Dr. Dunglison's Medical Dictionary, 559.--Illustrated Edition of General Morris's Poems, 559.--Books on Austria and Hungary, by Mr. Brace, and Mr. Stiles, 559. Foreign Versions of Ticknor's Spanish Literature, 559.--Arvine's Anecdotes, 559.--Dr. Gardner's Tractate on Female Physicians, 559.--Mrs. Conant's Translation of Neander on James, 559.--New Volume of Poems by Boker, 559.--Professor Stuart's Last Commentary, 559. Bull Fight at Madrid.--_By the Author of "The Castilian"_, 222 Brooding-Places on the Falkland Islands.--_From the German_, 45 Bancroft's History of the American Revolution, 461 Colonial Churches in Virginia: St. John's Church, Hampton.--_By Rev. John C. M'Cabe._ (Three Engravings, after original Drawings, by Rev. Louis P. Clover.) 39 Cicero, A New Portrait of, 162 Columbus at the Gates of Genoa.--_By the Author of "Nile Notes of a Howadji"_, 182 Camargo, Mademoiselle De, 282 Chatsworth, A Day At (Thirteen Engravings.) 291 Cats, A Chapter On, 372 Cagliostro, the Magician.--_By Charles Wyllis Elliott_, 452 Choice Secrets, 546 Dark Deed of Days Gone By, 110 Divination, Witchcraft, and Mesmerism, 198 _Deaths, Recent._--Dr. De Kay and Dr. Manley, 140.--Sovigny, the Naturalist, 140.--The late King of Hanover, 141.--Chevalier Levy, 141.--Augusta Byron (Mrs. Leigh), 142.--General Merchant, 142.--Matthias Attwood, 142.--Cardinal d'Astes, 142.--Emir Pasha, 142.--Alexis de Saint Priest, 142.--Joel R. Ponisett, LL.D., 281.--Moses Stuart D.D., 282.--William Grimshaw, 282.--Marshal Soult, 283.--Karl Frederich Runinhagen, 283.--Michael Sallantian, 283.--Dr. Graeffe, 283.--General Kiel, 283.--Wilhelm Meinhold, 283.--J. W. M. Turner, 284.--Basil Montagu, 286.--Admiral Henry G. Morris, 286.--Mr. Sapio, 286.--General Jatrako, 284.--Presnitz, 287.--Professor Dunbar, 287.--Henry Luttrell, 287.--R. C. Taylor, 287.--Professor Franz, 287.--William Jacob, F.R.S., 287.--Paul Burras, 287.--Dr. A. Sidney Doane, 427.--R. A. Davenport, 428.--Giovanni Berchet, 428.--Miss Berry, 428.--Louis Bertin Parant, 428.--Benjamin Laroche, 428.--Eugene Levesque, 428.--Thomas Williams, 428.--Baron Kemenyi, 429.--Herbert Rodwell, 429.--Sir Frederick Phillipse Robinson, 430.--Rev. John Taylor Jones, 430.--Eliot Warburton, 430.--Frederick Ricci, 430.--Baron D'Ohson, 430.--Mrs. Harlowe, 431.--Acheson Maxwell, 431.--William Ware, 560.--John Frazee, 561.--Dr. John Park, 561.--William Thompson, 561.--Robert Reinick, 562.--William Henry Oxberry, 562. Rev. Christopher Anderson, 562.--Madame Thiers, 562.--Thomas Moore, 563.--Samuel Prout. 565.--Archbishop Murray, 565.--Bishop McNicholas, 565. Mr. Holcroft, 565.--M. Benchot, 565.--Professor Kollar, 566.--The Widow of Kotzbue, 566.--Baron Krudener, 566.--M. de Martigny, 566.--M. Smitz, 566.--Bishop Eylert, 566.--Victor Falck, 566. Epitaphs.--_By F. Lawrence_, 213 Edward Everett and Daniel Webster, 307 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Miss Mitford, 310 Enemy of Virginia, The.--_By Dr. Smith_, 312 Election Row in New-York.--_By C. Astor Bristed_, 341 Emille De Coigny.--_By Richard B. Kimball._ (Illustrated by Darley.); 444 Franklin, Grave of Sir John: Richardson's Journey, 30 Falls of the Bounding Deer.--_By Alfred B. Street_, 49 Fielding, Henry: The man and his Works, 71 Fashionable Forger, 118 Faust of Wittenburgh and Faust of Mentz, 172 Feathertop: A Moralized Legend.--_By Nathaniel Hawthorne_, 182, 333 Freedom of Thought, and the Latest Miracles, 186 French Missionaries in Tartary and Thibet, 850 Fete Days at St. Petersburg.--_By Alex. Dumas_, 508 Greece, Present State of the Ancient Monuments of (Thirteen Engravings.), 4 Good Old Times in Paris: A Tale of Robbers, 216 Gambling, Chapter On, 337 Ghosts, New Discoveries In, 381 Gentlemen's and Ladies' Fashions, (With Engravings.), 143, 287, 431, 566 Guizot and Montalembert, in the Academy, 523 Homes of Cowley and Fox, at Chertsey. (Thirteen Engravings,) 146 Happiness of Oysters, 311 Hungarian Popular Songs.--_By Charles G. Leland_, 332 Heirs of Randolph Abbey, 375, 400, 477 Historical Review of the Month, 163, 288 Hooker, Herman, and his Works. (Portrait), 442 Jackson, Flint--_By a Police Officer_, 74 Jewish Heroine: A Story of Tangier, 345 Kossuth, Louis. (Portraits of Kossuth and of his Family.), 1 Leopards: Zoological Notes and Anecdotes, 54 Legend of the East Neuk of Fife, 63 Lee, Jesse, and the Lawyers, 84 Love Song.--_By R. S. Chilton_, 188 Legend of the Weeping Chamber, 219 Leonora to Tasso.--_By Mary E. Hewitt_, 331 Lady and the Flower.--_By G. P. R. James_, 226 Lamb, The White.--_By R. H. Stoddard_, 411 Legend from the Spanish, A.--_By Mary E. Hewitt_, 451 Life in Canada.--_By Mrs. Moodie_, 470 My Novel--_By Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton_. (Continued.) 89, 239, 395, 530 Mahon's, Lord, History of the American Revolution, with Sketches of Washington, Patrick Henry, Franklin, La Fayette, Horne Tooke, Wilkes, Lord Thurlow, Burke, &c., 164 Men and Women of the Eighteenth Century, 300 Model Traveller: Frederick Gerstacker, 305 Mysterious History, Touching Apparitions, 306 Murder of La Tour, The.--_By W. H. Stiles_, 457 New-York Society, by the Last English Traveller, 443 Niebuhr, Barthold George, The Historian, 517 _Noctes Amicitiæ._--Ambitious Christenings, 134.--The Passport System, 134.--A Mayor's Proclamation, 134.--Ingenious way of Hiding a Secret, 134.--Last Days of Alexander Lee, 134.--Anecdotes of Elephants, 134.--Madame Kossuth on Woman's Rights, 135.--Story of an English Lord in Paris, 135.--The Spectator on the sacrilege of Dramatists, 135.--Tipsey Drollery, 266.--Anthony Benezet and his Rats, 266.--Descartes and the Ladies, 266.--An American "Characteristic," 266.--Broussais and Water Cure, 267.--Story of Tom Cooke, 267.--Odd Statistics from Portugal, 267.--First Duel in New England, 267.--Ariosto and Humbugs, 667.--Ole Bull, 267. Opera, The.--_By Thomas Carlyle_, 29 Owen, John, at Oxford: A Biography, 80 Old Maid's First Love, 228 Pulszky, Francis, 122 Poems, Some Small.--_By R. H. Stoddard_, 174, 459 Punishment of Gina Montani, 189 Picture Advertising, in South America, 530 Reminiscences of Printers, Booksellers, Authors, &c., in New-York--_By Dr. John W. Francis, LL.D._, 258 Reclaiming of the Angel--_By Alice Carey_, 311 Red Feather: An Indian Story.--_By I. McLellen_, 319 Robinson, John, The Pastor of the Pilgrims, 367 Rainbow Making: The Ribbon Factories, 511 Story of Dr. Lindhorst.--_By Richard B. Kimball_, 109 Soult, The late Marshal, Duke of Dalmatia. (Portrait.), 145 Story, Mr. Justice, With Reminiscent Reflections. _By A. Oakey Hall_, 175 Smiles and Tears.--_By Richard Coe_, 186 Song Queen, The.--_Written in a Concert Room, by James T, Fields_, 188 Story of Gasper Mendez.--_By Catherine Crowe_, 362 Simms, William Gilmore, LL.D. (With a Portrait.), 433 Sunset: A Sonnet.--_By R. S. Chilton_, 443 Some Small Poems.--_By R. H. Stoddard_, 459 Squier, Mr., in Nicaragua, 474 Sequel to the Jewish Heroine, 491 String of Proverbs, A. 502 _Scientific Discoveries and Proceedings of Learned Societies._--Papers in the Paris Academy of Sciences, 139.--African Expeditions, 139.--Perpetual Motion, 139.--Grants of Parliament for Scientific Purposes, 139.--Balloons in Ancient Nineveh, 139.--Invention for Determining Distances, 140.--Interesting Experiments by Professor Gorini, 140.--Count Castelnau's Paper on Men with Tails, 140.--Hatching Turtles by Artificial Heat, 140.--Process for Contracting Fibres of Calico, 280.--Memoir on the Production of Wool, 281.--European Experiments in Electro-Magnetism, 281.--Curious Astronomical Fact respecting Lalande, 281.--Mr. Squier's Address before the London Royal Society of Literature on Mexican Hieroglyphics, 425.--Experiments in Photography, 425.--French experiments in Electro-Magnetism applied to Locomotives, 425.--Lord Brougham's Optical and Mathematical Inquiries, 425.--Mr. Lea's work on the Genus Unio, &c., 426.--Catlin's plan for a Museum of Mankind, 426.--French Academy on Yellow Fever, 426.--Dissolution of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands, 426.--Society of Antiquaries at Copenhagen, 426. Taylor and Stoddard, Poems of. (Portrait of R. H. Stoddard.), 13 Trangott Bromme's Views of America and Americans, 157 To Sundry Critics,--_By R. H. Stoddard_, 319 Threnodia,--_By Mrs. R. B. Kimball_, 323 The Palaces of Trade, (Six Engravings.), 435 Treatment of Gold and Gems, The. 524 Underground Territories of the United States. (Seven Engravings.), 17 Visit to the Fire Worshippers' Temple at Baku, 160 Vision of Charles the Twelfth, 196 Winter.--_By Alice Carey_, 28 Wits About the Throne of Louis the Fourteenth, 32 Wolf Gathering, 391 Warburton, Eliot, The Late, 459 THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE Of Literature, Art and Science. Vol. V. NEW-YORK, JANUARY 1, 1852. No. 1. [Illustration] KOSSUTH. On the preceding page is the best portrait we have seen of the illustrious Hungarian, whose presence in America is destined to mark one of the brightest pages in the history of Liberty. Of his personal appearance we transcribe the description in the _Tribune_. He is taller than had generally been supposed, and his face has an expression of penetrating intellect which is not indicated in any portrait. It is long, the forehead broad, but not excessively high, though a slight baldness makes it seem so, and the chin narrow, but square in its form. His hair is thin in front and of a dark brown, as is his beard, which is quite long, but not very thick, and arranged with neatness and taste. His moustache is heavy and rather long. His eyes are very large, and of a light blue; his complexion is pale like that of a man who is not in perfect health, and his appearance yesterday was that of the spirit bearing up against the exhaustion of the body; he was sea-sick during the passage, and had not slept for two or three nights. His manner in speaking is at once incomparably dignified and graceful. Gestures more admirable and effective, and a play of countenance more expressive and magnetic, we remember in no other public speaker. He stands quite erect, and does not bend forward like some orators, to give emphasis to a sentence. His posture and appearance in repose are imposing, not only from their essential grace and dignity, but from a sense of power they impress upon the beholder. This sense of unused power, this certainty that he is not making an effort and doing his utmost, but that behind all this strength of fascination there are other treasures of strength, other stores of ability not brought into use, possibly never brought into use, is perhaps what constitutes the supreme charm of his oratory. He speaks as if with little preparation, and with that peculiar freshness which belongs to extemporaneous speaking; there is no effort about it, and the wonderful compactness and art of his argument are not felt until you reflect upon it afterward. His every movement is perfectly easy, and he gesticulates much, equally well with either arm. Nothing could be more beautiful in its way than the sweep of his right hand, as it was raised to Heaven, when he spoke of the Deity--nothing sweeter than the smile which at times mantles his face. His voice is not very loud, but it was heard distinctly through the large pavilion. On the whole our previous impression was perfectly confirmed by hearing him. In speaking, Kossuth occasionally referred to notes which lay on the stand before him. He was dressed after the Hungarian fashion, in a black velvet tunic, single breasted, with standing collar and transparent black buttons. He also wore an overcoat or sack of black velvet with broad fur and loose sleeves. He wore light kid gloves. Generally his English is fluent and distinct, with a marked foreign accent, though at times this is not at all apparent. He speaks rather slowly than otherwise, and occasionally hesitates for a word. His command of the language, astonishing as it is in a foreigner, seems rather the result of an utter abandonment to his thought, and a reliance on that to express itself, than of an absolute command of the niceties of the grammar and dictionary. He evidently has no fear of speaking wrong, and so, as by inspiration, expresses himself often better even than one to whom the language is native and familiar. Though he often uses words with a foreign meaning, or a meaning different from that we usually give them, he does not stop to correct himself, but goes on as if there were no doubt that he would be perfectly apprehended. The character of Kossuth has been very amply discussed in all the journals both before and since his triumphal entry into New-York. The judgment of the London _Examiner_ is the common judgment of at least the Saxon race, that, while the extraordinary events of 1848 and 1849, afforded the fairest opportunities for the advent of a great man, the people who were ready for battle against oppression, were all stricken down on account of the incapacity of their leaders--except in one instance. The exception was in the case of Kossuth. And he was no new man, but had been steadily building a great fame from his youth; had labored in the humblest as well as highest offices of patriotism; and as a thinker, a speaker, and a writer, had been before the public eye of all Europe for years. He was born in 1806, at Monok, in Hungary, of parents not rich, yet possessing land, and calling themselves noble. His native district was a Protestant one, and in the pastor of that district he found his first teacher. On their death, while he was still young, more devoted to books than to farming, he was sent to the provincial college, where he remained until eighteen years of age, and earned the reputation of being the most able and promising youth of the district. In 1826, he removed to the University of Pesth, where he came in contact with the political influences and ideas of the time; and these, blending with his own historic studies and youthful hopes, soon produced the ardent, practical patriot, which the world has since seen in him. According to the Constitution of Hungary, the _Comitats_ or electoral body treated those elected to sit in the Diet more as delegates than as deputies. They gave them precise instructions, and expected the members not only to conform to them, but to send regular accounts of their conduct to their constituents for due sanction, and with a view to fresh instructions. This kind of communication was rather onerous for the Hungarian country gentleman, and hence many of the deputies employed such young men as Kossuth to transact their political business, and conduct their correspondence. Acting in this capacity for many members of the Diet, Kossuth came into intimate relations with the _comitats_, and acquired skill in public affairs. He was soon himself made a member, and from the first was distinguished in the Diet as a speaker. Here he felt, and soon pointed out to his colleagues, how idle and powerless were their debates unless these were known to the public in some more efficient manner than by the private correspondence of the deputies. Influenced by his representations, the chief members of the Diet resolved to establish a journal for the publication of their discussions; and Kossuth was selected as one of those who were to preside over it; but the Archduke Palatine objected, of course, because the object was to curtail the reports and garble them. Kossuth, however, was enabled by the more liberal of his colleagues to publish the reports on his own account. He then extended the journal by the insertion of leading articles; and his counsels and criticisms on the instructions of the _comitats_ to the deputies, so stirred the bile and counteracted the views of the Austrian authorities, that they interfered and suspended his newspaper by seizing his presses. But, even this did not stop his pen, nor those of his many amanuenses; until, at last, Metternich, exasperated by his obstinacy, caused him to be seized and condemned to three years' imprisonment in the citadel of Ofen. He was liberated in 1837; and during the years that elapsed between that epoch and 1848 the history of Hungary was that of Kossuth, who, amidst the many men of noble birth, wealth, high character, and singular talents, who surrounded him, still held his ground, and shone pre-eminent. In 1847 he was the acknowledged leader of the constitutional party, and member for the Hungarian capital. It is unnecessary to pursue this narrative. The events of 1848 and 1849 have passed too recently and vividly before us to need relation. The part that Kossuth played in those years was but the logical consequence of his previous life. The struggle was for the rights of Hungary, in all circumstances and against all foes. For these he fought along with the Hungarian aristocracy, as long as they had the courage to resist Austria; and when they wavered, he went on without them, appealing to the _comitats_ and to the smaller landed proprietors in the absence of the greater, and to the squires instead of the nobles. [Illustration: THE WIFE AND CHILDREN OF KOSSUTH--FROM A RECENT DAGUERREOTYPE.] The result thus far we all know. The final result perhaps we in America are to decide. THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS OF GREECE. [Illustration: THE ACROPOLIS.] Every one can understand the regret with which we behold the remains of ancient grandeur, and the capitals of buried empires. This feeling, so profound in Jerusalem and Rome, is even more so in Athens,-- "the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence, native to famous wits, Or hospitable--" a city never so large as New-York, but whose inhabitants produced within the short space of two centuries, reckoning from the battle of Marathon, as Landor says, a larger number of exquisite models, in war, philosophy, patriotism, oratory and poetry--in the semi-mechanical arts which accompany or follow them, sculpture and painting--and in the first of the mechanical, _architecture_, than the remainder of Europe in six thousand years. The monuments of antiquity which still exist in Athens have been described by Chandler, Clarke, Gell, Stuart, Dodwell, Leake, and other travellers, the most recent and competent of whom perhaps is Mr. Henry Cook, of London, author of _Illustrations of a Tour in the Ionian Islands, Greece, and Constantinople_, who has just made, or rather is now making for the _Art-Journal_ a series of drawings of those which are most important, representing them in their present condition. These drawings by Mr. Cook, so far as they have appeared, we reproduce in the _International_, making liberal use at the same time of his descriptions. Until the sacrilegious hand of the late Lord Elgin despoiled Athens of "what Goth, and Turk, and Time had spared," the world could still see enough to render possible a just impression of her old and chaste magnificence. It is painful to reflect within how comparatively short a period the chief injuries have been inflicted on such buildings as the Parthenon, and the temple of Jupiter Olympus, and to remember how recent is the greater part of the rubbish by which these edifices have been choked up, mutilated, and concealed. Probably until within a very few centuries, time had been, simply and alone, the "beautifier of the dead," "adorner of the ruin," and, but for the vandalism of a few barbarians, we might have gazed on the remains of former greatness without an emotion except of admiration for the genius by which they were created. The salient feature (probably the only one) in the present rule at Athens is one which affords the highest satisfaction to those interested in this subject. Slowly, indeed, and with an absence of all energy, is going on the restoration of some, the disinterment of others, and the conservation of all the existing monuments; and time will probably ere long give us back, so far as is possible, all that the vandalism or recklessness of modern ages has obscured or destroyed. On the Acropolis the results of these efforts at restoration are chiefly visible; day by day the debris of ruined fortifications, of Turkish batteries, mosques, and magazines, are disappearing; every thing which is not Pentelic marble finds its way over the steep sides of the fortress, and in due time nothing will be left but the scattered fragments which really belonged to the ancient temples. "The above sketch," says Mr. Cook, "represents faithfully the present condition of this most sublime creation. The details of the partial destruction of this old fortress--founded 1556 years before the advent of the Saviour--under the fire of the Venetians, commanded by Morosini, are so well known, that I have thought it unnecessary to repeat them; but it is impossible to recall them without a shudder, as the reflection is forced on one, of what must have been their fate whose wickedness caused an explosion which could scatter, as a horse's hoof may the sands of the sea-shore, the giant masses which for ever bear witness to the power of that mighty agent we have evoked from the earth for our mutual destruction." At the west end of the Acropolis, by which alone it was accessible, stood the Propylæa, its gate as well as its defence. Through this gate the periodical processions of the Panathenaic jubilee were wont to move, and the marks of chariot wheels are still visible on the stone floor of its entrance. It was of the Doric order, and its right wing was supported by six fluted columns, each five feet in diameter, twenty-nine in height, and seven in their intercolumniation. Of the Propylæa itself Mr. Cook gives no individual drawing, the only sketch he had opportunity of making, being in its relation to the Acropolis generally; "it will, however," he says, "serve in some degree to show what has been done. Here perhaps the chief work has been accomplished; all the now detached columns were built up with solid brickwork, batteries were erected on the spot occupied by the Temple of 'Victory without wings,' and on the square which answered to it on the opposite side of the flight of marble steps; the whole of which were deeply buried (not until they had severely suffered), beneath the ruins of the fortification which crumbled away under the Venetian guns. These walls have been removed, the batteries destroyed, and the material of which they were composed taken away; the steps exhumed, and the five grand entrances, by which the fortress was originally entered, opened, although not yet rendered passable. It would be, I imagine, impossible to conceive an approach more magnificent than this must have been. The whole is on such a superb scale, the design, in its union of simplicity and grandeur is so perfect, the material so exquisite, and the view which one has from it of the Parthenon and the Erechtheum so beautiful, that no interest less intense than that which belongs to these temples would be sufficient to entice the stranger from its contemplation." [Illustration: THE PARTHENON.] On the right wing of the Propylæa stood the temple of Victory, and on the left was a building decorated with paintings by the pencil of Polygnotus, of which Pausanias has left us an account. In a part of the wall still remaining there are fragments of excellent designs in basso-relievo, representing the combat of the Athenians with the Amazons; besides six columns, white as snow, and of the finest architecture. Near the Propylæa stood the celebrated colossal statue of Minerva, executed by Phidias after the battle of Marathon, the height of which, including the pedestal, was sixty feet. The chief glory of the Acropolis was the Parthenon, or temple of Minerva. It was a peripteral octostyle, of the Doric order, with seventeen columns on the sides, each six feet two inches in diameter at the base, and thirty-four feet in height, elevated on three steps. Its height, from the base of the pediments, was sixty-five feet, and the dimensions of the area two hundred and thirty-three feet, by one hundred and two. The eastern pediment was adorned with two groups of statues, one of which represented the birth of Minerva, the other the contest of Minerva with Neptune for the government of Athens. On the metopes was sculptured the battle of the Centaurs with the Lapithæ; and the frieze contained a representation of the Panathenaic festivals. Ictinus, Callicrates, and Carpion, were the architects of this temple; Phidias was the artist; and its entire cost has been estimated at seven million and a half of dollars. Of this building, eight columns of the eastern front and several of the lateral colonnades are still standing. Of the frontispiece, which represented the contest of Neptune and Minerva, nothing remains but the head of a sea-horse and the figures of two women without heads. The combat of the Centaurs and Lapithæ is in better preservation; but of the numerous statues with which this temple was enriched, that of Adrian alone remains. The Parthenon, however, dilapidated as it is, still retains an air of inexpressible grandeur and sublimity; and it forms at once the highest point in Athens, and the centre of the Acropolis. [Illustration: THE ERECHTHEUM.] To stand at the eastern wall of the Acropolis, and gaze on the Parthenon, robed in the rich colors by which time has added an almost voluptuous beauty to its perfect proportions--to behold between its columns the blue mountains of the Morea, and the bluer seas of Egina and Salamis, with acanthus-covered or icy-wedded fragments of majestic friezes, and mighty capitals at your feet--the sky of Greece, flooded by the gorgeous hues of sunset, above your head--Mr. Cook describes as one of the highest enjoyments the world can offer to a man of taste. He is opposed to the projects of its restoration, and says that, "to real lovers of the picturesque, the Parthenon as it now stands--a ruin in every sense of the term, its walls destroyed, its columns shivered, its friezes scattered, its capitals half-buried by their own weight, but clear of all else--is, if not a grander, assuredly a more impressive object than when, in the palmiest days of Athenian glory, its marble, pure as the unfallen snow, first met the rays of the morning sun, and excited the reverential admiration of the assembled multitudes." On the northeast side of the Parthenon stood the Erechtheum, a temple dedicated to the joint worship of Neptune and Minerva. There are considerable remains of this building, particularly those beautiful female figures called Caryatides, which support, instead of columns, three of the porticoes; besides three of the columns in the north hexastyle with the roof over these last columns, the rest of the roof of this graceful portico fell during the siege of Athens, in 1827. Lately, much has been done in the way of excavation; the buried base of this tripartite temple has been cleared; the walls, which had been built to make it habitable, have been removed; the abducted Caryatid replaced by a modern copy, the gift of Lord Guildford, and the whole prepared for a projected restoration. The Temple of Victory without wings, already mentioned is, with the exception of the pavement, entirely a restoration; for nearly two centuries all trace of it was lost, all mention omitted. In removing one of the Turkish batteries, in order to clear the entrance to the Propylæa, some fragments were found which led to a more minute investigation; and, after a short time, the foundation, the pavement, and even the bases of some of the columns were disinterred, making its reconstruction not only very easy, but extremely satisfactory. It is small, but of exquisite proportions, and now perfect, with the exception of a portion of the frieze, which is in the British Museum. A peculiarity of this temple is, that it stands at an angle slightly differing from that of the Propylæa itself,--a fact for which, as it clearly formed one of the chief ornaments to, and was certainly built after, this noble portico, it is difficult to assign any very good reason. Such is an outline of the chief buildings of the Acropolis, which, in its best days, had four distinct characters: being at once the fortress, the sacred inclosure, the treasury, and the museum of art, of the Athenian nation. It was an entire offering to the deity, unrivalled in richness and splendor; it was the peerless gem of Greece, the glory and the pride of genius, the wonder and envy of the world. Beneath the southern wall of the Acropolis, near its extremity, was situated the Athenian or Dionysiac theatre. Its seats, rising one above another, were cut of the sloping rock. Of these, only the two highest rows are now visible, the rest being concealed by an accumulation of soil, the removal of which would probably bring to light the whole shell of the theatre. Plato affirms it was capable of containing thirty thousand persons. It contained statues of all the great tragic and comic poets, the most conspicuous of which were naturally those of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, among the former, and those of Aristophanes and Menander among the latter. On the southwest side of the Acropolis is the site of the Odeum, or musical theatre of Herodes Atticus, named by him the theatre of Regilla, in honor of his wife. On the northeast side of the Acropolis stood the Prytaneum, where citizens who had rendered services to the state were maintained at the public expense. Extending southwards from the site of the Prytaneum, ran the street to which Pausanias gave the name of Tripods, from its containing a number of small temples or edifices crowned with tripods, to commemorate the triumphs gained by the Choragi in the theatre of Bacchus. Opposite to the west end of the Acropolis is the Areopagus, or hill of Mars, on the eastern extremity of which was situated the celebrated court of the Areopagus. This point is reached by means of sixteen stone steps cut in the rock, immediately above which is a bench of stone, forming three sides of a quadrangle, like a triclinium, generally supposed to have been the tribunal. The ruins of a small chapel consecrated to St. Dionysius the Areopagite, and commemorating his conversion by St. Paul, are here visible. About a quarter of a mile southwest from the centre of the Areopagus stands Pnyx, the place provided for the public assemblies at Athens in its palmy days. The steps by which the speaker mounted the rostrum, and a tier of three seats hewn in the solid rock for the audience, are still visible. This is perhaps the most interesting spot in Athens to the lovers of Grecian genius, being associated with the renown of Demosthenes, and the other famed Athenian orators, "whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie, Shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece, To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne." [Illustration: THE ARCH OF HADRIAN.] Descending the Acropolis, the eye is at once arrested by the magnificent remains of the temple of Jupiter Olympus, and by the Arch of Hadrian. Whether from its proximity to the gorgeous monument first named, or that it is intrinsically deficient in that species of merit which appeals directly to the senses, the Arch of Hadrian attracts comparatively little notice. It is, however, a highly interesting monument, bearing unmistakable marks of the decline of art; yet distinguished for much of that quality of beauty which gives so peculiar a character to the architecture of the Greeks. The inscriptions on the sides of the entablature have given rise to much learned discussion, and have led to a far more lucid arrangement of the city and its chief ornaments, than would in all probability have been accomplished, had not inquiry and investigation been spurred on by the difficulty of comprehending their exact meaning. [Illustration: TEMPLE OF JUPITER OLYMPUS.] [Illustration: ANOTHER VIEW OF THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER OLYMPUS.] Of two views of the temple of Jupiter Olympus, Mr. Cook chose that in which the Acropolis is seen in the distance. The three lofty Corinthian columns in the other engraving are diminished to the scale of the arch, while the Acropolis, from its greater complexity of parts, adds, perhaps, something of a quality in which the subject is rather wanting. "I am not sure," says Mr. Cook, "that the remains of the temple of Jupiter Olympus are not the most impressive which Athens offers to the eye and heart of the traveller, partly from their abstract grandeur--a grandeur derived from every element which could contribute to such an end--and partly from a position than which it would be impossible to conceive any thing more magnificent. The gigantic columns struck me with a sense of awe and bewilderment, almost oppressive; they consist, as may be seen by the engraving, of sixteen, the sole representatives of the one hundred and twenty which once formed this mightiest of Athenian temples. The least thoughtful person could scarcely avoid the question of where and how the remaining one hundred and four of these enormous masses can have vanished; and assisted by the fullest information which is to be acquired on the subject, it remains a matter of wonder to all. That time itself has had but little to answer for, the almost perfect preservation of portions is sufficient to prove; in some cases the flutings are as sharp and clean as when the hand of the sculptor left them, while, more generally, they bear disgraceful evidence of ill-usage of every kind, from that of the cannon ball to the petty mischief of wanton idleness. The proportion of these columns is quite perfect, and the mind is lost in charmed wonder, as wandering from part to part of the vast platform, it is presented at every step with combinations perpetually changing, yet always beautiful. So difficult do I find it to determine from what point of view these ruins are seen to the greatest advantage, that I have appended two engravings, from which the reader may select that which best conveys to him the magnificence of the structure which has been thus slightly described." The temple of Jupiter Olympus was one of the first conceived, and the last executed of the sacred monuments of Athens. It was begun by Pisistratus, but not finished till the time of the Roman emperor Adrian, seven hundred years afterwards. [Illustration: MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES.] A proof of the varied character of the Athenian architectural genius may be found in the exquisite model, the lantern of Demosthenes, or, as it is more properly called, the Choragic monument of Lysierates. It is, in common with the greater number of the remains of which we speak, of Pentelic marble. By whomever conceived, designed, or executed, this must have been a labor of love, and the result is such as might be anticipated from the consequent development of the highest powers of one to whom a people like the Athenians would entrust the task of doing honor to those who had paid to their native land a similar tribute. It is small, and formed of a few immense masses: the roof is one entire block; the temple or monument itself is circular, and is formed of six slabs of pure white marble, the joints of which are concealed by an equal number of beautiful Corinthian columns, partly imbedded into, and partly projecting from them. These have been fitted with such exactness, that before the "fretting hand of time and change" had done its work, the whole must have appeared as if cut from one solid mass. We have this single example of a class of buildings once so numerous that they formed an entire street; but however grateful one may feel to the hospice, which, being built over, protected it from the ruin of its companions, we can scarcely regret its disappearance, through which alone this exquisite result of intellect and refined taste may be seen as represented in the engraving. [Illustration: TEMPLE OF THE WINDS.] The Temple or Tower of the Winds, has been very justly termed "the most curious existing monument of the practical gnomonics of antiquity." In architecture no very elevated rank can be assigned to this edifice, nor is there, even in its ornamental portions, any very remarkable evidence of the higher order of Grecian art; the execution, indeed, can in nowise be considered equal to the conception, which, if somewhat fancifully elaborated, is at least highly to be esteemed, as uniting in a more than ordinary degree the practically useful with the poetical ideal. Near the new Agora, and consequently in the heart of the more densely populated division of the city, this indicator of the wind and hour must have been a valuable contribution to the Athenians, and must have given to its founder, Andronicus Cyrrestes, a proud position among the _bene merenti_ of the moment. Its form is octagonal, the roof being of marble, so cut as to represent tiles; upon the upper portion of each face is sculptured the figure of one of the eight Winds; these floating in an almost horizontal position convey, either by their dress, the emblems which they bear, or the expression of their features, the character of the wind they are respectively intended to personify. Within a very recent period this building, which was more than half buried, has been exhumed, and many important facts have been discovered during the process of excavation. The interior has been cleared, and in the pavement may be seen the channels by which the water was conveyed to the machinery by whose agency the hour was indicated, when the absence of the sun rendered the dials described upon the marble faces of the tower of no avail. These dials have been tested and pronounced perfectly correct, by a no less celebrated authority than Delambre. The two arches on the left of the illustration are the only remaining portions of the aqueduct by which the necessary supply was conveyed, according to Stuart, from the spring in the grotto of Pan; it is a matter of gratulation alike to the antiquarian and the lover of the picturesque, that these have been spared. From the amount of excavation necessary to arrive at its basement, it is clear that this portion of the town must have been raised, by ruins and atmospheric deposits, at least eight or nine feet above its original level. The temple of Theseus, apart from the present town, and in a comparatively elevated and isolated position, built by Cimon, shortly after the battle of Salarnis, is one of the most noble remains of the ancient magnificence of Athens, and the most perfect, if not the most beautiful, existing specimen of Grecian architecture. It is built of Pentelic marble; the roof, friezes, and cornices still remain; and so gently has the hand of time pressed upon this venerable edifice, that the first impression of the mind in beholding it, is doubt of its antiquity. It was raised thirty years before the Parthenon, unlike which it appears to have been but sparingly supplied with sculptural decoration; but that which was so dedicated was of the highest merit, and remaining in an almost perfect condition, is most deeply interesting to the artist and the historian: supplying to the one models of beauty, and to the other the most undeniable data, upon which to establish the identity of this with the temple raised by the Athenians to the Hero-God. [Illustration: TEMPLE OF THESEUS.] After having been successively denominated the remains of the Palace of Pericles, of the temple of Jupiter Olympus (an unaccountable blunder), the Painted Portico, the Forum of the inner Ceremeicus, the magnificent wreck of which the following engraving may convey a general idea, has been finally decided to have formed a portion of the Pantheon of Hadrian. For some time after this opinion had been started by Mr. Wilkins, and sanctioned by Sir William Gell, great doubts, despite the remarkable verification afforded by the language of Pausanias, remained as to its truth; but the Earl of Guildford has at length placed the matter beyond question. Some extensive excavations made under his personal direction resulted in the discovery of the Phrygian stone so minutely described by the enthusiastic traveller. [Illustration: PANTHEON OF HADRIAN.] The portico forming the next illustration was a long time considered the only remaining portion of a temple dedicated to the Emperor Augustus, but it is now clearly established as having been one of the entrances to a market-place. This idea, suggested to the mind of Stuart, by certain minute yet well marked variations in the proportion of the columns from those devoted to sacred purposes, has been sustained by research, and finally demonstrated to be correct by the discovery of an inscription which has put the question at rest for ever. In one of these the names of two prefects of the market are preserved; and another, still perfect, is an edict of Hadrian respecting the duties to be levied on certain articles of consumption, and regulating the sale of oils, &c. Nothing can be more picturesque than the present condition of this portico, the latest specimen of the pure Greek Art. Its coloring is rich and varied, while its state of ruin is precisely that in which the eye of the painter delights, sufficient to destroy all hardness or angularity, yet not so great as to rob it of one element of grandeur. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE MARKET-PLACE: FORMERLY SUPPOSED TO BE PART OF A TEMPLE DEDICATED TO AUGUSTUS.] The building called the Monument of Philopappus, despite its somewhat fantastic elaboration of detail, is very remarkable and interesting; it was created either during the lifetime, or as a memorial immediately after his death, to Caius Julius Antiochus Philopappus, a descendant of the royalty of Syria, and an adopted citizen of Athens. It consists of a basement supporting a pilastrade of semi-circular form, and presenting upon its concave surface three niches, containing sitting statues, and three recesses richly ornamented with the representation in strong relief of a Roman triumph. Upon the basement also were various sculptures in honor of the Emperor Trajan. These, and, indeed, all the decorative sculpture, &c., profusely lavished upon this building have suffered greatly. The two remaining statues are much dilapidated. From this point a magnificent view of the Acropolis is obtained, and few are the sights presented to the traveller, which surpass in historic interest or actual beauty that meeting his eye, to whichever point of the compass he may turn when standing at the foot of this remarkably picturesque monument. [Illustration: MONUMENT OF PHILOPAPPUS.] The ages which produced these marvellous works in architecture had other and different glories. Painting and sculpture reached the highest perfection; and poetry exhibited all the grace and vigor of the Athenian imagination. And though time has effaced all traces of the pencil of Parrhasius, Zeuxis, and Apelles, posterity has assigned them a place in the temple of fame beside Phidias and Praxiteles, whose works are, even at the present day, unrivalled for classical purity of design and perfection of execution. And after the city had passed her noon in art, and in political greatness, she became the mother of that philosophy at once subtile and sublime, which, even at the present hour, exerts a powerful influence over the human mind. This era in her history has been alluded to by Milton: "See there the olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long; There flowery hill Hymettus with the sound Of bees' industrious murmur oft invites To studious musing; there Ilyssus rolls His whispering stream; within the walls then view The schools of ancient sages; who bred Great Alexander to subdue the world, Lyceum there and painted Stoa next; ... To sage philosophy next lend thine ear. From Heaven descended to the low roof'd house Of Socrates; see there his tenement, Whom, well inspired, the oracle pronounced Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth Mellifluous streams that water'd all the schools Of Academics old and new, with those Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect Epicurean, and the Stoic severe." [Illustration] Such is an outline of the remains of the chief Athenian edifices, which link ancient times with the present, and which, as long as there is taste to appreciate or genius to imitate, must arrest the attention and command the admiration of all the generations of mankind. TAYLOR AND STODDARD[A] We have placed these names together, not on account of any fancied resemblance between the two poets, but for the very opposite reason. We wish to trace the contrasts which may be exhibited by writers living in the same age, the same country, and under the same system of social relations. Mr. Stoddard's volume is dedicated with evident warmth of feeling to Bayard Taylor, and the natural conclusion is that the poets are personal friends; yet so far from the intellectual nature of the one having influenced that of the other, they are as strikingly opposed in thought, feeling, and manner of expression, as two men well can be. The time has gone by when a volume from the pen of Mr. Taylor can be dismissed with a careless line or two. Few writers of our day have made more rapid advances into popular favor, and no one is more justly entitled to the place which he holds. If we are to trust contemporary criticism, a goodly army of what are called "promising young poets" might be raised from any state in the Union. But what becomes of them? It is one thing to promise, and another to perform, and we fear that this suggestion contains a hint at the whole mystery. It seems to be comparatively easy for educated men, blinded to their incapacity by an unwholesome passion for notoriety which is never the inspiring motive of a real poet, to reach a certain degree of excellence which may be denominated "promising." Many a feather has been shed, and many a wing broken, in attempting to soar beyond it. We shall not describe Mr. Taylor with the epithet. We see nothing to justify it in his volume, on every page of which there is actual performance. Maturity may indeed add to his powers, and further increase his poetical insight; but there is no necessity for waiting, lest we commit ourselves by a favorable opinion, and no fear that such an opinion will be falsified by succeeding efforts. Richard Henry Stoddard doubtless has been styled a promising young poet by half the newspaper press; therefore if we venture to say that Mr. Stoddard has performed, and that the promising season is over with him, it is not because we do not think that his future poems will exhibit new and greater excellencies, but because we recognize merits in his present collection which eminently entitle him to respectful consideration. The evident source of Mr. Stoddard's inspiration is a love for ideal beauty, in whatever form it may be manifested. Like all admirers of ideal beauty, he has a strong sensual element in his composition. He is not satisfied with the mere dreams of his imagination, but he must also attempt to realize them through the medium of imitative art. Among the various modes for expressing the same feelings and ideas, painting, poetry, sculpture and music, he has chosen poetry as the one best adapted to his purpose. We would not be understood to assert that an artist may, at will, express his emotions in any of the arts; for a man may be insensible to an idea expressed in sculpture or music, which is perfectly clear to him in poetry or painting; but we assert that all the arts are but different languages to convey the same ideas. True art addresses itself to the moral, the intellectual, or the sensual man; and by the predominance of one of these qualities in the artist, or by various combinations of the three, all the radical differences between men of genius can be accounted for, and all the seeming mysteries explained. This truth is the groundwork of genuine criticism; and the critic who busies himself about the accidental circumstances, which have influenced an artist, is only prying into his history, without sounding the depth of his nature. At least let criticism start here: it may afterward indulge in microscopic comparisons of style, and in worn-out accusations of imitation: but it is a sorry thing to see persons assuming the dignified office of the critic magnifying molehills into mountains, and similarities into thefts. All men are gifted with various faculties, but it is not in the superiority of any or all of them that we can account for the existence of the poet, who has something of the divine nature in him, having a creative energy that is not a result of the degree in which he possesses one or more of the ordinary faculties, but is a special distinction with which he is clothed by the deity. We will proceed to examine our two poets by the principles before stated, not forgetting to compare or contrast them, as there may be opportunity. In Mr. Taylor there is a just equipoise of the moral and intellectual natures, while the sensual nature, if not so strong as the former two, is at least calmed and subdued by their united power. With fine animal spirits, he has but little taste for gross animal enjoyments; and the mischief which his unlicensed spirits might commit, is foreseen by a sensitive conscience, and checked by a mind that sees the end in the act, and provides to-day against the future. Mr. Taylor's inclinations are for scenes of grandeur. Sublime human actions, nature in her awful revolutionary states, the wild desolation of a mountain peak or a limitless desert, the storm, the earthquake, the cataract, the moaning forest--these are the chief inspirations of his powers. Whatever is suggestive of high emotions, that act upon his moral nature, and in turn are acted upon by it, forms an unconquerable incentive to his poetical exertions. Mere word-painting he has no affection for. A scene of nature, however beautiful, would be poetically valueless to him, unless it moved his feelings past the point of silent contemplation. The first poem in his volume affords a striking illustration of his apprehension of intellectual bravery. Through fasting that approaches starvation, unanswered prayers, and repeated discomfitures, the soul of the hero burns undimmed, and his eyes remain steadily fixed on his purpose. Physical suffering only strengthens his resolution, and defeat only nerves him to renewed efforts. Round these ideas the poet lingers with a triumphant emotion, that proves his sympathies to be centred less in the outward action of the poem, than in the power of human will--a power which he conceives to be capable of overcoming all things, even the gods themselves. We have before stated that nature, unless suggestive of some intellectual emotion, is nothing to Mr. Taylor. To arouse himself to song, he must vitalize the world, must make it live, breathe and feel, must find books in the running brooks, and sermons in stones, or brooks and stones are to him as if they had not been. In the "Metempsychosis of the Pine," this characteristic is finely displayed. The poet imagines himself to have been a pine, and retraces his experiences while in that state of being. The pine becomes a conscious creature, revelling in the joys of its own existence, feeling the sap stir in its veins, and pour through a heart as susceptible as man's. Many poets have recalled the memories which linger around a particular tree, or, apostrophising it, have bid it relate certain histories; but in Mr. Taylor's poem the tree speaks from within its own nature--not with the feelings of a man, not with what we might suppose would be the feelings of a common tree, but as a pine of many centuries--and no one can mistake its voice. A nobler use of the dramatic faculty, in lyrical poetry, is not within our recollection. As may be supposed, Mr. Taylor's poetry is written under the excitement of passion, and does not proceed from that laborious process of constructing effects, to which a large number of poets owe their success. The consequence is that his language is vividly metaphorical, only dealing in similes when in a comparative repose, and never going out of the way to hunt up one of those eternal _likes_, which have emasculated our poetic style, and are fast becoming a leading characteristic in American verse, to the utter destruction of every thing like real passion. Mr. Taylor is an instructive study in this respect. He uses ten metaphors to one simile. His ideas come forth clothed in their figurative language, and do not bring it along neatly tied up in a separate bundle. From this cause there is a sturdy strength and genuine feeling about his poems, that more than compensate for the ingenious trinkets which he despises, and leaves for the adornment of those who need them. In him imagination predominates over fancy, and the latter is always sacrificed to the former. We do not intend to say that Mr. Taylor is without fancy. Far from it--he has fancy, but it never leads him to be fanciful. His versification is polished, correct and various, but more harmonious than melodious; that is to say, the whole rhythmical flow of his verse is more striking than the sweetness of particular lines. We have not mentioned all the phases of Mr. Taylor's genius. Some of the smaller poems in his volume border on the sensuous; and in "Hylas" he has paid a tribute to ancient fable worthy of its refined inventors; but scenes of moral and natural sublimity are those in which he succeeds best, and by them he should be characterized. [Illustration: RICHARD H. STODDARD.] Mr. Stoddard is the precise opposite to his friend. In him the sensual vastly outranks the moral or the intellectual quality. Let it not be supposed that we wish to hold the two latter elements as superior to the former for poetical purposes; nor do we by asserting the greater preponderance of any one, deny the possession of the other two. To the sensuous in man we are indebted for the great body of Grecian poetry, and Keats wholly, and Tennyson in part, are modern instances of what may be achieved by imbibing the spirit of the ancient classics. Shallow critics have professed to discover a resemblance between these English poets and Mr. Stoddard, and Mr. Taylor has also fallen under the same accusation, for no better reason, that we can conceive, than that all four have drunk at the same fountain, and enjoyed its inspirations. Mr. Stoddard's sympathies are almost entirely given up to ancient Grecian art. He can scarcely realize that the dream has passed forever. He sees something vital in its very ruins. For him the Phidian friezes yet crown the unplundered Parthenon; the gigantic Athena yet gleams through sacerdotal incense, in all her ivory whiteness, smiling upon reeking altars and sacrificing priests; Delphos has yet an oracular voice; Bacchus and Pan and his Satyrs yet lead their riotous train through a forest whose every tree is alive with its dryad, and whose every fountain is haunted by its potamid; there are yet patriot veins to glow at the Iliad; Æschylus can yet fill a theatre; Pericles yet thunders at Cimon from the Cema, or woos Aspasia, or tempers the headlong Alcibiades, or prepares his darling Athens for the Peloponnesian war. These things Mr. Stoddard feels while the locomotive shrieks in his ears, while the omnibus, speeding to the steamship, rattles the glass of his window, while the newsboy cries his monotonous advertisement, or his servant hands to him a telegraphic dispatch; and he is right. The body in which Grecian art existed, is indeed dead, but the spirit which animated it is indestructible. There will be poets to worship and reproduce it, there will be scholars to admire and preserve it, when every man's field is bounded by a railway, when every housetop is surmounted by a telegraph wire, and when the golden calf is again set up amid the people, to be worshipped as the living God. From the force of his sympathies, Mr. Stoddard can lean but in that direction. Throughout his volume there is scarcely a poem which is not the offshoot of these feelings. Some of them are confessedly upon Grecian subjects, and all of them are animated by a corresponding spirit. Even his few domestic poems are not treated after that modern manner, which moralizes in the last stanza, simply to let the reader understand how well the poet knows his own meaning. Whatever is beautiful in Mr. Stoddard's themes is distinctly brought forward, while the darker side of his subject is scarcely touched upon. Take, for example, a poem of great simplicity and tenderness, filled with a sorrow so beautiful as almost to make one in love with grief, and contrast it with a poem, on a similar subject, by Bayard Taylor: "Along the grassy slope I sit, And dream of other years; My heart is full of soft regrets, My eyes of tender tears! The wild bees hummed about the spot, The sheep-bells tinkled far, Last year when Alice sat with me Beneath the evening star! The same sweet star is o'er me now, Around, the same soft hours, But Alice moulders in the dust With all the last year's flowers! I sit alone, and only hear The wild bees on the steep, And distant bells that seem to float From out the folds of sleep!" _Stoddard_, _page_ 116. This is very fine and delicate feeling, softened down to the mildest point of passion; but it does not at all resemble the frenzy of grief which follows: "Moan, ye wild winds! around the pane, And fall, thou drear December rain! Fill with your gusts the sullen day, Tear the last clinging leaves away! Reckless as yonder naked tree, No blast of yours can trouble me. Give me your chill and wild embrace, And pour your baptism on my face; Sound in mine ears the airy moan That sweeps in desperate monotone, Where on the unsheltered hill-top beat The marches of your homeless feet! Moan on, ye winds! and pour, thou rain! Your stormy sobs and tears are vain, If shed for her whose fading eyes Will open soon on Paradise; The eye of Heaven shall blinded be, Or ere ye cease, if shed for me." _Taylor_, _page_ 92. What a desolation of wo! how the whole man is carried away in one overwhelming passion! A contrast of the opening poems of these two volumes, would be a pleasant employment, but their length forbids it. Mr. Taylor's "Romance of the Maize" we have mentioned already; Mr. Stoddard's "Castle in the Air" is its complete antithesis. The latter poem is a magnificent day-dream, abounding in luscious imagery, and unrivalled for its minute descriptions of ideal scenery and its voluptuous music of versification, by any similar creation since Spenser's "Bower of Bliss." To sum up Mr. Stoddard's poetical character, he has more fancy than imagination, he is rather exquisitely sensitive than profoundly passionate, and oftener works up his feelings to the act of composition, than seeks it as an outlet for uncontrollable emotion. He thoroughly, and at every point, an artist. His genius is never allowed to run riot, but is always subjected to the laws of a delicate, but most severe taste. His poems are probably planned with views to their artistic effects, and are then constructed from his exhaustless wealth of poetical material, by a nice adaptation of each part to the perfect whole of his design. If he has less imagination than Mr. Taylor, he has a richer and more glowing fancy; if his figures are less apt and striking, they are more elegant and symmetrical; if the harmonious dignity of his versification is less, its melodious sweetness is more; if he has less passion, he has more sensibility; if moral and physical grandeur are not so attractive to him, ideal and natural beauty are the only elements in which his life is endurable. We might pursue these contrasts to the end of our magazine; but if we have called the reader's attention to them, we have done enough. From "Love and Solitude," by Mr. Taylor, we extract the following picture, in order to contrast it with the handling of the same subject by Mr. Stoddard in "The South:" "Some island, on the purple plain Of Polynesian main, Where never yet adventurer's prore Lay rocking near its coral shore: A tropic mystery, which the enamored deep Folds, as a beauty in a charméd sleep. There lofty palms, of some imperial line, That never bled their nimble wine, Crowd all the hills, and out the headlands go To watch on distant reefs the lazy brine Turning its fringe of snow. There, when the sun stands high Upon the burning summit of the sky, All shadows wither: Light alone Is in the world: and pregnant grown With teeming life, the trembling island earth And panting sea forebode sweet pains of birth Which never come;--their love brings never forth The human Soul they lack alone." _Taylor_, _page_ 16. Half-way between the frozen zones, Where Winter reigns in sullen mirth, The Summer binds a golden belt About the middle of the Earth, The sky is soft, and blue, and bright, With purple dyes at morn and night: And bright and blue the seas which lie In perfect rest, and glass the sky; And sunny bays with inland curves Round all along the quiet shore; And stately palms, in pillared ranks Grow down the borders of the banks, And juts of land where billows roar; The spicy woods are full of birds, And golden fruits, and crimson flowers; With wreathéd vines on every bough, That shed their grapes in purple showers; The emerald meadows roll their waves, And bask in soft and mellow light; The vales are full of silver mist, And all the folded hills are bright; But far along the welkin's rim The purple crags and peaks are dim; And dim the gulfs, and gorges blue, With all the wooded passes deep; All steeped in haze, and washed in dew, And bathed in atmospheres of Sleep! _Stoddard_, _page_ 14. Passages like these say more for their authors than could any commendation from the critic. Observe how soon mere description is abandoned by Mr. Taylor, and he begins to put life and feeling into his scene. The deep is "enamored," the island is "in a charméd sleep," the palms are "imperial," and "crowd the hills," and "out the headlands go to watch the lazy brine," &c. All nature is alive. On the other hand, Mr. Stoddard loves nature for its beauty alone, without desiring in it any imaginable animation. The man who can read Mr. Taylor's "Kubla," without feeling the blood dance in his veins, should never confess it, for he is hardening into something beyond the reach of sympathy. In "The Soldier and the Pard," a poem of curious originality, Mr. Taylor pushes his belief in the all-pervading existence of moral nature to its last extreme. It closes with the following emphatic lines: "And if a man Deny this truth she [_the Pard_] taught me, to his face I say he lies: a beast may have a soul!" Without drawing too much on the tables of contents, we could not enumerate the many note-worthy pieces in these volumes; and it would much exceed our limits to give them even a passing word of comment. Among Mr. Stoddard's unmentioned poems, the "Hymn to Flora," an "Ode" of delicious melancholy, full of exquisite taste and finely-wrought fancies, "Spring," "Autumn," a "Hymn to the Beautiful," "The Broken Goblet," and "Triumphant Music," give the reader a clear insight into his peculiar characteristics, and open a vision of ideal beauty that no poet has exhibited in such Grecian perfection since the death of Keats. A poem, on page 115, is one that awakens peculiar emotions; it describes a state of half consciousness, when the senses are morbidly alive, and the perceptive faculties are fettered with dreams, or inspired by a strange memory that bears within it things not of this world, and hints at a previous and different existence. "The yellow moon looks slantly down, Through seaward mists, upon the town; And like a mist the moonshine falls Between the dim and shadowy walls. I see a crowd in every street, But cannot hear their falling feet; They float like clouds through shade and light, And seem a portion of the night. The ships have lain, for ages fled, Along the waters, dark and dead; The dying waters wash no more The long black line of spectral shore. There is no life on land or sea, Save in the quiet moon and me; Nor ours is true, but only seems, Within some dead old world of dreams!" _Stoddard_, _page_ 115. With this shadowy poem we close, begging our readers not to be terrified at the boldness with which we claim so high a place for the subjects of our review. They have that within them which will prove our commendations just, and establish them in the rank assigned by us, with a firmness that will need no critic's aid, and can be shaken by no critic's assault. We but add, let them remember that the fear of the world is the beginning of mischief. GEORGE H. BOKER. FOOTNOTES: [A] _A Book of Romances, Lyrics and Songs._ By BAYARD TAYLOR. Boston, Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 16mo. _Poems._ By RICHARD HENRY STODDARD Same publishers. 16mo. THE UNDERGROUND TERRITORIES OF THE UNITED STATES. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE MAMMOTH CAVE.] The extraordinary caverns which underlie various parts of this country are of a description suitable in extent and magnificence to the general scale of nature here, in lakes, rivers, cataracts, valleys in which empires are cradled, prairies of scarcely conceivable vastness, and mountains whose bases are amid perpetual flowers and where frozen seas have never intermission of their crashing thunders. In Virginia, New-York, and other states, the caves of Weyer, Schoharie, and many that are less famous but not inferior in beauty or grandeur, are well known to travellers; but the MAMMOTH CAVE, under Kentucky, is world renowned, and such felon states as Naples might hide in it from the scorn of mankind. Considering the common curiosity respecting that strange subterranean country, and the fact of its being resorted to in winter by valetudinarians, on account of its admirable climate--so that our article is altogether seasonable--we give, chiefly from a letter by Mrs. Child, a very full description of this eighth wonder of the world--illustrated by engravings from recent drawings made under the direction of the Rev. Horace Martin, who proposes soon to furnish for tourists an ample volume on the subject. The Mammoth Cave is in the southwest part of Kentucky, about a hundred miles from Louisville, and sixty from Harrodsburg Springs. The word _cave_ is ill calculated to impress the imagination with an idea of its surpassing grandeur. It is in fact a subterranean world; containing within itself territories extensive enough for half a score of German principalities. It should be named Titans' Palace, or Cyclops' Grotto. It lies among the Knobs, a range of hills, which border an extent of country, like highland prairies, called the Barrens. The surrounding scenery is lovely. Fine woods of oak, hickory, and chestnut, clear of underbrush, with smooth, verdant openings, like the parks of English noblemen. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE CAVE.--VIEW TAKEN FROM THE INSIDE.] The cave was purchased by Dr. John Croghan, for ten thousand dollars. To prevent a disputed title, in case any new and distant opening should be discovered, he has likewise bought a wide circuit of adjoining land. His enthusiasm concerning it is unbounded. It is in fact his world; and every newly-discovered chamber fills him with pride and joy, like that felt by Columbus, when he first kissed his hand to the fair Queen of the Antilles. He has built a commodious hotel[B] near the entrance, in a style well suited to the place. It is made of logs, filled in with lime; with a fine large porch, in front of which is a beautiful verdant lawn. Near by, is a funnel-shaped hollow of three hundred acres; probably a cave fallen in. It is called Deer Park, because when those animals run into it, they cannot escape. There are troops of wild deer in the immediate vicinity of the hotel; bear-hunts are frequent, and game of all kinds abounds. Walking along the verge of this hollow, you come to a ravine, leading to Green River, whence you command a view of what is supposed to be the main entrance to the cave. It is a huge cavernous arch, filled in with immense stones, as if giants had piled them there, to imprison a conquered demon. No opening has ever been effected here, nor is it easy to imagine that it could be done by the strength of man. In rear of the hotel is a deep ravine densely wooded, and covered with a luxuriant vegetable growth. It leads to Green River, and was probably once a water course. A narrow ravine, diverging from this, leads, by a winding path, to the entrance of the cave. It is a high arch of rocks, rudely piled, and richly covered with ivy and tangled vines. At the top, is a perennial fountain of sweet and cool water, which trickles down continually from the centre of the arch, through the pendent foliage, and is caught in a vessel below. The entrance of this wide arch is somewhat obstructed by a large mound of saltpetre, thrown up by workmen engaged in its manufacture, during the last war. In the course of their excavations, they dug up the bones of a gigantic man; but, unfortunately, they buried them again, without any memorial to mark the spot. They have been sought for by the curious and scientific, but are not yet found. As you come opposite the entrance of the cave, in summer, the temperature changes instantaneously, from about 85° to below 60°, and you feel chilled as if by the presence of an iceberg. In winter, the effect is reversed. The scientific have indulged in various speculations concerning the air of this cave. It is supposed to get completely filled with cold winds during the long blasts of winter, and as there is no outlet, they remain pent up till the atmosphere without becomes warmer than that within; when there is, of course, a continual effort toward equilibrium. Why the air within the cave should be so fresh, pure, and equable, all the year round, even in its deepest recesses, is not so easily explained. Some have suggested that it is continually modified by the presence of chemical agents. Whatever may be the cause, its agreeable salubrity is observed by every visitor, and it is said to have great healing power in diseases of the lungs. The amount of exertion which can be performed here without fatigue, is astonishing. The superabundance of oxygen in the atmosphere operates like moderate doses of exhilarating gas. The traveller feels a buoyant sensation, which tempts him to run and jump, and leap from crag to crag, and bound over the stones in his path. The mind, moreover, sustains the body, being kept in a state of delightful activity, by continual new discoveries and startling revelations. The wide entrance to the cavern soon contracts, so that but two can pass abreast. At this place, called the Narrows, the air from dark depths beyond blows out fiercely, as if the spirits of the cave had mustered there, to drive intruders back to the realms of day. This path continues about fourteen or fifteen rods, and emerges into a wider avenue, floored with saltpetre earth, from which the stones have been removed. This leads directly into the Rotunda, a vast hall, comprising a surface of eight acres, arched with a dome a hundred feet high, without a single pillar to support it. It rests on irregular ribs of dark gray rock, in massive oval rings, smaller and smaller, one seen within another, till they terminate at the top. Perhaps this apartment impresses the traveller as much as any portion of the cave; because from it he receives his first idea of its gigantic proportions. The vastness, the gloom, the impossibility of taking in the boundaries by the light of lamps--all these produce a deep sensation of awe and wonder. From the Rotunda, you pass into Audubon's Avenue, from eighty to a hundred feet high, with galleries of rock on each side, jutting out farther and father, till they nearly meet at top. This avenue branches out into a vast half-oval hall, called the Church. This contains several projecting galleries, one of them resembling a cathedral choir. There is a gap in the gallery, and at the point of interruption, immediately above, is a rostrum, or pulpit, the rocky canopy of which juts over. The guide leads up from the adjoining galleries, and places a lamp each side of the pulpit, on flat rocks, which seem made for the purpose. There has been preaching from this pulpit; but unless it was superior to most theological teaching, it must have been pitifully discordant with the sublimity of the place. Five thousand people could stand in this subterranean temple with ease. So far, all is irregular, jagged rocks, thrown together in fantastic masses, without any particular style; but now begins a series of imitations, which grow more and more perfect, in gradual progression, till you arrive at the end. From the Church you pass into what is called the Gothic Gallery, from its obvious resemblance to that style of architecture. Here is Mummy Hall; so called because several mummies have been found seated in recesses of the rock. Without any process of embalming, they were in as perfect a state of preservation, as the mummies of Egypt; for the air of the cave is so dry and unchangeable, and so strongly impregnated with nitre, that decomposition cannot take place. A mummy found here in 1813, was the body of a woman five feet ten inches high, wrapped in half-dressed deer skins, on which were rudely drawn white veins and leaves. At the feet, lay a pair of moccasons, and a handsome knapsack, made of bark: containing strings of small shining seeds; necklaces of bears' teeth, eagles' claws, and fawns' red hoofs; whistles made of cane; two rattlesnakes' skins, one having on it fourteen rattles; coronets for the head, made of erect feathers of rooks and eagles; smooth needles of horn and bone, some of them crooked like sail-needles; deers' sinews, for sewing, and a parcel of three-corded thread, resembling twine. I believe one of these mummies is now in the British Museum. From Mummy Hall you pass into Gothic Avenue, where the resemblance to Gothic architecture very perceptibly increases. The wall juts out in pointed arches, and pillars, on the sides of which are various grotesque combinations of rock. One is an elephant's head. The tusks and sleepy eyes are quite perfect; the trunk, at first very distinct, gradually recedes, and is lost in the rock. On another pillar is a lion's head; on another, a human head with a wig, called Lord Lyndhurst, from its resemblance to that dignitary. From this gallery you can step into a side cave, in which is an immense pit, called the Lover's Leap. A huge rock, fourteen or fifteen feet long, like an elongated sugar-loaf running to a sharp point, projects half way over this abyss. It makes one shudder to see the guide walk almost to the end of this projectile bridge, over such an awful chasm. As you pass along, the Gothic Avenue narrows, until you come to a porch composed of the first separate columns in the cave. The stalactite and stalagmite formations unite in these irregular masses of brownish yellow, which, when the light shines through them, look like transparent amber. They are sonorous as a clear-toned bell. A pendent mass, called the Bell, has been unfortunately broken, by being struck too powerfully. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE GOTHIC GATE.] The porch of columns leads to the Gothic Chapel, which has the circular form appropriate to a true church. A number of pure stalactite columns fill the nave with arches, which in many places form a perfect Gothic roof. The stalactites fall in rich festoons, strikingly similar to the highly ornamented chapel of Henry VII. Four columns in the centre form a separate arch by themselves, like trees twisted into a grotto, in all irregular and grotesque shapes. Under this arch stands Wilkins' arm-chair, a stalactite formation, well adapted to the human figure. The Chapel is the most beautiful specimen of the Gothic in the cave. Two or three of the columns have richly foliated capitals, like the Corinthian. If you turn back to the main avenue, and strike off in another direction, you enter a vast room, with several projecting galleries, called the Ball Room. In close vicinity, as if arranged by the severer school of theologians, is a large amphitheatre, called Satan's Council Chamber. From the centre rises a mountain of big stones, rudely piled one above another, in a gradual slope, nearly one hundred feet high. On the top rests a huge rock, big as a house, called Satan's Throne. The vastness, the gloom, partially illuminated by the glare of lamps, forcibly remind one of Lucifer on his throne, as represented by Martin in his illustrations of Milton. It requires little imagination to transform the uncouth rocks all around the throne, into attendant demons. Indeed, throughout the cave, Martin's pictures are continually brought to mind, by the unearthly effect of intense gleams of light on black masses of shadow. In this Council Chamber, the rocks, with singular appropriateness, change from an imitation of Gothic architecture, to that of the Egyptian. The dark, massive walls resemble a series of Egyptian tombs, in dull and heavy outline. In this place is an angle, which forms the meeting point of several caves, and is therefore considered one of the finest points of view. Here parties usually stop and make arrangements to kindle the Bengal Lights, which travellers always carry with them. It has a strange and picturesque effect to see groups of people dotted about, at different points of view, their lamps hidden behind stones, and the light streaming into the thick darkness, through chinks in the rocks. When the lights begin to burn, their intense radiance casts a strong glare on Satan's Throne; the whole of the vast amphitheatre is revealed to view, and you can peer into the deep recesses of two other caves beyond. For a few moments, gigantic proportions and uncouth forms stand out in the clear, strong gush of brilliant light! and then--all is darkness. The effect is so like magic, that one almost expects to see towering genii striding down the deep declivities, or startled by the brilliant flare, shake off their long sleep among the dense black shadows. [Illustration: THE GOTHIC CHAPEL.] If you enter one of the caves revealed in the distance, you find yourself in a deep ravine, with huge piles of gray rock jutting out more and more, till they nearly meet at top. Looking upward, through this narrow aperture, you see, high, high above you, a vaulted roof of _black_ rock, studded with brilliant spar, like constellations in the sky, seen at midnight, from the deep clefts of a mountain. This is called the Star Chamber. It makes one think of Schiller's grand description of William Tell sternly waiting for Gessler, among the shadows of the Alps, and of Wordsworth's picture of "Yorkshire dales Among the rocks and winding scars, Where deep and low the hamlets lie, Beneath their little patch of sky, And little lot of stars." [Illustration: THE STAR CHAMBER.] In this neighborhood is a vast, dreary chamber, which Stephen, the guide, called Bandit's Hall, the first moment his eye rested on it; and the name is singularly expressive of its character. Its ragged roughness and sullen gloom are indescribable. The floor is a mountainous heap of loose stones, and not an inch of even surface could be found on roof or walls. Imagine two or three travellers, with their lamps, passing through this place of evil aspect. The deep, suspicions-looking recesses and frightful crags are but partially revealed in the feeble light. All at once, a Bengal Light blazes up, and every black rock and frowning cliff stands out in the brilliant glare. The contrast is sublime beyond imagination. It is as if a man had seen the hills and trees of this earth only in the dim outline of a moonless night, and they should, for the first time, be revealed to him in the gushing glory of the morning sun. But the greatest wonder in this region of the cave, is Mammoth Dome--a giant among giants. It is so immensely high and vast, that three of the most powerful Bengal Lights illuminate it very imperfectly. That portion of the ceiling which becomes visible, is three hundred feet above your head, and remarkably resembles the aisles of Westminster Abbey. It is supposed that the top of this dome is near the surface of the ground. Another route from the Devil's Council Chamber conducts you to a smooth, level path, called Pensacola Avenue. Here are numerous formations of crystallized gypsum, but not as beautiful or as various as are found farther on. From various slopes and openings, caves above and below are visible. The Mecca's shrine of this pilgrimage is Angelica's Grotto, completely lined and covered with the largest and richest dog's tooth spar. A person who visited the place, a few years since, laid his sacrilegious hands upon it, while the guide's back was turned towards whim. He coolly demolished a magnificent mass of spar, sparkling most conspicuously on the very centre of the arch, and wrote his own insignificant name in its place. This was _his_ fashion of securing immortality! It is well that fairies and giants are powerless in the nineteenth century, else had the indignant genii of the cave crushed his bones to impalpable powder. [Illustration: THE BOTTOMLESS PIT.] If you pass behind Satan's Throne, by a narrow ascending path, you come into a vast hall where there is nothing but naked rock. This empty dreary place is appropriately called the Deserted Chamber. Walking along the verge, you arrive at another avenue, inclosing sulphur springs. Here the guide warns you of the vicinity of a pit, one hundred and twenty feet deep, in the shape of a saddle. Stooping over it, and looking upward, you see an abyss of precisely the same shape over head; a fact which indicates that it began in the upper region, and was merely interrupted by this chamber. From this, you may enter a narrow and very tortuous path, called the Labyrinth, which leads to an immense split, or chasm, in the rocks. Here is placed a ladder, down which you descend twenty-five or thirty feet, and enter a narrow cave below, which brings you to a combination of rock called the Gothic Window. You stand in this recess, while the guided ascends huge cliffs overhead, and kindles Bengal Lights, by the help of which you see, two hundred feet above you, a Gothic dome of one solid rock, perfectly overawing in its vastness and height. Below, is an abyss of darkness, which no eye but the Eternal can fathom. If, instead of descending the ladder, you pass straight alongside the chasm, you arrive at the Bottomless Pit, beyond which no one ever ventured to proceed till 1838. To this fact we probably owe the meagre account given by Lieber, in the Encyclopædia Americana. He says, "This cave is more remarkable for extent, than the variety or beauty of its productions; having none of the beautiful stalactites found in many other caves." For a long period this pit was considered bottomless, because, when stones were thrown into it, they reverberated and reverberated along the sides, till lost to the ear, but seemed to find no resting place. It has since been sounded, and found to be one hundred and forty feet deep, with a soft muddy bottom, which returns no noise when a stone strikes upon it. In 1838, the adventurous Stephen threw a ladder across the chasm, and passed over. There is now a narrow bridge of two planks, with a little railing on each side; but as it is impossible to sustain it by piers, travellers must pass over in the centre, one by one, and not touch the railing, lest they disturb the balance, and overturn the bridge. This walk brings you into Pensico Avenue. Hitherto, the path has been rugged, wild, and rough, interrupted by steep acclivities, rocks, and big stones; but this avenue has a smooth and level floor, as if the sand had been spread out by gently flowing waters. Through this, descending more and more, you come to a deep arch, by which you enter the Winding Way; a strangely irregular and zig-zag path, so narrow that a very stout man could not squeeze through. In some places, the rocks at the sides are on a line with your shoulders, then piled high over your head; and then again you rise above, and overlook them all, and see them heaped behind you, like the mighty waves of the Red Sea, parted for the Israelites to pass through. This toilsome path was evidently made by a rushing, winding torrent. Toward the close, the water not having force enough to make a smooth bed, has bored a tunnel. This is so low and narrow, that the traveller is obliged to stoop and squeeze himself through. Suddenly he passes into a vast hall, called the Great Relief; and this leads into the River Hall, at the side of which you have a glimpse of a small cave, called the Smoke House, because it is hung with rocks perfectly in the shape of hams. The River Hall descends like the slope of a mountain. The ceiling stretches away--away--before you, vast and grand as the firmament at midnight. No one, who has never seen this cave, can imagine the excitement, and awe, with which the traveller keeps his eye fixed on the rocky ceiling, which, gradually revealed in the passing light, continually exhibits some new and unexpected feature of sublimity or beauty. One of the most picturesque sights in the world, is to see a file of men and women passing along these wild and craggy paths--slowly, slowly--that their lamps may have time to illuminate the sky-like ceiling, and gigantic walls; disappearing behind the high cliffs, sinking into ravines, their lights shining upward through fissures in the rocks; then suddenly emerging from some abrupt angle, standing in the bright gleam of their lamps, relieved against the towering black masses around them. He who could paint the infinite variety of creation, can alone give an adequate description of this marvellous region. At one side of River Hall is a steep precipice, over which you can look down, by aid of blazing missiles, upon a broad, black sheet of water, eighty feet below, called the Dead Sea. This is an awfully impressive place, the sights and sounds of which do not easily pass from memory. He who has seen it will have it vividly brought before him by Alfieri's description of Filippo: "Only a transient word or act gives us a short and dubious glimmer, that reveals to us the abysses of his being; dark, lurid, and terrific, as the throat of the infernal pool." As you pass along, you hear the roar of invisible waterfalls, and at the foot of the slope, the River Styx lies before you, deep and black, overarched with rock. The first glimpse of it brings to mind the descent of Ulysses into hell. "Where the dark rock o'erhangs the infernal lake, And mingling screams eternal murmurs make." Across these unearthly waters, the guide can convey but two passengers at once; and these sit motionless in the canoe, with feet turned apart, so as not to disturb the balance. Three lamps are fastened to the prow, the images of which are reflected in the dismal pool. If you are impatient of delay, or eager for new adventures, you can leave your companions lingering about the shore, and cross the Styx by a dangerous bridge of precipices overhead. In order to do this, you must ascend a steep cliff and enter a cave above, from an egress of which you find yourself on the bank of the river, eighty feet above its surface, commanding a view of those passing in the boat, and those waiting on the shore. Seen from this height, the lamps in the canoe glare like fiery eyeballs; and the passengers sitting there, so hushed and motionless, look like shadows. The scene is so strangely funereal and spectral, that it seems as if the Greeks must have witnessed it, before they imagined Charon conveying ghosts to the dim regions of Pluto. Your companions, thus seen, do indeed-- "Skim along the dusky glades, Thin airy shoals, and visionary shades." [Illustration: THE RIVER STYX.] If you turn your eye from the canoe, to the parties of men and women, whom you left waiting on the shore, you will see them, by the gleam of their lamps, scattered in picturesque groups, looming out in bold relief from the dense darkness around them. When you have passed the Styx, you soon meet another stream, appropriately called Lethe. The echoes here are absolutely stunning. A single voice sounds like a powerful choir; and could an organ be played, it would deprive the hearer of his senses. When you have crossed, you enter a high level hall, named the Great Walk, half a mile of which brings you to another river, called the Jordan. In crossing this, the rocks, in one place, descend so low, as to leave only eighteen inches for the boat to pass through. Passengers are obliged to double up, and lie on each other's shoulders till this gap is passed. This uncomfortable position is, however, of short duration, and you suddenly emerge to where the vault of the cave is more than a hundred feet high. In the fall of the year, this river often rises, almost instantaneously, over fifty feet above low-water mark; a phenomenon supposed to be caused by heavy rains from the upper earth. On this account, autumn is an unfavorable season for those who wish to explore the cave throughout. If parties happen to be caught on the other side of Jordan, when the sudden rise takes place, a boat conveys them, on the swollen waters, to the level of an upper cave, so low that they are obliged to enter on hands and knees, and crawl through. This place is called Purgatory. People on the other side, aware of their danger, have a boat in readiness to receive them. The guide usually sings while crossing the Jordan, and his voice is reverberated by a choir of sweet echoes. The only animals ever found in the cave are fish, with which this stream abounds. They are perfectly white, and without eyes; at least, they have been subjected to a careful scientific examination, and no organ similar to an eye can be discovered. It would indeed be a useless appendage to creatures that dwell for ever in Cimmerian darkness. But, as usual, the acuteness of one sense is increased by the absence of another. These fish are undisturbed by the most powerful glare of light, but they are alarmed at the slightest agitation of the water; and it is therefore exceedingly difficult to catch them. The rivers of Mammoth Cave were never crossed till 1840. Great efforts have been made to discover whence they come, and whither they go. But though the courageous Stephen has floated for hours up to his chin, and forced his way through the narrowest apertures under the dark waves, so as to leave merely his head a breathing space, yet they still remain as much a mystery as ever--without beginning or end, like eternity. They disappear under arches, which, even at the lowest stage of the water, are under the surface of it. From an unknown cause, it sometimes happens in the neighborhood of these streams, that the figure of a distant companion will apparently loom up, to the height of ten or twelve feet, as he approaches you. This occasional phenomenon is somewhat frightful, even to the most rational observer, occurring as it does in a region so naturally associated with giants and genii. From the Jordan, through Silliman's Avenue, you enter a high, narrow defile, or pass, in a portion of which, called the Hanging Rocks, huge masses of stone hang suspended over your head. At the side of this defile, is a recess, called the Devil's Blacksmith's Shop. It contains a rock shaped like an anvil, with a small inky current running near it, and quantities of coarse stalagmite scattered about, precisely like blacksmith's cinders, called slag. In another place, you pass a square rock, covered with beautiful dog's tooth spar, called the Mile Stone. This pass brings you into Wellington's Gallery, which tapers off to a narrow point, apparently the end of the cave in this direction. But a ladder is placed on one side by which you ascend to a small cleft in the rock, through which you are at once ushered into a vast apartment, discovered about two years ago. This is the commencement of Cleveland's Avenue, the crowning wonder and glory of this subterranean world. At the head of the ladder, you find yourself surrounded by overhanging stalactites, in the form of rich clusters of grapes, transparent to the light, hard as marble, and round and polished, as if done by a sculptor's hand. This is called Mary's Vineyard; and from it, an entrance to the right brings you into a perfectly naked cave, whence you suddenly pass into a large hall, with magnificent columns, and rich festoons of stalactite, in various forms of beautiful combination. In the centre of this chamber, between columns of stalactite, stands a mass of stalagmite, shaped like a sarcophagus, in which is an opening like a grave. A Roman Catholic priest first discovered this, about a year ago, and with fervent enthusiasm exclaimed, "The Holy Sepulchre!" a name which it has since borne. To the left of Mary's Vineyard, is an inclosure like an arbor, the ceiling and sides of which are studded with snow-white crystallized gypsum, in the form of all sorts of flowers. It is impossible to convey an idea of the exquisite beauty and infinite variety of these delicate formations. In some places, roses and lilies seem cut on the rock, in bas-relief; in others, a graceful bell rises on a long stalk, so slender that it bends at a breath. One is an admirable imitation of Indian corn in tassel, the silky fibres as fine and flexile as can be imagined; another is a group of ostrich plumes, so downy that a zephyr waves it. In some nooks were little parks of trees, in others, gracefully curled leaves like the Acanthus, rose from the very bosom of the rock. Near this room is the Snow Chamber, the roof and sides of which are covered with particles of brilliant white gypsum, as if snowballs had been dashed all over the walls. In another apartment the crystals are all in the form of rosettes. In another, called Rebecca's Garland, the flowers have all arranged themselves into wreaths. Each seems to have a style of formations peculiar to itself, though of infinite variety. Days might be spent in these superb grottoes, without becoming familiar with half their hidden glories. One could imagine that some antediluvian giant had here imprisoned some fair daughter of earth, and then in pity for her loneliness, had employed fairies to deck her bowers with all the splendor of earth and ocean. Like poor Amy Robsart, in the solitary halls of Cumnor. Bengal Lights, kindled in these beautiful retreats, produce an effect more gorgeous than any theatrical representation of fairyland; but they smoke the pure white incrustations, and the guide is therefore very properly reluctant to have them used. The reflection from the shining walls is so strong, that lamplight is quite sufficient. Moreover, these wonderful formations need to be examined slowly and in detail. The universal glitter of the Lights is worthless in comparison. From Rebecca's Garland you come into a vast hall, of great height, covered with shining drops of gypsum, like oozing water petrified. In the centre is a large rock, four feet high, and level at top, round which several hundred people can sit conveniently. This is called Cornelia's Table, and is frequently used for parties to dine upon. In this hall, and in Wellington's Gallery, are deposits of fibrous gypsum, snow-white, dry, and resembling asbestos. Geologists, who sometimes take up their abode in the cave for weeks, and other travellers who choose to remain over night, find this a very pleasant and comfortable bed. Cornelia's Table is a safe centre, from which individuals may diverge on little exploring expeditions; for the paths here are not labyrinthine, and the hall is conspicuous from various neighboring points of view. In most regions of the cave, it is hazardous to lose sight of the guide. If you think to walk straight ahead, even for a few rods, and then turn short round and return to him, you will find it next to impossible to do so. So many paths come in at acute angles; they look so much alike; and the light of a lamp reveals them so imperfectly, that none but the practised eye of a guide can disentangle their windings. A gentleman who retraced a few steps, near the entrance of the cave, to find his hat, lost his way so completely, that he was not found for forty-eight hours, though twenty or thirty people were in search of him. Parties are occasionally mustered and counted, to see that none are missing. Should such an accident happen, there is no danger, if the wanderer will remain stationary; for he will soon be missed, and a guide sent after him. From the hall of congealed drops, you may branch off into a succession of small caves, called Cecilia's Grottoes. Here nearly all the beautiful formations of the surrounding caves, such as grapes, flowers, stars, leaves, coral, &c., may be found so low, that you can conveniently examine their minutest features. One of these little recesses, covered with sparkling spar, set in silvery gypsum, is called Diamond Grotto. Alma's Bower closes this series of wonderful formations. As a whole, they are called Cleveland's Cabinet, in honor of Professor Cleveland, of Bowdoin College. Silliman calls this admirable series, the Alabaster Caves. He says: "I was at first at a loss to account for such beautiful formations, and especially for the elegance of the curves exhibited. It is however evident that the substances have grown from the rocks, by increments or additions to the base; the solid parts already formed being continually pushed forward. If the growth be a little more rapid on one side than on the other, a well-proportioned curve will be the result; should the increased action on one side diminish or increase, then all the beauties of the conic and mixed curves would be produced. The masses are often evenly and longitudinally striated by a kind of columnar structure, exhibiting a fascicle of small prisms; and some of these prisms ending sooner than others, give a broken termination of great beauty, similar to our form of the emblem of 'the order of the star.' The rosettes formed by a mammillary disk surrounded by a circle of leaves, rolled elegantly outward, are from four inches to a foot in diameter. Tortuous vines, throwing off curled leaves at every flexure, like the branches of a chandelier, running more than a foot in length, and not thicker than the finger, are among the varied frost-work of these grottoes; common stalactites of carbonate of lime, although beautiful objects, lose by contrast with these ornaments, and dwindle into mere clumsy, awkward icicles. Besides these, there are tufts of 'hair salt,' native sulphate of magnesia, depending like adhering snowballs from the roof, and periodically detaching themselves by their own increasing weight. Indeed, the more solid alabaster ornaments become at last overgrown, and fall upon the floor of the grotto, which was found covered with numbers quite entire, besides fragments of others broken by the fall." A distinguished geologist has said that he believed Cleveland's Avenue, two miles in length, contained a petrified form of every vegetable production on earth. If this be too large a statement, it is at least safe to say that its variety is almost infinite. Amongst its other productions, are large piles of Epsom salts, beautifully crystallized. Travellers have shown such wanton destructiveness in this great temple of Nature--mutilating beautiful columns, knocking off spar, and crushing delicate flowers--that the rules are now very strict. It is allowable to touch nothing, except the ornaments which have loosened and dropped by their own weight. These are often hard enough to bear transportation. After you leave Alma's Bower, the cave again becomes very rugged. Beautiful combinations of gypsum and spar may still be seen occasionally overhead: but all round you rocks and stones are piled up in the wildest manner. Through such scraggy scenery, you come to the Rocky Mountains, an irregular pile of massive rocks, from 100 to 150 feet high. From these you can look down into Dismal Hollow--deep below deep--the most frightful looking place in the whole cave. On the top of the mountain is a beautiful rotunda, called Croghan Hall, in honor of the proprietor. Stalactites surround this in the richest fringe of icicles, and lie scattered about the walls in all shapes, as if arranged for a museum. On one side is a stalagmite formation like a pine-tree, about five feet high, with regular leaves and branches; another is in a pyramidal form, like a cypress. If you wind down the mountains on the side opposite from that which you ascended, you will come to Serena's Arbor, which is thirteen miles from the entrance of the cave, and the end of this avenue. A most beautiful termination it is! In a semicircle of stalactite columns is a fountain of pure water spouting up from a rock. This fluid is as transparent as air; all the earthy particles it ever held in suspension, having been long since precipitated. The stalactite formations in this arbor are remarkably beautiful. One hundred and sixty-five avenues have been discovered in Mammoth Cave, the walk through which is estimated at about three hundred miles. In some places, you descend more than a mile into the bowels of the earth. The poetic-minded traveller, after he has traced all the labyrinths, departs with lingering reluctance. As he approaches the entrance, daylight greets him with new and startling beauty. If the sun shines on the verdant sloping hill, and the waving trees, seen through the arch, they seem like fluid gold; if mere daylight rests upon them, they resemble molten silver. This remarkable richness of appearance is doubtless owing to the contrast with the thick darkness, to which the eye has been so long accustomed. As you come out of the cave, the temperature of the air rises thirty degrees instantly (if the season is summer), and you feel as if plunged in a hot vapor bath; but the effects of this are salutary and not unpleasant. Nature never seems so miraculous as it does when you emerge from this hidden realm of marvellous imitations. The "dear goddess" is so serene in her resplendent and more harmonious beauty! The gorgeous amphitheatre of trees, the hills, the sky, and the air, all seem to wear a veil of transfigured glory. The traveller feels that he was never before conscious how beautiful a phenomenon is the sunlight, how magnificent the blue arch of heaven! There are three guides at the service of travellers, all well versed in the intricate paths of this nether world. Stephen, the presiding genius of Mammoth Cave, is a mulatto, and a slave. He has lived in this strange region from boyhood, and a large proportion of the discoveries are the result of his courage, intelligence, and untiring zeal. His vocation has brought him into contact with many intellectual and scientific men, and a prodigious memory, he has profited much by intercourse with superior minds. He can recollect every body that ever visited the cave, and all the terms of geology and mineralogy are at his tongue's end. He is extremely attentive, and peculiarly polite to ladies. Like most of his race, he is fond of grandiloquent language, and his rapturous expressions, as he lights up some fine point of view, are at times fine specimens of glorification. His knowledge of the place is ample and accurate, and he is altogether an extremely useful and agreeable guide. FOOTNOTES: [B] See engraving of this hotel in the _International_ for August, 1851. THE POEM OF THE MONTH. The finest new poem that has fallen under our notice is the following, from _Graham's Magazine_ for the present month. We think few who have read Miss Carey's recent poems entitled _Lyra_, _Jessie Carol_, _October_, and _The Winds_, with her prose volume just published by Redfield, will be disposed to question, that in the brief period in which she has been before the public she has entitled herself to the highest rank among the living literary women of the United States. WINTER, BY ALICE CAREY. Now sits the twilight palaced in the snow, Hugging away beneath a fleece of gold Her statue beauties, dumb and icy cold, And fixing her blue steadfast eyes below, Where in a bed of chilly waves afar, With dismal shadows o'er her sweet face blown, Tended to death by eve's delicious star, Lies the lost day alone. Where late, with red mists bound about his brows, Went the swart Autumn, wading to the knees Through drifts of dead leaves shaken from the boughs Of the old forest trees, The gusts upon their baleful errands run O'er the bright ruin, fading from our eyes, And over all, like clouds about the sun, A shadow lies. For, fallen asleep upon a dreary world, Slant to the light, one late October morn, From some rough cavern blew a tempest cold, And tearing off his garland of ripe corn, Twisted with blue grapes, sweet with delicious wine, And Ceres' drowsy flowers, so dully red, Deep in his cavern leafy and divine, Buried him with his dead. Then, with big black beard glistening in the frost, Under the icy arches of the north, And o'er the still graves of the seasons lost, Blustered the Winter forth-- Spring, with your crown of roses budding new, Thought-nursing and most melancholy Fall, Summer, with bloomy meadows wet with dew, Blighting your beauties all. Oh heart, your spring-time dream will idle prove, Your summer but forerun the autumn's death, The flowery arches in the home of love Fall crumbling, at a breath; And, sick at last with that great sorrow's shock, As some poor prisoner, pressing to the bars His forehead, calls on Mercy to unlock The chambers of the stars-- You, turning off from life's first mocking glow Leaning it may be, still on broken faith, Will down the vale of Autumn gladly go To the chill winter, Death. Hark! from the empty bosom of the grove I hear a sob, as one forlorn might pine-- The white-limbed beauty of a god is thine, King of the seasons! and the night that hoods Thy brow majestic, brightest stars enweave-- Thou surely canst not grieve; But only far away Makest stormy prophecies; well, lift them higher, Till morning on the forehead of the day Presses a seal of fire Dearer to me the scene Of nature shrinking from thy rough embrace, Than Summer, with her rustling robe of green, Cool blowing in my face. The moon is up--how still the yellow beams That slantwise lie upon the stirless air, Sprinkled with frost, like pearl-entangled hair, O'er beauty's cheeks that streams, How the red light of Mars their pallor mocks. And the wild legend from the old time wins, Of sweet waves kissing all the drowning locks Of Ilia's lovely twins. Come, Poesy, and with thy shadowy hands Cover me softly, singing all the night-- In thy dear presence find I best delight; Even the saint that stands Tending the gate of heaven, involved in beams Of rarest glory, to my mortal eyes Pales from the blest insanity of dreams That round thee lies. Unto the dusky borders of the grove Where gray-haired Saturn, silent as a stone, Sat in his grief alone, Or where young Venus, searching for her love, Walked through the clouds, I pray, Bear me to-night away. Or wade with me through snows Drifted in loose fantastic curves aside, From humble doors where Love and Faith abide, And no rough winter blows, Chilling the beauty of affections fair, Cabined securely there. Where round their fingers winding the white slips That crown his forehead, on the grandsire's knees, Sit merry children, teasing about ships Lost in the perilous seas; Or listening with a troublous joy, yet deep, To stories about battles, or of storms, Till weary grown, and drowsing into sleep, Slide they from out his arms. Where, by the log-heap fire, As the pane rattles and the cricket sings, I with the gray-haired sire May talk of vanished summer-times and springs, And harmlessly and cheerfully beguile The long, long hours-- The happier for the snows that drift the while About the flowers. Winter, wilt keep the love I offer thee? No mesh of flowers is bound about my brow; From life's fair summer I am hastening now, And as I sink my knee, Dimpling the beauty of thy bed of snow-- Dowerless, I can but say-- O, cast me not away! CARLYLE ON THE OPERA. The London _Keepsake_, for 1852, contains an article by Carlyle. He has not sent something that was at hand, or thrown off any thing on the spur of the moment, but set himself to write down to his company, and do his best in that way. The paper is written in the character of a travelling and philosophical American, who pours forth his thoughts on the opera; the topics being the deterioration of music as an art, the small beneficial result that follows so much outlay and such a combination of artistical skill, the amount of training bestowed on the singers and dancers, greater than that which produces great men, and the company before the curtain, together with reflections thereanent. It is a piece of forcible description, and of thoughtful though perhaps rather one-sided reflection. As we heard it remarked a few days ago by a shrewd critic, Carlyle is never so much himself as when he appears in the character of another--for examples, in that of the strolling lecturer, who left with his unpaid lodging-house keeper a denunciation of modern philanthropists, or in that of the correspondent whose letters he quotes in the Life of Sterling. In the disguise of a Yankee philosopher he thus breaks out, after some serious and highly-wrought prefatory phrases on the glories of true music, while yet true music partook of the divine: "Of the account of the Haymarket Opera my account, in fine, is this: Lustres, candelabras, painting, gilding at discretion: a hall as of the Caliph Alraschid, or him that commanded the slaves of the Lamp; a hall as if fitted up by the genies, regardless of expense. Upholstery and the outlay of human capital, could do no more. Artists, too, as they are called, have been got together from the ends of the world, regardless likewise of expense, to do dancing and singing, some of them even geniuses in their craft. One singer in particular, called Coletti, or some such name, seemed to me, by the cast of his face, by the tones of his voice, by his general bearing, so far as I could read it, to be a man of deep and ardent sensibilities, of delicate intuitions, just sympathies; originally an almost poetic soul, or man of _genius_, as we term it; stamped by Nature as capable of far other work than squalling here, like a blind Samson to make the Philistines sport! Nay, all of them had aptitudes, perhaps of a distinguished kind; and must, by their own and other people's labor, have got a training equal or superior in toilsomeness, earnest assiduity, and patient travail, to what breeds men to the most arduous trades. I speak not of kings' grandees, or the like show-figures; but few soldiers, judges, men of letters, can have had such pains taken with them. The very ballet girls, with their muslin saucers round them, were perhaps little short of miraculous; whirling and spinning there in strange mad vortexes, and then suddenly fixing themselves motionless, each upon her left or right great-toe, with the other leg stretched out at an angle of ninety degrees;--as if you had suddenly pricked into the floor, by one of their points, a pair, or rather a multitudinous cohort, of mad restlessly jumping and clipping scissors, and so bidden them rest, with opened blades, and stand still, in the Devil's name! A truly notable motion; marvellous, almost miraculous, were not the people there so used to it. Motion peculiar to the Opera; perhaps the ugliest, and surely one of the most difficult, ever taught a female creature in this world. Nature abhors it; but Art does at least admit it to border on the impossible. One little Cerito, or Taglioni the Second, that night when I was there, went bounding from the floor as if she had been made of Indian-rubber, or filled with hydrogen gas, and inclined by positive levity to bolt through the ceiling; perhaps neither Semiramis nor Catherine the Second had bred herself so carefully. Such talent, and such martyrdom of training, gathered from the four winds, was now here, to do its feat, and be paid for it. Regardless of expense, indeed! The purse of Fortunatus seemed to have opened itself, and the divine art of Musical Sound and Rhythmic Motion was welcomed with an explosion of all the magnificences which the other arts, fine and coarse, could achieve. For you are to think of some Rossini or Bellini in the rear of it, too; to say nothing of the Stanfields, and hosts of scene-painters, machinists, engineers, enterprisers--fit to have taken Gibraltar, written the History of England, or reduced Ireland into Industrial Regiments, had they so set their minds to it! "Alas, and of all these notable or noticeable human talents, and excellent perseverances and energies, backed by mountains of wealth, and led by the divine art of Music and Rhythm vouchsafed by Heaven to them and us, what was to be the issue here this evening? An hour's amusement, not amusing either, but wearisome and dreary, to a high-dizened select populace of male and female persons, who seemed to me not worth much amusing! Could any one have pealed into their hearts once, one true thought, and glimse of Self-vision: 'High-dizened most expensive persons, Aristocracy so called, or _Best_ of the World, beware, beware what proofs you give of betterness and bestness!' and then the salutary pang of conscience in reply: 'A select Populace, with money in its purse, and drilled a little by the posture-maker: good Heavens! if that were what, here and every where in God's Creation, I _am_? And a world all dying because I am, and show myself to be, and to have long been, even that? John, the carriage, the carriage; swift! Let me go home in silence, to reflection, perhaps to sackcloth and ashes!' This, and not amusement, would have profited those high-dizened persons. "Amusement, at any rate, they did not get from Euterpe and Melpomene. These two Muses, sent for, regardless of expense, I could see, were but the vehicle of a kind of service which I judged to be Paphian rather. Young beauties of both sexes used their opera-glasses, you could notice, not entirely for looking at the stage. And it must be owned the light, in this explosion of all the upholsteries, and the human fine arts and coarse, was magical; and made your fair one an Armida,--if you liked her better so. Nay, certain old Improper-Females (of quality), in their rouge and jewels, even these looked some _reminiscence_ of enchantment; and I saw this and the other lean domestic Dandy, with icy smile on his old worn face; this and the other Marquis Singedelomme, Prince Mahogany, or the like foreign Dignitary, tripping into the boxes of said females, grinning there awhile with dyed moustachios and macassar-oil graciosity, and then tripping out again;--and, in fact, I perceived that Colletti and Cerito and the Rhythmic Arts were a mere accompaniment here. "Wonderful to see; and sad, if you had eyes! Do but think of it. Cleopatra threw pearls into her drink, in mere waste; which was reckoned foolish of her. But here had the Modern Aristocracy of men brought the divinest of its Arts, heavenly Music itself; and, piling all the upholsteries and ingenuities that other human art could do, had lighted them into a bonfire to illuminate an hour's flirtation of Singedelomme, Mahogany, and these improper persons! Never in Nature had I seen such waste before. O Colletti, you whose inborn melody, once of kindred as I judged to 'the Melodies eternal,' might have valiantly weeded out this and the other false thing from the ways of men, and made a bit of God's creation more melodious,--they have purchased you away from that; chained you to the wheel of Prince Mahogany's chariot, and here you make sport for a macassar Singedelomme and his improper-females past the prime of life! Wretched spiritual Nigger, oh, if you _had_ some genius, and were not a born Nigger with mere appetite for pumpkin, should you have endured such a lot? I lament for _you_ beyond all other expenses. Other expenses are light; you are the Cleopatra's pearl that should not have been flung into Mahogany's claret-cup. And Rossini, too, and Mozart and Bellini--Oh, Heavens, when I think that Music too is condemned to be mad and to burn herself, to this end, on such a funeral pile,--your celestial Opera-house grows dark and infernal to me! Behind its glitter stalks the shadow of Eternal Death; through it too I look not 'up into the divine eye,' as Richter has it, 'but down into the bottomless eyesocket'--not up towards God, Heaven, and the Throne of Truth, but too truly down towards Falsity, Vacuity, and the Dwelling-place of Everlasting Despair." THE GRAVE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. Sir John Richardson has just published, in London, a very valuable work, embracing the results of his recent travels and adventures in the polar regions, in search of the brave navigator who is probably buried under their eternal snows. As a narrative it is not particularly interesting; it is rich rather in scientific facts and observations. It has northern landscapes, painted by an observer who combines scientific knowledge with the taste of a lover of nature; exhibitions of zeal and endurance under hardships; and incidents interesting from their rarity or their circumstances; but nothing different from other expeditions undertaken to explore the same region. A large part of the scientific matter is presented by itself. A curious account of the Indian races whose territories were travelled over forms a succession of separate chapters, and a series of elaborate papers on the physical geography of northern America occupies an appendix, which fills nearly two-thirds of the second volume. The nature of the country explored gives a freshness to every thing connected with it, and interest even to casual observation. This is a curious fact connected with the feeling of heat: "The power of the sun this day in a cloudless sky was so great, that Mr. Rae and I were glad to take shelter in the water while the crews were engaged on the portages. The irritability of the human frame is either greater in these Northern latitudes, or the sun, notwithstanding its obliquity, acts more powerfully upon it than near the Equator; for I have never felt its direct rays so oppressive within the Tropics as I have experienced them to be on some occasions in the high latitudes. The luxury of bathing at such times is not without alloy; for, if you choose the mid-day, you are assailed in the water by the _tabani_, who draw blood in an instant with their formidable lancets; and if you select the morning or evening, then clouds of thirsty moschetoes, hovering around, fasten on the first part that emerges. Leeches also infest the still waters, and are prompt in their aggressions." The following relate to cold and mid-winter: "The rapid evaporation of both snow and ice in the winter and spring, long before the action of the sun has produced the slightest thaw or appearance of moisture, is made evident to residents in the high latitudes by many facts of daily occurrence; and I may mention that the drying of linen furnishes a familiar one. When a shirt, after being washed, is exposed in the open air to a temperature of 40° or 50° below zero, it is instantly rigidly frozen, and may be broken if violently bent. If agitated when in this condition by a strong wind, it makes a rustling noise like theatrical thunder. In an hour or two, however, or nearly as quickly as it would do if exposed to the sun in the moist climate of England, it dries and becomes limber.... "In consequence of the extreme dryness of the atmosphere in winter, most articles of English manufacture made of wood, horn, or ivory, brought to Rupert's Land, are shrivelled, bent, and broken. The handles of razors and knives, combs, ivory scales, and various other things kept in the warm rooms, are damaged in this way. The human body also becomes visibly electric from the dryness of the skin. One cold night I rose from my bed, and having lighted a lantern, was going out to observe the thermometer, with no other clothing than my flannel night-dress, when, on approaching my hand to the iron latch of the door, a distinct spark was elicited. Friction of the skin at almost all times in winter produced the electric odor.... "Even at mid-winter we had three hours and a half of daylight. On the 20th of December I required a candle to write at the window at ten in the morning. On the 29th, the sun, after ten days' absence, rose at the fishery, where the horizon was open; and on the 8th of January, both limbs of that luminary were seen from a gentle eminence behind the fort, rising above the centre of Fishery Island. For several days previously, however, its place in the heavens at noon had been denoted by rays of light shooting into the sky above the woods. The lowest temperature in January was 50° F. On the 1st of February the sun rose to us at nine o'clock and set at three, and the days lengthened rapidly. On the 23d I could write in my room without artificial light from ten A.M. to half-past two P.M., making four hours and a half of bright daylight. The moon in the long nights was a most beautiful object; that satellite being constantly above the horizon for nearly a fortnight together in the middle of the lunar month. Venus also shone with a brilliancy which is never witnessed in a sky loaded with vapors; and, unless in snowy weather, our nights were always enlivened by the beams of the Aurora." Few if any readers will ever be in a situation to use the knowledge of how to build a snow-house. The Arctic architecture, from a chapter on the Esquimaux, is worth reading, should it never turn out to be worth knowing: "As the days lengthen, the villages are emptied of their inhabitants, who move seaward on the ice to the seal-hunt. Then comes into use a marvellous system of architecture, unknown among the rest of the American nations. The fine pure snow has by that time acquired, under the action of strong winds and hard frosts, sufficient coherence to form an admirable light building material, with which the Eskimo master-mason erects most comfortable dome-shaped houses. A circle is first traced on the smooth surface of the snow; and the slabs for raising the walls are cut from within, so as to clear a space down to the ice, which is to form the floor of the dwelling, and whose evenness was previously ascertained by probing. The slabs requisite to complete the dome, after the interior of the circle is exhausted, are cut from some neighboring spot. Each slab is neatly fitted to its place by running a flenching-knife along the joint, when it instantly freezes to the wall, the cold atmosphere forming a most excellent cement. Crevices are plugged up, and seams accurately closed by throwing a few shovelfuls of loose snow over the fabric. Two men generally work together in raising a house, and the one who is stationed within cuts a low door, and creeps out when his task is over. The walls being only three or four inches thick, are sufficiently translucent to admit a very agreeable light, which serves for ordinary domestic purposes; but if more be required a window is cut, and the aperture fitted with a piece of transparent ice. The proper thickness of the walls is of some importance. A few inches excludes the wind, yet keeps down the temperature so as to prevent dripping from the interior. The furniture--such as seats, tables, and sleeping-places--is also formed of snow, and a covering of folded reindeer-skin or seal-skin renders them comfortable to the inmates. By means of ante-chambers and porches, in form of long, low galleries, with their openings turned to leeward, warmth is insured in the interior; and social intercourse is promoted by building the houses contiguously, and cutting doors of communication between them, or by erecting covered passages. Storehouses, kitchens and other accessory buildings, may be constructed in the same manner, and a degree of convenience gained which would be attempted in vain with a less plastic material. These houses are durable, the wind has little effect on them, and they resist the thaw until the sun acquires very considerable power." The following account of the formation of dry land is from an earlier portion of the journey, and refers to a region between the 50th and 55th degrees of latitude: "The eastern coast-line of Lake Winipeg is in general swampy, with granite knolls rising through the soil, but not to such a height as to render the scenery hilly. The pine forest skirts the shore at the distance of two or three miles, covering gently-rising lands; and the breadth of continuous lake-surface seems to be in process of diminution, in the following way. A bank of sand is first drifted up, in the line of a chain of rocks which may happen to lie across the mouth of an inlet or deep bay. Carices, balsam-poplars, and willows, speedily take root therein; and the basin which lies behind, cut off from the parent lake, is gradually converted into a marsh by the luxuriant growth of aquatic plants. The sweet gale next appears on its borders, and drift-wood, much of it rotten and comminuted, is thrown up on the exterior bank, together with some roots and stems of larger trees. The first spring storm covers these with sand, and in a few weeks the vigorous vegetation of a short but active summer binds the whole together by a network of the roots of bents and willows. Quantities of drift-sand pass before the high winds into the swamp behind, and, weighing down the flags and willow branches, prepare a fit soil for succeeding crops. During the winter of this climate, all remains fixed as the summer left it; and as the next season is far advanced before the bank thaws, little of it washes back into the water, but on the contrary, every gale blowing from the lake brings a fresh supply of sand from the shoals which are continually forming along the shore. The floods raised by melting snows cut narrow channels through the frozen beach, by which the ponds behind are drained of their superfluous waters. As the soil gradually acquires depth, the balsam-poplars and aspens overpower the willows; which, however, continue to form a line of demarcation between the lake and the encroaching forest. Considerable sheets of water, are also cut off on the northwest side of the lake, where the bird's-eye limestone forms the whole of the coast. Very recently this corner was deeply indented by narrow branching bays, whose outer points were limestone cliffs. Under the action of frost, the thin horizontal beds of this stone split up, crevices are formed perpendicularly, large blocks are detached, and the cliff is rapidly overthrown, soon becoming masked by its own ruins. In a season or two the slabs break into small fragments, which are tossed up by the waves across the neck of the bay into the form of narrow ridgelike beaches, from twenty to thirty feet high. Mud and vegetable matter gradually fill up the pieces of water thus secluded; a willow swamp is formed; and when the ground is somewhat consolidated, the willows are replaced by aspens." The volumes have all the value of an official survey, and they are the most important contributions to our knowledge of the _Terra Incognita_ of the Lower Mackenzie, that have been published. The occupants of this region are the Loucheux Indians. Fine grown men of considerable stature, and well-knit frames, they have evidently followed the course of the Mackenzie River, from south to north. These are the Indians of whom from the scantiness of our previous data, information is most valuable. They are reasonably considered to belong to the same family as the Dog-rib, Beaver, Hare, Copper, Carrier, and other Indians, a family which some call Chepewyan, others Athabascan, but which the present work designates as _Tinnè_. The Esquimo and Crees, though as fully described, are better known. The chapters, illustrative of the other branches of the natural history of North America, are equally valuable. WITS ABOUT THE THRONE OF LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH. We copy the following paragraphs from Sir James Stephens's Lectures on the History of France. The illustrious men referred to are of course well known by educated men, but to the masses their names are familiar chiefly from their appearance in the brilliant romances of Dumas. "The constellation of genius, wit, and learning, in the midst of which Louis shone thus pre-eminently, was too brilliant to be obscured by any clouds of royal disfavor; nor would any man have shrunken with greater abhorrence than himself, from any attempt to extinguish or to eclipse their splendor. He wisely felt, and frankly acknowledged, that, their glory was essential to his own; and he invited to a seat at his table, Moliere the roturier, to whom the lowest of his nobles would have appointed a place among his menial servants. As Francis, and Charles, and Leo, and Julius, and Lorenzo had assigned science, and poetry, and painting, and architecture, and sculpture, as their appropriate provinces, to those great master spirits of Italy, to whom they forbade the culture of political philosophy, so Louis, when he interdicted to the gigantic intellects of his times and country all intervention in the affairs of the commonwealth, summoned them to the conquest of all the other realms of thought in which they might acquire renown, either for him, for France, or themselves. The theatres, the academies, the pulpits, and the monasteries of his kingdom rivalled each other in their zealous obedience to that royal command, and obeyed it with a success from which no competent and equitable judge can withhold his highest admiration. At this day, when all the illusions of the name of Louis are exhausted, and in this country, where his Augustan age has seldom been regarded with much enthusiasm, who can seriously address himself to the perusal of his great tragedians, Corneille and Racine--or of his great comedians, Moliere and Regnard--or if his great poets, Boileau and La Fontaine--or of his great wits, La Rochfaucauld and La Bruyere--or of his great philosophers, Des Cartes and Pascal--or of his great divines, Bossuet and Arnauld--or of his great scholars, Mabillon and Montfaucon--or if his great preachers, Bourdaloue and Masillon--and not confess that no other monarch was ever surrounded by an assemblage of men of genius so admirable for the extent, the variety and the perfection of their powers. "And yet the fact that such an assemblage were clustered into a group, of which so great a king was the centre, implies that there must have been some characteristic quality uniting them all to each other and to him, and distinguishing them all from the nobles of every other literary commonwealth which has existed among men. What, then, was that quality, and what its influence upon them? "Louis lived with his courtiers, not as a despot among his slaves, but as the most accomplished of gentlemen among his associates. The social equality was, however, always guarded from abuse by the most punctilious observance, on their side, of the reverence due to his pre-eminent rank. In that enchanted circle men appeared at least to obey, not from a hard necessity, but from a willing heart. The bondage in which they really lived was ennobled by that conventional code of honor which dictated and enforced it. They prostrated themselves before their fellow-man with no sense of self-abasement, and the chivalrous homage with which they gratified him, was considered as imparting dignity to themselves. "Louis acknowledged and repaid this tribute of courtesy, by a condescension still more refined, and by attentions yet more delicate than their own. The harshness of power was so ingeniously veiled, every shade of approbation was so nicely marked, and every gradation of favor so finely discriminated, that the tact of good society--that acquired sense, which reveals to us the impression we make on those with whom we associate--became the indispensable condition of existence at Versailles and Marly. The inmates of those palaces lived under a law peculiar to themselves; a law most effective for its purposes, though the recompense it awarded to those who pleased their common master was but his smile, and though the penalty it imposed on those who displeased him was but his frown." AMERICAN WAR-ENGINES. The probabilities of a general war in Europe invest the subject of the following paper with an unusual interest. It is worthy of notice that America has furnished so large a proportion of the improvements in war-engines of every description. Fulton's schemes are well known; we all remember something of the guns invented by Perkins; there is a gentleman now in daily conference with Mazzini and the revolutionary committees, in London, who proposes the noiseless discharge of twenty thousand missiles in a minute, by means of a machine invented in Ohio; and we find in the _Times_ an abstract of a paper read at the Institution of Civil Engineers, on the 25th of November, by our famous countryman Colonel Colt, "On the Application of Machinery to the Manufacture of Rotating Chambered-Breech Fire-Arms, and the Peculiarities of those Arms." The communication commenced with a historical account of such rotating chamber fire-arms as had been discovered by the author, in his researches after specimens of the early efforts of armorers for the construction of repeating weapons, the necessity for which appears to have been long ago admitted; and with the attention of such an intelligent class devoted to the subject, it is certainly remarkable that during so long a period so little was really effected towards the production of serviceable weapons of this sort. The collections in the Tower of London, the United Service Museum, the Rotunda at Woolwich, Warwick Castle, the Musée d'Artillerie, and the Hotel Cluny, at Paris, as well as some ancient Eastern arms brought from India by Lord William Bentinck, demonstrated the early efforts that had been made to produce arms capable of rapidly firing several times consecutively, without the delay of loading after each discharge. Drawings of these specimens were exhibited, comprising the match-lock, the pyrites wheel-lock, the flint-lock, down to the percussion-lock, as adapted by the author. Among the match-lock guns, some had as many as eight chambers, rotating by hand. Some of the pyrites wheel-lock guns had also as many as eight chambers, and rotated by hand; one of them, made in the seventeenth century, had the peculiarity of igniting the charge close behind the bullet, burning backwards towards the breech--an arrangement identical in principle with that of the modern Prussian "needle gun," for which great merit has been claimed. The flint-locks induced more determined efforts, but all were abortive, as the magazines for priming and the pan covers were continually blown off on the explosion of the charge. Indeed, from the earliest match-lock down to the present time, the premature explosion of several chambers, owing to the simultaneous ignition of the charges, from the spreading of the fire at their mouths, had been the great source of difficulty. In some of the most ancient specimens, orifices were provided in the butt of the barrel for the escape of the bullets in case of explosion, whilst others had evidently been destroyed by this action. In a brass model of a pistol of the time of Charles II., from the United Service Museum, there was an ingenious attempt to cause the chamber to rotate, by mechanical action, in some degree similar, but more complicated than the arms constructed by the author. The "Coolidge" and the "Collier" guns, both flint guns of comparatively modern manufacture, exhibited the same radical defects of liability to premature explosion. The invention of Nock's patent breech, and the Rev. Mr. Forsyth's introduction of the detonating or percussion guns, which latter principle, with the necessary mechanical arrangements for the caps, was essential to the safe construction of repeating fire-arms, constituted a new era in these weapons. Colonel Colt gave a detailed and interesting account of his experiments, which resulted in the invention of his celebrated revolvers. His communication, the first that had been brought before the institution, by an American, was received with acclamations; and in the discussion which ensued, in which our Minister, the Hon. Abbott Lawrence, Captain Sir Thomas Hastings, R.N., Captain Sir Edward Belcher, R.N., Captain Riddell, R.N., Mr. Miles, and the members of the council took part, the most flattering testimony was given of the efficiency of the revolvers in active service, and the strongest opinions as to the necessity of their use in all frontier warfare; and that without this arm it was almost impossible, except with an overwhelming force of troops, to cope with savage tribes. The discussion was resumed at a meeting of the Institution, held on the second of December. A new, and, we understand, a very important invention, in this line, is also described in the following interesting article by a contributor to the _International_: SKETCH OF THE PROGRESS OF INVENTION IN OFFENSIVE ARMS: JENNING'S RIFLE. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE, BY W. M. FERRIS. It may be justly considered that mechanical invention has been the most prominent characteristic of history for the last four centuries. The application of science to the useful arts has been pushed to an extent of which preceding ages never dreamed. In poetry, in painting, in sculpture, the great masters of ancient times are still the teachers of mankind. But in all those arts which administer to the necessities, increase the comforts, or multiply the enjoyments of men, the present is marvellously in advance of every former age. Prominent among those arts which have shared in this advancement, is that of war. At first sight it may appear improper to distinguish as useful, improvements in the method of taking life. But, experience and philosophy unite in teaching that every improvement in military skill tends to render war less frequent, and the nearer its operations approach to those of an exact science, the more reluctant is each nation to engage in it, and the more careful not to commit those offences which render a resort to it on the part of other nations unavoidable. We purpose to trace a brief sketch of the progress of invention in offensive weapons, and more particularly in that class of fire-arms used either in hunting or war, by a single individual, and generally denominated small-arms, in contradistinction to artillery. Such a sketch will be interesting, not only in its subject-matter, but also as a chapter in the general history of human progress. The learned reader who is curious in such matters, will find in the Natural History of Pliny (vol. vii. cap. 56, 67), a statement of the source whence originated most of the mechanical implements, the manners and customs, and the political and religious institutions known in the author's time. It is to be presumed that Pliny did not intend to vouch for the truth of all he has there stated. He probably meant merely to give a synopsis of the traditions most generally received, and which assigned to a divine energy almost every thing that contributed to the happiness of men. He tells us here that "the first combats were made by the Africans against the Egyptians with a kind of stick, which they called _phalanges_." The evident Greek origin of this word renders the story absurd enough, and doubtless most of our readers will continue to acquiesce in the account given in Holy Writ, that the origin of war was but little subsequent to the origin of the race, and that fraternal blood first stained the breast of our mother earth. But this statement of Pliny contains a grain of truth. The stick, or club, was undoubtedly the first weapon made use of by men in their combats with each other, though the spear and the sword followed at a period long anterior to any known in historical records. But from the earliest ages men have sought to avoid hand-to-hand conflicts, and to make skill supply the place of strength. In contests with wild beasts this was indispensable. Nature had provided man with no weapon with which he could contend against the boar's tusks, the lion's teeth, or the tiger's paw. Hence, the substitution of missiles for manual weapons, has been the end towards which ingenuity has been constantly directed. The conversion of the spear into the javelin, as it was the most obvious, so probably it was the earliest step in advance. Close upon this followed the sling, and last the arrow and the bow. The invention of the latter weapon is ascribed by Pliny, in the chapter above cited, to a son of Jupiter. In the days of Homer it was the weapon of the gods; and thousands of years after, it was the pride and glory of the English yeoman. The classical scholar will remember the description in the fourth book of the Iliad, of the bow with which Pandaros shot at Menelaus an arrow which would have sent to Hades the hero dear to Mars, had not the daughter of Jove brushed it aside with her hand, as a mother doth a fly from her sleeping child. The bow does not appear to have been extensively used in later times in either the Greek or Roman armies. The ferocious Spartan preferred the close combat with manual weapons, the Athenian won his glory upon the sea, and it was with the pike that Alexander overcame the hosts of Persia. The Cretans, who were the most celebrated archers in Europe, sometimes formed a separate division in the Grecian and afterward in the Roman armies. The Romans, however, generally preferred heavy-armed troops. But it was a peculiarity of Roman policy always to adopt every improvement in the art of war with which they became acquainted, whether it originated with friend or foe. Rome never let slip any opportunity to add to the efficiency of her legions, and they repaid her care by carrying her eagles in triumph from the Thames to the Euphrates, and from the Danube to the Nile. It was in the west of Europe, and from about the eleventh to the fifteenth century, that archery flourished in the greatest perfection. The early chronicles are filled with the exploits of the English archers, and old and young still read with delight those ballads which tell of the wondrous achievements of "Robin Hood and his merry men." Indeed, with the name of that famous outlaw are connected all our ideas of perfect skill in the use of the bow, and in the directions which in his dying hour, he gave to his faithful man, "Little John," we seem to hear the dirge of archery itself: "Give me my bent bow in my hand, And a broad arrow I'll let flee, And where that arrow is taken up, There shall my grave digg'd be. "And lay me a green sod under my head, And another at my feet, And lay my bent bow by my side, Which was my music sweet." We shall not stop to dwell on the defects of the bow. The great and insuperable one was its want of power. The strength of a man was the limit of its capacity, and something more was necessary to pierce the ironclad breast of the knight. But, until the invention of gunpowder, it stood at the head of missile engines. When and where gunpowder was invented it is impossible now to ascertain. It seems to be described in the pages of Roger Bacon, while many are of opinion that the returning Crusaders brought it from the east. Certain it is that it had been known in China for many centuries, and applied to the blasting of rocks and other useful purposes, though never to the art of war. But the latter application of it was made by the Europeans almost contemporaneously with their knowledge of its properties, and for war it has been chiefly employed until the present time. The invention of cannon preceded by a century that of small-arms, and it was by a gradual reduction in the size of the former that the latter were produced. Barbour, in his metrical Life of Robert Bruce, says, that cannon were used by Edward III. in his first campaign against the Scots, in 1327. He calls them "Crakys of war." They are also supposed to have been employed by the French in the siege of Puy Guillaume, in 1338. But the first use of them which rests on unimpeachable evidence, and which seems to have been productive of much effect, was at the battle of Cressy, in 1346. It is from this epoch that it is most usual to date the employment of artillery. That day which witnessed the first efficient use of a weapon destined to revolutionize the art of war, also witnessed the most splendid achievements of the archers of England. The bowstrings of the French had become useless by the dampness of the weather, while those of the English, either on account of greater care or the different material of which they were made, were uninjured. The cloth-yard arrows of the English bowmen, directed with unerring skill, made terrible havoc in the ranks of their enemies, while four pieces of artillery stationed on a little hill contributed to their victory. The French troops had none of them ever seen, and most of them never heard of such a weapon, and the terror inspired by the noise and the smoke did more than the balls to hasten their defeat. The first cannons were rude in the extreme. They were made of bars of iron hooped together like the staves of a barrel, and were larger at the muzzle than at the breech. The size was very soon decreased, so that two men could carry one, and fire it from a rest. The 400 cannon with which Froissart said that the English besieged St. Malo, in 1378, were probably of this kind. Nearly a century elapsed before small-arms were invented. Sir S. Meyrick, to whom subsequent writers have been indebted for most of their knowledge upon this subject, has given, upon the authority of an eye-witness, the time and place of their invention. "It was in 1430," says Bilius, "that they were contrived by the Lucquese, when they were besieged by the Florentines." A French translation of Quintus Curtius made by Vasqua de Lucene, a Portuguese, in 1468, preserved among the Burney MSS. of the British Museum, exhibits in one of its illuminations the earliest representation of hand fire-arms which has yet been discovered. The following engraving is from a copy of this illumination, contained in the Penny Cyclopædia. [Illustration: _B.d.E.K_.] It will be observed that this gun much resembles one of those small lead cannons with which patriotic boys, upon each return of our national anniversary, manifest their appreciation of the blessings of liberty. It was fastened to a stick, and fired by a match held in the hand. We proceed to sketch the progress of improvement from this the first gun until we reach the repeating rifle. If we analyze the manipulation of fire-arms, it will be found to consist of three principal operations--namely, to charge the piece, to direct it toward the object of attack, and to discharge it by in some manner igniting the powder; or more concisely, to load, take aim, and fire. That gun with which these operations can be performed most safely, accurately, and rapidly, is the best. The process of loading has continued to be essentially the same from the invention of the gun to the present time. The charge is put in at the muzzle, and rammed down to the lower end of the barrel. At a very early period, efforts were made to construct guns which would load at the breech; but hitherto no such gun has been able to supplant those which load at the muzzle. The great complication of their parts, their liability to get out of repair, their insecurity, and the long practice required to learn their use, have been among the reasons which have prevented any of these inventions from being adopted. Hence it is that the muskets with which our soldiers are armed at the present day, possess no advantage in this respect over the rude little cannon fastened to the end of a stick, used by the soldiers of Europe four centuries ago. But in other respects the progress of invention has been steady and secure. With the gun represented in the above engraving it was impossible to take aim. Being perfectly straight, it could not be brought in the range of the eye. The most that could be expected was, that by pointing it in the direction of the enemy, it might chance to hit some one, in a crowd. The inconveniences attending the discharge of the piece were almost as great. A puff of wind, or the slightest motion of the soldier himself, would throw the priming from the touch-hole, and it is almost unnecessary to add, that in rainy or even very damp weather, such a gun was utterly useless. The first step in improvement was to place the touch-hole on the right side of the barrel instead of upon the top, and to attach a small pan which held the priming. By this means the priming was kept from being blown away by the wind, though scarce any other advantage was attained. About the year 1475 a great advance was made by the invention of the _arquebus_ or _bow-gun_. A spring let loose by a trigger threw the match, which was fastened to it, forward, into the pan which contained the priming. It was from this spring that the gun took its name. The arquebus is mentioned by Philip de Comines, in his account of the battle of Morat, in 1476. It appears to have been used in England in 1480. But as yet no improvement had been made by which the soldier was enabled to take aim. The butt of the arquebus was perfectly straight, and placed against the breast when the gun was fired. The danger of being knocked over by the recoil of the piece was great, that of hurting the enemy very small. The Germans first conceived the idea of bending the butt downward, and thus elevating the barrel so as to bring it in the range of the eye. They also sloped it so as to fit the shoulder instead of being held against the breast. The arquebus constructed in this manner was used in England in the time of Henry VIII., and was variously called haquebut, hakebut, hagbut, and hagbus, names all derived from the hooked shape of the butt. A small sized arquebus, with a nearly semi-circular butt, and called a demihaque, was probably the origin of the modern pistol. [Illustration: JENNINGS'S RIFLE.] The musket, invented in Spain, was introduced into France in the reign of Charles IX., by De Strozzi, Colonel-General of the King's infantry, and thence into England. At first it was so heavy that each musketeer was accompanied by a boy to assist him in carrying it. It was, however, soon decreased in weight sufficiently to enable the musketeer to carry it himself, though it was still so heavy that he could only fire it from a rest. This rest, which each musketeer carried with him, consisted of a stick the height of his shoulder, pointed at the lower end, and having at the upper an iron fork in which the musket barrel was laid. In a flask the musketeer carried his coarse powder for loading. His fine powder for priming was in a touch-box. His bullets were in a leathern bag, shaped much like a lady's work-bag, the strings of which he was obliged to draw in order to get at them. In his hand were his burning match and musket rest, and after discharging his piece he was obliged to defend himself with his sword. The match was fixed to the cock by a kind of tongs. Over the priming-pan was a sliding cover, which had to be drawn back with the hand before pulling the trigger. It was necessary to blow the ashes from the match, and take the greatest care that the sparks did not fall upon the priming. After each discharge the match had to be taken out of the cock and held in the hand until the piece was reloaded; then, in order that it might come down exactly upon the priming, the greatest care and nicety were required in fitting it again to the cock. Other inconveniences attended the use of the match-lock musket. The light of the burning match betrayed the position of the soldier, and hence it could not be used by sentinels or on secret expeditions. Various contrivances were resorted to in order to obviate these difficulties. Walhuysen, a captain of the town of Danzig, in a treatise entitled _L'Art Militaire pour l'Infantrie_, printed in 1615, says: "It is necessary that every musketeer should know how to carry his match dry in moist or rainy weather, that is, in his pocket or in his hat, by putting the lighted match between his head and hat, or by some other means to guard it from the weather. The musketeer should also have a little tin tube, about a foot long, big enough to admit a match, and pierced full of little holes, that he may not be discovered by his match when he stands sentinel or is gone on any expedition." The learned captain does not state whether the hair of those soldiers who carried their lighted matches between their heads and hats, was insured. These inconveniences were so great that many able military men regarded fire-arms as a failure, and recommended a return to the long-bow, which had been so terrible a weapon in the hands of the English archers. But the art of war, like every other, never goes backward, and men were not disposed to abandon the use of so mighty an agent as gunpowder, merely for the want of some weapon adapted to its use. The fire-lock, named from its producing fire by friction, was the first improvement upon the match-lock. Its earliest form was that known as the wheel-lock, which is mentioned in a treatise on artillery by Luigi Collado, printed at Venice in 1586. He says that it had been lately invented in Germany. This lock consisted of a solid steel wheel, with an axle, to which was fastened a chain. The axle was turned by a small lever, and thus winding around it the chain, drew up a very strong spring. By pulling the trigger the spring was let go, and the wheel whirled around with great velocity. The cock was so constructed as to bring a piece of sulphuret of iron down upon the edge of the wheel, which was notched, and touched the priming in the pan. The friction produced the sparks. It was from this use that the sulphuret of iron derived the name of pyrites, or fire-stone. Afterwards a flint or any common hard pebble was used. The complicated nature of this lock, and its uncertainty, prevented its general adoption. The next improvement was due to the Dutch. About the year 1600 there was in Holland a band of marauders known as _snaphausen_, or _poultry-stealers_. However free they were in using the property of others, they were yet unable to incur the expense of the wheel-lock, and the match-lock, by its burning light, exposed them on their nightly expeditions. The wit which had been sharpened by laying "plots" and "inductions dangerous" against unoffending hens and chickens, was turned to the invention of a gun-lock better adapted to their purposes. The result of their cogitations was the lock which, after its inventors, was called the snaphause. It consisted of a flat piece of steel, furrowed like the edge of the wheel in the wheel-lock, which was screwed on the barrel beyond the priming-pan in such a manner as to be movable. By bringing it over the pan, and pulling the trigger, the flint in the cock struck against the steel, and the spark was produced. The simplicity and cheapness of this lock soon rendered it common, and the transition from it to the ordinary flint-lock followed almost as a matter of course. The last improvement which we shall notice was the percussion-lock. This is due to the Rev. Mr. Forsyth, of Belhelvie, in Scotland, though the original form of the lock has been entirely changed by the introduction of the copper cap. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF JENNINGS'S BREECH.] Whilst these improvements were being made in locks, the other parts of the gun were gradually approaching in lightness, strength, and accuracy of finish, to the modern standard. The most valuable improvement was the invention of the rifle barrel. It is mentioned by Pere Daniel, who wrote in 1693, as being then well known; but the time and place of its origin has never been ascertained. It was first employed as a military weapon by the Americans, in the Revolutionary war, and it is in their hands that it acquired its world-wide reputation. It would be impossible, in an article like the present, to detail all the various attempts which have been made, during the last half century, to increase the efficiency of the rifle. The efforts of scientific men and mechanics have been constantly directed towards the invention of a gun which should fire, with the greatest possible rapidity, a number of times without reloading, and which should possess the indispensable requisites of safety, durability, and simplicity, both in construction and in use. Hitherto no invention has combined these advantages in a sufficient degree to supplant the common rifle. In our opinion, these ends are all most simply and beautifully attained by the invention of Mr. Jennings. But of this our readers will be able to judge for themselves, by the above engravings and the directions for its use. [Illustration: CARTRIDGES AND MACHINERY OF JENNINGS'S RIFLES.] Fill the magazine, on the top of the breech, with percussion pills or primings, and the tube, under the barrel, with the hollow cartridges containing gunpowder. Of these cartridges the tube will hold twenty-four. Place the forefinger in the ring which forms the end of the lever, _e_, and the thumb on the hammer, elevating the muzzle sufficiently to let the cartridge nearest the breech slip, by its gravity, into the carrier _d_; swing the lever forward, and raise the hammer which moves the breech-pin back, and the carrier up, placing the cartridge level with the barrel; pull the lever back, and thus force the breech-pin forward, and shove the cartridge into the barrel, by which motion a percussion priming is taken from the magazine by means of the priming-rack _c_, revolving the pinion which forms the bottom of the magazine, and it also throws up the toggle _a_, behind the breech-pin, thus placing the piece in the condition to be discharged by a simply upward pressure of the finger in the ring. After the discharge release the pressure and repeat the process. In conclusion, the reader is invited to look at the engraving we have given of the first gun, and to compare it with the offspring of American ingenuity we have just described. Fire-arms are the great pioneers which have opened a way for the progress of civilized man, and given him victory over the savage beasts and still more savage men who have opposed his course. Civilization has in its turn reacted upon fire-arms, and brought them to their present state of wonderful efficiency. The heavy match-lock of three centuries ago was almost as dangerous to him who used it as to the enemy against whom it was directed. It would be almost impossible for a person to injure himself by the repeating rifle except by deliberate intention. Skilful military men advised the abandonment of the match-lock for the bow. A good marksman with the repeating rifle would kill a score of bowmen, before they could approach near enough to reach him with their arrows. The practised musketeer, in the reign of Elizabeth, could hardly fire his piece once in twenty minutes; the merest novice can fire the repeating rifle twenty times in one minute. CLOVER'S COLONIAL CHURCHES IN VIRGINIA. ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, HAMPTON. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE, BY REV. JOHN C. M'CABE, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY REV. LEWIS P. CLOVER "Regarded as a building what is there to engage our attention! What is it which in this building inspires the veneration and affection it commands? We have mused upon it when its gray walls dully reflected the glory of the noontide sun. We have looked upon it from a neighboring hill when bathed in the pure light of a summer's moon, its lowly walls and tiny towers seemed to stand only as the shell of a larger and wider monument, amidst the memorials of the dead. Look upon it when and where we will, we find our affections yearn towards it; and we contemplate the little parish church with a delight and reverence, that palaces cannot command. Whence then arises this? It arises not from the beauties and ornaments of the building, but _from the thoughts and recollections associated with it_."--Molesworth. [Illustration: ST. JOHN'S CHURCH.] The region of country in lower Virginia, bordering, or near the James River, from the head of tide water to the sea-board, is rich in the possession of memorials of gone-by days, now turned up from the bosom of the earth, in the shape of arrow-heads, and broken war-hatchets--monuments, fragmentary monuments, of a race of forest-born monarchs: now appealing to the antiquary in the mouldering records of the County Court offices, and now, silently but eloquently, looking out imploringly in the ruins of churches and tombs, which meet the eye of the traveller, as he muses upon the faith and fortunes of generations long departed. Rapid as is the progress of steam upon those waters, which, in giving up their Indian patronymies, gave up the bold hunter and his lithe canoe to the progress of "manifest destiny," few are those who pass the venerable site of the first colony in Virginia, Jamestown, without paying a tribute of a sigh, and perchance a tear, to that solitary tower which is still standing a mute watcher amid the few almost illegible tombs,--all that are left of a busy population long departed;--the germ, however, of a great nation, whose name is even now "a watchword to the earth." The rank grass waves above those mouldering stones--the green corn of summer rustles in the breeze, which seems, it its "hollow, solemn memnonian, but saintly swell," to have "swept the field of mortality for a hundred centuries,"[C] and that lone, ruined, vine-crested tower, stands, the only memorial of the house, and the Temple of God. Gone are the altars where knelt the adventurer and the exile--high-born chivalry and manly beauty--gentle blood and noble pedigree,--and where rose "humble voices," and beat "pure hearts," approaching the throne of the heavenly grace! Jamestown is a city of the dead, and precious is the dust of its pathless cemetery! When we turn "from the wreck of the past that has perished," and stand beside those monuments which have withstood the "corroding tooth of time," and still stand invested with the sacred and solemn beauty of antiquity, we approach in the venerating spirit of worshippers, and render our thank-offerings at their base. Such is likely to be the feeling with the pilgrim antiquary, as he stands for the first time beneath the shadows of that venerable cruciform pile, St. John's Church, Hampton, which has braved "the battle and the breeze" of nearly two centuries; and then, when he crosses its worn threshold, and treads its echoing aisles, the wish must arise, involuntarily, to know something of the history of a spot "so sad, so fair." With the exception of Jamestown, there is no portion of Virginia possessing as much historic interest as Hampton, and its vicinity. Hampton is the county seat of Elizabeth City County, which is one of the eight original shires in which Virginia was divided. The town is doubtless the oldest Indian settlement in Virginia, and it is a matter of historical verity that it was the _first place_ visited by Captain John Smith after he had cast anchor in these waters. We learn from Burke, the historian, that while Smith and his company were "engaged in seeking a fit place for the first settlement, they met five of the natives, who invited them to their town, _Kecoughtan_, or _Kichotan_, where Hampton now stands. Here they were feasted with cakes made of Indian corn, and regaled with tobacco and a dance. In return, they presented the natives beads and other trinkets." We have no occasion to go specially into the history of this expedition, as it is well known to the student, that it was the result of a successful application on the part of a company, succeeding that of the ill-fated Sir Walter Raleigh, and for which a charter was obtained from James the First, in the year 1606, for the settling of Virginia. "The design," says Stith, the historian of Virginia, "included the establishment of a northern and southern colony, and among the articles, instructions, and orders," of the charter, provision was made for the due carrying out of that which is the highest end of every Christian colony, for it is expressly ordered, that "the said president, council, and ministers, should provide that the true word and service of God be preached, planted, and used, according to the rites and doctrines of the Church of England; not only in the said colonies, but also as much as might be amongst the savages bordering upon them, and that all persons should kindly treat the savages, and heathen people, in those parts, and use all proper means to draw them to the true service and knowledge of God."[D] This expedition left the shores of England, December 19, 1606, and, after a protracted voyage, occasioned by unpropitious winds, which kept them in sight of home for more than "six weeks," reached the capes of Virginia. The southern cape was christened "Henry," and the northern, "Charles," after the King's sons. This was on the 26th day of April, 1607. Accompanying this expedition was Rev. Robert Hunt, of the English Church, as the first chaplain of that colony, which, though few as the grains of mustard seed scattered by the morning wind, was the first planting of that tree which was destined, in coming time, to strike its roots deep down into the centre of empire, and to shelter beneath its strong branches, and wide-spread shadows, the exile and the oppressed, and to furnish home and altar for the pilgrim of civil and religious freedom. When we look around now and behold our country, "the observed of all observers," exalting her "towering head," and "lifting her eyes," the mind instinctively turns to the colony of Jamestown; and we cannot but exclaim, in the words of the Psalmist, "Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt; Thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it. Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root; and it filled the land. The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river." But a sad memory for the days of toil, and struggle, and blood in that little colony, will remind us that this tree was not "transplanted from Paradise with all its branches in full fruitage." Neither was it "sowed in sunshine," nor was it "in vernal breezes and gentle rains that it fixed its roots, and grew and strengthened." Oh, no! oh, no! In the mournfully beautiful words of Coleridge, "With blood was it planted; it was rocked in tempests; the goat, the ass, and the stag gnawed it, the wild boar whetted its tusk upon its bark; the deep scars are still extant on its trunk, and the path of the lightning may be traced among its higher branches!" The first communion of the body and blood of our Lord was administered by the pious Hunt, May 4, 1607, the day after the debarkation of the colonists: and, "here," says the Bishop of Oxford, "on a peninsula, upon the northern shore of James River, was sown the first seed of Englishmen, who, in after years, were to grow and to multiply into the great and numerous American people." It was an offering, this first sacrament, of the "appointed sacrifice of prayer and thanksgiving;" and we have an evidence of the pervading spirit of Hunt in that little band, when we remember that among their very first acts after rearing their straw-thatched houses for protection from the weather, was to erect the church of the colony. Hunt was succeeded, after his death, in 1610, by Master Bucke (the chaplain of Lord de la Ware), whose services were called forth the very day of his arrival at Jamestown. According to Purchas, "He (that is Lord Delaware) cast anchor before Jamestown, where we landed, and our much grieved Governor, first visiting the church, caused the bell to be rung; at which all such as were able to come forth of their house, repayered to church, which was neatly trimmed with the wild flowers of the country, where our minister, Master Bucke, made a zealous and sorrowful prayer, finding all things so contrary to our expectations, and full of misery and misgovernment." This state of things had been brought about by the treacherous conduct of their neighbors, the savages, domestic feuds, fluctuations in the quantity and quality of their food, bad water, and severe climatic diseases. While "Master Bucke" was toiling with the little band at Jamestown, Whitaker (son of Master Whitaker of St. John's College, Cambridge) was in Henrico, whose deeds of love and patience in his noble work we would gladly record, but for the desire of approaching, as speedily as possible, the beginning and planting of the church in Elizabeth City County. The first legislature of Virginia was convened under the administration of Governor Sir George Yeardley, in the year 1626; but before this we find, during the _first_ administration of Governor Wyatt, nay, before that, during that of Sir Thomas Yeardley, in 1619, _a starting point_ for our inquiries and investigations in regard to the Hampton Church. By reference to the histories of the period, we find that the pay of their clergy was fixed at £200 worth of corn and tobacco. One hundred acres were marked off for glebes in every borough, for each of which the company at home provided six tenants at the public cost. They applied to the Bishop of London to find them a body of "pious, learned, and painful ministers,"--"a charitable work," says Wilberforce, "in which he readily engaged." Two years subsequent to this occurred the massacre at Jamestown, and two years after that, we find, amongst thirty-five provisions, the following, for the promotion of religious knowledge and worship: That there shall be _erected_ a _house of worship_, and there shall be a _burial ground on every plantation_; that the colonists, under penalty, shall attend public worship, and that there shall be uniformity in faith and worship, with the English Church--prescribing also the observance of the feasts of the Church, and a fast upon the anniversary of the Jamestown massacre; not forgetting, by the way, to enjoin "respectful treatment, and the payment of a settled stipend to the colonial clergy." In the instructions given to Sir William Berkeley, Governor-General of Virginia, after the return of the royal exile, Charles the Second, to the throne of his murdered sire,--passing over, as we do, for the sake of brevity, much that might interest the reader during the closing period of the reign of James, that of Charles the First, and also that of the psalm-singing blood-hunter Cromwell,--we find the recommendation of the duties of religion, the use of "the booke of Common Prayer, the decent repairs of Churches, and a competent provision for conforming ministers."[E] These suggestions, we learn, were at once acted upon by the colonial legislature, and provision was made for the building and due furniture of churches, &c., &c. This was in 1660. The oldest records in the County Court office date as far back as 1635. In 1644, I find the _churchwardens_ presenting two females for offences, to the Court; and in 1646, I find that Nicholas Brown, and William Armistead, _churchwardens_, present one of their body to the Court, requesting that Thomas Eaton be compelled to collect the _parish levy_, and make his returns. This fixes the fact, then, that this was a _parish_, and that there was _a church_ somewhere in this region in 1644, for, from the English laws respecting the clergy, the object of the creation of _churchwardens_ is "to protect _the edifice of the Church_, to superintend the ceremonies of public worship, to promote the observance of religious duties, &c., &c.[F]" I find, in 1644, the following on record--"To paid Mr. Mallory for preaching 2 funeral sermons, 800 pounds of tobacco." The next year I find the Rev. Mr. Justinian Aylmere, who continued to officiate until the early part of 1667. We now find, in those same records, the _first mention of the church_ immediately under consideration, and it is as follows, being an extract from a will, and bearing date December 21, 1667: "I, Nicholas Baker, being very sicke in body, but of perfect memory, doe make, constitute, and ordaine this my last will and testament, revoking and disclayming all other wills by me made. Imprimis, I give my soule unto God my redeemer, and my body to bee decently buried in _ye new church of Kighotan_. Item, I give and bequeathe unto Mr. Jeremy Taylor, minister,[G] my cloath cloak, to bee delivered to him after my corpse carrying out of ye house." From these extracts I learn these two facts, that there was a _new church_, already built, and that Mr. Jeremy Taylor was the minister, and the inference is a legitimate one, taking into consideration the instructions given to Governor Berkeley, and acted upon by him, to which reference is made above, that the _old church now standing in Hampton_, built in the form of a cross, and of brick, a drawing of which, accompanies this communication, was erected at some period about 1660, or between that and 1667. That it was not built _before_ 1660, we have strong reasons to presume; and that it was built between that and 1667, we hope to show hereafter. In the time intervening between the murder of Charles the First and the restoration, there would have been no churches built, we presume, in the _form of the cross_--this the minions of Cromwell would not have allowed; nor for the worship and ritual of the Church of England, for the same reasons; and, moreover, the will above referred to, speaks of the church as being "ye _new_ church of Kighotan." The tower was an after thought, as we find from the vestry-book, now in the possession of the writer. The following bears date 2d day of March, 1761: "Charles Cooper came into vestry, and agreed to do the brick work of the steeple, with good and well burnt bricks and mortar of lime, at least fifteen bushels of lime to every thousand bricks so laid. The said Cooper to find all materials necessary for building the said steeple, and all expenses what kind soever at his own proper cost. The said Cooper to give bond for the performance, agreeable to a resolve of the said vestry on the 6 day of February last." And, on the 16th day of June, 1761, the record below is made in the vestry-book: "Agreed that the steeple as before to be built, shall be joined to the west end of the church wall, and that an half brick be added to the thickness of the foundation of the said steeple up to the water table." And, on the 14th day of July, 1762, the following record on the vestry-book will show its completion: "Agreed, that Mr. William Westwood, and Mr. Charles Cooper, compute the number of bricks laid in the steeple wall, and if they two disagree, that they chuse a third person; and that this vestry hath _this day received the said work_, so as not to affect the counting or computing the number of bricks laid in the said steeple." The occasion of building the tower is found in the extract following, made from the same source, and bearing date February 6, 1761: "Whereas the late Mr. Andrew Kennedy, did by his last will and testament, devise to the parish of Elizabeth City, forty pounds sterling, to purchase a bell for the church of the said parish, provided the vestry, and churchwardens of the said parish, shall undertake to build a belfry for the same in twelve months after the said Alexander Kennedy's death; and this vestry, willing to embrace the said gift, have accordingly resolved," &c. Now arises a question of some interest. The will of Nicholas Baker, made December 21, 1667, makes mention of "ye _new_ church of Kighotan." Was there an _old_ church of Kighotan? One older than this? We answer, yes! And now for the writer's reasons for arriving at this conclusion. From the old record of wills, deeds, &c., in the County Court office, and to which I have had access freely, through the politeness and kindness of Samuel Howard, Esq., the gentlemanly clerk of the court, I copy the following: "In the name of God, Amen. I, Robert Brough, clerke of Kigquotan, in the county of Elizabeth Citty, being sicke and weake in body, but in perfect sense and memory, praised bee God for itt, this seven and twentyeth day of Aprill, in the yeare of our Lord God 1667, for the quieting of my conscience, desire to settle that estate it has pleased God to lend mee, in manner and forme following;--And first of all, I commend my soul into the hands of ye Almighty God my Maker, and my Saviour and Redeemer Christ Jesus, being confident through his meritts and blood shedd for mee, to be an inheritor with Him, His saints and angells of everlasting life. And my body unto ye earthe from whence it came, there to receive decent burial in _the old parish church of Kigquotan_ aforesaid," &c. "The _old_ parish church of Kigquotan," and "ye _new_ church of Kighotan," cannot be one and the same. We are then led to inquire, _where_ was the old parish church of Kigquotan, and _when_ was it probably built? The last branch of this question, we prefer answering first. By reference to the administration of Sir Thomas Yeardley (not Sir George Yeardley), we find that, in 1621, among several other Colonial enactments, provision is made for the _erection_ of a "_house of worship, and the separation of a burial ground on every plantation_." We presume, therefore, that it was about this time (1621-2) that the first church of Kigquotan was erected, and we have not forgotten the _churchwardens_ of 1644. And now, in answer to the other question--_where_ was this church built?--we have only to turn our footsteps to the "_Pembroke Farm_" (the property of John Jones, Esq.), about one mile from the town of Hampton, and, as we there take our stand among the few remaining tombs, shout "Eureka, Eureka!" Whether the old parish church of Kigquotan was of wood, or of brick, we cannot at this day determine. "Like the baseless fabric of a vision" it has disappeared; but we opine it was wooden, from the fact, that the first church (and probably the second also) in Jamestown (both of which were destroyed by fire) was a wooden one; and the presumption is, the first brick church erected would be at the _capital_ of the colony. However this may be, the burial ground at Pembroke could not have been simply a piece of ground, "bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite, for a possession of a burying place" for a family; but that it was a _public_ cemetery, even that of the old parish church of Kigquotan, is evident from the _character_ of the tombs which are still to be seen _above the surface of the earth_. That there are many covered over with the deposits of years, I have not the slightest doubt. Those tombs, we now see, give the best evidence, in their inscriptions, that those whose remains moulder beneath the moss-grown marbles, were not private individuals--not members of the family owning the estate--but men in public service, and who would not have been laid in an obscure private burial ground, when the church-yard of the new church of Kigquotan was but a mile distant from the spot. Moreover, it will be perceived by the inscriptions which we shall presently give, that one of the sleepers at Pembroke was "_minister of this parish_." Now, is it probable, that the minister of the parish would have been buried _there_, if it had not been a _church_-yard, when there was the new church of Kigquotan to receive his remains, as it was fifty-two years before, to receive those of Mr. Nicholas Baker? I have no doubt that veneration for the old cemetery, the site of the first church of the parish, caused many to bury their dead there, long after the present church-yard was opened. The oldest tomb we can find in the church-yard at Hampton, and standing in the northeast angle of the Cross, is to the memory of Captain Willis Wilson, who departed this life the 19th day of November, 1701. The latest date upon the stones at Pembroke is 1719. "The lapse of years, and the ruthless hand of time," have levelled those graves in "ye old parish church of Kigquotan;" but enough is left to the "tomb searcher," even in the inscriptions following, as he reads them by the slanting rays of the setting sun, and hears the low winds dirging in the pines, and the moaning and sighing of the distant waves, to lead him to say with Blair: "The time draws on When not a single spot of burial earth, Whether on land, or in the spacious sea, But must give back its long-committed dust Inviolate; and faithfully _shall these_ Make up the full account." The following coats-of-arms and inscriptions, are taken from four black marble tablets, six feet high and three wide, lying in a field about one mile from Hampton. [Illustration] "Here lies ye body of JOHN NEVILLE, Esq., Vice Admiral of His Majesty's fleet, and Commander in chiefe of the Squadron cruising in ye West Indies, who dyed on board ye Cambridge, ye 17 day of August, 1697, in ye ninth yeare of the Reign of King William ye third, aged 57 years." [Illustration] "In hope of a Blessed Resurrection, here lies the body of THOMAS CURLE, gent.: who was born November 24, 1640, in the parish of St. Michaels, in Lewis, in the county of Sussex, in England, and dyed May 30, 1700.--When a few years are come then I shall goe the way whence I shall not return.--Job 16. 22." A third inscription is as follows: "This stone was given by his Excellency FRANCIS NICHOLSON, Esq., Lieutenant and Govenour Generall of Virginia. In memory of PETER HAYMAN, Esqr., grandson to Sir Peter Hayman of Summerfield, in ye county of Kent, he was Collector of ye Customs in the Lower District of James River, and went voluntary on board ye King's shipp Shoreham, in pursuit of a pyrate, who greatly infested this coast. After he had behaved himselfe seven hours with undaunted courage, was killed with a small shott ye 29 day of Aprill, 1700, in ye engagement he stood next ye Gouvenour upon ye quarter deck, and was here honorably interred by his order." And the last, which speaks for itself-- "Here lyeth the body of the Reverend Mr. ANDREW THOMPSON, who was born at Stonehive, in Scotland, and was Minister of this Parish seven years, and departed this life the 11 of September, 1719, in ye 46 yeare of his age, leaving ye character of a sober religious man." The above is followed on the tomb by a long Latin inscription, which has been so mutilated by some modern Goth, or Goths, that it is impossible to decipher it intelligibly. We could fill pages with interesting memoranda from the history of old parishes in Virginia, but a few more, in relation to the present subject, must close our article at this time. Should this be received with favor, perhaps the writer may make more diligent efforts to rescue, from the perishing records of County Courts, and crumbling stones, and family relics, _materiel_ for the future historian of the Church, to weave into his song of her progress in our "own green forest land," "from gloom to glory." A closer inspection of the records will doubtless enable him to trace an "unbroken succession," of parish ministers from 1621 to the present time. The following, however, is as near as can now be ascertained:--In 1664, Rev. Mr. Mallory; who was succeeded, in 1665, by Rev. Mr. Justinian Aylmere; succeeded, in 1667, by Rev. Mr. Jeremiah Taylor; succeeded, in 1677, by Rev. Mr. John Page, who left the colony about 1687; succeeded, in 1687, by Rev. Mr. Cope Doyley; in 1712, Rev. Mr. Andrew Thompson, who died 1719; in 1731, Rev. Mr. William Fife, who died in 1756; succeeded, in 1756, by Rev. Thomas Warrington, who died 1770; succeeded, in 1771, by Rev. William Selden, who either died, or resigned, in 1783; succeeded, in 1783, by Rev. William Nixon. The vestry-book here is defaced for some years, owing, I presume, to the fact that in the change in the Church, from that of England, to the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, begun in 1783, consummated in 1787, and the first convention in Philadelphia, July 28, 1789, with Bishops presiding, of our own, this parish did not procure a minister during that period; but the following inscription, on a stone near the east entrance to the church, will show that very soon after the change spoken of above, the parish was blessed with regular rectoral services: "Sacred to the memory of the Rev. JOHN JONES SPOONER, Rector of the Church in Elizabeth City County; who departed this life September 15, 1799, aged forty-two years." And then to the right of the door entering from the east, another bearing the following: "Departed this life, January 17, 1806, the Rev. BENJAMIN BROWN, Rector of Elizabeth City Parish, aged thirty-nine years." On November 17, 1806, the vestry elected the Rev. Robert Seymour Sims, and August 11, 1810, they elected the Rev. George Holson. During the last war with Great Britain (1813), Hampton was sacked, its inhabitants pillaged--one of its aged citizens sick and infirm, wantonly murdered in the arms of his wife--and other crimes committed by hireling soldiers, and by brutalized officers, over which the chaste historian must draw a veil. The church of God itself was not spared during the saturnalia of lust and violence. His temple was profaned, and His altars desecrated. What British ruthlessness had left scathed and prostrate, was soon looked upon with neglect. The moles and the bats held their revels undisturbed within its once hallowed courts, and the "obscene owl nestled and brought forth in the ark of the covenant." The church in which our fathers worshipped, stabled the horse and stalled the ox. The very tombs of the dead, sacred in all lands, became a slaughter ground of the butcher, and an arena for pugilistic contests. A few faithful ones wept when they remembered Zion, in her day of prosperity, and beheld her in her hour of homeless travail, and to their cry, "How long, oh Lord how long!" the following preamble, accompanying a subscription list, tells the story of her woes, and breathes the language of her returning hope: "Whereas, from a variety of circumstances, the Episcopal Church in the town of Hampton, is in a state of dilapidation, and will ere long moulder into ruins, unless some friendly hand be extended to its relief, and in the opinion of the vestry, the only method that can be pursued to accomplish the laudable design of restoring it to the order in which our forefathers bequeathed it to their children, is to resort to subscription; and they do earnestly solicit pecuniary aid from all its friends in the full belief, that an appeal will not be made in vain. And hoping that God will put it into the hearts of the people to be benevolently disposed toward our long neglected Zion." This bears date April 28, 1826. A committee of the citizens of Hampton was appointed to wait on the venerable Bishop Moore, "to solicit his advice upon the best manner of repairing the Protestant Episcopal Church in Hampton, and beg of him his particular aid and patronage in carrying into effect the same." The letter below will show how that "old man eloquent," felt on the subject. It is not among the Bishop's published letters, and is without date: "MY DEAR BRETHREN:--My long confinement at the north prevented my reception of your letter, until very lately; and the feebleness of my frame, since my return, must apologize to you for any apparent neglect which has attended my reply. It will afford me the greatest pleasure to assist you with my counsel in the reorganization of your church, and with that purpose in view, I will endeavor to visit Hampton in a short time, of which you shall be duly notified, when we can converse at large on the subject proposed for my consideration. To see that temple repaired in which the former inhabitants of Hampton worshipped God, and to see you placed under the care of a faithful and judicious clergyman, will inspire my mind with the greatest delight. May the Almighty smile on the proposed design, and carry it into full and complete effect. Believe me, gentlemen, very affectionately, your friend and pastor, RICHARD CHANNING MOORE." The citizens and friends of the church were blessed with the energetic aid of the Rev. Mark L. Chivers, chaplain at Fortress Monroe, who for several years officiated once on each Sabbath in Hampton. It is not saying too much when we assert that mainly through his efforts, the church was resuscitated. The present rector, the writer of this, with pleasure makes this acknowledgment. With the zeal and energy which were brought to bear, the results were most favorable; and on Friday morning, the 8th of January, 1830, a crowd might have been seen wending its way to those venerable walls. A rude staging was erected for the prominent actors, and on that platform knelt a white-haired soldier of the cross, the venerable Bishop of Virginia, his face radiant with "faith, hope, and charity." The ritual of the church was heard once more in that old pile, and in answer to the invitation, "Oh, come, let us sing unto the Lord, let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation," there might soon have been heard those beautiful words: "And wilt thou, O Eternal God, On earth establish thy abode? Then look propitious from thy throne, And take this temple for thine own." In the archives of the church the event is thus recorded: "Know all men by these presents, that we, Richard Channing Moore, D.D., by Divine permission, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Virginia, did consecrate to the service of Almighty God, on Friday, January 8th, in the year of our Lord 1880, St. John's Church, in the town of Hampton, Elizabeth City County. In which church the services of the Protestant Episcopal Church are to be performed agreeably to rubrics in such case made and provided. It is always to be remembered, that Saint John's Church thus consecrated and set apart to the worship of Almighty God, is by the act of consecration thus performed, separated from all worldly and unhallowed uses, and to be considered sacred to the service of the _Holy and undivided Trinity_. "In testimony whereof, I have on the day and year above written, subscribed my hand and affixed my seal. [Seal.] RICHARD CHANNING MOORE." The Rev. Mr. Chivers having resigned his afternoon appointment, after officiating for sixteen years, and ministering to them in their day of destitution, the Rev. John P. Bausman was elected Rector in 1843, and resigned in 1845; the Rev. William H. Good was elected in 1845, and continued until the close of 1848; and the parish remained without regular rectoral services, until the 1st of January, 1851, when the writer took charge; since which time an organ (the first one) has been put up, new pews have been added, and money enough obtained to make permanent and comfortable repairs. If the design of the true friends of the church, to make it a temple in which generations to come may worship God in comfort, fail, the fault and the punishment will lie with those who "knew their duty and did it not." FOOTNOTES: [C] De Quincey. [D] See Wilberforce's History of the American Church. [E] Burke Hist. Va. [F] Stanton's Church Dictionary. [G] This Jeremy Taylor was very unlike his illustrious namesake, the Bishop of Down and Conner, for I find by the records, that he was any thing else but a man of "holy living," whatever else he might have been when "dying." J C. M. BROODING-PLACES ON THE FALKLAND ISLANDS. TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL FROM THE GERMAN. By the name of "brooding-places," the navigators of the south seas understand places selected by various sea-fowls, where they in common build their nests, lay their eggs, and bring up their young. Here they assemble in immense masses, and in the laying out and construction of these places, exhibit great caution, judgment, and industry. When a sufficient number have assembled on the shore, they appear first to hold a consultation, and then to set about executing the great purpose for which they have come together. First, they choose out a level spot of sufficient extent, often of four or five acres, near the beach. In this they avoid ground that is too stony, which would be dangerous to their eggs. Next, they deliberate on the plan of their future camp, after which they lay out distinctly a regular parallelogram, offering room enough for the brother and sisterhood, somewhere from one to five acres. One side of the place is bounded by the sea, and is always left open for entrance and exit; the other three sides are inclosed with a wall of stones and roots. These industrious feathered workers first of all remove from the place all obstacles to their design; they take up the stones with their bills and carry them to the boundaries to compose the wall. Within this wall they build a perfectly smooth and even foot-path some six or eight feet wide, which is used by day as a public promenade, and by night for the back and forward march of the sentinels. After they have in this way completed their embankments on the three landward sides, they lay out the remaining part of the interior into equal little quadrangles, separated from each other by narrow foot-paths, crossing at right angles. In each crossing of these paths an albatross builds his nest, and in the middle of each quadrangle, a penguin, so that every albatross is surrounded by four penguins, and every penguin has albatross on four sides as neighbors. In this way the whole place is regularly occupied, and only at some distance are places left free for other sea-fowl, such as the green comorant and the so-called Nelly. Though the penguin and albatross live so near and in such intimacy they not only build their nests in very different fashions, but the penguin plunders the nest of its friend whenever it has an opportunity. The nest of the penguin is a simple hollow in the ground, just deep enough to keep its eggs from rolling out, while the albatross raises a little hill of earth, grass, and muscles, eight or ten inches high, with the diameter of a water pail, and builds its nest on the top, whence it looks down on its next neighbors and friends. None of the nests in the entire brooding-place is left vacant an instant until the eggs are hatched, and the young ones old enough to take care of themselves. The male bird goes to the sea for fish, and when he has satisfied his hunger hurries back and takes the place of the female, while she in turn goes in pursuit of food. Even when they are changing places, they know how to manage it so as not to leave their eggs for a moment uncovered. When, for instance, the male comes back from fishing, he nestles close beside the female and gradually crowds her off the nest with such care as to cover the eggs completely with his feathers without exposing them to the air at all. In this way they guard their eggs against being stolen by the other females, which are so greedy to raise large families that they seize every chance to rob the surrounding nests. The royal penguin is exceedingly cunning in this sort of trick, and never loses an occasion that is offered: In this way it often happens that the brood of this bird, on growing up turns out to be of two or three different species, a sure proof that the parents were no honester than their neighbors. It is not only interesting but instructive and even touching to watch from a little distance the life and movements of these brooding-places. You can then see the birds walking up and down the exterior path or public promenade in pairs, or even four, six, or eight together, looking very like officers promenading on a parade day. Then all at once, the whole brooding-place is in continuous commotion, a flock of the penguins come back from the sea and waddle rapidly along through the narrow paths, to greet their mates after this brief separation; another company are on the way to get food for themselves or to bring in provisions. At the same time the cove is darkened by an immense cloud of albatrosses, that continually hover above the brooding-place, descending from their excursions or mounting into the air to go upon them. One can look at these birds for hours, and not grow weary of gazing, observing and wondering at their busy social life. ARIADNE. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY E. W. ELLSWORTH. I. [Scene, part of the island of Naxos. Enter, sundry Dryads, habited as fair young maidens adorned with flowers, and bearing in their hands branches of trees.] _Dryad_: We shadowy Oceanides, Jove's warders of the island trees, The tufted pillars tall and stout, And all the bosky camp about, Maintain our lives in sounding shades Of old æolian colonnades; But post about the neighbor land In woof of insubstantial wear: Our ways are on the water sand, Our joy is in the desert air. The very best of our delights Are by the moon of summer nights. Darkness to us is holiday: When winds and waves are up at play, When, on the thunder-beaten shore, The swinging breakers split and roar, Then is the moment of our glory, In shadow of a promontory, To trip and skip it to and fro, Even as the flashing bubbles go. Or on the bleaker banks that lie, For the salt seething wash, too high, Where rushes grow so sparse and green, With baked and barren floors between. We glance about in mazy quire, With much of coming and retire; Nor let the limber measure fail, Till, down behind the ocean bed, The night dividing star is sped, And Cynthia stoops the marish vale, Wound in clouds and vigil pale, Trailing the curtains of the west About her ample couch of rest. Thus, nightly on, we lead the year Through all the constellated sphere. But more obscure, in brakes and bowers, During the sun-appointed hours, We lodge, and are at rest, and see, Dimly, the day's festivity, Nor hail the spangled jewel set Upon Aurora's coronet; Nor trail in any morning dew; Nor roam the park, nor tramp the pool Of lucid waters pebble cool, Nor list the satyr's far halloo. Noon, and the glowing hours, seem Mutations of a laboring dream. Yet subject, still, to Jove's decree, That governs, from the Olympian doors, The populous and lonely shores, We do a work of destiny; When any mortal, sorely spent, Girt with the thorns of discontent, Or care, or hapless love, invades, This ancient neighborhood of shades, Our gracious leave is to dispense, Of woods, the slumbrous influence; The waverings and the murmurings Of umber shades and leafy wings; Through all the courts of sense applying, With sights, and sounds, and odorous sighing, To the world-wearied soul of man, The gentle universal Pan-- As now we must: the roots around, Of forests clutch a certain sound Of weary feet; go, sisters, out: Some one is pining, hereabout. II. [Another part of the Island. Enter Ariadne.] _Ariadne_: Here, in the heart of this sea-moated isle, Where we, but last night, made a summer's lodge Of transient rest from many pendulous days Of swinging on the sick unquiet deep, Why left he me, so lone, so unattended? What converse had he with felonious Night, That underneath her dark consenting cloak, He stole unchallenged from his Ariadne? If, out of hope, I cannot answer that, Slant-eyed Conjecture at my elbow stands, To whisper me of things I would not hear. Ah me, my Theseus, wherefore art thou gone! Ah me, my Theseus, whither art thou gone! Oh how shall I, an unacquainted maid, So uninformed of whereabout I am, And in a wild completely solitary, Hope to find out my strangely absent lord! Sadness there is, and an unquiet fear, Within my heart, to trace these hereabouts Of idle woods, unthreaded labyrinths, Rude mannered brooks, unpastured meadow sides, All vagrant, voiceless, pathless, echoless, Oh for the farthest breath of mortal sound! From lacqueyed hall, or folded peasant hut,-- Some noontide echo sweetly voluble; Some song of toil reclining from the heat, Or low of kine, or neigh of tethered steeds, Or honest clamor of some shepherd dog, Laughter, or cries, or any living breath, To make inroad upon this dreariness. Methinks no shape of savage insolence, No den unblest, nor hour inopportune, Could daunt me now, nor warn my maiden feet From friendly parle, that am distract of heart, With doubt, desertion, utter loneliness. Death would I seek to run from lonely fear, And deem a hut a heaven, with company. Yea, now to question of my true heart's lord, And of the ports and alleys of this isle, Which way they lead the clueless wanderer To fields suburban, and the towers of men, I would confront the strangest things that haunt In horrid shades of brooding desolation: Griffin, or satyr, sphinx, or sybil ape, Or lop-eared demon from the dens of night, Let loose to caper out of Acheron. Ah me, my Theseus, wherefore art thou gone! Who left that crock of water at my side? Who stole my dog that loved no one but me? Why was the tent unstruck, I unawaked, I left, most loved, and last to be forgotten By much obtaining, much indebted Theseus? Left to sleep on, to dream and slumber on; Nothing to know, save fancies of the air, While he, so strangly covert in his thoughts, Was softly stirring to be gone from me. Ah me, my Theseus, whither art thou gone! Hast thou, in pleasant sport, deserted me? Is it a whim, a jest, a trick of task, To mesh me in another labyrinth? Could Theseus so make mirth of Ariadne? Unless he did, I would not think he could. And yet I will believe he is in jest. More false than that, he could not be to me, Since false to me, to his own self were false. Now do I hold in hope what I have heard, That love will sometimes cunning masks put on, Speak with strange tongues, and wear odd liveries, Transform himself to seemings most unlike, And still be love in fearful opposites. So may it be, but my immediate fear Jostles that hope aside, and I remember Of what my tutor Ætion did forewarn me. Oh fond old man! if thou didst know me here, Thou wouldst move heaven and earth to have me home. Much was his care of my uncaring youth, And, with a reverend and considerate wit, He curbed the frolic of my pupilage, Less by the bridle, than the feeding it With stories ending in moralities, With applications and similitudes Tacked to the merest leaf I looked upon, Till, so it was, we two did love each other, The sage and child, with mutual amity. Oft, hand in hand, we passed my father's gate, At evening, when the horizontal day Chequered his farewell on the western wall; Shying the court, where, for the frolic lords, Under the profaned silence of the rose, The syrinx, and the stringed sonorous shell, Governed the twinkling heeled Terpischore. We softly went and turned towards the bay, And found another world, contemplative Of shells and pebbles by the ocean shore. I do remember, once, on such an eve, Pacing the polished margin of the deep, We found two weeds that had embraced each other, And talked of friendship, love and sympathy. _My pupil sweet,_ said he, _beware of Love: For thou wilt shortly be besieged by him, From the four winds of heaven, because thou art Daughter of Minos, and already married To expectation of a royal dower. But O beware! for, listen what I say, By strong presentments I have moved thy father Bating a fair and well intending nay, To leave thy love to thine unmuffled eye. This is rare scope, my girl, O use it rarely, Be slow and nice in thy sweet liberty, And let discretion honor thee in choice. For love is like a cup with dregs at bottom! Hand it with care, and pleasant it shall be-- Snatch it, and thou may'st find its bitterness._ And now, my soon, my all sufficient lord, How shall I answer old Sir Oracle? It is too true that I have snatched my love, And taste already of its bitterness. But trifle not with love, my sportful Theseus. Affection, when it bears an outward eye, Be it of love, or social amity, Or open-lidded general charity, Becomes a holy universal thing-- The beauty of the soul, which, therein lodged, Surpasses every outward comeliness-- Makes fanes of shaggy shapes, and, of the fair, Such presences as fill the gates of heaven. Why is the dog, that knows no stint of heart, But roars a welcome like an untamed bear, And leaps a dirty-footed fierce caress, More valued than the sleek smooth mannered cat, That will not out of doors, whoever comes, But hugs the fire in graceful idleness? Birds of a glittering gilt, that lack a tongue, Are shamed to drooping with the euphony Of fond expression, and the voice beneath The russet jacket of the soul of song. What is that girdle of the Queen of Love, Wherewith, as with the shell of Orpheus, Things high and humble, the enthroned gods, And tenants of the far unvisited huts Of wildernesses, she alike subdues Unto the awe of perfect harmony? What else but sweetness tempered all one way, And looks of sociable benignity? Which when she chooseth to be all herself, She doth put on, and in the act thereof, Such thousand graces lacquey her about, And in her smile such plenitude of joy-- The extreme perfection of the divine gods-- Shines affable, as, to partake thereof, Hath oftentimes set Heaven in uproar. By these, and many special instances, It doth appear, or may be plainly shown, That, of all life, affection is the savor-- The soul of it--and beauty is but dross: Being but the outer iris--film of love, The fleeting shade of an eternal thing. Beauty--the cloudy mock of Tantalus; Daughter of Time, betrothèd unto Death, Who, all so soon as the lank anarch old Fingers her palm, and lips her for his bride, Suffers collapse, and straightway doth become A hideous comment of mortality. Know this, my lord, while thou dost run from me, The tide of true love hath its hours of ebb, If the attendant orb withdraw his light; And though there be a love as strong as death, There is a pride stronger than death or love; And whether 'tis that I am royal born, Or kingly blooded, or that once I was Sometimes a mistress in my father's court, I have of patience much--not overmuch-- And thou hadst best beware the boundary. Oh thou too cruel and injurious thorn! What hast thou done to my poor innocent hand! Thou art like Theseus, thou dost make me bleed; Offenceless I, yet thou dost make me bleed. This scratch I shall remember well, my lord! Deceiver false! deserter! runaway! My quick-heeled slave! my loose ungrateful bird! Where'er thou art, or if thou hear or no, Know that thou art from this time given o'er, To tarry and return what time thou wilt. It is most like that thou dost lurk not far, In twilight of some envious cave or bower. Well, if thou dost--why--lurk thy heart's content. Poor rogue! thou art not worth this weariness. I will not flutter more, nor cry to thee. Since thou art fledged, and toppled from the nest, Go--pick thy crumbs where thou canst find them best. III. Once more, once more, O yet again once more, Spent is my breath with fear and weariness! Vain toil it is to track this tangled wild-- This rank o'ergrown imprisoned solitude-- Whose very flowers are fetters in my way; Where I am chained about with vines and briers, Led blindfold on through mazes tenantless, And not a friendly echo answers me. Oh for a foot as airy as the wing Of the young brooding dove, to overpass, On swift commission of my true heart's love, All metes and bournes of this lone wilderness: So should I quickly find my truant lord. But, as it is, I can no farther go. What shall I do? despair? lie down and die? If I give o'er my search I shall despair, And if I do despair, I quickly die. Avaunt Despair! I will not yet despair. Begone, grim herald of oblivious Death! Strong-pinioned Hope, embrace thy wings about me; Shake not my fingers from thy golden chain. Oh still bear up and pity Ariadne! Alas! what hope have I but only Theseus, And Theseus is not here to pity me. Ah me, my Theseus, whither art thou gone! Thou dost forget that thou hast called me wife, And with sweet influence of holy vows Grappled and grafted me unto thyself. Oh how shall I, not knowing where thou art, Be all myself--thou dost dissever me. Yonder I'll rest awhile, for now I see, Through meshes of the internetted leaves, A little plot, girt with a living wall; A sylvan chamber, that the frolic Pan Has built and bosomed with a leafy dome, And windowed with a narrow glimpse of heaven. Its floor, sky-litten with the noontide sun, Shows garniture of many colored flowers, More dainty than the broidered webs of Tyre; And all about, from beeches, oaks and pines, Recesses deep of vernal solitude, Come sounds of calm that woo my ruffled spirits To a resigned and quiet contemplation. Yond brook, that, like a child, runs wide astray, Sings and skips on, nor knows its loneliness; A squirrel chatters at a doorless nut: A hammer bird drums on his hollow bark; And bits of winged life, with aëry voices, Tinkle like fountains in a corridor. Fair haunt of peace, ye quiet cadences, Ye leafy caves of sadness and sweet sounds, That have no feeling nor a fellowship With the rash moods of terror and of pain, I did not think ye could, in such an hour, So steal from me, as in a sleep, a dream-- What is't that comes between me and the light? Protect me, Jove! Lo, what untended flowers, That all night long, like little wakeful babes, Darkly repine, and weep themselves asleep, In the orient morning lift their pretty eyes, Tear smiling, to behold the sun their sire Enter the gilded chambers of the east-- Strange droopingness! What quality of air? [Ariadne falls asleep.--Enter, the Dryads, as before.] _1st Dryad_: Sprinkle out of flower bells Mortal sense entrapping spells; Make no sound On the ground; Strew and lap and lay around. Gnat nor snail Here assail, Beetle, slug, nor spider here, Now descend, Nor depend, Off from any thorny spear. _2d Dryad_: So conclude. Whatever seems, We have her in a chain of dreams. _3d Dryad_: As fair as foreign! Who is here In disarray of princely gear? Here were a lass whose royal port Might make an awe in Heaven's court; But sorrowing beauty testifies In tears that journey from her eyes, To touches of interior pain; And on her hand a sanguine stain. Hair unlooped and sandals torn, Zone unloosened from its bourne; Surely some wandering bride of Sorrow. _4th Dryad_: So let her sleep, and bid good morrow. _1st Dryad_: But, sisters, me it doth astound, What maid it is that we have bound, And Bacchus not, nor Ceres found. _2d Dryad_: Bacchus has gone to Arcady; Where certain swains, that merry be, Have found a happy thunder stone, That Jove has cast the vale upon; So take occasion to be blest, And Bacchus was invited guest. His shaggy crew have helped the plan. Silenus made the pipes of Pan, The Satyrs teased the vines about, And Bacchus sent a lubber lout, Who lurked, and stole, ere wink of moon, The heedless Amalthea's horn. Now all are gone to Arcady, Head bent on rousing jollity. Now riot rout will be, anon, That shall the very sun aston, By waters whilst, and on the leas, Under the old fantastic trees. The oldest swain with longest cane, And sad experience in his brain, On such mad mirth shall fail to wink, And grimly go aside to think. _3d Dryad_: But, cedar-cinctured sister, say, What news has winged our Queen away? _2d Dryad_: Ceres has gone to see the feast Made by the King of all East; Who breasts a beard so black and fair; And breathes a wealth of gorgeous air, Now all divided with Gulnare-- Whose odorous train came up from far, Last night, at shut of evening star, And filled, with pomp majestical, The gardens and the palace hall. So Ceres runs to give them aid, In likeness of an Indian maid-- Presents them each a dove apiece, And wishes blessing and increase. _3d Dryad_: Hark! hark! I hear her rolling car. Our Queen is not so very far. _4th Dryad_: Now make your faces long, I ween Here comes our sweet majestic Queen. [Enter Ceres, in likeness of a stately woman, bearing poppies and ears of wheat in her hands, and crowned with a wreath of flowers and berries.] _Ceres_: What! loose, and chatting here at play, All in the broad and staring day! Why children! this is something queer! _1st Dryad:_ But, mistress, see the sleeper here. _Ceres:_ A fair excuse, I own, the sight! Theseus deserted her last night. _2d Dryad:_ How knew you that, my lady dear? _Ceres:_ Well sought--for I was far from here: Whiles o'er the crisp Ionian main I shook the winnowed dragon rein-- _3d Dryad:_ Invented error! Sister! fie! Our Queen has trapped you in a lie. _2d Dryad:_ A lie! _Ceres_ A lie? _3d Dryad:_ Deceit forgets How Truth is always trailing nets. While you, sweet Empress, berry crowned, Were on the Ionian westward bound, Our sister puffed you towards the east, With words about a wedding feast. _Ceres_ How thin a bubble blame may be! I sought for doves in Italy; But orient was my main intent, And on an Indian nuptial bent. _2d Dryad:_ Now honey-lips, the lie is where? _4th Dryad:_ She weeps-- _2d Dryad:_ Fool fingered thing!-- _Ceres_ Forbear. Whiles o'er the crisp Ionian main I shook the winnowed dragon rein, A Triton clove the wake behind, And, with a hailing will, did wind Such parley through his crankled horn, As all the air was echo torn. I stayed--he told what did betide Of truant Theseus and his bride; Which having heard, I did repair Unto that subterranean lair Wherein the dreadful Sisters three Vex out the threads of destiny, But they were sorely overtasked; So techy, too, that when I asked If he could not be plagued for this Unloving piece of business, With knots and burs upon his thread, They would not speak, nor lift the head: Yet saw I how his flax did run Smoothly, and much is yet unspun. _4th Dryad:_ Sweet Queen, adieu--come, let's away, We keep no sunshine holiday. _Ceres_ Stay, children, stay. Poor things! I do remember me, How I did seek Proserpiné. We must not leave her thus forlorn: Auroral grace in her is born, And, rarer else, the finest sense Of feeling and intelligence. Mortals of such ethereal grain Are quickened both for joy and pain; Theirs is the affluence of joy, And pain that sorely doth annoy. And, therefore, if we leave her thus, To find the truth of Theseus, She will, with such a madness burn, And do herself so sad a turn, As that the very thought erewhile, Will drive us all to quit the isle. _1st Dryad:_ Alack! O no! What must be done? _Ceres_ Go, you, and you, and every one-- To stay such heart distracting harm, Go, each bring flowers upon her arm: Pink, pansy, poppy, pimpernell, Acanthus, almond, asphodel. [The Dryads disperse and gather flowers with which they return to Ceres.] _Ceres_ Now all join hands; [They join hands.] Fair fall the eyes Of any weary destinies! I bruise these flowers, and so set free Their virtue for adversity. Then, with my unguent finger tips, Touch twice and once on cheeks and lips. When this sweet influence comes to naught, Vexed she shall be, but not distraught. And now let music winnow thought: Bucolic sound of horn and flute, In distant echo nearly mute. Then louder borne, and swelling near, Make bolder murmur in her ear. _2d Dryad:_ See, see, what change is in her face: _Ceres_ Break hands, the lady wakes apace. [Ceres and the Dryads loose hands and disappear.] IV. _Ariadne:_ I dreamed a dream of sadness and the sea, And I will turn again, if yet I may, To where the rolling rondure of the deep Broadly affront the sky's infinity. Sleeping or waking, knew I naught but this; Sorrow and Love, above a desolate main, From the sheer battlements of opposite clouds, Kissed, and embraced, and parted company.... This is the self-same bay where we put in, Yonder the restless keel did gore the sand. There was the sailor's fire, and up and down, Are scattered mangled ropes, splinters, and spars, Fragments and shreds--but ship and all are gone. Here is my wreath. How brief, since yester eve, Then, when the sun, like an o'erthirsty god, Had stooped his brows behind the ocean brim, And the west wind, bearing his martial word, The limber-footed and the courier west, Went smoothly whist over the furrowed floor, To bid the night, then gazing up the sphere, Advance his constellated banners there, I leaned above the vessel's whispering prow, With an unusual joy, and drink, from out The heaven of those true repeated depths, Infinite calm, as though I did commune With the still spirit of the universe. So leaning, from my hair did I unwind This chain of flowers, and dropped it in the sea; Blessing that twilight hour, the port, the bay, The deep dim isle of interlunar woods, My love, and all the world, and naming them Waters of rest--now lies my garland here. What words are these thus furrowed on the shore? These are the very turns of Theseus' hand: If from thy hook the fish to water fall, Think not to catch that fish again at all. Too well my thought unlocks these cruel lines. Oh drench of grief! I thank ye, piteous powers, Who sent not this without forewarning drops. Oh miserable me! distressful me! Despised, disdained, deserted, desolate: Oh world of dew! Oh morning water drops! Lack-lustre, irksome, dull mortality! Oh now, oh now, that heaven all is black, Wherein the rainbow of my joy did stand! Oh love! oh life! oh life entire in love! All lost, all gone, or just so little left As is not worth the care to throw away! All lost, all gone, wrecked, rifted, sunk, devoured: Wrecked with false lights on Theseus' rocky heart! Oh man, perverse, dry-eyed, untender man, Enchanting man, so sleek so serpent-cold! Was it for this that thou didst swear to me, By all the gods in the three worlds at once, That thou didst love distractedly, and I, With certain tender and ingenuous tears, Did presently confess to thee as much? Was it for this, that I, who had a home, Like an Elysium in the lap of Crete, Did beckon buffets, and, for thee, did dare The rough unknown and outside of the world? Was it for this that thou didst hither bring me, Unto this isle of thorny loneliness, And, in the night, without foreargued cause, Any aggrievance, any allegation, Didst, like a coward traitor, run from me? Thou man of snow! thou art assailed by this-- Be sure of it--thou art begrimed as black As if thou hadst been hanged a thousand years Under the murky cope of Pluto's den. Oh agony! but thou shalt know my soul, Which gropes for daggers at the thought of this. Yea, from the day-beams of adoring love, Goes headlong to as vast a reprobation. Thou, Theseus, wast a cloud, and I a cloud, Quickened from thee with such pervading flame, As that thou canst not now so part from me Without the fiery iterance of my heart. Hear, hear me, love, who on the swathèd tops Of ribbed Olympus, and thy steadfast throne, Dost sit the sùpreme judge of gods and men, And bear within thy palm the living bolt, High o'er the soilèd air of this wan world; Look on yon helot wretch, and, wheresoe'er, Coursing what sea, or cabled in what port, The greatness of thine eye may light on him, Crush him with thunder! Thou, too, great Neptune of the lower deeps, Heave thy wet head up from the monstrous sea; Advance thy trident high as to the clouds, And with a not to be repeated blow, Dash the sin-freighted ship of that rash man! And thou, old iron-sceptred Eolus, Shatter the bars of thine enclosed winds; Unhinge the doors of thy great kennel house, And 'twixt the azure and the roaring deep Cry out thy whole inflated Strongyle-- Cry ruin on that man! But wherefore, thus, Do I invoke the speedy desolation Of any mighty magisterial soul, Whose will is weaponed with the elements! For oh-- Let the great spies of Jove, the sun and moon, The stars, and all the expeditious orbs That in their motions are retributive, Look blindly on, and seem to take no note Of any deep and deadly stab of sin-- Let vengeance gorge a gross Cerberean sop, Grovel and snore in swinish sluggardness, Yea, quite forget his dagger and his cup-- It is enough, for any retribution, That guilt retain remembrance of itself. Guilt is a thing, however bolstered up, That the great scale-adjusting Nemesis, And Furies iron-eyed, will not let sleep. Sail on unscarred--thou canst not sail so far, But that the gorgon lash of vipers fanged Shall scourge this howler home to thee again. Yes, yes, rash man, Jove and myself do know That from this wrong shall rouse an Anteros, Fierce as an Atë, with a hot right hand, That shall afflict thee with the touch of fire, Till, scorpion-like, thou turn and sting thyself. What dost thou think--that I shall perish here, Gnawed by the tooth of hungry savageness? Think what thou list, and go what way thou wilt. I, that have truth and heaven on my side, Though but a weak and solitary woman, Forecast no fear of any violence-- But thou, false hound! thou would'st not dare come back, Thou would'st not like to feel my eyes again. Go get thee on, to Argos get thee on; And let thy ransomed Athens run to thee, With portal arms, wide open to her heart-- To stifling hug thee with triumphant joy. Thou canst not wear such bays, thou canst not so O'erpeer the ancient and bald heads of honor, That I would have the back or follow thee. Let nothing but thy shadow follow thee; Thy shadow is to thee a curse enough; For thou hast done a murder on thyself. Thou hast put on the Nessus' fiery hide. Thou hast stepped in the labyrinths of woe, And in thy fingers caught the clue to Death. What solace have the gods for such as thou, That is not stabbed by this one thrust through me? From this black hour, this curse anointing hour, The currents of thy heart are all corrupt; The motions of thy thoughts are serpentine; And thy death-doing and bedabbled soul Is maculate with spots of Erebus. Aye me!--and yet--Oh that I should say so! Thou wast a noble scroll of Beauty's pen, Where every turn was grandly charactered. Hadst thou a heart--but thou hadst no such thing-- And having none, it was not thee I loved; Only my maiden thoughts were perfect, Theseus. O no, no, no, I never did love thee, Thou outside shell and carcase of a man. And I--what was it thou didst take me for? A paroquet of painted shallowness? A silly thing to whistle to and fro, And peck at plums, and then be whistled off? Oh, Theseus, Theseus, thou didst never know me-- In this unworthy clasp of woman's mould, This poor outside of pliant prettiness, There was a heart and in that heart a love, And in that love there was an affluence Full as the ocean, infinite as time, Deep as the spring that never knew an ebb. Too truly feeling what I left for thee, And with what joy I left it all for thee, And how I would have only followed thee, With soul, mind, purpose, to the far world's end, I cannot think on thee as thou deservest, But scorn is drownéd in a well of tears; I will go sit and weep.-- Note.--Theseus, a Grecian hero, according to ancient fable, made an expedition into Crete for the purpose of destroying the Minotaur, a monster which infested that island. While there he made love to Ariadne, (daughter of Minos the king of Crete) who returned his affection, assisted him in accomplishing the object of his expedition, and sailed with him on his return to Athens. She was, however, abandoned by Theseus at Naxos, an island in the Ægean sea held sacred to Bacchus. Bacchus received Ariadne hospitably, but afterwards he too ran away from her. We suspect (as perhaps our poem sufficiently indicates) that the root of Ariadne's misfortunes lay in certain infirmities of temper, which rendered her at times an uncomfortable companion. THE FALLS OF THE BOUNDING DEER. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY ALFRED B. STREET. "Good news! great discovery! new falls!" broke out in full chorus, boys and girls, at a party given by Jobson, in Monticello. "How did you happen to find them, Mayfield?" asked Allthings. "I was fishing, and came upon them all at once. I heard a roar of some waterfall or other, and the first I knew, I saw the chasm immediately below me!" "What was their appearance?" "There were two falls quite precipitous, and two basins. From the second basin the stream ran very smooth and placid again through a piece of woodland." "Good!--great!--new falls!" came anew the chorus. "What is the name of the falls, Mayfield?" inquired Allthings once more. "The people thereabouts call them Gumaer's Falls." "Horrid!--too common!--awful! Sha'n't have such a name!" was again the chorus. "Let's give them a new one at once." "Well, begin." "Let us call them the Falls of the Melting Snow," suggested the sentimental May Blossom. "That would do in the spring, when the snow is really melting," said Joe Jobson, a plain, practical young fellow, who never had a gleam of fancy in his life; "but there's no snow there now, I reckon." "What a heathen you are, Jobson!" broke in honest Allthings (who always spoke out); "the name applies to the water, not the snow!" "Why not the name of the Falls of the Silver Lace?" asked the tall, superb Lydia Lydell, who was also given to poetry. "Was there ever any lace made there?" again remarked Jobson. "I move we call them by an Indian name," said Job Paddock, the schoolmaster, who was deep in Indian lore. "Let us call them The Kah-youk-weh-reh Ogh-ne-ka-nos, or, The Arrow Water, or The Water of the Arrow; just as you fancy." "Kaw--what?" again interrupted Jobson; "a real queer name that--Kah-you-qweer-reh Oh-cane-my-nose!" "Do hold your tongue, Jobson!" said Claypole, "you are enough to drive one crazy!" "Mr. Jobson is not much inclined to poetry, I believe," lisped May Blossom, with a smile dimpling her beautiful mouth. "Poetry is well enough in its place," grumbled Jobson; "in speaking exercises, and so on; but what's poetry to do with naming falls of water, I should like to know?" "Let us call them Meadow Brook Falls," said beautiful Annie Mapes. "There's no meadow in sight, and your brook is a torrent," said Mayfield. "Well, what _shall_ we call them?" burst out once more the full chorus. "I think the best way is to go and see them first;" again grumbled Jobson, not much relishing the idea of all the company turning against him. This was really the most practical remark yet made, as none of the assemblage had seen them but Mayfield, who absolutely declined suggesting any name, and accordingly Jobson's idea was instantly adopted. The next day was settled upon for the jaunt, and consequently the company assembled at an early hour to start. It was as bewitching an autumn day as ever beamed on the earth, such an one as Doughty loves to fasten upon his glorious canvas. It would have glittered with golden splendor, had it not been toned down by a delicate haze, which could scarcely be seen near by, but which gradually thickened on the distant landscape until it brushed away the outlines of the mountain summits, so that they seemed steeped in a delicious swoon. We left the village, trotted up hill and down, and skimmed over flats, until we arrived at the long descent of a mile, beginning at the log-hut of old Saunsalis, and ending in Mamakating Hollow at the outskirts of Wurtsboro'. Here we turned short at the left, and pursued our way over a narrow country road through the enchanting scenery of the Hollow toward our destination. After passing farm-houses peering from clumps of trees, meadows, grainfields, and woodlands, we came to a by-road leading through a field. Here the little brook (Fawn of the "Bounding Deer") sparkled by our track, crossing in its capricious way the road, thereby forcing us to ford it, and then recross its ripples. We now came to the end of our road; and alighting, we tied our steeds to the willows and alders scattered along the streamlet's bank. Each one (laden with the pic-nic baskets) then hastened onward, for the low deep bleat of the "Deer" was sounding in our ears. We directly came to a sawmill, with a high broken bank in front. Over this impediment our path lay, and over it must we go. Accordingly we did go; and, descending the other side, the "Deer" was before us. An amphitheatre of towering summits saluted our eyes, clothed with wood and steeped in grateful shade. The gleam of the waterfall cut like a scimetar on our sight, flashing through its narrow cleft, whilst the bleating of the "Bounding Deer" was louder and sweeter. A beautiful place for our pic-nic--a mossy log or two by the streamlet, and a delicious greensward. The ladies busied themselves in unpacking the baskets, whilst the "boys" distributed themselves about the rocks. Forms were soon seen dangling from cedar bushes, and treading carefully among clefts and gullies. Some sat where the silver spray sprinkled their faces--some clambered the rocks jutting over the higher Fall--some scaled the still loftier summits. All this time the organ of the cascade was sounding like the deep strain of the wind in a pine forest. In about a half hour our pic-nic table was spread with various viands, the table composed of boards spread upon two of the mossy logs, the boards being the product of a sawmill hard by. The company seated themselves, and immediately a desperate charge was made by the whole force upon the eatables and drinkables, and immense havoc ensued. An entire route having been at length effected, again the vexed question of the name to be given to the "Fall" was brought on the _tapis_. "Let us call them the Falls of Aladdin," said enchanting Rose Rosebud, lifting her azure eyes to the jewelled autumn foliage that glittered around. "The Falls of the Ladder!" caught up Jobson: "the very name!--why, it describes the Falls exactly! I wonder we haven't thought of that name before. The water looks like a ladder exactly, coming down them big rocks." "I'll tell you what," said Paddock, "I've now been all about the cataract, and seen it at all points. I've hit upon the very name, I think. What say you to the Falls of the Bounding Deer?" "But where's the Deer?" grumbled Jobson, now thoroughly out of humor from the contempt with which his last observation had been treated. "Do be quiet, Mr. Jobson," chimed in the girls, "and let us hear what Mr. Paddock urges in favor of his beautiful name." "See," said Paddock, pointing upward, "see where the upper Fall bounds from yon dark cleft of rock, and, gathering itself in that basin for another effort, gives another leap down its path, and then, gathering itself once more in the lower basin, shoots away to the protecting woods!" "Capital name! Just the thing, Mr. Paddock!" again broke out the chorus of girls, like a dangling of silver bells. "The Falls of the Bounding Deer be it then!" The name being thus satisfactorily settled, we all commenced scrutinizing more closely the lovely lair of the "Bounding Deer." A dazzling display of tints was on the thickly mantling trees, changing the whole scene into a gorgeous spectacle. The most striking contrasts--the richest colors glowing side by side, flashed upon the delighted vision every where. The elm dripping with golden foliage from head to foot, in a way which only that most beautiful tree can show (the drooping naiad of the brook), shone beside the maple in a splendid flush of scarlet--the birch, garbed in the richest orange, bent near the pine gleaming with emerald--the beech displayed its tanny mantle by the dogwood robed in deepest purple, whilst every nook, crevice, shelf, and hollow of the umber banks and gray rocks blazed with yellow golden rods and sky-blue asters. How beautiful, how radiant, how glorious, the American foliage in autumn! No pen, unless dipped in rainbows, can do it justice. And, amidst this brilliant beauty, down her pointed rocks, down flashed the "Bounding Deer," white with the foam of her eager and headlong speed. The boys now prepare for another excursion amongst the rocks of the "Falls." Some climb the dangling grape vines; some clutch the roots of the slanting pine trees; and some find footing in the narrow fissures. Soon the gray rocks and yellow banks are scattered over with them. Ascending the very loftiest pinnacle by the roots of trees and the profuse bushes, the scene was wild, picturesque, and romantic in the extreme. A little below, bristled the points of the rocks with cedars, dwarf pines, and towering hemlocks shooting from the interstices. At one side, through its deep gully, flashed the "Bounding Deer"--the waters pouring in its first deep dark basin, cut in the granite like a goblet, thence twisting down in another bold leap into the second basin. Not a foam flake was on the surface of either sable cup, nothing but the wrinkles produced by the ever circling eddies. Below--past broken edge, grassy shelf, yawning cleft, and jutting ledge, was the broad deep hollow through which the "Deer" (mottled with sunshine and shadow) leaped away to the woods beyond, whilst in the meadow was seen the little "Fawn" tripping along its green banks until lost in the verdure of the valley. Add to these, the glittering tints that had been showered from autumn's treasury, and the effect was complete. But, where are the girls? _"Oui, oui!"_ exclaimed the Count de ----(a French nobleman of illustrious descent, and a most amiable, intelligent, and accomplished gentleman), "where de _demoiselles_--I no see 'em!" "The what?" asked Jobson. "De demoiselles; de--de--what _you_ call 'em, Monsieur Job?" "Girls," answered Jobson. "Non, non, non,--fie, Monsieur Job,--no girl; dey are--a--a--a--" "Ladies, Count, you mean," answered Allthings. "Oui, oui, oui--de ladees--_pas la-bas, pas la-bas!_ They must be--a--a--_noyées_--what you call when you fall _dans l'eau_ and _mourez_--eh?" "Drown," returned Allthings. "Oui, Monsieur Allting--drown." "Sure enough," ejaculated Jobson, looking down through the branches, "the girls are not there! Where can they be?" _"O ciel!--noyées!--noyées!"_ shouted the Count, plunging down the bank. _"Mon Dieu!--ces demoiselles dans les eaux!--au secours!--au secours!"_ The last we saw of the excellent Count he was going down the steep bank on the sliding principle, shouting with all his might, and presenting a rare sight of "ground and lofty tumbling" quite edifying to behold. We now all looked. True, the deep hollow beneath was quite forsaken. No ladies were there to be seen. Marvelling somewhat at the sudden disappearance, we all descended from our respective perches by the ladders formed of the branches, roots and tough grape vines, and set foot upon the hollow where our dinner had transpired. Looking around at the banks by which we were surrounded, we at length saw the girls emerge from a twisted ravine at the lower part of the hollow scarcely discernible from the foliage with which it was roofed, and found from the wreaths of moss, ground pine and wild flowers in their hair and around their persons, that they had been also making explorations, although in a lower region than ours. The Count now rejoined the party, after having peered most anxiously and at various points into the lower basin to find the drowned ones, all clustered together upon the short velvet sward near the streamlet, and Paddock was called upon for one of his Indian legends. He said he knew one relating to this very spot, and accordingly commenced: "In the old times, before the foot of the white man had startled the beaver from the stream, or his axe sent the eagle screaming with rage from his aërie on the lofty pine tree, there dwelt a tribe by these waters, an offshoot of the powerful Mohawks. They were called the tribe of the Deer, and had for their chieftain "Os-ko-ne-an-tah," meaning also the Deer. He had one daughter, beautiful as the day, who was named "Jo-que-yoh," or the Bluebird, for the melody of her voice. Jo-que-yoh was affianced to a young brave of her father's tribe named "To-ke-ah," or the Oak. They were tenderly attached to each other. Often when the moon of the summer night transformed these rugged rocks to pearl and this headlong torrent to plunging silver, did the two seat themselves by the margin of this very basin, and while Jo-que-yoh touched with simple skill the strings of her Indian lute, To-ke-ah sang of love and the sweet charms of his mistress. In the war-path the young brave thought only of her, and the scalps he took were displayed to her sight in token of his prowess. In the chase, he still thought of her solely, and the gray coat of the deer and the brindled skin of the fierce panther were laid at her feet. The vest of glossy beaver fur which encompassed her lovely form was the spoil of his arrow. And the eagle plume which rose gracefully from her brow was plucked by his hand from the wing of the haughty soarer of the clouds, that his unerring bow had brought to the dust. Time passed on--the crescent of Jo-que-yoh's beauty was enlarging into the full height of maiden grace, and the tall sapling of To-ke-ah's strength maturing into the size and vigor of his manhood's oak. Another moon, and he was to lead Jo-que-yoh as his bride to his lodge. The happy day at length arrived, and as soon as the first star trembled in the heavens, the joyous ceremonial was to take place. Sunset came, steeping the scene around in lustrous gold, and Jo-que-yoh, arrayed by the maidens of her tribe, sat in the lodge of her father awaiting the star that was to bring her love to her presence. Blushing and trembling she saw "Kah-quah" (the Indian name for the sun) wheeling down into the crimson west, and now his light was hidden. Blushing and trembling, she saw the sweet twilight stealing over the endless forests, and now the star--the bright star of her hope, came creeping, like a timid fawn, into the purple heavens. She heard a footstep, she turned--"To-ke-ah," trembled on her lips. But it was not To-ke-ah. It was Os-ko-ne-an-tah, her father, decked in all his finest splendor, to give away the bride. To-ke-ah she knew had departed in the afternoon upon a neighboring trail for a brighter eagle plume to adorn the brow of his lovely bride on this the evening of their bridal. Something has detained him, but he will soon come. She fixed her large dark elk-like eye upon the star. Momentarily it brightened and again another footstep. It was the maiden she had dispatched upon the rocks to watch for her the approaching form of To-ke-ah. Large and brighter grew the star, but still the absent came not. A shuddering fear began to creep into her bosom. Nothing could detain the absent from her but one reason--death! Larger and brighter grew the star until now it flashed like the eye of To-ke-ah from its home in the heavens. Still the absent came not. Tears began to flow, and she at length started in wild fear from her couch of sassafras to the towering rock to see if she could not behold the approaching shape of To-ke-ah. By this time the sky was sparkling with stars, and a feeble light was shed upon the forests. She saw the pointed rocks around her--she saw the two leaps of the torrent through their rugged pathway--she saw the still black basins on which the stars were glittering, but no To-ke-ah. "To-ke-ah! To-ke-ah! Jo-que-yoh awaits thee!" she cried, but she heard only the plunging of the torrents, and the song of the whippowill wailing as if in echo to her woe. Tremblings seized her limbs, her heart grew sick, and she was nigh swooning upon the rock, when she saw a form hurrying from the woods where the trail began. "To-ke-ah!" she shrieked joyfully, "I have been sad without thee!" and she was about casting herself into the arms of the form, when she found it was the youth who had accompanied To-ke-ah in the chase. "Is not the brave here?" asked the youth, with astonishment; "I left him at the first leap of the torrent, searching for the eagle-nest that is in the cleft of the rock!" With a wild scream Jo-que-yoh rushed away again to her wigwam; with a wild scream she asked for To-ke-ah, and no answer being returned, she darted to her canoe fastened in the cave above the upper leap. "I go for To-ke-ah!" she screamed, as she seized the paddle and unfastened the willow withe, and the canoe darted into the stream directly towards the bend of the torrent. The star-light displayed her slender form to the agonized sight of her father, plunging down the foaming cataract, and she was seen no more! The canoe overturned, emerged into the basin, and dashed down the curve of the second plunge. The father, followed by those present, rushed down the precipice to the basin below, and there were the fragments of the canoe floating around in the eddying waters. A light shape was also seen in the dark pool, and leaping in, Os-ko-ne-an-tah dragged to the margin the drooping form of his daughter. She was dead! A stream of blood poured from her fractured temple, and the father held in his arms only the remains of the loved and still lovely Jo-que-yoh. But a warrior now came rushing down the rocks with "Jo-que-yoh! Jo-que-yoh!" loud upon his tongue. It was To-ke-ah. He had wandered farther than he thought, and hurrying home had found the wigwam of Jo-que-yoh empty. Dashing down the precipice in his mad search, he now came upon the sorrowing group. "Jo-que-yoh! Jo-que-yoh!" he screamed, tearing the dead from the arms of the father, but Jo-que-yoh did not answer. "Jo-que-yoh!" said the proud forest man, bending his head aside in his uncontrollable grief; "I am lost without thee!" But no Jo-que-yoh spoke. She had gone to the far land of the happy in search of To-ke-ah. Then took To-ke-ah the lifeless maiden in his arms and cast himself prostrate on the earth. "To-ke-ah!" said the father, "a great warrior should not weep like the deer in his last agony. Rouse thee! it is Os-ko-ne-an-tah that speaks!" But To-ke-ah answered not. He only lay and shuddered. "Shall the tall tree of my tribe turn to a willow?" again asked Os-ko-ne-an-tah, and this time sternly. "Rise, bravest of my people, behold! even the maidens see thee!" But To-ke-ah answered not. He only lay and shuddered. Then bent Os-ko-ne-an-tah over both and essayed to take from To-ke-ah the form of Jo-que-yoh. But the moment the father touched his daughter, To-ke-ah leaped to his feet with Jo-que-yoh in his arms, and pealing his war-hoop, flourished his keen hatchet over the head of the father. "Go!" shouted he, whilst his eye flamed madly in the light of the pine torches that now kindled up the scene. "Go! Jo-que-yoh is mine. In death as in life, mine and mine only!" and again he threw himself, still holding her to his heart, headlong on the earth. Then went Os-ko-ne-an-tah sadly from the spot, followed by all his people. Still lay To-ke-ah there, grasping the form of his dead bride. The bright star glittered above the two, and then grew pale in the advancing dawn, but still he stirred not. Brightly rose the sun, striking the scene into sudden joy, but still he stirred not. Noon glowed, and then the sunset fell, but To-ke-ah still lay there with the dead one in his arms. Night darkened. Again the star stole out in the red twilight, again grew bright and gleamed above the spot where To-ke-ah rested, but still no motion there. Once more rose the sun, and his first beam rested on To-ke-ah, but still there he lay with the dead one lying on his bosom. At last he rose, and delving a grave in the sod with his knife and tomahawk, deposited therein the form of the maiden, and refilling it with his hands, stretched himself upon the mound. Os-ko-ne-an-tah had in the mean while often approached him, but the moment he appeared, up sprang To-ke-ah with his threatening tomahawk, and only when the father left, did that tomahawk sink, and the Brave again resume his posture. Eight days and nights passed, the most tempting food and the coolest water were placed near him upon the rocks, but still he stirred not. Food and water were untouched. At last, at the close of the ninth day, a thunder-cloud heaved up its black form in the west. Forth rushed the blast, out flashed the lightning, and the thunder was terrible to hear. But in the pauses of the storm there came a strain of guttural music from the grave of Jo-que-yoh--it was the death song of To-ke-ah. Short and faint and broken to the listening ear of Os-ko-ne-an-tah came the song, and at length it ceased. Cautiously approached the father with a torch, for even then he expected to see the flash of To-ke-ah's hatchet over his head. Cautiously he approached, but the form stretched above the grave of his daughter, was motionless. Cautiously he bent over him, and then he turned him with a sudden movement, so that he could look upon his face. To-ke-ah was dead! The faithful warrior had departed in the shadowy trail where Jo-que-yoh had gone, and both were now engaged in the feast of the strawberry in the bright hunting grounds of Hah-wen-ne-yo. When morning came the grave of Jo-que-yoh was opened by Os-ko-ne-an-tah, and the form of To-ke-ah, still arrayed in the weapons of a chief, was deposited in a sitting posture by her side. Again was the grave closed, and often did the young men and the maidens of the tribe repair thither, the first to celebrate the praises of To-ke-ah, and the latter to sing the virtues of Jo-que-yoh. Paddock ceased amidst the plaudits of the company. "He must have been a great fool to starve himself to death," said Jobson, "when he could have killed himself in a shorter time with his hatchet, or even by drowning himself in the pool!" "What a barbarian you are, Jobson!" said Allthings, "every thing is matter of fact with you. Do be still!" "Well, but I don't see the common sense," persisted Jobson, "if he was determined to kill himself, of leaving all the pies and things that they brought him, and starving himself and getting wet in the bargain, when he had a shorter way of doing the job!" "Suppose you go and ask him, Jobson!" said Paddock, smiling; "I don't know his reasons, if he had any. At all events, I tell the tale as I heard it, and can't alter it!" The Count had listened to the story with all his ears, but evidently, from his imperfect knowledge of the English language, without half understanding it. "Pauvre demoiselle! so she did a--a--a--what ye call dat, (making as if pitching headlong,) a--a--a--" "Tumble!" ejaculated Jobson. "_Oui, oui, oui_, toomball, toomball down de--down de _roches--roches_, pauvre demoiselle! did she se blesser?" "She went down the torrent, Count, in her canoe and was dashed to death!" exclaimed little Annie Mapes. "Oh, oh, pauvre demoiselle!" answered the Count, sorrowfully. "The lovaire did _courir_ from her--ah--ah--pauvre demoiselle!" "No, no, Count!" returned Annie impatiently, "her lover did not forsake her. She thought he was dead, and went in her canoe after his body!" "Pauvre demoiselle! and did she _trouver_ him?" "No. She was killed, and her lover had been detained in the chase, and he came afterwards and found her dead, as Mr. Paddock has just said!" "_Oui, oui, oui_, me understand, he try to run away and fall down--me understand--_oui, oui, oui_--me understand." "_No, no_, Count, you are all wrong; he starved himself to death from grief for her loss!" "_Oui, oui_, me understand; he try to run away--fall down--get no food in de _roches_--but he sing to keep courage up--_oui, oui_, me understand--bootiful story, bootiful story, Monsieur Paydook! vrai bootiful indeed! He lay there _long temps_--six, eight, ten day, you say! and den he sing, sing, sing, to keep courage up, for want of food! Bootiful story, bootiful story!" Finding it was in vain to enlighten the Count, Annie gave over her task, and the Count kept repeating, as if to himself: "_Oui, oui_, bootiful story, Monsieur Pay-dook, bootiful story! _bien_ bootiful story indeed! pauvre demoiselle! pauvre demoiselle! Joe--what you call it. She too good for Monsieur Took Ear. He run away--he fall down--he sing. She die to get rid of him. (Shrugging his shoulders and grimacing most laughably.) He run away--he fall down--he sing! pauvre demoiselle!" "I think he must have been crazy!" said Jobson, "not to eat when he could get a chance, and he hungry too, lying there a week or more; and only think, on the damp ground all this time. I wonder he didn't catch the rheumatism!" "No crazy, Monsieur Jobsoon! no crazy! he sing to keep courage up. I sing sometime to keep courage up ven I think of _la belle France_--of Paris! Bootiful story, Monsieur Paydook! _vrai_ bootiful story! Mooch oblege, mooch oblege!" By this time the sun was setting, and the hollow was filled with sweet rosy light. Every leaf flashed, and the "Bounding Deer" was tinged with the beautiful radiance. Soon the light crept up, leaving the bottom of this huge rocky chalice in shadow, whilst the rim was encompassed with rich brilliance. The sun poured down one stream of glory through a cleft in the bank or side of this Titan Goblet, like the visioned future which glows before the sight of happy youth, and then vanished. The gold rim vanished also; still there appeared to be no disposition among the party to leave the scene. Twilight began to shimmer, and now the stars trembled forth from the dusky sky. At last night settled on the landscape, and the girls expressed a wish to see the hollow lighted up with torchlight. Scattering ourselves amongst the trees of the bank, some splinters of the pitch pine were procured, and matches kindled each splinter into thick crimson flame. I clambered up as far as the basin of the first "bound" of the "Deer," and looked down to enjoy the scene. Scores of dark red torches were flashing in every direction, disclosing faces, forms, water, trees and grass, in broken fitful glances and in the most picturesque manner. Sometimes a deep light caught upon the edges of a hemlock, then upon the form of some graceful girl, then upon a huge rock, like the gleaming of stormy lightning, whilst the "Deer" bounded down, tawny as the shell of the chestnut. I looked at the basin at my foot. There were a score too of stars glittering there, but amidst them all was one large clear orb burning with pure and steadfast lustre. It was doubtless the star of Jo-que-yoh, and forthwith I named the basin the "Bath of the Star!" and the lower pool--oh, that shall be called "The Ladies' Mirror." Soon after I descended and once more mingled with the party. Merry song and talk again winged away the hour, until a pale radiance on the highest cliffs gave token of the moon. Soon up she came--that hunter's moon! moon of October! and, like a golden shield, impended from the heavens. And how she kindled up the scene, that lovely moon of the hunter! And by her delicious light we left the hollow, put our steeds in motion, passed through the meadow, skimmed over the valley road, and then turned to the right, up the turnpike leading over the "Barrens," homeward. How fragrant were the odors of the pine in the pure dry air, as we slowly toiled up the ascent of a mile towards the hut of old Gaunsalis, and then up and down over the hills, as the yellow bird flies, we travelled homeward. Past "Lord's Pond," through the turnpike gate, down the Neversink Hill, up the opposite one we went until we saw, gleaming in the heavenly moonlight, the welcome roofs of Monticello. From Bentley's Miscellany. LEOPARDS. ZOOLOGICAL NOTES AND ANECDOTES. "Where sacred Ganges pours along the plain, And Indus rolls to swell the Eastern Main, What awful scenes the curious mind delight! What wonders burst upon the dazzled sight! There giant palms lift high their tufted heads, The plantain wide his graceful foliage spreads; Wild in the woods the active monkey springs, The chattering parrot claps her painted wings; 'Mid tall bamboos lies hid the deadly snake, The tiger crouches in the tangled brake; The spotted axis bounds in fear away; The leopard darts on his defenceless prey, 'Mid reedy pools and ancient forests rude, Cool peaceful haunts of awful solitude!" There is no class of animals which combine in such a marked degree, beauty of form, with a wily and savage nature, as that to which the Leopard tribe belongs. The unusual pliability of the spine and joints with which they are endowed, imparts agility, elasticity, and elegance to their movements, whilst the happy proportions of their limbs give grace to every attitude. Their skins, beautifully sleek, yellow above, and white beneath, are marked with spots of brilliant black, disposed in patterns according to the species; nor are these spots for ornament alone; as was remarked by one of the ablest of the writers in the "Quarterly," the different and characteristic markings of the larger feline animals, bear a direct relation to the circumstances under which they carry on their predatory pursuits. The tawny color of the lion harmonizes with the parched grass or yellow sand, along which he steals towards, or on which he lies in wait to spring upon, a passing prey; and a like relation to the place in which other large feline animals carry on their predatory pursuits, may be traced in their different and characteristic markings. The royal tiger, for instance, which stalks or lurks in the jungle of richly-wooded India, is less likely to be discerned as he glides along the straight stems of the underwood, by having the tawny ground-color of his coat variegated by dark vertical stripes, than if it were uniform like the lion's. The leopard and panther again, which await the approach of their prey, crouching on the outstretched branch of some tree, derive a similar advantage, by having the tawny ground-color broken by dark spots like the leaves around them; but amidst all this variety, in which may be traced the principle of adaptation to special ends, there is a certain unity of plan, the differences not being established from the beginning. Thus the young lion is spotted, during his first year, with dark spots on its lighter ground, and transitorily shows the livery that is most common in the genus. It is singular that man has, in a semi-barbarous state, recognized the same principle as that which constitutes these differences, and applied it to the same purpose. It is well-known that the _setts_, or patterns of several of the highland tartans were originally composed with special reference to concealment among the heather. And with the Highlanders, perhaps, the hint was taken from the ptarmigans and hares of their own native mountains, which change their colors with the season, donning a snow white vest when the ground on which they tread bears the garb of winter, and resuming their garments of grayish brown when the summer's sun has restored to the rocks their natural tints. There are three species sufficiently resembling each other in size and general appearance, to be confounded by persons unacquainted with their characteristics, namely, the leopard, the panther, and the jaguar. The precise distinction between the first two, is still an open question, although the best authorities agree in considering, that they are distinct animals; still confusion exists. An eminent dealer in furs informed us, that in the trade, panther skins were looked upon as being larger than leopards', and the spots more irregular, but the specimens produced were clearly jaguar skins, which made the matter more complicated. The panther, _Felis pardus_, is believed to be an inhabitant of a great portion of Africa, the warmer parts of Asia, and the islands of the Indian Archipelago; while the leopard, _Felis leopardus_, is thought to be confined to Africa. The jaguar, _Felis onca_ is the scourge of South America, from Paraguay almost to the isthmus of Darien, and is altogether a larger and more powerful animal than either of the others. Though presenting much resemblance, there are points of distinction by which the individual may be at once recognized. The jaguar is larger, sturdier, and altogether more thickset than the leopard, whose limbs are the beau ideal of symmetry and grace. The leopard is marked with numerous spots, arranged in small irregular circles on the sides; the ridge of the back, the head, neck, and limbs, being simply spotted, without order. The jaguar is also marked with black spots, but the circles formed by them are much larger, and in almost all, a central spot exists, the whole bearing a rude resemblance to a rose; along the back, the spots are so narrow and elongated, as to resemble stripes. The tail of the jaguar is also considerably shorter than that of the leopard, which is nearly as long as the whole body. Leopards and panthers, if taken quite young, and treated with kindness, are capable of being thoroughly tamed; the poet Cowper, describes the great difference in the dispositions of his three celebrated hares; so it is with other wild animals, and leopards among the rest, some returning kindness with the utmost affection, others being rugged and untameable from the first. Of those brought to this country, the characters are much influenced by the treatment they have experienced on board ship; in some cases they have been made pets by the sailors, and are as tractable as domestic cats; but when they have been teased and subjected to ill-treatment during the voyage, it is found very difficult to render them sociable; there are now (September, 1851) six young leopards in one den at the Zoological Gardens: of these, five are about the same age, and grew up as one family; the sixth was added some time after, and being looked upon as an intruder, was quite sent to Coventry, and even ill-treated by the others; this he has never forgotten. When the keeper comes to the den, he courts his caresses, and shows the greatest pleasure, but if any of his companions advance to share them with him, he growls and spits, and shows the utmost jealousy and displeasure. In the same collection, there is a remarkably fine, full-grown leopard, presented by her Majesty, who is as tame as any creature can be; mutton is his favorite food, but the keeper will sometimes place a piece of beef in the den; the leopard smells it, turns it over with an air of contempt, and coming forward, peers round behind the keeper's back to see if he has not (as is generally the case) his favorite food concealed. If given to him, he lays it down, and will readily leave it at the keeper's call, to come and be patted, and whilst caressed he purrs, and shows the greatest pleasure. There were a pair of leopards in the Tower, before the collection was broken up, which illustrated well the difference in disposition; the male, a noble animal, continued to the last, as sullen and savage as on the day of his arrival. Every kindness was lavished upon him by the keepers, but he received all their overtures with such a sulky and morose return, that nothing could be made of his unreclaimable and unmanageable disposition. The female, which was the older of the two, on the contrary, was as gentle and affectionate as the other was savage, enjoying to be patted and caressed by the keeper, and fondly licking his hands; one failing, however, she had, which brought affliction to the soul of many a beau and lady fair; it was an extraordinary predilection for the destruction of hats, muffs, bonnets, umbrellas, and parasols, and indeed, articles of dress generally, seizing them with the greatest quickness, and tearing them into pieces, almost before the astonished victim was aware of the loss; to so great an extent did she carry this peculiar taste, that Mr. Cops, the superintendent, used to say that she had made prey of as many of these articles as there were days in the year. Animals in menageries are sometimes great enemies to the milliner's art; giraffes have been known to filch the flowers adorning a bonnet, and we once saw a lady miserably oppressed by monkeys. She was very decidedly of "a certain age," but dressed in the extreme of juvenility, with flowers and ribbons of all the colors of the rainbow. Her complexion was delicately heightened with rouge, and the loveliest tresses played about her cheeks. As she languidly sauntered through the former monkey house at the gardens, playfully poking the animals with her parasol, one seized it so vigorously that she was drawn close to the den; in the twinkling of an eye, a dozen little paws were protruded, off went bonnet, curls and all, leaving a deplorable gray head, whilst others seized her reticule and her dress, pulling it in a very unpleasant manner. The handiwork of M. Vouillon was of course a wreck, and the contents of the reticule, her purse, gloves, and delicately scented handkerchief, were with difficulty recovered from out of the cheek pouch of a baboon. On other occasion we saw the elephant, that fine old fellow who died some years ago, administer summary punishment to a weak minded fop, who kept offering him cakes, and on his putting out his trunk, withdrawing them and giving him a rap with his cane instead. One of the keepers warned him, but he laughed, and after he had teased the animal to his heart's content, walked away. After a time he was strolling by the spot again, intensely satisfied with himself, his glass stuck in his eye, and smiling blandly in the face of a young lady, who was evidently offended at his impudence, when the elephant, who was rocking backwards and forwards, suddenly threw out his trunk and seized our friend by the coat tails; the cloth gave way, and the whole back of the coat was torn out, leaving nothing but the collar, sleeves, and front. As may be supposed, this was a damper upon his amatory proceedings; indeed we never saw a man look so small, as he shuffled away amidst the titters of the company, who enjoyed his just reward. That very agreeable writer, Mrs. Lee, formerly Mrs. Bowdich, has related in the first volume of the "Magazine of Natural History," a most interesting account of a tame panther which was in her possession several months. He and another were found very young in the forest, apparently deserted by their mother; they were taken to the King of Ashantee, in whose palace they lived several weeks, when our hero, being much larger than his brother, suffocated him in a fit of romping, and was then sent to Mr. Hutchinson, the resident, left by Mr. Bowdich at Coomassie, by whom he was tamed. When eating was going on he would sit by his master's side and receive his share with gentleness. Once or twice he purloined a fowl, but easily gave it up on being allowed a portion of something else; but on one occasion, when a silly servant tried to pull his food from him, he tore a piece of flesh from the offender's leg, but never owed him any ill-will afterwards. One morning he broke the cord by which he was confined, and the castle gates being shut, a chase commenced, but after leading his pursuers several times round the ramparts, and knocking over a few children by bouncing against them, he suffered himself to be caught and led quietly back to his quarters, under one of the guns of the fortress. By degrees all fear of him subsided, and he was set at liberty, a boy being appointed to prevent his intruding into the apartments of the officers. His keeper, however, like a true Negro, generally passed his watch in sleeping, and Saï, as the panther was called, roamed at large. On one occasion he found his servant sitting on the step of the door, upright, but fast asleep, when he lifted his paw, gave him a pat on the side of the head which laid him flat, and then stood wagging his tail as if enjoying the joke. He became exceedingly attached to the governor, and followed him every where like a dog. His favorite station was at a window in the sitting-room, which overlooked the whole town; there, standing on his hind legs, his fore paws resting on the ledge of the window, and his chin laid between them, he amused himself with watching all that was going on. The children were also fond of this scene; and one day, finding Saï's presence an incumbrance, they united their efforts and pulled him down by the tail. He one day missed the governor, and wandered with a dejected look to various parts of the fortress in search of him; while absent on this errand the governor returned to his private rooms, and seated himself at a table to write; presently he heard a heavy step coming up the stairs, and raising his eyes to the open door beheld Saï. At that moment he gave himself up for lost, for Saï immediately sprang from the door on to his neck: instead, however, of devouring him, he laid his head close to the governor's, rubbed his cheek upon his shoulder, wagged his tail, and tried to evince his happiness. Occasionally, however, the panther caused a little alarm to the other inmates of the castle, and on one occasion the woman, whose duty it was to sweep the floors, was made ill by her fright; she was sweeping the boards of the great hall with a short broom, and in an attitude approaching all-fours, when Saï, who was hidden under one of the sofas, suddenly leaped upon her back, where he stood waving his tail in triumph. She screamed so violently as to summon the other servants, but they, seeing the panther in the act of devouring her, as they thought, gallantly scampered off as fast as their heels could carry them; nor was the woman released from her load till the governor, hearing the noise, came to her assistance. Mrs. Bowdich determined to take this interesting animal to England, and he was conveyed on board ship, in a large wooden cage, thickly barred in front with iron. Even this confinement was not deemed a sufficient protection by the canoe men, who were so alarmed that in their confusion they managed to drop cage and all into the sea. For a few minutes the poor fellow was given up for lost, but some sailors jumped into a boat belonging to the vessel, and dragged him out in safety. He seemed completely subdued by his ducking; and as no one dared to open the cage to dry it, he rolled himself up in one corner, where he remained for some days, till roused by the voice of his mistress. When she first spoke he raised his head, listened attentively, and when she came fully into his view, he jumped on his legs and appeared frantic, rolling over and over, howling and seeming as if he would have torn his cage to pieces; however, his violence gradually subsided, and he contented himself with thrusting his nose and paws through the bars to receive her caresses. The greatest treat that could be bestowed upon Saï was lavender water. Mr. Hutchinson had told Mrs. Bowdich, that on the way from Ashantee, happening to draw out a scented pocket-handkerchief, it was immediately seized by the panther, who reduced it to atoms; nor could he venture to open a bottle of perfume when the animal was near, he was so eager to enjoy it. Twice a week his mistress indulged him by making a cup of stiff paper, pouring a little lavender water into it, and giving it to him through the bars of the cage; he would drag it to him with great eagerness, roll himself over it, nor rest till the smell had evaporated. Quiet and gentle as Saï was, pigs never failed to excite indignation when they hovered about his cage, and the sight of a monkey put him in a complete fury. While at anchor in the Gaboon, an orang-outang was brought on board and remained three days. When the two animals met, the uncontrollable rage of the one and the agony of the other was very remarkable. The orang was about three feet high, and very powerful; so that when he fled, with extraordinary rapidity, from the panther to the other side of the deck, neither men nor things remained upright if they opposed his progress. As for the panther, his back rose in an arch, his tail was elevated and perfectly stiff, his eyes flashed, and as he howled he showed his huge teeth; then, as if forgetting the bars before him, he made a spring at the orang to tear him to atoms. It was long before he recovered his tranquillity; day and night he was on the listen, and the approach of a monkey or a Negro brought back his agitation. During the voyage to England the vessel was boarded by pirates, and the crew and passengers nearly reduced to starvation in consequence; Saï must have died had it not been for a collection of more than three hundred parrots; of these his allowance was one per diem, but he became so ravenous that he had not patience to pick off the feathers, but bolted the birds whole: this made him very ill, but Mrs. Bowdich administered some pills, and he recovered. On the arrival of the vessel in the London Docks, Saï was presented to the Duchess of York, who placed him in Exeter Change temporarily. On the morning of the duchess's departure for Oatlands, she went to visit her new pet, played with him, and admired his gentleness and great beauty. In the evening, when her royal highness's coachman went to take him away to his new quarters at Oatlands, Saï was dead from inflammation on the lungs. To this interesting animal, the following lines by Dryden, might with propriety have been applied: "The Panther, sure the noblest next the Hind And fairest creature of the spotted kind; Oh, could her inborn stains be washed away, She were too good to be a beast of prey! How can I praise or blame, and not offend, Or how divide the frailty from the friend? Her faults and virtues lie so mixed that she, Nor wholly stands condemned, nor wholly free." Mr. Gordon Cumming describes two encounters with leopards, one of which was nearly attended with fatal consequences: "On the 17th," says he, "I was attacked with acute rheumatic fever, which kept me to my bed, and gave me excruciating pain. Whilst I lay in this helpless state, Mr. Orpen and Present, who had gone up the river to shoot sea cows, fell in with an immense male leopard, which the latter wounded very baldly. They then sent natives to camp, to ask me for dogs, of which I sent them a pair. In about an hour the natives came running to camp, and said that Orpen was killed by the leopard. On further inquiry, however, I found that he was not really killed, but frightfully torn and bitten about the arms and head. They had rashly taken up the spoor on foot, the dogs following behind them, instead of going in advance. The consequence of this was, that they came right upon the leopard before they were aware of him, when Orpen fired and missed him. The leopard then sprang on his shoulders, and dashing him to the ground lay upon him, howling and lacerating his hands, arms, and head most fearfully. Presently the leopard permitted Orpen to rise and come away. Where were the gallant Present and all the natives, that not a man of them moved to assist the unfortunate Orpen? According to an established custom among all colonial servants, the instant the leopard sprang, Present discharged his piece in the air, and then dashing it to the ground he rushed down the bank and jumped into the river, along which he swam some hundred yards before he would venture on _terra firma_. The natives, though numerous and armed, had likewise fled in another direction." The tenacity of life of these animals was well shown in the other encounter: "Having partaken of some refreshment," says Mr. Cumming, "I saddled two steeds, and rode down the banks of Ngotwani, with the Bushman, to seek for any game I might find. After riding about a mile along the river's bank, I came suddenly upon an old male leopard lying under the shade of a thorn grove, and panting from the great heat. Although I was within sixty yards of him, he had not heard the horse's tread. I thought he was a lioness and dismounting, took a rest in my saddle on the old gray, and sent a bullet into him. He sprang to his feet, and ran half way down the river's bank, and stood to look about him, when I sent a second bullet into his person, and he disappeared over the bank. The ground being very dangerous, I did not disturb him by following then, but I at once sent Ruyter back to camp for the dogs. Presently he returned with Wolf and Boxer, very much done up with the sun. I rode forward, and on looking over the bank, the leopard started up and sneaked off alongside of the tall reeds, and was instantly out of sight. I fired a random shot from the saddle, to encourage the dogs, and shouted to them; they, however, stood looking stupidly round, and would not take up his scent at all. I led them over his spoor again and again, but to no purpose; the dogs seemed quite stupid, and yet they were Wolf and Boxer, my two best. At length I gave it up as a lost affair, and was riding down the river's bank, when I heard Wolf give tongue behind me, and galloping back I found him at bay, with the leopard immediately beneath where I had first fired at him; he was very severely wounded, and had slipped down into the river's bed, and doubled back, whereby he had thrown out both the dogs and myself. As I approached, he flew out upon Wolf and knocked him over, and then running up the bed of the river he took shelter in a thick bush. Wolf, however, followed him, and at this moment my other dogs came up, having heard the shot, and bayed him fiercely. He sprang out upon them, and then crossed the river's bed, taking shelter beneath some large tangled roots on the opposite bank. As he crossed the river, I put a third bullet into him, firing from the saddle, and as soon as he came to bay I gave him a fourth, which finished him. This leopard was a very fine old male. In the conflict, the unfortunate Alert was wounded as usual, getting his face torn open. He was still going on three legs, with all his breast laid bare by the first water-buck." Major Denham in his interesting travels, gives the following account of an adventure with a huge panther, which occurred during the expedition to Mandara: "We had started several animals of the leopard species, who ran from us so swiftly, twisting their long tails in the air, as to prevent our getting near them. We, however, now started one of a larger kind, which Maramy assured me was so satiated with the blood of a negro, whose carcase we found lying in the wood, that he would be easily killed. I rode up to the spot just as a Shonaa had planted the first spear in him, which passed through the neck a little above the shoulder, and came down between the animal's legs; he rolled over, broke the spear, and bounded off with the lower half in his body. Another Shonaa galloped up within two arms' length and thrust a second through his loins; and the savage animal, with a woeful howl, was in the act of springing on his pursuer, when an Arab shot him through the head with a ball which killed him on the spot. It was a male panther of a very large size, and measured, from the point of the tail to the nose, eight feet two inches." These animals are found in great abundance in the woods bordering on Mandara; there are also leopards, the skins of which were seen, but not in great numbers. The panthers are as insidious as they are cruel; they will not attack any thing that is likely to make resistance, but have been known to watch a child for hours while near the protection of huts or people. It will often spring on a grown person, male or female, while carrying a burthen, but always from behind. The flesh of a child or young kid it will sometimes devour, but when any full grown animal falls a prey to its ferocity, it sucks the blood alone. In India and Ceylon leopards and panthers are called Tree Tigers, and the following narrative of an exciting encounter with one is given in The Menageries:--"I was at Jaffna," says the writer, "at the northern extremity of the island of Ceylon in the beginning of the year 1819, when one morning my servant called me an hour or two before the usual time with, 'Master! master! people sent for master's dogs; tiger in the town!' Now my dogs chanced to be very degenerate specimens of a fine species called the Poligar dogs. I kept them to hunt jackals, but tigers are very different things. This turned out to be a panther; my gun chanced not to be put together, and while my servant was doing it the collector and two medical men, who had recently arrived, came to my door, the former armed with a fowling-piece, and the two latter with remarkably blunt hogspears. They insisted on setting off without waiting for my gun, a proceeding not much to my taste. The tiger (I must continue to call him so) had taken refuge in a hut, the roof of which, as those of Ceylon huts in general, spread to the ground like an umbrella; the only aperture was a small door about four feet high. The collector wanted to get the tiger out at once. I begged to wait for my gun, but, no! the fowling-piece, loaded with ball of course, and the two hogspears were quite enough; I got a hedge stake and awaited my fate for very shame. At this moment, to my great delight, there arrived from the fort an English officer, two artillery-men, and a Malay captain, and a pretty figure we should have cut without them, as the event will show. I was now quite ready to attack, and my gun came a minute afterwards. The whole scene which follows took place within an inclosure, about twenty feet square, formed on three sides by a strong fence of palmyra leaves, and on the fourth by the hut. At the door of this, the two artillery-men planted themselves, and the Malay captain got at the top to frighten the tiger out by worrying it--an easy operation, as the huts there are covered with cocoa-nut leaves. One of the artillery-men wanted to go in to the tiger, but we would not suffer it. At last the beast sprang; this man received him on his bayonet, which he thrust, apparently, down his throat, firing his piece at the same moment. The bayonet broke off short, leaving less than three inches on the musket, the rest remained in the animal, but was invisible to us: the shot probably went through his cheek, for it certainly did not seriously injure him, as he instantly rose upon his legs with a loud roar, and placed his paws upon the soldier's breast. At this moment the animal appeared to me to be about to reach the centre of the man's face; but I had scarcely time to observe this, when the tiger, stooping his head, seized the soldier's arm in his mouth, turned him half round, staggering, threw him over on his back and fell upon him. Our dread now was, that if we fired upon the tiger we might kill the man. For a moment there was a pause, when his comrade attacked the beast exactly in the same manner the gallant fellow himself had done. He struck his bayonet into his head; the tiger rose at him, he fired, and this time the ball took effect, and in the head. The animal staggered backwards, and we all poured in our fire; he still kicked and writhed, when the gentlemen with the hogspears advanced and fixed him, while some natives finished him by beating him on the head with hedge stakes. The brave artillery-man was after all but slightly hurt; he claimed the skin, which was very cheerfully given to him; there was, however, a cry among the natives, that the head should be cut off; it was, and in doing so, the knife came directly across the bayonet. The animal measured scarcely less than four feet from the root of the tail to the muzzle." The following practical joke is related in the late Rev. T. Acland's amusing volume on India:--A party of officers went out from Cuttack to shoot; their men were beating the jungle, when suddenly all the wild cry ceased, and a man came gliding to where all the Sahibs were standing to tell them that there was a tiger lying asleep in his den close at hand. A consultation was instantly held; most of the party were anxious to return to Cuttack, but Captain B---- insisted on having a shot at the animal; accordingly he advanced very quickly, until he came to the place, when he saw, not a tiger, but a large leopard, lying quite still, with his head resting on his fore-paws. He went up close and fired, but the animal did not move. This astonished him, and on examination he found that the brute was already dead. One of his companions had bribed some Indians to place a dead leopard there, and to say that there was a tiger asleep. It may be imagined what a laugh there was! Nature, ever provident, has scattered with a bounteous hand her gifts in the country of the Orinoco, where the jaguar especially abounds. The savannahs, which are covered with grasses and slender plants, present a surprising luxuriance and diversity of vegetation; piles of granite blocks rise here and there, and, at the margins of the plains, occur deep valleys and ravines, the humid soil of which is covered with arums, heliconias, and llianas. The shelves of primitive rocks, scarcely elevated above the plain, are partially coated with lichens and mosses, together with succulent plants and tufts of evergreen shrubs with shining leaves. The horizon is bounded with mountains overgrown with forests of laurels, among which clusters of palms rise to the height of more than a hundred feet, their slender stems supporting tufts of feathery foliage. To the east of Atures other mountains appear, the ridge of which is composed of pointed cliffs, rising like huge pillars above the trees. When those columnar masses are situated near the Orinoco, flamingoes, herons, and other wading birds perch on their summits, and look like sentinels. In the vicinity of the cataracts, the moisture which is diffused in the air produces a perpetual verdure, and wherever soil has accumulated on the plains, it is adorned by the beautiful shrubs of the mountains. Such is one view of the picture, but it has its dark side also; those flowing waters, which fertilize the soil, abound with crocodiles; those charming shrubs and flourishing plants are the hiding-places of deadly serpents; those laurel forests, the favorite lurking spots of the fierce jaguar; whilst the atmosphere, so clear and lovely, abounds with musquitoes and zancudoes to such a degree that, in the missions of Orinoco, the first questions in the morning when two people meet, are "How did you find the zancudoes during the night? How are we to-day for the musquitoes?" It is in the solitude of this wilderness that the jaguar, stretched out motionless and silent, upon one of the lower branches of the ancient trees, watches for its passing prey; a deer, urged by thirst, is making its way to the river, and approaches the tree where his enemy lies in wait. The jaguar's eyes dilate, the ears are thrown down, and the whole frame becomes flattened against the branch. The deer, all unconscious of danger, draws near, every limb of the jaguar quivers with excitement; every fibre is stiffened for the spring; then, with the force of a bow unbent, he darts with a terrific yell upon his prey, seizes it by the back of the neck, a blow is given with his powerful paw, and with broken spine the deer falls lifeless to the earth. The blood is then sucked, and the prey dragged to some favorite haunt, where it is devoured at leisure. Humboldt surprised a jaguar in his retreat. It was near the Joval, below the mouth of the Cano de la Tigrera, that in the midst of wild and awful scenery, he saw an enormous jaguar stretched beneath the shade of a large mimosa. He had just killed a chiguire, an animal about the size of a pig, which he held with one of his paws, while the vultures were assembled in flocks around. It was curious to observe the mixture of boldness and timidity which these birds exhibited; for although they advanced within two feet of the jaguar, they instantly shrank back at the least motion he made. In order to observe more nearly their proceedings, the travellers went into their little boat, when the tyrant of the forest withdrew behind the bushes, leaving his victim, upon which the vultures attempted to devour it, but were soon put to flight by the jaguar rushing into the midst of them. The following night, Humboldt and his party were entertained by a jaguar hunter, half-naked, and as brown as a Zambo, who prided himself on being of the European race, and called his wife and daughter, who were as slightly clothed as himself, Donna Isabella and Donna Manvela. As this aspiring personage had neither house nor hut, he invited the strangers to swing their hammocks near his own between two trees, but as ill-luck would have it, a thunder-storm came on, which wetted them to the skin; but their troubles did not end here, for Donna Isabella's cat had perched on one of the trees, and frightened by the thunder-storm, jumped down upon one of the travellers in his cot; he naturally supposed that he was attacked by a wild beast, and as smart a battle took place between the two, as that celebrated feline engagement of Don Quixote; the cat, who perhaps had most reason to consider himself an ill-used personage, at length bolted, but the fears of the gentleman had been excited to such a degree, that he could hardly be quieted. The following night was not more propitious to slumber. The party finding no tree convenient, had stuck their oars in the sand, and suspended their hammocks upon them. About eleven, there arose in the immediately adjoining wood, so terrific a noise, that it was impossible to sleep. The Indians distinguished the cries of sapagous, alouates, jaguars, cougars, peccaris, sloths, curassows, paraquas, and other birds, so that there must have been as full a forest chorus as Mr. Hullah himself could desire. When the jaguars approached the edge of the forest, which they frequently did, a dog belonging to the party began to howl, and seek refuge under their cots. Sometimes, after a long silence, the cry of the jaguars came from the tops of the trees, when it was followed by an outcry among the monkeys. Humboldt supposes the noise thus made by the inhabitants of the forest during the night, to be the effect of some contests that had arisen among them. On the pampas of Paraquay, great havoc is committed among the herds of horses by the jaguars, whose strength is quite sufficient to enable them to drag off one of these animals. Azara caused the body of a horse, which had been recently killed by a jaguar, to be drawn within musket-shot of a tree, in which he intended to pass the night, anticipating that the jaguar would return in the course of it, to its victim; but while he was gone to prepare for his adventure, behold the animal swam across a large and deep river, and having seized the horse with his teeth, dragged it full sixty paces to the river, swam across again with his prey, and then dragged the carcase into a neighboring wood; and all this in sight of a person, whom Azara had placed to keep watch. But the jaguars have also an aldermanic goût for turtles, which they gratify in a very systematic manner, as related by Humboldt, who was shown large shells of turtles emptied by them. They follow the turtles towards the beaches, where the laying of eggs is to take place, surprise them on the sand, and in order to devour them at their ease, adroitly turn them on their backs; and as they turn many more than they can devour in one night, the Indians often profit by their cunning. The jaguar pursues the turtle quite into the water, and when not very deep, digs up the eggs; they, with the crocodile, the heron, and the gallinago vulture, are the most formidable enemies the little turtles have. Humboldt justly remarks, "When we reflect on the difficulty that the naturalist finds in getting out the body of the turtle, without separating the upper and under shells, we cannot enough admire the suppleness of the jaguar's paw, which empties the double armor of the _arraus_, as if the adhering parts of the muscles had been cut by means of a surgical instrument." The rivers of South America swarm with crocodiles, and these wage perpetual war with the jaguars. It is said, that when the jaguar surprises the alligator asleep on the hot sandbank, he attacks him in a vulnerable part under the tail, and often kills him, but let the crocodile only get his antagonist into the water, and the tables are turned, for the jaguar is held under water until he is drowned. The onset of the jaguar is always made from behind, partaking of the stealthy, treacherous character of his tribe; if a herd of animals, or a party of men be passing, it is the last that is always the object of his attack. When he has made choice of his victim, he springs upon the neck, and placing one paw on the back of the head, while he seizes the muzzle with the other, twists the head round with a sudden jerk which dislocates the spine, and deprives it instantaneously of life; sometimes, especially when satiated with food, he is indolent and cowardly, skulking in the gloomiest depths of the forest, and scared by the most trifling causes, but when urged by the cravings of hunger, the largest quadrupeds, and man himself, are attacked with fury and success. Mr. Darwin has given an interesting account of the habits of the jaguar: the wooded banks of the great South American rivers appear to be their favorite haunt, but south of the Plata they frequent the reeds bordering lakes; wherever they are they seem to require water. They are particularly abundant on the isles of the Parana, their common prey being the carpincho, so that it is generally said, where carpinchos are plentiful, there is little fear of the jaguar; possibly, however, a jaguar which has tasted human flesh, may afterwards become dainty, and, like the lions of South Africa, and the tigers of India, acquire the dreadful character of man-eaters, from preferring that food to all others. It is not many years ago since a very large jaguar found his way into a church in Santa Fé; soon afterwards a very corpulent padre entering, was at once killed by him: his equally stout coadjutor, wondering what had detained the padre, went to look after him, and also fell a victim to the jaguar; a third priest, marvelling greatly at the unaccountable absence of the others, sought them, and the jaguar having by this time acquired a strong clerical taste, made at him also, but he, being fortunately of the slender order, dodged the animal from pillar to post, and happily made his escape; the beast was destroyed by being shot from a corner of the building, which was unroofed, and thus paid the penalty of his sacrilegious propensities. On the Parana they have killed many woodcutters, and have even entered vessels by night. One dark evening the mate of a vessel, hearing a heavy but peculiar footstep on deck, went up to see what it was, and was immediately met by a jaguar, who had come on board, seeking what he could devour: a severe struggle ensued, assistance arrived, and the brute was killed, but the man lost the use of the arm which had been ground between his teeth. The Guachos say that the jaguar, when wandering about at night, is much tormented by the foxes yelping as they follow him; this may perhaps serve to alarm his prey, but must be as teasing to him as the attentions of swallows are to an owl who happens to be taking a daylight promenade; and if owls ever swear, it is under those circumstances. Mr. Darwin, when hunting on the banks of the Uruguay, was shown three well-known trees to which the jaguars constantly resort, for the purpose, it is said, of sharpening their claws. Every one must be familiar with the manner in which cats, with outstretched legs and extended claws, will card the legs of chairs and of men; so with the jaguar; and of these trees, the bark was worn quite smooth in front; on each side there were deep grooves, extending in an oblique line nearly a yard in length. The scars were of different ages, and the inhabitants could always tell when a jaguar was in the neighborhood, by his recent autograph on one of these trees. We have seen tigers stretching their enormous limbs in this manner, and were recently interested in watching the proceedings of two beautiful young jaguars now in the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park; they are scarcely half-grown and as playful as kittens. After chasing and tumbling each other over several times, they went as by mutual consent to the post of their cage, and there carefully and with intensely placid countenances scraped away with their claws as they would have done against the trees had they been in their native woods. This proceeding satisfactorily concluded, they swarmed up and down the post, appearing to vie with each other as to which should be first. The six young leopards are equally graceful and active with the above, and the elegance and quickness of their movements cannot fail to command admiration. They seem to be particularly fond of bounding up and down the trees, and sometimes rest in the strangest attitudes, stuck in the fork of a bough, or sitting, as it were; astride of one, with their hind legs hanging down. M. Sonnini bears testimony to the extraordinary climbing powers of the jaguar; "For," says he, "I have seen, in the forests of Guiana, the prints left by the claws of the jaguar on the smooth bark of a tree from forty to fifty feet in height, measuring about a foot and a half in circumference, and clothed with branches near its summit alone. It was easy to follow with the eye the efforts which the animal had made to reach the branches; although his talons had been thrust deeply into the body of the tree, he had met with several slips, but had always recovered his ground; and attracted, no doubt, by some favorite prey, had at length succeeded in gaining the very top!" The following is the common mode of killing the jaguar in Tucuman: The Guacho, armed with a long strong spear, traces him to his den, and having found it, he places himself in a convenient position to receive the animal on the point of the spear at the first spring; dogs are then sent in, and driving him out he springs with fury upon the Guacho, who, fixing his eyes on those of the jaguar, receives his onset kneeling, and with such consummate coolness that he hardly ever fails. At the moment that the spear is plunged into the animal's body the Guacho nimbly springs on one side, and the jaguar, already impaled on the spear, is speedily dispatched. In one instance the animal lay stretched on the ground, like a gorged cat, and was in such high good humor after his satisfactory meal, that on the dogs attacking him he was disposed to play with them; a bullet was therefore lodged in his shoulder, on which rough salute he sprang out so quickly on his watching assailant, that he not only received the spear in his body, but tumbled the man over, and they rolled on the ground together. "I thought," said the brave fellow, "that I was no longer a capitaz, as I held up my arm to protect my throat, which the jaguar seemed in the act of seizing; but at the very moment that I expected to feel his fangs in my flesh, the green fire which had blazed upon me from his eyes flashed out--he fell upon me, and with a quiver died." Colonel Hamilton relates that when travelling on the banks of the Magdalena, he remarked a young man with his arm in a sling, and on inquiring the cause, was told that about a month before, when walking in a forest, a dog he had with him began to bark at something in a dark cavern overhung with bushes; and on his approaching the entrance, a jaguar rushed on him with great force, seizing his right arm, and in the struggle they both fell over a small precipice. He then lost his senses, and on recovering found the jaguar had left him, but his arm was bleeding and shockingly lacerated. On surprise being expressed that the animal had not killed him, he shrugged up his shoulders, and remarked, "La bienaventurada virgen Maria le habia salvo." The blessed Virgin had saved him. In the province of Buenaventura it is said that the Indians kill the jaguar by means of poisoned arrows, about eight inches in length, which are thrown from a blow-pipe: the arrows are poisoned with a moisture which exudes from the back of a small green frog, found in the provinces of Buenaventura and Choco. When the Indians want to get this poison from the frog, they put him near a small fire, and the moisture soon appears on his back; in this the points of the small arrows are dipped, and so subtle is the poison that a jaguar struck by one of these little insignificant weapons, soon becomes convulsed and dies. The jaguar has the general character of being untameable, and of maintaining his savage ferocity when in captivity, showing no symptoms of attachment to those who have the care of him. This, like many other points in natural history, is a popular error; there is at the present time a magnificent jaguar in the Zoological Gardens, who is as tame and gentle as a domestic cat. We have seen this fine creature walking up and down the front of his den as his keeper walked, rubbing himself against the bars, purring with manifest pleasure as his back or head was stroked, and caressing the man's hand with his huge velvet paws. There is in the collection another jaguar, just as savage as this one is tame. There was also a jaguar formerly in the Tower, which was obtained by Lord Exmouth while on the South American Station, and was afterwards present at the memorable bombardment of Algiers. This animal was equally gentle with that we have described, and was presented to the Marchioness of Londonderry by Lord Exmouth on his return to England after that engagement: it was placed by her Ladyship in the Tower, where it died. In a state of nature these animals have been known to show not only forbearance, but even playfulness, of which Humboldt relates the following instance which occurred at the mission of Atures, on the banks of the Orinoco: "Two Indian children, a boy and girl, eight or nine years of age, were sitting among the grass near the village of Atures, in the midst of a savannah. It was two in the afternoon when a jaguar issued from the forest and approached the children, gambolling around them, sometimes concealing itself among the long grass and again springing forward with his back curved and his head lowered, as is usual with our cats. The little boy was unaware of the danger in which he was placed, and became sensible of it only when the jaguar struck him on the side of the head with one of his paws. The blows thus inflicted were at first slight, but gradually became ruder; the claws of the jaguar wounded the child, and blood flowed with violence; the little girl then took up the branch of a tree, and struck the animal, which fled before her. The Indians, hearing the cries of the children, ran up, and saw the jaguar, which bounded off without showing any disposition to defend itself." In all probability, this fit of good humor was to be traced to the animal having been plentifully fed; for most assuredly the children would have stood but little chance, had their visitor been subjected to a meagre diet for some days previously. Mr. Edwards, in his voyage up the Amazon, tells of an exchange of courtesies between a traveller and a jaguar. The jaguar was standing in the road as the Indian came out of the bushes, not ten paces distant, and was looking, doubtless, somewhat fiercely as he waited the unknown comer. The Indian was puzzled for an instant, but summoning his presence of mind, he took off his broad brimmed hat, and made a low bow, with "Muito bene dias, men Señhor," or "A very good morning, Sir." Such profound respect was not wanting on the jaguar, who turned slowly and marched down the road with proper dignity. It is difficult to say how many leopards and jaguar skins are annually imported, as the majority are brought by private hands. We have been told by an eminent furrier that about five hundred are sold each year to the London trade. They are chiefly used as shabraques, or coverings to officers' saddles in certain hussar regiments, but skins used for this purpose must be marked in a particular manner, and the ground must be of a dark rich color. Such skins are worth about three pounds; ordinary leopard and jaguar skins are valued at about two pounds, and are chiefly used for rugs or mats. The jaguar skins are sometimes of great size, and we have measured one which was nine feet seven inches from tip to tip. The leopard skins are exclusively used for military purposes, and the jaguar's are preferred for rugs. From the Dublin University Magazine. A LEGEND OF THE EAST NEUK OF FIFE. It was a cold night in the March of the year 1708. The hour of ten had tolled from the old Gothic tower of the Collegiate Church; beating on his drum, the drummer in the livery of the burgh had proceeded from the Market-cross to the ruins of St. David's Castle, and from thence to the chapel of St. Rufus, and having made one long roll or flourish at the point from whence his peregrination began, he adjourned to the _Thane of Fife_ to procure a dram, while the good folks of Crail composed themselves for the night, and the barring of doors and windows announced that those who were within had resolved to make themselves comfortable and secure, while those unfortunate wights that were without were likely to remain so. Hollowly the German Sea was booming on the rocks of the harbor; and from its hazy surface a cold east wind swept over the flat, bleak coast of Crail; a star peeped at times between the flying clouds, and even the moon looked forth once, but immediately veiled her face again, as if one glance at the iron shore and barren scenery, unenlivened by hedge or tree, were quite enough to prevent her from looking again. The town drummer had received his dram and withdrawn, and Master Spiggot, the gudeman or landlord of the _Thane of Fife_, the principal tavern, and only inn or hostel in the burgh, was taking a last view of the main street, and considering the propriety of closing for the night. It was broad, spacious, and is still overlooked by many a tall and gable-ended mansion, whose antique and massive aspect announces that, like other Fifeshire burghs before the Union in the preceding year, it had seen better days. Indeed, the house then occupied by Master Spiggot himself, and from which his sign bearing the panoplied _Thane_ at full gallop on a caparisoned steed swung creaking in the night wind, was one of those ancient edifices, and in former days had belonged to the provost of the adjoining kirk; but this was (as Spiggot said) "in the auld warld times o' the Papistrie." The gudeman shook his white head solemnly and sadly, as he looked down the empty thoroughfare. "There _was_ a time," he muttered, and paused. Silent and desolate as any in the ruins of Thebes, the street was half covered with weeds and rank grass that grew between the stones, and Spiggot could see them waving in the dim starlight. Crail is an out-of-the-way place. It is without thoroughfare and without trade; few leave it and still fewer think of going there, for there one feels as if on the very verge of society; for there, even by day, reigns a monastic gloom, a desertion, a melancholy, a uniform and voiceless silence, broken only by the croak of the gleds and the cawing of the clamorous gulls nestling on the old church tower, while the sea booms incessantly as it rolls on the rocky beach. But there was a time when it was otherwise; when the hum of commerce rose around its sculptured cross, and there was a daily bustle in the chambers of its Town-hall, for there a portly provost and bailies with a battalion of seventeen corpulent councillors sat solemnly deliberating on the affairs of the burgh; and swelling with a municipal importance that was felt throughout the whole East Neuk of Fife; for, in those days, the bearded Russ and red-haired Dane, the Norwayer, and the Hollander, laden with merchandise, furled their sails in that deserted harbor, where now scarcely a fisherboat is seen; for on Crail, as on all its sister towns along the coast, fell surely and heavily the terrible blight of 1707, and now it is hastening rapidly to insignificance and decay. On the sad changes a year had brought about, Spiggot pondered sadly, and was only roused from his dreamy mood by the sudden apparition of a traveller on horseback standing before him; for so long and so soft was the grass of the street that his approach had been unheard by the dreamer, whose mind was wandering after the departed glories of the East Neuk. "A cold night, landlord, for such I take you to be," said the stranger, in a bold and cheerful voice, as he dismounted. "A cauld night and a dreary too," sighed poor Boniface, as he bowed, and hastening to seize the stranger's bridle, buckled it to a ring at the doorcheek; "but the sicht of a visitor does gude to my heart; step in, sir. A warm posset that was simmering in the parlor for myself is at your service, and I'll set the stall-boy to corn your beast and stable it." "I thank you, gudeman; but for unharnessing it matters not, as I must ride onward; but I will take the posset with thanks, for I am chilled to death by my long ride along this misty coast." Spiggot looked intently at the traveller as he stooped, and entering the low-arched door which was surmounted by an old monastic legend, trod into the bar with a heavy clanking stride, for he was accoutred with jack-boots and gilded spurs. His rocquelaure was of scarlet cloth, warmly furred, and the long curls of his Ramillies wig flowed over it. His beaver was looped upon three sides with something of a military air, and one long white feather that adorned it, floated down his back, for the dew was heavy on it. He was a handsome man, about forty years of age, well sunburned, with a keen dark eye, and close-clipped moustache, which indicated that he had served in foreign wars. He threw his hat and long jewelled rapier aside, and on removing his rocquelaure, discovered a white velvet coat more richly covered with lace than any that Spiggot had ever seen even in the palmiest days of Crail. According to the fashion of Queen Anne's courtiers, it was without a collar, to display the long white cravat of point d'Espagne, without cuffs, and edged from top to bottom with broad bars of lace, clasps and buttons of silver the whole length; being compressed at the waist by a very ornamental belt fastened by a large gold buckle. "Your honor canna think of riding on to-night," urged Boniface; "and if a Crail-capon done just to perfection, and a stoup of the best wine, at least siccan wine as we get by the east seas, since that vile incorporating Union--" "Vile and damnable! say I," interrupted the stranger. "True for ye, sir," said Spiggot with a kindling eye; "but if these puir viands can induce ye to partake of the hospitality of my puir hostel, that like our gude burrowtoun is no just what it has been--" "Gudeman, 'tis impossible, for I must ride so soon as I have imbibed thy posset." "As ye please, sir--your honor's will be done. Our guests are now, even as the visits of angels, unco few and far between; and thus, when one comes, we are loath to part with him. There is a deep pitfall, and an ugly gullyhole where the burn crosses the road at the town-head, and if ye miss the path, the rocks by the beach are steep, and in a night like this--" "Host of mine," laughed the traveller, "I know right well every rood of the way, and by keeping to the left near the Auldlees may avoid both the blackpit and the sea-beach." "Your honor kens the country hereawa then," said Spiggot with surprise. "Of old, perhaps, I knew it as well as thee." The gudeman of the _Thane_ scrutinized the traveller's face keenly, but failed to recognize him, and until this moment he thought that no man in the East Neuk was unknown to him; but here his inspection was at fault. "And hast thou no visitors with thee now, friend host?" he asked of Spiggot. "One only, gude sir, who came here on a brown horse about nightfall. He is an unco foreign-looking man, but has been asking the way to the castle o' Balcomie." "Ha! and thou didst tell of this plaguy pitfall, I warrant." "Assuredly, your honor, in kindness I did but hint of it." "And thereupon he stayed. Balcomie--indeed! and what manner of man is he?" "By the corslet which he wears under his coat, and the jaunty cock of his beaver, I would say he had been a soldier." "Good again--give him my most humble commendations, and ask him to share thy boasted posset of wine with me." "What name did you say, sir?" "Thou inquisitive varlet, I said no name," replied the gentleman, with a smile, "In these times men do not lightly give their names to each other, when the land is swarming with Jacobite plotters and government spies, disguised Jesuits, and Presbyterian tyrants. I may be the Devil or the Pope for all thou knowest." "Might ye no be the Pretender?" said Spiggot, with a sour smile. "Nay, I have a better travelling name than that; but say to this gentleman that the Major of Marshal Orkney's Dragoons requests the pleasure of sharing a stoup of wine with him." "Sir, it mattereth little whether ye give your name or no," replied the host bitterly; "for we are a' nameless now. Twelve months ago we were true Scottish men, but _now_--" "Our king is an exile--our crown is buried for ever, and our brave soldiers are banished to far and foreign wars, while the grass is growing green in the streets of our capital--ay, green as it is at this hour in your burgh of Crail; but hence to the stranger; yet say not," added the traveller, bitterly and proudly, "that in his warmth the Scottish cavalier has betrayed himself." While the speaker amused himself with examining a printed proclamation concerning the "Tiend Commissioners and Transplantation off Paroch Kirkis," which was pasted over the stone mantelpiece of the bar, the landlord returned with the foreign gentleman's thanks, and an invitation to his chamber, whither the Major immediately repaired; following the host up a narrow stone spiral stair to a snugly wainscotted room, against the well-grated windows of which a sudden shower was now beginning to patter. The foreigner, who was supping on a Crail-capon (in other words a broiled haddock) and stoup of Bourdeaux wine, arose at their entrance, and bowed with, an air that was undisguisedly continental. He was a man above six feet, with a long straight nose, over which his dark eyebrows met and formed one unbroken line. He wore a suit of green Genoese velvet, so richly laced that little of the cloth was visible; a full-bottomed wig, and a small corslet of the brightest steel (over which hung the ends of his cravat), as well as a pair of silver-mounted cavalry pistols that lay on the table, together with his unmistakable bearing, decided the Major of Orkney's that the stranger was a brother of the sword. "Fair sir, little introduction is necessary between us, as, I believe, we have both followed the drum in our time," said the Major, shaking the curls of his Ramillie wig with the air of a man who has decided on what he says. "I _have_ served, Monsieur," replied the foreigner, "under Marlborough and Eugene." "Ah! in French Flanders? Landlord--gudeman, harkee; a double stoup of this wine; I have found a comrade to-night--be quick and put my horse to stall, I will not ride hence for an hour or so. What regiment, sir?" "I was first under Grouvestien in the Horse of Driesberg." "Then you were on the left of the second column at Ramillies--on that glorious 12th of May," said the Major, drawing the high-backed chair which the host handed him, and spreading out his legs before the fire, which burned merrily in the basket-grate on the hearth, "and latterly--" "Under Wandenberg." "Ah! an old tyrannical dog." A dark cloud gathered on the stranger's lofty brow. "I belonged to the Earl of Orkney's Grey Dragoons," said the Major; "and remember old Wandenberg making a bold charge in that brilliant onfall when we passed the lines of Monsieur le Mareschal Villars at Pont-a-Vendin, and pushed on to the plains of Lens." "That was before we invested Doway and Fort-Escharpe, where old Albergotti so ably commanded ten thousand well-beaten soldiers." "And then Villars drew off from his position at sunset and encamped on the plain before Arras." "Thou forgettest, comrade, that previously he took up a position in rear of Escharpe." "True; but now I am right into the very melée of those old affairs, and the mind carries one on like a rocket. Your health, sir--by the way, I am still ignorant of your name." "I have such very particular reasons for concealing it in this neighborhood, that--" "Do not think me inquisitive; in these times men should not pry too closely." "Monsieur will pardon me I hope." "No apology is necessary, save from myself, for now my curiosity is thoroughly and most impertinently whetted, to find a Frenchman in this part of the world, here in this out-o'-the-way place, where no one comes to, and no one goes from, on a bleak promontory of the German Sea, the East Neuk of Fife." "Monsieur will again excuse me; but I have most particular business with a gentleman in this neighborhood; and having travelled all the way from Paris, expressly to have it settled, I beg that I may be excused the pain of prevarication. The circumstance of my having served under the great Duke of Malborough against my own King and countrymen is sufficiently explained when I acquaint you, that I was then a French Protestant refugee; but now, without changing my religion, I have King Louis's gracious pardon and kind protection extended to me." "And so you were with Wandenberg when his troopers made that daring onfall at Pont-a-Vendin, and drove back the horse picquets of Villars," said the Major, to lead the conversation from a point which evidently seemed unpleasant to the stranger. "'Twas sharp, short, and decisive, as all cavalry affairs should be. You will of course remember that unpleasant affair of Wandenberg's troopers, who were accused of permitting a French prisoner to escape. It caused a great excitement in the British camp, where some condemned the dragoons, others Van Wandenberg, and not a few our great Marlborough himself." "I did hear something of it," said the stranger in a low voice. "The prisoner whose escape was permitted was, I believe, the father of the youths who captured him, a circumstance which might at least have won them mercy--" "From the Baron!" "I forgot me--he was indeed merciless." "But as I left his dragoons, and indeed the army about that time, I will be glad to hear _your_ account of the affair." "It is a very unpleasant story--the more so as I was somewhat concerned in it myself," said the Major, slowly filling his long stemmed glass, and watching the white worm in its stalk, so intently as he recalled all the circumstances he was about to relate, that he did not observe the face of the French gentleman, which was pale as death; and after a short pause, he began as follows: "In the onfall at Pont-a-Vendin, it happened that two young Frenchmen who served as gentlemen volunteers with you in the dragoon regiment of Van Wandenberg, had permitted--how, or why, I pretend not to say--the escape of a certain prisoner of distinction. Some said he was no other than M. le Mareschal Villars himself. They claimed a court martial, but the old Baron, who was a savage-hearted Dutchman, insisted that they should be given up unconditionally to his own mercy, and in an evil moment of heedlessness or haste, Marlborough consented, and sent me (I was his Aid-de-Camp) with a written order to that effect, addressed to Colonel the Baron Van Wandenberg, whose regiment of horse I met _en route_ for St. Venant, about nightfall on a cold and snowy evening in the month of November. "Snow covered the whole country, which was all a dead level, and a cold, leaden-colored sky met the white horizon in one unbroken line, save where the leafless poplars of some far-off village stood up, the landmarks of the plain. In broad flakes the snow fell fast, and directing their march by a distant spire, the Dutch troopers rode slowly over the deepening fields. They were all muffled in dark blue cloaks, on the capes of which the snow was freezing, while the breath of the men and horses curled like steam in the thickening and darkening air. "Muffled to the nose in a well furred rocquelaure, with my wig tied to keep the snow from its curls, and my hat flapped over my face, I rode as fast as the deep snow would permit, and passing the rear of the column where, moody and disarmed, the two poor French volunteers were riding under care of an escort, I spurred to the Baron who rode in front near the kettle drums, and delivered my order; as I did so, recalling with sadness the anxious and wistful glance given me by the prisoners as I passed them. "Wandenberg, who had no more shape than a huge hogshead, received the dispatch with a growl of satisfaction. He would have bowed, but his neck was too short. I cannot but laugh when I remember his strange aspect. In form he looked nearly as broad as he was long, being nearly eight feet in girth, and completely enveloped in a rough blue rocquelaure, which imparted to his figure the roundness of a ball. His face, reddened by skiedam and the frost, was glowing like crimson, while the broad beaver hat that overshadowed it, and the feathers with which the beaver was edged, were incrusted with the snow that was rapidly forming a pyramid on its crown, imparting to his whole aspect a drollery at which I could have laughed heartily, had not his well-known acuteness and ferocity awed me into a becoming gravity of demeanor; and delivering my dispatch with a tolerably good grace, I reined back my horse to await any reply he might be pleased to send the Duke. "His dull Dutch eyes glared with sudden anger and triumph, as he folded the document, and surveyed the manacled prisoners. Thereafter he seized his speaking trumpet, and thundered out-- "'Ruyters--halt! form open column of troops, trot!' "It was done as rapidly as heavily armed Dutchmen on fat slow horses knee deep among snow could perform it, and then wheeling them into line, he gave the orders-- "'Forward the flanks--form circle--sling musquetoons!--trumpeters ride to the centre and dismount.' "By these unexpected manoeuvres, I suddenly found myself inclosed in a hollow circle of the Dutch horsemen, and thus, as it were, compelled to become a spectator of the scene that ensued, though I had his Grace of Marlborough's urgent orders to rejoin him without delay on the road to Aire." "'And--and you saw--' "Such a specimen of discipline as neither the devil nor De Martinet ever dreamed of; but thoroughly Dutch I warrant you. "I have said it was intensely cold, and that the night was closing; but the whiteness of the snow that covered the vast plain, with the broad red circle of the half-obscured moon that glimmered through the fast falling flakes as it rose behind a distant spire, cast a dim light upon the place where the Dutchmen halted. But deeming that insufficient, Van Wandenberg ordered half a dozen torches to be lighted, for his troopers always had such things with them, being useful by night for various purposes; and hissing and sputtering in the falling snow flakes, their lurid and fitful glare was thrown on the close array of the Dutch dragoons, on their great cumbrous hats, on the steeple crowns of which, I have said, the snow was gathering in cones, and the pale features of the two prisoners, altogether imparting a wild, unearthly, and terrible effect to the scene about to be enacted on that wide and desolate moor. "By order of Van Wandenberg, three halberts were fixed into the frozen earth, with their points bound together by a thong, after which the dismounted trumpeters layed hands on one of the young Frenchmen, whom they proceeded to strip of his coat and vest. "Disarmed and surrounded, aware of the utter futility of resistance, the unfortunate volunteer offered none, but gazed wistfully and imploringly at me, and sure I am, that in my lowering brow and kindling eyes, he must have seen the storm that was gathering in my heart. "'Dieu vous benisse, Monsieur Officer," cried the Frenchman in a mournful voice, while shuddering with cold and horror as he was stripped to his shirt; 'save me from this foul disgrace, and my prayers--yea, my life shall be for ever at your disposal.' "'Good comrade,' said I, 'entreat me not, for here, I am powerless.' "'Baron,' he exclaimed; 'I am a gentleman--a gentleman of old France, and I dare thee to lay thy damnable scourge upon me.' "'Ach Gott! dare--do you say dare? ve vill ze!' laughed Van Wandenberg, as the prisoner was dragged forward and about to be forcibly trussed to the halberts by the trumpeters, when animated to the very verge of insanity, he suddenly freed himself, and rushing like a madman upon the Baron, struck him from his horse by one blow of his clenched hand. The horse snorted, the Dutch troopers opened their saucer eyes wider still, as the great and corpulent mass fell heavily among the deepening snow, and in an instant the foot of the Frenchmen was pressed upon his throat, while he exclaimed: "'If I slay thee, thou hireling dog, as I have often slain thy clodpated countrymen in other days,' and the Frenchman laughed fiercely, 'by St. Denis! I will have one foe-man less on this side of Hell!' "'Gott in Himmel! ach! mein tuyvel! mein--mein Gott!' gasped the Dutchman as he floundered beneath the heel of the vengeful and infuriated Frenchman, who was determined on destroying him, till a blow from the baton of an officer, stretched him almost senseless among the snow, where he was immediately grasped by the trumpeters, disrobed of his last remaining garment, and bound strongly to the halberts. "Meanwhile the other prisoner had been pinioned and resolutely held by his escort, otherwise he would undoubtedly have fallen also upon Van Wandenberg, who choking with a tempest of passion that was too great to find utterance in words, had gathered up his rotund figure, and with an agility wonderful in a man of his years and vast obesity, so heavily armed, in a buff coat and jack-boots ribbed with iron, a heavy sword and cloak, clambered on the back of his horse, as a clown would climb up a wall; and with a visage alternating between purple and blue, by the effects of rage and strangulation, he surveyed the prisoner for a moment in silence, and there gleamed in his piggish gray eyes an expression of fury and pain, bitterness and triumph combined, and he was only able to articulate one word-- "'Flog.' "On the handsome young Frenchman's dark curly hair, glistening with the whitening snow that fell upon it, and on his tender skin reddening in the frosty atmosphere, on the swelling muscles of his athletic form, on a half-healed sabre wound, and on the lineaments of a face that then expressed the extremity of mental agony, fell full the wavering light of the uplifted torches. The Dutch, accustomed to every species of extra-judicial cruelty by sea and land, looked on with the most grave stolidity and apathetic indifference; while I felt an astonishment and indignation that rapidly gave place to undisguised horror. "'_Flog!_' "The other prisoner uttered a groan that seemed to come from his very heart, and then covered his ears and eyes with his hands. Wielded by a muscular trumpeter, an immense scourge of many-knotted cords was brought down with one full sweep on the white back of the victim, and nine livid bars, each red, as if seared by a hot iron, rose under the infliction, and again the terrible instrument was reared by the trumpeter at the full stretch of his sinewy arm. "Monsieur will be aware, that _until_ the late Revolution of 1688, this kind of punishment was unknown here and elsewhere, save in Holland; and though I have seen soldiers run the gauntlet, ride the mare, and beaten by the martinets, I shall never, oh, no! never forget the sensation of horror with which this (to me) new punishment of the poor Frenchman inspired me; and, sure I am, that our great Duke of Marlborough could in no way have anticipated it. "Accustomed, as I have said, to every kind of cruel severity, unmoved and stoically the Dutch looked on with their gray, lacklustre eyes, dull, unmeaning, and passionless in their stolidity, contrasting strongly with the expression of startled horror depicted in the strained eyeballs and bent brows of the victim's brother, when after a time he dared to look on this revolting punishment. Save an ill-repressed sob, or half-muttered interjection from the suffering man, no other sound broke the stillness of the place, where a thousand horsemen stood in close order, but the sputtering of the torches, in the red light of which our breaths were ascending like steam. Yes! there was one other sound, and it was a horrible one--the monotonous whiz of the scourge, as it cut the keen frosty air and descended on the lacerated back of the fainting prisoner. Sir, I see that my story disturbs you. "A corpulent Provost Mareschal, with a pair of enormous moustachios, amid which the mouth of his meerschaum was inserted, stood by smoking with admirable coolness, and marking the time with his cane, while a drummer tapped on his kettledrum, and four trumpeters had, each in succession, given their twenty-five lashes and withdrawn; twice had the knotted scourge been coagulated with blood, and twice had it been washed in the snow that now rose high around the feet of our champing and impatient horses; and now the fifth torturer approached, but still the compressed lips and clammy tongue of the proud Frenchman refused to implore mercy. His head was bowed down on his breast, his body hung pendant from the cords that encircled his swollen and livid wrists; his back from neck to waist was one mass of lacerated flesh, on which the feathery snowflakes were melting; for the agony he endured must have been like unto a stream of molton lead pouring over him; but no groan, no entreaty escaped him, and still the barbarous punishment proceeded. "I have remarked that there is no event too horrible or too sad to be without a little of the ridiculous in it, and this was discernible here. "One trumpeter, who appeared to have more humanity, or perhaps less skill than his predecessors, and did not exert himself sufficiently, was soundly beaten by the rattan of the trumpet-major, while the latter was castigated by the Provost Mareschal, who, in turn for remissness of duty, received sundry blows from the speaking-trumpet of the Baron; so they were all laying soundly on each other for a time. "'Morbleu!' said the Frenchmen, with a grim smile, ''twas quite in the Dutch taste, that.' "The Provost Mareschal continued to mark the time with the listless apathy of an automaton; the smoke curled from his meerschaum, the drum continued to tap-tap-tap, until it seemed to sound like thunder to my strained ears, for every sense was painfully excited. All count had long been lost, but when several hundred lashes had been given, Van Wandenberg and half his Dutchman were asleep in their saddles. "It was now snowing thick and fast, but still this hideous dream continued, and still the scourging went on. "At last the altered _sound_ of the lash and the terrible aspect of the victim, who, after giving one or two convulsive shudders, threw back his head with glazed eyes and jaw relaxed, caused the trumpeter to recede a pace or two, and throw down his gory scourge, for some lingering sentiment of humanity, which even the Dutch discipline of King William had not extinguished, made him respect when dead the man whom he had dishonored when alive. "The young Frenchman was dead! "An exclamation of disgust and indignation that escaped me woke up the Baron, who after drinking deeply from a great pewter flask of skiedam that hung at his saddlebow, muttered _schelms_ several times, rubbed his eyes, and then bellowed through his trumpet to bind up the _other_ prisoner. Human endurance could stand this no more, and though I deemed the offer vain, I proposed to give a hundred English guineas as a ransom. "'Ach Gott!' said the greedy Hollander immediately becoming interested; 'bot vere you get zo mosh guilder.' "'Oh, readily, Mynheer Baron,' I replied, drawing forth my pocket-book, 'I have here bills on his Grace the Duke of Marlborough's paymaster and on the Bank of Amsterdam for much more than that.' "'Bot I cannot led off de brisoner for zo little--hunder pounds dat ver small--zay two.' "'If one is not enough, Mynheer Baron, I will refer to the decision of his grace the captain-general.' "Ach, der tuyvel! vill you?' said the Dutchman, with a savage gleam in his little eyes, which showed that he quite understood my hint; 'vell, me vont quarrel vid you, gib me de bills and de schelm is yours.' "Resolving, nevertheless, to lay the whole affair before Marlborough, the moment I reached our trenches at Aire, I gave a bill for the required sum, and approaching the other Frenchman, requested him to keep beside me; but he seemed too much confused by grief, and cold, and horror to comprehend what I said. Poor fellow! his whole soul and sympathies seemed absorbed in the mangled corpse of his brother, which was now unbound from the halbert, and lay half sunk among the new fallen snow. While he stooped over it, and hastily, but tenderly, proceeded to draw the half-frozen clothing upon the stiffened form, the orders of Van Wandenberg were heard hoarsely through his speaking-trumpet, as they rang over the desolate plain, and his troopers wheeled back from a circle into line--from line into open column of troops, and thereafter the torches were extinguished and the march begun. Slowly and solemnly the dragoons glided away into the darkness, each with a pyramid of snow rising from the steeple crown, and ample brims of his broad beaver hat. "It was now almost midnight; the red moon had waned, the snow storm was increasing, and there were I and the young Frenchman, with his brother's corpse, left together on the wide plain, without a place to shelter us." "'Proceed, Monsieur,' said the Frenchman, as the narrator paused; 'for I am well aware that your story ends not there.' "It does not--you seem interested; but I have little more to relate, save that I dismounted and assisted the poor Frenchman to raise the body from the snow, and to tie it across the saddle of my horse; taking the bridle in one hand, I supported him with the other, and thus we proceeded to the nearest town." "'To Armentieres on the Lys," exclaimed the Frenchman, seizing the hands of the Major as the latter paused again; "to Armentieres, ten miles west of Lisle, and there you left them, after adding to your generosity by bestowing sufficient to inter his brother in the Protestant church of that town, and to convey himself to his native France. Oh! Monsieur, I am that Frenchman, and here, from my heart, from my soul, I thank you," and half kneeling, the stranger kissed the hand of the Major. "_You!_" exclaimed the latter; "by Jove I am right glad to see you. Here at Crail, too, in the East Neuk o' Fife--'tis a strange chance; and what in heaven's name seek ye here? 'Tis a perilous time for a foreigner--still more a Frenchman, to tread on Scottish ground. The war, the intrigues with St. Germains, the Popish plots, and the devil only knows what more, make travelling here more than a little dangerous." "Monsieur, I know all that; the days are changed since the Scot was at home in France, and the Frenchman at home in Scotland, for so the old laws of Stuart and Bourbon made them. A few words will tell who I am and what I seek here. Excuse my reluctance to reveal myself before, for now you have a claim upon me. Oh! believe me, I knew not that I addressed the generous chevalier who, in that hour of despair, redeemed my life (and more than life), my honor, from the scourge, and enabled me to lay the head of my poor brother with reverence in the grave. You have heard of M. Henri Lemercier?" "What! the great swordsman and fencer--that noble master of the science of self-defence, with the fame of whose skill and valor all Europe is ringing?" "I am he of whom Monsieur is pleased to speak so highly." "Your hand again, sir; sounds, but I dearly love this gallant science myself, and have even won me a little name as a handler of the rapier. There is but one man whom Europe calls your equal, Monsieur Lemercier." "My superior, you mean, for I have many equals," replied the Frenchman, very modestly. "You doubtless mean--" "Sir William Hope, of Hopetoun." "Ah! Mon Dieu, yes, he has, indeed, a great name in Europe as a fencer and master of arms, either with double or single falchion, case of falchions, backsword and dagger, pistol or quarter staff; and it is the fame of his skill and prowess in these weapons, and the reputation he has earned by his books on fencing, that hath brought me to-day to this remote part of Scotland." "Zounds!" said the Major, shaking back the long powdered curls of his Ramillie wig, and looking remarkably grave; "you cannot mean to have a bout with Sir William? He hath a sure hand and a steady eye. I would rather stand a platoon than be once covered with his pistol." "Monsieur, I have no enmity to this Sir William Hope, nor am I envious of his great name as a fencer. Ma foi! the world is quite wide enough for us both; but here lies my secret. I love Mademoiselle Athalie, the niece of Madame de Livry--" "How, the old flame of the great Louis?" "Oui," said Lemercier, smiling; "and many say that Athalie bears a somewhat suspicious resemblance to her aunt's royal lover; but that is no business of mine; she loves me very dearly, and is very good and amiable. Diable! I am well content to take her and her thirty thousand louis-d'or without making any troublesome inquiries. It would seem that my dear little Athalie is immensely vain of my reputation as a master of fence, and having heard that this Scottish Chevalier is esteemed the first man of the sword in Britain, and further, that report asserts he slew her brother in the line of battle at Blenheim, fighting bravely for a standard, she declared that ere her hand was mine, I must measure swords with this Sir William, and dip this, her handkerchief, in his blood, in token of his defeat, and of my conquest." "A very pretty idea of Mademoiselle Athalie, and I doubt not Hopetoun will be overwhelmed by the obligation when he hears of it," said the Major of Orkney's, whose face brightened with a broad laugh; "and so much would I love to see two such brisk fellows as thou and he yoked together, at cut-and-thrust, that if permitted, I will rejoice in bearing the message of M. Lemercier to Sir William, whose Castle of Balcomie is close by here." "Having no friend with me, I accept your offer with a thousand thanks," said Lemercier. "Sir William did, indeed, slay an officer, as you have said, in that charge at Blenheim, where the regiment of the Marquis de Livry was cut to pieces by Orkney's Scots' Greys; but to be so good and amiable, and to love you so much withal, Mademoiselle Athalie must be a brisk dame to urge her favored Chevalier on a venture so desperate; for, mark me, Monsieur Lemercier," said the Major, impressively, "none can know better than I, the skill--the long and carefully studied skill--of Sir William Hopetoun, and permit me to warn you--" "It matters not--I _must_ fight him; love, honor, and rivalry, too, if you will have it so, all spur me on, and no time must be lost." "Enough; I should have been in my stirrups an hour ago; and dark though the night be, I will ride to Balcomie with your message." "A million of thanks--you will choose time and place for me." "Say, to-morrow, at sunrise; be thou at the Standing-stone of Sauchope; 'tis a tall, rough block, in the fields near the Castle of Balcomie, and doubt not but Sir William will meet you there." "Thanks, thanks," again said the Frenchman, pressing the hand of the Major, who, apparently delighted at the prospect of witnessing such an encounter between the two most renowned swordsmen in Europe, drank off his stoup of wine, muffled himself in his rocquelaure, and with his little cocked hat stuck jauntily on one side of the Ramillie wig, left the apartment, and demanded his horse and the reckoning. "Then your honor _will_ be fule hardy, and tempt Providence," said the landlord. "Nay, gudeman, but you cannot tempt me to stay just now. I ride only through the town to Balcomie, and will return anon. The Hopetoun family are there, I believe?" "Yes; but saving my Lady at the preachings, we see little o' them; for Sir William has bidden at Edinburgh, or elsewhere, since his English gold coft the auld tower from the Balcomies of that ilk, the year before the weary union, devil mend it!" "Amen, say I: and what callest thou English gold?" "The doolfu' compensation, o' whilk men say he had his share." "Man, thou liest, and they who say so lie! for to the last moment his voice was raised against that traitorous measure of Queensbury and Stair, and now every energy of his soul is bent to its undoing!" replied the Major, fiercely, as he put spurs to his horse and rode rapidly down the dark, and then grassy, street, at the end of which the clank of his horse's hoofs died away, as he diverged upon the open ground that lay northward of the town, and by which he had to approach the tower of Balcomie. The Frenchman remained long buried in thought, and as he sipped his wine, gazed dreamily on the changing embers that glowed on the hearth, and cast a warm light on the blue delft lining of the fireplace. The reminiscences of the war in Flanders had called up many a sad and many a bitter recollection. "I would rather," thought he, "that the man I am about to encounter to-morrow was not a Scot, for the kindness of to-night, and of that terrible night in the snow-clad plain of Arras, inspire me with a warm love for all the people of this land. But my promise must be redeemed, my adventure achieved, or thou, my dear, my rash Athalie, art lost to me!" and he paused to gaze with earnestness upon a jewel that glittered on his hand. It was a hair ring, bound with gold, and a little shield bearing initials, clasped the small brown tress that was so ingeniously woven round it. As he gazed on the trinket, his full dark eyes brightened for a moment, as the mild memories of love and fondness rose in his heart, and a bright smile played upon his haughty lip and lofty brow. Other thoughts arose, and the eyebrows that almost met over the straight Grecian nose of Lemercier, were knit as he recalled the ominous words of his recent acquaintance-- "Mademoiselle Athalie must be a brisk dame to urge her favored Chevalier on a venture so desperate." One bitter pang shot through his heart, but he thrust the thought aside, and pressed the ring to his lips. "Oh, Athalie," he said in a low voice, "I were worse than a villain to suspect thee." At that moment midnight tolled from the dull old bell of Crail, and the strangeness of the sound brought keenly home to the lonely heart of Lemercier that he was in a foreign land. The hour passed, but the Major did not return. Morning came. With gray dawn Lemercier was awake, and a few minutes found him dressed and ready. He attired himself with particular care, putting on a coat and vest, the embroidery of which presented as few conspicuous marks as possible to an antagonist's eye. He clasped his coat from the cravat to the waist, and compressed his embroidered belt. He adjusted his white silk roll-up stockings with great exactness; tied up the flowing curls of his wig with a white ribbon, placed a scarlet feather in his hat, and then took his sword. The edge and point of the blade, the shell and pommel, grasp and guard of the hilt were all examined with scrupulous care for the last time; he drew on his gloves with care, and giving to the landlord the reckoning, which he might never return to pay, Lemercier called for his horse and rode through the main street of Crail. Following the directions he had received from his host, he hastily quitted the deserted and grass-grown street of the burgh (the very aspect of which he feared would chill him), and proceeded towards the ancient obelisk still known as the _Standing-stone of Sauchope_, which had been named as the place of rendezvous by that messenger who had not returned, and against whom M. Lemercier felt his anger a little excited. It was a cool March morning; the sky was clear and blue, and the few silver clouds that floated through it, became edged with gold as the sun rose from his bed in the eastern sea--that burnished sea from which the cool fresh breeze swept over the level coast. The fields were assuming a vernal greenness, the buds were swelling on hedge and tree, and the vegetation of the summer that was to come--the summer that Lemercier might never see--was springing from amid the brown remains of the autumn that had gone, an autumn that he had passed with Athalie amid the gayeties and gardens of Paris and Versailles. At the distance of a mile he saw the strong square tower of Balcomie, the residence of his antagonist. One side was involved in shadow, the other shone redly in the rising sun, and the morning smoke from its broad chimneys curled in dusky columns into the blue sky. The caw of the rooks that followed the plough, whose shining share turned up the aromatic soil, the merry whistle of the bonneted ploughboys, the voices of the blackbird and the mavis, made him sad, and pleased was Lemercier to leave behind him all such sounds of life, and reach the wild and solitary place where the obelisk stood--a grim and time-worn relic of the Druid ages or the Danish wars. A rough misshapen remnant of antiquity it still remains to mark the scene of this hostile meeting, which yet forms one of the most famous traditions of the East Neuk. As Lemercier rode up he perceived a gentleman standing near the stone. His back was towards him, and he was apparently intent on caressing his charger, whose reins he had thrown negligently over his arm. Lemercier thought he recognized the hat, edged with white feathers, the full-bottomed wig, and the peculiar lacing of the white velvet coat, and on the stranger turning he immediately knew his friend of the preceding night. "Bon jour, my dear sir," said Lemercier. "A good morning," replied the other, and they politely raised their little cocked hats. "I had some misgivings when Monsieur did not return to me," said the Frenchman. "Sir William has accepted my challenge?" "Yes, Monsieur, and is now before you," replied the other, springing on horseback. "_I am Sir William Hope, of Hopetoun_, and am here at your service." "You!" exclaimed the Frenchman, in tones of blended astonishment and grief; "ah! unsay what you have said, I cannot point my sword against the breast of my best benefactor--against him to whom I owe both honor and life. Can I forget that night on the plains of Arras? Ah! my God! what a mistake; what a misfortune. Ah! Athalie, to what have you so unthinkingly urged me?" "Think of her only, and forget all of me save that I am your antagonist, your enemy, as I stand between thee and her. Come on, M. Lemercier, do not forget your promise to Mademoiselle; we will sheath our swords on the first blood drawn." "So be it then, if the first is thine," and unsheathing their long and keen-edged rapiers they put spurs to their horses, and closing up hand to hand, engaged with admirable skill and address. The skill of one swordsman seemed equalled only by that of the other. Lemercier was the first fencer at the Court of France, where fencing was an accomplishment known to all, and there was no man in Britain equal to Sir William Hope, whose _Complete Fencing Master_ was long famous among the lovers of the noble science of defence. They rode round each other in circles. Warily and sternly they began to watch each other's eyes, till they flashed in unison with their blades; their hearts beat quicker as their passions became excited and their rivalry roused; and their nerves became strung as the hope of conquest was whetted. The wish of merely being wounded ended in a desire to wound; and the desire to wound in a clamorous anxiety to vanquish and destroy. Save the incessant clash of the notched rapiers, as each deadly thrust was adroitly parried and furiously repeated, the straining of stirrup-leathers, as each fencer swayed to and fro in his saddle, their suppressed breathing, and the champing of iron bits, Lemercier and his foe saw nothing but the gleam and heard nothing but the clash of each other's glittering swords. The sun came up in his glory from the shining ocean; the mavis soared above them in the blue sky; the early flowers of spring were unfolding their dewy cups to the growing warmth, but still man fought with man, and the hatred in their hearts waxed fierce and strong. In many places their richly laced coats were cut and torn. One lost his hat and had received a severe scar on the forehead, and the other had one on his bridle hand. They often paused breathlessly, and in weariness lowered the points of their weapons to glare upon each other with a ferocity that could have no end but death--until at the sixth encounter, when Lemercier became exhausted, and failing to parry with sufficient force a fierce and furious thrust, was run through the breast so near the heart, that he fell from his horse, gasping and weltering in blood. Sir William Hope flung away his rapier and sprang to his assistance, but the unfortunate Frenchman could only draw from his finger the ring of Athalie, and with her name on his lips expired--being actually choked in his own blood. Such was the account of this combat given by the horrified Master Spiggot, who suspecting "that there was something wrong," had followed his guest to the scene of the encounter, the memory of which is still preserved in the noble house of Hopetoun, and the legends of the burghers of Crail. So died Lemercier. Of what Sir William said or thought on the occasion, we have no record. In the good old times he would have eased his conscience by the endowment of an altar, or foundation of a yearly mass; but in the year 1708 such things had long been a dead letter in the East Neuk; and so in lieu thereof he interred him honorably in the aisle of the ancient kirk, where a marble tablet long marked the place of his repose. Sir William did more; he carefully transmitted the ring of Lemercier to the bereaved Athalie, but before its arrival in Paris, she had dried her tears for the poor Chevalier, and wedded one of his numerous rivals. Thus, she forgot him sooner than his conqueror, who reached a good old age, and died at his Castle of Balcomie, with his last breath regretting the combat at the Standing-stone of Sauchope. From the London Times. HENRY FIELDING.[H] We are glad to see this great humorist's works put forward in a popular form, and at a price exceedingly low. A man may be very much injured by perusing maudlin sentimental tales, but cannot be hurt, though he may be shocked every now and then, by reading works of sound sterling humor, like the greater part of these, full of benevolence, practical wisdom, and generous sympathy with mankind. The work is prefaced by an able biography of Fielding, in which the writer does justice to the great satirist's memory, and rescues it from the attacks which rivals, poetasters, and fine gentlemen have made upon it. Those who have a mind to forgive a little coarseness, for the sake of one of the honestest, manliest, kindest companions in the world, cannot, as we fancy, find a better than Fielding, or get so much true wit and shrewdness from any other writer of our language. "With regard to personal appearance," says his biographer, "Fielding was strongly built, robust, and in height rather exceeding six feet." He was possessed of rare conversational powers and wit; a nobleman who had known Pope, Swift, and the wits of that famous clique, declared that Harry Fielding surpassed them all. He and Hogarth between them have given us a strange notion of the society of those days. Walpole's letters, for all their cold elegance, are not a whit more moral than those rude coarse pictures of the former artists. Lord Chesterfield's model of a man is more polite, but not so honest as Tom Jones, or as poor Will Booth, with his "chairman's shoulders, and calves like a porter." Let us, then, not accuse Fielding of immorality, but simply admit that his age was more free-spoken than ours, and accuse it of the fault (such as it is) rather than him. But there is a great deal of good, on the other hand, which is to be found in the writings of this great man, of virtue so wise and practical, that the man of the world cannot read it and imitate it too much. He gives a strong real picture of human life, and the virtues which he exhibits shine out by their contrasts with the vices which he paints so faithfully, as they never could have done if the latter had not been depicted as well as the former. He tries to give you, as far as he knows it, the whole truth about human nature; the good and the evil of his characters are both practical. Tom Jones's sins and his faults are described with a curious accuracy, but then follows the repentance which comes out of his very sins, and that surely is moral and touching. Booth goes astray (we do verily believe that many persons even in these days are not altogether pure), but how good his remorse is! Are persons who profess to take the likeness of human nature to make an accurate portrait? This is such a hard question, that, think what we will, we shall not venture to say what we think. Perhaps it is better to do as Hannibal's painter did, and draw only that side of the face which has not the blind eye. Fielding attacked it in full. Let the reader, according to his taste, select the artist who shall give a likeness of him or only half a likeness. We have looked through many of the pieces of Mr. Roscoe's handsome volume. The dramatic works could not have been spared possibly, but the reader will have no great pleasure, as we fancy, in looking at them more than once. They are not remarkable for wit even, though they have plenty of _spirits_--a great deal too much perhaps. But he was an honest-hearted fellow, with affections as tender and simple as ever dwelt in the bosom of any man; and if, in the heyday of his spirits and the prodigal outpouring of his jovial good humor, he could give a hand to many "a lad and lass" whom the squeamish world would turn its back on (indeed, there was a virtue in his benevolence, but we dare not express our sympathies now for poor Doll Tearsheet and honest Mistress Quickly)--if he led a sad riotous life, and mixed with many a bad woman in his time, his heart was pure, and he knew a good one when he found her. He married, and (though Sir Walter Scott speaks rather slightingly of the novel in which Fielding has painted his first wife) the picture of Amelia, in the story of that name, is (in the writer's humble opinion) the most beautiful and delicious description of a character that is to be found in any writer, not excepting Shakspeare. It is a wonder how old Richardson, girded at as he had been by the reckless satirist--how Richardson, the author of "Pamela," could have been so blinded by anger and pique as not to have seen the merits of his rival's exquisite performance. Amelia was in her grave when poor Fielding drew this delightful portrait of her; but, with all his faults, and extravagancies, and vagaries, it is not hard to see how such a gentle, generous, loving creature as Fielding was, must have been loved and prized by her. She had a little fortune of her own, and he at this time inherited a small one from his mother. He carried her to the country, and like a wise, prudent Henry Fielding as he was, who, having lived upon nothing very jovially for some years, thought £5,000 or £6,000 an endless wealth; he kept horses and hounds, flung his doors open, and lived with the best of his country. When he had spent his little fortune, and saw that there was nothing for it but to work, he came to London, applied himself fiercely to the law, seized upon his pen again, never lost heart for a moment, and, be sure, loved his poor Amelia as tenderly as ever he had done. It is a pity that he did not live on his income, that is certain: it is a pity that he had not been born a lord, or a thrifty stock broker at the very least; but we should not have had "Joseph Andrews" if this had been the case, and indeed it is probable that Amelia liked him quite as well after his ruin as she would have done had he been as rich as Rothschild. The biographers agree that he would have been very successful at the bar, but for certain circumstances. These ugly circumstances always fall in the way of men of Fielding's genius: for though he amassed a considerable quantity of law, was reputed to be a good speaker, and had a great wit, and a knowledge of human nature which might serve him in excellent stead, it is to be remarked that those without a certain degree of patience and conduct will not insure a man's triumph at the bar, and so Fielding never rose to be a Lord Chancellor or even a judge. His days of trouble had now begun in earnest, and indeed he met them like a man. He wrote incessantly for the periodical works of the day, issued pamphlets, made translations, published journals and criticisms, turned his hand, in a word, to any work that offered, and lived as best he might. This indiscriminate literary labor, which obliges a man to scatter his intellects upon so many trifles, and to provide weekly varieties as sets-off against the inevitable weekly butcher's bills, has been the ruin of many a man of talent since Fielding's time, and it was lucky for the world and for him that at a time of life when his powers were at the highest he procured a place which kept him beyond the reach of weekly want, and enabled him to gather his great intellects together and produce the greatest satire and two of the most complete romances in our language. Let us remark, as a strong proof of the natural honesty of the man, the exquisite art of these performances, the care with which the situations are elaborated, and the noble, manly language corrected. When Harry Fielding was writing for the week's bread, we find style and sentiment both careless, and plots hastily worked off. How could he do otherwise? Mr. Snap, the bailiff, was waiting with a writ without--his wife and little ones asking wistfully for bread within. Away, with all its imperfections on its head, the play or the pamphlet must go. Indeed, he would have been no honest man had he kept them longer on his hands, with such urgent demands upon him as he had. But as soon as he is put out of the reach of this base kind of want, his whole style changes, and instead of the reckless and slovenly hack-writer, we have one of the most minute and careful artists that ever lived. Dr. Beattie gave his testimony to the merit of "Tom Jones." Moral or immoral, let any man examine this romance as a work of art merely, and it must strike him as the most astonishing production of human ingenuity. There is not an incident ever so trifling but advances the story, grows out of former incidents and is connected with the whole. Such a literary providence, if we may use such a word, is not to be seen in any other work of fiction. You might cut out the half of Don Quixote, or add, transpose, or alter any given romance of Walter Scott, and neither would suffer. Roderick Random, and heroes of that sort, run through a series of adventures, at the end of which the fiddles are brought and there is a marriage. But the history of Tom Jones connects the very first page with the very last, and it is marvellous to think how the author could have built and carried all this structure in his brain, as he must have done, before he began to put it to paper. And now a word or two about our darling "Amelia," of which we have read through every single word in Mr. Roscoe's handsome edition. "As for Captain Booth, Madam," writes old Richardson to one of his toadies, "Captain Booth has done his business. The piece is short, is as dead as if it had been published forty years ago;" indeed, human nature is not altered since Richardson's time; and if there are rakes, male and female, as there were a hundred years since, there are in like manner envious critics now as then. How eager they are to predict a man's fall, how unwilling to acknowledge his rise! If a man write a popular work, he is sure to be snarled at; if a literary man rise to eminence out of his profession, all his old comrades are against him. Well, in spite of Richardson's prophecies, the piece which was dead at its birth is alive a hundred years after, and will live, as we fancy, as long as the English language shall endure. Fielding, in his own noble words, has given a key to the philosophy of the work. "The nature of man," cries honest Dr. Harrison, "is far from being in itself evil; it abounds with benevolence, and charity, and pity, coveting praise and honor, and shunning shame and disgrace. Bad education, bad habits, and bad customs debauch our nature, and drive it headlong into vice." And the author's tale is an exemplification of this text. Poor Booth's habits and customs are bad indeed, but who can deny the benevolence, and charity, and pity, of this simple and kindly being? His vices even, if we may say so, are those of a man; there is nothing morbid or mawkish in any of Fielding's heroes; no passionate pleasing extenuation, such as one finds in the pseudo-moral romances of the sentimental character; no flashy excuses like those which Sheridan puts forward (unconsciously, most likely), for those brilliant blackguards who are the chief characters of his comedies. Vice is never to be mistaken for virtue in Fielding's honest downright books; it goes by its name, and invariably gets its punishment. Besides the matchless character of Amelia, whose beauty and charming innocent consciousness of it (so delicately described by the novelist), whose tenderness and purity are such that they endear her to a reader as much as if she were actually alive, his own wife or mother, and make him consider her as some dear relative and companion of his own, about whose charms and virtues is scarcely modest to talk in public; besides Amelia, there are other characters, not so beautiful, but not less admirably true to nature. Miss Matthews is a wonderful portrait, and the vanity which inspires every one of the actions of that passionate, unscrupulous lady, the color as it were which runs through the whole of the picture is touched with a master's hand. Mrs. James, the indifferent woman, is not less skilful. "Can this be my Jenny?" cries poor Amelia, who runs forward to meet her old friend, and finds a pompous, frigid-looking personage in an enormous hoop, the very pink of the fashion; to which Mrs. James answers, "Madam, I believe I have done what was genteel," and wonders how any mortal can live up three pair of stairs. "Is there," says the enthusiastic for the first time in her life, "so delightful a sight in the world as the four honors in one's own hand, unless it be the three natural aces at brag?" Can comedy be finer than this? Has not every person some Matthews and James in their acquaintance--one all passion, and the other all indifference and vapid self-complacency? James, the good-natured fellow, with passions and without principles: Bath, with his magnificent notions of throat-cutting and the Christian religion, what admirable knowledge of the world do all these characters display: what good moral may be drawn from them by those who will take the trouble to think! This, however, is not a task that the generality of novel-readers are disposed to take upon them, and prefer that their favorite works should contain as little reflection as possible; indeed, it is very probable that Mrs. James, or Miss Matthews might read their own characters as here described, and pronounce such writing vastly low and unnatural. But what is especially worthy of remark is the masterly manner in which the author paints the good part of those equivocal characters that he brings upon his stage: James has his generosity, and his silly wife her good nature; Matthews her starts of kindness; and Old Bath, in his sister's dressing-gown, cooking possets for her, is really an amiable object, whom we like while we laugh at him. A great deal of tenderness and love goes along with this kind of laughter, and it was this mixed feeling that our author liked so to indulge himself in, and knew so well how to excite in others. Whenever he has to relate an action of benevolence, honest Fielding kindles as he writes it: some writers of fiction have been accused of falling in a passion with their bad characters: these our author treats with a philosophic calmness: it is when he comes to the good that he grows enthusiastic: you fancy that you see the tears in his manly eyes; nor does he care to disguise any of the affectionate sympathies of his great, simple heart. This is a defect in art perhaps, but a very charming one. For further particulars of Fielding's life, we recommend the reader to consult Mr. Roscoe's biography. Indeed, as much as any of his romances, his own history illustrates the maxim we have just quoted from Amelia. Want, sorrow, and pain subdued his body at last, but his great and noble humor rode buoyant over them all, and his frank and manly philosophy overcame them. His generous attachment to his family comforted him to the last; and though all the labors of the poor fellow were only sufficient to keep him and them in a bare competence, yet it must be remembered, to his credit, that he left behind him a friend who valued him so much as to provide for the family he had left destitute, and to place them beyond the reach of want. It is some credit to a man to have been the friend of Ralph Allen; and Fielding before his death raised a monument to his friend a great deal more lasting than bronze or marble, placing his figure in the romance of Tom Jones under the name of Allworthy. "There is a day, sir," says Fielding in one of his dedications to Mr. Allen, "which no man in the kingdom can think of without fear, but yourself--the day of your death." Can there he a finer compliment? Nor was Fielding the man to pay it to one whom he thought was undeserving of it. Never do Fielding's courage, cheerfulness, and affection forsake him; up to the last days of his life he is laboring still for his children. He dies, and is beholden to the admiration of a foreigner, Monsieur de Meryionnet, French consul at Lisbon, for a decent grave and tombstone. There he lies, sleeping after life's fitful fever. No more care, no more duns, no more racking pain, no more wild midnight orgies and jovial laughter. Of the women who are weeping for him a pious friend takes care. Here, indeed, it seems as if his sorrow ended; and one hopes and fancies that the poor but noble fellow's spirit is at last pure and serene. FOOTNOTES: [H] The Works of Henry Fielding, in two volumes, octavo. With a Life, Portrait, and Autograph. London: Henry G. Bohn, Covent Garden. [New-York: Stringer and Townsend. 1851.] From "Recollections of a Police Officer" in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. FLINT JACKSON. Farnham hops are world-famous, or at least famous in that huge portion of the world where English ale is drunk, and whereon, I have a thousand times heard and read, the sun never sets. The name, therefore, of the pleasant Surrey village, in and about which the events I am about to relate occurred, is, I may fairly presume, known to many of my readers. I was ordered to Farnham, to investigate a case of burglary, committed in the house of a gentleman of the name of Hursley, during the temporary absence of the family, which had completely nonplussed the unpractised Dogberrys of the place, albeit it was not a riddle at all difficult to read. The premises, it was quickly plain to me, had been broken, not into, but out of; and a watch being set upon the motions of the very specious and clever person left in charge of the house and property, it was speedily discovered that the robbery had been effected by herself and a confederate of the name of Dawkins, her brother-in-law. Some of the stolen goods were found secreted at his lodgings; but the most valuable portion, consisting of plate, and a small quantity of jewelry, had disappeared: it had questionless been converted into money, as considerable sums, in sovereigns, were found upon both Dawkins and the woman, Sarah Purday. Now, as it had been clearly ascertained that neither of the prisoners had left Farnham since the burglary, it was manifest there was a receiver near at hand who had purchased the missing articles. Dawkins and Purday were, however, dumb as stones upon the subject; and nothing occurred to point suspicion till early in the evening previous to the second examination of the prisoners before the magistrates, when Sarah Purday asked for pen, ink, and paper for the purpose of writing to one Mr. Jackson, in whose service she had formerly lived. I happened to be at the prison, and of course took the liberty of carefully unsealing her note and reading it. It revealed nothing; and save by its extremely cautious wording, and abrupt, peremptory tone, coming from a servant to her former master, suggested nothing. I had carefully reckoned the number of sheets of paper sent into the cell, and now on recounting them found that three were missing. The turnkey returned immediately, and asked for the two other letters she had written. The woman denied having written any other, and for proof pointed to the torn fragments of the missing sheets lying on the floor. These were gathered up and brought to me, but I could make nothing out of them, every word having been carefully run through with the pen, and converted into an unintelligible blot. The request contained in the actually-written letter was one simple enough in itself, merely, "that Mr. Jackson would not on any account fail to provide her, in consideration of past services, with legal assistance on the morrow." The first nine words were strongly underlined; and I made out after a good deal of trouble that the word "pretence" had been partially effaced, and "account" substituted for it. "She need not have wasted three sheets of paper upon such a nonsensical request as that," observed the turnkey. "Old Jackson wouldn't shell out sixpence to save her or anybody else from the gallows." "I am of a different opinion; but tell me, what sort of a person is this former master of hers?" "All I know about him is that he's a cross-grained, old curmudgeon, living about a mile out of Farnham, who scrapes money together by lending small sums upon notes-of-hand at short dates, and at a thundering interest. Flint Jackson folk about here call him." "At all events, forward the letter at once, and to-morrow we shall see--what we shall see. Good-evening." It turned out as I anticipated. A few minutes after the prisoners were brought into the justice-room, a Guilford solicitor of much local celebrity arrived, and announced that he appeared for both the inculpated parties. He was allowed a private conference with them, at the close of which he stated that his clients would reserve their defence. They were at once committed for trial, and I overheard the solicitor assure the woman that the ablest counsel on the circuit would be retained in their behalf. I had no longer a doubt that it was my duty to know something further of this suddenly-generous Flint Jackson, though how to set about it was a matter of considerable difficulty. There was no legal pretence for a search-warrant, and I doubted the prudence of proceeding upon my own responsibility with so astute an old fox as Jackson was represented to be; for, supposing him to be a confederate with the burglars, he had by this time in all probability sent the stolen property away--to London in all likelihood; and should I find nothing, the consequences of ransacking his house merely because he had provided a former servant with legal assistance would be serious. Under these circumstances I wrote to headquarters for instructions, and by return of post received orders to prosecute the inquiry thoroughly, but cautiously, and to consider time as nothing so long as there appeared a chance of fixing Jackson with the guilt of receiving the plunder. Another suspicious circumstance that I have omitted to notice in its place was that the Guilford solicitor tendered bail for the prisoners to any reasonable amount, and named Enoch Jackson as one of the securities. Bail was, however, refused. There was no need for over-hurrying the business, as the prisoners were committed to the Surrey Spring Assizes, and it was now the season of the hop-harvest--a delightful and hilarious period about Farnham when the weather is fine and the yield abundant. I, however, lost no time in making diligent and minute inquiry as to the character and habits of Jackson, and the result was a full conviction that nothing but the fear of being denounced as an accomplice could have induced such a miserly, iron-hearted rogue to put himself to charges in defence of the imprisoned burglars. One afternoon, whilst pondering the matter, and at the same time enjoying the prettiest and cheerfulest of rural sights, that of hop-picking, the apothecary at whose house I was lodging--we will call him Mr. Morgan; he _was_ a Welshmann--tapped me suddenly on the shoulder, and looking sharply round, I perceived he had something he deemed of importance to communicate. "What is it?" I said quickly. "The oddest thing in the world. There's Flint Jackson, his deaf old woman, and the young people lodging with him, all drinking and boozing away at yon alehouse." "Show them to me, if you please." A few minutes brought us to the place of boisterous entertainment, the lower room of which was suffocatingly full of tipplers and tobacco-smoke. We nevertheless contrived to edge ourselves in; and my companion stealthily pointed out the group, who were seated together near the farther window, and then left me to myself. The appearance of Jackson entirely answered to the popular prefix of Flint attached to his name. He was a wiry, gnarled, heavy-browed, iron-jawed fellow of about sixty, with deep-set eyes aglow with sinister and greedy instincts. His wife, older than he, and as deaf apparently as the door of a dungeon, wore a simpering, imbecile look of wonderment, it seemed to me, at the presence of such unusual and abundant cheer. The young people who lodged with Jackson were really a very frank, honest, good-looking couple, though not then appearing to advantage--the countenance of Henry Rogers being flushed and inflamed with drink, and that of his wife's clouded with frowns, at the situation in which she found herself, and the riotous conduct of her husband. Their brief history was this: They had both been servants in a family living not far distant from Farnham--Sir Thomas Lethbridge's, I understood--when about three or four months previous to the present time Flint Jackson, who had once been in an attorney's office, discovered that Henry Rogers, in consequence of the death of a distant relative in London, was entitled to property worth something like £1500. There were, however, some law difficulties in the way, which Jackson offered, if the business were placed in his hands, to overcome for a consideration, and in the mean time to supply board and lodging and such necessary sums of money as Henry Rogers might require. With this brilliant prospect in view service became at once utterly distasteful. The fortunate legatee had for some time courted Mary Elkins, one of the ladies' maids, a pretty, bright-eyed brunette; and they were both united in the bonds of holy matrimony on the very day the "warnings" they had given expired. Since then they had lived at Jackson's house in daily expectation of their "fortune," with which they proposed to start in the public line. Finding myself unrecognized, I called boldly for a pot and a pipe, and after some manoeuvring contrived to seat myself within earshot of Jackson and his party. They presented a strange study. Henry Rogers was boisterously excited, and not only drinking freely himself, but treating a dozen fellows round him, the cost of which he from time to time called upon "Old Flint," as he courteously styled his ancient friend, to discharge. "Come, fork out, Old Flint!" he cried again and again. "It'll be all right, you know, in a day or two, and a few halfpence over. Shell out, old fellow! What signifies, so you're happy?" Jackson complied with an affectation of acquiescent gayety ludicrous to behold. It was evident that each successive pull at his purse was like wrenching a tooth out of his head, and yet while the dismallest of smiles wrinkled his wolfish mouth, he kept exclaiming: "A fine lad--a fine lad! generous as a prince--generous as a prince! Good Lord, another round! He minds money no more than as if gold was as plentiful as gravel! But a fine generous lad for all that!" Jackson, I perceived, drank considerably, as if incited thereto by compressed savageness. The pretty young wife would not taste a drop, but tears frequently filled her eyes, and bitterness pointed her words as she vainly implored her husband to leave the place and go home with her. To all her remonstrances the maudlin drunkard replied only by foolery, varied occasionally by an attempt at a line or two of the song of "The Thorn." "But you _will_ plant thorns, Henry," rejoined the provoked wife in a louder and angrier tone than she ought perhaps to have used--"not only in my bosom, but your own, if you go on in this sottish, disgraceful way." "Always quarrelling, always quarrelling!" remarked Jackson, pointedly, towards the bystanders--"_always_ quarrelling!" "Who is always quarrelling?" demanded the young wife sharply. "Do you mean me and Henry?" "I was only saying, my dear, that you don't like your husband to be so generous and free-hearted--that's all," replied Jackson, with a confidential wink at the persons near him. "Free-hearted and generous! Fool-hearted and crazy, you mean!" rejoined the wife, who was much excited. "And you ought to be ashamed of yourself to give him money for such brutish purposes." "Always quarrelling, always quarrelling!" iterated Jackson, but this time unheard by Mrs. Rogers--"_always_, perpetually quarrelling!" I could not quite comprehend all this. If so large a sum as £1500 was really coming to the young man, why should Jackson wince as he did at disbursing small amounts which he could repay himself with abundant interest? If otherwise--and it was probable he should not be repaid--what meant his eternal, "fine generous lad!" "spirited young man!" and so on? What, above all, meant that look of diabolical hate which shot out from his cavernous eyes towards Henry Rogers when he thought himself unobserved, just after satisfying a fresh claim on his purse? Much practice in reading the faces and deportment of such men made it pretty clear to me that Jackson's course of action respecting the young man and his money was not yet decided upon in his own mind; that he was still perplexed and irresolute; and hence the apparent contradiction in his words and acts. Henry Rogers at length dropped asleep with his head upon one of the settle-tables; Jackson sank into sullen silence; the noisy room grew quiet; and I came away. I was impressed with a belief that Jackson entertained some sinister design against his youthful and inexperienced lodgers, and I determined to acquaint them with my suspicions. For this purpose Mr. Morgan, who had a patient living near Jackson's house, undertook to invite them to tea on some early evening, on the pretence that he had heard of a tavern that might suit them when they should receive their fortune. Let me confess, too, that I had another design besides putting the young people on their guard against Jackson. I thought it very probable that it would not be difficult to glean from them some interesting and suggestive particulars concerning the ways, means, practices, outgoings and incomings, of their worthy landlord's household. Four more days passed unprofitably away, and I was becoming weary of the business, when about five o'clock in the afternoon the apothecary galloped up to his door on a borrowed horse, jumped off with surprising celerity, and with a face as white as his own magnesia, burst out as he hurried into the room where I was sitting: "Here's a pretty kettle of fish! Henry Rogers has been poisoned, and by his wife!" "Poisoned!" "Yes, poisoned; although, thanks to my being on the spot, I think he will recover. But I must instantly to Dr. Edwards: I will tell you all when I return." The promised "all" was this: Morgan was passing slowly by Jackson's house, in the hope of seeing either Mr. or Mrs. Rogers, when the servant-woman, Jane Riddet, ran out and begged him to come in, as their lodger had been taken suddenly ill. Ill indeed! The surface of his body was cold as death, and the apothecary quickly discovered that he had been poisoned with sulphuric acid (oil of vitriol), a quantity of which he, Morgan, had sold a few days previously to Mrs. Rogers, who, when purchasing it, said Mr. Jackson wanted it to apply to some warts that annoyed him. Morgan fortunately knew the proper remedy, and desired Jackson, who was in the room, and seemingly very anxious and flurried, to bring some soap instantly, a solution of which he proposed to give immediately to the seemingly dying man. The woman-servant was gone to find Mrs. Rogers, who had left about ten minutes before, having first made the tea in which the poison had been taken. Jackson hurried out of the apartment, but was gone so long that Morgan, becoming impatient, scraped a quantity of plaster off the wall, and administered it with the best effect. At last Jackson came back, and said there was unfortunately not a particle of soap in the house. A few minutes afterwards the young wife, alarmed at the woman-servant's tidings, flew into the room in an agony of alarm and grief. Simulated alarm, crocodile grief, Mr. Morgan said; for there could, in his opinion, be no doubt that she had attempted to destroy her husband. Mr. Jackson, on being questioned, peremptorily denied that he had ever desired Mrs. Rogers to procure sulphuric acid for him, or had received any from her--a statement which so confounded the young woman that she instantly fainted. The upshot was that Mrs. Rogers was taken into custody and lodged in prison. This terrible news flew through Farnham like wildfire. In a few minutes it was upon every body's tongue: the hints of the quarrelsome life the young couple led, artfully spread by Jackson, were recalled, and no doubt appeared to be entertained of the truth of the dreadful charge. I had no doubt either, but my conviction was not that of the Farnham folk. This, then, was the solution of the struggle I had seen going on in Jackson's mind; this the realization of the dark thought which I had imperfectly read in the sinister glances of his restless eyes. He had intended to destroy both the husband and wife--the one by poison, and the other by the law! Doubtless, then, the £1500 had been obtained, and this was the wretched man's infernal device for retaining it! I went over with Morgan early the next morning to see the patient, and found that, thanks to the prompt antidote administered, and Dr. Edwards's subsequent active treatment, he was rapidly recovering. The still-suffering young man, I was glad to find, would not believe for a moment in his wife's guilt. I watched the looks and movements of Jackson attentively--a scrutiny which he, now aware of my vocation, by no means appeared to relish. "Pray," said I, suddenly addressing Riddet, the woman-servant--"pray, how did it happen that you had no soap in such a house as this yesterday evening?" "No soap!" echoed the woman with a stare of surprise. "Why"-- "No--no soap," hastily broke in her master with loud and menacing emphasis. "There was not a morsel in the house. I bought some afterwards in Farnham." The cowed and bewildered woman slunk away. I was more than satisfied; and judging by Jackson's countenance, which changed beneath my look to the color of the lime-washed wall against which he stood, he surmised that I was. My conviction, however, was not evidence, and I felt that I should need even more than my wonted good fortune to bring the black crime home to the real perpetrator. For the present, at all events, I must keep silence--a resolve I found hard to persist in at the examination of the accused wife, an hour or two afterwards, before the county magistrates. Jackson had hardened himself to iron, and gave his lying evidence with ruthless self-possession. He had _not_ desired Mrs. Rogers to purchase sulphuric acid; had _not_ received any from her. In addition also to his testimony that she and her husband were always quarrelling, it was proved by a respectable person that high words had passed between them on the evening previous to the day the criminal offence was committed, and _that_ foolish, passionate expressions had escaped her about wishing to be rid of such a drunken wretch. This evidence, combined with the medical testimony, appeared so conclusive to the magistrates that spite of the unfortunate woman's wild protestations of innocence, and the rending agony which convulsed her frame, and almost choked her utterance, she was remanded to prison till that day week, when, the magistrates informed her, she would be again brought up for the merely formal completion of the depositions, and be then fully committed on the capital charge. I was greatly disturbed, and walked for two or three hours about the quiet neighborhood of Farnham, revolving a hundred fragments of schemes for bringing the truth to light, without arriving at any feasible conclusion. One only mode of procedure seemed to offer, and that but dimly, a hope of success. It was, however, the best I could hit upon, and I directed my steps towards the Farnham orison. Sarah Purday had not yet, I remembered, been removed to the county jail at Guilford. "Is Sarah Purday," I asked the turnkey, "more reconciled to her position than she was?" "She's just the same--bitter as gall, and venomous as a viper." This woman, I should state, was a person of fierce will and strong passions, and in early life had been respectably situated. "Just step into her cell," I continued, "upon some excuse or other, and carelessly drop a hint that if she could prevail upon Jackson to get her brought by _habeas_ before a judge in London, there could be no doubt of her being bailed." The man stared, but after a few words of pretended explanation, went off to do as I requested. He was not long gone. "She's all in a twitteration at the thoughts of it," he said; "and must have pen, ink, and paper without a moment's delay, bless her consequence!" These were supplied; and I was soon in possession of her letter, couched cautiously, but more peremptorily than the former one. I need hardly say it did not reach its destination. She passed the next day in a state of feverish impatience; and no answer returning, wrote again, her words this time conveying an evident though indistinct threat. I refrained from visiting her till two days had thus passed, and found her, as I expected, eaten up with fury. She glared at me as I entered the cell like a chained tigress. "You appear vexed," I said, "no doubt because Jackson declines to get you bailed. He ought not to refuse you such a trifling service, considering all things." "All what things?" replied the woman, eyeing me fiercely. "That you know best, though I have a shrewd guess." "What do you guess? and what are you driving at?" "I will deal frankly with you, Sarah Purday. In the first place, you must plainly perceive that your _friend_ Jackson has cast you off--abandoned you to your fate; and that fate will, there can be no doubt, be transportation." "Well," she impatiently snarled, "suppose so; what then?" "This--that you can help yourself in this difficulty by helping me." "As how?" "In the first place, give me the means of convicting Jackson of having received the stolen property." "Ha! How do you know that?" "Oh, I know it very well--as well almost as you do. But this is not my chief object; there is another, far more important one," and I ran over the incidents relative to the attempt at poisoning. "Now," I resumed, "tell me, if you will, your opinion on this matter." "That it was Jackson administered the poison, and certainly not the young woman," she replied, with vengeful promptness. "My own conviction! This, then, is my proposition: you are sharp-witted, and know this fellow's ways, habits, and propensities thoroughly--I, too, have heard something of them--and it strikes me that you could suggest some plan, some device grounded on that knowledge, whereby the truth might come to light." The woman looked fixedly at me for some time without speaking. As I meant fairly and honestly by her I could bear her gaze without shrinking. "Supposing I could assist you," she at last said, "how would that help me?" "It would help you greatly. You would no doubt be still convicted of the burglary, for the evidence is irresistible; but if in the mean time you should have been instrumental in saving the life of an innocent person, and of bringing a great criminal to justice, there cannot be a question that the Queen's mercy would be extended to you, and the punishment be merely a nominal one." "If I were sure of that!" she murmured, with a burning scrutiny in her eyes, which were still fixed upon my countenance; "if I were sure of that! But you are misleading me." "Believe me, I am not. I speak in perfect sincerity. Take time to consider the matter. I will look in again in about an hour; and pray, do not forget that it is your sole and last chance." I left her, and did not return till more than three hours had passed away. Sarah Purday was pacing the cell in a frenzy of inquietude. "I thought you had forgotten me. Now," she continued with rapid vehemence, "tell me, on your word and honor as a man, do you truly believe that if I can effectually assist you it will avail me with Her Majesty?" "I am as positive it will as I am of my own life." "Well, then, I _will_ assist you. First, then, Jackson was a confederate with Dawkins and myself, and received the plate and jewelry, for which he paid us less than one-third of the value." "Rogers and his wife were not, I hope, cognizant of this?" "Certainly not; but Jackson's wife and the woman-servant, Riddet, were. I have been turning the other business over in my mind," she continued, speaking with increasing emotion and rapidity; "and oh, believe me, Mr. Waters, if you can, that it is not solely a selfish motive which induces me to aid in saving Mary Rogers from destruction. I was once myself--Ah God!" Tears welled up to the fierce eyes, but they were quickly brushed away, and she continued somewhat more calmly: "You have heard, I dare say, that Jackson has a strange habit of talking in his sleep?" "I have, and that he once consulted Morgan as to whether there was any cure for it. It was that which partly suggested--" "It is, I believe, a mere fancy of his," she interrupted; "or at any rate the habit is not so frequent, nor what he says so intelligible, as he thoroughly believes and fears it, from some former circumstances, to be. His deaf wife cannot undeceive him, and he takes care never even to doze except in her presence only." "This is not, then, so promising as I hoped." "Have patience. It is full of promise, as we will manage. Every evening Jackson frequents a low gambling-house, where he almost invariably wins small sums at cards--by craft, no doubt, as he never drinks there. When he returns home at about ten o'clock, his constant habit is to go into the front parlor, where his wife is sure to be sitting at that hour. He carefully locks the door, helps himself to brandy and water--plentifully of late--and falls asleep in his arm-chair; and there they both doze away, sometimes till one o'clock--always till past twelve." "Well; but I do not see how--" "Hear me out, if you please. Jackson never wastes a candle to drink or sleep by, and at this time of the year there will be no fire. If he speaks to his wife he does not expect her, from her wooden deafness, to answer him. Do you begin to perceive my drift?" "Upon my word, I do not." "What; if upon awaking, Jackson finds that his wife is Mr. Waters, and that Mr. Waters relates to him all that he has disclosed in his sleep: that Mr. Hursley's plate is buried in the garden near the lilac-tree; that he, Jackson, received a thousand pounds six weeks ago of Henry Rogers's fortune, and that the money is now in the recess on the top-landing, the key of which is in his breast-pocket; that he was the receiver of the plate stolen from a house in the close at Salisbury a twelvemonth ago, and sold in London for four hundred and fifty pounds. All this hurled at him," continued the woman with wild energy and flashing eyes, "what else might not a bold, quick-witted man make him believe he had confessed, revealed in his brief sleep?" I had been sitting on a bench; but as these rapid disclosures burst from her lips, and I saw the use to which they might be turned, I rose slowly and in some sort involuntarily to my feet, lifted up, as it were, by the energy of her fiery words. "God reward you," I exclaimed, shaking both her hands in mine. "You have, unless I blunder, rescued an innocent woman from the scaffold. I see it all. Farewell!" "Mr. Waters," she exclaimed, in a changed, palpitating voice, as I was passing forth; "when all is done, you will not forget me?" "That I will not, by my own hopes of mercy in the hereafter. Adieu!" At a quarter past nine that evening I, accompanied by two Farnham constables, knocked at the door of Jackson's house. Henry Rogers, I should state, had been removed to the village. The door was opened by the woman servant, and we went in. "I have a warrant for your arrest, Jane Riddet," I said, "as an accomplice in the plate-stealing the other day. There, don't scream, but listen to me." I then intimated the terms upon which alone she could expect favor. She tremblingly promised compliance; and after placing the constables outside, in concealment, but within hearing, I proceeded to the parlor, secured the terrified old woman, and confined her safely in a distant out-house. "Now, Riddet," I said, "quick with one of the old lady's gowns, a shawl, cap, _et cetera_." These were brought, and I returned to the parlor. It was a roomy apartment, with small, diamond-paned windows, and just then but very faintly illuminated by the star-light. There were two large high-backed easy-chairs, and I prepared to take possession of the one recently vacated by Jackson's wife. "You must perfectly understand," were my parting words to the trembling servant, "that we intend standing no nonsense with either you or your master. You cannot escape; but if you let Mr. Jackson in as usual, and he enters this room as usual, no harm will befall you: if otherwise, you will be unquestionably transported. Now, go." My toilet was not so easily accomplished as I thought it would be. The gown did not meet at the back by about a foot; that, however, was of little consequence, as the high chair concealed the deficiency; neither did the shortness of the sleeves matter much, as the ample shawl could be made to hide my too great length of arm; but the skirt was scarcely lower than a Highlander's, and how the deuce I was to crook my booted legs up out of view, even in that gloomy starlight, I could hardly imagine. The cap also was far too small; still, with an ample kerchief in my hand, my whiskers might, I thought, be concealed. I was still fidgeting with these arrangements when Jackson knocked at his door. The servant admitted him without remark, and he presently entered the room, carefully locked the door, and jolted down, so to speak, in the fellow easy-chair to mine. He was silent for a few moments, and then he bawled out: "She'll swing for it, they say--swing for it, d'ye hear, dame? But no, of course she don't--deafer and deafer, deafer and deafer every day. It'll be a precious good job when the parson says his last prayers over her, as well as others." He then got up, and went to a cupboard. I could hear--for I dared not look up--by the jingling of glasses and the outpouring of liquids that he was helping himself to his spirituous sleeping-draughts. He reseated himself, and drank in moody silence, except now and then mumbling drowsily to himself, but in so low a tone that I could make nothing out of it save an occasional curse or blasphemy. It was nearly eleven o'clock before the muttered self-communing ceased, and his heavy head sank upon the back of the easy-chair. He was very restless, and it was evident that even his sleeping brain labored with affrighting and oppressive images; but the mutterings, as before he slept, were confused and indistinct. At length--half an hour had perhaps thus passed--the troubled meanings became for a few moments clearly audible. "Ha--ha--ha!" he burst out, "how are you off for soap? Ho--ho! done there, my boy; ha--ha! But no--no. Wall plaster! Who could have thought it? But for that I--I--What do you stare at me so for, you infernal blue-bottle? You--you--" Again the dream-utterance sank into indistinctness, and I comprehended nothing more. About half-past twelve o'clock he awoke, rose, stretched himself, and said: "Come, dame, let's to bed; it's getting chilly here." "Dame" did not answer, and he again went towards the cupboard. "Here's a candle-end will do for us," he muttered. A lucifer-match was drawn across the wall, he lit the candle, and stumbled towards me, for he was scarcely yet awake. "Come, dame, come! Why, thee beest sleeping like a dead un! Wake up, will thee--Ah! murder! thieves! mur"-- My grasp was on the wretch's throat; but there was no occasion to use force: he recognized me, and nerveless, paralyzed, sank on the floor incapable of motion much less of resistance, and could only gaze in my face in dumb affright and horror. "Give me the key of the recess up stairs, which you carry in your breast pocket. In your sleep, unhappy man, you have revealed every thing." An inarticulate shriek of terror replied to me. I was silent; and presently he gasped: "Wha--at, what have I said?" "That Mr. Hursley's plate is buried in the garden by the lilac-tree; that you have received a thousand pounds belonging to the man you tried to poison; that you netted four hundred and fifty pounds by the plate stolen at Salisbury; that you dexterously contrived, to slip the sulphuric acid into the tea unseen by Henry Rogers's wife." The shriek or scream was repeated, and he was for several moments speechless with consternation. A ray of hope gleamed suddenly in his flaming eyes. "It is true--it is true!" he hurriedly ejaculated; "useless--useless--useless to deny it. But you are alone, and poor, poor, no doubt. A thousand pounds!--more, more than that: _two_ thousand pounds in gold--gold, all in gold--I will give you to spare me, to let me escape!" "Where did you hide the soap on the day when you confess you tried to poison Henry Rogers?" "In the recess you spoke of. But think! Two thousand pounds in gold--all in gold--" As he spoke, I suddenly grasped the villain's hands, pressed them together, and in another instant the snapping of a handcuff pronounced my answer. A yell of anguish burst from the miserable man, so loud and piercing, that the constables outside hurried to the outer-door, and knocked hastily for admittance. They were let in by the servant-woman; and in half an hour afterwards the three prisoners--Jackson, his wife, and Jane Riddet--were safe in Farnham prison. A few sentences will conclude this narrative. Mary Rogers was brought up on the following day, and, on my evidence, discharged. Her husband, I have heard, has since proved a better and a wiser man. Jackson was convicted at the Guilford assize of guiltily receiving the Hursley plate, and sentenced to transportation for life. This being so, the graver charge of attempting to poison was not pressed. There was no moral doubt of his guilt; but the legal proof of it rested solely on his own hurried confession, which counsel would no doubt have contended ought not to be received. His wife and the servant were leniently dealt with. Sarah Purday was convicted, and sentenced to transportation. I did not forget my promise; and a statement of the previously-narrated circumstances having been drawn up and forwarded to the Queen and the Home Secretary, a pardon, after some delay, was issued. There were painful circumstances in her history which, after strict inquiry, told favorably for her. Several benevolent persons interested themselves in her behalf, and she was sent out to Canada, where she had some relatives, and has, I believe, prospered there. This affair caused considerable hubbub at the time, and much admiration was expressed by the country people at the boldness and dexterity of the London "runner;" whereas, in fact, the successful result was entirely attributable to the opportune revelations of Sarah Purday. From the North British Review. JOHN OWEN AT OXFORD.[I] Two hundred years ago the Puritan dwelt in Oxford; but, before his arrival, both Cavalier and Roundhead soldiers had encamped in its Colleges. Sad was the trace of their sojourn. From the dining-halls the silver tankards had vanished, and the golden candlesticks of the cathedral lay buried in a neighboring field. Stained windows were smashed, and the shrines of Bernard and Frideswide lay open to the storm. And whilst the heads of marble apostles, mingling with cannonballs and founders' coffins, formed a melancholy rubbish in many a corner, straw heaps on the pavement and staples in the wall, reminded the spectator that it was not long since dragoons had quartered in All-Souls, and horses crunched their oats beneath the tower of St. Mary Magdalene. However, matters again are mending. Broken windows are repaired; lost revenues are recovered; and the sons of Crispin have evacuated chambers once more consecrated to syntax and the syllogism. Through these spacious courts we recognize the progress of the man who has accomplished the arduous restoration. Tall, and in the prime of life, with cocked-hat and powdered hair, with lawn tops to his morocco boots, and with ribbons luxuriant at his knee, there is nothing to mark the Puritan,--whilst in his easy unembarrassed movements and kindly-assuring air, there is all which bespeaks the gentleman; but, were it not for the reverences of obsequious beadles and the recognitions of respectful students, you would scarce surmise the academic dignitary. That old-fashioned divine,--his square cap and ruff surmounting the doctor's gown,--with whom he shakes hands so cordially, is a Royalist and Prelatist, but withal the Hebrew Professor, and the most famous Orientalist in England, Dr. Edward Pocock. From his little parish of Childry, where he passes for "no Latiner," and is little prized, he has come up to deliver his Arabic lecture, and collate some Syriac manuscript, and observe the progress of the fig-tree which he fetched from the Levant; and he feels not a little beholden to the Vice-Chancellor, who, when the Parliamentary triers had pronounced him incompetent, interfered and retained him in his living. Passing the gate of Wadham he meets the upbreaking of a little conventicle. That no treason has been transacting nor any dangerous doctrine propounded, the guardian of the University has ample assurance in the presence of his very good friends, Dr. Wallis the Savilian Professor, and Dr. Wilkins the Protector's brother-in-law. The latter has published a dissertation on the Moon and its Inhabitants, "with a discourse concerning the possibility of a passage thither;" and the former, a mighty mathematician, during the recent war had displayed a terrible ingenuity in deciphering the intercepted letters of the Royalists. Their companion is the famous physician Dr. Willis, in whose house, opposite the Vice-Chancellor's own door, the Oxford Prelatists daily assemble to enjoy the forbidden Prayer-Book; and the youth who follows, building castles in the air, is Christopher Wren. This evening they had met to witness some experiments which the tall, sickly gentleman in the velvet cloak had promised to show them. The tall sickly gentleman is the Honorable Robert Boyle, and the instrument with which he has been amusing his brother sages, in their embryo Royal Society, is the newly invented air-pump. Little versant in their pursuits, though respectful to their genius, after mutual salutations, the divine passes on and pays an evening visit to his illustrious neighbor, Dr. Thomas Goodwin. In his embroidered night-cap, and deep in the recesses of his dusky study, he finds the recluse old President of Magdalene; and they sit and talk together, and they pray together, till it strikes the hour of nine; and from the great Tom Tower a summons begins to sound calling to Christ Church cloisters the hundred and one students of the old foundation. And returning to the Deanery, which Mary's cheerful management has brightened into a pleasant home, albeit her own and her little daughter's weeds are suggestive of recent sorrows, the doctor dives into his library. For the old misers it was pleasant to go down into their bullion vaults and feel that they were rich enough to buy up all the town, with the proud Earl in his mortgaged castle. And to many people there is a peculiar satisfaction in the society of the great and learned; nor can they forget the time when they talked to the great poet, or had a moment's monopoly of Royalty. But-- "That place that doth contain My books, the best companions, is to me A glorious court, where hourly I converse With the old sages and philosophers; And sometimes for variety I confer With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels." Not only is there the pleasant sense of property,--the rare editions, and the wonderful bargains, and the acquisitions of some memorable self-denial,--but there are grateful memories, and the feeling of a high companionship. When it first arrived, yon volume kept its owner up all night, and its neighbor introduced him to realms more delightful and more strange than if he had taken Dr. Wilkins's lunarian journey. In this biography, as in a magician's mirror, he was awed and startled by foreshadowings of his own career; and, ever since he sat at the feet of yonder sacred sage, he walks through the world with a consciousness, blessed and not vainglorious, that his being contains an element shared by few besides. And even those heretics inside the wires--like caged wolves or bottled vipers--their keeper has come to entertain a certain fondness for them, and whilst he detests the species, he would feel a pang in parting with his own exemplars. Now that the evening lamp is lit, let us survey the Doctor's library. Like most of its coeval collections, its foundations are laid with massive folios. These stately tomes are the Polyglotts of Antwerp and Paris, the Critici Sacri and Poli Synopsis. The colossal theologians who flank them, are Augustine and Jerome, Anselm and Aquinas, Calvin and Episcopius, Ballarmine and Jansenius, Baronius and the Magdeburg Centuriators,--natural enemies, here bound over to their good behavior. These dark veterans are Jewish Rabbis,--Kimchi, Abarbanel, and, like a row of rag-collectors, a whole Monmouth Street of rubbish,--behold the entire Babylonian Talmud. These tall Socinians are the Polish brethren, and the dumpy vellums overhead are Dutch divines. The cupboard contains Greek and Latin manuscripts, and those spruce fashionables are Spencer, and Cowley, and Sir William Davenant. And the new books which crown the upper shelves, still uncut and fresh from the publisher, are the last brochures of Mr. Jeremy Taylor and Mr. Richard Baxter.[J] This night, however, the Doctor is intent on a new book nowise to his mind. It is the "Redemption Redeemed" of John Goodwin. Its hydra-headed errors have already drawn from the scabbard the sword of many an orthodox Hercules on either side of the Tweed; and now, after a conference with the other Goodwin, the Dean takes up a ream of manuscript, and adds a finishing touch to his refutation. At this period Dr. Owen would be forty years of age, for he was born in 1616. His father was minister of a little parish in Oxfordshire, and his ancestors were princes in Wales; indeed, the genealogists claimed for him a descent from King Caractacus. He himself was educated at Queen's College, and, under the impulse of an ardent ambition, the young student had fully availed himself of his academic privileges. For several years he took no more sleep than four hours a-night, and in his eagerness for future distinction he mastered all attainable knowledge, from mathematics to music. But about the time of his reaching majority, all his ambitious projects were suspended by a visitation of religious earnestness. In much ignorance of the divine specific, his conscience grew tender, and sin appeared exceeding sinful. It was at this conjuncture that Archbishop Laud imposed on Oxford a new code of statutes which scared away from the University the now scrupulous scholar. Years of anxious thoughtfulness followed, partly filled up by his duties as chaplain successively to Sir Robert Dormer and Lord Lovelace, when about the year 1641 he had occasion to reside in London. Whilst there he went one day to hear Edward Calamy; but instead of the famous preacher there entered the pulpit a country minister, who, after a fervent prayer, gave out for his text--"Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?" The sermon was a very plain one, and Owen never ascertained the preacher's name; but the perplexities with which he had long been harassed disappeared, and in the joy of a discovered gospel and an ascertained salvation, the natural energy of his character and the vigor of his constitution found again their wonted play. Soon after this happy change, his first publication appeared. It was a "Display of Arminianism," and, attracting the attention of the Parliamentary "Committee for purging the Church of Scandalous Ministers," it procured for its author a presentation to the living of Fordham, in Essex. This was followed by his translation to the more important charge of Coggeshall, in the same county; and so rapidly did his reputation rise, that besides being frequently called to preach before the Parliament, he was, in 1649, selected by Cromwell as the associate of his expedition to Ireland, and was employed in re-modelling and resuscitating Trinity College, Dublin. Most likely it was owing to the ability with which he discharged this service that he was appointed Dean of Christ Church in 1651, and in the following year Vice-Chancellor of Oxford. It was a striking incident to find himself thus brought back to scenes which, fourteen years before, he had quitted amidst contempt and poverty, and a little mind would have been apt to signalize the event by a vainglorious ovation, or a vindictive retribution. But Owen returned to Oxford in all the grandeur of a God-fearing magnanimity, and his only solicitude was to fulfil the duties of his office. Although himself an Independent, he promoted well qualified men to responsible posts, notwithstanding their Presbyterianism or their Prelacy; and although the law gave him ample powers to disperse them, he never molested the liturgical meetings of his Episcopalian neighbors. From anxiety to promote the spiritual welfare of the students, in addition to his engagements as a Divinity lecturer and the resident head of the University, along with Dr. Goodwin he undertook to preach, on alternate Sabbaths, to the great congregation in St. Mary's. And such was the zeal which he brought to bear on the studies and the secular interests of the place, that the deserted courts were once more populous with ardent and accomplished students, and in alumni like Sprat, and South, and Ken, and Richard Cumberland, the Church of England received from Owen's Oxford some of its most distinguished ornaments; whilst men like Philip Henry and Joseph Alleine, went forth to perpetuate Owen's principles; and in founding the English schools of metaphysics, architecture, and medicine, Locke and Wren, and Sydenham taught the world that it was no misfortune to have been the pupils of the Puritan. It would be pleasant to record that Owen's generosity was reciprocated, and that if Oxford could not recognize the Non-conformist, neither did she forget the Republican who patronized the Royalists, and the Independent who befriended the Prelatists. According to the unsuspected testimony of Grainger, and Burnet, and Clarendon, the University was in a most flourishing condition when it passed from under his control; but on the principle which excludes Cromwell's statue from Westminster Palace, the picture-gallery at Christ Church finds no place for the greatest of its Deans. The retirement into which he was forced by the Restoration was attended with most of the hardships incident to an ejected minister, to which were added sufferings and sorrows of his own. He never was in prison, but he knew what it was to lead the life of a fugitive; and after making a narrow escape from dragoons sent to arrest him, he was compelled to quit his rural retreat, and seek a precarious refuge in the capital. In 1676 he lost his wife, but before this they had mingled their tears over the coffins of ten out of their eleven children; and the only survivor, a pious daughter, returned from the house of an unkind husband, to seek beside her father all that was left of the home of her childhood. Soon after he married again; but though the lady was good, and affectionate, and rich withal, no comforts and no kind tending could countervail the effects of bygone toils and privations, and from the brief remainder of his days, weakness and anguish made many a mournful deduction. Still the busy mind worked on. To the congregation, which had already shown at once its patience and its piety, by listening to Caryl's ten quartos on Job, and which was afterwards to have its patience farther tried and rewarded, in the long but invalid incumbency of Isaac Watts, Dr. Owen ministered as long as he was able; and, being a preacher who had "something to say," it was cheering to him to recognize among his constant attendants persons so intelligent and influential as the late Protector's brother-in-law and son-in-law, Colonel Desborough and Lord Charles Fleetwood, Sir John Hartopp, the Hon. Roger Boyle, Lady Abney, and the Countess of Anglesea, and many other hearers who adorned the doctrine which their pastor expounded, and whose expectant eagerness gave zest to his studies, and animation to his public addresses. Besides during all this interval, and to the number of more than thirty volumes, he was giving to the world those masterly works which have invigorated the theology and sustained the devotion of unnumbered readers in either hemisphere. Amongst others, folio by folio, came forth that Exposition of the Hebrews, which, amidst all its digressive prolixity, and with its frequent excess of erudition, is an enduring monument of its author's robust understanding and spiritual insight, as well as his astonishing industry. At last the pen dropped from his band, and on the 23d of August, 1683, he dedicated a note to his likeminded friend, Charles Fleetwood: "I am going to him whom my soul has loved, or rather who has loved me, with an everlasting love, which is the whole ground of all my consolation. I am leaving the ship of the Church in a storm; but while the great pilot is in it, the loss of a poor under-rower will be inconsiderable. Live, and pray, and hope, and wait patiently, and do not despond; the promise stands invincible--that he will never leave us nor forsake us. My affectionate respects to your lady, and to the rest of your relations, who are so dear to me in the Lord, remember your dying friend with all fervency." The morrow after he had sent this touching message to the representative of a beloved family was Bartholomew day, the anniversary of the ejection of his two thousand brethren. That morning a friend called to tell him that he had put to the press his "Meditations on the Glory of Christ." There was a moment's gleam in his languid eye, as he answered, "I am glad to hear it: but, O brother Payne! the long wished for day is come at last, in which I shall see that glory in another manner than I have ever done, or was capable of doing in this world." A few hours of silence followed, and then that glory was revealed. On the fourth of September, a vast funeral procession, including the carriages of sixty-seven noblemen and gentlemen, with long trains of mourning coaches and horsemen, took the road to Finsbury; and there, in a new burying-ground, within a few paces of Goodwin's grave, and near the spot where, five years later, John Bunyan was interred, they laid the dust of Dr. Owen. His grave is with us to this day; but in the crowded Golgotha, surrounded with undertakers' sheds, and blind brick walls, with London cabs and omnibuses whirling past the gate, few pilgrims can distinguish the obliterated stone which marks the resting-place of the mighty Non-conformist.[K] Many of our readers will remember Robert Baillie's description of Dr. Twiss, the Prolocutor of the Westminister Assembly: "The man, as the world knows, is very learned in the questions he has studied, and very good--beloved of all, and highly esteemed--but merely bookish ... and among the unfittest of all the company for any action." In this respect Dr. Owen was a great contrast to his studious contemporary; for he was as eminent for business talent as most ministers are conspicuous for the want of it. It was on this account that he was selected for the task of reorganizing the universities of Dublin and Oxford; and the success with which he fulfilled his commission, whilst it justified his patron's sagacity, showed that he was sufficiently master of himself to become the master of other minds. Of all his brethren few were so "fit for action." To the same cause to which he owed this practical ascendency, we are disposed to ascribe his popularity as a preacher; for we agree with Dr. Thompson, (Life of Owen, p. cvi.,) in thinking that Owen's power in the pulpit must have been greater than is usually surmised by his modern readers. Those who knew him describe him as a singularly fluent and persuasive speaker; and they also represent his social intercourse as peculiarly vivacious and cheerful. From all which our inference is, that Owen was one of those happy people who, whether for business or study, whether for conversation or public speaking, can concentrate all their faculties on the immediate occasion, and who do justice to themselves and the world, by doing justice to each matter as it successively comes to their hand. A well-informed and earnest speaker will always be popular, if he be tolerably fluent, and if he "shew himself friendly;" but no reputation and no talent will secure an audience to the automaton who is unconscious of his hearers, or to the misanthrope, who despises or dislikes them. And if, as Anthony à Wood informs us, "the persuasion of his oratory could move and wind the affections of his admiring auditory almost as he pleased," we can well believe that he possessed the "proper and comely personage, the graceful behavior in the pulpit, the eloquent elocution, and the winning and insinuating deportment," which this reluctant witness ascribes to him. With such advantages, we can understand how, dissolved into a stream of continuous discourse, the doctrines which we only know in their crystallized form of heads and particulars, became a gladsome river; and how the man who spoke them with sparkling eye and shining face was not shunned as a buckram pedant, but run after as a popular preacher. And yet, to his written style Owen is less indebted for his fame than almost any of the Puritans. Not to mention that his works have never been condensed into fresh pith and modern portableness by any congenial Fawcett, they never did exhibit the pathetic importunity and Demosthenic fervor of Baxter. In his Platonic loftiness Howe always dwelt apart; and there have been no glorious dreams since Bunyan woke amidst the beatific vision. Like a soft valley, where every turn reveals a cascade or a castle, or at least a picturesque cottage, Flavel lures us along by the vivid succession of his curious analogies and interesting stories; whilst all the way the path is green with kind humanity, and bright with Gospel blessedness. And like some sheltered cove, where the shells are all so brilliant, and the sea-plants all so curious, that the young naturalist can never leave off collecting, so profuse are the quaint sayings and the nice little anecdotes which Thomas Brooks showers from his "Golden Treasury," from his "Box," and his "Cabinet," that the reader needs must follow where all the road is so radiant. But Owen has no adventitious attractions. His books lack the extempore felicities and the reflected fellow-feeling which lent a charm to his spoken sermons; and on the table-land of his controversial treatises, sentence follows sentence like a file of ironsides, in buff and rusty steel, a sturdy procession, but a dingy uniform; and it is only here and there where a son of Anak has burst his rags, that you glimpse a thought of uncommon stature or wonderful proportions. Like candidates for the modern ministry, in his youth Owen had learned to write Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; but then, as now, English had no place in the academic curriculum. And had he been urged in maturer life to study the art of composition, most likely he would have frowned on his adviser. He would have urged the "haste" which "the King's business" requires, and might have reminded us that viands are as wholesome on a wooden trencher as on a plate of gold. He would have told us that truth needs no tinsel, and that the road over a bare heath may be more direct than the pretty windings of the valley. Or, rather, he would have said, as he has written--"Know that you have to do with a person who, provided his words but clearly express the sentiments of his mind, entertains a fixed and absolute disregard of all elegance and ornaments of speech." True: gold is welcome even in a purse of the coarsest canvas; and, although it is not in such caskets that people look for gems, no man would despise a diamond because he found it in an earthen porringer. In the treatises of Owen there is many a sentence which, set in a sermon, would shine like a brilliant; and there are ingots enough to make the fortune of a theological faculty. For instance, we open the first treatise in this new collection of his works, and we read:--"It carrieth in it a great condecency unto Divine wisdom, that man should be restored unto the image of God, by Him who was the essential image of the Father; and that He was made like unto us, that we might be made like unto Him, and unto God through him;" and we are immediately reminded of a recent treatise on the Incarnation, and all its beautiful speculation regarding the "Pattern-Man." We read again till we come to the following remark:--"It is the nature of sincere goodness to give a delight and complacency unto the mind in the exercise of itself, and communication of its effects. A good man doth both delight in doing good, and hath an abundant reward _for_ the doing it, _in_ the doing of it;" and how can we help recalling a memorable sermon "On the Immediate Reward of Obedience," and a no less memorable chapter in a Bridgewater treatise, "On the Inherent Pleasure of the Virtuous Affections?" And we read the chapter on "The Person of Christ the great Representative of God," and are startled by its foreshadowings of the sermons and the spiritual history of a remarkably honest and vigorous thinker, who, from doubting the doctrine of the Trinity, was led to recognize in the person of Jesus Christ the Alpha and Omega of his theology. It is possible that Archdeacon Wilberforce, and Chalmers, and Arnold, may never have perused the treatise in question; and it is equally possible that under the soporific influence of a heavy style, they may never have noticed passages for which their own minds possessed such a powerful affinity. But by the legitimate expedient of appropriate language--perhaps by means of some "ornament or elegance"--Jeremy Taylor or Barrow would have arrested attention to such important thoughts; and the cause of truth would have gained, had the better divine been at least an equal orator. However, there are "masters in Israel," whose style has been remarkably meagre; and perhaps "Edwards on the Will" and "Butler's Analogy," would not have numbered many more readers, although they had been composed in the language of Addison. We must, therefore, notice another obstacle which has hindered our author's popularity, and it is a fault of which the world is daily becoming more and more intolerant. That fault is prolixity. Dr. Owen did not take time to be brief; and in his polemical writings, he was so anxious to leave no cavil unanswered, that he spent, in closing loop-holes, the strength which would have crushed the foe in open battle. No misgiving as to the champion's powers will ever cross the mind of the spectators; but movements more rapid would render the conflict more interesting, and the victory not less conclusive.[L] In the same way, that the effectiveness of his controversial works is injured by this excursive tendency, so the practical impression of his other works is too often suspended by inopportune digressions; whilst every treatise would have commanded a wider circulation if divested of its irrelevant incumbrances. Within the entire range of British authorship there exists no grander contributions toward a systematic Christology than the Exposition of the Hebrews, with its dissertations on the Saviour's priesthood; but whilst there are few theologians who have not occasionally consulted it, those are still fewer who have mastered its ponderous contents; and we have frequently known valiant students who addressed themselves to the "Perseverance of the Saints," or the "Justification," but like settlers put ashore in a cane-brake, or in a jungle of prickly pears, after struggling for hours through the Preface or the General Considerations, they were glad to regain the water's edge, and take to their boat once more. It was their own loss, however, that they did not reach the interior; for there they would have found themselves in the presence of one of the greatest of Theological intellects. Black and Cavendish were born ready-made chemists, and Linnæus and Cuvier were naturalists, in spite of themselves; and so, there is a mental conformation which almost necessitated Augustine and Athanasius, Calvin and Arminius, to be dogmatists and systematic divines. With the opposite aptitudes for large generalization and subtile distinction, as soon as some master-principle had gained possession of their devout understandings, they had no greater joy than to develop its all-embracing applications, and they sought to subjugate Christendom to its imperial ascendency. By itself, the habit of lofty contemplation would have made them pietists or Christian psalmists, and a mere turn for definition would have made them quibblers or schoolmen; but the two united, and together animated by a strenuous faith, made them theologians. In such intellects the seventeenth century abounded, but we question if in dialectic skill, guided by sober judgment, and in extensive acquirements, mellowed by a deep spirituality, it yielded an equivalent to Dr. Owen. Although there is only one door to the kingdom of heaven, there is many an entrance to scientific divinity. There is the gate of Free Inquiry as well as the gate of Spiritual Wistfulness. And although there are exceptional instances, on the whole we can predict what school the new-comer will join, by knowing the door through which he entered. If from the wide fields of speculation he has sauntered inside the sacred inclosure; if he is an historian who has been carried captive by the documentary demonstration--or a poet who has been arrested by the spiritual sentiment--or a philosopher who has been won over by the Christian theory, and who has thus made a hale-hearted entrance within the precincts of the faith,--he is apt to patronize that gospel to which he has given his accession, and like Clemens Alexandrinus, or Hugo Grotius, or Alphonse de Lamartine, he will join that school where Taste and Reason alternate with Revelation, and where ancient classics and modern sages are scarcely subordinate to the "men who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." On the other hand, if "fleeing from the wrath to come," through the crevice of some "faithful saying," he has struggled into enough of knowledge to calm his conscience and give him peace with Heaven, the oracle which assured his spirit will be to him unique in its nature and supreme in its authority, and, a debtor to that scheme to which he owes his very self, like Augustine, and Cowper, and Chalmers, he will join that school where Revelation is absolute, and where "Thus saith the Lord" makes an end of every matter. And without alleging that a long process of personal solicitude is the only right commencement of the Christian life, it is worthy of remark that the converts whose Christianity has thus commenced have usually joined that theological school which, in "salvation-work," makes least account of man and most account of God. Jeremy Taylor, and Hammond, and Barrow, were men who made religion their business; but still they were men who regarded religion as a life _for_ God rather than a life _from_ God, and in whose writings recognitions of Divine mercy and atonement and strengthening grace are comparatively faint and rare. But Bolton, and Bunyan, and Thomas Goodwin, were men who from a region of carelessness or ignorance were conducted through a long and darkling labyrinth of self-reproach and inward misery, and by a way which they knew not were brought out at last on a bright landing-place of assurance and praise; and, like Luther in the previous century, and like Halyburton, and Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards, in the age succeeding, the strong sense of their own demerit led them to ascribe the happy change from first to last to the sovereign grace and good Spirit of God. It was in deep contrition and much anguish of soul that Owen's career began; and that creed, which is pre-eminently the religion of "broken hearts," became his system of theology. "Children, live like Christians; I leave you the covenant to feed upon." Such was the dying exhortation of him who protected so well England and the Albigenses; and "the convenant" was the food with which the devout heroic lives of that godly time were nourished. This covenant was the sublime staple of Owen's theology. It suggested topics for his parliamentary sermons;--"A Vision of Unchangeable Mercy," and "The Steadfastness of Promises." It attracted him to that book of the Bible in which the federal economy is especially unfolded. And, whether discoursing on the eternal purposes, or the extent of redemption--whether expounding the Mediatorial office, or the work of the sanctifying Spirit--branches of this tree of life re-appear in every treatise. In such discussions some may imagine that there can be nothing but barren speculation, or, at the best, an arduous and transcendental theosophy. However, when they come to examine for themselves they will be astonished at the mass of Scriptural authority on which they are based; and, unless we greatly err, they will find them peculiarly subservient to correction and instruction in righteousness. Many writers have done more for the details of Christian conduct; but for purposes of heart-discipline and for the nurture of devout affections, there is little uninspired authorship equal to the more practical publications of Owen. In the Life of that noble-hearted Christian philosopher, the late Dr. Welsh, it is mentioned that in his latter days, besides the Bible, he read nothing but "Owen on Spiritual-Mindedness," and the "Olney Hymns;" and we shall never despair of the Christianity of a country which finds numerous readers for his "Meditations on the Glory of Christ," and his "Exposition of the hundred and thirtieth Psalm." And here we may notice a peculiarity of Owen's treatises, which is at once an excellence and a main cause of their redundancies. So systematic was his mind that he could only discuss a special topic with reference to the entire scheme of truth; and so constructive was his mind, that, not content with the confutation of his adversary, he loved to state and establish positively the truth impugned: to which we may add, so devout was his disposition, that, instead of leaving his thesis a dry demonstration, he was anxious to suffuse its doctrine with those spiritual charms which it wore to his own contemplation. All this adds to the bulk of his polemical writings. At the same time it adds to their value. Dr. Owen makes his reader feel that the point in debate is not an isolated dogma, but a part of the "whole counsel of God;" and by the positive as well as practical form in which he presents it, he does all which a disputant can to counteract the skeptical and pragmatical tendencies of religious controversy. Hence, too, it comes to pass that, with one of the commonplaces of Protestantism or Calvinism for a nucleus, his works are most of them virtual systems of doctrino-practical divinity. The alluvial surface of a country takes its complexion from the prevailing rock-formation. The Essays of Foster, and the Sermons of Chalmers excepted, the evangelical theology of the last hundred years has been chiefly alluvial; and in its miscellaneous composition the element which we chiefly recognize is a detritus from Mount Owen. To be sure, a good deal of it is the decomposition of a more recent conglomerate, but a conglomerate in which larger boulders of the original formation are still discernible. The sermon-makers of the present day may read Cecil and Romaine and Andrew Fuller; and in doing this they are studying the men who studied Owen. But why not study the original? It does good to an ordinary understanding to hold fellowship with a master mind; and it would greatly freshen the ministrations of our pulpits, if, with the electric eye of modern culture, and with minds alive to our modern exigency, preachers held converse direct with the prime sources of British theology. We could imagine the reader of Boston producing a sermon as good as Robert Walker's, and the reader of Henry producing a commentary as good as Thomas Scott's, and the reader of Bishop Hall producing sketches as good as the "Horæ Homileticæ:" but we grow sleepy when we try to imagine Scott diluted or Walker desiccated, and from a congregation top-dressed with bone-dust from the "Skeletons," the crop we should expect would be neither fervent Christians nor enlightened Churchmen. And, even so, a reproduction of the men who have repeated or translated Owen, is sure to be commonplace and feeble; but from warm hearts and active intellects employed on Owen himself, we could expect a multitude of new Cecils and Romaines and Fullers. As North British Reviewers, we congratulate our country on having produced this beautiful reprint of the illustrious Puritan; and from the fact that they have offered it at a price which has introduced it to four thousand libraries, we must regard the publishers as benefactors to modern theology. The editor has consecrated all his learning and all his industry to his labor of love; and, by all accounts, the previous copies needed a reviser as careful and as competent as Mr. Goold. Dr. Thompson's memoir of the author we have read with singular pleasure. It exhibits much research, and a fine appreciation of Dr. Owen's characteristic excellencies, and its tone is kind and catholic. Such reprints, rightly used, will be a new era in our Christian literature. They can scarcely fail to intensify the devotion and invigorate the faculties of such as read them. And if these readers be chiefly professed divines, the people will in the long-run reap the benefit. Let taste and scholarship and eloquence by all means do their utmost; but it is little which these can do without materials. The works of Owen are an exhaustless magazine; and, without forgetting the source whence they were themselves supplied, there is many an empty mill which their garner could put into productive motion. Like the gardens of Malta, many a region, now bald and barren, might be rendered fair and profitable with loam imported from their Holy Land; and many is the fair structure which might be reared from a single block of their cyclopean masonry. FOOTNOTES: [I] _The Works of John Owen, D.D._ Edited by the Rev. WILLIAM H. GOOLD, Edinburgh. Vols. 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 14, (to be completed in Fifteen Volumes.) London and Edinburgh. 1850-51. New-York, Carter & Brother, 1852. [J] In his elaborate "Memoirs of Dr. Owen," (p. 345.) Mr. Orme mentions that "his library was sold in May, 1684, by Millington, one of the earliest of our book auctioneers;" and adds, "considering the doctor's taste as a reader, his age as a minister, and his circumstances as a man, his library, in all probability, would be both extensive and valuable." Then, in a foot note, he gives some interesting particulars as to the extent of the early No-conformist libraries, viz., Dr. Lazarus Seaman's, which sold for £700; Dr. Jacomb's, which sold for £1300; Dr. Bates's, which was bought for five or six hundred pounds by Dr. Williams, in order to lay the foundation of Red Cross Street library; and Dr. Evans's, which contained 10,000 volumes; again subjoining, "It is probable Dr. Owen's was not inferior to some of these." It would have gratified the biographer had he known that a catalogue of Owen's library is still in existence. Bound up with other sale-catalogues in the Bodleian, is the "Bibliotheca Oweniana; sive catalogus librorum plurimis facultatibus insignium, instructissimæ Bibliothecæ Rev. Doct. Viri D. Joan. Oweni (quondam Vice-Cancellarii et Decani Ædis Christi in Academia Oxoniensi) nuperrime defuncti; cum variis manuscriptis Græcis Latinis, &c., propria manu Doct. Patricii Junii aliorumq. conscriptis: quorum auctio habebitur Londini apud domum auctionariam, adverso Nigri Cygni in vico vulgo dicto Ave Mary Lane, prope Ludgate Street, vicesimo sexto die Maii, 1684. Per Eduardum Millington, Bibliopolam." In the Preface, the auctioneer speaks of Dr. Owen as "a person so generally known as a generous buyer and great collector of the best books;" and after adverting to his copies of Fathers, Councils, Church Histories, and Rabbinical Authors, he adds, "all which considered together, perhaps for their number are not to be paralleled, or upon any terms to be procured, when gentlemen are desirous of, or have a real occasion for the perusal of them." The number of volumes is 2889. For the knowledge of the existence of this catalogue, and for a variety of curious particulars regarding it, the Reviewer is indebted to one of the dignitaries of Oxford, whose bibliographical information is only exceeded by the obligingness with which he puts it at the command of others, the Rev. Dr. Macbride, Principal of Magdalene Hall. [K] A copious Latin epitaph was inscribed on his tombstone, of which Mr. Orme speaks, in 1826, as "still in fine preservation." (Memoirs, p. 346.) We are sorry to say that three letters, faintly traceable, are all that can now be deciphered. The tomb of his illustrious colleague, Goodwin, is in a still more deplorable condition: not only is the inscription effaced, but the marble slab, having been split with lightning, has never been repaired. [L] In his delightful reminiscences of Dr. Chalmers, Mr. J. J. Gurney says, "I often think that particular men bear about with them an analogy to particular animals: Chalmers is like a good-tempered lion; Wilberforce is like a bee." Dr. Owen often reminds us of an elephant; the same ponderous movements--the same gentle sagacity--the same vast but unobtrusive powers. With a logical proboscis able to handle the heavy guns of Hugo Grotius, and to untwist withal the tangled threads of Richard Baxter, in his encounters with John Goodwin he resembles his prototype in a leopard-hunt, where sheer strength is on the one side, and brisk ability on the other. And, to push our conceit no further, they say that this wary animal will never venture over a bridge till he has tried its strength, and is assured that it can bear him; and if we except the solitary break-down in the Waltonian controversy, our disputant was as cautious in choosing his ground as he was formidable when once he took up his position. JESSE LEE AND THE LAWYERS. Jesse Lee, one of the first Methodist preachers in New England, combined unresting energy, and sensibility, with an extraordinary propensity to wit. Mr. Stephens, in his new work on the _Memorials of Methodism_, gives the following specimen of Lee's _bonhommie_: As he was riding on horseback one day, between Boston and Lynn, he was overtaken by two young lawyers, who knew that he was a Methodist preacher, and were disposed to amuse themselves somewhat at his expense. Saluting him, and ranging their horses one on each side of him, they entered in a conversation something like the following:--_First Lawyer._ I believe you are a preacher, sir? _Lee._ Yes; I generally pass for one. _First lawyer._ You preach very often, I suppose? _Lee._ Generally every day, frequently twice, or more. _Second Lawyer._ How do you find time to study, when you preach so often? _Lee._ I study when riding, and read when resting. _First Lawyer._ But you do not write your sermons? _Lee._ No; not very often. _Second Lawyer._ Do you not often make mistakes in preaching extemporaneously? _Lee._ I do, sometimes. _Second Lawyer._ How do you do then? Do you correct them? _Lee._ That depends upon the character of the mistake. I was preaching the other day, and I went to quote the text: "All liars shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone;" and, by mistake, I said, "All _lawyers_ shall have their part"--_Second Lawyer_ (interrupting him). "What did you do with that? Did you correct it?" _Lee._ "Oh, no, indeed! It was so nearly true, I didn't think it worth while to correct it." "Humph!" said one of them, with a hasty and impatient glance at the other; "I don't know whether you are the more knave or fool!" "Neither," he quietly replied, turning at the same time his mischievous eyes from one to the other; "I believe I am just _between_ the two!" Finding they were measuring wit with a master, and mortified at their discomfiture, the knights of the green bag drove on, leaving the victor to solitude and his own reflections. ANNUARIES, BY ALICE CAREY. I. A year has gone down silently To the dark bosom of the Past, Since I beneath this very tree Sat hoping, fearing, dreaming, last. Its waning glories, like a flame, Are trembling to the wind's light touch-- All just a year ago the same, And I--oh! I am changed so much! The beauty of a wildering dream Hung softly round declining day; A star of all too sweet a beam In Eve's flushed bosom trembling lay. Changed in its aspect, yet the same, Still climbs that star from sunset's glow, But its embraces of pale flame Clasp not the weary world from wo! Another year shall I return, And cross this solemn chapel floor, While round me memory's shrine-lamps burn-- Or shall this pilgrimage be o'er? One that I loved, grown faint with strife, When drooped and died the tenderer bloom, Folded the white tent of young life For the pale army of the tomb. The dry seeds dropping from their pods, The hawthorn apples bright as dawn, And the pale mullen's starless rods, Were just as now a year agone. But changed is every thing to me, From the small flower to sunset's glow, Since last I sat beneath this tree, A year--a little year--ago. I leaned against this broken bough, This faded turf my footstep pressed; But glad hopes that are not there now, Lay softly trembling in my breast: Trembling, for though the golden haze, Rose, as the dead leaves drifted by, As from the Vala of old days, The mournful voice of prophecy. Give woman's heart one triumph hour, Even on the borders of the grave, And thou hast given her strength and power The saddest ills of life to brave. Crush that far hope down, thou dost bring To the poor bird the tempest's wrath, Without the petrel's stormy wing To beat the darkness from its path. Once knowing mortal hope and fear, Whate'er in heaven's sweet clime thou art, Bend, pitying mother, softly near, And save, O save me from my heart! Be still pale-handed memory, My knee is trembling on the sod, The heir of immortality, A child of the eternal God. II. When last year took her mournful flight, With all her train of wo and ill, As pale processions sweep at night Across some lonesome burial hill-- My soul with sorrow for its mate, And bowed with unrequited wrong, Stood knocking at the starry gate Of the wild wondrous realm of song. For hope from my poor hert was gone, With all the sheltering peace it gave, And a dim twilight, stealing on, Foretold the night-time of the grave. Past is that time of dim unrest, Hope reillumes its faded track, And the soft hand of love has prest Death's deep and awful shadows back. A year agone, when wildly shrill The wind sat singing on this bough, The churchyard on the neighboring hill Had not so many graves as now. When the May-morn, with hand of light, The clouds above her bosom drew, And o'er the blue, cold steeps of night Went treading out the stars like dew-- One, whose dear joy it had been ours Two little summer times to keep, Folded his white hands from the flowers, And, softly smiling, fell asleep. And when the northern light streamed cold Across October's moaning blast, One whose brief tarriance was foretold All the sweet summer that was past, Meekly unlocked from her young arms The scarcely faded bridal crown, And in death's fearful night of storms The dim day of her life went down. While still beneath the golden hours, That like a roof the woods o'erspread, Among the few and faded flowers, Musing this idle rhyme I tread. Above yon reach of level mist Bright shines the cross-crowned spire afar, As in the sky's clear amethyst The splendor of some steadfast star. And still beneath its steady light The waves of time heave to and fro, From night to day, from day to night, As the dim seasons come and go. Some eager for ambition's strife, Some to love's banquet hurrying on, Like pilgrims on the hills of life We cross each other, and are gone. But though our lives are little drops, Welled from the infinite fount above, Our deaths are but the mystic stops In the great melody of love. III. Burying the basement of the skies October's mists hang dull and red, And with each wild gust's fall and rise, The yellow leaves are round me spread. 'Tis the third autumn, ay, so long, Since memory 'neath this very bough, Thrilled my sad lyre strings into song-- What shall unlock their music now? Then sang I of a sweet hope changed, Of pale hands beckoning, glad health fled, Of hearts grown careless or estranged, Of friends, or living, lost, or dead. O living lost, forever lost, Your light still lingers, faint and far, As if an awful shadow crossed The bright disk of the morning star. Blow, autumn, in thy wildest wrath, Down from the northern woodlands, blow! Drift the last wild-flowers from my path-- What care I for the summer now? Yet shrink I, trembling and afraid, From searching glances inward thrown; What deep foundation have I laid, For any joyance, not my own? While with my poor, unskilful hands, Half hopeful, half in vague alarm, Building up walls of shining sands That fell and faded with the storm, E'en now my bosom shakes with fear, Like the last leaflets of this bough, For through the silence I can hear, "Unprofitable servant, thou!" Yet have there been, there are to-day In spite of health, or hope's decline, Fountains of beauty sealed away From every mortal eye but mine. Even dreams have filled my soul with light, and on my way their beauty left, As if the darkness of the night Were by some planet's rising cleft. And peace hath in my heart been born, That shut from memory all life's ills, In walking with the blue-eyed morn Among the white mists of the hills. And joyous, I have heard the wails That heave the wild woods to and fro, When autumn's crown of crimson pales Beneath the winter's hand of snow. Once, leaving all its lovely mates, On yonder lightning-withered tree, That vainly for the springtime waits, A wild bird perched and sang for me. And listening to the clear sweet strain That came like sunshine o'er the day My forehead's hot and burning pain, Fell like a crown of thorns away. But shadows from the western height Are stretching to the valley low, For through the cloudy gates of night The day is passing, solemn, slow. While o'er yon blue and rocky steep The moon, half hidden in the mist, Waits for the loving wind to keep The promise of the twilight tryst-- Come thou, whose meek blue eyes divine, What thou, and only thou canst see, I wait to put my hand in thine-- What answer sendest thou to me? Ah! thoughts of one whom helpless blight Had pushed from all fair hope apart, Making it thenceforth hers to fight The stormy battles of the heart. Well, I have no complaint of wrath, And no reproaches for my doom; Spring cannot blossom in thy path So bright as I would have it bloom. IV. O sorrowful and faded years, Gathered away a time ago, How could your deaths the fount of tears Have troubled to an overflow? I muse upon the songs I made Beneath the maple's yellow limbs, When down the aisles of thin cold shade Sounded the wild birds' farewell hymns. But no sad spell my spirit binds As when, in days on which it broods, October hunted with the winds Along the reddening sunset woods. Alas, the seasons come and go, Brightly or dimly rise and set The days, but stir no fount of woe, Nor kindle hope, nor wake regret. I sit with the complaining night, And underneath the waning moon, As when the lilies large and white Lay round the forehead of the June. What time within a snowy grave Closed the blue eyes so heavenly dear, Darkness swept o'er me like a wave, And time has nothing that I fear. The golden wings of summer hours Make to my heart a dirge-like sound, The spring's sweet boughs of bridal flowers Lie bright across a smooth-heaped mound. What care I that I sing to-day Where sound not the old plaintive hymns, And where the mountains hide away The sunset maple's yellow limbs? From Blackwood's Magazine. MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[M] BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. BOOK VIII.--CHAPTER IV. With his hands behind him, and his head drooping on his breast--slow, stealthy, noiseless, Randal Leslie glided along the streets on leaving the Italian's house. Across the scheme he had before revolved, there glanced another yet more glittering, for its gain might be more sure and immediate. If the exile's daughter were heiress to such wealth, might he himself hope--He stopped short even in his own soliloquy, and his breath came quick. Now in his last visit to Hazeldean, he had come in contact with Riccabocca, and been struck by the beauty of Violante. A vague suspicion had crossed him that these might be the persons of whom the Marchesa was in search, and the suspicion had been confirmed by Beatrice's description of the refugee she desired to discover. But as he had not then learned the reason for her inquiries, nor conceived the possibility that he could have any personal interest in ascertaining the truth, he had only classed the secret in question among those the farther research into which might be left to time and occasion. Certainly the reader will not do the unscrupulous intellect of Randal Leslie the injustice to suppose that he was deterred from confiding to his fair friend all that he knew of Riccabocca, by the refinement of honor to which he had so chivalrously alluded. He had correctly stated Audley Egerton's warning against any indiscreet confidence, though he had forborne to mention a more recent and direct renewal of the same caution. His first visit to Hazeldean had been paid without consulting Egerton. He had been passing some days at his father's house, and had gone over thence to the Squire's. On his return to London, he had, however, mentioned this visit to Audley, who had seemed annoyed and even displeased at it, though Randal well knew sufficient of Egerton's character to know that such feeling could scarce be occasioned merely by his estrangement from his half brother. This dissatisfaction had, therefore, puzzled the young man. But as it was necessary to his views to establish intimacy with the Squire, he did not yield the point with his customary deference to his patron's whims. He therefore observed, that he should be very sorry to do any thing displeasing to his benefactor, but that his father had been naturally anxious that he should not appear positively to slight the friendly overtures of Mr. Hazeldean. "Why naturally?" asked Egerton. "Because you know that Mr. Hazeldean is a relation of mine--that my grandmother was a Hazeldean." "Ah!" said Egerton, who as it has been before said, knew little, and cared less, about the Hazeldean pedigree, "I was either not aware of that circumstance, or had forgotten it. And your father thinks that the Squire may leave you a legacy?" "Oh, sir, my father is not so mercenary--such an idea never entered his head. But the Squire himself has indeed said--'Why, if any thing happened to Frank, you would be next heir to my lands, and therefore we ought to know each other.' But--" "Enough," interrupted Egerton, "I am the last man to pretend to the right of standing between you and a single chance of fortune, or of aid to it. And whom did you meet at Hazeldean?" "There was no one there, sir; not even Frank." "Hum. Is the Squire not on good terms with his parson? Any quarrel about tithes?" "Oh, no quarrel. I forgot Mr. Dale; I saw him pretty often. He admires and praises you very much, sir." "Me--and why? What did he say of me?" "That your heart was as sound as your head; that he had once seen you about some old parishioners of his; and that he had been much impressed with a depth of feeling he could not have anticipated in a man of the world, and a statesman." "Oh, that was all; some affair when I was member from Lansmere?" "I suppose so." Here the conversation had broken off; but the next time Randal was led to visit the Squire he had formally asked Egerton's consent, who, after a moment's hesitation, had as formally replied, "I have no objection." On returning from this visit, Randal mentioned that he had seen Riccabocca; and Egerton, a little startled at first, said composedly, "Doubtless one of the political refugees; take care not to set Madame di Negra on his track. Remember, she is suspected of being a spy of the Austrian government." "Rely on me, sir," said Randal; "but I should think this poor Doctor can scarcely be the person she seeks to discover?" "That is no affair of ours," answered Egerton; "we are English gentlemen, and make not a step towards the secrets of another." Now, when Randal revolved this rather ambiguous answer, and recalled the uneasiness with which Egerton had first heard of his visit to Hazeldean, he thought that he was indeed near the secret which Edward desired to conceal from him and from all--viz., the incognito of the Italian whom Lord l'Estrange had taken under his protection. "My cards," said Randal to himself, as, with a deep-drawn sigh, he resumed his soliloquy, "are become difficult to play. On the one hand, to entangle Frank into marriage with this foreigner, the Squire could never forgive him. On the other hand, if she will not marry him without the dowry--and that depends on her brother's wedding this countrywoman--and that countrywoman be as I surmise, Violante--and Violante be this heiress, and to be won by me! Tush, tush. Such delicate scruples in a woman so placed and so constituted as Beatrice di Negra, must be easily talked away. Nay, the loss itself of this alliance to her brother, the loss of her own dowry--the very pressure of poverty and debt--would compel her into the sole escape left to her option. I will then follow up the old plan; I will go down to Hazeldean, and see if there be any substance in the new one;--and then to reconcile both--aha--the House of Leslie shall rise yet from its ruin--and--" Here he was startled from his reverie by a friendly slap on the shoulder, and an exclamation,--"Why, Randal, you are more absent than when you used to steal away from the cricket ground, muttering Greek verses at Eton." "My dear Frank," said Randal, "you--you are so _brusque_, and I was just thinking of you." "Were you? And kindly, then, I am sure," said Frank Hazeldean, his honest handsome face lighted up with the unsuspecting genial trust of friendship; "and Heaven knows," he added, with a sadder voice, and a graver expression on his eye and lip--"Heaven knows I want all the kindness you can give me!" "I thought," said Randal, "that your father's last supply, of which I was fortunate enough to be the bearer, would clear off your more pressing debts. I don't pretend to preach, but really I must say once more, you should not be so extravagant." _Frank_ (seriously).--"I have done my best to reform. I have sold off my horses, and I have not touched dice nor card these six months: I would not even put into the raffle for the last Derby." This last was said with the air of a man who doubted the possibility of obtaining belief to some assertion of preternatural abstinence and virtue. _Randal._--"Is it possible? But, with such self-conquest, how is it that you cannot contrive to live within the bounds of a very liberal allowance?" _Frank_ (despondingly).--"Why, when a man once gets his head under water, it is so hard to float back again on the surface. You see, I attribute all my embarrassments to that first concealment of my debts from my father, when they could have been so easily met, and when he came up to town so kindly." "I am sorry, then, that I gave you that advice." "Oh, you meant it so kindly, I don't reproach you; it was all my own fault." "Why, indeed, I did urge you to pay off that moiety of your debts left unpaid, with your allowance. Had you done so, all had been well." "Yes, but poor Borrowwell got into such a scrape at Goodwood; I could not resist him--a debt of honor, _that_ must be paid; so when I signed another bill for him, he could not pay it, poor fellow: really he would have shot himself, if I had not renewed it; and now it is swelled to such an amount with that cursed interest, that _he_ never can pay it; and one bill, of course, begets another, and to be renewed every three months; 'tis the devil and all! So little as I ever got for all I have borrowed," added Frank with a rueful amaze. "Not £1500 ready money; and it would cost me almost as much yearly,--if I had it." "Only £1500." "Well, besides seven large chests of the worst cigars you ever smoked; three pipes of wine that no one would drink, and a great bear, that had been imported from Greenland for the sake of its grease." "That should at least have saved you a bill with your hairdresser." "I paid his bill with it," said Frank, "and very good-natured he was to take the monster off my hands; it had already hugged two soldiers and one groom into the shape of a flounder. I tell you what," resumed Frank, after a short pause, "I have a great mind even now to tell my father honestly all my embarrassments." _Randal_ (solemnly).--"Hum!" _Frank._--"What? don't you think it would be the best way? I never can save enough--never can pay off what I owe; and it rolls like a snowball." _Randal._--"Judging by the Squire's talk, I think that with the first sight of your affairs you would forfeit his favor for ever; and your mother would be so shocked, especially after supposing that the sum I brought you so lately sufficed to pay off every claim on you. If you had not assured her of that, it might be different; but she who so hates an untruth, and who said to the Squire, 'Frank says this will clear him; and with all his faults, Frank never yet told a lie.'" "Oh my dear mother!--I fancy I hear her!" cried Frank with deep emotion. "But I did not tell a lie, Randal; I did not say that that sum would clear me." "You empowered and begged me to say so," replied Randal with grave coldness; "and don't blame me if I believed you." "No, no! I only said it would clear me for the moment." "I misunderstood you, then, sadly; and such mistakes involve my own honor. Pardon me, Frank; don't ask my aid in future. You see with the best intentions I only compromise myself." "If you forsake me, I may as well go and throw myself into the river," said Frank in a tone of despair; "and sooner or later my father must know my necessities. The Jews threaten to go to him already; and the longer the delay, the more terrible the explanation." "I don't see why your father should ever learn the state of your affairs; and it seems to me that you could pay off these usurers, and get rid of these bills, by raising money on comparatively easy terms." "How?" cried Frank eagerly. "Why, the Casino property is entailed on you, and you might obtain a sum upon that, not to be paid until the property becomes yours." "At my poor father's death? Oh, no--no! I cannot bear the idea of this cold-blooded calculation on a father's death. I know it is not uncommon; I know other fellows who have done it, but they never had parents so kind as mine; and even in them it shocked and revolted me. The contemplating a father's death and profiting by the contemplation,--it seems a kind of parricide--it is not natural, Randal. Besides, don't you remember what the governor said--he actually wept while he said it, 'Never calculate on my death; I could not bear that.' Oh, Randal, don't speak of it!" "I respect your sentiments; but still all the post-obits you could raise could not shorten Mr. Hazeldean's life by a day. However, dismiss that idea; we must think of some other device. Ha, Frank! you are a handsome fellow, and your expectations are great--why don't you marry some woman with money?" "Pooh!" exclaimed Frank, coloring. "You know, Randal, that there is but one woman in the world I can ever think of, and I love her so devotedly, that, though I was as gay as most men before, I really feel as if the rest of her sex had lost every charm. I was passing through the street now,--merely to look up at her windows--" "You speak of Madame di Negra? I have just left her. Certainly she is two or three years older than you; but if you can get over that misfortune, why not marry her?" "Marry her!" cried Frank in amaze, and all his color fled from his cheeks. "Marry her!--are you serious?" "Why not?" "But even if she, who is so accomplished, so admired--even if she would accept me, she is, you know, poorer than myself. She has told me so frankly. That woman has such a noble heart! and--and--my father would never consent, nor my mother either. I know they would not." "Because she is a foreigner?" "Yes--partly." "Yet the Squire suffered his cousin to marry a foreigner." "That was different. He had no control over Jemima; and a daughter-in-law is so different; and my father is so English in his notions; and Madame di Negra, you see, is altogether so foreign. Her very graces would be against her in his eyes." "I think you do both your parents injustice. A foreigner of low birth--an actress or singer, for instance--of course would be highly objectionable; but a woman, like Madame di Negra, of such high birth and connections--" Frank shook his head. "I don't think the governor would care a straw about her connections, if she were a king's daughter. He considers all foreigners pretty much alike. And then, you know"--Frank's voice sank into a whisper--"you know that one of the very reasons why she is so dear to me would be an insuperable objection to the old-fashioned folks at home." "I don't understand you, Frank." "I love her the more," said young Hazeldean, raising his front with a noble pride, that seemed to speak of his descent from a race of cavaliers and gentlemen. "I love her the more because the world has slandered her name--because I believe her to be pure and wronged. But would they at the hall--they who do not see with a lover's eyes--they who have all the stubborn English notions about the indecorum and license of Continental manners, and will so readily credit the worst?--O, no--I love--I cannot help it--but I have no hope." "It is very possible that you may be right," exclaimed Randal, as if struck and half-convinced by his companion's argument--"very possible; and certainly I think that the homely folks at the Hall would fret and fume at first, if they heard you were married to Madame di Negra. Yet still, when your father learned that you had done so, not from passion alone, but to save him from all pecuniary sacrifice--to clear yourself of debt--to--" "What do you mean?" exclaimed Frank impatiently. "I have reason to know that Madame di Negra will have as large a portion as your father could reasonably expect you to receive with any English wife. And when this is properly stated to the Squire, and the high position and rank of your wife fully established and brought home to him--for I must think that these would tell, despite your exaggerated notions of his prejudices--and then, when he really sees Madame di Negra, and can judge of her beauty and rare gifts, upon my word, I think, Frank, that there would be no cause for fear. After all, too, you are his only son. He will have no option but to forgive you; and I know how anxiously both your parents wish to see you settled in life." Frank's whole countenance became illuminated. "There is no one who understands the Squire like you, certainly," said he, with lively joy. "He has the highest opinion of your judgment. And you really believe you could smooth matters!" "I believe so, but I should be sorry to induce you to run any risk; and if, on cool consideration, you think that risk is incurred, I strongly advise you to avoid all occasion of seeing the poor Marchesa. Ah, you wince; but I say it for her sake as well as your own. First, you must be aware, that, unless you have serious thoughts of marriage, your attentions can but add to the very rumors that, equally groundless, you so feelingly resent; and, secondly, because I don't think any man has a right to win the affections of a woman--especially a woman who seems likely to love with her whole heart and soul--merely to gratify his own vanity." "Vanity! Good heavens, can you think so poorly of me? But as to the Marchesa's affections," continued Frank, with a faltering voice, "do you really and honestly believe that they are to be won by me?" "I fear lest they may be half won already," said Randal, with a smile and a shake of the head; "but she is too proud to let you see any effect you may produce on her, especially when, as I take it for granted, you have never hinted at the hope of obtaining her hand." "I never till now conceived such a hope. My dear Randal, all my cares have vanished--I tread upon air--I have a great mind to call on her at once." "Stay, stay," said Randal. "Let me give you a caution. I have just informed you that Madame di Negra will have, what you suspected not before, a fortune suitable to her birth; any abrupt change in your manner at present might induce her to believe that you were influenced by that intelligence." "Ah!" exclaimed Frank, stopping short, as if wounded to the quick. "And I feel guilty--feel as if I _was_ influenced by that intelligence. So I am, too, when I reflect," he continued, with a _naïveté_ that was half pathetic; "but I hope she will not be so _very_ rich--if so, I'll not call." "Make your mind easy, it is but a portion of some twenty or thirty thousand pounds, that would just suffice to discharge all your debts, clear away all obstacle to your union, and in return for which you could secure a more than adequate jointure and settlement on the Casino property. Now I am on that head, I will be yet more communicative. Madame di Negra has a noble heart, as you say, and told me herself, that until her brother on his arrival had assured her of this dowry, she would never have consented to marry you--never crippled with her own embarrassments the man she loves. Ah! with what delight she will hail the thought of assisting you to win back your father's heart! But be guarded, meanwhile. And now, Frank, what say you--would it not be well if I run down to Hazeldean to sound your parents? It is rather inconvenient to me to be sure, to leave town just at present; but I would do more than that to render you a smaller service. Yes, I'll go to Rood Hall to-morrow, and thence to Hazeldean. I am sure your father will press me to stay, and I shall have ample opportunities to judge of the manner in which he would be likely to regard your marriage with Madame di Negra--supposing always it were properly put to him. We can then act accordingly." "My dear, dear Randal. How can I thank you? If ever a poor fellow like me can serve you in return--but that's impossible." "Why, certainly, I will never ask you to be security to a bill of mine," said Randal, laughing. "I practise the economy I preach." "Ah!" said Frank with a groan, "that is because your mind is cultivated--you have so many resources; and all my faults have come from idleness. If I had any thing to do on a rainy day, I should never have got into these scrapes." "Oh! you will have enough to do some day managing your property. We who have no property must find one in knowledge. Adieu, my dear Frank; I must go home now. By the way, you have never, by chance, spoken of the Riccaboccas to Madame di Negra?" "The Riccaboccas? No. That's well thought of. It may interest her to know that a relation of mine has married her countryman. Very odd that I never did mention it; but, to say truth, I really do talk so little to her; she is so superior, and I feel positively shy with her." "Do me the favor, Frank," said Randal, waiting patiently till this reply ended--for he was devising all the time what reason to give for his request--"never to allude to the Riccaboccas either to her or to her brother, to whom you are sure to be presented." "Why not allude to them?" Randal hesitated a moment. His invention was still at fault, and, for a wonder, he thought it the best policy to go pretty near the truth. "Why, I will tell you. The Marchesa conceals nothing from her brother, and he is one of the few Italians who are in high favor with the Austrian court." "Well!" "And I suspect that poor Dr. Riccabocca fled his country from some mad experiment at revolution, and is still hiding from the Austrian police." "But they can't hurt him here," said Frank, with an Englishman's dogged inborn conviction of the sanctity of his native island. "I should like to see an Austrian pretend to dictate to us whom to receive and whom to reject." "Hum--that's true and constitutional, no doubt; but Riccabocca may have excellent reasons--and, to speak plainly, I know he has (perhaps as affecting the safety of friends in Italy),--for preserving his incognito, and we are bound to respect those reasons without inquiring further." "Still, I cannot think so meanly of Madame di Negra," persisted Frank (shrewd here, though credulous elsewhere, and both from his sense of honor), "as to suppose that she would descend to be a spy, and injure a poor countryman of her own, who trusts to the same hospitality she receives herself at our English hands. Oh, if I thought that, I could not love her!" added Frank, with energy. "Certainly you are right. But see in what a false position you would place both her brother and herself. If they knew Riccabocca's secret, and proclaimed it to the Austrian government, as you say, it would be cruel and mean; but if they knew and concealed it, it might involve them both in the most serious consequences. You know the Austrian policy is proverbially so jealous and tyrannical!" "Well, the newspapers say so, certainly." "And, in short, your discretion can do no harm, and your indiscretion may. Therefore, give me your word, Frank. I can't stay to argue now." "I'll not allude to the Riccaboccas, upon my honor," answered Frank; "still I am sure that they would be as safe with the Marchesa as with--" "I rely on your honor," interrupted Randal, hastily, and hurried off. CHAPTER V. Towards the evening of the following day, Randal Leslie walked slowly from a village in the main road (about two miles from Rood Hall), at which he had got out of the coach. He passed through meads and corn-fields, and by the skirts of woods which had formerly belonged to his ancestors, but had long since been alienated. He was alone amidst the haunts of his boyhood, the scenes in which he had first invoked the grand Spirit of Knowledge, to bid the Celestial Still One minister to the commands of an earthly and turbulent ambition. He paused often in his path, especially when the undulations of the ground gave a glimpse of the gray church tower, or the gloomy firs that rose above the desolate wastes of Rood. "Here," thought Randal, with a softening eye--"here, how often, comparing the fertility of the lands passed away from the inheritance of my fathers, with the forlorn wilds that are left to their mouldering hall--here, how often have I said to myself--'I will rebuild the fortunes of my house.' And straightway Toil lost its aspect of drudge, and grew kingly, and books became as living armies to serve my thought. Again--again--O thou haughty Past, brace and strengthen me in the battle with the Future." His pale lips writhed as he soliloquized, for his conscience spoke to him while he thus addressed his will, and its voice was heard more audibly in the quiet of the rural landscape, than amidst the turmoil and din of that armed and sleepless camp which we call a city. Doubtless, though ambition have objects more vast and beneficent than the restoration of a name--_that_ in itself is high and chivalrous, and appeals to a strong interest in the human heart. But all emotions, and all ends, of a nobler character, had seemed to filter themselves free from every golden grain in passing through the mechanism of Randal's intellect, and came forth at last into egotism clear and unalloyed. Nevertheless, it is a strange truth that, to a man of cultivated mind, however perverted and vicious, there are vouchsafed gleams of brighter sentiments, irregular perceptions of moral beauty, denied to the brutal unreasoning wickedness of uneducated villany--which, perhaps ultimately serve as his punishment--according to the old thought of the satirist, that there is no greater curse than to perceive virtue, yet adopt vice. And as the solitary schemer walked slowly on, and his childhood--innocent at least of deed--came distinct before him through the halo of bygone dreams--dreams far purer than those from which he now rose each morning to the active world of man--a profound melancholy crept over him, and suddenly he exclaimed aloud, "_Then_ I aspired to be renowned and great--_now_, how is it that, so advanced in my career, all that seemed lofty in the means has vanished from me, and the only means that I contemplate are those which my childhood would have called poor and vile? Ah! is it that I then read but books, and now my knowledge has passed onward, and men contaminate more than books? But," he continued in a lower voice, as if arguing with himself, "if power is only so to be won--and of what use is knowledge if it be not power--does not success in life justify all things? And who prizes the wise man if he fails?" He continued his way, but still the soft tranquillity around rebuked him, and still his reason was dissatisfied, as well as his conscience. There are times when Nature, like a bath of youth, seems to restore to the jaded soul its freshness--times from which some men have emerged, as if reborn. The crises of life are very silent. Suddenly the scene opened on Randal Leslie's eyes. The bare desert common--the dilapidated church--the old house, partially seen in the dank dreary hollow, into which it seemed to Randal to have sunken deeper and lowlier than when he saw it last. And on the common were some young men playing at hockey. That old-fashioned game, now very uncommon in England, except at schools, was still preserved in the primitive simplicity of Rood by the young yeomen and farmers. Randal stood by the stile and looked on, for among the players he recognized his brother Oliver. Presently the ball was struck towards Oliver, and the group instantly gathered round that young gentleman, and snatched him from Randal's eye; but the elder brother heard a displeasing din, a derisive laughter. Oliver had shrunk from the danger of the thick clubbed sticks that plied around him, and received some strokes across the legs, for his voice rose whining, and was drowned by shouts of, "Go to your mammy. That's Noll Leslie--all over. Butter shins." Randal's sallow face became scarlet. "The jest of boors--a Leslie!" he muttered, and ground his teeth. He sprang over the stile, and walked erect and haughtily across the ground. The players cried out indignantly. Randal raised his hat, and they recognized him, and stopped the game. For him at least a certain respect was felt. Oliver turned round quickly, and ran up to him. Randal caught his arm firmly, and without saying a word to the rest, drew him away towards the house. Oliver cast a regretful, lingering look behind him, rubbed his shins, and then stole a timid glance towards Randal's severe and moody countenance. "You are not angry that I was playing at hockey with our neighbors," said he deprecatingly, observing that Randal would not break the silence. "No," replied the elder brother; "but, in associating with his inferiors, a gentleman still knows how to maintain his dignity. There is no harm in playing with inferiors, but it is necessary to a gentleman to play so that he is not the laughing-stock of clowns." Oliver hung his head and made no answer. They came into the slovenly precincts of the court, and the pigs stared at them from the palings, as they had stared, years before, at Frank Hazeldean. Mr. Leslie, senior, in a shabby straw hat, was engaged in feeding the chickens before the threshold, and he performed even that occupation with a maundering lack-a-daisical slothfulness, dropping down the grains almost one by one from his inert dreamy fingers. Randal's sister, her hair still and for ever hanging about her ears, was seated on a rush-bottom chair, reading a tattered novel; and from the parlor window was heard the querulous voice of Mrs. Leslie, in high fidget and complaint. Somehow or other, as the young heir to all this helpless poverty stood in the courtyard, with his sharp, refined, intelligent features, and his strange elegance of dress and aspect, one better comprehended how, left solely to the egotism of his knowledge and his ambition, in such a family, and without any of the sweet nameless lessons of Home, he had grown up into such close and secret solitude of soul--how the mind had taken so little nutriment from the heart, and how that affection and respect which the warm circle of the hearth usually calls forth had passed with him to the graves of dead fathers, growing, as it were, bloodless and ghoul-like amidst the charnels on which they fed. "Ha, Randal, boy," said Mr. Leslie, looking up lazily, "how d'ye do? Who could have expected you? My dear--my dear," he cried, in a broken voice, and as if in helpless dismay, "here's Randal, and he'll be wanting dinner, or supper, or something." But in the mean while, Randal's sister Juliet had sprung up and thrown her arms round her brother's neck, and he had drawn her aside caressingly, for Randal's strongest human affection was for this sister. "You are growing very pretty, Juliet," said he, smoothing back her hair; "why do yourself such injustice--why not pay more attention to your appearance, as I have so often begged you to do?" "I did not expect you, dear Randal; you ways come so suddenly, and catch us _en dish-a-bill._" "Dish-a-bill!" echoed Randal, with a groan. "_Dishabille!_--you ought never to be so caught!" "No one else does so catch us--nobody else ever comes! Heigho," and the young lady sighed very heartily. "Patience, patience; my day is coming, and then yours, my sister," replied Randal, with genuine pity, as he gazed upon what a little care could have trained into so fair a flower, and what now looked so like a weed. Here Mrs. Leslie, in a state of intense excitement--having rushed through the parlor--leaving a fragment of her gown between the yawning brass of the never mended Brummagem work table--tore across the hall--whirled out of the door, scattering the chickens to the right and left, and clutched hold of Randal in her motherly embrace. "La, how you do shake my nerves," she cried, after giving him a most hearty and uncomfortable kiss. "And you are hungry, too, and nothing in the house but cold mutton! Jenny, Jenny, I say Jenny! Juliet, have you seen Jenny! Where's Jenny? Out with the old man, I'll be bound." "I am not hungry, mother," said Randal; "I wish for nothing but tea." Juliet, scrambling up her hair, darted into the house to prepare the tea, and also to "tidy herself." She dearly loved her fine brother, but she was greatly in awe of him. Randal seated himself on the broken pales. "Take care they don't come down," said Mr. Leslie with some anxiety. "Oh, sir, I am very light; nothing comes down with me." The pigs stared up, and grunted in amaze at the stranger. "Mother," said the young man, detaining Mrs. Leslie, who wanted to set off in chase of Jenny--"mother, you should not let Oliver associate with those village boors. It is time to think of a profession for him." "Oh, he eats us out of house and home--such an appetite! But as to a profession--what is he fit for? He will never be a scholar." Randal nodded a moody assent; for, indeed, Oliver had been sent to Cambridge, and supported out of Randal's income from his official pay;--and Oliver had been plucked for his Little Go. "There is the army," said the elder brother--"a gentleman's calling. How handsome Juliet ought to be--but--I left money for masters--and she pronounces French like a chambermaid." "Yet she is fond of her book too. She's always reading, and good for nothing else." "Reading!--those trashy novels!" "So like you--you always come to scold, and make things unpleasant," said Mrs. Leslie, peevishly. "You are grown too fine for us, and I am sure we suffer affronts enough from others, not to want a little respect from our own children." "I did not mean to affront you," said Randal, sadly. "Pardon me. But who else has done so?" Then Mrs. Leslie went into a minute and most irritating catalogue of all the mortifications and insults she had received; the grievances of a petty provincial family, with much pretension and small power; of all people, indeed, without the disposition to please--without the ability to serve--who exaggerate every offence, and are thankful for no kindness. Farmer Jones had insolently refused to send his wagon twenty miles for coals. Mr. Giles, the butcher, requesting the payment of his bill, had stated that the custom at Rood was too small for him to allow credit. Squire Thornhill, who was the present owner of the fairest slice of the old Leslie domains, had taken the liberty to ask permission to shoot over Mr. Leslie's land, since Mr. Leslie did not preserve. Lady Spratt (new people from the city, who hired a neighboring country seat) had taken a discharged servant of Mrs. Leslie's without applying for the character. The Lord-Lieutenant had given a ball, and had not invited the Leslies. Mr. Leslie's tenants had voted against their landlord's wish at the recent election. More than all, Squire Hazeldean and his Harry had called at Rood, and though Mrs. Leslie had screamed out to Jenny, "Not at home," she had been seen at the window, and the Squire had actually forced his way in, and caught the whole family "in a state not fit to be seen." That was a trifle, but the Squire had presumed to instruct Mr. Leslie how to manage his property, and Mrs. Hazeldean had actually told Juliet to hold up her head and tie up her hair, "as if we were her cottagers!" said Mrs. Leslie, with the pride of a Montfydget. All these and various other annoyances, though Randal was too sensible not to perceive their insignificance, still galled and mortified the listening heir of Rood. They showed, at least, even to the well-meant officiousness of the Hazeldeans, the small account in which the fallen family was held. As he sat still on the moss-grown pale, gloomy and taciturn, his mother standing beside him, with her cap awry, Mr. Leslie shamblingly sauntered up, and said in a pensive dolorous whine-- "I wish we had a good sum of money, Randal, boy!" To do Mr. Leslie justice, he seldom gave vent to any wish that savored of avarice. His mind must be singularly aroused, to wander out of its normal limits of sluggish, dull content. So Randal looked at him in surprise, and said, "Do you, sir?--why?" "The manors of Rood and Dulmansberry, and all the lands therein, which my great-grandfather sold away, are to be sold again when Squire Thornhill's eldest son comes of age, to cut off the entail. Sir John Spratt talks of buying them. I should like to have them back again. 'Tis a shame to see the Leslie estates hawked about, and bought by Spratts and people. I wish I had a great--great sum of ready money." The poor gentleman extended his helpless fingers as he spoke, and fell into a dejected reverie. Randal sprang from the paling, a movement which frightened the contemplative pigs, and set them off squalling and scampering. "When does young Thornhill come of age?" "He was nineteen last August. I know it, because the day he was born I picked up my fossil of the sea-horse, just by Dulmansberry church, when the joy-bells were ringing! My fossil sea-horse! It will be an heir-loom, Randal--" "Two years--nearly two years--yet--ah, ah!" said Randal; and his sister now appearing to announce that tea was ready, he threw his arm around her neck and kissed, her. Juliet had arranged her hair and trimmed up her dress. She looked very pretty, and she had now the air of a gentlewoman--something of Randal's own refinement in her slender proportions and well-shaped head. "Be patient, patient still, my dear sister," whispered Randal, "and keep your heart whole for two years longer." The young man was gay and good-humored over his simple meal, while his family grouped round him. When it was over, Mr. Leslie lighted his pipe, and called for his brandy and water. Mrs. Leslie began to question about London and Court, and the new King and the new Queen, and Mr. Audley Egerton, and hoped Mr. Egerton would leave Randal all his money, and that Randal would marry a rich woman, and that the King would make him a prime-minister one of these days; and then she would like to see if Farmer Jones would refuse to send his wagon for coals! And every now and then, as the word "riches" or "money" caught Mr. Leslie's ear, he shook his head, drew his pipe from his mouth, and muttered, "A Spratt should not have what belonged to my great-great-grandfather. If I had a good sum of ready-money!--the old family estates!" Oliver and Juliet sat silent, and on their good behavior; and Randal, indulging his own reveries, dreamily heard the words "money," "Spratt," "great-great-grandfather," "rich, wife," "family estates;" and they sounded to him vague and afar off, like whispers from the world of romance and legend--weird prophecies of things to be. Such was the hearth which warmed the viper that nestled and gnawed at the heart of Randal, poisoning all the aspirations that youth should have rendered pure, ambition lofty, and knowledge beneficent and divine. CHAPTER VI. When the rest of the household were in deep sleep, Randal stood long at his open window, looking over the dreary, comfortless scene--the moon gleaming from skies half-autumnal, hall-wintry, upon squalid decay, through the ragged fissures of the firs; and when he lay down to rest, his sleep was feverish, and troubled by turbulent dreams. However, he was up early, and with an unwonted color in his cheeks, which his sister ascribed to the country air. After breakfast, he took his way towards Hazeldean, mounted upon a tolerable horse, which he hired of a neighboring farmer who occasionally hunted. Before noon, the garden and terrace of the Casino came in sight. He reined in his horse, and by the little fountain at which Leonard had been wont to eat his radishes and con his book, he saw Riccabocca seated under the shade of the red umbrella. And by the Italian's side stood a form that a Greek of old might have deemed the Naïad of the Fount; for in its youthful beauty there was something so full of poetry--something at once so sweet and so stately--that it spoke to the imagination while it charmed the sense. Randal dismounted, tied his horse to the gate, and, walking down a trelised alley, came suddenly to the spot. His dark shadow fell over the clear mirror of the fountain just as Riccabocca had said, "All here is so secure from evil!--the waves of the fountain are never troubled like those of the river!" and Violante had answered in her soft native tongue, and lifting her dark, spiritual eyes--"But the fountain would be but a lifeless pool, oh my father, if the spray did not mount towards the skies!" CHAPTER VII. Randal advanced--"I fear, Signior Riccabocca, that I am guilty of some want of ceremony." "To dispense with ceremony is the most delicate mode of conferring a compliment," replied the urbane Italian, as he recovered from his first surprise at Randal's sudden address, and extended his hand. Violante bowed her graceful head to the young man's respectful salutation. "I am on my way to Hazeldean," resumed Randal, "and, seeing you in the garden, could not resist this intrusion." _Riccabocca._--"You come from London? Stirring times for you English, but I do not ask you the news. No news can affect us." _Randal_, (softly.)--"Perhaps--yes." _Riccabocca_, (startled.)--"How?" _Violante._--"Surely he speaks of Italy, and news from that country affects you still, my father." _Riccabocca._--"Nay, nay, nothing affects me like this country: its east winds might affect a pyramid! Draw your mantle round you, child, and go in; the air has suddenly grown chill." Violante smiled on her father, glanced uneasily towards Randal's grave brow, and went slowly towards the house. Riccabocca, after waiting some moments in silence, as if expecting Randal to speak, said with affected carelessness, "So you think that you have news that might affect me? _Corpo di Bacco!_ I am curious to learn what!" "I may be mistaken--that depends on your answer to one question. Do you know the Count of Peschiera?" Riccabocca winced, and turned pale. He could not baffle the watchful eye of the questioner. "Enough," said Randal; "I see that I am right. Believe in my sincerity. I speak but to warn and to serve you. The Count seeks to discover the retreat of a countryman and kinsman of his own." "And for what end?" cried Riccabocca, thrown off his guard, and his breast dilated, his crest rose, and his eye flashed; valor and defiance broke from habitual caution and self-control. "But pooh," he added, striving to regain his ordinary and half-ironical calm, "it matters not to me. I grant, sir, that I know the Count di Peschiera; but what has Dr. Riccabocca to do with the kinsmen of so grand a personage?" "Dr. Riccabocca--nothing. But--" here Randal put his lip close to the Italian's ear, and whispered a brief sentence. Then retreating a step, but laying his hand on the exile's shoulder, he added--"Need I say that your secret is safe with me?" Riccabocca made no answer. His eyes rested on the ground musingly. Randal continued--"And I shall esteem it the highest honor you can bestow on me, to be permitted to assist you in forestalling danger." _Riccabocca_, (slowly.)--"Sir, I thank you; you have my secret, and I feel assured it is safe, for I speak to an English gentleman. There may be family reasons why I should avoid the Count di Peschiera; and, indeed, he is safest from shoals who steers clearest of his--relations." The poor Italian regained his caustic smile as he uttered that wise, villanous Italian maxim. _Randal._--"I know little of the Count of Peschiera save from the current talk of the world. He is said to hold the estates of a kinsman who took part in a conspiracy against the Austrian power." _Riccabocca._--"It is true. Let that content him; what more does he desire? You spoke of forestalling danger? What danger? I am on the soil of England, and protected by its laws." _Randal._--"Allow me to inquire if, had the kinsman no child, the Count di Peschiera would be legitimate and natural heir to the estates he holds?" _Riccabocca._--"He would. What then?" _Randal._--"Does that thought suggest no danger to the child of the kinsman?" Riccabocca recoiled, and gasped forth, "The child! You do not mean to imply that this man, infamous though he be, can contemplate the crime of an assassin?" Randal paused perplexed. His ground was delicate. He knew not what causes of resentment the exile entertained against the Count. He knew not whether Riccabocca would not assent to an alliance that might restore him to his country--and he resolved to feel his way with precaution. "I did not," said he, smiling gravely, "mean to insinuate so horrible a charge against a man whom I have never seen. He seeks you--that is all I know. I imagine from his general character, that in this search he consults his interest. Perhaps all matters might be conciliated by an interview!" "An interview!" exclaimed Riccabocca; "there is but one way we should meet--foot to foot, and hand to hand." "Is it so? Then you would not listen to the Count if he proposed some amicable compromise; if, for instance, he was a candidate for the hand of your daughter?" The poor Italian, so wise and so subtle in his talk, was as rash and blind when it came to action, as if he had been born in Ireland, and nourished on potatoes and Repeal. He bared his whole soul to the merciless eye of Randal. "My daughter!" he exclaimed. "Sir, your question is an insult." Randal's way became clear at once. "Forgive me," he said mildly; "I will tell you frankly all that I know. I am acquainted with the Count's sister. I have some little influence over her. It was she who informed me that the Count had come here, bent upon discovering your refuge, and resolved to wed your daughter. This is the danger of which I spoke. And when I asked your permission to aid in forestalling it, I only intended to suggest that it might be wise to find some securer home, and that I, if permitted to know that home, and to visit you, could apprise you from time to time of the Count's plans and movements." "Sir, I thank you sincerely," said Riccabocca with emotion; "but am I not safe here?" "I doubt it. Many people have visited the Squire in the shooting season, who will have heard of you--perhaps seen you, and who are likely to meet the Count in London. And Frank Hazeldean, too, who knows the Count's sister--" "True, true," interrupted Riccabocca. "I see, I see. I will consider. I will reflect. Meanwhile you are going to Hazeldean. Do not say a word to the Squire. He knows not the secret you have discovered." With those words Riccabocca turned slightly away, and Randal took the hint to depart. "At all times command and rely on me," said the young traitor, and he regained the pale to which he had fastened his horse. As he remounted, he cast his eyes towards the place where he had left Riccabocca. The Italian was still standing there. Presently the form of Jackeymo was seen emerging from the shrubs. Riccabocca turned hastily round, recognized his servant, uttered an exclamation loud enough to reach Randal's ear, and then catching Jackeymo by the arm, disappeared with him amidst the deeper recesses of the garden. "It will be indeed in my favor," thought Randal as he rode on, "if I can get them into the neighborhood of London--all occasion there to woo, and if expedient, to win--the heiress." CHAPTER VIII. "By the Lord Harry!" cried the Squire, as he stood with his wife in the park, on a visit of inspection to some first-rate South-Downs just added to his stock--"By the Lord, if that is not Randal Leslie trying to get into the park at the back gate! Hollo, Randal! you must come round by the lodge, my boy," said he. "You see this gate is locked to keep out trespassers." "A pity," said Randal. "I like short cuts, and you have shut up a very short one." "So the trespassers said," quoth the Squire: "but Stirn would not hear of it;--valuable man, Stirn. But ride round to the lodge. Put up your horse, and you'll join us before we can get to the house." Randal nodded and smiled, and rode briskly on. The Squire rejoined his Harry. "Ah, William," said she anxiously, "though certainly Randal Leslie means well, I always dread his visits." "So do I, in one sense," quoth the Squire, "for he always carries away a bank-note for Frank." "I hope he is really Frank's friend," said Mrs. Hazeldean. "Whose else can he be? Not his own, poor fellow, for he will never accept a shilling from me, though his grandmother was as good a Hazeldean as I am. But, zounds! I like his pride, and his economy too. As for Frank--" "Hush, William!" cried Mrs. Hazeldean, and put her fair hand before the Squire's mouth. The Squire was softened, and kissed the fair hand gallantly--perhaps he kissed the lips too; at all events, the worthy pair were walking lovingly arm-in-arm when Randal joined them. He did not affect to perceive a certain coldness in the manner of Mrs. Hazeldean, but began immediately to talk to her about Frank; praise that young gentleman's appearance; expatiate on his health, his popularity, and his good gifts personal and mental; and this with so much warmth, that any dim and undeveloped suspicions Mrs. Hazeldean might have formed soon melted away. Randal continued to make himself thus agreeable, until the Squire, persuaded that his young kinsman was a first-rate agriculturist, insisted upon carrying him off to the home-farm, and Harry turned towards the house to order Randal's room to be got ready: "For," said Randal, "knowing that you will excuse my morning dress, I ventured to invite myself to dine and sleep at the Hall." On approaching the farm buildings, Randal was seized with the terror of an impostor; for, despite all the theoretical learning on Bucolics and Georgics with which he had dazzled the Squire, poor Frank, so despised, would have beat him hollow when it came to judging of the points of an ox or the show of a crop. "Ha, ha!" cried the Squire, chuckling, "I long to see how you'll astonish Stirn. Why, you'll guess in a moment where we put the top-dressing; and when you come to handle my short-horns, I dare swear you'll know to a pound how much oilcake has gone into their sides." "Oh, you do me too much honor--indeed you do. I only know the general principles of agriculture--the details are eminently interesting; but I have not had the opportunity to acquire them." "Stuff!" cried the Squire. "How can a man know general principles unless he has first studied the details? You are too modest, my boy. Ho! there's Stirn looking out for us!" Randal saw the grim visage of Stirn peering out of a cattle-shed, and felt undone. He made a desperate rush towards changing the Squire's humor. "Well, sir, perhaps Frank may soon gratify your wish and turn farmer himself." "Eh!" quoth the Squire, stopping short. "What now?" "Suppose he was to marry?" "I'd give him the two best farms on the property rent free. Ha, ha! Has he seen the girl yet? I'd leave him free to choose, sir. I chose for myself--every man should. Not but what Miss Sticktorights is an heiress, and, I hear, a very decent girl, and that would join in the two properties, and put an end to that lawsuit about the right of way, which began in the reign of King Charles the Second, and is likely otherwise to last till the day of judgment. But never mind her; let Frank choose to please himself." "I'll not fail to tell him so, sir. I did fear you might have some prejudices. But here we are at the farm-yard." "Burn the farm-yard! How can I think of farm-yards when you talk of Frank's marriage? Come on--this way. What were you saying about prejudices?" "Why, you might wish him to marry an Englishwoman, for instance." "English! Good heavens, sir, does he mean to marry a Hindoo?" "Nay, I don't know that he means to marry at all: I am only surmising; but if he did fall in love with a foreigner--" "A foreigner! Ah, then Harry was--" The Squire stopped short. "Who might, perhaps," observed Randal--not truly if he referred to Madame di Negra--"who might, perhaps, speak very little English?" "Lord ha' mercy!" "And a Roman Catholic--" "Worshipping idols, and roasting people who don't worship them." "Signior Riccabocca is not so bad as that." "Rickeybockey! Well, if it was his daughter! But not speak English! and not go to the parish church! By George! if Frank thought of such a thing, I'd cut him off with a shilling. Don't talk to me, sir; I would. I'm a mild man, and an easy man; but when I say a thing, I say it, Mr. Leslie. Oh, but it is a jest--you are laughing at me. There's no such painted good-for-nothing creature in Frank's eye, eh?" "Indeed, sir, if ever I find there is, I will give you notice in time. At present I was only trying to ascertain what you wished for a daughter-in-law. You said you had no prejudice." "No more I have--not a bit of it." "You don't like a foreigner and a Catholic?" "Who the devil would?" "But if she had rank and title?" "Rank and title! Bubble and squeak! No, not half so good as bubble and squeak. English beef and good cabbage. But foreign rank and title!--foreign cabbage and beef!--foreign bubble and foreign squeak!" And the Squire made a wry face, and spat forth his disgust and indignation. "You must have an Englishwoman?" "Of course." "Money?" "Don't care, provided she is a tidy, sensible, active lass, with a good character for her dower." "Character--ah, that is indispensable?" "I should think so, indeed. A Mrs. Hazeldean of Hazeldean; you frighten me. He's not going to run off with a divorced woman, or a--" The Squire stopped, and looked so red in the face, that Randal feared he might be seized with apoplexy before Frank's crimes had made him alter his will. Therefore he hastened to relieve Mr. Hazeldean's mind, and assured him that he had been only talking at random; that Frank was in the habit, indeed, of seeing foreign ladies occasionally, as all persons in the London world were; but that he was sure Frank would never marry without the full consent and approval of his parents. He ended by repeating his assurance, that he would warn the Squire if ever it became necessary. Still, however, he left Mr. Hazeldean so disturbed and uneasy, that that gentleman forgot all about the farm, and went moodily on in the opposite direction, re-entering the park at its farther extremity. As soon as they approached the house, the Squire hastened to shut himself with his wife in full parental consultation; and Randal, seated upon a bench on the terrace, revolved the mischief he had done, and its chances of success. While thus seated, and thus thinking, a footstep approached cautiously, and a low voice said, in broken English, "Sare, sare, let me speak vid you." Randal turned in surprise, and beheld a swarthy saturnine face, with grizzled hair and marked features. He recognized the figure that had joined Riccabocca in the Italian's garden. "Speak-a you Italian?" resumed Jackeymo. Randal, who had made himself an excellent linguist, nodded assent; and Jackeymo, rejoiced, begged him to withdraw into a more private part of the grounds. Randal obeyed, and the two gained the shade of a stately chestnut avenue. "Sir," then said Jackeymo, speaking in his native tongue, and expressing himself with a certain simple pathos, "I am but a poor man; my name is Giacomo. You have heard of me;--servant to the Signior whom you saw to-day--only a servant; but he honors me with his confidence. We have known danger together; and of all his friends and followers, I alone came with him to the stranger's land." "Good, faithful fellow," said Randal, examining the man's face, "say on. Your master confides in you? He confided that which I told him this day?" "He did. Ah, sir! the Padrone was too proud to ask you to explain more--too proud to show fear of another. But he does fear--he ought to fear--he shall fear," (continued Jackeymo, working himself up to passion)--"for the Padrone has a daughter, and his enemy is a villain. Oh, sir, tell me all that you did not tell to the Padrone. You hinted that this man might wish to marry the Signora. Marry her!--I could cut his throat at the altar!" "Indeed," said Randal; "I believe that such is his object." "But why? He is rich--she is penniless; no, not quite that, for we have saved--but penniless, compared to him." "My good friend, I know not yet his motives; but I can easily learn them. If, however, this Count be your master's enemy, it is surely well to guard against him, whatever his designs; and, to do so, you should move into London or its neighborhood. I fear that while we speak, the Count may get upon his track." "He had better not come here!" cried the servant menacingly, and putting his hand where the knife was _not_. "Beware of your own anger, Giacomo. One act of violence, and you would be transported from England, and your master would lose a friend." Jackeymo seemed struck by this caution. "And if the Padrone were to meet him, do you think the Padrone would say 'Come stà sa Signora?' The Padrone would strike him dead!" "Hush--hush! You speak of what, in England, is called murder, and is punished by the gallows. If you really love your master, for heaven's sake get him from this place--get him from all chance of such passion and peril. I go to town to-morrow; I will find him a house that shall be safe from all spies--all discovery. And there, too, my friend, I can do--what I cannot at this distance--watch over him, and keep watch also on his enemy." Jackeymo seized Randal's hand and lifted it towards his lip; then, as if struck by a sudden suspicion, dropped the hand, and said bluntly--"Signior, I think you have seen the Padrone twice. Why do you take this interest in him?" "Is it so uncommon to take interest even in a stranger who is menaced by some peril?" Jackeymo, who believed little in general philanthropy, shook his head skeptically. "Besides," continued Randal, suddenly bethinking himself of a more plausible reason--"besides, I am a friend and connection of Mr. Egerton; and Mr. Egerton's most intimate friend is Lord L'Estrange; and I have heard that Lord L'Estrange--" "The good lord! Oh, now I understand," interrupted Jackeymo, and his brow cleared. "Ah, if _he_ were in England! But you will let us know when he comes?" "Certainly. Now, tell me, Giacomo, is this Count really unprincipled and dangerous? Remember, I know him not personally." "He has neither heart, head, nor conscience." "That makes him dangerous to men; but to women, danger comes from other qualities. Could it be possible, if he obtained any interview with the Signora, that he could win her affections?" Jackeymo crossed himself rapidly, and made no answer. "I have heard that he is still very handsome." Jackeymo groaned. Randal resumed--"Enough; persuade the Padrone to come to town." "But if the Count is in town?" "That makes no difference; the safest place is always the largest city. Every where else a foreigner is in himself an object of attention and curiosity." "True." "Let your master, then, come to London. He can reside in one of the suburbs most remote from the Count's haunts. In two days I will have found him a lodging and write to him. You trust to me now?" "I do indeed--I do, Excellency. Ah, if the Signorina were married, we would not care!" "Married! But she looks so high!" "Alas! not now--not here!" Randal sighed heavily. Jackeymo's eyes sparkled. He thought he had detected a new motive for Randal's interest--a motive to an Italian the most natural, the most laudable of all. "Find the house, Signor--write to the Padrone. He shall come. I'll talk to him. I can manage him. Holy San Giacomo bestir thyself now--'tis long since I troubled thee!" Jackeymo strode off through the fading trees, smiling and muttering as he went. The first dinner-bell rang, and, on entering the drawing-room, Randal found Parson Dale and his wife, who had been invited in haste to meet the unexpected visitor. The preliminary greetings over, Mr. Dale took the opportunity afforded by the Squire's absence to inquire after the health of Mr. Egerton. "He is always well," said Randal, "I believe he is made of iron." "His heart is of gold," said the Parson. "Ah!" said Randal, inquisitively, "you told me you had come in contact with him once, respecting, I think, some of your old parishioners at Lansmere?" The Parson nodded, and there was a moment's silence. "Do you remember your battle by the Stocks, Mr. Leslie?" said Mr. Dale with a good-humored laugh. "Indeed, yes. By the way, now you speak of it, I met my old opponent in London the first year I went up to it." "You did! where?" "At a literary scamp's--a cleverish man called Burley." "Burley! I have seen some burlesque verses in Greek by a Mr. Burley." "No doubt, the same person. He has disappeared--gone to the dogs, I dare say. Burlesque Greek is not a knowledge very much in power at present." "Well, but Leonard Fairfield?--you have seen him since?" "No." "Nor heard of him?" "No!--have you?" "Strange to say, not for a long time. But I have reason to believe that he must be doing well." "You surprise me! Why?" "Because, two years ago, he sent for his mother. She went to him." "Is that all?" "It is enough; for he would not have sent for her if he could not maintain her." Here the Hazeldeans entered, arm-in-arm, and the fat butler announced dinner. The Squire was unusually taciturn--Mrs. Hazeldean thoughtful--Mrs. Dale languid, and headachy. The Parson, who seldom enjoyed the luxury of converse with a scholar, save when he quarrelled with Dr. Riccabocca, was animated, by Randal's repute for ability, into a great desire for argument. "A glass of wine, Mr. Leslie. You were saying, before dinner, that burlesque Greek is not a knowledge very much in power at present. Pray, sir, what knowledge is in power?" _Randal_, (laconically.)--"Practical knowledge." _Parson._--"What of?" _Randal_,--"Men." _Parson_, (candidly.)--"Well, I suppose that is the most available sort of knowledge, in a worldly point of view. How does one learn it? Do books help?" _Randal._--"According as they are read, they help or injure." _Parson._--"How should they be read in order to help?" _Randal._--"Read specially to apply to purposes that lead to power." _Parson_, (very much struck with Randal's pithy and Spartan logic.)--"Upon my word sir, you express yourself very well. I must own that I began these questions in the hope of differing from you; for I like an argument." "That he does," growled the Squire; "the most contradictory creature!" _Parson._--"Argument is the salt of talk. But now I am afraid I must agree with you, which I was not at all prepared for." Randal bowed, and answered--"No two men of our education can dispute upon the application of knowledge." _Parson_, (pricking up his ears.)--"Eh! what to?" _Randal._--"Power, of course." _Parson_, (overjoyed.)--"Power!--the vulgarest application of it, or the loftiest? But you mean the loftiest?" _Randal_, (in his turn interested and interrogative.)--"What do you call the loftiest, and what the vulgarest?" _Parson._--"The vulgarest, self-interest; the loftiest, beneficence." Randal suppressed the half-disdainful smile that rose to his lip. "You speak, sir, as a clergyman should do. I admire your sentiment, and adopt it; but I fear that the knowledge which aims only at beneficence very rarely in this world gets any power at all." _Squire_, (seriously.)--"That's true; I never get my own way when I want to do a kindness, and Stirn always gets his when he insists on something diabolically brutal and harsh." _Parson._--"Pray. Mr. Leslie, what does intellectual power refined to the utmost, but entirely stripped of beneficence, most resemble?" _Randal._--"Resemble?--I can hardly say. Some very great man--almost any very great man--who has baffled all his foes, and attained all his ends." _Parson._--"I doubt if any man has ever become very great who has not meant to be beneficent, though he might err in the means. Cæsar was naturally beneficent, and so was Alexander. But intellectual power refined to the utmost, and wholly void of beneficence, resembles only one being, and that, sir, is the Principle of Evil." _Randal_, (startled.)--"Do you mean the Devil?" _Parson._--"Yes, sir--the Devil; and even he, sir, did not succeed! Even he, sir, is what your great men would call a most decided failure." _Mrs. Dale._--"My dear--my dear." _Parson._--"Our religion proves it, my love; he was an angel, and he fell." There was a solemn pause. Randal was more impressed than he liked to own to himself. By this time the dinner was over, and the servants had retired. Harry glanced at Carry. Carry smoothed her gown and rose. The gentlemen remained over their wine; and the Parson, satisfied with what he deemed a clencher upon his favorite subject of discussion, changed the subject to lighter topics, till happening to fall upon tithes, the Squire struck in, and by dint of loudness of voice, and truculence of brow, fairly overwhelmed both his guests, and proved to his own satisfaction that tithes were an unjust and unchristianlike usurpation on the part of the Church generally, and a most especial and iniquitous infliction upon the Hazeldean estates in particular. CHAPTER IX. On entering the drawing-room, Randal found the two ladies seated close together, in a position much more appropriate to the familiarity of their school-days than to the politeness of the friendship now existing between them. Mrs. Hazeldean's hand hung affectionately over Carry's shoulder, and both those fair English faces were bent over the same book. It was pretty to see these sober matrons, so different from each other in character and aspect, thus unconsciously restored to the intimacy of happy maiden youth by the golden link of some Magician from the still land of Truth or Fancy--brought together in heart, as each eye rested on the same thought;--closer and closer, as sympathy, lost in the actual world, grew out of that world which unites in one bond of feeling the readers of some gentle book. "And what work interests you so much?" said Randal, pausing by the table. "One you have read, of course," replied Mrs. Dale, putting a book-mark embroidered by herself into the page, and handing the volume to Randal. "It has made a great sensation, I believe." Randal glanced at the title of the work. "True," said he, "I have heard much of it in London, but I have not yet had time to read it." _Mrs. Dale._--"I can lend it to you, if you like to look over it to-night, and you can leave it for me with Mrs. Hazeldean." _Parson_, (approaching.)--"Oh! that book!--yes, you must read it. I do not know a work more instructive." _Randal._--"Instructive! Certainly I will read it then. But I thought it was a mere work of amusement--of fancy. It seems so, as I look over it." _Parson._--"So is the _Vicar of Wakefield_; yet what book more instructive?" _Randal._--"I should not have said _that_ of the _Vicar of Wakefield_. A pretty book enough, though the story is most improbable. But how is it instructive?" _Parson._--"By its results: it leaves us happier and better. What can any instruction do more? Some works instruct through the head, some through the heart; the last reach the widest circle, and often produce the most genial influence on the character. This book belongs to the last. You will grant my proposition when you have read it." Randal smiled and took the volume. _Mrs. Dale._--"Is the author known yet?" _Randal._--"I have heard it ascribed to many writers, but I believe no one has claimed it." _Parson._--"I think it must have been written by my old college friend, Professor Moss, the naturalist; its descriptions of scenery are so accurate." _Mrs. Dale._--"La, Charles, dear! that snuffy, tiresome, prosy professor? How can you talk such nonsense? I am sure the author must be young; there is so much freshness of feeling." _Mrs. Hazeldean_, (positively,)--"Yes, certainly young." _Parson_, (no less positively.)--"I should say just the contrary. Its tone is too serene, and its style too simple for a young man. Besides, I don't know any young man who would send me his book, and this book has been sent me--very handsomely bound too, you see. Depend upon it, Moss is the man--quite his turn of mind." _Mrs. Dale._--"You are too provoking, Charles dear! Mr. Moss is so remarkably plain, too." _Randal._--"Must an author be handsome?" _Parson._--"Ha, ha! Answer that, if you can, Carry." Carry remained mute and disdainful. _Squire_, (with great _naïveté_.)--"Well, I don't think there's much in the book, whoever wrote it; for I've read it myself, and understand every word of it." _Mrs. Dale_.--"I don't see why you should suppose it was written by a man at all. For my part, I think it must be a woman." _Mrs. Hazeldean._--"Yes, there's a passage about maternal affection, which only a woman could have written." _Parson._--"Pooh, pooh! I should like to see a woman who could have written that description of an August evening before a thunderstorm; every wildflower in the hedgerow exactly the flowers of August--every sign in the air exactly those of the month. Bless you! a woman would have filled the hedge with violets and cowslips. Nobody else but my friend Moss could have written that description." _Squire._--"I don't know; there's a simile about the waste of corn-seed in hand-sowing, which makes me think he must be a farmer!" _Mrs. Dale_, (scornfully,)--"A farmer! In hob-nailed shoes, I suppose! I say it is a woman." _Mrs. Hazeldean._--"A WOMAN, and A MOTHER!" _Parson._--"A middle-aged man, and a naturalist." _Squire._--"No, no, Parson; certainly a young man; for that love scene puts me in mind of my own young days, when I would have given my ears to tell Harry how handsome I thought her; and all I could say was--'Fine weather for the crops, Miss.' Yes, a young man, and a farmer. I should not wonder if he had held the plough himself." _Randal_, (who had been turning over the pages.)--"This sketch of Night in London comes from a man who has lived the life of cities, and looked at wealth with the eyes of poverty. Not bad! I will read the book." "Strange," said the Parson, smiling, "that this little work should so have entered into our minds, suggested to all of us different ideas, yet equally charmed all--given a new and fresh current to our dull country life--animated us as with the sight of a world in our breasts we had never seen before, save in dreams;--a little work like this, by a man we don't know, and never may! Well, _that_ knowledge _is_ power, and a noble one!" "A sort of power, certainly, sir," said Randal, candidly; and that night, when Randal retired to his own room, he suspended his schemes and projects, and read, as he rarely did, without an object to gain by the reading. The work surprised him by the pleasure it gave. Its charm lay in the writer's calm enjoyment of the Beautiful. It seemed like some happy soul sunning itself in the light of its own thoughts. Its power was so tranquil and even, that it was only a critic who could perceive how much force and vigor were necessary to sustain the wing that floated aloft with so imperceptible an effort. There was no one faculty predominating tyrannically over the others; all seemed proportioned in the felicitous symmetry of a nature rounded, integral, and complete. And when the work was closed, it left behind it a tender warmth that played around the heart of the reader, and vivified feelings that seemed unknown before. Randal laid the book down softly; and for five minutes the ignoble and base purposes to which his own knowledge was applied, stood before him, naked and unmasked. "Tut," said he, wrenching himself violently away from the benign influence, "it was not to sympathize with Hector, but to conquer with Achilles, that Alexander of Macedon kept Homer under his pillow. Such should be the use of books to him who has the practical world to subdue; let parsons and women construe it otherwise as they may!" And the Principle of Evil descended again upon the intellect, from which the guide of beneficence was gone. CHAPTER X. Randal rose at the sound of the first breakfast bell, and on the staircase met Mrs. Hazeldean. He gave her back the book; and as he was about to speak, she beckoned to him to follow her into a little morning-room appropriated to herself. No boudoir of white and gold, with pictures by Watteau, but lined with walnut-tree presses, that held the old heir-loom linen strewed with lavender--stores for the housekeeper, and medicines for the poor. Seating herself on a large chair in this sanctum, Mrs. Hazeldean looked formidably at home. "Pray," said the lady, coming at once to the point with her usual straightforward candor, "what is all this you have been saying to my husband as to the possibility of Frank's marrying a foreigner?" _Randal._--"Would you be as averse to such a notion as Mr. Hazeldean is?" _Mrs. Hazeldean._--"You ask me a question, instead of answering mine." Randal was greatly put out in his fence by these rude thrusts. For indeed he had a double purpose to serve--first thoroughly to know if Frank's marriage with a woman like Madame di Negra would irritate the Squire sufficiently to endanger the son's inheritance, and, secondly, to prevent Mr. and Mrs. Hazeldean believing seriously that such a marriage was to be apprehended, lest they should prematurely address Frank on the subject, and frustrate the marriage itself. Yet, withal, he must so express himself, that he could not be afterwards accused by the parents of disguising matters. In his talk to the Squire the preceding day, he had gone a little too far--farther than he would have done but for his desire of escaping the cattle-shed and short-horns. While he mused, Mrs. Hazeldean observed him with her honest sensible eyes, and finally exclaimed-- "Out with it, Mr. Leslie!" "Out with what, my dear madam? The Squire has sadly exaggerated the importance of what was said mainly in jest. But I will own to you plainly, that Frank has appeared to me a little smitten with a certain fair Italian." "Italian!" cried Mrs. Hazeldean. "Well, I said so from the first. Italian!--that's all, is it?" and she smiled. Randal was more and more perplexed. The pupil of his eye contracted, as it does when we retreat into ourselves, and think, watch, and keep guard. "And perhaps," resumed Mrs. Hazeldean, with a very sunny expression of countenance, "you have noticed this in Frank since he was here?" "It is true," murmured Randal; "but I think his heart or his fancy was touched even before." "Very natural," said Mrs. Hazeldean; "how could he help it?--such a beautiful creature! Well, I must not ask you to tell Frank's secrets; but I guess the object of attraction; and though she will have no fortune to speak of--and it is not such a match as he might form--still she is so amiable, and has been so well brought up, and is so little like one's general notions of a Roman Catholic, that I think I could persuade Hazeldean into giving his consent." "Ah!" said Randal, drawing a long breath, and beginning with his practised acuteness to detect Mrs. Hazeldean's error, "I am very much relieved and rejoiced to hear this; and I may venture to give Frank some hope, if I find him disheartened and disponding, poor fellow!" "I think you may," replied Mrs. Hazeldean, laughing pleasantly. "But you should not have frightened poor William so, hinting that the lady knew very little English. She has an accent, to be sure; but she speaks our tongue very prettily. I always forget that she's not English born! Ha, ha, poor William!" _Randal._--"Ha, ha!" _Mrs. Hazeldean._--"We had once thought of another match for Frank--a girl of good English family." _Randal._--"Miss Sticktorights?" _Mrs. Hazeldean._--"No; that's an old whim of Hazeldean's. But he knows very well that the Sticktorights would never merge their property in ours. Bless you, it would be all off the moment they came to settlements, and had to give up the right of way. We thought of a very different match; but there's no dictating to young hearts, Mr. Leslie." _Randal._--"Indeed no, Mrs. Hazeldean. But since we now understand each other so well, excuse me if I suggest that you had better leave things to themselves, and not write to Frank on the subject. Young hearts, you know, are often stimulated by apparent difficulties, and grow cool when the obstacle vanishes." _Mrs. Hazeldean._--"Very possibly; it was not so with Hazeldean and me. But I shall not write to Frank on the subject, for a different reason--though I would consent to the match, and so would William, yet we both would rather, after all, that Frank married an Englishwoman, and a Protestant. We will not, therefore, do any thing to encourage the idea. But if Frank's happiness becomes really at stake, _then_ we will step in. In short, we would neither encourage nor oppose. You understand?" "Perfectly." "And, in the mean while, it is quite right that Frank should see the world, and try to distract his mind, or at least to know it. And I dare say it has been some thought of that kind which has prevented his coming here." Randal, dreading a further and plainer _éclaircissement_, now rose, and saying, "Pardon me, but I must hurry over breakfast, and be back in time to catch the coach"--offered his arm to his hostess, and led her into the breakfast parlor. Devouring his meal, as if in great haste, he then mounted his horse, and, taking cordial leave of his entertainers, trotted briskly away. All things favored his project--even chance had befriended him in Mrs. Hazeldean's mistake. She had not unnaturally supposed Violante to have captivated Frank on his last visit to the Hall. Thus, while Randal had certified his own mind that nothing could more exasperate the Squire than an alliance with Madame di Negra, he could yet assure Frank that Mrs. Hazeldean was all on his side. And when the error was discovered, Mrs. Hazeldean would only have to blame herself for it. Still more successful had his diplomacy proved with the Riccaboccas; he had ascertained the secret he had come to discover; he should induce the Italian to remove to the neighborhood of London; and if Violante were the great heiress he suspected her to prove, whom else of her own age would she see but him? And the old Leslie domains--to be sold in two years--a portion of the dowry might purchase them! Flushed by the triumph of his craft, all former vacillations of conscience ceased. In high and fervent spirits he passed the Casino, the garden of which was solitary and deserted, reached his home, and, telling Oliver to be studious, and Juliet to be patient, walked thence to meet the coach and regain the capital. CHAPTER XI. VIOLANTE was seated in her own little room, and looking from the window on the terrace that stretched below. The day was warm for the time of year. The orange-trees had been removed under shelter for the approach of winter; but where they had stood sat Mrs. Riccabocca at work. In the Belvidere, Riccabocca himself was conversing with his favorite servant. But the casements and the door of the Belvidere were open; and where they sat, both wife and daughter could see the Padrone leaning against the wall, with his arms folded, and his eyes fixed on the floor; while Jackeymo, with one finger on his master's arm, was talking to him with visible earnestness. And the daughter from the window, and the wife from her work, directed tender anxious eyes towards the still thoughtful form so dear to both. For the last day or two Riccabocca had been peculiarly abstracted, even to gloom. Each felt there was something stirring at his heart--neither as yet knew what. Violante's room silently revealed the nature of the education by which her character had been formed. Save a sketch book which lay open on a desk at hand, and which showed talent exquisitely taught (for in this Riccabocca had been her teacher), there was nothing that spoke of the ordinary female accomplishments. No piano stood open, no harp occupied yon nook, which seemed made for one; no broidery frame, nor implements of work, betrayed the usual and graceful resources of a girl; but ranged on shelves against the wall were the best writers in English, Italian, and French; and these betokened an extent of reading, that he who wishes for a companion to his mind in the sweet company of woman, which softens and refines all it gives and takes in interchange, will never condemn as masculine. You had but to look into Violante's face to see how noble was the intelligence that brought soul to those lovely features. Nothing hard, nothing dry and stern was there. Even as you detected knowledge, it was lost in the gentleness of grace. In fact, whatever she gained in the graver kinds of information, became transmuted, through her heart and her fancy, into spiritual golden stores. Give her some tedious and arid history, her imagination seized upon beauties other readers had passed by, and, like the eye of the artist, detected every where the Picturesque. Something in her mind seemed to reject all that was mean and commonplace, and to bring out all that was rare and elevated in whatever it received. Living so apart from all companions of her age, she scarcely belonged to the Present time. She dwelt in the Past, as Sabrina in her crystal well. Images of chivalry--of the Beautiful and the Heroic--such as, in reading the silvery line of Tasso, rise before us, softening force and valor into love and song--haunted the reveries of the fair Italian maid. Tell us not that the Past, examined by cold Philosophy, was no better and no loftier than the Present; it is not thus seen by pure and generous eyes. Let the Past perish, when it ceases to reflect on its magic mirror the beautiful Romance which is its noblest reality, though perchance but the shadow of Delusion. Yet Violante was not merely the dreamer. In her, life was so puissant and rich, that action seemed necessary to its glorious development--action, but still in the woman's sphere--action to bless and to refine and to exalt all around her, and to pour whatever else of ambition was left unsatisfied into sympathy with the aspirations of man. Despite her father's fears of the bleak air of England, in that air she had strengthened the delicate health of her childhood. Her elastic step--her eyes full of sweetness and light--her bloom, at once soft and luxuriant--all spoke of the vital powers fit to sustain a mind of such exquisite mould, and the emotions of a heart that, once aroused, could ennoble the passions of the South with the purity and devotion of the North. Solitude makes some natures more timid, some more bold. Violante was fearless. When she spoke, her eyes frankly met your own; and she was so ignorant of evil, that as yet she seemed nearly unacquainted with shame. From this courage, combined with affluence of idea, came a delightful flow of happy converse. Though possessing so imperfectly the accomplishments ordinarily taught to young women, and which may be cultured to the utmost, and yet leave the thoughts so barren, and the talk so vapid--she had that accomplishment which most pleases the taste, and commands the love of the man of talent; especially if his talent be not so actively employed as to make him desire only relaxation where he seeks companionship--the accomplishment of facility in intellectual interchange--the charm that clothes in musical words beautiful womanly ideas. "I hear him sigh at this distance," said Violante softly, as she still watched her father; "and methinks this is a new grief, and not for his country. He spoke twice yesterday of that dear English friend, and wished that he were here." As she said this, unconsciously the virgin blushed, her hands drooped on her knee, and she fell herself into thought as profound as her father's, but less gloomy. From her arrival in England, Violante had been taught a grateful interest in the name of Harley L'Estrange. Her father, preserving a silence that seemed disdain, of all his old Italian intimates, had been pleased to converse with open heart of the Englishman who had saved where countrymen had betrayed. He spoke of the soldier, then in the full bloom of youth, who, unconsoled by fame, had nursed the memory of some hidden sorrow amidst the pine-trees that cast their shadow over the sunny Italian lake; how Riccabocca, then honored and happy, had courted from his seclusion the English Signor, then the mourner and the voluntary exile; how they had grown friends amidst the landscapes in which her eyes had opened to the day; how Harley had vainly warned him from the rash schemes in which he had sought to reconstruct in an hour the ruins of weary ages; how, when abandoned, deserted, proscribed, pursued, he had fled for life--the infant Violante clasped to his bosom--the English soldier had given him refuge, baffled the pursuers, armed his servants, accompanied the fugitive at night towards the defile in the Apennines, and, when the emissaries of a perfidious enemy, hot in the chase, came near, he said, "You have your child to save! Fly on! Another league, and you are beyond the borders. We will delay the foes with parley; they will not harm us." And not till escape was gained did the father know that the English friend had delayed the foe, not by parley, but by the sword, holding the pass against numbers, with a breast as dauntless as Bayard's in the immortal bridge. And since then, the same Englishman had never ceased to vindicate his name, to urge his cause, and if hope yet remained of restoration to land and honors, it was in that untiring zeal. Hence, naturally and insensibly, this secluded and musing girl had associated all that she read in tales of romance and chivalry with the image of the brave and loyal stranger. He it was who animated her dreams of the Past, and seemed born to be, in the destined hour, the deliverer of the Future. Around this image grouped all the charms that the fancy of virgin woman can raise from the enchanted lore of old Heroic Fable. Once in her early girlhood, her father (to satisfy her curiosity, eager for general description) had drawn from memory a sketch of the features of the Englishman--drawn Harley, as he was in that first youth, flattered and idealized, no doubt, by art and by partial gratitude--but still resembling him as he was then; while the deep mournfulness of recent sorrow yet shadowed and concentrated all the varying expression of his countenance; and to look on him was to say,--"So sad, yet so young!" Never did Violante pause to remember that the same years which ripened herself from infancy into woman, were passing less gently over that smooth cheek and dreamy brow--that the world might be altering the nature, as time the aspect. To her, the hero of the Ideal remained immortal in bloom and youth. Bright illusion, common to us all, where Poetry once hallows the human form! Who ever thinks of Petrarch as the old time-worn man? Who does not see him as when he first gazed on Laura?-- "Ogni altra cosa ogni pensier va fore; E sol ivi von voi rimansi Amore!" CHAPTER XII. And Violante, thus absorbed in reverie, forgot to keep watch on the Belvidere. And the Belvidere was now deserted. The wife, who had no other ideal to distract _her_ thoughts, saw Riccabocca pass into the house. The exile entered his daughter's room, and she started to feel his hand upon her locks and his kiss upon her brow. "My child!" cried Riccabocca, seating himself, "I have resolved to leave for a time this retreat, and to seek the neighborhood of London." "Ah, dear father, _that_, then, was your thought? But what can be your reason? Do not turn away; you know how carefully I have obeyed your command and kept your secret. Ah, you will confide in me." "I do, indeed," returned Riccabocca, with emotion. "I leave this place, in the fear lest my enemies discover me. I shall say to others that you are of an age to require teachers, not to be obtained here. But I should like none to know where we go." The Italian said these last words through his teeth, and hanging his head. He said them in shame. "My mother--(so Violante always called Jemima)--my mother, you have spoken to her?" "Not yet. _There_ is the difficulty." "No difficulty, for she loves you so well," replied Violante, with soft reproach. "Ah, why not also confide in her? Who so true? so good?" "Good--I grant it!" exclaimed Riccabocca. "What then? 'Da cattiva Donna guardati, ed alla buona non fidar niente,' (from the bad woman, guard thyself; to the good woman, trust nothing.) And if you must trust," added the abominable man, "trust her with any thing but a secret!" "Fie," said Violante, with arch reproach, for she knew her father's humors too well to interpret his horrible sentiments literally--"fie on your consistency, _Padre carissimo_. Do you not trust your secret to me?" "You! A kitten is not a cat, and a girl is not a woman. Besides, the secret was already known to you, and I had no choice. Peace, Jemima will stay here for the present. See to what you wish to take with you; we shall leave to-night." Not waiting for an answer, Riccabocca hurried away, and with a firm step strode the terrace and approached his wife. "_Anima mia_," said the pupil of Machiavel, disguising in the tenderest words the cruelest intentions--for one of his most cherished Italian proverbs was to the effect, that there is no getting on with a mule or a woman unless you coax them--"_Anima mia_,--soul of my being--you have already seen that Violante mopes herself to death here." "She, poor child! Oh no!" "She does, core of my heart, she does, and is as ignorant of music as I am of tent-stitch." "She sings beautifully." "Just as birds do, against all the rules, and in defiance of gamut. Therefore, to come to the point, O treasure of my soul! I am going to take her with me for a short time, perhaps to Cheltenham, or Brighton--we shall see." "All places with you are the same to me, Alphonso. When shall we go?" "_We_ shall go to-night; but, terrible as it is to part from you--you--" "Ah!" interrupted the wife, and covered her face with her hands. Riccabocca, the wiliest and most relentless of men in his maxims, melted into absolute uxorial imbecility at the sight of that mute distress. He put his arm round his wife's waist, with genuine affection, and without a single proverb at his heart--"_Carissima_, do not grieve so; we shall be back soon, and travelling is expensive; rolling stones gather no moss, and there is so much to see to at home." "Mrs. Riccabocca gently escaped from her husband's arms. She withdrew her hands from her face, and brushed away the tears that stood in her eyes. "Alphonso," she said touchingly, "hear me! What you think good, that shall ever be good to me. But do not think that I grieve solely because of our parting. No; I grieve to think that, despite of all these years in which I have been the partner of your hearth and slept on your breast--all these years in which I have had no thought but, however humbly, to do my duty to you and yours, and could have wished that you had read my heart, and seen there but yourself and your child--I grieve to think that you still deem me as unworthy your trust as when you stood by my side at the altar." "Trust!" repeated Riccabocca, startled and conscience-stricken; "why do you say 'trust?' In what have I distrusted you? I am sure," he continued, with the artful volubility of guilt, "that I never doubted your fidelity--hooked-nosed, long-visaged foreigner though I be; never pryed into your letters; never inquired into your solitary walks; never heeded your flirtations with that good-looking Parson Dale; never kept the money; and never looked into the account-books!" Mrs. Riccabocca refused even a smile of contempt at these revolting evasions; nay, she seemed scarcely to hear them. "Can you think," she resumed, pressing her hand on her heart to still its struggles for relief in sobs--"can you think that I could have watched, and thought, and tasked my poor mind so constantly, to conjecture what might best soothe or please you, and not seen, long since, that you have secrets known to your daughter--your servant--not to me? Fear not--the secrets cannot be evil, or you would not tell them to your innocent child. Besides, do I not know your nature? and do I not love you because I know it?--it is for something connected with these secrets that you leave your home. You think that I should be incautious--imprudent. You will not take me with you. Be it so. I go to prepare for your departure. Forgive me if I have displeased you, husband." Mrs. Riccabocca turned away; but a soft hand touched the Italian's arm. "O father, can you resist this? Trust her!--trust her! I am a woman like her! I answer for her woman's faith. Be yourself--ever nobler than all others, my own father." "_Diavolo!_ Never one door shuts but another opens," groaned Riccabocca. "Are you a fool, child? Don't you see that it was for your sake only I feared--and would be cautious?" "For mine! O then, do not make me deem myself mean, and the cause of meanness. For mine! Am I not your daughter--the descendant of men who never feared?" Violante looked sublime while she spoke; and as she ended she led her father gently on towards the door, which his wife had now gained. "Jemima--wife mine!--pardon, pardon," cried the Italian, whose heart had been yearning to repay such tenderness and devotion, "come back to my breast--it has been long closed--it shall be open to you now and for ever." In another moment, the wife was in her right place--on her husband's bosom; and Violante, beautiful peacemaker, stood smiling, awhile at both, and then lifted her eyes gratefully to heaven, and stole away. CHAPTER XIII. On Randal's return to town, he heard mixed and contradictory rumors in the streets, and at the clubs, of the probable downfall of the Government at the approaching session of Parliament. These rumors had sprung up suddenly, as if in an hour. True that, for some time, the sagacious had shaken their heads and said, "Ministers could not last." True that certain changes in policy, a year or two before, had divided the party on which the Government depended, and strengthened that which opposed it. But still its tenure in office had been so long, and there seemed so little power in the Opposition to form a cabinet of names familiar to official ears, that the general public had anticipated, at most, a few partial changes. Rumor now went far beyond this. Randal, whose whole prospects at present were but reflections from the greatness of his patron, was alarmed. He sought Egerton, but the minister was impenetrable, and seemed calm, confident and imperturbed. Somewhat relieved, Randal then set himself to work to find a safe home for Riccabocca; for the greater need to succeed in obtaining fortune there, if he failed in getting it through Egerton. He found a quiet house, detached and secluded, in the neighborhood of Norwood. No vicinity more secure from espionage and remark. He wrote to Riccabocca, and communicated the address, adding fresh assurances of his own power to be of use. The next morning he was seated in his office, thinking very little of the details, that he mastered, however, with mechanical precision, when the minister who presided over that department of the public service sent for him into his private room, and begged him to take a letter to Egerton, with whom he wished to consult relative to a very important point to be decided in the cabinet that day. "I want you to take it," said the minister, smiling (the minister was a frank, homely man), "because you are in Mr. Egerton's confidence, and he may give you some verbal message besides a written reply. Egerton is often _over_ cautious and brief in the _litera scripta_." Randal went first to Egerton's neighboring office--he had not been there that day. He then took a cabriolet and drove to Grosvenor Square. A quiet-looking chariot was at the door. Mr. Egerton was at home; but the servant said, "Dr. F. is with him, sir; and perhaps he may not like to be disturbed." "What, is your master ill?" "Not that I know of, sir. He never says he is ill. But he has looked poorly the last day or two." Randal hesitated a moment; but his commission might be important, and Egerton was a man who so held the maxim, that health and all else must give way to business, that he resolved to enter; and, unannounced, and unceremoniously, as was his wont, he opened the door of the library. He startled as he did so. Audley Egerton was leaning back on the sofa, and the doctor, on his knees before him, was applying the stethoscope to his breast. Egerton's eyes were partially closed as the door opened. But at the noise he sprang up, nearly oversetting the doctor. "Who's that?--How dare you!" he exclaimed, in a voice of great anger. Then recognizing Randal, he changed color, bit his lip, and muttered drily, "I beg pardon for my abruptness: what do you want, Mr. Leslie?" "This letter from Lord ----; I was told to deliver it immediately into your own hands; I beg pardon--" "There is no cause," said Egerton, coldly. "I have had a slight attack of bronchitis; and as Parliament meets so soon, I must take advice from my doctor, if I would be heard by the reporters. Lay the letter on the table, and be kind enough to wait for my reply." Randal withdrew. He had never seen a physician in that house before, and it seemed surprising that Egerton should even take a medical opinion upon a slight attack. While waiting in the ante-room there was a knock at the street door, and presently a gentleman, exceedingly well-dressed, was shown in, and honored Randal with an easy and half familiar bow. Randal remembered to have met this personage at dinner, and at the house of a young nobleman of high fashion, but had not been introduced to him, and did not even know him by name. The visitor was better informed. "Our friend Egerton is busy, I hear, Mr. Leslie," said he, arranging the camelia in his button-hole. "Our friend Egerton!" It must be a very great man to say, "Our friend Egerton." "He will not be engaged long, I dare say," returned Randal, glancing his shrewd inquiring eye over the stranger's person. "I trust not; my time is almost as precious as his own. I was not so fortunate as to be presented to you when we met at Lord Spendquick's. Good fellow, Spendquick; and decidedly clever." Lord Spendquick was usually esteemed a gentleman without three ideas. Randal smiled. In the meanwhile the visitor had taken out a card from an embossed morocco case, and now presented it to Randal, who read thereon, "Baron Levy, No. ----, Bruton St." The name was not unknown to Randal. It was a name too often on the lips of men of fashion not to have reached the ears of an _habitué_ of good society. Mr. Levy had been a solicitor by profession. He had of late years relinquished his ostensible calling; and not long since, in consequence of some services towards the negotiation of a loan, had been created a baron by one of the German kings. The wealth of Mr. Levy was said to be only equalled by his good nature to all who were in want of a a temporary loan, and with sound expectations of repaying it some day or other. You seldom saw a finer looking man than Baron Levy--about the same age as Egerton, but looking younger: so well preserved--such magnificent black whiskers--such superb teeth! Despite his name and his dark complexion, he did not, however, resemble a Jew--at least externally; and, in fact, he was not a Jew on the father's side, but the natural son of a rich English _grand seigneur_, by a Hebrew lady of distinction--in the opera. After his birth, this lady had married a German trader of her own persuasion, and her husband had been prevailed upon, for the convenience of all parties, to adopt his wife's son, and accord to him his own Hebrew name. Mr. Levy, senior, was soon left a widower, and then the real father, though never actually owning the boy, had shown him great attention--had him frequently at his house--initiated him betimes into his own highborn society, for which the boy showed great taste. But when my lord died, and left but a moderate legacy to the younger Levy, who was then about eighteen, that ambiguous person was articled to an attorney by his putative sire, who shortly afterwards returned to his native land, and was buried at Prague, where his tombstone may yet be seen. Young Levy, however, continued to do very well without him. His real birth was generally known, and rather advantageous to him in a social point of view. His legacy enabled him to become a partner where he had been a clerk, and his practice became great amongst the fashionable classes of society. Indeed, he was so useful, so pleasant, so much a man of the world, that he grew intimate with his clients--chiefly young men of rank; was on good terms with both Jew and Christian; and being neither one nor the other, resembled (to use Sheridan's incomparable simile) the blank page between the Old and the New Testament. Vulgar, some might call Mr. N. Levy, from his assurance, but it was not the vulgarity of a man accustomed to low and coarse society--rather the _mauvais ton_ of a person not sure of his own position, but who has resolved to swagger into the best one he can get. When it is remembered that he had made his way in the world, and gleaned together an immense fortune, it is needless to add that he was as sharp as a needle, and as hard as a flint. No man had had more friends, and no man had stuck by them more firmly--as long as there was a pound in their pockets! Something of this character had Randal heard of the Baron, and he now gazed, first at his card, and then at him, with--admiration. "I met a friend of yours at Borrowwell's the other day," resumed the Baron--"Young Hazeldean. Careful fellow--quite a man of the world." As this was the last praise poor Frank deserved, Randal again smiled. The Baron went on--"I hear, Mr. Leslie, that you have much influence over this same Hazeldean. His affairs are in a sad state. I should be very happy to be of use to him, as a relation of my friend Egerton's; but he understands business so well that he despises my advice." "I am sure you do him injustice." "Injustice! I honor his caution. I say to every man, 'Don't come to me--I can get you money on much easier terms than any one else;' and what's the result? You come so often that you ruin yourself; whereas a regular usurer without conscience frightens you. 'Cent per cent,' you say; 'oh, I must pull in.' If you have influence over your friend, tell him to stick to his bill-brokers, and have nothing to do with Baron Levy." Here the minister's bell rung, and Randal, looking through the window, saw Dr. F. walking to his carriage, which had made way for Baron Levy's splendid cabriolet--a cabriolet in the most perfect taste--Baron's coronet on the dark brown panels--horse black, with such action!--harness just relieved with plating. The servant now entered, and requested Randal to step in; and addressing the Baron, assured him that he would not be detained a minute. "Leslie," said the minister, sealing a note, "take this back to Lord ----, and say that I shall be with him in an hour." "No other message?--he seemed to expect one." "I dare say he did. Well, my letter is official, my message is not; beg him to see Mr. ---- before we meet--he will understand--all rests upon that interview." Egerton then, extending the letter, resumed gravely, "Of course you will not mention to any one that Dr. F. was with me; the health of public men is not to be suspected. Hum--were you in your own room or the ante-room?" "The ante-room, sir." Egerton's brow contracted slightly. "And Mr. Levy was there, eh?" "Yes--the Baron." "Baron! true. Come to plague me about the Mexican loan, I suppose. I will keep you no longer." Randal, much meditating, left the house, and re-entered his hack cab. The Baron was admitted to the statesman's presence. CHAPTER XIV. Egerton had thrown himself at full length on the sofa, a position exceedingly rare with him; and about his whole air and manner, as Levy entered, there was something singularly different from that stateliness of port common to the austere legislator. The very tone of his voice was different. It was as if the statesman--the man of business--had vanished; it was rather the man of fashion and the idler, who, nodding languidly to his visitor, said, "Levy, what money can I have for a year?" "The estate will bear very little more. My dear fellow, that last election was the very devil. You cannot go on thus much longer." "My dear fellow!" Baron Levy hailed Audley Egerton as "my dear fellow." And Audley Egerton, perhaps, saw nothing strange in the words, though his lip curled. "I shall not want to go on thus much longer," answered Egerton, as the curl on his lip changed to a gloomy smile. "The estate must, meanwhile bear £5000 more." "A hard pull on it. You had really better sell." "I cannot afford to sell at present. I cannot afford men to say, 'Audley Egerton is done up--his property is for sale.'" "It is very sad when one thinks what a rich man you have been--and may be yet!" "Be yet! How?" Baron Levy glanced towards the thick mahogany doors--thick and impervious as should be the doors of statesmen. "Why, you know that, with three words from you, I could produce an effect upon the stocks of three nations, that might give us each a hundred thousand pounds. We would go shares." "Levy," said Egerton coldly, though a deep blush overspread his face, "you are a scoundrel; that is your look out. I interfere with no man's tastes and consciences. I don't intend to be a scoundrel myself. I have told you that long ago." The Baron laughed, without evincing the least displeasure. "Well," said he, "you are neither wise nor complimentary; but you shall have the money. But yet, would it not be better," added Levy, with emphasis, "to borrow it, without interest, of your friend L'Estrange?" Egerton started as if stung. "You meant to taunt me, sir!" he exclaimed passionately. "I accept pecuniary favors from Lord L'Estrange! I!" "Tut, my dear Egerton, I dare say my Lord would not think so ill now of that little act in your life which--" "Hold!" exclaimed Egerton, writhing. "Hold!" He stopped, and paced the room, muttering in broken sentences, "To blush before this man! Chastisement, chastisement!" Levy gazed on him with hard and sinister eyes. The minister turned abruptly. "Look you, Levy," said he, with forced composure--"you hate me--why, I know not. I have never injured you--never avenged the inexpiable wrong you did me." "Wrong!--you a man of the world! Wrong! Call it so if you will then," he added shrinkingly, for Audley's brow grew terrible. "But have I not atoned it? Would you ever have lived in this palace, and ruled this country as one of the most influential of its ministers, but for my management--my whispers to the wealthy Miss Leslie? Come, but for me what would you have been--perhaps a beggar?" "What shall I be now if I live? _Then_ I should not have been a beggar; poor perhaps in money, but rich--rich in all that now leaves my life bankrupt. Gold has not thriven with me; how should it. And this fortune--it has passed for the main part into your hands. Be patient, you will have it all ere long. But there is one man in the world who has loved me from a boy, and wo to you if ever he learn that he has the right to despise me!" "Egerton, my good fellow," said Levy, with great composure, "you need not threaten me, for what interest can I possibly have in tale-telling to Lord L'Estrange? As to hating you--pooh! You snub me in private, you cut me in public, you refuse to come to my dinners, you'll not ask me to your own; still there is no man I like better, nor would more willingly serve. When do you want the £5000?" "Perhaps in one month, perhaps not for three or four. Let it be ready when required." "Enough; depend on it. Have you any other commands?" "None." "I will take my leave, then. By the by, what do you suppose the Hazeldean rental is worth--net?" "I don't know, nor care. You have no designs upon _that_, too?" "Well, I like keeping up family connections. Mr. Frank seems a liberal young gentleman." Before Egerton could answer, the Baron had glided to the door, and, nodding pleasantly, vanished with that nod. Egerton remained, standing on his solitary hearth. A drear, single man's room it was, from wall to wall, despite its fretted ceilings and official pomp of Bramah escritoires and red boxes. Drear and cheerless--no trace of woman's habitation--no vestige of intruding, happy children. There stood the austere man alone. And then with a deep sigh he muttered, "Thank heaven, not for long--it will not last long." Repeating those words, he mechanically locked up his papers, and pressed his hand to his heart for an instant, as if a spasm had shot through it. "So--I must shun all emotion!" said he, shaking his head gently. In five minutes more, Audley Egerton was in the streets, his mien erect, and his step firm as ever. "That man is made of bronze," said a leader of the Opposition to a friend as they rode past the minister. "What would I give for his nerves!" FOOTNOTES: [M] Continued from page 692, vol. iv. From Mr. Kimball's forthcoming "Sequel to St. Leger." THE STORY OF DR. LINDHORST. "Dr. Lindhorst has been an intimate friend of my father from the time they were both together at Heidelberg. The Doctor was born in Switzerland, and, after finishing the study of medicine, came back to his native town to practise it. Before this, however, he had become enthusiastically devoted to geology and its kindred sciences, botany and mineralogy; and, indeed, to all those pursuits which have direct relation to nature and her operations. His father dying soon after, and leaving him a handsome patrimony, he had abundant opportunity to indulge in them; which he did, without, however, neglecting his profession. Indeed, he soon acquired a reputation for being skilful and attentive, while every one spoke in terms of commendation of the young Doctor Paul. Suddenly there was a change. He declined any longer to visit the sick, excepting only the most poor and miserable. He absented himself for days and weeks in the mountains, pursuing his favorite objects with an unnatural enthusiasm. Then he left Thun for foreign countries, and was gone two or three years, and returned with an accumulation of various specimens in almost every department of natural science: with note-books, herbariums, cabinets, strange animals stuffed to resemble life, birds, fishes, petrifactions--in short, the air, the water, and the earth had furnished their quota to satisfy his feverish zeal for acquisition. He was still a young man, scarce five-and-twenty, yet he bore the appearance of a person at least forty years old--" "But the cause of this strange metamorphose?" "No one pretends to tell," continued Josephine. "There is a report--and my father, who, I am sure, knows all, does not contradict it--that Paul Lindhorst was attached to a young girl who resided in the same town, and that his affection was returned. On one occasion, a detachment of French soldiers was quartered in Thun for a short time, and a sub-lieutenant, who had in some way been made acquainted with her, was smitten with the charms of the pretty Swiss. I suppose, like some of her sex, she had a spice of coquetry in her composition, and now, possessing two lovers, she had a good opportunity to practise it. Paul Lindhorst, however, was of too earnest a nature to bear this new conduct from the dearest object of his heart with composure, neither was it his disposition to suffer in silence. He remonstrated, and was laughed at; he showed signs of deep dejection, and these marks of a wounded spirit were treated with thoughtless levity or indifference; he became indignant, and they quarrelled. It is quite the old story; the girl, half in revenge, half from a fancied liking for her new lover, married him: soon the order for march came, and, by special permission, she was permitted to accompany her husband, as the regiment was to be quartered in France, and not to go on active service. Such," continued Josephine Fluellen, "is the story which I have heard repeated, and to which was attributed the extraordinary change in the young physician. His devotion to his favorite pursuits continued to engross him, he grew more abstracted, more laborious, more unremitting in his vocation. Again he visited foreign lands, and was gone another three years. Returning, he brought, in addition to his various collections, a little bright-eyed, brown-haired child, a girl, some four years old; and taking her to his house, which he still retained, he made arrangements for her accommodation there, by sending to Berne for a distant relative, a widow lady, who had but one child, also a little girl, about the age of the stranger. She accordingly took up her residence with Dr. Lindhorst, and assumed the charge of both the children, while the Doctor continued to pursue his labors, apparently much lighter of heart than before." "But the child?" "I was about to add that I learned from my father the following account of it. He told me (but I am sure this is not known to any out of our own family) that as Dr. Lindhorst was returning home after his second long absence, he entered a small village near Turin, just as a detachment of 'The Army of Italy' were leaving it. The rear presented the usual motley collection of baggage-wagons, disabled soldiers, sutlers, camp-women, and hangers-on of all sorts, who attend in the steps of a victorious troop. As Paul Lindhorst stopped to view the spectacle, and while the wild strains of music could be heard echoing and re-echoing as the columns defiled around the brow of a mountain which shut them from his sight, the rear of the detachment came up and passed. At a short distance behind, a child, scarcely four years of age, without shoes or stockings, and thinly clad, her hair streaming in the wind, ran by as fast as her little feet could carry her, screaming, in a tone of agony and terror, 'Wait for me, mamma!' 'Here I am, mamma!' 'Do dot leave me, mamma!' '_Do_ wait for me!' Paul Lindhorst sprang forward, and taking the child in his arms, he hastened to overtake the detachment, supposing that by some accident the little creature had been overlooked. On coming up, he inquired for the child's mother. "'Bless me!' said one of the women, 'if there is not poor little Annette!' "'We can't take her; that's positive,' cried another. "'How did she get here?' exclaimed a third. "'Something must be done,' said a wounded soldier, in a compassionate tone. 'Give her to me; I will carry her in my arms;' and taking the little Annette, who recognized in him an old acquaintance, he easily quieted her by saying her mamma would come very soon. "The Doctor at length discovered that the poor child's mother had died in the village they were just leaving. He learned also that she was the wife of an officer who had been wounded some time before, and that she had made a long journey, just in time to see him breathe his last, and had remained with the camp until her own death. Some charitable person, attracted by the sprightly appearance of the little girl, had volunteered the charge of it, and, the halt at an end, the detachment had marched on its victorious course. Paul Lindhorst felt a shock, like the last shock which separates soul from body. He had inquired and been told the name of the deceased officer; he buried his face in his hands and wept. Little Annette had fallen asleep in the old soldier's arms, and the heavy military wagon lumbered slowly on its way. It was more than he could bear, to give up the child into the hands of strangers--_her_ child. Old scenes came back to his recollection. He forgot every resentment. He remembered but his first, his only love. He walked hastily after the wagon, and readily persuaded the old soldier to give the little girl to him. Then taking her in his arms while she still slept, he walked almost with a light heart into the village. It was of course difficult at first to pacify the little creature; but kindness and devotion soon do their office, and all the love which she had had for her mother was transferred to her kind protector. She has always borne his name, and, I believe, is unacquainted with her history, at least with the more melancholy portions of it. Do not ask me any more questions. I know you want to speak of your friend Maclorne. I must not show you too much favor at one time; besides, we must visit Lina a few moments. I have quite neglected her of late." From the New Monthly Magazine. A DARK DEED OF THE DAYS GONE BY. I. In one of the sunniest spots of sunny Tuscany, that favored department of Italy, may still be seen the ruins of a strong, ancient-built castle, or palace, surrounded by extensive grounds now run to waste; and which was, a century or two ago, one of the proudest buildings in that balmy land. It was on an evening of delicious coolness, there so coveted, that a cavalier issued on horseback from the gates of the castle, which was then at the acme of its pride and strength. Numerous retainers stood on either side by the drawbridge their heads bared to the evening sun, until the horseman should have passed, but he went forth unattended; and the men resumed their caps, and swung to the drawbridge, as he urged his horse to a quick pace. It was the lord of that stately castle, the young inheritor of the lands of Visinara. His form, tall and graceful, was bent occasionally to the very neck of his horse, in acknowledgment of the homage that was universally paid him, though he sat his steed proudly, as if conscious that such bearing befitted the descendant of one of Italia's noblest families. In years he had numbered scarcely more than a quarter of a century, and yet on his beautiful features might be traced a shade, which told of perplexity or care. Turning down a narrow and not much frequented way, which branched off from the main road, a mile or two distant from his residence, he urged his horse to a fast pace, and at length came in view of one of those pretty places, partly mansion, partly cottage, and partly temple, at that period to be seen in Italy; but which we _now_ meet with rarely save in pictures. Fastening the bridle of his charger to a tree, he walked towards the house, and passing down the colonade, which ran along the south side of it, entered one of the rooms through the open window. A lady, young and beautiful, sat there alone. She had delicate features, and a fair, open countenance, the complexion of which resembled more that of an English than an Italian one, inasmuch as a fine, transparent color was glowing on the cheeks. The expression of her eyes was mild and sweet, and her hair, of a chestnut brown, fell in curls upon her neck, according to the fashion of the times. She started visibly at sight of the count, and her tongue gave utterance to words, but what she apparently knew not. "So you have returned, signor?" "At last, Gina," was the count's answer, as he threw his arm around her slender waist, and essayed to draw her affectionately towards him. "Unhand me, Count di Visinara!" she impetuously exclaimed, sliding from his embrace, and standing apart, her whole form heaving with agitation. He stood irresolute; aghast at this reception from her, who was his early and dearest love. "Are you out of your senses?" was his exclamation. "No, but I soon shall be. And I have prayed to Heaven that insanity may fall upon me rather than experience the wretchedness of these last few days." "My love, my love, what mean you?" "_My love!_ you call _me_ your love, Count di Visinara! Be silent, hypocrite! I know you now. Cajoled that I have been in listening to you so long!" "Gina!" "And so the honorable Count di Visinara has amused his leisure hours in making love to Gina Montani!" she cried, vehemently. "The lordly chieftain who----" "Be silent, Gina!" he interrupted. "Before you continue your strange accusations, tell me the origin of them. My love has never wandered from you." "Yet you are seeking a wife in the heiress of Della Ripa! Ah, Sir Count, your complexion changes now!" Gina Montani was right: the flush of excitement on his face had turned to paleness. "Your long and repeated journeys, for days together, are now explained," she continued. "It was well to tell me business took you from home." "I have had business to transact with the Prince of Della Ripa," he replied, boldly, recovering his equanimity. "And to combine business with pleasure," she answered, with a curl of her delicate lip, "you have been wont to linger by the side of his daughter." "And what though I have sometimes seen the Lady Adelaide?" he rejoined. "I have no love for her." Gina was silent for awhile, as if struggling with her strong emotion, and then spoke calmly. "My mother has enjoined me, times out of mind, not to suffer your continued visits here, for that you would never marry me. You never will, Giovanni." "Turn to my own faith, Gina," he exclaimed, with emotion, "and I will marry thee to-morrow." "They say you are about to marry Adelaide of Della Ripa," she replied, passing by his own words with a gesture. "They deceive you, Gina." "_You_ deceive me," she answered, passionately; "you, upon whose veracity I would have staked my life. And this is to be my reward!" "You are like all your sex, Gina--when their jealousy is aroused, good-by to reason; one and all are alike." "Can you say that in this case my suspicions are unfounded?" "Gina," he answered, as he once again would have folded her to his heart, "let us not waste the hours in vain recriminations: I have no love for Adelaide of Della Ripa." And, alas! for the credulity of woman, Gina Montani lent ear once more to his honeyed persuasions, until she deemed them true: and they were again happy together, as of old. But this security was not to last long for her. As the weeks and months flew on, the visits of the count to her mother's house grew few and far between. He made long stays at the territory of Della Ripa, and people told it as a fact, no longer disputable, that he was about to make a bride of the Lady Adelaide. They had come strangers into Tuscany, the Signora Montani and her daughter, but a year or two before. The signora was in deep grief for the loss of her husband, and they lived the most secluded life, making no acquaintances. They were scarcely known by name or by sight, and, save the Count di Visinara, no visitors were ever found there. The signora was of northern extraction, and of the Reformed faith, and had reared her daughter in the principles of the latter, which of itself would cause them to court seclusion, at that period, in Italy. And the Lord of Visinara, independent and haughty as he was by nature and by position, would no more have dared to take Gina Montani to be his wedded wife, than he would have braved his Mightiness the Pope in St. Peter's chair. II. It was on a calm moonlight night, that a closely-wrapped-up form stood in the deep shade of a grove of cypress-trees, within the gates of the Castle of Visinara, anxiously watching. Parties passed and repassed, and the figure stirred not; but now there came one, the very echo of whose footsteps had command in it, and the form advanced stealthily, and glided out of its hiding-place, right upon the path of the Lord of Visinara. He stood still, and faced the intruder. "Who are you--and what do you do here?" "I came to bid you farewell, my Lord; to wish you joy of your marriage!" And, throwing back the mantle and hood, Gina Montani's fragile form stood out to view. "You here, Gina!" "Ay; I have struggled long--long. Pride, resentment, jealousy--I have struggled fiercely with them; but all are forgotten in my unhappy love." He folded her to his heart, as in their happy days. "You depart to-morrow morning on your way to bring home your bride. I have seen your preparations; I have watched the movements of your retainers. No farewell was given me--no word offered of consolation--no last visit vouchsafed." It would seem that he could not gainsay her words, for he made no reply. "Know you how long it is since we met?" she continued; "how long--" "Reproach me not," he interrupted. "I have suffered more than you, and, for a farewell visit, I did not dare to trust myself." "And so this is to be the end of your enduring love, that you said was to be mine, and only mine, till death!" "And before Heaven I spoke the truth. I have never loved--I never shall love but you. Yet, Gina, what would you have me do? I may not speak to you of marriage; and it is necessary to my position that I wed." "_She_ is of your own rank, therefore you have wooed her?" "And of my own faith. Difference in rank may be overcome; in faith, never." "Oh that the time had come when God's children shall be all of one mind!" she uttered; "when the same mode of worship, and that a pure one, shall animate us all. In the later ages, this peace may be upon the earth." "Would to the saints that it were now, Gina; or that you and I had never met." "What! do _you_ wish it?" she contemptuously exclaimed; "you, who voluntarily sever yourself from me?" "I have acted an honorable part, Gina," he cried, striding to and fro in his agitation. "_Honorable_, did you say?" "Ay, honorable. You were growing too dear to me, and I could not speak of marriage to you." There was a long pause. She was standing against one of the cypress-trees, the moon, through an opening above, casting its light upon her pure face, down which were coursing tears of anguish. "So henceforth we must be brother and sister," he whispered. "Brother and sister," she repeated, in a moaning voice, pressing the cold tree against her aching temples. "After awhile, Gina, when time shall have tamed our feelings down. Until then, we may not meet." "Not meet!" she exclaimed, startled by the words into sudden pain. "Will you never come to see us? Shall we never be together again--like brother and sister, as you have just said?" "Nay, Gina, I must not do so great wrong to the Lady Adelaide." "So great wrong!" she exclaimed in amazement. "Not real wrong, I am aware. But I shall undertake at the altar to love and cherish her; and though I cannot do the one, I will the other. Knowing this, it is incumbent on me to be doubly careful of her feelings." "I see, I see," interrupted the young lady, indignantly; "_her_ feelings must be respected whilst mine--Farewell, Giovanni." "One word yet, Gina," he said, detaining her. "You will probably hear of me much--foremost in the chase, gayest in the ballroom, last at the banquet--the gay, fortunate Lord of Visinara; and when you do so, remember that that gay lord wears about him a secret chain, suspected by and known to none--a chain, some links of which will remain entwined around his heart to his dying day, though the gilding that made it precious must from this time moulder away. Know you what the chain is, Gina?" The suffocating sobs were rising in her throat, and she made no answer. "_His love for you_. Fare thee well, my dearest and best. Nay, another instant; it is our last embrace in this world." III. It was a princely cavalcade that bore the heiress of Della Ripa to her new territories, and all eyes looked out upon it. The armor of the warlike retainers of the house of Visinara sparkled in the sun, and the more peaceful servitors were attired with a gorgeousness that would have done honor to an Eastern clime. The old Prince of Della Ripa, than whom one more fierce and brave never existed in all Italy, had that morning given his daughter's hand to Giovanni of Visinara; and as she neared the castle that was henceforth to be her home, every point from which a view of the procession could be obtained was seized upon. "By my patron saint, but it is a goodly sight!" exclaimed one of a group of maidens, gathered at a window beneath which the bridal cavalcade was prancing. "Only look at Master Pietro, the seneschal." "And at the steel points of the halberds,--how they shine in the crimson of the setting sun." "Nay, rather look at these lovely dames that follow--the Lady Adelaide's tire-women. By the sacred relics! if her beauty exceed that of her maidens, it must be rare to look upon. See the gold and purple of their palfreys' horsecloths waving in the air." "Hist! hist! it is the Count of Visinara in his emblazoned carriage! How haughtily he sits; but the Visinara is a haughty race. And--yes--see--by his side--oh, how lovely! Signora Montani, look! That face might win a kingdom." Gina Montani, who stood in the corner of the lattice, shielded from view by its massive frame, may possibly have heard, but she answered not. "Say what you will of his pride, he is the handsomest man that ever lived," exclaimed a damsel, enthusiastically. "Look at him as he sits there now--he rides bareheaded, his plumed cap resting on his knee--where will you find such a face and form as that!" "What is _she_ like?" interrupted an old duenna, snappishly, who, standing behind, could not as yet obtain a view of the coveted sight; "we know enough of his looks, let us hear something of hers. But you girls are ever the same: if a troop of sister angels came down from heaven, headed by the Virgin Mother herself, and a graceless cavalier appeared at the other side, you would turn your backs to the angels and your eyes upon Beatrice. Is she as handsome as the young Lady Beatrice, the count's sister, who married away a year agone?" "Oh, mother, she is not like her. Beatrice of Visinara had a warm countenance, with eyes black as the darkest night, and brilliant as a diamond aigrette." "And are the wife's not black," screamed out the duenna. "They ought to be; her blood is pure Italian." "They are blue as heaven's sky, and her face is dazzling to behold from its extreme fairness, and her golden hair droops in curls almost to her waist--it is a band of diamonds, you see, that confines it from the temples. But you can see her now, mother; remember you one half so lovely?" "_Dio mio!_" uttered the woman, startled at the beautiful vision that now came within her sight; "the Lord of Visinara has not sacrificed his liberty for nothing." "Mark you her rich white dress, mother, with its corsage of diamonds, and the sleeves looped up to the elbow with lace and jewels? And over it, nearly hiding her fair neck, is a mantle of blue velvet, clasped by a diamond star. And see, she is taking her glove off, and her hand is raised to her cheek--small and delicate it is too, as befitteth her rank and beauty. And--look!--he lays his own upon it as she drops it, but she would draw it from him to replace the glove. Now he bends to speak to her, and she steals a glance at him with her blushing cheeks and her eye full of love. And now he is bowing to the people--hark how they shout, 'Long life to the Lady Adelaide--long life and happiness to the Count and Countess of Visinara!'" "She is very beautiful, Bianca; but--" "Ay, what, you are a reader of countenances, _madra mia_; what see you there?" "That she is proud and self-willed. And woe be to any who may hereafter look upon her handsome husband with an eye of favor, for she loves him." "Can there be a doubt of that?" echoed Bianca; "has she not married him? And look at his attractions: see this goodly lot of cavaliers speeding on to join his banquet; can any there compare with him?" "Chi é stracco di bonaccie, si mariti," answered the lady; "and have you, Bianca, yet to learn that the comeliest mates oftentimes bring any thing but love to the altar?" Bianca made a grimace, as if she doubted. "It will come sure enough, then," she said aloud; "for none could be brought into daily contact with one so attractive and not learn to love him." "And who should this be in a holy habit, following the bridal equipage on his mule? Surely the spiritual director of the Lady Adelaide--the Father Anselmo it must be, that we have heard speak of. A faithful man, but stern, it is told; and so his countenance would betray. Bend your heads in reverend meekness, my children, the holy man is bestowing his blessings." "How savage I should be if I were the Lady Beatrice, not to be able to come to the wedding after all," broke in the giddy Bianca. "She reckoned fully upon it, too, they say, and had caused her dress for the ceremony to be prepared--one to rival the bride's in splendor." "She has enough to do with her newly-born infant," mumbled the good duenna. "Gayety first, care afterwards; a christening usually follows a wedding. Come, girls, there's nothing more to see." "Nay, mother mine, some of these dames that follow lack not beauty." "Pish!" uttered a fair young girl who had hitherto been silent; "it would be waste of time to look at their faces after the Lady Adelaide's." "Who is that going away? The Signora Montani? Why, it has not all passed, signora. She is gone, I declare! What a curious girl she seems, that." "Do you know what they say?" cried little Lisa, Bianca's cousin. "What do they say?" "That her mother is a descendant of those dreadful people over the sea, who have no religion, the heretics." The pious duenna boxed her niece's ears. "You sinful little monkey, to utter such heresy!" she cried, when anger allowed her to speak. "So they do say so!" sobbed the young lady, dancing about with the passion she dared not otherwise vent. "And people _do_ say," she continued, out of bravado, and smarting under the pain, "that they are heretics themselves, or else why do they never come to mass?" "The old Signora Montani is bedridden; how could she get to mass?" laughed Bianca. "Don't answer her, Bianca. If she says such a thing here again--if she insinuates that the Signora Gina, knowing herself to be in such league with the Evil One, would dare to put her head inside a faithful house such as this, I will cause her to do public penance--the wicked little calumniator!" concluded the good duenna, adding a few finishing strokes upon Lisa's ears. III. Long lasted the bridal banquet, and merrily it sped. Ere its conclusion, and when the hours were drawing towards midnight, the young Lady Adelaide, attended by her maidens, was conducted to her dressing-chamber, according to the custom of the times and of the country. She sat down in front of a large mirror whilst they disrobed her. They took the circlet of diamonds from her head, the jewels from her neck and arms, and the elegant bridal dress was carefully removed; and there she sat, in a dressing-robe of cambric and lace, while they brushed out and braided her beautiful hair. As they were thus engaged, the lady's eyes ran round and round the costly chamber. The furniture and appurtenances were of the most _recherché_ description. One article in particular attracted her admiration. It was a small, but costly cabinet of malachite marble, exquisitely mounted in silver, and had been a present to the count from a Russian despot. In the inner part was fixed a mirror, encircled by a large frame of silver, and on the projecting slab stood open essence-bottles of pure crystal, in silver frames, emitting various perfumes. As she continued to look at this novelty--the marble called malachite was even more rare and costly in those days than it is in ours--she perceived, lying by the side of the scent-bottles, a piece of folded paper, and, wondering what it could be, she desired one of the ladies to bring it to her. It proved to be a sealed letter, and was addressed to herself. The conscious blush of love rose to her cheeks, for she deemed it was some communication or present from her husband. She opened it, and the contents instantly caught her eye, in the soft, pure light which the lamps shed over the apartment: "_To the Lady Adelaide, Countess of Visinara._ "You fancy yourself the beloved of Giovanni, Count of Visinara, but retire not to your rest this night, lady, in any such vain imagining. The heart of the count has long been given to another, and you know, by your love for him, that such passion can never change its object. Had he met you in earlier life, it might have been otherwise. He marries you, for your lineage is a high one, and she, in the world's eye and in that of his own haughty race, was no fit mate for him." The bridegroom was still at the banquet, for some of his guests drank deeply, when a hasty summons came to him. Quitting the hall, he found, standing outside, two of his bride's attendants. "Sir Count, the Lady Adelaide--" "Has retired?" he observed, finding they hesitated, yet feeling somewhat surprised at so speedy a summons. "Nay, signor, not retired, but--" "But what? Speak out." "We were disrobing the Lady Adelaide, Sir Count, when she saw in the chamber a note addressed to her. And--and--she read it, and fainted, in spite of the essence we poured on her hands and brow." "A note!--fainted!" ejaculated the count. "It was an insulting letter, signor; for Irene, the youngest of the Lady Adelaide's attendants, read the first line or two of it aloud, before we could prevent her, it having fallen, open, on the floor. Our lady is yet insensible, and the Signora Lucrezia desired us to acquaint you, my lord." Without another word he turned from them, and passing through the various corridors, entered the dressing-chamber. The Lady Adelaide was still motionless, but a faint coloring had begun to appear in her face. "What is this, signora?" demanded the count of the chief attendant, Lucrezia. "It must be owing to this letter, my lord, which was waiting for her on the cabinet," was the lady's reply, holding out the open note. "The Lady Adelaide fainted whilst she was perusing it." "Fold it up," interrupted the count, "and replace it there." Lucrezia did as she was bid. "You may now go," said Giovanni to the attendants, advancing to support his bride. "When the countess has need of you, you shall be summoned." "You have read that letter?" were the first connected words of the Lady Adelaide. "Nay, my love, surely not, without your permission. Will you that I read it?" She motioned in the affirmative. "A guilty, glowing color came over his face as he read. Who could have written it? That it alluded to Gina Montani there was no doubt. Who _could_ have sent it? He felt convinced that she had no act or part in so dishonorable a trick--yet what may not be expected from a jealous woman? Now came his trial. "Was it not enough to make me ill?" demanded Adelaide. He stammered something. He was not yet sufficiently collected to speak connectedly. "Giovanni," she exclaimed, passionately, "deceive me not. Tell me what I have to fear: how much of your love is left for me--if any." He tried to soothe her. He told her an enemy must have done this; and he mentioned Gina Montani, though not by name. He said that he had sometimes visited her house, but not to love; and that the letter must allude to this. "You _say_ you did not love her!" she cried, resentment in her tone, as she listened to the tale. He hesitated a single second; but, he reasoned to himself, he ought at all risks to lull her suspicions--it was his duty. So he replied firmly, though the flush of shame rose to his brow, for he deemed a falsehood dishonorable. "In truth I did not. My love is yours, Adelaide." "Why did you visit her?" "I can hardly tell you. I hardly know myself: want of thought--or of occupation, probably." "You surely did not wrong her?" was the next whispered question, as she turned her face from him. "Wrong _her!_ Had you known her, you could not have admitted the possibility of the idea," he answered, resentment in his tone now. "She has been carefully reared, and is as innocent as you are." "Who is she?--what is her name?" "Adelaide, let us rather forget the subject. I have told you I loved her not: and I should not have mentioned this at all, but that I can think of nothing else to which that diabolical letter can have alluded. Believe me, my own wife"--and he drew her to his bosom as he spoke--"that I have not done you so great an injury as to marry where I did not love." "Oh," she exclaimed, wringing her hands, and extricating herself from him, "that this cruel news had not been given me!" "My love, be comforted--be convinced. I tell you it is a false letter." "How can I know it is false?" she lamented--"how can you prove it to me?" "Adelaide, I can but tell you so now: the future and my conduct must prove it." "Giovanni," she continued vehemently, and half sinking on her knees before him, "deceive me not. If there be aught of truth in this accusation, let me depart. I am your wife but in name: a slight ceremony only has passed between us, and we both know how readily, with such influence as ours, the Church at Rome would dissolve that. Suffer me to depart ere I shall be indeed your wife." "Adelaide," he replied mournfully, as he held her, "I thought you loved me." "I do--I do. None, save God, know how passionately. My very life is bound up in yours; but it is because I so love you, that I could not brook a rival. Let me know the truth at once--even though it be the worst; for should I trust to you now, and find afterwards that I had been deceived, it would be most unhappy for both of us. My whole affection would be turned to hate; and not only would my own existence be wretched, but I should render yours so." "You have no rival, Adelaide. You never shall have one." "I mean not a rival in the vulgar acceptation of the term," she replied, a shade of haughtiness mixing with her tone--"but one in your heart--your mind--this I could not bear." "Adelaide, hear me. Some enemy, wishing to do me a foul injury, has thrust himself between us; but, rely on it, they are but false cowards who stab in the dark. I have sought you these many months; I have striven to gain your love; I have now made you mine. Why should I have done this had my affections been another's? Talk not of separation, Adelaide." She burst into a passionate fit of weeping. "Adelaide," he whispered, as he fondly clasped her to his heart, "believe that I love you; believe that you have no rival, and that I will give you none. I have made you my wife--the wife of my bosom: you are, and ever shall be, my only love." Sweet words! And the Lady Adelaide suffered her disturbed mind to yield to them, resolutely thrusting away the dreadful thought that the heart of her attractive husband could ever have been given to another. V. Months elapsed, and the Lady Adelaide was the happiest of the happy, although now and again the remembrance of that anonymous letter would dart before her mind, like a dream. That most rare felicity was, indeed, hers, of passionately idolizing one from whom she need never be separated by night or by day. But how was it with him? Love is almost the only passion which cannot be called forth or turned aside at will, and though the Count di Visinara treated his wife in all respects, and ever would, with the most cautious attention, his heart was still true to Gina Montani. But now the Count had to leave home; business called him forth; and to remain away fifteen days. In those earlier times women could not accompany their lords every where, as they may in these; and when Giovanni rode away from his castle gates, the Lady Adelaide sank in solitude upon the arm of one of her costly sofas, all rich with brocaded velvet; and though not a tear dimmed her eye, or a line of pain marked her forehead, to tell of suppressed feelings, it seemed to her that her heart was breaking. It was on the morrow, news was brought to the countess that one craved admission to her--a maiden, young and beautiful, the servitor said; and the Lady Adelaide ordered her to be admitted. Young and beautiful indeed, and so she looked, as, with downcast eyes, the visitor was ushered in--_you_ know her, reader, though the Lady Adelaide did not. She began to stammer out an incoherent explanation; that news had reached her of the retirement of one of the Lady Adelaide's attendants, and of her wish to fill the vacant place. "What is your name?" inquired the countess, already taken, as the young are apt to be, with the prepossessing manners and appearance of her visitor. "Signora, it is Gina Montani." "And in whose household have you resided?" A deep shade rose to Gina's face. "Madam, I am a stranger as yet to servitude. I was not reared to expect such. But my mother is dead, and I am now alone in the world. I have heard much, too, of the Countess of Visinara's gentleness and worth, and should wish to serve her." Some further conversation, a few preliminary arrangements, and Gina Montani was installed at the castle as one of the countess's maids in waiting: a somewhat contradistinctive term, be it understood, to a _waiting-maid_, these attendants of high-born gentle-women being then made, in a great degree, their companions. Gina speedily rose in favor. Her manners were elegant and unassuming, and there was a sadness about her which, coupled with her great beauty, rendered her eminently interesting. VI. The Lady Adelaide stood at the eastern window of the Purple Room--so called from its magnificent hangings--watching eagerly for the appearance of her husband, it being the day and hour of his expected return. So had she stood since the morning. Ah! what pleasure is there in this world like that of watching for a beloved one! At the opposite end of the apartment were her ladies, engaged upon some fancy work, in those times violently in vogue, like that eternal knitting or crotchet-work is in ours. "Come hither, Lucrezia," said the lady, at length. "Discern you yon trees--groups of them scattered about, and through which an occasional glimpse of the highway may be distinguished? Nay, not there; far, far away in the distance. See you aught?" "Nothing but the road, my lady. And yet, now I look attentively, there seems to be a movement, as of a body of horsemen, Ah! now there is an open space, and they are more distinct. It should be the count, madam, and his followers." "I think it is, Lucrezia," said the Lady Adelaide, calmly, not suffering her emotion to appear in the presence of her maidens, for that haughty girl brooked not that others should read her deep love for Giovanni. "You may return to your embroidery." The Count di Visinara rode at a sharp trot towards his home, followed by his retainers; but when he discerned the form of his wife at the window, he quickened the pace to a gallop, after taking off his plumed cap, and waving his hand towards her in the distance. She pressed her heart to still its throbbing, and waited his approach. She heard him rattle over the drawbridge, and was turning to leave the apartment to welcome him home, when he entered, so great haste had he made. Without observing that she was not alone, he advanced, and, throwing his arms round her, drew aside her fair golden curls, and kissed her repeatedly, like many a man possessed of a lovely wife will kiss, though his love may be far away from her. But she shrank from his embrace, the glowing crimson overspreading her face; and then the count turned and saw they were not alone. At the extreme end of the apartment, out of hearing, but within sight, were the damsels seated over their embroidery. "Gina," murmured one of the girls, still pursuing her work, "what has made you turn so pale? You are as white as Juliette's dress." "Is the Signora Montani ill?" demanded Lucrezia, sharply, for she liked not Gina. "A sudden pain--a spasm in my side," gasped Gina. "It is over now." "Is he not an attractive man?" whispered another of the ladies in Gina's ear. "He?" "The Count di Visinara: _you_ never saw him before. They are well matched for beauty, he and the Lady Adelaide." "Pray attend to your work, and let this gossiping cease," exclaimed Lucrezia, angrily. Giovanni and his wife remained at the window, with their backs towards the damsels. She suffered her hand to remain in his--they could not see _that_--and conversed with him in a confidential tone. Then she began chattering to him of her new attendant, telling how lovely she was, when a servant entered and announced the mid-day meal. "Now you shall see my favorite," she exclaimed, as he took her hand to conduct her to the banquet-hall. "I will stop as I pass them, to look at their work, and you shall tell me if you do not think her very beautiful." "Scarcely, Adelaide, when beside you." "She is about my age," ran on Adelaide, whose spirits were raised to exuberance. But it had never entered the mind of that haughty lady to imagine the possibility of the Lord of Visinara, _her husband_, looking upon an attendant of hers with an eye of real admiration; or she might not have discussed their personal merits. "How do you get on with the work, Lucrezia?" demanded the Lady Adelaide, stopping close to her attendants. "Favorably, madam," answered the signora, rising from her seat. "That is a beautiful part that you are engaged upon, Gina. Bring it forward, that we may exhibit our handiwork." Gina Montani, without raising her eyes, and trembling inwardly and outwardly, rose, and advanced with the embroidery. The Signora Lucrezia eyed her, covertly. "Is it not a handsome pattern?" exclaimed Adelaide, her thoughts now really occupied with the beauty of the work. "And I was so industrious while you were away, Giovanni. I did a good portion of this myself--I did, indeed; all the shadings of the rosebuds are my doing, and those interlaces of silver." The Lady Adelaide stopped, for, on looking to his face for approbation, she was startled by the frightful pallor which had overspread it. "Oh, Giovanni, you are ill!--my husband, what is it? Giovanni--" "It is nothing," interrupted the count, leading her hurriedly from the room. "I rode hard, and the sun was hot. A cup of wine will restore me." But not less awake to this emotion of the count's than she had been to Gina's, was the Signora Lucrezia, and she came to the conclusion that there was some unaccountable mystery at the bottom of it, which she determined to do all in her power to find out. VII. Days passed. The count had not yet seen Gina alone, though he had sought for the opportunity; but one morning when he entered the Lady Adelaide's embroidery room--so called--Gina sat there alone, sorting silks. He did not observe her at the first moment, and, being in search of his wife, called to her, "Adelaide!" "The Lady Adelaide is not here, signor," was Gina's reply, as she rose from her seat. "Gina," he said, advancing cautiously, and speaking in an under tone, "what in the name of all the saints brought you here--an inmate of my castle--the attendant of the Lady Adelaide?" "You shall hear the truth," she gasped, leaning against the wall for support. "I have lived long, these many months, in my dreary home, unseeing you, uncared for, knowing only that you were happy with another. Giovanni, can you picture what I endured? My mother died--you may have heard of it--and her relations sent for me into their distant country, and would have comforted me; but I remained on alone to be near you. I struggled much with my unhappy passion. My very soul was wearing away with despair. I would see you pass sometimes at a distance with your retainers--and that was heaven to me. Then came a thought into my mind; I wrestled with it, and would have driven it away--but there it was, ever urging me; it may be that my better angel sent it there; it may be that the Evil One, who is ever tempting us for ill, drove it on." "What mean you?" he inquired. "It suggested," she continued in a low voice, "that if but to see you at a distance, and at rare intervals, could almost compensate for my life of misery, what bliss would be mine were I living under the roof of your own castle, liable to see you any hour of the day; hence you find me numbered amongst your wife's waiting-maids. And blame me not, Giovanni," she hastily concluded, seeing him about to interrupt her; "you are the cause of all, for you sought and gained my love; and such love! I think none can have ever known such. And yet I must suppress this love. The fiercest jealousy of the Lady Adelaide rages in my heart--and yet I must suppress it! Giovanni, you have brought this anguish upon me; so blame me not." "It is a dangerous proceeding, Gina. I was becoming reconciled to our separation; but now--it will be dangerous for both of us." "Ay," she answered, bitterly, "you had all. Friends, revelry, a wife of rare beauty, the chase, the bustle of an immense household--in short, what had you not to aid your mental struggles? I but my home of solitude, and the jealous pictures, self, but ever inflicted, of your happiness with the Lady Adelaide." "I still love but you, Gina," he repeated, "but I will be honorable to _her_, and must show it not." "Do I ask you to show it? or think you I would permit it?" she replied quickly; "no, no; I did not come here to sow discord in your household. Suffer me to live on unnoticed as of these last few days, but, oh! drive me not away from you." "Believe me, Gina, this will never do. I mistrust my own powers of endurance; ay, and of concealment." "You can think of me but as the waiting-maid of your lady," she interrupted, in a tone of bitterness. "In time you will really regard me as such." "There would be another obstacle, Gina," he returned, sinking his voice to a lower tone, as if fearful even to mention the subject--"how can you live in my household, and not conform to the usages of our faith? You know that yours must never be suspected." "Trust to me to manage all," she reiterated; "but send me not away from you." "Be it so, Gina," he observed, after reflection; "you deserve more sacrifice on my part than this. But all confidence must cease between us: from this time we are to each other as strangers." "Even so," she acquiesced. "Yet if you deem my enduring affection deserves requital, give me at times a look as of old; a smile, unperceived by others, but acknowledged by, and too dear to, my own heart. It will be a token that you have not driven away all remembrance of our once youthful love, though it is at an end for ever." He took her hand and clasped it tenderly, but the next moment he almost flung it from him, and had turned and quitted the room. Gina burst into a violent fit of weeping, and slowly retreated to seek the solitude of her chamber. Scarcely had the echo of her footsteps died away in the gallery, when the door of a closet appertaining to the room was cautiously pushed open, and out stepped the Signora Lucrezia, her eyes and mouth wide open, and her hair standing on end. "May all the saints reject me if ever I met with such a plot as this!" she ejaculated. "I knew there was something going on underneath, but the deuce himself would never have suspected this. So the innocent-faced madam has not been winding herself round the Lady Adelaide for nothing--the she-wolf in sheep's petticoats! Something was said, too, that I could not catch, about her irreligion. The hypocrite dare not go to confession, probably, and so keeps away. The letter of the wedding night is explained now, and that changing, as they both did, to the hue of a mort-cloth at sight of each other. May I die unabsolved if so sly a conspiracy ever came up. However, I shall not interfere yet awhile. Let my baby-mistress look out for herself: she has not pleased me of late, showering down marks of favor upon this false jade. _Her_ rival! if she did but know it! I'll keep my eyes and ears open. Two lovers cannot live for ever under the same roof without betraying their secret; and there will be an explosion some day, or my name is not Lucrezia Andrini." From Household Words A FASHIONABLE FORGER. I am an attorney and a bill discounter. As it is my vocation to lend money at high interest to extravagant people, my connection principally lies among "fools," sometimes among rogues "of quality." Mine is a pursuit which a prejudiced world either holds in sovereign contempt, or visits with envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness; but to my mind, there are many callings, with finer names, that are no better. It gives me two things which I love--money and power; but I cannot deny that it brings with it a bad name. The case lies between character and money, and involves a matter of taste. Some people like character; I prefer money. If I am hated and despised, I chuckle over the "per contra." I find it pleasant for members of a proud aristocracy to condescend from their high estate to fawn, feign, flatter; to affect even mirthful familiarity in order to gain my good-will. I am no Shylock. No client can accuse me of desiring either his flesh or his blood. Sentimental vengeance is no item in my stock in trade. Gold and bank-notes satisfy my "rage;" or, if need be, a good mortgage. Far from seeking revenge, the worst defaulter I ever had dealings with cannot deny that I am always willing to accept a good post-obit. I say again, I am daily brought in contact with all ranks of society, from the poverty-stricken patentee to the peer; and I am no more surprised at receiving an application from a duchess than from a pet opera-dancer. In my ante-room wait, at this moment, a crowd of borrowers. Among the men, beardless folly and mustachioed craft are most prominent: there is a handsome young fellow, with an elaborate cane and wonderfully vacant countenance, who is anticipating, in feeble follies, an estate that has been in the possession of his ancestors since the reign of Henry the Eighth. There is a hairy, high-nosed, broken-down nondescript, in appearance something between a horse-dealer and a pugilist. He is an old Etonian. Five years ago he drove his four-in-hand; he is now waiting to beg a sovereign, having been just discharged from the Insolvent Court, for the second time. Among the women, a pretty actress, who, a few years since, looked forward to a supper of steak and onions, with bottled stout, on a Saturday night, as a great treat, now finds one hundred pounds a month insufficient to pay her wine-merchant and her confectioner. I am obliged to deal with each case according to its peculiarities. Genuine undeserved Ruin seldom knocks at my door. Mine is a perpetual battle with people who imbibe trickery at the same rate as they dissolve their fortunes. I am a hard man, of course. I should not be fit for my pursuit if I were not; but when, by a remote chance, honest misfortune pays me a visit, as Rothschilds amused himself at times by giving a beggar a guinea, so I occasionally treat myself to the luxury of doing a kind action. My favorite subjects for this unnatural generosity, are the very young, or the poor, innocent, helpless people, who are unfit for the war of life. Many among my clients (especially those tempered in the "ice-book" of fashion and high-life--polished and passionless) would be too much for me, if I had not made the face, the eye, the accent, as much my study as the mere legal and financial points of discount. To show what I mean, I will relate what happened to me not long since:-- One day, a middle-aged man, in the usual costume of a West-End shopman, who had sent in his name as Mr. Axminster, was shown into my private room. After a little hesitation, he said, "Although you do not know me, living at this end of the town, I know you very well by reputation, and that you discount bills. I have a bill here which I want to get discounted. I am in the employ of Messrs. Russle and Smooth. The bill is drawn by one of our best customers, the Hon. Miss Snape, niece of Lord Blimley, and accepted by Major Munge; whom, no doubt, you know by name. She has dealt with us for some years, is very, very extravagant; but always pays." He put the acceptance--which was for two hundred pounds--into my hands. I looked at it as scrutinizingly as I usually do at such paper. The Major's signature was familiar to me; but having succeeded to a great estate, he has long ceased to be a customer. I instantly detected a forgery; by whom? was the question. Could it be the man before me? experience told me it was not. Perhaps there was something in the expression of my countenance which Mr. Axminster did not like, for he said, "It is good for the amount, I presume?" I replied, "Pray, sir, from whom did you get this bill?" "From Miss Snape herself." "Have you circulated any other bills made by the same drawer?" "O yes!" said the draper, without hesitation; "I have paid away a bill for one hundred pounds to Mr. Sparkle, the jeweller, to whom Miss Snape owed twenty pounds. They gave me the difference." "And how long has that bill to run now?" "About a fortnight." "Did you endorse it?" "I did; Mr. Sparkle required me to do so, to show that the bill came properly into his possession." "This second bill, you say, is urgently required to enable Miss Snape to leave town?" "Yes; she is going to Brighton for the winter." I gave Mr. Axminster a steady, piercing look of inquiry. "Pray, sir," I said, "could you meet that one hundred pounds bill, supposing it could not be paid by the acceptor?" "Meet it?" The poor fellow wiped from his forehead the perspiration which suddenly broke out at the bare hint of a probability that the bill would be dishonored: "Meet it? O no! I am a married man, with a family, and have nothing but my salary to depend on." "Then the sooner you get it taken up, and the less you have to do with Miss Snape's bill affairs, the better." "She has always been punctual hitherto." "That may be." I pointed to the cross-writing on the document, and said deliberately--"_This_ bill is a forgery!" At these words the poor man turned pale. He snatched up the document; and, with many incoherent protestations, was rushing toward the door, when I called to him, in an authoritative tone, to stop. He paused. His manner indicating not only doubt, but fear. I said to him, "Don't flurry yourself; I only want to serve you. You tell me that you are a married man with children, dependent on daily labor for daily bread; and that you have done a little discounting for Miss Snape out of your earnings. Now, although I am a bill discounter, I don't like to see such men victimized. Look at the body of this bill: look at the signature of your lady customer, the drawer. Don't you detect the same fine, thin, sharp-pointed handwriting in the words, 'Accepted, Dymmock Munge.'" The man, convinced against his will, was at first overcome. When he recovered, he raved: he would expose the Honorable Miss Snape, if it cost him his bread: he would go at once to the police office. I stopped him, by saying roughly, "Don't be a fool. Any such steps would seal your ruin. Take my advice; return the bill to the lady, saying simply that you cannot get it discounted. Leave the rest to me, and I think the bill you have endorsed to Sparkle will be paid." Comforted by this assurance, Axminster, fearfully changed from the nervous, but smug hopeful man of the morning, departed. It now remained for me to exert what skill I own, to bring about the desired result. I lost no time in writing a letter to the Honorable Miss Snape, of which the following is a copy: "Madam: A bill, purporting to be drawn by you, has been offered to me for discount. There is something wrong about it; and, though a stranger to you, I advise you to lose no time in getting it back into your own hands.--D. D." I intended to deal with the affair quietly, and without any view to profit. The fact is, that I was sorry--you may laugh--but I really _was_ sorry to think that a young girl might have given way to temptation under pressure of pecuniary difficulties. If it had been a man's case, I doubt whether I should have interfered. By the return of post, a lady's maid entered my room, profusely decorated with ringlets, lace, and perfumed with _patchouli._ She brought a letter from her mistress. It ran thus: "_Sir_--I cannot sufficiently express my thanks for your kindness in writing to me on the subject of the bills; of which I had also heard a few hours previously. As a perfect _stranger_ to you, I cannot estimate your kind consideration at too high a value. I trust the matter will be explained; but I should much like to see you. If you would be kind enough to write a note as soon as you receive this, I will order it to be sent to me at once to Tyburn Square. I will wait on you at any hour on Friday you may appoint. I believe that I am not mistaken in supposing that you transact business for my friend Sir John Markham, and you will therefore know the inclosed to be his handwriting. Again thanking you most gratefully, allow me to remain your much and deeply obliged, "JULIANA SNAPE." This note was written upon delicate French paper, embossed with a coat of arms. It was in a fancy envelope: the whole richly perfumed, and redolent of rank and fashion. Its contents were an implied confession of forgery. Silence, or three lines of indignation, would have been the only innocent answer to my letter. But Miss Snape thanked me. She let me know, by implication, that she was on intimate terms with a name good on a Westend bill. My answer was, that I should be alone on the following afternoon at five. At the hour fixed, punctual to a moment, a brougham drew up at the corner of the street next to my chambers. The Honorable Miss Snape's card was handed in. Presently, she entered, swimming into my room, richly yet simply dressed in the extreme of Parisian good taste. She was pale--or rather colorless. She had fair hair, fine teeth, and a fashionable voice. She threw herself gracefully into the chair I handed to her, and began by uncoiling a string of phrases, to the effect that her visit was merely to consult me on "unavoidable pecuniary difficulties." According to my mode, I allowed her to talk; putting in only an occasional word of question, that seemed rather a random observation than a significant query. At length, after walking round and round the subject, like a timid horse in a field, around a groom with a sieve of oats, she came nearer and nearer the subject. When she had fairly approached the point, she stopped, as if her courage had failed her. But she soon recovered, and observed: "I cannot think why you should take the trouble to write so to me, a perfect stranger." Another pause--"I wonder no one ever suspected me before." Here was a confession and a key to character. The cold gray eye, the thin compressed lips, winch I had had time to observe, were true indexes to the "lady's inner heart:"--selfish, calculating, utterly devoid of conscience; unable to conceive the existence of spontaneous kindness; utterly indifferent to any thing except discovery; and almost indifferent to that, because convinced that no serious consequences could affect a lady of her rank and influence. "Madam," I replied, "as long as you dealt with tradesmen accustomed to depend on aristocratic customers, your rank and position, and their large profits, protected you from suspicion; but you have made a mistake in descending from your vantage ground to make a poor shopman your innocent accomplice--a man who will be keenly alive to any thing that may injure his wife or children. His terrors--but for my interposition--would have ruined you utterly. Tell me, how many of these things have you put afloat?" She seemed a little taken aback by this speech, but was wonderfully firm. She passed her white, jewelled hand over her eyes, seemed calculating, and then whispered, with a confiding look of innocent helplessness, admirably assumed, "About as many as amount to twelve hundred pounds." "And what means have you for meeting them?" At this question, so plainly put, her face flushed. She half rose from her chair, and exclaimed, in the true tone of aristocratic _hauteur_--"Really, sir, I do not know what right you have to ask me that question." I laughed a little, though not very loud. It was rude, I own; but who could have helped it? I replied, speaking low; but slowly and distinctly:--"You forget. I did not send for you: you came to me. You have forged bills to the amount of twelve hundred pounds. Yours is not the case of a ruined merchant, or an ignorant over-tempted clerk. In your case a jury" (she shuddered at that word) "would find no extenuating circumstances; and if you should fall into the hands of justice, you will be convicted, degraded, clothed in a prison dress, and transported for life. I do not want to speak harshly; but I insist that you find means to take up the bill which Mr. Axminster has so unwittingly endorsed!" The Honorable Miss Snape's grand manner melted away. She wept. She seized and pressed my hand. She cast up her eyes, full of tears, and went through the part of a repentant victim with great fervor. She would do any thing; any thing in the world to save the poor man. Indeed, she had intended to appropriate part of the two hundred pound bill to that purpose. She forgot her first statement, that she wanted the money to go out of town. Without interrupting, I let her go on and degrade herself by a simulated passion of repentance, regret, and thankfulness to me, under which she hid her fear and her mortification at being detected. I at length put an end to a scene of admirable acting, by recommending her to go abroad immediately, to place herself out of reach of any sudden discovery; and then lay her case fully before her friends, who would, no doubt, feel bound to come forward with the full amount of the forged bills. "But," she exclaimed, with an entreating air, "I have no money; I cannot go without money!" To that observation I did not respond; although I am sure she expected that I should, check-book in hand, offer her a loan. I do not say so without reason; for, the very next week, this honorable young lady came again; and, with sublime assurance and a number of very charming, winning speeches (which might have had their effect upon a younger man), asked me to lend her one hundred pounds, in order that she might take the advice I had so obligingly given her, and retire into private life for a certain time in the country. I do meet with a great many impudent people in the course of my calling--I am not very deficient in assurance myself--but this actually took away my breath. "Really, madam," I answered, "you pay a very ill compliment to my gray hairs; and would fain make me a very ill return for the service I have done you, when you ask me to lend a hundred pounds to a young lady who owns to having forged to the extent of one thousand two hundred pounds, and to owing eight hundred pounds besides. I wished to save a personage of your years and position from a disgraceful career; but I am too good a trustee for my children to lend money to any body in such a dangerous position as yourself." "Oh!" she answered, quite unabashed, without a trace of the fearful, tender pleading of the previous week's interview--quite as if I had been an accomplice, "I can give you excellent security." "That alters the case; I can lend any amount on good security." "Well, sir, I can get the acceptance of three friends of ample means." "Do you mean to tell me, Miss Snape, that you will write down the names of three parties who will accept a bill for one hundred pounds for you?" Yes, she could, and did actually write down the names of three distinguished men. Now I knew for certain, that not one of those noblemen would have put his name to a bill on any account whatever for his dearest friend; but, in her unabashed self-confidence, she thought of passing another forgery _on me_. I closed the conference by saying "I cannot assist you;" and she retired with the air of an injured person. In the course of a few days, I heard from Mr. Axminster, that his liability of one hundred pounds had been duly honored. In my active and exciting life, one day extinguishes the recollection of the events of the preceding day; and, for a time, I thought no more about the fashionable forger. I had taken it for granted that, heartily frightened, although not repenting, she had paused in her felonious pursuits. My business, one day, led me to the establishment of one of the most wealthy and respectable legal firms in the city, where I am well known, and, I believe, valued; for at all times I am most politely, I may say most cordially, received. Mutual profits create a wonderful freemasonry between those who have not any other sympathy or sentiment. Politics, religion, morality, difference of rank, are all equalized and republicanized by the division of an account. No sooner had I entered the _sanctum_, than the senior partner, Mr. Precepts, began to quiz his junior, Mr. Jones, with "Well, Jones must never joke friend Discount any more about usury. Just imagine," he continued, addressing me, "Jones has himself been discounting a bill for a lady; and a deuced pretty one too. He sat next her at dinner in Grosvenor Square last week. Next day she gave him a call here, and he could not refuse her extraordinary request. Gad, it is hardly fair for Jones to be poaching on your domains of West-end paper!" Mr. Jones smiled quietly, as he observed, "Why, you see, she is the niece of one of our best clients; and, really, I was so taken by surprise, that I did not know how to refuse." "Pray," said I, interrupting his excuses, "does your young lady's name begin with S.? Has she not a very pale face, and cold gray eye?" The partners stared. "Ah! I see it is so; and can at once tell you that the bill is not worth a rush." "Why, you don't mean--?" "I mean simply that the acceptance is, I'll lay you a wager, a forgery." "A forgery!" "A forgery," I repeated as distinctly as possible. Mr. Jones hastily, and with broken ejaculations, called for the cash-box. With trembling hands he took out the bill, and followed my finger with eager, watchful eyes, as I pointed out the proofs of my assertion. A long pause was broken by my mocking laugh; for, at the moment, my sense of politeness could not restrain my satisfaction at the signal defeat which had attended the first experiment of these highly respectable gentlemen in the science of usury. The partners did not have recourse to the police. They did not propose a consultation with either Mr. Forrester or Mr. Field; but they took certain steps, under my recommendation; the result of which was that at an early day, an aunt of the Honorable Miss Snape was driven, to save so near a connection from transportation, to sell out some fourteen hundred pounds of stock, and all the forgeries were taken up. One would have thought that the lady who had thus so narrowly escaped, had had enough; but forgery, like opium-eating, is one of those charming vices which is never abandoned, when once adopted. The forger enjoys not only the pleasure of obtaining money so easily, but the triumph of befooling sharp men of the world. Dexterous penmanship is a source of the same sort of pride as that which animates the skilful rifleman, the practised duellist, or well-trained billiard-player. With a clean Gillott he fetches down a capitalist, at three or six months, for a cool hundred or a round thousand; just as a Scrope drops over a stag at ten, or a Gordon Cumming a monstrous male elephant at a hundred paces. As I before observed, my connection, especially lies among the improvident--among those who will be ruined--who are being ruined--and who have been ruined. To the last class belongs Francis Fisherton, once a gentleman, now without a shilling or a principle; but rich in mother wit--in fact a _farceur_, after Paul de Kock's own heart. Having in bygone days been one of my willing victims, he occasionally finds pleasure and profit in guiding others through the gate he frequented, as long as able to pay the tolls. In truth, he is what is called a "discount agent." One day I received a note from him, to say that he would call on me at three o'clock the next day, to introduce a lady of family, who wanted a bill "done" for one hundred pounds. So ordinary a transaction merely needed a memorandum in my diary, "Tuesday, 3 P.M.; F.F., 100_l._ Bill." The hour came and passed; but no Frank, which was strange--because every one must have observed, that, however dilatory people are in paying, they are wonderfully punctual when they expect to receive money. At five o'clock, in rushed my Jackall. His story, disentangled from oaths and ejaculations, amounted to this:--In answer to one of the advertisements he occasionally addresses "To the Embarrassed," in the columns of the "Times," he received a note from a lady, who said she was anxious to get a "bill done"--the acceptance of a well-known man of rank and fashion. A correspondence was opened and an appointment made. At the hour fixed, neatly shaved, brushed, gloved, booted,--the revival, in short, of that high-bred Frank Fisherton, who was so famous "In his hot youth, when Crockford's was the thing," glowing with only one glass of brandy "just to steady his nerves," he met the lady at a West-end pastry-cook's. After a few words (for all the material questions had been settled by correspondence) she stepped into her brougham, and invited Frank to take a seat beside her. Elated with a compliment of late years so rare, he commenced planning the orgies which were to reward him for weeks of enforced fasting, when the coachman, reverentially touching his hat, looked down from his seat for orders. "To ninety-nine, George street, St. James," cried Fisherton, in his loudest tones. In an instant, the young lady's pale face changed to scarlet, and then to ghastly green. In a whisper, rising to a scream, she exclaimed, "Good heavens! you do not mean to _that_ man's house" (meaning me). "Indeed, I cannot go to him, on any account; he is a most horrid man, I am told, and charges most extravagantly." "Madam," answered Frank, in great perturbation, "I beg your pardon, but you have been grossly misinformed. I have known that excellent man these twenty years, and have paid him hundreds on hundreds; but never so much by ten per cent, as you offered me for discounting your bill." "Sir, I cannot have any thing to do with your friend." Then, violently pulling the check-string, "Stop" she gasped; "and _will you_ have the goodness to get out?" "And so I got out," continued Fisherton, "and lost my time; and the heavy investment I made in getting myself up for the assignation; new primrose gloves, and a shilling to the hair-dresser--hang her! But, did you ever know any thing like the prejudices that must prevail against you? I am disgusted with human nature. Could you lend me half a sovereign till Saturday?" I smiled; I sacrificed the half sovereign, and let him go, for he is not exactly the person to whom it was advisable to intrust all the secrets relating to the Honorable Miss Snape. Since that day I look each morning in the police reports, with considerable interest; but, up to the present hour, the Honorable Miss Snape has lived and thrived in the best Society. From the Boston Atlas. FRANCIS PULSZKY. Francis Pulszky, de Lubocz and Cselfalva, was born in 1814, at Eperies, in the county of Sáros. He is of an ancient and distinguished Protestant family. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, all held the office of Inspector of the Protestant College at Eperies; an office to which Mr. Pulszky was himself appointed in 1840. His grandfather on the mother's side was Fejèrváry, the Hungarian archæologist, whose valuable collection has been incorporated with the National Library at Pesth. After completing his college education, Mr. Pulszky visited Italy. While in Rome he was made Fellow of the Archæological Institute of that city. In 1834 he returned to his country, and attended the sittings of the Diet, at Presburg, as Jurat. In 1835 he established, in conjunction with Vukovics and Lovassy, the Debating Club which afterwards became the object of the persecution of the Austrian Government. He formed, at this time, a friendship with Kolcsey, the poet, with Deák, the celebrated jurist, and with Kossuth. In 1836, Mr. Pulszky once more quitted Hungary to travel through Germany, France and England, in order to enlarge his experience by observation of the manners and institutions of foreign countries, and thus qualify himself to render more effectual service to his own. On his return in 1837, he published an account of England, written in German, which gained him a wide reputation. Soon after his return he was elected a Fellow of the Hungarian Academy. During his absence from Hungary his friend Lovassy, a young man highly distinguished for his brilliant genius, and for the nobleness of his character, together with some other members of the Debating Club, were subjected by the Austrian Government to an imprisonment, under the rigors of which the intellect of Lovassy was completely shattered. His release found him in a state bordering on idiocy, in which he has ever since continued. In 1839, Mr. Pulszky was sent as deputy to the Diet from his native county of Sáros. In this Diet, the framing of a commercial code was proposed. Mr. Pulszky was on the Committee appointed to consider this subject. He was likewise a member of the Committee appointed for the codification of the criminal law. After the close of the Diet, Mr. Pulszky repaired to Heidelberg, to study more fully the subject of the criminal law with the celebrated Mittermaier. The committee intrusted with the work of the codification of the criminal law of Hungary, closed its labors in 1843. Mr. Pulszky did not offer himself as a candidate for re-election to the Diet. In Hungary, the deputies to the Diet are obliged to vote in conformity with the instructions of their constituents. The county of Sáros, which Mr. Pulszky had represented, was a conservative county; and as his principles allied him with the liberal party, he thus often found himself placed in a false position. He therefore devoted himself to serving the cause of reform in Hungary, by his pen. He wrote constantly for the _Pesti Hirlap_, the journal edited by Kossuth. The character of this journal, and the objects of its editor, are thus described by Szilagyi, a political opponent, in a work published at Pesth in 1850; "In 1841 a strange thing happened. He [Kossuth] who had been imprisoned for editing a journal, came out on the 1st of January of that year as editor of the _Pesti Hirlap_. The first number of this paper betrayed that it was the organ of the Opposition, and in a short time it had obtained a reputation which could hardly have been expected. In reality Kossuth conducted the editorship with much ability. His leading articles, the stereotyped publications of the wishes of his heart, scourged the abuses which existed in the counties and in the cities. The aim of these articles was to raise the importance of the burgher class, to overthrow the privileges of the nobility--in a word, _first_, Reform, _secondly_ Reform--a hundred times, Reform." In 1848, after the Revolutions of Paris and Vienna, while the ministerial question yet remained to be settled in Hungary, Mr. Pulszky was sent to Pesth, together with Klauzal and Szemere, by the Archduke Stephen, the Palatine of Hungary, to take suitable measures for the maintenance of order. Some disturbances having broken out at Stuhlweissenburg, Mr. Pulszky went thither to quell them. He was recommended to take a military force with him, but he refused, confiding in the power of reason and eloquence. The result showed that he was not mistaken. He addressed the people with energy, and the disturbances were appeased without the necessity of a resort to force. In May, 1848, Mr. Pulszky was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Vienna. On the 5th of October of the same year, when the Austrian government no longer felt it necessary to observe any appearances in regard to Hungary; and when war had been virtually declared against that country by the Imperial proclamation of Oct. 3rd, which appointed Jellachich Royal Commissary in Hungary, with full powers civil and military, Mr. Pulszky was dismissed from his office. Mr. Pulszky was with Kossuth at the battle of Schwechat, where he acted as aid to the Hungarian commander, General Moga. He returned with Kossuth to Pesth, where he was appointed a member of the Committee of Defence, and was made Minister of Commerce. In December, 1848, he was sent as accredited Envoy to England, to advocate the interests of Hungary in that country. Speaking of his appointment to this office, Schlesinger, the able and impartial historian of the Hungarian War, says: "Kossuth could not have found a more active, able, and competent man in Hungary for the post. All that a man could do Pulszky did. Pulszky possesses the acuteness of a civilian, a penetrating intellect, readiness of conception, inexhaustible powers of invention, and withal, indefatigable activity, great knowledge of business, and a healthy and sober spirit, which is not easily carried away by sanguine hopes." After a perilous journey through Gallicia, Mr. Pulszky reached France, spent a short time in Paris, and arrived in England early in March, 1849, where he has since remained until the time of his embarkation for the United States. During his residence in England, Mr. Pulszky has served the cause of his country with equal zeal and ability. His character and his talents have obtained for him a great influence there. He enjoys the personal friendship of many of the most eminent men of England; and it is in a great degree to be ascribed to his exertions, that the merits of the Hungarian cause are so well apprehended by a large portion of the British public. Of the literary labors of Mr. Pulszky and of his wife, who accompanies him in this country, the Transcript gives the following account, which, though incomplete, is sufficiently accurate, so far as it goes: "Mr. Pulszky is distinguished not only as a statesman and a diplomatist, but as an author. Early in life he acquired a high reputation in his own country, and in Germany, by various political, archæological and philological writings. He wrote in German in a singularly pure and forcible style. For the last two or three years he has resided in London, where he has published several works in English, written in good style, and exhibiting a rare combination of practical intellect and creative imagination." He is a novelist as well as the historian and vindicator of his country. The most elaborate production of his pen, in English, is a novel in two volumes, 'The Jacobins in Hungary,' published last spring. The London Examiner concludes its notice of this work, by saying, "In a word, 'The Jacobins in Hungary' is a remarkably well told tale, which will please all readers by the skill and pathos of its narrative, and surprise many by its fairness and impartiality of tone to opinions as well as men. But the majority of intelligent Englishmen have not now to learn, that the closest parallel for a Hungarian rebel of the nineteenth century, would be an English rebel of the seventeenth; and they will not feel or express astonishment that what falls from Mr. Pulszky on any question of society or government, might with equal propriety for its sobriety and moderation of tone, have fallen from Lord Somers or Mr. Pym." The English translation of _Schlesinger's War in Hungary_ was edited by Mr. Pulszky, who prefaced it with a long and well-written historical introduction, and added to it a masterly sketch of the life and character of Görgey, who had been his school-fellow, and with whose whole career he was intimately acquainted. The estate of the Görgey family was in fact situated at no great distance from that of Mr. Pulszky, who was also an intimate friend of the traitor's brother. To the "_Memoirs of a Hungarian Lady_" by Theresa Pulszky, his wife, Mr. Pulszky prefixed a most valuable Introduction, containing the best history of Hungary which we have yet seen in English. It is a clear and concise sketch of the annals of the nation, from the earliest period to the year 1848, occupying about 100 pages of the American edition of the Memoirs. Madame Pulszky, the heroine and author of these interesting memoirs, is, we believe, a native of Vienna, where, in 1845, she was married to Mr. Pulszky. She was residing on their estates in Hungary, about 60 miles from Pesth, when the war broke out; and the _Memoirs_ are principally devoted to a narrative of her sufferings and adventures in that exciting and perilous time. They contain, besides, many graphic descriptions of life and manners in Hungary, and a good historical narrative of the Revolution and the war. Besides the _Memoirs_, Madame Pulszky has published in English, a volume of _Tales and Traditions of Hungary_, which we have not seen, but of which highly favorable notices have appeared in the Examiner and other English journals. She is not only a brilliant and powerful writer, but a most lovely and accomplished lady, as we learn from very reliable sources in Europe. Her talents and acquirements are said to be quite extraordinary. In England her husband and herself enjoyed the highest consideration, both in point of character and ability. It may be remarked, in addition to this, that the _Memoirs of a Hungarian Lady_ (Lea & Blanchard, Philadelphia, 1850) give a full account of Mr. Pulszky's career during the war and the revolution, and in chapters II. and III. a minute and most interesting sketch of his estates and tenantry. His novel, the _Jacobins in Hungary_, is understood to be written with constant reference to the recent history of his country, though the events on which it is founded occurred sixty years ago. Authors and Books. Henry Heine's long-promised _Romanzero_ has at last appeared in Germany, where the first edition has been greedily snapped up. It is a collection of poems of various name and nature, all after the true Heinian vein. The great curiosity of the book is the preface in which the "dying Aristophanes" discourses on his alleged conversion to religion, in a strain which settles the question, so much discussed for the past two or three years, whether such a conversion has actually taken place or not. He declares that he has "returned to God, like the profligate son, after having long kept swine among the Hegelians. Was it suffering that drove me back? Perhaps a less miserable reason. The celestial home-sickness came over me, and urged me forth through woods and ravines, over the dizziest mountain paths of dialectics. On my way I found the God of the Pantheists, but could not use him." Afterwards he says, that while in politics his views have not changed, in theology he has gone back to belief in a personal divinity. But he denies the report that he has joined any church. "No," he says, "my religions convictions and views remain free from all ecclesiasticism; no bell-ring has seduced me, no altar-candle blinded me. I have played with no symbols, nor altogether renounced my reason. I have sworn off from nothing, not even my old heathen gods, from whom I have indeed parted, but in all love and friendship. It was in May, 1848, the day when I last went out, that I took leave of the gracious idols I had worshipped in the days of my happiness. It was with difficulty that I dragged myself to the Louvre, and I almost fainted as I entered the lofty hall where the blessed goddess of beauty, our dear Lady of Milo, stands on her pedestal. I lay long at her feet, and wept so vehemently that a stone must have been filled with pity. The goddess, too, looked down piteously, as if to say, 'Seest thou not that I have no arms, and cannot help thee?'" It seems evident from this, that whatever change has happened in Heine's notions, there is no vital piety in his heart, but he is the same heathen as ever. The _Romanzero_ is divided into three parts--Histories, Lamentations, and Hebrew Melodies. The former are like the ballads he has before published, except that many of them go farther in the way of indecency, while many others are charming conceits, which are sure of long popularity. The Lamentations are more expressive of the personal state of mind and experience of the author. The Hebrew Melodies are the best of all, and betray a profound affection for the Jewish race and history, which he vainly seeks to hide with sneering and scoffs, and which proclaims him a genuine son of Abraham as well as of the nineteenth century. For the rest, the reader of this book will be reminded of the sharp saying of Gutzkow about Heine: "He is a writer who tries to disguise spoiled meat with a _sauce piquante_." Heine has also published "_Doctor Faust_, a Dance Poem, with curious information about the Devil, Witches and Poetic Art." This is intended to serve as the ground-work of a ballet and presents the great problems of existence in the form of a jest and a paradox. It was written for Lumley, the London manager, but his ballet-master declared the performance of it impossible. * * * * * The _Grenzboten_ contains a paper on German _Romanticism_, by Dr. JULIAN SCHMIDT, written for the purpose of defeating the last attempts which the romantic school of German writers is making to regain its former ascendency. Baron Eichendorff, almost the last of the old school, has lately brought out a pamphlet for that purpose. It has found a full contradiction in Dr. Schmidt's essay, one which will doubtless be satisfactory to all but the Baron himself. * * * * * We cannot too much commend a metrical German translation of the heroic Sagas (_Heldensagen_) of Firdusi, the chief of Persian poets. It is due to the learning and taste, we might even say the genius, of HERR VON SCHOCK, and has lately been published at Berlin. Those who recollect the delicious illustrations which our Emerson has dug out of this old mine of Persian poetry, to adorn some of his more recent lectures with, can need no additional inducement to seek the acquaintance of this book. It contains ten distinct _sagas_, with an introduction by the translator. * * * * * A work bearing a somewhat attractive title has recently been published for FRED BURAU, by Brockhaus, of Leipzig, entitled _The Secret History of Enigmatic Men, a Collection of Forgotten Notabilities._ Among the "odd ones" cited, are the Countess of Rochlitz, Dankelmann and Wartenberg, natural children of the last Stuarts, and of Danish Kings, Count Lewenhaupt, Lord Peterborough, the Duke of Ormond, Frederic Augustus the First, John Lilburne, W. Ludwig Weckerlin, and various other characters, too numerous to mention. We noticed this work while it was in course of preparation last year. * * * * * A singular historical concert was given at Dresden, in November. It was made up of works of distinguished Electoral and Royal Saxon _Capellmeisters_, in chronological order. First appeared John Walther, the friend of Luther, and the original master of Protestant Church music. Next, Heinrich Schutz, the author of the first German opera. The Italians, Lotti and Porpora, and Hasse (who composed in Italian style), represented the golden period of the Electoral Court in the past half of the eighteenth century. Naumann marked the transition to modern German music, while the most recent schools were represented by Morlacchi, Reissiger, Weber, and Richard Wagner. * * * * * The Michaelmas Fair of this year at Leipzig, is, according to its catalogue, as rich as ever in literary wares. From the Spring Fair up to September 30, there appeared in Germany 3,860 new books, and 1,130 more are now in press. Of those published, 106 were on Protestant, and 62 on Catholic theology; 36 on philosophy; 205, history and biography; 102 on linguistic subjects; 194, natural sciences; 168, military sciences; 83, commerce and industry; 87, agriculture and the management of forests; 69, public instruction; 92, classical philology; 80, living languages; 64, theory of music and the arts of design; 168, fine arts in general; 48, books for the people; 28, scientific miscellanies; bibliography, 18. * * * * * A History of Music in Italy, Germany, and France, from the beginning of Christianity to the present day, has been published in Germany, from the pen of PHILIP BRENDEL. It is not to be commended. It is not a real history, such as indeed is greatly to be desired, but a collection of sentimentalities and fancies, For instance, in speaking of Beethoven, the author compares him with Schiller in respect to the substance of his works, but says that in respect to his artistic form, he far excels that poet, and even rises to the level of Jean Paul. This may do for transcendental young people, but it is nonsense to all who like common sense and real information. * * * * * About a year since, a society was formed in Germany for the publication of the works of BACH, the great composer for the organ. Three hundred and fifty subscribers were obtained, each paying five Prussian Thalers ($3.50), a-year, for which he receives a copy of the issues of the society. They are not sold to music dealers, and are not intended for the general market. Of the subscribers, six are in Paris, twenty-three in London, ten in Russia, thirteen in Austria, but we see none from the United States. The first publication was to appear in December. It will contain ten cantatas not before published. * * * * * On the death of the great philologist LACHMANN JACOB GRIMM, for many years his co-laborer and friend, was appointed to deliver an oration before the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, which was done on the 3d of July last. This speech, recently published, is said to be highly interesting, as giving the characteristics of both the eulogist and the deceased, each of them men whose names will henceforth be inseparably allied in the history of German learning. A biography of LACHMANN has been published at Berlin; it is by William Hertz, and will interest those who care to look at the quiet but most industrious life of a great scholar. * * * * * A Sketch of _Jona. Edwards and his Works_, has been published in German at Leipsig. DR. ANDREE, whose work on America we lately noticed, has commenced at Bremen a periodical called _Das Westland_, devoted exclusively to the diffusion of information respecting the new world. The idea is an excellent one, especially in view of the great numbers of Germans who are already established on this side the Atlantic, and the still greater numbers that desire to come here. No man in Europe is so well fitted as Dr. Andree to conduct such a work. The first number, which we have received, contains articles on the Lopez Expedition, the Southern States of the American Union in their relation to the North, Traditions of the North American Indians, the navigation of the La Plata system of Rivers, the Welland Canal, &c. Sold in New-York by Westerman Brothers, 240 Broadway. * * * * * The _Gotha Almanac_ is an indispensable book for those who follow the history and look after the statistics of the royal families and governments of Europe. It contains perfect genealogical lists of the former, and tables of the diplomatic corps, the debt, the revenues, the expenses, the commercial system, the military and naval forces, the population, ecclesiastical organization, &c., of the latter. In no other manual is so much information of the sort condensed into so brief and convenient a form. The governments and statistics of the new world are also included. The portraits given for 1852, are Prince Adalbert of Prussia, Crown Prince Charles of Sweden, Count Leo Thun, Lord Palmerston, Prince Wolkonski, and Cardinal Schwarzenberg. This is the eighty-ninth year of the publication. * * * * * One of the best evidences of the value of Humboldt's _Kosmos_, is the vast number of popular treatises on various branches of science to which it has given rise in Germany, and which must exert a powerful influence in the formation of the growing age. A more solid and extensive undertaking is an _Atlas_ intended to illustrate the entire original work. It is by TRAUGOTT BROUVE, and will contain forty-two plates with explanatory text. The cost will be $4,50 in Germany. The first part has appeared at Stuttgardt, and is praised as worthy of the great work it illustrates. * * * * * Of AUERBACH's _Dorfgeschichten_ (Village Stories), 25,000 copies have been sold in Germany. He has just published a three-volume novel called _Neues Leben_ (New Life). * * * * * A new religious and philosophical novel is _Das Pfarrhaus zu Hallungen_ (The Parsonage at Hallungen), by LUDWIG STORCH. It is said to be full of exciting interest, but we confess that we have not read it, and do not mean to. Our taste is for novels of less elaborate purpose. * * * * * We give our tribute of commendation to the _Haus-Chronik_ (House Chronicles), which CASPAR BRAUN and FREDERICK SCHNEIDER are now publishing at Munich. These gentlemen are well known to all readers of that excellent comic paper, the _Fliegende Blätter_, and here appeal to all who can enjoy humor and have a taste for studies in the history of German life in the middle ages. * * * * * MUGGE, whose romance on _Toussaint L'Ouverture_ was translated by the Rev. Dr. Furness, of Philadelphia, has published at Leipzig the third volume of his annual _Vielliebchen_ (My Darling). It contains two tales and several poems, and is illustrated with seven steel engravings. It is worthy of notice that this word _Vielliebchen_ is the original of our mysterious _Filopine_. * * * * * M. PULSZKY, who is now in this country in the suite of KOSSUTH, has just published a historical romance at Berlin called _Die Jakobiner in Ungarn_ (The Jacobines in Hungary). It is in two volumes, and meets a favorable reception from the critics, and we doubt not, from the public also. It fared equally well when it was published in English at London some time since. * * * * * The _Middle Kingdom_, of our countryman, Mr. S. WELLS WILLIAMS, is the subject of a most favorable notice in the Augsburg _Allgemeine Zeitung_. Of this careful and very comprehensive work--the most elaborate and reliable that has ever appeared in the English language respecting China and the Chinese--Mr. Wiley has just published a new edition. * * * * * The public are solemnly warned in a number of the Leipzig _Central Blatt_, against a lately published work, entitled _Tabula Geographica Italiæ Antiquæ_, as swarming with errors. Divers towns are cited therein, at different times under different names, and as standing in different places, while the names themselves are declared to be sadly corrupted. * * * * * PROF. NEUMANN, of Munich, will publish in the course of a year, a _History of the British Empire in India_, on which he has been long engaged. It will be as thorough and able as it is impartial, and in Germany is expected with great interest. The author proposes also to write the History of Russian domination in Asia. * * * * * In noticing the poems lately published by GOETHE's nephew (mentioned in the last _International_), a German reviewer remarks, that the reverence which he (the reviewer), bears for the name of the uncle, "forbids any illusion to the book in question." * * * * * ADOLF STAHR is publishing at Berlin a second edition of his _History of the Russian Revolution_; it is dedicated to Macauley. * * * * * The celebrated Countess IDA HAHN-HAHN who was formerly as thorough an infidel as any member of the Worcester Women's Rights Convention, and as indecently licentious in her novels as the author of _Alban_, is thus described in a late number of the _Weser Zeitung_: "Daily, about noon, the loungers under the Linden at Berlin are startled by the extraordinary appearance of a tall, lanky woman, whose thin limbs are wrapped up in a long black robe of coarse cloth. An old crumpled bonnet covers her head, which continually moving turns restlessly in all directions. Her hollow cheeks are flushed with a morbid coppery glow; one of her eyes is immovable, for it is of glass, but her other eye shines with a feverish brilliancy, and a strange and almost awful smile hovers constantly about her thin lips. This woman moves with an unsteady quick step, and whenever her black mantilla is flung back by the violence of her movements, a small rope of hair with a crucifix at the end is plainly seen to bind her waist. This ungainly woman is the _quondam_ authoress, Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn, who has turned a Catholic, and is now preparing for a pilgrimage to Rome to crave the Pope's absolution for her literary trespasses." * * * * * PRINCE WINDISCHGRATZ has issued his long promised narrative of the Hungarian winter campaign in 1848-49. In the preface, he says he has been induced to depart from a resolution not to publish until a much later period, by numerous calumnies and misrepresentations which have been circulated. The book is dedicated to the army. * * * * * MENZEL, whose work on German Literature had the honor of appearing in Ripley's excellent series of foreign books, published at Boston some ten years since, has just published a novel at Leipzig, with the title of _Farore_. It is the history of a monk and a nun during the thirty years war. * * * * * FREDERIKA BREMER has in press a book upon the World's Fair. It is announced in Germany, but we presume will appear at the same time in England. Whether it will be historical, philosophical, sentimental, or mystical, we are not informed, but suppose it will have a touch of all these qualities. * * * * * FREDERICK THE GREAT (so-called), is not yet exhausted as a topic for book-makers, if we may judge by the _Anekdoten und Charakterzüge_ (Anecdotes and Traits of Character), drawn from his life, and just published at Berlin. The author is an adorer of the selfish old martinet. * * * * * KOHL, the indefatigable traveller, has just published, at Dresden, his _Reise nach Istrien Dalmatien und Montenegro_. A book of travels in those countries is a novelty, and no explorer could give his reader a more vivid picture of the peculiarities of a nation and its country than Kohl. The book is in two volumes. * * * * * The Shakspeare Society in London, at a recent sitting, received as a present a translation of Shakspeare, in twelve volumes, into Swedish verse. This laborious work has been accomplished by Professor HAGBERG, of the University of Lund, and it was transmitted through the Swedish Minister to England. * * * * * A new history of German literature from the most ancient to the most recent times has just been published at Stuttgart by Dr. EUGEN HAHN. It is particularly valuable in respect of biography and the history of mental culture in general. * * * * * A new work, called _Bilder aus Spainen_ (Pictures from Spain), is among the recent productions of the German press. Its author, HERR A. LONING, has already published several works on the Peninsula, where he resided several years. * * * * * LISZT, the eminent pianist, has published in French a book on Richard Wagner's two operas, _Lohengrin_ and _Tannhäuser_. He praises them most enthusiastically; possibly he may succeed in having Wagner's pieces produced at Paris. * * * * * DR. J. W. HADDOCK's work upon _Somnolism and Psycheism_, after having gone through a second edition in England, has just made its appearance at Leipzig in a German translation, made by Dr. C. L. Merkel. * * * * * A new edition of that excellent work, _The History of the Poetic National Literature of the Germans_, by Gerbinus, has just made its appearance at Leipzig. * * * * * SILVIO PELLICO is passing the present winter in Rome. * * * * * In Tuscany, a periodical similar to the _International_ has been established under the title of _Rivista Britannica_. The main purpose is to select articles from English periodicals, and offer them in good Italian versions. French newspapers, novels, and magazines come in freely, too freely in Italy. The good ones will sometimes be seized at the frontier, or at the post-office, by the jealous police of Rome, Naples, and Tuscany: but against any thing that is corrupt and debauched no Italian despot, prince, or priest, was ever known to shut his door. French literature, such as it is under most circumstances, can have only a bad influence in that enslaved country, and scarcely an Italian is to be found able to read, who has any difficulty in understanding the French language. As an antidote to this poison, the editors of the _Rivista Britannica_ have thought of ministering copious draughts of healthful English. We wish they might quote English and American journals with perfect independence of all censorship. * * * * * GIOBERTI, whose attack upon the Jesuits is fresh in the minds of all students of European literature, has lately published at Turin an elaborate work entitled _Del Rinovamento Civile d' Italia_ (Of the Civil Regeneration of Italy). It is in two parts, the first treating of the errors and misfortunes that have marked the past, the second of the remedies practicable in the present, and the hopes existing for the future. So large is the circle of readers who look with interest for every one of Gioberti's productions, that two simultaneous editions have been issued; one in two volumes 8vo. each of eight hundred pages, and the other in two volumes, 16mo. each of six hundred. * * * * * The _Israel of the Alps, a History of the Vaudois of Piedmont and of their Colonies_, is the title of a work, by ALEXIS MUSTON, fulfilling a promise made by the author in 1834, in a volume on the same subject. It consists of an account of the martyrdoms of Calabria and Provence, and embraces a period from the origin of those colonies to the end of the sixteenth century. In the second part are described the extraordinary sufferings and deliverances of the Piedmontese--the massacre of 1658--the dispersion of the Vaudois into foreign lands--the return to their own, under the orders of Colonel Arnaud--and an entirely new exposition is given of the negotiations which led to the official re-establishment of the Vaudois in their native valleys. The author has filled up the gaps of the Vaudois historians, Gilles, Leger, and Arnaud, and, by the aid of numerous inedited documents, has established a succession of facts in relation to the history of the churches of the Piedmontese, and those of the colonies, to which Wirtemberg, Brandenburg, and Switzerland are indebted for their evangelical faith. M. Muston, contrary to the opinions of Gieseler, Neander, and Schmidt, agrees with that school of writers--from Perrin to Monastier--who suppose that the evangelical churches of Piedmont existed before the reformer Pierre Waldo, and trace their origin to the apostolic ages. This opinion has much to support it--in the authority of many centuries, in the unanimous convictions of the Vaudois historians, and in evidences given by the most ancient monuments of their language, particularly the poem entitled the _Noble Lesson_, which bears inscribed its own date (1100), and the literary perfection of which certainly suggests an anterior literature. J. Bonnett (_Archives du Christianisme_, for October 16) notices the work very favorably, but considers it imperfect in many particulars, and the author is charged especially with omissions in the catalogue of the defenders of the faith, whose blood was so profusely spilled in their beautiful valleys, and "Whose bones Lie bleaching on the Alpine mountains cold." "Surely," says M. Bonnett, "the author ought to have given us some notice of the imposing characters who were early laboring for the defence of the Vaudois churches, from the episcopate of Maximus (that intrepid missionary of the Alps whose thundering voice against abuses recalls the eloquent accents of Luther) to the controversy of Vigilance and Jerome, and the iconoclastic propositions of Claude de Turin. There is something inspiring in the remembrance of that prelate, now an evangelist, and now a warrior, combating with one hand the enemies of truth, and with the other those of the empire. 'I make,' says he, in one of his letters, 'continual voyages to the court during the winter. In the spring, with my arms and my books, I go as a sentinel to watch the coasts of the sea, and to fight against the Saracen and the Moor. I use my sword during the night, and my pen by day, to accomplish the works which I have commenced in solitude.' The military and ecclesiastical character of Claude de Turin was deserving a remembrance, and in describing him M. Muston could not have fulfilled better the expectations of the public. There is another instance of omission--that of Pierre Waldo. Concerning him all opinions agree. It is just where he stands that all contradictory systems upon the origin of the Vaudois meet. Whether he was the father or the son of the churches of the Valleys his history ought not to be forgotten. With what interest would not the pen of Muston have clothed the recital! what attraction! what novelty! How the reformation, which originated in the cell of an obscure cloister, had already germinated in the mind of Waldo; how the rich merchant of Lyons, in search of the treasures of the age, was suddenly changed into a bumble disciple, voluntarily poor; and what were the principal traits of his ministry, his voyages, his relations, his life, his death! Concerning such men, we cannot regret too deeply the almost utter silence of this historian of the Vaudois." The following interesting fragment is translated from the history of the Vaudois de Calabre: "One day two young men were at a tavern in Turin, when a Calabrian lord came in to lodge for the night. The companions, in talking over their affairs, happened to express a desire to establish themselves somewhere away from home; for the lands of their own country were becoming so sterile, that they would soon cease to yield a sufficient support for the population. The stranger said, 'My friends, if you come with me, I will give you fruitful plains in exchange for your rocky wastes.' They accepted the proposal with a condition that they should gain the consent of their families, and with the hope that they would be accompanied by others. The inhabitants of the Valleys did not wish to make any determination before knowing to what kind of country they were invited, and commissioners were therefore sent to Calabria, with the youths to whom the lands had been offered. "In this country," says Gilles, "there are beautiful ranges of fertile soil, clothed with every kind of fruit trees, such as the olive and orange; in the plains, vines, and chestnut trees; along the shore, the hazel and the oak; upon the sides and summits of the mountains, the larch and the fir tree, as in the Alps--every where were signs both of a land promising rich rewards to the laborer, and but few inhabitants. The expatriation was decided on; the young, ready to depart, married; proprietors sold their farms; some member of every family prepared for the journey." The joys of the nuptial ceremony mingled with the sorrow of departure from home, and more than one marriage cortege took its place in the caravan of exile. But they could say, as the Hebrews going forth to the promised land, _The tabernacle of the Lord is with us_, for the travellers took with them an ancestral Bible, the source of all consolation and courage. At the foot of the mountains, father and son, and mother and daughter embraced, weeping and praying together, that the God of their fathers would bless them. And the blessing of heaven was not wanting to this colony. The industrious cities of Saint-Sixte, la Quardia, and Montolieu, arose as by magic amid this land of ignorance, and presented the spectacle of a praying and working Christian people, refusing homage to the superstitions of the age. The reformation in the West brought many fears, and the wrath of the Roman pontiffs was not stayed; the emissaries of the inquisition hunted these faithful people through their peaceful valleys; they were destined to perish; and the massacre of the Vaudois of Provence was a mournful pendant to the extermination of the Vaudois of Calabria. The historian weeps that he cannot cast a veil over this picture; yet the mind, agonized with scenes so atrocious, finds repose in the contemplation of such an admirable character as that of the martyr-pastor, Louis Pascal, exhaling all his soul in his last letter to his affianced Camilla Guarina: 'The love which I bear you is increased by that which I bear to God, and as much as I have been refined by the Christian religion, so much the more have I been enabled to love you. Adieu. Console yourself in Jesus, and may you be a pattern of his doctrines.' "There are few subjects," says the reviewer, "more worthy the ambition of a writer, or that are more inspiring, than the history of the martyred Vaudois, in the inaccessible solitudes of the Alps, for some time protected by their obscurity, but at last devoted for ages to the most cruel persecutions." The mystery of the origin of this people, the drama of their destiny, the melancholy interest which attaches itself to the different phases of their existence, command in their favor the attention of the world, and suffuse the pages of the historian with that sympathetic emotion so easily communicated to the reader, and which is the very soul of departed times. * * * * * AS WE learn from a recent number of the _Journal des Missions Evangeliques_, a new work appeared in China toward the end of 1849, under the title _Of the Geography and History of Foreign Nations_, by SEU-KE-JU, the viceroy of the important province of Foh-kien. It is in ten volumes, though the whole of them do not contain more matter than one of our common school text books, and is accompanied by a map of the world and several other maps. It has a preface by the Governor-General of the province, in which he declares that it is better than all previous geographical works in China, and recommends it to his countrymen as perfectly worthy of confidence. The two first volumes are occupied by a general introduction, in which Seu-ke-ju speaks of the sources from which he has derived information, and of the many difficulties he has had to contend with; he explains the use of maps, gives the simplest ideas concerning the spherical form of the earth, and expatiates on the difference of climates. Nothing can give a better idea of the profound ignorance of the Chinese upon these subjects, and nothing prove more decisively that they never can have possessed great mathematicians and astronomers than such passages as the following: "Formerly we were aware of the existence of an icy sea at the north only, but had never heard that there was another at the south. And when men from the west showed us maps on which such a sea was put down, we thought they had made a mistake from ignorance of the Chinese language, and had transferred to the south what ought to be in the north. But when we inquired about this subject of an American named Abeel (a missionary at Amoy), he said that the fact was certain, and now it indeed appears to us undeniable. The provinces of Kwang-tong and Foh-kien are mostly situated under the Kwang-tau (tropic) of the north, and when we compare them with the northern provinces in respect of heat, the temperature is found to be very different. At the time when we did not know that the sun passed over the middle of the globe, this fact caused us to believe that the farther one went to the south, the greater was the heat, and that at the south pole the stones ran in a melted state like a stream of gold. But this is not so; persons who go from Kwang-tong or Foh-kien, will find at the distance of five or six thousand _li_ the island of Borneo, which lies exactly under the Shih-tau (equator), and where the winter is like our summer. Going thence to the south-west the voyager reaches the south of Africa, where hail and snow are known; still farther on is Patagonia or the southern point of South America, near to the Hih-tau (polar circle) of the south, where ice is continual. Thus these warm and cold regions are successive, and therefore the region of the south pole is spoken of as a sea of ice. And why should the Chinese doubt this, because their ships have never gone so far and the province of Kwang-tong lies at the frontier of their country? In truth, we must listen to and accept this explanation." From this simple piece of instruction, the author of the new Geography proceeds to describe the regions to the west. We give a specimen from his account of Europe: "Europe lies at the north-west of Asia, from which it is separated by the Ural mountains, but is only one quarter as large. Before the dynasty Hia (2469 B.C.), the inhabitants lived by hunting, and were clothed in the skins of the animals they killed, as is the way of the Mongols. But toward the middle of that dynasty (2000 B.C.), civilization, agriculture and the arts began in the states of Greece, situated at the eastern end of the continent." This is followed by a very brief review of the rise and decay of the Roman Empire, of the rise of Moslemism and of the conquests of Tamerlane; next comes a description of the individual countries, with their resources, military and naval forces, "all things about which writers give very different reports, so that it is not possible to be exact, for errors must needs be many where proofs are wanting." How well Seu-ke-ju understands the machinery of European states is apparent from what he says about public debts: "Thus the interest of the borrowed money is paid yearly, while the debt continually increases, inasmuch as the income of the year suffices not for the wants of the Government. Then are new taxes laid upon the people which embitters and makes them rebellious, while the governments grow weaker and fall into decay. The half of Europe is now in this condition." To the mental superiority of the western nations, and especially to the talent and energy of the Americans, Seu-ke-ju renders full justice. On the whole this book is an indication of real progress among the Chinese, much as it militates against the old notion which ascribed to them a considerable degree of scientific knowledge. There can be no doubt that when the prejudice among them, according to which the Celestial Empire is the greatest country, and its inhabitants the most wonderful people of the world, is dissipated, their native thirst for knowledge will urge them forward with rapidity. The habit of visiting foreign lands which is springing up among them, will also do its part, in breaking up the monotony and stagnation into which they have grown. In addition to this book by Seu-ke-ju, a number of other geographical works, drawn from English, German, and French sources, have appeared in Chinese, at the instance mainly of high officers of state. * * * * * The Society of Horticulture, for Paris and Central France, is about to issue a large work, entitled _Pomologie Française, ou Monographie Generale des Arbres Fruitiers_. This will be one of the best works on fruit trees ever published, and our gardeners will do well to look after it. * * * * * The most elaborate and erudite modern work on international law is the _Histoire du Droit des Gens et des Relations Internationales_, by Prof. G. LAURENT, of Ghent, of which three volumes were published, in 1850, in that city. The first volume treats of international law in Hindostan, Egypt, Judea, Assyria, Media and Persia, Phoenicia, and Carthage; the second is devoted to Greece, and the third to Rome. The mass of learning exhibited is astonishing. The idea of the author is that through the great course of history, humanity is ripening to a state of universal peace and fraternity. It is unnecessary to say that from this stand-point, international law becomes a subject of the grandest proportions and significance. Prof. Laurent treats it with as much ability as erudition. ALEXANDRE DUMAS is the subject of a masterly criticism in the _Grenzboten_, in which justice is done him with that impartiality and moderation in respect to which a competent German is unequalled among critics. Among Dumas's dramas, the writer regards _Caligula_ as the best in spite of its grossness. In all the excesses, indecencies, improbabilities, and lawlessness of his romances, there is the trace of splendid talent. It is doubtful whether this talent could have been developed by industry and an earnest love of art into a higher sphere of power. Finally, the writer concludes that Dumas is doing more to corrupt the taste of France and Germany than any other romancer, except, perhaps, Eugene Sue. * * * * * Among the French socialists there has recently been considerable discussion on the principles of Government--discussion which has resulted in angry separation of the republican party into opposite camps; Rittinghausen, Considerant, Ledru Rollin, and Girardin having been severally aiming at the destruction of representative government, and the erection of _Direct Legislation_--a scheme which LOUIS BLANC, in his _Plus de Girondins_ and _La Republique Une et Indivisible_, has opposed with a degree of ability which promised to restore him to a respectable reputation. But PRUDHON, in his last book, not only denounces Rollin, Girardin, Blanc, and all the rest, with a school-boy vehemence, which _The Leader_ says is "pitiless," but he attacks without disguise _all government_, no matter what its form, as false in principle and vicious in effect. He believes neither in absolute monarchy, in constitutional monarchy, nor in democracy; he admits no divine right, no legal right, no right of majorities. He only believes in the right of justice in the empire of reason. The principle of authority he rejects in politics as in religion: he will admit only liberty--reason. Prudhon has won a name for talents, and has frequently written with real force--but such propositions are a disgrace to any man who has ever possessed a good reputation. * * * * * The _Republique_, a new book just published By Paris, by M. LEFRANC, a member of the Assembly, treats of the events which have filled up the time since the revolution of 1848. M. Lefranc is an ardent republican, and his exhibition of this momentous period is not favorable to the party which hitherto, at least, has managed to gain the victory, if not to assure itself the possession of its traits. His style is singularly animated and impassioned, and it is not without justice that a prominent Parisian critic (Eugene Pelletan) calls him the most direct inheritor of that light-armed yet potent style of polemical writing, of which the famous Camille Desmoulins was so great a master. * * * * * The popularity of SCOTT, in France, is shown by the appearance of the _twentieth_ edition of Defauconpret's translation of his novels; and the announcement of an entirely new translation of them by another hand. If Defauconpret had been the only translator, _twenty_ editions would have been an immense success; but there are besides, at the very least, _twenty_ different translations of the complete works (many of which have had two, three, or four editions), and innumerable translations of particular novels, especially of _Quentin Durward_. * * * * * M. BLANQUART EVRARD, has commenced at Paris what he calls _D'Album Photographique de l'Artiste et de l'Amateur_. It is a pictorial work, containing reproductions by photography on paper of well-known works of art by ancient and modern masters. We have not seen it, but hear it spoken of as successful. * * * * * M. GUIZOT has now published under the title of _Méditations et Etudes Morales_, a collection of essays that had previously appeared on the immortality of the soul, and kindred topics. To them he has added a new preface, in which he discusses the question of liberty and authority in religion. * * * * * On the night of the 13th of November, FRANCOIS ARAGO, the great astronomer, was brought from his sick bed to the French Assembly, and walked up the chamber, supported by the arms of two of his colleagues, to give his vote in favor of Universal Suffrage. * * * * * M. OTT has just published at Paris a _Traité d'Economie Sociale_, which has the merit of giving a careful statement of the doctrines of the various schools of Economists and Socialists. It makes a good-sized octavo volume. * * * * * LOUIS FASQEULLE, professor of modern languages in the University of Michigan, has published (Mark H. Newman) a _New Method of Learning the French Language_, embracing the analytic and synthetic modes of instruction, on the plan of Woodbury's method with the German. * * * * * M. LOUIS REYBAUD has published at Paris a new work under the title of _Athanase Robichon Candidat Perpetuel à la Présidence de la Republique_. M. Reybaud is one of the keenest of political satirists. * * * * * The French papers state that Lord Brougham, in his retreat at Cannes, is preparing a work to be entitled _France and England before Europe in 1851_. * * * * * DON JUAN HARTZENBUSCH has commenced, in Madrid, a reprint of the works of her most distinguished authors of Spain. From the earliest ages to the present time. It is entitled _Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles_, and it is a more difficult undertaking than things of the kind in western and northern Europe. Since many works of the principal authors never having been printed at all, the compiler has to hunt after them in libraries, in convents, and in out of the way places--whilst others, having been negligently printed, have to be revised line by line. Hartzenbusch has brought to light _fourteen_ comedies of Calderon de la Barca, which previous editors were unable to discover. The total number of Calderon's pieces the world now possesses is therefore 122; and there is reason to believe that they are all he wrote, with the exception of two or three, which there is no hope of recovering. * * * * * The first and second volumes of the _Grenville Papers_--being the correspondence of Richard, Earl Temple, and George Grenville, their friends and contemporaries, including Mr. Grenville's Political Diary--were published in London on the 18th of December. We have before alluded to this work, as one likely to illustrate some points in American history, and possibly to furnish new means for determining the vexed question of the authorship of Junius. Among the contents will be found letters from George the Third, the Dukes of Cumberland, Newcastle, Devonshire, Grafton, and Bedford; Marquess Granby; Earls Bute, Temple, Sandwich, Egremont, Halifax, Hardwicke, Chatham, Mansfield, Northington, Suffolk, Hillsborough, and Hertford; Lords Lyttleton, Camden, Holland, Olive, and George Sackville; Marshal Conway, Horace Walpole, Edmund Burke, George Grenville, John Wilkes, William Gerard Hamilton, Augustus Hervey, Mr. Jenkinson (first Earl of Liverpool), Mr. Wedderburn, Charles Yorke, Charles Townsend, Mr. Charles Lloyd, and the author of the Letters of Junius. The fifth and sixth volumes of Lord MAHON's _History of England_, embracing the first years of the American war, 1763-80, were also nearly ready. We regret that the earlier volumes of this important history, edited by Professor Reed, of Philadelphia, and published by the Appletons, have not been so well received as to warrant an expectation that the continuation will be reprinted. * * * * * SIR JAMES STEPHEN'S _Lectures on the History of France_, is an exceedingly interesting work, of which we hope to see an American edition. The author is well known in this country, by the largely circulated volume of his _Miscellanies_, published in Philadelphia, a few years ago. The present work consists of discourses delivered by him as professor of History in the University of Cambridge, and though not of the highest rank among systematic histories, it is inferior to very few in occasional grouping and character painting. * * * * * The third volume of Mr. MERRIVALE's _History of the Romans under the Empire_; the ninth and tenth volumes of Mr. GROTE'S _History of Greece_; and a seventh edition of SHARON TURNER'S _History of the Anglo-Saxons_, are among the most interesting English announcements in historical literature. * * * * * The _Life of Dr. Chalmers_, by Dr. Hanna, will extend to four volumes; the third, just re-published by the Harpers, is the most interesting yet issued. We observe that a volume of _Reminiscences of Chalmers_ has been published in London, by Mr. JOHN ANDERSON. * * * * * ALICE CAREY'S _Clovernook, or Recollections of our Neighborhood in the West_, has just been published by Mr. Redfield, in one volume, illustrated by Darley. To those who have read one of the introductory chapters of this work which we copied into the _International_ for November, it seems quite unnecessary to say any thing in illustration or commendation of the author's genius; they will be likely to purchase _Clovernook_ as soon as they are advised of its appearance. We have nothing in our literature, descriptive of country life, to be compared with it, for effective painting or for truthfulness. The scene is laid in Ohio--near Cincinnati--while a suburban village is gradually growing up from the simple cottage in the wilderness till it becomes a favorite resort of patrician families; and few novelists have been more happy in describing the "progress of society," or exhibited, in such performances, more humor, tenderness, or pathos. We have from Ticknor & Co., of Boston, a second series of _Greenwood Leaves_, by the public's old favorite, GRACE GREENWOOD. The tales which it embraces are in the author's happiest vein, and the letters are dashing and piquant, but liable to some objections which we might make in a longer notice. The same publishers have issued a capital book for children, entitled _Recollections of My Childhood_, by the same author. CAROLINE CHEESEBRO is another young magazinist, whose productions have been very popular. Her _Dreamland by Daylight_ (published by Redfield), a collection of tales and sketches, contains much fine sentiment and displays a ready fancy and a just appreciation of social life, but she has a little less individuality than Miss Carey or Grace Greenwood. * * * * * It will gratify every reader of American history to learn that we are soon to have three phases of the character of Washington, presented by men so eminent as DANIEL WEBSTER, Mr. IRVING, and Mr. BANCROFT. Mr. Webster, we have reason to believe, has nearly completed his Memoir of the Political Life of the great Chief; Mr. Irving's work, which has been some time announced, will make us familiar with his personal qualities, and Mr. Bancroft's History of the Revolution will display his military career as it has never before been exhibited, as it can be presented by none but our greatest historian. The first volume of Mr. Bancroft's work on the Revolution is passing rapidly through the press, and it will doubtless be published early in the spring. It has been kept back by the author's failure to obtain, until within a few weeks past, certain important documents necessary to its completion. * * * * * Mr. HART of Philadelphia, has just published _A Method of Horsemanship, founded on new Principles, and including the Breaking and Training of Horses, with Instructions for obtaining a good Seat; illustrated with Engravings_: by F. BAUCHER. It is translated from the ninth Paris edition, and makes a handsome duodecimo. Among the many systems of horsemanship which have appeared none has fallen under our notice so valuable as this. The chief defect of previous publications has been that they were mere collections of rules, applicable to particular cases only, based on no established principles, and therefore as impracticable for general purposes as crude and unphilosophical in design. Ignorance was at the root of this. The authors did not understand the nature of the animal about which they professed to teach so much, and their rules were quite as applicable to the bear or the hyena. The agent employed by the old masters was force--severe bitting, hard whipping, and deep spurring. Some went so far as to recommend the use of fire, in extreme cases--thus establishing a kind of equine martyrdom, in which the poor brute suffered indeed, but without any advantage to the faith of his more brutal persecutors. These various punishments were prescribed with the utmost coolness, often with jocularity, as if the horse under the worst tortures were only getting his deserts, and as if the amount and importance of his laborious services by no means entitled him to any forbearance. Human ingenuity is capable of absolute development in the direction of cruelty; it seems to be the most visible and satisfying side of our capabilities; no man who commits a slow murder, whether on one animal or another, can doubt that he has done _something_--the proof stares him in the face. Then again, murder is adapted to the lowest capacities; there is not a groom in the land less capable of taking life than the finest gentleman. The issue of all this has been--if the horse were not killed at once--to shorten his days, to lessen his intelligence, to injure his form, and to degrade and dwindle his race, from generation to generation. Who, after following the old course of training, has a right to complain of the degeneracy which he sees in the broken-hearted drudges around him, or, having any feeling, will hesitate in adopting a more humane course, if one be offered? Such a course is submitted to English readers for the first time in this translation of M. Baucher. The harsh bit is entirely cast aside, and the whip and spur are used very sparingly--as means of persuasion only, never as instruments of punishment. Baucher's system is intended to develope the better instincts of the animal, not to punish the vices which we have taught him, in vain efforts to subdue a strength incalculably greater than ours--which by resolute cruelty we have forced him to employ in resisting our unjust demands. Baucher lays it down as an axiom that no horse is naturally vicious, but that his vices are acquired through bad management. One may possess a higher temper than another, to be sure, but spirited horses are those which turn out best under his method of training. The more intelligent the animal, the more capable of instruction--the more frolicksome but the more tractable is his disposition. We all remember "Mayfly," a trick horse at Welch's circus, that could perform anything possible to a horse: he was a pupil of Baucher. But before falling into his skilful hands, this animal was so vicious, that on the race course it was thought necessary to start him from a box, in order to prevent his injuring himself and the other horses. Here there is an instance in which confirmed ill habits were completely eradicated by proper discipline; and how much easier must it be to establish good ones, where we have nothing but pliant ignorance with which to contend. It is not within our limits to enter fully into the different merits of Baucher's treatise. It is sufficient to say that it has been tested, approved and adopted by the most skilful riders of Europe--the late Duc d'Orleans, a more than graceful horseman, having been Baucher's patron until the day of his unfortunate death. The most vigorous and searching inquiries of the government failed to overthrow the system in a single particular; and wherever Baucher was led into argument with his opponents, the mere force of his philosophical reasonings was sufficient to put them down. His book has gone through nine editions in France, and as many in Russia, Germany, Belgium and Holland. The present translation is well executed, in clear comprehensible English; its only defect, if that can be considered one, is, that it is somewhat too idiomatically precise. So little does it smell of the usual vulgarity of the stable, that we are led to believe Baucher has fallen into the hands of a translator of taste and refinement, who not only admires the system for its practical uses, but also for its logical exactness and genial humanity. The work is copiously illustrated with explanatory engravings, and is well printed on good thick paper, as a manual should be. Nothing is wanting, but the extensive circulation which it deserves, to make it useful to equestrians, and beneficial to that much abused animal to which it is devoted. * * * * * The _Heroes and Martyrs of the Modern Missionary Enterprise, with some Sketches of the Earlier Missionaries_, edited by L. E. SMITH, with an introduction by Rev. Dr. SPRAGUE, will soon be published by P. Brockett & Co., of Hartford. It will be an octavo of about six hundred pages, with portraits. The Fine Arts. KAULBACH's picture of the Destruction of Jerusalem is at last finished, in fresco, upon the walls of the New Museum in Berlin. It is worth a journey thither to see it. Nor is it alone. The other parts of the series of pictures which adorn the great stairway of that edifice, are rapidly advancing to completion. The five broad pilasters, which separate the main pictures, are nearly done, many of the chief figures being finished in color, while others are drawn in their places. They will exhaust the history of the early religious and intellectual development of humanity. The Egyptian, Indian, Persian, Greek, Hebrew, and Roman religions, are all illustrated with that masterly genius, comprehensiveness and fertility of imagination, for which Kaulbach is without a peer among the artists of the age. Each religion is depicted in the persons of its divinities and early teachers and heroes. Thoroughly to understand the whole scope of these pictures, requires as much learning in the theology and mythology of these antique races as the artist has employed in painting them, not to speak of skill in deciphering allegories; but to be impressed with their wonderful richness, grandeur, and beauty, requires no learning, beyond a true eye and a mind capable of feeling. Besides, these mythological pictures, the symbolical men of history are introduced, such as Moses and Solon. The Grecian mythological part is not yet completed, the artist having reserved that to be done next summer; in it he intends to lay himself out as on a favorite and congenial subject. * * * * * The works of INGRES, the eminent French painter, have been published in splendid style by the great house of Didot at Paris. Noctes Amicæ. There are being born into this great city a vast number of young people--enough babies indeed, every day, to make a great noise in the world sometime, if every one should turn out to be a Demosthenes or Cicero, an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a Napoleon. But though every dame may think her own the prettiest child alive, it seems to us not altogether agreeable to good taste for her to anticipate the judgment of the future in naming it after that celebrity that he or she is destined to rival or eclipse. In seriousness, the habit which prevails so generally of bestowing illustrious names in baptism, is ridiculous and disgraceful, and is continually productive of misfortunes to the victims, if they happen to be possessed of parts to elevate them from a vulgar condition. In the south they manage these things better; the Cæsars, Hannibals, Napoleons, Le Grands, Rexes, &c., are all to be found in the negro yards; but almost every public occasion in the north, affords an instance by which a "man of the people," hearing his name called in an assembly, or seeing it printed in a journal, is compelled to feel shame for the weakness of his parents, by which he is burthened with a name that belittles the greatest actions of which he is capable. * * * * * In illustration of the passport system, a good story is told of the recent arrest of a Turk on the frontier of the Herzegowina. For some time past, the Turkish Government has allowed its authorities to wring something out of the people by means of passports and the devices thereunto belonging, but it chances that a great many persons in power can neither read nor write, and therefore a shrewd fellow may palm any species of official-looking paper he thinks proper as his regular pass on the officials; thus it was that a Turk who had travelled some time in peace with a document of imposing appearance, which he had picked up in the streets at Constantinople, at last found one who could read it, and it was discovered to be one of Jean Maria Farina's Eau de Cologne labels! * * * * * A Mayor of the department of the Haute-Saône, France, has had the following decision placarded on the church door:-- "Whereas, at all times, there have been disorders, and always will be; and whereas, at all times, there have been laws to repress them, and always will be; and whereas magistrates are appointed to have them properly executed, I ask, ought we, or ought we not, to do our duty? If we do our duty, we are calumniated. Well, then, taking these things into consideration, I declare that if that horde of good-for-nothings who are in the habit of frequenting the churchyard during Divine service, shall continue to do so, they will have to come into collision with me." * * * * * M. MICHAUD, of the French Academy, is pleased to express literary malice against those whom he loves and esteems the most. A political man came one day to confide a secret to him, and recommended to him the strictest discretion. "_Do not be uneasy_," replied M. Michaud, "_your secret shall be well kept; I will hide it in the complete works of my friend Lacretelle_." We think we know of an American author whose "various writings" would serve the same purpose. * * * * * In the last _International_ we mentioned the death of the well-known ballad composer ALEXANDER LEE. Some painfully interesting circumstances of his last days have since appeared in the journals: "About a week before his death, he called on a friend and brother pianist, Thirlwall, stated his extreme destitution, and asked that a concert might be got up for his relief. This was done, generously and promptly. The concert was advertised, Lee and Thirlwall to preside at the piano. The other performances were to be by Mr. Thirlwall's four daughters, and by half a dozen other friends and pupils of Lee, who had offered their gratuitous services. On the day of the proposed concert, he for whose benefit it was to be given, died. It was thought best to perform the concert, however, and to devote the proceeds to paying the proper honors to his memory. They did so, but most of those who tried their voices were too much affected to sing, and the performance was at last brought to an abrupt termination by one of his pupils, who burst into a passion of tears while endeavoring to sing _The Spirit of Good_, an air by the departed master." * * * * * STORIES of the sagacity of elephants are endless; here are two which imply complicated processes of thought: "Another elephant that was exhibited in London was made to go through a variety of tricks, and among them that of picking up a sixpence with its trunk; but on one occasion the coin rolled near a wall beyond its reach. As the animal was still ordered to get it, it paused for a moment as if for consideration, and then, stretching forth its trunk to its greatest extent, blew with such force on the money that it was driven against the wall, and was brought within reach by the recoil. An officer in the Bengal army had a very fine and favorite elephant, which was supplied daily in his presence with a certain allowance of food, but being compelled to absent himself on a journey, the keeper of the beast diminished the ration of food, and the animal became daily thinner and weaker. When its master returned, the elephant exhibited the greatest signs of pleasure; the feeding time came, and the keeper laid before it the former full allowance of food, which it divided into two parts, consuming one immediately, and leaving the other untouched. The officer, knowing the sagacity of his favorite, saw immediately the fraud that had been practised, and made the man confess his crime." * * * * * A delegation of those disgusting creatures of the feminine or neuter gender, who hold conventions for the discussion of "Women's Rights," obtruded into the presence of the wife of Kossuth, just before the Hungarian left England, with an address, which, in addition to expressions of sympathy, contained an intimation that a statement of opinions was desired respecting their efforts to achieve the "freedom of their sex." The lady replied that she thanked them for their attentions, and that, with respect to her views on the emancipation of woman, she had in earlier years confined herself to the circle of her domestic duties, and had never been tempted to look beyond it; that latterly the overwhelming course of events had left her, as might be well supposed, still less leisure for any speculations of this kind; it would, moreover (such was the conclusion of her little speech), be forgiven in her, the wife of Kossuth--a man whom the general voice, not more than her own heart, pronounced distinguished--if she submitted herself entirely to his guidance, and never thought of emancipation! Probably this admirable answer has saved her the annoyance of receiving any such visitors in this country. * * * * * We find the following in the _Gazette des Tribunaux_: "In 1814, Lord W---- was colonel of an English regiment, and joined the allied army which invaded France. Shortly before his departure from Dover, where he was in garrison, the Colonel married a rich heiress, but he left her with her family whilst he went to encounter the risk of combats. The campaign of France being terminated, nothing further was heard of the colonel; it was known, however, that his regiment had been almost entirely destroyed in a combat with the French in the south of France, but his death not having been regularly proved, some law proceedings took place between the different members of his family respecting property to a very large amount. These proceedings, which are not yet terminated, will, no doubt, receive a solution from the following singular circumstances:--Some time ago an old soldier, M. R----, residing in the environs of Marseilles, came to Paris on family affairs, and took up his residence in a hotel in the quarter of the Chaussée d' Antin. Having run short of money, he begged the hotel-keeper, M. D----, to advance him 100f., and as a guarantee he left him provisionally a superb gold watch, ornamented with diamonds, and on the back of which was the miniature of a lady, with the initials 'E. W----.' M. R---- told the hotel-keeper that in a combat in 1814, in the south of France, he had wounded and taken prisoner an English colonel; that the colonel dying almost immediately after of his wounds, his watch had remained in his hands. He recommended M. D----to take particular care of the watch, and he went away, some days ago, announcing that he would soon send by the messageries the sum lent, and demand restitution of the watch. Two days back there was such a numerous gathering of travellers in the hotel of M. D----, that he was obliged to give up his own room to an Englishman. On seeing the watch hanging over the chimney the Englishman uttered a cry of surprise, and examined it closely. From the miniature on the back, and the replies of the hotel keeper to his questions, he recognized it as the property of his brother, Colonel W----. With an obstinacy peculiarly English, the Englishman would not give up the watch, and offered to pay 100,000f. for it if required; for it was, with the testimony of R----, the proof of the decease of his brother, and the termination of the law proceedings, which had been pending thirty years; but in the absence of the proprietor of the watch, the hotel-keeper could not dispose of it. To satisfy, however, the obstinacy of the Englishman he called in the commissary of police, who consented to take it as a deposit. The same day the Englishman set out for Marseilles to seek for Mr. R----." * * * * * The London _Spectator_ has the following just observations on a scandalous exhibition in the theatres: "There is a certain degree of elevation, especially in the course of human events, which foretells a speedy downfall. Tyrannies, before their decline, become more and more abominable; and probably the last tyrant is the one who deems his position most secure and his impunity best established. We are forced to this reflection by a burlesque on Auber's _Enfant Prodigue_, brought out this week at the Olympic. Here we have the most affecting story of sin and repentance, derived moreover from the lips of One whom almost every inhabitant of this island esteems as sacred, made the peg whereon to hang the ordinary jokes which we hear _usque ad nauseam_, every Christmas and Easter. There must be an overweening confidence in the safety of burlesque to make such an experiment possible. We are by no means anxious to assume the Puritanical tone, or to lay down the doctrine that certain subjects are to be excluded from any department of art. The most sacred themes are worked into oratorio-books, and the most straitlaced portion of the community applauds their combination with music. But when a subject is in itself solemn, let it be solemnly treated. Opinions may be divided as to whether the story of the Prodigal Son can with propriety be represented in the form of serious opera or spectacle, but that it is an improper theme for burlesque there cannot be the shadow of a doubt. Our dramatic authors have too long been in the habit of trying to raise a laugh about every thing, and we have too long been inundated with a species of drama in which the chief wit is anachronism and the chief wisdom a Cockney familiarity with the disreputable works of the Metropolis. We trust that the _début_ of the _Prodigal Son_ at Vauxhall and the Casinos is that crisis of a disease which precedes a return to health, and that henceforth we shall hear less about Haroun Alraschid's views of the polka, and Julius Cæesar's estimate of cider cellars and cigars. As for the Olympic burlesque itself, it is by no means void of humor; nor is it unsuccessful. We only stigmatize it as the perfection of a bad genus." Some time ago when a comic opera founded on the history of Joseph was produced in England the people refused to hear it. Historical Review of the Month. In Great Britain through November, and in all the last month in the United States, Louis Kossuth has been the object of principal interest to every class of persons. Arriving in New-York on the 5th of December, he has delivered a series of brilliant orations, probably unexampled in all history by any one man, in so short a period, for displays of various knowledge, effective method, and popular eloquence; and, whatever his subject or occasion, the central point of every one was the deliverance of Hungary. The most important result thus far is the organization of a Finance Committee, consisting of a number of the most eminent citizens of New-York, to collect voluntary contributions of money, for the purpose of carrying on a projected resistance to Austria and Russia by the Hungarians. Of the Government of this country, it is understood, Kossuth asks no active intervention, but that England and America shall unite in affirming the policy, that "every nation shall have the right to make and alter its political institutions to suit its own condition and convenience," and that the two nations (England and America) shall not only _respect_ but _cause to be respected_ this doctrine, so as to prevent Russia from again marching her armies into Hungary. By a large majority of both Houses of Congress, Governor Kossuth has been invited to Washington, and it is probable that he will soon disclose in a speech before the representatives of the nation, more fully than he has yet done, his plans, his hopes, and his expectations. The first session of the thirty-second Congress assembled in Washington on the 1st of December. In both houses there is a strong majority for the Democratic party. Of the Senators, _twenty-four_ are Whigs, _two_ (Hale and Sumner) distinctive Free Soilers, _thirty-four_ Democrats including Mr. Chase of Ohio, an avowed Abolitionist, and Messrs. Rhett and Butler of South Carolina, Secessionists. There are now three vacancies in the Senate, the last occasioned by the resignation of Mr. Clay, on account of ill-health and his great age. This illustrious orator and statesman may now be regarded as having closed his public career. The present House consists of 233 Members, besides four Delegates from Territories, who can speak but not vote. Of the Members, the _Tribune_ reckons, _eighty-six_ Whigs, _five_ distinctive Free Soilers (besides several attached to one or the other of the great parties); the remaining _one hundred and forty-two_ are of the Democratic party, including all the Southern Rights men and such Union men as were not previously Whigs. The House was organized on the first day of the session by the election of Linn Boyd, of Kentucky, as Speaker, by a considerable majority. The annual Message of the President was delivered on the 2nd. It is a long document, of much value as a survey of the progress of the nation in the past year, and of considerable importance for its intimations of the policy of the administration. The President strongly condemns the recent invasion of Cuba, and in connection with a history of that affair states, that after the execution of fifty of the associates of Lopez, Commodore Parker was sent to Havana to inquire respecting them. They all acknowledged themselves guilty of the offence charged against them. At the time of their execution, the main body of invaders was still in the field, making war upon Spain. Though the invaders had forfeited the protection of their country, no proper effort has been spared to obtain the release of those now in confinement in Spanish prisons. The President advocates adherence to our neutrality and non-intervention policy. "Our true mission," he says, "is not to propagate our opinions, or impose upon other countries our form of government, by artifice or force; but to teach by example and show by our success, moderation, and justice, the blessings of self-government, and the advantages of free institutions." The correspondence with England and France respecting the invasion of Cuba, maintains the principle, on the part of the United States, that "in every regularly-documented merchant-vessel, the crew who navigate it and those on board of it will find their protection in the flag that is over them." The right of Consuls to security in the country where they reside, is maintained, and mortification is expressed at the attack on the Spanish Consul at New Orleans, and the insult to the Spanish flag. The aggregate receipts for the last fiscal year were $52,312,979.87, with the balance on hand at the commencement, making the means of the treasury for the year $58,917,524.36, against $48,005,878.66. The imports of the year ending June 30, 1851, were $215,725 995, of which $4,967,901 were in specie. The exports were $217,517,130, of which $178,546,555 were domestic, and $9,738,695 foreign products. Specie exported, $29,231,880. Since December 1850, the payments of principal of the debt were $7,501,456.56, which is inclusive of $3,242,400 paid under the 12th article of the treaty with Mexico, and $2,591,213.45 awards under the late treaty with Mexico. The public debt, exclusive of stock, authorized to be issued to Texas, was $62,560,395.26. The receipts for the next fiscal year, are estimated at $51,800,000, making, with the balance on hand, the available means of the year $63,258,743.09. The expenditures are estimated at $42,892,299.19, of which $33,343,198 are for ordinary purposes of government, and $9,549,101.11 for purposes consequent upon the acquisition of territory from Mexico. It is estimated that there will be an unappropriated balance of $20,366,443.90 in the Treasury on the 30th of June, 1853, to meet $6,237,931.35 of public debt due on the 1st of July following. The value of the domestic exports for the year ending June 30, 1851, show an increase of $43,646,322, which is owing to the high price of cotton during the first half of the year, and the price of which has since declined one-half. The value of the exports of breadstuffs is only $21,948,653 against $26,051,373 in 1850, and $68,701,921 in 1847--our largest year of export in that department of trade. In rice the decrease this as compared with last year in the export, is $460,917, which with the decrease in the value of tobacco exported, makes an aggregate decrease in the two articles of $1,156,751. From these premises the President draws the conclusion, that the favorable results anticipated by the advocates of free trade from the adoption of that policy have not been realized. The case of Mr. Thrasher, alluded to in our last, is the subject of a letter from the Secretary of State to our Minister in Madrid, under date of December 13. Mr. Webster directs efforts to secure Mr. Thrasher's release from imprisonment Mr. Thrasher was sent to Spain on the 24th November. An important violation of the stipulations of our last treaty with Great Britain occurred in the harbor of San Juan on the ---- of November. The steamship Prometheus, an American merchant vessel, plying between New York and San Juan de Nicaragua in the California trade, was levied on by the municipal authorities of San Juan or Greytown, for certain port charges established by direction of British agents, as under the government of the Indian or negro king of Mosquito. These charges the Captain of the Prometheus refused to pay. A British vessel of war, however fired on her twice, and after, under the peremptory orders of the Captain of the brig, the Prometheus had returned to her anchorage, he compelled her, under threats, to extinguish her fires, and place herself at his mercy. The pretended dues were at length paid under protest, and the facts in the case were communicated to Congress in a Message from the President on the 17th. Commodore Parker has been ordered to repair at once to the harbor of San Juan, with directions to protect all merchant vessels from such surveilance in future, of which he is to notify the British officers on his arrival. The trial of the persons arrested for taking part in the outrages at Christiana, in Pennsylvania, was commenced in Philadelphia on the 24th of November, before Judges Grier and Kane, in the United States Circuit Court, and on the 12th of December it was brought to a close by the acquittal of the prisoners. Information has been received at the State Department of the loss of the whale ships Arabella and America, of New Bedford; the Henry Thompson and Armada, of New London; the Mary Mitchell, of San Francisco, and the Sol Sollares, of Fall River. From California we have news of continued prosperity in mining, and in agriculture and general interests. The project for dividing the State into North and South California appears to have been urged with determination and hopes of success in the recent convention held to consider the subject. It is stated also that a large company of emigrants recently left San Francisco for the Sandwich Islands, to establish a Republican State there. To this end a Constitution had been formed in San Francisco prior to their departure. There are many circumstances which render this statement probable. A Governor, Lieut. Governor, Attorney General, and members of the Legislature were elected in Virginia on the 8th of December, under the new constitution. The democrats elected their ticket by a large majority. The Legislature of Indiana convened at Indianapolis on the 1st December. Lieutenant Governor James H. Lane took the chair of the Senate, and John D. Dunn was chosen Secretary. In the House, John W. Davis (formerly Speaker at Washington, and since Commissioner to China) was chosen Speaker by a unanimous vote. The Senate of South Carolina has refused an application from the Federal Government for the sale of the lighthouse at Bell's Bay. The House of Representatives has again refused to allow the people to choose Electors of President and Vice President. The vote was 66 to 48. The Legislature have passed a bill to provide for the holding of a Secession Convention. The Texas Legislature assembled at Austin on the 3d. Advices from Galveston state that Colonel Rogers has succeeded in effecting a treaty with the Camanche Indians, and recovered twenty-seven white captives from the Camanches, who had been in bondage among them. Of accidents and disasters, there have not been so many as in some previous months. On the morning of November 27, about two o'clock, a frightful collision took place between the steamers Die Vernon and Archer, resulting in the loss of the latter vessel, with serious loss of life. The accident occurred at Enterprise Island, about five miles above the mouth of Illinois River. The whole number of lives lost by this catastrophe was thirty-four, of whom ten were deck hands or firemen engaged on the boat. On Sunday, December 7, the city of Portland was visited by one of the most destructive conflagrations that ever occurred in that place. The extent of the conflagration was owing mainly to the want of water, the tide being down. There were twenty-seven stores burnt, nine vessels damaged, and over one hundred thousand dollars worth of merchandise destroyed. Public Thanksgiving was held this year on the same day in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas. From British America there is not much intelligence of importance. The recent elections have resulted favorably for the liberal party. A few days ago the first vessel passed through the new channel of Lake St. Peter, which has been constructed at a cost of $320,000. The dredging is to be continued next season; and it is expected that by July the channel will be 150 feet wide, and of adequate depth. By a new regulation of the Post Office Department, all newspapers pass free between Canada and the adjoining lower Provinces. The seat of Government has been changed four times in 11 years. In 1840 it was at Toronto; next year the union of the Provinces having been effected, it was at Kingston. From 1843 to 1849 it was at Montreal. Toronto then became the capital; and now it has moved to Quebec, under a pledge to come back at the expiration of four years. Respecting the final result of the late movements of Carvajal in Mexico it is not easy to form a conclusion, as the accounts are very contradictory. Notwithstanding his recent discomfiture, it seems to be believed that in the present distracted and impoverished condition of Mexico, he may succeed. General Aragua had arrived at Matamoras with 80 men, with several pieces of artillery and one mortar, to reinforce General Avalos. General Carvajal had not more than five or six hundred men. The Mexican troops in Matamoras number 2,000. From Nicaragua we learn, that on the 19th of November General Munoz, his officers, and twenty-seven Americans, were captured by General Chamorro, and committed to prison. If this intelligence is true, there is an end of the war in that quarter. From South America intelligence is as usual confused and unsatisfactory. By way of England we have dates from Montevideo to the 12th Oct. The war in the Banda Oriental was terminated. Oribe had retreated to his country house at Rinton. The Argentine forces were reported to have joined Urquiza. The Orientals had joined Gen. Garzon. A Provisional Government was talked of. The chief results had been effected without bloodshed. In Chili, the rebel army of 13,000 men, commanded by Carrera and Arteaga, was met by 850 Government troops at Petorca, about forty leagues from Santiago, on the 14th of October. They fought three hours, and the result was the total defeat of the former, with a loss of 70 killed, 200 wounded, and 400 prisoners, including 36 officers. Carrera and Arteaga have not been taken. The Government army, under Colonel Vidaure, lost 15 killed and 15 wounded. 400 of the Government troops had gone by sea to join Bulnes's army; the remainder had sailed for Coquimbo, so that the affair in the North may be considered quelled. In the South, General Cruz had an army of 400 regulars, and 2,500 militia, the latter badly armed and clothed. He had not left the Province of Conception. Bulnes was expected on the frontier of that province with 1,000 troops of the line and 300 militiamen, all well armed, clothed, and paid. He appeared determined to run no risks, and it was generally supposed he would soon restore order and quietness. In Ecuador, the Presidency of General Urbina has been acceptable, and it is probable that peace will be maintained for some time. Peru is in perfect tranquillity, and this peaceable state is greatly contributing to its advancement. Bolivia is also in peace, although the Congress has not fulfilled the promises with which it began its meetings. At first, some of the members dared to claim reforms in the Government, but they were silenced, and that body will close its session without having done any thing except abolishing Quina Bank, a measure which Government had resolved. Throughout all parts of Europe there seems to be a well grounded apprehension of an extraordinary effort to put down every species of despotism during the coming year. An impression prevails that the occasion of the presidential election in France will be seized on for a general rising, not only in that country, but in Italy, Germany, and Hungary, and the Revolutionary Congress, in London, of which the presiding genius is Mazzini, will predetermine affairs for all the States, so that each shall have the greatest possible advantage. Governor Kossuth will be back in time to assume the general leadership in northern and eastern Europe. From England we have intelligence of no important movement since the departure of Kossuth. No subject attracts more attention than that of the extensive and systematic emigration which is taking place to America and Australia. We learn from the report of the Registrar-General, for the three months ended 30th September last, that during those months 85,603 emigrants sailed from the several ports at which government emigration agents are stationed. This is at the rate of nearly 1,000 persons a day. It is probable that one-half of the total number were Irish. Of the 85,603, 68,960 sailed for the Atlantic ports of the Union; and the remaining 16,643 were distributed in the proportions of 9,268 to British North America, 6,097 to the Australian colonies, and 1,278 to other places. So far, the total emigration of 1851 exceeded that of the corresponding period of 1850, and the emigration of 1850 exceeded that of any former year. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill remains a dead letter. The Roman Catholic prelates assume and are called by the prohibited titles, and no steps are taken to enforce the law. The attendance of Roman Catholics on the "Godless Colleges" does not appear to have abated, and the Roman Catholic journals complain of the extent of proselytism from their Church. The Submarine telegraph between England and France has been completed, and messages between Paris and London have been transmitted in half an hour. The event was celebrated by the firing of cannon alternately at Calais and Dover, the fire for each explosion being communicated by the electric current from the side of the channel opposite the gun. An announcement is made by the _Times_ of the intended creation of a fourth Presidency in India, and a proposal to remove the seat of government from Calcutta to Lahore. The new province is to be constituted by the spacious province of the Punjab, to which, on the east, it will annex the broad districts of Agra and Bengal, up to the banks of the Sone, embracing the populous and important cities of Allahabad and Benares, To the southwest it will include our anomalous appendage of Scinde, and will thus extend itself from the Hindoo Kosh to the mouths of the Indus, and from the mountains of Beloochistan to the plains of the Ganges. On the 24th November, about seventy of the principal merchants and gentlemen in Liverpool, and the members of the American Chamber of Commerce, entertained R. J. Walker, late Secretary to the Treasury of the United States, at dinner at the Adelphi Hotel. The French Legislative Assembly was opened on the 4th of November with a long message from President Bonaparte. A disorderly and excited discussion took place on the 18th, on the proposition of the Questors of the Assembly to put the army in Paris directly under the orders of that body, thereby removing it from the control of the Minister of War and the President. The final vote was 300 for the proposition to 408 against it. The mass of the Republicans opposed it, though General Cavaignac and some of his immediate friends voted in the affirmative. The principal topic of discussion in the Assembly has been the Communal Electoral law. After long discussion, a clause has been adopted, making the time of residence necessary to qualify a citizen to vote in the communal or township elections, only two years instead of three as in the general electoral law. This is regarded as a departure from the rigor of that law and a step toward universal suffrage. It is thus a triumph for the President, who seems, on the whole, decidedly to have gained ground lately. Yet no real progress appears to have been yet made to a settlement of French difficulties, except in so far as every month added to the existence of a new government, the result of a revolution, consolidates it, and enlists in its favor the conservative sentiment. The prizes of the lottery of L'Ingots d'Or were drawn in the Champs Elysées on the 16th. An immense crowd attended. A journeyman hair-dresser obtained the prize of 200,000 francs, and an engine-driver on a railway the first prize of 400,000 francs. General Narvaez has returned to Spain, and is again in favor with the queen. The new King of Hanover, George the Fifth, has published a proclamation, in which he pledges his royal word for "the inviolable maintenance of the constitution of the country." Yet he has abandoned the policy of the late king by appointing a reactionist ministry. The Austrian currency appears to be in a worse condition than even our own "continental" at the close of the Revolution. The proprietors of houses have again raised their rents 20 and 25 per cent, and the seniors begin to talk of the _Bancozettel_ period, when 100 florins in silver sold for 700 florins in paper, and a pair of boots cost 75 paper florins. Government itself has indirectly countenanced the depreciation of the currency: the Finance Minister by the conditions of the loan, and the Director of the Imperial theatre by raising the price of admittance from 1fl. 24k. to 1fl. 48k., although the salaries of the actors are less than formerly, as they have to pay the income tax. The Russians have discovered four important veins of silver ore in the Caucasus--one in the defile of Sadon, another in that of Ordona, a third in that of Degorsk, and the fourth near Paltchick. The veins are rich in the yield of silver. The working of them has already been commenced. The Emperor of Russia has just ordered 6000 carriages to be built for the different railways in his empire, in order to facilitate the conveyance of troops. Scientific Discoveries and Proceedings of Learned Societies Ten pages of the last Compte Rendu of the _Paris Academy of Sciences_, Mr. Walsh says, in a letter to the _Journal of Commerce_, are allotted to an elaborate report from an able committee, on Mr. Gratiolet's Memoir concerning the cerebral protuberances and furrows of man and the _Primates_, the first order of animals in the class Mammalia, which include the Ape. The inequalities on the brain of man and most of the mammifers were denominated by the celebrated Willis, _gyri_,--_convolutiones_,--_plicæ_; the French use the phrase--_plis cerebraux_. The theories of Willis gave birth to the whole system of Dr. Gall: the _plicæ_ are found in the class of mammifers alone; they are rarer and less marked in the lower than in the higher species of the great family of monkeys and baboons. They have been regarded as _indicia_ or exponents of more or less perfection in the organ of intelligence, by their number, their projection, and their measure of separation by the furrows. The Report puts these two questions--among the numerous differences of the cerebral _plicæ_, in number, disposition and proportion. Is it possible to discriminate, in man, and among the mammifers that have them, constant characters of particular types, of families, genera, and even of species? 2d. Do some of those types exclusively distinguish such or such a family, and are they more or less marked or impaired, but still recognizable, according to the genera? The Report adds--These questions are solved in the affirmative by the results of Mr. Gratiolet's researches relatively to the great family of _Apes_. The importance of these results for the zoologist and the phrenologist is then signalized, and the insertion of the Memoir in the volume of Transactions emphatically recommended. According to the author, it is with the brain of the _Orang-Outang_ that the brain of man has the most points of resemblance. The distinguishing points in regard to all the Apes of the superior class are designated, and they correspond to the physical indications which denote a higher intellectual power. * * * * * Respecting the _African Exploring Expeditions_, Miss Overweg (daughter of one of the travellers) and the Chevalier Bunson, have received in London interesting letters, stating the continued success of the adventurous scholars. Previous to the 6th of August Dr. Overweg had safely joined his companion, Dr. Barth, at Kuka. The latter started on a highly interesting excursion to the kingdom of Adamowa, while the former was exploring Lake Tsad. The boat, which had been taken to pieces in Tripoli, and during a journey of twelve months had with immense trouble been carried on camels across the burning sands of the Sahrá, had been put together and launched on the lake; and the English colors were hoisted in the presence, and to the great delight, of numerous natives. Dr. Overweg, in exploring the islands of Lake Tsad, had been every where received with kindness by their Pagan inhabitants. * * * * * The _Courrier de la Gironde_ states that a civil engineer of Bordeaux, named De Vignernon, has discovered the perpetual motion. His theory is said to be to find in a mass of water, at rest, and contained within a certain space, a continual force able to replace all other moving powers. The above journal declares that this has been effected, and that the machine invented by M. de Vignernon works admirably. A model of the machine was to be exposed at Bordeaux for three days, before the inventor's departure with it for London. * * * * * The British Government has granted 1500_l._ to Colonel Rawlinson, to assist him in his researches among the Assyrian antiquities; and 1200_l._ for the publication of the zoology and botany collected during the Australian expedition of H.M.S. _Rattlesnake_, commanded by the late Captain Stanley, son of the late Bishop of Norwich. * * * * * The _Museum_ of Berlin says that a Prussian has discovered in the ruins of Nineveh, a basso-relievo, representing a fleet of balloons--another proof that "there is nothing new under the sun." An invention by Captain Groetaers of the Belgian engineers has been lately tested at Woolwich. It is a simple means of ascertaining the distance of any object against which operations may have to be directed, and is composed of a staff about an inch square and three feet in length, with a brass scale on the upper side, and a slide, to which is attached a plate of tin six inches long and three wide, painted red, with a white stripe across its centre. A similar plate is held by an assistant, and is connected with the instrument by a fine wire. When an observation is to be taken, the observer looks at the distant object through a glass fixed on the left of the scale, and adjusts the striped plate by means of the slide; the assistant also looks through his glass, standing a few feet in advance of his principal at the end of the wire, and as soon as the two adjustments are effected and declared, the distance is read off on the scale. In the three trials made at Woolwich, the distance in one case, although more than 1000 yards, was determined within two inches; and in two other attempts, within a foot. It is obvious that such an instrument, if to be depended on, will admit of being applied to other than military surveys and operations, and may be made useful in the civil service. * * * * * SIGNOR GORINI, of the University of Lodi, has recently made some important discoveries which have been much discussed in the scientific journals. His experiments to illustrate the origin of mountains are most interesting. He melts some substances, known only to himself, in a vessel, and allows the liquid to cool. At first it presents an even surface, but a portion continues to ooze up from beneath, and gradually elevations are formed, until at length ranges and chains of hills are formed, exactly corresponding in shape with those which are found on the earth. Even to the stratification the resemblance is complete, and M. Gorini can produce on a small scale the phenomena of volcanoes and earthquakes. He contends, therefore, "that the inequalities on the face of the globe are the result of certain materials, first reduced by the application of heat to a liquid state and then allowed gradually to consolidate." The professor, has also, it is said, succeeded, to a surprising extent, in preserving animal matter from decay without resorting to any known process for that purpose. Specimens are shown by him of portions of the human body which, without any alteration in their natural appearance, have been exposed to the action of the atmosphere for six and seven years; and he states that, at a trifling cost, he can keep meat for any length of time in such a way that it can be eaten quite fresh. * * * * * COUNT CASTELNAU, a French Savant who is well known in the United States, has lately communicated to the _Geographical Society of Paris_ the result of some personal inquiries at Bahia, in South America, respecting a race of human beings with tails. We suppose there is not a particle of truth in the information he received, but he is so respectable a person that his report deserves some notice. "I found myself in Bahia," he says, "in the midst of a host of negro slaves, and thought it possible to obtain from them information of the unknown parts of the African continent. I soon discovered that the Mohammedan natives of Soudan were much farther advanced in mind, than the idolatrous inhabitants of the coast.--Several blacks of Haoussa and Adamawah related to me that they had taken part in expeditions against a nation called _Niam Niams_, who had _tails_. They traced their route, on which they encountered tigers, giraffes, elephants, and _wild camels_. Nine days were consumed in traversing an immense forest. They reached at length a numerous people of the same complexion and frame as themselves, but with tails from twelve to fifteen inches long, &c., &c." * * * * * The Paris journals announce that M. Vallée, one of the officials of the Jardin des Plantes, has succeeded in hatching a turtle by artificial means. On the 14th of July last, he found some turtles' eggs on the sand in the inclosure reserved for the turtles, and placed three of them under his apparatus in the reptile department. On the 14th of this month he examined the eggs, and found a turtle, about as big as a walnut, in full life. He hopes to be able to rear it. This is the first case on record of one of these creatures having been produced artificially. Recent Deaths. The _Brussels Herald_ announces that the aged naturalist, Savigny, has lately died in Paris. Little has been heard of him for some time in the scientific world. He was for thirty years a member of the Academy of Sciences, and was among the _savants_ who accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt. * * * * * We noticed in the last _International_, the decease of Professor Pattison and Dr. Kearney Rodgers, two of the most eminent physicians and surgeons of New-York. Their deaths were succeeded in a few days by those of Dr. J. E. DE KAY (a brother of the late Commodore De Kay), and Dr. MANLEY. Dr. De Kay was eminent as a naturalist and as an author. He wrote a brace of volumes about Turkey, many years ago, which were published by the Harpers, and two of the quarto volumes of the Natural History of the State of New-York, published by the Government. He was intimate with Cooper, Irving, Halleck, Paulding, Dr. Francis, and all the old set of _litterateurs_ in the city. Dr. Manley (father of the distinguished authoress, Mrs. Emma C. Embury), was known at the beginning of this century, for certain political relations, for his connection with Thomas Paine in the last days of that famous infidel, and ever since as a conspicuous physician and high-toned gentleman--foremost especially in all proceedings which had the special stamp of _New-York_ upon them, but not at all inclined to second any movement originating in New England. He had lately accompanied his accomplished and distinguished daughter to Paris, for the benefit of her health, which has suffered for three or four years. Ernest, King of Hanover, died at his palace at Herrenhausen, on the 11th of November. The deceased prince--the fifth and last surviving son of George the Third, was born at Kew, on the 5th of June, 1771. In 1786, he accompanied his brothers, the Dukes of Sussex and Cambridge, to the University of Gottingen. In 1790, he entered the army, and served in the 9th Hanoverian Light Dragoons from that period until 1793, when he obtained the command of the Regiment. During the following year he took an active part in the war which raged on the continent, and in a rencontre near Toumay lost an eye, and was wounded in the arm. In 1799, he was created Duke of Cumberland, Earl of Armagh, and Duke of Teviotdale, with a Parliamentary grant of £12,000 per annum. In the latter part of 1807, he joined the Prussian army, engaged in the struggle against the encroaching power of Napoleon. On the defeat of the French by the allied forces, he proceeded to Hanover, and took possession of that kingdom on behalf of the English crown. In 1810, when the Regency question formed the subject of much public excitement, he entered into its discussion, and vehemently opposed the government on every point, as he opposed the claims of the Roman Catholics, the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and the Reform Bill. He uniformly supported in Parliament the opinions which guided the Pitt, Perceval, and Liverpool Administrations; while he was a warm patron of the Brunswick Clubs, and also held the office of Grand Master of the Orangemen of Ireland. In reference to his transactions with this body, many reports were circulated, imputing to him political designs and objects of personal ambition connected with the succession to the crown. On the night of the 31st of May, 1810, an extraordinary attempt was made on his life. While asleep, he was attacked by a man armed with a sabre, who inflicted several wounds on his head. He sprang out of bed to give an alarm, but was followed in the dark by his assailant, and cut across the thighs. On assistance arriving, Sellis, an Italian valet, who--it is alleged--had thus attacked the Duke, was found locked in his own room with his throat cut; and spots of blood were found on the floor of the passage leading to the apartment which Sellis occupied. The next day a coroner's inquest was held, and returned a verdict of _felo de se_. The Duke of Cumberland soon recovered from his wounds, but this event gave rise to much suspicion. In May, 1815, he was married to the third daughter of the late reigning Duke of Mecklenburgh-Strelitz, a lady who had been married twice previously, first to Prince Frederick Louis Charles of Prussia; and secondly, to Prince Frederick William of Solms-Braunfels The issue of this union was a prince, born at Berlin (where the Duke resided from 1818 to 1828), May 27, 1817--the present King of Hanover, known in England as Prince George of Cumberland. The Duke continued to reside in England from 1828 until the death of William IV., by which the Salique Law alienated the Crown of Hanover from that of Great Britain--bestowing it on the Duke at the same time. At the time of the suicide of Sellis, a statement was circulated to the effect that the Duke had murdered his valet; that, in order to conceal this crime, he had invented the story of a suicide, preceded by an attempt at assassination, and that the wounds which the Duke received were inflicted by himself. These accusations were negatived by evidence produced at the inquest; still the force of that evidence, and even the lapse of three-and-twenty years, did not prevent a revival of the imputation, and the Duke in 1833 thought it necessary to institute a prosecution in the Court of King's Bench, where the defendants were found guilty. On that occasion he himself was examined as a witness, and exhibited to the whole court, the marks of the wounds which he had received in the head, from the inspection of which it was inferred that they could never have been inflicted by his own hand. His titles were: Prince Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, and Teviotdale in Great Britain, and Earl of Armagh in Ireland, and King of Hanover. He was a Knight of the Garter, a Knight of St. Patrick, G.C.B.; and G.C.H. He was also a Knight of the Prussian orders of the Black and Red Eagle, a Field-Marshal in the British army, Chancellor and Visitor of the University of Dublin, a Commissioner of the Royal Military College and Asylum, a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Arts. George Frederick, his only son, and only surviving child, succeeds to the throne of Hanover, but his blindness has suggested the precaution of swearing in twelve councillors, who, to attend in rotation, two at a time, will witness and verify all state documents to be signed by the king. "The new king," says the _Morning Post_, "entirely lacks the Parliamentary experience by which his father so largely profited; and we greatly fear that his education in the strictest school of English High Churchmanship is more calculated to insure his blameless life in a private station, than to fit him for the arduous career of a king in the nineteenth century." The _Times_ sketches the character of the deceased in dark colors, declaring that he "never concerned himself to disguise his sentiments, to restrain his passions, or to conciliate the affections of those who might possibly have been one day his subjects. Relying on the victory which had been apparently declared for absolutism, inflexible in his persuasions, and unbending in his demeanor, the Duke treated popular opinion with a ferocity of contempt which could scarcely be surpassed at St. Petersburgh or Warsaw. In his pleasures he asserted the license of an Orleans or a Stuart, and although in this respect he wanted not for patterns, yet rumor persisted in attaching to his excesses a certain criminal blackness below the standard dye of aristocratic debauchery. It is but reasonable to presume, that a man so universally obnoxious should have suffered, to some extent, from that calumny which the best find it difficult to repel, and practical evidence was furnished in certain public suits, that the probabilities against him fell short of legal proof. The impartial historian, however, will be likely to decide, that there was little in the known character of Prince Ernest to exempt him from sure suspicions touching what remained concealed." * * * * * The Chevalier LAVY, Member of the Council of Mines in Sardinia and of the Academy of Sciences in Turin, and described as being one of the most learned of Italian numismatists, died early in November. He had created at great cost a Museum of Medals, which he presented to his country, and which bears his name. THE HON. AUGUSTA MARY BYRON, better known as the Hon. Augusta Leigh, died near the end of October, at her apartments in St. James's Palace, in the sixty-eighth year of her age. She was the half-sister of the author of _Childe Harold_. Her mother was Amelia Darcy, Baroness Conyers, the divorced Duchess of Leeds, whose future happiness was thought to be foretold in some homely rhymes which Dr. Johnson loved to repeat: "When the Duke of Leeds shall married be To a fine young lady of high quality, How happy will that gentlewoman be In his Grace of Leeds' good company. She shall have all that's fine and fair, And the best of silk and satin shall wear; And ride in a coach to take the air, And have a horse in St. James's-square." The poet was not, in this instance, a prophet; for the young lady proved any thing but happy in his Grace of Leeds's good company. She was divorced in 1779, and married immediately to Captain John Byron, by whom she had one child, the subject of the present notice. She survived the birth a year, dying 26th January, 1784. Her son by her former marriage became the sixth Duke of Leeds. On the 17th August, 1807, the Hon. Augusta Byron was married at St. George's, Hanover-square, to her cousin, Lieut.-Colonel George Leigh, of the 10th, or Prince of Wales's Light Dragoons, son of General Charles Leigh, by Frances, daughter of Admiral Lord Byron and aunt of Augusta. By this marriage Augusta had several children, some of whom survive her. She had been a widow for some time. Lord Byron is known to have entertained for his sister a higher and sincerer affection than for any other person. His best friends in his worst moments fell under the vindictive stroke of his pen, or the bitter denunciation of his tongue. His sister escaped at all times. "No one," he writes, "except Augusta, cares for me. Augusta wants me to make it up to Carlisle: I have refused every body else, but can't deny her any thing." One of the first presentation copies of _Childe Harold_ was sent to his sister with this inscription:--"To Augusta, my dearest sister, and my best friend, who has ever loved me much better than I deserved, this volume is presented by her father's son, and her most affectionate brother." This attachment he has himself chosen to account for, but wholly without reason. "My sister is in town," he writes, "which is a great comfort; for, never having been much together, we are naturally more attached to each other." One of the last evenings of Byron's English life was spent with his sister, and to her his heart turned when, in the midst of his domestic afflictions, it sought for refuge in song. Those tender, beautiful verses, "Though the day of my destiny's over," were his parting tribute to her, and were followed by a poem in the Spenserian stanza, of equal beauty, beginning-- "My sister, my sweet sister! If a name Dearer and purer were, it should be thine." His will evinces in another way his affection for his sister. Nor was Augusta forgetful of her brother. She remembered him with that tender warmth of affection which women only feel, and publicly evinced her regard for him, by the monument which she erected over his remains in the little church of Hucknall. She bore, it may be added, no personal resemblance to her illustrious kinsman. * * * * * LIEUTENANT-GENERAL COUNT JEAN GABRIEL MARCHANT, grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, Chevalier of St. Louis, &c., &c., was born at Solbene, in the department of the Isere, in 1764, and in 1789 became an advocate at Grenoble. In 1791, he entered the army as commander of a company in the fourth battalion of his district, and in the long and illustrious period of the wars of the empire he served with eminent distinction. He was made a colonel on the 14th June, 1797, general of brigade in 1804, and general of division on the 31st December, 1805, after a series of brilliant services under Marshal Ney. He was in the battles of Jena, Magdeburg, Friedland, &c., and after the latter received the title of Count, and a dotation of 80,000f. He won new honors in Russia and Spain, but after the overthrow of his master, so commended himself to Louis XVIII., as to be confirmed by him in the command of the 7th military division. After abandoning Grenoble to Napoleon, he was tried by a council of war for unfaithfulness to the royal authority, but acquitted, and from 1816 he lived principally in retirement at his chateau of St. Ismier, near Grenoble, where he died the 12th of November, in the 86th year of his age. * * * * * MATTHIAS ATTWOOD, long well known in Parliament, died at his house, in Dulwich-park, on the 11th of November. He was in his seventy-second year, and had for some time been in feeble health, which induced him to retire from Parliament at the last general election, but he still occasionally attended to business in London till within a short period of his decease. Mr. Attwood entered Parliament in 1819, and from that time till 1847, continued to have a seat in the House of Commons. Mr. Attwood was one of the bankers of London, of the firm of Spooners and Atwood, and the founder of several successful joint-stock companies. * * * * * CARDINAL D'ASTRS, Archbishop of Toulouse, died near the end of September, at an advanced age. He was, it is said, the person who caused the bull of excommunication, pronounced by Pius VII. against Napoleon, in 1809, to be posted up on the walls of Paris. The bull was issued in consequence of the seizure by Napoleon of the States of the Pope, and their annexation to the French empire. The act of excommunication was followed by the arrest of Pius VII. through the instrumentality of General Radet. * * * * * THE SERASKIER EMIR PASHA, commanding the Turkish army in Syria, has just died, and his death has caused a great sensation at Constantinople. He was highly esteemed for his prudence, energy, and incorruptibility. The rapidity with which he succeeded, in October, 1850, in suppressing the revolution created by the Emir of Balbek, the care and skill with which he introduced the Tanzimaut and the Conscription into the Syrian provinces, had procured him great credit with the government. No successor has been appointed. * * * * * The French papers report the death, at Moscow, of M. ALEXIS DE SAINT PRIEST, a member of the French Academy, formerly a Peer of France, and the author of several historical works,--of which the most celebrated are his History of the Fall of the Jesuits, first published in 1844, and _Histoire de la Royauté_, 1846. Ladies fashions for January. [Illustration: I.] From the journals of fashion in London and Paris it appears that furs are very much worn abroad this winter, but hitherto we have not marked their very general adoption in New-York. The sable, ermine, and chinchilla are, as in previous years, most fashionable. Sable harmonizes well with every color of silk or velvet, and it is especially beautiful when worn with the latter material. Cloaks, when trimmed with fur, should not be either so large or so full as when ornamented with other kinds of trimming. Many are of the paletot form, and have sleeves. They are edged with a narrow fur border, the collar being entirely of fur. For trimming mantles Canada sable is much employed. This fur is neither so beautifully soft and glossy, nor so rich in color as the Russian sable; but the difference in price is very considerable. In tone of color minx comes next to Canada sable. Squirrel will not be among the favorite furs this winter; it will be chiefly used for lining cloaks and mantles. Muffs are of the medium size adopted during previous winters. We may add that fur is not excluded from mourning costume. _Bonnets_, although fanciful in their appearance, have a warm effect, being composed of plush, velvet, and terry velvet. Felt and beaver bonnets are also much in vogue, trimmed simply, but richly, generally with colors to match, and with drooping feathers. Genin has reproduced the latest London and continental modes. Bonnets of violet velvet are also trimmed with a black lace, upon which are sprinkled, here and there, jet beads; this lace is passed over the bonnet and fixed upon one of the sides by a noeud of ribbon velvet of different widths; two wide ends, which droop over the shoulder, serve to attach a quantity of coques or ends, also of different widths. The interior is decorated with hearts-ease of velvet and yellow hearts, and is fixed by several ends of velours opinglé ribbon, the same shade and color as the centre of the hearts-ease. _Mantelets_ of all sorts of shapes are worn: the most striking are very full, and have a hood. It requires great dexterity in cutting out the mantelet to give a graceful appearance to this innovation. The shape adopted is that called _capuchin bonne femme_ (or old woman's hood); it is very comfortable, and the least apt to spoil the flowers or feathers of the head-dress. There are also mantelets like the above, made of lace, lined with colored silk, which sets off the pattern; and this is most in favor. Every thing in preparation for this winter is far from plain, being trimmed with embroidery, &c., or jet, lace, ribbons, velvet, blond, braid, half-twisted silk, gold beads, colored embroidery, in short, all the array of rich ornaments possible will be the order of the ensuing season. I. _The Waistcoat Fashion_, of which we have heretofore given an illustration, is said to increase, and as it is graceful and convenient it would be more popular but for the ridicule cast on all innovations by the vulgar or profligate women who expose their natural shamelessness and ambition of notoriety by appearing in what is called the Bloomer costume--a costume which, it is scarcely necessary to say, has never yet been assumed by a really respectable woman. [Illustration: II.] II. _Girls Dress._--White satin capote black velvet dress with berthe; and sleeves trimmed with slight silk fringe. Trousers of English embroidered work. The Genin hat, of felt or beaver. [Illustration: III. IV.] III. _Walking Dress._--Bonnet of purple velvet with black feather; full mantelet of black velvet, trimmed with lace and buttons; dress of dark valencias, very full, and plain. Another walking dress consists of pelisse and paletot of Nankin cachmere, the former beautifully embroidered. IV. _Evening Costume._--Dress of Brussels net, worn over a jupon of white satin; the body is made en stomacher: the waist and point not very long; two small capes, one of delicately worked net, the other of plain net, meet, in a point in front en demi-coeur; the short sleeve is formed by four frills, two of worked net, and two of plain net, placed alternately; the skirt is long, and extremely full; it has eight flounces, reaching nearly to the waist, and graduating in width towards the top; they are placed alternately, of worked and plain net. 
22694	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections). THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE Of Literature, Art, and Science. Vol. II. NEW YORK, JANUARY 1, 1851. No. II. Transcriber's note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article. [Illustration] EDMUND BURKE. Edmund Burke is the most illustrious name in the political history of England. The exploits of Marlborough are forgotten, as Wellington's will be, while the wisdom and genius of Burke live in the memory, and form a portion of the virtue and intelligence of the British nation and the British race. The reflection of this superior power and permanence of moral grandeur over that which, at best, is but a vulgar renown, justifies the most sanguine expectations of humanity. It may be said of Burke, as it was said by him of another, that "his mind was generous, open, sincere; his manners plain, simple, and noble; rejecting all sorts of duplicity and disguise, as useless to his designs, and odious to his nature. His understanding was comprehensive, steady, and vigorous, made for the practical business of the state.... His knowledge, in all things which concerned his duty was profound.... He was not more respectable on the public scene, than amiable in private life.... A husband and a father, the kindest, gentlest, most indulgent, he was every thing in his family, except what he gave up to his country.... An ornament and blessing to the age in which he lived, his memory will continue to be beneficial to mankind, by holding forth an example of pure and unaffected virtue, most worthy of imitation, to the latest posterity." In the last of a series of articles by Mrs. S. C. Hall, entitled "Pilgrimages to English Shrines," and published in the London _Art Journal_, we have an account of a visit to the residences and to the grave of Burke, which we reproduce in the following pages, with its interesting illustrations. THE GRAVE OF EDMUND BURKE. It has been said that we are inclined to over-value great men when their graves have been long green, or their monuments gray above them, but we believe it is only then we estimate them as they deserve. Prejudice and falsehood have no enduring vitality, and posterity is generally anxious to render justice to the mighty dead; we dwell upon their actions,--we quote their sentiments and opinions,--we class them amongst our household gods--and keep their memories green within the sanctuary of our HOMES; we read to our children and friends the written treasures bequeathed to us by the genius and independence of the great statesmen and orators--the men of literature and science--who "_have been_." We adorn our minds with the poetry of the past, and value it, as well we may, as far superior to that of the present: we sometimes, by the aid of imagination--one of the highest of God's gifts--bring great men before us: we hear the deep-toned voices and see the flashing eyes of some, who, it may be, taught kings their duty, or quelled the tumults of a factious people: we listen to the lay of the minstrel, or the orator's addresses to the assembly, and our pulses throb and our eyes moisten as the eloquence flows--first, as a gentle river, until gaining strength in its progress, it sweeps onwards like a torrent, overcoming all that sought to impede its progress. What a happy power this is!--what a glorious triumph over time!--recalling or creating at will!--peopling our small chamber with the demigods of history; viewing them enshrined in their perfections, untainted by the world; hearing their exalted sentiments; knowing them as we know a noble statue or a beautiful picture, without the taint of age or feebleness, or the mildew of decay. If these sweet wakening dreams were more frequent, we should be happier; yes, and better than we are; we should be shamed out of much baseness--for nothing so purifies and exalts the soul as the actual or imaginary companionship of the pure and exalted; no man who purposed to create a noble picture would choose an imperfect model; no one who seeks virtue and cherishes honor and honorable things, will endure the degradation of ignoble persons or ignoble thoughts; no one ever achieved a great purpose who did not plant his standard on high ground. A little before the commencement of the present century, England was rich in orators, and poets, and men of letters; the times were favorable to such--events called them forth--and there was still a lingering chivalric feeling in our island which the utilitarian principles or tastes of the present period would now treat with neglect, if not contempt. The progress of the French Revolution agitated Europe; and men wondered if the young Corsican would ever dare to wield the sceptre wrenched from the grasp of a murdered king; people were continually on the watch for fresh events; great stakes were played for all over Europe, and those who desired change were full of hope. It was an age to create great men. Let us then indulge in visions of those, who, in more recent times than we have yet touched upon,--save in one or two PILGRIMAGES,--illumed the later days of the last century; and, brightest and purest of the galaxy was the orator, EDMUND BURKE. Ireland, which gave him birth, may well be proud of the high-souled and high-gifted man, who united in himself all the great qualities which command attention in the senate and the world, and all the domestic virtues that sanctify home; grasping a knowledge of all things, and yet having that sweet sympathy with the small things of life, which at once bestows and secures happiness, and, in the end, popularity. EDMUND BURKE was born on Arran Quay, Dublin, January the 1st, 1730; his father was an attorney: the name, we believe, was originally spelt Bourke. The great grandfather of Edmund inherited some property in that county which has produced so many men of talent--the county of Cork; the family resided in the neighborhood of Castletown Roche, four or five miles from Doneraile, five or six miles from Mallow--now a railroad station--and nearly the same distance from the ruins of Kilcolman Castle, whose every mouldering stone is hallowed by the memory of the poet Spenser and his dear friend, "the Shepherd of the Ocean," Sir Walter Raleigh. There can be little doubt that Edmund--a portion of whose young life was passed in this beautiful locality--imbibed much thought, as well as much poetry, from the sacred memories which here accompanied him during his wanderings. Nothing so thoroughly awakens the sympathy of the young as the imaginary presence of the good and great amid the scenes where their most glorious works were accomplished; the associations connected with Kilcolman are so mingled, that their contemplation produces a variety of emotions--admiration for the poem which was created within its walls--contemplation of the "glorious two" who there spent so much time together in harmony and sweet companionship, despite the storms which ravaged the country; then the awful catastrophe, the burning of the castle, and the loss of Spenser's child in the flames, still talked of in the neighborhood, were certain to make a deep impression on the imagination of a boy whose delicate health prevented his rushing into the amusements and society of children of his own age. There are plenty of crones in every village, and one at least in every gentleman's house to watch "the master's children" and pour legendary lore into their willing ears, accompanied by snatches of song and fairy tale. All these were certain to seize upon such an imagination as that of Burke, and lay the foundation of much of that high-souled mental poetry--one of his great characteristics; indeed, the circumstances of his youth were highly favorable to his peculiar temperament--his delicate constitution rendered him naturally susceptible of the beautiful; and the locality of the Blackwater, and the time-honored ruins of Kilcolman, with its history and traditions, nursed, as they were, by the holy quiet of a country life, had ample time to sink into his soul and germinate the fruitage which, in after years, attained such rich perfection. An old schoolmaster, of the name of O'Halloran, was his first teacher; he "played at learning" at the school, long since in ruins; and the Dominie used to boast that "no matter how great Master Edmund (God bless him) was, HE was the first who ever put a Latin grammar into his hands." Edmund was one of a numerous family; his mother, who had been a Miss Nagle,[1] having had fourteen or fifteen children, all of whom died young, except four,--one sister and three brothers: the sister, Mrs. French, was brought up in the faith of her mother, who was a rigid Roman Catholic, while the sons were trained in the father's belief. This, happily, created no unkindness between them, for not only were they an affectionate and a united family, but perfectly charitable in their opinions, each of the other's creed. As the future statesman grew older, it was considered wise to remove him to Dublin for better instruction, and he was placed at a school in Smithfield kept by a Mr. James Fitzgerald; but, fortunately for his strength of body and mind, the reputation of an academy in the lovely valley of Ballitore, founded in the midst of a colony of Quakers, by a member of that most benevolent and intelligent society--the well-known Abraham Shackleton--was spreading far and wide; and there the three young Burkes were sent in 1741, Edmund being then twelve years old. He was considered not so much brilliant, as of steady application. Here, too, he was remarkable for quick comprehension, and great strength of memory; indications which drew forth at first the commendation, and as his powers unfolded, the warm regard of his master; under whose paternal care the improvement of his health kept pace with that of his intellect, and the grateful pupil never forgot his obligations: a truly noble mind is prone to exaggerate kindnesses received, and never detracts from their value; it is only the low and the narrow-minded who underrate the benefits they have been blessed with at any period of their lives. In 1743 he entered Trinity College, Dublin, as a pensioner. He gained fair honors during his residence there, but, like Johnson, Swift, Goldsmith, and other eminent men, he did not distinguish himself so as to lead to any speculation as to his after greatness, although his elders said he was more anxious to acquire knowledge than to display it;--a valuable testimony. His domestic life was so pure, his friendships were so firm, his habits so completely those of a well-bred, well-born IRISH GENTLEMAN--mingling, as only Irish gentlemen can do, the suavity of the French with the dignity of English manners--that there is little to write about, or speculate upon, beyond his public words and deeds. Like most young men of his time, his first oratory was exercised at a club, and his first efforts as a politician were made in 1749, previous to his quitting the Dublin University, in some letters against Mr. Henry Brooke, the author of "Gustavus Vasa." His determination was the bar, and his entry at the Middle Temple bears date April 23, 1747. His youthful impressions of England and its capital are recorded in graceful language in his letters to those friends whom he never lost, but by death; one passage is as applicable to the present as to the past. "I don't find that genius, the 'rath primrose which forsaken dies,' is patronized by any of the nobility, so that writers of the first talents are left to the capricious patronage of the public." It was the taste of his time to desire, if not solicit patronage. In our opinion literature is degraded by _patronage_, while it is honored by the friendship of the good and great. Nothing is so loathsome in the history of letters as the debased dedications which men of mind some years ago laid at the feet of the so-styled "patron!" Literature in our days has only to assert its own dignity, to be true and faithful to the right, to avoid ribaldry, and preserve a noble and brave independence; and then its importance to the state, as the minister of good, must be acknowledged. It is only when forgetful of great purposes and great power, that literature is open to be forgotten or sneered at. Still the indifference an Englishman feels towards genius, even while enjoying its fruits, was likely enough to check and chill the enthusiasm of Burke, and drive him to much mystery as to his early literary engagements. One of his observations made during his first visit to Westminster Abbey, while hopes and ambitions quickened his throbbing pulse, and he might have been pardoned for wishing for a resting-place in the grand mausoleum of England, is remarkable, as showing how little he changed, and how completely the youth "Was father to the man." "Yet after all, do you know that I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a country church-yard than in the tomb of the Capulets? I should like, however, that my dust should mingle with kindred dust; the good old expression, 'family burying-grounds,' has something pleasant in it, at least to me." This was his last, as it seems to have been his first desire; and it has found an echo in many a richly dowered heart. "Lay me," said Allan Cunningham, "where the daisies can grow on my grave;" and it is well known that Moore-- "The poet of all circles,"-- and, as a poor Irishman once rendered it-- "The _darlint_ of his own," has frequently expressed a desire to be buried at Sloperton beside his children. The future orator found the law, as a profession, alien to his habits and feelings, for at the expiration of the usual term he was not even called to the bar. Some say he desired the professorship of logic at the University of Glasgow, and even stood the contest; but this has been disputed, and if he was rejected, it is matter of congratulation, that his talents and time were not confined to so narrow a sphere. At that period his mind was occupied by his theories on the Sublime and Beautiful, which were finally condensed and published in the shape of that essay which roused the world to admiration. Mr. Prior says, and with every show of reason, "that Mr. Burke's ambition of being distinguished in literature, seems to have been one of his earliest, as it was one of his latest, passions." His first avowed work was "The Vindication of Natural Society;" but he wrote a great deal anonymously; and the essay on "The Sublime and Beautiful," triumphant as it was, must have caused him great anxiety; he began it before he was nineteen, and kept it by him for seven years before it was published--a valuable lesson to those who rush into print and mistake the desire for celebrity, for the power which bestows immortality. The literature which is pursued chiefly in solitude, is always the best sort: society, which cheers and animates men in most employments, is an impediment to an author if really warmed by true genius, and impelled by a sacred love of truth not to fritter away his thoughts or be tempted to insincerity. The genius and noble mind of Burke constituted him a high priest of literature; the lighter, and it might be the more pleasurable enjoyments of existence, could not be tasted without interfering with his pursuits; but he knew his duty to his God, to the world, and to himself, and the responsibility alone was sufficiently weighty to bend a delicate frame, even when there was no necessity for laboring to live--but where an object is to be attained, principles put forth or combated, God or man to be served, the necessity for exertion always exists, and the great soul must go forth on its mission. That sooner or later this strife, or love, or duty--pursued bravely--must tell upon all who even covet and enjoy their labor, the experience of the past has recorded; and Edmund Burke, even at that early period of life, was ordered to try the effects of a visit to Bath and Bristol, then the principal resort of the invalids of the United Kingdom. At Bath he exchanged one malady for another, for he became attached to Miss Nugent, the daughter of his physician, and in a very little time formed what, in a worldly point of view, would be considered an imprudent marriage, but which secured the happiness of his future life; she was a Roman Catholic; but, however unfortunate dissenting creeds are in many instances, in this it never disturbed the harmony of their affection. She was a woman exactly calculated to create happiness; possessing accomplishments, goodness of heart, sweetness of disposition and manners, veneration for talent, a hopeful spirit to allay her husband's anxieties, wisdom and love to meet his ruffled temper, and tenderness to subdue it--qualities which made him frequently declare "that every care vanished the moment he sheltered beneath his own roof." Edmund Burke became a husband, and also continued a lover--and once presented to his ladylove, on the anniversary of their marriage, his idea of "a perfect wife."[2] For a considerable time after his marriage Burke toiled as a literary man, living at Battersea or in town, now writing, it is believed, jointly with his brother Richard and his cousin William a work on the "European Settlements in America," in two volumes, which, according to tradition, brought him, or them, only fifty pounds! then planning and commencing an abridgment of the "History of England." Struggling, it may be with difficulties brought on by his generous nature, and which his father's allowance of two hundred a year, and his own industry and perseverance could hardly overcome, the birth of a son was an additional stimulant to exertion, and, in conjunction with Dodsley, he established the _Annual Register_. This work he never acknowledged, but his best biographers have no doubt of his having brought forth and nurtured this useful publication. A hundred pounds a volume seems to have been the sum paid for this labor; and Burke's receipts for the money were at one time in the possession of Mr. Upcott. Long before he obtained a seat in Parliament he won the esteem of Doctor Johnson, who bore noble testimony to his virtue and talent, and what he especially admired, and called, his "affluence of conversation." For a time he went to Ireland as private secretary to Mr. Hamilton, distinguished from all others of his name as "single-speech Hamilton;" but disagreeing with this person, he nobly threw up a pension of three hundred a year, because of the unreasonable and derogatory claims made upon his gratitude by Hamilton, who had procured it for him. While in Dublin he made acquaintance with the genius of the painter Barry, and though his own means were limited, he persuaded him to come to England, and received him in his house in Queen Anne-street, where he soon procured him employment; he already numbered Mr., afterwards Sir Joshua, Reynolds amongst his friends; and his correspondence with Barry might almost be considered a young painter's manual, so full is it of the better parts of taste, wisdom, and knowledge. Mr. Burke was then on the threshold of Parliament, Lord Verney arranging for his _début_ as member for Wendover, in Buckinghamshire, under the Rockingham administration; another star was added to the galaxy of that brilliant assembly, and if we had space it could not be devoted to a better purpose than to trace his glorious career in the senate; but that is before all who read the history of the period, and we prefer to follow his footsteps in the under current of private life. He was too successful to escape the poisoned arrows of envy, or the misrepresentations of the disappointed. Certain persons exclaimed against his want of consistency, and gave as a reason that at one period he commanded the spirit of liberty with which the French Revolution commenced, and after a time turned away in horror and disgust from a people who made murder a pastime, and converted Paris into a shambles for human flesh. But nothing could permanently obscure the fame of the eloquent Irishman, he continued to act with such worthiness, that, despite his schism with Charles James Fox, "the people" did him the justice to believe, that in his public conduct, he had no one view but the public good. He outlived calumny, uniting unto genius diligence, and unto diligence patience, and unto patience enthusiasm, and to these, deep-hearted enthusiasm, with a knowledge, not only, it would seem, of all things, but of such ready application, that in illustration or argument his resources were boundless; the wisdom of the Ancients was as familiar to him as the improved state of modern politics, science, and laws; the metaphysics and logic of the Schools were to him as household words, and his memory was gemmed with whatever was most valuable in poetry, history, and the arts. [Illustration: GREGORIES.] After much toil, and the lapse of some time, he purchased a domain in Buckinghamshire, called "Gregories;" there, whenever his public duties gave him leisure, he enjoyed the repose so necessary to an overtaxed brain; and from Gregories some of his most interesting letters are dated.[3] Those addressed to the painter Barry, _whom his liberality sent to and supported in Rome_, are, as we have said, replete with art and wisdom; and the delicacy of both him and his excellent brother Richard, while entreating the rough-hewn genius to prosecute his studies and give them pleasure by his improvement, are additional proofs of the beautiful union of the brothers, and of their _oneness_ of purpose and determination that Barry should never be cramped by want of means.[4] After the purchase of Gregories[5] Mr. Burke had no settled town-house, merely occupying one for the season. In one of his letters to Barry, he tells him to direct to Charles-street, St. James's Square; he writes also from Fludyer-street, Westminster, and from Gerrard-street, Soho; but traces of his "whereabouts" are next to impossible to find. Barry was not the only artist who profited by Edmund Burke's liberality. Barret, the landscape-painter, had fallen into difficulties, and the fact coming to the orator's ears during his short tenure in power, he bestowed upon him a place in Chelsea Hospital, which he enjoyed during the remainder of his life. Indeed, this great man's noble love of Art was part and parcel of himself; it was no affectation, and it led to genuine sympathy with, not only the artist's triumphs, but his difficulties. He found time, amid all his occupations, to write letters to the irritable Barry, and if the painter had followed their counsel, he would have secured his peace and prosperity; but it was far otherwise: his conduct, both in Rome and after his return to England, gave his friend just cause of offence; though, like all others who offended the magnanimous Burke, he was soon forgiven. He never forgot his Irish friends, or the necessities of those who lived on the family estate; the expansive generosity of his nature did not prevent his attending to the minor comforts of his dependants, and his letters "home" frequently breathe a most loving and careful spirit, that the sorrows of the poor might be ameliorated, and their wants relieved. We ought to have mentioned before that Mr. and Mrs. Burke's marriage was only blessed by two sons; one died in childhood, the eldest grew up a young man of the warmest affections, and blessed with a considerable share of talent; to his parents he was every thing they could desire; towards his mother he exhibited the tenderness and devotion of a daughter, and his demeanor to his father was that of an obedient son, and most faithful friend; at intervals he enjoyed with them the pleasure they experienced in receiving guests of the highest consideration; amongst them the eccentric Madame de Genlis, who put their politeness to the test by the exercise of her peculiarities, and horrified the meek and amiable Sir Joshua Reynolds by the assumption of talents she did not possess. The publication of his reflections on the French Revolution, which, perhaps, never would have seen the light but for the rupture with Mr. Sheridan, which caused his opinions to be misunderstood, brought down the applause of Europe on a head then wearying of public life. But, perhaps, a tribute Burke valued more than any, remembering the adage--an adage which, unhappily, especially applies to Ireland--"no man is a prophet in his own country," was, that on a motion of the provost of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1790, the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him in full convocation, and an address afterwards presented in a gold box, to express the University's sense of his services. When he replied to this distinguished compliment, his town residence was in "Duke-street, St. James." His term of life--over-tasked as it was--might have been extended to a much longer period, but that his deeply affectionate nature, as time passed on, experienced several of those shocks inseparable from even moderate length of days; many of his friends died; among others, his sister and his brother; but still the wife of his bosom and his son were with him--that son whose talents he rated as superior to his own, whom he had consulted for some years on almost every subject, whether of a public or a private nature, that occurred, and very frequently preferred his judgment to his own. This beloved son had attained the age of thirty-four, when he was seized with rapid consumption. When the malady was recognized and acknowledged, his father took him to Brompton, then, as now, considered the best air for those affected with this cruel malady. "Cromwell House," chosen as their temporary residence, is standing still, though there is little doubt the rage for extending London through this once sequestered and rural suburb, will soon raze it to the ground, as it has done others of equal interest. [Illustration: CROMWELL HOUSE.] We have always regarded "Cromwell House," as it is called, with veneration. In our earliest acquaintance with a neighborhood, in which we lived so long and still love so well, this giant dwelling, staring with its whited walls and balconied roof over the tangled gardens which seemed to cut it off from all communication with the world, was associated with our "Hero Worship" of Oliver Cromwell. We were told he had lived there (what neighborhood has not its "Cromwell House?")--that the ghastly old place had private staircases and subterranean passages--some underground communication with Kensington--that there were doors in the walls, and out of the walls; and, that if not careful you might be precipitated through trap-doors into some unfathomable abyss, and encounter the ghost of old Oliver himself. These tales operated upon our imagination in the usual way; and many and many a moonlight evening, while wandering in those green lanes--now obliterated by Onslow and Thurloe Squares--and listening to the nightingales, have we watched the huge shadows cast by that solitary and melancholy-looking house, and, as we have said, associated it with the stern and grand Protector of England. Upon closer investigation, how grieved we have often been to discover the truth, for it destroyed not only our castles in the air, but their inhabitants; we found that Oliver never resided there, but that his son, Richard, had, and was a rate payer to the parish of Kensington for some time. To this lonely sombre house Mr. and Mrs. Burke and their son removed, in the hope that the soft mild air of this salubrious neighborhood might restore his failing strength; the consciousness of his being in danger was something too terrible for them to think of. He had just received a new appointment--an appointment suited to his tastes and expectations; he must take possession of it in a little time. He was their child, their friend, their treasure, their all! Surely God would spare him to close their eyes. How could death and he meet together? They entreated him of God, by prayer, and supplication, and tears that flowed until their eyes were dry and their eyelids parched--but all in vain. The man, in his prime of manhood, was stricken down; we transcribe, from an article in the _Quarterly Review_, on "Fontenelle's Signs of Death," the brief account of his last moments: "Burke's son, upon whom his father has conferred something of his own celebrity, heard his parents sobbing in another room at the prospect of an event they knew to be inevitable. He rose from his bed, joined his illustrious father, and endeavored to engage him in a cheerful conversation. Burke continued silent, choked with grief. His son again made an effort to console him. 'I am under no terror,' he said; 'I feel myself better and in spirits, and yet my heart flutters, I know not why. Pray, talk to me, sir! talk of religion; talk of morality; talk, if you will, of indifferent subjects.' Here a noise attracted his notice, and he exclaimed, 'Does it rain?--No; it is the rustling of the wind through the trees.' The whistling of the wind and the waving of the trees brought Milton's majestic lines to his mind, and he repeated them with uncommon grace and effect: 'His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow, Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines, With every plant, in sign of worship wave!' A second time he took up the sublime and melodious strain, and, accompanying the action to the word, waved his own hand in token of worship, and sank into the arms of his father--a corpse. Not a sensation told him that in an instant he would stand in the presence of the Creator to whom his body was bent in homage, and whose praises still resounded from his lips." The account which all the biographies of Burke give of the effect this bereavement produced upon his parents is most fearful even to read; what must it have been to witness? His mother seems to have regained her self-possession sooner than his father. In one of his letters to the late Baron Smith, he writes--"So heavy a calamity has fallen upon me as to disable me from business, and disqualifies me for repose. The existence I have--_I do not know that I can call life_. * * Good nights to you--I never have any." And again--"The life which has been so embittered cannot long endure. The grave will soon close over me, and my dejections." To Lord Auckland he writes--"For myself, or for my family (alas! I have none), I have nothing to hope or to fear in this world." And again in another letter--"The storm has gone over me, and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honors, I lie prostrate on the earth; I am alone, I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season of life, I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honor in the world." There is some thing in the "wail" and character of these laments that recalls the mournful Psalms of David; like the Psalmist he endeavored to be comforted, but it was by an effort. His political career was shrouded for ever--the _motive_ to his great exertions was destroyed--but his mind, wrecked as it had been, could not remain inactive. In 1795 his _private_ reply to Mr. Smith's letter, requesting his opinion of the expediency of and necessity for Catholic Emancipation, got into public circulation; and in that singular document, though he did not enter into the details of the question with as much minuteness as he would previously have done, he pleaded for the removal of the whole of the disabilities of the Roman Catholic body. From time to time he put forth a small work on some popular question. He originated several plans for benefiting the poor in his own neighborhood. He had a windmill in his park for the purpose of supplying the poor with cheap bread, which bread was served at his own table; and, as if clinging to the memory of the youth of his son, he formed a plan for the establishment of an emigrant school at Penn, where the children of those who had perished by the guillotine or the sword amid the French convulsions, could be received, supported, and educated. He made a generous appeal to government for the benefit of these children, which was as generously responded to. The house appropriated to this humane purpose had been inhabited by Burke's old friend, General Haviland; and after his death several emigré French priests sheltered within its walls. Until his last fatal illness Mr. Burke watched over the establishment with the solicitude of a friend and the tenderness of a father. The Lords of the Treasury allowed fifty pounds per month for its sustenance: the Marquis of Buckingham made them a present of a brass cannon and a stand of colors. When the Bourbons were restored in 1814 they relieved the government from this charge, and the institution was dissolved in 1820; in 1822 "Tyler's Green House," as it was called, was sold in lots, pulled down, and carried away; thus, Burke's own dwelling being destroyed by fire, and this building, sanctified by his sympathy and goodness, razed to the ground, little remains to mark the locality of places where all the distinguished men of the age congregated around "the Burkes," and where Edmund, almost to the last, extended hospitalities, coveted and appreciated by all who had any pretensions to be considered as distinguished either by talent or fortune. It has frequently struck us as strange, the morbid avidity with which the world seizes upon the slightest evidence of abstraction in great men, to declare that their minds are fading, or impoverished: the public gapes for every trifle calculated to prove that the palsied fingers can no longer grasp the intellectual sceptre, and that the well-worn and hard-earned bays are as a crown of thorns to the pulseless brow. It was, in those days whispered in London that the great orator had become imbecile immediately after the publication of his "_Letter to a Noble Lord_;" and that he wandered about his park kissing his cows and horses. A noble friend went immediately to Beaconsfield to ascertain the truth, and was delighted to find Mr. Burke anxious to read him passages from "A Regicide Peace," which he was then writing; after a little delicate manoeuvring on his part, to ascertain the truth, Mr. Burke told him a touching incident which proved the origin of this calumny on his intellectual powers. An old horse, a great favorite of his son's, and his constant companion, when both were full of life and health, had been turned out at the death of his master, to take his run of the park for the remainder of his life, at ease, with strict injunctions to the servants that he should neither be ridden, nor molested by any one. While musing one day, loitering along, Mr. Burke perceived this worn-out old servant come close up to him, and at length, after some moments spent in viewing his person, followed by seeming recollection and confidence, he deliberately rested his head upon his bosom. The singularity of the action itself, the remembrance of his dead son, its late master, who occupied so much of his thoughts at all times, and the apparent attachment, tenderness and intelligence of the creature towards him--as if it could sympathize with his inward sorrow--rushing at once into his mind, totally overpowered his firmness, and throwing his arms over its neck, he wept long and loudly. But though his lucid and beautiful mind, however agonized, remained unclouded to the last, and his affections glowed towards his old friends as warmly as ever, his bodily health was failing fast; one of the last letters he ever dictated was to Mary Leadbeater, the daughter of his old friend and master, Shackleton; this lady was subsequently well known in Ireland as the author of "Cottage Dialogues." The first literary attempt, we believe, made towards the improvement of the lower order of Irish, was by her faithful and earnest pen; to this letter, congratulating her on the birth of a son, is a PS. where the invalid says:--"I have been at Bath these four months to no purpose, and am therefore to be removed to my own house at Beaconsfield to-morrow, _to be nearer to a habitation more permanent, humbly_ and fearfully hoping that my better part may find a better mansion!" It would seem as if he anticipated the hour of his passing away. He sent sweet messages of loving-kindness to all his friends, entreating and exchanging pardons; recapitulated his motives of action on various political emergencies; gave directions as to his funeral, and then listened with attention to some serious papers of Addison on religious subjects and on the immortality of the soul. His attendants after this were in the act of removing him to his bed, when indistinctly invoking a blessing on all around him, he sunk down and expired on the 9th of July, 1797, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. "His end," said his friend Doctor Lawrence, "was suited to the simple greatness of mind which he displayed through life; every way unaffected, without levity, without ostentation, full of natural grace and dignity, he appeared neither to wish nor to dread, but patiently and placidly to await the appointed hour of his dissolution." [Illustration: THE TOMB OF EDMUND BURKE.] It was almost impossible to people, in fancy, the tattered and neglected churchyard of Beaconsfield as it now is--with those who swelled the funeral pomp of the greatest ornament of the British senate; to imagine the titled pall-bearers, where the swine were tumbling over graves, and rooting at headstones. Seldom, perhaps never, in England, had we seen a churchyard so little cared for as that, where the tomb of Waller[6] renders the surrounding disorder "in a sacred place" more conspicuous by its lofty pretension, and where the church is regarded as the mausoleum of Edmund Burke.[7] Surely the "decency of churchyards" ought to be enforced, if those to whom they should be sacred trusts, neglect or forget their duty. That the churchyard of Beaconsfield, which has long been considered "a shrine," should be suffered to remain in the state in which we saw it, is a disgrace not only to the town, but to England; it was differently cared for during Burke's lifetime, and though, like that of the revered Queen Dowager, his Will expressed a disinclination to posthumous honors, and unnecessary expense, never were mourners more sincere--never did there arise to the blue vault of heaven the incense of greater, and more deep-felt sorrow, than from the multitude who assembled in and around the church, while the mortal remains of Edmund Burke were placed in the same vault with his son and brother. The tablet to his memory, placed on the wall of the south aisle of the church, records his last resting-place with the relatives just named; as well as the fact of the same grave containing the body of his "entirely beloved and incomparable wife," who died in 1812, at the age of 76. Deeply do we deplore that the dwelling where he enjoyed so much that renders life happy, and suffered what sanctifies and prepares us for a better world, exists no longer; but his name is incorporated with our history, and adds another to the list of the great men who have been called into life and received their first and best impressions in Ireland; and if Ireland had given nothing to her more prosperous sister than the extraordinary men of the past and present century, she merits her gratitude for the gifts which bestow so much honor and glory on the United Kingdoms. Mrs. Burke, previous to her death, sold the mansion to her neighbor, Mr. John Du Pré, of Wilton Park. Mrs. Haviland, Mr. Burke's niece, lived with her to the last, though she did not receive the portion of her fortune to which she was considered entitled. Her son, Thomas Haviland Burke, grand-nephew of Edmund, became the lineal representative of the family; but the library, and all the tokens of respect and admiration which he received from the good, and from the whole world, went with the property to _Mrs. Burke's_ nephew, Mr. Nugent. Some of the sculpture which ornamented the house now graces the British Museum. The mansion was burnt on the 23d of April, 1813. The ground where it stood is unequal; and some of the park wall remains, and fine old trees still flourish, beneath whose shade we picture the meeting between the mourning father and the favorite horse of his lost son. There is a full-length portrait of Edmund Burke in the Examination Hall of the Dublin University. All such portraits should be copied, and preserved in our own Houses of Parliament, a meet honor to the dead, and a stimulant to the living to "go and do likewise." It hardly realizes, however, the _ideal_ of Burke; perhaps no portrait could. What Miss Edgeworth called the "ground-plan of the face" is there; but we must imagine the varying expression, the light of the bright quick eyes, the eloquence of the unclosed lips, the storm which could gather thunder-clouds on the well-formed brow; but we have far exceeded our limits without exhausting our subject, and, with Dr. Parr, still would speak of Burke: "Of Burke, by whose sweetness Athens herself would have been soothed, with whose amplitude and exuberance she would have been enraptured and on whose lips that prolific mother of genius and science would have adored, confessed--the Goddess of Persuasion." Alas! we have lingered long at his shrine, and yet our praise is not half spoken. --[The notes and drawings for this paper were contributed by F. W. Fairhold, of the Society of Antiquaries.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Sylvanus Spenser, the eldest son of the Poet Spenser, married Ellen Nagle, eldest daughter of David Nagle, Esq., ancestor of the lady, who was mother to Edmund Burke. [2] This as a picture is outlined with so delicate a pencil, and colored with such mingled purity and richness of tone, that we transcribe a few passages, as much in honor of the man who could write, as the woman who could inspire such praise:-- "The character of ---- "She is handsome, but it is beauty not arising from features, from complexion, or from shape. She has all three in a high degree, but it is not by these she touches a heart; it is all that sweetness of temper, benevolence, innocence, and sensibility, which a face can express, that forms her beauty. She has a face that just raises your attention at first sight; it grows on you every moment, and you wonder it did no more than raise your attention at first. "Her eyes have a mild light, but they awe when she pleases; they command like a good man out of office, not by authority, but by virtue. "Her stature is not tall, she is not made to be the admiration of every body, but the happiness of one. "She has all the firmness that does not exclude delicacy--she has all the softness that does not imply weakness. * * "Her voice is a soft, low, music, not formed to rule in public assemblies, but to charm those who can distinguish a company from a crowd: it has this advantage--_you must come close to her to hear it_. "To describe her body, describes her mind; one is the transcript of the other; her understanding is not shown in the variety of matters it exerts itself on, but in the goodness of the choice she makes. "She does not display it so much in saying or doing striking things, as in avoiding such as she ought _not_ to say or do." * * * * * "No persons of so few years can know the world better; no person was ever less corrupted by the knowledge. "Her politeness flows rather from a natural disposition to oblige, than from any rules on that subject, and therefore never fails to strike those who understand good breeding, and those who do not." * * * * * "She has a steady and firm mind, _which takes no more from the solidity of the female character, than the solidity of marble does from its polish and lustre_. She has such virtues as make us value the truly great of our own sex. She has all the winning graces that make us love even the faults we see in the weak and beautiful in hers." [3] Our cut exhibits all that now remains of Gregories--a few walls and a portion of the old stables. Mrs. Burke, before her death, sold the mansion to her neighbor, Mr. John Du Pré, of Wilton Park. It was destroyed by fire soon afterwards. [4] During Barry's five years' residence abroad he earned nothing for himself, and received no supplies save from Edmund and Richard Burke. [5] Mr. Prior says in his admirable Life of Burke--"How the money to effect this purchase was procured has given rise to many surmises and reports; a considerable portion was his own, the bequest of his father and elder brother. The Marquis of Rockingham offered the loan of the amount required to complete the purchase; the Marquis was under obligations to him publicly, and privately for some attention paid to the business of his large estates in Ireland. Less disinterested men would have settled the matter otherwise--the one by quartering his friend, the other, by being quartered, on the public purse. To the honor of both, a different course was pursued." [6] Waller was a resident in this vicinity, in which his landed property chiefly lay. He lived in the family mansion named Well's Court, a property still in the possession of his descendants. His tomb is a table monument of white marble, upon which rises a pyramid, resting on skulls with bat's wings; it is a peculiar but picturesque addition to the churchyard, and, from its situation close to the walk, attracts much attention. [7] Our engraving exhibits his simple tablet, as seen from the central aisle of the church, immediately in front of the pew in which Burke and his family always sat. POEMS BY S. G. GOODRICH[8] For the last twenty years the name of Mr. Goodrich has been very constantly associated with American literature. He commenced as a publisher, in Boston, and was among the first to encourage by liberal copyrights, and to make attractive by elegant editions, the works of American authors. One of his earliest undertakings was a collection of the novels of Charles Brockden Brown, with a memoir of that author, by his widow, with whom he shared the profits. In 1828 he began "The Token," an annual literary souvenir, which he edited and published fourteen years. In this appeared the first fruits of the genius of Cheney, who has long been acknowledged the master of American engravers; and the first poems and prose writings of Longfellow, Willis, Mellen, Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Child, Mrs. Sigourney, and other eminent authors. In "The Token" also were printed his own earlier lyrical pieces. The work was of the first rank in its class, and in England as well as in this country it was uniformly praised. In 1831 an anonymous romance was published by Marsh & Capen, of Boston. It was attributed by some to Willis, and by others to Mrs. Child, then Miss Francis. It illustrated a fine and peculiar genius, but was soon forgotten. Mr. Goodrich appreciated its merits, and applied to the publishers for the name of the author, that he might engage him as a contributor to "The Token." They declined to disclose his secret, but offered to forward a letter to him. Mr. Goodrich wrote one, and received an answer signed by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, many of whose best productions, as "Sights from a Steeple," "Sketches under an Umbrella," "The Prophetic Pictures," "Canterbury Pilgrims," &c., appeared in this annual. In 1839, Mr. Goodrich suggested to Mr. Hawthorne the publication of a collection of his tales, surrendering his copyrights to several of them for this purpose; but so little were the extraordinary qualities of this admirable author then understood, that the publishers would not venture upon such an experiment without an assurance against loss, which Mr. Goodrich, as his friend, therefore gave. The public judgment will be entitled to little respect, if the copyright of the works of Hawthorne be not hereafter a most ample fortune. Mr. Goodrich soon abandoned the business of publishing, and, though still editing "The Token," devoted his attention chiefly to the writing of that series of educational works, known as _Peter Parley's_, which has spread his fame over the world. The whole number of these volumes is about sixty. Among them are treatises upon a great variety of subjects, and they are remarkable for simplicity of style and felicity of illustration. Mr. Goodrich has accomplished a complete and important revolution in juvenile reading, substituting truth and nature for grotesque fiction in the materials and processes of instruction, and his method has been largely imitated, at home and abroad. In England many authors and publishers have disgraced the literary profession by works under the name of "Parley," with which he has had nothing to do, and which have none of his wise and genial spirit. Besides his writings under this pseudonym, Mr. Goodrich has produced several works of a more ambitious character, which have been eminently popular. Among them is a series entitled "The Cabinet Library," embracing histories, biographies, and essays in science; "Universal Geography," in an octavo volume of one thousand pages; and a "History of all Nations," in two large octavos, in which he has displayed such research, analysis, and generalization, as should insure for him an honorable rank among historians. We cannot better illustrate his popularity than by stating the fact, that more than four hundred thousand volumes of his various productions are now annually sold in this country and Europe. No living writer is, therefore, as much read, and in the United States hardly a citizen now makes his first appearance at the polls, or a bride at the altar, to whose education he has not in a large degree contributed. For twenty years he has preserved the confidence of parents and teachers of every variety of condition and opinion, by the indefectible morality and strong practical sense, which are universally understood and approved. Like many other eminent persons, Mr. Goodrich lets sought occasional relaxation from the main pursuits of his life in poetry, and the volume before us contains some forty illustrations of his abilities, as a worshipper of the muse whose temples are most thronged, but who is most coy and most chary of her inspiration. They have for the most part been previously printed in "The Token," or in literary journals, but a few are now published the first time. In typographical and pictorial elegance the book is unique. It is an exhibition of the success of the first attempt to rival the London and Paris publishers in woodcut embellishment and general beauty of execution. That Mr. Goodrich possesses the poetical faculty in an eminent degree, no one has doubted who has read his fine lines "To Lake Superior:" [Illustration] Father of Lakes! thy waters bend, Beyond the eagle's utmost view, When, throned in heaven, he sees thee send Back to the sky its world of blue. Boundless and deep the forests weave Their twilight shade thy borders o'er, And threatening cliffs, like giants, heave Their rugged forms along thy shore. Nor can the light canoes, that glide Across thy breast like things of air, Chase from thy lone and level tide, The spell of stillness deepening there. Yet round this waste of wood and wave, Unheard, unseen, a spirit lives, That, breathing o'er each rock and cave, To all, a wild, strange aspect gives. The thunder-riven oak, that flings Its grisly arms athwart the sky, A sudden, startling image brings To the lone traveller's kindled eye. The gnarled and braided boughs that show Their dim forms in the forest shade, Like wrestling serpents seem, and throw Fantastic horrors through the glade. The very echoes round this shore, Have caught a strange and gibbering tone, For they have told the war-whoop o'er, Till the wild chorus is their own. Wave of the wilderness, adieu-- Adieu, ye rocks, ye wilds, ye woods! Roll on, thou Element of blue, And fill these awful solitudes! Thou hast no tale to tell of man. God is thy theme. Ye sounding caves, Whisper of Him, whose mighty plan, Deems as a bubble all your waves! The "Birth Night of the Humming Birds" has been declared by the London _Athenæum_ equal to Dr. Drake's "Culprit Fay," and it may be regarded as in its way the best specimen of Mr. Goodrich's talents. It is too long to be quoted in these paragraphs. In descriptions of nature he is uniformly successful, presenting his picture with force and distractness. There are many examples of this in one of his longest poems, "The Mississippi," in which the traditions that cluster around the Father of Waters, and the advances of civility along his borders, are graphically presented. The river is described as rising. [Illustration] "Far in the west, where snow-capt mountain's rise, Like marble shafts beneath heaven's stooping dome, And sunset's charming curtain drapes the skies As if Enchantment there would build her home. The bard laments that "though these scenes are fair As fabled Arcady, the sylph and fay, And all their gentle kindred, shun the air, Where car and steamer make their stormy way;" Yet trusts that in a future time, "Perchance some Cooper's magic art may wake The sleeping legends of this mighty vale, And twine fond memories round the lawn and lake, Where Warrior fought or Lover told his tale. In the volume are several allegorical pieces of much merit, of which the most noticeable are the "Two Windmills," "The Bubble Chase," and "The Rainbow Bridge." Several smaller poems are distinguished for a quaint simplicity, reminding us of the old masters of English verse; and others, for refined sentiment, as the "Old Oak," of which the key-note is in the lines, Here is the grassy knoll I used to seek At summer noon, beneath the spreading shade, And watch the flowers that stooped, with glowing cheek, To meet the romping ripples as they played. [Illustration] The longest of Mr. Goodrich's poems is "The Outcast." It was first published many years ago, and it appears now with the improvements suggested by reflection and criticism. Its fault is, a certain _intensity_, but it has noble passages, betraying a careful study and profound appreciation of the subtler operations of the mind, particularly, when, in its most excited action, it is influenced by the observation of nature. The volume will take its place in the cabinets of our choice literature, and will be prized the more for the fact that by selecting American themes for his most elaborate compositions, Mr. Goodrich has made literature subservient to the purposes of patriotism. FOOTNOTES: [8] _Poems: by S. G. Goodrich._ New York, G. P. Putnam. [The designs--about forty--are by Mr. Billings, the engravings by Bobbett & Edmonds, Lossing & Barrett, Hartwell, and others, and the printing by Mr. John F. Trow.] [Illustration] RICHARD B. KIMBALL. The author of "_St. Leger_" was by that admirable work placed in the leading rank of the new generation of American writers. The appearance in the _Knickerbocker_ for the present month, of the commencement of a sequel to "St. Leger," makes it a fit occasion for some notice of his life and genius. Mr. Kimball is by inheritance of the first class of New-England men, numbering in his family a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a President of the Continental Congress, and several other persons honorably distinguished in affairs. He is a native of Lebanon, in New Hampshire, where his father is still living--the centre of a circle bound to him by their respect for every public and private virtue. Though he had completed his preparatory studies before he was eleven years of age, he did not enter college until he was nearly thirteen. Four years after, in 1834, he graduated at Dartmouth, and upon devoting one year to the study of the law, he went abroad; travelled in England, Scotland, and Germany; and resided some time in Paris, where he attended the lectures of Majendie, Broussais, and Louis, in medicine, and those of the elder Dupin, and Coulanges, in law. Returning, he entered upon the practice of the law, at Waterford, in this state, but soon removed to New-York, where a year's devotion to his profession made him familiar with its routine. In 1842 he went a second time to Europe, renewing the associations of his travel and student-life in Great Britain and on the continent. Since, for seven years, he has been an industrious and successful lawyer in New-York. Although but few works are known to be from the pen of Mr. Kimball, he has been a voluminous author. The vigorous and polished style of his avowed compositions, is never attained but by long practice. He has been, we believe, a contributor to every volume of the _Knickerbocker_ published since 1842. He printed in that excellent magazine his "Reminiscences of an Old Man," "The Young Englishman," and the successive chapters of "St. Leger, or the Threads of Life." This last work was published by Putnam, and by Bentley in London, about one year ago, and it passed rapidly through two English and three American editions. It was not raised into an ephemeral popularity, as so many works of fiction easily are, for their lightness, by careless applauses; it arrested the attention of the wisest critics; commanded their study, and received their verdict of approval as a book of learning and reflection in the anatomy of human life. Mr. Kimball had been eminent in his class at college for a love of Greek literature, and he studied the Roman also with reverent attention. It was his distinction that he had thoroughly acquainted himself with the philosophy of the ancients. At a later day he was attracted by the speculation of the Germans, and a mastery of their language enabled him to enter fully into the spirit of Spinosa, Kant, and Fichte, as he did into that of the finer intelligences, Göethe and Richter, and pervading he found the passion to know Whence are we? What are we? Whither do we go? In "St. Leger," a mind predisposed to superstition by some vague prophecies respecting the destiny of his family--a mind inquisitive, quick, and earnest, but subject to occasional melancholy, as the inherited spell obtains a mastery of the reason--is exposed to the influences of a various study, and startling experiences, all conceived with a profound knowledge of human nature, and displayed with consummate art; having a metaphysical if not a strictly dramatic unity; and conducting by the subtlest processes, to the determination of these questions, and the flowering of a high and genial character; as Professor Tayler Lewis expresses it, "at rest, deriving substantial enjoyment from the present, because satisfied with respect to the ultimate, and perfect, and absolute."[9] Aside from its qualities as a delineation of a deep inner experience, "St. Leger" has very great merits as a specimen of popular romantic fiction. The varied characters are admirably drawn, and are individual, distinct, and effectively contrasted. The incidents are all shaped and combined with remarkable skill; and, as the _Athenaeum_ observes, "Here, there, everywhere, the author gives evidence of passionate and romantic power." In some of the episodes, as in that of Wolfgang Hegewisch, for example, in which are illustrated the tendency of a desperate philosophy and hopeless skepticism, we have that sort of mastery of the feelings, that chaining of the intensest interest, which distinguishes the most wonderful compositions of Poe, or the German Hoffman, or Zschokke in his "Walpurgis Night;" and every incident in the book tends with directest certainty to the fulfilment of its main design. The only other work of which Mr. Kimball is the acknowledged author, is "Cuba and the Cubans;" a volume illustrative of the history, and social, political, and economical condition of the island of Cuba, written during the excitement occasioned by its invasion from the United States, in 1849, and exhibiting a degree of research, and a judicial fairness of statement and argument, which characterizes no other production upon this subject. As it was generally admitted to be the most reliable, complete, and altogether important work, upon points commanding the attention of several nations, its circulation was very large; but it was produced for a temporary purpose, and it will be recalled to popularity only by a renewal of the inevitable controversies which await the political relations of the Antilles. "A Story of Calais," in the following pages, is an example of Mr. Kimball's success as a tale writer. Though less remarkable than passages in "St. Leger," it will vindicate his right to a place among the chief creators of such literature among us. FOOTNOTES: [9] The Inner-Life, a Review of St. Leger, by Professor Tayler Lewis, LL. D., &c. THE BISHOP OF JAMAICA. Among the distinguished strangers who visited the United States during the last season, no one has left a more favorable impression upon American society than the thoroughly accomplished scholar and highbred gentleman, the Bishop of Jamaica. We propose a brief sketch of his history: AUBREY GEORGE SPENCER, D.D. and D.C.L., was born in London on the 12th of February, 1795, and is the eldest son of the late Hon. William Spencer, the poet, whose father, Lord Charles Spencer, was a son of Charles the second Duke of Marlborough, and grandson of John Churchill, the illustrious hero of Ramillies and Blenheim. His Christian names were given by the Dukes of St. Albans and Marlborough, who were his great uncles and godfathers. His mother was Susan Jennison, a countess of the Holy Roman Empire, and a lady of singular beauty and accomplishments, to whom Mr. William Spencer was married at the court of Hesse Darmstadt, in 1791. Aubrey Spencer and his younger brother George (subsequently Bishop of Madras,) received the rudiments of learning at the Abbey School of St. Albans, whence the former was soon removed to the seminary of the celebrated Grecian, D. Burme, of Greenwich, and the latter to the Charter house. For some time previous to his matriculation at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, Mr. Aubrey Spencer was the private pupil of Mr. Mitchell, the very learned translator of Aristophanes. At the house of his father in Curzon street, at Melbourne House in Chiswick, Blenheim, and Woolbeednig, Hallowell Hill, (the seat of the Countess Dowager Spencer,) he was in frequent and familiar intercourse with many of the most distinguished contemporary statesmen, philosophers, and other men of letters; and in this society his own literary and conversational talents obtained an early celebrity, and commended him to the regard and friendship of Mr. Rogers, Mr. Campbell, Lord Byron, Mr. Hallam, Lord Dudley, Mr. Coutts, Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Francis, Mr. Homer, Thomas Moore, Mr. Southey, Lady Caroline Lamb, Mr. Crabb, and many other authors, with some of whom he still maintains a correspondence, while some have fallen asleep. With the society of the county of Oxford, and with that of the University, he was equally popular. In the early part of the year 1818, he took leave of his College, on being ordained deacon, and entered on a charge of the parish of Great Oakering, in the diocese of London. From this, which is a very unhealthy part of Essex, he removed at the end of the year to Bannam, Norfolk, where he became the neighbor and frequent guest of the Earl of Albemarle and the Bishop of Norwich. In March, 1819, he was admitted a priest, and soon after gave up the brilliant society in which he had hitherto lived, and devoted himself to the Church in the Colonies, where, for a quarter of a century, he has filled a distinguished part as archdeacon and bishop. His first visit to the Bermudas was undertaken for the recovery of his health, to which a colder climate has always been hostile; and when, in the year 1825, these islands were attached to the diocese of Nova Scotia, he was, at the instance of the late Primate, appointed to them as Archdeacon and Ecclesiastical Commissary to the Bishop of the see. Here he may be said to have created the Ecclesiastical Establishment which, under his conciliatory influence, has so rapidly and largely increased; and with it he soon associated the revival of Bishop Berkeley's Classical Academy, and a system of general instruction, of which a chain of schoolhouses, from either extremity of the island, are the abiding monuments. From his connection with the Bishop of Nova Scotia, the visits of Archdeacon Spencer to that colony were frequent, and many of the inhabitants both of that province and of New Brunswick retain a lively impression of his abilities, as they were illustrated in his preaching and in the practice of the other duties of his profession and position. In July, 1839, Dr. Spencer was consecrated by the venerable Archbishop of Canterbury, on the nomination of the crown, to the new see of Newfoundland, retaining still episcopal jurisdiction over the isles of Bermuda, under the extension of the Colonial Episcopate, which relieved the indefatigable Bishop of Nova Scotia of a large portion of his cares. The new Bishop was enabled, by the aid of the Society for the Promotion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to quadruple the number of his clergy within four years, and to consecrate more than twenty additional churches within the same period. A very grateful sense of the Bishop's exertions, and of the prosperous results of his unceasing labor, was manifested in the several addresses presented to his lordship on his subsequent translation to the diocese of Jamaica, by the clergy and laity of Newfoundland and Bermuda. In a paper which only purports to be a biographical notice of one who is still living, it is not desirable to do more than briefly advert to the principal topics and dates of a history which may hereafter be advantageously amplified and filled up. The real progress of the established church in Newfoundland at this period, would be best gathered from the Bishop's letters to the government and the religious societies, and to the clergy under his jurisdiction, but to these documents it is not likely that any biographer will have unreserved access during the life of his lordship. On the decease of Bishop Lipscombe, in April, 1843, Bishop Spencer was translated, under circumstances peculiarly indicative of the high opinion which was had of his ability by the Queen's ministers and the heads of the English church, to the see of Jamaica, one of the most important connected with the crown. He quitted his old diocese, as the papers of the day amply testify, with the respect of all denominations of Christians. A national ship, the Hermes, was appointed to convey him and his family and suite to Jamaica, where he arrived in the first week of November, having made the land on the auspicious festival of All Saints. The sermon delivered by him at his installation, in the cathedral at Spanish Town, was published at the request of the Speaker of the House of Assembly, while the Earl of Elgin, the Governor-General, in his speech to the Legislature, "congratulated the inhabitants of Jamaica on the appointment of a prelate of such approved talents and piety to that see." At every point of the Bishop's visitation, which he commenced by a convention of eighty clergymen, at Spanish Town, he was met by congratulatory addresses from the vestries, and other corporate bodies, declaratory of their confidence in his projected measures, and of their desire to aid him in the extension of the church. In consonance with his views the local Legislature passed an act increasing the number of island curates, and providing higher salaries for their support, while at the same time, they granted three thousand pounds as a first instalment to the Church Society, which had been organized by him, and to which the Governor-General contributed the annual sum of one hundred pounds. On his visit to England in 1845 and in the beginning of 1846, he was continually employed in preaching in aid of various charities, and in assisting at public meetings which had for their object the promotion of Christianity by the servants of the church. At the weekly meetings of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, in London, he was a constant attendant; and the increase of the funds of that association, and the conciliation to it of many powerful supporters, are result of measures which may be traced to his projection and tact. In his reply to an address from the clergy, on his return from a recent visitation, published at length in the last annual report of the parent Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, will be found the clearest exposition of the existing state and future prospects of the church in Jamaica; and a charge addressed by his lordship to the clergy of the Bahamas, on the subject of a difficult and embarrassing question, for the adjustment of which the Bishop received the thanks of the Queen's government and of the local Executive, is full of valuable information on the condition, principles and progress of the colonial establishment. In closing the last session of the Bahamas Legislature, Governor Gregory declared in his speech, with reference to this matter, that he considered the arrival of the Bishop in the island, at that juncture, as a convincing proof of the interposition of a special Providence in the conduct of human affairs. In 1822, the Bishop was married to Eliza, the daughter of John Musson, Esq., and the sister of a former friend at the University. He has had one son, now deceased, and has three daughters. As a man of letters, Bishop Spencer is entitled to a very honorable position. As a scholar and as a critic, he has evinced such abilities as, fitly devoted, would have secured fame; as a poet and essayist, he has unusual grace and elegance; and a collection of the various compositions with which he has relieved the monotony and arduous labors of his professional and official career, would vindicate his title to be classed with those prelates who have been most eminent in the literary world. The following poems, from autographs of Bishop Spencer, we believe are first given to the public in the _International_. "HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP." I tread the church-yard's path alone, Unseen to shed the gushing tear: I read on many a mould'ring stone Fond records of the good and dear. My soul is well-nigh faint with fear, Where doubting many went to weep; And yet what sweet repose is here-- "He giveth His beloved sleep!" The world has but a feverish rest, To weary pilgrims sometimes given, When pleasure's cup has lost its zest, And glory's hard-earned crown is riven. Here, softer than the dews of even Fall peaceful on the slumbering deep, Asleep to earth, awake to heaven-- "He giveth His beloved sleep." Yes, on the grave's hard pillows rise No cankering cares, no dreams of woe; On earth we close our aching eyes, And heavenward all our visions grow. The airs of Eden round us flow, And in their balm our slumbers steep. God calls His chosen home, and so "He giveth His beloved sleep." Ah! vainly could the human voice, In this dull world of sin and folly, Tell how the sainted dead rejoice In those high realms where joy is holy-- Where no dim shade of melancholy Beclouds the rest which angels keep, Where, peace and bliss united wholly "He giveth His beloved sleep." If on that brow so fair, so young, Affliction trace an early furrow, If Hope's too dear, delusive tongue Has broke its promise of to-morrow, Seek not the world again, to borrow The deathful print its votaries reap. Man gives his loved ones pain and sorrow, God "giveth His beloved sleep." * * * * * LINES WRITTEN ON WITNESSING A CONFIRMATION, IN BERMUDA, IN 1826. Veil'd in robes of snowy whiteness, Filled with love and sacred fear, Forms of beauty, eyes of brightness, At the altar's foot appear. There with hearts oppressed with feeling What their dying Saviour felt; At His throne of mercy kneeling Where their pious parents knelt, Many a youth, and many a maiden Meekly and devoutly bow, And from worldly cares unladen Ratify a Christian's vow. Hark! what voice subdued and holy In that deep and tender tone, Prays upon those suppliants lonely Christ's eternal benison! God! who call'st them to inherit Joys no mortal tongue can speak, Guide them with thy gracious Spirit Through the storms that round them break. When thou seest these children straying From the way thy word imparts, Then, thine anger yet delaying, Renovate their faltering hearts. If provoked by strong temptation From thy paths again they swerve, If in prideful elevation They forget the God they serve, Then by timely, mild correction, Lead them, wheresoe'er they roam, Fan the embers of affection For their Father and their Home. * * * * * MIDNIGHT. Midnight is on the earth: Flowers that in darkness bloom, Their odorous life pour forth Beneath the gloom. O'er palace and o'er stall Her sable curtain spread, Mantles within its pall The living dead! Midnight is on the sea: A soft and still repose Steals o'er the untroubled lea That darkly glows. Hushed in their ocean caves The winds their sleep prolong, Or mourn along the waves In dreamlike song. Midnight is in the Heaven: The planets of the air To her as vassals given, Wander and worship there. No sound comes from her throne, Piled in those lofty skies, Calmly she broods upon Her own deep mysteries. Yet in her silence deep, There breathes a language fraught With spell to wake and keep The energies of thought; And on her awful brow Strange characters appear, The portraitures to show Of the advancing year. Night is a fearful book, And in her darkling skies Did Seers and Magi look, Searching earth's destinies. But oh! had I the power To ancient science given, I would not use this hour To rifle Heaven. The night is Memory's sphere, In light and shadow cast; In her dim disk appear The last--the past. The lov'd ones of our youth Hasten'd to life's last bourne; Dear to the heart's deep truth, Will they return? Ask of the phantoms pale That haunt the hollow sky, Ask of the fitful gale That mourns and passes by, Invoke the spirits' home, Unsearchable, unseen-- Where do the wanderers roam? Are they as they have been? Silence is on the land, No voice comes from the sea, No spell can reach thy strand, Thou dim Eternity! Fled like the cloudy rack With morning's early breath, What night shall bring them back? The night that brings us death! * * * * * STETE SUPER VIAS ANTIGUAS. My heart lies buried with the past, 'Mid scenes where fleeting memory strays And time its darkening shadows cast O'er all the marks of by-gone days; I look in vain for ancient ways-- The olden paths are worn and gone; No friend that trod them here delays, I pass benighted and alone. Yet in this mist of life and mind, Which ever dark and darker grows, There is one living lamp enshrin'd, Whose ray in deathless lustre glows. That star-like light my God bestows To break the deep sepulchral gloom; Its beams Eternity disclose, And show the garden round the tomb. ENCOURAGEMENT OF LITERATURE. In the concluding volume of the Life of Southey, just published by the Harpers, is a letter from the poet in answer to one by Lord Brougham, on the subject of the encouragement of literature by government. "Your first question," writes Southey, "is, whether Letters would gain by the more avowed and active encouragement of the Government? "There are literary works of national importance which can only be performed by co-operative labor, and will never be undertaken by that spirit of trade which at present preponderates in literature. The formation of an English Etymological Dictionary is one of those works; others might be mentioned; and in this way literature might gain much by receiving national encouragement; _but Government would gain a great deal more by bestowing it. Revolutionary governments understand this: I should be glad if I could believe that our legitimate one would learn it before it is too late. I am addressing one who is a statesman as well as a man of letters, and who is well aware that the time is come in which governments can no more stand without pens to support them than without bayonets._ They must soon know, if they do not already know it, that the volunteers as well as the mercenaries of both professions, who are not already enlisted in this service, will enlist themselves against it; and I am afraid they have a better hold upon the soldier than upon the penman; because the former has, in the spirit of his profession and in the sense of military honor, something which not unfrequently supplies the want of any higher principle; and I know not that any substitute is to be found among the gentlemen of the press. "But neediness, my Lord, makes men dangerous members of society, quite as often as affluence makes them worthless ones. I am of opinion that many persons who become bad subjects because they are necessitous, because 'the world is not their friend, nor the world's law,' might be kept virtuous (or, at least, withheld from mischief) by being made happy, by early encouragement, by holding out to them a reasonable hope of obtaining, in good time, an honorable station and a competent income, as the reward of literary pursuits, when followed with ability and diligence, and recommended by good conduct. "My Lord, you are now on the Conservative side. Minor differences of opinion are infinitely insignificant at this time, when in truth there are but two parties in this kingdom--the Revolutionists and the Loyalists; those who would destroy the constitution, and those who would defend it, I can have no predilections for the present administration; they have raised the devil who is now raging through the land: but, in their present position, it is their business to lay him if they can; and so far as their measures may be directed to that end, I heartily say, God speed them! _If schemes like yours for the encouragement of letters, have never entered into their wishes, there can be no place for them at present in their intentions._ Government can have no leisure now for attending to any thing but its own and our preservation; and the time seems not far distant when the cares of war and expenditure will come upon it once more with their all-engrossing importance. But when better times shall arrive (whoever may live to see them), it will be worthy the consideration of any government whether the institution of an Academy, with salaries for its members (in the nature of literary or lay benefices), might not be the means of retaining in _its_ interests, as connected with their own, a certain number of influential men of letters, who should hold those benefices, and a much greater number of aspirants who would look to them in their turn. A yearly grant of ten thousand pounds would endow ten such appointments of five hundred pounds each for the elder class, and twenty-five of two hundred pounds each for younger men; the latter eligible, of course, and preferably, but not necessarily, to be elected to the higher benefices, as those fell vacant, and as they should have improved themselves. "The good proposed by this, as a political measure, is not that of retaining such persons to act as pamphleteers and journalists, but that of preventing them from becoming such, in hostility to the established order of things; and of giving men of letters, as a class, something to look for beyond the precarious gains of literature; thereby inducing in them a desire to support the existing institutions of their country, on the stability of which their own welfare would depend. "Your Lordship's second question,--in what way the encouragement of Government could most safely and beneficially be given,--is, in the main, answered by what has been said upon the first. I do not enter into any details of the proposed institution, for that would be to think of fitting up a castle in the air. Nor is it worth while to examine how far such an institution might be perverted. Abuses there would be, as in the disposal of all preferments, civil, military, or ecclesiastical; but there would be a more obvious check upon them; and where they occurred they would be less injurious in their consequences than they are in the state, the army and navy, or the church. "With regard to prizes, methinks they are better left to schools and colleges. Honors are worth something to scientific men, because they are conferred upon such men in other countries; at home there are precedents for them in Newton and Davy, and the physicians and surgeons have them. In my judgment, men of letters are better without them, unless they are rich enough to bequeath to their family a good estate with the bloody hand, and sufficiently men of the world to think such distinctions appropriate. For myself, if we had a Guelphic order, I should choose to remain a Ghibelline. "I have written thus fully and frankly, not dreaming that your proposal is likely to be matured and carried into effect, but in the spirit of good will, and as addressing one by whom there is no danger that I can be misunderstood. _One thing alone I ask from the legislature, and in the name of justice,--that the injurious law of copyright should be repealed, and that the family of an author should not be deprived of their just and natural rights in his works when his permanent reputation is established._ This I ask with the earnestness of a man who is conscious that he has labored for posterity." The publication of this letter, and of the correspondence between Southey and Sir Robert Peel, in which the poet declines being knighted, on account of his poverty--a correspondence eminently honorable to the late Prime Minister, has occasioned an eloquent letter from Walter Savage Landor to Lord Brougham on the same subject. CLASSICAL NOVELS. The _Edinburgh Review_ rebukes the daring of those uneducated story-tellers who profane by their intrusion the holy lands, the sacred names, and golden ages of art. We have acceptable specimens of the "classical novel" by Dr. Croly, Lockhart, Bulwer, and Collins (the author of "Antonini"), and in this country by Mrs. Child and William Ware; but nineteen of every twenty who have attempted such compositions have failed entirely. The Edinburgh Reviewer, after showing that the writers whom he arraigns have merely parodied the exterior life of our own time, proceeds-- "It is not uncommon to excuse such deviations from historical propriety by saying, that if the mere accidents have been neglected, the essential humanity has been only more fully realized: and those who quarrel with the neglect are stigmatized as pedants having no eyes except for the external. We think, however, that it will be found, in most cases where the plea is set up, that the humanity for which the sacrifice has been made is equally external with that which has been disregarded, and much more commonplace and conventional; being in fact, only the outer life of existing society. We are met, of course, by the triumphant answer that Shakspeare wrote Roman plays with a very slender knowledge of the classics. It would be sufficient to reply, that we are speaking of cases where ignorance of antiquity is not counterbalanced by any very exuberant or profound knowledge of human nature. Possibly posterity may have to deal with another myriad-minded dramatist whose poverty is better than other men's riches; but it must not be rashly presumed that he is likely to appear at all; or, if at all, with the same deficiency of learning which was not unnatural three hundred years back. Meanwhile, it is a perverse and pernicious paradox to maintain that Shakspeare's consummate genius was in any way connected with his 'little Latin and less Greek,' or that he might not have portrayed the Romans yet more successfully if he had known more about them. Believing this, we are not presuming, as the same absurd reasoning would have it, to set up ourselves against him. We do not say that any other man in his age or our own, however great his command of learning, could possibly mend those plays by touching them; but we say that Shakspeare himself, with increased knowledge, might have made them yet more perfect. It is easy to oppose inspiration to scholastic culture; to coin antitheses between nature and art; and to say that Shakspeare's Romans are more ideally true than Niebuhr's. There is some truth in all this; but it is not to the purpose. A poet like Burns may have really known more of classical life than a critic like Blair; nay, it may be that if Keats or Tennyson had been a senior medallist at Cambridge, they would not have produced any thing not only so beautiful but so purely Greek as _Endymion_ or _Oenone_. In what we were just saying we were thinking of the very highest minds. And, when we recollect how gracefully Milton could walk under the weight of his immense learning, we need not fear that the Alantean shoulders of Shakspeare would have been oppressed by a similar load. The knowledge of antiquity may operate on the recipient so as to produce mere bookishness and intellectual sophistication; but in itself it is a real and legitimate part of all knowledge, a portion of that truth with which poets are conversant, a lesson set in other schools than those where man is teacher. We know not what were Shakspeare's feelings with respect to his own deficiencies; but we cannot believe that the same modesty which besought his friend to chide with Fortune, 'the guilty goddess of his harmful deeds,' would have shrunk from confessing want of knowledge as an evil to be lamented, at the same time that it was imputed to want of opportunity. If he was self-centred, it was in his strength, not in his weakness. His eulogists may show the greatness of their faith in him by doubting whether he could have assimilated the learning which obstructs Ben Jonson's _Catiline_ and _Sejanus_; but we have no proofs that he thought so meanly of himself or of that which he happened not to possess. On the contrary, it may be argued, from the diligent use which he has made of such information as he had, that he would gladly have taken advantage of more. Arnold, in his Roman History, has noted the poet's perception of historical truth in a matter where it might well have been overlooked; and future critics may perhaps spend their time more profitably in discovering other indications of a like vigilant industry than in laboring to prove that the absence of so servile a virtue has been conducive to his preëminence as a creative artist." SLIDING SCALE OF THE INCONSOLABLES. The editor of _The Albion_ thus christens, while he translates, the following lively narrative, culled from the varied columns of the _Courrier des Etats Unis_. The malicious writer dates from Paris; but for such experiences our own city would probably be quite as prolific a hunting-field. * * * * * How rapid is the progress of oblivion with respect to those who are no more! How many a quadrille shall we see this winter, exclusively made up from the ranks of inconsolable widows! Widows of this order exist only in the literature of the tombstone. In the world, and after the lapse of a certain period, there is but one sort of widows inconsolable--those who refuse to be comforted, because they can't get married again! One of our most distinguished sculptors was summoned, a short time since, to the house of a young lady, connected by birth with a family of the highest grade in the aristocracy of wealth, and united in marriage to the heir of a title illustrious in the military annals of the empire. The union, formed under the happiest auspices, had been, alas! of short duration. Death, unpitying death, had ruptured it, by prematurely carrying off the young husband. The sculptor was summoned by the widow. He traversed the apartments, silent and deserted, until he was introduced into a bedroom, and found himself in presence of a lady, young and beautiful, but habited in the deepest mourning, and with a face furrowed by tears. "You are aware," said she, with a painful effort, and a voice half choked by sobs, "you are aware of the blow which I have received?" The artist bowed, with an air of respectful condolence. "Sir," continued the widow, "I am anxious to have a funeral monument erected in honor of the husband whom I have lost." The artist bowed again. "I wish that the monument should be superb, worthy of the man whose loss I weep, proportioned to the unending grief into which his loss has plunged me. I care not what it costs. I am rich, and I will willingly sacrifice all my fortune to do honor to the memory of an adored husband. I must have a temple--with columns--in marble--and in the middle--on a pedestal--his statue." "I will do my best to fulfil your wishes, madam," replied the artist; "but I had not the honor of acquaintance with the deceased, and a likeness of him is indispensable for the due execution of my work. Without doubt, you have his portrait?" The widow raised her arm and pointed despairingly to a splendid likeness painted by Amaury Duval. "A most admirable picture!" observed the artist, "and the painter's name is a sufficient guarantee for its striking resemblance to the original." "Those are his very features, sir; it is himself. It wants but life. Ah! would that I could restore it to him at the cost of all my blood!" "I will have this portrait carried to my studio, madam, and I promise you that the marble shall reproduce it exactly." The widow, at these words, sprung up, and at a single bound throwing herself towards the picture, with arms stretched out as though to defend it, exclaimed, "Take away this portrait! carry off my only consolation! my sole remaining comfort! never! never!" "But madam, you will only be deprived of it for a short time, and--" "Not an hour! not a minute! could I exist without his beloved image! Look you, sir, I have had it placed here, in my own room, that my eyes might be fastened upon it, without ceasing, and through my tears. His portrait shall never leave this spot one single instant, and in contemplating _that_ will I pass the remainder of a miserable and sorrowful existence." "In that case, madam, you will be compelled to permit me to take a copy of it. But do not be uneasy--I shall not have occasion to trouble your solitude for any length of time: one sketch--one sitting will suffice." The widow agreed to this arrangement; she only insisted that the artist should come back the following day. She wanted him to set to work on the instant, so great was her longing to see the mausoleum erected. The sculptor, however, remarked that he had another work to finish first. This difficulty she sought to overcome by means of money. "Impossible!" replied the artist, "I have given my word; but do not distress yourself; I will apply to it so diligently, that the monument shall be finished in as short a time as any other sculptor would require, who could apply himself to it forthwith." "You see my distress," said the widow; "you can make allowance for my impatience. Be speedy, then, and above all, be lavish of magnificence. Spare no expense; only let me have a masterpiece." Several letters echoed these injunctions, during the few days immediately following the interview. At the expiration of three months the artist called again. He found the widow still in weeds, but a little less pallid, and a little more coquettishly dressed in her mourning garb. "Madam," said he, "I am entirely at your service." "Ah! at last; this is fortunate," replied the widow, with a gracious smile. "I have made my design, but I still want one sitting for the likeness. Will you permit me to go into your bedroom?" "Into my bedroom? For what?" "To look at the portrait again." "Oh! yes; have the goodness to walk into the drawing-room; you will find it there, now." "Ah!" "Yes; it hangs better there; it is better lighted in the drawing-room than in my own room." "Would you like, madam, to look at the design for the monument?" "With pleasure. Oh! what a size! What profusion of decorations! Why, it is a palace, sir, this tomb!" "Did you not tell me, madam, that nothing could be too magnificent? I have not considered the expense; and, by the way, here is a memorandum of what the monument will cost you." "Oh, heavens!" exclaimed the widow, after having cast an eye over the total adding up. "Why, this is enormous!" "You begged me to spare no expense." "Yes, no doubt, I desire to do things properly, but not exactly to make a fool of myself." "This, at present, you see, is only a design; and there is time yet to cut it down." "Well, then, suppose we were to leave out the temple, and the columns, and all the architectural part, and content ourselves with the statue? It seems to me that this would be very appropriate." "Certainly it would." "So let it be, then--just the statue, alone." Shortly after this second visit, the sculptor fell desperately ill. He was compelled to give up work; but, on returning from a tour in Italy, prescribed by his physician, he presented himself once more before the widow, who was then in the tenth month of her mourning. He found, this time, a few roses among the cypress, and some smiling colors playing over half-shaded grounds. He brought with him a little model of his statue, done in plaster, and offering in miniature the idea of what his work was to be. "What do you think of the likeness?" he inquired of the widow. "It seems to me a little flattered; my husband was all very well, no doubt; but you are making him an Apollo!" "Really? well, then, I can correct my work by the portrait." "Don't take the trouble--a little more, or a little less like, what does it matter?" "Excuse me, but I am particular about likenesses." "If you absolutely must--" "It is in the drawing-room, yonder, is it not? I'll go in there." "It is not there any longer," replied the widow, ringing the bell. "Baptiste," said she to the servant who came in, "bring down the portrait of your master." "The portrait that you sent up to the garret last week, madam?" "Yes." At this moment the door opened, and a young man of distinguished air entered; his manners were easy and familiar; he kissed the fair widow's hand, and tenderly inquired after her health. "Who in the world is this good man in plaster?" asked he, pointing with his finger to the statuette, which the artist had placed upon the mantel-piece. "It is the model of a statue for my husband's tomb." "You are having a statue of him made? The devil! It's very majestic!" "Do you think so?" "It is only great men who are thus cut out of marble, and at full length; it seems to me, too, that the deceased was a very ordinary personage." "In fact, his bust would be sufficient." "Just as you please, madam," said the sculptor. "Well, let it be a bust, then; that's determined!" Two months later, the artist, carrying home the bust, encountered on the stairs a merry party. The widow, giving her hand to the elegant dandy who had caused the statue of the deceased to be cut down, was on her way to the mayor's office, where she was about to take a second oath of conjugal fidelity. If the bust had not been completed, it would willingly have been dispensed with. When, some time later, the artist called for his money, there was an outcry about the price; and it required very little less than a threat of legal proceedings, before the widow, consoled and remarried, concluded by resigning herself to pay for this funeral homage, reduced as it was, to the memory of her departed husband. A NEW SERIES OF TALES BY MISS MARTINEAU. There is scarcely in English literature a collection of tales by a simple writer that are better adapted for the instruction of the masses, than HARRIET MARTINEAU'S _Illustrations of Political Economy_. Without believing her a very profound philosopher, we are inclined to think these works could be remembered longer than any of her other writings. The pleasure and instruction we derived from them were recalled by the announcement in the London _Leader_ that she is to contribute a new series of stories for the people, to that journal. We copy the first of them. THE OLD GOVERNESS. The afternoon was come when the Morells must go on board. They were going to Canada at last, after having talked about it for several years. There were so many children, that it was with much difficulty they had got on for some years past; and there was no prospect for the lads at home. They had, with extreme difficulty, paid their way: and they had, to a certain extent, educated the children. That, however, was Miss Smith's doing. "We shall always feel, every one of us," said Mrs. Morell, with tears, to the elderly homely governess, "that we are under the deepest obligations to you. But for you, the children would have grown up without any education at all. And, for the greatest service you or any one could possibly render us, we have never been able to give you your due,--even as regards the mere money." "I can only say again," replied the governess, "that you do not look at the whole of the case. You have given me a home, when it is no easy matter for such as I am to earn one, with my old-womanish ways and my old-fashioned knowledge." "I will not hear any disparagement of your ways and your knowledge," interrupted Mrs. Morell. "They have been every thing to my children: and if you could have gone with us...." This, however, they all knew to be out of the question. It was not only that Miss Smith was between fifty and sixty, too old to go so far, with little prospect of comfort at the end of the journey; but she was at present disabled for much usefulness by the state of her right hand. It had been hurt by an accident a long time before, and it did not get well. The surgeon had always said it would be a long case; and she had no use whatever of the hand in the mean time. Yet she would not part with the baby till the last moment. She carried him on the left arm, and stood on the wharf with him--the mother at her side--till all the rest were on board, and Mr. Morell came for his wife. It was no grand steamer they were going in, but a humble vessel belonging to the port, which would carry them cheap. "Now, my love," said the husband. "Now, Miss Smith," taking the child from her. "Words cannot tell...." And if words could have told, the tongue could not have uttered them. It was little, too, that his wife could say. "Write to us. Be sure you write. We shall write as soon as we arrive. Write to us." Miss Smith glanced at the hand. She said only one word, "Farewell!" but she said it cheerfully. The steam-tug was in a hurry, and down the river they went. She had one more appointment to keep with them. She was to wave her handkerchief from the rocks by the fort; and the children were to let her try whether she could see their little handkerchiefs. So she walked quickly over the common to the fort, and sat down on the beach at the top of the rocks. It was very well that she had something to do. But the plan did not altogether answer. By the time the vessel crossed the bar it was nearly dark, and she was not quite sure, among three, which it was, and she did not suppose the children could see her handkerchief. She waved it, however, according to promise. How little they knew how wet it was! Then there was the walk home. It was familiar, yet very strange. When she was a child her parents used to bring her here, in the summer time, for sea air and bathing. The haven and the old gray bathing houses, and the fort, and the lighthouse, and the old priory ruins crowning the rocks, were all familiar to her; but the port had so grown up that all else was strange. And how strange now was life to her! Her parents gone, many years back, and her two sisters since; and now, the Morells! She had never had any money to lose, and the retired way in which the Morells lived had prevented her knowing any body out of their house. She had not a relation nor a friend, nor even an acquaintance, in England. The Morells had not been uneasy about her. They left her a little money, and had so high an opinion of her that they did not doubt her being abundantly employed, whenever her hand should get well. They had lived too much to themselves to know that her French, learned during the war, when nobody in England could pronounce French, would not do in these days, nor that her trilling, old-fashioned style of playing on the piano, which they thought so beautiful, would be laughed at now in any boarding school; and that her elegant needleworks were quite out of fashion; and that there were new ways of teaching even reading, spelling, and writing. She knew these things, and cautioned herself against discontent with the progress of society, because she happened to be left alone behind. She suspected, too, that the hand would not get well. The thing that she was most certain of was, that she must not rack her brain with fears and speculations as to what was to become of her. Her business was to wait till she could find something to do, or learn what she was to suffer. She thought she had better wait here. There was no call to any other place. This was more familiar and more pleasant to her than any other--the Morells' cottage being far away, and out of the question--and here she could live with the utmost possible cheapness. So here she staid. The hand got well, as far as the pain was concerned, sooner than she had expected. But it was in a different way from what she had expected. It was left wholly useless. And, though the time was not long, it had wrought as time does. It had worn out her clothes; it had emptied her little purse. It had carried away every thing she had in the world but the very few clothes she had on. She had been verging towards the resolution she now took for three or four weeks. She took it finally while sitting on the bench near the fort. It was in the dusk; for her gown, though she had done her best to mend it with her left hand, was in no condition to show by daylight. She was alone in the dusk, rather hungry and very cold. The sea was dashing surlily upon the rocks below, and there was too much mist to let any stars shine upon her. It was all dreary enough; yet she was not very miserable, for her mind was made up. She had made up her mind to go into the work-Pouse the next day. While she was thinking calmly about it a fife began to play a sort of jig in the yard of the fort behind her. Her heart heaved to her throat and the tears gushed from her eyes. In this same spot, fifty years before, she had heard what seemed to her the same fife. Her father was then sitting on the grass, and she was between his knees, helping to tassel the tail of a little kite they were going to fly; and, when the merry fife had struck up, her father had snatched up her gay Harlequin that lay within reach, and made him shake his legs and arms to the music. She heard her own laugh again now, through that long course of fifty years, and in the midst of these tears. All that night she pondered her purpose: and the more she considered, the more sure she was that it was right. "I might," thought she, "get maintained by charity, no doubt: I might call on any of the clergymen of this place, and the rich people. Or I might walk into the shops and tell my story, and I dare say the people would give me food and clothes. And, if it was a temporary distress, I would do so. I should think it right to ask for help, if I had any prospect of work or independence in any way. But I have none: and this, I am convinced, points out my duty. Hopeless cases like mine are those which public charity--legal charity--is intended to meet. My father little dreamed of this, to be sure; and the Morells little dream of it at this moment. But when do our parents and friends, when do we ourselves, dream of what our lot is really to turn out? Those old notions have nothing to do, if we could but think so, with the event. Nor has my disgust any thing to do with my duty. The plain fact is, that I am growing old--that I am nearly helpless--that I am cold and hungry, and nearly naked--that I have no friends within reach, and no prospect whatever. I am, therefore, an object for public charity, and I will ask for what is my due. I am afraid of what I may find in the workhouse;--the vicious people, the dirty people, the diseased people,--and, I suppose, not one among them who can give me any companionship whatever. "It is dreadful; but it can't be helped. And the worse the case is about my companions--my fellow-paupers--(for I must learn to bear the word)--the greater are the chances of my finding something to do for them;--something which may prevent my feeling myself utterly useless in the world. This is not being wholly without prospect, after all. I suppose nobody ever is. If it were not so cold now, I could sleep upon mine." It was too cold for sleep; and when, in the morning, she offered her old shawl in payment for her bed, assuring the poor old woman who let it that she should not want the shawl, because she was going to have other clothes, the woman shook her head sorrowfully,--her lodger looked so wan and chilled. She had no fear that there was any thought of suicide in the case. No one could look in Miss Smith's sensible face, and hear her steady, cheerful voice, and suppose that she would do any thing wild or impatient. "Who is that woman with a book in her hand?" inquired the visiting Commissioner, some months afterwards, of the governor of the workhouse. The governor could only say she was a single woman of the name of Smith, who had no use of her right hand. As to who she was, he could tell no more than this; but his wife had sometimes mentioned her as a different sort of person from those they generally saw there. She could not only read, but she read very well: and she read a great deal aloud to the old people, and in the infirmary. She talked unlike the rest, too. She said little; but her language was good, and always correct. She could not do much on account of her infirmity: but she was always willing to do what could be done with one hand; and she must have been very handy when she had the use of both. "I should have thought her eyes had been too weak for much reading," observed the Commissioner. "Has the medical officer attended to her?" The governor called his wife: and the wife called a pauper woman who was told the question. This woman said that it was not exactly a case for the doctor. Nobody that shed so many tears could have good eyes. Ah! the governor might be surprised; because Smith seemed so brisk in the daytime, and cheered the old people so much. But she made up for it at night. Many and many a time she cried the night through. "How do you know?" asked the Commissioner. "I sleep in the next bed, sir. I can't say she disturbs any body; for she is very quiet. But if any thing keeps me awake I hear her sobbing. And you need but feel her pillow in the morning. It is wet almost through." "And does that happen often?" "Yes, sir. Many a time when she has turned her back,--gone into the infirmary, or been reading to the old people,--I have got her pillow and dried it. And I have seen her do it herself, with a smile on her face all the time." The Commissioner walked away. Before he left the place, the woman Smith was beckoned out by the governor. She went with a beating heart, with some wild idea in her head that the Morells had sent, that some friends had turned up. While still in the passage, however, she said to herself that she might as well look to see her parents risen from the dead. The Commissioner had, indeed, nothing to tell. He wanted to ask. He did ask, as much as his delicacy would allow. But he learned nothing; except, indeed, what he ought to have considered the most important thing, the state of her mind about being there. About that, she was frank enough. She said over again to him what she had said to herself, about this being the right place for one in her circumstances. She considered that it would be an abuse of private charity for her to be maintained in idleness at an expense which might set forward in life some person in a less hopeless position. "You speak cheerfully, as if you were in earnest," said the Commissioner. "Of course, I am in earnest," she replied. And cheerful she remained throughout the conversation. Only once the Commissioner saw her eyes filled and a quiver on her lips. He did not know it; but he had unconsciously called her "Madam." Would she prefer the children's department of the House? There was no doubt that she could teach them much. Would she change her quarters? No. She was too old now for that. She should not be a good companion now for children; and they would be too much for her. Unless she was wanted-- By no means. She should be where she preferred to be. She preferred to be where she was. The Commissioner's lady soon after dropped in, and managed to engage Smith in conversation. But there was no result; because Smith did not choose that there should be. Perhaps she was more in the infirmary; and had oftener a warm seat by the fire, and was spoken to with more deference. But this might be solely owing to the way she made with the people by her own acts and manners. The invalids and the infirm grew so fond of her that they poured out to her all their complaints. She was favored with the knowledge of every painful sensation as it passed, and every uneasy thought as it arose. "I never thought to die in such a place as this," groaned old Johnny Jacks. "I wonder at that," said his old wife; "for you never took any care to provide yourself a better--to say nothing of me." And she went on to tell how Johnny had idled and drank his life away, and brought her here at last. Much of Johnny's idling and drinking having been connected with electioneering in an abominably venal city, he was a great talker on politics, and the state was made responsible for all his troubles. He said it was a shame that any body should die in a workhouse; he appealed to his neighbor Smith, who was warming his broth, whether it was not so? "Which is best?" she answered; "being here, or on a common, or the sea-sands? Because," she added, "there was a time when old people like us were left to die wherever they fell. There are countries now where old people die so. I should not like that." "You don't mean to say that you or any one likes being here?" "Oh, no; I don't mean to say that. But things are better than they were once: and they may be better again." "I shall not live to see that," groaned Johnny. "No; nor I. But it is something to think of." "D---- it," said Johnny, "I am not the better for any good that does not happen to me, nor to any body I know." "Are not you?" said neighbor Smith. "Well, now, I am." And so she was to the end. She died in that infirmary, and not very long after. When the Morells' letter came, it was plain that they had enough to do to take care of themselves. So she did not let them know,--in her reply, written by the hands of the schoolmaster,--where she was. The letter was so cheerful that they are probably far from suspecting, at this moment, how she died and was buried. As "from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," there was so much in her letter as rather surprised them about her hope and expectation that the time would come when hearty work in the vigorous season of life should secure its easy close; and when a greater variety of employment should be opened to women. There was more of this kind of speculation and less news and detail of facts than they would have liked. But it was a household event to have a letter from Miss Smith; and the very little children, forgetting the wide sea they had passed, began shouting for Miss Smith to come to them just (as it happened) when her ear was closing to every human voice. ON THE ATTEMPTS TO DISCOVER THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE. There are some peculiarities of style in the following performance, which is by no means devoid of eloquence, and which derives a certain interest from the efforts now being made to discover the fate of Sir John Franklin. The author is GEORGE STOVIN VENABLES, LL. D., of Jesus College, Cambridge. THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE. "And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold; And ice, mast high, came floating by, As green as emerald. And through the drifts and snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen: Nor shape of men, nor beasts we ken-- The ice was all between-- The ice was here, the ice was there-- The ice was all around: It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and howl'd, Like noises in a swound." COLERIDGE. _Rime of the Ancient Mariner._ The secret wonders of the gloomy North bid proud defiance, in their solitude, to man's triumphant daring. Who shall pierce the ancient prison-house where Nature's might, in mightier chains of adamantine frost, lies fettered, since Creation? Who shall live where promontories huge, of pilèd ice, like monstrous fragments of primeval worlds tossed on the surge of Chaos, over the waves rear their triumphant heads, and laugh to scorn the undreaded kinghood of the lordly sea? A fearful challenge! yet the charmèd spell, which summons man to high discovery, is ever vocal in the outward world, though they alone may hear it, who have hearts responsive to its tone. The gale of spring, breathing sweet balm over the western waters, called forth that gifted old adventurer[10] to seek the perfumes of spice-laden winds, far in the Indian Isles. Yea, there is power in Nature's solemn music. All have heard the sighs of Winter in the middle air, and seen the skirts of his cloud-woven robe lingering upon the misty mountain-top: but years rolled on, ere man might understand the mystic invitation of that call to seek the Monarch in his Arctic home. At length that call is answered. Daringly yon gallant ship, towards the Polar Star, walks the untrodden pathways of old Ocean, leaving the haunts of man. Even now, the bounds are passed where silently the Boreal Morn[11] folds and unfolds, in swiftest interchange, her silver robe of alternating light over the midnight Heaven. There is a change in every sight and sound. White glaciers clash on the tormented waves, in fierce career waving eternally, and hoary whales, with musical din[12] booming along the deep, breathe forth in giant chorus, wondrously, the welcome of the Spirit of the North. Joy to the brave! That old phantasmal veil which checked the view of dim antiquity, shrinks from their eagle glance, while fabled hills and regions of impenetrable ice fade in the blue expanse of mighty bays[13]--now spread the bosom of the expectant sail unto the Eastern breeze, and while the prow furrows the yielding waters, image forth high dreams of lofty hope--the joyous bound of billows gushing between parted shores, where Asia's rocky brow for ever frowns on the opposing continent. And, borne on spirit-plumed wings, let fancy soar far from that sunless clime, to the warm South, where soft skies slumber through the cloudless noon, o'er the gold palaces of fair Cathay. Why pause ye in mid ocean? Still the sail swells to the voiceful breeze; the high mast bends with hideous creak, and every separate rib in the huge fabric quivers. Yet the ship on the unmoved waters motionless struggles, as one, who in a feverish dream nervelessly fleeing o'er a haunted waste, strives horribly to shun some fiendish shape, with straining sinews, and convulsive gasp, and faint limbs, magic-stricken. There is rest, dismal and dreary, on the silent sea: most dismal quiet: for the viewless might of the keen frost-wind[14] crisps the curling waves, binding their motion with a clankless chain along the far horizon. Fruitlessly the imprisoned vessel writhes, until the gale, lulled in the embrace of evening, leaves its prey, to share the torpor of the lifeless waste, till earth awaken from her half-year's sleep. Yet, in those daring hearts, the cheerless voice of boding Fear or dull Despondency can find no answering tone, whether the storm, round the snow-rampart[15] howling, interweaves his solemn moans with the rejoicing shouts of the glad theatre,[16] or simple strains of homely music leave that warm recess--vibrating far into the tremulous air. Here, even here are pleasures; those stray[17] forms of joy, which Nature spreads throughout the world, that he who seeks may find them. When the Sun, uprising from his long and gloomy trance, beams through the clearer air, how beautiful, in some obscurest dell[18] of that lone land, led by the music of an unseen river to see fair flowers, with light-awakened buds, salute the spring tide. Happily, they smile in the midst of nakedness, like sweet memories of laughing infancy, beaming around the desolation of an aged heart. Oh, that the might of Man's majestic will were self-sufficing! that the meaner chains which bind him to this dark, material world, before the lightning glance of Enterprise might fade, as those Philistian bonds, that fell from him of Zorah. Back--in sorrow back--the ocean-wanderers turn the unwilling prow; for Nature may not yield, and all is lost, save gloomy thoughts of unrequited toil in the storm-beaten deep; and phantasies of gorgeous dreams, for ever desolate; and hopes, which were, and will not be again. Yet if the race of Man, as some have deemed[19], form but one mighty Being, who doth live, yea with intenser life, while kingly Death benumbs each separate atom with the touch of his pale sceptre--one unchanging ocean of everchanging waves--one deathless heaven of clouds, which to their graves roll ceaselessly: if it be so, not vainly have long years sent forth their heralds on the trackless deep, where high endeavors of exalted will which in themselves find no accomplishment, shall build at length perfection. Peacefully he[20] sleeps, who erst beheld the rifted shores of Greenland "glister in the sun, like gold:" and that deserted chief[21] whose angry moan once mingled wildly with the screaming winds and the hoarse gurgle of ingulfing waves, is unremembered now. But high Emprise died not with them. Have not our latter days beheld, with awe, the ice-borne Muscovite[22] ride the fierce billows of the Polar Sea? Has not the Northern hunter seen the flag of England, o'er her floating palaces, unfurled in his dominions crystalline? And who shall mourn, while, in the mystic race, from hand to hand still moves the unquenched torch, that none have reached the goal? Not suddenly doth the sweet warmth of universal life, from brumal caves advancing, interfuse the vast abysmal air, or penetrate the deep heart of the frost-entranced Earth. Gentle, and in its very gentleness invincible, it moves, though ruthlessly stern Winter calls his rallied armies on, and snow-blasts violate the joyous prime. So is it, with the silent victories of Man's enduring spirit: we have seen Winter and Spring; and shall we not behold the full rejoicing of the complete year? The hour shall come, nor shall the longing heart in that dark interval be all unblest with glance prophetic. Though no meteor shape glare from the speaking sky, no sheeted ghost wander dim-moving in the weird midnight, with such forshadowings true as ever wait on him who, with a calm and reverend eye, hath viewed the mysteries of things, and dared to image forth the future from the past--bind on the mystic robe, and from the brow of Hope's enchanted hill look boldly forth upon the coming ages. Saw ye not white fog-wreaths floating through the cold gray dawn over ice-laden billows, as they roll through yon rock-cinctured chasm? A dusky shape looms through the hazy atmosphere, and sails, as of some struggling bark that wearily breasts the opposing strength of angry waves,[23] float with a fitful motion to and fro. Still on and on--a breath-suspending sight of pale Solicitude, and fearful hope--and hark! the triple crash of Britain's joy, the magical music of her wild hurra, peals with a sound of mighty exultation through the aerial depths. The cloven mist unwraps its folded canopy, and lo! the blue Pacific, boundlessly outspread, far glitters in the silvery light of morn. FOOTNOTES: [10] Columbus. [11] The phenomenon which is commonly called Aurora Borealis, is in high latitudes frequently seen to the south. [12] On entering the Arctic Circle, the musical sounds of the white whales is first heard. [13] Modern discoverers have frequently found an open passage in latitudes, where chains of hills were laid down in the old charts. [14] The effect of the change of temperature at the beginning of winter is almost instantaneous, as young ice at the thickness of half an inch will stop a large vessel in full sail. [15] Captain Parry found considerable advantage from raising a wall of snow round the ship, in its winter station. [16] The theatrical amusements, which were introduced during the stay of the Fury and Hecla at Melvile Island, are well known. [17] Alluding to the following lines of Mr. Wordsworth:-- ----"Pleasure is spread throughout the earth, In stray gifts, to be claim'd by whoever shall find." [18] The beautiful effect of these Arctic Oases is described in the account of Captain Parry's second voyage. [19] See the speech attributed by Socrates to Diotima in the Banquet of Plato. [20] Sir Martin Frobisher, who in 1577 anchored on the Western coast of Greenland, reported that in that country "the stones be altogether sparkled, and glister in the sun like gold." [21] Hudson. [22] Baron Wrangle. RECOLLECTIONS OF PAGANINI. The "Leaves from the Portfolio of a Manager," in the December _Dublin University Magazine_, disclose a number of interesting facts connected with Prynne's "Histriomastix," Milton's "Samson Agonistes," Hannah More's "Tragedies," Ireland's "Shakspeare Forgeries," and not a few very startling disclosures respecting the extraordinary emoluments of first class performers, from Roscius down to Jenny Lind. From this portion of our Manager's Portfolio we select the amusing recollections of Paganini in Ireland, twenty years ago: "Catalani, Pasta, Sontag, Malibran, Grisi, Taglioni, Rubini, Mario, Tamburini, Lablache, _cum multis aliis_, have received their thousands, and tens of thousands: but, until the Jenny Lind mania left every thing else at an immeasurable distance, Paganini obtained larger sums than had ever before been received in modern times. He came with a prodigious flourish of trumpets, a vast continental reputation, and a few personal legends of the most exciting character. It was said that he had killed his wife in a fit of jealousy, and made fiddlestrings of her intestines; and that the devil had composed a sonata for him in a dream, as he formerly did for Tartini. When you looked at him, you thought all this, and more, very likely to be true. His talent was almost supernatural, while his 'get up,' and 'mise en scene,' were original and unearthly, such as those who saw him will never forget, and those who did not can with difficulty conceive. The individual and his performance were equally unlike anything that had ever been exhibited before. No picture or description can convey an adequate idea of his entrance and his exit. To walk simply on and off the stage appears a commonplace operation enough, but Paganini did this in a manner peculiar to himself, which baffled all imitation. While I am writing of it, his first appearance in Dublin, at the great Musical Festival of 1830, presents itself to 'my mind's eye,' as an event of yesterday. When he placed himself in position to commence, the crowded audience were hushed into a deathlike silence. His black habiliments; his pale, attenuated visage, powerfully expressive; his long, silky, raven tresses, and the flash of his dark eye, as he shook them back over his shoulders; his thin, transparent fingers, unusually long; the mode in which he grasped his bow, and the tremendous length to which he drew it; and, climax of all, his sudden manner of placing both bow and instrument under his arm, while he threw his hands behind him, elevated his head, his features almost distorted with a smile of ecstasy, and his very hair instinct with life, at the conclusion of an unparalleled fantasia! And there he stood, immovable and triumphant, while the theatre rang again with peals on peals of applause, and shouts of the wildest enthusiasm! None who witnessed this will ever forget it, nor are they likely again to see the same effect produced by mere mortal agency. "The _one_ string feat I always considered unworthy this great master of his art. It has been done by fifty others, and is at best but an imperfect exhibition on a perfect instrument; a mere piece of charlatanerie, or theatrical 'gag,' to use a professional term, sufficiently intelligible. There have been, and _are_, mighty musicians on the violin. Spagnoletti, De Beriot, Ole Bull (who according to some plays without any string at all), Sivori, Joachim, Ernst, Levey, &c. &c., are all in the list of great players; but there never was more than one Paganini; he is unique and unapproachable. "In Dublin, in 1830, Paganini saved the Musical Festival, which would have failed but for his individual attraction, although supported by an army of talent in every department. All was done in first-rate style, not to be surpassed. There were Braham, Madame Stockhausen, H. Phillips, De Begnis, &c. &c., Sir G. Smart for conductor, Cramer, Mori, and T. Cooke for leaders, Lindley, Nicholson, Anfossi, Lidel Hermann, Pigott, and above ninety musicians in the orchestra, and more than one hundred and twenty singers in the chorus. The festival was held in the Theatre-Royal, then, as now, the only building in Dublin capable of accommodating the vast number which alone could render such a speculation remunerative. The theatre can hold two thousand six hundred persons, all of whom may see and hear, whether in the boxes, pit, or galleries. The arrangement was, to have oratorios kept distinct on certain mornings, and miscellaneous concerts on the evenings of other days. The concerts were crushers, but the first oratorio was decidedly a break down. The committee became alarmed; the expenses were enormous, and heavy liabilities stared them in the face. There was no time to be lost, and at the second oratorio, duly announced, there stood Paganini, in front of the orchestra, violin in hand, on an advanced platform, overhanging the pit, not unlike orator Henley's tub, as immortalized by the poet. Between the acts of the Messiah and the Creation, he fiddled 'the Witches at the Great Walnut Tree of Benevento,' with other equally appropriate interpolations, to the ecstatic delight of applauding thousands, who cared not a pin for Hadyn or Handel, but came to hear Paganini alone; and to the no small scandal of the select few, who thought the episode a little on the north side of consistency. But the money was thereby forthcoming, every body was paid, the committee escaped without damage, and a hazardous speculation, undertaken by a few spirited individuals, was wound up with deserved success. "When the festival was over, the town empty, and a cannon-ball might have fired down Sackville-street, without doing much injury, Paganini was engaged by himself for a series of five performances in the theatre. For this he received £1,143. His dividend on the first night's receipts amounted to £330 (_horresco referens_)! without a shilling of outlay incurred on his part. He had the lion's share with a vengeance, as the manager cleared with difficulty £200. The terms he demanded and obtained were a clear two-thirds of each night's receipts, twenty-five guineas per night for the services of two auxiliaries, worth about as many shillings, the full value allowed for every free ticket, and an express stipulation that if he required a rehearsal on a dark morning, when extra light might be indispensable, the expense of candles should not fall on him--a contingency which by no possible contrivance could involve a responsibility exceeding five or six shillings." FOOTNOTES: [23] A current is supposed to flow constantly from the Pacific through the North-West Passage into the Atlantic. A PEASANT DUCHESS. The _Stamford Mercury_ gives an interesting account of the life and fortunes of a young woman of that neighborhood who rose to a high station by means of her personal attractions, and, after a checkered life, died in Italy a few weeks ago. She was the daughter of John Peele, a small farmer at Corringham, near Gainsborough, who eked out a somewhat declining livelihood by dealing in horses, &c., having previously been in better circumstances. Being an only daughter, and aware that she possessed no small share of rustic charms, she resolved to try her fortune in a higher sphere. She became a dressmaker in Gainsborough, and resided subsequently in Hull, and it is said as housemaid in a good family in London, where her attractions obtained for her the attentions of a person of rank, to whom she afterwards averred she was married; and she from that time occupied a position where her fortunes led her into contact with some of the highest classes. A few years afterwards she astonished her former companions by appearing with her carriage and livery servants in the character of _chère amie_ to Mr. Fauntleroy, then a flourishing banker in London. The riches of the banker were of a doubtful character, however; some time afterward she was convicted of forgery, and paid the penalty with his life. Affected by the ruin, but not participating in the crime of Fauntleroy, she struggled bravely with fate, and generally maintained a fair appearance in society both in London and Paris. She shortly reappeared in her native county as Duchess of Palata. At this time the fortunes of her family had reduced them to be the occupants of a small cottage at Morton, and age rendering her father incapable of active exertion, he filled the humble office of rural postman. To her honor it should be recorded that she enabled her parents to pass the remainder of their days in comfort. Six or seven years ago she again visited her native place, a widow, his grace the Duke of Palata having paid the debt of nature. Her mother she left at Morton, paid the last duties to her father (somewhat ostentatiously), and volunteered her assistance to promote the advancement of her female relatives. Again, however, "a change came o'er the spirit of her dream;" and some three or four years ago the public journals announced her marriage to the son of an Irish clergyman of good family. In this character, accompanied by her niece as _femme de chambre_, but not by her husband, she once more visited Gainsborough and the scenes of her youth; after making her mother an allowance, she again departed for Italy, in good health; but death, which spares neither rank nor character, has closed the "last scene of all, in this strange eventful history." * * * * * The author of the "Nibelungenlied" is unknown, and, whether it be the work of one poet, of two, or twenty, is still a matter of doubt, among German critics. That the Nibelungenlied has been extensively interpolated, is, I believe, agreed on all hands; we may conclude as much, from having reason to believe that it was handed down for some time (how long, nobody knows for certain), by oral tradition, and what effect such a state of things may have on popular poetry, we may readily collect from what Bishop Percy and Sir Walter Scott have told us of the variations in the old ballads of England and Scotland. Lachmann attributes it to the thirteenth century. Original Correspondence. PARIS, DEC. 2, 1850. FROM time immemorial, no one knows why (for the legends which recount her history leave it doubtful whether she performed on any instrument), St. Cecilia has been chosen by musicians as their patron saint; and the musicians of Paris, on the approach of winter, always celebrate a mass, in music, to her honor, and for the benefit of the distressed members of their body. Not that they entertain any exaggerated idea of the consoling powers of the musical art, or hope to relieve the positive sufferings of poverty and destitution by any combination of sounds, no matter how harmonious; but this festival being held in the church of St. Eustache, the largest in Paris, and all lovers of music being so eager to gain admission, that the immense aisles of this grand old pile (which will contain five thousand persons), are always crowded to overflowing on these occasions, every one paying a franc for his admission: the sum thus gained, together with the collections taken up in the middle of the service, by the committee of ladies chosen for that purpose (who go round among the crowd, preceded by the beadle, and followed by two or three attendant gentlemen, carrying a little embroidered bag of a particular shape, used for that purpose, in which they receive the contributions of the benevolent), constitute a fund, from which many an unfortunate or superannuated brother of the tuneful craft obtains relief. This vast building, with its lofty arches, is admirably calculated for the performance of grand religious compositions; the effect of the music being enhanced by the aspect of the building, and the accessories of sculpture, painting, and carving, which render this church one of the richest in the capital. To obtain places on any occasion of the kind, it is necessary to go an hour or two in advance; and the gradual filling of the aisles is one of the most curious scenes which a stranger can contemplate. As there are no pews, each person, on entering, helps himself or herself to a chair, which he holds aloft over the heads of his already seated neighbors, as he slowly forces his way onward through their serried ranks, until he espies some unappropriated gap into which he can insinuate his chair and himself; the police and the beadles always taking care to keep a little pathway, just large enough to squeeze through, open all through the outer aisle that runs round the church. For the unfortunate people who form the walls of this pathway, the process of filling is a severe infliction; the uninterrupted stream of in-comers, forcing their way along with a ruthless disregard of the shoulders of those between whom they pass, is really, (especially when the in-comer happens to be a very stout man, or a very fat lady, enveloped in an unusual quantity of drapery,) almost overpowering. Every now and then the beadle comes along, rapping his silver-headed cane on the pavement, and crying, "Way, there! keep out of the path!" and escorting a party of privileged individuals for whom seats have been reserved; and, as the beadle is always tall and stout, and always forces his way through in defiance of apparent impossibilities, a chorus of murmurs accompanies his progress. The beadle is a very grand personage, and his appearance sufficiently indicates this fact. He wears a cocked hat, covered with silver lace, and decorated with nodding white plumes; a scarf of crimson velvet, stiff with embroidery in silver thread, covers the upper part of his person; black velvet smalls, fastened at the knee with silver buckles, white silk stockings and gloves, and enormous buckles in his polished shoes, complete his attire. He wears a massive silver chain round his neck; and a sword hangs at his side to strike terror into the hearts of all beholders. Besides the grand beadle, there are several minor ones, dressed in black, but wearing heavy silver chains; _gens d'armes_ also are always present, and often soldiers, who mount guard, musket in hand, at all the doorways, and on the steps of the chancel. When these sapient guardians of the peace perceive that as many have been admitted as can possibly be squeezed into the building, they shut the doors; and the process of distribution goes on until the mass is equalized throughout the edifice; a task of no small difficulty, as the portions of the building contiguous to the doors are always densely packed at an early period, so that the greater number have to pass through these crowded centres to gain the remoter parts of the church. Meantime people chat, and look about them, amusing themselves as they best can; and the sonorous edifice echoes with the footsteps of the moving mass. But at length the noise subsides; the "organ utters its voices," and a hush, intense, unbroken, falls on the vast assembly. The glorious music peals through the vaulted aisles, and swells upward to the arching roof, pervading every nook and corner of the fane; and so perfect is the stillness that one would think the winged notes the only living things within its precincts. On Friday last this annual solemnity was celebrated as usual at St. Eustache; the mass, composed by Adam, a very noble and beautiful composition, was admirably executed by a choir of two hundred and fifty singers, and a band of one hundred musicians, including the whole orchestra of the _Opera Comique_, and the best performers from the Italian opera. The solos were sung by Mesdames Grimm and Couraud, and by Bassine and Chapuis, the latter being one of the best tenors in the city. Some of the quartettes, with accompaniments of harps and wind instruments, were indescribably beautiful. The Archbishop of Paris made an elegant little address, in which he spoke of art in Pagan and in Christian days, and of its mission in the present; and winding up with an appeal to the liberality of his hearers on behalf of the charitable idea which had prompted this performance. The Archbishop is a man of mild and grave countenance, but his dress was very inharmonious. He wore a surplice of very rich lace, a cape of violet silk, and a scarf richly embroidered in gold, which was all very pretty, but his arms and hands were encased in sleeves, finished with gloves, of scarlet cloth, which showed through the lace sleeves of the surplice, and gave the hands a very frightful appearance. He wore a little round cap on the top of his head, a golden crucifix on his bosom, and an enormous gold ring on his right hand. He spoke very slowly, screaming rather than speaking, in order to make himself heard in the distant parts of the building. The service lasted two hours, and yielded several thousand francs. The Duchess of Narbonne, famed for her benevolence, was so desirous to aid on this occasion, that though unable, on account of her great age, to go among the crowd _making the guest_, as it is termed, she held a bag at one of the great doors, adding to the sum she thus received, a thousand francs as her own contribution, and a hundred francs for her chair, for which the ordinary price is two sous. The musicians are not alone in their preparations for winter. The shopkeepers are just beginning the periodic display which betokens the coming on of the holidays: and conspicuous among the novelties whose appearance thus indicate the approach of Christmas, is a new style of porcelain, of English invention, which imitates with great success the antique marble vases, pitchers, &c., of classic days. Many of these objects are of great beauty; the creamy hue of the ware itself, slightly translucent, the graceful simplicity of their forms, and the delicate mouldings of classical designs in bass-relief with which they are adorned, producing an admirable effect, highly creditable to English taste. While modern art is thus successfully emulating the symmetrical achievements of ancient times, a relic of great interest, recalling the romantic age of Spanish history, has just been unexpectedly brought to light. Some workmen, employed in making repairs in the Guildhall of Burgos, in Spain, have recently discovered the tomb of the Cid, so renowned in ancient story; a tomb whose very existence was unknown. An old chest, long considered as mere rubbish, and on which stood the antique chair from which, in other days, the Counts of Castille gave judgment, having been opened through the curiosity of these workmen, was found to contain the remains of Don Rodrigo Campeador, and his wife Chimena, immortalized in ancient legend, in the verses of Guilhen de Castro, of Corneille, and in our own days, in the graceful writings of Mrs. Hemans. The remains of the renowned hero and his beautiful spouse are to be removed to the church of San Gadeo, where a suitable monument will be erected to their memory. The following incident, connected with the two prevailing manias of the day, lapdogs and balloon-ascensions, is just now amusing the gay circles of this gossiping capital. It seems that Madame de N., the accomplished and beautiful wife of a triple millionaire of the quartier St. Honore, equally renowned for the charms of her wit, and for the intensity of her passion for the barking pets so dear to Parisian hearts, had taken a violent fancy (shared by half Paris) to a certain tiny gray spaniel, the property of one of the most admired of the innumerable representatives of Albion at this time here congregated, the beautiful and distinguished Lady R., whose intimacy was assiduously cultivated by Madame de N., all for the love of the little gray spaniel. Sylphide, the spaniel in question, was in sooth well calculated to make havoc in hearts susceptible to canine charms. Her glossy fur, combed, bathed, and perfumed every day with the utmost care, was of the most delicate mouse-color, and softer than silk; her lustrous eyes sparkled like jewels, and her expressive face, with the delicate drooping ears that adorned her graceful head, were the realization of the most ideal dream of little-doggish beauty; her tail was perfection; her slender legs, in their light electric movements, hardly touched the ground; and the dainty way in which she raised her charming little paws from the sidewalk, when, by some rare chance (attired in her newest paletot of the finest merino, lined with wadded silk, and trimmed with a rich braid, her neck encircled with a silver collar, whose burnished chain was attached to her mistress's waist), she honored the sidewalk with their pressure, was so irresistibly bewitching, that all the fair round arms of Paris opened spontaneously at the sight, as though to offer a nestling-place to the little beauty, and raise her from a contact unworthy of so peerless a creature. Any price, no matter how exorbitant, that could have been asked for this little paragon, Madame de N. would very gladly have paid; but, unhappily, Sylphide was not to be sold: Lady R. was very fond of her, and never seemed to understand the various hints thrown out from time to time, with the utmost tact and delicacy, but still quite intelligibly, by Madame de N.; and all that the latter could do was to bring her utmost power of petting to bear on the subject of her adoration, trusting to some unlooked-for stroke of good fortune to aid her in the accomplishment of her heart's desire. Sylphide was excessively fond of sugar-plums (in which she was a great connoisseur), and also of fresh _brioche_, crumbs of which she would eat, in the most charming manner, from the snowy hand of her admiring friend; and as the _bonbonnière_ of Madame de N. was always well supplied with her favorite dainties, Sylphide, who, on her side, was not ungrateful, soon contracted a lively affection for Madame de N. and her bonbonnière. Such was the position of affairs, when an incident occurred which produced a total estrangement between the two ladies. M. de S., a gentleman well known in the diplomatic circles, whom Madame de N. had long numbered among her conquests, fascinated by the charms of the fair islander, deserted his brilliant countrywoman, and ranged himself among the satellites of her rival. And by a curious coincidence, at the very time that M. de S. quitted thus abruptly the orbit of Madame de N., the Prince of ----, who had hitherto been one of the brightest luminaries in the train of Lady R., left her ladyship to lay his homage at the feet of the charming Parisian. But the acquisition of the Prince seems to have failed to console the latter for the loss of a knight who had so long worn her colors; and the defection of M. de S. drew from her an expression of resentment towards her rival, which the mutual friend to whom these angry feelings had been confided, lost no time in repeating to the object of her displeasure. But Lady R., so far from being affected by the indignation of Madame de N., merely replied, with a careless shrug of her handsome shoulders, "_Mais, ma chère_, she has really nothing to complain of; all the world knows that '_exchange is no robbery_!'" At this time a magnificent bracelet, the latest achievement of the wonder-working _atèliers_ of Froment & Meurice, had been the object of Lady R.'s most violent desire; but her lord, who was subject to occasional attacks of a malady not uncommon to the husbands of beautiful and fashionable ladies, was just then suffering from an attack of jealousy so acute, that, to the despair of Lady R., he utterly refused to gratify her desire to become the possessor of this costly ornament; and the lady, after having vainly called to her aid all the force of her address, and all the charms of her eloquence, found herself obliged, though with a heavy heart, to renounce the idea of its acquisition. Lady R.'s desire for this bracelet, and its disappointment, were no secret to Madame de N.; and on learning, from the gossiping confidant, the response made by her rival to her complaint, a sudden thought darted through her mind. "_Chère amie_," said she to the confidant, "I beg you to say to her ladyship, that, since such is her opinion, I hold her to the acceptance of the consequences of her maxim." The confidant lost no time in delivering this message, to which Lady R., thinking only of her host of admirers, laughingly replied, that Madame de N. was quite at liberty to make any practical application of the principle that she pleased. Within two hours from the reception of this challenge, the beautiful bracelet, inclosed in an elegant case, on whose lid the initials of Lady R., surrounded by her crest, were engraved in letters of gold, had passed from the jeweller's show-rooms to the boudoir of Madame de N., who thenceforth, by means of an espionage that followed every movement of her rival, kept her constantly in view. At length the tournament, to be followed by the balloon-ascension (held a week or two ago in the Champ de Mars), was announced to the great delight of the spectacle-loving public; and having learned that the fair Englishwoman was to be present in an open carriage, Madame de N. determined to avail herself of this occasion to execute her scheme. Accordingly on the appointed day, the bracelet, in its elegant case, being placed in the carriage beside her, and the coachman duly instructed in the part he was to play, Madame de N., holding in her hand her _bonbonnière_, supplied with fresh crumbs of the most delicate _brioche_, followed, at short distance, the carriage of her rival to the Champ de Mars, and took her stand just in the rear of her ladyship's phaeton. Lady R. was in excellent spirits, receiving the homage of a crowd of attendant cavaliers; Sylphide, to the unspeakable joy of Madame de N., being seated on the front seat nearest her carriage. Madame de N. waited patiently through the various evolutions of the gorgeous scene; and, at its close, when the great balloon of M. Poitevin rose majestically from the field, surrounded by its graceful band of nymphs that seemed to float, self-sustained, in the air, their silver wands and wreaths of flowers shining in the light of the setting sun, when all eyes followed the aëronauts, and deafening acclamations rent the air, in less time than we take in recounting the movement, the carriage of Madame de N. advanced to the side of Lady R.'s; Sylphide, attracted by the well-known _bonbonnière_, leapt lightly into the outstretched arms of her friend; and Madame de N. depositing the morocco case on the very spot Sylphide had quitted, bowed gracefully to her rival, and drove rapidly away, before Lady R. had had time to comprehend what was passing. Great was her ladyship's amazement, as may well be supposed; and great, for the first few moments, was also her indignation; but the mystery was soon explained; for, in opening the case, which occupied Sylphide's vacant place, and which was unmistakably intended for her, she perceived the rich bracelet she had so much wished for, and beside it, the card of Madame de N., on which was written, in pencil, these words, which contained the key of the enigma, "_Exchange is no robbery_." A hearty laugh, which she tried in vain to repress, broke from the lips of the fair lady; much to the astonishment of the gentlemen who had witnessed the scene, and to whom, notwithstanding their eager inquiries, Lady R. very naturally declined giving any explanation of the affair. I shall observe your instructions, to keep you advised of whatever occurs here in the middle of the world. STELLA. _Authors and Books_. The German book trade has, for some months, been fairly overwhelmed with books upon Hungary. We notice among the latest, "Flowers from Hungarian Battlefields," a collection of novelettes, with scenes drawn from real life in the late war, by Sajó, one of the most popular writers of Hungary. The stories are spirited and vivid. "Confessions of a Civilian," and "Confessions of a Soldier," are two books, of which the last named has been for some time before the public, and has excited attention by the thoroughness of its absolutist tendencies. The Civilian is the opposite of the Soldier, being a liberal of the first stamp. Both these writers, however, oppose the present Austrian ministry. A German translation of Horwath's "History of the Hungarians" is coming out at Pesth in numbers, and is welcomed by the German critics. This is regarded by the most competent judges as an excellent work. "János the Hero," a Romance of Hungarian Peasant Life, by Alexander Petöfy, one of the most popular Magyar writers, is spoken of as a most successful delineation of national peculiarities. "The Revolution and the Jews in Hungary," is an interesting chapter out of the history of the Hungarian Jews, by J. Eichorn. The fidelity of the Hebrews to the cause represented by Kossuth and his associates, and defended by the entire nation, is as well known as the extortions with which the butcher Haynau attempted to punish their patriotism. _Rerum Hungaricum Monumenta_ is the last work of the lamented antiquarian Eudlicher, and is designed to open to the literary world the authentic sources of early Hungarian history. It is, in short, a most valuable collection of ancient documents relating to the origin of the Magyars, their first settlement in Hungary, and their history under the native princes of the race of Arpad. One of the best results of this work will be the provocation of other savans to similar investigations, which cannot fail to throw light on many obscure historical questions. * * * * * A very interesting work has just made its appearance at Leipsic, giving an intimate though by no means flattering account of the condition of the POLISH POPULATION IN GALLICIA. The peculiarities of this race of people are described as wild barbarism combined with elegant politeness, dreamy melancholy, and practical cunning. The author was in Gallicia before the peasants' insurrection in 1846. He narrates a variety of the most striking scenes, which though highly colored are apparently true in the main. Among other things he gives an account of a dinner-party to which he was invited, at the house of a nobleman. The house stood in the midst of a scattered mass of outbuildings, none of which bore the slightest appearance of neatness, order, or comfort. Every thing, in fact, has the appearance of neglect and decay. Many of the walls are supported by props to prevent them from tumbling. Around the doors the slightest rain produces a disgusting morass, while the general aspect of the whole reminds the beholder of Attila's wooden palace in Pannonia, where he heaped up the booty of a world, and received the ambassadors of Rome. When the writer reached the door, he found his host with some other gentlemen waiting to receive him. The company was numerous, and all, especially the ladies, expensively dressed, in the last Parisian fashion, with abundant jewelry and ornaments. The saloon in which they were received was large but low, the walls covered with dirty paper, the floor of rough boards, the furniture of all sorts and sizes, and nowhere a trace of art or refined taste. The conversation was carried on in French, and the ladies exhibited a thorough acquaintance with Paris matters, notabilities, and gossip generally. At the table the drinking was almost incredible, and the topic of conversation, the emancipation of Poland. Every word was aimed at the conversion of the German guest. The hard treatment of the serfs was spoken of as necessary, as they must be kept in complete subjection in order to be made useful in the great work. The festivity grew more and more ardent, till at last one of the gentlemen took a shoe off from a lady's foot, filled it with wine, and after drinking from it himself, passed it to the others, so that all could pledge the ladies from such a cup. The next morning the stranger saw by chance a sight of another kind, as he was taking a walk. Behind a wall a man lay on the earth; another held fast his head, and a third his feet, while a fourth stood over him with a whip, laying on with all his might. The lord stood by in his dressing-gown, smoking a long pipe, and coolly directing the procedure. The guest turned away from the spectacle, but was told by his servant that this was the tenth man who had undergone the same punishment that morning. The offence was, that they had not begun work at sunrise. Of course a peasantry so treated could have no affection for their masters. All the work was done in the worst manner, while the lord was plundered in every way by his servants. Of the supplies for the family, more than half were regularly stolen, there being no supervision in the household. The extravagance of the masters was boundless, and when they got out of money they resorted to the Jews, who had the whole commerce of the country in their hands, besides having mortgages on most of the estates. This is the merest outline of a small portion of the book. It renders more intelligible the atrocities which took place in the insurrection of 1846, and which the Austrian Government permitted, if they did not foment. * * * * * One of the most remarkable philologists and travellers of the present day is the Hungarian Professor REGULY, a man as yet little known out of his own country and northern Europe. He has devoted himself a good deal to the exposition of the affinities between the Magyar and the Finnish languages, and his labors have impelled a number of learned Hungarians to the same study. In the year 1839 he left his country, and passed ten years in the north of Asia and Europe, mostly among the Finnish tribes of the Moguls, Ostiacks, Tsheremisses, Nordwins, &c., making himself familiar with their manners, customs, dialects, songs, and traditions, in order to attain a thorough personal acquaintance therewith. He also spent a long period in Kasan and St. Petersburgh, studying the other languages of Central Asia. His adventures during this time were, as may be supposed, remarkable. He suffered not only the privations and exposures inseparable from such an undertaking, but was also poorly supplied with money, and often in the greatest distress from that cause. Nothing but scientific enthusiasm carried him through, till he became acquainted with some Russian savans, and a Russian Councillor named Balugyanszky, who were of great assistance to him. He left his home a vigorous young man, and comes back broken down in strength and health. His investigations have related not only to philology, but to geography and ethnography. He has penetrated farther into the north of Asia than any previous traveller. On his return, at St. Petersburgh, he prepared, at the special request of the Geographical Society, a vast map of Northern Asia along the Ural Mountains, between 58 and 70 deg. north latitude, and 72 and 80 deg. east longitude, giving about five hundred localities. This map is made on the largest scale, containing sixteen large quarto sheets. The _St. Petersburgh Gazette_ says of it, that it has proved Reguly to be the discoverer of a vast territory for Russia. He is now at Pesth, engaged in preparing for publication the fruits of his ten years' absence from home. He will treat of the languages of the European and Asiatic Finnish tribes, their grammar and vocabularies, with constant regard to the analogies of the Magyar tongue. By way of introduction he will first publish a special work, containing his philosophical views on the organism of language. After these philological treatises he will print a series of ethnographic works on the various races among which he has lived, with collections of their songs and traditions, and finally a detailed narrative of his travels, with a condensed account of their scientific results. The conclusion of his philological studies is briefly, that the Central-Asiatic, or as it might be called, the Ural-Altaic group of languages, is divided into six branches or families, namely, the language of the Mandshu Tartars, the Mongols, the Turkish-Tartar tribes, the Samoyedes, the Fins, and the Magyars. These families have however no nearer relation to each other than the individual tongues of the Indo-European group, as the Indian, the Romanic, German, Celtic, Slavic, and Persian languages. Still he regards the Magyar and Finnic languages as having greater mutual affinities than the others, though not to such a degree that one of these races of men can be supposed to be derived from the other. He rather supposes all of the races whose languages form the Central-Asiatic group to have sprung from an original race, which was probably Scythian. * * * * * The Austrian government has just set on foot an enterprise which promises to be of use to both Literature and Science. The plan is, to prepare and publish at the expense of the Imperial Treasury, a great work on the ethnography of the Empire, and all savans, teachers, artists, poets, of every race, are invited to furnish materials. It is designed to give a complete account of the origin, history, manners, language, character and condition of each of the many tribes and peoples included under the Austrian sceptre. This will be combined of course with descriptions of the country, scenery, climate, soil, minerals, and natural and industrial productions of each region. It is supposed that the whole will be completed in eight big volumes. It will be accompanied by a vast ethnographic map, which is now being prepared with great energy under the superintendence of the Minister of Commerce. * * * * * KARL GUTZKOW is one of the most prolific and popular novel and playwrights now living in Germany. As to his last work, _Die Ritter vom Geiste_ (The Knights of the Spirit), of which only the first volume has been published, the critics entertain the most contradictory opinions. Some exclaim at its great length, which indeed is rather terrific: there are to be nine books, and the first occupies the whole of the first volume. Others are charmed with the skill with which the details of the work are wrought up, and the great variety of persons who figure in the story. The author has certainly laid out all his strength in this book, which is designed to reproduce the present age in all the contradictions of its doctrines and the complexity of its tendencies. But instead of seizing these in some central and vital point, and setting them forth in a work whose very simplicity would conceal its depth from most readers, Gutzkow has adopted the easier and more clumsy method of multiplying his characters and complicating the actions of his drama. Thus it is hardly possible for it not to be tedious and a failure. But we can speak of it more fairly when it is farther advanced. * * * * * Dr. NEANDER'S Library is advertised for sale by auction at Berlin, but our correspondent thinks it will be saved from the hammer by a private subscription, which will secure it to the University. * * * * * KARL SIMROCK has just brought out at Frankfort a new collection of GERMAN POPULAR SONGS, not obsolete or artistic poems, but such as still live among the people, and are familiar to every class. "Among _Volkslieder_," he says in his preface, "I include only such as have proceeded directly from the people, and still bear the tokens of their origin, in their unsophisticated form, and simple, hearty language. The pieces of cultivated poets which have found access and become loved with the people, are reserved for a future collection of favorite German songs. The distinction here hinted at between the people's songs and popular songs is not generally understood. All previous collections have confused the two, and some even have not a single production of the people. For example, _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_, whose great merit must be recognized, contains antique poems which by no means issued from among the people." In another place he says: "The songs here collected and arranged have been newly written down, literally from the mouths of the people; and where they could not be procured in this way, have been corrected by comparison of all earlier versions. So that as they here stand, they are in a sort my own property." The work is spoken of by competent critics as perfectly successful. We believe that Simrock, who is perhaps better qualified for the undertaking than any other man in Germany, intends in a future edition to publish the melodies of the songs along with the words. * * * * * Belgian Literature is a standing joke with the authors of Paris, and not without reason, for the majority of the books printed by the publishers of Belgium, are pirated from their French neighbors. There is, however, such a thing as a Belgian literature, though it is not very extensive, and one of its chief ornaments is Professor BORGNEL, of Liege, best known as the author of a _Historie des Belges à la fin du dix-huilième Siècle_, published some six years since, to which he is about to bring out an addition, carrying the history back to the beginning of the same century. He has also been occupied for several years with the history of the Flemish Provinces, under the domination of the Spaniards, and has a work on that subject in preparation. The Introduction to it appeared not long since among the Memoirs of the Brussels Academy, where it is entitled: _Philippe I. et la Belgique_. In treating a subject which the masterly pen of Schiller has already rendered familiar to the world, Prof. Borgnel does not attempt to imitate the ardent and splendid eloquence of that great poet and historian; Borgnel's merits are distinctness in his outlines, remarkable clearness of arrangement, perfect impartiality towards individuals and parties, and conscientious use of materials. Of these he has had a greater variety, including many manuscripts not before brought to light, than any previous writer. * * * * * Among the new books announced in London is _Notes on North America, Agricultural, Social, and Economical_, by J. F. W. Johnston, author of "Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry." We may anticipate something of value from a man of his studies and well earned reputation. Professor Johnston passed the greater portion of his time, while in America, in the British Provinces. He had been led to believe that they offered the most interesting field for his professional observation. When he came into New-England, New-York and Pennsylvania, he was continually surprised at the perfection and the success of our agriculture. He regretted only, that the mistake into which he had been led by British travellers, had detained him from the United States until the period of his absence from home was nearly expired. Professor Johnston's lectures in New-York were given under singular disadvantages, but the too small audiences who heard them were pleased and instructed. All who became acquainted with him were impressed with a belief of his candor and his talents. We hope to see immediately an edition of his book in this country. * * * * * In Geissen, Prof. LIEBIG, has published a Review of the Progress of Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology, in the year 1849. He has been assisted in its preparation by Professor Kopp and several other savans connected with the University at Giessen. It is marked by his usual completeness, breadth of scope, and exhaustive treatment of each particular subject. Liebig is now engaged in preparing a new series of Chemical Letters, which will be specially devoted to the growth of this science, in connection with the history of mental progress in general. Professor Knobel, of the same University, has also issued a work on the Genealogies of the Book of Genesis, which excites remark by the thoroughness of its historical investigations. Leopold Schmid's last work is on the Spirit of Catholicism, and also highly spoken of by both Catholic and Protestant writers. This author holds a high rank in the Catholic literature of Germany, and has been chosen Bishop of Mayence. Professor Hillebrand is occupied with a revision of his highly esteemed History of German national literature since Lessing. There seems to be no reason to fear that Giessen is doing less than its share toward keeping the ocean of German books up at a high-water mark. * * * * * BERANGER, the veteran _chansonier_, is now occupying himself in writing biographies, anecdotes, criticisms, &c., of the public men with whom, in the course of his long career, he has been in contact. It is five years since he announced his intention of giving such a work to the public, and he thinks it will possess great historical value, while of his songs, which alone will convey his name to the last ages in which the language of France is spoken, he thinks but "indifferently well." * * * * * The house, at Paris, in which EUGENE SUE laid some of the most exciting scenes of his "Wandering Jew," has lately been advertised for sale, and has been visited by crowds of curious loungers. It is known as the Hotel Serilly, and is situated at No. 5 Rue Neuve Saint François, in the quarter called the Marais. At the time the "Wandering Jew" was published, the street was often filled by groups of gazers at the strange old edifice, which had been so exactly described by the romancer, that no one could mistake it. Some even ventured to knock at the door and seek further information. They were received by a mysterious and taciturn old Hebrew, who looked as if he himself had charge of the great Rennepeal treasure, and three-quarters of the visitors went away convinced that they had seen the veritable Samuel himself. Now that the whole house has been thrown open to the public, there have been found under it vast sub-cellars extending under the large garden in the rear, and in these cellars are seven wells, partially filled up, but with walls of careful masonry, and other indications that they were of great depth and great utility. The opinion was at once set on foot by the explorers, that the millions of the treasure had been concealed in one of these wells. The fact is, that the house formerly belonged to a Protestant family which suffered extreme persecution after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and which doubtless found the subterranean passages extremely convenient. In the year 1791, it was inhabited by the revolutionist Carnot. * * * * * The COUNT DE TOCQUEVILLE, a relative of the author of "Democracy in America," has just published a historical work on the Reign of Louis XVI. The writer, an old man almost sinking into the grave, enjoys the advantage of having himself witnessed and even shared in a part of the events he describes. He was intimate with Malasherbes, and personally devoted to the unfortunate Louis. Of his ability as a writer, a former work on the Reign of Louis XV. furnished proofs which are repeated in the present volume. Of course he does full justice to the amiable personal qualities of Marie Antoinette and her husband, without doing injustice to their faults. But he shows that after all what was charged upon them as political crime, was but the consequence of long-standing causes, over which they had no control, or even of measures of reform to which with the best intentions, they had given their consent. In speaking of the mission of Franklin at the French Court, M. de Tocqueville gives some interesting details. "At Paris," he says, "the zeal for the cause of the insurgents constantly increased. The women who exercised a great influence in the reign of Louis XVI., became passionate supporters of the Americans, and made aiding them a question of honor. The simple manners of their envoys,--their hair without powder, their citizens' dress, pleased by a sort of piquant novelty. All who approached Franklin were charmed by his wit. In him people venerated the founder of the liberty of a great nation, and even grew enthusiastic in behalf of that liberty." M. de Tocqueville shows however that the prime minister Maurepas only feared the Americans because he was embarrassed in his position, and thought to relieve himself by making war with England. But as there was no good reason for making such a war, the honesty of the King revolted at it. M. de Vergennes also said in the Council, that England would be much more weakened by a long war with her colonies, than by their loss. "But how," repeated all the women, "can we help embracing the cause of a people which sends us ambassadors without powder, and with shoe-strings, instead of buckles?" So weighty a reason turned the balance, and the war was declared. That war finished the ruin of the French monarchy, not only by inspiring the officers and soldiers sent to the United States with new ideas, but also by completing the exhaustion of its finances. With regard to the Revolution in which Louis XVI. lost his head, it is enough praise for our historian, that while he inclines always to the monarchical side, he is not altogether unjust to the popular virtues which shone with such rare brilliancy amid the gloom of that epoch. * * * * * The great work of J. G. AUDUBON and the Rev. Dr. BACHMAN, upon the "Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America," is much praised by those persons in Europe whose praise is of most value. The _Athenaeum_ remarks that, hitherto, the mammalia of America have been known chiefly through descriptions by zoologists, in the Transactions of European Societies, and that no systematic attempt has been made to bring together into one connected view the very varied forms of animal life presented by this great continent, while these authors have not only used the materials which were at hand in the works of others, but have themselves observed with great diligence the habits of many of the creatures which they have described. "Their work is creditable to the United States, where a large number of subscribers have induced the authors to undertake it,--and a most valuable addition to our general natural-history literature." The geographical range within which the animals described in these pages are found is not that of the government of the United States merely; it comprehends Russian and British America, in fact, all the country which lies north of the tropics in the New World. * * * * * At the last MICHAELMAS BOOK FAIR at Leipsic, the Catalogue contained the titles of 5,023 new works published in Germany since Easter. This is from twelve to fifteen hundred more than at any fair since the Revolution of 1848. A great number of these books are large and of remarkable merit, being in some sort, the accumulation of the more profound scientific labors of the past two years. * * * * * The BARONESS VON BECK has just published in London two volumes of "Personal Adventures" in the Hungarian war. She is herself a Hungarian, and she saw her husband fall while cheering his men to defend a barricade at Vienna. In this book Kossuth is her hero, her prophet, her demigod; and she sacrifices all other celebrities without compunction at the altar of his greatness. Dembinsky she treats with manifest injustice; Georgey comes out on her pages as a very Mephistopheles. Klapka himself does not escape without animadversion. But without adopting her opinions, either of the man she blames or the subject she discusses, it cannot be denied that she has great cleverness, and a wonderful power of exciting and interesting the reader. * * * * * A valuable scientific periodical is the _Geographisches Jahrbuch_ for the Communication of all the more important New Investigations, edited by the distinguished BERGHAUS, and published by Perthes of Gotha. The last number has an article by the editor on the system of "Mountains and Rivers of Africa," which differs altogether from what is laid down in the present maps. The author lays down the river Nile as flowing from the N'Yassi, and as connected with a great number of rivers in Dar Fur, Waday, and Fertil, with relation to which only the vaguest views have hitherto been entertained. The article shows, too, that the newly discovered lake N'Gami, in Southern Africa, has been long known under the name of Nampur. The same number of the _Jahrbuch_ also contains an article from the pen of the late lamented ALBERT GALLATIN, on the climate of North America. This article was written in English, and was translated into German for the _Jahrbuch_. * * * * * BERGHAUS has also lately issued a complete work of the highest interest, especially now that so much attention is every where paid to Ethnographic studies. Its title is _Grundlinien der Ethnographie_ (Outlines of Ethnography). It is in two parts, and contains a universal tabular description of all the races of the globe, arranged ethnographically and geographically, and according to languages and dialects, with a comparative view of their manners, customs, and habits. No person who undertakes to investigate the origin of the human family and the mutual relations of its different members, can afford to be without this work. Published in Stuttgart. * * * * * BERTHOLD AUERBACH has just brought out a little volume of tales, which we may well infer from his previous performances are charmingly replete with grace, good humor, and a keen perception of whatever is peculiar to his subject. The title of the book is _Deutsche Abende_ (German Evenings). It contains three stories: "Nice People," "What is Happiness?" and "The Son of the Forester." Published at Mannheim. * * * * * BARON STERNBERG, a dilettante book-maker of Germany, who generally resides at Berlin, has just added a new romance, or rather the beginning of one, to his previous publications. It bears the promising, if not pretentious title, of _The German Gil Blas_ (published at Bremen), and claims to be comic, as a matter of course. As a whole, the book is a failure. Though there are passages here and there which may be read with satisfaction, there is not enough unity and connection between the different parts, and the humor is generally but a thin potation. It must be said, however, that the absence of continuous interest is the fault of most comic novels, as well as poems. Even the matchless works of Jean Paul grow tedious by the endeavor to read much of them at a time, a fact which may be ascribed to the sentimentality and mere fantastics with which the kernels of his wit are overburdened. It is certain that no German humorous work can be compared with those great originals in that kind, Gil Blas and Don Quixote, or even with the much inferior works of Smollett and Dickens. Baron Sternberg's last effort forms no exception to this remark, and there is little hope that the second and concluding volume, whose appearance in Germany ought to be made by this time, will prove superior to the first. His "Royalists," an anti-democratic novel, which he had the courage to publish in the chaos of 1848, and which excited much attention, and a great deal of severe criticism, was far better. * * * * * "THE NEW FAITH SOUGHT IN ART," is the title of an anonymous little book lately issued at Paris, which, though not of great value, has more poetic originality of thought than is often found in printed pages. The author thinks that the time has gone by in which the subjects of art could properly be sought in the lives of saints and legends of the Church, and wishes to substitute for them the lives of artists and celebrated inventors, who have sprung from the bosom of the people. With this writer, every thing is democratic and popular. For him the people is alone King, and worthy of all honor. "Nothing," he says in one place, "is truer than the song of Beethoven. It is the song of life, the voice of truth, an infallible voice, which will create a world, and cause the old false world to crumble. Born of the people, the people sing in him, although they know him not." In painting, the heroes of the author are Ruysdael, Rembrandt, Claude-Lorraine, and Paul Potter. * * * * * The Poet FREILIGRATH has received orders to leave the village of Bilk, in the neighborhood of Dusseldorf; where he was residing, and to quit the Prussian territories. He will probably go back to England, where he passed some time in a counting-house or perhaps come to the United States, where he has several friends, to whom he has written of such an event as possible. * * * * * In AFRICAN DISCOVERY greater advances have been made in the last two years than before since the journeys of the brothers Lander. We mentioned in the last _International_ that the American traveller, Dr. W. Mathews, had been heard of at Vienna, and we now learn that he has been very successful in the five years of his adventure in the northern and central parts of the continent. Letters received in Berlin from Drs. Barth and Overweg, contain information of their having accomplished the journey across the Great Desert, or Sahara, and of their arrival near the frontiers of the kingdom of Air or Asben, (Air is the modern Tuarick, and Asben the ancient Sudan name), the most powerful in that part of Africa after Bornou, and never explored by Europeans. On the 24th of August--the date of their last letter--they were at Taradshit, a small place in about 20° 30' N. latitude, and 9° 20' longitude E. of Greenwich. Among their discoveries are some of peculiar interest, one of which is of several curious and very ancient sculptures, apparently of Egyptian origin. The King of Prussia has, at the instance of the Chevalier Bunsen and Baron Alexander von Humboldt, augmented the funds of the two travellers by a grant of 1,000 thalers. While Richardson, Barth and Overweg have penetrated the _terra incognita_ of the north, Dr. Krapf and the Rev. Mr. Rebmann have explored the region described on the common maps as the "Great Southern Sahara," and found it to be fertile, healthy, abounding in mountains, valleys and rivers, and inhabited by a race altogether superior to that which occupies the Atlantic coast. Mr. Mansfield Parkyns is endeavoring to cross the country southward from the Nile to the river Gambia; Mr. Charles Johnson is travelling in Abysinnia; Baron von Müller is conducting an expedition up the White Nile; and the American missionaries and colonists are gradually extending their knowledge over the various settlements on the eastern coast of the continent. * * * * * THE PRUSSIAN EXPEDITION TO EGYPT, _Denkmaeler aus �gypten und �thiopien nach den Zeichnungen der von Sr. Majestat dem Könige von Preussen Friedrich Wilhelm IV. nach diesen Ländern gesendeten, und in den Jahren 1842-45, ausgefuhrten wissenschaftlichen Expedition: Herausgegeben von Dr. R. Lepsius_; published at the expense and under the guarantee of the Prussian Government, will be completed in eighty parts, or eight hundred plates. Most of the plates are printed with tints, and many in the colors of the originals. This work forms a necessary completion of the celebrated work of the French Expedition under Napoleon. Parts I. to X. are now advertised as ready for subscribers, in London, at three dollars and a half each. * * * * * A NEW WORK ON AFRICA, by H. C. Grund, is advertised at Berlin. * * * * * Almanacs for popular use, offer a means much used in France for the propagation of political, social and religious doctrines. Every sect and party issues its Almanac, and some issue several, crammed to the brim with the peculiar notions whose dissemination is wished for. One of the most successful for the year 1851, is the _Almanach des Opprimés_ (The Almanac of the Oppressed). In fact, it is aimed wholly at the Society of Jesuits, whose history it exposes in the blackest colors. It begins with the early life of Loyola, depicts his debaucheries, his ambition, the religious mechanism invented by his enthusiastic and fanatical genius, the flexibility of his morality, and goes on to give an account of the intrigues and crimes of his successors in various countries and times, with an analysis of their books, their missions and their miracles. Another of these publications is called the _Almanach du Peuple_, containing a very great variety of articles of substantial value. Among the contributors are, F. Arago, Quinet, Charras, Carnot, Girardin, George Sand, Pierre Leroux, Dumil Aeur, E. Lithe, Mazzini, and other republicans distinguished in the political, literary and scientific world. This Almanac had the honor last year of being seized by the Government, but on trial before a jury it was acquitted of the charge against it, of being dangerous to society, and provoking citizens to hate the republic and despise the authorities. * * * * * A critic in the _Allegemeine Zeitung_, in noticing "Ottomar, a Romance from the Present Time," the last novel from the pen of Madame Von Zöllner, takes occasion to give some hard hits at women's novels in general. "It always must and always will be a failure," he says, "when a woman attempts to form a just conception of masculine character, and to put her conception into language. Female writers always comb out smoothly the flaxen hair of their heroes, and dress them up in the frockcoat of innocence. They go into raptures over a sort of green enthusiasm, and a romantic fantasticality of virtue, such as we godless fellows are not guilty of possessing; and in this way they turn out automatons which resemble nothing in earth, heaven, or elsewhere." The critic however admits that Madame Zöllner, who is undoubtedly one of the best living German novel writers, possesses remarkable and peculiar merits. No other woman occupies so high a place with the German public, except it be Fanny Lewald. Madame Zöllner is praised for the pure moral tone of her writings. * * * * * One of the most accomplished writers in France--M. DE CORMENIN--and one of the most _spirituel_ of that _spirituel_ nation, said at Frankfort, "It is true that it is difficult to abolish war, but it is far more difficult to abolish death; and yet if people would take the same pains to avoid the one as they did to escape the other, they would certainly accomplish their object." * * * * * One of the most ardent and vigorous writers of Young France, Alphonse Esquiros, has brought out at Paris a new book called "The History of the Martyrs of Liberty." The author aims to follow the development of liberty in humanity; to expose the tie which unites ancient and modern society in historic solidarity; to determine the transformation of the doctrines, which, for a century past, have invaded the religious world under the name of philosophy, political economy, and socialism; to set forth the fertile sufferings which have brought about that double triumph of liberty in ideas and in facts, namely Christianity and the French Revolution; to indicate the questions yet undecided; and to call to their solution both the miseries of the laboring classes and the lights of science. * * * * * Whatever may be said of the more elaborate writings of GEORGE SAND, it is impossible for the most scrupulous critic to deny or resist the charm of her smaller works, such as the "Mosaic Workers," the "Devil's Love," and "Fadette." To these she has just added another, which is spoken of with the utmost delight by all who have read it, as a work of remarkable genius. It is intended for the use of children, and is called "The History of the veritable Gribonille." The text is accompanied by richly engraved illustrations, designed by Mr. Maurice Sand, the son, we believe, of the author. Why will not some American publisher give us a translation, with the original illustrations? * * * * * To the already immense literature of the French Revolution, we now have to signalize another addition, which is worth the attention of those who are not weary of books relating to that momentous epoch. It is a "Biography of Camille Desmoulins," by Ed. Fleury--an octavo volume, lately issued at Paris. The author discusses the history of this famous pamphleteer and revolutionary rhetorician, as an advocate defends a client before a jury. * * * * * THE HISTORY OF THE PRINCIPLES, INSTITUTIONS AND LAWS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, from 1789 to 1800, is an anti-revolutionary work of elaborate character, and decided ability, published a few weeks since at Paris, by an anonymous author, who thinks he can do something toward getting the world right by rolling back some of its more recent gyrations. * * * * * A popular History of the French Revolution, from 1789 to 1799, written by HIPPOLITE MAGEN, and lately published at Paris, in one volume, is having a great success among the laboring classes of Paris and other French cities. It is of course in favor of the Montangards. * * * * * A valuable manual for students of French history is M. LOUIS TRIPIER'S collection of French Constitutions, since 1789, with the decrees of the Provisional Government of 1848. It has just been issued by Cotillon, at Paris. * * * * * MIRABEAU, the great revolutionist, is the subject of a new work just published at Vienna, from the pen of Franz Ernst Pipitz, a native of that city, but now a teacher at the University of Zurich. It is in great part the result of original investigations, and in many particulars departs from the received biographies, while in others it casts a new light on facts previously known. The critics of Vienna speak in the highest terms of it, as worthy to be named along with the most brilliant French productions on the same subject. They are, however, bound to say the best thing possible for a book by a Viennese author, since they have but few to rejoice in. * * * * * THE MEMOIRS OF MASSENA, which have for some time been in course of publication at Paris, are at last completed, by the issue of the final volume, which contains the history of the campaign of 1810-11, in Portugal. No complete account of this campaign has ever before been published. The book also casts a great deal of light not merely on the history of the Marshal himself, but on the wars of Napoleon in general. It is founded on documents left by Massena, which have not before been published or consulted. * * * * * M. COUSIN, who, after having exerted a more powerful influence in philosophy than any of his contemporaries, (though this influence was, in a large degree, secondary in its character), has recently been almost forgotten. We see by a paragraph in the _Debats_ that he is collecting and editing all his various writings upon the subject of education. They will fill several volumes. * * * * * Another tribute to the memory of LOUIS PHILIPPE, has just been offered by M. R. PAIGNON, who has collected and published a volume of the deceased King's thoughts and opinions on matters of State. This work exhibits the mental and political history of its subject in the best light, and has the merit of being arranged with care and fidelity. * * * * * M. FELIX PIGNORY, of the Commission despatched by the French Government, in search of the tomb of Godfrey of Bouillon, has returned from Asia, and reports some curious discoveries relative to the object of the mission. * * * * * A new and enlarged edition of ZUINET'S _Genie des Religions_ has appeared at Paris. * * * * * THE POLITICAL MAXIMS AND THE PRIVATE THOUGHTS OF FREDERICK THE GREAT is the title of a curious piece in the last number of _Frazer's Magazine_. It is unique as a sample of kingcraft; and every line supplies a proof of the candor, hypocrisy, unscrupulousness, sense of duty, courage, sensuality, and intellect, of the great Prussian, to whom are partially due the literary merits or demerits of the paper. * * * * * The new edition of the POEMS OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, contains besides many original pieces, her translation of the "Prometheus Bound," of �schylus, never hitherto published, although, as she informs us, once privately circulated in another and less complete form. It bears no mark of a woman's hand: it is rugged, massive, and sublime, as befits the grand old fate drama which the genius of the Greek moulded out of the immortal agony of the beneficent Titan. From the new poems we select the following exquisite love sonnets, from a series scarcely inferior to those in which Shakspeare has given the history of his heart-life: "I lift my heavy heart up solemnly, As once Electra her sepulchral urn, And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see What a great heap of grief lay hid in me, And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot in scorn Could tread them out to darkness utterly, It might be well perhaps. But if instead Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow The gray dust up, ... those laurels on thine head, O my beloved, will not shield thee so, That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred The hair beneath. Stand further off, then! Go. "Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Never more Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore, Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes, the tears of two. "Beloved, my beloved, when I think That thou wast in the world a year ago, What time I sat alone here in the snow, And saw no foot-print, heard the silence sink No moment at they voice; ... but link by link Went courting all my chains, as if that so They never could fall off at any blow Struck by thy possible hand.... Why, thus I drink Of life's great cup of wonder. Wonderful, Never to feel thee thrill the day or night With personal act or speech,--nor ever call Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white Thou sawest growing! _Atheists are as dull, Who cannot guess God's presence out of sight._ "First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write, And ever since it grew more clear and white; How to world greetings ... quick with its 'Oh, list,' When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst I could not wear there plainer to my sight Than that first kiss. The second passed in height The first, and sought the forehead, and half-missed, Half falling on the hair. O, beyond meed! That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown, With sanctifying sweetness, did precede. The third, upon my lips was folded down, In perfect purple state! Since when, indeed, I have been proud, and said, 'My love, my own.'" * * * * * The candidateship between Lord Palmerston and the historian Alison for the office of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, resulted in a majority for the latter, on the gross poll, of 69. As, however, of the "four nations" into which the students were distributed, each of the candidates had two, the election should have been decided by the vote of the present Rector, Mr. Macaulay; but he declines the duty, and would not go to the university during the contest. * * * * * The Official Gazette announces that "the Queen has been pleased to appoint ALFRED TENNYSON, Esq., to be Poet Laureate in ordinary to her Majesty, in the room of William Wordsworth, Esq., deceased." There have been poorer poets than Tennyson among the laureates; but this appointment does not and ought not to give much satisfaction. Mr. Tennyson had already a pension from the government, and was in no need of the salary of this office, as one or two others, and as we conceive, greater poets, are; and it had been hoped that the queen would appoint to the place the _greatest poet of her own sex_ who has lived in England--Elizabeth Barrett Browning. * * * * * The original MS. of "WAVERLEY,"--wholly in the handwriting of Sir Walter Scott,--the same which was sold in 1831 with the other MSS. of the series of novels and romances--has been presented to the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, by Mr. James Hall, brother of the late Capt. Basil Hall. Several of the MSS. of Scott are in this country, having been sold here by Dr. Lardner, soon after his arrival here with Mrs. Heavyside. * * * * * MR. HORACE MAYHEW, author of the metropolitan "Labor and the Poor" articles, has ceased to write for the London _Morning Chronicle_, the conductors of that journal wishing him to suppress, in his reports on the condition of the working classes, facts opposed to free trade. This appears to be characteristic of the advocates of that side. * * * * * D'ISRAELI has published an edition of his father's "Curiosities of Literature," with a "View of the Character and Writings of the Author." He is now engaged upon a Life of Lord William Bentinck, which he has undertaken at the request of the Duke of Portland. We do not think the author of the "Wondrous Tale of Alroy" will do very well in history. * * * * * The EARL OF CARLISLE has recently given two lectures before the Tradesmen's Benevolent Society of Leeds, and the Mechanics' Institute of the same city, upon the Scenes, Institutions, and Characteristics of the United States, which he visited when Lord Morpeth. * * * * * LEIGH HUNT has probably done a foolish thing in again becoming an editor. He is too old. We have, by the last steamer, "Leigh Hunt's Journal: a Miscellany for the Cultivation of the Memorable, the Progressive, and the Beautiful"--certainly a characteristic title. * * * * * A Posthumous work of JOSEPH BALMAS,--(the celebrated Spanish priest, whose book on Catholicism and Protestantism has lately been translated, and published in Baltimore, and who perished prematurely in 1848), has just been published. It is entitled _Escritos Posthumos, Poesias Posthumos_, and contains prose and verse on science, literature, and politics. * * * * * The Death of the late MRS. BELL MARTIN, at the Union Place Hotel, in this city, was briefly noticed in the last number of the _International_. It appears from a statement in the London _Times_ that the vast estates known as the Connemara property, to which she had succeeded as the daughter and heiress of the late Mr. Thomas Martin, of Ballinahinch Castle, in Galway, was among the first brought into the new "Encumbered Estates Court," and has been for some months advertised for sale. The Dublin _Evening Mail_ has the following remarks upon the melancholy history of Mrs. Martin, whose novel of "Julia Howard" must preserve for her a very distinguished rank among the literary women, of our time: "The vicissitudes of life have seldom produced a sadder or more rapid reverse than that by which the fortunes of this excellent lady were darkened and overthrown. Born to a noble inheritance which extended over a territory far exceeding the domain of many a reigning German prince, her name was known throughout the United Kingdom as that of "the Irish heiress." Five years ago her expectancy was considered to be equivalent, over and above all encumbrances and liabilities, to a yearly income of 5,000_l._ Before two years of the interval had elapsed she found herself at the head of her patrimonial estates, without a shilling that she could call her own. The failure of the potato crop, the famine and pestilence which followed, the scourging laws enacted and enforced by an ignorant Legislature to redress the calamity, and the claims of money-lenders, swept every inch of property from under her feet. Her hopes and her prospects were for ever blighted. Her projects for the improvement of the wild district over which she had reigned as a sort of native sovereign were at an end; and she went forth from the roof of her fathers as a wanderer, without a home, and, as it would almost appear, without a friend. Never was hard fate less deserved; for her untiring and active benevolence had been devoted from her childhood to the comfort and relief of those who suffered, and her powerful and original mind was incessantly employed in devising means of moral and physical amelioration in the condition of the tenantry on her father's estates. She gave up her whole time to such pursuits, avoiding the haunts of fashion and those amusements which might be considered suitable to her age and place, that she might perform the various duties of physician, almoner, schoolmistress, and agricultural instructor. Her almost daily habit was to visit the poor and the sick in the remote recesses of that wild region, sometimes on foot--more frequently in her little boat, well provided with medicaments and food, which she impelled by the vigor of her own arm through the lakes which stretch along the foot of the mountains. How grievous it is to reflect that she should so soon have been driven across the ocean in search of a place to lay her head. The American editor intimates that the object of her voyage was to collect materials for literary works. We have no doubt that such was among her projects; for she was a very distinguished writer, and would by no means eat the bread of idleness or dependence; but there is reason to believe that it was a more stringent compulsion which obliged her, at an advanced period of the year, and in a peculiarly delicate situation, when even peasants remain on shore, to encounter the tedium and perils of a voyage in a sailing vessel. We have heard, in fact, from a quarter which ought to be correctly informed, that she was proceeding to the residence of a near relative of her father, with the intention of remaining there till some favorable change might come over the color of her life." * * * * * Our countrywoman, MRS. MOWATT, has revised and partially rewritten her novels of "The Fortune Hunter," and "Evelyn, or the Heart Unmasked," and they have just been published in London. The _Athenæum_ says of them: "These tales give us a higher idea of Mrs. Mowatt's talents as an authoress, than her plays did. Taken in conjunction with those dramas, and with the pleasing powers as an actress displayed by the lady,--they not only establish a case of more than common versatility, but indicate that with labor and concentration, so gifted a person might have taken a high place, whether on the library shelf or on the stage. In another point of view, they are less agreeable. Alas, for those primitive souls, who with a perverse constancy may still wish to fancy America a vast New-England of simple manners and superior morals! The society which Mrs. Mowatt describes--whether in 'Evelyn,' which begins with a wedding out of Fleecer's boarding-house, or in 'The Fortune Hunter,' which opens with table-talk at Delmonico's--is as sophisticated as any society under which this wicked old world groans, and which our Sir E. Lytton and Mrs. Gore have satirized--or Balzac (to shame the French) has "shown up." _Major Pendennis_ himself could hardly have produced anything more _blasé_ in tone than some of the pictures of 'New-York Society' drawn by this American lady,--drawn, moreover, when the lady was young. Evelyn is married to a rich man, without her heart having any thing to say in the matter,--by a mother who is a superfine _Mrs. Falcon_:--and wretched mischief comes of it. Brainard, the fortune hunter, is a heartless and cynical illustration that a Broadway hunter can be as unblushingly mercenary, and as genteelly dishonorable as the veriest old Bond Street hack, bred up in the traditions of the Regency, who ever began life on nothing and a showy person--continued it on nothing and the reputation of fashion--and ended no one cares how or where. There are character, smartness and passion in both these tales--though a certain looseness of structure and incompleteness of style prevent us from being extreme in praising them, or from recommending them by quotation,--and though, as has been said, the tone and taste of the life which they describe must jar on the feelings of those who are unwilling to see the decrepitude of elderly civilization coming down upon a new country, ere its maturity has been reached--or even ere its youth has been sufficiently and steadily trained." * * * * * MRS. SOUTHWORTH, the authoress of "Retribution," "The Deserted Wife," &c., has a new novel in the press of the Appletons, entitled "Shannondale." Mrs. Southworth is the most popular of our female novelists, notwithstanding the doubtful morality of her works. * * * * * CHARLES MACKAY, who, two or three years ago, passed some months in New-York, and who is known for his very candid and intelligent book upon the United States, entitled "The Western World," has gone to India, as an agent of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, for the purpose of inquiring into the state and prospects of Indian cotton cultivation. Mr. Mackay has had experience in the collection of statistical information; he has lived long enough abroad to know that essential differences sometimes lurk beneath external resemblances in the social arrangements of two countries, and to be on his guard against the erroneous inferences to which ignorance of this fact leads. He is naturally acute, energetic, and cautious. For the difficult task of investigating and reporting upon the condition of an important branch of industry, and the circumstances which are likely to promote or retard its progress among a community so different from the English as that of India, he is probably as well fitted as any man who could have been selected. The foundation of the British Indian empire and the establishment of the United States as an independent nation, were contemporary events. The loss of her American colonies helped to concentrate the attention and exertions of England upon her Indian dominions. The progress made by British India since 1760, in civilization, material wealth, and intelligent enterprise, is barely perceptible; while the United States have expanded from a few obscure colonies into a nation second only to Great Britain in the value and extent of their commercial relations, second to none in intelligence and successful enterprise. The Anglo-Norman inhabitants of the "Old Thirteen" provinces have made the valley of the Mississippi, and the prairies beyond it, which little more than half a century ago were mere wastes, the thronged abodes of a vigorous and wealthy European population. They have done this without the aid of the aboriginal tribes, who have proved irreclaimably addicted to their nomade habits. The Anglo-Normans who rule British India have had to deal with a country thickly peopled with races far advanced in civilization, though of a peculiar character; yet, in every respect, the results of their efforts lag far behind those visible in America. To place the difference in a most striking point of view, it is only necessary to contrast the cotton produce and the mercantile marine of British India with those of the United States. There is actually a more fully-developed steam navigation between Panama and California than between Bombay and China. The causes of these results are plain enough to us, but to the English they are enigmas. The mission of Mr. Mackay will scarcely end in a revelation of the truth, that liberty and independence have kept healthy the blood in the vigorous limbs of the Americans, while trammels and vassalage have deadened the energies of the Indies; but it may have an important influence upon the question whether the East India Company's charter shall be renewed, and it certainly will develop much information interesting to the cotton-growers of the United States. * * * * * MR. DE QUINCEY is one of the greatest of the elder race of literary men now living in Great Britain, and we believe he is in no very affluent circumstances. The bestowal of a pension by the Government upon Mr. James Bailey, an editor of the classics, residing at Cambridge, on the ground of his "literary services," causes _The Leader_ thus to refer to the author of "The Opium Eater"-- "Where is Thomas De Quincey's pension? Some may not regard him, as we do, the very greatest living master of the English language; some may think lightly of those fragmentary works and fugitive articles with which he has for more than thirty years enriched our literature; but, whatever may be the individual estimate of his services, one fact is patent, namely, that you cannot mention De Quincey in any circle of the British Islands, pretending to literary culture, but his name will sound familiar; in most it will awaken responses of gratitude for high pleasures bestowed, in none will it arouse indignation of high power to base uses. Now, this we call a clear case for national beneficence. He has done the state service, and they know it; but they will not reward it." Apropos of pensions: Upon the whole, we have the best exchequer in the world, and to _soldiers_ we have evinced no special lack of liberality. To give five hundred dollars a year to Mr. Audubon, R. H. Dana, Moses Stuart, Edward Robinson, H. R. Schoolcraft, James G. Percival, C. F. Hoffman, and some half dozen others, would be something toward an "honorable discharge" of the country's obligations in the premises, and probably no slight addition to the happiness of men who have added much to the real glory of the nation, while it would cost less than a morning's useless debate in Congress. In a recent letter to Lord Brougham, on a cognate subject, Savage Landor exclaims: "Probably the time is not far distant when the arts and sciences, and even literary genius, may be deemed no less worthy of this distinction than the slaughter of a thousand men. But how, in the midst of our vast expenditure, spare so prodigious a sum as five hundred a year to six, and three hundred a year to six more!" * * * * * A MR. CHUBB has published in London, in a small volume, a paper which he read before the Institution of Civil Engineers, on the construction of locks and keys. It embraces a history of the lock and key from the earliest ages, illustrated profusely with wood cuts. It forms an instructive and entertaining essay; but we think Mr. Chubb might have learned something more of the subject in the lock factories of Newark and this city. * * * * * MR. TICKNOR'S History of Spanish Literature has been translated into German, and is announced for publication by Brockhaus. * * * * * MR. DICKEN'S "David Copperfield" is at length completed, and Mr. Wiley has published it in two handsome volumes, profusely illustrated. There is a variety of opinions among the critics as to its rank among the works of "Boz"; but it is not contended by any that it evinces a decay of his extraordinary and peculiar genius. We copy a paragraph which strikes us as just, from the _Spectator_: "This story has less of London life and town-bred character than most of its predecessors; but what may thus be gained in variety is lost in raciness, breadth, and effect. The peculiar classes forced into existence by the hotbed of a great city, and owing a part of their gusto to town usage, may be narrow enough if compared with general nature, but they are broader than the singularities whom Mr. Dickens copies or invents as representatives of genteel country life, or human nature in general. In the mere style there is frequently an improvement--less effort and greater ease, with occasional touches of the felicity of Goldsmith; but we should have thought the work was likely to be less popular than many of the previous tales of Mr. Dickens, as well as rather more open to unfavorable criticism. Any prose fiction that is to take rank in the first class, must have what in epic poetry is called a fable,--some lesson of life embodied in a story that combines the utile and the dulce. This fable should not only please the reader by its succession of coherent events, and by the variety of its persons and fortunes, but should touch by appeals to the common kinship of humanity, and teach worldly conduct of ethical lessons by particular incidents, as well as by the general development. And when this end is attained, whether by design or instinct, technical rules are readily forgotten; even the great rule of unity of action can be dispensed with. It does not appear that Mr. Dickens has the critical training necessary to feel the importance of this principle, or a knowledge of life sufficiently deep and extensive to enable him to embody it unconsciously, as a well-chosen story will always compel an author to do. So far as _David Copperfield_ appears designed with any other object than as a vehicle for writing a number of sketches, it would seem intended to trace the London career of an inexperienced young man, with infirmity of purpose, a dangerous friend, and no very experienced advisers. Any purpose of this kind is only prosecuted by snatches; "the theme" is constantly deserted, and matters are introduced that have no connection with the hero further than his being present at them, or their occurring to his acquaintance. In fact, from the time that David Copperfield emerges from boyhood, the interest in _his_ adventures ceases, beyond that sort of feeling which many readers entertain of wishing to know 'how it ends.'" * * * * * MR. DAVID DUDLEY FIELD, of this city, one of the three commissioners who prepared the amended Code of the State of New-York, abolishing the distinction in procedure between law and equity, being in England for a brief visit, was invited by the leading members of the Law Amendment Society to give some account of the great changes effected here in the administration of justice. He complied, and a meeting of the Society was summoned specially to hear him. The result is much remarked upon in nearly all the London journals. Mr. Field is a clear headed man, master of his subject, perspicuous in his rhetoric, and distinct in his elocution, so that our new constitution was most advantageously displayed before his learned and critical hearers. The _Spectator_ says of the subject: "The visit of Mr. Dudley Field to England, and his interesting statements to the members of our Law Amendment Society, are real events in the progress of law reform in this country. The injustice which the English people submit to in the revered name of Law, and in the sacred but in their case profaned name of Equity, is more enormous than the future historian will be able remotely to conceive. The keystone of the barbarous Gothic portal to Justice in our common-law procedure was struck out some twenty years ago, when the logical forms of legal contest were reduced to their now moderate number; other heavy blows have further undermined the ruin, and almost cleared away whatever was feudal in that portion of the edifice; and then came the raising of the new and noble portal of the County Courts. Still, in all but the most trivial litigation the delay and expense are such that justice can only be had at a percentage utterly disgraceful to a nation either honest or merely clearheaded and commercial. We still preserve a diversity of tribunals, to administer laws that ought not to be inharmonious; and we are prevented from making the laws harmonious by the difficulties of finding tribunals able to rule the concord and administer the whole field of law as a single empire. In this case, as in a multitude of others, our young relations across the Atlantic have done that which we only longed to do. In this rivalry of nations, far above all other rivalries, they have pushed development of institutions which they received from forefathers common to us both, to a more rapid perfection than we. Mr. Dudley Field is one of three men who framed a constitutional law for the State of New York, under which the courts of legal and equitable jurisdiction have been successfully merged; the enactment has succeeded in practical working; and the spectacle of "Equity swallowing up Law" has been so edifying to the citizens of his State, that three other States of the Union have resolved to enact, and four further States have appointed conferences to deliberate upon, a similar procedure. It is impossible--however narrow-minded lawyers may object--that what Americans find practicable and beneficial should be either impracticable or disadvantageous to Englishmen." * * * * * A second part of the "Historical Collections of Louisiana," by B. F. French, has been published by Mr. Putnam. It contains some interesting papers, among which are translations of an original letter of Hernando de Soto, on the Conquest of Florida, of a brief account of de Soto's memorable expedition to Florida, from a recently discovered manuscript by a writer named Biedma, and Hackluyt's translation of the longer narrative "by a gentleman of Elvas." It is to be followed, we understand, by a second volume. * * * * * ELIHU BURRITT is one of those people who are filled with the comfortable assurance of their own greatness. He seems always to regard the mob of men as very diminutive creatures, while his introverted glances are through a lens which reveals a character of qualities and proportions the most extraordinary. This is unfortunate. It renders Mr. Elihu Burritt, _par excellence_, the bore of his generation. He is really a person of very small abilities; of very little information, considering the opportunities presented by his travels; and the "_learned_ blacksmith" has no learning at all. He had, indeed, an unusual facility in acquiring words, but he knows nothing of languages; not having in any a particle of scholarship; of the philosophy, even of his mother tongue, being as ignorant as the bellows-hand in his smithy at Worcester. But because of this not uncommon faculty of acquiring words--acquiring them as Zerah Colburn did a certain mastery of figures, without being able to comprehend any principle of mathematics--Mr. Everett, or some one else, advertised him as "learned," and ever since he has neglected his fit vocation to crowd himself into conspicuous places, all over Christendom; to blow continually his penny whistle in the ears of the little people called philanthropists; to speak and write in addresses and letters immense aggregations of ambitious platitudes, to pontiffs, emperors, kings, parliaments, etc., respecting their particular affairs, all of which addresses and letters are as cogent as the barkings sent by a lap-dog toward the moon, and receive from all sorts of people, except diminutives and impertinents whose profession is "philanthropy," just about as much consideration as Dian yields to the fast-yelping cur. It is all unfortunate, for poor Elihu Burritt will never be persuaded that he is a subject of derision only, instead of admiration; that men pause to regard him as a miracle of conceit and assurance rather than as a prophet; and that his commonplaces about "olive leaves," "calumets," "universal brotherhood," "fatherland," etc., have no more influence than the maudlin rigmarole of the madman whose preternatural force is lost in senility. It is time for Elihu Burritt to go back to his shop: the world wants a new fool. * * * * * JOHN MILLS, remembered by some unfortunate New-Yorkers as John _St. Hugh_ Mills, has written half a dozen tolerable novels since he went home, and he is now publishing, in the _United Service Magazine_, a series of papers illustrative of his American travels, in which he illustrates his knowledge and veracity by certain anecdotes, which are described as having occurred on "_the western prairies of Louisiana_." * * * * * PRESIDENT HITCHCOCK, of Amherst College, who is capable of a very conclusive treatment of the subject, has in the press of Philips & Sampson, a work on the connection of Geology and Religion. * * * * * DR. LATHAM'S very important work on the "Varieties of Man," we are glad to hear is to be republished by the Appletons. Though much less voluminous than the work of Pritchard, and therefore less particular generally in its illustrations, it may be regarded as decidedly the most masterly and satisfactory production that has yet appeared in ethnology. The prospect of its republication affords us the more satisfaction, because the superficial and flippant infidelity of Dr. Robert Knox has been reproduced here by a respectable publishing house, and widely diffused. The "Races of Man," by Dr. Knox, is what is called a clever book; the Yankees might style it "smart;" but it is no more entitled to consideration as an exhibition of scholarship, intellectual strength, or fairness, than the rigmarole of the Millerite or the Mormon. * * * * * THE HOMOEOPATHIC REVIEW AND QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF MEDICAL SCIENCE, is a new periodical, commencing with the year, of which the general character is indicated by the title. It is edited by Dr. Marcy, author of "The Homoeopathic Theory and Practice," one of the most eminent scholars and successful practitioners of the new school; Dr. Herring, of Philadelphia, whose name is familiar to the students of German literature and science, and who was one of the most trusted friends of Hahnemann; and Dr. Metcalfe, who has been known as an able lawyer and ingenious critic, and who is regarded as a very accomplished physician. Under such direction, the Homoeopathic Review can hardly fail of success. It will certainly, we think, commend the doctrines of the Hahnemannists to the favorable consideration of all thoughtful readers, and compel those who have been accustomed to deride the new principles to a courteous treatment of them. Mr. Radde is the publisher. * * * * * The cheapness of good books and good editions is one of the wonders of our time. American publishers have done much toward bringing literature into the homes of the poor, but the cheap books manufactured in this country have, for the most part, been badly printed, and in every respect so wretchedly put together, that they were hardly worth preserving after a first reading. The English are now competing vigorously for the popular market here, and mainly, through the house of Bangs & Brother of this city. Bohn and other great London publishers are supplying us with well printed, well bound, and excellently illustrated books, at prices altogether lower than those for which the American manufacturers have offered or can afford them. To sell such a book as _Lodge's Portrait Gallery_, in eight volumes, with all its finely engraved heads, for ten dollars, one must have the world for a market; and so with the long list of important writings in the compactly but correctly and elegantly printed volumes of Bohn's Standard Library--the best and cheapest popular series ever issued in any country. * * * * * Many very correct writers are very poor authors, and there are abundance of good books with imperfect rhetoric; yet we have a right to ask some attention to the details of style in a literary critic. Professor Henry Reed has a delicate appreciation in poetry, but his remarks are nearly always marred by verbal infelicities incompatible with a knowledge of literary art. Thus, within a few pages of his Memoir of Gray, just published, he says of Jacob Bryant, who has been dead a century, that "he _has_ recorded;" that "Gray retained a high admiration of Dryden's poetry, _as_ was strongly expressed," &c.; that an ode published in 1747, "being the first publication _of_ his English verse" (meaning his first publication in English verse); that Gray could not "break through the circumspection of so contracted a system of metaphysics _as that of Locke's_;" that "it is apparent from what Gray _has_ done" (as if Gray were now living, or present), &c. &c. &c. &c. &c., all through every thing he publishes. Such things in a professor of mathematics would attract no attention, but they will be observed in a "Professor of English Literature." * * * * * Mr. BANCROFT is not, as we were led by some newspaper to state in the _International_, engaged in printing his History of the Revolution; and when he does give it to the press, it is by no means likely that he will have to leave New-York to find a publisher for it. The History of the Colonization of America--introductory to the History of the United States--has secured for Mr. Bancroft a place among the greatest historians; he has now the assurance that he is writing for other ages; and he will not endanger his fame, nor fail of the utmost perfection in his work, for any needless haste. This second part of his History will probably occupy five volumes; and although the story has been written by many hands, with more or less fulness and various degrees of justice, Mr. Bancroft will have studied it from beginning to end in the original materials, of which his collection is by far the best that has ever been made. If upon this field any one successfully competes with him for the historic wreath, he must come after him, and be guided by his light. * * * * * HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT, LL. D., is occupied, as his official duties permit, in the composition of memoirs of his long and honorably distinguished life. His great work upon the History and Condition of the Indians, now in press, and to be published in some half-dozen splendid quarto volumes by Lippencott, Grambo & Co., of Philadelphia, will contain the fruits of his observations in that department which he has made so peculiarly his own, and upon which he will always be the chief and highest authority; but his personal adventures, and his reminiscences of his contemporaries, will form the subject of this additional performance. * * * * * DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, the father of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Connecticut, and the first President of King's College, now Columbia College, in New-York, was one of the most interesting characters in our social history. His abilities, learning, activity, and influence, entitle him to be ranked in the class of Franklin (who was his friend and correspondent, and who printed, at his press in Philadelphia, several of his works), as a promoter of the highest civilization in the colonies. Except the Memoirs of Franklin, we have hitherto had no more attractive specimen of biography than the book known as Dr. Chandler's Life of Dr. Johnson. Franklin's Memoirs, it is well known, never came before the public in the form in which they were written, until a few years ago, and it has lately been discovered that Dr. Johnson's had suffered a similar disadvantage. Dr. Johnson amused himself in his old age by writing recollections of his life and times, which, after his death, were placed in the hands of Dr. Chandler, who changed them from the first to the third person, omitted many particulars which he did not deem it expedient to publish, and added others which the modesty of Dr. Johnson had not allowed him to write. The book thus made by Dr. Chandler was printed by his son-in-law, the late Bishop Hobart, who probably was not aware of its origin. But Dr. Johnson's MS. has now been discovered, and it will immediately be given to the public, under the supervision of the Rev. Mr. Pitkin, of Connecticut, who is adding to it many notes and illustrative documents. It is very much to be regretted that so little of the extensive correspondence of Dr. Johnson with the chief persons of his time in the literary and the religious world abroad, has been preserved; but the book will contain numerous letters by his more eminent contemporaries which have not appeared elsewhere. * * * * * Somebody has made the "discovery" that General Charles Lee, of the revolutionary army, was not unwilling to be considered the author of "Junius;" and two or three of our contemporaries have been busy with the subject of the internal and other evidence in the case. These critics are about as wise as the editor of an evening paper who published one of the old Washington forgeries, lately, as an important historical document. It was "characteristic," that the chief wrote so familiarly to his wife of affairs! In the same way, the history of the _Book of Mormon_ (originally composed as a religious novel by the Rev. Solomon Spaulding), appears as a curious and altogether new exposure! We shall not be surprised if the same journals advise us that Walter Scott wrote the Waverley Novels. * * * * * EMILIE GIRARDIN has a new book _L'Abolition de la Misére_, in which he proposes the entire abolition of suffering. He has "found the philosopher's stone." * * * * * Somebody is writing for the _United Service_, "Reminiscences of a Voyage to Canada," and we have looked into a couple of his chapters to see what sort of stuff, respecting America, is thus submitted to the officers of her Majesty's Army and Navy. The style of a fellow who talks of his "fellow countrymen" (not meaning, as the words do, persons who live with him in rural neighborhoods), is scarcely deserving of criticism; but the silliness of the falsehoods of this latest English traveller among us, may be referred to as illustrating the causes of the common prejudices in England against the United States. After describing his arrival at the Tremont House, in Boston, he says: "A clerk [meaning our old friend Parker], dressed in the height of fashion, presided at the bar [meaning the office] at which we applied for rooms, wherein to perform our duties of the toilet. The one to which I was directed contained several beds without curtains, from which the occupants had evidently but a short time previously taken their departure. This was however a matter of indifference, as I imagined the apartment would have been entirely at my own disposal. In the course of a few minutes however, the door was opened, and in walked an individual, who, depositing a small carpet bag on the floor, commenced operations of a similar nature to those I myself was engaged in--not a word was at first exchanged between us; he eyed me critically, I returned the compliment, till at length I was favored with 'Stranger, I guess you are from Europe' (a strong accent on the last syllable), immediately followed by questions as to where I was going, what was my business, &c. This was somewhat amusing, so I informed my gentleman I was journeying to New-York, whereupon he told me I should see an 'almighty fine city.' His curiosity being next attracted by my portmanteau, which was lying open on a chair, he strode up and peered into it most attentively. Thinking I might as well follow his example, I did the same by his carpet bag; whereupon giving a grunt of dissatisfaction, he collected his valuables and soon after took himself off." Thirty years ago, the Duke of Saxe Weimar published a western story of a coachman who said, "I am the gentleman what's to drive you." Our very original _United Service_ tourist tells of a visit to Mount Auburn, and adds: "Whilst driving back to the hotel I happened to remark, 'That is the _man_ who drove us from the steamer in the morning.' Upon which 'Jehu' quickly replied, 'I reckon I'm the _gentleman_ that drove you.' This information was received on our part with all the respect due to the elevated rank of our charioteer." In a paragraph about luggage: "The American trunk is a ponderous solid affair made of wood, secured with braces of iron, studded with brass or iron nails, and usually having the name or initials of the owner, and frequently the state of which he is a native, painted on it in large white letters. Owing to this custom, the traveller is liable to be addressed by any peculiarity appertaining to his trunk being affixed thereto. Thus a gentleman passing through the states, found himself designated as 'Mr. Air Tight,' because this simple term was marked on the outside of a tin-box, and no affirmations on his part could induce the bystanders to believe to the contrary. They 'reckoned it was on his box,' and that was sufficient." Of the personal appearance of the Americans: "To a stranger newly arrived from England, the absence of fresh complexions and of bright and cheerful faces among the male part of the creation is very striking. They are gaunt, sallow, cadaverous looking creatures; their general, far from prepossessing, appearance, in no way improved by the habit of wearing long, straight hair, combed entirely off the face, the bare throat, the never absent 'quid,' and that abominably nasty habit of constant expectoration." And this trash is from one of the most reputable periodicals published in London--the one of all most especially addressed to _gentlemen_. In the next number of his "Reminiscences" the author promises a sketch of the city of New-York, for which his authority will probably be Mrs. Trolloppe, Mr. Joseph Miller, and the last pick-pocket who went home to London. * * * * * The "Peace Congress," in which we have most faith--the only one that is likely to exert any very desirable influence, is that to assemble next year in Hyde Park. This will be a display of works rather than one of words; and _apropos_ of its lingual character, which will show very conclusively that as yet "all the nations of the earth" are not "as one people," we find in _The Leader_ this paragraph: "The Exhibition of 1851, seems to promise a whole literature of its own. Journals are already established for the record of its proceedings. Useful information will be at a premium--unless there should happen to be a "glut;" while in the shape of translations and dialogue-books, every facility will be offered to foreigners. What a Babel it will be! How the English ear will be rasped by Slavonic and Teutonic gutturals, or distended by the breadth of Southern vowels. It will be a marvel if this incursion of barbarians do not very much affect the purity of our own tongue, and damage the tender susceptibility of the London ear, already so delicate that when an actor says--as it _sometimes_ happens--"_Donnar Elvirar_ is coming," the whole audience rises in a mass to protest against the outrages on taste. We are told the Athenians were also merciless critics in such matters. Nay, there is a famous anecdote perpetually cited as an illustration of Athenian delicacy in matters of pronunciation, that Theophrastus was known to be a foreigner even by a herbseller. People who wonder at every thing recorded of the Greeks, will regard us probably as reckless iconoclasts if we break that by a stone flung from common sense; but really, with the daily experience of Scotchmen and Irishmen before us, we must say the most wonderful part of the anecdote is, that it should have been recorded. Theophrastus came from Lesbos--if we remember rightly--and his pronunciation, therefore, naturally preserved some of the Lesbian flavor, as Carlyle's does that of Annandale. Would any critic compliment the cockney on delicacy of ear because it detects the accent of Carlyle, or Sheridan Knowles, to be other than its own true London accent? Yet, this is precisely what critics do with respect to the Athenians." * * * * * MILTON, BURKE, MAZZINI, and DANIEL WEBSTER, present the most extraordinary examples of the harmonious and effective combination of political and literary genius, that have appeared in modern times. There have been and there are now many politicians who are eminent as authors: but these are preëminently great in both statesmanship and letters. Mazzini is now the chief apostle of republicanism in Europe, as Milton was in the time of the Protector. He devises and executes the schemes which promise advances of liberty and happiness, and he is equal to the defence with the pen of every thing he essays in affairs. "Young Italy," since it was put down by French bayonets, has had as little quarter from parasite writers as from patristic governors; but Mazzini has come to her defence with as vigorous a pen as that with which Milton vindicated the people of England against the hireling Salmasius, under similar circumstances. In another part of this number of the _International_, we have copied from the London _Examiner_ a reviewal of Mazzini's work on the Italian revolution. We should be glad to see it criticised by Mr. Walsh also, or by Professor Bowen, in his _North American Review_. * * * * * Since SIR FRANCIS HEAD went home from Canada, and finished the last edition of his "Bubbles" and "Travels," and the funny anathema of poor Mr. William Lyon Mackenzie, in the _Times_, he has been very quiet, except now and then, when he has given an explosive and amusing paper in the _Quarterly_. But now he has published a new book, on "The Defenceless State of Great Britain," in which, the _Examiner_ says "he has made up for lost time." Says the critic, "It is calculated to rouse all the old women in the country. Such a fee-fa-fum of a book we never read. The Duke's letter to Sir John Burgoyne was nothing to it, and it beats even Lord Ellesmere hollow." The baronet thinks every thing portends a French invasion, and he advocates the largest "war footing." * * * * * The REV. DR. BLOOMFIELD, whose edition of the Greek Testament is so well known in this country, has just published two volumes of additional Notes, critical, philological, and explanatory, in fulfilment of a promise made in the third edition of his New Testament, in 1839. This promise was, that he would make no further change in the notes to the New Testament, but reserve all additions for a separate supplementary work. That work, after the direct labor of eleven years, is now published; forming a companion to all the editions of Bloomfield's Greek Testament except the first two. The annotations relate to a critical examination of the readings of the text, with the reasons for that selected, philological notes on the meaning of words, and exegetical annotations on the verbal interpretations of passages. * * * * * MR. COOPER has a new book in press which, in New-York, will produce a profounder sensation, than any he has yet written. It is entitled "The Men of Manhattan," and reveals the social condition of the city, past and present, as it is known only to the author of "The Littlepage Manuscripts." Mr. Cooper is a thorough New-Yorker; he is intimately acquainted with all the sources of her past and present and prospective greatness; and he has watched, with such emotions as none but a gentleman of the old school can feel, the infusion and gradual diffusion of those principles of plebeianism and ruffianism, from discontented improvidence, immigration, and other causes, which threaten to destroy whatever has justified the wisest pride; and to sink--not raise--all the mob of people to a common level. He has his whims, and though they have won for him little popularity, we regret that they are not shared more largely by the public, which will never appreciate his merits as a censor, until the best features of our civilization are quite obliterated. * * * * * MR. JUDD, the author of "Margaret," an original, indigenous, striking, and in many respects brilliant New-England story, and of "Philo," a crude, extravagant, ridiculous mass of versified verbiage, has lately published (through Phillips & Sampson, of Boston,) a new work entitled "Richard Edney, or the Governor's Family; a Rus-Urban Tale, simple and popular, yet cultured and noble, of morals, sentiment and life." It is worthy of the author of "Margaret." Though it evinces very little of the constructive faculty, it illustrates in every page a quick and intelligent observation, a happy talent for characterization, and great independence in speculation. * * * * * Mr. C. P. CASTANIS, formerly known in this country as an agreeable lecturer upon various subjects connected with Modern Greece, has just published (through Lippencott, Grambo & Co., of Philadelphia), a narrative of his captivity and escape during the massacre by the Turks on the Island of Scio, together with various adventures in Greece and America. * * * * * MR. E. G. SQUIER, whose large work upon American antiquities, published by the Smithsonian Institute, made for him a most desirable reputation, is now engaged in the preparation of an elaborate work upon the remains of ancient civilization in Central America, to contain the results of investigations during his recent official residence there. * * * * * NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE'S new work, "The House of Seven Gables," is in the press of Ticknor, Reed & Fields, of Boston. * * * * * MISS FENIMORE COOPER, whose beautiful work entitled "Rural Hours in America" has been so much and so justly applauded, has a new volume in the press of Putnam. * * * * * In the new novel of "Olive," republished by the Harpers, (which is much praised by the London critics), the heroine, who has a lofty, noble nature, full of poetic feeling and enthusiasm for art, determines to devote herself to its study, urged on by a desire of liquidating a debt contracted by her father. _Apropos_ of the purpose of her life, and the sphere of her sex: "She became an artist--not in a week, a month, a year. Art exacts of its votaries no less service than a lifetime. But in her girl's soul the right chord had been touched, which began to vibrate into noble music, the true seed had been sown, which day by day grew into a goodly plant. Vanbrugh had said truly, that genius is of no sex; and he had said likewise truly, that no woman can be an artist--that is, a great artist. The hierarchies of the soul's dominion belong only to man, and it is right they should. He it was whom God created first, let him take pre-eminence. But among those stars of lesser glory, which are given to lighten the nations, among sweet-voiced poets, earnest prose writers, who, by lofty truth that lies hid beneath legend and parable, purify the world, graceful painters and beautiful musicians, each brightening their generation with serene and holy lustre--among these, let woman shine! But her sphere is, and ever must be, bounded; because, however lofty her genius may be, it always dwells in a woman's breast. Nature, which gave to man the dominion of the intellect, gave to her that of the heart and affections. These bind her with everlasting links from which she cannot free herself,--nay, she would not if she could. Herein man has the advantage. He, strong in his might of intellect, can make it his all in all, his life's sole aim and guerdon. A Brutus, for that ambition which is misnamed patriotism, can trample on all human ties. A Michael Angelo can stand alone with his genius, and so go sternly down into a desolate old age. But there scarce ever lived the woman who would not rather sit meekly by her own hearth, with her husband at her side, and her children at her knee, than be the crowned Corinne of the Capitol. "Thus woman, seeking to strive with man, is made feebler by the very spirit of love which in her own sphere is her chiefest strength. But sometimes chance, or circumstance, or wrong, sealing up her woman's nature, converts her into a self-dependant human soul. Instead of life's sweetness, she has before her life's greatness. The struggle passed, her genius may lift itself upward, expand and grow mighty; never so mighty as man's, but still great and glorious. Then, even while she walks over the world's rough pathway, heaven's glory may rest upon her up-turned brow, and she may become a light unto her generation." * * * * * DAUTZENBERG, a Flemish poet, has issued at Brussels a volume of small compositions, which, apart from freshness of fancy and beauty of thought, are remarkable for the correctness and smoothness of their form. The Flemish tongue is used by him with a lyrical success that would reflect honor on a writer in the more melodious dialects of Southern Europe. He has also licked that jaw-cracking tongue so far into shape, that it serves for regular hexameters. * * * * * MISS STRICKLAND'S LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND, republished by Lea & Blanchard of Philadelphia, in ten or twelve volumes, is a work of very great interest and value, for its illustrations of the higher and progressive British civilization. Her Lives of the Queens of Scotland, soon to be issued from the press of the Harpers, resembles generally her former work, by the success of which it was probably suggested, as much as by the desirableness of the biographies of the Northern Queens, as "adjuncts" to the lives of those of England. A good deal of matter was collected in reference to the later Queens of Scotland during the biographer's researches for the Queens of England; and this, augmented by further inquiries among public and private archives, especially among the muniment-chests of noble Scottish families, forms the materials of the present undertaking. The "lives" do not begin till the Tudor times, when the nearer relationship with England imparts a greater interest to the subject, not only from the closer communication between the courts, but from the prospects of the Scottish succession to the English crown. * * * * * JOHN S. DWIGHT, of Boston, has recently delivered an admirable lecture before the Mercantile Library Association of this city, on "Operatic Music," illustrated by a critical examination of Rossini's _Don Giovanni_. Mr. Dwight's rare musical learning and accomplishments, his exquisite taste in art, and his remarkable felicity of expression, were displayed to singular advantage in this masterly lecture, and won the cordial applauses of the most appreciative critics in his large and highly intelligent audience. * * * * * A History of the Greek Revolution is soon to be given to the public by Baron PROKESH OSTEN, who for many years was Austrian ambassador at Athens, and who now fills the same office at Berlin. Of course his book will be published at Vienna. * * * * * A NEW EDITION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF G�ETHE, in thirty volumes (it would look much better and be far more convenient in fifteen), is advertised in Berlin. Two volumes are ready, and the whole are to be issued before the close of 1851. * * * * * W. G. SIMMS, LL. D., is referred to in the _Southern Literary Gazette_ as having delivered in Charleston lately an elaborate poem entitled "The City of the Silent," on the occasion of the consecration of a beautiful rural cemetery near that city. * * * * * DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES is writing a biographical sketch of the late Dr. Parkman, to form a part of a work called "The Benefactors of the Medical School of Harvard University," of which the poet is himself one of the professors. * * * * * PIERRE DUPONT, the Parisian Socialist poet, has lately issued a new book containing six songs that have not before been published. Dupont is as much a favorite with the people as Beranger, and though he does not equal the latter in originality of fancy and gayety of spirit, he even excels him in revolutionary point and enthusiasm. His songs are heard in every workshop and at every popular banquet, their words and music are universally familiar, and when the clubs were permitted, each meeting was opened and closed with a song of Dupont's, the whole audience joining in the chorus. This was done instinctively and without previous arrangement. It often happened, too, that after some orator had delivered an ardent speech, Dupont would appear at the tribune with a new song which he had composed on the inspiration of the moment. Now each new political event is sure of a response from this poet; one of his late productions is the _Chant du Vote_ (vote song), in which he denounces the attempt of the Government to destroy universal suffrage. Perhaps his most powerful production is the _Marsellaise of Hunger_; the hold this has taken on the public may be judged from the fact, that when at the theatre of the Porte St. Martin a piece was performed, called _Misery_, founded on incidents in the Irish famine, when the curtain went down at the end of the first act, the beholders spontaneously set up this song. So in the same theatre, when the piece representing the downfall of Rome was performed (this piece afterwards became famous through its prohibition by the Government), one of the spectators in the pit began the chorus of Dupont's Soldier's Song: "Les peuples sont pour nous des freres Et les tyrans des ennemis," the whole house joined in, and the performance had to be interrupted till the song was ended. The _Chant des Transportés_ wherever it is heard moves the people to tears and indignation. The Peasant's Song prophecies the time when independent industry shall render the earth blooming with fertility, and the corn and wine shall "be free as warmth in summer weather." While the majority of his poems are political and social, some of them are full of love and appreciation of outward nature. In one, the Romance of the Poplar, this sentiment is finely combined with the spirit of liberty. * * * * * ARAGO'S great work, which was some time since announced in the _International_, is now nearly complete and will soon be given to the public. The scientific and literary world of Europe expect it with impatience. It is said even that Alexander von Humboldt intends to be its translator into German, but this is not probable. It is also rumored that the author gives an appendix in which he for the moment abandons science for politics, in order to pay off some of the attacks he has suffered from Proudhon. Our own opinion is that he had better stick to his trade and leave Proudhon alone. * * * * * CHARLES SUMNER has published (through Ticknor, Reed & Fields of Boston,) two volumes of his "Orations and Addresses." Mr. Sumner is a scholar of the finest and rarest capacities and accomplishments. He is of the school of Everett, but has more earnestness, and consequently more compactness of expression, and more force. He enters heartily into all the 'progressive' movements of the day, and is of many the intellectual leader. His bravery is equal to every emergency into which he may be led by a search after truth, and to all combats he brings arms of the truest metal and most exquisite polish. There are in New-England many more fervid and powerful orators, but we know of none whose orations are delivered with a more pleasing eloquence. We have not leisure now to review Mr. Sumner's volumes; but if among our readers there are any who desire to see displayed the "very form and spirit" of the new age, we commend them to "The True Grandeur of Nations," and the other discourses, speeches, and essays, here published. * * * * * "THE MANHATTANER IN NEW-ORLEANS" is the title of a small volume, from the press of J. S. Redfield, which was written by an accomplished New-York lawyer who had resided some time in the Crescent City. It is a very graphic and delightful picture of the social life of the metropolis of the South; betraying a quick insight, a genial appreciation of what is manly, and fairness in regard to every thing. We have had need of such a book, for hitherto we northerners have generally known less of our southern neighbors than even Professor Bowen knew of the Hungarians, before Mrs. Putnam enlightened him. We are sorry that Mr. Hall, to whom we are indebted for "The Manhattaner in New-Orleans," intimates that it is the last book for the preparation of which he will ever have withdrawn his attention from the law. * * * * * "ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, MARGARET FULLER D'OSSOLI AND GEORGE SAND," is the title of an article in which the characters and genius of these three remarkable women is discussed, in the last number of _The Palladium_, a new English monthly. * * * * * IKE MARVEL'S "Reveries of a Bachelor," (printed by Baker & Scribner), appears to be the "book of the season." All the critics praise it as one of the choicest specimens of half-romance and half-essay, that has appeared in our time. But for ourselves--we have not read it. * * * * * The subject of "Junius" is again discussed in "Junius and his Works, Compared with the character and Writings of the Earl of Chesterfield," by W. Cramp, just published in London. * * * * * PARKE GODWIN'S beautiful story of "Vala," suggested by the career of Jenny Lind, has been issued in a luxurious quarto, by Putnam. The Fine Arts. GIFT FROM THE BAVARIAN ARTISTS TO KING LOUIS.--The artists and artisans of Munich have combined to make to ex-King Louis of Bavaria a gift such as monarchs have not often received. It consists of a writing-desk and album. The desk is of oak varnished, adorned with rich carving, and with locks and the Bavarian arms in gilt bronze enamel. The carving contains the most charming figures representing the various arts and trades. The album is bound in crimson velvet, the clasps and ornaments of gilt bronze. On the outside is a medallion, designed by Widnmann, set in brilliants, representing King Louis surrounded by artists. A smaller medallion stands in each corner, one representing architects with plans and models by Hautman; sculptors and bronze workers with the statue of Bavaria, by Halbig; historic painters by Esseling; and landscape and genre painters by Widnmann. Between the two upper medallions is a rich ornament with the arms of the four tribes of Bavaria in enamel, and the inscription "Louis I. King of Bavaria:" between the lower medallions is a similar ornament with "The German Artists, A. D. 1850." All the ornaments are in the old German style of the fifteenth century. In the Album are 177 sheets, each containing a contribution from some artist. The title-page is by Esseling. Kaulbach has a drawing of unusual freshness and beauty, representing the King calling to new life, at Rome, the neglected art of Germany. But we have not space to speak of the works of individual artists in this remarkable collection. It is enough to say that every distinguished painter and sculptor in Germany is represented in it. * * * * * CHARLES EASTLAKE has been chosen _President of the Royal Academy_, and the Queen has made him a knight. Sir Charles Eastlake is in some respects a great painter, and he has produced many works which evince very remarkable talents. Among the few pictures by him which evince _genius_, is that owned by Mr. Henry Carey Baird, of Philadelphia, of "Hagar and Ishmael." He has done something in literature, and from his own account of himself we quote, that, like Haydon, he was born at Plymouth, a soil congenial to art, for in its environs was also the birth-place of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Like Rembrandt, Reynolds, and so many before them, Eastlake showed an early aversion to the Latin Grammar. He fled the Charter-house school; and a glimpse of Haydon's picture of "The Dentatus," which was at that period exhibited at Plymouth, made him a painter. After studying in the Academy two years, under Fuseli, he produced "The Raising of Jairus's Daughter." This won him a patron, in Mr. Harman, by whom he was commissioned to make studies of the miracles of art, at that time collected in the Louvre by Napoleon. Here also Lawrence, Haydon, Wilkie, and we believe Allston also, came at this time to study. In the Louvre Eastlake made his first acquaintance with the wonders of Roman art. But the pleasant task of copying these old masters was relinquished on the sudden return of Napoleon from Elba. At a not much later period, the fallen hero became himself the subject of his pencil. Eastlake made a sketch of the ex-Emperor as he appeared from the gangway of the Bellerophon, when at anchor in Plymouth roads, interesting as the last delineation of a noble visage, then untinged with chagrin. In 1817 and 1819 he visited Italy and Greece, rather stirring up their living treasures than measuring antiquity with the inch rule of the archæologist. Nor yet did Eastlake confine himself to the external forms of art and nature; he then laid the foundation of that intimate knowledge of the arts, be they called formative, architectural, plastic, or pictorial, the able elucidation of which renders his writings so valuable. Thus, whilst all the technical skill of ancient colorists is found in his style of painting, all the principles on which Dutch and Venetian masters proceeded are found in his writings. Those who reflect on the unceasing labors of the Secretary of the Fine Art Commission, will be rather inclined to believe that the title of President was alone wanting to render Eastlake the legitimate leader of art in England. We need only mention his translation of Göethe's "Theory of Colors," the "Notes to Kugler," and the "Materials for a History of Oil Painting." * * * * * NEW PICTURE BY KAULBACH. The King of Bavaria has ordered from Kaulbach a picture some twenty feet high, to represent the Apotheosis of a Good Prince. The lucky potentate is to be painted rising from the tomb, and conducted up to heaven by attending angels, where the Saviour, enthroned between the cherubim of Power and Justice, receives him with open arms. The purple mantle and crown, the signs and adornments of earthly might, sink from the transfigured monarch upon the tomb, around which the Seven Works of Mercy bear witness for him, while the Seven Deadly Sins lie under the earth asleep and in chains. The idea of the composition was suggested by the King. Kaulbach has advanced so far with its execution that the cartoon is nearly completed. * * * * * THE ROYAL RUSSIAN PORCELAIN MANUFACTORY, at Berlin, is known over the world for the elegance and excellence of its productions; most of the porcelain transparencies which are so common in all countries, and so much admired, are from this source. An honorary council has just been named to have the supervision of the artistic department of the institution. Among its members, are the eminent painter CORNELIUS, the sculptor RAUCH, and the architect HULER. * * * * * Mr. HEALEY, according to a letter by Mr. Walsh in the _Journal of Commerce_, is proceeding rapidly in Paris with his picture of the American Senate, during the debate so famous for the passages between Mr. Webster and Col. Hayne. Mr. Healey is said to be a very worthy person, and it is to be regretted that his skill and genius are not equal to his morals, in which case we might not despair of his producing a work not altogether unworthy of this subject. Some accident introduced Mr. Healey to the late King of the French, who gave him various orders, the reception of which was so noticed in the journals as to be of the greatest possible advantage to him. He was suddenly elevated in the common opinion to the condition of the first rank of artists. But he is really a painter of very ordinary capacities. We have probably some hundreds who are very much superior to him. It is impossible to point to even _one_ portrait by him that is remarkable for any excellence; and all his fame rests, rather than upon his productions, upon his having received orders from Louis Philippe. We remember the general surprise with which groups of his portraits, displayed in the rotunda of the capitol, were viewed by critics. The "study" of Daniel Webster, upon whose every feature God has set the visible stamp of greatness, was among them, and it looked like the prim keeper of the accounts in a respectable grocery-store. So of all the rest. Men sat to him from deference to the wishes of the King, but every body felt that he was not an artist. Accidents and newspapers may confer a transient reputation, but they can endow no one with abilities; and to espouse the cause of newspapers against the cause of nature is a grievous wrong, in the end, to both newspapers and nature. * * * * * AN ELEGANT work of much value to the students of modern art has lately appeared at Berlin, under the title of _Rimische Studien_ (Roman Studies), from the pen of VON KESTNER, a diplomatist by profession. The author, who by the way is a son of the famous CHARLOTTE, the heroine of Göethe's "Werther," dwells with the utmost partiality on these German artists, who have developed their talents by long and intimate acquaintance with Roman art, and who are now at work in the fatherland. To the productions of "Cornelius," he devotes a great deal of space. The special purpose of the work, as the author says in his preface, is to glorify Germany in the great creations of its artists. * * * * * THE PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY of Paris, at one of its recent concerts, gave a piece of original Russian music, called the "Song of the Cherubim," by BORTNIANSKY, a composer who has written a good deal for the Imperial Chapel at St. Petersburg. It is a chorus without accompaniment, and is spoken of by the critics as most original and striking, in fact unlike any thing familiar to Western or Southern ears. We can easily conceive of a peculiar style of music being produced from the bosom of the Greek Church. Those who have heard the melancholy and touching, half-barbaric music usually employed in its ritual, will not be surprised that out of it there should arise a quite new order of compositions. * * * * * THE G�ETHE'S INHERITANCE--an extensive collection of models, engravings, sculptures, carvings, gems, minerals, fossils, original drawings, &c., collected by the great poet,--is to be sold at Weimar, for the benefit of his heirs, two grandsons. A _catalogue raisonnée_ has been published by Fromman, at Jena, and it makes a very interesting book. It is suggested in the _Art-Journal_ for December, that if the collection were distributed in separate lots, in America, or England, or Germany, the heirs would realize three or four times as much as they will by a single sale for the whole, which they have determined upon. Letters upon the subject may be addressed to Baron Walther Von Goethe, at Vienna. * * * * * The author of the following remarks on ART-UNIONS, is an eminent artist, whose name has never been associated with any discussions of these Institutions, or with any controversies connected with them, and he has not, we believe, since the foundation of the first Art-Union in America, had any production of his own in the market. ART-UNIONS: THEIR TRUE CHARACTER CONSIDERED. ART-UNIONS, and their management, have recently attracted much attention in this country, if we may judge from the numerous articles on the subject which have appeared in some of the most reputable journals. It is now about ten years since the first Art-Union was established in this city. Others, in various sections, have followed, and all, whatever their peculiarities, have been more or less successful in their chief objects. Now it is reasonable to suppose, that the result of these ten years' efforts to promote the cultivation of the Fine Arts among us, should furnish some evidence of their capabilities for the accomplishment of so worthy and so great a work. The whole subject of their usefulness resolves itself into the following queries: I. Has any person of decided genius, who was unknown, friendless, and in need, been sought out by them, assisted, encouraged, and at last added to the effective number of artists who are profitably employed among us? II. Have those artists who have received the larger share of the patronage of these institutions, shown by their works a corresponding advance in the knowledge and love of excellence and truth in art? III. Have they furnished any peculiar advantages to artists, as a body, by supplying the means of their improvement, in a free access to books, casts, pictures, or good engravings? IV. Do Art-Unions promote the interests and reward the labors of those who are most eminently deserving? V. Do they elevate the pursuit of art, in the minds of the people, and teach them its value, by distributing to them, in return for their subscriptions, _only_ the best specimens which they can purchase from the studios of our artists? VI. Are there a dozen well known artists who will openly testify to a conviction of their usefulness? It is believed by many that an affirmative response cannot be given to these questions; and if not, then the subject of their influence need be no longer discussed. It is not my intention, nor my desire, to inquire into the _management_ of these institutions. It is only at the system itself that I wish to direct the attention of the reader. If it is proved that, as a system, this is not calculated to elevate and enlarge the sphere of the arts, but on the contrary, that its tendency is to degrade and stifle all that is lovely and desirable in their pursuit, then there will be no need of troubling ourselves with the lower and baser subject of management; for there is no bad system, which, by any method, can be managed into a good one, and satisfy the just demands of those whose interests it professes to hold in its keeping. Numbers rather than quality seem to govern the Art-Unions in their purchases of works, that they may give to subscribers a greater number of _chances_ to draw something for their money, and thus encourage them to future _patronage_. This is the principle on which all lotteries live: and when we come to sift the matter to the bottom, we cannot but acknowledge that Art-Unions are nothing else but lotteries, under another and more popular name. Both exist ostensibly for the good of others, who in reality are but the dupes of a most deceitful and vicious system, against which every good citizen should indignantly turn his face. It cannot be justly said in defence of Art-Unions, that they spend more money for art than was ever done in the same period of time, nor that they have distributed works amongst a class of people who never thought of giving money for such things before. They must first prove that this great amount of money which they have collected, has been spent _judiciously_, for the benefit of deserving and meritorious artists, and that the works distributed are such as to elevate the judgment and enlarge the feelings in relation to art, among those who may have received them. It is for the interest of lotteries to offer some very large and valuable prizes at the head of their list, to attract the attention of the public, and thus to sell their tickets. Similar means are adopted by Art-Unions to increase their subscription lists, which show that the system is _managed_ in the most efficient manner. Those who can look back fifteen and twenty years, will remember that our country was literally flooded with the bulletin boards of lotteries, printed in the most gaudy and attractive colors, showing a brilliant schedule of prizes, and pledging almost certain wealth to all who would venture their money on the "grand scheme." They will also call to mind how many a victim there was to this deceptive and depraved system of legal fraud, until it became so injurious to the public morals, that Legislatures were forced to hurl the bolts of the law against them, in all parts of the United States, and so put an end to their iniquity. Lotteries have been justly prohibited by wise governments, because they attract men from legitimate pursuits, into the speculative, uncertain, and, morally, illegitimate pursuit of fortune. The case is similar in its results to that of Art-Unions. They attract many from a calling for which their talents have fitted them, into a sphere so much above their natural powers, that they must in time fall back, victims to vanity and love of gain, into a lower plane of life perhaps, than that they once happily occupied. The effect of these Unions is seen rather in the great number of persons of mediocre abilities they have _encouraged_ to enter upon the cultivation of art, than in the bringing forth greater powers and excellence in those whose undoubted genius is apparent to the world. It was remarked by Carlyle, that our modern intellect is of the spavined kind, "all action and no go;" and so it appears to be in regard to the efforts that are being made to "promote the interests of art," in this country. Art-Unions have been active enough, for many years, and have possessed themselves of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and yet it is "no go;" the interests of art still lie gasping, without much hope of a change for the better. There is a great display made every year in the "distribution of prizes," and every means used to gain public confidence, by holding up the names of the most respectable citizens as guarantees that nothing under their control can go wrong; and by issuing bulletins in which is proved, by figures, the flourishing state of the institution, and consequently of the beautiful arts; yet in spite of all this, the great mass of common-sense minds and of true lovers of art, heretics that they are, go away and exclaim, "Well, after all it's 'no go,' the works distributed are no better than those of last year, and we are really afraid there are no hopes for the arts in this country, so long as no other plan is adopted for their improvement." Some of the petty states in Germany and in southern Europe obtain a large revenue from lotteries, which are entirely under the control of the crown, and are hence commonly called "Royal," or "Imperial." The prizes are comparatively small, but the tickets are fixed at such a very low sum, say from ten to twenty cents, that they come within the reach of the poorest inhabitants. The consequence is that nearly all persons who are ignorant of the scheme which the Government has laid to tax them, spend more or less every year for lottery tickets. We have known persons who, under the excitement produced by these plans for rapidly gaining fortunes, have pawned the last blanket from their beds, to obtain the means of purchasing a ticket. At every drawing of these "Imperial" lotteries, there is nothing left undone by Royalty to strike the people with a sense of their importance, and the honesty with which they are conducted. In an open square is erected a kind of stage large enough to be occupied by some twenty persons. Rich canopies of scarlet and gold overhang it, and above all are figures of Justice, Plenty, Virtue, &c. &c. The "Royal" band of music is stationed near, and amidst its enlivening tones, holding in silence many thousands of anxious hearts, the cortege, preceded by Royalty itself, ascends, and is seated in the order of its dignity. In front of the throne are placed, upon pedestals, two large revolving globes half filled with tickets, and by the side of each stands a page, in magnificent costume, blindfolded. Then commences the distribution of the prizes, in the usual way, by drawing numbers from the globes, by the hands of the pages, which are announced from the throne, and so along to the ears of the most distant in the multitude. At intervals, the drawing ceases, while most charming music serves to keep the crowd together, and possibly to drive for the moment, from many a heart, the pangs of disappointment or despair. Now there is some excuse for ignorance on this subject, among those poor people, for there are no means by which they can be enlightened and warned of the evil. But in this country, where the press is free, and the means of information abundant, it would be sad to reflect that such things can, under any name or phrase, long continue unmasked and unshorn of their power. There is consolation in the belief, that however prosperous this species of gaming may be, the time is not far distant when its true character and tendency will be made manifest; and when the unseen but certain operations of the moral sense of our people will put an end to its inglorious career; if not directly, through the action of the laws, yet indirectly, by withholding the necessary contributions to its further support. This parallel between Art-Unions and Lotteries is drawn that the character of the former may be more readily comprehended by the reader. In the recent drawing of the American Art-Union there were distributed _one thousand works of art_, making about one prize to sixteen blanks. But where did all these "thousand works" come from? and what are they? Have they all been executed by living American artists? Are they paintings, or sculptures, or engravings, purchased from the artists who made them, and who have received an adequate price for them? We know from their advertisement that _sixty_ of them are "impressions from the large engravings after Col. Trumbull's pictures of the _Battle of Bunker Hill_ and the _Death of Montgomery_." Now the purchase of these engravings from the pictures of a long deceased painter can be of no possible service to the painters living and laboring among us, nor to the progress of art in any way. As well might the Art-Union purchase for distribution sixty copies of Dunlap's History of the Arts of Design, or of Allston's Lectures on Art, or any object pertaining to the subject that may be procured at any time of the book or print sellers. It is true, they must manage to offer a number of small prizes, the best way they can, that they may in some plausible way meet the expectations of their very extended lists of subscribers, to which, it seems, they never attempt to set a limit. Here is another proof that they are mere speculators upon the labors of artists, and only seek to enlarge their subscriptions, and usurp a power and control over the great body of artists, which should never, with their consent, be allowed to any, no matter how respectable, body of men. Let us turn to the "_Western Art-Union_." Having but few good prizes to offer, nothing indeed which would ensure them a large subscription list, it became necessary to procure some well known production for this purpose, as a capital prize. The managers therefore negotiated, in a very quiet manner, with a Mr. Robb, of New Orleans, for one of HIRAM POWERS'S finest statues, the "_Greek Slave_," then in the possession of Mr. Robb, and it was accordingly taken to Cincinnati, and placed on exhibition in the Art-Union, as one of the prizes to be distributed this year. Handbills were then sent over the United States announcing this fact. Of course, with such a celebrated work as this, thousands would be seduced to purchase a ticket, and thus place the _Art-Union_ in a most flourishing condition, and probably secure to it at least double the sum which it had paid, or the sculptor had originally received, for the statue. Now let us consider this transaction in its true light. The Art-Union was established solely for the purpose of benefiting artists, protecting their interests, and increasing the knowledge of art among the people. From these facts it is evident that neither of these purposes were kept in view or carried out. Instead of negotiating with the sculptor himself for one of his works, and giving him a liberal price for it, they never mentioned the subject to him, but secretly purchased one of another person--a rich man, who was in nowise whatever connected with the arts. One would have supposed that even if there were very strong inducements to such a procedure on the part of this institution, for the sake of gain, still that a friendly feeling towards the great sculptor, of whom the Queen City is so proud, and a due regard for his interests and his fame, would have prevented the consummation of such an act. It can be no pleasing reflection to Mr. Powers, that a work which many persons in Europe, as well as in America, would have purchased at any reasonable price, should, by any movement of his own townsmen, be disposed of at a public raffle, so that of its final destination he must long remain in ignorance. It seems, from what has here been adduced, that Art-Unions have not proved of service to art or artists, notwithstanding the immense amount annually collected for this ostensible purpose; but that they are in reality only lotteries operating under another but less objectionable name. If a corporation can be granted by the Legislature, with the privilege of selling pictures, or statuary, by lottery, every other branch of industry is as much entitled to such a privilege, or our laws are onesided and unjust. We would then see distributions of prizes from every quarter, until the whole mechanical and commercial interests of the country would be turned into Lotteries or Unions. Following the example of the Art-Union in this state, we have already advertised a "_Homestead Art-Union_," the grand prize of which is a "house and lot situated in Williamsburgh, which cost nearly $5,000." Subscribers are entitled to "an elegant and valuable engraving, which has heretofore sold at $7.50, (being $2.50 more than the price of subscription,) and superior in execution and elegance to any picture distributed in this manner." It has in its collection for distribution "ninety-nine elegant and costly oil paintings and engravings, richly framed in ornamental and plain gilt frames." All the difference between these Unions, seems to be in the fact that the "Homestead" has limited the number of tickets--certainly an improvement on the other, so far as the public interest is concerned. We may expect to hear very soon of _Bread and Meat Art-Unions_, when the whole community, for a very small outlay, may live like princes, and snap their fingers at haggard want. The tendency of these hotbed methods of cultivating an appreciation of art and of rewarding its professors, has been to discourage artists from any suitable efforts to provide instruction, upon a liberal scale, to those who are seeking for it. Indeed it takes from them the power to do so, by drawing away funds necessary to such an object, which, but for these grand schemes, would be likely to come into their hands. One has but to observe the motives which induce persons to subscribe to an Art-Union, to be convinced that the great majority do so for the sake of self-aggrandizement, that is, to have a chance of getting the works of our best artists for a mere tithe of their value, or in the language of the advertisements, "of obtaining a valuable return, for a small investment;" as they would buy any other lottery tickets: to make the most out of their money. But there are many who subscribe from nobler motives--real lovers of art, whose only object is to lend a helping hand to its interests, and to show a generous sympathy in the struggles and self-denying endeavors of all whose souls are so wrapt up in its pursuit that they scarcely arrive at the knowledge requisite to a charge of their own pecuniary and worldly affairs. This latter class of subscribers believe they are gratifying this genuine love of the beautiful and good, when they give annually their five dollars to an institution chartered for the express design of protecting and cherishing the interests of art, and of enlarging the field of its labors and usefulness among the people. These genuine _patrons_ give, without a hope or thought of drawing a prize, or receiving in any shape a return for their subscriptions. Did they reflect upon, or know, that these funds were worse than misapplied, they would withhold them, and seek in some other way to make a proper appropriation of them. We have said that these Art-Unions prevent artists from taking any steps to provide the means of instruction for those who need and seek it. As an illustration of this we may mention the present state of the _National Academy of Design_. It is, and has been for two or three years, quite prostrate for want of funds; its schools have been closed, and without assistance it must soon die. A few years ago it was in a flourishing state, and offered the advantages of study which their fine collection of casts from the best antique statues, and a small but well selected and growing library could afford to students. Such have been the results of Art-Unions upon schools of art everywhere. To be sure the members of the National Academy are not entirely free from censure in this matter, for many of them, smitten with the "Union" mania, gave it their countenance, and even something more substantial, to assist its infant struggles for popularity, little suspecting, certainly, that they were lending a club which would sooner or later strike them to the ground. It may not be out of place here to remark, that it is firmly believed that the Academy of Design can yet rise up from its ashes, and overthrow all such schemes as Art-Unions, by placing itself upon a more liberal and popular footing; and by disclaiming all exclusive titles as utterly unworthy the ambition of every sensible and right-feeling artist. Institutions in this country, to be useful, must be placed on a popular foundation; and to be popular, they must rest upon the broad republican principle of equal rights and equal privileges to all. Let the members of the Academy open their doors wide enough to admit all classes of artisans who desire to study the principles of design--the basis upon which the beauty and the saleability of their works mainly depends. There might then, in addition to the sections of Painting and Sculpture, be added those of Architecture, Ornamental Marble and Stone Workers, Carvers in Wood and Metal, Gold and Silver Smiths, Cabinet Makers, and indeed, as many other occupations as chose to unite themselves, in separate sections, for the purposes of mutual instruction in the Art of Design. This would at once be practical and popular, and with such objects in view, the Academy could with very little additional funds be put into immediate and successful operation, and become a highly honorable and most useful institution. These are mere suggestions, thrown out for the consideration of the members of the Academy and others interested. This is not the proper place to enlarge upon such a subject. Artists must learn, if they do not know, how to control their own affairs, and if they are determined to succeed, they must not think of trusting their interests to the keeping of those not of their profession, and entirely uneducated in art, and who consequently cannot be qualified to discharge so delicate a duty with judgment and fidelity. It is an old saying, but very applicable to the present instance, that "if you neglect your own business, you need not expect others to attend to it for you." Let artists depend more upon private sales of their works to those who can appreciate them for a just remuneration, than upon the deceptive offers which chartered schemes may hold out to them. They will then, by their worth and their artistic merits, build up about them a solid body of friends and patrons, of whom nothing but death itself can rob them; and the number of whom time will but increase, until they may look forward with well-founded hopes to a peaceful and honorable old age, and a full reward for all their labors. They cannot justly suppose that permanent success and a distinguished name can be attained through any other channel than by honesty, and excellence in their works. Honors and rewards from private sources may be very laggard in their approach, but they must ultimately come--especially in this enlightened, progressive, and prosperous country--to those who have fairly earned them. Recent Deaths. Those who have been accustomed to visit the bookstore of Bartlett & Welford, under the Astor House, during the last half-dozen years, must have been familiar with the commanding figure and gentle but uneasy expression of our late excellent friend, the Rev. SERENO E. DWIGHT, D. D., who died in Philadelphia on the thirtieth of November, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. Dr. Dwight was born in Greenfield, Connecticut, in 1786, and was educated at Yale College, where he was graduated in 1803, being then about seventeen years of age. He became a tutor in the college, but soon abandoned this occupation to commence the study of the law at Burlington in Vermont, and in a few years he was admitted to practice in the highest courts of the country. An early and ever-increasing predilection, however, led him to the profession of his father, and upon completing his theological studies he was settled over the Park-street Congregational church, in Boston, where, he rapidly acquired the fame of being one of the ablest, most eloquent, and most useful divines in New-England. He had contracted a cutaneous disease, from the injudicious use of calomel, while a tutor in Yale College; and its effects increased so much now, that his parishioners, who had become quite attached to him, in 1825 induced him to undertake a voyage to Europe. A year's travel, in Great Britain, Germany, France, and other countries, failed to restore his health, and soon after his return to the United States he resigned his charge of the Park-street church, and undertook the Presidency of Hamilton College, which in turn he was compelled to surrender, and in 1830 he opened, at New-Haven, an Academy, in which he was assisted by his wife, a daughter of the late Judge Daggett. The decline of Mrs. Dwight's health, and other circumstances, induced him to relinquish the business of teaching; he visited the Southern States, was during several sessions chaplain to the United States Senate, and, devoting himself to literature, wrote an elaborate memoir of his great-grandfather, Jonathan Edwards, and several works of less importance, one of which was "The Hebrew Wife," written to illustrate the Jewish laws of marriage, and published in New-York in 1836. The death of his wife, and increasing physical infirmities, led him to adopt a habit of the utmost seclusion in New-York, where he passed nearly all the residue of his life. His last appearance in public was in the summer of 1848, when he consented to act with Mr. John R. Bartlett (now the chief of the Mexican Boundary Commission) and the writer of these paragraphs, as an examiner of one of the departments of the Rutgers Female Institute. He died suddenly, while upon a visit to Philadelphia for the purpose of trying the effect of the hydropathic treatment of his disease, on the 30th of September. In the _Home Journal_ of December 14, Mr. Willis says of him:-- "In the death of this excellent man we have lost a friend, whose loss to ourself we most sincerely mourn, though the grave was, to him, a welcome relief from an insufferable disease, that had made life wretched for years. Mr. Dwight was the son of Rev. Dr. Dwight, President of Yale College. He became pastor of Park-st. church, in Boston, while we attended it in boyhood, and it is our pride to record that we were so fortunate as to secure his friendship at that time, and to retain it, in undiminished warmth and kindness, to the day of his death. Mr. Dwight was a man of qualities unusual in his profession. When he first came to Boston, in perfect health, he was, in personal appearance, the ideal of a high-souled and faultlessly elegant gentleman--with more of manly and refined beauty, indeed, than we remember to have combined in any other man. He wore these winning gifts most unconsciously, being beloved by the humblest for his open and accessible simplicity and kindness: and his health first gave way under the laborious discharge of his parochial duties. He was too severely critical and polished a scholar to be either a very eloquent preacher or an easy writer, but his sermons were models of purity of style, study, and elevated thought, and his pastoral intercourse and counsel were too delightful ever to be forgotten by those who enjoyed it. Sent to Europe for his health, by his congregation, Mr. Dwight was received and followed with a degree of enthusiastic and flattering attention which fully confirmed his mark as a man, and showed how Nature's noblemen are recognized and honored everywhere. He resumed his duties on his return, but was soon obliged by illness to relinquish them, and, from that time forward, he was never again well. His weakness took the shape of a cutaneous disease of the most irritating and incurable form, and though he made one or two attempts at re-commencing his usefulness, it was sadly in vain. He resided secludedly in New-York during the latter years of his life, giving to books and scholarship what mind he could withdraw from pain, and, even thus, ready always with kindness and delightful earnestness, to give counsel or sympathy to those he loved. Mr. Dwight was a martyr to that great wrong of our country toward all clergymen--to express it by a common saying, "the working a free horse to death"--and we have only to look at the pale faces, the stooping chests, and the slender frames of most of our clerical men, to see how mind, patience, attention, needful leisure and more needful sleep, are cruelly overdrawn upon, by the service expected of them. But for his share of suffering by this exacting system, Mr. Dwight might have been, for years to come, the ornament and pride to his country which his unequalled combination of fine gifts qualified him to be; and we should not mourn, as we now do, over his life embittered while it lasted, and sent to the grave in what might have been its meridian of usefulness and ornament." * * * * * COUNT BRANDENBURGH, the Prussian Prime Minister, died on the 6th November at Berlin. He was a natural brother of the late King of Prussia, being the illegitimate son of the present King's grandfather, by the Countess Dönhoff Frederichstein, and was acknowledged, educated, and admitted as such, by the Prussian Royal family, by whom he was invariably treated as a friend and relative, although not with royal honors. He was born on the 23d of January, 1792, and had nearly completed his 59th year. He was educated for the military profession and entered the service in 1807; his promotion continued regularly, and in 1812 he was a captain on the staff of General Von York, under whom he saw some service. In 1813 he became major, and in that rank took part in the numerous actions between the Prussian and the French armies, including the battles of Leipsic, and Bautzen, Brienne, Laon, and Paris. At the passage of the Rhine at Caub, Count Brandenburgh was the first who reached the French bank. For his good conduct at Mokern and Wartenburg, he received the Iron Cross of the first class. In 1814 he was made lieutenant-colonel. In 1816 he received the command of the regiment in which he first entered the service. From 1816 to 1846 he received various promotions, charges, and decorations. In 1848 he was made general in command of the 8th army corps. Up to this time he had taken no part in politics. The London _Times_ says: "It was in the midst of those scenes of anarchy and violence which, about two years ago, had shaken the Prussian monarchy to its foundations--when a furious Assembly, beleaguered and intimidated by a more furious mob, had usurped sovereign power in the capital, and a democratic constitution was all but grafted on the military throne of Frederic the Great,--that we remember to have exclaimed, in the wonder and the dread of that terrible period, "Will no one save the house of Hohenzollern?" The state seemed to be on the brink of a cataract, and even the leaders of the popular movement were ignorant of the dark and stormy course before them. At that moment, it was announced one morning, to the amazement of the Prussians and of Europe, that an elderly gentleman, who had never taken any active part in politics, but had lived in the most exclusive circles of the aristocracy, and the Prussian Guards, was about to enter on the task which the boldest men had found beyond their courage, and the ablest beyond their capacity. But though he laid small claim to skill in political tactics, or experience in the administration of affairs, Count Brandenburgh brought to the service of his sovereign precisely those plain qualities which no one else appeared to possess. He had sense, he had firmness, he absolutely contemned the storm of unpopularity which greeted his appointment, and he proceeded to conduct the Government with full confidence that, although his countrymen were peculiarly subject to fits of enthusiasm, they respect nothing so much in the long run as a clear will and definite authority. After about fifteen months the citizens of Berlin hailed Count Brandenburgh as the saviour of his country." * * * * * GEORGE GRENVILLE, LORD NUGENT, died on the 26th of November at Lillies, near Aylesbury, aged sixty-one. He was the second son of the Marquis of Rockingham, and inherited the Irish Barony of Nugent, on the death of his mother, in 1812. During the same year he was elected M. P. for Aylesbury, and continued to represent that borough on the Liberal interest, until 1832, when he was appointed Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Isles. He held that office until 1836, when he returned to England. In 1847 he was re-elected for Aylesbury. He enjoyed a very fair literary reputation. He was the author of "Lands, Classical and Sacred," "Memorials of Hampden," and other interesting productions. In conjunction with Lady Nugent, he also brought out the popular "Legends of the Library at Lillies." * * * * * M. ALEXANDRE FRAGONARD, the eminent French painter and sculptor, died in October. He was a pupil of David. As a statuary, his great work is the frontispiece of the old Chamber of Deputies; and, as a painter, he executed several fine pieces, amongst others a ceiling of the Louvre, representing Tasso reading his "Jerusalem." His chief works were engraved in 1840. * * * * * M. JOSEPH DROZ, a member of the French Institute, died in Paris in November. The youth of M. Droz was devoted to stormier occupations than that in which he gathered the laurels now laid upon his grave. For three years he was a soldier:--for upwards of fifty he has been devoted to letters and to philosophy. His last escort was composed of the men who had been his comrades in that latter field,--and over his grave MM. Guizot and Bartholemy Saint-Hilaire, pronounced eulogies. * * * * * PROFESSOR SCHORN, died in Augsburgh on the 7th of October, at the premature age of forty-seven years. In the formation of the Munich Gallery, he was the most trusted and active emissary, and traversed considerable portions of Europe, including England and Italy, in search of those treasures which now enrich this famous gallery. When in London, his companion was Von Martins, the eminent Brazilian traveller and naturalist. * * * * * GUSTAVE SCHWAB, one of the most popular poets of Germany, died at Stuttgart on the 4th of November, aged fifty-eight. Schwab was the friend of Uhland. His death was very sudden. On the morning of the day on which he was summoned, he had entertained a party of his friends at breakfast, and read to them passages of a translation into German verse, which he was making of the poetical works of M. de Lamartine. Spirit of the English Annuals. NEW TALES BY THACKERAY, BULWER, MRS. HALL, &c. The holiday souvenirs for the present season are less numerous in England, as in this country, than in some previous years; but the _Keepsake_, edited formerly by Lady Blessington, and now by her niece, Miss Power, is among the few favorite annuals that are continued, and it is as good as in its best days. We quote several of its chief attractions, and first VOLTIGUER: BY THE AUTHOR OF THE "HISTORY OF PENDENNIS." There arose out of the last Epsom races a little family perplexity, whereon the owner of Voltiguer little speculated: and as out of this apparently trivial circumstance a profound and useful moral may be drawn, to be applied by the polite reader; and as Epsom Races will infallibly happen next year, and, I dare say, for many succeeding generations; perhaps the moral which this brief story points had better be printed upon Dorling's next "Correct Card," as a warning to future patrons and patronesses of the turf. This moral, then--this text of our sermon, is, NEVER----but we will keep the moral, if you please, for the end of the fable. It happened, then, that among the parties who were collected on the Hill to see the race, the carriage of a gentleman, whom we shall call Sir Joseph Raikes, occupied a commanding position, and attracted a great deal of attention amongst the gentlemen sportsmen. Those bucks upon the ground who were not acquainted with the fair occupant of that carriage--as indeed, how should many thousands of them be?--some being shabby bucks; some being vulgar bucks; some being hot and unpleasant bucks, smoking bad cigars, and only staring into Lady Raikes's carriage by that right which allows one Briton to look at another Briton, and a cat to look at a king;--of those bucks, I say, who, not knowing Lady Raikes, yet came and looked at her, there was scarce one that did not admire her, and envy the lucky rogue her husband. Of those ladies who, in their walks from their own vehicles, passed her ladyship's, there was scarce one lady in society who did not say, "is that all?--is that the beauty you are all talking about so much? She is overrated; she looks stupid; she is over-dressed; she squints;" and so forth; whilst of the men who _did_ happen to have the honor of an acquaintance with Lady Raikes and her husband (and many a man, who had thought Raikes rather stupid in his bachelor days, was glad enough to know him now), each as he came to the carriage, and partook of the excellent luncheon provided there, had the most fascinating grins and ogles for the lady, and the most triumphant glances for all the rest of the world,--glances which seemed to say, "Look, you rascals, I know Lady Raikes; you don't know Lady Raikes. I can drink a glass of champagne to Lady Raikes's health. What would you give, you dog, to have such a sweet smile from Lady Raikes? Did you ever see such eyes? did you ever see such a complexion? did you ever see such a killing pink dress, and such a dear little delightfully carved ivory parasol?"--Raikes had it carved for her last year at Baden, when they were on their wedding-trip. It has their coats of arms and their ciphers intertwined elegantly round the stalk--a J and a Z; her name is Zuleika; before she was married she was Zuleika Trotter. Her elder sister, Medora, married Lord T--mn--ddy; her younger, Haidee, is engaged to the eldest son of the second son of a noble D-ke. The Trotters are of a good family. Dolly Trotter, Zuleika's brother, was in the same regiment (and that, I need not say, an extremely heavy one) with Sir Joseph Raikes. He did not call himself Joseph then: quite the contrary. Larkyn Raikes, before his marriage, was one of the wildest and most irregular of our British youth. Let us not allude--he would blush to hear them--to the particulars of his past career. He turned away his servant for screwing up one of the knockers which he had removed during the period of his own bachelorhood, from an eminent physician's house in Saville Row, on the housekeeper's door at Larkyn Hall. There are whole hampers of those knockers stowed away somewhere, and snuff-taking Highlanders, and tin hats, and black boys,--the trophies of his youth, which Raikes would like to send back to their owners, did he know them; and when he carried off these spoils of war he was not always likely to know. When he goes to the Bayonet and Anchor Club now (and he dined there twice during Lady Raikes's ... in fine, when there was no dinner at home), the butler brings him a half-pint of sherry and a large bottle of Seltzer water, and looks at him with a sigh, and wonders--"Is this Captain Raikes, as used to breakfast off pale hale at three, to take his regular two bottles at dinner, and to drink brandy and water in the smoking billiard-room all night till all was blue?" Yes, it is the same Raikes; Larkyn no more--riotous no more--brandivorous no longer. He gave away all his cigars at his marriage; quite unlike Screwby, who also married the other day, and offered to _sell_ me some. He has not betted at a race since his father paid his debts and forgave him, just before the old gentleman died and Raikes came into his kingdom. Upon that accession, Zuleika Trotter, who looked rather sweetly upon Bob Vincent before, was so much touched by Sir Joseph Raikes's determination to reform, that she dismissed Bob and became Lady Raikes. Dolly Trotter still remains in the Paddington Dragoons; Dolly is still unmarried; Dolly smokes still; Dolly owes money still. And though his venerable father, Rear-admiral Sir Ajax Trotter, K.C.B., has paid his debts many times, and swears if he ever hears of Dolly betting again, he will disinherit his son, Dolly--the undutiful Dolly--goes on betting still. Lady Raikes, then, beamed in the pride of her beauty upon Epsom race-course, dispensed smiles and luncheon to a host of acquaintances, and accepted, in return, all the homage and compliments which the young men paid her. The hearty and jovial Sir Joseph Raikes was not the least jealous of the admiration which his pretty wife caused; not even of Bob Vincent, whom he rather pitied for his mishap, poor fellow! (to be sure, Zuleika spoke of Vincent very scornfully, and treated his pretensions as absurd); and with whom, meeting him on the course, Raikes shook hands very cordially, and insisted upon bringing him up to Lady Raikes's carriage, to take refreshment. There _could_ have been no foundation for the wicked rumor, that Zuleika had looked sweetly upon Vincent before Raikes had carried her off. Lady Raikes received Mr. Vincent with the kindest and frankest smile; shook hands with him with perfect politeness and indifference, and laughed and talked so easily with him, that it was impossible there could have been any previous discomfort between them. Not very far off from Lady Raikes's carriage, on the hill, there stood a little black brougham--the quietest and most modest equipage in the world, and in which there must have been nevertheless something very attractive, for the young men crowded around this carriage in numbers; and especially that young reprobate Dolly Trotter was to be seen, constantly leaning his great elbows on the window, and poking his head into the carriage. Lady Raikes remarked that, among other gentlemen, her husband went up and spoke to the little carriage, and when he and Dolly came back to her, asked who was in the black brougham. For some time Raikes could not understand which was the brougham she meant--there was so many broughams. "The black one with the red blinds was it? Oh, that--that was a very old friend--yes, old Lord Cripplegate, was in the brougham: he had the gout, and he couldn't walk." As Raikes made this statement he blushed as red as a geranium; he looked at Dolly Trotter in an imploring manner, who looked at him, and who presently went away from his sister's carriage bursting with laughter. After making the above statement to his wife, Raikes was particularly polite and attentive to her, and did not leave her side; nor would he consent to her leaving the carriage. There were all sorts of vulgar people about: she would be jostled in the crowd: she could not bear the smell of the cigars--she knew she couldn't (this made Lady Raikes wince a little): the sticks might knock her darling head off; and so forth. Raikes is a very accomplished and athletic man, and, as a bachelor, justly prided himself upon shying at the sticks better than any man in the army. Perhaps, as he passed the persons engaged in that fascinating sport, he would have himself liked to join in it; but he declined his favorite entertainment, and came back faithfully to the side of his wife. As Vincent talked at Lady Raikes's side, he alluded to this accomplishment of her husband. "Your husband has not many accomplishments," Vincent said (he is a man of rather a sardonic humor), "but in shying at the sticks he is quite unequalled: he has quite a genius for it. He ought to have the sticks painted on his carriage, as the French marshals have their bâtons. Hasn't he brought you a pincushion or a jack-in-the-box, Lady Raikes? and has he begun to neglect you so soon? Every father with a little boy at home" (and he congratulated her ladyship on the birth of that son and heir) "ought surely to think of him, and bring him a soldier, or a monkey, or a toy or two." "Oh, yes," cried Lady Raikes, "her husband must go. He must go and bring back a soldier, or a monkey, or a dear little jack-in-the-box, for dear little Dolly at home." So away Raikes went; indeed nothing loth. He warmed with the noble sport: he was one of the finest players in England. He went on playing for a delightful half-hour; (how swiftly, in the blessed amusement, it passed away!) he reduced several of the sticksters to bankruptcy by his baculine skill; he returned to the carriage laden with jacks, wooden apples and soldiers, enough to amuse all the nurseries in Pimlico. During his absence Lady Raikes, in the most winning manner, had asked Mr. Vincent for his arm, for a little walk; and did not notice the sneer with which he said that his arm had always been at her service. She was not jostled by the crowd inconveniently; she was not offended by the people smoking (though Raikes was forbidden that amusement); and she walked up on Mr. Vincent's arm, and somehow found herself close to the little black brougham, in which sat gouty old Lord Cripplegate. Gouty old Lord Cripplegate wore a light blue silk dress, a lace mantle and other gimcracks, a white bonnet with roses, and ringlets as long as a chancellor's wig, but of the most beautiful black hue. His lordship had a pair of enormous eyes, that languished in a most killing manner; and cheeks that were decorated with delicate dimples; and lips of the color of the richest sealing-wax. "Who's that?" asked Lady Raikes. "That," said Mr. Vincent, "is Mrs. Somerset Montmorency." "Who's Mrs. Somerset Montmorency?" hissed out Zuleika. "It is possible you have not met her in society, Mrs. Somerset Montmorency doesn't go much into society," Mr. Vincent said. "Why did he say it was Lord Cripplegate?" Vincent, like a fiend, burst out laughing. "Did Raikes say it was Lord Cripplegate? Well, he ought to know." "What ought he to know?" asked Zuleika. "Excuse me, Lady Raikes," said the other, with his constant sneer; "there are things which people had best not know. There are things which people had best forget, as your ladyship very well knows. You forget; why shouldn't Raikes forget? Let by-gones be by-gones. Let's all forget, Zulei--I beg your pardon. Here comes Raikes. How hot he looks! He has got a hat full of jack-in-the-boxes. How obedient he has been! He will not set the Thames on fire--but he's a good fellow. Yes; we'll forget all: won't we?" And the fiend pulled the tuft under his chin, and gave a diabolical grin with his sallow face. Zuleika did not say one word about Lord Cripplegate when Raikes found her and flung his treasures into her lap. She did not show her anger in words, but in an ominous, boding silence; during which her eyes might be seen moving constantly to the little black brougham. When the Derby was run, and Voltigeur was announced as the winner, Sir Joseph, who saw the race from the box of his carriage--having his arm around her ladyship, who stood on the back seat, and thought all men the greatest hypocrites in creation (and so a man _is_ the greatest hypocrite of all animals, save one)--Raikes jumped up and gave a "Hurrah!" which he suddenly checked when his wife asked, with a deathlike calmness, "And pray, sir, have you been betting upon the race, that you are so excited?" "Oh no, my love; of course not. But you know it's a Yorkshire horse, and I--I'm glad it wins; that's all," Raikes said; in which statement there was not, I am sorry to say, a word of truth. Raikes wasn't a betting man any more. He had forsworn it: he would never bet again. But he had just, in the course of the day, taken the odds in _one_ little bet; and he had just happened to win. When his wife charged him with the crime, he was about to avow it. "But no," he thought; "it will be a surprise for her. I will buy her the necklace she scolded me about at Lacy and Gimcrack's; it's just the sum. She has been sulky all day. It's about that she is sulky now. I'll go and have another shy at the sticks." And he went away, delighting himself with this notion, and with the idea that at last he could satisfy his adorable little Zuleika. As Raikes passed Mrs. Somerset Montmorency's brougham, Zuleika remarked how that lady beckoned to him, and how Raikes went up to her. Though he did not remain by the carriage two minutes, Zuleika was ready to take an affidavit that he was there for half an hour; and was saluted by a satanical grin from Vincent, who by this time had returned to her carriage side, and was humming a French tune, which says that "_on revient toujours à ses premi-è-res amours, à se-es premières amours_." "What is that you are singing? How dare you sing that?" cried Lady Raikes, with tears. "It's an old song--you used to sing it," said Mr. Vincent. "By the way, I congratulate you. Your husband has won six hundred pounds. I heard Betterton say so, who gave him the odds." "He is a wretch! He gave me his word of honor that he didn't bet. He is a gambler--he'll ruin his child! He neglects his wife for that--that creature! He calls her Lord Crick--crick--ipplegate," sobbed her ladyship, "Why did I marry him?" "Why, indeed!" said Mr. Vincent. As the two were talking, Dolly Trotter, her ladyship's brother, came up to the carriage; at which, with a scowl on his wicked countenance, and indulging inwardly in language which I am very glad not to be called upon to report, Vincent retired, biting his nails, like a traitor, and exhibiting every sign of ill-humor which the villain of a novel or of a play is wont to betray. "Don't have that fellow about you, Zuly," Dolly said to his darling sister. "He is a bad one. He's no principle: he--he's a gambler, and every thing that's bad." "I know others who are gamblers," cried out Zuleika. "I know others who are every thing that's bad, Adolphus," Lady Raikes exclaimed. "For heaven's sake, what do you mean?" said Adolphus, becoming red and looking very much frightened. "I mean my husband," gasped the lady. "I shall go home to papa. I shall take my dear little blessed babe with me and go to papa, Adolphus. And if you had the spirit of a man, you would--you would avenge me, that you would." "Against Joe!" said the heavy dragoon; "against Joe, Zuly? Why, hang me if Joe isn't the greatest twump in Chwistendom. By Jove he is!" said the big one, shaking his fist; "and if that scoundwel, Vincent, or any other wascal, has said a word against him, by Jove--" "Pray stop your horrid oaths and vulgar threats, Adolphus," her ladyship said. "I don't know what it is--you've got something against Joe. Something has put you against him; and if it's Vincent, I'll wring his--" "Mercy! mercy! Pray cease this language." Lady Raikes said. "You don't know what a good fellow Joe is," said the dragoon. "The best twump in England, as _I've_ weason to say, sister: and here he comes with the horses. God bless the old boy!" With this, honest Sir Joseph Raikes took his seat in his carriage; and tried, by artless blandishments, by humility, and by simple conversation, to coax his wife into good humor; but all his efforts were unavailing. She would not speak a word during the journey to London; and when she reached home, rushed up to the nursery and instantly burst into tears upon the sleeping little Adolphus's pink and lace cradle. "It's all about that necklace, Mrs. Prince," the good-natured Baronet explained to the nurse of the son and heir. "I know it's about the necklace. She rowed me about it all the way down to Epsom; and I can't give it her now, that's flat. I've _no_ money. I _won't_ go tick, that's flat; and she ought to be contented with what she has had; oughtn't she, Prince?" "Indeed she ought, Sir Joseph; and you're an angel of a man, Sir Joseph; and so I often tell my lady, Sir Joseph," the nurse said: "and the more you will spile her, the more she will take on, Sir Joseph." But if Lady Raikes was angry at not having the necklace, what must have been her ladyship's feelings when she saw in the box opposite to her at the Opera, Mrs. Somerset Montmorency, with that very necklace on her shoulders for which she had pined in vain! How she got it? Who gave it her? How she came by the money to buy such a trinket? How she dared to drive about at all in the Park, the audacious wretch! All these were questions which the infuriate Zuleika put to herself, her confidential maid, her child's nurse, and two or three of her particular friends; and of course she determined that there was but one clue to the mystery of the necklace, which was that her husband had purchased it with the six hundred pounds which he had won at the Derby, which he denied having won even to her, which he had spent in this shameful manner. Nothing would suit her but a return home to her papa--nothing would satisfy her but a separation from the criminal who had betrayed her. She wept floods of tears over her neglected boy, and repeatedly asked that as yet speechless innocent, whether he would remember his mother when her place was filled by another, and whether her little Adolphus would take care that no insult was offered to her untimely grave? The row at home at length grew so unbearable, that Sir Joseph Raikes, who had never had an explanation since his marriage, and had given into all his wife's caprices--that Sir Joseph, we say, even with his 'eavenly temper, he broke out into a passion; and one day after dinner, at which only his brother-in-law Dolly was present, told his wife that her tyranny was intolerable, and that it must come to an end. Dolly said he was "quite wight," and backed up Raikes in every way. Zuleika said they were a pair of brutes, and that she desired to return to Sir Ajax. "Why, what the devil is urging you?" cried the husband; "you drive me mad, Zuleika." "Yes; what are you at, Zuleika? You dwive him cwazy," said the brother. Upon which Zuleika broke out. She briefly stated that her husband was a liar; that he was a gambler; that he had deceived her about betting at Epsom, and had given his word to a lie; that he had deceived her about that--that woman,--and given his word to another lie; and that, with the fruits of his gambling transactions at Epsom, he had purchased the diamond necklace, not for her, but for that--that person! That was all--that was enough. Let her go home and die in Baker Street, in the room which, she prayed Heaven, she never had quitted! That was her charge. If Sir Joseph Raikes had any thing to say he had better say it. Sir Joseph Raikes said, that she had the most confounded jealous temper that ever a woman was cursed with; that he had been on his knees to her ever since his marriage, and had spent half his income in administering to her caprices and extravagancies; that as for these charges, they were so monstrous, he should not condescend to answer them; and as she chose to leave her husband and her child, she might go whenever she liked. Lady Raikes upon this rang the bell, and requested Hickson the butler to tell Dickson her maid to bring down her bonnet and shawl; and when Hickson quitted the dining-room, Dolly Trotter began: "Zuleika," said he, "you are enough to twy the patience of an angel; and, by Jove, you do! You've got the best fellow for a husband (a sneer from Zuleika) that ever was bullied by a woman, and you tweat him like a dawg. When you were ill, you used to make him get up of a night to go to the doctor's. When you're well, you plague his life out of him. He pays your milliner's bills, as if you were a duchess, and you have but to ask for a thing and you get it." "Oh, yes, I have necklaces!" said Zuleika. "Confound you, Zuly! had'nt he paid three hundwed and eighty for a new cawwiage for you the week before? Hadn't he fitted your dwawing-woom with yellow satin at the beginning of the season? Hadn't he bought you the pair of ponies you wanted, and gone without a hack himself, and he gettin' as fat as a porpoise for want of exercise, the poor old boy? And for that necklace, do you know how it was that you didn't have it, and that you were very nearly having it, you ungwateful little devil you? It was _I_ prevented you! He _did_ win six hundwed at the Derby; and he would have bought your necklace, but he gave me the money. The governor said he never would pay another play-debt again for me; and bet I would, like a confounded, gweat, stooped fool: and it was this old Joe--this dear old twump--who booked up for me, and took me out of the hole, like the best fellow in the whole world, by Jove! And--and I'll never bet again, so help me----! And that's why he couldn't tell--and that's why he wouldn't split on me--and that's why you didn't have your confounded necklace, which old Cwipplegate bought for Mrs. Montmowency, who's going to marry her, like a confounded fool for his pains!" And here the dragoon being blown, took a large glass of claret; and when Hickson and Dickson came down stairs, they found her ladyship in rather a theatrical attitude, on her knees, embracing her husband's big hand, and calling down blessings upon him, and owning that she was a wretch, a monster, and a fiend. She was only a jealous, little spoiled fool of a woman; and I am sure those who read her history have never met with her like, or have ever plagued their husbands. Certainly they have not, if they are not married: as, let us hope, they will be. As for Vincent, he persists in saying that the defence is a fib from beginning to end, and that the Trotters were agreed to deceive Lady Raikes. But who hasn't had his best actions misinterpreted by calumny? And what innocence or good will can disarm jealousy? * * * * * Very different from THACKARAY is the genial Mrs. S. C. HALL, from whom we have EDWARD LAYTON'S REWARD. "I could not have believed it!" exclaimed Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw. "I could not have believed it!" she repeated, over and over again; and she fell into a fit of abstraction. Her husband, who had been glancing wearily over a magazine, turning leaf after leaf without reading, or perhaps seeing even the heading of a page, at length said, "I could!" "You have large faith, my dear," observed the lady. "Fortunately for Selina, I had no faith in him," was the reply. Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw was not an eloquent person; she never troubled her husband or any one else with many words; so she only murmured, in a subdued tone, "Fortunately, indeed!" "What a fellow he was!" said Mr. P. Bradshaw, as he closed the magazine. "Do you remember how delighted you were with him the evening of the _tableaux_ at Lady Westrophe's? There was something so elegant and dignified in his bearing; so much ease and grace of manner; his address was perfect--the confidence of a well-bred gentleman, subdued almost, but not quite, into softness by the timidity of youth. This was thrown into strong relief by the manners of the young men of the family, whose habits and voices might have entitled them to take the lead, even now, in the go-a-head school, which then was hardly in existence--at all events in England." "You were quite as much taken with him as I was." "No, my dear, not _quite_. Edward Layton was especially suited for the society of ladies. His tastes and feelings are--or _were_ at that time--all sincerely refined; he was full of the impulse of talent, which he never had strength to bring forth: his thoughts were ever wandering, and he needed perpetual excitement, particularly the excitement of beauty and music, to bring them and keep them where he _was_. He was strongly and strangely moved by excellence of any kind, so that it _was_ excellence; and the only thing I ever heard him express contempt for was wealth!--yes wealth!" "I could not have believed it," said Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw again. "That particular night it was whispered he was engaged to Lelia Medwin. When she sung, he stood like a young Apollo at her harp, too entranced to turn over the leaves of music, his eyes overflowing with delight, and the poor little girl so bewitched by his attentions that she fancied every whisper a declaration of love." "Shameful!" said Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw. "Then her mother showed every one what a lovely sketch he had made of Lelia's head, adding, that indeed it was too lovely; but then, he was a _partial_ judge." "She was a silly woman," observed the lady. "She would not have been considered so if they had been married," replied the gentleman. "Mammas have no mercy on each other in those delicate manoeuvrings. Well, he waltzed with her always; and bent over her--willow-fashion; looked with her at the moon; and wrote a sonnet which she took to herself, for it was addressed 'To mine own dear ----;' and then when, about eight weeks afterwards, we met him at the _déjeúner_ at Sally Lodge, he was as entranced with Lizzie Grey's guitar as he had been with Lelia's harp, sketched her little tiger head for her grandmamma, waltzed with _her_, bent over _her_ willow-fashion, looked with her at the moon, and wrote another sonnet, addressed 'To the loved one.'" "Such men----" exclaimed Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw. She did not finish the sentence, but looked as if such men ought to be exterminated. And so they ought! "There was so much about him that I liked: his fine talents, good manners, excellent position in society, added to his good nature, and----" "Good fortune," added Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw. "No, Mary," said her husband, quietly, "I never was a _mammon worshipper_. This occurred, if you remember, before the yellow pestilence had so completely subverted London, that the very aristocracy knelt and worshipped the golden calf; and no blame to the calf to _receive_ the homage, whatever we may say of those who paid it. "I did not mean _that_ as a reproof, Pierce," replied his wife, most truly. "_I_ think it quite natural to like young men of fortune--we could not get on without them, you know; and it would be very imprudent--very imprudent, indeed--to invite any young man, however excellent. When we want to get these young girls, our poor nieces, off, I declare it is quite melancholy. Jane is becoming _serious_ since she has grown so thin; and I fear the men will think Belle a blue, she has so taken to the British Museum. Oh, how I wish people would live, and bring up, and get off their own daughters! Four marriageable nieces, with such farthing fortunes, are enough to drive any poor aunt distracted!" This was the longest speech Mrs. Bradshaw ever made in her life, and she sighed deeply at its conclusion. "You may well sigh!" laughed the gentleman; "for the case seems hopeless. But I was going to say, that as I knew him better, I was really going to take the young gentleman a little to task on the score of his philandering. Lelia was really attached to him, and had refused a very advantageous offer for his sake; but the very next week, at another house, I found him enchained by a sparkling widow--correcting her drawings, paying the homage of intelligent silence and sweet smiles to her wit, leaning his white-gloved hand upon her chair, and looking in her eyes with his most bewitching softness. The extent of this flirtation no one could anticipate; but the sudden appearance of Lady Di' Johnson effected a total change. She drove four-in-hand, and was a dead shot--the very antipodes of sentiment. We said her laugh would drive Edward Layton distracted, and her _cigarette_ be his death. But, no! the magnificence of her tomboyism caught his fancy. He enshrined her at once as Diana, bayed the moon with hunting-songs, wrote a sonnet to the chase, and then, with his own hands, twisted it into a _cigarette_, with which her ladyship puffed it to the winds of heaven, while wandering with the Lothario amid a grove of fragrant limes. The miracle was, that at breakfast the next morning Lady Di' was subdued, voted driving unfeminine, and asked Edward to take the reins for her after lunch. You remember we left them there; and I next met him at Killarney, giving his chestnut locks to the breeze, his arm to the oar, and his eyes to a lady of blue-stocking celebrity, who, never having had many lovers, was inclined to make the most of the present one. Circumstances rendered me acquainted with some facts relating to his 'flirtations,' if his soft and sentimental ways could be called by such a name. I had seen poor Lelia at Baden-Baden; and I dare say you can recall what we heard of another love of his nearer home. Well, I encountered my Hero of Ladies that very evening, wandering amid the ruined aisles of Mucross Abbey. I saw that his impressible nature had taken a thoughtful, if not a religious tone, from the scene. And he commenced the conversation by declaring, that 'He was a great fool.'" "Knave, rather," said Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw. "No," replied her husband; "not a knave, but a singular example of a man whose feelings and susceptibilities never deepen into affection--unstable as water--tossed hither and thither for want of fixed principles, and suffering intensely in his better moods from the knowledge of the weakness he has not the courage to overcome. I was not inclined to let him spare himself, and did not contradict his opinion that he was a 'fool,' but told him he might be what he pleased himself, as long as he did not make fools of others." "'I tell every woman I know that I am not a marrying man,' he replied. "'That,' I said, 'does not signify as long as you act the lover, each fair one believing you will revoke in her favor.' "'I give you my honor,' he exclaimed, 'as a man and a gentleman, I never entertained for twenty-four hours the idea of marrying any woman I ever knew.'" "The villain!" exclaimed the lady. "I hope, Pierce, you told him he was a villain!" "No; because I knew the uncertainty of his disposition: but I lectured him fully and honestly, and yet said nothing to him so severe as what he said of himself. I told him he would certainly be caught in the end by some unworthy person, and then he would look back with regret and misery upon the chances he had lost, and the unhappiness he had caused to those whose only faults had been in believing him true when he was false." "'Better that,' he answered, 'than marrying when he could not make up his mind.' "'Then why play the lover?' "'He only did so while infatuated--he was certain to find faults where he imagined perfection.'" "What assurance!" said Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw. "'I am sure,' I said, 'Lelia was very charming. Lelia Medwin was an excellent, amiable little creature, with both good temper and good sense.' "'That was it,' he said: 'only fancy the six-foot-one-and-three-quarters wedded to bare five feet! The absurdity struck me one night as we were waltzing and whirling past a looking-glass; I was obliged to bend double, though I never felt it till I saw it.'" "Really, I have not patience," observed Mrs. Bradshaw. "And so her feelings were to be trampled upon because she was not tall enough to please _him_! Why did he not think of that before?" "'But there was Lizzy Grey, related to half the aristocracy, with a voice like an angel.' "'A vixen,' he said, 'though of exquisite beauty--could have torn my eyes out for the little attention I paid Mrs. Green.' "'_Little attention!_' I repeated; 'more than little.' "'Her wit was delicious,' he replied; 'but she was a widow! Only fancy the horror of being compared with 'My dear first husband!' "'Then your conquest of Lady Di' Johnson! How badly you behaved to her!' "'She was magnificent on horseback; and her _cigarette_ as fascinating as the fan of a Madrid belle, or the _tournure_ of a Parisian lady. They were her _two points_. But when she relinquished both, I believe in compliment to _me_, she became even more commonplace than the most commonplace woman.'" "The puppy!" muttered the lady: "the dreadful puppy! I could not have believed it!" Mr. Bradshaw did not heed the interruption, but continued: "'And who,' I inquired, 'was the Lady of the Lake? I do not mean of _this lake_, for I see her reign is already over--your passion expired with the third chapter of her novel, which I know she read to you by moonlight--but the fair Lady of Geneva, whose betrothed called you out?' "'Her father was a sugar-boiler,' was the quiet reply: 'a sugar-boiler, or something of the kind. What would my aristocratic mother say to that? Of course I could have had no serious intention _there_. Indeed I never _had_ a serious intention for a whole week.' "'But, my dear fellow, when presents are given, and letters written, and locks of hair and vows exchanged----' "'No, no!' he exclaimed; '_no_ vows exchanged! I never broke my word to a woman yet. It was admiration for this or that--respect, esteem, perhaps a tender bewilderment--mere _brotherly_ love. And in that particular instance her intended got angry at my civility. I know I was wrong; and, to confess the truth, I am ashamed of that transaction--it taught me a lesson; and, but for the confounded vacillation of my taste and temper, I might perhaps have been a Benedick before this. You may think it puppyism, if you please; but I am really sorry when I make an impression, and resolve never to attempt it again: but the next fine voice, or fine eyes----' "'Or cigarette,' I suggested; and then I said as much as one man can say to another, for you know a woman can say much more to a man in the way of reproof than he would bear from his own sex; but he silenced me very quickly by regrets and good resolutions. It was after that our little niece, Selina, made an impression upon him." "I did not know all you have now told me," expostulated his wife. "I own I thought it would have been a good match for Selina; and he was evidently deeply smitten before he knew she was your niece. I managed it beautifully; but you cut the matter short by offending him." "There, say no more about it," said the sensible husband; "you thought your blue-eyed, fair-haired, doll-like favorite, could have enchained a man who had escaped heart-whole from the toils of the richest and rarest in the land. It really is fearful to see how women not only tolerate, but pursue this sort of men. You call them 'villains,' and I know not what, when you are foiled; but if you succeed, you temper it; they have been a little wild, to be sure--but then, and then, and then--you really could not refuse your daughter; and add, "Men _are_ such creatures that if the world knew but all, _he_ is not worse than others." "For shame, Pierce! how can you?" said the lady. "I told him then," continued Mr. Bradshaw, "that he would take '_the crooked stick at last_;' but that he should not add a tress of Selina's hair to his collection, to be turned over by _his_ WIFE one of those days. Of course he was very indignant, and we parted; but I did not think my prophecy would come true so soon. I have long since given up speculating how marriages will turn out, for it is quite impossible to tell. If women could be shut up in a harem, as in the East, a man who was ashamed of his wife might go into society without her; but for a refined and well-educated gentleman, as Edward Layton certainly is, to be united to the _widow_ of a sugar-boiler!--yes, absolutely!--who is an inch shorter than pretty Lelia and more tiger-headed than Lizzy Grey, and who declares she hates music, although her dear first husband took her _h_often to the Hopera--who adds deformity to shortness, talks loudly of the _h_influence of wealth, and compares the presentations at the Mansion House, that she has seen, to those at St. James's which she has not yet seen! Verily, Edward Layton has had _his reward_!" * * * * * BULWER LYTTON contributes to the "Keepsake" an essay, characteristic of his earlier rather than of his later style: THE CONFIRMED VALETUDINARIAN. Certainly there is truth in the French saying, that there is no ill without something of good. What state more pitiable to the eye of a man of robust health than that of the Confirmed Valetudinarian? Indeed, there is no one who has a more profound pity for himself than your Valetudinarian; and yet he enjoys two of the most essential requisites for a happy life; he is never without an object of interest, and he is perpetually in pursuit of hope. Our friend Sir George Malsain is a notable case in point: young, well born, rich, not ill educated, and with some ability, they who knew him formerly, in what were called his "gay days," were accustomed to call him "lucky dog," and "enviable fellow." How shallow is the judgment of mortals! Never was a poor man so bored--nothing interested him. His constitution seemed so formed for longevity, and his condition so free from care, that he was likely to have a long time before him:--it is impossible to say how long that time seemed to him. Fortunately, from some accidental cause or other, he woke one morning and found himself ill; and, whether it was the fault of the doctor or himself I cannot pretend to say, but he never got well again. His ailments became chronic; he fell into a poor way. From that time life has assumed to him a new aspect. Always occupied with himself, he is never bored. He may be sick, sad, suffering, but he has found his object in existence--he lives to be cured. His mind is fully occupied; his fancy eternally on the wing. Formerly he had travelled much, but without any pleasure in movement: he might as well have stayed at home. Now, when he travels, it is for an end; it is delightful to witness the cheerful alertness with which he sets about it. He is going down the Rhine;--for its scenery? Pshaw! he never cared a button about scenery; but he has great hopes of the waters at Kreuznach. He is going into Egypt;--to see the Pyramids? Stuff! the climate on the Nile is so good for the mucous membrane! Set him down at the dullest of dull places, and he himself is never dull. The duller the place the better; his physician has the more time to attend to him. When you meet him he smiles on you, and says, poor fellow, "The doctor assures me that in two years I shall be quite set up." He has said the same thing the last twenty years, and will say it the day before his death!... What a busy, anxious, fidgety creature Ned Worrell was? That iron frame supported all the business of all society! Every man who wanted any thing done, asked Ned Worrell to do it. And do it Ned Worrell did! You remember how feelingly he was wont to sigh,--"Upon my life I'm a perfect slave." But now Ned Worrell has snapped his chain; obstinate dyspepsia, and a prolonged nervous debility, have delivered him from the carks and cares of less privileged mortals. Not Ariel under the bough is more exempt from humanity than Edward Worrell. He is enjoined to be kept in a state of perfect repose, free from agitation, and hermetically shut out from grief. His wife pays his bills, and he is only permitted to see his banker's accounts when the balance in his favor is more than usually cheerful. His eldest daughter, an intelligent young lady, reads his letters, and only presents to him those which are calculated to make a pleasing impression. Call now on your old friend, on a question of life and death, to ask his advice, or request his interference--you may as well call on King Cheops under the Great Pyramid. The whole houseguard of tender females block the way. "Mr. Worrell is not to be disturbed on any matter of business whatever," they will tell you. "But, my dear ma'am, he is trusted to my marriage settlement; his signature is necessary to a transfer of my wife's fortune from those cursed railway shares. To-morrow they will be down at zero. We shall be ruined!" "Mr. Worrell is in a sad, nervous way, and can't be disturbed, sir." And the door is shut in your face! It was after some such occurrence that I took into earnest consideration a certain sentiment of Plato's, which I own I had till then considered very inhuman; for that philosopher is far from being the tender and sensitive gentleman generally believed in by lovers and young ladies. Plato, in his "Republic," blames Herodicus (one of the teachers of that great doctor Hippocrates) for showing to delicate, sickly persons, the means whereby to prolong their valetudinary existence, as Herodicus himself (naturally a very rickety fellow) had contrived to do. Plato accuses this physician of having thereby inflicted a malignant and wanton injury on those poor persons;--nay, not only an injury on them, but on all society. "For," argues this stern, broad-shouldered Athenian, "how can people be virtuous who are always thinking of their own infirmities?" And therefore he opines, that if a sickly person cannot wholly recover health and become robust, the sooner he dies the better for himself and others! The wretch, too, might be base enough to marry, and have children as ailing as their father, and so injure, _in perpetuo_, the whole human race. Away with him! But, upon cool and dispassionate reflection, it seemed to me, angry as I was with Ned Worrell, that Plato stretched the point a little too far; and certainly, in the present state of civilization, so sweeping a condemnation of the sickly would go far towards depopulating Europe. Celsus, for instance, classes amongst the delicate or sickly the greater part of the inhabitants of towns, and nearly all literary folks (_omnesque pene cupidi literarum_). And if we thus made away with the denizens of the towns, it would be attended with a great many inconveniencies as to shopping, &c., be decidedly injurious to house property, and might greatly affect the state of the funds; while, without literary folks, we should be very dull in our healthy country-seats, deprived of newspapers, novels, and "The Keepsake." Wherefore, on the whole, I think Herodicus was right; and that sickly persons should not only be permitted but encouraged to live as long as they can. That proposition granted, if in this attempt to show that your confirmed Valetudinarian is not so utterly miserable as he is held to be by those who throw physic to the dogs--and that in some points he may be a decided gainer by his physical sufferings--I have not wholly failed--then I say, with the ingenious Author who devoted twenty years to a work "On the Note of the Nightingale,"--"I have not lived in vain!" A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[24] WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE, BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ. _Continued from Page 44._ CHAPTER VI. Reader, can you go back for twenty years? You do it every day. You say, "Twenty years ago I was a boy--twenty years ago I was a youth--twenty years ago I played at peg-top and at marbles--twenty years ago I wooed--was loved--I sinned--I suffered!" What is there in twenty years that should keep us from going back over them? You go on so fast, so smoothly, so easily on the forward course--why not in retrogression? But let me tell you: it makes a very great difference whether Hope or Memory drives the coach. But let us see what we can do. Twenty years before the period at which the last chapter broke off, Philip Hastings, now a father of a girl of fifteen, was a lad standing by the side of his brother's grave. Twenty years ago Sir John Hastings was the living lord of these fine lands and broad estates. Twenty years ago he passed, from the mouth of the vault in which he had laid the clay of the first-born, into the open splendor of the day, and felt sorrow's desolation in the sunshine. Twenty years ago, he had been confronted on the church-yard path by a tall old woman, and challenged with words high and stern, to do her right in regard to a paltry rood or two of land. Twenty years ago he had given her a harsh, cold answer, and treated her menaces with impatient scorn. Do you remember her, reader? Well, if you do, that brings us to the point I sought to reach in the dull flat expanse of the far past; and we can stand and look around us for awhile. That old woman was not one easily to forget or lightly to yield her resentments. There was something perdurable in them as well as in her gaunt, sinewy frame. As she stood there menacing him, she wanted but three years of seventy. She had battled too with many a storm--wind and weather, suffering and persecution, sorrow and privation, had beat upon her hard--very hard. They had but served to stiffen and wither and harden, however. Her corporeal frame, shattered as it seemed, was destined to outlive many of the young and fair spirit-tabernacles around it--to pass over, by long years, the ordinary allotted space of human life; and it seemed as if even misfortune had with her but a preserving power. It is not wonderful, however, that, while it worked thus upon her body, it should likewise have stiffened and withered and hardened her heart. I am not sure that conscience itself went untouched in this searing process. It is not clear at all that even her claim upon Sir John Hastings was not an unjust one; but just or unjust his repulse sunk deep and festered. Let us trace her from the church-yard after she met him. She took her path away from the park and the hamlet, between two cottages, the ragged boys at the doors of which called her "Old Witch," and spoke about a broom-stick. She heeded them little: there were deeper offences rankling at her heart. She walked on, across a corn-field and a meadow, and then she came upon some woodlands, through which a little sandy path wound its way, round stumps of old trees long cut down, amidst young bushes and saplings just springing up, and catching the sunshine here and there through the bright-tinted foliage overhead. Up the hill it went, over the slope on which the copse was scattered, and then burst forth again on the opposite side of wood and rise, where the ground fell gently the other way, looking down upon the richly dressed grounds of Colonel Marshall, at the distance of some three miles. Not more than a hundred yards distant was poor man's cottage, with an old gray thatch which wanted some repairing, and was plentifully covered with herbs, sending the threads of their roots into the straw. A little badly cultivated garden, fenced off from the hill-side by a loose stone wall, surrounded the house, and a gate without hinges gave entrance to this inclosed space. The old woman went in and approached the cottage door. When near it she stopped and listened, lifting one of the flapping ears of her cotton cap to aid the dull sense of hearing. There were no voices within; but there was a low sobbing sound issued forth as if some one were in bitter distress. "I should not wonder if she were alone," said the old woman; "the ruffian father is always out; the drudging mother goes about this time to the town. They will neither stay at home, I wot, to grieve for him they let too often into that door, nor to comfort her he has left desolate. But it matters little whether they be in or out. It were better to talk to her first. I will give her better than comfort--revenge, if I judge right. They must play their part afterwards." Thus communing with herself, she laid her hand upon the latch and opened the door. In an attitude of unspeakable grief sat immediately before her a young and exceedingly beautiful girl, of hardly seventeen years of age. The wheel stood still by her side; the spindle had fallen from her hands; her head was bowed down as with sorrow she could not bear up against; and her eyes were dropping tears like rain. The moment she heard the door open she started, and looked up with fear upon her face, and strove to dash the tears from her eyes; but the old woman bespoke her softly, saying, "Good even, my dear; is your mother in the place?" "No," replied the girl; "she has gone to sell the lint, and father is out too. It is very lonely, and I get sad here." "I do not wonder at it, poor child," said the old woman; "you have had a heavy loss, my dear, and may well cry. You can't help what is past, you know; but we can do a good deal for what is to come, if we but take care and make up our minds in time." Many and strange were the changes of expression which came upon the poor girl's face as she heard these few simple words. At first her cheek glowed hot, as with the burning blush of shame; then she turned pale and trembled, gazing inquiringly in her visitor's face, as if she would have asked, "Am I detected?" and then she cast down her eyes again, still pale as ashes, and the tears rolled forth once more and fell upon her lap. The old woman sat down beside her, and talked to her tenderly; but, alas! very cunningly too. She assumed far greater knowledge than she possessed. She persuaded the poor girl that there was nothing to conceal from her; and what neither father nor mother knew, was told that day to one comparatively a stranger. Still the old woman spoke tenderly--ay, very tenderly; excused her fault--made light of her fears--gave her hope--gave her strength. But all the time she concealed her full purpose. That was to be revealed by degrees. Whatever had been the girl's errors, she was too innocent to be made a party to a scheme of fraud and wrong and vengeance at once. All that the woman communicated was blessed comfort to a bruised and bleeding heart; and the poor girl leaned her head upon her old companion's shoulder, and, amidst bitter tears and sobs and sighs, poured out every secret of her heart. But what is that she says, which makes the old woman start with a look of triumph? "Letters!" she exclaimed; "two letters: let me see them, child--let me see them! Perhaps they may be more valuable than you think." The girl took them from her bosom, where she kept them as all that she possessed of one gone that day into the tomb. The old woman read them with slow eyes, but eager attention; and then gave them back, saying, "That one you had better destroy as soon as possible--it tells too much. But this first one keep, as you value your own welfare--as you value your child's fortune, station, and happiness. You can do much with this. Why, here are words that may make your father a proud man. Hark! I hear footsteps coming. Put them up--we must go to work cautiously, and break the matter to your parents by degrees." It was the mother of the girl who entered; and she seemed faint and tired. Well had the old woman called her a drudge, for such she was--a poor patient household drudge, laboring for a hard, heartless, idle, and cunning husband, and but too tenderly fond of the poor girl whose beauty had been a snare to her. She seemed somewhat surprised to see the old woman there; for they were of different creeds, and those creeds made wide separation in the days I speak of. Perhaps she was surprised and grieved to see the traces of tears and agitation on her daughter's face; but of that she took no notice; for there were doubts and fears at her heart which she dreaded to confirm. The girl was more cheerful, however, than she had been for the last week--not gay, not even calm; but yet there was a look of some relief. Often even after her mother's entrance, the tears would gather thick in her eyes when she thought of the dead; but it was evident that hope had risen up: that the future was not all darkness and terror. This was a comfort to her; and she spoke and looked cheerfully. She had sold all the thread of her and her daughter's spinning, and she had sold it well. Part she hid in a corner to keep a pittance for bread from her husband's eyes; part she reserved to give up to him for the purchase of drink: but while she made all these little arrangements, she looked somewhat anxiously at the old woman, from time to time, as if she fain would have asked, "What brought you here?" The crone was cautious, however, and knew well with whom she had to deal. She talked in solemn and oracular tones, as if she had possessed all the secrets of fate, but she told nothing, and when she went away she said in a low voice but authoritative manner, "Be kind to your girl--be very kind; for she will bring good luck and fortune to you all." The next day she laid wait for the husband, found and forced him to stop and hear her. At first he was impatient, rude, and brutal; swore, cursed, and called her many and evil names. But soon he listened eagerly enough: looks of intelligence and eager design passed between the two, and ere they parted they perfectly understood each other. The man was then, on more than one day, seen going down to the hall. At first he was refused admission to Sir John Hastings; for his character was known. The next day, however, he brought a letter written under his dictation by his daughter, who had been taught at a charitable school of old foundation hard by; and this time he was admitted. His conversation with the Lord of the Manor was long; but no one knew its import. He came again and again, and was still admitted. A change came over the cottage and its denizens. The fences were put in order, the walls were repaired, the thatch renewed, another room or two was added; plenty reigned within; mother and daughter appeared in somewhat finer apparel; and money was not wanting. At the end of some months there was the cry of a young child in the house. The neighbors were scandalized, and gossips spoke censoriously even in the father's ears; but he stopped them fiercely, with proud and mysterious words; boasted aloud of what they had thought his daughter's shame; and claimed a higher place for her than was willingly yielded to her companions. Strange rumors got afloat, but ere a twelvemonth had passed, the father had drank himself to death. His widow and her daughter and her grandson moved to a better house, and lived at ease on money none knew the source of, while the cottage, now neat and in good repair, became the dwelling of the old woman, who had been driven with scorn from Sir John's presence. Was she satisfied--had she sated herself? Not yet. CHAPTER VII. There was a lady, a very beautiful lady indeed, came to a lonely house, which seemed to have been tenanted for several years by none but servants, about three years after the death of Sir John Hastings. That house stood some miles to the north of the seat of that gentleman, which now had passed to his son; and it was a fine-looking place, with a massive sort of solemn brick-and-mortar grandeur about it, which impressed the mind with a sense of the wealth and long-standing of its owners. The plural has slipped from my pen, and perhaps it is right; for the house looked as if it had had many owners, and all of them had been rich. Now, there was but one owner,--the lady who descended from that lumbering, heavy coach, with the two great leathern wings on each side of the door. She was dressed in widow's weeds, and she had every right to wear them. Though two-and-twenty only, she stood there orphan, heiress, and widow. She had known many changes of condition, but not of fate, and they did not seem to have affected her much. Of high-born and proud parentage, she had been an only child for many years before her parents' death. She had been spoiled, to use a common, but not always appropriate phrase; for there are some people who cannot be spoiled, either because the ethereal essence within them is incorruptible, or because there is no ethereal essence to spoil at all. However, she had been spoiled very successfully by fate, fortune, and kind friends. She had never been contradicted in her life; she had never been disappointed--but once. She had travelled, seen strange countries--which was rare in those days with women--had enjoyed many things. She had married a handsome, foolish man, whom she chose--few knew rightly why. She had lost both her parents not long after; got tired of her husband, and lost him too, just when the loss could leave little behind but a decent regret, which she cultivated as a slight stimulant to keep her mind from stagnating. And now, without husband, child, or parents, she returned to the house of her childhood, which she had not seen for five long years. Is that all her history? No, not exactly all. There is one little incident which may as well be referred to here. Her parents had entered into an arrangement for her marriage with a very different man from him whom she afterwards chose,--Sir Philip Hastings; and foolishly they had told her of what had been done, before the young man's own assent had been given. She did not see much of him--certainly not enough to fall in love with him. She even thought him a strange, moody youth; but yet there was something in his moodiness and eccentricity which excited her fancy. The reader knows that he chose for himself; and the lady also married immediately after. Thus had passed for her a part of life's pageant; and now she came to her own native dwelling, to let the rest march by as it might. At first, as she slowly descended from the carriage, her large, dark, brilliant eyes were fixed upon the ground. She had looked long at the house as she was driving towards it, and it seemed to have cast her into a thoughtful mood. It is hardly possible to enter a house where we have spent many early years, without finding memory suddenly seize upon the heart and possess it totally. What a grave it is! What a long line of buried ancestors may not _the present_ always contemplate there. Nor are there many received into the tomb worth so much respect as one dead hour. All else shall live again; lost hours have no resurrection. There were old servants waiting around, to welcome her, new ones attending upon her orders; but for a moment or two she noticed no one, till at length the old housekeeper, who knew her from a babe, spoke out, saying, "Ah, madam! I do not wonder to see you a little sad on first coming to the old place again, after all that has happened." "Ah, indeed, Arnold," replied the lady, "many sad things have happened since we parted. But how are you, Goody? You look blooming:" and walking into the house, she heard the reply in the hall. From the hall, the old housekeeper led her lady through the house, and mightily did she chatter and gossip by the way. The lady listened nearly in silence; for Mrs. Arnold was generous in conversation, and spared her companion all expense of words. At length, however, something she said seemed to rouse her mistress, and she exclaimed with a somewhat bitter laugh, "And so the good people declared I was going to be married to Sir Philip Hastings?" "_Mr._ Hastings he was then, madam," answered the housekeeper; "to be sure they did. All the country around talked of it, and the tenants listened at church to hear the banns proclaimed." The lady turned very red, and the old woman went on to say, "Old Sir John seemed quite sure of it; but he reckoned without his host, I fancy." "He did indeed," said the lady with an uncheerful smile, and there the subject dropped for the time. Not long after, however, the lady herself brought the conversation back to nearly the same point, asked after Sir Philip's health and manner of living, and how he was liked in the neighborhood, adding, "He seemed a strange being at the time I saw him, which was only once or twice--not likely to make a very pleasant husband, I thought." "Oh dear, yes, madam, he does," answered Mrs. Arnold, "many a worse, I can assure you. He is very fond of his lady indeed, and gives up more to her than one would think. He is a little stern, they say, but very just and upright; and no libertine fellow, like his brother who was drowned--which I am sure was a providence, for if he was so bad when he was young, what would he have been when he was old?" "Better, perhaps," replied her mistress, with a quiet smile; "but was he so very wicked? I never heard any evil of him." "Oh dear me, madam! do not you know?" exclaimed the old woman; and then came the whole story of the cotter's daughter on the hill, and how she and her father and old Mother Danby--whom people believed to be a witch--had persuaded or threatened Sir John Hastings into making rich people of them. "Persuaded or threatened Sir John Hastings!" said the lady in a tone of doubt. "I knew him better than either of his sons; and never did I see a man so little likely to yield to persuasion or to bow to menace;" and she fell into a deep fit of musing, which lasted long, while the old housekeeper rambled on from subject to subject, unlistened to, but very well content. Let us dwell a little on the lady, and on her character. There is always something to interest, something to instruct, in the character of a woman. It is like many a problem in Euclid, which seems at first sight as plain and simple as the broad sunshine; but when we come to study it, we find intricacies beneath which puzzle us mightily to resolve. It is a fine, curious, delicate, complicated piece of anatomy, a woman's heart. I have dissected many, and I know the fact. Take and lay that fibre apart--take care, for heaven's sake! that you do not tear the one next to it; and be sure you do not dissever the fragments which bind those most opposite parts together! See, here lies a muscle of keen sensibility; and there--what is that? A cartilage, hard as a nether millstone. Look at those light, irritable nerves, quivering at the slightest touch; and then see those tendons, firm, fixed, and powerful as the resolution of a martyr. Oh, that wonderful piece of organization! who can describe it accurately? I must not pretend to do so; but I will give a slight sketch of the being before me. There she stands, somewhat above the usual height, but beautifully formed, with every line rounded and flowing gracefully into the others. There is calmness and dignity in the whole air, and in every movement; but yet there is something very firm, very resolute, very considerate, in the fall of that small foot upon the carpet. She cannot intend her foot to stay there for ever; and yet, when she sets it down, one would be inclined to think she did. Her face is very beautiful--every feature finely cut--the eyes almost dazzling in their dark brightness. How chaste, how lovely the fine lines of that mouth. Yet do you see what a habit she has of keeping the pearly teeth close shut--one pure row pressed hard against the other. The slight sarcastic quiver of the upper lip does not escape you; and the expanded nostril and flash of the eye, contradicted by the fixed motionless mouth. Such is her outward appearance, such is she too within--though the complexion there is somewhat darker. Much that, had it been cultivated and improved, would have blossomed into womanly virtue; a capability of love, strong, fiery, vehement, changeless--not much tenderness--not much pity,--no remorse--are there. Pride, of a peculiar character, but strong, ungovernable, unforgiving, and a power of hate and thirst of vengeance, which only pride can give, are there likewise. Super-add a shrewdness--a policy--a cunning--nay, something greater--something approaching the sublime--a divination, where passion is to be gratified, that seldom leads astray from the object. Yes, such is the interior of that fair temple, and yet, how calm, sweet, and promising it stands. I have omitted much perhaps; for the human heart is like the caldron of the witches in Macbeth, and one might go on throwing in ingredients till the audience became tired of the song. However, what I have said will be enough for the reader's information; and if we come upon any unexplained phenomena, I must endeavor to elucidate them hereafter. Let us suppose the lady's interview with her housekeeper at an end--all her domestic arrangements made--the house restored to its air of habitation--visits received and paid. Amongst the earliest visitors were Sir Philip and Lady Hastings. He came frankly, and in one of his most happy moods, perfectly ignorant that she had ever been made aware of there having been a marriage proposed between himself and her; and she received him and his fair wife with every appearance of cordiality. But as soon as these visits and all the ceremonies were over, the lady began to drive much about the country, and to collect every tale and rumor she could meet with of all the neighboring families. Her closest attention, however, centred upon those affecting the Hastings' race; and she found the whole strange story of the cottage girl confirmed, with many another particular added. She smiled when she heard this--smiled blandly--it seemed to give her pleasure. She would fain have called upon the girl and her mother too. She longed to do so, and to draw forth with skill, of which she possessed no small share, the key secret of the whole. But her station, her reputation, prevented her from taking a step which she knew might be noised abroad and create strange comments. She resolved upon another move, however, which she thought would do as well. There would be no objection to her visiting her poorer neighbors, to comfort, to relieve; and she went to the huts of many. At length one early morning, on a clear autumn day, the carriage was left below on the high road, and the lady climbed the hill alone towards the cottage, where the girl and her parents formerly lived. She found the old woman, who was now its occupant, busily cooking her morning meal; and sitting down, she entered into conversation with her. At first she could obtain but little information; the old woman was in a sullen mood, and would not speak of any thing she did not like. Money was of no avail to unlock her eloquence. She had never asked or taken charity, the old woman said, and now she did not need it. The lady pondered for a few minutes, considering the character of her ancient hostess, trying it by her experience and intuition; and thus she boldly asked her for the whole history of young John Hastings and the cottage girl. "Tell me all," she said, "for I wish to know it--I have an interest in it." "Ay?" said the old woman, gazing at her, "then you are the pretty lady Sir Philip was to have married, but would not have her?" "The same," replied the visitor, and for an instant a bright red spot arose upon her cheek--a pang like a knife passed through her heart. That was the price she paid for the gratification of her curiosity. But it probably was gratified, for she stayed nearly an hour and a half in the cottage--so long, indeed, that her servants, who were with the carriage, became alarmed, and one of the footmen walked up the hill. He met his lady coming down. "Poor thing," she said, as if speaking of the old woman she had just left, "her senses wander a little; but she is poor, and has been much persecuted. I must do what I can for her. Whenever she comes to the house, see she is admitted." The old woman did come often, and always had a conference with the lady of the mansion; but here let us leave them for the present. They may appear upon the stage again. CHAPTER VIII. "MY DEAR SIR PHILIP: "I have not seen you or dear Lady Hastings for many months; nor your sweet Emily either, except at a distance, when one day she passed my carriage on horseback, sweeping along the hill-side like a gleam of light. My life is a sad, solitary one here; and I wish my friends would take more compassion upon me and let me see human faces oftener--especially faces that I love. "But I know that you are very inexorable in these respects, and, sufficient to yourself, cannot readily conceive how a lone woman can pine for the society of other more loving friends than books or nature. I must, therefore, attack the only accessible point I know about you, meaning your compassion, which you never refuse to those who really require it. Now I do require it greatly; for I am at this present engaged in business of a very painful and intricate nature, which I cannot clearly understand, and in which I have no one to advise me but a country attorney, whose integrity as well as ability I much doubt. To whom can I apply so well as to you, when I need the counsel and assistance of a friend, equally kind, disinterested, and clear-headed? I venture to do so, then, in full confidence, and ask you to ride over as soon as you can, to give me your advice, or rather to decide for me, in a matter where a considerable amount of property is at stake, and where decision is required immediately. I trust when you do come you will stay all night, as the business is, I fear, of so complicated a nature, that it may occupy more than one day of your valuable time in the affairs of Your faithful and obliged servant, CAROLINE HAZLETON." "Is Mrs. Hazleton's messenger waiting?" asked Sir Philip Hastings, after having read the letter and mused for a moment. The servant answered in the affirmative; and his master rejoined, "Tell him I will not write an answer, as I have some business to attend to; but I beg he will tell his mistress that I will be with her in three hours." Lady Hastings uttered a low-toned exclamation of surprise. She did not venture to ask any question--indeed she rarely questioned her husband on any subject; but when any thing excited her wonder, or, as was more frequently the case, her curiosity, she was accustomed to seek for satisfaction in a somewhat indirect way, by raising her beautiful eyebrows with a doubtful sort of smile, or, as in the present instance, by exclaiming, "Good gracious! Dear me!" or giving voice to some other little vocative, with a note of interrogation strongly marked after it. In this case there was more than one feeling at the bottom of her exclamation. She was surprised; she was curious; and she was, moreover, in the least degree in the world, jealous. She had her share of weaknesses, as I have said; and one of them was of a kind less uncommon than may be supposed. Of her husband's conduct she had no fear--not the slightest suspicion. Indeed, to have entertained any would have been impossible--but she could not bear to see him liked, admired, esteemed, by any woman--mark me, I say by _any woman_; for no one could feel more triumphant joy than she did when she saw him duly appreciated by men. She was a great monopolizer: she did not wish one thought of his to be won away from her by another woman; and a sort of irritable feeling came upon her even when she saw him seated by any young and pretty girl, and paying her the common attentions of society. She was too well bred to display such sensations except by those slight indications, or by a certain petulance of manner, which he was not close observer enough of other people's conduct to remark. Not to dwell too long on such things, Sir Philip Hastings, though perfectly unconscious of what was going on in her heart, rarely kept her long in suspense, when he saw any signs of curiosity. He perhaps might think it a point of Roman virtue to spoil his wife, although she had very little of the Portia in her character. On the present occasion, he quietly handed over to her the letter of Mrs. Hazleton; and then summoned a servant and gave orders for various preparations. "Had not I and Emily better go with you?" asked Lady Hastings, pointing out to him the passage in the letter which spoke of the long absence of all the family. "Not when I am going on business," replied her husband gravely, and quitted the room. An hour after, Philip Hastings was on horseback with a servant carrying a valise behind him, and riding slowly through the park. The day was far advanced, and the distance was likely to occupy about an hour and a half in travelling; but the gentleman had fallen into a reverie, and rode very slowly. They passed the park gates; they took their way down the lane by the church and near the parsonage. Here Sir Philip pulled in his horse suddenly, and ordered the man to ride on and announce that he would be at Mrs. Hazleton's soon after. He then fastened his horse to a large hook, put up for the express purpose on most country houses of that day in England, and walked up to the door. It was ajar, and without ceremony he walked in, as he was often accustomed to do, and entered the little study of the rector. The clergyman himself was not there; but there were two persons in the room, one a young and somewhat dashing-looking man, one or two and twenty years of age, exceedingly handsome both in face and figure; the other personage past the middle age, thin, pale, eager and keen-looking, in whom Sir Philip instantly recognized a well known, but not very well reputed attorney, of a country town about twenty miles distant. They had one of the large parish books before them, and were both bending over it with great appearance of earnestness. The step of Sir Philip Hastings roused them, and turning round, the attorney bowed low, saying, "I give you good day, Sir Philip. I hope I have the honor of seeing you well." "Quite so," was the brief reply, and it was followed by an inquiry for the pastor, who it seemed had gone into another room for some papers which were required. In the mean time the younger of the two previous occupants of the room had been gazing at Sir Philip Hastings with a rude, familiar stare, which the object of it did not remark; and in another moment the clergyman himself appeared, carrying a bundle of old letters in his hand. He was a heavy, somewhat timid man, the reverse of his predecessor in all things, but a very good sort of person upon the whole. On seeing the baronet there, however, something seemed strangely to affect him--a sort of confused surprise, which, after various stammering efforts, burst forth as soon as the usual salutation was over, in the words, "Pray, Sir Philip, did you come by appointment?" Sir Philip Hastings, as the reader already knows, was a somewhat unobservant man of what was passing around him in the world. He had his own deep, stern trains of thought, which he pursued with a passionate earnestness almost amounting to monomania. The actions, words, and even looks of those few in whom he took an interest, he could sometimes watch and comment on in his own mind with intense study. True, he watched without understanding, and commented wrongly; for he had too little experience of the motives of others from outward observation, and found too little sympathy with the general motives of the world, in his own heart, to judge even those he loved rightly. But the conduct, the looks, the words of ordinary men, he hardly took the trouble of remarking; and the good parson's surprise and hesitation, passed like breath upon a mirror, seen perhaps, but retaining no hold upon his mind for a moment. Neither did the abrupt question surprise him; nor the quick, angry look which it called up on the face of the attorney attract his notice; but he replied quietly to Mr. Dixwell, "I do not remember having made any appointment with you." The matter was all well so far; and would have continued well; but the attorney, a meddling fellow, had nearly spoiled all, by calling the attention of Philip Hastings more strongly to the strangeness of the clergyman's question. "Perhaps," said the man of law, interrupting the baronet in the midst, "Perhaps Mr. Dixwell thought, Sir Philip, that you came here to speak with me on the business of the Honorable Mrs. Hazleton. She told me she would consult you, and I can explain the whole matter to you." But the clergyman instantly declared that he meant nothing of the kind; and at the same moment Sir Philip Hastings said, "I beg you will not, sir. Mrs. Hazleton will explain what she thinks proper to me, herself. I desire no previous information, as I am now on my way to her. Why my good friend here should suppose I came by appointment, I cannot tell. However, I did not; and it does not matter. I only wish, Mr. Dixwell, to say, that I hear the old woman Danley is ill and dying. She is a papist, and the foolish people about fancy she is a witch. Little help or comfort will she obtain from them, even if they do not injure or insult her. As I shall be absent all night, and perhaps all to-morrow, I will call at her cottage as I ride over to Mrs. Hazleton's and inquire into her wants. I will put down on paper, and leave there, what I wish my people to do for her; but there is one thing which I must request you to do, namely, to take every means, by exhortation and remonstrance, to prevent the ignorant peasantry from troubling this poor creature's death-bed. Her sad errors in matters of faith should only at such a moment make us feel the greater compassion for her." Mr. Dixwell thought differently, for though a good man, he was a fanatic. He did not indeed venture to think of disobeying the injunction of the great man of the parish--the man who now held both the Hastings and the Marshal property; but he would fain have detained Sir Philip to explain and make clear to him the position--as clear as a demonstration in Euclid to his own mind--that all Roman Catholics ought to be, at the very least, banished from the country for ever. But Sir Philip Hastings was not inclined to listen, and although the good man began the argument in a solemn tone, his visitor, falling into a fit of thought, walked slowly out of the room, along the passage, through the door, and mounted his horse, without effectually hearing one word, though they were many which Mr. Dixwell showered upon him as he followed. At his return to his little study, the parson found the young man and the lawyer, no longer looking at the book, but conversing together very eagerly, with excited countenances and quick gestures. The moment he entered, however, they stopped, the young man ending with an oath, for which the clergyman reproved him on the spot. "That is very well, Mr. Dixwell," said the attorney, "and my young friend here will be much the better for some good admonition; and for sitting under your ministry, as I trust he will, some day soon; but we must go I fear directly. However, there is one thing I want to say; for you had nearly spoiled every thing to-day. No person playing at cards--" "I never touch them," said the parson, with a holy horror in his face. "Well, others do," said the attorney, "and those who do never show their hand to their opponent. Now, law is like a game of cards--" "In which the lawyer is sure to get the odd trick," observed the young man. "And we must not have Sir Philip Hastings know one step that we are taking," continued the lawyer. "If you have conscience, as I am sure you have, and honor, as I know you have, you will not suffer any thing that we have asked you, or said to you, to transpire; for then, of course, Sir Philip would take every means to prevent our obtaining information." "I do not think it," said the parson. "And justice and equity would be frustrated," proceeded the attorney, "which you are bound by your profession to promote. We want nothing but justice, Mr. Dixwell: justice, I say; and no one can tell what card Sir Philip may play." "I will trump it with the knave," said the young man to himself; and having again cautioned the clergyman to be secret, not without some obscure menaces of danger to himself, if he failed, the two gentlemen left him, and hurried down, as fast as they could go, to a small alehouse in the village, where they had left their horses. In a few minutes, a well known poacher, whose very frequent habitation was the jail or the cage, was seen to issue forth from the door of the alehouse, then to lead a very showy looking horse from the stable, and then to mount him and take his way over the hill. The poacher had never possessed a more dignified quadruped than a dog or a donkey in his life; so that it was evident the horse could not be his. That he was not engaged in the congenial but dangerous occupation of stealing it, was clear from the fact of the owner of the beast gazing quietly at him out of the window while he mounted; and then turning round to the attorney, who sat at a table hard by, and saying, "he is off, I think." "Well, let him go," replied the lawyer, "but I do not half like it, Master John. Every thing in law should be cool and quiet. No violence--no bustle." "But this is not a matter of law," replied the younger man, "it is a matter of safety, you fool. What might come of it, if he were to have a long canting talk with the old wretch upon her death-bed?" "Very little," replied the attorney, in a calm well-assured tone, "I know her well. She is as hard as a flint stone. She always was, and time has not softened her. Besides, he has no one with him to take depositions, and if what you say is true, she'll not live till morning." "But I tell you, she is getting frightened, as she comes near death!" exclaimed the young man. "She has got all sorts of fancies into her head; about hell, and purgatory, and the devil knows what; and she spoke to my mother yesterday about repentance, and atonement, and a pack of stuff more, and wanted extreme unction, and to confess to a priest. It would be a fine salve, I fancy, that could patch up the wounds in her conscience; but if this Philip Hastings were to come to her with his grave face and solemn tone, and frighten her still more, he would get any thing out of her he pleased." "I don't think it," answered the lawyer deliberately; "hate, Master John, is the longest lived passion I know. It lasts into the grave, as I have often seen in making good men's wills when they were dying--sanctified, good men, I say. Why I have seen a man who has spent half his fortune in charity, and built alms-houses, leave a thoughtless son, or a runaway daughter, or a plain-spoken nephew, to struggle with poverty all his life, refusing to forgive him, and comforting himself with a text or a pretence. No, no; hate is the only possession that goes out of the world with a man: and this old witch, Danby, hates the whole race of Hastings with a goodly strength that will not decay as her body does. Besides Sir Philip is well-nigh as puritanical as his father--a sort of cross-breed between an English fanatic and an old Roman cynic. She abominates the very sound of his voice, and nothing would reconcile her to him but his taking the mass and abjuring the errors of Calvin. Ha! ha! ha! However, as you have sent the fellow, it cannot be helped. Only remember I had nothing to do with it if violence follows. That man is not to be trusted, and I like to keep on the safe side of the law." "Ay, doubtless, doubtless," answered the youth, somewhat thoughtfully; "it is your shield; and better stand behind than before it. However, I don't doubt Tom Cutter in the least. Besides, I only told him to interrupt them in their talk, and take care they had no private gossip; to stick there till he was gone, and all that." "Sir Philip is not a man to bear such interruption," said the attorney, gravely; "he is as quiet looking as the deep sea on a summer's day; but there can come storms, I tell you, John, and then woe to those who have trusted the quiet look." "Then, if he gets in a passion, and mischief comes of it," replied the young man, with a laugh, "the fault is his, you know, Shanks." "True," answered the attorney, meditating, "and perhaps, by a little clever twisting and turning, we might make something of it if he did, were there any other person concerned but this Tom Cutter, and we had a good serviceable witness or two. But this man is such a rogue that his word is worth nothing; and to thrash him--though the business of the beadle--would be no discredit to the magistrate. Besides, he is sure to give the provocation, and one word of Sir Philip's would be worth a thousand oaths of Tom Cutter's, in any court in the kingdom." "As to thrashing him, that few can do," replied the youth; "but only remember, Shanks, that I gave no orders for violence." "I was not present," replied the attorney, with a grin; "you had better, by a great deal, trust entirely to me, in these things, Master John. If you do, I will bring you safely through, depend upon it; but if you do not, nobody can tell what may come. Here comes Folwell, the sexton. Now hold your tongue, and let me manage him, sir. You are not acquainted with these matters." CHAPTER IX. Did you ever examine an ant-hill, dear reader? What a wonderful little cosmos it is--what an epitome of a great city--of the human race! See how the little fellows run bustling along upon their several businesses--see how some get out of each other's way, how others jostle, and others walk over their fellows' heads! But especially mark that black gentleman, pulling hard to drag along a fat beetle's leg and thigh, three times as large as his own body. He cannot get it on, do what he will; and yet he tugs away, thinking it a very fine haunch indeed. He does not perceive, what is nevertheless the fact, that there are two others of his own race pulling at the other end, and thus frustrating all his efforts. And thus it is with you, and me, and every one in the wide world. We work blindly, unknowing the favoring or counteracting causes that are constantly going on around us, to facilitate or impede our endeavors. The wish to look into futurity is vain, irrational, almost impious; but what a service would it be to any man if he could but get a sight into Fate's great workshop, and see only that part in which the events are on the anvil that affect our own proceedings. Still, even if we did, we might not understand the machinery after all, and only burn or pinch our fingers in trying to put pieces together which fate did not intend to fit. In the mean time--that is to say while the attorney and his companion were talking together at the alehouse--Sir Philip Hastings rode quietly up the hill to the cottage I have before described, and therefore shall not describe again, merely noticing that it now presented an appearance of neatness and repair which it had not before possessed. He tied his horse to the palings, walked slowly up the little path, gazing right and left at the cabbages and carrots on either side, and then without ceremony went in. The cottage had two tenants at this time, the invalid old woman, and another, well-nigh as old but less decrepit, who had been engaged to attend upon her in her sickness. How she got the money to pay her no one knew, for her middle life and the first stage of old age had been marked by poverty and distress; but somehow money seems to have a natural affinity for old age. It grows upon old people, I think, like corns; and certainly she never wanted money now. There she was, lying in her bed, a miserable object indeed to see. She was like a woman made of fungus--not of that smooth, putty-like, fleshy fungus which grows in dank places, but of the rough, rugged, brown, carunculated sort which rises upon old stumps of trees and dry-rot gate-posts. Teeth had departed nearly a quarter of a century before, and the aquiline features had become more hooked and beaky for their loss; but the eyes had now lost their keen fire, and were dull and filmy. The attorney was quite right. Hate was the last thing to go out in the ashes where the spark of life itself lingered but faintly. At first she could not see who it was entered the cottage; for the sight now reached but a short distance from her own face. But the sound of his voice, as he inquired of the other old woman how she was going on, at once showed her who it was, and hate at least roused "the dull cold ear of death." For a moment or two she lay muttering sounds which seemed to have no meaning; but at length she said, distinctly enough, "Is that Philip Hastings?" "Yes, my poor woman," said the baronet; "is there any thing I can do for you?" "Come nearer, come nearer," she replied, "I cannot see you plainly." "I am close to you, nevertheless," he answered. "I am touching the bed on which you lie." "Let me feel you," continued she--"give me your hand." He did as she asked him; and holding by his hand, she made a great struggle to raise herself in bed; but she could not, and lay exhausted for a minute before she spoke again. At length, however, she raised her voice louder and shriller than before--"May a curse rest upon this hand and upon that head!" she exclaimed; "may the hand work its own evil, and the head its own destruction! May the child of your love poison your peace, and make you a scoff, and a by-word, and a shame! May the wife of your bosom perish by----" But Sir Philip Hastings withdrew his hand suddenly, and an unwonted flush came upon his cheek. "For shame!" he said, in a low stern tone, "for shame!" The next moment, however, he recovered himself perfectly; and turning to the nurse he added, "Poor wretch! my presence only seems to excite evil feelings which should long have passed away, and are not fit counsellors for the hour of death. If there be any thing which can tend to her bodily comfort that the hall can supply, send up for it. The servants have orders. Would that any thing could be done for her spiritual comfort; for this state is terrible to witness." "She often asks for a priest, your worship," said the nurse. "Perhaps if she could see one she might think better before she died." "Alas, I doubt it," replied the visitor; "but at all events we cannot afford her that relief. No such person can be found here." "I don't know, Sir Philip," said the old woman, with a good deal of hesitation; "they do say that at Carrington, there is--there is what they call a seminary." "You do not mean a papist college!" exclaimed the baronet, with unfeigned surprise and consternation. "Oh, dear, no sir," replied the nurse, "only a gentleman--a seminary--a seminary priest, I think they call it; a papist certainly; but they say he is a very good gentleman, all but that." Sir Philip mused for a minute or two, and then turned to the door, saying, "Methinks it is hard that a dying woman cannot have the consolations of the rites of her own faith--mummery though they be. As a magistrate, my good woman, I can give no authority in this business. You must do as you think fit. I myself know of no priest in this neighborhood, or I should be bound to cause his apprehension. I shall take no notice of your word, however, and as to the rest, you must, as I have said, act as you think fit. I did not make the laws, and I may think them cruel. Did I make them, I would not attempt to shackle the conscience of any one. Farewell," and passing through the door, he remounted his horse and rode away. It was in the early autumn time of the year, and the scene was peculiarly lovely. I have given a slight description of it before, but I must pause and dwell upon it once more, even as Sir Philip Hastings paused and dwelt upon its loveliness at that moment, although he had seen and watched it a thousand times before. He was not very impressible by fine scenery. Like the sages of Laputa, his eyes were more frequently turned inwards than outwards; but there was something in that landscape which struck a chord in his heart, that is sure to vibrate easily in the heart of every one of his countrymen. It was peculiarly English--I might say singularly English; for I have never seen any thing of exactly the same character anywhere else but in Old England--except indeed in New England, where I know not whether it be from the country having assimilated itself to the people, or from the people having chosen the country from the resemblance to their own paternal dwelling place, many a scene strikes the eye which brings back to the wandering Englishman all the old, dear feelings of his native land, and for a moment he may well forget that the broad Atlantic rolls between him and the home of his youth. But let me return to my picture. Sir Philip Hastings sat upon his horse's back, very nearly at the summit of the long range of hills which bisected the county in which he dwelt. I have described, in mentioning his park, the sandy character of the soil on the opposite slope of the rise; but here higher up, and little trodden by pulverizing feet, the sandstone rock itself occasionally broke out in rugged maps, diversifying the softer characteristics of the scene. Wide, and far away, on either hand, the eye could wander along the range, catching first upon some bold mass of hill, or craggy piece of ground, assuming almost the character of a cliff, seen in hard and sharp distinctness, with its plume of trees and coronet of yellow gorse, and then, proceeding onward to wave after wave, the sight rested upon the various projecting points, each softer and softer as they receded, like the memories of early days, till the last lines of the wide sweep left the mind doubtful whether they were forms of earth or clouds, or merely fancy. Such was the scene on either hand, but straightforward it was very different, but still quite English. Were you ever, reader, borne to the top of a very high wave in a small boat, and did you ever, looking down the watery mountain, mark how the steep descent, into the depth below, was checkered by smaller waves, and these waves again by ripples? Such was the character of the view beneath the feet of the spectator. There was a gradual, easy descent from the highest point of the whole county down to a river-nurtured valley, not unbroken, but with lesser and lesser waves of earth, varying the aspect of the scene. These waves again were marked out, first by scattered and somewhat stunted trees, then by large oaks and chestnuts, not undiversified by the white and gleaming bark of the graceful birch. A massive group of birches here and there was seen; a scattered cottage, too, with its pale bluish wreath of smoke curling up over the tree-tops. Then, on the lower slope of all, came hedgerows of elms, with bright, green rolls of verdant turf between; the spires of churches; the roofs and white walls of many sorts of man's dwelling-places, and gleams of a bright river, with two or three arches of a bridge. Beyond that again appeared a rich wide valley--I might almost have called it a plain, all in gay confusion, with fields, and houses, and villages, and trees, and streams, and towns, mixed altogether in exquisite disorder, and tinted with all the variety of colors and shades that belong to autumn and to sunset. Down the descent, the eye of Sir Philip Hastings could trace several roads and paths, every step of which he knew, like daily habits. There was one, a bridle-way from a town about sixteen miles distant, which, climbing the hills almost at its outset, swept along the whole range, about midway between the summit and the valley. Another, by which he had come, and along which he intended to proceed, traversed the crest of the hills ere it reached the cottage, and then descended with a wavy line into the valley, crossing the bridle-path I have mentioned. A wider path--indeed it might be called a road, though it was not a turnpike--came over the hills from the left, and with all those easy graceful turns which Englishmen so much love in their highways, and Frenchmen so greatly abhor, descended likewise into the valley, to the small market-town, glimpses of which might be caught over the tops of the trees. As the baronet sat there on horseback, and looked around, more than one living object met his eye. To say nothing of some sheep wandering along the uninclosed part of the hill, now stopping to nibble the short grass, now trotting forward for a sweeter bite,--not to notice the oxen in the pastures below, there was a large cart slowly winding its way along an open part of the road, about half a mile distant, and upon the bridle-path which I have mentioned, the figure of a single horseman was seen, riding quietly and easily along, with a sauntering sort of air, which gave the beholder at once the notion that he was what Sterne would have called a "picturesque traveller," and was enjoying the prospect as he went. On the road that came over the hill from the left, was another rider of very different demeanor, going along at a rattling pace, and apparently somewhat careless of his horse's knees. The glance which Sir Philip Hastings gave to either of them was but slight and hasty. His eyes were fixed upon the scene before him, feeling, rather than understanding, its beauties, while he commented in his mind, after his own peculiar fashion. I need not trace the procession of thought through his brain. It ended, however, with the half uttered words, "Strange, that such a land should have produced so many scoundrels, tyrants, and knaves!" He then slowly urged his horse forward, down the side of the hill, soon reached some tall trees, where the inclosures and hedgerows commenced, and was approaching the point at which the road he was travelling, crossed the bridle-path, when he heard some loud, and as it seemed to him, angry words, between two persons he could not see. "I will soon teach you that;" cried a loud, coarse tongue, adding an exceedingly blasphemous oath, which I will spare the reader. "My good friend," replied another milder voice, "I neither desire to be taught any thing, just now, nor would you be the teacher I should chose, if I did, though perchance, in case of need, I might give you a lesson, which would be of some service to you." Sir Philip rode on, and the next words he heard were spoken by the first voice, to the following effect; "Curse me, if I would not try that, only my man might get off in the mean time; and I have other business in hand than yours. Otherwise I would give you such a licking in two minutes, you would be puzzled to find a white spot on your skin for the next month." "Two minutes would not detain you long," replied the calmer voice, "and, as I have never had such a beating, I should like to see, first, whether you could give it, and secondly, what it would be like." "Upon my soul, you are cool!" exclaimed the first speaker with another oath. "Perfectly," replied the second; and, at the same moment, Sir Philip Hastings emerged from among the trees, at the point where the two roads crossed, and where the two speakers were face to face before his eyes. The one, who was in truth the sauntering traveller whom he has seen wending along the bridle-path, was a tall, good-looking young man, of three or four and twenty years of age. In the other, the Baronet had no difficulty in recognizing at once, Tom Cutter, the notorious poacher and bruiser, whom he had more than once had the satisfaction of committing to jail. To see him mounted on a very fine powerful horse, was a matter of no slight surprise to Sir Philip; but, naturally concluding that he had stolen it, and was making off with his prize for sale to the neighboring town, he rode forward and put himself right in the way, determined to stop him. "Ay, ay! Here is my man!" cried Tom Cutter, as soon as he saw him. "I will settle with him first, and then for you, my friend." "No, no, to an old proverb, first come must be first served," replied the traveller, pushing his horse forward a few steps. "Keep the peace, in the King's name!" exclaimed Sir Philip Hastings. "I, as a magistrate, charge you, sir, to assist me in apprehending this man!--Thomas Cutter, get off that horse!" The only reply was a coarse and violent expletive, and a blow with a thick heavy stick, aimed right at Sir Philip's head. The magistrate put up his arm, which received the blow, and was nearly fractured by it; but at the same moment, the younger traveller spurred forward his horse upon the ruffian, and with one sweep of his arm struck him to the ground. Tom Cutter was upon his feet again in a moment. He was accustomed to hard blows, and like the immortal hero of Butler, could almost tell the quality of the stick he was beat withal. He was not long in discovering, therefore, that the fist which struck him was of no ordinary weight, and was directed with skill as well as with vigor; but he was accustomed to make it his boast, that he had never taken a licking "from any man," which vanity caused him at once to risk such another blow, in the hope of having his revenge. Rushing upon the young stranger then, stick in hand, he prepared to knock him from his horse; for the other appeared to have no defensive arms, but a slight hazel twig, pulled from a hedge. "He will jump off the other side of his horse," thought Tom Cutter; "and then, if he do, I'll contrive to knock the nag over upon him. I know that trick, well enough." But the stranger disappointed him. Instead of opposing the horse between him and his assailant, he sprung with one bound out of the saddle, on the side next to the ruffian himself, caught the uplifted stick with one hand, and seized the collar of the bruiser's coat with the other. Tom Cutter began to suspect he had made a mistake; but, knowing that at such close quarters the stick would avail him little, and that strength of thews and sinews would avail him much, he dropped the cudgel, and grappled with the stranger in return. It was all the work of a moment. Sir Philip Hastings had no time to interfere. There was a momentary struggle, developing the fine proportions and great strength and skill of the wrestlers; and then, Tom Cutter lay on his back upon the ground. The next instant, the victor put his foot upon his chest, and kept the ruffian forcibly down, notwithstanding all is exclamations of "Curse me, that isn't fair! When you give a man a fall, let him get up again!" "If he is a fair fighter, I do," replied the other; "but when he plays pirate, I don't--" Then turning to Sir Philip Hastings, who had by this time dismounted, he said, "What is to be done with this fellow, sir? It seems he came here for the express purpose of assaulting you, for he began his impertinence, with asking if you had passed, giving a very accurate description of your person, and swearing you should find every dog would have his day." "His offence towards myself," replied the Baronet, "I will pass over, for it seems to me, he has been punished enough in his own way; but I suspect he has stolen this horse. He is a man of notoriously bad character, who can never have obtained such an animal by honest means." "No, I didn't steal him, I vow and swear," cried the ruffian, in a piteous tone; for bullies are almost always cravens; "he was lent to me by Johny Groves--some call him another name; but that don't signify.--He lent him to me, to come up here, to stop your gab with the old woman, Mother Danty; and mayhap to give you a good basting into the bargain. But I didn't steal the horse no how; and there he is, running away over the hill-side, and I shall never catch him; for this cursed fellow has well nigh broken my back." "Served you quite right, my friend," replied the stranger, still keeping him tightly down with his foot. "How came you to use a cudgel to a man who had none? Take my advice, another time, and know your man before you meddle with him." In the mean time Sir Philip Hastings had fallen into a profound reverie, only repeating to himself the words "John Groves." Now the train of thought which was awakened in his mind, though not quite new, was unpleasant to him; for the time when he first became familiar with that name was immediately subsequent to the opening of his father's will, in which had been found a clause ordering the payment of a considerable sum of money to some very respectable trustees, for the purpose of purchasing an annuity in favor of one John Groves, then a minor. There had been something about the clause altogether which the son and heir of Sir John Hastings could not understand, and did not like. However, the will enjoined him generally to make no inquiry whatsoever into the motives of any of the bequests, and with his usual stern rigidity in what he conceived right, he had not only asked no questions, but had stopped bluntly one of the trustees, who was about to enter into some explanations. The money was paid according to directions received, and he had never heard the name of John Groves from that moment till it issued from the lips of the ruffian upon the present occasion. "What the man says may be true," said Sir Philip Hastings, at length; "there is a person of the name he mentions. I know not how I can have offended him. It may be as well to let him rise and catch his horse if he can; but remember, Master Cutter, my eye is upon you; two competent witnesses have seen you in possession of that horse, and if you attempt to sell him, you will hang for it." "I know better than to do that," said the bruiser, rising stiffly from the ground as the stranger withdrew his foot; "but I can tell you, Sir Philip, others have their eyes upon you, so you had better look to yourself. You hold your head mightily top high, just now: but it may chance to come down." Sir Philip Hastings did not condescend to reply, even by a look; but turning to the stranger, as if the man's words had never reached his ear, he said, "I think we had better ride on, sir. You seem to be going my way. Night is falling fast, and in this part of the country two is sometimes a safer number to travel with than one." The other bowed his head gravely, and remounting their horses they proceeded on the way before them, while Tom Cutter, after giving up some five minutes to the condemnation of the eyes, limbs, blood, and soul of himself and several other persons, proceeded to catch the horse which he had been riding as fast as he could. But the task proved a difficult one. TO BE CONTINUED. FOOTNOTES: [24] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by G. P. R. James, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. CYPRUS AND THE LIFE LED THERE. "Eidolon, or the Trial of a Soul, and other Poems," is the title of a new volume of verses from the press of Pickering, written by WALTER R. CASSELS, a student of the school of Shelley, and Keats, and Tennyson, and Browning. A favorable specimen of his abilities is offered in the following description of Cyprus: Amid it riseth Olympus, Stately and grand as the throne of the gods, And the island sleeps 'neath its shadow Like a fair babe 'neath the care of its father. Streams clear as the diamond Evermore wander around it, Like the vein'd tide through our members, Quick with the blessings of beauty, And health and verdurous pleasure, Filling with yellow sheaves And plenty the bosom of Ceres; Calling forth flowers from the slumbering earth, Like thoughts from the dream of a poet, Till the island throughout is a garden, The child and the plaything of summer. "In luscious clusters the fruit hangs In the sunshine, melting away From swetness to sweetness; The grapes clustering 'mid leaves, That give their bright hue to the eye Like the setting of rubies; The nectarines and pomegranates Glowing with crimson ripeness, And the orange trees with their blossoms Yielding sweet odor to every breeze, As the incense flows from the censer. "The air is languid with pleasure and love, Lulling the senses to dreams Elysian, Making life seem a glorious trance, Full of bright visions of heaven, Safe from the touch of reality, Toil none--woe none--pain, Wild and illusive as sleep-revelations. Time to be poured like wine from a chalice Sparking and joyous for aye, Drain'd amid mirth and music, The brows circled with ivy, And the goblets at last like a gift Thrust in the bossom of slumber. "Thus are the people of Cyprus; Young men and old making holiday, Decking them daintily forth In robes of Sidonian purple; The maidens all beauteous, but wanton, Foolishly flinging youth's gifts, Its jewels--its richest adornment, Like dross on the altar of pleasure; Letting the worm of mortality Eat out their hearts till they bear Only the semblance of angels." THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE, OR, THE SPY IN SOCIETY.[25] TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF H. DE ST. GEORGES. _Continued from page 60._ BOOK THIRD. We left young Rovero in despair, yielding to the stupefaction which overpowered him, just as the singer leaned over his bed to be assured that he was asleep. La Felina looked at him for some time in silence, with pity in her eyes. "Why does he love me?" said she; "what have I done? why should this poor lad love one who scarcely knew him?" Rovero moved. "Heavens! is the effect of the narcotic over? Will he awaken?" "Felina!" murmured Taddeo. "My name ever on his lips and in his heart. Yes! I was right in avoiding another interview: this letter tells all." She took a paper from her bosom. "But if he resist my prayer, if he shrink from the duty imposed on him by honor and humanity! He alone can accomplish it--all my hope is in him!" She approached the table, and by the pale moonlight looked at the flask of Massa wine. A single glass had been taken from it. "_One glass!_" said she, "_only one glass?_ His sleep cannot be long. This torpor will terminate before any one enters his cell. But Lippiani the turnkey is devoted to me, and will see nothing." Drawing near the bed she took out of her fine hair a long gold pin, with which to fasten the letter on his pillow, so that his eyes would rest on it when he awoke. While Felina's face was near Rovero's as she put the letter beneath his head, her warm breath hung on his lips; they pressed hers, and, terrified, she sprang from his side. The prisoner dreamed of happiness, and doubted not that his fancy was realized. Whether this kiss had overcome his torpor, or whether, as La Felina thought, the narcotic had been taken in such small quantity that it had produced but a slight effect, Taddeo tossed on his bed. The singer, terrified at these signs, which were the precursors of his awakening, disappeared by the secret passages through which she had entered. An hour rolled by before Taddeo could triumph over his sleep. His heavy eyes shut together in spite of himself, and his eyelashes rested on each other. All sensation was lost in general lassitude. In the first disorder of his mind, he asked himself if he had not again dreamed of the appearance of La Felina. Had he not seen her approaching his bed just as he sunk to sleep, he would have been sure of it. He shuddered at the thought that he had lost the opportunity so anxiously expected. At last he recovered his strength, and attempted to rise. As he did so, his hand touched La Felina's letter on the pillow. When he drew out the diamond-headed pin which fastened it, he no longer doubted that he had actually seen her. Having been unable to rouse him, she had written to him. He felt angry with himself. He would have given ten years of his life to regain that one lost hour. He went to the tall window of the chapel to invoke a single ray of the moon to enable him to read the lines which had been traced by the hand of the woman he worshipped. This consolation was denied him. The moon was hidden by clouds, and the completest obscurity pervaded the prison. What Taddeo suffered during the time till day, which it seemed to him would never dawn, may be fancied, but not described. His fate was in his own hands, yet it was unknown. Ardently clasping to his heart and to his lips the perfumed paper on which Felina had written, his heart became intoxicated. He passionately kissed the sheet on which the singer had left her words, and a sad presentiment of misfortune took possession of him. He almost feared the coming of day, the light of which would reveal to him his fate. Day dawned, at first feeble, then brighter, and still brighter, and finally brilliant and clear. He opened the letter, and his eyes glanced over it with tender earnestness. A livid pallor overcast his features, a nervous tremor shook him. The lines traced by La Felina he could not read; and overcome by despair, he sank to his seat. The keeper entered. "Signor," said he to Taddeo, "the person who visited you three days ago asks permission to see you again." "Who is he?" said Taddeo--his voice choked with grief. "The Marquis de Maulear." The name recalled to the prisoner his mother and Aminta. This memory soothed his wounded heart. "My mother, my sister," thought he; "but for their tenderness what now would be my life! Show the Marquis in." While the keeper was absent, he hurried to the bed, examined it anxiously as if in search for something which had escaped his observation. Seizing the letter, he read anxiously the last lines, approached the bed, and discovered the mysterious deposit La Felina had placed under the pillow. He took it and concealed it carefully in his clothing; and with an accent which betrayed the contest in his crushed heart, he said aloud, as if he wished some one to hear him, "You judged me correctly, Felina; misfortune will not make me unjust; I will do what you ask!" A cry of joy echoed beneath the vault of the old chapel. Taddeo turned. The cry had penetrated his heart. But he was alone. Just then Henri de Maulear entered. "Yesterday evening, Signor Rovero, confiding your promise, I informed the minister that, consulting with prudent reflections, you would accept the pardon offered by the King. You are free, and can now accompany me." "Let us hurry to my mother, Monsieur," said Taddeo, casting one last look on the chapel walls, which had shut up so much sorrow, happiness and torment. He followed the Marquis. An hour afterwards two gentlemen on noble English steeds--the best the stables of the Marquis afforded--rode toward Sorrento. One of these riders, Rovero, was melancholy, so that even the French amiability of the Marquis could not divert him from gloomy meditations. Ever and anon a smile hung on his lips, till chased away by some painful memory. The Marquis de Maulear, satisfied that Taddeo concealed a secret from him, avoided any allusion to it, with the delicacy and good taste which above all things fears indiscretion. He feigned to attribute to the reserve of a new acquaintance his companion's coldness and absence of mind. For his own part, delighted at being able to restore this prodigal son to the parental roof, anxious to see her whom he loved (to whom, relying on Taddeo's promise, he had gone the evening before to announce her brother's return), he could scarcely repress his delight. "Signor," said he to Taddeo, at a moment when the state of the road forced them to slacken their pace, "we have arranged all: we have left the festivities and pleasures of Naples, and have nothing to say of your suffering and captivity." "Not one word, Monsieur, if you please, either of what I have passed through, or of the sufferings of my friends." "I think your mother and sister know nothing of what you have undergone. Had they, their suffering and alarm would have been great. But do not flatter yourself that the arrest of Count Monte-Leone is unknown to them. One of the Neapolitan papers informed them yesterday of that fact; and I do not hide from you, that in my presence, your mother deplored your unfortunate intimacy with one so adventurous and rash." "And what said Aminta?" asked Rovero anxiously, as if struck by a thought, which hitherto had escaped him. "Signorina said nothing," observed Maulear, with an air of surprise; "and he heard the news with the most perfect indifference." "To him she is unchanged," murmured Rovero. Low as was the tone in which this was uttered, Maulear heard it, and could not repress the question, which he put with great anxiety, "To whom is the Signorina always the same?" "To him--to the Count," said Taddeo. "I confide to you almost a family secret. Count Monte-Leone deeply loves my sister. He never told me so, but it is the case. If he be restored to liberty, as his friends hope, it will be a good match for Aminta." Every word of Rovero fell like a drop of boiling oil on the heart of Maulear. "My father," said Taddeo, "left us but a moderate fortune. Perhaps some day we may be rich--richer than the Monte-Leone--for we are the only heirs of the Roman Cardinal Justiniani, my mother's brother, who, as eldest son, inherited all the property of my maternal grandfather. As yet, however, our fortune in small, though sufficient for my tastes and ideas. But my mother and sister have other notions; and the marriage of Aminta and Count Monte-Leone would assure her a magnificent and brilliant portion." "But if your sister does not love Count Monte-Leone?" "Her refusal would make two persons unhappy; first the Count of Monte-Leone, and in the second place----" "And in the second place?" said Maulear. "Myself." "Yourself!" said Maulear, with surprise; "Are you intent on their marriage?" "Yes," replied Taddeo, with emotion; "now, all my happiness depends on it." Maulear was amazed at these singular words. Scarcely had they been uttered, when Taddeo spurred his horse sharply, and rode toward the house of his mother, which he saw a few hundred yards distant. Henri followed him, troubled, and for the first time, with a care-marked brow, paused at Aminta's door. A fond mother clasped her son to her bosom, with that pleasure which a mother only knows. Aminta, entirely recovered from her accident, kissed her brother affectionately. "My son," said Madame Rovero to Taddeo, as she clasped the hand of Maulear, "beyond all doubt the Marquis has told you what we owe him." "The Marquis has only told me how devoted he was to you." "Well," said Aminta, "I will be less discreet." With exquisite grace she told Taddeo all that had passed. "Ah, Monsieur," said he, opening his arms to the Marquis, "I would I could find some dearer name than friend to give you." Aminta blushed, and looked down. Maulear saw the motion, and a gentle hope stole over him. The name which Taddeo could not think of, perhaps, suggested itself to Aminta. It was the name Maulear was so anxious to give Rovero. Aminta's brother wished to see the courageous child who had so heroically sacrificed himself for her. All followed Signora Rovero to the room of the invalid. He was better. The great inflammation of his face had disappeared, and his eyes had returned to their orbits. Apparently he was rapidly recovering; but the cruel prediction of the physician seemed about to be verified: _He will live, but will never speak again_. Only harsh and broken sounds escaped the invalid's lips. Aminta, who had become Scorpione's nurse as soon as she was able to leave her room, had already learned to discriminate between the modulations of his voice. A kind of mute groan called her to him; a hiss expressed pain or impatience; but when his violent and almost savage nature was excited, a terrible bellowing was heard, and the bravest heart might quail at the inhuman sound. Tonio was asleep when the visitors entered his room, but he awoke, and without seeming surprised at the curious faces that surrounded his bed, looked at them earnestly. He first recognized Taddeo, and a contraction of his lips, which, bent from their deformity, might have been called a smile, testified his pleasure at the visit. Aminta's presence always produced a strange effect on Scorpione, which his inability to speak enhanced. His eyes, of pale green, became suddenly lighted up with a peculiar and gentle languor, which was so tender that they seemed almost attractive. This singular magnetism had a novel effect on the invalid. But his brow soon became contracted; a violent storm seemed to agitate his heart; and the hissing was heard. "What is the matter?" asked Taddeo. Aminta said she did not know. He had perhaps some new suffering, or something put him out of humor. Following the direction of Tonio's eyes, she saw they rested sparkling and bright on those of Maulear. Aminta quailed, and Henri, who saw her tremble, hurried to sustain her. He thought the strength of the young convalescent needed this aid. But at the moment when the girl accepted the arm of Maulear, Scorpione rose and uttered the horrible cry by which he expressed his impotent fury. All shuddered as they heard him. Aminta let go Maulear's arm, and quickly sought, by gesture and words, to soothe the Cretin, as she would appease an angry child. He became soothed at once, and Signora Rovero left him, followed by Taddeo, Maulear, and Aminta; but Aminta did not take Maulear's arm. II. A NIGHT AT SORRENTO. A feeling of uneasiness had suddenly taken possession of Maulear while in the presence of Aminta and Tonio. But he had not remarked the smile of happiness which played on the features of the invalid when Aminta, with the most natural air in the world, took the arm of her mother instead of his own. "Signor," said Aminta's mother to the Marquis, as they went into the hall, "do not suffer this festival in honor of the return of my son to be celebrated without your presence. Share our family meal, and be satisfied that in doing so you will gratify us all." The offer delighted Maulear, and time flew by with the rapidity love only confers on it when passed in the presence of loved ones. About dinner time two strangers came to the villa, the Count Brignoli and his son. The Count was an old minister of war of Murat, and had been a colleague of Taddeo's father. He was one of the best friends of Rovero's widow and daughter. A country neighbor, he often visited them. His son Gaetano had been educated and brought up with Aminta, and a close friendship had been the consequence. Gaetano was twenty years of age, and his features bore the imprint of masculine and impressive Neapolitan beauty, deficient neither in the dark locks nor black though somewhat glassy eye, which is as it were the ordinary seal of the countenances of the men of the south. The arrival of these visitors displeased Maulear. The beauty of Gaetano struck him unpleasantly. The intimacy between Aminta and the young man, though thus explained, wounded him. During the whole day he fancied that he discovered a thousand of those little trifles which a lover treasures up so carefully, and also that Aminta seemed happy in his presence. His anxiety had begun to pass away, when a new circumstance revived it. Aminta, who was a perfect musician, went to the piano, and sang some of those charming canzonets which are so sweet and touching, like the flowers of this country of melody. The voice of Aminta found an echo in the heart of Maulear, and his ecstasy was at its height, when Gaetano joined her and sang the charming duo from Romeo é Julietta, the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Zingarelli. The jealous Maulear, as he heard this passionate music, could not believe that art alone inspired the singer. He trembled when he thought, that as Julietta loved Romeo, Aminta might adore Gaetano. Unable to repress the agitation which took possession of him, Maulear left the saloon at the end of the duo, to superintend the preparations for his departure. The night was dark, and pale lightning shot through the sky, foreboding a storm. The Marquis could not repress his mortification. The voices of Aminta and the young Italian, blended together, followed him wherever he went "People," thought he, "only sing thus when they are linked together by love. Art alone cannot give so passionate an expression to their tones. Indeed, what sentiment can be more natural? Educated together, always near each other, their affection cannot but have grown up with them, so that now they perceive the effect without being aware of the cause. They love each other because they were born to do so, as birds mate in the spring because it is the season of love. The spring of Gaetano and Aminta is come. How can I, a stranger to this young girl, hope to please her? Her real preserver was not I, but the unfortunate Tonio. Her gratitude to me then must be very feeble. Besides, does gratitude lead to love?" As he indulged in these painful reflections, his eyes became fixed on the skies, already damascened with black clouds. He strode rapidly across the court of the villa until he saw in front of him Gaetano Brignoli. Maulear could not repress a sentiment of anger at seeing him, and one of those emotions inconsiderately indulged in, and which reflection often punishes, though too late, took possession of him. "Signor," said he to the young man, "you love the Signorina Aminta Rovero." Gaetano, surprised at the sudden rencontre in the dark, and yet more amazed at the excited tone of the Marquis, looked at him, and in his dark black eyes shone neither anger nor indignation, but only astonishment at the question. "I have the honor to ask you," said Maulear, now become more calm, having more command of himself, and blushing at his first uncivil question, "if you do not (and it is very natural) feel a deep and tender affection for your childhood's friend, the Signorina Aminta Rovero?" "If I love Aminta?" replied Gaetano. "Ah! Monsieur, who would not love her! Do you know a more beautiful girl in Naples? Do you know any one more cultivated and refined than she?" "Certainly not," said the Marquis, with a voice of half-stifled emotion. "She is my childhood's friend, the companion of my sports. With her I received my first lessons in music. The divine art I adore. You all know we accord, exactly. I often sing false, my teacher tells me, but she never does." To hear one the heart loves and adores, spoken of with qualification and familiarity by a stranger, is often an acute pain to a lover, so acute, that even the familiarity of a brother with a sister often causes distress to certain minds. Some jealous souls think this a robbery of friendship, and a profanation of their idol. Maulear, wounded that the cherished name of Aminta should be so cavalierly treated by Gaetano, replied with ill-disguised temper, "I understand, Signor, that there is nothing false, even musically speaking, in the sentiments expressed by you to Signora Rovero. Perhaps this is an exception to your usual habits, as your professor says. But were he to find fault with the correctness of your tones, he could not censure the sincerity of the passion breathed through them." "Is not that true?" said Gaetano, really flattered at Maulear's compliment. "It is exalted, distinct, and intense. It is of a good school, and of the lofty style of Tacchinardi." "Ah! Signor," replied Maulear impatiently, "you know as well as I do, that no artist, however skilful and great, can express love as lovers do." "The fact is," continued Gaetano, "that Zingarelli must have loved some Julietta, when he wrote his Romeo." "And you," answered Maulear, "must adore Signorina Aminta, to play so well the part of Romeo!" "Certainly," said Gaetano, smiling; "and I know very few tenors in San Carlo who sing that _duo_ as I do. All must confess that there is no Julietta like her." Maulear was amazed, and could make no reply. The young man either was sincere, and had not understood him, or he had affected not to do so, assuming the remarks of his companion to refer to the singer, and not to the lover. He positively refused to become Maulear's confidant, and by his adroitness and tact made himself understood. The result of all this was, that Maulear remained in a cruel state of doubt in relation to the sentiments Gaetano entertained for Aminta, and, what was yet more painful, in relation to those of Aminta for Gaetano. "Excuse me, Marquis," said the young man to Maulear, "our conversation is so unexpected, that I, in my surprise, forgot a commission with which I was charged by Signora Rovero. I sought you to inform you of it, when our conversation was diverted to something else. Signora Rovero, fancying that you were superintending the preparations for your departure, wishes you to postpone them until to-morrow, as the night is dark and the road difficult and dangerous. Look," said he, "at these large drops of rain, which are the avant-couriers of a violent storm." "Indeed," said Maulear, "I will then accompany you to the ladies." When they returned to the room, they found Signora Rovero talking with the Count Brignoli, and Taddeo, with his head on his hand, lost in sad meditation. Leaning on the back of his chair, was the poetic figure of Aminta. Her long black curls fell over her brother's brow, and when he looked up to see what it was that hung over him, she leaned her face towards his until their lips met. "Brother," said she, "I closed your eyes on purpose that I might hide what I see in them." "What do you see there, my dear sister?" "I see," said she, "by their sadness and languor, that my brother has three pieces of a heart. Two he keeps for my mother and myself, but the third--" "Is for none," said Taddeo, rising. "Very well, very well, Monsieur," said Aminta, piqued. "No one asks you for your secret. We take an interest only in those we love--and I love you no more." "My good sister," said Taddeo, clasping her hands with emotion, "love me, love me better than ever, for I have more need of your affection." Aminta threw herself in his arms. "What is all that?" said their mother, looking around. "A family drama," said Gaetano, who had just come in with Maulear. "Yes, Gaetano," said Signora Rovero, "and a happy scene of that drama; for I know of no family more fortunate than mine." Aminta drew near to Maulear, and her manner was so kind, and she paid such attention to her guest, that Maulear felt his uneasiness pass away and his confidence return. Just then the storm burst in all its fury. The wind whistled violently among the tall trees of the park. Signora Rovero kept her three guests. A night passed beneath the same roof with Aminta, gratified every wish of the Marquis, and promised him an opportunity on the next day to declare himself to the Rose of Sorrento, and confirm or dissipate his jealous doubts. Signora Rovero wished to discharge every duty of hospitality to her guest, and escorted him herself to the room he was to occupy. "This room," said she to Maulear, "was long occupied by my dear daughter; but after the death of her father we altered our arrangements, and Aminta is now in my own room. Since that time it has been occupied by our young friend Gaetano Brignoli. I have to-night placed him elsewhere, to be able to give you the best room." Maulear quivered with joy at the idea of occupying the room in which she he adored had slept, and it was with a kind of veneration that he took possession of it. The room was on the first story, in the right wing of the villa, and looked on a terrace covered with flowers, and communicating with all the rooms of the first floor. It was possible to reach, in two ways, the rooms of the first story--from the interior of the building, and from the exterior by this elegant terrace. But Maulear did not observe that night the situation of his room. The early days of March having been colder than those of February, after a strange season, which well-nigh had deposed winter from its throne, and the injury Aminta had received not having permitted her to leave her room, during his previous visits the Marquis had not examined the residence of Signora Rovero. The terrace on which his window opened was therefore completely unknown to him. For about two hours after Maulear had been conducted to the old room of Aminta by Signora Rovero, he was so agitated by the events of the evening that he could not consent to seek repose. Love, hope, and jealousy, disputed for the possession of his heart. Seated in a vast arm-chair, near the hearth, the fire on which flickered faintly, the eyes of Maulear were mechanically directed to one of the windows of his room, by the beating of the rain against it. All at once he saw, or thought he saw, a white figure on the other side of the window pause for a few instants, as if it sought to enter his room. Maulear fancied himself under the influence of a dream. He rubbed his eyes, to be sure that he was awake, and that his sight did not deceive him. He hurried towards the window and opened it hastily. But as he moved, and his steps were heard, the nocturnal visitor disappeared, and Maulear lost sight of it amid the shadows of night. For a moment he thought it some aerial being, flitting through space, and coming, like the _djinns_ of the East, to watch by night over the faithful believer. But his poetry gave way to material evidence, and the sight of the terrace, of whose existence he had had no suspicion, proved that the _djinn_ was really a human being, who for some unknown motive had wandered across it, and was by no means so unreal as he had supposed. The idea of crime and theft occurred to him. He was about to follow the person who fled, when he saw on the terrace, before his window, an object which he immediately picked up, and examined by the light of his lamp. It was a veil of white lace, at that time the ordinary dress of Neapolitan women, a vaporous cloud in which they framed their features, the relic of a fashion imported from France, and made illustrious by the pencil of our Irabey, the great portrayer of the grace and beauty of the empire. "It is beyond doubt some love-scrape," thought Maulear, "interrupted by my occupying this bedroom; and the heroine of the adventure, having come to the window to ascertain whether or not I slept, has fled, losing a portion of her drapery, like a frightened sheep running through thorns." When, however, he had examined the veil more closely, Maulear observed its elegance and richness, and began to think which of the inmates of the villa was likely to wear such a one. Was this the headdress of a chambermaid? If not, who else but Aminta could wear it, unless indeed her mother did? Lost in conjectures, the Marquis was roused by hearing a door in the same corridor on which his room was, open. He listened. Two persons spoke in a low tone; and walking with such precaution that it was evident they had no disposition to be overheard. Such an occurrence, in a house usually so silent and calm, excited Maulear's curiosity so much, that he resolved to know who the mysterious personages were. Silently leaving his room, he went down the long corridor through which those he wished to follow had preceded him. A faint light from a dark lantern, borne by one of the strangers, fell on the path in front of them, and was a guide to Maulear. Thus they descended the principal staircase of the villa, crossed the ground floor, and entered the front court. A puff of wind just then put out the lantern, as the person who bore it was attempting to brighten its flame. "Fool!" said one of the two men to his companion. "How can I saddle my horse now?" "It is already saddled," said the other. "Then I have nothing to do but mount!" "And you will not have occasion to use the spur," said the man with the lantern, "for he is wild, from having been three weeks in his stable." As the two speakers thus communed, they entered the second courtyard of the villa. Maulear had followed them thither, hidden in the deep shadow. A horse, ready saddled, was waiting there. One of the two men sprang lightly into the saddle, and the other, as he opened a gate into the fields, through which the horseman rode, said, in a voice full of fear, "May God protect you in this terrible midnight storm, Signor Taddeo. Beware of the road down the ravine, and be careful whom you meet." III.--THE AVOWAL. Maulear, uneasy and disturbed by what he had seen, returned to his room. What could induce Taddeo thus to leave his mother's house, alone, at midnight, and in a storm? Could it be that, so recently liberated, he was about to begin again that life of plot and sedition which already had cost him his liberty? A deep interest united Maulear to Taddeo. The love he felt toward the sister, made him devoted to the brother, and the new dangers which might befall the young man seriously affected Maulear. The night passed away without his being able to sleep. In addition to fear on account of Taddeo, his heart was yet agitated by the emotions of the previous day; but above all, he thought of the woman who had stood at his window, and whose appearance he could not forget. A terrible idea then occurred to him. The room he occupied had been that of Gaetano Brignoli. Had this young girl, apparently so pure and modest, had the White Rose of Sorrento, any secret amour or intrigue? The young man who had seen the companion of her infancy might know of it. Could this charming flower be already scorched by the hot breath of passion? Maulear reproached himself as with a crime, for the mental profanation of his divinity. The morning meal assembled together all the family and guests. Taddeo participated in it as naturally as if he had passed the whole night in the villa, and not a word was said of his nocturnal expedition. He was not so melancholy and moody as he had been on the previous night, and a careful observer might have marked on his features the satisfaction following the performance of a painful duty. The Brignoli bade adieu to Signora Rovero immediately after breakfast, and returned to their villa. Maulear was delighted at their departure. "Marquis," said Taddeo, "permit me to treat you as a friend, and ask a favor of you--a favor that will require you to renounce the brilliant saloons of Naples, whose chief ornaments are the _attachés_ of the French embassy, to lead for a time a retired country-life with my mother and sister?" "If that be the favor you ask of me," said Maulear with joy, "you confer one on me. I accept your proposition with gratitude." "What are you thinking of, brother? How can you propose such an exile to the Marquis? Our life in the country is so sad and melancholy; what can we offer him as a compensation for the amusements he would sacrifice?" "Where would be the merit of the service, unless its performance cost some sacrifice?" said Taddeo. "In one word, this is the state of affairs. An obligation, my honor imposes on me, requires me for at least a week to be absent from Sorrento. The trial of Count Monte-Leone will begin in a few days, and I must be present at it. It is said," added he, with hesitation and a significant glance at the Marquis, "that the Count's partisans will on that occasion be active. His enemies too are numerous, and as he is known to have come to this house, I cannot feel satisfied unless some courageous and energetic man replaces me, and deigns to watch over the two dear beings I am forced to leave. This, Marquis, is what I expect from you." "My heart, my arm, my life, are all at the ladies' disposal. You may rely on me." Aminta looked down, for the first consecration made by Maulear was evidently intended for her. Taddeo did not remark it, and clasped with gratitude the hand of his new friend. Signora Rovero, terrified at the idea of losing her son again, looked sadly at him. "I do not know what is going on," said she with emotion, and with that instinct which reveals to a mother the danger of a beloved son. "I shudder, however, Taddeo, when I see you surrounded by danger. You do not like the government, I know, for by the fall of Murat a brilliant career was closed before you, for your father was one of his greatest favorites. But in your father's name I, your mother, his widow, whose hope and support you are, beseech you not to expose the life which does not belong to you alone. Remember, my child, your sister and myself have no other support in life than yourself, and that my weak and failing existence could not withstand your loss." Taddeo grew pale, for the association with which he was affiliated might expose him to all the dangers of which his mother was apprehensive. He concealed his agitation by caresses and iterations of love, mentally resolving to turn aside in time from his sad career, as if those who involve themselves in perdition can pause in the rapid descent down the declivity to sorrow and death, whither the sturdiest champions are hurried to be entombed in the grave they have dug for themselves. "You will go then to Naples?" said Signora Rovero to her son. "God grant that Monte-Leone recover his liberty, since he is your friend! But, Taddeo, do not trust to his adventurous mind; he is a hurricane, enveloping all in his path. Heaven grant he may not bear you away with him." This conversation on this subject, so painful to the mother and annoying to the son, ended here. "Will you deign, Signorina," said the Marquis to Aminta, "to accept me as a guest for a few days?" "Certainly, if you are not afraid of our retreat. Besides," added she, with a smile, "_one must have suffered as much as Leonora's lover, not to be happy in the paradise of Sorrento_." Maulear remembered the words he had written on the wall of Tasso's house. But before he could express his astonishment and joy, Aminta was gone. Just then it was announced to Maulear, that his horse waited him at the gate of the park. "We will accompany you thither (my sister and I)," said Taddeo. Signora Rovero called Aminta to her, and added: "The air is keen, my child: cover your head with your lace veil. It becomes you." Maulear turned quickly toward Aminta with his mind full of fear and surprise-- "I am afraid I have lost my veil. I looked for it this morning, but could not find it." Aminta seemed annoyed. Her emotion was perceived at once by Maulear, who said to himself: "What mystery is this? why conceal it from me?" The coincidence of a veil being found by him, and of Aminta having lost one, made him keenly anxious: he was terrified, confounded, and so excited, that he could scarcely speak to Taddeo and Aminta as he crossed the park with them. "Remember," said Rovero to him, "that my mother and sister will expect you here in a few days." "In a few days," said Aminta, giving the Marquis her sweetest smile. "In a few days," replied Maulear, as he mounted his horse, and cast on the young girl a look of doubting love. He then galloped off, and soon disappeared in the long road to Sorrento. When he returned to Naples, the whole city was busy with the approaching trial of Monte-Leone, who was so beloved by one portion of the community and so unpopular with the other. The nobility of the two Sicilies deplored the errors of the Count, and regretted that one of the most illustrious of the great names of Naples should embrace and defend so plebeian a cause; one in their eyes so utterly without interest as that of popular rights. But it was wounded at the idea that a peer should die by the hand of the executioner. The old leaven of independence, innate in all the aristocracies of Europe; the feudal aspirations which Louis XI. and Richelieu had so completely annihilated and subdued in France, yet germinated in the minds of the nobles of Naples. They loved the king because he maintained their privileges, and had re-established the rights of their birth. They would have revolted had he touched them. From pride of birth they would have applauded the execution of a plebeian conspirator, but were prepared to cry out _en masse_ against that of Monte-Leone, because he was one of themselves. The people looked on the illustrious prisoner as a defender of their rights, and sympathized with him. To sharpen this sympathy, the adepts of the Italian _vente_ everywhere represented their chief as a martyr to his love of the people, and a victim of monarchy. Most injurious charges were everywhere circulated against Fernando IV. It was said that he had inherited the hatred of Carlos III. to the Monte-Leoni, and sought to follow out on the son the vengeance to which the father had fallen a victim. Nothing was omitted that could stimulate the favor of the superstitious and impressionable people of Naples. The same executioner, block and axe, which had been used at the father's death, by a strange fatality, would come in play again at the murder of the son. The imprisonment of the son at the Castle _Del Uovo_, where the father had died, gave something of plausibility to this story. But what most excited public curiosity was the strange incident which had taken place at _Torre-del-Greco_. All were impatient for its explanation. The double and impossible presence of the Count at the house of Stenio Salvatori, and within the fifty locks of the Castle _Del Uovo_, his contest with his enemy, the wound he was accused of having given him, his ubiquity at the same hour in different places, produced a thousand incredible versions, a thousand bets on this wonderful fact, unrivalled in the judicial annals of Naples. The name of Monte-Leone was so closely and intimately linked with the destiny of the Marquis de Maulear, with his friendship to Taddeo, and his love of Aminta, that he partook of the general interest inspired by the Count, and as a man of honor hoped for acquittal, notwithstanding the influence it might exert on his happiness. To lose confidence in one we love, is the greatest agony possible. The four days, therefore, which separated him from Aminta, were four centuries to Maulear. Like the majority of rich young men of our times, yielding at an early age to _liaisons_, he had formed an erroneous and unjust opinion of women in general. The withered myrtles he had often gathered, the passing amours in which almost all the men of his rank, fortune and appearance indulge, had distorted his mind in relation to a sex, the least respectable portion of which alone he was acquainted with. But the young Marquis had exalted sentiments, and his high spirit turned aside from vulgar, common pleasures. His first loves, or not to profane that word, his first indulgences, had for their object those women who lead astray an ardent mind or passionate natures; those women who, betrayed into marriage, seek elsewhere a recompense for their misfortunes or the deceptions practised upon them, and fancy they can find it in the inexperience and youth of young men, whom chance throws in their way. The latter proudly, and at first eagerly, accepting their conquests, soon discover, that often they are not heroes. They become themselves the accomplices of the criminal devices, the studied falsehoods, employed by married women to abuse those on whom they depend. In either case they see each other insensibly change, and in spite of themselves conceive an aversion to those pleasures, even in sharing which they blush. The idol becomes a mere woman, and the hero of these adventures fancies himself right in estimating all women by a few exceptions, and becomes an atheist in love because he has sacrificed to false gods. This deplorable theory had taken possession of Maulear. His naturally pure sentiments, the poetry of his heart, had been dissipated in ephemeral indulgences. The Countess of Grandmesnil, the guardian of the young man, fearing lest a serious passion should contravene his father's views,--encouraged him in his _liaisons_, or at least she did nothing to induce him to abandon them. Under this sad opinion, which is unfortunately too common in our days, that female virtue is but a name, and that the most prudent only need opportunity to go astray, Maulear came to Naples, where we must say much success in gallantry fortified his faith in these detestable principles. His meeting with one so pure as Aminta had wrought a complete change in his ideas. He saw woman under a new aspect, as we dream of her at twenty, when the young soul first awakes. He suffered intensely when suspicion gnawed at his heart. "What," said he, yet under the influence of the pernicious theories of his youth, "not one woman worthy of respect! Even this young girl, apparently so modest and pure, unworthy the confidence I reposed in her." The recollection of the chaste and maidenly appearance of Aminta soon put such ideas to flight, and Maulear thenceforth had but one idea, but one desire. He sought to clear up the strange mystery of his nocturnal vision, and extricate himself from his cruel perplexity. On the day appointed for his return to Sorrento, as the clock struck ten, he stopped his horse at the garden gate where four days before he had left Aminta. The gate was open. He entered the orange grove which lay between it and the house. A secret hope told him he would find Aminta there. He was not mistaken. She sat beneath a rustic porch, which served as a portal to the prettiest cottage imaginable. This building, constructed of the slightest material, had windows closed with gayly-covered verandahs, and served to shelter walkers from the heat of the summer's sun. It was Aminta's favorite retreat, and thither she came in the morning to paint her sisters, the white Bengal roses, the red cactus and the graceful clematides, which surrounded her charming retreat. There in the evening, pensive and reflective, the young girl suffered her glance to stray over the vast horizon of the sea gilded by the sun's expiring rays. On the day we speak of, Maulear found her reading, or rather seeming to read, for her book rested on her knee, her ivory brow supported by her hand. Her eyes, lifted up to heaven, seemed to ask the realization of some gentle dream inspired doubtless by the author. Perhaps the nature of the dream might have been devised by the book--Tasso's Divine Poem! Maulear glided rather than walked to her, so fearful was he of destroying the beautiful tableau presented to him by chance. Then he paused some moments behind a screen of leaves, and looked at the beautiful dreamer, in mute but passionate adoration. As he scanned her girlish form, becoming intoxicated with her modest charms, Maulear blushed at his suspicions, and resolved to abandon them. God did not make such angels for men to distrust, and Aminta, beautiful as the heavenly beings, must be pure and spiritual as they. He left his concealment, and approached Aminta. She moved when she saw him, for he had surprised her in a dream. The dreams of young girls are treasures to be concealed from the profane in the most profound sanctuary of the heart. Aminta advanced a step or two towards Maulear, thus testifying her wish to return to the villa. But the Marquis, afraid of losing this favorable opportunity to see her for a short time alone, begged her to be seated, and took his place beside her, making, as an excuse, an allusion to the fatigue of riding rapidly from Naples to Sorrento. Aminta sat down, but with an embarrassment which Maulear could not but see. "You have kept your promise, Signor," said she, seeking to disguise her trouble by speaking first. "How could I not keep my promise?" said Maulear. "It was to see you again." "We know what such devotion must cost you," Aminta replied, speaking aloud, as if her words were not intended only for Maulear. "Both my mother and myself are very grateful to you." "Signorina," said Maulear, with an effort, for he was afraid of wasting in commonplaces moments in which every word he uttered had a priceless value, "I did not think, as I wrote on the wall of Tasso's house the simple lines you deigned to read and remember, that I thus wrote out my horoscope, and divined the happiness fate marked out for me at Sorrento." "Happiness?" said Aminta, and she trembled as she spoke. "You must refer to the service you have rendered me." "I speak," said Maulear, unable to restrain himself, "of a new and strange feeling to me, full of pleasure and pain, of hope and fear. I speak of a love, which will be the pride and joy of my existence, if it be shared; which will bring despair and torment, if she who inspires it rejects it." "Pray be silent," said Aminta, rising and looking with fear around her. "Ah, you have understood me," said Maulear, attributing to his confession Aminta'a emotion. The young girl was silent. Her eyes turned towards the door of the hut, as if she feared some one would open it. "What I say here, Signorina, with nought near me but the passing cloud and flying bird, I wish to repeat to those who love you--before your mother and brother, whom I would look on as my own. It is for you to tell me whether I shall speak to them or be silent." Just then a faint noise was heard in the summer-house. Maulear did not perceive it, for Aminta, more and more disturbed by the mysterious noise, had suffered the Marquis to take her hand, and the latter, interpreting this favor as his heart wished, fell on his knees before the young girl, who, overcome with emotion, sat down. "Aminta," said he, passionately, "since the first day I saw you, my soul, my life, have been your own. If you but will it, your life shall be my own--my own, to make every hour of your life one of joy and pleasure--mine, in adoring you as we do the saints in heaven." Maulear, with his eyes fixed on Aminta's, sought an echo to the outpourings of his soul. His lips were on Aminta's hand, when, between the young girl and himself, he saw a hideous head, made yet more horrid by the agony it expressed. Aminta suddenly withdrew, and Maulear experienced that terror of which the bravest are sensible when they tread on a reptile. "Scorpione!" said the Marquis. This name, on the lips of the Marquis at such a time, made such an impression, that a stream of blood, mingled with white froth, burst from his lips, and fell at Aminta's feet. "Help, Signor!" said she to Maulear, "help, I pray you, for this unfortunate man! This is the first time he has gone out since that cruel day. See, he dies!" "What is the meaning of all this?" said Maulear to himself, as he hurried towards the villa. "Twice my being with Aminta has exercised the same effect on this unfortunate being. Can she love him? Can he be jealous?" IV. THE GRAND JUDGE. The trial of Count Monte-Leone, which had been so anxiously looked for, and had given rise to so many disputes about the curious story which occupied both the high and low of Naples, was about to begin. The Duke of Palma had not been able to make good his promise to the prisoner, and bring him promptly before his judges. The incident at _Torre-del-Greco_ made a new inquiry necessary, and the examinations, researches, and inquiries of every kind it led to daily, retarded the trial, much to the regret of the king and his minister of police, who were aware of the extent to which the public imagination was excited, and feared its consequences. Monte-Leone began to feel grave apprehensions in relation to the dangerous game he had played. On the evening of his excursion, faithful to his word, the Count had presented himself again to the keeper of the Castle del Uovo in the costume in which he had left it, and the pious wicket-keeper, when he saw the false assistant jailer, who had gone out on the previous evening, return with a trembling and uncertain step, read a long lecture on intemperance and the results of drunkenness, deplorable faults, especially to be regretted in one of his profession, where, added the turnkey proudly, one needs morality, reason, and vigilance especially, to unravel the plots of the prisoners confided to him, and to triumph over their detestable _mania for liberty_. When Pietro on that evening, palpitating as he was with fear, saw Monte-Leone, whom he waited for at the postern of the castle, return, his joy was so great that he was ready to clasp the Count's neck. The latter was not much flattered by his transports. "Well," said the head-jailer, "you are a noble and true gentleman. A scoundrel in your place would have escaped, and put his keeper in trouble. You are of a good race, of a noble and generous blood, you have paid me well, and have been unwilling to hang the father of a family. Now," added he, "do not let us talk together, or even look at each other. Our looks may be watched and interpreted." From that time Pietro became more brutal, more savage and stern than ever. The visit of the minister of police justly enough increased the terror of the jailer. He had from public rumor heard of the terrible episode at _Torre-del-Greco_, though he did not precisely understand the motives of the prisoner. He was aware that he had become an accomplice of his crime, and shuddered more and more at its probable results. Whenever, therefore, the Count sought to ask him any question, Pietro exhibited such terror, and his countenance was so complete a picture of fright, that Monte-Leone at last ceased to speak to him. No news from without, nothing enlightened the Count in relation to the consequences of his daring conduct, and for the first time he despaired of the result. One morning his door opened as usual at meal time; but instead of withdrawing, the keeper approached Monte-Leone kindly, his ugly face, on account of the complaisance which lit it up, seeming yet more horrid. He said: "Excellence, the great day approaches, and we must arrange some little details about which the High Court will no doubt be ill-mannerly enough to question us!" "You can speak then," replied Monte-Leone, with surprise. "To-day is not yesterday. Then and ever since your escape, my gossip, the Headsman, who lives up there as you know, distrusts me. I learn from his assistant, who is a friend of mine, that the story of the cell undermined by the sea has made him fancy I wish to deprive him of his perquisites. I know that while he waters his flowers on the platform he keeps an eye and ear open for all that passes here. Besides, he would not be at all sorry to obtain my place for his first assistant--a promising lad who becomes his son-in-law to-day." "Ah!" said Monte-Leone, "the executioner's daughter is to be married." "A love match. He wished to postpone the wedding until after _your affaire_, as he calls it, for on such cases he always has large perquisites, and would be able largely to increase the bride's portion. The young girl, however, was in love, and was unwilling to wait for you. The worthy father then determined to make her happy, and I have just seen all the party set out for the church of Santa-Lucia. The executioner, his wife, the bride, and the little executioners, all in their best garb. The procession was so imposing, they might have been taken for a family of turnkeys. Lest, however, the people should disturb the ceremony by a volley of stones, they set out early, at five o'clock. As, therefore, we have no inquisitive neighbors, I am come to have an understanding with your excellency, in order that I may not be compromised in the trial." "So be it!" said the Count, "let us have an understanding. In the first place, have they any suspicions?" "Of whom?" "Of you to be sure, for unless I have wings and flew out of the window to _Torre-del-Greco_, no one but you can have opened the prison gate to me." "That is true, then," said Pietro, "you went to _Torre-del-Greco_ to stab Stenio Salvatori. I really would not have believed it, for it seems that twenty thousand piasters is too large a sum for the pleasure of a poniard thrust--in the arm too! After all, though, we Neapolitans regard nothing valuable compared with revenge!" "It matters little to you whether it was for revenge or another purpose. All I wish is, for you alone to know that I was away for twelve hours. As neither you or I will mention it, I am at ease." "You are right in the main, your Excellency. But we have placed our heads in the balance, and I am determined yours shall not outweigh mine. The hand of justice weighs heavily, especially on the poor. It would be very bad if now, when I am prepared to live happily and pleasantly on the proceeds of our little operation, I were called on to dangle at the end of a rope, to the great delight of the dealers in ice-water and macaroni, whom the people of Naples on that day would enrich. Few would miss the entertainment which would be given at my expense." "What makes you fear this?" asked the Count. "One idea. They might take it into their heads to examine separately all the inhabitants of the castle. First your Excellency, as its principal guest, then your humble servant, the gate-keeper, and even my assistant Crespo. If all did not tell the same story the Grand Judge would see some trick." "You think so?" said the Count, moodily. "I know so," said Pietro. "The Grand Judge, as the child's story-book says of ogres, loves fresh meat, and would see a spot on the brow of an angel. Now, I am not exactly an angel--and if he saw a spot, your excellency's head might be safe, but for want of a chicken he might twist my neck. The jailer would be the victim, and my friend the executioner would have to do with me. I know him. He would be enthusiastic in the operation, to make a vacancy in my place. He is bound up in his family." For an instant the Count had not heard the jailer. One single name inspired him with the greatest terror, for it recalled one of the participators in his escape. This man held in his own hands his own and his accomplice's escape. Pietro had not foreseen all. This assistant, the character and dress of whom he had assumed, this Crespo, this mole, would be summoned before the magistrate. The keeper had seen and spoken to him, had opened the gate of the castle to suffer him to pass out, or at least fancied he had. What then would the man say? With great emotion, then, Monte-Leone said, "The danger does not come from the place you apprehend. One witness, however, may ruin all." "Of whom do you speak?" said Pietro, trembling. "Of Crespo," said the Count. "Ah--what have you to fear of Crespo?" "Have you gained him over?" "No. I was spared the trouble. At this moment the poor fellow is probably in the other world." "Have you killed him?" said the Count, with terror. "For what does your excellency take me? One may yield to the prayers of a prisoner, and secure a fortune by permitting him a few hours' exercise, yet be no murderer. If Crespo dies, it is in consequence of his unfortunate passion." "Was he in love?" "No. He was fond of water-rats." "Horrible appetite." "Not at all," said the jailer. "Crespo says the animal is very savory, especially when fat as those in the ditches of the castle are. The waters bear hither all the offal of Naples, and the rats live like canons." "And Crespo eats them?" "He has a passion for game of that kind, and does nothing but hunt them. He makes some very ingenious traps to catch them with. I do not molest him, because the taste is so innocent, and besides, saves me the expense of several cats." "But how came that passion to endanger Crespo's life?" "Ah--one is not always lucky. Perhaps the last rats Crespo ate, had feasted on arsenic--rats are so whimsical. The poor devil, perhaps, was poisoned in that manner. Rather an expensive taste. Unfortunately, the lesson will do him no good." After this touching funeral oration, the jailer took out a blue and torn handkerchief, and dried his eyes. The Count shuddered at this story. He understood the atrocious plan adopted by Pietro to get rid of a dangerous witness, and forgetful of his own safety, said, "Perhaps, if you hurry for a physician, the poor man may yet be saved." "Bah! do you think the Governor would let one of his officers die without assistance? The doctor, however, was too late; and when I came hither, Crespo was dying." Notwithstanding his firmness, the horror of Monte-Leone at the wretch was so great that he hastened to terminate the conversation. The quasi complicity in a crime committed in cold blood, and with premeditation; was odious to him. "Do not fear lest my examination should compromise you. I will be prudent. Now, one word more, or if you please to consider it so, one favor more--when will I be tried?" "In two days. To-night they will come to take you to _Castello Capuano_, where the supreme court will meet." Pietro left, and Monte-Leone relapsed into a profound reverie. The drama was about to begin. What the Count hitherto had done, was as it were but a prelude, an exposition, or rather a skilful introduction. On the eve of the event he did not quail, but like a sagacious tactician asked himself if he had been guilty of no neglect, if he had taken advantage of all the circumstances. One thing alone made him uneasy. When he returned to the Etruscan villa, to assume the clothes of the assistant-jailer, he saw with terror that he had lost the great emerald, the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Benvenuto, the family ring, so long celebrated and so well known. He readily enough fancied that it had been lost during his rapid flight, and did not suspect that it had fallen into the hands of his enemies. Reassured on this point, he waited patiently for the hour when, as the jailer said, they would come to take him to _Castello Capuano_. It came at last, and Monte-Leone was glad of it, for it seemed to bring him nearer to liberty. It was about midnight when the Governor came to the Count's cell, accompanied by the worthy jailer and several officers. "Excellency," said he to Monte-Leone, "I have an order from the Duke of Palma, minister of police, to take you to _Castello Capuano_, to be tried." "I am ready to obey the orders of the Duke," said Monte-Leone, "late as the hour and bad as the weather are. But, Signor, the Duke treats me like those curious monsters, who travel by night to avoid the anxious eyes of the public, and to enhance the profits received from their exhibition." "Signor, the Duke of Palma," said the Governor, piqued by this irony in relation to his patron, "has a more exalted object than exciting or allaying the curiosity of the people of Naples. He wishes to prevent any demonstration of your numerous partisans in your favor. Such conduct would certainly injure your cause." The sarcasm of the Count had made the Governor say too much. He had revealed to Monte-Leone the interest he had excited, and the efforts which might be made to save him. To a man like Monte-Leone nothing was lost, and like a skilful geometer, he knew how to take advantage of the errors of his adversary. "Let us go, Signor," said Monte-Leone to the Governor. "I am impatient to make an acquaintance with the new castle which the king honors me with. Let me change once or twice again, and I will be able to publish a statistical account of all the dungeons in the kingdom, for the information of his majesty's beloved subjects." An hour after this scene the Count was in a room of _Castello Capuano_, appropriated to the reception of great and distinguished criminals to be tried by the high court. On the next day, a man of cold and ascetic air waited on Monte-Leone. This person was Felippo San Angelo, the ogre of whom Pietro had spoken, the terror of all criminals, the Grand Judge of Naples. If the _morale_ of the Judge had been calumniated by Pietro, his physique bore a strong analogy to that of certain beasts of prey to which carnivorous appetite is attributed. His nose was hooked like an eagle's, his brow was prominent, oblong and bald, his lips were thin and fixed as if he had never smiled, his body was long and attenuated, and he never met the glance of those with whom he spoke. "Signor," said the Grand Judge, "I am come to announce to you, as the law requires, that you will appear before the court on the day after to-morrow. You will be allowed to choose an advocate, and, as Grand Judge of the Kingdom, I come to invite you to do so." "I am deeply sensible of your Excellency's consideration," said Monte-Leone, "but I must say, the first act of your _justice_ is _unjust_. If my enemies have had two months to prepare their accusation, it is cruel to allow me but two days to prepare my defence." "This is the provision of the laws which regulate at Naples the special courts, like the one which is to try you, Signor Comte. I do not make the law, but only administer it." "But, Excellency, a man of your character should not administer an unjust law; nothing should compel him to do so." "Signor," said the Grand Judge, much annoyed at finding himself unexpectedly drawn into such a discussion, "the legislator gives us the text of law, we find the interpretation. Your judges, the chief of whom I am, have carefully studied them, and if we have assumed on our honor and conscience their application, it is because we think them just. We do not permit the accused to contest their forms. When a man is unfortunately brought before a court, he must submit." "I do, Excellency," said Monte-Leone, "I will even court their severity, and will not take advantage of the very short time allowed me to choose a defender. For humanity's sake alone I address you as I do. It seems to me, however, that it is necessary that I should know, in the first place, of what I am accused; and I wait until it please your Excellency to tell me." "You are charged, Signor, with two capital crimes. First, of having, on the night of the 20th December, 1815, conspired against the security of the state, near the ruins of Pompeii, where you presided over a secret society, the object of which is the overthrow of royalty. You are, in the second place, accused of having attempted to assassinate Stenio Salvatori, of _Torre-del-Greco_, to avenge yourself on account of his testimony." "Is this all?" asked Monte-Leone. "It is, Signor," said the Grand Judge; "I think such charges are important enough to induce you to remember that you must now choose your counsel." "You are right, Signor," said Monte-Leone. "For such a cause a skilful advocate is required, one who shall be able to impress your heart with the conviction of my innocence, for on his word depends my life or death." "Find such a one, then, Signor," said the Grand Judge. "Believe me, however, the most eloquent advocate has less influence over a conscientious judge than the facts of the case, the light which illumines them, and which it is their duty to make brilliant in our eyes, rather than seek an opportunity to display their fluency and their political opinions, or, worse yet, to produce public or private scandal--" "You are right, Signor, but the person who will speak in my behalf is neither eloquent nor skilful, yet the most famous pleas, the most powerful defences of Naples, will not produce so much effect as the words of that man." "You, Signor, alone," said the Grand Judge, "can choose your defender. But let me know his name--" "That can only be revealed at the trial." "But you do not know, Signor, you thus deprive yourself of a precious right to all who are accused, secured them by law, the right of communicating with their defenders." "That right I waive. The man who will defend me will know his grave mission only when called on in the face of the supreme tribunal to fulfil it." The Grand Judge looked with amazement at Monte-Leone. "Why, Signor, cannot he be informed of his grave duty?" "God forbid he should!" "Why?" "Because in that case I would lose my cause." The Count laughed. "Act then, Signor, as you please. Strange and whimsical as your conduct is, I have no authority to speak of its advantages and disadvantages." He bowed to Monte-Leone and withdrew. "He is mad," said he, as he was leaving _Castello Capuano_. "He is a fool," said Monte-Leone, as the Grand Judge left. "He did not understand that one defends himself from the effects of a crime committed, but not when no crime has been committed." V.--THE TRIAL. The appointed day came at last, and all Naples assumed a strange and unusual air. One subject of interest took possession of all the city, one idea occupied it, and from the Senator to the Lazzarone all had one name on their lips. Monte-Leone, Count Monte-Leone. "Monte-Leone, the people's friend," said some. "Monte-Leone, the conspirator," said others. "Monte-Leone, the assassin of Stenio Salvatori," said the enemies of the Count. "Monte-Leone, the victim of Fernando," said the enemies of the King. As all this was going on around the prison, calm and thoughtful Monte-Leone waited for the hour of trial. _Castello Capuano_, usually called la Vicaria, had been for several centuries the palace of the Kings and Viceroys, until Pedro de Toledo abandoned for a more splendid palace, that of the existing Kings, and devoted la Vicaria or _Castello Capuano_ to the civil and criminal courts of the realm. Nothing can be more sad and melancholy than the portion of the palace in which the prisons are. As if to enhance this appearance, the outside of the prison was hung with iron cages, in which were the heads and hands of persons who had been executed. These relics of humanity, long before dried up, and the skeletons of which alone remained, rattled in the night wind horribly, and filled with superstitious terror the minds of belated travellers returning through the _Porta Capuano_, from which the Castle took its name, to Naples. La Vicaria was then from an early hour in the morning besieged by a numerous crowd, awaiting the opening of its gates to rush into the hall of audience. The doors were opened. The hall was instantly occupied by a crowd of curious persons, who everywhere in Europe are attracted by criminal trials. It is a matter of surprise that in France women, and especially those of rank, are attracted in numbers sufficient sometimes to form a majority of the audience. But the reason is, that women are nervous and impressionable, and that they constantly require excitement. They are not often careful in the selection of these emotions, provided there are violent shocks, revulsions of feeling, terror, hope, surprise. Such are the fruits of criminal trials. The head of the prisoner becomes a shuttlecock between the advocate and magistrate. The varied chances of such a scene offer great and real interest, effacing all the fictions of tragedy. There, far more than on the stage, women take delight in the dark dramas, and are the first to resent the terrible effect of the denouements. The beautiful women of Naples did not fail to add to the interest of the representation of this drama, the hero of which possessed the admiration of all and the good graces of many. Some of the upper seats were occupied by women of high rank, who did not dare to show themselves publicly at this strange spectacle, and came, like beggars, to enjoy a scene which they would be ashamed to have acknowledged. Places, too, had been reserved for the patrician women, near the bench of the judges and advocates. These cold, careless creatures, attracted by mere curiosity, were not the most numerous of the agitated crowd. The private friends of the Count, his partisans, the members of the society of which he was the chief, formed an imposing mass agitated by the most tumultuous sentiments. Two hearts beat violently, and, though in different places, a skilful clock-maker would have declared that one was not faster than the other by a single second. These two hearts were full of the same object, desired the same thing, pursued the same end. One sentiment united both, and they were equally tortured by hope and fear. One of these was a woman dressed in black, and having a half disclosed, fresh and beautiful face. A fine and delicately gloved hand was placed upon her heart as if to restrain its pulsations. Her other hand, from time to time, was passed beneath her veil, to bear to her lips an exquisitely embroidered and perfumed handkerchief. She sat alone on one of the remote benches. For a long time she remained motionless, but suddenly seeming anxious to avoid observation, she approached, as nearly as possible, the front of the recess in which the bench on which she had been sitting was placed. She then cast a quick, anxious glance on the crowd which filled every portion of the court-room, returned, and became again motionless, and apparently calm as she had been before. The other actor in this silent scene, was a young man with a pale and agitated countenance, which betrayed the anxiety of his mind, and the deep interest he took in the events of the day. Yet not to the place reserved for the judges, nor the doors through which the prisoner would be led, did he look. Suspiciously examining every bench in the hall, perceiving (so to speak) the mass of spectators, the long lines of which rose one above another, he examined the most remote, even, without perceiving what he was evidently so anxious to find. At last, by a sudden start, he attracted the attention of those near him,--a half-stifled cry burst from his lips; he had perceived the lonely woman on the remote bench. "Do you know that lady?" said a young man who sat upon the advocates' bench. "I know her?" said he, "not at all." "Excuse me, you seemed surprised when you saw her." "The fact was, I had not remarked those seats; they are real opera boxes." "Look again, Signor, the lady amuses herself strangely." "I see nothing, sir," said the pale young man, who still kept his eyes fixed upon the lady. "Three times," said the first speaker, "she has placed her hand upon her hair, as if she would point out to somebody a diamond pin which shines amid her jetty locks like a star in a stormy sky." "You think so?" "I am sure of it, it is a signal--and see, she has taken her pin from her hair, and is imploring. Ah! sir, what a pretty Venus hand. One kiss on her hand, and I would die content!" "To be sure," said the other mechanically, and without knowing what he said. "It is some intrigue," said the gossiper, "the women of our country go everywhere, to the church, to the court, and to the theatre. It would be odd if it were the judge's wife. They who always condemn others, sometimes must atone for it." "Speak lower, Signor, speak lower; you may compromise her." "True, true, but by St. Januarius, see what she is about now;" he spoke lower. "What!" said the young man. "She has placed her finger upon her pin, and looks this way, as if she was interrogating you." "You are mistaken; besides, how can you see under a veil which way she looks?" "There is no doubt about it, it is intended for us, and she wishes to speak either to you or to me." Looking towards the person of whom they spoke, for the purpose of giving more force to his asseveration, he was amazed to see her white hand holding the diamond pin to her lips. The scene we have been so long describing had taken place in a few seconds. Prompt as was the reply of the young man to the interrogatory of the woman, his companion had perceived it. The latter being a man of good taste, and perfectly expert in the telegraphs of love, was persuaded that he had interfered in some love affair, and hastened to say to the hero of the adventure, "Do not be afraid, sir, I have seen nothing. Well-bred people, such as you and I are, never speak of secrets we thus become acquainted with--and I am ready to maintain with my lip and with my sword, that you have not the slightest acquaintance with the lady there." "Thank you, sir," said the young man; "your conduct proves you to be a gentleman." Just then all the assemblage became full of eager expectation at the entrance of the High Court, preceded by the President. "The court is opened--produce the prisoner," said the Grand Judge. The agitation became stronger. Women stood up in their chairs, men climbed up on the banisters, and others, vexed at not being able to see, protested against the appropriation of seats by the legs and boots of those in front of them. The disorder was quickly put an end to by the imperious voice of the Grand Judge, who threatened to have the hall cleared if order were not at once restored, and the respect due to the court maintained. All became immediately quiet; the audience sat down, those in the rear ceased to complain, and many an eye was fixed on Count Monte-Leone. The Count sat in the lofty seat reserved for him, an arm-chair replaced the stool used by vulgar criminals. The respect due to rank and birth was religiously observed in this aristocratic tribunal. The noble, if found guilty, was certainly sentenced to death, as the merest commoner--the form of trial, though, always exhibited respect for illustrious names, which was most gratifying to the people. The fact was, at that time people believed in social superiority, had faith in their God, king and nobles, and though they demanded that their nobles should be punished, did not expect them to die like common people; the difference was the difference between the rope and the sabre. That very difference, however, between the two deaths--the terrible theatrical effect of the latter, made a great impression on the masses. The public accuser arose, and pronounced an eloquent harangue against Monte-Leone, as guilty of two crimes, the nature of which the Grand Judge had already described to him in prison. First crime: Conspiracy against the State, in having presided at the secret _venta_ of Pompeia, as chief of a society, having for its object the overturning of the monarchy. TO BE CONTINUED. FOOTNOTES: [25] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by Stringer & Townsend, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. From Graham's Magazine. BALLAD OF JESSIE CAROL. BY ALICE CAREY. I. At her window, Jessie Carol, As the twilight dew distils, Pushes back her heavy tresses, Listening toward the northern hills. "I am happy, very happy, None so much as I am blest; None of all the many maidens In the Valley of the West," Softly to herself she whispered; Paused she then again to hear If the step of Allen Archer, That she waited for, were near. "Ah, he knows I love him fondly!-- I have never told him so!-- Heart of mine be not so heavy, He will come to-night, I know." Brightly is the full moon filling All the withered woods with light, "He has not forgotten surely-- It was later yesternight!" Shadows interlock with shadows-- Says the maiden, "Woe is me!" In the blue the eve-star trembles Like a lily in the sea. Yet a good hour later sounded,-- But the northern woodlands sway!-- Quick a white hand from her casement Thrust the heavy vines away. Like the wings of restless swallows That a moment brush the dew, And again are up and upward, Till we lose them in the blue, Were the thoughts of Jessie Carol,-- For a moment dim with pain, Then with pleasant waves of sunshine, On the hills of hope again. "Selfish am I, weak and selfish," Said she, "thus to sit and sigh; Other friends and other pleasures Claim his leisure well as I. Haply, care or bitter sorrow 'Tis that keeps him from my side, Else he surely would have hasted Hither at the twilight tide. Yet, sometimes I can but marvel That his lips have never said, When we talked about the future, Then, or then, we shall be wed! Much I fear me that my nature Cannot measure half his pride, And perchance he would not wed me Though I pined of love and died. To the aims of his ambition I would bring nor wealth nor fame. Well, there is a quiet valley Where we both shall sleep the same!" So, more eves than I can number, Now despairing, and now blest, Watched the gentle Jessie Carol From the Valley of the West. II. Down along the dismal woodland Blew October's yellow leaves, And the day had waned and faded, To the saddest of all eves. Poison rods of scarlet berries Still were standing here and there, But the clover blooms were faded, And the orchard boughs were bare. From the stubble fields the cattle Winding homeward, playful, slow, With their slender horns of silver Pushed each other to and fro. Suddenly the hound upspringing From his sheltering kennel, whined, As the voice of Jessie Carol Backward drifted on the wind, Backward drifted from a pathway Sloping down the upland wild, Where she walked with Allan Archer, Light of spirit as a child! All her young heart wild with rapture And the bliss that made it beat-- Not the golden wells of Hybla Held a treasure half so sweet! But as oft the shifting rose-cloud, In the sunset light that lies, Mournful makes us, feeling only How much farther are the skies,-- So the mantling of her blushes, And the trembling of her heart, 'Neath his steadfast eyes but made her Feel how far they were apart. "Allan," said she, "I will tell you Of a vision that I had-- All the livelong night I dreamed it, And it made me very sad. We were walking slowly, seaward, In the twilight--you and I-- Through a break of clearest azure Shone the moon--as now--on high; Though I nothing said to vex you, O'er your forehead came a frown, And I strove, but could not soothe you-- Something kept my full heart down; When, before us, stood a lady In the moonlight's pearly beam, Very tall and proud and stately-- (Allan, this was in my dream!--) Looking down, I thought, upon me, Half in pity, half in scorn, Till my soul grew sick with wishing That I never had been born. 'Cover me from woe and madness!' Cried I to the ocean flood, As she locked her milk-white fingers In between us where we stood,-- All her flood of midnight tresses Softly gathered from their flow, By her crown of bridal beauty, Paler than the winter snow. Striking then my hands together, O'er the tumult of my breast,-- All the beauty waned and faded From the Valley of the West!" In the beard of Allan Archer Twisted then his fingers white, As he said, "My gentle Jessie, You must not be sad to-night; You must not be sad, my Jessie-- You are over kind and good, And I fain would make you happy, Very happy--if I could!" Oft he kissed her cheek and forehead, Called her darling oft, but said, Never, that he loved her fondly, Or that ever they should wed; But that he was grieved that shadows Should have chilled so dear a heart; That the time foretold so often Then was come--and they must part! Shook her bosom then with passion, Hot her forehead burned with pain, But her lips said only, "Allan, Will you ever come again?" And he answered, lightly dallying With her tresses all the while, Life had not a star to guide him Like the beauty of her smile; And that when the corn was ripened And the vintage harvest prest, She would see him home returning To the Valley of the West. When the moon had veiled her splendor, And went lessening down the blue, And along the eastern hill-tops Burned the morning in the dew, They had parted--each one feeling That their lives had separate ends; They had parted--neither happy-- Less than lovers--more than friends. For as Jessie mused in silence, She remembered that he said, Never, that he loved her fondly, Or that ever they should wed. 'Twas full many a nameless meaning My poor words can never say, Felt without the need of utterance, That had won her heart away. O the days were weary! weary! And the eves were dull and long, With the cricket's chirp of sorrow, And the owlet's mournful song. But in slumber oft she started In the still and lonesome nights, Hearing but the traveller's footstep Hurrying toward the village lights. So, moaned by the dreary winter-- All her household tasks fulfilled-- Till beneath the last year's rafters Came the swallows back to build. Meadow-pinks, like flakes of crimson, Over all the valleys lay, And again were oxen ploughing Up and down the hills all day. Thus the dim days dawned and faded To the maid, forsaken, lorn, Till the freshening breeze of summer Shook the tassels of the corn. Ever now within her chamber All night long the lamp-light shines, But no white hand from her casement Pushes back the heavy vines. On her cheek a fire was feeding, And her hand transparent grew-- Ah, the faithless Allan Archer! More than she had dreamed was true. No complaint was ever uttered, Only to herself she sighed,-- As she read of wretched poets Who had pined of love and died. Once she crushed the sudden crying From her trembling lips away, When they said the vintage harvest Had been gathered in that day Often, when they kissed her, smiled she, Saying that it soothed her pain, And that they must not be saddened-- She would soon be well again! Thus nor hoping nor yet fearing, Meekly bore she all her pain. Till the red leaves of the autumn Withered from the woods again; Till the bird had hushed its singing In the silvery sycamore, And the nest was left unsheltered In the lilac by the door; Saying, still, that she was happy-- None so much as she was blest-- None, of all the many maidens In the Valley of the West. III. Down the heath and o'er the moorland Blows the wild gust high and higher, Suddenly the maiden pauses Spinning at the cabin fire, And quick from her taper fingers Falls away the flaxen thread, As some neighbor entering, whispers, "Jessie Carol lieth dead." Then, as pressing close her forehead To the window-pane, she sees Two stout men together digging Underneath the church-yard trees. And she asks in kindest accents, "Was she happy when she died?"-- Sobbing all the while to see them Void the heavy earth aside; Or, upon their mattocks leaning, Through their fingers numb to blow, For the wintry air is chilly, And the grave-mounds white with snow; And the neighbor answers softly, "Do not, dear one, do not cry: At the break of day she asked us If we thought that she must die; And when I had told her, sadly, That I feared it would be so, Smiled she, saying, ''Twill be weary Digging in the churchyard snow!' 'Earth,' I said, 'was very dreary-- That its paths at best were rough; And she whispered, she was ready, That her life was long enough. So she lay serene and silent, Till the wind, that wildly drove, Soothed her from her mortal sorrow, Like the lullaby of love." Thus they talked, while one that loved her Smoothed her tresses dark and long, Wrapped her white shroud down, and simply Wove her sorrow to this song: IV. Sweetly sleeps she: pain and passion Burn no longer on her brow-- Weary watchers, ye may leave her-- She will never need you now! While the wild spring bloomed and faded, Till the autumn came and passed, Calmly, patiently, she waited-- Rest has come to her at last! Never have the blessed angels, As they walked with her apart, Kept pale Sorrow's battling armies Half so softly from her heart Therefore, think not, ye that loved her, Of the pallor hushed and dread, Where the winds, like heavy mourners, Cry about her lonesome bed, But of white hands softly reaching As the shadow o'er her fell, Downward from the golden bastion Of the eternal citadel. [From "The Memorial," just published by Putnam.] A STORY OF CALAIS. BY THE AUTHOR OF "ST. LEGER." Some years ago, I was detained unexpectedly in Calais for an entire week. It was with difficulty I could occupy the time. For a while my chief resource was to inspect the different faces which daily presented themselves at the Hotel de Meurice, where one could see every variety of features belonging to every country, age, sex, and condition. I grew tired of this presently, for I had been on the continent a considerable period, and had seen the human species under as many different phases as could well be imagined. Therefore, when the third day brought with it one of those disagreeable storms peculiar to the coast--half drizzle, half sleet and rain--it found me weary of the amusement of attending on new arrivals and departures, and of the nameless petty doings by which time, in a bustling hotel, is attempted to be frittered away. A misty, dreary, damp, offensive day! An out-and-out tempest, a thorough right-down drenching rain, would have been in agreeable contrast with the previous hot, dusty, sunny weather; but this--it seemed absolutely intolerable! I was, besides, in no particular condition to be pleased. I was neither setting out upon a tour, nor returning from one, but had been interrupted in my progress and forced to stand still at this most uninteresting spot. I came down, and with a bad grace, to order breakfast. "Garçon, Café--oeufs a la coque--biftek--rotie--vite!" I was about repeating this in a louder tone, for the waiter seemed engrossed with something more important than attending to my wants, when I heard a quiet voice behind me-- "Garçon, Café--oeufs a la coque--biftek--rotie--vite!" I turned angrily upon the speaker, doubtful of the design of this repetition of my order. The reader will perceive that my breakfast was a substantial one; indeed, such a breakfast as an American, who had not so far lost himself in "European society" as to forget his appetite, would be very likely to call for. The idea that I was watched, doubtless made me a little suspicious, or sensitive, or irritable; at any rate, I turned, as I have said, angrily upon the speaker. He was a slightly made, elderly man, at least fifty, with pleasant features, a calm appearance, and quiet manners--a person evidently at home with the world. I recollected at the same moment, that the stranger had been at the hotel ever since my arrival there, although I had not, from his unobtrusive habit, given him more than a passing notice. His appearance at once dispelled the frown which I had brought to bear upon him; but when he answered my stare with a respectful yet half familiar bow, I could have sworn that it came from an old acquaintance. I need not say that I returned the salutation cordially. At the same time my new friend rose, came towards me, and held out his hand. "I am quite sure," he said, "that you are an American--perhaps a New Englander; _I_ am both; why, then, should not countrymen beguile an unpleasant day in company? Excuse me--I did hear your order just now, and as it suited my own taste, I proposed to myself that we should breakfast together;--we may trust to François; he has been here, to my knowledge, more than twenty years, and pleases every body." I pressed the hand of my new acquaintance--acknowledged myself to be from New Hampshire--gave my name, and received in return--"Philip Belcher." We sat down to the same table, and very soon François appeared with a well-served breakfast. "Pray," said I, "what _can_ one do to relieve the monotony of this intolerable place? If the country about were agreeable--nay, if it were bearable! but as it is, I repeat, what is to be done?" "Done!" said Mr. Belcher, rather sharply, "a hundred things! Put on your Mackintosh and overshoes; come with me to the Courtgain, and see the fishermen putting to sea, their boats towed out by their wives and daughters; a sight, I will be bound, you have not beheld, although you may have coursed Europe over, and been at Calais half a dozen times." Mr. Belcher proceeded in this vein, detailing many things that could be seen to advantage even in Calais; but as he suggested nothing which interested me so much as he himself did, I had the boldness to tell him so, and that my curiosity was excited to know more of him. "There is nothing in my history that can amuse a stranger; indeed, it is without incident or marvel. To be sure, I am alone in the world, but I have never been afflicted, or suffered misfortune, within my recollection. My parents died when I was very young; my father and mother were both only children; a small property which the former left was carefully invested, and faithfully nursed during my minority, by a scrupulous and honest lawyer, in no way connected with us, but whom my father named as executor in his will, and my guardian. Ill health prevented my getting on at school. I can't say that I was an invalid, but my constitution was delicate and my temperament nervous. I tried to make some progress in the study of a profession, under my excellent guardian, but was forced to give it up as too trying to my nerves. The excitement of a court-room I could not endure for a day, much less for a lifetime. Before I was twenty-five, my income had so much increased that I could afford to travel. I have gained in this way my health, which, however, would become impaired should I return to a sedentary life; so, as a matter of necessity, I have wandered about the world. You see my story is soon told." I found Mr. Belcher was not in the habit of talking about himself, and I liked him the better for it. Without pressing for a more particular account, I led the conversation to treat of the different countries he had visited, referring, by the way, to some principal objects of attraction. Here I touched an idiosyncrasy of my new friend. "I never formed," he said, "any distinct 'plan' of travel. I never 'did' Paris in eight days, nor the gallery of the Louvre in half an hour, as they have been done by an acquaintance. I never opened a guide-book in my life; I never employed a _commissionere_, a _valet_, a _courier_, a _cicerone_, or a _dragoman_. My pleasure has been to let the remarkable--the beautiful--the interesting--burst upon me without introduction, and I have found my account in it. I have quitted the Val d'Arno, turned off from the Lake of Como, passed to the wrong side of Lake Leman and its romantic castles, pursuing my way, regardless of these well-worn attractions, while I beheld rarer--at least familiar scenes--and enjoyed with zest what was fresh and unhackneyed. No everlasting 'route'--no mercenary and dishonest landlords--no troops of travellers, travelling that they may become 'travelled'--but in place of all this, I saw every thing naturally--the country in its simplicity--the inhabitants in their simplicity--while, I trust, I have preserved my own simplicity. Indeed, I rather prefer what your tourist calls an 'uninteresting region.'" "For that reason," I remarked, pleasantly, "you have come here to Calais to spend a few weeks; you must enjoy the barren sand-plain which extends all the way from this to St. Omer. How picturesque are those pollards scattered along the road, with here and there a superannuated windmill, looking like an ogre with three arms and no legs: then, to relieve the dreariness of the place, you have multitudes of miserable cabins, grouped into more miserable villages, to say nothing of the chateaux of dingy red, in which painters of the brick-dust school so much delight. Really, Mr. Belcher, you will have a capital field here!" My new acquaintance shook his head a little seriously, as if deprecating further pleasantry. "You are like the rest of them, I fear," he remarked, "a surface traveller; at least you will force me to believe so if you go on in this way. But come," he continued, "the storm threatens to last the morning; if you wish, I will help to make away with part of it, by recounting a little adventure which happened to me hard by those very pollards, which you are pleased to abuse so freely." It is needless to add that I joyfully assented to the proposal, and was soon seated in Mr. Belcher's room before a cheerful fire--for he had managed even in Calais to procure one--when he commenced as follows: "I think it was during the first season I was on the continent, that I visited St. Omer. After spending a day or two in that place, I concluded to walk to Calais, and set out one morning accordingly. "The weather was fine; but after I had been a few hours on the road, the wind began to blow directly in my face, and soon enveloped me in a cloud of sand from which there seemed no escape, and which threatened actually to suffocate me. To avoid this I left the highway, but keeping what I supposed to be in the general direction of the road, I struck out into the adjacent fields. There was nothing for a considerable distance to repay me for this _detour_, except that I thus was rid of the sand. The country was barren and uninteresting, the cottages little better than hovels, and the whole scene uninviting. But I pushed on, not a whit discouraged; indeed my spirits rose as the prospect darkened, and like a valiant general invading a country for the purpose of conquering a peace, I resolved in some way to force an adventure before I reached Calais. I trudged along for hours, stopping occasionally for a draught of sour wine and a bit of bread. I made no inquiry about the main road, for I preferred to know nothing of it. In this way I proceeded, until it was almost night, when I spied, some half a mile distant, a cluster of trees surrounding a small tenement. I turned at once toward the spot, and coming up to it, found a cottage not differing in size or structure from those I had seen on the way, except that it appeared even more antiquated. It was, however, in perfect repair, and finely shaded by a variety of handsome trees, and flanked on one side by a neat garden. The door stood open and I entered. There was no one in the room. I called, but received no answer. I strayed out into the garden and walked through it. At the lower end was a small inclosure covered over at the top as if to protect it from the weather, and fenced on each side with open wire-work, looking through which, I beheld a small grave, overspread with mosses, and strewed with fresh-gathered white flowers. It bore no name or inscription, except the following simple but pathetic line; "Enfant cherie, avec toi mes beaux jours sont passes.--1794." Surprised by the appearance of fresh flowers upon a tomb which had been so long closed over its occupant, I turned, hoping to find some explanation of the mystery, in what I might see elsewhere, But there was nothing near to attract one's attention, nor was any person within sight. "After taking a glance around, I returned to the cottage, and walking in, sat down to wait the arrival of the occupants. In a few minutes, I heard voices from the side of the house opposite the garden, and soon two persons, of the peasant class, evidently husband and wife, came in. The man was strong and robust, with the erect form and martial appearance acquired only by military service, and which the weight of nearly sixty years had not seemed to impair. His countenance was frank and manly, and his step firm. The woman appeared a few years younger, while the air of happy contentment which beamed in her face, put the ordinary encroachments of time at defiance. Altogether, I had never seen a couple so fitted to challenge observation and interest. They both stopped short on seeing me. "I hastened to explain my situation, as that of a belated traveller, attracted by the sight of the cottage; and told them I was both hungry and tired, and desirous of the hospitality of their roof. I was made welcome at once. "Louis Herbois, for that was his name, gave me a bluff, soldierly greeting, while Agathe, his wife, smiled her acquiescence. Supper was soon laid; I ate with a sharpened appetite, which evidently charmed my host, who encouraged me at intervals, as I began to flag. "Supper concluded, I was glad to accept the offer of a bed--for I was exhausted with fatigue. "I had been so engrossed with the repast, that curiosity was for the time suspended, and it was not again in action until I had said good-night to my entertainers, and found myself in the room where I was to sleep. This was an apartment of moderate size; the furniture was old and common, but neither dilapidated nor out of order; the bed was neatly covered; around the room were scattered several books of interest, and in one corner was a neat writing-desk, of antiquated appearance, with silver mounting, and handsomely inlaid; while some small articles of considerable value placed on a table in another corner, indicated at least occasional denizens very different from the peasant and his wife. Yet this could not be a rural resort for any family belonging to the town. There were but two other apartments in the house, and these were occupied. Nevertheless, I reasoned, these things can never have been brought here by the worthy people I have seen; and then--the little grave in the garden? who has watched the tomb for so many years, preserving the moss so green and the flowers so fresh--cherishing an affection which has triumphed over time? How intense, how sacred, how strange must be such devotion! I decided that some persons besides my host were concerned, in some way, in the history of the little dwelling, and with this conclusion I retired; and so, being fatigued by my day's travel, I soon fell asleep. "I awoke about sunrise. Going to the window, I put aside the curtain, and looked out into the garden. Louis Herbois and his wife were there, renewing the garlands with fresh flowers, and watering the moss which was spread over the grave. It must be their own child, thought I, and yet--no--I will step out and ask them, and put an end to the mystery. I met the good people coming in: they inquired if I had rested well, and said that breakfast would soon be ready. 'You do not forget your little one,' I said to the old fellow, at the same time pointing towards the inclosure. 'Monsieur mistakes,' replied he, crossing himself devoutly. 'Some dear friend, I suppose?' He looked at me earnestly: '_On voit bien, Monsieur, que vous etes un homme comme il faut._ After you have breakfasted, you shall hear the story. 'Ah, there is then a story,' said I to myself, as I followed Louis Herbois into the cottage, where Agathe had preceded us, and sat down to an excellent breakfast. When it was concluded I asked for the promised narration. 'Let me see,' said Louis, 'Agathe, how long have we been married?' Agathe, matron as she was, actually blushed at the question, yet answered readily, without stopping to compute the time. 'Yes; true; very well;' resumed Louis. 'You must know, Monsieur, that my father was a soldier, and enrolled me, at an early age, in the same company with himself. Having been detailed, soon after, on service to one of the provinces, I was so severely wounded that I was thought to be permanently unfitted for duty, and was honorably dismissed with a life pension. Owing to the care and skill of a famous surgeon who attended me, and whom I was fortunate enough to interest, I was at last cured of my wounds, and very soon after I wandered away here, for no better reason, I believe, than that Agathe was in the neighborhood; for we had known each other from the time we were children. Very soon she and I were married, and we took this little place, and were as blessed as possible. "'In the mean time, great changes were going on at Paris. The revolution had begun, and soon swept every thing before it. But it did not matter with us. We rose with the birds, and went to rest with the sun, and no two could have been happier: am I not right, Agathe?' The old lady put her hand affectionately upon the shoulder of her husband, but said nothing. 'And we have never ceased being happy: we are always happy, are we not Agathe?' The tears stood in Agathe's eyes, and Louis Herbois went on. 'Well, the revolution was nothing to me, they were mad with it, and killed the king, and slew each other, until our dear Paris became a bedlam--still, as I said, it was nothing to me. To be sure, I went occasionally to Calais, where I heard a new language in every body's mouth, and much talk of _Les hommes suspects, Mandats d'arrets_, with shouts of _Abas les aristocrates_, and _Vive la Republique_--but I did not trouble myself about any of it; Agathe and I worked together in the field, and in the garden, and in the house--always together--always happy. One morning we went out to prune our vines, the door of the house was open, just as you found it yesterday; why should we ever shut the door? we were honest, and feared nobody; we stood--Agathe here on this side holding the vine; I, with my knife, on the other side, bending over to lop a sprout from it; when down came two young people--lad and lass--upon us, as fast as they could run; out of breath--agitated--and as frightened as two wood-pigeons. The young man flew to me, and catching hold of my arm begged me, _pour l'amour de Dieu_, to secrete his wife somewhere--anywhere--out of the reach of the _gens-d'armes_, who were pursuing them. I felt in ill-humor, for I had cut my finger just then; besides, I did not relish the mention of the _gens-d'armes_, so I replied plainly, that I would have nothing to do with persons who were _suspects_. Why should I thrust my own neck into the trap? they had better go about their business, and not trouble poor people. Bah! such a speech was not like Louis Herbois! but out it came, Heaven knows how, and no sooner had I finished than up runs the young creature, and seizing my moustache she cries, "My brave fellow, hie away, and crop off all this; none but _men_ have a right to it; God grant you were not born in France; no Frenchman could give such an answer to a man imploring protection for his wife. Look at my husband--did he ask aid for himself? Do you think he would turn you off in this way, had you sought his assistance to save _her_?" pointing to Agathe, who stood trembling all the while like an aspen. "Ah! you have made a mistake, I see you repent, be quick; what will you do with us?" And she held me tight by the moustache until I should answer, while the husband stared upon me in a sort of breathless agony. I took another look at the little creature, while she kept fast hold of me, and saw that she was----_eh bien_! I see you understand me,' said Louis, interrupting himself, as he glanced towards his wife. 'My heart knocked loud enough, believe me, and there the dear little thing stood, her hand, as I was telling you, clenched fast in my moustache--ha! ha! ha!--and looking so full into my eyes, with her own clear bright blue gazers. "_Mon Dieu--mon Dieu!_ Agathe we must help these _pauvres enfans_." "You _are_ a Frenchman--I thought so," cried the little one, letting go my moustache and clapping her hands. "Oh! hasten, hasten, or we are lost!" "All in good time," said I, "for--" "No no," interrupted she, "they are almost upon us: in a moment we may be captured, and then Albert, oh, Albert, what will become of you?" So saying, she threw her arms about her husband, and clung to him as if nothing should part them. "_Voilà bien les femmes_; to the devil with my caution; come with me, and I will put you in a place where the whole Directory shall not find you, unless they pull my cottage down stone by stone." I hurried them to the house, and hid them in a private closet which, following out my soldier-like propensities, I had constructed in one end of the room, in a marvellously curious way. Not a soul but Agathe knew of it, and I disliked to give up the secret, but I hurried the young people in, and arranged the place, and went back to the vines and cut away harder than ever. In two minutes, up rode three dragoons with drawn swords, as fine looking troopers as one would ask for. I saw them reconnoitre the cottage, then spying me, they came towards us at a gallop. "What have you done with the Comte and Comtesse de Choissy?" said the leading horseman. "You had better hold your tongue," I retorted, "than be clattering away at random. What the devil do I know of the Comte and Comtesse de Choissy, as you call them?" "Look, you," said the dragoon, laying his hand on my shoulder; "the persons for whom I seek, are escaped prisoners; they were seen to come in the direction of this cottage; our captain watched them with his glass, and he swears they are here." "And look you, Monsieur Cavalier, I am an old soldier, as you see, if scars and hard service can prove one, and it seems to me you should take an old soldier's word. I have said all I have to say; there is my house, the doors are open--look for yourself: come Agathe, we must finish our morning's work." So saying, I set at the vines harder than ever. I looked neither one way nor the other, but kept clipping, clipping, thus standing between the dragoons and poor Agathe, who was frightened terribly, although she tried to seem as busy as I. The rider who was spokesman, stared for a minute without saying a word, and then broke out into a loud laugh. "An old soldier indeed!--a regular piece of steel! one has but to point a flint at you, and the sparks fly." He turned to his men: "Our captain was mistaken, evidently; this is a _bon camarade_; we may trust to him. We will take a turn through the cottage and push forward." With that he bid me good morning, and after looking around the house the party made off. "'"Well, Agathe, what's to be done now?" said I, when the dragoons were fairly out of sight. "We have made a fine business of it." "Ah, Louis," said she, "let us not think of the danger; we have saved two innocent lives, for innocent I know they are: what if we _have_ perilled our own? Heaven will reward us." Nothing more was said, though we both thought a great deal, but we kept at our work as if nothing had happened. It was a long time before I dared let the fugitives come from their hiding-place; for I was afraid of that cursed glass of _Monsieur le Capitaine_. When I did open it I found my prisoners nearly dead with suspense. We held a council as to the best means for their concealment--for who would have had the heart to turn the young people adrift?--and it was finally settled that the comte and his wife should dress as peasants, and take what other means were necessary to alter their appearance, that they might pass as such without suspicion. This was no sooner resolved than carried out. Agathe was as busy as a bee, and in a few minutes had a dress ready for Victorine--we were to call her by her first name--who was now as lively as a creature could be, running about the room, looking into the glass, and making fun of her husband, who had in the mean time pulled on some of my clothes. After this, the young comte explained to me that his father had died a short time before, leaving him his title and immense estates, which, however, should he die childless, would pass to an uncle, a man unscrupulous and of bad reputation. This uncle was among the most conspicuous of the revolutionists. Through his agency the Comte de Choissy and his young wife, with whom he had been but a twelvemonth united, were arrested, and shortly after sentenced to death. They escaped from prison and the guillotine by the aid of a faithful domestic, and were almost at Calais when they discovered that they were pursued. By leaving the road and sending the carriage forward, they managed to gain the few moments which saved them. Their principal fear now was from the wicked designs of the uncle, for the Directory had too much on their hands to hunt out escaped prisoners who were not specially obnoxious. For some days the young people did not stir from the house, but were ever ready to resort to their hiding-place on the first alarm. There were, however, no signs of the _gens-d'armes_ in the neighborhood. I went to Calais in a little while, and found, after much trouble, the old servant who was in the carriage when the comte and his wife deserted it. He had been permitted to pass on without being molested, so alert were the soldiers in pursuit of the fugitives; and he had brought the few effects which he could get together for his master on leaving Paris to a safe place; and to prevent suspicion, he himself had taken service with a respectable _traiteur_. By degrees, I managed to bring off every thing belonging to my guests, and we fitted up the little room in which you passed the night, as comfortably as possible, without having it excite remark from any one casually entering it. "Albert" was industrious, aiding me at my work, no matter what I was doing, and "Victorine," too, insisted upon helping my wife in whatever she did, here, there, and everywhere, the liveliest, the merriest, the most innocent creature I ever set eyes upon. But for all that, one could see that time hung heavy on the comte. He became thoughtful and _triste_, and like every man out of his proper place, he was restless and uneasy. Not so the dear wife: she declared she had never been so happy, that she had her Albert all to herself: wanted nothing more: if she but knew how to requite _us_, she would not wish the estates back again--she would live where she was, forever. Then her husband would throw his arms around her, and call her by endearing names, which would make the little thing look so serious, but at the same time so calm and satisfied and angel-like, that it seemed as if the divine soul of the Holy Virgin had taken possession of her, as she turned her eyes up to her husband and met his, looking lovingly down....' "Here Louis Herbois stopped, and felt for his handkerchief, and blew his nose until the walls resounded, and wiped his eyes as if trying to remove something that was in them, and proceeded-- "'Any one to have seen her at different times would have sworn I had two little women for guests instead of one: so full of fun and mischief and all sorts of pranks; so lively, running hither and yon, teasing me, amusing Agathe, rallying her husband; but on the occasions I mention, so subdued, so thoughtful so--different from her other self: _Ciel!_ she had all our hearts. "'Several months passed, much in the same manner. The comte by degrees gained courage, and often ventured away from the house. Twice he had been to the town, but his wife was in such terror during his absence, that he promised her he would not venture again. He continued meanwhile moody and ill at ease; it would be madness to leave his place of concealment; this he knew well enough; still he could not bring himself to be patient. Do not think, Monsieur, that the Comte de Choissy failed to love his wife just as ever: that was not it at all. A man is a man the world about; the comte felt as any body would feel who finds himself rusting away like an old musket, which has been tossed aside into some miserable cock-loft. I had seen the world and knew how it was with him. But what could be done? In Paris things were getting worse and worse. At first we had _le Côté Gauche; les Montagnards; les Jacobines_: then came _les Patriotes de '93_; and after that, _les Patriotes par excellence_, who were succeeded by _les Patriotes plus patriotes que les patriotes_: and then the devil was let loose in mad earnest; for what with _les Bonnets-Rouges, les Enragés, les Terroristes, les Beveurs de Sang_, and _les Chevaliers du Poignard_, Paris was converted into a more fitting abode for Satan than his old-fashioned country residence down below. _Pardon Monsieur!_ I am getting warm; but it always stirs my blood when I recall those days. I see, too, I am getting from my story. Well: I tried to comfort the comte with such scraps of philosophy as I had picked up in my campaigns--for in the army, you must know, one learns many a good maxim--but I did little by that. The sweet young comtesse was the only one who could make him cheerful, and smile, and laugh, and seem happy in a natural way, for he loved her as tenderly as a man ever loved; besides, the comtesse had now a stronger claim than ever upon her husband. I fancy I can see her sitting _there_, her face bent over, employing her needle upon certain diminutive articles, whose use it is very easy to understand. Do you know, when she was at work on _these_, that she was serious--never playful--_always_ serious; wearing the same expression as when she received from her husband a tender word? No: nothing could make her merry then. I used to sit and wonder how the self-same person could become so changed all in one minute. How the comte loved to look at her! his eyes were upon her wherever she was; not a word she spoke, not a step she took, not a motion of hers escaped him. Well, the time came at last, and by the blessing of God and the Holy Virgin, as beautiful a child as the world ever welcomed, was placed by my Agathe in the arms of the comtesse. Perhaps,' added Louis Herbois, in a lower voice, while speech seemed for the instant difficult, 'perhaps I have remembered this the better, because God willed it that we ourselves should be childless. When Agathe took the infant and laid it in the mother's bosom, the latter regarded it for a moment with an expression of intense fondness; then, raising her eyes to her husband, who stood over her, she laughed for joy. "'Mother and daughter prospered apace. The little girl became the pet of the house; we all quarelled for her; but each had to submit in turn. How intelligent! what speaking eyes! what knowing looks! what innocently mischievous ways! mother and child! I wish you could have seen them. I soon marked a striking change: the young comtesse was now never herself a child. A gentle dignity distinguished her--new-born, it would seem--but natural. I am making my story a long one, but I could talk to you the whole day in this way. So, the months passed on--and the revolution did not abate; and the comte was sick at heart, and the comtesse was, as ever, cheerful, content, happy, and the little one could stand alone by a chair and call out to us all, wherever we were. The comte, notwithstanding his promise, could not resist his desire to learn more of what was going on than I could inform him of. I seldom went away, for when hawks are abroad, it is well to look after the brood: and as I had nothing to gain, and every thing to lose, by venturing out, I thought it best to stay at home. The comte, on the contrary, was anxious to know every thing. He had made several visits to Calais, first obtaining his wife's consent, although the agony she suffered seemed to fill his heart with remorse; this, however, was soon smothered by his renewed and unconquerable restlessness. One morning he was pleading with her for leave to go again, answering her expressions of fear with the fact that he had been often already without danger. "There is always a first time," said my Agathe, who was in the room. "And there is always a last time, too," said I, happening to enter at that moment. I did not know what they were talking about, and the words came out quite at random. The comtesse turned pale. "Albert," she said, "content yourself with your Victorine and our babe: go not away from us." The infant was standing by its mother's knee, and without understanding what was said, she repeated, "Papa--not go. The comte hesitated: "What a foreboding company--croakers every one of you--away with such presentiments of evil. Go I will, to show you how foolish you have all been;" and with that he snatched a kiss from his wife and the little one, and started off. The former called to him twice, "Albert, Albert!" and the baby in imitation, with its little voice said, "Papa, papa!" but the comte did not hear those precious tones of wife or child, and in a few minutes he was out of sight. I cannot say what was the matter with me; my spirit was troubled; the comtesse looked so desponding, and Agathe so _triste_, that I knew not what to do with myself. I did nothing for an hour, then I spoke to Agathe: "Wife, I am going across to the town." She said, "Ah, Louis, I almost wish you would go. See how the comtesse suffers. I am sure I shall feel easier myself." Then I told her to say nothing of where I had gone, and away I went. It did not take me long, for it seemed as if I ought to hasten. I got into the town, and having walked along till I came to the Rue de Paris, I was about turning down it when I saw a small concourse of people on the opposite corner; I crossed over and beheld the Comte de Choissy in the custody of four _gens-d'armes_, and surrounded by a number of "citizens." My first impulse was to rush to his assistance, but I reflected in time, and contented myself with joining the crowd. One of the soldiers had gone for a carriage, and the remainder were questioning him; the comte, however, would make no reply, except, "You have me prisoner, I have nothing to say, do what you will." I waited quietly for an opportunity of showing myself to him, but he did not look toward me. Presently I said to the man next me, "Neighbor, you crowd something too hard for good fellowship." The comte started a very little at the sound of my voice, but he did not immediately look up. Shortly he raised his head and fixed his eyes on me for an instant only, and then turned them upon others of the company with a look as indifferent as if he were a mere spectator. What a courageous dog! by Heaven, he never changed an iota, nor showed the slightest possible mark of recognition; still, I knew well enough he did recognize me, but I got no sign of it, neither did he look towards me again. Soon the carriage came up and he was hurried in by the _gens-d'armes_, and off they drove! I made some inquiries, and found that the comte was known, and that they were taking him to Paris. "'It seems that he had been observed by a spy of the uncle during one of his visits to the town, and although he was not tracked to his home--for he was always very cautious in his movements--yet a strict watch was kept for his next appearance. I went to see the old domestic, but he knew not so much as I. My steps were next turned homeward. What a walk that was for me? How could I enter my house the bearer of such tidings! "_Bon Dieu! ah, bon Dieu_," I exclaimed, "_ayez pitie!_" and I stopped under a hedge and got down on my knees and said a prayer, and then I began crying like a child. I said my prayer again, and walked slowly on; then I saw the house, and Agathe in the garden, and the comtesse with the little one standing in the door--looking--looking. I came up--"Albert--where is Albert? where is my husband?" I made no answer. "Tell me," she said, almost fiercely, taking hold of my arm. I opened my mouth and essayed to speak, but although my lips moved I did not get out a syllable. I thought I might whisper it, so I tried to do so, but I could not whisper! The comtesse shrieked, the child began to cry, and Agathe came running in. "Come with me," said I to my wife, and I went into our chamber and told her the whole, and bid her go to the comtesse and tell the truth, for I could not. My dear Agathe went out half dead. I sat still in my chamber; presently the door opened, and the comtesse stood on the threshold. Her eyes were lighted up with fire, her countenance was terribly agitated, her whole frame trembled: "And you are the wretch base enough to let him be carried off to be butchered before your eyes without lifting voice or hand against it, without interposing one word--one look, one thought! Cowardly recreant!" she screamed, and fell back in the arms of my wife in violent convulsions; the infant looked on with wondering eyes and followed us as we laid the comtesse on the bed, and then put her little hand on her mother's cheek, and said softly, "Mamma." In a few minutes the comtesse began to recover. She opened her eyes with an expression of intense pain, gave a glance at Agathe and me, and then observing her child, she took it, and pressed it to her breast and sobbed. Shortly she spoke to me, and oh, with what a mournful voice and look: "Louis, forgive me; I said I knew not what; I was beside myself. You have never merited aught from me but gratitude; will you forgive me?" I cried as if I were a baby. Agathe too went on so that I feared she could never be reconciled to the dreadful calamity--for myself, I was well nigh mad. I could but commend the comtesse to the Great God and hasten out of her sight. Five wretched and wearisome days were spent. The character of the comtesse meantime displayed itself. Instead of sinking under the weight of this sorrowful event, she summoned resolution to endure it. She was devoted to her child; she assumed a cheerful air when caressing it; she even tried to busy herself in her ordinary occupations; but I could not be deceived, I knew the iron had entered her soul. All these heroic signs were only evidences of what she really suffered. Did I not watch her closely? and when the comtesse, folding her infant to her breast, raised her eyes to heaven as if in gratitude that it was left to her, I fancied there was an expression which seemed to say, "Why were not _all_ taken?" The little one, unconscious of its loss, would talk in intervals about "papa;" and when the mother, pained by the innocent prattle, grew sad of countenance, the child would creep into her lap, and putting its slender fingers upon her eyes, her lips, and over her face, would say, "Am I not good, mamma? I am not naughty; I am good, mamma." "'Five days were passed in this way; on the morning of the sixth, we were startled by the comtesse, who, in manifest terror came to us holding her child, which was screaming as if suffering acute pain: its eyes were bloodshot and gleamed with an unnatural brilliancy, its pulse rapid, and head so hot that it almost burned me to feel of it. Presently it became quiet for a few minutes, but soon the screams were renewed. Alas! what could we do? Agathe and I tried every thing that occurred to us, but to no purpose: the pains in the head became so intense that the poor thing would shriek as if some one was piercing her with a knife, then she would lay in a lethargy, and again start and scream until exhausted. Not for a moment did the comtesse allow her darling to be out of her arms. For two days and two nights she neither took rest nor food; absorbed wholly in her child's sufferings, she would not for a moment be diverted from them. Agathe too watched night and day. On the third night the child appeared much easier, and the comtesse bade Agathe go and get some rest. She came and laid down for a little time and at last fell asleep; when she awoke it was daylight; she knocked at the door of the comtesse--all was still;--she opened it and went in. The comtesse, exhausted by long watching, had fallen asleep in her chair, with her little girl in her arms. The child had sunk into a dull lethargic state never to be broken. Alas! Monsieur--alas! the little one was dead! Agathe ran and called me. I came in. What a spectacle!... Which of us should arouse the unhappy comtesse? or should we disturb her? Were it not better gently to withdraw the dead child and leave the mother to her _repose_? We thought so. I stepped forward, but courage failed me. I did not dare furtively to abstract the precious burden from the jealous arms which even in slumber were clasped tightly around it. Oh! my God!... While we were standing the comtesse opened her eyes: her first motion was to draw the child closer to her heart--then to look at us--then at the little one. She saw the whole. She had endured so much that this last stroke scarcely added to her wretchedness. She allowed me to take the child, and Agathe to conduct her to the couch and assist her upon it. She had held out to the point of absolute exhaustion, and when once she had yielded she was unable to recall her strength. She remained in her bed quite passive, while Agathe nursed her without intermission. I dug a little grave in the garden yonder, and Agathe and I laid the child in it. The mother shed no tears; when from her bed she saw us carry it away she looked mournfully on, and as we went out she whispered, "_Mes beaux jours sont passés_." Soon the grave was filled up and flowers scattered over it, and we came back to the cottage. As I drew near her room I beheld the comtesse at the window, supporting herself by a chair, regarding the grave with an earnest longing gaze which I cannot bear to recall. As I passed, her eye met mine,--such a look of quiet enduring anguish, which combined in one expression a world of untold agonies! Oh! I never could endure a second look like that. I rushed into the house: Agathe was already in. I called to her to come to me, for I could not enter _that_ room again. "Wife," I said, "I am going to Paris. Do not say one word. God will protect us. Comfort the comtesse. Agathe, if I _never_ return, remember--it is on a holy errand--adieu." I was off before Agathe could reply. I ran till I came to the main road, there I was forced to sit down and rest. At last I saw a wagoner going forward; part of the way I rode with him, and a part I found a faster conveyance. At night I walked by myself. "'I had a cousin in Paris, Maurice Herbois, with whom in old times I had been on companionable terms. He was a smith, and had done well at the trade until the revolution broke out, since then I had heard nothing from him. He was a shrewd fellow, and I thought he would be likely to keep near the top of the wheel. But I had a perilous time after getting into Paris before I could find him. I learned as many of the _canaille_ watchwords by heart as I could. I thought they would serve me if I was questioned; but my dangers thickened, until I was at last laid hold of, for not giving satisfactory answers, as _un homme sans aveu_, and was on the point of being conveyed to a _maison d'arret_, when I mentioned the name of Maurice Herbois as a person who could speak in my favor. "What," said one, "_le Citoyen Herbois_?" "The very same," said I, "and little thanks will you get from him for slandering his cousin with a charge of _incivisme_." There was a general shout at this, and off we hurried to find Maurice. I had answered nothing of whence I came or where I was going, which was the reason I had at length got into trouble. I knew Maurice to be a true fellow, revolution or no revolution, and so determined to hold my peace till I should meet him. I found that he had been rapidly advanced by the tide of affairs, which had set him forward whether he would or no. Indeed Maurice was no insignificant fellow at any rate. The noise of the men who carried me along, soon brought him out. I spoke first: "Maurice, my dear cousin, I am glad to find you; but before we can shake hands, you must first certify my--loyalty," I was about to say, but bit my tongue, and got out "_civisme_." "My friends," said Maurice, "this is my cousin Louis Herbois, once a valiant soldier, now a brave and incorruptible _citoyen_. He is trustworthy; he comes to visit me; I vouch for him." This was so satisfactory, that we were greeted with huzzas, and then I went in with Maurice. I need not tell you how much passed between us. In short, we talked till our tongues were tired. I found my cousin as I expected, true as a piece of his own steel. He had been carried along, in spite of himself, in the course of revolution, and had become a great man as the best chance of saving his head. I told him my whole story, and the object of my visit. "A fruitless errand, Louis," said he; "I know the case; and where personal malice is added to the ordinary motive for prosecution, there is no escape. Poor fellow, I wish I could help him; but the uncle, he is in power: ah! there is no help for it." Suddenly a new thought struck him. "Louis, did you come by the Hotel de Ville?" "Yes." "What was going on?" "I looked neither right nor left; I don't know." "Well, what did you hear?" "I heard a cry of _Vive Tallien!_ with strange noises, and shouts, and yells; and somebody said that the National Guards were disbanding, and had forsaken Robespierre; and the people were surrounding the Hotel de Ville." "Then, _Dieu merci_, there is hope. You are in the nick of time; let us out. If Robespierre falls, you may rescue the comte. He is in the Rue St. Martin; in the same prison is Madame de Fontenay, the _friend_ of Tallien, whom Robespierre has incarcerated. The former will proceed thither as soon as Robespierre is disposed of, to free _Madame_; there will be confusion and much tumult. I know the keeper: I must be cautious; but I will discover where the comte and the lady are secured. Then I will leave you with the jailer; the crisis cannot be delayed another day. Wait till you hear them coming, then shout _Vive Tallien!_ run about, dance around like a crazy man--hasten the jailer to release _Madame_, and do _you_ manage to rescue the comte--then be off instantly; don't come here again; strike into the country while the confusion prevails. Come; let us go this minute." And I did go. I found Maurice's introduction potent with the keeper, and what was better, I found the keeper to be an old companion in arms, who had belonged to the same company with me. We embraced; we were like two brothers; nothing could have happened better. I learned from him all I cared to know. I staid hour after hour; just as I was in despair at the delay, I heard the expected advance. I found my fellow-soldier understood what it meant. I began to shout _Vive Tallien!_ as loud as I could cry. In a fit of enthusiasm I snatched the keys from the hands of the keeper, as if to liberate the lady, while my comrade opened the doors to the company. I hied first to the comte's room. In one instant the door was unlocked. "Quick!" I whispered; "follow me--do as I do. Shout, huzza; jump this way and that--but stick close to me." In another minute I had unbolted the door of Madame de Fontenay, making as much noise as I could get from my lungs--the comte keeping very good time to my music. So, while we were shouting _Vive Tallien!_ at the top of our voices, Tallien himself rushed in with a large party. I took the opportunity to gain the street, and without so much as thanking my comrade for his attentions, I glided into an unfrequented lane, the comte at my heels; and I did not stop, nor look around, nor speak, till I found myself under cover of an old windmill near St. Denis, where I used to play when I was a boy. There I came to a halt, and seizing the comte in my arms, I embraced him a thousand times. I look some provisions from my pouch, which my cousin had provided, and bade him eat, for we should stand in need of food. We then proceeded, avoiding the main road, and getting a ride whenever we could, but never wasting a moment--not a moment. I told the comte what had happened, and that he must hasten if he would see his wife alive. At last we came near our house. The comte could scarcely contain himself; he ran before me: I could not keep up with him. How my heart was filled with foreboding!--how I dreaded to come nearer!--but apprehension was soon at an end. There was my little cottage, and in the doorway, leaning for support against the side, stood the comtesse, gazing on vacancy--the picture of despair and desolation. At the sight of her husband, she threw out her hands and tried to advance: she was too feeble, and would have fallen had he not the same moment folded her in his arms. "'_Bien Monsieur!_' continued Louis Herbois, after clearing his voice, 'the worst of the story is told. The comtesse was gradually restored to health, and the comte was content to remain quietly with us till the storm swept past; but the lady never recovered the bright spirits which she before displayed, and the comte himself could never speak of the little one whom he kissed for the last time on that fatal morning, without the deepest emotion. It seems to have been destined that this should be their only affliction. The uncle was beheaded in one of the sudden changes of parties the succeeding year, and in due time the comte regained his estates. Sons and daughters were born to them, and their family have grown up in unbroken numbers. The comte and comtesse can scarcely yet be called old, their health and vigor remain, and they enjoy still those blessings which a kind Providence is pleased to bestow on the most favored. But the Comtesse de Choissy will never forget the child which lies _there_. Twice a year, accompanied by the comte, she visits the cottage. She lays with her own hands fresh flowers over the little grave, and waters the moss which overspreads it; and the tears stand in her eyes when she looks upon the spot where we buried her _first-born_. We have engaged that every morning we will renew the flowers, and preserve the mosses always green. It is a holy office, consecrated by holy feelings. Ah! life is a strange business: we may not be always serious, we cannot be always gay. God grant, Monsieur, that in heaven we may all be happy!' "I have given you the whole story," said Mr. Belcher, after a short pause; "but look, the sun is out; let us go to the Courtgain." [From Fraser's Magazine.] LIFE AT A WATERING-PLACE. OLDPORT SPRINGS. BY CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED. "Hold on a minute," said Harry, as they were about to take the stage, after a very fair three-o'clock dinner at Constantinople (the Occidental, not the Oriental city of that name); "there goes an acquaintance of ours whom you must know. He has arrived by the Westfield train, doubtless." Away sped Benson after the acquaintance, arm-in-arm with whom he shortly returned, and, with all the exultation of an American who has brought two lions into the same cage, introduced M. le Vicomte Vincent Le Roi to the honorable Edward Ashburner. Ashburner was rather puzzled at Le Roi, whose personal appearance did not in any way answer, either to his originally conceived idea of a Frenchman, or to the live specimens he had thus far met with. The Vicomte looked more like an Englishman, or perhaps like the very best kind of Irishman. He was a middle-sized man, of thirty or thereabout, with brown hair and a florid complexion; and very quietly dressed, his clothes being neither obtrusively new nor cut with any ultra-artistic pretension. Except his wearing a moustache and (of course) not speaking English, there was nothing continental about his outward man, or the first impression he gave of himself. Fortunately, he was also bound for the Springs, so that Ashburner would have abundant opportunity to study his character, if so disposed. The stage in which our tourists were to embark was not unlike a French diligence, except that it had but one compartment instead of three; in which compartment there were three seats, and on each seat more or less room for three persons, and two more could sit with the driver. All the baggage was carried on the top. The springs were made like coach-springs, or C-springs, as they are always called in America (just as in England a pilot-coat is called a P-jacket), only they were upright and perpendicular to the axletree instead of curving; and the leathern belts connected with them, on which the carriage swung, were of the thickest and toughest description. As the party, with the addition of Le Roi, amounted to eight, Benson managed, by a little extra expenditure of tin and trouble, to secure the whole of one vehicle, and for the still greater accommodation of the ladies and child, the gentlemen were to sit on the box two at a time by turns. Benson's first object was to get hold of the reins, for which end he began immediately to talk around the driver about things in general. From the price of horses they diverged to the prospects of various kinds of business, and thence slap into the politics of the country. The driver was a stubborn Locofoco, and Benson did not disdain to enter into an elaborate argument with him. Ashburner, who then occupied the other box-seat, was astonished at the man's statistical knowledge, the variety of information he possessed upon local topics, and his accurate acquaintance with the government and institutions of his country. It occurred to him to prompt Benson, through the convenient medium of French, to sound him about England and European politics. This Harry did, not immediately, lest he might suspect the purport of their conversational interlude, but by a dexterous approach to the point after sufficient preliminary; and it then appeared that he had lumped "the despotic powers of the old world" in a heap together, and supposed the Queen of England to be on a par with the Czar of Russia as regarded her personal authority and privileges. However, when Benson set him right as to the difference between a limited and an absolute monarchy, he took the information in very good part, listened to it attentively, and evidently made a mental note of it for future reference. The four-horse team was a good strong one, but the stage with its load heavy enough, and the roads, after the recent storm, still heavier, besides being a succession of hills. The best they could do was to make six miles an hour, and they would not have made three but for a method of travelling down-hill, entirely foreign to European ideas on the subject. When they arrived at the summit there was no talk of putting on the drag, nor any drag to put on, but away the horses went, first at a rapid trot, and soon at full gallop; by which means the equipage acquired sufficient momentum to carry it part of the way up the next hill before the animals relapsed into the slow walk which the steepness of the ascent imposed upon them. Indeed this part of the route would have been a very tedious one (for the country about was almost entirely devoid of interest), had it not been for Le Roi, who came out in great force. He laughed at every thing and with every body; told stories, and good ones, continuously, and only ceased telling stories to break forth into song. In fine, he amused the ladies so much, that when he took his turn on the box they missed him immediately, and sent Benson outside again on the first opportunity; whereat the Vicomte, being very much flattered, waxed livelier and merrier than ever, and kept up a constant fire of jest and ditty. As to Ashburner, who had a great liking for fresh air, and an equal horror of a small child in a stage-coach, he remained outside the whole time; for which the fair passengers set him down as an insensible youth, who did not know how to appreciate good company; until the evening becoming somewhat chilly by comparison with the very hot day they had undergone, both he and Harry took refuge in the interior, and a very jolly party they all made. While they were outside together, Benson had been giving Ashburner some details about Le Roi--in fact, a succinct biography of him; for be it noted, that every New-Yorker is able to produce off-hand a minute history of every person, native or foreign, at all known in society: for which ability he is indebted partly to the inquisitive habits of the people, partly to their communicative disposition, partly to their remarkable memory of small particulars, and partly to a fine imagination and power of invention, which must be experienced to be fully appreciated. Benson, we say, had been, telling his friend the story of his other friend or acquaintance; how he was of good family and no fortune; how he had written three novels and three thousand or more _feuilletons_; how he had travelled into some out-of-the-way part of Poland, where no one had ever been before or since, and about which he was, therefore, at liberty to say what he pleased; how, besides his literary capabilities, such as they were, he played, and sang, and danced, and sketched--all very well for an amateur; how he was altogether a very agreeable and entertaining man, and, as such, was supposed to have been sent out by a sort of mutual-benefit subscription-club, which existed at Paris for the purpose of marrying its members to heiresses in different countries. Ashburner had once heard rumors of such a club in Germany, but was never able to obtain any authentic details concerning it, or to determine whether it was any thing more than a traveller's traditionary legend. Even Benson was at fault here, and, indeed, he seemed rather to tell the club part of the story as a good joke, than to believe it seriously himself. As they approached the termination of their journey, their talk naturally turned more and more on the Springs. The Vicomte was in possession of the latest advices thence; the arrivals and expected arrivals, and the price-current of stock: that is, of marriageable young gentlemen, and all other matters of gossip; how the whole family of the Robinsons was there in full force, with an unlimited amount of Parisian millinery; how Gerard Ludlow was driving four-in-hand, and Lowenberg had given his wife no end of jewelry; how Mrs. Harrison, who ought not to have been (not being of our set), nevertheless _was_ the great lioness of the season; how Miss Thompson, the belle expectant, had renounced the Springs altogether, and shut herself up at home somewhere among the mountains--all for unrequited love of Hamilton White, as was charitably reported; last, but not least, how Tom Edwards had invented six new figures for the German cotillon. Ashburner did not at first altogether understand the introduction of this personage into such good company, supposing from his familiar abbreviation and Terpsichorean attributes that he must be the fashionable dancing-master of Oldport, or perhaps of New-York; but he was speedily given to understand that, on the contrary, Mr. Edwards was a gay bachelor of good family and large fortune, who, in addition to gambling, intriguing, and other pleasant little propensities, had an insatiable passion for the dance, and was accustomed to rotate morning, noon, and night, whenever he was not gambling, &c. as aforesaid. "And," continued Benson, "I'll lay you any bet you please, that the first thing we see on arriving at our hotel, will be Tom Edwards dancing the polka; unless, indeed, he happen to be dancing the Redowa." "Very likely," said Mrs. Benson, "seeing we shall arrive there at ten o'clock, and this is a ball-night." Both Harry and his wife were right; they arrived at half-past ten, just as the ball was getting into full swing. On the large portico in front of the large hotel opened a large room, with large windows down to the floor,--the dining-room of the establishment, now cleared for dancing purposes. All the idlers of Oldport, male and female, black and white, congregated at these windows and thronged the portico; and almost into the very midst of this crowd our party was shot, baggage and all. While Ashburner was looking out of a confused heap of people and luggage, he heard one of the assistant loafers say to another, "Look at Mr. Edwards!" Profiting by the information not originally intended for him, he followed the direction of the speaker's nose, and beheld a little showily-dressed man flying down the room with a large showily-dressed woman, going the _poursuite_ of the Redowa at a terrific rate. So that, literally, the first thing he saw in Oldport was Tom Edwards dancing. But there was no opportunity to make a further study of this, "one of the most remarkable men among us," for the party had to look up their night quarters. Benson had dispatched in advance to Mr. Grabster, proprietor of the Bath Hotel at Oldport Springs, a very particular letter, stating the number of his party, the time he meant to be there, and the number of rooms he wanted, and had also sent his horses on ahead; but though the animals had arrived safe and found stable-room, there was no preparation for their master. Ashburner, at the request of the ladies, followed Benson into the office (for the Bath Hotel being, nominally at least, the first house in the place, had its bar-room and office separate), and found Harry in earnest expostulation with a magnificently-dressed individual, whom he took for Mr. Grabster himself, but who turned out to be only that high and mighty gentleman's head book-keeper. The letter had been dispatched so long beforehand that, even at the rate of American country posts, it ought to have arrived, but no one knew any thing about it. Both the young men suspected--uncharitably, perhaps, but not altogether unnaturally--that Mr. Grabster and his aids, finding a prospect of a full season, had not thought it worth their while to trouble themselves about the application, or to keep any rooms. Ashburner suggested trying another hotel, but the roads were muddy, and vehicles scarce at that time of night, so that altogether there seemed a strong probability of their being compelled to "camp out" on the portico. But it was not in Benson "to give it up so." He possessed, as we have already hinted, that faculty so alarmingly common in his country, which polite people call oratory, and vulgar ones the "gift of the gab;" and he was not the man to throw away the opportunity of turning any of his gifts to account. Warming with his subject, he poured out upon the gorgeously-attired Mr. Black such a flood of conciliatory and expostulatory eloquence, that that gentleman absolutely contrived to find some accommodation for them. The ladies, child, and servants were huddled together into one tolerably large room, in the third story. Benson had a sort of corner-cupboard in the fourth, that might, perhaps, have accommodated a mouse with a small family; and to Ashburner and Le Roi were assigned two small chambers in the fifth. As to the baggage, that was all piled up in the office, with the exception of a few indispensable articles. Supper was out of the question, there being no room to eat it in because of the dancers. The ladies did not want supper; they only regretted not being able to unpack their trunks, and dress for the ball then and there going on; their eyes lighted up at the sound of the music, and their little feet began to beat the floor incontinently. The gentlemen took a drink all round by way of substitute for something more solid. Ashburner had mounted to his dormitory--no small journey--and was sitting on his bed, wishing he had some contrivance for pulling off all his clothes at once without the trouble of removing them piece by piece, when he heard in the passage the voice of Le Roi, _quantum mutatus ab illo_! The Vicomte had sworn up all his own language, and was displaying a knowledge of English expletives that quite surprised his fellow-traveller. On investigation, the cause of his wrath proved to be this: a semi-civilized Irish waiter had shown him to No. 296, in accordance with Mr. Black's directions. But Mr. Black, in the multiplicity of his affairs, had forgotten that No. 296 was already tenanted, to wit, by a Western traveller, who did, indeed, intend to quit it by an early stage next morning, but had not the least idea of giving up his quarters before that time; and accordingly, as if from a presentiment that some attempt would be made to dislodge him, had, in addition to the ordinary not very strong fastenings of the door, so barricaded it with trunks and furniture, that it could have stood a considerable amount of siege. The waiter had gone off, leaving Le Roi to shift for himself. Bells were scarce in the upper stories of the Bath Hotel, nor was there any light throughout the long corridor, except the one tallow candle which his useless guide had deposited on the floor. Utterly upset at the idea of having to tramp down four pair of stairs and back again in search of accommodation, the unlucky Gaul was seeking a momentary relief in the manner above stated, when Ashburner came to the rescue. His bed happened to be rather a large one--so large, comparatively, that it was a mystery how it had ever found its way into the little room, the four walls of which seemed to have grown or been built up around it; and this bed he instantly proposed to share with Le Roi for the night. The Frenchman _mercied_, and couldn't think of such a thing for five minutes, edging into the room and pulling off his coat and boots all the time; then he gave a glorious exemplification of _cessanta causa_, for all his rage vanished in a moment, and he was the same exuberantly good-natured and profusely loquacious man that he had been all day. On he streamed in a perpetual flow of talk long after both were in bed, until Ashburner began to feel as a man might to whom some fairy had given a magical instrument, which discoursed sweet music at first, but could never be made to stop playing. And when at length the Vicomte, having lighted on the subject of women, poured out an infinity of adventures with ladies of all countries, of all which stories Vincent Le Roi was, of course, the hero, his fellow-traveller, unable to help being disgusted at his vanity and levity, turned round to the wall, and without considering whether he was acting in accordance with _bienseance_, fell fast asleep in the midst of one of the most thrilling narratives. When Ashburner awoke next morning, the first thing he was conscious of was Le Roi talking. It required very little exercise of the imagination to suppose that he had been going on uninterruptedly all night. Afterwards he became aware of a considerable disturbance, evidently originating in the lower story of the house, but sufficiently audible all over it, which he put down to the account of numerous new arrivals. By the time they had completed their toilettes (which did not take very long, for the room being just under the roof, was of a heat that made it desirable for them to evacuate it as soon as possible), Benson made his appearance. He had obtained possession of his baggage, and arrayed himself in the extreme of summer costume:--a white grass-cloth coat, about the consistency of blotting-paper, so transparent that the lilac pattern of his check shirt was distinctly visible through the arms of it; white duck vest, white drilled trousers, long-napped white hat, a speckled cravat to match his shirt, and highly varnished shoes, with red and white striped silk stockings,--altogether very fresh and innocent-looking. He came to show them the principal spring, which was not far from the hotel--just a pleasant walk before breakfast, though it was not likely they would meet many people so early, on account of last night's ball. "I am afraid your quarters were not very comfortable," said Harry, as the three strolled arm-in-arm down a sufficiently sandy road; "but we shall have better rooms before dinner to-day." "The house must be very full," Ashburner remarked; "and were there not a great many arrivals this morning? From the noise I heard, I thought at least fifty people had come." "No; I glanced at the book, and there were not a dozen names on it. Hallo!" and Benson swore roundly in Spanish, apparently forgetting that his friend understood that language. Ashburner looked up, and saw meeting them a large Frenchman and a small Irish boy. The Frenchman had an immense quantity of hair of all sorts on his face, nearly hiding his features, which, as what was visible of them had a particularly villainous air, was about the best thing he could have done to them; and on his head he carried a something of felt, which indisputably proved the proposition that matter may exist without form. The Irish youth sported a well-meant, but not very successful attempt at a moustache, and a black cloth cap pitched on one side of his head. In other respects, they were attired in the usual costume of an American snob; that is to say, a dress-coat and full suit of black at seven in the morning. Ashburner noticed that Benson spit ostentatiously while passing them; and after passing he swore again, this time in downright English. Le Roi had seen in his acquaintance with European watering-places, a goodly amount of scamps and blacklegs, and Ashburner was not without some experience of the sort, so that they were not disposed to be curious about one blackguard more or less in a place of the kind; but these two fellows had such a look of unmitigated rascality, that both the foreigners glanced inquiringly at their friend, and were both on the point of asking him some questions, when he anticipated their desire. "God forgive me for swearing, but it is too provoking to meet these loafers in respectable quarters. The ancients used to think their journey spoiled if they met an unclean animal on starting, and I feel as if my whole stay here would go wrong after meeting these animals the first thing in the first morning." "_Mais qu'est ce qu'ils sont donc, ces vaut-riens?_" asked Le Roi. "The Frenchman is a deported convict, who is doing us the honor to serve out his time here; the Irishman is a refugee, I believe. They have come here to report for _The Sewer_." They cooled their virtuous indignation in the spring, and were returning. "Hallo, Benson! Hallo! I thought that was you!" shouted somebody, a quarter of a mile off, from the hotel steps. "Ah," said Harry, "I understand now why you heard so much noise this morning. Bird Simpson has arrived." Mr. Simpson, popularly known as "the bird" (_why_ no one could tell exactly, but people often get such names attached to them for some inexplicable reason), came on a half-run to meet them. He was a tall, showy, and rather handsome, though not particularly graceful man; very flashily got up in a blue cutaway with gilt buttons, wide blue stripes down the sides of his white trousers, a check shirt of enormous crimson pattern, and a red and white cravat; no waistcoat, and wide embroidered braces, the work of some lady friend. He seemed to have dressed himself on the principle of the tricolor, and to have carried it out in his face--his cheeks being very red, his eyes very blue, and his hair very white. After having pump-handled Benson's arm for some time, he made an attack on Le Roi, whom he just knew by name, and inquired if he had just come _de l'autre côte_, meaning the other side of the Atlantic, according to a common New-York idiom; but the Vicomte not unnaturally took it to mean from the other side of the road, and gave a corresponding answer in English as felicitous as Mr. Simpson's French. Then he digressed upon Ashburner, whom he saw to be an Englishman, in so pointed a manner, that Benson was obliged to introduce them; and the introduction was followed by an invitation on Simpson's part to the company to take a drink, which they did, somewhat to the consternation of the Frenchman, who knew not what to make of iced brandy and mint before breakfast. Then Simpson, having primed himself for the morning meal, set about procuring it, and his departure visibly relieved Benson, who was clearly not proud of his acquaintance. Le Roi also went after his breakfast, taking care to get as far as possible from the corner of the room where Simpson was. "There," said Benson, "is a very fair specimen of 'second set.' He is B, No. 1, rather a great man in his own circle, and imports French goods. To hear him talk about French actresses and eating-houses, you would think him a ten-years' resident of that city, instead of having been there perhaps four times in his life, a week each time. But you know we Americans have a wonderful faculty of seeing a great deal in a little time. Just so with Italy; he was there two months, and professes to know all about the country and the people. But he doesn't know the set abroad or at home. Sometimes you meet him at a ball, where he does his duty about supper time; but you will never see him dancing with, or talking to, the ladies who are 'of us.' Nevertheless, they will avail themselves of his services sometimes, when they want to buy silks at wholesale prices, or to have something smuggled for them; for he is the best-natured man in the world. And, after all, he is not more given to scandal than the exquisites, and is a great deal honester and truer. Once I caught a fever out on the north-eastern boundary, and had not a friend with me, or any means of getting help. This man nursed me like a brother, and put himself to no end of trouble for me until we could fetch Carl on. I would certainly rather have been under such an obligation to some other men I know than to Simpson; but having incurred it, I do not think it can be justly paid off with a 'glad-to-know-you-when-I'm-at-Bath-again' acquaintance; and I feel bound to be civil to him, though he does bother me immensely at times with his free-and-easy habits,--walking into my parlor with his hat on and cigar in his mouth; chaffing me or my wife in language about as elegant as an omnibus driver's; or pawing ladies about in a way that he takes for gallantry. Talking of ladies, I wish mine would show themselves for breakfast. Ah, here are two men you must know; they are good types of two classes of our beaux--the considerably French and the slightly English--the former class the more numerous, you are probably aware. Mr. White, Mr. Ashburner--Mr. Ashburner, Mr. Sumner." Hamilton White was a tall, handsome man, some few years on the wrong side of thirty, broader-shouldered and deeper-chested than the ordinary American model, elaborately but very quietly dressed, without any jewelry or showy patterns. There was something very Parisian in his get-up and manner, yet you would never take him for a Frenchman, still less for a Frenchified-Englishman. But he had the look of a man who had lived in a gay capital, and quite fast enough for his years: his fine hair was beginning to go on the top of his head, and his face wanted freshness and color. His manner, slightly reserved at first, rapidly warmed into animation, and his large dark eyes gave double expression to whatever he said. His very smallest talk was immensely impressive. He would tell a stranger that he was happy to make his acquaintance with an air that implied all the Spaniard's _mi casa a la disposicion de usted_, and meant about as much; and when you saw him from the _parquet_ of the Opera talking to some young lady in the boxes, you would have imagined that he was making a dead set at her, when in fact he was only uttering some ordinary meteorological observation. Apart from his knack of looking and talking sentiment, he had no strongly-marked taste or hobby: danced respectably, but not often; knew enough about horses to pick out a good one when he wanted a mount for a riding-party; drank good wine habitually, without being pedantic about the different brands of it; and read enough of the current literature of the day to be able to keep up a conversation if he fell among a literary circle. He was not a marrying man, partly because his income, sufficient to provide him with all bachelor luxuries, was not large enough to support a wife handsomely; partly because that a man should tie himself to one woman for life was a thing he could not conceive, much less practice: but he very much affected the society of the softer sex, and was continually amusing himself with some young girl or young wife. He rather preferred the latter--it was less compromising; still he had no objection to victimize an innocent _débutante_, and leave her more or less broken-hearted. (It must be observed, however, for the credit of American young ladies, that they are not addicted to dying of this complaint, so often fatal in novels; many of Hamilton's victims had recovered and grown absolutely fat upon it, and married very successfully.) Wherever there was a _fiancée_, or a probable _fiancée_, or a married belle with an uxorious husband,--in short, wherever he could make himself look dangerous and another man jealous or foolish, he came out particularly strong; at the same time, being adroit and not over belligerent, he always contrived to stop or get out of the way in time if the other party showed open signs of displeasure. Frank Sumner was rather shorter than White, rather younger, and rather more dressed. He had the same broad shoulders, which in America, where most of the beaux are either tall and thin or short and thin, find favor with the ladies; just as blondes create a sensation in southern countries, because they are so seldom seen. In almost all other particulars, the two men were totally unlike, and Sumner might have passed for an English gentleman put into French clothes. He was reserved in his conversation, and marked in the expression of his likes and dislikes. With no more intention of marrying than White, he took care never to make love to any woman, and if any woman made love to him, he gave her no encouragement. He was not richer than White, not so good-looking, and certainly not so clever, but more respected and more influential; for the solid and trustworthy parts of his character, backed by a bull-dog courage and an utter imperturbability, got the better in the long run of the other's more brilliant qualities. Some of these things Ashburner observed for himself, some of them Benson told him after White and Sumner, who did _not_ ask the stranger to take a drink, had passed on. He had noticed that the latter's manner, though perfectly civil, was very cold compared with the _empressement_ which the former had exhibited. "He doesn't like your countrymen," said Harry, "and nothing can vex him more than to be told, what is literally the truth, that he resembles an Englishman in many respects. I believe it is about the only thing that _can_ vex him. What an immovable man it is! I have seen a woman throw a lighted cigar into his face, and another cut off one end of his moustache (that was when we were both younger, and used to see some queer scenes abroad), and a servant drop half a tureen of soup over him, and none of these things stirred him. Once at Naples, I recollect, he set our chimney on fire. Such a time we had of it; every one in the house tumbling into our room, from the _piccolo_, with no coat and half a pair of pants, to the proprietor in his dressing-gown and spectacles--women calling on the Virgin, men running after water--and there sat Frank, absolutely radiating off so much coolness, that he imparted a portion of it to me, and we sat through the scene as quietly as if they had only been laying the cloth for dinner. A rum pair they must have thought us! The day before we had astonished the waiter by lighting brandy over a pudding. I suppose we left them under the impression that the Anglo-Saxons had a propensity to set fire to every thing they came in contact with." "It is very odd that so many of your people should be afraid of resembling us, and take the French type for imitation in preference to the English. The original feeling of gratitude to France for having assisted you in the war of independence, does not seem sufficient to account for it." "Certainly not; for that feeling would naturally diminish in succeeding generations, whereas the Gallicism of our people is on the increase,--in fact its origin is of comparatively recent date. But we really _are_ more like the French in some senses. Politically the American is very Anglo-Saxon. So he is morally; but socially, so far as you can separate society from morals, he is very French. The Englishman's first idea of his duty in society is non-interference; the Frenchman's and American's, amusement. An Englishman does not think it his business to endeavor to amuse the company in which he happens to be; an Englishwoman does not think it her duty to make any attempt to entertain a man who is introduced to her. A Frenchman will rather talk trash, _knowing that he is talking trash_, than remain silent and let others remain silent. So will an American. But an Englishman, unless he is sure of saying something to the point, will hold his tongue. The imperturbable self-possession of the English gentleman is generally understood by us, any more than it is by the French. His minding his own business is attributed to selfish indifference. The picture that half our people form of an Englishman is, a heavy, awkward man, very badly dressed, courageous, and full of learning; but devoid of all the arts and graces of life, and caring for nobody but himself. It is a great pity that there is not a better understanding; but, unfortunately, the best Englishmen who come here seldom stay long enough to be appreciated, and the best Americans who go to England seldom stay there long enough to appreciate the country. Whenever an American chances to stay some years among you, he ends by liking England very much; but it is very seldom that he has any provocation, unless compelled by business, to stay some years, for acquaintances are harder to make in London than in any other city, while it has less resources for a man without acquaintances than any other city--besides being so dear. But here come the ladies at last; now for breakfast." Breakfast was the best managed meal at the Bath Hotel. The _table d'hôte_ began at half past seven, but fresh relays of rolls and eggs, ham, chops, and steaks, were always to be obtained until half-past ten or eleven by those who had interest with the waiters. After breakfast the company went to work promenading. There was a very wide hall running through the hotel, and up and down this, and up and down the two broadest sides of the portico, all the world walked--"our set" being conspicuous from the elegance of their morning costume. One side of the portico was devoted to the gentlemen and their cigars, and there Ashburner and Benson took a turn, leaving with the ladies Le Roi and a small beau or two who had joined them. Suddenly Benson pressed his friend's arm. "Here comes _really_ 'one of the most remarkable men'--the very god of the dance; behold Tom Edwards!" Ashburner beheld a little man, about five feet and a half high. If he could have stood on his bushy black beard it would have lifted him full three inches higher. Besides this beard he cherished a small moustache, very elaborately curling-tongsed at the ends into the shape of half a lyre. Otherwise he had not much hair on his head, but what he had was very carefully brushed. His features were delicate, and not without intelligence, but terribly worn by dissipation. To look at his figure, you would take him for a boy of nineteen; to look at his face, for a man of thirty: he was, probably, about half way between the two ages. Every thing about him was wonderfully neat: a white coat and hat like Benson's; cream-colored waistcoat and pearl-colored trousers; miraculously small feet in resplendent boots, looking more like a doll's extremities than a man's; a fresh kid glove on one of his little hands, and on the other a sapphire ring, so large that Ashburner wondered how the little man could carry it, and thought that he should, like Juvenal's dandies, have kept a lighter article for summer wear. Then he had a watch-chain of great balls of blue enamel, with about two pounds of chatelaine charms dependent therefrom; and delicate little enamelled studs, with sleeve-buttons to match. Altogether he was a wonderful lion, considering his size. Even Benson had not the courage to stop and introduce his friend until he passed the great dancer more than once, in silent admiration, and with a respectful bow. And as they passed he detailed to Ashburner, with his usual biographical accuracy, the history of Tom Edwards, which he had begun in the stage-coach. Tom had been left in his infancy with a fortune and without a father, to be brought up by relatives who had an unlucky preference of Parisian to American life. Under their auspices and those of other Mentors, whom he found in that gay capital, his progress was so rapid, that at a very early age he was known as the banker of two or three distinguished _lorettes_, and the pet pupil of the renowned Cellarius. Indeed, he had lived so much in the society of that gentleman and his dancing girls, that he took the latter for his standard of female society, and had a tendency to behave to all womankind as he behaved to them. To married ladies he talked slightly refined _double-entendre_: to young ladies he found it safest to say very little, his business and pleasure being to dance with them; if they did not dance, he gave them up for uncivilized beings, and troubled himself no further about them. Of old people of either sex he took no further notice than to order them out of the way when they impeded the polkers, or dance bodily over them when they disobeyed. Still it must be said, in justice to him, that dancing was not his sole and all-absorbing pursuit. Having an active turn of mind and body, he found leisure for many other profitable amusements. He was fond of that noble animal, the horse, gambled habitually, ate and drank luxuriously,--in short, burned his candle at a good many ends: but the dance was, though not his sole, certainly his favorite passion; and he was never supremely happy but when he had all the chairs in the house arranged in a circle, and all the boys and women of "our set" going around them in the German cotillon, from noon to midnight at a (so-called) _matinée_, or from midnight to daybreak at a ball. "And now," said Benson, "I think my cousin Gerard must be up by this time; he and Edwards are generally the last to come down to breakfast. Perhaps we shall find him at the ten-pin alley; I see the ladies are moving that way." To the ten-pin alley they went. Down stairs, men were playing, coat off and cigar in mouth; while others waited their turn, with feet distributed in various directions. Above, all was decorum; the second story being appropriated to the ladies and their cavaliers. And very fond of the game the ladies were, for it afforded them an opportunity of showing off a handsome arm, and sometimes a neat ankle. Gerard was not there; they had to wait some time for alleys: altogether Benson was a little bored, and whispered to his friend that he meant to console himself by making a little sensation. "By your play?" asked Ashburner. "No, but by taking off my coat." "Why, really, considering the material of your coat, I think it might as well be on as off. Surely you can't find it an impediment?" "No, but I mean to take it off for fun,--just to give the people here something to talk about; they talk so much about so little. They will be saying all over by to-morrow that Mr. Benson was in the ladies' room half undressed." After an hour's rolling they turned hotelwards again, and as they did so a very spicy phaeton, with gray wheelers and black leaders, drove up to the door. A tall, handsome man, handed out a rather pretty and very showily-dressed little woman; and Ashburner recognized Gerard Ludlow. It was not the first time he had seen Gerard. They had travelled half over Greece together, having accidentally fallen upon the same route. As the Honorable Edward had all the national fear of compromising himself, and Gerard was as proud and reserved as any Englishman, they went on together for days without speaking, although the only Anglo-Saxons of the party. At last, Ludlow having capsized, horse and all, on a particularly bad road, Ashburner took the liberty of helping to pick him up, and then they became very good friends. Gerard was at that time in the full flush of youth and beauty, and the lion of the Italian capital which he had made his headquarters, where it was currently reported that a certain very desirable countess had made desperate love to him, and that a rich nobleman (for there are _some_ rich noblemen still left on the continent) had tried very hard to get the handsome foreigner for a son-in-law. Knowing this and some other similar stories about him, Ashburner was a little curious to see Mrs. Ludlow, and confessed himself somewhat disappointed in her; he found her rather pretty, and certainly not stupid; lively and agreeable in her manners, like most of her countrywomen; but by no means remarkably distinguished either for beauty or wit. Benson explained to him that his cousin "had married for tin." "But Ludlow always talked of his father as a rich man, and his family as a small one. I should have supposed money about the last thing he would have married for." "Yes, he had prospects of the best; but he wanted ready money and a settled income. He was on a small allowance; he knew the only way to get a handsome one was to marry, and that the more money his wife brought, the more his father would come down with. So as Miss Hammersley had eight thousand a year, old Ludlow trebled it; and Gerard may build as many phaetons as he likes. I don't mean to say that the match is an uncongenial one--they have many tastes alike; but I do mean to say that love had nothing to do with it." "Well, I used to think that in your unsophisticated Republican country, people married out of pure love; but now it looks as if the fashionables, at least, marry for money about as often as we do." "They don't marry for any thing else," replied Benson, using one of the slang phrases of the day.[26] While the two friends were gossiping, Sumner and Le Roi had carried off the ladies; and an assemblage of juvenile beaux and young girls, and some few of the younger married women, had extemporized a dance in the largest of the public parlors, which they kept up till two o'clock, and then vanished--to dress, as it appeared, for the three o'clock dinner. Benson's party had obtained their apartments at last,--a parlor and two bedrooms for the ladies on the first floor, and chambers for the three men in the second story, of a recently built wing, popularly known as "the Colony," where most of the gay bachelors, and not a few of the young married men, slept. At dinner the ladies presented themselves as much dressed as they could be without being _décolletées_; and the men had doffed their grass-cloth or linen garments, and put on dress-coats, or, at least, black coats. Ashburner was a good-looking young man enough, and had sufficient vanity to take notice, in the course of the morning, that he was an object of attention; at dinner many looks were directed towards him, but with an expression of disappointment which he did not exactly understand at the time, but afterwards learned the reason of from his friend. Though making no pretensions to the title of exquisite, he happened to have a very neat shooting-jacket, unexceptionable in material and fit; and "our set," having approved of this, were curious to see what sort of costume he would display at dinner. When, therefore, he came to table, Avec les mêmes bas et la même cravate, and the shooting-jacket unchanged, they were visibly disappointed. Benson, to keep him in countenance, had retained his white coat, on the plea of its being most wanted then, as they were in the hottest part of the day, which excuse did not enable him to escape some hints from his sister-in-law, and a direct scolding from his wife. Our Englishman thought the dinner hardly worth so much dressing for. The dishes, so far as he had an opportunity of judging, were tolerably cooked; but their number was not at all proportionate to that of the guests; in short, it was a decided case of short commons, and the waiters were scarce to match. There were but two parties well attended to. One was the family of an old gentleman from the South, who was part owner of the building, and who, besides this advantage, enjoyed the privilege of letting his daughter monopolize the piano of the public parlor half the day, to sing Italian _arias_ shockingly out of tune, much to the disgust of the boarders generally, and especially of the dancing set, who were continually wanting the instrument themselves for polking purposes. The other was----the reporters of _The Sewer_; who had a choice collection of dishes and waiters always at their command. To be sure they had their end of the table to themselves, too, for not a person sat within three chairs of them on either side; but this they, no doubt, accepted as a complimentary acknowledgment of their formidable reputation. Every one else was famished. The married women grumbled, and scolded their husbands--those convenient scapegoats of all responsibility; the young ladies tried to look very sentimental, and above all such vulgar anxiety as that of meat and drink, but only succeeded in looking very cross; the men swore in various dialects at the waiters whenever they could catch them flying, and the waiters being used to it didn't mind it; and Ashburner, as a recollection of a former conversation flitted across his mind, could not help letting off a _tu quoque_ at his friend. "I say, Benson," quoth he, "is this one of the hotels that are so much better than ours, and that our people ought to take a lesson from?" Harry looked half-a-dozen bowie-knives at him. Besides the natural irritation produced by hunger, his wife and sister-in-law had been whipping him over each other's shoulders for the last half-hour, and now this last remark made him ready to boil over. For a few seconds his face wore an expression positively dangerous, but in another moment the ridiculous side of the case struck him. With a good-humored laugh he called for some wine--the only thing one was sure to get, as it was an extra, and a pretty expensive one, too, on the hills--and they drowned their hunger in a bumper of tolerable champagne. The fact was, that the Bath Hotel had been a most excellent house three or four summers previous, and the "enterprising and gentlemanly" landlord (to borrow an American penny-a-liner's phrase) having made a fortune, as he deserved, had sold out his lease, with the good-will and fixtures of the establishment, to Mr. Grabster. The latter gentleman was originally a respectable farmer and market-gardener in the vicinity of Oldport; and having acquired by his business a fair sum of money, was looking about for some speculation in which to invest it. He commenced his new profession with tolerably good intentions, but having as much idea of keeping a hotel as he had of steering a frigate, and finding a balance against him at the end of the first season from sheer mismanagement, he had been endeavoring ever since to make up for it by screwing his guests in every way. People naturally began to complain. Two courses were open to him--to improve his living, or to tip an editor to puff him. He deemed the latter course the cheaper, and bought _The Sewer_, which, while uttering the most fulsome adulation of every thing connected with the Bath Hotel, frightened the discontented into silence through dread of its abuse. Ludlow, and some of the other exclusives, had, in the beginning of the present season, contrived a remedy, which, for the time, was perfectly successful. They held a private interview with the cook, and made up a weekly contribution for him, on condition of their having the best of every thing, and enough of it, for dinner; and the waiters were similarly retained. For a time this worked to a marvel, and the subscribers were as well fed as they could desire. But the other guests began to make an outcry against the aristocracy and exclusiveness of private dishes on a public table, and the servants soon hit upon a compromise of their own, which was to take the money without rendering the _quid pro quo_. This, of course, soon put an end to the payments, and things were on the old starvation footing again. After dinner, every body who had horses rode or drove. The roads about Oldport were heavy and sandy, and terrible work the dust made with the ladies' fine dresses and the gentlemen's fine coats. "Rather different from the drives about Baden-Baden," said Benson. "Yes; but I suppose we must console ourselves on moral grounds, and remember, that there we owe the beautiful promenades to the gambling-table, while here we are without the roads, and also without the play." "Ah, but isn't there play here! only all _sub rosâ_. Wait a while, and you'll find out." And Ashburner did find out before many nights, when the footsteps and oaths of the young gamblers returning at four in the morning to their rooms in the "Colony," woke him out of his first sleep. After the drive, tea--still at the _table-d'hôte_--and after tea, dressing for the ball, which this night was at the Bellevue House, appropriately so called from commanding a fine view of nothing. As the Bellevue was not a fashionable hotel (although the guests were sufficiently fed there), some of the exclusive ladies had hesitated about "assisting" on the occasion; but the temptation of a dance was too strong to be resisted, and they all ultimately went. Le Roi accompanied the Bensons in the all-accommodating Rockaway. The Bellevue had a "colony," too, in the second story of which was the ballroom. As they ascended the stairs, the lively notes of _La Polka Sempiternelle, composée par Josef Bungel, et dédiée à M. T. Edwards_, reached their ears; and hardly were they over the threshold when Edwards himself hopped up before them, and without other preface or salutation than a familiar nod, threw his arm round Mrs. Benson's waist, and swung her off in the dance; while Sumner, who had simultaneously presented himself to Miss Vanderlyn, took similar possession of her. "Do you dance?" "No, I thank you." While Benson asked the question, Le Roi dived at a girl and whirled her away: almost before Ashburner had answered it, his friend shot away from him, making point at a young married lady in the distance; and his bow of recognition ended in the back-step of the polka, as the two went off together at a killing pace. In five seconds from the time of entrance, Ashburner was left standing alone at one end of the room, and his companions were twirling at the other. For so habituated were the dancers to their fascinating exercise, that they were always ready to go at the word, like trained horses. And certainly the dancing was beautiful. He had never seen gentlemen move so gracefully and dexterously in a crowded room as these young Americans did. Le Roi and Röwenberg, who, by virtue of their respective nationalities, were bound to be good dancers, looked positively awkward alongside of the natives. As to the ladies, they glided, and swam, and realized all the so-often-talked-of-and-seldom-seen "poetry of motion." Indeed Ashburner thought they did it too well. He thought of Catiline's friend, commemorated by Sallust, who "danced better than became a modest woman." He thought some of their displays were a little operatic, and that he had seen something like them at certain balls in Paris--_not_ the balls of the Faubourg St. Germain. He thought that the historian's aphorism might be extended to the male part of the company,--and that they danced better than became intelligent men. He thought--but as he prudently kept thoughts to himself, and as some of his foreign prejudice may have been at the bottom of them, we will not stop to record them all. By and by there was a quadrille for the benefit of the million, during which the exclusives rested, and Ashburner had full opportunity of observing them. The first thing that struck him was the extreme youth of the whole set, and more especially of the masculine portion of it. Old men there were none. The old women, that is to say, the mammas and aunts, were stuck into corners out of the way, and no one took any notice of them. Hamilton White was quite an old beau by comparison--almost superannuated. Sumner would have been nearly off the books but for his very superior dancing. Even Benson seemed a middle-aged man compared with the majority of "our set," who averaged between boys of seventeen and young men of twenty-four. And the more juvenile the youth, the larger and stiffer was his white tie. Some of these neck-fastenings were terrific to behold, standing out a foot on each side of the wearer. All the Joinvilles that Ashburner had ever seen, on all the gents in London or elsewhere, faded into insignificance before these portentous cravats. He could not help making some observations on this fashion to Benson, as he encountered him promenading with a fair _polkiste_. "Did you ever notice the whiffletrees of my team-trotting wagon, how they extend on each side beyond the hubs of the wheels? They serve for feelers in a tight place: wherever you clear your whiffletrees, you can clear your wheels; and these cravats are built on the same principle--wherever you clear your tie, you can clear your partner." By one in the morning the democracy of the ballroom had had enough of four hours' dancing and looking on. "Our set" was left in full possession of the floor. Forthwith they seized upon all the chairs, and the interminable German cotillon commenced. It lasted two hours--and how much longer Ashburner could not tell. When he went away at three, the dancers looked very deliquescent, but gave no symptoms of flagging. And so ended his first day's experience of an American watering-place. FOOTNOTES: [26] This is the strongest American (slang) way of putting an affirmation; and, probably, the strongest instance of it on record is that of a Bowery boy, who, when asked by a clergyman, "Wilt thou have this woman?" replied, "I won't have any one else." [From the Dublin University Magazine.] THE MYSTIC VIAL: OR, THE LAST DEMOISELLE DE CHARREBOURG. _Continued from page 75._ PART II. VI.--THE MINIATURE. Lucille had not, therefore, gained by her marriage the position to which her ambition aspired. She had made several ineffectual efforts to dissolve the spell of isolation which seemed to seclude the intercourse of the Chateau des Anges from all human ken and visitation as absolutely as the palace of a merman. With the exception, however, of a few visits from the great ladies who resided in the neighborhood, no casual beams from the brilliant world of rank and fashion without penetrated the dismal shadows of her gorgeous abode. She was dissatisfied, angry, and resolved upon the earliest fitting occasion to rebel against the selfish tyranny which consigned her to solitude and monotony. She had hitherto gained nothing by those little expedients, hints, and even entreaties, which are sometimes found so effectual in like cases. The old fermier-general was just as smiling and as promising as the Chateau des Anges itself, but, alas! as absolutely impenetrable. An iron will encountered and repressed all her shifts and struggles. She chafed and coaxed alike in vain. Whether the bird sang or fluttered, the bars of her cage were immovable. Under these circumstances, no very cordial feelings began to animate the fiery girl respecting her resolute and reserved old helpmate. Meanwhile the humble cottage in the park of Charrebourg was deserted, and permitted to fall to decay, for the old visconte, and even Marguerite, had been removed to the establishment at Des Anges, and so, in process of time, the little walks were overgrown with grass, the fences spread and straggled, dark green plants clambered to the roof, and weeds showed themselves over the tiled vestibule and even ventured into the inner chambers. Thus time and nature, in mournful alliance, began their obliterating work. But there were some plants and flowers which grew outside what had been for so long Mademoiselle Lucille de Charrebourg's window. They had been the objects of her care, and Gabriel!--sweet but sorrowful remembrance!--had been, in those happy times, privileged to tend them for her. Poor Gabriel was now desolate indeed, but he pleased himself with dressing those flowers, and watering, and weeding them day by day, just as if she were there; and he would then sit on the bank that bounded the bowling-green, and watch the desolate casement where he used so often to see that face that too probably was never more to beam on him. And thus hours would glide away, and, young as he was, he came to live chiefly in the past. And generally when he rose, and with an effort, and many a backward look, lingeringly departed, he would strengthen his sinking heart with some such reflection as this:-- "She did not love the fermier-general--it was the visconte who made her marry him. This Monsieur Le Prun--what was he at first but a roturier--no better than myself--and made his own money--fortune may yet befriend me also. I have energies, and resolution, and courage, for her sake, to dare ten thousand deaths. I'll not despair. And then the old fellow can't live _very_ long--a few years--and so who knows yet what may befall?" There was one beautiful rose which grew close to the window, and which Lucille herself had planted, and this tree Gabriel came gradually to regard as connected by some sweet and silent sympathy with the features and feelings of its mistress. When it drooped, she, he thought, was sick or in sorrow; when, on the contrary, it was covered with blossoms and fresh leaves, she was full of smiles and health; when a rough gust tore its slender sprays, some vexation and disappointment had fretted her; and when again it put forth new buds and sprouts, these were forgotten, and time had gathered round her new hopes and delights. Thus this tree became to him an object of strangely tender interest, and he cherished the fancy that, in tending and guarding it, he was protecting the fortunes and the happiness of poor Lucille. Meanwhile, as a sort of beginning of that great fortune that awaited him, he obtained employment as an under-gardener at the Chateau de Charrebourg, which had just been let to a wealthy noble, whose millions had elevated him (like Monsieur le Prun) from the bourgeoisie to his present rank. But we must return to the Chateau des Anges. Lucille's apartments were situated at a side of the chateau overlooking a small court communicating with the greater one at the front of the building; and this narrow area was bounded by a lofty wall, which separated the other pleasure-grounds from the park. It was night; Lucille and her gentle companion, Julie, had been chatting together, as young-lady friends will do, most confidentially. The little maiden had detailed all her sadness and alarms. Her married companion had been fluent and indignant upon her wrongs and disappointments. Each felt a sort of relief, and drawn as it were into a securer intimacy, by the absence of Monsieur le Prun, who was that night necessarily absent upon business. The conversation had now shifted to Julie's engagement. "And so, I suppose, I must marry him. Is it not a cruel tyranny to compel one who desires nothing but to live and die among good Christians, in the quiet of a convent, to marry a person whom she does not or cannot love?" "Yes, Julie, so it seems; but you may yet be happier so married, than leading the life you long for. Remember, Julie, he is not a man who has outlived the warmth, and tenderness, and trust of youth. He is still capable of a generous passion, and capable of inspiring one. There is no grief like the tyranny of one whom law and not love has made your master." As they conversed, some cases of Lucille's lay open on the table before her companion, who had been amusing herself in girlish fashion by the varied splendor and exquisite taste of the jewelry they contained. "This brooch," she said, taking up a miniature in enamel, representing some youthful tradition of Monsieur le Prun's person, set round with diamonds, "is set very like mine, but I hate to look at it." "It represents, then----" "The Marquis. Yes." "The world calls him handsome, I am told." "Yes, but somehow, if he be so, I can't perceive it; he does not please me." "Well, then, bring me the miniature, and I will pronounce between you and the world." With a melancholy smile Julie ran to her own apartment, hard by, and in a few minutes returned. With curiosity all alive, Lucille took the brooch and looked at it. "Well, what say you?" asked Julie, who stood behind her chair, gazing at the trinket over her shoulder. Lucille was silent, although nearly a minute had elapsed. "He certainly has the noble air," she continued; but still Lucille offered no criticism. On a sudden she put down the miniature sharply on the table, and said, abruptly, "It is time to go to rest; let us go to bed." She rose and turned full round on Julie as she spoke. Her face was pale as death, and her eyes looked large and gleaming. Her gaze was almost wild. "Are you ill?" said Julie, frightened, and taking her hand, which was quite cold. "O, no, no," said Lucille quickly, with a smile that made her pallor and her dilated stare more shocking. "No, no, no--tired, vexed, heart-sick of the world and of my fate." Julie, though shocked and horrified, thought she had never seen Lucille look so handsome before. She was an apparition terrible, yet beautiful as a lost angel. "You are, after all, right," she said suddenly. "I--I believe I _am_ ill." The windows of the apartment descended to the floor, and opened upon a balcony. She pushed the casement apart, and stood in the open air. Julie had hurried to her assistance, fearing she knew not what, and stood close by her. Never was scene so fitted to soothe the sick brain, and charm the senses with its sad and sweet repose. The pure moon, high in the deep blue of the heavens, shed over long rows of shimmering steps, and urns, and marble images--over undulating woodlands, and sheets of embowered and sleeping water, and distant hills, a mournful and airy splendor. It seemed as though nature were doing homage to so much beauty. The old forest wafted from his broad bosom a long hushed sigh as she came forth; the moon looked down on her with a serene, sad smile; and the spirits of the night-breeze sported with her tresses, and kissed her pale lips and forehead. At least five minutes passed in silence. Lucille, on a sudden, said-- "So, at the end of a year you will be married?" It seemed to Julie that the countenance that was turned upon her gleamed with an expression of hatred which froze her. But the moonlight is uncertain, and may play wild freaks with the character of an excited face. "Yes, dear Lucille; alas! yes," she answered, in a tone that was almost deprecatory. "Well, well, I am better now," she said, after a second interval. "My head, Julie--my poor head!" "Have you a pain there, dear Lucille?" "Yes, yes, it's all there," she said, abstractedly; and, returning, she kissed her gentle companion, bade her good night, and was alone. Julie was strangely perplexed by the scene which had just occurred. She could account for it upon no theory but the supposition that some flickering vein of insanity was shooting athwart her reason, and as suddenly disappeared. As soon as she was partially composed, she kneeled down at the bedside, and prayed long and fervently; and for far the greater part of the time poor Lucille was the sole theme of her supplications. At last she lay down, and composed herself to sleep. Spite of the unpleasant images with which her mind was filled, slumber ere long overpowered her. But these painful impressions made teasing and fantastic shapes to themselves. Her pillow was haunted, and strange dreams troubled her slumbering senses. From one of these visions she awoke with a start, and found herself sitting upright in her bed, with her heart beating fast with terror. A burst of passionate wailing from Lucille's apartments thrilled her with a sort of terror at the same moment. In hushed uncertainty she listened for a repetition of the sound; but in vain. She was prompted to go and try whether she needed any help or comfort; but something again withheld her; and, after another interval of somewhat excited reflection, she once more gradually fell asleep. Again, however, hateful visions tormented her. She dreamed that a phantom, said to have haunted the chateau for ages, and known by the familiar title of "La Belle Colombe," was pursuing her from chamber to chamber, dressed in her accustomed shroud of white; and had at last succeeded in chasing her into a chamber from which there was no second door of escape--when she awoke with a start; and, behold! there was a light in the room, and a female form, dressed in white, standing between the bedside and the door. For some moments she fancied that she saw but the continuation of her dream, and awaited the further movements of the figure with the fascination of terror. But gradually her senses reported more truly, and she perceived that the figure in white was indeed Lucille--pale, haggard; while with one she held the candlestick, with the other she motioned slowly towards the bed, which she was approaching with breathless caution, upon tiptoe. With an effort Julie succeeded in calling her by name, almost expecting as she did so to see the whole apparition vanish into air. "Awake, awake; how softly you breathe, Julie!" said Lucille, drawing close to the bedside, and drawing the curtains. "Yes, dear Lucille; can I do any thing for you?" "No, no--nothing but----" "How do you feel now?--are you better?" "Yes, better than I desire to be." "But why are you here, dear Lucille? Has any thing--_frightened_ you?" "Ha! then you heard it, did you?" "Heard it? What?" "Why, how long have you been awake--did you--did you hear music--singing?" "No, no; but in truth, dear Lucille, I thought I heard you weeping." "O, nonsense; who minds a girl's weeping. But you heard nothing else?" "No, indeed." Lucille appeared greatly relieved by this assurance. She stooped over her and kissed her; and it was not until her face was thus brought near that Julie could perceive how worn and wan with weeping it was. "I have been dreaming, then; yes, yes, I suspected as much--_dreaming_," she said; and, as she reached her own room, she muttered-- "Well, God be thanked, she did _not_ hear it. But what can it mean? What madness and crime can have conjured up these sounds? What can it mean but guilt, danger, and despair?" VII.--THE DEVIL'S COACH. It seemed to Julie that Lucille was moody and abstracted next morning. Sometimes for a few moments she talked and smiled as before, but this was fitfully, and with an effort. She appeared like one brooding over some wrong that had taken possession of her thoughts, or some dark and angry scheme which engrossed her imagination. She soon left Julie and retired to her own apartments. When Monsieur Le Prun returned, some time after noon, not finding his young wife in her usual chamber, he went up stairs to wish her good day in her own suite of rooms. He was surprised at the sullen and stormy countenance with which she greeted him. She had not yet ventured to rebel against his authority, although she had frequently hinted her remonstrances and wrongs. But there was now a darkness charged with thunder on her brow, and the fermier-general began seriously (in nautical phrase) to look out for squalls. "Good-day, my pretty wife." "Good-day, sir." "Are you well to-day?" "No." "Hey? that's a pity; what ails you, my charming little wife?" "Solitude." "Solitude! pooh, pooh! why, there is Julie." "Julie has her _young_ lover to think of." "And when you weary of her," he continued, resolved not to perceive the slight but malicious emphasis, "you have got your own sweet thoughts to retire upon." "My thoughts are ill company, sir." "Well, as it seems to me, the pretty child is out of temper to-day," he said, with evident chagrin. "Perhaps I am--it is natural--I should be a fool were I otherwise." "Par bleu! what new calamity is this?" he asked, with a smile and a shrug. "Nothing new, sir." "Well, what _old_ calamity?" The past night had wrought a change in Lucille; and, little as she had ever liked M. Le Prun, she now felt a positive hatred of him, and she answered with a gloomy sort of recklessness-- "Sir, I am a prisoner." "Tut, tut! pretty rogue." "Yes, a prisoner; _your_ prisoner." "A prisoner on parole, perhaps; but provided, pretty captive, you don't desert me, you may wander where you will." "Pshaw! that is nonsense," she said sharply. "Nonsense!" he repeated, testily; "it is no such thing, madame; you have the handsomest equipages in France. Pray, when did I refuse you carriages, or horses, or free egress from this place? par bleu! or lock the gates, madame? Treated as you are, how _can_ you call yourself a prisoner?" "What advantage in carriages, and horses, and open gates, when we are surrounded by a desert?" "A desert? what do you mean?" "There is not a soul to speak to." "Not a soul--why, you are jesting; pray, is the Marquise de Pompignaud nobody? is the Conte de la Perriere nobody?" "_Worse_ than nobody, monsieur: I should prefer a desert to a wilderness haunted by such creatures." "_Sacre!_ what does the child want?" "What every wife in France commands--society, sir." "Well, I say you have got it: independently of your immediate domestic circle, you have a neighborhood such as ought to satisfy any reasonable person. There are persons fully as well descended as yourself, and others nearly as rich as I am, all within easy visiting distance." "The rich are all plebeians, and the nobles are all poor; there is and can be in a group so incongruous no cordiality, no gayety, no splendor; in a word, no such society as the last descendant of the Charrebourgs may reasonably aspire to." "It is fully as numerous and respectable, notwithstanding, as the society which the last descendant of the Charrebourgs enjoyed in the ancestral park where first I had the honor of making her acquaintance." "Yes; but not such as with my birth and beauty I might and _must_ have commanded, sir." "Well, what do you expect? These people won't give fêtes." "Bring me to Paris, sir; I wish to take my place among the noble society, where I may meet my equals; and at court, where I may, like all my ancestry, see my sovereign. Here, sir, my days fly by in melancholy isolation; I am kept but to amuse your leisure; this, sir, is not indulgence--it is selfish and tyrannical." Monsieur Le Prun looked angrier and uglier than ever she had seen him before. His eyes looked more black and prominent, and his face a great deal paler. But he did not trust himself with an immediate answer; and his features, as if in the effort to restrain the retort his anger prompted, underwent several grotesque and somewhat ghastly contortions. His handsome wife, meanwhile, sat sullen and defiant, daring, rather than deprecating, the menaced explosion of his wrath. Their matrimonial bickerings, however, were not so soon to reach their climax. Monsieur Le Prun contrived to maintain a silent self-command--thrust his hands into his pockets, walked to the window humming an air, and after a few moments' pause, turned abruptly and left the room. Near the stair-head he met old Marguerite on her way to Lucille's apartments. He signed to her to follow him, and entered a chamber there. She perceived the unmistakable traces of angry excitement in his face--always sinister in an old man, but in one so powerful, and about whom she had heard so many dark rumors, full of vague terrors. As soon as he had closed the door, he said to her-- "I hope they make you comfortable here, Marguerite?" "Yes, sir, very comfortable," she replied, with a low courtesy, and trembling a good deal. "Well, Marguerite, I suppose you would wish to make a suitable return. Now, some vile miscreant meddler, who has got the ear of your young mistress, has been endeavoring to make her unhappy in her present secluded situation--I think I could place my hand upon the culprit; but at all events, do _you_ lose no opportunity henceforward of cheering her, and reconciling your young mistress, to this most suitable residence." It was perfectly plain from his looks, that Monsieur Le Prun suspected _her_ of being the "meddler" in question; but before she could muster presence of mind to attempt her exculpation, he was gone. The interview was like an ugly, flitting dream. His angry face and menacing croak had scared her senses but for a moment; the apparition had vanished, and, with a heart still beating fast, she went stealthily on her way. Now Julie perceived that a change had taken place in Lucille--she was anxious and excited, and appeared morbidly and passionately eager to share in those amusements which before she had desired with comparative moderation. "Julie, I _will_ mix in the world; I _will_ meet people and associate with my equals--I am resolved upon it. If Monsieur Le Prun persists in refusing my reasonable wishes, it will perchance be the worse for himself." Such sentences she used to utter amidst blushes and pallor, and with a fire and agitation that painfully perplexed her gentle, but now somewhat estranged, little companion. Her conduct, too, became eccentric and capricious; sometimes she appeared sullen and reserved--sometimes, at moments, as if animated with a positive hatred of her unoffending companion. Then, again, she would relent, and, in an agony of compunction, entreat her to be reconciled. It happened, not unfrequently, that business compelled Monsieur Le Prun to pass the night from home. Upon one of these occasions Lucille had gone early to her bed, and old Marguerite, at her special desire, sat beside her. "Well, Marguerite," said her young mistress, "I am going to exact the fulfilment of a promise you made me long ago, when first you came home, and before you became afraid of Monsieur Le Prun. You told me, then, that you knew some stories of him--come, what are they?" "Hey dear, bless the pretty child!--did I though?" "Yes, yes, Marguerite; and you must tell them now--I say you _must_--I _will_ have them. Nay, don't be afraid; I'll not tell them again, and nobody can overhear us here." "But, my pretty pet, these stories----" "Then there _are_ stories--see, you can't deny it any longer; tell them, tell them to me all." "Why, they are nothing but a pack of nonsense. You would laugh at me. It is only about monsieur's father, and the wonderful coach they say he left to his son." "Well, be it what it may, let me have it." "Well, then, my pretty bird, you shall have it as they told it to myself." She looked into the next apartment, and having satisfied herself that it was vacant, and shut the door of communication, she prepared for her narrative. We have clipped the redundancies and mended the inaccuracies of honest Marguerite's phraseology; but the substance and arrangement of the story is recorded precisely as she gave it herself. "Monsieur's father, they say, began with a very little money, madame, and he made it more by--by--in short, by _usury_; I beg pardon, but they say so, madame; and so finding as he grew old that he had a great deal of gold, and wishing to have some one of his own flesh and blood to leave it to, when he should be dead and buried, he bethought him of getting a wife. He must have been a shrewd man, I need not tell you, to have made so much money, so he was determined not to make his choice without due consideration. Now there was a farmer near them, who had a pretty and innocent daughter, and after much cautious inquiry and patient study of her character, old money-bags resolved that she was excellently suited for his purpose." "She was young and pretty, and he old and ugly, but rich; well, what followed?" "Why, she, poor thing, did not want to marry him at all; for though he was rich, he had a very ill name in the country, and she was afraid of him; but her father urged her, and the old man himself spoke her fair, and between them they overpowered her fears and scruples, and so she was married." "Poor thing!" said Lucille, unconsciously. "Well, madame, he married, and brought her home to his desolate old house, and there, they say, he treated her harshly; and, indeed he might there safely use her as he pleased, for there was not another house for a great way round to be seen: and nobody but his own creatures and dependents, who, they said, were just as bad as himself, could hear her cries, or witness his barbarities." Lucille sat up in the bed, and listened with increased interest. "Poor thing! it was there, in the midst of sufferings and cruelties, that she gave birth to a child, who is now Monsieur Le Prun, the great fermier-general; but her health, and indeed her heart, was broken; and, some rumor having reached her relations, that she was sick and unhappy, a cousin of hers, who, they said, was in love with her in their early days, brought the village physician with him to see her, though it was full three leagues and a half away." "The cousin loved her; poor fellow, he was true," said Lucille, with a blush of interest. "Ay, so they say; but Monsieur Le Prun, who was a jealous curmudgeon, would not admit him; but he did allow the physician to see her (himself standing by), because he was always glad to have the use of any body's skill for nothing--which, more than any love he bore his poor wife, was the reason of his letting him prescribe for her. Well, of course, she could not send any message to her friends, nor tell how she was treated, for old Le Prun was at her bedside; but the physician saw that she was ill, and he said to the old miser--'Your wife can't walk, and she must have air; let her drive every day in your coach.' 'I have no such thing,' said old Le Prun. 'But you are rich,' said the physician, 'you can afford to buy one; and it is your duty to do so for your wife, who will die else.' 'Let her die, then, for me--the devil may send her a coach to ride in, as they say he sent me my money; but I'll not waste my gold on any such follies.' So the physician went away, disappointed and disgusted, and her poor cousin was not able to effect any good on her behalf; but it seems the words of Monsieur Le Prun did not fall quite to the ground--they were heard in the quarter to where they were directed. That evening closed in clouds, and before twelve o'clock at night, they say, there came on such another thunder-storm as never was heard in the neighborhood, before or since. Nothing but thunder, roaring and crashing, peal upon peal, till the old house shook and trembled to its very base; and the blue lightning glared at every window, and split along the pavement in streams of livid fire; and all this time the rain was beating straight down in an incessant and furious deluge." "And so, I suppose, the devil came in the midst of the tempest, and took him away bodily in a flash of lightning?" "No, no, my pretty bird, not so fast. There was an old negro servant of his, a fellow just as wicked as himself, who was sitting in the kitchen, cursing the rain that was battering in huge drops down the chimney, and putting out the wood at which he was warming his shins, when, in the midst of the dreadful hubbub of the tempest, what should he hear but the rush of a great equipage, and wheels and horses clattering over the pavement, amidst the shouts of men and the sound of horns. Up jumped the black, and, listening, he heard a loud voice shouting through the storm, as if to summon some one to the door. Though they say he was a courageous old sinner, his heart failed him, for such sounds had not visited the old house within the memory of man in the day time, much less in the dead of night; and, instead of going to the door, he hurried away to the chamber where old Le Prun was cowering, screwed up in the middle of a great old fauteuil, and more frightened at the tempest than he would have cared to confess. So he told him of the sounds he had just heard, and he and his master mounted together to a small room in a gable over the hall-door, and from the casement of this they commanded a view of the paved court in front. It was so dark, however, that they could see nothing; and the thunder still echoing in loud explosions, and the rain battering at the windows, prevented their distinctly hearing the words which the voice was shouting outside. 'Shall we open the casement and ask him what they want?' said the old negro. 'Let it alone,' said his old master, shoving his arm back again, with a curse. At the same moment a vivid flash of lightning, or rather several in almost continuous succession, shed for some seconds a blue, pulsating illumination over the scene, and then they saw before their eyes a coach, with a team of horses and outriders, in the style of a royal equipage, drawn up before the hall door; and all the postillions and outriders were sitting motionless, with their whips pointing to the house, as if they were signing to the inhabitants to come out: and some one was looking from the window, and cried, in a tone like the shriek of the wind--'The coach that Monsieur Le Prun ordered this morning.' In the quivering blue light the whole thing looked like a smoky shadow, and was swallowed in darkness in a moment. Then came the bellowing thunder-burst, and a wild scream of winds rushed whooping, and sighing, and hissing through the tree-tops, and died away in the unknown distance. The two old sinners, master and man, crept away from the window, and stumbled their way back again to the chamber which Monsieur Le Prun had occupied before, and which, being in the rear of the house, and most remote from the sight that had scared them, was preferred by them to any other. In the morning a coach, of first-rate workmanship in all respects, was standing in front of the hall door, just where they had seen it on the night before, but no sign of horse, rider, or owner. For several days it remained in the same position, no one caring to touch it; but at the end of that time, having grown accustomed to its presence, and gradually less and less in awe of it, they lodged it in the coach-house; and so, after a considerable time, the old usurer's instincts prevailed, and he resolved to make trial of the vehicle, with a view to sell it in Paris. At first the horses snorted, and reared, and shyed, when they were attempted to be harnessed to it, but in a little while they too became reconciled to it, and Monsieur Le Prun made an experimental trip in it himself. Whatever passed upon that occasion, it certainly determined him against parting with it. And, it was said, whenever he was thenceforward in doubt about any purchase, or meditating any important financial _coup_, he invariably took a solitary drive in this preternaturally-acquired vehicle; and, in the course of that drive, his doubts, whatever they may have been, were invariably resolved, and some lucky purchase or successful operation upon 'Change was sure to follow. It was said that upon these occasions Monsieur Le Prun was always heard to converse with some companion in the coach; and the driver once avowed that, having been delayed by an accident on the road, as the darkness came on, he distinctly saw two shadowy outriders spurring duly in their van, and never lost sight of them until, with hair standing on end, and bathed in a cold sweat, he drew up in the court before his master's house." "And what happened to old Le Prun?" "When they returned from one of their drives, taken, Heaven bless us! for the purpose of consulting the Evil One, so to speak, face to face, they found old Le Prun quite dead, sitting back in his wonted attitude, and with his arm slung in the embroidered strap." "And what has become of the wonderful coach?" "That I have never heard; but they say that Monsieur Le Prun, the fermier-general, has it in one of his houses, either in the country or in Paris, and that, whenever he wants to consult the familiar demon of the family, he takes a drive in it alone; and this, they say, has been the cause of his great successes and his enormous fortune." "I should like to ride in that coach myself," said Lucille. "Heaven and all the saints forbid!" "I want to know my destiny, Marguerite. Were I sure that all my days were to pass as at present, I would rather die than live." "Oh, but sure my pretty bird would not ask her fortune of--of--" "Yes, of any one--of any spirit, good or evil, that could tell it. I am weary of my life, Marguerite. I would rather beg or work with my liberty, and the friends I like, than see my days glide by in this dull, wealthy house, without interest, or hope, or--or _love_." "But never desire, while you live, my child, the visits of the Evil One. Once asked for, it is said he never refuses them." "Say you so? then I invite him with all my heart," she said, with a bitter pleasantry; "he can't be a great deal worse than the society I have sometimes had to share; and, if he discloses the futurity that awaits me, he will have been the most instructive companion that fortune ever lent me." "Chut! madame, listen." "What is the matter, Marguerite?" "Did not you hear?" "What?--whom?" "There--there again; blessed Virgin shield us!" "Psha! Marguerite; it is nothing but the moths flying against the window-panes; I have heard that little tapping a hundred times." "Well, well, maybe so; but say your prayers, my dear, and ask forgiveness for your foolish words." "No, Marguerite; for in truth I do wish my fortune were read to me, and care not by whom." "Hey, what's that? Chut! in Heaven's name hold thy mad tongue," she cried, in the irritation of panic; "surely _that_ is no moth. May the saints guard your bed, my child. You heard it, did you not?" "Hum--yes--there was a sound." "I should think so, par bleu! something a size or two larger than a moth, too." "It was a spray of one of the plants swung by the breeze against the window." "Ma foi! it was no such thing, my sweet pet; no, no, something with a pair of wings fluttered up against it." Had the old woman, in her trepidation, had leisure to study the countenance of her young mistress, she would have perceived that her cheeks were flushed with crimson. But she was too busy with her medley of prayers and protestations, and too fully preoccupied with the idea of an unearthly visitation. "Well, well, Marguerite, be it as you say; I'll not dispute the point; but leave me now; I'm tired, and would sleep. Good night." After the old woman had withdrawn some minutes, Lucille rose from her bed. She had only been partially undressed; and throwing on her dressing-gown, and putting her little ivory feet into her slippers, she glided to her chamber-door, which she secured, and then cautiously, and almost fearfully, stepped to the window, which she pushed open, and stood upon the balcony. With a beating heart, and a cheek that momentarily changed color, she looked all along the edges of the court, and over the tall plants, and under the shadow of the lofty jessamine-covered wall. She listened with breathless and excited suspense--she waited for some minutes; but, having watched and listened in vain, she pressed her hand on her heart, and, with a deep and trembling sigh, turned back again. It was at this moment she saw something white, no bigger than a playing-card, lie at her feet. She picked it up, entered her room, and trembling violently, closed the window again, and was alone. VIII.--THE ORDEAL. The next morning came with sunshine, and the merry carols of all the sylvan choirs. It would have meetly ushered in a day of rejoicing; but joy seemed to have bid an eternal adieu to the luxurious solitudes of the Chateau des Anges. Julie that morning remarked that Lucille remained unusually late in her own rooms. Fearing that she might be ill, she ventured to visit her in her apartments. It was past twelve o'clock when she knocked at her door. There was no answer; and she knocked repeatedly, but without success. At last she opened the door, but Lucille was not as usual in that room. She walked through it, and the apartment beyond it, without seeing her; but in her dressing-room, which lay beyond that again, she found her. She was sitting in a loose morning-robe; her head was supported by her hand, and the open sleeve of heavy silk had fallen back from her white round arm. An open letter lay upon the table under her gaze. She had evidently been weeping, and was so absorbed either in her own reflections or the contents of the letter, that she did not perceive the entrance of Julie. The visitor paused; but feeling that every moment of her undiscovered presence added to the awkwardness of her situation, she called Lucille by name. At the sound of her name she started from her seat, and stood, pale as death, with all her dark hair shaken wildly about her shoulders, and her eyes gleaming with a malign terror upon the intruder. At the same moment she had clutched the letter, and continued to crumple it in her hand with a spasmodic eagerness. Julie was almost as much confounded as Lucille. Both were silent for a time. "I beg your pardon, dear Lucille; I fear my unperceived intrusion startled you." "Yes, yes; I suppose I am nervous. I am not well. Oh, God! you did startle me very much." To do her justice, she looked terrified; every vestige of color had fled from her face, even from her lips, and her eyes continued gleaming wildly and fixedly on her. "Why did you come, then--what do you want of me?" she said, at last, excitedly, and even angrily. "I came to ask how you are, Lucille--I feared you were ill." "I--I ill? You know I was _not_ ill," she said hurriedly and impatiently, and either forgetting or despising her own excuse of but a moment before. "You came--you came for a _purpose_, Julie--yes, yes--do not deny it--there is perfidy enough already." "You wrong me, Lucille; I told you the simple truth--why should I deceive you?" "Why--why? Because the world is full of deceit, full of falsehood and treason--they are every where, every where." She turned away, and Julie perceived that she was weeping. She was pained and puzzled--nay, she was crossed every moment by the horrid fear that Lucille's mind was unsettled. Her strange agitation seemed otherwise unaccountable. "Lucille--dear Lucille--surely you will not be angry with your poor little friend--surely you believe Julie." She looked at her for a moment, and said-- "Yes, Julie, I do believe you;" and so saying, she kissed her. "But--but I am utterly, and I fear irremediably miserable." "But what is the cause of your wretchedness, my dear Lucille?" "This place--this solitude oppresses me; I cannot endure the isolation to which I am unnaturally and tyrannically condemned. Oh, Julie! there are circumstances, secrets, miseries, I dare not tell you; fate is weaving round me a net, to all eyes but my own invisible. But why do you look at me with those strange glances? Do not believe that I am _guilty_, because I am miserable--do not dare to touch me with such a thought." She stamped her little foot furiously on the floor at these words, while her cheek and eye kindled with excitement. It speedily subsided, however, into a deep and sullen gloom, and she continued-- "I scarce know myself, Julie, what I am, or what I may be; but my heart is as full of tumult, of suffering, of hatred, as hell itself. I will at least be free--my captivity in this magician's prison shall terminate--I _will_ not endure it. It shall end soon, one way or another--I will liberate myself." Lucille spoke with something more than passion--it was fierceness; and her gentle companion was filled with vague alarms. She had, as feeble natures often have, an instinctive appreciation of the superior energy and daring of her more fiery companion, and knew that she would, too probably, take some violent and irreparable step in furtherance of her resolution. It was, therefore, with feelings of anxiety and fear that she left her to the solitary influence of her own angry and excited thoughts. Monsieur Le Prun did not arrive till night. As he and the Count de Blassemare rolled homeward, side by side in his carriage, under the uncertain moonlight, between the lordly rows of forest-trees that, like files of gloomy Titans, kept perennial guard along the approaches of the chateau, or, as Lucille has not unaptly styled it, "the magician's prison," they talked pretty much as follows: "Le Prun, my good friend, you are jealous--jealous, by all the imps in true love's purgatory," said Blassemare. "Not jealous, but cautious." "A nice distinction." "Why, when one has reached our time of life----" "_Ours!_ you might be my father." "Well, I can't deny it, for nobody knows _how_ old you are. But at my years a man with a young wife must exercise precaution. _Par bleu!_ we are neither of us fools, and I need not tell you that." "Why, yes, we have had our experiences--I as a spectator--you as----" "Of course--therefore this threatened irruption of frivolity and vice--" "Say of youth and beauty; the other qualities--frivolity and vice--may coexist with age and ugliness, and, therefore, harmlessly." "Well, what you will, it does not please me. But, under existing circumstances, with my application pending, you know it was impossible to deny the marchioness her whim." "Of course; and so for a single night the Chateau des Anges becomes a fairy palace. Well, what harm--you can't apprehend that a single _fête_, however gay and spirited, will--_ruin_ you." "Why, no; after all, it is, as you say, but a single _fête_, and then extinguish the lights, and lock the doors, and so the Chateau des Anges becomes as sober as before." "And I wager a hundred crowns you will tell Madame Le Prun that you have given this _fête_ entirely on _her_ account." "I thought of that," he replied, with a grin; "but it would not be wise." "Why so?" "Because it would make a precedent." "And will you never again indulge her fancy for society?" "By ---- my good friend, _never_. She fancies she has a great deal of spirit, and will contrive to rule me; but she does not know Etienne Le Prun--she does not know him--I will treat her like what she is--a child." "And she will treat you, perhaps, like----" "Like what?" "Like what you are--a bridegroom of seventy." "If she dares. Ay, Blassemare, I have just as little trust as you in what conventionality calls the _virtue_ of the sex. I rely upon my own strong will--the discipline I can put in force, and their salutary fears." There was here a pause of more than a minute in the dialogue; each appeared to have enough to think of, and the carriage was driving nearly at a gallop under the funereal shadow of the dense and lofty trees. With a fierce start, Monsieur Le Prun cried, suddenly-- "What do you mean?" "_I?_--nothing." "Why do you say _that_?" "What?" "You said--Bluebeard." "Hey?" "Ay!--what the devil did you mean by that?" "Upon my soul, I said no such thing," said Blassemare, with a hollow, satirical laugh. Monsieur Le Prun glanced over his shoulder once or twice, and then hummed to himself for a time. "Seriously," he repeated, "did you not call me by that name?" "_I!_--no; I always call things by their name, and yours is gray." "Hem!--what is he driving in this shadow for? Tell him to keep in the moonlight--one would think he wanted to break our necks." Monsieur Le Prun, it was evident, had become fidgety and fanciful. A few minutes' rapid driving brought the carriage to the hall-door of the chateau, and its wealthy, but, perhaps, after all, not very much to be envied, master conducted his familiar imp, Blassemare, into a saloon, where supper awaited them. "I don't myself understand these things, Blassemare, but you will be my stage-manager, and get up the spectacle in the best style." "Why, yes. I don't see why I should not lend a hand, that is to say, if nothing happens to call me away," said Blassemare, who delighted in such affairs, but liked a little importance also. "How soon is it to take place?" "She said in about three weeks." "Ha! very good." And the Count de Blassemare was instantaneously translated, in spirit, among feu d'artifice, water-works, arches, colored lamps, bands, and all the other splendors and delectations of an elaborate fête. "I remember," said Le Prun, abruptly dispelling these happy and gorgeous visions with his harsh tones, "when I was at school, reading about Socrates and those invisible demons that were always hovering at his ears; it was devilish odd, Blassemare. But to be sure those were good-natured devils; ay, that is true, and meant him no harm." "By my faith, I forget all about it; but what the devil connection have these demons, blue, black, or red, with your fête?" "I sometimes think, Blassemare, you are a worse fellow than I am, for you have no qualms of conscience." "No qualms of stomach, no fumes of indigestion; as for conscience, it is an infirmity of which we both stand equally acquitted." "I did not speak of it in a good sense," said Le Prun, gloomily; "it may be remorse or superstition, but I fancy the man who has none of it is already dead, and under his coffin-lid, so far as his spiritual chances are concerned." "Faith, it is a treat, Le Prun, to hear you talk religion. When do you mean to take orders? I should so like to see you, my buck, in a cassock and cowl begging meal, and telling your beads, and calling yourself brother Ambrose." "I have not good enough in me for that," he replied, in a tone which might be earnest, or might be a sneer; "besides, I dare say that the grand _melange_ of rapture and diablerie they call religion is altogether true; but _par bleu!_ my good fellow, there is something more than this life--agencies, subtler and more powerful mayhap than those our senses are commonly cognizant of. I say I have had experience of this truth, and of them. You laugh! and I suppose will laugh on, until that irresistible old gentleman-usher, DEATH, presents you to other realities face to face." "Well, so be it. If they have faces, I suppose they have mouths, and can laugh, and chat, and so, egad I'll make the best of them; it is one comfort, we shall all understand religion then, and need not plague our heads about it any further. But, in the mean time, suppose we have a game of piquet." "Agreed! call for cards, and, by the time you have got them, I will return." Le Prun took a candle, and opening a door which led through a passage to a back stair communicating with Lucille's apartments, he directed his steps thither for the purpose of announcing his arrival, and ascertaining at the same time the state of his wife's temper. He tapped at the door, and, having received permission to enter, did so to the manifest surprise of the occupants of the chamber, who had expected to see one of the servants. Julie, who was in the very middle of a story about the Marquis de Secqville, her intended husband, (to which Lucille was listening, as she leaned pensively back in her rich fauteuil, with downcast eyes,) suspended her narrative. "Well, sir?" "Well, madame?" Such was the curt and menacing greeting exchanged between the fermier-general and his wife. "You appear dissatisfied," he said, after an interval, and having taken a chair. "I _am_ so." "This is tiresome, _ma femme_." "Yes, insupportably; _this_, and every thing else that passes here." "It appears to me, you are somewhat hard to please." "Quite the reverse. I ask but to mix in human society." "You have society enough, madame." "I have absolutely none, sir." "I can't say what society you enjoyed in the Parc de Charrebourg, madame," he began, in an obvious vein of sarcasm. And as he did so, he thought he observed her eyes averted, and her color brighten for a moment. He did not suffer this observation to interrupt him, but he laid it up in the charnel of his evil remembrances, and continued: "I don't know, I say, what society you there enjoyed. It may have been very considerable, or it may have been very limited: it was possibly very dull, or possibly very delightful, madame. But if you _had_ any society there _whatever_, it was private, secret; it was neither seen nor suspected, madame, and, therefore, you must excuse me if I can't see what sacrifice, in point of society, you have made in exchanging your _cottage_ in the Parc de Charrebourg for a residence in the Chateau des Anges." "Sir, I _have_ made sacrifices--I have lost my liberty, and gained you." "I see, my pretty wife, it will be necessary that you and I should understand one another," he said, tranquilly, but with a gloom upon his countenance that momentarily grew darker and darker. "That is precisely what I desire," replied his undaunted helpmate. "Leave us, Julie," said the fermier-general, with a forced calmness. Julie threw an imploring glance at Lucille as she left the room, for she held her uncle in secret dread. As she glided through the door her last look revealed them seated at the little table; he--ugly: black, and venomous; she--beautiful, and glittering in gay colors. It was like a summer fly basking unconsciously within the pounce of a brown and bloated spider. "Depend upon it, madame, this will never do," he began. "Never, sir," she repeated emphatically. "Be silent, and listen as becomes you," he almost shouted, with a sudden and incontrollable explosion of rage, while the blood mounted to his discolored visage. "Don't fancy, madame, that I am doting, or that you can manage me with your saucy coquetry or sulky insolence. I have a will of my own, madame, under which, by Heaven, I'll force yours to bend, were it fifty times as stubborn as ever woman's was yet. You shall obey--you shall submit. If you will not practise your duty cheerfully, you shall learn it in privation and tears; but one way or another, I'll bring you to act, and to speak, and to _think_ as I please, or I'm not your husband." "Well, sir, try it: and in the mean time, I expect----" "What do you expect?" he thundered. "I expect to receive a counterpart of this," she said, with deliberate emphasis, holding the magic vial steadily before his eyes. For a second or two, the talisman appeared powerless, but only for so long. On a sudden his gaze contracted--he became fascinated, petrified--his face darkened, as if a tide of molten lead were projected through every vessel--and a heavy dew of agony stood in beads upon his puckered forehead. With all this horror was mingled a fury, if possible, more frightful still; every fibre of his face was quivering; the hand that was clenched and drawn back, as if it held a weapon to be hurled into her heart, was quivering too; his mouth seemed gasping in vain for words or voice; he resembled the malignant and tortured victim of a satanic possession; and this frightful dumb apparition was imperceptibly drawing nearer and nearer to her. A sudden revulsion broke the horrid spell of which he was the slave; like one awaking from a nightmare, conscience-stricken, he uttered a trembling groan of agony, and with one hand upon his breast, the other clutched upon his forehead, he hurried, speechless, like a despairing, detected criminal, from the room. IX.--THE UNTOLD SECRET. Julie, who had heard high words as she traversed the apartments which lay _en suite_, paused in the lobby at the stair-head--a sort of _oeil de boeuf_, to which several corridors converged, and with a lofty lantern-dome above, from which swung a cluster of rose-colored lamps. Here she sat down upon a sofa, ill at ease on account of the scene which was then going on so near her; and, in the midst of her reverie, raising her eyes suddenly, she saw Monsieur Le Prun, the thick carpets rendering his tread perfectly noiseless, gliding by her with a countenance guilty and terrible beyond any thing that fancy had ever seen. Without appearing to see her, like a spectre from the grave he came, passed, and vanished, leaving her frozen with horror, as if she had beheld a phantom from the dead and damned. With steps winged with hideous alarm she sped through the intervening chambers to that in which she had left Lucille. She was standing with an ashy smile of triumph on her face, and in her hand was still mechanically grasped the queer little vial with its four spires of gold. Monsieur Le Prun had recovered his self-possession to a certain extent by the time he reached the apartment where he had left Blassemare. But that observant gentleman did not fail to perceive, at a glance, that something had occurred to agitate his patron profoundly. "Egad," he thought, "I should not be surprised if the girl were taken at disadvantage by his abrupt visit, and that the venerable Adonis saw something to justify his jealousy. A husband has no right to surprise his wife. Le Prun," he continued carelessly aloud, "I wonder why Nature, who has been so bounteous to the sex, has not furnished husbands, like certain snakes, with rattles to their tails, to give involuntary warning of their approach." Le Prun poured out a glass of cold water and drank it. Blassemare observed, as he did so, that his hand trembled violently. The fermier-general was silent, and his flippant Mercury did not care just then to hazard any experiment upon his temper. "Blassemare!" he exclaimed, abruptly arresting his glass, and eyeing his companion with a sort of brutal rage, "I ought to run you through the body, sir, where you stand, for your accursed perfidy." "What! _me?_--by my soul, sir, I don't understand you," he replied, at once offended and amazed. "Why the devil should you murder me?" "You have broken your word with me!" "In what respect?" "Exactly where it was most vitally needful to keep it, sir." "Deuce take me if I know what you mean." "You do--you _do_--a thousand curses! You _must_ know it." "But hang me if I do." "You have suffered that _calumny_ to reach her ears." "What calumny?" "She must have seen her." "_Her!_--whom?" "She must have spoken with her." "Do say, plainly, what it _is_ all about?" "About that--that d---- woman; there, is _that_ intelligible? She is at large, sir, in spite of all I've said--in spite of all you undertook, sir; and she has been filling my wife's ears with those hell-born lies that have been whispered to _you_, sir, and which it was your business to have suppressed and extinguished. By ----, Blassemare, you deserve my curses and my vengeance." As he concluded, he struck the glass upon the table with a force that shivered it to pieces. "Monsieur le Prun," said Blassemare, coolly, "I deprecate no man's vengeance, and fear no man's sword; but whatever be the ground of your present convictions, it is utterly fallacious. The person in question has never stirred abroad--you mean the _sister_ of course--since your marriage, except under close and trustworthy attendance; and the other--_that_ you know is out of the question." "There has been mismanagement somewhere, or else some new device of infernal malice; I say the thing has been misconducted, with the same cursed blundering that has always attended that affair; and I would rather my wife were in her coffin than have seen what I have seen to-night." "What! in her coffin!" echoed Blassemare, with a sort of fiendish satire. "Ay, sir, in her coffin!" said Le Prun, with a black defiance which made Blassemare shrug his shoulders and become silent. The chill and the smell of death seemed to him to have come with these words into the room. But he would not on any account have betrayed his sensations; on the contrary, he pointed gayly to the cards, and looked a smiling interrogatory towards the fermier. But that excellent gentleman was in no mood for picquet. He declined the challenge gloomily and peremptorily. "_Ma foi!_ you suffer trifles to plague you strangely," said Blassemare, as they parted for the night. "What on earth does it signify after all? Thwart a woman, and she will strive to vex you--there's nothing new in that; why should not Madame Le Prun share the pretty weaknesses of her sex? On the other hand, indulge her, and she will flatter as much as she teased before. You are too sensitive, too fond, and, therefore, exaggerate trifles. Good night." Monsieur Le Prun withdrew, and Blassemare muttered-- "Remorseless old criminal! I shall keep my eye close upon you, and if I see any sign of the sort----" He set his teeth together, smiled resolutely and threateningly, and nodded his head twice or thrice in the direction of the door through which the fermier-general had just disappeared. The violent explosion we have just described was not followed by any very decisive results. The fermier-general and his wife had not been upon very pleasant terms for some time previous to the scene which had so fearfully agitated the millionaire; and, whatever may have been the immediate promptings of his anger, his temper had cooled down sufficiently, before the morning, to enable him to carry the matter off, like a man of the world, with a tolerable grace. Whatever change for the worse had taken place in his feelings towards his wife, he was able to suppress the manifestation of it: but, as we have said, their relations had of late been by no means cordial, and Monsieur Le Prun did not think it necessary to affect any warmer sentiment toward his wife, nor any abatement of the sinister estrangement which had been gradually growing between them. Meanwhile the preparations for the _fête_ proceeded at the Chateau des Anges upon a scale worthy of the rarity of the occasion and the vastness of the proprietor's fortune. All these were carried on by Blassemare, who indulged his gallantry by consulting the beautiful young wife of the fermier-general upon every detail of the tasteful and magnificent arrangements as they proceeded. Monsieur Le Prun had a special object in gratifying the great lady who had insisted upon this sacrifice. Blassemare had, therefore, a _carte blanche_ in the matter. There were to be musicians from Paris, bands of winged instruments among the trees, galleys and singers upon the waters, illuminated marquees and fanciful grottoes, feu d'artifice, and colored lamps of every dye, in unimaginable profusion, theatricals, gaming, feasting, dancing--in a word, every imaginable species of gayety, revelry, and splendor. As these grand projects began to unfold themselves, Lucille's ill-temper began to abate. Her interest was awakened, and at last she became pleased, astonished, and even delighted. Now at length she hoped that the long-cherished object of her wishes was about to be supplied, and that she was indeed to emerge from her chrysalis state, and enjoy, among the sweets and gayeties of life, the glittering freedom for which she felt herself so fitted, and had so long sighed in vain; and which, moreover, as the reader may have suspected, she desired also in furtherance of certain secret and cherished aspirations. Monsieur de Blassemare found his æsthetic and festive confidences most encouragingly received by the handsome and imperious Madame Le Prun. The subject of his consultations delighted her; and knowing well the close relation in which he stood with her husband, she perhaps thought it no such bad policy to secure him, by a little civility, in her interest. She little imagined, perhaps, engrossed as she was with other images, to what aspiring hopes she was thus unconsciously introducing the Sieur de Blassemare. That gentleman was proud of his _bonnes fortunes_; and the rapid chemistry of his vanity instantaneously transmuted the lightest show of good-humor, in a handsome woman, into the faint but irrepressible evidences of a warmer sentiment of preference. Perfectly convinced of the reality of the _penchant_ he believed himself to have inspired, you may be sure the lively scoundrel was not a little flattered at his imaginary conquest. He debated, therefore, in his self-complacent reveries, whether he should take prompt advantage of the weakness of his victim, or pique her by the malice of suspense. He chose the latter tactique, and, with a happy self-esteem, reserved the transports of his confession to reward the longings and agitations of a protracted probationary ordeal. Thus Blassemare was in his glory, superintending the preparations for a _fête_, which left him nothing in prodigality and magnificence to desire; enjoying, at the same time, the delightful consciousness of having placed, without an effort, the prettiest woman in France at his feet, and the _piquant_ sense, beside, of his little treason against old Le Prun. Thus matters proceeded; but, strange to say, while the evening for which all these preparations were being made was still more than a week distant, Madame Le Prun, whose impatience of even that brief delay had been unspeakable, on a sudden lost all her interest in the affair. Such, alas! is the volatility, the caprice, of women. The object for sake of which she had led poor Le Prun a dog's life for so long, was now presented to her, and she turned from it with indifference, if not with disgust. This would, indeed, have been very provoking to Le Prun himself, had he been just then upon speaking terms with his wife; but not happening to be so, and being in no mood to talk about her further to his gay familiar, Blassemare, he was wholly ignorant of those feminine fluctuations of interest and of liking which Blassemare himself did not fully comprehend. The change was so abrupt as to excite his surprise. Her apathy, too, was unaccompanied by ill-temper, and was obviously so genuine, that he could hardly believe it affected merely to pique him. We are disposed to think there was a powerful, but mysterious, cause at work in this change. It was just about this time that one night, Julie, having sat up rather later than usual, and intending to bid Lucille good night, if she were still awake, entered her suite of apartments, and approached her dressing-room door. She heard her rush across the floor, as she did so, and, with a face of terror, she emerged from the door and stood before it, as if to bar ingress to the room. Julie was disconcerted and agitated by this apparition; and Lucille was evidently, from whatever cause, greatly terrified. The two girls confronted one another with pale and troubled looks. Lucille was white with fear, and, alas! as it seemed to her companion, with the agitation of guilt. Julie looked at her all aghast. "Good night, Julie, good night," she whispered, hurriedly. "Good night," answered she; "I fear I have interrupted--I mean, startled you." "Good night, good night," repeated Lucille. As Julie retreated across the lobby, she was overtaken by Lucille, who placed her hand upon her shoulder. "Julie, will you hate me if I tell you all?" she said, in great agitation, as she hurried with her into her apartment. "_Hate_ you, Lucille! How could I hate my dear friend and companion?" "Friend, O yes, _friend_; what a friend I have proved to you!" "Come, come, you must not let yourself be excited; you know you are my friend, my _only_ friend and confidante, and you know I love you." Lucille covered her face with her hands and sobbed or shuddered violently. Julie embraced and kissed her tenderly; but, in the midst of these caresses, her unhappy friend threw her arms about her neck, and, looking earnestly in her face for a few seconds, drew her passionately to her heart and kissed her, murmuring as she did so-- "No, no; she never could forgive me." And, so saying, she mournfully betook herself away, leaving Julie a prey to all manner of vague and perplexing alarms. Whatever was the cause of Lucille's profound mental agitation, it was an impenetrable mystery to Julie. Blassemare obviously did not know what to make of it; and as the fête drew near without eliciting any corresponding interest on her part, Julie, who had observed with pleasure the delight with which at first she had anticipated the event, was dismayed and astonished at the change. As often as she had endeavored to recall her to the topic so strangely approached, and inexplicably recoiled from, upon the occasion we have just described, Lucille repulsed her curiosity, or at least evaded it with entire and impenetrable secrecy. Finding, therefore, that the subject was obviously distasteful to her, she forbore to return to it, and contented herself with recording the broken conversation of the night in question among the other unexplained mysteries of her life. "Well, Lucille," she said to her one day, as they were walking upon the terrace together, and interrupting by the remark a long and gloomy silence, "you do not seem to enjoy the prospect of the gay night which my uncle has prepared, now that it approaches, half so much as you did in the distance." "Enjoy it? no, no." "But you longed for such an occasion." "Perhaps, Julie, I had reasons; perhaps it was not all caprice." "But do you not still enjoy the prospect? surely it has not lost all its charms?" "I say, Julie, I had reasons--that is, perhaps I had--for wishing it. I have none now." "Well, but it seems to me it positively depresses you. Surely, if it were merely indifferent, it need not distress you." "Ah, Julie, Julie, we are strange creatures; we know not ourselves, neither our strength nor our weakness, our good nor our evil, until time and combinations solve the problem, and show us the sad truth." "It seems to me," said Julie, with a gentle smile, "you take a wondrous moral tone in treating of a ball, my pretty sage; and, notwithstanding all you say, I suspect you like a fête as well as most young women." "Julie, when I tell you honestly I hate it--that I would gladly be hidden in the roof or the cellar of the loneliest tower in the chateau upon that evening, you will cease to suspect me of so poor a dissimulation. Honestly, then, and sadly, these crowded festivities, I expected but a short time since with so much delight, are now not only indifferent to me, but repulsive. I no longer wish to meet and mix with people; the idea, on the contrary, depresses, nay, even terrifies me." "Lucille, you are hiding something from me." "_Hiding!_--no, nothing--that is, nothing but my own thoughts, the images of my reflections; nothing, dear Julie, that it would not render you unhappy to hear. Why should I throw upon your mind the gloom and shadows of my own?" "But perhaps your troubles are fantastic and unreal; and, were you to confide in me, I might convince you that they are so." "Julie, they are real." "So thinks every body who is haunted by chimeras." "These are none. Oh, Julie! would I could tell you all. The agony of the relation would be in some sort recompensed by having one human being to tell my thoughts to. But it cannot be; it is quite, quite impossible." "This impossibility is also one of the imagination." "No, no, Julie; the effort to repose this confidence would destroy _all_ confidence between us. I have said enough--let us speak of other matters. My innermost grief, be it what it may, I must endure alone. Julie, it is a hard condition; but I must and will--alone." Here they were interrupted by Blassemare, who gayly joined them, with a prayer that they would resolve a momentous difficulty, by deciding upon the best site for one of his principal batteries of fireworks; and so, with little good-will, they surrendered themselves for a quarter of an hour to the guidance and the light sarcastic conversation of the master of the revels, with whom for the present we shall leave them. X.--THE F�TE. At length the eventful night arrived--a beautiful, still, star-lit night. You may fancy the splendor of the more than royal festivities. What a magnificent levee of gayety, rank, and beauty! What unexampled illuminations!--what fantastic and inexhaustible ingenuity of pyrotechnics! How the gorgeous suites of salons laughed with the brilliant crowd! How the terraces, arched and lined with soft-colored lamps, re-echoed with gay laughter or murmured flatteries! What an atmosphere it was of rosy hues, of music, and ceaseless hum of human enjoyment! For miles around, the wandering peasants beheld the wide, misty, prismatic circle that overarched the enchanted ground, and heard the silver harmonies and drumming thunders of the orchestras floating over the woods, and filling the void darkness with sounds of unseen festivities. In such a scene all are in good-humor--all wear their best looks. Each finds his appropriate amusement. The elegant gamester discovers his cards and his companions; the garrulous find listeners; the gossip retails, and imbibes, from a hundred sources, all the current scandal; vanity finds incense--beauty adoration; the young make love, or dance, or in groups give their spirits play in pleasantries, and raillery, and peals of animated laughter; their elders listen to the music, or watch the cards, or in a calmer fashion converse; while all, each according to his own peculiar taste, find whatever pleases their palate best. Whatever is rarest, most fantastic--things only dreamed of--the epicurean connoisseur has only to invoke, and, at a touch of the magic wand of Mammon, it is there before him. Wines, too,--what-not, est-est, tokay, and all the rest, flowing from the inexhaustible tap of the same Mephistopheles, with his golden gimlet. All the demons of luxury riot there, and at your nod ransack the earth for a flavor or a flask; and place it before you, almost before your wish is uttered. It is, indeed, the Mahomet's paradise of all true believers in the stomach, and worshippers of Bacchus. Thus in a realized dream all eddies on in a delicious intoxication, and each is at once the recipient of enjoyment and the dispenser of good-humor, imbibing through every sense enchanted fare, reflecting smiles, and radiating hilarity. Each, indeed, becomes, as it were, a single glowing particle in the genial and brilliant mass, and tends to keep alive the general fire, from which he derives and to which returns at once light and geniality. It is admitted that he who has discovered the grand arcanum, and has the philosopher's stone in his waistcoat-pocket, is, so to speak, _ex officio_, a magician. But M. Le Prun had no need of any such discoveries. He had the gold itself, and was, therefore, a ready-made magician, and as such was worshipped accordingly with an oriental fanaticism. Monsieur le Prun had, like other favorites of fortune in the latter days of the monarchy, purchased his patent of noblesse. Every body knew that he was a _parvenu_; and rumor, as she is wont in such cases, had adorned his early history with so many myths and portents, that Niebuhr himself could hardly have distinguished between the fable and the truth. It was said and believed that he was a foundling--a Gipsy's son, a wandering beggar, a tinker. Others had seen him in rags, selling pencils at the steps between the Pont-Neuf and the Pont-au-Change. Others, again, maintained that he had for years filled the canine office of guide to an old blind mendicant, whose beat was about the Rue de Bauboug; and were even furnished with a number of pleasant anecdotes about his hardships and adroitness, while in this somewhat undignified position. Indeed, the varieties of positions though which good Mother Gossip sent him were such, and so interminable, that a relation of half of them would alone make a library of fiction. But fortune had consecrated this mean and smutty urchin. He stood now worshipped in the awful glory of his millions, pedestalled on his money-bags, gilded from head to heel; and what could the proudest noblesse upon earth do but forget and forgive the rags and hunger of his infancy, and come together, from the east and from the west, to drink of the cup of his enchantments, and cry, "Long live King Solomon in all his glory?" "She is beautiful as a divinity," exclaimed the gallant old Marquess de Fauteuil, who had just completed an admiring survey of the fair Madame le Prun. "Pretty--yes; but she has the manners of a _petite moine_," said the Duchess de la Cominade, an old flame of the marquis, who, in spite of her marriage and her mistakes, conceived her claims upon his devotions unabated. "And her little gossip, too, Le Prun's niece, is a charming creature--an exquisitely contrived contrast. By my word, this place deserves its name--is it not truly the Chateau des Anges?" "Who is that young person whom Le Prun is leading towards them? He is the only man I have seen to-night whose dress is perfect; and he looks like a hero of romance." "That?--eh? Why that is the Marquis de Secqville." "What! the horrid man who enslaves us all? I have not seen him for years--how very handsome he is!" "Yes; and I fancy that melancholy air assists him very much in vanquishing the gentle sex. I once had a little vein of that myself." "So you had," murmured the duchess, with a tender smile of memory, and a little sigh. "But is it not a madness of poor Le Prun to present that terrible man to his handsome young wife?" "He is to marry the niece--the affair is concluded. Poor little thing! she looks so frightened; see--a little fluttered pigeon of Venus--it becomes her very much." Meanwhile Le Prun and the marquis were approaching Lucille and Julie, who were seated together close to a window which opened to the floor, and admitted the soft summer air, charged with such sounds and perfumes as might have hovered among the evergreen groves of Calypso's island. "He is coming," said Julie, "he is coming with my uncle." "Who?" asked Lucille, looking coldly on the advancing figures. "My--my fiancé, the Marquis de Secqville," whispered Julie, in trembling haste, blushing, and dropping her eyes. "Oh, then, I must observe him carefully," said Lucille, with an arch smile. "Do, and tell me honestly what you think of him." "Ha! little rogue, I see you are not quite so indifferent as you pretend." "My _heart_ is indifferent--but--but he is very handsome--don't you think so?" "Hush! here he is." "I have the happiness, madame, to present Monsieur le Marquis de Secqville, with whom, as you are aware, we are about to have the honor of being nearly allied." So said Monsieur le Prun, with a smile of conjugal affection, which may, or may not, have been genuine. "I was not until now aware of the full extent of the honor and the happiness involved in that alliance," said the marquis, with a glance of respectful admiration. Madame le Prun acknowledged this little speech with a slight bow, and a cold and haughty smile. "You have been in the south lately?" "Yes, madame, with my regiment at Avignon." "So he says," interrupted the fermier-general, with a cunning leer; "but his colonel swears he never saw him there." "Then either you or your colonel must be wrong," said Madame le Prun, drily. "No, no, madame; but Monsieur le Prun likes a jest at my expense." "Not at all," said Le Prun, laughing; "I protest D'Artois, his colonel, vows he has not seen him for six months at least." "They are in a conspiracy to quiz me." "Then you _were_ at Avignon?" "No such thing, I tell you; the fellow was about some mischief--ha! ha! ha!" "He is resolved to laugh at me." "Yes, yes, I say he is a mischievous fellow--the most dangerous dog in France; and so shy that, by my word, it requires a shrewd fellow like myself to discover his rogueries." "And so he deserves not only _all_ my sins, but a great deal more." "Stay--here is the Visconte de Charrebourg. Visconte, this is the Marquis de Secqville, my future nephew." The old visconte looked closely and dubiously for a moment in the young man's face. The marquis, on the contrary, seemed to have some little difficulty in suppressing a smile. "But that I know I have not had the honor of meeting you before, I should----but no doubt it is a family likeness. I knew your father when he was about your age, and a very handsome fellow, by my faith. Is his brother, the Conte de Cresseron, still living?" The old gentleman drew the marquis away before he had had time to pay his devoirs to Julie, who had shrunk at his approach into the background, and left the little group to themselves. "What do you think of him?" whispered Julie, resuming her place by Lucille. "He is pretty well." "Monsieur le Marquis is a handsome man," said Blassemare, who at that moment joined them; and, addressing Lucille, "You have seen him before?" "_I?_--no. He has just been presented to me for the first time." "And you think him----" "Rather handsome--indeed, _decidedly_ handsome; but, somehow, his melancholy spoils him. But I forgot, Julie--I ask your pardon, my pretty niece, for criticising your hero. Remember, however, I admit his beauty, though I can't admire him." There is no truth of which we have been reminded with such unnecessary reiteration, as the pretty obvious fact that every human enjoyment must, sooner or later, come to an end. The _fête_ at the Chateau des Anges had no exemption from this law of nature and necessity. Musicians, cooks, artists, and artisans of all sorts, gradually disappeared. At length the last equipage whirled down the great avenue, and a stillness and void, more mournful from the immediate contrast, supervened. The windows were closed--the yawning servants betook themselves to their beds, and the angel of sleep waved his downy wings over the old chateau. The genius of Blassemare was of that electric sort which is not easily unexcited. He could no more have slept than he could have transformed himself into one of the stone Tritons of the fountain by which in the moonlight he now stood alone. Blassemare had had a magnificent triumph; so well-contrived an entertainment had never, perhaps, been known before; and, like certain great generals, he felt desirous to visit the field of his victory after the heat of action was over. Monsieur Le Prun was also wide awake and astir from other causes. No vein of Blassemare's excitement--not even jealousy, nor conscience, nor any mental malady--kept him waking. The cause of his vigilance was, simply, his late supper and an indigestion. Now it happened that both these worthies were walking unconsciously almost side by side--Le Prun along the summit, and Blassemare along the base, of the beautiful terrace which stretched in front of the windows of the chateau. There was a little receding court which lay in front of Madame Le Prun's windows, which were furnished with a heavy stone balcony. On the side opposite was a high wall, which divided the pleasure-grounds from the wild, wooded park that lay immediately beyond, and in this was a door with a private key and a spring lock. Now it happened that both Monsieur Le Prun and the Sieur de Blassemare, as they approached this point, amid the fumes of expiring lamps and the wreck of fireworks, heard certain sounds of an unexpected sort. These were, in fact, human voices, conversing in earnest but suppressed tones--so low, indeed, that were it not for the breathless stillness of the night they would have been unheard. "Sacre!" muttered Le Prun, looking up like a toothless old panther. "Ma foi! what's this?" whispered Blassemare, whose jealousy was also alarmed. The sounds continued--the eavesdroppers quickened their paces. Le Prun was, however, unfortunately a little asthmatic, as sometimes happens to bridegrooms of a certain age, and, spite of all his efforts to hold it in, he could not contain a burst of coughing. Its effect was magical. There supervened an instantaneous silence, followed by the dropping of a heavy body upon the ground, as it seemed, under Madame Le Prun's windows. The descent was, however, unfortunately made; a dog, evidently hurt, raised a frightful yelping, making the night additionally hideous. Blassemare hurried up the steps, and at the top encountered Le Prun, running and panting, with his sword drawn. There was a sound, as of hastily closing the casement above the balcony--a light gleamed from it for an instant, and was extinguished--and, at the same moment, they beheld the dim figure of a man hurrying across the court, and darting through the opposite door, which shut with a crash behind him. "Thieves! robbers!" shouted Le Prun, dashing at the door. "Robbers! thieves!" cried a shrill voice of alarm from Madame Le Prun's casement. "Horns! antlers!" halloed Blassemare. "Robbers! robbers!" "Thieves! thieves!" The lady screamed, Le Prun bawled, Blassemare laughed. "He is gone, however," said the latter, as soon as the explosion had a little subsided. "Suppose we get the key, madame. Please throw us yours from the window. I promise to pink the burglar through the body. Quick--quick!" "Ay, ay," thundered Le Prun, "the key! the key!" Madame Le Prun was too much excited to get it in an instant. She ran here, and flew there--she screamed and rummaged. Le Prun stormed. A key was at last thrown out, amid prayers and imprecations. How provoking!--it was a wrong one. Another effort--a new burst of execration from Le Prun--another fit of laughter from Blassemare--more screaming and pressing from the window--and all accompanied by the sustained yelping of the injured lap-dog. "Here it is--this must be it," and another key clangs and jingles on the ground. "Yes, this time it is the right key." The door flies open--Le Prun rushes puffing among the bushes. Blassemare sees something drop glittering to the ground as the door opens--a button and a little rag of velvet; he says nothing, but pockets it, and joins the moonlight chase. It is all in vain. Le Prun, perspiring and purple, his passion as swollen as his veins, knowing not what to think, but fearing every thing, staggered back, silent and exhausted; Blassemare also silent--no longer laughing--abstracted, walks with knit brows, and compressed lips, beside him. "Of course," said Blassemare, "you have the fullest reliance upon the honor of your wife?" Monsieur Le Prun growled an inarticulate curse or two, and Blassemare whistled a minuet. "Come, my dear Le Prun," he resumed, "let us be frank; you are uneasy." "About what?" "Madame Le Prun." "She is not injured?" "No, but----" "Ah, she's in league with the thieves, may be?" said Le Prun, with an agitated sneer. "Precisely so," answered Blassemare, with a cold laugh. "I know what you think, and I know what _I_ think," replied Le Prun, with suppressed fury. His suspicions were all awake; he was bursting with rage, and looked truly infernal. "On the faith of a gentleman," said Blassemare, with a changed tone, "I cannot be said to _think_ any thing about the affair. I have my doubts, but that is all. We men are naturally suspicious; but, after all, there are such things as thieves and housebreakers." Le Prun said nothing, but looked black and icy as the north wind. "At all events," said Blassemare, "we men of the world know how to deal with affairs of this sort; so long as any uncertainty exists, put ostensibly the best possible construction upon it. Thus much is due to one's dignity in the eyes of the public; and in private we may prosecute inquiries unsuspected, and with the greater likelihood of success." "I know the world as well as you, Blassemare. I'm sick of your tone of superiority and advice. I know when to respect and when to defy the world. A man can no more make a fortune without tact than he can lose one without folly." "Well, well," said Blassemare, who was used to an occasional rebuff, and regarded a gruff word from his principal no more than he did the buzz of a beetle, "I know all that very well; but you, robust fellows, with millions at your back, are less likely to respect those subtle and delicate influences which sometimes, notwithstanding, carry mischief with them, than we poor, sensitive valetudinarians, without a guinea in our pockets; and if you will permit me, I will, when I return to-day, sift the matter for you. I understand woman; it is an art in itself, though not, perhaps, a very high one. A careless conversation with Madame Le Prun will let me further into the mystery, than a year spent in accumulating circumstantial evidence. You may rely on the result." The fermier-general uttered something between a growl and a grunt, which might or might not convey assent; and, waving Blassemare towards the house, walked along the terrace alone; and sat himself down upon the steps at the further end. The mental torpor which supervenes under sudden disasters was not, in the case of the fermier-general, without its dreamy groups of ugly images in prospect. As the light broke, and the darkness began to melt eastward into soft crimson mists and streaks of amber, Monsieur Le Prun rose stiffly from his hard, cold seat, and, with the slow step of a man irresolute and oppressed with profound wrath and mortification, began to return homeward. "Robbers!--thieves!" he muttered bitterly. "How glibly the traitress echoed the cry! The rascal Blassemare gave the true alarm--she did not echo _that_. D---- her, and d----him! Robbers, indeed! Thieves!--very like. I know what they came a thieving for. Upon her balcony--talking in murmurs--the candle extinguished in such a devil of a hurry--the ready cry of 'Thieves'--the spring door open for his flight--and the long delay to find the key. Bah! what proofs are wanting?" He heard just at this point a cracked voice singing a gay love verse from an open window. He knew the voice; every association connected with the performance and the performer jarred upon his nerves. It was indeed the Visconte de Charrebourg, some of whose early gayety had returned with his good fortune. He had, such was the pride of his rich son-in-law, a little household of his own, and kept his state and his own exorbitantly early hours in a suite of rooms assigned him, through one of whose windows, arrayed in a velvet cap and gown of brocade, he was rivalling the lark and greeting the rising sun, and, while sipping his chocolate in the intervals, moved, with the nimble irregularity of idle and active-minded age, about his apartment. "Well, sir, a pleasant affair this!" cried a harsh voice, interrupting his cheery occupation; and on looking round he saw the purple and sinister face of the fermier-general looming through the window. "What affair?" asked the visconte, in unfeigned astonishment, for he had been quite certain that his worthy son-in-law was quietly in his bed. "Your daughter's conduct." "What of her?" "Just this--she is a ----!" and, with the term of outrage, Le Prun uttered a forced laugh of fury. "I cannot have heard you aright: be kind enough to repeat that." There was a certain air of pomp and menace in this little speech, which drove Le Prun beyond all patience. He repeated the imputation in language still grosser. This was an insult which the ancient blood of the Charrebourgs could not tolerate, and the visconte taunted him with the honor which one of his house had done him in mingling their pure blood with that of a "roturier." Then came the obvious retort, "beggar," and even "trickster," retaliated by a torrent of scarcely articulate scorn and execration, and an appeal to the sword, which, with brutal contempt, (while at the same time, nevertheless, he recoiled instinctively a foot or two from the window,) the wealthy plebeian retorted by threatening to arrest him for the sums he had advanced. Le Prun had the best of it; he left the outraged visconte quivering and shrieking like an old woman in a frenzy. It was some comfort to have wrapt another in the hell-fire that tormented himself. [From the Examiner.] MAZZINI ON ITALY. We may--we do differ from Mazzini in many of his political views, and in our estimate of what may be the wisest policy for Italian liberals in existing circumstances. We think that he seeks to impart to politics a mathematical precision of which they are not susceptible, and does not sufficiently regard a principle the correctness of which has been admitted by himself, that the fact of a thing being true in principle cannot give the right of suddenly enthroning it in practice. But his errors are all on the large and generous side. He is too apt to attribute to society the precise convictions and spirit he feels within himself, and so to expect impossibilities, by impossible means. But there is a power of reasoning in Mazzini, an unsullied moral purity, a chivalrous veracity and frankness, an utter abnegation of self, and a courage that has stood the severest trials, which command not only respect but veneration. He belongs to the martyr age of Italian liberalism, and possesses himself the highest qualities of the martyr. His declared object in publishing the small volume[27] before us is to correct public opinion in England as to the Italian movement in which he took part. But it is a statement of principles rather than a narrative of details. It is always dignified in tone, often singularly eloquent, and substantially it contains little which would be likely to draw forth an expression of willing disagreement from any well-educated, high-minded, liberal Englishman. Mr. Mazzini thus declares his reasons WHY THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE REPUBLICAN. The Italian tradition is eminently republican. In England, the aristocratic element has a powerful influence, because it has a history: well or ill, it _has_ organized society: it has created a power, snatched from royalty, by conquering guarantees for the rights of the subject; it has founded in part the wealth and the influence of England abroad. The monarchical element has still great influence over the tendencies of France, because it also claims an important page in the national history; it has produced a Charlemagne, a Louis XI., a Napoleon; it has contributed to found the unity of France; it has shared with the communes the risks and the honors of the struggle against feudalism; it has surrounded the national banner with a halo of military glory. What is the history of the monarchy and of the aristocracy of Italy? What prominent part have they played in the national development? What vital element have they supplied to Italian strength, or to the unification of the future existence of Italy? The history of our royalty in fact commences with the dominion of Charles V., with the downfall of our liberties; it is identified with servitude and dismemberment; it is written on a foreign page, in the cabinets of France, of Austria, and of Spain. Nearly all of them the issue of foreign families, viceroys of one or other of the great powers, our kings do not offer the example of a single individual redeeming by brilliant personal qualities the vice of subalternity, to which his position condemned him; not a single one who has ever evinced any grand national aspiration. Around them in the obscurity of their courts, gather idle or retrograde courtiers, men who call themselves _noble_, but who have never been able to constitute an aristocracy. An aristocracy is a compact independent body, representing in itself an idea, and from one extremity of the country to another, governed, more or less, by one and the same inspiration: our nobles have lived upon the crumbs of royal favor, and if on some rare occasions they have ventured to place themselves in opposition to the monarch, it has not been in the cause of the nation, but of the foreigner, or of clerical absolutism. The nobility can never be regarded as an historical element: it has furnished some fortunate _Condottieri_, powerful even to tyranny, in some isolated town; it has knelt at the feet of the foreign emperors who have passed the Alps or crossed the sea. The original stock being nearly everywhere extinct, the races have become degenerated amidst corruption and ignorance. The descendants of our noble families at Genoa, at Naples, at Venice, and at Rome, are, for the most part specimens of absolute intellectual nullity. Almost every thing that has worked its difficult way in art, in literature, or in political activity, is plebeian. In Italy the initiative of progress has always belonged to the people, to the democratic element. It is through her communes that she has acquired all she has ever had of liberty: through her workmen in wool or silk, through her merchants of Genoa, Florence, Venice, and Pisa, that she has acquired her wealth; through her artists, plebeian and republican, from Giotto to Michael Angelo, that she has acquired her renown; through her navigators,--plebeian,--that she has given a world to humanity; through her Popes--sons of the people even they--that until the twelfth century she aided in the emancipation of the weak, and sent forth a word of unity to humanity. All her memories of insurrection against the foreigner are memories of the people: all that has made the greatness of our towns, dates almost always from a republican epoch: the educational book, the only book read by the inhabitant of the Alps or the Transteverin who can read, is an abridgment of the history of the Ancient Roman Republic. This is the reason why the same men who have so long been accused of coldness, and who had in fact witnessed with indifference the aristocratic and royal revolutions of 1820 and 1821, arose with enthusiasm and with a true power of self-sacrifice at the cry of _St. Mark and the Republic, God and the People_! These words contained for them a guarantee. They awoke in them, even unconsciously to themselves, the all-powerful echo of a living past, a confused recollection of glory, of strength, of conscience, and of dignity. With such elements how would it be possible to found a monarchy surrounded with an aristocracy? How can one speak of a balance of powers, where there are but two forces--foreign absolutism, and the people? How could one organize a constitutional monarchy where the aristocracy is without a past, and where royalty inspires neither affection nor respect? It will surprise many candid readers to find Mr. Mazzini repeatedly declaring in this book that the republican, or, as he calls it, the national party, are not responsible for the disunion, which, at a time when the whole nation was armed against the foreigners and might have driven them from the country, turned its forces against its own citizens. He gives proof that his own advice was for union till the day of victory, and _not till then_ for discussion as to what party should reap its fruits. Whether to monarch, or to people, he affirms that he was ready to submit; he asserts repeatedly that it was only after having been betrayed that the national party set up for themselves; and he expresses his belief that even now, when a union of princes has been seen to be impossible, the leadership of a single prince would be accepted by all, supposing such a fitting leader could be found. He thus describes THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND THEIR DETRACTORS. They have said, and they say again, without taking advantage of the favorable position in which events have placed them:--Let the nation arise; let her make herself mistress of her own territory; then, the victory once gained, let her freely decide who shall reap the fruits. Monarch or People, we will submit ourselves to the power she herself shall organize. Is it possible that so moderate and rational a proposition should be the object of such false interpretations, in a country which reveres the idea of right and of self-government? Is it possible that its leaders should be the object of so much calumny? It is time that these calumnies should cease. It matters little to us, who act as our conscience dictates, without troubling ourselves as to the personal result; and to whom faith and exile have given the habit of looking higher than the praise or blame of this earth. But it should be recognized as most important by all who believe that political questions agitated by whole nations, are questions eminently religious. For religion, to all those who see more in it than the mere materialism of forms and formulæ, is not only a thought of heaven, but the impulse which seeks to apply that thought, as far as possible to government on earth, our rule of action for the good of all, and for the moral development of humanity. Politics then are like religion--sacred; and all good men are bound to see them morally respected. Every question has a right to serious, calm, and honest discussion. Calumny should be the weapon of those only who have to defend not ideas, but crimes. It is immoral to say to men who have preached clemency throughout the whole of their political career, who have initiated their rule by the abolition of capital punishment, who, when in power, never signed a single sentence of exile against those who had persecuted them, nor even against the known enemies of their principle.--"You are the sanguinary organizers of _terror_, men of vengeance and of cruelty." It is immoral to ascribe to them views which they never had, and to choose to forget that they have, through the medium of the press here and elsewhere, attracted and refuted those communistic systems and exclusive solutions which tend to suppress rather than to transform the elements of society; and to say to them, "_You are communists, you desire to abolish property_." It is immoral to accuse of irreligion and impiety men who have devoted their whole lives to the endeavor to reconcile the religious idea, betrayed and disinherited by the very men who pretend to be its official defenders, with the National movement. It is immoral to insinuate accusations of personal interest and of pillage, against men who have serenely endured the sufferings of poverty, and whose life, accessible to all, has never betrayed either cupidity or the desire of luxury. It is immoral continually to proclaim, as the act of a whole party, the death of a statesman killed by an unknown hand, under the influence of the irritation produced by his own acts and by the attacks of another political party, many months before the Republican party recommenced its activity. Mr. Mazzini charges no direct treachery against Carlo Alberto. He declares him to have been himself the victim of the weakness which caused others as well as himself so much loss and misery. For the impossible political project of a Kingdom of the North he was content to surrender the grand reality of a United People which fate had placed within his hands. CHARLES ALBERT. Genius, love, and faith were wanting in Charles Albert. Of the first, which reveals itself by a life entirely, logically, and resolutely devoted to a great idea, the career of Charles Albert does not offer the least trace; the second was stifled in him by the continual mistrust of men and things, which was awakened by the remembrance of an unhappy past; the last was denied him by his uncertain character, wavering always between good and evil, between _to do_ and _not to do_, between daring and not daring. In his youth, a thought, not of virtue, but of Italian ambition--the ambition however which may be profitable to nations--had passed through his soul like lightning; but he recoiled in affright, and the remembrance of this one brilliant moment of his youth presented itself hourly to him, and tortured him like the incessant throbbing of an old wound, instead of acting upon him as an excitement to a new life. Between the risk of losing, if he failed, the crown of his little kingdom, and the fear of the liberty which the people, after having fought for him, would claim for themselves, he went hesitating on, with this spectre before his eyes, stumbling at every step, without energy to confront these dangers, without the will or power to comprehend that to become King of Italy he must first of all forget that he was King of Piedmont. Despotic from rooted instinct, liberal from self-love, and from a presentiment of the future, he submitted alternately to the government of Jesuits, and to that of men of progress. A fatal disunion between thought and action, between the conception and the faculty of execution, showed itself in every act. Most of those who endeavored to place him at the head of the enterprise, were forced to agree to this view of his character. Some of those intimate with him went so far as to whisper that he was threatened with lunacy. He was the Hamlet of Monarchy. A characteristic passage of the volume has relation to LAMARTINE'S VIEWS OF ITALIAN INDEPENDENCE. The war between the two principles was general in Europe--the enthusiasm excited by the movements in Italy, especially the Lombard insurrection and the prodigies of the five days, was immense; and Italy could, had she willed it and known how, have drawn thence sufficient force to counterbalance all the strength of hostile reaction. But to do this, it was necessary, whatever the mean policy of the _Moderates_ might fear, to give to the movement a character so audaciously national as to alarm our enemies, and to offer the most powerful element of support to our friends. Both felt the time was ripe, and began to believe that Italy would be but _Italy_, and not _the Kingdom of the North_. I remember the consoling words Lamartine addressed to me, at his house, on the eve of my departure for Italy, and in presence, amongst others, of Alfred de Vigny, and of the same Forbin Janson whom I was afterwards to meet preaching the papal restoration, and getting up various petty conspiracies and ridiculous intrigues at Rome. "The hour has struck for you," said the minister, "and I am so firmly convinced of it, that the first words with which I have charged Monsieur d'Harcourt for the Pope are these; _Holy Father, you know that you ought to be the President of the Italian Republic_." But Monsieur d'Harcourt had quite other things to say to the Pope, on the part of that faction which involved Lamartine in its snares whilst he imagined that he could control it. For myself I attached no importance, except as a symptom, to these words of Lamartine, a man of impulse and of noble instincts, but unstable in belief, without energy for a fixed purpose, and without real knowledge of men and things. He was indeed the echo of a tendency all-powerful, in those moments of excitement, upon the French mind; and every re-awakening nationality, every political programme, which, if not absolutely republican, was like that, at least, of the Italian constituent, would have compelled the support of the most hesitating government in France. From great things great things are born. The _dwarfish_ conception of the _Moderates_ froze up all souls, and imposed an utter change of politics upon France. The ITALIAN PEOPLE was an ally more than sufficiently powerful to preserve the Republic from all danger of a foreign war; a _Kingdom of the North_, in the hands of princes little to be relied upon, and hostile, by long tradition, to the Republicans of France, did but add a dangerous element to the league of kings. The French nation became silent, and left its government free to exist without any foreign policy, and to leave the destinies of the republic to the impenetrable future. The incidents described in most detail are those immediately preceding and following the fatal surrender of Milan; and it is impossible not to be struck by the contrast of the royal and the republican party, assuming the statement to be in all respects correct. But passing this ignominious period, there ought to be small difference of opinion in a free and educated country as to where the right lay in the subsequent Roman struggle. What sensible or honest Protestant would not sympathize with the indignant eloquence of this earnest Italian protesting against the flimsy oratory of a Jesuit Frenchman? MAZZINI TO MONTALEMBERT. "You base your argument upon the void; you discuss that which was, not that which is. The Papacy is dead, choked in blood and mire; dead, because it has betrayed its own mission of protection to the weak against the oppressor; dead, because for three centuries and a half it has prostituted itself with princes; dead, because in the name of egotism and before the palaces of all the corrupt, hypocritical, and skeptical governments, it has for the second time crucified Christ; dead, because it has uttered words of faith which it did not itself believe; dead, because it has denied human liberty and the dignity of our immortal souls; dead, because it has condemned science in Galileo, philosophy in Giordano Bruno, religious aspiration in John Huss and Jerome of Prague, political life by an anathema against the rights of the people, civil life by Jesuitism, the terrors of the inquisition, and the example of corruption, the life of the family by confession converted into a system of espionage, and by division introduced between father and son, brother and brother, husband and wife; dead, for the princes, by the treaty of Westphalia; dead, for the peoples, with Gregory XI., in 1378, and with the commencement of the schism; dead, for Italy, since 1530, when Clement VII. and Charles V., the Pope and the Emperor, signed an infamous compact, and extinguished, at Florence, the dying liberties of Italy, as to-day you have attempted to extinguish her rising liberties in Rome; dead, because the people has risen, because Pius IX. has fled, because the multitude curses him, because those very men who for fifteen years have made war upon the priests, in the name of Voltaire, now hypocritically defend them, because you and yours defend them, with intolerance and by force of arms, and declare that the Papacy and liberty cannot live side by side? You ask Victor Hugo to point out to you an idea which has been worshipped for eighteen centuries. It is that idea which you have declared irreconcilable with the Papacy, and which was breathed into humanity by God; the idea which has withdrawn from Catholicism the half of the Christian world, the idea which has snatched from you Lammennais and the flower of the intellects of Europe, the idea of Christ, that pure, holy, and sacred liberty which you invoked for Poland some years back, which Italy invokes for herself to-day, under the form, and with the guarantee of nationality, and which you cannot pretend to be good for one country and bad for another, unless you believe it a part of religion to create a pariah people in the bosom of humanity." Very admirably, too, and nobly written, are Mr. Mazzini's later remarks on the republican and anti-papal administration of Rome, and the coldness it met with in England and elsewhere. We must admit that it is hard for a people to struggle, suffer, and bleed alone, yet hold themselves in this temperate attitude. It is _not_ generous, as Mr. Mazzini too truly complains, in a nation having the enjoyment and the consciousness of liberty herself, to wait until the hour of victory has sounded for another nation before she stretches out a sister's hand towards her. WHAT THE REPUBLICANS DID AND ENGLAND MIGHT HAVE DONE. I affirm that with the exception of Ancona, where the triumvirate were obliged energetically to repress certain criminal acts of political vengeance, the republican cause was never sullied by the slightest excess; that no censorship was assumed over the press before the siege, and that no occasion arose for exercising it during the siege. Not a single condemnation to death or exile bore witness to a severity which it would have been our right to have exercised, but which the perfect unanimity which reigned amongst all the elements of the state rendered useless. I affirm that, except in the case of three or four priests, who had been guilty of firing upon our combatants, and who were killed by the people during the last days of the siege, not a single act of personal violence was committed by any fraction of the population against another, and that if ever there was a city presenting the spectacle of a band of brothers pursuing a common end, and bound together by the same faith, it was Rome under the republican rule. The city was inhabited by foreigners from all parts of the world, by the consular agents, by many of your countrymen; let any one of them arise and under the guarantee of his own signature deny, if he can, the truth of what I say. Terror now reigns in Rome; the prisons are choked with men who have been arrested and detained without trial; fifty priests are confined in the castle of St. Angelo, whose only crime consists in their having lent their services in our hospitals; the citizens, the best known for their moderation, are exiled; the army is almost entirely dissolved, the city disarmed, and the "factious" sent away even to the last man; and yet France dares not consult in legal manner the will of the populations, but re-establishes the papal authority by military decree. I do not believe that since the dismemberment of Poland there has been committed a more atrocious injustice, a more gross violation of the eternal right which God has implanted in the peoples, that of appreciating and defining for themselves their own life, and governing themselves in accordance with their own appreciation of it. And I cannot believe that it is well for you or for Europe that such things can be accomplished in the eyes of the world, without one nation arising out of its immobility to protest in the name of universal justice. This is to enthrone brute force, where, by the power of reason, God alone should reign; it is to substitute the sword and poniard for law--to decree a ferocious war without limit of time or means between oppressors rendered suspicious by their fears, and the oppressed abandoned to the instincts of reaction and isolation. Let Europe ponder upon these things. For if the light of human morality becomes but a little more obscured, in that darkness there will arise a strife that will make those who come after us shudder with dread. The balance of power in Europe is destroyed. It consisted formerly in the support given to the smaller states by the great powers: now they are abandoned. France in Italy, Russia in Hungary, Prussia in Germany, a little later perhaps in Switzerland; these are now the masters of the continent. England is thus made a nullity; the "celsa sedet in Eolus in arce," which Canning delighted to quote, to express the moderating function which he wished to reserve for his country, is now a meaningless phrase. Let not your preachers of the theory of material interests, your speculators upon extended markets deceive themselves; there is history to teach them that political influence and commercial influence are closely bound together. Political sympathies hold the key of the markets; the tariff of the Roman Republic will appear to you, if you study it, to be a declaration of sympathy towards England to which your government did not think it necessary to respond. * * * * * And yet, above the question of right, above the question of political interest, both of which were of a nature to excite early the attention of England, there is, as I have said, another question being agitated at Rome of a very different kind of importance, and which ought to have aroused all those who believe in the vital principle of religious reformation--it is that of liberty of conscience. The religious question which broods at the root of all political questions showed itself there great and visible in all its European importance. The Pope at Gaeta was the theory of absolute infallible authority exiled from Rome for ever; and exiled from Rome was to be exiled from the world. The abolition of the temporal power evidently drew with it, in the minds of all those who understood the secret of the papal authority, the emancipation of men's minds from the spiritual authority. The principle of liberty and of free consent, elevated by the Constituent Assembly into a living active right, tended rapidly to destroy the absolutist dogma which from Rome aims more than ever to enchain the universe. The high aristocracy of the Roman Catholic clergy well know the impossibility of retaining the soul in darkness, in the midst of light inundating the intelligence of men; for this reason they carried off their Pope to Gaeta; for this reason they now refuse all compromise. They know that any compromise would be fatal to them; that they must re-enter as conquerors, or not at all. And in the same way that the aristocracy of the clergy felt this inseparability of the two powers, the French government, in its present reactionary march, has felt that the keystone of despotism is at Rome--that the ruin of the spiritual authority of the middle ages would be the ruin of its own projects--and that the only method of securing to it a few more years of existence was to rebuild for it a temporal domination. England has understood nothing of this. She has not understood what there was of sublime and prophetic in this cry of emancipation, in this protestation in favor of human liberty, issuing from the very heart of ancient Rome, in the face of the Vatican. She has not felt that the struggle in Rome was to cut the Gordian knot of moral servitude against which she has long and vainly opposed her Bible Societies, her Christian and Evangelical Alliances; and that there was being opened, had she but extended a sisterly hand to the movement, a mighty pathway for the human mind. She has not understood that one bold word, "respect for the liberty of thought," opposed to the hypocritical language of the French government, would have been sufficient to have inaugurated the era of a new religious policy, and to have conquered for herself a decisive ascendency upon the continent. The writer of such passages as these may nevertheless be of good heart. Though we may not think him exactly qualified to conduct to a successful issue practical political movements in the existing state of Italian society, we think him qualified for something far higher and nobler. Like Knox and Wicliffe, Huss and Luther, Mr. Mazzini is no maker of ephemeral arrangements and compromises; but like them he is the uncompromising asserter of principles, and the creator of a national sentiment, that will in time give law to the makers of such arrangements. Looking to the yet weak and timid condition of public opinion in Italy--looking to the narrow provincial views which still hamper general society--above all, looking to the limited power of its princes and prelates, and to the imbecile and demoralized characters of its Pio Nonos and Antonellis, we must confess that we see no hope of any immediate political settlement, the attainment of which need make it worth while for Mr. Mazzini to compromise or abandon for a moment his most extreme political opinions. Nothing is to be accomplished at present; and he is therefore more usefully employed in rallying his party by fervent reiteration of his principles, and in forming a pure and elevated public sentiment alike by his precepts and his example. How masterly is this sketch of the career of PIO NONO. A Pope arose, by his tendencies, his progressive instincts and his love of popularity, an exception to the Popes of later times: to whom Providence, as if to teach mankind the absolute powerlessness of the institution, opened, in the love and in the illusions of the people, the path to a new life. So great is the fascination exercised by great memories--so great is the power of ancient customs--so feverish, in these multitudes who are said to be agitated by the breath of anarchy, is the desire for authority as the guide and sanction of their progress, that a word of pardon and tolerance from the Pope's lips sufficed to gather round him, in an enthusiasm and intoxication of affection, friends and enemies, believers and unbelievers, the ignorant and the men of thought. One long cry, the cry of millions ready to make themselves martyrs or conquerors at his nod, saluted him as their father and benefactor, the regenerator of the Catholic faith and of humanity. The experience of three ages and the inexorable logic of ideas, were at once forgotten; writers, powerful by their intellect and doctrines, until then dreaded as adversaries, employed themselves in founding around that _One_ man systems destined to prepare for him the way to a splendid initiative. The many advocates of liberty of conscience, weary of the spectacle of anarchy revealed by the Protestant sects, remained in doubt. The few believers in the future church remained silent and thoughtful. It might be that history had decided too rashly, it might be amongst the secrets of Providence that an institution, which had for ten centuries at least given life and movement to Europe, should rise again, reconciled with the life and movement of humanity, from its own tomb. The minds of the whole civilized world hung, troubled and excited, upon the _word_ which was to issue from the Vatican. And where now is Pius IX.? In the camp of the enemy: irrevocably disjoined from the progressive destinies of humanity; irrevocably adverse to the desires, to the aspirations which agitate his people and the people of believers. The experiment is complete. The abyss between Papacy and the world is hollowed out. No earthly power can fill it up. Impelled by the impulses of his heart to seek for popularity and affection, but drawn on by the all-powerful logic of the principle that he represents, to the severity of absolute dictatorship; seduced by the universal movement of men's minds, by living examples in other countries, by the spirit of the age, to feel, to understand the sacred words of progress, of people, of free brotherhood, but incapable of making himself their interpreter; fearful of the consequences, and trembling like one who feels himself insecure, lest he should see the people, raised to a new consciousness of its own faculties and of its own rights, question the authority of the pontificate--Pius IX. vacillated contemptibly between the two paths presented to him, muttered words of emancipation, which he neither knew how nor intended to make good, and promises of country and independence to Italy which his followers betrayed by conspiring with Austria. Then, struck with sudden terror, he fled before the multitudes who cried aloud to him _courage;_ he sheltered himself under the protection of a Prince whom he despised--the executioner of his subjects; he imbibed his tendencies, and in order to revenge himself for the quiet with which Rome, provoked in vain to a civil war, was organizing a new government, he solicited foreign aid; and he who had, from a horror of bloodshed, shortly before endeavored to withdraw Roman assistance from the Lombard struggle, agreed that French, Austrian, Neapolitan, and Spanish bayonets should rebuild his throne. He now wanders amidst the fallacies of secret protocols, the servant of his protectors, the servant of all except of duty and of the wish of those who hoped in him, turning to the frontiers of Rome and yet not expecting to re-enter there, and as if kept back by the phantoms of the slain. The Louis XVI. of Papacy, he has destroyed it for ever. The cannon ball of his allies discharged against the Vatican, gave the last blow to the institution. Whilst these things were happening, a Prince was pursuing in the north of our peninsula a similar course, accompanied by the same hopes, by the same illusions and delusions of the people. He was saluted by the title of the _Sword of Italy_. The choicest spirits from all parts pointed out to him Austria and the Alps, and suspended, in order to make the last trial of monarchy, the propagandism of their most cherished ideas. He was preceded by the encouragement of all Europe, and followed by a numerous and valiant army. Where died Charles Albert? Thus has Providence shown to our people, desirous of the right, but lukewarm in faith and too credulous in the illusions of the old world, the powerlessness of monarchy to insure the safety of Italy, and the irreconcilability of papacy with the free progress of humanity. The dualism of the middle ages is henceforward a mere form without life or soul; the Guelph and Ghibelline insignia are now those of the tomb. Neither Pope, nor King! God and the people only shall henceforth disclose to us the regions of the future. * * * * * Future times--nay the present will do ample justice to Mazzini, as well as to Pio Nono. In the first will be frankly recognized one of those iron men who are able to beard tyranny and profligacy even while they stand alone, the apostles of reformation, the originators and heralds of after change. In the other--but the words just quoted anticipate as it seems to us, and in no ungenerous spirit, the verdict and language of history. FOOTNOTES: [27] Royalty and Republicanism in Italy; or Notes and Documents relating to the Lombard Insurrection, and to the Royal War of 1848. By Joseph Mazzini. Charles Gilpin. [From the Keepsake for 1851.] THE MOTHER'S LAST SONG. BY BARRY CORNWALL. Sleep!--the ghostly winds are blowing; No moon's abroad; no star is glowing; The river is deep, and the tide is flowing To the land where you and I are going! We are going afar, Beyond moon or star, To the land where the sinless angels are! I lost my heart to your heartless sire; ('Twas melted away by his looks of fire;) Forgot my God, and my father's ire, All for the sake of a man's desire:-- But now we'll go Where the waters flow, And make us a bed where none shall know. The world is cruel; the world's untrue; Our foes are many; our friends are few; No work, no bread, however we sue! What is there left for us to do-- But fly--fly, From the cruel sky, And hide in the deepest deeps--and die! [From the Ladies' Companion.] A DRIVE ABOUT MY NEIGHBORHOOD IN 1850. BY MARY RUSSEL MITFORD. If there be one thing more than another in the nice balance of tastes and prejudices (for I do not speak here of principles) which incline us now to the elegance of Charles, now to the strength of Cromwell,--which disgust us alternately with the license of the Cavaliers and the fanaticism of the Roundheads; it would be the melancholy ruin of cast-down castles and plundered shrines, that meet our eyes all over our fair land, and nowhere in greater profusion than in this district, lying as it does in the very midst of some of the most celebrated battles of the Civil Wars. To say nothing of the siege of Reading, which more even than the vandalism of the Reformation completed the destruction of that noble abbey, the third in rank and size in England, with its magnificent church, its cloisters, and its halls, covering thirty acres of buildings,--and such buildings! within the outer courts;--to say nothing of that most reckless barbarity just at our door--we in our little village of Aberleigh lie between Basting-House to the south, whose desperately defended walls offer little more now than a mere site,--and Donnington to the west, where the ruined Gatehouse upon the hill alone remains of that strong fortress, which overlooked the well-contested field of Newbury,--and Chalgrove to the north, where the reaper, as he binds his sheaf, still pauses to tell you the very place where Hampden fell; every spot has a history! Look at a wooden spire, and your companion shakes his head, and says that it has been so ever since the Cavaliers were blown up in the church tower! Ask the history of a crumbling wall, and the answer is pretty sure to be, Cromwell! That his Highness the Lord Protector did leave what an accomplished friend of mine calls "his peculiar impressions" upon a great many places in our neighborhood is pretty certain; on so many, that there is no actual or authentic catalogue of all; and in some cases there is nothing but general tradition, and the nature of the "impressions" in question, to vouch for the fact of their destruction at that period. Amongst these, one of the edifices that must have been best worth preserving, and is even now most interesting to see, is the grand old castellated mansion, which in the reign of Elizabeth belonged to one of her favorite courtiers, and was known as Master Comptroller's House, at Grays. The very road to it is singularly interesting. Passing through the town, which increases in growth every day, until one wonders when and where it will stop, and looking with ever fresh admiration at the beautiful lacework window of the old Friary, which I long to see preserved in the fitliest manner, by forming again the chief ornament of a church, and then driving under the arch of the Great Western Railway, and feeling the strange vibration of some monster train passing over our heads,--a proceeding which never fails to make my pony show off his choicest airs and graces, pricking up his pretty ears, tossing his slender head, dancing upon four feet, and sometimes rearing upon two,--we arrive at the long, low, picturesque old bridge, the oldest of all the bridges that cross the Thames, so narrow that no two vehicles can pass at once, and that over every pier triangular spaces have been devised for the safety of foot passengers. On the centre arch is a fisherman's hut, occupying the place once filled by a friar's cell, and covering a still existing chapel, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, now put to secular uses--a dairy or a cellar. A little way down the river is one of the beautiful islands of the Thames, now a smooth and verdant meadow, edged round with old willow pollards calmly reflected in the bright, clear waters, but giving back in the twelfth century a far different scene. Here was fought a wager of battle between Robert de Montford, appellant, and Henry de Essex, hereditary Standard-bearer of the kings of England, defendant, by command, and in the presence of Henry the Second. The story is told very minutely and graphically by Stowe. Robert de Montford at length struck down his adversary, "who fell," says the old historian, "after receiving many wounds; and the King, at the request of several noblemen, his relations, gave permission to the monks to inter the body, commanding that no further violence should be offered to it. The monks took up the vanquished knight, and carried him into the abbey, where he revived. When he recovered from his wounds, he was received into the community, and assumed the habit of the order, his lands being forfeited to the King." I have always thought that this story would afford excellent scope to some great novelist, who might give a fair and accurate picture of monastic life, and, indeed, of the monastic orders, as landlords, neighbors, teachers, priests, without any mixture of controversial theology, or inventing any predecessors of Luther or Wicliffe. How we should have liked to have heard all about "The Monastery," about the "Abbot" and Father Eustace, untroubled by Henry Warden or John Knox! From the moment that they appear, our comfort in the book vanishes, just as completely as that of the good easy Abbot Boniface himself. There we are in the middle of vexed questions, with the beautiful pile of Melrose threatening every moment to fall about our ears! Our business now, however, is to get over the bridge, which after the excitement of one dispute with a pugnacious carrier, and another with a saucy groom, whose caracoling horse had well nigh leaped over the parapets on either side; after some backing of other carriages, and some danger of being forced back to our own, we at last achieve, and enter unscathed, the pleasant village of Caversham. To the left, through a highly ornamented lodge, lies the road to the ancient seat of the Blounts, another house made famous by Pope, where the fair ladies of his love, the sisters Martha and Teresa, lived and died. A fine old place it is; and a picturesque road leads to it, winding through a tract called the Warren, between the high chalk-cliffs, clothed with trees of all varieties, that for so many miles fence in the northern side of the Thames, and the lordly river itself, now concealed by tall elms, now open and shining in the full light of the summer sun. There is not such a flower bank in Oxfordshire as Caversham Warren. Our way, however, leads straight on. A few miles further, and a turn to the right conducts us to one of the grand old village churches, which give so much of character to English landscape. A large and beautiful pile it is. The tower half clothed with ivy, standing with its charming vicarage and its pretty vicarage-garden on a high eminence, overhanging one of the finest bends of the great river. A woody lane leads from the church to the bottom of the chalk-cliff, one side of which stands out from the road below, like a promontory, surmounted by the laurel hedges and flowery arbors of the vicarage-garden, and crested by a noble cedar of Lebanon. This is Shiplake church, famed far and near for its magnificent oak carving, and the rich painted glass of its windows, collected, long before such adornments were fashionable, by the fine taste of the late vicar, and therefore filled with the very choicest specimens of mediæval art, chiefly obtained from the remains of the celebrated Abbey of St. Bertin, near St. Omers, sacked during the first French Revolution. In this church Alfred Tennyson was married. Blessings be upon him! I never saw the great Poet in my life, but thousands who never may have seen him either, but who owe to his poetry the purest and richest intellectual enjoyment, will echo and re-echo the benison. A little way farther, and a turn to the left leads to another spot consecrated by genius,--Woodcot, where Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton passed the earlier years of his married life, and wrote several of his most powerful novels. I have always thought that the scenery of Paul Clifford caught some of its tone from that wild and beautiful country, for wild and beautiful it is. The terrace in the grounds commands a most extensive prospect; and beneath a clump of trees on the common behind the house, is the only spot where on a clear day Windsor may be seen on one side, and Oxford on the other,--looking almost like the domes, and towers, and pinnacles that sometimes appear in the clouds--a fairy picture that the next breeze may waft away! This beautiful residence stands so high, that one of its former possessors, Admiral Fraser (grandfather to that dear friend of mine who is the present owner), could discover Woodcot Clump from the mast of his own ship at Spithead, a distance of sixty miles. Wyfold's Court, another pretty place a little farther on, which also belonged once to a most dear friend, possesses the finest Wych-elms in England. Artists come from far and near to paint these stately trees, whose down-dropping branches and magnificent height are at once so graceful and so rich. They are said always to indicate ecclesiastical possession, but no trace of such dependency is to be found in the title-deeds, or in the tenure by which in feudal times the lands were held,--that of presenting a rose to the King, should he pass by a certain road on a May-day. And now we approach Rotherfield Grays,--its bowery lanes, its wild rugged commons, and its vast beech woods, from the edge of which projects every here and there a huge cherry-tree, looking, in the blossoming springtime, as if carved in ivory, so exquisite is the whiteness, casting upon the ferny-turf underneath showers of snowy petals that blanch the very ground, and diffusing around an almond-like odor, that mingles with the springing thyme and the flowering gorse, and loads the very air with heavy balm. Exquisite is the pleasantness of these beech woods, where the light is green from the silky verdure of the young leaves, and where the mossy wood-paths are embroidered with thousands of flowers, from the earliest violet and primrose, the wood-anemone, the wood-sorrel, the daffodil, and the wild hyacinth of spring, to the wood-vetch, the woodroof, the campanulas, and the orchises of summer;--for all the English orchises are here: that which so curiously imitates the dead oak leaf, that again which imitates the human figure; the commonest but most pretty bee orchis, and the parallel ones which are called after the spider, the frog, and the fly. Strange freak of nature this, in a lower order of creation, to mimic her own handyworks in a higher!--to mimic even our human mimicry!--for that which is called the man orchis is most like the imitation of a human figure that a child might cut from colored paper. Strange, strange mimicry! but full of variety, full of beauty, full of odor. Of all the fragrant blossoms that haunt the woods, I know none so exquisite as that night-scented orchis which is called indifferently, the butterfly or the lily of the valley. Another glory of these woods, an autumnal glory, is the whole fungus tribe, various and innumerable as the mosses; from the sober drab-colored fungi, spotted with white, which so much resemble a sea-egg, to those whose deep and gorgeous hues would shame the tinting of an Indian shell. Truffles, too, are found beneath the earth; and above it are deposited huge masses of the strange compound called in modern geological phrase Agglomerate. Flint and coral, and gravel, and attrited pebbles enter into the combination of this extraordinary natural conglomeration, which no steel, however hardened, can separate, and which seems to have been imitated very successfully by the old builders in their cements and the substances used in the filling up of their grandest structures, as may be seen in the layers which unite the enormous slabs of granite in the Roman walls at Silchester, as well as in the works of the old monkish architects at Reading Abbey. Another beauty of this country is to be found in the fields,--now of the deep-red clover, with its shining crimson tops, now of the gay and brilliant saintfoin (the holy hay), the bright pink of whose flowery spikes gives to the ground the look of a bed of roses. And now we reach the gate that admits us down a steep descent to the Rectory-house, a large substantial mansion, covered with Banksia roses, and finely placed upon a natural terrace,--a fertile valley below, and its own woods and orchard-trees above. My friend the rector, raciest of men, is an Oxford divine of the old school; a ripe scholar; one who has travelled wide and far, and is learned in the tongues, the manners, and the literature of many nations; but who is himself English to the backbone in person, thought, and feeling. Orthodox is he, no doubt. Nowhere are church and schools, and parish visitings, better cared for; but he has a knack of attending also to the creature comforts of all about him, of calling beef and blankets in aid of his precepts, which has a wonderful effect in promoting their efficacy. Mansion and man are large alike, and alike overflowing with hospitality and kindliness. His original and poignant conversation is so joyous and good-humored, the making every body happy is so evidently his predominant taste, that the pungency only adds to the flavor of his talk, and never casts a moment's shade over its sunny heartiness. Right opposite the Rectory terrace, framed like a picture by the rarest and stateliest trees, stands the object of my pilgrimage, Grays' Court, a comparatively modern house, erected amongst the remains of a vast old castellated mansion, belonging first to the noble family of Gray, who gave their name not merely to the manor, but to the district; then to the house of Knollys; and latterly to the Stapletons, two venerable ladies of that name being its present possessors. All my life I had heard of Grays' Court; of the rich yet wild country in which it is placed; of the park so finely undulated, and so profusely covered by magnificent timber; of the huge old towers which seem to guard and sentinel the present house; of the far extended walls, whose foundations may yet be traced, in dry seasons, among the turf of the lawn; of the traditions which assign the demolition of those ancient walls to the wars of the Commonwealth; and of the strange absence of all documentary evidence upon the subject. Another cause for my strong desire to see this interesting place, is to be found in its association with one of those historical personages in whom I have always taken the warmest interest. Lord Essex (whose mother was the famous Lettice Knollys, who had had for her second husband another of Queen Elizabeth's favorites, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester), when confined in London, a prey to the tyranny of Elizabeth, petitioned, in one of those eloquent letters to the Virgin Queen which will always remain amongst the earliest and finest specimens of English prose, to be allowed to repair, for the benefit of his health, "to Master Comptroller's house at Grays." Ah! we can fancy, when looking over this lovely valley, with its woods, its verdure, its sweep of hills, its feeling of the near river, we can well fancy how the poet-heart of the great Earl must have longed to leave the trial, the turmoil, the jangling, the treachery, the weary fears, the bitter humiliations of his London captivity, and to taste once more the sweet air, the pleasant sights, the calmness and the quiet of the country. Hope and comfort must have come with the thought. One of the prettiest pictures that I know, is an extract from a contemporary letter, in the first volume of Mr. Craik's most interesting book, the "Romance of the Peerage," telling of the Earl and Countess, during one of the daily visits that she was at one time permitted to pay him when he was a prisoner in Essex House, walking together in the garden, "now he, now she, reading one to the other." The whole taste and feeling of the man, the daily habit of his life, is shown in this little circumstance. And this is the brave soldier who, when examined before the Privy Council, a council composed of open enemies and treacherous friends, had been kept nearly all the day kneeling at the bottom of the table. Tyranny drove him into madness, and then exacted the full penalty of the wild acts which that madness prompted. But Essex was a man in advance of his age; the companion as well as the patron of poets; the protector of papist and puritan; the fearless asserter of liberty of conscience! He deserved a truer friend than Bacon, a more merciful judge than Elizabeth. To the house of Knollys belongs another interesting association, that strangest of genealogical romances, the great case of the Banbury peerage. The cause was decided (if decided it can be called even now) by evidence found in the parish register of Rotherfield Grays. The place has yet another attraction in its difficulty of access; the excellent ladies of the Court admitting few beyond their own immediate connections and nearest friends. One class, to be sure, finds its way there as if by instinct--the poor, who, as the birds of the air detect the grain under the surface in the newly sown ground, are sure to find out the soil where charity lies germinating. Few excepting these constant visitors are admitted. But, besides the powerful introduction of our mutual friend the rector, a nephew of theirs, and his most sweet and interesting wife, had for some time inhabited the house which had been the home of my own youth, so that my name was not strange to them; and they had the kindness to allow me to walk over their beautiful grounds and gardens, to see their charming Swiss dairy, with its marbles and its china, and, above all, to satisfy my curiosity by looking over the towers which still remain of the old castle,--piles whose prodigious thickness of wall and distance from each other give token of the immense extent and importance of the place. It is said to have been built round two courts. Alnwick and Windsor rose to my thoughts as I contemplated these gigantic remains, and calculated the space that the original edifice must have covered. One of these towers is still occupied by the well of the castle, a well three hundred feet deep, which supplies the family with water. It will give some idea of the scale of the old mansion, to say that the wheel by which the water is raised, is twenty-five feet in diameter. Two donkeys are employed in the operation. One donkey suffices for the parallel but much smaller well at Carisbrook, where the animal is so accustomed to be put in for the mere purpose of exhibiting the way in which the water is raised to the visitors who go to look at the poor king's last prison, that he just makes the one turn necessary to show the working of the machine, and then stops of his own accord. The donkeys at Grays, kept for use and not for show, have not had a similar opportunity of displaying their sagacity. One cannot look at the place without a feeling of adaptedness. It is the very spot for a stronghold of the Cavaliers: a spot where Lovelace and Montrose might each have fought and each have sung, defending it to the last loaf of bread and the last charge of powder, and yielding at last to the irresistible force of Cromwell's cannonade. [From the Keepsake for 1851.] STANZAS. Come not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep, and the plover cry; But go thou by. Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest; Wed whom thou wilt; but I am sick of time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie. Go by--go by! ALFRED TENNYSON. [From Blackwood's Magazine.] MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. _Continued from page 120._ BOOK II.--CHAPTER VII. In spite of all his Machiavellian wisdom, Dr. Riccabocca had been foiled in his attempt to seduce Leonard Fairfield into his service, even though he succeeded in partially winning over the widow to his views. For to her he represented the worldly advantages of the thing. Lenny would learn to be fit for more than a day-laborer; he would learn gardening, in all its branches--rise some day to be a head gardener. "And," said Riccabocca, "I will take care of his book learning, and teach him whatever he has a head for." "He has a head for every thing," said the widow. "Then," said the wise man, "every thing shall go into it." The widow was certainly dazzled; for, as we have seen, she highly prized scholarly distinction, and she knew that the parson looked upon Riccabocca as a wondrous learned man. But still, Riccabocca was said to be a Papist, and suspected to be a conjuror. Her scruples on both these points, the Italian, who was an adept in the art of talking over the fair sex, would no doubt have dissipated, if there had been any use in it; but Lenny put a dead stop to all negotiations. He had taken a mortal dislike to Riccabocca; he was very much frightened by him--and the spectacles, the pipe, the cloak, the long hair, and the red umbrella; and said so sturdily, in reply to every overture, "Please, sir, I'd rather not; I'd rather stay along with mother"--that Riccabocca was forced to suspend all further experiments in his Machiavellian diplomacy. He was not at all cast down, however, by his first failure; on the contrary, he was one of those men whom opposition stimulates. And what before had been but a suggestion of prudence, became an object of desire. Plenty of other lads might no doubt be had, on as reasonable terms as Lenny Fairfield; but the moment Lenny presumed to baffle the Italian's designs upon him, the special acquisition of Lenny became of paramount importance in the eyes of Signor Riccabocca. Jackeymo, however, lost all his interest in the traps, snares, and gins which his master proposed to lay for Leonard Fairfield, in the more immediate surprise that awaited him on learning that Dr. Riccabocca had accepted an invitation to pass a few days at the Hall. "There will be no one there but the family," said Riccabocca. "Poor Giacomo, a little chat in the servants' hall will do you good: and the squire's beef is more nourishing, after all, than the sticklebacks and minnows. It will lengthen your life." "The Padrone jests," said Jackeymo, statelily, "as if any one could starve in his service." "Um," said Riccabocca. "At least, faithful friend, you have tried that experiment as far as human nature will permit;" and he extended his hand to his fellow-exile with that familiarity which exists between servant and master in the usages of the continent. Jackeymo bent low, and a tear fell upon the hand he kissed. "_Cospetto!_" said Dr. Riccabocca, "a thousand mock pearls do not make up the cost of a single true one! The tears of women, we know their worth; but the tear of an honest man--fie, Giacomo!--at least I can never repay you this! Go and see to our wardrobe." So far as his master's wardrobe was concerned, that order was pleasing to Jackeymo; for the Doctor had in his drawers suits which Jackeymo pronounced to be as good as new, though many a long year had passed since they left the tailor's hands. But when Jackeymo came to examine the state of his own clothing department, his face grew considerably longer. It was not that he was without other clothes than those on his back--quantity was there, but the quality! Mournfully he gazed on two suits, complete in the three separate members of which man's raiments are composed: the one suit extended at length upon his bed, like a veteran stretched by pious hands after death; the other brought piecemeal to the invidious light--the _torso_ placed upon a chair, the limbs dangling down from Jackeymo's melancholy arm. No bodies long exposed at the Morgue could evince less sign of resuscitation than those respectable defuncts. For, indeed, Jackeymo had been less thrifty of his apparel--more _profusus sui_--than his master. In the earliest days of their exile, he preserved the decorous habit of dressing for dinner--it was a respect due to the Padrone--and that habit had lasted till the two habits on which it necessarily depended had evinced the first symptoms of decay; then the evening clothes had been taken into morning wear, in which hard service they had breathed their last. The Doctor, notwithstanding his general philosophical abstraction from such household details, had more than once said, rather in pity to Jackeymo, than with an eye to that respectability which the costume of the servant reflects on the dignity of the master, "Giacomo, thou wantest clothes; fit thyself out of mine!" And Jackeymo had bowed his gratitude, as if the donation had been accepted; but the fact was, that that same fitting out was easier said than done. For though--thanks to an existence mainly upon sticklebacks and minnows--both Jackeymo and Riccabocca at that state which the longevity of misers proves to be most healthful to the human frame, viz., skin and bone--yet, the bones contained in the skin of Riccabocca all took longitudinal directions; while those in the skin of Jackeymo spread out latitudinally. And you might as well have made the bark of a Lombardy poplar serve for the trunk of some dwarfed and pollarded oak, in whose hollow the Babes of the Wood could have slept at their ease, as have fitted out Jackeymo from the garb of Riccabocca. Moreover, if the skill of the tailor could have accomplished that undertaking, the faithful Jackeymo would never have had the heart to avail himself of the generosity of his master. He had a sort of religious sentiment too, about those vestments of the Padrone. The ancients, we know, when escaping from shipwreck, suspended in the votive temple the garments in which they had struggled through the wave. Jackeymo looked on those relics of the past with a kindred superstition. "This coat the Padrone wore on such an occasion. I remember the very evening the Padrone last put on those pantaloons!" And coat and pantaloons were tenderly dusted, and carefully restored to their sacred rest. But now, after all, what was to be done? Jackeymo was much too proud to exhibit his person, to the eyes of the Squire's butler, in habiliments discreditable to himself and the Padrone. In the midst of his perplexity the bell rang, and he went down into the parlor. Riccabocca was standing on the hearth, under his symbolical representation of the "Patriæ Exul." "Giacomo," quoth he, "I have been thinking that thou hast never done what I told thee, and fitted thyself out from my superfluities. But we are going now into the great world; visiting once begun, Heaven knows where it may stop! Go to the nearest town and get thyself clothes. Things are dear in England. Will this suffice?" And Riccabocca extended a £5 note. Jackeymo, we have seen, was more familiar with his master than we formal English permit our domestics to be with us. But in his familiarity he was usually respectful. This time, however, respect deserted him. "The Padrone is mad!" he exclaimed; "he would fling away his whole fortune if I would let him. Five pounds English, or a hundred and twenty-six pounds Milanese![28] Santa Maria! Unnatural Father! And what is to become of the poor Signorina? Is this the way you are to marry her in the foreign land?" "Giacomo," said Riccabocca, bowing his head to the storm, "the Signorina to-morrow; to-day, the honor of the house. Thy small-clothes, Giacomo. Miserable man, thy small-clothes!" "It is just," said Jackeymo, recovering himself, and with humility; "and the Padrone does right to blame me, but not in so cruel a way. It is just--the Padrone lodges and boards me, and gives me handsome wages, and he has a right to expect that I should not go in this figure." "For the board and the lodgment, good," said Riccabocca. "For the handsome wages, they are the visions of thy fancy!" "They are no such thing," said Jackeymo, "they are only in arrear. As if the Padrone could not pay them some day or other--as if I was demeaning myself by serving a master who did not intend to pay his servants! And can't I wait? Have I not my savings, too? But be cheered, be cheered; you shall be contented with me. I have two beautiful suits still. I was arranging them when you rang for me. You shall see, you shall see." And Jackeymo hurried from the room, hurried back into his own chamber, unlocked a little trunk which he kept at his bed head, tossed out a variety of small articles, and from the deepest depth extracted a leathern purse. He emptied the contents on the bed. They were chiefly Italian coins, some five-franc pieces, a silver medallion inclosing a little image of his patron saint--San Giacomo--one solid English guinea, and two or three pounds' worth in English silver. Jackeymo put back the foreign coins, saying prudently, "One will lose on them here;" he seized the English coins and counted them out. "But are you enough, you rascals?" quoth he angrily, giving them a good shake. His eye caught sight of the medallion--he paused; and after eyeing the tiny representation of the saint with great deliberation, he added, in a sentence which he must have picked up from the proverbial aphorisms of his master: "What's the difference between the enemy who does not hurt me, and the friend who does not serve me? _Monsignore San Giacomo_, my patron saint, you are of very little use to me in the leathern bag. But if you help me to get into a new pair of small-clothes on this important occasion, you will be a friend indeed. _Alla bisogna, Monsignore_." Then, gravely kissing the medallion, he thrust it into one pocket, the coins into the other, made up a bundle of the two defunct suits, and, muttering to himself, "Beast, miser that I am, to disgrace the Padrone, with all these savings in his service!" ran down stairs into his pantry, caught up his hat and stick, and in a few moments more was seen trudging off to the neighboring town of L----. Apparently the poor Italian succeeded, for he came back that evening in time to prepare the thin gruel which made his master's supper, with a suit of black--a little threadbare, but still highly respectable--two shirt fronts, and two white cravats. But, out of all this finery, Jackeymo held the small-clothes in especial veneration; for as they had cost exactly what the medallion had sold for, so it seemed to him that San Giacomo had heard his prayer in that quarter to which he had more exclusively directed the saint's attention. The other habiliments came to him in the merely human process of sale and barter; the small-clothes were the personal gratuity of San Giacomo! CHAPTER VIII. Life has been subjected to many ingenious comparisons: and if we do not understand it any better, it is not for want of what is called "reasoning by illustration." Amongst other resemblances, there are moments when, to a quiet contemplator, it suggests the image of one of those rotatory entertainments commonly seen in fairs, and known by the name of "whirligigs or roundabouts," in which each participator of the pastime, seated on his hobby, is always apparently in the act of pursuing some one before him, while he is pursued by some one behind. Man, and woman too, are naturally animals of chase; the greatest still finds something to follow, and there is no one too humble not to be an object of prey to another. Thus, confining our view to the village of Hazeldean, we behold in this whirligig Dr. Riccabocca spurring his hobby after Lenny Fairfield; and Miss Jemima, on her decorous side-saddle, whipping after Dr. Riccabocca. Why, with so long and intimate a conviction of the villany of our sex, Miss Jemima should resolve upon giving the male animal one more chance of redeeming itself in her eyes, I leave to the explanation of those gentlemen who profess to find "their only books in woman's looks." Perhaps it might be from the over-tenderness and clemency of Miss Jemima's nature; perhaps it might be that, as yet, she had only experienced the villany of man born and reared in those cold northern climates; and in the land of Petrarch and Romeo, of the citron and myrtle, there was reason to expect that the native monster would be more amenable to gentle influences, less obstinately hardened in his iniquities. Without entering farther into these hypotheses, it is sufficient to say, that on Signor Riccabocca's appearance in the drawing-room, at Hazeldean, Miss Jemima felt more than ever rejoiced that she had relaxed in his favor her general hostility to man. In truth, though Frank saw something quizzical in the old-fashioned and outlandish cut of the Italian's sober dress; in his long hair, and the _chapeau bras_, over which he bowed so gracefully, and then pressed it, as if to his heart, before tucking it under his arm, after the fashion in which the gizzard reposes under the wing of a roasted pullet; yet it was impossible that even Frank could deny to Riccabocca that praise which is due to the air and manner of an unmistakable gentleman. And certainly as, after dinner, conversation grew more familiar, and the Parson and Mrs. Dale, who had been invited to meet their friend, did their best to draw him out, his talk, though sometimes a little too wise for his listeners, became eminently animated and agreeable. It was the conversation of a man who, besides the knowledge which is acquired from books and life, had studied the art which becomes a gentleman--that of pleasing in polite society. Riccabocca, however, had more than this art--he had one which is often less innocent,--the art of penetrating into the weak side of his associates, and of saying the exact thing which hits it plump in the middle, with the careless air of a random shot. The result was, that all were charmed with him; and that even Captain Barnabas postponed the whist-table for a full hour after the usual time. The Doctor did not play--he thus became the property of the two ladies, Miss Jemima and Mrs. Dale. Seated between the two, in the place rightfully appertaining to Flimsey, who this time was fairly dislodged, to her great wonder and discontent, the Doctor was the emblem of true Domestic Felicity, placed between Friendship and Love. Friendship, as became her, worked quietly at the embroidered pocket-handkerchief, and left Love to its more animated operations. "You must be very lonely at the Casino," said Love, in a sympathizing tone. "Madam," replied Riccabocca, gallantly, "I shall think so when I leave you." Friendship cast a sly glance at Love--Love blushed or looked down on the carpet, which comes to the same thing. "Yet," began Love again--"yet solitude, to a feeling heart--" Riccabocca thought of the note of invitation, and involuntarily buttoned his coat, as if to protect the individual organ thus alarmingly referred to. "Solitude, to a feeling heart, has its charms. It is so hard even for us, poor ignorant women, to find a congenial companion--but for _you_!" Love stopped short, as if it had said too much, and smelt confusedly at its boquet. Dr. Riccabocca cautiously lowered his spectacles, and darted one glance, which, with the rapidity and comprehensiveness of lightning, seemed to envelope and take in it, as it were, the whole inventory of Miss Jemima's personal attractions. Now, Miss Jemima, as I have before observed, had a mild and pensive expression of countenance, and she would have been positively pretty had the mildness looked a little more alert, and the pensiveness somewhat less lackadaisical. In fact, though Miss Jemima was constitutionally mild, she was not _de natura_ pensive; she had too much of the Hazeldean blood in her veins for that sullen and viscid humor called melancholy, and therefore this assumption of pensiveness really spoilt her character of features, which only wanted to be lighted up by a cheerful smile to be extremely prepossessing. The same remark might apply to the figure, which--thanks to the same pensiveness--lost all the undulating grace which movement and animation bestow on the fluent curves of the feminine form. The figure was a good figure, examined in detail--a little thin, perhaps, but by no means emaciated--with just and elegant proportions, and naturally light and flexible. But that same unfortunate pensiveness gave the whole a character of inertness and languor; and when Miss Jemima reclined on the sofa, so complete seemed the relaxation of nerve and muscle, that you would have thought she had lost the use of her limbs. Over her face and form, thus defrauded of the charms Providence had bestowed on them, Dr. Riccabocca's eye glanced rapidly; and then moving nearer to Mrs. Dale--"Defend me" (he stopped a moment, and added,) "from the charge of not being able to appreciate congenial companionship." "Oh, I did not say that!" cried Miss Jemima. "Pardon me," said the Italian, "if I am so dull as to misunderstand you. One may well lose one's head, at least, in such a neighborhood as this." He rose as he spoke, and bent over Frank's shoulder to examine some Views of Italy, which Miss Jemima (with what, if wholly unselfish, would have been an attention truly delicate) had extracted from the library in order to gratify the guest. "Most interesting creature, indeed," sighed Miss Jemima, "but too--too flattering!" "Tell me," said Mrs. Dale gravely, "do you think, love, that you could put off the end of the world a little longer, or must we make haste in order to be in time?" "How wicked you are!" said Miss Jemima, turning aside. Some few minutes afterwards, Mrs. Dale contrived it so that Dr. Riccabocca and herself were in a farther corner of the room, looking at a picture said to be by Wouvermans. _Mrs. Dale._--"She is very amiable, Jemima, is she not?" _Riccabocca._--"Exceedingly so. Very fine battle-piece!" _Mrs. Dale._--"So kind-hearted." _Riccabocca._--"All ladies are. How naturally that warrior makes his desperate cut at the runaway!" _Mrs. Dale._--"She is not what is called regularly handsome, but she has something very winning." _Riccabocca_, with a smile.--"So winning, that it is strange she is not won. That gray mare in the foreground stands out very boldly!" _Mrs. Dale_, distrusting the smile of Riccabocca, and throwing in a more effective grape charge.--"Not won yet; and it _is_ strange!--she will have a very pretty fortune." _Riccabocca._--"Ah!" _Mrs. Dale._--"Six thousand pounds, I dare say--certainly four." _Riccabocca_, suppressing a sigh, and with his wonted address.--"If Mrs. Dale were still single, she would never need a friend to say what her portion might be; but Miss Jemima is so good that I am quite sure it is not Miss Jemima's fault that she is still--Miss Jemima!" The foreigner slipped away as he spoke, and sat himself down beside the whist-players. Mrs. Dale was disappointed, but certainly not offended.--"It would be such a good thing for both," muttered she, almost inaudibly. "Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he was undressing, that night, in the large, comfortable, well-carpeted English bedroom, with that great English four-posted bed in the recess which seems made to shame folks out of single-blessedness--"Giacomo, I have had this evening the offer of probably six thousand pounds--certainly of four thousand." "_Cosa meravigliosa!_" exclaimed Jackeymo--"miraculous thing!" and he crossed himself with great fervor. "Six thousand pounds English! why, that must be a hundred thousand--blockhead that I am!--more than a hundred and fifty thousand pounds Milanese!" And Jackeymo, who was considerably enlivened by the Squire's ale, commenced a series of gesticulations and capers, in the midst of which he stopped and cried, "But not for nothing?" "Nothing! no!" "These mercenary English!--the Government wants to bribe you." "That's not it." "The priests want you to turn heretic." "Worse than that," said the philosopher. "Worse than that! O Padrone! for shame!" "Don't be a fool, but pull off my pantaloons--they want me never to wear _these_ again!" "Never to wear what!" exclaimed Jackeymo, staring outright at his master's long legs in their linen drawers--"never to wear--" "The breeches," said Riccabocca, laconically. "The barbarians!" faltered Jackeymo. "My nightcap!--and never to have any comfort in this," said Riccabocca, drawing the cotton head-gear; "and never to have any sound sleep in that," pointing to the four-posted bed. "And to be a bondsmen and a slave," continued Riccabocca, waxing wroth; "and to be wheedled and purred at, and pawed, and clawed, and scolded, and fondled, and blinded, and deafened, and bridled, and saddled--bedevilled and--married." "Married!" said Jackeymo, more dispassionately--"that's very bad, certainly; but more than a hundred and fifty thousand _lire_, and perhaps a pretty young lady, and--" "Pretty young lady!" growled Riccabocca, jumping into bed and drawing the clothes fiercely over him. "Put out the candle, and get along with you--do, you villainous old incendiary!" CHAPTER IX. It was not many days since the resurrection of those ill-omened stocks, and it was evident already to an ordinary observer, that something wrong had got into the village. The peasants wore a sullen expression of countenance; when the Squire passed, they took off their hats with more than ordinary formality, but they did not return the same broad smile to his quick, hearty "Good day, my man." The women peered at him from the threshold or the casement, but did not, as was their wont (at least the wont of the prettiest), take occasion to come out to catch his passing compliment on their own good looks, or their tidy cottages. And the children, who used to play after work on the site of the old stocks, now shunned the place, and, indeed, seemed to cease play altogether. On the other hand, no man likes to build, or rebuild, a great public work for nothing. Now that the Squire had resuscitated the stocks, and made them so exceedingly handsome, it was natural that he should wish to put somebody into them. Moreover, his pride and self-esteem had been wounded by the Parson's opposition; and it would be a justification to his own forethought, and a triumph over the Parson's understanding, if he could satisfactorily and practically establish a proof that the stocks had not been repaired before they were wanted. Therefore, unconsciously to himself, there was something about the Squire more burly, and authoritative, and menacing, than heretofore. Old Gaffer Solomons observed, "that they had better moind well what they were about, for that the Squire had a wicked look in the tail of his eye--just as the dun bull had afore it tossed neighbor Barnes's little boy." For two or three days these mute signs of something brewing in the atmosphere had been rather noticeable than noticed, without any positive overt act of tyranny on the one hand, or rebellion on the other. But on the very Saturday night in which Dr. Riccabocca was installed in the four-posted bed in the chintz chamber, the threatened revolution commenced. In the dead of that night, personal outrage was committed on the stocks. And on the Sunday morning, Mr. Stirn, who was the earliest riser in the parish, perceived, in going to the farmyard, that the knob of the column that flanked the board had been feloniously broken off; that the four holes were bunged up with mud; and that some jacobinical villain had carved, on the very centre of the flourish or scroll work, "Dam the stoks!" Mr. Stirn was much too vigilant a right-hand man, much too zealous a friend of law and order, not to regard such proceedings with horror and alarm. And when the Squire came into his dressing-room at half-past seven, his butler (who fulfilled also the duties of valet) informed him with a mysterious air, that Mr. Stirn had something "very particular to communicate, about a most howdacious midnight 'spiracy and 'sault." The Squire stared, and bade Mr. Stirn be admitted. "Well!" cried the Squire, suspending the operation of stropping his razor. Mr. Stirn groaned. "Well, man, what now!" "I never knowed such a thing in this here parish afore," began Mr. Stirn, "and I can only 'count for it by s'posing that them foreign Papishers have been semminating"-- "Been what?" "Semminating"-- "Dissemminating, you blockhead--disseminating what?" "Damn the stocks," began Mr. Stirn, plunging right _in medias res_, and by a fine use of one of the noblest figures of rhetoric. "Mr. Stirn!" cried the Squire, reddening, "did you say 'Damn the stocks?'--damn my new handsome pair of stocks!" "Lord forbid, sir; that's what _they_ say: that's what they have digged on it with knives and daggers, and they have stuffed mud in its four holes, and broken the capital of the elewation." The Squire took the napkin off his shoulder, laid down strop and razor; he seated himself in his arm-chair majestically, crossed his legs, and, in a voice that affected tranquillity, said-- "Compose yourself, Stirn; you have a deposition to make, touching an assault upon--can I trust my senses?--upon my new stocks. Compose yourself--be calm. NOW! What the devil is come to the parish?" "Ah, sir, what indeed?" replied Mr. Stirn: and then laying the forefinger of the right hand on the palm of the left, he narrated the case. "And whom do you suspect? Be calm now, don't speak in a passion. You are a witness, sir--a dispassionate, unprejudiced witness. Zounds and fury! this is the most insolent, unprovoked, diabolical--but whom do you suspect, I say?" Stirn twirled his hat, elevated his eyebrows, jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and whispered--"I hear as how two Papishers slept at your honor's last night." "What, dolt! do you suppose Dr. Rickeybockey got out of his warm bed to bung up the holes in my new stocks?" "Noa; he's two cunning to do it himself, but he may have been semminating. He's mighty thick with Parson Dale, and your honor knows as how the Parson set his face agin the stocks. Wait a bit, sir--don't fly at me yet. There be a boy in this here parish"-- "A boy!--ah fool, now you are nearer the mark. The Parson write 'Damn the stocks,' indeed! What boy do you mean?" "And that boy be cockered up much by Mister Dale; and the Papishers went and sat with him and his mother a whole hour t'other day; and that boy is as deep as a well; and I seed him lurking about the place, and hiding hisself under the tree the day the stocks was put up--and that ere boy is Lenny Fairfield." "Whew," said the Squire, whistling, "you have not your usual senses about you to-day, man. Lenny Fairfield--pattern boy of the village. Hold your tongue. I dare say it is not done by any one in the parish, after all; some good-for-nothing vagrant--that cursed tinker, who goes about with a very vicious donkey--whom, by the way, I caught picking thistles out of the very eyes of the old stocks! Shows how the tinker brings up his donkeys! Well, keep a sharp look-out. To-day is Sunday; worst day of the week, I'm sorry and ashamed to say, for rows and depredations. Between the services, and after evening church, there are always idle fellows from all the neighboring country about, as you know too well. Depend on it, the real culprits will be found gathering round the stocks, and will betray themselves: have your eyes, ears, and wits about you, and I've no doubt we shall come to the rights of the matter before the day's out. And if we do," added the Squire, "we'll make an example of the ruffian!" "In course," said Stirn; "and if we don't find him, we must make an example all the same. That's where it is, sir. That's why the stock's ben't respected: they has not had an example yet--we wants an example." "On my word, I believe that's very true; and the first idle fellow you catch in any thing wrong we'll clap in, and keep him there for two hours at least." "With the biggest pleasure, your honor--that's what it is." And Mr. Stirn, having now got what he considered a complete and unconditional authority over all the legs and wrists of Hazeldean parish, _quoad_ the stocks, took his departure. CHAPTER X. "Randal," said Mrs. Leslie, on this memorable Sunday--"Randal, do you think of going to Mr. Hazeldean's?" "Yes, ma'am," answered Randal. "Mr. Egerton does not object to it; and as I do not return to Eaton, I may have no other opportunity of seeing Frank for some time. I ought not to fail in respect to Mr. Egerton's natural heir!" "Gracious me!" cried Mrs. Leslie, who, like many women of her cast and kind, had a sort of worldliness in her notions, which she never evinced in her conduct--"gracious me!--natural heir to the old Leslie property!" "He is Mr. Egerton's nephew, and," added Randal, ingenuously letting out his thoughts, "I am no relation to Mr. Egerton at all." "But," said poor Mrs. Leslie, with tears in her eyes, "it would be a shame in the man, after paying your schooling and sending you to Oxford, and having you to stay with him in the holidays, if he did not mean any thing by it." "Any thing, mother--yes--but not the thing you suppose. No matter. It is enough that he has armed me for life, and I shall use the weapons as seems to me best." Here the dialogue was suspended, by the entrance of the other members of the family, dressed for church. "It can't be time for church! No! it can't!" exclaimed Mrs. Leslie. She was never in time for any thing. "Last bell ringing," said Mr. Leslie, who, though a slow man, was methodical and punctual. Mrs. Leslie made a frantic rush at the door, the Montfydget blood being now in a blaze--whirled up the stairs--gained her room, tore her best bonnet from the peg, snatched her newest shawl from the drawers, crushed the bonnet on her head, flung the shawl on her shoulders, thrust a desperate pin into its folds, in order to conceal a buttonless yawn in the body of her gown, and then flew back like a whirlwind. Meanwhile the family were already out of doors, in waiting; and just as the bell ceased, the procession moved from the shabby house to the dilapidated church. The church was a large one, but the congregation was small, and so was the income of the Parson. It was a lay rectory, and the great tithes had belonged to the Leslies, but they had been long since sold. The vicarage, still in their gift, might be worth a little more than £100 a year. The present incumbent had nothing else to live upon. He was a good man, and not originally a stupid one; but penury and the anxious cares for wife and family, combined with what may be called _solitary confinement_ for the cultivated mind, when, amidst the two-legged creatures round, it sees no other cultivated mind with which it can exchange an extra-parochial thought--had lulled him into a lazy mournfulness, which at times was very like imbecility. His income allowed him to do no good to the parish, whether in work, trade, or charity; and thus he had no moral weight with the parishioners beyond the example of his sinless life and such negative effect as might be produced by his slumberous exhortations. Therefore his parishioners troubled him very little; and but for the influence which in hours of Montfydget activity, Mrs. Leslie exercised over the most tractable--that is, the children and the aged--not half-a-dozen persons would have known or cared whether he shut up his church or not. But our family were seated in state in their old seignorial pew, and Mr. Dumdrum, with a nasal twang, went lugubriously through the prayers; and the old people who could sin no more, and the children who had not yet learned to sin, croaked forth responses that might have come from the choral frogs in Aristophanes. And there was a long sermon _apropos_ to nothing which could possibly interest the congregation--being, in fact, some controversial homily, which Mr. Dumdrum had composed and preached years before. And when this discourse was over, there was a loud universal grunt, as if of release and thanksgiving, and a great clatter of shoes--and the old hobbled, and the young scrambled, to the church door. Immediately after church, the Leslie family dined; and, as soon as dinner was over, Randal set out on his foot journey to Hazeldean Hall. Delicate and even feeble though his frame, he had the energy and quickness of movement which belongs to nervous temperaments; and he tasked the slow stride of a peasant, whom he took to serve him as a guide for the first two or three miles. Though Randal had not the gracious open manner with the poor which Frank inherited from his father, he was still (despite many a secret hypocritical vice, at war with the character of a gentleman) gentleman enough to have no churlish pride to his inferiors. He talked little, but he suffered his guide to talk; and the boor, who was the same whom Frank had accosted, indulged in eulogistic comments on that young gentleman's pony, from which he diverged into some compliments on the young gentleman himself. Randal drew his hat over his brows. There is a wonderful tact and fine breeding in your agricultural peasant; and though Tom Stowell was but a brutish specimen of the class, he suddenly perceived that he was giving pain. He paused, scratched his head, and glancing affectionately towards his companion, exclaimed-- "But I shall live to see you on a handsomer beastis than that little pony, Master Randal; and sure I ought, for you be as good a gentleman as any in the land." "Thank you," said Randal. "But I like walking better than riding--I am more used to it." "Well, and you walk bra'ly--there ben't a better walker in the county. And very pleasant it is walking; and 'tis a pretty country afore you, all the way to the Hall." Randal strode on, as if impatient of these attempts to flatter or to soothe; and, coming at length into a broader lane, said--"I think I can find my way now. Many thanks to you, Tom;" and he forced a shilling into Tom's horny palm. The man took it reluctantly, and a tear started to his eye. He felt more grateful for that shilling than he had for Frank's liberal half-crown; and he thought of the poor fallen family, and forgot his own dire wrestle with the wolf at his door. He stayed lingering in the lane till the figure of Randal was out of sight, and then returned slowly. Young Leslie continued to walk on at a quick pace. With all his intellectual culture, and his restless aspirations, his breast afforded him no thought so generous, no sentiment so poetic, as those with which the unlettered clown crept slouchingly homeward. As Randal gained a point where several lanes met on a broad piece of waste land, he began to feel tired, and his step slackened. Just then a gig emerged from one of these by-roads, and took the same direction as the pedestrian. The road was rough and hilly, and the driver proceeded at a foot's-pace; so that the gig and the pedestrian went pretty well abreast. "You seem tired, sir," said the driver, a stout young farmer of the higher class of tenants, and he looked down compassionately on the boy's pale countenance and weary stride. "Perhaps we are going the same way, and I can give you a lift?" It was Randal's habitual policy to make use of every advantage proffered to him, and he accepted the proposal frankly enough to please the honest farmer. "A nice day, sir," said the latter, as Randal sat by his side. "Have you come far?" "From Rood Hall." "Oh, you be young Squire Leslie," said the farmer, more respectfully, and lifting his hat. "Yes, my name is Leslie. You know Rood, then?" "I was brought up on your father's land, sir. You may have heard of Farmer Bruce?" _Randal._--"I remember, when I was a little boy, a Mr. Bruce, who rented, I believe, the best part of our land, and who used to bring us cakes when he called to see my father. He is a relation of yours?" _Farmer Bruce._--"He was my uncle. He is dead now, poor man." _Randal._--"Dead! I am grieved to hear it. He was very kind to us children. But it is long since he left my father's farm." _Farmer Bruce_, apologetically.--"I am sure he was very sorry to go. But, you see, he had an unexpected legacy----" _Randal._--"And retired from business?" _Farmer Bruce._--"No. But, having capital, he could afford to pay a good rent for a real good farm." _Randal_, bitterly.--"All capital seems to fly from the lands of Rood. And whose farm did he take?" _Farmer Bruce._--"He took Hawleigh, under Squire Hazeldean. I rent it now. We've laid out a power o' money on it. But I don't complain. It pays well." _Randal._--"Would the money have paid as well, sunk on my father's land?" _Farmer Bruce._--"Perhaps it might, in the long run. But then, sir, we wanted new premises--barns, and cattle-sheds, and a deal more--which the landlord should do; but it is not every landlord as can afford that. Squire Hazeldean's a rich man." _Randal._--"Ay!" The road now became pretty good, and the farmer put his horse into a brisk trot. "But which way be you going, sir? I don't care for a few miles more or less, if I can be of service." "I am going to Hazeldean," said Randal, rousing himself from a reverie. "Don't let me take you out of your way." "Oh, Hawleigh Farm is on the other side of the village, so it be quite my way, sir." The farmer then, who was really a smart young fellow--one of that race which the application of capital to land has produced, and which, in point of education and refinement, are at least on a par with the squires of a former generation--began to talk about his handsome horse, about horses in general, about hunting and coursing; he handled all these subjects with spirit, yet with modesty. Randal pulled his hat still lower down over his brows, and did not interrupt him till past the Casino, when, struck by the classic air of the place, and catching a scent from the orange-trees, the boy asked abruptly--"Whose house is that?" "Oh, it belongs to Squire Hazeldean, but it is let or lent to a foreign Mounseer. They say he is quite the gentleman, but uncommonly poor." "Poor," said Randal, turning back to gaze on the trim garden, the neat terrace, the pretty belvidere, and (the door of the house being open) catching a glimpse of the painted hall within--"poor; the place seems well kept. What do you call poor, Mr. Bruce?" The farmer laughed. "Well, that's a home question, sir. But I believe the Mounseer is as poor as a man can be who makes no debts and does not actually starve." "As poor as my father?" asked Randal, openly and abruptly. "Lord, sir! your father be a very rich man compared to him." Randal continued to gaze, and his mind's eye conjured up the contrast of his slovenly, shabby home, with all its neglected appurtenances! No trim garden at Rood Hall, no scent from odorous orange blossoms. Here poverty at least was elegant--there, how squalid! He did not comprehend at how cheap a rate the luxury of the Beautiful can be effected. They now approached the extremity of the Squire's park pales! and Randal, seeing a little gate, bade the farmer stop his gig, and descended. The boy plunged amid the thick oak groves; the farmer went his way blithely, and his mellow merry whistle came to Randal's moody ear as he glided quick under the shadow of the trees. He arrived at the Hall, to find that all the family were at church; and, according to the patriarchal custom, the church-going family embraced nearly all the servants. It was therefore an old invalid housemaid who opened the door to him. She was rather deaf, and seemed so stupid that Randal did not ask leave to enter and wait for Frank's return. He therefore said briefly that he would just stroll on the lawn, and call again when church was over. The old woman stared, and strove to hear him; meanwhile Randal turned round abruptly, and sauntered towards the garden side of the handsome old house. There was enough to attract any eye in the smooth greensward of the spacious lawn--in the numerous parterres of varying flowers--in the venerable grandeur of the two mighty cedars, which threw their still shadows over the grass--and in the picturesque building, with its projecting mullions and heavy gables; yet I fear that it was with no poet's nor painter's eye that this young old man gazed on the scene before him. He beheld the evidence of wealth--and the envy of wealth jaundiced his soul. Folding his arms on his breast, he stood a while, looking all around him with closed lips and lowering brow; then he walked slowly on, his eyes fixed on the ground, and muttered to himself---- "The heir to this property is little better than a dunce; and they tell me I have talents and learning, and I have taken to my heart the maxim, 'Knowledge is power.' And yet, with all my struggles, will knowledge ever place me on the same level as that on which this dunce is born? I don't wonder that the poor should hate the rich. But of all the poor, who should hate the rich like the pauper gentleman? I suppose Audley Egerton means me to come into Parliament, and be a Tory like himself. What! keep things as they are! No; for me not even Democracy, unless there first come Revolution. I understand the cry of a Marat--'More blood!' Marat had lived as a poor man, and cultivated science--in the sight of a prince's palace." He turned sharply round, and glared vindictively on the poor old hall, which, though a very comfortable habitation, was certainly no palace; and with his arms still folded on his breast, he walked backwards, as if not to lose the view, nor the chain of ideas it conjured up. "But," he continued to soliloquize--"but of revolution there is no chance. Yet the same wit and will that would thrive in revolutions should thrive in this commonplace life. Knowledge is power. Well, then, shall I have no power to oust this blockhead? Oust him--what from? His father's halls? Well, but if he were dead, who would be the heir of Hazeldean? Have I not heard my mother say that I am as near in blood to this Squire as any one, if he had no children? Oh, but the boy's life is worth ten of mine! Oust him from what? At least from the thoughts of his uncle Egerton--an uncle who has never even seen him! That, at least, is more feasible. 'Make my way in life,' sayest thou, Audley Egerton? Ay--and to the fortune thou hast robbed from my ancestors. Simulation--simulation. Lord Bacon allows simulation. Lord Bacon practised it--and--" Here the soliloquy came to a sudden end; for as, rapt in his thoughts, the boy had continued to walk backwards, he had come to the verge where the lawn slided off into the ditch of the ha-ha--and, just as he was fortifying himself by the precept and practice of my Lord Bacon, the ground went from under him, and slap into the ditch went Randal Leslie! It so happened that the Squire, whose active genius was always at some repair or improvement, had been but a few days before widening and sloping off the ditch just in that part, so that the earth was fresh and damp, and not yet either turfed or flattened down. Thus when Randal, recovering his first surprise and shock, rose to his feet, he found his clothes covered with mud; while the rudeness of the fall was evinced by the fantastic and extraordinary appearance of his hat, which, hollowed here, bulging there, and crushed out of all recognition generally, was as little like the hat of a decorous hard-reading young gentlemen--_protegé_ of the dignified Mr. Audley Egerton--as any hat picked out of a kennel after some drunken brawl possibly could be. Randal was dizzy, and stunned, and bruised, and it was some moments before he took heed of his raiment. When he did so, his spleen was greatly aggravated. He was still boy enough not to like the idea of presenting himself to the unknown Squire, and the dandy Frank, in such a trim: he resolved at once to regain the lane and return home, without accomplishing the object of his journey; and seeing the footpath right before him, which led to a gate that he conceived would admit him into the highway sooner than the path by which he had come, he took it at once. It is surprising how little we human creatures heed the warnings of our good genius. I have no doubt that some benignant power had precipitated Randal Leslie into the ditch, as a significant hint of the fate of all who choose what is, now-a-days, by no means an uncommon step in the march of intellect--viz., the walking backwards, in order to gratify a vindictive view of one's neighbor's property! I suspect that, before this century is out, many a fine fellow will thus have found his ha-ha, and scrambled out of the ditch with a much shabbier coat than he had on when he fell into it. But Randal did not thank his good genius for giving him a premonitory tumble;--and I never yet knew a man who did! CHAPTER XI. The Squire was greatly ruffled at breakfast that morning. He was too much of an Englishman to bear insult patiently, and he considered that he had been personally insulted in the outrage offered to his recent donation to the parish. His feelings, too, were hurt, as well as his pride. There was something so ungrateful in the whole thing, just after he had taken so much pains, not only in the resuscitation, but the embellishment of the stocks. It was not, however, so rare an occurrence for the Squire to be ruffled, as to create any remark. Riccabocca, indeed, as a stranger, and Mrs. Hazeldean, as a wife, had the quick tact to perceive that the host was glum and the husband snappish; but the one was too discreet and the other too sensible, to chafe the new sore, whatever it might be; and shortly after breakfast the Squire retired into his study, and absented himself from morning service. In his delightful _Life of Oliver Goldsmith_, Mr. Foster takes care to touch our hearts by introducing his hero's excuse for not entering the priesthood. He did not feel himself good enough. Thy Vicar of Wakefield, poor Goldsmith, was an excellent substitute for thee; and Dr. Primrose, at least, will be good enough for the world until Miss Jemima's fears are realized. Now, Squire Hazeldean had a tenderness of conscience much less reasonable than Goldsmith's. There were occasionally days in which he did not feel good enough--I don't say for a priest, but even for one of the congregation--"days in which (said the Squire in his own blunt way), as I have never in my life met a worse devil than a devil of a temper, I'll not carry mine into the family pew. He shan't be growling out hypocritical responses from my poor grandmother's prayer-book." So the Squire and his demon stayed at home. But the demon was generally cast out before the day was over; and, on this occasion, when the bell rang for afternoon service, it may be presumed that the Squire had reasoned or fretted himself into a proper state of mind; for he was then seen sallying forth from the porch of his hall, arm-in-arm with his wife, and at the head of his household. The second service was (as is commonly the case, in rural districts) more numerously attended than the first one; and it was our Parson's wont to devote to this service his most effective discourse. Parson Dale, though a very fair scholar, had neither the deep theology nor the archæological learning that distinguish the rising generation of the clergy. I much doubt if he could have passed what would now be called a creditable examination in the Fathers; and as for all the nice formalities in the rubric, he would never have been the man to divide a congregation or puzzle a bishop. Neither was Parson Dale very erudite in ecclesiastical architecture. He did not much care whether all the details in the church were purely gothic or not: crockets and finials, round arch and pointed arch, were matters, I fear, on which he had never troubled his head. But one secret Parson Dale did possess, which is perhaps of equal importance with those subtler mysteries--he knew how to fill his church! Even at morning service no pews were empty, and at evening service the church overflowed. Parson Dale, too, may be considered, now-a-days, to hold but a mean idea of the spiritual authority of the Church. He had never been known to dispute on its exact bearing with the State--whether it was incorporated with the State, or above the State--whether it was antecedent to the Papacy, or formed from the Papacy, &c., &c. According to his favorite maxim, _Quieta non movere_ (not to disturb things that are quiet), I have no doubt that he would have thought that the less discussion is provoked upon such matters, the better for both church and laity. Nor had he ever been known to regret the disuse of the ancient custom of excommunication, nor any other diminution of the powers of the priesthood, whether minatory or militant; yet for all this, Parson Dale had a great notion of the sacred privilege of a minister of the gospel--to advise--to deter--to persuade--to reprove. And it was for the evening service that he prepared those sermons, which may be called "sermons that preach _at_ you." He preferred the evening for that salutary discipline, not only because the congregation was more numerous, but also because, being a shrewd man in his own innocent way, he knew that people bear better to be preached at after dinner than before; that you arrive more insinuatingly at the heart when the stomach is at peace. There was a genial kindness in Parson Dale's way of preaching at you. It was done in so imperceptible fatherly a manner, that you never felt offended. He did it, too, with so much art, that nobody but your own guilty self knew that you were the sinner he was exhorting. Yet he did not spare rich nor poor: he preached at the Squire, and that great fat farmer, Mr. Bullock the church-warden, as boldly as at Hodge the ploughman, and Scrub the hedger. As for Mr. Stirn, he had preached at _him_ more often than at any one in the parish; but Stirn, though he had the sense to know it, never had the grace to reform. There was, too, in Parson Dale's sermons, something of that boldness of illustration which would have been scholarly if he had not made it familiar, and which is found in the discourses of our elder divines. Like them, he did not scruple, now and then, to introduce an anecdote from history, or borrow an allusion from some non-scriptural author, in order to enliven the attention of his audience, or render an argument more plain. And the good man had an object in this, a little distinct from, though wholly subordinate to the main purpose of his discourse. He was a friend to knowledge--but to knowledge accompanied by religion; and sometimes his references to sources not within the ordinary reading of his congregation would spirit up some farmer's son, with an evening's leisure on his hands, to ask the Parson for farther explanation, and so he lured on to a little solid or graceful instruction under a safe guide. Now on the present occasion, the Parson, who had always his eye and heart on his flock, and who had seen with great grief the realization of his fears at the revival of the stocks; seen that a spirit of discontent was already at work amongst the peasants, and that magisterial and inquisitorial designs were darkening the natural benevolence of the Squire; seen, in short, the signs of a breach between classes, and the precursors of the ever inflammable feud between the rich and the poor, meditated nothing less than a great Political Sermon--a sermon that should extract from the roots of social truths a healing virtue for the wound that lay sore, but latent, in the breast of his parish of Hazeldean: And thus ran-- _The Political Sermon of Parson Dale._ CHAPTER XII. "For every man shall bear his own burden." _Galatians_, c. vi., v. 5. "Brethren, every man has his burden. If God designed our lives to end at the grave, may we not believe that he would have freed an existence so brief from the cares and sorrows to which, since the beginning of the world, mankind has been subjected? Suppose that I am a kind father, and have a child whom I dearly love, but I know by a divine revelation that he will die at the age of eight years, surely I should not vex his infancy by needless preparations for the duties of life. If I am a rich man, I should not send him from the caresses of his mother to the stern discipline of school. If I am a poor man, I should not take him with me to hedge and dig, to scorch in the sun, to freeze in the winter's cold: why inflict hardships on his childhood, for the purpose of fitting him for manhood, when I know that he is doomed not to grow into man? But if, on the other hand, I believe my child is reserved for a more durable existence, then should I not, out of the very love I bear to him, prepare his childhood for the struggle of life, according to that station in which he is born, giving many a toil, many a pain to the infant, in order to rear and strengthen him for his duties as man? So is it with our Father that is in heaven. Viewing this life as our infancy, and the next as our spiritual maturity, where, 'in the ages to come, he may show the exceeding riches of his grace,' it is in his tenderness, as in his wisdom, to permit the toil and the pain which, in tasking the powers and developing the virtues of the soul, prepare it for the earnest of our inheritance, the 'redemption of the purchased possession.' Hence it is that every man has his burden. Brethren, if you believe that God is good, yea, but as tender as a human father, you will know that your troubles in life are a proof that you are reared for an eternity. But each man thinks his own burden the hardest to bear: the poor man groans under his poverty, the rich man under the cares that multiply with wealth. For, so far from wealth freeing us from trouble, all the wise men who have written in all ages, have repeated with one voice the words of the wisest, 'When goods increase, they are increased that eat them; and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?' And this is literally true, my brethren; for, let a man be as rich as was the great King Solomon himself, unless he lock up all his gold in a chest, it must go abroad to be divided amongst others; yea, though, like Solomon, he make him great works--though he build houses and plant vineyards, and make him gardens and orchards--still the gold that he spends feeds but the mouths he employs; and Solomon himself could not eat with a better relish than the poorest mason who builded the house, or the humblest laborer who planted the vineyard. Therefore, 'when goods increase, they are increased that eat them.' And this, my brethren, may teach us toleration and compassion for the rich. We share their riches whether they will or not; we do not share their cares. The profane history of our own country tells us that a princess, destined to be the greatest queen that ever sat on this throne, envied the milk-maid singing; and a profane poet, whose wisdom was only less than that of the inspired writers, represents the man who by force and wit had risen to be a king, sighing for the sleep vouchsafed to the meanest of his subjects--all bearing out the words of the son of David--'The sleep of the laboring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much; but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.' "Amongst my brethren now present, there is doubtless some one who has been poor, and by honest industry has made himself comparatively rich. Let his heart answer me while I speak: are not the chief cares that now disturb him to be found in the goods he hath acquired?--has he not both vexations to his spirit and trials to his virtue, which he knew not when he went forth to his labor, and took no heed of the morrow? But it is right, my brethren, that to every station there should be its care--to every man his burden; for if the poor did not sometimes so far feel poverty to be a burden as to desire to better their condition, and (to use the language of the world) 'seek to rise in life,' their most valuable energies would never be aroused; and we should not witness that spectacle, which is so common in the land we live in--namely, the successful struggle of manly labor against adverse fortune--a struggle in which the triumph of one gives hope to thousands. It is said that necessity is the mother of invention; and the social blessings which are now as common to us as air and sunshine, have come from that law of our nature which makes us aspire towards indefinite improvement, enriches each successive generation by the labors of the last, and, in free countries, often lifts the child of the laborer to a place amongst the rulers of the land. Nay, if necessity is the mother of invention, poverty is the creator of the arts. If there had been no poverty, and no sense of poverty, where would have been that which we call the wealth of a country? Subtract from civilization all that has been produced by the poor, and what remains?--the state of the savage. Where you now see laborer and prince, you would see equality indeed--the equality of wild men. No; not even equality there; for there, brute force becomes lordship, and woe to the weak! Where you now see some in frieze, some in purple, you would see nakedness in all. Where stand the palace and the cot, you would behold but mud huts and caves. As far as the peasant excels the king among savages, so far does the society exalted and enriched by the struggles of labor excel the state in which Poverty feels no disparity, and Toil sighs for no ease. On the other hand, if the rich were perfectly contented with their wealth, their hearts would become hardened in the sensual enjoyments it procures. It is that feeling, by Divine Wisdom implanted in the soul, that there is vanity and vexation of spirit in the things of Mammon, which still leaves the rich man sensitive to the instincts of heaven, and teaches him to seek for happiness in those elevated virtues to which wealth invites him--namely, protection to the lowly and beneficence to the distressed. "And this, my brethren, leads me to another view of the vast subject opened to us by the words of the apostle--'Every man shall bear his own burden.' The worldly conditions of life are unequal. Why are they unequal? O my brethren, do you not perceive? Think you that, if it had been better for our spiritual probation that there should be neither great nor lowly, rich nor poor, Providence would not so have ordered the dispensations of the world, and so, by its mysterious but merciful agencies, have influenced the framework and foundations of society? But if, from the remotest period of human annals, and in all the numberless experiments of government which the wit of man has devised, still this inequality is ever found to exist, may we not suspect that there is something in the very principles of our nature to which that inequality is necessary and essential? Ask why this inequality! Why? as well ask why life is the sphere of duty and the nursery of virtues. For if all men were equal, if there were no suffering and no ease, no poverty and no wealth, would you not sweep with one blow the half at least of human virtues from the world? If there were no penury and no pain, what would become of fortitude?--what of patience?--what of resignation? If there were no greatness and no wealth, what would become of benevolence, of charity, of the blessed human pity, of temperance in the midst of luxury, of justice in the exercise of power? Carry the question further; grant all conditions the same--no reverse, no rise and no fall--nothing to hope for, nothing to fear--what a moral death you would at once inflict upon all the energies of the soul, and what a link between the heart of man and the Providence of God would be snapped asunder! If we could annihilate evil, we should annihilate hope; and hope, my brethren, is the avenue to faith. If there be 'a time to weep, and a time to laugh,' it is that he who mourns may turn to eternity for comfort, and he who rejoices may bless God for the happy hour. Ah! my brethren, were it possible to annihilate the inequalities of human life, it would be the banishment of our worthiest virtues, the torpor of our spiritual natures, the palsy of our mental faculties. The moral world, like the world without us, derives its health and its beauty from diversity and contrast. "'Every man shall bear his own burden.' True; but now turn to an earlier verse in the same chapter. 'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.' Yes; while Heaven ordains to each his peculiar suffering, it connects the family of man into one household, by that feeling which, more perhaps than any other, distinguishes us from the brute creation--I mean the feeling to which we give the name of _sympathy_--the feeling for each other! The herd of deer shun the stag that is marked by the gunner; the flock heedeth not the sheep that creeps into the shade to die; but man has sorrow and joy not in himself alone, but in the joy and sorrow of those around him. He who feels only for himself, abjures his very nature as man; for do we not say of one who has no tenderness for mankind that he is _inhuman_? and do we not call him who sorrows with the sorrowful, _humane_? "Now, brethren, that which especially marked the divine mission of our Lord, is the direct appeal to this sympathy which distinguishes us from the brute. He seizes not upon some faculty of genius given but to few, but upon that ready impulse of heart which is given to us all; and in saying, 'Love one another,' 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' he elevates the most delightful of our emotions into the most sacred of his laws. The lawyer asks our Lord, 'who is my neighbor?' Our Lord replies by the parable of the Good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite saw the wounded man that fell among the thieves, and passed by on the other side. That priest might have been austere in his doctrine, that Levite might have been learned in the law; but neither to the learning of the Levite, nor to the doctrine of the priest, does our Saviour even deign to allude. He cites but the action of the Samaritan, and saith to the lawyer, 'Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy unto him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.' "O shallowness of human judgments! It was enough to be born a Samaritan in order to be rejected by the priest, and despised by the Levite. Yet now, what to us the priest and the Levite, of God's chosen race though they were? They passed from the hearts of men when they passed the sufferer by the wayside; while this loathed Samaritan, half thrust from the pale of the Hebrew, becomes of our family, of our kindred; a brother amongst the brotherhood of Love, so long as Mercy and Affliction shall meet in the common thoroughfare of Life! "'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ!' Think not, O my brethren, that this applies only to almsgiving--to that relief of distress which is commonly called charity--to the obvious duty of devoting, from our superfluities, something that we scarcely miss, to the wants of a starving brother. No. I appeal to the poorest amongst ye, if the worst burdens are those of the body--if the kind word and the tender thought have not often lightened your hearts more than bread bestowed with a grudge, and charity that humbles you by a frown. Sympathy is a beneficence at the command of us all,--yea, of the pauper as of the king; and sympathy is Christ's wealth. Sympathy is brotherhood. The rich are told to have charity for the poor, and the poor are enjoined to respect their superiors. Good: I say not to the contrary. But I say also to the poor, '_In your turn have charity for the rich_;' and I say to the rich, '_In your turn respect the poor_.' "'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.' Thou, O poor man, envy not nor grudge thy brother his larger portion of worldly goods. Believe that he hath his sorrows and crosses like thyself, and perhaps, as more delicately nurtured, he feels them more; nay, hath he not temptations so great that our Lord hath exclaimed--'How hardly they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven?' And what are temptations but trials?--what are trials but perils and sorrows? Think not that you cannot bestow your charity on the rich man, even while you take your sustenance from his hands. A heathen writer, often cited by the earliest preachers of the gospel, hath truly said--'Wherever there is room for a man, there is place for a benefit.' "And I ask any rich brother amongst you when he hath gone forth to survey his barns and his granaries, his gardens and orchards, if suddenly, in the vain pride of his heart, he sees the scowl on the brow of the laborer--if he deems himself hated in the midst of his wealth--if he feels that his least faults are treasured up against him with the hardness of malice, and his plainest benefits received with the ingratitude of envy--I ask, I say, any rich man, whether straightway all pleasure in his worldly possessions does not fade from his heart, and whether he does not feel what a wealth of gladness it is in the power of the poor man to bestow! For all these things of Mammon pass away; but there is in the smile of him whom we have served, a something that we may take with us into heaven. If, then, ye bear one another's burdens, they who are poor will have mercy on the errors, and compassion for the griefs of the rich. To all men it was said--yes, to the Lazarus as to the Dives--'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' But think not, O rich man, that we preach only to the poor. If it be their duty not to grudge thee thy substance, it is thine to do all that may sweeten their labor. Remember, that when our Lord said, 'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven,' he replied also to them who asked, 'Who then shall be saved?' 'The things which are impossible with men are possible with God:' that is, man left to his own temptations would fail; but strengthened by God, he shall be saved. If thy riches are the tests of thy trial, so may they also be the instruments of thy virtues. Prove by thy riches that thou art compassionate and tender, temperate and benign; and thy riches themselves may become the evidence at once of thy faith and of thy works. "We have constantly on our lips the simple precept, 'Do unto others as ye would be done by.' Why do we fail so often in the practice? Because we neglect to cultivate that SYMPATHY which nature implants as an instinct, and the Saviour exalts as a command. If thou wouldst do unto thy neighbor as thou wouldst be done by, ponder well how thy neighbor will regard the action thou art about to do to him. Put thyself into his place. If thou art strong, and he is weak, descend from thy strength, and enter into his weakness; lay aside thy burden for the while, and buckle on his own; let thy sight see as through his eyes--thy heart beat as in his bosom. Do this, and thou wilt often confess that what had seemed just to thy power will seem harsh to his weakness. For 'as a zealous man hath not done his duty, when he calls his brother drunkard and beast,'[29] even so an administrator of the law mistakes his object if he writes on the grand column of society, only warnings that irritate the bold, and terrify the timid: and a man will be no more in love with law than with virtue, 'if he be forced to it with rudeness and incivilities.' If, then, ye would bear the burden of the lowly, O ye great--feel not only _for_ them, but _with!_ Watch that your pride does not chafe them--your power does not wantonly gall. Your worldly inferior is of the class from which the apostles were chosen--amidst which the Lord of Creation descended from a throne above the seraphs." The Parson here paused a moment, and his eye glanced towards the pew near the pulpit, where sat the magnate of Hazeldean. The Squire was leaning his chin thoughtfully on his hand, his brow inclined downwards, and the natural glow of his complexion much heightened. "But"--resumed the Parson softly, without turning to his book, and rather as if prompted by the suggestion of the moment--"But he who has cultivated sympathy commits not these errors, or, if committing them, hastens to retract. So natural is sympathy to the good man, that he obeys it mechanically when he suffers his heart to be the monitor of his conscience. In this sympathy behold the bond between rich and poor! By this sympathy, whatever our varying worldly lots, they become what they were meant to be--exercises for the virtues more peculiar to each; and thus, if in the body each man bear his own burden, yet in the fellowship of the soul all have common relief in bearing the burdens of each other. This is the law of Christ--fulfil it, O my flock!" Here the Parson closed his sermon, and the congregation bowed their heads. FOOTNOTES: [28] By the pounds Milanese, Giacomo means the Milanese lira. Gleanings from the Journals. Dr. TURNBULL says in the _Medical Gazette_, "It has struck me that, if we could discover any substance which could be so applied as to contract the _iris_, one cause of the effect of shortsightedness would be remedied. The result, I am happy to say, has been most satisfactory. In the first instance I applied the extract of ginger, which was rubbed five or ten times over the whole forehead, with the view of acting upon the fifth pair of nerves. Afterwards I substituted a concentrated tincture, of the strength of one part of ginger to two parts of spirits of wine, decolorated by animal charcoal. In numerous cases this application has almost doubled the vision." * * * * * Mr. GEORGE CRUIKSHANK has presided over a temperance meeting at Bristol. He maintained in his address that if Shakspeare were alive now, he would be of their society! "In 'Othello,' there was the character of a bad man, one Iago, who, setting himself to work the ruin of another, begins by making him drunk, and when it is first offered to him the answer is, 'Not to-night, good Iago. I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking. I could well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment.' They would re-echo that wish, he was sure; courtesy might invent a better custom of entertainment than that of drinking"--(applause). We observe that the meeting gave three cheers for "The Bottle." A stranger to modern engravings would no doubt consider this in the last degree inconsistent. * * * * * We find in the London papers accounts of a Copying Electric Telegraph, invented by a Mr. Bakewell, who had given lectures upon it at the Russell Institution. Its object is the transmission of the _handwriting_ of correspondents. Its advantages are, freedom from error, as the messages transmitted are fac-similes of the originals: authentication of the communications by the transmission of copies of the handwriting; increased rapidity, to such an extent that a single wire may be as effective as ten with the needle telegraph, and consequent economy in the construction of telegraphic lines of communication. The secrecy of correspondence would also be maintained in a greater degree by the copying telegraph, as it would afford peculiar facility for transmitting messages in cipher, and the telegraph clerks, instead of being compelled by their duties to read all the messages transmitted, might be forbidden from perusing any portion but the address. As an additional means of secrecy, the messages may be transmitted invisibly, by moistening the paper with diluted muriatic acid alone, the writing being rendered legible by a solution of prussiate of potass. * * * * * The "original Mrs. Partington" was a respectable old lady (says _Notes and Queries_), living at Sidmouth, in Devonshire. Her cottage was on the beach, and during an awful storm (November, 1824, when some fifty or sixty ships were wrecked at Plymouth) the sea rose to such a height as every now and then to invade the old lady's place of domicile; in fact, almost every wave dashed in at the door. Mrs. Partington, with such help as she could command, with mops and brooms, as fast as the water entered the house, mopped it out again; until at length the waves had the mastery, and the dame was compelled to retire to an upper story of the house. The first allusion to the circumstance was made by Lord Brougham in his celebrated speech in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill, in which he compared the Conservative opposition to the bill to be like the opposition of "Dame Partington, who endeavored to mop out the waves of the Atlantic." * * * * * It is stated that the Neapolitan Government has granted a sum of twenty thousand ducats for continuing the excavations at Pompeii. FOOTNOTES: [29] JEREMY TAYLOR--_Of Christian Prudence_. Ladies' Fashions for January. [Illustration] The evening costumes of the present season are characterized by profuse trimming. The skirts of the newest dresses, excepting those composed of very rich materials, are all very fully trimmed. Corsages, whether high or low, are ornamented in some way or other. Flounces, employed to trim the skirts of ball dresses, are made somewhat fuller than heretofore. Even lace flounces, which used to be set on plain, are now gathered up in slight fulness. To add still more to the appearance of amplitude in dresses trimmed with lace, some dressmakers edge the skirts with a fontange of ribbon. With ball dresses of transparent textures, trimmed with flounces of the same, this fontange of ribbon is frequently placed at the edge of the slip worn under the dress. Tulle dresses are now fashionable for ball costume. Some pretty organdy muslins, intended for very young ladies, have just been introduced. These dresses should be made with two jupes, simply edged with a broad hem. Cloth is adopted for morning walking dresses, _redingote_ form, open down the front, and embroidered in arabesque pattern, in silk braid and other trimming; the sleeves are worked at bottom, and open, to admit underneath cambric or muslin sleeves tight at the wrist; the body is embroidered to match the skirts. With this _redingote_ is worn a _pardessus_ of the same cloth, embroidered in front and at bottom with braiding of from two to two and a half inches wide. [Illustration] The more showy dresses, and a little _décolletées_, are square in front (Louis XV. style), the body pointed, the skirt plain, and but few flounces. The colors are sombre and plain; the materials are velvet, satin, damask, watered, _antique_, and some plaids, for the theatres and for half dress. These dresses are always worn with open sleeves, trimmed with _engageantes_. Short velvet cloaks, richly embroidered either in satin stitch, silk braid, or gimp, are in vogue, the preferred colors being burnt-bread and black. Short velvet cloaks, of the paletot shape, half tight, trimmed with lace, embroidered entirely in satin stitch, and with narrow braiding, are also worn. On mantelets of silk, entirely embroidered velvet ribbon is worn; or stamped velvet flowers, upon the stuff, produce a very pleasing effect. The braid used for the arabesque pattern is commonly plain, or has only a thick cord, and is from half to three quarters of an inch wide. Walking boots, entirely of leather, are the most fashionable. In the _Illustrations_ which we give this month: I. Is a Cap of Alencon lace, with flat bows of ribbon, and lappets of the same. II. A Bonnet of pink satin, covered with cut black velvet. A trimming of black lace encircles the crown. The bonnet may be lined either with pink satin or with black velvet; and the under trimming consists of small pink flowers. Strings of pink satin ribbon. III. _Engageantes_ of India muslin, with two rows of Mechlin lace, one above the other. IV. Velvet mantelet, with arabesque in silk braiding, a quarter of an inch wide, and satin stitch, slightly fitting to the waist; wide sleeves, and entirely embroidered. V. (See the group of figures upon the following page.) (I.) _Evening Costume for a Bride, back view._--The headdress a wreath of white roses, mingled with orange-blossom. Back hair arranged in twists, in the style called _noeud d' Apollon_. Across the forehead may be worn a narrow bandeau of pearls or diamonds. Dress of white crape over white satin; front of the skirt with bouquets of the same flowers as those in the wreath. The corsage has a berthe of folds of white tulle. The sleeves slightly full, and ornamented on the shoulder with epaulettes of tulle. Necklace, a single row of pearls. (II.) _Costume for an Evening Party._--Dress of brocade, the ground a dark violet color, with large bouquets of flowers in a variety of hues. [Illustration] A _sortie de bal_ of cerulean blue satin, edged with a broad band of velvet of the same color, on which a braid is disposed in a zigzag pattern. The headdress of loops of narrow blue velvet ribbon fixed on each side of the head. (III.) _Bride's dress suited to the Nuptial Ceremony._--Robe of white satin; the skirt ornamented with side trimmings, consisting each of a row of lace, headed by a fronce of white satin ribbon. This trimming is set on spirally up each side of the skirt, and is attached at intervals by small bows of white satin ribbon. The corsage is half high at the back, and is sloped somewhat lower in front. The front of the corsage is trimmed with rows of lace set on horizontally. On the neck is worn a chemisette of lace. The sleeves are finished at the ends with a full trimming of white satin ribbon. The under-sleeves are loose at the ends, and are edged with two rows of lace. On each arm a bracelet of gold, one of the serpent pattern, and the other fastened by a cameo snap. Bridal wreath of orange-blossom and jasmin. A very large veil of tulle illusion is fixed under the wreath instead of being thrown over it, as is sometimes customary. 
36405	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections.) THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE Of Literature, Art, and Science. Vol. IV. NEW-YORK, SEPTEMBER 1, 1851. No. II. INSTITUTIONS FOR SAILORS, IN NEW-YORK. [Illustration: HEALTH-OFFICER BOARDING AN IMMIGRANT SHIP, QUARANTINE, STATEN ISLAND.] The maritime commerce of New-York has increased so rapidly that it has continually outgrown the space appropriated for its accommodation, so that the docks, wharves, warehouses, and landings, have been found wholly inadequate to the reception of the business which has poured in upon them. But the benevolent institutions of the "Empire City," designed to meliorate the condition of sea-faring men, have been fully equal to the exigencies of this improvident class of laborers, and are among the noblest and best conducted of the many charitable institutions in this great and growing metropolis of the New World. Commerce is the life and soul of New-York, and the most selfish motives should lead to the establishment of suitable retreats and hospitals for the benefit of the class of men without whose labors its wheels could not revolve; but it is not to those who are most benefited by the labors of seamen that they are indebted for the existence of safe havens of retreat, where they may cast anchor in repose, where they can no longer follow their dangerous and storm-tost business. Seamen are the only class who have asylums provided expressly for their use, either in sickness or old age. The nation provides no hospital like that of Greenwich, where the tars who are disabled in the public service find a home and an honorable support, but it lays a capitation tax on all the seamen in the navy for the creation of a fund, out of which the Naval Asylum, the Wallabout Hospital, &c., for the disabled, invalid, and superannuated of the navy have, at their own cost, not altogether disagreeable homes. New-York, however, from the munificence of private individuals and the creation of a fund from a tax on seamen, can boast of excellent institutions for the ample and comfortable accommodation of all the sick and infirm sailors who have earned a right of admission by sailing from this port. In this respect there is no other city in the world that can equal New-York. The quarantine ground of the port of New-York, which is on the north-eastern point of Staten Island, five and a half miles from the Battery, is admirably located for the purposes of purification, and liberally endowed with all the necessary means for the cure of the sick and the prevention of the spread of disease. The ground appropriated for the purposes of a lazaretto has a frontage on the bay of about fourteen hundred feet, and extends back twelve hundred feet. It is inclosed by a high brick wall, and includes suitable hospitals for the accommodation of the sick, houses for the resident physician, and offices for the numerous persons employed about the grounds. The largest hospital, appropriated for fever patients, is that nearest the water. It is constructed of brick, is three stories high, and one hundred and thirty-six feet long by twenty-eight feet wide. The building on the rising ground next above this is intended for convalescents. It is built of brick, three stories high, fifty feet long, and forty-five feet high, with two wings sixty-six by twenty-six feet each. Higher up, beyond this, is the small-pox hospital, which generally has the largest number of patients. It is but two stories, eighty feet long and twenty-eight feet wide; like the other hospitals, it is built of brick, and has open galleries on the outside, in front, and rear. The quarantine hospitals, although forming no unimportant part of the maritime institutions of New-York, do not properly come under the head of those denominated benevolent, as they are merely sanitary and for the purpose of preventing the spread of contagious diseases. [Illustration: THE SEAMEN'S RETREAT.] The Seamen's Retreat is also on Staten Island, a mile below the quarantine ground, built upon a natural terrace, about one hundred feet above the water, and fronting the Narrows. The location is one of exceeding beauty, being surrounded by sylvan scenery of unsurpassed loveliness, and commanding a prospect of great extent, which embraces the city, the shore of New Jersey, the Palisades, Long Island, and the highlands of Neversink and Sandy Hook. The Hospital is a noble building, constructed of rough granite, three stories high, and surrounded by piazzas, upon which the patients may inhale the pure air, and beguile their confinement by watching the ever-changing panorama presented by the bay, with its countless ships and steamers. The Retreat is intended solely for sick but not disabled seamen. It is supported by a fund derived from a state capitation tax, levied upon all seamen sailing from this port, and is the only establishment of the kind in the United States, or, we believe, in the world. Seamen are the only class who are compelled by the law of the state to contribute to a fund to form a provision for them in case of sickness. The income for the support of the Retreat is ample, and the most liberal provision is allowed for all whose necessities compel them to seek admission. On the grounds are houses for the residence of the physician and keeper. [Illustration: SAILOR'S SNUG HARBOR.] This noble Charity is situated on the north side of Staten Island, about three miles from the Quarantine, and commands a magnificent view, with the city in the distance. It is surrounded with elegant villas, pretty cottages, and well cultivated farms, and is in the midst of the loveliest rural scenery that the neighborhood of New-York can boast of. The grounds belonging to the institution comprise about one hundred and sixty acres of land, which is inclosed by a handsome iron fence that cost, a few years since, thirty-five thousand dollars. The principal building is constructed of brick and faced with white marble, with a marble portico. The corner-stone was laid in 1831, and the institution opened for the reception of its inmates in 1833. The centre building is sixty-five by one hundred feet, with two wings fifty-one by one hundred feet, connected with the main building by corridors. There are two handsome houses for the residences of the governor of the institution, and the physician, and numerous offices and outhouses. This noble institution owes its existence to Captain James Randall, who, in the year 1801, bequeathed a piece of land in the upper part of the city, for the foundation of a retreat for worn-out seamen, who had sailed from the port of New-York; it was called most appropriately the SNUG HARBOR, and many a poor mariner has since found safe moorings there, when no longer able to follow his perilous calling. The benevolent-hearted sailor who founded this noble charity could hardly have dreamed that the small property which he bequeathed for that purpose, could ever increase to the magnificent sum which it is now valued at. The income from the estate in the year 1806 was but a little more than four thousand dollars; it is now thirty-seven thousand dollars, and will be, next year, when the leases of the property have to be renewed, at least sixty thousand dollars a year, an income abundantly large to support even in luxurious comfort the worn-out tars who may be compelled by misfortune to seek this magnificent asylum. The trustees of the Snug Harbor are about to build extensive additions to the present accommodations for it inmates, and among the new buildings will be a hospital for the insane. There is no chapel attached to the Snug Harbor, but there is a regular chaplain who performs religious services every Sunday in the large hall in the centre building. In front of the principal edifice a plain monument of white marble has been erected by the trustees in memory of Captain Randall, the founder of the institution, which is chiefly remarkable for the omission, in the inscription, of any information respecting the birth or death of the person in whose honor it was erected. [Illustration: THE SAILOR'S HOME.] It is somewhat remarkable that New-York has originated every system for bettering the temporal and spiritual condition of seamen, that now exists, and furnished the models of the various institutions for the benefit of sea-faring men which have been successfully copied in other maritime cities of the new and the old world. It was here that the first chapel was built for the exclusive use of sailors and their families, the Mariner's chapel in Roosevelt-street; and it was here, too, that the first Home was erected for the residence, while on shore, of homeless sailors. The corner-stone of the Home in Cherry-street was laid with appropriate ceremonies on the 14th of October, 1841, just twenty-two years from the day on which the corner-stone of the Mariner's chapel was laid in Roosevelt-street. The building is a well constructed house of brick with a granite basement, plain and substantial, without any pretensions to architectural ornamentation. It is six stories high, fifty feet front, and one hundred and sixty feet deep. It contains one hundred and thirty sleeping-rooms, a dining-room one hundred by twenty-five feet, and a spacious reading-room, in which are a well selected library, and a museum of natural curiosities; there are also suitable apartments for the overseer and officers. About five hundred boarders can be accommodated in the Home, but it is not often filled. The Sailor's Home was built by the Seaman's Friend Society, and is intended to furnish sailors with a comfortable and orderly home, where they will not be subject to the rapacities of unprincipled landlords, nor the temptations which usually beset this useful but improvident class of men when they are on shore. [Illustration: U.S. MARINE HOSPITAL, BROOKLYN.] The Marine Hospital at the Wallabout, Brooklyn, near the Navy Yard, belongs to the government of the United States, and is intended for the use of the sailors and officers of the navy, and none others. It was built from a fund called the hospital fund, which is created by a payment of twenty cents a month by all the officers and seamen of the navy. The Hospital stands on high ground, on one of the healthiest and pleasantest spots in the vicinity of New-York, commands a superb view of the East River as it sweeps toward the Sound, and overlooks both Brooklyn and New-York. The buildings constituting the Hospital are two fine large airy edifices constructed of white marble, with galleries and piazzas, and surrounded by well-kept grounds which abound with choice fruit trees, and every requisite for the health and comfort of the invalids. The patients remain there only while under treatment for disease. Our government has no asylum for the support of the sailors or soldiers who lose their health or limbs in its service, like the hospitals of Greenwich and Chelsea, and, in this respect at least, we are behind the government of Great Britain, which makes ample and generous provision for all classes and grades of public servants. As New-York was the first maritime city that built a chapel expressly for seamen, so it was the first to build a floating church, for although there had been previously in London and Liverpool old hulks fitted up as chapels, and moored in the docks for the use of sailors, there had never been an actual church edifice put afloat before the FLOATING CHURCH OF OUR SAVIOUR, which now lies moored at the foot of Pike-street, in the East River. This novel edifice was finished and consecrated in February, 1844. It is under the charge of the Young Men's Church Missionary Society of the City of New-York, by whom it was built, and has been under the pastoral care of the Rev. B. C. C. Parker, of the Episcopal church, from its consecration to the present time. It is seventy feet long, and thirty feet wide, and will comfortably seat five hundred persons. It has an end gallery, in which is an organ. A beautiful baptismal font of white marble, in the shape of a capstan, surmounted by a seashell, chiselled from the same block with the shaft--the gift of St. Mark's church in the Bowery, New-York--stands in front of the chancel rail. The top of the communion-table is a marble slab, and the Ten Commandments are placed on the panels on each side in the recess over it. An anchor in gold, painted on the back-ground between these panels, rests upon the Bible and prayer-book. The roof, at the apex, is twenty-six feet high, and eleven feet at the eaves. The edifice is built on a broad deck, seventy-six by thirty-six feet, covering two boats of eighty tons each, placed ten feet apart. The spire contains a bell, and the top of the flag-staff is about seventy feet from the deck. Divine service is regularly performed on Sundays, commencing in the morning at half-past ten, and in the afternoon at three o'clock. Both the boats on which the edifice rests are well coppered, and protected from injury by booms placed around them. [Illustration: THE FLOATING CHURCH OF OUR SAVIOUR.] A similar floating church has been built and moored near Rector-street, in the North River, near which is another floating chapel, formed of an old hulk, after the manner of the first floating chapels in London. In addition to these houses of worship for seamen, there is a large and handsome church for sailors near the "Home," in Cherry-street, under the charge of the Baptists, and a small seamen's chapel in Brooklyn, near the Catharine Ferry. To complete this system of benevolent enterprises for the benefit of sailors, there is a Seaman's Savings Bank in Wall-street, a very handsome structure of brown free-stone, in the third story of which are the offices of the Seaman's Friend Society. In Franklin Square, which, at the time of Washington's last visit to New-York, bore about the same relation to the heart of the city that Union Square and Grammercy Park now do, being the Ultima Thule of fashion, and the very focus of gentility and aristocracy, there is the Sailor's Home for colored seamen, which has been most respectably conducted on the principle of the "Home" in Cherry-street, and under the supervision of, although not belonging to, the Seaman's Friend Society. The Colored Home consists of two respectable three-story brick buildings, and is next door to the old Walton House, which is the last remnant of ante-revolutionary splendor remaining in the commercial metropolis of the Union, which once abounded in stately old mansions full of historical mementoes of the days when we acknowledged to kingly authority. The principle of compelling men, when they have means, to lay up a trifle against the exigencies of a rainy day, has worked well, as we have seen, when applied to the most improvident of all the laboring classes, and we are not sure but the same principle applied to other classes would not prove equally beneficial. If the law should require every author, or merchant, or broker, or editor, to pay a monthly stipend to provide houses of refuge for the needy of their class, it would be only carrying out the principle of government which has been applied to seamen, and might save many a poor wretch from committing suicide to avoid the fate of a pauper. [Illustration: A CUB OF THE BARN-YARD] RURAL LIFE IN VIRGINIA: THE "SWALLOW BARN." We remember no book of its class altogether more delightful than the "Swallow Barn" of JOHN P. KENNEDY. In Irving's "Bracebridge Hall" we have exquisite sketches of English homes, such sketches as could be drawn only by that graceful and genial humorist, but Bracebridge Hall is not in our own country, and we scarcely feel "at our own" in it, as we do in every scene to which we are introduced by the author of "Swallow Barn," the best painter of manners who has ever tried his hand at their delineation in America. The love of nature, the fine appreciation of a country life, the delicate and quiet humor, and hearty joy in every one's enjoyment, which those who know Mr. Kennedy personally will recognize as principal elements of his own character, are reflected in the pages of the book, and with its other good qualities make it one of the most charming compositions in the literature of the present time. Mr. Putnam in a few days will publish a new edition of "Swallow Barn," profusely illustrated by Mr. Strother, an artist who seems perfectly at home in the Old Dominion, as if--which may be the case--all his life had been spent there. Some of these we shall transfer to our own pages, but first we copy in full Mr. Kennedy's "Word in Advance to the Reader": "Swallow Barn was written twenty years ago, and was published in a small edition, which was soon exhausted. From that date it has disappeared from the bookstores, being carelessly consigned by the author to that oblivion which is common to books and men--out of sight, out of mind. Upon a recent reviewal of it, after an interval sufficiently long to obliterate the partialities with which one is apt to regard his own productions, I have thought it was worthy of more attention than I had bestowed upon it, and was, at least, entitled to the benefit of a second edition. In truth, its republication has been so often advised by friends, and its original reception was so prosperous, that I have almost felt it to be a duty once more to set it afloat upon the waters, for the behoof of that good-natured company of idle readers who are always ready to embark on a pleasure excursion in any light craft that offers. I have, therefore, taken these volumes in hand, and given them a somewhat critical revisal. Twenty years work sufficient change upon the mind of an author to render him, perhaps more than others, a fastidious critic of his own book. If the physiologists are right, he is not the same person after that lapse of time; and all that his present and former self may claim in common, are those properties which belong to his mental consciousness, of which his aspiration after fame is one. The present self may, therefore, be expected to examine more rigorously the work of that former and younger person, for whom he is held responsible. This weighty consideration will be sufficient to account for the few differences which may be found between this and the first edition. Some quaintness of the vocabulary has been got rid of--some dialogue has been stript of its redundancy--some few thoughts have been added--and others retrenched. I shall be happy to think that the reader will agree with me that these are improvements:--I mean the reader who may happen to belong to that small and choice corps who read these volumes long ago--a little troop of friends of both sexes, to whom I have reason to be grateful for that modicum of good opinion which cheered my first authorship. Health and joy to them all--as many as are now alive! I owe them a thanksgiving for their early benevolence. "Swallow Barn exhibits a picture of country life in Virginia, as it existed in the first quarter of the present century. Between that period and the present day, time and what is called "the progress," have made many innovations there, as they have done every where else. The Old Dominion is losing somewhat of the raciness of her once peculiar, and--speaking in reference to the locality described in these volumes--insulated cast of manners. The mellow, bland, and sunny luxuriance of her home society--its good fellowship, its hearty and constitutional _companionableness_, the thriftless gayety of the people, their dogged but amiable invincibility of opinion, and that overflowing hospitality which knew no ebb--these traits, though far from being impaired, are modified at the present day by circumstances which have been gradually attaining a marked influence over social life as well as political relation. An observer cannot fail to note that the manners of our country have been tending towards a uniformity which is visibly effacing all local differences. The old states, especially, are losing their original distinctive habits and modes of life, and in the same degree, I fear, are losing their exclusive American character. A traveller may detect but few sectional or provincial varieties in the general observances and customs of society, in comparison with what were observable in the past generations, and the pride, or rather the vanity, of the present day is leading us into a very notable assimilation with foreign usages. The country now apes the city in what is supposed to be the elegancies of life, and the city is inclined to value and adopt the fashions it is able to import across the Atlantic, and thus the whole surface of society is exhibiting the traces of a process by which it is likely to be rubbed down, in time, to one level, and varnished with the same gloss. It may thus finally arrive at a comfortable insipidity of character which may not be willingly reckoned as altogether a due compensation for the loss of that rough but pleasant flavor which belonged to it in its earlier era. There is much good sense in that opinion which ascribes a wholesome influence to those homebred customs, which are said to strengthen local attachments and expand them into love of country. What belonged to us as characteristically American, seems already to be dissolving into a mixture which affects us unpleasantly as a plain and cosmopolitan substitute for the old warmth and salient vivacity of our ancestors. We no longer present in our pictures of domestic life so much as an earnest lover of our nationality might desire of what abroad is called the "red bird's wing"--something which belongs to us and to no one else. The fruitfulness of modern invention in the arts of life, the general fusion of thought through the medium of an extra-territorial literature, which from its easy domestication among us is scarcely regarded as foreign, the convenience and comfort of European customs which have been incorporated into our scheme of living,--all these, aided and diffused by our extraordinary facilities of travel and circulation, have made sad work, even in the present generation, with those old _nationalisms_ that were so agreeable to the contemplation of an admirer of the picturesque in character and manners. [Illustration: THE "SWALLOW BARN."] "Looking myself somewhat hopelessly upon this onward gliding of the stream, I am not willing to allow these sketches of mine entirely to pass away. They have already begun to assume the tints of a relic of the past, and may, in another generation, become archæological, and sink into the chapter of antiquities. Presenting, as I make bold to say, a faithful picture of the people, the modes of life, and the scenery of a region full of attraction, and exhibiting the lights and shades of its society with the truthfulness of a painter who has studied his subject on the spot, they may reasonably claim their accuracy of delineation to be set off as an extenuation for any want of skill or defect of finish which a fair criticism may charge against the artist. Like some sign-post painters, I profess to make a strong likeness, even if it should be thought to be _hard_,--and what better workmen might call a daub,--as to which I must leave my reader to judge for himself when he has read this book. The outward public award on this point was kind, and bestowed quite as much praise as I could have desired--much more than I expected--when the former edition appeared. But "the progress" has brought out many competitors since that day, and has, perhaps, rendered the public taste more scrupulous. A book then was not so perilous an offering as it is now in the great swarm of authorships. We run more risk, just now, of being left alone--unread--untalked of--though not, happily, unpuffed by newspapers, who are favorites with the publisher, and owe him courtesies. "I wish it to be noted that Swallow Barn is not a novel. I confess this in advance, although I may lose by it. It was begun on the plan of a series of detached sketches linked together by the hooks and eyes of a traveller's notes; and although the narrative does run into some by-paths of personal adventure, it has still preserved its desultory, sketchy character to the last. It is, therefore, utterly unartistic in plot and structure, and may be described as variously and interchangeably partaking of the complexion of a book of travels, a diary, a collection of letters, a drama, and a history,--and this, serial or compact, as the reader may choose to compute it. Our old friend Polonius had nearly hit it in his rigmarole of 'pastoral-comical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral'--which, saving 'the tragical,' may well make up my schedule: and so I leave it to the 'censure' of my new reader." [Illustration: VIRGINIA MILL-BOYS RACING.] Here the history of the book is admirably told. The work itself, so full of truthful and effective pictures, offers numerous passages for quotation, but though we have nothing better to give our readers, we shall limit our extracts to a few scenes illustrated by Mr. Strother's pencil. We present first the old barn itself. "Beyond the bridge, at some distance, stands a prominent object in the perspective of this picture,--the most venerable appendage to the establishment--a huge barn with an immense roof hanging almost to the ground, and thatched a foot thick with sunburnt straw, which reaches below the eaves in ragged flakes. It has a singularly drowsy and decrepit aspect. The yard around it is strewed knee-deep with litter, from the midst of which arises a long rack resembling a chevaux de frise, which is ordinarily filled with fodder. This is the customary lounge of half a score of oxen and as many cows, who sustain an imperturbable companionship with a sickly wagon, whose parched tongue and drooping swingle-trees, as it stands in the sun, give it a most forlorn and invalid character; whilst some sociable carts under the sheds, with their shafts perched against the walls, suggest the idea of a set of gossiping cronies taking their ease in a tavern porch. Now and then a clownish hobble-de-hoy colt, with long fetlocks and disordered mane, and a thousand burs in his tail, stalks through this company. But as it is forbidden ground to all his tribe, he is likely very soon to encounter a shower of corn-cobs from some of the negro men; upon which contingency he makes a rapid retreat across the bars which imperfectly guard the entrance to the yard, and with an uncouth display of his heels bounds towards the brook, where he stops and looks back with a saucy defiance; and after affecting to drink for a moment, gallops away with a braggart whinny to the fields." The life led by the young negroes on the plantations of Virginia is generally easy, and of course utterly free from the cares which beset their youthful masters, compelled to pore over "miserable books." "There is a numerous herd of little negroes about the estate; and these sometimes afford us a new diversion. A few mornings since we encountered a horde of them, who were darting about the bushes like untamed monkeys. They are afraid of me because I am a stranger, and take to their heels as soon as they see me. If I ever chance to get near enough to speak to one of them, he stares at me with a suspicious gaze, and, after a moment, makes off at full speed, very much frightened, towards the cabins at some distance from the house. They are almost all clad in a long coarse shirt which reaches below the knee, without any other garment. But one of the group we met on the morning I speak of, was oddly decked in a pair of ragged trowsers, conspicuous for their ample dimensions in the seat. These had evidently belonged to some grown-up person, but were cut short in the legs to make them fit the wearer. A piece of twine across the shoulder of this grotesque imp, served for suspenders, and kept his habiliments from falling about his feet. Ned ordered this crew to prepare for a foot-race, and proposed a reward of a piece of money to the winner. They were to run from a given point, about a hundred paces distant, to the margin of the brook. Our whole suite of dogs were in attendance, and seemed to understand our pastime. At the word, away went the bevy, accompanied by every dog of the pack, the negroes shouting and the dogs yelling in unison. The shirts ran with prodigious speed, their speed exposing their bare, black, and meager shanks to the scandal of all beholders; and the strange baboon in trowsers struggled close in their rear, with ludicrous earnestness, holding up his redundant and troublesome apparel with his hand. In a moment they reached the brook with unchecked speed, and, as the banks were muddy, and the dogs had become entangled with the racers in their path, two or three were precipitated into the water. This only increased the merriment, and they continued the contest in this new element by floundering, kicking, and splashing about, like a brood of ducks in their first descent upon a pool. These young negroes have wonderfully flat noses, and the most oddly disproportioned mouths, which were now opened to their full dimensions, so as to display their white teeth in striking contrast with their complexions. They are a strange pack of antic and careless animals, and furnish the liveliest picture that is to be found in nature of that race of swart fairies, which, in the old time, were supposed to play their pranks in the forest at moonlight. Ned stood by, enjoying this scene like an amateur--encouraging the negroes in their gambols, and hallooing to the dogs, that by a kindred instinct entered tumultuously into the sport and kept up the confusion. It was difficult to decide the contest. So the money was thrown into the air, and as it fell to ground, there was another rush, in which the hero of the trowsers succeeded in getting the small coin from the ground in his teeth, somewhat to the prejudice of his finery. [Illustration: DRILLING THE NEGRO BOYS.] "Rip asserts a special pre-eminence over these young serfs, and has drilled them into a kind of local militia. He sometimes has them all marshalled in the yard, and entertains us with a review. They have an old watering-pot for a drum, and a dingy pocket handkerchief for a standard, under which they are arrayed in military order, and parade over the grounds with a riotous clamor." [Illustration: TREADING OUT WHEAT.] The farmers of Virginia are scarcely as far advanced in the application of science as the more active-minded Yankees, and among the ancient customs which still obtain among them is that of treading out grain with cattle. At Swallow Barn the operation is described: "Within the farm-yard a party of negroes were engaged in treading out grain. About a dozen horses were kept at full trot around a circle of some ten or fifteen paces diameter, which was strewed with wheat in the sheaf. These were managed by some five or six little blacks, who rode like monkey caricaturists of the games of the circus, and who mingled with the labors of the place that comic air of deviltry which communicated to the whole employment something of the complexion of a pastime." We hope this edition of _Swallow Barn_ will be so well received that the author will give us all his other works in the same attractive style. _Horse-shoe Robinson_, _Rob of the Bowl_, _Quodlibet_, and all the rest, except the _Life of Wirt_, are now out of print, and all have been greeted on their first appearance with an approval that should satisfy a more ambitious writer than Mr. Kennedy. [Illustration] GEORGE H. BOKER. [Illustration] Mr. Boker is one of the youngest of American authors. He is a native of Philadelphia, and was born, we believe, in the year 1824. After the usual preparatory studies in the city of his birth, he entered the college at Princeton, New Jersey, of which he is a graduate. In addition to the collegiate course, however, he devoted much time to the study of Anglo-Saxon, and to the perusal of the early masters of English literature, whose influence is discernible in all his earlier poems. Soon after leaving college he made a visit to France and England, but was obliged to return after having been but a short time abroad, owing to the critical state of his health. He was at that time suffering under a pulmonary disease which threatened to be fatal, but all symptoms of which, fortunately, have since disappeared. On his return he took up his residence in Philadelphia, which continues to be his home. Three or four years since he was married to an accomplished lady of that city. Mr. Boker first appeared as an author at the commencement of the year 1848, when a volume of his poems, under the title of _The Lesson of Life_, was published in Philadelphia. The publication of a volume was no light ordeal to a young poet whose name was unknown, and who, we believe, had never before seen himself in print. The lack of self-observation and self-criticism, which can only be acquired when the author's thoughts have taken the matter-of-fact garb of type, would of itself be sufficient to obscure much real promise. In spite of these disadvantages, the book contained much that gave the reader the impression of a mind of genuine and original power. We remember being puzzled at its seeming incongruity, the bold, mature, and masculine character of its thought being so strikingly at variance with its frequent crudities of expression. It seemed to us the work of a man in the prime of life, whose poetic feeling had taken a sudden growth, and moved somewhat unskilfully in the unaccustomed trammels of words, rather than the first essay of a brain glowing with the fresh inspiration of youth. No one saw the author's imperfections sooner than himself; and before the year had closed, his tragedy of _Calaynos_ was published--a work so far in advance of what he had hitherto accomplished, so full, not only of promise for the future, but of actual performance, that it took his most confident friends by surprise. To write a five act tragedy is also a bold undertaking; but there is an old French proverb which, says, "if you would shoot lions, don't begin by aiming at hares," and we believe there are fewer failures from attempting too much than from being content with too little. The success of _Calaynos_ showed that the author had not aimed beyond his reach. The book attracted considerable attention, and its merits as a vigorous and original play, were very generally recognized. Although written with no view to its representation on the stage, it did not escape the notice of actors and managers, and a copy happening to fall into the hands of Mr. Phelps, a distinguished English tragedian, it was first performed under his direction at the Theatre Royal, Saddler's Wells, Mr. Phelps himself taking the part of Calaynos. Its success as an acting play was most decided, and after keeping the stage at Saddler's Wells twenty or thirty nights, it went the round of the provinces. It has already been performed more than a hundred times in different parts of Great Britain. _Calaynos_ gives evidence of true dramatic genius. The characters are distinct and clearly drawn, and their individualities carefully preserved through all the movements of the plot, which is natural and naturally developed. The passion on which the action hinges, is the prejudice of blood between the Spanish and Moorish families of Spain. The interest of the plot, while it never loses sight of the hero, is shared in the first three acts by the other personages of the story, but concentrates at the close on Calaynos, whose outbursts of love and grief and revenge are drawn with striking power and eloquence. The play is enlivened with many humorous passages, wherein the author shows his mastery of this element, so necessary to the complete dramatist. Mr. Boker's next publication was the tragedy of _Anne Boleyn_, which appeared in February, 1850. In this work he touched on more familiar ground, and in some instances, in his treatment of historical characters, came in conflict with the opinions or prejudices of the critics. The necessity of adhering to history in the arrangement of the plot and selection of the dramatis personæ, imposed some restraint on the author's mind, and hence, while _Anne Boleyn_ exhibits a calmer and more secure strength, and a riper artistic knowledge than _Calaynos_, it lacks the fire and passionate fervor of some passages of the latter. We should not forget, however, that the Thames has a colder and sadder sun than the Guadalquiver. Objections have been made to Mr. Boker's King Henry, especially to his complaint of the torments of his conscience, and his moralizing over Norris's ingratitude. But those who cavil at these points seem to forget that however vile and heartless King Henry appears to them, he is a very different man to himself. The author's idea--and it is true to human nature--evidently is, that a criminal is not always guilty to his own mind. This marked insensibility of King Henry to his own false and corrupt nature is a subtle stroke of art. The language of the tragedy is strong, terse, and full of point, approaching the sturdy Saxon idiom of the early English dramatists. We might quote many passages in support of our opinion, as, for instance, the scene between the Queen and her brother, Lord Rochford; between the Queen and King Henry; Wyatt and Rochford, and King Henry and Jane Seymour. Two or three brief extracts we cannot avoid giving. Wyatt and Rochford are in "The Safety," the thieves' quarter of London--the St. Giles of that day. Wyatt speaks: "I oft have thought the watchful eye of God Upon this place ne'er rested; or that hell Had raised so black a smoke of densest sin That the All-Beautiful, appalled, shrunk back From its fierce ugliness. I tell you, friend, When the great treason, which shall surely come To burst in shards law-bound society, Gives the first shudder, ere it grinds to dust Thrones, ranks, and fortunes, and most cunning law-- When the great temple of our social state Staggers and throbs, and totters back to chaos-- Let men look here, here in this fiery mass Of aged crime and primal ignorance, For the hot heart of all the mystery!-- Here, on this howling sea, let fall the scourge, Or pour the oil of mercy! _Rochford._ Pour the oil-- In God's name, pour the blessed oil! The scourge, Bloody and fierce, has fallen for ages past Upon the foreward crests within its reach; Yet made no more impression on the mass Than Persia's whips upon the Hellespont!" Wyatt's soliloquy on beholding Queen Anne led forth to execution is full of a rare and subtle beauty, both of thought and expression: "O Anne, Anne! The world may banish all regard for thee, Mewing thy fame in frigid chronicles, But every memory that haunts my mind Shall cluster round thee still. _I'll hide thy name Under the coverture of even lines, I'll hint it darkly in familiar songs_, I'll mix each melancholy thought of thee Through all my numbers: _so that heedless men Shall hold my love for thee within their hearts, Not knowing of the treasure_." The last scene, preceding the death of Anne Boleyn, is simple and almost homely in its entire want of poetic imagery; yet nothing could be more profoundly touching, and--in the highest sense of the word--tragic. The same tears which blur for us the lines of Browning's _Blot on the 'Scutcheon_, and the last words of Shelley's _Beatrice Cenci_, suffuse our eyes at this parting address of Anne Boleyn to her maidens, beside her on the scaffold: "And ye, my damsels, Who whilst I lived did ever show yourselves So diligent in service, and are now To be here present in my latest hour Of mortal agony--as in good times Ye were most trustworthy, even so in this, My miserable death, ye leave me not. As a poor recompense for your rich love, I pray you to take comfort for my loss-- And yet forget me not. To the king's grace, And to the happier one whom you may serve In place of me, be faithful as to me. Learn from this scene, the triumph of my fate, To hold your honors far above your lives. When you are praying to the martyred Christ, Remember me who, as my weakness could, Faltered afar behind His shining steps, And died for truth, forgiving all mankind. The Lord have pity on my helpless soul!" Since the publication of _Anne Boleyn_, Mr. Boker has written two plays, _The Betrothal_, and _All the World a Mask_, both of which have been produced on the stage in Philadelphia with the most entire success. _Calaynos_ was also played for a number of nights, Mr. Murdoch taking the principal part. _The Betrothal_ was performed in New-York and Baltimore, with equal success. It is admirably adapted for an acting play. The plot is not tragic, though the closing scenes have a tragic air. The dialogue is more varied than in _Anne Boleyn_ or _Calaynos_--now sparkling and full of point, now pithy, shrewd, and pregnant with worldly wisdom, and now tender, graceful, and poetic. _All the World a Mask_ is a comedy of modern life. We have not seen it represented, and it has not yet been published; yet no one familiar with the fine healthy humor displayed in portions of _Calaynos_ and _The Betrothal_ can doubt the author's ability to sustain himself through a five-act comedy. In addition to these plays, Mr. Boker has published from time to time, in the literary magazines, lyrics and ballads that would of themselves entitle him to rank among our most worthy poets. It is rare that a dramatic author possesses lyric genius, and _vice versa_, yet the true lyric inspiration is no less perceptible in Mr. Boker's _Song of the Earth_ and _Vision of the Goblet_, than the true dramatic faculty in his _Anne Boleyn_. There is a fresh, manly strength in his poetry, which may sometimes jar the melody a little, but never allows his verse to flag. The life which informs it was inhaled in the open air; it is sincere and earnest, and touched with that fine enthusiasm which is the heart's-blood of lyric poetry. Take, for instance, this glorious Bacchic, from the _Vision of the Goblet_: "Joy! joy! with Bacchus and his satyr train, In triumph throbs our merry Grecian earth; Joy! joy! the golden time has come again, A god shall bless the vine's illustrious birth! Io, io, Bacche! "O breezes, speed across the mellow lands, And breathe his coming to the joyous vine; Let all the vineyards wave their leafy hands Upon the hills to greet this pomp divine! Io, io, Bacche! "O peaceful triumph, victory without tear, Or human cry, or drop of conquered blood! Save dew-beads bright, that on the vine appear, The choral shouts, the trampled grape's red flood! Io, io, Bacche! "Shout, Hellas, shout! the lord of joy is come, Bearing the mortal Lethe in his hands, To wake the wailing lips of Sorrow dumb, To bind sad Memory's eyes with rosy bands: Io, io, Bacche!" In the _Song of the Earth_, which shows a higher exercise of the poetic faculty than any thing else Mr. Boker has written, he has enriched the language with a new form of versification. Except in this poem, we do not remember ever to have seen _dactylic_ blank verse attempted in the English language. The majestic and resonant harmonies of the measure are strikingly adapted to the poet's theme. The concluding _Chorus of Stars_, rebuking the Earth for her pride as the dwelling-place of the human soul, is a splendid effort of the imagination. We know not where to find surpassed the sounding sweep of the rhythm in the final lines: "Heir of eternity, Mother of Souls, Let not thy knowledge betray thee to folly! Knowledge is proud, self-sufficient, and lone, Trusting, unguided, its steps in the darkness. Thine is the wisdom that mankind may win, Gleaned in the pathway between joy and sorrow; Ours is the wisdom that hallows the child Fresh from the touch of his awful Creator, Dropped like a star on thy shadowy realm, Falling in splendor, but falling to darken. Ours is the simple religion of Faith, Trusting alone in the God who o'errules us; Thine are the complex misgivings of Doubt, Wrested to form by imperious Reason. _Knowledge is restless, imperfect, and sad; Faith is serene, and completed, and joyful._ Bow in humility, bow thy proud forehead, Circle thy form with a mantle of clouds, _Hide from the glittering cohorts of evening, Wheeling in purity, singing in chorus: Howl in the depths of thy lone, barren mountains, Restlessly moan on the deserts of ocean, Wail o'er thy fall in the desolate forests, Lost star of Paradise, straying alone!_" In the flush of youth, fortunate in all the relations of life, and with a fame already secured, there is perhaps no American author to whom the future promises more than to Mr. Boker. He has that faithful reverence for his art which makes harmless the breath of praise, more dangerous to the poet than that of censure, and there are yet many years before him ere his mind attains its full scope and stature. That all these promises may be fulfilled, to his own honor and that of American literature, is the earnest hope of BAYARD TAYLOR. HERR FLEISCHMANN ON THE INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE AMERICANS. In the careful watch we keep of French, German, and other foreign literatures, for what will instruct or entertain the readers of the _International_, we are always sharp-sighted for any thing said of us or our institutions, whether it be in sympathy or in antipathy. So, for a recent number, we translated from the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ a very clever paper on our American Female Poets, and on other occasions have reviewed or done into English a great many compositions which evinced the feeling of continental Europe in regard to our character and movements. We shall continue in this habit, as there is scarcely any thing ever more amusing than "what the world says" of our concerns, even when it is in the least amiable temper. Among the most interesting works published of late months in Germany, is FLEISCHMANN'S _Erwerbszweige der Vereinigten Staaten Nord-America's_, (or Branches of Industry in the United States.) The reader who anticipates from this title a mere mass of statistics relative to the industrial condition of our own country will find himself agreeably disappointed. Statistics are indeed there--lists of figures and relative annual arrays of products, sufficient to satisfy any one that Mr. Fleischmann has turned the several years during which he was connected with the Patent Office at Washington to good account. But in addition to this there is a mass of information and observation, which, though nearly connected with the subject, was yet hardly to be expected. It is doubtful whether the social and domestic peculiarities of others or of ourselves be most attractive, but to those who prefer the latter, and who have lived as many do under the impression that our own habits and ways of life present little that is marked or distinctive, this work will be found not only interesting, but even amusing. For among those practising branches of industry, he not only includes blacksmiths, coopers, architects, planters, and pin-makers, but also clergymen, actors, circus-riders, model-artists, midwives, and boarding-house keepers! The main object of the work being to inform his countrymen who propose emigration, of the true state of the most available branches of industry in this country, and prevent on their part undue anticipation or disappointment, even these items cannot be deemed out of place. Cherishing an enthusiastic admiration of our country, and better informed in all probability in the branches of which he treats than any foreigner who has before ventured upon the subject, it is not astonishing that he should have produced a work which not only fully answers the object intended, but in a faithful translation would doubtless be extensively read by our own countrymen. The reader will find in this book many _little_ traits of our domestic life, which, commonplace though they be, are not unattractive when thus reflected back on us, mirror-like, from another land. Take for example the following account of confectioners: "All men are more or less fond of sweet food and dainties, and the wealthier a people may be, and consequently in more fit condition to add such luxuries to the necessaries of life, the greater will be its consumption of sugar. If we compare the sugar consumption of England with that of Germany, we find the first consumes a far greater quantity per head than the latter. "And in this respect the Americans are in no wise behind the English, since they not only at least twice a day drink either tea or coffee, which they abundantly sweeten, enjoying therewith vast quantities of preserved fruits, and every variety of cakes, but they have universally a remarkable appetite for sweets, which from childhood up is nourished with all sorts of confectionery. And this appetite is very generally retained even to an advanced age, so that all the _cents_ of the children, and many of the dollars of those more advanced in life, go to the _candy-shops_ and _confectioneries_. Add to this the numerous balls, marriages, and other festive occasions, particularly the parties in private houses, at which pyramids, temples, and other architectural and artistic works, founded on rocks of candied sugar, and bonsbons, are never wanting, we can readily imagine that in this country the confectioner's trade is a flourishing and brilliant business. "The Americans are, as is well known, universally a remarkably hospitable people, not only frequently entertaining guests in their homes, but also holding it as an established point of _bon ton_, to give one or two parties annually, to which _all_ their friends are invited. The evening is then spent with music and dancing, concluded with an extremely elegant (_hochst elegant_) supper, at which the gentlemen wisely stick to the more substantial viands and champagne, but where abundance of sugar-work for the ladies is never wanting. "And since no family will be surpassed by another, the most incredible extravagance not infrequently results from this unfortunate spirit of rivalry. Confectionery is often brought for a certain party expressly from France, fresh fruits from the West Indies, and the stairways and rooms are adorned with the most exquisite flowers which Europe can yield, while the guests are served on costly porcelain and massive plate. In a word, the greatest imaginable expense is lavished on these festive occasions, which prevail in every class of society, and in none--be their degree what it may--are sugared sweets wanting: the poorer confining themselves, it is true, to such dainties as are the production of the country, excepting indeed a few bottles of champagne, which latter is absolutely indispensable. "I have deemed it necessary to touch upon these extravagances of American life, that I might show that while on the one hand an expert confectioner may readily find employment during the season, on the other that mere skill and industry are by no means sufficient of themselves to support an establishment grounded on credit. "Nearly all the small shopkeepers, fruit-dealers, and bar-keepers, sell candy and sugar-cakes, which they either prepare themselves or obtain from confectioners who not only carry on a wholesale business, _but even send large quantities of their products to the country dealers_. In Philadelphia, warm cakes are carried about for sale in the streets,[1] the bearers thereof announcing their presence by the sound of a bell. French confectioners have already done much in this country toward improving the public taste, and excellent _bonsbons à la francaise_ are now actually manufactured here, though we must admit that in the country there is a great consumption of confectionery and cakes by no means of a very good quality. In these regions a taste for '_horses_' (which are of cake greatly resembling gingerbread and made in the form of a horse) universally predominates, and not only children but even adults select these as a favorite dainty. It is no unusual spectacle to behold in the northern states an entire court--judge, jury, and lawyers--regaling themselves during an important trial on horse-cakes!" Whether Herr Fleischmann received this legal anecdote on hearsay, or whether his German soul was actually startled by stumbling upon such an extraordinary legal spectacle, we will not here inquire. In Germany the favorite dainty in this line is a _pretzel_, or carnival cake, in the form of a two-headed serpent, which antiquaries declare to be of oriental origin, and to conceal divers horrific mysteries of deeply metaphysical import. From the solemnity of tone with which Herr Fleischmann imparts this horse-cake story, we are half inclined to suspect that he inferred that a great ethical mystery, in some way connected with the administration of justice in America, might thus be conveyed. Under the head of spirit distilleries our author enters into a _naïf_ and enthusiastic defence of good brandy, but still highly approves of the American custom of substituting coffee for grog in merchant vessels, on which he remarks that it is not allowed to soldiers or sailors to bring spirits into the forts or ships. "But they are so extravagantly fond of liquor as to invent every imaginable method of evading the regulation. I have been told," he says, "by persons of the highest credibility that during the night whisky is not unfrequently brought to the vicinity of military stations, and that the sentinels, after filling the barrels of their muskets therewith, bring it into the 'watch-room,' and divide the _loading_ with their comrades." After remarking the melancholy fact, which the strictest examination would, we fear confirm, in a still higher degree, that the sewing-girls employed in our umbrella factories, tailor establishments, &c., are very inadequately paid, he makes a statement which is, however, glaringly false, that among these poor girls corruption of manners prevails to a degree unknown in any country of Europe, save indeed "merry England." Without being familiar with such statistics, we are on the contrary firmly convinced that though females in these employments are _not_ so well paid even as in Germany, there is no country on the face of the earth--most certainly not in Bavaria, Austria, or Prussia, where the standard of morals is in this respect so high as in our own. There are a thousand correlative facts in the state of society in our country which confirm our assertion. This opinion of our author's is, however, slightly at variance, as far as appearance is concerned, with a part of the following good advice to the more beautiful portion of his fair young countrywomen, who propose repairing to this country for the sake of catching husbands: "And I deem this a fit place to give them a warning, which I have before often repeated, namely, that these lovely beings, when they forsake their homes, also leave behind them their fantastic national dress. In this country long dresses are worn--and not merely frocks which barely reach the knee, as is usual in several parts of Germany. The same may be applied to their head-dresses, which are not unfrequently so eccentric as to give their wearers the appearance of having escaped from a lunatic asylum. On which account, I beg my _ladies_, or any women who design emigrating to this land of equality, to buy themselves French bonnets,[2] or a similar style of head covering, but in no instance to run bareheaded about the streets, which is here remarkably unpopular, since neither widow, wife, nor maiden, ever appears in the public way without hat or bonnet. And I moreover beg of them, on their first arrival in the populous cities, to restrain their manifestations of affection to the house, where walls are the only witnesses, _and not to permit their lovers, fiancées, or husbands, to clasp them about the waist, and lead them in this close embrace about the streets_, since this would be for Americans a scandalous spectacle. I will not assert that the American is incapable of tender feeling, but he at least observes decency in the public streets, and _apropos_ of this, I would further remark, that in this country the wife or maiden invariably walks by the side of her male companion, and never follows after him in _Indian file_--that is, like geese returning from pasture." In his chapter on hat-makers, we are informed that neither French, Germans, nor English, can in this country compete with the Americans in the manufacture of hats; and that he was informed by a very intelligent manufacturer that the work of Germans by no means suited our market, and further, that within a few years past the use of caps has increased at least two thirds, though these are by no means so well adapted to carry papers, &c., as hats, in which Americans are accustomed to convey their archives. Of boarding-houses: "These extremely convenient establishments, in which lodging, food, and all things requisite, are provided, may be found in all the cities in the United States; but we first learn to duly appreciate their value, when, on returning to Germany, we find ourselves obliged either to lodge in a hotel, or for a short stay in a place hire and perhaps furnish rooms for ourselves. "These communistic institutions, where one person or family takes care of several, give the _boarder_ all the conveniences of a hotel, united to the advantages of dwelling in a private family. He has opportunities of entering such society as is adapted to his habits and tastes, in addition to which he has what may be termed a _chez soi_--he feels that he is 'in house.'[3] "Such boarding-houses are generally kept by widows or old maids, and even ladies of the highest families take refuge in this branch of industry, to maintain respectably themselves and families. "Fashionable houses of this sort are splendidly furnished, and supplied with excellent dishes and attendance. In these the price is naturally high, since for a room, without fuel, from six to twelve dollars a week is generally paid. Rooms in the upper part of the house are of course cheaper. The parlor is common to all the persons in the house--they meet there, before and after meals, pass the evening with reading, music, &c., receive visits, and live in all respects as if at home. "The Americans are of a very accommodating disposition--particularly the men, who, from a regard for the lady of the house, are easily contented. The ladies, on the contrary, very frequently indulge in little feuds, produced by the _ennui_ resulting from a want of domestic employment, and living in common; but all are on the whole very circumspect, are careful to live _in Christian love and unity_ with one another, and never offend external propriety. "It is not requisite in America to take a license from the police to establish a boarding-house, unless a bar-room be therewith connected. The person undertaking such an enterprise rents a house, makes it known in newspapers or among friends, or simply placards on the door 'Boarding'--and the establishment is opened without further ceremony. Particular introductions and recommendations are requisite to be received in a boarding-house of higher rank." There is even yet a lingering prejudice prevailing in this country in favor of certain musical instruments of European manufacture, which this work is well adapted to dissipate, since the author appears to be in this particular an excellent judge. Take for example his chapter on pianos: "The favorite musical instrument of the American ladies is the piano, and in every family with the slightest pretensions to education or refinement a piano may certainly be found, upon which, of an evening, the young 'Miss' plays to her parents the pieces which she has learned, or accompanies them with her voice. If the stranger will walk of an evening through the streets of an American city, he can hear in almost every house a piano and the song of youthful voices, often very agreeable, though the latter are not unfrequently wanting in proper culture. Many of these amateurs have beyond doubt remarkable talent, and would in their art attain to a high degree of perfection if they had better opportunities to hear the best music, to study more industriously, and practice more than they do, but their domestic audiences are unfortunately easily pleased, in consequence of which their knowledge seldom extends beyond well known opera pieces and favorite popular airs. "A few years since, pianos were generally imported from Germany, England, and France, but it was soon found that their construction and material were by no means adapted to withstand the changes of the American climate; and it was also found that the enormous profit cleared by the importers, might quite as well be retained in this country, and there are consequently, at present, in Boston, New-York, Philadelphia, and even Baltimore, excellent and extensive 'piano forte manufactories,' in which every portion of these instruments is constructed. For this purpose the best varieties of wood known are used, such as mahogany and rosewood, which, however, in America are obtainable at cheap rates. The cases are of the most solid construction possible, and the legs massive, (by which especially the firmest duration is insured) all constructed of the above-mentioned material, which is quickly and accurately cut into the requisite form by a machine.... By means of these and other improvements, but particularly by means of the material, are the American pianos not only far more durable than the imported, but also infinitely less subject to loss of tone. "The American pianos are invariably of a table form, in order to adapt them to small rooms. Their tone is sweet and rich, and has been pronounced clear, full and pleasing, by the best European performers. The pianos of Stottart (Stoddard) and Nunns, in New-York, of Laud and Mayer, in Philadelphia, and especially of Chickering, in Boston, enjoy a high reputation. This latter enterprising individual spares no expense to secure the best improvements, and apply them to his instruments. Other excellent manufactories also abound, among which are many German proprietors, who, however, all follow the American style of construction. "Previous to the year 1847, about sixty-four patents for improvements in pianos were taken out.... The average price of a splendid 'Chickering,' of 7-1/2 octaves, is from $350 to $400. I have purchased of Stoddard in New-York an excellent and handsome instrument for $250; since which time (A. D. 1848) the price for the same has sunk fifty dollars. Instruments of a lighter construction may be bought for one hundred and fifty dollars; nor will it be long ere the best pianos may be had for a price ranging from $180 to $200. There are in America men whose exclusive business it is to tune pianos, for which they generally receive one dollar.... "While on the subject of music, I may be permitted to speak of an outcast class of minstrels, namely, the harp girls; who, after having wandered through Germany, or even England, or having been turned out of the same, find their way to the United States. Especially in New Orleans are they at home, and there sing, in the coffee-houses and bar-rooms, most blackguard (_zotenhaften lieder_) songs, in the English language, learned either _at home or in England_--partly to the delight and partly to the disgust of the mixed companies there assembled. Germany can in truth take but little pride in such representatives of her nationality. She is already too little appreciated in America to render it necessary that such females should still further degrade her--females, for whom the American (who invariably holds in high respect the sex) entertains an unconquerable disgust. Apropos of those, I may mention the so-called 'broom girls,' who sell a sort of little brooms or fly-brushes, singing therewith fearful songs; and finally, the innumerable organ and tambourine players, who frequently have with them a child which dances like an ape to the sound of their horrible music." From the practical and common-sense-like manner in which the subject is treated, the following chapter on boarding-schools will probably prove interesting to every American reader: "Would not any one imagine that a nation like the German, which is universally recognized as the best educated and most erudite, which has written and effected so much for the cause of education, would naturally be the one to supply the world with accomplished teachers? Is there in the civilized world another nation where so many men have made it the entire business of a life, passed in the most zealous and deeply grounded studies of all languages, living and dead, or who have so fully succeeded in teaching even foreigners their own language? Certainly not. 'Whence comes it then,' any one may reasonably inquire, 'that these learned men, who appear to be, in every respect, so peculiarly adapted to teach, have not long since conducted the education of the whole world? Or why is it, that in North America at least, where a widely spread German element throws open so vast a field to their exertions, they have not the direction of every private school?' "Incomprehensible as this may appear at a first glance, it is still explicable in a few words. The American seeks, for the education of his children, _practical men, who are not only adapted to and skilled in their vocation, but also familiar with the world--its progress and requirements_--men not only capable of teaching their pupils the rules of grammar and syntax, but who are also qualified to impart the peculiarities and precepts of life in the world at large--men of prepossessing manner and appearance, and whose habits are adapted to the requirements of refined society. This it is, in a few words, that the American requires. And now, I ask--how many old and young teachers are there in Germany thus qualified? "I here speak, of course, in a general way; for I well know that there are in Germany many teachers and learned men, who could more than fulfil all of these requirements of the American parent, but their number is unfortunately limited; and I deem it important that I speak freely and fully on this subject, since many a learned German, whose acquirements and scientific knowledge would insure him an independent and respectable station at home, nevertheless frequently finds himself compelled by the pressure of circumstances to seek America, in the hope of there opening a school, or at least finding employment as teacher, and there too frequently, in addition to the bitterest disappointment, discovers too late that he is fit for no other practical employment which will yield him his daily bread. "As a proof, however, that most of these so called pedagogues must in America be necessarily deceived in their expectations, I take the liberty of adding yet a few words. "The American requires before all, as far as the moral qualifications of the teacher are concerned, a firm religious tendency--a requirement for which the scion of 'Young Germany,' fresh from his university career, has but little taste; since his recollections of that life are yet too fresh upon him to admit of a willing submission to such rules,--and I advise any one who proposes to follow such a course to become a farmer's man, rather than a hypocrite or sham-saint.... "If we proceed in our examination of private schools in America, we find that the majority are for the education of girls. Upon which the question arises--Are German ladies generally adapted to the superintendence of such establishments?--a question which I must either answer with No, or modify with the admission that if there be any schools managed by German ladies, I am ignorant of their existence. The cause for the negative being essentially the same as with the male scholars. "No man can better appreciate the worth of German women than myself. I acknowledge perfectly their virtues and excellencies--their domestic sphere is their world, inhabited by their children and ruled by their husbands, whose faithful, true-hearted, modest, obedient companions they are. To be independent and free is not in their nature; they are not so adapted either by origin or manner of life; nor does their education embrace any thing cosmopolitan. Born and brought up in a province, or court city, they have never cast a glance beyond its limits or boundaries, or those of the nearest town, and all that lies beyond is to them unknown and uninteresting. Thus they generally lead, according to ancient custom, (_nach altem brauch_) an almost vegetable life; and nothing save the dictates of fashion can ever disturb in the slightest degree the equanimity of their quiet souls. They do not in the least interest themselves in the progress of industry, literature, science, or politics, even in Germany--much less for that of foreign countries; but are content with learning in which section of the place they inhabit this or that necessary article may be best or most cheaply purchased; what late foreign romance is current in the circulating library; and what are the latest changes in bonnets, caps, chemisettes, or dresses, in the kingdom of fashion--whose sovereign they all obey. In politics they rest under the perpetual conviction that all goes on in the old way, and pass their leisure hours in coteries and parties, where knittings exclude all _spirituelle_ entertainment. In the lower grades of the middle class, they grow up with an unchangeable feeling of social inferiority, and shudder at every free glance into life, as if guilty of unheard of arrogance and presumption. "And how is it possible that a woman who has grown up in such social relations should, despite the fullest possession of all imaginable virtues and acquirements, be capable of teaching high-minded and independent girls? The American maiden regards most household employments as work requiring but little intelligence, and for which even negroes are as well qualified. She believes that she can better occupy the time necessary to the acquisition of subordinate acquirements, and prefers reading, music, and art, to knitting stockings, and similar soul-killing business. She recognizes, moreover, no distinction in rank, but strives to acquire as many accomplishments and as refined manners as any other person. In short, she strives to become _a lady_, and regards it as no extraordinary assumption, particularly when education or natural advantages adapt her thereto, to consider herself quite as good as any other woman in the republic. Nor does she forget that the time will come when, as mother, the first development of her child's mind will become a duty, and she remembers also that he will be a republican whose sphere of action is without limit, if his ability correspond only to the effort. Moreover, the American maidens are materially very _wide awake_, (_sehr auf gewecht_,) particularly in the large cities, where they enjoy excellent opportunities for instruction, and are proportionally highly educated. "The American woman or girl highly esteems the _elegant_ and _noble_, striving ever to form herself after this pattern, on which account French female teachers are universally preferred, even when very imperfectly qualified. The revolutions in France have driven forth many well educated persons to America, who have been compelled to seek by teaching a livelihood. Louis Philippe himself was once among the number. In addition to the fact that no nation surpasses the French in personal accomplishments, they have for Americans the further recommendation that their nation has played an important part in modern history. The American is impressed in favor of France, because she aided him in freeing his country from the yoke of England; and this inclination manifests itself continually in language. "And when the American boy glances over his school-books, he sees France represented in pictures as the _polite_ nation, and reads in history that she aided his country in the war of freedom, and that Lafayette was the _friend_ of Washington; while the same work represents the German as a merely agricultural race, portrayed in the caricature of an Altenburger peasant and his wife, in their fantastic national dress. From the same book he also learns that a German prince sold his subjects for so many pounds per head to aid England to subdue his country. Such contrasts cannot but awake in the child's mind deeply-rooted prejudices, far from favorable to the German race. "And since there has been for years an emigration to America of Germans who were very generally poor and uneducated--people speaking a revolting dialect, employed in the lowest offices, and not unfrequently much resembling the pictures in the geographies, the prejudice formed in early youth has been thus strengthened, that the Germans are a rough, uncultivated race, industrious and domestic, it is true, but yet very little improved by civilization--of all which the native Pennsylvania Germans afford unfortunately striking examples. The well-educated American, of course, knows better how to appreciate the true value of the Germans; he is aware of the value of their contributions to literature, science, art, and music; only in politics, and in the practical application of knowledge, he places (and not without justice) but little confidence in them. "But the personal appearance and bearing of many Germans, who are in themselves truly worthy of respect, often induce the well-educated and refined American to place in the back ground their otherwise estimable qualities. There is often something rough and harsh about the German, and his domestic habits are not invariably in unison with his erudition and excellent education, but frequently destroy the good impression which the latter might produce; moreover, their '_geselliges Leben_,' (social jovial life) as Germans term it, with its accompaniments of pipe and mug, are in the highest degree revolting to an American. And further, it is taken ill of the German that he considers that regard for the sex, entertained by the American, as carried somewhat too far, and allows himself to form on this point a too hasty, and not seldom unfavorable judgment, without seeking to examine more accurately this domestic characteristic. Many Germans find it impossible to enter into the spirit of American life, customs, and manners, while on religious subjects it appears impossible for either to adopt the same views: so that there is apparently almost no point in common between them." After stating that many educated Germans might succeed as teachers in this country, could they dispense with national peculiarities, and a description of the manner of establishing schools, in which he pays a high compliment to the general appearance of such institutions in our country, he adds: "The superintendent of such an establishment must entirely renounce all visits to bar-rooms and coffee-houses. He must learn to impart to his system of instruction the elements of novelty and attractiveness, and especially learn to make friends of the children. It is utterly impossible in this country to manage a school by the mere force of power and authority, and the teacher attempting this, soon experiences a revolution by which indeed he is not exactly _driven forth_, but left _alone_ on his _cathedra_." With this extract we close, regretting that we have been obliged to leave untranslated many more practical and not less interesting items. We consider the entire work as the best possible answer which can be given to the question, '_Why has America done so little for England's fair?_' No one who contemplates in it the immense range of our manufactories--our incredible combinations of excellence and cheapness, and the almost superhuman rapidity of our progress in every branch of industrial and social life, will entertain for an instant the slightest regret that we have not done more to increase the profits of John Bull's raree-show. FOOTNOTES: [1] Muffins?--_International._ [2] _Pariser-tracht_--French dress--is the epithet usually applied in Germany to our ordinary style of costume, in contradistinction to the _Bauern-tracht_, or peasant's costume, which is so frequently seen among German immigrants. [3] _Zu hause_--at house, at home. In this sentence the reader finds a striking exemplification of the saying, that neither in French nor German is there a word for _home_. IN THE HAREM. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY R. H. STODDARD. The scent of burning sandal-wood Perfumes the air in vain; A sweeter odor fills my sense, A fiercer fire my brain! O press your burning lips to mine!-- For mine will never part, Until my heart has rifled all The sweetness of your heart! The lutes are playing on the lawn, The moon is shining bright, But we like stars are melting now In clouds of soft delight! TO THE CICADA. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY H. J. CRATE. Cicada sits upon a sprig, And makes his song resound; For he is happy when a twig Lifts him above the ground. And so am I, when lifted up On hopes delusive wing; I laugh, and quaff the flowing cup, I love, I write, I sing! Should clouds or cares obscure our sky, And all be gloom around, My merry little friend and I Soon tumble to the ground. TRICKS ON TRAVELLERS AT WATERLOO. M. Leon Gozlan, one of the most esteemed magazinists in France, has lately paid a flying visit to the scene of his country's most glorious disasters, Waterloo, and has given a characteristic account of what he saw and heard there. We quote a part of it, in which he describes a knavish practice of which great numbers are every year made victims. M. Gozlan has just passed through the Brussels _faubourg_ Louisa, and is oppressed with most melancholy reflections, when his coachman addresses him-- "Sir," exclaimed my conductor, suddenly interrupting my meditations, "excuse me if I am troublesome, but before arriving at Mont-Saint-Jean I wish to warn you of a knavish trade you have probably never heard of at Paris." "A knavish trade unknown at Paris?" I replied, incredulously; "that is rather surprising. But come, tell me what is this new species of industry." "You can easily suppose," pursued my loquacious coachman, "that after the battle of Waterloo there remained on the field a large quantity of cannon-balls, buttons, small brass eagles, and broken weapons. Well, for the last thirty-four years, the country people have been carrying on a famous business in these articles." "It seems to me, however, my friend," I observed, "that a sale continued for so long a period, must have left very little to be disposed of at present." "True, sir; and this is precisely what I would guard you against. Those who obtain a subsistence by such means, purchase the goods new at a manufactory, in shares, and then bury in different parts of the field, and for a wide space around, pieces of imperial brass eagles, thousands of metal buttons, and heaps of iron balls. This crop is allowed to rest in the earth until summer, for few strangers visit Waterloo in winter; and when the fine weather arrives, they dig up their relics, to which a sojourn of eight months in a damp soil gives an appearance of age, deceiving the keenest observer, and awakening the admiration of pilgrims." "But this is a shameful deceit." "True again, sir; but the country is very poor about here; and after all, perhaps," added the philosophic driver, "no great harm is done. This year the harvest of brass eagles has been very fair." We entered the forest of Soignies by a narrow and naturally covered alley, the two sides crowned with the most luxuriant foliage. Poplars, elms, and plane-trees appeared to be striving which should attain the highest elevation. One peculiarity I could not avoid remarking in the midst of this solemn and beautiful abode of nature, and that was the perfect stillness prevailing around. The air itself seemed without palpitation, and during a ride of nearly two hours through this sylvan gallery, not even the note of a bird broke on the solitude. A forest without feathered songsters appeared unnatural, and the only possible reason that could be imagined for such a circumstance might be, that since the formidable day of Waterloo, they had quitted these shades, never to return, frightened away by the roar of the cannon and the dismal noise of war. What melancholy is impressed upon the beautiful forest of Soignies! I cannot overcome the idea, that since Providence destined it should become the mute spectator of the great event in its vicinity, it has retained the mysterious memory in the folding of its leaves and the depths of its shades. Destiny designs the theatre for grand actions. An army of one hundred thousand men perished there. Such was the irrevocable decree. "Do you think," I inquired of the coachman, wishing to change the current of my thoughts, "there are persons so unscrupulous as to speculate on the curiosity of tourists to Waterloo in the manner you have described?" "Ah, sir," he replied, "I have not told you half the tricks they practice on the credulous. It would indeed fatigue you if I mentioned all of them, but if you will permit me, I will relate an instance I witnessed myself one day. I was conducting from Waterloo to Brussels a French artist and a Prussian tourist. The Prussian supported on his knee some object very carefully enveloped in a handkerchief, and which he seemed to value greatly. When we had arrived about midway on the road, he inquired of the Frenchman whether he had brought away with him any souvenir of his pilgrimage to Waterloo. "'In good faith no,' replied the other; and yet I was on the point of making a certain acquisition, but the exorbitant price demanded prevented me: one hundred francs, besides the trouble of carrying off such an article.' "'What could it have been?' demanded the Prussian, curiously. "'You must not feel offended if I tell you,' returned the artist; 'it was the skull of a Prussian colonel, a magnificent one! And what rendered it more valuable, it was pierced by three holes, made by the balls of Waterloo. One was in the forehead, the others were through the temples. I should have had no objection to secure this, if I could have afforded it, and have had a lamp made of the skull of a Prussian officer killed by the French. And you, sir?' he continued, looking at the packet carried by his fellow-traveller, 'pray what luck have you had?' "'I,' replied the Prussian, with an uneasy movement, and looking greatly confused, 'I am astonished at the wonderful resemblance of what has happened to both of us, for I purchased this morning the skull of a French colonel killed by a Prussian at Waterloo.' "'You, sir?' "'Y--e--s,' stammered the Prussian, 'and I thought of having it made into a cup to drink the health of Blucher at each anniversary of our victory.' "'And is the skull pierced by three bullets?' demanded the Frenchman, his suspicions becoming awakened. "With a look of consternation the Prussian hastily unrolled the handkerchief, and examined the contents. The skull bore the same marks indicated by his travelling companion! It was the identical relic that was French when offered to an Englishman or Prussian, and had become Prussian or English when offered to a Frenchman. "This, sir," added Jehu, smacking his whip, "you will admit, is worse than selling false brass buttons and the Emperor's eagles." STUDIES OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, BY PHILAR�TE CHASLES. We have frequently been interested by the clever contributions of M. PHILAR�TE CHASLES to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. They are chiefly on English and American literature, and among them are specimens of acute and genial criticism. M. Chasles has just published in Paris a collection of these papers, and we translate for _The International_ a reviewal of it which appears in a late number of the French journal, the _Illustration_. Says the writer, M. Hipolyte Babou: Books are becoming scarce. To be sure, volume upon volume is published every day, but a book that is a book is a _rara avis_, and if any one should inquire whose fault it is, we reply that it is the fault of the press, constantly requiring the first-fruits of a writer's meditations. The journalist has displaced the author. The fugitive page rules the great world of literature. Wit, talent, genius, science, have not time to consolidate their thoughts, before they are disseminated. They are like the folds of the birchen bark, thrown off as soon as formed, to give place to new ones. And these in their turn fall, and are scattered. But, when we wish it, we can collect our literary leaves. How many handsome volumes are made up of weekly and monthly pages! The binder runs his needle through a collection, and the book is made. What kind of book? Ah, truly, it is not the venerable work of past days, which took ten years to print and bring to perfection, establishing at once a literary fame. It is simply a series of articles written by steam, printed by steam, and some bright morning bound up under a common title. But what is the story and the attraction of such works? Bless you! there is no story. The attraction is in the style (when there is any) and in the variety of subjects, which generally produces a variety of impressions. For an ordinary reader, to whom continued attention produces headache, there is nothing more agreeable than those album-pages, or fragments of mosaic. Thinking and serious minds turn rather towards works of consecutive reflection, or whose details contribute to the beauty of some whole. Variety is the wind to the weather-cock; and unity is the inflexible pivot which every weather-cock requires to keep it from being blown away. Thoughtful minds prefer unity above every thing. And yet they are only heavier weather-cocks, which turn round with a grating. Nervous and discursive reader! logical and phlegmatic reader! here is a book which will suit you both. M. Philarète Chasles has just published expressly for you his _Studies upon the Literature and Manners of the Anglo-Americans in the Nineteenth Century_. It is a work by compartments, any of them interesting to the superficial reader, and forming at the same time a perfect whole. Under the influence of a spirit of order, which professors by their vocation are very apt to possess in an eminent degree, the author has composed his work, not of articles written for journals, but by detailing articles a work whose plan he had before considered. The general design, to which he is obedient, is clearly developed, page by page, in his curious studies upon the Anglo-Americans. It is a vile term--that of Anglo-American--a pedantic term--and rather surprising from the pen of Chasles. For, professor as he is, he despises pedantry as the plague. There is nothing doctoral in his literary costume; and if he has any pretension, it resembles in no particular the grave assumptions of the cathedrants of the university. It would be a mortification to him to belong to the school of the Sorbonne. He is a member of the free family of the College of France, where individual genius has triumphed more than once over the sterile routine of tradition. Before filling the chair of professor, the author of _Etudes_ had written much in journals and reviews. He writes still, and is always welcome to the public. For, it may be remarked without malice, he has always had a larger audience of readers than of listeners. And that it is so is rather complimentary than otherwise. How is it, indeed, that the intellectual humorist succeeds better as an author than as a teacher? What does he need to insure, if he wishes it, the enthusiastic admiration of the young public whom he instructs? Has he not at command those vivid flashings of the imagination which, by an electric sympathy, might bring down about him thunders of applause? Is he fearful that his gesture and his voice would not become his thought? Does he disdain to have recourse, hap-hazard, to the little artifices of eloquence? It is very easy to gain popularity by a juggle, when it cannot be done by the force of true oratory. Be enthusiastic of your merits. Mingle with the swellings of poetry a certain dogmatism of opinion--call to your aid assurance, impudence, and all the insipidities of the _style printanier_--fire, as it were, pistol-shots into the audience, and continue the fire by a brilliant musketry of little fulminating phrases--the victory is yours, unless you are essentially an ass. For youth--verdant youth--will always be carried away by the expression, true or false, of feeling. M. Philarète Chasles is said to want in some degree that great constituent of humanity--passion. He is one of those refined and delicate writers who employ all their genius to ridicule the mind, and all their reason to drive to shipwreck upon the beautiful waters of poesie the most charming flotillas of the imagination. He belongs to the breed of sharp raillers, whose skepticism points an epigram. In a word, there is no reverse side for his admiration on any question--a habit of judging quite common among many writers, genuine and charlatan. But this is not saying that the author of _Etudes_ does not feel deeply the irresistible attraction of the beau ideal; or that we are treating of one of those representatives of pompous and stupid criticism, who are so justly despised by the poets. Certainly not. On the contrary, M. Chasles combines a vigorous hate of ornate folly and vulgarity with a profound disgust towards tame or extravagant conventionalism. The academic style has no fascination for him. He likes elbow-room in the discussion of art, and if he finds himself confined by the close-fitting coat of the professor, he rips it asunder, stretching out his arms in a fit of restlessness. A protective literature regards him among its most resolute adversaries. No custom-houses in literature for him, and particularly no excisemen, who, under pretext of contraband, drive their brutal gauge-rods into the free productions of human intelligence. M. Philarète Chasles is a literary disciple of Cobden. He would not only lower the barriers between province and province, but wholly abolish them between nation and nation. His imagination carries him as a balloon beyond the tops of custom-houses; and after visiting the shores of England and America, he returns to France with some curious samples of foreign literature. By this come-and-go policy of importation and exportation, he has created, or at least developed, a noble spirit of commerce, which may be termed international criticism. This commerce is particularly useful for us who are always ready to proclaim ourselves in every thing and to every one the first nation of the globe. It is an auspicious time therefore to become acquainted with the weaknesses of our character without losing its force. The glory of the past obliges us to think of the glory of the future, which can be easily lost to us if ambition does not come in time to animate our courage. To deny that there are rivals is no way to conquer them. It is a great deal better to study them attentively, and to consider beforehand the perils of the combat. We are indeed the heroes of genius, but if we misapprehend the tactics, we say it frankly, we shall be beaten. The author of the _Etudes_ wishes to spare us such a humiliation, by telling us of the enemy as he is; and in this sense his work is truly patriotic, and cannot be unacceptable to any. Many writers have instituted a relation between us and the Latins and Greeks. M. Chasles thinks that to remember the glorious dead of the south is to engender contempt for the living. It is not then towards the south that he directs his attention. The Saxon race, beyond the British Sea and the Atlantic, preoccupies him. The nations in progress are those most hopeful for new and immortal productions of the muse. The rest of the world is given to an incurable imitation. And M. Chasles is right in bringing us into the presence of the English and the Americans. He is sufficiently conversant with their language to fulfil the delicate functions of interpreter. I know writers who, on account of studying foreign literature, so bear the imprints of it in their works, that one would say in reading them, that he had before him French translations of Italian or German, or English, or Spanish. The literary temperament of M. Chasles, however, is not changed, notwithstanding his migrations. The author of _Etudes_ thinks in French, writes in French, and what is more, in French inherited from a Gaul. He preserves in his mind the brightness of his native sky, whether he wanders in the fogs of London, or is becoming a victim of ennui among the vapors of New-York. His pen seems to strike out sparks as he writes. He is active and bold, strong and light, independent and courteous. Nothing stops him. He runs oftener than he walks, and leaps over an obstacle that he may not lose time in going round it. Indeed, every thing is accomplished well by the intelligence that judges as it travels. Reflection itself is rapid, and logic hastens the step and smooths the way. A light and tripping foot belongs especially to criticism. If it raises a little brilliant dust in the road, it is no matter, it soon falls again. M. Chasles has no taste for old truths; he prefers much some kind of paradox which is now a truth and now a lie. It is for this reason that foreigners reproach him with being superficial. Very well! let him be so. He is a true Frenchman, for he touches only the flower of ideas, and, for a Frenchman, the flower and the surface are all one. It is not just, however, to regard this reproach as wholly merited, although (originating beyond the British Sea) it is reproduced among us by those would-be grave men who are dull writers. M. Chasles often allies lightness of expression with great profundity of thought. His style cuts as a blade of steel. He has eloquence, gayety, irony, caprice, and all in a perfect measure. No style resembles less the childish dashes of persons of wit, and who possess nothing else--who play the mountebank by a hundred tricks to astonish the gaping crowd--a light style, if you please, but empty as it is light. The _Etudes_ of M. Chasles are not of that superficial character adopted by many. The admiration of ninnies is not his desire. The object that he pursues continues ever a serious one, although a thousand graces ornament the way. He has vivacity without losing precision--two characteristics of good writing seldom found together. If he indulges in digressions, they are not perceptible until the reappearance of his subject shows us how gracefully he has departed from it. He passes rapidly over what is known, while with an especial care he dwells on what is unknown. Thus, in the history of American literature he does not amuse himself long with the popular names of Fenimore Cooper and Franklin. What could he say new respecting these two great ornaments of American science and literature? His instinct of observation and criticism suggested to him the works less known of Gouverneur Morris and Hermann Melville. Between these two writers, of whom one was the contemporary of Washington, and the other still living in some corner of Massachusetts, are ranged according to their date the productions of the writers of the great American nation. Gouverneur Morris was of a noble spirit. His _Mémoires_ represent to us, with a full and attractive fidelity, the opinion which the young and tranquil republic of the United States entertained at the close of the eighteenth century, of the men and the events of our French Revolution. He was far from misunderstanding the abuses of our ancient society, but he deplored that it was necessary for violence to abolish them. A sensible and polished observer, he criticised them without passion, and with a benevolent irony. Let us hear him tell of a conversation he had, at Madame de la Suze's, with one of the most brilliant leaders of the gay world that had just perished. In a few lines, he presents an admirable sketch of the personage: 'The rest of our party were playing at cards, and quite absorbed in the game, when M. de Boufflers, in want of something better to do, spoke to me of America. The carelessness with which he heard me proved that he did not pay the least attention to what he had asked me. --"But how could you defend your country from invasion without fleets and armies?" "Nothing could be more difficult," replied Morris, "than to subjugate a nation composed of kings, and who, if looked upon contemptuously, would respond: '_I am a man; are you any thing more?_'" "Very well," said M. de Boufflers. "But how would you like it, if I should say to one of those citizen-kings: Monsieur, the king, make me a pair of boots!" "My compatriot," said Morris, "would not hesitate to reply: 'With great pleasure, sir. It is my duty and my vocation to make boots, and I could wish that every one would do his duty in this world."' M. de Boufflers looked up to the ceiling as if in search of a solution of this enigma, and Morris contemplated him, as much surprised as if, in the forests of the New World, he had heard a humming-bird reason of the affairs of the Republic. And it was thus with all that class of men--the same elegance--the same luxury--the same prattle--the same heedlessness. All these courtiers of the last hour resembled precisely M. de Boufflers. The same day, indeed, of the taking of the Bastile, Morris traced two lines upon the tablettes: "It is very well that the court should appear to believe that all is tranquil; but to-morrow, perhaps, when the citadelle is in flames, they will agree that there has been some noise in Paris." Some time before, the grave and gentle American had met Madame de Staël at Madame de Tesse's; the daughter of Necker conversed with him in another style than that of M. de Boufflers. However, quite serious as Corinne certainly was, the dignity of the compatriot of Washington surprised and diverted her. "Monsieur," she said, after a moment's conversation, "you have a very imposing air." "I know it, Madame," replied Morris. The English literature constantly serves M. Chasles, to bring into relief the character of American literature. And thus, he opposes the peaceful inspirations of the work-girls of Lowell with the passionate dithyrambics of Ebenezer Elliott, the blacksmith of Sheffield--a chapter full of just remarks upon what Chasles calls the poetry of vengeance. The girls of Lowell--the Lucindas, the Alleghanias, the Tancredas, the Velledas--who, after a day's labor, pass into the street in silken dresses, with gold watches shining at their zone, and their beautiful faces shaded by parasols--those Massachusetts weavers, who have even instituted an academy among themselves--do not in their innocent verses, invoke the vengeful muses. They know nothing of that terrible Nemesis, with cheeks hollow and ghastly, armed hands, and eyes red with poverty and weeping, to whom the poor workers of British factories send up the cry of famine and despair. If the female operatives of Lowell read the work of M. Philarète Chasles, they will find there an encouragement to cultivate the smiling thoughts of poetry. He, no more than George Sand, notwithstanding her sympathies for the working classes, either loves or encourages the irritable singers of social sufferings. "What," he exclaims, "has become of the glorious Apollo of the Greek? Where is the sunny ideal of the hellenistic heavens? Where the sacred sorrows of Christian perfection? Poetry is no more a garden of roses; it is a wild field of thorns, wherein he who walks leaves tracks of blood. At the entrance of this Parnassus stands Poverty, whom Virgil places _in faucibus orci_. Her complaints are in the midst of curses. She holds in her hand a skull, with strings of iron, and she sweeps them as a lyre with golden chords. Behind her are Crabbe, the Juvenal of the hospitals; Ebenezer Elliott, the singer of hunger; Cooper, the poet of suicide, and the author of _Ernest_, followed by a miserable train of children, whom manufacturers have famished, and young women whom excessive labor has demoralized and prostituted in the morning of their life. Mournful choir, to which these poets worthily respond." It is not very pleasant, to be sure, for a reader to pass from some agreeable representation to a frightful array of evils. The spectacle but too true of social infirmities troubles the sleep of the happy, and awakes with a start the drowsy hate of the unhappy. But there is no reason why he who suffers, should not utter his complaint. The Bible itself is not a stranger to vehement protestations against the apparent injustice of destiny. When Job arose from the ashes, surely it was not to sing to the passers-by some touching idylle in the style of Ruth and Naomi. He accused heaven and life, he cursed his friends, and his mother, without troubling himself to know whether his sorrows reached the lovers' palm-groves, or disturbed the wooings of the daughters of Idumea. The Sheffield blacksmith, among flaming furnaces, cannot sing the voluptuous sweets of existence. He strikes the anvil with a ring, and exclaims in a rough voice, amid smoke and fire: "Accursed be the muse of necessity and suffering! Who wishes her acquaintance? The poor, so despised! Write not their frightful history. Pride and vanity despise your labors. Who is he, I pray you, that artizan who uses the pen? What right has he to do so? Absurd rhymer, let him retire and pare his nails--and renounce a species of industry for which he was never made. You are accustomed only to oaths, and you are only a rough worker in poetry." M. Chasles does not deny the right of artizans to employ the pen. Ignoble or noble--a serf or a lord--whether he is called Burns, or Chasles of Orleans--whether he is a porter, a laborer, or even a drunkard, from the moment that there is seen upon his brow the radiant sign of genius, he is known. To wonder that an artizan is a poet, is to think it marvellous that beauty should bloom upon the cheek of a village maid. The gift is natural, and not acquired; and the mechanic who writes either prose or poetry must be judged with as much severity as if he were a king. It is not astonishing, therefore, that the author of the _Etudes_ judges severely the blacksmith of Sheffield. But the latter seems to have anticipated the severity of the critic, when he says with an accent of the most mournful bitterness: "Do not read me, ye who love elegance and grace. Alight not, ye butterflies, among thorns--nor upon rocks burning in the sun and beaten by the rains--you may tarnish the gauze of your beautiful wings. But you who honor truth, follow me. I will bring you wild flowers, gathered from the precipice, amid howling tempests." While we inhale the perfume of the _flowers of the heath_, we can honor truth, without being _foolish flies_, and without renouncing the love of the _elegant and graceful_. Not less did M. Chasles write to the _Journal des Débats_, a little before the revolution, in those generous words which we are happy to see again in his book: "It is for you, politicians, to find a remedy for the evils of society. The interests of the masses are in your hands--those who have not enough to eat, and too much work. The verses of famished workmen, which we cannot sing, we weep over. The muse of Cooper, of Elliott, and of Crabbe, is not a muse, but a fury. You are reminded, that in accumulating wealth in one direction, you are increasing poverty in another; and that the poverty which complains at first avenges itself afterward." I do not know whether these words were prophetic, but I see in them a noble sentiment, unfortunately too rare among those who love elegance and grace. Let us be elegant, if we can; gracious, if we know how. But, besides those desirable qualities of the old French society, let us show in the light of heaven that living active charity which only can strengthen by purifying the existence of the new order of society. The grandchildren of Boufflers, we expose ourselves no more to ridicule in saying: "Monsieur le roi, faite-moi une paire de souliers." The king will make the shoes if it is his vocation. The grandchildren of Boufflers should do their duty--that is to say: contribute with all their mind to find out, according to the expression of Chasles, efficacious remedies for social evils. When workmen are more happy, they will write less poetry, or at least they will write more calmly. See the American spinners of Lowell. Ah! Lucinda or Tancreda has never lifted up her voice to heaven with the despair of Elliott. An amorous complaint suffices her; a sonnet, or a love-sigh, breathed by the light of the stars, consoles her for the labors of the day. American society works first; when it has conquered an independence, it sings. All Americans do not accept the saying of one of their journalists: "Political and practical life is sufficient for man. Imagination is a peril--arts a misfortune." So far from proscribing the arts and imagination, Cooper, Irving, Audubon, and many others are among those who have magnified the literature of their country. But the greater part, with that fruitful wisdom which characterizes them, applaud the advice of Channing: "I made a resolution of presenting a gift to my country in the form of an epic. But I had prudence enough to postpone it until I should have a fortune. I then commenced to make my business known, after which I retired into solitude with my imagination." In Europe it is just the contrary. We ask the imagination to make our business known, and we retire into solitude with our fortune or our poverty. Which course avails the more for our glory? Which for our repose? The conclusion of the work of M. Chasles is, that our literature, our manners, our nationality even, will some day disappear before the rising glory of the great Western Republic, but I can declare without emotion that I have no fear of my country. America offers us examples; we also have some to offer her. The future of the United States is developed day by day in a manner that astonishes Europe. But notwithstanding the _patriotes de clocher_, and French _humanitaires_ who suppress the very word native country, I believe in the higher destinies of France. A PHANTASY. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY R. H. STODDARD. "Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean." The light of the summer noon Bursts in a flood through the blind; But few are the rays of joy That shine in my darkened mind. My heart is stirred to a storm, And its passions intense and proud Feed on themselves, like fires Pent in a thunder-cloud! I think of the days of youth, And the fountains of love defiled, Till I hide my face in my hands, And weep like a little child! THE TIMES OF CHARLEMAGNE. Sir Francis Palgrave's _History of Normandy and of England_, of which the first volume has just appeared in London, is unquestionably a very important work, illustrating a period of which comparatively little has been known, and of which a knowledge is eminently necessary to the student of British institutions and manners. The subject has been partially handled by French authors--by Thierry, Guizot, Michelet, and in a desultory manner by M. Barante--but not one of these has shown the very intimate relation that exists between the history of Normandy and of England. That intermixture of the histories of the countries may indeed be inferred from old English works, such as Camden, Fortescue, Hale, Britton, Bracton, Fleta, Spelman, Somner, Chief Baron Gilbert, Daines Barrington, and others, and from labors of Bede, William of Malmesbury, Geoffry of Monmouth, and all the older chroniclers. But not one of these writers, in all their varied labors, has undertaken to show how the histories of the two countries act and re-act on each other, or how, represented in the popular mind by the epithets Norman and Saxon, French and English, they have been for a thousand years or more running against each other a perpetual race of rivalry and emulation. A worthy Picard lawyer indeed, of the name of Gaillard, who abandoned the law for literature about a century ago, wrote a work called _The Rivalry between France and England_, in eleven volumes; but who, in 1851, unless specially dedicated to historical studies, would read a French history on the subject of the rivalry between the two nations, written between 1771 and 1777, especially when it extends to eleven volumes? Independently of this, any French history on such subject is sure to be tinged with prejudice, passion, and vanity. It is true that the judicious Sharon Turner, in his _History of the Anglo-Saxons_, Henry Wheaton, in his _History of the Northmen_, and M. Capefigue, give us more or less insight into Norman history; but none of these authors attempt to show the general relations of mediæval history, or that absolute need of uniting Norman to English history, which it is the chief aim of Sir Francis Palgrave to demonstrate. As deputy keeper of the public records of England, this learned historian has had the best possible opportunities of investigation, and he tells us in his preface that he has devoted to the work a full quarter of a century. The style of Sir Francis Palgrave is generally heavy, and his work will therefore be more prized by students than by the mere lovers of literature. His manner and spirit and the character of his performance may be most satisfactorily exhibited in a few specimen paragraphs, however, and we proceed to quote, first, from an introductory dissertation, some remarks on the arts, architecture, and civilization of Rome. He says: "Roman taste gave the fashion to the garment, Roman skill the models for the instruments of war. We have been told to seek in the forests of Germany the origin of the feudal system and the conception of the Gothic aisle. We shall discover neither there. Architecture is the costume of society, and throughout European Christendom that costume was patterned from Rome. Unapt and unskilful pupils, she taught the Ostrogothic workman to plan the palace of Theodoric; the Frank, to decorate the hall of Charlemagne; the Lombard, to vault the duomo; the Norman, to design the cathedral. Above all, Rome imparted to our European civilization her luxury, her grandeur, her richness, her splendor, her exaltation of human reason, her spirit of free inquiry, her ready mutability, her unwearied activity, her expansive and devouring energy, her hardness of heart, her intellectual pride, her fierceness, her insatiate cruelty, that unrelenting cruelty which expels all other races out of the very pale of humanity; whilst our direction of thought, our literature, our languages, concur in uniting the dominions, kingdoms, states, principalities, and powers, composing our civilized commonwealth in the Old Continent and the New, with the terrible people through whom that civilized commonwealth wields the thunderbolts of the dreadful monarchy, diverse from all others which preceded amongst mankind." The following is our author's view of the real and the ideal Charlemagne:-- "It seems Charlemagne's fate that he should always be in danger of shading into a mythic monarch--not a man of flesh and blood, but a personified theory. Turpin's Carolus Magnus, the Charlemagne of Roncesvalles; Ariosto's _Sacra Corona_, surrounded by Palatines and Doze-Piers, are scarcely more unlike the real rough, tough, shaggy, old monarch, than the conventional portraitures by which his real features have been supplanted. "It is an insuperable source of fallacy in human observation as well as in human judgment, that we never can sufficiently disjoin our own individuality from our estimates of moral nature. Admiring ourselves in others, we ascribe to those whom we love or admire the qualities we value in ourselves. We each see the landscape through our own stripe of the rainbow. A favorite hero by long-established prescription, few historical characters have been more disguised by fond adornment than Charlemagne. Each generation or school has endeavored to exhibit him as a normal model of excellence: Courtly Mezeray invests the son of Pepin with the taste of Louis Quatorze; the polished Abbé Velly bestows upon the Frankish emperor the abstract perfection of a dramatic hero; Boulainvilliers, the champion of the noblesse, worships the founder of hereditary feudality; Mably discovers in the capitulars the maxims of popular liberty; Montesquieu, the perfect philosophy of legislation. But, generally speaking, Charlemagne's historical aspect is derived from his patronage of literature. This notion of his literary character colors his political character, so that in the assumption of the imperial authority, we are fain to consider him as a true romanticist--such as in our own days we have seen upon the throne--seeking to appease hungry desires by playing with poetic fancies, to satisfy hard nature with pleasant words, to give substance and body to a dream. "All these prestiges will vanish if we render to Charlemagne his well deserved encomium:--he was a great warrior, a great statesman, fitted for his own age. It is a very ambiguous praise to say that a man is in advance of his age; if so, he is out of his place; he lives in a foreign country. Equally so, if he lives in the past. No innovator so bold, so reckless, and so crude, as he who makes the attempt (which never succeeds) to effect a resurrection of antiquity." The practical character of Charlemagne is thus sketched:-- "We may put by the book, and study Charlemagne's achievements on the borders of the Rhine; better than in the book may the traveller see Charlemagne's genuine character pictured upon the lovely unfolding landscape: the huge domminsters, the fortresses of religion; the yellow sunny rocks studded with the vine; the mulberry and the peach, ripening in the ruddy orchards; the succulent potherbs and worts which stock the Bauer's garden,--these are the monuments and memorials of Charlemagne's mind. The first health pledged when the flask is opened at Johannisberg should be the monarchs name who gave the song-inspiring vintage. Charlemagne's superiority and ability consisted chiefly in seeking and seizing the immediate advantages, whatever they might be which he could confer upon others or obtain for himself. He was a man of forethought, ready contrivance, and useful talent. He would employ every expedient, grasp every opportunity, and provide for each day as it was passing by. "The educational movement resulting from Charlemagne's genius was practical. Two main objects had he therein upon his conscience and his mind. The first, was the support of the Christian Faith; his seven liberal sciences circled round theology, the centre of the intellectual system. No argument was needed as to the obligation of uniting sacred and secular learning, because the idea of disuniting them never was entertained. His other object in patronizing learning and instruction was the benefit of the State. He sought to train good men of business; judges well qualified, ready penmen in his chancery; and this sage desire expanded into a wide instructional field. Charlemagne's exertions for promoting the study of the Greek language--his Greek professorships at Osnaburgh or Saltzburgh--have been praised, doubted, discussed, as something very paradoxical; whereas, his motives were plain, and his machinery simple. Greek was, to all intents and purposes, the current language of an opulent and powerful nation, required for the transaction of public affairs. A close parallel, necessitated by the same causes, exists in the capital of Charlemagne's successors. The Oriental Academy at Vienna is constituted to afford a supply of individuals qualified for the diplomatic intercourse, arising out of the vicinity and relations of the Austrian and Ottoman dominions, without any reference to the promotion of philology. We find the same at home. If the Persian language be taught at Haileybury, it is to fit the future Writer of his Indian office. He may study Ferduzi or Hafiz, if he pleases, but the cultivation of literature is not the intent with which the learning is bestowed." Here is the manner in which Sir Francis Palgrave contrasts and compares the two emperors, Charlemagne and Napoleon:-- "Napoleon sought the creation of an anti-christian imperial pontificate--the caliphate of positive civilization; his aspiration was the establishment of absolute dominion, corporeal and intellectual; mastery over body and soul; faith respected only as an influential and venerable delusion; the aiding powers of religion accepted until she should be chilled out, and the unfed flame expire, and positive philosophy complete her task of emancipating the matured intellect from the remaining swathing bands which had been needful during the infancy of human society. And the theories of Charlemagne and Napoleon, though irreconcileably antagonistic, in their conception, would, were either fully developed, become identical in their result, notwithstanding their contrarieties. They start in opposite directions, but, circling round their courses, would--were it permitted that they should persevere continuously and consistently--meet at the same point of convergence, and attain the same end. "Moreover, the territorial empires of Napoleon and Charlemagne had their organically fatal characteristics in common. Each founder attempted to accomplish political impossibilities--to conjoin communities unsusceptible of amalgamation; to harmonize the discordant elements which could only be kept together by external force, whilst their internal forces sprung them asunder--a unity without internal union. But even as the wonderful agencies revealed to modern chemistry effect, in a short hour, the progresses which nature silently elaborates during a long growth of time, so in like manner did the energies of civilization effect in three years that dissolution for which, in the analogous precedent, seven generations were required." THE DECORATIVE ARTS IN AMERICA. The growth of the fine arts, commonly so called, in this country, has been a fruitful subject of congratulatory observation in the last dozen years. The opera in that time has gained a permanent home here, and our sculptors and painters have gone out into the old fields of art, and claimed equality with their masters--an equality which Italy, Germany, France, and even England, slowly and reluctantly in some cases, but in the presence of the works of Powers, Crawford, Greenough, Leutze, and others, have, at length, confessed. In painting, as everybody knows, with few exceptions our best works have never been seen abroad, and the advance of design here is therefore to be studied only in our own exhibitions, hung with the productions of Durand, Huntington, Eliott, and the crowd of young painters coming forward every season to claim the approval of the people. The general taste keeps pace with every achievement. We hear that the Art-Union was never visited so much as this year; and private galleries, and those of every dealer in works of art, are thronged. The existence in our principal cities, under the control of men of cultivation, of stores for the sale of works in the fine arts, is a fact eminently significant. That of Williams & Stevens, in Broadway, for example, could be sustained only by a community in which there is a refinement of taste such as a few years ago could be found only in limited circles in this country. Beginning with efforts to introduce the finest forms and combinations in looking-glass and picture frames, the proprietors of this establishment have made it a great market-house for artists, and the display upon its walls and in its windows is frequently more attractive to the connoisseur than the exhibitions of the Academies or the Art-Unions. And it is astonishing how many of the best works of the European engravers--works which may justly be called copies of the master-pieces of contemporary foreign art--are sold here, to adorn houses from which the tawdry ornaments in vogue a few years ago have been discarded. The same observations may be made in regard to furniture. The graceful styles and high finish to be seen at many of our stores, and in our recently furnished houses, illustrate a progress in elegance, luxury, and taste, not dreamed of by the last generation. And in all these things it is observable that the advance is in cheapness as well as in beauty. In this respect indeed we have scarcely kept pace with the French and English, but the cost at which a man of taste and a little tact can now furnish a house, so that it shall illustrate not only his own refinement but the condition of the best civilization of the time, is astonishingly small, compared with what it was a few years ago. The fine engraving, with its appropriate frame, to be bought for thirty dollars, is to be much preferred before the portrait or indeed before any painting whatever that is purchasable for a hundred dollars; and though silver is unquestionably silver, the imitation table furniture, of the most classical shapes, that is sold now for a fifth of the cost of the coinable metal, looks quite as well upon a salver. The arts by which beauty is made familiar in the homes of all classes of people are of all arts most deserving of encouragement, and it is among the happiest of omens that they are receiving so much attention--far more attention now than they have ever before received in America. We shall hereafter attempt a more particular exhibition of this subject. A VISIT TO THE LATE DR. JOHN LINGARD. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY REV. J. C. RICHMOND. Noticing in the journals some brief but very just remarks upon the character of the eminent Roman Catholic historian of England, who died July 17th, at the good old age of more than four-score years, I am induced to think that an account of a visit which I had the honor to make this celebrated scholar, may not be altogether without interest for your readers. March 12, 1850, having a leisure day at Lancaster, and having already visited John of Gaunt's castle, in company with several of those genial spirits who afford me an unusually delightful social remembrance of the dingy buildings and narrow crooked streets of that famous old town, one of them happened to mention the name of Dr. Lingard. I instantly inquired after him with interest, and, observing my enthusiasm, Mr. T. J---- proposed a drive to his residence at Hornby, a village some twelve or thirteen miles distant. I of course gladly acceded to the proposal, and we were soon on our way, with a fleet horse, over the absolutely perfect English turnpike road--for the roads in England are always passable, and not "_improved_," like some of those around New-York, in so continued a manner as to be useless. After a fine rural drive, crossing the river Loon, and through Lonsdale, we came within sight of an old church and castle. I took the church to be that of the historian, but found, to my surprise, that the famous old sage was placed in entire seclusion, and ministered to a very few, and those very poor, sheep, in a little chapel, or room, under his own roof. In this remote and by no means picturesque village, at an antiquated house, we knocked, and were told by the aged domestic that the venerable historian had been very feeble of late, and had gone out, on this fine day in the spring, for a walk. After many inquiries among the villagers, by whom he was as well known as beloved, I proposed to take the line of the new railway, and, after quite a walk, met a feeble old man, with a scholar's face, a bright twinkling black eye, supporting his steps on a staff, and wrapped up with all the care which an aged and faithful housekeeper could bestow upon a long-tried and most indulgent master. I pronounced his name, and gave him my own; stated that I was a presbyter in the holy (though not Roman) Catholic church, that I had long admired his integrity and faithfulness as an historian, and that it was by no means the least of my happy days in England that I was now permitted to speak to him face to face. The kind and gentle old man seemed truly astonished that any one who had come so far, and seen so much, should care for seeing _him_, and rewarded my enthusiasm with a hearty grasp of the hand that had wielded so admired a pen. We then walked on together towards his house, and you will not blame me for saying, that I was proud to offer the support of my arm to this fine octogenarian, who had not suffered the spirit of the priest to becloud the candor of the historian. We conversed with the greatest freedom upon our points of difference, and he repeated to me, personally, _his entire disbelief in the fable of the nag's head ordination_. He seemed to be only _historically_ aware of a disruption between us, for the benevolence of his heart would acknowledge no actual difference. I cannot refrain from quoting a somewhat amusing illustration of his infinite and childlike simplicity of character, combined with an utter ignorance of those rudiments of modern science which would be much more familiar to our district school-boys than to many men educated in those classic homes of ancient learning, the English universities. Some posts had been set in the ground, and were bound together, for strength, by iron wires; and the venerable sage said, "I suppose this is the Electric Telegraph." I was obliged to insist with a kind of explanatory and playful pertinacity, that this supposition must be incorrect, because electricity could not be conducted, unless the wires were at least continued _through_ the thick posts, instead of being wound _around_ them. At his house, we found the study not very well supplied with books, for the aged scholar had now almost ceased to peruse these. At my request he wrote out very slowly, but in a wonderfully distinct hand for eighty, his own name and the date, "John Lingard, Hornby, March 12, 1850;" and voluntarily added a Latin punning inscription, which he had made the evening before, which he humorously proposed to have engraved upon the new Menai bridge. In this he had spoken of the _builder of the bridge_, the celebrated Stephens, as _Pontifex Maximus_. I need not say that I shall preserve these papers among the most precious of my English mementos. I was sorry I could have no hopes that the branch which he gave me from the tree that he had transplanted with his own hands from the battle-field of Cannæ to the quiet of his garden at Hornby, would ever flourish in America. After many hospitable invitations, which other engagements obliged us to decline, and many modest expressions of the gratitude which he seemed deeply to feel for the pains that I had taken to come so far to visit him, we bade farewell to the candid priest, who began, as he told me, an essay to defend his Church against the aspersions of Hume, and had ended by producing a voluminous as well as luminous history. [For another part of this magazine we have compiled a more full and accurate account of the life of the deceased scholar than has hitherto appeared in this country. See _Recent Deaths_, _post_, 285-6.] PRIVATE LIFE OF JOHN C. CALHOUN. ADDRESSED TO HER BROTHER, AND COMMUNICATED TO THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE, BY MISS M. BATES. The funeral rites of the lamented Calhoun have been performed. So deeply has the mournful pageant impressed me, so vividly have memories of the past been recalled, that I am incapable of thinking or writing on any other theme. My heart prompts me to garner up my recollections of this illustrious statesman. I can better preserve these invaluable memories by committing them to paper, and as you enjoyed but one brief interview with Mr. Calhoun, these pages shall be addressed to you. An eloquent member of the House of Representatives, from your state, has compared this southern luminary to that remarkable constellation the Southern Cross. A few years since, in sailing to a West Indian island, I had a perilous voyage, but have ever felt that the sight of that Southern Cross, which had long haunted my imagination, almost repaid me for its excitement and suffering. And thus do I regard an acquaintance with this intellectual star as one great compensation for a separation from my early home. It would have been a loss not to have seen that poetic group, which greets the traveller as he sails southward, but how much greater the loss, never to have beheld that unique luminary which has set to rise no more upon our visible horizon. Mr. Calhoun's public character is so well known to you that I shall speak of him principally in his private relations, and shall refer to his opinions only as expressed in conversation--for it was in the repose of his happy home, in the tranquillity of domestic life, and in the freedom of social intercourse, that I knew him. While the clarion-notes of his fame resound among the distant hills and valleys of our land, while those who in political strife crossed lances with this champion of the south nobly acknowledge his valor and his honor, while Carolina chants a requiem for her departed dead, may not one who knows his moral elevation, and who has witnessed his domestic virtues, have the consolation of adding an unaffected tribute to his memory? While his devoted constituents, with impressive symbols and mournful pageants, perform funereal rites, erect for him the costly marble, weave for him the brilliant chaplet, be it mine to scatter over his honored tomb simple but ever green leaflets. While in glowing colors the orator portrays him on his peerless career in the political arena, be it mine to delineate the daily beauty of his life. In Mr. Calhoun were united the simple habits of the Spartan lawgiver, the inflexible principles of the Roman senator, the courteous bearing and indulgent kindness of the American host, husband, and father. This was indeed a rare union. Life with him was solemn and earnest, and yet all about him was cheerful. I never heard him utter a jest; there was an unvarying dignity and gravity in his manner; and yet the playful child regarded him fearlessly and lovingly. Few men indulge their families in as free, confidential, and familiar intercourse as did this great statesman. Indeed, to those who had an opportunity of observing him in his own house, it was evident that his cheerful and happy home had attractions for him superior to those which any other place could offer. Here was a retreat from the cares, the observation, and the homage of the world. In few homes could the transient visitor feel more at ease than did the guest at Fort Hill. Those who knew Mr. Calhoun only by his senatorial speeches may suppose that his heart and mind were all engrossed in the nation's councils, but there were moments when his courtesy, his minute kindnesses, made you forget the statesman. The choicest fruits were selected for his guest; and I remember seeing him at his daughter's wedding take the ornaments from a cake and send them to a little child. Many such graceful attentions, offered in an unostentatious manner to all about him, illustrated the kindness and noble simplicity of his nature. His family could not but exult in his intellectual greatness, his rare endowments, and his lofty career, yet they seemed to lose sight of all these in their love for him. I had once the pleasure of travelling with his eldest son, who related to me many interesting facts and traits of his life. He said he had never heard him speak impatiently to any member of his family. He mentioned that as he was leaving that morning for his home in Alabama, a younger brother said, "Come soon again, and see us, brother A----, for do you not see that father is growing old, and is not father the dearest, best old man in the world!" Like Cincinnatus, he enjoyed rural life and occupation. It was his habit, when at home, to go over his grounds every day. I remember his returning one morning from a walk about his plantation, delighted with the fine specimens of corn and rice which he brought in for us to admire. That morning--the trifling incident shows his consideration and kindness of feeling, as well as his tact and power of adaptation--seeing an article of needlework in the hands of sister A----, who was then a stranger there, he examined it, spoke of the beauty of the coloring, the variety of the shade, and by thus showing an interest in her, at once made her at ease in his presence. His eldest daughter always accompanied him to Washington, and in the absence of his wife, who was often detained by family cares at Fort Hill, this daughter was his solace amid arduous duties, and his confidant in perplexing cases. Like the gifted De Staël, she loved her father with enthusiastic devotion. Richly endowed by nature, improved by constant companionship with the great man, her mind was in harmony with his, and he took pleasure in counselling with her. She said, "Of course, I do not understand as he does, for I am comparatively a stranger to the world, yet he likes my unsophisticated opinion, and I frankly tell him my views on any subject about which he inquires of me." Between himself and his younger daughter there was a peculiar and most tender union. As by the state of her health she was deprived of many enjoyments, her indulgent parents endeavored to compensate for every loss by their affection and devotion. As reading was her favorite occupation, she was allowed to go to the letter-bag when it came from the office, and select the papers she preferred. On one occasion, she had taken two papers, containing news of importance, which her father was anxious to see, but he would allow no one to disturb her until she had finished their perusal. In his social as well as in his domestic relations he was irreproachable. No shadow rested on his pure fame, no blot on his escutcheon. In his business transactions he was punctual and scrupulously exact. He was honorable as well as honest. Young men who were reared in his vicinity, with their eyes ever on him, say that in all respects, in small as well as in great things, his conduct was so exemplary that he might well be esteemed a model. His profound love for his own family, his cordial interest in his friends, his kindness and justice in every transaction, were not small virtues in such a personage. He was anti-Byronic. I never heard him ridicule or satirize a human being. Indeed, he might have been thought deficient in a sense of the ludicrous, had he not by the unvarying propriety of his own conduct proved his exquisite perception of its opposites. When he differed in opinion from those with whom he conversed, he seemed to endeavor by a respectful manner, to compensate for the disagreement. He employed reason rather than contradiction, and so earnestly would he urge an opinion and so fully present an argument, that his opponent could not avoid feeling complimented rather than mortified. He paid a tribute to the understandings of others by the force of his own reasoning, and by his readiness to admit every argument which he could, although advanced in opposition to one he himself had just expressed. On one occasion I declined taking a glass of wine at his table. He kindly said, "I think you carry that a little too far. It is well to give up every thing intoxicating, but not these light wines." I replied that wine was renounced by many, for the sake of consistency, and for the benefit of those who could not afford wine. He acknowledged the correctness of the principle, adding, "I do not know how temperance societies can take any other ground," and then defined his views of temperance, entered on a course of interesting argument, and stated facts and statistics. Of course, were all men like Mr. Calhoun temperance societies would be superfluous. Perhaps he could not be aware of the temptations which assail many men--he was so purely intellectual, so free from self-indulgence. Materiality with him was held subject to his higher nature. He did not even indulge himself in a cigar. Few spent as little time and exhausted as little energy in mere amusements. Domestic and social enjoyments were his pleasures--kind and benevolent acts were his recreations. He always seemed willing to converse on any subject which was interesting to those about him. Returning one evening from Fort Hill, I remarked to a friend, "I have never been more convinced of Mr. Calhoun's genius than to-day, while he talked to us of a flower." His versatile conversation evinced his universal knowledge, his quick perception, and his faculty of adaptation. A shower one day compelled him to take shelter in the shed of a blacksmith, who was charmed by his familiar conversation and the knowledge he exhibited of the mechanic arts. A naval officer was once asked, after a visit to Fort Hill, how he liked Mr. Calhoun. "Not at all," says he--"I never like a man who knows more about my profession than I do myself." A clergyman wished to converse with him on subjects of a religious nature, and after the interview remarked that he was astonished to find him better informed than himself on those very points wherein he had expected to give him information. I have understood that Mr. Calhoun avoided an expression of opinion with regard to different sects and creeds, or what is called religious controversy; and once, when urged to give his views in relation to a disputed point, he replied, "That is a subject to which I have never given my attention." Mr. Calhoun was unostentatious and ever averse to display. He did not appear to talk for the sake of exhibition, but from the overflowing of his earnest nature. Whether in the Senate or in conversation with a single listener, his language was choice, his style fervid, his manner impressive. Never can I forget his gentle earnestness when endeavoring to explain his views on some controverted subject, and observing that my mind could hardly keep pace with his rapid reasoning, he would occasionally pause and say, in his kind manner, "Do you see?" He did not seek to know the opinion of others with regard to himself. Anonymous letters he never read, and his daughters and nieces often snatched from the flames letters of adulation as well as censure which he had not read. Although he respected the opinions of his fellow-men, he did not seek office or worldly honor. A few years since, one to whom he ever spoke freely, remarked to him that some believed that he was making efforts to obtain the presidency. At that moment he had taken off his glasses, and was wiping them, and thus he replied: "M----, I think when a man is too old to see clearly through his glasses, he is too old to think of the presidency." And recently he said to her, "They may impute what motives they please to me, but I do not seek office." So much did he respect his country, that he might have been gratified by the free gift of the people; so much did he love his country, that he might have rejoiced at an opportunity to serve it, but would he have swerved one iota from his convictions to secure a kingdom? Who that knew him believes it? It has been said by that brilliant satirist Horace Walpole, that every man has his price. I never did believe so evil a thing; I have been too conversant with the great and good to believe this libel; and I doubt not there are others beside Mr. Calhoun who value truth and honor above all price or office. Highly as our great statesman regarded appreciation, yet he could endure to be misrepresented. While his glorious eye would light with more brilliant lustre at the greeting of friendship or the earnest expression of confidence, he rose superior to abuse or censure. I believe it was ever thus while in health. The last winter, dying in the Senate chamber, his feeble frame could ill repel the piercing shafts of his antagonists. The ebbing currents in his pulses were accelerated. He could not desert his post, though the contest raged fiercely, but his great soul was wounded. He loved his country, he loved the Union, and it was a great grief to him in his last hours to be misunderstood and misrepresented. Still, he was consoled by the thought that in the end he would be appreciated. Some one remarked to him that he was a very unpopular man. He replied, "I am, among politicians, but not among the people, and you will know this when I am dead." Though Mr. Calhoun acknowledged, in his own winning way, the involuntary tributes of friendship and admiration, he courteously declined, whenever he could with propriety, public testimonies of homage which were offered to him. His wife shared with him this unostentatious spirit, preferring the voice of friendship to the acclamations of the multitude. I have heard some of his family say that they coveted nothing, not even the presidency, for him. They, with many of us who knew him, felt that even the first gift of a great nation could not add one gem to his crown--that crown of genius and virtue, whose glorious beauty no mortal power could illumine with new effulgence. His sincerity was perfect. What he thought he said. He was no diplomatist. Some of his theories might seem paradoxical, but a paradox is not necessarily a contradiction. He has been accused of inconsistency. Those who thus accuse him do him grievous wrong. Nothing is more inconsistent than to persist in a uniform belief when changing circumstances demand its modification. How absurd to preserve a law which in the progress of society has become null and obsolete! for instance, granting to a criminal "the benefit of clergy." "Nothing," says a distinguished English writer, "is so revolutionary as to attempt to keep all things fixed, when, by the very laws of nature, all things are perpetually changing. Nothing is more arrogant than for a fallible being to refuse to open his mind to conviction." When Mr. Calhoun altered his opinion, consistency itself required the change. However some of his political sentiments might have differed from those of many of the great and good of the age, he was sincere in them, and believed what he asserted with all the earnestness of an enthusiastic nature, with all the faith of a close and independent thinker, and with all the confidence of one who draws his conclusions from general principles and not from individual facts. Time will test the truth of his convictions. It has been said that he was sectional in his feelings, but surely his heart was large enough to embrace the whole country. It has often been said that he wished to sever the Union, but he loved the Union, nor could he brook the thought of disunion if by any means unity could be preserved. Because he foresaw and frankly said that certain effects must result from certain causes, does this prove that he desired these effects? In his very last speech he speaks of disunion as a "great disaster." But he was not a man to cry "peace, peace, when there was no peace." Although like Cassandra he might not be believed, he would raise his warning voice; he was not a man to hide himself when a hydra had sprung up which threatened to devastate our fair and fertile land from its northern borders to its southern shores. And while he called on the south for union, did he not warn the conservative party at the north that this monster was not to be tampered with? And did he not call on them to unite, and arise in their strength, and destroy it? And how could he, with his wise philosophy, his knowledge of human nature, and universal benevolence, view with indifference that unreflecting and wild (or should I not say _savage_) philanthropy, which in order to sustain abstract principles loses sight of the happiness and welfare of every class of human beings? How often did he entreat that discussion on those subjects, beyond the right of legislation, should be prevented, that angry words and ungenerous recrimination should cease! Did he not foresee that such discussions would serve to develop every element of evil in all the sections of the country--a country with such capacities for good? Did he unwisely fear that the ancient fable of Cadmus would be realized--that dragon-teeth, recklessly scattered, would spring up armed? And did he not know that the southern heart could not remain insensible to reproach and aggression? "Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora Poeni: Nec tam aversus equos Tyria Sol jungit, ab urbe." And, ah, how earnestly did he plead for peace, and truth, and justice! As far as I understood him, he wished to benefit by his policy in affairs both the south and the north. I remember, in speaking to me of free trade, he expressed the opinion that the course he recommended would benefit the north as well as the south. This he did not merely assert, but sustained with frequent argument. In his conversation there was a remarkable blending of fact and theory, of a knowledge of the past and an insight into the future. Mr. Calhoun was a philanthropist in the most liberal sense of the word. He desired for man the utmost happiness, the greatest good, and the highest elevation. If he differed from lovers of the race in other parts of the world, with regard to the means of obtaining these results, it was not because he failed to study the subject; not because he lacked opportunities of observation and of obtaining facts; nor because he indulged in selfish prejudices. From every quarter he gleaned accessible information, and with conscientious earnestness he brought his wonderful powers of generalization to bear on the subject of human happiness and advancement--his pure unselfish heart aiding his powerful mind. The good of the least of God's creatures was not beneath his regard; but he did not believe that the least was equal to the greatest; he did not think the happiness or elevation of any class could be secured by a sentiment so unphilosophical. The attempt to reduce all to a level, to put all minds in uniform, to give all the same employment, he viewed as chimerical. He said that in every civilized society there must be division of labor, and he believed the slaves at the south more happy, more free from suffering and crime, than any corresponding class in any country. He had no aristocratic pride, but he desired for himself and others the highest possible elevation. He respected the artisan, the mechanic, and agriculturist, and considered each of these occupations as affording scope for native talent. He believed the African to be most happy and useful under the guidance of an Anglo-Saxon; he is averse to hard labor and responsible effort; he likes personal service, and identifies himself with those he serves. Mr. Calhoun spoke of the great inconsistency of English denunciations of American slavery, and said that to every man, woman, and child in England, two hundred and fifty persons were tributary. Although colonial possessions and individual possessions are by many regarded as different, he considered them involved in the same general principle. In considering the rights of man the great question is not, Has a master a right to hold a slave? but, Has one human being a right to hold another subordinate? The rights of man may be invaded, and the idol Liberty cast down, by those who are loudest in their philanthropic denunciations respecting slavery. Is there as much cruelty in holding slaves, even under the most unfavorable circumstances, as in selling into bondage a whole nation?[4] Let the brave chiefs of the Rohillas answer from the battle-field. Let cries reply from the burning cities of Rohilcund. Let the princesses of Oude speak from their prisons. Close observation, prompted by a kindly heart, had brought Mr. Calhoun to the opinion that the Africans in this country were happier in existing circumstances than they would be in any other; that they were improving in their condition, and that any attempt to change it, at least at present, would not only be an evil to the country but fraught with suffering to them. A state of freedom, so called, would be to them a state of care and disaster. To abolish slavery now would be to abolish the slave. The race would share the doom of the Indians. Although here nominally slaves, as a general thing they enjoy more freedom than any where else; for is not that freedom, where one is happiest and best, and where there is a correspondence between the situation and the desires, the condition and the capacities? May we not say with the angel Abdiel: "Unjustly thou depravest it with the name Of servitude, to serve whom God ordains, Or Nature. God and Nature bid the same, When he who rules is worthiest, and excels Them whom he governs. This is servitude, To serve the unwise." Mr. Calhoun found the local attachment of the slaves so strong, their relation to their owners so satisfying to their natures, and the southern climate so congenial to them, that he did not believe any change of place or state would benefit them. These, as nearly as I can recollect, were his opinions on the subject of slavery, and were expressed to me in several conversations. Sentiments similar to these are entertained by many high-minded and benevolent slave-holders. That this institution, like every other, is liable to abuse, is admitted, but every planter must answer, not for the institution--for which he is no more accountable than for the fall of Adam--but for his individual discharge of duty. If, through his selfishness, or indolence, or false indulgence, or severity, his servants suffer, then to his Master in heaven he must give account. But those who obey the divine mandate, "Give unto your servants that which is just and equal," need not fear. In the endeavor to perform their duty in the responsible sphere in which they were placed by no act of their own, they can repose even in the midst of the wild storm which threatens devastation to our fertile land; they can look away from the judgment of the world, nor will they, even if all the powers of earth bid them, adopt a policy which will ruin themselves, their children, and the dependent race in their midst; they will not cast a people they are bound to protect on the tender mercies of the cruel. In their conservative measures they are, and must be, supported at the north, by men of liberal and philosophical minds, of extended views, and benevolent hearts. But I have said far more on this subject than I intended, and will add only that those who do not, from personal observation, know this institution in its best estate, cannot easily understand the softened features it often wears, nor the high virtues exhibited by the master, and the confiding, dependent attachment of the servant. Often is the southern planter as a patriarch in olden times. Those who are striving to sever his household know not what they do. Well may we who live in these troubled times exclaim with Madame Roland, the martyr of the false principles of her murderers, "O Liberté! O Liberté! que de crimes on commet en ton nom!" This she said, turning to the statue of liberty beside the scaffold. Liberty unrestrained degenerates into license. There may be political freedom without social liberty. Says Lamartine, speaking of the inhabitants of Malta, "Ils sont esclaves de la loi immuable de la force que Dieu leur fait; nous sommes esclaves des lois variables et capricieuses que nous nous faisons." A few years' residence on this soil might teach even a Wilberforce to turn in his philanthropy to other and wider fields of action. Of Mr. Calhoun's character as a master much might be said, for all who knew him admit that it was exemplary. But we need not multiply examples to prove his unaffected goodness, and I will repeat only a circumstance or two, which, by way of illustrating some subjects discussed, he incidentally mentioned to me. One related to a free negro, formerly a slave in Carolina, but then living in one of our northern cities, who came to him in Washington, begging him to intercede for his return to Carolina. He represented his condition as deplorable, said that he could not support himself and family by his trade, (he was a shoemaker,) and that not being able to obtain sufficient food or fuel in that cold climate, they were almost frozen. "When I told him," said Mr. Calhoun, "that I would do all I could for him, he seized both my hands in his and expressed fervent gratitude." At another time, speaking of a family whom his son designed to take to Alabama, he told me that the mother of the family came to him and said she would prefer to stay with her master and mistress on the plantation, even if all her children went with master A. Mr. Calhoun added, "I could not think of her remaining without either of her children; and as she chose to stay, we retained her youngest son, a boy of twelve years." Mr. Calhoun required very little of any one, doing more for others than he asked of them. He seemed to act upon the principle that the strong should bear the burthens of the weak. In sickness he feared to give trouble, and unless his friends insisted, would have little done for him. "Energetic as he was," said a near relative, "he would lie patiently all day, asking for nothing." His sensibility was of the most unselfish nature. Some months before his death, and after he left Fort Hill the last time, he said he felt that death was near, much nearer than he was willing to have his family know, and added that he wished to give all the time he could spare from public duty to preparation for death. While suffering from increasing illness at Washington, still, as he hoped to return again to his family, he was unwilling, though they anxiously awaited his summons, that they should be alarmed, saying he could not bear to see their grief. No doubt his conscientious spirit felt that his country at that critical moment demanded his best energies, and that he should be unnerved by the presence of his nearest friends; and loving his own family as he did, and so beloved as he was by them, he serenely awaited the approach of the king of Terrors, and suffered his last sorrow far from his home, cheered only by one watcher from his household. There was a beautiful adaptation in his bearing--a just appreciation of what was due to others, and a nice sense of propriety. I have had opportunities to compare his manners with those of other great men. His kind and unaffected interest was expressed in a way peculiarly dignified and refined. Some men appear to think they atone for a low estimate of our sex by flattery. Not so with Mr. Calhoun. He paid the highest compliment which could be paid to woman, by recognizing in her a soul--a soul capable of understanding and appreciating. Of his desire for her improvement and elevation he gave substantial proofs. Although Fort Hill was five miles from the female academy he never suffered an examination to pass without honoring it with his presence. He came not for the sake of form, but he exhibited an interest in the exercises, and was heard to comment upon them afterwards in a manner which showed that he had given them attention. He never reminded you that his hours were more precious than yours. The question may be asked how could he, amid his great and stern duties, find time for attention to those things from which so many men excuse themselves on the plea of business. But he wasted no time, and by gathering up its fragments, he had enough and to spare. I have before said that his kind acts were his recreations. Were I asked wherein lay the charm which won the hearts of all who came within his circle, I could not at once reply. It was perhaps his perfect _abandon_, his sincerity, his confidential manner, his childlike simplicity, in union with his majestic intelligence, and his self-renunciation--the crowning virtue of his life: these imparted the vivid enjoyment and the delightful repose which his friends felt in his presence. It was often not so much what he said as his manner of saying it, that was so impressive. Never can I forget an incident which occurred at the time when a war with England, on account of Oregon, seemed impending. He arrived in Charleston during the excitement on that subject. He was asked in the drawing-room if he thought there would be a war. He waived an answer, saying that for some time he had been absent from home and had received no official documents; but as he passed with us from the drawing-room to the street door, he said to me in his rapid, earnest manner, "I anticipate a severe seven months' campaign. I have never known our country in such a state." War has a terror for me, and I said, "Oh, Mr. Calhoun, do not let a war arise. Do all you can to prevent it." He replied, "I will do all, in honor, I can do," and paused. A thousand thoughts seemed to pass over his face, his soul was in his eyes, and bending a little forward, as if bowed by a sense of his responsibility and insufficiency, he added, speaking slowly and with emphasis and with the deepest solemnity, as if questioning with himself, "_But what can one man do?_" I see him now. No painting or sculpture could remind me so truly of him as does my faithful memory. But I will not dwell on the subject, for I fear I can never by words convey to the mind of another the impression which I received of his sincerity, and of his devotion to his country and to the cause of humanity. How he redeemed his pledge to do all that he, in honor, could do, his efforts in the settlement of the Oregon question truly show. When next I saw him I told him how much I was delighted with his Oregon speech. In his kindest manner he replied, "I am glad I can say any thing to please you." The last time I saw Mr. Calhoun, you, my brother, were with me. You remember that his kind wife took us to his room, and that you remarked the cheerfulness and affability with which he received us, although his feeble health had obliged him to refuse almost every one that day. We shall see him no more, but his memory will linger with us. To you I would commend him as an example. Read his letter to a young law-student. As you are so soon to enter the profession of law, such a model as Mr. Calhoun may be studied with advantage. While I would never wish any one to lose his own individuality, or to descend to imitation, I believe that one gifted mind leaves its impress on another; while I would not deify or canonize a mortal, I would render homage to one who united such moral attainments to so rare a combination of intellectual gifts; while it is degrading to ourselves and injurious to others to lavish unmerited and extravagant praise, it is a loss not to appreciate a character like his, for it ennobles our own nature to contemplate the true and the beautiful. Although it is said that our country is in danger from its ideas of equality, and its want of reverence and esteem for age, and wisdom, and office, and talents, and attainments, and virtues--and this feature of the American character is so strongly impressed that Mar Yohannah, the Nestorian bishop, said in my presence, in his peculiar English, "Yes, I know this nation glory in its republicanism, but I am afraid it will become republican to God"--yet it is a cheering omen when a man like Mr. Calhoun is so beloved and reverenced. I think every one who was favored with a personal acquaintance with him will admit that I have not been guilty of exaggeration, and "will delight to do him honor." The question naturally arises, to what are we to ascribe the formation of such a character? There must have been causes for such effects. Whence came his temperance, his self-denial, his incorruptible integrity, his fidelity in every duty, his love for mankind, his indefatigable efforts for the good of others, and his superiority to those things which the natural heart most craves? Mr. Calhoun's childhood was spent among the glorious works of nature, and was sheltered from the temptations which abound in promiscuous society. He was the son of pious parents, and by them he was taught the Bible, and from that source undoubtedly his native gifts were perfected. I have understood that from early life he was an advocate for the doctrines of the Bible, as understood by orthodox Christians. I have been told by relatives of his who were on the most intimate terms with him, that for some time before his death his mind had seemed to be much occupied with religious subjects, and that he too often expressed confidence in the providence of God to leave any doubt as to his trust in Him. An eminent clergyman, now deceased, said in conversation with another, that he had often conversed with Mr. Calhoun on the subject of religion, and had no doubt as to his piety. I have remarked his reverential air in church, and have known him apparently much disturbed by any inattention in others. He never united with any church, and it is my opinion, formed not without some reason, that he was prevented, not by disregard to any Christian ordinances, but from personal and conscientious scruples with respect to his qualifications. He was a man who weighed every thing with mathematical precision. Although open as day on topics of general interest, he was reserved in respect to himself. I do not recollect ever to have heard him speak egotistically, for his mind seemed always engrossed by some great thought, and he appears, even at the close of life, to lose all personal solicitudes in his anxiety for his country. In one of his last letters he says, "But I must close. This may be my last communication to you. My end is probably near, perhaps very near. Before I reach it, I have but one serious wish to gratify--it is to see my country quieted under some arrangement (alas, I know not what!) that will be satisfactory to all and safe to the south." His country's peace, and quietness, and safety, he did not see; he perished in the storm; and there are many who knew and loved him who cherish the hope that he is removed to a higher sphere of action--that his noble spirit has meekly entered into the presence of its author, and that in the starry courts above he will receive an inheritance "incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away." When I saw the elaborate preparations which were made here in Charleston for his funeral, knowing his simple tastes and habits, and his benevolence, I was at first pained, and I thought he would not have sanctioned so much display. I feared too that solemnity would be lost in pageantry. But it was not so. There was nothing to jar upon the feelings of the most sensitive. All was in perfect and mournful harmony. Silently and reverently his sorrowing countrymen bore his remains from the steamer where they had reposed, under a canopy wearing its thirty stars, and when the hearse, so funereal with mournful drapery and sable plumes, entered the grounds of the citadel, deep silence brooded over the vast multitude; noiselessly were heads uncovered, banners dropped--not a sound but that of the tramp of horses was heard; statue-like was that phalanx, with every eye uplifted, to the sacred sarcophagus. If there was too much of show, it was redeemed by the spirit that prompted it: the symbols, significant and expressive, as they were, faintly shadowed forth the deep and universal grief; the mournful pageantry, the tolling bell, the muffled drum, the closed and shrouded stores and houses, gave external signs of wo, but more impressive and affecting was the peaceful sadness which brooded over the metropolis while it awaited the relics of the patriot, and the deep silence which pervaded the vast procession that followed to the City Hall, the subdued bearing of the crowd who resorted thither, and the solemnity expressed on every face--for these told that the great heart of the city and commonwealth wept in hushed and sincere sorrow over "the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle." One day and night the illustrious dead reposed in state in the draped and darkened Hall. An entrance was formed by the arching palmetto, that classic tree, under whose branches Dudon the crusader was placed, when slain in Palestine. On that tree--"altissima palma"--his comrades placed his trophies. With a spirit as sad as that of the crusaders when under the verdant foliage of the palm they mourned the noble Dudon, did those who loved our champion pass beneath that arch, dark with funereal gloom. The sarcophagus was within a magnificent catafalque; the canopy rested on Corinthian columns; the bier was apparently supported by six urns, while three pearl-colored eagles surmounted the canopy, holding in their beaks the swinging crape. Invisible lamps cast moonlight beams over the radiated upper surface of the canopy. Through the day numbers resorted to this hallowed spot, and at night vigils were held where the dead reposed. When morning came the chosen guards carried the remains of the great leader to the church. The funeral car was not allowed to bear these sacred remains to the tomb, but they were borne by sons of the state, with uncovered heads. Well might those who saw all these things feel that Carolina would never be wanting to herself. The body was placed upon the bier, surrounded by significant offerings, pure flowers and laurel-wreaths. A velvet pall, revealing in silver lines the arms of the state, the palmetto, covered the sarcophagus. Above it was a coronet woven of laurel-leaves, like that which crowned Tasso. Then, in that church, where columns, arches, and galleries were shrouded in the drapery of wo, the funeral rites were performed--the mighty dead was placed in his narrow tomb. Peerless statesman, illustrious counsellor, devoted patriot, generous friend, indulgent husband and father, thy humble, noble heart is still in death; thy life was yielded up at the post of duty; thou hast perished like a sentinel on guard, a watchman in his tower. "Thou wast slain in thy high places." Clouds gathered thick and fast about thy country's horizon, and even thy eagle eye failed in its mournful gaze to penetrate the gloom which hides its future from mortal eye. Thy work is finished--peacefully rest with thine own! Thy memory is enshrined in the hearts of those for whom thy heart ceased its beating. Thy grave is with us-- "Yet spirit immortal, the tomb cannot bind thee, For like thine own eagle that soared to the sun, Thou springest from bondage, and leavest behind thee A name which before thee few mortals have won." In reviewing the character of Mr. Calhoun, we find a rare combination of mental and moral qualities--a union of contrasts. He had genius with common sense, the power of generalization with the habit of abstraction, rapidity of thought with application and industry. His mind was suggestive and logical, imaginative and practical. His noble ideal was embodied in his daily life. He was at once discursive and profound; he could soar like the eagle, or hover on unwearied wings around a minute circle. He meekly bore his lofty endowments; his childlike simplicity imparted a charm to his transcendent intellect; he united dignity with humility, sincerity with courtesy, decision with gentleness, stern inflexibility with winning urbanity, and keen sensibility with perfect self-command. He was indulgent to others, denying to himself; he was energetic in health, and patient in sickness; he combined strict temperance with social habits; he was reserved in communicating his personal feelings, but his heart was open on subjects of general interest; he prized the regard of his fellow-beings, but was superior to worldly pomps and flatteries; he honored his peers, but was not swayed by their opinions. Equal to the greatest, he did not despise the least of men. He did not neglect one duty to perform another. In the Senate he was altogether a senator, in private and domestic life he was as though he had never entered the halls of the nation, and had never borne an illustrious part in the councils of his country. FOOTNOTES: [4] _Vide_ Macaulay's article on Warren Hastings, in the Edinburgh Review. STYLES OF PHILOSOPHIES. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY REV. J. R. MORELL, Translator of Fourier "On the Passions," &c. The history of literatures, like that of nations, has presented its varieties as well as its curiosities, and both alike furnish similar though not identical features. 1st. Families and clans are traceable equally in each development, and the movements both of literatures and races have displayed a corresponding monotony and eccentricity, convergence and divergence, in proportion as they have progressed along the beaten track of opinion or performed outpost duty as the corps of guides. 2d. Not only is this family likeness obvious in the general characteristics of ethnography and authorship, but the laws of lineage and the hereditary transmission of qualities are as strongly marked in one case as in the other. Letters as well as races have their hereditary sceptres and coronets; but whereas, in the latter case the fleshly heir of the great of other days may chance to be unworthy of his sires, the spiritual sonship of the patrician writer is stereotyped upon each line and lineament of his nature. 3d. Nor is the connection between words and peoples confined to a law of analogy running through them both, but they have reacted upon and moulded each other in a manner curious to relate, and races and letters have mutually made and unmade each other. 4th. The Indo-Germanic people have left monuments of their sinewy energy in the psycho-physical characteristics of affiliated races and tongues, and individual family likenesses may be readily traced between groups of thinkers and dreamers on the banks of the Ganges, in the Academy, and at Weimar. Again the mystical semitic world, groaning beneath the weight of an overwrought ideal, and lacking the ballast of science and patient thought, has ever and anon given birth to prodigies and monsters of cabalistic or Gnostic extravagance. 5th. To follow the currents of peoples and tongues, the great subdivisions of the Teutonic and Romance tribes and literatures, their virtues and vices have stamped its present physical and moral character on the face of modern Europe. The Teutonic, representing strength and depth in word and work, has been the stronghold of emancipation in life and thought, yet tinctured with the savageness and chaos of unpolished and disordered nature. The Romance, fettered by the rhythm of Latinity, has yet possessed that voluptuous wealth of the ideal and that graceful tracery of thought and wit which have been denied to the other. The antagonism of the Catholic and Protestant mind is the result of this contrast, which has, moreover, been pictured in the tertian fevers of French revolution and in the mystical skepticism of modern Germany. As certain races, so also certain families of writers, have in thought transcended the bounds of the existing and actual, and thrown out from their brain an ideal past, present, or future, beyond the horizon, and free from the flaws of their experience. Thus, whilst the followers of Tao-tse were in China seeking for the drug of immortality, the Greek and Roman poets and historians were dreaming of a golden age that cast its radiance over the past, or of that fabled Atlantis and those sweet Islands of the Blest in the far west--dreams and fables that have been somewhat justified by modern discovery. Again sacred voices mingled with these aspirations, and the semitic bards and seers pronounced in their oracles an Eden for the past and a millenium for the future of man. Nor were these views confined to the old world, for the followers of Columbus found, among the cannibals of the gulf, the traditions of a fountain of eternal youth, and later travellers were regaled with gorgeous stories of El Dorado and his empire--traditions and stories that seemed to point, however obscurely, to the Sitzbath and Californian riches. There has likewise been a class of writers broad-cast through the nations who have sought to mend the present and make the future by holding the mirror to contemporaneous deformity, or painting the perspective of an earthly elysium with the rainbow tints of hope. Negatively or positively, directly or indirectly, these men had, in common, faith in the regeneration of humanity. Utopias are the familiar homes of such minds, either because they have a cast in their eyes, or because they are more clairvoyants than the vulgar herd. In the spring-time of our race, a Plato reflected on the poetical extravagancies of his day, and refracted the rays of golden fancy in the enchanted land of his Republic. The Hebrew seers in like manner, whilst they apply no measured castigations to the money-changers who converted the temple of God into a den of thieves, love to soar in sublimest rhapsody above the valley of dry bones and the shadow of death cast around them, and to indulge in visions of a vernal future, when earth should smile in the sunshine of infinite love, when the wolf should dwell with the lamb and the leopard lie down with the kid, and a little child should lead them. Affiliated members of this extensive and venerable company of cynics and seers have ever and anon in the current of ages lifted a frowning brow above the troubled waters round about them, and with the same breath that swept like a tempest over the wintry waste, their cradle and their home, have given utterance to strains of harmony that told of summer skies to come. Tracing the tides of the children of men in their eccentric ebbings and floodings, a little crew of rovers may be ever seen ploughing the world of waters, true to their principle of keeping aloof from the gulf-stream. Europe has been the chief nursery of these rovers, whose voices, though few and far between, have risen above the storms of evil passions howling about them, and have echoed through the ages. Thus a Rabelais could laugh the knell of monkery, and with his stentor voice, rich booming from the classic world of Nature, that had slept during the dark ages, could crack the babel of spiritual usurpation, and restore the balance of power between the seen and the unseen. A Cervantes in like manner could, in the fulness of time, inflict death-wounds with a stroke of his pen on a superannuated chivalry, and thus, by negatively giving a _coup de grâce_ to the past, pave the way for an age of prose. Later in the day a Swift appears, in the heart of a rotten age, himself infected with the leprosy, yet he smites the idols of his time, of Stuart progeny, Lust and Lucre, and converts his fables into a house of correction for a nation's vices. The Tale of a Tub contains a stream of lustral water, and Gulliver is no mean adept at the photographic art. The Dean hath taught us how the "positive" fictions of a madman's brain may indirectly be a school to the nations at all times and in all seasons. Poesy has mixed its plaintive strains in the lamentations and oracles of insane or inspired reformers, and the aberration or illumination of a kindred spirit breaks forth in the wizard words of a prophet or a bard. Some favored scions of the royal priesthood and chosen generation of whom we speak seem to mingle these various and heterogeneous ingredients, the cynic's lash with the seer's lamp, mathematical squares and compasses with the conjurations of the diviner. Their proportions, both harmonious and deformed, bespeak their consanguinity with an extensive family, whose branches are scattered through broad lands, and are not confined to a single variety of the human race, though the quality and quantity of their _esprit de corps_ may be especially predicated of the Caucasian race. There are sovereign natures that bespeak the choice blood of rival and remote races mingling in their veins, and which may claim kinsmanship in opposite and conflicting clans of teachers. We have Indo-Germanic minds, whose massive substance is relieved by the arabesque of the Semitic style of thought, and which, though stamped with the characteristic mould of their parentage, fling aside much of its speciality, and stand forth as magnates in the universal aristocracy of humanity. An example of a rich nature cast in this mould has been presented of late years in France, in the person of Charles Fourier. Though indelibly French, he is still more human, and though Teutonic elements enter largely as component parts of his frame, and the Romance genius has cast its sunshine tints over his canvas, yet has he bravely shaken off the chains of generic and specific modes of thought and sight, and the priestly hieroglyphs and geometry of Egypt are seen to blend with Persian dualism and the prophetic wand of Hebrew seers in his pages. Nay, the mantle of Mohammed might seem to have fallen on his capacious shoulders, to judge from the strangely glorious flights of his fancy, and the tangible solids of his elysium. Thus the nations would appear to have converged towards and centred in this brain, and to have dropped in their pearls or their paste, as the case might be. Exaggerating the mathematical precision of French thought, it is yet tempered in a manner somewhat uncommon, by the most wholesale picture-writing on which man ever yet ventured. The flaming double-edged critic's sword is sometimes changed in his hands, after a manner wonderful to relate, into an Esculapian staff, which farther suffers a frequent conversion into Mercurian caduceus and Bacchanile Thyrsus, and at another time assumes the proportions of Midas's wand. Never was such a many-faced Janus seen in the flesh as this man, who exceeds Proteus and Hindoo avatars in multiplicity combined with unity. The bitter laugh still curls our lips, elicited by his merciless satire, when the tears of pity come coursing down our cheeks, as he touches with magic finger the most godlike fibres of the soul. Luxuriance, bordering on levity, follows fast a sense of justice and of truth, that might have put a Brutus and an Aristides to the blush. National contrasts, harmonies, and deformities, all seem reflected in this representative man. Yet it would be a very partial view that represented Fourier as nothing better than an expletive particle added to the genealogical list of idea-mongers, or a mosaic of valuable relics in earth's cabinet of curiosities. Though his pen inflicts wounds both broad and deep, yet a balm is ever at hand. Not satisfied with performing amputations for the good of the body corporate, he is a professor of the healing art, and affects to have discovered an elixir that shall wipe away all tears, by causing pain and sorrow to flee away. I do not profess to judge of the merits of the case, but one feature distinguishes Fourier from critics, reformers, and prophets, who are gathered to their fathers. He is a _scientific_ explorer, and the plans that he has designed for the future structure of humanity, from the high order of architecture and mechanics which they exhibit, discriminate him from the vulgar herd as an originator, and place him in the category either of eminent scientific adventurers or inventors. Daring and caution shake hands at every page, and seem exhausted by his pen. The Archimedian lever found a resting-place in his brain, and sundry of his thoughts seem not inapt to upheave the world. If Laplace deserves credit as the creator of a Mechanique Celeste, Fourier has equal claims to gratitude as the first and only propounder of a rigidly scientific system of mental mechanics. Though Pythagoras might smile complacently at his harmonies and sacred numbers, and Plato clap his hands on seeing so worthy a disciple of his Republic, yet the fiery Frenchman is but too apt to run counter to the past, and give a slap in the face to the wisdom of the fore-world. Though hope and faith ever brighten his pages, we could wish at times for a larger infusion of charity, to neutralize the gall in which his pen was dipped. Yet he nobly vindicates his claim as a reformer by the lash he applies with no measured hand to injustice, falseness, and hypocrisy, under whatever guise they may appear. REMINISCENCES OF PARIS, FROM 1817 TO 1848. On the original publication of this work, in German, at Berlin, we gave in the _International_ some account of it; and we avail ourselves of the notice in the _Athenæum_ of an English translation of it which has just appeared in London, to give some of its best passages. In the capital of a nation which, above all others, has been wont to project its gravest interests into the circles of fashion and gayety, the period included between 1817 and 1848 must have been rich indeed in matter for observation of all kinds, by the foreigner admitted to its saloons. With Waterloo at one end of the line, and the overthrow of Louis Philippe at the other, what a world of change lies between!--what unexpected turns of fortune, each throwing some new tint on the chameleon-play of social existence! We may not expect a lady's eye to see more than its outward features. But these alone, in such a scene and period, are themselves enough to give some permanent historical value, as well as a present attraction to the survey, if only taken with common feminine intelligence. It is true that the retrospect is not actually so rich as the above dates would imply.--Connected notices of what might be seen in Parisian circles do not extend beyond the first seven years of the period in question. Afterwards, there is nearly a total hiatus, except in the two departments of music and painting--anecdotes of which are continued almost to the close of the Orleans dynasty. Of the persons and events which otherwise filled the scene from 1828 downwards, the _Reminiscences_ are wholly silent, or only introduce one or two figures by anticipation while dwelling on the period of the Restoration. The volume ends, indeed, with a story, in which some of the very latest exhibitions of somnambulism serve to introduce a Spanish romance, founded, it may be, on a basis of fact, but evidently dressed up for effect by one not well enough acquainted with the Spain of this century to give to the composition a probable air. But here the display in the Parisian saloon is merely an occasional overture to the melo-drama that follows; and we learn next to nothing of the new faces and new fashions which the writer may have seen during the second half of the term included in her title. What is now published, therefore, can only be taken as a fragment--destined, perhaps, to be further completed at some future time. The work appears anonymously; and it might be uncourteous to pry into the condition of the writer, beyond what it has pleased herself to reveal. This is to the effect that she came to Paris, unmarried, and hardly out of her teens, from some part of Germany, in the second year of the Restoration, and, at first, was chiefly conversant with the circles of the _haute finance_. We afterwards hear of her marriage, of journeyings and absences, and see her in contact with various circles, but, above all, with painters and musicians; intimate also with Henriette, the daughter of the celebrated Jewish philosopher, Mendelssohn. She left Paris, she further says, before the explosion of 1848. More of her personal history she does not tell--and we shall not take the liberty of guessing. Her notes are penned without any attempt at order; and make no pretence to dive far beneath the surface of what she saw in the world. They contain such light, lady-like reflections as one may fancy taken down without effort from the kaleidoscope of Paris life, in its balls, _soirées_, and promenades; and such anecdotes of notable things and persons as were current in ordinary company--many of which are well known, having been already reported by others. Here and there a graphic trait, or a remark above the level of commonplace, gives token of more lively intelligence, but the general character of the reminiscence is merely gossipping--just on the ordinary level of such observations and ideas as prevail in the common talk of the saloons. It is only when she touches on the fine arts, especially on music, that the lady displays decidedly clever notions of her own. Gleanings of this easy kind, from any lesser field than Paris, might hardly have been worth preserving; here, the abundance of matter is so great, that even the most careless hand returns from that strange harvest with some gatherings of value. Among these we shall dip here and there, without attempting more order in selection than the author herself has observed in arranging her notes. Each may be read by and for itself without any disadvantage whatever. In no respect, perhaps, does the Paris of to-day differ more from that of thirty years since than in the article of domestic comfort. After praising Madame Thuret, one of the financial _lionnes_ of the Restoration, for her attention to neatness, the lady adds:-- In Paris generally there was a marked contrast to this; as well as to the Parisian cleanliness of present times. In those days, even the dwellings of people of competent means, there was not a trace of comfort. I have a lively recollection of what happened when one of the younger partners of M. Thuret gave a ball soon after his marriage. Although the youth was rich, and had married a wealthy young lady, the young couple, according to the Parisian custom of the time, lived with their parents; who, rich as they were, desiring to be richer still, had let out their splendid hotel up to the fourth story. In this fourth story the whole family lived together. After the Parisian finery, I was not less struck with the Parisian filth of those days; and, in truth, I should vainly try to paint my amazement on finding myself compelled, while ascending the staircase, which was actually plastered with dirt, to hold up my dress as high as possible in order to appear tolerably clean in the ball-room. But if modern Paris has improved in this respect, it has, on the other hand, we are told, lost far more in the chapter of manners. The generation born during the first Revolution still preserved some of the older style of social bearing; but, in the present descendants, we may now vainly seek for any of the graces that once gave to France her European credit for politeness. The French, after lording it over the capitals of Europe for so many years, were impatient to the last degree of the retribution which the allied armies brought to their own doors in 1816. Even a returning _émigré_ could not restrain his rage on finding that-- foreigners held the fortresses, and that he had to submit his passport for a _vise_ to Prussian, Russian, or English authorities; and he lost all command of himself at the idea of the prostration of the _grande gloire Française_.... The same wrath at the occupation of France by foreign troops--an occupation which lasted for hardly three years--whereas the French had ravaged Germany for full twenty, from the siege of Mentz to the battle of Leipsic, was then felt in Paris by all classes. Every little theatre on the Boulevards played some piece referring to it in all the _refrains_ urging the foreigners to be off at once; all the print-shops were full of caricatures of the English and Russians. The German soldiers, by-the-by, were, without exception, called Prussians. At that time there was less hatred expressed towards the Russians; in the theatres even the people would point with curiosity to Lostopchin, the author of the conflagration at Moscow. The hatred of the Russians grew much more decided under Nicholas. Alexander, on the contrary, was personally popular. Strictly speaking, the Prussians were detested; while the English, on the contrary, served as a perpetual butt for ridicule and wit. Their language, gestures, dress, afforded a complete series of dramas and caricatures. This soreness of France under a very light application of her own Continental system, brings to mind an anecdote from the papers of the time, which is worth preserving:-- When the Prussian army entered Paris, one of its officers made particular interest to be quartered in a certain hotel in the Faubourg St Germain, the residence of a widow lady of rank. On taking possession of his billet, the Colonel at once haughtily refused the apartments offered him; and, after a survey of the premises, insisted on having the best suite on the first floor, then occupied by the lady of the house herself. She protested and entreated in vain--the Colonel was harsh and peremptory,--the lady had to abandon her sitting-room, boudoir, and bed-room, and content herself with the chambers intended for the officer. From these, however, she was as rudely dislodged on the next day, the Colonel demanding them for his orderly, and the lady had at last to creep into a servant's garret. This was not all. On first taking possession of his rooms the officer had summoned the _maitre d'hotel_, and commanded a rich dinner of twelve covers for the entertainment of a party of his comrades. They came--the cellar had to yield its choicest wines; the house was filled with bacchanalian uproar. The orgy was repeated both on the next day and on the next following. On the morning afterwards the officer presented himself before the lady of the house. "You are perhaps somewhat annoyed by my proceedings in your hotel?" "Certainly," was the reply, "I think I have cause to complain of the manner in which the law of the strongest has been used here, in defiance of the commonest regard due to my sex and age. I have been roughly expelled from every habitable room in my own house, and thrust into a garret; my servants have been maltreated; with my plate and provisions and the best of my cellar, you have forced them to wait on the riotous feasting of your comrades. I have appealed to your generosity, to your courtesy, but in vain. I protest against such conduct. It is unworthy of a soldier." "Madam," replied the Prussian, "what you say is perfectly true. Such conduct is brutal and unbecoming. I have the honor to inform you that what you have justly complained of for the last three days is but a faint copy of the manner in which your son daily behaved himself in my mother's house in Berlin _for more than six months_ after the Battle of Jena. From me you shall have no further annoyance. I shall now retire to an inn. The hotel is entirely at your own disposal." The lady blushed, and was silent. We can hardly choose amiss among the portrait sketches. Here is the Princess of Chimay, once celebrated as the fair Spanish Cabarus--or Madame Tallien of the "18th Brumaire." After giving up a name which she had no legal right to bear, she married the Count Caraman before he succeeded to a princely title. In 1818, this heroine-- was some forty years old. Her age was partly open to positive proof, as in '94 she was known to have just reached her twentieth year--it was partly shown by a fulness of person, rather tending to corpulence, which betrayed the retreat of her younger bloom; but still you would rarely find another beauty so well preserved, or a general appearance equally imposing. Tall, full, gorgeous, she reminded you of the historical beauties of antiquity. Such a figure you might imagine as an Ariadne, Dido, or Cleopatra. With a perfect bust, arms, and shoulders; white as an animated statue, regular features, beaming eyes, pearly teeth, hair raven black--hearing, speech, motion, still ravishingly perfect. Her costume, too, had a certain Grecian character. Among the painters, Gérard was the lady's chosen intimate. When she first knew him, he had already been long famous and rich; but he seems to have taken pleasure in recalling the struggles of his early career. It was, in many respects, a strange one:-- His father was a Frenchman, who belonged to the domestic establishment of the Cardinal de Bernis, then ambassador at Rome. His mother, whose name was Tortoni, was the daughter of a plain Roman citizen. In 1782, Gérard's parents, with their three boys, of whom François, the eldest, was now twelve, returned to France, where the father died in 1789. A year afterwards the widow went back with her children to her own country, but had to return to France once more, for the preservation of a small income important in her narrow circumstances. On this occasion, besides her sons, she came back with her little brother Tortoni and his infant sister, some years younger than her eldest son François. Thus there was in the house an aunt younger than her nephew. The family found it hard enough to live at all in Paris: and when François's great talent for drawing revealed itself, the household means were further pinched to provide him with paper and pencils. Under all obstacles, however, his powers soon grew evident: he got at last an introduction to David, and became his pupil:-- Gérard was created the perfect opposite, both physically and morally, of David. David was tall, with distorted features, rough, furious, cruel. Gérard was small, with a pleasing, regular physiognomy, delicate, soft, generous.... He would often tell how he was forced in those days (during the reign of terror) to deceive his master David, in order to preserve his own life. David, who in his zeal for reforming the world had become one of the most active members of the Committee of Safety, was incessantly busied in providing that bloody tribunal with familiars. Every one belonging to him, who desired his own preservation, was forced either to adopt republicanism in David's sense, or to evade it by some kind of deception. Gérard, although in perfect health, escaped the honor designed him by feigning sickness; and went about in public on crutches, which, however, he threw down the instant he knew himself safe from observation. Gérard's mother had died in 1792. Her brother, the painter's uncle, now a grown youth, took up the queer fancy of showing the Parisians the excellent manner in which the Romans are skilled in making confectioner's ices. The success of the _Café Tortoni_, on the _Boulevard des Italiens_, has now been for some fifty years known to all Europe. One of the children (Gérard) was dead, the youngest provided for elsewhere; and thus, after his mother's death, the young painter of two-and-twenty was left alone with his aunt, Mlle. Tortoni, who was but two years his junior. She became his wife. When relating the above, she would add, with _naïveté_, "At that time my nephew was in a manner forced to marry me, unless he chose to turn me out into the street. We were poor, but contented. Gérard's talent, as yet little known, and destitute of suitable means for its exercise, supported us, however, barely; and I continued to sew, darn, cook, carry water, and cut wood for our little household, as I had been wont to do before, when assisting his mother, my sister. In those days there was no marrying in the church, no priest, no banns. A few days after the death of my sister, we appeared in our poor work-a-day clothes, before the _maire_. He joined our hands, and then we became a couple." Some months were passed in this obscure poverty, until calmer times prevailed in Paris. Isabey had somehow become aware of the young painter's talent, and now urged him to exhibit a picture at the first Exhibition. Gérard produced the sketch of his _Bélisaire_;[5] but declared he had no means to paint it on a grand scale. Isabey hereupon assisted him; and, after the picture was finished and exhibited with success, procured him a purchaser, at the price of 100 Louis d'or. "On the receipt of this sum," Madame Gérard went on, "we were nearly losing our wits for joy. We were ravished, like mere children, by the glitter of the shining gold, which we kept again and again rolling through our fingers. We, who until now could not even afford to buy a common candlestick, so that we had to cut a hole in our poor wooden table to stick the rushlight in,--we now had a hundred louis!" By degrees Gérard advanced to a high European name; but those only who knew him personally could have any idea of his amiable, refined nature, of his pleasant conversation, of the various acquirements and highly intellectual peculiarities of this eminent man, who took up with equal clearness many of the most dissimilar sciences. You forgot time with him, or gladly gave him up the whole night, as he seldom made his appearance in company at his own house before ten. Before leaving the grim figure of the old Revolution for more modern sketches, we must correct the lady's statement of its victims, in which she quite exceeds the utmost latitude of feminine gossip. "_Two millions of heads_" she assigns as the food of the devouring guillotine--a number transcendent, even for lady rhetoric. It is some _five hundred_ times more than the largest estimate of those even who have done their best to aggravate the tale of its horrors. The Convention, when grown Anti-Jacobin, and anxious, of course, to justify its destruction of Robespierre and his fellows, it published lists of the sufferers, could not bring the number of the guillotined up to a full _two_ thousand. Montgaillard, who complains that the returns were incomplete, may be taken as the author of the most extreme calculation on this subject: he does not get beyond a total of _four_ thousand victims, including those who perished by _fusillades_ and _noyades_. Even an anonymous lady cannot be suffered to pass with such a terrific exaggeration unquestioned. In 1823, she was present at an opening of the Chambers by "Louis the Desired," now grown fatter, it seems, than was desirable for such an operation. Indeed-- he could no longer walk; on this account the session was held in the Louvre; and the manner in which he suddenly pushed out on his low rolling chair, from beneath a curtain, which was quickly drawn back, as it is done on the stage, and as rapidly closed again, had an effect at once painful and ludicrous. Both these feelings were increased by the shrill piping treble which came squeaking forth from this unlucky corpulent body.... His brother, the Comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles the Tenth, was tall and thin, and had retained to his advanced age that habit of shuffling about with his legs, which teachers and governors had vainly tried to cure him of while young. He could not keep his body still for a single instant. His protruded head, his mouth always open, would of themselves have seemed to indicate mere stupidity rather than cunning, had not this impression been contradicted, partly by the vivacity of his eyes, and partly by his too notorious habit of intriguing. This idiotic air of poking forward the head, with the mouth always open--but aggravated by quite lifeless and almost totally closed eyes--was apparent in a still higher degree in his eldest son, the Duke of Angoulême. In the face of his wife there were still visible some traces, if not of a former beauty, at least of something characteristic and noble. In spite of her withered, lean figure, her gait was firm and majestic; but the terrorists of the Revolution had heaped misery of every kind in double and three-fold measure on this unhappy daughter of Louis the Sixteenth, and their cannibal severity had broken her heart for ever.... The Duchess of Berri, a Neapolitan princess, wife of the youngest son of the Count d'Artois, was young, but had been ill-treated by nature in her outward appearance. She was short, thin, with hair blonde almost to whiteness, and a kind of reddish fairness of complexion. In her irregular features, in her eyes which all but squinted, no kind of expression could be detected--not even that of frivolity, which she was accused of.... To both these ladies the rigorously-prescribed court-dress, as worn in open day, without candlelight, was very unbecoming. It consisted of a short white satin dress, called _jupe_, which means a dress without a train; the front breadth richly embroidered with gold, with a cut-out body, and short sleeves, leaving the neck and arms bare,--the effect of which was absolutely pitiable on the superannuated, yellow, and withered Duchess of Angoulême. Around the waist a golden ceinture held up a colored velvet skirt, with an enormous train, but no body. In front, this kind of outer dress, called _manteau de cour_, was open, and trimmed all round with broad lace. The head was decorated, or rather disfigured, by a thick upright plume of tall white ostrich feathers, to which were attached behind two long ends of blonde lace, called _barbes_, which hung down the back. On the forehead a closely-fitting jewelled diadem was worn, and diamond ornaments on the neck and arms, according to the usual fashion. From such court scarecrows let us turn to keep a last corner for a figure of more modern and genial appearance--though this, too, was saddening, and is now, like the rest, grown a mere shadow. The lady saw much of the musician Chopin after 1832, and speaks of him with warm affection, and with a fine feeling of his genius:-- He was a delicate, graceful figure, in the highest degree attractive--the whole man a mere breath--rather a spiritual than a bodily substance,--all harmony, like his playing. His way of speaking, too, was like the character of his art--soft, fluctuating, murmuring. The son of a French father and of a Polish mother, in him the Romance and Sclavonic dialects were combined, as it were, in one perfect harmony. He seemed, indeed, hardly to touch the piano; you might have fancied he would do quite as well without as with the instrument: you thought no more of the mechanism,--but listened to flute-like murmurs, and dreamed of hearing �olian harps stirred by the ethereal breathings of the wind; and with all this--in his whole wide sphere of talents given to him alone--always obliging, modest, unexacting! He was no pianoforte player of the modern sort: he had fashioned his art quite alone in his own way, and it was something indescribable. In private rooms as well as in concerts, he would steal quietly, unaffectedly, to the piano; was content with any kind of seat; showed at once, by his simple dress and natural demeanor, that he abhorred every kind of grimace and quackery; and began, without any prelude, his performance. How feeling it was--how full of soul!... When I first knew him, though far from strong, he still enjoyed good health; he was very gay, even satirical, but always with moderation and good taste. He possessed an inconceivable comic gift of mimicry, and in private circles of friends he diffused the utmost cheerfulness both by his genius and his good spirits.... Hallé has now the best tradition of his manner. We pause, not for want of matter, but for want of room. Besides its lively sketches, the book contains some materials of a tragic interest--to which we may return. FOOTNOTES: [5] It is now, or was not long since, at Munich, in the Leuchtenburg Gallery. THE LAST JOSEPH IN EGYPT. A writer in the July number of _Bentley's Miscellany_ describes some official experiences in Egypt during the reign of Mehemet Ali, and among various curious incidents has the following of Boghos Bey, the prime minister of the Pacha, who then played a no inconsiderable part on the stage of European diplomacy, more particularly as relating to the, at that period, all-engrossing "Eastern Question." "By birth an Armenian, in early life Boghos Bey was dragoman or interpreter to Mr. Wherry, then English consul at Smyrna; but he gave up that appointment, to accompany, in a similar capacity, the Turkish army, which, during the occupation of Egypt by the French, was sent to co-operate at Alexandria with Sir Ralph Abercrombie's British force. At the close of the war, on the expulsion of the French, he remained in Egypt, where he attached himself to the rising fortunes of Mehemet Ali, with whom he successively occupied the post of interpreter, secretary, and finally that of prime minister, when his master--from the Albanian adventurer--became the self-elected successor of the Pharaohs and Ptolomies. "On one occasion, Boghos having got into disgrace, Mehemet Ali ordered his prime minister to be placed in a sack and thrown into the Nile. It was supposed that this cruel sentence had been duly carried into effect. However, the British consul in Egypt at that time, managed to get something else smuggled into the sack, whilst he smuggled old Boghos into his own residence, where the latter long remained concealed, until, on one occasion, the financial accounts got so entangled, that Mehemet Ali expressed to the British consul his regret that Boghos Bey was no longer there to unravel the complicated web of difficulties in which he found himself entangled: whereupon old Boghos was produced, pardoned, reinstated in his office, acquired more influence than ever, and was, at the time referred to, the very 'Joseph' of the land." THE ENGLISH IN AMERICA: BY THE AUTHOR OF "SAM SLICK." Mr. Justice Haliburton obtained some notoriety and a certain degree of popularity by his broad caricatures of common life in New England. These books did not display very eminent ability even for the rather low and mean field in which the author found congenial occupation, but the old jokes transplanted into our republican soil had a seeming freshness in the eyes of buyers of cheap books, and they were profitable to paper-makers and printers, until the patience of the public could tolerate no more of their monotonous vulgarity. Judge Haliburton has since essayed a more serious vein, and being wholly without originality, has fallen into the old track of depreciation, sneering, and vituperation, in the expectation that any form of attack upon the people of the United States would sell, at least in England. The unfortunate gentleman was mistaken, as the following very kind reviewal of his book, which we transfer to _The International_ from _The Athenæum_ of July 26, will show. "THE ENGLISH IN AMERICA. _By the Author of 'Sam Slick,' &c._ This is a vulgar and violent political pamphlet, which will fill no small part of the admirers of 'Sam Slick' with alarm and astonishment. The 'English in America' are in these two volumes set forth principally as a parcel of uncouth, disingenuous, and repulsive Puritans, who emigrated to America in the early part of the seventeenth century for the sake of an easier indulgence in disloyalty and schism. Confining himself almost wholly to the events which took place in the colony of Massachusetts, Judge Haliburton has thought it worth while to write a book, half declamation and half treatise, against Democracy and Dissent,--which seem to him to be the two giant evils that oppress mankind. It is no part of our function to discuss the abstract merits of either of these questions; but it is perfectly within our province to point out the errors and faults of those writers who imagine that they can serve a party purpose by making a convenient and derogatory use of literature. "In the first place, then, we say that the volumes before us are essentially unfair. The 'English in America' have not really and truly been _such_ English as are there described,--nor has their career been such as is there narrated,--nor generally are the actual facts of the case logically and impartially stated in these volumes. Judge Haliburton colors and distorts almost every event and circumstance to which he refers; and there is a coarseness and rancor in the manner in which he speaks of nearly all persons and parties who differ from him in opinion, which has surprised and shocked us. There was no occasion whatever for all this vehemence. In the first place, the facts connected with the early history of the British settlements in America are too well known to permit any attempt at systematic and unscrupulous disparagement of the early Puritan colonists to be in any important degree successful. In the next place, the questions which Judge Haliburton professes to consider have been for all practical purposes discussed and decided long ago. In the last place, we are quite sure that no writer on questions of colonial policy could more effectually cut himself off from all sympathy and influence than by the adoption of an excited and menacing tone. "We find in the introductory chapter to these volumes a statement to the effect that one of the chief objects in writing them has been to inform Englishmen that Democracy did not appear for the first time in America during the War of Independence; and that the peculiar form of religion that prevailed at an early period in the New England States exerted a very powerful influence over their politics and modes of government. Surely there is nothing new in all this. There is no great discovery here which required for its introduction the expenditure of so much labor and vehemence. We had imagined that the great orations of Burke on Conciliation with America had exhausted long ago not only all the facts but most of the philosophy which is contained in the general view now revived by the author of 'Sam Slick.' There are a sentence or two in one of the most famous passages of perhaps the greatest of these orations which seem to anticipate the present volumes most completely. 'All Protestantism,' said Burke more than seventy years ago, 'even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations, agreeing in nothing but in the communication of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of the northern provinces; where the Church of England, notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality no more than a sort of private sect, not composing, most probably, the tenth of the people. The colonists left England when this spirit was high, and in the emigrants was the highest of all; and even that stream of foreigners which has been constantly flowing into these colonies has for the greatest part been composed of dissenters from the establishments of their several countries, and have brought with them a temper and character far from alien to that of the people with whom they mixed.' The speech of Burke in which these sentences occur ought surely to have passed for something in the estimation of Judge Haliburton before he committed himself to the task of writing this book. "We are quite sensible that as far as the mere composition is concerned there is very great merit in its publication. The style is vigorous and lively--and not unfrequently the animation rises into eloquence. The narrative parts of the volumes are in general exceedingly well written; and we must not omit to say, that during those short intervals when the author permits himself to lose sight of his extreme opinions he rarely fails to delight the reader with a page or two distinguished by acute observation and good sense. "Still, the faults of the book are of the most serious kind. It is incomplete in plan: for it is neither a regular narrative, nor a treatise, nor a commentary, nor a history, nor an article for a review--but something of all five. As we have said, it is written in a tone highly excited and partial; and it has the misfortune to appear before the world as the exponent of seemingly a new, but in reality of an old and familiar, doctrine, by employing examples and reasonings of which very few people indeed will not be able to detect at once either the sophistry or the incompleteness. "We forbear to enter into any general discussion on the well-worn topics of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritan settlements. The verdict of an impartial age has been long ago pronounced on these questions: and we may well deplore the unsound judgment of any writer of the deserved eminence of Judge Haliburton who gratuitously brings upon himself an imputation of outrageous eccentricity by attempting to unsettle, on his own single authority, conclusions so well and so long established.... "There is a great deal said in these volumes in disparagement of the early New Englanders. They are stigmatized as turbulent, schismatic, dishonest, revolutionary, bigoted, cruel, and so on. These are old charges, which have been several times placed in their true light; and it is needless again to undertake a defence and to enter into explanations which are familiar to most educated persons. We are not the indiscriminate admirers of the policy pursued by the first colonists of Massachusetts Bay; but the course which they adopted, the communities which they built up, and the form of liberty which they introduced into the New World can be adequately understood only when surveyed from a comprehensive and impartial point of view. It is at best a shallow criticism which contents itself with the discovery that the settlers were religious zealots, and had no particular respect for either kings or bishops. ... "We close these volumes. We regret that the author has been so ill-advised as to publish them at all. They are well written, as we have said--and in some respects possess great merit; but truth compels us to add, that they are very unworthy of the author and of the great questions they profess to elucidate and discuss." A FEW QUESTIONS FROM A WORN-OUT LORGNETTE. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY A. OAKEY HALL. I trust I am not _now_ impertinent, however much so I may have been heretofore. I have seen and observed a great deal. My observations have engendered experiences. My experiences have some point to them. And altogether, I think I am entitled to ask a few questions of those whom I have sometimes overlooked, but now address myself to most immediately. I am proud to say that I never belonged to but one mistress. I was of too much value to be exchanged, lost, lightly parted with, or--I feel prouder as I say it--_sold_. Moreover, I was a _gage d'amour_. That fascinating Dr. ----! But though curious, I will be discreet. This sole mistress of mine gave me plenty to do. Many thanks to her for it, since it has given me an insight into much that is wonderful. I am certain she preferred opera to the drama. I saw more of the stage at the first, and more of the audience at the last. I have found much in both to puzzle me. Some things I have solved. As for that which remains, I had hoped to determine for myself, but an unlucky fall from a nail has spoiled my sight. I have been now two months imprisoned in an _escrutoire_. Others must answer my questions. In the first place, I want to know why theatres and opera houses have such curious odors when empty? I have often perceived this fact when our carriage came announced the last of all. And why are the lights turned out when the audience have half-way reached the front doors? What becomes of the bills which are left behind? Do the rag-pickers ever break in? Where do the musicians go to through that little door in the stage? And why does the kettle drummer always glance around the house upon entering with such an air of satisfaction? As if any one cared for _him_! Why does the leader always stop to take a pinch of snuff, while the audience are breathing in their boots and gaiters to catch the first note of the new opera? Why does the fat man with the violoncello always saw upon two strings, and leave the two in the middle to such a contemptuous silence and exile? Why do the front-bench people get up ten minutes before the performances are over, and rush from the house as if the floor was on fire, while the galleries make twice as much noise by crying "hush!" and always stay to hear the speech (if there is any), although they have not paid as much by half as they who ran away? Why does the lover, rushing upon the stage to the embrace of his mistress, stop half way to bow to the ladies in the boxes? And why doesn't the aforesaid mistress box his ears for his impoliteness? And why did she say, just before he came, "Here comes my Alonzo! Hark! I hear his step," when every door upon the stage was shut, and nothing was heard but the confused trampling behind her, which might have been the galloping of donkeys? And why did this same lady wait for him by the side of a rosewood table, covered with satin damask, and ornamented with a Wellington inkstand--and she dressed in a robe of shot-silk, with laces and feathers--while he was dressed as a valiant knight of the sixteenth century should be? And now I think of it, why did _Mr. Anderson_, in the play of "Gisippus," visit the Roman centurion in a brick house, entered through a mahogany door, with a brass plate upon it? Why do the peasantry of Europe always dress with the most expensive ribbons about their legs and arms when they come out to dance at the wedding, or to drink from pewter mugs to the health of the bride? And why do they stand like mutes at a funeral, whilst two people in their midst are plotting some horrible murder? Why do the Italian banditti wear such steeple-crowned hats when they creep through small holes, or kneel for concealment behind rocks which only cover their foreheads? Why do the soldiers in _Fra Diavolo_ stand and sing, "We must away, 'tis duty calls," while they sit at a table drinking punch, and seem in no more hurry to go than if they were paid for drinking? Why do the chamois-hunters in "Amilie" continue so urgent about going to the mountains away, after the prey, before the dawning of the day, when it is evident from the very nature of things that they couldn't be spared for such a severe service on any contingency? Why does the lover always sing tenor in an opera? What connection is there between villany and a bass voice? What's the necessity of a _prima donna_ singing towards the ceiling when she addresses a chorus behind her? By what right does the head man in the chorus do all the gesticulating, while his fellows stand like militia-men? Who ever saw an excited basso bid a "minion away," without trying to throw his fist behind him? Why does Ernani's mistress wear such splendid diamonds, and not sell them to give him release from persecution? I have seen a sentimental young lady swear to share the poverty and disgrace of her lover, when she was fool enough to lay aside most precious jewels and dresses, which would have purchased affluence, and then robe herself in calico! Now, why did he permit _that_? Why do stage heroines venture out into the woods in November in white silk dresses? Are there never any snakes about? And why are theatrical forests always green in the middle of winter? What kind of thermometers do managers have? Why is it that three or four stout men, with loaded pistols, allow themselves to be beaten off the stage by a slim man with a small stick? In my opinion--and I don't care who hears it--Richard the Third (whom I understand to be a natural son of one Shakespeare) was a great numskull to allow Richmond to beat him with the two dozen lanky-looking scoundrels who come in during the last scene! Why do the fairies shake so convulsively when they soar through the air over the stage? Are stage-fairies all over the world such unequal highflyers? Who made gaiter-boots for Juno and her attendant goddesses, in the many classical plays I have witnessed? Did the Egyptians and Persians know how to make cotton-cloth a yard wide--I have measured their costumes too often behind the footlights not to know the exact measurement. Why do people always cough in the theatre after a severe storm of thunder and lightning, and hold their handkerchiefs to their noses at such times? Why does the moon, in every opera wherein she condescends to show herself, stand still for half an hour immediately over a chimney? What is the necessity of a man dying for love, and singing himself to death like a swan, when he has strength enough of body and mind to pick up three or four pounds of _bouquets_? And why does he give them up to the spasmodic lady in white muslin, whom he has been abusing for half an hour, and declaring, in most emphatic terms, that they part from that time forward for ever? What wonderful hair-invigorator do some actors use in order to grow themselves a fine pair of bushy whiskers in fifteen minutes? How is it possible for a noble lord to have travelled over thousands of miles, to have encountered unheard-of perils, in order to return and marry the miller's maid, and yet to preserve, through years of absence, the same trousers, vest, coat, and hat, in which he first won her affections? Mentioning hats, why does the rich landholder, in modern comedy, sometimes go without a hat, when all his servants talk to him with _their_ hats upon their heads? Is there any forcible, necessary, or (to put it stronger) _absolute_, connection between a queen in distress and large quantities of pearls strung about the hair? These are but a twentieth part of the inquiries which crowd into my questioning-box. I know they are disjointed,--as I soon shall be. But I will see what can be done for me, as things here stand, before I venture to again pile "whys" upon "wherefores." FRAGMENTS: FROM "THE STORY OF A SOUL," AN UNPUBLISHED POEM, WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY H. W. PARKER. A TOUR DE FORCE. I felt myself alone--alone as one Who leapt in joy from starry rock to rock Across creations stream, and joyed to know Himself alone in starry solitudes, Communing with his soul and God; and clomb The heights of glory, there amazed to see The wilderness of worlds, and feel the want Of other hearts to share excess of bliss. Alone!--it startled me with such a fear-- A daring fear, as only spirits can have. At once I would be every where--on all The peopled globes where'er myself had been; My lonely being would I spread through all. I thought, with the velocity of thought Which disembodied souls alone may know-- I thought, I willed, myself in thousand places In quick and successive instants, quick as one; And so around again, and still around, Without an interval. Soon as a flash, A thousand selves were scattered o'er the deep Of distant space; and, urging on my soul, Around and on, with energy immortal, And swifter still, at last I seemed to grow Ubiquitous--a multipresence dread, A loneliness enlarged, more awful yet-- Until, in thought's extreme rapidity, The distant selves were blended into one, And space was gone! The universe was lost In me--in nothingness. Soon it returned And stood resplendent; space again became A mode of thought, as thought resumed its calm, And motion ceased with will. I found myself Far off in outer coasts of light.... MEMORY. .... The vision changed; for still The cherub Fancy sports beyond the grave, Led by the hand of Reason. Once again, My memory rose, a painted canvas, framed In golden mouldings of immortal joy. But now the perfect copy of a life, With all the colors glorified, began To melt in slow dissolving views of truth. From out the crowded scene of mortal deeds, A group enraged, colossal in its shapes: Self--a dead giant, hideous and deformed, Lay, slain with lightning, while, upon his head, Stood holy Love, her eyes upturned to Heaven, Her hands extended o'er the kneeling forms Of Faith and Hope.... MUSIC. Nor were the splendors silent all. To spirits 'Tis ever one to see, to hear, to feel-- The music of the spheres is therefore truth, And, now, no more I heard the noise confused Of humming stars and murmuring moons, in tones Discordant; but as in the focal point Of whispering rooms, so here I found at last The centre where the perfect chords combine-- Where the full harmonies of rolling worlds Are poring evermore in billowy seas Of sounds, that break in thundered syllables Unutterable to men. A naked soul Within the central court of space, to me The trill of myriad stars, the heavy boom Of giant suns that slowly came and went, The whistlings, sweet and far, of lesser orbs, And the low thunder of more distant deeps, Ever commingling, grew to eloquence No mortal brain may bear. The universe Had found a voice.... HEAVEN. "Look to thy God." I flamed at Him with will intense, And soon a sea of light and love arose And bathed my soul, and filled the empty space With overflowing glory. All was heaven; And all the joy, the splendor, I had known In space, to this was but the prelude harsh Of brazen instruments, before the song Of some incarnate seraph, breathes and rolls A flood of fulness o'er a tranced world. Enough to say, whate'er we wish of scene, Society, occupation, pleasure-- Whenever wished, is ours; and this is Heaven; This is the prize of earthly self-denial. Freedom, the boundless freedom of the pure-- This the reward of holy self-restraint. A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[6] WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ. CHAPTER XXXVIII. We must now turn once more to Sir Philip Hastings as he sat in his lonely room in prison. Books had been allowed him, paper, pen, and ink, and all that could aid to pass the time; but Sir Philip had matter for study in his own mind, and the books had remained unopened for several days. Hour after hour, since his interview with Secretary Vernon, and day after day he had paced that room to and fro, till the sound of his incessant footfall was a burthen to those below. His hair had grown very white, the wrinkles on his brow had deepened and become many, and his head was bowed as if age had pressed it down. As he walked, his eye beneath his shaggy eyebrow was generally bent upon the floor, but when any accidental circumstance caused him to raise it--a distant sound from without, or some thought passing through his own mind--there was that curious gleam in it which I have mentioned when describing him in boyhood, but now heightened and rendered somewhat more wild and mysterious. At those moments the expression of his eyes amounted almost to fierceness, and yet there was something grand, and fixed, and calm about the brow which seemed to contradict the impatient, irritable look. At the moment I now speak of there was an open letter on the table, written in his daughter's hand, and after having walked up and down for more than one hour, he sat down as if to answer it. We must look over his shoulder and see what he writes, as it may in some degree tend to show the state of his mind, although it was never sent. "MY CHILD" (it was so he addressed the dear girl who had once been the joy of his heart): "The news which has been communicated to you by Marlow has been communicated also to me, but has given small relief. The world is a prison, and it is not very satisfactory to leave one dungeon to go into a larger. "Nevertheless, I am desirous of returning to my own house. Your mother is very ill, with nobody to attend upon her but yourself--at least no kindred. This situation does not please me. Can I be satisfied that she will be well and properly cared for? Will a daughter who has betrayed her father show more piety towards a mother? Who is there that man can trust?" He was going on in the same strain, and his thoughts becoming more excited, his language more stern and bitter every moment, when suddenly he paused, read over the lines he had written with a gleaming eye, and then bent his head, and fell into thought. No one can tell, no pen can describe the bitter agony of his heart at that moment. Had he yielded to the impulse--had he spoken ever so vehemently and fiercely, it would have been happier for him and for all. But men will see without knowing it in passing through the world, conventional notions which they adopt as principles. They fancy them original thoughts, springing from their own convictions, when in reality they are bents--biases given to their minds by the minds of other men. The result is very frequently painful, even where the tendency of the views received is good. Thus a shrub forced out of its natural direction may take a more graceful or beautiful form, but there is ever a danger that the flow of the sap may be stopped, or some of the branches injured by the process. "No," said Sir Philip Hastings, at length, with a false sense of dignity thus acquired, "no, it is beneath me to reproach her. Punish her I might, and perhaps I ought; for the deed itself is an offence to society and to human nature more than to me. To punish her would have been a duty, even if my own heart's blood had flowed at the same time, in those ancient days of purer laws and higher principles; but I will not reproach without punishing. I will be silent. I will say nothing. I will leave her to her own conscience," and tearing the letter he had commenced to atoms, he resumed his bitter walk about the room. It is a terrible and dangerous thing to go on pondering for long solitary hours on any one subject of deep interest. It is dangerous even in the open air, under the broad, ever-varying sky, with the birds upon the bough, and the breeze amongst the trees, and a thousand objects in bright nature to breathe harmonies to the human heart. It is dangerous in the midst of crowds and gay scenes of active life so to shut the spirit up with one solitary idea, which, like the fabled dragon's egg, is hatched into a monster by long looking at it. But within the walls of a prison, with nothing to divert the attention, with nothing to solicit or compel the mind even occasionally to seek some other course, with no object in external nature, with the companionship of no fellow being, to appeal to our senses or to awake our sympathies, the result is almost invariable. An innocent man--a man who has no one strong passion, or dark, all-absorbing subject of contemplation, but who seeks for and receives every mode of relief from the monotony of life that circumstances can afford, may endure perfect solitude for years and live sane, but whoever condemns a criminal--a man loaded with a great offence--to solitary confinement, condemns him to insanity--a punishment far more cruel than death or the rack. Hour after hour again, day after day, Sir Philip Hastings continued to beat the floor of the prison with untiring feet. At the end of the third day, however, he received formal notice that he would be brought into court on the following morning, that the indictment against him would be read, and that the attorney-general would enter a _nolle prosequi_. Some of these forms were perhaps unnecessary, but it was the object of the government at that time to make as strong an impression on the public mind as possible without any unnecessary effusion of blood. The effect upon the mind of Sir Philip Hastings, however, was not salutary. The presence of the judges, the crowd in the court, the act of standing in the prisoners' dock, even the brief speech of the lawyer commending the lenity and moderation of government, while he moved the recording of the _nolle prosequi_, all irritated and excited the prisoner. His irritation was shown in his own peculiar way, however; a smile, bitter and contemptuous curled his lip. His eye seemed to search out those who gazed at him most and stare them down, and when he was at length set at liberty, he turned away from the dock and walked out of the court without saying a word to any one. The governor of the jail followed him, asking civilly if he would not return to his house for a moment, take some refreshment, and arrange for the removal of his baggage. It seemed as if Sir Philip answered at all with a great effort; but in the end he replied laconically, "No, I will send." Two hours after he did send, and towards evening set out in a hired carriage for his own house. He slept a night upon the road, and the following day reached the Court towards evening. By that time, however, a strange change had come over him. Pursuing the course of those thoughts which I have faintly displayed, he had waged war with his own mind--he had struggled to banish all traces of anger and indignation from his thoughts--in short, fearing from the sensations experienced within, that he would do or say something contrary to the rigid rule he had imposed upon himself, he had striven to lay out a scheme of conduct which would guard against such a result. The end of this self-tutoring was satisfactory to him. He had fancied he had conquered himself, but he was very much mistaken. It was only the outer man he had subdued, but not the inner. When the carriage drew up at his own door, and Sir Philip alighted, Emily flew out to meet him. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek, and her heart beat with joy and affection. For an instant Sir Philip remained grave and stern, did not repel her, but did not return her embrace. The next instant, however, his whole manner changed. A sort of cunning double-meaning look came into his eyes. He smiled, which was very unusual with him, assumed a sort of sportiveness, which was not natural, called her "dainty Mistress Emily," and asked after the health of "his good wife." His coldness and his sternness might not have shocked Emily at all, but his apparent levity pained and struck her with terror. A cold sort of shudder passed over her, and unclasping her arms from his neck, she replied, "I grieve to say mamma is very ill, and although the news of your safety cheered her much, she has since made no progress, but rather fallen back." "Doubtless the news cheered you too very much, my sweet lady," said Sir Philip in an affected tone, and without waiting for reply, he walked on and ascended to his wife's room. Emily returned to the drawing-room and fell into one of her profound fits of meditation; but this time they were all sad and tending to sadness. There Sir Philip found her when he came down an hour after. She had not moved, she had not ordered lights, although the sun was down and the twilight somewhat murky. She did not move when he entered, but remained with her head leaning on her hand, and her eyes fixed on the table near which she sat. Sir Philip gazed at her gloomily, and said to himself, "Her heart smites her. Ha, ha, beautiful deceitful thing. Have you put the canker worm in your own bosom? Great crimes deserve great punishments. God of heaven! keep me from such thoughts. No, no, I will never avenge myself on the plea of avenging society. My own cause must not mingle with such vindications." "Emily," he said in a loud voice, which startled her suddenly from her reverie, "Emily, your mother is very ill." "Worse? worse?" cried Emily with a look of eager alarm; "I will fly to her at once. Oh, sir, send for the surgeon." "Stay," said Sir Philip, "she is no worse than when you left her, except insomuch as a dying person becomes much worse every minute. Your mother wishes much to see Mrs. Hazleton, who has not been with her for two days, she says. Sit down and write that lady a note asking her to come here to-morrow, and I will send it by a groom." Emily obeyed, though with infinite reluctance; for she had remarked that the visits of Mrs. Hazleton always left her mother neither improved in temper nor in health. The groom was dispatched, and returned with a reply from Mrs. Hazleton to the effect that she would be there early on the following day. During his absence, Sir Philip had been but little with his daughter. Hardly had the note been written when he retired to his own small room, and there remained shut up during the greater part of the evening. Emily quietly stole into her mother's room soon after her father left her, fearing not a little that Lady Hastings might have remarked the strange change which had come upon her husband during his absence. But such was not the case. She found her mother calmer and gentler than she had been during the last week or ten days. Her husband's liberation, and the certainty that all charge against him was at an end, had afforded her great satisfaction; and although she was still evidently very ill, yet she conversed cheerfully with her daughter for nearly an hour. "As I found you had not told your father the hopes that Mr. Marlow held out when he went away, I spoke to him on the subject," she said. "He is a strange cynic, my good husband, and seemed to care very little about the matter. He doubt's Marlow's success too, I think, but all that he said was, that if it pleased me, that was enough for him. Mrs. Hazleton will be delighted to hear the news." Emily doubted the fact, but she did not express her doubt, merely telling her mother she had written to Mrs. Hazleton, and that the servant had been sent with the note. "She has not been over for two days," said Lady Hastings. "I cannot think what has kept her away." "Some accidental circumstance, I dare say," said Emily, "but there can be no doubt she will be here to-morrow early." They neither of them knew that on the preceding night but one Mrs. Hazleton had received a visit from John Ayliffe, which, notwithstanding all her self-command and assumed indifference, had disturbed her greatly. Mrs. Hazleton nevertheless was, as Emily anticipated, very early at the house of Sir Philip Hastings. She first made a point of seeing that gentleman himself; and though her manner was, as usual, calm and lady-like, yet every word and every look expressed the greatest satisfaction at seeing him once more in his home and at liberty. To Emily also she was all tenderness and sweetness; but Emily, on her part, shrunk from her with a feeling of dread and suspicion that she could not repress, and hardly could conceal. She had not indeed read any of the papers which Marlow had left with her, for he had not told her to read them; but he had directed her thoughts aright, and had led her to conclusions in regard to Mrs. Hazleton which were very painful, but no less just. That lady remarked a change in Emily's manner--she had seen something of it before;--but it now struck her more forcibly, and though she took no notice of it whatever, it was not a thing to be forgotten or forgiven; for to those who are engaged in doing ill there cannot be a greater offence than to be suspected, and Mrs. Hazleton was convinced that Emily did suspect her. After a brief interview with father and daughter, their fair guest glided quietly up to the room of Lady Hastings, and seated herself by her bed-side. She took the sick lady's hand in hers--that white, emaciated hand, once so beautiful and rosy-tipped, and said how delighted she was to see her looking a great deal better. "Do you think so really?" said Lady Hastings; "I feel dreadfully weak and exhausted, dear Mrs. Hazleton, and sometimes think I shall never recover." "Oh don't say so," replied Mrs. Hazleton; "your husband's return has evidently done you great good: the chief part of your malady has been mental. Anxiety of mind is often the cause of severe sickness, which passes away as soon as it is removed. One great source of uneasiness is now gone, and the only other that remains--I mean this unfortunate engagement of dear Emily to Mr. Marlow--may doubtless, with a little firmness and decision upon your part, be remedied also." Mrs. Hazleton was very skillful in forcing the subject with which she wished to deal, into a conversation to which it had no reference; and having thus introduced the topic on which she loved to dwell, she went on to handle it with her usual skill, suggesting every thing that could irritate the invalid against Marlow, and render the idea of his marriage with Emily obnoxious in her eyes. Even when Lady Hastings, moved by some feelings of gratitude and satisfaction by the intelligence of Marlow's efforts to recover her husband's property, communicated the hopes she entertained to her visitor, Mrs. Hazleton contrived to turn the very expectations to Marlow's disadvantage, saying, "If such should indeed be the result, this engagement will be still more unfortunate. With such vast property as dear Emily will then possess, with her beauty, with her accomplishments, with her graces, the hand of a prince would be hardly too much to expect for her; and to see her throw herself away upon a mere country gentleman--a Mr. Marlow--all very well in his way, but a nobody, is indeed sad; and I would certainly prevent it, if I were you, while I had power." "But how can I prevent it?" asked Lady Hastings; "my husband and Emily are both resolute in such things. I have no power, dear Mrs. Hastings." "You are mistaken, my sweet friend," replied her companion; "the power will indeed soon go from you if these hopes which have been held out do not prove fallacious. You are mistress of this house--of this very fine property. If I understand rightly, neither your husband nor your daughter have at present any thing but what they derive from you. This position may soon be altered if your husband be reinstated in the Hastings estates." "But you would not, Mrs. Hazleton, surely you would not have me use such power ungenerously?" said Lady Hastings. Mrs. Hazleton saw that she had gone a little too far--or rather perhaps that she had suggested that which was repugnant to the character of her hearer's mind; for in regard to money matters no one was ever more generous or careless of self than Lady Hastings. What was her's was her husband's and her child's--she knew no difference--she made no distinction. It took Mrs. Hazleton some time to undo what she had done, but she found the means at length. She touched the weak point, the failing of character. A little stratagem, a slight device to win her own way by an indirect method, was quite within the limits of Lady Hastings' principles; and after dwelling some time upon a recapitulation of all the objections against the marriage with Marlow, which could suggest themselves to an ambitious mind, she quietly and in an easy suggestive tone, sketched out a plan, which both to herself and her hearer, seemed certain of success. Lady Hastings caught at the plan eagerly, and determined to follow it in all the details, which will be seen hereafter. CHAPTER XXXIX. "I feel very ill indeed this morning," said Lady Hastings, addressing her maid about eleven o'clock. "I feel as if I were dying. Call my husband and my daughter to me." "Lord, my lady," said the maid, "had I not better send for the doctor too? You do not look as if you were dying at all. You look a good deal better, I think, my lady." "Do I?" said Lady Hastings in a hesitating tone. But she did not want the doctor to be sent for immediately, and repeated her order to call her husband and her daughter. Emily was with her in an instant, but Sir Philip Hastings was some where absent in the grounds, and nearly half an hour elapsed before he was found. When he entered he gazed in his wife's face with some surprise--more surprise indeed than alarm; for he knew that she was nervous and hypondriacal, and as the maid had said, she did not look as if she were dying at all. There was no sharpening of the features--no falling in of the temples--none of that pale ashy color, or rather that leaden grayness, which precedes dissolution. He sat down, however, by her bed-side, gazing at her with an inquiring look, while Emily stood on the other side of the bed, and the maid at the end; and after speaking a few kind but somewhat rambling words, he was sending for some restoratives, saying "I think, my dear, you alarm yourself without cause." "I do not indeed, Philip," replied Lady Hastings. "I am sure I shall die, and that before very long--but do not send for any thing. I would rather not take it. It will do me more good a great deal to speak what I have upon my mind--what is weighing me down--what is killing me." "I am sorry to hear there is any thing," said Sir Philip, whose thoughts, intensely busy with other things, were not yet fully recalled to the scene before him. "Oh, Philip, how can you say so?" said Lady Hastings, "when you know there is. You need not go," she continued, speaking to the maid, who was drawing back as if to quit the room, "I wish to speak to my husband and my daughter before some one who will remember what I say." Sir Philip however quietly rose, opened the door, and motioned to the girl to quit the room, for such public exhibitions were quite contrary to his notions of domestic economy. "Now, my dear," he said, "what is it you wish to tell me? If there be any thing that you wish done, I will do it if it is in my power." "It is in your power, Philip," replied Lady Hastings; "you know and Emily knows quite well that her engagement to Mr. Marlow was against my consent, and I must say the greatest shock I ever received in my life. I have never been well since, and every day I see more and more reason to object. It is in the power of either of you, or both, to relieve my mind in this respect--to break off this unhappy engagement, and at least to let me die in peace, with the thought that my daughter has not cast herself away. It is in your power, Philip, to--" "Stay a moment," said her husband, "it is not in my power." "Why, are you not her father?" asked Lady Hastings, interrupting him. "Are you not her lawful guardian? Have you not the disposal of her hand?" "It is not in my power," repeated Sir Philip coldly, "to break my plighted word, to violate my honor, or to live under a load of shame and dishonor." "Why in such a matter as this," said Lady Hastings, "there is no such disgrace. You can very well say you have thought better of it." "In which case I should tell a lie," said Sir Philip dryly. "It is a thing done every day," argued Lady Hastings. "I am not a man to do any thing because there are others who do it every day," answered her husband. "Men lie, and cheat, and swindle, and steal, and betray their friends, and relations, and parents, but I can find no reason therein for doing the same. It is not in my power, I repeat. I cannot be a scoundrel, whatever other men may be, and violate my plighted word, or withdraw from my most solemn engagements. Moreover, when Marlow heard of the misfortunes which have befallen us, and learned that Emily would not have one-fourth part of that which she had at one time a right to expect, he showed no inclination to withdraw from his word, even when there was a good excuse, and I will never withdraw from mine, so help me God." Thus speaking he turned his eyes towards the ground again and fell into a deep reverie. While this conversation had been passing, Emily had sunk upon her knees, trembling in every limb, and hid her face in the coverings of the bed. To her, Lady Hastings now turned. Whether it was that remorse and some degree of shame affected her, when she saw the terrible agitation of her child, I cannot tell, but she paused for a moment as if in hesitation. She spoke at length, saying "Emily, my child, to you I must appeal, as your father is so obdurate." Emily made no answer, however, but remained weeping, and Lady Hastings becoming somewhat irritated, went on in a sharper tone. "What! will not my own child listen to the voice of a dying mother?" she asked rather petulantly than sorrowfully, although she tried hard to make her tone gravely reproachful; "will she not pay any attention to her mother's last request? "Oh, my mother," answered Emily, raising her head, and speaking more vehemently than was customary with her, "ask me any thing that is just; ask me any thing that is reasonable; but do not ask me to do what is wrong and what is unjust. I have made a promise--do not ask me to break it. There is no circumstance changed which could give even an excuse for such a breach of faith. Marlow has only shown himself more true, more faithful, more sincere. Should I be more false, more faithless, more ungenerous than he thought me? Oh no! it is impossible--quite impossible," and she hid her streaming eyes in the bed-clothes again, clasping her hands tightly together over her forehead. Her father, with his arms crossed upon his chest, had kept his eyes fixed upon her while she spoke with a look of doubt and inquiry. Well might he doubt--well might he doubt his own suspicions. There was a truth, a candor, a straightforwardness, in that glowing face which gave the contradiction, plain and clear, to every foul, dishonest charge which had been fabricated against his child. It was impossible in fact that she could have so spoken and so looked, unless she had so felt. The best actress that ever lived could not have performed that part. There would have been something too much or too little, something approaching the exaggerated or the tame. With Emily there was nothing. What she said seemed but the sudden outburst of her heart, pressed for a reply; and as soon as it was spoken she sunk down again in silence, weeping bitterly under the conflict of two strong but equally amiable feelings. For a moment the sight seemed to rouse Sir Philip Hastings. "She should not, if she would," he said; "voluntarily, and knowing what she did, she consented to the promise I have made, and she neither can nor shall retract. To Marlow, indeed, I may have a few words to say, and he shall once more have the opportunity of acting as he pleases; but Emily is bound as well as myself, and by that bond we must abide." "What have you to say to Marlow?" asked Lady Hastings in a tone of commonplace curiosity, which did not at all indicate a sense of that terrible situation in which she assumed she was placed. "That matters not," answered Sir Philip. "It will rest between him and me at his return. How he may act I know not--what he may think I know not; but he shall be a partaker of my thoughts and the master of his own actions. Do not let us pursue this painful subject further. If you feel yourself ill, my love, let us send for further medical help. I do hope and believe that you are not so ill as you imagine; but if you are so there is more need that the physician should be here, and that we should quit topics too painful for discussion, where discussion is altogether useless." "Well, then, mark me," said Lady Hastings with an air of assumed melancholy dignity, which being quite unnatural to her, bordered somewhat on the burlesque; "mark me, Philip--mark me, Emily! your wife, your mother, makes it her last dying request--her last dying injunction, that you break off this marriage. You may or you may not give me the consolation on this sick bed of knowing that my request will be complied with; but I do not think that either of you will be careless, will be remorseless enough to carry out this engagement after I am gone. I will not threaten, Emily--I will not even attempt to take away from you the wealth for which this young man doubtless seeks you--I will not attempt to deter you by bequeathing you my curse if you do not comply with my injunctions; but I tell you, if you do not make me this promise before I die, you have embittered your mother's last moments, and--" "Oh, forbear, forbear," cried Emily, starting up. "For God's sake, dear mother, forbear," and clasping her hands wildly over her eyes, she rushed frantically out of the room. Sir Philip Hastings remained for nearly half an hour longer, and then descended the stairs and passed through the drawing-room. Emily was seated there with her handkerchief upon her eyes, and her whole frame heaving from the agonized sobs which rose from her bosom. Sir Philip paused and gazed at her for a moment or two, but Emily did not say a word, and seemed indeed totally unconscious of his presence. Some movements of compassion, some feeling of sympathy, some doubts of his preconceptions might pass through the bosom of Sir Philip Hastings; but the dark seeds of suspicion had been sown in his bosom--had germinated, grown up, and strengthened--had received confirmation strong and strange, and he murmured to himself as he stood and gazed at her, "Is it anger or sorrow? Is it passion or pain? All this is strange enough. I do not understand it. Her resolution is taken, and taken rightly. Why should she grieve? Why should she be thus moved, when she knows she is doing that which is just, and honest, and faithful?" He measured a cloud by an ell wand. He gauged her heart, her sensibilities, her mind, by the rigid metre of his own, and he found that the one could not comprehend the other. Turning hastily away after he had finished his contemplation, without proffering one word of consolation or support, he walked away into his library, and ringing a bell, ordered his horse to be saddled directly. While that was being done, he wrote a hasty note to Mr. Short, the surgeon, and when the horse was brought round gave it to a groom to deliver. Then mounting on horseback, he rode away at a quick pace, without having taken any further notice of his daughter. Emily remained for about half an hour after his departure, exactly in the same position in which he had left her. She noticed nothing that was passing around her; she heard not a horse stop at the door; and when her own maid entered the room and said,--"Doctor Short has come, ma'am, and is with my lady. Sir Philip sent Peter for him; but Peter luckily met him just down beyond the park gates;" Emily hardly seemed to hear her. A few minutes after, Mr. Short descended quietly from the room of Lady Hastings, and looked into the drawing-room as he passed. Seeing the beautiful girl seated there in that attitude of despondency, he approached her quietly, saying, "Do not, my dear mistress Emily, suffer yourself to be alarmed without cause. I see no reason for the least apprehension. My good lady, your mother is nervous and excited, but there are no very dangerous symptoms about her--certainly none that should cause immediate alarm; and I think upon the whole, that the disease is more mental than corporeal." Emily had raised her eyes when he had just begun to speak, and she shook her head mournfully at his last, words, saying, "I can do nothing to remedy it, Mr. Short--I would at any personal sacrifice, but this involves more--I can do nothing." "But I have done my best," said Mr. Short with a kindly smile; for he was an old and confidential friend of the whole family, and upon Emily herself had attended from her childhood, during all the little sicknesses of early life. "I asked your excellent mother what had so much excited her, and she told me all that has passed this morning. I think, my dear young lady, I have quieted her a good deal." "How? how?" exclaimed Emily eagerly. "Oh tell me how, Mr. Short, and I will bless you!" The good old surgeon seated himself beside her and took her hand in his. "I have only time to speak two words," he said, "but I think they will give you comfort. Your mother explained to me that there had been a little discussion this morning when she thought herself dying--though that was all nonsense--and it must have been very painful to you, my dear Mistress Emily. She told me what it was about too, and seemed half sorry already for what she had said. So, as I guessed how matters went--for I know that the dear lady is fond of titles and rank, and all that, and saw she had a great deal mistaken Mr. Marlow's position--I just ventured to tell her that he is the heir of the old Earl of Launceston--that is to say, if the Earl does not marry again, and he is seventy-three, with a wife still living. She had never heard any thing about it, and it seemed to comfort her amazingly. Nevertheless she is in a sad nervous state, and somewhat weak. I do not altogether like that cough she has either; and so, my dear young lady, I will send her over a draught to-night, of which you must give her a tablespoonful every three hours. Give it to her with your own hands; for it is rather strong, and servants are apt to make mistakes. But I think if you go to her now, you will find her in a very different humor from that which she was in this morning. Good bye, good bye. Don't be cast down, Mistress Emily. All will go well yet." CHAPTER XL. From the house of Sir Philip Hastings Mr. Short rode quickly on to the cottage of Mistress Best, which he had visited once before in the morning. The case of John Ayliffe, however, was becoming more and more urgent every moment, and at each visit the surgeon saw a change in the countenance of the young man which indicated that a greater change still was coming. He had had a choice of evils to deal with; for during the first day after the accident there had been so much fever that he had feared to give any thing to sustain the young man's strength. But long indulgence in stimulating liquors had had its usual effect in weakening the powers of the constitution, and rendering it liable to give way suddenly even where the corporeal powers seemed at their height. Wine had become to John Ayliffe what water is to most men, and he could not bear up without it. Exhaustion had succeeded rapidly to the temporary excitement of fever, and mortification had begun to show itself on the injured limb. Wine had become necessary, and it was administered in frequent and large doses; but as a stimulant it had lost its effect upon the unhappy young man, and when the surgeon returned to the cottage on this occasion, he saw not only that all hope was at an end, but that the end could not be very far distant. Good Mr. Dixwell was seated by John Ayliffe's side, and looked up to the surgeon with an anxious eye. Mr. Short felt his patient's pulse with a very grave face. It was rapid, but exceedingly feeble--went on for twenty or thirty beats as fast as it could go--then stopped altogether for an instant or two, and then began to beat again as quickly as before. Mr. Short poured out a tumbler full of port wine, raised John Ayliffe a little, and made him drink it down. After a few minutes he felt his pulse again, and found it somewhat stronger. The sick man looked earnestly in his face as if he wished to ask some question; but he remained silent for several minutes. At length he said, "Tell me the truth, Short. Am not I dying?" The surgeon hesitated, but Mr. Dixwell raised his eyes, saying, "Tell him the truth, tell him the truth, my good friend. He is better prepared to bear it than he was yesterday." "I fear you are sinking, Sir John," said the surgeon. "I do not feel so much pain in my leg," said the young man. "That is because mortification has set in," replied Mr. Short. "Then there is no hope," said John Ayliffe. The surgeon was silent; and after a moment John Ayliffe said, "God's will be done." Mr. Dixwell pressed his hand kindly with tears in his eyes; for they were the Christian words he had longed to hear, but hardly hoped for. There was a long and somewhat sad pause, and then the dying man once more turned his look upon the surgeon, asking, "How long do you think it will be?" "Three or four hours," replied Mr. Short. "By stimulants, as long as you can take them, it may be protracted a little longer, but not much." "Every moment is of consequence," said the clergyman. "There is much preparation still needful--much to be acknowledged and repented of--much to be atoned for. What can be done, my good friend to protract the time?" "Give small quantities of wine very frequently," answered the surgeon, "and perhaps some aqua vitæ--but very little--very little, or you may hurry the catastrophe." "Well, well," said John Ayliffe, "you can come again, but perhaps by that time I shall be gone. You will find money enough in my pockets, Short, to pay your bill--there is plenty there, and mind you send the rest to my mother." The surgeon stared, and said to himself, "he is wandering;" but John Ayliffe immediately added, "Don't let that rascal Shanks have it, but send it to my mother;" and saying "Very well, Sir John," he took his leave and departed. "And now, my dear young friend," said Mr. Dixwell, the moment the surgeon was gone, "there is no time to be lost. You have the power of making full atonement for the great offence you have committed to one of your fellow creatures. If you sincerely repent, as I trust you do, Christ has made atonement for your offences towards God. But you must show your penitence by letting your last acts in this life be just and right. Let me go to Sir Philip Hastings." "I would rather see his daughter, or his wife," said John Ayliffe: "he is so stern, and hard, and gloomy. He will never speak comfort or forgiveness." "You are mistaken--I can assure you, you are mistaken," answered the clergyman. "I will take upon me to promise that he shall not say one hard word, and grant you full forgiveness." "Well, well," said the young man, "if it must be he, so be it--but mind to have pen and ink to write it all down--that pen won't write. You know you tried it this morning." "I will bring one with me," said Mr. Dixwell, rising eager to be gone on his good errand; but John Ayliffe stopped him, saying, "Stay, stay--remember you are not to tell him any thing about it till he is quite away from his own house. I don't choose to have all the people talking of it, and perhaps coming down to stare at me." Mr. Dixwell was willing to make any terms in order to have what he wished accomplished, and giving Mrs. Best directions to let the patient have some port wine every half hour, he hurried away to the Court. On inquiring for Sir Philip, the servant said that his master had ridden out. "Do you know where he is gone, and how long he will be absent?" asked Mr. Dixwell. "He is gone, I believe, to call at Doctor Juke's, to consult about my lady," replied the man; "and as that is hard upon twenty miles, he can't be back for two or three hours." "That is most unfortunate," exclaimed the clergyman. "Is your lady up?" The servant replied in the negative, adding the information that she was very ill. "Then I must see Mistress Emily," said Mr. Dixwell, walking into the house. "Call her to me as quickly as you can." The man obeyed, and Emily was with the clergyman in a few moments, while the servant remained in the hall looking out through the open door. After remaining in conversation with Mr. Dixwell for a few minutes, Emily hurried back to her room, and came down again dressed for walking. She and Mr. Dixwell went out together, and the servant saw them take their way down the road in the direction of Jenny Best's cottage: but when they had gone a couple of hundred yards, the clergyman turned off towards his own house, walking at a very quick pace, while Emily proceeded slowly on her way. When at a short distance from the cottage, the beautiful girl stopped, and waited till she was rejoined by Mr. Dixwell, who came up very soon, out of breath at the quickness of his pace. "I have ordered the wine down directly," he said, "and I trust we shall be able to keep him up till he has told his story his own way. Now, my dear young lady, follow me;" and walking on he entered the cottage. Emily was a good deal agitated. Every memory connected with John Ayliffe was painful to her. It seemed as if nothing but misfortune, sorrow, and anxiety, had attended her ever since she first saw him, and all connected themselves more or less with him. The strange sort of mysterious feeling of sympathy which she had experienced when first she beheld him, and which had seemed explained to her when she learned their near relationship, had given place day by day to stronger and stronger personal dislike, and she could not now even come to visit him on his death-bed with the clergyman without feeling a mixture of repugnance and dread which she struggled with not very successfully. They passed, however, through the outer into the inner room where Mistress Best was sitting with the dying man, reading to him the New Testament. But as soon as Mr. Dixwell, who had led the way, entered, the good woman stopped, and John Ayliffe turned his head faintly towards the door. "Ah, this is very kind of you," he said when he saw Emily, "I can tell you all better than any one else." "Sir Philip is absent," said Mr. Dixwell, "and will not be home for several hours." "Hours!" repeated John Ayliffe. "My time is reduced to minutes!" Emily approached quietly, and Mrs. Best quitted the room and shut the door. Mr. Dixwell drew the table nearer to the bed, spread some writing paper which he had brought with him upon it, and dipped a pen in the ink, as a hint that no time was to be lost in proceeding. "Well, well," said John Ayliffe with a sigh, "I won't delay, though it is very hard to have to tell such a story. Mistress Emily, I have done you and your family great wrong and great harm, and I am very, very sorry for it, especially for what I have done against you." "Then I forgive you from all my heart," cried Emily, who had been inexpressibly shocked at the terrible change which the young man's appearance presented. She had never seen death, nor was aware of the terrible shadow which the dark banner of the great Conqueror often casts before it. "Thank you, thank you," replied John Ayliffe; "but you must not suppose, Mistress Emily, that all the evil I have done was out of my own head. Others prompted me to a great deal; although I was ready enough to follow their guidance, I must confess. The two principal persons were Shanks the lawyer, and Mrs. Hazleton--Oh, that woman is, I believe, the devil incarnate." "Hush, hush," said Mr. Dixwell, "I cannot put such words as those down, nor should you speak them. You had better begin in order too, and tell all from the commencement, but calmly and in a Christian spirit, remembering that this is your own confession, and not an accusation of others." "Well, I will try," said the young man faintly, lifting his hand from the bed-clothes, as if to put it to his head in the act of thought. But he was too weak, and he fell back again, and fixing his eyes on a spot in the wall opposite the foot of the bed, he continued in a sort of dreamy commemorative way as follows: "I loved you--yes, I loved you very much--I feel it now more than ever--I loved you more than you ever knew--more than I myself knew then. (Emily bent her head and hid her eyes with her hands.) It was not," he proceeded to say, "that you were more beautiful than any of the rest--although that was true too--but there was somehow a look about you, an air when you moved, a manner when you spoke, that made it seem as if you were of a different race from the rest--something higher, brighter, better, and as if your nobler nature shone out like a gleam on all you did--I cannot help thinking that if you could have loved me in return, mine would have been a different fate, a different end, a different and brighter hope even now--" "You are wandering from the subject, my friend," said Mr. Dixwell. "Time is short." "I am not altogether wandering," said John Ayliffe, "but I feel faint. Give me some more wine." When he had got it, he continued thus: "I found you could not love me--I said in my heart that you would not love me; and my love turned into hate--at least I thought so--and I determined you should rue the day that you had refused me. Long before that, however, Shanks the lawyer had put it into my head that I could take your father's property and title from him, and I resolved some day to try, little knowing all that it would lead me into step by step. I had heard my mother say a hundred times that she had been as good as married to your uncle who was drowned, and that if right had been done I ought to have had the property. So I set to work with Shanks to see what could be done. Sometimes he led, sometimes I led; for he was a coward, and wanted to do all by cunning, and I was bold enough, and thought every thing was to be done by daring. We had both of us got dipped so deep in there was no going back. I tore one leaf out of the parish register myself, to make it seem that your grandfather had caused the record of my mother's marriage to be destroyed--but that was no marriage at all--they never were married--and that's the truth. I did a great number of other very evil things, and then suddenly Mrs. Hazleton came in to help us; and whenever there was any thing particularly shrewd and keen to be devised, especially if there was a spice of malice in it towards Sir Philip or yourself, Mrs. Hazleton planned it for us--not telling us exactly to do this thing or that, but asking if it could not be done, or if it would be very wrong to do it. But I'll tell you them all in order--all that we did." He went on to relate a great many particulars with which the reader is already acquainted. He told the whole villainous schemes which had been concocted between himself, the attorney, and Mrs. Hazleton, and which had been in part, or as a whole, executed to the ruin of Sir Philip Hastings' fortune and peace. The good clergyman took down his words with a rapid hand, as he spoke, though it was somewhat difficult; for the voice became more and more faint and low. "There is no use in trying now," said John Ayliffe in conclusion, "when I am going before God who has seen and known it all. There is no use in trying to conceal any thing. I was as ready to do evil as they were to prompt me, and I did it with a willing heart, though sometimes I was a little frightened at what I was doing, especially in the night when I could not sleep. I am sorry enough for it now--I repent from my whole heart; and now tell me--tell me, can you forgive me?" "As far as I am concerned, I forgive you entirely," said Emily, with the tears in her eyes, "and I trust that your repentance will be fully accepted. As to my father, I am sure that he will forgive you also, and I think I may take upon myself to say, that he will either come or send to you this night to express his forgiveness." "No, no, no," said the young man with a great effort. "He must not come--he must not send. I have made the atonement that he (pointing to Mr. Dixwell) required, and I have but one favor to ask. Pray, pray grant it to me. It is but this. That you will not tell any one of this confession so long as I am still living. He has got it all down. It can't be needed for a few hours, and in a few, a very few, I shall be gone. Mr. Dixwell will tell you when it is all over. Then tell what you like; but I would rather not die with more shame upon my head if I can help it." The good clergyman was about to reason with him upon the differences between healthful shame, and real shame, and false shame, but Emily gently interposed, saying, "It does not matter, my dear sir; a few hours can make no difference." Then rising, she once more repeated the words of forgiveness, and added, "I will now go and pray for you, my poor cousin--I will pray that your repentance may be sincere and true--that it may be accepted for Christ's sake, and that God may comfort you and support you even at the very last." Mr. Dixwell rose too, and telling John Ayliffe that he would return in a few minutes, accompanied Emily back towards her house. They parted, however, at the gates of the garden; and while Emily threaded her way through innumerable gravelled walks, the clergyman went back to the cottage, and once more resumed his place by the side of the dying man. CHAPTER XLI. Sir Philip Hastings returned to his own house earlier than had been expected, bringing with him the physician he had gone to seek, and whom--contrary to the ordinary course of events--he had found at once. They both went up to Lady Hastings's room where the physician, according to the usual practice of medical men in consultation, approved of all that his predecessor had done, yet ordered some insignificant changes in the medicines in order to prove that he had not come there for nothing. He took the same view of the case that Mr. Short had taken, declaring that there was no immediate danger; but at the same time he inquired particularly how that lady rested in the night, whether she started in her sleep, was long watchful, and whether she breathed freely during slumber. The maid's account was not very distinct in regard to several of these points; but she acknowledged that it was her young lady who usually sat up with Lady Hastings till three or four o'clock in the morning. Sir Philip immediately directed Emily to be summoned, but the maid informed him she had gone out about an hour and a half before, and had not then returned. When the physician took his leave and departed, Sir Philip summoned the butler to his presence, and inquired, with an eager yet gloomy tone, if he knew where Mistress Emily had gone. "I really do not, Sir Philip," replied the man. "She went out with Mr. Dixwell, but they parted a little way down the road, and my young lady went on as if she were going to farmer Wallop's or Jenny Best's." At the latter name Sir Philip started as if a serpent had stung him, and he waved to the man to quit the room. As soon as he was alone he commenced pacing up and down in more agitation than he usually displayed, and once or twice words broke from him which gave some indications of what was passing in his mind. "Too clear, too clear," he said, and then after a pause exclaimed, holding up his hands; "so young, and so deceitful! Marlow must be told of this, and then must act as he thinks fit--it were better she were dead--far better! What is the cold, dull corruption of the grave, the mere rotting of the flesh, and the mouldering of the bones, to this corruption of the spirit, this foul dissolution of the whole moral nature?" He then began to pace up and down more vehemently than before, fixing his eyes upon the ground, and seeming to think profoundly, with a quivering lip and knitted brow. "Hard, hard task for a father," he said--"God of heaven that I should ever dream of such a thing!--yet it might be a duty. What can Marlow be doing during this long unexplained absence? France--can he have discovered all this and quitted her, seeking, in charity, to make the breach as little painful as possible? Perhaps, after all," he continued, after a few moments' thought, "the man may have been mistaken when he told me that he believed that this young scoundrel was lying ill of a fall at this woman's cottage; yet at the best it was bad enough to quit a sick mother's bed-side for long hours, when I too was absent. Can she have done it to show her spleen at this foolish opposition to her marriage?" There is no character so difficult to deal with--there is none which is such a constant hell to its possessor--as that of a moody man. Sir Philip had been moody, as I have endeavored to show, from his very earliest years; but all the evils of that sort of disposition had increased upon him rapidly during the latter part of his life. Unaware, like all the rest of mankind, of the faults of his own character, he had rather encouraged than struggled against its many great defects. Because he was stern and harsh, he fancied himself just, and forgot that it is not enough for justice to judge rightly of that which is placed clearly and truly before it, and did not remember, or at all events apply the principle, that an accurate search for truth, and an unprejudiced suspension of opinion till truth has been obtained, are necessary steps to justice. Suspicion--always a part and parcel of the character of the moody man--had of late years obtained a strong hold upon him, and unfortunately it had so happened that event after event had occurred to turn his suspicion against his own guiltless child. The very lights and shades of her character, which he could in no degree comprehend, from his own nature being destitute of all such impulsiveness, had not only puzzled him, but laid the foundation of doubts. Then the little incident which I have related in a preceding part of this work, regarding the Italian singing-master--Emily's resolute but unexplained determination to take no more lessons from that man, had set his moody mind to ponder and to doubt still more. The too successful schemes and suggestions of Mrs. Hazleton had given point and vigor to his suspicions, and the betrayal of his private conversation to the government had seemed a climax to the whole, so that he almost believed his fair sweet child a fiend concealed beneath the form of an angel. It was in vain that he asked himself, What could be her motives? He had an answer ready, that her motives had always been a mystery to him, even in her lightest acts. "There are some people," he thought, "who act without motives--in whom the devil himself seems to have implanted an impulse to do evil without any cause or object, for the mere pleasure of doing wrong." On the present occasion he had accidentally heard from the farmer, who was the next neighbor of Jenny Best, that he was quite certain Sir John Hastings, as he called him, was lying ill from a fall at that good woman's cottage. His horse had been found at a great distance on a wild common, with the bridle broken, and every appearance of having fallen over in rearing. Blood and other marks of an accident had been discovered on the road. Mr. Short, the surgeon, was seen to pay several visits every day to the old woman's house, and yet maintained the most profound secrecy in regard to his patient. The farmer argued that the surgeon would not be so attentive unless that patient was a person of some importance, and it was clear he was not one of Jenny Best's own family, for every member of it had been well and active after the surgeon's visits had been commenced. All these considerations, together with the absence of John Ayliffe from his residence, had led the good farmer to a right conclusion, and he had stated the fact broadly to Sir Philip Hastings. Sir Philip, on his part, had made no particular inquiries, for the very name of John Ayliffe was hateful to him; but when he heard that his daughter had gone forth alone to that very cottage, and had remained there for a considerable time in the same place with the man whom he abhorred, and remembered that the tale which had been boldly put forth of her having visited him in secret, the very blood, as it flowed through his heart, seemed turned into fire, and his brain reeled with anguish and indignation. Presently the hall door was heard to open, and there was a light step in the passage. Sir Philip darted forth from his room, and met his daughter coming in with a sad and anxious face, and as he thought with traces of tears upon her eyelids. "Where have you been?" asked her father in a stern low tone. "I have been to Jenny Best's down the lane, my father," replied Emily, startled by his look and manner, but still speaking the plain truth, as she always did. "Is my mother worse?" Without a word of reply Sir Philip turned away into his room again and closed the door. Alarmed by her father's demeanor, Emily hurried up at once to Lady Hastings's room, but found her certainly more cheerful and apparently better. The assurance given by the physician that there was no immediate danger, nor any very unfavorable symptom, had been in a certain degree a relief to Lady Hastings herself; for, although she had undoubtedly been acting a part when in the morning she had declared herself dying, yet, as very often happens with those who deceive, she had so far partially deceived herself as to believe that she was in reality very ill. She was surprised at Emily's sudden appearance and alarmed look, but her daughter did not think it right to tell her the strange demeanor of Sir Philip, but sitting down as calmly as she could by her mother's side, talked to her for several minutes on indifferent subjects. It was evident to Emily that, although her father's tone was so harsh, her mother viewed her more kindly than in the morning, and the information which had been given her by the surgeon accounted for the change. The conduct of Sir Philip, however, seemed not to be explained, and Emily could hardly prevent herself from falling into one of those reveries which have often been mentioned before. She struggled against the tendency, however, for some time, till at length she was relieved by the announcement that Mistress Hazleton was below, but when Lady Hastings gave her maid directions to bring her friend up, Emily could refrain no longer from uttering at least one word of warning. "Give me two minutes more, dear mamma," she said, in a low voice. "I have something very particular to say to you--let Mrs. Hazleton wait but for two minutes." "Well," said Lady Hastings, languidly; and then turning to the maid she added, "Tell dear Mrs. Hazleton that I will receive her in five minutes, and when I ring my bell, bring her up." As soon as the maid had retired Emily sank upon her knees by her mother's bed-side, and kissed her hand, saying, "I have one great favor to ask, dear mother, and I beseech you to grant it." "Well, my child," answered Lady Hastings, thinking she was going to petition for a recall of her injunction against the marriage with Marlow, "I have but one object in life, my dear Emily, and that is your happiness. I am willing to make any sacrifice of personal feelings for that object. What is it you desire?" "It is merely this," replied Emily, "that you would not put any trust or confidence whatever in Mrs. Hazleton. That you would doubt her representations, and confide nothing to her, for a short time at least." Lady Hastings looked perfectly aghast. "What do yon mean, Emily?" she said. "What can you mean? Put no trust in Mrs. Hazleton, my oldest and dearest friend?" "She is not your friend," replied Emily, earnestly, "nor my friend, nor my father's friend, but the enemy of every one in this house. I have long had doubts--Marlow changed those doubts into suspicions, and this day I have accidentally received proof positive of her cruel machinations against my father, yourself, and me. This justifies me in speaking as I now do, otherwise I should have remained silent still." "But explain, explain, my child," said Lady Hastings. "What has she done? What are these proofs you talk of? I cannot comprehend at all unless you explain." "There would be no time, even if I were not bound by a promise," replied Emily; "but all I ask is that you suspend all trust and confidence in Mrs. Hazleton for one short day--perhaps it may be sooner; but I promise you that at the end of that time, if not before, good Mr. Dixwell shall explain every thing to you, and place in your hands a paper which will render all Mrs. Hazleton's conduct for the last two years perfectly clear and distinct." "But do tell me something, at least, Emily," urged her mother. "I hate to wait in suspense. You used to be very fond of Mrs. Hazleton and she of you. When did these suspicions of her first begin, and how?" "Do you not remember a visit I made to her some time ago," replied Emily, "when I remained with her for several days? Then I first learned to doubt her. She then plotted and contrived to induce me to do what would have been the most repugnant to your feelings and my father's, as well as to my own. But moreover she came into my room one night walking in her sleep, and all her bitter hatred showed itself then." "Good gracious! What did she say? What did she do?" exclaimed Lady Hastings, now thoroughly forgetting herself in the curiosity Emily's words excited. Her daughter related all that had occurred on the occasion of Mrs. Hazleton's sleeping visit to her room, and repeated her words as nearly as she could recollect them. "But why, my dearest child, did you not tell us all this before?" asked Lady Hastings. "Because the words were spoken in sleep," answered Emily, "and excited at the time but a vague doubt. Sleep is full of delusions; and though I thought the dream must be a strange one which could prompt such feelings, yet still it might all be a troublous dream. It was not till afterwards, when I saw cause to believe that Mrs. Hazleton wished to influence me in a way which I thought wrong, that I began to suspect the words that had come unconsciously from the depths of her secret heart. Since then suspicion has increased every day, and now has ripened into certainty. I tell you, dear mother, that good Mr. Dixwell, whom you know and can trust, has the information as well as myself. But we are both bound to be silent as to the particulars for some hours more. I could not let Mrs. Hazleton be with you again, however--remembering, as I do, that seldom has she crossed this threshold or we crossed hers, without some evil befalling us--and not say as much as I have said, to give you the only hint in my power of facts which, if you knew them fully, you could judge of much better than myself. Believe me, dear mother, that as soon as I am permitted--and a very few hours will set me free--I will fly at once to tell you all, and leave you and my father to decide and act as your own good judgment shall direct." "You had better tell me first, Emily," replied Lady Hastings; "a woman can always best understand the secrets of a woman's heart. I wish you had not made any promise of secrecy; but as you have, so it must be. Has Marlow had any share in this discovery?" she added, with some slight jealousy of his influence over her daughter's mind. "Not in the least with that which I have made to-day," replied Emily; "but I need not at all conceal from you that he has long suspected Mrs. Hazleton of evil feelings and evil acts towards our whole family; and that he believes that he has discovered almost to a certainty that Mrs. Hazleton aided greatly in all the wrong and injury that has been done my father. The object of his going to France was solely to trace out the whole threads of the intrigue, and he went, not doubting in the least that he should succeed in restoring to my parents all that has been unjustly taken from them. That such a restoration must take place, I now know; but what he has learned or what he has done I cannot tell you, for I am not aware. I am sure, however, that if he brings all he hopes about, it will be his greatest joy to have aided to right you even in a small degree." "I do believe he is a very excellent and amiable young man," said Lady Hastings thoughtfully. She seemed as if she were on the point of saying something farther on the subject of Marlow's merits; but then checked herself, and added, "But now indeed, Emily, I think I ought to send for Mrs. Hazleton." "But you promise me, dear mother," urged Emily eagerly, "that you will put no faith in any thing she tells you, and will not confide in her in any way till you have heard the whole?" "That I certainly will take care to avoid, my dear," replied Lady Hastings. "After what you have told me, it would be madness to put any confidence in her--especially when a few short hours will reveal all. You are sure, Emily, that it will not be longer!" "Perfectly certain, my dear mother," answered her daughter. "I would not have promised to refrain from speaking, had I not been certain that the time for such painful concealment must be very short." "Well, then, my dear child, ring the bell," said Lady Hastings. "I will be very guarded merely on your assurances, for I am sure that you are always candid and sincere whatever your poor father may think." Emily rung the bell, and retired to her own room, repeating mournfully to herself, "whatever my poor father may think!--Well, well," she added, "the time will soon come when he will be undeceived, and do his child justice. Alas, that it should ever have been otherwise!" She found relief in tears; and while she wept in solitude Lady Hastings prepared to receive Mrs. Hazleton with cold dignity. She had fully resolved when Emily left her to be as silent as possible in regard to every thing that had occurred that day, not to allude directly or indirectly to the warning which had been given her, and to leave Mrs. Hazleton to attribute her unwonted reserve to caprice or any thing else she pleased. But the resolutions of Lady Hastings were very fragile commodities when she fell into the hands of artful people who knew her character, and one was then approaching not easily frustrated in her designs. FOOTNOTES: [6] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by G. P. R. James, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. Continued from page 41. NEWSPAPER POETS: CHARLES WELDON. Some of the best poetry in America makes its appearance in the newspapers, without pretension, and often without the names of its authors. It is enough for them to write, and publish, whoever will may take the fame. This indifference to public opinion does not arise from any want of autorial vanity perhaps, but in most cases from that modesty which an acquaintance with and self-measurement by the best standards never fails to produce in sincere lovers of art. Recently a series of noticeable poems has from time to time appeared in the _Tribune_, without any name or clue to their authorship except the enigmatical initials O. O. They are by Mr. Charles Weldon; he is still a young man, and the poems below, we have been told, are the first that he wrote. Their niceties of rhythm in many cases would reflect credit on the recognized masters of the poetic art. In this respect they are remarkable; but perhaps their greatest charm is a certain kind of subtle but masculine thought. They embody what most men feel, but lack words to express; strange facts of impression and consciousness, half-formed philosophies, and those glimpses of truth which are revealed to the mind in certain moods, as stray rays of the moon on a cloudy night. In this respect they resemble the best pieces of Emerson, who seems to be a favorite with Mr. Weldon. In others they remind us of the simplicity of "In Memoriam." By this we intend a compliment rather than a charge of imitation. Mr. Weldon's thoughts are too peculiar to come from any one but himself, and too original to be cast in other moulds. We shall watch his progress with interest, and are mistaken if he does not do something worthy to be long remembered. Mysterious interpreter, Dear Aid that God has given to me! Instruct me, for I meanly err; Inform me, for I dimly see. I know thee not: How can I know?-- I sought thee long, and lately found, Wearing the sable weeds of wo, A figure cast upon the ground. _Thou_ wert that figure. Face to face We have not stood: I dare not see Thy features. We did once embrace, And all my being went to thee. Henceforward never more apart We wander. All thy steps are mine. Thou hast my brain: thou hast my heart: Thou hast my soul. And I am thine. ...*...*...*...* The Sun has his appointed place, He never rests, and never tires; And ever in serenest space Burn the celestial, upper fires. They shine into the soul of man-- Good works of God, but not the best-- And he adores them as he can, Cherishing a supremer guest. He does not know the alphabet Of angel-language, who aspires Against the sky his tube to set, And spell them into worlds, those fires. ...*...*...*...* The Petrel, bird of storms, is found Five hundred leagues from any ground: He dwells upon the ocean-wave; He screams above the sailor's grave. How many tens of centuries Ere mankind built their theories, Skimming the foamy tracks of whales, Did he outride the stoutest gales, Upon three thousand miles of sea From land to land perpetually Rolling; and not a wave could stay, From day to night, from night to day, Without an anthem? Where are gone The anthem, and the sea-bird's moan? Where is the splendor of the morn That rose on seas, ere man was born? Where are the roses of the years, Ere Mother Eve knew mother's cares? Where is the clang of Tubal-Cain's First brass, and where are Jubal's strains? Where is the rainbow Noah saw And heard a law, or thought a law? The rainbow fades, the beauty lives; The creature falls, the race survives. ...*...*...*...* They tell us that the brain is mind, Or the mind enters through the brain, Even as light that is confined And colored by the window pane. The act is fashioned by the head, And thus man does or cannot do; Through the red glass the light is red. Through the blue glass the light is blue. They do not urge their world-machine To sounder progress, nor explain The difficulties that were seen And felt before--pray what _is_ brain? All undiscoverable, how Can they resolve the Whence or Why Man grew to being in the Now, Or what is his Futurity. ...*...*...*...* Down the world's steep, dread abysmal, Icy as Spitzbergen's coast, Through the night hours, long and dismal, Ghost is calling unto ghost; Crushed is every fairer promise, And the good is taken from us; Sorrow adds to former sorrow, And, with every new to-morrow, Some expected joy is lost. But I will not shrink nor murmur. Though a spectre leads me on; Now I set my footsteps firmer, Face me now, thou skeleton! Trance me with thy fleshless eyeholes-- But I move to other viols Than the rattling of thy bones, As we tread the crazy stones, For I see the risen sun. With my face behind my shadow Thrown before the risen sun, Life I follow o'er the meadow, And an angel thrusts me on. Every little flower below me Seems to see me, seems to know me; Every bird and cloud above me Seems (or do I dream?) to love me, While the Angel thrusts me on. Where the turf is softest, greenest, Does that Angel thrust me on; Where the landscape lies serenest In the journey of the sun. I shall pass through golden portals With him, to the wise Immortals, And behold the saints and sages Who outshone their several ages, For an Angel thrust them on. ...*...*...*...* The poem of the Universe Nor rhythm has, nor rhyme; Some god recites the wondrous song, A stanza at a time. Great deeds he is foredoomed to do, With Freedom's flag unfurled, Who hears the echo of that song, As it goes down the world. Great words he is compelled to speak, Who understands the song; He rises up like fifty men-- Fifty good men and strong. A stanza for each century! Now, heed it, all who can, Who hears it, he, and only he, Is the elected man. ...*...*...*...* The frost upon the window pane Makes crystal pictures in the night; The Earth, old mother, wears again Her garment of the shining white. We fly across the frozen snow With bounding blood that will not pause. Oh Heaven! we are far below-- Oh Earth! above thee, with thy laws. The happy horses toss their bells; The sleigh goes on into the far And far away. (A whisper tells Of flight to where the angels are.) Glide forward. As a star that slips Through space, we know a large desire; And though our steeds are urged by whips, We haste as they were urged by fire. Dash forward, Let us know no rest-- But on, and on, and ever on, Until the palace of the West We enter, with the sinking sun. And forward still, until the East Releases the aspiring day; And forward till the hours have ceased, Oh Earth! now art thou far away. ...*...*...*...* The mountains truly have a glorious roughness; I do not hear the pyramids are smooth; The ocean grandly foams into abruptness; Does God peal thunder down a well-oiled groove? Thou, with a poet's roughness, friend, would'st quarrel; Staggering o'er the ridges of ploughed speech, You move uneasily. Well, the apparel Of verse is trivial. Try the sense to reach. THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE: OR, THE SPY IN SOCIETY.[7] TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF H. DE ST. GEORGES. XX.--THE GOOD AND THE BAD ANGEL. The Count of Monte-Leone was cast down on receiving from the minister an order to leave France. So many interests bound him to his country; not that he cherished still the hope of being loved by Aminta, and of one day giving her his name. His ruin had dissipated all his bright dreams of future happiness. But he resided in the same place as the marquise; he breathed the same air that she breathed. To live near her thus, without seeing her, without telling her of that love which consumed his soul, was indeed cruel--it was a bitter sorrow to him every hour and every moment. But to remove himself from her and France was to die. And then, his political work--that work, his life and glory--that work which he loved because it avenged him of kings in avenging his father, the victim of a king--in which he believed he saw the regeneration of the world--that great work, in fine, of which the confidence of almost all the _Ventes_ of Europe rendered him in some way the master and arbiter--it was necessary to renounce at the very moment of accomplishment. He must abandon his associates, his brothers, who relied in the hour of danger on his devotion and energy, and on the firm and bold will with which he had often controlled chance, and by which he had produced safety from apparent shipwreck. Had the Count been denounced? was the plan for the completion of which he and his friends toiled known? He told Taddeo, Von Apsbery, and d'Harcourt, of the order he had received, and they had consulted about it. Their plans, as it will be seen, though difficult, were susceptible of penetration. The house of the false Matheus as yet appeared unsuspected, and that was a great point. It was the holy ark in which were deposited the archives of the association, and the names of the agents, and if it were violated, all was lost. The expulsion from France of the Count might be the signal of the persecutions about to be begun against Carbonarism. At once, by means of a spontaneity which was one of the characteristics of the association, all the _Vente_ of Paris were informed of the measures adopted against Count Monte-Leone. The mighty serpent then coiled up its innumerable rings and then its federal union apparently ceased in the whole capital. The orders were transmitted, received, and executed the very night after the decree of the minister had been signified to Monte-Leone. The friends during the night could not fancy why the order had been given. Monte-Leone seemed, as it were, struck by a new idea and said: "Perhaps it has no political motive, but has been dictated by private vengeance." He then paused, for he saw Taddeo's eyes fixed on him. He continued--"I have a few hours left to ascertain it, and will do so, not for my own sake, for whatever motive it may have, it will not trouble me less, but for your sake, my friends, who will remain here to defend the breach and to receive the enemy's attack." It was then resolved that up to the time of Monte-Leone's departure, he should not again visit Matheus's house, nor receive the adieus of his friends even at his hotel. All this took place on the night after the interview of the stranger and M. H----, and on the day Louis XVIII. received the visit of the Prince de Maulear. In relation to private revenge the Count could think of no one except the beautiful and passionate Duchess of Palma, who had loved him so devotedly that she wished even to die for him. This passionate woman he had driven to despair. For some time, though, calmness and resignation seemed to occupy her once desolate heart. The Count rarely visited her, but occasionally went to her hotel. Every time he did so, he found her more reasonable and calm. The Duchess evidently avoided all allusion to their old relations. She inquired calmly after his affairs, his pleasures, and his friends. When her mind recurred to the past, as a skiff drifts towards the river it has left, an effort of will was required again to push it into the wide stream of worldliness and indifference. The Count, however, was a delicate and acute observer, and sounded the abyss of her mind through the flowers which grew across its brink. The Count then went to his hotel at the _Champs Elysées_, to clear up his suspicions, and to ascertain if his expulsion had not been caused by the Duchess of Palma. Monte-Leone was ushered in and found her with a few visitors. The features of the Duchess evidently became flushed at the sound of Monte-Leone's name. This, however, was but a flash of light in the dark, and the pale and beautiful face of La Felina soon became cold and passionless. "I expected you, Signor," said she, "when I learned from the Duke the unpleasant event which has occurred. I did not think you would leave the city without seeing me." "Signora," said the Count, "you were right. But you are mistaken in calling the terrible blow, the almost humiliating attack to which I have been subjected, a disagreeable event." "Certainly," said La Felina, "it is a catastrophe, and I can understand how severe it must be. We will talk of it by and by, however, when we are _alone_." The last words of the Duchess were a dismissal to those in the room, and a few moments after they left. When the ambassadress had seen the last visitor leave, she rang the bell by her side. A footman came, to whom she said, "Remember I am at home to no one, not even to the Duke, if he take it into his head to ask for me. Now," said she to the Count, who was surprised at the precautions she had taken, "we are now alone, and can talk together safely. You tell me you are ordered to leave France?" "At once, without the assignment of any reason." "Have you not seen the Minister and asked an explanation?" "I did not think it dignified to do so. Besides, my legal protector in France, the Duke of Palma, the Neapolitan ambassador, alone can defend me. I am, too, unwilling to ask justice, even, far less a favor, from his excellency." "You are right," said the Duchess. "You would not have been successful, for at the instance of the Duke himself have you been ordered away." The reply of the Duchess was clear and precise. The Count had every reason to suspect she had participated in the affair, but wished to be sure of it. "And has not the Duchess discovered why the Duke has done so?" "Certainly," said La Felina. "The Duke has little confidence in me, not deigning to initiate me in the mysteries of diplomacy. This is not the case, though, with the secretaries. Now," said she kindly, "you must know that nothing which relates to you is uninteresting and I therefore sought to discover why such a stern course had been adopted." "Indeed." "Your Neapolitan enemies, or perhaps your _friends_, have caused this. The court of Naples had, by means of the Duke of Palma, pointed you out to that of France as maintaining communications with Italy, which endangered the peace of the country. You are accused of being engaged in a plot to control from Paris the insurrectionary movements of the two Sicilies. You may," said she, "be innocent of those crimes, but you have left terrible recollections behind you in Naples, and your name will long continue a standard of revolt and sedition." "The court of Naples," said the Count, "does me honor by believing me thus powerful and formidable. I do not see, however, the use of bringing so dangerous a person to Italy." The Duchess said, "At home, it will be able to watch you more closely than at a distance. I trust, however, we will be able to defeat their plans and keep you here." "What say you?" said the Count. "I say that I am willing to abandon many schemes, but will not be diverted from being useful to you--from defending you against your enemies--nor cease to be what I once was, a secret providence, an �gis against danger. You know I learned this long ago, and am happy to be again able to assume the part." The Count did not know what to think, and his face expressed doubt and incredulity. "Well, well," said she bitterly, "you suspect, you doubt me, and do not think me generous enough to return good for evil. So be it; judge me by my actions rather than my words. The former will soon convince you of my devotion." "What devotion, Signora, do you speak of?" said the Count with curiosity. "Plainly speaking, of the most sublime of all devotion--of making you happy at the expense of myself. I wish to retain you here in France, where the happiness of which I speak exists, to keep you by her who loves you and by whom you are loved." "What say you?" said the Count, "would you do so?" "I will try," said Felina. "I have been forced to adopt strange and extreme means," added she, with a smile. "You know serious cases require violent remedies, and I had no choice." "Felina," said the Count, with emotion, "I have just committed an offence against you, for which I blush, and which my frankness alone can excuse. When you were busy in my behalf I fancied you the cause of my troubles." "That is very natural, and I am not at all surprised," said the Duchess. "People in this world are not apt to repay evil with good. I, however, do not wish to appear to you to be better than I am. Perhaps I am less deserving than you think. Time, it is said, cures the greatest mortifications, and dissipates the deepest passions. Three months ago I did not think it possible that I could have acted thus on your behalf. Then I was but a poor despised woman, passionate and deserted. Now I am your friend, sincere and devoted." "You are an angel," said the Count, with a deep transport of gratitude. "An angel," said the Duchess. "Then there are only good angels. But," continued she, as if she were unwilling to suffer the Count to think on what she had said, "let us descend from heaven, where you give me so excellent a resting place, to earth. Speak to me of your plans and of her you love." "Of her I love!" said the Count, with hesitation. "Certainly; have not all your old hopes returned? Has not the death of the Marquis revived your old passion?" "Felina," said the Count, "should I talk to you of such matters?" "Why not? am I not the first to mention them? You must, from my _sang-froid_, see that I can now listen to your confessions and hear all your tender sentiments. The French proverb says: _'Il n'y a que le premier pas qui coute_;'[8] I have already taken that. Treat me as a sister, but as a sister you love, and let me at least have the satisfaction of knowing that my self-denial has made you happy." "Happy!" said the Count, relapsing into sad thoughts, "may I always be happy, as you seem to wish me! I do not know that I may not hope some day for her to share my fate. She once refused my hand. I do not know but that her heart at last listens to mine; but that which Count Monte-Leone, amid all his luxury, once could offer, the poor and exiled Italian does not now propose." "Really," said Felina, "I am predestined to make you happy. By a single word I am about to dissipate the clouds around you, and light up your brow and heart with joy." "That is impossible," said the Count. "I henceforth have nothing, and have lost even hope." "The present," said the Duchess, "is less sombre than you think it. You are yet rich, almost as you ever were." The features of the Count expressed the greatest astonishment. "Listen to me," said the Duchess. "Yesterday one of my Neapolitan friends came to see me. He spoke of you, and I did not conceal the interest with which you had inspired me. He told me he had a confidential letter for Count Monte-Leone from his banker, Antonio Lamberti. The man is not so bad as he is thought to be; for, forced to give way before the burden of his obligations, he only pretended to fail. United by friendship, and especially by political opinions, with you, he has saved your fortune, and will send you the income until he can arrange his affairs and send you the capital." "Can this be true?" said the Count, beside himself. "All this can be effected only on certain conditions, that you will answer the letter of Lamberti, which now should be at your hotel." Monte-Leone could not repress his joy. "Rich," said he; "yet rich! Fortune has now its value for _her_ sake." Scarcely had he uttered the last word when the face of the Duchess changed its expression. Her eyes glared with madness, and a mortal pallor covered her face. "Excuse me," said the Count, as he saw this change. This was however but a flash, and by her powerful self-control Mme. de Palma became calm and smiling. She said "convalescents sometimes have relapses. Time is indispensable for a radical cure. The storm has passed, and the old nature reappears but for a moment, and gives place to the new but true friend, who rejoices with you at your unanticipated good fortune. It will secure your happiness." "My friend," added she, reaching out her hand to Monte-Leone, "you must be impatient to ascertain if what I have said is true. Go home, and you will find my prediction correct." "Felina," said the Count, "if your hopes are not realized, if you be not again my good star, I shall not be less grateful to you." "Gratitude is cold, indeed," said Felina. "I ask your friendship." "It is all yours," said the Count. "Well, go now," said the Duchess, with a smile. She was right, for when he reached his hotel, his old and faithful Giacomo, who, since his master's misfortune, had discharged his servants, and now performed all his functions, with the addition of those of valet, factotum, and cook, was busy with preparations for the departure of Monte-Leone. The old man gave him a letter, saying that it had been brought during his absence. The Count opened it, and read as follows: "COUNT MONTE-LEONE: You will lose nothing by Antonio Lamberti. He is not a person to destroy one of our great association. You will find within a check for fifty thousand livres, drawn in your favor by one of the first houses in Naples, on the house of Casimer Périer of Paris. This is the interest at five per cent. on the million deposited by you with Antonio Lamberti. Every year the same sum will be paid down, and before six months you will receive security for your principal. One condition only is interposed on the return of your fortune. This is indispensable--that you maintain the most profound secrecy in relation to your new resources, and attribute them to any other than the real cause. The least indiscretion on your part will awake attention in relation to means employed to save from the wreck of Antonio Lamberti your own fortune." This letter was signed, _A Brother of the Venta of Castel-à-Mare_. Count Monte-Leone, though master of himself in adversity, could not repress his joy as he read this saving letter. As he had said at the house of La Felina, it was not for himself but for another that he rejoiced at this return of prosperity. "A fine time, indeed, to be laughing," said Giacomo, ill-tempered as possible, "when we are being driven from the country as if we were spotted with plague. Only think, a Monte-Leone expelled, when his ancestor, Andrea Monte-Leone, Viceroy of Sicily, received royal honors in every town he passed through. You, however, have no shame. No, Signor," added he, as he saw Monte-Leone smiling. "Had I been in your place, I would have picked a quarrel and killed the damned minister who has forced us to resume our wandering gipsy life. Besides we are ruined gipsies. At my age to begin my wanderings, to be badly lodged, badly fed, like the servant of a pedler. If I were only twenty I would undertake a game of dagger-play with my minister." "That is very fine, Giacomo," said Monte-Leone, "but the dagger is not the fashion in France. As for your apprehensions of the future, you may get rid of them by leaving me." The wrath of the old man disappeared at these words of his master, and great tears streamed down his furrowed cheeks. "Leave you! I leave you, when you are lost and ruined, Count?" said the good man. "Your father would not have spoken thus to me." "Come, come, old boy, you know well enough I cannot get on without you. If you did not scold me every day, if you did not bark everlastingly at me, like those old servants to whom age gives impunity--if I did not hear every morning and night your magisterial reprimands, I would have fancied I missed some luxury. Be easy, however, Giacomo. You saw me happy just now because my sky began to grow bright, because our fortune is about to change, because we are nearer good fortune than you thought." Full of these happy ideas, and anxious to take advantage of the few hours yet under his control, in case his departure should be enforced, the Count went to the hotel of the Prince. His heart beat violently when he was shown into the saloon of the Marquise, and he was glad that her not being in the room enabled him to repress his agitation. Aminta came in soon after. When Monte-Leone was announced, she felt almost as he had done. She spoke first, but with a voice full of agitation. "We had almost despaired of seeing you, Count, for the Prince told me you were about to go. You have however neglected us for so long a time that we knew not whether we might expect you to bid us adieu." The fact was, that since the news of his ruin the Count had not called to see Aminta. He felt that every interview made his departure more painful and the wreck of his hopes more terrible. "Madame," said he, without replying immediately to her kind reproach, "you are not mistaken, for an exile comes to bid you farewell. That exile, however, will bear away a perpetual memory of your kindness." "You will see _our_ country," said the Marquise, with an effort. "I shall see my country, but not that which made it dear to me." "You will find many friends there," said the Marquise, becoming more and more troubled. "Friends are like swallows, Signora, they love the summer, but leave when winter comes." "You must have thought the Prince and myself were like them," said Aminta, "and that winter was come. You have not been for a long time to see us." "Ah, Signora, had I known--had I guessed--such a sympathy would have made me wish for misfortune." "No, Count, not so. It should, however, aid you to bear it." "There are misfortunes," said the Count, "which often disturb the strongest mind and destroy the greatest courage." "Ah, Signor, should the loss of a fortune cause such regret?" "But what if the loss of fortune," continued the Count, "involved that of the only blessing dreamed of--if this loss deprived you even of the right to be happy--then, Signora, do you understand, what would be the effect of such a loss?" The future fate of the Count was thus exhibited to Aminta. She saw at once that this noble and energetic man, born to command, must be proscribed, wandering, and wretched. The idea was too much for her heart, already crushed by the idea of a separation which became every moment more painful to her, and she therefore formed in her mind a generous resolution. "Signor," said she, "there are hearts which are attracted rather than alienated by misfortune, and sentiments which they would conceal from the happy, they confess to those who suffer." Monte-Leone, perfectly overcome, fell at the Marquise's feet. He was about to confess the unexpected good fortune which had befallen him. He, however, forgot all, and covered the hand which the Marquise abandoned to him with kisses. The Prince de Maulear entered, and appeared surprised but not offended by what he saw. "Do not disturb yourself, dear Count,--I know the meaning of all that, and expected it. But if, however, you are making an exhibition of your despair and misery, you have lost your time; for you will not go. The King places a high estimate on you, and will not forget you. He told me so." XXI.--THE SECRET PANEL. Three hours after the revelation made to M. H---- by his mysterious visitor in the cabinet of the chief of the political police, a man about fifty years of age rang at the door of a room on the second story of a furnished house in Jacob-street. He looked like a substantial citizen with a property of fifty thousand francs--or an income of 2,500 francs at five per cent. The mulberry frock of this man, over a vest of yellow silk, spotted with snuff, and a cravat of white mousseline, with gloves of sea-green, and pantaloons of brown cloth twisted like a cork-screw around his legs, an ivory-headed cane, and all the _et cetera_, might appropriately belong to a shopkeeper, retired from business, living in some _thebaide_ of the streets d'Enfer or Vaugirard, and sustaining their intellects by the leaders of "The White Flag" of Martainville, and by witnessing once a year some chef-d'oeuvre of Picard at the Odeon. We will make no conjectures about the social position of this gentleman,--he will hereafter explain himself. Almost before the bell he rang had ceased to sound, the door was opened by another person. The latter was tall, dark and athletic, so that we would really have taken him for the lover of Mlle. Celestine Crepineau, had he worn the magnificent moustache and voluminous whiskers of the bear-hunter, which the lady admired so much. His costume, too, was different from that of the Spaniard. He wore a blue frock over his chest, at the bottom hole of which was a bit of red ribbon, not a little discolored. "Ah! M. Morisseau," said the inmate of the room, "you are welcome, but late. The dinner is cold. And," added he in a low tone, "the dinner of _a brigand of the Loire_, as they call such fragments of the imperial guard as myself, must be hot, it being too small to eat in any other way." "I think it always excellent, Monsieur _Rhinoceros_," said Morisseau. "Permit me," said the brigand of the Loire,--for so the man called himself--"My name is not Rhinoceros. A certain African animal has that beautiful name, as I have often told you during the many games of _dominoes_ we have played together at the _Café Lemblin_, whither you are attracted by my company. My name is _Rinoccio--Paolo Rinoccio_, born in Corsica, as my foreign accent tells you. I am the countryman of _him_." He made a military salute. "I served ten years beneath the Eagles. You, too, adore our Emperor. Each Buonapartist has a hand for his brother," continued he, shaking that of Morisseau. "Already thinking alike, eight days ago, over M. Lemblin's cognac, we swore eternal friendship. You, therefore, deigned to visit the warrior in his tent, in Jacob-street, to share the bread and soup of the soldier, and drink to the return of _him_ of Austerlitz." "M. Rhinoceros,--no, no, Rhino,--damn the name," said the Corsican's guest, "it is indeed an honor for me to sit at the table of so brave a man--for that reason, I accepted your invitation." "Sit down, then, and let us drink to the health of the little corporal." As he spoke he filled two glasses and emptied his own. M. Morisseau simply moistened his lips. "The Emperor," he said, on receiving his part of the soup, "the Emperor, M. Rhino, was my god." "And that of France," said the Corsican. "He was my god and my best customer; I had the honor to be his furrier." "His what?" "His furrier. I furnished his majesty's robes--not only his own, but those of all the kings he made. You know the Emperor used to make a king a year, and he used to insist that all his brothers and friends should reign only in my robes. I had the honor, therefore, of wrapping up the august forms of Kings Louis, Joseph, Jerome, Bernadotte and Murat, without particularizing the sovereign princes, grand dukes, and grand judges, who to please _him_ dealt with me." "To _his_ health," said the Corsican, and he emptied the second glass. "You never served, Monsieur Morisseau?" "Yes," said the furrier, "I marched beneath the imperial eagles. I belonged to the glorious army of the _Sambre_ and _Meuse_. I even now suffer in my _femur_." "From a ball?" "No, from the rheumatism, contracted during a forced march during the winter of '93. Having been surprised during the night by the enemy, I had not time to dress myself comfortably, and was compelled to march fifteen leagues barefooted, and in my drawers. That, by the bye, was the usual uniform of our army. Those who were best dressed only wore shoes and pantaloons. To dress thus, though, something more than our pay was necessary, which we never got." "You were then discharged?" "Yes, for my rheumatism became very severe. But for it I might now be a general. I asked a pension as having been wounded in service. It was, however, refused me--a great injustice." "The soup is gone. It is a very indigestible food, and we must therefore attack the enemy in his strong-holds. Two glasses of vin de Beaume will settle him." "But," said Morisseau, as he saw his host filling up his glass, "my head is very weak, and I have not gotten drunk since I left the service." "So be it, dear Morisseau. I will go for the second service, which the restorateur leaves in the kitchen. Excuse my having no servant, but two old soldiers like us can do without attendants." Rinoccio went into the next room. When Morisseau was alone he took a little vial from his pocket, opened it, and poured a few drops into the Corsican's glass, the third portion of the contents of which he had swallowed. Scarcely had he replaced the vial when the Corsican entered, having a plate on which were two large pork chops, with a gravy of _cornichons_. "The second entry will make a man drink like a fish," said the Corsican. "Let us drink, then," said Morisseau, knocking his glass against his host's. "Let us drink," said the latter; and Morisseau's eyes glared as he saw him bear the glass to his lips. His joy, however, was short. "Let us drink something better than this," said the Corsican, who, as he spoke, threw away the contents of his glass. "I have some champagne given me by my General, one of the old guard, and I shall never find a more suitable occasion to uncork it." He took from a shelf near the table a long wire-fastened bottle, covered with a venerable dust. Morisseau was not yet in despair, for he relied for an opportunity to use his vial on the third service. Paolo dexterously uncorked the bottle, and poured out a glass of perfumed wine to the imperial furrier, who, when he had knocked his glass against the Corsican's, drank it down, while the latter, just when he got it to his mouth, saw a fragment of cork on its brim. He took it out with his knife, lifted up the glass, and said: "To the Emperor. May he whom the enemies call the Corsican Ogre, soon eat up the Prussians, Austrians, and beggarly Cossacks. May he cut them into cat's-meat. May he cut off the _ailles de Pigeon_ of all the _Voltigeurs de Louis XVI._ restored by the Bourbons. May he--" Rinoccio paused in his speech, for his guest looked pale and disturbed, and seemed about to go to sleep. "_Per Bacco!_" said M. Morisseau, at once speaking the purest Italian, "what did that devil give me to drink?" "Probably," said the Corsican, in the same tongue, "what you would have given me, had I not taken care to empty in the fireplace the glass into which you had poured some narcotic or other." "Christ!" said the furrier, "the beggar saw me!" "Perfectly, Signor Pignana." "He knows me," said the false furrier, attempting to rise. The Corsican, however, pushed him back, and Pignana sank stupidly on his seat. "Curse you, Stenio, you shall pay for this!..." "Ah, ah," said the Corsican, "so two played at the same game. Funny! and we were both good actors. I do not ask you," continued he, ironically, "why you came hither, and why you consented to share my frugal meal, for I know already, and will tell you. You met me in Paris, my presence annoyed you and your friends, and I know why. You watched and pursued me to find where I lived, and you succeeded. You joined me at the Café Lemblin, and we neither seemed to recognize each other. I asked you to dine, and you accepted my invitation, for with the drug you have you intended to put me to sleep, and expected then to be able to examine all my plans. You would have failed, Signor Pignana, for I do not live in this house. I took this room only for your especial benefit, and intend to give it up to-morrow. Do not, therefore, be disturbed, my good fellow; but go to sleep, and digest your dinner." "But I will not go to sleep," said Signor Pignana, attempting again to rise, "I will not go to sleep here, in the house of a man I think capable of any thing." "Not exactly that," said the Corsican, "but I am capable of much." "What do you wish to do with me?" said Pignana, articulating with great pain, for his tongue began to grow heavy and his ideas confused. "That you must not know; but do not be afraid, your life and health being dear to me. I would not deprive the Carbonari of so skilful an agent, who is so daring and prudent as you are. Lest, however, you should be uneasy and your sleep be troubled, I will tell you what I mean, and you will yourself admire my plan." Half stupid with sleep and terror, Pignana glared at Stenio Salvatori. "Here," said he, lifting up Pignana from the floor and placing him on a kind of sofa, "lie there, and then you can both sleep better and hear me more at your ease. You will for twelve hours have the most pleasant dreams imaginable. A glass will make you sleep twelve hours--a bottle for eternity." Pignana made a gesture expressive of the greatest terror. "Do not be so uneasy," said Stenio, "and remember you have had only a glass. To-morrow, at six o'clock, you will wake up, with a slight headache, but in other respects perfectly well. Then the master of the house will come to ask after you. If you are generous, you will give him something to drink your health. Otherwise you will thank him and go, for all has been paid for. You see I do things genteelly, and know how to receive my friends. You will then leave this house, and go about your usual business, and will never mention this matter." "Eh? who will prevent me?" muttered Pignana. "Oh, you will take care not to do so. For if you own that you have been duped, your confederates will think you a fool, and dismiss you without wages. Now this would be bad--just on the eve of their success. If you tell them how long you have slept, they will think you an idiot, for I never saw any one take to champagne so kindly as you did just now, my dear Pignana. Now, adieu, for I must go. Be still," said he, pushing Pignana down with all his strength. "No, no, do not take the trouble to go with me--you are too kind. Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, my dear fellow." He left the room, and sleep took possession of its prey. Pignana felt his ideas grow gradually more confused, and his real life pass away. A few minutes after Stenio's departure, M. Pignana was sound asleep. Stenio then slowly opened the door of the room, and glided like a shadow over the floor to the sleeper, into whose pockets he placed his hand. "Nothing here--not here. The devil, can it be that it is not about him!" A smile of triumph, however, soon appeared on his lips, for he had found what he wanted. He discovered a kind of pocket in the waistcoat of the false tradesman, and felt in it. "Here it is!" said he. Pignana moved. Stenio paused, and then took from the sleeper's pocket a door-key. He then left, and did not return.... While the events recorded above were transpiring, about eight o'clock on the evening, in Jacob-street, Mlle. Celestine Crepineau waited as Desdemona might have done for Othello, singing the melancholy romance of "The Willow." This was to console her for the prolonged absence of the bear-hunter, who had not been during the whole day in her lodge. The finger of Celestine furtively wiped away the tears which dripped down her long aquiline nose. Hope now and then arose in her heart, but that hope was betrayed. A man with a stern voice asked for Dr. Matheus, and went to his room. Seven times hope was enkindled in her heart only to be disappointed. She became angry, and as she could not confess to that passion in relation to the bear-hunter, and must have some pretext, she vented her temper on the Doctor's visitors. "How soon will this be over?" said she. "All Paris has come this evening to see my handsome lodger. What brings all these _savans_ hither? They will keep me awake until late hours, and then Mr. Nuñez will say maliciously in the morning, 'Your eyes, Mlle. Celestine, are very heavy this morning. What have you been dreaming?' Then he will take liberties altogether inconvenient to a person of my sex." The seven blows on the knocker had announced the union of eight persons, including Von Apsberg, in the ground-floor parlor, the apartment through which the unfortunate Pignana used to go and come. Two of the Doctor's friends were d'Harcourt and Taddeo Rovero. The others we will tell by and by. "Gentlemen," said Von Apsberg, when they were in council, "our meeting should, as usual, be presided over by Count Monte-Leone. Since, however, the order of expulsion, of which he was notified and which almost immediately was revoked, for some unknown reason, it seemed best that he should not be present. Monte-Leone is the head of the great brotherhood of Carbonarism. We therefore propose to render a succinct account of its situation in Europe, and particularly in France. Its position is peculiar, and we cannot deny that its existence is threatened on all sides. Secret and shrewd spies have penetrated in Germany the secret labors of our three societies, _The Tugenbund_ at Berlin, _The Burschenschaft_ and _The Teutonia_ at Vienna and Leipsic. Their chiefs, Johan and Plischer, have been arrested." "Death to spies!" said Matheus's seven hearers. "This is not all," continued Matheus. "The plans of Count Labisbel have failed in Spain, and the Italian _vente_ have been discovered by a shrewd police. The prisons of Naples, Venice, and Milan are already filled with our brethren." There was consternation on every face. "We are assured," said Matheus, "that the informations on which these arrests have been made have come from Paris. Now, this information could only have been obtained from our secret papers, as we alone in France correspond with the supreme venta of Europe. To these papers none have access but four brothers, Monte-Leone, Rovero, d'Harcourt, and myself. We inform you of these facts in obedience to our articles of association, that you may place us four on trial." These words were uttered with deep excitement. The three persons present of the four mentioned by Von Apsberg sat still, and the others rose. "On my honor and conscience," said General A----, "I declare that such an idea is unworthy of you and us." The banker F----, Count de Ch----, a Peer of France, Ober the merchant, the lawyer B----, and professor C----, said the same. They then gave their hands affectionately to the three friends, who acknowledged their salute. "Let the denunciation come whence it may, our brothers yet are victims of it. They suffer for us," said Taddeo, "and we will act for them." "Yes," said Von Apsberg, "we will act, and decidedly, for time presses us, and we must anticipate our enemies unless we would be anticipated. Let all opinions centre, then, without hesitation, on the one principle which is the basis and keystone of Carbonarism, viz., '_That might is not right--that the kings of Europe reign either by virtue of a convention or by virtue of arms. The Bourbons in France reign by virtue of the allied sovereigns. We therefore declare that the Carbonari have associated to restore to all the nations of the continent, and to France especially, the free exercise of the right to choose the government which suits them best. We all swear to maintain this principle!_" "We swear," said the Carbonari. "Gentlemen," said Von Apsberg, "the time of action will be fixed by Count Monte-Leone at a meeting to take place January 25th, 1820, in the masonic lodge of _The Friends of Truth_. Until then let each one individually contribute to do all he can towards the reconstruction of our new edifice from the ruins of the old." "I take charge of the army," said General A----, "the regiments in garrison at Befort are ours, and the others will follow their example." "I take charge of the colleges," said professor C----. The lawyer B---- said, "We have many friends in the bar." Count Ch---- said, "And in the chamber of peers." The banker F---- added, "There will be no scarcity of money." The last who spoke was the merchant Ober, who said, "The influence of trade is on our side." Von Apsberg said, "We will not meet again till the twenty-fifth of January, 1820. The supreme _vente_, composed of the Count, Rovero, the Viscount, and myself, will communicate only with the five central _ventas_ of Paris, the representative of which you are. Be active, then, in the _ventas_ which depend on you, members of which are ignorant of your identity. Make yourself known to but one member of each venta, and communicate with Count Monte-Leone only in that brilliant society to which the high position of him and of yourselves gives access, and where the government will least suspect the existence of treason. Confide the rolls of our ventas, and of our new associates to him alone, for it is his duty to deposit them among our archives. Now, brethren of right and duty, confide alone in Monte-Leone, the soul of honor and of prudence. To all others, silence or death." "Silence or death," repeated his seven associates, and their voices sounded like the chorus of a solemn hymn.... A few minutes after the room was deserted. The Carbonari had gone, and Matheus returned to his laboratory. The door of the library was then opened gently, and two men were seen concealed behind the secret panel. They were H----, the chief of the political police, and the bear-hunter, the brigand of the Loire, or Stenio Salvatori. "I have them," said M. H----. "Not yet," said Stenio, "but thanks to our associate, Count Monte-Leone, by whose aid I have brought you hither...." The door was shut without noise.... The next day, when he awoke, Pignana found the key of the room in his pocket. BOOK II. PART II.--I. CLOUDS IN THE HORIZON. A month had rolled by since the Carbonari had met at the house of Von Apsberg. They were as prudent as possible. There was no meeting of the members of this vast society, yet such were the advantages of its mechanism, that communication and intercourse was never interrupted for a day. All action emanated from the high _venta_, which was known only to the presidents of the seven central ventas, through whom its instructions were communicated by means of _agents_ to the secondary ventas; a few men where thus enabled to discipline ten thousand. Count Monte-Leone was the soul of all this enterprise, and on him all the threads of this huge net united. The Count, the invisible providence of this invisible world, alone could give it external life and utter the _fiat lux_ of eternity. More pleasant and delightful ideas had possession of the Count. The future occupied him with a force and intensity he thought most contradictory to his political duties. Since Aminta had unveiled her heart to him, she had, as it were, returned to her usual bearing. The life of Monte-Leone, though, was entirely changed. The happiness he had long desired was about to dawn on him. In a few months he would be the husband of that Aminta he had so much loved and so regretted. The Count was received almost as a son by the Prince, and as a husband by Aminta. Taddeo looked on him entirely as a brother, and began to realize the happiest dream of his life--the marriage he had so desired. Gladly availing himself of the liberty accorded him, of coming familiarly to the hotel of the Prince de Maulear, the Count was perfectly happy. He passed the whole day there, and when night came mingled most unwillingly with society. The order of expulsion which he had received, and which had been so mysteriously revoked, added to the interest which had been entertained for him by all Paris. The opposition was especially attentive to him, for he was esteemed a decided enemy of the French Government, and of all monarchies. This ostracism which he had escaped, attracted the attention to him, for which the people of Paris were already prepared, by the history of his Neapolitan adventures. In 1850 he would have been called the lion of the day, and the greatest curiosity would have been paid to all his adventures. So great was the attention excited by the account of Monte-Leone's loss of fortune, that people were surprised to see him resume his usual mode of life, keep possession of his hotel, indulge in the same expenses of carriages, attendants, etc. He altered nothing, not even the luxury of his house, from what had been its condition before the papers and he himself had announced that the failure of Lamberti made him entirely poor, and forced him to sell his diamonds and other personal property to be able to live, as cheaply as possible. The Count, who had been forced to conceal the manner in which his property had been restored, told his friends, Taddeo, d'Harcourt and Von Apsberg, that certain important funds had been recovered from the general wreck; and they, delighted with his good fortune, did not fail to congratulate him. The world was more curious; the enemies of the Count especially, who were ultra-monarchists, were numerous, active, and malicious. They wrote to Naples, and ascertained that the ruin of Monte-Leone was total, acquiring also certainty that he had no funds in any European bank, and no property. They therefore made an outcry of astonishment when they saw all the external appearance of opulence in the possession of one they knew without the means of so splendid and imposing an establishment. The Count knew nothing of this, and continued his old life. It is, all know, true that rumors of this kind reach their object last of all, when they are calculated to be injurious. One of the dominant ideas which actuated us in the preparation of this history, we can here dwell upon, and we ask leave to do so briefly. There exists in French society, polished and elegant as it is, a hideous monster known to all, though no one disturbs it. Its ravages are great; almost incalculable. It saps reputations, poisons, dishonors, and defiles the splendor of the most estimable fame. This minotaurus, which devours so many innocent persons, is especially fearful, because its blows are terrible. It presents itself under the mildest and gentlest forms, and is received every where in the city. We find it in our rooms, in the interior of our families, in the palaces of the opulent, and the garrets of the poor. It has no name, being a mere figure of speech, a very word. It is composed of but one phrase, and is called--THEY SAY. "Do you know such a one?" is often asked, and the person is pointed out. "_No_; but they say his morals are very bad. He has had strange adventures, and his family is very unhappy." "Are you sure?" "No, I know nothing about it. But they say so." "This young woman, so beautiful, so brilliant, so much admired--Do you know her?" "No. _They say_ that it is not difficult to please her, and that more than one has done so." "But she appears so decent, so reserved." "Certainly; but _they say_----" "Do not trust that gentleman who has such credit and is thought so rich. Be on your guard--" "Bah! his fortune is immense: see what an establishment he has." "Yes! But _they say_ he is very much involved." "Do you know the fact?" "Not I. _They say_ though--" This _they say_ is heard in every relation of life. It is deadly mortal, and not to be grasped. It goes hither and thither, strikes and kills manly honor, female virtue, without either sex being ever conscious of the injury done. Each as he reads these lines will remember cases illustrating the truth of what we say. The Count suffered from the influence of the evil we mention; and as all were ignorant whence his fortune came, each one adopted a thousand conjectures and suspicions, which, as is always the case, were most malicious. This is the way of the world. Now the consequences of this _they say_ are plain. By its means they had dared to attack a reputation which hitherto had been considered unassailable. This _they say_ came in the end. The Marquise de Maulear was the only person who knew whence came the resources of Monte-Leone; and after he had confided to her, the charming woman had said, "It was very wrong in you not to tell me previously of your good fortune. For instance, when I thought you a fugitive and ruined, I suffered you to read my heart. Had you told me this before, you would not have seen within it." "Do not make me regret my misery which procured me such exquisite pleasure as knowing that you loved me." In the long and pleasant conversations of the Count and Marquise, he was frequently embarrassed in relation to the duties imposed on him as chief of the _Carbonari_. Aminta never dared to speak to him in relation to that subject, though she was more anxious about it. On this point alone the Count was impenetrable, avoiding with care all that related to his political plans, and giving the Marquise no information about them. One day Aminta, the Prince de Maulear, the Countess of Grandmesnil, and Taddeo, were in the drawing-room. The Countess did not love the young Marquise, whom she looked on as the indirect cause of her nephew's death. Neither did she love the Count, whose attentions to Aminta were by no means to her taste. The old lady was aware of Monte-Leone's opinions, and lost no opportunity to open all her batteries on liberals, jacobins and foreigners, who sought to make France the receptacle of the trouble and contests of which it had already drank so deeply. The Countess said-- "You know the news, brother?" The Prince de Maulear was then playing a game of chess with Monte-Leone. "We have now, thank God and M. Angles, one miserable Jacobin the less to deal with." "Check to your king!" said the Prince to Monte-Leone. "To be sure," said she, following out the tenor of her own thoughts, "it would be check to the King, if the opinions of those persons were to triumph. M. Angles, however, watches over them and us." For an instant the Count neglected his game. He as well as Taddeo heard what she had said, and both seemed anxious to hear her out. "May I venture to inquire, Countess," said the Count, holding his piece in his hand, and hesitating to place it on the board, "who is the terrible Jacobin from whom the world is delivered?" "One of the most dangerous alive, Count," said the old lady, with an air of triumph. "The man, it is said, had his connections established through the whole army." "Check to your king," said the Prince, who was weary of the delay. "True," said the Count, with visible abstraction; and he played his game so badly that the Prince won it without difficulty. The latter said: "Check-mate--victory--victory!" "Yes, brother," said the Countess, "a great victory. For the Jacobin is a general. General B----, one of those vile Buonapartists, to whom, at a time like this, a regiment should never have been trusted." The Count and Taddeo grew pale when they heard the General's name. He was one of the seven chiefs of ventas at the house of Von Apsberg. "Why was the General arrested?" said the Prince. "Oh, some plot. The Jacobins and Buonapartists are always at that business. The details are not yet known. It is certain, however, that he was arrested this morning at his hotel. I heard so at the Duchess de Feltre's, whom I visited to-day." "Strange!" said the Prince; "on the day before yesterday he gave a ball. Were you not there, Count?" said he to Monte-Leone. "Yes," said the Count; "I was one of the last to leave. It was then two o'clock in the morning." "At noon his generalship was in the Conciergerie. A bad business for him, for the government has decided to use the greatest severity against all conspirators. Happily, the police is very expert, and it is said of every three conspirators one is a spy. A thing very satisfactory to society, but decidedly unfortunate for the plotters." "I think," said the Count, indignantly, "that the conspirators are calumniated. They are bound by such oaths, and are so devoted to their opinions, that there can be but few traitors among them." "My dear Count," said the Prince, "the spirit of Monte-Leone of Castle del Uovo is yet visible, and you do not seem to have recovered from your old disease. When you speak of conspirators you seem to defend your friends. I hope, however, for your sake, and for the sake of those who love you," said he, pointing to Aminta, "that you have renounced for ever your old enterprises. His Majesty, Louis XVIII., the other day spoke highly of you, relying much on your devotion, and he cannot have to do with an ingrate." "Ah!" said Taddeo, with stupefaction, as he looked at his associate, "the King of France relies on the devotion of Monte-Leone!" "I know not why," said the Count, not a little moved by this _brevet_ of royalism. "I confess, though, that I shall be surprised to give any chagrin or uneasiness to my friends." These words were in a manner wrung from the Count by the paleness and agitation of Aminta since the commencement of the conversation. This new declaration increased Taddeo's surprise. "Well, well," said the Prince, "there is pardon for every sin. We know, and we look on you as a wandering sheep returned to the fold. See, however, what are the consequences of a bad reputation. An insurrection breaks out in Italy, and you are at once thought to be its accomplice in France. You are about to be expelled from the country and treated as an enemy, when we acquire a certainty. What do I say? when the King of France and his ministers swear by you alone!" This series of praises in relation to his royalty evidently increased the bad humor of the Count, as well as the astonishment of Taddeo. Monte-Leone was about to reply, even though he destroyed his influence with the Prince and Marquise. He was about to repel the fanciful compliments to his loyalty, when the Countess of Grandmesnil folded up her work. This was the usual signal for dispersion, and all were about to leave, when the Marquise said to Monte-Leone, "Count, will you remain here a few moments? I wish to speak to you of the charity in which you were kind enough to unite with me." The Count went anxiously to Aminta's side. The Prince said, with a smile, "No one ever refuses to speak with a pretty woman. That is even the weak side of our ministers. Talk, then, with my daughter-in-law, and neither the Countess nor I will trouble you." He then took the Countess's arm, and led her from the room. Taddeo remained, for his interest with the Count was too grave to permit him to leave thus. Aminta said but a few words to Monte-Leone. The deep emotion of the young woman, however, gave them a serious character. "Listen," said she. "I do not know what is about to happen, but your agitation, and that of Taddeo, when the Countess spoke of General B----, did not escape me. A painful presentiment assures me that you are involved in some secret plot, and that new dangers menace you. In the name of all that is dear to you, in the name of your love to me, I conjure you to abandon those ideas, or I shall die of terror and despair." She then, without speaking a word more, kissed her brother, and retired. The Count stood as if he were struck with a thunderbolt. Taddeo took his hand, and said, "Come, come," wresting the Count from the painful thoughts Aminta had called up. "Come, the arrest of General B---- may ruin all." They entered Monte-Leone's carriage, and drove to the Duke d'Harcourt. They hoped to find the Vicomte, and take him to Matheus, for the opinion of each of the four was necessary in considering the best means of warding off the peril which menaced the association. D'Harcourt was in, but Monte-Leone and Taddeo had not expected the spectacle which awaited them. The Vicomte had one of those sudden attacks, forerunners of the cruel disease which had devastated his family. The pleasures of the winter, in which the imprudent young man madly indulged, and perhaps also the cares and anxieties of his political relations, the nocturnal ventas he was often obliged to attend, had severely shaken his already feeble health, and caused a cough, every utterance of which sounded to his father like a funeral knell. The Count and Taddeo found him in bed. Von Apsberg was by his side, and opposite the doctor was the charming Marie, glancing alternately from the doctor to the patient. The Duke leaned on the fireplace, and gently scolded René for his folly and imprudence. The arrival of the two friends produced a cessation to this, but the Duke continued: "Come, gentlemen, and assist me to produce some effect on your friend; for, unassisted, even I cannot. Tell him that such an exposure of his life, in folly and dissipation, is a double crime, when his health is so dear to an old man who has no other son." Tears came into the Duke's eyes as he spoke, which Marie kissed away. "Now, René," said she, "you see how unhappy you make us all. Promise, then, to be more reasonable." "Father," said René, giving the Duke his hand, "I will promise you to do the impossible thing, to be prudent. Besides, you have a powerful auxiliary in my friend Monte-Leone, who has committed not a few follies in his time. He has however begun a new life, and will soon be entirely converted by Hymen." "What," said Marie, "is the Count about to be married?" "Mademoiselle," said the Count, "your brother is indiscreet, and you can never take half that he says as literal." "Then," said Marie, "you are in love--that is about the half of his statement." And Marie blushed. Von Apsberg said, as he remarked the embarrassment of the young girl, "Our patient needs the warmth and mildness of the south. Magnetism with the Vicomte will be powerless, and he must avoid cold and dampness. He must also be prudent, and that is the greatest difficulty. I however rely on his promise and his devotion to us. Adieu, Messieurs," said he, bowing to Taddeo and Monte-Leone. "Do not make him talk, or suffer him to sit up too long." The Duke left, accompanied by Marie, whose last look seemed to recommend her brother to the doctor. Perhaps, though, this glance had another signification, for the eyes of young women mean a great deal. As soon as the four associates were alone, the Count told Matheus of the arrest. Von Apsberg thought: "The General cannot be in danger. Only one evidence of his participation could have been found, and that Monte-Leone gave me on the day before yesterday. I am sure I placed it in the secret drawer of my laboratory, the key of which I alone keep." "What proof do you mean?" asked d'Harcourt, whose memory was troubled by illness. "A proof," said Monte-Leone, "which would be overwhelming in the case of the General and a number of our brethren--the roll of the venta over which he presides. This roll he has signed. He gave it to me at two in the morning of the day before yesterday, and I gave it to Von Apsberg on the next day." "Then it matters not. Though the General has been arrested, the mystery of ventas has not been penetrated. I am assured that skilful and incessant espionage hovers around us, and the time for action should be no longer delayed." "But," said the Count, to whom this idea recalled what the Marquise had said, "we should not raise a flag we cannot defend. The forces the General controlled are indispensable to our success." "To replace soldiers," said Von Apsberg, "we shall have opinion on our side. Our various ventas will be valiant soldiers, and will be encouraged when they see themselves so much more numerous than they expect." "Do not let us be hasty," said Monte-Leone. "The six chiefs of the principal ventas, like the brave General, must give me the lists of ventas, and only when we are sure of their number will we act." His three friends then adopted Monte-Leone's opinion, and they separated, mutually recommending prudence to each other. There remained, however, a species of surprise, and an injurious impression in relation to Monte-Leone's hesitation. He had usually been the most decided of the four. When Von Apsberg returned home, he went to his laboratory, and opened the bureau in which the papers of the association were kept. He satisfied himself that the lists of the various ventas were safe. He breathed freely and slept soundly, without any trouble on account of the arrest of the General. On the next day, however, a letter, hastily written with a pencil, was brought him by a man who at once disappeared. It was from General A----, and was as follows: "The list of our associates, certified by myself, is in the possession of the prefect of police. I saw it myself, and I am ruined." Von Apsberg uttered a cry of terror. He was utterly confounded. II.--THEY SAY. The arrest of General A---- produced a double effect in Paris. The city began to have confidence in the vigilant police, which sought for and arrested the enemies of order every where and in every rank, while the chiefs of the great association of Carbonarism trembled when they saw the government on the track of their plans and projects. They then asked on all sides what could have been the motive of the incarceration of the General, and how they had discovered the criminal, or rather the criminals, for the principal associates of the _venta_ over which the General presided, were arrested after their chief. Still other arrests were subsequently made. Nothing, however, transpired, either in relation to the offence of which the General was accused, or the secret means by which the police had acquired information of them. The police acted prudently and with great skill, for the General and his associates were but a small part of an immense plot. Time and secret service alone would give the government a clue to follow all the secret labyrinths of this vast plot, which menaced France and Europe. A conspiracy and military plot was talked of, and the trial of the affair was understood to be postponed until time should throw more light on the matter. The authorities were not in a hurry, they needed other aims, and waited patiently to procure them. Thus passed a month; and as in Paris every thing is soon forgotten, people paid no attention to General A---- and his imprisonment. Public attention, however, was reattracted to this mysterious affair. The entertainments, concerts, and receptions of the court, made the city joyous. The gold of countless visitors from foreign nations gave activity to commerce, and there was an universal spirit of rivalry in luxury and opulence. Then the Duchess de Berri gave those charming balls, of which those who were admitted even now talk of. The mystery of the note written to Von Apsberg by General A----, in which he assured him he had seen the list of the venta, he had himself certified to in the hands of the prefect of police, remained impenetrable to the supreme _venta_, for Von Apsberg had the list the Count had given him. The General was in close confinement, and no intercourse could be had with him. The six other chiefs of the ventas were ignorant of this incident of the arrest of their confederate. The four brothers of the central venta had resolved not to suffer the circumstance to transpire, because the Count fancied this circumstance would chill their zeal, and make them uneasy about the new lists. On these lists, as we have said, the decision of the time of action was made to depend, as it would reveal to the four chiefs the exact number of their confederates in Paris. According to the statutes of carbonarism, the signatures of the brethren were sacred engagements, which made it indispensable for them to give their aid to the undertaking when the hour and day should be appointed. The lists were, then, a kind of declaration of war against the government, in which they must either conquer or die. This is the prudence of all bad causes. Persons thus involved have no confidence that their associates will keep their oaths, and put remorse and repentance out of the question by allowing no alternative between ruin and safety. The Vicomte d'Harcourt, but slightly recovered from his indisposition, seldom left his father's house, and participated but slightly in the pleasures of the season. Taddeo, whose devotion to the Neapolitan ambassadress constantly increased, visited her every day, and went nowhere else. Though aware that she was constantly anxious to speak of the Count, he did not despair of being able some day to touch her heart. So great were his attentions, that in society he was looked on as the _cicisbéo_ of the Duchess. The Duke of Palma, devoted to his opera-loves, seemed not at all offended at the frequent visits of Taddeo Rovero, whose attentions did not at all shock his Italian ideas. Von Apsberg lived more retired than ever, and rarely left his laboratory except when he went to the Duke d'Harcourt's. There the intelligent doctor was kindly received by all the family, Marie included, and his fair patient's health seemed visibly to improve, as those flowers which have been too long neglected always do when attended to by a skilful horticulturist. Monte-Leone devoted to the society of Paris, of which he was passionately fond, all the hours which he passed away from the Marquise. This, however, was a duty, for there only could he meet the Carbonari who belonged to the upper class without giving rise to suspicion. The trial of General A---- was soon to take place, and the preparations for it had already been begun. Revelations or anxious inquiries might destroy the association. Concert was required to avoid this, and Count Monte-Leone gave this information to MM. C----, the lawyer B----, the baron de Ch----, the banker F----, and the rich merchant Ober, who was perhaps from his extended commercial relations, the most important of the Carbonari. A great dinner was given by the banker F---- to enable the chiefs to confer with Monte-Leone. But in addition to these personages, and in order that public attention should not be fixed on them alone, F---- had invited the _élite_ of the capital, several peers of France, some illustrious soldiers, many deputies, and several women famous for their rank and beauty. Insensibly conversation assumed a political tone, as at that time every thing did. Monte-Leone, whom the abuses of the French government and the _camarilla_ of the Tuilleries made most indignant, gave vent to his opinions and complained bitterly of the acts of the ministry. He compassionated the people, whose liberties were being swept away, and reprobated the censorship of the liberty of the press and of freedom of speech--the only resource of the oppressed and the only means of reaching the oppressors. The master of the house, M. F----, agreed with the Count in the liberal opinions he had expressed. Led on by the example, B---- and C---- testified their sympathy with what the Count had said, and their wish to see a change in the fortune of a country where the institutions satisfied neither the wants nor the rights of the oppressed. This discussion, which had been provoked by the Count, was so bold and so decided that many of the guests looked on with terror, fearing they would be compromised by the expression of such revolutionary ideas. Just then many of the guests of M. F----, taking him aside from the table, asked anxiously if he was satisfied of the discretion of all the persons present, and also of their honor. M. F---- energetically repelled such fears, saying: "The people whom I receive are not all friends of the government. Nothing, however, said here will be repeated, for the minister of police has no representative at my table." The words of their host in a degree satisfied some of the most timid. It was then said openly that amid the most eminent persons met with in society were found individuals in the secret pay of M. Angles, and that many ruined and extravagant nobleman did not hesitate to exist in this manner. People said that in the drawing-room of M. F---- Monte-Leone had determined to defy the government, and they looked on his conduct under existing circumstances as most imprudent. During the evening, and when all were engaged, the chiefs of _ventas_ took occasion, one by one, to isolate themselves from company and gave the Count the rolls. It was then agreed, also, that the last of these documents being complete, notice should be given without delay, and during the trial of the General, of the day for the commencement of the insurrectionary movement by which Carbonarism was to be revealed to France and to Europe. The terrible plan, however, was foiled by various events which attacked the society unexpectedly. Four days after the dinner of M. F----, he, the lawyer B----, the baron Ch----, who had taken so decided a part in the discussion provoked by Monte-Leone, and who, on that very evening, had given him the fatal lists of his associates, were arrested. The first was taken in his office, the second just as he left his cabinet, and the third on his way to the opera. The capital was amazed at this news. All the other guests of F---- began to examine their consciences, and sought to recall whether or not they had given utterance to any governmental heresy at the fatal dinner, and whether they had not uttered something rash. They were doubtful if any opinion at all might not expose them to the resentment and vigilance of an adroit and secret police. It seemed beyond a doubt that the remarks of the persons who had been arrested had provoked this rigorous action, and that some ear in the pay of the police had heard their dangerous conversation, and noted the violent expression of their opinions. The conduct of all the guests was then passed in review, and the public and private life of each examined. Their domestic history and life were inquired into, and their weak points, habits, errors, and tastes, were scrutinized. No rank, family, sex, or social position, was neglected, and not even intrigues, life, nor money, were considered sufficient to shield the informer. All were anxious to tear away the mask from the common enemy, to crush the serpent, who, sliding stealthily into society, gnawed its very heart and lacerated that bosom which sheltered it. The arrest of General A---- then recurred to the memory of all. This event had taken place after a ball which the General had given. It was after an entertainment given by F---- that he, too, had lost his liberty. On this occasion two other important men had shared the fate of the rich banker, and, like him, they had both been energetic, violent, and pitiless denouncers of a ministry which defied public opinion and outraged the nation. People then remembered that Count Monte-Leone had provoked the conversation--that he had gone farther than any one else on the dangerous ground--and that his daring had surpassed that of the master of the house and his guests. All expected he would be arrested also. This fear was especially well founded, as Monte-Leone concealed neither his liberal opinions nor his revolutionary doctrines, and in fact every thing in his previous conduct pointed him out as one of the persons to whom the attention of the police would especially be directed. People were, therefore, amazed to see Monte-Leone preserve his liberty, and that one of the four speakers who had been most imprudent enjoyed entire impunity. Astonishment, however, was not all, for strange reports were soon circulated, and rumors were heard in every direction. The impunity of the Count became the universal subject of conversation. His private life was taken in hand, and his whole career, as it were, extended on the anatomical table of moral anatomy. The scalpel of public opinion, it is well known, pitilessly dissects every subject it wishes thoroughly to understand. The THEY SAY, that terrible creature to which we have already referred, began to play its part. It was heard every where. "THEY SAY Count Monte-Leone cannot be a stranger to what is passing. He was seen to talk to General A---- on the night of the ball for a long time." "What! Count Monte-Leone?--a man of his rank?" "Ah, these Italian noblemen are all suspicious." "He--a liberal--a revolutionist!" "Listen to me. People often change their opinions in this world, especially when fortune disappears, and want of money and care supervene. _They say_ he is completely ruined, yet he is still very luxurious in his mode of life." "True--that is strange." "Oh, no, not at all. _They say_ the strong box of the police enables him to maintain his style." "That may be." "_They say_, also, that the order to leave France given by the minister was but a trick to divert suspicion and keep him here usefully." "Do you think so? Then he is a villain, and should be avoided. He is a----" "Oh, I know nothing of it--but _they say_ so." _They_ did say so, but when that awful rumor was first pronounced _they_ did not. These words were produced by the terror which the events of the day produced on the mind of every friend, even of the three imprisoned Carbonari. Perhaps some malevolent spirit disseminated them. This rumor was circulated from house to house, like a drop of oil, which though first scarcely perceptible, sullies the fairest fabrics utterly. A trifling fault is thus made to do the part of an atrocious crime. At first the rumor was whispered. It then grew bolder, and finally fortified itself by a thousand corroborations furnished by chance or gossip. Every person who detailed it added to its incidents and arguments. Within one month after the dinner all Paris heard of the terrible offence against society attributed to Count Monte-Leone. As is always the case, however, the three friends of the Count were the last to hear of this slander. Every one who was aware of their intimacy took care not to speak to them of the rumor, for no one wished to involve himself by repeating a story entirely unsubstantiated, and the origin of which was unknown. The consequence was that the three persons who could have refuted the calumny were entirely ignorant of the stigma attached to their friend. Monte-Leone had no more suspicion than his friends had in relation to the horrible fable. The other chiefs of the principal ventas, who might have told him what was said, terrified at the fate of their associates, lived apart, refused to see any one, and thus heard none of the imputations against the high-priest of Carbonarism. Then commenced a series of mistakes, surprises, and mortifications, in which Monte-Leone would see no insult. His life, however, became an enigma, the explanation of which he could not divine. Certain rooms under various pretexts were closed to him. Often persons who once had been most anxious to secure his attendance at their entertainments pretended to forget him. The world did not dare, however, to brave an enemy whose secret power it was ignorant of, but it exhibited a certain coldness and oblivion which deeply wounded him. His most intimate acquaintances avoided him with studied care, and when they accepted his hand did so with a marked expression of annoyance. An immense void existed around him. His hotel was a solitude, and the houses of others were shut to him. The Count at first thought he found a motive for this in the apprehension all entertained of his affiliation with some secret association. When he saw that the police paid no attention to him, he was compelled to seek some other reason for his public proscription. What this cause was he did not divine and could not ask, for a position of this kind is such that an honorable man thinks it beneath him to ask for an explanation of merely natural occurrences. Wounded, disgusted, and grieved by the strange existence created for him, Monte-Leone felt himself at once a prey to the distrust which ostracism of this kind creates in the bosom of all who are subject to it. The world thought that by avoiding society Count Monte-Leone confessed the justice of its allegations. He became every day more attentive to the charming woman he adored, and who only waited the time when the proprieties of society would permit her to make him her husband. In her affection he found a consolation for all the external chagrin which annoyed him, for a mute terror had taken possession of the Carbonari since the occurrence of the many arrests, the motives of which were as yet wrapped in such impenetrable mystery. An event which was altogether unexpected made his position yet more complicated. He was one evening in one of the few houses to which he was yet invited. This was the house of M. L----, where the Marquis de Maulear had lost such immense sums to the Englishman who subsequently ruined him. M. L----, either more prudent or circumspect than others, had not listened to the reports which were circulated about Monte-Leone, and had invited him to his magnificent hotel in the Rue d'Antin. Monte-Leone had avoided the crowd, and walked down the long avenue of exotic flowers and camelias, then almost unknown in Paris. He came upon a boudoir where several men were speaking. The Count was about to go back, when his name struck on his ear. "Yes, gentlemen," said one of the speakers, in a most indignant tone, "you may well be astonished at my presence here, while my family is in tears, and my prospects blasted and made desperate. Only eight days since I came to Paris, and am here to find Count Monte-Leone, my challenge to whom, to deliver which I have sought him every where, should be as solemn as the vengeance I will exact." No sooner had the Count heard these words than he rushed into the boudoir, and stood face to face with the speaker, who was a young man of twenty-eight or thirty, wearing the uniform of the royal navy. His countenance was mild and noble, but bore an expression of perfect fury when he saw Monte-Leone. "Monsieur," said the Count, "you will not have to look farther for the person of whom you have dared to speak thus. I am thankful that I am here to spare you farther trouble in looking for me, though why you do so I cannot conceive." "He was listening to us," said the young man to his friends, in a tone of the deepest contempt. "Well, after all, that is right enough." "Chance," said the Count, resuming his _sang-froid_ and control over himself, which he always maintained in such emergencies, "led me within sound of your voice. You and I also should be glad that this is the case, for it seems to me a ball is a bad place for such an explanation as you seem to wish." "All places are good," said the naval officer, in a most insolent tone, "to tell you what I think of you. To repeat to you the epithet you have overheard, and which I am willing yet again to declare to all in these rooms." "Sir," said Monte-Leone, with the same calmness, "will you tell me first to whom I speak?" "My name is A----, and I am a lieutenant of the royal navy. My father is the person whom your infamous denunciations have caused to be imprisoned in the Conciergerie!" "What!" said the Count, "are you the son of General A----?" "What influences me I cannot and will not tell you; for then it would be out of the question for me to meet you." "Gentlemen," said the Count, speaking to those who witnessed this scene, to which the attention of many others had now been called, "this young man is mad. I, more than any person, have pitied his father, and I wish to give General A---- a new proof of my sympathy, by granting his son a delay until to-morrow, to enable him to repair the incredible injury he has done me. Here is my card," said he, placing it on a table, "and I shall wait until to-morrow for an explanation of the unintelligible conduct of Lieutenant A----." As soon as the Count had finished he left the boudoir, and the Lieutenant's friends kept possession of him, taking him out of the hotel. On the next day Monte-Leone received the following note: "COUNT--Instead of making an apology to you, I maintain all I said. You are a coward and a scoundrel, and you know why. I repeat, that if my voice articulated or my hand traced, why I speak thus, it would be impossible for me to kill you and avenge myself. Do not therefore ask me to make an explanation of what you know perfectly well. If you are unmoved by what I now say, and if I do not bring you out, I will have recourse to other means. I will await you and your witnesses to-day at two o'clock, at the _bois de Bologne_, behind Longchamp. I have selected this hour in order that I might previously see my father. "GUSTAVE A----, "Lieutenant, Royal Navy." "All hell is let loose against me," said the Count, as he perused this letter. "Why can I not penetrate the awful mystery which enshrouds me!" Taking a pen, he wrote the following words, which he gave to the bearer of the challenge: "I will be at the _bois de Bologne_ at two o'clock." FOOTNOTES: [7] Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by Stringer & Townsend, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. Continued from page 54. [8] _Anglice._ Only the first step is troublesome.--TR. From Fraser's Magazine. POULAILLER, THE ROBBER. Cartouche had been arrested, tried, condemned, and executed, some seven or eight years, and no longer occupied the attention of the good people of Paris, to whom his almost melodramatic life and death had afforded a most interesting and enduring topic. They were languishing, like the Athenians of old, for something new, when there arose a rumor that another robber, more dexterous, more audacious, more extraordinary, ay, and more cruel than Cartouche, was roaming about the streets of their city. What was his name? whence did he come? were questions in the mouth of every one, as each of his numerous daring acts was made public,--questions which no one could answer. In vain was every arm of the police put in requisition--crime after crime was committed with impunity, and terror reigned supreme. At last the criminal himself disdained concealment, and all Paris--nay, a considerable portion of Europe--trembled at the name of POULAILLER. He appeared about the year 1730, and astonished the world by deeds, some of them so shocking, and at the same time so wonderful, that they gave some color to the belief of many that he was aided by supernatural agency. This belief was supported by a history of the circumstances attending his birth. There lived in a village on the coast of Brittany a man, poor but of good repute, and well beloved by his neighbors,--an intrepid mariner, but poor as Job himself when his friends came to comfort him. A robust and well-knit frame, combined with a fine frank countenance, well bronzed by the sea-breezes, was looked on favorably by all, and by none more than by the young lasses whose furtive glances rested with pleasure on the manly form and gallant bearing of Jacques Poulailler. His strength was prodigious, and his temerity upon the ocean incredible. Such qualities are appreciated in every country; and among the beauties of the village, one remarkable for her superiority in wealth, as well as natural gifts, was attracted by them, and Jacques Poulailler had the good fortune to find favor in the eyes of her who was known in her little world as _La belle Isabeau Colomblet_. At no great distance from this maritime village, on the crest of a rock lashed by the waves, which at high tides was perfectly insulated, dwelt a personage of whose origin every one was ignorant. The building where he had established himself had long been of evil fame throughout the country, and was only known as _La Tour Maudite_. The firesides resounded with tales of terror enacted in this lonely and ominous theatre. Fiends, in the olden time had made it their abode, as was currently reported and believed. From that time, it was asserted that no human being could dwell there without having previously entered into a compact with the evil one. The isolation of the place, the continued agitation of the waves at its base, the howlings of the wind around its frowning battlements, the traces of the thunderbolts that from time to time had blackened and almost charred its walls, the absence of bush or tree, or any thing in the shape of blossom or verdure--for neither wall-flower nor even moss would grow there--had produced their effect on the superstitious spirit of the neighbors, and the accursed place had remained untenanted by any thing earthly for forty or fifty years. One gloomy day, however, a man was seen prowling about the vicinity. He came and went over the sands, and, just as a storm was rising, he threw himself into a boat, gained the offing, and disappeared. Every one believed that he was lost; but next morning there he was. Surprised at this, the neighbors began to inquire who he could be; and at last learned that he had bought the tower of the proprietor, and had come to dwell there. This was all the information that their restless curiosity could obtain. Whence did he come, and what had he done? In vain were these questions asked. All were querists, and none found a respondent. Two or three years elapsed before his name transpired. At last it was discovered, nobody knew how, that his name was Roussart. He appeared to be a man above six feet in height, strongly built, and apparently about thirty years of age. His countenance was all but handsome, and very expressive. His conduct was orderly, and without reproach, and, proving himself to be an experienced fisherman, he became of importance in that country. No one was more weatherwise than Roussart, and no one turned his foreknowledge to such good account. He had been seen frequently to keep the sea in such fearful tempests, that all agreed that he must have been food for fishes if he had not entered into some agreement with Satan. When the stoutest hearts quailed, and ordinary men considered it suicidal to venture out, Roussart was to be seen braving the tumult of winds and waves, and always returned to the harbor safe and sound. People began to talk about this, and shook their heads ominously. Little cared Roussart for their words or gestures; but he was the only one in the commune who never went to church. The curé at last gave out that he was excommunicated; and from that time his neighbors broke off all communication with him. Things had arrived at this point, when it was rumored that the gallant fisherman, Jacques Poulailler, had touched the heart of _La belle Isabeau_. Soon their approaching marriage became the topic of the village; and, finally, one Sunday, after mass, the bans were first published by the vicar. The lads of the village, congregated on the shore, were congratulating Poulailler on the auspicious event, when Roussart suddenly appeared among them. His presence was a surprise. He had always avoided the village meetings as much as others had sought them; and this sudden change in his habits gave a new impulse to curiosity. The stranger appeared to seek some one with his eyes, and presently walked straight up to the happy Jacques, who, intoxicated with joy, was giving and receiving innumerable shakes of the hand. "Master Poulailler," said Roussart, "you are going to be married, then?" "That seems sure," replied Poulailler. "Not more sure than that your first-born will belong to the evil one. I, Roussart, tell you so." With that he turned on his heel, and regained his isolated dwelling, leaving his auditors amazed by his abrupt and extraordinary announcement, and poor Jacques more affected by it than any one else. From that moment Roussart showed himself no more in the neighborhood, and soon disappeared altogether, without leaving a trace to indicate what had become of him. Most country people are superstitious,--the Bretons eminently so, and Jacques Poulailler never forgot the sinister prophecy of Roussart. His comrades were not more oblivious; and when, a year after his marriage, his first-born came into the world, a universal cry saluted the infant boy as devoted to Satan. _Donné au diable_ were the words added to the child's name whenever it was mentioned. It is not recorded whether or no he was born with teeth, but the gossips remarked that during the ceremony of baptism the new-born babe gave vent to the most fearful howlings. He writhed, he kicked, his little face exhibited the most horrible contortions; but as soon as they carried him out of the church, he burst out into laughter as unearthly as it was unnatural. After these evil omens every body expected that the little Pierre Poulailler would be ugly and ill-formed. Not a bit of it--on the contrary, he was comely, active, and bold. His fine fresh complexion and well-furnished mouth were set off by his brilliant black eyes and hair, which curled naturally all over his head. But he was a sad rogue, and something more. If an oyster-bed, a warren, or an orchard was robbed, Pierre Poulailler was sure to be the boy accused. In vain did his father do all that parent could to reform him--he was incorrigible. Monsieur le curé had some difficulty to bring him to his first communion. The master of the village exhausted his catalogue of corrections--and the catalogue was not very short--without succeeding in inculcating the first notions of the Christian faith and the doctrine of the cross. "What is the good of it?" would the urchin say. "Am not I devoted to the devil, and will not that be sufficient to make my way?" At ten years of age Pierre was put on board a merchant-ship, as cabin-boy. At twelve he robbed his captain, and escaped to England with the spoil. In London he contrived to pass for the natural son of a French Duke; but his numerous frauds forced him again to seek his native land, where, in his sixteenth year, he enlisted as a drummer in the regiment of Champagne, commanded by the Count de Variclères. Before he had completed his eighteenth year he deserted, joined a troop of fortune-telling gipsies, whom he left to try his fortune with a regular pilferer, and finally, engaged himself to a rope-dancer. He played comedy, sold orvietan with the success of Doctor Dulcamara himself, and in a word, passed through all the degrees which lead to downright robbery. Once his good angel seemed to prevail. He left his disreputable companions and entered the army honorably. For a short time there were hopes of him; it was thought that he would amend his life, and his superiors were satisfied with his conduct. But the choicest weapon in the armory of him to whom he had been devoted was directed against him. A _vivandiere_--the prettiest and most piquante of her tribe--raised a flame in his heart that burnt away all other considerations; but he might still have continued in a comparatively respectable course, if the sergeant-major had not stood forward as his rival. The coquette had in her heart a preference for Pierre; and the sergeant, taking advantage of his rank, insulted his subordinate so grossly that he was repaid by a blow. The sergeant's blood was up, and as he rushed to attack Pierre, the soldier, drawing his sabre, dangerously wounded his superior officer, who, after lingering a few days, went the way of all flesh. Pierre would have tasted the tender mercies of the provost-marshal; but fortunately the regiment was lying near the frontier, which our hero contrived to cross, and then declared war against society at large. The varied knowledge and acquirements of the youth--his courage, true as steel, and always equal to the occasion--the prudence and foresight with which he meditated a _coup de main_--the inconceivable rapidity of his execution--his delicate and disinterested conduct towards his comrades--all contributed to render him famous, in the _famosus_ sense, if you will, and to raise him to the first place. Germany was the scene of his first exploits. The world had condemned him to death, and he condemned the world to subscribe to his living. At this period, he had posted himself in ambush on the crest of a hill, whence his eye could command a great extent of country; and certainly the elegance of his mien, his graceful bearing, and the splendor of his arms, might well excuse those who did not take him for what he really was. He was on the hillside when two beautiful young women appeared in sight. He lost no time in joining them; and, as youth is communicative, soon learnt, in answer to his questions, that, tired of remaining in the carriage, they had determined to ascend the hill on foot. "You are before the carriage, then, mademoiselle?" "Yes, sir; cannot you hear the whip of the postillions?" The conversation soon became animated, and every moment made a deeper inroad into the heart of our handsome brigand: but every moment also made the situation more critical. On the other side of the hill was the whole band, ranged in order of battle, and ready to pounce upon the travellers. Having ascertained the place of abode of his fair companions, and promised to avail himself of the first opportunity to pay his compliments to them there, he bade them politely adieu; and having gained a path cut through the living rock, known but to few, descended with the agility of a chamois to his party, whom he implored not to attack the carriage which was approaching. But, if Poulailler had his reasons for this chivalrous conduct, his band were actuated by no such motives, and they demurred to his prayer. He at once conquered their hesitation by bidding them name the value that they put on their expected booty, purchased the safety of the travellers by the sum named, and the two fair daughters of the Baron von Kirbergen went on their way full of the praises of the handsome stranger whose acquaintance they had made, and in blissful ignorance of the peril they had passed. That very day, Poulailler left his lieutenant in the temporary command of the band, mounted his most beautiful horse, followed his beloved to the castle of her father, and introduced himself as the Count Petrucci of Sienna, whom he had lately robbed, and whose papers he had taken care to retain with an eye to future business. His assumed name, backed by his credentials, secured for him a favorable reception, and he well knew how to improve the occasion. An accomplished rider, and bold in the chase, he won the good opinion of the Baron; while his musical and conversational talent made him the pet of the drawing-room. The young and charming Wilhelmina surrendered her heart to the gay and amiable cavalier; and all went merrily, till one fine morning Fortune, whose wheel is never stationary, sent the true count to the castle. It was no case of the two Sosias, for no two persons could well be more unlike; and as soon as the real personage saw his representative, he recognized him as the robber who had stolen his purse as well as his name. Here was a pretty business. Most adventurers would have thrown up the game as desperate; but our hero, with a front worthy of Fathom himself, boldly proclaimed the last visitor to be an impostor, and argued the case so ably, and with such well-simulated indignation at the audacity of the newcomer, that the Baron was staggered, and despatched messengers to the partners of a mercantile house at Florence, to whom the true Petrucci was well known. To wait for the result of the inquiry would have been a folly of which Poulailler was not likely to be guilty; so he made a moonlight flitting of it that very night--but not alone. Poor Wilhelmina had cast in her lot with her lover for good or for evil, and fled with him. The confusion that reigned in the best of all possible castles, the next morning, may be conceived; but we must leave the Baron blaspheming, and the Baroness in hysterics, to follow the fugitives, who gained France in safety, and were soon lost in the labyrinths of Paris. There he was soon joined by his band, to the great loss and terror of the honest people of the good city. Every day, M. Hérault, the lieutenant of police, was saluted by new cases of robbery and violence, which his ablest officers could neither prevent nor punish. The organization of the band was so complete, and the head so ably directed the hands, that neither life nor property was considered safe from one moment to another. Nor were accounts of the generosity of the chief occasionally wanting to add to his fame. One night, as Poulailler was traversing the roofs with the agility of a cat, for the purpose of entering a house whose usual inmates were gone into the country, he passed the window of a garret whence issued a melancholy concert of sobs and moans. He stopped, and approached the apartment of a helpless family, without resources, without bread, and suffering the pangs of hunger. Touched by their distress, and remembering his own similar sufferings before Fortune favored him, he was about to throw his purse among them, when the door of the chamber opened violently, and a man, apparently beside himself, rushed in with a handful of gold, which he cast upon the floor. "There," cried he, in a voice broken by emotion, "there, take--buy--eat; but it will cost you dear. I pay for it with my honor and peace of mind. Baffled in all my attempts to procure food for you honestly, I was on my despairing return, when I beheld, at a short distance from me, a tall but slight-made man, who walked hurriedly, but yet with an air as if he expected some one. Ah! thought I, this is some lover; and yielding to the temptation of the fiend, I seized him by the collar. The poor creature was terrified, and, begging for mercy, put into my hands this watch, two gold snuff-boxes, and those Louis, and fled. There they are; they will cost me my life. I shall never survive this infamy." The starving wife re-echoed these sentiments; and even the hungry children joined in the lamentations of the miserable father. All this touched Pierre to the quick. To the great terror of the family, he entered the room, and stood in the midst. "Be comforted," said he to the astonished husband; "you have robbed a robber. The infamous coward who gave up to you this plunder is one of Poulailler's sentinels. Keep it; it is yours." "But who are you?" cried the husband and wife;--"who are you, and by what right is it that you thus dispose of the goods of another?" "By the right of a chief over his subalterns. I am Poulailler." The poor family fell on their knees, and asked what they could do for him. "Give me a light," said Pierre, "that I may get down into the street without breaking my neck." This reminds one of the answer which Rousseau gave to the Duc de Praslin, whose Danish dog, as it was running before the carriage, had upset the peripatetic philosopher. "What can I do for you?" said the Duke to the fallen author of _La Nouvelle Heloise_, whose person he did not know. "You can tie up your dog," replied Jean-Jacques, gathering himself up, and walking away. Poulailler having done his best to render a worthy family happy, went his way, to inflict condign punishment on the poltroon who had so readily given up the purse and the watches. The adventures of this accomplished robber were so numerous and marvellous, that it is rather difficult to make a selection. One evening, at the _bal de l'Opéra_, he made the acquaintance of a charming woman, who, at first, all indignation, was at length induced to listen to his proposal, that he should see her home; and promised to admit him, "if Monseigneur should not be there." "But who is this Monseigneur?" inquired Pierre. "Don't ask," replied the fair lady. "Who is he, fairest?" "Well, how curious you are; you make me tell all my secrets. If you must know, he is a prince of the church, out of whose revenues he supports me; and I cannot but show my gratitude to him." "Certainly not; he seems to have claims which ought to be attended to." By this time they had arrived at an elegantly furnished house, which they entered, the lady having ascertained that the coast was clear; and Poulailler had just installed himself, when up drove a carriage--Monseigneur in person. The beauty, in a state of distraction, threw herself at the feet of her spark, and implored him to pass into a back cabinet. Poulailler obeyed, and had hardly reached his hiding-place, when he beheld, through the glazed door, Monseigneur, who had gone to his Semele in all his apostolical magnificence. A large and splendid cross of diamonds, perfect in water, shot dazzling rays from his breast, where it was suspended by a chain of cat's-eyes, of great price, set in gold; the button and loop of his hat blazed with other precious stones; and his fingers sparkled with rings, whose brilliants were even greater and more beautiful than those that formed the constellation of his cross. It is very seldom that the human heart, however capacious, has room for two grand passions in activity at the same time. In this instance, Poulailler no sooner beheld the rich and tempting sight, than he found that the god of Love was shaking his wings and flying from his bosom, and that the demon of Cupidity was taking the place of the more disinterested deity. He rushed from his hiding-place, and presented himself to the astonished prelate with a poinard in one hand and a pistol in the other, both of which he held to the sacred breast in the presence of the distracted lady. The bishop had not learnt to be careless of life, and had sufficient self-possession in his terror not to move, lest he should compromise his safety, while Poulailler proceeded to strip him with a dexterity that practice had rendered perfect. Diamonds, precious stones, gold, coined and ornamental, rings, watch, snuff-box, and purse, were transferred from the priest to the robber with marvellous celerity; then turning to the lady, he made her open the casket which contained the price of her favors, and left the house with the plunder and such a laugh as those only revel in who win. The lieutenant of police began to take the tremendous success of our hero to heart, and in his despair at the increasing audacity of the robber, caused it to be spread amongst his spies, archers, and sergeants, that he who should bring Poulailler before him should be rewarded with one hundred pistoles, in addition to a place of two thousand livres a year. M. Hérault was seated comfortably at his breakfast, when the Count de Villeneuve was announced. This name was--perhaps is--principally borne by two celebrated families of Provence and Languedoc. M. Hérault instantly rose and passed into his cabinet, where he beheld a personage of good mien, dressed to perfection, with as much luxury as taste, who in the best manner requested a private interview. Orders were immediately issued that no one should venture to approach till the bell was rung; and a valet was placed as sentinel in an adjoining gallery to prevent the possibility of interruption. "Well, Monsieur le Comte, what is your business with me?" "Oh, a trifle;--merely a thousand pistoles, which I am about to take myself from your strong box, in lieu of the one hundred pistoles, and the snug place, which you have promised to him who would gratify you by Poulailler's presence. I am Poulailler, who will dispatch you to the police of the other world with this poisoned dagger, if you raise your voice or attempt to defend yourself. Nay, stir not--a scratch is mortal." Having delivered himself of this address, the audacious personage drew from his pocket some fine but strong whip-cord, well hackled and twisted, and proceeded to bind the lieutenant of police hand and foot, finishing by making him fast to the lock of the door. Then the robber proceeded to open the lieutenant's secrétaire, the drawers of which he well rummaged, and having filled his pockets with the gold which he found there, turned to the discomfited lieutenant with a profound bow, and after a request that he would not take the trouble to show him out, quietly took his departure. There are some situations so confounding, that they paralyze the faculties for a time; and the magistrate was so overcome by his misfortune, that, instead of calling for aid, as he might have done when the robber left him, he set to work with his teeth, in vain endeavors to disengage himself from the bonds which held him fast. An hour elapsed before any one ventured to disturb M. Hérault, who was found in a rage to be imagined, but not described, at this daring act. The loss was the least part of the annoyance. A cloud of epigrams flew about, and the streets resounded with the songs celebrating Poulailler's triumph and the defeat of the unfortunate magistrate, who dared not for some time to go into society, where he was sure to find a laugh at his expense. But ready as the good people of Paris were with their ridicule, _they_ were by no means at their ease. The depredations of Poulailler increased with his audacity, and people were afraid to venture into the streets after nightfall. As soon as the last rays of the setting sun fell on the Boulevards, the busy crowds began to depart; and when that day-star sank below the horizon, they were deserted. Nobody felt safe. The Hôtel de Brienne was guarded like a fortress, but difficulty seemed to give additional zest to Poulailler. Into this hôtel he was determined to penetrate, and into it he got. While the carriage of the Princess of Lorraine was waiting at the Opera, he contrived to fix leathern bands, with screws, under the outside of the bottom of the body, while his associates were treating the coachman and footman at a _cabaret_, slipped under the carriage in the confusion of the surrounding crowd when it drew up to the door of the theatre, and, depending on the strength of his powerful wrists, held on underneath, and was carried into the hôtel under the very nose of the Swiss Cerberus. When the stable-servants were all safe in their beds, Poulailler quitted his painful hiding-place, where the power of his muscles and sinews had been so severely tested, and mounted into the hay-loft, where he remained concealed three nights and four days, sustaining himself on cakes of chocolate. No one loved good cheer better than he, or indulged more in the pleasures of the table; but he made himself a slave to nothing, save the inordinate desire of other men's goods, and patiently contented himself with what would keep body and soul together till he was enabled to make his grand _coup_. At last, Madame de Brienne went in all her glory to the Princess de Marsan's ball, and nearly all the domestics took advantage of the absence of their mistress to leave the hôtel in pursuit of their own pleasures. Poulailler then descended from the hay-loft, made his way to the noble dame's cabinet, forced her secrétaire, and possessed himself of two thousand Louis d'or and a port-folio, which he doubtless wished to examine at his ease; for, two days afterwards, he sent it back, (finding it furnished with such securities only as he could not negotiate with safety,) and a polite note signed with his name, in which he begged the Princess graciously to receive the restitution, and to accept the excuses of one who, had he not been sorely pressed for the moderate sum which he had ventured to take, would never have thought of depriving the illustrious lady of it; adding, that when he was in cash, he should be delighted to lend her double the amount, should her occasions require it. This impudent missive was lauded as a marvel of good taste at Versailles, where, for a whole week, every one talked of the consummate cleverness and exquisite gallantry of the _Chevalier_ de Poulailler. This title of honor stuck, and his fame seemed to inspire him with additional ardor and address. His affairs having led him to Cambray, he happened to have for a travelling companion the Dean of a well-known noble Belgian chapter. The conversation rolled on the notorieties of the day, and Poulailler was a more interesting theme than the weather. But our chevalier was destined to listen to observations that did not much flatter his self-esteem, for the Dean, so far from allowing him any merit whatever as a brigand, characterized him as an infamous and miserable cutpurse, adding, that at his first and approaching visit to Paris, he would make it his business to see the lieutenant of police, and reproach him with the small pains he took to lay so vile a scoundrel by the heels. The journey passed off without the occurrence of any thing remarkable; but about a month after this colloquy M. Hérault received a letter, informing him that on the previous evening, M. de Potter, _chanoine-doyen_ of the noble chapter of Brussels, had been robbed and murdered by Poulailler, who, clad in the habits of his victim, and furnished with his papers, would enter the barrier St. Martin. This letter purported to have been written by one of his accomplices, who had come to the determination of denouncing him in the hope of obtaining pardon. The horror of M. Hérault at the death of this dignified ecclesiastic, who was personally unknown to him, was, if the truth must be told, merged in the delight which that magistrate felt in the near prospect of avenging society and himself on this daring criminal. A cloud of police officers hovered in ambush at each of the barriers, and especially at that which bore the name of the saint who divided his cloak with the poor pilgrim, with directions to seize and bring into the presence of M. Hérault a man habited as an ecclesiastic, and with the papers of the Dean of the Brussels chapter. Towards evening the Lille coach arrived, was surrounded and escorted to the hôtel des Messageries, and at the moment when the passengers descended, the officers pounced upon the personage whose appearance and vestments corresponded with their instructions. The resistance made by this personage only sharpened the zeal of the officers who seized him, and, in spite of his remonstrances and cries, carried him to the hôtel of the police, where M. Hérault was prepared with the proofs of Poulailler's crimes. Two worthy citizens of Brussels were there, anxious to see the murderer of their friend, the worthy ecclesiastic, whose loss they so much deplored: but what was their joy, and, it must be added, the disappointment of M. Hérault, when the supposed criminal turned out to be no other than the good Dean de Potter himself, safe and sound, but not a little indignant at the outrage which he had sustained. Though a man of peace, his ire so far ruffled a generally calm temper, that he could not help asking M. Hérault whether Poulailler (from whom a second letter now arrived, laughing at their beards) or he, M. Hérault, was the chief director of the police? William of Deloraine, good at need-- By wily turns, by desperate bounds, Had baffled Percy's best bloodhounds. Five times outlawed had he been, By England's king and Scotland's queen. But he was never taken, and had no occasion for his ----neck-verse at Hairibee, even if he could have read it. Poulailler was arrested no less than five times, and five times did he break his bonds. Like Jack Sheppard and Claude du Val, he owed his escape in most instances to the frail fair ones, who would have dared any thing in favor of their favorite, and who, in Jack's case, joined on one occasion without jealousy in a successful effort to save him. Poulailler was quite as much the pet of the petticoats as either of these hempen heroes. With a fine person and accomplished manners, he came, saw, and overcame, in more instances than that of the fair daughter of the Baron von Kirbergen; but, unlike John Sheppard or Claude Du Val, Poulailler was cruel. Villains as they were, John and Claude behaved well, after their fashion, to those whom they robbed, and to the unhappy women with whom they associated. In their case, the "ladies" did their utmost to save them, and men were not wanting who endeavored to obtain a remission of their sentence. But Poulailler owed his fall to a woman whom he had ruined, ill-treated, and scorned. The ruin and ill-treatment she bore, as the women, poor things, will bear such atrocities; but the scorn roused all the fury which the poets, Latin and English, have written of; and his cruelties were so flagrant, that he could find no man to say, "God bless him." Wilhelmina von Kirbergen had twice narrowly escaped from a violent death. Poulailler, in his capricious wrath, once stabbed her with such murderous will, that she lay a long time on the verge of the grave, and then recovered to have the strength of her constitution tried by the strength of a poison which he had administered to her in insufficient quantities. Henry the Eighth forwarded his wives, when he was tired of them, to the other world by form of what was in his time English law; but when Poulailler "felt the fulness of satiety," he got rid of his mistresses by a much more summary process. But it was not till this accomplished scoundrel openly left Wilhelmina for a younger and more beautiful woman, that she, who had given up station, family, and friends, to link herself with his degrading life, abandoned herself to revenge. She wrote to him whom she had loved so long and truly, to implore that they might once more meet before they parted in peace for ever. Poulailler, too happy to be freed on such terms, accepted her invitation, and was received so warmly that he half repented his villainous conduct, and felt a return of his youthful affection. A splendid supper gave zest to their animated conversation; but towards the end of it, Poulailler observed a sudden change in his companion, who manifested evident symptoms of suffering. Poulailler anxiously inquired the cause. "Not much," said she; "a mere trifle--I have poisoned myself, that I may not survive you." "Quoi, coquine! m'aurais-tu fait aussi avaler le boucon?" cried the terrified robber. "That would not have sufficiently avenged me. Your death would have been too easy. No, my friend, you will leave this place safe and well; but it will be to finish the night at the Conciergerie; and, to-morrow, as they have only to prove your identity, you will finish your career on the wheel in the Place de Grève." So saying, she clapped her hands, and, in an instant, before he had time to move, the Philistines were upon him. Archers and other officers swarmed from the hangings, door, and windows. For a few moments, surrounded as he was, his indomitable courage seemed to render the issue doubtful; but what could one man do against a host armed to the teeth? He was overpowered, notwithstanding his brave and vigorous resistance. His death, however, was not so speedy as his wretched mistress prophesied that it would be. The love of life prevailed, and in the hope of gaining time which he might turn to account in effecting his escape, he promised to make revelations of importance to the state. The authorities soon found out that he was trifling with them, and the _procureur-général_, after having caused him to be submitted to the most excruciating torture, left him to be broken on the wheel alive. He was executed with all the accursed refinement of barbarity which disgraced the times; and his tormenters, at last, put the finishing stroke to his prolonged agonies, by throwing him alive into the fire that blazed at his feet. Nothing can justify such penal atrocities. If any thing could, Poulailler, it must be admitted, had wrought hard to bring down upon himself the whole sharpness of the law of retaliation. Upwards of one hundred and fifty persons had been murdered by him and his band. Resistance seemed to rouse in him and them the fury of devils. Nor was it only on such occasions that his murderous propensities were glutted. At the village of St. Martin, he caused the father, the mother, two brothers, a newly-married sister, her husband, and four relations, or friends, to be butchered in cold blood. One of his band was detected in an attempt to betray him. Poulailler had him led to a cellar. The traitor was placed upright in an angle of the wall, gagged, and there they built him in alive. Poulailler, with his own hand, wrote the sentence and epitaph of the wretch on the soft plaster; and there it was found some years afterward, when the cellar in which this diabolical act of vengeance was perpetrated passed into the hands of a new proprietor. It was current in the country where Poulailler first saw the light, and where his father, mother, brethren, and sisters, still lived an honorable life, embittered only by the horrible celebrity of their relation, that, on the night which followed the day of Pierre's execution, the isolated tower, which had been uninhabited since its last occupant had so mysteriously disappeared, seemed all on fire, every window remaining illuminated by the glowing element till morning dawned. During this fearful nocturnal spectacle, it was affirmed that infernal howlings and harrowing cries proceeded from the apparently burning mass, and some peasants declared that they heard Pierre Poulailler's name shouted from the midst of the flames in a voice of thunder. The dawn showed the lonely tower unscathed by fire; but a fearful tempest arose, and raged with ceaseless fury for thrice twenty-four hours. The violence of the hurricane was such, that it was impossible during that time for any vessel to keep the sea; and when at length the storm subsided, the coast was covered with pieces of wreck, while the waves continued for many days to give up their dead at the base of the rock, from whose crest frowned _La Tour Maudite_. From Hogg's Instructor. THE LATE D. M. MOIR. BY GEORGE GILFILLAN. Pleasant and joyous was the circle wont to assemble now and then (not _every_ night, as the public then fondly dreamed) in Ambrose's, some twenty-five years ago: not a constellation in all our bright sky, at present, half so brilliant. There sat John Wilson, "lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye," his hair somewhat thicker, and his eye rather brighter, and his complexion as fresh, and his talk as powerful, as now. There Lockhart appeared, with his sharp face, _adunco naso_, keen poignant talk, and absence of all enthusiasm. There Maginn rollicked and roared, little expecting that he was ever destined to stand a bankrupt and ruined man over Bunyan's dust, and cry, "Sleep on, thou Prince of Dreamers!" There De Quincey bowed and smiled, while interposing his mild but terrible and unanswerable "buts," and winding the subtle way of his talk through all subjects, human, infernal, and divine. There appeared the tall military form of old Syme, alias Timothy Tickler, with his pithy monosyllables, and determined _nil admirari_ bearing. There the Ettrick Shepherd told his interminable stories, and drank his interminable tumblers. There sat sometimes, though seldom, a young man of erect port, mild gray eye, high head, rich quivering lips, and air of simple dignity, often forgetting to fill or empty his glass, but never forgetting to look reverently to the "Professor," curiously and admiringly to De Quincey, and affectionately to all: it was Thomas Aird. There occasionally might be seen Macnish of Glasgow, with his broad fun; Doubleday of Newcastle, then a rising litterateur; Leitch, the ventriloquist, (not professionally so, and yet not much inferior, we believe, to the famous Duncan Macmillan); and even a stray Cockney or two who did not belong to the Cockney school. There, too, the "Director-general of the Fine Arts," old Bridges, (uncle to our talented friend, William Bridges, Esq. of London,) was often a guest, with his keen black eye, finely-formed features, rough, ready talk, and a certain smack audible on his lips when he spoke of a beautiful picture, a "leading article" in "Maga," or of some of the queer adventures (_quorum pars fuit_) of Christopher North. And there, last, not least, was frequently seen the fine fair-haired head of Delta, the elegant poet, the amiable man, and the author of one of the quaintest and most delightful of our Scottish tales, "Mansie Wauch." That brilliant circle was dissolved long ere we knew any of its members. We question if it was ever equalled, except thrice: once by the Scriblerus Club, composed of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Gay, and Bolingbroke; again by the "Literary Club," with its Johnson, Burke, Garrick, Beauclerk, Gibbon, and Fox: and more recently by the "Round-table," with its Hazlitt, Hunt, Lamb, and their minor companions. It is now, we need not say, entirely dissolved, although most of its members are yet alive, and although its doings and sayings have been of late imitated in certain symposia, reminding us, in comparison with the past, of the shadowy feasts of the dead beside real human entertainments. The "nights" of the North are diviner than the "days." From this constellation, we mean, at present, to cut out one "bright, particular star," and to discourse of him. This is Delta, the delightful. We have not the happiness of Dr. Moir's acquaintance, nor did we ever see him, save once. It was at the great Edinburgh Philosophic Feed of 1846, when Macaulay, Whately, and other lions, young and old, roared, on the whole, rather feebly, and in vulgar falsetto, over their liberal provender. Delta, too, was a speaker, and his speech had two merits, at least, modesty and brevity, and contrasted thus well with Whately's egotistical rigmarole, Macaulay's labored paradox, and Maclagan's inane bluster. He was, we understood afterwards, in poor health at the time, and did not do justice to himself. But we have been long familiar with his poems in "Blackwood" and the "Dumfries Herald," to which he occasionally contributed. We remember well when, next to a paper by North, or a poem by Aird, we looked eagerly for one by Delta in each new number of "Ebony;" and we now cheerfully proceed to say a few words about his true and exquisite genius. We may call Delta the male Mrs. Hemans. Like her, he loved principally the tender, the soft, and the beautiful. Like her, he excelled in fugitive verses, and seldom attempted, and still more seldom succeeded, in the long or the labored poem. Like her, he tried a great variety of styles and measures. Like her, he ever sought to interweave a sweet and strong moral with his strains, and to bend them all in by a graceful curve around the Cross. But, unlike her, his tone was uniformly glad and genial, and he exhibited none of that morbid melancholy which lies often like a dark funeral edge around her most beautiful poems: and this, because he was a _masculine_ shape of the same elegant genus. Delta's principal powers were cultured sensibility, fine fancy, good taste, and an easy, graceful style and versification. He sympathized with all the "outward forms of sky and earth, with all that was lovely, and pure, and of a good report" in the heart and the history of humanity, and particularly with Scottish scenery, and Scottish character and manners. His poetry was less a distinct power or vein, than the general result and radiance of all his faculties. These exhaled out of them a fine genial enthusiasm, which expressed itself in song. We do not think, with Carlyle, that it is the same with _all_ high poets. _He_ says--"Poetry, except in such cases as that of Keats, where the whole consists in a weak-eyed maudlin sensibility, and a certain vague tunefulness of nature, is no separate faculty, no organ which can be superadded to the rest, or disjoined from them, but rather the result of their general harmony and completion." Now, 1st, Carlyle is here grossly unjust to Keats. Had the author of Hyperion nothing but maudlin sensibility? If ever man was devoured, body and soul, by that passion for, and perception of, the beauty and glory of the universe, which is the essence of poetry, it was poor Keats. He was poetry incarnate--the wine of the gods poured into a frail earthy vessel, which split around it. Nor has Burns, of whom Carlyle is here writing, left any thing to be compared, in ideal qualities, in depth, and massiveness, and almost Miltonic magnificence, with the descriptions of Saturn, and the Palace of the Sun, and the Senate of the Gods in "Hyperion." Burns was the finest lyrist of his or any age; but Keats, had he lived, would have been one of the first of _epic_ poets. 2dly, We do not very well comprehend what Carlyle means by the words "no organ, which can be superadded to, or disjoined from the rest." If he means that no culture can add, or want of it take away, poetic faculty, he is clearly right. But, if he means that nature never confers a poetic vein distinct from, and superior to, the surrounding faculties of the man, we must remind him of certain stubborn facts. Gay and Fontaine were "fable-trees," Goldsmith was an "inspired idiot." Godwin's powerful philosophic and descriptive genius seemed scarcely connected with the man; he had to _write_ himself _into_ it, and his friends could hardly believe him the author of his own works! Even Byron was but a common man, except at his desk, or "on his stool" as he himself called it. He had to "_call_" his evil spirit from the vasty deep, and to lash himself very often into inspiration by a whip of "Gin-_twist_." And James Hogg was little else than a _haverer_, till he sat down to write poetry, when the "faery queen" herself seemed to be speaking from within him. Nay, 3dly, we are convinced that many men, of extraordinary powers otherwise, have in them a vein of poetry as distinct from the rest as the bag of honey in the bee is from his sting, his antennæ, and his wings, and which requires some special circumstance or excitement to develop it. Thus it was, we think, with Burke, Burns, and Carlyle himself. All these had poetry in them, and have expressed it; but any of them might have _avoided_, in a great measure, its expression, and might have solely shone in other spheres. For example, Burke has written several works full, indeed, of talent, but without a single gleam of that real imagination which other of his writings display. What a contrast between his "Thoughts on the Present Discontents," or his "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful," (an essay containing not one sublime, and not two beautiful sentences in it all,) and the "rare and regal" rhetorical and poetic glories of his "Essay on the French Revolution," or his "Letters on a Regicide Peace!" Burns might have been a philosopher of the Dugald Stewart school, as acute and artificially eloquent as any of them, had he gone to Edinburgh College instead of going to Irvine School. Carlyle might have been a prime-minister of a somewhat original and salvage sort, had it been so ordered. None of the three were so essentially poetical, that all their thoughts were "twin-born with poetry," and rushed into the reflection of metaphor, as the morning beams into the embrace and reflection of the lake. All were _stung_ into poetry: Burke by political zeal and personal disappointment, Burns by love, and Carlyle by that white central heat of dissatisfaction with the world and the things of the world, which his temperament has compelled him to express, but which his Scottish common sense has taught him the wisdom of expressing in earnest masquerade and systematic metaphor. But, 4thly, there is a class of poets who have possessed more than the full complement of human faculties, who have added to these extensive accomplishments and acquirements, and yet who have been so constituted, that imaginative utterance has been as essential to their thoughts as language itself. Such were Dante, Milton, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, &c., and such are Wilson, Bailey, Aird, and Yendys. These are "nothing, if not poetical." All their powers and acquisitions turn instinctively toward poetic expression, whether in verse or prose. And near them, although on a somewhat lower plane, stood Delta. Poetry, with Delta, was rather the natural outflow of his whole soul and culture combined, than an art or science. His poetry was founded on feelings, not on principles. Indeed, we fancy that little true poetry, in any age, has been systematic. It is generally the work of sudden enthusiasm, wild and rapid ecstasy acting upon a nature _prefitted_ for receiving the afflatus, whether by gift or by accomplishment, or by both united. Even the most thoroughly furnished have been as dependent on moods and happy hours as the least. The wind of inspiration bloweth where it listeth. Witness Milton and Coleridge, both of whom were masters of the theory of their art, nay, who had studied it scientifically, and with a profound knowledge of cognate sciences, and yet both of whom could only build up the lofty rhyme at certain seasons, and in certain circumstances, and who frequently perpetrated sheer dulness and drivel. The poetry of Homer, of Eschylus, of Lucretius, of Byron, of Shelley, of Festus--in short, the most of powerful poetry--has owed a vast deal more to excitement and enthusiasm than to study or elaborate culture. The rhapsodists were the first, have been the best, and shall be the last of the poets. And with what principles of poetic art were the bards of Israel conversant? And what systems of psychology or æsthetics had Shakspeare studied? And in what college were trained the framers of the ballad-poetry of the world--the lovers who soothed with song their burning hearts--the shepherds who sang amid their green wildernesses--the ploughmen who modulated to verse the motion of their steers--the kings of the early time who shouted war-poetry from their chariots--the Berserkars whose long hair curled and shook as though life were in it, to the music of their wild melodies--and the "men of sturt and strife," the rough Macpherson-like heroes, whose spirits sprang away from the midst of flood and flame, from the gallows or the scaffold, on whirlwinds of extempore music and poetry? Poetry, with them, was the irresistible expression of passion and of imagination, and hence its power; and to nothing still, but the same rod, can its living waters flow amain. Certain fantastic fribbles of the present day may talk of "principles of art," and "principles of versification," and the necessity of studying poetry as a science, and may exhaust the resources of midnight darkness in expressing their bedrivelled notions; but _our_ principle is this--"Give us a gifted intellect, and warm true heart, and stir these with the fiery rod of passion and enthusiasm, and the result will be genuine, and high, and lasting poetry, as certainly as that light follows the sun." It may, perhaps, be objected, besides, that Delta has left no large or great poem. Now, here we trace the presence of another prevalent fallacy. Largeness is frequently confounded with greatness. But, because Milton's Paradise Lost is both large and great, it does not follow that every great poem must be large, any more than that every large poem must be great. Pollok's Course of Time is a large and a clever, but scarcely a great poem. Hamlet and Faust may be read each in an hour, and yet both are great poems. Heraud's Judgment of the Flood is a vast folio in size, but a very second-rate poem in substance. Thomas Aird's Devil's Dream covers only four pages, yet who ever read it without the impression "this is a great effort of genius." Lalla Rookh was originally a quarto, but, although brilliant in the extreme, it can hardly be called a poem at all. Burns's Vision of Liberty contains, in the space of thirty-two lines, we hesitate not to say, all the elements of a great poem. Although Delta's poems be not large, it is not a necessary corollary that they are inferior productions. And if none of them, perhaps, fill up the whole measure of the term "great," many of them are beautiful, all are genuine, and some, such as Casa Wappy, are exquisite. Health is one eminent quality in this pleasing writer. Free originally from morbid tendencies, he has nursed and cherished this happy tone of mind by perusing chiefly healthy authors. He has acted on the principle that the whole should be kept from the sick. He has dipped but sparingly into the pages of Byron and Shelley, whereas Wordsworth, Wilson, Southey, and Scott, are the gods of his idolatry. Scott is transcendently clear. Indeed, we think that he gives to him, _as a poet_, a place beyond his just deserts. His ease, simplicity, romantic interest, and Border fire, have blinded him to his faults, his fatal facility of verse, his looseness of construction, and his sad want of deep thought and original sentiment. To name him beside or above Wordsworth, the great consecrated bard of his period, is certainly a heresy of no small order. One or two of Wordsworth's little poems, or of his sonnets, are, we venture to say, in genuine poetical depth and beauty, superior to Scott's _five_ larger poems put together. _They_ are long, lively, rambling, shallow, and blue, glittering streams. Wordsworth's ballads are deep and clear as those mountain pools over which bends the rowan, and on which smiles the autumn sky, as on the fittest reflector of its own bright profundity and solemn clearness. Well did Christopher North characterize Delta as the poet of the spring. He was the darling of that darling season. In all his poetry there leaped and frolicked "vernal delight and joy." He had in some of his verses admirably, and on purpose, expressed the many feelings or images which then throng around the heart, like a cluster of bees settling at once upon flower--the sense of absolute newness, blended with a faint, rich thrill of recollection--the fresh bubbling out of the blood from the heart-springs--the return of the reveries of childhood or youth--the intolerance of the fireside--the thirst after nature renewed within the soul--the strange glory shed upon the earth, all red and bare though it yet be--the attention excited by every thing, "even by the noise of the fly upon the sunny wall, or the slightest murmur of creeping waters"--the springing up of the sun from his winter declinature--the softer and warmer lustre of the stars--and the new emphasis with which men pronounce the words "hope" and "love." To crown a spring evening, there sometimes appears in the west the planet Venus, bright yellow-green, shivering as with ecstasy in the orange or purple sky, and rounding off the whole scene into the perfection of beauty. The Scottish poet of spring did not forget this element of its glory, but sung a hymn to that fair star of morn and eve worthy of its serene, yet tremulous splendor. Delta was eminently a national writer. He did not gad abroad in search of the sublime or strange, but cultivated the art of staying at home. The scenery of his own neighborhood, the traditions or the histories of his own country, the skies and stars of Scotland, the wild or beautiful legends which glimmer through the mist of its past--these were "the haunt and the main region of his song," and hence, in part, the sweetness and the strength of his strains. Indeed, it is remarkable that nearly all our Scottish poets have been national and descriptive. Scotland has produced no real epic, few powerful tragedies, few meditative poems of a high rank, but what a mass of poetry describing its own scenery and manners, and recording its own traditions. King James the Sixth, Gawin Douglas, Davie Lyndsay, Ramsay, Fergusson, Ross of the "Faithful Shepherdess," Burns, Beattie, Sir Walter Scott, Wilson, Aird, Delta, and twenty more, have been all more or less national in their subject, or language, or both. We attribute this, in a great measure, to the extreme peculiarity of Scottish manners, _as they were_, and to the extreme and romantic beauty of Scottish scenery. The poetic minds, in a tame country like England, are thrown out upon foreign topics, or thrown in upon themselves; whereas, in Scotland, they are arrested and detained within the circle of their own manners and mountains. "Paint _us_ first," the hills seem to cry aloud. A reason, too, why we have had few good tragedies or meditative poems, may be found in our national narrowness of creed, and in our strong prejudice against dramatic entertainments. As it is, we have only Douglas, and three or four good plays of Miss Baillie's, to balance Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, and all that galaxy--not to speak of the multitudes who have followed--and only the "Grave," the "Minstrel," and the "Course of Time," to compare with the works of George Herbert, Giles Fletcher, Quarles, Milton, Young, Cowper, and Wordsworth. We find in Delta little meditative power or tendency. His muse had no "speculation" in her eye. Whether from caution, or from want of the peculiar faculty, he never approached those awful abysses of thought which are now attracting so many poets--attracting them, partly from a desire to look down into their darkness, and partly from a passion for those strange and shivering flowers which grow around their sides. Leigh Hunt, in his late autobiography, when speaking of Blanco White, seems to blame all religious speculation, as alike hopeless and useless. But, in the present day, unless there be religious speculation, there can, with men of mind, be little religion--no creed--nor even an approximation toward one. Would Mr. Hunt destroy that link, which in every age has bound us to the infinite and eternal? Would he bring us back to mere brute worship, and brute belief? Because we cannot at present form an infallible creed, should we beware of seeking to form a creed at all? Because we cannot see all the stars, must we never raise our eyes, or our telescopes, to the midnight heavens? Because HE has been able to reach no consistent and influential faith, ought all men to abandon the task? So far from agreeing with this dogmatic denunciation, we hold that it argues on the part of its author--revered and beloved though he be--a certain shallowness and levity of spirit--that its tendency is to crush a principle of aspiration in the human mind, which may be likened to an outspringing angel pinion, and that it indirectly questions the use and the truth of all revelation. We honor, we must say, Blanco White, in his noble struggles, and in his divine despair, more than Leigh Hunt, in his denial that such struggles are wiser than a maniac's trying to leap to the sun, and in the ignoble conceptions of man's position and destiny which his words imply. And, notwithstanding his chilling criticism, so unlike his wont, we believe still, with Coleridge, that not Wordsworth, nor Milton, have written a sonnet, embodying a thought so new and magnificent, in language so sweet and musical, and perfectly fitted to the thought, like the silvery new moon sheathed in a transparent fleecy cloud, as that of Blanco White's beginning with "Mysterious Night." Delta, we have already said, gained reputation, in prose, as well as in verse. His _Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith_, is one of the most delightful books in the language. It is partly, it is true, imitated from Galt; but, while not inferior to him in humor, it has infused a far deeper vein of poetry into the conception of common Scottish life. Honor to thee, honest Mansie! Thou art worth twenty Alton Lockes, the metaphysical tailor (certainly one of the absurdest creations, and surrounded by the most asinine story of the age, although redeemed by some glorious scenes, and _one_ character, Sandy Mackay, who is just Thomas Carlyle _humanized_). But better than thee still, is thy 'prentice, Mungo Glen, with decline in his lungs, poetry in his heart, and on his lips one of the sweetest laments in the language! Many years have elapsed since we read thy life, but our laughter at thy adventures, and our tears at the death of thy poor 'prentice, seem as fresh as those of yesterday! Why did Delta only open, and never dig out, this new and rich vein? He alone seemed adequate to follow, however far off, in the steps of the Great Wizard. Aird seemed to have exhausted his tale-writing faculty, exquisite as it was. Wilson's tales, with all their power, lack repose; they are too troubled, tearful, monotonous, and tempestuous. Galt, Miss Ferrier, the authoress of the Odd Volume, Macnish, &c., are dead.... We had not the pleasure of hearing Delta's recent lectures. They were, chatty, conversational, lively, full of information, although neither very eloquent, nor very profound. He knew too well the position in which he stood, and the provender which his audience required! Nor, we confess, did we expect to meet in them with a comprehensive or final vidimus of the poetry of the last fifty years. His Edinburgh eye has been too much dazzled and overpowered by the near orbs of Walter Scott and Wilson, to do justice to remoter luminaries. Nor was criticism exactly Delta's forte. He had not enough of subtility--perhaps not enough of profound native instinct--and, perhaps, _some_ will think, not enough of bad blood. But his criticism must, we doubt not, be always sincere in feeling, candid in spirit, and manly in language. Still, we repeat, that his power and mission were in the description of the woods and streams, the feelings and customs, the beauties and peculiarities, of 'dear Auld Scotland.' It may, perhaps, be necessary to add, that the name Delta was applied to Dr. Moir, from his signature in "Black wood," which was always [Symbol: Delta]; that he was a physician in Musselburgh, and the author of some excellent treaties on subjects connected with his own profession; and that while an accomplished litterateur and beautiful poet, he never neglected his peculiar duties, but stood as high in the medical as in the literary world. From Fraser's Magazine. THE DESERTED MANSION. A few years ago, a picture appeared in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, which peculiarly impressed my imagination; it represented an ancient ruinous dwelling, surrounded by dilapidated gardens, set in sombre woods. The venerable trees, the moat filled with nettles and rubbish, the broken fences, green stagnant waters, the gabled, turreted, many-windowed, mouldering mansion, a perfect medley of chaotic architecture. The _visible silence_, the spirit of supreme desolation brooding over the precincts, filled my mind with involuntary sadness; while fancy conjured up strange, wild tales of other days, in connection with the scene. I could not shake off the belief that reality was portrayed on the canvas; and writing an account of the various pictures to a friend who resided in the country, I dwelt on this particular one, and my singular impressions respecting it. When I next received a letter from my friend, she remarked how unaccountable my fancies were; fancies which were, however, based on the foundation of truth. She went on to say, that reading my letter to Mrs. L----, an octogenarian in wonderful preservation, that lady informed her of the locality of my deserted mansion, and also of its history; the picture being actually painted for Mrs. L----'s son; and the tale attached to it, which my friend eventually gave me in the old lady's own words, was as follows: "Fifty years ago, the mansion of St. Elan's Wood was reckoned ancient, but it was a healthful, vigorous age, interesting and picturesque. Then, emerald turf lined the sides of the moat, and blooming flowers clustered within its sloping shelter; white drapery fluttered within the quaint latticed windows, and delicate climbers festooned them without; terraced walks and thick hollow hedges were in trim order, fountains sparkled in the sunshine, and blushing roses bent over and kissed the clear rejoicing waters. "Fifty years ago, joyous laughter resounded amid the greenwood glades, and buoyant footsteps pressed the greensward; for the master of St. Elan's had brought home a bride, and friends and relatives hastened thither to offer congratulations, and to share the hospitalities of the festive season. "Lady St. Elan was a very young wife; a soft-eyed, timid creature; her mother had died during her daughter's infancy, and her father (an officer of high rank in the army) being abroad, a lady whom we shall call Sabina, by whom she had been educated, accompanied her beloved pupil, now Lady St. Elan, to this new home. The death of Lady St. Elan's father, and the birth of a daughter, eventually mingled rejoicing and mourning together, while great anxiety was felt for the young mother, whose recovery was extremely tedious. The visits of eminent physicians, who were sent for from great distances, evinced the fears which were still entertained, even when the invalid roamed once more in the pleasant garden and woods around. Alas! it was not for the poor lady's bodily health they feared; the hereditary mental malady of her family on the maternal side, but which had slumbered for two generations, again darkly shadowed forth its dread approaches. Slight, indeed, had been the warning as yet, subtle the demonstrations of the deadly enemy, but enough to alarm the watchful husband, who was well acquainted with the facts. But the alarm passed away, the physicians came no more, and apparent health and strength, both mental and physical, were fully restored to the patient, while the sweet babe really deserved the epithets lavished on it by the delighted mother of the 'divinest baby in the world.' "During the temporary absence of her husband, on affairs of urgent business, Lady St. Elan requested Sabina to share her chamber at night, on the plea of timidity and loneliness; this wish was cheerfully complied with, and two or three days passed pleasantly away. "St. Elan was expected to return home on the following morning, and when the friends retired to rest on the previous night, Sabina withdrew the window curtains, to gaze upon the glorious landscape which stretched far away, all bathed in silver radiance, and she soon fell into a tranquil slumber, communing with holy thoughts and prayerful aspirations. She was suddenly awakened by a curious kind of sound in the room, accompanied by a half-stifled jeering laugh. She knew not how long sleep had lulled her in oblivion, but when Sabina turned round to see from whence the sound proceeded, imagine her horror and dismay at beholding Lady St. Elan standing near the door, sharpening a large knife on her slipper, looking wildly round now and then, muttering and jibing. "'Not sharp enough yet--not sharp enough yet,' she exclaimed, intently pursuing her occupation. "Sabina felt instinctively, that this was no practical _joke_; she knew instinctively the dread reality--by the maniac's eye--by the tone of voice--and she sprang from the bed, darting towards the door. It was locked. Lady St. Elan looked cunningly up, muttering-- "'So you thought I was so silly, did you? But I double-locked it, and threw the key out of the window; and perhaps you may spy out in the moonshine you're so fond of admiring,' pointing to an open casement, at an immense height from the ground--for this apartment was at the summit of a turret, commanding an extensive view, chosen for that reason, as well as for its seclusion and repose, being so far distant from the rest of the household. "Sabina was not afflicted with weak nerves, and as the full danger of her position flashed across her mind, she remembered to have heard that the human eye possesses extraordinary power to quell and keep in abeyance all unruly passions thus terrifically displayed. She was also aware, that in a contest where mere bodily energy was concerned, her powers must prove utterly inadequate and unavailing, when brought into competition with those of the unfortunate lady during a continuance of the paroxysm. Sabina feigned a calmness which she was far from feeling at that trying moment, and though her voice trembled, yet she said cheerfully, and with a careless air-- "'I think your knife will soon be sharp enough, Lady St. Elan; what do you want it for?' "'What do I want it for?' mimicked the mad woman; 'why what should I want it for, Sabina, but to cut your throat with?' "'Well, that is an odd fancy,' exclaimed Sabina, endeavoring not to scream or to faint: 'but you had better sit down, for the knife is not sharp enough for that job--there--there's a chair. Now give me your attention while you sharpen, and I'll sit opposite to you; for I have had such an extraordinary dream, and I want you to listen to it.' "The lady looked maliciously sly, as much as to say, 'You shall not cheat me, if I _do_ listen.' But she sat down, and Sabina opposite to her, who began pouring forth a farrago of nonsense, which she pretended to have dreamt. Lady St. Elan had always been much addicted to perusing works of romantic fiction, and this taste for the marvellous was, probably, the means of saving Sabina's life, who, during that long and awful night, never flagged for one moment, continuing her repetition of marvels in the _Arabian Night's_ style. The maniac sat perfectly still, with the knife in one hand, the slipper in the other, and her large eyes intently fixed on the narrator. Oh, those weary, weary hours! When, at length, repeated signals and knocks were heard at the chamber-door, as the morning sun arose, Sabina had presence of mind not to notice them, as her terrible companion appeared not to do so; but she continued her sing-song, monotonous strain, until the barrier was fairly burst open, and St. Elan himself, who had just returned, alarmed at the portentous murmurs within, and accompanied by several domestics, came to the rescue. "Had Sabina moved, or screamed for help, or appeared to recognize the aid which was at hand, ere it could have reached her, the knife might have been sheathed in her heart. This knife was a foreign one of quaint workmanship, usually hanging up in St. Elan's dressing-room; and the premeditation evinced in thus secreting it was a mystery not to be solved. Sabina's hair which was black as the raven's wing, when she retired to rest on that fearful night, had changed to the similitude of extreme age when they found her in the morning. Lady St. Elan never recovered this sudden and total overthrow of reason, but died--alas! it was rumored, by her own hand--within two years afterwards. The infant heiress was entrusted to the guidance of her mother's friend and governess; she became an orphan at an early age, and on completing her twenty-first year was uncontrolled mistress of the fortune and estates of her ancestors. "But long ere that period arrived, a serious question had arisen in Sabina's mind respecting the duty and expediency of informing Mary St. Elan what her true position was, and gently imparting the sad knowledge of that visitation overshadowing the destinies of her race. It was true that in her individual case the catastrophe might be warded off, while, on the other hand, there was lurking, threatening danger; but a high religious principle seemed to demand a sacrifice, or self-immolation, in order to prevent the possibility of a perpetuation of the direful malady. "Sabina felt assured that were her noble-hearted pupil once to learn the facts, there would be no hesitation on her part in strictly adhering to the prescribed line of right; it was a bitter task for Sabina to undertake, but she did not shrink from performing it when her resolution became matured, and her scruples settled into decision, formed on the solid basis of duty to God and man. Sabina afterwards learnt that the sacrifice demanded of Mary St. Elan was far more heroic than she had contemplated; and when that sweet young creature devoted herself to a life of celibacy, Sabina did not know, that engrossed by 'first love,' of which so much has been said and sung, Mary St. Elan bade adieu to life's hope and happiness. "With a woman's delicate perception and depth of pity, Sabina gained that knowledge; and with honor unspeakable she silently read the treasured secrets of the gentle heart thus fatally wounded--the evil from which she had sedulously striven to guard her pupil, had not been successfully averted--Mary St. Elan had already given away her guileless heart. But her sorrows were not doomed to last; for soon after that period when the law pronounced her free from control respecting her worldly affairs, the last of the St. Elans passed peacefully away to a better world, bequeathing the mansion house and estate of St. Elan's Wood to Sabina and her heirs. In Sabina's estimation, however, this munificent gift was the 'price of blood:' as but for _her_ instrumentality, the fatal knowledge would not have been imparted; but for _her_ the ancestral woods and pleasant home might have descended to children's children in the St. Elan's line,--tainted, indeed, and doomed; but now the race was extinct. "There were many persons who laughed at Sabina's sensitive feelings on this subject, which they could not understand; and even well-meaning, pious folk, thought that she carried her strict notions, too far. Yet Sabina remained immovable; nor would she ever consent that the wealth thus left should be enjoyed by her or hers. "Thus the deserted mansion still remains unclaimed, though it will not be long ere it is appropriated to the useful and beneficent purpose specified in Mary St. Elan's will--namely, failing Sabina and her issue, to be converted into a lunatic asylum--a kind of lunatic alms-house for decayed gentlewomen, who, with the requisite qualifications, will here find refuge from the double storms of life assailing them, poor souls! both from within and without." "But what became of Sabina, and what interest has your son in this picture?" asked my friend of old Mrs. L----, as that venerable lady concluded her narration; "for if none live to claim the property, why does it still remain thus?" "Your justifiable curiosity shall be gratified, my dear," responded the kindly dame. "Look at my hair--it did not turn white from age: I retired to rest one night with glossy braids, black as the raven's wing, and they found me in the morning as you now behold me! Yes, it is even so; and you no longer wonder that Sabina's son desired to possess this identical painting; my pilgrimage is drawing towards its close--protracted as it has been beyond the allotted age of man--but, according to the tenor of the afore-named will, the mansion and estate of St. Elan must remain as they now stand until I am no more; while the accumulated funds will amply endow the excellent charity. Were my son less honorable or scrupulous, he might, of course, claim the property on my decease; but respect for his mother's memory, with firm adherence to her principles, will keep him, with God's blessing, from yielding to temptation. He is not a rich man, but with proud humility he may gaze on this memorial picture, and hand it down to posterity with the traditionary lore attached; and may none of our descendants ever lament the use which will be made, nor covet the possession, of this deserted mansion." From Hogg's Instructor. ILLUSTRATIONS OF MOTIVES. Certain it is, that in the universe there can be but one infallible Judge of motives. None but its Maker can see into the secret springs, and clearly comprehend the motions, of the mind. Nevertheless, "the will for the deed" is an old understanding among mankind, in virtue of that inward life whose world and workings they know to extend so far beyond the visible. It is, indeed, the privilege, and in some sense a necessity of human reason, to inquire after, at least, obvious motives, since the smallest acquaintance with character or history cannot be formed without taking them into account. Thus, in the biographies of notable men, in the histories of nations, and in the gossip which constitutes the current history of most neighborhoods, and is relished alike by the denizens of court and hamlet, nobody is satisfied with knowing merely what was done, for the demand invariably follows, Why they did it? That query is often necessary to legal, and always to moral justice. It must be, so to speak, a most mechanical and surface life, whose daily doings the beholder can fully explain, independent of any reference to inward feelings, unuttered memories, or concealed hopes. How many deeds and whole courses of action, chameleon-like, utterly change their complexions, according to the light of attributed motives! Through that medium, the patriot of one party becomes the heartless and designing knave of another; and the fanatical revolutionists of their own generation turn to fearless reformers with the next. Many an act, on the details of which most historians are agreed, is held up by one to the world's praise, and by another to universal censure. Henri Quatre, says the first, conformed to Catholicism rather than continue a civil war in his kingdom; while a second remarks of the same monarch, that he sacrificed his faith for a crown. When Frederick-William of Prussia was just at the hottest of that persecution of his celebrated son, for which, together with his love of tall soldiers, he is best known to the world, the grand dispute amongst his favorite guards at Potsdam was, whether the kicks, cuffs, and imprisonments, which the old king bestowed so liberally on his heir-apparent, were intended to prevent young Fritz turning an infidel, or arose from his father's fears that he might be a greater man than himself! On no subject are mankind more apt to differ, probably because there are few on which observation affords so much inferential and so little direct evidence. Approaching the innermost circles of private life, we find that the views entertained of motives exercise a still greater influence in determining our estimation of kindred, friends, or lovers. Volpone, in Ben Jonson's play, even had he been capable of it, could have no cause for gratitude to his numerous friends for all their gifts and attentions, knowing so perfectly as he did, that they came but in expectation of a legacy; and many a well-portioned dame has seen cause for applying to her most attentive suitor those lines of a homely Scottish song-- "My lad is sae muckle in love wi' my siller, He canna hae love to spare for me." There is a strange difference of opinion existing at times between the principals and the spectators of these particular affairs. Few, it has been said, can penetrate the motives of others in matters regarding themselves. Yet most people are wonderfully sharp-sighted where their neighbors are concerned; and the world--as every one of us is apt to call that fraction of society in which we live, and move, and have our associations--though generally not over charitable, is rarely wrong in its conclusions. He was a keen observer of life who remarked that the rapid changes to which most of human friendships and enmities are liable, could be no matter of surprise to one who took note of the motives from which they generally originate. Poor and unsubstantial enough these doubtless are, in many a case. There have been friendships that owed their growth solely to showers of flattery, and bitter enmities have spontaneously sprung up in the soil of envy. It was said of Goldsmith, that he could never hear a brother poet, or, indeed, any citizen of the world of letters, praised, without entertaining a temporary aversion to that individual, and a similar effect was always produced by the smallest sign of increasing literary consequence. A report that M---- had been taken particular notice of by such a nobleman of those patronizing times, or that his works had been admired in some segment of the fashionable circle, was sufficient to make the author of the "Deserted Village" find all manner of faults with him and his, till time, or his habitual good nature, wiped the circumstance out of Goldsmith's remembrance. This reminds one of Madame de Montespan, a belle of that order which reigned most triumphantly at the court of Louis XIV., who never could forgive her rival, even when disgraced and dead, because she had once got a ride in the royal carriage. It is curious that the learned and the fair, far as their general pursuits, and visibilities, too, are known to be apart, should, according to common report, approximate so nearly in their motives to enmity or friendship. George Colman used to say, that, if one had any interest in getting up a quarrel between either two fine ladies or two literary men, he had nothing to do but to praise the one energetically to the other, and the higher his enthusiasm rose, the fiercer would be the war. It was asserted of both the elder and younger Scaliger, that they never applauded any scholar with all their might, but one who was manifestly inferior to themselves; and of Madame de Maintenon, that she never honored any one with her special friendship who was not, in some considerable point, beneath her. There is still a large class of characters, in all whose attachments a something to despise seems the indispensable ingredient. The perpetual triumph of being always "king of the company" has a binding attraction for such minds. It confers a kind of dictatorship to have the advantage of one's friends. Nothing else can explain the amount of patronage and befriending generally lavished on the most worthless members of families or societies; and the half-grudge, half-surveillance, which, under the covert of mere mouth-honor, often surrounds great or successful abilities. A strange motive to enmity is illustrated in the life of General Loudoun, one of the Scotch Jacobites, who, on the defeat of his party, entered the Austrian service, and rose to the rank of field-marshal in the wars of Maria Theresa. He had taken the town of Seidlitz from the Prussians. It was a great stroke in favor of the empress queen, and might have been rewarded with a coronet, but, in his haste to send her majesty the intelligence, Loudoun transmitted it through her husband, the Emperor Francis, who had a private interest in the matter, having long carried on a speculation of his own in victualling not only his wife's troops, but those of her Prussian enemy. King Maria, as she was styled by her Hungarian subjects, had also some special reasons for allowing him to have neither hand nor voice in her concerns--a fact which the marshal had never learned, or forgotten; and her majesty was so indignant at receiving the news through such a channel, that, though she struck a medal to commemorate the taking of Seidlitz, Loudoun was rewarded only with her peculiar aversion throughout the remaining seventeen years of her reign, for which the good wishes of that imperial speculator in forage and flour afforded but poor consolation. Of all the important steps of human life, that by which two are made one appears to be taken from the greatest variety of motives. Doubtless, from the beginning it was not so; but manifold and heterogeneous are those which have been alleged for it in the civilized world. Goethe said he married to attain popular respectability. Wilkes, once called the Patriot, when sueing his wife, who chanced to have been an heiress, for the remains of her property, declared that he had wedded at twenty-two, solely to please his friends; and Wycherly the poet, in his very last days, worshipped and endowed with all his worldly goods, as the English service hath it, a girl whom poverty had made unscrupulous, in order to be revenged on his relations. Princes of old were in the habit of marrying to cement treaties, which were generally broken as soon after as possible; and simple citizens are still addicted to the same method of amending their fortunes and families. There was an original motive to double blessedness set forth in the advice of a veteran sportsman in one of the border counties. His niece was the heiress of broad lands, which happened to adjoin an estate belonging to a younger brother of the turf; and the senior gentleman, when dilating to her on the exploits they had performed together by wood and wold, wound up with the following sage counsel--"Maria, take my advice, and marry young Beechwood, and you'll see this county hunted in style." The numbers who, by their own account, have wedded to benefit society, in one shape or another, would furnish a strong argument against the accredited selfishness of mankind, could they only be believed. The general good of their country was the standing excuse of classic times, and philosophers have occasionally reproduced it in our own. Most people seem to think some apology necessary, but none are so ingenious in showing cause why they should enter the holy state, as those with whom it is the second experiment. The pleas of the widowed for casting off their weeds are generally prudent, and often singularly commendable. Domestic policy or parental affection supply the greater part of them; and the want of protectors and step-mothers felt by families of all sizes is truly marvellous, considering the usual consequences of their instalment. It is to be admired, as the speakers of old English would say, for what noble things men will give themselves credit in the way of motives, and how little resemblance their actions bear to them. Montaigne was accustomed to tell of a servant belonging to the Archbishop of Paris, who, being detected in privately selling his master's best wine, insisted that it was done out of pure love to his grace, lest the sight of so large a stock in his cellar might tempt him to drink more than was commendable for a bishop. A guardian care of their neighbors' well-being, somewhat similar, is declared by all the disturbers of our daily paths. Tale-bearers and remarkers, of every variety, have the best interests of their friends at heart; and what troublesome things some people can do from a sense of duty is matter of universal experience. Great public criminals, tyrants, and persecutors in old times, and the abusers of power in all ages, have, especially in the fall of their authority, laid claim to most exalted motives. Patriotism, philanthropy, and religion itself, have been quoted as their inspirers. The ill-famed Judge Jeffries said, his judicial crimes were perpetrated to maintain the majesty of the law. Robespierre affirmed that he had lived in defence of virtue and his country. But perhaps the most charitable interpretation that ever man gave to the motives of another, is to be found in the funeral sermon of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and father of George III. The preacher, after several judicious remarks on the virtues of the royal deceased, concludes, "That in the extreme to which these were carried, they appeared like vices; for so great was his generosity, that he ruined half the tradesmen in London; and so extraordinary his condescension, that he kept all sorts of bad company." It is strange, that while motives abstractly virtuous have produced large additions to the sum of mortal ills, little of private, and still less of public, good has sprung, even casually, from those that are evil in themselves. "If either the accounts of history, or the daily reports of life, are to be at all credited," said one who had learned and thought much on this subject, "the greatest amount of crime and folly has been committed from motives of religion and love, as men, for the most part, know them; while those of avarice, revenge, and fear, have originated the most extraordinary actions and important events." The sins of revenge have usually a leaven of what Bacon calls "wild justice" in them. Those of avarice are, from their very nature, notorious; but perhaps no motive has ever prompted men to such varied and singular actions as that of fear. The working of fear was singularly exhibited in the conduct of a certain Marquis of Montferrat, who lived at the period of the famous Italian wars, waged between Charles V. of Germany and Francis I. of France. The marquis was an Alpine feudatory of the former, and served him long and faithfully, till a German astrologer of high repute in those days assured him, from the stars, that the emperor would be eventually overthrown, and all his partisans utterly ruined. To avoid his probable share in that prediction, the marquis turned traitor to his friend and sovereign, for Charles had trusted him beyond most men; but the next year, the emperor was completely victorious, by both sea and land. The marquis had fallen, fighting in vain for Francis, and his fief was bestowed on a loyal vassal of the emperor. Divines and philosophers have had many controversies concerning motives. A great dispute on this subject is said to have engaged the learned of Alexandria, about the accession of the emperor Julian, whom, says a biographer, "some of his subjects named the Apostate, and some the Philosopher." The controversy occupied not only the Christian Platonists, for whose numbers that city was so celebrated, but also the Pagan wisdom, then shedding its last rays under favor of the new emperor. Yet neither Christians nor Pagans could entirely agree with each other, and such a division of opinion had never been heard, even in Alexandria. Things were in this state, says the tradition, when there arrived in the capital of Egypt a Persian, whose fame had long preceded him. He had been one of the Magi, at the base of the Caucasus, till the Parthians laid waste his country, when he left it, and travelled over the world in search of knowledge, and, in both east and west, they called him Kosro the Wise. Scarce was the distinguished stranger fairly within their gates when the chiefs of the parties determined to hear his opinion on matter; and a deputation, consisting of a Christian bishop, a Jewish rabbi, a Platonist teacher, and a priest of Isis, waited on the Persian one morning, when he sat in the portico of a long-deserted temple, which some forgotten Egyptian had built to Time, the instructor. The rabbi and the priest were for actions. The Platonist and the bishop were motive men, but in the manner of those times, for even philosophy has its fashions, the four had agreed that each should propose a question to Kosro, as his own wisdom dictated. Accordingly, after some preparatory compliments, touching the extent of his fame and travels, the Platonist, who was always notable for circumlocution, opened the business by inquiring what he considered the chief movers of mankind. "Gain and vanity," replied Kosro. "Which is strongest?" interposed the rabbi, in whom the faculty of beating about in argument was scarcely less developed. "Gain was the first," said the Persian. "Its worship succeeded the reign of Ormuz, which western poets call the golden age, and I know not when it was; but, in later ages, vanity has become the most powerful, for every where I have seen men do that for glory which they would not do for gain; and many even sacrifice gain to glory, as they think it." "But, wise Kosro," demanded the priest, impatient with what he considered a needless digression, "tell us your opinion--Should men be judged by their motives or their actions?" "Motives," said Kosro, "are the province of divine, and actions of human, judgment. Nevertheless, because of the relation between them it is well to take note of the former when they become visible in our light, yet not to search too narrowly after them, but take deeds for their value; seeing, first, that the inward labyrinth is beyond our exploring; secondly, that most men act from mingled motives; and, thirdly, that if, after the thought of a western poet, there were a crystal pane set in each man's bosom, it would mightily change the estimation of many." And the bishop made answer--"Kosro, thou hast seen the truth; man must at times perceive, but God alone can judge of, motives." From Sharpe's London Journal. THE LAST DAYS OF THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER. FROM THE FRENCH OF ALEX. DUMAS, BY MISS STRICKLAND. The knowledge of an extensively organized conspiracy embittered the last years of the Emperor Alexander, and increased his constitutional melancholy. His attachment to Tzarsko Zelo made him linger longer at his summer palace than was prudent in a man subject to erysipelas. The wound in his leg reopened with very unfavorable symptoms, and he was compelled to leave his favorite residence in a closed litter for St. Petersburgh; and the skill and firmness of Mr. Wyllie, his Scotch surgeon, alone saved the diseased limb from amputation. As soon as he was cured, he returned again to Tzarsko Zelo, where the spring found him as usual alone, without a court or chamberlain, only giving audience to his ministers twice a-week. His existence resembled rather that of an anchorite weeping for the sins of his youth, than that of a great Emperor who makes the happiness of his people. He regulated his time in the following manner:--in summer he rose at five, and in winter at six o'clock every morning, and as soon as the duties of the toilette were ended, entered his cabinet, in which the greatest order was observed. He found there a cambric handkerchief folded, and a packet of new pens. He only used these pens in signing his name, and never made use of them again. As soon as he concluded this business, he descended into the garden, where, notwithstanding the report of a conspiracy which had existed two years against his life and government, he walked alone with no other guards than the sentinels always stationed before the palace of Alexander. At five he returned, to dine alone, and after his solitary meal was lulled to sleep by the melancholy airs played by the military band of the guard regiment on duty. The selection of the music was always made by himself, and he seemed to sink to repose, and to awake, with the same sombre dispositions and feelings which had been his companions throughout the day. His empress Elizabeth lived like her consort, in profound solitude, watching over him like an invisible angel. Time had not extinguished in her heart the profound passion with which the youthful Czarowitz had inspired her at first sight, and which she had preserved in her heart, pure and inviolate. His numerous and public infidelities could not stifle this holy and beautiful attachment, which formed at once the happiness and misery of a delicate and sensitive woman. At this period of her life, the Empress at five-and-forty retained her fine shape and noble carriage, while her countenance showed the remains of considerable beauty, more impaired by sorrow than time. Calumny itself had never dared to aim her envenomed shafts at one so eminently chaste and good. Her presence demanded the respect due to virtue, still more than the homage proper to her elevated rank. She resembled indeed more an angel exiled from heaven, than the imperial consort of a Prince who ruled a large portion of the earth. In the summer of 1825, the last he was destined to see, the physicians of the Emperor unanimously recommended a journey to the Crimea, as the best medicine he could take. Alexander appeared perfectly indifferent to a measure which regarded his individual benefit, but the Empress, deeply interested in any event likely to restore her husband's health, asked and obtained permission to accompany him. The necessary preparations for this long absence overwhelmed the Emperor with business, and for a fortnight he rose earlier, and went to bed later, than was customary to him. In the month of June, no visible alteration was observed in his appearance, and he quitted St. Petersburgh, after a service had been chanted, to bring down a blessing from above on his journey. He was accompanied by the Empress, his faithful coachman, Ivan, and some officers belonging to the staff of General Diebitch. He stopped at Warsaw a few days, in order to celebrate the birthday of his brother, the Grand-Duke Constantine, and arrived at Tangaroff in the end of August 1825. Both the illustrious travellers found their health benefitted by the change of scene and climate. Alexander took a great liking to Tangaroff, a small town on the borders of the sea of Azof, comprizing a thousand ill-built houses, of which a sixth-part alone are of brick and stone, while the remainder resemble wooden cages covered with dirt. The streets are large, but then they have no pavement, and are alternately loaded with dust, or inundated with mud. The dust rises in clouds, which conceals alike man and beast under a thick veil, and penetrates every where the carefully closed jalousies with which the houses are guarded, and covers the garments of their inhabitants. The food, the water, are loaded with it; and the last cannot be drunk till previously boiled with salt of tartar, which precipitates it; a precaution absolutely necessary to free it from this disagreeable and dangerous deposit. The Emperor took possession of the governor's house, where he sometimes slept and took his meals. His abode there in the daytime rarely exceeded two hours. The rest of his time was passed in wandering about the country on foot, in the hot dust or wet mud. No weather put any stop to his outdoor exercise, and no advice from his medical attendant nor warning from the natives of Tangaroff, could prevail upon him to take the slightest precaution against the fatal autumnal fever of the country. His principal occupation was, planning and planting a great public garden, in which undertaking he was assisted by an Englishman whom he had brought with him to St. Petersburgh for that purpose. He frequently slept on the spot on a camp-bed, with his head resting upon a leather pillow. If general report may be credited, planting gardens was not the principal object that engrossed the Russian Emperor's attention. He was said to be employed in framing a new Constitution for Russia, and unable to contend at St. Petersburgh with the prejudices of the aristocracy, had retired to this small city, for the purpose of conferring this benefit upon his enslaved country. However this might be, the Emperor did not stay long at a time at Tangaroff, where his Empress, unable to share with him the fatigues of his long journeys, permanently resided, during his frequent absences from his head quarters. Alexander, in fact, made rapid excursions to the country about the Don, and was sometimes at Tcherkask, sometimes at Donetz. He was on the eve of departure for Astracan, when Count Woronzoff in person came to announce to his sovereign the existence of the mysterious conspiracy which had haunted him in St. Petersburgh, and which extended to the Crimea, where his personal presence could alone appease the general discontent. The prospect of traversing three hundred leagues appeared a trifle to Alexander, whom rapid journeys alone diverted from his oppressive melancholy. He announced to the Empress his departure, which he only delayed till the return of a messenger he had sent to Alapka. The expected courier brought new details of the conspiracy, which aimed at the life, as well as the government of Alexander. This discovery agitated him terribly. He rested his aching head on his hands, gave a deep groan, and exclaimed, "Oh, my father, my father!" Though it was then midnight, he caused Count Diebitch to be roused from sleep and summoned into his presence. The general, who lodged in the next house, found his master in a dreadfully excited state, now traversing the apartment with hasty strides, now throwing himself upon the bed with deep sighs and convulsive starts. He at length became calm, and discussed the intelligence conveyed in the dispatches of Count Woronzoff. He then dictated two, one addressed to the Viceroy of Poland, the other to the Grand-Duke Nicholas. With these documents all traces of his terrible agitation disappeared. He was quite calm, and his countenance betrayed nothing of the emotion that had harassed him the preceding night. Count Woronzoff, notwithstanding his apparent calmness, found him difficult to please, and unusually irritable, for Alexander was constitutionally sweet-tempered and patient. He did not delay his journey on account of this internal disquietude, but gave orders for his departure from Tangaroff, which he fixed for the following day. His ill-humor increased during the journey; he complained of the badness of the roads and the slowness of the horses. He had never been known to grumble before. His irritation became more apparent when Sir James Wyllie, his confidential medical attendant, recommended him to take some precaution against the frozen winds of the autumn; for he threw away with a gesture of impatience the cloak and pelisse he offered, and braved the danger he had been entreated to avoid. His imprudence soon produced consequences. That evening he caught cold, and coughed incessantly, and the following day, on his arrival at Orieloff, an intermittent fever appeared, which soon after, aggravated by the obstinacy of the invalid, turned to the intermittent fever common to Tangaroff and its environs in the autumn. The Emperor, whose increasing malady gave him a presage of his approaching death, expressed a wish to return to the Empress, and once more took the route to Tangaroff; contrary to the prayers of Sir James Wyllie, he chose to perform a part of the journey on horseback, but the failure of his strength finally forced him to re-enter his carriage. He entered Tangaroff on the fifth of November, and swooned the moment he came into the governor's house. The Empress, who was suffering with a complaint of the heart, forgot her malady, while watching over her dying husband. Change of place only increased the fatal fever which preyed upon his frame, which seemed to gather strength from day to day. On the eight, Wyllie called in Dr. Stephiegen, and on the thirteenth they endeavored to counteract the affection of the brain, and wished to bleed the imperial patient. He would not submit to the operation, and demanded iced water, which they refused. Their denial irritated him, and he rejected every thing they offered him, with displeasure. These learned men were unwise, to deprive the suffering prince of the water, a safe and harmless beverage in such fevers. In fact, nature herself sometimes, in inspiring the wish, provides the remedy. The Emperor on the afternoon of that day wrote and sealed a letter, when perceiving the taper remained burning, he told his attendant to extinguish it, in words that plainly expressed his feelings in regard to the dangerous nature of his malady. "Put out that light, my friend, or the people will take it for a bier candle, and will suppose I am already dead." On the fourteenth of November, the physicians again urged their refractory patient to take the medicines they prescribed, and were seconded by the prayers of the Empress. He repulsed them with some haughtiness, but quickly repenting of his hastiness of temper, which in fact was one of the symptoms of the disease, he said, "Attend to me, Stephiegen, and you too, Sir Andrew Wyllie. I have much pleasure in seeing you, but you plague me so often about your medicine, that really I must give up your company if you will talk of nothing else." He however was at last induced to take a dose of calomel. In the evening, the fever had made such fearful progress that it appeared necessary to call in a priest. Sir Andrew Wyllie, at the instance of the Empress, entered the chamber of the dying prince, and approaching his bed, with tears in his eyes advised him "to call in the aid of the Most High, and not to refuse the assistance of religion as he had already done that of medicine." The Emperor instantly gave his consent. Upon the fifteenth, at five o'clock in the morning, a humble village priest approached the imperial bed to receive the confession of his expiring sovereign.--"My father, God must be merciful to kings," were the first words the Emperor addressed to the minister of religion; "indeed they require it so much more than other men." In this sentence all the trials and temptations of the despotic ruler of a great people--his territorial ambition, his jealousy, his political ruses, his distrusts and over-confidences, seem to be briefly comprehended. Then, apparently perceiving some timidity in the spiritual confessor his destiny had provided for him, he added, "My father, treat me like an erring man, not as an Emperor." The priest drew near the bed, received the confession of his august penitent, and administered to him the last sacraments. Then having been informed of the Emperor's pertinacity in rejecting medicine, he urged him to give up this fatal obstinacy, remarking, "that he feared God would consider it absolutely suicidal." His admonitions made a deep impression upon the mind of the prince, who recalled Sir Andrew Wyllie, and, giving him his hand, bade him do what he pleased with him. Wyllie took advantage of this absolute surrender, to apply twenty leeches to the head of the Emperor; but the application was too late, the burning fever continually increased, and the sufferer was given over. The intelligence filled the dying chamber with weeping domestics, who tenderly loved their master. The Empress still occupied her place by the bed-side, which she had never quitted but once, in order to allow her dying husband to unbosom himself in private to his confessor. She returned to the post assigned her by conjugal tenderness directly the priest had quitted it. Two hours after he had made his peace with God, Alexander experienced more severe pain than he had yet felt. "Kings," said he, "suffer more than others." He had called one of his attendants to listen to this remark with the air of one communicating a secret. He stopped, and then, as if recalling something he had forgotten, said in a whisper, "they have committed an infamous action." What did he mean by these words? Was he suspicious that his days had been shortened by poison? or did he allude, with the last accents he uttered, to the barbarous assassination of the Emperor Paul? Eternity can alone reveal the secret thoughts of Alexander I. of Russia. During the night, the dying prince lost consciousness. At two o'clock in the morning, Count Diebitch came to the Empress, to inform her that an old man, named Alexandrowitz, had saved many Tartars in the same malady. A ray of hope entered the heart of the imperial consort at this information, and Sir Andrew Wyllie ordered him to be sent for in haste. This interval was passed by the Empress in prayer, yet she still kept her eyes fixed upon those of her husband, watching with intense attention the beams of life and light fading in their unconscious gaze. At nine in the morning, the old man was brought into the imperial chamber almost by force. The rank of the patient, perhaps, inspiring him with some fear respecting the consequences that might follow his prescriptions, caused his extreme unwillingness. He approached the bed, looked at his dying sovereign, and shook his head. He was questioned respecting this doubtful sign. "It is too late to give him medicine; besides, those I have cured were not sick of the same malady." With these words of the peasant physician, the last hopes of the Empress vanished; but if pure and ardent prayers could have prevailed with God, Alexander would have been saved. On the sixteenth of November, according to the usual method of measuring time, but on the first of December, if we follow the Russian calendar, at fifty minutes after ten in the morning, Alexander Paulowitz, Emperor of all the Russias, expired. The Empress, bending over him, felt the departure of his last breath. She uttered a bitter cry, sank upon her knees, and prayed. After some minutes passed in communion with heaven, she rose, closed the eyes of her deceased lord, composed his features, kissed his cold and livid hands, and once more knelt and prayed. The physicians entreated her to leave the chamber of death, and the pious Empress consented to withdraw to her own.[9] The body of the Emperor lay in state, on a platform raised in an apartment of the house where he died. The presence-chamber was hung with black, and the bier was covered with cloth of gold. A great many wax tapers lighted up the gloomy scene. A priest at the head of the bier prayed continually for the repose of his deceased sovereign's soul. Two sentinels with drawn swords watched day and night beside the dead, two were stationed at the doors, and two stood on each step leading to the bier. Every person received at the door a lighted taper, which he held while he remained in the apartment. The Empress was present during these masses, but she always fainted at the conclusion of the service. Crowds of people united their prayers to hers, for the Emperor was adored by the common people. The corpse of Alexander I. lay in state twenty-one days before it was removed to the Greek monastery of St. Alexander, where it was to rest before its departure for interment in St. Petersburgh. Upon the 25th December, the remains of the Emperor were placed on a funeral car drawn by eight horses, covered to the ground with black cloth ornamented with the escutcheons of the empire. The bier rested on an elevated dais, carpeted with cloth of gold; over the bier was laid a flag of silver tissue, charged with the heraldic insignia proper to the imperial house. The imperial crown was placed under the dais. Four major-generals held the cords which supported the diadem. The persons composing the household of the Emperor and Empress followed the bier dressed in long black mantles, bearing in their hands lighted torches. The Cossacks of the Don every minute discharged their light artillery, while the sullen booming of the cannon added to the solemnity of the imposing scene. Upon its arrival at the church, the body was transferred to a catafalco covered with red cloth, surmounted by the imperial arms in gold, displayed on crimson-velvet. Two steps led up to the platform on which the catafalco was placed. Four columns supported the dais upon which the imperial crown, the sceptre, and the globe, rested. The catafalco was surrounded by curtains of crimson velvet and cloth of gold, and four massy candelabra, at the four corners of the platform, bore wax tapers sufficient to dispel the darkness, but not to banish the gloom pervading the church, which was hung with black embroidered with white crosses. The Empress made an attempt to assist at this funeral service, but her feelings overpowered her, and she was borne back to the palace in a swoon; but as soon as she came to herself she entered the private chapel, and repeated there the same prayers then reciting in the church of St. Alexander. While the remains of the Emperor Alexander were on their way to their last home, the report of his dangerous state, which had been forwarded officially to the Grand-Duke Nicholas, was contradicted by another document, which bore date of the 29th of November, announcing that considerable amendment had taken place in the Emperor's health, who had recovered from a swoon of eight hours' duration, and had not only appeared collected, but declared himself improved in health. Whether this was a political ruse of the conspirators or the new Emperor remains quite uncertain; however, a solemn _Te Deum_ was ordered to be celebrated in the cathedral of Casan, at which the Empress Mother and the Grand-Dukes Nicholas and Michael were present. The joyful crowds assembled at this service scarcely left the imperial family and their suite a free space for the exercise of their devotions. Towards the end of the _Te Deum_, while the sweet voices of the choir were rising in harmonious concert to heaven, some official person informed the Grand-Duke Nicholas that a courier from Tangaroff had arrived with the last dispatch, which he refused to deliver into any hand but his own. Nicholas was conducted into the sacristy, and with one glance at the messenger divined the nature of the document of which he was the bearer. The letter he presented was sealed with black. Nicholas recognized the handwriting of the Empress Consort, and, hastily opening it, read these words: "Our angel is in heaven; I still exist on earth, but I hope soon to be re-united to him." The bishop was summoned into the sacristy by the new Emperor, who gave him the letter, with directions to break the fatal tidings it contained to the Empress Mother with the tenderest care. He then returned to his place by the side of his august parent, who alone, of the thousands assembled there, had perceived his absence. An instant after, the venerable bishop re-entered the choir, and silenced the notes of praise and exultation with a motion of his hand. Every voice became mute, and the stillness of death reigned throughout the sacred edifice. In the midst of the general astonishment and attention he walked slowly to the altar, took up the massy silver crucifix which decorated it, and throwing over that symbol of earthly sorrow and divine hope a black veil, he approached the Empress Mother, and gave her the crucifix in mourning to kiss. The Empress uttered a cry, and fell with her face on the pavement;--she comprehended at once that her eldest son was dead. The Empress Elizabeth soon realized the sorrowful hope she had expressed. Four months after the death of her consort she died on the way from Tangaroff, at Beloff, and soon rejoined him she had pathetically termed "_her_ angel in heaven." The historical career of the Emperor Alexander is well known to every reader, but the minor matters of every-day life mark the man, while public details properly denote the sovereign. The faults of Alexander are comprised in his infidelity to a beautiful, accomplished, and affectionate wife. He respected her even while wounding her delicate feelings by his criminal attachments to other women. After many years of mental pain, the injured Elizabeth gave him the choice of giving her up, or banishing an imperious mistress, by whom the Emperor had a numerous family. Alexander could not resolve to separate for ever from his amiable and virtuous consort,--he made the sacrifice she required of him. His gallantry sometimes placed him in unprincely situations, and brought him in contact with persons immeasurably beneath him. He once fell in love with a tailor's wife at Warsaw, and not being well acquainted with the character of the pretty grisette, construed her acceptance of the visit he proposed making her, into approbation of his suit. The fair Pole was too simple, and had been too virtuously brought up, to comprehend his intentions. Her husband was absent, so she thought it would not be proper to receive the imperial visit alone; she made, therefore, a re-union of her own and her husband's relations--rich people of the bourgeoisie class--and when the emperor entered her saloon, he found himself in company with thirty or forty persons, to whom he was immediately introduced by his fair and innocent hostess. The astonished sovereign was obliged to make himself agreeable to the party, none of whom appeared to have divined his criminal intentions. He made no further attempt to corrupt the innocence of this beautiful woman, whose simplicity formed the safeguard of her virtue. A severe trial separated him for ever from his last mistress, who had borne him a daughter; this child was the idol of his heart, and to form her mind was the pleasure of his life. At eighteen the young lady eclipsed every woman in his empire by her dazzling beauty and graceful manners. Suddenly she was seized with an infectious fever, for which no physician in St. Petersburgh could find a remedy. Her mother, selfish and timid, deserted the sick chamber of the suffering girl, over whom the bitter tears of a father were vainly shed, while he kept incessant vigils over one whom he would have saved from the power of the grave at the expense of his life and empire. The dying daughter asked incessantly for her mother, upon whose bosom she desired to breathe her last sigh; but neither the passionate entreaties nor the commands of her imperial lover could induce the unnatural parent to risk her health by granting the interview for which her poor child craved, and she expired in the arms of her father, without the consolation of bidding her mother a last adieu. Some days after the death of his natural daughter, the Emperor Alexander entered the house of an English officer to whom he was much attached. He was in deep mourning and appeared very unhappy. "I have just followed to the grave," said he, "as a private person the remains of my poor child, and I cannot yet forgive the unnatural woman who deserted the death-bed of her daughter. Besides, my sin, which I never repented of, has found me out, and the vengeance of God has fallen upon its fruits. Yes, I deserted the best and most amiable of wives, the object of my first affection, for women who neither possessed her beauty nor merit. I have preferred to the Empress even this unnatural mother, whom I now regard with loathing and horror. My wife shall never again have cause to reproach my broken faith." Devotion and his strict adherence to his promise balmed the wound, which, however, only death could heal. To the secret agony which through life had haunted the bosom of the son was added that of the father, and the return of Alexander to the paths of virtue and religion originated in the loss of this beloved daughter, smitten, he considered, for his sins. The friendship of this prince for Madam Krudener had nothing criminal in its nature, though it furnished a theme for scandal to those who are apt to doubt the purity of Platonic attachments between individuals of opposite sexes. In regard to this Emperor's political career, full of ambition and stratagem, we can only re-echo his dying words to his confessor:--"God must be merciful to kings?" His career, however varied by losses on the field or humiliated by treaties, ended triumphantly with the laurels of war and the olives of peace, and he bore to his far northern empire the keys of Paris as a trophy of his arms. His moderation demands the praise of posterity, and excited the admiration of the French nation at large.[10] His immoral conduct as a man and a husband was afterwards effaced by his sincere repentance, and he died in the arms of the most faithful and affectionate of wives, who could not long survive her irreparable loss. His death was deeply lamented by his subjects, who, if they did not enrol his name among the greatest of their rulers, never have hesitated to denote him as the best and most merciful sovereign who ever sat upon the Russian throne. FOOTNOTES: [9] The autopsy exhibited the same appearance generally discovered in those subjects whose death has been caused by the fever of the country: the brain was watery, the veins of the head were gorged, and the liver was soft. No signs of poison were discovered; the death of the Emperor was in the course of nature. [10] The French authorities would have removed the trophies of Napoleon's victories, and the commemoration of the Russian share in the disastrous days of Jena and Austerlitz. The Emperor Alexander magnanimously replied, "No, let them remain: it is sufficient that I have passed over the bridge with my army!" A noble and generous reply. Few princes have effaced public wrongs so completely, or used their opportunity of making reprisals so mercifully. (See Chateaubriand's Autobiography.) FALLEN GENIUS. BY MISS ALICE CAREY. No tears for him!--he saw by faith sublime Through the wan shimmer of life's wasted flame, Across the green hills of the future time, The golden breaking of the morn of fame. Faded by the diviner life, and worn, The dust has fallen away, and ye but see The ruins of the house wherein were borne The birth-pangs of an immortality. His great life from the wondrous life to be, Clasped the bright splendors that no sorrow mars, As some pale, shifting column of the sea, Mirrors the awful beauty of the stars. What was Love's lily pressure, what the light Of its pleased smile, that a chance breath may chill? His soul was mated with the winds of night, And wandered through the universe at will. Oft in his heart its stormy passion woke, Yet from its bent his soul no more was stirred, Than is the broad green bosom of the oak By the light flutter of the summer bird. His loves were of forbidden realms, unwrought In poet's rhyme, the music of his themes, Hovering about the watch-fires of his thought, On the dim borders of the land of dreams. For while his hand with daring energy Fed the slow fire that, burning, must consume, The ravishing joys of unheard harmony Beat like a living pulse within the tomb. Pillars of fire that wander through life's night, Children of genius! ye are doomed to be, In the embrace of your far-reaching light, Locking the radiance of eternity. From the London Times. COPENHAGEN. A more stately city than Copenhagen can scarcely be imagined. The streets, wide and long, filled with spacious and lofty houses of unspotted whiteness, and built with great regularity, remind one somewhat of Bath, but that the ground is level; many of them all but equal, in breadth, to the Irishman's test of street architecture--Sackville-street, Dublin. But large squares break up their continuous lines, and the eye rests on fine statues, noble palaces, and splendid buildings devoted to the arts, to amusement, to justice, or to the purposes of religion in every quarter of the city. Copenhagen is but a creation of the last century, and, after a little time spent there, a large portion of it gives the idea that it was built all of a sudden, by some Danish Grissell and Peto, according to contract. Surrounded by a deep foss, by ramparts and intrenchments, defended by formidable forts and batteries, filled with the halls of kings, with churches, museums, and castles, it combines the appearance of a new cut made by the royal commissioners through some old London rookery, with the air of an old feudal town. The moat prohibits any considerable extension. Seen under a bright cold sky, the blanched fronts of the houses, the white walls of the public edifices, the regularity of the streets, conveyed an impression of cleanliness, which could only be destroyed when one happened to look down at his feet, or ceased to keep guard over his nose. The paving is of the style which may be called Titanic, and was never intended for any foot garb less defensive than a _sabot_ or a _caliga_. The drainage is superficial,--that is, all the liquid refuse of the city runs, or rather walks very leisurely, along grooves in the pavement aforesaid, which are covered over by boards in various stages of decomposition. In summer, the city must be worse than Berlin (which, by the by, it very much resembles in many respects). In spring time, after rain, my own experience tells me it suggests forcible reminiscences of the antique odors of Fleet Ditch. One thing which soon strikes the stranger is the apparent want of shops. But they are to be found by those who want them. Nearly every trader carries on his business very modestly in his front parlor, and makes a moderate display of his stock in the ordinary window, so that the illusory and enchanting department of trade is quite gone. A Danish gentleman can walk out with his wife without the least fear that he will fall a victim to "a stupendous sacrifice," or be immolated on the altar of "an imperative necessity to clear out in a week." Moving through these streets is a quiet, soberly-attired population. Bigger than most foreigners, and with great roundness of muscle and size of bone, your Dane wants the dapper air of the Frenchman, or the solemnity of the Spaniard, while he is not so bearded or so dirty as the German. But then he smokes prodigiously, dresses moderately in the English style, is addicted to jewelry in excess, and has a habit of plodding along, straight in the middle of the road, with his head down, which must be a matter of considerable annoyance to the native cabman. He is, however, amazingly polite. He not only takes off his hat to every one he knows, but gives any lady-acquaintance the trouble of recognizing him, by bowing to her before she has made up her mind whether the individual is known or not. Another of his peculiarities is, that he always has a dog. I should say, more correctly, there is always a dog following him,--for I have seen an animal, which seemed to be bound by the closest ties to a particular gentleman, placidly leave him at the corner of a street, and set off on an independent walk by itself. These dogs are, in fact, a feature of the place by themselves. In number they can only be excelled by the canine scavengers of Cairo or Constantinople, and in mongrelness and ugliness by no place in the world--not even in Tuum before the potato rot. They get up little extemporary hunts through the squares, the trail being generally the remnant of an old rat, carried away by the foremost, and dash between your legs from unexpected apertures in walls and houses, so as to cause very unpleasant consequences to the nervous or feeble sojourner. On seeking for an explanation of their great abundance, I was informed that they were kept to kill rats. But this is a mere delusion. These dogs are far too wise to lose their health by keeping late hours in pursuit of vermin. No, they retire as soon as darkness sets in, and with darkness, out come the rats in the most perfect security. Such rats! they are as big as kittens, and their squeaking under the wooden planks of the gutters as you walk home is perfectly amazing. The celebrated dog Billy would have died in a week of violent exercise in any one street in Copenhagen, giving him his usual allowance of murder. I must say that, in the matters of paving, dogs, rats, sewers, water, and lights, Copenhagen is rather behind the rest of the world. As to the lights, they are sparely placed, and as yet gas is not used. With a laudable economy, the oil-wicks are extinguished when the moon shines, and the result is, that sometimes an envious cloud leaves the whole city in Cimmerian darkness for the rest of the night, in consequence of five minutes' moonshine in the early part, as, once put out, they are not again relumed. In the crowd you meet many pale, sorrow-stricken women in mourning, and now and then a poor soldier limps before you, with recent bandages on his stump, or hobbles along limpingly, with perhaps a sabre-cut across the face, or an empty coat-sleeve dangling from his shoulder; and then you remember all the horrors the late war must have caused Denmark, when, out of her small population, 90,000 men were under arms in the field. It can scarcely atone for this sight to meet dashing hussars, with their red coats and sheepskin calpacks; heavy dragoons in light-blue and dark-green; jagers in smart frocks of olive-green, decorated with stars and ribands, and swaggering along in all the pride of having smelt powder and done their duty. They are numerous enough, indeed every third man is a soldier; but one of these sad widows or orphans is an antidote to the glories of these fine heroes, scarcely less powerful than that of the spectacle of their mutilated and mangled comrades. This war has roused the national spirit of Denmark; it has caused her to make a powerful effort to shake off all connection with Germany, or dependence on her Germanic subjects, but it has cost her £5,000,000 of money, and it has left many a home desolate for ever. From Household Words. THE SHADOW OF LUCY HUTCHINSON. There are some books that leave upon the mind a strange impression, one of the most delightful reading can produce--a haunting of the memory, it may be, by one form or by several, strangely real, having a positive personal presence and identity, yet always preserving an immaterial existence, and occupying a "removed ground," from which they never stir to mingle with the realities of recollection. These shadows hold their place apart, as some rare dreams do, claiming from us an indescribable tenderness. The "Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson" is such a book. In many passages it is tedious--a record of petty strategies of partisan warfare--and, more dreary still, of factious jealousies and polemical hatreds. The absolute truth of the book is fatal, in one direction to our hero-worship. The leaders of the Great Rebellion, in such minute details, appear as mere schemers, as rival agents at a borough election; and the most fervent in professions of religious zeal are as bitter in their revenges as the heroes of a hundred scalps; but there arises out of the book, and is evermore associated with it, the calm quiet shadow of a woman of exquisite purity, of wondrous constancy, of untiring affection--Lucy Hutchinson, its writer. John Hutchinson is at Richmond, lodging at the house of his music-master. He is twenty-two years of age. The village is full of "good company," for the young Princes are being educated in the palace, and many "ingenious persons entertained themselves at that place." The music-master's house is the resort of the king's musicians; "and divers of the gentlemen and ladies that were affected with music came thither to hear." There was a little girl "tabled" in the same house with John Hutchinson, who was taking lessons of the lutanist--a charming child, full of vivacity and intelligence. She told John she had an elder sister--a studious and retiring person--who was gone with her mother, Lady Apsley, into Wiltshire--and Lucy was going to be married, she thought. The little girl ever talked of Lucy--and the gentlemen talked of Lucy--and one day a song was sung which Lucy had written--and John and the vivacious child walked, another day, to Lady Apsley's house, and there, in a closet, were Lucy's Latin books. Mr. Hutchinson grew in love with Lucy's image; and when the talk was more rife that she was about to be married--and some said that she was indeed married--he became unhappy--and "began to believe there was some magic in the place, which enchanted men out of their right senses; but the sick heart could not be chid nor advised into health." At length Lucy and her mother came home; and Lucy was not married. Then John and Lucy wandered by the pleasant banks of the Thames, in that spring-time of 1638, and a "mutual friendship" grew up between them. Lucy now talked to him of her early life; how she had been born in the Tower of London, of which her late father, Sir John Apsley, was the governor; how her mother was the benefactress of the prisoners, and delighted to mitigate the hard fortune of the noble and the learned, and especially Sir Walter Raleigh, by every needful help to his studies and amusements; how she herself grew serious amongst these scenes, and delighted in nothing but reading, and would never practise her lute or harpsichords, and absolutely hated her needle. John was of a like serious temper. Their fate was determined. The spring is far advanced into summer. On a certain day the friends on both sides meet to conclude the terms of the marriage. Lucy is not to be seen. She has taken the small-pox. She is very near death. At length John is permitted to speak to his betrothed. Tremblingly and mournfully she comes into his presence. She is "the most deformed person that could be seen." Who could tell the result in words so touching as Lucy's own? "He was nothing troubled at it, but married her as soon as she was able to quit the chamber, when the priest and all that saw her were affrighted to look on her. But God recompensed his justice and constancy by restoring her; though she was longer than ordinary before she recovered to be as well as before." They were married on the 3d of July, 1638. In the autumn of 1641, John and Lucy Hutchinson are living in their own house of Owthorpe, in Nottinghamshire. They have two sons. They are "peaceful and happy." John has dedicated two years since his marriage to the study of "school divinity." He has convinced himself of "the great point of predestination." This faith has not, as his wife records, produced a "carelessness of life in him," but "a more strict and holy walking." He applies himself, in his house at Owthorpe, "to understand the things then in dispute" between the King and Parliament. He is satisfied of the righteousness of the Parliament's cause; but he then "contents himself with praying for peace." In another year the King has set up his standard in Nottingham; the battle of Edgehill has been fought; all hope of peace is at an end. John Hutchinson is forced out of his quiet habitation by the suspicions of his royalist neighbors. He is marked as a Roundhead. Lucy does not like the name. "It was very ill applied to Mr. Hutchinson, who having naturally a very fine thick-set head of hair, kept it clean and handsome, so that it was a great ornament to him; although the godly of those days, when he embraced their party, would not allow him to be religious because his hair is not in their cut." The divinity student now becomes a lieutenant-colonel. He raises a company of "very honest godly men." The Earl of Chesterfield is plundering the houses of the Puritans in the vale of Belvoir, near Owthorpe; and the young colonel has apprehensions for the safety of his family. In the depth of winter, a troop of horse arrive one night at the lonely house where Lucy and her children abide. They are hastily summoned to prepare for an instant journey. They are to ride to Nottingham before sunrise, for the soldiers are not strong enough to march in the day. Lucy is henceforth to be the companion of her husband in his perilous office--his friend, his comforter--a ministering angel amongst the fierce and dangerous spirits, whom he sways by a remarkable union of courage and gentleness. Let us look at the shadow of Lucy Hutchinson. She tranquilly sits in one of the upper chambers of the old and ruinous castle of which her husband is appointed governor. It is a summer evening of 1643. In that tower, built upon the top of the rock, tradition says that Queen Isabel received her paramour Mortimer; and at the base of the rock are still shown Mortimer's Well, and Mortimer's Hole, as Lady Hutchinson saw them two centuries ago. She looks out of the narrow windows by which her chamber is lighted. There is the Trent, peacefully flowing on one side, amid flat meadows. On the other is the town of Nottingham. The governor has made the ruinous castle a strong fortress, with which he can defy the Cavaliers should they occupy the town beneath. Opposite the towers is the old church of St. Nicholas, whose steeple commands the platform of the castle. The Governor has sent away his horse, and many of his foot, to guard the roads by which the enemy could approach Nottingham. There is no appearance of danger. The reveille is beat. Those who have been watching all night lounge into the town. It is in the possession of the Cavaliers. The scene is changed. The din of ordnance rouses Lucy from her calm gaze upon the windings of the Trent. For five days and nights there is firing without intermission. Within the walls of the castle there are not more than eighty men. The musketeers on St. Nicholas steeple pick off the cannoniers at their guns. Now and then, as the assailants are beaten from the walls, they leave a wounded man behind, and he is dragged into the castle. On the sixth day, after that terrible period of watchfulness, relief arrives. The Cavaliers are driven from the town with much slaughter, and the castle is filled with prisoners. Lucy has been idle during those six days of peril. There was a task to be performed,--a fitting one for woman's tenderness. Within the castle was a dungeon called the Lion's Den, into which the prisoners were cast; and as they were brought up from the town, two of the fanatical ministers of the garrison reviled and maltreated them. Lucy reads the commands of her Master after another fashion. As the prisoners are carried bleeding to the Lion's Den, she implores that they should be brought in to her, and she binds up and dresses their wounds. And now the two ministers mutter--and their souls abhor to see this favor done to the enemies of God--and they teach the soldiers to mutter. But Lucy says, "I have done nothing but my duty. These are our enemies, but they are our fellow-creatures. Am I to be upbraided for these poor humanities?" And then she breathes a thanksgiving to Heaven that her mother had taught her this humble surgery. There is a tear in John's eye as he gazes on this scene. That night the Cavalier officers sup with him, rather as guests than as prisoners. In the vale of Belvoir, about seven miles from Belvoir Castle, is the little village of Owthorpe. When Colonel Hutchinson returned to the house of his fathers, after the war was ended, he found it plundered of all its movables--a mere ruin. In a few years it is a fit dwelling for Lucy to enjoy a lifelong rest, after the terrible storms of her early married days. There is no accusing spirit to disturb their repose. John looks back upon that solemn moment when he signed the warrant for the great tragedy enacted before Whitehall without remorse. He had prayed for "an enlightened conscience," and he had carried out his most serious convictions. He took no part in the despotic acts that followed the destruction of the monarchy. He had no affection for the fanatics who held religion to be incompatible with innocent pleasures and tasteful pursuits. At Owthorpe, then, he lived the true life of an English gentleman. He built--he planted--he adorned his house with works of art--he was the first magistrate--the benefactor of the poor. The earnest man who daily expounded the Scriptures to his household was no ascetic. There was hospitality within those walls--with music and revelry. The Puritans looked gloomily and suspiciously upon the dwellers at Owthorpe. The Cavaliers could not forgive the soldier who had held Nottingham Castle against all assaults. The Restoration comes. The royalist connexions of Lucy Hutchinson have a long struggle to save her husband's life; but he is finally included in the Act of Oblivion. He is once more at Owthorpe, without the compromise of his principles. He has done with political strife for ever. On the 31st of October 1663, there is a coach waiting before the hall of Owthorpe. That hall is filled with tenants and laborers. Their benefactor cheerfully bids them farewell; but his wife and children are weeping bitterly. That coach is soon on its way to London with the husband and wife, and their eldest son and daughter. At the end of the fourth day's journey, at the gates of that fortress within which she had been born, Lucy Hutchinson is parted from him whose good and evil fortunes she had shared for a quarter of a century. About a mile from Deal stands Sandown Castle. In 1664, Colonel Hutchinson is a prisoner within its walls. It was a ruinous place, not weatherproof. The tide washed the dilapidated fortress; the windows were unglazed; cold, and damp, and dreary was the room where the proud heart bore up against physical evils. For even here there was happiness. Lucy is not permitted to share his prison; but she may visit him daily. In the town of Deal abides that faithful wife. She is with him at the first hour of the morning; she remains till the latest of night. In sunshine or in storm, she is pacing along that rugged beach, to console and be consoled. Eleven months have thus passed, when Lucy is persuaded by her husband to go to Owthorpe to see her children. "When the time of her departure came, she left with a very sad and ill-presaging heart." In a few weeks John Hutchinson is laid in the family vault in that Vale of Belvoir. Lucy Hutchinson sits in holy resignation in the old sacred home. She has a task to work out. She has to tell her husband's history, for the instruction of her children:--"I that am under a command not to grieve at the common rate of desolate women, while I am studying which way to moderate my woe, and, if it were possible, to augment my love, can, for the present, find out none more just to your dear father, nor consolatory to myself, than the preservation of his memory." So rests her shadow, ever, in our poor remembrance. From Eliza Cook's Journal. THE WIVES OF SOUTHEY, COLERIDGE, AND LOVELL. Southey, Coleridge, and Lovell, three poets, married three sisters, the Misses Fricker of Bristol. They were all alike poor when they married. Southey's aunt shut her door in his face when she found he was resolved on marrying in such circumstances; and he, postponing entry upon the married life, though he had contracted the responsibility of husband, parted from his wife at the church door, and set out on a six months' visit to Portugal, preparatory to entering on the study of the legal profession. Southey committed his maiden wife to the care of Mr. Cottle's sisters during his absence. "Should I perish by shipwreck," he wrote from Falmouth to Mr. Cottle, "or by any other casualty, I have relations whose prejudice will yield to the anguish of affection, and who will love, cherish, and give all possible consolation to my widow." With these words Southey set sail for Portugal, and his wife, who had persuaded him to go, and cried when he was going, though she would not then have permitted him to stay, meekly retired to her place of refuge, wearing her wedding-ring round her neck. Southey returned to England, and commenced the study of the law, but after a year's drudgery gave it up. His wife joined him in a second visit to Portugal, and on his return he commenced the laborious literary career which he pursued till his death. He enjoyed on the whole a happy married life; took pleasure in his home and his family; loving his children and his wife Edith dearly. This is one of his own pictures:--"Glance into the little room where sits the gray-haired man, 'working hard and getting little--a bare maintenance, and hardly that; writing poems and history for posterity with his whole heart and soul; one daily progressing in learning, not so learned as he is poor, not so poor as proud, not so proud as happy.'" Great men have invited him to London, and he is now answering the invitation. The thought of the journey plagues him. "Oh dear, oh dear!" he writes, "there is such a comfort in one's old coat and old shoes, one's own chair and own fireside, one's own writing-desk and own library--with a little girl climbing up to my neck and saying, 'Don't go to London, papa, you must stay with Edith'--and a little boy whom I have taught to speak the language of cats, dogs, cuckoos, jackasses, &c., before he can articulate a word of his own--there is such a comfort in all these things, that _transportation_ to London seems a heavier punishment than any sins of mine deserve." But a sad calamity fell upon him in his old age. His dear Edith was suddenly bereft of reason. "Forty years," he writes to Grosvenor Bedford from York, "has she been the life of my life--and I have left her this day in a lunatic asylum." In the same letter he expresses the resignation of a Christian and the confident courage of a man. "God, who has visited me with this affliction," he says, "has given me strength to bear it, and will, _I know_, support me to the end, whatever that may be. To-morrow I return to my poor children. I have much to be thankful for under this visitation. For the first time in my life (he was sixty years old) I am so far beforehand with the world that my means are provided for the whole of next year, and that I can meet this expenditure, considerable in itself, without any difficulty." Mrs. Southey, after two years' absence, returned to Keswick, the family home, and closed her pitiable existence there. Southey was now a broken-down man. "There is no one," he mournfully writes, "to partake with me the recollections of the best and happiest portion of my life; and for that reason, were there no other, such recollections must henceforth be purely painful, except when I collect them with the prospects of futurity." Two years after, however, Southey married again: the marriage was one of respect on the part of Caroline Bowles, the gifted authoress, who was his choice, and probably of convenience and friendship on the part of Southey. We have heard that the union greatly tended to his comfort, and that his wife tenderly soothed and cheered his declining years. Southey, in addition to maintaining his own wife and family at Keswick by his literary labors, had the families of his two sisters-in-law occasionally thrown upon his hands. He was not two-and-twenty when Mr. Lovell, who married his wife's sister, fell ill of fever, died, and left his widow and child without the slightest provision. Robert Southey took mother and child at once to his humble hearth, and there the former found happiness until his death. Coleridge, not sufficiently instructed by a genius to which his contemporaries did homage, in a wayward and unpardonable mood withdrew himself from the consolations of home; and in their hour of desertion his wife and children were saved half the knowledge of their hardships by finding a second husband and another father in the sanctuary provided for them by Robert Southey. Coleridge was unpunctual, unbusiness-like, improvident, and dreamy, to the full extent to which poets are said proverbially to be. When he married--his pantisocratic Owenite scheme having just been exploded, and his lectures at Bristol having proved a failure--he retired with Sara Fricker, his wife, to a cottage at Clevedon, near Bristol. Though the cottage was a poor one, consisting of little more than four bare walls, for which he paid only £5 annual rental, he and his wife made it pretty snug with the aid of the funds supplied by their constant friend, Mr. Cottle, the Bristol bookseller. Coleridge decorated this cottage with all the graces that his imagination and fancy could throw around it. It is alluded to in many of his poems:-- "Low was our pretty cot! our tallest rose Peep'd at the chamber window. We could hear At silent noon, and eve, and early morn, The sea's faint murmur. In the open air Our myrtles blossom'd, and across the porch Thick jasmines twin'd: the little landscape round Was green and woody, and refreshed the eye. It was a spot which you might aptly call The valley of seclusion." But his loved young wife was not forgotten; for again he sings:-- "My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclin'd Thus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it is To sit beside our cot--our cot o'ergrown With white-flowered jasmine, and the broad leav'd myrtle (Meet emblems they of innocence and love!) And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light, Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve, Serenely brilliant (such should wisdom be!) Shine opposite." Here their first child was born--Hartley, the dreamer--on whom the happy parent shed tears of joy:-- "But when I saw it on its mother's arm, And hanging at her bosom (she the while Bent o'er its features with a tearful smile,) Then I was thrill'd and melted, and most warm Impress'd a father's kiss; and all beguil'd Of dark remembrance and presageful fear, I seem'd to see an angel's form appear-- 'Twas even thine, beloved woman mild! So for the mother's sake the child was dear, And dearer was the mother for the child." But writing poetry, reading Hartley and Condillac, would not make the poet's pot boil at all briskly, and so he had to go a little nearer to the world, and went back to Bristol. Coleridge, however, wanted application, and could scarcely be induced to work, even though the prospect of liberal remuneration was offered to him. Hence, a few years after marriage, in July, 1796, we find him thus groaning in the spirit to a friend: "It is my duty and business to thank God for all his dispensations, and to believe them the best possible; but, indeed, I think I should have been more thankful if He had made me a journeyman shoemaker, instead of an author, by trade. I have left my friends, I have left plenty," &c. "So I am forced to write for bread! with the nights of poetic enthusiasm, when every minute I am hearing a groan from my wife--groans, and complaints, and sickness! The present hour I am in a quickset of embarrassments, and whichever way I turn, a thorn runs into me! The future is a cloud and thick darkness! Poverty, perhaps, and the thin faces of them that want bread looking up to me," &c. This was not the kind of spirit to make a wife happy--very different indeed from the manly, courageous, and self-helping Southey--and the poor wife suffered much. Whatever Coleridge touched failed: his fourpenny paper, the _Watchman_, was an abortion; and the verses he wrote for a London paper did little for him. He next preached for a short time among the Unitarians, deriving a very precarious living from that source; when at length the Messrs. Wedgwood, struck by his great talents, granted him an annuity of £150 to enable him to devote himself to study. Then he went to Germany, leaving his wife and little family to the hospitality of Southey; and returned and settled down to the precarious life of a writer for the newspapers: his eloquent conversation producing unbounded admiration, but very little "grist." He was often distressed for money, wasting what he had by indulgence in opium, to which he was at one time a fearful victim. The great and unquestionable genius of Coleridge was expended chiefly on projections. He was a man who was capable of greatly adorning the literature of his time, and of creating an altogether new era in its history; but he could not or would not work, and his life was passed in dreamy idleness, in self-inflicted poverty, often in poignant misery, in gloomy regrets, and in unfulfilled designs. We fear the life of Mrs. Coleridge was not a happy one, good and affectionate though she was as a wife and mother. MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[11] BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. CHAPTER XIII. Leonard and Helen settled themselves in two little chambers in a small lane. The neighborhood was dull enough--the accommodation humble; but their landlady had a smile. That was the reason, perhaps, why Helen chose the lodgings; a smile is not always found on the face of a landlady when the lodger is poor. And out of their windows they caught sight of a green tree, an elm, that grew up fair and tall in a carpenter's yard at the rear. That tree was like another smile to the place. They saw the birds come and go to its shelter; and they even heard, when a breeze arose, the pleasant murmur of its boughs. Leonard went the same evening to Captain Digby's old lodgings, but he could learn there no intelligence of friends or protectors for Helen. The people were rude and sturdy, and said that the Captain still owed them £1 17s. The claim, however, seemed very disputable; and was stoutly denied by Helen. The next morning Leonard set off in search of Dr. Morgan. He thought his best plan was to inquire the address of the Doctor at the nearest chemist's, and the chemist civilly looked into the _Court Guide_, and referred him to a house in Bulstrode-street, Manchester Square. To this street Leonard contrived to find his way, much marvelling at the meanness of London. Screwstone seemed to him the handsomest town of the two. A shabby man-servant opened the door, and Leonard remarked that the narrow passage was choked with boxes, trunks, and various articles of furniture. He was shown into a small room, containing a very large round table, whereon were sundry works on homoeopathy, Parry's _Cymbrian Plutarch_, Davies' _Celtic Researches_, and a Sunday newspaper. An engraved portrait of the illustrious Hahnemann occupied the place of honor over the chimneypiece. In a few minutes the door to an inner room opened, and Dr. Morgan appeared, and said politely, "Come in, sir." The Doctor seated himself at a desk, looked hastily at Leonard, and then at a great chronometer lying on the table. "My time's short, sir--going abroad; and now that I am going, patients flock to me. Too late. London will repent its apathy. Let it!" The Doctor paused majestically, and, not remarking on Leonard's face the consternation he had anticipated, he repeated peevishly--"I am going abroad, sir, but I will make a synopsis of your case, and leave it to my successor. Hum! Hair chestnut; eyes--what color? Look this way--blue,--dark blue. Hem! Constitution nervous. What are the symptoms?" "Sir," began Leonard, "a little girl--" _Dr. Morgan_, (impatiently)--"Little girl! Never mind the history of your sufferings; stick to the symptoms--stick to the symptoms." _Leonard._--"You mistake me, Doctor; I have nothing the matter with me. A little girl--" _Dr. Morgan._--"Girl again! I understand it! it is she who is ill. Shall I go to her? she must describe her own symptoms--I can't judge from your talk. You'll be telling me she has consumption, or dyspepsia, or some such disease that don't exist: mere allopathic inventions--symptoms, sir, symptoms." _Leonard_, (forcing his way)--"You attended her poor father, Captain Digby, when he was taken ill in the coach with you. He is dead, and his child is an orphan." _Dr. Morgan_, (fumbling in his medical pocket-book.)--"Orphan! nothing for orphans, especially if inconsolable, like _aconite_ and _chamomilla_."[12] With some difficulty Leonard succeeded in bringing Helen to the recollection of the homoeopathist, stating how he came in charge of her, and why he sought Dr. Morgan. The Doctor was much moved. "But really," said he after a pause, "I don't see how I can help the poor child. I know nothing of her relations. This Lord Les--whatever his name is--I know of no lords in London. I knew lords, and physicked them too, when I was a blundering allopathist. There was the Earl of Lansmere--has had many a blue pill from me, sinner that I was. His son was wiser; never would take physic. Very clever boy was Lord L'Estrange--I don't know if he was as good as he was clever--" "Lord L'Estrange!--that name begins with Les--" "Stuff! He's always abroad--shows his sense. I'm going abroad too. No development for science in this horrid city; full of prejudices, sir, and given up to the most barbarous allopathical and phlebotomical propensities. I am going to the land of Hahnemann, sir--sold my good-will, lease, and furniture, and have bought in on the Rhine. Natural life there, sir--homoeopathy needs nature; dine at one o'clock, get up at four--tea little known, and science appreciated. But I forget. Cott! what can I do for the orphan?" "Well, sir," said Leonard rising, "Heaven will give me strength to support her." The doctor looked at the young man attentively. "And yet," said he in a gentler voice, "you, young man, are, by your account, a perfect stranger to her, or were so when you undertook to bring her to London. You have a good heart--always keep it. Very healthy thing, sir, a good heart--that is, when not carried to excess. But you have friends of your own in town?" _Leonard._--"Not yet, sir; I hope to make them." _Doctor._--"Bless me, you do? How? I can't make any." Leonard colored and hung his head. He longed to say "Authors find friends in their readers--I am going to be an author." But he felt that the reply would savor of presumption, and held his tongue. The Doctor continued to examine him, and with friendly interest. "You say you walked up to London--was that from choice or economy?" _Leonard._--"Both, sir." _Doctor._--"Sit down again and let us talk. I can give you a quarter of an hour, and I'll see if I can help either of you, provided you tell all the symptoms--I mean all the particulars." Then with that peculiar adroitness which belongs to experience in the medical profession, Dr. Morgan, who was really an acute and able man, proceeded to put his questions, and soon extracted from Leonard the boy's history and hopes. But when the Doctor, in admiration at a simplicity which contrasted so evident an intelligence, finally asked him his name and connections, and Leonard told them, the homoeopathist actually started. "Leonard Fairfield, grandson of my old friend, John Avenel of Lansmere! I must shake you by the hand. Brought up by Mrs. Fairfield!--Ah, now I look, strong family likeness--very strong!" The tears stood in the Doctor's eyes. "Poor Nora!" said he. "Nora! Did you know my aunt?" "Your aunt! Ah--ah! yes--yes! Poor Norah!--she died almost in these arms--so young, so beautiful. I remember it as of yesterday." The Doctor brushed his hand across his eyes, and swallowed a globule; and, before the boy knew what he was about, had in his benevolence thrust another between Leonard's quivering lips. A knock was heard at the door. "Ha! that's my great patient," cried the Doctor, recovering his self-possession--"must see him. A chronic case--excellent patient--tic, sir, tic. Puzzling and interesting. If I could take that tic with me, I should ask nothing more from Heaven. Call again on Monday; I may have something to tell you then as to yourself. The little girl can't stay with you--wrong and nonsensical. I will see after her. Leave me your address--write it here. I think I know a lady who will take charge of her. Good-bye. Monday next, ten o'clock." With this, the Doctor thrust out Leonard, and ushered in his grand patient, whom he was very anxious to take with him to the banks of the Rhine. Leonard had now only to discover the nobleman whose name had been so vaguely uttered by poor Captain Digby. He had again recourse to the _Court Guide_; and finding the address of two or three lords the first syllables of whose titles seemed similar to that repeated to him, and all living pretty near to each other, in the regions of May Fair, he ascertained his way to that quarter, and, exercising his mother-wit, inquired at the neighboring shops as to the personal appearance of these noblemen. Out of consideration for his rusticity, he got very civil and clear answers; but none of the lords in question corresponded with the description given by Helen. One was old, another was exceedingly corpulent, a third was bed-ridden--none of them was known to keep a great dog. It is needless to say that the name of L'Estrange (no habitant of London) was not in the _Court Guide_. And Dr. Morgan's assertion that that person was always abroad, unluckily dismissed from Leonard's mind the name the homoeopathist had so casually mentioned. But Helen was not disappointed when her young protector returned late in the day and told her of his ill success. Poor child! she was so pleased in her heart not to be separated from her new brother; and Leonard was touched to how she had contrived, in his absence, to give a certain comfort and cheerful grace to the bare room devoted to himself. She had arranged his few books and papers so neatly, near the window, in sight of the one green elm. She had coaxed the smiling landlady out of one or two extra articles of furniture, especially a walnut-tree bureau, and some odds and ends of ribbon--with which last she had looped up the curtains. Even the old rush-bottom chairs had a strange air of elegance, from the mode in which they were placed. The fairies had given sweet Helen the art that adorns a home, and brings out a smile from the dingiest corner of hut and attic. Leonard wondered and praised. He kissed his blushing ministrant gratefully, and they sat down in joy to their abstemious meal, when suddenly his face was overclouded--there shot through him the remembrance of Dr. Morgan's words--"The little girl can't stay with you--wrong and nonsensical. I think I know a lady who will take charge of her." "Ah," cried Leonard, sorrowfully, "how could I forget?" And he told Helen what grieved him. Helen at first exclaimed that she would not go. Leonard, rejoiced, then began to talk as usual of his great prospects; and, hastily finishing his meal, as if there were no time to lose, sat down at once to his papers. Then Helen contemplated him sadly, as he bent over his delighted work. And when, lifting his radiant eyes from his MS. he exclaimed, "No, no, you shall _not_ go. _This_ must succeed, and we shall live together in some pretty cottage, where we can see more than one tree"--_then_ Helen sighed, and did not answer this time, "No, I will not go." Shortly after she stole from the room, and into her own; and there, kneeling down, she prayed, and her prayer was somewhat this--"Guard me against my own selfish heart. May I never be a burden to him who has shielded me." Perhaps, as the Creator looks down on this world, whose wondrous beauty beams on us more and more, in proportion as our science would take it from poetry into law--perhaps He beholds nothing so beautiful as the pure heart of a simple loving child. CHAPTER XIV. Leonard went out the next day with his precious MSS. He had read sufficient of modern literature to know the names of the principal London publishers; and to these he took his way with a bold step, though a beating heart. That day he was out longer than the last; and when he returned, and came into the little room, Helen uttered a cry, for she scarcely recognised him. There was on his face so deep, so concentrated a despondency. He sat down listlessly, and did not kiss her this time, as she stole towards him. He felt so humbled. He was a king deposed. _He_ take charge of another life! He! She coaxed him at last into communicating his day's chronicle. The reader beforehand knows too well what it must be, to need detailed repetition. Most of the publishers had absolutely refused to look at his MSS.; one or two had good-naturedly glanced over and returned them at once, with a civil word or two of flat rejection. One publisher alone--himself a man of letters, and who in youth had gone through the same bitter process of dis-illusion that now awaited the village genius--volunteered some kindly though stern explanation and counsel to the unhappy boy. This gentleman read a portion of Leonard's principal poem with attention, and even with frank admiration. He could appreciate the rare promise that it manifested. He sympathized with the boy's history, and even with his hopes; and then he said, in bidding him farewell-- "If I publish this poem for you, speaking as a trader, I shall be a considerable loser. Did I publish all that I admire, out of sympathy with the author, I should be a ruined man. But suppose that, impressed as I really am with the evidence of no common poetic gifts in this MS., I publish it, not as a trader, but a lover of literature, I shall in reality, I fear, render you a great disservice, and perhaps unfit your whole life for the exertions on which you must rely for independence." "How, sir?" cried Leonard--"Not that I would ask you to injure yourself for me," he added with proud tears in his eyes. "How, my young friend? I will explain. There is enough talent in these verses to induce very flattering reviews in some of the literary journals. You will read these, find yourself proclaimed a poet, will cry 'I am on the road to fame.' You will come to me, 'And my poem, how does it sell?' I shall point to some groaning shelf, and say, 'not twenty copies!' The journals may praise, but the public will not buy it. 'But you will have got a name,' you say. Yes, a name as a poet just sufficiently known to make every man in practical business disinclined to give fair trial to your talents in a single department of positive life;--none like to employ poets;--a name that will not put a penny in your purse--worse still, that will operate as a barrier against every escape into the ways whereby men get to fortune. But, having once tasted praise, you will continue to sigh for it: you will perhaps never again get a publisher to bring forth a poem, but you will hanker round the purlieus of the muses, scribble for periodicals, fall at last into a bookseller's drudge. Profits will be so precarious and uncertain, that to avoid debt may be impossible; then, you who now seem so ingenuous and so proud, will sink deeper still into the literary mendicant--begging, borrowing--" "Never--never--never!" cried Leonard, veiling his face with his hands. "Such would have been my career," continued the publisher. "But I luckily had a rich relative, a trader, whose calling I despised as a boy, who kindly forgave my folly, bound me as an apprentice, and here I am; and now I can afford to write books as well as sell them. "Young man, you must have respectable relations--go by their advice and counsel; cling fast to some positive calling. Be any thing in this city rather than poet by profession." "And how, sir, have there ever been poets? Had _they_ other callings?" "Read their biography, and then envy them!" Leonard was silent a moment; but, lifting his head, answered loud and quickly,--"I _have_ read their biography. True, their lot poverty--perhaps hunger. Sir, I envy them!" "Poverty and hunger are small evils," answered the bookseller, with a grave kind smile. "There are worse,--debt and degradation, and--despair." "No, sir, no--you exaggerate; these last are not the lot of all poets." "Right, for most of our greatest poets had some private means of their own. And for others, why, all who have put into a lottery have not drawn blanks. But who could advise another man to set his whole hope of fortune on the chance of a prize in a lottery? And such a lottery!" groaned the publisher, glancing towards sheets and reams of dead authors lying like lead upon his shelves. Leonard clutched his MSS. to his heart, and hurried away. "Yes," he muttered, as Helen clung to him and tried to console--"yes, you were right: London is very vast, very strong, and very cruel;" and his head sank lower and lower yet upon his bosom. The door was flung widely open, and in, unannounced, walked Dr Morgan. The child turned to him, and at the sight of his face she remembered her father; and the tears that, for Leonard's sake, she had been trying to suppress, found way. The good Doctor soon gained all the confidence of these two young hearts. And, after listening to Leonard's story of his paradise lost in a day, he patted him on the shoulder and said, "Well, you will call on me on Monday, and we will see. Meanwhile, borrow these of me,"--and he tried to slip three sovereigns into the boy's hand. Leonard was indignant. The bookseller's warning flashed on him. Mendicancy! Oh no, he had not yet come to that! He was almost rude and savage in his rejection; and the Doctor did not like him the less for it. "You are an obstinate mule," said the homoeopathist, reluctantly putting up his sovereigns. "Will you work at something practical and prosy, and let the poetry rest awhile?" "Yes," said Leonard doggedly, "I will work." "Very well, then. I know an honest bookseller, and he shall give you some employment; and meanwhile, at all events, you will be among books, and that will be some comfort." Leonard's eyes brightened--"A great comfort, sir." He pressed the hand he had before put aside to his grateful heart. "But," resumed the Doctor seriously, "you really feel a strong predisposition to make verses?" "I did, sir." "Very bad symptom indeed, and must be stopped before a relapse! Here, I have cured three prophets and ten poets with this novel specific." While thus speaking, he had got out his book and a globule. "_Agaricus muscarius_ dissolved in a tumbler of distilled water--tea-spoonful whenever the fit comes on. Sir, it would have cured Milton himself." "And now for you, my child," turning to Helen--"I have found a lady who will be very kind to you. Not a menial situation. She wants some one to read to her and tend on her--she is old and has no children. She wants a companion, and prefers a girl of your age to one older. Will this suit you?" Leonard walked away. Helen got close to the Doctor's ear, and whispered, "No, I cannot leave _him_ now--he is so sad." "Cott!" grunted the Doctor, "you two must have been reading _Paul and Virginia_. If I could but stay in England, I would try what _ignatia_ would do in this case--interesting experiment! Listen to me--little girl; and go out of the room, you, sir." Leonard, averting his face, obeyed. Helen made an involuntary step after him--the Doctor detained and drew her on his knee. "What is your Christian name?--I forget." "Helen." "Helen, listen. In a year or two you will be a young woman, and it would be very wrong then to live alone with that young man. Meanwhile, you have no right to cripple all his energies. He must not have you leaning on his right arm--you would weigh it down. I am going away, and when I am gone there will be no one to help you, if you reject the friend I offer you. Do as I tell you, for a little girl so peculiarly susceptible (a thorough _pulsatilla_ constitution) cannot be obstinate and egotistical." "Let me see him cared for and happy, sir," said she firmly, "and I will go where you wish." "He shall be so; and to-morrow, while he is out, I will come and fetch you. Nothing so painful as leave-taking--shakes the nervous system, and is a mere waste of the animal economy." Helen sobbed aloud; then, writhing from the Doctor, she exclaimed, "But he may know where I am? We may see each other sometimes? Ah, sir, it was at my father's grave that we first met, and I think Heaven sent him to me. Do not part us for ever." "I should have a heart of stone if I did," cried the Doctor vehemently, "and Miss Starke shall let him come and visit you once a week. I'll give her something to make her. She is naturally indifferent to others. I will alter her whole constitution, and melt her into sympathy--with _rhododendron_ and _arsenic_!" CHAPTER XV. Before he went, the Doctor wrote a line to Mr. Prickett, bookseller, Holborn, and told Leonard to take it, the next morning, as addressed. "I will call on Prickett myself to-night, and prepare him for your visit. And I hope and trust you will only have to stay there a few days." He then turned the conversation, to communicate his plans for Helen. Miss Starke lived at Highgate--a worthy woman, stiff and prim, as old maids sometimes are. But just the place for a little girl like Helen, and Leonard should certainly be allowed to call and see her. Leonard listened and made no opposition; now that his day-dream was dispelled, he had no right to pretend to be Helen's protector. He could have bade her share his wealth and his fame; his penury and his drudgery--no. It was a very sorrowful evening--that between the adventurer and the child. They sat up late, till their candle had burned down to the socket; neither did they talk much; but his hand clasped hers all the time, and her head pillowed itself on his shoulder. I fear, when they parted, it was not for sleep. And when Leonard went forth the next morning, Helen stood at the street door, watching him depart--slowly, slowly. No doubt, in that humble lane there were many sad hearts; but no heart so heavy as that of the still quiet child, when the form she had watched was to be seen no more, and, still standing on the desolate threshold, she gazed into space--and all was vacant. CHAPTER XVI. Mr. Prickett was a believer in homoeopathy, and declared, to the indignation of all the apothecaries round Holborn, that he had been cured of a chronic rheumatism by Dr. Morgan. The good Doctor had, as he promised, seen Mr. Prickett when he left Leonard, and asked him as a favor to find some light occupation for the boy, that would serve as an excuse for a modest weekly salary. "It will not be for long," said the Doctor; "his relations are respectable and well off. I will write to his grandparents, and in a few days I hope to relieve you of the charge. Of course, if you don't want him, I will repay what he costs meanwhile." Mr. Prickett, thus prepared for Leonard, received him very graciously, and, after a few questions, said Leonard was just the person he wanted to assist him in cataloguing his books, and offered him most handsomely £1 a-week for the task. Plunged at once into a world of books vaster than he had ever before won admission to, that old divine dream of knowledge, out of which poetry had sprung, returned to the village student at the very sight of the venerable volumes. The collection of Mr. Prickett was, however, in reality by no means large; but it comprised not only the ordinary standard works, but several curious and rare ones. And Leonard paused in making the catalogue, and took many a hasty snatch of the contents of each tome, as it passed through his hands. The bookseller, who was an enthusiast for old books, was pleased to see a kindred feeling (which his shop-boy had never exhibited) in his new assistant; and he talked about rare editions and scarce copies, and initiated Leonard in many of the mysteries of the bibliographist. Nothing could be more dark and dingy than the shop. There was a booth outside, containing cheap books and odd volumes, round which there was always an attentive group; within, a gas-lamp burned night and day. But time passed quickly to Leonard. He missed not the green fields, he forgot his disappointments, he ceased to remember even Helen. O strange passion of knowledge! nothing like thee for strength and devotion. Mr. Prickett was a bachelor, and asked Leonard to dine with him on a cold shoulder of mutton. During dinner the shop-boy kept the shop, and Mr. Prickett was really pleasant as well as loquacious. He took a liking to Leonard--and Leonard told him his adventures with the publishers, at which Mr. Prickett rubbed his hands and laughed as at a capital joke. "Oh give up poetry, and stick to a shop," cried he; "and, to cure you for ever of the mad whim to be an author, I'll just lend you the _Life and Works of Chatterton_. You may take it home with you and read before you go to bed. You'll come back quite a new man to-morrow." Not till night, when the shop was closed, did Leonard return to his lodging. And when he entered the room, he was struck to the soul by the silence, by the void. Helen was gone! There was a rose-tree in its pot on the table at which he wrote, and by it a scrap of paper, on which was written-- "Dear, dear Brother Leonard, God bless you. I will let you know when we can meet again. Take care of this rose, Brother, and don't forget poor HELEN." Over the word "forget" there was a big round blistered spot that nearly effaced the word. Leonard leant his face on his hands, and for the first time in his life he felt what solitude really is. He could not stay long in the room. He walked out again, and wandered objectless to and fro the streets. He passed that stiller and humbler neighborhood, he mixed with the throng that swarmed in the more populous thoroughfares. Hundreds and thousands passed him by, and still--still such solitude. He came back, lighted his candle, and resolutely drew forth the "Chatterton" which the bookseller had lent him. It was an old edition in one thick volume. It had evidently belonged to some contemporary of the Poet's--apparently an inhabitant of Bristol--some one who had gathered up many anecdotes respecting Chatterton's habits, and who appeared even to have seen him, nay, been in his company; for the book was interleaved, and the leaves covered with notes and remarks in a stiff clear hand--all evincing personal knowledge of the mournful immortal dead. At first,Leonard read with an effort; then the strange and fierce spell of that dread life seized upon him--seized with pain, and gloom, and terror--this boy dying by his own hand, about the age Leonard had attained himself. This wondrous boy, of a genius beyond all comparison--the greatest that ever yet was developed and extinguished at the age of eighteen--self-taught--self-struggling--self-immolated. Nothing in literature like that life and that death! With intense interest Leonard perused the tale of the brilliant imposture, which had been so harshly and so absurdly construed into the crime of a forgery, and which was (if not wholly innocent) so akin to the literary devices always in other cases viewed with indulgence, and exhibiting, in this, intellectual qualities in themselves so amazing--such patience, such forethought, such labor, such courage, such ingenuity--the qualities that, well directed, make men great, not only in books, but action. And, turning from the history of the imposture to the poems themselves, the young reader bent before their beauty, literally awed and breathless. How had this strange Bristol boy tamed and mastered his rude and motley materials into a music that comprehended every tune and key, from the simplest to the sublimest? He turned back to the biography--he read on--he saw the proud, daring, mournful spirit, alone in the Great City like himself. He followed its dismal career, he saw it falling with bruised and soiled wings into the mire. He turned again to the later works, wrung forth as tasks for bread,--the satires without moral grandeur, the politics without honest faith. He shuddered and sickened as he read. True, even here his poet mind appreciated (what perhaps only poets can) the divine fire that burned fitfully through that meaner and more sordid fuel--he still traced in those crude, hasty, bitter offerings to dire Necessity, the hand of the young giant who had built up the stately verse of Rowley. But, alas! how different from that "mighty line." How all serenity and joy had fled from these later exercises of art degraded into journey-work. Then rapidly came on the catastrophe--the closed doors--the poison--the suicide--the manuscripts torn by the hands of despairing wrath, and strewed round the corpse upon the funeral floors. It was terrible! The spectre of the Titan boy, (as described in the notes written on the margin,) with his haughty brow, his cynic smile, his lustrous eyes, haunted all the night the baffled and solitary child of song. CHAPTER XVII. It will often happen that what ought to turn the human mind from some peculiar tendency produces the opposite effect. One would think that the perusal in the newspaper of some crime and capital punishment would warn away all who had ever meditated the crime, or dreaded the chance of detection. Yet it is well known to us that many a criminal is made by pondering over the fate of some predecessor in guilt. There is a fascination in the Dark and Forbidden, which, strange to say, is only lost in fiction. No man is more inclined to murder his nephews, or stifle his wife, after reading Richard the Third or Othello. It is the _reality_ that is necessary to constitute the danger of contagion. Now, it was this reality in the fate, and life, and crowning suicide of Chatterton, that forced itself upon Leonard's thoughts, and sat there like a visible evil thing, gathering evil like cloud around it. There was much in the dead poet's character, his trials, and his doom, that stood out to Leonard like a bold and colossal shadow of himself and his fate. Alas! the bookseller, in one respect, had said truly. Leonard came back to him the next day a new man, and it seemed even to himself as if he had lost a good angel in losing Helen. "Oh that she had been by my side," thought he. "Oh that I could have felt the touch of her confiding hand--that, looking up from the scathed and dreary ruin of this life, that had sublimely lifted itself from the plain, and sought to tower aloft from a deluge, her mild look had spoken to me of innocent, humble, unaspiring childhood! Ah! If indeed I were still necessary to her--still the sole guardian and protector--then could I say to myself, 'Thou must not despair and die! Thou hast her to live and to strive for.' But no, no! Only this vast and terrible London--the solitude of the dreary garret, and those lustrous eyes glaring alike through the throng and through the solitude." CHAPTER XVIII. On the following Monday, Dr. Morgan's shabby man-servant opened the door to a young man in whom he did not at first remember a former visitor. A few days before, embrowned with healthful travel--serene light in his eye, simple trust in his careless lip--Leonard Fairfield had stood at that threshold. Now again he stood there pale and haggard, with a cheek already hollowed into those deep anxious lines that speak of working thoughts and sleepless nights; and a settled sullen gloom resting heavily on his whole aspect. "I call by appointment," said the boy testily, as the servant stood irresolute. The man gave way. "Master is just called out to a patient; please to wait, sir;" and he showed him into the little parlor. In a few moments two other patients were admitted. These were women, and they began talking very loud. They disturbed Leonard's unsocial thoughts. He saw that the door into the Doctor's receiving-room was half open, and, ignorant of the etiquette which holds such _penetralia_ as sacred, he walked in to escape from the gossips. He threw himself into the Doctor's own well-worn chair, and muttered to himself, "Why did he tell me to come? What new can he think of for me? And if a favor, should I take it? He has given me the means of bread by work: that is all I have a right to ask from him, from any man--all I should accept." While thus soliloquizing, his eye fell on a letter lying open on the table. He started. He recognized the handwriting--the same as the letter which had enclosed £50 to his mother--the letter of his grandparents. He saw his own name: he saw something more--words that made his heart stand still, and his blood seem like ice in his veins. As he thus stood aghast, a hand was laid on the letter, and a voice, in an angry growl, muttered, "How dare you come into my room, and be reading my letters? Er--r--r!" Leonard placed his own hand on the Doctor's firmly, and said in a fierce tone, "This letter relates to me--belongs to me--crushes me. I have seen enough to know that. I demand to read all--learn all." The Doctor looked round, and seeing the door into the waiting-room still open, kicked it to with his foot, and then said, under his breath, "What have you read? Tell me the truth." "Two lines only, and I am called--I am called"--Leonard's frame shook from head to foot, and the veins on his forehead swelled like cords. He could not complete the sentence. It seemed as if an ocean was rolling up through his brain, and roaring in his ears. The Doctor saw, at a glance, that there was physical danger in his state, and hastily and soothingly answered,--"Sit down, sit down--calm yourself--you shall know all--read all--drink this water;" and he poured into a tumbler of the pure liquid a drop or two from a tiny phial. Leonard obeyed mechanically, for indeed he was no longer able to stand. He closed his eyes, and for a minute or two life seemed to pass from him; then he recovered, and saw the good Doctor's gaze fixed on him with great compassion. He silently stretched forth his hand towards the letter. "Wait a few moments," said the physician judiciously, "and hear me meanwhile. It is very unfortunate you should have seen a letter never meant for your eye, and containing allusions to a secret you were never to have known. But, if I tell you more, will you promise me, on your word of honor, that you will hold the confidence sacred from Mrs. Fairfield, the Avenels--from all? I myself am pledged to conceal a secret, which I can only share with you on the same condition." "There is nothing," announced Leonard indistinctly, and with a bitter smile on his lip,--"nothing, it seems, that I should be proud to boast of. Yes, I promise--the letter, the letter!" The Doctor placed it in Leonard's right hand, and quietly slipped to the wrist of the left his forefinger and thumb, as physicians are said to do when a victim is stretched on the rack. "Pulse decreasing," he muttered; "wonderful thing, _Aconite_!" Meanwhile Leonard read as follows, faults in spelling and all:-- "Dr. MORGAN--Sir: I received your favur duly, and am glad to hear that the pore boy is safe and Well. But he has been behaving ill, and ungrateful to my good son Richard, who is a credit to the whole Family, and has made himself a Gentleman, and Was very kind and good to the boy, not knowing who and What he is--God forbid! I don't want never to see him again--the boy. Pore John was ill and Restless for days afterwards.--John is a pore cretur now, and has had paralytiks. And he Talked of nothing but Nora--the boy's eyes were so like his Mother's. I cannot, cannot see the Child of Shame. He can't cum here--for our Lord's sake, sir, don't ask it--he can't, so Respectable as we've always been!--and such disgrace! Base born--base born. Keep him where he is, bind him prentis, I'll pay anything for That. You says, sir, he's clever, and quick at learning; so did Parson Dale, and wanted him to go to Collidge, and make a Figur--then all would cum out. It would be my death, sir; I could not sleep in my grave, sir. Nora that we were all so proud of. Sinful creturs that we are! Nora's good name that we've saved now, gone, gone. And Richard, who is so grand, and who was so fond of pore, pore Nora! He would not hold up his Head again. Don't let him make a Figur in the world--let him be a tradesman, as we were afore him--any trade he Takes to--and not cross us no more while he lives. Then I shall pray for him, and wish him happy. And have not we had enuff of bringing up children to be above their birth? Nora, that I used to say was like the first lady o' the land--oh, but we were rightly punished! So now, sir, I leave all to you, and will pay all you want for the boy. And be Sure that the secret's kep. For we have never heard from the father, and, at least, no one knows that Nora has a living son but I and my daughter Jane, and Parson Dale and you--and you Two are good Gentlemen--and Jane will keep her word, and I am old, and shall be in my grave Soon, but I hope it won't be while pore John needs me. What could he do without me? And if _that_ got wind, it would kill me straght, sir. Pore John is a helpless cretur, God bless him. So no more from your servant in all dooty, "M. AVENEL." Leonard laid down this letter very calmly, and, except by a slight heaving at his breast, and a death-like whiteness of his lips, the emotions he felt were undetected. And it is a proof how much exquisite goodness there was in his heart that the first words he spoke were, "Thank Heaven!" The Doctor did not expect that thanksgiving, and he was so startled that he exclaimed, "For what?" "I have nothing to pity or excuse in the woman I knew and honored as a mother. I am not her son--her--" He stopped short. "No; but don't be hard on your true mother--poor Nora!" Leonard staggered, and then burst into a sudden paroxysm of tears. "Oh, my own mother!--my dead mother! Thou for whom I felt so mysterious a love--thou, from whom I took this poet soul--pardon me, pardon me! Hard on thee! Would that thou wert living yet, that I might comfort thee! What thou must have suffered!" These words were sobbed forth in broken gasps from the depth of his heart. Then he caught up the letter again, and his thoughts were changed as his eyes fell upon the writer's shame and fear, as it were, of his very existence. All his native haughtiness returned to him. His crest rose, his tears dried.--"Tell her," he said, with a stern unfaltering voice--"tell Mrs. Avenel that she is obeyed--that I will never seek her roof, never cross her path, never disgrace her wealthy son. But tell her, also, that I will choose my own way in life--that I will not take from her a bribe for concealment. Tell her that I am nameless, and will yet make a name." A name! Was this but an idle boast, or was it one of those flashes of conviction which are never belied, lighting up our future for one lurid instant, and then fading into darkness? "I do not doubt it, my prave poy," said Dr. Morgan, growing exceedingly Welsh in his excitement; "and perhaps you may find a father, who--" "Father--who is he--what is he? He lives then! But he has deserted me--he must have betrayed her? I need him not. The law gives me no father." The last words were said with a return of bitter anguish; then in a calmer tone, he resumed, "But I should know who he is--as another one whose path I may not cross." Dr. Morgan looked embarrassed, and paused in deliberation. "Nay," said he at length, "as you know so much, it is surely best that you should know all." The Doctor then proceeded to detail, with some circumlocution, what we will here repeat from his account more succinctly. Nora Avenel, while yet very young, left her native village, or rather the house of Lady Lansmere, by whom she had been educated and brought up, in order to accept the place of governess or companion in London. One evening she suddenly presented herself at her father's house, and at the first sight of her mother's face she fell down insensible. She was carried to bed. Dr. Morgan (then the chief medical practitioner of the town) was sent for. That night Leonard came into the world, and his mother died. She never recovered her senses, never spoke intelligibly from the time she entered the house. "And never therefore named your father," said Dr. Morgan. "We know not who he was." "And how," cried Leonard, fiercely,--"how have they dared to slander this dead mother? How knew they that I--was--was--was not the child of wedlock?" "There was no wedding-ring on Nora's finger--never any rumor of her marriage--her strange and sudden appearance at her father's house--her emotions on entrance, so unlike those natural to a wife returning to a parent's home: these are all the evidence against her. But Mr. Avenel deemed them strong, and so did I. You have a right to think we judged too harshly--perhaps we did." "And no inquiries were ever made?" said Leonard mournfully, and after long silence--"no inquiries to learn who was the father of the motherless child?" "Inquiries!--Mrs. Avenel would have died first. Your grandmother's nature is very rigid. Had she come from princes, from Cadwallader himself," said the Welshman, "she could not more have shrunk from the thought of dishonor. Even over her dead child, the child she had loved the best, she thought but how to save that child's name and memory from suspicion. There was luckily no servant in the house, only Mark Fairfield and his wife (Nora's sister): they had arrived the same day on a visit. "Mrs. Fairfield was nursing her own infant, two or three months old; she took charge of you; Nora was buried, and the secret kept. None out of the family knew of it, but myself and the curate of the town--Mr. Dale. The day after your birth, Mrs. Fairfield, to prevent discovery, moved to a village at some distance. There her child died; and when she returned to Hazeldean, where her husband was settled, you passed as the son she had lost. Mark, I know, was a father to you, for he had loved Nora; they had been children together." "And she came to London--London is strong and cruel," muttered Leonard. "She was friendless and deceived. I see all--I desire to know no more. This father, he must indeed have been like those whom I have read of in books. To love, to wrong her--_that_ I can conceive; but then to leave, to abandon; no visit to her grave--no remorse--no search for his own child. Well, well; Mrs. Avenel was right. Let us think of _him_ no more." The man-servant knocked at the door, and then put in his head. "Sir, the ladies are getting very impatient, and say they'll go." "Sir," said Leonard, with a strange calm return to the things about him, "I ask your pardon for taking up your time so long. I go now. I will never mention to my moth--I mean to Mrs. Fairfield--what I have learned, nor to any one. I will work my way somehow. If Mr. Prickett will keep me, I will stay with him at present; but I repeat, I cannot take Mrs. Avenel's money and be bound apprentice. Sir, you have been good and patient with me--Heaven reward you." The Doctor was too moved to answer. He wrung Leonard's hand, and in another minute the door closed upon the nameless boy. He stood alone in the streets of London; and the sun flashed on him, red and menacing, like the eye of a foe! CHAPTER XIX. Leonard did not appear at the shop of Mr. Prickett that day. Needless it is to say where he wandered--what he suffered--what thought--what felt. All within was storm. Late at night he returned to his solitary lodging. On his table, neglected since the morning, was Helen's rose-tree. It looked parched and fading. His heart smote him: he watered the poor plant--perhaps with his tears. Meanwhile Dr. Morgan, after some debate with himself whether or not to apprise Mrs. Avenel of Leonard's discovery and message, resolved to spare her an uneasiness and alarm that might be dangerous to her health, and unnecessary in itself. He replied shortly, that she need not fear Leonard's coming to her house--that he was disinclined to bind himself an apprentice, but that he was provided for at present; and in a few weeks, when Dr. Morgan heard more of him through the tradesman by whom he was employed, the Doctor would write to her from Germany. He then went to Mr. Prickett's--told the willing bookseller to keep the young man for the present--to be kind to him, watch over his habits and conduct, and report to the Doctor in his new home, on the Rhine, what avocation he thought Leonard would be best suited for, and most inclined to adopt. The charitable Welshman divided with the bookseller the salary given to Leonard, and left a quarter of his moity in advance. It is true that he knew he should be repaid on applying to Mrs. Avenel; but, being a man of independent spirit himself, he so sympathized with Leonard's present feelings, that he felt as if he should degrade the boy did he maintain him, even secretly, out of Mrs. Avenel's money--money intended not to raise, but keep him down in life. At the worst, it was a sum the doctor could afford, and he had brought the boy into the world. Having thus, as he thought, safely provided for his two young charges, Helen and Leonard, the Doctor then gave himself up to his final preparations for departure. He left a short note for Leonard with Mr. Prickett, containing some brief advice, some kind cheering; a postscript to the effect that he had not communicated to Mrs. Avenel the information Leonard had acquired, and that it were best to leave her in that ignorance; and six small powders to be dissolved in water, and a tea-spoonful every fourth hour--"Sovereign against rage and sombre thoughts," wrote the Doctor. By the evening of the next day Dr. Morgan, accompanied by his pet patient with the chronic tic, whom he had talked into exile, was on the steamboat on his way to Ostend. Leonard resumed his life at Mr. Prickett's; but the change in him did not escape the bookseller. All his ingenious simplicity had deserted him. He was very distant, and very taciturn; he seemed to have grown much older. I shall not attempt to analyze metaphysically this change. By the help of such words as Leonard may himself occasionally let fall, the reader will dive into the boy's heart, and see how there the change had worked, and is working still. The happy dreamy peasant-genius, gazing on glory with inebriate, undazzled eyes, is no more. It is a man, suddenly cut off from the old household holy ties--conscious of great powers, and confronted on all sides by barriers of iron--alone with hard reality, and scornful London; and if he catches a glimpse of the lost Helicon, he sees, where he saw the muse, a pale melancholy spirit veiling its face in shame--the ghost of the mournful mother, whose child has no name, not even the humblest, among the family of men. On the second evening after Dr. Morgan's departure, as Leonard was just about to leave the shop, a customer stepped in with a book in his hand which he had snatched from the shop-boy, who was removing the volumes for the night from the booth without. "Mr. Prickett, Mr. Prickett!" said the customer, "I am ashamed of you. You presume to put upon this work, in two volumes, the sum of eight shillings." Mr. Prickett stepped forth from the Cimmerian gloom of some recess, and cried, "What! Mr. Burley, is that you? But for your voice I should not have known you." "Man is like a book, Mr. Prickett; the commonalty only look to his binding. I am better bound, it is very true." Leonard glanced towards the speaker, who now stood under the gas-lamp, and thought he recognized his face. He looked again; yes, it was the perch-fisher whom he had met on the banks of the Brent, and who had warned him of the lost fish and the broken line. _Mr. Burley_ (continuing).--"But 'The Art of Thinking,'--you charge eight shillings for 'The Art of Thinking?'" _Mr. Prickett._--"Cheap enough, Mr. Burley. A very clean copy." _Mr. Burley._--"Usurer! I sold it to you for three shillings. It is more than 150 per cent. you propose to gain from my 'Art of Thinking.'" _Mr. Prickett_, (stuttering and taken aback.)--"_You_ sold it to me! Ah! now I remember. But it was more than three shillings I gave. You forget--two glasses of brandy and water." _Mr. Burley._--"Hospitality, sir, is not to be priced. If you sell your hospitality, you are not worthy to possess my 'Art of Thinking.' I resume it. There are three shillings, and a shilling more for interest. No--on second thoughts, instead of that shilling, I will return your hospitality; and the first time you come my way you shall have two glasses of brandy and water." Mr. Prickett did not look pleased, but he made no objection; and Mr. Burley put the book into his pocket, and turned to examine the shelves. He bought an old jest-book, a stray volume of the Comedies of Destouches--paid for them--put them also into his pocket, and was sauntering out, when he perceived Leonard, who was now standing at the doorway. "Hem! who is that?" he asked, whispering to Mr. Prickett. "A young assistant of mine, and very clever." Mr. Burley scanned Leonard from top to toe. "We have met before, sir. But you look as if you had returned to the Brent, and had been fishing for my perch." "Possibly, sir," answered Leonard. "But my line is tough, and is not yet broken, though the fish drags it amongst the weeds, and buries itself in the mud." He lifted his hat, bowed slightly, and walked on. "He _is_ clever," said Mr. Burley to the bookseller: "he understands allegory." _Mr. Prickett._--"Poor youth! He came to town with the idea of turning author: you know what _that_ is, Mr. Burley." _Mr. Burley_, (with an air of superb dignity.)--"Bibliopole, yes! An author is a being between gods and men, who ought to be lodged in a palace, and entertained at the public charge on ortolans and tokay. He should be kept lapped in down, and curtained with silken awnings from the cares of life--have nothing to do but to write books upon tables of cedar, and fish for perch from a gilded galley. And that's what will come to pass when the ages lose their barbarism, and know their benefactors. Meanwhile, sir, I invite you to my rooms, and will regale you upon brandy and water as long as I can pay for it; and when I cannot, you shall regale me." Mr. Prickett muttered, "A very bad bargain, indeed," as Mr. Burley, with his chin in the air, stepped into the street. CHAPTER XX. At first Leonard had always returned home through the crowded thoroughfares--the contact of numbers had animated his spirits. But the last two days, since the discovery of his birth, he had taken his way down the comparatively unpeopled path of the New Road. He had just gained that part of this outskirt in which the statuaries and tomb-makers exhibit their gloomy wares--furniture alike for gardens and for graves--and, pausing, contemplated a column, on which was placed an urn half covered with a funeral mantle, when his shoulder was lightly tapped, and, turning quickly, he saw Mr. Burley standing behind him. "Excuse me, sir, but you understand perch-fishing; and since we find ourselves on the same road, I should like to be better acquainted with you. I hear you once wished to be an author. I am one." Leonard had never before, to his knowledge, seen an author, and a mournful smile passed his lips as he surveyed the perch-fisher. Mr. Burley was indeed very differently attired since the first interview by the brooklet. He looked less like an author, but more perhaps like a perch-fisher. He had a new white hat, stuck on one side of his head--a new green overcoat--new gray trousers, and new boots. In his hand was a whalebone stick, with a silver handle. Nothing could be more fragrant, devil-me-carish, and to use a slang word, _tigrish_, than his whole air. Yet, vulgar as was his costume, he did not himself seem vulgar, but rather eccentric, lawless, something out of the pale of convention. His face looked more pale and more puffed than before, the tip of his nose redder; but the spark in his eye was of livelier light, and there was self-enjoyment in the corners of his sensual humorous lip. "You are an author, sir," repeated Leonard. "Well, and what is the report of your calling? Yonder column props an urn. The column is tall, and the urn is graceful. But it looks out of place by the roadside: what say you?" _Mr. Burley._--"It would look better in the churchyard." _Leonard._--"So I was thinking. And you are an author!" _Mr. Burley._--"Ah, I said you had a quick sense of allegory. And so you think an author looks better in a churchyard, when you see him but as a muffled urn under the moonshine, than standing beneath the gas-lamp, in a white hat, and with a red tip to his nose. Abstractedly, you are right. But, with your leave, the author would rather be where he is. Let us walk on." The two men felt an interest in each other, and they walked some yards in silence. "To return to the urn," said Mr. Burley, "you think of fame and churchyards. Natural enough, before illusion dies; but I think of the moment, of existence--and I laugh at fame. Fame, sir--not worth a glass of cold without! And as for a glass of warm, with sugar--and five shillings in one's pocket to spend as one pleases--what is there in Westminster Abbey to compare with it?" "Talk on, sir--I should like to hear you talk. Let me listen and hold my tongue." Leonard pulled his hat over his brows, and gave up his moody, questioning, turbulent mind to his new acquaintance. And John Burley talked on. A dangerous and a fascinating talk it was--the talk of a great intellect fallen. A serpent trailing its length on the ground, and showing bright, shifting, glorious hues as it grovelled. A serpent, yet without the serpent's guile. If John Burley deceived and tempted, he meant it not--he crawled and glittered alike honestly. No dove could be more simple. Laughing at fame, he yet dwelt with an elegant enthusiasm on the joy of composition. "What do I care what men without are to say and think of the words that gush forth on my page?" cried he. "If you think of the public, of urns, and laurels, while you write, you are no genius; you are not fit to be an author. I write because it rejoices me, because it is my nature. Written, I care no more what becomes of it than the lark for the effect that the song has on the peasant it wakes to the plough. The poet, like the lark, sings 'from his watch-tower in the skies.' Is this true?" "Yes, very true." "What can rob us of this joy! The bookseller will not buy, the public will not read. Let them sleep at the foot of the ladder of the angels--we climb it all the same. And then one settles down into such good-tempered Lucianic contempt for men. One wants so little from them, when one knows what one's self is worth, and what they are. They are just worth the coin one can extract from them in order to live. Our life--_that_ is worth so much to us. And then their joys, so vulgar to them, we can make them golden and kingly. Do you suppose Burns drinking at the ale-house, with his boors around him, was drinking, like them, only beer and whisky? No, he was drinking nectar--he was imbibing his own ambrosial thoughts--shaking with the laughter of the gods. The coarse human liquid was just needed to unlock his spirit from the clay--take it from jerkin and corduroys, and wrap it in the 'singing-robes' that floated wide in the skies: the beer or the whisky was needed but for that, and then it changed at once into the drink of Hebe. But come, you have not known this life--you have not seen it. Come, give me this night. I have moneys about me--I will fling them abroad as liberally as Alexander himself, when he left to his share but hope. Come!" "Whither?" "To my throne. On that throne last sate Edmund Kean--mighty mime. I am his successor. We will see whether in truth these wild sons of genius, who are cited but 'to point a moral and adorn a tale,' were objects of compassion. Sober-suited cits to lament over a Savage and a Morland--a Porson and a Burns!--" "Or a Chatterton," said Leonard, gloomily. "Chatterton was an impostor in all things; he feigned excesses that he never knew. _He_ a bacchanalian--a royster! He!--No. We will talk of him. Come!" Leonard went. CHAPTER XXI. The Room! And the smoke-reek, and the gas-glare of it. The whitewash of the walls, and the prints thereon of the actors in their mime-robes, and stage postures; actors as far back as their own lost Augustan era, when the stage was a real living influence on the manners and the age. There was Betterton in wig and gown--as Cato, moralising on the soul's eternity, and halting between Plato and the dagger. There was Woodward as "The Fine Gentleman," with the inimitable rakehell air in which the heroes of Wycherly and Congreve and Farquhar live again. There was jovial Quin as Falstaff, with round buckler and "fair round belly." There was Colley Cibber in brocade--taking snuff as with "his Lord," the thumb and forefinger raised in air--and looking at you for applause. There was Macklin as Shylock, with knife in hand; and Kemble, in the solemn weeds of the Dane; and Kean in the place of honor over the chimneypiece. When we are suddenly taken from practical life, with its real workday men, and presented to the portraits of those sole heroes of a World--Phantastic and Phantasmal, in the garments wherein they did "strut and fret their hour upon the stage," verily there is something in the sight that moves an inner sense within ourselves--for all of us have an inner sense of some existence, apart from the one that wears away our days: an existence that, afar from St. James's and St. Giles's, the Law Courts and Exchange, goes its way in terror or mirth, in smiles or in tears, through a vague magic land of the poets. There, see those actors! They are the men who lived it--to whom our world was the false one, to whom the Imaginary was the Actual. And did Shakspeare himself, in his life, ever hearken to the applause that thundered round the Personators of his airy images? Vague children of the most transient of the arts, fleet shadows of running waters, though thrown down from the steadfast stars, were ye not happier than we who live in the Real? How strange you must feel in the great circuit that ye now take through eternity! No prompt-books, no lamps, no acting Congreve and Shakspeare there! For what parts in the skies have your studies on the earth fitted you? Your ultimate destinies are very puzzling. Hail to your effigies, and pass we on! There, too, on the whitewashed walls, were admitted the portraits of ruder rivals in the arena of fame--yet they, too, had known an applause warmer than his age gave to Shakespeare; the champions of the ring--Cribb, and Molyneux, and Dutch Sam. Interspersed with these was an old print of Newmarket in the early part of the last century, and sundry engravings from Hogarth. But poets, oh! they were there, too: poets who might be supposed to have been sufficiently good fellows to be at home with such companions. Shakspeare, of course, with his placid forehead; Ben Jonson, with his heavy scowl; Burns and Byron cheek by jowl. But the strangest of all these heterogeneous specimens of graphic art was a full-length print of William Pitt!--William Pitt, the austere and imperious. What the deuce did he do there amongst prize-fighters, and actors, and poets? It seemed an insult to his grand memory. Nevertheless there he was, very erect, and with a look of ineffable disgust in his upturned nostrils. The portraits on the sordid walls were very like the crambo in the minds of ordinary men--very like the motley pictures of the FAMOUS hung up in your parlour, O my Public! Actors and prize-fighters, poets and statesmen, all without congruity and fitness, all whom you have been to see or to hear for a moment, and whose names have stared out in your newspapers, O my Public! And the company? Indescribable! Comedians from small theatres, out of employ: pale haggard-looking boys, probably the sons of worthy traders, trying their best to break their fathers' hearts; here and there the marked features of a Jew. Now and then you might see the curious puzzled face of some greenhorn about town, or perhaps a Cantab; and men of grave age, and gray-haired, were there, and amongst them a wondrous proportion of carbuncled faces and bottle noses. And when John Burley entered there was a shout, that made William Pitt shake in his frame. Such stamping and hallooing, and such hurrahs for "Burly John." And the gentleman who had filled the great high leathern chair in his absence gave it up to John Burley; and Leonard, with his grave observant eye, and lip half sad and half scornful, placed himself by the side of his introducer. There was a nameless expectant stir through the assembly, as when some great singer advances to the lamps, and begins "_Di tanti palpiti_." Time flies. Look at the Dutch clock over the door. Half-an-hour! John Burley begins to warm. A yet quicker light begins to break from his eye; his voice has a mellow luscious roll in it. "He will be grand to-night," whispered a thin man who looked like a tailor, seated on the other side of Leonard. Time flies--an hour! Look again at the Dutch clock, John Burley _is_ grand, he is in his zenith, at his culminating point. What magnificent drollery!--what luxuriant humor! How the Rabelais shakes in his easy chair! Under the rush and the roar of this fun, (what word else shall describe it,) the man's intellect is as clear as a gold sand under a river. Such wit, and such truth, and, at times, such a flood of quick eloquence. All now are listeners, silent, save in applause. And Leonard listened too. Not, as he would some nights ago, in innocent unquestioning delight. No; his mind has passed through great sorrow, great passion, and it comes out unsettled, inquiring, eager, brooding over joy itself as over a problem. And the drink circulates, and faces change; and there are gabbling and babbling; and Burley's head sinks in his bosom, and he is silent. And up starts a wild, dissolute, bacchanalian glee for seven voices. And the smoke-reek grows denser and thicker, and the gas-light looks dizzy through the haze. And John Burley's eyes reel. Look again at the Dutch clock. Two hours have gone. John Burley has broken out again from his silence, his voice thick and husky, and his laugh cracked; and he talks, O ye gods! such rubbish and ribaldry; and the listeners roar aloud, and think it finer than before. And Leonard, who had hitherto been measuring himself, in his mind, against the giant, and saying inly, "He soars out of my reach," finds the giant shrink smaller and smaller, and saith to himself, "He is but of man's common standard after all." Look again at the Dutch clock. Three hour have passed. Is John Burley now of man's common standard? Man himself seems to have vanished from the scene; his soul stolen from him, his form gone away with the fumes of the smoke, and the nauseous steam from that fiery bowl. And Leonard looked round, and saw but the swine of Circe--some on the floor, some staggering against the walls, some hugging each other on the tables, some fighting, some bawling, some weeping. The divine spark had fled from the human face; the beast is everywhere growing more and more out of the thing that had been man. And John Burley, still unconquered, but clean lost to his senses, fancies himself a preacher, and drawls forth the most lugubrious sermon upon the brevity of life that mortal ever heard, accompanied with unctuous sobs; and now and then, in the midst of balderdash, gleams out a gorgeous sentence, that Jeremy Taylor might have envied; drivelling away again into a cadence below the rhetoric of a Muggletonian. And the waiters choked up the doorway, listening and laughing, and prepared to call cabs and coaches; and suddenly some one turned off the gas light, and all was dark as pitch--howls and laughter as of the damned, ringing through the Pandemonium. Out from the black atmosphere stept the boy-poet; and the still stars rushed on his sight, as they looked over the grimy roof-tops. CHAPTER XXII. Well, Leonard, this is the first time thou hast shown that thou hast in thee the iron out of which true manhood is forged and shaped. Thou hast _the power to resist_. Forth, unebriate, unpolluted, he came from the orgy, as yon star above him came from the cloud. He had a latch key to his lodging. He let himself in, and walked noiselessly up the creaking wooden stair. It was dawn. He passed on to his window, and threw it open. The green elm-tree from the carpenter's yard looked as fresh and fair as if rooted in solitudes, leagues away from the smoke of Babylon. --"Nature, Nature!" murmured Leonard, "I hear thy voice now. This stills--this strengthens. But the struggle is very dread. Here, despair of life--there, faith in life. Nature thinks of neither, and lives serenely on." By-and-by a bird slid softly from the heart of the tree, and dropped on the ground below out of sight. But Leonard heard its carol. It awoke its companions--wings began to glance in the air, and the clouds grew red toward the east. Leonard sighed and left the window. On the table, near Helen's rose-tree, which bent over wistfully, lay a letter. He had not observed it before. It was in Helen's hand. He took it to the light, and read it by the pure healthful gleams of morn:-- "Oh, my dear brother Leonard, will this find you well, and (more happy I dare not say, but) less sad than when we parted? I write kneeling, so that it seems to me as if I wrote and prayed at the same time. You may come and see me to-morrow evening, Leonard. Do come, do--we shall walk together in this pretty garden; and there is an arbor all covered with jessamine and honeysuckle, from which we can look down on London. I have looked from it so many times--so many--trying if I can guess the roofs in our poor little street; and fancying that I do see the dear elm-tree. Miss Starke is very kind to me; and I think, after I have seen you, that I shall be happy here--that is, if you are happy. Your own grateful sister, "HELEN. "Ivy Lodge. "P. S.--Any one will direct you to our house; it lies to the left, near the top of the hill, a little way down a lane that is overhung on one side with chestnut trees and lilies. I shall be watching for you at the gate." Leonard's brow softened, he looked again like his former self. Up from the dark sea at his heart smiled the meek face of a child, and the waves lay still as at the charm of a spirit. CHAPTER XXIII. "And what is Mr. Burley, and what has he written?" asked Leonard of Mr. Prickett when he returned to the shop. Let us reply to that question in our own words, for we know more about Mr. Burley than Mr. Prickett does. John Burley was the only son of a poor clergyman, in a village near Ealing, who had scraped and saved and pinched, to send his son to an excellent provincial school in a northern country, and thence to college. At the latter, during his first year, young Burley was remarked by the undergraduates for his thick shoes and coarse linen, and remarkable to the authorities for his assiduity and learning. The highest hopes were entertained of him by the tutors and examiners. At the beginning of the second year his high animal spirits, before kept down by study, broke out. Reading had become easy to him. He knocked off his tasks with a facile stroke, as it were. He gave up his leisure hours to symposia by no means Socratical. He fell into an idle hard-drinking set. He got into all kinds of scrapes. The authorities were at first kind and forbearing in their admonitions, for they respected his abilities, and still hoped he might become an honor to the university. But at last he went drunk into a formal examination, and sent in papers after the manner of Aristophanes, containing capital jokes upon the Dons and Bigwigs themselves. The offence was the greater, and seemed the more premeditated, for being clothed in Greek. John Burley was expelled. He went home to his father's a miserable man, for with all his follies he had a good heart. Removed from ill example, his life for a year was blameless. He got admitted as usher into the school in which he had received instruction as a pupil. This school was in a large town. John Burley became member of a club formed among the tradesmen, and spent three evenings a week there. His astonishing convivial and conversational powers began to declare themselves. He grew the oracle of the club; and from being the most sober peaceful assembly in which grave fathers of a family ever smoked a pipe or sipped a glass, it grew under Mr. Burley's auspices the parent of revels as frolicking and frantic as those out of which the old Greek Goat Song ever tipsily rose. This would not do. There was a great riot in the streets one night, and the next morning the usher was dismissed. Fortunately for John Burley's conscience, his father had died before this happened--died believing in the reform of his son. During his ushership Mr. Burley had scraped acquaintance with the editor of the county newspaper, and given him some capital political articles; for Burley was like Parr and Porson, a notable politician. The editor furnished him with letters to the journalists in London, and John came to the metropolis and got employed on a very respectable newspaper. At college he had known Audley Egerton, though but slightly; that gentleman was then just rising into repute in Parliament. Burley sympathized with some questions on which Audley had distinguished himself, and wrote a very good article thereon--an article so good that Egerton inquired into the authorship, found out Burley, and resolved in his own mind to provide for him whenever he himself came into office. But Burley was a man whom it was impossible to provide for. He soon lost his connection with the newspaper. First, he was so irregular that he could never be depended upon. Secondly, he had strange honest eccentric twists of thinking, that could coalesce with the thoughts of no party in the long run. An article of his, inadvertently admitted, had horrified all the proprietors, staff, and readers of the paper. It was diametrically opposite to the principles the paper advocated, and compared its pet politician to Catiline. Then John Burley shut himself up and wrote books. He wrote two or three books, very clever, but not at all to the popular taste--abstract and learned, full of whims that were _caviare_ to the multitude, and larded with Greek. Nevertheless, they obtained for him a little money, and among literary men some reputation. Now Audley Egerton came into power, and got him, though with great difficulty--for there were many prejudices against this scampish harum-scarum son of the Muses--a place in a public office. He kept it about a month, and then voluntarily resigned it. "My crust of bread and liberty!" quoth John Burley, and he vanished into a garret. From that time to the present he lived--Heaven knows how. Literature is a business, like everything else; John Burley grew more and more incapable of business. "He could not do task-work," he said; he wrote when the whim seized him, or when the last penny was in his pouch, or when he was actually in the spunging-house or the Fleet--migrations which occurred to him, on an average, twice a year. He could generally sell what he had positively written, but no one would engage him beforehand. Magazines and other periodicals were very glad to have his articles, on the condition that they were anonymous; and his style was not necessarily detected, for he could vary it with the facility of a practised pen. Audley Egerton continued his best supporter, for there were certain questions on which no one wrote with such force as John Burley--questions connected with the metaphysics of politics, such as law reform and economical science. And Audley Egerton was the only man John Burley put himself out of the way to serve, and for whom he would give up a drinking-bout and do _task-work_; for John Burley was grateful by nature, and he felt that Egerton had really tried to befriend him. Indeed, it was true, as he had stated to Leonard by the Brent, that, even after he had resigned his desk in the London office, he had had the offer of an appointment in Jamaica, and a place in India from the Minister. But probably there were other charms then than those exercised by the one-eyed perch, that kept him to the neighborhood of London. With all his grave faults of character and conduct, John Burley was not without the fine qualities of a large nature. He was most resolutely his own enemy, it is true, but he could hardly be said to be any one else's. Even when he criticised some more fortunate writer, he was good-humored in his very satire; he had no bile, no envy. And as for freedom from malignant personalities, he might have been a model to all critics. I must except politics, however, for in these he could be rabid and savage. He had a passion for independence, which, though pushed to excess, was not without grandeur. No lick-platter, no parasite, no toadeater, no literary beggar, no hunter after patronage and subscriptions; even in his dealings with Audley Egerton, he insisted on naming the price for his labors. He took a price, because, as the papers required by Audley demanded much reading and detail, which was not at all to his taste, he considered himself entitled fairly to something more than the editor of the journal, wherein the papers appeared, was in the habit of giving. But he assessed this extra price himself, and as he would have done to a bookseller. And, when in debt and in prison, though he knew a line to Egerton would have extricated him, he never wrote that line. He would depend alone on his pen, dipped it hastily in the ink, and scrawled himself free. The most debased point about him was certainly the incorrigible vice of drinking, and with it the usual concomitant of that vice--the love of low company. To be King of the Bohemians--to dazzle by his wild humor, and sometimes to exalt, by his fanciful eloquence, the rude gross nature that gathered round him--this was a royalty that repaid him for all sacrifice of solid dignity; a foolscap crown that he would not have changed for an emperor's diadem. Indeed, to appreciate rightly the talents of John Burley, it was necessary to hear him talk on such occasions. As a writer, after all, he was only capable now of unequal desultory efforts. But as a talker, in his own wild way, he was original and matchless. And the gift of talk is one of the most dangerous gifts a man can possess for his own sake--the applause is so immediate, and gained with so little labor. Lower, and lower, and lower, had sunk John Burley, not only in the opinion of all who knew his name, but in the habitual exercise of his talents. And this seemed wilfully--from choice. He would write for some unstamped journal of the populace, out of the pale of the law, for pence, when he could have got pounds from journals of high repute. He was very fond of scribbling off penny ballads, and then standing in the street to hear them sung. He actually once made himself the poet of an advertising tailor, and enjoyed it excessively. But that did not last long, for John Burley was a Pittite--not a Tory, he used to say, but a Pittite. And if you had heard him talk of Pitt, you would never have known what to make of that great statesman. He treated him as the German commentators do Shakspeare, and invested him with all imaginary meanings and objects, that would have turned the grand practical man into a sybil. Well, he was a Pittite; the tailor a fanatic for Thelwall and Cobbett. Mr. Burley wrote a poem, wherein Britannia appeared to the tailor, complimented him highly on the art he exhibited in adorning the persons of her sons; and, bestowing upon him a gigantic mantle, said that he, and he alone, might be enabled to fit it to the shoulders of living men. The rest of the poem was occupied in Mr. Snip's unavailing attempts to adjust this mantle to the eminent politicians of the day, when, just as he had sunk down in despair, Britannia reappeared to him, and consoled him with the information that he had done all mortal man could do, and that she had only desired to convince pigmies that no human art could adjust to _their_ proportions the mantle of William Pitt. _Sic itur ad astra_. She went back to the stars, mantle and all. Mr. Snip was exceedingly indignant at this allegorical effusion, and with wrathful shears cut the tie between himself and his poet. Thus, then, the reader has, we trust, a pretty good idea of John Burley--a specimen of his genus, not very common in any age, and now happily almost extinct, since authors of all degrees share in the general improvement in order, economy, and sober decorum, which has obtained in the national manners. Mr. Prickett, though entering into less historical detail than we have done, conveyed to Leonard a tolerably accurate notion of the man, representing him as a person of great powers and learning, who had thoroughly thrown himself away. Leonard did not, however, see how much Mr. Burley himself was to be blamed for his waste of life; he could not conceive a man of genius voluntarily seating himself at the lowest step in the social ladder. He rather supposed he had been thrust down there by Necessity. And when Mr. Prickett, concluding, said, "Well, I should think Burley would cure you of the desire to be an author even more than Chatterton," the young man answered gloomily, "Perhaps," and turned to the book-shelves. With Mr. Prickett's consent, Leonard was released earlier than usual from his task, and a little before sunset he took his way to Highgate. He was fortunately directed to take the new road by the Regent's Park, and so on through a very green and smiling country. The walk, the freshness of the air, the songs of the birds, and, above all, when he had got half-way, the solitude of the road, served to rouse him from his stern and sombre meditations. And when he came into the lane overhung with chestnut trees, and suddenly caught sight of Helen's watchful and then brightening face, as she stood by the wicket, and under the shadow of cool murmurous boughs, the blood rushed gayly through his veins, and his heart beat loud and gratefully. CHAPTER XXIV. She drew him into the garden with such true childlike joy! Now behold them seated in the arbor--a perfect bower of sweets and blossoms; the wilderness of roof-tops and spires stretching below, broad and far; London seen dim and silent, as in a dream. She took his hat from his brows gently, and looked him in the face with tearful penetrating eyes. She did not say, "You have changed."--She said, "Why, why did I leave you?" and then turned away. "Never mind me, Helen. I am man, and rudely born--speak of yourself. This lady is kind to you, then?" "Does she not let me see you? Oh! very kind--and look here." Helen pointed to fruits and cakes set out on the table. "A feast, brother." And she began to press her hospitality with pretty winning ways, more playful than was usual for her, and talking very fast, and with forced but silvery laughter. By degrees she stole him from his gloom and reserve; and, though he could not reveal to her the cause of his bitterest sorrow, he owned that he had suffered much. He would not have owned _that_ to another living being. And then, quickly turning from this brief confession, with assurances that the worst was over, he sought to amuse her by speaking of his new acquaintance with the perch-fisher. But when he spoke of this man with a kind of reluctant admiration, mixed with compassionate yet gloomy interest, and drew a grotesque though subdued sketch of the wild scene in which he had been spectator, Helen grew alarmed and grave. "Oh, brother, do not go there again--do not see more of this bad man." "Bad!--no! Hopeless and unhappy, he has stooped to stimulants and oblivion;--but you cannot understand these things, my pretty preacher." "Yes I do, Leonard. What is the difference between being good and bad? The good do not yield to temptations, and the bad do." The definition was so simple and so wise that Leonard was more struck with it than he might have been by the most elaborate sermon by Parson Dale. "I have often murmured to myself since I lost you, 'Helen was my good angel;'--say on. For my heart is dark to myself, and while you speak light seems to dawn on it." This praise so confused Helen that she was long before she could obey the command annexed to it. But, by little and little, words came to both more frankly. And then he told her the sad tale of Chatterton, and waited, anxious to hear her comments. "Well," he said, seeing that she remained silent, "how can _I_ hope, when this mighty genius labored and despaired? What did he want, save birth and fortune, and friends, and human justice." "Did he pray to God?" said Helen, drying her tears. Again Leonard was startled. In reading the life of Chatterton, he had not much noted the scepticism, assumed or real, of the ill-fated aspirer to earthly immortality. At Helen's question, that scepticism struck him forcibly. "Why do you ask that, Helen?" "Because, when we pray often, we grow so very, very patient," answered the child. "Perhaps, had he been patient a few months more all would have been won by him, as it will be by you, brother; for you pray, and you will be patient." Leonard bowed his head in deep thought, and this time the thought was not gloomy. Then out from that awful life there glowed another passage, which before he had not heeded duly, but regarded rather as one of the darkest mysteries in the fate of Chatterton. At the very time the despairing poet had locked himself up in his garret, to dismiss his soul from its earthly ordeal, his genius had just found its way into the light of renown. Good and learned and powerful men were preparing to serve and save him. Another year,--nay, perchance, another month--and he might have stood acknowledged and sublime in the foremost front of his age. "Oh Helen!" cried Leonard, raising his brows from which the cloud had passed,--"Why, indeed, did you leave me?" Helen started in her turn as he repeated this regret, and in her turn grew thoughtful. At length she asked him if he had written for the box which had belonged to her father, and been left at the inn. And Leonard, though a little chafed at what he thought a childish interruption to themes of graver interest, owned with self-reproach that he had forgotten to do so. Should he not write now to order the box to be sent to her at Miss Starke's. "No; let it be sent to you. Take care of it. I should like to know that something of mine is with you; and perhaps I may not stay here long." "Not stay here? That you must, my dear Helen--at least as long as Miss Starke will keep you, and is kind. By-and-by, (added Leonard, with something of his former sanguine tone) I may yet make my way, and we shall have our cottage to ourselves. But--Oh Helen!--I forgot--you wounded me; you left your money with me. I only found it in my drawers the other day. Fie!--I have brought it back." "It was not mine--it is yours. We were to share together--you paid all; and how can I want it here, too?" But Leonard was obstinate; and as Helen mournfully received back all that of fortune her father had bequeathed to her, a tall female figure stood at the entrance of the harbor, and said, that scattered all sentiment to the winds--"Young man, it is time to go." CHAPTER XXV. "Already!" said Helen, with faltering accents, as she crept to Miss Starke's side, while Leonard rose and bowed. "I am very grateful to you, Madam," said he, with the grace that comes from all refinement of idea, "for allowing me to see Miss Helen. Do not let me abuse your kindness." Miss Starke seemed struck with his look and manner, and made a stiff half curtsey. A form more rigid than Miss Starke's it was hard to conceive. She was like the grim white woman in the nursery ballads. Yet, apparently, there was a good nature in allowing the stranger to enter her trim garden, and providing for him and her little charge those fruit and cakes which belied her aspect. "May I go with him to the gate?" whispered Helen, as Leonard had already passed up the path. "You may, child; but do not loiter. And then come back, and lock up the cakes and cherries, or Patty will get at them." Helen ran after Leonard. "Write to me, brother--write to me; and do not, do not be friends with this man who took you to that wicked, wicked place." "Oh, Helen, I go from you strong enough to brave worse dangers than that," said Leonard almost gaily. They kissed each other at the little wicket gate, and parted. Leonard walked home under the summer moonlight, and on entering his chamber, looked first at his rose-tree. The leaves of yesterday's flowers lay strewn round it; but the tree had put forth new buds. "Nature ever restores," said the young man. He paused a moment, and added, "It is that Nature is very patient?" His sleep that night was not broken by the fearful dreams he had lately known. He rose refreshed, and went his way to his day's work--not stealing along the less crowded paths, but with a firm step, through the throng of men. Be bold, adventurer--thou hast more to suffer! Wilt thou sink? I look into thy heart, and I cannot answer. FOOTNOTES: [11] Continued from page 97. [12] It may be necessary to observe, that homoeopathy professes to deal with our moral affections as well as our physical maladies, and has a globule for every sorrow. From Sharpe's Magazine. EGYPT UNDER ABBAS PASHA. BY BAYLE ST. JOHN. When the late Mohammed Ali heard at length of the taking of Acre by his troops under Ibrahim, he exclaimed, "That place," adding an energetic but somewhat unsavory expression, "that place has cost me," not the lives of so many thousand men, but, "so many thousand cantars of gunpowder." These words illustrate pretty forcibly the narrow and selfish views of that celebrated but overrated man. We do not believe, indeed, that during the whole period of his sway in Egypt, the thought ever crossed his mind that he was bound to govern for any other purpose than his own personal aggrandisement, or that he was to regard in the slightest degree the feelings, the comfort, the property or the lives of his people. The system which arose from this wretchedly egotistical state of mind was to a certain extent successful. Although great schemes of conquest, which even a more magnanimous species of selfishness might have carried out, were destined to end in comparative shame and disgrace, yet a somewhat brilliant _de facto_ sovereignty was erected and maintained to the termination of the old man's life; and he died regretting only that he had not been allowed to march to Constantinople. To the end of his days he was rolling in wealth, and possessed of arbitrary power in dominions of great extent, where he was not the less arbitrary because he was compelled to acknowledge a superior, and to send a tribute, instead of a fleet and an army, to the shores of the Bosphorus. The provinces which he called his own, lay sleeping in a death-like tranquillity; and because he could ride through the streets without a guard, his flatterers told him that he had secured the fear, respect and love of the people. For he had many flatterers, this ancient of days;--not merely his own minions, whose business it was, but European gentlemen, who affected to be awe-struck in his presence, and gathered and treasured up and repeated his wise sayings, his profound observations, and, save the mark! his wit; but they never could impress on any impartial hearer the belief in any of these things. His sayings and observations were sometimes very foolish, sometimes distinguished by respectable common-sense; and his wit consisted in prefacing a very silly or impertinent remark with a peculiar grunt. Whenever, therefore, his courtiers, being in a narrative mood, began to tell how on a certain occasion the pasha said, "Hunk!" &c., a crowd of admirers were ready to smile, and one or two disinterested lookers-on were compelled to smile likewise, though, perhaps, for a very different reason. Nothing is easier than to surround a man who has sufficient talents to fight or wheedle himself into a position of authority with a halo of false reputation; but it is rather more difficult to impress a character on the civilization of a country, and, now-a-days, to found an enduring dynasty. We shall not here recapitulate the enormous blunders of Mohammed Ali, in political and economical questions, nor explain how these blunders arose from a selfish desire to make what is vulgarly called a "splash," nor waste an anathema on his crafty cruelty and abominable tyranny. We wish merely to remind the reader that his period of power having come to a close, little good had been done, except, perhaps, improving the method of transacting public business. Well, there were plenty of people to succeed him. The pasha had a large family of children and grandchildren, to whom he had behaved sometimes with indulgence, but generally with unreasoning and perverse severity. There was scarcely a member of his family with whom he had not had many little quarrels, and who did not avoid his presence as they did the plague. Even the favorite Ibrahim could not bear to live in the same city as his presumed father; and the rest would have been little less startled by the last summons of all, than they were by an occasional order to appear in the presence of the angry and savage old man. One feeling, however, was pretty general amongst them,--they regarded the pasha as a wonderfully important personage, and themselves consequently, being his children, as little less wonderful and important. Their hopes were in the uncertainty of life; and very many of them, in their own minds, had arranged what they would do in case they came to be viceroy--how they would make the money spin, and what mighty devices they would put in practice, to emulate and surpass the splendors of "Effendina"--"Our Lord," _par excellence_. It must be confessed that Abbas Pasha alone had the good sense to take up a position of his own. Whether he was as crafty and politic as some pretend before his elevation to power, it is difficult to decide; but the plan, at that time generally ascribed to him, of forming what was called a Turkish or bigoted party--a party of discontented great folks, and fanatical Ulemas--a party which should appeal to the religious prejudices of the good Caireens, and oppose itself to the inroad of European adventurers and improvements,--this plan, if distinctly formed, was certainly a very sagacious one. Let us be frank: Europeans have done more harm than good in Egypt; that is to say, whenever they have appeared, except as mere commercial men, bringing the goods of their own countries, and anxious to take away the surplus of the luxuriant crops of the valley of the Nile. As political advisers, partly, perhaps, because men undertook to advise who were fit only for the counting-house, partly because their own interests were concerned, their intermeddling has been most pernicious. Even the benefits, for some such there are, which have been conferred by their wisdom, have been mingled with an immense amount of misery. There is one fact which has attained an almost mythological dignity, from its notoriety, and the admirable manner in which it symbolises European meddling in Egypt. An English merchant, who ought to have known the manners of the country, advised the construction of the Mahmoudiyeh Canal. It has been most useful to commerce; but twenty thousand people were starved or worked to death within six weeks, in order to complete it. Fifty illustrations of the same kind might be given; but we wish merely to have our meaning understood, when we say that, if Abbas Pasha or his party ever contemplated, as there is reason to suppose they did, the utter destruction of foreign influence, the total change of a system, under which French and English measures alternated like whig and tory administrations, we must candidly admit they had some very good grounds to go upon. The creation of the party was a long and laborious work; very likely it was brought and kept together more by mutual discontents, ambitious hopes, and straightforward bigotry, than by any very Machiavellian policy. Probably Abbas Pasha really liked ram-fighting, and was a pigeon-fancier, and did not assume these tastes, as the elder Brutus played the fool, in order to accomplish his ends. But, however this may be, he certainly occupied a more respectable position than his uncle Ibrahim, whose whole ideas of the duties of government were getting money and playing at soldiers; and than any of the other members of this most obese and heavy-headed family. Even if it be true that he meditated a revolt against the broken-down conqueror of Syria, and was only withheld by fear of the European powers, this fact gives an impression of his energy, and by no means derogates from his character in this country. The Saids and the Ahmeds, the Ismains and the Mustaphas, would, each and all of them, strike a blow and rid the country of their beloved relations, if the little word _impossible_ did not stare them in the face. As it is, they are in perpetual feud with the head of the family, and there is no end to their bickerings, heart-burnings, jealousies, and hatreds. Abbas is haughty and overbearing to them; they as insolent as they may be to him. Be sure that, on all sides, direful causes of affront have been given; but probably Abbas has been provoked by unbecoming pretensions. What else could be expected from a set of ignorant, debauched adventurers, who have got a temporary footing in the country, and actually talk with the pride of an ancient respectable line of hereditary princes of their rights, and their expectations, and their rank, and so forth! Abbas, of course, has not the same natural influence over this unruly brotherhood as had the ruthless old man, and his more savage immediate successor; and probably, in attempting to exert his rightful authority, has been betrayed into undignified squabbles. It is certain that many members of his family have fled or retired to Constantinople; among others, Mohammed Ali Bey, and the notorious Hazlet Hanem. Some remarks have been made on this subject, to the effect that Abbas is frightening away his dutiful relations by his violent and unreasonable conduct; but if Egypt never loses two of its natives whom it can worse spare than these, it will be fortunate. Without further inquiry than into their character, one would be inclined to admire and respect the man who had quarrelled with them. Mohammed Ali is a debauched worthless lad; and Madame Nazlet cannot have justice done to her without details into which our pen is not at liberty to enter. It is a sad thing, certainly, to view the breaking up of a large family; but it would be a sadder thing to witness vice unpunished, and harmony arising out of the reckless indulgence of unbridled passions. Abbas Pasha himself, if report speaks true, has little in his private life to plead for lenity in judging of his public character. His taste leads him to the most trifling amusements. Just as of old, when he was the supposed head of a kind of Conservative Turkish party, when he was Governor of Cairo, and silently nourishing his ambitious schemes, he spends time and money in the undignified, though not inelegant, and certainly innocent, occupation of a pigeon-fancier. Near the new palace which he is building (none of these Turkish princes seem to care about living where their fathers lived before them) rises a magnificent square tower, entirely devoted to the loyal winged favorites of his Highness the Viceroy, who is reported to be quite learned in this department of natural history. Another of his tastes, for which Englishmen will have more sympathy, is for horses; and the public will remember his bold challenge to the Jockey Club. In what way he passes the remainder of his leisure hours we do not inquire; but we give him, in common with his relatives, the advantage of an excuse that has before been urged in their favor--namely, that of an infamous education. Abbas Pasha has not exactly carried out the views which were attributed to him before he reached his present elevation. He has not, for example, done all that his fanatical anti-Frank friends could expect in shaking off foreign influence. He began, it is true, by getting rid, in rather a hasty and shabby manner, of many Europeans, chiefly English, in his employ; and showed a disposition entirely to put a stop to that enormous blunder of the Barrage. His first, and very wise impulse, was either to destroy the works altogether, or, abandoning them, simply allow the river to work its own majestic will. But a clamor was raised on all sides! After throwing so many millions of dollars into the river, why should not a few millions more be thrown? I believe the French, who have a fondness for this undertaking because it was suggested by or through Napoleon--(the Osiris of his day is parent of all wonderful inventions)--I believe, I say, that France made it almost a national question; and so this work, which already impedes the navigation of one of the finest rivers in the world, and which, if successful, would only achieve an object that one quarter of the expense in the establishment of steam-engines at various points for raising water would effectually accomplish, is allowed to drag on slowly towards its conclusion. We must give Abbas credit for the courageous good sense which suggested to him that the first loss was the best; and yet we must not withhold from him some praise for yielding to the influence of friendly persuasion, and refraining from carrying out his own opinion, however well founded, when he was told that, by doing so, he would incur the risk of being accused of treason to his grandfather's fame. The old man had fondly believed that his Barrage would join the Pyramids that look down upon it in that restricted category of the "Wonders of the World," and might well be supposed to lie uneasily in his grave if all the piles which he had caused to be driven, all the mighty walls, and piers, and arches, which he had caused to be raised with a disregard of expense and human labor worthy of Cheops, were allowed to sink and lie forgotten in the slimy bed of the Nile. This was the first point on which it appeared that Abbas Pasha was not disposed to act up fully to his presumed plan of destroying European influence altogether; but, on many occasions, he early showed a disposition to temporize between his prejudices and his interest. We cannot here enter into details of minor importance, but, coming down to a recent period, we may mention another instance of a similar nature. For many years before his death, Mohammed Ali had held out hopes that he would construct, or allow to be constructed, a railway from Cairo to Suez. This was preëminently an English project--not likely to be unuseful to the country at large, it is true, but calculated chiefly to promote the more expeditious and comfortable transit of passengers to and from India. The Pasha, however, deceived by an excess of cunning, really entertained no intention of performing his promise. With great want of sagacity, he confounded the proposed stations on the line of railway, which he might have held in his own hands if he chose, with the counters which he was told had formed the nuclei of the British power in India. He believed the English had some sinister designs upon his country, and were engaged in all sorts of schemes for introducing themselves into it. The same policy which made him refuse to deepen the entrance of the port of Alexandria, lest a British fleet might come in, made him unwilling to throw a railway across the Desert of Suez, even if he kept the whole management in his own hands. The recommendations, he saw, came all from one country: the objections, nearly all, from another. France was opposed to the railway because it had another darling Neapolitan project in hand--namely, the cutting of the Isthmus of Suez, which was much talked of once, but which now nobody mentions but to laugh at. The difficulties of execution, immense as they were found to be by the Austrian commission, were not the most decisive objections. The real ones were contained in an answer to the very appropriate question--_Cui bono?_ However, the railway was shelved for a time. It has lately come again upon the tapis; and although it is now proposed to lay down a line in the first instance between Alexandria and Cairo, to compensate for the water communication which M. Moujel is spoiling by his Barrage, yet there is every probability of proper extensions and branches being made in due time. If, indeed, the project be really a serious one. Many say, in spite of the official manner in which the announcement has been made, that it is only a _ruse_, a piece of policy in order to propitiate English influence, and that as soon as certain manoeuvres shall have been successful or otherwise, nothing more will be said about the railway. There is no answering for the diplomacy of Eastern courts; but this explanation seems a little too Machiavellian. I have no doubt the promise has been made, in part, because it is thought to be agreeable to the English; but I can hardly imagine Abbas Pasha is so foolish as not to know that if he coaxes Lord Palmerston with a sugar-plum, and when his lordship opens his mouth, puts a finger in instead, Lord Palmerston will bite pretty sharply. Be these things as they may, it seems admitted on all hands that Abbas Pasha has now completely thrown overboard the party which he courted so assiduously as heir-apparent, and is seeking foreign, especially English, support. All this is fair enough provided he does not fall into the old error of sacrificing the natives entirely to strangers, as did his great predecessor, and provided he do not allow himself to be persuaded by flatterers--and he has flatterers; what man in power has not?--to engage in grand undertakings for the purpose of emulating the renown of the old Pharaohs. Egypt wants neither a resuscitation of old times, nor a hasty imitation of the new. She has to find out the form of its own civilization: and modern improvements, as they have been hitherto introduced, will only weigh her down into despair. But it is said that Abbas Pasha has no views at all about the progress of the arts, and manufactures, and commerce; no thought of the amelioration of the country; but that in endeavoring to gain the good-will of Europe, he wants to serve some ambitious projects of his own. There may be something in this. Not that it is probable he intends to play the old game over again and throw off the yoke of Stamboul; but there is certainly a very arduous struggle now carrying on, both by open and underhand means, between Egypt and the Porte. There is an infinity of points of difference between the vassal and his lord; but the gist of the matter is, that the former wishes to preserve all the privileges, to be treated with the same indulgence, to be left with the same freedom of action, as his grandfather; he wishes to remain, in fact, a vassal little more than in name, free to indulge any arbitrary whims; whilst the latter is attempting, with some reason,--with great reason indeed, but perhaps in too precipitate a manner, and actuated by feelings that resemble private grudge,--to reduce Egypt to the same subjection as the rest of the Ottoman Empire. The discussion is a serious one, and much may be said on both sides; but it must be accorded at once in favor of the Porte, that the Viceroy of Egypt is not to be considered as an independent sovereign merely paying tribute to a superior power, but as an officer of the Empire. Certainly, he holds a distinguished position; and his case is an exceptional one; but very imprudent would be any who should advise him to take the same ground as Mohammed Ali, even after his defeat and expulsion from Syria, was allowed to assume. He has been levying troops, and is said even to have victualled his fleet to give more weight to his negotiations; but it is not probable he will draw the sword when, by giving way a little, he may establish a character for moderation, and be left undisturbed in a position sufficiently splendid to satisfy a very respectable ambition. On the other hand, it is hoped that no undue heat, no petty jealousy, no minor considerations of self-love--excited and encouraged by the numerous runagates from Egypt, as Artin Bey and his fellows--will finally govern the councils of Constantinople. Many missions have passed from this country to the Porte with the object of warding off the blows that are being aimed at the authority of Abbas Pasha. Probably they ask too much, as is always done in such cases; but, if reports speak true, they have been answered with an asperity which seems calculated rather to provoke a quarrel than to lead to a satisfactory settlement. The great question now is about the Tanzamat promulgated by the Porte, which may be briefly described as a well-intended attempt to introduce some kind of order into the administration of the empire, to substitute certain rules in place of arbitrary will, and generally to control the actions of what are called the great men in their relations with those who, we suppose, may be described as the little men. Such a scheme, even if imperfect in its details and difficult to be applied, must command our sympathies. The provinces of the Turkish empire--and Egypt is at least as great in degree as the remainder--have been too long the sport of caprice; and if it be the secret object of Abbas Pasha utterly to prevent the introduction of this new system--to refuse it even a fair trial--he will most certainly, whatever may be the effect of obstinate passive resistance, receive no countenance or support from England. It is said, however, that he merely desires--and such is the purport of his remonstrances--that certain modifications, adapted to the peculiar situation of Egypt, shall be made. The Porte is the best judge as to how far these modifications are compatible with the spirit of its decree; and as the communications that have taken place have been chiefly verbal, we will not take upon ourselves to say whether they are even suggested by any peculiar necessity. The negotiations are in progress; and all we can say is, that unless Abbas Pasha be considered too dangerous a subject, and his removal be desired, it will be better to make up by amenity of procedure for the inexorable requirements of principle. There was one great grievance in Mohammed Ali's time, namely, the existence of the _ferdeh_, or tax of one-twelfth upon income of all kinds, down to that of the poorest fellah. This was a great outrage on legality. It was opposed to all the constitutions of the Turkish empire; and it was understood that, after the Syrian affair, it should be voluntarily done away with by the Pasha. But an easy source of revenue is not easily given up; and, in spite of all remonstrances, the tax was maintained. There was no burden to which the people objected more than this. They paid,--but they murmured somewhat loudly; and even in the coffee-houses many were sometimes bold enough to say the ferdeh was illegal. On one occasion, when Ibrahim Pasha was in Cairo, not long before his father's death, there was the semblance of a riot on the subject; but the stick and the halter were brought into play, and the conviction produced that, legal or not legal, the tax must be paid. Abbas Pasha himself for some time allowed this copious fountain to gush into his treasury; but it now suited the policy of the Porte to return vigorously to the charge in favor of legality; and towards the end of last year the ferdeh was finally abolished to the infinite delight of the whole population. The long-wished-for event was celebrated by illuminations in Alexandria and Cairo; and the general joy might have risen to something like enthusiasm had not a fresh, though temporary, cause of discontent accompanied the boon. This was the conscription, which nearly drove Egypt into a revolt last winter. In old times, when soldiers were wanted, men were pounced upon suddenly wherever they could be found, and marched off, leaving great grief behind; but before any dangerous excitement could be got up. This was justly considered a barbarous and inartificial method; and when, for what purposes remains a mystery, a certain levy of men was required, it was determined to proceed with regularity, and to make each district furnish its quota according to the number of inhabitants. The idea, at first sight, seems both fair and wise; and if the people could have been got to acquiesce in the necessity of their supplying soldiers in any proportion at all, would have worked very well. But as nobody in Egypt wants to shoulder a musket, as everybody has the utmost hatred and abhorrence of military service, arising partly from constitutional want of energy, but chiefly from the knowledge that the soldier is ill-paid[13] and ill-fed, and rarely, if ever, returns--we never met but one old discharged campaigner in the country--it is not surprising if the public announcement of the intentions of Government produced the greatest possible perturbation. The first impulse of the whole adult population, except those who could boast of some very undoubted claim of exemption, was to fly to the mountains; and every defile, every cavern, every catacomb, every quarry in the Libyan and Arabian chains, were soon tenanted by people running away from enlistment. Wherever we went in our excursions, we became accustomed to see lines of human beings perched like crows on the summit of seemingly inaccessible cliffs, on the look-out for the enemy in the shape of the Sheikh-el-Beled; for the task of catching and forwarding the prescribed number of "strong active young men" devolved on the civil authority, aided sometimes by that estimable rural police, the Arnaout irregular cavalry. On many occasions we surprised these poor people in their retreats; and once, when they mistook us for recruiters, were assailed with slings diverted from their original purpose, namely, that of frightening the sparrows away from the crops. Accounts reached us at several places that blood had been shed; and the affair in various ways rendered our journey somewhat melancholy. Now we came upon a large town, as Geneh, seemingly deserted by its whole population, with closed shops and silent streets; then we met a party of recruits, chained neck and neck, going to their destination; and anon we saw a crowd of women, driven to despair by the loss of son, or husband, or brother, tossing up their arms, tearing their garments, and invoking curses on their oppressors. Public opinion in all despotic countries finds utterance through the weaker sex; they dare to say what would perhaps bring condign punishment on the men; they nearly made a revolt once in Cairo under Mohammed Ali, and on the present occasion they expressed their mind pretty freely. Some of the more noisy brought a good beating on themselves from some irascible Sheikh; but in general their anathemas were received with a kind of sheepish deprecating good-humor. It was difficult to ascertain how many recruits were at last got together, but, as near as I could gather, the number ordered was one in about every 180 souls. The sight of so much unhappiness naturally excited great indignation and disgust; but not so much perhaps on reflection as the permanent misery and ill-treatment of a great proportion of the population. Abbas Pasha has taken the old system as he found it, and, with the exception of the abolition of the ferdeh, has done nothing to alleviate the condition of the fellah. It is especially on the lands of the great men, the pashas and the beys, that these poor serfs are worst off. Their profession is that of agricultural laborers, but it must not be supposed that they have freedom to carry their services to what master they will. They belong to the land as much as do the palm-trees; and the nature of their occupation, their hours of labor, and their pay, are regulated by their lord and master in a perfectly arbitrary way. At Randa, opposite Sheikh Abadeh, we found a sugar estate occupying 1,300 men, and endeavored to ascertain in as exact a manner as possible how they were treated. We found that, in the first place, they were, of course, forced to work, both on the land and in the factory, at a nominal pay of twenty-five paras, or three-halfpence a head, and that some of them were in active employment nearly eighteen hours a day. Now it _is_ possible for a man to exist on such wages in that part of Egypt, even with a family; and as bare existence is considered in most countries an adequate reward for unintelligent labor, there seemed not so much reason to complain. But then came the question, how was the payment made? The answer in substance was, the men are paid twenty-five paras a day, but they never get the money; they receive what is called its value in the refuse molasses; but this only when it can be of little service to them, when the owner of the estate has glutted the market, and they can only sell at a loss of forty or fifty per cent. They would be only too happy to receive fifteen paras in hard cash; as it is, some of them necessarily eke out their living by stealing, and others by the produce of little plots of land, which they cultivate at night when they should be reposing after the fatigues of the day. The women and children assist them, when the latter are not pressed into what is called the service of the state; that is, compelled to dig canals, and perform other light work for which they receive neither pay nor food. Their parents bring them food, or some charitable person flings them a morsel of coarse bread, otherwise they would perish. Such is pretty nearly the state of things in the private possessions of all the descendants of Mohammed Ali. In fairness, however, we must remind the reader that Abbas Pasha is only answerable for acquiescing in customs handed down. He has not established any new pernicious regulation that we have heard of; and even if he remain perfectly quiescent and leave things to go their own gait, King Log is better than King Stork. The mischievous activity of Mohammed Ali is not to be regretted; and if, by the influence of Constantinople prudently exercised, some little check is gradually put upon the caprices and violence of the proprietors who call themselves princes--and it is for the interest of Abbas Pasha that this should be the case--Egypt, though not possessed of all the happiness she wants, might not be very discontented, and would have no reason to look back with regret on the time of the old pasha. According to all accounts, some classes of the agricultural laborers are gradually enriching themselves in spite of the burdens which they bear; and, although wealth is timid to show itself, a great amelioration in the state of the country may soon be perceptible. FOOTNOTES: [13] Soldiers will often stop a European in a by-place and beg. They get about twenty paras (a penny farthing) a day. From Household Words. THE JEWS IN CHINA. There is a quaintness in the notion of a Jewish colony surrounded by Chinese; the fixed among the fixed. The fact that such a colony exists, or has existed when found, ought to be especially remarked, for to ethnologists and others it may prove a valuable opportunity for speculation. Jews in China, what will they be like? Will the Jew stand out from the surrounding uniformity of Chinese life, like the one tree of the desert (for which, see Panorama of Overland Mail, and hear lecture upon same); or will he become non-entity, like among like, adding nothing to the first idea--silence in a calm? In the Jewish synagogue in Kai-foung-fou, concerning which we have presently to speak, there are Chinese inscriptions. The first placed there in 1444, by a literary Jew, is intended to prove the close analogy between Jewish and Chinese points of doctrine. "The author," it says, "of the law of Yse-lo-ye (Israel) is Ha-vou-lo-han (Abraham). His law was translated by tradition to Nichè (Moses). He received his book on Mt. Sinai. His book has fifty-four sections. The doctrine which is therein contained is much like that of the Kings," (which are sacred volumes of the Chinese). The author of the inscription repeats many passages to prove that in their worship to heaven, their ceremonies, their behavior to the old and young, their patriarchal character, their prayers, and their mode of honoring dead ancestors, the Jews resemble the Chinese. The author of a second inscription, a grand mandarin in his own time, speaks to the same purpose. "From the time of Han," says this gentleman, whose name is Too-tang, "from the time of Han, the Jews fixed themselves in China; and in the twentieth year of the cycle 65, (which is, by interpretation, 1163,) they offered to the Emperor Hiao-tsong a tribute of cloth from India. He received them well, and permitted them to live in Kai-foung-fou. They formed then sixty-six families. They built a synagogue where they placed their Kings, or Divine Scriptures." This mandarin concludes with an eulogium of Jewish virtue, after the approved manner of epitaphs. The Jews emphatically cultivated agriculture, commerce, were faithful in the armies, upright as magistrates, and rigid in observance of their ceremonies. One only wants to wind up with the scrap, "Affliction sore, long time they bore;" but affliction on the part of the Chinese, at any rate, they certainly did not bear; they were more than tolerated, they were understood; ceremony-men to ceremony-men were ceremoniously polite to one another. The Jews and Chinese even intermarried; on their first introduction by way of Persia to the Chinese Empire, they had settled here and there in sundry Chinese cities; but by the marriage with Chinese disciples of Confucius or Mahomet, the Jewish colonies were melted down into the pure Chinese metal; and when this history begins, nothing is known of any synagogue in China, save the synagogue at Kai-foung-fou, which is a city in the heart of the Flowery Land, the capital of the central province of Honan; and for an account of which we are indebted to Father Ricci, one of the Jesuit Missionaries. Father Ricci died in the year 1610, at Pekin, which was his station. Father Ricci, at Pekin, first heard of the Jewish synagogue at Kai-foung-fou, and the information startled him exceedingly. The young Jew who enlightened Father Ricci on the subject told him that there were then at Kai-foung-fou barely a dozen Jewish families, and that for five or six hundred years they had preserved in their synagogue a very ancient copy of the Pentateuch. The father produced a Hebrew Bible, and the young man recognized the characters, although he could not read them, for he knew no language but Chinese. Four years after this, Father Ricci (whose business at Pekin would not permit him to go gadding) had an opportunity of sending off to Kai-foung-fou a Chinese Jesuit, with a letter written in Chinese, to the chief of the synagogue. He explained to the rabbi his own reverence for the books of the Old Testament, and informed him of its fulfilled predictions, and the advent of a Messiah. The rabbi shook his head at that, saying, "that so it could not be, because they had yet to expect the Messiah for ten thousand years." The good natured rabbi nevertheless did homage to Father Ricci's great abilities. He was an old man, and saw none about him fit to guide his people; he therefore besought the learned Jesuit to come to Kai-foung-fou, and undertake the guidance of the synagogue, under one only condition, a true Chinese-Jewish one, that he would pledge himself to abstinence from all forbidden meats. However, that was very much as if Dr. Jones of Bettws-y-Coed should offer his practice to Sir B. Brodie of London. Father Ricci had a larger work in hand, and so he stopped at Pekin. In 1613, Father Aleni (such an uncommonly wise man, that the Chinese called him the Confucius of Europe) was directed to proceed to Kai-foung-fou and make investigation. Father Aleni, being well up in his Hebrew, was a promising man to send on such an errand, but he found the rabbi dead, and the Jews, though they let him see the synagogue, would not produce their books. The particulars of nothing having been done on this occasion are to be found related by Father Trigaut, in choice Latin, and choicer Italian, (_de Expedit. Sinicâ, lib. 1., cap. 2, p. 118_,) and by Father Samedo (_Relatione della China, part 1., cap. 30, p. 193_.) A residence was established by the Jesuits in Kai-foung-fou. _Now_, thought those who thought at all upon such matters, we shall have something done. If we can only compare our Old Testament texts with an ancient exemplar, that will be no small gain. A certain father Gozani went zealously into the whole subject, entered the synagogue, copied the inscriptions, and transmitted them to Rome. The Jews told Father Gozani that in a temple at Pekin was a large volume, wherein were inscribed the sacred books of foreigners resident in China. That volume was sought afterwards by Europeans at Pekin, but not found. Certainly such a volume does exist among the Chinese records. The Jews, however, told Father Gozani not only about what existed in Pekin, but all about themselves at Kai-foung-fou. The Father wrote a letter, dated 1704, containing what he learned in this manner. It appears that by that application of "soft sawder" which is or ought to be well understood by men of the world and Jesuits, the Father gratified the Jews, so that they paid him voluntary visits. He returned their visits by a call upon them at their synagogue, where, he says--"I had a long conversation with them; and they showed me their inscriptions; some of which are in Chinese, and others in their own tongue. I saw also their _Kims_, or religious books, and they suffered me to enter even the most secret place of their synagogue, to which they can have no access themselves. That place is reserved for their _Chian-Kiao_; that is to say, chief of the synagogue, who never approaches it but with the most profound respect. "There were thirteen tabernacles placed upon tables, each of which was surrounded by small curtains. The sacred _Kim_ of Moses (the Pentateuch) was shut up in each of these tabernacles, twelve of which represented the Twelve Tribes of Israel; and the thirteenth, Moses. The books were written on long pieces of parchment, and folded up on rollers. I obtained leave from the chief of the synagogue to draw the curtains of one of these tabernacles, and to unroll one of the books, which appeared to me to be written in a hand exceedingly neat and distinct. One of these books had been luckily saved from the great inundation of the river _Hoang-ho_, which overflowed the city of Kai-foung-fou, the capital of the province. As the letters of the book have been wetted, and on that account are almost effaced, the Jews have been at great pains to get a dozen copies made, which they carefully preserve in the twelve tabernacles above mentioned. "There are to be seen also in two other places of the synagogue, coffers, in which are shut up with great care several other little books, containing different divisions of the Pentateuch of Moses, which they call _Ta-Kim_, and other parts of their law. They use these books when they pray; they showed me some of them, which appeared to be written in Hebrew. They were partly new and partly old, and half torn. They, however, bestow as much attention on guarding them as if they were gold or silver. "In the middle of the synagogue stands a magnificent chair, raised very high, and ornamented with a beautiful embroidered cushion. This is the chair of Moses, in which every Saturday, and days of great solemnity, they place their Pentateuch, and read some portions of it. There also may be seen a _Van-sui-pai_, or painting, on which is inscribed the Emperor's name; but they have neither statues nor images. This synagogue fronts the west, and when they address their prayers to the Supreme Being, they turn towards that quarter, and adore him under the name of _Tien_, _Cham-Tien_, _Cham-ti_, and _Kao-van-voe-tche_; that is to say, _Creator of all things_; and lastly, of _Van-voe-tchu-tcai, Governor of the Universe_. They told me that they had taken these names from the Chinese books, and that they used them to express the Supreme Being and First Cause. "In going out from the synagogue, I observed a hall, which I had the curiosity to enter, but I found nothing remarkable in it, except a great number of censers. They told me that in this hall they honored their _Chim-gins_, or the great men of their law. The largest of these censers, which is intended for the Patriarch Abraham, stands in the middle of the hall, after which come those of Isaac, and Jacob, and his twelve branches, or the Twelve Tribes of Israel; next are those of Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Esdras, and several other illustrious persons, both male and female. "After quitting this apartment, they conducted us to the Hall of Strangers, in order to give us an entertainment. As the titles of the books of the Old Testament were printed in Hebrew at the end of my Bible, I showed them to _Cham-Kiao_, or chief of the synagogue; he immediately read them, though they were badly printed, and he told me that they were the names of their _Chin-Kim_, or Pentateuch. I then took my Bible, and the _Cham-Kiao_ took his _Beresith_ (thus they name the Book of Genesis); we compared the descendants of Adam, until Noah, with the age of each, and we found the most perfect conformity between both. We afterwards ran over the names and chronology in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, which compose the Pentateuch, or five Books of Moses. The chief of the synagogue told me that they named these five books _Beresith_, _Veelesemoth_, _Vaiiora_, _Vaiedabber_, and _Haddebarim_, and that they divided them into fifty-three volumes; _viz._, Genesis into twelve, Exodus into eleven, and the three following books into ten volumes each, which they call _Kuen_. Some of these they opened, and presented to me to read; but it was to no purpose, as I was unacquainted with the Hebrew language. "Having interrogated them respecting the titles of the other books of the Bible, the chief of the synagogue replied, that they were in possession of some of them, but that they wanted a great many, and of others they had no knowledge. Some of his assistants added, that they had lost several books in the inundation of the Hoang-ho, of which I have spoken." Father Gozani has spoken of the inundation, but we have not, and so we will do so now. Previously, however, we may call attention to the distinct adoption of the Chinese "Hall of Ancestors" among these Jews, and of a place for showing hospitality to strangers as an appendage to their place of worship. It is in this way that, without violating their own opinions, they became assimilated more completely to their neighbors. Father Gozani also notes that their accounts of sacred history were grossly disfigured with Talmudical legends, or other stories of that class--a fact not to be lost sight of by the speculator. The Jews, in the time of Father Gozani, composed seven families--Phao, Kin, Che, Kao, The-Man, Li, Ngai--including in all about one thousand souls. They intermarried with each other, and had their own fashion of hair-cutting. These seven families of Kai-foung-fou were the remains of seventy who had of old established themselves in that capital. Now for the inundation. That event took place in the year 1642, and it occurred as follows:--Li-cong-tse, a rebel, with a big army, besieged the city. The inhabitants, after defending themselves for six months, still refused to succumb, because they expected rescue from the Emperor. The Emperor did come, a vastly clever fellow, who determined to destroy the enemy by a great master-stroke. "I'll drown every man-jack!" he said, and broke the dikes that confined the Hoang-ho, or Yellow River, a league distant from the city. Out poured the stream and drowned the besiegers, and besieged the city in its turn, knocked down its walls, and destroyed thirty thousand of its inmates. The Emperor, a cockney sportsman on the largest scale, shot at the pigeon and killed the crow. It was in this inundation that the number of the Jews was thinned; diluted by the waters of the river, their Pentateuch was damaged and some other portions of their scripture altogether lost. Before passing down from Father Gozani, we must extract his rough picture of the Jewish synagogue, as it existed in his day. He says of the Jews-- "They have no other synagogue but this, in the capital of the province of Ho-Nan. I perceived in it no altar, nor any other furniture, but the chair of Moses, with a censer, a long table, and large chandeliers, in which were placed candles made of tallow. This synagogue has some resemblance to our European churches; it is divided into three aisles; that in the middle is occupied by the table of incense, the chair of Moses, the painting, and the tabernacles already mentioned, in which are preserved the thirteen copies of the Pentateuch. These tabernacles are constructed in the form of an arch, and the middle aisle is like the choir of the synagogue; the two others are set apart as places of prayer, and for the adoration of the Supreme Being. Within the building there is a passage which runs quite round. "As there formerly were, and still are, among them Bachelors and _Kien-sens_, which is a degree different from that of a Bachelor, I took the liberty of asking them if they rendered homage to Confucius; they replied that they honored him in the same manner as the rest of the literati, and that they assisted them in solemn ceremonies, which are performed in halls dedicated to their great men. They added, that in spring and autumn they practised certain rites in honor of their ancestors, according to the manner of Chinese, in the hall next to their synagogue; that they did not present them the flesh of hogs, but of other animals; that in other ceremonies they were contented with offering them porcelain dishes filled with dainties and sweetmeats, which they accompanied with perfumes and profound reverences or prostrations. I asked them, likewise, if in their houses or Hall of Ancestors, they had tablets in honor of their departed relations; they replied that they used neither tablets, images, nor any thing else, but only a few censers. We must, however, except their mandarins, for whom alone they place in the Hall of Ancestors a tablet inscribed with their name and rank." Father Gozani adds, that "these Jews, in their inscriptions, call their law the Law of Israel, _Yselals-Kiao_, which they name also _Kon-Kiao_, Ancient Law; _Tien-Kiao_, Law of God, and _Tien-Kin-Kiao_, to signify that they abstain from blood, and cut the nerves and veins of the animals they kill, in order that the blood may flow more easily from them." This custom gives to the Jews in China, at the present day, the name of Cut-Nerves. To the present day our story now descends; for, after the time of Father Gozani, blank follows in the way of action. Father Etienne, who meditated a work upon the Sacred Scriptures in reply to the _Critici Sacri_, was eager to push on investigations. From the letters of Father Gozani, and from those which Father Domingo and Gambil wrote upon it, material was obtained for the memoir published under the direction of M. L. Aimé Martin, in which he remarks that the detail would be regarded with the more curiosity, as it had been often demanded, and as Father du Halde had contented himself with merely promising it in his great work, "Description de la Chine." So we have fairly got out of the past into the present, where our story thus runs on. In the year 1815, the Chinese Jews endeavored unsuccessfully to communicate with Europe by means of a Hebrew letter addressed to London, which seems not to have been delivered. Last year the Jewish Society of London determined, however, to communicate with them. Miss Cooks, an energetic and devoted Jewess, placed her purse in the hands of the Society; nothing impeded fresh research; the English bishop at Hong Kong co-operated, Dr. Medhurst was consulted, and two Chinese Christians were at length appointed to proceed to Kai-foung-fou. The elder of these two was a bachelor; the younger was a student from the Missionaries' College at Batavia; but the junior was named to head the enterprise, because he had previously displayed zeal and ability, and also because he could write English fluently, and would journalize in that language. His journals, therefore, could be laid before Miss Cooks, uninjured by translation. Our heroes--for so we will call the two adventurers--set out from Shanghae, on the 15th of last November, by boat to Toing-kiang-tou. In a car, drawn by mules, they were then jolted along, following the track of the Hoang-ho, rising at three o'clock on winter mornings, to save time--a proceeding which involves almost supererogatory self-denial. Population near the Yellow River they found rare and unhealthy. Localities which figure in the geographical charts of the empire as principal places, or as towns of the second class, are but huge piles of rubbish, surrounded by crumbling walls. Here and there a gate, with its inscription half-effaced, informs the traveller that he is entering a mighty town. Perseverance, and a mule car, brought the travellers to Kai-foung-fou. They found there many Mahometans, openly exercising right of conscience, and flying their religion on a flag displayed over their gate. These Mahometans are, for the most part, hotel-keepers, and with one of them our heroes lodged. Of him they began asking about Cut-Nerves. Mine host of the Crescent said there were still some Jews in Kai-foung-fou, and offered himself as a cicerone to their synagogue. Thither they went. They found its outer wall in ruins; briers and dirt filled the grand entrance; "the pillars of the building, the inscribed marbles, the stone balustrade, before the peristyle of the temple, the ornamental sculpture--all were cracked, broken, and overturned." Under the wings of the synagogue, the chapels built in honor of the patriarchs--nestled together, cold and naked, sleeping on the bare stones, those objects of our European interest, "the Jews in China." Poor and miserable as they are, they had begun to sell the stones of their temple for bread, and a portion of land within their sacred inclosure had been already sold to an adjacent temple of the Buddhists. Still, there were the cylinders inclosing the sacred rolls of the Old Testament, which, luckily, had not proved eatable. In number, these rolls were about a dozen, each thirty feet long by three feet wide. They are of white sheep-skin, inscribed with very small Hebrew characters. For fifty years these poor Jews have been without the guidance of a rabbi, and there is not one left who can read a word of Hebrew. In a dozen years, probably, the last trace of the Jews in China will expire. The travellers gave money to the mournful congregation in the synagogue, and received leave to copy the inscriptions, about which the Jesuits had previously informed us. Moreover, they obtained, and have brought home, eight Hebrew manuscripts; six contain portions of the Old Testament, namely, of Exodus, chapters 1-6, and 38-40; of Leviticus, chapters 19, 20; of Numbers, chapters 13, 14, 15; of Deuteronomy, chapters 11-16, and chapter 32; with portions of the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and Prophets. The other two manuscripts are of the Jewish Liturgy. The leaves of these manuscripts "are of a species of card-board, on which the words, as it were, are engraved with a point; the binding is in silk, and bears evident marks of being of foreign origin. Two Israelitish merchants, to whom these books were shown at Shanghae, spoke of having seen similar ones at Aken, and the presence here and there upon the margins of Persian words, interspersed with Hebrew annotations, seemed to indicate that the books came originally from some western country of Asia, perhaps Persia, or some of the high provinces of India, where Persic has from time immemorial been the language used among people of education. Although the annotations mentioned are numerous, and apparently referring to different epochs, no trace of any Chinese character is to be discovered, nor any of those marks or signs which immediately betray Chinese origin. No date exists by which the age can be determined." We hope the statement is correct which tells us that these manuscripts are to be deposited in the British Museum. Fac-similes are at the same time promised, printed in Hebrew, accompanied with a plan of the synagogue, made on the spot by the Chinese travellers, and the journal of our junior hero, written in English and Chinese. The journal in English would not be a very ponderous affair, the entire expedition having occupied only two months--the residence at Kai-foung-fou, five days. We may usefully remember how the good Chinese, rising so fearfully betimes, did justice to the generosity and zeal of their patroness. Are there not men of might at work upon investigations for the public, who, at their ordinary rate, might have come to abandon this business in forty years, after eliminating fifty pounds of blue-book? _Authors and Books._ LUDWIG FUERBACH, the last great philosopher of Young Germany, whose doctrines have been complacently declared as "more utterly irreconcilable with pietism or orthodox Christianity than those of any of his predecessors," has at length published his course of lectures "On the Existence of Religion," delivered at Heidelberg, from the month of December 1848 to March 1849. With regard to the apparent apathy with which he has regarded the great political events of these latter days, and the reproach that he has taken no active part therein--in which he forms a somewhat unfavorable contrast with Fichte and other great thinkers of the last generation--he remarks: "It will not appear strange that these lectures have not before been published; for what could, at the present day, be more seasonable than a remembrance of the year 1848? And by this souvenir I would also remark, that these lectures have been my only public intimations of activity during the so-called time of the Revolution. My own share in all the political and unpolitical deeds and movements of those times, was merely that of a critical beholder and listener, for the very simple reason that I could take no part in aimless, and consequently headless (silly) undertakings, having foreseen, or at least felt, from the very beginning of the whole movement, that such would be its result. A well-known Frenchman lately put me the question, Why I took no active part in the revolution of 1848? I replied, Mr. Taillandier,[14] if another revolution should break forth, and I take an active part therein, then may you, to the terror of your God-believing soul, be certain that this would be an overpowering revolution, bringing with it the judgment-day of monarchy and hierarchy. This revolution I should, alas! never survive. But I now also take an active part in a great revolution, but one whose true effects and results will be first developed in the course of centuries. For you know, Mr. Taillandier, according to my theory--which recognizes no Gods, and, consequently, no miracles in the sphere of politics--according to my theory, of which you know and understand nothing, though you assume to pass judgment on me instead of studying me, if TIME and SPACE are the fundamental conditions of all being and existence, of all thought and action, of all prosperity and success. Not that believers in God were wanting to the parliament, as some one humorously asserted in the Bavarian State council-chamber--the majority, at least, were believers, and the good Lord always sides with the majority--but because it had no comprehension of place or time, on which account it came to such a disgraceful and resultless end." This, certainly, will appear to most readers to be, despite its bitterness, a lame and weak apology for neutrality, though we imagine that but little good could result from the intensest activity, when directed by such principles. Taillandier has also, in his own unassuming way, done, for so young a man, a full share of work "in the great revolution, whose true effects and results will be first developed in the course of centuries." * * * * * AUGUST KOPISCH, well known as the collector and translator of _Agrumi_--a choice selection of Italian Popular Songs--has recently published by Ernest and Korn of Berlin, a _Description and Explanation of the Monument to Frederic the Second_. A far more elegant work on the same subject, with no less than twenty excellent views of the monument, taken from as many points, appears from Decker, to which we may add another by Kohlheim, illustrated with a selection of ancient and modern poems relative to the memory of "Old Fritz." * * * * * We observe from a prospectus recently sent forth by the publisher, J. G. Muller, in Gotha, that the _Janus_, a well known and ably edited quarterly, devoted to medical literature, history, biographies, and statistics, the publication of which was suspended in 1848, on account of the political difficulties which then agitated Germany, is again to make its appearance, under the editorial charge of Doctors Bretschneider, Henschel, Hensinger, and Thierfelder, who will be aided in their efforts by many learned correspondents and contributors in different countries. Like most revived publications, it will be published in a style superior to its original, and to judge from the type and paper of the prospectus, which is given as a specimen of that with which the work is to be issued, its appearance will be truly exquisite. * * * * * FRANZ KUGLER the great historian and critic of Art, has made his appearance in a small _brochure_ of thirty pages, entitled, _Three Articles upon Theatrical Affairs_,--which, however, appears to have met with but little admiration, if we may judge from the hard knock which a reviewer gives it with the word--"Unpractical as the suggestions are, which we find allied to these observations, they would still give us no occasion for remark, had not Herr Kugler made them a pretence for political discussion." Apropos of Kugler we may observe that a very excellent work entitled _Denkmaler der Kunst_ (Souvenirs of Art), consisting of very neatly engraved and very extensive illustrations of Art in all ages and nations, intended specially as a companion work to the Berlin professor's _History_, has just been published for the first time in a compact form by Ebner and Seubert of Stuttgart. Among its authors or contributors we see the names of Dr. Ernst Guhl, Jos. Caspar, and Professor Voit of Munich. * * * * * The conclusion of the late JOHANN VON MULLER'S _History of the Swiss Confederation_ has just appeared from the hands of MM. VULLIEMIN and MONNARD. The work was commenced in 1786; when Von Muller died it was brought down to the year 1489; and it has since been continued by four other authors in succession. Robert Glutz-Blozheim took up the narrative where Von Muller stopped, and continued it to 1516; after his death, John Jacob Hottinger described the progress of the reformation in the German cantons; but on coming to the part which the French cantons took in this great movement, it was decided to employ a native of that part of the Confederation, and the work was accordingly given to Louis Vulliemin, who completed the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He was followed by E. Monnard, Professor in the University of Bonn, who carried it as far as the second peace of Paris, in 1815. Both he and M. Vulliemin had already translated into French the volumes of their German predecessors. Their own volumes are now being translated into German, and the entire performance will soon be printed in both languages. * * * * * An interesting contribution to the religious and metaphysical history of Germany in the last generation will be found in the _Autobiography_ of BRETSCHNEIDER, now being published in parts, by his son-in-law Horst. It is described as a faithful as well as interesting narrative of the life of its deceased author and subject, who must fill a prominent place in the history of that great theological development of which his country has recently been the scene. He was a rationalist, but without aiming at the rejection or annihilation of the Christian supernaturalism. The sense of dependence on God, which was the foundation of Schleiermacher's theory, he regarded as stupid mysticism, and the general tendency of the more recent philosophy as obscure, abstruse, scholastic, and useless. He was a vigorous and unsparing controversialist, and the greater part of his writings are of that character. * * * * * DR. WURTH, the dramatist and theatrical director, has published a play "with choruses, dances, _and melodramas_ (_?_) entitled _The Gipsey Queen of Hungary in the year 1849_." * * * * * Those of our Philadelphia friends, who are conversant with foreign literature, will do well to patronise Herr CHRISTERN, who has recently opened an establishment of French, German, and Italian works at No. 232 Chesnut-st. Mr. Christern has been for several years the superintendant of the extensive bookstore of Kaisar, the eminent bibliographist in Berlin. We are happy thus to recommend Herr Christern as a scholar, well acquainted with something more than the mere titles of his wares. * * * * * Among "divers diversities," we note that the passion for Slavonic literature, which has received such an impetus during the last two years, has induced HERR SIEGFRIED KAPPER to write, after ancient Servian legends and heroic lyrics, a poem entitled _Lazar der Serbencar_. A new edition of CLEMENS BRENTANO'S _History of the brave Kasperl and fair Annerl_, has also been published at Berlin by the "United Bookselling Establishment," with an illustration. GLASSBRENNER, the humorist, (who is, however, we believe, not identical with his Rabelæsian pen-brother BRENNGLASER,) publishes by Simion of Berlin a third edition of his poems, while the more recent numbers of _Die Grenzboten_, the _Monatscrift_ and the _Europa_ are rich in a variety of articles surpassing in general interest any thing of the kind which we have for a long time witnessed in German periodical literature. It is to be wished that our own literati and miscellaneous intellectual purveyors would make a far more extended use of these German monthlies than they have hitherto done. Except the _International_, the _Tribune_ is almost the only periodical in the country that makes any considerable use of the German literary journals. * * * * * IMRESI, _die Ungarischen Flüchtlinge in d. Türkei_, (Imresi, or the Hungarian Refugees in Turkey), being a collection of data relative to the history of the emigration of 1849, from the journal of an exile, returned from Turkey, translated from the Hungarian, with additions by VASFI, has just appeared at Leipzig. "The _data_ alluded to in this article," remarks a German review, "principally concern the personal history of the Hungarian exiles in Turkey. In point of time it reaches to their departure from Widdin to Shumla. Many articles are added drawn from newspapers and private sources, relative to their adventures, to the fortune of those who have emigrated to America, and to the influence of England in these matters. A certain chapter on Turkish manners and customs, containing nothing which has not been already better described by other writers, might as well have been omitted." * * * * * THORWALDSEN'S _Jugend_ (or The Youth of Thorwaldsen) is the title of a work composed from the correspondence, manuscripts and notes of the illustrious artist, written originally in Danish by Hans Wachenhufen, and translated by J. M. Thiele, (if we mistake not, the eminent theologian). "The style and execution is somewhat stiff and dry, which may, however, be partly the fault of the translator, who appears to have deemed it his duty to condense as much as possible; and has in consequence apparently detracted in a degree from the easy, confidential tone with which it is inspired. Nor is the translation entirely free from errors and provincial expressions." * * * * * Among the most exquisite works recently published in Germany we observe a second greatly augmented and improved edition of _Alte und neue Kinderlieder Fabeln, Sprüche und Rathseln_, or, Old and New Songs, Fables, Sayings, and Riddles for Children, with illustrations by W. von Kaulbach, C. v. Aeideck, G. Konig, A. Kreling, E. Neureuther, the humorous and popular Graf. v. Poeci, L. Richter, C. H. Schmolze, M. v. Schwind, Stauber, &c. We have been thus particular in mentioning these names, that those who have not as yet seen the work may form some idea of the excellence of its illustrations. The only objection indeed which we have to find is, that the text (despite its title) is too far subordinate to the illustrations. A work of this description should at least have comprised _a majority_ of those songs heard in every Germany nursery, and which are given with such _naïve_ truthfulness in _Des Knaben Wonderhorn_. In several instances these old songs were evidently the sources whence the spirit of the illustration was derived, which illustration is here applied to a limited scrap of the original; as for instance, in the exquisitely spirited and droll picture of _das bucklig's Mannlein_, or the hump-backed dwarf, by _Schwind_, which is far more applicable to the droll, demi, diabolical popular ballad of that name, than to the old scrap of verse which it over-illustrates. But as an album of admirable designs the work is unrivalled. The engraving of the mother and child illustrating the ballad of _Schlof Kindlein_ is truly beautiful, conceived in a spirit of naïve fantasie, peculiarly applicable to the odd yet childlike song. _Das Glocklein im Hersen_, in which Christ is represented as opening the gate of Heaven to a child, by W. Kaulbach, in its pious, gentle beauty, almost transcends praise. Our notice already exceeds limit, yet we cannot leave this gem-book without specially and further commending The Toy-dealer of Nuremberg, a masterpiece of domestic life, by L. Richter, and _Es staig eim Herr zu Rosse_, or A Rider mounting his Horse, by Schwind, which forcibly recall the romantic etchings of Albert Durer. * * * * * A convention of Sclavic scholars, under the auspices of the Servian literary society of _Matica Ilirska_, in Agram, will probably soon be held, to consider the possibility of combining the different Sclavic dialects into one language. This will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, on account of the degree of cultivation which the languages of the Sclavic stock have attained. * * * * * A translation of JOHN MILTON'S _Areopagitica_, a Speech for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England, in 1644, has recently been executed by Dr. RICHARD R�PELL, Professor of History at the University of Breslau, and published by Veit and Co. of Berlin. * * * * * "In every revolution, good or bad, there are blind fanatics and selfish intriguers ready to take part, and loafers and vagabonds (_Bummler und Gamins_) willing to raise their voices." This is the remark of a German medical critic on a recent hydropathically insane composition, entitled _The Sin-register of the Medical Art of Healing_. In this work the _servum pecus_ of allopathic physicians are richly abused, partly with biblical quotations and partly with original anathemas. Another on the same subject and in the same curious style, is entitled, _Gustav Schwab, the noble bard of Suabia_, by GOTTLOB WASSERMAN (or Praise-God Water-man). In this work the anti-Sangrado author proves to his own satisfaction, that the _noble bard_ came to his death in consequence of having been imprudently bled, on one occasion, some six months previous to his death. * * * * * At the end of June an eighth edition of OSCAR VON REDUITZ'S _Amaranth_, was announced, and it has already been succeeded by a ninth. Many of the poems in this collection are in Uhland's romantic vein, and abound in the artistic spirit. To this we may add a _Mahrchen_ in verse, (or Child's Tale,) a beautiful fantasie of birds, brooks, leaves, and sunshine, reminding us at times of _The Story without an End_, at others of Sara Coleridge's _Phantasmion_. But as it is one of those gilded fascinations which invariably charm on a first perusal, we leave to some more accurate reader the task of judging more critically as to its literary merit. * * * * * A translation of Shakspeare's Plays into the Swedish language by HAGBERG, Professor of Greek in the University of Lund, is now in course of publication. Of this twelve volumes have appeared; and although the first edition consisted of no less than two thousand copies, the whole have been sold off, and a second edition is in preparation. * * * * * The lectures of NEANDER, _On Church History_, etc., are soon to appear, in fifteen volumes, edited by Professor JULIUS MULLER, of Halle. The Interpretation of the Gospel of St. John, will form the first part of the work. * * * * * German books and pamphlets on the Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition, are already in the market, or have indeed been extant for some time. _Der Krystall Palast im Hyde Park_, is among the last in this line. * * * * * M. POUSSIN, recently the minister of France to this country, has in preparation a volume for popular circulation on the comparative merits of the French and American constitutions. * * * * * The Prussian minister VON RADOWITZ has published a second series of his _Dialogues on Church and State_, of which the first series appeared in 1846. * * * * * BARON DUDEVANT, husband of GEORGE SAND, the French papers lately declared had died in an obscure apartment in Paris; but it appears, on the contrary, that he is still living, in true baronial style, at his chateau on the Garonne. A correspondent of the _Tribune_ says, "he never reads his wife's romances, and that his decease was believed in Paris, for several literary gentlemen of eminence are said to have laid their hands and fortunes at the feet of the large-hearted woman" who was supposed to be a widow. * * * * * AUGUSTE COMTE has just published the first volume of a new work, his _Systeme de Politique Positive_. In his great work, _Philosophie Positive_, he was forced by his method to proceed objectively--from the world up to man; he now proceeds subjectively--from man to the world. This system of Positive Polity he calls a Treatise of Sociology, instituting the Religion of Humanity. * * * * * EMILE DE GIRARDIN announces a new pamphlet, the title of which sets one thinking, _La Révolution Légale par la Présidence d'un Ouvrier_. (The Revolution Legal through the Presidency of a Workman.) * * * * * LAMARTINE has published the first volume of _The History of the Restoration of the Monarchy in France_. It is intended as a sequel to his History of the Girondins, and this initial volume comprises the closing days of the Empire, the last great struggle of Napoleon with the combined armies in 1814, and the abdication at Fontainbleau. The tone throughout is derived from the partizan feelings of the present time. Its characteristic is an elaborate and determined depreciation of the emperor. The author's apparent ambition is to be striking, and he sometimes is successful: to be just or wise is scarcely in his nature. For ourselves, we are so well acquainted with the life of Napoleon--with the workings of that most powerful practical intelligence that God has yet suffered to exist among mankind--that we are not in any way affected by these efforts of a hungry rhetorician to disparage him. In his new book, as in his _Girondins_, M. Lamartine has not chosen to give us any authorities. What he says as to facts may be true, but we have only his word for it; and long ago, before M. Lamartine became a great man in affairs, we learned from his _Pilgrimage to the Holy Land_, that his word is of very little value. We confess an admiration for parts of his _Elvire_ and for some of his minor poems, but it is the youthful poet we admire, not the author of the sickly sentimentalism in his recent romantic memoirs, far less the historian, who to get himself out of difficulties induced by early extravagancies can play marketable tricks with the most awful shade that moves in the twilight of men's memories about the world. * * * * * MICHELET, driven from his chair in the University, is publishing in the _Evénement_ his new work, _Légendes de la Démocratie_. The preface is remarkable for its naïveté. "This book," he says, "is the true _Légendes d'Or_ (golden legend)--free from all alloy, and in it will be found nothing but the truth.--Nay more, every one who reads it will become a wiser and a better man." A happy author, to have such faith in his book! * * * * * M. GUIZOT'S _History of the Representative Form of Government_, is prepared from a course of lectures delivered by the author in the reign of Louis the Eighteenth. The preface contains frequent allusions to the politics of the day, and the eminent author refers in it to his attempts to reconcile authority with liberty. M. Guizot's style is clear, but destitute of warmth or ornament, and his works have reputation chiefly for their judicial carefulness and honesty--qualities not so common in France as to be reasonably neglected there. * * * * * M. PROUDHON, the socialist "philosopher," has written, in the prison, in which it has been deemed necessary to shut him up, a new work, entitled _General Idea of Revolution in the Nineteenth Century_. Among the topics of which it treats are the Reaction of Revolutions, the Sufficient Reason of Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, the Principle of Association, the Principle of Authority, Organization of Economical Forces, and Dissolution of Government under an Economical Organization. The elements of every revolutionary history, according to Proudhon, are the previous régime which the revolution seeks to abolish, and which, by the instinct of self-preservation, may become a counter-revolution; the parties which, according to their different prejudices and interests, endeavor to turn it to their own advantage; and the revolution itself. * * * * * DR. BUSHNAN, of Edinburgh, under the title of _Miss Martineau and her Master_, has published a temperate but conclusive refutation of the _Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development_, by Miss MARTINEAU and Mr. GEORGE ATKINSON. The shallow performance in which these persons displayed their atheism was treated by the learned with contempt. Douglass Jerrold said the sum of their doctrine was contained in the formula, "There is no God, and Miss Martineau is his prophet," and those who considered the _Letters_ more seriously, for the most part expressed surprise and pity--never any one an apprehension that such wretched stuff could unsettle a conviction of the feeblest, or confirm a doubt of the most skeptical. * * * * * ISAAC TAYLOR, whose "Natural History of Enthusiasm," has been much read in this country, has in press _Wesley and Methodism_. * * * * * Not long ago it was stated that a Mr. SIMONIDES had discovered at the foot of Mount Athos a great number of important Greek MSS. We ventured to express some doubts on the subject, and we now perceive that Mr. RHANGABE, Professor of Archaiology in the University of Athens, has published a critical examination of these pretended discoveries, in which he proves very satisfactorily that every manuscript of an ancient work which Mr. Simonides has allowed others to examine, and every work which he has published, has turned out to be a modern fabrication. A more real discovery has been made by persons engaged in removing the earth for the foundations of a house near the Acropolis. Fragments of inscriptions, and several relics of sculpture and architecture, have been dug up, and it is thought they prove that the senate house, metroon, and other buildings in which the Athenian archives were preserved, stood in the vicinity. Apropos of M. Simonides, in a letter from Constantinople it is alleged that from the examination of ancient manuscripts in different Greek convents, he has discovered an indication that the original of the _Acts of the Apostles_ is buried in an island in the Sea of Marmora, and that he has caused an application to be made to the Turkish government for leave to search after it, which, it is said, is opposed by the Greek Patriarch, from fear that the discovery of the important document may lead to new schisms in the church! * * * * * We mentioned in a recent number of the _International_ the discovery and publication of a supposed MS. work by Origen. In the June number of the _Quarterly_ it is carefully reviewed, and in several of the theological journals it has received the attention due to a work of its pretensions. We see now that the Chevalier BUNSEN has in the press of the Longmans _Five Letters to Archdeacon Hare, on Hypolitus, Presbyter of the Church of Rome, author of the recently discovered book ascribed to Origen, and the bearing of this work on the leading Questions of Ecclesiastical History and Polity_. * * * * * Dr. CROLY has just published a new volume of poems, under the title of _Scenes from Scripture_. The greater part of them had previously appeared in annuals, &c. C. B. CAYLEY has given to the world a new version of the _Divine Comedy_, in the original terza rhyme; EDMUND PEEL, a poet of Mr. Robert Montgomery's class, has published _The Fair Island_, descriptive of the Isle of Wight; ROBERT MONTGOMERY himself has nearly ready his some-time promised _Poetical Works_, for the first time collected into one volume, similar to the octavo editions of Southey, Wordsworth, &c., including some original minor poems, and a general preface, (only the printing being in the style of Wordsworth.) * * * * * The first of the old historians to be edited in the light of the modern discoveries in Assyria, is _Herodotus_, to appear in a new English version, translated from the text of Gaisford, and edited by Rev. GEORGE RAWLINSON, assisted by Col. RAWLINSON and Sir J. G. WILKINSON, with copious notes, illustrating the history and geography by Herodotus, from the most recent sources of information, and embodying the chief results, historical and ethnographical, which have been arrived at in the progress of cuneiform and hieroglyphical discovery. This edition will be printed for Mr. Murray in four octavo volumes. The translation has been undertaken from a conviction of the inadequacy of any existing version to the wants of the time. The unfaithfulness of Beloe, and the unpleasantness of his style, render his version insufficient in an age which dislikes affectation and requires accuracy; while the only others which exist are at once too close to the original to be perused with pleasure by the general reader, and defective in respect of scholarship. * * * * * SIR JAMES STEPHEN, whose brilliant contributions to the Edinburgh Review are familiar through Mr. Hart's Philadelphia edition, has nearly ready _Lectures on the History of France_, and _The History of France_, compiled, translated and abridged from the works of De Sismondi, and of other recent French authors, and illustrated with historical maps and chronological and other tables. * * * * * J. S. BUCKINGHAM, the author of fifty volumes of _Travels_, (of which eight large octavos are about our own unfortunate country,) has at length succeeded in his long contest with the East India Company for indemnification for his losses as an oriental journalist. The bill before parliament for restitution has been withdrawn, the court of directors and the government having agreed to settle upon him a pension of four hundred pounds per annum. * * * * * We perceive that the British government has bestowed a pension of five hundred dollars a year on Mrs. JAMESON. We think of no Englishwoman who is more deserving of such distinction. Mrs. Jameson has spent a pretty long life in the most judicious exercise of her literary abilities, and as a critic of art she is unquestionably superior to any woman who has ever written on the subject. One of her most popular works, the _Beauties of the Court of Charles the Second_, will be issued in a splendid edition, with all the original portraits, in a few weeks, by the Appletons of this city. * * * * * SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON has published _Critical Discussions in Philosophy, Literature, and Education with University Reform_, chiefly from the Edinburgh Review, but now corrected, vindicated, and enlarged. * * * * * Several new books of _Travels_ have lately appeared or are in press in London. Among them are _Eight Years in Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor, from 1842 to 1850_, by F. A. NEALE, late of the Consular service; _A Naturalist's Sojourn in America_, by P. H. GOSSE; a _Journal of a Boat Voyage through Rupert's Land, and along the Central Arctic Coasts of America_, in Search of the Discovery Ships under command of Sir John Franklin, with an Appendix on the Physical Geography of North America, by Sir JOHN RICHARDSON, C. B., F. R. S., &c.; the _Personal Narrative of an Englishman Domesticated in Abyssinia_, by MANSFIELD PARKINS; _Contrasts of Foreign and English Society_, or, records and recollections of a residence in various parts of the Continent and of England, by Mrs. AUSTIN; _Narrative of Travels to Nineveh, in 1850_, by Hon. FREDERICK WALPOLE, R. N. author of "Four Years in the Pacific;" _Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines, in 1848-50_, by ROBERT MACMICKING; _Recollections of a Ramble from Sidney to Southampton, via Panama, the West Indies, the United States, and Niagara_, (anonymous.) * * * * * J. J. GARTH WILKINSON has just published in London _The Human Body and its Connection with Man, illustrated by the Principal Organs_, and it is dedicated to Mr. Henry James of New-York, the author of _Moralism and Christianity_. "My dear James," says the author, "this book is indebted to you for its appearance, for without you it would neither have been conceived nor executed. I dedicate it to you as a feeble tribute of friendship and gratitude that would gladly seek a better mode of expressing themselves. It may remind you of happy hours that we have spent together, and seem to continue some of the tones of our long correspondence. _Valeat quantum!_ It could not lay its head upon the shelf without a last thought of affection directed to its foster parent. That prosperity may live with you and yours, and your great commonwealth, is the prayer of, my dear James, your faithful friend," &c. * * * * * Of new novels the most noticeable appear to be _The Lady and the Priest_, by Mrs. Maberly; _The Tutor's Ward_; _Clare Abbey_, by author of "The Dicipline of Life;" _Marion Wethers_, by Miss Jewsbury; _Castle Deloraine, or the Ruined Peer_, by Miss PRISCILLA SMITH; and _Quakerism, or the Story of My Life_, a splenetic attack on the society of Friends. * * * * * The recent work of Dr. GREGORY on Animal Magnetism has attracted much attention, and from some intimations in the papers we suspect it is to be criticised in _Letters on the Truths contained in Popular Superstitions, with an Account of Mesmerism_, by Dr. HERBERT MAYO, F.R.S., to be published by Blackwood. * * * * * Two new works on the _Apocalypse_ are to be added to the immense number already printed, for New-York publishers. We not long ago undertook to ascertain how many expositions of the great mystery had been written in this country, and paused at the sixty-fifth title-page. One of the forthcoming works is an ingenious composition by the Rev. Mr. James of the western part of this state, and the other (to be published by Mr. Dodd) is by a clergyman in Connecticut. Longmans advertise in London _The Spiritual Exposition of the Apocalypse_, as derived from the writings of Swedenborg, and illustrated and confirmed by ancient and modern authorities, by the Rev. Augustus Clissold, of Exeter College; and the Rivingtons have in press a _Commentary on the Apocalypse_ by the Rev. ISAAC WILLIAMS, of Trinity College. England indeed is quite as prolific of such works as the United States. * * * * * MR. JOHN FINCHMAN, "master shipwright of her Majesty's Dockyard, at Portsmouth," has published a _History of Naval Architecture_, which is praised as a just exposition of the progress and supremacy of English ship-building. Our Mr. Collins could have furnished him, as illustrations for an additional and very interesting chapter, drawings of the _Pacific_ and the _Baltic_, which would perhaps make the work a "just exposition of the supremacy" of American ship-building, of which this Mr. Finchman seems never to have been informed. * * * * * Of collections of Letters on Affairs, that to be published immediately by Mr. Murray, under the title of the _Grenville Papers_, promises to be among the most important. It will comprise the Private Correspondence of Richard Grenville, Earl Temple, and his Brother, the Right Honorable George Grenville, and their friends and cotemporaries--formerly preserved at Stowe and now for the first time made public, and it is given out that it will contain material for the formation of a pretty conclusive judgment as to the authorship of Junius. * * * * * Among books that will bear a republication, if written with even average ability and fairness, is _The Present State of the Republic of the Rio de la Plata_ (_Buenos Ayres_), its Geography, Resources, Statistics, Commerce, Debt, etc. described, with the History of the Conquest of the Country by the Spaniards, by Sir WOODBINE PARISH, F.R.S. Formerly British Consul General and Chargé d' Affaires in that country. * * * * * LORD MAHON'S _History of England, from, the Peace of Utrecht_, volumes 5 and 6--the First Years of the American War: 1763 to 1780--was to appear in August. * * * * * A new book has just appeared in London on the Pitcairn's Islanders. * * * * * An advertisement of the works of Archbishop WHATELEY contains thirty-six titles. He appears to be one of the most voluminous writers among the bishops, as well as one of the most sensible and learned. * * * * * MR. MACAULEY has at length completed two more volumes of his _History of England_, and they will be published the coming autumn by Longmans. * * * * * The _Poems of Edith May_, from the press of E. H. Butler of Philadelphia, will be one of the most beautiful of the illustrated books of the season. Mr. Butler is an artist in book-making, and he has never published anything more elegant. The lady who writes under the pseudonym of "Edith May" is a genuine poet, and the volume will be popular. * * * * * WILLIAM WARE, one of those delightful authors whose names are always uttered by appreciating readers in tones of affection, has just published (Phillips, Sampson, & Co., of Boston,) _Sketches of European Capitals_. The work includes his views of Ancient Rome, St. Peters and the Vatican, Florence, Naples, the Italians of Middle Italy, and London, and in his preface he tells us that "the volume comes into existence, like so many others now-a-days, as a convenient way of disposing of matter previously used in the form of lectures;" and adds, modestly, "It is a volume of light reading for the summer roadside, and though, like the flowers of that season, perishing with them, one may be permitted to hope that, like some of them, at least it may exhale a not unpleasing fragrance while it lasts." Such a fate awaits no book by the author of _Probus_ and _Zenobia_, of whom this performance is by no means unworthy. * * * * * The HARPERS have in press _Drayton, a Tale of American Life_, in which is traced the career of a young American from the workshop to places of trust and honor; and a friend, who has read the manuscript, speaks in warm terms of the frequent beauty of the style, the warmth of the coloring, the animation of the narrative, and the general progress and development of the story. The author is THOMAS H. SHREVE, for the last ten or twelve years one of the editors of the _Louisville Daily Journal_, and for twenty years well and most favorably known by frequent and elegant contributions to western literature. _Drayton_, we are advised, is not one of those easy pieces of writing which are known as very hard reading, but has engaged the attention of the author, at periods of comparative leisure, for several years past. Within a few months it has been entirely recast and rewritten; and, if our correspondent be not very partial in his judgment of the merits of the work, the public will find in its patriotic and democratic pages a mine of poetry and fine reflection. * * * * * A few words more of _American Reviews_. The subject is important; a great periodical in which the best intelligence of the country shall have expression, is necessary, for many purposes, and never was more necessary than now. The _Princeton Review_, the _Christian Review_, the _Biblical Repository_, the _Bibliotheca Sacra_, the _Methodist Quarterly Review_, the _Church Review_, _Brownson's Quarterly Review_, and several others, are in large degrees devoted to particular religious interests, and though for the most part conducted with much learning and discretion, do not altogether serve the purpose for which an American Review of Literature and Affairs is demanded. The _North American_, as we have before intimated, has no character; it occasionally has good articles, but it has no principles; it is sectional, which is pardonable, but displays neither the knowledge nor the tact necessary to a sectional organ. The mineral riches of our lake region, plans for connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific, the Cuban question, our relations with other republics, the extraordinary phenomena of Mormonism, the efforts of certain American women to unsex themselves, and numerous other subjects of present interest in this country, have been amply discussed in British and other European Reviews during the last year, but not one of them has been mentioned in the work to which, from its pretentions, readers would naturally look for its most masterly exposition. It may be said that the _North American_ is devoted to philosophy, learning, and literature rather than to affairs: we have heard this defence, even in the face of its elaborate papers on Hungary and Austria; but let us see how it occupies such a ground: the bright and especial intellectual boast and glory of New England is Jonathan Edwards, of whom Dr. Chalmers says that he was "the greatest of theologians," Sir James Mackintosh that "in power of subtle argument he was perhaps unmatched, certainly was unsurpassed among men," Dugald Stewart that "he cannot be answered," and Robert Hall that he was the "mightiest of mankind:" such a character was undoubtedly worthy of its criticism, but in the half century of its existence the _North American_ has never once noticed him! We have an illustration much more pertinent, especially in as far as the present editor of the _Review_ is concerned: The late Hartley Coleridge was a man of peculiar and very interesting qualities, and it may be admitted that he possessed considerable genius; but a pretence that his life was as remarkable or that his abilities as displayed in his writings were as eminent as those of Edgar A. Poe, who died about the same time, would be simply ridiculous; yet we believe every quarterly and nearly every monthly Review published in Great Britain has had its article on Hartley Coleridge, while even the name of Edgar A. Poe has never appeared in our self-styled "great national journal." And Maria Brooks, admitted by Southey, Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, Fitz Greene Halleck, and many other masters of literary art, to have been the greatest poet of her sex who ever wrote in any language or in any age, though she was born and educated in the shadow of the college in which more than one of the editors of the _North American_ have been professors, was never once honored with its recognition. We do not know that it will strike others so, but it seems to us that John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, Hugh S. Legaré, R. H. Wilde, J. J. Audubon, Mathew L. Davis, Albert Gallatin, Henry Inman, Chancellor Kent, Dr. Judson, Dr. Jarvis, Dr. Morton, Dr. Troost, M. M. Noah, Mrs. Osgood, and many other Americans who have recently completed variously illustrious lives, and so come before the world for a final judgment, are subjects quite as deserving and appropriate for the _North American Review_, as those which it has been accustomed to pick up in the byways of the literary world abroad; and we cannot understand why the facts connected with our own development and destiny, facts which engross and baffle the attention of the profoundest thinkers in the older nations, should give place in the only Review we possess, to such foreign, antiquated, and altogether unimportant topics as continually occupy its pages. * * * * * MR. JAMES W. WARD, of Cincinnati, a short time ago delivered before one of the literary institutions of Ohio, a poem on _Woman_, which has been noticed in terms of high commendation. A correspondent who heard it says it was devoted in about equal parts to the foibles and the virtues of the sex, the former of which it laid bare with a most trenchant blade, while the latter it portrayed with elegance of diction, and an evident love for all that is pure, elevated, and beautiful in woman's proper character. The slave of fashion, the politician in petticoats, and the "bloomer" in br---- pettiloons, the female "progressive," the scold, the slattern, and the butterfly, were all held up to merited rebuke: then came "the true woman," whose character as sister, wife, mother, friend, and "comforter," was dwelt on long and fondly, and portrayed in the language of true poetry and manly devotion. Mr. Ward is not much known out of the literary circles of the West, but several of his short poems have had a wide circulation in this country and in England. * * * * * A volume entitled _Novellettes of the Musicians_, has been published by Cornish, Lamport, & Co., with Mrs. ELLET's name on the title-page as its author, but most of its contents are translated from the German, and the rest are hardly worth claiming. Yet the book altogether is entertaining, and is handsomely executed, with several striking portraits. * * * * * The Rev. Mr. HUNTINGTON, once a village doctor, then a congregational minister, next an Episcopal clergyman, and now a Catholic priest, made his mark a year or two ago in the novel of _Alice or the Mysteries_, in which there was displayed a great deal of talent as well as a very peculiar morality. He has just added to his works (by Putnam) a tale called _Alban_, in which a hero somewhat like himself is conducted through various pursuits into the faith, and by pleasantly related vicissitudes to a good condition. The scene is in New-York and New-Haven, and of Roman Catholic novels we know of scarcely one more readable. Mr. Huntington perhaps gives us a reflection of his experience in this advice addressed to one of his characters: "That is why I turn to literature with such predilection," said the young man, greatly excited by Mr. De Groot's way of talking. "Letters," resumed Mr. De Groot, after a long glance around his endless book-shelves, "are a pursuit that surpasses every other, in enjoyment, and nearly every other in dignity. We must have our own literary men. We can't afford to let other nations write our books for us. That were worse than policy which would hire them to fight our battles. There is a thought and there is a sentiment which belongs to _us_, and which we are in a manner bound to elicit. But--I am sorry to interpose so many _buts_, young sir--you are to consider that you must live. You cannot live by literature. It is difficult any where, but in this country it is impossible. As pride distinguishes the Spaniard, revenge the Italian, lust the Saxon, and sanguinary violence (they say) the Celt, so pecuniary injustice is our national trait, we steal the author's right in every book we publish, native or foreign. Now, Atherton, you can't live by a craft where people hold themselves at liberty to _steal_ what you have produced." * * * * * We mentioned a month or two ago the intention of Mr. Russell, of Charleston, to publish the _Poetical Writings_ of WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS, and we are pleased to see in the _Southern Literary Gazette_ the announcement that they will appear in two handsome duodecimos of from three to four hundred pages each. The publisher remarks very justly in his advertisement that "the works of Mr. Simms recommended themselves peculiarly to the South, as illustrating its history, its traditions and legends, its scenery and its sentiments." In the North they will be welcomed by the author's numerous friends, and by all lovers of poetry, for their manly tone, imagination, and frequent elaborate elegance. * * * * * DR. TYNG has added to the _Memoir of the late Rev. Edward Bickersteth_, by the Rev. T. R. BIRKS, an introductory chapter, and the work has been published in two volumes, by the Harpers. Mr. Bickersteth was one of the most excellent and most interesting men in the English church, and this well-written memoir will have a place among standard religious biographies. * * * * * The _Home Book of the Picturesque_, to be published by Mr. Putnam, will be upon the whole the most beautiful souvenir volume of the year. The engravings are from pictures of the Bay of New York, by H. Beckwith; the Clove, Cattskill, by Durand; the Alleghanies, North Carolina, by Richards; Snow Scene on the Housatonic, by Gignoux; Cattskill Scenery, by Kensett; Schroon Lake, by Cole; West Rock, New Haven, by Church; Adirondach Mountains, by Durand; the Juniatta, Pennsylvania, by Talbot; Cascade Bridge on the Erie Railroad, by Talbott; the Rondout, by Huntington; Church at West Point, by Weir; Wa-wa-yanda Lake, by Cropsey, &c., and these are illustrated with letter-press by Miss Cooper, Fenimore Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Willis, Bayard Taylor, Magoon, Bethune, and one or two persons quite unworthy of the association to which the publisher admits them. The _Book of Home Beauty_, also to be issued by Mr. Putnam, we judge from a few proofs of Mr. Martin's pictures which we have seen, will be a much more attractive volume than any "Book of Beauty" ever published abroad. The text of this is all from the pen of Mrs. Kirkland. * * * * * The _Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature_, by the Rev. Dr. KITTO, has been republished in a fine large octavo, with numerous illustrations by Gould, Kendall & Lincoln, of Boston. We have had frequent occasion to praise the abilities, learning, and excellent taste of Dr. Kitto, who is one of the most attractive writers and most judicious editors engaged in the illustration of the Scriptures. We think the present work will become the most common of all the Bible Dictionaries, as it probably is the best. * * * * * Mr. Redfield has reprinted in a style quite equal to that of the original London edition, the second series of _Episodes of Insect Life_, by ACHETA DOMESTICA. This volume relates to insect life in the summer, and is as entertaining as a romance. We have never read a more attractive book in natural history. * * * * * MR. POMEROY JONES, of Westmoreland, in this state, has in press at Utica, a _History of Oneida County_, in the preparation of which he has been engaged several years, and the professors of Hamilton College have in preparation a Natural History of the County, embracing its Geology, Botany, Zoology, &c. * * * * * A volume of _Poems_ by MRS. REBECCA S. NICHOLS, of Cincinnati, will, we understand, be issued for the next holidays. Mrs. N. has some warm admirers, and this volume is to contain her best productions. We hope its success may equal its deserts. * * * * * The fine, thoughtful _Essays Written in the Intervals of Business_, have been reprinted by A. D. F. Randolph, of this city. * * * * * The Rev. ISAAC LEESER, one of the Jewish ministers of Philadelphia, whom we have long known as a scholar and man of talents, is engaged on a new translation of the Old Testament, on the basis of the common English version, carefully corrected and improved according to the best Jewish authorities. It is intended by Mr. Leeser so to render the Hebrew text that but few explanatory notes will be needed, and he reasonably hopes that his edition will be commonly adopted by the Jews of this country. Dr. KENRICK, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Philadelphia, has just published (by Dunigan & Brother, New-York,) _The Epistles and the Apocalypse_, from the Vulgate, having previously given to the public a translation of the Gospels; and Dr. Alexander of Princeton, and several other men of learning, have lately been occupied with new versions of particular portions of the sacred volume. It is well known, too, that a society, composed for the most part of members of one of the largest and most respectable denominations of Christians, has been established mainly for the purpose of publishing a revised version of the Bible, but it is not probable that this society will ever accomplish any thing more than an increased "contempt for God's word and commandment." The specimens we have of its scholarship might justify some merriment if they were connected with something less venerable and sacred. For ourselves we are content with the Bible as it is, and cannot help a feeling of regret that any who profess to be governed by its wisdom are disposed to treat it with so little reverence. Undoubtedly there are some slight verbal inaccuracies in the common version, but they are understood, or may be easily explained in notes: we want here no innovations, no improvements, no progress, except in the observance of the good we understand. Nevertheless, we see with pleasure all the studies with which really learned men illustrate their convictions of the significance of the original. For the chief portion of mankind, in this night in which we live, the sun does not shine with its original splendor, but it is reflected on us by the moon, and we care not how many thousand stars reflect it also according to their capacity. A new version, by which it is _not proposed to displace the common one_, is to appear from the press of Mr. Colby, in this city, and the high reputation of its author for learning and judgment, is a sufficient assurance that what he does at all he will do in a very masterly manner. The Rev. Dr. Conant, Professor of Biblical Literature in the University of Rochester, says in a letter to his publisher: "It has long been a favorite object with me to furnish a translation of the Holy Scriptures for unlearned readers, which should accurately express the meaning of the original by the aids of modern scholarship in the style and manner of the early English versions. The translation is intended, therefore, for the benefit of the common reader of the Scriptures, to aid him in more clearly understanding them wherever our common version is for any reason obscure. In other words, it is to do directly by a translation what has long been attempted by the awkward and circuitous method of a commentary; viz. to make the Scriptures plain to the unlearned reader. I should for many reasons regard it as undesirable, and it certainly is impracticable, to supplant the common version to any extent as the received version for the church and the people, or the common English Bible and common standard of appeal for those who use only the English language." Dr. Conant will preserve as nearly as may be the manner of the old translations, endeavoring only to combine the fidelity and exactness of modern scholarship with the simplicity and strength of the common version. To such an effort, by such a man, we see no objections. The reputation most at stake is that of Dr. Conant himself, and those who know him do not fear that that will suffer. It will at least be interesting to mark the differences between his renderings and those of King James's translators. * * * * * Mr. Putnam publishes for the coming holidays a new impression of the _Memorial_, which is incomparably the most interesting literary miscellany ever printed as a gift-book in this country. The proceeds of the sale, it is known, are to be appropriated for the erection of a monument to the late Mrs. Osgood, in Mount Auburn Cemetery. The book is made up of original articles by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Chancellor Walworth, N. P. Willis, Bishop Doane, G. P. R. James, S. G. Goodrich, John Neal, W. G. Simms, Richard B. Kimball, George P. Morris, Dr. Mayo, Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Oakes Smith, Mrs. Hewitt, Mrs. Lynch, and indeed all the best and most brilliant writers of the time; and it is beautifully illustrated. * * * * * The well-known private library of the late Rev. Dr. SAMUEL FARMER JARVIS is to be sold in this city, by Messrs. Lyman & Rawdon, about the beginning of October. In several departments of sacred and classical literature it is one of the finest collections in America, and it will probably attract large numbers of buyers, especially from among the lovers of mediæval scholarship and theology. * * * * * MR. MITCHELL'S new book, the _Diary of a Dreamer_, is in press by Charles Scribner, and the same publisher will issue for the holidays an edition of the _Reveries of a Bachelor_, admirably illustrated by Darley, who seems indeed never to have done better than in some of his designs for it. * * * * * MR. LONGFELLOW has in the press of Ticknor, Reed and Fields, of Boston, a new poem, entitled _The Golden Legend_. It is the longest of his poetical works, making some 350 pages, and will soon be given to the public. * * * * * There is this year a very remarkable number of new books illustrative of the applications of science to mechanics. Every man seems determined to master the learning which can be turned to account in his vocation, and the booksellers are quite willing to aid them. We suppose the most generally and importantly useful work of this kind ever printed is Appleton's _Dictionary of Machinery, Mechanics, Engine Work, and Engineering_, just completed in two very large compactly printed and profusely illustrated octavo volumes. In this great work are gathered the best results of the study and experiment of the workers of the world. It is a cyclopedia of inventions, in which one may be sure of finding described the best processes yet discovered for doing every thing that is to be done by means of mechanics. The benefits conferred on the country by this publication must be very great; its general circulation would mark a new period in our physical advancement, and to a degree influence our civilization, since there is no country in the world in which every resource is so readily applied to purposes of comfort and culture. If knowledge is power, as, misquoting Lord Bacon, it is every day asserted, the truth is most conspicuous in the range of those arts and occupations illustrated by these incomparable volumes, which should be in the house of every man who has already provided himself with the Bible and Shakspere. The Appletons also publish a _Mechanics' Magazine_, edited in a very admirable manner, and we understand it is largely sold. Next to the Appletons, we believe the largest publisher in this line is Henry C. Baird, of Philadelphia, who has now in press a _Handbook of Locomotive Engineers_, by SEPTIMUS NORRIS, of the celebrated house, Norris & Brother, engine manufactures; _The Practical Metal Worker's Assistant_, by M. HOLTZAPHFEL, illustrated with many engravings, and enlarged by the addition of American matters; SCOTT's _Cotton Spinner_, thoroughly revised by an American editor; a new edition of Mr. OVERMAN's important book on _Iron; The Practical Model Calculator_, for the engineer, machinest, manufacturer, &c., by Mr. BYRNE, (to be issued in twelve semi-monthly numbers); a _Treatise on the American Steam-Engine_, by the same author; and several other books of this class. * * * * * The Appletons will publish in a few weeks _The Women of Early Christianity_, one of that series of splendidly illustrated volumes composed of _Our Saviour and his Apostles_, _The Women of the Bible, &c._ * * * * * BRAITHWAITE'S _Retrospect of Practical Medicine_, in consequence of an arrangement just entered into, will hereafter be published by Stringer & Townsend, who will issue it with promptness, correctness, and general mechanical excellence. * * * * * James Munroe & Co. of Boston are proceeding regularly with Mr. HUDSON's excellent edition of Shakspeare, and they have lately issued among several handsome volumes an edition of the works of George Herbert. They have in press _The Philippics of Demosthenes_, with notes critical and explanatory, by Professor M. J. Smead; _The Camel Hunt_, a narrative of personal adventures, by Joseph Warren Fabius; _Companions of my Solitude_, by the author of "Friends in Council," &c., &c.; _The Greek Girl_, and other poems, by James W. Simmons; _Epitaphs_, taken from Copp's Hill Burying Ground in Boston, by Thomas Bridgman; and _Domestic Pets_, their habits and management, with illustrative anecdotes, by Mrs. Loudon. * * * * * The second and concluding volume of the _Life of Calvin_, by Dr. HENRY, has just been issued by Carter & Brothers, and it is quite equal in every respect to the first volume. Such a careful history was well-deserved of a Christian whom even Voltaire admitted to be one in the list of the world's twenty greatest men, and it was especially needed for the vindication of one who had in so extraordinary a degree been a subject of partisan hatred and calumny. * * * * * DR. WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS of this city has just published a volume of _Lectures on the Lord's Prayer_, (Gould & Lincoln, Boston,) which we shall notice more appropriately hereafter. At present we can only remark that it is a work of extraordinary merit, worthy of an author whose abilities and virtues render his name illustrious. * * * * * The Rev. Dr. WAINWRIGHT has in the press of the Appletons a work descriptive of his Travels in Egypt. It will appear in a large and luxuriously embellished volume, some time before Christmas. * * * * * The third, fourth, and fifth volumes of the _Works of John Adams_ have been issued by Little and Brown, and the fifth and sixth volumes of the _Works of Alexander Hamilton_, by C. S. Francis. * * * * * Mr. FREDERIC SAUNDERS is publishing in the _New-York Recorder_ a series of papers under the title of _Bookcraft_ which will make a volume not unworthy of D'Israeli. * * * * * M. W. DODD has published a new edition of CRUDEN's great _Concordance of the Bible_, a book which every body knows is perfect in its kind. * * * * * Jewett & Co. have in press the works of the Rev. LYMAN BEECHER, D.D. which they will publish in some half-dozen octavo volumes. * * * * * The approaching Trade Sales will be the largest ever held in New-York. FOOTNOTES: [14] Réné Taillandier, Professor of Belles Lettres at the College of Montpellier, declared by the _Allgemeine Zeitung_ to be more familiar with German politics and literature than any other Frenchman living. _The Fine Arts._ POWERS, in a letter to a friend in this city, says with satirical humor, of his favorite work, "Eve is an old-fashioned body, and not so well formed and attractive as are her granddaughters,--at least some of them. She wears her hair in a natural and most primitive manner, drawn back from the temples, and hanging loose behind, thus exposing those very ugly features in women. _Her waist is quite too large for our modern notions of beauty_, and her feet, they are so very broad and large! And did ever one see such long toes! they have never been wedged into form by the nice and pretty little shoes worn by her lovely descendents. But Eve is very stiff and unyielding in her disposition: _she will not allow her waist to be reduced by bandaging, because she is far more comfortable as she is_, and besides, she has _some regard for her health, which might suffer from such restraints upon her lungs, heart, liver, &c., &c., &c._ I could never prevail upon her to wear modern shoes, for she dreads corns, which, she says, are neither convenient nor ornamental. But some allowance ought to be made for these crude notions of hers,--founded as they are in the prejudices and absurdities of _primitive_ days. Taking all these things into consideration, I think it best that she should not be exhibited, as it might subject me to censure, and severe criticisms, and these, too, without pecuniary reward." * * * * * After the death of WORDSWORTH, a committee was formed among his friends for the purpose of setting up a tablet to his memory in Grassmere Church, where he is buried. The work intrusted to Mr. Thomas Woolner, has been completed. Surmounted by a band of laurel leaves is the inscription, written by Professor Keble; under which the poet's head is sculptured in relief. The likeness to the man has received praise from persons whose verdict is final; the intellectual likeness to the poet will be more widely appreciated, and recognized with cordial admiration. The meditative lines of the face, the thoughtful forehead and eye, the compressed, sensitive mouth, are rendered with refined intelligence. In two narrow spaces at each side of the head, are introduced the crocus and celandine, and the snowdrop and violet, treated with a rare union of natural beauty and sculpturesque method and subordination. Throughout, the delicately studied execution shows that the work has been a labor of love. * * * * * LEUTZE'S great historical picture of Washington Crossing the Delaware before the Battle of Trenton, has been received in this city by Messrs. Goupil & Co. and will soon be exhibited to the public. These publishers will give us a large and fine engraving of it. * * * * * GREENOUGH'S noble group for the capitol, upon which he has been engaged nearly twenty years, is so nearly finished that it may be expected in the United States before the end of November. The subject is a contrast of the Anglo-Saxon with the Indian. The group is composed of an American Hunter, in the act of seizing an Indian who was about to tomahawk a mother and her infant. The white man has approached the savage from behind, and, having seized him by the arms, and pressed him with bending knees to the ground, stands frowning above his subjugated foe, who, with his head thrown back, gazes upward at his conqueror with surprise and terror. At their feet a woman, pressing a child to her bosom, sinks in alarm and agony. The effect is very imposing, having something of the dignity and grandeur which belong to the works of Michael Angelo. In Italy the work has much increased Greenough's previous great reputation. * * * * * A monument is to be erected at Dresden to the composer VON WEBER. To defray the expenses, performances are to be given at the various theatres in Germany, and the proceeds formed into a fund for that purpose. Large sums are expected from this source, as also from private contributions throughout Europe. The monument is to be surmounted by a statue of the composer, by Rietschel, who was an intimate friend of his. It will be of bronze, eight feet high, and placed on a pedestal of the same metal, ornamented with bas-reliefs. The site chosen for its erection is immediately opposite the principal entrance to the Royal Theatre of Dresden. * * * * * The distinguished painter CORNELIUS has been solicited by the Belgian Academy of Art to send the grand cartoons on which he is employed, to the great Belgian Exhibition. Cornelius, however, fears to risk these drawings, the work of ten years, on a journey of such length, since their loss could not be replaced. They already fill two large halls, and will remain a lasting monument of the painter's genius, even if the Cathedral, in which they are to appear as frescoes, should not be erected during his life. * * * * * The publication of a work entitled _The Twelve Virgins of Raphael_, has been commenced in Paris. It will be in twelve numbers, each containing an engraving and letter-press description and history. * * * * * A sculptor of Paris has received orders from the Greek Government to execute marble busts of Admirals de Rigny and Codington, to be placed in the Salle where the Senate holds its sittings. _Historical Review of the Month._ THE UNITED STATES. The August elections, though in general not very warmly contested, have attracted much attention. We have attempted, in the following carefully prepared table, to exhibit the results, as well as the character of the next Congress at large--a task somewhat difficult on account of the diversity of parties and the frequent disregard which has been shown for old divisions:-- XXXII CONGRESS--SENATE. _Commenced March 4, 1851, and ends March 4, 1852._ _Term Expires._ ALABAMA. JEREMIAH CLEMENS, 1853 William R. King, S. R. 1855 ARKANSAS. Wm. K. Sebastian, S. R., 1853 SOLON BORLAND. 1855 CALIFORNIA. WM. M. GWINN, 1855 Elean Heydenfeldt, L. R.[A] 1857 CONNECTICUT. _Truman Smith_, 1855 A vacancy. 1857 DELAWARE. _Presley Spruance_, 1855 James A. Bayard, L. R. 1857 FLORIDA. JACKSON MORTON,[B] 1855 STEPHEN R. MALLORY.[A] 1857 GEORGIA. _John McP. Berrien_, S. R.,[C] 1853 WM. C. DAWSON.[B] 1855 INDIANA. James Whitcomb, L. R., 1855 JESSE D. BRIGHT. 1857 ILLINOIS. Stephen A. Douglas, 1853 James Shields, L. R. 1855 IOWA. George W. Jones, L. R., 1853 Augustus C. Dodge, L. R. 1855 KENTUCKY. _Joseph R. Underwood,_ 1853 _Henry Clay._ 1855 LOUISIANA. SOL. W. DOWNS, 1853 Pierre Soulé, S. R. 1855 MAINE. James W. Bradbury, 1853 Hannibal Hamlin, F. S. 1857 MARYLAND. _James A. Pierce,_ 1855 _Thomas G. Pratt._ 1857 MASSACHUSETTS. _John Davis_, 1853 Charles Sumner, F. S. 1857 MISSISSIPPI. HENRY S. FOOTE, 1853 Jefferson Davis, S. R. 1857 MICHIGAN. ALPHEUS FELCH, 1853 Lewis Cass. 1857 MISSOURI. David R. Atchison, S. R., 1855 HEN. S. GEYER.[B] 1857 NEW HAMPSHIRE. John P. Hale, F. S., 1853 MOSES HARRIS, jr. 1855 NEW-YORK. _William H. Seward,_ 1855 _Hamilton Fish._ 1857 NEW JERSEY. _Jacob W. Miller_, 1853 ROBERT F. STOCKTON. 1857 NORTH CAROLINA. _Willie P. Mangum,_ 1853 _George E. Badger._ 1855 OHIO. Salmon P. Chase, F. S., 1855 _B. Franklin Wade_. 1857 PENNSYLVANIA. _James Cooper_, 1853 RICHARD BRODHEAD, jr. 1857 RHODE ISLAND. _John H. Clarke_, 1853 Charles T. Jarves, L. R. 1857 SOUTH CAROLINA. R. Barnwell Rhett (Sec.), 1853 A. P. Butler, S. R. 1855 TENNESSEE. _John Bell_, 1853 A vacancy. 1857 TEXAS. Sam Houston, 1853 Thomas J. Rusk. 1857 VERMONT. _William Upham,_ 1853 _Solomon Foote._ 1857 VIRGINIA. Robert M. T. Hunter, 1853 James M. Mason. 1857 WISCONSIN. Isaac P. Walker, 1855 Henry Dodge. 1857 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. ALABAMA. 1. John Bragg, S. R., 2. JAMES ABERCROMBIE,[B] 3. Sampson W. Harris, S. R., 4. WM. R. SMITH, 5. GEO. S. HOUSTON, 6. W. R. W. COBB, 7. ALEX WHITE.[B] ARKANSAS. ---- CALIFORNIA. ---- ---- CONNECTICUT. 1. _Charles Chapman_, 2. C. M. INGERSOLL,[B] 3. Chauncey F. Cleveland, F. S., 4. O. S. SEYMOUR.[B] DELAWARE. 1. George Read Riddle, L. R. FLORIDA. _Edward C. Cabell, L. R._ GEORGIA. 1. ----, 2. ----, 3. ----, 4. ----, 5. ----, 6. ----, 7. ----, 8. ----. ILLINOIS. 1. Wm. H. Bissell, L. R., 2. Willis Allen, L. R., 3. O. R. Ficklin, L. R., 4. R. S. Maloney, F. S., 5. Wm. A. Richardson, L. R., 6. T. Campbell, F. S., 7. _Richard Yates_. INDIANA. 1. James Lockhart, 2. Cyrus L. Dunham, L. R., 3. John L. Robinson, 4. _Samuel W. Parker_, 5. Thomas H. Hendricks, L. R., 6. Willis A. Gorman, 7. John G. Davis, F. S., 8. Daniel Mace, F. S., 9. Graham N. Fitch, 10. _Samuel Brenton_. IOWA. 1. Lincoln Clark, L. R., 2. Bernhardt Henn, L. R. KENTUCKY. 1. LINN BOYD, 2. _Ben. Edward Grey, L. R._, 3. _Presley Ewing_, 4. _William T. Ward_, 5. James N. Stone (rep.), 6. _Addison White_, 7. _Humphrey Marshall_, 8. John C. Breckenridge, L. R., 9. John C. Mason, 10. Richard H. Stanton. LOUISIANA. 1. ----, 2. ----, 3. ----, 4. ----. MAINE. 1. Moses McDonald, L. R., 2. John Appleton,[A] 3. _Robert Goodenow_, 4. Charles Andrews, F. S., 5. Ephraim K. Smart, F. S., 6. _Israel Washburn, jr._, 7. THOMAS J. D. FULLER. MARYLAND. 1. ----, 2. ----, 3. ----, 4. ----, 5. ----, 6. ----. MASSACHUSETTS. 1. _William Appleton_, 2. Robert Rantoul, jr., F. S., 3. _James H. Duncan_, 4. _B. Thompson_, 5. _Charles Allen, F. S._, 6. George T. Davis, 7. John Z. Goodrich, 8. Horace Mann, F. S., 9. _Oron Fowler_, 10. _Zeno Scudder_. MICHIGAN. 1. _Ebenezer J. Penniman, F. S._, 2. Charles E. Stuart, L. R., 3. _James L. Conger, F. S._ MISSISSIPPI. 1. ----, 2. ----, 3. ----, 4. ----. MISSOURI. 1. _John F. Darby_, 2. _Gilchrist Porter_, 3. _John G. Miller_, 4. Willard P. Hall, Anti-Benton, 5. John S. Phelps, Benton. NEW HAMPSHIRE. 1. _Amos Tuck_, 2. CHARLES H. PEASLEE, 3. _Jared Perkins_, 4. Harry Hibbard, L. R. NEW JERSEY. 1. Nathan T. Stratten, 2. Charles D. Skelton, L. R., 3. ISAAC WILDRICK, 4. George H. Brown, 5. Rodman M. Price, L. R. NEW-YORK. 1. John G. Floyd, F. S., 2. _Obadiah Bowne_, 3. Emanuel B. Hart, L. R., 4. _J. H. Hobart Haws_, 5. _George Briggs_, 6. _James Brooks_, 7. Abraham P. Stevens, L. R., 8. Gilbert Dean, F. S., 9. William Murray, F. S., 10. _Marius Schoonmaker_, 11. Josiah Sutherland, F. S., 12. David L. Seymour, L. R., 13. _John L. Schoolcraft_, 14. _John H. Boyd_, 15. Joseph Russell, F. S., 16. _John Wells_, 17. Alexander H. Buel, F. S., 18. Preston King, F. S., 19. Willard Ives, F. S., 20. Timothy Jenkins, F. S., 21. William W. Snow, F. S., 22. _Henry Bennett_, 23. Leander Babcock, F. S., 24. Daniel T. Jones, F. S., 25. Thomas Y. How, Jr., F. S., 26. _Henry S. Walbridge_, 27. _William A. Sacket_, 28. _Ab. M. Schermerhorn_, 29. _Jerediah Horsford_, 30. Reuben Robie, F. S., 31. _Frederick S. Martin_, 32. _Solomon G. Haven_, 33. _Aug. P. Hascall_, 34. _Lorenzo Burrows_. NORTH CAROLINA. 1. _Thomas L. Clingman_,[C] 2. _Joseph P. Caldwell, L. R._, 3. _Alfred Dackery_, 4. _James T. Morehead_, 5. Abraham W. Venable, S. R., L. R., 6. John R. J. Daniel, S. R., 7. WILLIAM S. ASHE, 8. _Edward Stanley_, 9. _David Outlaw_. OHIO. 1. David T. Disney, L. R., 2. _Lewis D. Campbell, L. R._, 3. _Hiram Bell_, 4. _Benjamin Stanton_, 5. Alfred P. Edgerton, 6. Frederick Green, 7. _Nelson Barrere_, 8. _John L. Taylor, L. R._, 9. Edson B. Olds, L. R., 10. Charles Sweetser, 11. George H. Busby, 12. _John Welsh_, 13. James M. Gaylord, 14. _Alexander Harper_, 15. _William F. Hunter_, 16. _John Johnson, Md. L. R._, 17. Joseph Cable, L. R., 18. David K. Cartter, 19. _Eben Newton, F. S._, 20. Josh R. Giddings, F. S., 21. N. S. Townshend, F. S., L. R. PENNSYLVANIA. 1. Thomas B. Florence, L. R.,[A] 2. _Joseph R. Chandler_, 3. _Henry D. Moore_, L. R., 4. John Robbins, jr., L. R., 5. John McNair, 6. Thomas Ross, 7. John A. Morrison, L. R., 8. _Thaddeus Stevens_, 9. J. Glancy Jones, 10. Milo M. Dimmick, 11. _Henry M. Fuller_,[A] 12. Galusha A. Grow, F. S., 13. James Gamble, 14. _T. M. Bibighaus_, 15. William H. Kurtz, 16. J. X. McLanahan, 17. Andrew Parker, 18. John L. Dawson, 19. _Joseph H. Kuhns_, 20. _John Allison_, 21. _Thomas M. Howe_, 22. _John W. Howe_, 23. Carlton B. Curtis, L. R., 24. Alfred Gilmore, L. R. RHODE ISLAND. 1. _George G. King_, 2. Benj. B. Thurston, F. S. SOUTH CAROLINA. 1. Daniel Wallace, 2. James L. Orr, 3. Jos. A. Woodard, 4. John McQueen, 5. Armistead Burt, 6. William Aiken, 7. William F. Colcock. TENNESSEE. 1. Andrew Johnson, L. R., 2. _Albert G. Watkins_, L. R., 3. _Josiah M. Anderson_, L. R., 4. John H. Savage, S. R., L. R., 5. GEORGE W. JONES, L. R., 6. William H. Polk, L. R., 7. _Meredith P. Gentry_, L. R., 8. _William Cullom_, 9. Isham G. Harris, S. R., L. R., 10. Frederick P. Stanton, L. R., 11. _Christopher H. Williams_, L. R. TEXAS. 1. ----, 2. ----. VERMONT. 1. _Ahiman L. Miner_, 2. _William Hebard_, 3. _James Meacham_, 4. Thos. Bartlett, jr., F. S. VIRGINIA. 1. ----, 2. ----, 3. ----, 4. ----, 5. ----, 6. ----, 7. ----, 8. ----, 9. ----, 10. ----, 11. ----, 12. ----, 13. ----, 14. ----, 15. ----. NEBRASKA. ----. OREGON. 1. Joseph Lane, Ind. L. R. WISCONSIN. 1. Charles Durkee, F. S., 2. Ben. C. Eastman, L. R., 3. James D. Doty, Md., F. S., L. R. MINNESOTA. 1. H. H. Sibley, Ind. NEW MEXICO. ----. UTAH. ----. Democrats, in Roman; Whigs, in _italics_; "Union"-men in SMALL-CAPITALS. [A] Seats contested. Whig Unionists marked with a [B]; Whig Southern Rights with a [C]; F. S., Free Soil; L. R., Land Reform. So far as heard from, the Delegations from thirteen States are Democratic; six are Whig; four tied. Arkansas and Texas to hear from, and elections are to be held in the six remaining States. THE ELECTIONS FOR STATE OFFICERS. ALABAMA.--Hon. HENRY W. COLLIER, a Southern Rights Democrat, is re-elected Governor of this State. TENNESSEE.--Gen. WILLIAM B. CAMPBELL, Union Whig, is elected Governor of this State over the late Democratic incumbent, Gen. William Trowsdale. KENTUCKY.--Lazarus W. Powell (Democrat), it is reported is elected Governor; a John B. Thompson, (Whig) Lieut. Governor; and Rev. Robert J. Breckenridge, (Whig) Superintendent of Public Instruction. Not much of a party contest for the remaining State Officers. One Congressional District (the 5th) in doubt as we go to press, the friends of Clement S. Hill (Whig) hoping that he is elected, but Stone has made gains enough to secure his election. RECAPITULATION OF CONGRESS. SENATE. HOUSE. _States._ _Dem._ _Whig._ _Vac._ _Dem._ _Whig._ _Vac._ Alabama 2 0 0 5 2 0 Arkansas 2 0 0 0 0 1 California 2 0 0 0 0 2 Connecticut 1 0 1 3 1 0 Delaware 1 1 0 1 0 0 Florida 1 1 0 0 1 0 Georgia 0 2 0 0 0 8 Illinois 2 0 0 6 1 0 Indiana 2 0 0 8 2 0 Iowa 2 0 0 2 0 0 Kentucky 0 2 0 5 5 0 Louisiana 2 0 0 0 0 4 Maine 2 0 0 5 2 0 Maryland 0 2 0 0 0 6 Massachusetts 1 1 0 3 7 0 Michigan 2 0 0 1 2 0 Mississippi 2 0 0 0 0 4 Missouri 1 1 0 2 3 0 New Hampshire 2 0 0 2 2 0 New Jersey 1 1 0 4 1 0 New York 0 2 0 17 17 0 North Carolina 0 2 0 3 6 0 Ohio 1 1 0 11 10 0 Pennsylvania 1 1 0 15 9 0 Rhode Island 1 1 0 1 1 0 South Carolina 2 0 0 7 0 0 Tennessee 0 1 1 6 5 0 Texas 2 0 0 0 0 2 Vermont 0 2 0 1 3 0 Virginia 2 0 0 0 0 15 Wisconsin 2 0 0 3 0 0 -- -- -- -- -- -- Total, 39 21 2 111 80 42 In New-York, the Democratic party will meet in convention on the 10th of this present month of September, to prepare for approaching elections, and, on the following day, the United Whig party will hold its annual convention in the same city--the State Central Committee of both sections of it having united in a call for that purpose. The Convention of Virginia, which has been sitting at Richmond during the last eight months, have at length agreed upon the form of a new Constitution for that State, and brought its session to a close. The Constitution has yet to be submitted to a vote of the people, but of its acceptance no doubt appears to be entertained. It is to be voted for on the 23d of October. The President of the United States, accompanied by the Secretaries of War and Interior, has been received with much enthusiasm in various places in eastern Virginia, through which he passed on his way to the White Sulphur Springs. The Secretary of State has been passing a few weeks among the lakes and mountains of New Hampshire, where he will remain probably till October; and the Secretary of the Treasury has been detained by ill health at his residence in Ohio. Reports from the various agricultural districts of the Union indicate that the wheat harvest of 1851 will be the heaviest ever raised. In New-York, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the yield is very large, and the wheat excellent. In the Northern and Central Illinois, heavy rains have destroyed a portion of the crop, but in the Southern portion of the State it will be abundant. In Ohio, advices from all quarters of the State show that the wheat crop of the present season will be the largest ever grown in the State. In Iowa, the yield is indifferent. Of corn there will probably be an average crop. Potatoes in several parts of the country have suffered from the rot. The cholera prevails to some extent in the valley of the Mississippi, and other parts of the Southern and Western States. Among the Sioux Indians it has been very fatal. The treaty just formed with the Sioux Indians, secures to the United States all the land in the entire valley of the Minnesota, and the eastern tributaries of the Sioux, estimated at 21,000,000 of acres. From Texas, we learn that there has been great excitement at Rio Grande, in consequence of the Mexicans refusing to surrender a fugitive slave. It is said that 2,000 slaves have made their escape into Mexico. There have been several arrivals from California, and by every one evidence has been furnished of a very unfortunate condition of affairs. Dissatisfied with the manner in which justice is executed, or perhaps with a view to the complete overthrow of the government, large numbers of men have associated themselves at San Francisco and elsewhere, and assumed all the functions of a magistracy, treating the constituted authorities with contempt, and, in secret assemblies, deciding questions of life and of all the highest interests of society. By their directions, several persons accused of crimes have been murdered, and all the officers of the law have been set at defiance. In other respects, the news from California and other parts of the Pacific coast is without remarkable features; the general prosperity continues in mining, agriculture, and trade; and such is the energy of the inhabitants of that city, that San Francisco has nearly recovered from the effects of the disastrous fires with which it has been visited. The arrival at New-York, on the 13th of August, of the steamer Prometheus, in 29 days from San Francisco, by the new route of Lake Nicaragua and the river San Juan, establishes the practicability and advantages of this route. The shortest trip ever made by the Panama route, it is said, was in 31 days. CUBA. The people of the United States have been kept in a state of excitement during a portion of the last month by reports of a revolution in the Island of Cuba. It is not yet possible to discover very clearly, what are the facts, but it is certain, that there were insurrectionary movements commencing about the 4th of July, in several parts of the Island; that they were badly planned, and inefficiently executed, and that the whole attempt, having caused the ruin of a vast number of persons, is at an end, and has resulted in the firmer establishment of the Spanish authority. BRITISH AMERICA. The Provincial Government persists in its refusal to concede the navigation of the St. Lawrence to foreign vessels till it obtains an equivalent from the United States. A motion against removing the Executive Government to Quebec, until after the expiration of four years from the time of its removal to Toronto, has been negatived the House of Commons by a vote of 48 to 12. It is believed that the removal will be decided on during the present season. MEXICO. The financial embarrassments of the government and people engross the general attention, and though it has been believed that a scheme of administration for augmenting the revenue would be successful, yet the country is so unsettled, and the dissatisfaction with the government so common, and the spirit of revolution so diffused, that only confusion and accelerated ruin can very reasonably be predicted of the country. Insurrectionary movements by parties having in view the recall and dictatorship of Santa Anna, have been put down in Chiapos and Tobasco. SOUTH AMERICA. In Buenos Ayres Rosas had been disturbed by the disaffection of General Urquiza. Rosas was making active preparations to oppose hostile attacks. The fortieth Anniversary of the Independence of Venezuela was celebrated at Caraccas with great enthusiasm. Venezuela remains perfectly tranquil. The insurrection in the Southern Provinces of New-Grenada has not yet been quelled, and the troops of the Government have suffered a defeat. EUROPE AND ASIA. We are compelled to abridge our notices of foreign events to a mere statement of dates. In ENGLAND the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill finally passed the House of Lords on the 28th of July, and receiving the royal signature became a law. Little other business of importance was accomplished before the prorogation of Parliament, which took place on the 8th of August. In FRANCE the motion for a revision of the constitution was rejected in the Assembly at Paris on Saturday, July 19. Out of 736 members, in the Assembly, 724 were present and voted--446 in favor of the revision and 278 against it; but as a majority of three quarters was required to carry the motion, it failed. On the 31st of July the Assembly elected a Committee of Permanence, consisting of twenty-five of the most dignified of its members, to sit during the vacation, which it was decided should last from the 10th of August to the 4th of November. From RUSSIA we have news of an important victory of the Turkomans over the Russian troops in the harbor of Astrabad, and the Russians have also suffered an extraordinary and most important defeat in the Caucasus. In ITALY every thing is calm, but the oppressions of the ecclesiastical government are more and more intolerable and outrageous. The Pope has returned from his residence at Castel Gandolfo to Rome. The rebellion in the southern provinces of CHINA appears to be still unchecked. _Recent Deaths._ The Rev. STEPHEN OLIN, D.D. president of the Wesleyan University, died at Middletown on the 16th of August. He was a native of Vermont, and was educated at Middlebury College. He entered the itinerant ministry in the Methodist Episcopal Church, in 1824, uniting himself with the South Carolina conference. His next two years were spent in Charleston. His labors proved too severe, and in 1826 he became what is called in the Methodist Church a supernumerary, with permission to travel for the benefit of his health. He was a local preacher for the same reason until 1828, but in 1829 resumed his itinerant labors. In 1832 he was again compelled to relinquish the labors the itinerancy imposed, and was appointed by the Georgia conference a professor in Franklin College. In 1833 he was elected president of Randolph College, Macon, Geo., which position he held until elected President of the Wesleyan University. In 1837 he travelled in Europe and the East, and on his return published an account of his Travels, in two volumes, which were very popular. * * * * * Baron de Ledeirir, the celebrated Russian botanist, died at Munich on the 23d of July, aged sixty-five. At the early age of nineteen he was appointed Professor of Botany in the University of Dorpat, and in 1820 he obtained the botanical chair in the University of St. Petersburg. In 1821 he was elected member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, and by order of the Emperor Alexander undertook to compile the _Russian Flora_. To collect materials for this great work he spent sixteen years in visiting different parts of the vast Empire of Russia, and went as far as the frontiers of China and into Siberia. In 1848 the state of his health obliged him to take up his residence at Munich. There he labored at his _Flora_, and had the satisfaction of completing it two months before his death. * * * * * Edward Quillinan, son-in-law to Wordsworth, and known in the select rather than in the wide world of letters, as a poet, a scholar, a contributor to more than one literary publication, and the author of one or two separate works, died in July. * * * * * Harriet Lee, the celebrated writer of the "Canterbury Tales," was the youngest sister of Sophia Lee, the author of _The Recess_, and of many popular dramas and novels. These ladies were daughters of John Lee, who had been bred to the law, but became an actor of much repute at Covent Garden Theatre, and ended his life as manager of the Bath Theatre. Sophia Lee, the elder daughter, who was born more than one hundred years ago (her sister Harriet, the subject of this notice, being a few years her junior), produced, in 1780, a comedy, entitled, "The Chapter of Accidents," which was performed with considerable success. The profits enabled the two sisters to open a school at Bath, which they carried on for many years with high credit and prosperity. In 1782 Sophia Lee brought out her most popular novel, _The Recess_, which was followed by other tales, and by _Almayda, Queen of Grenada_, a tragedy, in which Mrs. Siddons acted. Soon after, Harriet Lee published the first five volumes of her _Canterbury Tales_. Two of the stories, _The Young Lady's Tale_, and the _The Clergyman's Tale_, were written by her sister Sophia; the rest by herself. One of these Canterbury Tales, by Harriet Lee, named _Kruitzner_, became afterwards famous for having formed the subject and the plot of Byron's gloomy tragedy of _Werner_. Harriet Lee's other principal works were the _Error of Innocence_, a novel; the _Mysterious Marriage_, a play; _Clara Lennox_, a novel; and a _New Peerage_, begun in 1787. The last days of the sisters were passed near Bristol, where Sophia died in 1824, and Harriet on the first of August, 1851. * * * * * Dr. Julius, the author of an able work on the Prisons and Criminal Law in the United States, died about the end of July, in London. Dr. Julius was editor of the Berlin _Zeitungshalle_ during the revolution of 1848, and was greatly respected for his talents and courage. Kinkel pronounced a touching _oraison funebre_ over his grave. * * * * * Rev Azariah Smith, M.D., missionary of A.B.C.F.M. to the Armenians, died at Aintab, Syria, in the early part of June, in the 35th year of his age. * * * * * General Henry A. S. Dearborn, of Roxbury, died suddenly at Portland, Me., on the twenty-ninth of July. He was a native of New-Hampshire, and was born March 3d, 1783, and removed with his father to the county of Kennebec in Maine in 1784. His father having been twice elected to Congress from the Kennebec district, prior to 1801, and on the accession of Mr. Jefferson to the Presidency, appointed Secretary of War, his son Henry was taken to Washington, and educated at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. In 1806 he established himself in the profession of law, in which he continued but few years, the excitements of public life having more attractions for him than the quiet pursuit of that profession. He took a prominent part in the politics, of the country, filled many important public stations, among which was the collectorship of Boston, in which he succeeded his father in 1812, and remained many years. He also distinguished himself in literature, and by efforts for the promotion of public improvements. He was a member of the Convention of Massachusetts for revising the constitution of that state, in 1821, a member of the Governor's Council in 1831, member of Congress in 1832, Adjutant-General of Massachusetts in 1835, and at the time of his death Mayor of Roxbury. He was a man of fine manners, cultivated mind, and liberal views. While he held the office of Collector of Boston, he improved the favorable opportunity to collect statistics relative to the commerce of the country, and particularly that to countries connected with the Mediterranean, which he embodied in a valuable work, entitled _The Commerce and Navigation of the Black Sea_, in three volumes octavo. In 1839 he published a series of letters _To the Secretary of the State of Massachusetts, on the Internal Improvements and the Commerce of the West_, containing extremely valuable information on those subjects. He recently published a life of the _Apostle Elliot_, to aid in the construction of a monument in Roxbury to the memory of that celebrated missionary, and among his other published writings is a _Life of Commodore Bainbridge_. He left in MS. a work on Architecture, another on Flowers, and an extended Memoir of his Father, embodying all his journal in his expedition through Maine to Canada, his imprisonment in Quebec, and a vast deal of other Revolutionary matter. He was constantly throwing off essays in various periodicals, to promote the interests of society. Among other claims upon public gratitude, was his untiring zeal in the cause of horticultural and agricultural improvements. Few did more than he to elevate this important branch of industry. As a politician he was most prominent for his connection with the Native American party, by which he was nominated for the Vice Presidency of the United States. * * * * * In another part of this magazine we have given a sketch of the late Dr. MOIR, from the pen of Mr. Gilfillan. The deceased physician and litterateur died at Dumfries, on the 6th of July, in the fifty-third year of his age, having left his home in Musselburg, near Edinburgh, to visit in Dumfries his friend, Mr. Aird. Of the poems of "Delta," Professor Wilson says: "Delicacy and grace characterize his happiest composition; some of them are beautiful, in a cheerful spirit that has only to look on nature to be happy, and others breathe to simplest and purest pathos." Similar praise was given him by Lord Jeffrey. We do not think so highly of his abilities. In verse, Dr. Moir had the fatal gift of facility, and he cultivated it at the ordinary penalty. His poetry is not made to survive him. He was a man, however, of varied accomplishments; and is the author, besides his considerable body of verse, of a prose narrative, _Mansie Wauch, Tailor of Dalkieth_, a very excellent book of _Outlines of the Ancient History of Medicine_, being a View of the Progress of the _Healing Art among the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Arabians_, and of _Sketches of the Poetical Literature of the past Half Century, in Six Lectures_, a work which has the sketchy character and incompleteness common to its class. The _Legend of Généviève, with other Tales and Poems_, and _Domestic Verses_, are the two poetical volumes of his which have been published in a collected form. * * * * * General Sir Roger H. Sheaffe, Bart., died on the 17th July, at Edinburgh, at the advanced age of 88 years. He entered the army in 1778. In 1798 he became a lieut. colonel, and the next year served in Holland. He served in the expedition to the Baltic in 1801 under Sir Hyde Parker and Lord Nelson. He also served in North America, and, in 1812, the Americans having invaded Upper Canada, at Queenston, when General Brock, commanding in the province, fell in an effort to oppose the enemy, they posted themselves on a woody height above Queenston. Major-General Sheaffe, upon whom the command devolved, assembled some regular troops and militia, with a few Indians, and on the same day attacked and completely defeated the Americans, their general delivering his sword to Major-General Sheaffe, and surrendering the surviving troops on the field of battle, their number far exceeding the assailants. For these brilliant services Sir Roger Sheaffe was created a baronet of the United Kingdom. * * * * * Louis Jacques Maude Daguerre, whose name is for ever associated with the photographic process, of which he was the discoverer, died on the tenth of July, in Paris, in the sixty-second year of his age. He was a man of extreme modesty and great personal worth, and was devoted to art. He was favorably known to the world before the announcement of his discovery of the Daguerreotype. His attempts to improve panoramic painting, and the production of dioramic effects, were crowned with the most eminent success. Among his pictures, which attracted much attention at the time of their exhibition were, The Midnight Mass, Land-slip in the Valley of Goldau, The Temple of Solomon, and The Cathedral of Sainte Marie de Montreal. In these the alternate effects of night and day, and storm and sunshine, were beautifully produced. To these effects of light were added others, from the decomposition of form, by means of which, for example, in The Midnight Mass, figures appeared where the spectators had just beheld seats, altars, &c., and again, as in The Valley of Goldau, in which rocks tumbling from the mountains replaced the prospect of a smiling valley. The methods adopted in these pictures were published at the same time with the process of the Daguerreotype, by order of the French Government, who awarded an annual pension of ten thousand francs to Daguerre and M. Niepce, jr., whose father had contributed towards the discovery of the Daguerreotype. Daguerre was led to experiments on chemical changes by solar radiations, with the hope of being able to apply the phenomena to the production of effects in his dioramic paintings. As the question of the part taken by him in the process to which he has given his name, has been discussed sometimes to his disadvantage, it appears important that his position should be correctly determined. In 1802, Wedgwood, of Etruria, the celebrated potter, made the first recorded experiments in photography; and these, with some additional ones by Sir Humphrey Davy, were published in the journals of the royal institution. In 1814, Mr. Joseph Nicephore Niepce was engaged in experiments to determine the possibility of fixing the images obtained in the camera obscura; but there does not appear any evidence of publication of any kind previously to 1827, when Niepce was in England. He there wrote several letters to Mr. Bauer, the microscopic observer, which are preserved and printed in Hunt's _Researches on Light_. He also sent specimens of results obtained to the Royal Society, and furnished some to the cabinets of the curious, a few of which are yet in existence. These were pictures on metallic plates covered with a fine film of resin. In 1824 Daguerre commenced his researches, starting at that point at which Wedgwood left the process. He soon abandoned the employment of the nitrate and chloride of silver, and proceeded with his inquiry, using plates of metal and glass to receive his sensitive coatings. In 1829 M. Vincent Chevalier brought Niepce and Daguerre together, when they entered into partnership to prosecute the subject in common. For a long time they appear to have used the resinous surfaces only, when the contrast between the resin and the metal plates not being sufficiently great to give a good picture, endeavors were made to blacken that part of the plate from which the resin was removed in the process of _heliography_ (sun-drawing), as it was most happily called. Amongst other materials, iodine was employed; and Daguerre certainly was the first to notice the property possessed by the iodine coating of changing under the influence of the sun's rays. The following letter from Niepce to Daguerre is on this subject: "81, LOUP DE VARENNES, June 23, 1831. "_Sir, and dear Partner_: I had long expected to hear from you with too much impatience not to receive and read with the greatest pleasure your letters of the tenth and twenty-first of last May. I shall confine myself in this reply to yours of the twenty-first, because, having been engaged ever since it reached me in your experiments on iodine, I hasten to communicate to you the results which I have obtained. I had given my attention to similar researches previous to our connection, but without hope of success, from the impossibility, or nearly so, in my opinion, of fixing in any durable manner the images received on iodine, even supposing the difficulty surmounted of replacing the lights and shadows in their natural order. My results in this respect have been entirely similar to those which the oxide of silver gave me; and promptitude of operation was the sole advantage which these substances appeared to offer. Nevertheless, last year, after you left this, I subjected iodine to new trials, but by a different mode of application. I informed you of the results, and your answer, not at all encouraging, decided me to carry these experiments no farther. It appears that you have since viewed the question under a less desperate aspect, and I do not hesitate to reply to the appeal which you have made. "J. N. NIEPCE." From this and other letters it is evident that Niepce had used iodine, and abandoned it on account of the difficulty of reversing the lights and shadows. Daguerre employed it also, and, as it appears, with far more promise of success than any obtained by M. Niepce. On the fifth of July, 1833, Niepce died; in 1837 Daguerre and Isodore Niepce, the son and heir of Nicephore Niepce, entered into a definite agreement; and in a letter written on the first November, 1837, to Daguerre, Isodore Niepce says, "What a difference, also, between the method which you employ and the one by which I toil on! While I require almost a whole day to make one design, you ask only four minutes! What an enormous advantage! It is so great, indeed, that no person, knowing both methods, would employ the old one." From this time it is established, that although both Niepce and Daguerre used iodine, the latter alone employed it with any degree of success, and the discovery of the use of mercurial vapor to produce the positive image clearly belongs to Daguerre. In January, 1839, the Daguerreotype pictures were first shown to the scientific and artistic public of Paris. The sensation they created was great, and the highest hopes of its utility were entertained. On the 15th June, M. Duchatel, Minister of the Interior, presented a bill to the Chamber of Deputies relative to the purchase of the process of M. Daguerre for fixing the images of the camera. A commission appointed by the Chamber, consisting of Arago, Etienne, Carl, Vatout, de Beaumont, Toursorer, Delessert (François), Combarel de Leyval, and Vitet, made their report on the third of July, and a special commission was appointed by the Chamber of Peers, composed of the following peers: Barons Athalin, Besson, Gay Lussac, the Marquis de Laplace, Vicomte Simeon, Baron Thenard, and the Comte de Noe, who reported favorably on the thirtieth July, 1839, and recommended unanimously that the "bill be adopted simply and without alteration." On the nineteenth of August the secret was for the first time publicly announced in the Institute by M. Arago, the English patent having been completed a few days before, in open defiance and contradiction of the statement of M. Duchatel to the Chamber of Deputies, who used these words, "Unfortunately for the authors of this beautiful discovery, it is impossible for them to bring their labor into the market, and thus indemnify themselves for the sacrifices incurred by so many attempts so long fruitless. This invention does not admit of being secured by patent." In conclusion, the Minister of the Interior said, "You will concur in a sentiment which has already awakened universal sympathy; you will never suffer us to leave to foreign nations the glory of endowing the world of science and of art with one of the most wonderful discoveries that honor our native land." Daguerre never did much towards the improvement of his process. The high degree of sensibility which has been attained has been due to the experiments of others. [Illustration: M. DAGUERRE.] Daguerre is said to have been always averse to sitting for his own picture, and there are but few photographs of him in existence. The one from which our engraving is copied was taken by Mr. Meade, of this city, and first appeared in the _Daguerrean Journal_, a monthly periodical conducted with marked ability by S. D. Humphrey and L. L. Hill, who are distinguished for their improvements upon Daguerre's process. We can refer to no more striking illustration of the advance of the beautiful art which the deceased discovered, than the existence of such a work, with more than two thousand subscribers among those who are occupied in the production of Daguerreotypes in this country. * * * * * The Rev. John Lingard, D. D., one of the most deservedly eminent scholars and writers of the Roman Catholic church in England, and one of the most distinguished historians of the time, died at Hornby, in Lancashire, on the 17th of July, at the advanced age of 81 years, and his remains were buried at Ushaw College, Durham, with which he was once officially connected. The deceased priest has left a reputation that will probably survive that of any of the persons of his sect who have been brought into notice by the recent agitations in England. His career as a controversial writer commenced while he was a young man, and was continued through a large portion of his laborious life. He was an unknown priest at Newcastle-on-Tyne, when, in 1804, he issued from the local press in that town his _History of the Anglo-Saxon Church_, a work which constituted the first and most efficient effort to attract popular attention to those ecclesiastical institutions of the Saxons, which are now familiar objects of study and speculation. In 1805 he published Catholic Loyalty Vindicated. The next year, the bishop of Durham, in a charge to his clergy, having attacked the Roman Catholics, Mr. Lingard answered him, in Remarks on a Charge. This brought on a sharp controversy, in which several persons of ability took part, and Mr. Lingard published a General Vindication of the Remarks, with Replies to the Reverend T. Le Mesurier, G. S. Faber, and others (1808). These two pamphlets were followed, on the same subject, by Documents to ascertain the Sentiments of British Catholics in former Ages (1812); a Review of certain Anti-Catholic Publications (1813); and Strictures on Doctor Marsh's Comparative View of the Churches of England and Rome (1815). In the last of these publications, Mr. Lingard asserted that the church of England was modern, compared with that of Rome; an assertion which so much irritated the late Doctor Kipling, that he was absurd enough to threaten the author with a process in Westminster-hall, if he did not prove the truth of what he had stated. In 1809 Mr. Lingard published the Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church in an enlarged edition. Doctor Lingard is principally known in foreign countries as the author of a History of England till the Revolution of 1688, of which ten editions have appeared and which has been translated into several languages. Although the object of this work is the vindication of the Roman Catholic church and clergy in England from the alleged misrepresentations of Protestant writers, yet it is allowed to be written in a candid and dispassionate tone. As a historian, the author is acute and perspicuous, judicious in the selection and arrangement of his materials, and clear and interesting in his narrative. He wrote from original sources, which he examined with care and diligence, and on many points gave new and more correct views of manners, events and characters. In 1826, he published a Vindication, &c., in reply to two articles in the Edinburgh Review (Nos. 83 and 87, written by Dr. Allen), charging him with inaccuracy and misrepresentation. A more favorable notice of the History appeared in No. 105 of the same Review. The editions of his History, an English version of the Gospels, and other learned publications, in pamphlet form, consumed the time unoccupied by religious duty, or by converse with the neighbors and friends, who continually courted his society. For the last forty years Dr. Lingard held the small and retired preferment belonging to the Roman Catholic Church in the village of Hornby, and there the historian resided, near to Hornby Castle, the seat of his attached and constant friend, Mr. Pudsey Dawson. After a lingering illness, he closed in this retirement his mortal career. Dr. Lingard's residence was a small unpretending building, with three windows, connected with a little chapel built by himself, where, till last autumn, he regularly officiated. A door of communication opened into it from his house, the lower window of which lighted the room where he usually sat, and where he wrote the History of England. His garden consisted of a long strip, taken off a small grass field of about half an acre in extent. Here he passed much of his time, in the indulgence of his taste for rural occupations. The private virtues of Dr. Lingard were as remarkable as his public talents. His whole habits of life were charmingly simple; his nature was kind, his disposition most affectionate. Always they were agreeable and profitable hours passed in his society, his mind was so richly stored, his knowledge so varied, his fund of anecdote so inexhaustible: a pleasantry and good humor pervaded his conversation at all times. He never sought controversy in visits among his friends. When questioned on the matters of his own faith, he would speak freely; those warmly attached to the Established Church or other creeds, widely differing from him in religious principles, never felt restraint in his society, or anticipated any sharpness or acrimony. In personal appearance he was rather above the middle height, and of slender frame; and though he had reached to full four-score years, his dark brown hair was but slightly tinged with gray: his small dark twinkling eye was singularly expressive, and his countenance bright and animated. The annexed portrait is from the miniature taken in 1849, by Mr. Scaife, and engraved for the last edition of the History of England. It has been reported, though on doubtful authority, that very high positions in the Roman Catholic Church were more than once offered to Dr. Lingard. There is, it is believed, little or no truth in this; but those who knew his simple habits, and his love of retirement, would not be surprised at his preferring, even to the purple, his peaceful residence in the loveliest locality of the loveliest of England's northern valleys. [Illustration: REV. JOHN LINGARD, D. D.] * * * * * [Illustration: MARSHAL SEBASTIANI.] Horace François della Porta Sebastiana, Marshal of France, and for some time Minister of Foreign Affairs under Louis Phillippe, died in Paris on the 14th of July. He was born in Corsica, in 1775, and having entered the French service in 1792, rose rapidly through the different ranks to that of colonel. Colonel Sebastiani took an active part in the revolution of the 18th Brumaire, and, in 1802, the First Consul sent him on a mission to the Levant. After having brought about a reconciliation of the differences between the court of Sweden and the regency of Tripoli, and compelled the Pacha to acknowledge the Italian republic and salute its flag, he repaired to Alexandria, and had an interview with General Stewart, in order to insist on the terms of the treaty of Amiens for the evacuation of Alexandria. To this demand the English general replied that he had not received any orders from his court. M. Sebastiani went therefore to Cairo, and in conferences with the pacha offered to open a communication with the beys; but the offer was not accepted, the orders of the Porte being to make it a war of extermination. He afterwards went to St. Jean d'Acre, with the object of settling with the pacha a treaty of commerce, and found him pacifically inclined. In November he set out on his return to France, having accomplished all the objects of his mission. He was, after his arrival, employed on various services, and, among the rest in a diplomatic mission to Germany. He distinguished himself in the campaign of 1804, was wounded at the battle of Austerlitz, and obtained the rank of general of division. Napoleon entertained a high opinion of his diplomatic talents, and named him, in 1806, ambassador to the Ottoman Porte--a mission which he filled for some years, with much ability. He established at Constantinople a printing-office for the Turkish and Arabic languages, and by this means contributed not a little to the French influence in that country. The English having forced the passage of the Dardanelles, and menaced Constantinople, Sebastiani immediately organized a plan of defence, marked out the batteries, and prepared for the most vigorous resistance; but the inhabitants broke out into insurrection, and he was obliged to depart for France. He was subsequently sent to Spain, where he distinguished himself on numerous occasions; and he served in the Russian-German war under Murat. July 15, 1812, he was surprised by the Russians at Drissa, but he recovered his character by his exertions at the battle of Borodino. On the invasion of France, he had a command in Champagne, and defended Chalons. April 10, M. Sebastiani sent to M. Talleyrand his adhesion to the provisional government, and, June 1, received from the king the cross of St. Louis. On the return of Napoleon, in 1815, he was elected deputy of the lower chamber, and after the second abdication of Napoleon was one of the commissioners to treat for peace with the allies. In 1819 he was elected a member of the Chamber of Deputies, by the island of Corsica. His lucid and manly eloquence was employed to throw light over all the great questions of finance, war, foreign politics, and domestic administration, and he evinced at once the talents of an orator and the knowledge of a statesman. After the revolution of 1830, General Sebastiani received the port-folio of the marine in the Guizot ministry, and in November that of foreign affairs under Laffitte, which he retained under Périer. He received the baton of Marshal from Louis Phillippe, and had retired from active political life, when, in 1847, the assassination of his daughter, the Duchess de Praslin, by her husband, affected him so much that he never recovered from the blow. Ladies' Midsummer Fashions. [Illustration] There are few changes to notice in the modes de Paris. Every thing at this season is, of course, made in an airy style, and of very light materiel. We copy two of the most graceful costumes in the recent books of patterns. I. _Morning Dress_ of white muslin, with flounces, ornamented with needlework. Many dresses intended for négligé morning costume in the country consists of a skirt of checkered or striped silk, printed muslin, or some other light material. For morning négligé a variety of very pretty caps have appeared; they are of worked muslin, and are trimmed with ribbon and fine Valenciennes. II. _Visiting Dress_ of glace or rich silk, with three flounces, embroidered. Mantelet of a splendid black lace, lined with pink silk, and richly trimmed with a deep fall of black lace, which also encircles the open sleeve. Bonnets of white _paille de riz_, decorated in the interior with red and white flounces. _Coiffures_ are extremely simple in form. A wreath of ivy leaves intermixed with small clusters of jewelry, and attached at the back with a long lappet of gold lace, fastened by noeuds of pearls and emeralds, has a fine effect. Head-dresses of blonde are extremely becoming, forming three points. These are fashionable for concerts, &c. They are placed backward on the head, the points at the side being attached with a profusion of flowers, the centre one falling over the back comb. Another style is of a lappet of white blonde, and another of plain pink tulle; the lappet of blonde being fastened just over the shoulder, and a little backward, with a bunch of grapes--the pink one, which is very wide, covering the bosom like a veil, and drooping as low as the waist. Fashionable colors are of all light mixtures, such as gray, lilac, fawn, mauve, green, and peach color--white, pink, and blue predominating for evening toilette. * * * * * [Illustration: JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. From a Daguerreotype by Brady, taken for the International. 1851] [Illustration: OTSEGO HALL. Residence of MR. COOPER. Cooperstown. From a drawing by MISS COOPER.] 
33965	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections.) THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE _Of Literature, Art, and Science._ Vol. III. NEW-YORK, JULY 1, 1851. No. IV. FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. [Illustration] The author of _Fanny_, _Burns_, _Marco Bozzaris_, etc., was born at Guilford in Connecticut, in August, 1795, and in his eighteenth year removed to the city of New-York. He evinced a taste for poetry and wrote verses at a very early period; but the oldest of his effusions I have seen are those under the signatures of "Croaker," and "Croaker & Co.," published in the _New-York Evening Post_, in 1819. In the production of these pleasant satires he was associated with Doctor DRAKE, author of the _Culprit Fay_, a man of brilliant wit and delicate fancy, with whom he was long intimate. DRAKE died in 1820, and his friend soon after wrote for the _New-York Review_, then edited by BRYANT, the lines to his memory, beginning-- "Green be the turf above thee, Friend of my better days, None knew thee but to love thee, Nor named thee but to praise." Near the close of 1819, Halleck published Fanny, his longest poem, which was written and printed in three weeks; in 1827 a small volume, containing Alnwick Castle, Marco Bozzaris, and a few other pieces, which had previously appeared in various miscellanies; and in 1836, an edition of all his serious and more finished compositions. The last and most complete edition of his works appeared two years ago in a splendid volume from the press of the Appletons. It was Lord Byron's opinion that a poet is always to be ranked according to his execution, and not according to his branch of the art. "The poet who executes best," said he, "is the highest, whatever his department, and will ever be so rated in the world's esteem." We have no doubt of the justness of that remark; it is the only principle from which sound criticism can proceed, and upon this basis the reputations of the past have been made up. Considered in this light, Mr. Halleck must be pronounced not merely one of the chief ornaments of new literature, but one of the great masters in a language, classical and immortal, for the productions of genius which have illustrated and enlarged its capacities. There is in his compositions an essential pervading grace, a natural brilliancy of wit, a freedom yet refinement of sentiment, a sparkling flow of fancy, and a power of personification, combined with such high and careful finish, and such exquisite nicety of taste, that the larger part of them must be pronounced models almost faultless in the classes to which they belong. They appear to me to show a genuine insight into the principles of art, and a fine use of its resources: and after all that has been said and written about nature, strength, and originality, the true secret of fame, the real magic of genius is not force, not passion, not novelty, but art. Look all through Milton; look at the best passages of Shakspeare; look at the monuments, "all Greek and glorious," which have come down to us from ancient times, what strikes us principally, and it might almost be said only, is the wonderfully artificial character of the composition; it is the principle of _their_ immortality, and without it no poem can be long-lived. It may be easy to acquire popularity, and easy to display art in writing, but he who obtains popularity by the means and employment of careful, elaborate art, may be confident that his reputation is fixed upon a sure basis. This--for his careless playing with the muse, by which one time he kept the town alive, is scarcely remembered now--this, it seems to me, Mr. Halleck has done; Mr. Halleck, Mr. Bryant, and Mr. Poe, have done above all our authors. THE BENEVOLENT INSTITUTIONS OF NEW-YORK. No city in the world is more justly entitled to consideration for active, judicious, and liberal benevolence, than New-York, though it must be confessed that in some respects others may make a more splendid display of the machinery of philanthropy, and even seem in the subscriptions made every year to particular charities to be more liberal. This is easily explained, by the fact that, while the people of New-York are behind none in thrift and virtue, the great commercial capital has nevertheless more than twice as much pauperism and crime, from emigration and importation, as any other city in the world. Foreigners who come here of their own will, foreigners who pay their own passages to our country, are always welcome; but those who are banished from their native places for crime, or deported for idleness, imbecility, or any cause that renders them a burthen to the public, should be shut out from our ports by some more efficient means than have yet been devised for the purpose. This class alone demands of the organized and individual benevolence of New-York a larger amount of money every year than is paid for the relief of human wretchedness in any other city. The benevolent institutions of New-York are remarkable for their number, so that in no department does an establishment indicate the attention given to the particular necessities to which it is devoted; and not only do the Quakers and the Jews, as in other places, take care of their own poor, but almost every church, no matter of what denomination, is here a well organized society for the relief of the unfortunate among its members, and to a degree, within the sphere of its influence. Where wealth has been acquired by its possessor, there is apt to be a generous consideration for the less fortunate, and no city had ever so many of the philanthropic merchants, of whom the late Samuel Ward was a type, who are as judicious as they are liberal in shielding the oppressed, strengthening the weak, and guiding the unwary, in pointing out ways and furnishing means to the young who seem born to the inheritance of degradation, and in saving others from sufferings caused by improvidence or inevitable misfortune. We propose no account of the humane societies of New-York, but only a brief mention of some few of those whose edifices are most likely to arrest the attention of strangers, as from several directions they approach the city. The Institution for the Blind is in the square bounded by Eighth and Ninth Avenues and by Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth Streets, and is built of marble. The society was founded by Mr. Samuel Wood, aided largely by Dr. Samuel Ackerley, and was incorporated in 1831. In the spring of the following year the managers reported that they had made arrangements for instructing two or three blind children, "by way of experiment," and from that period the increase of its action and resources has been constant. Pupils are received for one hundred and thirty dollars a year, and the State has made provision for the maintenance at the institution of one hundred and twenty-eight indigent blind persons, so that it is always nearly full. The system of instruction includes the common English studies, with philosophy and the higher mathematics, mechanics, vocal and instrumental music, and, when desired, such trades as the blind can advantageously practise. The library contains more than seven hundred volumes in raised letters, besides a considerable collection printed in ink. The occasional exhibitions of the pupils have excited much attention, and the institution may be regarded as altogether one of the most successful of its kind in the world. [Illustration: THE INSTITUTION FOR THE BLIND.] In 1797 the celebrated Isabella Graham founded the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children, and in the spring of 1806, Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, the widow of the great statesman, and Mrs. Bethune, a daughter of Mrs. Graham and the mother of the Rev. Dr. Bethune, with several associates, established, as a branch of that institution, the Orphan Asylum of the City of New-York, which was incorporated in 1807. Its first edifice was in Bank-street, but the enlargement of its activity and resources in 1836 led to the purchase of the ample and beautiful grounds near Eightieth-street, five miles from the City Hall, from which the edifice described in the engraving looks down on the Hudson, and forms one of the most picturesque views which greet the traveller who approaches the city by the river from the north. The eminent women whom we have mentioned continue, after nearly half a century, to be active in its management. [Illustration: THE ORPHAN ASYLUM.] There is also a Protestant Half-Orphan Asylum in Sixth Avenue, a Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, conducted by Sisters of Charity, in Mott-street, a Roman Catholic Half-Orphan Asylum in Eleventh-street, a very large Colored Orphan Asylum in Twelfth-street, and several other establishments of the same description, supported by public or private charity, in different parts of the city. New-York is second only to Philadelphia in the liberality of its provision for orphan children: the college founded by Stephen Girard places the latter city in this respect before any other in the world. [Illustration: NEW-YORK INSTITUTION FOR THE DEAF AND DUMB.] The Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb was incorporated in 1817, the first pupils were received in the following year, and in 1827 the foundation was laid for the edifice now occupied by the institution in Fiftieth street, near Fourth Avenue. Since 1831, the President, Harvey P. Peet, LL.D. has had the chief direction of its affairs, and its income, the number of its inmates, and its good reputation, have rapidly increased. The New-York Hospital in Broadway, the Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane, the Marine Hospital, the Seamen's Retreat, the Sailors' Snug Harbor, and the numerous establishments (several of which have large and splendid edifices) under the control of the municipal authorities, we may describe at length hereafter. The illustrations of this article evince the liberal style as well as the extent of the institutions which the position of New-York has rendered it necessary for her citizens to establish and support. [Illustration: LUNATIC ASYLUM, BLACKWELL'S ISLAND.] ADVENTURES AND OBSERVATIONS IN NICARAGUA. We have already announced in these pages that Mr. SQUIER, who was lately representative of the United States in Nicaragua, had in preparation for the press an account of his residence in that interesting country, and expressed an opinion that his work would surpass in interest and value the entire library of English and French publications on the subject. An examination of some of the sheets justifies our expectations; Mr. Squier must hereafter be ranked among the most successful travel-writers as well as antiquaries of the time; he knows what to observe and how to observe, and his relations with the Nicaraguans were such that no traveller had ever better opportunities for the acquisition of facts or the formation of judgments. His work will soon be published in a profusely illustrated octavo by Mr. Putnam. A pleasant specimen of the author's style is afforded by the following sketch of an evening ride on the banks of the lake of Granada, and of the sigñoras of that metropolis. "After a pleasant interview of half an hour we bade Don Jose "_buena tarde_," and galloped down to the shores of the lake, just as the sun was setting, throwing the whole beach in the shade, while the fairy "Corales" were swimming in the evening light. The shore was ten-fold more animated than when we landed the day previously; men on horseback, women on foot, sailors, fishermen, idlers, children, and a swarm of water-carriers, mingling together, gave life to the scene; while boats and graceful canoes drawn up on the beach, barges rocking at their anchors outside, the grim old fort frowning above, and the green border of trees, with bars of sunlight streaming between them, all contributed to heighten and give effect to the picture. We rode up the glacis of the old castle, through its broken archway, into its elevated area, and looked out beyond the broad and beautiful lake, upon the distant shores of Chontales, with its earthquake-river, hills, and rugged volcanic craters. Their rough features were brought out sharply and distinctly in the slanting light which gilded the western slope of the gigantic volcano of Momobacho, while its eastern declivity slept in purple shadow. We were absorbed in contemplating, one by one, these varied beauties, when the bells of the city struck the hour of the "oracion." In an instant every voice was hushed, the horseman reined in his steed, the rope dropped from the hands of the sailor, the sentinel on the fort stopped short in his round; even the water-jar was left half filled, every head was uncovered, and every lip moved in prayer. The merry waves seemed to break more gently on the shore in harmony with the vibrations of the distant bells, while the subdued hum of reverential voices filled the pauses between. There was something almost magical in this sudden hush of the multitude, and its apparent entire absorption in its devotions, which could not fail deeply to impress the stranger witnessing it for the first time. "No sooner, however, had the bells ceased to toll and struck up the concluding joyful chime, than the crowd on the shore resumed its life and gayety, while we put spurs to our horses and darted through their midst on our return to the city. The commandant and his companions would only leave me at my door, where we were saluted by our host with, "Saved your distance, gentlemen, dinner's ready!" "An evening visit to the Señorita Teresa, finished our first entire day in Granada. This young lady had been educated in the United States, spoke English very well, and was withal a proficient in music--accomplishments which we never before learned to estimate at their true value. It was worth something to hear well executed passages from familiar operas, amidst tangible and not painted orange trees and palms, and in an atmosphere really loaded with tropical perfumes, instead of the odors of oil-pots and gas lights. Eight o'clock was the signal for general withdrawal from the streets, for then commenced the reign of the military police, and the city became at once still and quiet. The occasional barking of a dog, the tinkling of a distant guitar, the soughing of the evening wind amongst the trees of the courtyard, the measured tread and graduated "alertas!" of the sentinels, were the only interruptions to the almost sepulchral silence. While returning to our quarters we were startled by the "Quien vive?" of the sentinel, uttered in a tone absolutely ferocious, and as these fellows rarely parleyed long, we answered with all expedition, "La Patria," which was followed on the instant by "Que gente?" "Americanos del Norte." This was enough--these we found were magic words which opened every heart and every door in all Nicaragua. They never failed us. We felt proud to know that no such charm was attached to "Ingleses," "Alemanes", or "Franceses." "The day following, in accordance with the "costumbres del pais," the customs of the country, we returned the visits of the preceding day, and began to see more of the domestic and social life of the citizens of Granada. We found all of the residences comfortable, and many elegant, governed by mistresses simple, but graceful and confiding in their manners. They were frank in their conversation and inquired with the utmost _naïveté_ whether I was married or intended to be, and if the ladies of El Norte would probably visit Granada, when the "Vapores grandes," the great steamers came to run to San Juan, and the "Vaporcitas" steameretts, to ply on the lake and river. They had heard of a Mr. Estevens (their nearest approach to Stephens), who had written a book about their "pobre pais," their poor country, and were anxious to know what he had said of them, and whether our people really regarded them as "esclavos y brutes sin verguenza," slaves and brutes without shame, as the abominable English (los malditos Ingleses) had represented them. They were also very anxious to know whether the party of Californians which had passed through, were "gente commun," common people, or "caballeros," gentlemen, upon which point, however, we were diplomatically evasive, for there was more in the inquiry than we chose to notice. Our lady had heard that I was a great antiquarian, and, anticipatory to my visit, had got together a most incongruous collection of curiosities, from "vasos antiguos," fragments of pottery, and stone hatchets, down to an extraordinary pair of horn spectacles and a preposterously distorted hog's hoof,--all of which she insisted on sending to my quarters, which she did, with some rare birds, and a plate of dulces! At every house we found a table spread with wines and sweetmeats, and bearing a silver brazier filled with burning coals, for the greater convenience of lighting cigars. I excited much surprise by declining to smoke, on the ground that I had never done so; but the ladies insisted on my taking a "cigarita," which they said wouldn't injure a new-born babe, and paid me the compliment of lighting it with their own fair lips, after which it would have been rank treason to etiquette, and would have ruined my reputation for gallantry, had I refused. I at first endeavored to shirk the responsibility of smoking by thrusting them into my vest pocket, but found that as soon as one disappeared, another was presented, so I was obliged "to face the music" in the end. In every sala we found a large hammock suspended from the walls, which was invariably tendered to the visitor, even when there were easy chairs and sofas in the room. This is the seat of honor. [Illustration: RESIDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES CHARGE D'AFFAIRES, SAN JUAN DE NICARAGUA.] "The women of pure Spanish stock are very fair, and have the _embonpoint_ which characterizes the sex under the tropics. Their dress, except in a few instances where the stiff costume of our own country had been adopted, was exceedingly loose and flowing, leaving the neck and arms exposed. The entire dress was often pure white, but generally the skirt, or _nagua_, was of some flowered stuff, in which case the _guipil_ (_anglice_ vandyke) was white, heavily trimmed with lace. Satin slippers, a red or purple sash wound loosely round the waist, and a rosary sustaining a little golden cross, with a narrow golden band, or a string of pearls extending around the forehead and binding the hair, which often fell in luxuriant waves upon their shoulders, completed a costume as novel as it was graceful and picturesque. To all this add the superior attractions of an oval face, regular features, large and lustrous black eyes, small mouth, pearly white teeth, and tiny hands and feet, and withal a low but clear voice, and the reader has a picture of a Central American lady of pure stock. A large number of the women have, however, an infusion of other families and races, from the Saracen to the Indian and the Negro, in every degree of intermixture. And as tastes differ, so may opinions as to whether the tinge of brown, through which the blood glows with a peach-like bloom, in the complexion of the girl who may trace her lineage to the Caziques upon one side, and the haughty grandees of Andalusia and Seville on the other, superadded, as it usually is, to a greater lightness of figure and animation of face,--whether this is not a more real beauty than that of the fair and more languid Señora, whose white and almost transparent skin bespeaks a purer ancestry. Nor is the Indian girl, with her full, lithe figure, long, glossy hair, quick and mischievous eyes, who walks erect as a grenadier beneath her heavy water-jar, and salutes you in a musical, impudent voice, as you pass--nor is the Indian girl to be overlooked in the novel contrasts which the "bello sexo" affords in this glorious land of the sun." Some of the pleasantest incidents related in the book are those which befell the author in his dealings with the Indians, in prosecuting his archæological investigations. These Indians are all passionate admirers of the United States, and of the "hijos de Washington"--the sons of Washington. Mr. Squier was waited upon officially by the authorities of several of the Indian pueblos or towns, and among them by the municipality of the Indian pueblo of Subtiaba, headed by a great friend of our author, Don Simon Roque, first alcalde, who presented him with an address in the aboriginal language, of which the following is a literal translation: "SIR: The municipality of the Pueblo of Subtiaba, of which we are members, entertain the highest enthusiasm in view of the relations which your arrival induces us to believe will speedily be established between Nicaragua and the United States, the greatest and most glorious republic beneath the sun. We rejoice in the depths of our hearts that a man like yourself has been chosen to convey to us the assurances of future prosperity, in the name of the sons of Washington; and we trust in the Almighty, that the flag of the United States may soon become the shield of Nicaragua on land and sea. Convey our sincerest thanks for their sympathy to the great people which you represent, and give to your generous government the assurances of that deep gratitude which we feel but cannot express. We beg of you, sir, to accept this humble evidence of the cordial sentiments which we entertain both for you, your countrymen, and your Government, and which are equally shared by the people which we represent JOSE DE LA CRUZ GARCIAS, (Signed) SIMON ROQUE, FRANCISCO LUIS AUTAN." Our author returned the visit, and gives us the following account of his reception: "The reader may be assured that I did not forget my promise to the municipality of Subtiaba. A day was shortly afterwards fixed for my visit, and I was received with great ceremony at the cabildo or council chamber, where I found collected all the old men who could assist me in forming a vocabulary of the ancient language, which I had casually expressed a desire to procure. It was with difficulty that we could effect an entrance, for a half-holiday had been given to the boys of all the schools, in honor of the occasion, and they literally swarmed around the building. We were finally ushered into an inner room, where the archives of the municipality were preserved. Upon one side was a large chest of heavy wood, with massive locks, which had anciently been the strong box or treasury. A shadow fell over Simon's animated face as he pointed it out to me, and said that he could remember the time when it was filled with "duros," hard dollars, and when, at a single stroke of the alarm bell, two thousand armed men could be gathered in the plaza of Subtiaba. But those days were passed, and the municipality now scarcely retained a shadow of its former greatness. Under the crown it had earned the title 'leal y fiel' (loyal and true), and in reward of its fidelity it had received a grant of all the lands intervening between it and the ocean, to hold them in perpetuity for the benefit of its citizens. And Simon showed me the royal letters, signed "Yo, el Rey" (I, the King), which the imperial emperor had thought it not derogatory to their dignity to address to his predecessors in office, and notwithstanding his ardent republicanism, I thought Simon looked at them with something of regret. I inquired for manuscripts which might throw some light upon the early history of the country, but found only musty records of no interest or value. [Illustration: INDIAN HOUSE, SUBTIABA, NICARAGUA.] "My attempts to fill out the blank vocabulary with which I was provided created a great deal of merriment. I enjoyed it quite as much as any of them, for nothing could be more amusing than the discussions between the old men in respect to certain doubtful words and phrases. They sometimes quite forgot my presence, and rated each other soundly as ignoramuses, whereat Simon was greatly scandalized, and threatened to put them all in the stocks as "hombres sin verguenza" (men destitute of shame). 'Ah!' said he, 'these old sinners give me more trouble than the young ones'--a remark which created great mirth amongst the outsiders, and especially amongst the young vagabonds who clung like monkeys to the window bars. The group of swarthy, earnest faces, gathered round the little table, upon which was heaped a confused mass of ancient, time-stained papers, would have furnished a study for a painter. It was quite dark when I had concluded my inquiries, but I was not permitted to leave without listening to a little poem, 'Una Decima,' written by one of the school-masters, who read it to me by the light of a huge wax candle, borrowed, I am sure, from the church for the occasion. My modesty forbids my attempting a translation, and so I compromise matters by submitting the original: DECIMA. Nicaragua, ve harta cuando Cesara vuestro desvelo, Ya levantara el vuelo Hermoso, alegre, y triunfante; Al mismo tiempo mirando De este personage el porte, Y mas sera cuando corte Todos los gradeciamentos: Diremos todos contentos Viva el Gobierno del Norte. D. S. "As I mounted my horse, Don Simon led off with three cheers for 'El Ministro del Norte,' and followed it with three more for 'El Amigo de los Indios' (the friend of the Indians), all of which was afterwards paraded by a dingy little Anglo-servile paper published in Costa Rica, as evidence that I was tampering with the Indians, and exciting them to undertake the utter destruction of the white population!" THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. _A History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Wars of the North American Tribes against the English Colonies after the Conquest of Canada_, is the title of a new work to be published during the summer by Francis Parkman, Jr. of Boston. Mr. Parkman, in introducing himself to the public two or three years since, by a volume of sketches of western travel, _The Oregon Trail_, betrayed not alone his strong natural fancy for the wild life of the Indian, but a sensitive and sagacious eye for character and scenery, and a style of nervous simplicity which in the present undertaking have more perfect play in a much wider and worthier sphere. The narrative proceeds clearly, and with simple grace. Many figures, familiar by name, but by name only, pass sharply defined before the reader's eye. The author has not lost in the lore of the historian the feeling of the poet, but he does not compromise the dignity of history, nor mistake its purpose, by indulging too much in luxuriance of picturesque description. We congratulate Mr. Parkman that his tastes have led him to the exploration of a subject in which we are all so interested, a subject whose historical romance has never been before attempted. The consultation of all the authorities, personal observation, and the want of any unfair gilding of events or character, fix the reader's faith in the severe integrity and justice of the author's results. This history will materially mitigate the complaint that American literature has so little honored the singular charm of the aboriginal American race, and we cannot hesitate to predict for it a position of authority to the student and of honor to the author, which the works of few men so young in the literary career have attained. Little estimate of its value, or of the value of any history, can be formed from extracts, but the following will indicate the freshness and poetic simplicity of the style, the author's exact eye for characteristic life and scenery, and just appreciation of historical truth and character. Here is a glance at the life of the Iroquois: "The life of the Iroquois, though void of those multiplying phases which vary the routine of civilized existence, was one of sharp excitement and sudden contrast. The chase, the war-path, the dance, the festival, the game of hazard, the race of political ambition, all had their votaries. When the assembled sachems had resolved on war against some foreign tribe, and when, from their great council-house of bark, in the Valley of Onondaga, their messengers had gone forth to invite the warriors to arms, then from east to west, through the farthest bounds of the confederacy, a thousand warlike hearts caught up the summons with glad alacrity. With fasting and praying, and consulting dreams and omens, with invoking the war-god, and dancing the frantic war-dance, the warriors sought to insure the triumph of their arms; and, these strange rites concluded, they began their stealthy progress, full of confidence, through the devious pathways of the forest. For days and weeks, in anxious expectation, the villagers await the result. And now, as evening closes, a shrill wild cry, pealing from afar, over the darkening forest, proclaims the return of the victorious warriors. The village is alive with sudden commotion; and snatching sticks and stones, knives and hatchets, men, women, and children, yelling like fiends let loose, swarm out of the narrow portal, to visit upon the miserable captives a foretaste of the deadlier torments in store for them. And now, the black arches of the forest glow with the fires of death; and with brandished torch and firebrand the frenzied multitude close around their victim. The pen shrinks to write, the heart sickens to conceive, the fierceness of his agony; yet still, amid the din of his tormentors, rises his clear voice of scorn and defiance. The work is done; the blackened trunk is flung to the dogs, and, with clamorous shouts and hootings, the murderers seek to drive away the spirit of their victim. "The Iroquois reckoned these barbarities among their most exquisite enjoyments; and yet they had other sources of pleasure, which made up in frequency and in innocence all that they lacked in intensity. Each passing season had its feasts and dances, often mingling religion with social pastime. The young had their frolics and merry-makings; and the old had their no less frequent councils, where conversation and laughter alternated with grave deliberations for the public weal. There were also stated periods marked by the recurrence of momentous ceremonies, in which the whole community took part--the mystic sacrifice of the dogs, the wild orgies of the dream feast, and the loathsome festival of the exhumation of the dead. Yet, in the intervals of war and hunting, these multiform occupations would often fail; and, while the women were toiling in the cornfields, the lazy warriors vainly sought relief from the scanty resources of their own minds, and beguiled the hours with smoking or sleeping, with gambling or gallantry." A glimpse of Indian winter life: "But when winter descends upon the north, sealing up the fountains, fettering the streams, and turning the green-robed forests to shivering nakedness, then, bearing their frail dwellings on their backs, the Ojibwa family wander forth into the wilderness, cheered only, on their dreary track, by the whistling of the north wind, and the hungry howl of wolves. By the banks of some frozen stream, women and children, men and dogs, lie crouched together around the fire. They spread their benumbed fingers over the embers, while the wind shrieks through the fir-trees like the gale through the rigging of a frigate, and the narrow concave of the wigwam sparkles with the frostwork of their congealed breath. In vain they beat the magic drum, and call upon their guardian manitoes;--the wary moose keeps aloof, the bear lies close in his hollow tree, and famine stares them in the face. And now the hunter can fight no more against the nipping cold and blinding sleet. Stiff and stark, with haggard cheek and shrivelled lip, he lies among the snow drifts; till, with tooth and claw, the famished wildcat strives in vain to pierce the frigid marble of his limbs. Such grim schooling is thrown away on the incorrigible mind of the northern Algonquin. He lives in misery, as his fathers lived before him. Still, in the brief hour of plenty he forgets the season of want; and still the sleet and the snow descend upon his houseless head." Here another leaf from Penn's laurels: "It required no great benevolence to urge the Quakers to deal kindly with their savage neighbors. They were bound in common sense to propitiate them; since, by incurring their resentment, they would involve themselves in the dilemma of submitting their necks to the tomahawk, or wielding the carnal weapon, in glaring defiance of their pacific principles. In paying the Indians for the lands which his colonists occupied,--a piece of justice which has been greeted with a general clamor of applause,--Penn, as he himself confesses, acted on the prudent counsel of Compton, Bishop of London. Nor is there any truth in the representations of Raynal and other eulogists of the Quaker legislator, who hold him up to the world as the only European who ever acquired the Indian lands by purchase, instead of seizing them by fraud or violence. The example of purchase had been set fifty years before by the Puritans of New England; and several of the other colonies had more recently pursued the same just and prudent course." The deaths of Wolfe and Montcalm: "In the heat of the action, as he advanced at the head of the grenadiers of Louisburg, a bullet shattered his wrist; but he wrapped his handkerchief about the wound, and showed no sign of pain. A moment more, and a ball pierced his side. Still he pressed forward, waving his sword, and cheering his soldiers to the attack, when a third shot lodged deep within his breast. He paused, reeled, and, staggering to one side, fell to the earth. Brown, a lieutenant of the grenadiers, Henderson, a volunteer, an officer of artillery, and a private soldier raised him together in their arms, and, bearing him to the rear, laid him softly on the grass. They asked if he would have a surgeon; but he shook his head, and answered that all was over with him. His eyes closed with the torpor of approaching death, and those around sustained his fainting form. Yet they could not withhold their gaze from the wild turmoil before them, and the charging ranks of their companions rushing through fire and smoke." "See how they run," one of the officers exclaimed, as the French fled in confusion before the levelled bayonets. "Who run?" demanded Wolfe, opening his eyes like a man aroused from sleep. "The enemy, sir," was the reply; "they give way every where." "Then," said the dying general, "tell Colonel Burton to march Webb's regiment down to Charles River, to cut off their retreat from the bridge. Now, God be praised, I will die in peace," he murmured; and, turning on his side, he calmly breathed his last! "Almost at the same moment fell his great adversary, Montcalm, as he strove, with useless bravery, to rally his shattered ranks. Struck down with a mortal wound, he was placed upon a litter and borne to the General Hospital on the banks of the St. Charles. The surgeons told him that he could not recover. "I am glad of it," was his calm reply. He then asked how long he might survive, and was told that he had not many hours remaining. "So much the better," he said; "I am happy that I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec." Officers from the garrison came to his bedside to ask his orders and instructions. "I will give no more orders," replied the defeated soldier; "I have much business that must be attended to, of greater moment than your ruined garrison and this wretched country. My time is very short; therefore, pray leave me." The officers withdrew, and none remained in the chamber but his confessor and the Bishop of Quebec. To the last, he expressed his contempt for his own mutinous and half-famished troops, and his admiration for the disciplined valor of his opponents. He died before midnight, and was buried at his own desire in a cavity of the earth formed by the bursting of a bombshell." We conclude with a sketch of Pontiac: "Pontiac, as already mentioned, was principal chief of the Ottawas. The Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Pottawattamies, had long been united in a loose kind of confederacy, of which he was the virtual head. Over those around him his authority was almost despotic, and his power extended far beyond the limits of the three united tribes. His influence was great among all the nations of the Illinois country; while, from the sources of the Ohio to those of the Mississippi, and, indeed, to the farthest boundaries of the wide-spread Algonquin race, his name was known and respected. The fact that Pontiac was born the son of a chief would in no degree account for the extent of his power; for, among Indians, many a chief's son sinks back into insignificance, while the offspring of a common warrior may succeed to his place. Among all the wild tribes of the continent, personal merit is indispensable to gaining or preserving dignity. Courage, resolution, wisdom, address and eloquence, are sure passports to distinction. With all these Pontiac was preëminently endowed, and it was chiefly to them, urged to their highest activity by a vehement ambition, that he owed his greatness. His intellect was strong and capacious. He possessed commanding energy and force of mind, and in subtlety and craft could match the best of his wily race. But, though capable of acts of lofty magnanimity, he was a thorough savage, with a wider range of intellect than those around him, but sharing all their passions and prejudices, their fierceness and treachery." DR. STARBUCK MAYO, AUTHOR OF "KALOOLAH," "THE BERBER," &c. [Illustration] If there is any satisfaction derivable from a long and clear lineage, the author of _Kaloolah_ ought to be a very happy man. Seven successive generations of reputable ancestry connect him with the Rev. John Mayo, a divine of distinguished piety and learning who in the year 1630 came to this country, and after settling in the town of Barnstable, transferred his residence to Boston, and became the first pastor of the South Church. The English pedigree of this John Mayo is one of the oldest among the gentry of Great Britain. On his mother's side Dr. Mayo also traces his descent for several ages through the Starbucks, one of the primitive families of that most primitive of all places, the island of Nantucket. The parents of Dr. Mayo removed to the village of Ogdensburg on the St. Lawrence under the circumstances very similar to those described in Kaloolah, and he was there born in the year 1812. His early intellectual training was under the pedagogueism of the Rev. Josiah Perry, one of the few men formed by nature for school-masters, who has left as marked a memory in a smaller sphere as did ever Parr or Burke in theirs. Never was instruction better given in all the elements of a thorough English education than for many years in his well-known school, which has produced several of the most distinguished men of the present time. From this the subject of our memoir was transferred, at the age of eleven or twelve, for the purpose of pursuing classical studies, to the academy at Potsdam, which enjoyed for a number of years the superintendence in the office of its principals of a succession of very eminent men, among them the present Rt. Rev. Bishop of North Carolina. His successor, under whom Dr. Mayo's pupilage occurred, was the Rev. Mr. Banks, a Presbyterian divine from New England, of learning, taste, and refinement, such as were rarely met with even in that day among men of his class. The description of the early life of Jonathan Romer is in the main the history of the author himself. At the age of seventeen he commenced the study of medicine, which he pursued with ardor and success. In 1832, having attended for three years the lectures of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in this city, he underwent his examination for a degree, but did not receive a diploma till the ensuing term, not having attained the legal age of twenty-one. After spending several years in the city hospitals and in private practice, he abandoned brilliant professional prospects to go abroad, partly for the benefit of his health and partly urged by the spirit of adventure, which had long led him to form plans for the exploration of Central Africa. Perhaps it is to be regretted that he was prevented by the infirmity of short-sightedness from emulating the achievements of Park, Clapperton and Ledyard, for which his moral and physical constitution eminently fitted him. He travelled extensively in Spain and Barbary however, and we have the results in Kaloolah and in The Berber. Anonymously, in various magazines, Dr. Mayo had written much and well, but he was scarcely known as an author until the appearance of the work upon which his fame still chiefly rests, _Kaloolah, or Journeyings to the Djébel Kumri_, in the spring of 1849. It has frequently been said that Kaloolah was suggested by the popular works of Herman Melville, but it was written and nearly printed before the appearance of Typee, the first of Mr. Melville's productions; and we see no reason for another opinion, that it was an offspring of the author's love for Defoe; if it was not an altogether spontaneous and independent work, its parentage was probably less famous; we know of no composition so nearly resembling Kaloolah as the pretended _Narrative of Robert Adams, an American sailor who was wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the year 1810, detained three years in slavery by the Arabs, and afterward several months a resident in the city of Timbuctoo_. This was a piece of pure fiction, though brought out in London in a splendid quarto under the endorsement of the Lord Chancellor, the President of the Royal Society, and many other eminent persons in literature, science, and affairs, and elaborately and credulously reviewed in the Edinburgh, the Quarterly, and other Reviews. The hero of this performance, after various adventures, was married to a dusky princess in the _terra incognita_, and made almost as many marvellous discoveries as are recorded by Jonathan Romer. Another and a very different writer, who selected central Africa to be the field of somewhat similar inventions, was the learned and ingenious Richard Adams Locke, whose astonishing history of revelations in the moon was not more creditable to his abilities than his singularly recovered MSS. of a lost traveller by the borders of the Niger and in middle Africa, published in the _New Era_ journal in this city about the year 1838. But we do not suppose Dr. Mayo was indebted to either of these works for the idea of his story. And just as erroneous as the charge of plagiarism, and much more absurd, is the notion that he designed Kaloolah as a "satirical criticism on life and manners in New-York." A writer in the _North British Review_ declares that he "could not help laughing aloud," though seated quietly by himself, at the "description of a musical entertainment of the court of the hero's royal father-in-law, heaven knows where in Africa, and intended as a burlesque on the sheer noise which is the predominant element" in all our orchestras. We assure the shrewd critic most positively that the author never dreamed of such a thing. Kaloolah is too well known to need much description; its success was certain and immediate, and not many original works have ever been published in this country which have had a larger circulation. It evinces remarkable fertility of invention, is exceedingly interesting, and abounds in clearly defined, spirited, and occasionally well finished portraitures. Kaloolah, the heroine, is a fresh and beautiful creation, worthy of any of the masters of fiction. The hero, Romer, is designed merely as a type of the determined Yankee adventurer, drawn with only the exaggeration demanded in works of art; and half the seeming of extravagance in the narrative and the sketches of nature would have disappeared if the author had not, to reduce his volume to the size deemed by his publisher most promising of profit, omitted all his numerous and curious notes. Kaloolah was followed in 1850 by _The Berber, or the Mountaineer of the Atlas_, a story of Spain and Morocco, about the close of the seventeenth century. As a novel it is decidedly better than Kaloolah; it displays greater skill in narration, and is written in the same pure, distinct and nervous English. Dr. Mayo thoroughly understood from observation as well as study all the accessories of his subject, and we are mistaken if any recent book on northern Africa gives a more clear, spirited or just impression of its scenery or of the character and manners of its people. The hero is of the highest style of the half-barbarian chiefs of the country and time; born a Christian, educated a Mohamedan, and ambitious to free his tribe from the domination of the Moors, and to found a new empire, with a higher civilization than was ever known to the race he leads; and other characters have enough adventures, dimly sketched, to fill the circles of a dozen tragedies if brought more near the eye. The faults of the book are, an excess of incident, discursiveness preventing proper unity and proportion, and a confessed failure of the story to evolve all the intended moralities, which the author therefore in some cases brings forward in his own person. The last volume we have had from the hand of Dr. Mayo is, _Romance Dust from the Historic Placer_, a collection of shorter stories chiefly founded on historical incidents. In these he exhibits the fresh feeling, occasionally the humor, and always the bold drawing and effective coloring which distinguish his more ambitious performances. The volume contains also a poem, but not one of such striking qualities as to induce regret that the author has commonly chosen to write in prose. The style of his novels, especially in the narrative parts, is uncommonly good, but with its many excellencies it does not seem to us that it possesses a poetical element. Dr. Mayo has commenced a brilliant course, in which we trust we shall have occasions to record still greater triumphs than those by which he has won a place in the first rank of the young writers of English. The portrait at the beginning of this article is very truthful; it is from a recent daguerreotype by Brady. [Illustration: THE CRYSTAL PALACE.] _Original Correspondence._ LONDON, _May 23, 1851._ Historical Sketch--Why England was the most appropriate location for Exhibition--First impressions--Contrast between barbaric and civilized industry--Use and beauty--Moral and social influences. The Great Exhibition constitutes the one absorbing topic in which, for the time being, all other topics are merged. Go where you will, nothing else is thought of, talked of, or heard of, from one end of London to the other--this magnificent display of the achievements of art and industry forms the sole theme of conversation, calling forth the most animated descriptions, the most energetic discussions, the warmest and most enthusiastic praise. Nor is this interest confined to London alone; the whole kingdom shares in the excitement, and seems to be only waiting for warmer weather, and the approaching reduction of the entrance fee, to march upon the metropolis, and satiate its curiosity within the walls of the Crystal Palace. As the season advances, and the brilliant success of the enterprise becomes known, foreign nations, who have contributed so largely to the splendor of the show, will send over hosts of friendly visitants; and the World's Fair, so veritably cosmopolitan in design and execution, will become equally so in its social character and results. As the activity of the present age developes itself mainly through productive and commercial industry, this collection of the choicest industrial products of all the nations of the globe, is not only in perfect accordance with the spirit of the epoch, but seems indeed to belong so properly to the present day, that it may be doubted whether such an event could have taken place at any earlier period: while the political and social conditions of Great Britain, her friendly relations with all other powers, together with the perfect security for property, the commercial freedom, and facilities of transport, which are here enjoyed in a pre-eminent degree, combine to indicate this country as the most appropriate arena for this first pacific contest of the nations; the only one, perhaps, in the actual state of Europe, in which it could have taken place at this time. The traditions of the English people, also, are such as would naturally suggest to them the idea of an enterprise of this kind; for not only have Fairs (which may be regarded as a rude attempt at a more general exhibition of wares than that afforded by the mere ordinary display of shops) been common here, as elsewhere in Europe, for many centuries, but exhibitions more nearly resembling the present Institution, in which the palm of excellence, rather than direct commerce, is the primary object, have taken place here frequently during the past century, through the enterprise of individuals, or societies, independently of any assistance from the Government. As early as the year 1756, the "Society of Arts" of London offered prizes for the best specimens of various manufactures, tapestry, carpets, porcelain, &c., and held public exhibitions of the works which were offered in competition; while about the same period, the Royal Academy, as a private society, patronized by George the Third, rather in a personal capacity than as the head of the legislature, organized its exhibitions of painting, sculpture, and engraving; and during the last thirty years exhibitions of machinery and manufactures, gotten up entirely through the efforts of private individuals, have taken place not only in the metropolitan cities, in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, but in all the principal towns of the United Kingdom. The earliest national exhibition of industrial products in France, occurred in 1798, and was followed by others at irregular intervals until 1819, since which period they have taken place every five years, and have exercised a marked effect upon the industrial development of Europe. The brilliant character of the two last of these exhibitions (in '44 and '49), led to several ineffectual attempts on the part of the Society of Arts, and others, to interest the British Government in the getting up of a similar exhibition of the products of British industry, to be held in 1851. At length in 1849, Prince Albert, who, as President of the Society of Arts, had known and sanctioned all these proceedings, took the project under his own personal superintendence, enlarged upon the original design by proposing to invite the co-operation and competition of all foreign nations, and proceeded to settle the principles upon which the enterprise, thus modified, should be conducted, and the mode in which it should be carried out. The first steps toward the realization of this new plan, were made in the name, and under the auspices of the Society of Arts; but so universal was the interest which this noble project called forth throughout the country, that it was thought advisable to make it a national concern, by taking it out of the hands of the Society, and intrusting its execution to a body of royal commissioners, appointed for that purpose by the Government, with Prince Albert as its President; the Government, meantime, giving its sanction only to the undertaking, and merely lending its aid when it was absolutely indispensable, as in correspondence with foreign countries, providing a site for the building, organization of police, and the cost of such assistance whenever it entailed expense, being defrayed from the funds of the Exhibition, thus leaving all the responsibility of the attempt, pecuniary or other, with the commissioners themselves. The subsequent history of the "rise and progress" of the undertaking; the promptitude with which the requisite funds were subscribed by private generosity; the selection of Hyde Park as the site of the projected Industrial Palace; the various plans proposed for the building, and the final adoption of the design of Mr. Paxton, after the model of a conservatory by him erected for the Duke of Devonshire; the admirable manner in which this design has been carried out by the architects, Messrs. Fox & Henderson; the cordial response with which England's friendly challenge has been answered by all the peoples of the globe, from her next-door neighbors across the channel, to the far-off denizens of Orient, and remote islands of sunny southern seas; the imposing ceremonial which, on the appointed day, threw open the vast Museum to the gaze of an impatient public; the crowds of titled dames and potent seigneurs, of the "wealth, beauty and fashion" of the aristocratic world, that fill, day after day, the immense area, wandering from one magnificent display to another, and marvelling at the richness, perfection, and variety of the countless objects that meet their eyes at every turn; the probability of a somewhat formidable thronging of less elegant, but equally interested visitors, when the "shilling days" begin; the fabulous wealth flowing, week after week, into the treasury of the royal commissioners at the various entrances of the buildings; and the growing desire on the part of the public, that the funds, thus arising from the Exhibition itself, should be appropriated to the formation of a "Permanent Museum of the Art and Industry of all Nations;" all this is too well known to call for further comment. The first impression created by the interior aspect of the Crystal Palace, is one of admiration. Magnificent indeed is the lofty dome of the transept, arching over glorious old trees, oriental shrubbery, statuary, fountains, and masses of gorgeous flowers; the brilliant perspective of the central aisle, with its double lines of galleries, stretching away on either hand, and traversed by countless avenues, every point of the vast expanse presenting its own special subject of interest, and challenging the beholder's gaze. But so extensive and various is this great collection, so striking are the contrasts of form, color, and use, presented by the endless succession of objects that meet the eye in every direction, that the sentiment of admiration soon gives place to a feeling of hopeless bewilderment. A careful study of maps and catalogues, and many visits, spent in making a general survey of the various departments of the building, are indispensable preliminaries to a more intimate acquaintance with the admirable objects contained in each. But the topographic and distributive arrangements of the building understood, the chaos of one's impressions becomes gradually into order; and the work of examination goes on with more success. The transept and the western wing are occupied by Great Britain and her colonial possessions; the eastern wing is appropriated to foreign nations, the countries lying nearest the tropics being ranged immediately round the transept. Objects of art and artistical industry occupy the central portions of the building; raw materials, machinery, hardware, and carriages being placed nearest to the walls. The objects admitted to the exhibition come under four general categories: raw materials, machinery, manufactures, and fine arts, and are divided into thirty classes, an arrangement which greatly facilitates the business of investigation and comparison. Many of the Oriental nations are very fully represented, especially India; it would be difficult to cite any department of Indian life and industry not illustrated in the ample collections of her natural and manufactured products, gathered together with the utmost care. China, Tunis, Persia, and the islands of the Indian archipelago, are also here in great force, and make a very brilliant display. The exquisite texture of many of their woven fabrics, the richness of color and effect, the incredible _fineness_ and delicacy of workmanship displayed in many of their manufactured articles, prepared with the aid only of the rudest tools, often surpass all that the enlightened skill of European artisans can accomplish, and may furnish western industry with many valuable models and precious suggestions for future use. But the beauty of eastern productions lies solely in perfection of detail; there is nothing large, generous, or comprehensive in barbaric industry. All that its resources can accomplish is lavished on objects of parade and luxury, often absolutely useless, and always destined for the privileged few; the element of ordinary existence, all that goes to make up the daily life of the masses, is coarse and rudimentary. These shawls, which, for fineness of texture, richness of color, and beauty of design, leave the choicest productions of European looms at an immeasurable distance; these muslins and gauzes, finer than gossamer, yet covered with exquisite traceries in gold and silver thread, fabrics that seem too etherially light to be worn by others than the ladies of Titania's court; these silks and satins, and damasks of admirable texture, and of richest dyes; these magnificent garments, stiff gold embroidery, with precious stones and with tinsel whose glancing hues produce an effect quite as brilliant as that of the jewels; how strangely they contrast, these splendid things intended for the few, with the coarseness of the fabrics destined for the ordinary use of the many. Compare these magnificent housings and accoutrements, these saddles of velvet, stiff with gold, these reins, and swords and daggers, full of pearls and jewels, with those clumsy implements of labor, and those uncouth, heavy utensils of domestic life. Compare the elaborate workmanship of screens, cabinets, vases, lamps, and tables, with the primitive candles and suspicious-looking soaps; the magnificence of carriages and palanquins, luxuriously cushioned, and hung with velvet and gold, in which lazy, bloated grandees are lounging, laden with jewels and finery, with the naked, emaciated bearers, human brutes that replace beasts of burden, and contrast, unfavorably, with average European horses! In European industry, on the contrary, an ascentional, out-reaching movement is every where visible. Beauty remains no longer in scornful isolation, divorced from use, but descending into the domain of every-day existence, incorporates her divine essence in all the forms of common life, pervading the lowliest spheres, raising and ennobling the humblest details, by her purifying and vivifying presence. This tendency, visible in the industry of all European nations, is still more clearly evident in the manufactures of France and England, whose productions, standing at the head of all others, constitute the highest expression of the industrial spirit of the age. Here the hardest and heaviest materials, wood, iron, and stone, become plastic under the workman's hand, assuming the most brilliant polish, the lightest and most elegant forms; grates, fire-irons, and kitchen-ranges, rival, in lustre and beauty, the attractions of diamonds, goldsmiths' work, and flowers. The admirable construction of machinery shares in the enthusiasm excited by the beautiful fabrics woven by their tireless fingers; and the "Golden Marriage" of use and beauty is every where celebrated under varying forms. They who imagine that art has died out of the world, and sigh for the chisel of Praxiteles, the pencil of Apelles, and the glorious conceptions of the masters of the middles ages, would do well to visit the Crystal Palace, and contrast the rudeness which shaped all the elements of ordinary life in former periods, with the elegance and beauty which the simplest objects of common use are beginning to assume. Not, however, that the one necessarily precludes the other, or that we are fated to produce no more fine statues and paintings, no more monumental temples and palaces, because we now have, at lower prices than were paid in ancient times for inferior articles, beautiful carpets, and fabrics of silk, wool, and cotton, furniture, porcelain, and glass, in which the thought of the artist and the craft of the artisan are so admirably blended that they seem to be identical. Art is not dead; it is throwing out wider and deeper roots, and will bear richer fruits in the garden of the future, enriched by the mingled detritus of by-gone ages, than it has ever borne in the primitive formations of the past. One of the most interesting features of the present exhibition, the one which constitutes its distinguishing character, is, undoubtedly, its universality, and the interest which it excites among all nations, and all classes. And it was time that the results of human activity in its various departments, should thus be gathered together from the four corners of the globe, for the world is cut up into so many small fractions, and each fraction lives so much within the limits of its own narrow circle, ignoring, for the most part, all that is going on outside of it, that it is in the highest degree desirable that people should begin to see something of what their neighbors are doing. It is time that nations met elsewhere than on the field of battle, and measured their strength and dignity by some more rational standard than the relative force of their cannon; time also that the various classes of society, so widely separated by the artificial divisions of caste and fortune, should look, at length, into each other's face and recognize the band of a common nature and of common needs; that the world's, as yet, unhonored workers, beholding the glorious fruits of their prolific energy, should perceive the sublimity of their mission and take fresh heart and fresh hope; that the rich should learn, from the grand results of labor, to appreciate more justly its nobleness and worth. That the exhibition of 1851, successful as it is evidently destined to be, should fully realize this most desirable end, is hardly to be expected; but that it will do much toward creating a better understanding between classes and countries, and thus pave the way for the bringing in of a future era of universal helpfulness and good-will, may be very confidently predicted. STELLA. FRENCH FEUILLETONISTES UPON LONDON. The leading Parisian journals have correspondents in London during the Great Exhibition, and as the _corps_ of Parisian feuilletonistes comprises much of the richest and rarest talent of the great French metropolis, there is a piquancy and brilliance in these daguerreotypes of London life and the impressions of English character, which is very entertaining. No traveller who remembers dining at any of the recherché cafés upon the Boulevards with a Frenchman, and chatting with him of England and London, can forget the cold chill that curled through the Parisian's conversation, as if he were a Pole, gossipping of Siberia, or the glances of intense satisfaction and pride which he cast upon the lively and lovely groups in the street, inly thanking God that he was not born a child of _perfide Albion_. But these gentlemen talk not alone of the Exhibition, but of the "town" in general. Their articles wear the air of the journals of heroic adventurers who have penetrated into barbarous lands. They are clearly home-sick, these sybarites. We extract the following from a translation in the London _Literary Gazette_, prefaced with a few editorial remarks. Speaking of the variety of their topics the reviewer says: "Thus the great Jules Janin, in the _Journal des Débats_, notwithstanding the interest of portions of his article, some of which have been translated into our journals, makes the infamy of French republicans, and his own fervent love and devotedness to the royal family of Orleans, the burden of his lucubrations. M. Blanqui, the historian of political economy, and translator of Adam Smith, faithful as becomes an economist to his _idée fixe_, bewails in the _Presse_ the folly of France in rejecting the doctrines of free trade, and clamors loudly for an immediate reform of French tariffs. M. Jules de Prémary fills column after column in the _Patrie_ with descriptions of English manners, customs, and peculiarities; and yet he admits that he knows nothing of our language, and has only resided amongst us for a few days. Parisian _littérateurs_ pride themselves on being men of imagination, poets, _penseurs fantasistes_; and it is clear that it would be as reasonable to chain an eagle to a dog-cart, as to expect _them_ to deal with a plain, practical, matter-of-fact thing in the methodical business-like way of the English journalist. Of these, the lines of Miss Fanny Fudge are strikingly true: "Vain, critics, vain All your efforts to saddle wit's fire with a chain!! To blot out the splendor of fancy's young stream, Or crop in its cradle the newly-fledged beam!!!" But though our worthy _confrères_ of the Parisian press have thus let their wits go a wool-gathering, and left the poor Exhibition in the lurch, it is but just to state that one and all display on the whole a most friendly feeling towards the English; and even in quizzing us, as most of them do, display great good nature. They feel, perhaps, a little sore at having been outstripped by us in the establishment of the first great Universal Exhibition; but this was only natural, and they console themselves by stating that it was in France that the idea was first conceived, and by solemnly promising that France will some day _prendre sa revanche_. The most amusing of the _feuilletonistes_ is unquestionably M. Jules de Prémary, of the _Patrie_; and we have thought it worth while to translate a portion of his last letter, as a specimen of what an intelligent man of letters feels on visiting us for the first time, and before he becomes well acquainted with us: "One of the principal causes of surprise to me in walking along the streets of London, has been to see myself all at once become a curious animal. I did not think that I had any of the qualities necessary for such a thing, being neither humpbacked nor club-footed, neither a giant nor a dwarf. Thus, then, on the day of my arrival I went along Regent Street, and heard the exclamations and laughter of the crowd on seeing me, I examined myself from head to foot, to ascertain the cause of the unhoped-for success which I obtained in England. I even felt all up my back, thinking that perhaps some facetious boy might have transformed me into a walking placard. There was nothing, however; but I had moustachios and a foreign air! A foreign air! That is one of the little miseries on which you do not count, O simple and inexperienced travellers! "At home you may have the dignity and nobleness of the Cid--you may be another Talma: but pass the Channel--show yourself to the English, and in spite of yourself you will become as comic as Arnal. Arnal! do I say? why, he would not make them laugh so much as you do; and they would consider our inimitable comedians Levassor and Hoffmann as serious personages. Do not be angry, then, or cry with Alceste,-- 'Par la sambleu! Messieurs, je ne croyais pas être Si plaisant que je suis!' They would only laugh the more. In this respect the English are wanting in good taste and indulgence. Their astonishment is silly and their mockery puerile. The sight of a pair of moustachios makes them roar with laughter, and they are in an ecstasy of fun at the sight of a rather broad-brimmed hat. A people must be very much bored to seize such occasions for amusing themselves. However, all the _travers_, like all the qualities of the English, arise from the national spirit carried to exaggeration. They consider themselves the _beau ideal_ of human kind. Their stiffness of bearing, their pale faces, their hair, their whiskers cut into the shape of mutton chops, the excessive height of their shirt collars, and the inelegant cut of their coats--all that makes them as proud as Trafalgar and Waterloo. "In our theatres we laugh at them as they laugh at us, and on that score we are quits. But in our great towns they are much better and more seriously received than we Frenchmen are in England. "At Paris now-a-days nobody laughs at an Englishman; but at London every body laughs at a Frenchman. We do not make this remark from any feeling of ill-will; in fact, we think that to cause a smile on the thin and pinched-up lips of old England is not a small triumph for our beards and moustachios. After all, too, the astonishment which the Englishman manifests at the sight of a newly disembarked Frenchman (an astonishment which appears singular when we call to mind the frequent communications between the two nations), is less inexplicable than may be thought. Geographically speaking, France and England touch each other--morally, they are at an immeasurable distance. Nothing is done at Calais as at Dover, nothing at London as at Paris. There is as much difference between the two races as between white and black. In France, the Englishman conforms willingly to our customs, and quickly adopts our manner of acting; but in England we are like a stain on a harmonious picture. "Our fashion of sauntering along the streets, smiling at the pretty girls we meet, looking at the shops, or stopping to chat with a friend, fills the English with stupefaction. They always walk straight before them like mad dogs. In conversation there is the same difference. In England it is always solemn. Left alone after dinner, the men adopt a subject of conversation, which never varies during all the rest of the evening. Each one is allowed to develop his argument without interruption. Perhaps he is not understood, but he is listened to. When he has ended, it becomes the turn of another, who is heard with the same respect. The thing resembles a quiet sitting of the Parliament. But in France, conversation is a veritable _mélée_--it is the contrary excess. A subject is left and taken up twenty times, amidst joyous and unforeseen interruptions. We throw words at each other's heads without doing ourselves any harm; smart sallies break forth, and _bon mots_ roll under the table. In short, the Englishman reflects before speaking; the Frenchman speaks first and reflects afterwards--if he has time. The Frenchman converses, the Englishman talks: and it is the same with respect to pleasure. Place a Frenchman, who feels _ennui_, by the side of an Englishman who amuses himself, and it will be the former who will have the gayest air. From love, the Englishman only demands its brutal joys; whereas the Frenchman pays court to a woman. The Englishman, at table, drinks to repletion; the Frenchman never exceeds intoxication. "A difference equally striking exists between the females of the two countries. I do not now speak of the beauty of the type of the one, or the elegance and good taste of the others; but I will notice one or two great contrasts. In France, a young girl is reserved, is timid, and as it were hidden under the shade of the family: but the married woman has every liberty, and many husbands can tell you that she does not always use it with extreme moderation! In England, you are surprised at the confident bearing of young girls, and the chaste reserve of married women. The former not only willingly listen to gallant compliments, but even excite them; whilst the latter, by the simple propriety of their bearing, impose on the boldest. "The boldness of young girls in England was explained to me by the great emigration of young men--in other words, by the scarcity of husbands. The French girl who wants a husband is ordinarily rather disdainful; the English girl is by no means difficult. "A Frenchwoman walks negligently leaning on our arm, and we regulate our steps by the timidity and uncertainty of hers: the Englishwoman walks with the head erect, and takes large strides like a soldier charging. An accident made me acquainted with the secret of the strange way of walking which Englishwomen have. I was lately on a visit to the family of a merchant, whose three daughters are receiving a costly education. The French master, the drawing master, and the music master had each given his lesson, when I saw a sergeant of the grenadiers of the guard arrive. He went into the garden, and was followed by the young ladies. "'Ah! mon Dieu!" I cried to the father, 'these young ladies are surely not going to learn the military exercise!' "'No,' said he, with a smile. "'What, then, has this professor in a red coat come for?' "'He is the _master of grace_." "'What! that grenadier, who is as long as the column in Trafalgar-square?' "'Yes, or rather he is the _walking master_.' "I looked out of the window, and saw the three young ladies drawn up and immovable as soldiers, and presently they began to march to the step of the grenadier. They formed a charming platoon, and trod the military step with a precision worthy of admiration. I asked for an explanation of such a strange thing. "'We in England,' said my host, 'understand better the duty of women than you Frenchmen do. We cannot regulate our manner of walking on that of a being subjected to us. Our dignity forbids it. It is the woman's duty to follow us. Consequently she must walk as we do,--we can't walk as she does.' "'_Ma foi!_' said I, 'I must admit that in progress you are decidedly our masters. In France the law, it is true, commands the wife to follow her husband; but it does not, I confess, say that she must do so at the rate of a _quick march_!' "The contrasts between the two countries are in truth inexhaustible. Indeed I defy the most patient observer, to find any point of resemblance between them. In France, houses are gay in appearance; in London, with the exception of some streets in the centre, such as Regent-street or Oxford-street, they are as dark and dismal as prisons. Our windows open from the left to the right; windows in England open from top to bottom. At Paris, to ring or knock too loud is vulgar and ill-bred; at London, if you don't execute a tattoo with the knocker or a symphony with the bell, you are considered a poor wretch, and are left an hour at the door. Our hack cabs take their stand on one side of the street; in England they occupy the middle. Our coachmen get up in front of their vehicles; in England they go behind. In Paris, Englishmen are charming; at home they are--Englishmen. One thing astonishes me greatly--that the English don't walk on their hands, since we walk on our feet." But the French gentlemen do not have it all their own way. The London _Leader_ attacks them pleasantly in a similar spirit, yet it is always tinged, upon both sides, with a shade of caustic feeling: "Jules Janin, who has fallen in love with our fog and kindliness, announces to all France the joyful news that there will be no Waterloo banquet this June: the flag of France floating over the Crystal Palace suggests to the Duke that the banquet would be a breach of hospitality, because it would recall such "cruel souvenirs!" Janin believes that report; or at least prints it, which is to give journalistic credence to it. We are sorry to think how "cruelly" France will be disappointed; and we are amused at the excessive pre-occupation of Frenchmen with this said battle of Waterloo. It is the ineradicable belief of every Frenchman that we in England are in a perpetual self-swagger about Waterloo. We are prodigal of the word upon omnibus, shop, street, and road, because we wish to humble France at every corner. Waterloo-house is an insult! Waterloo-bridge a defiance! Wellington boots an outrage! Every step you take you trample on the national pride of France, for with "insular arrogance" you walk in boots named of Wellington or of Blucher! We are intoxicated with our success at having beaten the French--never having drubbed them before, from the times of Cressy, Poictiers, and Agincourt, down to the Peninsular Campaign! This one success of Waterloo--(which, after all, was _not_ a success, as France clearly gained the battle, only she quitted the field in disgust!)--we cannot forget; we cherish it, we riot in it; we blazon the name everywhere to flatter our national pride and humiliate the foreigner. And, curious enough, the foreigner _is_ humiliated! He turns his head away as he passes Waterloo-house; he declines crossing Waterloo-bridge, or crosses it in a passion; and even his national dread of rain cannot induce him to ride in a Waterloo omnibus. Of all the many profound misconceptions of English society current in France, none, we venture to say, is more completely baseless than the belief in the English feeling about Waterloo. Though it would be impossible to persuade a Frenchman that omnibus proprietors, hotel keepers, and builders were guilty of no national swagger in using the offending word 'Waterloo.'" SCHALKEN THE PAINTER.--A GHOST STORY. We take the following from a volume of of ghost stories, with illustrations by Phiz, which has lately been published in London. One Minheer Vanderhausen, through the means of a certain persuasive eloquence, backed by money, becomes the husband of Rose, the niece of Gerard Douw, and with whom Schalken, the celebrated painter's pupil, was in love. Vanderhausen and his wife set out ostensibly for Rotterdam, but receiving no communication from either for a long time, Gerard resolves upon a journey to the city. No such individual as Vanderhausen is known there, and the fate of the poor wife is told as follows:-- "One evening, the painter and his pupil were sitting by the fire, having accomplished a comfortable meal, and had yielded to the silent and delicious melancholy of digestion, when their ruminations were disturbed by a loud sound at the street door, as if occasioned by some person rushing and scrambling vehemently against it. A domestic had run without delay to ascertain the cause of the disturbance, and they heard him twice or thrice interrogate the applicant for admission, but without eliciting any other answer but a sustained reiteration of the sounds. They heard him then open the hall-door, and immediately there followed a light and rapid tread upon the staircase. Schalken advanced towards the door. It opened before he reached it, and Rose rushed into the room. She looked wild, fierce, and haggard with terror and exhaustion; but her dress surprised them as much even as her unexpected appearance. It consisted of a kind of white woollen wrapper, made close about the neck, and descending to the very ground. It was much deranged and travel soiled. The poor creature had hardly entered the chamber when she fell senseless on the floor. With some difficulty they succeeded in reviving her; and on recovering her senses she instantly exclaimed, in a tone of terror rather than mere impatience, 'Wine! wine!--quickly, or I'm lost!" "Astonished, and almost scared, at the strange agitation in which the call was made, they at once administered to her wishes, and she drank some wine with a haste and eagerness which surprised them. She had hardly swallowed it, when she exclaimed, with the same urgency, 'Food, for God's sake; food at once, or I perish!' "A large fragment of a roast joint was upon the table, and Schalken immediately began to cut some; but he was anticipated; for no sooner did she see it than she caught it, a more than mortal image of famine, and with her hands, and even with her teeth, she tore off the flesh, and swallowed it. When the paroxysm of hunger had been a little appeased, she was on a sudden overcome with shame; or it may have been that other more agitating thoughts overpowered and scared her, for she began to weep bitterly, and to wring her hands. "'Oh! send for a minister of God!' said she; 'I am not safe till he comes; send for him speedily.' "Gerard Douw dispatched a messenger instantly, and prevailed on his niece to allow him to surrender his bedchamber to her use. He also persuaded her to retire there at once to rest: her consent was extorted upon the condition that they would not leave her for a moment. "'Oh, that the holy man were here!' she said; 'he can deliver me: the dead and the living can never be one; God has forbidden it.' "With these mysterious words she surrendered herself to their guidance, and they proceeded to the chamber which Gerard Douw had assigned to her use. "'Do not, do not leave me for a moment!' she said; 'I am lost for ever if you do.' "Gerard Douw's chamber was approached through a spacious apartment, which they were now about to enter. He and Schalken each carried a candle, so that a sufficiency of light was cast upon all surrounding objects. They were now entering the large chamber, which, as I have said, communicated with Douw's apartment, when Rose suddenly stopped, and, in a whisper which thrilled them both with horror, she said, 'O God! he is here! he is here! See, see! there he goes!' "She pointed towards the door of the inner room, and Schalken thought he saw a shadowy and ill-defined form gliding into that apartment. He drew his sword, and raising the candle so as to throw its light with increased distinctness upon the objects in the room, he entered the chamber into which the shadow had glided. No figure was there--nothing but the furniture which belonged to the room; and yet he could not be deceived as to the fact that something had moved before them into the chamber. A sickening dread came upon him, and the cold perspiration broke out in heavy drops upon his forehead; nor was he more composed when he heard the increased urgency and agony of entreaty with which Rose implored them not to leave her for a moment. "'I saw him,' said she, 'he's here. I cannot be deceived; I know him; he's by me; he is with me; he's in the room. Then, for God's sake, as you would save me, do not stir from beside me.' "They at length prevailed upon her to lie down upon the bed, where she continued to urge them to stay by her. She frequently uttered incoherent sentences, repeating again and again, 'The dead and the living cannot be one; God has forbidden it:' and then again, 'Rest to the wakeful--sleep to the sleep-walkers.' These and such mysterious and broken sentences she continued to utter until the clergyman arrived. Gerard Douw began to fear, naturally enough, that terror or ill-treatment had unsettled the poor girl's intellect; and he half suspected, from the suddenness of her appearance, the unseasonableness of the hour, and, above all, from the wildness and terror of her manner, that she had made her escape from some place of confinement for lunatics, and was in imminent fear of pursuit. He resolved to summon medical advice as soon as the mind of his niece had been in some measure set at rest by the offices of the clergyman whose attendance she had so earnestly desired; and until this object had been attained, he did not venture to put any questions to her which might possibly, by reviving painful or horrible recollections, increase her agitation. The clergyman soon arrived; a man of ascetic countenance and venerable age--one whom Gerard Douw respected much, forasmuch as he was a veteran polemic, though one perhaps more dreaded as a combatant, than beloved as a Christian--of pure morality, subtile brain, and frozen heart. He entered the chamber which communicated with that in which Rose reclined; and immediately on his arrival she requested him to pray for her, as for one who lay in the hands of Satan, and who could hope for deliverance only from heaven. "That you may distinctly understand all the circumstances of the event which I am going to describe, it is necessary to state the relative position of the parties who were engaged in it. The old clergyman and Schalken were in the anteroom of which I have already spoken; Rose lay in the inner chamber, the door of which was open; and by the side of the bed, at her urgent desire, stood her guardian; a candle burned in the bedchamber, and three were lighted in the outer apartment. The old man now cleared his voice, as if about to commence; but before he had time to begin, a sudden gust of air blew out the candle which served to illuminate the room in which the poor girl lay, and she with hurried alarm exclaimed, 'Godfrey, bring in another candle; the darkness is unsafe.' "Gerard Douw, forgetting for the moment her repeated injunctions, in the immediate impulse, stepped from the bedchamber into the other, in order to supply what she desired. "'O God! do not go dear uncle,' shrieked the unhappy girl; and at the same time she sprang from the bed and darted after him, in order by her grasp to detain him. But the warning came too late; for scarcely had he passed the threshold, and hardly had his niece had time to utter the startling exclamation, when the door which divided the two rooms closed violently after him, as if swung to by a strong blast of wind. Schalken and he both rushed to the door, but their united and desperate efforts could not avail so much as to shake it. Shriek after shriek burst from the inner chamber, with all the piercing loudness of despairing terror. Schalken and Douw strained every nerve to force open the door; but all in vain. There was no sound of struggling from within, but the screams seemed to increase in loudness, and at the same time they heard the bolts of the latticed window withdrawn, and the window itself grated upon the sill as if thrown open. One _last_ shriek, so long, and piercing, and agonized, as to be scarcely human, swelled from the room, and suddenly there followed a death-like silence. A light step was heard crossing the floor, as if from the bed to the window, and almost at the same instant the door gave way, and yielding to the pressure of the external applicants, they were nearly precipitated into the room. It was empty. The window was open, and Schalken sprang to a chair, and gazed out upon the street and canal below. There was no one there; but he saw, or thought he saw, the waters of the broad canal beneath settling ring after ring, in heavy circles, as if a moment before disturbed by the submersion of some ponderous body." SKETCHES OF LIFE IN SWEDEN. Hans Christian Anderson, the Danish poet and story-teller, whose _Improvisatore_ is one of the most beautiful and intrinsically truthful of the myriad beautiful books upon Italian life, has published a new work, _Pictures of Sweden_. It is very genial summer reading, consisting of detached sketches of Swedish life and scenery, with interludes of poetic reverie. The London journals complain that it is not sufficiently well translated, but we quote the following characteristic passages in which the same weird child-likeness of feeling which his readers will recall, is expressed in the peculiar, subdued strain of northern sentimentalism, which is more the complexion, than the substance of his style. Here is the prelude to the book: "It is a delightful spring: the birds warble, but you do not understand their song! Well, hear it in a free translation. "'Get on my back,' says the stork, our green island's sacred bird, 'and I will carry thee over the Sound. Sweden also has fresh and fragrant beech woods, green meadows and cornfields. In Scania, with the flowering apple-trees behind the peasant's house, you will think that you are still in Denmark.' "'Fly with me,' says the swallow; 'I fly over Holland's mountain ridge, where the beech-trees cease to grow; I fly further towards the north than the stork. You shall see the vegetable mould pass over into rocky ground; see snug, neat towns, old churches and mansions, where all is good and comfortable, where the family stand in a circle around the table and say grace at meals, where the least of the children says a prayer, and, morning and evening, sings a psalm. I have heard it, I have seen it, when little, from my nest under the eaves.' "'Come with me! come with me!' screams the restless sea-gull, and flies in an expecting circle. 'Come with me to the Skjärgaards, where rocky isles by thousands, with fir and pine, lie like flower beds along the coast; where the fishermen draw the well-filled nets!' "'Rest thee between our extended wings,' sing the wild swans. 'Let us bear thee up to the great lakes, the perpetually roaring elves (rivers), that rush on with arrowy swiftness; where the oak forest has long ceased, and the birch-tree becomes stunted. Rest thee between our extended wings: we fly up to Sulitelma, the island's eye, as the mountain is called; we fly from the vernal green valley, up over the snow-drifts, to the mountain's top, whence thou canst see the North Sea, on yonder side of Norway. "'We fly to Jemteland, where the rocky mountains are high and blue; where the Foss roars and rushes; where the torches are lighted as _budstikke,_ to announce that the ferryman is expected. Up to the deep, cold-running waters, where the midsummer sun does not set; where the rosy hue of eve is that of morn." Stockholm is thus pictured, with an allusion, at the close, to a building dear to us all, now--as that which was first enriched by the voice, whose recent lapse into silence has made our hearts heavy: "It is but the work of one night; the same night when Oluf Hakonson, with iron and with fire, burst his onward way through the stubborn ground; before the day breaks the waters of the Mälar roll there; the Norwegian prince, Oluf, sailed through the royal channel he had cut in the east. The stockades, where the iron chains hang, must bear the defences; the citizens from the burnt-down Sigtuna erect themselves a bulwark here, and build their new little town on stock-holms.[A] The clouds go, and the years go! Do you see how the gables grow? there rise towers and forts. Birger Jarl makes the town of Stockholm a fortress; the warders stand with bow and arrow on the walls, reconnoitring over lake and fiord, over Brunkaberg sand-ridge. There where the sand slopes upwards from Rörstrand's Lake they build Clara cloister, and between it and the town a street springs up: several more appear; they form an extensive city, which soon becomes the place of contest for different partisans, where Ladelaas's sons plant the banner, and where the German Albrecht's retainers burn the Swedes alive within its walls. Stockholm is, however, the heart of the kingdom: that the Danes know well; that the Swedes know too, and there is strife and bloody combating. Blood flows by the executioner's hand, Denmark's Christian the Second, Sweden's executioner, stands in the market-place. Roll, ye runes! see over Brunkaberg sand-ridge, where the Swedish people conquered the Danish host, there they raise the May-pole: it is midsummer-eve--Gustavus Vasa makes his entry into Stockholm. Around the May-pole there grow fruit and kitchen-gardens, houses and streets; they vanish in flames, they rise again; that gloomy fortress towards the tower is transformed into a palace, and the city stands magnificently with towers and draw-bridges. There grows a town by itself on the sand-ridge, a third springs up on the rock towards the south; the old walls fall at Gustavus Adolphus's command; the three towns are one, large and extensive, picturesquely varied with old stone houses, wooden shops, and grass-roofed huts; the sun shines on the brass balls of the towers, and a forest of masts stands in that secure harbor. * * * "It is a very little semicircular island, on which the arches of the bridge rest: a garden full of flowers and trees, which we overlook from the high parapet of the bridge. Ladies and gentlemen promenade there; musicians play, families sit there in groups, and take refreshments in the vaulted halls under the bridge, and look out between the green trees over the open water, to the houses and mansions, and also to the woods and rocks: we forget that we are in the midst of the city. It is the bridge here that unites Stockholm with Nordmalen, where the greatest part of the fashionable world live, in two long Berlin-like streets; yet amongst all the great houses we will only visit one, and that is the theatre. We will go on the stage itself--it has an historical signification. Here by the third side-scene from the stage-lights, to the right, as we look down towards the audience, Gustavus the Third was assassinated at a masquerade; and he was borne into that little chamber there, close by the scene, whilst all the outlets were closed, and the motley group of harlequins, polichinellos, wild men, gods and goddesses, with unmasked faces, pale and terrified, crept together; the dancing ballet-farce had become a real tragedy. This theatre is Jenny Lind's childhood's home. Here she has sung in the choruses when a little girl; here she first made her appearance in public, and was cheeringly encouraged when a child; here, poor and sorrowful, she has shed tears, when her voice left her, and sent up pious prayers to her Maker. From hence the world's nightingale flew out over distant lands, and proclaimed the purity and holiness of art." We ramble a moment in the garden of Linnæus, and contemplate his monument. It is withered and wasted now; it appears not unlike that grave garden of Ferney, with the close bower in which Voltaire used to walk and meditate: "The walls shine brightly, and with varied hues, in the great chapel behind the high altar. The fresco paintings present to us the most eventful circumstances of Gustavus Vasa's life. Here his clay moulders, with that of his three consorts. Yonder, a work in marble, by Sargel, solicits our attention: it adorns the burial-chapel of the De Geers; and here, in the centre aisle, under that flat stone, rests Linnæus. In the side chapel, is his monument, erected by _amici_ and _discipuli_; a sufficient sum was quickly raised for its erection, and the King, Gustavus the Third, himself brought his royal gift. The projector of the subscription then explained to him, that the purposed inscription was, that the monument was erected only by friends and disciples, and King Gustavus answered: 'And am not I also one of Linnæus's disciples?' The monument was raised, and a hall built in the botanical garden, under splendid trees. There stands his bust; but the remembrance of himself, his home, his own little garden--where is it most vivid? Lead us thither. On yonder side of Fyri's rivulet, where the street forms a declivity, where red-painted wooden houses boast their living grass roofs, as fresh as if they were planted terraces, lies Linnæus's garden. We stand within it. How solitary! how overgrown! Tall nettles shoot up between the old, untrimmed, rank hedges. No water-plants appear more in that little dried-up basin; the hedges that were formerly clipped, put forth fresh leaves without being checked by the gardener's shears. It was between these hedges that Linnæus at times saw his own double--that optical illusion which presents the express image of a second self--from the hat to the boots. Where a great man has lived and worked, the place itself becomes, as it were, a part and parcel of him: the whole, as well as a part, has mirrored itself in his eye; it has entered into his soul, and becomes linked with it and the whole world. We enter the orangeries: they are now transformed into assembly-rooms; the blooming winter-garden has disappeared; but the walls yet show a sort of herbarium. They are hung round with the portraits of learned Swedes--a herbarium from the garden of science and knowledge. Unknown faces--and, to the stranger, the greatest part are unknown names--meet us here." A palace of Gustavus Vasa's: "There yet stands a stone outline of Vadstene's rich palace which he (Gustavus Vasa) erected, with towers and spires, close by the cloister. At a far distance on the Vettern, it looks as if it still stood in all its splendor; near, in moonlight nights, it appears the same unchanged edifice, for the fathom-thick walls yet remain; the carvings over the windows and gates stand forth in light and shade, and the moat round about, which is only separated from the Vettern by the narrow carriage road, takes the reflection of the immense building as a mirrored image. "We now stand before it in daylight. Not a pane of glass is to be found in it; planks and old doors are nailed fast to the window frames; the balls alone still stand on the two towers, broad, heavy, and resembling colossal toadstools. The iron spire of the one still towers aloft in the air; the other spire is bent: like the hands on a sundial it shows the time--the time that is gone. The other two balls are half fallen down; lambs frisk about between the beams, and the space below is used as a cow-stall. "The arms over the gateway have neither spot nor blemish: they seem as if carved yesterday; the walls are firm, and the stairs look like new. In the palace yard, far above the gateway, the great folding door was opened, whence once the minstrels stepped out and played a welcome greeting from the balcony, but even this is broken down: we go through the spacious kitchen, from whose white walls, a sketch of Vadstene palace, ships, and flowering trees, in red chalk, still attract the eye. "Here where they cooked and roasted, is now a large empty space; even the chimney is gone; and from the ceiling where thick, heavy beams of timber have been placed close to one another, there hangs the dust-covered cobweb, as if the whole were a mass of dark gray dropping stones. "We walk from hall to hall, and the wooden shutters are opened to admit daylight. All is vast, lofty, spacious, and adorned with antique chimney-pieces, and from every window there is a charming prospect over the clear, deep Vettern. In one of the chambers in the ground floor sat the insane Duke Magnus (whose stone image we lately saw conspicuous in the church), horrified at having signed his own brother's death-warrant; dreamingly in love with the portrait of Scotland's Queen, Mary Stuart; paying court to her and expecting to see the ship, with her, glide over the sea towards Vadstene. And she came--he thought she came--in the form of a mermaid, raising herself aloft on the water: she nodded and called to him, and the unfortunate Duke sprang out of the window down to her. We gazed out of this window, and below it we saw the deep moat in which he sank." FOOTNOTES: [A] "Stock, signifies bulks, or beams; holms, _i.e._ islets, or river islands; hence, Stockholm." A FRENCHMAN'S OPINIONS OF AMERICAN FEMALE POETS. We find in the Paris _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for May 15, an article, which we translate for _The International_, on "The Female Poets of America,"[B] by M. E. MONTEGUT. This writer's opinions respecting the influence of Protestantism on the cultivation of poetry may amuse those who remember who have been the greatest poets. It is a part of the cant of criticism to point to mediæval art as a fruit of the Roman Catholic ascendency--as if the Roman Catholics had done more than the Protestants for high art since the Reformation. But M. Montegut is a man of wit, and his criticism, though we confess that it loses some of its point in our version, will entertain the hundred of our countrywomen who make verses. * * * * * It is an opinion very generally entertained that the Americans are almost exclusively occupied with material affairs, with commerce, and the varied forms of mechanical industry. The volume of Mr. Griswold will contribute to dispel any such idea, for in its four hundred pages, nearly of the size of quartos, there are quoted ninety of the most celebrated female poets of North America: ninety female poets! and all, with few exceptions, contemporary. Why, all Europe could not count a greater number. If therefore, we bear in mind that this voluminous poetic _flore_ contains only the names of women, and that Mr. Rufus Griswold has consecrated two volumes of similar dimensions, one to the Poets of the masculine gender, and the other to the Prose-Writers of both genders, it is difficult to believe in the literary sterility of the United States. But why is it, that among these three or four hundred writers, only three or four are known beyond the Atlantic? It is, that a literature is not altogether composed of harmonious reveries, of elegant imitations, of agreeable fancies; that poetry does not consist in a melodious rhythm only, nor even in a tasteful choice of words, nor in a perfect knowledge of language. Poetry, as well as all the possible expressions of thought and genius, arises from the very depths of the soul. It is the exterior expression of the national life, the recital,--from the lips of an individual animated and transported with the popular spirit--of the mysteries of his country's existence, and the desires, aspirations and convictions of his countrymen. The poet is the interpreter of the moral character of his country to other nations, and his works are the highest embodiment of the manners and habits of life in his country and his time. The poetry which does not fulfil these conditions is not poetry. Any man writing verse, who does not feel himself agitated in a more lively and distinct manner with the desires which torment his contemporaries as a vague fever, who does not know that his whole mission is to express, in an artistic and harmonious form, the clamors and the incorrect utterance of these desires, is not and cannot be a poet. If such be the moral necessities which give birth to poetry, how is it that America has not an original literature? How is it that she has no great artists, and that there are but three or four writers--Cooper, Channing, Emerson--who well express her spirit and tendencies? None of the great moral qualities necessary to a poet are wanting to Americans. They have a national pride, approaching even to sensitiveness; they have firm and free religious faiths; life is energetic and manifests itself abundantly every where. How is it, we ask, that we meet no man of genius to tell us of the miracles of triumph over nature and barbarism; of those hardy industrial enterprises, and those wonderful displays of human activity around them; to sing the adventurous heroes of commerce and mechanism, and that singular marriage in domestic life of sedentary virtues with a changing, nomadic disposition--the love of the fireside, which remains undisturbed in the midst of perpetual displacement, as of old the tents of the patriarchs were pitched in the evening and stricken in the morning? Is it that there is no poetry in these subjects? Here, indeed, is a curious phenomenon, and one of the least-studied laws of literary history. But ought we to regard Americans unfortunate because they have no literature of their own? In some points of view it is a reason for envying them. When true poetry appears among a people, it is not always a prophetic sign of future greatness; it is oftener a reflection of greatness passed away. It announces not new destinies, but recounts a history of the vanished and vanishing. Whenever the voice of a great poet is heard, we are sure that the customs, the institutions, and the religions he sings, are near their decline. Thus, Shakspeare, the most faithful mirror of the middle and feudal ages, came with reform and the sixteenth century; and Calderon, with the decay of Spanish Catholicism. That opinions and manners should partake of poesy, it is necessary that they begin to fade away into the realm of the fabulous past; it is necessary, in order that the ideal should appear, that these cease to exist. It was formerly said, and not without reason, "Happy the people who have no literature!" and in our time we are tempted to say: Happy the people who have no great poets! it is a proof that they enjoy the plentitude of life, that they have nothing to regret, that they are still in all their primal innocency, and the native energy of their being. It is curious, also, to observe, how men animated by an heroic faith, seldom see that that faith and the deeds which it inspires, belong to the poetic and ideal. The first Puritans, who embarked, without resources, in a frail vessel, to seek in America the enjoyment of a free religion, now appear to us truly poetical. Walter Scott has drawn a thousand original characters of cavaliers and round-heads. Do you know what was the literature of those men full of the spirit of the Bible? Do you know what was the character of the first poetic publications in the United States? We open Mr. Griswold's volume, and the first name is that of Anne Bradstreet, who proceeded thither with her father, an ardent nonconformist. Here is the title under which her poems were printed, in the year 1640, at Boston: "_Several Poems, compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning, full of delight; wherein especially is contained a compleat Discourse and Description of the Four Elements, Constitutions, Ages of Man, and Seasons of the Year, together with an exact Epitome of the Three First Monarchies, viz. the Assyrian, Persian, and Grecian; and the beginning of the Roman Commonwealth to the end of their last King; with divers other Pleasant and Serious Poems: By a Gentlewoman of New England._" This Mrs. Bradstreet, called by the Americans, at this epoch, the "tenth muse"--probably a very good Protestant--made invocations to Phoebus, and imitated ---- Dubartas! Certainly, the emigrant Americans, who were indeed the most zealous of all Protestants, did not suspect the mournful poetry which Protestantism contains--a poetry which we perceive to-day. It is even a part of the American life of our times. But this absence of real poetry is far from being a bad sign; it is, on the contrary, a proof of strength and energy. Great works are not what we require of Americans; we would rather endeavor to discover in them the traces of the moral spirit of their country, its philosophical and historic signs, rather than poetic fables skilfully constructed and eloquently told. For example, these female poets of North America, suggest an interesting question for Europeans to examine. Have all those Misses and Mistresses who write poems, dramas and sonnets, any features of resemblance with our female authors? Has America, which is represented so coarse in manners, inherited the vices of European society, and become so degenerate as to give birth to that monstrous nondescript, named among us a _bas-bleu_? We have endeavored, diligently, to discover, in this large volume, traces of resemblance between our women of letters and the female poets of America, but we have discovered none. These daughters and wives of American citizens, of merchants, bankers, magistrates and doctors in theology, do not write as our female authors, from vain ambition, or love, or scandal, or (what among us is by no means uncommon) to repent of the scandal that they have occasioned. They write as among us young girls draw or sing. Poesy is for them an ornamental art, and nothing more. Besides, this great number of female poets in America, is explained by the much more liberal education received by the women of English blood and of the Protestant religion. We can find better specimens of poetry, certainly, but nothing equalling them in the discretion and reserve that reign in all their verses. We have sought, diligently, to discover the sentiments which American women are most pleased in translating into written poetry: one only is expressed, freely and energetically--maternal love. The other sentiments and virtues are carefully veiled, as subjects upon which it would be improper to dwell. Such verses are full of scruples and delicacies, and to us, it is their principal charm. Love, so difficult for the female heart to acknowledge in words; passionate confidences, so easily turned into sarcasms, and almost repulsive when uttered by the mouth of a woman, find no place in the inspirations of the American poetess. There are no strongly expressed individual passions. Vague and objectless longings--the cold lights of mere fancy, are the characteristics of those writers. Sometimes we discover a regret, or a mournful remembrance, but so obscure as to be nearly lost in a vastly diffused hope of some good which is not realized. We have endeavored to discover if the sentiment of conjugal love were there, but we are disappointed. To us, Europeans, who are overwhelmed with romances, in which this chaste sentiment is analyzed and written of in a manner to produce absolute nausea, it is not, perhaps, known how much discretion there is in this passionless exterior, and how commendable it is that so holy a sentiment should not pass the sacred inclosures of the female heart; that it should not wound the delicacies of its own natural reserve and silence. The talents of these writers are exercised upon permitted subjects, and not, as too often among our own female poets, upon subjects at once easy and unlawful. This modesty and reserve throughout the work become necessarily monotonous--but it is of no great consequence to us. We would not have written if it had not been to acknowledge specimens of real literary excellence. But we have in the work itself what is of considerable value as reflecting in some degree the American character. We can use these elegies, reveries and monodies as a means of discovering the nature of the virtues thus brought out from obscurity, though in coloring too pale and uniform. The life of these women possesses nothing adventurous, passionate, or eccentric. It is composed of three facts: birth, marriage, and death. As to the intervals between these three solemn events, the biographer says little, and we suppose they are filled with exemplary virtues and the accomplishment of duties which human and divine law imposes upon the woman. Three of these, however, are distinguished from the others by their position in society, or by their talents, and constitute the only singularities of the work. We have just remarked, that these _poésies_ are all written by the daughters of rich merchants, lawyers, and doctors of divinity; two, however, are of low condition--a negress, Philis Wheatley Peters; and a domestic, Maria James. The negress belonged to the close of the eighteenth century, and was born at a time to justify the pamphlets of Franklin on slavery, and the demands of philanthropy. This "daughter of the murky Senegal," as one of her critics called her, has been, thanks to the circumstances of her color, birth, and condition, a sort of historic character. Sold at ten years of age, in a public mart of slaves, she was purchased by Mrs. Wheatley, a lady who educated her, and who afterwards permitted her to be called by her own name. This negress, so little known now, has had her day in history; she visited London, where she was an object of general esteem. Washington corresponded with her, and the Abbé Grégoire, our revolutionary regicide, announced her a great poet, in his Essay upon the Intellectual and Moral Faculties of the Negro. The opponents of slavery applauded her verses with enthusiasm, and the upholders of slavery denounced and slandered her. She has been, for a moment, in the eyes of the universe, the noblest type of her race--this humble black slave has been, in the civilized world, the representative of all her brethren. Her existence has been one of the incidents of universal history, and this unknown person has had her share, however small, in the revolutions of the world. Maria James was a poor servant, the child of an emigrant from Wales. An unlettered poet, she drew her only instruction from the Bible, the Pilgrim's Progress, and Miss Hannah More, a kind of Madame de Genlis of puritanism; and yet it was this poor girl who wrote the most perfect lyric, the neatest, and in a literary view, the best composed, that we find in the collection; the lyrical pieces, by the way, are not generally well written. The thoughts are indefinite, the images confounded, and in some way run in upon each other. The principal sentiment is seldom neatly distinguished. These lyrics are as the buzzing of bees, or rather as honey scarcely formed, of which each drop contains the perfume of the flower whence it was extracted. Here is a piece by Maria James, which we do not give as her best, but which overflows with a profound religious feeling, and turns the heart of the reader, for a moment, to the haven of eternal repose: THE PILGRIMS: TO A LADY. We met as pilgrims meet, Who are bound to a distant shrine, Who spend the hours in converse sweet From noon to the day's decline-- Soul mingling with soul, as they tell of their fears And their hopes, as they passed through the valley of tears. And still they commune with delight, Of pleasures or toils by the way, The winds of the desert that chill them by night, Or heat that oppresses by day: For one to the faithful is ever at hand, As the shade of a rock in a weary land. We met as soldiers meet, Ere yet the fight is won-- Ere joyful at their captain's feet Is laid their armor down: Each strengthens his fellow to do and to bear, In hope of the crown which the victors wear. Though daily the strife they renew, And their foe his thousands o'ercome, Yet the promise unfailing is ever in view Of safety, protection, and home: Where they knew that their sov'reign such favor conferred, "As eye hath not seen, as the ear hath not heard." We met as seamen meet, On ocean's watery plain, Where billows rise and tempests beat, Ere the destined port they gain: But tempests they baffle, and billows they brave, Assured that their pilot is mighty to save. They dwell on the scenes which have past, Of perils they still may endure-- The haven of rest, where they anchor at last, Where bliss is complete and secure-- Till its towers and spires arise from afar, To the eye of faith as some radiant star. We met as brethren meet, Who are cast on a foreign strand, Whose hearts are cheered as they hasten to greet And commune of their native land-- Of their father's house in that world above, Of his tender care and his boundless love. The city so fair to behold, The redeemed in their vestments of white-- In those mansions of rest, where, mid pleasures untold, They finally hope to unite: Where ceaseless ascriptions of praise shall ascend To God and the Lamb in a world without end. But of all these poetesses, the most remarkable, certainly to us, is Maria Brooks, who died in 1845, the author of a curious poem entitled _Zophiel_, which Southey admired, and which Charles Lamb declared to be too extraordinary to have been conceived in the mind of a woman. Unfortunately, in Mr. Griswold's volume, we have only an incomplete analysis, with some brief fragments, of this poem. Notwithstanding its incompleteness, however, there is enough to show a powerful life and a wonderful imagination. There is in the poem a surprising union of Thomas Moore and Shelley. Imagine the bowers of _Lalla Rookh_, through which is sweeping the northern tempest of Shelley, bending the trees and scattering the roses. The odes _To Cuba_, to the _Shade of her Child_, and all her other lyrics, have, in a word, a very remarkable movement, and are full of mysterious inquietudes and inexplicable burnings. We cannot have an idea of the sweetness, and at the same time the impetuosity which mingle in her verses, without thinking of the impossible combination of the eagle and the dove--a dove with the stroke of an eagle's wing, and which would yet, in spite of its power, retain the timid nature of the dove, be frightened at its own strength, and tremble in looking upward to the sun. Her compositions are full of daring ideas imperfectly expressed, as if she were afraid of the boldness of her heart. Often, however, her thoughts fall into the _alambiqué_, the abstract and metaphysical. Her love to her child inspired the best lines she ever composed. The sports of the little one, whom she should see no more, associated with the remembrance of forests, plains, and cataracts, give to that love the grandeur and infinitude of American Nature. Of all the female poets of the new world, Maria Brooks seems to possess most the sibylline inspirations of the celebrated women of contemporaneous Europe. Yet she has none of that Byronean spirit that reigns so much among them; and if we would indicate the European poetry school to which she should be attached, we would cite, rather than that of Byron, the names of Southey, her admirer, of Coleridge, and of John Wilson, the author of the _City of the Plague_. Maria Brooks is the only brilliant exception that we have met in the collection of Mr. Griswold. All her poetic companions draw their inspirations, not from their individual life, but their education, and as this education is the same for all, it is not astonishing that their works are uniform and monotonous. Yet, we do not complain, as we have already intimated, for we are thus enabled to see some of the features of American character more easily than if an original genius inspired each of the poetesses. The religious sentiment, for example, is every where uttered in these verses, but indeed it is the same that we find in the writings of American essayists--a sort of Christian theism which is becoming more the character of Protestantism in America. The spirit of Christ breathes indeed in these pages, but the person itself is seldom seen: Christ is always the teacher and saviour of the world, but the crucified Redeemer is well nigh forgotten. The Son of God is manifested as he appeared to his disciples; transfigured upon Tabor, they see him in the radiant light conversing with the prophets of the ancient law. Do you prostrate humanity in the place of the disciples and the astonished crowd at the foot of the mountain, then you have an idea of the life of the religious faiths more and more adopted in America. But the torments of the Divine agony--the cross of Golgotha, and all the tragedy in the Saviour's history upon earth, which the nations of the middle ages and the ancient Christians held in precious remembrance, are almost forgotten. We mention the fact as being one which the religious and philosophic of our times may reflect upon with profit. It is the symptom of an imminent crisis in Protestantism, and sooner or later, will not fail of attracting discussion. This theistic sentiment, which is the foundation of the writings of Channing and Theodore Parker, makes itself felt continually in the verses of this collection which by manner or subject relate to religion. The descriptions of nature, oddly enough, never strike, as one would expect, by their novelty. Far away we see pleasantly the names of palms, cotton-trees, cocoa trees, and the botanic names of flowers unknown to us, but it is no matter whether we exchange all these trees and exotic plants for poplars, oaks, and birches, or the modern plants of our Europe. We feel very little, in any poetry, the particular sentiment of an original nature. In the midst of the woods and forests of the new world, one can readily believe himself among those of France or England; he will remark only a more lively picture of verdure and waters. Have you ever seen the landscapes of Theodore Rousseau? The grass is greener and the yellow leaves are yellower than in the paintings of any other artist. But the presence of nature is not there. Such is the effect upon us of the descriptions given by these female poets. Here, in support of our assertion, is a picture by Mrs. Frances Green. Stillness of summer noontide over hill, And deep embowering wood, and rock, and stream, Spread forth her downy pinions, scattering sleep Upon the drooping eyelids of the air. No wind breathed through the forest that could stir The lightest foliage. If a rustling sound Escaped the trees, it might be nestling bird, Or else the polished leaves were turning back To their own natural places, whence the wind Of the last hour had flung them. From afar Came the deep roar of waters, yet subdued To a melodious murmur, like the chant Of naiads, ere they take their noontide rest. A tremulous motion stirred the aspen leaves, And from their shivering stems an utterance came, So delicate and spirit like, it seemed The soul of music breathed, without a voice. The anemone bent low her drooping head, Mourning the absence of her truant love, Till the soft languor closed her sleepy eye, To dream of zephyrs from the fragrant south, Coming to wake her with renewed life. The eglantine breathed perfume; and the rose Cherished her reddening buds, that drank the light, Fair as the vermil on the cheek of hope. Where'er in sheltered nook or quiet dell, The waters, like enamored lovers, found A thousand sweet excuses for delay, The clustering lilies bloomed upon their breast, Love-tokens from the naiads, when they came To trifle with the deep, impassioned waves. The wild-bee hovering on voluptuous wing, Scarce murmured to the blossom, drawing thence Slumber with honey; then in the purpling cup, As if oppressed with sweetness, sank to sleep. The wood-dove tenderly caressed his mate; Each looked within the other's drowsy eyes, Till outward objects melted into dreams. The rich vermilion of the tanager, Or summer red-bird, flashed amid the green, Like rubies set in richest emerald. On some tall maple sat the oriole, In black and orange, by his pendent nest, To cheer his brooding mate with whispered songs; While high amid the loftiest hickory Perched the loquacious jay, his turquoise crest Low drooping, as he plumed his shining coat, Rich with the changeful blue of Nazareth. And higher yet, amid a towering pine, Stood the fierce hawk, half-slumbering, half-awake, His keen eye flickering in his dark unrest, As if he sought for plunder in his dreams. The scaly snake crawled lazily abroad, To revel in the sunshine; and the hare Stole from her leafy couch, with ears erect Against the soft air-current; then she crept, With a light, velvet footfall, through the ferns. The squirrel stayed his gambols; and the songs Which late through all the forest arches rang, Were graduated to a harmony Of rudimental music, breathing low, Making the soft wind richer--as the notes Had been dissolved and mingled with the air. Pawtucket almost slumbered, for his waves Were lulled by their own chanting: breathing low, With a just audible murmur, as the soul Is stirred in visions with a thought of love, He whispered back the whisper tenderly Of the fair willows bending over him, With a light hush upon their stirring leaves, Blest watchers o'er his day-dreams. Not a sign Of man or his abode met ear or eye, But one great wilderness of living wood, O'er hill, and cliff, and valley, swelled and waved, An ocean of deep verdure. By the rock Which bound and strengthen'd all their massive roots Stood the great oak and giant sycamore; Along the water-courses and the glades Rose the fair maple and the hickory; And on the loftier heights the towering pine-- Strong guardians of the forest--standing there, On the old ramparts, sentinels of time, To watch the flight of ages.[C] These verses are pretty, perhaps very pretty. They give nature a charming appearance,--too much like the "everlasting spring" of Ovid. Do you not seem to lie in the shade of a European forest? Here are the same trees, the same flowers, the same animals. But the trees are more abundant of leaves, the grass is thicker, the sun is brighter, the waters warmer. But there is no profoundly original painting, no broad description by a few great outlines. The sentiment of the beautiful and ideal is expressed in this collection of poetry, in an uncolored, abstract, and metaphysical manner. We are not sure that all these women love and understand the beautiful arts, and particularly the plastic arts; the only one whose influence they feel deeply, and which they seem to prefer, is music. And this preference among the moderns for music is a curious fact. The superiority given to it above painting and sculpture may be accounted for in some degree by the fact that music accords more with woman's instincts. Music is truly the art of the nineteenth century _par excellence_; it is the art which expresses best incredible aspirations; it is an art democratic in its essence. Appreciated by all living beings, even the unintelligent tribes, to be felt, music demands neither science nor long study--it makes every one happy, and tells to each the story of his love. To produce sculptors, poets, and painters, it is necessary that a country should boast of many centuries, of a history, of a long succession of traditions, of established customs; but modern nations, particularly Americans, outstrip time, act with precipitation, and have no leisure to wait the traditions of history. Hence this extraordinary love of music, the least costly of the arts. They love music as one loves the conversations of the evening, and refreshing sleep after a hard day's labor. The art of music then is, if we dare say so, the art of nations who have no time for meditation and reflection--the art of ardent and feverish nations; for, to be understood, it requires only that a man should have a soul, with warm desires and hopes. We find in this collection two sonnets in honor of Beethoven and Mozart, in which the genius of the two masters is perfectly appreciated and felt. They are from Margaret Fuller, since Countess d'Ossoli, who was drowned by shipwreck on her return to her native country. BEETHOVEN. Most intellectual master of the art, Which best of all teaches the mind of man The universe in all its varied plan-- What strangely mingled thoughts thy strains impart! Here the faint tenor thrills the inmost heart, There the rich bass the reason's balance shows; Here breathes the softest sigh that love e'er knows; There sudden fancies seeming without chart, Float into wildest breezy interludes; The past is all forgot--hopes sweetly breathe, And our whole being glows--when lo! beneath The flowery brink, Despair's deep sob concludes! Startled, we strive to free us from the chain-- Notes of high triumph swell, and we are thine again! MOZART. If to the intellect and passions strong Beethoven speak, with such resistless power, Making us share the full creative hour, When his wand fixed wild Fancy's mystic throng, Oh, Nature's finest lyre! to thee belong The deepest, softest tones of tenderness, Whose purity the listening angels bless, With silvery clearness of seraphic song. Sad are those chords, oh heavenward striving soul! A love, which never found its home on earth, Pensively vibrates, even in thy mirth, And gentle laws thy slightest notes control; Yet dear that sadness! spheral concords felt Purify most those hearts which most they melt. Of these two sonnets, we prefer that of Mozart, as expressing better, in our opinion, the character of the music of the great master--as more discriminating than that of Beethoven--a perfect description besides of the author of _Fidelio_. The sonnets appear curious to us as sparklings of æsthetic poetry beyond the seas. The sentiments of American pride and of national susceptibility vibrate here and there in all this poetry, but not very often. The remembrance of the early emigrants, the description of America when inhabited by savage hordes, and the comparison of this barbaric state with the industrial wonders of the nineteenth century, are themes somewhat rare, but which are nevertheless not forgotten. We have also noticed two or three pieces which brought a smile upon our lips--where the shades of old Indian sachems appear to bless modern civilization, and seem ready to thank the Great Spirit for having exterminated their race, despoiled and chased from their own native woods and prairies. There are besides a few pieces borrowed from historic subjects, and a few dedicated to individuals; some pages in honor of Washington and Napoleon, and this is all. The rest is composed of mere musings, fancies, and elegies, expressing no precise and distinct sentiment. But what matters the relative weakness of this poetry? Let us rise to higher spheres than that purely literary. The moral character and the virtues which this collection of poetry suggests are superior to the poetry itself. Who can tell, indeed, the good which may be done by these musical reveries and innocent caprices? They have been composed in the bosom of tranquility, by the fireside, among parents, children, relatives, and friends. These were the public to which they addressed themselves, who admired them, and drew from them their contributions to the good and beautiful. Probably many chaste tendernesses are recognized by the banks of these little limpid fountains of poesy; many hearts have rejoiced in these tender harmonies; many a man, weary with the labors of the day, has felt the sweet words of his daughter or his wife thrill his soul; he has beheld the bright gleams of ideal realities, and laid himself down and dreamed of images of higher beauty. In that hard, practical country, many poetic germs have thus taken root, many coarse natures have become more refined. What matters it, then, whether these specimens of poetry be original or not?--they have been useful. We offer our thanks to the female poets of America, for the seeds of piety, virtue, and nobility sown in their country. Without noise, without humanitary pretensions, they have fulfilled their mission of religion and refinement. FOOTNOTES: [B] THE FEMALE POETS OF AMERICA: BY RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD. Philadelphia, Henry C. Baird, 1851. [C] From Nanuntenoo, an Indian Romance. By Frances H. Green. Philadelphia, 1850. JEANNE MARIE, AND LYRICAL POETRY IN GERMANY. We are induced to translate for _The International_ the following crisply written critique from _Die Grenzboten_, not only from its giving for the benefit of certain of our _dilettanti_ German scholars a few judicious remarks on the true merit of their "new celebrity," JEANNE MARIE, but because the preceding account of the present state of lyrical poetry in Germany, is very nearly as applicable to lyrical poetry as it now exists among the rising bards of America and England as to that of the father-land: "It is now about a century since the beginning of our most brilliant German lyrical era, and we are at the conclusion of a series of developments, which individually display all of the peculiarities indicative of the decline of a great epoch in art. The incredible number of subjects which have been artistically treated, has inspired the minds of our cotemporaries with an almost superfluity of poetically adapted figures, forms, tones and materials, with which we are familiar from our first breath. Vast numbers of corresponding series of similes, and combinations of words and sentences have been naturalized in our language, and the spirit of the rising generation cannot be other than powerfully influenced by the incredible variety of forms and phrases, which it acquires during education. From all which a limitation of the creative power naturally results--since there is hardly a sentiment, hardly a perception of the present day, which has not been rendered applicable to poetic art; and the array of these imposing creations ring in the soul of the young poet wonderfully through each other. It is almost impossible to experience a new feeling which has not been sung, and yet the impulse still exists to win for the again and again experienced, a value, and a certain degree of originality. From which results the most desperate efforts, by means of bold, artificial, highly polished or tasteless images and comparisons, to form a style and acquire a peculiar literary physiognomy: efforts which should by no means be despised, even when the critic is compelled to blame its results; for it is natural and unavoidable. Such a superabundance of poetic forms of address, applications, words, and measures, are at present current in the world, that for every poetic feeling a prosaic or metrical reminiscence rings and echoes consciously or unconsciously, and more or less clearly, through the poetic soul. To avoid this wearisome beaten path, our poets are driven, on the one hand, into unheard of refinements of metre and words--or on the other, into an affected barbarism and roughness. And since the quantity of poetic metres, applications, and forms of speech, has become so incredibly large that they every where pass and are received as a sort of _spiritual small change_, it has become infinitely easier to express an idea in tolerably good poetic language, than it was fifty years ago. Gleim, Holty, and Bürger, are to us great men, not because their poems are so much better than those manufactured at the present day, but because their every poem was a victory gained over the barbarism and want of form in the German language as it then existed--a true conquest for the realm of beauty and art. At present, any fool who has by heart his Schiller or his Heine, can collect and write that which may pass for his 'poem'--though perhaps not an atom of the whole is the result of aught save mere reproduction. What is really wanting to all our writers is the _correct_ and _artistic_ adaptation of terms. For this modern dilettanti reproduction and combination of the thoughts and forms of others is but a rough and uncomely parody of those poetic creations, which were consecrated by an earnest striving and silent battle with the force of language. Among the numerous modern poets in Germany, there live not a dozen who can write a truly correct verse and make just applications of our so poetically adapted language. The which assertion, seemingly a paradox--is nevertheless natural enough. "And yet the creative impulse lives in many a soul, nor has there for a long time existed a more generally diffused or more exquisite appreciation of lyrical poetry than during the past year. New poets of an aristocratic or pious tendency are eagerly purchased and admired, which is also according to rule, since they reflect the spirit of the age, and correspond with modern wants. Such a peculiar influence on the interest of the public at large has naturally conducted to the most elegant style of publication of recent poems. It has become a real pleasure to see their paper, type, and binding, and their neat garments of fine linen, delicately trimmed and lettered with burnished gold. Such a highly ornamented work at present adorns every table, and appears right well in the white little hand of its fair possessor. "The poems of Jeanne Marie, the popular romance writer, are by an intelligent and well educated lady. She has evidently observed and reflected much in the world, and had also her own experiences therein--yet knows how to express with propriety and consciousness her most passionate feelings. She is, however, in her poems, rather witty and calculating, than inspired with heart and soul. Those productions are, for the greater part, images and comparisons--not unfrequently very exquisitely conceived and executed--the _point_ being occasionally a gross antithesis, as for example in the poem, _Alles nur Du_: "'What I most longed for, thou hast to me given, What I possess, belongeth all to thee; Thou art mine _I_--thine is my life and heaven, My life is thine, and thine my all _To-Be_.' "Or in other poems, the conclusion merely amounts to the explanation of a comparison, as in the _New Cloak Song_, in which on a rusty nail, a torn cloak explains itself as the cloak of Christian love. But where our poetess simply narrates or describes, her art is truly agreeable, only that the lively and closely detailed perceptions, which shoot forth in her soul, often appear obscure from a want of practice in poetic language, and not unfrequently entirely perverted on account of an utter deficiency in logical acuteness. "But since this poetess is endowed with far more than her cotemporaries--_id est_, a peculiar talent to conceive and represent in a lively manner epic details--let us, for the sake of art, gently beg of her to do something for this her talent. She is by far too ignorant of the art of application of terms in lyrical poetry, her delivery is too variable and inaccurate, while botched-up expressions (_Flickwörter_) and startling instances of incorrectness in language are in her writings every where to be met with. As yet she is a mere amateur and _dilettant_, and her right, to lay before the literary world her poetic inspirations, may very correctly be doubted; and yet she has evidently in her the material for something far better. This she can attain in only one way. She must lay aside all the flaunt and tawdriness of her similes and figures, and then strive to express a lively emotion or an interesting expression, with the simplest words, first in prose--and _then_ in verse. What she has written should then be carefully thought over--every line and word tested, and no inaccuracy in poetical perceptions, no oblique expression, and no metrical defect be suffered to remain." _Authors and Books._ A new German work, entitled _Klopstock in Zurich from the years 1730 to 1751_, gives quite a new portrait of the poet of the Messias, who, both by the time of his appearance and by the dignity of his theme, is held as the patriarch of German poetry. In this sprightly little volume the mystic halo with which an exaggerated homage has invested the head of the genial young German rolls away, and we behold a pleasant fellow in gay summer costume, floating about upon the blue lake of Zurich, surrounded by a circle of fair and admiring votaries, to whom he chants strains from his immortal poem, and reaps a harvest of kisses in return. We behold a chivalrous equestrian dashing through the still streets of old Zurich, draining unreasonable depths of beer with wild students, biting glass, and swallowing coal, until the old Bodmer with whom he was living--a reverential admirer of the great Prophet of the Messias, and in whose imagination Klopstock sat separate in a godlike and passionless serenity--was bitterly grieved by these earthly experiences of a Greek rather than of a Christian divinity, complained, remonstrated, rebuked, until the jovial poet was forced to leave the good Bodmer's house, and betake himself to Rape's, with whom he sat in silken hose, and speculated upon the universe. It is always pleasant to hear these human facts of the heroes of fame and imagination. Few things remove Washington farther from the general sympathy than the unbending austerity of hue in which his mental portrait is always colored. Why should our great men, whose humanity makes them dearer, go so solemnly and sadly through all posterity? Burns could draw the tired hostlers of village inns from their beds to listen open-mouthed and open-hearted to his wondrous and witching stories. Shakspeare shall always have stolen sheep, even though De Quincy proves by splendid and resonant reasoning that he could never have done it. Raphael shall have been a warm-blooded man, spite of our cold-blooded speculations upon his saintship, so that we shall not wonder at De Maistre's delicate and dainty truth that the Fornarina "loved her love more than her lover." Not that sheep-stealing, or any other peccadillo is beautiful, or in any way to be commended or imitated, but that these are the signs of human and actual sympathy which these great and glorious geniuses show us--as stately sky-sailed galleons, sweeping the sea into admiring calm at their progress, might hang out simple lanterns to the fishing-smacks around, to show their crews that the same red blood was the sap of all that splendid life. "Is he not the Just?" "Yes--and because he is the Just, I have done it." Poor old Herr Bodmer could not see with equanimity the illustrious guest of his imagination boating about the lake with the girls at Zurich, and selling the stanzas--of priceless worth to him--for a snatched and blushing kiss. For our own part, we are glad that generous Mr. Morikofer has pulled off the bleached horse hair wig of factitious gravity, and shown us the natural moist and waving hair of a human-hearted poet. * * * * * A _History of German Literature_, from W. WACKERNAGEL, is coming out in parts at Basle. Since Gervinus there has been no broad treatment of the subject. But Gervinus gives us rather a history of the cultivation than of the literature of Germany. Vilmar is much too partial and partisan, and Hillebrand treats only the period from Lessing to the present time. Wackernagel surveys the whole ground from the beginning. The first part of his work is occupied with the elder literature of Germany, but he has handled it so dexterously that it interests the general reader, even while he develops the laws by which the old high German proceeded from the Gothic, and the middle high German from that. He divides the literary history into three parts. 1. The old high German era, Frank, Carlovingian, of the German Latinity of the bards. 2. The middle high German, beginning with the Crusades, and treating all the chivalric, social, and international relations which they inspired. 3. The new German style. The treatise is original and profound, and lacks only a little more elaboration of the biographical notices. * * * * * A somewhat curious proof of the influence which America at present exerts, even in language, may be found in the title of a dictionary (English and German), recently published at Brunswick. The title alluded to, is as follows: _A new and complete dictionary of the English and German languages, compiled with especial regard to the American idiom for general use; containing a concise grammar, &c., &c._: by WILLIAM ODELL ELWELL. * * * * * CARL HEIDELOFF, whose exquisite work on the architectural ornaments of the Middle Ages, should entitle him to the gratitude of every student of mediæval art, will publish, before the end of this month, by Geigar of Nuremberz, a folio, illustrated with the finest steel engravings, entitled _Architectonic Sketches, and complete buildings, in the Byzantine and Old German styles_. * * * * * It has long been a mooted point among the philosophers of the beautiful in Germany whether the art of gardening was a legitimate branch of æsthetic culture. Bouterweck denied that the artificial perversions of an old-fashioned French garden had the slightest relation to art, but admitted that the _Landschafts-gartenkunst_, or art of landscape gardening, might very properly be ranked with painting and sculpture. Thiersch passes the subject by in silent contempt, while Tittman, whose work on beauty and art is fast becoming a universal hand-book of æsthetics, declares, on the other hand, that it is, even more than architecture, closely allied to the study of the beautiful, since its object is far less directly connected with human wants, and more nearly related to the attractive and fascinating. Herr Rudolph Siebeck would appear, however, to have put the question for a time at rest, by a work at present publishing by Voigt, in Leipsic, entitled _Die Vildende Gartenkunst, in ihren modernen Formen_, which, as he very correctly asserts, "embraces in one comprehensive theory all those laws of the art of gardening which æsthetics present, by the application of natural and artificial methods, in order to plan and execute walks and grounds, according to the dictates of a refined taste." In pursuance of this great aim, Herr Siebeck, (who was, by the way, formerly the imperial Russian court-gardener at Lazienka, and is at present council-gardener at Leipsic,) after completing his education as a practical gardener, scientifically studied the higher principles of his art at the universities of Munich and Leipsic, both of which, but particularly the former, have long been celebrated for the facilities which they afford for this study. After which, under the kind patronage of Baron Hugel, he journeyed to "every country" the natives of which had so far advanced in the art of gardening as to deserve the honor of a visit. The results of this study and labor are given in the above-titled volume, which embraces all things, if not exactly from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall, at least from the largest royal park to the smallest garden in a city. The work is illustrated with twenty colored garden plans, arranged according to the following categories: 1. Kitchen Gardens. 2. Pleasure Gardens. 3. Pleasure and Kitchen Gardens. 4. Public Gardens. 5. A Botanical Garden. * * * * * The first volume of a new _Life of Goethe_, by J. W. SCHAFER, has been published, of which we find flattering accounts. Also the _Life and Times of Joachim Jurgins_, with Goethe's fragments upon his works by G. C. Guhsaner. He was the contemporary of Galileo, Kepler, Cartesius, &c. * * * * * FRANZ LISZT, the famous pianist, has written a pleasant pamphlet in favor of the project of a Goethean Institute of Art in Weimar, where he is chapel master. * * * * * WEIL--not _Alexander_ of the Corsaire, but Dr. GUSTAV WEIL, Professor of Oriental languages and History at Heidelberg--is publishing at Mannheim, a _History of the Khalifs_,[D] which, as regards extent, erudition, and accuracy, may be fairly ranked with any work on this subject extant. The title is, however, only partial; that of "An Universal History of Islamism," would be far more appropriate. The Khalifate forms, so to speak, a nucleus around which are grouped as integral parts all of the numerous dynasties which were in any degree connected with the Khalifate, while those which were more nearly within its influence, as the Saffarides, the Tulinides, Bujides, and Saljucks, are illustrated with extraordinary learning and research. An excellent history of Arabic literature to the midst of the fourth century of the Hegira is appropriately introduced. The reader will remember that SCHLOSSER, in the introduction to his fourth volume of the _Weltgeschichte_, remarks that in the oriental portion of that work he had been guided _solely_ by the "Life of Mohammed," by Weil, and this "History of the Khalifate," of which, however, only the first volume had then appeared. _Weil_, remarks the great "modern Tacitus," "is at present universally recognized as one of the first oriental scholars in Germany or France. He has brought from manuscripts many new things to light, and his works may be regarded as historical sources." * * * * * VON RAHDEN, a German officer of note, has published some very interesting _Reminiscences of a Military Career_. The third part, which is just completed, contains the history of his campaigns with the earliest army in Spain. He is a soldier of the old type, and was devoted body and soul to Don Carlos--and if his story occasionally expands into romance, it is readily forgiven for the greater local truth and impression thereby obtained. He paints battle-pieces in a most vivid manner, pervaded by that interest in the individual which lends so fascinating a charm to all narration. In his first Spanish battle, when stationed as an outpost in the very tempest of bullets and balls, he quietly takes time to draw the country and the situation of the enemy. His hero is Lichnowsky--the young German Prince, who was so inhumanly butchered during the session of the German Parliament in Frankfort. He was in Spanish battle as cool, skilful, and death-despising, as he was chivalric against the crudeness of the political philosophers, and noble against the beastly brutality of his assassins, in central Germany. * * * * * The third part of the life of BARON VON STEIN, the celebrated Prussian statesman, is published. The chief interest of this part is the history of Stein's sympathy with the Emperor Alexander of Russia, whom he regarded as the Saviour of Europe. * * * * * ADELBERT KELLER, one of the most zealous among the mediæval romantic antiquaries of the Tubingen school, and well known by his accurate editions of the _Gesta Romanorum, Les Romans des Sept Sages, Romancero del Cid_, and _Gudrun_, has recently, in company with Wilhelm Holland, prepared for the press a new edition of the songs of _Guillem IX., Count of Poictiers and Duke of Aquitania_. In addition to the chair of Professor Extraordinary of Modern Languages, (which our readers need not be informed is nothing very extraordinary at a German university,) Keller holds the far more important office of teacher of the German Language and Literature at the university of Tubingen. We presume that few men, even in France or Germany, have more carefully or enthusiastically hunted over the various MS. libraries of Italy or his own country, in search of Minnesinger and Provençal literature than Keller. * * * * * The twenty-fifth publication of the _Geschichte der Europaischen Staaten_ (History of the States of Europe) consists of continuations of histories of Austria and Prussia. The series is edited by the well-known scholars HEEREN and UKERT. It has been in progress more than twenty years, and is designed to embrace a complete body of American history, by competent authors. Fifty volumes have already been issued, embracing in complete works, Italy, by Leo, finished 1832; German Empire, by Pfister, 1836; Saxony, by Bottiger, 1837; Netherlands, by Van Kampen, 1837; Austria, by Mailath, 1850; France to the Revolution, by Schmidt, 1848; France, from the Revolution, by Wachsmuth, 1844; the Histories of Denmark, by Dahlmann (vol. III. in 1844); of Portugal, by Schafer (vol. III. in 1850); of Russia, continued by Herrmann after Strahl's decease (vol. IV. 1849); of Prussia, by Stenzel (vol. IV. 1850) are all far advanced, and their completion may be looked for at no distant period. Single volumes, also, have appeared, by Zinkeisen, on the Ottoman Kingdom; by Ropel, on Poland; and by Bulau on the Modern History of Germany. The _Athenæum_ observes that when the series is completed, the Germans and those who read German in other countries will have, in no immoderate compass, a body of European history, uniform in its general plan, and maintaining a standard of competent authorship such as cannot, we believe, be found in any other language. * * * * * The well-known Countess SPAUR, the wife of the Bavarian Ambassador at Rome, is engaged upon a series of memoirs of events connected with the flight of the Pope from Rome in 1849. It will be remembered that the Pope escaped under convoy of the Bavarian ambassador, and the consequent completeness of information added to the graceful elegance of her style, will produce a brilliant and interesting book. * * * * * A singular occurrence which took place very recently in Berlin affords a curious illustration of a line in _The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_, in which, speaking of German idioms, the writer somewhat inaccurately remarks, that "the U, twice dotted, is pronounced like E;" inaccurately, we say, since this pronunciation is not found in the pure north German. Dr. WIRTH, director of the opera at Berlin, was during the past month confounded by some not very intelligent police agents of that city with the revolutionary WURTH (who was however deceased in 1848), arrested, and subjected to much personal inconvenience, before he could prove to their satisfaction that he was not the _ci-devant_ disturber of kingly peace. * * * * * The COUNTESS IDA HAHN-HAHN, has written her spiritual experience in a work published in Mannheim, entitled, _From Babylon to Jerusalem_. It is a history of her own soul, showing how it journeyed from confusion and doubt to peace. In it she says of the famous holy coat of Treves: "It was not comprehended--what did that show? How wonderful and incredible it was that thousands and thousands journeyed up the Rhine and down, not alone of the lower classes, but of the intelligent, of the cultivated and elegant class. And could this be really the Saviour's garment? And were the cures real which had been reported in all the journals as wrought by it? Like all the rest, I shared the religious enthusiasm of which no Protestant can conceive. Instead of ridiculing and scorning, I wrote that I knew not if this was the identical garment, but this was certainly the same faith that cast the woman at the feet of Christ, and caused her to kiss the hem of his robe, and be healed. My instinct was just, but my reasoning false. For if the old faith was so fast, so glowing, and so immortal in the old church, how could I ever say better _no_ church than _one_ only?" * * * * * A singular book is announced in Germany, a country in which we are not aware that singular books have ever been rare, under the title of _Intercourse with the Departed by means of Magnetism_. "A book for the consolation of Humanity, containing the most irresistible evidence of the personal continuance and activity of the soul after its separation from the body, collected from contemporary notes taken from extatic somnambulists, by LUIS ALPHONSE CAHAGNET, with a critical preface by Dr. J. Newberth, authorized magnetizer in Berlin and Associate of the Imperial Leopold Academy of Sciences." A prospectus, modest enough in style but of very large pretensions, sets forth that it is not a speculation, but a communication of truth, which is nowise contrary to the Christian religion, but is calculated to exercise a genial influence upon the faithful to disperse all doubts and to advance the kingdom of Faith and Love. Who will fail warmly to wish "God-speed" to a work that proposes to accomplish such rich results? * * * * * In Russia the singular prejudice has long obtained that the old Sclavonian dialects had nothing in common with the Russian language. But there is now a change in the opinions of the learned, and many skilful philologists are at present engaged in scientific speculations upon the subject. SRESNEWSKY, DAWYDOFF, and SCHEWYREFF have recently published works upon the question. The first has "Memoirs upon the new efforts towards a philological investigation of the old Sclavonian Language," and "Thoughts upon the History of the Russian Language." Dawydoff has published "An attempt at a Grammar of Universal Comparison of the Russian Language," and Schwyreff "A Journey to the Convent of Kirillo-Bjeloserski," an archæological work, represented as a model of its kind. Schewyreff is a well known, educated, and learned man, fully cognizant of the results of philogical study in the west. It is evident that Russia constantly aims to put herself abreast of western science. Wostokoff is busy upon a complete grammar of the old Sclavonic language, and a dictionary of the same. Both works will soon go to press. Since Dobrowsky, the area of old Sclavonian philology has much extended itself, and there can be no doubt that Wostokoff has made use of all the new material. The study of the Sclavonian language and literature has more than a merely philological interest. It will throw much light upon the confused history of Eastern Europe from the sixth to the ninth century,--a light sadly needed, even after Schaffarik's Sclavonian antiquities. * * * * * In Munich, we observe that THIERSCH, Professor of Fine Arts at the University of the "German Athens," and whose _Aesthetik_, if not the most philosophic, is at least the most agreeable and practical, (though we know that _Krug_ disposes of it in conversation very briefly with the expression "merely eclectic,") has published a new edition of his _Ziber das Erechtheum auf der Akropolis zu Athen_, with excellent colored illustrations by METZGER. Out of Germany the reputation of Thiersch rests principally upon his researches into and elucidations of Athenian antiquities. * * * * * A drama by an unknown poet, ROBERT PRÖLSS, _The Right of Love_, attracts much attention in Germany, from its clear and interesting style, its fresh and lively dialogue, and the delicate drawing of its characters. The author seems to have modelled himself upon Shakspeare, but his work shows traces also of Italian study, and the critics, without questioning Prölss' originality or asserting an imitation, are reminded of Machiavelli's Mandragora. They find in the author the material of a genuine dramatist--experience, feeling, a sharp insight into character, and great skill in dialogue. The literary eye must be fastened upon such promise. It is so refreshing to find a Phenix in a mare's nest. * * * * * _Pictures of Travel and Study, from the North of the United States of America_, is the title of a new book of travel by Mr. CHARLES QUENTIN, a German gentleman and official from Prussia. It is a diary of impressions, and without aiming at any high literary or philosophical excellence, abounds in sharp and smart observations. Some things do not escape the shrewd eye of Mr. Quentin, that not all Americans observe. As an illustration, we remark his notice of the American female habit in "shopping," of tumbling over all the goods in the shop and departing without finding "anything to suit." Hence our author infers the social supremacy of women in America. A new way of arriving at the old fact--a fact which the sane and sensible of the sex cannot fail to perceive and acknowledge. The book is written in a vivacious, colloquial humor. * * * * * ERNST FORSTER, well known as having married the daughter of Jean Paul Richter, but more celebrated for his translation of and notes to the best version of Vasari ever published, and who would deserve an honorable mention were it only for his well-known hospitality to all Americans visiting Munich, has recently given to the world, through the eminent bibliographist and publisher Kaiser, a brochure, entitled, _Wem Gebuhrt der Krang?_ (Who deserves the Wreath?) a holiday-gift on the occasion of uncovering the colossal bronze statue of Bavaria. Next to King Ludwig himself, there are no Germans of the present day who entertain more comprehensive or sounder views of art in its manifold relations than Dr. Ernst Forster. * * * * * Since the remarkable increase of late years of the use of stucco ornaments in our Atlantic cities, we deem it almost a duty to call the attention of our builders to a work by Professor Eisenlohr, recently published, at a very moderate price, by Veith, of Carlsruhre, entitled _Architectural Ornaments, in Clay and Gypsum, for practical use, with Lithographed Illustrations_. Folio, 1 volume. * * * * * The publishing house of BROCKHAUS, one of the largest in Germany, is printing a series of Russian novels and poems, translated into German by William Wólfsohn. * * * * * _The History of the United States Exploring Expedition_, under Lieutenant WILKES, is just translated and published in Germany. * * * * * COUNT MORITZ STRACHWITZ has published a new volume of poems. His former books have been well received. * * * * * PROFESSOR BULAU'S _Review of the Year 1850_, has reached a second edition. * * * * * BAYARD TAYLOR'S _El Dorado_ has lately appeared in a German translation. * * * * * In Paris the first volume of the collection of _Greek and Latin Physicians_ has just appeared. To the profession this will be a work of the greatest interest and importance. The idea originated with Dr. DAREMBERG, a learned physician, enamored of his art, versed in the ancient languages--familiar with the study of MSS., and a visitor of all the principal libraries of Europe for the purposes of his work. The book will comprise the text of the authors, collated with manuscripts, and with the best editions, with a French translation and notes. To each division there will be a copious index. Daremberg has too well appreciated the scope and dignity of his work to suppose that it could be accomplished by any individual, and has therefore associated with himself several of the most distinguished savans in various departments of the undertaking, both in France and elsewhere. He comprehended no less the immense expense of the work, and applied in its inception under the monarchy, to the Government for aid. It was granted, and the Republic does not shrink from the fulfilment of that promise of its predecessor, in so truly a democratic work--for every thing which tends to the knowledge of the means of preserving health is essentially democratic. The French translation is admirably precise and clear; the notes are numerous but useful--chiefly upon natural history--the customs of the ancients--their hygiene, and upon all points which required elucidation. The work cannot be completed for several years, but Daremberg is young and ardent, and for his future labors he will have the solace of his first great and undoubted success. * * * * * The correspondence of MIRABEAU during the last three years of his life, and the complete history of his relations to the Court, is announced in Paris by Le Normant, in three octavo volumes. According to the _Journal des Débats_, the greatest part of these papers have never been printed. Mirabeau, a few days before his death, (2d April, 1794,) delivered them to his friend the Count de Mark, from whose hands, when he died at Brussels in 1833, they came into the possession of M. de Barcourt. This gentleman, formerly Ambassador to the United States, has enriched the volume with historical notes and commentaries. * * * * * LOUIS BLANC has published a political pamphlet called _Plus de Girondins_ (No more Girondins), in which the opposition of the extreme party to the moderate party is expressed with the greatest force. The freedom of the press, and the liberty of public meeting, he wishes entirely unlimited, and the clubs to be every where opened as popular schools of politics. Exile has but knit him more closely to the democratic ideas, for whose development he hoped so much in the Revolution of '48. His compeer, Ledru Rollin, achieved nothing by his last year's work upon the Decadence of England, but ridicule in England, and no great fame at home. * * * * * A curious anecdote is told of SCRIBE, the French vaudevilliste. He was one day at work in his cabinet, when a young man entered. It was Lacenaire. He seemed very modest, and stated delicately the occasion of his visit. He had been appointed to a situation in Belgium, but was entirely without means, and requested of Scribe thirty or forty francs to pay his way to Brussels. Scribe was attracted by the young man's tone and manner. "Thirty to forty francs," said he, "are too few. I must give you a hundred, and if you choose to repay them, you can do so to an old woman in Brussels, who was a servant of our family. Here is her address." So saying, Scribe went to his drawer and took out the gold for the young man, who expressed his gratitude with all the elegance of a cultivated and sensitive mind, and left a copy of verses with Scribe for a remembrance. Since then Lacenaire has confessed that he knew the arrangement of Scribe's chamber, and had chosen an hour when the servants were absent. "I put myself between Scribe and the bell-rope, and if he had refused me, I should have made short and noiseless work with my knife. Scribe owed his life to his generosity." In this little story is there not an averted tragedy as sad as Eugene Aram's? * * * * * A new work, of great importance to the oriental student, will soon reach England from Siam, where it has been already published. It is a new Siamese grammar, prepared by the Roman Catholic Vicar General, who has resided in Siam for twenty years. In the "Journal of the English Archipelago," Mr. Taylor Jones announces the work and its value, with some illustrative facts in the author's life. The bishop brings to the task not alone his own remarkable intelligence and devotion, but the results of the inquiries of his predecessors for two centuries. The work forms a quarto of two hundred and forty-six pages, and treats of a mass of matter necessary to the understanding of the language, but which is not elsewhere to be found. Among this the reckoning of time, of money, measures, and weights, as well as chronology, literature, and religion, are included. The eight or ten pages devoted to chronology afford a clear and just insight into the old history of Siam. The enumeration of Siamese books, although not complete, shows that Siamese literature is by no means poor. The miscellaneous list contains one hundred and fifty various books upon grammar, arithmetic, astronomy, astrology, and history, and many poetical works, especially romances. The various warlike romances of China are very faithfully translated and broadly diffused in Siam. Sometimes these ponderous productions climb to a series of ninety volumes. The historical reports of Siam make forty volumes, and there are no less than thirty-six holy Buddhist books. A sketch of Buddhism is given in the present work, and the good bishop is now about commencing a Siamese dictionary. * * * * * The literature of democracy has received another illustration in a social tragedy in five acts, by the citizen Xavier Sauriac, entitled The Death of Jesus. Its object of course is to embody dramatically the sentiment of the old Revolution that Jesus Christ was a _Sans Culottes_, akin to the feeling which causes ardent abolitionists to assert that he was a negro. This tragedy makes Jesus Christ a democratic philosopher, Herod an apostle, Magdalen a kind of Fleur de Marie. The hero rehearses a plan for the salvation of the world, which is simply crude communism. We quote an illustration: "Quand l'etat, héritier de la famille éteinte, Sera du sol entier possesseur sans contrainte, Qu'il serve alors de pére à tous les citoyens Et de la vie à tous dépense les moyens." And again: "Dans les bizars brillante du luxe industriel, Il devienue lui seul, marchand universel." This work is probably a very sincere one, and deserves a prominent place among the curiosities of literature. Nevertheless, such familiar presentation of the Saviour is not only blasphemous but ridiculous. * * * * * MR. ALEXANDER DUFAÏ has published in Paris a satire on socialist women, under the title of _Lélila, ou la Femme Socialiste_, and the journals of the sect are very angry with him that he illustrates the tendencies of socialism by presenting as his heroine its female apostle, George Sand. That there may be no doubt of his intention, he tells us in the preface that he has made _Lélila_ narrate her childhood, education, and poetic dreams, her marriage with a _sous préfet_, who did not "understand" her, and her amours with a poet who _did_ understand her, for he carried her off; he has also made _Lélila_ marry by turns all the socialist systems in the persons of their chiefs; and finally, shows her in the revolution of 1848, presiding at _Le Club des Femmes_, and playing an active part in public life. "After this," observes the _Leader_, "he has the shameless audacity to say he attacks the 'species,' not the 'individual!'" * * * * * The two last volumes of the Remains of SAINT-MARTIN have just been issued from the National Press in Paris, under the title, _Fragments of a History of the Arsacides, posthumous work of M. Saint-Martin_. He was a well-known French _litterateur_, and director of the library of the Arsenal. Strange stories are told of his unwearied diligence and devotion to details. He was the original proposer of a plan for a systematic and scientific investigation of oriental antiquities, and another for a collection of oriental classics. This latter was his darling project, for the execution of which Louis XVIII. granted a commission; but the revolution of 1830 ruined his hopes. Yet a new commission was named, and on the day upon which it was to hold its first session, Saint-Martin was stricken by the cholera, and died without knowing that the hope of his life would be fulfilled. * * * * * The _Univers_ at Paris announces a newly-discovered document in relation to the trial of Louis XVI., proving that the report of the Debates in the _Moniteur_ were falsified. This document is reported to have been published on the third of January, 1794, but has escaped all the historians. It occurs in the report of the commission appointed by the Convention to examine the papers found in Robespierre's possession. A letter turns up, written by the editor of the Debates of the Convention in the _Moniteur_ to Robespierre, and of this import: "You know that we always report more fully the speeches of the Mountain than of the other side. In Convet's complaint against you, I printed only a short sketch of his first point, but the whole of your reply. And in the report of the King's trial I introduced on his side only enough to preserve an appearance of impartiality," &c., &c. Lamartine received these papers to examine when he announced his history of the Girondins, but returned them, saying that he could make no use of them. * * * * * An important work is announced by Joubert in Paris, _Les Murailles Revolutionaries_, being a complete collection of professions of faith, proclamations, placards, decrees, bulletins, facsimiles of signatures, inedited autographs, &c., from February, 1848, to the present day: three volumes quarto. It is to be published in twenty-four parts, one part every month, and will supply a very important want of the future historian of these last remarkable years. * * * * * M. UBICINI has just published in Paris a very interesting work on the Ottomans, _Lettres sur la Turquie_. These letters were first printed in successive numbers of the _Moniteur_, from March, 1850, to the present summer, and they treat with decided ability and with freshness the chief subjects connected with Mohammedan civilization, and with the present condition and prospects of the Turkish empire, as the government, administration, army, finances, agriculture, commerce, public instruction, organization of religion, &c. * * * * * The _Collection of Sacred Moralists_, which has been for some time in course of publication in Paris, under the editorial supervision of the famous editor of French classics, M. Lefèvre, has been just completed by the publication of the two volumes, of which one contains the _Moral Thoughts_ of Confucius, and the other the work known as _The Sacred Book of China_. * * * * * M. REGNAULT'S new book, which he would have regarded as a completion of Louis Blanc's _Histoire de Dix Ans_, is described as a very violent and not very clever pamphlet. * * * * * LAMARTINE'S sentimental and lachrymose romance of _Raphaël_, has passed into a third edition in Paris. * * * * * The French poet MERY has just published a romance entitled _Confessions de Marion Delorme_. We cannot imagine any additional interest from fictitious coloring to a life such as it is believed was really led by the heroine. "Marion Delorme was born in 1612 or 1615, but where is not exactly known, though probably in Champagne or Franche Comté. Of marvellous beauty and exquisite wit, she became, after certain amatory adventures, the mistress, and subsequently by secret marriage the wife, of Cinq Mars, and, as such, was persecuted by the terrible Cardinal Richelieu. Even before he was sent to the scaffold, she had formed other intrigues, and then had a long list of lovers, amongst whom were de Grammont and Saint Evremont; then she became the 'glass of fashion and the mould of form, the observed of all observers,' and the admired of all gallants of the good city of Paris; then she dabbled in politics, and eventually became one of the chiefs of the malcontent party; then she was in danger of arrest, like the Princes de Conti and de Condé; then to escape a jail she spread a rumor that she was dead, and actually got up a mock funeral of herself; afterwards, she escaped to England, married a lord, and in a short time became a widow with a legacy of £4000; then she returned to France, and on her way to Paris was attacked by brigands, robbed of her money, and made to marry the chief of the band; four years later she was again a widow, and then she wedded a M. Laborde; after living with him seventeen years, he died, and she went to Paris with the remains of her fortune; robbed by her domestics, she was reduced to beggary, and continued to lead a wretched existence to the extraordinary age of one hundred and thirty-four!" * * * * * M. CUVILLIER-FLEURY has published _Portraits Politiques et Revolutionnaires_, containing Louis Philippe and the Duchess d'Orleans, Causes of the Revolution, Lamartine, Louis Blanc, Eugene Sue, Victor Hugo, Proudhon, &c., &c. M. Cuvillier-Fleury was one of the Secretaries of Louis Philippe. * * * * * MR. PARKE GODWIN'S beautiful romance of Vala (published by Putnam) has been translated into the Swedish language. One of the journals of Stockholm announces the translation in terms of just appreciation. "Our excellent Lind," it is observed, "is showered over with the California gold, but no tribute given her can equal in worth the exquisite gem which is here cast at her feet by this most imaginative author." * * * * * The author of "How to make Home Unhealthy" has published in London _A Defence of Ignorance_. It is addressed to the largest of the markets, but to one that buys few books. * * * * * A new novel by CHARLES DICKENS is to be commenced early in the autumn. Neither the title nor the subject has been announced. * * * * * A noble author, Viscount MAIDSTONE, has just published a poem in six cantos, under the title of Abd-el-Kader. * * * * * MR. THACKERAY, who promises to come and see us, and who, of course, will talk about us with the world afterwards, is delivering a course of six lectures in London upon the English humorists. The first was good, and as good as was expected, which is great praise--for few things are so difficult as for a famous man to satisfy public expectation. The London _Leader_ thus speaks of it: "On Thursday the great satiric painter of social life--the Fielding of our times--commenced at Willis's rooms the first of those 'Lectures on the English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century,' which many months ago we announced as in preparation. We have never heard a lecture that delighted us more. It was thoughtful and picturesque, with some wonderful traces of pathos and far-reaching sentences. Dwelling upon the moral aspects of Swift's position and career, rather than attempting a criticism on his works, Thackeray held his audience from first to last. He gave a vivid picture of the early life and loneliness of the great satirist amidst the exasperating servilities and insults endured from Temple's household, as also of the turbulent political bravo coming up to London to carve for himself a pathway among lords whom he despised. In this part of the lecture it was felt that, while satirizing that condition of political corruption which made Swift a bravo, and used him as such, the censor still touched upon living foibles; at the allusion to the South Sea Bubble, with its railway parallel, we observed some fair shoulders wince! Nor were religious cant and formalism untouched in the admirable picture of Swift's sacrifice of his life to an hypocrisy. The audience was of the elite--Thomas Carlyle, Macaulay, Milman, Milnes, Sir Robert Inglis, the Duke and Duchess of Argyle, the Duchess of Sutherland, Lady Constance Leveson Gower, Lady Lichfield, with many others, not a few lovely women, and several men well known in literature and art." Of his second lecture we quote the _Times_: "The heroes of his second lecture were Congreve and Addison. For Congreve, while he admitted the brilliancy of his wit, he evinced no great respect. He characterized him as the greatest literary "swell" that ever lived. With an air of greatness, Congreve put on his best clothes, stalked among wits who all thronged to admire him, however eminent they might be, and approached fine ladies with a certainty of conquest. The "I am the great Mr. Congreve!" was the complacent ejaculation which seemed to break through all he said and did. His character as a man of gallantry was illustrated by citations from his poems, in which he adulates or insults the ladies whom he immortalizes, and every where appears as the irresistible seducer, sure to be victorious in the end. And who could resist that very great Mr. Congreve, with his very fine coat, squeezing a hand, covered with diamonds, through the ringlets of a dishevelled periwig? Of the moral principle of his comedies Mr. Thackeray spoke with disgust, and traced the worship of youth and recklessness, and the disrespect of old age, which are such leading characteristics in those brilliant works, through a whole series of dramatic categories from the comedy to the puppet-show. The constant tendency, he humorously described, is a recommendation to "Eat and drink, and go to the deuce, when your time comes, if deuce there be; and he confessed that he regarded these witty banquets without love as he would contemplate the ruins of Sallust's house at Pompeii, with all its ghastly relics of festivity. The foppish depreciation of his own literary productions with which Congreve met the compliments of Voltaire, Mr. Thackeray rather commended than otherwise, but not for a reason which would have pleased the great man. He really did think his productions worthless, if weighed against one kindly line of Steele or Addison. "Addison is evidently Mr. Thackeray's favorite of the 'humorists' he has brought before the public. If Swift was the most wretched of mankind, Addison appeared to him as the most amiable. He admired the serene, calm character, who could walk so majestically among his fellow-creatures, and viewing with love all below him, could raise his eyes with adoration to the blue sky above. He admitted that Addison was not profound, and that his writings betray no appearance of suffering--which probably he never knew prior to his unlucky marriage--but at the same time he expatiated on the kindliness of his wisdom and the genuine character of his piety. The foible of drinking he did not attempt to conceal, but observed that we should have liked Addison less had he been without it, as we should have liked Sir Roger de Coverley less without his vanities. Greatly he admired the gentle spirit of Addison's sarcasm, as distinguished from the merciless onslaught of Swift, remarking, that in his mild court only minor cases were tried. Nor were words of commendation the only means by which Mr. Thackeray indicated his predilection for Addison. Of Swift he scarcely read a line; Congreve he illustrated, not by extracts from the comedies in which he lives for posterity, but by those minor poems which, though admired by his cotemporaries, are now little regarded; but he read several extracts from the _Spectator_, and also Addison's well known hymn, as a specimen of his deep feeling of devotion. Addison and Congreve were both prosperous men in a wordly point of view, and they were therefore introduced with a survey of that golden age, when an epithalamium on some noble marriage, or an ode to William III., was rewarded out of the public purse to an extent that made the poet comfortable for life. Congreve's first literary achievements earned for him, through the patronage of Lord Halifax, places in the commission for licensing hackney-coaches, in the Custom-house, and in the Pipe-office. 'Alas!' said Mr. Thackeray, 'there are no Pipe-offices now; the public have smoked all the pipes!" * * * * * THEODORE S. FAY--of whom the literary world has heard nothing for a long time--has in the press of the Appletons, a poem, entitled _Ulric, or the Voices_. Mr. Fay wrote good verses twenty years ago, and we shall see whether he has lost his art. * * * * * MR. HART, of Philadelphia, has lately published, in a very handsome style, several handbooks in the mechanic arts, which are much commended. Among them are _The Manufacture of Steel_, by Frederick Overman; _The Practical Dyer's Guide_; the _American Cotton Spinner's Guide_, and the London _Year Book of Facts_. * * * * * We are soon to have a new book from THOMAS CARLYLE--a _Memoir of the late John Sterling_, the "Archæus" of _Blackwood_, and the author of some of the finest compositions in recent English literature. Sterling, it is known to his friends, from a devout believer became a skeptic, and then a deist, pantheist, or perhaps an atheist, and finally, having done all that he saw to do, deliberately shut himself up to die--wrote to his friends what time he should leave the world, and on the very day, as if by a mere volition, went to his place. All this is concealed or passed over very lightly by Archdeacon Hare, his biographer, and Carlyle therefore determines that the world shall have his friend's true history. Among Sterling's most intimate correspondents was Ralph Waldo Emerson, and even Carlyle cannot write his life, we suspect, without having access to the extraordinary series of letters the poet sent to his American friend--letters, we have reason to believe, that will command a greater fame for him than all his published works have won, letters that almost any man might die to be the author of. * * * * * The most noticeable event connected with literature in this country is an arrangement entered into between a New-York publisher and THOMAS H. BENTON, for the publication of the _Historical Memoirs of the Life and Times_ of that eminent person. Mr. Benton is now about sixty-eight years of age, and for half a century he has been an active participant in affairs. He was thirty years a senator from Missouri, to which state he removed some time before its admission to the Union. His name has been connected with many great measures, and very few have exercised a more powerful influence upon our institutions or policy. The increase of his strength, as well as the increase of his fame, has been gradual but regular. He has been from his youth a student. To every question which has arrested his attention he has brought all the forces of his understanding, and what he has acquired by incessant and painful labor he has to an astonishing degree retained after the occasions which made it necessary have passed. At a period much beyond the noon of other men, he was still rising. He was of the age at which Cicero achieved his highest triumphs, before he displayed the fullness and the perfection of his powers, in several of the remarkable debates which have had relation to our empire on the Pacific. With his extraordinary experience, his faithful and particular memory, and wisdom which is master of his temper, he is perhaps before every man of his time in the requisites for such an undertaking as that which has occupied his leisure for many years, and the chief portion of his time since he ceased to be a senator. His work will probably make some five large octavo volumes, and it may be believed that in fame, authority, and length of life, it will equal the immortal production of Clarendon. * * * * * A new _Life of Mr. Jefferson_ is soon to be published by Mr. RANDALL, who has been honorably distinguished in his connection with the government of this state. The work will embrace a very interesting sketch of the private life of Mr. Jefferson, by Mr. Thomas Jefferson Randolph, the statesman's grandson and executor. Whatever we may think of the abilities or the special services of Mr. Jefferson, we are of that large number who regard his principles as altogether erroneous and injurious, and his character with little respect. The time is coming in which his history must be written, not by a maker of books, but by a philosophical statesman. Every year the materials are becoming more accessible. The writings of Adams and Hamilton, now in course of publication, are important contributions to them. The looked-for correspondence of Madison will serve largely for the same end; but Mr. Jefferson's life cannot be thoroughly understood until the collection of his papers in the possession of the government is carefully and intelligibly studied. The four volumes of his letters printed by Mr. Randolph, embrace but about eight hundred, but there were sold to the government by his executor the enormous number at _forty-two thousand letters_ and other documents, of which nearly sixteen thousand were written or signed by Mr. Jefferson himself. A large proportion of these papers are doubtless most important for the illustration of contemporary French and American biography, but the whole of them should be read by whoever attempts to write the history of the apostle of the radical democracy in the United States. * * * * * A Memoir _with a selection of the unpublished writings of the late Margaret Fuller, Countess d'Ossoli_, is announced as in preparation by her friends RALPH WALDO EMERSON and WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. The letters of Margaret Fuller to the _Tribune_, would fill a large volume, and we hope they will be reprinted with the collection of her private correspondence and inedited essays. And some of her later critical writings for the _Tribune_, in which the fame of more than one favorite of certain coteries was assailed--will her editors have courage to reproduce them? Pray you, gentlemen, consider that you propose bringing Margaret Fuller herself from the sea, to speak again to us in her own language; if the figure you present speak not as she spoke--all that she would speak, regardless of your regards--it will not be believed that you have commission for what you undertake. * * * * * The Rev. FREDERICK OGILBY, of Philadelphia, has in preparation a _Memoir with selections from the Writings of the late Rev. John D. Ogilby, D.D._, whose death at Paris was recently mentioned in these pages, and of whose life and character we have received an eloquent portraiture in the address delivered at his funeral by Bishop Doane. * * * * * An interesting article in the last _Southern Quarterly Review_ on the life and writings of Edward Everett embraces some learned and elegant philological discussions, in which Mr. Everett (of whom Dr. GILMAN, the writer, is a very warm admirer) is convicted of the use of several vulgarities, _e. g._ "in our midst," "in this connection," "reliable," &c. It is not often that such nice criticism is adventured in an American review. By the way, we are surprised that in none of the reviewals of Everett that have fallen under our notice has there been even the suggestion of a parallel between the classical orator of Harvard and Mr. Legaré. A feeble eulogist in a Philadelphia magazine compares him with Webster, which is merely ridiculous, as the two men have nothing in common. It would have pleased us if Dr. Gilman had weighed the merits of the illustrious Carolinian against those of the New Englander most deserving of critical comparison with him. * * * * * MR. GILMORE SIMMS has in the press of a Charleston publisher a complete collection of his poems--or rather a collection embracing all his poetical compositions which so nearly meet the approval of his judgment that he is willing to preserve them under his name. Mr. Simms is a voluminous writer in verse as well as in prose, and we agree to an opinion in the _Southern Literary Messenger_, that as a poet he has by no means received justice from his contemporaries. Scarce any one in this country has produced more fair verses, and with the fair is much that is really beautiful. How much this proportion would be increased if he would but labor! and not turn off sonnets as editors do paragraphs. * * * * * MRS. OAKESSMITH has published in the _Tribune_, ten numbers of an eloquently earnest performance under the title of _Woman and her Needs_. She has none of the silly and maudlin extravagances of the "Women's Rights" party, so called, and her work may safely be placed before those of Mary Wolstoncraft and Margaret Fuller, for ability; but we regard all these productions as uncalled for and injurious to the best interests of the sex. A book of much more real value may be looked for in Catherine Beecher's _True Remedy for Woman's Wrongs_, in the press of Phillips & Sampson, of Boston. There is no woman of stronger intellect than Miss Beecher's now writing in this country. * * * * * We learn with much regret that the Rev. Dr. THOMAS H. SMYTH, of South Carolina, of whose many and various contributions to religious and historical literature we gave some account in an earlier number of _The International_, is dangerously ill in Italy, where his family have recently joined him. Dr. Smyth, our advices state, had twice been stricken with paralysis, and had been compelled entirely to forego all his literary occupations. * * * * * The new novels of the last month have been numerous. The Harpers have published _Caleb Field_, by the author of Mrs. Margaret Maitland; _Eastbury_, by Harriet Drury; _The Heir of Wast-Wayland_, by Harriet Drury; _Yeast, a Problem_, by the author of Alton Locke; and some half dozen others. From T. B. Peterson, of Philadelphia, we have _Ginevra, or the History of a Portrait_, which we understand is by a daughter of the late S. L. Fairfield: it is much praised in some of the journals. M. Hart has given us another clever novelette, by Caroline Lee Hentz, under the title of _Rena_. From Lippincott, Grambo & Co., we have _Lord and Lady Harcourt_, one of the pleasantest books of the season. * * * * * MISS BREMER has passed the winter and spring in the south and west, where she has been received with much hospitality, and detained with the affection she seems every where to inspire. Within a few weeks she has visited Florida, with a family of her friends from Charleston, and she has given very careful attention, under the most favorable circumstances, to the institutions of the southern states. She is now on her way through Tennessee and Virginia to New-York, and will soon return to Sweden, by way of London. * * * * * H. BALLIERE has just published _Vestiges of Civilization, or the Ætiology of History, Religious, Æsthetical, Political and Philosophical_. It appears to be written with much ability, but we are by no means inclined to believe in the truth of the author's views. He applies to civilization the processes which the author of the _Vestiges of Creation_ applied to Natural History; and without attaining to the fame of that work, the Vestiges of Civilization will probably share its condemnation. * * * * * All our readers who were accustomed to read the journals twenty years ago, will remember SHOCCO JONES, the immortal defender of the fame of North Carolina. We had thought the mortal part of him was sent to the bourne he was so fond of describing in fine rhetoric when he wrote duel-challenges until a few days ago, when a friend advised us that he had lately listened to him saying mass in a Roman Catholic chapel in Mississippi. Who would have thought it? * * * * * MR. CHARLES SCRIBNER, (successor of Baker & Scribner,) has in press a large number of interesting new works, among which are _Incidents in the Life of a Pastor_, by the Rev. Dr. Wisner of Ithica; _The Captains of the Old World_, by Henry William Herbert; _Naval Life: the Midshipman_, by Lieutenant Lynch, Commander of the late Dead Sea Expedition; _The Fall of Poland_, by L. C. Saxton; _The Evening Book_, by Mrs. Kirkland; _Rural Homes_, by G. Wheeler; _The Epoch of Creation_, in which the scripture doctrine is contrasted with the geological theory, by Eleazer Lord; &c. * * * * * We perceive by the religious journals that Mr. JOHN NEAL, who for twenty or thirty years has been the chief literary gladiator of the country, has recently given his attention to religion, and is now laboring with characteristic activity for its advancement in the city and vicinity of Portland. Of course this is very pleasing intelligence, but we cannot help a regret that the conversion of the author of "Randolph" had not taken place before he printed his reviewal of the _Life of Poe_. * * * * * MRS. FRANCES H. GREEN has in press a collection of her Poems, which will soon be published in a stout duodecimo, by Mr. Strong, in Nassau-street. The merits of Mrs. Green may be partially inferred from the notice of her in the article on our Female Poets which we translate from the last number of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, in another part of this magazine. She has remarkable powers of description, a rich fancy, and much poetical feeling. * * * * * MR. MITCHELL has published (Charles Scribner) a new edition of his _Fresh Gleanings_, one of the most delightful books of travel we ever read; a new edition, with a preface, in which he for the first time avows himself the author of _The Lorgnette_, (Stringer & Townsend); and he has a new work in the press of Mr. Scribner, besides a new and illustrated edition of _The Reveries of a Bachelor_. * * * * * MR. MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, F.R.S., has returned to England, and will soon give to the world his views of society and manners in America. He said indeed on one or two occasions that he should write no book about us, yet we have it from excellent authority that he has matured his plan for the purpose, and will lose no time in bringing out the results of his summer's observation. * * * * * DR. HOLBROOK, of Charleston, whose splendid work on reptiles entitles him to be ranked with the great naturalists of the time, has taken up his residence for the summer, we understand, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he will be occupied with his forthcoming book on American fishes, which in the beauty of its illustrations at least will equal his previous performance. * * * * * MR. JUDD has in the press of Phillips & Sampson, a new edition of his first and best novel, _Margaret, a Tale of the Real and the Ideal_. We hope it will be illustrated with the admirable sketches of Darley. * * * * * MR. SCHOOLCRAFT, we are pleased to learn, has in the press of Lippincott, Grambo & Co., his personal memoirs. They will constitute a work of much and varied interest. * * * * * MR. MELVILLE will soon be again before the public in a romance. The title of his new work is not announced, but we believe it is in press. * * * * * We have before us the first volume--printed at Charleston, with an elegance that would do credit to our best northern printers--of the _History of Alabama, and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest period_, by ALBERT JAMES PICKETT. In _The International_ for May we gave some account of the design. The work is executed throughout with great care, and Colonel Pickett may be congratulated upon having done a very important service to his State, by his arduous and intelligently prosecuted labors, of which he gives an interesting account in the following extract from his preface: "About four years since, feeling impressed with the fact that it is the duty of every man to make himself, in some way, useful to his race, I looked around in search of some object, in the pursuit of which I could benefit my fellow-citizens; for, although much interested in agriculture, that did not occupy one-fourth of my time. Having no taste for politics, and never having studied a profession, I determined to write a History. I thought it would serve to amuse my leisure hours; but it has been the hardest work of my life. While exhausted by the labor of reconciling the statements of old authors, toiling over old French and Spanish manuscripts, travelling through Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, for information, and corresponding with persons in Europe and elsewhere, for facts, I have sometimes almost resolved to abandon the attempt to prepare a History of my State. "In reference to that portion of the work which relates to the Indians, I will state, that my father removed from Anson county, North-Carolina, and carried me to the wilds of the 'Alabama Territory,' in 1818, when I was a boy but eight years of age. He established a trading house, in connection with his plantation, in the present county of Autauga. During my youthful days, I was accustomed to be much with the Creek Indians--hundreds of whom came almost daily to the trading house. For twenty years I frequently visited the Creek nation. Their green-corn dances, ball-plays, war ceremonies, and manners and customs, are all fresh in my recollection. In my intercourse with them, I was thrown into the company of many old white men, called 'Indian countrymen,' who had for years conducted a commerce with them. Some of these men had come to the Creek nation before the revolutionary war, and others, being tories, had fled to it during the war, and after it, to escape from whig persecution. They were unquestionably the shrewdest and most interesting men with whom I ever conversed. Generally of Scotch descent, many of them were men of some education. All of them were married to Indian wives, and some of them had intelligent and handsome children. From these Indian countrymen I learned much concerning the manners and customs of the Creeks, with whom they had been so long associated, and more particularly with regard to the commerce which they carried on with them. In addition to this, I often conversed with the Chiefs while they were seated in the shades of the spreading mulberry and walnut, upon the banks of the beautiful Tallapoosa. As they leisurely smoked their pipes, some of them related to me the traditions of their country. I occasionally saw Choctaw and Cherokee traders, and learned much from them. I had no particular object in view at that time, except the gratification of a curiosity, which led me, for my own satisfaction alone, to learn something of the early history of Alabama. "In relation to the invasion of Alabama by De Soto, which is related in the first chapter of this work, I have derived much information in regard to the route of that earliest discoverer, from statements of General McGillivray, a Creek of mixed blood, who ruled this country, with eminent ability, from 1776 to 1793. I have perused the manuscript history of the Creeks, by Stiggins, a half-breed, who also received some particulars of the route of De Soto, during his boyhood, from the lips of the oldest Indians. My library contains many old Spanish and French maps, with the towns through which De Soto passed, correctly laid down. The sites of many of these are familiar to the present population. Besides all these, I have procured from England and France three journals of De Soto's expedition. "One of these journals was written by a cavalier of the expedition, who was a native of Elvas, in Portugal. He finished his narrative on the 10th February, 1557, in the city of Evora, and it was printed in the house of Andrew de Burgos, printer and gentleman of the Lord Cardinal and the Infanta. It was translated into English, by Richard Hakluyt, in 1609, and is to be found in the supplementary volume of his voyages and discoveries; London: 1812. It is also published at length in the Historical Collections of Peter Force, of Washington city. "Another journal of the expedition was written by the Inca Garcellasso de la Vega, a Peruvian by birth, and a native of the city of Cusco. His father was a Spaniard of noble blood, and his mother the sister of Capac, one of the Indian sovereigns of Peru. Garcellasso was a distinguished writer of that age. He had heard of the remarkable invasion of Florida by De Soto, and he applied himself diligently to obtain the facts. He found out an intelligent cavalier of that expedition, with whom he had minute conversations of all the particulars of it. In addition to this, journals were placed in his hands, written in the camp of De Soto--one by Alonzo de Carmona, a native of the town of Priego, and the other, by Juan Coles, a native of Zafra. Garcellasso published his work, at an early period, in Spanish. It has been translated into French, but never into English. The copy in our hands is entitled 'Histoire de la Conquete de la Floride ou relation de ce qui s'est passé dans la découverte de ce pais, par Ferdinand De Soto, Composée en Espagnol, par L'Inca Garcellasso de la Vega, et traduite en Francois, par St. Pierre Richelet, en deux tomes; a Leide: 1731.' "I have still another journal, and the last one, of the expedition of De Soto. It was written by Biedma, who accompanied De Soto, as his commissary. The journal is entitled 'Relation de ce qui arriva pendant le voyage du Captaine Soto, et details sur la nature du pas qu'il parcourut; par Luis Hernandez de Biedma,' contained in a volume entitled 'Recuil de Pieces sur la Floride,' one of a series of 'Voyages et memoires originaux pour servir a la L'Histoire de la Recouverte de L'Amerique publies pour la premier fois en Francois; par H. Ternaux-Compans. Paris: 1841.' "In Biedma there is an interesting letter written by De Soto, while he was at Tampa Bay, in Florida, which was addressed to some town authorities in Cuba. The journal of Biedma is much less in detail than those of the Portuguese Gentleman and Garcellasso, but agrees with them in the relation of the most important occurrences. "Our own accomplished writer, and earliest pioneer in Alabama history--Alexander B. Meck, of Mobile--has furnished a condensed, but well written and graphic account of De Soto's expedition, contained in a monthly magazine, entitled 'The Southern,' Tuscaloosa, 1839. He is correct as to the direction assumed by the Spaniards, over our soil, as well as to the character of that extraordinary conquest." We shall recur to the work on receiving the second volume. * * * * * LORD CAMPBELL, (who is himself a somewhat voluminous author, in history and general literature,) has reversed the decision of Baron Rolfe, given last year, and has decided that foreigners _first publishing_ in England are entitled to copyright. He declared that the act of Anne for the encouragement of learning was furthered by allowing a copyright to aliens who first published in England, that Parliament had always favored the importation of foreign literature, and that the law would still protect the property of the foreign author, recognize his rights, and give him redress for all wrongs inflicted upon him in England. This decision is one of very great importance, though not final, as the pirating booksellers have determined to carry the matter before the House of Lords, where Brougham, Lyndhurst, and several others of great authority, are known to be against them. Meantime, Bentley and the other purchasers of American copyrights, have issued advertisements warning the public against the purchase of unauthorized editions. * * * * * The Rev. DR. BAIRD has added to the number of his works _The Christian Retrospect and Register, a Summary of Scientific Moral and Religious Progress in the First Half of the XIXth Century_. (_12mo. M. W. Dodd._) It is an interesting compend of events, of which even a condensed history might fill a dozen volumes. In all respects it is superior to a work of the same design published by Dr. Davis, and formerly reviewed in this magazine. * * * * * The _Parthenon_, is the title of a new work, remarkable for the beauty of its typography and of its wood cuts, to be published by Loomis & Griswold. It will be in about a dozen parts, the price of each of which will be one dollar. The first number contains, with a new story by Mr. Cooper, the best poem ever published by Mr. Duganne, and two really excellent poems by William Ross Wallace. * * * * * LOUISA PAYSON HOPKINS has just published (Gould & Lincoln of Boston) an excellent little volume in practical religion, entitled _Life's Guiding Star_, and designed to illustrate the second and third questions of the Westminster Catechism. * * * * * The works of the late Rev. WALTER COLTON, U. S. N., will soon be completed in the edition of A. S. Barnes & Co. They have already published _Ashore and Afloat_, and _Three Years in California_, which appeared before the author's death, and since then, _Land and Lee_, embracing the volume published many years ago under the title of "Constantinople and Athens." The posthumous volumes are carefully and judiciously edited by the Rev. HENRY T. CHEEVER, whose own works of a somewhat similar character we have always to notice with praise. * * * * * The Appletons have in press _Io!_ a novel, by a member of the Canadian Parliament, which gives large promise in the proof sheets; _The Philosophy of Mechanics_, by Mr. Allen, of Providence; _Campaigns in Mexico and by the Rio Grande_, by Brevet Major ISAAC J. STEVENS, in which Major Ripley, author of the History of the Mexican War, published by Harpers, is likely to receive more hot shot than he encountered on the field; _Sunbeams and Shadows_, a novel, by Miss HULSE, of Baltimore, and several other new works. * * * * * The _History of the Protestants of France, from the Commencement of the Reformation to the Present Period_, by G. S. FELICE, Professor of Theology at Montauban, has been published in a handsome octavo, by Edward Walker, Fulton street. In the April number of _The International_, we described this work, from a copy of the French original that fell in our way, not knowing that it was in course of translation. We renew our commendations. * * * * * The _Traveller's and Tourist's Guide through the United States, Canada, &c._, by W. WILLIAMS, (published by Lippincott, Grambo & Co., of Philadelphia), is the most convenient and comprehensive hand-book of the kind we have seen. It appears in time for the tourists of the summer, who will find in it all the information they need, as to routes, distances, &c. * * * * * The author of "Standish the Puritan," who indulges a natural taste for letters, after having won fortune and eminence at the bar, is now finishing the last sheets of a new novel for the Harpers, on his estate in Georgia. * * * * * CZERNY'S _Method of the Piano Forte_, which we believe to be in all respects as good a book of instruction for that instrument, as was ever made, has been reprinted in a good edition by Oliver Ditson, of Boston. * * * * * A new edition of CARDINAL WISEMAN'S _Lectures on the Principal Doctrines of the Catholic Church_, has been published by John Murphy & Co., of Baltimore. This is a very able work, though less interesting to the mass of readers than its eminent author's work on the connexion between Science and Revealed Religion. * * * * * Among the new poems of the month are several fine ones by a new candidate for favor--a young woman of Connecticut--who writes in the _Tribune_. We quote two of them: TRAILING ARBUTUS. Darlings of the forest! Blossoming alone When Earth's grief is sorest For her jewels gone-- Ere the last snow-drift melts, your tender buds have blown. Tinged with color faintly, Like the morning sky, Or more pale and saintly, Wrapped in leaves ye lie, Even as children sleep in faith's simplicity. There the wild wood-robin Hymns your solitude, And the rain comes sobbing, Through the budding wood, While the low south wind sighs, but dare not be more rude. Were your pure lips fashioned Out of air and dew: Starlight unimpassioned, Dawn's most tender hue-- And scented by the woods that gathered sweets for you? Fairest and most lonely, From the world apart, Made for beauty only, Veiled from nature's heart, With such unconscious grace as makes the dream of Art! Were not mortal sorrow An immortal shade, Then would I to-morrow Such a flower be made, And live in the dear woods where my lost childhood played. A. W. H. INDOLENCE. Indolent! indolent! Yes, I am indolent, So is the grass growing tenderly, slowly; So is the violet fragrant and lowly, Drinking in quietness, peace, and content; So is the bird on the light branches swinging, Idly his carol of gratitude singing, Only on living and loving intent. Indolent! indolent! Yes, I am indolent! So is the cloud overhanging the mountain So is the tremulous wave of a fountain, Uttering softly its eloquent psalm; Nerve and sensation in quiet reposing, Silent as blossoms the night dew is closing, But the full heart beating strongly and calm. Indolent! indolent! Yes, I am indolent! If it be idle to gather my pleasure Out of creation's uncoveted treasure, Midnight, and morning; by forest and sea; Wild with the tempest's sublime exultation; Lonely in Autumn's forlorn lamentation; Hopeful and happy with Spring and the bee. Indolent! indolent! are ye not indolent? Thralls of the earth, and its usages weary; Toiling like gnomes where the darkness is dreary, Toiling and sinning, to heap up your gold. Stifling the heavenward breath of devotion; Crushing the freshness of every emotion; Hearts like the dead, that are pulseless and cold! Indolent! indolent! are ye not indolent? Thou who art living unloving and lonely, Wrapped in a pall that will cover thee only, Shrouded in selfishness, piteous ghost! Sad eyes behold thee, and angels are weeping O'er thy forsaked and desolate sleeping; Art thou not indolent!--Art thou not lost? A. W. H. ALICE CAREY continues to write pieces full of grace and feeling. Here is one from the _National Era_: ANNIE CLAYVILLE. In the bright'ning wake of April Comes the lovely, lovely May, But the step of Annie Clayville Falleth fainter day by day. In despite of sunshine, shadows Lie upon her heart and brow: Last year she was gay and happy-- Life is nothing to her now! When she hears the wild bird singing, Or the sweetly humming bee, Only says she, faintly smiling, What have you to do with me? Yet, sing out for pleasant weather, Wild birds in the woodland dells-- Fly out, little bees, and gather Honey for your waxen wells. Softly, silver rain of April, Come down singing from the clouds, Till daffodils and daisies Shall be up in golden crowds; Till the wild pinks hedge the meadows, Blushing out of slender stems, And the dandelions, starry, Cover all the hills with gems. From your cool beds in the rivers, Blow, fresh winds, and gladness bring To the locks that wait to hide you-- What have I to do with spring? May is past--along the hollows Chime the rills in sleepy tune, While the harvest's yellow chaplet Swings against the face of June. Very pale lies Annie Clayville-- Still her forehead, shadow crowned, And the watchers hear her saying, As they softly tread around: Go out, reapers, for the hill tops Twinkle with the summer's heat-- Lay from out your swinging cradles Golden furrows of ripe wheat! While the little laughing children, Lightly mixing work with play, From between the long green winrows Glean the sweetly-scented hay. Let your sickles shine like sunbeams In the silver-flowing rye, Ears grow heavy in the cornfields-- That will claim you by and by. Go out, reapers, with your sickles, Gather home the harvest store! Little gleaners, laughing gleaners, I shall go with you no more. Round the red moon of October, White and cold the eve-stars climb, Birds are gone, and flowers are dying-- 'Tis a lonesome, lonesome time, Yellow leaves along the woodland Surge to drifts--the elm bough sways, Creaking at the homestead window All the weary nights and days. Dismally the rain is falling-- Very dismally and cold; Close, within the village graveyard, By a heap of freshest mould, With a simple, nameless headstone, Lies a low and narrow mound, And the brow of Annie Clayville Is no longer shadow-crowned. Rest thee, lost one, rest thee calmly, Glad to go where pain is o'er-- Where they say not, through the night-time, "I am weary," any more. MR. BOKER has a fine poem entitled "I have a Cottage," in the July _Graham's Magazine_. FOOTNOTES: [D] Weil's _History of the Khalifs_. 3 vols. octavo. Besserman, Mannhein, 1851. _The Fine Arts._ There have been new discoveries of sculptures in Athens. The foundations of the old Council House were disclosed, and farther investigation led to the discovery of very beautiful remains. They are mostly fragmentary, but of the finest style. Especially an arm, with drapery, is very fine, and as the investigations are not yet completed, it is hoped that other parts of the statue may be obtained. More than sixty inscriptions have been also revealed. They are mostly decrees in praise of and memorials of honor to certain men. Some are of the Macedonian, others of the Roman period. Mr. Pittakis, the long resident and famous Athenian antiquariae, has been properly put at the head of the party of investigation. His topographical knowledge of Athens is probably superior to that of any other living man. * * * * * The German painter CORNELIUS has recently composed a picture for the hospital of the Sisters of Charity in Berlin. The cartoon is at present in Dresden, where it will be cut in wood by the artist's old friend, Director von Schnorr, for the Art-Guild there. It will afterward be engraved upon steel, and sold for the benefit of the hospital. The subject is taken from the life of Elizabeth. The mother of the Landgrave of Thuringen has seen that Elizabeth has laid a beggar on the nuptial bed, for the purpose of nursing her, and he brings her son to see how his wife forgets his dignity as well as her own. But her worldly selfishness is shamed in the most surprising manner. An angel has drawn aside the curtain, and the landgrave, instead of a beggar, beholds the Saviour himself, who, with gentle aspect, stretches his hand toward the mother and son. Under the picture is the motto, "What ye have done to the least of these brethren, that ye have done to me." In its essential character this picture resembles the cartoon for a painting upon glass in the cathedral of Aix. In both pictures the artist has reverted to the sensibility of his youth, and created forms which recall the paintings of the old German and elder Italian masters. In the present drawing the figures of Elizabeth and of the two angels (one of whom is in a reverential posture behind the bed) are radiant with celestial tenderness and loveliness. From the countenance of Christ beams the divinely mild rebuke of the deepest feeling of mistaken virtue. The landgrave, a fine manly figure, is full of the earnest expression of the knowledge fast dawning upon his mind, and his mother shows characteristic worldliness subdued by a higher power. The whole picture is penetrated by the devotional sentiment of the middle ages. These are not modern figures in middle age costume, but men who belong to their time by expression and bearing. In the freedom and simplicity of treatment we recognize the master, who may properly reproduce the life and art of a past time, from his entire sympathy with it. Another cartoon in the great series for the Berlin Campo Santo, upon which Cornelius is now engaged, represents the happiness of those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. * * * * * A German critic, speaking of the statues of the Greek Slave by Powers and of the Wounded Indian by Stevenson, says of the latter that the touch of genius is visible in the work, but it is only the copying of nature, and has no ideal character; and of the former that the artist must have developed his talent by long and patient study and contemplation of the finest creations of art. The forms of nature are not only reproduced, with the most poetic truth, but a glow of spiritual beauty breathes all over the work. It is most interesting, concludes the critic, to see the laying of the corner-stone of American art, an edifice whose completion none of us will live to see. * * * * * The Festival of the unveiling of the statue of Frederick the Great, at Berlin, on the last day of May, is represented as one of the most splendid spectacles ever witnessed in that city. The memory of "Old Fritz" is cherished with a peculiar enthusiasm by the masses, who turned out in immense numbers. The day was the 110th anniversary of Frederick's ascending the throne. The monument is a real historical work, and, besides its artistic merit, may be consulted as an authentic record of the warriors and statesmen who helped to found a great kingdom. It is an immense advance on the insipid allegorical style, with its eternal Fames with trumpets, and Victories descending with garlands. Except in one or two of the small bas-reliefs, Rauch has adhered to strict reality, only so skilfully modified that it never becomes vulgar or commonplace. His Ziethens and Winterfeldts are warriors as stern and dignified in their "regulation" uniforms as if they were presented on the fields of Torgau and and Rossbach, like Achilles and Hector on the plains of Troy. A letter in the London _Times_ says there were present about eighty aged soldiers who had served under the great King, and one old Hussar, of Ziethen's regiment, was pointed out as having actually fought in the Seven Years' War; the junior of the party could not be less than fourscore; they were all accommodated with seats specially provided for them; they wore the uniform of the period, of the old regulation cut, but newly made for the day, so that the veterans looked quite brilliant. Some of them, perhaps, had not worn a uniform for half a century. * * * * * The author of _Wanderings of a Pilgrim, during Four-and-Twenty Years in the East_, has employed herself, since her return to England, in superintending the painting of a Diorama of Hindostan. Perhaps no one else has so numerous a collection of beautiful sketches taken in the East, and few, indeed, possess her knowledge of Indian manners and customs. * * * * * At the close of last month the bronze statues of Gustavus Adolphus, and of Tegner, the Swedish poet who wrote the _Children of the last Supper_, were cast in Munich. * * * * * Since our last number, JENNY LIND has closed the series of her farewell concerts in New-York, and a week afterward dissolved her business relations with Mr. Barnum. Her career of nine months in this country has been a triumph unprecedented in the history of artistic success. She has appealed everywhere to the great general sympathy of the multitude, and partly, undoubtedly, owing to the prestige of her European fame, and the wonder at her remarkable vocalism, she has sung always before an audience essentially and characteristically American. But the great service she has rendered, the fact which history would regard, is her introduction to us of some of the finest music, presented in a manner entirely adequate, and yet entirely different from all to which we were accustomed. She has illustrated the fact, that a noble nature ennobles the position of a public artist, and that the most appreciative artistic sympathy with the highest and most unpopular music, has yet something popularly sympathetic. It is the old story of great genius. It is Burns, again, at once the despair of the most brilliant and cultivated talent, and the delight of the entirely illiterate and vulgar sense. From this career of JENNY LIND must date a new era for us, both in musical taste and musical criticism. Now that she has shown us what is good music, whether popular or not, and what is perfect performance of it, whether in any favorite school or not, it will no longer do to smear mediocrity with superlatives, or to criticise music upon any grounds other than those of the criticism of all other arts. The manner in which JENNY LIND took our Penates, our _Sweet Home_, and _Auld Robin Gray_, and _Comin' thro' the Rye_, and restored them to us with a more graceful and significant life, was one of the most beautiful signs of the presence and power of genius. To that, every thing has been subservient. The large and gracious charities of the woman, the natural simplicity of her manner, and the personal magnetism which she every where diffused, were but the ornaments of the pure artistic nature, the divine priesthood of genius. JENNY LIND continues her progress through the country. It is understood that, after a month, she will retire from the public eye, for the rest which she so much requires, and afterwards, we learn from the best authority, she will, if possible, resume her concerts. * * * * * THE OPERA.--Immediately upon the departure of JENNY LIND, Mr. Maretzek opened the doors of the Astor Place Opera House for a short season, preparatory to his summer campaign in Castle Garden. Under his auspices BOSIO has reappeared, and BETTINI has made his bow. BOSIO is so beautiful a woman, she has a voice so subtly sweet and sympathetic, a style of singing so simple and sufficient, and an instinctive feminineness of feeling fine enough to make her acting always agreeable, that her impression as a Prima Donna is the most symmetrical we have known in New-York. Her womanliness is her charm and her success. Even in characters of so grandiose proportions in the imagination, as _Lucrezia_, she never drops for a moment the interest of the spectator, although it is new to him to find a tender feeling in his regard for the Borgia. This tenderness, however, is not fatal to the artistic effect. It is that quality of feeling which he would have for a lost but lovely Magdalen. BOSIO'S _Zerlina_ is another quite perfect representation. Its arch grace and sparkling beauty have never been surpassed by any Zerlina we have seen. BOSIO, however, sketches rather than colors. Her acting is a suggestive outline which the imagination naturally fills--and, within the range of singers possible to us, we could select none so singularly fascinating as Bosio for the summer moonlight at Castle Garden. BETTINI is a young man, with a fresh, sweet, sympathetic tenor voice, which happily harmonizes with BOSIO'S. He has rather too magniloquent a style both of acting and singing, but is a very agreeable artist. We could lay in the shadows of his portrait delicately, yet deeply enough, by saying that he is _young_. He has made a decided hit upon the town, and the first evening at Castle Garden attracted an audience of not less than three thousand. Donizetti's opera of _Marino Faliero_ has been produced at Castle Garden, for the first time in America. It is only second rate music, but was admirably sung by the company. MARINI looks the Doge and wears the ducal robe with great dignity and success. NICHOLAS VON DER FLUE. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY THE AUTHOR OF "RURAL HOURS." The fifteenth century proved an eventful and important period of Swiss history. The age which preceded it gave birth to the people, and brought them an independent existence and a name; but it left them at its close the mere skeleton of a political body, and it was not until a later day that their national constitution received fulness and development--it was not until the fifteenth century that the people acquired a clearly distinct character and position among the countries of Europe. Several of the most celebrated battles in Swiss history, those which gave the confederates military fame with other nations, belong to this period. The battle of St. Jacques is altogether one of the most extraordinary on record. Thirty thousand French troops, chiefly from the free company of Armagnac, commanded by the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI., marched to the defence of Zurich, which had revolted against the confederacy. They arrived at Basle in August, 1444. Fifteen hundred Swiss, from the cantons of Berne, Lucerne, Soleure and Basle, were dispatched to meet them. They found several thousand of the enemy in advance. These they attacked, repulsed, and pursued to the river Birs, and then, dashing into the stream after the flying enemy, and in face of a heavy cannonade, they actually assaulted the whole army of France in their camp on the opposite shore. The daring corps were soon divided, but they fought like lions. Five hundred were in an open meadow, exposed on all sides to the enemy; the remaining nine hundred threw themselves behind a garden wall. These last repulsed the enemy there several times, and made two attacks in their turn. Hundreds and thousands of the Armagnacs fell--man by man the brave Swiss were struck down. The battle lasted ten hours before the whole corps of Swiss had fallen, for then only could the enemy pause. Fourteen hundred and ninety of the confederates were numbered with the dead, ten men only escaping by flight. Thousands upon thousands of the French army lay piled about the dead Swiss. This defeat, if such a name be fitted to the battle of St. Jacques, produced all the results of a victory: the siege of Basle was abandoned, a peace was speedily concluded, and it was in consequence of this brilliant action that Louis XI., when he ascended his father's throne, concluded with the Swiss that close alliance which has lasted nearly to the present times. It was in the fifteenth century also that Charles of Burgundy attacked the confederates with all the forces of one of the richest and most powerful princes of the age. On the third of March, 1476, twenty thousand Swiss marched from Neufchatel to meet the army of Burgundy near Granson, a force which, with its followers, numbered one hundred thousand strong. The battle began in the morning, and at night Charles the Bold was flying through the passes of the Jura, with five companions, his brilliant army dispersed to the four winds of heaven, his choicest treasures in the hands of the frugal Swiss. In the month of June of the same year Charles again appeared in Switzerland, at the head of an army still larger than that he had commanded at Granson. On the twenty-second of June he lay before the little town of Morat, which he had assaulted in vain. The Swiss, with thirty-four thousand men, advanced to meet him, and with their usual ardor rushed upon the whole Burgundian force. In a few hours they had again routed an invading army nearly four times their own numbers. Charles fled from the field, with a small escort, leaving fifteen thousand of his army dead on the battle ground, while thousands more were drowned in the adjoining lake. Having been thus successful when opposed to northern troops, the Swiss shortly after tried their strength against a southern foe, the Duke of Milan. On this occasion the confederates were the aggressors, although under the plea of retaliation. A party of Italians had cut timber in one of their forests. Immediately a descent upon the Italian valleys was planned, and a considerable force crossed the southern Alps. A Milanese army of fifteen thousand men marched up the Ticino to meet the mountaineers. At the village of Giornico lay the Swiss vanguard of six hundred men, from Uri, Schweyz, Lucerne, and Zurich, the main body of their troops not having yet advanced so far. It was mid-winter of the year 1478. The Swiss caused the Ticino to overflow the meadows before the village, which soon became a field of ice; and as the Milanese army advanced upon Giornico, the confederates sallied out upon _skates_, and with this advantage over their enemies, six hundred Swiss put to flight a Milanese army of fifteen thousand men. At that period the principal weapons were crossbows, arquebuses, lances, and halberds. Battle-axes and swords were also common, as well as knives and daggers. The body was still protected by armor, generally among the Swiss of plain workmanship; the head was covered by a helmet, or among the common soldiery with a thick felt hat, ornamented with feathers of the ostrich or the cock, according to the means of the owner. A white cross was stitched on the clothing in conspicuous places, and served as a common uniform badge with the confederates. Victories so brilliant as those of Granson, Morat, and Giornico, with a defeat so advantageous as that of St. Jacques, spread the fame of the mountaineers through Europe--princes eagerly sought their aid as mercenaries; they were frequently opposed to each other in rival armies, and as their fidelity became as well known as their courage, they were solicited to form the body-guards of royalty. The Swiss guards of the kings of France have a place in history. Their honorable fidelity to Louis XVI. is known the world over. Even within the present century the Swiss have watched at the gates of the Tuileries, Louis XVIII. having revived the custom on his return to France. After the Hundred Days, however, the body was finally disbanded. To the present hour it is understood that the King of Naples and the Pope are still (or were very shortly since) surrounded by body-guards from the confederacy. But much as these different wars added to Swiss glory, they were followed by serious evils to the nation. A warlike, rapacious spirit, and with it the love of a roving, restless life, spread with wonderful rapidity among the people. Their mountain homes were deserted, their lands lay fallow, their flocks were sold to procure the means of arming themselves, employment among foreign powers was eagerly sought, and when it could not be obtained, parties of disbanded soldiers and idle camp-followers spread disorder through the country to such an extent that the severest measures were resorted to, and in the space of a few months as many as fifteen hundred vagabonds of this description were publicly executed. The rich spoils of the Burgundian army produced a very unhappy effect. The gold, and silver, and jewels found in the deserted camp gave the conquerors a taste for riches to which they had hitherto been strangers. Formerly they had been a frugal and contented people, but a few short years produced a very striking change in this respect; a thirst for gold became general, bribes were openly offered and received, and foreign coin had an all-powerful influence in directing the course of their politics. Not only were the military openly in the pay of their neighbors, but the public men of the different cantons were only too well acquainted with German florins, Italian ducats, and French crowns. It is true, this fact was not considered so disgraceful in those times as it would be to-day. For, two hundred years since, half the court of England, with the king at their head, were in the pay of Louis XIV. But it would appear that bribery became more frequent and more impudent in Swiss politics than in those of other countries at the same period. On one occasion the French minister had his money-bags publicly opened at Berne, and the royal pensions or bribes distributed in the town with the sound of the trumpet. At Friburg heaps of crowns were openly displayed, piled up with shovels, and the bystanders were asked if the silver did not sound better than the empty promises of the Emperor Maximilian, nicknamed _Pochidanari_, or the Pennyless. At another time the French ambassador went to the baths of Baden, in Arau, where people from all parts of the country were assembled, kept open house, paid the score for large troops of the company, and actually threw gold into the bathing rooms, for the women to scramble for. The result of a course like this was very injurious to Swiss character. Highly honorable for courage and fidelity, it has yet been considered as too generally colored by the love of money, verifying the proverb, "_point d'argent, point de Suisse_." But this mercenary spirit was not the only evil brought upon the confederacy by the victories of the fifteenth century. Internal differences of the gravest nature soon followed. The division of the spoil was very unsatisfactory to the rural cantons. They made loud complaints of injustice, and became extremely jealous of the greater intelligence, power, and influence of the towns; while the burghers, in their turn, became suspicious of the pastoral cantons, accusing them of wishing to promote disturbances between themselves and their subjects--subjects, we say, for the towns having acquired by conquest or purchase parcels of territory here and there, governed them as the feudal lords governed their vassals. In short, from the whole history of that period it is evident that a spirit of suspicion and jealousy was rife throughout the confederacy, threatening disunion and revolution. In the hope of restoring confidence and unity, a council or Diet was convened at Stantz, one of the principal towns of the canton of Unterwalden. One by one, the deputations from the different cantons made their appearance at the little town of Stantz. They came by the lake of Lucerne, or lake of the forest cantons, as it is more frequently called by the people themselves, a beautiful sheet of limpid water, lying in the bosom of noble Alpine mountains, with sweet pastoral valleys opening here and there among the solemn cliffs. There were soldiers, merchants, lawyers, and peasants in the assembly; there were burghers from Berne, Zurich, and Lucerne, with shepherds from Schwyz and Uri; in addition to the regular deputies, there were also agents from St. Gall, Appenzell, Soleure, and Friburg, applying for admission to the confederacy, to which they had been hitherto only allies. It was in the winter season that the Diet assembled. The session was scarcely opened when it became evident that they had met in an evil temper; every subject introduced was received with bitterness, mistrust, and suspicion. The angry passions of the rural cantons were thoroughly aroused; they were extremely jealous of the towns, and no reasoning could induce them to accede to the application for admission from Friburg and Soleure. These districts were headed by important cities, and every city was accused of tyranny. The burghers knew too much, they were too rich, they were too prosperous. The deputies of the larger cantons, on the other hand, were indignant at this petty jealousy, and at the refusal to receive Soleure and Friburg, whose citizens had fought side by side with them in so many of their struggles. The subject of the division of the spoils from the war with Burgundy was again advanced by the rural cantons with renewed bitterness. In short, every matter broached seemed to offer only another field for mistrust and fierce contention. While the Diet was thus holding its stormy session at Stantz, a conspiracy against Lucerne was discovered. The peasants of a rural district subject to the town were implicated in it; they had resolved to seize the occasion of an approaching festival for attacking the burghers, murdering the governor and council, and razing the city to the ground, so that in future nothing but a village, like their own, should exist on the spot. Tidings of the discovery of this conspiracy only aggravated the evil temper of the Diet. From invective and accusation both parties proceeded to the gravest threats. The deputies of Friburg and Soleure, in the hopes of restoring a better understanding, voluntarily withdrew their application, but in vain. Both parties were too highly exasperated. Reconciliation was held to be impossible. Disunion and civil war, that most wretched, most shameful warfare, were declared inevitable. The canton of Unterwalden was divided into two districts, each including one of the two great gorges of that region. Each of these valleys had its own towering mountains, with rocky summits, wooded heights, and green alpine pastures. Through each flowed a stream, or rather wild torrent, and the more level lands on their banks were thickly sprinkled with rustic dwellings, in near neighborhood. Stantz, the seat of the Diet, and a mere village, was the principal town of Lower Unterwalden. The sister valley of Upper Unterwalden was the most fertile and beautiful. Its chief village was Sarnen. A stream called the Melch ran through a branch of the valley, to which it gave its name of Melchthal. This dale was already noted ground in Swiss history, as the native spot of two of their heroes. Arnold von Melchthal, the companion of Tell, was a peasant of this valley, as his name denotes; and Arnold von Winkelried, to whose heroic self-sacrifice they owed the victory of Sempach, was also born and lived on the banks of the Melch. During the time of the critical Diet of Stantz, there lived in this valley a family by the name of Loewenbrugger. They were among the most important peasants of the dale. Ten children, five sons and five daughters, had been born in the paternal cottage. Some were living there at the time, with their mother, others had married and gone to different homes. The father was absent. Nicholas Loewenbrugger had for many years held a conspicuous position in his native district. He had served his country faithfully on many occasions by his wisdom and his courage. During their wars he had distinguished himself highly, not only for bravery, but also for humanity. When still in middle life, however, he had retired from the little world about him, leaving his paternal estate to the care of his wife, and choosing a cliff on one of the neighboring mountains, he there built himself a hermitage, in which he gave up his whole time to devotion and religious services. So great was the simplicity of his ascetic life, that it is said his only bed was the floor of his cell, and his pillow a stone. It was even believed that for years he had taken no other nourishment than the blessed elements of the holy sacrament. Whatever exaggerations may have been credited in that superstitious age, it is at least certain that his unfeigned piety and saintly life had acquired for him a high place in the respect of his countrymen, while the name of Nicholas von der Fluë, or Nicholas of the Rock, from the spot where he dwelt, was honored far and wide through the cantons. News of the fierce dissensions of the Diet of Stantz spread rapidly through the different valleys about the lake of the forest cantons; every hour it was expected that the assembly would break up in violence, and the deputies hurry home to prepare the different cantons for a terrible internal struggle. Every appearance warranted this opinion. The priest of Stantz, Heinrich Imgrund, was one of those who most sincerely mourned this state of things. One day, when matters were at the worst, and the danger appeared most imminent, the worthy man took his walking-staff, and proceeded to the Melchthal. It was in winter, the last week of December, and the old priest made his way over the snow and ice to the hermitage of the pious Nicholas of the Fluë. There he hastened to lay before the good man the state of things in Stantz, and the dangers that threatened their common country. The hermit, unlike many of his recluse brethren, had not lost all interest in the higher events of the world to which he belonged, and he determined that every means in his power should be employed to avert the impending evil. Early on the morning of December 22d, 1481, the venerable man, now far advanced in life, left his little cell on the rock, and bent his way towards Stantz, and we may well believe that, as he went on his patriotic errand, earnest prayers were offered by him in behalf of his misguided countrymen. Arrived at Stantz, he proceeded immediately to the hall where the Diet was in session. While yet without the walls, the stormy uproar and fierce discord of the assembly reached his ears. Hurrying his steps, the old man entered the hall. He had scarcely crossed the threshold, when his venerable figure, aged face, and hoary locks, attracted general attention; in another instant he was known to be Nicholas of the Rock. As if by instinctive impulse, the whole assembly rose to their feet. Seizing the moment of their respectful attention, the venerable man addressed them in earnest, fervent tones. There were those in the Diet to whom his voice was not strange; men, who in former years had known him as the soldier and the patriot, while to all within the walls his character for wisdom and sanctity was well known. Every eye was fixed upon his venerable countenance, every ear listened eagerly to the words which fell from his honored lips. It was a remarkable scene; a spectator could never have credited that this was an authoritative assembly into which the hermit had presented himself unbidden; it seemed rather as if that hall were the presence chamber of the wise and saintly man, and deputies from far and near--knight, merchant, and peasant--had gathered about him, and pressed forward to receive his judgment. With all the eloquence of wisdom, and a heartfelt interest, the venerable man addressed the assembly. He implored, he warned, he admonished; he reminded them the interests of a whole nation were committed to their hands, and that for the powers with which they were intrusted they were not responsible to man alone, but also to their Almighty Maker. Had they met together like traitors, like madmen, to tear asunder the body politic over which they were the appointed guardians? Where was the calmness of deliberation with which a dignified assembly should meet to utter, and to listen? Was it to revile each other, to menace, that they, grave and mature men, had come from the farthest limits of their common country? Such language as he had heard, such disorder as he had witnessed when he first crossed that threshold, was it manly, was it honorable, was it rational? He bade them pause, and tell him to what, under Providence, they owed their present position as a free and independent nation, respected by their neighbours. Every man there present knew beyond all contradiction, that it was to their union they owed this great debt of glory and prosperity. Without union they never could have attained to independence; without union they never could have preserved their freedom against one of the most powerful princes of Europe. And now, the very bond to which they and their fathers owed every national blessing and individual safety, they stood ready, in a moment of passion, to sever violently. He asked them if a national bond were absolutely nothing, that they held it now so cheap? There were men, he knew, in every land who held cheap each tie which bound them to their fellows--men who had no feeling for father, or brother, or son; but, thanks be to God, such was not the case with all. Most human hearts could value every social bond, whether of family, kindred, or country. And what course would they take, should the evil work be accomplished? Did they expect to thrive better singly--each canton to face the world and all its manifold interests alone, or did they mean to cling together, a few here, a few there, one nation broken up into half a dozen nations? Did they expect that any future union could be closer and dearer than that which had already held together for generations men of the same blood and language; men who had suffered and triumphed together? He warned them that if the evil spirit of disunion and strife were now let loose and encouraged by themselves, they must not expect it to end its work to-day, to stop short at the very hour they required it to sleep again; like all other evil influences, it must either be checked and controlled, or the fatal poison must spread farther and farther, until it ended in utter anarchy and confusion. It is not for man, made of the dust of the earth, to rouse evil and accursed passions, and bid them go thus far and no farther. He implored them to let no narrow, selfish, momentary interest blind them to interests immeasurably higher, and more lasting. It remained for the men of that generation to say whether the crisis should be a fatal one or not; it lay within their power to steer the ark of their country's hopes safely over a stormy sea, or purposely, deliberately, wilfully, to rush on the breakers, until that noble, honored fabric foundered for ever. Evil passions, suspicion, envy, jealousy, wrath, had too often, in the history of the world, worked out general, public misery: but he trusted there was yet within the bosom of their own people wisdom, patience, and moderation sufficient to carry them safely through the storm. He called upon every good man, every honest man, who could rise superior to the selfishness of the race, to move and act in the blessed cause of peace and concord. He advised them to look each at his own post and duty, and to meddle less with those of his neighbors; he implored them, for conscience' sake, not to be so ready with mutual suspicion and recrimination. He warned them that whatever evils were to be remedied, the task must be undertaken calmly and dispassionately to be well done. Then proceeding to the subjects immediately under discussion, he continued: "Let not the towns insist on claims which are injurious to the old confederates. Let the rural cantons bear in mind how Soleure and Friburg fought by their side, and received them freely into the confederacy. Beware of intrigues, confederates! Beware of discord! Far be it for any to sacrifice his father-land for selfish interests of his own." The old man paused. The better intentioned of the deputies, who had been silenced by the violence of their companions, pressed about him. He repeated his counsels; he entered more particularly into the subjects of dispute; more and more gathered to the ranks of peace; and, in short, it is a matter of history that the earnest address of the good man worked an entire change in the temper of the Diet. In one hour's time the country was saved. It may be doubted whether there is on record, in the whole course of history, so striking an instance of the influence of disinterested wisdom upon a public assembly at a moment so critical. Probably, such an incident could only occur in a simple state of society, where legislative pride and legislative weakness had not made such rapid strides as in later times. Happily for Switzerland, the question was decided on the spot; during that same day's session every subject under debate was peaceably settled. The confederacy was saved. Friburg and Soleure were received into the union. The venerable Nicholas had proposed that territorial conquests should be shared according to cantons, and the other spoil according to the population; both questions were immediately decided in accordance with this plan. Other points were amicably settled; and, instead of a fatal rupture, a covenant was entered into, since called the "Covenant of Stantz," by which the bonds of union were drawn closer. The deputies separated in a friendly temper, and the happy news of reconciliation spread rapidly through the quiet valleys and busy towns, while from the Alps to the Jura, the bells of town-house, church, and convent, poured forth over hill and dale their grateful peal of national joy. To the present day the Swiss thankfully recur to the 22d of December, 1481, and the appeal of Nicholas von der Fluë to the Diet of Stantz, as a memorable epoch in their history. Certainly the incident is very remarkable, and almost without a parallel in history. To us of the present day, when revolution and violence are rife, when invective and accusation form the common speech of public writers and public speakers, to us of these days of controversy the fact that the personal character and wisdom of one man should have pacified and influenced to such a degree a stormy assembly, appears all but incredible. The traveller who visits the canton of Unterwalden to-day finds its mountains sublime, its valleys beautiful, its waters limpid and living, as of old. It is a wholly pastoral region, and the smooth green meadows are thickly sprinkled with peasant homes, neat, cheerful, and peculiar, like those of all Switzerland. The valley of the Melch is particularly populous, its green pasture grounds protected by noble mountains, rising on either side six or eight thousand feet towards the heavens, are closely dotted with pretty cottages. Among these rustic dwellings, that once inhabited by Nicholas Loewenbrugger is still shown. It is in good preservation, and much like those which surround it. Probably the architecture, like the dress of the Swiss peasantry, has varied but little for generations. Several personal relics of the venerable man are also preserved, and shown to the pilgrim traveller--these are two swords, a silver goblet, and a couple of wooden spoons. It is very probable that they were in fact what they claim to have been, the property of the good man, for we, in this country of change, have little idea of the great care taken with family relics of this description in the households of the old world. A chapel has been built near the cell occupied by the hermit; his tomb is at Sachslen, about a league from the village of Sarnen, in the principal church of the canton. Descendants of the patriot are still living in Unterwalden, where his family long held a very honorable position, and is well represented at the present day. But those who boast of his own blood and name can scarcely claim a deeper and more heartfelt veneration for his memory than that which is felt throughout the whole confederacy. There is no name in Switzerland, not even that of Tell, revered more highly than the name of Nicolas von der Fluë. "Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God." Probably, if earnest efforts in behalf of concord, like those of the old hermit, were more frequently made, history would, on many occasions, show less gloomy pictures than those which she now unfolds to the world. But it is a singular fact that, generally, good men are more easily disheartened, and, consequently, far less active in times of internal disturbance than the selfish and intriguing. Surely this ought not to be. A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[E] WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ. _Continued from page 346._ CHAPTER XXX. Mrs. Hazleton was very consoling. She was with Mrs. Hastings two or three times in the week, and poor Mrs. Hastings required a considerable degree of consolation; for the arrest of her husband, coming so close upon the bitter mortification of loss, and abatement of dignity, and at the end of a long period of weak health, had made her seriously ill. She now kept her bed the whole day long, and lay, making herself worse by that sort of fretful anxiety which was constitutional with her as well as with many other people. Mrs. Hazleton's visits were a great comfort to her, and yet, strange to say, Emily almost always found her more irritable after that lady had left her. Poor Emily seemed to shine under the cloud of misfortune. Her character came out and acted nobly in the midst of disasters. She was her mother's nurse and constant attendant; she kept her father informed of every thing that passed--not an opportunity was missed of sending him a letter; and although she would have made any sacrifice to be with him in prison, to comfort and support him in the peril and sorrow of his situation, she was well satisfied that he had not taken her, when she found the state into which her mother had fallen. Often, after Mrs. Hazleton had sat for an hour or two with her sick friend, she would come down and walk upon the terrace for a while with Emily, and comfort her much in the same way that she did Mrs. Hastings. She would tell her not to despond about her mother: that though she was certainly very ill, and in a dangerous state, yet people had recovered who had been quite as ill as she was. Then she would talk about lungs, and nerves, and humors, and all kinds of painful and mortal diseases, as if she had studied medicine all her life; and she did it, too, with a quiet, dignified gravity which made it more impressive and alarming. Then again, she would turn to the situation of Mr. Hastings, and wonder what they would do with him. She would also bring every bit of news that she could collect, regarding the case of Sir John Fenwick, especially when the intelligence was painful and disastrous; but she hinted that, perhaps, after all, they might not be able to prove any thing against Mr. Hastings, and that even if they did--although the Government were inclined to be severe--they might, perhaps, commute his sentence to transportation for the colonies, or imprisonment in the Tower for five or six years. It is thus our friends often console us; some of them, from a dark and gloomy turn of mind, and some of them from the satisfaction many people feel in meddling with the miseries of others. But it was neither natural despondency of character, nor any general love of sorrowful scenes or thoughts, that moved Mrs. Hazleton in the present instance. She had a peculiar and especial pleasure in the wretchedness of the Hastings family, and particularly in that of Emily. The charming lady fancied that if Marlow were free from his engagement with Emily the next day, and a suitor for her own hand, she would never think of marrying him. I am not quite sure of that fact, but that is no business of ours, dear reader, and one thing is certain, that she would have very willingly sacrificed one half of her whole fortune, nay more, to have placed an everlasting barrier between Emily and Marlow. She was thus walking with her dear Emily, as she called her, one day on that terrace at the back of the house where the memorable conversation had taken place between Mr. Hastings and Sir John Fenwick, and was treating Emily to a minute and particular account of the death of the latter, when Marlow suddenly arrived from London, and entered the house by the large glass door in front. He found a servant in the hall who informed him that Mrs. Hastings was still in bed, and that Emily was walking on the terrace with Mrs. Hazleton. Marlow paused, and considered for a moment. "Any thing not dishonorable," he said to himself, "is justifiable to clear up such a mystery;" and passing quietly through the house into the dining-room, which had one window opening as a door upon the terrace, he saw his fair Emily and her companion pass along towards the other end of the walk without being himself perceived. He then approached the window, and calculating the distances nicely, so as to be sure that Mrs. Hazleton was fully as far distant from himself as she could have been from Sir John Fenwick and Mr. Hastings on the evening when they walked there together, he pronounced her name in an ordinary tone, somewhat lower than that which Mr. Hastings usually employed. Mrs. Hazleton instantly started, and looked round towards the spot where Marlow was now emerging from the room. The lady could not miss an occasion, and the moment she saw him she exclaimed, "Dear me! there is Mr. Marlow; I am afraid he brings bad tidings, Emily." Emily paused not to consider, but with her own wild grace ran forward and cast herself into his arms. Fortunately Mrs. Hazleton had no dagger with her. Her face was benevolent and smiling when she joined them; for the joy there was upon Emily's countenance forbade any affectation of apprehension. It said as plainly as possible, "All is well;" but she added the words too, stretching forth her hand to her supposed friend, and saying, "Dear Mrs. Hazleton, Charles brings me word that my father is safe--that the Government have declared they will not prosecute." "I congratulate you with my whole heart, Emily," replied the lady; "and I do sincerely hope that ministers may keep their word better in this instance than they have done in some others." "There is not the slightest doubt of it, my dear madam," said Marlow; "for I have the official announcement under the hand of the Secretary of State." "I must fly and tell my mother," said Emily, and without waiting for a reply she darted away. Mrs. Hazleton took a turn or two up and down the terrace with Marlow, considering whether it was at all possible for her to be of any further comfort to her friends at the Court. As she could not stay all night, however, so as to prevent Emily and Marlow from having any happy private conversation together and as she judged that, in their present joy, they would a good deal forget conventional restraints, and give way to their lover-like feelings even in her presence, which would be exceedingly disagreeable to her, she soon re-entered the house, and ordered her carriage. It must be acknowledged that both Emily and Marlow were well satisfied to see her depart, and it is not to be wondered at if they gave themselves up for half an hour to the pleasure of meeting again. At the end of that time, however, Marlow drew forth a letter from his pocket, carefully folded, so that a line or two only was apparent, and placing it before Emily, inquired if she knew the hand. "It is mine," said Emily, at first; but the moment after she exclaimed "No!--it is not; it is Mrs. Hazleton's. I know it by the peculiar way she forms the _g_ and the _y_.--Stay, let me see, Marlow. She has not done so always; but that _g_, and that _y_, I am quite certain of. Why do you ask, Marlow?" "For reasons of the utmost importance, dear Emily," he answered, "have you any letters or notes of Mrs. Hazleton's?" "Yes, there is one which came yesterday," replied Emily; "it is lying on my table up-stairs." "Bring it--bring it, dearest girl," he said; "I wish very much to see it." When he had got, he examined it with a well-pleased smile, and then said, with a laugh, "I must impound this, my love. I am now on the right track, and will not leave it till I have arrived at perfect certainty." "You are very strange and mysterious to-day, Marlow," said the beautiful girl, "what does all this mean?" "It means, my love," replied Marlow, "that I have very dark doubts and suspicions of Mrs. Hazleton,--and all I have seen and heard to-day confirms me. Now sit down here by me, dear Emily, and tell me if, to your knowledge, you have ever given to Mrs. Hazleton cause of offence." "Never!" answered Emily, firmly and at once. "Never in my life." Marlow mused, and then, with his arms round her waist, he continued, "Bethink yourself, my love. Within the course of the last two or three years, have you ever seen reason to believe that Mrs. Hazleton's affection for you is not so great as it appears?--Has it ever wavered?--Has it ever become doubtful to you from any stray word or accidental circumstance?" Emily was silent for a moment, and then replied, thoughtfully, "Perhaps I did think so, once or twice, when I was staying at her house, last year." "Well, then, now, dear Emily," said Marlow, "tell me every thing down to the most minute circumstance that occurred there." Emily hesitated. "Perhaps I ought not," she said; "Mrs. Hazleton showed me, very strongly, that I ought not, except under an absolute necessity." "That necessity is now, my love," replied Marlow; "love cannot exist without confidence, Emily; and I tell you, upon my honor and my faith, that your happiness, my happiness, and even your father's safety, depends in a great degree upon your telling me all. Do you believe me, Emily?" "Fully," she answered; "and I will tell you all." Thus seated together, she poured forth the whole tale to her lover's ears, even to the circumstances which had occurred in her own room, when Mrs. Hazleton had entered it, walking in her sleep. The whole conduct of John Ayliffe, now calling himself Sir John Hastings, was also displayed; and the dark and treacherous schemes which had been going on, began gradually to evolve themselves to Marlow's mind. Obscure and indistinct they still were; but the gloomy shadow was apparent, and he could trace the outline though he could not fill up the details. "Base, treacherous woman!" he murmured to himself, and then, pressing Emily more closely to his heart, he thanked her again and again for her frankness. "I will never misuse it, my Emily," he said; "and no one shall ever know what you have told me except your father: to him it must be absolutely revealed." "I would have told him myself," said Emily, "if he had ever asked me any questions on the subject; but as he did not, and seemed very gloomy just then, I thought it better to follow Mrs. Hazleton's advice." "The worst and the basest she could have given you," said Marlow; "I have had doubts of her for a long time, Emily, but I have no doubts now; and, moreover, I firmly believe that the whole case of this John Ayliffe--his claim upon your father's estate and title--is all false and factitious together, supported by fraud, forgery, and crime. Have you preserved this young man's letter, or have you destroyed it, Emily?" "I kept it," she replied, "thinking that, some time or another, I might have to show it to my father." "Then one more mark of confidence, my love," said Marlow; "let me have that letter. I do not wish to read it; therefore you had better fold it up and seal it; but it may be necessary as a link in the chain of evidence which I wish to bring forward for your father's satisfaction." "Read it, if you will, Marlow," she answered; "I have told you the contents, but it may be as well that you should see the words: I will bring it to you in a moment." They read the letter over together, and when Marlow had concluded, he laid his hand upon it, saying, "This is Mrs. Hazleton's composition." "I'm almost inclined to fancy so, myself," answered Emily. "He is incapable of writing this," replied her lover; "I have seen his letters on matters of business, and he cannot write a plain sentence in English to an end without making some gross mistake. This is Mrs. Hazleton's doing, and there is some dark design underneath it. Would to God that visit had never taken place!" "There has been little happiness in the house since," said Emily, "except what you and I have known together, Marlow; and that has been sadly checkered by many a painful circumstance." "The clouds are breaking, dear one," replied Marlow, rising; "but I will not pause one moment in my course till all this is made clear--no, not even for the delight of sitting here by you, my love. I will go home at once, Emily; mount my horse, and ride over to Hartwell before it be dark." "What is your object there?" asked Emily. "To unravel one part of this mystery," replied her lover. "I will ascertain, by some means, from whom, or in what way, this young man obtained sufficient money to commence and carry on a very expensive suit at law. That he had it not himself, I am certain. That his chances were not sufficiently good, when first he commenced, to induce any lawyer to take the risk, I am equally certain. He must have had it from some one, and my suspicions point to Mrs. Hazleton. Her bankers are mine, and I will find means to know. So, now, farewell, my love; I will see you again early to-morrow." He lingered yet for a moment or two, and then left her. CHAPTER XXXI. Marlow was soon on horseback, and riding on to the country town. But he had lingered longer with Emily than he imagined, and the day declined visibly as he rode along. "The business hours are over," he thought; "bankers and lawyers will have abandoned the money-getting and mischief-making toils of the day; and I must stay at the inn till to-morrow." He had been riding fast; but he now drew in his rein, and suffered his horse to walk. The sun was setting gloriously, and the rich, rosy light, diffused through the air, gave every thing an aspect of warmth, and richness, and cheerfulness. But Marlow's heart was any thing but gay. Whether it was that the scenes which he had passed through in London, his visits to a prison, his dealings with hard official men, the toiling, moiling crowds that had surrounded him; the wearisome, eternal, yet ever-changing struggle of life displayed in the streets and houses of a capital, the infinite varieties of selfishness, and folly, and vice, and crime, had depressed his spirits, or that his health had somewhat suffered in consequence of anxious waiting for events in the foul air of the metropolis, I cannot tell. But certain, he was sadder than was usual with him. His was a spirit strong and active, naturally disposed to bright views and happy hopes, too firm to be easily depressed, too elastic to be long kept down. But yet, as he rode along, there was a sort of feeling of apprehension upon his mind that oppressed him mightily. He revolved all that had lately passed. He compared the state of Mr. Hastings' family, as it actually was, with what it had been when he first knew it, and there seemed to be a strange mystery in the change. It had then been all happiness and prosperity with that household; a calm, grave, thoughtful, but happy father and husband; a bright, amiable, affectionate mother and wife; a daughter, to his mind the image of every thing that was sweet, and gentle, and tender--of every thing that was gay, and sparkling, and cheerful; full of light and life, and fancy, and hope. Now, there was a father in prison, deprived of his greatest share of worldly prosperity, cast down from his station in society, gloomy, desponding, suspicious, and, as it seemed to him, hardly sane: a mother, irritable, capricious, peevish, yielding to calamity, and lying on a bed of sickness, while the bright angel of his love remained to nurse, and tend, and soothe the one parent, with a heart torn and bleeding for the distresses of the other. "What have they done to merit all this?" he asked himself. "What fault, what crime have they committed to draw down such sorrows on their heads? None--none whatever. Their lives had been spent in kindly acts and good deeds; they had followed the precepts of the religion they professed; their lives had been spent in doing service to their fellow-creatures, and making all happy around them." Then again, on the other hand, he saw the coarse, and the low, and the base, and the licentious prosperous and successful, rising on the ruins of the pure and the true. Wily schemes and villanous intrigues obtaining every advantage, and honesty of purpose and rectitude of action frustrated and cast down. Marlow was no unbeliever--he was not even inclined to skepticism--but his mind labored, not without humility and reverence, to see how it could reconcile such facts with the goodness and providence of God. "He makes the sun shine upon the just and the unjust, we are told," said Marlow to himself; "but here the sun seems to shine upon the unjust alone, and clouds and tempests hang about the just. It is very strange, and even discouraging; and yet, all that we see of these strange, unaccountable dispensations may teach us lessons for hereafter--may give us the grandest confirmation of the grandest truth. There must be another world, in which these things will be made equal--a world where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. We only see in part, and the part we do not see must be the part which will reconcile all the seeming contradictions between the justice and goodness of God and the course of this mortal life." This train pursued him till he reached the town, and put up his horse at the inn. By that time it was quite dark, and he had tasted nothing since early in the morning. He therefore ordered supper, and the landlord, by whom he was now well known--a good, old, honest, country landlord of the olden time--brought in the meal himself, and waited on his guest at table. It was so much the custom of gentlemen, in those days, to order wine whenever they stopped at an inn--it was looked upon so much as a matter of course that this should be done for the good of the house--that the landlord, without any direct commands to that effect, brought in a bottle of his very best old sherry, always a favorite wine with the English people, though now hardly to be got, and placed it by the side of his guest. Marlow was by habit no drinker of much wine. He avoided, as much as in him lay, the deep potations then almost universal in England; but, not without an object, he that night gave in to a custom which was very common in England then, and for many years afterwards, and requested the landlord, after the meal was over, to sit down, and help him with his bottle. "You'll need another bottle, if I once begin, Master Marlow," said the jolly landlord, who was a wag in his way. Marlow nodded his head significantly, as if he were prepared for the infliction, replying quietly, "Under the influence of your good chat, Mr. Cherrydew, I can bear it, I think." "Well, that's hearty," said the landlord, drawing a chair sideways to the table; for his vast rotundity prevented him from approaching it full front. "Here's to your very good health, sir, and may you never drink worse wine, sit in a colder room, or have a sadder companion." Now I have said that Marlow did not invite the landlord to join him, without an object. That object was to obtain information, and it had struck him even while the trout, which formed the first dish at his supper, was being placed on the table, that he might be able, if willing, to afford it. Landlords in England at that time--I mean, of course, in country towns--were very different in many respects, and of a different class from what they are at present. In the first place, they were not fine gentlemen: in the next place, they were not discharged valets de chambre, or butlers, who, having cheated their masters handsomely, and perhaps laid them under contribution in many ways, retire to enjoy the fat things at their ease in their native town. Then, again, they were on terms of familiar intercourse with two or three classes, completely separate and distinct from each other--a sort of connecting link between them. At their door the justice of the peace, the knight of the shire, the great man of the neighborhood, dismounted from his horse, and had his chat with mine host. There came the village lawyer when he had gained a cause, or won a large fee, or had been paid a long bill, to indulge in his pint of sherry, and gossipped, as he drank it, of all the affairs of his clients. There sneaked in the Doctor to get his glass of eau de vie, or plague water, or aqua mirabilis, or strong spirits, in short of any other denomination, and tell little dirty anecdotes of his cases, and his patients. There the alderman, the wealthy shop-keeper, and the small proprietor, or the large farmer, came to take his cheerful cup on Saturdays or on market-day. But, besides these, the inn was the resort, though approached by another door, of a lower and a poorer class, with whom the landlord was still upon as good terms as with the others. The wagoner, the carter, the lawyer's and the banker's clerk, the shopman, the porter even, all came there; and it mattered not to Mr. Cherrydew or his confraternity, whether it was a bowl of punch, a draught of ale, a glass of spirits, or a bottle of old wine that his guests demanded; he was civil, and familiar, and chatty with them all. Thus under the rosy and radiant face of Mr. Cherrydew, and in that good, round, fat head, was probably accumulated a greater mass of information, regarding the neighborhood in which he lived, and all that went on therein, than in any other head in the whole town, and the only difficulty was to extract that part of the store which was wanted. Marlow knew that it would not do to approach the principal subject of inquiry rashly; for Mr. Cherrydew, like most of his craft, was somewhat cautious, and would have shut himself up in silent reserve, or enveloped himself in intangible ambiguities, if he had known that his guest had any distinct and important object in his questions--having a notion that a landlord should be perfectly cosmopolitan in all his feelings and his actions, and should never commit himself in such a manner as to offend any one who was, had been, or might be his guest. He was fond of gossipping, it is true, loved a jest, and was not at all blind to the ridiculous in the actions of his neighbors; but habitual caution was in continual struggle with his merry, tattling disposition, and he was generally considered a very safe man. Marlow, therefore, began at a great distance, saying, "I have just come down from London, Mr. Cherrydew, and rode over, thinking that I should arrive in time to catch my lawyer in his office." "That is all over now, sir, for the night," replied the landlord. "In this, two-legged foxes differ from others: they go to their holes at sunset, just when other foxes go out to walk. They divide the world between them, Master Marlow; the one preys by day, the other by night.--Well, I should like to see Lunnun. It must be a grand place, sir, though somewhat of a bad one. Why, what a number of executions I have read of there lately, and then, this Sir John Fenwick's business. Why, he changed horses here, going to dine with Sir Philip, as I shall call him to the end of my days. Ah, poor gentleman, he has been in great trouble! But I suppose, from what I hear, he'll get clear now?" "Beyond all doubt," said Marlow; "the Government have no case against him. But you say very true, Mr. Cherrydew, there has been a sad number of executions in London--seven and twenty people hanged, at different times, while I was there." "And the town no better," said Mr. Cherrydew. "By the way," said Marlow, "were you not one of the jury at the trial of that fellow, Tom Cutter?--Fill your glass, Mr. Cherrydew." "Thank you, sir.--Yes I was, to be sure," answered the landlord; "and I'll tell you the funniest thing in the world that happened the second day. Lord bless you, sir, I was foreman,--and on the first day the judge suffered the case to go on till his dinner was quite cold, and we were all half starved; but he saw that he could not hang him that night, at all events--here's to your health, sir!--so he adjourned the Court, and called for a constable, and ordered all of us, poor devils, to be locked up tight in Jones's public-house till the next day; for the jury-room is so small, that there is not standing-room for more than three such as me. Well, the other men did not much like it, though I did not care,--for I had my boots full of ham, and a brandy-bottle in my breeches-pocket. One of them asked the judge, for all his great black eyebrows, if he could'nt go on that night; but his lordship answered, with a snort like a cart horse, and told us to hold our tongues, and mind our own business, and only to take care and keep ourselves together. Well, sir, we had to walk up the hill, you know, and there was the constable following us with his staff in his hand; so I had compassion on my poor fellow-sufferers, and I whispered, first to one, then to another, that this sort of jog would never do, but I would manage to tell them how to have a good night's rest. You see, says I, here's but one constable to thirteen people, so when you get to the cross-roads, let every man take up his legs and run, each his own way. He can but catch one, and the slowest runner will have the chance. Now, I was the fattest of them all, you see, so that every one of them thought that I should be the man. Well, sir, they followed my advice; but it's a different thing to give advice, and take it. No sooner did we get to the cross-roads, than they scattered like a heap of dust in the wind, some down the roads and lanes, some over the styles and gates, some through the hedges. Little Sninkum, the tailor, stuck in the hedge by the way, and was the man caught, for he was afraid of his broadcloth; but I stood stock still, with a look of marvellous astonishment, crying out, "For God's sake catch them, constable, or what will my lord say to you and me?" Off the poor devil set in a moment, one man to catch twelve, all over the face of the country. He thought he was sure enough of me; but what did I do? why, as soon as he was gone, I waddled home to my own house, and got my wife to put me to bed up-stairs, and pass me for my grandfather. Well, sir, that's not the best of it yet. We were all in Court next day at the right hour, and snug in the jury-box before the judge came in; but I have a notion he had heard something of the matter. He looked mighty hard at Sninkum, whose face was all scratched to pieces, and opening his mouth with a pop, like the drawing of a cork, he said, "Why, man, you look as if you and your brethren had been fighting!" and then he looked as hard at me, and roared, "I hope gentlemen, you have kept yourselves together?" Thereupon, I laid my two hands upon my stomach, sir,--it weighs a hundred and a half, if it were cut off to-morrow, as I know to my cost, who carry it--and I answered quite respectful, "I can't answer for the other gentlemen, my lord, but I'll swear I've kept myself together." You should have heard how the Court rang with the people laughing, while I remained as grave as a judge, and much graver than the one who was there; for I thought he would have burst before he was done, and a fine mess that would have made." Serious as his thoughts were, Marlow could not refrain from smiling; but he did not forget his object, and remarked, "There were efforts made to save that scoundrel, and the present Sir John Hastings certainly did his best for his friend." "Call him John Ayliffe, sir, call him John Ayliffe," said the host. "Here's to you, sir,--he's never called any thing else here." "I wonder," said Marlow, musingly, "if there was any relationship between this Tom Cutter and John Ayliffe's mother?" "Not a pin's point of it, sir," replied the landlord. "They were just two bad fellows together; that was the connection between them, and nothing else." "Well, John stood by his friend, at all events," said Marlow; "though where he got the money to pay the lawyers in that case, or in his suit against Sir Philip, is a marvel to me." Mine host winked his eye knowingly, and gave a short laugh. That did not entirely suit Marlow's purpose, and he added in a musing tone, "I know that he wanted to borrow ten pounds two or three months before, but was refused, because he had not repaid what he had borrowed of the same party, previously." "Ay, ay, sir," said the landlord; "there are secrets in all things. He got money, and money enough, somehow, just about that time. He has not repaid it yet, either, but he has given a mortgage, I hear, for the amount; and if he don't mortgage his own carcase for it too, I am very much mistaken, before he has done." "Mortgage his own carcase! I do not understand what you mean," replied Marlow. "I am sure I would not give a shilling for that piece of earth." "A pretty widow lady, not a hundred miles off, may think differently," replied the landlord, grinning again, and filling his glass once more. "Ah, ha," said Marlow, trying to laugh likewise; "so you think she advanced the money, do you?" "I am quite sure of it, sir," said Mr. Cherrydew, nodding his head profoundly. "I did not witness the mortgage, but I know one who did." "What! Shanks' clerk, I suppose," said Marlow. "No, sir, no," replied the landlord; "Shanks did not draw the mortgage, either; for he was lawyer to both parties, and Mrs. Hazleton didn't like that;--O, she's cute enough!" "I think you must be mistaken," said Marlow, in a decided tone; "for Mrs. Hazleton assured me, when there was a question between herself and me, that she was not nearly as rich as she was supposed, and that if the law should award me back rents, it would ruin her." "Gammon, sir!" replied the landlord, who had now imbibed a sufficient quantity of wine, in addition to sundry potations during the day. "I should not have thought you a man to be so easily hooked, Mr. Marlow; but if you will ask the clerk of Doubledoo and Kay, who was down here, staying three or four days about business, you'll find that she advanced every penny, and got a mortgage for upwards of five thousand pounds;--but I think we had better have that other bottle, sir?" "By all means," said Marlow, and Mr. Cherrydew rolled away to fetch it. "By the way, what was that clerk's name you mentioned?" "Sims, sir, Sims," said the landlord, drawing the cork; and then setting down the bottle on the table, he added, with a look of great contempt, "he's the leetlest little man you ever saw, sir, not so tall as my girl Dolly, and with no more stomach than a currycomb, a sort of cross breed between a monkey and a penknife. He's as full of fun as the one, too, and as sharp as the other. He will hold a prodigious quantity of punch, though, small as he is. I could not fancy where he put it all, it must have gone into his shoes." "Come, come, Mr. Cherrydew," said Marlow, laughing, "do not speak disrespectfully of thin people--I am not very fat myself." "Lord bless you, sir, you are quite a fine, personable man; and in time, with a few butts, you would be as fine a man as I am." Marlow devoutly hoped not, but he begged Mr. Cherrydew to sit down again, and do his best to help him through the wine he had brought; and out of that bottle came a great many things which Marlow wanted much more than the good sherry which it contained. CHAPTER XXXII. It was about ten o'clock in the day when Marlow returned to the Court, as it was called. The butler informed him that Miss Emily was not down--a very unusual thing with her, as she was exceedingly matutinal in her habits; but he found, on inquiry, that she had sat up with her mother during the greater part of the night. Marlow looked at his watch, then at the gravelled space before the house, where his own horse was being led up and down by his groom, and a stranger who had come with him was sitting quietly on horseback, as if waiting for him. "I fear," said Marlow, after a moment's musing, "I must disturb your young lady. Will you tell her maid to go up and inform her that I am here, and wish to speak with her immediately, as I have business which calls me to London without delay." The man retired, and Marlow entered what was then called the withdrawing room, walking up and down in thought. He had not remained many minutes, however, when Emily herself appeared, with her looks full of surprise and anxiety. "What is the matter, Marlow?" she said. "Has any new evil happened?" "Nay, nay, my love," said Marlow, embracing her tenderly. "You must not let the few ills that have already befallen you, my Emily, produce that apprehensiveness which long years of evil and mischance but too often engender. Brighter days are coming, I trust, my love; so far from new evils having arisen, I have been very fortunate in my inquiries, and have got information which must lead to great results. I must pursue the clue that has been afforded me without a moment's delay or hesitation; for once the thread be broken I may have difficulty in uniting it again. But if I judge rightly, my Emily, it will lead me to the following results. To the complete exposure of a base conspiracy; to the punishment of the offenders; to the restoration of your father's property, and of his rank." He held her hand in his while he spoke, and gazed into her beautiful eyes; but Emily did not seem very much overjoyed. "For my own part," she said, "I care little as to the loss of property or station, Marlow, and still less do I care to punish offenders; but I think my father and mother will be very glad of the tidings you give me. May I tell them what you say?" Marlow mused for a moment or two. He was anxious to give any comfort to Mrs. Hastings, but yet he doubted her discretion, and he replied, "Not the whole, dear Emily, except in case of urgent need. You may tell your mother that I think I have obtained information which will lead to the restoration of your father's property, and you may assure her that no effort shall be wanting on my part to attain that object. Say that I am, even now, setting out for London for the purpose, and that I am full of good hopes. I believe I can prove," he added, after a moment's consideration, and in reality more to lead Mrs. Hastings away from the right track than from any other consideration, although the point he was about to state was a fact, "I believe I can prove that the missing leaf of the marriage register, which was supposed to have been torn out by your grandfather's orders, was there not two years ago, and that I can show by whose hands it was torn out at a much later date. Assure her, however, that I will do every thing in my power, and bid her be of good hope." "I do not understand the matter," answered Emily, "and never heard of this register, but I dare say my mother has, and will comprehend your meaning better than I do. I know the very hope will give her great pleasure." "Remember one thing, however, dear Emily," replied Marlow, "on no account mention to her my suspicions of Mrs. Hazleton, nor show any suspicions of that good lady yourself. It is absolutely necessary that she should be kept in ignorance of our doubts, till those doubts become certainties. However, in case of any painful and unpleasant circumstances occurring while I am absent, I must leave these papers with you. They consist of the note sent you by Mrs. Hazleton which you showed me, a paper which I feel confident is in her handwriting, but which imitates your hand very exactly, and which has led to wrong impressions, and the letter of young John Ayliffe--or at least that which he wrote under Mrs. Hazleton's direction. I have added a few words of my own, on a separate sheet of paper, stating the impression which I have in regard to all these matters, and which I will justify whenever it may be needful." "But what am I to do with them?" asked Emily, simply. "Keep them safely, and ever at hand, dear girl," replied Marlow, in a grave tone. "You will find your father on his return a good deal altered--moody and dissatisfied. It will be as well for you to take no notice of such demeanor, unless he expresses plainly some cause of discontent. If he do so--if he should venture upon any occasion to reproach you, my Emily--" "For what?" exclaimed Emily, in utter surprise. "It would be too long and too painful to explain all just now, dear one," answered her lover. "But such a thing may happen, my Emily. Deceived, and in error, he may perhaps reproach you for things you never dreamt of. He may also judge wrongly of your conduct in not having told him of this young scoundrel's proposal to you. In either case put that packet of papers in his hands, and tell him frankly and candidly every thing." "He is sometimes so reserved and grave," said Emily, "that I never like to speak to him on any subject to which he does not lead the way. I sometimes think he does not understand me, Marlow, and dread to open my whole heart to him, as I would fain do, lest he should mistake me still more." "Let no dread stop you in this instance, my own dear girl," Marlow answered. "That there have been dark plots against you, Emily, I am certain. The only way to meet and frustrate them is to place full and entire confidence in your father. I do not ask you to speak to him on the subject unless he speaks to you, till I have obtained the proofs which will make all as clear as daylight. Then, every thing must be told, and Sir Philip will find that had he been more frank himself he would have met with no want of candor in his daughter. Now, one more kiss, dear love, and then to my horse's back." I will not pursue Marlow's journey across the fair face of merry England, nor tell the few adventures that befell him on the way, nor the eager considerations that pressed, troop after troop, upon his mind, neither will I dwell long upon his proceedings in London, which occupied but one brief day. He went to the house of his banker, sought out the little clerk of Messrs. Doubledoo and Kay, and contrived from both to obtain proof positive that Mrs. Hazleton had supplied a large sum of money to young John Ayliffe to carry on his suit against Sir Philip Hastings. He also obtained a passport for France, and one or two letters for influential persons in Paris, and returning to the inn where he had left the man who had accompanied him from the country, set out for Calais, without pausing even to take rest himself. Another man, a clerk from his own lawyer's house, accompanied him, and though the passage was somewhat long and stormy, he reached Calais in safety. Journeys to Paris were not then such easy things as now. Three days passed ere Marlow reached the French capital, and then both his companions were inclined to grumble not a little at the rapidity with which he travelled, and the small portion of rest he allowed them or himself. In the capital, however, they paused for two days, and, furnished with an interpreter and guide, amused themselves mightily, while Marlow passed his time in government offices, and principally with the lieutenant of police, or one of his commissaries. At length the young gentleman notified his two companions that they must prepare to accompany him at nine o'clock in the morning to St. Germain en Laye, where he intended to reside for some days. A carriage was at the door to the moment, and they found in it a very decent and respectable gentleman in black, with a jet-hilted sword by his side, and a certain portion of not very uncorrupt English. The whole party jogged on pleasantly up the steep ascent, and round the fine old palace, to a small inn which was indicated to the driver by the gentleman in black, for whom that driver seemed to entertain a profound reverence. When comfortably fixed in the inn, Marlow left his two English companions, and proceeded, as it was the hour of promenade, to take a walk upon the terrace with his friend in black. They passed a great number of groups, and a great number of single figures, and Marlow might have remarked, if he had been so disposed, that several of the persons whom they met seemed to eye his companion with a suspicious and somewhat anxious glance. All Marlow's powers of observation, however, were directed in a different way. He examined every face that he saw, every group that he came near; but at length, as they passed a somewhat gayly dressed woman of the middle age, who was walking alone, the young Englishman touched the arm of the man in black, saying, "According to the description I have had of her, that must be very like the person." "We will follow her, and see," said the man in black. Without appearing to notice her particularly, they kept near the lady who had attracted their attention, as long as she continued to walk upon the terrace, and then followed her when she left it, through several streets which led away in the direction of the forest. At length she stopped at a small house, opened the door, and went in. The man in black took out a little book from his pocket, closely written with long lists of names. "Monsieur et Madame Jervis," he said, after having turned over several pages. "Here since three years ago." "That cannot be she, then," answered Marlow. "Stay, stay," said his companion, "that is _au premier_. On the second floor lodges Monsieur Drummond. Old man of sixty-eight. He has been here two years; and above Madame Dupont, an old French lady whom I know quite well. You must be mistaken, Monsieur, but we will go into this _charcutier's_ just opposite, and inquire whether that is Madame Jervis who went in." It proved to be so. The pork butcher had seen her as she passed the window, and Marlow's search had to begin again. When he and his companion returned to their inn, however, the man whom he had brought up from the country met him eagerly, saying, "I have seen her, sir! I have seen her! She passed by here not ten minutes ago, dressed in weeds like a widow, and walking very fast. I would swear to her." "Oh, ho," said the man in black, "we will soon find her now," and calling to the landlord, who was as profoundly deferential towards him as the coachman had been, he said in the sweetest possible tone, "Will you have the goodness to let Monsieur Martin know that the _bon homme grivois_ wishes to speak with him for a moment?" It was wonderful with what rapidity Monsieur St. Martin, a tall, dashing looking personage, with an infinite wig, obeyed the summons of the _bon homme grivois_. "Ah, _bon jour_, St. Martin," said the man in black. "_Bon jour, Monsieur_," replied the other, with a profound obeisance. "A lady of forty--has been handsome, fresh color, dark eyes, middle height, hair brown, hardly gray," said the man in black. "Dressed like an English widow, somewhat common air and manner, has come here within a year. Where is she to be found, St. Martin?" The other, who had remained standing, took out his little book, and after consulting its pages diligently, gave a street and a number. "What's her name?" asked the man in black. "Mistress Brown," replied Monsieur St. Martin. "Good," said the man in black, "but we must wait till to-morrow morning, as it is now growing dark, and there must be no mistake; first, lest we scare the real bird in endeavoring to catch one we don't want, and next, lest we give annoyance to any of his Majesty's guests, which would reduce the king to despair." The next morning, at an early hour, the party of four proceeded to the street which had been indicated, discovered the number, and then entered a handsome hotel, inhabited by an old French nobleman. The man in black seemed unknown to either the servants or their master, but a very few words spoken in the ear of the latter, rendered him most civil and accommodating. A room in the front of the house, just over that of the porter, was put at the disposal of the visitors, and the man who had accompanied Marlow from the country was placed at the window to watch the opposite dwelling. It was a balmy morning, and the house was near the outskirts of the town, so that the fresh air of the country came pleasantly up the street. The windows of the opposite house were, however, still closed, and it was not till Marlow and his companions had been there near three quarters of an hour, that a window on the first floor was opened, and a lady looked out for a moment, and then drew in her head again. "There she is!" cried the man who was watching, "there she is, sir." "Are you quite certain?" asked the man in black. "Beyond all possible doubt, sir," replied the other. "Lord bless you, I know her as well as I know my own mother. I saw her almost every day for ten years." "Very well, then," said the man in black, "I will go over first alone, and as soon as I have got in, you, Monsieur Marlow, with these two gentlemen, follow me thither. She won't escape me when once I'm in, but the house may have a back way, and therefore we will not scare her by too many visitors at this early hour." He accordingly took his departure, and Marlow and his companions saw him ring the bell at the opposite house. But the suspicion of those within fully justified the precautions he had taken. Before he obtained admission, he was examined very narrowly by a maid-servant from the window above. It is probable that he was quite conscious of this scrutiny, but he continued quietly humming an opera air for a minute or two, and then rang the bell again. The door was then opened. He entered, and Marlow and his companions ran across, and got in before the door was shut. The maid gave a little scream at the sudden ingress of so many men, but the gentleman in black told her to be silent, to which she replied, "Oh, Monsieur, you have cheated me. You said you wanted lodgings." "Very good, my child," replied the man, "but the lodgings which I want are those of Madame Brown, and you will be good enough to recollect that I command all persons, in the king's name, now in this house, to remain in it, and not to go out on any pretence whatever till they have my permission. Lock that door at the back, and then bring me the key." The maid, pale and trembling, did as she was commanded, and the French gentleman then directed the man who had accompanied Marlow to precede the rest up the stairs, and enter the front room of the first floor. The others followed close, and as soon as the door of the room was open, it was evident that the lady of the house had been alarmed by the noise below; for she stood looking eagerly towards the top of the stairs, with cheeks very pale indeed. At the same moment that this sight was presented to them, they heard the man who had gone on exclaim in English, "Ah, Mistress Ayliffe, how do you do? I am very glad to see you. Do you know they said you were dead--ay, and swore to it." John Ayliffe's mother sank down in a seat, and hid her face with her hands. CHAPTER XXXIII. Marlow could not be hard-hearted with a woman, and he felt for the terrible state of agitation and alarm, to which John Ayliffe's mother was reduced. "We must be gentle with her," he said in French to the Commissary of Police, who was with him, and whom we have hitherto called the man in black. "_Oui, monsieur_," replied the other, taking a pinch of snuff, and perfectly indifferent whether he was gentle or not,--for the Commissary had the honor, as he termed it, of assisting at the breaking of several gentlemen on the wheel, to say nothing of sundry decapitations, hangings, and the question, ordinary and extraordinary, all of which have a certain tendency, when witnessed often, slightly to harden the human heart, so that he was not tender. Marlow was approaching to speak to the unfortunate woman, when removing her hands from her eyes, she looked wildly round, exclaiming, "Oh! have you come to take me, have you come to take me?" "That must depend upon circumstances, madam," replied Marlow, in a quiet tone. "I have obtained sufficient proofs of the conspiracy in which your son has been engaged with yourself and Mr. Shanks, the attorney, to justify me in applying to the Government of his most Christian Majesty for your apprehension and removal to England. But I am unwilling to deal at all harshly with you, if it can be avoided." "Oh! pray don't, pray don't!" she exclaimed vehemently; "my son will kill me, I do believe, if he knew that you had found me out; for he has told me, and written to me so often to hide myself carefully, that he would think it was my fault." "It is his own fault in ordering your letters to him to be sent to the Silver Cross at Hartwell," replied Marlow. "Every body in the house knew the handwriting, and became aware that you were not dead, as had been pretended. But your son will soon be in a situation to kill nobody; for the very fact of your being found here, with the other circumstances we know, is sufficient to convict him of perjury." "Then he'll lose the property and the title, and not be Sir John any more," said the unhappy woman. "Beyond all doubt," replied Marlow. "But to return to the matter before us; my conduct with regard to yourself must be regulated entirely by what you yourself do. If you furnish me with full and complete information in regard to this nefarious business, in which I am afraid you have been a participator, as well as a victim, I will consent to your remaining where you are, under the superintendence of the police, of which this gentleman is a Commissary." "O, I have been a victim, indeed," answered Mrs. Ayliffe, weeping. "I declare I have not had a moment's peace, or a morsel fit to eat since I have been in this outlandish country, and I can hardly get any body, not even a servant girl, who understands a word of English, to speak to." Marlow thought that he saw an inclination to evade the point of his questions, in order to gain time for consideration, and the Commissary thought so too: though both of them were, I believe, mistaken; for collaterality, if I may use such a word, was a habit of the poor woman's mind. The Commissary interrupted her somewhat sharply in her catalogue of the miseries of France, by saying, "I will beg you to give me your keys, madame, for we must have a visitation of your papers." "My keys, my keys!" she said, putting her hands in the large pockets then worn. "I am sure I do not know what I have done with them, or where they are." "O, we will soon find keys that will open any thing," replied the Commissary. "There are plenty of hammers in St. Germain." "Stay, stay a moment," said Marlow; "I think Mrs. Ayliffe will save us the trouble of taking any harsh steps." "O yes, don't; I will do any thing you please," she said, earnestly. "Well then, madame," said Marlow, "will you have the goodness to state to this gentleman, who will take down your words, and afterwards authenticate the statement, what is your real name, and your ordinary place of residence in England?" She hesitated, and he added more sternly, "You may answer or not, as you like, madame; we have proof by the evidence of Mr. Atkinson here, who has known you so many years, that you are living now in France, when your son made affidavit that you were dead. That is the principal point; but at the same time I warn you, that if you do not frankly state the truth in every particular, I must demand that you be removed to England." "I will indeed," she said, "I will indeed;" and raising her eyes to the face of the Commissary, of whom she seemed to stand in great dread, she stated truly her name and place of abode, adding, "I would not, indeed I would not have taken a false name, or come here at all, if my son had not told me that it was the only way for him to get the estate, and promised that I should come back directly he had got it. But now, he says I must remain here forever, and hide myself;" and she wept bitterly. In the mean while, the Commissary continued to write actively, putting down all she said. She seemed to perceive that she was committing herself, but, as is very common in such cases, she only rendered the difficulties worse, adding, in a low tone, "After all, the estate ought to have been his by right." "If you think so, madame," replied Marlow, "you had better return to England, and prove it; but I can hardly imagine that your son and his sharp lawyer would have had recourse to fraud and perjury in order to keep you concealed, if they judged that he had any right at all." "Ay, he might have a right in the eyes of God," replied the unhappy woman, "not in the eyes of the law. We were as much married before heaven as any two people could be, though we might not be married before men." "That is to say, you and your husband," said the Commissary in an insinuating tone. "I and Mr. John Hastings, old Sir John's son," she answered; and the Commissary drawing Marlow for a moment aside, conversed with him in a whisper. What they said she could not hear, and could not have understood had she heard, for they spoke in French; but she grew alarmed as they went on, evidently speaking about her, and turning their eyes towards her from time to time. She thought they meditated at least sending her in custody to England, and perhaps much worse. Tales of bastiles, and dungeons, and wringing confessions from unwilling prisoners by all sorts of tortures, presented themselves to her imagination, and before they had concluded, she exclaimed in a tone of entreaty, "I will tell all, indeed I will tell all, if you will not send me any where." "The Commissary thinks, madame," said Marlow, "that the first thing we ought to do is to examine your papers, and then to question you from the evidence they afford. The keys must, therefore, be found, or the locks must be broken open." "Perhaps they may be in that drawer," said Mrs. Ayliffe, pointing across to an escrutoire; and there they were accordingly found. No great search for papers was necessary; for the house was but scantily furnished, and the escrutoire itself contained a packet of six or seven letters from John Ayliffe to his mother, with two from Mr. Shanks, each of them ending with the words "_read and burn_;" an injunction which she had religiously failed to comply with. These letters formed a complete series from the time of her quitting England up to that day. They gave her information of the progress of the suit against Sir Philip Hastings, and of its successful termination by his withdrawing from the defence. The first letters held out to her, every day, the hope of a speedy return to England. The later ones mentioned long fictitious consultations with lawyers in regard to her return, and stated that it was found absolutely necessary that she should remain abroad under an assumed name. The last letter, however, evidently in answer to one of remonstrance and entreaty from her, was the most important in Marlow's eyes. It was very peremptory in its tone, asked if she wanted to ruin and destroy her son, and threatened all manner of terrible things if she suffered her retreat to be discovered. As some compensation, however, for her disappointment, John Ayliffe promised to come and see her speedily, and secure her a splendid income, which would enable her to keep carriages and horses, and "live like a princess." He excused his not having done so earlier, on the ground that his friend Mrs. Hazleton had advanced him a very large sum of money to carry on the suit, which he was obliged to pay immediately. The letter ended with these words, "She is as bitter against all the Hastings' as ever; and nothing will satisfy her till she has seen the last of them all, especially that saucy girl; but she is cute after her money, and will be paid. As for my part, I don't care what she does to Mistress Emily; for I now hate her as much as I once liked her,--but you will see something there, I think, before long." "In the name of Heaven," exclaimed Marlow, as he read that letter, "what can have possessed the woman with so much malice towards poor Emily Hastings?" "Why, John used always to think," said Mistress Ayliffe, with a weak smile coming upon her face in the midst of her distress, "that it was because Madame Hazleton wanted to marry a man about there, called Marlow, and Mistress Emily carried him off from her." The Commissary laughed, and held out his snuff-box to Marlow, who did not take the snuff, but fell into a deep fit of thought, while the Commissary continued his perquisitions. Only two more papers of importance were found, and they were of a date far back. The one fresh, and evidently a copy of some other letter, the other yellow, and with the folds worn through in several places. The former was a copy of a letter of young John Hastings to the unfortunate girl whom he had seduced, soothing her under her distress of mind, and calling her his "dear little wife." It was with the greatest difficulty she could be induced to part with the original, it would seem, and had obtained a copy before she consented to do so. The latter was the antidote to the former. It was a letter from old Sir John Hastings to her father, and was to the following effect: "Sir: "As you have thought fit distinctly to withdraw all vain and fraudulent pretences of any thing but an illicit connection between your daughter and my late son, and to express penitence for the insolent threats you used, I will not withhold due support from my child's offspring, nor from the unfortunate girl to whom he behaved ill. I therefore write this to inform you that I will allow her the sum of two hundred pounds per annum, as long as she demeans herself with propriety and decorum. I will also leave directions in my will for securing to her and her son, on their joint lives, a sum of an equal amount, which may be rendered greater if her behavior for the next few years is such as I can approve. "I am, sir, your obedient servant, "JOHN HASTINGS." Marlow folded up the letter with a smile, and the Commissary proceeded, with all due formalities, to mark and register the whole correspondence as found in the possession of Mrs. Ayliffe. When this was done, what may be called the examination of that good lady was continued, but the sight of those letters in the hands of Marlow, and the well-satisfied smile with which he read them, had convinced her that all farther attempt at concealment would be vain. Terror had with her a great effect in unloosing the tongue, and, as is very common in such cases, she flew into the extreme of loquacity, told every thing she knew, or thought, or imagined, and being, as is common with very weak people, of a prying and inquisitive turn, she could furnish ample information in regard to all the schemes and contrivances by which her son had succeeded in convincing even Sir Philip Hastings himself of his legitimacy. Her statements involved Mr. Shanks the lawyer in the scheme of fraud as a principal, but they compromised deeply Mrs. Hazleton herself as cognizant of all that was going on, and aiding and abetting with her personal advice. She detailed the whole particulars of the plan which had been formed for bringing Emily Hastings to Mrs. Hazleton's house, and frightening her into a marriage with John Ayliffe; and she dwelt particularly on the tutoring he had received from that lady, and his frantic rage when the scheme was frustrated. The transactions between him and the unhappy man Tom Cutter she knew only in part; but she admitted that her son had laughed triumphantly at the thought of how Sir Philip would be galled when he was made to believe that his beloved Emily had been to visit her young reprobate son at the cottage near the park, and that, too, at a time when he had been actually engaged in poaching. All, in fact, came forth with the greatest readiness, and indeed much more was told than any questions tended to elicit. She seemed indeed to have now lost all desire for concealment, and to found her hopes and expectations on the freest discovery. Her only dread, apparently, being that she might be taken to England, and confronted with her son. On this point she dwelt much, and Marlow consented that she should remain in France, under the supervision of the police, for a time at least, though he would not promise her, notwithstanding all her entreaties, that she should never be sent for. He endeavored, however, to obviate the necessity of so doing, by taking every formal step that could be devised to render the evidence he had obtained available in a court of law, as documentary testimony. A magistrate was sent for, her statements were read over to her in his presence by the commissary of police, and though it cannot be asserted that either the style or the orthography of the worthy commissary were peculiarly English, yet Mrs. Ayliffe signed them, and swore to them in good set form, and in the presence of four witnesses. To Marlow, the scene was a very painful one; for he had a natural repugnance to seeing the weakness and degradation of human nature so painfully exhibited by any fellow-creature, and he left her with feelings of pity, but still stronger feelings of contempt. All such sensations, however, vanished when he reached the inn again, and he found himself in possession of evidence which would clear his beloved Emily of the suspicions which had been instilled into her father's mind, and which he doubted not in the least would effect the restoration of Sir Philip Hastings to his former opulence and to his station in society. The mind of man has a sun in its own sky, which pours forth its sunshine, or is hidden by clouds, irrespective of the atmosphere around. In fact we always see external objects through stained glass, and the hues imparted are in our windows, not in the objects themselves. It is wonderful how different the aspect of every thing was to the eyes of Marlow as he returned towards Paris, from that which the scene had presented as he went. All seemed sunshine and brightness, from the happiness of his own heart. The gloomy images, which, as I have shown, had haunted him on his way from his own house to Hartwell--the doubts, if they can be so called--the questionings of the unsatisfied heart in regard to the ways of Providence--the cloudy dreads which almost all men must have felt as to the real, constant, minute superintendence of a Supreme Power being but a sweet vision, the child of hope and veneration, were all dispelled. I do not mean to say that they were dissipated by reason or by thought, for his was a strong mind, and reason and thought with him were always on the side of faith; but those clouds and mists were suddenly scattered by the success which he had obtained, and the cheering expectation which might be now well founded upon that success. It was not enough for him that he knew, and understood, and appreciated to the full the beauty and excellence of his Emily's character. He could not be contented unless every one connected with her understood and appreciated it also. He cared little what the world thought of himself, but he would have every one think well of her, and the deepest pang he had perhaps ever felt in life had been experienced when he first found that Sir Philip Hastings doubted and suspected his own child. Now, all must be clear--all must be bright. The base and the fraudulent will be punished and exposed, the noble and the good honored and justified. It was his doing; and as he alighted from the carriage, and mounted the stairs of the hotel in Paris, his step was as triumphant as if he had won a great victory. Fate will water our wine, however--I suppose lest we should become intoxicated with the delicious draught of joy. Marlow longed and hoped to fly back to England with the tidings without delay, but certain formalities had to be gone through, official seals and signatures affixed to the papers he had obtained, in order to leave no doubt of their authenticity. Cold men of office could not be brought to comprehend or sympathize with his impetuous eagerness, and five whole days elapsed before he was able to quit the French capital. FOOTNOTES: [E] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by G. P. R. James, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. HORACE WALPOLE'S OPINIONS OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. The correspondence of the Earl of Orford and the Rev. William Mason, the friend and biographer of Gray, has just been published, and the critics seem to regard it as more entertaining than any previous collection of the letters of the noble and celebrated author. The _Examiner_ says they bring out with marked prominence his abhorrence of the Scotch, his bitter dislike of Johnson, and the men of genius connected with him, his uneasy contempt for Chesterfield and Lyttleton, his impatience of Garrick's popularity, and his better founded scorn of Cumberland and his clique. We do not mention his studied injustice to Chatterton, because in this there was not a little natural resentment of as great an injustice to himself on the part of poor Chatterton's upholders; but perhaps nothing is more painfully impressed on all the letters than his monstrous persistence in the refusal of all merit to the most distinguished writers of his time who did not happen to belong to his set. Let the reader remember that within a few years before these letters, and during their continuance, all the writings of Sterne had been produced, and all the writings of Goldsmith; that Johnson had published _Rasselas_ and the _Idler_, the edition of _Shakspeare_, the _Dictionary_, and the _Lives of the Poets_; that Smollett had given _Sir Lancelot Greaves_ and _Humphrey Clinker_ to the world; that the first publication of Lady Mary Wortley Montague's letters had taken place; that Percy had published his _Reliques_, Reid his _Inquiry_, and Hume his immortal _History_; that the most important portion of the _Decline and Fall_ had appeared, and that the theatres could boast of the farces of Foote and the comedies of Goldsmith, Colman, and Sheridan. Yet here is all that Walpole can say of it! "What a figure will this our Augustan age make! Garrick's prologues, epilogues, and verses, Sir W. Chambers's Gardening, Dr. Nowel's Sermon, Whittington and his Cat, Sir John Dalrymple's History and Life of Henry II. What a library of poetry, taste, good sense, veracity, and vivacity! Ungrateful Shebbear! indolent Smollett! trifling Johnson! piddling Goldsmith! how little have they contributed to the glory of a period in which all arts, all sciences are encouraged and rewarded! Guthrie buried his mighty genius in a review, and Mallet died of the first effusions of his loyalty. The retrospect makes one melancholy, but Ossian has appeared, and were Paradise once more lost, we should not want an epic poem!" We take other passages from the letters exhibiting the same spirit--now simply entertaining: "Dr. Goldsmith has written a comedy--no, it is the lowest of all farces, it is not the subject I condemn, though very vulgar, but the execution. The drift tends to no moral, no edification of any kind--the situations, however, are well imagined, and make one laugh in spite of the grossness of the dialogue, the forced witticisms, and total improbability of the whole plan and conduct. But what disgusts me most is, that though the characters are very low, and aim at low humor, not one of them says a sentence that is natural or marks any character at all. It is set up in opposition to sentimental comedy, and is as bad as the worst of them. Garrick would not act it, but bought himself off by a poor prologue. "You will be diverted to hear that Mr. Gibbon has quarrelled with me. He lent me his second volume in the middle of November. I returned it with a most civil panegyric. He came for more incense, I gave it, but alas! with too much sincerity, I added, 'Mr. Gibbon, I am sorry you should have pitched on so disgusting a subject as the Constantinopolitan history. There is so much of the Arians and Eunomians, and semi-Pelagians; and there is such a strange contrast between Roman and Gothic manners, and so little harmony between a Consul Sabinus and a Ricimer, Duke of the Palace, that though you have written the story as well as it could be written, I fear few will have patience to read it.' He colored; all his round features squeezed themselves into sharp angles; he screwed up his button-mouth, and rapping his snuff-box, said, "It had never been put together before'--'so well,' he meant to add, but gulped it. He meant 'so well,' certainly, for Tillemont, whom he quotes in every page, has done the very thing. Well, from that hour to this, I have never seen him, though he used to call once or twice a week: nor has sent me the third volume, as he promised. I well knew his vanity, even about his ridiculous face and person, but thought he had too much sense to avow it so palpably. "I have read Sheridan's Critic, but not having seen it, for they say it is admirably acted, it appeared wondrously flat and old, and a poor imitation; it makes me fear I shall not be so much charmed with the School for Scandal, on reading, as I was when I saw it." There is of course no denying that these attempts to make "small beer" of the Gibbons, Humes, Goldsmiths, Johnsons, Smolletts, and other spirits already secure and serene among the immortals, however amusing in themselves, become mighty ridiculous by the side of as perpetual praise of the writer's own clique. THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE: OR, THE SPY IN SOCIETY. TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF H. DE ST. GEORGES. _Continued from page 357._ XI.--ON PAROLE. Three days after the night upon which the father and son had knocked at the door of No. 7 Rue de Menors, another scene occurred. It was ten o'clock. The Prince had not appeared at dinner. Confined by a slight indisposition to his room, he sent an excuse to his daughter-in-law. The Prince was respectful as far as possible to Aminta, looking on her as head of the family and mistress of the household. The Countess of Grandmesnil had embroidered away a portion of the day, contradicted her niece, admired her nephew, commented on the last sermon of the Abbé de Rozan on worldly pleasures, contriving therein to insert various bitter-sweet allusions to Aminta. Finally the Countess left the room. The Marquis and Marquise were then alone together. After her discovery of the nocturnal absence of Henri, and especially after the reading of the fatal note in which an appointment was made with the Marquis, Aminta felt a sadness which she could not overcome. Too proud to reproach him, or suffer him to discover her sorrow, divided between unextinguished love and deep mortification, Aminta lived in perpetual constraint, biding her grief and humiliation under a false tranquillity, the recompense for which she found in solitary tears. The Marquis seemed ill at ease. He had for some days been as moody as possible. His absence became every day more frequent, and the sudden departure of the Countess made his situation very annoying to both of them. Not a word was said for some moments. Henri sat with his eyes fixed on a paper, though he did not read, and Aminta convulsively twisted between her fingers a kind of work which just then was fashionable. Her eyes however occasionally strayed to her husband's face, on which they rested with anxiety. As she thus examined him, the features of Henri finally assumed such an expression of despair that Aminta could not repress her sorrow, and said, "What _is_ the matter? are you in pain?" "I? not at all! I am well--very well," said the Marquis. "I have something of importance to attend to," and he added, as he looked at the clock, "I am already rather late." Aminta, in a supplicating tone, said, "Henri, once the most important business of your life was to be with me." "The business which calls me out is by no means as pleasant as that would be." "I wish I thought so," said Aminta--"for the needle of jealousy had entered her heart. "Aminta," said Maulear, looking at her, "what is the matter? what do you mean?" "That I am afraid I have lost the greatest blessing of life in a marriage like ours, and that, when my confidence in you is lost, happiness is gone for ever." "And why have you lost it?" said Maulear. "You have yourself destroyed it. You, whom I thought so frank--you, in the oaths of whom I had confidence--for whom I abandoned my mother and my country," said she, with tears. "You, against whose love I contended, for I was afraid I would not be happy, or rather that you would not be. Alas! I am now sure of this. Your coldness, your indifference, your abandonment, tell me so more distinctly than your tongue could. Yet I had rather you should say so, for there would at least be boldness in the confession, while meanness is the element of dissimulation." The head of the poor young woman fell on her shoulder, and she shed bitter tears. "Aminta," said Henri, as he drew near and sought to take her hand, "I swear that I have not deceived you." Aminta looked towards him with a countenance lighted up with joy, but a frightful thought, the recollection of the letter, pierced her heart like an arrow. "He deceives me," said she, and she felt herself blush for the man who did not blush himself, though he was committing perjury. The door of the room was then opened, and the Prince de Maulear entered. He was pale and agitated, though he had a smile on his lips. The smile, however, was cold and evidently studied. "You are about to go out, Marquis," said he, pointing to the hat which the latter had in his hand, without appearing to remark either the trouble of Henri or the tears of Aminta. "Excuse me, Monsieur, but I have an important appointment." "I am sorry for your appointment," said the Prince, "but you must break it." "I cannot," muttered Henri. "I hope you will," said the Prince, but his manner implied, "you must." "Very well, sir," said the Marquis, putting down his hat and gloves, with marked ill humor, "I obey you." The Prince paid no further attention to him, but placed a chair near Aminta, sat beside her, and pointing out a chair to the Marquis, bade him do so also. "We thought you unwell," said the Marquise to her father-in-law, making an effort to restrain herself. "We are glad to see it is not the case." "For three days," said the Prince, "I have not felt well. Too long a walk for a person of my age, and some important affairs have fatigued both my body and mind. I therefore determined to pass this evening calmly and quietly with you--with my family. I do not," said he, speaking to Henri, "expect it will be gay, but we cannot make a holiday all the time. We must sometimes be calm, and reflect. You, my daughter," said he to Aminta, "may be sure I will do all I can to aid you. I know you like to hear my old stories, but if you did not, and it were unpleasant to you, you would bear with me. I am about to tell you a long one." The Marquis and the Marquise listened to the Prince with surprise. The tone of this preamble seemed to them so foreign to the ordinary language and habits of the Prince, that they began to see something stranger even than the piquant anecdotes and traditions he delighted in narrating. "This story is a revelation of a story I long doubted whether or not I should confide to you. Its avowal cannot but be painful to me, and a man does not like to blush before his children." "Why do so, then, my father?" said Henri. "Because I wish to, monsieur," said the Prince sternly. "Because in the course of his life man must suffer, when its suffering is good in its effects, because thereby he may punish evil, and do his duty." The young couple looked at the Prince with terror, for his brow was moody, and on his lips--across which irony, gayety, and sarcasm so often played--there were now the marks of anger, menace, and indignation. The old man spoke thus: "After leaving Mettan, whither I had followed the Princess, I went to Naples in 1792. Like almost all the _émigrés_ of that day, I had no money. One of the first Frenchmen I met with in that city was Count Max de Nangis, with whom I had previously become acquainted in the strangest manner. We had been educated by the Benedictines, but our scholastic success was most unequal; for the Count saw me regularly surpass him, and carry away every college prize. He naturally disliked me. When we had entered society, our whimsical hate continued,--so that I seemed born to be the evil genius of the Count. If our horses were entered for the same stake, mine won the purse; sometimes by a length or a head only--but they won. If the Count fell in love, he did so with a woman that loved me, and the Count was soon sent adrift. My marriage soon capped the climax. Count Max had a charming cousin, Mlle. de Devonne, whom he loved passionately. Their marriage had been quietly agreed on between the families, and was to be solemnized on the majority of M. de Nangis. I was introduced to the Duke de Devonne, and saw his daughter, the most beautiful woman of the Court. After a short time I became passionately in love with her. I soon saw that my love was returned, and as the marriage to which I have referred had only been a matter of family-talk, known to a few friends, but not to the public, my father induced the Dauphin to ask the Duke de Nangis for his daughter's hand for me. Unwilling to offend the Prince, led astray by the manifest interest of his daughter, and anxious to gratify her, the Duke consented. The Count de Nangis was enraged, and challenged me;--I wounded him in the arm. We fought again;--I wounded him in the thigh. He challenged me again; and I run him through the body; he was forced to be satisfied. All these duels took place in the county of _Saluces_, in Savoy,--then belonging to my family, and whither I had gone to attend to business-matters. I married Mlle. de Devonne, who was your noble and excellent mother,"--this was said to Henri, "I have told you this to explain the hatred which had existed so long a time in the heart of M. de Nangis, when we met at Naples, in 1792. The first months of my sojourn were sad and solitary. Too proud to inform any one of the nature of my sufferings, I lived retired; and, except a few countrymen as poor as I was, saw no one. This was easy enough; for I had brought no letter of recommendation to the eminent people of that capital, in which I made such a bad figure, and amid which I was isolated. This life made one of my habits and tastes suffer cruelly. A painful circumstance, however, mortified my self-love, and increased my humiliation,--the Count de Nangis then was 'the observed of all observers,' in Naples. More prudent or more fortunate than I, he saved large sums of money from the tempest which overwhelmed all the large fortunes of France. He had a number of servants, and in luxury and magnificence equalled the wealthiest persons of the city. Notwithstanding my anxiety to avoid him, I met him frequently, and I saw in his expression a kind of disdain and contempt which wounded me to the soul. One day, when I was more desperate than ever, I received a letter from France, and in it a check for fifty thousand livres, which the Countess of Grandmesnil had sent me. Intoxicated with joy, I hastened to get possession of this money, and careless of the future, forgot this would be the only sum I should receive for a long time, or perhaps would ever receive. I indulged in mad extravagance, took a carriage, and three days afterwards presented myself at various noble houses, where my rank and title procured me a ready reception. I saw M. de Nangis; we met in the same rooms, amid people of high rank, and there was no trace of our old differences. I fancied, though, that the Count exhibited a secret spite at my recovery of fortune, which he thought more stable than it really was. At this time people in Naples played high. The palace of Prince Leta was every night filled with rich strangers, and with the principal nobles of Naples. Over his tables, loaded with gold, they played all night long. I was taken to Prince Leta's, where a strange idea took possession of me. I fancied that I might, without danger or risk, increase my revenue, and probably triple the poor sum I had been fortunate to receive. I played, and my good fortune did not desert me; at first I won with the strangest good fortune. My daring increased, and I made some bold bets, which were successful; so that in the course of a few evenings I won three hundred thousand francs." The eyes of the Marquis glittered with strange light, as he heard his father speak thus. The Prince did not seem to observe it, and continued-- "Chance led me into a room where the Count de Nangis also was--he too played. Remembering how my fortune had always seemed to surpass his, and all the victories I had won at his expense, I could not refrain from secretly pitying him for the fate which had again brought him into contact with me, and which led him again to contend with one who had uniformly triumphed over and beaten him in fortune, love, and war. We began to play--the Count betting high, and I following his example. The game was something between faro and lansquenet, now completely forgotten, having been replaced by _écarté_." The Prince saw his son tremble at the mention of the last game; for a few moments he paused, and then continued-- "The first games were unfortunate for me; I lost--I doubled the stakes, and lost again. At the conclusion of the evening my hundred thousand crowns were reduced to a hundred thousand francs. I returned home completely overpowered, but less stupefied at my own losses than at the success of my rival, who heretofore had been so unfortunate. On the next day I sent to M. de Nangis, before noon, the fifty thousand francs I owed him--on the previous evening I had on my person only fifty thousand francs with me. That night we met again at Prince Leta's. The game began--there were many spectators. I won ten thousand francs, and smiled confidently at the change of fortune. It soon, however, changed once more.--When the clock struck twelve I was ruined! 'On my honor!' said the Count, 'I have sought for ten years to contend with you, Prince. If gold could indemnify me for all the losses you have caused me, confess that, to-day, we are even.' My heart was ready to burst with rage, and I was ready to insult him. 'We will not stop here, I hope,' said M. de Nangis; 'and I wish to have more of your money; provided I have fifty thousand francs of yours, I ask nothing more of the god Plutus.' "A terrible contest then took place in my mind. To confess that I had no more money--that I was ruined, seemed impossible; a miserable false pride prevented me. Should I, however, go on, and contract a debt which I could not discharge? 'Prince,' said the Count, pushing ten notes of a thousand francs towards me, 'ten thousand francs more I wish to lose, and something tells me that luck is about to turn.' The devil spoke to me through the mouth of man. '_On parole_,' said I, 'for I have no money with me.' '_Pardieu_, said the Count, 'people like ourselves never have more than fifty thousand francs in our pocket-books. _Parole_ is our cash, and none but citizens and bankers, who are loaded with gold like mules in Guatemala, have any thing else. Your word is good for five hundred thousand francs, and I will take it for cash.' I felt an icy coldness run through my veins and stop at my very heart. I played again, and again I lost and won again. An hour afterwards I owed sixty thousand francs to the Count de Nangis. 'What is the matter?' said he ironically, 'are you ill.' 'The heat,' said I, rising, 'is excessive; and if you please we will stop here.' 'As you please,' said the Count; 'and to-morrow you shall have your revenge.' 'To-morrow, then, be it,' said I. My head was hot, yet a cold perspiration stood on my brow; my sight became troubled, my legs quailed, and I saw before me the terrible spectacle of dishonor. He at last had his enemy in his power, and was about to doom him to infamy. Two words seemed written before my eyes, and by their aspect terrified me. Those two words contained all I had to fear and apprehend--they were worse to me than death. These words were a contract of honor, a sacred article in even the gambler's code. These words had been pronounced by the Count as he pushed his money towards me: they were '_on parole_.' I went to my hotel--for I had not yet left the modest room I had inhabited while a more comfortable suite was being prepared--and gave way to despair. 'My name disgraced!' cried I, 'the name of the Prince de Maulear, which has been pure and honored for so many centuries, made vile and disgraced by a miserable debt of sixty thousand francs, a sum once scarcely to be considered as a fraction of the revenues of my family!' There was no one by to aid me--no one to whom I could own my fault, my remorse, and my despair. Day came, and the horror of my situation increased as the fatal hour drew near. Unable to resist this frightful torment I said, 'No! I will not live dishonored; I will not bear a disgraced, shameful, and dishonored life.' I went to the table and wrote: 'I owe to the Count de Nangis the sum of 60,000 francs, for which I bequeath him all the profits ever likely to accrue to me from my property in France. Here, when I am about to die, I enjoin my son to discharge this debt of honor by every means in his power.' I then took my pistols, loaded and cocked them--now be bold for one moment, and spare yourself years of shame and disgrace!--I placed one of the pistols with the muzzle at my heart, and the other in my mouth. I was about to pull the trigger when I heard a noise. The partition which divided me from the next room was shattered, and through the opening thus made, I saw a man, pale and agitated. This person advanced towards we with a pocket-book in his hands. 'Stop,' said he, 'here is what you owe--this pocket-book contains sixty thousand livres.'" XII.--THE GAMBLER. The Prince de Maulear continued his story. Aminta timidly looked at her father-in-law with painful emotion, for she knew how he must suffer in making such a confession. The Marquis seemed to suffer under increasing discomfort and terror. "At the sudden and almost supernatural apparition of this stranger, who thus rose before me, the weapons fell from my hands, and as I was unable to speak, I made use of my eyes to question him. "'I was there,' said the man, pointing to the chamber whence he had burst so suddenly; 'I have not lost one of the words you have uttered since your return--I have watched every moment, the long and cruel agony of your soul. You have revealed yourself to me, your name, your family, your isolated hopes, and your isolation in this city. I have seen your despair hourly increase, until, but for me, you would have reached the climax. Monsieur,' continued he, with a tone full of religion and sensibility, 'make this day the happiest of my life by enabling me to save one of my fellows.' "'One of your fellows, Monsieur? alas I am not such, for if I estimate you according to your actions, you are a man of honor and heart, while I....' "'You,' said he, interrupting me, 'you are like what you think me, a man of honor and heart. The proof that such is the case is, that, unable to bear the consequences of a moment of weakness, you were about to die to avoid the consequences of that error. Monsieur de Maulear,' continued the stranger, and he took my hand with touching kindness, 'permit me to restore you to life and happiness, for you have a family perhaps, and children, and cannot abandon all thus. Listen to me,' said he, as he saw me refuse the pocket-book he offered me; 'I had a father who was one of the noblest and best of men. He died many months ago, and my tears tell you how I regret him. I know that he is in heaven and blesses me for what I do now, for thus he would have done. The money I offer you is a part of his fortune, and I am sure I appropriate it as he would wish me. To refuse this, Monsieur, would be to exhibit ingratitude to Providence, which has evidently watched over you, in permitting me to hear and induce you to pause.' "'But,' said I, with deep emotion, 'you do not know me, and such a service....' "'Have I not told you,' said he, 'that in your sorrow you told me all. Do not, however, think I wish to be useful without a condition. I exact one, and you will excuse me for making it the consideration of what I propose to do.' "'What is it?' said I. 'You can exact any thing from man as the price of his honor.' "'Well, swear to me that you will never play again.' "'I do, I do!' said I. 'I pledge my faith not to.' "'Take this pocket-book then,' said the stranger. It is now ten o'clock, and debts of honor should always be paid before noon.' "'But your name, at least, I should know, Monsieur, before I take your gold.' "'An insignificant one, which derives its only merit from the virtues of him who transmitted it to me. My name is Luigi Rovero.'" "My father," said the Marquise, "my father, was it he who...." She paused from a sentiment of respect and delicacy to the Prince. "This, however, is not the only benefit he conferred on me. From the effects of the emotion I had undergone, a horrible illness seized me, and during this malady of long days and endless nights of suffering, my new friend never left me. A crisis ensued; for three days my life was in danger, and depended on the precision with which a certain remedy was administered to me. For three days and nights he watched me without one minute of repose, and he not only restored my honor but preserved my life. Rovero was a very brother to me, and I passed a whole year at Naples, living with him and never leaving him. A few months after I was able to discharge my pecuniary obligation to him--my debt of honor was beyond my capacity. Here is the portrait of the person who was so dear to me," said the Prince, and he took from his pocket a magnificent gold box on which was a miniature set with diamonds. "Look at it, my daughter," said he, "and observe the noble face yours so often recalls to me." Aminta kissed the portrait, and Henri, then remembering the picture which Signora Rovero had shown him on his second visit to Sorrento, explained his surprise when he saw it, for he had often seen the box and the magnificent portrait. "Plans, prejudices, pride, and family pride," said the Prince, "my child, disappeared, as you know, when I heard the words 'The daughter of Rovero.' Rovero was my savior and brother. From that moment I understood that in the far-away skies, he besought me to discharge my debt towards him, and to prove the extent of my gratitude. I understood that he would have bequeathed his daughter to me, to become my own; therefore, when I opened my arms you became my child, and since then my love for you has continually increased. When I took charge of your life, my daughter, I took charge of your happiness, which I thought secured for ever. For some time, though, you have shed tears in secret--do not tell me no," said the Prince, as he saw Aminta make a motion of negation. "I have studied you closely, and one cannot deceive a father's heart--I am your father. Monsieur," said the Prince, turning towards his son, "now you know why I love your wife. You see that her sorrows are mine, and that her tears melt my heart. For two months you have distressed and made her weep over your neglect and indifference, the fatal secret of which I know and intend to tell her." Henri quivered with fear. "Father, for pity's sake, do not...." "Monsieur," said the Prince, "had you blushed earlier you would not do so now." "My daughter," said he, pointing to the Marquise who bent before him; "your husband is not false to you, but he is a gamester." "Then he has not deceived me," said the young woman. With an emotion she could not restrain, she rushed into the arms of the Marquis. For some moments the Prince looked at her with deep emotion, for Aminta forgave and pardoned all in one who had not betrayed her. Then the Prince continued sadly-- "Do not rejoice so soon, my child; gaming is the instigator of all vices, and has led him so far as to _risk his honor without the means of redeeming his parole_." "Monsieur," said the Prince to his son, "I have told you a terrible story, to prove to what abasement the passion for gaming can reduce a man. That abasement you are in danger of." "Father, if you knew the temptation." "I do--for three days ago your mysterious life was revealed to me. In the circle to which you belong, in one of those societies formed to divide and interfere with domestic life--where persons go in search of a liberty and after a license they do not find at home--in that place, led astray by morbid self-esteem, you played for the first time. What, in a man of your rank, should have been a mere amusement, a fugitive pleasure, became a serious business. You played to win, or rather to repair your losses. In the saloons of Paris you were constantly at the écarté tables, that cursed game, the chances of which have ruined so many persons. Thanks to it, you won immense sums from young Lord Elmore, at the last ball of M. L----, which you lost again in the more doubtful house of Mme. Fanny de Bruneval, where you had an appointment." "Ah, father! then he went to that woman's house to play?" said Aminta, almost involuntarily. "What else should he go for to the house of a dowager of fifty, who receives all sorts of people, and where every thing is suspicious, from her guests to the very cards they use? This very night, in consequence of information received from me, that elegant abode will be examined by the police most scrupulously. That," said the Prince, "is one of the reasons why I have prevented my son from going thither. Now, Monsieur," said the Prince, "make an explanation of the state of your funds. You had six hundred thousand francs from your mother, you have expended two hundred thousand in furniture, horses, carriages, articles of luxury, and presents to your wife. With the expenditure of this money I have no fault to find, for you cannot estimate too highly the angel Heaven has sent you. Then you had four hundred thousand francs. You have realized this money, and during the last two months have lost the sum of three hundred and ninety thousand francs. This evening, Monsieur, you were about to tempt fortune with the ten thousand francs now in your possession. Is not this the exact state of your affairs?" "Ah, Monsieur, it is cruel to say all this before the Marquise." "It is a hundred times less cruel than the suspicion to which you abandon her. Did you not see just now that instead of reproaching the gamester who had ruined her, she experienced only a tender emotion for the husband she loved? Henri," continued the Prince, taking his son's hand in his own, "when I told you how once in my life I had erred, when I confessed to you a fault which yet makes my cheek blush, I sought to make you pause on the abyss into which you were near plunging. In telling you this secret I deprived myself of the right of severity to you. When, in a letter I wrote to you at Naples, I spoke lightly of a loss at cards I had undergone, I did not doubt that some day I would be obliged to tell you all that had taken place. I was wrong, however, in forbidding you to beware of what I had spoken of; for I should have known that there are passions, like other diseases, which a father transmits to his children. The body, like the soul, inherits them. I however pardon and forget all I have mentioned." Henri clasped the old man's hand, and Aminta kissed the Prince. "I will," said the latter, "only pardon you on the terms imposed on me by my generous friend Rovero. You will swear to me, on your honor, that you will never play again, and I will confide in you as he did in me." "I do swear," said the Marquis, "and will die if I ever break my oath." "Now listen to me, my children," said the Prince, kindly; "I have a hundred thousand francs a year--I will allow you fifty. A similar sum satisfies me. To protect you, however, from all temptations to extravagance, I give you the income and not the capital, and as a reward of my indulgence, as a recompense of my courage in making the confession of a great error of my life, make your wife happy, reward her by tenderness for the care you have subjected her to, for the uneasiness she has known, and my heart will be gratified for the bliss she will owe you, as something to discharge my debt to her father." The Prince clasped his children to his heart and left. While this was occurring at the Hotel de Maulear, a storm overhung the hospitable roof of Mme. Fanny de Bruneval. This house had been correctly estimated by the Prince de Maulear, angry as he naturally was at the sums lost by his son in those saloons. Madame de Bruneval assumed the military title of widow of an ex-colonel of the Imperial Guard. There had really been such a colonel on the _rôles_ of the _grande armée_. Such a soldier had not only had flesh and blood, but crosses and decorations. He had beaten, and well beaten, the Austrians, but had lost his horse at Leipsic, and been cut down by one of the black hussars of Brunswick. All this was real, positive, and printed in black and white. There was no doubt about it. It was doubtful, though, if the Colonel ever had a wife. The _Moniteur_ mentioned the battles and the death--it said nothing of Madame. Colonel de Bruneval, once, during a time of peace--such times were rare with the Emperor--came to Paris with a lady about forty, blonde like a German, rosy and fresh as a German, and speaking French with a German accent. The Colonel introduced the lady to his brethren in arms as _Madame la Colonelle_, and no one asked any other questions. No one was ever bold enough to ask if the contract was perfectly regular; for the Colonel was six feet high, tall as a drum-major, and was not only a giant, but susceptible as possible, having a habit of translating logic and syllogisms into sword-cuts and sabre slashes. The widow of the Colonel, naturally enough, opened her house to her husband's brothers-in-arms after the fatal blow of the black Brunswicker. The house of Mme. Bruneval, in 1818, had become a Bonapartist club, at which the police squinted with unusual forbearance for a long time. We must, however, say, that the widow soon saw that the illustrious soldiers who frequented her house did not indemnify her by their conversation for her expenses. She therefore sought to make the presence of these heroes available, and mingled with them a few honest people who were fond of play, from whom the lights, like the altars of the god Plutus, received the tithe of the stakes. At the widow's the play was high, and all kinds of games were recognized. All, however, was fair and above board, and this kind of reputation attracted thither many persons who would not have met on a field of battle less orthodox. People in good society were met with there. People who, like the Marquis de Maulear, were unwilling to play in public, looked for excitement without regard to chance and society. There the famous match between the Marquis and Lord Elmore took place. Count Monte-Leone also went occasionally to Mme. Bruneval's, since he used to meet there many _Carbonari_ and Bonapartists; for, as we have said, people of the most diverse opinions all united for one purpose, to destroy what was, and make their ideas triumph from the wreck of the general chaos. On the evening of the lesson given by the Prince to the Marquis de Maulear, the Count presented Taddeo to Mme. de Bruneval, and while the play seemed animated in various parts of the room, the _Carbonari_ talked in a neighboring room of a plan conceived by several wealthy Americans who were affiliated with the society, of a plan to bear off the Emperor Napoleon from his prison at St. Helena, and carry him to France. Important, however, as the subject was, the Count paid but little attention to it. He was then at one of the most painful crises of his life. In about an hour he would need all his courage and persuasion to combat and conquer one of the greatest obstacles man can meet with in his career--the will of an energetic and passionate woman. Not long before, Monte-Leone had received the following note: "For fifteen days I have not seen you. I do not know why you avoid me. I had rather die than continue to live thus. I wish to hear my fate from your own lips. For eight days _he_ will be away. Come--if you refuse me--if you are not with me when midnight comes, it will be the proof of an eternal adieu, and I will cease to live." The Count waited with impatience for the period of this terrible interview. He knew the feeling which had inspired this note, how full of irrepressible indignation her mind was, and that it would shrink from no danger and no excess. He sought in vain to shake off Taddeo, but since the scene in Verneuil street, when the wretch set to watch Monte-Leone had been overheard by Rovero, the young man had been almost heart-broken. On this evening, though, he did not lose sight of Taddeo for an instant. The Count saw with terror that the time was drawing near, yet he could not leave the room. Taking advantage of a moment when Taddeo was not by, the Count was about to leave, when a noise was heard in the anteroom. The door was thrown open, and a man with a white scarf advanced amid the company. There was no possibility of mistake, for justice, herself, as the Prince de Maulear had told his son, had come into the gaming-house, disguised as a Commissary of Police. All who were present felt the greatest uneasiness--they were about to be arrested on the double charge of _Carbonarism_ and forbidden play. Was it to the gamesters or to the _Carbonari_ that the Commissary paid his visit? All were excited, though from different motives. "Madame," said the Commissary, exhibiting his warrant to Madame Bruneval, who, like the commander of a besieged place, sought to parley with the enemy; "you are the widow of Colonel de Bruneval." "I am, sir," said the German lady, whose color became greater than ever, "and cannot conceive why I should be thus insulted. I am not, I suppose, under the surveillance of the police." "Excuse me, madame," said the Commissary, "your house has long been pointed out to us, as the rendezvous of many Buonapartists"--the Buonapartists became alarmed--"and," continued the Commissary, "as a place where forbidden games are played. For these reasons, we are about to make an examination in the premises and in relation to the persons here--until that is completed, none can leave this room." The clock struck twelve. The sound made the Count grow pale, for it was the hour of the rendezvous. His situation was annoying, and a moment's delay might bring about a catastrophe. The note had said: "If you are not at my house by midnight, I shall be dead before one." The Count made up his mind, and with his habitual decision in all critical, embarrassing, or dangerous conjunctures, said that he must at all risks get out of the house and go whither he was expected, to save life--which every moment endangered. In such a state of affairs, _ruse_ was the best course he could adopt--especially as that promised his immediate extrication. He was about to adopt a difficult course; he purposed to put out the lights, rush on the magistrate and his attendants, and then break through the doors. Before adopting this extreme course, the Count wished to know if he had many Carbonari around him. Glancing around the guests of Madame Bruneval, he placed his hand on his brow and made slowly the secret sign by means of which the Carbonari recognized each other. The Commissary had not removed his eyes from the Count, who he was well aware, though he did not know his name, was one of the principal persons of the assemblage. No sooner had Monte-Leone made the sign than, much to his surprise, he saw the Commissary acknowledge it. The Count then discovered that the magistrate was a Carbonari, and that there was one more brother than could have been expected in the room. This strange circumstance had its explanation in the statement of D'Harcourt at Doctor Matheus's: "We meet our brethren every where; in the city, in the courts, among the lawyers, and among the judges." The inquiry was brief and a mere matter of form. The Commissary did nothing. Monte-Leone was one of the first who received permission to leave. Followed by Taddeo, he rushed out. Rovero called on him to stop, but the Count paid no attention to his cries. The clock was about to strike one, and hurrying across the streets and squares of Louis XV., with the rapidity of an arrow, he did not pause until he had reached the _Champs Elysées_, where a little green door veiled by a hedge was opened to admit him. XIII.--DESPAIR. When the door opened, a woman appeared and said, "Follow me, Count, Madame is waiting for your excellency." "What o'clock is it?" asked he, with great anxiety. She answered, "A quarter after one." "When did you leave your mistress?" "At twelve. Madame bade me wait here for you." "Lost!--dead! perhaps dead!" exclaimed the Count. He hurried down the alley directly to the hotel. "Signore! Signore!" said the woman; "all the servants have not perhaps gone to bed, and if you be seen now in the garden of the Embassy, what will people say and think of Madame?" "Take me directly to her," said the Count, "for her life is in danger." "Her life!" said the woman, with terror. Then, as if struck with an idea, she added, "Wait, though, Madame bade me not come into her room until to-morrow, unless I brought your excellency with me." "Come, come," said the Count, dragging the woman after him. Thus they went to the right wing of the building. A small door opened on a private stairway communicating with the rooms of the Duchess of Palma. The servant pointed out the door to the Count, and then preceded him. The stairway ended at a little hall on the first floor. There the Count stopped and the woman put a key in another door in the wall, through which the Count entered a waiting-room and passed into a boudoir, where the _femme de chambre_ asked him to sit for a few moments while she informed the Duchess of his arrival. The Count was for some minutes alone in the boudoir, and at last heard a half stifled cry behind him. He looked around and saw the servant motionless and with terror impressed on every feature. She pointed to the Duchess's room with one hand, and lifted up the curtain of the door with the other. The Count entered the room where a terrible spectacle awaited him. The Duchess, pale as death, was extended on a sofa; by her side was a lamp almost burnt out, and the flickering light cast from time to time a pale lustre over this scene of sadness and death. The pulse and heart of La Felina were motionless. By her side was a flaçon of red liquor, which was spilled on the rosewood stand. The Count held the flaçon to his nose and lip, and recognized its contents to be laudanum, that bringer of calm or ruin, of sleep or death. A feeling of deep sorrow took possession of him. The love and devotion of that woman appeared to him in their proper light--limitless and vast. Remorse lacerated his heart; for he charged himself with being the cause of the terrible crime she had committed. Again the Count approached the Duchess, and somewhat calmer than he had first been, perceived a faint palpitation. He placed a mirror near Felina's lips, and a thin mist overcast it. "She lives!" said Monte-Leone; "a lethargic sleep has plunged her in this apparent death. Thank heaven, from having taken too small a dose, the opium has acted as a narcotic--not as a poison. She must be roused from this dangerous state. Listen," said he to the servant, "I have a friend who will save your mistress without noise or scandal. He is a physician, as skilful as he is prudent. Send him this, at once," said he, writing hastily a few lines on a fragment of paper he took from the Duchess's desk. "Order the carriage at once, say that your mistress is ill and a physician indispensable. Suffer no one to enter this room but the person for whom I have written, and I will answer for the consequences. Here, this note is for Doctor Matheus, No. 7 _rue de Babylonne_--hurry." When Monte-Leone was alone with the Duchess, he sought to arouse her from the sleep which oppressed her, by making her inhale the perfumes of several flaçons which he found near. This was, however, in vain, and he soon abandoned it. "Poor woman," said he, sitting by and looking at her with compassion; "this is then the end of her life and love: to what misery has she been led by passion, while mine was not more lasting than the perfume of a rose." As he abandoned himself to these cruel thoughts, the eyes of the Count fell on a letter, which she had with her expiring strength attempted to throw into the fire. It had, however, fallen on the hearth and was but partially burned. The Count took hold of it with the intention of destroying it, lest it might contain some secret compromising the Duchess. Just, however, as he was about to destroy it, he fancied that he saw his own name, and unable to resist his curiosity, he glanced rapidly over it. The following detached phrases had been spared by the fire: "You gave me bread when I was famishing, and apparel when I had none.... "The consequence of.... "body and soul.... "But I feel your.... "is mine.... "belongs to you.... "This Monte-Leone deserves to be.... "offends you.... "live for you.... "or if I.... "It will be for me...." "What is the meaning of this, said the Count, and what does she meditate? Has the Duchess a confidant? Can this man be my enemy? How have I injured him?" The servant entered, and the Count placed the letter in his bosom. A half hour passed in anxious expectation of Matheus. The wheels of a carriage were heard in the courtyard and aroused the Count from his thoughts. The servant went to meet the Doctor and soon after introduced Frederick von Apsberg into the room. "Look there," said the Count, pointing to La Felina. The doctor drew near and examined her. "Suicide and laudanum," said he. He felt the pulse. "Just in time--luckily you told me what was the matter, and I have brought some active and powerful antidotes. In a quarter of an hour cerebral congestion would have ensued, and death." He poured out a few drops of a liquid he had brought in a glass spoon, and forced it between the convulsive teeth of the Duchess. Three minutes afterwards she heaved a deep sigh. "Now I will answer for her recovery," said Von Apsberg. The Duchess opened her eyes soon after and glanced around her. She was, though, unable to distinguish any thing, so haggard and fixed had they become. The Count stood aside. For a few moments through the vast room nothing was heard but the feeble panting and anxious breathing of the invalid, which, however, gradually grew more regular and natural. "Madame," said the doctor, giving the Duchess a glass of water, into which he had poured a few drops of the liquid he had brought with him, "do you wish to live?" "No," said the Duchess. "Then do not take this antidote, for the poison is yet in your system and this alone can neutralize it." Just then Monte-Leone advanced towards La Felina. "He here!" murmured she. "Live," said the Count, "live, I beg you." Without replying, the Duchess looked towards the doctor as if she were about to ask him for the elixir. She drained the glass. "Now," said Von Apsberg, "madame must be calm and silent; least of all must she indulge in any emotion," added he, looking at Monte-Leone, "or the medicine will be powerless." "Who are _you_?" said the Duchess. "A friend, a brother of mine, to whose heart I confide all the secrets of my life." _La Felina_ glanced a few moments at the doctor, and said, "I remember." "Certainly, the Duchess has not forgot the Pulcinella at the Eutruscan house. She has not forgotten the dreamy German lad whom she once lectured so sternly, but who never was offended with her. The lecture did him a great service, for the joyous Pulcinella, changing his humor and dress, has now become a grave doctor who never jests, and insists that his prescriptions be literally followed. To add example to precept, I will remain in this room and watch over the prophetess of San Carlo, and if I do not leave her cured and reasonable," said he, whispering in the Duchess's ear, "for I am a physician of the mind as well as body, I will at least do her some good. All my brothers of the medical profession cannot say as much." He then handed the Count his hat and pointed to the door. "To-morrow evening, at nine," said the Count, "I will call on you." An expression of joy hung on La Felina's lips, and she nodded in acknowledgment. Monte-Leone placed his lips on the yet icy hand of the ambassadress, and then approached Von Apsberg, to whom he said in a low tone, "You swear that you will save her." "I do," said Matheus. The Count went to the door, not the one the doctor had pointed out, but to the secret one through which he had come, and a few minutes after was alone in the _Champs Elysées_, doubtful whether all that had passed was not a dream. The letter which he had found, and which rattled in his bosom, with its mysterious broken phrases, its shreds of threats and vengeance, sufficed to recall to his mind the reality of the scene which he had been both an actor and participator in. According to his promise, on the day after this series of alarms and torments, Monte-Leone went to the hotel of the Neapolitan minister just as the bell of Saint Philippe de Roule rang for nine. The Count on this occasion came us an ordinary visitor to the principal door. "The Duchess," said the usher, "made an exception of Count Monte-Leone alone, in orders she gave that no one should be admitted. Madame had last night a nervous attack from which she yet suffers. She, however, expects your excellency." The Count went into the reception room, and soon after was introduced into the Duchess's boudoir. He found Madame de Palma lying on a divan, and her countenance yet showed traces of her sufferings. Monte-Leone was touched. The Duchess gave him her hand and bade him be seated. She said, "You see almost a spectre or ghost escaped from the grave. Do not, however, be afraid, the ghost will not rise before you animated by wrath and anger. Did it wish to do so, it is now too feeble." The Duchess used her salts, as if she would regain that strength which seemed rapidly leaving her. "Felina," said the Count, gently and sadly, "did you wish to die?" "What now is life to me?" said she, "I meet with only contempt and desertion from him for whom I forgot my gratitude and duty. Be frank with me, do not fear my despair; but this doubt is too cruel. _Tell_ me that you do not love me, let me learn it from your mouth, not from your indifference." The Count wished to speak. "Ah! you do not know," continued she, and with her hand she bade him listen, "what those long hours of expectation are, when every noise seems to announce the coming of the person you love--when the hope having been twenty times deceived, the ear rather than the heart listens with the anxiety of death to the sound of every carriage which passes by, but does not stop at your door--to the bell which announces another visitor than the one who is expected. You do not know the torment of those wretched evenings when alone, with no companion but sorrow--you see ever before you your devotion to the one man all the time staring you in the face, him attracted elsewhere by other charms. The soul that suffers thus, by some instinctive powers, sees him approach every rival, become intoxicated by her glance, listen to her voice, take her hand stealthily, live in her life, while she dies a thousand times an hour--a thousand deaths as often as despair passes a picture before her. Do you see, Count, how horrible all this is? This is murderous, though time must elapse before the deadly poison takes effect on the heart. In such cases one who does not die rapidly is mad. Yesterday I had in my power the means of avoiding such tortures." Completely exhausted, the Duchess fell back on the cushion. The eyes of the Count glistened with tears, and he knelt before the poor woman who had suffered so much for him. "Felina," said he, "until to-day I thought courage consisted in braving danger, and even death: I now know that I have only to unveil my heart to you to prove that my daring did not need that I should contend with the ocean, be immured in a dungeon, and bare my neck to the axe. I will have that courage, for to me it is a duty, and I will not shrink from it. When I met you on the Lago di Como--when sad at the fact that I had been deserted by men who did not know me, by the woman I adored, I saw your immense tenderness unfolded to me, when you uttered those passionate words which my heart had no power then of understanding, I fancied that I had forgotten the past in the charms of a present full of love and intoxicating passion. I told you all I felt, and was sincere and happy. I remembered what you had done for me, and I fancied I had found the angel of my existence in you. Alas! a few months after, the bandage was torn from my brow, and, excuse me, but all I thought dead in my soul became more animated than ever. I saw my tenderness was the offspring of friendship, that my love changed into deep affection, which, however, was not of the kind you expected from me. With terror and despair I discovered that I was ungrateful to you. Twenty times I was on the point of making this painful confession, yet as many times I felt my strength fail. Now, though, when you have wished to die for the unworthy man for whom you would have made such a sacrifice, when you have appealed to my honor, I must speak to you, and avow to you my true sentiments, which it would be improper for me any longer to conceal from you." While the Count was speaking, the Duchess lay half asleep on the divan, with her eyes closed, and her hand on her heart, the pulsations of which she tried to restrain. One might have thought she slept, but for her short respiration, and the heaving of her breast, which indicated great feverish agitation. She remained in this motionless state a few seconds after Monte-Leone had ceased. She then slowly opened her eyelids, and resting her head on her hand, as if her marble shoulders would not suffice to sustain it, looked at the Count with those eyes whence emanated the burning glance of delirium. A single look--a single glance was cast on the Count; this glance, however, was instinct with a terrible thought, and she became at once chill and cold. "I thank you for your frankness," said she to the Count, giving him her hand. "Perhaps I would have thanked you had you suffered me to die without telling me what you have heard. You, however, wished me to live, and I can understand why, for my death would have poisoned all your existence. I will live, then, but for you alone." The same glance she had thrown on the Count appeared again, but immediately died away. "Yet," continued she, "listen to me. I cannot consent to lose you--I can consent to be your friend, but will not think you another's." "Felina," said the Count, "I understand you. On my life and soul, I swear I will never speak of love to her of whom you think. Her ties and virtues I will respect, her honor will relieve your apprehensions, and I know what this honor imposes on me." "I have faith in you," said Felina; "understand me, though, and do not require what I cannot give. Do not add to my grief, the vengeance and excess of which you cannot calculate." "Threats!" said the Count, bitterly. He was about to speak to the Duchess of the fragments of the letter, but was prevented by a secret presentiment. "No," said Felina, "not threats. Such are not intended for friends, and to me you are a friend." The Count took her hand. It was cold as death. "Come to see me often," said she; "invalids need a physician; and skilful as the one you brought last night may be, your visits will exert a better effect--you will enable me to contend with myself. Then, too," said she, growing pale, "I will see you.... Now leave me, for I am feeble. Since you wish me to live, I must not exhaust the rest of my life ... I will try to sleep; but I will not sleep as long as I expected to last night." Then, as if she was completely exhausted by such a variety of shocks, she bade the Count adieu. Monte-Leone left her. Just as he was about to cross the peristyle, he saw the shadow of a man gliding into the hotel through the half open door. The face of this man was suddenly lighted up by one of the reflectors of the palace, and Monte-Leone remembered features yet present to his memory. They were the features of STENIO SALVATORI of _Torre del Greco_. XIV.--THE MAGNETIZER. The lecture the Prince had given to his son seemed to have done him good. For two months the family of the Prince de Maulear had been calm and happy. Aminta, in the care, attention, and watchfulness of her husband, enjoyed again all the emotions of her early marriage days. Her letters to her mother were filled with hope far different than that expressed in the one we have read. Henri constantly avoided every thing which could possibly awaken the sad passion which chance, temptation, and the weakness of his character had led him into. He never approached the card-table, and paid no attention to the challenges of his old adversaries. He began to learn whist and other games of combination, calculation, and science, which leave the head cold and the reason sound, and at which no one ever pretended to bet a thousand francs a trick, as was subsequently done in 1846, at the house of Count A. ---- and that of M. de R----, Minister of D. People then played whist for whist's sake, not to become rich or bankrupt. An unexpected event disturbed the quiet life of the inmates of the Hotel-Maulear. Aminta received a letter from her mother, in which Signora Rovero announced to her daughter a piece of intelligence, which for her children's sake delighted, while for her own sake it distressed her. The Roman Cardinal, Filippo Justiniani, her brother, of whom we spoke in one of the first chapters of this book, had died, leaving his fortune to his nephew and niece. This fortune was more than a million. Signora Rovero, therefore, wished her son-in-law, the Marquis de Maulear, and Taddeo, to come at once to Rome, to receive this inheritance; the one in the name of his wife, and the other for himself. This letter produced very different effects in the family of the Prince de Maulear. Instead of rejoicing at a fortune which was to be purchased by the absence of her husband, the young _marquise_ was rather grieved than pleased at it. The revenue the Prince had appropriated to his children was sufficient to make their career quite brilliant. This increase of fortune, therefore, had little value in Aminta's eyes; but a separation, though but temporary, from Henri might endanger, in one so volatile as the Marquis was, the influence she had acquired over him. She apprehended this, and fear, in a heart impassionable as his was, could not but be the source of uneasiness and torment. The idea of accompanying the Marquis often suggested itself to her, but it was then the depth of winter, and her health, naturally delicate, had been so recently shaken by the troubles she had experienced, that she could not, at such a time, venture on such an excursion. The Prince de Maulear did not see his son leave him without dissatisfaction. He did not think him completely cured of the moral malady he had undertaken to cure, but watched over him paternally and kindly. The Marquis, though he sincerely regretted that he must be separated from his charming wife, whom he now loved better than ever, did not conceal the pleasure which such a trip caused him. He did not deny that the kind of atony to which his monotonous life subjected him, made it necessary that he should be somewhat galvanised by the excitement of travel. Taddeo, too, had been more kindly received by the Duchess since the scene which had taken place between Monte-Leone and her. He was distressed at the absence which removed him from that woman whose influence over his heart nothing could overcome. All these feelings, however, resulted in the same circumstance--the prompt departure of the two heirs from the eternal city. When they left, Aminta felt a deep distress, and the Prince de Maulear a sombre presentiment. Fifteen days afterwards, a letter, dated at Rome, informed the young Marquise of the arrival of her husband and brother at the capital of the Christian world. This letter informed them also that there were difficulties in the way of obtaining possession of the estate of Cardinal Justiniani, from the fact that his eminence had made various bequests to convents, churches, and religious foundations, in relation to which it was necessary for the Holy Father himself to make a decision, which would much retard the final arrangement of their business. Aminta felt that her sadness was doubled at this news, and the feeling grew more poignant from the fact that her husband's letters became every day more rare and more cold. Aware of the devotion of the Prince de Maulear to her, and knowing how uneasy the old man was about his son, the young woman did all she could to conceal her anxiety from her father-in-law, and by means of a thousand pretexts kept from his sight the often icy letters written by her husband. When the Prince questioned her about what he wrote from Rome, he received an evasive reply. "Well, well," he would say, "one should not inquire into them. Fathers have nothing to say about them; and provided, my child, that you are happy, I will ask nothing more." Thus two months rolled by. The young Marquise waited anxiously every day for the coming of the post, and the hours rolled by only to deceive her. Deep mortification soon replaced regret. Surrounded by the homage of a society which adored her, Aminta saw herself deserted by the man to whom she was bound for life, and the humiliation of this indifference almost overpowered the agony she felt. The fact was, that having already been sacrificed to the miserable passion for play, she now fancied she was postponed to the pleasure of travel, and her firm character, softened by the happiness in which the early days of her marriage had been passed, began now to assume the firmness of womanhood, with all the characteristics of the Italian nature. Such was the condition of Aminta's mind when she received the visit of the Count Monte-Leone. When he came she was alone. They were both annoyed by this novel position, and for a time their conversation was commonplace. But soon the memory of the past began to assert its influence over them. The Count spoke of Naples as Neapolitans only can. He infused into his conversation the passionate energy which ever exists in their souls in relation to that climate, so highly favored by heaven. Aminta, to whom the cold climate of France had not been that of her love, surrendered her whole soul to the happiness awakened by those smiling ideas. The Count recalled to her Sorrento and its perfumed hills, its azure sea and brilliant sky. He then recalled to her the villa where he had been so nobly welcomed, where days flitted by like hours, where the silence of a calm and beautiful nature were only interrupted by the breeze and the waves, which died away among myrtle and orange-groves, or by the songs of birds in the luxuriant thickets. Aminta listened to him with increasing trouble, for his voice had never seemed so penetrating and mild. Astonishment took possession of her when she thought that the mind of this man, so sensible to the charms of nature, so aware of the simple beauties of Italian scenery, was the energetic and powerful soul which braved death without weakness, and defied the executioner without fear. The Count thus led, contrary to his own wishes, into the dangerous retrospect of the past, felt his reason give way, as he found himself in the presence of one whose very appearance agitated his reason, because she recalled that country where the gayest and happiest hours of his life had passed. Aminta, anxious to triumph over the involuntary emotion which took possession of her, diverted the Count from all the seductions of his memory and love by asking if Taddeo was a better friend than brother, and if letters were as great rarities to him as to herself. The Count replied that Taddeo wrote often. He then, with an effort, shook off his delicious dream, and sadly returned to real life. "The Marquis and he," said Monte-Leone, "are yet at Rome, as M. de Maulear must have told you. Rome has never been gayer than it now is. Festivals and entertainments are numerous, and the richest strangers of Europe are now there; while balls and cards are all the rage." At the last phrase Aminta grew pale. The Count observed this, and attributing its cause to some illness, rose to go away. The Marquise, though, said with a vivacity which surprised him, "And does the Holy father authorize play in his states?" "He does not authorize but tolerates it. This is sufficient for a bank kept by a rich society of capitalists, to realize millions by this passion, and to produce many disasters and calamities." The Marquise felt her heart grow chill, and as she began to grow sick she dismissed the Count. "Will the _Marquise_ permit me to call on her again?" "Yes, Count; and if you receive any news from Rome--from the Marquis and my brother, tell me of it, I beg you." The Count left, more in love than ever; and Aminta remained alone, unhappy, agitated, and a prey to instinctive and wretched thoughts. It now becomes our duty to conduct the reader to a magnificent hotel in the Faubourg St. Germain, and make him a spectator of a scene which occurred a few days after the conversation we have spoken of. We wish to introduce him to the beautiful girl of whom Dr. Matheus caught a glimpse from the windows of the laboratory. This girl was no longer the most brilliant rose of the parterre. Seated in a large arm-chair, near a window of the saloon, which looked out upon the garden, her pale complexion, and the hectic flush of her cheek, her red lips, and the dark ring about the eyes, indicated general indisposition. An old man sat near her, with one of her hands in his; while, with his eyes fixed on her, he seemed with despair to read the expression of intense suffering. The old man was the Duke d'Harcourt, and the invalid, his daughter _Marie_. "Ah, papa! this is nothing but a horrid _migraine_ to which I have long been subject. The pain in the chest which accompanies it, you know, never lasts long, and is almost always cured by the very presence of the kind doctor, whom we might almost fancy to be a sorcerer." "The means he employs, my child, and which he has communicated to me, is not sorcery, but a science, scarcely known as yet, and the source of much dispute. I confess I had no great faith in it until experience had revealed to me its power and reality." "And have you faith, papa, in the power of the doctor?" asked the young girl, with a singular accent. "I believe, my child, in what I see. He benefits you, and therefore dissipates all my hesitation. Magnetism is not new; Mesmer, the able Foria, and afterwards many serious and learned men have inquired into it, and discovered undeniable virtues. Unfortunately, imposture and charlatanism soon took possession of it, and, therefore, it has been overburdened with ridicule and contempt. If it be a truth, as all I have seen induces me to think; if in the employment of this fluid there be means to assist nature, a studious man, who has any charity towards his fellows, should study before he decides on it, and reject nothing novel, as it may be, until he has proven it to be false or impotent." "Here is the doctor!" said the Vicomte d'Harcourt, quickly opening the door, and introducing Von Apsberg.--"I have taken him from a grave consultation to see my sister." Hurrying to his sister, the Vicomte kissed her. Marie blushed; was not this blush caused, perhaps, by the coming of the doctor?--Was it caused by René's kiss? The heart alone can tell; and young women's hearts do not answer such questions very readily. "Marie yet suffers," said the Duke to the false Matheus. "With you though, doctor, hope and health always return. For that reason we are unwilling you should ever leave us." It was now the doctor's turn to blush. "You certainly," said he, "estimate my influence over the disease to be in proportion to my wish to soothe it. If such were really the case, you might be of good cheer, for my wishes are limitless." "There is a doctor for you, modest, talented, and one who uses no drugs and none of the remedies of the old medicine," said the Vicomte; "pantomime with him is every thing, as with the ballet-doctors of the opera. A few signs and gestures and away goes the disease, like the devil when holy water is brought him." Von Apsberg said with a smile, "such an eulogium as the Vicomte's would, a few centuries ago, have sent me to the stake. Fortunately there is now no danger of that, for there is no longer any faith in magicians. Rightly enough, too, for if not so, there would be no glory and advantage in wisdom. _Savans_ are fond of their privileges. For my own part, though no philosopher, I do not deal in magic, though from study I have learned that there are secret agents in nature too much neglected even now, though much good has resulted and the most marvellous effects have been produced from them. Of these agents, the magnetic fluid is the surest, the most active and powerful. Like all other imponderable fluids, it is invisible, passing through space perhaps with the rapidity of light, though unlike the latter, its passage is not interrupted by the opposition of opaque bodies, which it penetrates as caloric does.[F] I do not pretend, Duke," continued Von Apsberg, "to teach you the theory of magnetism, but at all risks to justify your confidence in me, which now induces you to confide so precious a trust to me. As an honest man I think I am not deceived in the hope I expressed at my first visit, that your daughter, from my system of action, will acquire that vital force which will enable her to overcome her natural weakness, and thus reach the period of life when, age coming to aid nature, she will acquire a degree of health which will bid defiance to all the accidents of youth and assure her a healthy life in future. I call God to witness that I act with a heartfelt conviction and religious sincerity. I will, though, swear, that if in a short time I see no evidence of the efficacy of my remedy, I will inform you of the fact without delay." "I am sure, sir, you will. I confide in your honor as I do in your skill." "Father," said the Vicomte, "you are right to do so. The doctor is a brother to me, and looks on Marie almost as a sister." Both the doctor and Marie now blushed. No one though remarked it, for just then the Prince and _Marquise_ de Maulear were announced. The Duke said: "They are friends and need not disturb you." Aminta loved Marie d'Harcourt. These two beautiful women had conceived a deep affection for each other. Aminta, though, who was a few years older than Marie, and had a right to more gravity, as a married woman, matronized the young girl, and it was rather an amusing picture to see a mother twenty years old, _chaperoning_ a daughter of seventeen and explaining the peculiarities of a life they were equally ignorant of. "Prince," said the Duke, "Doctor Matheus is a famous magnetist, who has been serviceable to Marie already, and when you came in was about to subject her again to the influence of the fluid." "_Parbleu!_" said the Prince, "I would be glad to witness the experiment. I am myself something of an adept, having known the Abbé Foria in my youth. People used to laugh at him, but the court and the people were present at his curious exhibitions. I, too, was magnetized, drank magnetic water, and passed whole hours on the magnetic chair surrounded by iron rings; all this was to cure me of a sciatica, which, nevertheless, he did not do at all. He asserted that I had no faith, and that I arrayed myself against the power of the fluid. I, however, only ask to believe, and if the doctor can convert me, I am willing." Without answering the Prince, Von Apsberg approached Marie d'Harcourt. Aminta sat by the patient. The doctor looked at the young girl. Seated a few feet from her, he placed his hands in front of Marie's brow, and then lowering them slowly, made some magnetic passes, seeming to direct his action to the gastric regions where she suffered most. Marie did not seem at all affected by the operation. While Matheus was doing thus the Marquise, who sat in front of the doctor, felt her brow grow heavy, her eyes close, and a deep stupefaction take possession of her. She soon felt that sleep was overpowering her, and after a few attempts to resist it, her head sunk on her bosom, and leaning back in her chair, she was completely overpowered. "My daughter is sick," said the Prince, hurrying to Aminta. "No, sir," said the physician coldly, "she only sleeps." "She sleeps," said all who witnessed the scene, and who were evidently surprised. THE SOMNAMBULIST. "She sleeps!" said Matheus, pointing to Aminta, "and to fall so suddenly into that state when I did not intend it, shows her to be very impressionable and nervous." "The Prince," said the Marquis, "has often told me she is a somnambulist." "I am no longer amazed," said Von Apsberg, "at the spontaneity of her sleep." "Is it true," said the Prince, "that somnambulists have the power of being able to see what is taking place in remote spots--that they can transport themselves to remote places and accompany the persons who are pointed out to them?" "All these phenomena are real," replied the doctor, "but they demand the most perfect lucidity in the person magnetized." "And can," asked the Duke, "such experiments be made without inconvenience or danger to the subjects?" "Certainly." "Pardieu," said the Prince, "I would like the doctor to question my daughter." "About what?" said Matheus. "Something interesting to us all. For a month we have had no news from my son, and are becoming uneasy about him." "And do you wish," said the doctor, "to know what the Marquis de Maulear is engaged in now?" "Exactly," said the Prince. "Stop," said René, "I object. There is no reason why a wife should know what her husband is about when he is three hundred leagues away. The devil! That is dangerous, and the Marquise might some day regret it." "Now you see," said Marie, with her soft voice, "it would be dangerous for her--she would not like it." "I do not fear that," said the Vicomte, "but I vow there would be no marriages possible, if women had the faculty of knowing at any hour, and in any place, what their husbands are about." "Ah!" said the Prince, "I have a better opinion of my son than the Vicomte has of his friend, and I hope the doctor will send my daughter-in-law on a visit to Rome." During the whole of this time Aminta continued asleep, but so soundly, that her bosom scarcely heaved, and her breath escaped almost insensibly from her lips. "But," said the doctor, "it is, in the first place, necessary that I should establish a communication between the _Marquise_ and myself. I must be able to place in her hands, to enable her to touch, something which belonged to the Marquis de Maulear. The best thing is a lock of the Marquis's hair." "Nothing in the world is easier; my daughter-in-law always wears a bracelet of the Marquis's hair." "On which arm?" asked the doctor. "On the left," said M. de Maulear. "If Mademoiselle Marie be pleased to take it off we will place it as the doctor wishes in the hands of the somnambulist." "But are you sure," said Marie to Von Apsberg, "are you sure she will not suffer?" "I am, Mademoiselle, I would not have her suffer either for your sake or for her own." Marie arose from her chair and walked painfully towards the Marquise, who, having bared Aminta's arm a little above the wrist, found there a bracelet of the Marquis's hair. When she was about to touch it she said to the doctor, "I shall awake her." "Do not be afraid of that, you will not." Slight, however, as the motion was, to which the sleeper's arm had been subjected, the _Marquise_ half arose from her chair and made an effort to open her eyes. Von Apsberg extended his arm towards the Marquise's brow, and she again sank into as deep a sleep as before. The bracelet was given by Marie to the doctor, who placed it in Aminta's hand. "Now," said he, "we will begin." Silence was at once established, and all was solemn and almost terrible; for it seemed that something was in preparation of the most terrible character, and that the room was becoming filled with all those invisible phantoms we know as TERROR, FATE, and MISFORTUNE, and which on their leaden wings seem to soar above mortality. The strongest and best organized minds of our kind have, in the silent places of their hearts, something of superstition, which develop themselves in certain conditions of the corporeal and mental organization. Without pretending to considerations of a very serious kind, the guests of the Duke d'Harcourt experienced a kind of mute terror, which in this world always precedes misfortune. The strange power which the doctor used was also well calculated to impress those who contemplated this scene. The doctor took Aminta's hand in his and said most respectfully:[G] "Does the Marquise understand me?" "Yes!" said she. "Will you answer my questions?" "Yes!" "Do you read in my heart any malevolence or hostility to you?" "No!" "You then have confidence in me?" "Yes!" "Are you sure that in questioning you, as I am about to, I have no other object but to relieve you of uneasiness in relation to the Marquis?" "I am sure that is the case." "Well," said the Doctor, placing his thumbs on Aminta's forehead, "I wish you to go at once to Rome, to Italy." "It is far away," said the Marquise, feebly. "I wish you to," said Matheus, imperiously. "Well, well," said the sleeper, with a smile, "there is no reason why you should be angry." She was silent. All the spectators, with their eyes fixed and their necks extended, seemed to watch with anxiety every scene of this whimsical drama. Their souls seemed hung on their lips. "Ah! my God!" said the Marquise, with agitation, "what a journey--how cold it is amid these mountains." "She crosses the Alps," said the doctor. The Marquise coughed. "You see," said Marie, "she will take cold." The young girl wrapped the shawl around her friend. "This cold will not be dangerous," said the Vicomte, gayly. "Silence!" said Matheus. "Ah!" said the somnambulist, "what a magnificent country! What a sun! This then is Rome," said she, with enthusiasm, "the city of the Cæsars--the eternal city--the city of God!" She bowed herself respectfully. "True," said Matheus, "and now you must find him you love; you must look for your husband amid this vast city." "No, no!" said the Marquise. "Why not?" "I shall lose myself amid these long streets; besides I am afraid of these men in masks." "Do not fear. I _wish_ you to see the Marquis at once." The Marquise clasped the bracelet of her husband's hair convulsively, and then uttering a cry of joy, said: "It is he--Henri, Henri, I see him." She extended her arms as if to embrace him. The flush which had covered her face was soon succeeded by a mortal pallor. "What is the matter?" asked the doctor. "Oh God!" said she, "he does not see me. He passes by without looking at me. Whither does he go? Why is he so sad? Why is his hair so disordered? Why? why?" The tone in which these words were uttered were so deeply sorrowful, that the doctor reached forward his hand and said to the Prince: "_Must I awaken the Marquise?_" Before the Prince could reply, Aminta stood erect and said, "No! I will go with him. Henri, Henri! for pity's sake do not. I never will forgive you! Henri, you would not commit perjury? My God!" said she, clasping her hands, "he will go thither! Fatal, terrible passion!" She then shed tears, and fell back into the arms of Marie, who sustained her. "Enough, doctor, enough!" said Marie, "I beseech you. She suffers, you see. She shall not do so. I will not consent to." The doctor took the young woman's hand, and prepared to arouse her from this condition and to restore her to real life. Just then the Prince de Maulear, with intense agony on his face, rushed towards his daughter-in-law, repelling Matheus. "Will the health and happiness of the Marquise be endangered," said he, "if she continue longer in this condition?" "Her heart alone will suffer, Monsieur," said the doctor, "neither her health nor her life is in danger." "Go on, then, Monsieur," said the Prince, coldly, "for we speak of my son. On what the Marquise has said depends the repose of my life, her happiness, and the honor of my family." "But," said Matheus, "my honor forbids me to follow up the excitement any longer. Know that the true apostles of the science I now practise before you, make it a rigid law never to make use of such phenomena as you have seen, to penetrate hidden secrets, or to read by force the consciences of those whom they submit to the exercise of their will." "Monsieur," said the Prince, "we have around us here only honest hearts, which are also friendly. I, therefore, do not at all fear to initiate them into my family secrets. Besides this, vain curiosity exerts no influence over me, but a nobler thought, the possibility, perhaps, of preventing cruel misfortunes which I now apprehend, and which I would anticipate." "_See!_" said the doctor to the Marquise. "_I wish you to_----" "No, no!" said the somnambulist. "I have seen enough. Do not force me to follow out his wanderings--he has forgotten me--his father--his honor--his oath--himself!" "_See!_" said the doctor, replacing his hand over the Marquise's eyes, "_I wish it._" "Henri! Henri!" exclaimed she, "will nothing then restrain you?" "What is he about, then?" said the doctor. "See, see! he sits in front of a table covered with money. The wheel turns. The people who look after it do so with haggard eyes. How pale and withered they are! See how he throws the money on the table. Poor Henri--how he suffers! His brow is frozen. How horribly pale he is! He beats his breast. See that pale and pitiless man sweeping away all the money! Ah!" said she, "he quivers--he seems about to faint--no, he takes out his pocket-book, and throws other notes on the table. The wheel turns again. My God, have pity on him! Lost, lost again! He endures torments worse than death. Henri! for mercy's sake, stop--remember your wife--your Aminta--" Her sobs increased, and inarticulate sounds burst from her chest. The Prince listened with increasing agitation to the heart-rending words of Aminta. His eyes wandered, troubled and uncertain, between the Marquise and the doctor. His eyes became cold, his cheeks livid, and from time to time the noble and venerable old man seemed to bend beneath another half century. All the others, sad and terrified, seemed fascinated by this terrible drama. "He has in his hand his last notes," said Aminta--"he places them before him. Silence! hark, there is a confused noise. The wheel again makes its odious circle. It stops--Henri advances to take them. No, no, they are not his. The man seizes them, and takes possession of this. What does he say?" continued she, with attention--"ruined! ruined! he says. Well, what matter? it is only gold--only gold that he has lost. Dear Henri," said she, in a beseeching air, as if she knelt before him--"husband, what is the value of your money, if you love me? Listen to me. Do not weep, for your tears will kill me. Come to me--I forgive you. I will not reproach you, and you will not leave me again--never, never, never. He repels and avoids me. Whither does he go? What a desert! what an isolated street! How dark it is!--let us follow him, and not desert him. What do I see at the end of this street?" She looked through her hands, as if to enable her to see further. "What long black cloth is that? What pall is that? Henri does not walk--but I cannot follow him," said she, in a heart-rending voice. "Listen to me, Henri, I am suffering--I have walked so far and am so overcome. I do not see him--he is gone! he draws near the pall. My God! is there not a mourning-cloth painted on the horizon? It is water--a river--he rushes toward it--let us reach him--I cannot! Ah! here he is. I am with him now. What does he want. He calls me--he pronounces my name. Here I am--close--next to you. Your father also calls you. Come, come, let us turn to him. He does not hear me--he lifts his eye to heaven--he prays. Henri, Henri, why do you approach this dark water? Take care of the water--death is before you--under your very feet."... Just then the Marquise uttered a terrible cry, and was seized with a violent nervous attack. "You would insist, Monsieur," said the doctor to the Prince, in a reproachful tone. Then, taking the young woman's hands, he clasped them in his own, and made a few rapid passes over her face and eyes. He then made her smell a flaçon of salts, and opened a window of the room, close to which he placed the Marquise's chair. This occupied a few minutes, all who were present standing around Mme. de Maulear, and paying attention only to her. The first excitement having passed away, they discovered that the Prince de Maulear had fainted. The doctor drew near the old man, and soon restored him to consciousness. When he had recovered his senses, the Prince called the doctor to him, and whispered, "Do you believe all this?" The doctor clasped the hand of the Prince, and went away. The Marquise de Maulear, smiling and calm, said, "Have I not been asleep?" Her memory, however, recalled nothing of the scenes which had passed before her in her somnambulism. She forgot, as people frequently do, both pleasant and mournful dreams.... Fifteen days after this scene Mme. de Maulear saw her mother stop at the hotel of the Prince. Behind Signora Rovero, humble and trembling, was the deformed and courageous boy, whom the children of Sorrento had called Scorpione. The Marquise, both happy and surprised, rushed into her mother's arms. With great anxiety, she suddenly cried, "Henri--the Marquis--where is he?" In reply, the Signora Rovero clasped her daughter to her breast, and wept. FOOTNOTES: [F] The translator has here elided about two pages on the theory of magnetism which he has thought rather detracted than otherwise from the interest of this book. [G] Madame la Marquise, se trouve-t-elle ainsi suffisament en rapport avec moi? From Fraser's Magazine. SCENES AT MALMAISON. The Palace of Malmaison, though not built on a large scale, became, with the additions afterwards made, a most princely residence. The hall, the billiard-room, the reception-rooms, the saloon, dining-room, and Napoleon's private apartment, occupied the ground floor, and are described as having been very delightful. The gallery was appropriated to the noblest specimens of the fine arts; it was adorned with magnificent statuary by Canova and other celebrated artists, and the walls were hung with the finest paintings. The pleasure-grounds, which were Josephine's especial care, were laid out with admirable taste; shrubs and flowers of the rarest and finest growth and the most delicious odors, were there in the richest profusion. But there is an interest far deeper than the finest landscape, or the most exquisite embellishments of art, could ever impart--an interest touchingly associated with the precincts where the gifted and renowned have moved, and with the passions and affections, the joys and sorrows by which they were there agitated. It is, indeed, an interest which excites a mournful sympathy, and may awaken salutary reflection. Who, indeed, could visit Malmaison without experiencing such? The vicissitudes experienced by some individuals have been so strange, that had they been described in a romance, it would have lost all interest from their improbability; but occurring in real life, they excite a feeling of personal concern which forever attaches to the name with which they are associated. Of this, the eventful life of Napoleon furnishes a striking example. There cannot be found in the range of history one who appears to have identified himself so much with the feelings of every class and every time; nay, his manners and appearance are so thoroughly impressed on every imagination, that there are few who do not rather feel as if he were one whom they had seen and with whom they had conversed, than of whom they had only heard and read. Scarcely less checkered than his, was the life of Josephine: from her early days she was destined to experience the most unlooked-for reverses of fortune: her very introduction to the Beauharnais family and connection with them, were brought about in a most unlikely and singular manner, without the least intention on her part, and it ultimately led to her being placed on the throne of France. The noble and wealthy family of Beauharnais had great possessions in the West Indies, which fell to two brothers, the representatives of that distinguished family; many of its members had been eminent for their services in the navy, and in various departments. The heirs to the estates had retired from the royal marine service with the title of _chefs d'escadre_. The elder brother, the Marquis de Beauharnais, was a widower, with two sons; the younger, Vicomte de Beauharnais, had married Mademoiselle Mouchard, by whom he had one son and two daughters. The brothers, warmly attached to each other from infancy, wished to draw still closer the bonds which united them, by the marriage of the Marquis's sons with the daughters of the Vicomte; and with this view, a rich plantation in St. Domingo had never been divided. The two sisters were looked on as the affianced brides of their cousins; and when grown up, the elder was married to the elder son of the Marquis, who, according to the prevalent custom of his country, assumed the title of Marquis, as his brother did that of Vicomte. M. Renaudin, a particular friend of the Beauharnais, undertook the management of their West Indian property. The Marquis, wishing to show some attention in return for this kindness, invited Madame Renaudin over to Paris, to spend some time. The invitation was gladly accepted; and Madame Renaudin made herself useful to her host by superintending his domestic concerns. But she soon formed plans for the advancement of her own family. With the Marquis's permission, she wrote to Martinique, to her brother, M. Tacher de la Pagerie, to beg that he would send over one of his daughters. The young lady landed at Rochefort, was taken ill, and died almost immediately. Notwithstanding this unhappy event, Madame did not relinquish the project which she had formed, of bringing about a union between the young Vicomte and a niece of her own. She sent for another;--and _Josephine_ was sent. When the young creole arrived, she had just attained her fifteenth year, and was eminently attractive; her elegant form and personal charms were enhanced by the most winning grace, modesty, and sweetness of disposition. Such fascinations could not have failed in making an impression on the young man with whom she was domesticated. His opportunities of becoming acquainted with his cousin were only such as were afforded by an occasional interview at the grating of the convent, where she was being educated; so no attachment had been formed; and he fell passionately in love with the innocent and lovely Josephine. She was not long insensible to the devotion of a lover so handsome and agreeable as the young Vicomte. Madame Renaudin sought the good offices of an intimate friend, to whose influence with the young man's father she trusted for the success of her project. In a confidential interview the lady introduced the subject--spoke of the ardent attachment of the young people, of the charms of the simple girl who had won his son's heart, and urged the consideration of the young man's happiness on his father, assuring him it rested on his consent to his marriage with Josephine. The Marquis was painfully excited; he loved his son tenderly, and would have made any sacrifice to insure his happiness; but his affection for his brother, and the repugnance which he felt, to fail in his engagement to him, kept him in a state of the most perplexing uneasiness. At length, stating to his brother how matters stood, he found that he had mortally offended him; so deeply, indeed, did he resent the affront, that he declared he could never forget or forgive it--a promise too faithfully kept. The affection and confidence of a whole life were thus snapped asunder in a moment. The Vicomte insisted on a division of the West Indian property; and, with feelings so bitterly excited, no amicable arrangement could take place, and the brothers had recourse to law, in which they were involved for the rest of their days. The marriage of the young people took place, and the youthful Mademoiselle Tacher de Pagerie became Vicomtesse de Beauharnais. It is said that her husband's uncle took a cruel revenge for the disappointment, of which she had been the cause, by awakening suspicion of the fidelity of Josephine in the mind of her husband. The distracting doubts he raised made his nephew wretched; to such a degree was his jealousy excited, that he endeavored, by legal proceedings, to procure a divorce; but the evidence he adduced utterly failed, and after some time, a reconciliation took place. The uncle died, and his daughter had in the mean time married the Marquis de Barral. So all went well with the young couple. They met with the most flattering reception at court. The Vicomte, who was allowed to be the most elegant dancer of his day, was frequently honored by being the partner of the Queen. And as to Josephine, she was the admired of all admirers; she was not only considered one of the most beautiful women at court, but all who conversed with her were captivated by her grace and sweetness. She entered into the gayeties of Versailles with the animation natural to her time of life and disposition. But the sunshine of the royal circle was, ere long, clouded, and the gathering storm could be too well discerned; amusement was scarcely thought of. The States General assembled, and every thing denoted a revolutionary movement. Josephine was an especial favorite with the Queen; and in those days, dark with coming events, she had the most confidential conversations with her; all the fears and melancholy forebodings which caused the Queen such deep anxiety, were freely imparted to her friend. Little did Josephine think, while sympathizing with her royal mistress, that she would herself rule in that court, and that she, too, would be a sufferer from the elevation of her situation. Her husband, the Vicomte de Beauharnais, was then called to join the army, as war had been unexpectedly declared. He distinguished himself so much, that he attained the rank of general. But in the midst of his successful career, he saw the danger which was impending, and he could perceive that not only were the days of Louis's power numbered, but he even feared that his life was not safe. His fears were unhappily fulfilled; and he himself, merely on account of belonging to the aristocracy, was denounced by his own troops, and deprived of his commission by authority, arrested, brought to Paris, and thrown into prison. It was during his imprisonment that the Vicomte had the most affecting proofs of the attachment of Josephine: all the energies of her mind and of her strong affection were bent on obtaining his liberty; no means she could devise were left untried; she joined her own supplications to the solicitations of friends, to whom she had appealed in her emergency; she endeavored, in the most touching manner, to console and cheer him. But the gratification of soothing him by her presence and endearments was soon denied, for she was seized, and taken as a prisoner to the convent of the Carmelites. A few weeks passed, and the unfortunate Vicomte was brought to trial, and condemned to death by the revolutionary tribunal. Though natural tears fell at thoughts of parting from his wife and children, and leaving them unprotected in the world, his courage never forsook him to the last. When the account of his execution reached Josephine she fainted away, and was for a long time alarmingly ill. It was while in prison, and every moment expecting to be summoned before the revolutionary tribunal, that Josephine cut off her beautiful tresses, as the only gift which she had to leave her children, for all the family estates in Europe had been seized, and the destruction of property at St. Domingo had cut off all supplies from that quarter. Yet amidst her anxieties, her afflictions, and her dangers, her fortitude never forsook her, and her example and her efforts to calm them, to a degree supported the spirits of her fellow-prisoners. Josephine herself ascribed her firmness to her implicit trust in the prediction of an old negress which she had treasured in her memory from childhood. Her trust, indeed, in the inexplicable mysteries of divination was sufficiently proved by the interest with which she is said to have frequently applied herself during her sad hours of imprisonment to learn her fortune from a pack of cards. Mr. Alison mentions, that he had heard of the prophecy of the negress in 1801, long before Napoleon's elevation to the throne. Josephine herself, Mr. Alison goes on to say, narrated this extraordinary passage in her life in the following terms:-- "One morning the jailer entered the chamber where I slept with the Duchesse d'Aiguillon and two other ladies, and told me he was going to take my mattress, and give it to another prisoner. "'Why,' said Madame Aiguillon, eagerly, 'will not Madame de Beauharnais obtain a better one?' "'No, no,' replied he, with a fiendish smile, 'she will have no need of one, for she is about to be led to the Conciergerie, and then to the guillotine." "At these words, my companions in misfortune uttered piercing shrieks. I consoled them as well as I could; and at length, worn out with their eternal lamentations, I told them that their grief was utterly unreasonable; that I not only should not die, but live to be queen of France. "'Why, then, do you not name your maids of honor?' said Madame Aiguillon, irritated at such expressions at such a moment. "'Very true,' said I, 'I did not think of that. Well, my dear, I make you one of them.'[H] "Upon this the tears of the ladies fell apace, for they never doubted I was mad; but the truth was, I was not gifted with any extraordinary courage, but internally persuaded of the truth of the oracle. "Madame d'Aiguillon soon after became unwell, and I drew her towards the window, which I opened, to admit through the bars a little fresh air. I then perceived a poor woman who knew us, and who was making a number of signs, which I could not at first understand. She constantly held up her gown (_robe_); and seeing that she had some object in view, I called out _robe_; to which she answered _yes_. She then lifted up a stone, and put it into her lap, which she lifted a second time. I called out _pierre_. Upon this, she evinced the greatest joy at perceiving that her signs were understood. Joining then the stone to her robe, she eagerly imitated the motion of cutting off the head, and immediately began to dance and evince the most extravagant joy. "This singular pantomime awakened in our minds a vague hope that possibly Robespierre might be no more. "At this moment, while we were vacillating between hope and fear, we heard a great noise in the corridor, and the terrible voice of our jailer, who said to his dog, giving him at the same time a kick, 'Get in, you cursed Robespierre.'" This speech told them they were saved. Through the influence of Barras, a portion of her husband's property, in which Malmaison was included, was restored to Josephine. In this favorite abode she amused herself in exercising her taste in the embellishment of the grounds, and in the pursuit of botany; but her chief enjoyment was in the society and instruction of her children, to whom she was passionately attached. Their amiable dispositions and their talents were a source of the most exquisite pleasure to her, not, however, unmingled with regret at finding herself without the means of conferring on them the advantages of which they were so deserving. However, a better time was to come. Madame Tallien and several of Josephine's friends, after a time, prevailed on her to enter into society, and the fair associates became the principal ornaments of the dictatorial circle. Through their influence revolutionary manners were reformed, and all the power which their charms and their talents gave them was exerted in the cause of humanity. Napoleon's acquaintance with Josephine arose from the impression made on him by her son, Eugene Beauharnais, then a little boy. He came to request that his father's sword, which had been delivered up, might be restored to him. The boy's appearance,--the earnestness with which he urged his request, and the tears which could not be stayed when he beheld the sword, interested Napoleon so much in his favor, that not only was the sword given to him, but he determined to become acquainted with the mother of the boy. He visited her, and soon his visits became frequent. He delighted to hear the details which she gave of the court of Louis. "Come," he would say, as he sat by her side of an evening, "now let us talk of the old court--let us make a tour to Versailles." It was in these frequent and familiar interviews that the fascinations of Josephine won the heart of Napoleon. "She is," said he, "grace personified--every thing she does is with a grace and delicacy peculiar to herself." The admiration and love of such a man could not fail to make an impression on a woman like Josephine. It has been said, that it was impossible to be in Napoleon's company without being struck by his personal appearance; not so much by the exquisite symmetry of his features, and the noble head and forehead, which have furnished the painter and the sculptor with one of their finest models; nor even by the meditative look, so indicative of intellectual power; but the magic charm was the varying expression of countenance, which changed with every passing thought, and glowed with every feeling. His smile, it is said, always inspired confidence. "It is difficult, if not impossible," so the Duchess of Abrantes writes, "to describe the charm of his countenance when he smiled;--his soul was upon his lips and in his eyes." The magic power of that expression at a later period is well known. The Emperor of Russia experienced it when he said, "I never loved any one more than that man." He possessed, too, that greatest of all charms, a harmonious voice, whose tones, like his countenance, changing from emphatic impressiveness to caressing softness, found their way to every heart. It may not have been those personal and mental gifts alone which won Josephine's heart; the ready sympathy with which Napoleon entered into her feelings may have been the greatest charm to an affectionate nature like hers. It was in the course of one of those confidential evenings that, as they sat together, she read to him the last letter which she had received from her husband: it was a most touching farewell. Napoleon was deeply affected; and it has been said that that letter, and Josephine's emotion as she read it, had a powerful effect upon his feelings, already so much excited by admiration. Josephine soon consented to give her hand to the young soldier of fortune who had no dower but his sword. On his part, he gave a pledge that he would consider her children as his own, and that their interest should be his first concern. The world can testify how he redeemed his pledge! To his union with Josephine he was indebted for his chief happiness. Her affection, and the interchange of thought with her, were prized beyond all the greatness to which he had attained. Many of the little incidents of their every-day life cannot be read without deep interest--evincing, as they do, a depth of affection and tenderness of feeling which it is difficult to conceive should ever have been sacrificed to ambition. They visited together the prison where Josephine had passed so many dreary and sad hours. He saw the loved name traced on the dank wall, by the hand which was now his own. She had told him of a ring, which she had fondly prized; it had been the gift of her mother. She pointed out to him the flag under which she had contrived to hide it. When it was taken from its hiding-place and put into her hand, her delight enchanted Napoleon. Seldom have two persons met whose feelings and whose tastes appeared more perfectly in unison than theirs, during the _happy_ days of their wedded life. The delight which they took in the fine arts was a source of constant pleasure; and in their days of power and elevation, it was their care to encourage artists of talent. Many interesting anecdotes are related of their kind and generous acts towards them. In Josephine's manner of conferring favors, there was always something still more gratifying than the advantage bestowed--something that implied that she entered into the feelings of those whom she wished to serve. She had observed that M. Turpin, an artist who went frequently to Malmaison, had no coveyance but an almost worn-out cabriolet, drawn by a sorry horse. One day, when about to take his leave, he was surprised to see a nice new vehicle and handsome horse drawn up. His own arms painted on the pannels, and stamped on the harness, at once told him they were intended for him; but this was not the only occasion on which Josephine ministered to the straitened means of the painter. She employed him in making a sketch of a Swiss view, while sitting with her, and directed him to take it home, and bring the picture to her when finished. She was delighted with the beautiful landscape which he produced, and showed it with pleasure to every visitor who came in. The artist no doubt felt a natural gratification at finding his fine work appreciated. Josephine then called him aside, and put the stipulated price in bank-notes into his hand. "This," said she, "is for your excellent mother; but it may not be to her taste; so tell her that I shall not be offended at her changing this trifling token of my friendship, and of the gratification which her son's painting has given me, for whatever might be more acceptable." As she spoke, she put into his hand a diamond of the value of six thousand francs. Josephine attended Napoleon in many of his campaigns. When she was not with him, he corresponded regularly with her, and no lover ever wrote letters more expressive of passionate attachment. "By what art is it," he says, in one of them, "that you have been able to captivate all my faculties? It is a magic, my sweet love, which will finish only with my life. To live for Josephine is the history of my life. I am trying to reach you. I am dying to be with you. What lands, what countries separate us! What a time before you read these lines!" Josephine returned her husband's fondness with her whole heart. Utterly regardless of privation and fatigue, she was ever earnest in urging him to allow her to accompany him on all his long journeys; and often, at midnight, when just setting out on some expedition, he has found her in readiness. "No, love," he would say, "No, no, love, do not ask me; the fatigue would be too much for you." "Oh no," she would answer; "No, no." "But I have not a moment to spare." "See, I am quite ready;" and she would drive off, seated by Napoleon's side. From having mingled in scenes of gayety from her earliest days, and from the pleasure which her presence was sure to diffuse, and perhaps, it may be added, from a nature singularly guileless, that could see no evil in what appeared to her but as innocent indulgencies, she was led into expenses and frivolous gratifications which were by no means essential for a mind like hers. Dishonest tradesmen took advantage of her inexperience and extreme easiness, and swelled their bills to an enormous amount; but her greatest and far most congenial outlay, was in the relief of the distressed. She could not endure to deny the petition of any whom she believed to be suffering from want; and this tenderness of heart was often imposed on by the artful and rapacious. Those who, from interested motives, desired to separate her from Napoleon, felt a secret satisfaction in the uneasiness which her large expenditure occasionally gave him. To their misrepresentations may be ascribed the violent bursts of jealousy by which he was at times agitated; but he was ever ready to perceive that there was no foundation to justify them. It was during one of their separations, that the insinuations of those about Napoleon excited his jealousy to such a degree, that he wrote a hasty letter to Josephine, accusing her of _coquetry_, and of evidently preferring the society of men to those of her own sex. "The ladies," she says, in her reply, "are filled with fear and lamentations for those who serve under you; the gentlemen eagerly compliment me on your success, and speak of you in a manner that delights me. My aunt and those about me can tell you, ungrateful as you are, whether _I have been coquetting with any body_. These are your words, and they would be hateful to me, were I not certain you see already that they are unjust, and are sorry for having written them." Napoleon's brothers strove to alienate his affections from Josephine; but the intense agony which he suffered when suspicion was awakened, must have proved to them how deep these affections were. Perhaps no trait in Josephine's character exalts it more than her conduct to the family who had endeavored to injure her in the most tender point. She often was the means of making peace between Napoleon and different members of his family with whom he was displeased. Even after the separation which they had been instrumental in effecting, she still exerted that influence which she never lost, to reconcile differences which arose between them. Napoleon could never long mistrust her generous and tender feelings, and the intimate knowledge of such a disposition every day increased his love; she was not only the object of his fondest affection, but he believed her to be in some mysterious manner connected with his destiny; a belief which chimed in with the popular superstition by which she was regarded as his good genius,--a superstition which took still deeper hold of the public mind when days of disaster came, whose date commenced in no long time after the separation. The apparently accidental circumstance by which Josephine had escaped the explosion of the infernal machine was construed by many as a direct interposition of Providence in favor of _Napoleon's Guardian Angel_. It was just as she was stepping into her carriage, which was to follow closely that of the First Consul to the theatre, that General Rapp, who had always before appeared utterly unobservant of ladies' dress, remarked to Josephine that the pattern of the shawl did not match her dress. She returned to the house, and ran up to her apartment to change it for another. The delay did not occupy more than three minutes, but they sufficed to save her life. Napoleon's carriage just cleared the explosion. Had Josephine been close behind, nothing could have saved her. In the happy days of love and confidence, Malmaison was the scene of great enjoyment: the hand of taste could be discerned in all its embellishments. Napoleon preferred it to any other residence. When he arrived there from the Luxembourg or the Tuileries, he was wild with delight, like a school-boy let loose from school. Every thing enchanted him, but most of all, perhaps, the chimes of the village church-bells. It may have been partly owing to the associations which they awakened. He would stop in his rambles if he heard them, lest his footfall should drown the sound--he would remain as if entranced, in a kind of ecstasy, till they ceased. "Ah! how they remind me of the first years I spent at Brienne!" Napoleon added considerably to the domain of Malmaison by purchasing the noble woods of Butard, which joined it. He was in a perfect ecstasy with the improvement; and, in a few days after the purchase was completed, proposed that they should all make a party to see it. Josephine put on her shawl, and, accompanied by her friends, set out. Napoleon, in a state of enchantment, rode on before; but he would then gallop back, and take Josephine's hand. He was compared to a child, who, in the eagerness of delight, flies back to his mother to impart his joy. Nothing could be more agreeable than the society of Malmaison. Napoleon disliked ceremony, and wished all his guests to be perfectly at their ease. All his evenings were spent in Josephine's society, in which he delighted. Both possessed the rare gift of conversational powers. General information and exquisite taste were rendered doubly attractive by the winning manners and sweet voice of Josephine. As for Napoleon, he appeared to have an intuitive knowledge on all subjects. He was like an inspired person when seen amidst men of every age, and all professions. All thronged round the pale, studious-looking young man--feeling that "he was more fitted to give than to receive lessons." Argument with him almost invariably ended by his opponent going over to his side. His tact was such that he knew how to select the subject for discussion on which the person with whom he conversed was best informed; and thus, from his earliest days, he increased his store of information, and gave infinite pleasure by the interest which he took in the pursuits of those whom chance threw in his way. The delightful flow of his spirits showed how much he enjoyed the social evenings. He amused his guests in a thousand ways. If he sat down to cards, he diverted them by pretending to cheat, which he might have done with impunity, as he never took his winnings. He sometimes entertained them with tales composed on the moment. When they were of ghosts and apparitions, he took care to tell them by a dim light, and to preface them by some solemn and striking observation. Private theatricals sometimes made the entertainment of the evening. Different members of Napoleon's family and several of the guests performed. The plays are described as having been acted to an audience of two or three hundred, and going off with great effect--every one, indeed, endeavored to acquit themselves to the best, of their ability, for they knew they had a severe critic in Napoleon. The amiable and engaging manners of Napoleon and Josephine gave to Malmaison its greatest charm. The ready sympathy of Josephine with all who were in sorrow, or any kind of distress, endeared her to every one. If any among her domestics were ill, she was sure to visit the sick bed, and soothe the sufferer by her tenderness. Indeed, her sympathy was often known to bring relief when other means had failed. She was deeply affected by the calamity of M. Decrest. He had lost his only son suddenly by a fatal accident. The young man had been on the eve of marriage, and all his family were busy in making preparations for the joyful occasion, when news of his death was brought. The poor father remained in a state of nearly complete stupor from the moment of the melancholy intelligence. All attempts to rouse him were unavailing. When Josephine was made acquainted with his alarming state, she lost not a moment in hurrying to him: and leading his little daughter by the hand, and taking his infant in her arms, she threw herself, with his two remaining children, at his feet. The afflicted man burst into tears, and nature found a salutary relief, which saved his life. In such acts Josephine was continually engaged. Nothing could withdraw her mind from the claims of the unfortunate. Her tender respect for the feelings of others was never laid aside; and with those who strove to please her she was always pleased. On one occasion, when the ladies about her could not restrain their laughter at the discordant music made by an itinerant musician, who had requested permission to play before her, she preserved a becoming gravity, and encouraged, and thanked, and rewarded the poor man. "He did his best to gratify us," she said, when he was gone; "I think it was my duty not only to avoid hurting his feelings, but to thank and reward him for the trouble which he took to give pleasure." Such were the lessons which she impressed upon her children. She often talked with them of the privations of other days, and charged them never to forget those days amidst the smiles of fortune which they now enjoyed. Josephine saw with great uneasiness the probable elevation of the First Consul to the throne. She felt that it would bring danger to him, and ruin to herself; for she had discernment enough to anticipate that she would be sacrificed to the ambition of those who wished to establish an hereditary right to the throne of the empire. Every step of his advancing power caused her deep anxiety. "The real enemies of Bonaparte," she said to Raderer, as Alison tells, "the real enemies of Bonaparte are those who put into his head ideas of hereditary succession, dynasty, divorce, and marriage. I do not approve the projects of Napoleon," she added. "I have often told him so. He hears me with attention, but I can plainly see that I make no impression. The flatterers who surround him soon obliterate all I have said." She strove to restrain his desire of conquest, by urging on him continually a far greater object--that of rendering France happy by encouraging her industry and protecting her agriculture. In a long letter, in which she earnestly expostulates with him on the subject, she turns to herself in affecting terms: "Will not the throne," she says, "inspire you with the wish to contract new alliances? Will you not seek to support your power by new family connections? Alas! whatever these connections may be, will they compensate for those which were first knit by corresponding fitness, and which affection promised to perpetuate?" So far, indeed, from feeling elated by her own elevation to a throne, she regretted it with deep melancholy. "The assumption of the throne," she looked on as "an act that must ever be an ineffaceable blot upon Napoleon's name." It has been asserted by her friends that she never recovered her spirits after. The pomps and ceremonies, too, attendant on the imperial state, must have been distasteful to one who loved the retirement of home, and hated every kind of restraint and ostentation. From the time that Napoleon became Emperor he lavished the greatest honors on the children of Josephine. Her daughter Hortense received the hand of Louis Bonaparte, and the crown of Holland. Eugene, his first acquaintance of the family and especial favorite, obtained the rank of colonel, and was adopted as one of the imperial family; and the son of Hortense and Louis was adopted as heir to the throne of France. The coronation took place at Notre Dame, with all the show and pomp of which the French are so fond. When the papal benediction was pronounced, Napoleon placed the crown on his head with his own hands. He then turned to Josephine who knelt before him, and there was an affectionate playfulness in the manner in which he took pains to arrange it, as he placed the crown upon her head. It seemed at that moment as if he forgot the presence of all but her. After putting on the crown, he raised it, and placing it more lightly on, regarded her the while with looks of fond admiration. On the morning of the coronation, Napoleon had sent for Raguideau the notary, who little thought that he had been summoned into the august presence to be reminded of what had passed on the occasion of their last meeting, and of which he had no idea the Emperor was in possession. While Napoleon had been paying his addresses to Josephine, they walked arm in arm to the notary's, for neither of them could boast of a carriage. "You are a great fool," replied the notary to Josephine, who had just communicated her intention of marrying the young officer--"you are a great fool, and you will live to repent it. You are about to marry a man who has nothing but his cloak and his sword." Napoleon, who was waiting in the antechamber, overheard these words, but never spoke of them to any one. "Now," said Napoleon, with a smile, addressing the old man, who had been ushered into his presence--"now, what say you, Raguideau, have I nothing but my cloak and sword?" The Empress and the notary both stood amazed at this first intimation that the warning had been overheard. The following year, the magnificent coronation at Milan took place, surpassing, if possible, in grandeur that at Paris. Amidst the gorgeousness of that spectacle, however, there were few by whom it was not forgotten in the far deeper interest which the principal actors in the scene inspired. Amidst the blaze of beauty and of jewels, and the strains of music, by which he was surrounded, what were the feelings of Napoleon, as he held within his grasp the iron crown of Charlemagne, which had reposed in the treasury of Monza for a thousand years, and for which he had so ardently longed. Even at that moment when he placed it on his own head, were the aspirings of the ambitious spirit satisfied?--or were not his thoughts taking a wider range of conquest than he had yet achieved? And for her, who knelt at his feet, about to receive the highest honor that mortal hands can confer--did the pomp and circumstance of that scene, and the glory of the crown, satisfy her loving heart? Ah, surely no! It was away in the sweet retirement of Malmaison--amidst the scenes hallowed by Napoleon's early affection. And how few years were to elapse ere the crown just placed on the head of Josephine was to be transferred to another?--when the place which she--the loving and beloved--occupied by her husband's side was to be filled by another? Though doubts had arisen in her mind--though she knew the influence of those who feared the sceptre might pass into the hands of another dynasty--still, the hope never forsook her, that affection would triumph over ambition, till Napoleon himself communicated the cruel determination. With what abandonment of self she was wont to cast her whole dependence on Napoleon, may be seen in a letter addressed to Pope Pius VII. In it she says: "My first sentiment--one to which all others are subservient--is a conviction of my own weakness and incapacity. Of myself I am but little; or, to speak more correctly, my only value is derived from the extraordinary man to whom I am united. This inward conviction, which occasionally humbles my pride, eventually affords me some encouragement, when I calmly reflect. I whisper to myself, that the arm under which the whole earth is made to tremble, may well support my weakness." Hortense's promising child was dead; Napoleon and Josephine had shed bitter tears together over the early grave of their little favorite; and there was now not even a nominal heir to the throne. The machinations of the designing were in active motion. Lucien introduced the subject, and said to Josephine that it was absolutely necessary for the satisfaction of the nation that Napoleon should have a son, and asked whether she would pass off an illegitimate one as her own. This proposal she refused with the utmost indignation, preferring any alternative to one so disgraceful. On Napoleon's return from the battle of Wagram, Josephine hastened to welcome him. After the first warm greetings and tender embraces, she perceived that something weighed upon his mind. The restraint and embarrassment of his manner filled her with dread. For fifteen days she was a prey to the most cruel suspense, yet she dreaded its termination by a disclosure fatal to her happiness. Napoleon, who loved her so much, and who had hitherto looked to her alone for all his domestic felicity, himself felt all the severity of the blow, which he was about to inflict. The day at length came, and it is thus affectingly described by Mr. Alison: "They dined together as usual, but neither spoke a word during the repast; their eyes were averted as soon as they met, but the countenance of both revealed the mortal anguish of their minds. When it was over, he dismissed the attendants, and approaching the Empress with a trembling step, took her hand, and laid it upon his heart. 'Josephine,' said he, 'my good Josephine, you know how I have loved you; it is to you alone that I owe the few moments of happiness I have known in the world. Josephine, my destiny is more powerful than my will; my dearest affections must yield to the interests of France.' "'Say no more,' cried the Empress, 'I expected this; I understand and feel for you, but the stroke is not the less mortal.' With these words, she uttered piercing shrieks, and fell down in a swoon. "Doctor Corvisart was at hand to render assistance, and she was restored to a sense of her wretchedness in her own apartment. The Emperor came to see her in the evening, but she could hardly bear the emotion occasioned by his appearance." Little did Napoleon think, when he was making a sacrifice of all the 'happiness which he had known in the world,' that the ambitious views for which it was relinquished would fade away ere five years ran their course. What strange destinies do men carve out for themselves! what sacrifices are they ever making of felicity and of real good, in the pursuit of some phantom which is sure to elude their grasp! How many Edens have been forfeited by madness and by folly, since the first pair were expelled from Paradise! It was not without an effort on her part to turn Napoleon from a purpose so agonizing to them both, that Josephine gave up all hope. In about a month after the disclosure, a painful task devolved on the imperial family. The motives for the divorce were to be stated in public, and the heart-stricken Josephine was to subscribe to its necessity in presence of the nation. In conformity with the magnanimous resolve of making so great a sacrifice for the advantage of the empire, it was expedient that an equanimity of deportment should be assumed. The scene which took place could never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. Napoleon stood pale and immovable as a statue, showing in the very stillness of his air and countenance a deep emotion. Josephine and Hortense alone appeared divested of every ornament, while those about them sparkled in all the splendor of court costume. Every eye was directed to Josephine, as with slow steps she reached the seat which had been prepared for her. She took it with her accustomed grace, and preserved throughout a dignified composure. Hortense stood weeping behind her chair, and poor Eugene was nearly overcome by agitation, as the act of separation was read; Napoleon declared that it was in consideration of the interests of the monarchy and the wishes of his people that there should be an heir to the throne, that he was induced "to sacrifice the sweetest affections of his heart." "God knows," said he, "what such a determination has cost my heart." Of Josephine he spoke with the tenderest affection and respect. "She has embellished fifteen years of my life; the remembrance of them will be for ever engraven on my heart." When it was Josephine's turn to speak, though tears were in her eyes, and though her voice faltered, the dignity of all she uttered impressed every one who was present. "I respond to all the sentiments of the Emperor," she said, "in consenting to the dissolution of a marriage which henceforth is an obstacle to the happiness of France, by depriving it of the blessing of being one day governed by the descendants of that great man, evidently raised up by Providence to efface the evils of a terrible revolution, and restore the altar, the throne, and social order. I know," she went on to say, "what this act, commanded by policy and exalted interests, has cost his heart; but we both glory in the sacrifice which we make to the good of our country. I feel elevated by giving the greatest proof of attachment and devotion _that ever was given upon earth_." It was not till Josephine heard the fatal words which were to part her from the object of her affection for ever, that her courage seemed for a moment to forsake her; but hastily brushing away her tears that forced their way, she took the pen which was handed to her, and signed the act; then taking the arm of Hortense, and followed by Eugene, she left the saloon, and hurried to her own apartment, where she shut herself up alone for the remainder of the day. It is well known that, notwithstanding the courage with which the imperial family came forward before the public on this occasion, they gave way to the most passionable grief in private. Napoleon had retired for the night, and had gone to his bed in silence and sadness, when the private door opened, and Josephine appeared. Her hair fell in wild disorder, and her countenance bore the impress of an incurable grief. She advanced with a faltering step; then paused; and bursting into an agony of tears, threw herself on Napoleon's neck, and sobbed as if her heart were breaking. He tried to console her, but his own tears fell fast with hers. A few broken words--a last embrace--and they parted. The next morning, the whole household assembled to pay the last tribute of respect to a mistress whom they loved and revered. With streaming eyes, they saw her pass the gates of the Tuileries, never to return. The feelings with which Josephine took up her residence at Malmaison, amidst the scenes so dear to her, may be conceived; but true to the wishes of the Emperor, and to the dictates of her own elevated mind, she bore up under her trying situation with exemplary dignity; but grief had done its part; and no one could look into her face, or meet the sweet melancholy smile with which she welcomed them, without being moved. Happy days, which she had enjoyed amidst these scenes with many of those who waited on her, were sadly contrasted with her forlorn feelings; and though she strove to speak cheerfully, and never complained, the tears which she tried to check or to conceal would sometimes force their way. The chief indulgence which she allowed her feelings was during those hours of the day when she shut herself up in Napoleon's cabinet; that chamber where so many moments of confidential intercourse had passed, and which she continued to hold so sacred, that scarcely any one but herself ever entered it. She would not suffer any thing to be moved since Napoleon had occupied it. She would herself wipe away the dust, fearing that other hands might disturb what he had touched. The volume which he had been reading when last there lay on the table, open at the page at which he had last looked. The map was there, with all his tracings of some meditated route; the pen which had given permanence to some passing thought lay beside it; articles of dress were on some of the chairs; every thing looked as if he were about to enter. Even under the changed circumstances which brought Josephine back to Malmaison, her influence over Napoleon, which had been always powerful, was not diminished. No estrangement took place between them. His visits to her were frequent, though her increased sadness was always observed on those days when he made them. They corresponded to the last moment of her life. The letters which she received from him were her greatest solace. It is thus she alludes to them in writing to him:--"Continue to retain a kind recollection of your friend; give her the consolation of occasionally hearing from you, that you still preserve that attachment for her which alone constitutes the happiness of her existence." The nuptials of Napoleon and Marie Louise took place a very short time after the divorce was ratified. Whatever the bitter feelings of Josephine might have been, they were not mingled with one ungenerous or unjust sentiment. No ill-feeling towards the new Empress was excited in her bosom by the rapturous greetings with which she was welcomed on her arrival. "Every one ought," said she, "to endeavor to render France dear to an Empress who has left her native country to take up her abode among strangers." But however elevated above all the meaner passions, the affections of Josephine had received a wound from which they could never recover, and she found it essential for any thing like peace of mind, to remove from scenes of former happiness. She retired to a noble mansion in Navarre, the gift of Napoleon; and as he had made a most munificent settlement on her, she was able to follow the bent of her benevolent mind, and to pass her time in doing good. So far from feeling any mortification on the birth of his son, she unfeignedly participated in the gratification which the Emperor felt, and she ever took the most lively interest in the child. She was deeply affected when his birth was announced to her, and retired to her chamber to weep unseen; but no murmur mingled with those natural tears. It is rare to meet an example of one like Josephine, who has escaped the faults which experience tells us beset the extremes of destiny. In all the power and luxury of the highest elevation, no cold selfishness ever chilled the current of her generous feelings; for in the midst of prosperity her highest gratification was to serve her fellow-creatures, and in adverse circumstances, unspited at the world, such was still her sweetest solace. She was, indeed, so wonderfully sustained throughout all the changes and chances of her eventful life, that it needs no assurance to convince us that she must have sought for support beyond this transitory scene. She employed the peasantry about Navarre in making roads and other useful works. Ever prompt in giving help to those in want, she chanced to meet one of the sisters of charity one day, seeking assistance for the wounded who lay in a neighboring hospital. Josephine gave large relief, promised to put all in train to have her supplied with linen for the sick, and that she would help to prepare lint for their wounds. The petitioner pronounced a blessing on her, and went on her way, but turned back to ask the name of her benefactress; the answer was affecting--"_I am poor Josephine._" There can be no doubt but that Napoleon's thoughts often turned with tenderness to the days that he had passed with Josephine. Proof was given of an unchanging attachment to her, in the favors which he lavished on those connected with her by relationship or affection. Among her friends was Mrs. Damer, so celebrated for her success in sculpture. She had become acquainted with her while she was passing some time in Paris. Charmed by Josephine's varied attractions, she delighted in her society, and they became fast friends; when parting, they promised never to forget each other. The first intimation which Mrs. Damer had of Josephine's second marriage was one day when a French gentleman waited on her; he was the bearer of a most magnificent piece of porcelain and a letter, with which he had been charged for her by the wife of the First Consul. Great was her astonishment, when she opened the letter, to find that it was indeed from the wife of the First Consul; no longer Vicomtesse de Beauharnais, but her dear friend Josephine, who urged her, with all the warmth of friendship, to pay her an immediate visit at Paris. "I do long," she added, "to present my husband to you." Such a tempting invitation was gladly accepted, and she was received with joy by Napoleon and Josephine. In after years, she constantly recalled to mind the pleasures of that visit, with mingled feelings of melancholy and delight. The domestic scene left a lasting impression. Napoleon, always so fascinating in conversation, made himself delightfully agreeable to her; he loved to talk with her of her art; and his originality, enthusiasm, and taste gave an interest to every thing he said. He had a great admiration for Fox, and expressed a wish to have his bust. When Mrs. Damer next visited Paris, she brought Fox's bust, but Josephine's place was occupied by another. The Emperor saw her, and met her with all the cordiality and kindness which the recollection of former happy days, and her attachment to Josephine, were sure to inspire. At parting, he gave her a splendid snuff-box, with his likeness set in diamonds. The box is now in the British Museum. It was in her retirement at Navarre that Josephine wept bitterly over the fallen fortunes of Napoleon. The Russian expedition caused her such deep inquietude that her health and spirits visibly declined; she saw in it a disastrous fate for Napoleon, and trembled, too, for the safety of Eugene, a son so dearly and so deservedly beloved, and who was, if possible, rendered still more precious, as the especial favorite of Napoleon, and as having been the means of introducing him to her. Josephine now scarcely joined her ladies, but would remain for the length of the day alone in her chamber, by the large travelling-desk which contained Napoleon's letters. Among these there was one that she was observed to read over and over again, and then to place in her bosom; it was the last that she had received; it was written from Brienne. A passage in it runs thus: "On revisiting this spot, where I passed my youthful days, and contrasting the peaceful condition I then enjoyed with the state of terror and agitation to which my mind is now a prey, often have I addressed myself in these words: I have sought death in numberless engagements, I can no longer dread its approach; I should now hail it as a boon. Nevertheless, I could still wish to see Josephine once more--" He again adds: "Adieu, my dear Josephine; never dismiss from your recollection one who has never forgotten, and never will forget, you." It would be needless to dwell on the rapid events which led to Napoleon's abdication, but it would be impossible, even in this imperfect sketch, not to be struck by the strange coincidences of Josephine's life,--twice married--twice escaped from a violent death--twice crowned--both husbands sought for a divorce--one husband was executed--the other banished! One of Napoleon's first cares, in making his conditions when he abdicated, was an ample provision for Josephine; 40,000_l._ per annum was settled on her. It was after Napoleon's departure from the shores of France, that the Emperor Alexander, touched with admiration of Josephine's character, and with pity for her misfortunes, prevailed on her to return to Malmaison to see him there. The associations so linked with the spot that she had loved to beautify must, indeed, have been overpowering. It was there that Napoleon's passionate attachment to her was formed. How many recollections must have been awakened by the pleasure-grounds adorned with the costly shrubs and plants which they had so often admired _together_; how many tears had afterwards fallen among them when the hours of separation came. The Emperor Alexander used every effort to console her, and promised his protection to her children, but sorrow had done its part, and the memories of other times had their effect. Josephine fell sick; malignant sore throat was the form which disease took, during the fatal illness of but a few days. Alexander was unremitting in his attentions; he again soothed the dying mother by the renewal of his promise of care for her children, a promise most faithfully kept. It was in the year 1814 that Napoleon left France for Elba, and also that Josephine died. The bells to which they had loved to listen together tolled her funeral knell. Her remains rest in the parish church of Ruel, near Malmaison. They were followed to the place of interment by a great number of illustrious persons who were desirous of paying this parting token of respect to one so much loved and honored. Upwards of eight thousand of the neighboring peasantry joined the funeral procession to pay their tribute of affection and veneration to her, who was justly called, '_the mother of the poor and distressed_.' The tomb erected by her children marks the spot where she takes her 'long last sleep.' It bears the simple inscription-- EUGENE ET HORTENSE A JOSEPHINE. Napoleon, too, paid a parting visit to the residence which he had preferred to every other. After his unsuccessful attempt to resume the sovereignty of France, he spent six days at Malmaison to muse over departed power and happiness, and then left the shores of France for ever! FOOTNOTES: [H] Josephine might afterwards have fulfilled this promise, had not Madame d'Aiguillon been a divorced wife, which excluded her from holding any situation about the Empress. From the London Art Journal. THE GRAVE OF GRACE AGUILAR. "Pilgrimages, pilgrimages!" exclaimed a German friend whose family had been shorn of its "olive branches" by so many hurricanes, that, although still in the prime of life, his head was bowed and his hair gray:--"pilgrimages! what is life but a pilgrimage over graves?" The older we grow, the better we comprehend the force of this sad truth; life is, indeed, a pilgrimage over graves; but how different are the ideas and emotions they suggest or excite! In pent-up cities the graves cluster round ancient churches: congregations after congregations are pressed into festering earth until the inclosure becomes a charnel-house; yet they prove how devoutly later occupants have longed to rest in death with the loved in life. The nameless mounds are hardly shrouded by broken turf; records, on the cankering, crumbling head-stones, are almost obliterated; some are closely bordered and capped by heavy stones, as if rich inheritors dreaded a resurrection; others there are, where the dock and the nettle are matted around rusty railings, as though no hand remained that ever pressed, in friendship or affection, the hand which moulders beneath; others, again, are marked by broad head-stones, new and well-lettered, the black on the pure white setting forth a proud array of virtues, of which the co-mates of the departed never heard; a few dingy and heavy monuments stand apart, and look down with civic haughtiness on humbler graves. Repulsive specimens of bad taste are these elaborate monuments often; in their ornaments so unmeaning, their clumsy dignity so intrusive, so coarsely ostentatious--the epitaphs so earnest in saying _by whom_ the carved stones were erected! Our village churchyards, lying away amid glorious trees, or tranquil valleys, or sleeping on the sloping hills, where "birds sing, lambs bleat, and ploughboys whistle,"--however picturesque they may appear in the distance, have frequently the same uncared for aspect as those within the city. We love the living, but we _seem_ to care little for the dead. However much we may muse on crossing "the churchyard," or indulge in poesy, where "The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep," our places of burial, with the exception of cemeteries, which are as yet too new to show what they may become, bear but slight testimony to the "love which lives forever." The contrast is humiliating when we visit other lands, and mark the attention paid to graves of relatives and friends. A certain sum is annually set apart by the peasants in many districts of France, for visiting and decking the resting-places of those whom Death has taken; the fresh garland is hung on the simple cross, and the prayer earnestly repeated for the soul's peace; and these tributes continue for years and years, long after the bitterness of sorrow has passed away. We have seen an aged woman, with white hair, strewing flowers on her mother's grave, though forty years had passed since the separation of the living from the dead; and once, attracted by the beauty of a girl who had been decking, and then praying, beside a nameless grave, we asked for whom she mourned--although the word "mourned" had little association with her bright face and sunny smile. She answered, none of her people slept there; she had nothing of herself to do with graves; it was Marie's mother's grave, and Marie had gone far away--to England. Marie was her friend, and she had promised her that she would deck that grave, and pray beside it; and all for the love she bore her friend. We asked if she was certain Marie would return: "No, there was no certainty; but she would watch the grave, and deck it, and say the prayers Marie would have said, all the same; she loved Marie, and had promised her." There was something very tender in this friendly fidelity, this tending the dead for the sake of the living--the living, dead to her. For ourselves, the place of tombs has rarely been one of sorrow; we have loved to visit the last dwellings of those who have gone home before us. We have thought of the enjoyment of re-union; and dwelt upon the delight of an eternity of harmony and love--that "perfect love which casteth out fear." We have speculated on seeing Milton in the company of angels; on recognizing Bunyan with the faithful; on beholding Fenelon at the "right hand," and Mendelssohn among the chosen! Knowing that God is a more merciful judge than man, we believe that there we shall see many faiths prostrate in adoration of the one great LORD, who is for all, and "above all, and in us all." We have looked to the higher nature, the divine essence of those we have honored; and when noble deeds have been done, or lofty genius has triumphed, we have listened with more than doubt to the insinuations of those who, in former, as in present times, aim to detract from the excellence it is not given them to understand. We do not cater for the prejudices of sects or parties, but simply desire to lay our tribute of homage on the graves of those who seem to us most worthy, and have been most useful. We have enjoyed the high privilege of knowing many remarkable people who have passed from among us during the last twenty years,--having won for themselves a glorious immortality by the exercise of talents which, in any other country, would have led to national distinctions. Yet they are well remembered! and to them be _all_ the glory of success. The memory of these great lights,--great authors, great statesmen, great philosophers, great warriors,--is still "Green in our souls." But there were some stars of lesser magnitude, who, if longer spared among us, would have become luminaries of power; some who were summoned, when, according to our finite views, they had arrived at the period for their faculties to expand, and they were about to reap the harvest of long years of labor and of care; such was Mrs. Fletcher, better known as Miss Jewsbury, one of the chosen friends of Mrs. Hemans, who passed away in a foreign land, far from all who loved her. And such was GRACE AGUILAR--a Jewess, of mind so elevated, heart so pure, and principles so just and true, as to deserve a lofty seat among those "Women of Israel," whose lives were so beautifully rendered by her delicate and powerful pen. It seems Quixotic in this day of sunshine, of civil and religious liberty, to attempt to combat the prejudices which, we are gravely told, do not now exist against the Jewish community; yet it is impossible to observe society, and not perceive that whatever political disabilities may be removed from them, individual prejudice against those from whom our blessed Saviour sprang, and who gave birth to the apostles of the Christian faith, is as deeply seated, as in the days when faggot and fire were the ministers employed for their conversion. How can it be that we, in our age, look down with cold or scornful eyes upon this once "chosen people"--chosen when the material world was in its youth--those children of Israel, whose history is the foundation of our faith? We read _our_ Bible, which is _their_ Bible; our code of conduct is based upon _their_ commandments, which are _our_ commandments; _our_ salvation is gained by the Jewish sacrifice of the lamb without spot or blemish; _our_ apostles, the promulgators of the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies, and the founders of the New, were Jews. We are especially blessed in triumphing in a hope fulfilled--while to them the promise is yet to come; they linger and wait century after century for what they lost, and we won: this is their sorrow, and hard to bear is their punishment--but it should not detract from the honor and glory which was, and is, theirs from ages past. The condemnation we give them is unworthy of us, and undeserved by them--_They brought no wrath upon us by their blindness_; and we should remember the time will come when we shall be gathered--Jews and Gentiles--together from the four quarters of the globe, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, "And there shall be one fold and one Shepherd." But of what do we, in these days, chiefly accuse the Jews?--of being a Mammon-making, and a Mammon-loving people?--Ought we not to look to ourselves in that matter, and remember the old saying about houses of glass, and throwing of stones? There are but too many evidences of late before the world, of the Mammon-worship of _our own_ people, to render any bowing down to the molten image remarkable in the children of Israel; yet it is marvellous how those who think and reason on all new things, give in to old prejudices without question or examination--clinging with childlike tenacity to foul traditions, as if they were established truths. We no longer politically outrage a people who have been, at all times, LOYAL, peaceable, and industrious; we do not confine them to any particular quarter of our great city; nor drive them out of it like rabid dogs; we suffer them to make money and keep it, and we borrow it for our own wants; we allow them to worship as they please--but denying them a cordial fellowship with us, we restrict their improvement in all Arts, but the one of money-making;--and they, unable to obtain distinction except through their gold, naturally cling to that which gives them what all men covet--Power. At our first introduction to Grace Aguilar we were struck, as much by the earnestness and eloquence of her conversation, as by her delicate and lovely countenance. Her person and address were exceedingly prepossessing; her eyes, of the deep blue that look almost black in particular lights; and her hair dark and abundant. There was no attempt at display; no affectation of learning; no desire to obtrude "me and my books" upon any one, or in any way: in all things she was graceful and well-bred. You felt at once that she was a carefully educated gentlewoman, and if there was more warmth and cordiality of manner than a stranger generally evinces on a first introduction, we remembered her descent,[I] and that the tone of her studies, as well as her passionate love of music and high musical attainments had increased her sensibility. When we came to know her better, we were charmed and astonished at her extensive reading; at her knowledge of foreign literature, and actual learning--relieved by a refreshing pleasure in juvenile amusements. Each interview increased our friendship, and the quantity and quality of her acquirements commanded our admiration. She had made acquaintance with the beauties of English nature during a long residence in Devonshire; loved the country with her whole heart, and enriched her mind by the leisure it afforded. She had collected and arranged conchological and mineralogical specimens to a considerable extent; loved flowers as only sensitive women can love them; and with all this was deeply read in theology and history. Whatever she knew she knew thoroughly; rising at six in the morning, and giving to each hour its employment; cultivating and exercising her home affections, and keeping open heart for many friends. All these qualities were warmed by a fervid enthusiasm for whatever was high and holy. She spurned all envy and uncharitableness, and rendered loving homage to whatever was great and good. It was difficult to induce her to speak of herself or of her own doings. After her death, it was deeply interesting to hear from the one of all others who loved and knew her best (her mother), of the progress of her mind from infancy to womanhood; it proved so convincingly how richly she deserved the affection she inspired. Grace Aguilar, the only daughter of Emanuel and Sarah Aguilar, was born at the Paragon, in Hackney, in June 1816;[J] for eight years she was an only child, and after that period had elapsed, two boys were added to the family. Grace was of so fragile and delicate a constitution, that her parents took her to Hastings when she was four years old; and at that early age she commenced collecting and arranging shells, learning to read, almost by intuition, and when asked to choose a gift, always preferring "a book." These gift-books were not read and thrown aside, but preserved with the greatest care, and frequently perused. From the age of seven years this extraordinary child kept a daily journal, jotting down what she saw, heard, and thought, with the most rigid regard to the truth; indeed, after visiting a new scene, her chief delight was to read and ponder over whatever she could find relating to what she had observed. Her parents were both passionately fond of the beauties of nature, and she enjoyed scenery with them, at an age when children are supposed to be incapable of much observation. Her mother, a highly educated and accomplished woman, loved to direct her child's mind to the study of whatever was beautiful and true: before she completed her twelfth year she wrote a little drama called "Gustavus Vasa;" it was an indication of what, in after life, became her ruling passion. The first history placed in her hand was that of Josephus; increasing, as it was certain to do, her interest in her own people. In 1828, after various English wanderings, the family, in consequence of Mr. Aguilar's impaired health, went to reside in Devonshire. The beauty of the scenery which surrounds Tavistock inspired her first poetic effusions, and she became passionately fond of her new power; yet her well-regulated mind prevented her indulging in the exercise of this fascinating talent, until her daily duties and studies were performed. A life spent as was that of Grace Aguilar, affords little incident or variety; it is simply a record of talents highly cultivated, of duties affectionately fulfilled, and, as years advanced, of the formation of a great purpose persevered in with stoic resolution, until, supported by pillows, and shaken by intense suffering, the trembling fingers could no longer hold the pen. It cannot fail to interest those at all acquainted with her writings, to learn how she mingled the most intense faith and devotion to her own people, with respect for the teachers of Christianity. Well as we knew her, we were quite unacquainted with her religious habits; though the odor of sanctity exhaled from all she did and said, she never assumed to be holier than others; never sought discussion; never, in her intercourse with Christians, though sometimes sorely pressed, gave utterance to a hard word or an uncharitable feeling; even when roused to plead with eloquent lips and tearful eyes the cause of her beloved Israel. It is a beautiful picture to look upon--this young and highly endowed Jewish maiden, nurtured in the bosom of her own family, the beloved of her parents,--themselves high-class Hebrews,--gifted with tastes for the beautiful in Art and Nature, and a sublime love for the true; leaving the traffic of the busy city, content with a moderate competence, soothed by the accomplishments, the graces and the devotion of that one cherished daughter, whose high pursuits and purposes never prevented the daily and hourly exercise of those domestic duties and services, which the increasing indisposition of her father demanded more and more. Stimulated by the counsel of a judicious friend, who, while she admired the varied talents of the young girl, saw, that for any _great purpose_, they must be concentrated, Grace Aguilar prayed fervently to God that she might be enabled to do something to elevate the character of her people in the eyes of the Christian world, and--what was, and is, even more important--in their own esteem. They had, she thought, been too long satisfied to go on as they had gone during the days of their tribulation and persecution; content to amass wealth, without any purpose beyond its possession; she panted to set before them "The Records of Israel," to hold up to their admiration "The Women of Israel," those heroic women of whom any nation might be justly proud. Here was a grand purpose,--a purpose which made her heart beat high within her bosom. She knew she had to write _against_ popular feeling; she had the still more bitter knowledge that the greater number of those for whom she contended, cared little, and thought less, of the CAUSE to which she was devoted, heart and soul. But what large mind was ever deterred from a great purpose by difficulties? The young Jewish girl, with few, if any, literary connections; with limited knowledge as to how she could set those things before the world; treasured up her intention for a while, and then imparted it to that mother who she felt assured would support her in whatever design was high and holy. Her mother exulted in her daughter's plan, and had faith in that daughter's power to work it out: she believed in her noble child, and thanked the God of Israel, who had put the thought into her mind. Mrs. Aguilar knew that Grace had not made religion her study only for her own personal observance and profit. She knew that she embraced its _principles_ in a widely-extended and truly liberal sense; the good of her people was her first, but not her sole, object. The Hebrew mother had frequently wept tears of joy and gratitude when she observed how her beloved child carried her practice of the holy and benevolent precepts of her faith into every act of her daily life--doing all the good her limited means permitted--finding time, in the midst of her cherished studies, and still more cherished domestic duties, and most varied occupations, to work for and instruct her poor neighbors; and, while steadily venerating and adhering to her own faith, neither inquiring nor heeding the religious opinions of the needy, whom she succored or consoled. Her young life had flowed on in bestowing and receiving blessings, and now, when her aspiring soul sought still higher objects, how could her mother, knowing her so well, doubt that she would falter or fail in her undertaking! Proofs have been for some time before the world that she did neither. She first translated a little work from the French, called "Israel Defended;" she tried her pinions in "The Magic Wreath," and, feeling her mental strength, soared upwards in the cause of her people; she wrote "Home Influence," and "The Spirit of Judaism." But the triumphant spirit was, ere long, clogged by the body's weakness. In the spring of 1838, she was attacked by measles, and from that illness she never perfectly recovered. Soon, she commenced the work that of itself is sufficient to create and crown a reputation--"The Women of Israel." But while her mental powers increased in strength and activity, she became subject to repeated attacks of bodily prostration; and her once round and graceful form was but a shadow. The physician recommended change of air and scene: and sometimes she rallied, but there was no permanent improvement. Music was still, as it had ever been, her solace and delight; but she was obliged to relinquish her practice of the harp, and to exercise her voice but seldom; still her spirit cried "On, on," and every hour she could command was devoted to her pen. "The Records of Israel," "The Women of Israel," and "The Jewish Faith," separately and together, show how, heart and soul, she labored in the cause she had so emphatically made her own. The first publication relating so particularly to her own people, met with but a cool reception from the English Jews; but in America (where the Hebrews enjoy perfect equality with their Christian brethren) they hailed this rising star with joy, and looked anxiously for its meridian. Letters and congratulations came to her across the Atlantic; and those who had read only her fugitive pieces, were astonished at the concentrated zeal and pious energy which animated her when writing of the Hebrews. A little "History of the English Jews," published by the Messrs. Chambers, is perhaps superior to her other writings in style and finish--the sentences are more condensed--the information more full of interest. It was, we believe, her last labor of love, and she greatly rejoiced in its publication. When it was finished, she had resolved to visit the German baths, and enjoy, as much as her increased debility permitted, the society of her eldest brother, who at the time was studying music (the art in which he now so much excels) at Frankfort. Her youngest brother was at sea. There were times, even before her departure for Germany, that she felt as if her days were numbered; but this feeling she studiously concealed from her mother, and bore her sufferings with the sweet and placid patience which rendered it a privilege to see her and to hear her speak. At times she thought she might be spared a little longer to comfort her mother, to witness the distinction certain to reward her brother, and enjoy the reputation which now rushed upon her, especially from her own people, both here and in America. Devotedly attached to her friends, she bitterly regretted that she could not take leave of them all; but her weakness increased daily; propped up by pillows she still continued to write, until her medical advisers expressly commanded that she should abstain from this--her "greatest and last luxury." She obeyed, though expressing her conviction that writing did her good, not harm; she frequently said that when oppressed by care, anxiety, and pain, her favorite pursuit drew her from herself, and she firmly believed that writing relieved her headaches,--and this at a period when she had grown too ill even to listen to music. But, all--all her sufferings were borne with angelic patience, as the will of her Heavenly Father, and she would console her mother with words of cheerfulness and hope. We have said her life had in it nothing to render it remarkable; surely, we are in error, her patient, industrious, self-sacrificing life, was remarkable not only for its sanctity, its talent, and its high purpose, but for its earnest and beautiful simplicity, and perfect _womanliness_. When the period of her departure for Germany had arrived, her friends found it difficult to bid her farewell; for they thought it would be the last time they should ever press her thin attenuated hand; but the brightness of her eyes, the hopefulness of her smile, made them hope against hope. She left England on the 16th of June, 1847, lingered in the brilliant city of Frankfort for a few weeks, and then went to the baths at Langen Schwalback. She persevered in her use of the baths and mineral waters, but they afforded no relief; she was seized one night with violent spasms, and the next day was removed to Frankfort. Convinced that recovery was now impossible, she calmly and collectedly awaited the coming of death: and though all power of speech was gone, she was able to make her wants and wishes known by conversing on her fingers. Her great anxiety was to soothe her mother; though her tongue refused to perform its office, those wasted fingers would entreat her to be patient, and trust in God. She would name some cherished verse in the Bible, or some dearly-loved psalm, that she desired might be read aloud. The last time her fingers moved it was to spell upon them feebly, "_Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him_;" when they could no longer perform her will, her loving eyes would seek her mother and then look upwards, intimating that they should meet hereafter. Amen! Her death occasioned deep regret among the Hebrews both in Europe and America: foreign tabernacles poured forth their lamentations, private friends gave voice to their grief in prose and poetry, and the various journals of both hemispheres spoke of her with the respect and admiration she deserved. But to those who really knew Grace Aguilar, all eulogium falls short of her deserts; and she has left a blank in her particular walk of literature, which we never expect to see filled up! Her loss to her own people is immense; she was a golden light between the Christian and the Jew; respected and admired alike by both, she drew each in charity closer to the other; she was a proof, living and illustrious, of Jewish excellence and Jewish liberality, and loyalty, and intelligence. The sling of the son of Jesse was not wielded with more power and effect against the scorner of his people, than was her pen against the giant Prejudice. We have dwelt more than may be thought necessary on Grace Aguilar's championship of her own people, because _that_ distinguishes her from all other female authors of our time; and when writing of the "fold of Judah," there is a tone of feeling in all she has published which elevates and sustains her in a remarkable manner. In conversation, the mention of her people produced the same effect. Sometimes she seemed as one inspired; and the intense brightness of her eyes, the deep tones of her voice, the natural and unaffected eloquence of her words, when referring to the past history of the Jews,--and the positive radiance of her countenance when she spoke of the gathering of the tribes at Jerusalem, could never be forgotten by those who knew this young Jewish lady. In time, as we have said, her own people estimated her as she deserved. She received a very beautiful address from some of the "women of Israel" before she left this country for Germany. Among her works of a more general nature, "Home Influence" is perhaps the most popular; and its sequel, "The Mother's Recompense," though only lately published, was written as far back as the year 1836. "The Vale of Cedars" is a tale of Jewish faith and Jewish suffering, founded on singular facts that came to her knowledge through some of her own people: the arrangement of the story was difficult, as it is always difficult to embellish what is simple and dignified, without destroying its effect and beauty--but, as we have said, whenever Grace touched upon her own people, she wrote and spoke as one inspired; she condensed and spiritualized, and all her thoughts and feelings were steeped in the essence of celestial love and truth. We are persuaded that had this young woman lived in the perilous times of persecution, she would have gone to the stake for her faith's sake, and died praying for her murderers. And this heroism was not only for the great trials of life; she was also a heroine in her endurance of small sufferings, and petty annoyances, deeming it sinful to manifest impatience, and thinking it right to be afflicted. Grace Aguilar had earnestly desired that we should have met her at Frankfort; and the only letter we received from her after her arrival there, was full of the pleasant hope that we should meet again--in that cheerful city; this was however impossible; but when we knew that we should see her no more in this world, we promised ourselves a pilgrimage to her grave: and over all the plans which mingled with our dreams of the splendid churches and vast cathedrals we were to see in Germany, would come a vision of Grace Aguilar's quiet grave in the Jewish burying-ground of Frankfort-on-the-Main; and all the reality of the animated handsome city, its merchant palaces in the _Zeil_, and _Neue Mainzer Strasse_, its old _Dom_, so full of interest, with its fine monument of Rudolph of Sachsenhausen, beside which you cannot but recall the time when St. Bernard preached the crusade within its walls,--not even when we stood alone beneath the roof of St. Leonhard's Church, and knew that there once stood the Palace of Charlemagne,--not there--nor anywhere--could we forget that we had vowed a pilgrimage to the grave of "the lost star of the house of Judah." How wild and inharmonious is the mingling of sights, as you whirl through continental cities! Heroic monuments--dark and deep dungeons--magnificent palaces--pictures--flowers--instruments of torture--delicious operas--all crowded together into a few short days! We had not failed to remember that the brilliant city of Frankfort was the cradle of the Rothschilds; and it had been suggested that before we visited the Jews' burying-ground, we should see "The Jews' Quarter," to look upon the house where the "very rich man was born," and where his mother chose to live to the end of her many days, preferring, wise woman that she was, to dwell to the last amongst her own people; yet living, we believe, long enough to know that her grandson represented in Parliament the first city of the modern world: and so became a practical illustration of the altered position of the Jews in the middle of the nineteenth century--sheltered under the vine and fig-tree that flourishes in England. In few of the German cities did the Jews endure more persecution than in the _free_ city of Frankfort. During the past century the gates of the quarter to which they were confined, were closed upon them at an early hour, and egress and ingress were alike denied. In 1796 Marshal Jourdan, in bombarding the town, knocked down the gate of the Jews' quarter, and laid several houses in ruin; they have not since been replaced. Another tyrannical law, not repealed until 1834, restricted the number of Hebrew marriages in the city to thirteen yearly. It would seem, however, that, like the mother of the Rothschilds, the people continue to dwell in their own quarter from choice, not necessity; and well it is for the lover of the picturesque and for the antiquary that they do so. A ramble in the Jews' quarter at Frankfort might well repay a journey from London; it is like going back to the fourteenth century, and meeting the people you read of in history far gone. Imagine the narrowest possible streets through which a carriage can drive, flanked at either side by houses so high that the blue sky above becomes an idea rather than a reality; story after story, with windows of ancient construction, small and narrow, inclosed by iron gratings, from which frequently depended portions of many-colored draperies; garments for sale, which might have been of the spoil of the Egyptian; strong swords and all kinds of weapons, rust-worn; bunches of keys, whose handles would drive an antiquary distracted by their elaborate workmanship; dresses of all countries and all fashions, fez caps, and old but costly turbans. The rich balconies of the most exquisite design, however time-worn; the _jalousies_, sometimes within, sometimes without the windows; the Atlantes, supporting entablatures; lost none of their effect from being half draped by a scarlet mantle or variegated scarf of Barbary. Numbers of the houses were profusely ornamented at intervals by ball-flowers in the hollow mouldings, and balustrades, supporting carved copings. Then above the doors, some of which evidently led to an inner court or a mysterious-looking passage, was inserted the most exquisitely wrought iron-work, sufficiently beautiful to form a model for a Berlin bracelet; while from a stealthy passage peered forth the half shrouded face and illuminated eyes of dazzling brightness, of some ancient Jewess, whose long, lean, yellow fingers grasped the strong, but exquisitely moulded handle of the entrance. The doors (except the very modern ones) were all of great strength, frequently studded with nails, and the bolts, now worn and rusty, had withstood many a rude assault. We passed beneath small oriel windows, supported by richly carved stone brackets, gray and mouldering; and beside bay windows, of pure Gothic times; and when we gazed up--up--up--story after story, we saw what appeared to us more than one Belvedere, doubtless erected by some wealthy Jew as a place from whence he could overlook the city it was forbidden him to tread, or to enjoy pure air, which certainly he could not do in the densely close street beneath. Many of the brackets supporting a solitary balcony were of beautiful design, though the greater number were defaced and crumbling. We also passed several of the fan-shaped windows, so characteristic of the early German style, and here and there a quaint and fantastic _gurgoyle_; from the mouth of one depended a bunch of soiled but many colored ribbons. What a vision it seems to us now--that wonderful Jews' quarter of the bright and busy city of Frankfort!--a vision of some far-off Oriental Pompeii, repeopled in a dream! Never did we look upon faces so keen and withered, beards so black, or eyes so bright; once we saw a curly-headed child, half naked in its swarthy beauty, throned, like a baby-king, upon a pile of yellow cushions; and once again, as we drove slowly on, a tall young girl turned up a face of scornful beauty, as if she thought we pale-faced Christians had no business there,--and those two young creatures were all we clearly observed of youthful beauty within the "Quarter." The avenues in the outskirts of German towns contribute greatly to their interest,--they protect from both sun and wind. We drove leisurely along that which leads to the Cemetery of Frankfort, and turned up a narrower road, that we might enter the walled-off portion of ground appropriated as the Jews' burying-ground. Nothing can exceed the beauty of the view from the gate of entrance. The city is spread out in the valley like a panorama; the brightest sunshine illumined the scene; a girl was seated beneath the branches of a spreading tree in the distance; she was a garland-weaver, and there she spent her days weaving garlands, which the living bought from her to place on the graves of their departed friends. The gates were open. Mrs. Aguilar had told us that HER grave was near the wall of the Protestant burying-ground--and there we found it. The head stone which marks the spot, bears upon it a butterfly and five stars, and beneath is the inscription: "Give her of the fruits of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates."--PROV. Chap. xxxi., 31. Our pilgrimage was accomplished. It was, though in a foreign city, a pilgrimage to an English Shrine--for it was to the grave of an English woman--pure and good. On the 16th of September, 1847, at the early age of thirty-one, Grace Aguilar was laid in that cemetery, far from the England she loved so well--the bowl was broken, the silver cord was loosed! We cannot conclude this tribute to the memory of one we loved, respected, and admired, without extracting a portion of an address presented to her by several young Jewish ladies, before her departure for Germany. Had the gift which accompanied it been of the richest and rarest jewels, and offered by the princes of this earthly world, it could not have been as acceptable as it was, coming from the hearts and hands of the maidens of her own faith. We would simply add that the address is a proof, if proof were needed, that Jewish ladies not only feel and appreciate what is refined, and high, and holy, but know how to express their feelings beautifully and well. Its orientalism does not detract from its pure and sweet simplicity: "DEAR SISTER:--Our admiration of your talents, our veneration for your character, our gratitude for the eminent services your writings render our sex, our people, our faith,--in which the sacred cause of true religion is embodied, all these motives combine to induce us to intrude on your presence, in order to give utterance to sentiments which we are happy to feel, and delighted to express. Until you arose, it has, in modern times, never been the case, that a woman in Israel should stand forth, the public advocate of the faith of Israel, that with the depth and purity which is the treasure of woman, and the strength of mind and extensive knowledge that form the pride of man, she should call on her own to cherish, on others to respect, the truth as it is in Israel. You, sister, have done this, and more. You have taught us to know and appreciate our own dignity; to feel and to prove that no female character can be more pure than that of the Jewish maiden, none more pious than that of the women in Israel. You have vindicated our social and spiritual equality in the faith; you have, by your excellent example, triumphantly refuted the aspersion that the Jewish religion leaves unmoved the heart of the Jewish woman,--while your writings place within our reach those higher motives, those holier consolations, which flow from the spirituality of our religion, which urge the soul to commune with its Maker, and direct it to His grace and His mercy, as the best guide and protector here and hereafter." We can say nothing of Grace Aguilar more eloquently or beautifully true; it is the just acknowledgment of a large debt from the Women of Israel to a holy and good sister, who, having done much to destroy prejudice, and to inculcate charity, merits the thanks of the true Christian as much as of the conscientious Jew. FOOTNOTES: [I] Grace Aguilar's family fled to England to escape Spanish and Portuguese persecutions, and some of them found homes and fortunes in the West Indies. Her mother's name was Diaz Fernandes. [J] Her family were of the tribe of Judah. Of the original twelve tribes two only are at present are known: the tribe of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob and Leah, and the tribe of Benjamin, the youngest son of Jacob and Rachel. The other tribes revolted from Rehoboam, A.M. 2964, when there were two separate kingdoms, A.M. 3205, when the ten tribes were made captives by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria. The ten tribes have never since been heard of; but the Israelites believe they are in existence, and will be gathered "from all the nations whither the Lord our God hath scattered them." The Spanish and Portuguese Jews are of the tribe of Judah. The German Jews are of the tribe of Benjamin. From Frazer's Magazine. THE CLOISTER-LIFE OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V.--PART. II. To be lodged in the monastic palace of Yuste was a distinction which queen Mary of Hungary shared with one, and only one, of the visitors of her brother. The personage whom the imperial eremite delighted thus to honor was Francisco Borja, who a few years before had exchanged his dukedom of Gandia for the robe of the order of Jesus. In his brilliant youth, this remarkable man had been the star and pride of the nobility of Spain. Heir of a great and wealthy house, which was a branch of the royal line of Aragon, and which had given two pontiffs to Rome, he was distinguished no less by the favor of the emperor than by the splendor of his birth, the graces of his person, and the endowments of his mind. Born to be a soldier and a courtier, he was also an accomplished scholar, and no inconsiderable statesman. He broke horses and trained hawks as well as the most expert master of the menage and the mews; he composed masses, which long kept their place in the cathedral-choirs of Spain; he was well versed in polite learning, and deeply read in the mathematics; he served in Africa and Italy with distinction; and as viceroy of Catalonia he displayed abilities for business and administration which in a few years would have enabled him to rival the fame of Mendoza and De Lannoy. The pleasures and the honors of the world, however, seemed, even from the first, to have but slender attraction for the man so rarely fitted to obtain them. In the midst of life and its triumphs, his thoughts perpetually turned upon death and its mysteries. Ever punctilious in the performance of his religious duties, he early began to take delight in spiritual contemplation, and to discipline his mind by self-imposed penance. Even in his favorite sport of falconry, he sought occasion for self-punishment by resolutely fixing his eyes on the ground at the moment when he knew that his best hawk was about to stoop upon the heron. These tendencies were fixed by an incident which followed the death of the empress Isabella. As her master of the horse, it was Borja's duty to attend the body from Toledo to the chapel-royal of the cathedral of Granada, and to make oath of its identity ere it was laid in the grave. But when the coffin was opened, and the cerements drawn aside, the progress of decay was found to have been so rapid, that the mild and lovely face of Isabella could no longer be recognized by the most trusted and most faithful of her servants. His conscience would not allow him to swear, that the mass of corruption thus disclosed was the remains of his royal mistress, but only that having watched day and night beside it, he felt convinced that it was the same form which he had seen wrapped in its shroud at Toledo. From that moment, in the twenty-ninth year of his prosperous life, he resolved to spend what remained to him of time in earnest preparation for eternity. A few years later, the death of his beautiful and excellent wife strengthened his purpose, and snapped the dearest tie which bound him to the world. Having completed the Jesuits' college at Gandia, their first establishment of that kind in Europe, and having married his son and his two daughters, he put his affairs in order and retired into the young and still struggling society of Ignatius Loyola. In the year 1548, the thirty-eighth of his age, he ceased to be duke of Gandia, and became father Francis of the Company of Jesus. Borja did not appear at Yuste as a chance or uninvited guest. Charles seems to have regarded him with an affection as strong as his cold nature was capable of entertaining. It was with no ordinary interest that he watched the career of the man whom alone he had chosen to make the confidant of his intended abdication, and who had unexpectedly forestalled him in the execution of the scheme. They were now in circumstances in some respects similar, in others widely different. Both had voluntarily descended from the eminence of their hereditary fortunes. Broken in health and spirits, the emperor had come to Yuste to rest and to die. The duke, on the other hand, in the full vigor of his age, had entered the humblest of the religious orders, to work out his salvation in a course of self-denial and toil, ending only in the grave. His career in the Company began with severe theological study, from which he passed to the pulpit and the professor's chair. As provincial of Aragon and Andalusia, he had been for some time laboring as a preacher, and teacher in various cities of Spain; he had founded colleges at Plasencia and Seville; and he was now delivering lectures at Alcala, in the college which Jesuit energy soon raised to be the stately pile which still forms one of the most prominent ruins of that Palmyra of universities. It seems to have been in the early spring of the year 1557, that the emperor determined to send for his old companion and counsellor. The message was conveyed to Alcala by a servant of the count of Oropesa. Borja at first excused himself, pleading ill-health and the duties of his calling; and it was not until he had received a second summons, from the mouth of the duke of Medina-Celi, that he consented to go to Yuste. On the way he was met by a messenger, bearing a letter from the regent Juana, which advised him that her father's object in seeking an interview was to persuade him to pass from the Company into the order of St. Jerome. He arrived at the monastery early in December, attended by two brothers of the order, father Marcos, and father Bartolomé Bustamente, the latter known to fame as a scholar, and as architect of the noble hospital of St. John Baptist at Toledo. The emperor not only paid his guest the unusual compliment of lodging him in his own quarters, but even busied himself in making preparations for his reception. To make his chamber as comfortable as conventual austerity would permit, Luis Quixada had hung it with some tapestry which remained in the meagre imperial wardrobe. But this his master, judging that it would rather offend than please the visitor, caused him to take down, supplying its place with some black cloth, of which he despoiled the walls of his own cell. The royal recluse received the noble missionary with a cordiality which was more foreign to his nature than to his habits, but which on this occasion was probably sincere. Both had withdrawn themselves from the pomps and vanities of life; but, custom being stronger than reason or faith, their greeting was as ceremonious as if it had been exchanged beneath the canopy of state at Augsburg or Valladolid. Not only did the Jesuit, lapsing into the grandee, kneel to kiss the hand of Charles, but he even insisted on remaining upon his knees during the interview. Charles, who addressed him as duke, of course frequently entreated him to rise and be seated, but in vain. "I humbly beg your majesty," said he, "to suffer me to continue kneeling; for I feel," he added, in a spirit of extravagant loyalty, "as if, in the presence of your majesty, I were in the presence of God himself." Being aware of his host's intentions with regard to himself and his habit, he anticipated them, by asking permission to give an account of his life since he made religious profession, and of the reasons which had led him to join the Jesuits,--"of which matters," he said, "I will speak to your majesty as I would speak to my Maker, who knows that all that I am going to say is true." Leave being granted, he narrated, at great length, how, being resolved to enter a monastic order, he had prayed, and caused many masses to be said, for God's guidance in making his choice; how, at first, he inclined to the rule of St. Francis, but found that, whenever his thoughts went in that direction, he was seized with an unaccountable melancholy; how he turned his eyes to the other orders, one after another, and always with the same gloomy result; how, on the contrary, when it at last occurred to him to join the Company, the Lord had filled his soul with peace and joy; how it frequently happened in the great orders that churchmen arrived at higher honors in this life than if they had remained in the world, a chance which he desired by all means to shun, and which was hardly offered in a recent and humble fraternity, still in the furnace of trial through which the others had long ago passed; how the Company, by embracing in its scheme the active as well as the contemplative life, provided for the spiritual welfare of men of the most opposite characters, and of each man in the various stages of his mental being; and lastly, how he had submitted these reasons to several grave and holy fathers of the other orders, and had received their approval and blessing before he took the vows which for ten years had been the hope and consolation of his life. The emperor listened to this long narrative with attention, and expressed his satisfaction at hearing his friend's history from his own lips. "For," said he, "I felt great surprise when I received at Augsburg your letter from Rome, notifying the choice you had made of a religious brotherhood. And I still think, that a man of your weight ought to have entered an order which had been approved by age rather than this new one, in which no white hairs are found, and which besides, in some quarters, bears but an indifferent reputation." To this Borja replied, that in all institutions, even in Christianity itself, the purest piety and the noblest zeal were to be found near the source; that had he been aware of any evil in the Company, he would never have joined, or he would already have quitted it; and that, in the matter of white hairs, though it was hard to expect that the children should be old while the parent was still young, even these were not wanting, as might be seen in his companion, the father Bustamente. That ecclesiastic, who had begun his novitiate at the age of sixty, was accordingly called into the presence. The emperor at once recognized him as a priest who had been sent to his court at Naples, soon after the campaign of Tunis, charged with an important mission by Cardinal Tavera, primate of Spain. Three hours of discourse with these able, earnest, and practised champions of Jesuitism appear to have had their natural influence on the mind of Charles. He hated innovation with the hate of a king, a devotee, and an old man; and having fought for forty years a losing battle against the reform of the terrible monk of Saxony, he looked with suspicion even upon the great orthodox movement, led by the soldier of Guipuzcoa. The infant Company, although, or perhaps because, in favor at the Vatican, had gained no footing in the imperial court; and as its fame grew, the prelates around the throne, sons or friends of the ancient orders, were more likely to remind their master, that its general had been once admonished by the holy office of Toledo, than to dwell on his piety and eloquence, or on the splendid success of his missions in the East. But from his ancient servant and brother in arms, in the quiet shades of Yuste, Charles heard a different tale, which seems to have changed his feelings towards the Jesuits, from distrust and dislike, to approval and friendly regard. Sometimes the talk of the emperor and his guest was of old times, and of their former selves. "Do you remember," said Charles, "how I told you in 1542, at Monçon," during the holding of the Cortes of Aragon, "of my intention of abdicating the throne? I spoke of it to only one person besides." The Jesuit replied that he had kept the secret truly, but that now he hoped he might mention the mark of confidence with which he had been honored. "Yes," said Charles; "now that the thing is done, you may say what you will." One of the emperor's most curious and interesting revelations to Borja, was the fact that he had composed memoirs of a part of his reign. He asked if the father thought that a man's writing an account of his own actions savored too much of vanity; and said, that he had drawn up a notice of his various campaigns and travels, not with any view to vain-glory, but in order that the truth might be known; for he had observed in the works of the historians of his time, that they were led into error, as much by ignorance, as by passion and prejudice. What judgment Borja delivered upon this case of conscience does not appear. Nor is the fate of the memoirs known. But the work cannot have been large, having been composed to beguile time spent in sailing down the Rhine from Mayence. Van Male, to whose letters we owe our knowledge of this fact, and who was employed to translate his master's French into Latin, praises the terseness and elegance of the style. This translation was spoken of, in 1560, by Ruscelli, in a letter addressed to Philip II., as soon to be published; and Brantome wonders why so excellent a speculation could have been neglected by the booksellers. It is plain, therefore, that Borja is not to be blamed for the loss, if they are indeed lost, of the precious commentaries of the Cæsar of Castile. And indeed, though a saint, and an advocate for the mortification of all worldly desires, he was hardly capable of advising the imperial author to put his manuscript in one of his Flemish fireplaces. The stern ascetic had not quite cast off, or, at least, on occasion he could reassume, the ways and language of the insinuating chamberlain. To one of the devout queries of the emperor, he replied in a style of courtly gallantry, which sounds strange in the mouth of the friend of Francis Xavier, and would have done honor to a later Jesuit, who labored in the vineyard of Versailles. Narrating the course of his penances and prayers, Charles asked him whether he could sleep with his clothes on; "for, I must confess," added he, contritely, "that my infirmities, which prevent me from doing many things of the kind that I would gladly do, render this penance impossible in my case." Borja, who practised every kind of self-punishment, and had in early life in one year fasted down a cubit of his girth, eluded the question by an answer, which was perhaps as remarkable for modesty as for dexterity. "Your majesty," said he, "cannot sleep in your clothes, because you have watched so many nights in mail. Let us thank God that you have done more service by keeping those vigils in arms, than many a cloistered monk who sleeps in his hair-shirt." The new allegiance of the Jesuit did not permit him to spare more than three days to his old master. Duty required him once more to take his staff in his hand, and proceed on his visitation of the rising schools and colleges of the company. While at Yuste he had been treated with marked distinction. Not only did his host arrange the upholstery of his apartment, but he sent him each day the most approved dish from his own table, the only part of his establishment which was somewhat removed from conventual meagerness. The honored guest set forth to Valladolid, with the pleasing impression that he left regrets behind him; and he likewise carried away two hundred ducats for alms, which Luis Quixada had been directed to force upon his acceptance. "It is a small sum," said the mayordomo; "but in comparison with the present revenues of my lord the emperor, it is the largest bounty which he ever bestowed at one time." John III., king of Portugal, dying on the 11th of June, 1557, state or family affairs required Charles to send a trusty messenger to his sister, the widowed queen Catherine. He immediately bethought him of his cousin and counsellor, the Jesuit, whose order had early gained the ear of the deceased monarch, and who himself enjoyed the friendship and confidence of all that remained of the house of Avis. Borja received the summons at Simancas, where he had founded a small establishment, and whither he loved to escape from the court of Valladolid, to unstinted penance and prayer. The sun of July had begun to scorch the naked plains of the Duero, and the good father was in poor health. Nevertheless, he repaired to Yuste and received his instructions; and then scorning repose in the cool woodlands, at once took the road to Portugal across the charred wastes of Estremadura. This haste, and the heat, threw him into a fever, of which he nearly died in the city of Evora; and when once more able to resume his journey, he was nearly lost, in a squall, in crossing the Tagus to Lisbon. His mission accomplished, he eluded the nursing of the queen and the Cardinal Henry, and hurried back to Yuste, where he probably arrived early in September. The usual gracious reception awaited him. The nature of his business in Portugal has not been recorded by his biographers. But he seems to have conducted it to the emperor's satisfaction. It was on this occasion, or the last, that Charles returned certain letters addressed to him, by Father Francis, on the politics and politicians of the day, and written at his request, and on condition of close secresy. "You may be sure," said he, on restoring them, "that no one but I have seen them." The confidence thus reposed in the judgment and observation of the Jesuit, by the shrewdest prince of the age, shows how keenly the things of earth may be scanned by eyes which seem wholly fixed on heaven. The emperor likewise told him of a dispute between two nobles, which had been referred to him for decision, and on which he desired his opinion, because he probably knew on whose side the right lay. The dispute was about a title to certain lands, and the parties were Borja's son, Charles, then duke of Gandia, and Don Alonso de Cardona, admiral of Aragon. Thus appealed to, the father behaved with that stoical indifference to the voice of blood which somewhat shocked his lay admirers, and commanded the loud applause of his reverend biographers. "I know not," he said, "whose cause is the just one; but I pray your majesty not only not to allow the admiral to be wronged, but to show him all the favor compatible with equity." On the emperor's expressing some not unnatural surprise, this Cato of the company offered the very poor explanation of his request, that, perhaps, the admiral needed the disputed lands more than the duke, and that it was good to assist the necessitous. Borja paid a fourth and last visit in the following year, 1558, to the monastery. He was sent for by the emperor for the benefit of his spiritual counsels, possibly after he had been attacked by his closing illness. For within a few days after the minister's return to Valladolid, tidings reached the court that the invalid was no more. During his brief sojourn at Yuste, his holy conversation and example awakened the religious zeal of Magdalena de Ulloa, the wife of the mayordomo, Quixada. The good seed thus chance-sown by the wayside sprang up in after years, bearing abundant fruit for the company in the three colleges founded and endowed by that devout lady at Villagarcia, Santander, and Oviedo. Almost a century after his visits, the fame of the third general of the Jesuits lingered in the country around Yuste. In 1650, the centenarian of Guijo, a neighboring village, used to tell how he had seen the emperor and the Count of Oropesa on the road to Xarandilla, and to point out a great tree, under which they had partaken of a repast, and he, a child, had been permitted to pick up the crumbs. But of the individual impressions left on his memory by that remarkable group, none had endured for the third generation, except "the meek and penitent face of him they called the saintly duke,"--"_el duque santo_." In such occupations and in such companionship noiselessly glided away the cloister life of Charles V. The benefit which his health had reaped from the fine air of Yuste, was but transient. It began to decline rapidly in the spring of 1558, after the death of queen Eleanor, to whom he was tenderly attached. He caused funeral rites to be performed in her honor, in the church of the monastery, with all the pomp of light and music that the brotherhood could command. Indeed, funeral services were, in some sort, the festivals of his lugubrious life; for whenever he received intelligence of the death of a prince of the blood, or a knight of the Golden Fleece, he caused his obsequies to be celebrated by the Jeromites. He was also very mindful of the souls of his deceased friends, and the masses which were offered day by day up for himself were preceded by some for his father, his mother, and his wife. As his infirmities increased, his prayers grew longer, and his penances more severe. He wrapped his emaciated body in hair-cloth, and flogged it with scourges, which were afterwards found in his cell, stained with his blood. Restless and sleepless, he would roam, ghost-like, through the corridors of the convent, and call up the drowsy monks for the midnight services of the church. Once he was asked by a slugglish novice, whose slumbers he had broken, why he could not be satisfied with turning the world upside down, but must also disturb the peace and rest which it was reported he had come to seek at Yuste. From all secular things and persons he kept entirely aloof. Of the events then passing in the world, nothing stirred his curiosity or his interest but the ruthless crusade against heresy, led by Cardinal Valdés, the fiercest inquisitor since the days of Torquemada. For the great northern Reformation had made itself felt, though with feeble and transient effect, even in Spain,--as the Lisbon earthquake troubled the waters of Lochlomond. Strange questions were stirred in the schools of Alcala and Salamanca; new doctrines were taught from the pulpits of Seville and Valladolid; wool-clad wolves were said to lurk even in the folds of St. Francis and St. Dominic; and Lutheran traders ran casks of heretical tracts upon the shores of the bay of Cadiz. Amongst the persons arrested at Valladolid was Dr. Augustin Cazalla, canon of Salamanca, who had been one of the emperor's preachers, and as such, had resided, from 1546 to 1552, at the imperial court in Germany. Though he had distinguished himself in the land of the Reformation by sermons against its doctrines, and had returned to Spain with untarnished orthodoxy, he was accused not only with being infected with Lutheran principles, but of having "dogmatized," as the inquisition happily called preaching, in a conventicle at Valladolid. Charles was much moved when he heard of his arrest, not with pity for the probable fate of the man, but with horror of his crime. "Father," said he to the prior, "if there be any thing which could drag me from this retreat, it would be to aid in chastising heretics. For such creatures as these, however, this is not necessary; but I have written to the inquisition to burn them all, for none of them will ever become true Catholics, or are worthy to live." This recommendation, seldom neglected, was exactly observed in the case of the poor chaplain. Denying the offence of dogmatizing, he confessed having held heretical opinions, and offered to abjure them. Nevertheless he was "relaxed," or in secular speech, burnt, with thirteen companions, at Valladolid, in the presence of the princess-regent and her court. A more illustrious victim of the holy office was Constantine Ponce de la Fuente, canon of Seville, and famous both as a pulpit orator, and as author of several theological works, which were much esteemed in Italy as well as Spain. He, too, had attended the emperor in Germany, as his preacher and almoner. For him Charles seemed to entertain more respect; for upon hearing that he had been committed to the castle of Triana, he remarked, "If Constantine is a heretic, he will prove a great one." The canon's "merits," for so the inquisition, with a sort of grim humor, called the acts or opinions which qualified a man for the stake, were certain heretical treatises in his handwriting, which had been dug with his other papers out of a wall. Confessing to the proscribed doctrines, but refusing to name his disciples, he was thrown into a dungeon, damp and noisome as Jeremiah's pit, far below the level of the Guadalquivir, where a dysentery soon delivered him from his chains. "Yet did not his body," says the historian[K] of Spanish literature, writing several ages after, with all the bitterness of a contemporary, "for this escape the avenging flames." His bones, and a carefully modelled effigy of him, with outstretched arms, as he charmed the crowd from the pulpits of Seville, figured at the _auto-da-fé_ which, in 1560, illuminated the burning-place, the _quemadero_, of that city. Another sufferer there, Fray Domingo de Guzman, was also known to the emperor. His arrest, however, merely drew from him the contemptuous remark, that fray Domingo might have been shut up as much for idiocy as for heresy. In looking back on the religious troubles of his reign, Charles bitterly regretted that he did not put Luther to death when he was in his power. He had spared him, he said, on account of his pledged word, which, indeed, he would have been bound to respect had the offences of Luther merely concerned his own authority; but he now saw that he had erred, in preferring the obligation of his promise to the greater duty of avenging upon that arch-heretic his offences against God. Had Luther been removed, he conceived the plague might have been stayed: now, it was going on from bad to worse. He had some consolation, however, in recollecting how steadily he refused to hear the points at issue argued in his presence. At this price he had declined to purchase the support of some of the protestant princes of the empire, when marching against the duke of Saxony and the landgrave of Hesse; he had declined it even when flying, with only ten horsemen, before the army of duke Maurice. He knew how dangerous it was, especially for those who, like himself, had little learning, to parley with heretics, who were armed with reasons so apt and so well ordered. Suppose one of their arguments had been planted in his soul; how did he know that he could ever have got it rooted out? So have many better men of every form of faith learned to look upon their belief as something external to themselves, to be kept hid away in the dark, lest, like ice, it should melt in the free air and light of heaven. The grave was now in all his thoughts. One morning, his barber, a malapert of the old comedies, ventured to ask him what he was thinking of. "I am thinking," replied Charles, "that I have here a sum of two thousand crowns, which I cannot employ better than in performing my funeral." "Do not let that trouble your Majesty," rejoined the fellow; "if you die and we live, we will take care to bury you with all honors." "You do not perceive, Nicolas," said the emperor, rather pursuing his own train of thought than replying to the barber, "that it makes a difference in a man's walking, if he holds the light before or behind him." The same opinion had been held by a bishop of Liege, Cardinal Erard de la Mark, whom Charles must have known, and whose example perhaps suggested the idea. For many years before 1558, the year of his death, did this prelate rehearse his obsequies, annually carrying his coffin to the tomb which he had prepared for himself in his cathedral. Before deciding on the step, however, the emperor determined to submit the question to his confessor, Fray Juan de Regla. They had just been hearing the service for the souls of his parents and his wife. Speaking of such rites in general, he asked the friar if they were most effectual when performed before, or when performed after, death. Fray Juan, after due deliberation, gave his verdict in favor of solemnities which preceded decease. "Then," said the emperor, "I will have my funeral performed while I am still alive." Accordingly, this celebrated service took place next day, being the 30th of August, 1558. So short a time being allowed for the preparations, they cannot have severely drained the bag of dollars, which Nicholas the barber wished to reserve for other purposes. A wooden monument, however, was erected in the chapel in front of the high altar; the ornaments of the convent were brought out and arranged to the best advantage; and the whole was illuminated with a blaze of wax-lights. The household of the emperor, all in deep mourning attended; and thither Luis Quixada brought Don Juan, from his sports in the forest, to learn his first lesson of the vanity of human greatness. "The pious monarch himself," says the historian of the Jeromites, "was there, in sable weeds, and bearing a taper, to see himself interred, and to celebrate his own obsequies." And when the solemn mass for the defunct was sung, he came forward and gave his taper into the hands of the officiating priest, in token of his desire to yield his soul into the hands of his Maker. High above, over the kneeling throng, and the gorgeous vestments, the flowers, and the incense, and the glittering altar--the same idea shone forth in that splendid canvas of Titian, which pictured Charles kneeling on the threshold of the heavenly mansion. When the dirge was sung, and the ceremonies over, and Charles had, as it were, come back for a little while to life, he told his confessor that he felt the better for being buried. Of a scene which might well have shaken the nerves of the boldest hunter on the Sierra, he said next day, that it had filled his soul with joy and consolation that seemed to react upon his body. That evening he caused to be brought, from the repository where his few valuables were kept, a portrait of the empress, and hung for some time, lost in thought, over the gentle face, which, in its blue eyes, auburn hair, and pensive beauty, somewhat resembled the noble countenance of that other Isabella, the great queen of Castile. He next called for a picture of our Lord praying in the Garden; and after long gazing, passed from that to a Last Judgment, by Titian. Perhaps this was a sketch or small copy of the great altar-piece, or it may be that he turned to the original itself, which could be seen by opening the window, through which his bedchamber commanded a view of the altar. Having looked his last upon the image of the wife of his youth; it seemed as if he were now bidding farewell, in the contemplation of this masterpiece, to the noble art which he loved with a love that years, and cares, and sickness could not quench, and that will ever be remembered with his better fame. He remained so long abstracted and motionless, that the physician who was on the watch thought it right to awake him from his reverie. On being spoken to, he turned round and said, "I feel myself ill." The doctor felt his pulse, and pronounced him in a fever. He was seated at the moment in the open gallery, to the west of his apartments, into which the sinking sun poured his tempered splendor through the boughs of the great walnut-tree. From this pleasant spot, filled with the fragrance of the garden and the murmur of the fountain, and bright with glimpses of the golden Vera, they carried him to the gloomy chamber of his sleepless nights, and laid him on the bed from which he was to rise no more. His old enemy, the gout, had not troubled him for several days. The disorder with which he was now attacked was a tertian fever, likewise a malady familiar to his shattered frame. The fits now were of unusual violence, the cold fit lasting twice as long as the hot. His physician twice attempted to relieve him by bleeding, but the operation seemed rather to augment than allay the violence of the disease. Being sensible that his hour was come, and wishing to add a codocil to his will, he dispatched a messenger to Valladolid, to the regent Juana, requiring an authorization for his secretary Gaztelu to act as a notary for the purpose. The princess, seeing the imminence of the danger, along with the authorization, instantly sent off her physician, Cornelio, to Yuste, while she herself prepared to follow. It is possible that she also sent father Borja, to pay a last visit of consolation to his friend. The emperor had made his will at Brussels, on the 6th of June, 1554. The codocil is dated at Yuste, the 9th of September, 1558. From the great length of this document, its minuteness, and the frequent recurrence of provisions in case of his death before he should see his son, an event which now was beyond hope, it seems to have been prepared some time before. But as it must have been read to him before his trembling hand affixed the necessary signature, it remains as a proof that one of his last acts was to urge Philip II., by his love and allegiance, and his hope of salvation, to take care that "the heretics were repressed and chastised, with all publicity and rigor, as their faults deserved, without respect of persons, and without regard to any plea in their favor." The rest of the paper is filled with directions for his funeral, and with a list of legacies to forty-eight servants, and many thoughtful arrangements for the comfort of those who had followed him from Flanders. Though willing to send all his Protestant subjects to martyrdom, he watched with fatherly kindness over the fortunes of his grooms and scullions. It is said that Fray Juan de Regla proposed that Don Juan of Austria should be named in the will as next heir to the crown after Philip, his sister, and his children; but if this incredible advice were given by the confessor, the dying man had energy enough left to reject it with indignation. Day by day the tide of life continued to ebb with visible fall. The sick man, however, was still able to attend to his devotions, to confess, and to receive the sacrament. He would not allow his confessor, Regla, to be absent from his bedside, and the poor man, who could hardly find a moment for his repasts, was nearly worn out with incessant watching. On every Sunday and feast day, at half-past three in the afternoon, the chaplain, Villalva, preached in the church, the window of the sick-room being left open, and the doors being shut to all but the friars. The patient likewise frequently caused passages of Scripture to be read to him, and was never weary of hearing the psalm which begins, _Domine! refugium factum es nobis_. On the 19th of September, towards evening, the patient asked for the rite of extreme unction. By the desire of the prior, Luis Quixada, who was ever at his pillow, inquired whether he would have it administered according to the form for friars, or after the briefer fashion of the laity. He chose the former, in which the seven penitential psalms were read, as well as a litany and sundry prayers and verses of scripture. During the reading of the psalms, it was observed that he joined in the responses of the monks with an audible voice. When the ceremony was over, instead of being exhausted, he seemed to have been revived by it. His appetite for food having entirely failed him for some days, Quixada seized the opportunity of urging him to take some. "Trouble me not, Luis Quixada," said he; "my life is going out of me, and I cannot eat." The next morning, the 20th, he asked for the eucharist. His confessor told him that having received extreme unction, the other sacrament was unnecessary. "It may not be necessary," said the dying man; "yet it is good company on so long a journey." His wish was accordingly complied with; the wafer was brought to his bedside, followed by the whole community in solemn procession, and he received it from the hands of his confessor with tears of devotion, incessantly repeating the words of our Saviour, "_In me manes, ego in te maneam_." In spite of his extreme weakness, he remained for a quarter of an hour kneeling in his bed, and uttering devout ejaculations, in praise of the blessed sacrament, which the simple friars attributed to divine inspiration. On the evening of the 19th of September, a remarkable visitor knocked at the gate of Yuste. It was the new Archbishop of Toledo, Bartolomè Carranza de Miranda--a name which stands high on the list of the Wolseys of the world, of men remembered less for their splendid success than for their signal fall. From a simple Dominican, he had risen to be a professor at Valladolid, a leading doctor of Trent, prior of Palencia, provincial of Spain, and prime adviser of Philip II. in that movement which Spanish churchmen loved to call the reduction of England. During Mary's reign, the ruthless black friar had been a mark for popular vengeance; and Oxford, Cambridge, and Lambeth, long remembered how he had preached the sacrifice of the mass, dug up the bones of Bucer, and presided at the burning of Cranmer. For these services he had been rewarded by Philip II. with the richest see in Christendom; and he was now on his way to take possession of the throne of Toledo, little thinking that his enemy, the inquisitor Valdes, was already preparing the indictment which was to make his reign a long disgrace. The archbishop was expected at Yuste. He had been long known to the Emperor, who had paved the way for his success by sending him to display his lore at the council of Trent. Charles had afterwards offered him the Peruvian bishopric of Cuzco, the post of confessor to the heir-apparent of Spain, and lastly, the bishopric of the Canaries. His refusal of all these pieces of preferment caused his patron some surprise, which was changed into displeasure by his acceptance of the see of Toledo. Reports had also got abroad, which cast a doubt on the orthodoxy of the new prelate,--of all doubts, as Charles thought, the gravest. He was anxious for an opportunity of conversing with him, partly, it seems, to upbraid him with his new honors, and partly in order to ascertain how far these reports were well founded. William, one of his barbers, related that he had heard his majesty say, "When I gave Carranza the bishopric of the Canaries, he refused it; now he accepts Toledo. We shall see what we are to think of his virtue." In this frame of mind, he had been expecting the unconscious prelate for some time; these feelings of dislike being, no doubt, strengthened by his confessor, father Regla, a bitter enemy, and one of the foremost accusers of Carranza. There can be no doubt that the ruin of this celebrated man was decreed on evidence which would have been listened to only by a secret tribunal of unscrupulous enemies. It may be that some of his printed theology contained--what theology does not?--passages capable of interpretations neither intended nor foreseen by the writer; it may be that he had pillaged the writings of reformers, whose persons he would willingly have given to the flames. But it is certain that he was a man of unambitious nature, of active benevolence, and, according to the notions of that age, of exemplary life; that he was a scholar and theologian of practised and consummate skill, a wary shepherd of the faithful, a relentless butcher of heretics; that he carried his reluctance to the mitre so far beyond the bounds of decent clerical coyness, as to recommend three eminent rivals to Philip II., as more fit and proper than himself for the primacy; and that one of his first acts, as archbishop, was to advise the king to appropriate the revenues of a canonry in every cathedral in Spain to the use of the Inquisition. Setting aside, therefore, the palpable personal hatred which betrayed itself in all the proceedings against him, it seems probable that he spoke the plain truth, when he made his dying declaration, that he had never held any of the heretical opinions of which he had been accused. In after days, when enduring the sickness of deferred hope in his prison at Valladolid or at Rome, the archbishop perhaps regarded it as one of the mischances which marked the ebb of his fortunes, that he reached Yuste too late either to explain to the emperor the circumstances of his promotion, or to remove the suspicion which had been cast on his faith. On the evening of his arrival, Charles was too ill to receive him, and the day following, although he was thrice admitted into the sick room, he found occasion to utter only a few words. Those words, few and simple as they were, were some weeks after reported to the Holy Office, with, as it seems, gross exaggeration, by the confessor, father Regla. On the 20th of September, it was evident that the end was approaching. The few friends of the emperor who lived in the neighborhood had assembled at the convent. The count of Oropesa was there from Xarandilla, with several of the family of Toledo, and Don Luis de Avila had come from Plasencia. They, and the prior and some of the monks, were frequently in the sick-room, in which Quixada kept constant watch. The patient had hardly spoken during the whole day. In the afternoon, when Oropesa introduced the archbishop, he merely told him to be seated, but was unable to hold any conversation. Towards night he grew hourly worse. The physicians, Mathesio and Cornelio, at last announced to the group around the bed, that the resources of their art were exhausted, and that all hope was over. Cornelio, the court doctor from Valladolid, then retired; Mathesio remained, feeling the pulse of the dying man, and saying at intervals, "His majesty has only two hours to live--only one hour--only half an hour." Charles meanwhile lay in a stupor, seemingly unconscious of what was going on around him, but now and then mumbling a prayer, and turning his eyes to heaven. At last he roused himself, and pronounced the name of William Van Male. On the man's coming to his support, he leaned towards him, as if to obtain ease by a change of posture; at the same time uttering a groan of agony. The physician now looked towards the door, and said to the archbishop, who was standing there in the shade, "_Domine! jam moritur_." The prelate approached, and knelt down by the bed, holding a crucifix in his hand, and saying in a loud tone, "Behold him who answers for sin; sin is no more; all is forgiven!" Sad and swarthy of visage, Carranza had also a hoarse, disagreeable voice. On hearing it, the emperor gave signs of impatience so distinct, that the faithful Quixada thought it right to interfere and say, "Hark, my lord, you are disturbing his majesty." The archbishop took the hint, and retired. It was near two o'clock on the morning of the 21st of September, St. Matthew's day. Fray Francisco de Villalva, the favorite chaplain, now presented himself at the bedside. Addressing the dying man, he told him how blessed a privilege he enjoyed in having been born on the day of St. Matthias, the apostle, who had been chosen by lot to complete the number of the twelve, and in being about to die on the day of St. Matthew, the evangelist, who, for Christ's sake, had forsaken wealth, as his majesty had forsaken imperial power. For some time he continued to hold forth in the same edifying strain. At length, Charles, rousing himself, said, "The time is come, bring me the candle and the crucifix." These were cherished relics, which he had kept in reserve for this supreme hour. The one was a taper from Our Lady's shrine at Monserrat; the other, a crucifix of beautiful workmanship, which before had been taken from the dead hand of his mother Juana, in the convent of Tordesillas, and which afterwards comforted the last moments of his son Philip, in the convent of the Escorial. When brought by the attendant, he turned eagerly to receive them; and taking one into each hand, he remained silent for some minutes, with his eyes fixed upon the figure of the Saviour. Those who stood nearest the bed then heard him say, quickly, as if replying to a sudden call, "_Ya voy, Señor_--Now, Lord, I go." A few moments of death-wrestle between soul and body followed; and then, with a voice loud and clear enough to be heard in the other apartments, he cried three times, "_Ay, Jesus!_" and expired. In or near the chamber of death were assembled the prior and the chaplains, and the household; the count of Oropesa, his brother Don Francisco, his cousin, Don Juan Pacheco, and his uncle Diego abbot of Cabañas, Don Luis de Avila, and archbishop Carranza. Don Juan of Austria, too, in the quality of page to Quixada, stood by the death-bed of him he was afterwards so proud to call his sire. On the day of the death, and part of the day following, the physicians and attendants were engaged in embalming the body, and arranging it for the grave. Meanwhile, a leaden coffin was prepared, and likewise a massive outer case of chestnut wood, and a black velvet pall to cover the whole. Sandoval had heard, but gave no credit to the story, of the coffin which the emperor was said to have brought with him to Yuste, and to have kept under his bed. Another version of the tale, he says, made the coffin a winding-sheet, but no mention of either was found in the minute account drawn up by the prior Angulo. When all was ready, the coffin was lowered, by ten or twelve men, through the window which opened from the bedchamber into the church, and placed upon a stage erected in the middle of the isle. These preparations were hardly completed, when the corregidor of Plasencia arrived with his clerks and constables, and asserted that, as the emperor had died within his jurisdiction, it was his duty to see that the remains had been deposited in a place of safety. In spite, therefore, of the remonstrances of the prior, he caused the coffins to be opened, that he might identify the body. The solemn funeral services, or the honors, as they were called, were commenced the next day, Tuesday, the 27th of October. They were an expansion of the rites in which the emperor had himself taken part a few weeks before, and they lasted for three days. Mass was said each day by the Archbishop of Toledo, the prior of Yuste assisting as deacon, and the prior of Granada as subdeacon, amongst the tears of the whole brotherhood. Funeral services were also preached, on the first day by the eloquent Villalva, on the second by the prior of Granada, and on the third by the prior of Yuste. The imperial dust was then committed to the earth. "Let my sepulchre," said the will of Charles, "be so ordered, that the lower half of my body lie beneath, and the upper half before, the high altar, that the priest who says mass may tread upon my head and breast." But the clergy present being divided in opinion as to the lawfulness of placing under the high altar a corpse not in the odor of sanctity, the matter was compromised by laying the coffin in a cavity made in the wall behind, so that it encroached only on a small portion of the holy ground. Funeral honors also took place in the presence of the regent and her court, in the beautiful church of the Royal Benedictines at Valladolid. A sermon was preached on the occasion by Francisco Borja, from the text, "_Ecce longavi fugiens et mansi in solitudine._"--"Lo! then would I wander afar off, and remain in the wilderness." (Psalm lv. 7.)[L] It was filled with praise of the emperor for his pious magnanimity in taking leave of the world before the world had taken leave of him--praise which, from the mouth of a Jesuit who had once been a wealthy grandee, must have savored somewhat of self-glorification. Amongst other edifying reminiscences of his friend, Borja told his hearers that he had it from the lips of the deceased, that never, since he was one-and-twenty years old, had he failed to set apart some portion of each day for inward prayer. Brussels excelled all the other cities of the Austrian dominion in the splendor with which she did honor to the emperor's memory. The ceremonies took place on the 29th and 30th of December. The procession, in which King Philip walked, attended by the dukes of Savoy and Brunswick, and a host of the nobility of Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands, was two hours in passing from the palace to the church of St. Gudule. Its principal feature was a huge galley, large enough for marine service, placed on a cunningly devised sea, which answered the double purpose of supporting some isles, emblematic of the Indies, and of concealing the power which rolled the huge structure along. Faith, Hope, and Charity, were the crew of this enchanted bark; and her sides were hung with twelve paintings of Charles's principal exploits, which were further set forth in golden letter-press on the black satin sails. A long line of horses followed, each led by two gentlemen, and bearing on its housings the blazon of one of the states of the emperor. They were led up the aisle of the church past the altar, and the seats occupied by the order of the Golden Fleece. As the last horse, covered with a black foot-cloth, went by, the count of Bossu, one of the knights, the early playmate and dear friend of the emperor, threw himself on his knees, and remained for some time prostrated on the pavement in an agony of grief. The chapel of Yuste was merely a temporary resting-place of the royal dead. In his will the emperor had confided the care of his bones to his son, expressing a wish, however, to be laid beside his wife and his father in the cathedral of Granada, in that splendid chapel-royal, rich with the tombs and trophies of Ferdinand and Isabella. Philip, however, shivering in the rear at St. Quentin, had already vowed to St. Lawrence the great monastery which it was his after delight to make the chief monument of the power and the piety of the house of Hapsburg. At the Escorial, therefore, he united the bones of his father and mother, and placed them, on the fourth of February, 1574, in a vault beneath the jasper shrine, which yet contains their fine effigies, wrought in bronze by Leoni. The occasion was marked by one of those terrific storms, sent, as the monks supposed, by the devil, in the hope of overthrowing that fortress of piety. A grand arch of timber, erected at the door of the church, was blown away, and its hangings of rich brocades, rent into minute shreds, were scattered far and wide over the surrounding chase. Eighty years later, the repose of the emperor was once more broken by his great-grandson, Philip IV. For thirty-three years that prince was engaged in building the celebrated Pantheon, begun by his father, Philip III. On the sixteenth of March, 1654, the dust of the Austrian kings of Spain and of their consorts who had continued the line, was translated from the plain vault of Philip II. to this splendid sepulchral chamber, which gleamed, in the light of a thousand tapers, with its marble and jasper and gold, like a creation of oriental romance. Each coffin was borne by three nobles and three Jeromite friars; the procession being headed by that of Charles V., carried by Don Luis de Haro, the Duke of Abrantes, and the Marquess of Aytona. As the remains were to be deposited in a marble sarcophagus, it became necessary to remove the previous coverings, which enabled Philip IV. to come face to face with his great ancestor. The body of the emperor was found to be quite entire. After looking at it for some minutes in silence, the king turned to Haro, and said, "Honored body, Don Luis." "Very honored," replied the minister; words, brief indeed, but very pregnant; for the prior of the Escorial has left it recorded "that they condensed all that a Christian ought to feel on so solemn an occasion." Charles did not leave the world without some of those portents in which the men of that age loved to trace the influence of a remarkable death upon the operations of nature. A comet appeared over the monastery at the beginning of his last illness, and was seen no more after the night on which he died. In the spring of 1558, a lily in his garden, beneath his windows, bore two buds, of which one flowered and withered in due course, but the other remained a bud through the summer and autumn, to the great astonishment of the gardener and the friars. But on the night of the twenty-first of September it burst into full bloom, an emblem of the whiteness of the parting spirit, and of the sure and certain hope of its reception into bliss. It was reverently gathered, and fastened upon the black veil which covered the sacramental shrine in the church. In the week following the grand obsequies, a pied bird, large as a vulture, but of a kind unknown at Yuste, perched at night on the roof of the church, exactly over the imperial grave, and disturbed the friars by barking like a dog. For five successive nights it barked there in the clear moonlight, always at the same hour, and always arriving from the east, and flying away towards the west. And four years later, a holy Capuchin of the New World, Fray Luis Mendez, as he knelt in his convent-chapel at Guatemala, was blessed with a vision, wherein he saw the emperor before the judgment-seat of our Lord, making his defence against the accusing demons, with so much success that he received honorable acquittal, and was in the end carried off to heaven by the angels of light. The codicil of the will of Charles, the only part of the document which belongs to his life at Yuste, is drawn up with a minuteness of detail very characteristic of the careful habits of the man. After a profession of attachment to the church, and hatred of heresy, and after the directions for his burial which have been already noticed, he proceeds to describe a monument and an altar-piece which he wished to be erected in the church of the convent, in the event of Yuste being chosen by his son for the final resting-place of his bones. The altar-piece was to be of alabaster, a copy in relief of Titian's picture of the "Last Judgment," the picture on which he was gazing at the moment when he first felt the touch of death. A custodia, or sacramental tabernacle, was likewise to be made of alabaster and marble, and placed between statues of himself and the empress. They were to be sculptured, kneeling with hands clasped as in prayer, barefoot, and with uncovered heads, and clad in sheets like penitents. For further particulars, he referred the king to Luis Quixada, and the confessor Regla, who were fully instructed in his meaning and wishes. In case of the removal of his body, instead of the altar-piece and monument, the convent was to receive a picture for their altar, of such kind as the king shall appoint. In compliance with this desire, Philip presented the monks with a copy of Titian's "Judgment," which adorned their high altar until the suppression of the convents, in 1823, when it was carried off to the parish church of Texeda. The emperor next expresses his concern at hearing that the pensions which he had granted to the servants whom he had dismissed at Xarandilla, had been very ill-paid, and he entreats the king to order their punctual payment for the future. He directs that the friars of Yuste and the friars from other convents, who had been specially employed in his service, as readers, preachers, and musicians, shall receive such gratuities as shall appear sufficient to father Regla and Quixada. To the confessor himself he bequeaths an annual pension of four hundred ducats (about 80_l._ sterling), and four hundred ducats in legacy. Of Luis Quixada he twice speaks in the most affectionate terms, acknowledging his long and good service, and his willing fidelity in incurring the expense and inconvenience of removing his wife and household to Yuste. Lamenting that he has done so little to promote his interest, he earnestly recommends him to the king's favor, and, with a legacy of 2000 ducats, he leaves him a pension to the value of his present appointment (without mentioning the sum), until he is provided with a place of greater emolument. He also desires that the Infanta will cause the amount of fines recovered by his attorney, or that might be recovered in cases still pending against the poachers and rioters of Quacos, to be paid into the hands of a person named by the executors for distribution amongst the poor of the village. The contents of his larder and cellar, and his stores of provisions in general, at the day of his decease, and likewise the dispensary, with its drugs and vessels, he leaves to the brotherhood of Yuste, and to the poor any money which may remain in his coffers after defraying the wages of his servants. These are all mentioned by name, and for the most part receive pensions, except a few to whom small gratuities are given, it being explained that previous provision has been made for them. The pensions range from four hundred florins (32_l._ sterling), conferred on the doctor, Enrique Mathesio, to ninety florins, which requite the services of Isabel Plantin, the laundress of the table-linen. The gratuities vary from 150,000 maravedis (about 45_l._ sterling), left to the secretary Gaztelu, to 7500, given to Jorge de Diana, a boy employed in the workshop of Torriano. That mechanician being already pensioned to the amount of 200 crowns, receives only 15,000 maravedis; he is likewise reminded that he has been paid something to account on the price of a clock which is in hand, and for which his employer is content that the executors shall pay a fair valuation. These sums were all to be paid at Valladolid. After the funeral service was ended, therefore, on the 29th of October, when the count of Oropesa and the other neighbors returned to their homes, and the archbishop took the road to Toledo, most of the household of the emperor were also ready to depart. Only three Flemings remained behind for a few days to bring up the rear with the heavy baggage. Within about a fortnight after the death of Charles, the Jeromites of Yuste were again alone among the yellow October woods, and the convent relapsed into its ancient obscurity, never more to be remembered, except as the cell of the imperial recluse. So ended the career of Charles V., the greatest monarch of the memorable sixteenth century. The vast extent of his dominions in Europe, the wealth poured into his coffers by the New World, the energy and sagacity of his mind, and the important crisis of the world's history in which he acted, have combined to make him more famous than any of the successors of Charlemagne. The admiration which was raised by the great events of his reign was sustained to the last by the unwonted manner of its close. In our days, abdication has been so frequently the refuge of weak men fallen on evil times, or the last shift of baffled bad men, that it is difficult for us to conceive the sensation which must have been produced by the retirement of Charles. Now that the "divinity which doth hedge a king" has decayed into a bowing wall and a tottering fence, it is almost impossible to look upon the solemn ceremony which was enacted at Brussels, with the feeling and eyes of the sixteenth century. The act of the emperor was not, indeed, a thing altogether unheard of, but it was known only in books, and belonged, as the Spaniard used to say, to the days of king Wamba. The knights of the Fleece who wept on the platform around their Cæsar, knew little more about Diocletian than was known by the farmers and clothiers who elbowed each other in the crowd below. It was only some studious monk who was aware that a Theodosius and an Isaac had submitted their heads to the razor to save their necks from the bowstring; that a Lothaire had led a hermit's life in the Ardennes; that a Carloman had milked the ewes of the Benedictines at Monte Cassino. The retirement of Charles, therefore, was fitted to strike the imagination of men by the novelty of the occasion, by the solemnity of its circumstances, by the splendor of the resigned crown, and by the world-wide fame with which it had been worn. There can be no doubt that the emperor gave the true reasons of his act, when, panting for breath, and unable to stand alone, he told the states of Flanders that he resigned the government because it was a burden which his shattered frame could no longer bear. It was to no sudden impulse, however, that he yielded; but he calmly fulfilled a resolve which he had cherished for many years. Indeed, he seems to have determined to abdicate, almost at the time when he determined to reign. For so powerful a mind has rarely been so tardy in giving evidence of power. Until he appeared in Italy in 1530, the thirtieth year of his age, his strong will had been as wax in the hands of other men. Up to that time the most laborious, reserved, and inflexible of princes was the most docile subject of his ministers. But if his mind was slow to ripen, his body was no less premature in its decay. By nature and hereditary habit a keen sportsman, and in youth unwearied in tracking the wolf and the bear over the hills of Toledo and Granada, he was reduced, ere he had turned fifty, to content himself with shooting crows and daws amongst the trees of his gardens. Familiarized by feeble health with images of death, he had determined twenty years before his abdication to interpose some interval of rest between the council and the grave. He had agreed with his empress, who died in 1538, that as soon as the state affairs and the age of their children should permit, they should retire into religious seclusion: he into a cloister of friars, and she into a nunnery. In 1542, he spoke of his design to the duke of Gandia; and in 1546 it was whispered at court, and was mentioned by the sharp-eared envoy of Venice, in a dispatch to the Doge. Since then, decaying health and declining fortune had maintained him in that general vexation of spirit which he shared with king Solomon. His later schemes of conquest and policy had resulted in disaster and disgrace. The Pope, the great Turk, the Protestant princes, and the king of France, were once more arrayed against the potentate who in the bright morning of his career had imposed laws upon them all. The flight from Innsbruck had avenged the cause which seemed lost at Muhlberg; Guise and the gallant townsmen of Metz had enabled the French wits to turn the emperor's proud motto, _Plus ultra_, into _Non ultra metas_. Whilst the Protestant faith was spreading even in the dominions of the house of Hapsburg, the doctors of the church assembled in that council which had cost so much treasure and intrigue, continued to quibble, for the sole benefit of the tavern-keepers of Trent. The finances both of Spain and the other Austrian states were in the utmost disorder, and the lord of Mexico and Peru had been forced to borrow from the duke of Florence. It is no wonder, therefore, that he seized the first gleam of sunshine and returning calm to make for the long-desired harbor of refuge; and that he relieved his brow of its thorny crowns as soon as he had attained an object dear to him as a father, a politician, and a devotee, by placing his son Philip on the rival throne of the heretic Tudors. His habits and turn of mind, as well as his Spanish blood, and the spirit of his age, made a convent the natural place of his retreat. Monachism seems to have had for him the charm, vague, yet powerful, which soldiership has for most boys; and he was ever fond of catching glimpses of the life which he had resolved, sooner or later, to embrace. When the empress died, he retired to indulge his grief in the cloisters of La Sisla, at Toledo. After his return from one of his African campaigns, he paid a visit to the noble convent of Mejorada, near Olmedo, and spent two days in familiar converse with the Benedictines, sharing their refectory fare, and walking for hours in their garden alleys of venerable cypress. When he held his court at Brussels, he was frequently a guest at the convent of Groenendael; and the monks commemorated his condescensions, as well as his skill as a marksman, by placing a bronze statue of him on the banks of their fish-pond, into which he had brought down a heron, from an amazing altitude, with his gun. Though unable at Yuste to indulge the love of sport, which may have had its influence in drawing him to the chestnut woods of the Vera, we have seen that he continued to the last to take his pleasure in the converse and companionship of the Jeromites. In the cloister, Charles was no less popular than he had been in the world; for in spite of his feeble health and phlegmatic temperament, in spite of his caution, which amounted to distrust, and his selfishness, which frequently took the form of treachery, in spite of his love of power, and the unsparing severity with which he punished the assertion of popular rights, there was still that in his conduct and bearing which gained the favor of the multitude. A little book, of no literary value, but frequently printed both in French and Flemish, sufficiently indicates in its title the qualities which colored the popular view of his character. "The Life and Actions, Heroic and Pleasant, of the invincible Emperor Charles V." was long a favorite chap-book in the Low Countries. It relates how he defeated Solyman the magnificent, and how he permitted a Walloon boor to obtain judgment against him for the value of a sheep, killed by the wheels of his coach; how he charged the Moorish horsemen at Tunis; and how he jested incognito with the woodmen of Soigne. A similar impression, deepened by his reputation for sanctity, he seems to have left behind him amongst the sylvan hamlets of Estremadura. In one point alone did Charles in the cell differ widely from Charles on the throne. In the world, fanaticism had not been one of his vices; he feared the keys no more than his cousin of England; and he confronted the successor of St. Peter no less boldly than he made head against the heir of St. Louis. When he held Clement VII. prisoner in Rome, he permitted at Madrid the mockery of masses for that pontiff's speedy deliverance. Against the Protestants he fought rather as rebels than as heretics; and he frequently stayed the hand of the triumphant zealots of the church. At Wittenberg, he set a fine example of moderation, in forbidding the destruction of the tomb of Luther--saying, that he contended with the living, and not with the dead. But once within the walls of Yuste, and he assumed all the passions, and prejudices, and superstitions of a friar. Looking back on his past life, he thanked God for the evil that he had done in the matter of religious persecution, and repented him, in sackcloth and ashes, of having kept his plighted word to a heretic. Religion was the enchanted ground whereon that strong will was paralyzed, and that keen intellect fell groveling in the dust. Protestant and philosophic historians love to relate how Charles, finding that no two of his time-pieces could be made to go alike, remarked that he had perhaps erred in spending so much blood and treasure in the hope of compelling men to uniformity in the more difficult matter of religion. We fear the anecdote must have been invented by some manufacturer of libels or panegyrics, such as Sleidan and Jovius, whom Charles was wont to call his liars. No remark of equal wisdom can be brought home to the lips of the Spanish Diocletian; nor was the philosophy "of him who walked in the Salonian garden's noble shade" ever heard amongst the litanies and the scourges which resounded through the cloisters of Yuste. To those who have perused this brief record of the recluse and his little court, it may be agreeable to know the subsequent fortunes of the personages who acted upon that miniature stage. Queen Mary of Hungary died at Cigales on the 28th of October, 1558, four weeks after the death of her brother. So passed away, in the same year, and within a few months of one another, the royal group who landed at Laredo. From Yuste, Luis Quixada and his wife returned to their house at Villagarcia, near Valladolid, taking Don Juan with them. When Philip II. arrived in Spain, in 1559, he received his brother and his guardian at the neighboring convent of San Pedro de la Espina. They afterwards followed the court to Madrid, where Quixada had an opportunity of signalizing his devotion to his master's son, by rescuing him from a fire, which burnt down their house in the night, before he attended to the safety of Doña Magdalena. This, and his other services, were not neglected by the king, who made him master of the horse to the heir-apparent, and president of the council of the Indies, and gave him several commanderies in the order of Calatrava. When Don Juan was sent to command against the Moriscos, whom Christian persecution and bad faith had driven to revolt in the Alpuxarras, the old major-domo went with him as a military tutor. They were reconnoitring the strong mountain fortress of Seron, when a bold sally from the place threw the Castilians into disorder bordering on flight, in the course of which a bullet from an infidel gun finished the campaigns of the comrade of Charles V. He fell, shot through the shoulder, by the side of his pupil; and he died of the wound at Canilles, on the 25th of February, 1570, in the arms of his wife, who had hurried from Madrid to nurse him. Don Juan buried him with military honors, and mourned for him as for a father. The good Doña Magdalena retired to Villagarcia, and employed her childless widowhood in works of charity and piety, in prayers for the soul of her husband, and for the success of her darling young prince. For the latter she also engaged in a work of a more practical and secular kind; for the hero of Lepanto wore no linen but what was wrought by her loving hands. His sad and early death severed her chief tie to the world, and left religion no rival in her heart. The companions of Francis Borja, who had first kindled the holy flames of her devotion at Yuste, became her guides and counsellors; and she built and endowed no less than three Jesuit colleges at Villagarcia, Santander, and Oviedo. Her life of gentle and blameless enthusiasm ended in 1598, when she was laid beside her lord in the collegiate church of Villagarcia. Amongst the relics of that temple, two crucifixes were held in peculiar veneration,--one being that which she had pressed to her dying lips, the other a trophy rescued by Luis Quixada from a church burned by the Moors in the war of the Alpuxarras. William Van Male, the gentle and literary chamberlain, returned to Flanders, with a slender annual pension of 150 florins, which was to be reduced one half on his becoming keeper of the palace at Brussels, an office of which the king had given him the reversion. He died in 1560, and was buried in the church of St. Gudule, at Brussels, where his widow, Hippolyta Reynen, was laid by his side in 1579. Father Borja continued to teach and to travel with unflagging zeal. Soon after preaching the emperor's funeral sermon, he was again in Portugal, visiting the colleges at Evora, Coimbra, and Braga, and aiding in the foundation of the college of Porto. Called to Rome by Pope Pius IV., to advise on affairs of the church, he was twice chosen vicar-general of the company; and finally, in 1565, he received the staff of Loyola. During his rule of seven years, the order lengthened its cords and strengthened its stakes in every part of the world, and in every condition of mankind. Its astute politicians gained the ear of princes and prelates who had hitherto been cold, or adverse; its colleges rose amid the snows of Poland, and the forests of Peru; Barbary, Florida, and Brazil, were watered with the blood of its martyrs; and its ministers of mercy moved amongst the roar of battle, on the bastions of Malta and the decks at Lepanto. The general of this great army visited his native Spain, for the last time, in 1571, when he was sent by Pope Pius V. to fan the anti-Turkish flame in the bosom of Philip II., and to add a morsel of the true cross to the relics of the Escorial. Of the offers to build houses for the company, which now poured in, the last that he accepted was Doña Magdalena de Ulloa's college at Villagarcia, thus finding, after many days, the bread which he had cast upon the waters at Yuste. From Spain, he went to preach the crusade at the courts of Portugal and France--an arduous journey, which proved fruitful of royal caresses, but fatal to his enfeebled frame. Falling ill by the way, he had barely strength to reach Rome to die. In the year 1572, the sixty-second of his age, he was laid beside his companions in toil and glory, and his predecessors in power, Loyola and Laynez. * * * * * "After long experience of the world," says Junius, "I affirm before God, I never knew a rogue who was not unhappy." Very likely: another author had intimated before the observations of Junius, that even the righteous "is of few days and full of trouble." FOOTNOTES: [K] Nicolas Antonio. [L] Psalm liv. 7. The Vulgate Psalm liv. is our Psalm lv. From the North British Review. DICKENS AND THACKERAY. Our impression of the difference between the two authors in the matter of style is very much what it has always been from a general reading acquaintance with their works, namely, that Mr. Thackeray is the more terse and idiomatic, and Mr. Dickens the more diffuse and luxuriant writer. Both seem to be easy penmen, and to have language very readily at their command; both also seem to convey their meaning as simply as they can, and to be careful, according to their notions of verbal accuracy; but in Mr. Dickens's sentences there is a leafiness, a tendency to words and images, for their own sake; whereas, in Mr. Thackeray's, one sees the stem and outline of the thought better. We have no great respect for that canon of style which demands in English writers the use of Saxon in preference to Latin words, thinking that a rule to which there are natural limitations, variable with the writer's aim and with the subject he treats; but we should suppose that critics who do regard the rule would find Mr. Thackeray's style the more accordant with it. On the whole, if we had to choose passages at random, to be set before young scholars as examples of easy and vigorous English composition, we would take them rather from Thackeray than from Dickens. There is a Horatian strictness, a racy strength, in Mr. Thackeray's expressions, even in his more level and tame passages, which we miss in the corresponding passages in Mr. Dickens's writings, and in which we seem to recognize the effect of those classical studies through which an accurate and determinate, though somewhat bald use of words becomes a fixed habit. In the ease, and at the same time thorough polish and propriety with which Mr. Thackeray can use slang words, we seem especially to detect the university man. Snob, swell, buck, gent, fellow, fogy--these, and many more such expressive appellatives, not yet sanctioned by the dictionary, Mr. Thackeray employs more frequently, we believe, than any other living writer, and yet always with unexceptionable taste. In so doing he is conscious, no doubt, of the same kind of security that permits Oxford and Cambridge men, and even, as we can testify, Oxford and Cambridge clergymen, to season their conversation with similar words--namely, the evident air of educated manliness with which they can be introduced, and which, however rough the guise, no one can mistake. In the use of the words genteel, vulgar, female, and the like--words which men diffident of their own breeding are observed not to risk; as well as in the art of alternating gracefully between the noun lady and the noun woman, the Scylla and Charybdis, if we may say so, of shy talkers--Mr. Thackeray is also a perfect master, commanding his language in such cases with an unconscious ease, not unlike that which enables the true English gentleman he is so fond of portraying, either to name titled personages of his acquaintance without seeming a tuft-hunter, or to refrain from naming them without the affectation of radicalism. In Mr. Dickens, of course, we have the same perfect taste and propriety; but in him the result appears to arise, if we may so express ourselves, rather from the keen and feminine sensibility of a fine genius, whose instinct is always for the pure and beautiful, than from the self-possession of a mind correct under any circumstances by discipline and sure habit. Where Mr. Dickens is not exerting himself, that is, in passages of mere equable narrative or description, where there is nothing to move or excite him, his style, as we have already said, seems to us more careless and languid than that of Mr. Thackeray; sometimes, indeed, a whole page is only redeemed from weakness by those little touches of wit, and those humorous turns of conception which he knows so well how to sprinkle over it. It is due to Mr. Dickens to state, however, that in this respect his "Copperfield" is one of his most pleasing productions, and a decided improvement on its predecessor "Dombey." Not only is the spirit of the book more gentle and mellow, but the style is more continuous and careful, with fewer of those recurring tricks of expression, the dread remnants of former felicities, which constituted what was called his mannerism. Nor must we omit to remark also, that in passages where higher feeling is called into play, Mr. Dickens's style always rises into greater purity and vigor, the weakness and the superfluity disappearing before the concentrating force of passion, and the language often pouring itself forth in a clear and flowing song. This, in fact, is according to the nature of the luxuriant or poetical genius, which never expresses itself in its best or most concise manner unless the mood be high as well as the meaning clear,--for maintaining the excellence of the style of a terse and highly reflective writer, such as Thackeray, on the other hand, the presence of a clear meaning is at all times sufficient, though, of course, here also the pitch and melody will depend on the mood.... There is one piece of positive doctrine, however, in which both Pen and Warrington agree, and of which Mr. Thackeray's writings are decidedly the exponents in the present day, as Mr. Dickens's are of the doctrine of kindliness. This doctrine may be called the doctrine of anti-snobbism. Singular fact! in the great city of London, where higher and more ancient faiths seem to have all but perished, and where men bustle in myriads, scarce restrained by any spiritual law, there has arisen of late years, as there arose in Mecca of old, a native form of ethical belief, by which its inhabitants are tried and try each other. "Thou shall not be a snob;" such is the first principle at present of Cockney ethics. And observe how much real sincerity there is in this principle, how it really addresses itself to facts, and only to facts, known and admitted. It is not the major morals of human nature, but what are called the minor morals of society, and these chiefly in their æsthetic aspect, as modes of pleasant breeding, that the Cockney system of ethics recognizes. Its maxims and commands are not "Thou shalt do no wrong," "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," "Thou shalt not covet,"--but, "Thou shalt pronounce thy H's," "Thou shalt not abuse waiters as if they were dogs," "Thou shalt not falsely make a boast of dining with peers and members of Parliament." He who offends in these respects is a snob. Thus, at least, the Cockney moralist professes no more than he really believes. The real species of moral evil recognized in London, the real kind of offence which the moral sentiment there punishes, and cannot away with, is snobbism. The very name, it will be observed, is characteristic and unpretentious--curt, London-born, irreverent. When you say that a man is a snob, it does not mean that you detest and abhor him, but only that you must cut him, or make fun of him. Such is anti-snobbism, the doctrine of which Mr. Thackeray, among his other merits, has the merit of being the chief literary expounder and apostle. Now it is not a very awful doctrine, certainly; it is not, as our friend Warrington would be the first to admit, the doctrine in the strength of which one would like to guide his own soul, or to face the future and the everlasting; still it has its use, and by all means let it have, yes, let it have its scribes and preachers. From Household Words. WORK AWAY! Work away! For the Master's eye is on us, Never off us, still upon us, Night and day! Work away! Keep the busy fingers plying, Keep the ceaseless shuttles flying; See that never thread lie wrong; Let not clash or clatter round us, Sound of whirring wheels, confound us; Steady hand! let wool be strong And firm, that has to last long! Work away! Keep upon the anvil ringing Stroke of hammer; on the gloom Set 'twixt cradle and 'twixt tomb Shower of fiery sparkles flinging; Keep the mighty furnace glowing; Keep the red ore hissing, flowing Swift within the ready mould; See that each one than the old Still be fitter, still be fairer For the master to behold: Work away! Work away! For the leader's eye is on us, Never off us, still upon us, Night and day! Wide the trackless prairies round us, Dark and unsunned woods surround us, Steep and savage mountains bound us; Far away Smile the soft savannahs green, Rivers sweep and roll between: Work away! Bring your axes, woodmen true; Smite the forest till the blue Of Heaven's sunny eye looks through Every wild and tangled glade; Jungle swamp and thicket shade Give to-day! O'er the torrents fling your bridges, Pioneers! Upon the ridges Widen, smoothe the rocky stair-- They that follow, far behind Coming after us, will find Surer, easier footing there; Heart to heart, and hand with hand, From the dawn to dusk o' day, Work away! Scouts upon the mountain's peak-- Ye that see the Promised Land, Hearten us! for ye can speak Of the country ye have scanned, Far away! Work away! For the Father's eye is on us, Never off us, still upon us, Night and day! WORK AND PRAY! Pray! and Work will be completer; Work! and Prayer will be the sweeter; Love! and Prayer and Work the fleeter Will ascend upon their way! Fear not lest the busy finger Weave a net the soul to stay; Give her wings--she will not linger; Soaring to the source of day; Cleaving clouds that still divide us From the azure depths of rest, She will come again! beside us, With the sunshine on her breast, Sit, and sing to us, while quickest On their task their fingers move, While the outward din wars thickest, Songs that she hath learned above. Live in Future as in Present; Work for both while yet the day Is our own! for Lord and Peasant, Long and bright as summer's day, Cometh, yet more sure, more pleasant, Cometh soon our Holiday; Work away! From Household Words. OUR PHANTOM SHIP.--JAPAN. We may as well go by the North-west passage as by any other, on our phantom voyage to Japan. Behring Straits shall be the door by which we enter the Pacific Ocean. We are soon flitting between islands; from the American peninsula of Alaska runs a chain of islands,--the Aleutian,--which lie sprinkled upon our track, like a train of crumbs dropped by some Tom Thumb among the giants, who may aforetime have been led astray, not in the wood, but on the water. If he landed on Kamtchatka, from the point of that peninsula he made a fresh start, dropping more crumbs,--the Kurile Islands,--till he dropped some larger pieces, and a whole slice for the main island of Japan, before he again reached the continent and landed finally on the Corea. In sailing by these islands, we have abundant reason to observe that they indicate main lines of volcanic action. From Behring Strait, in fact, we enter the Pacific, between two great batteries of subterranean fire. Steering for Japan, we pass, on the Kamtchatkan coast, the loftiest volcano in the old world, Kamtchatskaja (fifteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty-three feet). Following the course of the volcanic chain of Kurile Islands, of which the most northerly belong to Russia, the southern Kuriles are the first land we encounter subject to Japan. We do not go ashore here, to be sent to prison like Golownin, for we are content, at present, to remember that the natives of these islands are the hairiest among men. We sail on, too polite to outrage Japanese propriety by landing, even from a Phantom Ship, on the main island; so we sail to Kiusiu, and run into the bay of Nagasaki. The isles of Japan, calling rocks islands, are in number three thousand eight hundred and fifty. The main island, Nippon, is larger than Ireland, and is important enough to have been justly called the England of the Pacific Ocean. Only there is a mighty difference between this England, talking about liberty, or cherishing free trade, and that Dai Nippon; in which not a soul does as he pleases, and from which the commerce of the whole world is shut out. Dai (or great) Nippon is the name of the whole state, which the Chinese modify into Jih-pun, and which we have further altered to Japan. On Kiusiu, a large southern island, Nagasaki is the only port into which, on any possible excuse, a foreign vessel is allowed to enter. This port we are now approaching; the dark rocks of the coast line are reflected from a brilliant sea; we pass a mountain island, cultivated to the very summit, terrace above terrace; green hills invite us to our haven, and blue mountains in the distance tempt us to an onward journey. There are white houses shining among cedars; there are pointed temple roofs; boats with their sails up make the water near us lively; surely we shall like Japan. We enter the bay now, and approach Nagasaki, between fruitful hills and temple groves, steeps clothed with evergreen oak, cedars, and laurels, picturesque rocks, attacked by man, and wheedled out of practicable ground for corn and cabbages. There is Nagasaki on a hill side, regularly built, every house peeping from its little nest of greens; and there is the Dutch factory, named Dezima. Zima in Japanese means "island," for this factory is built upon an island. No Europeans but the Dutch; no Dutch except these managers of trade who are locked up in Dezima, may traffic with Japan; and these may traffic to the extent only of two ships yearly, subject to all manner of restrictions. As for the resident Dutch, they are locked up in Dezima, which is an island made on purpose for them. As if three thousand, eight hundred and fifty were not enough, another little island, fan-shaped, was built up out of the sea a few yards from the shore of Nagasaki. There the Dutchmen live; a bridge connects their island with the mainland, but a high gate and a guard of soldiers prevent all unseasonable rambles. In another part of the town there is a factory allowed to the Chinese. Other strangers entering this port are treated courteously, are supplied gratuitously with such necessaries as they want, but are on no account allowed to see the town, still less to penetrate into the country, and are required to be gone about their business as soon as possible. Strangers attempting entry at any other port belonging to Japan, are without ceremony fired upon as enemies. The admitted Dutch traders are rigorously searched; every thing betraying Christianity is locked up; money and arms are removed, and hostages are taken. Every man undergoes personal scrutiny. The Dutch are allowed no money. The Japanese authorities manage all sales for them; pay the minutest items of expenditure, and charge it on the profits of their trade, which are then placed on the return vessel, not in money, but in goods. The Japanese deal justly, even generously, in their way; but it is their way to allow the foreigners no money power. They restrict their exports almost wholly to camphor and copper, and allow no native workmanship to go abroad. Yet among themselves, as between one island and another, commerce is encouraged to the utmost. The Japanese territories range in the temperate zone through a good many degrees, and include all shades of climate between that of Liverpool and that of Constantinople. Between island and island, therefore, busy interchange takes place by means of junks, like these which now surround us in the Nagasaki harbor. You can observe how weak they look about the sterns, with rudders insecure. The law compels them to be so; for that is an acute device by which they are prevented from travelling too far; they dare not trust themselves too boldly to the mercy of the sea, and as it is, many wrecked men accuse the prudence of their lawgivers. But life is cheap; the population of Japan is probably near thirty million,--and who should care for a few dozen mariners? If you please, we will now walk up into Nagasaki, with our phantom cloaks about us. Being in a region visited by earthquakes, of course we find the houses of one story lightly built; they are built here of wood and clay with chopped straw,--coated over, like our town suburban villas, with cement. Paper, instead of glass, for window panes, Venetian blinds, and around each house a verandah, we observe at once. But our attention is attracted from the houses to the people. How very awkwardly they slip along! With so much energy and vigor in their faces, how is it that they never thought of putting reasonable shoes upon their feet? They wear instead of shoes mere soles of wood or matting, held to the foot each by a peg which runs between the great toe and its neighbor, through a hole made for that purpose in the sock. These clouts they put away on entering a house, as we should put away umbrellas, and wear only socks in-doors. Nevertheless the people here look handsome in their loose, wide gowns, bound by a girdle round the waist, with long sleeves, of which, by the bye, you may perceive that the dependent ends are Japanese coat-pockets. Thence you see yonder gentleman drawing his nose-paper,--one of the little squares of clean white paper always ready in the sleeve-pocket to serve the purpose of our handkerchief. That little square when used is, you see, thrown away; but if the gentleman were in a house he would return it to his pocket, to be got rid of in a more convenient place. The women's robes are like those of the men in form, but richer in material, more various with gold and color. As to the head equipment, we observe, however, a great difference between the sexes. The men shave their own heads, leaving hair only at the back part and upon the temples, which they gather forward, and tie up into a tuft. The women keep their entire crop of hair standing, and they make the most of it; they spread it out into a turban, and stick through it not a few pieces of polished tortoise-shell, as big as office rulers.[M] Inviting admiration, the young beauty of Japan paints her face red and white, and puts a purple stain upon her lips; but the remaining touches are forbidden to a damsel till her heart is lost. The swain who seeks to marry her, fixes outside her father's house a certain shrub; if this be taken in-doors by the family, his suit he knows to be accepted; and when next he gets a peep at his beloved, he watches with a palpitating heart the movement of her lips, to see whether her teeth be blackened; for by blackened teeth she manifests the reciprocal affection. Only after marriage, however, is the lady glorified with a permission not only to have black teeth, but also to pull out her eyebrows. Those are not little beggars yonder trotting by that lady who is so magnificently dressed; they are her children. The children of the Japanese are all dressed meanly, upon moral grounds. Notice those gentlemen who bow to one another; the ends of a scarf worn by each of them exactly meet the ground, yet one bows lower than another, and they go on walking in the bowed position until each has lost the other from his sight. Those scarfs are regulated by the law; each man must bow so that his scarf shall touch the ground, and it is so made long or short, that he may humble himself more or less profoundly in exact accordance with his rank. Of rank there are eight classes after the Mikado and the Ziogoon, whom we shall come to visit in our travels presently. There are, one, the princes; two, the nobles, who owe feudal service to the prince, or the empire; three, the priests; and four, the soldiers; these four form the higher orders, and enjoy the privilege of wearing two swords and petticoat trousers. Class five counts as respectable; inferior officials and doctors constitute this class, and wear one sword with the trousers. Merchants and respectable tradesmen form class six, whose legs may not pollute the trousers, though, by entering themselves as domestics to a man of rank, they may enjoy the privilege of carrying one sword. These are the only people by whom wealth can be accumulated. Class seven--artists, artisans, and petty shopkeepers. Class eight--day laborers and peasants. Tradesmen who work on leather, tanners, &c., are excluded from classification. They are defiled, and may not even live with other men; they live in villages of their own, so thoroughly unrecognized, that Japanese authority, in measuring the miles along a road, breaks off at the entrance of a currier's village, leaves it excluded from his measurement, which is resumed upon the other side. So, if we travel post, we get through leather-sellers' villages for nothing. These houses in Nagasaki, which at a distance looked so much like mansions, are the store-rooms wherein tradesmen keep their valuable stock, and families their valuable furniture. For desolating fires are common in the towns and cities of Japan; so common, that almost every house is prudently provided with a fire-proof store-room, having copper shutters to the windows, and the walls covered a foot thick with clay. Attached to each is a large vessel of liquid mud, with which the whole building is smeared on an alarm of fire; and this method of fire-insurance is exceedingly effective, where there is nothing like a Sun or Atlas Company to fall upon, and the most abstemious of fires eats up, at any rate, a street. That door is open, and there is no horseshoe over it--there's not an iron horseshoe in Japan,--so two ghosts slip into the house unperceived. First, here is a portico for palanquins, shoes, and umbrellas; into this the kitchens open. In the back apartments we shall find the family. We walk into the drawing-room, and there the master sits. It is most fortunate that we are now invisible; for, did we visit in the flesh, we should be teased by the necessities of Japanese civility. That gentleman would sit upon his heels before us; we should sit on our heels before him; we should then all bow our heads as low as possible. Then we should make compliments to one another, the answer to each being "_He, he, he!_" Then pipes and tea would be brought in; after this we might begin to talk. Before we left we should receive sweetmeats on a sheet of white paper, in which it would be our duty to fold up whatever we did not eat, and put it in our pockets. Eat what you like, and pocket what remains, is Japanese good-breeding. At a dinner-party the servant of each guest brings baskets, that he may take away his master's portion of the feast. This master, however, is unconscious of our shadowy appearance, and continues busy with his book. It is Laplace, translated into Japanese, through Dutch. The Japanese are thoroughly alive to the advanced state of European science, and on those fixed occasions when the Dutchmen from the factory visit the capital, the Dutch physician is invariably visited by the native physicians, naturalists, and astronomers, who display on their own parts wonderful acumen, and most dexterously pump for European knowledge. Scientific books in the Dutch language they translate and publish into Japanese. The country has not been shut up out of contempt for foreigners, and native men of science have so diligently profited by opportunities afforded from without, that they construct by their own artificers, barometers, telescopes, make their own almanacks, and calculate their own eclipses. Hovering about this gentleman, our eyes detect at once that the impression on his page is taken from a wood-cut imitation of handwriting; movable types are not yet introduced into Japan. The writing, like Chinese, is up and down the page, and not across it. Three or four different characters seem to be used indiscriminately, and some of them are certainly Chinese. The good folks of Dai Nippon are indebted to the Chinese for the first strong impulse to their civilization; not being themselves of Chinese origin, but a distinct branch of the Mongolian family. Their language is quite different, and has exceedingly long words, instead of being built up, like Chinese, of mono-syllables. Japanese written in Chinese character is understood by any Chinaman; but so would English be, since Chinese writing represents ideas. So, if a Spaniard writes five, an Englishman reads it as "five," and understands correctly, yet the Spaniard would tell you that he wrote not "five," but "cinco." Hovering still about this gentleman, and beguiled by the strangeness of all things we see into a curiosity like that of children, we admire his sword. The hilt is very beautiful, composed of various metals blended into a fine enamel. This enamel is used in Japan where Europeans would use jewels, because the art of cutting precious stones is not known to the Japanese. For the blade of this sword it is not impossible that a sum has been given not unlike a hundred pounds; the tempering of steel is carried to perfection in Japan, where gentlemen are connoisseurs in sword-blades. Young nobles lend their maiden swords to the executioner (who is always chosen from the defiled leather-selling race) that they may be tried upon real flesh and blood; as executions in Japan are generally cruel, and some criminals are hacked to death, rather than killed outright, the swords on such occasions are refreshed with a fair taste of blood. The mats upon the floor are the next things we notice. A thick matting of straw forms a substratum, over which are spread the fine mats, elegantly fringed. To see that lackered work inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which we familiarly call Japan, in its perfection, we must evidently visit it at home. Any thing of the kind so exquisitely beautiful as this little table, is not to be found in Europe. Whatever trinkets pass out of these islands into Europe, do so _nayboen_--that is, with secret connivance--but the first-rate manufactures are in no way suffered to come to us. Without _nayboen_, life would be insupportable in a minute wilderness of rules and customs. People even die _nayboen_--that is, a man lies unburied, and is said to be alive, when his death otherwise would lead to disagreeable results. Here, as elsewhere, when rules are made intolerably strict, evasion is habitual. The amount that cannot be evaded is astonishing enough, as we shall see ere we return to England. Now we are in the house of this gentleman at Nagasaki. His wife enters, and by their mutual behavior it is evident that ladies in Japan are to their husbands very much what ladies are in England. This lady passes to the garden; the room ends with a projecting angle open to the garden on each side, a sort of bay, which every house has; and if there be no more ground than just the supplementary triangles on each side to complete the square, still there is always that, and that is always quite enough, for want of more. It is enough to spend a fortune upon, in dwarf trees and vegetable curiosities. The Japanese shine like the Chinese in monstrosities. They can dwarf trees so well, that in a little box four inches square, President Meylan saw growing a fir, a bamboo, and a plum-tree, in full blossom. Or they hypertrophy plants if they please, until a radish is produced as large as a boy six years old. Their gardens, however small, are always laid out in landscape style, and each is adorned with a temple, not a mere ornamental summerhouse, but the real shrine of a household god. Into this garden walks the lady, and returns with a few flowers. She takes these to an elegant shelf fixed in a recess of the apartment, upon which a bouquet stands, and is engaged upon her nosegay. An act of taste? O dear, no; every drawing-room in Japan has such a shelf, with flowers placed upon it; every lady entering who found her husband there, and meant to talk with him, would in the first place make the nosegay talk, and say, "The wife and husband are alone together." If company arrive, the flowers must be otherwise adjusted; the position of every flower, and even of green leaves in that bouquet, is fixed by custom, which is law, to vary with the use to which the room is put. One of the most difficult and necessary parts of female education in Japan is to acquire a perfect knowledge of the rules laid down in a large book on the arrangements of the drawing-room nosegay, in a manner suitable to every case. It is the Japanese "use of the globes" to ladies' schools. To boys and girls, after reading and writing, which are taught (hear, England!) to the meanest Japanese, the most necessary part of education is an elaborate training in the ceremonial rules of life. Bows proper for every occasion, elegant kotoos, the whole science and practice of good-breeding, have to be learned through many tedious years. To boys there is given special training in the hara-kiri, or the art of ripping one's self up. Many occasions present themselves on which it as much concerns the honor of a Japanese to cut himself open, as it concerned an Englishman some years ago to fire a pistol at his friend. The occasions are so frequent, that a Japanese boys' school would be incomplete in which instruction was not given in this art of suicide. Boys practise all the details in dramatic fashion, and in after life, if a day come when disgrace, caused often by the deeds of other men, appears inevitable, he appoints a day, and according to the exigencies of the case, before his family or his assembled connections, ceremoniously cuts open his own belly at a solemn dinner. Dying in this way, he is said to have died in the course of nature; dying before shame came to him, he is said to have died undisgraced, and so has saved his family from that participation in his fall which otherwise was imminent. Now we must leave this house, in which we have spent perhaps a little too much time: yet in the whole time we did not once hear the squalling of a baby, though a baby was there certainly. If this should meet the eye of Mr. Meek, he is informed that in Japan, children, until they are three years old, are not allowed to wear any thing tight about their persons. Now we are once more in the streets of Nagasaki, and observe, that for a gentleman to turn his back upon a friend, is true politeness in this most original of lands. It signifies that he who so turns is unworthy to behold the face, &c. A bridal procession passes us; the bride in her long white veil. There is a touch of poetry connected with that veil--it literally is the shroud in which she will be buried. We are out of town, now, and delighting in the open country. Exquisite views of hill, and dale, and wood, and water, tempt the sight. Rice fields, of course, we pass; rice is a staple article of diet to the Japanese, as to so many other millions of the human race. It is the vegetable food that finds its way into more mouths than any other. There is wheat also in Japan, used chiefly for making cakes and soy; barley for feeding cattle. The cattle being used as beasts of draught and burden, it is thought improper to kill them, or to deprive the young calves of their milk; the Japanese, therefore, refrain from milk and beef. They eat great quantities of fish, poultry, and venison. In the country gardens we see quinces, pears, plums, cherries, peaches, oranges, and citrons too; bean-fields abound, and farms, of which the hedges are all tea. Where soil and climate favor, many a hillside in Japan is cultivated as a tea plantation; but beyond this the tea-plant is used by the farmers generally as a hedge from which they gather their own leaves, and dry tea for home use, just as our farmers brew their own October beer. Now we are flitting under cedar groves, now under firs, now under mulberry plantations for the silkworm; every good point in the landscape is occupied by a temple, which is composed of one large edifice and many little ones. The little ones are used by pleasure-parties. There is a snake, and there you see in the tree a long-tailed monkey (_Inuus speciosus_); there is no other kind of monkey in these islands, and the snakes are all of a species found nowhere else. The tree frog and the eatable frog live in the north of Nippon. Here we have squirrels. There are no lions and tigers; there is not a single animal of the cat tribe known upon these islands; you can meet with nothing worse than a wild boar. Great pains are taken to destroy the foxes. Here are pheasants without game-laws, and the peacock yonder looks as if he felt himself at home. Several palanquins have passed us on the road, varying much in shape and minor details. The shape of the palanquin, the length of the poles, their position, the way in which they are held, and the number of holders, all are fixed so as to accord precisely with the rank of the good gentleman inside. The number of attendants in the train, even of an inconsiderable man, is startling; and as for a prince, he might be setting out to conquer China. The roads are good, and there is no lack of horsemen, but we have not seen draught carriages; perhaps these hills are an impediment to travelling by such conveyance; roads over hills and mountains being simply flights of steps. Hollo! What couple scampers by in such a hurry? 'Tis the post: the greatest princes must get out of its way. One man runs with the letters, and another keeps pace with him, to supply his place in case of illness or accident; if both posts fail, the nearest man, whatever be his dignity, must do their work for them. These posts are never horsed; but each pair, at the conclusion of a stage, finds the next couple waiting to catch the important bundle thrown to them, and set off instantly, before the spent runners have reached the spot where they may halt and get their wind again. Goods are conveyed on packhorses or oxen over land, but water transit by lakes, rivers, or canals, is much more common. The roads are well swept, for the farmers on each side diligently scrape up all manure; and as men with brooms clear all away before a traveller of rank, the highway is kept in a very neat condition. Men selling straw clouts for travellers, and straw shoes for the horses, which require, of course, frequent renewal, pick up a living by the roadside, and we pass them frequently. Observe that mighty camphor-tree, which every traveller has mentioned. To Kæmpfer it was venerable for its age in the year 1691; still it is healthy, and so large that fifteen men can stand within its hollow. Hot-springs, of course, we pass in a volcanic country. There is a coal-mine also here, though charcoal is the fuel usually burned. We have now crossed Kiusiu, and reached the seaport of Kokura, where we find our Phantom Ship in readiness to take us through a sea covered with islets, to the large island of Nippon. We shall disembark, and travel very rapidly through Ohosaka to Miyako, where the divine Mikado holds his court. We pass some strange-looking men covered with matting, each of whom has in his hand a long wooden spoon. The spoon is their cockle-shell, for they are pilgrims travelling in the most pious form, as beggars, to the shrine of their own goddess. This pilgrimage is made by all good Japanese--the oftener the better, especially as they grow old, because they get each time full absolution from the priests for their past sins. The sun goddess and the Mikado are allied together; and as we now are journeying towards a seat of government, we can do nothing better than discuss the Japanese religion. It begins with an Oriental "once upon a time," of gods who reigned for a few millions of years apiece, above whom there was, and is, and ever will be, one supreme God, free from care. The last of seven royal gods said to his wife one day, "There's earth somewhere, I'm sure!" and so he poked about with his spear in the water, feeling for it. Drops falling from his spear-point made the islands of Japan. Then this god made eight millions of other gods, and also created the ten thousand things. Having ordered matters to his satisfaction, he made a present of his Japanese earth to his pet daughter, the sun goddess. The sun goddess reigned only two hundred and fifty thousand years, and her four successors filled the next two million; the last of the four, being the great-great-grandson of the sun goddess, fancied a mortal life, and left a mortal boy, who reigned on earth, and was the first Mikado: from him all Mikados are descended. This is the native Japanese religion, called Sintoo; worshipping the sun goddess, and _Kami_, which are minor gods or saints. The Sintoos bow before no images, but put as emblems in their temples a sheet of white paper and a mirror, to denote the soul pure and incapable of stain. The worshipper kneels, gazes at the mirror, offers sacrifice of fruit or rice, deposits money, and retires. Upon this creed Buddhism has been grafted; but the religion of the learned Japanese is Sintoo--a philosophic moral doctrine which they cherish secretly, while outwardly observing rites prescribed by custom. But _revenons à nos Mikados_: the first Mikado, though of fabulous descent, is an historical person, Zin-mu-teen-woo, and with him Japanese history begins--at a period from whence we date rational annals in some other countries, about 660 B.C. We will note those points of history that are essential to a comprehension of the present government. Mikados followed each other, sole rulers and powerful, until they fell into a trick of abdicating in favor of their children, and then doing the duty without being annoyed by the ceremonies of their office. That had its inconvenient results, for presently came one Mikado who married the daughter of a powerful papa; and when the time came for retirement, and he had abdicated in favor of a son three years old, the powerful papa thrust him aside into a prison, and usurped the regency. A civil war was the result of this; Yoritomo leaped up as champion of the imprisoned man, so recently a king, released him, and restored him to the regency over his infant son. For this essential service good Yoritomo was made a sort of field-marshal, or Ziogoon. The ex-Mikado dying, left Yoritomo the guardian of his son; and so for twenty years the Ziogoon was regent. Infant Mikados still continuing to be the fashion, regency became hereditary to the Ziogoons; and these last being men, it eventually came to pass that the Mikado was stripped of all power, and converted into a magnificent doll, while the real court was transferred to Jeddo, where the Ziogoons reside. Retributive justice we shall meet with in a little while, but we have now reached Miyako, the Mikado's residence, and nominally still the capital of Nippon. Poor Mikado, what a miserable honor he must think it is to be divine! He represents the sun goddess on earth, and is required to sit upon his throne quite still, and without moving his head for several hours every day, lest the whole earth should be unsteady. When not sitting, he must leave his crown upon the throne to keep watch in his absence. Being so very holy, he is deprived of all use of his legs; earth is not worthy of his tread. His nails and hair are never cut--for who may mutilate a god? Every article of dress that he puts on must be brand new; his plates, and cups, and dishes, every thing he touches at a meal--even the kitchen utensils used in cooking for him--must not be used twice, and of course no profane man may employ what has been sanctified by the Mikado's use. Whatever clothes he puts off are immediately burned; his pots and vessels are destroyed. This hourly waste being a heavy pull on the finances of the Ziogoon, the divine victim gets only the coarsest slops to dress in, and eats off the cheapest crockery. No wonder that he still keeps up the fashion of resigning. His palace is circumscribed with palisades, and an officer residing without the gate spies all his actions, and reports them to the Ziogoon. Still the poor fellow is divine. The gods, it is believed, all spend a month at his place, during which month they are not at home in their own temples, and worship is accordingly suspended. The Mikado grants religious titles, fixes feasts and fasts, and settles doctrinal disputes. Thus there arose once schism in Japan about the color of the devil. Four factions respectfully declared him to be black, white, red, and green. The theologic knot was given to the Mikado that day to unravel, who, knowing the obstinacy of theologians well, declared all parties to be right; and so the devil of Japan remains to this day a four-colored monster. Offices of state in the Mikado's court--the Dairi it is called--are above all in honor, objects of ambition even to the Ziogoon. The dwellers in the Dairi with the holy prisoner, both male and female, are the most refined and cultivated Japanese. From their ranks are supplied the poets of the land, who sing the beauties of the rapid Oyewaga, or legends of the snow-capped Foesi. Miyako is the classic ground, the Athens of Japan. But we must go on to the Japanese London, Jeddo, the real capital, a grand metropolis, with about one million, six hundred thousand inhabitants. Of course there is a wilderness of suburb; there are endless streets; there is a river through the town which flows into the bay, from which this capital is not far distant. There are bridges; there is a vast multitude of people thronging to and fro; there are shops, signs, inscriptions. We will walk into a theatre; for here, as in the days of Æschylus, performances take place by day. There is a pit, and there are tiers of elegant seats, which answer to our boxes; the scenery and dresses are handsome, only in scene painting there is no perspective. As in the early European drama, the subjects illustrated are the deeds of gods and heroes; not more than two speakers occupy the scene at once; boys act the female characters. Several pieces are performed, each piece divided into acts, and the plan is to give after Act I. of the first play, Act I. of the second, and then to begin the third, before taking the series of second acts. As each actor in each piece plays also several parts, one might consider this arrangement to be rather puzzling. Gentlemen go out after the act of any piece they wish to hear, and attend to other matters till the next act of the same piece shall come on; but ladies sit with pleasure through the whole. Dear souls! they steal a march upon our feminine box ornaments; for they bring with them a collection of dresses to the play, slip out during each pause to change their clothes, and reappear, to catch the admiration of beholders, every time in a new costume. The palace of the Ziogoon covers much ground, being in fact a rural scene--a palace and a park, locked up within the town. As for the Ziogoon, he also is locked up within his trenches. To understand how he is fettered, and, at the same time, how all the people of Japan have come to be locked up, we must pursue our little thread of history. Yoritomo established, as we said, the power of the Ziogoons, which flourished for a long time. Kublah Khan endeavored to make Nippon subject to him; but without success, winds and waves fighting with the Japanese. Mongolians were forbidden then to touch Japanese ground, but a century later friendly relations were restored with China. In 1543, two Portuguese, Antonio Moto and Francesco Zeimoto, landed in Japan, exciting great interest among a mercantile people, trading at that time, it is said, with sixteen foreign nations. The Portuguese taught new arts, they brought new wares, and they were welcomed eagerly; some of them settled, and were married in Japan. The Jesuits came, too, with Christianity, and their preaching was abundantly successful. Now, it so happened that about the same time, when the Portuguese first arrived, a civil war was waged between two brothers, for the dignity of Ziogoon. Both brothers perished in this war, and then the vassal princes fought over the fallen bone. Nobunaga, the most powerful of these, was aided by a person of obscure birth, named Hide-yosi. Nobunaga became Ziogoon, favored the Christians, and invested Hide-yosi with high military rank. An usurper murdered Nobunaga, was then himself murdered, and left vacant a seat which Hide-yosi was now strong enough to seize. He took the name of Tayko, and is the great hero of the annals of Japan. He it was who continued the robbery of the Mikado's power, and secured himself against revolt by establishing a system of check over the princes, which prevails to this day. He left a son bearing the name of Hide-yosi, six years old, and to secure his power, married him to the daughter of Jyeyas, a strong papa. Jyeyas played the usurper, of course, and a large faction supported the young Hide-yosi, whom he had sworn to guard. The boy was Christian at heart; his cause, also, was just; the Jesuits, therefore, and the great body of the Christians warmly took his part. Had he maintained his right successfully, Christianity would have become the state religion in Japan. Jyeyas conquered, and the Christians, persecuted, afterwards rebelling, they were rooted out--regarded as a sect politically hostile. Their rebellion broke loose in the principality of Arima; the Prince of Arima drove the insurgents, seventy thousand in number, to the peninsula of Simabara, where they stood at bay. Since they were not to be dislodged, the Dutch, then settled at Firato, were desired to aid the government; accordingly they sent a man-of-war, which fired upon the Christians and sealed their fate. To this service the Dutch were indebted for their permission to retain one factory. All other Christians were destroyed or expelled, and since those days every stranger has been required, exempting the Dutch factory, to trample on an image of the Saviour, as an evidence of his not being a Christian interloper. To finish our history, we must record that Jyeyas, having established his own usurpation, completed the reduction of the Mikado to a state of helplessness; completed the fettering of the princes, and the protective system of espial; and being deified, on death, under the name, of Gongen, was the founder of the Gongen dynasty of Ziogoons, which still rules in Japan, and still adheres to the protective system. But in course of time the power of the Ziogoons has waned; the Ziogoon himself is now a puppet to his council, which is governed by a president, who by no means is able to do what he likes. Let us now see how all the Japanese are tied and bound, and kept in profound peace. In the first place, nearly half the population are officials in pay, and the whole empire is sprinkled thickly with spies, some public and official, who may intrude where they please, others concealed and not acknowledged, although paid, by government. Furthermore, every householder is required to watch the actions of his five intermediate neighbors, and to keep a sharp eye upon movements opposite. Every prince is assisted in his government by two secretaries, whom the court appoints, one to reside with him, and the other to reside at Jeddo. These take every act of government out of his hands. The secretary, who lives with him, watches him, and acts upon instructions from the secretary who resides at Jeddo, who again is prompted by the council. Not only does the prince live surrounded by a mob of unknown spies, but he is obliged, every alternate year, to leave his principality and to reside at Jeddo; his wife and family are always kept at Jeddo in the character of hostages. Furthermore, pains are taken to prevent a prince from being rich. He is required at Jeddo to impoverish himself by displays of pomp; and if his purse be long, the Ziogoon invites himself to dinner with him; an honor great enough to ruin any noble in Japan. Similar checks are upon all governors of towns and all officials. Any neglect reported by a spy, any infraction of a rule, threatens disgrace, and makes it necessary to perform the act of suicide before described. So it was not without cause that they were taught at school the hara-kiri. Perhaps you think the council is omnipotent. Far from it. The council may, indeed, make any law, which will be submitted by the president for sanction to the Ziogoon. Then, should the Ziogoon refuse his signature, and differ in opinion from the council, if he blame the law, the question is submitted to the Ziogoon's three next of kin, and they are umpires. If these decide against the Ziogoon, he is deposed immediately; if they decide against the council, then its president and members must rip themselves up. Yet still this tyranny of custom, which would seem to be so burdensome to all, goes on, because all are so bound that none can begin to stir. The Japanese, as we have partly been able to see, are an acute race--they have original and thinking minds; with a dash of Asiatic fierceness, they are generous, joyous, sympathetic. They love picnic parties and music, with a buffoon; who first encourages them to throw off restraint, to laugh and riot in good-nature; and, assuming then his second office, draws himself up demurely, to give all a lesson in politeness. The buffoons who go for hire to promote mirth with a pleasure-party, go also as masters of the ceremonies. The treatment of Golownin, as a prisoner, will also illustrate the nature of the Japanese. In moving from one prison to another, he walked, bound so tightly with thin cords that they cut wounds into his flesh. These wounds the soldiers dressed every evening, but did not slacken any string; they said that he was fettered in the customary way. Yet these men willingly would take him on their backs, to carry him, when he was foot-sore; people in the villages were gladly suffered to show sympathy by feeding him with pleasant things as he passed through; and when he had made efforts to escape; which, if successful, would have entailed hara-kiri on his guards; they still showed no abatement of good-nature. Under the main bridge of Jeddo lies our Phantom Ship, and from the heart of that great city of the East we float out to the sea. It does not take us long to get to Tower Stairs;--and now a Phantom Cab will take you home. FOOTNOTES: [M] Hats are not used by either sex except in rainy weather, but every Japanese carries a fan; even the beggar yonder holds his fan to that young lady, whereupon she drops her charitable gift. From Fraser's Magazine. MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. _Continued from page 409._ BOOK V. CONTINUED.--CHAPTER VII. Leonard had been about six weeks with his uncle, and those weeks were well spent. Mr. Richard had taken him to his counting-house, and initiated him into business and the mysteries of double entry; and, in return for the young man's readiness and zeal in matters which the acute trader instinctively felt were not exactly to his tastes, Richard engaged the best master the town afforded to read with his nephew in the evening. This gentleman was the head-usher of a large school--who had his hours to himself after eight o'clock--and was pleased to vary the dull routine of enforced lessons by instructions to a pupil who took delightedly--even to the Latin grammar. Leonard made rapid strides, and learned more in those six weeks than many a cleverish boy does in twice as many months. These hours which Leonard devoted to study Richard usually spent from home--sometimes at the houses of his grand acquaintances in the Abbey Gardens, sometimes in the reading-room appropriated to those aristocrats. If he stayed at home, it was in company with his head clerk, and for the purpose of checking his account books, or looking over the names of doubtful electors. Leonard had naturally wished to communicate his altered prospects to his old friends, that they in turn might rejoice his mother with such good tidings. But he had not been two days in the house before Richard had strictly forbidden all such correspondence. "Look you," said he, "at present we are on an experiment--we must see if we like each other. Suppose we don't, you will only have raised expectations in your mother which must end in bitter disappointment; and suppose we do, it will be time enough to write when something definite is settled." "But my mother will be so anxious--" "Make your mind easy on that score. I will write regularly to Mr. Dale, and he can tell her that you are well and thriving. No more words, my man--when I say a thing, I say it." Then, observing that Leonard looked blank and dissatisfied, Richard added, with a good-humored smile, "I have my reasons for all this--you shall know them later. And I tell you what,--if you do as I bid you, it is my intention to settle something handsome on your mother; but if you don't, devil a penny she'll get from me." With that Richard turned on his heel, and in a few moments his voice was heard loud in objurgation with some of his people. About the fourth week of Leonard's residence at Mr. Avenel's, his host began to evince a certain change of manner. He was no longer quite so cordial with Leonard, nor did he take the same interest in his progress. About the same period he was frequently caught by the London butler before the looking-glass. He had always been a smart man in his dress, but he was now more particular. He would spoil three white cravats when he went out of an evening, before he could satisfy himself as to a tie. He also bought a Peerage, and it became his favorite study at odd quarters of an hour. All these symptoms proceeded from a cause, and that cause was--Woman. CHAPTER VIII. The first people at Screwstown were indisputably the Pompleys. Colonel Pompley was grand, but Mrs. Pompley was grander. The colonel was stately in right of his military rank and his services in India; Mrs. Pompley was majestic in right of her connections. Indeed, Colonel Pompley himself would have been crushed under the weight of the dignities which his lady heaped upon him, if he had not been enabled to prop his position with "a connection" of his own. He would never have held his own, nor been permitted to have an independent opinion on matters aristocratic, but for the well-sounding name of his relations, "the Digbies." Perhaps on the principle that obscurity increases the natural size of objects, and is an element of the sublime, the Colonel did not too accurately define his relations "the Digbies;" he let it be casually understood that they were the Digbies to be found in Debrett. But if some indiscreet _Vulgarian_ (a favorite word with both the Pompleys) asked point-blank if he meant "my Lord Digby," the Colonel, with a lofty air, answered--"The elder branch, sir." No one at Screwstown had ever seen these Digbies: they lay amidst the Far--the Recondite--even to the wife of Colonel Pompley's bosom. Now and then, when the Colonel referred to the lapse of years, and the uncertainty of human affections, he would say--"When young Digby and I were boys together," and then add with a sigh, "but we shall never meet again in this world. His family interest secured him a valuable appointment in a distant part of the British dominions." Mrs. Pompley was always rather cowed by the Digbies. She could not be skeptical as to this connection, for the Colonel's mother was certainly a Digby, and the Colonel impaled the Digby arms. _En revanche_, as the French say, for these marital connections, Mrs. Pompley had her own favorite affinity, which she specially selected from all others when she most desired to produce effect; nay, even upon ordinary occasions the name rose spontaneously to her lips--the name of the Honorable Mrs. M'Catchley. Was the fashion of a gown or cap admired, her cousin, Mrs. M'Catchley, had just sent to her the pattern from Paris. Was it a question whether the Ministry would stand, Mrs. M'Catchley was in the secret, but Mrs. Pompley had been requested not to say. Did it freeze, "my cousin, Mrs. M'Catchley, had written word that the icebergs at the Pole were supposed to be coming this way." Did the sun glow with more than usual fervor, Mrs. M'Catchley had informed her "that it was Sir Henry Halford's decided opinion that it was on account of the cholera." The good people knew all that was doing at London, at court, in this world--nay, almost in the other--through the medium of the Honorable Mrs. M'Catchley. Mrs. M'Catchley was, moreover, the most elegant of women, the wittiest creature, the dearest. King George the Fourth had presumed to admire Mrs. M'Catchley, but Mrs. M'Catchley, though no prude, let him see that she was proof against the corruptions of a throne. So long had the ears of Mrs. Pompley's friends been filled with the renown of Mrs. M'Catchley, that at last Mrs. M'Catchley was secretly supposed to be a myth, a creature of the elements, a poetic fiction of Mrs. Pompley's. Richard Avenel, however, though by no means a credulous man, was an implicit believer in Mrs. M'Catchley. He had learned that she was a widow--an honorable by birth, an honorable by marriage--living on her handsome jointure, and refusing offers every day that she so lived. Somehow or other, whenever Richard Avenel thought of a wife, he thought of the Honorable Mrs. M'Catchley. Perhaps that romantic attachment to the fair invisible preserved him heart-whole amongst the temptations of Screwstown. Suddenly, to the astonishment of the Abbey Gardens, Mrs. M'Catchley proved her identity, and arrived at Colonel Pompley's in a handsome travelling-carriage, attended by her maid and footman. She had come to stay some weeks--a tea-party was given in her honor. Mr. Avenel and his nephew were invited, Colonel Pompley, who kept his head clear in the midst of the greatest excitement, had a desire to get from the corporation a lease of a piece of ground adjoining his garden, and he no sooner saw Richard Avenel enter, than he caught him by the button, and drew him into a quiet corner in order to secure his interest. Leonard, meanwhile, was borne on by the stream, till his progress was arrested by a sofa table at which sate Mrs. M'Catchley herself, with Mrs. Pompley by her side. For on this great occasion the hostess had abandoned her proper post at the entrance, and, whether to show her respect to Mrs. M'Catchley, or to show Mrs. M'Catchley her well-bred contempt for the people of Screwstown, remained in state by her friend, honoring only the _élite_ of the town with introductions to the illustrious visitor. Mrs. M'Catchley was a very fine woman--a woman who justified Mrs. Pompley's pride in her. Her cheekbones were rather high, it is true, but that proved the purity of her Caledonian descent; for the rest, she had a brilliant complexion, heightened by a _soupçon_ of rouge--good-eyes and teeth, a showy figure, and all the ladies of Screwstown pronounced her dress to be perfect. She might have arrived at that age at which one intends to stop for the next ten years, but even a Frenchman would not have called her _passée_--that is, for a widow. For a spinster, it would have been different. Looking round her with a glass, which Mrs. Pompley was in the habit of declaring that "Mrs. M'Catchley used like an angel," this lady suddenly perceived Leonard Avenel; and his quiet, simple, thoughtful air and looks so contrasted with the stiff beaux, to whom she had been presented, that experienced in fashion as so fine a personage must be supposed to be, she was nevertheless deceived into whispering to Mrs. Pompley-- "That young man has really an _air distingué_--who is he?" "Oh," said Mrs. Pompley, in unaffected surprise, "that is the nephew of the rich Vulgarian I was telling you of this morning." "Ah! and you say that he is Mr. Arundel's heir?" "Avenel--not Arundel--my sweet friend." "Avenel is not a bad name," said Mrs. M'Catchley. "But is the uncle really so rich?" "The Colonel was trying this very day to guess what he is worth; but he says it is impossible to guess it." "And the young man is his heir." "It is thought so: and reading for college, I hear. They say he is clever." "Present him, my love: I like clever people," said Mrs. M'Catchley, falling back languidly. About ten minutes afterwards, Richard Avenel, having effected his escape from the Colonel, and his gaze being attracted towards the sofa table by the buzz of the admiring crowd, beheld his nephew in animated conversation with the long-cherished idol of his dreams. A fierce pang of jealousy shot through his breast. His nephew never looked so handsome and so intelligent; in fact, poor Leonard had never before been drawn out by a woman of the world, who had learned how to make the most of what little she knew. And, as jealousy operates like a pair of bellows on incipient flames, so, at first sight of the smile which the fair widow bestowed upon Leonard, the heart of Mr. Avenel felt in a blaze. He approached with a step less assured than usual, and, overhearing Leonard's talk, marvelled much at the boy's audacity. Mrs. M'Catchley had been speaking of Scotland and the Waverly Novels, about which Leonard knew nothing. But he knew Burns, and on Burns he grew artlessly eloquent. Burns the poet and peasant; Leonard might well be eloquent on _him_. Mrs. M'Catchley was amused and pleased with his freshness and _naïveté_, so unlike any thing she had ever heard or seen, and she drew him on and on, till Leonard fell to quoting: And Richard heard, with less respect for the sentiment than might be supposed, that "Rank is but the guinea stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that." "Well!" exclaimed Mr. Avenel. "Pretty piece of politeness to tell that to a lady like the Honorable Mrs. M'Catchley. You'll excuse him, ma'am." "Sir!" said Mrs. M'Catchley, startled, and lifting her glass. Leonard, rather confused, rose, and offered his chair to Richard, who dropped into it. The lady, without waiting for formal introduction, guessed that she saw the rich uncle. "Such a sweet poet--Burns!" said she, dropping her glass. "And it is so refreshing to find so much youthful enthusiasm," she added, pointing her fan towards Leonard, who was receding fast among the crowd. "Well, he is youthful, my nephew--rather green!" "Don't say green!" said Mrs. M'Catchley. Richard blushed scarlet. He was afraid he had committed himself to some expression low and shocking. The lady resumed, "Say unsophisticated." "A tarnation long word," thought Richard; but he prudently bowed, and held his tongue. "Young men nowadays," continued Mrs. M'Catchley, resettling herself on the sofa, "affect to be so old. They don't dance, and they don't read, and they don't talk much; and a great many of them wear _toupets_ before they are two-and-twenty!" Richard mechanically passed his hand through his thick curls. But he was still mute; he was still ruefully chewing the cud of the epithet _green_. What occult horrid meaning did the word convey to ears polite? Why should he not say "green?" "A very fine young man your nephew, sir," resumed Mrs. M'Catchley. Richard grunted. "And seems full of talent Not yet at the University? Will he go to Oxford or Cambridge!" "I have not made up my mind yet, if I shall send him to the University at all." "A young man of his expectations!" exclaimed Mrs. M'Catchley, artfully. "Expectations!" repeated Richard, firing up. "Has the boy been talking to you of his expectations?" "No, indeed, sir. But the nephew of the rich Mr. Avenel. Ah, one hears a great deal, you know, of rich people; it is the penalty of wealth, Mr. Avenel!" Richard was very much flattered. His crest rose. "And they say," continued Mrs. M'Catchley, dropping out her words very slowly, as she adjusted her blonde scarf, "that Mr. Avenel has resolved not to marry." "The devil they do, ma'am!" bolted out Richard, gruffly; and then, ashamed of his _lapsus linguæ_, screwed up his lips firmly, and glared on the company with an eye of indignant fire. Mrs. M'Catchley observed him over her fan. Richard turned abruptly, and she withdrew her eyes modestly, and raised the fan. "She's a real beauty," said Richard, between his teeth. The fan fluttered. Five minutes afterwards, the widow and the bachelor seemed so much at their ease that Mrs. Pompley--who had been forced to leave her friend, in order to receive the Dean's lady--could scarcely believe her eyes when she returned to the sofa. Now, it was from that evening that Mr. Richard Avenel exhibited the change of mood which I have described. And from that evening he abstained from taking Leonard with him to any of the parties in the Abbey Gardens. CHAPTER IX. Some days after this memorable _soirée_, Colonel Pompley sat alone in his drawing-room (which opened pleasantly on an old-fashioned garden) absorbed in the house bills. For Colonel Pompley did not leave that domestic care to his lady--perhaps she was too grand for it. Colonel Pompley with his own sonorous voice ordered the joints, and with his own heroic hand dispensed the stores. In justice to the Colonel, I must add--at whatever risk of offence to the fair sex--that there was not a house at Screwstown so well managed as the Pompleys'; none which so successfully achieved the difficult art of uniting economy with show. I should despair of conveying to you an idea of the extent to which Colonel Pompley made his income go. It was but seven hundred a-year; and many a family contrive to do less upon three thousand. To be sure, the Pompleys had no children to sponge upon them. What they had, they spent all on themselves. Neither, if the Pompleys never exceeded their income, did they pretend to live much within it. The two ends of the year met at Christmas--just met, and no more. Colonel Pompley sat at his desk. He was in his well brushed blue coat--buttoned across his breast--his gray trowsers fitted tight to his limbs, and fastened under his boots with a link chain. He saved a great deal of money in straps. No one ever saw Colonel Pompley in dressing-gown and slippers. He and his house were alike in order--always fit to be seen-- "From morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve." The Colonel was a short compact man, inclined to be stout--with a very red face, that seemed not only shaved, but rasped. He wore his hair cropped close, except just in front, where it formed what the hairdresser called a feather; but it seemed a feather of iron, so stiff and so strong was it. Firmness and precision were emphatically marked on the Colonel's countenance. There was a resolute strain on his features, as if he was always employed in making the two ends meet! So he sat before his house-book, with his steel pen in his hand, and making crosses here and notes of interrogation there. "Mrs. M'Catchley's maid," said the Colonel to himself, "must be put upon rations. The tea that she drinks! Good Heavens!--tea again!" There was a modest ring at the outer door. "Too early for a visitor!" thought the Colonel. "Perhaps it is the water rates." The neat man-servant--never seen, beyond the offices, save in _grande tenue_, plushed and powdered--entered, and bowed. "A gentleman, sir, wishes to see you." "A gentleman," repeated the Colonel, glancing towards the clock. "Are you sure it is a gentleman?" The man hesitated. "Why, sir, I ben't exactly sure; but he speaks like a gentleman. He do say he comes from London to see you, sir." A long and interesting correspondence was then being held between the Colonel and one of his wife's trustees touching the investment of Mrs. Pompley's fortune. It might be the trustee--nay, it must be. The trustee had talked of running down to see him. "Let him come in," said the Colonel; "and when I ring--sandwiches and sherry." "Beef, sir?" "Ham." The Colonel put aside his house-book, and wiped his pen. In another minute the door opened, and the servant announced "MR. DIGBY." The Colonel's face fell, and he staggered back. The door closed, and Mr. Digby stood in the middle of the room, leaning on the great writing-table for support. The poor soldier looked sicklier and shabbier, and nearer the end of all things in life and fortune, than when Lord L'Estrange had thrust the pocket-book into his hands. But still the servant showed knowledge of the world in calling him gentleman; there was no other word to apply to him. "Sir," began Colonel Pompley, recovering himself, and with great solemnity, "I did not expect this pleasure." The poor visitor stared round him dizzily, and sank into a chair, breathing hard. The Colonel looked as a man only looks upon a poor relation, and buttoned up first one trowser-pocket and then the other. "I thought you were in Canada," said the Colonel at last. Mr. Digby had now got breath to speak, and he said meekly, "The climate would have killed my child, and it is two years since I returned." "You ought to have found a very good place in England, to make it worth your while to leave Canada." "She could not have lived through another winter in Canada--the doctor said so." "Pooh," quoth the Colonel. Mr. Digby drew a long breath. "I would not come to you, Colonel Pompley, while you could think that I came as a beggar for myself." The Colonel's brow relaxed. "A very honorable sentiment, Mr. Digby." "No: I have gone through a great deal; but you see, Colonel," added the poor relation, with a faint smile, "the campaign is wellnigh over, and peace is at hand." The Colonel seemed touched. "Don't talk so, Digby--I don't like it. You are younger than I am--nothing more disagreeable than these gloomy views of things. You have got enough to live upon, you say--at least so I understand you. I am very glad to hear it; and, indeed, I could not assist you, so many claims on me. So it is all very well, Digby." "Oh, Colonel Pompley," cried the soldier, clasping his hands, and with feverish energy, "I am a suppliant, not for myself, but my child! I have but one--only one--a girl. She has been so good to me. She will cost you little. Take here when I die; promise her a shelter--a home. I ask no more. You are my nearest relative. I have no other to look to. You have no children of your own. She will be a blessing to you, as she has been all upon earth to me!" If Colonel Pompley's face was red in ordinary hours, no epithet sufficiently rubicund or sanguineous can express its color at this appeal. "The man's mad," he said at last, with a tone of astonishment that almost concealed his wrath--"stark mad! I take his child!--lodge and board a great, positive, hungry child! Why, sir, many and many a time have I said to Mrs. Pompley, ''Tis a mercy we have no children. We could never live in this style if we had children--never make both ends meet.' Child--the most expensive, ravenous, ruinous thing in the world--a child!" "She has been accustomed to starve," said Mr. Digby, plaintively. "Oh, Colonel, let me see your wife. _Her_ heart I can touch--she is a woman." Unlucky father! A more untoward, unseasonable request the Fates could not have put into his lips. Mrs. Pompley see the Digbies! Mrs. Pompley learn the condition of the Colonel's grand connections! The Colonel would never have been his own man again. At the bare idea, he felt as if he could have sunk into the earth with shame. In his alarm he made a stride to the door, with the intention of locking it. Good heavens, if Mrs. Pompley should come in! And the man, too, had been announced by name. Mrs. Pompley might have learned already that a Digby was with her husband--she might be actually dressing to receive him worthily--there was not a moment to lose. The Colonel exploded. "Sir, I wonder at your impudence. See Mrs. Pompley! Hush, sir, hush!--hold your tongue. I have disowned your connection. I will not have my wife--a woman, sir, of the first family--disgraced by it. Yes; you need not fire up. John Pompley is not a man to be bullied in his own house. I say disgraced. Did not you run into debt, and spend your fortune? Did not you marry a low creature--a vulgarian--a tradesman's daughter?--and your poor father such a respectable man--a beneficed clergyman! Did not you sell your commission! Heaven knows what became of the money! Did not you turn (I shudder to say it) a common stage-player, sir? And then, when you were on your last legs, did I not give you £200 out of my own purse to go to Canada? And now here you are again--and ask me, with a coolness that--that takes away my breath--takes away--my breath, sir--to provide for the child you have thought proper to have;--a child whose connections on the mother's side are of the most abject and discreditable condition. Leave my house, leave it--good heavens, sir, not that way!--this." And the Colonel opened the glass door that led into the garden. "I will let you out this way. If Mrs. Pompley should see you!" And with that thought the Colonel absolutely hooked his arm into his poor relation's, and hurried him into the garden. Mr. Digby said not a word, but he struggled ineffectually to escape from the Colonel's arm; and his color went and came, came and went, with a quickness that showed that in those shrunken veins there were still some drops of a soldier's blood. But the Colonel had now reached a little postern-door in the garden wall. He opened the latch, and thrust out his poor cousin. Then looking down the lane, which was long, straight, and narrow, and seeing it was quite solitary, his eye fell upon the forlorn man, and remorse shot through his heart. For a moment the hardest of all kinds of avarice, that of the _genteel_, relaxed its gripe. For a moment the most intolerant of all forms of pride, that which is based upon false pretences, hushed its voice, and the Colonel hastily drew out his purse. "There," said he--"that is all I can do for you. Do leave the town as quick as you can, and don't mention your name to any one. Your father was such a respectable man--beneficed clergyman!" "And paid for your commission, Mr. Pompley. My name!--I am not ashamed of it. But do not fear I shall claim your relationship. No; I am ashamed of _you_!" The poor cousin put aside the purse, still stretched towards him, with a scornful hand, and walked firmly down the lane. Colonel Pompley stood irresolute. At that moment a window in his house was thrown open. He heard the noise, turned round, and saw his wife looking out. Colonel Pompley sneaked back through the shrubbery, hiding himself amongst the trees. CHAPTER X. "Ill-luck is a _bêtise_," said the great Cardinal Richelieu; and on the long run, I fear, his eminence was right. If you could drop Dick Avenel and Mr. Digby in the middle of Oxford-street--Dick in a fustian jacket, Digby in a suit of superfine--Dick with five shillings in his pocket, Digby with a thousand pounds--and if, at the end of ten years, you looked up your two men, Dick would be on his road to a fortune, Digby--what we have seen him! Yet Digby had no vice; he did not drink, nor gamble. What was he, then? Helpless. He had been an only son--a spoiled child--brought up as a "gentleman;" that is, as a man who was not expected to be able to turn his hand to any thing. He entered, as we have seen, a very expensive regiment, wherein he found himself, at his father's death, with £4000, and the incapacity to say "No." Not naturally extravagant, but without an idea of the value of money--the easiest, gentlest, best-tempered man whom example ever led astray. This part of his career comprised a very common history--the poor man living on equal terms with the rich. Debt; recourse to usurers; bills signed sometimes for others, renewed at twenty per cent.; the £4000 melted like snow; pathetic appeal to relations; relations have children of their own; small help given grudgingly, eked out by much advice, and coupled with conditions. Amongst the conditions there was a very proper and prudent one--exchange into a less expensive regiment. Exchange effected; peace; obscure country quarters; _ennui_, flute-playing, and idleness. Mr. Digby had no resources on a rainy day--except flute-playing; pretty girl of inferior rank; all the officers after her; Digby smitten; pretty girl very virtuous; Digby forms honorable intentions; excellent sentiments; imprudent marriage. Digby falls in life; colonel's lady will not associate with Mrs. Digby; Digby cut by his whole kith and kin; many disagreeable circumstances in regimental life; Digby sells out; love in a cottage; execution in ditto. Digby had been much applauded as an amateur actor; thinks of the stage; genteel comedy--a gentlemanlike profession. Tries in a provincial town, under another name; unhappily succeeds; life of an actor; hand-to-mouth life; illness; chest affected; Digby's voice becomes hoarse and feeble; not aware of it; attributes failing success to ignorant provincial public; appears in London; is hissed; returns to provinces; sinks into very small parts; prison; despair; wife dies; appeal again to relations; a subscription made to get rid of him; send him out of the country; place in Canada--superintendent to an estate, £150 a-year; pursued by ill-luck; never before fit for business, not fit now; honest as the day, but keeps slovenly accounts; child cannot bear the winter of Canada; Digby wrapped up in the child; return home; mysterious life for two years; child patient, thoughtful, loving; has learned to work; manages for father; often supports him; constitution rapidly breaking; thought of what will become of this child--worst disease of all. Poor Digby!--Never did a base, cruel, unkind thing in his life; and here he is, walking down the lane from Colonel Pompley's house! Now, if Digby had but learned a little of the world's cunning, I think he would have succeeded even with Colonel Pompley. Had he spent the £100 received from Lord l'Estrange with a view to effect--had he bestowed a fitting wardrobe on himself and his pretty Helen; had he stopped at the last stage, taken thence a smart chaise and pair, and presented himself at Colonel Pompley's in a way that would not have discredited the Colonel's connection, and then, instead of praying for home and shelter, asked the Colonel to become guardian to his child in case of his death, I have a strong notion that the Colonel, in spite of his avarice, would have stretched both ends so as to take in Helen Digby. But our poor friend had no such arts. Indeed, of the £100 he had already very little left, for before leaving town he had committed what Sheridan considered the extreme of extravagance--frittered away his money in paying his debts; and as for dressing up Helen and himself--if that thought had ever occurred to him, he would have rejected it as foolish. He would have thought that the more he showed his poverty, the more he would be pitied--the worst mistake a poor cousin can commit. According to Theophrastus, the partridge of Paphlagonia has two hearts; so have most men: it is the common mistake of the unlucky to knock at the wrong one. CHAPTER XI. Mr. Digby entered the room of the inn in which he had left Helen. She was seated by the window, and looking out wistfully on the narrow street, perhaps at the children at play. There had never been a playtime for Helen Digby. She sprang forward as her father came in. His coming was her holiday. "We must go back to London," said Mr. Digby, sinking helplessly on the chair. Then with his sort of sickly smile--for he was bland even to his child--"Will you kindly inquire when the first coach leaves?" All the active cares of their careful life devolved upon that quiet child. She kissed her father, placed before him a cough mixture which he had brought from London, and went out silently to make the necessary inquiries, and prepare for the journey back. At eight o'clock the father and child were seated in the night-coach, with one other passenger--a man muffled up to the chin. After the first mile, the man let down one of the windows. Though it was summer, the air was chill and raw. Digby shivered and coughed. Helen placed her hand on the window, and, leaning towards the passenger, whispered softly. "Eh!" said the passenger, "draw up the windows? You have got your own window; this is mine. Oxygen, young lady," he added solemnly, "oxygen is the breath of life. Cott, child!" he continued, with suppressed choler, and a Welsh pronunciation, "Cott! let us breathe and live." Helen was frightened, and recoiled. Her father, who had not heard, or had not heeded, this colloquy, retreated into the corner, put up the collar of his coat, and coughed again. "It is cold, my dear," said he languidly to Helen. The passenger caught the word, and replied indignantly, but as if soliloquizing-- "Cold--ugh! I do believe the English are the stuffiest people! Look at their four-post beds?--all the curtains drawn, shutters closed, board before the chimney--not a house with a ventilator! Cold--ugh!" The window next Mr. Digby did not fit well into its frame. "There is a sad draught," said the invalid. Helen instantly occupied herself in stopping up the chinks of the window with her handkerchief. Mr. Digby glanced ruefully at the other window. The look, which was very eloquent, aroused yet more the traveller's spleen. "Pleasant!" said he. "Cott! I suppose you will ask me to go outside next! But people who travel in a coach should know the law of a coach. I don't interfere with your window; you have no business to interfere with mine." "Sir, I did not speak," said Mr. Digby meekly. "But Miss here did." "Ah, sir!" said Helen plaintively, "if you knew how papa suffers!" And her hand again moved towards the obnoxious window. "No, my dear: the gentleman is in his right," said Mr. Digby; and, bowing with his wonted suavity, he added, "Excuse her, sir. She thinks a great deal too much of me." The passenger said nothing, and Helen nestled closer to her father, and strove to screen him from the air. The passenger moved uneasily. "Well," said he, with a sort of snort, "air is air, and right is right: but here goes"--and he hastily drew up the window. Helen turned her face full towards the passenger with a grateful expression, visible even in the dim light. "You are very kind, sir," said poor Mr. Digby; "I am ashamed to"--his cough choked the rest of the sentence. The passenger, who was a plethoric, sanguineous man, felt as if he were stifling. But he took off his wrappers, and resigned the oxygen like a hero. Presently he drew nearer to the sufferer, and laid hand on his wrist. "You are feverish, I fear. I am a medical man. St!--one--two. Cott! you should not travel; you are not fit for it!" Mr. Digby shook his head; he was too feeble to reply. The passenger thrust his hand into his coat-pocket, and drew out what seemed a cigar-case, but what, in fact, was a leathern repertory, containing a variety of minute phials. From one of these phials he extracted two tiny globules. "There," said he; "open your mouth--put those on the tip of your tongue. They will lower the pulse--check the fever. Be better presently--but should not travel--want rest--you should be in bed. Aconite!--Henbane!--hum! Your papa is of fair complexion--a timid character, I should say--a horror of work, perhaps. Eh, child?" "Sir!" faltered Helen, astonished and alarmed--Was the man a conjuror? "A case for _phosphor_!" cried the passenger; "that fool Browne would have said _arsenic_. Don't be persuaded to take arsenic." "Arsenic, sir!" echoed the mild Digby. "No; however unfortunate a man may be, I think, sir, that suicide is--tempting, perhaps, but highly criminal." "Suicide," said the passenger tranquilly--"suicide is my hobby! You have no symptom of that kind, you say?" "Good heavens! No, sir." "If ever you feel violently impelled to drown yourself, take _pulsatilla_. But if you feel a preference towards blowing out your brains, accompanied with weight in the limbs, loss of appetite, dry cough, and bad corns--_sulphuret of antimony_. Don't forget." Though poor Mr. Digby confusedly thought that the gentleman was out of his mind, yet he tried politely to say "that he was much obliged, and would be sure to remember;" but his tongue failed him, and his own ideas grew perplexed. His head fell back heavily, and he sank into a silence which seemed that of sleep. The traveller looked hard at Helen, as she gently drew her father's head on her shoulder, and there pillowed it with a tenderness which was more that of mother than child. "Moral affections--soft--compassionate!--a good child and would go well with--_pulsatilla_." Helen held up her finger, and glanced from her father to the traveller, and then to her father again. "Certainly--_pulsatilla_!" muttered the homoeopathist: and, esconcing himself in his own corner, he also sought to sleep. But, after vain efforts, accompanied by restless gestures and movements, he suddenly started up, and again extracted his phial-book. "What the deuce are they to me!" he muttered; "morbid sensibility of character--_coffee_? No!--accompanied by vivacity and violence--_Nux_!" He brought his book to the window, contrived to read the label on a pigmy bottle. "_Nux!_ that's it," he said--and he swallowed a globule! "Now," quoth he, after a pause, "I don't care a straw for the misfortunes of other people--nay, I have half a mind to let down the window." Helen looked up. "But I won't," he added resolutely; and this time he fell fairly asleep. CHAPTER XII. The coach stopped at eleven o'clock, to allow the passengers to sup. The homoeopathist woke up, got out, gave himself a shake, and inhaled the fresh air into his vigorous lungs with an evident sensation of delight. He then turned and looked into the coach. "Let your father get out, my dear," said he, with a tone more gentle than usual. "I should like to see him in-doors--perhaps I can do him good." But what was Helen's terror when she found that her father did not stir. He was in a deep swoon, and still quite insensible when they lifted him from the carriage. When he recovered his senses, his cough returned, and the effort brought up blood. It was impossible for him to proceed farther. The homoeopathist assisted to undress and put him into bed. And having administered another of his mysterious globules, he inquired of the landlady how far it was to the nearest doctor--for the inn stood by itself in a small hamlet. There was the parish apothecary three miles off. But on hearing that the gentlefolks employed Dr. Dosewell, and it was a good seven miles to his house, the homoeopathist fetched a deep breath. The coach only stopped a quarter of an hour. "Cott!" said he angrily to himself--"the _nux_ was a failure. My sensibility is chronic. I must go through a long course to get rid of it. Hallo, guard! get out my carpet-bag. I shan't go on to-night." And the good man, after a very slight supper, went up stairs again to the sufferer. "Shall I send for Dr. Dosewell, sir?" asked the landlady, stopping him at the door. "Hum! At what hour to-morrow does the next coach to London pass?" "Not before eight, sir." "Well, send for the doctor to be here at seven. That leaves us at least some hours free from allopathy and murder," grunted the disciple of Hahnemann, as he entered the room. Whether it was the globule that the homoeopathist had administered, or the effect of nature, aided by repose, that checked the effusion of blood, and restored some temporary strength to the poor sufferer, is more than it becomes one not of the Faculty to opine. But certainly Mr. Digby seemed better, and he gradually fell into a profound sleep, but not till the doctor had put his ear to his chest, tapped it with his hand, and asked several questions; after which the homoeopathist retired into a corner of the room, and, leaning his face on his hand, seemed to meditate. From his thoughts he was disturbed by a gentle touch. Helen was kneeling at his feet. "Is he very ill--very?" said she; and her fond wistful eyes were fixed on the physician's with all the earnestness of despair. "Your father _is_ very ill," replied the doctor after a short pause. "He cannot move hence for some days at least. I am going to London--shall I call on your relations, and tell some of them to join you?" "No, thank you, sir," answered Helen, coloring. "But do not fear; I can nurse papa. I think he has been worse before--that is, he has complained more." The homoeopathist rose and took two strides across the room, then he paused by the bed, and listened to the breathing of the sleeping man. He stole back to the child, who was still kneeling, took her in his arms and kissed her. "Tamm it," said he angrily, and putting her down, "go to bed now--you are not wanted any more." "Please, sir," said Helen, "I cannot leave him so. If he wakes he would miss me." The doctor's hand trembled; he had recourse to his globules. "Anxiety, grief suppressed," muttered he. "Don't you want to cry, my dear? Cry--do!" "I can't," murmured Helen. "_Pulsatilla!_" said the doctor, almost with triumph. "I said so from the first. Open your mouth--here! Good night. My room is opposite--No. 6; call me if he wakes." CHAPTER XIII. At seven o'clock Dr. Dosewell arrived, and was shown into the room of the homoeopathist, who, already up and dressed, had visited his patient. "My name is Morgan," said the homoeopathist; "I am a physician. I leave in your hands a patient whom, I fear, neither I nor you can restore. Come and look at him." The two doctors went into the sick-room. Mr. Digby was very feeble, but he had recovered his consciousness, and inclined his head courteously. "I am sorry to cause so much trouble," said he. The homoeopathist drew away Helen; the allopathist seated himself by the bedside and put his questions, felt the pulse, sounded the lungs, and looked at the tongue of the patient. Helen's eye was fixed on the strange doctor, and her color rose, and her eye sparkled when he got up cheerfully, and said in a pleasant voice. "You may have a little tea." "Tea!" growled the homoeopathist--"barbarian!" "He is better, then, sir?" said Helen, creeping to the allopathist. "Oh, yes, my dear--certainly; and we shall do very well, I hope." The two doctors then withdrew. "Last about a week!" said Dr. Dosewell, smiling pleasantly, and showing a very white set of teeth. "I should have said a month; but our systems are different," replied Dr. Morgan, drily. _Dr. Dosewell_, (courteously).--"We country doctors bow to our metropolitan superiors; what would you advise? You would venture, perhaps, the experiment of bleeding." _Dr. Morgan_, (spluttering and growing Welsh, which he never did but in excitement). "Pleed! Cott in heaven! do you think I am a butcher--an executioner? Pleed! Never." _Dr. Dosewell._--"I don't find it answer, myself, when both lungs are gone! But perhaps you are for inhaling." _Dr. Morgan._--"Fiddledee!" _Dr. Dosewell_, (with some displeasure).--"What would you advise, then, in order to prolong our patient's life for a month?" _Dr. Morgan._--"Stop the hæmoptysis--give him _rhus_!" _Dr. Dosewell._--"Rhus, sir! _Rhus!_ I don't know that medicine. _Rhus!_" _Dr. Morgan._--"_Rhus toxicodendron._" The length of the last word excited Dr. Dosewell's respect. A word of five syllables--this was something like! He bowed deferentially, but still looked puzzled. At last he said, smiling frankly, "You great London practitioners have so many new medicines; may I ask what Rhus toxico--toxico-- "Dendron." "Is?" "The juice of the Upas--vulgarly called the Poison-Tree." Dr. Dosewell started. "Upas--poison-tree--little birds that come under the shade fall down dead! You give upas juice in hæmoptysis--what's the dose?" Dr. Morgan grinned maliciously, and produced a globule the size of a small pin's head. Dr. Dosewell recoiled in disgust. "Oh!" said he very coldly, and assuming at once an air of superb superiority, "I see--a homoeopathist, sir!" "A homoeopathist!" "Um!" "Um!" "A strange system, Dr. Morgan," said Dr. Dosewell, recovering his cheerful smile, but with a curl of contempt in it, "and would soon do for the druggists." "Serve 'em right. The druggists soon do for the patients." "Sir!" "Sir!" _Dr. Dosewell_, (with dignity.)--"You don't know, perhaps, Dr. Morgan, that I am an apothecary as well as a surgeon. In fact," he added, with a certain grand humility, "I have not yet taken a diploma, and am but Doctor by courtesy." _Dr. Morgan._--"All one, sir! Doctor signs the death-warrant--'pothecary does the deed!" _Dr. Dosewell_, (with a withering sneer.)--"Certainly we don't profess to keep a dying man alive upon the juice of the deadly upas-tree." _Dr. Morgan_, (complacently.)--"Of course you don't. There are no poisons with us. That's just the difference between you and me, Dr. Dosewell!" _Dr. Dosewell_, (pointing to the homoeopathist's travelling pharmacopoeia, and with affected candor.)--"Indeed, I have always said that if you can do no good, you can do no harm, with your infinitesimals." Dr. Morgan, who had been obtuse to the insinuation of poisoning, fires up violently at the charge of doing no harm. "You know nothing about it! I could kill quite as many people as you, if I chose it; but I don't choose." _Dr. Dosewell_, (shrugging up his shoulders.)--"Sir! 'tis no use arguing; the thing's against common sense. In short, it is my firm belief that it is--is a complete--" _Dr. Morgan._--"A complete what?" _Dr. Dosewell_, (provoked to the utmost.)--"Humbug!" _Dr. Morgan._--"Humbug! Cott in heaven! You old--" _Dr. Dosewell._--"Old what, sir?" _Dr. Morgan_, (at home in a series of alliteral vowels, which none but a Cymbrian could have uttered without gasping.)--"Old allopathical anthropophagite!" _Dr. Dosewell_, (starting up, seizing by the back the chair on which he had sate, and bringing it down violently on its four legs)--"Sir!" _Dr. Morgan_, (imitating the action with his own chair.)--"Sir!" _Dr. Dosewell._--"You're abusive." _Dr. Morgan._--"You're impertinent." _Dr. Dosewell._--"Sir!" _Dr. Morgan._--"Sir!" The two rivals fronted each other. They were both athletic men, and fiery men. Dr. Dosewell was the taller, but Dr. Morgan was the stouter. Dr. Dosewell on the mother's side was Irish; but Dr. Morgan on both sides was Welsh. All things considered, I would have backed Dr. Morgan if it had come to blows. But, luckily for the honor of science, here the chambermaid knocked at the door, and said, "The coach is coming, sir." Dr. Morgan recovered his temper and his manners at that announcement. "Dr. Dosewell," said he, "I have been too hot--I apologize." "Dr. Morgan," answered the allopathist, "I forgot myself. Your hand, sir." _Dr. Morgan._--"We are both devoted to humanity, though with different opinions. We should respect each other." _Dr. Dosewell._--"Where look for liberality, if men of science are illiberal to their brethren?" _Dr. Morgan_, (aside.)--"The old hypocrite! He would pound me in a mortar if the law would let him." _Dr. Dosewell_, (aside.)--"The wretched charlatan! I should like to pound him in a mortar." _Dr. Morgan._--"Good-bye, my esteemed and worthy brother." _Dr. Dosewell._--"My excellent friend, good-bye." _Dr. Morgan_, (returning in haste.)--"I forgot. I don't think our poor patient is very rich. I confide him to your disinterested benevolence."--(Hurries away.) _Dr. Dosewell_, (in a rage.)--"Seven miles at six o'clock in the morning, and perhaps done out of my fee! Quack! Villain!" Meanwhile, Dr. Morgan had returned to the sick-room. "I must wish you farewell," said he to poor Mr. Digby, who was languidly sipping his tea, "But you are in the hands of a--of a--gentleman in the profession." "You have been too kind--I am shocked," said Mr. Digby. "Helen, where's my purse?" Dr. Morgan paused. He paused, first, because it must be owned that his practice was restricted, and a fee gratified the vanity natural to unappreciated talent, and had the charm of novelty which is sweet to human nature itself. Secondly, he was a man "Who knew his rights, and, knowing, dared maintain." He had resigned a coach fare--slaved a night--and thought he had relieved his patient. He had a right to his fee. On the other hand he paused, because, though he had small practice, he was tolerably well off, and did not care for money itself, and he suspected his patient to be no Cresus. Meanwhile, the purse was in Helen's hand. He took it from her, and saw but a few sovereigns within the well-worn network. He drew the child a little aside. "Answer me, my dear, frankly--is your papa rich?" And he glanced at the shabby clothes strewed on the chair, and Helen's faded frock. "Alas, no!" said Helen, hanging her head. "Is that all you have?" "All." "I am ashamed to offer you two guineas," said Mr. Digby's hollow voice from the bed. "And I should be still more ashamed to take them. Good-bye, sir. Come here, my child. Keep your money, and don't waste it on the other doctor more than you can help. His medicines can do your father no good. But I suppose you must have some. He's no physician, therefore there's no fee. He'll send a bill--it can't be much. You understand. And now, God bless you." Dr. Morgan was off. But as he paid the landlady his bill, he said considerately, "The poor people up stairs can pay you, but not that doctor--and he's of no use. Be kind to the little girl, and get the doctor to tell his patient (quietly, of course) to write to his friends--soon--you understand. Somebody must take charge of the poor child. And stop--hold your hand; take care--these globules for the little girl when her father dies--(here the Doctor muttered to himself, 'grief;--_aconite_')--and if she cries too much afterwards--these (don't mistake.) Tears:--_caustic_!" "Come, sir," cried the coachman. "Coming;--tears--_caustic_," repeated the homoeopathist, pulling out his handkerchief and his phial-book together as he got into the coach; and he hastily swallowed his anti-lachrymal. CHAPTER XIV. Richard Avenal was in a state of great nervous excitement. He proposed to give an entertainment of a kind wholly new to the experience of Screwstown. Mrs. M'Catchley had described with much eloquence the _Déjeûnés dansants_ of her fashionable friends residing in the elegant suburbs of Wimbledon and Fulham. She declared that nothing was so agreeable. She had even said point-blank to Mr. Avenel, "Why don't you give a _Déjeûné dansant_?" And, therewith, a _Déjeûné dansant_ Mr. Avenel resolved to give. The day was fixed, and Mr. Avenel entered into all the requisite preparations with the energy of a man and the providence of a woman. One morning as he stood musing on the lawn, irresolute as to the best site for the tents, Leonard came up to him with an open letter in his hand. "My dear uncle," said he, softly. "Ha!" exclaimed Mr. Avenel, with a start. "Ha--well--what now?" "I have just received a letter from Mr. Dale. He tells me that my poor mother is very restless and uneasy, because he cannot assure her that he has heard from me; and his letter requires an answer. Indeed, I shall seem very ungrateful to him--to all--if I do not write." Richard Avenel's brows met. He uttered an impatient "pish!" and turned away. Then coming back, he fixed his clear hawk-like eye on Leonard's ingenuous countenance, linked his arm in his nephew's, and drew him into the shrubbery. "Well, Leonard," said he, after a pause, "it is time that I should give you some idea of my plans with regard to you. You have seen my manner of living--some difference from what you ever saw before, I calculate. Now I have given you, what no one gave me, a lift in the world; and where I place you, there you must help yourself." "Such is my duty and my desire," said Leonard, heartily. "Good. You are a clever lad, and a genteel lad, and will do me credit. I have had doubts of what is best for you. At one time I thought of sending you to college. That, I know, is Mr. Dale's wish; perhaps it is your own. But I have given up that idea; I have something better for you. You have a clear head for business, and are a capital arithmetician. I think of bringing you up to superintend my business: by-and-by I will admit you into partnership; and before you are thirty you will be a rich man. Come, does that suit you?" "My dear uncle," said Leonard frankly, but much touched by this generosity, "it is not for me to have a choice. I should have preferred going to college, because there I might gain independence for myself, and cease to be a burden on you. Moreover, my heart moves me to studies more congenial with the college than the counting-house. But all this is nothing compared with my wish to be of use to you, and to prove in any way, however feebly, my gratitude for all your kindness." "You're a good, grateful, sensible lad," exclaimed Richard heartily; "and believe me, though I'm a rough diamond, I have your true interest at heart. You _can_ be of use to me, and in being so you will best serve yourself. To tell you the truth, I have some idea of changing my condition. There's a lady of fashion and quality who, I think, may condescend to become Mrs. Avenel; and if so, I shall probably reside a great part of the year in London. I don't want to give up my business. No other investment will yield the same interest. But you can soon learn to superintend it for me, as some day or other I may retire, and then you can step in. Once a member of our great commercial class, and with your talents, you may be any thing--member of parliament, and after that, minister of state, for what I know. And my wife--hem!--that is to be--has great connections, and you shall marry well; and--oh, the Avenels will hold their heads with the highest, after all! Damn the aristocracy--we clever fellows will be the aristocrats--eh!" Richard rubbed his hands. Certainly, as we have seen, Leonard, especially in his earlier steps to knowledge, had repined at his position in the many degrees of life--certainly he was still ambitious--certainly he could not now have returned contentedly to the humble occupation he had left; and woe to the young man who does not hear with a quickened pulse, and brightening eye, words that promise independence, and flatter with a hope of distinction. Still, it was with all the reaction of chill and mournful disappointment that Leonard, a few hours after this dialogue with his uncle, found himself alone in the fields, and pondering over the prospects before him. He had set his heart upon completing his intellectual education, upon developing those powers within him which yearned for an arena of literature, and revolted from the routine of trade. But to his credit be it said that he vigorously resisted this natural disappointment, and by degrees schooled himself to look cheerfully on the path imposed on his duty, and sanctioned by the manly sense that was at the core of his character. I believe that this self-conquest showed that the boy had true genius. The false genius would have written sonnets and despaired. But still Richard Avenel left his nephew sadly perplexed as to the knotty question from which their talk on the future had diverged--viz. should he write to the parson; and assure the fears of his mother? How do so without Richard's consent, when Richard had on a former occasion so imperiously declared that, if he did, it would lose his mother all that Richard intended to settle on her. While he was debating this matter with his conscience, leaning against a stile that interrupted a path to the town, Leonard Fairfield was startled by an exclamation. He looked up, and beheld Mr. Sprott the tinker. CHAPTER XV. The tinker, blacker and grimmer than ever, stared hard at the altered person of his old acquaintance, and extended his sable fingers, as if inclined to convince himself by the sense of touch, that it was Leonard in the flesh that he beheld, under vestments so marvellously elegant and preternaturally spruce. Leonard shrank mechanically from the contact, while in great surprise he faltered-- "You here, Mr. Sprott! What could bring you so far from home?" "'Ome!" echoed the tinker, "I 'as no 'ome! or rayther, d'ye see, Muster Fairfilt, I makes myself at 'ome verever I goes! Lor' love ye I ben't settled in no parridge. I vanders here and vanders there, and that's my 'ome verever I can mend my kettles, and sell my tracks!" So saying, the tinker slid his panniers on the ground, gave a grunt of release and satisfaction, and seated himself with great composure on the stile, from which Leonard had retreated. "But, dash my vig," resumed Mr. Sprott, as he once more surveyed Leonard, "vy, you bees a rale gentleman now, sure_ly_. Vot's the dodge--eh?" "Dodge!" repeated Leonard mechanically--"I don't understand you." Then, thinking that it was neither necessary nor expedient to keep up his acquaintance with Mr. Sprott, nor prudent to expose himself to the battery of questions which he foresaw that further parley would bring upon him, he extended a crown-piece to the tinker; and saying with a half smile, "You must excuse me for leaving you--I have business in the town; and do me the favor to accept this trifle," he walked briskly off. The tinker looked long at the crown-piece, and sliding it into his pocket, said to himself-- "Ho--'ush-money! No go, my swell cove." After venting that brief soliloquy he sat silent a little while, till Leonard was nearly out of sight, then rose, resumed his fardle, and creeping quick along the hedgerows, followed Leonard towards the town. Just in the last field, as he looked over the hedge, he saw Leonard accosted by a gentleman of comely mien and important swagger. That gentleman soon left the young man, and came, whistling loud, up the path, and straight towards the tinker. Mr. Sprott looked round, but the hedge was too neat to allow of a hiding-place, so he put a bold front on, and stepped forth like a man. But, alas for him! before he got into the public path, the proprietor of the land, Mr. Richard Avenel, (for the gentleman was no less a personage) had spied out the trespasser, and called to him with a "Hillo, fellow," that spoke all the dignity of a man who owns acres, and all the wrath of a man who beholds those acres impudently invaded. The tinker stopped, and Mr. Avenel stalked up to him. "What the devil are you doing on my property, lurking by my hedge? I suspect you are an incendiary!" "I be a tinker," quoth Mr. Sprott, not louting low, (for a sturdy republican was Mr. Sprott,) but like a lord of humankind, "Pride in his port, defiance in his eye." Mr. Avenel's fingers itched to knock the tinker's villanous hat off his Jacobinical head, but he repressed the undignified impulse by thrusting both hands deep into his trowsers' pockets. "A tinker?" he cried--"that's a vagrant; and I'm a magistrate, and I've a great mind to send you to the treadmill--that I have. What do you do here, I say? You have not answered my question?" "What does I do 'ere?" said Mr. Sprott. "Vy, you had better ax my crakter of the young gent I saw you talking with just now; he knows me!" "What! my nephew know you?" "W--hew," whistled the tinker, "your nephew is it, sir? I have a great respek for your family. I have known Mrs. Fairfilt, the vasherwoman, this many a year. I 'umbly ax your pardon." And he took off his hat this time. Mr. Avenel turned red and white in a breath. He growled out something inaudible, turned on his heel, and strode off. The tinker watched him as he had watched Leonard, and then dogged the uncle as he had dogged the nephew. I don't presume to say that there was cause and effect in what happened that night, but it was what is called "a curious coincidence" that that night one of Richard Avenel's ricks was set on fire; and that that day he called Mr. Sprott an incendiary. Mr. Sprott was a man of very high spirit and did not forgive an insult easily. His nature was inflammatory, and so was that of the lucifers which he always carried about him, with his tracts and glue-pots. The next morning there was an inquiry made for the tinker, but he had disappeared from the neighborhood. CHAPTER XVI. It was a fortunate thing that the _déjeûné dansant_ so absorbed Mr. Richard Avenel's thoughts, that even the conflagration of his rick could not scare away the graceful and poetic images connected with that pastoral festivity. He was even loose and careless in the questions he put to Leonard about the tinker; nor did he set justice in pursuit of that itinerant trader; for, to say truth, Richard Avenel was a man accustomed to make enemies amongst the lower orders; and though he suspected Mr. Sprott of destroying his rick, yet, when he once set about suspecting, he found that he had quite as good cause to suspect fifty other persons. How on earth could a man puzzle himself about ricks and tinkers, when all his cares and energies were devoted to a _déjeûné dansant_? It was a maxim of Richard Avenel's, as it ought to be of every clever man, "to do one thing at a time;" and therefore he postponed all other considerations till the _déjeûné dansant_ was fairly done with. Amongst these considerations was the letter which Leonard wished to write to the parson. "Wait a bit, and we will _both_ write!" said Richard good-humoredly, "the moment the _déjeûné dansant_ is over!" It must be owned that this fête was no ordinary provincial ceremonial. Richard Avenel was a man to do a thing well when he set about it-- "He soused the cabbage with a bounteous heart." By little and little his first notions had expanded, till what had been meant to be only neat and elegant now embraced the costly and magnificent. Artificers accustomed to _déjeûné dansants_ came all the way from London to assist, to direct, to create. Hungarian singers, and Tyrolese singers, and Swiss peasant-women who were to chant the _Ranz des Vaches_, and milk cows or make syllabubs, were engaged. The great marquee was decorated as a Gothic banquet hall; the breakfast itself was to consist of "all the delicacies of the season." In short, as Richard Avenel said to himself, "It is a thing once in a way; a thing on which I don't object to spend money, provided that the thing _is_--the thing!" It had been a matter of grave meditation how to make the society worthy of the revel; for Richard Avenel was not contented with the mere aristocracy of the town--his ambition had grown with his expenses. "Since it will cost so much," said he, "I may as well come it strong, and get in the county." True, that he was personally acquainted with very few of what are called county families. But still, when a man makes himself of mark in a large town, and can return one of the members whom that town sends to parliament; and when, moreover, that man proposes to give some superb and original entertainment, in which the old can eat and the young can dance, there is no county in the island that has not families enow who will be delighted by an invitation from THAT MAN. And so Richard, finding that, as the thing got talked of, the Dean's lady, and Mrs. Pompley, and various other great personages, took the liberty to suggest that Squire this, and Sir Somebody that, would be _so_ pleased if they were asked, fairly took the bull by the horns, and sent out his cards to the Park, Hall, and Rectory, within a circumference of twelve miles. He met with but few refusals, and he now counted upon five hundred guests. "In for a penny, in for a pound," said Mr. Richard Avenel. "I wonder what Mrs. M'Catchley _will_ say?" Indeed, if the whole truth must be known, Mr. Richard Avenel not only gave that _déjeûné dansant_ in honor of Mrs. M'Catchley, but he had fixed in his heart of hearts upon that occasion, (when surrounded by all his splendor, and assisted by the seductive arts of Terpsichore and Bacchus,) to whisper to Mrs. M'Catchley those soft words which--but why not here let Mr. Richard Avenel use his own idiomatic and unsophisticated expression? "Please the pigs, then," said Mr. Avenel to himself, "I shall pop the question." CHAPTER XVII. The Great Day arrived at last; and Mr. Richard Avenel, from his dressing-room window, looked on the scene below as Hannibal or Napoleon looked from the Alps on Italy. It was a scene to gratify the thought of conquest, and reward the labors of ambition. Placed on a little eminence stood the singers from the mountains of the Tyrol, their high-crowned hats and filagree buttons and gay sashes gleaming in the sun. Just seen from his place of watch, though concealed from the casual eye, the Hungarian musicians lay in ambush amidst a little belt of laurels and American shrubs. Far to the right lay what had once been called (_horresco referens_) the duckpond, where--_Dulce sonant tenui gutture carmen aves_. But the ruthless ingenuity of the head artificer had converted the duckpond into a Swiss lake, despite grievous wrong and sorrow to the _assuetum innocuumque genus_--the familiar and harmless habitants, who had been all expatriated and banished from their native waves. Large poles twisted with fir branches, stuck thickly around the lake, gave to the waters the becoming Helvetian gloom. And here, beside three cows all bedecked with ribbons, stood the Swiss maidens destined to startle the shades with the _Ranz des Vaches_. To the left, full upon the sward, which it almost entirely covered, stretched the great Gothic marquee, divided into two grand sections--one for the _dancing_, one for the _déjeûné_. The day was propitious--not a cloud in the sky. The musicians were already tuning their instruments; figures of waiters--hired of Gunter--trim and decorous, in black trowsers and white waistcoats, passed to and fro the space between the house and the marquee. Richard looked and looked; and as he looked he drew mechanically his razor across the strop; and when he had looked his fill, he turned reluctantly to the glass and shaved! All that blessed morning he had been too busy, till then, to think of shaving. There is a vast deal of character in the way that a man performs that operation of shaving! You should have seen Richard Avenel shave! You could have judged at once how he would shave his neighbors, when you saw the celerity, the completeness with which he shaved himself--a forestroke and a backstroke, and _tondenti barba cadebat_! Cheek and chin were as smooth as glass. You would have buttoned up your pockets instinctively if you had seen him. But the rest of Mr. Avenel's toilet was not completed with correspondent dispatch. On his bed, and on his chairs, and on his sofa, and on his drawers, lay trowsers and vests, and cravats, enough to distract the choice of a Stoic. And first one pair of trowsers was tried on, and then another--and one waistcoat, and then a second, and then a third. Gradually that _chef d'oeuvre_ of civilization--a _man dressed_--grew into development and form; and, finally. Mr. Richard Avenel emerged into the light of day. He had been lucky in his costume--he felt it. It might not suit every one in color or cut, but it suited him. And this was his garb. On such occasions, what epic poet would not describe the robe and tunic of a hero? His surtout--in modern phrase, his frock-coat--was blue, a rich blue, a blue that the royal brothers of George the Fourth were wont to favor. And the surtout, single-breasted, was thrown open gallantly; and in the second button-hole thereof was a moss rose. The vest was white, and the trowsers a pearl-gray, with what tailors style "a handsome fall over the boot." A blue and white silk cravat, tied loose and debonair; an ample field of shirt front, with plain gold studs; a pair of lemon-colored kid gloves, and a white hat, placed somewhat too knowingly on one side, complete the description, and "give the world assurance of the man." And, with his light, firm, well-shaped figure, his clear complexion, his keen bright eye, and features that bespoke the courage, precision, and alertness of his character--that is to say, features bold, not large, well-defined and regular--you might walk long through town or country before you would see a handsomer specimen of humanity than our friend Richard Avenel. Handsome, and feeling that he was handsome; rich, and feeling that he was rich; lord of the fête, and feeling that he was lord of the fête, Richard Avenel stepped out upon his lawn. And now the dust began to rise along the road, and carriages, and gigs, and chaises, and flies, might be seen at near intervals and in quick procession. People came pretty much about the same time--as they do in the country--heaven reward them for it! Richard Avenel was not quite at his ease at first in receiving his guests, especially those whom he did not know by sight. But when the dancing began, and he had secured the fair hand of Mrs. M'Catchley for the initiatory quadrille, his courage and presence of mind returned to him; and, seeing that many people whom he had not received at all seemed to enjoy themselves very much, he gave up the attempt to receive those who came after,--and that was a great relief to all parties. Meanwhile Leonard looked on the animated scene with a silent melancholy, which he in vain endeavored to shake off--a melancholy more common amongst very young men in such scenes than we are apt to suppose. Somehow or other the pleasure was not congenial to him; he had no Mrs. M'Catchley to endear it--he knew very few people--he was shy--he felt his position with his uncle was equivocal--he had not the habit of society--he heard incidentally many an ill-natured remark upon his uncle and the entertainment--he felt indignant and mortified. He had been a great deal happier eating his radishes, and reading his book, by the little fountain in Riccabocca's garden. He retired to a quiet part of the grounds, seated himself under a tree, leant his cheek on his hand, and mused. He was soon far away;--happy age, when, whatever the present, the future seems so fair and so infinite! But now the _déjeûné_ had succeeded the earlier dances; and, as champagne flowed royally, it is astonishing how the entertainment brightened. The sun was beginning to slope towards the west, when, during a temporary cessation of the dance, all the guests had assembled in such space as the tent left on the lawn, or thickly filled the walks immediately adjoining it. The gay dresses of the ladies, the joyous laughter heard every where, and the brilliant sun light over all, conveyed even to Leonard the notion, not of mere hypocritical pleasure, but actual healthful happiness. He was attracted from his reverie, and timidly mingled with the groups. But Richard Avenel, with the fair Mrs. M'Catchley--her complexion more vivid, and her eyes more dazzling, and her step more elastic than usual, had turned from the gayety just as Leonard had turned towards it, and was now on the very spot (remote, obscure, shaded by the few trees above five years old Mr. Avenel's property boasted) which the dreamer had deserted. And then! Ah! then! moment so meet for the sweet question of questions, place so appropriate for the delicate, bashful, murmured popping thereof!--suddenly from the sward before, from the groups beyond, there floated to the ears of Richard Avenel an indescribable mingled ominous sound--a sound as of a general titter--a horrid, malignant, but low cachination. And Mrs. M'Catchley, stretching forth her parasol, exclaimed, "Dear me, Mr. Avenel, what can they be all crowding there for?" There are certain sounds and certain sights--the one indistinct, the other vaguely conjecturable--which, nevertheless, we know by an instinct, bode some diabolical agency at work in our affairs. And if any man gives an entertainment, and hears afar a general ill-suppressed derisive titter, and sees all his guests hurrying towards one spot, I defy him to remain unmoved and uninquisitive. I defy him still more to take that precise occasion (however much he may have before designed it) to drop gracefully on his right knee before the handsomest Mrs. M'Catchley in the universe, and--pop the question! Richard Avenel blurted out something very like an oath; and, half guessing that something must have happened that it would not be pleasing to bring immediately under the notice of Mrs. M'Catchley, he said, hastily, "Excuse me! I'll just go and see what is the matter--pray, stay till I come back." With that he sprang forth; in a minute he was in the midst of the group, that parted aside with the most obliging complacency to make way for him. "But what's the matter?" he asked, impatiently, yet fearfully. Not a voice answered. He strode on, and beheld his nephew in the arms of a woman! "God bless my soul!" said Richard Avenel. CHAPTER XVIII. And such a woman! She had on a cotton gown--very neat, I dare say--for an under housemaid: and _such_ thick shoes! She had on a little black straw bonnet; and a kerchief, that might have cost tenpence, pinned across her waist instead of a shawl; and she looked altogether--respectable, no doubt, but exceedingly dusty! And she was hanging upon Leonard's neck, and scolding, and caressing, and crying very loud. "God bless my soul!" said Mr. Richard Avenel. And as he uttered that innocent self-benediction, the woman hastily turned round, and, darting from Leonard, threw herself right upon Richard Avenel--burying under her embrace blue-coat, moss-rose, white waistcoat and all--with a vehement sob and a loud exclamation! "Oh! brother Dick!--dear, dear brother Dick! and I lives to see thee agin!" And then came two such kisses--you might have heard them a mile off! The situation of brother Dick was appalling! and the crowd, that had before only tittered politely, could not now resist the effect of this sudden embrace. There was a general explosion!--it was a roar! That roar would have killed a weak man; but it sounded to the strong heart of Richard Avenel like the defiance of a foe, and it plucked forth in an instant from all conventional let and barrier the native spirit of the Anglo-Saxon. He lifted abruptly his handsome masculine head, looked round the ring of his ill-bred visitors with a haughty stare of rebuke and surprise. "Ladies and gentlemen," then said he, very coolly, "I don't see what there is to laugh at! A brother and sister meet after many years' separation, and the sister cries, poor thing! For my part, I think it very natural that _she_ should cry; but not that you should laugh!" In an instant the whole shame was removed from Richard Avenel, and rested in full weight upon the bystanders. It is impossible to say how foolish and sheepish they all looked, nor how slinkingly each tried to creep off. Richard Avenel seized his advantage with the promptitude of a man who had got on in America, and was therefore accustomed to make the best of things. He drew Mrs. Fairfield's arm in his, and led her into the house; but when he had got her safe into his parlor--Leonard following all the time--and the door was closed upon those three, _then_ Richard Avenel's ire burst forth. "You impudent, ungrateful, audacious drab!" Yes, drab was the word. I am shocked to say it, but the duties of a historian are stern; and the word _was_ drab. "Drab!" faltered poor Jane Fairfield; and she clutched hold of Leonard to save herself from falling. "Sir!" cried Leonard fiercely. You might as well have cried "sir" to a torrent. Richard hurried on, furious. "You nasty, dirty, dusty dowdy! How dare you come here to disgrace me in my own house and premises, after my sending you fifty pounds? To take the very time, too, when--when"-- Richard gasped for breath; and the laugh of his guests rang in his ears, and got into his chest, and choked him. Jane Fairfield drew herself up, and her tears were dried. "I did not come to disgrace you; I came to see my boy, and"-- "Ha!" interrupted Richard, "to see _him_." He turned to Leonard: "You have written to this woman, then?" "No, sir, I have not." "I believe you lie." "He does not lie; and he is as good as yourself, and better, Richard Avenel," exclaimed Mrs. Fairfield; "and I won't stand here and hear him insulted--that's what I won't. And as for your fifty pounds, there are forty-five of it; and I'll work my fingers to the bone till I pay back the other five. And don't be afeared I shall disgrace you, for I'll never look on your face agin; and you're a wicked bad man--that's what you are." The poor woman's voice was so raised and so shrill, that any other and more remorseful feeling which Richard might have conceived, was drowned in his apprehension that she would be overheard by his servants--a masculine apprehension, with which females rarely sympathize; which, on the contrary, they are inclined to consider a mean and cowardly terror on the part of their male oppressors. "Hush! hold your infernal squall--do!" said Mr. Avenel in a tone that he meant to be soothing. "There--sit down--and don't stir till I come back again, and can talk to you calmly. Leonard, follow me, and help to explain things to our guests." He stood still, but shook his head slightly. "What do you mean, sir?" said Richard Avenel, in a very portentous growl. "Shaking your head at me? Do you intend to disobey me? You had better take care!" Leonard's front rose; he drew one arm round his mother, and thus he spoke: "Sir, you have been kind to me and generous, and that thought alone silenced my indignation when I heard you address such language to my mother: for I felt that, if I spoke, I should say too much. Now I speak, and it is to say shortly that"-- "Hush, boy," said poor Mrs. Fairfield frightened; "don't mind me. I did not come to make mischief, and ruin your prospex. I'll go!" "Will you ask her pardon, Mr. Avenel?" said Leonard, firmly; and he advanced towards his uncle. Richard, naturally hot and intolerant of contradiction, was then excited, not only by the angry emotions which, it must be owned, a man so mortified, and in the very flush of triumph, might well experience, but by much more wine than he was in the habit of drinking; and when Leonard approached him, he misinterpreted the movement into one of menace and aggression. He lifted his arm: "Come a step nearer," said he between his teeth, "and I'll knock you down." Leonard advanced that forbidden step; but as Richard caught his eye, there was something in that eye--not defying, not threatening, but bold and dauntless--which he recognized and respected, for that something spoke the freeman. The uncle's arm mechanically fell to his side. "You cannot strike me, Mr. Avenel," said Leonard, "for you are aware that I could not strike again my mother's brother. As her son, I once more say to you,--ask her pardon." "Ten thousand devils! Are you mad? or do you want to drive me mad? you insolent beggar, fed and clothed by my charity. Ask her pardon!--what for? That she has made me the object of jeer and ridicule with that d----d cotton gown, and those double-d----d thick shoes? I vow and protest they've got nails in them! Hark ye, sir, I've been insulted by her, but I'm not to be bullied by you. Come with me instantly, or I discard you; not a shilling of mine shall you have as long as I live. Take your choice,--be a peasant, a laborer, or"-- "A base renegade to natural affection, a degraded beggar indeed!" cried Leonard, his breast heaving, and his cheeks in a glow. "Mother, mother, come away. Never fear,--I have strength and youth, and we will work together as before." But poor Mrs. Fairfield, overcome by her excitement, had sunk down into Richard's own handsome morocco leather easy-chair, and could neither speak nor stir. "Confound you both!" muttered Richard. "You can't be seen creeping out of my house now. Keep her here, you young viper, you; keep her till I come back; and then if you choose to go, go and be"-- Not finishing his sentence, Mr. Avenel hurried out of the room, and locked the door, putting the key into his pocket. He paused for a moment in the hall, in order to collect his thoughts, drew three or four deep breaths, gave himself a great shake, and, resolved to be faithful to his principle of doing one thing at a time, shook off in that shake all disturbing recollection of his mutinous captives. Stern as Achilles when he appeared to the Trojans, Richard Avenel stalked back to his lawn. CHAPTER XIX. Brief as had been his absence, the host could see that, in the interval, a great and notable change had come over the spirit of his company. Some of those who lived in the town were evidently preparing to return home on foot; those who lived at a distance, and whose carriages (having been sent away, and ordered to return at a fixed hour), had not yet arrived, were gathered together in small knots and groups; all looked sullen and displeased, and all instinctively turned from their host as he passed them by. They felt they had been lectured, and they were more put out than Richard himself. They did not know if they might not be lectured again. This vulgar man, of what might he not be capable? Richard's shrewd sense comprehended in an instant all the difficulties of his position; but he walked on deliberately and directly towards Mrs. M'Catchley, who was standing near the grand marquee with the Pompleys and the Dean's lady. As these personages saw him make thus boldly towards them, there was a flutter. "Hang the fellow!" said the Colonel, intrenching himself in his stock, "he is coming here. Low and shocking,--what shall we do? Let us stroll on." But Richard threw himself in the way of the retreat. "Mrs. M'Catchley," said he very gravely, and offering her his arm, "allow me three words with you." The poor widow looked very much discomposed. Mrs. Pompley pulled her by the sleeve. Richard still stood gazing into her face, with his arm extended. She hesitated a minute, and then took the arm. "Monstrous impudent!" cried the Colonel. "Let Mrs. M'Catchley alone, my dear," responded Mrs. Pompley; "_she_ will know how to give him a lesson!" "Madam," said Richard, as soon as he and his companion were out of hearing, "I rely on you to do me a favor." "On me?" "On you, and you alone. You have influence with all those people, and a word from you will effect what I desire. Mrs. M'Catchley," added Richard, with a solemnity that was actually imposing, "I flatter myself that you have some friendship for me, which is more than I can say of any other in these grounds--will you do me this favor, ay or no?" "What is it, Mr. Avenel?" asked Mrs. M'Catchley, much disturbed, and somewhat softened--for she was by no means a woman without feeling; indeed, she considered herself nervous. "Get all your friends--all the company in short--to come back into the tent for refreshments--for any thing. I want to say a few words to them." "Bless me! Mr. Avenel--a few words!" cried the widow, "but that's just what they are all afraid of! You must pardon me, but you really can't ask people to a _déjeûné dansant_, and then--scold 'em!" "I'm not going to scold them," said Mr. Avenel, very seriously--"upon my honor, I'm not! I'm going to make all right, and I even hope afterwards that the dancing may go on--and that you will honor me again with your hand. I leave you to your task; and, believe me, I'm not an ungrateful man," He spoke, and bowed--not without some dignity--and vanished within the breakfast division of the marquee. There he busied himself in re-collecting the waiters, and directing them to rearrange the mangled remains of the table as they best could. Mrs. M'Catchley, whose curiosity and interest were aroused, executed her commission with all the ability and tact of a woman of the world, and in less than a quarter of an hour the marquee was filled--the corks flew--the champagne bounced and sparkled--people drank in silence, munched fruits and cakes, kept up their courage with the conscious sense of numbers, and felt a great desire to know what was coming. Mr. Avenel, at the head of the table, suddenly rose-- "Ladies and Gentlemen," said he, "I have taken the liberty to invite you once more into this tent, in order to ask you to sympathize with me, upon an occasion which took us all a little by surprise to-day. "Of course, you all know I am a new man--the maker of my own fortunes." A great many heads bowed involuntarily. The words were said manfully, and there was a general feeling of respect. "Probably, too," resumed Mr. Avenel, "you may know that I am the son of very honest tradespeople. I say honest, and they are not ashamed of me--I say tradespeople, and I'm not ashamed of them. My sister married and settled at a distance. I took her son to educate and bring up. But I did not tell her where he was, nor even that I had returned from America--I wished to choose my own time for that, when I could give her the surprise, not only of a rich brother, but of a son whom I intended to make a gentleman, so far as manners and education can make one. Well, the poor dear woman has found me out sooner than I expected, and turned the tables on me by giving me a surprise of her own invention. Pray, forgive the confusion this little family scene has created: and though I own it was very laughable at the moment, and I was wrong to say otherwise, yet I am sure I don't judge ill of your good hearts when I ask you to think what brother and sister must feel who parted from each other when they were boy and girl. To me (and Richard gave a great gulp--for he felt that a great gulp alone could swallow the abominable lie he was about to utter)--to me this has been _a very happy occasion_! I'm a plain man: no one can take ill what I've said. And, wishing that you may be all as happy in your family as I am in mine--humble though it be--I beg to drink your very good healths!" There was an universal applause when Richard sat down--and so well in his plain way had he looked the thing, and done the thing, that at least half of those present--who till then had certainly disliked and half despised him--suddenly felt that they were proud of his acquaintance. For however aristocratic this country of ours may be, and however especially aristocratic be the genteeler classes in provincial towns and coteries--there is nothing which English folks, from the highest to the lowest, in their hearts so respect as a man who has risen from nothing, and owns it frankly! Sir Compton Delaval, an old baronet, with a pedigree as long as a Welshman's, who had been reluctantly decoyed to the feast by his three unmarried daughters--not one of whom, however, had hitherto condescended even to bow to the host--now rose. It was his right: he was the first person there in rank and station. "Ladies and Gentlemen," quoth Sir Compton Delaval, "I am sure that I express the feelings of all present when I say that we have heard with great delight and admiration the words addressed to us by our excellent host. (Applause.) And if any of us, in what Mr. Avenel describes justly as the surprise of the moment, were betrayed into an unseemly merriment at--at--(the Dean's lady whispered 'some of the')--some of the--some of the"--repeated Sir Compton, puzzled, and coming to a dead lock--('holiest sentiments,' whispered the Dean's lady)--"ay, some of the holiest sentiments in our nature--I beg him to accept our sincerest apologies. I can only say, for my part, that I am proud to rank Mr. Avenel amongst the gentlemen of the county, (here Sir Compton gave a sounding thump on the table,) and to thank him for one of the most brilliant entertainments it has ever been my lot to witness. If he won his fortune honestly, he knows how to spend it nobly!" Whiz went a fresh bottle of champagne. "I am not accustomed to public speaking, but I could not repress my sentiments. And I've now only to propose to you the health of our host, Richard Avenel, Esquire; and to couple with that the health of his--very interesting sister, and long life to them both!" The sentence was half drowned in enthusiastic plaudits, and in three cheers for Richard Avenel, Esquire, and his very interesting sister. "I'm a cursed humbug," thought Richard Avenel, as he wiped his forehead; "but the world _is_ such a humbug!" Then he glanced towards Mrs. M'Catchley, and to his great satisfaction, saw Mrs. M'Catchley wiping her eyes. Now, though the fair widow might certainly have contemplated the probability of accepting Mr. Avenel as a husband, she had never before felt the least bit in love with him; and now she did. There is something in courage and candor--at a word, in manliness--that all women, the most worldly, do admire in men; and Richard Avenel, humbug though his conscience said he was, seemed to her like a hero. The host saw his triumph, "Now for another dance!" said he gaily; and he was about to offer his hand to Mrs. M'Catchley, when Sir Compton Delaval seizing it, and giving it a hearty shake, cried, "You have not yet danced with my eldest daughter; so, if you won't ask her, why, I must offer her to you as your partner. Here--Sarah." Miss Sarah Delaval, who was five feet eight, and as stately as she was tall, bowed her head graciously; and Mr. Avenel, before he knew where he was, found her leaning on his arm. But as he passed into the next division of the tent, he had to run the gauntlet of all the gentlemen, who thronged round to shake hands with him. Their warm English hearts could not be satisfied till they had so repaired the sin of their previous haughtiness and mockery. Richard Avenel might then have safely introduced his sister--gown, kerchief, thick shoes and all--to the crowd; but he had no such thought. He thanked heaven devoutly that she was safely under lock and key. It was not till the third dance that he could secure Mrs. M'Catchley's hand, and then it was twilight. The carriages were at the door, but no one yet thought of going. People were really enjoying themselves. Mr. Avenel had had time, in the interim, to mature all his plans for completing and consummating that triumph which his tact and pluck had drawn from his momentary disgrace. Excited as he was with wine and suppressed passion, he had yet the sense to feel that, when all the halo that now surrounded him had evaporated, and Mrs. M'Catchley was redelivered up to the Pompleys, whom he felt to be the last persons his interest could desire for her advisers--the thought of his low relations would return with calm reflection. Now was the time. The iron was hot--now was the time to strike it, and forge the enduring chain. As he led Mrs. M'Catchley after the dance, into the lawn, he therefore said tenderly: "How shall I thank you for the favor you have done me?" "Oh!" said Mrs. M'Catchley warmly, "it was no favor--and I am so glad--" She stopped. "You're not ashamed of me, then, in spite of what has happened?" "Ashamed of you! Why, I should be so proud of you, if I were--" "Finish the sentence, and say--'your wife!'--there it is out. My dear madam, I am rich, as you know; I love you very heartily. With your help, I think I can make a figure in a larger world than this; and that whatever my father, my grandson at least will be--But it is time enough to speak of _him_. What say you?--you turn away. I'll not tease you--it is not my way. I said before, ay or no; and your kindness so emboldens me that I say it again--ay or no?" "But you take me so unawares--so--so--Lord, my dear Mr. Avenel; you are so hasty--I--I--." And the widow actually blushed, and was genuinely bashful. "Those horrid Pompleys!" thought Richard, as he saw the Colonel bustling up with Mrs. M'Catchley's cloak on his arm. "I press for your answer," continued the suitor, speaking very fast. "I shall leave this place to-morrow, if you will not give it." "Leave this place--leave me?" "Then you will be mine?" "Ah, Mr. Avenel!" said the widow, languidly, and leaving her hand in his; "who can resist you?" Up came Colonel Pompley: Richard took the shawl: "No hurry for that now, Colonel--Mrs. M'Catchley feels already at home here." Ten minutes afterwards. Richard Avenel so contrived that it was known by the whole company that their host was accepted by the Honorable Mrs. M'Catchley. And every one said, "He is a very clever man, and a very good fellow," except the Pompleys--and the Pompleys were frantic. Mr. Richard Avenel had forced his way into the aristocracy of the country. The husband of an Honorable--connected with peers! "He will stand for our city--Vulgarian!" cried the Colonel. "And his wife will walk out before me," cried the Colonel's lady--"nasty woman!" And she burst into tears. The guests were gone; and Richard had now leisure to consider what course to pursue with regard to his sister and her son. His victory over his guests had in much softened his heart towards his relations; but he still felt bitterly aggrieved at Mrs. Fairfield's unseasonable intrusion, and his pride was greatly chafed by the boldness of Leonard. He had no idea of any man whom he had served, or meant to serve, having a will of his own--having a single thought in opposition to his pleasure. He began, too, to feel that words had passed between him and Leonard which could not be well forgotten by either, and would render their close connection less pleasant than heretofore. He, the great Richard Avenel, beg pardon of Mrs. Fairfield, the washerwoman! No; she and Leonard must beg his. "That must be the first step," said Richard Avenel; "and I suppose they have come to their senses." With that expectation, he unlocked the door of his parlor, and found himself in complete solitude. The moon, lately risen, shone full into the room, and lit up every corner. He stared round, bewildered--the birds had flown. "Did they go through the key-hole?" said Mr. Avenel. "Ha! I see!--the window is open!" The window reached to the ground. Mr. Avenel, in his excitement, had forgotten that easy mode of egress. "Well," said he, throwing himself into his easy-chair, "I suppose I shall soon hear from them; they'll be wanting my money fast enough, I fancy." His eye caught sight of a letter, unsealed, lying on the table. He opened it, and saw bank-notes to the amount of £50--the widow's forty-five country notes, and a new note, Bank of England, that he had lately given to Leonard. With the money were these lines, written in Leonard's bold, clear writing, though a word or two here and there showed that the hand had trembled-- "I thank you for all you have done to one whom you regarded as the object of charity. My mother and I forgive what has passed. I depart with her. You bade me make my choice, and I have made it. LEONARD FAIRFIELD." The paper dropped from Richard's hand, and he remained mute and remorseful for a moment. He soon felt, however, that he had no help for it but working himself up into a rage. "Of all creatures in the world," cried Richard, stamping his foot on the floor, "there are none so disagreeable, insolent, and ungrateful as poor relations. I wash my hands of them!" Historical Review of the Month THE UNITED STATES. Both political parties are already moving with reference to the choice of a Presidential candidate for the coming campaign of 1852. The demonstrations thus far, however, have been principally local, and give no clue whatever to the probable choice of the National Conventions of the parties. In Boston, a paper nominating the Hon. Daniel Webster for the Presidency, on the ground of his devotion to the Union and Constitution, has been circulated for signatures. The Democrats of New Hampshire have declared their preference for the Hon. Levi Woodbury. The Whigs of Pennsylvania manifest a strong predilection for taking up Gen. Scott. A considerable class, who advocate the freedom of the Public Lands to actual settlers, have formally adopted the Hon. Isaac P. Walker, of Wisconsin, for their candidate. The President and Cabinet reached Buffalo on Friday afternoon, the 17th of May. Here they were received by an immense concourse of people, and publicly welcomed by the city authorities. On the following day the President went to Aurora, to visit his father's family, and Secretaries Graham and Crittenden took the opportunity to visit Niagara. The distinguished guests left Buffalo on the following Tuesday morning, dined at Rochester, where a public reception was given to them, and were greeted at Syracuse, where they arrived at midnight, with a torchlight procession. The next day they visited Rome, Oneida and Utica, where they remained all night, and were received in Albany on Thursday afternoon, the 23d, with a grand military and civic reception. From Albany they returned directly to Washington, making no stop at any intermediate point. Mr. Webster, who had been detained at Dunkirk by the illness of his son, remained at Buffalo a few days after the departure of the Presidential party. On Wednesday evening, the 21st, he was complimented with a dinner from the citizens, at which he made a familiar speech of some length. The following day he addressed the citizens of Buffalo. His speech was an explanation and defence of his course with regard to the Compromise measures, and the questions which have recently agitated the country. It is regarded as one of the most able and effective addresses he has made for some time past. On his return to Washington, Mr. Webster delivered another speech at Albany on the 29th. The Government has received information from Chihuahua, that claims to the amount of twenty millions of dollars, for damages done to Mexican property by the Indians from the American side of the Rio Grande, have been filed with the Mexican authorities for presentation to our Government under the Treaty which provides that this country shall prevent Indian depredations. Much damage has unquestionably been committed since the Treaty, but the amount has been enormously exaggerated. The Postmaster General has announced an arrangement, to take effect after the 1st of this month, by which letters to the West India Islands, ports in the Gulf of Mexico and on the Atlantic Coast of South America, can be sent through the United States Post Office, on prepayment of the American postage to any of the British ports, with the addition of the British postage, when destined for ports belonging to other Governments. M. de Sartiges, the newly appointed French Minister to this country, presented his credentials to the President on the 29th of May. Mr. Paine, who claims to have invented a process for manufacturing gas from water, is in Washington endeavoring to procure a contract from Washington for the illumination of light-houses. The pendulum experiment, exhibiting the rotation of the earth, has been tried in the Capitol, with the most satisfactory result. The projected expedition for the invasion of Cuba, has, it is believed, been completely broken up. The Steamer Gaston, after searching the coasts and rivers, returned to Baltimore with twenty-five men under arrest. A camp of three hundred men, near Jacksonville, had been broken up just before the arrival of the Steamer. Upwards of fifteen hundred persons had visited the place since the invasion was projected, but after squandering their funds, they again dispersed. The U.S. revenue cutter Fancy went on a similar cruise, a week after the Gaston, and succeeded in discovering an encampment on a branch of the St. John's river. The three officers and leaders of the company were arrested and taken to Savannah; the men were ordered to return to their homes. There has been considerable stir in State politics and legislation during the past month. In the Virginia Reform Convention, the violent debate on the question of representation, on which the members of the eastern and western parts of the State were arrayed against each other, has been settled by the adoption of a compromise. The difficulty was in relation to slave representation. The committee to whom the subject was referred, reported a plan providing that the House of Delegates shall consist of 150 members, eighty-two to be chosen from the West and sixty-eight from the East, making a Western majority of fourteen; the Senate to consist of fifty members, thirty from the East and twenty from the West, making an Eastern majority of ten. It is also made the duty of the General Assembly, in the year 1865, to re-apportion the representation in both Houses. The people of Maryland have adopted the new State Constitution by a large majority. Its prominent features are--the ineligibility of clergymen to seats in the Legislature; the disqualification of persons engaged in duels as principals or seconds, from holding office; the extension of the Governor's term to four years, at a salary of $2,600 per annum; the election of judges by the people; the abolition of lotteries and of imprisonment for debt, and the exemption of the homestead, to the value of $500, from legal process. The Massachusetts Legislature adjourned on the 24th of May, after a session of nearly five months. A bill for the aid of the proposed European and North American Halifax Railroad, was debated at considerable length, but was finally referred to the next Legislature. The message of the Governor of Maine, which was delivered to the Legislature on the 19th of May, contains a strong complaint against Massachusetts for her policy in regard to her claims in Maine lands, and especially for refusing her aid in the construction of the Aroostook Road, which passes through the territory claimed by Massachusetts. The election in Texas for Governor and Members of the Legislature, is exciting great interest. Unusual importance is attached to the election, as the disposition of the Ten Millions received from the United States will be in the hands of the successful candidates. Mr. Foote, U.S. Senator from Mississippi, has been nominated by the Union Convention of that State as candidate for Governor, which nomination he has accepted. The secession excitement is on the decline in South Carolina, and no further action on the subject is anticipated. In Georgia, the secessionists held a State Convention at Milledgeville, on the 28th of May. A series of resolutions was adopted, declaring that the rights of the South had been violated, and advocating the extension of the line of 36° 30', as the limit of slavery, to the Pacific Ocean. The Union Convention of the same State met on the 3d of June, and after re-adopting the resolutions of the Georgia Convention, nominated the Hon. Howell Cobb, late Speaker of Congress, as candidate for Governor. An important law-suit, which, has some resemblance to the late agitation on the Slavery question, has been pending in the United States Circuit Court, in New-York. The suit was commenced at the instance of the Southern Methodist Conference against the Trustees of the Methodist Book Concern, in New-York, for the establishment of a claim to a large amount of property now in the hands of the Trustees. A division of the American Methodist Church took place in 1845, on account of a difference in relation to the ownership of slaves by the ministry of the Church. The Southern members formed a separate organization, called the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and have since then claimed a division of the funds of the Book Concern. The Northern Church, in their defence, maintained that the separation was a secession on the part of the South, and therefore that the Church was not entitled to any share in the establishment. As the property of the concern is valued at nearly a million of dollars, the case assumed an important aspect, and the ablest counsel were employed on both sides. Daniel Webster and Reverdy Johnson were engaged by the plaintiffs, and Thomas Ewing and Rufus Choate for the defence. The case has not yet been decided, but in the mean time proposals for arbitration and compromise have been made, which may prove successful. The elections in New-York to supply the vacancies in the State Senate, created by the resignation of twelve senators, for the purpose of defeating the bill for the enlargement of the Erie Canal, by leaving that body without a quorum, took place on the 27th of May. Six of the former senators were returned, and five others, favorable to the enlargement, in place of those who had resigned: the vote in the 26th District was a tie. The special session of the Legislature met on the 10th of June. The election secured to the Senate a quorum of the friends of the Canal Bill, and therefore insures its passage. The Seventh Census of the United States has been published. The total population amounts to 23,267,408, including 3,179,470 slaves. The whole number of Representatives to Congress based on this population is 233. An attack of "gold excitement," on a small scale, has appeared in Maine. It is reported and generally believed that the precious metal has been found in the Northern part of the State, in the streams which flow into the west branch of the Penobscot and into Moose River. The country is a high plateau, near the Canadian boundary, where, also, the tributaries of the Chaudiere take their rise. On the latter streams, it is said, the Provincial Government of Canada has been quietly carrying on mining operations for two years past. Several companies of adventurers from the towns of Maine and New Hampshire have started for the Northern Eldorado. Several of the Western States have been visited by violent and destructive tornadoes. In the city of St. Louis, upwards of one hundred buildings were injured. The regions about Louisville, Ky., and Pittsburg, also suffered severely. During the last week in May an immense amount of rain fell in the Northern part of Illinois; occasional great freshets in all the rivers. The flood was greater than had been known for many years; the mill-dams and mills were swept away, and a great amount of property damaged. Two viaducts on the Indiana Canal were entirely destroyed. The grain crops of the Middle and Western States promise an abundant harvest. The cotton crop in South Carolina, the northern part of Georgia and the Tennessee Valley, has been considerably injured by the coldness of the season. A serious riot occurred at Hoboken, near New-York, on Monday, the 26th of May. It was the holiday of Pentecost, and the German residents of the city, to the number of near ten thousand, crossed the Hudson to celebrate the day according to their national customs. They were beset in the afternoon by a company of rowdies, between whom and a German society of gymnasts an altercation arose, resulting in a general fight, in the course of which the Germans were grossly injured by their antagonists. Two persons were killed, and forty or fifty badly wounded. The rowdies all escaped, and of fifty Germans who were arrested, only ten were found to have participated in the affray. The riot, after lasting till 9 o'clock at night, was finally quelled by calling out the military. The inhabitants of Hoboken have organized a company for the prevention of disorder in future. During the month of May Jenny Lind gave fourteen concerts in New-York, without any diminution of her wonderful success, the last concert realizing upwards of $18,000. At the close, the termination of her contract with Mr. Barnum, at the hundredth concert, was announced. On giving her first concert at Philadelphia, however, a new agreement was made, by which the contract was at once broken off, Miss Lind having then sung ninety-three times, on condition of her forfeiting the sum of $25,000. The concerts in Philadelphia, given on her own account, were very successful. Several large defalcations in public officers have lately come to light. The Postmaster of Macon, Ga., failed for the sum of $50,000, part of which was the Post-office funds. He escaped by flight. The late City Collector of Baltimore is charged with a deficiency of $30,000 in the accounts of the Custom House, but has surrendered his property in trust, and expresses his desire to have the subject investigated. A man named Brown was recently taken to Washington by the Marshal of Michigan, on a charge of forging Land Warrants. A company of Mormons, under the government of a man named Strang, on Beaver Island, in Huron River, have got into difficulty with the authorities and the American citizens. They recently attacked two men by the name of Bennett, who were known to be hostile to their claims: killed one, and dangerously wounded the other. Strang and some of his companions voluntarily delivered themselves into the hands of the authorities, and are awaiting their trial. In the Lake Superior region business of all kinds has become very active. The steamboats on the Lake are crowded with passengers and freight, and the country about the mines is improving rapidly. Lands are being cleared, roads laid out, houses built, and the region rapidly assuming the appearance of a permanent settlement. Several new mines of unusual richness have been discovered, and all the old shafts deepened and extended, with the most successful results. The prospects of the mines on the Ontmagon are equally favorable. Hostilities have again broken out between the Sioux and Chippewa Indians. Several of the latter tribe were murdered by the former, who formed into war parties, and marched against their enemies. The first Centennial Celebration of the Pennsylvania Hospital took place on the 3d of June, in Philadelphia.--The cholera still appears at intervals along the Western rivers. There were 13 deaths in New Orleans during the week ending May 31st.--In the case of Scott, indicted at Boston for the rescue of the fugitive slave Shadrach, the jury were unable to agree upon a verdict. Although agreeing as to the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law, they stood equally divided on the question of convicting the prisoner. A new trial has been ordered. A personal combat took place in the streets of Lynchburg, Va., on the 5th of June, between Mr. Saunders, a member of the State Convention, and Mr. Terry, Editor of the Lynchburg "Virginian." Five shots were exchanged, and both parties so severely wounded that they died shortly afterwards. The emigration across the plains has commenced, but will be much smaller than that of last year. It is calculated that 300 wagons will cross during the Summer, three-fourths of which will go to the Salt Lake and Oregon, and the remainder to California. Grass is abundant on the plains, but the snow is reported to be very deep in the mountains beyond Fort Laramie. Advices from Texas give accounts of the rapid improvement of the lands on the Brazos River. The troubles with the Indians still continue. A battle between a small company of Texan militia and a band of Indians, took place near the head waters of the Lema River, on the 24th of May: Six Indians were killed, and the remainder driven off. An expedition has been ordered by Gen. Harney, to aid the Indian agents in their demand for the release of white prisoners in captivity. A train, composed of 170 wagons, with a large escort, left San Antonio for El Paso on the 7th of May. A company of Americans, while crossing the Rio Grande to attend a ball at Rima, were fired upon by a party of Mexican soldiers. Two of the American soldiers were severely wounded, and the Mexicans apologized for the act on the ground of its being a mistake. News from Santa Fe to the 1st of May has arrived. On the 2d of April, Governor Calhoun consummated a treaty with Francisco Chacon, principal chief of the Apaches east of the Rio Grande. The savages agreed to give up what stolen property had been in their possession for the previous eight months, and to settle in towns, provided teachers and implements of husbandry were furnished them. As might have been expected, this treaty was broken within three weeks of its adoption, although Chacon bound himself to maintain the peace, on penalty of forfeiting his head. Fifteen companies of the U.S. troops were to leave Santa Fe on the 10th of May, upon a campaign against the Navajo Indians. This movement was considered necessary, on account of the serious injury which the health of the soldiers had sustained from the inactivity of their mode of life. Governor Calhoun issued a proclamation on the 23d of April, appointing the 19th of May for the election of members of the Legislative Assembly. The first session of the Legislature was to commence at Santa Fe on the 2d of June. The Mexicans were well pleased with the new Government, since it removed the power from the hands of the military. Business was very brisk at Santa Fe, and a number of mills were in the course of erection in the neighborhood. The census of the territory, taken by direction of the Governor, shows a population of 56,984, in addition to the Indians. The Boundary Commissioners were on the Rio Grande, near Dona Ana, and had decided to place the corner-stone six or seven miles below that place. The news of the formation of a Territorial Government for Utah, and the appointment of Brigham Young as Governor, was first received at the Salt Lake, by way of California. The General Assembly of the Church for the State of Deseret, have transferred all their powers to the Territorial Government, and adjourned. The "Quorum of Seventies" had agreed to erect an extensive rotunda in the Salt Lake City, to be called the "Seventies' Hall of Science." The Mormons have established a colony in Iron County, about 250 miles nearly south of the Salt Lake City. Several families, with 130 men and supplies of all kinds, under charge of Elder Geo. A. Smith, left on the 7th of December, and when last heard from, they had 1600 acres cleared, and 400 sown with grain. Elders Lyman and Rich left early in March with 150 wagons, to form another settlement on the Colorado, on the Californian line. The Mormons design establishing a continuous line of stations on the Pacific on this route. The steamers which left San Francisco on the 15th of April and the 1st of May, carried away $3,000,000 in gold dust, nearly all of which was shipped to the Atlantic States. The news from all parts of the gold region is unusually favorable. The rains which came on towards the end of March continued for two weeks, and furnished an abundant supply of water for the dry diggings. The piles of earth which had been heaped up during the winter, were yielding excellent returns. In the higher ranges of the mountains there had been heavy falls of snow, which had cut off the supplies of some of the remote diggings, and several persons were frozen to death near the head waters of Feather River. The rich placers discovered in this region have attracted many thousands of miners; and the trail through the snows was lined with the carcases of mules which had perished from the cold. On account of the scarcity of supplies, board had risen to $56 per week. Important discoveries have been made in Shaste Valley, in the northern part of the State. One thousand acres were tested, and found to yield ten cents to the panful of earth. The first discoverers averaged $80 apiece daily. The diggings differ from all others in the circumstance of all the earth containing gold down to the bottom rock, which is struck at a depth of four feet. The gold is found in coarse grams, interspersed with large lumps. An extensive emigration had already set towards the new placer. The Volcano diggings continue to give large returns; while there is no diminution in the yield of the old localities on the American Fork, the Stanislaus and the Mariposa. The quartz veins on the latter river and in the neighborhood of Nevada City, give proof of astonishing richness; but the gold is generally found in such fine particles, that not more than half of it can be collected by any machinery which has yet been brought into use. Veins of silver ore, which promise to be very rich, have been discovered on Carson's Creek. The Californian Legislature adjourned on the last day of April, after a session of four months. Among its last acts was the passage of a law, exempting homesteads and other property from forced sale in certain cases. It also passed a Usury Law, fixing interest at ten per cent., and allowing eighteen per cent. by special agreement. Party politics have attained a height scarcely known in the older States at present. The City election in San Francisco was very hotly contested, but finally resulted in the choice of all the Whig candidates, except two. Both parties are marshalling their forces for the coming State election. The prominent candidates for Governor, are Major Roman, the present State Treasurer, with the Democrats, and Major Pearson B. Redding with the Whigs. A body of Indians have been committing depredations on the Salinas Plains, near Monterey. They have killed three persons near the town of San Luis Obispo, robbed all the ranches, and driven away the horses from San Antonio to San Miguel. According to the treaty made with the Nevada Indians by the U. S. Commissioners, six tribes, numbering in all 1500 persons, have been removed to a tract of land twelve miles square, between the Merced and Tuolomne Rivers, which is secured to them for ever. In the vicinity of Los Angeles, the tribes still continue their depredations. Lynch law still remains in force in all the mining districts. A band of five Mexicans, who had been detected stealing cattle on the San Joaquin River, were tried in a summary manner, and all executed. A project has been started to supply San Francisco with water from a lake called "Mountain Lake," a few miles from the city. It is described as a body of pure water, a mile in circumference, and 153 feet above the sea. A line seventy-five feet long, was dropped into the centre without finding bottom. It is estimated to furnish twenty-five millions of gallons of pure water daily. In the neighborhood of San Francisco, San José, Sacramento City, Sonoma and Bodega, large tracts of land have been brought under cultivation: and the harvest of grain and vegetables will this year go far towards supplying the wants of California. Nearly all kinds of vegetables attain a size and flavor which are not equalled in any other part of the world. It is rumored that an expedition is about being raised in the southern part of California, for the purpose of invading the Mexican province of Lower California. A certain Gen. Morehead is said to have left with a force of two hundred men, well armed and provisioned. There is also talk of similar movement, having reference to the State of Sonora. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company have made their depot in Oregon at Pacific City, on Baker's Bay. The coast region of Oregon, from the mouth of the Umpqua to Vancouver's Island, is rapidly filling up with emigrants. Another steamer, of 100 tons burden, has been placed on the Williamette, to run from Oregon City to the mouth of the Columbia. Gen. Lane, the ex-governor of the Territory, has been nominated by a convention of the people, irrespective of party, as a candidate for Congress. EUROPE. The main topic of interest in ENGLAND is still the Great Exhibition. Even the uncertainties of the Ministerial existence, the Papal Aggression Bill, the Ceylon Question, and other measures, sink into insignificance beside the imposing display of the products of all nations, opened in Hyde Park. The continued support and encouragement given by the Queen, who has visited it almost daily since the opening, has contributed greatly to the success of the undertaking. The receipts for the first two or three weeks were from $10,000 to $15,000 per day. After the price of admission was reduced to one shilling, the receipts decreased considerably; but in the last accounts, from fifty to sixty thousand persons visited the building daily. The entire amount received from the sale is already more than £50,000; and it is expected that the proceeds will be sufficient, with the amount subscribed, to defray the whole expense of the building. The limit for the admission of articles has been extended to the 1st of September. Thirty juries have been appointed, to decide on the merits of the different classes of contributions, and adjudge the medals, which will be distributed to the value of £20,000. The Ministry of Lord John Russell holds its position with better success than was anticipated. The Malt Tax, one of its measures, was carried by a majority of 136. The debate on the Ceylon Government question, where a defeat was again anticipated, resulted in sustaining the Ministers by a majority of 80. As this was the main question before the House, Lord John Russell's place is secure for the rest of the session. The two great parties have agreed not to make the Papal Aggression Bill a point of political difference. In consequence of this, the Government carried every question on the bill by a large majority. Mr. W. G. Fox made an unsuccessful attempt to introduce a bill for Free Schools in England and Wales. A riot occurred at Tamworth, the residence of the late Sir Robt. Peel, on account of a Protectionist banquet having been held there. A mob broke into the hall, and dispersed the company, who armed themselves and engaged in a regular fight. The quarrel was only subdued by the intervention of the military. The Collins' steamer Pacific, having made the trip from New-York to Liverpool in nine days and nineteen hours, the English papers admit the defeat of the Cunard line. The recent political movements in FRANCE contain no salient points of interest. The subject of the revision of the Constitution is still agitated among all parties, and there seems a slow and gradual preparation for a severe struggle. The Legitimatists are strongly in favor of the measure. The debate thereupon will come on about the 1st of July, and will probably last about a month. Next to this in importance is the subject of the next general election, which will take place in May, 1852. All parties are mingling their intrigues in the general preparation. Among the different plans is that of the fusion of the two branches of the Bourbon family into a single monarchical party, to which Guizot and the Duke de Nemours are said to be favorable. The friends of Louis Napoleon are in favor of a revision of the Constitution for the purpose of prolonging his term. The _Constitutionnel_, the organ of the middle class in Paris, advocates the repeal of the law limiting the suffrage. Emile de Girardin, editor of the _Presse_, has made a violent attack upon Generals Cavaignac and Changarnier, charging the latter with having formed a design of invading England, while Ledru-Rollin was minister of the Interior. To this attack neither of the generals has responded. In GERMANY, the Dresden Conferences have closed. The King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria have visited Warsaw as the guests of the Emperor Nicholas. The meeting, however, is considered as something more than a mere visit of courtesy. At the latest dates the three potentates were still at Warsaw, but nothing had transpired indicative of the nature of their conferences. The Prussian General Assembly had adjourned. During the recent session upwards of eleven and a half millions of thalers were voted for the expenses of the late useless campaign. Austria is making desperate efforts to relieve herself from her embarrassing financial position. Baron Rothschild, one of the principal creditors of the empire, has been summoned to assist at the consultation; the prospect is said to be better than had been anticipated. A change has taken place in the Austrian Ministry, Baumgarten having been made Minister of Commerce in place of Brück. The Countess Teleki, and her companion Madame Eardly, have been arrested in Hungary, on charge of conveying letters from the political refugees in London to their partisans in Asia Minor and Hungary. They are to be tried by a court martial. ITALY is in a most unfortunate condition. The reaction continues to increase in power, while the discontent of the Republican party still ferments in all quarters. The condition of the country is very analogous to what it was previous to the Revolution. The Government of Tuscany is entirely under the control of Austria; while that of Naples, grown bold in tyranny, is more actively oppressive than ever. The death of the King of Naples was reported; but it turns out that instead of this being the case, he is more vigorous and tyrannical than ever. In Rome, the rule of the French soldiery is almost insupportable. Persons are daily arrested for the cut of their beards, or the color of their garments. In addition to this, there is a bitter hostility between the French and Roman troops, and several sanguinary quarrels have occurred. At Nice there has been a threatening meeting, claiming the revocation of certain fiscal regulations of the Government. There has been no league of Sardinia with any other of the Italian States. The insurrection of the Duke de Saldanha, in PORTUGAL, was entirely successful; and the Queen has been obliged to name him President of the Council, after an attempt to appoint the Viscount de Castro and the Duke of Terecira, friends of the fallen Minister, Count de Thomar. The latter gentleman was dismissed from his situation as Minister to Madrid, and has taken up his residence in England. Saldanha remained some time in Oporto, administering the Government in the name of the Queen, but afterwards proceeded to Lisbon. He has not yet announced the course he will pursue. In the mean time, large bodies of Reformers are calling upon the Queen to abdicate. The negotiations in relation to the release of Kossuth, Count Bathyani, and the other Hungarian leaders, have taken an unfavorable turn; and it is now almost certain that the Sublime Porte will consent to retain the unfortunate exiles as prisoners for some time to come. The Governments of Austria and Russia protest against their release, and their influence will probably prevent the acceptance of the liberal offer made by the United States in behalf of the Hungarians. BRITISH AMERICA. The Canadian Parliament met at Toronto on the 20th of May, by Lord Elgin, the Governor-General, who read the Royal speech in English and French. The most important topic it contained was a project for increasing the representation. It was also stated that the change in the Navigation Laws had increased foreign shipping in the Canadian ports; that the new Postage Law will soon yield an equal revenue with the former exorbitant system; that a measure will be introduced for reducing the civil list and withdrawing the troops. The Government refers to the Halifax and Quebec Railroad in a manner favorable to the adoption of the conditions on which the Imperial Government offer to guaranty a loan. The Government has since introduced a measure to abolish the law of primogeniture in Upper Canada. The question of a reciprocity of trade with the United States, has given rise to a long discussion in the Legislature; but the Governor refused to produce the correspondence on the subject with the Government of the United States. The Minister of Finance insisted on measures of retaliation, and proposed to close the canals against American vessels. The question was finally postponed for a fortnight, in order to await the result of negotiations with the American Government. The Governor-General sent to the Assembly a detailed account of the public debt of the Canadas, which, on the 31st of January last, amounted to $18,049,875, paying an annual interest of $877,674. The Annexation feeling is said to be on the decrease in Canada, and the idea of an independent Northern Republic, consisting of the British Provinces and the territory now held by the Hudson's Bay Company, has arisen in its stead! The Episcopal Church is making great efforts to prevent the secularization of the Clergy Reserves, and a general Convention of both the clergy and laity has been held at Toronto, in opposition to the measure. A large and enthusiastic meeting has been held at Halifax, and Earl Grey's proposition in regard to the Halifax and Quebec Railway, was unanimously accepted. The propeller Franklin, running between St. John's, Newfoundland, and Halifax, was wrecked on the 17th of May; the passengers and mails were saved. MEXICO--CENTRAL AMERICA. The Mexican Government is in a state of great perplexity, on account of the desperate state of its finances. All projects for the adjustment of the revenues, or the consolidation of the Interior Debt, have thus far entirely failed. Señor Esteva, the Minister of Finance, resigned early in May, on account of the difficulties he encountered in attempting to carry out the imperfect provisions of the law. Señor Yañez, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, was appointed in his place. He proposed a plan of increasing the revenue by reducing the expenses of the public offices, imposing a tax on manufactures, and levying contributions on the States,--a course which was strongly opposed by the friends of the Administration. Congress adjourned on the 22d of May, without making any provision for the emergency: and a special session has been called, to meet on the 2d of June. The Tehuantepec grant to Garay was annulled in both Houses by a large majority. Ex-President Pedraza died in the capital on the 13th of April. The commercial house of Rondero, in the city of Mexico, has failed in the amount of $600,000. The police in the city is very deficient, and many of the streets in the suburbs are almost deserted, on account of the hordes of robbers which roam and plunder at large. The Northern States of Mexico are in great distress, from an unprecedented drought. No rain has fallen since last August; provisions are enormously dear, and a general famine was apprehended. In Yucatan, the Indian war is drawing to a close. Gen. La Vega, who had arrived at Campeachy to take command of the forces, was received with great enthusiasm. The Indians have recently sustained several bloody defeats, and are evidently very much discouraged. In their endeavor to take by assault the town of Bacalar, they were received with such a heavy fire by the garrison, that they were utterly routed, and the river was choked up by their dead bodies, while the whites suffered only a trifling loss. There is little news of interest from Central America. A mule-track, or transit-road as it is called, has been made from Rivas de Nicaragua to the Gulf of San Juan del Sur: and the line from New-York to San Francisco is expected to be completed by the 17th of July. The subject of a new Constitution is engaging public attention in Honduras. A violent earthquake was experienced in the State of Costa Rica, on the morning of the 18th of March. A great amount of property was destroyed in the cities of San José, Heredia, and Barba. WEST INDIES. In Cuba, the fears of an invasion, with which the island has been agitated for three months past, appear to have subsided. A number of arrests have been made, but no revolutionary preparations have been discovered. Several prisoners have been convicted of disaffection to the Government, and are to be sent to Spain for safekeeping. Mr. Christopher Madan, who voluntarily delivered himself up to the authorities, has been banished to Spain, and condemned to pay his share of the damages done by Lopez at Cardenas. The Jamaica House of Assembly was prorogued by the Governor on the 23d of May; the Governor made a long speech on the occasion. The cholera still lingers in the island, and appears in several localities which have been hitherto exempt. The island of Hayti is tranquil for the present. The proposition of the U.S. Commissioner. Mr. Walsh, in connection with the French and English Consuls, for a ten years' truce with the Dominicans, was rejected by the Haytian Government. The Emperor has since addressed a proclamation to the former Government, proposing the appointment of delegates on both sides, to negotiate terms of peace. Prince Bobo, who, in consequence of having been engaged in a conspiracy against the Emperor, had fled to the mountains with a few adherents, has not been captured. SOUTH AMERICA. An insurrection broke out in Santiago, the capital of Chili, on the 20th of April. It was occasioned by excited political feeling, growing out of the approaching Presidential election. About twenty persons were killed, and fifty wounded. The province was immediately placed under martial law: and as the Government possesses much power, no further trouble was anticipated. About seven o'clock, on the morning of the 2d of April, Valparaiso was visited by a terrible earthquake. The earth continued to heave violently for a minute, throwing down a large number of buildings, and cracking and damaging others. The population assembled in the squares in the utmost terror and distress. Soon afterwards a heavy rain set in, which, on account of the shattered roofs, did immense damage to property. The entire loss is estimated at $1,500,000. The Government of Brazil is adopting stringent measures for the suppression of the Slave Trade. Several of the most prominent dealers have been fined or forced to leave the country. The hostility to Rosas in Brazil, Paraguay, Entre-Rios and the Oriental States, became so great, that, seeing no way of extricating himself from the difficulty, he offered his resignation to the Legislature of Buenos Ayres. This, however, was considered as merely a trick to shift the responsibility from his own shoulders. Five of the Argentine Provinces have passed resolutions refusing to accept his resignation, and restoring to him all his former powers. The city of Montevideo is still besieged by the forces of Gen. Oribe. POLYNESIA. In the month of March another difficulty occurred between the French officials at the Sandwich Islands and the Hawaiian Government. The French demanded a repeal of the duty on wines and brandies, the election of a Frenchman to the Cabinet of King Kamehameha, and the adoption of the French language as the official tongue! In case of refusal, they threatened to blockade Honolulu, and take possession of the island. A compromise was effected, however, in which the King agreed to refer the disputed subjects to the Legislature, and to receive documents from French subjects in the French language. RECENT DEATHS. DR. SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON, one of the most eminent of our men of science, died suddenly in Philadelphia on the 15th of May. Mr. E. G. Squier, in announcing the occurrence to the Ethnological Society, said: "The name of Dr. Morton is best known to the world through those splendid monuments of scientific research, '_Crania Americana_,' and '_Crania Egyptiaca_', which attest alike his industry and zeal!--his patient analytical and comprehensive generalizing abilities, and his sound and impartial judgment. Besides these works, he was the author of numerous papers in scientific journals of this country and of Europe, as also of a number of pamphlets on various subjects connected with the studies in which he was engaged. Among these the 'Inquiry into the Distinctive Characteristics of the Aboriginal Race of America,' published in 1844, deserves to be specially mentioned as a comprehensive _résumé_ of the general results of his inquiries. Dr. Morton had a wide practice in his profession, of which he was a distinguished member--a profession peculiarly subject to those interruptions and contingencies so unfavorable to philosophical investigation. Yet in the intervals of leisure which were afforded to him during hours snatched from sleep, he made those arduous researches of which we have the leading results in the works which I have enumerated. The facts and data upon which these researches were based, were collected with almost incredible labor, and at an expense which few students could afford, or affording, would have consented to incur. Dr. MORTON'S museum of Crania, presented by him to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, of which he was a principal supporter and most active officer, comprised not less than 900 human skulls, and 600 of the inferior animals. These were collected from every quarter of the globe, and afford types of every race, and almost every family of men. The correspondence and general and special exertions, which the collection of such a museum involves, must have been immense; and we can but admire the untiring zeal and patient industry of the man who undertook and accomplished it. It is a brilliant example of what men may do if animated by a true spirit; and must afford encouragement to those engaged in cognate researches in a country like our own, where public aid is rarely extended to objects of this nature. As Americans we may take just pride in the reflection, that an American physician, by his individual exertions, with the aid of a few personal friends, made a Craniological Museum surpassing extent the united collections of half of Europe, and one which must now be consulted by every scholar before he can undertake to write upon the great questions involved in the natural history of man. In March last the Government of the United States placed in the hands of Dr. MORTON the Crania collected by the American Exploring Expedition, with a view to their careful investigation at his hands; but the interesting results which we had every reason to expect from such investigation, have been cut short by his untimely death, which has also suddenly terminated a wide series of inquiries, instituted by the same active mind, looking to a work more comprehensive, if not more interesting and valuable than any which he had published before. Dr. MORTON was essentially a man of no theories; he brought to the service of science an earnest love of truth in its simplest and severest form, and was always ready to yield his opinions to the rigid requirements of facts. Possessed of a high intellect and a generous disposition, he always assumed that those who differed most widely from him in their views, were animated by the same desire to arrive at truth, and dealt with questions of science as matters to be kept superior to all personal considerations and influences. He had, in short, a true appreciation of the dignity and aims of philosophy. In private life, and in his personal intercourse with men, Dr. MORTON added lustre to his high character as a scholar and philosopher. Mild and courteous in his demeanor, devoted in his friendships, generous, upright, and true; as a husband, father, friend and citizen, he was a man in the noblest acceptation of the word--one whom, none knew but to esteem, and whose whole life as a model of virtue and excellence." * * * * * MR. SHEIL, one of the most brilliant rhetoricians of the age in which he lived, has prematurely closed his remarkable career in a foreign land, and in a manner so sudden that the surprise which the event must occasion will be only exceeded by the deep affliction of his friends and the regret of the public. The Right Hon. Richard Lalor Sheil was a native of Dublin, born in the year 1793. His father, imitating the example of many Irish Roman Catholics of good family, sought in other countries that independence and those means of advancement which the penal laws, then in force, denied them in the land of their nativity. He resided for many years at Cadiz, and engaged in mercantile pursuits with more than ordinary success. Having amassed a competence, he returned to the county of Waterford, purchased an estate, and built a mansion. Unfortunately, he was again led into commercial speculation, which proved of a disastrous character, and he eventually died unable to bequeath to his son more than the means of acquiring a liberal education. That education, commenced at Stoneyhurst, was continued at Trinity College, Dublin, where the young Mr. Sheil, then remarkable for the precocity of his talents, graduated with much distinction, and at the age of twenty-one, in the year 1814, he was called to the Irish bar. In the profession of the law, though he attained the rank of Queen's counsel, he never enjoyed a lucrative practice. On remarkable occasions he held briefs and made showy speeches, but the attorneys had no confidence in his legal acquirements, and though the judges regarded affectionately his personal character and greatly admired his genius, yet his arguments were listened to with comparatively little attention. It was said, however, that he determined, if possible, to get on in the more arduous walks of the profession, and hoped for especial favor in the Rolls' Court, having married at an early age Miss O'Halloran, niece to Sir William MacMahon, (who then presided in that court), and niece also to Sir John MacMahon, who at that time was private secretary to the Prince Regent. But all this gossip of the "Four Courts" ended in nothing. Mr. Sheil, instead of an eminent lawyer, became a political agitator, and in the Roman Catholic Association reached a position second only to that of Mr. O'Connell. His speeches at public meetings in Dublin, the first of which was delivered by him at the early age of eighteen, attracted the admiration of all classes; his passionate tone delighted the vulgar, his wit and exquisite fancy charmed the most cultivated minds, while his perfect amiability of character, his high and generous nature, secured the friendship of every one who enjoyed the advantage of his acquaintance. With all this celebrity, however, he was not making a fortune, and when literature offered to him some of its rewards, he gladly contributed to the monthly periodicals of that day, producing at the same time the tragedy of _Evadne_, and many other dramatic works. The Roman Catholic Relief Bill of 1829, when it became a law, opened to Mr. Sheil a new and more extended sphere of action; he was returned to Parliament for Lord Anglesey's borough of Milbourne Port, and soon became one of the favorite orators of the House. At first, there was some disposition to laugh at his shrill tones and vehement gesticulation, but Parliament soon recognized him as one of its ornaments. His great earnestness and apparent sincerity, his unrivalled felicity of illustration, his extraordinary power of pushing the meaning of words to the utmost extent, and wringing from them a force beyond the range of ordinary expression, much more than the force of his reasoning or the range of his political knowledge, obtained for him in Parliament marked attention, and, for the most part, unqualified applause. When he rose to speak, members took their places, and the hum of private conversation was hushed, in order that the House might enjoy the performances of an accomplished artist--not that they should receive the lessons of a statesmanlike adviser, or follow the lead of a commanding politician. Still, for twenty years, he held a prominent place in the House of Commons, though throughout a great portion of that period he represented very insignificant constituencies. Mr. Sheil was returned for Milbourne Port in 1830, having been an unsuccessful candidate for the county of Louth. In 1831, however, he got in for Louth; in 1832 was returned for Tipperary, without contest, and again in 1835; but in 1837 there was an opposition, against which he prevailed. His principal influence in that county, exclusive of the weight of his public character, is understood to have been derived from his second marriage with the widow of Mr. Edmund Power, of Gurteen, which took place in 1830. It will be remembered that the eldest son of that gentleman fell very recently by his own hand; and during his minority, whatever influence he might possess as a landlord was in a great degree at the command of Mr. Sheil, who continued to sit for Tipperary till 1841, though he encountered some opposition on accepting office in 1838. From, the general election in 1841 till the time of his departure for Florence in 1850, he represented, through the influence of the Duke of Devonshire, the small borough of Dungarvon, always of course supporting the most liberal section of the Whigs. Amongst his first appointments was that of Vice-President of the Board of Trade, in the last Melbourne Ministry, and then he became Judge Advocate General, which office he held only from June to September, 1841. On the return of the present Ministers he was appointed Master of the Mint, and in 1850, went out as British Minister to Florence. For many years past, his health had been declining, his fits of gout grew more frequent and severe, his speeches in Parliament, never very numerous, came at length to be few and far between; though his political friends regarded him with infinite favor, they began to think he might be just as useful to them in Florence as in London, especially as the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was soon to be brought in; and although that appointment amounted to shelving for life a man not yet 60 years of age, though it was nothing less than an expatriation of the individual and an extinction of what might have been a growing fame, yet he submitted not merely with a philosophical indifference, but almost in a joyous spirit, feeling, or seeming to feel, that it was great promotion and a dignified retirement. He was old in constitution, if not in years, with powers better suited to the development of general principles than to that successful administration of details which a practical age demands. With Grattan, Flood, and Curran, he would have well co-operated from 1782 to 1800, but amongst the public men of England in the middle of this century he appeared grievously out of place, and he therefore was perhaps quite sincere in the expressions of delight with which he escaped from Downing-street to enjoy the fine vintages and bright sunshine of the south. He is stated to have expired at Florence on the 26th ult., owing to an attack of gout in the stomach.--_London Times, June 3._ * * * * * MR. RICHARD PHILLIPS, the well-known chemist, died suddenly in London on the tenth of May. He was in his seventy-fifth year, and at least fifty years of his life had been devoted to science. He was one of the founders of the Geological Society, a very old member of the Royal Society, and for many years a member of its Council. In the _Transactions_ of that body will be found numerous papers by him on chemical subjects, and many of his discoveries were of great importance to the analytical chemist. He was editor of the _Annals of Philosophy_ from 1812, and one of the editors of the _Philosophical Magazine_. He was appointed Lecturer on Chemistry at the London Hospital in 1817, and for many years was Lecturer on Chemistry at St. Thomas's Hospital, to which office he was appointed in 1832; and was among the earliest chemists to the Museum of Practical Geology. His attention to Pharmaceutical Chemistry was very great; and the regular improvement which has marked during the period of more than twenty years the _London Pharmacopoeia_ has been largely due to his suggestions and criticisms. His first translation was published in 1824. He had been during the last twelve months busily engaged for the College of Physicians on the new edition of the _Pharmacopoeia_,--and considerable progress had been made in the new translation. For many years Mr. Phillips had been in the habit of furnishing to the faculty and the druggists of the United Kingdom a translation of the _Pharmacopoeia_, with appended notes, the value of which has been fully appreciated by those for whom it was intended. He was for the last two years the President of the Chemical Society--by all the members of which he was regarded with the highest consideration. In his "History of Chemistry," Dr. Thompson says--"Of modern British analytical chemists, undoubtedly the first is Mr. Richard Phillips, to whom we are indebted for not a few analyses conducted with great skill and performed with great accuracy." All the chemical articles in the _Penny Cyclopoedia_ were by Mr. Phillips:--and scattered through the various scientific journals will be found papers on various chemical subjects and reviews of scientific works from his pen. * * * * * "OLD DOWTON," the celebrated comedian, is dead. He was born at Exeter in 1763, and consequently was in his eighty-eighth year. At sixteen he was apprenticed to an architect, but having performed successfully the part of Carlos, in "The Revenge," at a private theatre, he was induced to join a travelling company, and after completing a circuit, was engaged by Mr. Hughes, manager of the Plymouth theatre. His first appearance at Drury-lane was on the tenth of October, 1796, in the difficult character of Sheva, in Cumberland's comedy of _The Jew_. This had long been a favorite part of Bannister's--Elliston had also marked it for his own. Mr. Dowton stepped into the field, and, without taking the laurel from either, honorably shared it with both. His first appearance at Drury-lane was on the tenth of October, 1796, in this difficult character. He was hailed as a genuine actor, and crowned with applause. In 1805 he was engaged at the Haymarket, and on the fifteenth of August in that year revived for his benefit the warm-weather tragedy of the _Tailors_, which produced a memorable fracas. The principal _roles_ in the burlesque were sustained by Dowton, Mathews, Liston, and Mrs. Gibbs, as _Francisco_, _Abrahamides_, _Zachariades_, and _Tittilinda_. The great success of _Tom Thumb_, in which Dowton played _King Arthur_ very humorously, stimulated him to this attempt. His two principal Shakspearian characters were _Sir John Falstaff_ and _Dogberry_. As _Dr. Cantwell_ in the _Hypocrite_ he was inimitable. His other best parts were _Sir Anthony Absolute_ and _Major Sturgeon_. With the proceeds of his farewell benefit at Her Majesty's Theatre a few years since, an annuity was purchased, on which he has lived to a fine green old age, happy in the bosom of his family and a large circle of professional and private friends. * * * * * ADMIRAL SIR EDWARD CODRINGTON died recently in London. He entered the naval service in 1783, and bore a part in some distinguished affairs. He was lieutenant of the Queen Charlotte in Howe's victory of the 1st of June, 1794, and captain of the Babet in Bridport's action, July, 1795. At the memorable victory of Trafalgar, he was captain of the Orion. He commanded on the Walcheren expedition; was afterwards employed at the defence of Cadiz, and commanded a squadron co-operating with the Spanish patriots on the coast of Catalonia. He was also captain of the fleet in the Chesapeake, and at New Orleans in 1814. In October, 1827, with the combined fleet, he destroyed the Turkish fleet in the harbor of Navarino. He was gazetted on five occasions, viz., in 1805, 1809, 1811, 1814, 1815. For some period he commanded on the Mediterranean station. He has also held other naval appointments. He represented Devonport in Parliament from 1832 to 1840. In politics he was a "liberal." * * * * * The death of EARL COTTENHAM, late Lord Chancellor, took place at the small town of Pietra Santa, in the duchy of Mucca, on the twenty-ninth of April. Charles Christopher Pepys was born in Great-Russell street, Bloomsbury, in 1781. The family was originally of Diss, in Norfolk, but early in the sixteenth century it removed to Cottenham, in Cambridgeshire, from which place the deceased derived his title. Amongst his ancestors may be mentioned Samuel Pepys, author of the _Diary_, and Secretary of the Admiralty in the time of Charles the Second; and Richard Pepys, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in 1664. William Weller Pepys, the father of the late Lord Chancellor, who held the office of a Master in Chancery, was created a baronet in the year 1801. Lord Cottenham was in the seventy-first year of his age, having been born in 1781. He was graduated LL.B. at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1803; was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, 1804; appointed a king's counsel, 1826; Solicitor General to Queen Adelaide, 1830; solicitor-general to the king, February, 1834; master of the rolls, September, 1834; first commissioner when the great seal was in commission, in 1835; lord chancellor from 1836 to September, 1841, and again appointed to that office in August, 1846; was appointed a commissioner to consider the state of the bishoprics, 1847. Represented the borough of Malton in Parliament from 1832 to 1836; had previously sat for Higham Ferrars. Under his second appointment he held the great seal until the Easter term, 1850, when ill health compelled him to retire. Record of Scientific Discovery. Professor S. F. B. MORSE has written an interesting letter to the _National Intelligencer_ respecting the _Hillotype_, an improvement upon the daguerreotype which appears to be genuine and very important. The improvement by Baird exhibited lately in London, is spoken of as a great advance upon the silvered plate, as it cannot but be: it is making a surface of porcelain susceptible to the sun's rays. And now, in the very depths of our forests, a discovery has been perfected which leaves nothing to be desired by daguerreotypists. France, England, and America, have thus each contributed to the perfection of the photogenic art, our country supplying the crowning improvement: "You perhaps have seen it announced," says Mr. Morse, "that a Mr. Hill, of this state, formerly a Baptist clergyman, was under the necessity, from ill health, of abandoning the ministry, and for a support practised the daguerreotype art, and has made the discovery of photographing in colors, or chromotography. The magnificence of this discovery is as remarkable as the original discovery of photography by Daguerre. Many affect to doubt the fact of this discovery by Mr. Hill, but I have every reason to believe it strictly true. A week or two since I received a most interesting letter from him, in consequence of his learning that I had expressed a hope that he would not think of attempting to secure his property in his discovery by a _patent_. I determined to visit him, and save him, if possible, from the evils I had experienced. So last week I went up to Kingston, and, hiring a gig, I set forth in a northwesterly direction in search of Westkill, in Greene county, some thirty-six miles in the interior, and after seven hours' drive through a wild region of the Western Catskill mountains, passing into the very outskirts of civilization, through a deep gorge of mountain precipices that rose on each side of the road more than a thousand feet, at an angle of forty-five degrees, I at length found the little village of some three hundred inhabitants of which I was in search, embosomed in the deep valley of the Westkill creek. I had no difficulty in finding Mr. Hill. He is unquestionably a man of genius, intelligence, and piety, retiring and sensitive; and his simple description of the effect upon him when the result of his discovery stood revealed before him, was true to nature, and, among other things, demonstrated to me that his discovery was a fact. I have not time to give you the details of the conversation; but I succeeded in dissuading him from thinking of a patent as a security, and in this I am rejoiced. He shall not be plagued by lawsuits, have his life shortened and made miserable, and his just right in the property of his discovery snatched from him, if I can prevent it. His discovery, fortunately for him, is one that can be kept secret, and his case furnishes a capital example of the reality and nature of property in invention or discovery. It can be seen at a glance in this stage of the matter that Mr. Hill now has that property absolutely in his own possession, and no one has a right to demand it of him, nor request it, without paying him such a price as he may affix to his property. I have a plan which pleased him, and which I think, will secure the object aimed at, to wit, ample remuneration to him, and in such a shape as to leave him the use of his powers the remainder of his life (unlike my own case) for further research and scientific pursuits, without fear of fraud, of attacks on his character, and endless litigation. More of this another time. I must now stop, simply remarking on the strangeness of the circumstances of this discovery as contrasted with Daguerre's discovery; the latter surrounded by every facility for experiment in the metropolis of refinement and science, the former surrounded by no facilities whatever for experiment, excepting such as were transported by him at great trouble and comparative expense, with limited pecuniary means, into the primeval forest, with scarcely an individual to consult with except his wife, and literally surrounded by wild beasts--the deer, the bears, the wolves, the wild-cats, and the panthers too, still inhabiting the wild mountain forests that inclose the village." * * * * * PROFESSOR BLUME, of Leyden, has been elected a member of the French Academy, to fill a vacancy in the section of botany. Among the candidates were Professor John Torrey, of New-York, and Professor Gray of Harvard College. Professor Blume presented on the occasion his splendid new work on botany: a Flora, in four volumes, folio, of the peninsula of India, the islands of the Sonde, and of the Indian Archipelago; the title is _Rumphia_, the contents being collected from the seven folios of the botanist Everard Rumph, published in the middle of the last century. Professor Blume resided many years in Batavia, and added the results of his own scientific and extensive research throughout Java and the Archipelago. On the 24th ult. M. de Juissen submitted to the Academy an interesting report on the work, in which he says, "A poisonous tree, the _Upas-Antiar_, has been the subject of numerous fictions, by which it has acquired great celebrity. It has therefore attracted the attention of many travellers, who have dissipated the stories, as Mr. Blume does, with piquant details." He explains a part of the terrible reputation of the tree, by the fact that the volcanic soil emits, on different spots, deleterious gases, which have a fatal effect on animal life--an effect erroneously imputed to the adjacent trees. Their juice, indeed, possesses highly energetic properties. The birds often take refuge on their elevated tops, without the least injury. [A specimen of the Upas tree has been recently brought to the United States by an officer of the navy, and it is alleged that while it does not poison the atmosphere, its sap is quite as fatal to life as its effluvia has been represented to be.] The natives poison their arms with the juice of another Upas, _Strychnos tieute_. Mr. Blume visited a mangrove tree--_ficus India_--of gigantic dimensions and remote antiquity, which is regarded and preserved as a sort of religious monument. The branches spread a shade over a vast area, and form themselves for the parasite growth of a multitude of other plants on their surface. The professor obtained license to herborize on the top. He collected thirty-seven species, without reckoning lichens and mosses, but being restricted as to time, did not inspect half of the display. The plants were fully developed, with rich foliage and graceful and brilliant flowers. [Illustration] Ladies' Summer Fashions. The changes for the season are not in general very striking. There is said to be an unusual prevalence of sombre colors, with artistically agreeing brighter ones. Striped silks, taffetas, and barèges, are all in vogue. For BONNETS the materials employed are very numerous. Paille de riz, fine Florence straw, gauze, tulle, crape, and crêpe lisse, are all fashionable; silk, also, but it is not much in request. The stripes are round, very open at the sides, but not standing out so much as they were last season over the forehead; the crowns are also very low, and the curtains full, and always short enough to be becoming. Among the most elegant rice straw bonnets are those lined with white tulle and ornamented with tufts of violets and snowdrops, the exterior decorated with a wreath of the same flowers. Others have exteriors trimmed with a light panache, composed of fuschias, heliotropes, and sprigs of eglantine, mingled with long blades of grass (this ornament droops over the brim on one side), the interior trimmed with small tufts of fruit blossoms. Rice and Florence straw bonnets are trimmed with a petite couronne of rose and white marabout tips, forming a tuft on each side; the interior is lined with rose and white tulle bouillonnée, and tufts of narrow blonde intermingled with small tips of rose marabouts. Bouquets of white roses and flowers of the double-blossomed peach are also in great request for these bonnets. The majority of gauze, tulle, crape, and crêpe bonnets, are trimmed in a light style with flowers or marabouts. French chip, trimmed with broad lace, promises to be considerably worn. Plain straw is always respectable, but it is less worn this season than heretofore. In PROMENADE AND CARRIAGE DRESSES the redingote form is adopted in plain silks of a quiet kind, or striped, that are not showy, for the promenade. Redingotes for carriage dress are much trimmed, some with passementerie, lace, or ribbon; lace is much in vogue; ribbon is more so; it admits of a great variety of forms; one of the most novel is a cockle-shell wreath arranged in two rows of festoons up each side of the front of the dress. Fashionable as flounces are for in-door and carriage-dress, they are, comparatively speaking, little seen in the promenade; the extreme width of the skirts, which does not seem at all likely to diminish, accounts in some degree for this. In EVENING DRESSES silks predominate for robes, but always the new spring silks, the heavy ones being quite laid aside; the bodies are cut low, but moderately so; they are of the Louis Quinze, and la Grecque styles; the latter have the draperies attached by knots of ribbon, or brilliant ornaments, as the dress is rich or otherwise. A deep fall of lace, placed under the last drapery, is looped with it in the centre, and also on the shoulder; it turns round the back, and falls, _en mancheron_, over the sleeve, which is always very short if the corsage is _à la Grecque_. The Louis Quinze has the lace disposed in a full fall _à l'enfant_; or also a berthe, either round or pointed; the latter is _en coeur_, very voluminous at the top, but with the lace narrowing to a point at the waist; the skirts, if trimmed, are flounced, but many are made without garnitures. Several white dresses, trimmed, with black lace, have lately appeared; this fashion gains ground, but it is not yet a decided one. The majority of evening dresses combine richness of effect with the light textures adapted to summer, ball, and dinner costume. Dresses of white crape have been made with double jupes, or with three flounces, the latter edged with pink-ruches, or with four or five rows of narrow ribbon. The berthe is of the shawl form, and should be trimmed to correspond with the flounces, either with ruches or rows of ribbon. A bouquet of flowers may be worn in the centre of the corsage. New barège dresses are made with three flounces, scalloped, and trimmed at the edge with a quilling of ribbon. The corsages of some of these dresses are made close to the figure, and with basques; the latter, like the flounces, having a scalloped or vandyked edge, trimmed with a quilling of ribbon. Other dresses of the same material have drawn corsagas, and then the top flounce is set on at the lower end of the waist, and by that means serves as a basque. The flounce may be open or not in front. Sleeves are almost universally worn open at the ends, whether the dress be plain or of a superior kind. The under-sleeves worn in dressed costume are also open at the ends, in the pagoda form, and are trimmed with fontanges or frills of lace, or richly worked muslin. Dresses intended for walking or négligé costume have muslin under-sleeves fastened at the wrist with turned-up cuffs. For sleeves reaching to the wrist, and not open at the ends, cuffs of various patterns are worn. Those generally adopted have two or three buillonnées, with a row of lace between each; or a single buillonnée, edged by a lace frill, falling over the hand. MANTELETS are likely to supersede pardessus in a great degree; there is a variety in their forms, and they are made of silk, muslin, and lace. The Medicis, the Violetta, and the Victoria, are the most remarkable of the new shapes. The first is of deep violet taffetas, small, and the hind part of an oval form--the garniture composed of three flounces, cut in dents, and encircled with a deep fringe, surmounted by a light embroidery; a narrow flounce in the same style goes round the throat. Being set on full it has something of a ruff. BLACK VELVET COLLARS date from the earliest days of Louis XV., for the _beau monde_, who adopted them from the peasantry, with whom they had been long in vogue. They are now revived, and likely to become general. The collar is a black velvet ribbon, never very broad, crossed on the throat, and fastened by an ornament of jewelry or gold, according to the fancy or the fortune of the wearer; the ends descend upon the neck, and some are bordered with seed pearl or diamond fringe. These collars can be becoming only to blonde belles. There is no probability of any radical change in the costume of women of the better classes. [Illustration] 
36564	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections.) THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE Of Literature, Art, and Science. Vol. IV. NEW-YORK, OCTOBER 1, 1851. No. III. JOHN GODFREY SAXE. [Illustration] Every catalogue of English poets embraces the name of Butler, though he was but the most unpoetical of satirists. If Hudibras is poetry there can be no difficulty in admitting to this distinction Trumbull's Progress of Dulness and McFingal, Snelling's Truth, a Gift for Scribblers, Halleck's Fanny, Osborn's Vision of Rubeta, Lowell's Fable for Critics, and some dozen other attempts in in this line, by Americans. The disease of the satiric muse in this country has been the spleen, and the reason why we have had so little of the healthful humorous rage, ideal and lyrical, of which the old masters gave us immortal examples, is, that those among us who have attempted this kind of composition have generally had far more to do with persons than with manners, have been influenced more by envy and malice than by a generous scorn of what is ludicrous and mean and criminal. The author of "Progress" has fallen into none of the prevailing sins; he is of the school of Horace, and has as little as he may to do with fools, while he holds up, unfolds, and whips, the follies of the day. John G. Saxe was born in Highgate, Franklin county, Vermont, on the second day of June, 1816, His youth was passed in rural occupations until he was seventeen years of age, when he determined to study one of the liberal professions, and with this view entered the grammar school at St. Albans, and, after the usual preliminary course, the college at Middlebury, where he graduated bachelor of arts in the summer of 1839. He subsequently read law at Lockport in New-York and at St. Albans, and was admitted to the bar at the latter place in September, 1843, since which time he has been practising in the courts with more than the average success of young attorneys, and he is now a leading politician of the democratic party, the conductor of its local organ, the Burlington Sentinel, and District Attorney, by the grace of personal popularity--all other candidates on the same ticket having been defeated. Mr. Saxe became known as an occasional contributor to the _Knickerbocker Magazine_, some eight or ten years ago. Among his pieces in that miscellany is one characteristically remarkable for a sympathetic fitness of phrase, entitled the Rhyme of the Rail, and beginning: Singing through the forests, Rattling over ridges, Shooting under arches, Rumbling over bridges, Whizzing through the mountains, Buzzing o'er the vale,-- Bless me! this is pleasant, Riding on the Rail! In this period he has thrown off scores of epigrams, &c., anonymously, besides the more ambitious performances acknowledged in the collection of his Poems, of which we have before us a third edition--showing that their quality is well appreciated--from the press of Ticknor & Co. The longest of these is Progress, first published in 1846. In skilful felicities of language and rhythm, general clear and sharp expression, and alternating touches of playful wit and vigorous sense, there is nothing so long that is so well sustained in the hundred and one books of American satire. In the beginning of it he says finely of our "glorious tongue:" Let thoughts, too idle to be fitly dressed In sturdy Saxon, be in French expressed; Let lovers breathe Italian,--like, in sooth, Its singers soft, emasculate, and smooth; But for a tongue, whose ample powers embrace Beauty and force, sublimity and grace, Ornate or plain, harmonious, yet strong, And formed alike for eloquence and song, Give me the English,--aptest tongue to paint A sage or dunce, a villain or a saint, To spur the slothful, counsel the distressed, To lash the oppressor, and to soothe the oppressed, To lend fantastic Humor freest scope, To marshal all his laughter-moving troop, Give Pathos power, and Fancy lightest wings, And Wit his merriest whims and keenest stings! And then proceeds with a display of popular follies, and especially of those most grotesque and offensive, the sham philosophies by which it is attempted to regenerate society: Hail, Social Progress! each new moon is rife With some new theory of social life, Some matchless scheme ingeniously designed From half their miseries to free mankind; On human wrongs triumphant war to wage, And bring anew the glorious golden age. "Association" is the magic word From many a social "priest and prophet" heard; "Attractive Labor" is the angel given, To render earth a sublunary Heaven! "Attractive Labor!" ring the changes round, And labor grows attractive in the sound; And many a youthful mind, where haply lurk Unwelcome fancies at the name of "work," See pleasant pastime in its longing view Of "toil made easy" and "attractive" too, And, fancy-rapt, with joyful ardor, turns Delightful grindstones, and seductive churns! In the same vein we are treated with "novelties which disturb our peace," in literature, fashion, politics, religion, and morals; and every line is faultless in finish and in wit. The Proud Miss McBride, and The New Rape of the Lock, are in different veins, but abound in the same exquisite turns, agreeable images, and comic displays of wisdom. In the New Rape of the Lock: The gossips whispered it through the town, That "Captain Jones loved Susan Brown;" But, speaking with due precision, The gossips' tattle was out of joint, For the lady's "blunt" was the only point That dazzled the lover's vision! And the Captain begged, in his smoothest tones, Miss Susan Brown to be Mistress Jones,-- Flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones, Till death the union should sever; For these are the words employed, of course, Though Death is cheated, sometimes by Divorce; A fact which gives an equivocal force To that beautiful phrase, "for ever!" And Susan sighed the conventional "Nay" In such a bewitching, affirmative way, The Captain perceived 'twas the feminine "Ay," And sealed it in such commotion, That no "lip-service" that ever was paid To the ear of a god, or the cheek of a maid, Looked more like real devotion! At the wedding party all the aristocracy of the circle in which the Browns and Joneses were acquainted came together, and Miss Susan-- To pique a group of laughing girls Who stood admiring the Captain's curls, She formed the resolution To get a lock of her lover's hair, In the gaze of the guests assembled there, By some expedient, foul or fair, Before the party's conclusion. "Only a lock, dear Captain!--no more, 'A lock for Memory,' I implore!" But Jones, the gayest of quizzers, Replied, as he gave his eye a cock, "'Tis a treacherous memory needs a lock," And dodg'd the envious scissors. Alas! that Susan couldn't refrain, In her zeal the precious lock to gain, From laying her hand on the lion's mane! To see the cruel mocking, And hear the short, affected cough, The general titter, and chuckle, and scoff, _When the Captain's Patent Wig came off,_ Was really dreadfully shocking! The Times, a poem read before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, in 1849, Carmen Lætum, recited last year at a meeting of the Alumni of Middlebury College, and New England Men, delivered before the literary societies of the New-York University a few weeks ago, are his other most elaborate productions, and they are all carefully finished and alike in their chief characteristics. His shorter pieces in a few instances have touches of sentiment, but this is not his forte; by the definition which limits poetry to rhythmical creations of beauty, Mr. Saxe can scarcely be called a poet of great excellence; his distinction is, that he is a wit, and that he has been eminently successful in giving to his wit a poetical expression. As a judicious critic has said of him, "he unquestionably an _artist_, of a high order, in the narrow range which he has taken. His comical productions are beautifully finished. As they stand, they are terse, smooth, and fluent, and any one who has ever tried his hand at this species of composition, will readily appreciate the time, labor, and taste, which must have been expended, to jest so easily, in rhyme." GLASS OF BOHEMIA. [Illustration] This beautiful article is manufactured in various places throughout Germany--most largely amid the very mountainous districts of Bohemia; some of the best, however, is made in Bavaria and sent to Bohemia, and thence exported. The materials from which the glass is formed consist chiefly of the same as those used in England; the manufacturers themselves seem to believe that there is no difference except in the proportions of the materials, and in the fuel, which is exclusively wood, and produces, by a little attention, a more constant and intense heat than can be produced by any coal; the feeding of the furnace with the latter material, they say, always creates a change in the temperature detrimental to the fluid above, and never sufficiently intense. The wooded mountains of Bohemia are entirely inhabited by a population whose industry, morals, hospitality, and kindliness of manners, do honor, not only to this rich and beautiful kingdom, but to the whole human race. They are pure Germans, not of Sclavish origin, and the German dialect alone is spoken. Unlike every other manufacturing district I have ever visited, they retain unimpaired all their rural and primitive virtues. Clean to a proverb, in their houses and persons, hospitable and amiable in their manners, simple in their habits, cheerful and devoted in their religion, they form perhaps, the happiest community in the world. In passing through the country, a stranger would never find out that he was in a manufacturing district, but might fancy himself in the green valleys of a partly pastoral, partly agricultural people. Thickly inhabited, the beautiful little cottages, clustered into villages, or scattered along the glens, or sides of the hills, are embowered with fruit trees, and encircled with shrubs and flowers, which each cottager cultivates with a zeal peculiar to his race; on every side rich fields of grain or pasture stretch out like a vast enamelled carpet between the hills, which are clothed in dense forest of spruce, fir, pine, and beech, filled with deer, roe, and capercalzie; they extend in every direction, far beyond the reach of the eye, one vast cloud of verdure. The fabriques or factories, are placed generally in the middle of one of these villages, the extent of which can only be known by going from house to house; so closely is each hid in its own fruit-bower, and so surrounded by shrubs and flowers, that the eye can only pick up the buildings by their blue smoke, or get a glimpse of them here and there as you advance; thus some of the villages are elongated to three miles, forming the most delicious walk along its grassy road, generally accompanied by a stream, _always_ overhung by a profusion of wild flowers, the mountain-ash, and weeping birch; many of the former only to be found in our gardens. It has a very picturesque effect to see the inhabitants of these villages with their simple costume; and if it rains, their umbrellas, often of rich colors like their glass, scarlet, green, and deep crimson, with beautiful ruby, emerald, or turquoise handles; not such as a stranger might suppose a gaudy glass bauble, but rich and massive, and having all the appearance of the solid, gold, and gem-studded handles of the oriental weapons. The fabrique is built like the rest of the cottages, and only differs from them in size, and the shape and height of its chimney, which emitting only wood smoke, has none of the dense sulphuric cloud which blackens and poisons the neighborhood of coal-fed factories: it is never that ostentatious building for whose magnitude and embellishments the public are obliged to pay, in the increased charges on its productions. The glass fabriques of Bohemia are all small, in fact only one large apartment, in the centre of which is the furnace, a circular structure divided into eight compartments containing the melted metal for as many colors; one man and a boy are stationed at the door of each compartment, the former to extract the fluid with his pipe, the latter to hold the wooden mould[1] in which the article is blown and shaped. The number of hands employed in an ordinary fabrique, are:--Eight men who work in the metal, take it from the fire, and blow it in the moulds; eight helps to hold the moulds, &c.; four to stir the metal, &c.; two breakers; four day laborers. The best men are sometimes paid from eighteen to twenty shillings a week, and provide their own food, which is good; and as they require much nourishment from the exhausting effects of the heat, it consists of meat, vegetables, and a vast quantity of beer; those who are employed about the furnace especially, drink from twelve to fifteen quarts a day; it is a clear, bitter beverage, which they, in common with all the German race, like beyond every thing else, but it is of little strength; intoxication is almost unknown, and as a proof of their careful and excellent character, in one of the above-mentioned villages, three miles in length, a fire had not been known in the memory of the oldest inhabitants I questioned, though the houses from the ground to the roof are made entirely of wood. The materials of which the glass is composed, as far as can be ascertained, and they seem to make no secret of it, appear to be the same as those in use in England; they say, they derive their perfection from their mode of mixing and burning the material. Thus the principal component parts are:--Sand; chalk; potash; brimstone; arsenic, mixed with various colors, regulated by the principal:--Uran oxide; cobalt oxide; coppré oxide; nickel oxide; chrom oxide; minium; tin oxide. The gold used in ornamenting the glass is from the purest ducats, dissolved in strong acid (artz wasser), the oil with which the colors are mixed is of turpentine (harz öhl). Nothing is done in most of the blowing fabriques but mixing the material, and coloring; and for cutting, polishing, &c., from three to six wheels are used--all the finishing goes on in the little cottages by which the furnace is surrounded, and with which the valleys and sides of the hills are studded; here you find, within the contracted chambers of these small block-houses, if on the ground-flat, standing on an earthen[2] floor like our Highland cottages, an artist of the first ability, tracing the exquisite scrolls and flowers which we see in these beautiful works of art; and which are performed by men bearing all the appearance of simple cotters; but whose hand sweeps free and careless over the glass with the confidence and ease of an experienced artist; seldom being provided with more than two very ordinary looking brushes, a small one and another a size larger, and working frequently without any pattern, or indicating lines upon the glass they are painting; but perfect from habitude, the scrolls, and wreaths, and flowers, come out with the same facility as one traces a name upon the dewy pane of a window. Often the whole family are brought up from childhood in painting and in drawing on glass, and thus producing a race of hereditary artists; boys from thirteen and upwards are employed in the most delicate works in this genre of art. Each cottage where the painting and gilding go on, is provided with a small oven, into which the glass is put to bake in the colors, where it is kept for a day and allowed to cool down; the white figures and flowers, when they go into the oven, are of a dark chrome color, but come out pure white, as will be observed on examining any glass on which flowers of this color are painted; the gold, also, when laid on, is of a dead brown, and when burnt in, is polished, generally by women of the family. The gold in many instances is left unpolished, and only the stalks and fibres are burnished, which give an excellent effect. It is most interesting to go from one cottage to another; in one you are amazed by the exquisite paintings in gold, silver, and colors; in another, the cutting out all those beautiful leaf-work, lily, bell-flower, octagon, and star-shaped vases, which is done, not only by men, but by their children, girls and boys. In one cottage, I was particularly struck by a man, his two daughters, and son, sitting at as many wheels, cutting the most elaborate, but delicate, figures; shaping from the merely turned over bell vases, those beautiful varieties of lily and flower-indented lamps for suspension, and vessels for holding bouquets, tracing the scrolls, stalks, and fibres, with the same ease as the bare-footed wife and mother prepared their supper in the wooden bowl on the earth-floor behind them; for there was but one apartment for the fine arts, the nursery, and the kitchen, yet all was neatness, perfect cleanliness, and order; while on the long beam which formed the sill of the three mullion windows, was arranged a number of glass objects in the glorious colors of Bohemian art--ruby, emerald, topaz, chrysopras, turquoise; with pure crystals, which, richly cut, reflected, like a rainbow, the gems by which they are surrounded. In another cottage, in Steinchönau, I was much pleased with the designs which two young men were painting, both in gold, and colors; of which the former were scrolls of a very superior character, and the latter, flowers, butterflies, and insects. I questioned one of the men respecting the forms and characteristics of those he was painting, and which were beautiful illustrations of Natural History; when he brought me in, from a little bed-room, or rather closet, two boxes full of exquisitely preserved specimens of a great variety of native insects, which he had collected in his leisure hours, and arranged himself, to assist him in his painting. The copies were facsimiles of the originals, both as to colors and character. Among these insects I observed a beautiful miniature crawfish, not so large as a shrimp, a native, also, of the streams in his neighborhood. So identified had these productions of nature become with his imagination, that he was, at the moment I came in, painting some most correctly, without any specimen before him. It is impossible to express the feelings produced by these people, so simple, so industrious, and, above all, _so_ modest. They could not refrain from surprise at the admiration their every-day productions created in us; and these simple artisans would with difficulty believe that their works were sought for, and thus valued, in all powerful and wealthy England, where they believe nothing is unknown, nothing imperfect, nothing impossible! One man whom I visited is an extraordinary genius, rarely to be met with; he has been driven by the force of that same genius, to seek abroad, in France and Bavaria (Munich), food for his mind, and has brought back with him several folio works of engravings from the best masters, from which he designs. Placing before him one of these works, a Raphael or a Rubens, he either copies the group, or composes from them to suit the form of his vase, which he thus embellishes with the most exquisite figures; his name is Charles Antoin Günther. He lives in a little block-house, as humble as the commonest of those above described, on the declivity of a brae, by a small stream, on which stand the little scattered village of Steinschönau. It is composed of only two apartments below, of which his work-room is one, and which is not above ten feet square, with just space enough to hold four little lathes for engraving glass, at one of which he works himself, while the others are occupied by three boys, the youngest twelve and a-half years old, the eldest fifteen! They all engrave beautifully, pieces laid before them by Günther, and which they follow with a faithfulness and spirit only to be believed on personal inspection. He was at work himself on a vase goblet, of the shape of the usual green hock-glass, but which might contain a bottle; it was lapis lazuli blue, enriched by a group of Bacchanalian Cupids and vine-leaves of his own composition, and worked with a spirit and freedom worthy of some of the masters by whose works he was surrounded. What struck me most, was one of those exquisite little figures of Raphael's, in his great picture of the "Madona del Sixto," in the Royal Gallery at Dresden. The cherub leaning on the parapet, with his chin resting on one hand, as he gazes on the Virgin; it is exquisitely drawn in pencil, a fac-simile, and pinned on the wooden wall of the engraver's cottage, immediately opposite his seat. I asked him how he first traced on the glass the subjects which he was to cut; he replied by taking up a plain glass without any figure or indication on its surface, and asking me what subject I should like engraved. On my replying that, being an old deer-stalker, I should be very well pleased with a stag; he immediately applied the wheel to the glass, and in five minutes by my watch, produced one of the most splendid, spirited animals I ever saw in the forest, and really worthy of Landseer; the stag is making a spring over some broken palings and rough foreground, and his action and parts can only be appreciated by those who have lived with the deer on the hill and watched them with the feelings of a hill-man, like Günther, who has had opportunities of seeing the deer in his own native woods, where they abound. I brought this glass away with me, though in itself but an inferior article; merely as a specimen of what I had seen done by this man in the space of five minutes, without a copy or any thing to guide him on the smooth surface of the goblet. I send you sketches of the artist and his dwelling; and as the portrait exhibits, at the same time, his native costume, it will be the more interesting, and cannot fail to give a correct idea of the character of this Bohemian mountaineer. [Illustration: BOHEMIAN GLASS PAINTER.] The sketch of Günther's House will also afford an idea of these Bohemian artisans' dwellings, more so than any written description could do. I send you with it a drawing of another of these picturesque houses. There are two classes of persons engaged, on a large scale, in the exportation of Bohemian glass--the fabricant and the collector; generally speaking, however, the latter is the direct exporter, and he also superintends the cutting, painting, and packing. The fabricant is more frequently engaged in furnishing the collector, and to a great extent, with the glass in its original and more simple forms as it comes from the furnace, and it is then cut and painted by the cottagers who surround the dwelling of the collector; so that many of these villages are entirely formed by the collector and his people. Others however, employed in the same way, cluster round the fabrique; but even their productions for the most part go to the collectors, who have their correspondents in America, Spain, Turkey, Greece, England, &c. [Illustration: HOME OF CHARLES ANTOINE GUNTHER.] As might be expected, there is a considerable difference in the designs of different houses; some are much superior to others, both as to color and design. Those of Egermann, in Hyda, who has added many new and valuable discoveries in the art of making and coloring the glass, and Hoffman, in Prague, are the best I have visited, to which may be added Zahn, in Steinschönau, for whom Günter engraves. Egerman's establishment in Hyda, for cutting, painting, and engraving, is very considerable, and exhibits first-rate talent, which can only be appreciated by a personal inspection of his works; and the taste and judgment of Hoffman, in Prague, in his selections, the designs he gives, and the artists he employs, cannot be surpassed, if equalled, in Germany. He has entirely abandoned the modern school, and returned to the first principles of art,[3] and produces, both in form and decorations, subjects worthy of the ancient masters. [Illustration: RESIDENCE OF A BOHEMIAN ARTISAN.] The glass villages are scattered all through the mountainous districts, whose ridges, and summits, and upper ranges are covered with a forest, which extends forty or fifty miles in length, by thirty broad; the fabriquants maintain that the finer glass cannot be brought to perfection but by wood heat, and hence, the glass fabriques are only to be found in these vast forests. One of the most interesting natural formations within this circle is the volcanic rock, called "Spirlingstein," which shoots up out of a little valley on the right bank of the Elbe crowned with a shattered mass of natural towers and turrets which it is difficult to believe, till closely examined, are not the ruins of one of those feudal holds crowning the summits of so many of the hills in Bohemia. Every village has its school, in which are to be found all the children too old for the nursery, and too young to be employed. Several I visited contained as many as three hundred; the specimens of their writing are beautiful, some quite like engraving; the eldest child, whose specimen I saw, was only thirteen; they sing most sweetly, and many accompanying themselves on the guitar, the schoolmaster being almost always a musician, and capable of playing two or three instruments. There is a church and good organ in each village, and a very good choir entirely composed of these villagers, all of whom play some instrument, and form the choir by turns, generally directed by the schoolmaster. Some of these amateur bands play exquisitely, as an idea may be formed by the families or communities who occasionally visit England, and who are often from a district such as I have described, and whose sole instruction has been that which they could pick up from each other in their hours of recreation. At the fabrique of A. Kittls-Erben of Kreibitz, while at dinner in the garden, and which was provided by the hospitality of the fabriquant, and in great profusion, with a variety of Hungarian and Bohemian wines, I observed a little girl of twelve years of age, who came into the bower with a guitar, and while I was looking round for the performer, the master of the fabrique lifted the little girl on a chair, and laid a music book before her, from which she played and sang a number of Bohemian songs with much taste and execution. All the instruction she ever had was from the schoolmaster, who taught her during the leisure hours of the scholars. She was an orphan, and brought up by the fabriquant. After dinner we walked up the valley to visit a fabrique of Chichorie; in the way I remarked a little cottage, like the rest, with its fruit-trees and garden, but which had, in addition to its projecting roof and windows filled with flowers, both in pots and _Bohemian glass_ vases, verandahs in carved oak, the scroll-work of which was quite classic, and the execution admirable. While I stopped to examine this, the fabriquant who accompanied me remarked that the owners were makers of musical instruments. On inquiring of what kind, he replied a variety,--violins, accordions, and others. I was met at the door by a man whose appearance was that of a simple cottager, and his manners indicated all the simplicity of rural life. He was told that I wished to see some of his instruments, upon which he bowed, slightly elevated his shoulders, and replied, that he had nothing worth seeing, but would be happy to receive us, and showed us the way, with that natural kindness and politeness, which distinguish the peasants of this country. We followed him up a little carved-wood staircase, and he ushered us into a small, yet clean apartment, where, to my surprise, I found two rather large organs, sufficiently large for a moderate church; one was a peculiar instrument, a pan-harmomicon, invented by himself, with improvements and great facility and simplicity in tuning; it formed a concert of the single organ, brass horns, and kettle drums, having a double row of keys behind, so that the performer was masked by the instrument, which had a handsome front; the face of it could be removed to show the whole interior of the mechanical arrangement. A variety of other instruments were packed in different parts of the room, some of which were large and highly improved accordions, which, as well as the organ, are beautifully played by the brothers,[4] of whom there are three; their talent for music is extraordinary. [Illustration: SPIRLINGSTEIN.] The church in this country is still the great patron of the arts. In _every_ little chapel, however remote or small, (and in some of the _minute_ villages in the mountains, they are not larger than an ordinary room,[5] though of a vast height in proportion to the length and breadth,) is found a good organ, and always well played. There is also an amateur choir attached to each. These chapels are decorated by paintings and frescoes, some of which are of considerable merit. In the house of a priest, who officiates in one of them, I observed a "Crucifixion," without a frame, apparently quite newly painted, and, on inquiring, I found it was the work of an artist in Antwerp; that it had been bought by the glass-makers of the district, or rather obtained in exchange for some part of a cargo sent to that city, from which they had brought and presented it to their little chapel; it was valued at Antwerp, against the glass, at seven hundred florins ($150). The little chapels in the glass districts are also beautifully decorated with colored glass, the rich ruby lamps suspended before the altars, with their ever-burning lamps, the clusters of prisms in the great centre chandelier, reflecting the ruby lights, and gold, and flowers, from the altar, are always--independent of any other feeling--subjects worthy the contemplation of the artist. All the vases for flowers which richly decorate the country churches are of native manufacture--ruby, emerald, topaz, chrysophras, turquoise, and crystal chalices, full of the rarest of those flowers which form so much the delight and pastime of the inhabitants to cultivate, shed their delicious perfume through their chapels, mingled with the incense which, renewed daily, at morning and evening service, fills the buildings with perpetual fragrance. Another great resource for the arts in this country, which is offered by the Church, is the sculpture of wood. I have often been surprised and confounded by seeing an exquisite Virgin, or Crucifixion, or figure of a patron or local saint, in some far out of the way chapel in the hills, or in some lonely shrine, and even in the niches on the exterior of these buildings: but on inquiry I found that these were often the works of the first artists! the foreman of some native Canova, or Max, whose health, impaired by inhaling the fine dust of the marble, was not obliged to work on till death put an end to his talent; but, before the disease had become incurable, forsook _marble_ for _oak_, and reproduced in that material all the beauties of the original; and under the fostering wing of the Church recovered his health, and filled his native village church with works of the highest order. It is the same with artists, natives of larger towns; I do not speak of such works as are to be seen in Antwerp, and other cities of note--wonderful productions of rare art in carving, such as the figures which stand on each side of the numerous confessionals in the north transept of the glorious cathedral of the former, nearly as large as life, all emblematical of repentance and forgiveness, and other attributes of contrition and mercy; with many others of nearly, if not quite, the same merit, in the various churches with which this town abounds. These are the works of great masters whose celebrity is European; but to find in the wild and unknown districts of these mountains such works of art--to know there is a sure and safe means for the suffering artist to continue his work and regain his health, while he fills his country with fine objects of art, carved in wood, and which could never be obtained in any other way, is a blessed encouragement to talent, and a field for the arts which can only be appreciated by those who are relieved by it, or those who are dying for want of its protecting hand. Mr. Steel, in Edinburgh, the last time I had the happiness of visiting him in his studio, when he was engaged on that exquisite work the Scott statue, and which has since been placed within the monument erected to that illustrious man, told me he had, then, lately lost one or two of his best men from pulmonary complaint, brought on by inhaling the marble dust; that he had tried every means to counteract its effects, by providing the men with veils and masks, but to no purpose. His best man then at work upon this national masterpiece, was fast failing beneath the effects of the same cause, and is now probably laid with all his talent in the dust, lost to his country in the prime of life, when _here_ such a man would soon be restored to health, while he reproduced his works in wood, and maintained himself and family in a comfortable and illustrious independence, enriching his country, and carrying the arts into the remote valleys of his native home. Thus far we make use of a letter to the Art Journal. In the Great Exhibition we perceive that the glass of Bohemia has attracted much attention, not more for the grace and beauty of its forms than for the recent improvements which have been made in its colors. The principal agent for the sale of Bohemian Glass in the United States is Mr. Collamore, of 447 Broadway, in whose extensive establishment may be seen in particular all the varieties of those vases, and other mantel ornaments, of Bohemian Glass, which, to a great extent, are taking the place of porcelain fabrics, of the same description, in the more fashionably furnished houses. One of these vases we copy here from the Art Journal Catalogue of the Hyde Park Exhibition; others are of different forms, and of colors equalled in richness only in other manufactures of the same country. [Illustration] Of other industrial pursuits in this class we shall give accounts hereafter. FOOTNOTES: [1] The moulds are made of beech-wood. [2] These earthen floors are not, as might be supposed from their name, dirty and untidy; they are made with wet clay, which, when dry, becomes quite hard, and can be kept as clean as brick or stone. [3] This excellence in the decoration of glass is, probably, only a branch of the high proficiency of the art of engraving and carving, in Germany, on all materials--the metal work of guns, seals engraved on steel and stone, wood, ivory, up to the copper plates of landscape and history; with regard to the second, seal engraving on steel, it cannot be surpassed, and scarcely, if at all, equalled in any other part of Europe. It is wrought with a delicacy unrivalled, and the impressions are equal to the best cutting on stone; it is done, too, at a cost wholly unknown in England, even among the lowest order of seal engravers, for initials on brass for sealing wine or sauce bottles! It is not only in the depth and sharpness of the cutting, that they excel, but in the beauty of the drawing of the various subjects--figures of men, animals, birds, and the lambrequins and mantlings with which the German heraldry abounds. The cheapness arises, no doubt, from the great patronage enjoyed by the seal engravers. Every nobleman has a large office-seal for each of his properties, and some have a vast number, as, for instance, the Prince Schwartzenberg, who has upwards of _forty_; the full coat of arms is engraved on the office-seal of each lordship. Such, of old, was the case with us; and I remember, among others, a beautiful gold seal, in the possession of the late Gordon of Fyvie, which had a thin topaz, with the arms of Sealton (the ancient lords of Fyvie) engraved upon it, with the colors enamelled on the gold beneath. A comparison, however, between the prices of these works of art, here and in England, will be more satisfactory and interesting; for an office-seal, which would cost in the latter country, if cut on brass, from 5_l._ to 7_l._, costs here from 30_s._ to 2_l._ on _steel_! including a beautifully ornamented base, and polished Bohemian granite, porphyry or agate handle, three inches in length; and such coats of arms as would cost in England, on stone, from 10_l._ to 20_l._, can be had here for a third of that sum, and executed in the best style of the art. Carving in ivory is equally good, and equally moderate. Pipes, also, of that beautiful material erroneously called Meerschaum, and of large dimensions, are carved either with a superb coat of arms or historical subjects, the prices of which vary according to the size of the pipe and number of figures, from 30_s._ to 2_l._! [4] Their name is Lehmann; residence--Schonfeld, near Kreibitz. [5] The ruins of similar little chapels are found all over the highlands and isles of Scotland, however remote, with other sacred edifices, in some of which may still be traced the remains of frescoes. In the ruins of larger buildings the frescoes are more apparent: thus, in the abbey church of Pluscardine, near Elgin, the four Evangelists were distinctly visible in 1826, after more than 500 years of ruin and decay. THE SANDWICH ISLANDS TO-DAY. [Illustration: VALLEYS AND MOUNTAINS OF WAILUKU, MAUI.] Whatever may be said of the influence of European and American profligacy in the Islands, they may be pointed to with perfect satisfaction for illustrations of the benefits of Christian civilization, and the people of this country are greatly indebted to the Rev. Henry T. Cheever, whose works on the subject we have had frequent occasion to praise, for the eminently judicious and interesting accounts he has given us of society, manners, and religion, and of industrial resources, and every kind of natural phenomena, throughout the "island world," especially in the Sandwich Islands, to which his last work[6] is altogether devoted. Of the important question of the political destiny of this group Mr. Cheever says: "Perhaps it is in the providential plan of the world's great Ruler, that the Sandwich Islands should yet be adopted into the Great American Confederacy. Won as they have been from the lowest barbarism by American missionaries,--having had expended upon them in the process nearly a million and a half of dollars from America, and the services of fifty families now possessing there valuable homesteads,--harboring a permanent American population, foremost in energy and influence, now little short of one thousand, besides a floating American population that touch and recruit annually to the number of fifteen thousand, in whaleships and merchantmen, and consuming yearly a million of dollars' worth of American merchandise; on all these grounds there would seem to be a propriety in their enjoying an American Protectorate, if not an admission under the flag of the American Republic. "'American enterprise,' says a writer[7] who has been for many years familiar with the history and progress of the Hawaiian Islands, 'both commercial and philanthropic, has invested the group with its present political importance--bestowing upon the inhabitants laws, religion, and civilization--and will soon add to these gifts language; for the English tongue is rapidly superseding the Hawaiian. The Islanders have thus a moral claim upon the American nation for protection. In no way can this be more efficiently bestowed than by receiving them into the family of this great republic. The native population are as well prepared to be American citizens as the multitude of European emigrants. Unlike the generality of them, they can read and write, and have already acquired democratic ideas under the operation of their own liberal constitution of government, which will readily enable them to incorporate themselves under our institutions. They are destined to be supplanted in numbers and power by a foreign race. They desire us to be their successors and protectors. The present revenues of the Islands are more than adequate to the expenses of their government--time, opportunity, the interests of the inhabitants and ourselves point to this result.' Events will soon determine whether they are to retain their independency, or to be merged in the nation that has civilized them." The work abounds in interesting details of Island Life, and we regret that our limits will not permit us to enrich the _International_ with more liberal extracts. We can at present add but the following paragraphs on a sport for which the islanders have been celebrated ever since the days of Cook: "It is highly amusing to a stranger to go out into the south part of this town, some day when the sea is rolling in heavily over the reef, and to observe there the evolutions and rapid career of a company of surf-players. The sport is so attractive and full of wild excitement to Hawaiians, and withal so healthful, that I cannot but hope it will be many years before civilization shall look it out of countenance, or make it disreputable to indulge in this manly though dangerous exercise. Many a man from abroad who has witnessed this exhilarating play, has no doubt only wished that he was free and able to share in it himself. For my part, I should like nothing better, if I could do it, than to get balanced on a board just before a great rushing wave, and so be hurried in half or a quarter of a mile landward with the speed of a race-horse, all the time enveloped in foam and spray, but without letting the roller break and tumble over my head. "In this consists the strength of muscle and sleight of hand, to keep the head and shoulders just ahead and clear of the great crested wall that is every moment impending over one, and threatening to bury the bold surf-rider in its watery ruin. The natives do this with admirable intrepidity and skill, riding in, as it were, upon the neck and mane of their furious charger; and when you look to see them, their swift race run, dashed upon the rocks or sand, behold, they have slipped under the belly of the wave they rode, and are away outside, waiting for a cruise upon another. Both men and women, girls and boys, have their times for this diversion. Even the huge Premier (Auhea) has been known to commit her bulky person to a surf-board; and the chiefs generally, when they visit Lahaina, take a turn or two at this invigorating sport with billows and board. For a more accurate idea of it than can be conveyed by any description, the reader is referred to the engraving. "I have no doubt it would run away with dyspepsia from many a bather at Rockaway or Easthampton, if they would learn, and dare to use a surf-board on those great Atlantic rollers, as the Hawaiians do on the waves of the Pacific. But there is wanting on the Atlantic sea-board that delicious, bland temperature of the water, which within the tropics, while it makes sea-bathing equally a tonic, renders it always safe. "The missionaries at these islands, and foreigners generally, are greatly at fault in that they do not avail themselves more of this easy and unequalled means of retaining health, or of restoring it when enfeebled. Bathing in fresh water, in a close bath-house, is not to be compared to it as an invigorating and remedial agent; and it is unwise, not to say criminal, in such a climate, to neglect so natural a way of preserving health, as washing and swimming in the sea. In those who live close to the water, and on the leeward side of the Islands, it is the more inexcusable, for it could be enjoyed without exposure in the dewless evenings; or in some places a small house might be built on stone abutments over the water, and facilities so contrived that both sexes could enjoy this great luxury of a life within the tropics." The volume has several spirited engravings, and is excellently printed. [Illustration: HAWAIIAN SPORT OF SURF PLAYING] FOOTNOTES: [6] Life In the Sandwich Islands, or the Heart of the Pacific, as it was and as it is. By Rev. Henry T. Cheever, author of "The Island World of the Pacific," "The Whale and his Captors," &c. 1 vol. 12 mo. New-York. A. S. Barnes & Co., 51 John-street. [7] J. J. Jarves. PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE. [Illustration] Among our pleasantest friends in many years was the author of the _Froissart Ballads_. We think of him as a friend, but we never saw him; his features are familiar to us only by this poor counterfeit, and all we know of his voice is that it has been described to us as musically joyous, sometimes varying to a sad sweetness, sometimes wild. For half a dozen years visits to him were written of, and hoped for, and it was settled, we thought, that we were to share with him a turkey-hunt in the Old Dominion, in a few weeks, when suddenly the intelligence came that he was dead. Philip Pendleton Cooke was born in Martinsburg, Berkeley county, Virginia, on the twenty-sixth of October, 1816. His father, Mr. John R. Cooke, was then and is now honorably distinguished at the bar, and his mother was of that family of Pendletons which has furnished so many eminent names to that part of the Union. At fifteen he entered Princeton college, where he had a reputation for parts, though he did not distinguish himself, or take an honor, and could never tell how it happened that he obtained a degree, as he was not examined with his class. He liked fishing and hunting better than the books, and Chaucer and Spenser much more than the dull volumes in the "course of study." He had already made rhymes before he became a freshman, and the appearance of the early numbers of the _Knickerbocker Magazine_ prompted him to new efforts in this way; he wrote for the _Knickerbocker_, in his seventeenth year, _The Song of the Sioux Lover_, and _The Consumptive_, and in a village paper, about the same time, humorous and sentimental verses. When he left college his father was living at Winchester, and there he himself pursued the study of the law. He wrote pieces in verse and prose for the _Virginian_, and _The Southern Literary Messenger_ (then just started), and projected novels and an extensive work in literary criticism. Before he was twenty-one he was married, admitted to the bar, and had a fair prospect of practice, in Frederick, Jefferson, and Berkeley counties. "I am blessed by my fireside," he wrote, "here on the banks of the Shenandoah in view and within a mile of the Blue Ridge; I go to county towns, at the sessions of the courts, and hunt, and fish, and make myself as happy with my companions as I can." "So," he wrote to us in 1846, "have passed five, six, seven, eight years, and now I am striving, after long disease of my literary veins, to get the rubbish of idle habits away and work them again. My fruit-trees, rose-bushes, poultry, guns, fishing-tackle, good, hard-riding friends, a long-necked bottle on my sideboard, an occasional client, &c., &c., &c., make it a little difficult to get from the real into the clouds again. It requires a resolute habit of self-concentration to enable a man to shut out these and all such real concerns, and give himself warmly to the nobler or more tender sort of writing--and I am slowly acquiring it." The atmosphere in which he lived was not, it seems, altogether congenial--so far as literature was concerned--and he wrote: "What do you think of a good friend of mine, a most valuable and worthy and hard-riding one, saying gravely to me a short time ago, 'I would'nt waste time on a damned thing like poetry; you might make yourself, with all your sense and judgment, a useful man in settling neighborhood disputes and difficulties.' You have as much chance with such people, as a dolphin would have if in one of his darts he pitched in amongst the machinery of a mill. "Philosophy would clip an angel's wings," Keats says, and pompous dulness would do the same. But these very persons I have been talking about, are always ready, when the world generally has awarded the honors of successful authorship to any of our mad tribe, to come in and confirm the award, and _buy_, if not read, the popular book. And so they are not wholly without their uses in this world. But woe to him who seeks to _climb_ amongst them. An author must avoid them until he is already mounted on the platform, and can look down on them, and make them ashamed to show their dulness by keeping their hands in their breeches pockets, whilst the rest of the world are taking theirs out to give money or to applaud with. I am wasting my letter with these people, but for fear you may think I am chagrined or cut by what I abuse them for, I must say that they suit one half of my character, moods, and pursuits, in being good kindly men, rare table companions, many of them great in field sports, and most of them rather deficient in letters than mind; and that, in an every-day sense of the words, I love and am beloved by them." Soon afterward he wrote: "Mr. Kennedy's assurance that you would find a publisher for my poems leaves me without any further excuse for not collecting them. If not the most devoted, truly you are the most serviceable, of my friends, but it is because Mr. Kennedy has overpraised me to you. Your letter makes me feel as if I had always known you intimately, and I have a presentiment that you will counteract my idleness and good-for-nothingness, and that, hoisted on your shoulders I shall not be lost under the feet of the crowd, nor left behind in a fence corner. I am profoundly grateful for the kindness which dictated what you have done, and to show you that I will avail myself of it, I inclose a proem to the pieces of which I wrote you in my last." The poem referred to was so beautiful that we asked and obtained permission to put it in Graham's Magazine, of which we were at that time editor. The author's name was not given, and it excited much curiosity, as but two or three of our poets were thought capable of such a performance, and there was no reason why one of them should print any thing anonymously. It was most commonly, however, attributed to Mr. Willis, at which Mr. Cooke was highly gratified. The piece, which was entitled "Emily," contained about three hundred lines, and was a feigned history of the composition of tales designed to follow it, exquisitely told, and sprinkled all along with gems that could have come from only a mine of surpassing richness. For examples: Young Emily has temples fair Caress'd by locks of dark brown hair. A thousand sweet humanities Speak wisely from her hazel eyes. Her speech is ignorant of command, And yet can lead you like a hand. Her white teeth sparkle, when the eclipse Is laughter-moved, of her red lips. She moves, all grace, with gliding limbs As a white-breasted cygnet swims. I know some wilds, where tulip trees, Full of the singing toil of bees, Depend their loving branches over Great rocks, which honeysuckles cover In rich and liberal overflow. In the dear time of long ago When I had woo'd young Emily, And she had told her love to me, I often found her in these bowers, Quite rapt away in meditation, Or giving earnest contemplation To leaf, or bird, or wild-wood flowers; And once I heard the maiden singing, Until the very woods were ringing---- Singing an old song to the hours! One jocund morn: I found her where a flowering tree Gave odors and cool shade. Her cheek A little rested on her hand; Her rustic skill had made a band Of rare device which garlanded The beauty of her bending head; Some maiden thoughts most kind and wise Were dimly burning in her eyes. When I beheld her--form and face So lithe, so fair--the spirit race, Of whom the better poets dream'd, Came to my thought, and I half deem'd My earth-born mistress, pure and good, Was some such lady of the wood, As she who work'd at spell, and snare, With Huon of the dusky hair, And fled, in likeness of a doe, Before the fleet youth Angelo. But these infirm imaginings Flew quite away on instant wings. I call'd her name. A swift surprise Came whitely to her face, but soon It fled before some daintier dyes, And, laughing like a brook in June, With sweet accost she welcomed me. It was a golden day to me, And its great bliss is with me yet, Warming like wine my inmost heart---- For memories of happy hours Are like the cordials press'd from flowers, And madden sweetly. Then the poet recited ancient lays which tell some natural tales; and then: Pity look'd lovely in the maiden; Her eyes were softer, when so laden With the bright dew of tears unshed. But I was somewhat envious That other bards should move her thus, And oft within myself had said, "Yea--I will strive to touch her heart With some fair songs of mine own art"---- And many days before the day Whereof I speak, I made essay At this bold labor. In the wells Of Froissart's life-like chronicles I dipp'd for moving truths of old. A thousand stories, soft and bold, Of stately dames, and gentlemen, Which good Lord Berners, with a pen Pompous in its simplicity, Yet tipt with charming courtesy, Had put in English words, I learn'd; And some of these I deftly turn'd Into the forms of minstrel verse. I know the good tales are the worse-- But, sooth to say, it seems to me My verse has sense and melody---- Even that its measure sometimes flows With the brave pomp of that old prose. It was a good while before the promised contents of the book were sent to us, and Cooke wrote of the delay to a friend: "Procrastination is a poison of my very marrow. Moreover, since 'the first wisping of the leaf,' my whole heart has been in the woods and the waters--every rising sun that could be seen, _I have seen_, and I never came in from my sport until too much used up to do more than adopt this epitaph of Sardanapalus: 'Eat, drink,' &c. Moreover (2d), Mr. Kennedy and others were poking me in the ribs eternally about my poems; and I was driven to the labor of finishing them. I groaned and did it, and sent them to Griswold, and have left the task of carrying them through the press to him; and only lie passive, saying with Don Juan (in the slave-market of Adrianople, or some other place), 'would to God somebody would buy me.'" At length through his cousin and friend, John P. Kennedy--(a name that makes one in charity with all mankind)--the MS. of all the poems was sent to us. It makes a book about the size of the printed volume, written with a regular elegance to match that of the old copyists. In an accompanying letter he says: ... "They are certainly not in the high key of a man warm with his subject, and doing the thing finely; I wrote them with the reluctance of a turkey-hunter kept from his sport--only Mr. Kennedy's urgent entreaty and remonstrance whipped me up to the labor. You will hardly perceive how they should be called "Ballads." You are somewhat responsible for the name. I designed (originally) to make them short poems of the old understood ballad cast. I sent you the proem, which you published as a preface to the "Froissart Ballads." Words in print bore a look of perpetuity (or rather of fixedness) about them, and what I would have changed if only my pen and portfolio had been concerned, your type deterred me from changing. The term "Froissart Ballads," however, is after all correct, even with the poems as they are. The Master of Bolton is as much a _song_ as the Lay of the Last Minstrel, although I have no prologue, interludes, &c., to show how it was sung; and as for Orthone, &c. Sir John Froissart may as easily be imagined chanting them as talking them." Again he wrote: "You will find them beneath your sanguine prognostic. They are mere narrative poems, designed for the crowd. Poetic speculation, bold inroads upon the debatable land--"the wild weird clime, out of space out of time"--I have not here attempted. I _will_ hereafter merge myself in the nobler atmosphere; in the mean time I have stuck to the ordinary level, and endeavored to write interesting stories in verse, with grace and spirit. I repeat my fear that in writing for the cold, I have failed to touch the quick and warm--in writing for a dozen hunting comrades, who have been in the habit of making my verse a _post prandium_ entertainment, and never endured an audacity of thought or word, I have tamed myself out of your approbation." The book was at length published, but though reviewed very favorably by the late Judge Beverly Tucker, in the Southern Literary Messenger, and by Mr. Poe, in the American Review, and much quoted and praised elsewhere, it was, on the whole, not received according to its merits or our expectations. Yet the result aroused the author's ambition, and after a few weeks he remarked in a letter: "My literary life opens now. If the world manifest any disposition to hear my 'utterances,' it will be abundantly gratified. I am thirty: until forty literature shall be my calling--avoiding however to rely upon it pecuniarily--then (after forty) politics will be a _sequitur_. "It has occurred to me to turn my passion for hunting, and 'my crowding experiences' (gathered in fifteen or sixteen years of life in the merriest Virginia country society) of hunting, fishing, country races, character and want of character, woods, mountains, fields, waters, and the devil knows what, into a rambling book. Years ago I used to devour the 'Spirit of the Times.' Indeed, much of my passion for sports of all kinds grew out of reading the 'Spirit.' Like Albert Pike's poet, in 'Fantasms,' I 'Had not known the bent of my own mind, Until the mighty spell of 'Porter' woke Its hidden passions.' Only Albert Pike, says 'Coleridge' and 'Powers' for 'Porter' and 'passions.' Then, I have a half-written novel in my MS. piles, with poems, tales, sketches, histories, commenced, or arranged in my mind ready to be put in writing, _to order_. In a word, I am cocked and primed for authorship. My life here invites me urgently to literary employments. My house, servants, &c. &c.,--all that a country gentleman, really wants of the goods of life,--are in sure possession to me and mine. I want honors, and some little more money. Be good enough, my dear sir, to let me know how I am to go about acquiring them." We wrote with frankness what we thought as true, of possible pecuniary advantages from the course he proposed, and were answered: "What you say about the returns in money for an author's labors is dispiriting enough,--and I at once give over an earnest purpose, which I had formed, of writing _books_. Thank God, I am not dependent on the booksellers, but have a moderate and sure support for my family, apart from the crowding hopes and fears which dependence on them, would no doubt generate. But I must add (or forego some gratifications) two or three hundred dollars per annum to my ordinary means. I might easily make this by my profession, which I have deserted and neglected, but it would be as bad as the tread-mill to me; I detest the law. On the other hand, I love the fever-fits of composition. The music of rhythm, coming from God knows where, like the airy melody in the Tempest, tingles pleasantly in my veins and fingers; I like to build the verse cautiously, but with the excitement of a rapid writer, which I rein in and check; and then, we both know how glorious it is to make the gallant dash, and round off the stanza with the sonorous couplet, or with some rhyme as natural to its place as a leaf on a tree, but separated from its mate that peeps down to it over the inky ends of many intervening lines.... That unepistolary sentence has considerably fatigued me. I was saying, or about to say, that I would be obliged to you for information as to the profitableness of writing for periodicals." From this time Mr. Cooke wrote much, but in a desultory way, and seemed, in a growing devotion to a few friends, and in the happiness that was in his home, to forget almost the dreams of ambition. He had commenced an historical novel to be called "Lutzen," in which that great battle was to end the adventures of his hero; this he threw aside, and his love for that age appeared in "The Chevalier Merlin," suggested by the beautiful story of Charles the Twelfth, as given by Voltaire, several chapters of which appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger. In the same magazine he printed "John Carpe," "The Two Country Houses," and other tales, parts of a series in which he intended to dramatize the whole life and manners of Virginia. As for any applause that these might win for him, he wrote to his friend John R. Thompson: "I look upon these matters serenely, and will treat renown as Sir Thomas More advises concerning guests; welcome its coming when it cometh, hinder not with oppressive eagerness its going, when it goeth. Furthermore, I am of the temper to look placidly upon the profile of this same renown, if, instead of stopping, it went by to take up with another; therefore it would not ruffle me to see you win the honors of southern letters away from me." The chivalric poetry had filled his mind early and long, and he was only banishing it for the more independent and beautiful growth of his nature, when his untimely death destroyed hopes of fruits which the productions of his youth seemed to precede as blossoms. He died suddenly, at his home, on Sunday, the 20th of January, 1850, at the age of thirty-three. At the time of his death he was writing "The Women of Shakspeare," "The Chariot Race," and a political and literary satire. Undoubtedly Philip Pendleton Cooke was one of the truest poets of our day, and what he has left us was full of promise that he would become one of the most famous. Of his love poems, this little song, written when he was scarcely more than twenty, is perhaps the finest: FLORENCE VANE. I loved thee long and dearly, Florence Vane; My life's bright dream, and early Hath come again; I renew, in my fond vision, My heart's dear pain, My hopes, and thy derision, Florence Vane. The ruin lone and hoary, The ruin old, Where thou didst hark my story, At even told,---- That spot--the hues Elysian Of sky and plain---- I treasure in my vision, Florence Vane. Thou wast lovelier than the roses, In their prime; Thy voice excelled the closes Of sweetest rhyme; Thy heart was as a river Without a main; Would I had loved thee never, Florence Vane. But fairest, coldest wonder! Thy glorious clay Lieth the green sod under---- Alas the day! And it boots not to remember Thy disdain---- To quicken love's pale ember, Florence Vane. The lilies of the valley By young graves weep, The pansies love to dally Where maidens sleep; May their bloom, in beauty vying, Never wane Where thine earthly part is lying, Florence Vane! We cannot quote others; in the lines "To my Daughter Lilly," may be discovered the tenderness and warmth of his affections; in his Ballads, the fiery and chivalrous phase of his intelligence; in "Ugolino," his pathos; in "Life in the Autumn Woods," his love of nature; and in all his writings, the thoroughly healthy character of his mind. As a boy and as a young man, we understand, his life was always poetical--apart, original, and commanding affectionate respect. As he grew older, and married, he became practical in his views, reaching that point in the life of genius in which its beautiful ideals take the forms of duty or become the strength of wise resolves. Toward his family, including his father, mother, brothers, and sisters, he cherished a deep and unfaltering devotion. A short time before his last illness he introduced into his household morning and evening prayers. He died, as he had lived, a pure-minded gentleman and humble Christian. Of his personal appearance a just impression is given by the portrait at the beginning of this article. His carriage was graceful and upright; his frame vigorous and elastic, trained as he was by constant hunting in the Blue Ridge; his hair was black and curling; his eye dark and bright; his expression calm and thoughtful; his manner impressed with dignity. ----"Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer." DR. HUNTINGTON ON COPYRIGHT. The author of _Alice_ and _Alban_ has written the following piquant letter on the important subject of INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. _To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle._ As an American deeply interested in the subject of international copyright, and much struck by the fallacies of some of the speakers at a meeting of authors and publishers, recently reported in the London journals, may I, as the subject is fresh so long as it is undecided, beg of your courtesy a little space to point them out. Let me begin by admitting the force of most that was said by the distinguished chairman on that occasion, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. No man living, perhaps, has a better right than he to complain of my countrymen, to whose intellectual pleasures and moral instruction he has contributed ever since I was a boy, out of the hard labor of his brains--helping to enrich our publishers and booksellers, and to stimulate all the trade connected with bookmaking, and vivifying the circulation of magazines and newspapers--for all which he has never received a penny. The same may be said of Dickens, whose works are of course as familiar to us as to you, and whose characters have become a part of our stock of ideas, more precious than the gold from our new-discovered mines. It is true that neither of these great men has benefited us so much as he might have done if we had paid for our pleasure honorably, for the influence of genius is like that of grace--the fertilizing shower falls in vain on the arid, stony places of selfish and unjust enjoyment. Charles Dickens has never received a penny from us, although we insulted our unpaid creditor when he came among us by asking him to Boz balls and dinners, given on a scale of splendor which showed how well we could have afforded to pay our debt if we had been honest enough to have admitted it. How degrading--how incongruous--for a great nation, such as we boast of being, to be thus the literary pensioners, the intellectual beggars of England, meanly enjoying what we won't pay for? An American would scorn to be fed or clothed gratis; he would "stand treat" with the world; yet he lets an Englishman (of all men!) gratuitously amuse his leisure, satisfy his thirst for knowledge, and clothe the nakedness of his mind. If Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, or Mr. Dickens, were to offer to pay for a pair of trousers for Brother Jonathan, he would knock him down; or if Miss Bell, or whatever is the name of the lady who wrote "Jane Eyre," and her sisters, pretended to make him up a dozen fine shirts as a charity, I think he would go out of his senses. He would rather go bare to the end of his days than owe such an obligation to any he or she Briton in existence; but what are such favors to those which he unblushingly accepts, year after year, from Sir Edward Bulwer and Miss Bell? But I think, sir, with submission, that an injury has been done to the cause of copyright by resting it on false abstract grounds, which cannot be, and never have been, carried out. If a man has a rightful monopoly in his book, merely because he has produced it, your law is unjust and piratical in fixing a term to copyright--for why should you take away a man's property after he has enjoyed it a certain number of years? On the contrary, one would suppose that the longer he has enjoyed it the more perfect his right, and the greater the wrong to deprive him of it. Time converts even what is unjustly acquired into a legitimate possession--how much more that which the owner has actually created? I would put the matter on simple, concrete grounds, which all men can appreciate. The production of books is an element of civilization, by the common consent of nations. Books cannot be produced unless in some way they procure the authors a subsistence. And whoever produces by his labor a beneficial thing, is entitled to a reasonable compensation from those who are thereby benefited. In former times, when readers were scarce, as copies were costly, the rich, or sovereigns, supported authors directly, by pensions or otherwise. It is now conceded that the best mode of rewarding them is by allowing them an exclusive copyright in their works, and all civilized nations do so. But this mode of remuneration being once established, a foreign author, coming personally, or in his work, into a country, "has as much moral right to his book as he has to his baggage," and it is as barbarous to plunder him of the one as of the other. Why, when was there a time in Europe, or even in Asia or the antique world, that princes and states did not receive and cherish, and nobly reward, foreign men of letters? Are they to be more ignobly treated now that the people have become patrons? But, if deaf to the voice of honor, hear that of justice. Those who enjoy their works are bound to remunerate them for what they have produced at a great expenditure of time, money, and soul-wearing labor. That "the laborer is worthy of his hire," is a divine sentence which sooner or later will judge all those by whom that hire is by fraud "kept back." A country which refuses a fair copyright to authors, whether native or foreign, condemns itself to barbarism. It cultivates in itself a spirit of violence, aggravated by ingratitude to benefactors. There is, too, a sort of indelicacy in this injury, which even the law of reprisal cannot excuse. The benefit which the author of genius confers is something personal. You might as well, if some savage tribe ravished your women, condemn its females, when captured, to insult and dishonor. Moreover, to refuse copyright to any class of authors (and here, again, I agree with Sir Bulwer), is to refuse it, in part, to all. The native author is robbed of his just hire by such a law, as much as the foreigner. I am compelled by the existing law of American copyright to part with my books for a sum which is under their natural price, and which is not a remunerating price, because I am undersold by reprints for which the authors are paid nothing. Look the fact in the face, ye readers of cheap reprints, who are unwilling to abandon an unjust privilege, which affords you so much pleasure at so low a rate. I have written a book. I have spent years in writing or learning to write it. Perhaps I could do nothing else. The influence of the literary atmosphere in which all who read the English language are forced to live, acting on my special organization, has made literary production a necessary resource. It is the same as if I were a poor shirt-maker, over whose sorrows a Hood has taught you to weep and be indignant. At all events, you approve of my writing, or you would not have read my book so extensively. And yet, because you can refuse to pay foreign authors for books of the same kind, you oblige me to take a nominal price for mine--a price for which it could not be produced by any man living, and less than it would command if you honestly paid for such labor in other instances. You have beaten me down most unfairly. I consider it so; and if every one of the 10 or 12,000 buyers of the cheap edition of "Lady Alice" were to send me a "quarter" (1_s._) by mail, I should regard it as a simple restitution; nor would the sum total cover my expenses while writing it. So far, then, Sir Edward Lytton and myself (if it is not too great presumption in me to join myself with him) cordially agree. And further, it is a most nonsensical and absurd policy for a country thus to swamp its native literature, and to depress and degrade the whole class of native writers. No nation can afford to let foreigners write for it; it would be as unwise as to let them fight its battles. I may add that no nation can afford to embitter its own writers against itself by producing in their minds a sense of injustice. Strong as our feeling of nationality undoubtedly is, it will not stand this for ever. It has seemed strange to some that an American should have written such a book as "Lady Alice," the author of which appears, at first sight, to have expatriated his mind, if not his heart. His being an episcopal clergyman accounts for it in part--for the Church is essentially of Old England, and its clergy and more devoted members are morally domiciled in England, with whose institutions and social system they have a stronger sympathy than with those of their own country. Moreover, for years, he lived only among Englishmen of that class which is most intensely attached to things as they are--a part of the time in England itself. These circumstances made the thing possible. But despair of obtaining any thing like a fair copyright for an American book made it actual--led him to lay aside a projected American story, and try his hand at an English novel, with a bent less serious: at first, indeed, not without some idea of caricature, in a gay, lawless, audacious spirit, in defiance of cant of every kind: but the calm, methodical, somewhat mechanical [Greek: êthos] of actual English life, when he saw it and felt its restraints, tamed down these peculiarities somewhat. The result was a book which truly excited more surprise than sympathy in England--but which, in America, proved its real nationality by bursting in a trice all the bonds of clique, and, in spite of its acknowledged faults, securing near a hundred thousand readers in a few months. If copyright had been protected as it ought, I should have been reimbursed by so large a sale; but, as it was, even this successful book paid me less than a day laborer could have earned in the time I was writing it, in any part of the States. But now I want Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and Mr. Colburn to tell me what good it will do English authors and publishers for you to imitate in this respect the injustice and folly of your transatlantic cousins. Because "literature is in a depressed state," which Sir Edward asserts to be a fact--and because Mr. Colburn cannot afford to give one hundred pounds for a book for which once he would have given £1000--they propose, if I understand them, to have recourse to an unlimited pirating of American literature. I should think (if your British pride will tolerate the expression of my opinion) that the true remedy would be to give a stringent copyright to American authors. Pray which injured the English book-market most--Mr. Colburn's issue of a few hundreds of "Lady Alice" at a guinea and a half, or Mr. Bohn's issue of as many thousands of Mayo's "Kaloolah" at a shilling? Or do they think, as Sir E. Bulwer Lytton seems to imply, that, except Cooper and Irving, we have no authors whose works are readable in Britain? "Typee," and "The Scarlet Letter," and "The Reveries of a Bachelor," and the two works above mentioned, tell a different story. Who can deny the genius and artistic power of Hawthorne, or the clear English simplicity of his style? And if Ik Marvel falls much behind Geoffrey Crayon, we, their countrymen, are no judges--although it is true that the former has fallen upon an affected age. I admit our deterioration. Or is it supposed that we shall cease producing if the possibility of English copyright is taken away? That would be a great mistake. Men who have a vocation for it will write, well or ill, even if they starve, as London garrets can testify. And there is no danger of our starving absolutely. Successful books pay their authors, not adequately, but enough to keep soul and body together. In light literature (so-called, perhaps, because it demands entire devotion and unceasing toil to arrive at excellence in it)--in light literature, which pays best here as well as elsewhere, there is a distinct demand for native works, which all the competition of the cheap pamphlet novels of the Harpers cannot wholly extinguish, and it is by the feeble, but real aid of this national taste that we exist. For my part, I feel a sort of Coriolanus pride in having got nothing, as I may say, for a book which had an unprecedented run; and if my countrymen object, as some of them do, to its principles, I tell them fairly that beggars cannot be choosers. I can live, thank Heaven, in many ways. I could not, indeed, keep school--as my countrymen, I believe, think every literary man should, the better to amuse them at his own expense. Two such drains on the cerebro-nervous system would soon lay me beneath the sod. But I can invest what remains of my patrimony in wild land, till it for my bread, and write a tale every winter, in defiance of the buccaneers. But suppose that we continue to write (as we shall, depend on it), and that our impracticable Congress--from the difficulty of getting it to look at any question not bearing upon "Who is to be the next President?" or from the general apathy in regard to the injuries of authors, and want of perception as to the important interests of the heart--will not or does not pass an international copyright law, what sense or what honesty will there be in your strangling yourselves meanwhile by permitting Mr. Bohn his black-flag reprisals? Whom do you injure by this species of retaliation? First, and chiefly, your own authors and publishers, and your own literature (and, therefore, you must abandon such a policy sooner or later); and next, your friends on this side the water. For what does our government care if our native authors, even of the highest ability, earn less than common stevedores? Not a rush. Do the people enjoy our works with a less magnanimous gusto, because we have coined our brains and hearts in composing them for bread and patched elbows? Will they be less, in their own estimation, the greatest, the freest, the wisest, and the most enlightened nation upon earth? You retaliate, gentlemen, by injuring those whose sufferings (greater than yours) are already disregarded by the power you would influence; and if you ruined them, you would not ruffle one self-complacent feather of the American eagle. You but do what you can to depress and extinguish the only class of Americans who have a direct interest in getting you what you want, and who are already as eager to obtain it as men usually are to protect themselves from ruinous competition. I do not know what you expect from such a method, unless you think that our government, which has no pity on its native men of letters, will be touched by the distresses of yours. Believe me, further, that it is the most unlikely way to succeed with the American people, to offer them an international copyright as a matter of bargain. They immediately suspect a design of obtaining an advantage for you, without any real equivalent to themselves. Show them, by granting a free and perfect copyright to all the world, on the same terms as your own subjects, that you regard such a course as the true policy of every state (which it is), and you will be much more likely to gain a hearing. I see nothing in this movement against foreigners getting a copyright, but selfishness overreaching itself. The Americans are sometimes obtuse to appeals to their sense of justice, when they have an immediate interest in repudiating the claim. I admit it with regret, but it cannot be denied. They do not know how to relinquish the present advantages of a cheap pirated literature--forgetting that the endless reading of cheap books is a vice, and that this deluge of foreign under-priced novels and magazines, good, bad, and indifferent, is washing away every manly national taste. But on the other hand you are too grasping. It is undignified and unbecoming. Why should you so eagerly clutch at a foreign sale for your works, as to sacrifice what you can secure--freedom from injurious competition at home? For my own part (and I am sure I speak the sentiments of every American writer of respectability), give me on this side of the Atlantic, what you may have on yours at pleasure--a fair chance, without being under-bid by pirates--and I ask no more. I will cheerfully relinquish all the advantage to be drawn from an English sale. Without vanity, justly as we are charged with it, or boasting (our national infirmity--heaven knows we came honestly by it), all we want is "a fair field" at home, "and no favor," and we will write books, if not intrinsically so good as those of English authors, yet more congenial to the tastes, and better adapted to supply the intellectual wants, of our countrymen. To conclude: although the American people appear at times obtuse, as I have said, on the question of justice, and take, as in this instance, a "mighty narrow" view of expediency, they are very open to an appeal to their generosity. Present a bill--above all, an unusual bill--to Brother Jonathan, and he may dispute it, or turn his back on you with all the coolness imaginable; but offer to contribute your sovereign for those poor devils of authors, and he is up to the gentlemanly thing--he will cover your subscription with an eagle. I should be glad to persuade him to do justice under the idea that it was a sort of charity, convinced as I am that, as soon as he had done it, he would see the true nature of the transaction, and blush to have ever stood out about so plain a thing. You Englishmen pretend, even in your national capacity, to believe the Bible (I wish it were true of either us or you). There is one passage which I commend to your consideration, as bearing directly on the practical solution of this question, and sustaining my view of it by a sentence which cannot fail: "Give and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal shall it be measured to you again." And there is another maxim more universal still, which among us is thus familiarly expressed: "Do as you would be done by." By reversing Lord Campbell's decision, you will act ungenerously, that's certain, and I think, unjustly, you will injure your own writers more than ours, and rob us of one of our strongest arguments. I remain, sir, very respectfully yours, THE AUTHOR OF "LADY ALICE." New-York, July 26. "THE SCIENCE OF DECEPTION." This is the title of a chapter in "The Age of Veneer," a series of papers appearing from month to month in _Fraser's Magazine_. At the beginning of it a certain preeminence is claimed for England which some have thought belonged to our own country, but we are not unwilling to yield the distinction: "The science of deception has of late years attained an immense importance in this good realm of Britain. In other lands,--as, for example, in France or in America,--it is practiced with more or less of success and perfection; but the inherent superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race has asserted itself even in this sinister and questionable pursuit, so that we may fairly claim as decided a preeminence in the arts by which fools are gulled and ruled, as in those more honorable and useful ones by which we have attained a moral dominion over the opinions and tastes of mankind. There may be more _finesse_ in the system of the French deceivers, or the American 'humbug' may, like the other indigenous productions of that remarkable land, be a very monster in the grandeur of his conceptions, and the enormous force brought to bear on their development; but for real, sound, profitable, business-like work in this peculiar line, we back the Britishers against all the world. Like every thing done in the country, their operations in the art of deception are steady, systematic and sure. "We conceive that we have a right to speak of the 'science' of deception, for it has all the dignity, symmetry, and order of the nobler sciences. It has its mysteries, which are utterly unknown to the uninitiated; it has also its professors, who are men very often raised by the admiration of their own dupes to positions of high honor and great profit. The organization and regulation of its minor ministrants are also complete, and ere a man can hope to reach the high places and carry off the rich prizes, he must go through many grades, and master many secrets, both in theory and practice. Once initiated, he is able to effect results, by comparison with which the glory and the honors reaped by successful soldiers or great discoverers sink into insignificance. "In a former number an attempt was made to explain some of the means resorted to for the manufacture of public opinion in England, through the journals and other agents, by which the public ear is monopolized. We showed that almost any desired 'public opinion' might be made to order; that there were great contractors, who would not only undertake the duty, but who would also fulfil their undertakings. That similar processes exist in other countries cannot admit of a doubt, but it is questionable whether the corresponding effects in France or America are not produced upon a much lower and more ignorant class of the community, and whether there are in those countries such masses of wealthy, intelligent, and educated persons willing to be cajoled, fleeced, and laughed at, as those we find in our own dearly beloved country. It might, perhaps, be proved that the arts of which we speak succeed with the superior classes of our countrymen in a much larger proportion than with similar classes elsewhere. This science of deception has, of course, for its basis, the production of particular 'opinions,' and the creation of peculiar preferences in the public mind; but although the great contractors for political opinion are, of all the practitioners, the most perfect adepts, their _modus operandi_ is far more difficult, and the secret of their power far more occult than in the case of the general professors or the charlatans. "Except for the lower class of Frenchmen or Americans such tactics as these are unavailing; all the rest have enough penetration to see through the whole scheme; but in England it is possible to lead by the nose persons who not only ought to know better, but who in all other transactions of life evince the utmost shrewdness and aptitude." In this series of papers on the _Age of Veneer_, a general confession of national sins and weaknesses is made by John Bull, and he is shown to have as discerning an apprehension for his own character as he ever had for that of any of his neighbors. The "Age of Veneer" is a happy title, and it gives alone a better idea of English society and manners than can be derived from some hundreds of volumes on the subject that have been printed within our recollection. ARTS AMONG THE AZTECS AND INDIANS. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY THOMAS EWBANK _United States Commissioner of Patents, author of "Treatise on Hydraulics", &c._ To the antiquary and student of ethnology on this continent there are few subjects more interesting than those early industrial arts, which, better than any thing else, illustrate the civilization of the Aztecs, and their rude neighbors, the aborigines of the more northern parts of the country. An attempt is made in the following pages to define, in certain respects, the extent, and justly to represent the character, of those efforts, made before the Discovery, and repeated, with more or less uniformity, by portions of the American races until the present time. I have copied from the great work of Lord Kingsborough on Mexican Antiquities, four uncouth figures, of which the originals are native drawings sent to Spain by Antonio de Mendoza, the successor of Cortes, and first viceroy of New Spain. It will be confessed that few things could give us a more correct impression of the condition and character of the peoples subdued by Cortes and Pizarro than we may derive from these pictures. [Illustration: Aztec Goldsmith at work. From Mendoza's Collection.] In this drawing the artist has represented a workman in the act of soldering or annealing a piece of plate. Except the rude style in which the native limners portrayed the human figure, the cut is a fac-simile of Pharaonic profiles of the same class of workmen, and of modern goldsmiths of Africa, Hindustan, Java, Sumatra, Ceylon, and Asia generally. The small portable furnace, the blowpipe, the position of the operator, the scantiness of his apparel, and the absence of any bench, are common to all; the only observable difference is in the apron (suspended by long shoulder-straps) of the American, who, in this respect, seems to have advanced beyond his brethren of the other hemisphere. Had the draughtsman possessed the skill of a modern artist, and painted the tools and processes used, in fusing the metal, in spreading it out into plates, working it into shape, and chasing in the ornaments, in drawing wire, and fabricating the famous old Panama chains, &c., many other problems of Aztec economy and art would have been solved. The smiths of Mexico, Central America, and Peru, were expert in the use of the blowpipe; and this is not to be wondered at, if, as early Spanish writers report, the bellows was unknown among them. In specimens of their industry which are extant the soldering rivals any thing executed in modern workshops, and seams often challenge and sometimes defy the keenest scrutiny to detect them. Native smiths still use the pipe. Every enlightened worker in metals must feel interested in thus beholding an ancient red man in the actual use of the blowpipe, to say nothing of the illustration the figure affords of the state of the arts in ante-Columbian epochs, and of ancient life in this part of the world. The use of the blowpipe has been inferred from metalline remains discovered in sepulchral tumuli of the Mississippi valley. In Caleb Atwater's _Antiquities of the West_, (Columbus, 1833, pages 92-3,) mention is made of sixty copper beads, found in one of the mounds at Grave Creek, near Wheeling. "They were made of a coarse wire, which appeared to have been hammered out, not drawn, and were cut off at unequal lengths; _they were soldered together_ in an awkward manner, the centres of some of them uniting with the edges of others; they were incrusted with verdigris, but the inside of them was pure copper; which fact shows that the ancient inhabitants were not wholly unacquainted with the use of metals." As it is admitted that _brass_ was not known to the mound-builders, an analysis of the alloy that constituted the brazen solder here alluded to would be a positive addition to the little knowledge we have gleaned of these early native workers and of their arts. No matter how far man is separated from his fellows, either on the earth's surface or by time, the general uniformity of his nature is stamped on all his normal devices. Primitive inventions are universally similar. Under agreeing circumstances and conditions, the same means are hit upon to produce the same ends. Kindred trains of thought, of resources and results, characterize the origin and early progress of the arts every where. They begin in the same wants, and suggest the same ideas, which are carried out in substantially the same ways. Still, when a primitive people is found shut from communion with others--isolated from the rest of the world and deriving no suggestions from it--some shades of difference, more or less strongly defined, often mark means they discover, in common with others, and this whether occupiers of small islands or of widespread continents. But after all, this is only what may be called a variety of _expression_, the same general idea being differently brought out, just as in speech the same thoughts are displayed in various idioms. All arts and all machines are but dialects of one language--reasonings and conclusions in tangible forms and figures--a universal speech, understood by all men. Of the diverse exhibitions of a primitive and common suggestion, a more interesting example cannot well be adduced than the processes for the fabrication of thread, which have been disclosed on this half of the globe. They appear so different from others, and so remarkable, if not unique, that it may safely be said, if the first spinsters were foreigners, their mode of spinning was indigenous, however difficult, if not impossible, it may be to reconcile one suggestion with the other. Spinning lies at the threshold of human culture. It was the first or among the first born of the arts, and was doubtless the offspring of woman's ingenuity. Through all the past ages it was within the peculiar province of the sex. In it queens and even goddesses sought to excel; one of the earliest of useful efforts, it was one of the best; till it was introduced, man was a houseless wanderer, and where it is unknown, he is still a vagabond, roaming the forest. Home and its softening and soothing influences had no existence, till woman began to twirl the spindle. Till then the fount of the arts was unopened, unthought of, undreamt of. A universal acquirement, it is one in which little variation in details could be looked for among uncultivated tribes. It is, however, singular, that the thread-making idea has been less skilfully developed by the red race than perhaps any other of their mechanical conceptions. This is a striking fact, in peoples so far advanced as were the Mexicans, Peruvians, and others. The distaff has been identified with spinning in the eastern world from the earliest times. It dates far behind historic and was a common thing in heroic epochs. It pervades the most ancient legends, and plays a part in the remotest myths. No other instrument of domestic economy is seen through the semi-historic clouds that are about the infancy of human progress; few others could be named as belonging to lower strata of time. Common in the other hemisphere through unknown periods, it was utterly a stranger in this. Of the offices assigned to the fates, that of Clotho was to hold the distaff, while Lachesis twirled the spindle, and Atropos determined the length of the thread. Then there was Hercules, who was playfully rapped over the head by Omphale, for his awkwardness in this service. Sardanapalus, too, endeavored to rival the son of Jupiter, by spinning among his maids. Ancient Egyptian spindles and distaffs have been recovered from the tombs; and how common they both were among the Hebrews appears in Solomon's portrait of a virtuous woman: "She seeketh wool and flax--she layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff." Both spindle and distaff were frequently dedicated to Minerva, the patroness of spinning and of the arts connected with it. The goddess was herself rudely sculptured with them in the Trojan Palladium. A glance at these classic implements, before introducing the primitive American apparatus, will better enable us to perceive the differences existing between them, more correctly to appreciate both, and to judge how far one is allied to or could have been derived from the other. [Illustration: Distaff and Spindle--Ancient Greek and Roman.] This figure is from a series of bas-reliefs representing the arts of Minerva, upon a frieze of the Forum Palladium at Rome. It exhibits the process of spinning, at the moment when the spinner has drawn out a sufficient length of thread from the distaff, and just previous to the act of taking it out of the slit on the top of the spindle, to wind it on that instrument. It is said by classic writers that the spindle was always, when in use, accompanied by the distaff, as "an indispensable part of the apparatus." The following particulars are gathered from Homer, Herodotus, Ovid, Horace, Catullus, Pliny, and others: The spindle was a stick, ten or twelve inches long, having at the top a slit or notch, by which to fix the thread at the commencement; the lower end was passed through and attached to a small but heavy disc or whirl, made of wood, stone, or metal. The weight of this and of the spindle, kept the thread at a proper tension, and the momentum while turning round kept the yarn or thread twisting in the interval of repeating the operation with the fingers. When, from the length of the thread, the spindle approached the ground, or descended below the reach of the fingers, the thread was wound on the spindle, except a short piece left for insertion in the slit, preparatory to the formation of another length. The distaff was about three times as long as the spindle, and commonly made of a reed, with an expansion near the top, over which the prepared flax or wool was placed, and secured by a ribbon or tape; the fibres being left sufficiently loose to be easily drawn out by the fingers and thumb of the spinner. Distaffs as well as spindles of gold and of ivory were ascribed to goddesses, and were presented to distinguished women. It was quite common for ancient females to keep their spindles whirling while on their way to the fountain for water, or in making short visits, &c. Some striking examples have been recorded by historians, and among them the following, by Herodotus: "As Darius, king of Persia, was sitting publicly in one of the streets of Sardis, he observed a young woman of great elegance and beauty, bearing a vessel on her head, leading a horse by a bridle fastened round her arm, and at the same time spinning some thread. Darius viewed her as she passed, with intense curiosity, observing that her employments were not those of a Persian, Lydian, nor indeed of any Asiatic female. Prompted by what he had seen, he sent some of his attendants to observe what she did with the horse. They accordingly followed her. When she came to the river, she gave the horse some water, and then filled her pitcher, and having done this, she returned by the way she came, with the pitcher of water on her head, the horse fastened by a bridle to her arm, and, as before, employed in spinning." [Illustration: Distaff and Spindle--Modern Asiatic and European.] In the rural districts of old Rome, women were forbidden to spin while travelling on foot. The prohibition arose from superstitious feelings; but the practice has come down to our times, being found more or less common in Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Italy, Greece, and other parts of Europe, as also over the greater part of Asia. The shank of the distaff on such occasions was secured by a sheath or strap to the person; or, as in the preceding figure of a modern spinner, was held under the left arm. How differently the idea has been worked out by the ancient inhabitants of this hemisphere, will appear in the two next illustrations. They are coarse and uncouth, yet of unusual interest and value in an historical survey of a people who at the Conquest stood at the head of the aborigines, but whose nationality and power have been broken, and whose arts have all but vanished before those introduced by the whites. [Illustration: Aztec Girl Spinning. From Mendoza's Collection.] The figure represents a girl, six years old, learning to spin, in the presence of her mother, whose portrait is omitted. She is in the act of winding on the spindle the length of thread just spun. The spindle differs but little from those of the eastern races, its lower end being furnished with a conical weight or fly, to promote rotation, and, as it would seem, for its pointed extremity to rest like a pivot in some small cavity while revolving; for the spindle, when in use, was not raised from the ground: the reverse of the eastern practice, in which the motion ceased the moment the ground was touched by the spindle. The basket-like base on which the fly rests, is the Mexican symbol of the ground, though possibly it may here represent an implement or utensil also. The bunch of cotton to be spun, after being suitably prepared, was held in the left hand, and the length of thread formed at one operation was determined by the distance the bunch could be drawn away from the spindle, this being also the converse of the Asiatic and European practices, in which the distaff, and cotton on it, are at rest--the length of thread depending on the descent of the spindle from them. We know that domestic industry was strictly enforced by the Mexicans, particularly on girls; and of this, these cuts are remarkable illustrations. In the next, a female adult (as the headdress shows) is portrayed at the moment when a full length of thread has been twisted, or she is in the act of finishing it. To this spindle _two_ conical weights were attached, unless the under one was fixed and had a cavity on the top to admit the point of the upper one to play in it. The process differs but little from that of the present Pimos and Maricopas tribes, as mentioned hereafter, except in the hollow in which the spindle turns. It is obvious that this practice is incompatible with walking; locomotion can only be associated with a spindle suspended by the thread, and whirling free above the ground. In this absence of the distaff, and especially in twirling the spindle like a top _on the floor_, the process can never be viewed as one derived from abroad; but rather as a result solely of primitive ingenuity. No people, civilized or savage, of the eastern hemisphere, are known to have thus embarrassed the movements of the spindle. The idea and the practice appear to be purely American. No ancient American spinner is represented at work either when seated or standing--much less when walking. [Illustration: Aztec Woman Spinning. From Mendoza's Collection.] For the following illustration and description the patent office is indebted to Mr. Squier, late United States Chargé to Nicaragua. It is interesting as showing how little the old native process has been changed. The common foot-wheel is extensively used in spinning cotton in Nicaragua; but the simple contrivance in use before the Conquest is not yet entirely supplanted. It consists of a spindle of hard wood, sixteen or eighteen inches in length, which passes through and is fixed to a disc of heavy wood that serves as a fly, by adding momentum to the whirling spindle. The lower end of the spindle is rounded or rudely pointed, and when in use the instrument is placed in a calabash or clean iron kettle. The mode of operation is as follows: The spinster is seated on a stool, with a bunch of loose cotton already prepared, in her lap. From this she twists a thread with her finger, and attaches the end to the spindle at the top, giving it an energetic twirl that keeps it going for some time. Meanwhile she disengages and draws out the cotton, from her lap, with both hands. The length of thread spun (from two to three feet) is then wound around the spindle, which is again set in motion, and another length added in the same manner. In the accompanying sketch, _b_ is the spindle, _c_ the thread already twisted, _d_ the disc or fly, and _f_ the calabash. When the spindle is not in motion, the calabash prevents it from falling over, the fly resting against the sides. [Illustration: Modern Spinning Apparatus of the Central American Indians.] In the regions of the Gila and Colorado the natives have been little disturbed by Europeans. The Spaniards never extended their iron sway over them, and, like the Araucanians of Peru, they have been supposed to retain many of the customs and arts of their ancestors. This is to some extent true. The country soon after the Conquest was reported to be occupied by a civilized people, who followed agriculture and dwelt in stone houses. Colonel Emory, in his _Notes of a Military Reconnaissance, from Fort Leavenworth in Missouri to San Diego in California, including part of the Arkansas, Del Norte, and Gila Rivers_, (Washington, 1848,) met with remains of stone and adobe houses, scattered over extensive tracts of country--sometimes continued over ten, fifteen, and even twenty miles. The Pecos tribe, he remarks, have preserved alive, till within a few years, the sacred fire that glowed on the ancient altars; nor is it certain that it is not yet preserved, for a few Indians took it with them to the Pueblos of Zuni. The name of Montezuma is said to be as familiar to those Indians, to the Apaches, Navajos, and others, as that of Washington is to us. "Turning from some old ruins towards the Pimos village," says Colonel Emory, "we urged our guide to go fast, as we wished to see as much of his people as the day would permit. We were at once impressed with the beauty and order of the arrangements for irrigating and draining the land. Corn, wheat, and cotton are the crops of this peaceful and intelligent people. All the crops have been gathered in, and the stubbles show that they have been luxuriant. The cotton has been picked and stacked for drying on the tops of the sheds. The fields are subdivided by ridges of earth into rectangles of about 200 x 100 feet for the convenience of irrigating. The fences are stakes wattled with willow and mezquite, and in this particular set an example of economy in agriculture worthy to be followed by the Mexicans, who never use fences at all." The thatched houses of the Pimos are dome-shaped, and of wicker work, about six feet high, and from twenty to fifty feet in diameter. In front is usually a large arbor, on the top of which cotton in the pod is piled for drying. A Pimos spinster was observed at work. Her apparatus was more simple than that in the preceding figures, but closely allied to them; in fact the same, with the exception of the calabash or basket, for which a more ready substitute, one always ready, was adopted. "A woman was seated on the ground under the shade of one of the cotton-sheds; her left leg was tucked under her, and her foot was turned sole upwards; between her big toe and the next was a spindle about eighteen inches long, with a single fly of four or six inches; now and then she gave it a twist in a dexterous manner, and at its end was drawn a coarse cotton thread. Such was their spinning jenny." This application of the toes is like that practised by the wives and daughters of the Hindoo weavers: the axles of their light cane reels are thus held when winding off the thread. The foot however is in front of its owner, and in a natural position, nor does the stick grasped by the toes revolve. The Pimos and Maricopas are in their habits, agriculture, religion, and manufactures, the same. [Illustration: Indians Spinning Coarse Thread.] A process of undoubted antiquity, and occasionally followed by modern Indians, is shown in the above engraving. The spinner holds in the left hand, horizontally, a short piece of hollow reed or cane, within which the spindle is twirled by the fingers and thumb of the right hand. Sometimes a cross stick or handle is attached, as represented in the figure. A second person performs the part of a distaff, which, as the thread lengthens, recedes from the spinner, or the spinner from it. A section of this primitive apparatus is separately portrayed. Mr. Van--a delegate now in Washington from the Cherokee nation, to obtain a settlement of claims on the United States for their lands in Georgia, Alabama, &c.--states that the large old spinning-wheel has, to his knowledge, been in the possession of the Cherokees nearly fifty years. His mother, a Creek, and over a hundred years of age, he believes, used to spin with it in her youth. Mr. Van has seen Indians twist coarse thread with apparatus like that here represented, and which in all probability formed one of the contrivances that slowly led to the whirling spindle, in both hemispheres. For the next two illustrations of spinning, by the Navajoes, Camanches, and other tribes of New Mexico, the Patent Office is indebted to Judge Peters, of Santa Fe, New Mexico. We have here another instance in which the thread-making idea has manifested itself among the red race, and a very interesting one. The spinner has a small stick, which she holds horizontally in one hand, and on it winds the thread, as on a spindle, as fast as it is spun. The bunch of cotton is itself twirled round by means of a short and small rod, passed through the lower part, with its ends projecting. A pebble is commonly fastened to the middle of this stick (_d_), and serves as a fly to keep up the motion, and assist, by its weight, in drawing out the thread. To keep the stone and stick in their places, a piece of yarn is wound loosely round the bunch. The length of thread is seldom over six or eight inches, before it is wound on the stick. In this singular process, the classical mode is completely reversed--the spindle, or that which corresponds to it, is held at rest, and the distaff put in motion, in which respect the operation is unique. The idea of increasing the momentum of the whirling mass by the introduction of a weight into its centre is here realized. [Illustration: A Comanche Spinning.] [Illustration: Navajoes Spinning.] In the case illustrated below, two pieces of board or shingle are pinned to opposite sides of the fork of a small tree or stump. A spindle (a smooth rod ten or twelve inches in length) is passed through, and made to turn in them, as in two journals. See the section S, where _a_, _a_ is the spindle and _b_, _b_, the boards, and _c_ a pin to keep the spindle in its place. To whirl the spindle, a cross stick, _d_, is tied to the large end. Sometimes a stone is folded in a piece of cloth, and fastened to each end of the cross stick, which answers the purpose of a rude flywheel. When a suitable stick, having a branch at right angles, can be procured, the cross stick and spindle are of one piece, as at S. A notch is made at the small end of the spindle, where the thread unites to it, and thus, while one girl turns the spindle, another, with a bunch of loose cotton, supplies it, and, as the thread lengthens, gradually recedes from it. As soon as a full length is twisted, it is wound round the spindle, another length is added, and so on, till the spindle is fully charged. The thread is then wound off into a hank, and the spindle set again for working. These illustrations of primitive art possess a deeper and a more extensive interest than that of their relation to a few Indian tribes; they are types of thought, more or less common to the species, to barbarous and semi-civilized people of all times; such as we ourselves would adopt, were we thrown on our own resources, without any knowledge or recollection on the subject. [Illustration: Aztec Girl Weaving. From Mendoza's Collection.] It is difficult to determine from this figure whether the shuttle was developed in ancient Mexico. It is not represented, and appears not to have existed any more than the distaff. The loom is like those now used by American Indians. Colonel Emory, after speaking of the Pimos spinning, says, "Led on by this primitive display, I asked for their loom, by pointing to the thread and then to the blanket girded about the woman's loins. A fellow stretched in the dust, sunning himself, rose up leisurely, and untied a bundle, which I had supposed to be a bow and arrow. This little package with four stakes in the ground, was his loom, and he stretched his cloth and commenced the process of weaving. He had no shuttle, the warp being passed across the woof, a thread at a time, by a long wooden needle. One of the rods in the preceding figure is doubtless designed to represent a needle, and was used in the same way." If the figures here introduced truly indicate the progress made by the Aztecs in spinning and weaving, their advance was very moderate; and though very creditable work might be made with this weaving apparatus, by individual skill and patience, it would seem that few or no attempts had been made to render it more facile and efficient. The same remark is, however, applicable to the looms of Asia and Africa. It is worth noting, that the dress of females, pictured above, indicates a decided improvement on that of less civilized tribes. Aztec women and girls wore pantalettes, and a species of tunic, with short sleeves and ornamental borders, not unlike the Chinese female costume, except in the shortness of the sleeves. Amulets or keepsakes, suspended over the neck and resting on the bosom, seem also to have been common. Modern Peruvian Indians spin without the distaff, and their loom is precisely like the ancient one just represented--the shuttle, or what answers the purpose of one, being a long thorn needle, which is passed through the woof, thread by thread. Every piece is woven of the precise width wanted, whether for garments, cocoa-bags, or any thing else, with no waste by cutting. Ancient specimens of cloth, of excellent execution, have been found in their tombs. The length of the needles varies with the width of the piece to be woven. That very fine fabrics were produced in Old Mexico, and by implements little if at all better than those here figured, is doubtless true. The highly colored accounts by the conquerors are believed to have been fully warranted by the fineness of the goods which they saw. Indeed, some of the richest of modern shawls and dresses, turned out of the looms of Persia, Egypt, and Hindostan, are but a degree superior to those of the Aztecs. Personal tact and skill are every thing with semi-civilized artisans. The ancient spindle and loom of the East, singularly enough, are still preserved and used for special purposes in modern Rome, just as they were thirty or forty centuries ago. A recent writer on the Pallium (an ecclesiastical robe of lamb's wool) says, there stands about a mile outside the Porta Pia, on the road to Tivoli, an old convent of nuns, attached to the still more ancient church of St. Agnes; that these nuns are poor, and rarely receive any of Rome's high-born damsels to their lonely and neglected cloister; but that they have a small paddock appendant to the monastery, and therein keep a couple of sacred lambs, (not necessarily of the Merino breed,) and are proud and happy ministrants of their wool for the texture of this noble decoration, spinning it, not by any new-fangled jennies, but on the old patriarchal spindle, and weaving it in a loom of which the pattern might date from the days of Penelope. In conclusion, we may remark, of this subject, that to the substitution of circular for straight motions, and of continuous for alternating ones, may be attributed nearly all the conveniences and elegances of civilized life. It is not too much to assert that the present advanced state of science and the arts is due to revolving mechanism. We may speak of the wonders effected by steam and other motive agents, but of what value would they have been without this means of their employment? The applications of rotary in place of other movements are conspicuous in modern history, from those which propel steamships through the water and locomotives over land, to those which are employed in the manufacture of pins and the pointing of needles. It is by this principle that the irregular motion of the ancient flail and the primeval sieve, has become uniform, in threshing, bolting, and winnowing machines; and hence our circular saws, shears, and slitting mills; the abolition of the mode of spreading out metal into sheets with the hammer, for the more expeditious one of passing it through rollers or flatting mills; and the revolving oars, or paddle wheels, for the propulsion of vessels--the process of inking type with rollers in place of balls, the rotary printing presses, and revolving machines for planing iron and other metals, instead of the ancient process of chipping off superfluous portions with chisels, and that still more tedious of smoothing the surfaces with files. But in few things is the effect of this change of motion more conspicuous than in the modern apparatus for preparing, spinning, and weaving vegetable and other fibres into fabrics for clothing. The simple application of rotary motion to these processes has changed the domestic economy of the world, and increased the general comforts of our race a hundred fold. The birth of the arts here, and not least among them that of the humble one of spinning, has relation to a problem in American ethnology of great and increasing interest--_the early occupancy or first peopling of this hemisphere_. Were there through countless ages no eyes or hearts here to respond to the smiling heaven, none to taste the teeming fruits or inhale the aroma of flowers? Was the placid atmosphere never moved by the prattle and laughter of children, the songs of birds, or the sudden start of quadrupeds arrested by the presence of the race ordained to rule over them, until a few straggling members of that race arrived (perhaps driven hither by tempests) from abroad, to claim the splendid heritage? If the red man was not indigenous to the soil, if the first settlers were aliens, how natural the desire to know who they were, whence they came, and how, and when, and over what regions extended the first rights of preëmption! to ask whether they left no memorials in the languages that have come down to us, in legends, manners, customs, traditions, religious observances and rites, no signs in arts, utensils, arms, or other relics extant? whether they left no marks in earth-works--those most lasting of records--in quarries and entrenchments, in mines, tumuli, and mounds? It is reasonable to suppose--and difficult to suppose otherwise--that if no human form was ever reflected from the surfaces of these lakes and rivers, no human voice heard in these forests, the imprint of no human foot left on these sands, until colonized from another continent, the arts of that continent must have been considerably advanced before the means of transport, or inducements to emigrate, were evolved; and under any circumstances, a knowledge of the most essential, would be brought over. Of these, such as related to domestic habits and the occupations of women, would be prominent, and among these spinning most of all. When once introduced, this art could not have been lost, indispensable as it is to the savage and demi-savage condition, and the original process or processes, whencesoever derived, unless superseded by better, would have been continued by every generation. Now, if the mothers of the American race came from any of the early advanced sections or outskirts of Eastern civilization, they brought the distaff and spindle with them, yet nothing of the kind was found at the conquest. It cannot of course be imagined that they, or their descendants, could have been induced to throw the former away, and to embarrass the movements of the latter in a calabash or basket. Efficient previous practice, and acquired habits and expertness, could never have been laid aside for such rude, and laborious, and unproductive substitutes. We know that the distaff and spindle have never been lost where once known, in the old world. Neither civil commotions or revolutions, nor duration of time, affected them, in Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Italy, Carthage, Persia, Scythia, Asia-Minor, or any of the great or small theatres of past history. The laws, learning, science, arts, and races, which once flourished in those countries, have mostly vanished, but women still spin there as they did thirty or forty centuries ago; and so it is here also. The principal mechanical devices of the old Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Peruvians, Chilians, &c., are no longer known; the means by which the stone architecture, the basaltic and porphyritic sculptures of Cusco, Uxmal, Copan, Palenque, and other Aztec remains scattered over the continent, were achieved, are a puzzle; yet the household labors of Indian women in those lands remain unchanged, they spin and weave with the same apparatus, and embroider, as did their kindred in and before the times of Atahualpa and Montezuma. Admitting that repeated emigrations took place at periods remote as that of the Iliad, and up to the twelfth century of our era, that arrivals, designed or fortuitous, thus occurred, on either the Atlantic or the Pacific, or both coasts--we might still more confidently expect to find the distaff and spindle of the other hemisphere domiciled in this. If they were brought at all, it was in hands practiced in their use, and tenacious of their worth. But from the Cape of Storms in the south, to the limits of human abodes in the north, instead of these the most awkward contrivances prevailed when the whites came, and such still are found to prevail. The inference therefore seems inevitable that the first colonists, and their successors for many ages, came before spinning was known in their native places, or at least before the distaff had been added to the spindle; and that the art, as practised by the Aztecs and their successors in Central America at the present day, is purely of aboriginal development, and of remote antiquity, and had not before the Conquest come in contact with the better processes of the other hemisphere. Of the three epochs of human condition indicated by the materials of which economical implements and weapons have been made--stone, bronze, and iron--it is uncertain whether the distaff was ever developed under the first. The probabilities are that it was not. In the remote periods in which it is mentioned, some of those who possessed it had advanced far into the second, and some had entered on the third. The great mass of the occupants of this hemisphere at the time of the Conquest were toiling in the cycle of stone; while the Mexicans and Peruvians, the most advanced of the red nations, had discovered and applied the properties of copper and some of its alloys: had entered on the second, but had not progressed far into it. Had they possessed bronze weapons equal to those of the heroic ages, they might yet have preserved, in a measure, their independence and nationality. Clothing is second only to food, and the clothing of nations in any degree civilized is of woven thread. The all but paramount importance of the manufacture of thread materials--including that made of flax, silk, cotton, worsted, and other fibrous materials--affords matter for great surprise. Compare the products of the distaff and spindle of old with that of our mills, and how difficult to realize the change which modern mechanism has wrought! The yearly amount, the lineal extent, of thread now made--who can measure it? It would reach from our planet to the planets in the farthest regions of space, and almost suffice for a net-work to include the whole system. Turn from the wood-cut illustrations here given of ancient and not yet obsolete processes, to modern manufactures, and it would seem that while in the space of time which it took Grecian Helens, Syrian Naahmahs, or Mexican Penelopes, to prepare an annual supply of clews for their families, the myriads of spindles now twirling, by steam and water, produce enough to use the Asteroids as balls on which to wind it and as bobbins from which to reel it. Even a century ago, a single mill, driven by water, is said to have spun or reeled 73,726 yards of silk--_i.e._, between forty and fifty miles--at each revolution of the motive axle. Patent Office, Washington, September, 1851. ORIGINAL POEMS BY BARRY CORNWALL AND W. C. BENNETT.[8] TO THE AUTHOR OF EOTHEN. If I may choose (out of our travelled bands) Friend or companion to make bright, the way; Or draw the grandeur out from Orient lands, Where Libanus mounts up and meets the day; Or face, midst trackless, boundless, burning sands, The Desert Silence--as it pants for prey; Be thou (oh Author of Eothen), mine; Who show'st whate'er the region, stern or gay, Whate'er the scene--life, death, sublime decay, For all fine things, and apprehension fine. 'Tis well to ride abroad on the untamed waves; To shoot the desert with the camel's speed; To muse o'er discrowned Egypt's wondrous graves, And trace her story downwards, deed by deed; Yet, half the lustre of our life were hid, Our travel idle, meditation nought, Without such friend in give back thought for thought, From waste and sea, mountain and pyramid. BARRY CORNWALL. ARIADNE. Morn rose on Naxos,--golden dewy morn, Climbing its eastern cliffs with gleaming light, Purpling each inland peak and dusky gorge Of the gray distance,--morn, on lowland slopes, Of olive-ground and vines and yellowing corn, Orchard and flowery pasture, white with kine, On forest, hillside cot, and rounding sea, And the still tent of Theseus by the shore. Morn rose on Naxos--chill and freshening morn, Nor yet the unbreathing air a twitter heard From eave or bough,--nor yet a blue smoke rose From glade or misty vale, or far-off town; One only sign of life, a dusky sail, Stole afar across the distant sea, Flying; all else unmoved in stillness lay Beneath the silence of the brightening heavens, Nor sound was heard to break the slumbrous calm, Save the soft lapse of waves along the strand. A white form from the tent,--a glance,--a cry. Where art thou, Theseus?--Theseus! Theseus! where? Why hast thou stolen thus with earliest dawn, Forth from thy couch--forth from these faithless arms, That even in slumber should have clasped thee still! Truant! ah me! and hast thou learnt to fly So early from thy Ariadne's love! Where art thou? Is it well to fright me thus,---- To scare me for a moment with the dread Of one abandoned! Art thou in the woods With all that could have told me where thou art! Cruel! and couldst thou not have left me one, Ere this to have laughed away my idle fears! He could have told thee all--the start--the shriek---- The pallid face, with which I found thee gone, And furnished laughter for thy glad return; But thus! to leave me, cruel! thus alone! There is no sound of horns among the hills, No shouts that tell they track or bay the boar. O fearful stillness! O that one would speak! O would that I were fronting wolf or pard But by thy side this moment! so strange fear Possesses me, O love! apart from thee; The galley? gone? Ye Gods! is it not gone? Here, by this rock it lay but yesternight. Gone! through this track its keel slid down by the shore; And I slept calmly as it cleft the sea. Gone? gone? where gone?--that sail! 'tis his! 'tis his! Return, O Theseus! Theseus! love! return! Thou wilt return. Thou dost but try my love? Thou wilt return to make my foolish fears Thy jest. Return, and I will laugh with thee! Return! return! and canst thou hear my shrieks, Nor heed my cry! And wouldst thou have me weep, Weep! I that wept--white with wild fear--the while Thou slew'st the abhorred monster! If it be Thou takest pleasure in these bitter tears, Come back, and I will weep myself away---- A streaming Niobe--to win thy smiles! O stony heart! why wilt thou wring me thus! O heart more cold unto my shrilling cries Than these wild hills that wail to thee, return, Than all these island rocks that shriek, return. Come back! Thou seest me rend this blinding hair; Hast thou not sworn each tress thou didst so prize, That sight of home, and thy gray father's face, Were less a joy to thee, and lightlier held! Thy sail! thy sail! O do my watery eyes Take part with thee, so loved! to crush me down! Gone! Gone! and wilt thou--wilt thou not return? Heartless, unfearing the just Gods, wilt thou, Theseus! my lord! my love! desert me thus! Thus leave me, stranger in this strange wild land, Friendless, afar from all I left for thee, Crete, my old home, and my ancestral halls, My father's love, and the remembered haunts Of childhood,--all that knew me--all I knew---- All--all--woe! woe! that I shall know no more. Why didst thou lure me, craftiest, from my home? There if, thy love grown cold, thou thus hadst fled, I had found comfort in fond word and smiles Familiar, and the pity of my kin, Tears wept with mine--tears wept by loving eyes, That had washed out thy traces from my heart, Perchance, in years, had given me back to joy. O that thy steps had never trodden Crete! O that these eyes had never on thee fed! O that, weak heart! I ne'er had looked my love. Or looking, thou hadst thrust it back with hate! Did I not save thee? I? was it for this, Despite Crete's hate--despite my father's wrath, Perchance to slay me, that I ventured all For thee--for thee--forgetting all for thee! Thou know'st it all,--who knows it if not thou, Save the just Gods--the Gods who hear my cry, And mutter vengeance o'er thy flying head, Forsworn! And, lo! on thy accused track Rush the dread furies; lo! afar I see The hoary Ægeus, watching for his son, His son that nears him still with hastening oars, Unknown, that nears him but to dash him down, Moaning, to darkness and the dreadful shades The while, thy grief wails after him in vain: And, lo, again the good Gods glad my sight With vengeance; blood again, thy blood, I see Streaming;--who bids Hippolytus depart But thou--thou, sword of lustful Phædra's hate Against thy boy--thy son--thy fair-haired boy; I see the ivory chariot whirl him on---- The maddened horses down the rocky way Dashing--the roaring monster in their path; And plates and ivory splinters of the car, And blood and limbs, sprung from thee, crushed and torn, Poseidon scatters down the shrieking shores; And thou too late--too late, bewail'st in vain. Thy blindness and thy hapless darling's fate. And think'st of me, abandoned, and my woe; Thou who didst show no pity, to the Gods Shrieking for pity, that my vengeful cries Drag thee not down unto the nether gloom, To endless tortures and undying woe. Dread Gods! I know these things shall surely be! But other, wilder whispers throng my ears, And in my thought a fountain of sweet hope Mingles its gladness with my lorn despair. Lo! wild flushed faces reel before mine eyes. And furious revels, dances, and fierce glee, Are round me,--tossing arms and leaping forms. Skin-clad and horny-hoofed, and hands that clash Shrill cymbals, and the stormy joy of flutes And horns, and blare of trumpets, and all hues Of Iris' watery bow, on bounding nymphs, Vine-crowned and thyrsus-sceptred, and one form, God of the roaring triumph, on a car Golden and jewel-lustred, carved and bossed, As by Hephæstus, shouting, rolls, along, Jocund and panther-drawn, and through the sun, Down, through the glaring splendor, with wild bound, Leaps, as he nears me, and a mighty cup, Dripping, with odorous nectar, to my lips Is raised, and mad sweet mirth--frenzy divine Is in my veins--hot love burns through mine eyes, And o'er the roar and rout I roll along, Throned by the God, and lifted by his love Unto forgetfulness of mortal pains, Up to the prayers and praise and awe of earth. W. C. B. FOOTNOTES: [8] By the kindness of a friend these fine poems are printed for the first time in _The International Magazine_. A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[9] WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ. CHAPTER XLII. Mrs. Hazleton was an observer of all small particulars. On the present occasion she had been kept alone fully ten minutes in the drawing-room, and she was not at all pleased with this want of alacrity. Though her face was as smooth as ever when she entered the sick room, she saw that a change of feeling, or at least a change of purpose, had taken place, and that Lady Hastings felt embarrassed by a consciousness which she might not choose to communicate. But success had made her bold, and she loved to steer her course through agitated waters. "Well, my dear friend," she said, with the sweet tones of her voice falling from her lips like drops of liquid honey, "you do not seem quite so well to-day. I hope this business which you were to undertake has not agitated you. Or perhaps you have not executed your intention. It could be very well put off until you are better." This was intended to lead to confession; she suspected some shame at a want of resolution. But Lady Hastings remained silent, playing with her rings, and Mrs. Hazleton, a little angry--but very little--gave her one of those delightful little scratches which she was practised in administering, saying, "No one knew any thing about your intentions but myself; so no one can accuse you of weakness or vacillation." "I care very little," said Lady Hastings, most untruly, "of what people accuse me. I shall of course form my own resolutions from what I know, and execute them or not, dear Mrs. Hazleton, according to circumstances--which are ever changing. What is inexpedient one day may be quite expedient the next." Now, no one was more fully aware than Mrs. Hazleton that expediency is always the argument of weak minds, and that changing circumstances afford every day fair excuses to men and to multitudes for every kind of weakness under the sun. Her belief was strengthened that Lady Hastings had not acted as she had promised her to act, and she replied, with an easy, quiet, half-pitying smile, "Well, it is not of the slightest consequence whether you do it now, or a week hence, or not at all. The worst that could come would be Emily's marriage with Marlow, and if you do not care about it, who should? I take it for granted, of course, that you have not acted in the matter so boldly and decidedly as we proposed." There was an implied superiority in Mrs. Hazleton's words and manner which Lady Hastings did not like. It roused and elevated her, and she replied, somewhat sharply, "You are quite mistaken, my dear friend; I did all that was ever intended. I sent for Emily and my husband, told them that I believed I should not live long, and made it my last request that the engagement with Marlow should be broken off." "Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Hazleton, with even too much eagerness. "What did they say? Did they consent?" "Far from it," answered Lady Hastings. "My husband said he had made a promise which he could not violate on any account or consideration whatever, and Emily was much in the same story." "That shows that your decision was not strongly enough expressed," replied her visitor. "I do not believe that any man or woman could be heartless enough to refuse a wife or mother's last request, if made in so solemn a manner." "They did refuse, point-blank, however," said Lady Hastings. "But do you know, Mrs. Hazleton," she continued, seeing a provokingly bitter smile on Mrs. Hazleton's face, "do you know, strange to say, I am very glad they did refuse. Upon after consideration, when all anger and irritation was gone, I began to think it was hardly right or fair, or Christian either, to oppose this marriage so strongly, without some better reason than I have to assign. Marlow is a gentleman in all respects, of very good family too, I believe. He is a good and excellent young man. His fortune, too, is not inconsiderable, his prospects good, and his conduct under the deprivations which we have lately suffered, and the loss of at least two-thirds of the fortune he had a right to expect with Emily, has been all that is kind, and amiable, and generous." Mrs. Hazleton sat by the bedside, fixing her eyes full upon the countenance of the invalid, and betraying not in the least the rage and disappointment that were at her heart. They were not a whit the less bitter, however, or fierce, or malignant; but rather the more so from the effort to smother them. No one for a moment could have imagined that she was angry, even in the least degree; and yet no disappointed demon ever felt greater fury at being frustrated by the weakness or vacillation of a tool. After staying for a moment to take breath, Lady Hastings proceeded, saying, "All these considerations, dear Mrs. Hazleton, have made me resolve to make amends for what I have said--to withdraw the opposition I have hitherto shown--and consent to the marriage." Mrs. Hazleton retired for a moment into herself. For a minute or two she was as silent as death--her cheek grew a little paler--her eyes lost their lustre, and became dead and cold--they seemed looking at nothing, seeing nothing--there was no speculation in them. The only thing that indicated life and emotion was a slight quivering of the beautifully-chiselled lip. There was a word echoing in the dark chambers of her heart in replying to Lady Hastings. It was "Never!" but it was not spoken; and after a short and thoughtful pause she recovered herself fully, and set about her work again. "My dear friend," she said, in a sweet tone, "you have doubtless good reasons for what you do. Far be it from me to say one word against your doing what you think fit; only I should like to know what has made such a change in your views, because I think perhaps you may be deceived." "Oh, no, I am not deceived," replied Lady Hastings, "but really I cannot enter into explanations. I have heard a great deal lately about many things--especially this morning; but I--I--in fact, I promised not to tell you." Lady Hastings thought that in making this distinct declaration she was performing a very magnanimous feat; but her little speech, short as it was, contained three separate clauses or propositions, with each of which Mrs. Hazleton proposed to deal separately. First, she asserted that she was not deceived, and to this her companion replied, with a slight incredulous smile, "Are you quite sure, my friend? Here you are lying on a bed of sickness, with no power of obtaining accurate information; while those who are combined to win you to their wishes have every opportunity of conveying hints to you, both directly and indirectly, which may not be altogether false, but yet bear with them a false impression." "Oh, but there can be no possible doubt," said Lady Hastings, "that Marlow is the heir of the Earl of Launceston." Mrs. Hazleton's brow contracted, and a quick flush passed over her cheek. She had never before given attention to the fact--she had never thought of it at all--but the moment it was mentioned, her knowledge of the families of the nobility, and Mr. Marlow's connections, showed her that the assertion was probably true. "It may be so," she said, "but I am very doubtful. However, I will inquire, and let you know the truth, to-morrow. And now, my dear friend, let us turn to something else. You say you have heard a great deal to-day, and that you have promised not to tell _me_--me--for you marked that word particularly. Now here I have a right to demand some explanation; for your very words show that some person or persons endeavor to prejudice your mind against me. What you have heard must be some false charge. Otherwise the one who has been your friend for years, who has been faithful, constant, attentive, kind, to the utmost limit of her poor abilities, would not be selected for exclusion from your confidence. They seek, in fact, by some false rumor, or ridiculous tale, which you have not the means of investigating yourself, to deprive you of advice and support. I charge no one in particular; but some one has done this--if they had nothing to fear from frankness, they would not inculcate a want of candor towards one who loves you, as they well know." "Why the fact is Emily said," replied Lady Hastings, "that could only be for a short time, and----" "Emily!" cried Mrs. Hazleton with a laugh, "Emily indeed! Oh, then the matter is easily understood--but pray what did Emily say? Dear Emily, she is a charming girl--rather wayward--rather wilful--not always quite so candid to her friends as I could wish; but these are all thoughts which, will pass away with more knowledge of the world. She will learn to discriminate between true friends and false ones--to trust and confide entirely and without hesitation in those who really love her, and not to repose her confidence in the dark and mysterious. Now I will undertake to say that Emily has thrown out hints and inuendoes, without giving you very clear and explicit information. She has asked you to wait patiently for a time. It is always the dear child's way; but I did not think she would practice it upon her own mother." Now most people would have imagined, as Lady Hastings did imagine, that Mrs. Hazleton's words proceeded from spite--mere spite; but such was not the case: it was all art. She sought to pique Lady Hastings, knowing very well that when once heated or angry, she lost all caution; and her great object at that moment was to ascertain what Emily knew, and what Emily had said. She was successful to a certain degree. She did pique Lady Hastings, who replied at once, and somewhat sharply, though with the ordinary forms of courtesy. "I do not think you altogether do Emily justice, dear Mrs. Hazleton, although you have in some degree divined the course she has pursued. She did not exactly throw out inuendoes; but she made bold and distinct charges, and though she did not proceed to the proofs, because there was no time to do so, and also because there were particular reasons for not doing so, yet she promised within a very few hours to establish every assertion that she made beyond the possibility of doubt. "I thought so," said Mrs. Hazleton, in a somewhat abstracted tone, casting her eyes round the room and taking up, apparently unconcerned, the vial of medicine which stood by Lady Hastings' bedside. "Pray, my dear friend, when the revelation is made--if it ever be made--inform me of the particulars." "If it ever be made," exclaimed Lady Hastings. "No revelation needs to be made, Mrs. Hazleton--nothing is wanting but the proofs. Emily was explicit enough as to the facts. She said that you had aided and assisted in depriving my husband of his property, that in that and many other particulars you had acted any thing but a friendly part, that you were moved by a spirit of hatred against us all, and that very seldom had there been any communications between our house and yours without some evil following it--which is true enough." She spoke with a good deal of vehemence, and raised herself somewhat on her elbow, as if to utter her words more freely. In the mean while Mrs. Hazleton sat silent and calm--as far as the exterior went at least--with her eyes fixed upon a particular spot in the quilt from which they never moved till Lady Hastings had done. "Grave charges," she said at length, "very grave charges to bring against one whom she has known from her infancy, and for whom she has professed some regard--but no less false than grave, my dear friend. Now either one of two things has happened: the first, which I mention merely as a possibility, but without at all believing that such is the case--the first is, I say, that Emily, judging your opposition to her proposed unequal marriage to be abetted by myself, has devised these charges out of her own head, in order to withdraw your confidence from me and gain her own objects: the second is--and this is much more likely--that she has been informed by some one, either maliciously or mistakenly, of some suspicions and doubts such as are always more or less current in a country place, and has perhaps embellished them a little in their transmission to you.--The latter is certainly the most probable.--I suppose she did not tell you from whom she received the information." "Not exactly," answered Lady Hastings, "but one thing I know, which is, that Mr. Dixwell the rector has all the same information, and if I understood her rightly, has got it down in writing." Mrs. Hazleton's cheek grew a shade paler; but she answered at once "I am glad to hear that; for now we come to something definite. All these charges must be substantiated, dear friend--that is, if they can be substantiated--" she added with a smile. "You can easily understand that, attached to you by the bonds of a long friendship, I cannot suffer my name to be traduced, or my conduct impeached, even by your own daughter, without insisting upon a full explanation, and clear, satisfactory proofs, or a recantation of the charges. Emily must establish what she has said, if she can.--I am in no haste about it; it maybe to-morrow, or the next day, or the day after--whenever it suits you and her in short; but it must be done. Conscious that I am innocent of such great offences, I can wait patiently; and I do not think, my dear friend, that although I see you have been a little startled by these strange tales, you will give any credence to them in your heart till they are proved. Dear Emily is evidently very much in love with Mr. Marlow, and is anxious to remove all opposition to her marriage with him. But I think she must take some other means; for these will certainly break down beneath her." She spoke so calmly, and in so quiet and gentle a tone--her whole look and manner as so tranquilly confident--that lady Hastings could hardly believe that she was in any degree guilty. "Well, I cannot tell," she said, "how this may turn out, but I do not think her marriage with Mr. Marlow can have any thing to do with it. I have fully and entirely resolved to cease all opposition to her union; on which I see my daughter's happiness is staked, and I shall certainly immediately signify my consent both to Emily and to my husband." "Wait a little--wait a little" said Mrs. Hazleton with a significant nod of the head. "I have no mysteries, my dear friend. I have nothing to conceal or to hold back. You are going, however, to act upon information which is very doubtful. I believe that you have been deceived, whoever has told you that Mr. Marlow is the heir to the Earl of Launceston, and it is but an act of friendship on my part to procure you more certain intelligence. You shall have it I promise you, before four and twenty hours are over, and all I ask is that you will not commit yourself by giving your consent till that intelligence has been obtained. You cannot say that you consent if Mr. Marlow proves to be the heir of that nobleman, but will not consent if such be not the case.--That would never do, and therefore your consent would be irrevocable. But on the other hand there can be no great harm in waiting four and twenty hours at the utmost. I have plenty of books of heraldry and genealogy, which will soon let me into the facts, and you shall know them plainly and straightforwardly at once. You can then decide and state your decision firmly and calmly, with just reason and upon good grounds." Lady Hastings was silent. She saw that Mrs. Hazleton had detected the motives of her sudden change of views, and she did not much like being detected. She had fully made up her mind, too, that Marlow was to become Earl and her daughter Countess of Launceston, and the very thought of such not being the result was a sort of half disappointment to her. Now Lady Hastings did not like being disappointed at all, and moreover she had made up her mind to have a scene of reconciliation, and tenderness, and gratitude with her husband and her daughter, from which--being of a truly affectionate disposition--she thought she should derive great pleasure. Thus she hesitated for a moment as to what she should answer, and Mrs. Hazleton, determined not to let the effect of what she had said subside before she had bound her more firmly, added, after waiting a short time for a reply, "you will promise me, will you not, that you will not distinctly recall your injunction, and give your consent to the marriage till you have seen me again; provided I do not keep you in suspense more than four and twenty hours? It is but reasonable too, and just, and you would, I am sure, repent bitterly if you were to find afterwards that your consent to this very unequal marriage had been obtained by deceit, and that you had been made a mere fool of--Really at the very first sight, even if I had not good reason to believe that this story of the heirship is either a mistake or a misrepresentation, it seems so like a stage trick--the cunning plot of some knavish servant or convenient friend in a drama--that I should be very doubtful. Will you not promise me then?" "Well, there can be no great harm in waiting that length of time," said Lady Hastings. "I do not mind promising that; but of course you will let me know within four and twenty hours." "I will," replied Mrs. Hazleton firmly; "earlier if it be possible; but the fact is, I have some business to settle to-morrow of great importance. My lawyer, Mr. Shanks--whom I believe to be a great rogue--persuaded me to lend some money upon security which he pronounced himself to be good. I knew not what it was for; as we women of course can be no judges of such things; but I have just discovered that it was to pay off some debts of this young man who calls himself Sir John Hastings. Now I don't know whether the papers have been signed, or any thing about it; and I hear that the young man himself is absent, no one knows where. It makes me very uneasy; and I have sent for Shanks to come to me to-morrow morning. It may therefore be the middle of the day before I can get here; but I will not delay a moment, you may be perfectly sure." She had risen as she spoke, and after pressing the hand of Lady Hastings tenderly in her own, she glided calmly out of the room with her usual graceful movement, and entering her carriage with a face as serene as a summer sky, ordered the coachman to drive home in a voice that wavered not in its lightest tone. CHAPTER XLIII. Mrs. Hazelton entered the carriage, I have said, at the end of the last chapter, without the slightest appearance of agitation or excitement. Although now and then a flush, and now and then a paleness, had spread over her face during the conversation with Lady Hastings, though her eye had emitted an occasional flash, and at other times had seemed fixed and meaningless, such indications of internal warfare were all banished when she left the room, the fair smooth cheek had its natural color, the eye was as tranquil as that of indifferent old age. The coachman cracked his long whip, before four magnificent large horses heaved the ponderous vehicle from its resting place, and Mrs. Hazleton sank back in the carriage and gave herself up to thought--but not to thought only. Then all the smothered agitation; then all the strong contending passions broke forth in fierce and fiery warfare. It is impossible to disentangle them and lay them out, as on a map, before the reader's mind. It is impossible to say which at first predominated, rage, or fear, or disappointment, or the thirst of vengeance. One passion it is true--the one which might be called the master passion of her nature--soon soared towering above the rest, like one of those mighty spirits which rise to the dizzy and dangerous pinnacle of power in the midst of the turbulence and tempest which accompany great social earthquakes. But at first all was confusion. "Never," she repeated to herself--"never!--it shall never be. If I slay her with my own hand it shall never be--foiled--frustrated in every thing; and by this mere empty, moody child, who has been my stumbling block, my enemy, my obstruction, in all my paths. No, no, it shall never be!" A new strain of thought seemed to strike her; her head leaned forward; her eyes closed, and her lips quivered. There are many kinds of conscience, and every one has some sort, such as it is. What I mean is, that there is almost in every heart a voice of warning and reproof which counsels us to regret certain actions, and which speaks in different tones to different men. To the worldly--those who are habitually of the earth earthly--it holds out the menace of earthly shame and misfortune and sorrow. It recapitulates the mistakes we have committed, points to the evil consequences of evil deeds, shows how the insincerities and falsehoods of our former course have proved fruitless, and how the cunning devices, and skilful contrivances, and artful stratagems, have ended in mortification and reproach and contempt; while still the gloomy prospects of detection and exposure and public contumely and personal punishment, are held up before our eyes as the grim portrait of the future. I need not pause here to show how conscience affects those who, however guilty, have a higher sense--those who have a cloudy belief in a future state--who acknowledge in their own hearts a God of justice--who look to judgment, and feel that there must be an immortality of weal or woe. Mrs. Hazleton was of the former class. The grave was a barrier to her sight, beyond which there was no seeing. She had been brought up for this world, lived in this world, thought, devised, schemed, plotted for this world. She never thought of another world at all. She went to church regularly every Sunday, read the prayers with every appearance of devotion, even listened to the sermon if the preacher preached well, and went home more practically atheist than many who have professed themselves so. What were her thoughts, then, now? They were all earthly still. Even conscience spoke to her in earthly language, as if there were no other means of reaching her heart but that. Its very menaces were all earthly. She reviewed her conduct for the last two or three years, and bitterly reproached herself for several faults she discovered therein--faults of contrivance, of design, of execution. She had made mistakes; and for a time she gave herself up to bitter repentance for that great crime. "Caught in my own trap," she said; "frustrated by a girl--a child!--ay! and with exposure, perhaps punishment, before me. How she triumphs, doubtless, in that little malignant heart. How she will triumph when she brings forward her proofs, and overwhelms me with them--if she has them. Oh, yes, she has them! She is mighty careful never to say any thing of which she is not certain. I have remarked that in her from a child. She has them beyond doubt, and now she is sitting anticipating the pleasure of crushing me--enjoying the retrospect of my frustrated endeavors--thinking how she and Marlow will laugh together over a whole list of attempts that have failed, and purposes that I have not been able to execute. Yes, yes, they will laugh loud and gaily, and at the very altar, perhaps, will think with triumph that they are filling for me the last drop of scorn and disappointment. Never, never, never! It shall never be. That is the only way, methinks;" and she fell into dark and silent thought again. The fit lasted some time, and then she spoke again, muttering the words between her teeth as she had previously done. "They will never marry with a mother's curse upon their union! Oh, no, no, I know her too well. She will not do that. That weak poppet may die before she recalls her opposition--must die--and then they will live on loving and wretched. But it must be made as bitter as possible. It must not stop there." Again she paused and thought, and then said to herself, "That drug which the Italian monk sold me would do well enough if I did but fully know its effects. There are things which leave terrible signs behind them--besides it is old, and may have lost its virtue. I must run no risk of that--and it must be speedy as well as sure. I have but four and twenty hours--the time is very short;" and relapsing into silence again, she continued in deep and silent meditation till the carriage stopped at her own gates. Mrs. Hazleton sat in the library that night for two or three hours, and studied diligently a large folio volume which she had taken down herself. She read, and she seemed puzzled. A servant entered to ask some unimportant question, and she waved him away impatiently. Then leaning her head upon her hand she thought profoundly. She calculated in her own mind what Emily knew--how much--how intimately, and how she had learned it. Such a thing as remorse she know not; but she had some fear, though very little--a sort of shrinking from the commission of acts more daring and terrible than any she had yet performed. There was something appalling--there is always something appalling--in the commission of a great new crime, and the turning back, as it were, of the mind of Mrs. Hazleton from the search for means to accomplish a deed determined, in order to calculate the necessity of that deed, proceeded from this sort of awe at the next highest step of evil to those which she had already committed. "She must know all," said Mrs. Hazleton to herself, after having considered the matter for some moments deeply. "And she must have learned it accurately. I know her caution well. From whom can she have learned it?" "From that young villain Ayliffe," was the prompt reply. "I was too harsh with him, and in his fit of rage he has gone away at once to tell this girl--or perhaps that old fool Dixwell. Most likely he has furnished her with evidence too, before he fled the country. Without that I could have set Marlow's discoveries at naught. Yet I doubt his having gone to Dixwell; he always despised him. Mean as he was himself, he looked upon him as a meaner. He would not go to him to whine and cant over him. He would go to the girl herself. Her he always loved, even in the midst of his violence and his rage. He would go to her or write to her beyond all doubt. She must be silenced. But I must deal with another first. Come what will, this marriage shall not take place. Besides, she is the most dangerous of the two. The girl might be frightened or awed into secresy, and it will take longer time to reach her, but nothing will keep that weak woman's tongue from babbling, and in four and twenty hours her consent will be given to this marriage. If I can but contrive it rightly, that at least may be stopped, and a part of my revenge obtained at all events. It must be so--it must be so." She turned to the leaves of the book again, but nothing in the contents seemed to give her satisfaction. "That will be too long," she said, after having read about a third of a page. "Three or four days to operate! Who could wait three or four days when the object is security, tranquility, or revenge? Besides the case admits of no delay. Before three or four days all will be over." She read again, and was discontented with what she read. "That will leave traces," she said. "It must be the Italian's dose, I believe, after all. Those monks are very skilful men, and perhaps it may not have lost its efficiency. It is easily tried," she exclaimed suddenly, and ascending quietly to her own dressing-room, she sought out from the drawer of an old cabinet a small packet of white powder, which she concealed in the palm of her hand. Then descending to the library again, she sat for a few minutes in dull, heavy thought, and then rang a hand-bell which stood upon her table. "Bring me a small quantity of meat cut fine for the dog," she said, as soon as her servant appeared. "He seems ill; what has been the matter with him?" "Nothing, madam," said the man, looking under the table where lay a beautiful small spaniel sound asleep. "He has been quite well all day." "He has had something like a fit," said Mrs. Hazleton. "Dear me, perhaps he is going mad," replied the man. "Had I not better kill him?" "Kill him!" exclaimed Mrs. Hazleton; "on no account whatever. Bring me a small plate of meat." The man did as he was ordered, and on his return found the dog sitting at his mistress's feet, looking up in her face. "Ah, Dorset," she said, speaking to the animal in a kindly tone, "you are better now, are you?" The man seemed inclined to linger to see whether the dog would eat: but Mrs. Hazleton took the plate from him, and threw the poor beast a small piece, which he devoured eagerly. "There that will do," said Mrs. Hazleton. "You may leave the room." When she was alone again, she paused for a moment or two, then deliberately unfolded the packet, and put a very small quantity of the powder it contained upon a piece of the meat. This morsel she threw to the poor animal, who swallowed it at once, and then she set down the plate upon the ground, which he cleared in a moment. After that Mrs. Hazleton turned to her reading again, and looked round once at the end of about two minutes. The dog had resumed his sleeping attitude, and she read on. Hardly a minute more had passed ere the poor brute started up, ran round once or twice, as if seized with violent convulsions, staggered for an instant to and fro, and fell over on its side. Mrs. Hazleton rang the bell violently, and two servants ran in at once. "He is dying," she cried; "he is dying." "Keep out of his way, madam," exclaimed one of the men, evidently in great fear himself, "there is no knowing what he may do." The next instant the poor dog started once more upon his feet, uttered a loud and terrific yell, and fell dead upon the floor. "Poor thing," said Mrs. Hazleton, "Poor Dorset! He is dead; take him away." The two men seemed unwilling to touch him, but when quite satisfied that there was no more life left in him, they carried him away, and Mrs. Hazleton remained alone. "Speedy enough," said the lady, replacing the large volume on the shelf. "We need no distillations and compoundings. This is as efficacious as ever. Now let me see. I must try and remember the size of the bottle, and the color of the stuff that was in it." She thought of these matters for some minutes, and then retired to rest. Did she sleep well or ill that night? God knows. But if she slept well, the friends of hell must sometimes have repose. The next morning very early, Mrs. Hazleton walked out. As the reader knows, she lived at no great distance from the little town, even by the high-road, and that was shortened considerably by a path through the park. There was a poor man in the place, an apothecary, who had came down there in the hope of carrying away some of the practice of good Mr. Short. He had not been very successful, and his stock of medicines was not very great: but he had all that Mrs. Hazleton wanted. Her demands indeed were simple enough--merely a little logwood, a little saffron, and a little madder. Having obtained these she asked to see some vials, and selected one containing somewhat less than half a pint. The good man packed all these up with zealous care, saying that he would send them up to the house in a few minutes. Mrs. Hazleton, however, said she would carry them herself; but the very idea of the great lady carrying home a parcel, even through her own park, shocked the little apothecary extremely, and he pressed hard to be permitted to send his own boy, till Mrs. Hazleton replied in a rather peremptory tone, "I always say what I mean, sir. Be so good as to give me the parcel." When she reached her own house, she ordered her carriage to be at the door at half past twelve in order to convey her to the dwelling of Sir Philip Hastings. Upon a very nice calculation the drive, commenced at that hour, would bring her to the place of her destination shortly after that precise period of the day when Lady Hastings was accustomed to take an hour's sleep. But Mrs. Hazleton had laid out her plan, and did not thus act by accident. Almost every lady in those days acted the part of a Lady Bountiful in her neighborhood, and gave, not alone assistance in food and money to the cottagers and poor people about her, but medicine and sometimes medical advice. Both the latter were very simple indeed; but the preparation of these simple medicines entailed the necessity of what was called a still-room in each great house. In fact to be a Lady Bountiful, and to have a still-room, were two of the conventionalities of the day, from which no lady, having more than a very moderate fortune, could then hope to escape. Mrs. Hazleton was in the still-room, then, when her dear friend, who had already on one occasion given the death blow to her schemes upon Mr. Marlow's heart, drove up to the door and asked to see her. The servant replied that his mistress was busy in the still-room, but that he would go and call her in a moment. "Oh, dear, no," replied the lady, entering the house with an elastic step; "I will go and join her there, and surprise her in her charitable works. I know the way quite well--you needn't come--you needn't come;" and on she went to the still-room, which she entered without ceremony. Mrs. Hazleton was, at that moment, in the act of pouring a purpleish sort of fluid, out of a glass dish with a lip to it, into an apothecary's vial. She turned round sharply at the sound of the opening door, thinking that it was produced by a servant intruding upon her uncalled. When she saw her friend, however, whose indiscreet advice she had neither forgotten nor forgiven, her face for a moment turned burning red, and then as pale as death; and she had nearly let the glass fall from her hand. What was said on either part matters very little. Mrs. Hazleton was too wise to speak as sharply as she felt, and led the way from the still-room as fast as possible; but her dear friend had in one momentary glance seen every thing--the glass bowl, the vial, the fluid, and--more particularly than all--Mrs. Hazleton's sudden changes of complexion on her entrance. CHAPTER XLIV. Sir Philip Hastings sat at breakfast with his daughter the morning of the same day on which Mrs. Hazleton in the still-room was subjected to her dear friend's unpleasant intrusion. He was calmer than he had been since his return; but it was a gloomy, thoughtful sort of calmness--that sort of superficial tranquility which is sometimes displayed under the influence of overpowering feelings, as the sea, so sailors tell us, is sometimes actually beaten down by the force of the winds that sweep over it. His brow was contracted with a deep frown, but it was by no means varied. It was stern, fixed, immoveable. To his daughter he spoke not a word, except when she bade him good morning, and asked after his health; and then he only replied "Well." When breakfast was nearly over, a servant brought in some letters, and handed two to his master and one to Emily. Sir Philip's were soon read; but Emily's was longer, and she was still perusing it, with apparently much emotion, when the servant returned to the room. Sir Philip, during the half hour they had been previously together, had abstained from turning his eyes towards her. He had looked at the table cloth, or straight at the wall; but now he was gazing at her so intently, with a strange, eager, haggard expression of countenance that he did not even notice the entrance of the servant till the man spoke to him. "Please your worship" said the servant "Master Atkinson of the Hill farm, near Hartwell, wishes to speak to you on some justice business." Sir Philip started, and murmured between his teeth "Justice--ay, justice!--who did you say?" The man repeated what he had said before, and his master replied, "shew him in." He then remained for a moment or two with his head leaning on his hand, and seemingly making an effort to recall his thoughts from some distant point; and when Mr. Atkinson entered, he spoke to him tranquilly enough. "Pray be seated, Mr. Atkinson," he said, "what is it you want? I have meddled little with magisterial affairs lately." "I want a warrant, sir," replied Mr. Atkinson. "And against a near neighbor and relation of yours; so I am sure you are not a man to refuse me justice." "Not if it were my nearest and my dearest," replied Sir Philip, in a deep and hollow tone. "Who is the person?" "A young man calling himself Sir John Hastings," said Mr. Atkinson. "We are afraid of his getting out of the country. He knows he has been found out, and he is hiding somewhere not very far off; but I and a constable will find him." Emily had lain down her letter by her side, and was listening attentively. It was clear she was greatly moved by what she heard. Her face turned white and red. Her lip quivered as if she would fain have spoken; but she hesitated and remained silent for a moment. She thought of the unhappy young man lying on his death bed; for she had as yet received no intimation of his death from Mr. Dixwell, and of his seeing himself seized upon by the officers of justice, his last thoughts disturbed, all his anxious strivings after penitence, all his communings with his own heart, all his efforts to prepare for meeting with death, and God, and judgment, scattered by worldly shame and earthly anguish--she felt for him--she would fain have petitioned for him; but she was misunderstood, and, what was worse, she knew it--she felt it--she could not speak--she dare not say any thing, though her heart seemed as if it would break, and her only consolation was that all would be explained, that her motives, her conduct, would all be clear and comprehended in a very few short hours. She knew, however, that she could not bear much more without weeping; for the letter which she had received from Marlow, telling her that he had arrived in London, and would set off to see her, as soon as some needful business, in the capital had been transacted, had agitated her much, and even pleasureable emotions will often shake the unnervous so as to weaken rather than strengthen us when called upon to contend with others of a different kind. She rose then and left the room with a sad look and wavering step, and Sir Philip gazed at her as she passed with a look impossible to describe, saying to himself, "So--is it so?" The next instant, however, he turned to the farmer, who was a man of a superior class to the ordinary yeomen of that day, saying, "What is your charge, sir?" "Oh, plenty of charges, sir," replied the man; "fraud, conspiracy, perjury, forgery, in regard to all which I am ready to give information on my oath." Sir Philip leaned his head upon his hand, and thought bitterly for two or three minutes. Then raising his eyes full to Atkinson's face, he said, "Were this young man my own child, were he my son, or were he my brother, were he a very dear friend, I should not have the slightest hesitation, Mr. Atkinson. I would take the information, and grant you a warrant at once--nay, I will do so still, if you insist upon it; for it shall never be said that any consideration made me refuse justice. But I would have you remember that Sir John Hastings is my enemy; that he has, justly or unjustly, deprived me of fortune and station, and throughout the only transactions we have had together, has shown a spirit of malignity against me which might well make men believe that I must entertain similar feelings towards him. To sign a warrant against him, therefore, would be very painful to me, although I believe him to be capable of the crimes with which you charge him, and know you to be too honest a man to make such an accusation without a reasonable confidence in its truth. But I would have you consider whether it may not bring suspicion upon all your proceedings, if your very first step therein is to obtain a warrant against this man from his known and open enemy." "But what am I to do. Sir Philip?" asked the farmer. "I am afraid he will escape. I know that he is hiding in this very neighborhood, in this very parish, within half a mile of this house." A groan burst from the heart of Sir Philip Hastings. He had spoken his remonstrance clearly, slowly, and deliberately, forcibly bending his thoughts altogether to the subject before him; but he had been deeply and terribly moved all the time, and this direct allusion to the hiding place of John Ayliffe, to the very house which his daughter had visited on the previous day, roused all the terrible feelings, the jealous anger, the indignation, the horror, the contempt which had been stirred up in him, by what he thought her indecent, if not criminal act. It was too much for his self-command, and that groan burst forth in the struggle against himself. He recovered himself speedily, however, and he replied, "Apply to Mr. Dixwell: he is a magistrate, and lives hardly a stone's throw from this house. You will lose but little time, save me from great pain, and both you and me from unjust imputations." "Oh, I am not afraid of any imputations," said Mr. Atkinson. "I have personally no interest in the matter. You have, Sir, a great interest in it, and if you would just hear what the case is, you would see that no one should look more sharply than you to the matter, in order that no time may be lost." "I would rather not hear the case at all," replied Sir Philip, "If I have a personal interest in it, as you say, it would ill befit me to meddle. Go to Mr. Dixwell, my good friend. Explain the whole to him, and although perhaps he is not the brightest man that ever lived, yet he is a good man, and an honest man, who will do justice in this matter." "Very well, sir, very well," replied the farmer, a little mortified; for to say the truth, he had anticipated some little accession of importance from lending a helping hand to restore Sir Philip Hastings to the rights of which he had been unjustly deprived, and taking his leave he went away, thinking the worthy baronet the most impracticable man he had ever met with in his life. "I always knew that he was crotchety," he said to himself, "and carried his notions of right and wrong to a desperate great length; but I did not know that he went so far as this. I don't believe that if he saw a man running away with his own apples, he would stop him without a warrant from another justice. Yet he can be severe enough when he is not concerned himself, as we all know. He'd hang every poacher in the land for that matter, saying, as I have heard him many a time, that it is much worse to steal any thing that is unprotected, than if it is protected." With these thoughts he rode straight away to the house of Mr. Dixwell, but to his mortification he found that the worthy clergyman was out. "Can you tell me where he is?" he asked of the servant, "I want him on business of the greatest importance." The woman hesitated for a moment, but the expression of perplexity and anxiety on the good farmer's face overcame her scruples, and she replied, "I did not exactly hear him say where he was going, but I saw him take the foot-path down to Jenny Best's." Atkinson turned his horse's head at once, and rode along the road till he reached the cottage. There he fastened his horse to a tree, and went in. The outer room was vacant; but through the partition he heard a voice speaking in a slow, measured tone, as if in prayer; and after waiting and hesitating for a moment or two, he struck upon the table with his knuckles to call attention to his presence. The moment after, the door opened slowly and quietly, and Jenny Best herself first put out her head, and then came into the room with a curtsy, closing the door behind her. "Good day, Jenny," said the farmer; "is Mr. Dixwell here?" "Yes, Master Atkinson," replied the good dame; "he is in there, praying with a sick person." "Why how is that?" asked Mr. Atkinson. "Best is not ill, I hope, nor your son." "No, sir," answered the old woman; "it is a young man who broke his leg close by our door the other day;" and seeing him about to ask further questions, which she might have had difficulty in parrying, she added, "I will call the parson, to you, sir." Thus saying, she retreated again into the inner room, and in a few moments Mr. Dixwell himself appeared. "God day, Atkinson," he said; "you have been absent on a journey, I hear." "Yes, your Reverence," replied the farmer, "and it is in consequence of that journey that I come to you now. I want a warrant from you, Mr. Dixwell; and that as quick as possible." "Why, I cannot give you a warrant here," said the clergyman, hesitating. "I have no clerk with me, nor any forms of warrants, and I cannot very well go home just now. It can do no harm waiting an hour or two, I suppose." "It may do a great deal of harm," replied the farmer, "for as great a rogue and as bad a fellow as ever lived may escape from justice if it is not granted immediately." "Can't you go to Mr. Hastings?" said the clergyman. "He would give you one directly, if the case justifies it." "He sent me to your Reverence," replied the farmer. "In one word, the case is this, Mr. Dixwell. I have to charge a man, whom, I suppose, I must call a gentleman, upon oath, with fraud, perjury, and forgery. Shanks, one of the conspirators we have got already. But this man--this fellow who calls himself Sir John Hastings, I mean, is hiding away here--in this very cottage, sir, I am told--and may make his escape at any minute. Now that I am here, and a magistrate with me, I tell you fairly, sir, I will not quit the place till I have him in custody." He spoke in a very sharp and decided tone; for to say the truth he had a vague suspicion that Mr. Dixwell, whose good-nature was well known, knew very well where John Ayliffe was, and might be trying to convert him, with the full intention of afterwards aiding him to escape. The clergyman answered at once, however, "he is here, Master Atkinson, but he is very ill, and will soon be in sterner custody than yours." There was a good deal of the bull-dog spirit of the English yeoman in the good farmer's character, and he replied tartly, "I don't care for that. He shall be in my custody first." Mr. Dixwell looked pained and offended. His brow contracted a good deal, and laying his hand upon the farmer's wrist, he led him towards the door of the inner room, saying, "You are hard and incredulous, sir. But come with me, and you shall see his state with your own eyes." The farmer suffered himself to be led along, and Mr. Dixwell opened the door, and entered the room with a quiet and reverent step. The sunshine was streaming through the little window upon the floor, and by its cheerful light, contrasting strangely with the gray darkness of the face which lay upon the bed of death. There was not a sound, but the footfalls of the two persons who entered; for the old woman had seated herself by the bedside, and was gazing silently at the face of the sick man. At first, Mr. Atkinson thought that he was dead; and life indeed lingered on with but the very faintest spark. He seemed utterly unconscious; for the eyes even did not move at the sound of the opening door, and the farmer was a good deal shocked at the hardness of his judgment. He was not one, however, to give up his purpose easily, and when Mr. Dixwell said, "you can now see and judge for yourself--is he likely to escape, do you think?" Atkinson answered in a low but determined tone, "No, but I do not think I ought to leave him as long as there is any life in him." "You can do as you please," said Mr. Dixwell, in a tone of much displeasure, "Only be silent. There is a seat;" and leaving him, he took his place again by the dying man's side. Though shocked, and feeling perhaps a little ashamed, Mr. Atkinson, with that dogged sort of resolution which I have before spoken of, resisted his own feelings, and would not give up the field. He thought he was doing his duty, and that is generally quite sufficient for an Englishman. Nothing could move him, so long as breath was in the body of the unhappy young man. He remained seated there, perfectly still and silent, as hour after hour slipped away, with his head bent down, and his arms crossed upon his chest. The approach of death was very slow with John Ayliffe: he lingered long after all the powers of the body seemed extinct. Hand or foot he could not move--his sunken eyes remained half closed--the hue of death was upon his face, but yet the chest heaved, the breath came and went, sometimes rapidly, sometimes very slowly; and for a long time Mr. Dixwell could not tell whether he was conscious at all or not. At the end of two hours, however, life seemed to make an effort against the great enemy, though it was a very feeble one, and intellect had no share in it. He began to mutter a few words from time to time, but they were wild and incoherent, and the faint sounds referred to dogs and horses, to wine and money. He seemed to think himself talking to his servants, gave orders, and asked questions, and told them to light a fire, he was so cold. This went on till the shades of evening began to fall, and then Mr. Short, the surgeon, came in and felt his pulse. "It is very strange," said the surgeon, "that this has lasted so long. But it must be over in a few minutes now. I can hardly feel a pulsation." Mr. Dixwell did not reply, and the surgeon remained gazing on the dying man's face till it was necessary to ask for a light. Jenny Best brought in a solitary candle, and whether it was the effect of the sudden though feeble glare, I cannot tell, John Ayliffe opened his eyes, and said, more distinctly than before, "I am going--I am going--this is death--yes, this is death! Pray for me, Mr. Dixwell--pray for me--I do repent--yes, I have hope." The jaw quivered a little as he uttered the last words, but at the same moment John Best, the good woman's husband, entered the room with a hurried step, drew Mr. Short, the surgeon, aside, and whispered something in his ear. "Good Heaven!" exclaimed the surgeon. "Impossible, Best! Has the man got a horse? mine's at the farm." "Yes, sir, yes!" replied the man, eagerly. "He has got a horse; but you had better make haste." Mr. Short dashed out of the room; but before he left it, John Ayliffe was a corpse. CHAPTER XLV. Mrs. Hazleton found the inconvenience of having a dear friend. It was in vain that she tried to get rid of her visitor. The visitor would not be got rid of. She was deaf to hints; she paid no attention to any kind of inuendoes; and she looked so knowing, so full of important secrets, so quietly mischievous, that Mrs. Hazleton was cowed by that most unnerving of all things, the consciousness of meditated crime. She could not help thinking that the fair widow saw into her thoughts and purposes--she could not help doubting the impenetrability of the veil behind which hypocrisy hides the hideous features of unruly passion--she could not help thinking that the keen-sighted and astute must perceive some of the movements at least of the rude movers of the painted puppets of the face--the smile, the gay looks, the sparkling eyes, the calm placid brow, the dignified serenity, which act their part in the glittering scene of the world, too often worked by the most harsh, foul, and brutal of all the motives of the human heart. But she was irritated too, as well as fearful; and there was a sort of combat went on between impatience and apprehension. Had she given way to inclination she would have ordered one of her servants to take the intruder by the shoulders and put her out of doors; but for more than an hour after the time she had fixed for setting out, vague fears--however groundless and absurd--were sufficiently powerful to restrain her temper. She was not of a character, however, to be long cowed by any thing. She had great confidence in herself--in her own resources--in her own conduct and good fortune likewise. That confidence might have been a little shaken indeed by events which had lately occurred; but anger soon rallied it, and brought it back to her aid. She asked herself if she were a fool to dread that woman--what it was she had discovered--what it was that she could testify. She had merely seen her doing what almost every lady did a hundred times in the year in those day--preparing some simples in the still-room; and gradually as she found that gentle hints proved unsuccessful, she resumed her natural dignity of demeanor. That again gave way to a chilling silence, and then to a somewhat irritable imperiousness, and rising from her chair, she begged her visitor to excuse her, alledging that she had business of importance to transact which would occupy her during the whole day. Not one of all the variation of conduct--not one sign, however slight, of impatience, doubt, or anger--escaped the keen eye that was fixed upon her. Mrs. Hazleton, under the influence of conscience, did not exactly betray the dark secrets of her own heart, but she raised into importance, an act in itself the most trifling, which would have passed without any notice had she not been anxious to conceal it. As soon as her visitor, taking a hint that could not be mistaken, had quitted the room and the house, with an air of pique and ill-humor, Mrs. Hazleton returned to the still-room and recommenced her operations there; but she found her hand shaking and her whole frame agitated. "Am I a fool," she asked herself, "to be thus moved by an empty gossip like that? I must conquer this, or I shall be unfit for my task." She sat down at a table, leaned her head upon her hand, gazed forth out of the little window, forced her mind away from the present, thought of birds and flowers, and pictures and statues, and of the two sunshiny worlds of art and nature--of every thing in short but the dark, dark cares of her own passions. It was a trick she had learned to play with herself--one of those pieces of internal policy by which she had contrived so often and so long, to rule and master with despotic sway the frequent rebellions of the body against the tyranny of the mind. She had not sat there two minutes, however, ere there was a tap at the door, and she started with a quick and jarring thrill, as if that knock had been a summons of fate. The next instant she looked quickly around, however, and was satisfied that whoever entered could find no cause for suspicion. She was there seated quietly at the table. The vial was out of sight, the fatal powder hidden in the palm of her hand, and she said aloud, "Come in." The butler entered, bowing profoundly and saying, "The carriage is at the door, madam, and Wilson has just come back from the house of Mr. Shanks, but he could not find him." The man hesitated a little as if he wished to add something more, and Mrs. Hazleton replied in a somewhat sharp tone, "I told you when I sent it away just now that I would tell you when I was ready. I shall not be so for half an hour; but let it wait, and do not admit any one. Mr. Shanks must be found, and informed that I want to see him early to-morrow, as I shall go to London on the following day." "I am sorry to say, madam," replied the butler, "that if the talk of the town is true, he will not be able to come. They say he has been apprehended on a charge of perjury and forgery in regard to that business of Sir Philip Hastings, and has been sent off to the county jail." Mrs. Hazleton looked certainly a little aghast, and merely saying "Indeed!" she waved her hand for the man to withdraw. She then sat silent and motionless for at least five minutes. What passed within her I cannot tell; but when she rose, though pale as marble, she was firm, calm, and self-possessed as ever. She turned the key in the lock; she drew a curtain which covered the lower half of the window, farther across, so that no eye from without, except the eye of God, could see what she was doing there within. She then drew forth the vial from its nook, opened out the small packet of powder, and poured part of it into a glass. She seemed as if she were going to pour the whole, but she paused in doing so, and folded up the rest again, saying, "That must be fully enough; I will keep the rest; it may be serviceable, and I can get no more." She gazed down upon the ground near her feet with a look of cold, stern, but awful resolution, as if there had been an open grave before her; and then she placed the packet in her glove, poured a little distilled water into the glass, shook it, and held the mixture up to the light. The powder had in great part dissolved, but not entirely, and she added a small quantity more of the distilled water, and poured the whole into the vial, which was already about one-third full of a dark colored liquid. "Now I will go," she said, concealing the bottle. But when she reached the door, and had her hand upon the lock, she paused and remained in very deep thought for an instant, with her brow slightly contracted and her lip quivering. Heaven knows what she thought of then,--whether it was doubt, or fear, or pity, or remorse--but she said in a low tone, "Down, fool! it shall be done," and she passed out of the room. She paused suddenly in the little passage which led to the still-room, by a pair of double doors, into the principal part of the house, perceiving with some degree of consternation that she had been unconsciously carrying the vial with its dark colored contents in her hand, exposed to the view of all observers. Her eye ran round the passage with a quick and eager glance; but there was no one in sight, and she felt reassured. Even at that moment she could smile at her own heedlessness, and she did smile as she placed the bottle in her pocket, saying to herself, "How foolish! I must not suffer such fits of absence to come upon me, or I shall spoil all." She then walked quietly to her dressing-room, arranged her dress for the little journey before her, and descended again to the hall, where the servants were waiting for her coming. After she had entered the carriage, however, she again fell into a fit of deep thought, closed her eyes, and remained as if half asleep for nearly an hour. Perhaps it would be too much to scrutinize the state or changes of her feelings during that long, painful lapse of thought. That there was a struggle--a terrible struggle--can hardly be doubted--that opportunity was given her for repentance, for desistance, between the purpose and the deed, we know; and there can be little doubt that the small, still voice--which is ever the voice of God--spoke to her from the spirit-depth within, and warned her to forbear. But she was of an unconquerable nature; nothing could turn her; nothing could overpower her, when she had once resolved on any act. There was no persuasion had effect; no remonstrance was powerful. Reason, conscience, habit itself, were but dust in the balance in the face of one of her determinations. She roused herself suddenly from her fit of moody abstraction, when the carriage was still more than a mile from the house of Sir Philip Hastings. She looked at the watch which hung by her side, and gazed at the sky; and then she said to herself, "That woman's impertinent intrusion was intolerable. However, I shall get there an hour before the twenty-four hours have passed, and doubtless she will have kept her word and refrained from speaking till she has seen me; but I am afraid I shall find her woke up from her mid-day doze, and that may make the matter somewhat difficult. Difficult! why I have seen jugglers do tricks a thousand times to which this is a mere trifle. My sleight of hand will not fail me, I think;" and then she set her mind to work to plan out every step of her proceedings. All was clearly and definitely arranged by the time she arrived at the door of Sir Philip Hastings' house. Her face was cleared of every cloud, her whole demeanor under perfect control. She was the Mrs. Hazleton, the calm, dignified, graceful Mrs. Hazleton, which the world knew; and when she descended from the carriage with a slow but easy step, and spoke to the coachman about one of the springs which had creaked and made a noise on the way, not one of Sir Philip Hastings' servants could have believed that her mind was occupied with any thing more grave than the idle frivolous thoughts of an every-day society. * * * * * The shrewdest and most successful of politicians has given us the secret of his policy in the words, Follow the public so closely that you shall seem to lead it. FOOTNOTES: [9] Continued from page 201 MUSIC. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY H. W. PARKER. The singing spheres Entranced the very time they measured out; And memory drew me back to one sweet year, When, born anew to thought and love, the earth Was new, and music--fancy's dancing light Till then--became a dazzling revelation. 'Twas in a city, midway from the hymns Of Trenton and Niagra. 'Twas an eve When a whole nation sighed, as hour by hour, The news electric ran that he was dying, The Palo Alto hero. Then and there, I hear the orchestra that once had winged The festal hours when first the hero stood, A nation's chief. To me, the hall, the crowd, Were not; I watched a window-square of sky Deepen from tender blue to night profound; And, as it deepened, heard the voice of Time, All Time, all joy and sorrow, madness, woe, And saw a thousand forms of light and gloom, From music born. Distorted faces glared; Long lines of star-browed angels circled down, And ages dead were summoned back to earth. The horn rang out the joy of happy souls; The viol screamed and laughed in scorn, and groans Rose dread and deep from under gulfs of night. The past, the future life of self, of all. Before me crowded, wailed, entreated, warned, Battled, triumphed, or struggled wildly past, A long procession. Good for me the hour When music, erst a sylph or monster form, Assumed the glory that immortals wear, And sang to me the messages of Heaven. It nerved me newly for the war of life, Of truth, humanity. Now, a naked soul, I dwelt within the central court of space-- No globe immense, but the aye changing point, Where centred, hangs the whole creation's weight, Light as a snow-flake, on the hand of God. The trill of myriad stars, the heavy boom Of giant suns that slowly came and went, The whistlings, sweet and clear, of lesser orbs, And the low thunder of more distant deeps, Ever commingling, grew to eloquence No earthly brain may bear. The universe Had found a voice: the countless souls that fill The countless earths, were calling each to each, In tones as high as heaven, as deep as hell, And many as the many words. I felt What is existence, what the vast extent, The mystery, and the far result.... THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE: OR, THE SPY IN SOCIETY.[10] TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF H. DE ST. GEORGES. III. THE DUEL It was a morning of December, but one of those fitful days when, the sun shining and the sky cloudless, the weather might lead one to suppose it to be spring, were the temperature not so cold and sharp, or if the flowers would only open, and the sun were as warm as it was bright. The young Marquise de Maulear sat over her painting, with Scorpione at her feet, when the Count Monte-Leone was announced. "Show him in," said Aminta. The Count entered. He was very pale, and there was a secret emotion on his countenance which Aminta discovered at once. "What is the matter?" said she; "why have you come so early to see me? I do not reproach you for this; but if you intend by what you do now to stay away this evening, I object to it. I protest against this, Monsieur." "How beautiful you are!" said Monte-Leone, "and how I love to hear you thus calculate your moments of happiness." "Ah, Monsieur, I am very exacting, I have already told you. I will, however, grant you one hour, especially as time passes so rapidly in your company." Then she said, sadly, "Life is so short!" "Yes, very short," said the Count; "especially when the career you promise me is pleasant--enough so to make one wish it would never end." "I should so wish it, but you, perhaps, would think it tedious." "It should be eternal," said Monte-Leone, "and eternity itself would not suffice for me to prove my tenderness. Besides, my purgatory here has been long enough. Have I not suffered all the tortures of hell since the day I renounced you? Ah!" said he, passionately, "you will never know how I loved, and how I now love you." "Yes, yes," said Aminta, with a smile, "a heart like yours, I think, can love but once. I speak seriously--do you hear, sir? This word means much--so much that I tremble to think of it. You love me, and always will. I have faith in you." "The future," said the Count, with an expression of sorrow which he could not conquer, "is your own--at least, if such is God's will, for mine is in your hands." "What mean you?" said the Marquise, fearfully, and looking again with anxiety at the Count. "What trouble now menaces you? Would you leave Paris and myself? Well, that is a small affair. The country you dwell in shall be my country--the climate you select shall be mine. I will love the climate you love, even if it be as sombre and icy as our Italy is warm and glorious. The true country is where we find happiness." "Dear Aminta," said the Count, with a delight he could not repress, "it would be terrible to die now." Scorpione drew near the Count, and looked at him with a strange expression. One might have fancied that like the idiots of northern lands, who, we are assured, have a strange prescience of the future, this poor being was seized on by an unfortunate presentiment. The words she had heard echoed sadly in Aminta's heart. "My friend," said she "for some time I have seen that you suffered. You are no longer happy in my presence. For pity's sake conceal nothing from me. Something terrible and unknown exists in your heart. To whom else but me would you confide it? Who would you permit to share my torments? Who should suffer with you? Tell me, I beseech you, for doubt is worse even than misery." The Count felt his very soul expand as he heard this expression of Aminta's interest. He was about to speak to her. Could he, however, reveal to a young and tender woman the fate which menaced him--the duel which as was said was to be merciless? Could he tell her of the prospect of death in the midst of his dreams of happiness. All this was barbarous and impossible, and the Count sought to lull the storm he had excited, to soften her fears, and to efface her suspicions. "My noble and dear Aminta, no violent and arbitrary power forces me to leave you. Perhaps, however, I am about to undertake a journey--a long journey," he said, with feelings he sought in vain to repress. "An important and imperious duty forces me to do so, and you see that I am sad on account of the farewell I am about to bid you." "Farewell!" said Aminta, growing pale; "a journey, a departure! Wait but a few months, and we will go together." This thought, so full of love, seemed sad to the Count, and at once he said, "No, no; I must make this journey alone. But," said he, "I will return, and thenceforth leave you no more. This will be my last separation and absence." The Count pronounced these words with such earnestness that a smile of joy flitted across Aminta's countenance. "Well," said she, "at least I know what danger menaces. I know now the secret of your distress, and the cause of the melancholy which I could not before penetrate. Count," continued she, "you have sometimes seen me brave and courageous. Judge then of my affection by the tears which I cannot repress." Monte-Leone took the young woman's hand, and covered it with kisses. In the interim, leaning against a wall, and with his features contracted by grief, the idiot shed tears, because he saw Aminta do so. A servant appeared, and told the Count that Taddeo Rovero asked to see him. Monte-Leone looked up, and glancing at the clock, thought it was one. Aminta stopped him as he was about to go. "Shall I see you again?" said she. "Yes, yes," said the Count--"to-night--to-morrow." "One word more," said she; "travel has its danger, and now I know you will take care of yourself; for henceforth your life does not belong to you alone. Every day I will pray for you. I should not, however, be an Italian woman if my heart had no tender superstition. Yours, my brother has told me, is not exempt from this feeling. You have one family superstition in particular," said she. "This is an heir-loom. Take it again," said she, and she placed on the Count's finger the ring of Benvenuto, which Monte-Leone long before had sent her through Taddeo. "They tell me it has always brought you good fortune. Do not part with it again, for my sake, as I once received it for yours." "Aminta," said the Count, "again you restore confidence to me. I expected to leave you full of love--but you can yet once more make me happy." "How so?" said she. "Let this be our wedding-ring." "So be it," said Aminta. "Countess di Monte-Leone," said the Count, regaining his energy, and speaking with a transport of joy. "We will meet again--I swear we will." He left, and the idiot followed the Count. Monte-Leone's brow became bright. He had made up his mind, and regained his firmness. The countless indistinct voices of nature alone interrupted the silence of this solitude, the echoes of which had so often resounded with the cry of grief, or the last sighs of a dying man. It was two o'clock when Monte-Leone and his companions appeared at the _rendezvous_. The place was as yet solitary, but in the course of a few minutes the distant sound of wheels reached their ears, and informed them that ere long their adversaries would be present. The latter, in fact, descended as they had themselves done at the round point which led to the ruins, and before many minutes had passed the two parties had met. Two officers, one of the navy and the other of the general's regiment, accompanied the Lieutenant. The Count and the Lieutenant stood aside. The witnesses approached each other. "Gentlemen," said Von Apsberg, "the Count Monte-Leone, as well as ourselves, is ignorant what could have given rise to the atrocious insult your friend has uttered, the latter having refused to explain it. Perhaps you will think it your duty to do so." The naval officer said, "Monsieur, we are sorrow to say, that we know nothing more of the matter than you do. Lieutenant A---- is one of the most gallant officers of the royal navy. He has requested us to attend him here to-day, swearing that his cause was just and honorable, but that he would unfold its cause only _in articulo mortis_, or in case his adversary fell. We have such confidence in our comrade's honor and prudence, that we determined to do as he wished us." "You, as well as we, gentlemen," said the other second, "have read the letter sent by Lieutenant A---- to Count Monte-Leone, and are aware that it was placed out of the power of the latter to refuse the challenge, even if he thought he had as yet received insufficient provocation." "This is enough, Messieurs," said Von Apsberg. "I have made an appeal to you, and I see with sorrow that you disagree with me. I have hitherto considered the seconds in a duel as being charged with the soul of their friend. Without however pronouncing on the reasons which seem to have influenced Lieutenant A---- in his bearing towards such a man as Monte-Leone, we agree with you that he has given more than sufficient provocation for bloodshed. Let us therefore cut short this conversation, and proceed. We claim the choice of arms." "Very well," said the officers. "We select pistols," said Taddeo, "and rigorously using all our rights, claim the first fire; or that his adversary object by maintaining that he has received the first insult." "Lieutenant A---- will maintain no such thing," said the naval officer. "Then, gentlemen," said Von Apsberg, "we will not hesitate to take advantage of the benefit allowed us by the laws of duelling." The seconds of A---- consented, and the weapons were loaded. When the terms were explained to Monte-Leone he said, "I wish that in this unfortunate and mysterious affair the right may be on my side. I insist, therefore, that the terms be equal, and that this gentleman and myself fire together, or when we please, advancing from a distance of twenty paces on each side. I take particular care, also, to say, not from bravado merely, but because I think proper to do so, that I am an extremely good shot." "Were I not resolved to kill you," said the Lieutenant, "I would refuse this insolent generosity. I think I have such rights over your life, and my vengeance is of so sacred character, that I accept it without hesitation." All then were silent--the ground measured and the pistols loaded. All this passed beneath a wall of the old monastery of Longchamps. The two enemies were placed opposite. The signal was given, and each lifted his arm. Without advancing towards his enemy, who walked rapidly towards him, Count Monte-Leone fired and his ball took effect on the body of the Lieutenant, who sank on the ground before him. He did not utter a complaint, did not close his eyes, but supporting himself on his elbow he fired on Monte-Leone. The ball would have struck the Count in the breast had not a man rushed rapidly as lightning from the thicket, and covering the Count with his body, received the ball in his own heart. Four persons cried out at once. The seconds rushed towards the victim, who was Scorpione. The poor idiot thus died for Aminta, for he rescued one she loved. When they lifted up the unfortunate lad he was dead. It was afterwards learned from the people of the house that when he saw Taddeo with the pistol case, he had gotten into a hackney coach and followed the three friends. He beyond doubt remembered the box which he had seen in the hands of the Count at the time of the difficulty with the Marquis de Maulear. He had gone thus to the rendezvous and sprang from his concealment only to receive the mortal wound. While Von Apsberg, Monte-Leone, and Taddeo sought to reanimate Tonio, the seconds of A---- supported him, and made useless efforts to staunch the blood which poured from his wound. Von Apsberg being satisfied that Scorpione was dead, offered his services to the Lieutenant. He, however, had fainted. Von Apsberg took out his case and cut two long straps of adhesive plaster for the purpose of healing the wound. He soon saw that his efforts would be useless. He said the ball is in the pylorus, and that noble organ being injured, death, unless a miracle ensue, must supervene. The seconds looked on with amazement. Just then the sound of the feet of several horses was heard, one of the officers said, "It is the forest keepers." "Hurry away," said Von Apsberg to Monte-Leone, who yet held the hand of Scorpione and looked at him with great pity. "Hurry away. They will arrest you as the murderer of this man and what then will become of the association?" The Count yet hesitated, for this sudden flight might seem injurious to his character. He was unwilling to shake off the responsibility of any act of his life. "For Aminta's sake," said Taddeo, in a low voice; and the Count, rushing into the thicket, disappeared. A few minutes passed and they waited for the horsemen, whose uniforms were seen in the distance. This was idle, for they passed within a few paces of the dead body without noticing it. And another, too, in spite of all Von Apsberg's efforts, was dying. A convulsive whistle began to escape from the breast of the Lieutenant, his eyes rolled in his head, and his sight began to grow dim. The blood ceased to flow, and only a few black drops escaped from time to time. Suddenly the body which had become contracted, expanded, and by a last effort the eyes of the dying man began to expand and glittered strangely. "Listen all," said he sharply and distinctly; "do not loose one word I say. These are the last words I shall ever pronounce. May God grant me power to unmask a traitor and prevent him from making new victims." All drew near, and paid attention to the words of one about to appear before his Creator. The respirations of the three auditors were distinct. "I said that I would reveal my secret only _in articulo mortis_, or in case my adversary fell, I will keep my promise. I did not tell you," and he turned with pain towards his seconds, "why I insulted this man who has killed me. The reason was that if I had spoken you would not have suffered me to meet him as being unworthy of the arm of an honest man. I wished to kill him first and unmask him afterwards. This brilliant Count Monte-Leone is a miserable hanger-on of the police. The people call such things _eaves-droppers_, but men of higher rank give them another name: Monte-Leone is a SPY IN SOCIETY." "Horror! it is a slander," said Von Apsberg and Taddeo. "By all that is dearest to me," said the Lieutenant, whose voice became every moment weaker and weaker, "by my father's life, by my own soul, this is true. Monte-Leone denounced the General, and my father himself gave me evidence of the fact, which is beyond a doubt. He will also satisfy you--men do not lie at the hour of death, and I am dying with these words on my lips." He closed his eyes and died. IV--THE ANONYMOUS NOTE. Nothing could describe the stupefaction of the four seconds of the duel at what A----said. Von Apsberg was the first to divest himself of the mute terror which seemed to have taken possession of all. "Gentlemen," said he, "I appeal to your honor. The truth of a dying man's assertions cannot be suspected. I am sure he was convinced of the truth of his assertion. This alone can palliate his statements. M. A---- would have soon recovered from his unfortunate impression in relation to the count, and it is a pity that he did not sooner impart it to us. We are able to furnish such evidence of Monte Leone's truth that he would have himself confessed that he was wrong. We will see at all risks the unfortunate young man's father and will attempt to discover the origin of this strange imputation. We will ask one favor of you, such as may be between people of honor, to suspend your judgments in relation to Monte-Leone until we are able to satisfy you this originated in some terrible mistake." The naval officer then said: "We have no reason to be hostile to Count Monte-Leone, and his conduct in relation to the preliminaries of the duel rather inspire us with respect. We will, then, await your communications and say nothing of the circumstances." "I thank you, sirs--all here has occurred as should between men of honor and courage. Let us now take care of the victims. Each take care of his own friend," pointing to the son of the General and to Scorpione. A quarter of an hour afterwards there remained only a few drops of dried-up blood on the withered leaves and on the moss. When Taddeo returned with the body of Tonio, Monte-Leone was already with the Marquise. When the latter saw him, she thought in obedience to his promise he had come to bid her adieu. Then the Count told her what had happened, and the circumstances of Scorpione's death. Aminta wept. All the self-denial of the poor lad appeared before her; his torture and suffering which began and ended his life. The arrival of Taddeo, therefore, distressed her. The Count, however, was there, and she had discovered the direction of his pretended voyage. The Count, perhaps, regretted Tonio's death as much as she did, for he had been its involuntary cause and could not console himself for it. A few hours after, Von Apsberg and Taddeo met at the bedside of the Vicomte, who was yet sick. They told him all the incidents of the duel, and they concurred in thinking the statements of the dying Lieutenant most atrocious. They determined not to speak of it to the Count whose anger and exasperation, they feared at such a statement. As Von Apsberg had said to the Lieutenant's seconds, they determined at all hazards to reach the General's cell, and thus explain the mystery. Three days passed in useless efforts to induce the authorities to accede to their request. At last the Procureur du roi relaxed in favor of Doctor Matheus who was introduced into the cell of General A---- whom he found completely overcome by the death of his son. To this grief, which was intense and terrific, was joined the most violent anger against the Count, whom he called the murderer and assassin of his son. "Yes," said the unfortunate father, "he is a villain, and coward, and has denounced the father and killed the son. What have I done to this man? why is he so enraged against me? why against mine?" "General," said Von Apsberg, "I can understand how bitter a despair like yours must be: it should not, though, make you unjust towards a man of honor who was your associate and is ours." This was said in a low tone. "Count Monte-Leone fought honorably against your son, and but for an unforseen accident would have been killed by him. Resume, then, your coolness. Time is precious, and I beg you to tell me why you have accused Monte-Leone." "Would to God I had kept that terrible secret to myself! would to God my son had never heard that charge! He would not then have been forced to meet him to avenge me; he would have been living now." The sobs of the General increased. Von Apsberg suffered his grief to pass away, and asked, "Is this note yours, General?" "What note?" asked he, and looking through his tears at a piece of paper which the Doctor gave him. Von Apsberg whispered almost in his ear. "This note was given a few days after your arrest." The General read it, and said: "Yes, an old servant who accompanied me to the prison, and who was afterwards taken away, was my messenger." "And you say that you saw in the hands of the Prefect, as the basis of the charge against you, the list of the members of your _vente_ signed by you and given by you to Count Monte-Leone." "I do." "Well," said the Doctor, "repel this error, and do justice to the innocent name you have aspersed, for the Count gave me that very list, and here it is." The General took the document and looked minutely at the signature. He then said, "This is not the list I gave Monte-Leone. My signature is forged. Both the list and signatures have been imitated by a forger, skilfully indeed, but the true list, the one which beyond doubt will take me to the scaffold, this list, as I say and as my blood will prove, is in the hands of the Prefect of police." Von Apsberg grew pale and leaned against the wall. An icy paleness ran through his veins and a cloud stood before his eyes. He shuddered at this distinct statement. The fact was this list must have been taken from his own papers and imitated in his own room which hitherto he had looked on as inviolable, or the Count was a traitor, and the General right. The unfortunate Lieutenant was not mistaken, he had proved all he said, and was correct in all he did. "General," said Von Apsberg, "for the sake of the honor of a man who is dear to me, for the sake of an association the dominant idea of which you have sustained so nobly and for which you now suffer, think well--make an appeal to your memory; let not chagrin lead you astray, I beg you; by your thirty glorious years of service, I ask you if that is not your signature?" "On my conscience, and by the memory of my son, I vow that list is an imitation, a copy of mine, and that the original was given to Angles on the day of my arrest." "It is a strange and incredible mystery," said Von Apsberg, who continued to repel with horror the idea of treason in Monte Leone. Some enemy must have taken this paper from the Count and copied it. "Do not look so far for this traitor. I have pointed him out to you. The man you call your friend has denounced and betrayed me by means of that fatal document. I tell you, Doctor, he is a coward, and has betrayed the father and son." The old soldier wept. They came to tell the Doctor that the time allotted for his visit was past. He was about to leave when the General seized him and said, "Do prompt justice to that man, _or the day of Carbonarism is gone_." Von Apsberg could not restrain an expression of terror when he heard these words and saw the look with which they were accompanied. He clasped the General's hand and followed the turnkey who accompanied him to the outer gate of the conciergerie.... Two days before this scene, MM. Ober and professor C., the two other chiefs of the central _ventes_, who were yet at liberty, placed in the hands of Count Monte-Leone their lists certified to as those of General A----, F----, B----, and the Count de Ch----, had been. Monte-Leone at once took those important papers to Matheus, who shut them up with the others in a secret drawer of the old bureau, a print of the lock of which we saw Mlle. Crepineau's lover take. Von Apsberg, when he returned home, found Taddeo and the Vicompte waiting for him. The latter was much changed, being pale and weak. He was so anxious, however, to learn the result of the Doctor's visit to A---- that he went to his house. Von Apsberg was struck by the agitation of his friends and the desperation of their countenances. Taddeo said: "We are betrayed and lost, and Carbonarism in France is dead. Ober and C---- were last night arrested and taken to prison." Von Apsberg sank on his chair without speaking. He then arose and rushed out of the room. "What is the matter with him?" said both Taddeo and the Vicomte. Von Apsberg went to his laboratory, opened the door and then the secretary. He took out a mass of papers, and descended again with rapidity. He said to the Vicomte, "you know the signature of Ober, having corresponded with him on business," and handed him the letter. D'Harcourt took it, and went to the window, the curtains of which he threw aside. He looked carefully at the signature; and then, after a minute examination of every letter, said, "It is forged." He then took a letter from his pocket and added, "I can prove it by this." He then laid the letter which was written by Ober side by side with the roll and said, "This is but a coarse imitation." Von Apsberg beat his breast and exclaimed: "As you said, my friends, _Cabonarism is dead in France_, and one of its sons, or rather its chief, who should have defended it with his body and mind, with his blood and life, has basely slain it." "Do you mean Monte-Leone?" asked d'Harcourt and Taddeo. "I mean Monte-Leone," and he told all that had passed between the General and himself. "No!" said Taddeo. "I do not and can not think so. I will not. I will not think one I have esteemed honorable to a proverb, so debased. No! Count Monte-Leone is neither a spy nor a traitor. No! he shall be slandered by none; not even by you shall such a slander be uttered against a friend, countryman, and brother." "Why," added he, with great vehemence, "why do you not ask for another version than that which condemns him? why may not these lists have been taken and copied while in his possession? why may they not have been thus treated, so that he gave you but counterfeits when he fancied he gave you originals? Indeed," said the noble-hearted young man, "you forget too easily the qualities of those you love, and are oblivious of years of courage consecrated to the cause we sustain, and for which he has periled his life. Truly your friendship turns now into hatred and contempt." "Taddeo," said d'Harcourt, "We too, suffer--our hearts also repel what our reason tells us is true. As you do we seek to satisfy ourselves that hate not design had produced our ruin. We, like you, are unwilling to think our friend a villain; and God grant we may not be mistaken." Von Apsberg added that his faith in Monte-Leone had been revived by Taddeo's energetic defence. Every thing must have a cause, a reason, a motive. Why then should Monte-Leone betray us. "Well, well, my friends," said Taddeo, clasping their hands, "if you do not suspect you are not sure of what you say; you will soon be satisfied, and in a short time will deplore your unworthy suspicion. But I who repelled it will now fathom what it means. Our safety and a brother's honor depend on our doing so." "Gentlemen," said Von Apsberg, "we should be guilty if we concealed any longer from Monte-Leone what we intended. Certainly a determined will is required to enable one to inflict such a blow on him. He alone can enable us to trace the traitors and criminals. He can give us light--otherwise we are in darkness." Taddeo said, "Ask me to brave death, to risk my liberty for our cause, and I will not hesitate. Do not, though, ask me to say to a man whom I think honorable, 'you are accused of having sold your brothers, of having basely denounced their secrets--you are called a traitor and a spy--that I cannot do.'" D'Harcourt said, like Taddeo, "I feel myself incompetent to make this revelation. My lips would quiver, and in spite of my efforts, my strength would fail when I looked into his lofty brow and frank countenance. On that brow fear and shame have never spread a blush." "Then I will speak," said Von Apsberg, "I love the Count as well as you do, and accused him just now with deep regret, my heart refuting the imputation which my mouth uttered. I will see him, I will tell him of all, and will in my devotion accomplish the most cruel task ever imposed on me." Just then several blows were struck on the pannel of the book-case through which we have seen S. Pignana enter, and also Signor Salvatori and M. H----. "This is some important information from Pignana," said Von Apsberg, and he touched the spring. The panel opened, but behind it was Monte-Leone instead of Pignana. All experienced great emotion when they saw him. Von Apsberg was the most agitated, for he was to speak, and had thus the most painful task to perform. "I am just now come," said Monte-Leone, "but I did not think I should enter Frederick's house openly. Prudence is now more needed than ever. You have heard," said he, "of the arrests of the chiefs of the two other central _ventes?_" "Yes," said Von Apsberg, "and we were seeking to discover who is our secret enemy." "This misfortune," said the Count, "is to be attributed rather to our friends than our enemies. One piece of indiscretion may have produced all this." "Imprudence," said Matheus, "in a conspiracy, is a crime. It endangers all who participate in it." "My friends," said the Count, "our association is menaced from all quarters. The journals of every day reveal to all Europe the misfortunes of the secret societies of Germany and Italy--the sisters of Carbonarism in France. The latter, attacked in the person of the chiefs of our central _ventes_, mortally wounded by the discouragement of a great number of our brothers, has now but one of two alternatives to take." "Revolt?" said Von Apsberg. "Violence?" said Taddeo. "No, my friend, prudence and inaction." All looked at him with surprise, and Von Apsberg felt again the strange feeling which the facts we have recounted had produced. The Count resumed. "What I say, it is evident, astonishes you. Burdened, though, with a heavy responsibility by the _ventes_ of Europe, which await, as a signal for action, only my word, I can give it to this immense secret association, which is beneath the surface of society, only when force and number are aided by opportunity. Opportunity now is wanting; for the uneasy eye of government penetrates our ranks, and the iron hand of despotism decimates us. Force and numbers now are paralysed by fear, and I am sorry to say all our future hope is found in prudence and inactivity." "This language is indeed strange in the month of Monte-Leone," said d'Harcourt. "Far different," said Taddeo, "from that you used yesterday." "Calm and cold," said Von Apsberg, "when we take into consideration the storm which howls around us--the shipwrecks which menace every day our vessels." "Because the heavens are in a blaze--because the tempests howls around us, I would have you for the time seek a shelter." "Once, though," said Apsberg, "you advised us to brave danger, to meet it face to face, to parry it with arms in our hands, to conquer or to die." "Gentlemen," said the Count with dignity, "am I called on to rehearse again the offensive scene which took place at the abbey de San Paolo? Am I, as one in the supreme _vente_ of Naples, the chief of which I was, an object of distrust to my brethren? Have I again lost the confidence of my dearest associates? If such be the case, if the pledges I have given to our cause are now valueless, if forgetfulness and ingratitude go together, say so, plainly and distinctly. I am willing to abandon the office, title, and rank, you have conceded to me. I will write to all the _ventes_ of Europe and will henceforth become the most humble but not the least devoted brother of the association." The suspicions of the three friends at once passed away when they heard this energetic and loyal discourse. Von Apsberg gave his hand to the Count. "Excuse us," said he, "misfortune embitters even the best men. The misfortunes of our brethen, the mysterious enemy who denounces and seems anxious to effect our ruin, overwhelm and distress us. Look," added he, with the haste with which men often discharge a painful duty, "here are the lists of the six chiefs of the central _ventes_. Are these the papers given you by the imprisoned chiefs A----, Ch----, B----, C----, F----, and Ober? Are these the papers you gave me?" "They are." "Are these their signatures?" said Von Apsberg. "They are." "You are mistaken," said d'Harcourt, "at least in relation to that of Ober, for here is his true signature to this letter, written the day previous to his arrest. You can yourself see how poor the imitation is." The Count grew pale, and the other conspirators watched him as if to read his thoughts. "Do you think the other lists also forgeries?" said the Count. "We do." "Then," said the Count, "all is lost." "All _is_ lost," said Von Apsberg, "and we wish to ascertain from you who had charge of these papers; how is it that they have been copied, and how came the originals in the hands of the police?" "If such be the case," said Taddeo, who suffered visibly from this species of examination. "But," said Monte-Leone, who became more and more excited, "you ask me a question I cannot answer--which God alone can explain. All this is a mystery beyond my powers." "Well," said Von Apsberg, growing every moment more nervous, for he saw the approach of the necessity of this terrible explanation; "well, in the absence of proof, our brethren indulge in conjectures." As he spoke, the words seemed riveted to his lips, and to break from them with difficulty. "What are those conjectures?" said Monte-Leone, resuming his _sang-froid;_ for the idea that there was a suspicion in relation to his honor, was not within the compass of his thought. He began to seek a remedy almost before he knew what was the evil which menaced him. "THEY SAY," said Von Apsberg, with hesitation, "that some traitor has insinuated himself among us and betrayed us to the secret police--that he has sold us to our enemies, and that the arrests of our brothers are the fruits of his treason." "Who is that man?" said Monte-Leone. "Who is he?" said Von Apsberg, and his very heart grew cold. "Yes! who? who is he?" said Monte-Leone. Von Apsberg was about to speak; the bolt was about to fall. His two friends ceased almost to breathe, when the door of the room was rung violently. "Who can it be at this hour?" said d'Harcourt. "I cannot tell," said the Doctor, "I expect no one." The bell was rung again. "Some patient, perhaps," said Monte-Leone. "Go at once. A doctor should always be prompt to attend such calls." "But," said d'Harcourt, "what if it be an officer?" "Then there is an additional reason for answering the bell," said Monte-Leone. Von Apsberg left the room, closing the door after him and hurrying into the anteroom, saw before him Mlle. Celestine Crepineau. The three friends listened at the door Von Apsberg had closed, to ascertain who called. "Excuse me, Doctor," said Mlle. Crepineau, "but the matter was so urgent." "What?" "This note, which a very pleasant person, fair as you are, but not so handsome, asked me to deliver at once." "Very well," said the Doctor, who took the note and shut the door in Mlle.'s face. "Now that is not polite," said she. "After all, though, he may have been engaged in some operation when I rang, and he may have been very much annoyed by the interruption." Von Apsberg read the letter which had been given him hurriedly and uttered an exclamation of joy. When he rejoined his friends, he said, "God has come to our assistance." "What is the matter?" asked all of them. "Nothing that concerns us," said the Doctor, seeking to disguise his trouble; "I have an appointment which is strictly private." "Tell me, then," said Monte-Leone, "who is accused of having betrayed us." "I do not know," said Von Apsberg, at once changing his tone. "No one can say who he is." D'Harcourt and Taddeo looked at him with surprise. The Count said, "I thought our secret enemy, or the person pointed out as such, was known to you." "He is not," said the Doctor, looking significantly at his friends. "None know who he is." "Then," said Monte-Leone, "we must seek him out and reach him wherever he is." "If we discover him," said Von Apsberg, "what shall be his fate." "Our statutes provide for that case," said Monte-Leone; "he shall share his victim's fate. If our brethren die, so shall he." "He shall die," said the _Carbonari_. "Listen," said Monte-Leone, "the signature of Ober is false, but perhaps it is the only one which has been counterfeited. We must ascertain whether the others are. This point must be cleared up, and I will see to it. Gold and influence will open the dungeons of our friends, and I will see them. Besides, the papers were not out of my possession. Ah!" said he, as if he were utterly discouraged, "this is enough to make a man mad. To-morrow I shall have penetrated it, and then you will see me." He went out through the secret pannel. When it had closed, Apsberg arose and repeating his last words, said, "Yes, my friends, to-morrow you shall know all." Taking from his bosom the letter Mlle. Crepineau had given him, he read as follows: "TO DOCTOR MATHEUS--If you would ascertain who has denounced your brethren, the miserable spy whose reports have ruined them and given to your enemies the original rolls, be to-night at 11 o'clock, p. m., at the back door of the Prefecture of Police, opening on the _quai des Orfevres_. You will there find the person you need. This is the hour of his _rendezvous_. Stand in the angle of the door, and without being seen, you may recognize the informer. "A BROTHER _of the third_ CENTRAL VENTE." V.--A TERRIBLE NIGHT. The night of January 5th, 1820, was one of the coldest of the winter. The snow fell heavily, and the Seine was covered with large crystallized flakes which, uniting together and lodging on each bank, narrowed the current and caused it to flow more rapidly. The steps of the patrols, or of the benighted travellers, were unheard. The light of the lamps shone redly but indistinctly amid the snowy cloak which hung around them. They seemed like eyes of fire in the long solitary streets. All was sad and gloomy in this paradise of pleasure and festival. One might have fancied a vast white shroud to be extended over a city without souls. A man walked rapidly down the port St. Nicholas, before that part of the old Louvre which had once witnessed such joy, love, crime, and splendor. His steps seemed, from their length, to testify great impatience and an anxiety to reach his destination. "What can they be about?" said he. "All is lost if they do not come. The anonymous note is formal and the terms are precise, "_Eleven o'clock and the quai des Orfevres_." This secret enemy, whose name and features we are about to know, had only to hasten to the Prefecture of Police to deprive us of the only means of unmasking a scoundrel. Yet heaven protects us, for just as I was about to reveal to Monte-Leone the villainy imputed to him, this note closed my lips and veiled the indignation my words could not but have created in his noble soul." The man stopped. The silence of the _quai_ was broken, and he heard the sound of persons approaching him. Soon two shadows were seen by the light of the lamps which hung from the walls of the Louvre, and a voice was heard. "It is he: it is Matheus. He waits for us in the _chiaro oscuro_ of the door." This was followed by a short dry cough, produced by the intense cold of the evening. The speaker was the Vicomte d'Harcourt, scarcely recovered from his illness. A few seconds passed and d'Harcourt and Taddeo stood by the side of Von Apsberg. The three friends had determined not to consult Monte-Leone, nor to inform him of what had taken place until they knew who had denounced them and who was to be punished. "I came hither," said Von Apsberg, "alone, because three men together are greater subjects of remark than two; for the same reason two are more subject to comment than one; therefore, let us separate, and walking down the quai meet at the place appointed." The clock of the Hotel de Ville struck eleven, when the three friends met in rear of the Prefecture of Police. They followed strictly the directions of the anonymous letter. They discovered the back door and stood in its shadow, being concealed by an angle in the wall. They waited there. Carriage after carriage passed, and their hearts beat violently as each approached. The carriages crossed the _quai_ but did not stop. At about a quarter after eleven came a carriage driven rapidly, but which relaxed its speed as it reached the _quai de Orfevres_; it then paused a few feet only from the angle of the wall where the Carbonari were concealed. The steps were let down and the person in the carriage descended and walked rapidly to the back door of the Prefecture. In spite, though, of his haste, the Carbonari could not but remark the stature, tournure, cloak, and bearing of the stranger. The door was opened. The three friends followed and were able to hear him say, "Count Monte-Leone." "He--he--" said they. "The scoundrel!" said Von Apsberg. "The villain!" said D'Harcourt. Taddeo hurried to the carriage which was on the point of leaving. "All doubt is gone," said Taddeo. "The carriage is his." "They are _his_ horses," said d'Harcourt. "It is his driver," said Von Apsberg. Then speaking to the man who, while surrounded by the three men, began to tremble, "Who is the person who came in the carriage?" said he. "My master," said the automaton, more dead than alive. "The Count Monte-Leone." "Whence did your master come hither?" "How?" said the driver, who did not understand the question. "I wish to know, did you drive him from his hotel, or some other place?" "My master was to-night at the Neapolitan embassy. I waited for him in the courtyard which was black as a fair on days when there is no reception. After having remained an hour there he got into the carriage and bade me drive to the _quai des Orfevres, near the Prefecture of Police_. Here I am, Monsieur, and so are you. Good night, then." Whipping up his horses at the risk of driving over two of the young men who stood at their heads, he went away at a gallop. Von Apsberg, d'Harcourt, and Rovero, were all as white as the snow, which had again begun to fall with violence, and looked at each other with that sympathy of a thousand sentiments which might have been expected in persons so terribly situated as they were. Terror, shame, and despair were all united in their glance. Then by one of those sudden and sublime emotions, they clasped each other's hands as if to say, that, henceforth they could rely on no others. Von Apsberg and the Vicomte, were about to speak, when Taddeo made them wait, and said, "No complaints, no insults. _If it be he_, contempt and death." As he spoke the last word his voice quivered. "'_If it be he?_' what doubt can there be?" said Von Apsberg. "Have not our eyes seen? Have not our ears heard? Are we not satisfied?" "Did you not hear the name?" "May he not have used the name surreptitiously?" "Was it not his form, dress, and air?" "Did you see his face?" asked Taddeo, who was himself struck with the poverty of his reasons, and contended against his convictions. "But, are not the driver and carriage his?" "The driver may have been bribed," said Taddeo, who, like many others, became enthusiastic in favor of a bad cause. "I need something more, I must be certain, and will be. In two hours I will see you at Matheus's." He entered a hackney-coach and drove away; bidding the coachman go to the Neapolitan embassy. "I know his plan," said Von Apsberg, "for if Monte-Leone was not at the embassy, the driver was mistaken, and it was not Monte-Leone we saw." "What now shall we do?" asked the Vicomte, whose cough became more violent, and more frequent. "Go home," said Von Apsberg, "for both your body and mind suffer. You remember I am accountable to your father, and to--your sister, for your health." "But what will you do?" said the Vicomte. "I will wait." "Where--here? at this door?" "Yes; at this door, deserted as it is. I will wait here, for the phantom or the reality. I will wait and tear off the hat which covers his brow, and read with my own eyes the shame there, and thus throw from my soul the last remnant of faith in the honor of my friend." "But if he resist?" "So much the better: I will then kill him." "And if he kill you?" "His work will be complete; for, like Judas, he will have slain one he said he loved." "I will stay," said d'Harcourt; and, despite of the entreaties of his friend and the orders of his physician, he wrapped himself more closely in his cloak, leaned against the wall, and waited. Von Apsberg followed his example.... Taddeo went to the embassy. Few persons had been there during the evening, but the rooms were brilliant with light, and contrasted with the darkness of the vast courtyard of which Monte-Leone's driver had spoken. It was almost midnight, but like most Italians the Duchess lived as much by night as day. The hour, too, at which Taddeo came was not unusually late, for at this hour he was in the habit of visiting the Duchess. Therefore, she was not surprised to see him. She lay negligently on an ottoman in that boudoir where we have already seen her receive Count Monte-Leone. There too she had probably received company during the evening, for the chairs were in a kind of ring around the ottoman. She said: "Ah, Signor Rovero, you are welcome. I have been kept long waiting this evening for you and for one of your best friends, who expected to find you here." "Who, Signora, is that friend?" asked Taddeo, with deep curiosity. "Can you not guess?" said the Duchess. "Whom should we call Pylades' friend but Orestes?" "Is it the Count you mean?" "Yes." "Has he been here?" "Certainly," said La Felina. "Certainly," repeated Taddeo, "you kept him a long time with you." "Taddeo," said La Felina, "you are indulging in that villanous habit of jealousy. Ah!" said she, "I am learned in that." She did not give him time to reply. "It is a pity you yet love a poor woman that chagrin and suffering overwhelm, and whose heart is now as withered as her face." "To me you are what you always were, and what you will ever be," said Taddeo. "Deign, though, to tell me, I beg you, when did the Count go?" "The Count, again. Did you come hither to speak of him alone?" "Not so; but an imperious reason forces me to know when he left the hotel." "About an hour ago," said the Duchess, looking at Taddeo. Taddeo grew pale and his fingers grasped the back of the ottoman convulsively. His head fell on his bosom, and his eyes became motionless and fixed upon the carpet. He was convinced, and in despair. From this dreary state he was aroused by the pressure of a soft hand. "Taddeo," said a voice musical as the song of the angels, "you suffer." "Yes," said the young man. "I see you do. Can friendship do nothing to soothe you?" "Nothing!" "Thus it is with men," said La Felina; "they think of us in their pleasure and happiness, but never in their sorrow." Taddeo looked towards the Duchess, whose features expressed so much sympathy and devotion that he felt his heart give way, and he was about to give vent to his secret--an innate and noble sentiment of generosity restrained him. It seemed to him that La Felina might fancy he took a base revenge, should he dishonor one she had loved so passionately, and, perhaps, was yet devoted to. "Signor Rovero," said the ambassadress, after a long silence, "since you think me unworthy to share your secret, let us have done with it. Skilful physicians lull pains they cannot soothe. Let me then do as they do, and divert your mind from such bitter thoughts to present it a more pleasant prospect--that of your sister's happiness." "What say you?" asked Taddeo, as if he were aroused from a dream. "You understand me certainly--the approaching marriage of your sister with Count Monte-Leone is everywhere understood to be a fact." "Never!" said Taddeo, losing his _sang-froid_. A smile of triumph, which Taddeo did not observe, flitted across La Felina's face. She said, "What say you?--do you oppose the union?" "It is no longer possible, signora," said Taddeo, giving way to his emotion--"it cannot be. Vice and virtue--the serpent and the dove--heaven and hell--may be mingled, but not Aminta and Monte-Leone. He is unworthy of her." "Unworthy?" said La Felina--"your heroic friend unworthy of her?" "My friend! I deny him. He was my friend, as Judas was Christ's. For he has sold his, as the recreant sold our Saviour." "Taddeo! is it you who speak thus?" "It is. I, whose soul has been crushed by his cruel deception--I, whose holy faith in his truth has perished--I, who must detest him whom I loved and honored!" Unable any longer to conceal the odious secret within his breast, he opened his bleeding heart to La Felina. When the Duchess had heard him, she said, "No, it is impossible!--Monte-Leone is not a traitor, a coward, the basest of men." "Ah! you say so; so did I. I repelled the charge with horror; yet I was forced to yield to reason and evidence." "It is evident either that you saw or did not see _him_." "But the departure from your hotel," said Taddeo, "coincides so fatally with his arrival at the prefecture of police--the very answer of the driver proves all." "All this is presumptive, yet terrible; but if you yield--if your faith in his honor is not great enough to triumph over it, do you believe that a true passion, that a deep love, such as he inspires, will also do so?" "Ah, signora!" said Taddeo, with pain, "you have been generous long enough; you have had pity or time long enough to allow me at least to remain in doubt about your sentiments. It is cruel to choose such a time as this to own them." "How know you what I feel?" said La Felina to Taddeo, who was about to go. "Think you the profound passion of which you speak can resist indifference and forgetfulness?--I spoke only of your sister." "Is it true?" said the young man, forgetting all in his joy at this confession--"of my sister?" "Yes; and her heart will not suffer her to be convinced as easily as you have been of the baseness of a man whose name and hand she was about to receive. To break the bonds which unite them, to change her love into contempt, the Marquise de Manlear will require evidence beyond dispute of a crime of which, as yet, you have only suspicions, and which my respect for Monte-Leone forces me to repudiate." As she spoke, the Duchess, who sat on the ottoman yet, reached forth her arm to pick up a paper which lay on the carpet. Taddeo, following her motions, picked up the paper and handed it to her. "What is that?" said she; "some letter I have dropped or which one of my visitors has lost." "Count Monte-Leone sat there," and she pointed to a particular chair. She opened it mechanically, but scarcely had she done so than she uttered a cry of grief. Taddeo hurried to La Felina with a bottle of salts. She had let the paper fall, and it met his glance as it lay open. He saw a seal. Moved by a feeling of curiosity, which he could not repress, and hoping to discover the cause of La Felina's emotion, made confident also by the authentic character of the paper, Taddeo took and read it carefully. Scarcely had he done so than his strength gave way and he became pale as death. Sinking back in a chair he was crushed, as it were, by terror. The Duchess had recovered, and their countenances exhibited to each other the terrible feelings which filled their minds. "Did you read?" said La Felina. "I did," said Rovero. "Here it is." "I recognize as an _attaché_ of the Police Count Monte-Leone, who acts by my authority." "This is awful," said she. "Do you yet doubt?" said Taddeo, quivering with grief. "What will you do with that paper?" said La Felina, also trembling. "What people do with a decree which holds a man to public infamy--fasten it to the scaffold, that all may know who is the wretch society expels from its bosom. I will nail it to his brow." "No, no! you will not do so; you will not be hard-hearted and cruel enough to act thus." "I will do my duty," said Taddeo, sternly. "And I," said Signora de la Palma, taking possession of the paper, "will not suffer you to do so." Then, quicker than thought, she crushed the paper in her hands, and threw it in the fire. "What have you done?" said Taddeo. "You have destroyed the irrefragable proof of his guilt." "You read it, that is enough _for you_--it is too much for _him_." Then rushing from the room where she was alone, she said aloud--"It is enough, too, for me, for now _she will never marry him_." VI.--THE ACCUSATION. What had occurred was a sufficient reason for the Duchess not to return to the room. Taddeo hurried to Von Apsberg's. D'Harcourt and the Doctor did not come until two o'clock. The door they watched did not open, and he they were so anxiously waiting for prudently left by some other egress. "Well," said the Doctor to Taddeo, "was he at the Duchess's?--did he go out as his driver said?" "May we yet doubt?" said D'Harcourt. Taddeo was silent, and seemed not even to have heard them. With his head on his hands, he sat before a table in the centre of the room. His eyes were red with tears and watching, and he had written a few lines rapidly; at last he said: "Read that, which is my answer." They did so, and a painful sigh escaped their breasts. He continued--"I, who defended, accuse him; I do so because I saw the proof of his infamy. I know not its object and motive, which confounds my reason; I cannot, however, doubt it, for I have read the letter, and devote this man to the hatred and vengeance of the brethren he has betrayed." He then told all that had passed. Von Apsberg took the pen and wrote his name below Taddeo's. D'Harcourt did the same. This act, simple as it was, had a lugubrious and solemn character, for which it was indebted to the physiognomy and emotion of the three men whose hearts beat under the same emotion, and who shed tears together. At last it seemed that they had evidence which lighted up their future path of vengeance. "My friends," said the Doctor, "Carbonarism in France is dead. The arrests of the chiefs of the central ventes tell you plainly enough what fate is reserved for us. We are free men only because our liberty contributed to the plans of our enemies. We cannot dissemble that we are sold and betrayed by a spy. Our retreats and plans also are revealed, and the dungeon, exile, or death, is the fate of our brethren and ourselves. I propose to you, therefore, no isolated vengeance, but one for all affiliated with us. By the terms of our association, a sentence has been passed on the traitor, and been signed." He pointed to the paper to which they had affixed their names. "Who will execute it? The supreme annual _vente_ will assemble in a few days at the Masonic lodge of the _Friends of Truth_. The supreme vente will decide." "No, gentlemen," said the Vicomte D'Harcourt, "my mind and education object to nocturnal vengeance. I prefer daylight and the sword to obscurity and the dagger. His sword is not worthy to be crossed with mine, but better thus than murder." "So be it. But not your sword, but those of all of us will be directed to his heart. To-morrow, like three shadowy avengers, we will tell him of his crime and punish it." "To-morrow be it," said D'Harcourt and Taddeo. Then, clasping each other's hand with a mingled feeling of anger, sorrow, and despair, they separated. On the morning of the night after these scenes, Monte-Leone, immersed in reflection, sat in his hotel. It might be about ten o'clock. The snow, which had been falling since the evening before, intercepted the faint light of day, and added to the sadness of the vast room. By means of his anxious research and skilful investigations, Monte-Leone, since the previous evening, had ascertained beyond doubt that the true lists of members of the central _ventes_ were in the hands of the police. Thenceforth all seemed an impenetrable mystery to the Count, which his intelligence and the fertile resources of his mind could not fathom. "How had originals been replaced by copies?--how had the police obtained the originals?" This impenetrable enigma appeared to the Count as a new evidence of his evil genius, which had been for a long time apparently growing darker and darker before him, and seemed to hurry him to ruin and destruction. The defection of the world had become more and more sensible--the coldness every day became more marked and decided. The incredible and brutal challenge of Lieutenant A----, the causeless duel, and the death he had been forced to inflict on one who, for his father's sake, he almost loved, appeared before him. The embarrassment which he saw with sorrow supervene in the intercourse of his friends with him, caused a vague torment in his usually energetic and decided mind. The tenderness of Aminta, the esteem and affection of the Prince, opposed these impressions, but could not dispel them entirely. The Count was thus disturbed by this overwhelming trouble and fatigue, produced by painful and distressing reflection, when Giacomo appeared before him. He entered with such calmness and silence, that the Count did not perceive his intendent until he stood at his side, and said: "A person is waiting to speak to your excellency in the cabinet." "I am at home for no one." "That is bad," said Giacomo, "for I have said you were in, and even bade the person wait in the next room. Really I think it was time to do so, for the poor woman trembled so she could scarcely stand." "Who is she?" asked the Count. "That I cannot give your excellency; in the first place, because she did not tell me her name, and, in the second place, because she wears a veil, which her little hand holds fast. This, too, is always the case: ladies never come at this hour to see a bachelor without a veil--this is the uniform of the sex." "Who can it be?" thought he. The idea occurred to him that it might be the Duchess. The recollection of La Felina's disinterested kindness pleaded in her favor. Monte-Leone bade Giacomo show her in. The intendent left and soon returned, preceded by a veiled lady of an elegant and distinguished air. Scarcely had the old man retired, when the visitor lifted up her veil, and exhibited the features of Aminta. He was rejoiced indeed, and said: "You here--at my house!" and Monte-Leone fell at her feet. "I never would have dared to ask you to grant me such a favor. I never would have hoped, you would concede such." "Count," said Aminta, trembling as much, as possible, "I took this step for a reason which is imperious to me. Are we alone?" said she, looking timidly around her. "We are alone," said the Count. "Speak to me, and tell me to what I am indebted for your presence here?" "To my sorrow and despair," said the Marquise. "What then is the matter?" asked the Count with terror. "I do not know, but some danger menaces us.... The Prince, my second father, who, as you know, always treated me as a daughter--who hitherto always has received you with such kindness, and has acted so that our proposed marriage is no longer a secret, came yesterday to see me. His countenance expressed the greatest trouble, and his eyes sparkled with rage. He said, 'My daughter, I am about to grieve you greatly, and you must arm yourself with all your courage and resolution. Your marriage with Count Monte-Leone is now impossible, and I beg you, in the name of my love of you, to abandon him for ever.'" "What do I hear?" said Monte-Leone, almost beside himself. "What does this mean?--why this change?--whence did he obtain a right thus to ruin and crush me?" "He did not pause there, that is but half of my sacrifice. He said, 'You must not again receive Count Monte-Leone's visits. The doors of this house henceforth are closed to him.'" Monte-Leone said with vehemence, "Is it not enough to separate us?--would he add insult to cruelty? What is my crime? Of what am I accused? Why was I worthy of you yesterday, and am so base to-day?" "My prayers and tears," said the Marquise, "could not induce the Prince to reveal this strange secret to me. He said, 'The Count has no longer a right to your hand, for he has deceived us. If he insists again on speaking of his passion, say to him, that I know all, and have heard it from one who cannot lie, and whom it is the duty of every Frenchman to have faith in next to God--from the King!'" The Count stood silent and amazed. It seemed to him that an invisible net surrounded him, and that the iron threads perpetually closed around him. All grew darker and deeper; the mysteries amid which he walked seemed more intense, and his reason began to give way beneath the heavy hand which weighed on his brow. Aminta looked at him with deep distress. The silence of the Count appeared to acknowledge the Prince's words. He seemed stupified by an accusation, of the justice of which he was aware. Aminta trembled at the idea that she had loved a criminal. He, however, at last looked up, and his eyes bore only the expression of deep sadness. He said, "Aminta, by all that is most holy, by our own life, I swear that I know not the meaning of this. From the language, though, that the Prince has used, and from the King's name being, I know not why, involved in my affairs, it is clear that my honor has been doubted by the Prince. This I have hitherto allowed no one to do. However, one has been found bold enough to do this." "The Prince is almost my father," said Aminta, timidly. "He is my mortal foe, for he seeks to separate us." "Listen," continued he, in a more gentle tone, and he sat beside her; "my love is so great, I dread so to bring any cloud across your brow, that hitherto I have concealed my sufferings." "You have been unhappy and I ignorant of it!" "I am in that terrible condition in which a man feels that his reason is about to escape from him. I hear my voice--I see my face, and seek to discover in their expression if there be any symptom of folly or not--I am not myself--I am not what I was--I am like the leper in the Bible, for all flee from me--I am repelled everywhere, as if death and disease followed in my train. French society, across which I strode like a king once, now seeks to make me atone for my fleeting triumph. To public esteem and universal consideration have succeeded distrust and coldness. I see hatred and fear in eyes that once shone with admiration and respect; and, when I look into my life, when I examine my most secret acts, I find no cause for this repulsion, and can not but ask myself if my fancy be not diseased, and calls not up the chimeras which distress me." "No, no," said Aminta, with that womanly pride which always actuated her in relation to him she loved, "your reason and mind are yet the same. Some dark and odious calumny may perhaps have been circulated to your disadvantage." "Who will tell me what it is?" said the Count; "who will exhibit it to my eyes? who will show me the phantom which robs me of name and fame, and secretly immolates my honor?" Just then the bell of the hotel rang. The Count hurried to the door to exclude any one. He was, however, too late; for rapid steps were heard in the anteroom. "Who is it?" said he to Giacomo. "The three persons to whom these doors are never closed, M. Von Apsberg, d'Harcourt, and Rovero." The Marquise uttered a cry of terror. "They will come hither," said he, "in spite of both Giacomo and myself, and this room has no other egress." The voices of the Carbonari fell on the ears of the Marquise. "Go in there," said Monte-Leone to the Marquise; and he opened an elegant closet. "In a few moments I will dismiss them." The young woman did so--and scarcely had the door been closed than the three young men entered the room. Their brows were stern and severe, and bore the impress of their feelings. "What is the matter now?" asked Monte-Leone. Not a sound was heard, but six eyes glared at him with disdain and arrogance. Von Apsberg took a paper from his breast, and without speaking, gave it to Monte-Leone. "What means this?" said he. He read---- "STATUTES OF FRENCH CABONARISM. "_Article 1._--Whosoever shall denounce or betray his brethren, confesses that he deserves death, and sentences himself for the crime at the time of its commission." "Well," said the Count, looking at his friends, "I know all that. I signed that article as well as you." "Go on," said Taddeo. The Count continued: "We, chiefs of the central ventes, supreme judges of the members of the association, we to whom our brethren have confided the sacred right of life and death, declare, swear, and affirm, that a base traitor and informer is among us. Each of us therefore demands on this man the punishment which he has made himself liable to, which is death." "His name? his name?" asked Monte-Leone. "His name," said Von Apsberg, "we hesitated to tell you the other day, but do so no longer. His name is Count Monte-Leone!" Monte-Leone stood mute at this reply, and cast glances of surprise and terror on his companions. His blood ran as if it would burst the arteries. His eyes became fiery, and the nails of his fingers drew blood from his palms. He was silent. One might have fancied him the animating spirit of a cloud charged with thunder. After the reading of the sentence, the silence was broken by Von Apsberg, who said: "He who was our chief, who was our dearest friend"--his voice trembled at this sentence--"should not die like a common Carbonaro. We have therefore forgotten our aversion to his crime, and offer to risk our lives against his in strife." The Count let the Doctor conclude, and then said, "I was right! I saw what I fancied I did. This is no dream--no hallucination. A man has dared to couple my name and the reproach of a denunciator together." "There are three who dare, and their names are Rovero, D'Harcourt, and Von Apsberg." "Gentlemen," said he, "sometimes one is forced to condescend to be affronted when dealing with people too low to reach their mark. I, however, cannot condescend to stoop to the gutters where such epithets are gathered up as you throw on me." "These epithets," said D'Harcourt, "are not addressed merely by three men to Count Monte-Leone. All Paris does so." "Public rumor," interrupted Von Apsberg, "accuses you of having betrayed A----, Ober, B----, and our other friends." "Public rumor!" exclaimed the Count, whose eyes seemed ready to spring from his head. "Public rumor says that Count Monte-Leone, ruined and desperate, obtains the money he now spends, most disgracefully. He has sold his brethren to enable him to continue his luxury." The Count uttered an exclamation of horror. "Count Monte-Leone, proscribed two months ago in France, owes the right of remaining in the realm to the fact that he is in communication with the French police, whose agent he is." "Are you done?" said Monte-Leone, sarcastically. "Count Monte-Leone has sold the secrets of his brethren in every land, and filled the prisons of France, Spain, and Italy, with his victims." "Then," said Monte-Leone, with a far different accent from what might have been expected from an injured man or discovered criminal, for his tone was almost joyous, "this is the explanation of the obscurity amid which I have wandered. No, it is impossible! Paris may speak thus, but you do not! You do not think me such a being?" "On our honor we do," said the three. The ball which reaches the soldier's heart, the bolt which falls on the traveller, have not a more sudden effect than these words on Monte-Leone. "They, too!" said he, "they, too!" "Yes," said Von Apsberg, "we accuse you more distinctly even than the rest of the world. We have horrible proof." "What is it?" "General A---- swore on the soul of his son that you betrayed him; and that he saw the list he gave you in the hands of the Prefect of Police." "This one you gave me," said the Doctor, handing the document to him. "Here are the lists of the five other ventes, all of which are false and counterfeit. You alone had these lists, and could give them up." "Horrible!" said Monte-Leone. "A man," said D'Harcourt, "went yesterday, at eleven o'clock at night, into the Prefecture of Police. This man got out of a carriage which was your own. The man gave your name to the keeper of the gate. He did not however know that two of his brethren overheard him. Those who overheard him are now before you. Will you deny it? "The carriage and name mine?" said Monte-Leone, beside himself. "Finally," said Taddeo, "I saw the disgraceful brevet you received from the police. I saw the name of Monte-Leone linked with the infamous word 'SPY.'" Taddeo had no sooner finished reading this letter than Monte-Leone hurried towards a press, and took out pistols, one of which he threw at Taddeo's feet. "Take it," said he, "kill me before I shoot you; for I will not survive this insult one moment, or live with him who has pronounced it." At that moment, a cry was heard in the next room. The door was thrown open, and the Marquise of Maulear fell between her brother and Count Monte-Leone. VII.--DESCENT OF THE POLICE. When the Marquise de Maulear regained consciousness her attention was directed to a woman who knelt before the sofa. This person was the confidential female servant of the Count Monte-Leone, who rendered to the Marquise cares he could not extend himself. Having retired into the next room he anxiously waited for an opportunity to see her again. Doctor Von Apsberg having become satisfied that the young woman had merely fainted, and that there was nothing serious in her condition, joined D'Harcourt in his efforts to hurry Taddeo from the hotel; and Monte-Leone's ideas having been suddenly changed by the apparition of the lady, which had effaced all his sufferings, scarcely perceived their sudden departure. The Marquise, when she recovered, remembered this terrible scene. "My brother!--Taddeo!--Monte-Leone! where are they? For God's sake hide nothing from me--take me to them--let me terminate that terrible combat, the very idea of which makes me mad." "Here is the Count, madame," said the woman, pointing to Monte-Leone, who drew near. "One word--tell me where my brother is." Count Monte-Leone bade the servant leave him; and when he was alone with her, he said bitterly, "Your brother is gone, madame, with his friends, after having overwhelmed me with insults." "By your love to me," said Aminta, "falling on her knees, I ask his life." "But you did not hear this terrible scene," said he. "I did. Every word fell on my heart as if it would crush it. They were, though, the results of error and anger. The honor of Monte-Leone is above such imputations." "Aminta," said the Count, "they are only the echoes of the world. My fury cannot reach the thousand mouths which dishonor me. I can speak only through their interpreters. Blood alone can wash out the insults they have subjected me to--ask me, then, for my own life, but not for the life of those who have thus insulted me." "One of them is my brother,--is your friend." "My dearest friend," said the Count, "one who knows my very inmost life, and has had a thousand opportunities to judge me. He was bold enough to repeat that odious calumny to me. Ah!" continued he, with sombre vehemence, "that this corrupt world, which knows me not, should have been able thus to heap suspicion on me! The world has judged me by itself; but Taddeo is the very reflection of my own soul. The name of friend seemed too little for him. I loved him as I would have loved my mother's son. He was the object of my second love on earth. Aminta, Taddeo has leagued himself with my enemies, and came hither to affront me mortally. This is too much for my heart and physical endurance." Count Monte-Leone, who in danger was so firm, wept at the idea that his friends had so misconceived him. "My friend," said the Marquise, sobbing, and pressing the face of Monte-Leone to her bosom, "Taddeo would shed tears of despair and regret could he only see how you grieve. Certainly he is wrong to doubt your honor, but he will repair his wrongs, and expiate all by repentance. He will defend you, will convince and confound your enemies and will again be your friend." "He has suspected me," said Monte-Leone, sadly, "and cannot be my friend again, even if he confessed his injustice on his knees before me. He is your brother, though, Aminta, and that imposes a sacrifice on me which my love for you alone can inspire. I will either not avenge the insult, or demand satisfaction for it from another. God grant that other may kill me, for then Taddeo will live without being called on to expiate this outrage." "Ah!" said Aminta, "that misfortune was absent, but now he wishes to die." "Yes, Aminta," said the Count, "I wish to die rather than drag out a disgraceful life, without the power of effacing from my brow the stigma placed there, rather than read suspicion in every eye, rather than see myself despised. All parts--all Europe--all the world, perhaps, will repeat this awful charge." "I do not believe it," said the young woman; "I am sure there is no heart on earth more worthy than yours, and that you may challenge the esteem of all. What I know, though, all others must.----In eight days, Count Monte-Leone, you must marry me. I _will_ be Countess Monte-Leone." "What!" said the Count, to whom that idea gave a glimpse of heaven amid the hell around him, "you Countess Monte-Leone!" "Who then will dare to say that I married a disgraced man?" "Aminta," said the Count, falling at the feet of the noble-hearted woman, "God knows my gratitude is equal to your love, but I cannot marry you. You know that I love you, that I would give my life for your hand, but my father's name I cannot confer on you, dishonored as it now is. Hear then my oath," said the Count. Aminta trembled, but he said, "I swear by the sacred soul of my father, not to accept your hand until my enemies are confounded, until the infernal imposture of which I am the victim be recognized as the basest and foulest of calumnies." "So be it," said Aminta. "We will not wait long for that day, and my prayers will appeal to heaven for it. Let Taddeo's life, though, be sacred to you. I confide him to your love of me...." "No,--no," said she, seeing he was about to reply, and perhaps resist her; "do not speak, but remember that Taddeo is my brother, and that his death will separate us for ever." A few moments after this scene, a carriage, which was standing at the end of the _quai_, bore the Marquise rapidly to her hotel. We need not say that she was completely overcome by the incidents of the day.... At about ten o'clock the next day, the Duke d'Harcourt, was at the breakfast table with all his family. The eyes of the old man were suddenly struck with the following passage in the _Journal des Debats_, which he was glancing over. He read it aloud:-- "The terrible secret association, on the track of which the police has very long been, has been discovered--even its name is known--the whimsical one of 'Carbonarism!' We are assured that every rank of life has representatives in this vast affiliation. Even young men of the most noble families of France have been found on its rolls, and they have been already pointed out to the attention of the government." The Viscount d'Harcourt grew visibly pale as he heard his father read, and Marie called the Duke's attention to the fact. She hurried to his side. "It is nothing," said he, "but a sudden spasm of pain. It will soon pass away, and in a few minutes I shall be better." The Duke d'Harcourt had finished his paper, and looked sternly on his son. His glance was like that of the judge on the criminal, a mute appeal to conscience, which the young man could not be insensible of. "René," said the Duke, in his most penetrating tone, "if I did not know that you have overcome the influence of those political chimeras which produced your expulsion from Italy, the agitation caused by what you have heard read would make me think the cause of those conspirators your own." The Count's trouble increased. The old noble continued to speak in this tone, extolling, also, the advantages of a monarchical government, and pointing out the evils likely to result from the possible realization of the plans of the Carbonari. He, however, heard the sounds of many feet in the anteroom of the saloon, where he sat with his children. The secretary of the Duke, the brave D'Arbel, an old officer of the army of Condé, who had emigrated with the Duke, and never left him, appeared at the door. His features expressed the greatest agitation. He said:-- "The Duke does not know what is going on." "What _is_ the matter, my dear D'Arbel?" said the Duke, taking a seat in the chair the old man handed to him. "The door of our hotel has been broken open in the King's name, and is now in possession of the police. The chief has placed all the household under surveillance and is about to come hither." "What means this?" said the Duke. "Why is my house thus invaded?" "Ah, my God!" said Marie, trembling, "what do these people want?" "What do they want?" said the Vicomte, completely beside himself. "They want vengeance on me." "To arrest you! For heaven's sake, sir, tell me what you have been doing." "What you censured so violently just now. Father, I have sought to overturn a government of which my opinions do not approve. I am now to experience the penalty of having failed. In such matters success makes great men, and failure criminals." "Criminal or not, they shall not take away my son. I will defend him." "Brother, brother," cried Marie, wildly, and embracing the Vicomte. "Monsieur," said D'Arbel, "a few moments yet remain for you to attempt to enable the Vicomte to escape." "Whither? how?" said the Duke, who was overcome with terror and distress. "Through the garden. The gate on _la rue_ Baylonne perhaps is yet practicable." "D'Arbel is right," said the Duke, "come, come;" and he took his son's hand, and led him to the end of the room where he opened the window fronting on the portico. "Here," said the secretary, "is a cloak and hat with a broad brim which will somewhat conceal the features of the Vicomte." He placed his own hat and cloak on Rene's head and hurried him towards the outer door. "Remain here, my daughter," said the Duke to Marie, "to detain them as long as possible, and enable us to escape." "This way--this way, Duke," said the secretary to M. d'Harcourt and his son. "The principal alley is too much exposed for us to escape unseen." He led them close to the wall where the foliage was very thick, and thence to the gate. The Duke's eyes were so filled with tears, that he stumbled at every step, and his son was forced to guide him to the goal of all their hopes. At last they stood at the gate. The Secretary took a pass-key from his pocket, put it in the lock and opened the door. Here, though, were six officers of police. The Duke uttered a painful cry, and to keep from falling leaned against the wall. "I am your prisoner," said D'Harcourt to these men. "I am the Vicomte." "We know you well enough. You have long been pointed out to us, and we have had our eyes on you." The Duke, when he heard these words, felt as if his heart would break, for a cruel idea occurred to him. His son had long been under surveillance, and had also for a long time deceived his father. "Come, then," said the Vicomte, "I am ready to accompany you." "You are acting correctly, M. le Vicomte," said the agent. "You submit without difficulty. Let us go, but not in this direction; if you please, we will go through the garden to the hotel." "And why?" "Because such are our orders. The chief intends to examine your papers and draw up the _proces verbal_ in your presence. M. H---- never puts himself out except on great occasions like this." Without replying, the Vicomte took his father's arm, and followed by the old secretary, and surrounded by the police agents, went to the house. The Duke, during the whole route, did not speak, but sobbed audibly. From time to time, he clasped the arm of his son as if he would have retained possession of him. When they returned home, Marie, who thought her brother safe, uttered a cry of terror, and fainted. The Duke hurried to her side and sent for her women to take care of her. The Vicomte, in the interim, was taken to his room by M. H----, to be present at the examination of his papers. A few minutes after, the door was thrown open, and Count Monte-Leone entered. Faithful to the promise he had made to the Marquise to ask no explanation from Taddeo of the outrage he had received, he had come to obtain satisfaction from René. The appearance of the police in the vestibule of the house, the terrified air of the servants, made Monte-Leone apprehend some new disaster. He entered the room without being impeded, for the guards had orders to keep persons from going out, not from entering. "Ah, Count," said the Duke, when he saw Monte-Leone, "you are come to share our trouble. My son is arrested and lost." "Arrested?" "Yes; as an accomplice in one of those awful plots in which you were yourself once involved. What sorrow to my house!" "Where is he now--has he left the hotel?" asked the Count. "No, sir," said the secretary, "the police is now examining his papers." "His papers seized! You were right, sir, in what you said--your son is lost." The Duke, with an activity and vehemence due entirely to the over-excitement caused by his misfortune, said, "And how, Monsieur, do you know any thing about my son's papers?" "I know but too well," said the Count in despair; "for I shall doubtless ere long share his fate and captivity, as I have his hopes and anticipations." "Alas!" said the Duke, "your antecedents, your exalted opinions, a powerful instinct which cannot deceive a father's heart, all tell me that you have led my son astray. You have ruined him." Before the Count could reply, the Vicomte returned, followed by M. H----, chief of the political police, and his officers. "My father," said the Vicomte, "I was unwilling to leave the hotel without imploring your pardon for the wrong I have done you." He knelt before the Duke, who could scarcely stand. "I forgive you, my son, for having thus wrung from me the only tears I ever shed on your account. They are bitter, though, indeed, and cannot but shorten my life." Marie had recovered, and embraced her brother. What the Duke said to his son, the tender and touching embrace of the young girl, appeared not to be observed by René. His glance was fixed, and stern, and full of horror. His features were discomposed by violent rage, and, pointing to Count Monte-Leone, he exclaimed: "Ah! why look for the informer?--there he is. Father, father, that scoundrel has sold me to the persons who tear me from your arms. There is the man whose name henceforth is Judas." The Duke and Marie shrank from the Count as from a reptile. "René," said the Count, "thank God that my hand has no dagger to reach your heart for this new insult!" "Ah! I believe you. One more crime would have cost you nothing. You would then slay the body as you did the soul. A coward is but a coward--a spy is but an assassin." "A spy!" said Monte-Leone, rushing towards the Vicomte. He then paused as if he had been seized by a new idea, and, turning towards the chief of police, said, pointing to René, "Tell this man that I am not one of your creatures. Tell him that I do not know you. If he needs proof, arrest _me_, for I am far more criminal than he is." "We have no orders to arrest Count Monte-Leone," said M. H----, with a smile. "Well," the Count said, "if you have no orders, I will give you reason to do so. Instead of being an agent of police, I am the head of the secret association you seek after. I am the leader of those who seek to ruin you, the soul of the invisible world which conspires against the throne of your king and hated government. Now, far from avoiding, I call on you to act. Earn your rewards, and arrest the most implacable enemy of your master--the chief of Carbonarism--arrest me!" The Duke, the Vicomte, and the witnesses of this scene, looked with amazement at Monte-Leone, who, as it were, rushed to the block. René d'Harcourt felt something of remorse at what he had said. M. H----, piqued at the defiance, as it were, cast in his face, said to Monte-Leone, "Instead of admitting you guilty of the crimes with which you charge yourself, we protest against your statement: were you as guilty as you say, you would not dare thus to speak. Besides, this bravado is useless. We know to what your conduct is to be attributed, and that you have pursued a very different course from what you say. If you suffer, it is because you have forced me thus publicly to make an explanation." The Count was stricken down by this overwhelming statement, and by the attempt to establish complicity between himself and the police. His sight, his very thoughts became dim, and his lips, contracted by fury, gave vent only to indistinct mutterings. Before he recovered his _sang-froid_, before he could repel this disgraceful imputation, René, in obedience to a signal from M. H----, disengaged himself from his sister's arm, and, clasping his father to his bosom, went from the room. Pausing at the door, he pointed to H----, and said to Monte-Leone, "the words of this man tear away my last doubt; I maintain all I have said. May an old man and young woman's tears, may my blood rest on your head." The Vicomte left. When the old man saw his son depart, he went to Monte-Leone, and with a gesture of anger and contempt said to him: "Away! you have betrayed my son to the executioner; away, you will also kill me." He then sank in the arms of his servant. FOOTNOTES: [10] Continued from page 216. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by Stringer & Townsend, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. From Fraser's Magazine. CHAMOIS HUNTING. I had been staying at Fend (one of the highest inhabited spots in Europe) for some days, existing on a light and wholesome regimen of hard-boiled eggs, harder baked rye bread, and corn brandy, exploring the magnificent scenery round me, and had returned the way I came, to a collection of brown packing-boxes, by courtesy called a village, which rejoiced in the euphonious name of Dumpfen, nestling cozily under the grand belt of pines that feathered the flanks of the mountains, which rose high and clear behind. In front roared, rattled, and grated, a wide glacier torrent, the color of ill-made gruel, and on the opposite side stretched, some quarter of a mile, a flat plain of gravel and worn boulders, here and there gemmed with patches of short sweet turf, till it reached the base of a noble range of cliffs, which rose gray and steep into the clear blue sky, so lofty, that the fringe of world-old pines along their summits could scarcely be distinguished. On the narrow patch of turf between the village and the torrent I found--it being a fine Sunday afternoon--much mirth and conviviality. The rifle-butts were pitched on the opposite side of the torrent, with a small hut close to them to shelter the marker, a fellow of infinite fun, attired in bright scarlet, and a fantastic cap, who placed marked pegs into the bullet-holes, and pantomimed with insane gestures of admiration, contempt, astonishment, or derision, the good or bad success of the marksmen. And splendid specimens of men they were--firm, proud, yet courteous and gentle, well dressed in their handsome and handy costume, strong as lions, which, in fact, they "needed to be" to support the weight of those young eighteen pounders which they called rifles, with brass enough in the stocks to manufacture faces for a dynasty of railroad kings. Never did I see finer fellows. And the women! How lovely are those Tyrolese damsels, with their dark brown glossy hair braided under the green hat, with a brilliant carnation stuck over their left ear in a pretty coquettish fashion, enough to send an unfortunate bachelor raving. And their complexions! the very flower in their hair paling, looking dull beside their blooming cheeks; and their clear soft hazel eyes, with such a soul of kindness, gentleness and purity peeping through them, as one scarcely sees, even in one and another elsewhere. The shooting was at last over, the winner crowned with flowers, and, the targets borne in triumph before them, the whole party retired to the wooden hut with a mystic triangle in a circle over the door, to eat, drink, and be merry; and very merry we were, albeit the only tipple strongly resembled very indifferent red ink, both in taste and color. Talk of the _dura messorum ilia!_ what insides those fellows must have had! We were sitting listening to interminable stories of Berg-geister, and Gemsen Könige, and rifle practice at French live targets, when two herd lads came in from some of the higher mountain pastures, and reported three chamois, seen that morning low down on the cliffs. Hereupon up rose a vast clatter among the yägers as to the fortunate man who was to go after them, for chamois hunting, gentle reader, requires rather less retinue and greater quiet than pheasant shooting in October. The lot fell upon one Joseph something or another; I never could make out his surname, if he had one--which I rather doubt. He was a fine, handsome, jaunty fellow, with "nut-brown hair" curling round his open forehead, and a moustache for which a guardsman would have given his little finger. Now, as it fell out, _I_ also got excited; _I_ too thirsted after chamois' blood; but how to get it? How could I, small five foot seven, and rather light in the build, persuade that Hercules to let me accompany him, unless he put me in his pocket, which would have been derogatory? It is true that I, being light myself, was perfectly convinced that weight was rather an incumbrance than otherwise in the mountains; but how could I persuade the "heavy," whose opinions, of course, ran the other way, to agree with me? However, as the men thinned off, and the place became quieter, I determined to make the attempt, at least, and commenced the attack by "standing" Joseph a chopine of the aforesaid red ink, and then, fearing the consequences, followed it up by an infinity of "gouttes" of infamous corn brandy, all the while raving about the Tyrol, Andreas Hofer, and the Monk, and abusing the French, till I quite won his heart; he, innocent soul, never imagining the trap I had set for him. At last I glided into chamois hunting, the darling theme of a Tyroler, making him tell me all sorts of wild stories, and telling him some in return, (every whit as true, I have no doubt, as his own,) till at last I boldly demanded to be allowed to accompany him the next morning. Joseph humm'd and ha'ed for some time; but gratitude for the tipple, my admiration for Hofer, and, perhaps, the knowledge that I had been over some of the stiffest bits of the surrounding ranges _solus_, and had been after the gems, though unsuccessfully, before, made him relent, and it was finally settled that I should go. He went home to get comfortably steady for the next morning, and I laid violent hands on every thing eatable to stuff into my knapsack; whilst the others, after vainly trying to persuade me out of my determination, retired, shaking hands with me as if I was ordered for execution at eight precisely the next morning. Whereupon I vanished into the wooden box, which it is _de règle_ to get into in that part of the world when one wants to sleep, and slumbered incontinently. I had been asleep about five minutes, according to my own computation, though, in fact, it was as many hours, when I suddenly awoke to a full perception of the fact that I was "in for it." Alas, those treacherous fumes of "Slibowitz" no longer deluded me into the idea that I was fully up to any existing mountain in the known world; that jumping a ten-foot crevasse was as easy as taking a hurdle; or that climbing hand over hand up rocks "so perpendicular" that one's nose scraped against their stony bosoms, was rather safer, if any thing, than taking sparrows' nests from the top of a stable ladder! However, the honor of England was at stake. Go I must. So I resigned myself to the certainty of breaking my only neck, and jumped up, thereby nearly dashing in the roof of my brain-pan against the top of my box, adding, most unnecessarily, another headache to the one I already possessed--and turned out. Unfortunately, there was no one awake to see my magnanimity; and it was too dark to see if there had been; so I groped my way down, with my upper garments on my arm. After "barking" my shins against stools and trestles, and being nearly eaten up by a big dog in the dark, I sallied out, preferring to make my morning ablutions in the clear but cold brunnen that plashed and sparkled on the little green before the door, to dipping the tip of my nose and the ends of my fingers into the pie-dish which had been considerately placed for my private use. How intensely beautiful that dawn was! with the pine-woods steeped in the deepest purple--here and there a faint, gauzy mist, looking self-luminous, marking the course of some mountain brook through the forest. The gray cliffs stood dark and silent on the opposite side of the stream, and one far-off snow-peak, just catching the faint reflected light of dawn, gleamed ghost-like and faint, like some spirit lingering on the forbidden confines of day. How intense was that silence!--broken only by the harsh rattle of the torrent and the occasional faint tinkle of a cow-bell in the distance, or now and then by a spirit-like whispering sigh amongst the pines, that scarcely moved their long arms before the cold breath of the dying night. I had finished my toilet, and was just beginning to hug myself in the idea that I had escaped, and had a very good excuse to slip into bed again, when I heard the clang of a pair of iron-soled shoes advancing down the torrent bed that did duty for a road, and to my unmitigated disgust saw Joseph looming through the darkness, like an own brother to the Erl King, a "shooting-iron" under each arm, and a mighty wallet on his back. There was no escape--I was in for it! Setting our faces to the mountains, we entered the pine-forest, and toiled up and up through the dark, silent trees, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, till the day began to break, some three-quarters of an hour after our start, when we stopped with one accord, _of course_ only to look back and see the sunrise, though I doubt if either of us could have kept up that steady tread-mill pace much longer, with any degree of comfort. Well, we halted to look, perhaps for the last time, at the valley and the village now far below us. We had got to the height of the cliffs on the opposite side, and could look over their summits at the tumbled alp-billows that tossed their white crests for many a league beyond; the sun steeping the snow-peaks in tints of purple, pink, and crimson, and here and there a rock-peak shone with the brightest silver and the reddest gold,--enough to send one "clean wud" with their exquisite beauty. Down below in the valley, the sun had not yet risen, though man had; the little columns of blue smoke wreathed gracefully upwards in the calm morning air, and the lowing of the cows, and the faint tinkle of their bells, as they were being driven to their morning pasture, floated up ever and anon in strangely diminished tones, that seemed to come from some fairy world far down in the Alp-caverns. Having rested, we turned our faces again to the mountains, and toiled anew through the pine-forest, now no longer dark and gloomy, but fleckered with gleams of yellow morning light, and sparkling with a thousand dew-diamonds. Up, up! still up! across the little sparkling runlets, tumbling head over heels in their hurry to see what sort of a world the valley below might be;--up! over masses of rock, ankle-deep in rich brown moss, bejewelled with strawberries and cowberries, garlanded with raspberries, twisting and straggling out of their crevices, covered with rich ripe fruit;--up! over bits of open turf, green as emeralds, set in pure white gravel, sparkling like a thousand diamonds;--up! through tangled masses of fallen pines, their bleaching stumps standing out like the masts of great wrecks--terrible marks of the course of the avalanche wind!--up! through one short bit more of pine-wood, over the split fir fence, and into the little mountain meadow, smiling in the level sunlight, with its bright stream tinkling merrily through it, its scattering boulders, and wooden sennhutt, with the cows and goats clustered round it, standing ready to be milked,--one of the latter, by the bye, instantly charges me, and has to be repelled by my alpenstock, bayonet fashion,--while all around, the sweet breath of the cows mingles deliciously with the aromatic fragrance of the pine forest, and the rich scent of the black orchis and wild thyme. Seat yourself on that wooden milking-stool by the door--(beware! it has but one leg, and is "kittle to guide")--after a hearty shake of the hand from that grey old giant of a herdsman, and enjoy yourself. "Joseph, what's i' the fardel? Turn out your traps, and let us see what 'provaunt' you have got." A mighty mass of cold boiled mutton, an infinity of little drabs of rye-bread, the size of one's hand, and as hard as flints; and--what is that thou art extracting with such a grin on thy manly countenance, as if thou hadst found the best joke in Europe, tied up in the corner of the bag? A quart bottle of corn-brandy!--I simper, the grey herdsman simpers, and Joseph simpers most of all, as if he was conscious of having done a monstrous clever thing, but was modest. "Schnaps at six in the morning!--hardly correct," say I. Joseph thinks that it _is_ apt to make one thirsty (it certainly always appears to have that effect upon him); and the grey herdsman shakes his head, and smacks his lips dubiously, as if he were not quite certain, but would rather like to try. "Well, just one thimbleful, Joseph, 'just to kill the larvæ, ye ken.' Ah! you don't understand, it is a mountain excuse, too. Never mind--hand us the becher." Here we breakfasted luxuriously, eking out our store with sour milk and crumbly new white cheese from the sennhutt. The grey herdsman eyes me intently, and longs to know what manner of man I am. I take pity on his thirst for knowledge. "Ein Englander?"--I am his friend for life! He has heard of the 30,000_l._ sent over in the French war-time, and his nephew has seen _the_ letter in a glass-case at Innspruck. "And I want to shoot chamois?" He looks almost sorrowfully at me, but I have gone too far to retreat, and am very valiant. "Yes, there are three up about the Wildgrad Kögle." That is enough, Adé Andre! Pack up, Joseph, Forward! Stop a bit, let us load here; we may stumble on something shootable. I am soon ready; but loading with Joseph is a very solemn affair, not to be undertaken lightly, or finished in a hurry. First, he takes a dose of stuff out of a cow's horn, which I, in my ignorance, suppose to be very badly made No. 7 shot. A small quantity of this he places in the pan of his rifle, and crushes with the handle of his knife, the rest he pours down the barrel, and I perceive that it is powder; then he looks up and down, round and about--what the deuce _is_ he after? Is he cockney enough to be going to flash off his rifle, and afraid of some one hearing him? No, there he has it--a bunch of grey moss, "baum haar," as he calls it, from that blasted pine. Wonder again; what in the name of goodness is he going to do with that? Use it as a pocket-handkerchief? I do not believe he carries one; at any rate, if he does, he only uses that pattern said by the Fliegende Blätter to be so popular amongst the Gallician deputies of the Paul's-Kirche Parliament. No,--wrong again; he carefully pulls it to pieces, and making it into a round ball, rams it down upon the powder; and a most excellent dodge it is. Colonel Hawker has only re-discovered an old secret, or, more likely, learnt it on the shores of the Bodensee; then the greased patch and the ball, and all is ready. On we go! After leaving the meadow, we entered again into the pine forest, which gradually became more open, the trees more stunted and fantastic, and their long straggling arms clothed more and more as we ascended with the ash-grey baumhaar; dead trees and thunder-riven stumps became frequent, rotting in and into the black bog mould, which gives a scanty root-hold to the blushing alpen-rose. Soon we leave the trees behind us altogether; nothing but wild chaotic masses of gravel and stones, tossed and heaped one on the other, by the fierce avalanche--the very rocks grey and crumbling with age; here and there patches of black bog, with little oases of emerald green turf perched in their centre, the black orchis growing thick upon them, and perfuming the air yards around. Ere long, even these traces of vegetation became more scarce, and the appearance of every thing around us wilder and more steril. Still the brilliant peaks of the Wildgrad Kögle gleamed brightly before us, and beckoned us on. Our path lay now, steep and rugged, along the edge of a ravine, at the bottom of which we heard the torrent chafing and roaring many a yard below us. There was a precipitous bank of rocks and screes to our right, quite unclimbable, which seemed only to want the will--they certainly had the way--to topple us into the abyss. Just as we were turning an abrupt angle very gingerly, with our eyes fixed on our slippery path, and longing for an elephant's trunk, to try the sound bits from the rotten ones, we suddenly heard a rushing "sough," like the falling of a moist snow avalanche, and a cloud passed across the sun. Glancing hastily upwards, I--yes I, in the body at this present, inditing this faithful description of my chase,--saw, not a hundred paces from me, an enormous vulture! Any thing so fiercely, so terribly grand, as this great bird, saw I never before, and can scarcely hope to see again. He was so near that we could distinctly see the glare of his fierce eye, and the hard bitter grip of his clenched talons. The sweep of his vast wings was enormous--I dare not guess how broad from tip to tip; and their rushing noise, as he beat the air in his first labored strokes, sounded strangely wild and spirit-like in the mountain stillness. A dozen strange strokes, and he took a wild swoop round to our right, and away, like a cloud before the blast, till a neighboring peak hid him from our sight, followed by a wild shout of astonishment from Joseph. I opened not my mouth, or if I did--left it open. Nothing ever gave me such a feeling of _reality_ as the sight of this vast vulture so near me. Often and often had I seen them, both in Switzerland and the Tyrol, sailing so high that, although well up the mountain flank myself, I almost doubted whether they were realities, or mere _muscæ volitantes_, produced by staring up in to the clear bright sky, with one's head thrown back. This fellow there was no doubt of--we saw his very beard! We were really then chamois-hunting--we had penetrated into the very den of the mountain tyrant. No fear of gigs and green parasols _here;_ we were above the world! Soon after our friend had departed, and we had recovered from the astonishment into which his unexpected visit had thrown us, we reached the end of our _mauvais pas_, and found ourselves at the foot of a wild valley, entirely shut in by ranges of lofty cliffs, with here and there patches of snow lying on the least inclined spots. In front, still far above us, towered the wild rock masses of the Wildgrad Kögle. The Kögle itself ran up into one sharp peak, that seemed from where we were, to terminate in a point. Great part of its base was concealed by a range of precipices, with broad sheets of snow here and there, resting at an extraordinary high angle, as we soon found to our cost, and having their crests notched, and pillared, and serrated in the wildest manner. The floor of the valley was covered with masses of rock and boulder, hurled from the surrounding cliffs, and heaps and sheets of rough gravel, ground and crushed by the avalanches, and fissured by the torrents of melted snow. The silence of the Alp-spirit, as silent as death itself, was in it; only at intervals was heard the whispering 'sough' of some slip of snow, dislodged by the warmth of the mid-day sun. We advanced stealthily, concealing ourselves behind the boulders, and searched valley and cliff in vain for our prey. Joseph was the proud possessor of a telescope, mysteriously fashioned out of paper and cardboard; a pretty good one, nevertheless, brought from Italy by some travelling pedlar, and an object of great veneration, but one which failed in discovering a single chamois. Our only chance now was that they might be feeding in some of the smaller valleys, between the cliffs at the head of the basin in which we were and the Kögle itself. "Feeding! what could they be feeding on, when you say yourself that you left all kinds of 'green stuff' behind you long ago." So _I_ thought, too, doubtless, by this time, most impatient reader; but on the screes at the head of the valley, Joseph showed me, for the first time, the plant on which these extraordinary animals in a great measure live. It has a thick green, trilobate leaf, and a flower so delicate and gauze-like, that one wonders how it can bear for a moment the harsh storms to which it is exposed. Its petals have a most curious crumpled appearance, and are of the softest pink imaginable--almost transparent. As for its class and order, you must go elsewhere for them; I know them not; nor the name either which the Latins would have called it if they had been aware of its existence. Joseph called it "gemsenkraut," or chamois herb, and that was enough for me. Having finished our botanical investigations, we pushed on to the upper end of the valley, and found that the cliffs, and screes, and snow-patches looked uglier and steeper the nearer we approached them. However, there was no retreat--onward we must go, or be declared "nidding" through the length and breadth of the Tyrol. Oh! those screes--those screes! lying at an angle of goodness knows how much with the horizon--sharp, slaty, angular pieces of stone, like savage hatchets, slippery as glass, glancing from under our feet, and casting us down sideways on their abominable edges, "sliddering" down by the ton, carrying our unfortunate persons yards below where we wanted to go, crashing and clattering, and then dancing and bounding far down into the valley, like mischievous gnomes, delighted with the bumpings and bruisings they had treated us to! How Joseph did anathematize! For my part, mine was a grief "too deep for swears!" After crossing, still ascending, two or three beds of screes, we came to the edge of the first snow-field; not very broad, it is true, but lying at a higher angle than I ever thought possible, and frozen as hard as marble on the surface--one sheet of ice, with an agreeable fall of some hundred feet at its lower edge. We were in despair! We had now got excited and confident--our "blood was up;" and here came "the impossible to stop us." "But what is it that Joseph has picked up from the snow, and is examining so carefully?" "No matter--'twas not what we sought," but it _was_ something closely connected with it. "Yes, there is no doubt of it; they have been here, and lately too! See the sharp hoof-prints just above! They must have crossed this morning! Go it, ye cripples (_in prospectu_), we must cross this, come what may." We got along steadily, without any slides, though with many slips, always sticking our staves convulsively into the snow the moment our heels seemed to have the slightest disposition to assume the altitude of our heads. It was nervous work--one slip, one moment too late in thrusting our staff perpendicularly in the snow, as an anchor, and away we should have shot like a meteor over the glittering surface for a hundred terrible yards, and then with a wild bound have been launched into the abyss below. However, we could not have turned back if we had wished it, and at last, to our intense satisfaction, we grasped the rough rock that bounded the further side of the field. Grasped it!--we embraced it!--we clung to its rough surface as if we had been six months at sea, and had landed in the Hesperides! At length on the summit of the ridge, we were able to crouch down and look through a crack in the rock into the next valley. Round and about, above and below, we examined every hole and corner; half-a-dozen times some villanous stone made our hearts leap to our mouths. But alas! "it was no go;" there was not a living thing in sight--barrenness, barrenness, and desolation. Our chance of chamois was utterly over for the day. _N'importe._ Better luck to-morrow. Who can feel out of spirits in that brisk mountain atmosphere? There is the highest peak of the Wildgrad Kögle right before us--and hang him, we'll dine on his head. The ridge on which we found ourselves was but a few feet broad, and about a hundred and fifty feet above the snow on each side. It was composed of innumerable irregular pillar-like masses of rock, of different heights and distances, impossible to descend at the point where we found ourselves, but as it ran at the same general level, we fancied that we could get on the sloping mass of snow which lay on the side of the peak at some distance on. Jumping from one small table of rock to another--now only saved from "immortal smash" by Joseph's strong arm, and now swaying doubtfully on a _plateau_ the size of a small dumb-waiter top, uncertain whether we should be off or not--we hopped along, wishing we were kangaroos, till we found a crevice which seemed practicable, and down which I went with a run--or rather a slide, much quicker than was agreeable, being only brought up by my feet coming on Joseph's broad shoulders, he taking, as I must confess he generally did, the first place, whereby he always came in for a double allowance of stones and gravel, but about which he seemed utterly indifferent. On reaching the bottom, we found that, as usual, the snow had melted some distance from the rock, leaving a mighty pretty crack to receive us. However, a lucky jump landed us safely, and for a moment erect, on the snow, and then head over heels, rolling, and bumping, and kicking, we spun over the slippery surface till we managed to bring ourselves up about fifty yards below where we had started. But in spite of tumbles we were in high spirits: there were no gems to frighten, and no more tottering avalanches, ready to fall on our heads if we as much as ventured to use our pocket-handkerchiefs. We toiled up the terribly steep snow-patch merrily enough, not without retracing our path several times in a manner at once undignified and unexpected--though it certainly was not to be complained of as far as speed went--and reached, at last, utterly blown and sick with exertion, the base of the rock forming the summit of the mountain. Hardly giving ourselves time to recover, we climbed up the last sixty or seventy feet of cliff, and I found myself--first this time, for a wonder--on a small platform, the summit of the Wildgrad Kögle. The platform was some ten or twelve feet square, and the only approach to it was on the side we had ascended; on every other the cliff ran down in a sheer wall, how deep I know not, for I never could judge of distances from above. As for describing what we saw from our elevated dining-table, it is clean out of the question; we saw nothing but mountains--or rather the tops of mountains, for we were far above the general level of their crests; one wide sea of rock and snow surged around us; shoreless, no bounding range, no sweet glimpses of broad green valleys and glistening rivers in the distance; no pretty villages nestling cosily under the pine forest--nothing but peak on peak, ridge on ridge; bright pinnacles and clusters of pinnacles shooting up here and there far above the rest into the calm blue sky--deep grooves marking the course of distant valleys, like tide-marks on the sea. But no trace of man or beast, herb or tree; the very wind that whistled past us brought no sound or scent from the valleys it had passed, but sounded harsh, and dry, and dead. Vain, indeed would be the effort to convey the slightest idea of the solemn grandeur of that scene! Manfred? Manfred gives the finest and truest picture ever perhaps painted of _Swiss_ Alpine scenery, as seen looking towards the mountains, or from the cliffs bordering some rich pastoral valley; but we had passed all that long ago--we were in the very heart of the range. Alp was still piled on Alp, but we had reached the summit of the pile. The only valleys _we_ saw were fearful scars in the mountain flank, half filled with eternal snow, and the crumbling skeletons of dead Alps. No sound--no herdsman's jödle--no cowbell's tinkle ever reached to half way up our rocky perch: we were far above the vulture and the chamois. We were alone with the rock, and snow, and sky! It seemed profanity to whisper--and yet there was Joseph, after a glance round, and a short "schöne panorama!" whistling and fishing up the eatables and drinkables from the bottom of his wallet, as coolly as if he was seated in his own smoky, half-lighted cabin. He had been born in it, and was used to it. I doubt whether I myself felt the grandeur of the scene as much then as I have often done since, on recalling it bit by bit to my recollection. The really grand gives one at first a sort of painful feeling that is indescribable. One cannot _think_--one only _feels_ with that strange undescribed sense, that strives, almost to heart-breaking, to bring itself forth, and yet stays voiceless. We sat long, drinking in alternate draughts of sublimity and Slibowitz (as Joseph called the brandy), till the Berg-geist kindly put an end to our exstasies by drawing a dark gray veil over the whole picture, and pelting us with snow-flakes, as a gentle hint to be off and leave him to his cogitations. It began, indeed, to snow in real earnest, and the weather looked mighty dark and unpromising, so we scrambled hastily down the way we came, and leaning well back on our alpenstocks with our feet stretched out before us, shot down the long sheet of snow, at a considerably quicker rate than we had ascended; and gliding scornfully past our columnar friends, whose fantastic capitals had given us so much trouble in the morning, we reached, with many a tumble and much laughter, the stony ravine at its foot. Scorning to finish the day without drawing blood from something besides ourselves, we determined to commit slaughter on whatever came across us. We soon heard the shrill signal-whistle of the marmot, and for want of better game, determined to bag at least one of these exceedingly wide-awake gentlemen. Creeping to the top of a neighboring ridge, we peeped cautiously over into a little valley floored with a confused mass of mossy stones and straggling alpen-rosen. Here several of these quaint little beasts, half rat, half rabbit, were frisking in and out of their burrows, cutting all sorts of what Joseph called, 'Burzelbaume,' Anglicè, capers; little suspecting that the all-destroying monster, man, had his eye upon them. One fellow, the sentinel, took my particular fancy as he sat up on his nether end on a large stone. There was an expression of unutterable self-conceit and conscious wide-awakefulness about his blunt muzzle and exposed incisors that was perfectly delicious. Him I determined to bring to bag, and cautiously raising my carbine--crack! Over he rolled, I have no doubt, too astonished to feel any pain, his friends tumbling madly head over heels into their burrows, whilst the astonished echoes repeated crack! crack! again and again, in all sorts of tones and modulations, till warned to silence by the harsh rattle of an old mountain a mile off. We bagged our friend, who looked every wit as conceited in death as he did when alive, and recommenced our descent. On our way we shot a brace of "schnee huhner," a species of ptarmigan, a pack of which very _slow_ birds were running stupidly in and out amongst the rocks--and hurried on. It was growing very dark, the snow fell heavily, and the wind began rushing and eddying round us, depositing the largest and coldest of the snow-flakes in our ears and eyes, till we were half-blinded and wholly deaf. Joseph began to look serious, and hunted about for a small torrent he knew of, to serve as a guide, and after some trouble and anxiety, we found it, and stumbled down its rocky banks till we came to a solitary sennhutt, which was to be our resting-place for the night. After some trouble, we got the door open, and found that the hut was fortunately not entirely filled with hay; a space about six or eight feet broad had been boarded off between it and the outer wall for the use of the wild-hauer. This was to serve us as parlor and kitchen and all, except bed-room, which was to be sought for in the hay-stack itself. Our floor was the bare earth; the logs which formed the wall were badly jointed, and the wind whistled through the gaping cracks in the most uncomfortable manner; one could almost fancy that it was trying to articulate the dreaded word, rheu--matism. However, the ever-active Joseph, bustling about, found some dry wood, and we made a blazing fire on the floor at the imminent risk of burning our beds, and slightly thawed ourselves; we continued our researches, and found a shallow wooden pail, carefully covered over, holding some two gallons of sour milk, left by the charitable hay-man some fortnight before, for the use of any benighted hunter who might have the luck to stumble on the hut, and one of those abominable one-legged milking-stools, so common in that part of the world, which, having vainly endeavored to sit on, and having tumbled into the fire in consequence, to Joseph's intense amusement, I hurled madly over the hay out into the storm. As the clatter made amongst the shingles of the roof by its hasty exist subsided, we heard a noise which struck terror into both our hearts, and would doubtless have chilled our very marrow, if it had not been below freezing-point already. Devils! Berg-geister! Fly! out into the black storm! over the precipice! into the torrent! before some fearful mopping and mowing face, too ghastly horrible for human eye-ball to see without bursting, or human brain to conceive without madness, gibber out upon us from that dark corner! Listen: there it is again! And--mew-w-w-w-w! down tumbled between us a miserable, half-grown, gray kitten, nearly dead with cold and starvation, doubtless absent on some poaching expedition when the hut was deserted, and not thought worth the going back for. Oh! the joy of that unfortunate little beast at seeing man and fire once more! How she staggered about with tail erect, vainly trying to mew and purr at the same time! having to be perpetually pulled out of the fire, and "put out," to prevent her playing the part of one of Samson's foxes with our beds, filling the cabin with unspeakable smells of singed hair! And now she would persist in walking up our backs, and tickling us to madness with her scorched tail! Having disposed of "Catchins," as she was immediately named, as well as we could, by tossing her by the tail to the top of the hay, whenever she descended to thank us, which happened about three times in every two minutes, we "fixed" our suppers, broiling the schnee-huhner over the bright fire, and enjoyed ourselves mightily. After a smoke and a short cross-examination from Joseph as to our friends, family, and expectations, and particular inquiries for the shortest overland route to England, and the number of years required for the journey, we climbed up into the hay, and grubbed and wormed our way for two or three feet below its surface, and, making unto ourselves each a "spiracle" or blow-hole over our respective noses, tried to slumber. Now, a bed of short, sweet Alpine grass, fragrant with the spirits of a thousand departed flowers, is as warm, cozy, and elastic as a bed can be, but it has one unfortunate drawback,--the small straws and dust falling down the before-mentioned spiracle, tickle and titilate one's unfortunate face and nose in a most distracting manner; and as you utterly destroy the snug economy of your couch, and let in a rush of cold mountain air, as often as you raise your hand to brush away the annoyance, some fastidious persons might possibly prefer a modest mattress, with a fair allowance of sheets and blankets. At last, however, I was dozing off, tired of hearing Joseph muttering what certainly were not his prayers, rustling fretfully, and sneezing trumpet-like at intervals, as some straw, more inquisitive than usual, made a tour of inspection up his nostril, when I suddenly heard a round Tyrolese oath rapped out with great fervor, and something whirled over my head and plumped against the timbers of the roof. Dreamily supposing that it was the aforesaid cumbrous Tyrolese execration, which Joseph had jerked out with such energy as to send it clean back into oblivion, when something with an evil smell, and making a noise like a miniature stocking-machine, tumbled down my spiracle, plump into my face. Waking fully, I at once perceived that it was the cat, not the oath, I had heard fly over me shortly before, she, in the excess of her gratitude, being determined to stick as closely to us as possible. Following Joseph's example, I seized her by the tail, and whirled her, purring uninterruptedly, as far as I could. Ere many minutes had elapsed, she was again launched forth by the infuriated Joseph, and backwards and forwards she flew at least half-a-dozen times between us, without appearing in the least disconcerted, perhaps, indeed, finding the exercise conducive to the assimilation of the sour milk, till Nature could stand no more, and we fell fast asleep. Whether she spent the night on our faces, in alternate watches, I know not, but I had ghastly dreams, and when I woke in the morning, I found my hand and arm thrust forth from the hay, reposing on a cool and clean counterpane of snow, which had drifted in during the night, as if I had been repelling her advances even in my sleep. Feeling very cold and damp, we turned out as soon as we woke, and blowing up the embers of the fire, warmed ourselves as well as we could, and took a peep out into the night. The storm had passed away, leaving everything covered with a veil of snow, that gleamed faintly under the intense black-blue sky. The stars were beginning to assume that peculiar sleepy, twinkling appearance which shows that their night-watch is drawing to a close, and everything lay in still, calm rest around us. We breakfasted sparingly, as our provisions were beginning to run short, thanks to the keen mountain air and our hard work the day before, and just as the first cold chill of the approaching dawn began to be felt, we left the cabin, shutting up Catchins, and hanging the marmot on a peg out of her reach, till our return. Our day's route lay more round to the left of the Wildgrad Kögle. The scene was for some time a repetition of that of the day before, but the cliffs were still more precipitous and the ravines narrower and more difficult to traverse. Many a tumble we got for the first hour amongst the boulders covered with treacherous moss and cowberry plants, but before sunrise we had left all vegetation behind us again, and were up amongst the crags and the snow. As we ascended, we saw a valley to our left, filled to the brim with dense mist, which, as soon as the sun began to tinge the highest peaks, rose in swirling columns, and shut out every thing that was not in our immediate vicinity. This was advantageous, as, although it prevented our _seeing_, it at the same time prevented our being _seen_, from the cliffs before we reached our best ground. We toiled on steadily, crossing vast beds of snow, and occasionally the roots of some glacier, that threw itself into the valleys to our left, climbing, scrambling, and slipping, but still steadily ascending, till we got to where Joseph expected to fall in with chamois, when we called a halt, and sheltering ourselves behind a mass of rock from the keen morning wind, waited for the clearing of the mist. The Alp-spirit seemed to be amusing himself mightily with this same mist! at one moment, catching it up in huge masses, he piled it on the sharp peaks, as if to make himself a comfortable cushion; and then, sitting suddenly down to try its efficacy, drove it in all directions by his "lubber weight." Enraged, he tossed and tumbled it about for some time, and at last spread it into one broad level plain, with the higher peaks standing out clear and sharp, like rocks from a calm sea. Now and then the mist would disappear entirely for a few moments, leaving everything clear and bright; then a small cloud, "like a man's hand," would form on the side of some distant peak, and spreading out with inconceivable rapidity, would envelope us in its boiling wreaths, while the wind, ever and anon rushing down some unexpected gully, cut a tunnel right through it, giving us glimpses of distant mountains and snow-fields, looking near and strange as if seen through a telescope. At last the sun began to shine out cheerily and steadily, and the breeze gave a freshness and buoyance to our spirits never to be felt except on high mountains. The heavy atmosphere of the valley squeezes one's soul into its case, and sits on the lid like an incubus. That blessed mountain-spirit is the only power who takes the lid off altogether, and lets the soul out of its larva-case to revel in the strange beauties of his domain without restraint! After a time, we found ourselves in a region of snow-fields, filling up broad valleys, lying calm and shadowless in the bright sunshine. Here and there, they were marked by delicate blue lines, where the crevasses allowed the substratum of ice to be seen, showing that these apparently eternal and immovable plains of snow were slowly but steadily flowing downwards, to appear as splintered glaciers in the valley far below; and here and there again, dark ridges, standing sharply up from the snow-bed, marked the course of buried mountain ranges, and gave some idea of the vast depth of the deposit. But wonderfully beautiful as these plains were, and strange and wild as they appeared to an English eye, with a brilliant August sun pouring his whole flood of light and warmth upon them, they were not the great points of interest to us. Those mighty ranges of cliff, rising tier above tier to our right, fretted with a pure white lace-work of fresh fallen snow, with here and there vast beds of screes shot from above, giving promise of gemsenkraut, were the bits we scanned with the greatest eagerness. We had come for chamois, and I am afraid, looked upon the rest as of very secondary importance. We were advancing along the base of the lowest tier of cliff, which had a sort of step of snow running along it about half-way up for some half-a-mile, bounded at one end by an immense mass of screes and precipice, and at the other by a sudden turn of the rock, when Joseph suddenly dashing off his hat and throwing himself prostrate behind a stone, dragged me down beside him, with a vice-like grasp, that left its mark on my arm for many a day after. Utterly taken aback at the suddenness of my prostration, I lay beside him, wondering at the change that had come over his face; he was as white as marble, his moustache worked with intense excitement, and his eyeballs seemed starting from their sockets as he glared at the cliff. Following his line of sight, I glanced upwards, and my eye was instantly arrested by something--it moved--again--and again! With shaking hand I directed the telescope to the point, and there, at the end of it, hopping fearlessly on the shivered mountain side, scratching its ear with its hind foot, and nibbling daintily the scattered bits of gemsenkraut that spring up between the stones, stood fearless and free--a chamois! After watching him with intense interest for some moments, we drew back, scarcely daring to breathe, and sheltering ourselves behind a large stone, held a council of war. It was evidently impossible to approach him from where we were: we could not have moved ten steps towards him without the certainty of being discovered; our only chance was to get above him and so cut him off from the higher ranges. Crawling backwards, we managed to place a low range of rock between ourselves and the cliffs, and then making a wide sweep, we reached their base at some distance from where the chamois was feeding. After examining the precipice for some time, we found that the only mode of access to its summit, here some three or four hundred feet above us, was by a sort of ravine, what would be called in the Swiss Alps, a _cheminée_ a species of fracture in the strata the broken edges of which would give us some foot and hand hold: at its upper termination we could see the end of a small glacier, slightly overhanging the cliff, from which a small stream leapt from ledge to ledge, only alive in the last hour or two of sun-warmth, giving promises, which certainly were faithfully fulfilled, of additional slipperiness and discomfort. But we had no choice; we had already spent nearly an hour in our cautious circuit. Our scramble, wherever it took place, would cost us nearly another before we got above our expected prey, and if we hesitated much longer, he might take a fancy to march off altogether in search of the rest of the herd. So up we went, dragging ourselves and each other up the wet slippery rocks, getting a shivering "swish" of ice-cold water in our faces every now and then, till we got about half-way up, when, just as we were resting for a moment to take breath, we heard a tremendous roar, followed by a splintering crash just above our heads, and had the pleasure of seeing the fragments of some half-a-ton of ice, which had fallen from the glacier above, fly out from the shelf of rock under which we were resting, and spin down the rugged path we had just ascended. Thinking that this was quite near enough to be pleasant, and "calculating" that by every doctrine of chances the same thing would not happen twice in the same half-hour, we scrambled up as fast as we could before the next instalment became due, and at last reached safely the top of the precipice. We certainly had not much to boast of as far as walking went, when we got there, for the snow and rocks were tumbled about in a very wild manner. If we slipped off a rock, we tumbled waist-deep into the soft, melting snow-drifts, and when we tumbled on the snow, there was always some lurking rock ready to remind us of his presence by a hearty thump; however, as we were fairly above the chamois, our excitement carried us on. I do not think that Joseph swore once; we found afterwards indeed, to our cost, that in one of his involuntary summersets, he had broken _the_ bottle, and narrowly escaped being bayoneted by the fragments: however, we did not know it then, and so scrambled on in contented ignorance, until we reached the spot on the cliffs to our right, which we had marked as being above our prey. Here, however, we found that it was impossible to get near enough to the edge to look over, as the fresh-fallen snow threatened to part company from the rock and carry us with it, on the slightest indiscretion on our parts. Crouching down in the snow, we listened for some hint of our friend's whereabouts, and had not waited more than a minute, when the faint clatter of a stone far below convinced us that he was on the move: keeping low, we wallowed along till we came to where the crest of the cliff showing a little above the snow, gave us a tolerable shelter; carefully crawling to the edge, we peeped over, and saw, as we expected, that the gems had shifted his quarters, and as luck would have it, was standing on the snow-bed half-way up the cliff, immediately below us. Trembling, partly with excitement, and partly from the under-waistcoat of half-melted snow we had unconsciously assumed in our serpentine wrigglings, we lay and watched the graceful animal below us. He evidently had a presentiment that there was something "no canny" about the mountain-side; some eddy had perhaps reached his delicate nostrils, laden with the taint of an intruder. With his head high in the air, and his ears pointed forwards, he stood examining--as wiser brutes than he sometimes do--every point of the compass but the right. One foot was advanced; one moment more, and he would have gone; when crack! close to my ear, jut as I was screwing up my nerves for a long shot, went Joseph's heavy rifle. With a sinking heart I saw the brute take a tremendous bound, all four hoofs together, and then, like a rifle-ball glancing over the bosom of a calm lake, bound after bound carried him away and away over the snow-field, and round the corner to our right, before I had recovered my senses sufficiently to take a desperate snap at him. What we said, or felt, or how we got over the face of that cliff, I know not. A dim recollection of falling stones and dust showering round us--pieces of treacherous rock giving way in our hands and under our feet, bruising slides, and one desperate jump over the chasm between the cliff and the snow,--and there we were both, standing pale and breathless, straining our eyes for some scarcely expected trace of blood to give us hope. Not a drop tinged the unsullied snow at the place where he had made his first mad bound, nor at the second, nor at the third; but a few paces further on, one ruby-tinged hole showed where the hot blood had sunk through the melting snow. Too excited to feel any uprising of envy, hatred, or malice against my more fortunate companion, I raced along the white incline, leaving him behind reloading his rifle,--which was always a sort of solemn rite with him,--and following, without difficulty, the deep indentations of the animal's hoofs, I came to where the cliff receded into a sort of small bay, with its patch of snow on the same plane with the one I was on, but separated from it by a rugged promontory of cliff and broken rock. Cautiously I scrambled round the point, removing many a stone that seemed inclined to fall and give the alarm to the watchful chamois, and peeping cautiously round the last mass of rock that separated me from the snow-patch, I saw the poor brute, standing not more than sixty yards from me, his hoofs drawn close together under him, ready for a desperate rush at the cliff at the first sound that reached him; his neck stretched out, and his muzzle nearly touching the snow, straining every sense to catch some inkling of the whereabouts of the mischief he felt was near him. With my face glowing as if it had been freshly blistered, a dryness and lumping in my throat, as if I had just escaped from an unsuccessful display of Mr. Calcraft's professional powers, and my heart thud-thudding against my ribs at such a rate that I really thought the gems must hear it in the stillness, I raised my carbine. Once, at the neck just behind the ear, I saw the brown hide clear at the end of the barrel, but I dared not risk such a chance; and so, straining my nerves, I shifted my aim to just behind the shoulder,--one touch of the cold trigger, and as the thin gases streamed off, rejoicing at their liberation, I saw the chamois shrink convulsively when the ball struck him, and then fall heavily on the snow, shot right through the heart. With a who-whoop! that might have been heard half-way to Innspruck, I rushed up to him;--one sweep of the knife--the red blood bubbled out on to the snow that shrunk and wasted before its hot touch, as if it felt itself polluted, and there lay stretched out in all its beauty before me the first gems I ever killed--just as Joseph came up, panting, yelling, and jödling, and rejoicing at my success, without a shade of envy in his honest heart. Now I believe, in all propriety, we ought to have been melancholy, and moralized over the slain. That rich, soft black eye, filming over with the frosty breath of death, and that last convulsive kick of the hind legs, ought perhaps to have made us feel that we had done rather a brutal and selfish thing; but they did not. This is a truthful narrative, and I must confess that our only feeling was one of unmixed rejoicing. I have occasionally moralized over a trout, flopping about amongst the daisies and buttercups, and dying that horrible suffocation death of my causing; but it was never, if I remember right, the _first_ trout I had killed that day. My feelings always get finer as my pannier gets fuller, particularly if it be a warm afternoon, and I have _lunched_. But as for the unfortunate gems, we rejoiced over him exceedingly; we shook hands over him; we sat beside him, and on him; we examined him, carefully, minutely, scientifically, from stem to stem. I firmly believe that I could pick him out at this moment from the thousand ghosts that attend the silver-horned Gemsen König, if I had but the good luck to fall in with his majesty and his charmed suite. Joseph's ball had struck him high up on the neck, but had not inflicted any thing like a severe wound. Had we fired on him from below, he would have scaled the cliffs in a moment, and been no more seen, at least by us; but as he knew that the mischief was above him, he dared not ascend--to descend was impossible; and so, getting to a certain extent pounded, he gave me the rare chance of a second shot. Long we sat and gazed at the chamois; and the wild scene before us--never shall I forget it!--shut in on three sides by steep and frowning cliffs, in front the precipice, and far, far down, the wild rocky valleys, divided by shivered ridges, rising higher and higher till they mounted up into the calm, pure snow range, set in the frame of the jutting promontories on each side of us--looking the brighter and the "holier" from the comparative shade in which we were. Not a sound but the occasional faint "swish" of the waterfall that drained from the snow-bed,--not a living thing _now_ but our two selves standing side by side on the snow. We had killed the third, and there he lay stiffening between us! But, hillo! Joseph! we are nearly getting sentimental, after all, over this brute, (that I should say so!) who has all but broken our necks already, and who in all human probability will do so entirely before we have done with him. Fish up the decanter, and let us have a schnaps over our quarry; my throat and lips are burning, as if I had lunched off quicklime. Well, what are you fumbling at? Oh, horror! Joseph's hand returns empty from the bag, with a large cut on one of the fingers--weeping tears of blood! The bottle is smashed!--smashed to atoms! and the unconscious Joseph has had the celestial liquor trickling down his back--how long he know not, and care not; it is "gone, and for ever!" Like the summer-dried fountain, When our need is the sorest! But it is of no use blaspheming in that manner, Joseph; not one of those ten hundred and fifty millions of bad spirits you are invoking so freely, will bring us back one drop of our good ones; so we must e'en "girn and bide." But still it is as bad as bad can be,--not a drop of water for hours to come, perhaps. Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. Munching snow only chars one's lips like hot cinders, and the cool "swish" of the waterfall there below us only makes one the more thirsty. Let us be off out of ear-shot of it, at any rate. Take up the gems, and let us dream of cool, bubbling runlets and iced sour milk as we go. Dream! quotha! we must dream of how we are to go at all, first, and a very nightmarey sort of dream it promises to be; we are regularly pounded; not a vestige of a crack or crevice up which to worm ourselves in the whole face of the semicircular range of cliffs beneath which we stand; and moreover, they are all of that upside down, overhanging style, that precludes all climbing. We must retrace our steps as we best can, and try where we descended. "Well, Joseph, where did we come down--eh?" Not there! Nonsense!--impossible! Yes! too true; there it was; there are our tracks in the snow, and the dust and stones that were so obliging as to accompany us to the bottom, and be hanged to them! But the cliff has surely grown since then. It looks as high as Gallantry Bower, in dear old North Devon.--I wish I were at the top or bottom either of _that_, instead of where I am! There is not a hundred feet difference between them. Three hundred feet, the cliff is, if an inch! We can never do it! Let us make a cast round by the screes, and see if we cannot get down that way. We did so, but found that they were quite impassable. What looked like a continuous shoot when seen from below, we found to be divided by two or three ledges of rock, and the angle at which they lay, rendered it impossible for any thing heavier footed than a gems to pass them. We must up the cliff! We had no choice. Now, to begin, it was no easy thing to get at the cliff at all. That confounded gap between the snow and the rock was bad enough to get across from above; but to jump up from the sloping snow slap against the face of the rock was ten times worse. However, Joseph having uncoiled a few yards of line from his waist, and made it fast to the gems, tightened his belt, and took the crack gallantly, lighting on a narrow ledge, with his nose almost touching the rock, to which he stuck like a limpet for a moment, and then, having steadied himself, turned round and seated himself, with his legs dangling over the chasm. Now came my turn. Having thrown the end of the line to Joseph--after vainly looking for a promising ledge to land on, I yielded to his entreaties, and swung myself right _at_ him. We grasped each other pretty tight, you may be assured, gentle reader; and after swaying for a moment or two over the abyss, I climbed up him, and getting my feet on his shoulders, I managed to draw myself up to a ledge a few feet higher. Now came my turn to turn, and a most unpleasant piece of gymnastics it was. The ledge was not an inch too broad, and the rock below only rough enough to _scratch_ against, not to give any firm foot-hold. However, I at last got my back against the rock pretty firmly; and Joseph, who had dragged the gems up from the snow, threw me the end of the line, which, after one or two unsuccessful grabs, that nearly toppled me over from my "bad eminence," I caught, and with his assistance, got the gems up to me, and rested it across my knees. Joseph now turned his face to the rock, and getting up to me, placed one of his iron-soled shoes on my thigh, and the other on my shoulder, and climbed over and past me. As soon as he was firmly fixed, I threw him up the end of the line, and, felt much relieved of the weight of the chamois, whose rough hide rubbed lovingly over my face as it passed me, and turning round, and standing upon my ledge, laid hold of Joseph by the ankle, and again climbed up him and past him, to be climbed up and over in my turn. Over and over we had to repeat the same manoeuvre, varied occasionally by our being unable to turn or to sit down from the narrowness of the ledges, and then the strain was terrible. If we had not come sometimes to a broader ledge than usual, which allowed us to lie down and get an easier hold of the line, as it dangled like a plummet over the cliff, we, or at least I, could never have reached the top of the cliff _with_ the gems, and I very much doubt whether either of us would have cared much to have done so _without_ it. What was before me I hardly knew. Imitating as well as I could the happy _insouciance_ of a snail "sliming" up the side of the Parthenon, I tried to restrict my range of vision to points immediately near me. I never felt giddy in my life; but I felt that it would be running a terrible risk to look into the immensity that lay stretched out below me, like another world. However, every thing in this world must have at least one end, even an Alpine cliff. And at last, as I drew myself up, I found myself face to face with the snow. The last step was by no means the easiest or safest; but in a few moments all three of us, Joseph, the chamois, and myself, were lying on the snow-bed, one hardly more alive than the other. As soon as we had recovered a little, we stumbled back amongst the sloppy snow, and the half-hidden rocks, one of which had doubtless caused the untimely emptying of our spirit bottle, till we arrived at the _cheminée_ up which we had scrambled in the morning. Now scrambling _up_ is one thing, and scrambling _down_ is another--decidedly more difficult, particularly with the addition of a "beastie" twice as large as a well-grown fawn. So we decided to return over the small glacier which had so nearly knocked our brains out in our ascent, not without a lurking hope of finding some water in its delicate green chalices. The small ice-stream on which we pursued our thirsty search, flowed down from the upper snow-beds through a chasm in the cliffs, and lay right across our path. The crevasses were small and easy to traverse, though had they been ten times the breadth, we should have welcomed them for the prospect of water they held out. We soon discovered what we wanted, and throwing ourselves on the ice, from which the sun had long since melted the last night's snow, leaving nothing but the pure water crystal, revelled in long draughts of ice-cold water, regardless of the consequences. We lay there resting ourselves, and peering down the crevasses for some time. How deliciously refreshing was that cool green light, filtered through the translucent ice, to our eyes, wearied by the eternal glare of the snow-fields! I have often wondered why no poet had ever chosen one of these same crevasses, with its tinkling stream, and fairy bridges and battlements of pure green ice, bathing in a strange unearthly phosphorescent light, for the home of some glacier Undine. Where could one find a fitter palace for some delicate Ariel than such places as the moulins of the Mer de Glace, the ice-grottoes of the Grindenwald, or the Rhone glacier, or even the commonest crack in the most insignificant sheet of frozen snow. How exquisitely beautiful are those little emerald basins, fit baths for Titania, filled with water so pure and clear that one almost doubts its presence, till its exquisite coolness touches one's parched lips! I never wondered at the excitement of that enthusiastic Frenchman, who being held by the legs to prevent him throwing himself into the arms of the ice-nymph, whom he doubtless saw beckoning to him from below, hurled his hat into the moulin, and then raced down to the source of the Arveiron to see it appear, hoping, doubtless, that it would bring him some tidings of fairyland. But the nymph answered not: perhaps she was cold, and retained the chapeau for her own private wearing. At all events, M. le Baron never got it again, as far as I could learn. Our labor was now nearly over; we quickly traversed two or three small snow-fields, and after a little trouble in hauling ourselves and the gems up and down the ridges that separated them, we reached a smooth declivity of snow, down which we shot merrily, getting many a roll, it is true, but merely laughing thereat, as every tumble carried us all the faster downwards, and at last reached safe and sound the region of rocks and gravel we had left so long. How deliciously refreshing to the wearied eye was the first patch of green turf!--how brightly glowed the alpen-rosen amongst the rocks! And--yes! there is actually a honey-bee droning about that orchis, singing his welcome song of home, and fire-sides, and kindly greetings! Happy as two school-boys, we marched on, carrying our quarry alternately, yodling, and shouting, and playing all sorts of practical jokes on each other, rejoicing at the success of our expedition, caring nothing now for the frowns of the grim old giants around us, caring nothing for the bitter blasts and swirling snow-squalls that swept past us; and at last, as night closed in, we found ourselves once more in the little cabin, that seemed quite home-like to us, and which we had fancied more than once in the course of the day that we should never see again, with Catchins gyrating pound us, "making a tail" at the chamois, and welcoming us as old friends. We did not dawdle long over our supper, which consisted principally of the rat-like marmot, broiled on the embers, and a draught from the neighboring torrent, and turned into our hay beds, wet and wearied enough, with our brains in a whirl from the strange excitements of the day, and slept, too done up to care for tickling straws or feline impertinences. When I woke in the morning, I lay for some time trying to collect my thoughts, half fearing that all was but a dream, and that we had still our work before us; but on scrambling down, the sight of the gems reassured me, and was an agreeable balm for the intolerable aching I felt from head to heel. Joseph I must say groaned quite as much as myself, and we hobbled about in the dark to find bits of wood for our fire, like a couple of unfortunates just escaped from the rack. The skin of our faces and necks was peeling off, as if we had been washing them in oil of vitriol, and using sand-paper for a towel; but we were used to that, and had been as badly burnt many a time before; but we ached!--ye gods, how we did ache! It took a long warming and some mutually administered friction, to get us at all in walking trim. As soon as we become "lissom" again, having nothing to detain us, and very little to eat, we wended on our way, one bearing Catchins in the now empty bag, and the other with the gems, down towards the pines, covered with last night's snow, and following the course of the torrent, strode on as merrily, or perchance more so, as the first morning we started. The sun soon shone out bright and warm, the snow began to drip from the boughs, and every step we took showed the black mould and the decaying needle leaves of the pines. We heard the rustling of several black-cock, and it being my turn to carry Catchins' light weight, I shot one villanously, as he sat on a pine branch, and stuck his tail in my hat, after the fashion of all true yägers. Soon we left the melting snow and dripping woods behind us, and reached the bright meadows glowing beneath an Italian sky. Strange sounded the shrill chirping of the red and green grasshoppers in our ears, kindly each herdsman's yodle and maiden's laugh rang to our hearts, and palace-like seemed the little cabin that received us after our sojourn amongst the ice and snow, now seeming more like uneasy dreams than realities which we had undergone but a day before. Bright smiles greeted us, bright brown eyes laughed a welcome to us, and many a sturdy hand was clasped in ours as we sat resting ourselves on the bench before the door. But we tarried not long; we burned to show our trophy "at home;" and we sped down the Oetzthal, and reached Dumpfen early in the afternoon, to be cheered and complimented, and welcomed back with all the warmth of the honest Tyrolese heart. The people had been in great distress about us--about me, at least--as they supposed that I must, of necessity, have broken my neck. I suspect, indeed, that they never thought that I would really go, and were rather astonished when they woke, and found me gone. As for Joseph, it was his certain fate--if not now, another time. But they rejoiced in their mistake, and with my hat crowned with flowers by many a rosy finger, and my hands tingling from many a giant squeeze, and perhaps my heart, too, a little, from more than one gentle one, I hung my gems on a nail outside the door for inspection, and seated myself once again in the little chamber, looking out upon the torrent and the cliff. I cannot linger over the simple pleasures of that evening; as Shallow says, "the heart is all." "Jenkins of the _Post_" may love to record his reminiscences of a ball at Almack's, or an "æsthetic tea" at the Comtesse of Cruche Cassé's; but such remembrances always bring as much pain as pleasure to me, making me yearn for those free days spent amongst the mountains, and the torrents, and the happy single-hearted mountaineers, far from the cares, troubles, and tribulations of "our highly civilized society." And now, most patient reader,--are you there still? Farewell! I have tried to give you some faint description of the indescribable, and have, of course, failed. But take at least my advice, and a knapsack, and a thick pair of shoes, and eschewing hackneyed Switzerland, leave for once the old bellwether, and try one summer in the Norischer Alpen; and if you _are_ disappointed--I can only say, that you richly deserve to be! From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. VISIT TO THE ABERDEEN COMBWORKS. Within our recollection, comb-making was considered one of the most miserable of trades, and as destitute of any thing like an organized _modus operandi_ as that of the perambulating artisans who possessed a certain skill in the fashioning of rams' horns into spoons and rejoiced in the expressive designation of Horners. On a late visit to Aberdeen, however, we found the manufacture of combs carried on there not only to an extent far exceeding our preconceived notions, but flourishing in a state of skilful organisation; and we hastened to visit the comb-works of by far the largest comb-maker in this country or in the world. We have no room to follow the steps by which Aberdeen came to be the seat of this particular branch of industry; but before describing the system of comb-making there, we shall take a short retrospective glance at the general history of the comb, in order to illustrate the various changes it has passed through, and its gradual elevation to a respectable position in the manufactures of the country. It is impossible to state with any degree of accuracy the time when it first became an indispensable requisite of the toilet; but by what we can glean from the ancient writers it would appear to have been of Egyptian origin. The Greeks and Romans used combs made of boxwood, which they obtained as we do, from the shores of the Euxine Sea, and the mountain-ridge of Cytorus, in Galatia. According to Guasco, a modern Italian author, combs were also formed of silver, iron, bronze, but in no instance do we find the modern material, shell or horn. In addition to the wooden combs found in their tombs, it has been proved that the Egyptians had ivory combs, toothed on one side, which gradually came into use among the Greeks and Romans; but from specimens of the remains found at Pompeii, with representations on the Amyclæan tables, it would seem that the Greeks, who were remarkably studious and careful in arranging their hair, used them, with teeth on both sides, exactly similar to our small-tooth-combs. The mediæval progress of the comb exhibits, like that of every thing else of its class, much curious elaboration with but little improvement in utility. In the fifteenth volume of the _Archæologia_ there is a representation of an ivory comb found in the ruins of Inkleton Nunnery, Cambridgeshire, containing some Anglo-Saxon design exquisitely carved in relief, but with such teeth as a common boor in our day would treat with contempt. We find Chaucer commenting on the many absurd articles of female attire, at a time when both sexes tied up their hair in a "licorous fashion" with ivory pins; and one of the earliest specimens of English combs extant, was dug up in 1764 from beneath the lowest of the three paved streets, which lie--memorials of their several ages--under the present Shiprow Street of Aberdeen; and it was supposed to have lain there ever since Edward III. burned and ruined the city in 1336. In modern days the comb probably reached its most costly and ornamental state at the court of Louis XIV., where hair-dressing was an art more appreciated and often better paid than the higher efforts of genius. Combs of ivory and of tortoise-shell, richly inlaid with gold and pearl, formed an essential adjunct of the toilet of the court beauties. In Great Britain the fabrication of horn into combs was a very ancient process, chiefly in Yorkshire and the midland counties. But towards the end of the last century the increased demand for combs caused makers to establish themselves all over the country; and in Scotland there were one or two houses of some eminence in the trade at the period--some twenty-five years back--at which we have now arrived. It was, however, one of those trades that, as its artificers were concerned, would not stand investigation. Making combs on nearly the same principles as those pursued by their forefathers--that is, by simply cutting out the interspace between the teeth, with various sorts and sizes of saws--its followers, barely entitled to the name of skilled workmen, were dissipated, unsettled, and irregular in their habits. We come now to treat of the grand era in the comb trade--of the time when it was destined, like the great staple manufactures of our country, to undergo a revolution. The introduction of machinery and steam-power, with the division of labor, is suggestive of an important stride in the progress of the trade. About the year 1828 Mr. Lynn invented a machine of a singularly ingenious design, having for its principal object that of cutting two combs out of one plate of horn or shell; and two years afterwards Stewart, Rowell & Co. commenced the manufacture in Aberdeen. To the first of these circumstances the trade was indebted for the successful idea of a machine, which affected at the same time a saving of half the material, and an increase of produce almost inconceivable. To the latter it is still more indebted for the first application of steam-power to the machinery; and, what we think of infinitely greater importance, the introduction of those true principles in the philosophy of production contended for by Adam Smith--a philosophy which, in its legitimate application, has the invariable effect of elevating alike the character of the produce and the producers. We shall most appropriately represent the combined effect of these improvements on the trade by taking the reader along with us in a cursory view of the principal departments of the Aberdeen Combworks. Provided with an intelligent cicerone in the person of one of the clerks of the office, we began our investigations, and as an essential preliminary, were first shown specimens of the various kinds of raw material. In the order of its intrinsic value, this consists of tortoise-shells, horns, and hoofs. Ivory, in our day, is reserved almost exclusively for the manufacture of small-tooth combs, which form a branch of the ivory trade distinct from the one before us. Of the first of these materials, tortoise-shell, that best adapted to manufacturing purposes is the shell, or scales of a horny contexture which inclose the sea-tortoise, _Testudo imbricata_. It is found in all warm latitudes; but the best species are indigenous to Hindostan, the Indian Archipelago, and the shores of the Red Sea. The price we are apt to think excessive. At present it is thirty-five shillings per pound, and ten years ago it was nearly double that price. It forms however a valuable article of importation. There are two chief divisions in horn, buffalo and ox horns, both of which are imported from various parts of the globe. Buffalo horn is for the most part used in the manufacture of knife-handles, and such articles, in the cutlery trade. In comb-making it is chiefly used for dressing-combs, and, generally speaking, all combs of a deep black color are formed of this material. The best buffalo-horns are obtained from the East Indies, and the finest are those of the Indian buffalo from Siam. We were shown a beautiful specimen of Siamese horns, which, on account of their extraordinary dimensions, had been preserved and polished. One of them measured five feet from tip to base, eighteen and a half inches in circumference at the widest part, and weighed fourteen pounds. Some conception may be formed of the size of an animal which can support such a weight on the frontal-bone, if we recollect that an English ox-horn weighs only a single pound. Ox-horns, the staple of comb-makers, are imported with hides from South America, the Cape of Good Hope, and New South Wales. The imports, however, are chiefly from the enormous herds of South American black-cattle, which have multiplied to such an extent in the Brazilian territories, that they are now slaughtered for the sake of their hides and horns, and their carcasses left to be devoured by the innumerable carnivorous animals which infest the jungles. The ox-horns entered for consumption in Great Britain in 1850 numbered 1,250,000, and the average price is about fifty pounds per ton. Hoofs are from the German and home markets, and are worth about twelve pounds per ton. They are used generally in the cheapest description of combs, but although the least valuable material, are subject to the most costly and ingenious processes of manufacture. At the time of our visit the quantity of horns and hoofs in stock amounted to upwards of one hundred tons of each. Enormous piles of different varieties--from the delicate curvature of the small Highland ox to the equally beautiful but enormous _cornu_ of the ferocious buffalo of the Cape; from the Smithfield horns to those of the gigantic buffalo of Thibet and Siam--all lay piled in inextricable confusion. After a glance at the steam-engine, fifty horse-power, and the largest of the horizontal kind in Scotland, we proceeded to see the first stage of the manufacture, where horns are cut into assorted sizes by a circular saw. A horn is twice cut transversely, and afterwards, if a large one, longitudinally. The tips or extremities here cut off are sent to Sheffield, where they are converted into table-knife and umbrella handles; and for this purpose sixteen thousand horns can be cut up in a week. Instead of being divided in this manner, the hoofs are, after being boiled a certain time, to render the fibre soft, cut into two pieces; or rather the sole is stamped out by vertical punching-machines of the same irregular conformation. The horns and hoofs thus cut are then brought in pieces into the pressing department. The first thing that strikes the visitor on entering is the peculiar and easily distinguishable odor of burnt horn, which indeed is predominant throughout the works. This arises from the high temperature necessary to the fabrication of horn, which to a greater or less extent effects decomposition of the material, and is invariably accompanied with the disengagement of the peculiar gases which create the odor. Along the floor of this department are thirty-six furnaces of a peculiar construction, and at each of these a man and boy were busily engaged in shaping the cut horns into flat plates, by heating the pieces, and then cutting them to the required shape with knives. They were then inserted between screw-blocks, and pressed flat. If, however, the plates are required for stained combs, as the greater part of them are, a different mode of pressing is pursued. Into a rectangular cast-iron trough about two and a half feet long by twelve inches wide and deep, a number of iron hot-plates are put; they are then oiled on their surface, and the plates of horn inserted between them; a wedge is next driven into the press by the percussion-force of a weight falling eight feet, producing a force of about one hundred and twenty tons. This pressure on the horn in the iron plates has the effect of breaking the fibre to a certain degree, and forcing it to expand in a lateral direction. Whatever may have been the original color of the horn, it is now of a uniform dark green color, and perfectly soft. This treatment renders the tissues more pervious to the action of acids, and will be better understood when we arrive at the operation of staining. But there are other means of pressure. Around the apartment were arranged one hundred and twenty iron screw-presses--levers of the second order, and differing only from a common vice in pressing under the screw after the manner of nut-crackers. They are fitted with steel dies, with a variety of engraved designs, and in these braid-combs, the outside coverings of pocket-combs and side-combs are pressed. We were shown a new impression on pocket-combs of the Crystal Palace. A man exerting his strength on one of these presses can produce a force of upwards of fifty tons. But however great, the pressure is still insufficient. The enormous demand for the cheap side-combs of hoof led to the application of hydraulic pressure. The two portions of the hoof, after being boiled a second time in a number of little troughs, with a steam-jet in each of them to preserve the necessary temperature, the excrescences still adhering are pared off. They are then transferred to an adjoining room, where sixteen hydraulic presses, are in operation; and here are subjected to a pressure of three hundred tons, with a degree of speed and precision that is astonishing. They come out of the press in the form of small, semi-transparent, rectangular plates, having on each side the rounded projection or beading observable on most side-combs. To illustrate the resistless force of this pressure, we were informed that the very steel dies which give shape to the hoof are soon crushed and worn out; and it was not without some nice calculation and experiment that the application of hydraulic pressure to the purpose was successfully attained. After having received the necessary formation by the various modes of pressing, the plates are laid aside to dry in a room where a high temperature is preserved by means of steam-pipes, and where they are also assorted into different sizes, and the edges squared with circular saws. The number of such plates, of shell, horn, and hoof, in stock at the time of our visit, was somewhere about four millions and a half. From this they are distributed to the different processes in order--the first of which is cutting the teeth. Certain classes of horn-plates, however, are subjected to a farther process of planing on the surface preliminary to this operation; but in all plates which have been hot-pressed, and are intended to be stained, this is unnecessary, and therefore they are taken when perfectly dry to the cutting department. On entering this department the visitor is sometimes bewildered. The incessant and peculiar clatter of the machinery, the heat of the place, and apparent confusion, produce together a curious effect. A little observation, however, shows that we have arrived at the basis of all the modern improvements in comb-making. On benches around the apartment, in close proximity to each other, were twenty-four "twinning-machines"--the invention, with its subsequent improvements, to which we have referred. Each of these is worked by a man, with an attendant who keeps up a supply of hot plates from the fires arranged for that purpose in the centre of the room. It is impossible without diagrams to explain the principles and construction of this apparatus; but there can be no mistaking its effect. A plate of horn, after being heated, is placed on a small carriage within the cast-iron frame of the machine, which travels by means of a particular arrangement of gearing on parallel slides. Immediately over this are two angular-shaped chisel-like cutters, which, on the application of motive power, descend on the horn with an alternating motion, and an inconceivable degree of rapidity and force. Before we could well see, far less understand, the rationale of the process, we were shown the horn cut in two pieces--_one half literally taken out of the other_, and each presenting the well-defined outline of a comb. In this cutting department resides the perfection of that beautiful mechanism that revolutionized the trade and reduced it to mathematical precision. To appreciate this we have only to look at the increase it has effected in the production. A comb-maker of the old school could not perhaps, with all his skill, cut more than eighty or a hundred combs per day; while with this machinery a man and boy will cut upwards of _two thousand_ of the same kind, and with a consumption of only half the material. The finer dressing-combs, and all small-tooth combs, are still cut by circular saws in the next department. Here, however, a moderately curious visitor will not linger. A dense atmosphere of horn dust fills the large apartment, and gives to every thing within its influence the white appearance that distinguishes a flour-mill, to which indeed at first sight it bears a striking resemblance. From the notes we took, we learn that here there are wheels on the fine self-acting machinery, in connection with the cutting and pointing of combs, that revolve 5000 times in a minute, and saws so delicately fine as to cut forty teeth within the space of an inch. We inquired as to the effect on the operatives of this animalized atmosphere, and were informed that it was not known to be injurious. On the contrary, it was stated as a singular fact, in connection with the late visitation of cholera in Aberdeen, that not a single comb-maker had been affected by the disease, at least fatally; whence it may be inferred, although we do not pretend to assign the reason, that the fabrication of horn must be attended with considerable anti-miasmatic effects. At all events it is certain that horn-dust cannot exercise that injurious action on the air-passages and the lungs which is experienced in many trades, such as that of the steel-grinders of Sheffield. Passing over one or two intermediate stages after the combs are thus cut and twinned--such as "thinning" on the outer edge by means of grindstones, and "pointing," by means of peculiarly-shaped bevel-saws--we arrive at the next department, where the finishing is given by the hand. Here we meet with artificers who, with a pertinacious reverence for ancient usages, preserve among themselves the appellation of comb-makers _par excellence_, forgetting that the very boys and girls in their respective departments play as important a part in the aggregate production. And yet, in their province, they are deserving of commendation. The specimens of elaborate and skilful decoration displayed here, especially on ladies' braid-combs, were admirable, and one pattern was shown us wherein there was a species of chain, formed of beautifully stained horn, woven with the head of the comb, which, although we examined it minutely, and knew there must have been a joint in each alternate link, we nevertheless failed to discover. It is in this department that the teeth are smoothed and rounded--an operation technically termed "grailling"--which is effected by different sorts of cutting rasps. So far as the making or formation is concerned, the combs are now finished. At the opposite side of the buildings we were taken to the department where the staining is carried on. This will be better understood if described as the imitation on the various classes of combs of the natural diversity of tint in tortoise-shell. The horn, whether in plates, as in the side-combs, or after being "twinned," as in dressing-combs, is immersed in diluted nitric acid, which, with its characteristic action on all organized tissues, creates a deep and permanent yellow stain. This resembles the ground color of tortoise-shell; and to produce the variegation, the horns are then treated with a particular composition of red oxide of lead, with certain alkaline compounds, which has the effect of neutralizing the action of the acid, and imprinting a stain of a deep orange color. After being carefully washed, dried, and polished, the surface of the combs presents the beautiful and natural appearance desired. Indeed, the imitation is so perfect in the best classes of stained combs, that a practised observer can only detect it. We were shown, for example, two specimens of braid-combs, one of real tortoise-shell and another of stained horn; and so much alike were they in color and configuration, that we could not tell which was which, and yet the one comb was worth about ten times as much as the other. This operation of staining, which is somewhat artistic, is performed by women. There are still some minor departments, which we need not describe in detail. "Buffing" consists in smoothing the rough surfaces of the horn by means of wheels covered with walrus skin. Side-combs and braids are bent to their peculiar curve by being first heated and then fastened to wooden blocks--an operation that lasts only a few minutes. Pocket-combs have of course a different and peculiar treatment in some stages; such as the formation of the joint, and the putting together of the handles. And there is a department exclusively devoted to the fabrication of horn-spoons, which becomes chiefly remarkable from the circumstance of there being no modern application of machinery to the manufacture. The last process, however, to which all combs are subjected, is that of polishing, which is effected by wheels, covered with leather of different degrees of softness. After this they are despatched to the warehouse, to be assorted the last time--the side-combs being stitched to cards, or packed in fancy boxes, which affords constant work to about twenty women. We were finally shown the patterns of the different kinds of combs, many of them exceedingly beautiful; but we can only notice them in regard to number. Of dressing-combs (counting the different sizes of all the patterns), there were 605; ladies' braid-combs, 612; ladies' side-combs, 525; pocket, small-tooth, horse combs, and sundry articles, 186: in all, 1928 different varieties. The aggregate number produced of all these different sorts averages upwards of 1200 gross weekly, or about 9,000,000 annually. The annual consumption of ox-horns is about 730,000, being considerably more than half the imports of 1850; the consumption of hoofs amounts to 4,000,000; the consumption of tortoise-shell and buffalo-horn, although not so large, is correspondingly valuable: even the waste, composed of horn-shavings and parings of hoof, which, from its nitrogenized composition, becomes valuable in the manufacture of prussiate of potash, amounts to 350 tons in the year; the broken combs in the various stages of manufacture average 50 or 60 gross in a week; and as the crowning illustration of the enormous extent of these comb-works, the very paper for packing costs L.600 a year. There are so many beautiful instances of the division of labor that the task of selecting is not easy. But let us take the cheapest article in the trade; namely, the side-combs, sold retail at 1d. per pair: in its progress from the hoof to the comb--finished, carded, and labelled "German shell"--it undergoes eleven distinct operations. This comb, which twenty years ago was sold to the trade at 3s. 6d. per dozen, can now be purchased in the same way for _two shillings and sixpence per gross!_ thus effecting a reduction in price of about 1600 per cent. As an illustration of the value of labor, we give the following comparative estimate of the produce of the three materials:---- 1 cwt. shell, val. L.200, produces combs, val. 275, inc. 37-1/2 per cent. 1 ton horns, " 56, " " " 150, " 168 " " 1 ton hoofs, " 12, " " " 36, " 200 " " Regarded in this aspect, in the relation of labor to material, we find that hoofs--intrinsically the least valuable of the materials--become, with the application of labor, the _most valuable_--that is, proportionably: and the converse is true in the case of tortoise-shell. At the time of our visit there were employed 456 men and boys, and 164 women--in all, 620 persons--exactly four times the number employed in the comb-trade in all Scotland when the house commenced business. From the National Era. A REMINISCENCE. BY ALICE CAREY. Some four or five years ago, there came to reside in the neighborhood in which I then lived a family consisting of three persons--an old lady, a young man, and a child of some fourteen years. The cottage they took was divided by a little strip of woods from my own home; and I well remember how rejoiced I was on first seeing the blue smoke curling up from the high red chimneys, for the house had been a long time vacant, and the prospect of having near neighbors gave me delight. Perhaps, too, I was not the less pleased that they were new neighbors. We are likely to under-estimate persons and things we have continually about us; but let separation come, and we learn what they were to us. _Apropos_ of this--in the little grove I have spoken of I remember there was an oak tree, taller by a great deal than its fellows; and a thousand times I have felt as though its mates must be oppressed with a painful sense of degradation, and really wished the axe were laid at its root. At last, one day I heard the ringing strokes of that fatal instrument, and, on inquiry, was told that the woodman had received orders no longer to _spare that tree_. Eagerly I listened at first--every stroke was like the song of victory; then the gladness subsided, and I began to marvel how the woods would look with the monarch fallen; then I thought, the glory will have departed, and began to reflect on myself as having sealed its death warrant, so that when the crash, telling that the mighty was fallen, woke the sleeping echoes from the hills, I cannot tell how sad an echo it waked also in my heart. If I could see it standing once more, just once more! but I could not, and till this day I feel a twinge when I think of the tall oak. But the new neighbors. Some curiosity mingled with my pleasure, I confess, and so, as soon as I thought they were settled, and feeling at home, I made my toilet with unusual care for the first call. The cottage was somewhat back from the main road, and access to it was had by a narrow grass-grown lane, bordered on one side by a green belt of meadow land, and on the other by the grove, sloping upward and backward to a clayey hill, where, with children and children's children, about them, "The rude forefathers of the hamlet slept." A little farther on, but in full view of its stunted cypresses and white headstones, was the cottage. Of burial grounds generally I have no dread, but from this particular one I was accustomed, even from a child, to turn away with something of superstitious horror. I could never forget how Laura Hastings saw a light burning there all one winter night, after the death of John Hine, a wild, roving fellow, who never did any real harm in his life to any one but himself, hastening his own death by foolish excesses. Nevertheless, his ghost had been seen more than once, sitting on the cold clay mound beneath which the soul's expression was fading and crumbling into dust--so, at least, said some of the oldest and most pious inhabitants of our village. There, too, Mary Wildermings, a fair young girl who died, more sinned against than sinning, had been heard to sing sad lullabies under the waning moon sometimes, and at other times had been sitting by her sunken grave, and braiding roses, as for a bridal, in her hair. True, I never saw any of these wonderful things; but a spot more likely to be haunted by the unresting spirits of the bad could not readily be imagined. The woods, thick and full of birds, along the roadside, thinned away toward the desolate ridge, where briers grew over the grave-mounds, and about and through the fallen palings, as they would, with here and there a little clearing among weeds and thistles and high matted grass, for the making of a new bed. It was the twilight of a beautiful summer day as I walked down the grassy lane and past the lonesome graveyard to make my first call at the cottage, feeling, I scarcely knew why, strangely sad. By an old broken bridge in the hollow between the cottage and the graveyard I remember that I sat down, and for a long time listened to the trickling of the water over the pebbles, and watched the golden patches of sunlight till they quite faded out as "came still evening on, and twilight gray, that in her sober livery all things clad." So quietly I sat that the mole, beginning its blind work at sunset, loosened and stirred the ground beneath my feet, and the white, thick-winged moths, coming from beneath the dusty weeds, fluttered about me, and lighted in my lap, and the dull, flabby beating of the bat came almost in my face. The first complaint of the owl sounded along the hollow and died over the next hill, warning me to proceed, when I heard, as it were the echo of my own thought, repeated in a low, melancholy voice, the conclusion of that beautiful stanza of the elegy in reference to that moping bird. I distinctly caught the lines---- "Of such as wandering near her sacred bower, Molest her ancient solitary reign." Looking up, I saw approaching slowly, with arms folded and eyes upon the ground, a young and seemingly exceeding handsome man. He passed without noticing me at all, and I think without seeing me. As he did not observe me, I had the better opportunity of observing him, though I would fain have foregone that privilege to have won one glance. He interested me, and I felt humiliated that he should pass me as though I were a stick or a stone. His face was pale and very sad, and his forehead shaded with a mass of black, heavy hair, pushed away from one temple, and falling neglectedly over the other. "Well!" said I, as I watched him ascending the opposite hill, feeling very much as though he had wantonly slighted some claim I had upon him, though I could not possibly have the slightest, and, turning ill-humoredly away, I walked with a quick step toward the cottage. A golden-haired young girl sat in the window reading, and on my approach arose and received me with easy gracefulness and well-bred courtesy, but during my stay her manner did not once border upon cordiality. She was very beautiful, but her beauty was like that of statuary. The mother I did not see. She was, as I was told, slightly indisposed, and, on begging that she might not be disturbed, the daughter readily acquiesced. Every thing about the place indicated people accustomed to refined and elegant habits, but whence they came, how long they proposed to remain, and what relation the young man sustained to the other members of the family I confess I would gladly have known. Seeing a flute on the table, I spoke of music, for I conceived it to belong to the absent gentleman. I received no enlightenment, however; and as the twilight was already falling deeply, I felt obliged to take leave, without obtaining even a glimpse of the person whom I had pictured in imagination as young and fair, and of course agreeable. The sun had been set some time, but the moon had risen full and bright, so that I felt no fear even in passing the graveyard, but walked more slowly than I had done before, till, reaching the gate, I paused to think of the awful mystery of life and death and immortality. This is not a very desolate spot after all, thought I, as leaning over the gate, something of the quiet of the place infused itself into my spirits. Here, I felt, the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. Here the long train of evils that attach themselves to the best phases of humanity fade to silent dust. Here the thorn-crown of pain is loosened from the brow of sorrow by the white hand of peace, and the hearts that were all their lifetime bowed under the shadow of a great and haply unpitied affliction, never ache any more. And here, oh, best of all, the frailties of the unresisting tempted are folded away beneath the shroud from the humiliating glances of pity--from the cold eyes of pride. We have need to be thankful that when man brought upon his primal nature the mildew of sin, God did not cast us utterly from him, but in the unsearchable riches of his mercy struck open the refuge of the grave. If there were no fountain where our sins of scarlet might be washed as white as wool--if the black night of death were not bordered by the golden shadows of the morning of immortality--if deep in the darkness were not sunken the foundations of the white bastions of peace--it were yet an inestimable privilege to lay aside the burden of life, for life becomes--sooner or later, a burden, an echo among ruins. In the corner of the burial ground, where the trees are thickest, a little apart from the rest, was the grave of Mary Wildermings, and year after year the blue thistles bloomed and faded in its sunken sod. The train of my reflections naturally suggested her, and, turning my eyes in the direction of her resting place, I saw, or thought I saw, the outline of a human figure. I remembered the story of her unresting ghost, and at first little doubted that I beheld it, and felt, I own, a tumult of strange feeling on finding myself thus alone so near a questionable shape. Then, I said, this is some delusion of the senses; and I passed my hand over my eyes, for an uncertain glimmer had followed my intensity of gaze. I looked towards the cottage to reassure myself by the light of a human habitation, but all there was dark--a cloud had passed over the moon, and, without venturing to look towards the haunted grave, I withdrew from the gate, very lightly; nevertheless, it creaked as I did so. Any sound save the beating of my own heart gave me courage; and when I had walked a little way, I turned and looked again, but the dense shadow would have prevented my seeing any thing, if any thing had been there. Certain it is, I saw nothing. On returning home, I asked the housekeeper, a garrulous person usually, if she remembered Mary Wildermings, and if she was not buried in the graveyard across the wood. "Yes, I remember her, and she is buried in the corner of the ground on the hill. They come to my house, I know, to get a cup, or something of the sort, with which to dip the water from her grave, for it rained terribly all the day of her funeral. But," she added, "what do you want to talk of the dead and gone for, when there are living folks enough to talk about?" Truth is, she wanted me to say something of our new neighbors, and was vexed that I did not, though I probably should have done so had they not been quite driven from my thoughts by the more absorbing event of the evening; so, as much vexed and disappointed as herself, I retired. The night was haunted with some troublous dreams, but a day of sunshine succeeded, and my thoughts flowed back to a more cheerful channel. Days and weeks went by, and we neither saw nor heard anything of our new neighbors, for my call was not returned, nor did I make any further overtures towards an acquaintance. Often, as I sat under the apple tree by the door, of twilights, I heard the sweet mellow music of the flute. "Is that at the cottage?" said the housekeeper to me, one night: "it sounds to me as though it were in the corner of the graveyard." I smiled as she turned her head a little to one side, and, encircling the right ear with her hand, listened for some minutes eagerly, and then proceeded to express her conviction that the music was the result of no mortal agency. "Did you ever hear of a ghost playing the flute?" said I. "A flute!" she answered, indignantly, "it's a flute, just as much as you are a flute; and for the sake of enlightening your blind understanding, I'll go to the graveyard, night as it is, if you will go with me." "Very well," I said. "Come on." So, under the faint light of the crescent moon, we took our way together. Gradually the notes became lower and sadder, and quite died away. I urged my trembling companion to walk faster, lest the ghost should vanish too; and she acceded to my wish with silent alacrity, that convinced me at once of the sincerity of her expressed belief. Just as we began to ascend the hill, she stopped suddenly, saying, "There! did you hear that?" I answered that I heard a noise, but that it was no unusual thing to hear sounds of the sort in an inhabited neighborhood at so early an hour. It was the latching of the gate at the graveyard. She answered, solemnly. "As you value your immortal soul, go no further." In vain I argued, that a ghost would have no need to unlatch the gate. She positively refused to go farther, and with a courage not very habitual to me, I confess, I walked on alone. "Do you think I don't know that sound?" she called after me. "I would know if I had forgotten everything else. Oh, stop till I tell you! The night Mary Wildermings died," I heard her say; but I knew the sound of the gate as well as she, and would not wait even for a ghost story. I have since wished I had, for I could never afterwards persuade her to reveal it. Gaining the summit of the hill, I perceived, a little way before me, a dark figure, receding slowly; but so intent was I on the superhuman, that I paid little attention to the human; though afterward, in recalling the circumstance, the individual previously seen while I sat on the bridge became in some way associated with this. How hushed and solemn the graveyard seemed! I was half afraid, as I looked in--quite startled, in fact, when latching and unlatching the gate, to determine whether the sound I had heard were that or not, a rabbit, roused from its light sleep, under the fallen grass, sped fleetly across the still mounds to the safer shelter of the woods. I saw nothing else, save that the grass was trampled to a narrow path leading towards Mary's grave. During the summer, I sometimes saw the young girl in the woods, and I noticed that she neither gathered flowers nor sang with the birds; but would sit for hours in some deep shadow, without moving her position in the least, not even to push away the light curls which the wind blew over her cheeks and forehead, as they would. She seemed to neither love nor seek human companionship. Once only I noticed, and it was the last time she ever walked in the woods, that he whom I supposed to be her brother was with her. She did not sit in the shade, as usual, but walked languidly, and leaning heavily on the arm of her attendant, who several times swept off the curls from her forehead, and bent down, as if kissing her. A few days afterwards, being slightly indisposed, I called in the village doctor. Our conversation, naturally enough, was of who was sick and who was dead. "Among my patients," he said, "there is none that interests me so deeply as a little girl at the cottage--indeed, I have scarcely thought of anything else, since I knew that she must die. A strange child," he continued; "she seems to feel neither love of life nor fear of death--nor does she either weep or smile; and though I have been with her much of late, I have never seen her sleep. She suffers no pain--her face wears the same calm expression, but her large, melancholy eyes are wide open all the time." The second evening after this, though not quite recovered myself, I called at the cottage, in the hope of being of some service to the sick girl. The snowy curtain was dropped over the window of her chamber--the sash partly raised, and all within still--very still. The door was a little open, and, pausing, I heard from within a low, stifled moan, which I could not misunderstand, and pushing open the door, I entered without rapping. In the white sheet, drawn straight over the head and the feet, I recognised at once the fearful truth--the little girl was dead. By the head of the bed, and still as one stricken into stone, sat the personage I so often wished to see. The room was shadowy, and his face buried in his hands--nevertheless, I knew him--it was he who had passed me on the bridge. Presently the housekeeper, or one that I took to be she, entered, and whispering to him, he arose and left the room, so that I but imperfectly saw him. When he was gone, the woman folded the covering away from the face, and to my horror I saw that the eyes were still unclosed. Seeing my surprise, she said, as she folded a napkin, and pinned it close over the shut lids---- "It is strange, but the child would never in life close her eyes--her mother, they say, died in watching for one who never came, and the baby was watchful and sleepless from the first." The next day, and the next, it was dull and rainy--excitement and premature exposure had induced a return of my first indisposition, so that I was not at the funeral. I saw, however, from my window, preparations for the burial--to my surprise, in the lonesome little graveyard by the woods. In the course of a fortnight, I prepared for a visit of condolence to the cottage, but, on reaching it, found the inhabitants gone--the place still and empty. On my return, I stopped at the haunted burial ground--close by the grave of Mary Wildermings was that of the stranger child. The briers and thistles had been carefully cut away, there was no slab and no name over either, but the blue and white violets were planted thickly about both. That they slept well, was all I knew. From Household Words. THE SHADOW OF MARGERY PASTON. A suggestive book, "The Paston Letters; Original Letters, written during the reigns of Henry the Sixth, Edward the Fourth, and Richard the Third:" the private history of a family of rank, some four centuries ago. In this collection of ancient memorials of domestic life, we trace the nature of the contests between themselves of a poor, ambitious, and turbulant aristocracy, when the right of the strong arm was paramount over law; we see the growth of that power which was derived from the profitable exercise of industry; and view the middle classes, amidst the partial oppression and general contempt of the high-born, securing for themselves a firm position and a strong hold, whilst the exclusive claims of feudality were crumbling around them. Here we learn how harsh were many of the domestic relations of parent and child--how public oppression had its counterpart in private tyranny. The love passages of the book are singularly interesting. A humble friend of the Paston family has won the affections of one of its daughters. They are betrothed. The mother insults the "Factor." The brothers despise him. The power of the Church is opposed to the union. Yet the ardent girl is constant--and she triumphs. How she finally emerged from her persecutions is not recorded. But the last letter of the angry mother, which describes these struggles, is thus endorsed:--"A letter to Sir John Paston from his mother, touching the good-will between her daughter Margery P. and Ric. Calle, who were after married together." The shadows of the young lady and her lover arise before us, and we try to piece out their dim history. * * * * * Margery Paston is sitting in the accustomed solitude of the Brown chamber in her mother's dowry house at Norwich. Dame Margaret Paston, her mother, has just returned from spending the Easter of 1469 in her son's ruinous castle of Caister. He holds this castle under a disputed will; and the great duke of Norfolk is preparing to dispossess him of it, not by the feeble writs of the King's Court at Westminster, but by gun and scaling ladder. On the return of the lady she receives unwelcome intelligence. Her chaplin, Sir James Gloys, has intercepted a letter addressed to her daughter. The young lady is the object of constant anxiety and suspicion--watched--persecuted. Up to the age of twelve or fourteen she had seen little of her parents, but had been a welcome inmate in the family of Sir John Fastolf, at Caister; who, in his caresses of the fair girl, indulged the strong affection which old men generally feel towards a playful and endearing child. He had no children of his own, and little Margery was, therefore, a real solace to the ancient warrior. There was another child, a few years older than Margery, who was admitted to play, and to learn out of the same book, with the daughter of the Pastons. This was Richard Calle, the only son of an honest and painstaking man, who acted in the capacity of a steward for Sir John Fastolf, and conducted many of the complicated affairs with which the old knight amused himself in the evening of a busy life--his friends complaining of "the yearly great damage he beareth in disbursing his money about shipping and boats, keeping a house up at Yarmouth to his great harm, and receiveth but chaffer and ware for his corns and his wools, and then must abide a long day to make money."[11] Richard Calle has now grown into manhood. He is reputed to have received a goodly inheritance from his father, which he has increased by provident enterprises in trade. When the Pastons wanted money, he was once always to be applied to. But he has presumed to address his play-fellow Margery with the language of affection; and though Sir John Paston had once said that, for his part, Richard Calle might have his dowerless sister and welcome, for he had always been a warm friend of the Pastons; his mother is indignant that a trader should think of marrying into a gentle family; and John of Gelston, the second son, in an hour when the fortunes of the house seemed in the ascendant, has vowed that Richard Calle "should never have my good-will for to make my sister to sell candles and mustard, at Framlingham."[12] Margery Paston sits in the Brown chamber, with her bright blue eyes dimmed with tears. She is endeavouring to forget her own sorrows by reading a tale of imaginary griefs, which for four hundred years has never been read with a tearless eye. She is at that passage of "The Clerk's Tale" of Chaucer, where Grisildis has her infant daughter taken from her, under pretence that it is to be put to death:---- "But, at the last, to speaken she began, And meekly she to the serjeant pray'd (So as he was a worthy gentleman) That she might kiss her child ere that it deid [died]; And in her barne [lap] this little child she laid With full sad face, and 'gan the child to bliss, And lulled it, and after 'gan it kiss." The door of the chamber is hastily opened, and an old servant stands before Margery with a face of affright. All in that household love the gentle maiden; and so the old man, seeing the tear in her eye, bids her be of good cheer, for though his worshipful mistress is now in a somewhat impatient humor, and demands her instant attendance in the Oaken parlor, she is a good lady at heart, and would soon forgive any slight cause of offence. Dame Paston has called in two allies to constitute, with herself, the tribunal that is about to sit in judgment on Margery Paston. Dame Agnes Paston, the aged mother of the late heir of Caister, sits at the table with her daughter-in-law and the priest. Margery enters; and, in a moment, is kneeling at the feet of her mother, with the accustomed reverence of child to parent. "Oh, minion," says the mother, "rise, I beseech you; it is not for such as you to kneel to a poor forlorn widow, left with few worldly goods. Mistress Calle has plenteousness all around her, and has nothing to ask of the world's gear. She has her good house at Framlingham, and her full store at Norwich. Mistress, know you the price of salted hams at this present? Are pickled herrings plenteous? We have some wool in loft, which we should not be unwilling to exchange for worsteds. How say you, Mistress Dry-goods; will you deal, will you chaffer?" "My mother, what mean you?" "Oh, minion, you know full well my meaning. You are an alien from your family. You are betrothed to a low trader, with no gentle blood in his veins." "The good Sir William Paston, Knight, and whilom Judge of His Majesty's Court of the Common Pleas, would rise from his grave to save a granddaughter of his from inter-marrying with mustard and candle," quoth the ancient lady. "Faugh! a factor!" "And one whom I shrewdly suspect to be a heretic," says the priest, looking earnestly at Mistress Margaret Paston. "Oh, my mother, why am I thus persecuted?" "Persecuted, foosooth!" responds the elder dame; "I took other rule with my daughters; and well do I remember that when Elizabeth Clere, my niece, tried to intercede with me for her wilful cousin Mary, forasmuch as she had been 'beaten once in the week or twice, and sometimes twice in a day, and had her head broken in several places,'[13] I told her that it was for warning and ensample to all forward maidens who dared to think of love or marriage without their parents' guidance. And with the help of my worthy lord, the good Sir William Paston, Knight, and Judge of His Majesty's Court of the Common Pleas--His Majesty Henry the Sixth gave him two robes and a hundred marks yearly; and may God him preserve upon his throne----" The priest and Mistress Margaret drown the good old lady's somewhat disloyal gratitude (seeing that the House of York is in the ascendant) by judicious clearings of the voice, as they prepare to read the intercepted letter of Richard Calle, with sundry glosses. "Minion," says the mother, "know you this superscription?" "It is a letter from my own Richard," cries the delighted girl; "will you give it me?" "Assuredly not. It convicts you of being a false liar,--or it lies itself. Did you not, with the fear of close custody, and bread and water, and maybe some healing stripes, before your eyes, affirm that there was no contract between the dry-goodsman and yourself?" "Mother, I own my sin; I did affirm it, but I was wrong, and I am penitent." "Vile brethel!" exclaims the mother. "She mentioned it not, even under the seal of confession," adds the priest. "Yes, once in the week or twice, and sometimes twice a day, and she made an excellent wife, by reason of the frequent beatings, and brought up her children accordant," soliloquises the old lady. "Daughter, I conjure you to hear what this vile Richard Calle sayeth to you. Tell me that it is false--tell me that he is a bold liar, when he affirmeth that you are contracted, and you shall at once have all freedom and reasonable pleasure; but if not----" "Mother, I listen." "Hear, then, what this abominable bill imports. Sir James, please to read." "'To Mistress Margery Paston: "'Mine own lady and mistress, and before God very true wife, I, with heart full, very sorrowfully recommend me unto you, as he that cannot be merry, nor nought shall be, till it be otherwise with us than it is yet; for this life that we lead now is neither pleasure to God nor to the world, considering the great band of matrimony that is made betwixt us, and also the great love that hath been, and as I trust yet is, betwixt us, and as on my part never greater. Wherefore I beseech Almighty God comfort us as soon as it pleaseth Him; for us that ought of very right to be most together, are most asunder. Meseemeth it is a thousand years ago that I spake with you----" Margery here bursts into a passion of tears; and her mother, almost weeping too, ejaculates, "My poor child!" The priest looks at the lady somewhat spitefully, and proceeds:---- "'I had liever than all the good in the world I might be with you. Alas! alas! good lady full little remember they what they do that keep us thus asunder. Four times in the year are they accursed that let matrimony----'" "Accursed are they?" exclaims the priest. "Ban and anathema against us, my worshipful lady! But there are others, I wot, that the Church holds accursed; and this base mechanical be one of them, if I mistake not. Did I not once hear him say--for the varlet ever had privilege to speak in this house, when his betters held their peace--did I not hear him once say that his father had told him that he had seen the heretic priest, John Waddon, burnt at Framlingham, and that he (shame that such an unbeliever might presume to speak upon matters of the Church!) thought that the knowledge of the truth was not advanced by such terrors, and that those who lit the fires for the Lollards had no sanction in the Gospel of Christ. For mine own part, I well believe that he has seduced our daughter from her obedience by his false and damnable opinions. Mistress Margery, did he never open in your presence the book of that arch heretic, John Wiclif, which is called, 'The Book of the New Law'--the book which, in the Constitution of Archbishop Arundel, was forbidden to be read, under pain of the greater excommunication?" The maiden answers not. The priest, looking earnestly at Mistress Margaret Paston, asks her if she did not think that there was a possibility of such a devilish corruption having gone forward; and Mistress Margaret, her cheek coloring a deep red, and then having an ashy paleness, speaks no more for good or evil to her daughter, but quails before the priest. He has her secret. There is a treasured volume in that house, which has been carefully locked up for half a century, to be looked upon in the secret hour, when prying eyes are sleeping, and in the hour of tribulation, when careful eyes are waking. With Richard Calle, Mistress Margaret had often spoken of this book; although even to possess it was to risk a charge of "Lollardie," with all its penalties. The priest sees his triumph; and proceeds to make an end of as much of the letter as he chooses to read:---- "'I understand, lady, ye have had as much sorrow for me as any gentlewoman hath had in the world, as would God all that sorrow that ye have had had rested upon me, and that ye had been discharged of it; for I wis, lady, it is to me a death to hear that ye be entreated otherwise than ye ought to be; this is a painful life that we lead. I cannot live thus without it be a great displeasure to God.'" "He thought not of God's displeasure when he presumed to speak of love to a daughter of the Pastons," says the priest. "A granddaughter of Sir William Paston, one of his Majesty's Justices," mutters the ancient lady. Sir James continues to read the missive:---- "'I suppose they deem we be not ensured together and if they do so I marvel, for then they are not well advised, remembering the plainness that I brake to my mistress at the beginning, and I suppose by you, both; and ye did as ye ought to do of very right; and if ye have done the contrary, as I have been informed ye have done, ye did neither consciencely, nor to the pleasure of God, without ye did it for fear, and for the time, to please such as were at that time about you; and if ye did it for this cause, it was a reasonable cause, considering the great and importable calling upon ye that ye had; and many an untrue tale was made to you of me, which, God know it, I was never guilty of."[14] "And now, pretty Mistress Margery," says Sir James, "will you affirm that this man sayeth untruly, when he sayeth that you are ensured together? You have before said that you are not so ensured. Will you cast off your mother and your brothers to be the wife of a low factor, and a companion for idle queans and the wives of fat burgesses, instead of wedding some noble knight, who will give you a castle to dwell in, with all worship and authority? Deny the contract; there is guilt in affirming it even if it had been made in a moment of imprudence." "Sir James Gloys, and you, my honored mother," answers the maiden, "Richard Calle says truly, that I did not consciencely, nor to the pleasure of God, when I concealed our contract for fear, and for the time. We are betrothed; and I rejoice at the handfasting. No pain, no fear, shall ever again lead me to deny it. He is my true husband, and may I ever be to him a reverent and loving wife. For who can I love as I have loved, and do love, Richard Calle,--the companion of my childhood, the instructor of my girlhood: a true man, as brave as if he were the sturdiest of belted knights--as wise as if he were the clerkliest of learned scholars. He has abundance; he is generous. When did a Paston ask Richard Calle for aid that his hand was not open? We may not want his help just now; but if the time arrive, and assuredly it may be not far off, that hand would be again stretched out for succour. Come Richard Calle of gentle or simple, I heed not; he is my own true man, and to him is my faith plighted, for ever and aye." "Twice in a day, and had her head broke in several places," grumbles the ancient dame. "Mistress Margery," responds the priest, "you must take your own course. But this is not now a matter for daughter and mother to settle between them. It must before the Lord Bishop. In the name of Holy Church, I prohibit all intercourse by message or letter between Richard Calle and yourself. You must be in strict durance for a short season; and then a higher than us shall decide, contract or no contract. Heaven forfend that I, or any servant of the altar, should let matrimony." "My child, go to your chamber," whispers the subdued mother. We see the shadow of Margery Paston, before she quits the Oaken parlor, kneeling for her mother's blessing. * * * * * The Michaelmas of 1469 is nearly come. Margery Paston is still in durance at her mother's house. Every art has been tried to make her deny the betrothal. The priest has worked upon the fears of the mother--the daughter has been studiously kept from her presence. But this state of things cannot abide. Dame Margaret thus writes to Sir John Paston: "I greet you well, and send you God's blessing and mine; letting you weet that on Thursday last was, my mother and I were with my Lord of Norwich, and desired him that he would no more do in the matter touching your sister till that ye, and my brother, and others, that were executors to your father, might be here together, for they had the rule of her as well as I; and he said plainly that he had been required so often to examine her, that he might not, nor would, no longer delay it: and charged me, in pain of cursing, that she should not be deferred, but that she should appear before him the next day. And I said plainly that I would neither bring her nor send her. And then he said that he would send for her himself, and charged that she should be at her liberty to come when he sent for her." On the next day--it is a Friday--Margery Paston is brought into the Bishop's Court. There, surrounded with the panoply of the Church, sits old Walter Lyhart--he that built the roof of the nave, and the screen, of Norwich Cathedral. The maiden trembles, but her spirit remains unbroken. The bishop puts her in remembrance how she was born,--what kin and friends she has--"And ye shall have more, young lady, if ye will be ruled and guided after them. But if ye will not, what rebuke, and loss, and shame will be yours? They will evermore forsake you, for any good, or help, or comfort that ye shall have of them. Be well advised. I have heard say that ye love one that your friends are not well pleased that ye should love. Be advised--be right well advised." "I am the betrothed wife of Richard Calle. I must cleave to him for better for worse." "Rehearse to me what you said to him. Let me understand if it makes matrimony?" "We have plighted our troth--we are handfasted. How can I repeat the words? Richard said----Oh, my lord! spare me, I am bound in my conscience, whatsoever the words were. If the very words make not sure, make it, I beseech you, surer ere I go hence." And then the bishop dismisses the maiden with many frowns. Richard Calle is summoned. He briefly tells the time and place where the vows were exchanged. The bishop is bewildered. He scarcely dare hesitate to confirm the marriage. But the subtle priest is at his side, and he whispers the fearful word of "Lollardie." Then the bishop hastily breaks up the court, and says, "That he supposed there should be found other things against him that might cause the letting the marriage; and therefore he would not be too hasty to give sentence." Margery Paston stands again upon her mother's threshold. The aged servant is weeping as he opens the door: "Oh, my dear young mistress! I am commanded to shut this gate against you." The figure of Sir James Gloys looms darkly in the hall. "Begone, mistress!" he exclaims. "I will go to my grandmother," sobs out the poor girl. "Your grandmother banishes you for ever from her presence," retorts the churlish priest. It is night. The pride and the purity of the unhappy Margery forbid her to seek the protection of her Richard. She has been watched. Exhausted and heart-broken, she gladly accepts the shelter which Roger Best offers her. That shelter becomes her prison. Here closes the record. But what a succession of Shadows is called up by the endorsement of the letter which tells of these sorrows: "_They were after married together._" The contract could not be dissolved. At one time we see the shadows of Richard and Margery Calle sitting cheerily together in their peaceful home at Framlingham. The intrigues that are carrying on in the Duke of Norfolk's castle, under whose walls they abide, touch them not. They are not called upon to declare either for York or Lancaster. At another time we fancy John of Gelston, Margery's younger brother, a wandering fugitive after the battle of Barnet, throwing himself upon the despised Factor for refuge and succor. The fortunes of the Pastons are now at the lowest ebb. Norfolk holds Caister. Edward the Fourth has pardoned their revolt--but he will not trust them, or employ them. At length Norfolk dies. Caister is restored to the Pastons--but they are penniless. We see the shadow of a great feast within those half-ruinous walls. The Factor has procured the means from his friends the Lombards. He now sits upon the dais. Sir John Paston calls him brother. Dame Paston greets him as son. John of Gelston says, "I would that my sister should not sell mustard and candles at Framlingham--and assuredly she shall not. Richard Calle has managed his substance better than we; he can win broad lands enow. Kiss me, sister." There is one shadow of Margery which rests upon our mind. She sits with her mother in the Oaken parlor at Norwich, reading from a volume, now opened without fear, "Blessed are the peace-makers." FOOTNOTES: [11] "Paston Letters;" edited by A. Ramsay. [12] "Paston Letters." [13] "Paston Letters." [14] This and the preceding passages are given literally from Calle's letter in the Paston Collection. From the London Times. CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE. But a few years ago, the imperishable records of the Assyrian empire were discovered amidst the sands of the Euphrates by the intelligence and enterprise of a single English traveller. What is the value of the ruins of Pompeii by the side of these awful records of the genius and power of a mighty nation, which had passed from the earth apparently as a wave passes away on the surface of the sea? The official persons charged with the direction of such matters would, of course, satisfy themselves in the first instance that there was no trickery, no spice of adventure or imposition, about the project of removing the Assyrian marbles to England. When this was done, was it not natural to suppose that they would have clutched at the opportunity of adding yet another trophy to the relics of the Parthenon? The history of Mr. Layard is there to show how weak is the character of that enthusiasm which must work out its effects at a distance--in what driblets any assistance from the public purse is vouchsafed to an enterprise which is not recommended to notice by the untiring zeal of a projector! Consider the money fooled away on the basin at Keyham on the one hand, and the inefficient aid afforded to Mr. Layard for the removal of the Assyrian marbles on the other, and our meaning will be at once evident. We desire to-day to call attention to another public shortcoming of the like nature. Englishmen who travel from their native country to the British Indian empire, as they pass through Alexandria, take occasion to visit two tall obelisks of red Thebaic granite on the south side of the Great Harbour. These relics of the remotest periods of Egyptian history are covered with inscriptions which possess great interest for the antiquarian, independently of the value which attaches to the shafts or pillars themselves. In our columns yesterday will be found a long and particular account of the traditions which must ennoble these mute interpreters of the past in the eyes of the latest posterity; we do not, therefore, deem it necessary to repeat the tale in this place. One of the two obelisks remains erect in its original site; the other lies prostrate on the sand, with which it is partly covered. A portion of its pedestal has been built into the wall which at that spot constitutes the fortification of the town. The one which yet remains upright on the spot where once stood the temple of the Cæsars is the property of the Egyptian Government; the other, which lies neglected on the earth, belongs to the English nation. It is ours by conquest--it is ours by gift. It is a trophy won by our arms when the gallant Abercromby fell at the head of his victorious troops. As though this title were not sufficient, in 1820 Mehemet Ali, then Pasha of Egypt set at rest any doubt which might have existed as to our title to this trophy by its long abandonment on the field of battle. He solemnly presented it to George IV. Nor has a shadow of doubt ever been cast upon our right to this memorial of past times and of our own military glory, save by a modest inuendo of the French consul in 1830, when the French were busy removing the obelisk of Luxor. That worthy and intelligent functionary suggested that, "as the English had so long neglected the Pasha's present, they might be considered to have relinquished it, and therefore it might as well be taken away in the French vessel which had come for the other obelisk." To this modest proposition the English government demurred, and accordingly Cleopatra's Needle has been left upon the sand in the harbour of Alexandria, until it may suit the English to take some efficient steps for its removal. All authoritative reports from the spot inform us that the inscription is partly defaced upon one side, but in no other respect. The sand from the desert has in great measure preserved the monument which has been so long abandoned to its fate. Truth, however, compels us to call attention to the language of our report, which adds, that if the obelisk "be not removed at once, it will doubtless, ere long, become utterly ruined and worthless." This result will not be attributable to the ravages of time, but to the injuries inflicted by idle or mischievous persons on this valuable record and monument of by-gone days. A correspondent furnishes the _Times_ with the following interesting historical notices of this celebrated monument: "Travellers who visit Alexandria cannot fail to observe, on the south side of the great harbor, now called the New Port, a beautiful obelisk of red Thebaic granite, or Syenite, covered with hieroglyphics, standing erect where was once the Cæsarium, or Temple of Cæsar, while near it another similar monument lies prostrate, and partly covered by the sand. To these relics of a remote antiquity the Arabs give the name of Mesellet Faráun, or _Pharaoh's Packing Needle_, a term which is, indeed, applied by them to all obelisks. The traditions of the later periods of the Roman Empire, and of a subsequent time, seem to have attributed many objects at Alexandria to Cleopatra, and the obelisks in question are accordingly best known to Europeans as _Cleopatra's Needles_, a trivial designation, possessing as little historical value as that of "Queen Elizabeth's Pocket Pistol," which is given to the great gun at Dover. The classical term _obelisk_ is, in its origin, not less trivial, if it be true that it is derived from the Latin _obeliscus_, a diminutive of the Greek word [Greek: obelos], which means, literally, a spit, as indicative of the peculiar form of this species of monument. "As far as the true history of these obelisks is concerned, which is principally to be deduced from the monarchs' names sculptured on them, they appear to have been originally cut at the granite quarries of Syene, at the first cataract in Upper Egypt, 750 miles from their present site, by Thothmosis III. This monarch was one of the most celebrated rulers of that remarkable country. We find remains of him in Nubia, at Samneh, at Premmis, and at Amada, proving that his sway extended even beyond the third cataract. He added also largely to the great temple of Karnak; and on the sculptures in one of its rooms he is represented as presenting offerings to his ancestors or predecessors of eight several dynasties, namely: the kings of Thebes, of Abydos, of Memphis, of Ethiopia, and of four other divisions of Egypt. In one of the tombs near Thebes is a painting of a grand procession of men of the several nations bordering on the Nile, who are bringing their costly gifts in token of homage to this king. Under Thothmosis III., who held Upper and Lower Egypt and Ethiopia, the kingdom of Thebes had reached its full size. Several later kings may have been more wealthy, and more powerful, and their conquests may have extended further, but those conquests were only temporary; and the glories of those later kings never threw the reign of Thothmosis III. into the shade. "The central inscriptions on the four faces of these obelisks were sculptured by the monarch whom we have just described. The lateral inscriptions were added by a king who was, if possible, even more celebrated, namely, Amunmai Rameses II., commonly known by the name of Sesostris, the monarch under whom Upper Egypt rose to its greatest height in arms, in art, and in wealth. It is unnecessary to do more than allude to the fabled history of this monarch; but confining ourselves to the particulars recorded on imperishable monuments of stone, we find that he finished the palace of the Memnonium or Mamunei at Abydos, and also the temple of Osiris, in the same city; and on one of the walls of the latter he carved that list of his forefathers now in the British Museum, which is known by the name of the Tablet of Abydos. At Thebes, besides adding to the buildings of his predecessors, he erected a new palace, which, like that at Abydos, was by the Greeks called the Memnonium. In the first courtyard was a colossal statue of himself, larger than any other in Egypt, and in the second yard were two smaller ones, from one of which was taken the colossal head now in the British Museum. "The two obelisks of Alexandria likewise have the names and titles of some Pharaoh of later times, by whom they may probably have been removed to Memphis; but subsequently the Ptolemies, to embellish their Greco-Egyptian capital, transferred them to Alexandria. In the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, when the Alexandrians completed the beautiful temple to his honor named the Sebaste, or Cæsar's Temple, which stood by the side of the harbor, and was surrounded by a sacred grove, ornamented with porticoes, and fitted up with libraries, paintings, and statues,--it being the most lofty building in the city,--they set up in front of this temple the two obelisks of Thothmosis and Rameses, which, like the other monuments of the Theban kings, have outlived all the temples and palaces of their Greek and Roman successors. "These beautiful memorials of two of the most powerful and celebrated rulers of Egypt appear not to have suffered any material injury from the vicissitudes to which the dominions of those kings have during so many ages been subjected.[15] From a very early period one of them has been thrown down from the pedestal on which it stood; but this seeming calamity has probably preserved its sculptures better than if it had remained on its pedestal, for its still erect companion, though well preserved on the sides exposed to the sea, has suffered a good deal from the beating against it of the land-wind, which blows with violence and is charged with sand. With the exception of the four corners of the base, where, like the obelisk in the Hippodrome at Constantinople, it would seem to have formerly been held to its pedestal by four cubes of bronze, the fallen obelisk is perfect, and its sculptures are in comparatively good preservation. Its length is 64 feet, and at its base it is about 8 feet square; its weight being estimated at about 240 tons.[16] The obelisk is of great value from its antiquity, its proportions, and, moreover, as an imperishable memorial of British valor. "After the English were in possession of Alexandria (as we find it recorded by Dr. Clarke in his _Travels_) a subscription was opened among the officers of the army and navy for the purpose of removing the prostrate obelisk to Great Britain. With the money thus raised they purchased one of the vessels that Menou had sunk in the old port of Alexandria. This they raised, and prepared for its reception. The work went on rapidly, the obelisk was turned, and its lower surface was found to be in a high state of preservation. It was then moved, by means of machinery constructed for the purpose, towards the vessel prepared to receive it. Lord Cavan presided at this undertaking. A naval officer, who was present upon the occasion, brought over to England the plans projected for conveying this splendid trophy of the success of our arms to the metropolis of this country; and there is every reason to believe the design would have been accomplished. Its interruption took place in consequence of an order preventing the sailors from assisting at the work. An eye-witness, who is still living, states that about 5,000L. were subscribed by the army, that 300 Sepoys worked for three or four months in constructing a jetty, whence the obelisk was to have been embarked; but that the General who then commanded at Malta wrote to the military authorities in Egypt, objecting to the employment of the troops in such a work, and ordering them to suspend their operations. This was accordingly done, and the money unexpended was returned to the subscribers. "Though the obelisk was thus left behind when the British forces quitted Egypt, the idea of bringing it to England was never abandoned; and whatever doubts might have existed as to our right to the possession of a trophy which had been taken, but afterwards (as it were) abandoned on the field of battle, were set at rest by the gift of it made in the year 1820 by the late Mehemet Ali Pasha to King George IV. "Notwithstanding this gift, the obelisk still remained without any definitive steps being taken for its removal to England.[17] In 1830, when the French sent a vessel to Alexandria to transport to France the obelisk of Luxor, which is now standing in the Place de la Concorde at Paris, and also, as it was talked of at the time, the one of 'Cleopatra's needles' which is yet standing, the French Consul in Egypt is said to have made the modest suggestion that, 'as the English had so long neglected the Pasha's present, they might be considered to have relinquished it, and therefore it might as well be taken away in the French vessel which had come for the other obelisk.' "This, however, was not allowed to take place. Neither have the English taken any steps to acquire possession of a monument which is the indisputable property of the British nation, and which, if not removed, will doubtless ere long become utterly ruined and worthless. The stones of the pedestal on which it stood have been carried away for building purposes; the obelisk itself has been exposed to many marks inflicted by the curious and idlers of Alexandria, and as a last indignity one end of it has actually been built into the wall surrounding the port, forming part of the new fortifications of the city. "The subject of the removal of this obelisk has often been before Parliament. On the 2d of June last, in the House of Peers, the Marquis of Westmeath, at the request of several military and naval officers, inquired what steps had been taken for obtaining possession of or for removing it. He stated that the opinion of the late Sir R. Peel, expressed to himself, was, that it was a monument which ought to be brought to London and erected as a memorial of Sir Ralph Abercromby and others who had fought and died in Egypt. The late Sir George Murray had also stated that he joined with all his military and naval friends, who desired that the obelisk should be brought to this country. In reply to Lord Westmeath's inquiry the Earl of Carlisle admitted the importance which attached to the obelisk, not merely as a memorial of the ancient art of Egypt, but also as a monument of British heroism; but said that he apprehended there were some mechanical difficulties. This, however, can hardly be the case, inasmuch as the obelisk would unquestionably have been removed in 1801, had it not been for the reasons already stated. "As a relic of ancient art, as a memorial of two of the most renowned monarchs of Egypt, and as a trophy of British valor, this obelisk is without price. If allowed to remain in its present state, it will inevitably be destroyed, and there cannot exist the slightest doubt that it was the bounden duty of the British nation to see to its preservation, which can only be secured by carrying out the intention of our valiant troops half-a-century ago--namely, by transplanting it to England. The appropriate site for it might either be the courtyard of the British Museum, where it would form a noble addition to the peerless collection of Egyptian monuments, of which the famed 'Rosetta Stone,' that other trophy of our occupation of Egypt, forms a part; or it might, perhaps, be more appropriately set up in St. James's Park, at the back of the Horse Guards. The expense of its removal could not be great; but, whatever might be its amount, it is certain, when even Mr. Hume has expressed an interest in the subject, that the nation would cheerfully incur it. An offer has indeed been made to Government to bring it to England by contract for a comparatively trifling sum." FOOTNOTES: [15] Mr. Gould, in the "Builder" of August 2, says, from certain authorities, it would appear that both were standing at the close of the 12th century. [16] On the 15th of April, 1832, when a proposition for its removal was made in the House of commons, it was stated that it weighed 284 tons. Captain Smyth, R.N., supposes it to be 230 tons. [17] In 1822 Captain Smyth, R.N., was prepared, with the consent of Mehemet Ali, to attempt its removal, but could not procure the authority of our Government. The Pasha offered to build a pier for the embarkation of the obelisk, and to render Captain Smyth every assistance for its removal. From the London Times HISTORY AND CONDITION OF THE CHEAP POSTAGE SYSTEM. A traveller sauntering through the Lake districts of England, some years ago, arrived at a small public-house just as the postman stopped to deliver a letter. A young girl came out to receive it. She took it in her hand, turned it over and over, and asked the charge. It was a large sum--no less than a shilling. Sighing heavily she observed that it came from her brother, but that she was too poor to take it in, and she returned it to the postman accordingly. The traveller was a man of kindness as well as of observation; he offered to pay the postage himself, and in spite of more reluctance on the girl's part than he could well understand he did pay it, and gave her the letter. No sooner, however, was the postman's back turned than she confessed that the proceeding had been concerted between her brother and herself, that the letter was empty, that certain signs on the direction conveyed all that she wanted to know, and that as neither of them could afford to pay postage they had devised this method of franking the intelligence desired. The traveller pursued his journey, and as he plodded over the Cumberland fells he mused upon the badness of a system which drove people to such straits for means of correspondence, and defeated its own objects all the time. With most men such musings would have ended before the hour, but this man's name was Rowland Hill, and it was from this incident and these reflections that the whole scheme of penny postage was derived. The value of this reform is felt in every household throughout the kingdom, but its extent will be well shown by the extraction of some figures from a return which has just been made to the House of Commons. The first general reduction of postage took place on the 5th of December, 1839--a fourpenny rate being interposed for a short time before the universal charge of a penny. At this time the number of letters delivered annually in the united kingdom was about 75 millions, the actual estimate for 1839 being 75,907,572. The gross amount of the tax levied upon this delivery was no less than 2,339,737_l._, of which, as the cost of management was only 687,000_l._, there was 1,652,424_l._ carried to the account of profit. Last year the number of letters delivered in the united kingdom was estimated at upwards of _three hundred and forty-seven millions_, while the penny tax upon the same amounted to no more than 2,264,684_l._, so that while our payments to the Exchequer have been actually lessened, the service rendered to the public has been multiplied fivefold--in other words, we pay less for five letters than we formerly paid for one. It is worth remark that the correspondence in the three kingdoms has increased almost equally. In 1839 the deliveries were 59,982,520; 8,301,904; and 7,623,148, in England, Ireland, and Scotland, respectively; while last year they were 276,252,642; 35,388,895; and 35,427,534. The rate of increase has been continuous, though not quite constant, ever since the reduction. The first effect of the reform was to double the deliveries at once, and turn the 75 millions into upwards of 160 millions. From that time to this the increase has proceeded at the rate of 10 or 20 millions a year, the smallest augmentation being in the famous year of 1848, when the delivery exceeded only by 6 millions that of 1847; and the largest in the equally famous times of 1845, when railway speculations added 28 millions of epistles to correspondence of the year preceding. The return before us includes, we hardly know with what view, a weekly account taken once a month for 1850, and from this curious table it would seem that during the month in which ladies talk least they write most; at any rate the largest number of letters yet counted was for the week ending February the 21st. The cost of management has, of course, been swelled considerably under the new system, though by no means in proportion to the increased service, for whereas the deliveries, as we have said, are multiplied fivefold, the expenses are only multiplied about twice and a half, being 1,460,785_l._ in 1850, against 686,768_l._ in 1839. The return does not comprise the items out of which this sum is made up, though it specifies the amounts paid in each year for the conveyance of mails by railway. These amounts fluctuate rather curiously from 12,623_l._ in 1839, to 206,357_l._ in this present year of 1851--not increasing gradually or even constantly, but rising or falling occasionally, though with an ultimate tendency to rise. We should have rather liked to see the expenses of management and conveyance stated separately, and some means of comparison given between the cost of railway carriage and that of the old mail coaches. About 10,000_l._ per annum of the total disbursements is devoted, we are told, to pensions, and must therefore be distinguished from the direct expenses of the Post-office service. All things considered, perhaps, this "non-effective" charge is not heavy; in fact, we believe that Post-office servants are by no means extravagantly paid either for their work or at their retirement. The Money Order office forms a distinct establishment of itself, and a curious institution it is. The amount of orders issued in 1840, the first year of the system, was 240,063_l_. for England and Wales, 47,295_l._ for Ireland, and 25,765_l._ for Scotland. In the year 1850 these amounts had increased in England to no less a sum than 7,173,622_l._, in Ireland to 623,732_l._, and in Scotland to 697,143_l._ The total sum was 8,494,498_l._, and the number of orders of which it was composed 4,439,713, showing an average of some shillings less than 2_l._ per order. The proportion between the number and the amount of the orders does not vary greatly in the three kingdoms, though the average amount of each order is somewhat larger in Scotland than Ireland, and in England than Scotland. The Scotch transactions fell off considerably in the year 1849, but the English and Irish offices have steadily increased their business, nor is any effect perceptible in the latter country, either from the famine or the rebellion. The return of "money orders issued" is distinguished from that of "money orders paid," and the difference between these gross amounts is no less than 11,000_l._ in favor of the Post-office for the year ending the 31st of last December. Some of these orders will no doubt have come in for payment during the current year, but we suspect that ignorance, negligence, or accident must be leaving an appreciable balance to accumulate on the side of the office. Country bankers, we believe, used to reckon upon a gain of 5l. per cent. on the score of notes lost, mislaid, hoarded, destroyed, or otherwise not presented for payment. Money orders are doubtless more rigorously exchanged for cash, but there must still, we imagine, be a profit from this source, especially as the Post-office circumscribes the term of its liability, which bankers did not. The total expenses of the Money Order offices, both in London and the country, are returned at 70,577_l._ and the total amount of commission received at 73,813_l._--a fair balance of charge and service. The actual benefits, however, of this prodigious reform extend far beyond those immediately represented in the figures we have given. It is not the mere saving of 4d. or 5d. on a letter by which the country has so enormously gained. The facilitation of business, the diffusion of information, the correspondence of friends, and the maintenance of family connexions, which in old days were severed for ever, are the real and inestimable advantages of Mr. ROWLAND HILL'S invention. Like most reformers, he had to contend with violent and not always sincere opposition. The system, indeed, was long deprived of a fair trial by the obstinate resistance of those who should have aided him, and it is mainly owing to this concerted hostility that the results are not as favorable to the revenue as they are to the welfare of the country. But the principle is now established, and of all the reductions which a Chancellor of the Exchequer has ever made there has been none attended with such universal relief, convenience, and benefit as this sacrifice of 800,000_l._ for the sake of the letter writers. OCTOBER. BY MISS ALICE CAREY. Not the light of the long blue summer, Nor the flowery huntress, Spring, Nor the chilly and moaning Winter, Doth peace to my bosom bring, Like the hazy and red October, When the woods stand bare and brown, And into the lap of the south land, The flowers are blowing down; When all night long, in the moonlight, The boughs of the roof tree chafe, And the wind, like a wandering poet, Is singing a mournful waif; And all day through the cloud-armies, The sunbeams coquettishly rove-- For then in my path first unfolded The sweet passion-flower of love. With bosom as pale as the sea-shell, And soft as the flax unspun, And locks like the nut-brown shadows In the light of the sunken sun, Came the maiden whose wonderful beauty Enchanted my soul from pain, And gladdened my heart, that can never, No, never be happy again. Far away from life's pain and passion, And our Eden of love, she went, Like a pale star fading softly From the morning's golden tent. But oft, when the bosom of Autumn Is warm with the summer beams, We meet in the pallid shadows That border the land of dreams, For seeing my woe through the splendor That hovers about her above, She puts from her forehead the glory, And listens again to my love. MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[18] BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. BOOK VII.--INITIAL CHAPTER. "What is courage?" said my uncle Roland, rousing himself from a reverie into which he had fallen after the Sixth Book in this history had been read to our family circle. "What is courage?" he repeated more earnestly. "Is it insensibility to fear? _That_ may be the mere accident of constitution; and, if so, there is no more merit in being courageous than in being this table." "I am very glad to hear you speak thus," observed Mr. Caxton, "for I should not like to consider myself a coward; yet I am very sensible to fear in all dangers, bodily and moral." "La, Austin, how can you say so?" cried my mother, firing up; "was it not only last week that you faced the great bull that was rushing after Blanche and the children?" Blanche at that recollection stole to my father's chair, and hanging over his shoulder, kissed his forehead. _Mr. Caxton_, (sublimely unmoved by these flatteries.)--"I don't deny that I faced the bull, but I assert that I was horribly frightened." _Roland._--"The sense of honor which conquers fear is the true courage of chivalry: you could not run away when others were looking on--no gentleman could." _Mr. Caxton._--"Fiddledee! It was not on my gentility that I stood, Captain, I should have run fast enough, if it had done any good. I stood upon my understanding. As the bull could run faster than I could, the only chance of escape was to make the brute as frightened as myself." _Blanche._--"Ah, you did not think of that, your only thought was to save me and the children." _Mr. Caxton._--"Possibly, my dear--very possibly I might have been afraid for you too--but I was very much afraid for myself. However, luckily, I had the umbrella, and I sprang it up and spread it forth in the animal's stupid eyes, hurling at him simultaneously the biggest lines I could think of in the First Chorus of the 'Seven against Thebes.' I began with ELEDEMNAS PEDIOPLOKTUPOS; and when I came to the grand howl of [Greek: Iô, iô, iô, iô],--the beast stood appalled as at the roar of a lion. I shall never forget his amazed snort at the Greek. Then he kicked up his hind legs, and went bolt through the gap in the hedge. Thus, armed with Æschylus and the umbrella, I remained master of the field; but (continued Mr. Caxton, ingenuously) I should not like to go through that half minute again." "No man would," said the Captain kindly. "I should be very sorry to face a bull myself, even with a bigger umbrella than yours, and even though I had Æschylus, and Homer to boot, at my fingers' ends." _Mr. Caxton._--"You would not have minded if it had been a Frenchman with a sword in his hand?" _Captain._--"Of course not. Rather liked it than otherwise," he added grimly. _Mr. Caxton._--"Yet many a Spanish matador, who doesn't care a button for a bull, would take to his heels at the first lunge en carte from a Frenchman. Therefore, in fact, if courage be a matter of constitution, it is also a matter of custom. We face calmly the dangers we are habituated to, and recoil from those of which we have no familiar experience. I doubt if Marshal Turenne himself would have been quite at his ease on the tight-rope; and a rope-dancer, who seems disposed to scale the heavens with Titanic temerity, might possibly object to charge on a cannon." _Captain Roland._--"Still, either this is not the courage I mean, or there is another kind of it. I mean by courage that which is the especial force and dignity of the human character, without which there is no reliance on principle, no constancy in virtue--a something," continued my uncle, gallantly, and with a half bow towards my mother, "which your sex shares with our own. When the lover, for instance, clasps the hand of his betrothed, and says, 'Wilt thou be true to me, in spite of absence and time, in spite of hazard and fortune, though my foes malign me, though thy friends may dissuade thee, and our lot in life may be rough and rude?' and when the betrothed answers, 'I will be true,' does not the lover trust to her courage as well as her love?" "Admirably put, Roland," said my father. "But _apropos_ of what do you puzzle us with these queries on courage?" _Captain Roland_, (with a slight blush.)--"I was led to the inquiry (though, perhaps, it may be frivolous to take so much thought of what, no doubt, costs Pisistratus so little) by the last chapters in my nephew's story. I see this poor boy, Leonard, alone with his fallen hopes, (though very irrational they were,) and his sense of shame. And I read his heart, I dare say, better than Pisistratus does, for I could feel like that boy if I had been in the same position; and, conjecturing what he and thousands like him must go through, I asked myself, 'What can save him and them?' I answered, as a soldier would answer, 'Courage!' Very well. But pray, Austin, what is courage?" _Mr. Caxton._ (prudently backing out of a reply.)--"_Papoe!_ Brother, since you have just complimented the ladies on that quality, you had better address your question to them." Blanche here leant both hands on my father's chair, and said, looking down at first bashfully, but afterwards warming with the subject, "Do you not think, sir, that little Helen has already suggested, if not what is courage, what at least is the real essence of all courage that endures and conquers, that ennobles, and hallows, and redeems? Is it not Patience, father?--and that is why we women have a courage of our own. Patience does not affect to be superior to fear, but at least it never admits despair." _Pisistratus._--"Kiss me, my Blanche, for you have come near to the truth which perplexed the soldier and puzzled the sage." _Mr. Caxton_, (tartly.)--"If you mean me by the sage, I was not puzzled at all. Heaven knows you do right to inculcate patience--it is a virtue very much required in your readers. Nevertheless," added my father, softening with the enjoyment of his joke--"nevertheless, Blanche and Helen are quite right. Patience is the courage of the conqueror; it is the virtue, _par excellence_, of Man against Destiny--of the One against the World, and of the Soul against Matter. Therefore this is the courage of the Gospel; and its importance, in a social view--its importance to races and institutions--cannot be too earnestly inculcated. What is it that distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon from all other branches of the human family, peoples deserts with his children, and consigns to them the heritage of rising worlds? What but his faculty to brave, to suffer, to endure--the patience that resists firmly, and innovates slowly? Compare him with the Frenchman. The Frenchman has plenty of valor--that there is no denying; but as for fortitude, he has not enough to cover the point of a pin. He is ready to rush out of the world if he is bit by a flea." _Captain Roland._--"There was a case in the papers the other day, Austin, of a Frenchman who actually did destroy himself because he was so teased by the little creatures you speak of. He left a paper on his table, saying that 'life was not worth having at the price of such torments.'"[19] _Mr. Caxton_, (solemnly.)--"Sir, their whole political history, since the great meeting of the Tiers Etat, has been the history of men who would rather go to the devil than be bit by a flea. It is the record of human impatience, that seeks to force time, and expects to grow forests from the spawn of a mushroom. Wherefore, running through all extremes of constitutional experiment, when they are nearest to democracy they are next door to a despot; and all they have really done is to destroy whatever constitutes the foundation of every tolerable government. A constitutional monarchy cannot exist without aristocracy, nor a healthful republic endure with corruption of manners. The cry of equality is incompatible with Civilization, which, of necessity, contrasts poverty with wealth--and, in short, whether it be an emperor or a mob that is to rule, Force is the sole hope of order, and the government is but an army. "Impress, O Pisistratus! impress the value of patience as regards man and men. You touch there on the kernel of the social system--the secret that fortifies the individual and disciplines the million. I care not, for my part, if you are tedious so long as you are earnest. Be minute and detailed. Let the real human life, in its war with Circumstance, stand out. Never mind if one can read you but slowly--better chance of being less quickly forgotten. Patience, patience! By the soul of Epictetus, your readers shall set you an example!" CHAPTER II. Leonard had written twice to Mrs. Fairfield, twice to Riccabocca, and once to Mr. Dale; and the poor, proud boy could not bear to betray his humiliation. He wrote as with cheerful spirits--as if perfectly satisfied with his prospects. He said that he was well employed, in the midst of books, and that he had found kind friends. Then he turned from himself to write about those whom he addressed, and the affairs and interests of the quiet world wherein they lived. He did not give his own address, nor that of Mr. Prickett. He dated his letters from a small coffee-house near the bookseller, to which he occasionally went for his simple meals. He had a motive in this. He did not desire to be found out. Mr. Dale replied for himself and for Mrs. Fairfield, to the epistles addressed to these two. Riccabocca wrote also. Nothing could be more kind than the replies of both. They came to Leonard in a very dark period in his life, and they strengthened him in the noiseless battle with despair. If there be a good in the world that we do without knowing it, without conjecturing the effect it may have upon a human soul, it is when we show kindness to the young in the first barren foot-path up the mountain of life. Leonard's face resumed its serenity in his intercourse with his employer; but he did not recover his boyish ingenuous frankness. The under-currents flowed again pure from the turbid soil, and the splintered fragments uptorn from the deep; but they were still too strong and too rapid to allow transparency to the surface. And now he stood in the sublime world of books, still and earnest as a seer who invokes the dead. And thus, face to face with knowledge, hourly he discovered how little he knew. Mr. Prickett lent him such works as he selected and asked to take home with him. He spent whole nights in reading; and no longer desultorily. He read no more poetry, no more Lives of Poets. He read what poets must read if they desire to be--_Sapere principium et fons_--strict reasonings on the human mind; the relations between motive and conduct, thought and action; the grave and solemn truths of the past world; antiquities, history, philosophy. He was taken out of himself. He was carried along the ocean of the universe. In that ocean, O seeker, study the law of the tides; and seeing Chance nowhere--thought presiding over all--Fate, that dread phantom, shall vanish from creation, and Providence alone be visible in heaven and on earth! CHAPTER III. There was to be a considerable book-sale at a country-house one day's journey from London. Mr. Prickett meant to have attended it on his own behalf, and that of several gentlemen who had given him commissions for purchase; but, on the morning fixed for his departure, he was seized with a severe return of his old foe, the rheumatism. He requested Leonard to attend instead of himself. Leonard went, and was absent for the three days during which the sale lasted. He returned late in the evening, and went at once to Mr. Prickett's house. The shop was closed; he knocked at the private entrance; a strange person opened the door to him, and in reply to his question if Mr. Prickett was at home, said with a long and funereal face, "Young man, Mr. Prickett, senior, has gone to his long home, but Mr. Richard Prickett will see you." At this moment a very grave-looking man, with lank hair, looked forth from the side-door communicating between the shop and the passage, and then stepped forward--"Come in, sir; you are my late uncle's assistant, Mr. Fairfield, I suppose?" "Your late uncle! Heavens, sir, do I understand aright--can Mr. Prickett be dead since I left London?" "Died, sir, suddenly, last night. It was an affection of the heart; the Doctor thinks the rheumatism attacked that organ. He had small time to provide for his departure, and his account books seem in sad disorder: I am his nephew and executor." Leonard had now followed the nephew into the shop. There, still burned the gas lamp. The place seemed more dingy and cavernous than before. Death always makes its presence felt in the house it visits. Leonard was greatly affected--and yet more, perhaps, by the utter want of feeling which the nephew exhibited. In fact, the deceased had not been on friendly terms with this person, his nearest relative and heir-at-law, who was also a bookseller. "You were engaged but by the week, I find, young man, on reference to my late uncle's papers. He gave you £1 a week--a monstrous sum! I shall not require your services any further. I shall move these books to my own house. You will be good enough to send me a list of those you bought at the sale, and your account of travelling expenses, &c. What may be due to you shall be sent to your address. Good evening." Leonard went home, shocked and saddened at the sudden death of his kind employer. He did not think much of himself that night; but, when he rose the next day, he suddenly felt that the world of London lay before him, without a friend, without a calling, without an occupation for bread. This time it was no fancied sorrow, no poetic dream disappointed. Before him, gaunt and palpable, stood Famine. Escape!--yes. Back to the village; his mother's cottage; the exile's garden; the radishes and the fount. Why could he not escape? Ask why civilization cannot escape its ills, and fly back to the wild and the wigwam. Leonard could not have returned to the cottage, even if the Famine that faced had already seized him with her skeleton hand. London releases not so readily her fatal step-sons. CHAPTER IV. One day three persons were standing before an old book-stall in a passage leading from Oxford Street into Tottenham Court Road. Two were gentlemen; the third, of the class and appearance of those who more habitually halt at old book-stalls. "Look," said one of the gentlemen to the other, "I have discovered here what I have searched for in vain the last ten years--the Horace of 1580, the Horace of the Forty Commentators--a perfect treasury of learning, and marked only fourteen shillings!" "Hush, Norreys," said the other, "and observe what is yet more worth your study;" and he pointed to the third bystander, whose face, sharp and attenuated, was bent with an absorbed, and as it were with a hungering attention over an old worm-eaten volume. "What is the book, my Lord?" whispered Mr. Norreys. His companion smiled, and replied by another question, "What is the man who reads the book?" Mr. Norreys moved a few paces, and looked over the student's shoulder. "Preston's translation of BOETHIUS, _The Consolations of Philosophy_," he said, coming back to his friend. "He looks as if he wanted all the consolations Philosophy can give him, poor boy." At this moment a fourth passenger paused at the book-stall, and, recognizing the pale student, placed his hand on his shoulder and said, "Aha, young sir, we meet again. So poor Prickett is dead. But you are still haunted by associations. Books--books--magnets to which all iron minds move insensibly. What is this? BOETHIUS! Ah, a book written in prison, but a little time before the advent of the only philosopher who solves to the simplest understanding every mystery of life----" "And that philosopher----" "Is Death!" said Mr. Burley. "How can you be dull enough to ask? Poor Boethius, rich, nobly born, a consul, his sons consuls--the world one smile to the Last Philosopher of Rome. Then suddenly, against this type of the old world's departing WISDOM, stands frowning the new world's grim genius, FORCE--Theodoric the Ostrogoth condemning Boethius the Schoolman; and Boethius, in his Pavian dungeon, holding a dialogue with the shade of Athenian Philosophy. It is the finest picture upon which lingers the glimmering of the Western golden day, before night rushes over time." "And," said Mr. Norreys abruptly, "Boethius comes back to us with the faint gleam of returning light, translated by Alfred the Great. And, again, as the sun of knowledge bursts forth in all its splendor, by Queen Elizabeth. Boethius influences us as we stand in this passage; and that is the best of all the Consolations of Philosophy--eh, Mr. Burley?" Mr. Burley turned and bowed. The two men looked at each other; you could not see a greater contrast. Mr. Burley, his gay green dress already shabby and soiled, with a rent in the skirts, and his face speaking of habitual night-cups. Mr. Norreys, neat and somewhat precise in dress, with firm lean figure, and quiet, collected, vigorous energy in his eyes and aspect. "If," replied Mr. Burley, "a poor devil like me may argue with a gentleman who may command his own price with the booksellers, I should say it is no consolation at all, Mr. Norreys. And I should like to see any man of sense accept the condition of Boethius in his prison, with some strangler or headsman waiting behind the door, upon the promised proviso that he should be translated, centuries afterwards, by Kings and by Queens, and help indirectly to influence the minds of Northern barbarians, babbling about him in an alley, jostled by passers-by who never heard the name of Boethius, and who don't care a fig for philosophy. Your servant, sir,--young man, come and talk." Burley hooked his arm within Leonard's, and led the boy passively away. "That is a clever young man," said Harley L'Estrange. "But I am sorry to see yon young student, with his bright earnest eyes, and his lip that has the quiver of passion and enthusiasm, leaning on the arm of a guide who seems disenchanted of all that gives purpose to learning and links philosophy with use to the world. Who, and what is this clever man whom you call Burley?" "A man who might have been famous, if he had condescended to be respectable! The boy listening to us both so attentively interested _me_ too--I should like to have the making of him. But I must buy this Horace." The shopman, lurking within his hole like a spider for flies, was now called out. And when Mr. Norreys had bought the Horace, and given an address where to send it, Harley asked the shopman if he knew the young man who had been reading Boethius. "Only by sight. He has come here every day the last week, and spends hours at the stall. When once he fastens on a book, he reads it through." "And never buys?" said Mr. Norreys. "Sir," said the shopman, with a good-natured smile, "they who buy seldom read. The poor boy pays me twopence a-day to read as long as he pleases. I would not take it, but he is proud." "I have known men amass great learning in that way," said Mr. Norreys. "Yes, I should like to have that boy in my hands. And now, my lord, I am at your service, and we shall go to the studio of your artist." The two gentlemen walked on towards one of the streets out of Fitzroy Square. In a few minutes more Harley L'Estrange was in his element, seated carelessly on a deal table, smoking his cigar, and discussing art with the gusto of a man who honestly loved, and the taste of a man who thoroughly understood it. The young artist, in his dressing robe, adding slow touch upon touch, paused often to listen the better. And Henry Norreys, enjoying the brief respite from a life of great labor, was gladly reminded of idle hours under rosy skies; for these three men had formed their friendship in Italy, where the bands of friendship are woven by the hands of the Graces. CHAPTER V. Leonard and Mr. Burley walked on into the suburbs round the north road from London, and Mr. Burley offered to find literary employment for Leonard--an offer eagerly accepted. Then they went into a public house by the wayside. Burley demanded a private room, called for pen, ink, and paper; and placing these implements before Leonard, said, "Write what you please, in prose, five sheets of letter paper, twenty-two lines to a page--neither more nor less." "I cannot write so." "Tut, 'tis for bread." The boy's face crimsoned. "I must forget that," said he. "There is an arbor in the garden under a weeping ash," returned Burley. "Go there, and fancy yourself in Arcadia." Leonard was too pleased to obey. He found out the little arbor at one end of a deserted bowling-green. All was still--the hedgerow shut out the sight of the inn. The sun lay warm on the grass, and glinted pleasantly through the leaves of the ash. And Leonard there wrote the first essay from his hand as Author by profession. What was it that he wrote? His dreamy impressions of London? an anathema on the streets, and its hearts of stone? murmurs against poverty? dark elegies on fate? Oh, no! little knowest thou true genius, if thou askest such questions, or thinkest that there, under the weeping ash, the task-work for bread was remembered; or that the sunbeam glinted but over the practical world, which, vulgar, and sordid, lay around. Leonard wrote a fairy tale--one of the loveliest you can conceive, with a delicate touch of playful humor--in a style all flowered over with happy fancies. He smiled as he wrote the last word--he was happy. In rather more than an hour Mr. Burley came to him, and found him with that smile on his lips. Mr. Burley had a glass of brandy and water in his hand; it was his third. He too smiled--he too looked happy. He read the paper aloud, and well. He was very complimentary. "You will do!" said he, clapping Leonard on the back. "Perhaps some day you will catch my one-eyed perch." Then he folded up the MS., scribbled off a note, put the whole in one envelope--and they returned to London. Mr. Burley disappeared within a dingy office near Fleet Street, on which was inscribed--"Office of the _Beehive_," and soon came forth with a golden sovereign in his hand--Leonard's first-fruits. Leonard thought Peru lay before him. He accompanied Mr. Burley to that gentleman's lodging in Maida Hill. The walk had been very long; Leonard was not fatigued. He listened with a livelier attention than before to Burley's talk. And when they reached the apartments of the latter, and Mr. Burley sent to the cookshop, and their joint supper was taken out of the golden sovereign, Leonard felt proud, and for the first time for weeks he laughed the heart's laugh. The two writers grew more and more intimate and cordial. And there was a vast deal in Burley by which any young man might be made the wiser. There was no apparent evidence of poverty in the apartment--clean, new, well furnished; but all things in the most horrible litter--all speaking of the huge literary sloven. For several days Leonard almost lived in those rooms. He wrote continuously--save when Burley's conversation fascinated him into idleness. Nay, it was not idleness--his knowledge grew larger as he listened; but the cynicism of the talker began slowly to work its way. That cynicism in which there was no faith, no hope, no vivifying breath from Glory--from Religion. The cynicism of the Epicurean, more degraded in his style than ever was Diogenes in his tub; and yet presented with such ease and such eloquence--with such art and such mirth--so adorned with illustration and anecdote, so unconscious of debasement. Strange and dread philosophy--that made it a maxim to squander the gifts of mind on the mere care for matter, and fit the soul to live but as from day to day, with its scornful cry, "A fig for immortality and laurels!" An author for bread! Oh, miserable calling! was there something grand and holy, after all, even in Chatterton's despair! CHAPTER VI. The villanous _Beehive_! Bread was worked out of it, certainly; but fame, but hope for the future--certainly not. Milton's _Paradise Lost_ would have perished without a sound, had it appeared in the _Beehive_. Fine things were there in a fragmentary crude state, composed by Burley himself. At the end of a week they were dead and forgotten--never read by one man of education and taste; taken simultaneously and indifferently with shallow politics and wretched essays, yet selling, perhaps, twenty or thirty thousand copies--an immense sale; and nothing got out of them but bread and brandy! "What more would you have?" cried John Burley. "Did not stern old Sam Johnson say he could never write but from want?" "He might say it," answered Leonard; "but he never meant posterity to believe him. And he would have died of want, I suspect, rather than have written _Rasselas_ for the _Beehive_! Want is a grand thing," continued the boy, thoughtfully. "A parent of grand things. Necessity is strong, and should give us its own strength; but Want should shatter asunder, with its very writhings, the walls of our prison-house, and not sit contented with the allowance the jail gives us in exchange for our work." "There is no prison-house to a man who calls upon Bacchus--stay--I will translate to you Schiller's Dithyramb. 'Then see I Bacchus--then up come Cupid and Phoebus, and all the Celestials are filling my dwelling.'" Breaking into impromptu careless rhymes, Burley threw off a rude but spirited translation of that divine lyric. "O materialist!" cried the boy, with his bright eyes suffused. "Schiller calls on the gods to take him to their heaven with him; and ye would debase the Gods to a gin palace." "Ho, ho!" cried Burley with his giant laugh. "Drink, and you will understand the Dithyramb." CHAPTER VII. Suddenly one morning, as Leonard sat with Burley, a fashionable cabriolet, with a very handsome horse, stopped at the door--a loud knock--a quick step on the stairs, and Randal Leslie entered. Leonard recognized him and started. Randal glanced at him in surprise, and then, with a tact that showed he had already learned to profit by London life, after shaking hands with Burley, approached, and said with some successful attempt at ease, "Unless I am not mistaken, sir, we have met before. If you remember me, I hope all boyish quarrels are forgotten?" Leonard bowed, and his heart was still good enough to be softened. "Where could you two ever have met?" asked Burley. "In a village green, and in single combat," answered Randal, smiling; and he told the story of the Battle of the Stocks with a well-bred jest on himself. Burley laughed at the story. "But," said he, when this laugh was over, "my young friend had better have remained guardian of the village stocks, than come to London in search of such fortune as lies at the bottom of an inkhorn." "Ah," said Randal, with the secret contempt which men elaborately cultivated are apt to feel for those who seek to educate themselves--"ah, you make literature your calling, sir? At what school did you conceive a taste for letters?--not very common at our great public schools." "I am at school now for the first time," answered Leonard, dryly. "Experience is the best school-mistress," said Burley; "and that was the maxim of Goethe, who had book-learning enough, in all conscience." Randal slightly shrugged his shoulders, and, without wasting another thought on Leonard, peasant-born and self-taught, took his seat, and began to talk to Burley upon a political question, which made then the war-cry between the two great Parliamentary parties. It was a subject in which Burley showed much general knowledge; and Randal, seeming to differ from him, drew forth alike his information and his argumentative powers. The conversation lasted more than an hour. "I can't quite agree with you," said Randal, taking his leave; "but you must allow me to call again--will the same hour to-morrow suit you?" "Yes," said Burley. Away went the young man in his cabriolet. Leonard watched him from the window. For five days, consecutively, did Randal call and discuss the question in all its bearings; and Burley, after the second day got interested in the matter, looked up his authorities--refreshed his memory and even spent an hour or two in the Library of the British Museum. By the fifth day, Burley had really exhausted all that could well be said on his side of the question. Leonard, during these colloquies, had sat apart, seemingly absorbed in reading, and secretly stung by Randal's disregard of his presence. For indeed that young man, in his superb self-esteem, and in the absorption of his ambitious projects, scarce felt even curiosity as to Leonard's rise above his earlier station, and looked on him as a mere journeyman of Burley's. But the self-taught are keen and quick observers. And Leonard had remarked that Randal seemed more as one playing a part for some private purpose, than arguing in earnest; and that when he rose and said, "Mr. Burley, you have convinced me," it was not with the modesty of a sincere reasoner, but the triumph of one who has gained his end. But so struck, meanwhile, was our unheeded and silent listener, with Burley's power of generalization, and the wide surface over which his information extended, that when Randal left the room the boy looked at the slovenly purposeless man, and said aloud--"True; knowledge is _not_ power." "Certainly not," said Burley, dryly--"the weakest thing in the world." "Knowledge is power," muttered Randal Leslie, as, with a smile on his lip, he drove from the door. Not many days after this last interview there appeared a short pamphlet; anonymous, but one which made a great impression on the town. It was on the subject discussed between Randal and Burley. It was quoted at great length in the newspapers. And Burley started to his feet one morning, and exclaimed, "My own thoughts! my very words! Who the devil is this pamphleteer?" Leonard took the newspaper from Burley's hand. The most flattering encomiums preceded the extracts, and the extracts were as stereotypes of Burley's talk. "Can you doubt the author?" cried Leonard, in deep disgust and ingenuous scorn. "The young man who came to steal your brains, and turn your knowledge----" "Into power," interrupted Burley, with a laugh, but it was a laugh of pain. "Well, this was very mean; I shall tell him so when he comes." "He will come no more," said Leonard. Nor did Randal come again. But he sent Mr. Burley a copy of the pamphlet with a polite note, saying, with candid but careless acknowledgment, that "he had profited much by Mr. Burley's hints and remarks." And now it was in all the papers, that the pamphlet which had made so great a noise was by a very young man, Mr. Audley Egerton's relation, and high hopes were expressed of the future career of Mr. Randal Leslie. Burley still attempted to laugh, and still his pain was visible. Leonard most cordially despised and hated Randal Leslie, and his heart moved to Burley with noble but perilous compassion. In his desire to soothe and comfort the man whom he deemed cheated out of fame, he forgot the caution he had hitherto imposed on himself, and yielded more and more to the charm of that wasted intellect. He accompanied Burley now where he went to spend his evenings, and more and more--though gradually, and with many a recoil and self-rebuke--there crept over him the cynic's contempt for glory, amid miserable philosophy of debased content. Randal had risen into grave repute upon the strength of Burley's knowledge. But, had Burley written the pamphlet, would the same repute have attended _him_? Certainly not. Randal Leslie brought to that knowledge qualities all his own--a style simple, strong, and logical; a certain tone of good society, and allusions to men and to parties that showed his connection with a cabinet minister, and proved that he had profited no less by Egerton's talk than Burley's. Had Burley written the pamphlet, it would have showed more genius, it would have had humor and wit, but have been so full of whims and quips, sins against taste, and defects in earnestness, that it would have failed to create any serious sensation. Here, then, there was something else besides knowledge, by which knowledge became power. Knowledge must not smell of the brandy bottle. Randal Leslie might be mean in his plagiarism, but he turned the useless into use. And so far he was original. But one's admiration, after all, rests where Leonard's rested--with the poor, shabby, riotous, lawless, big, fallen man. Burley took himself off to the Brent, and fished again for the one-eyed perch. Leonard accompanied him. His feelings were indeed different from what they had been when he had reclined under the old tree, and talked with Helen of the future. But it was almost pathetic to see how Burley's nature seemed to alter, as he strayed along the banks of the rivulet, and talked of his own boyhood. The man then seemed restored to something of the innocence of the child. He cared, in truth, little for the perch, which continued intractable, but he enjoyed the air and the sky, the rustling grass and the murmuring waters. These excursions to the haunts of youth seemed to rebaptize him, and then his eloquence took a pastoral character, and Isaac Walton himself would have loved to hear him. But as he got back into the smoke of the metropolis, and the gas lamps made him forget the ruddy sunset, and the soft evening star, the gross habits reassumed their sway; and on he went with his swaggering, reckless step to the orgies in which his abused intellect flamed forth, and then sank into the socket quenched and rayless. CHAPTER VIII. Helen was seized with profound and anxious sadness. Leonard had been three or four times to see her, and each time she saw a change in him that excited all her fears. He seemed, it is true, more shrewd, more worldly-wise, more fitted, it might be, for coarse, daily life; but, on the other hand, the freshness and glory of his youth were waning slowly. His aspirings drooped earthward. He had not mastered the Practical, and moulded its uses with the strong hand of the Spiritual Architect, of the Ideal Builder: the Practical was overpowering himself. She grew pale when he talked of Burley, and shuddered, poor little Helen! when she found he was daily and almost nightly in a companionship which, with her native, honest prudence, she saw so unsuited to strengthen him in his struggles, and aid him against temptation. She almost groaned when, pressing him as to his pecuniary means, she found his old terror of death seemed fading away, and the solid, healthful principles he had taken from his village were loosening fast. Under all, it is true, there was what a wiser and older person than Helen would have hailed as the redeeming promise. But that something was _grief_--a sublime grief In his own sense of falling--in his own impotence against the Fate he had provoked and coveted. The sublimity of that grief Helen could not detect: she saw only that it _was_ grief, and she grieved with it, letting it excuse every fault--making her more anxious to comfort, in order that she might save. Even from the first, when Leonard had exclaimed, "Ah, Helen, why did you ever leave me?" she had revolved the idea of return to him; and when in the boy's last visit he told her that Burley, persecuted by duns, was about to fly from his present lodgings, and take his abode with Leonard in the room she had left vacant, all doubt was over. She resolved to sacrifice the safety and shelter of the home assured her. She resolved to come back and share Leonard's penury and struggles, and save the old room, wherein she had prayed for him, from the tempter's dangerous presence. Should she burden him? No; she had assisted her father by many little female arts in needle and fancy work. She had improved herself in these during her sojourn with Miss Starke. She could bring her share to the common stock. Possessed with this idea, she determined to realize it before the day on which Leonard had told her Burley was to move his quarters. Accordingly she rose very early one morning; she wrote a pretty and grateful note to Miss Starke, who was fast asleep, left it on the table, and before any one was astir, stole from the house, her little bundle on her arm. She lingered an instant at the garden-gate, with a remorseful sentiment--a feeling that she had ill-repaid the cold and prim protection that Miss Starke had shown her. But sisterly love carried all before it. She closed the gate with a sigh, and went on. She arrived at the lodging-house before Leonard was up, took possession of her old chamber, and, presenting herself to Leonard as he was about to go forth, said, (story-teller that she was,)--"I am sent away, brother, and I have to come to you to take care of me. Do not let us part again. But you must be very cheerful and very happy, or I shall think that I am sadly in your way." Leonard at first did look cheerful, and even happy; but then he thought of Burley, and then of his own means of supporting her, and was embarrassed, and began questioning Helen as to the possibility of a reconciliation with Miss Starke. And Helen said gravely, "Impossible--do not ask it, and do not go near her." Then Leonard thought she had been humbled and insulted, and remembered that she was a gentleman's child, and felt for her wounded pride--he was so proud himself. Yet still he was embarrassed. "Shall I keep the purse again, Leonard?" said Helen coaxingly. "Alas!" replied Leonard, "the purse is empty." "That is very naughty in the purse," said Helen, "since you put so much into it." "I!" "Did you not say you made, at least, a guinea a-week?" "Yes; but Burley takes the money; and then, poor fellow! as I owe all to him, I have not the heart to prevent his spending it as he likes." "Please, I wish you could settle the month's rent," said the landlady, suddenly showing herself. She said it civilly, but with firmness. Leonard colored. "It shall be paid to-day." Then he pressed his hat on his head, and putting Helen gently aside, went forth. "Speak to _me_ in future, kind Mrs. Smedley," said Helen, with the air of a housewife. "_He_ is always in study, and must not be disturbed." The landlady--a good woman, though she liked her rent--smiled benignly. She was fond of Helen, whom she had known of old. "I am so glad you are come back; and perhaps now the young man will not keep such late hours. I meant to give him warning, but----" "But he will be a great man one of these days, and you must bear with him now." And Helen kissed Mrs. Smedley, and sent her away half inclined to cry. Then Helen busied herself in the rooms. She found her father's box, which had been duly forwarded. She re-examined its contents, and wept as she touched each humble and pious relic. But her father's memory itself thus seemed to give this home a sanction which the former had not; and she rose quietly and began mechanically to put things in order, sighing as she saw all so neglected, till she came to the rose-tree, and that alone showed heed and care. "Dear Leonard!" she murmured, and the smile resettled on her lips. CHAPTER IX. Nothing, perhaps, could have severed Leonard from Burley but Helen's return to his care. It was impossible for him, even had there been another room in the house vacant, (which there was not,) to install this noisy, riotous son of the Muse by Bacchus, talking at random, and smelling of spirits, in the same dwelling with an innocent, delicate, timid, female child. And Leonard could not leave her alone all the twenty-four hours. She restored a home to him, and imposed its duties. He, therefore, told Mr. Burley that in future he should write and study in his own room, and hinted with many a blush, and as delicately as he could, that it seemed to him that whatever he obtained from his pen ought to be halved with Burley, to whose interest he owed the employment, and from whose books or whose knowledge he took what helped to maintain it; but that the other half, if his, he could no longer afford to spend upon feasts or libations. He had another to provide for. Burley pooh-poohed the notion of taking half his coadjutor's earning, with much grandeur, but spoke very fretfully of Leonard's sober appropriation of the other half; and, though a good-natured, warm-hearted man, felt extremely indignant against the sudden interposition of poor Helen. However, Leonard was firm; and then Burley grew sullen, and so they parted. But the rent was still to be paid. How? Leonard for the first time thought of the pawn-broker. He had clothes to spare, and Riccabocca's watch. No; that last he shrank from applying to such base uses. He went home at noon and met Helen at the street door. She too had been out, and her soft cheek was rosy red with unwonted exercise and the sense of joy. She had still preserved the few gold pieces which Leonard had taken back to her on his first visit to Miss Starke's. She had now gone out and bought wools and implements for work; and meanwhile she had paid the rent. Leonard did not object to the work, but he blushed deeply when he knew about the rent, and was very angry. He payed back to her that night what she had advanced; and Helen wept silently at his pride, and wept more when she saw the next day a woeful hiatus in his wardrobe. But Leonard now worked at home, and worked resolutely; and Helen sat by his side, working too; so that next day, and the next, slipped peacefully away, and in the evening of the second be asked her to walk out in the fields. She sprang up joyously at the invitation, when bang went the door, and in reeled John Burley--drunk;--And so drunk! CHAPTER X. And with Burley there reeled in another man--a friend of his--a man who had been a wealthy trader and once well to do, but who, unluckily, had literary tastes, and was fond of hearing Burley talk. So, since he had known the wit, his business had fallen from him, and he had passed through the Bankrupt Court. A very shabby-looking dog he was, indeed, and his nose was redder than Burley's. John made a drunken dash at poor Helen. "So you are the Pentheus in petticoats who defies Bacchus," cried he; and therewith he roared out a verse from Euripides. Helen ran away, and Leonard interposed. "For shame, Burley!" "He's drunk," said Mr. Douce the bankrupt trader--"very drunk--don't mind--him. I say, sir, I hope we don't intrude. Sit still, Burley, sit still and talk, do--that's a good man. You should hear him ta--ta--talk, sir." Leonard meanwhile had got Helen out of the room, into her own, and begged her not to be alarmed, and keep the door locked. He then returned to Burley, who had seated himself on the bed, trying wondrous hard to keep himself upright; while Mr. Douce was striving to light a short pipe that he carried in his buttonhole--without having filled it--and, naturally failing in that attempt, was now beginning to weep. Leonard was deeply shocked and revolted for Helen's sake: but it was hopeless to make Burley listen to reason. And how could the boy turn out of his room the man to whom he was under obligations? Meanwhile there smote upon Helen's shrinking ears loud jarring talk and maudlin laughter, and cracked attempts at jovial songs. Then she heard Mrs. Smedley in Leonard's room, remonstrating, and Burley's laugh was louder than before, and Mrs. Smedley, who was a meek woman, evidently got frightened, and was heard in precipitate retreat. Long and loud talk recommenced. Burley's great voice predominant, Mr. Douce chiming in with hiccupy broken treble. Hour after hour thus lasted, for want of the drink that would have brought it to a premature close. And Burley gradually began to talk himself somewhat sober. Then Mr. Douce was heard descending the stairs, and silence followed. At dawn, Leonard knocked at Helen's door. She opened it at once, for she had not gone to bed. "Helen," said he very sadly, "you cannot continue here, I must find out some proper home for you. This man has served me when all London was friendless, and he tells me that he has nowhere else to go--that the bailiffs are after him. He has now fallen asleep. I will go and find you some lodging close at hand--for I cannot expel him who has protected me; and yet you cannot be under the same roof with him. My own good angel, I must lose you." He did not wait for her answer, but hurried down the stairs. The morning looked through the shutterless panes in Leonard's garret, and the birds began to chirp from the elm-tree, when Burley rose, and shook himself, and stared round. He could not quite make out where he was. He got hold of the water-jug, which he emptied at three draughts, and felt greatly refreshed. He then began to reconnoitre the chamber--looked at Leonard's MSS.--peeped into the drawers--wondered where the devil Leonard himself had gone to--and finally amused himself by throwing down the fire-irons, ringing the bell, and making all the noise he could, in the hopes of attracting the attention of somebody or other, and procuring himself his morning dram. In the midst of this _charivari_ the door opened softly, but as if with a resolute hand, and the small quiet form of Helen stood before the threshold. Burley turned round, and the two looked at each other for some moments with silent scrutiny. _Burley_, (composing his features into their most friendly expression.)--"Come hither, my dear. So you are the little girl whom I saw with Leonard on the banks of the Brent, and you have come back to live with him--and I have come to live with him too. You shall be our little housekeeper, and I will tell you the story of Prince Prettyman, and a great, many others not to be found in _Mother Goose_. Meanwhile, my dear little girl, here is sixpence--just run out and change this for its worth in rum." _Helen_, (coming slowly up to Mr. Burley, and still gazing earnestly into his face.)--"Ah, sir, Leonard says you have a kind heart, and that you have served him--he cannot ask you to leave the house; and so I, who have never served him, am to go hence and live alone." _Burley_, (moved.)--"You go, my little lady?--and why? Can we not all live together?" _Helen._--"No sir. I left every thing to come to Leonard, for we had met first at my father's grave. But you rob me of him, and I have no other friend on earth." _Burley_, (discomposed.)--"Explain, yourself. Why must you leave him because I come?" Helen looks at Mr. Burley again, long and wistfully, but makes no answer. _Burley_, (with a gulp.)--"Is it because he thinks I am not fit company for you?" Helen bowed her head. Burley winced, and after a moment's pause said,--"He is right." _Helen_, (obeying the impulse of her heart, springs forward and takes Burley's hand.)--"Ah, sir," she cried, "before he knew you he was so different--then he was cheerful--then, even when his first disappointment came, I grieved and wept; but I felt he would conquer still--for his heart was so good and pure. Oh, sir, don't think I reproach you; but what is to become of him if--if--No, it is not for myself I speak. I know that if I was here, that if he had me to care for, he would come home early and--work patiently--and--and--that I might save him. But now when I am gone, and you with him--you to whom he is grateful, you whom he would follow against his own conscience, (you must see that, sir,)--what is to become of him?" Helen's voice died in sobs. Burley took three or four long strides through the room--he was greatly agitated. "I am a demon," he murmured. "I never saw it before--but it is true--I should be this boy's ruin." Tears stood in his eyes, he paused abruptly, made a clutch at his hat, and turned to the door. Helen stopped the way, and taking him gently by the arm, said,--"Oh, sir, forgive me--I have pained you;" and looked up at him with a compassionate expression, that indeed made the child's sweet face as that of an angel. Burley bent down as if to kiss her, and then drew back--perhaps with a sentiment that his lips were not worthy to touch that innocent brow. "If I had had a sister--a child like you, little one," he muttered, "perhaps I too might have been saved in time. Now----" "Ah, now you may stay, sir; I don't fear you any more." "No, no; you would fear me again ere night time, and I might not be always in the right mood to listen to a voice like yours, child. Your Leonard has a noble heart and rare gifts. He should rise yet, and he shall, I will not drag him into the mire. Good-bye--you will see me no more." He broke from Helen, cleared the stairs with a bound, and was out of the house. When Leonard returned he was surprised to hear his unwelcome guest was gone--but Helen did not venture to tell him of her interposition. She knew instinctively how such officiousness would mortify and offend the pride of man; but she never again spoke harshly of poor Burley. Leonard supposed that he should either see or hear of the humorist in the course of the day. Finding he did not, he went in search of him at his old haunts; but no trace. He inquired at the _Beehive_ if they knew there of his new address, but no tidings of Burley could be obtained. As he came home disappointed and anxious, for he felt uneasy as to the disappearance of his wild friend, Mrs. Smedley met him at the door. "Please, sir, suit yourself with another lodging," said she. "I can have no such singings and shoutings going on at night in my house. And that poor little girl too! you should be ashamed of yourself." Leonard frowned and passed by. CHAPTER XI. Meanwhile, on leaving Helen, Burley strode on; and, as if by some better instinct, for he was unconscious of his own steps, he took the way towards the still green haunts of his youth. When he paused at length, he was already before the door of a rural cottage, standing alone in the midst of fields, with a little farm-yard at the back; and far through the trees in front was caught a glimpse of the winding Brent. With this cottage Burley was familiar; it was inhabited by a good old couple who had known him from a boy. There he habitually left his rods and fishing-tackle; there, for intervals in his turbid, riotous life, he had sojourned for two or three days together--fancying, the first day that the country was a heaven, and convinced before the third that it was a purgatory. An old woman of neat and tidy exterior came forth to greet him. "Ah, Master John," said she, clasping his nerveless hand--"well, the fields be pleasant now--I hope you are come to stay a bit? Do; it will freshen you; you lose all the fine color you had once, in Lunnon town." "I will stay with you, my kind friend," said Burley, with unusual meekness--"I can have the old room, then?" "Oh yes, come and look at it. I never let it now to any one but you--never have let it since the dear beautiful lady with the angel's face went away. Poor thing, what could have become of her?" Thus speaking, while Burley listened not, the old woman drew him within the cottage, and led him up the stairs into a room that might have well become a better house, for it was furnished with taste, and even elegance. A small cabinet pianoforte stood opposite the fire-place, and the window looked upon pleasant meads and tangled hedgerows, and the narrow windings of the blue rivulet. Burley sank down exhausted, and gazed wistfully from the casement. "You have not breakfasted?" said the hostess anxiously. "No." "Well, the eggs are fresh laid, and you would like a rasher of bacon, Master John? And if you _will_ have brandy in your tea, I have some that you left long ago in your own bottle." Burley shook his head. "No brandy, Mrs. Goodyer; only fresh milk. I will see whether I can yet coax Nature." Mrs. Goodyer did not know what was meant by coaxing Nature, but she said, "Pray do, Master John," and vanished. That day Burley went out with his rod, and he fished hard for the one-eyed perch; but in vain. Then he roved along the stream with his hands in his pockets, whistling. He returned to the cottage at sunset, partook of the fare provided for him, abstained from the brandy, and felt dreadfully low. He called for pen, ink, and paper, and sought to write, but he could not achieve two lines. He summoned Mrs. Goodyer, "Tell your husband to come and sit and talk." Up came old Jacob Goodyer, and the great wit bade him tell him all the news of the village. Jacob obeyed willingly, and Burley at last fell asleep. The next day it was much the same, only at dinner he had up the brandy bottle, and finished it; and he did _not_ have up Jacob, but he contrived to write. The third day it rained incessantly. "Have you no books, Mrs. Goodyer?" asked poor John Burley. "Oh yes; some that the dear lady left behind her; and perhaps you would like to look at some papers in her own writing?" "No, not the papers--all women scribble, and all scribble the same things. Get me the books." The books were brought up--poetry and essays--John knew them by heart. He looked out on the rain, and at evening the rain had ceased. He rushed to his hat and fled. "Nature, Nature!" he exclaimed when he was out in the air, and hurrying by the dripping hedgerows, "you are not to be coaxed by me! I have jilted you shamefully, I own it; you are a female and unforgiving. I don't complain. You may be very pretty, but you are the stupidest and most tiresome companion that ever I met with. Thank heaven, I am not married to you!" Thus John Burley made his way into town, and paused at the first public-house. Out of that house he came with a jovial air, and on he strode towards the heart of London. Now he is in Leicester Square, and he gazes on the foreigners who stalk that region, and hums a tune; and now from yonder alley two forms emerge, and dog his careless footsteps; now through the maze of passages towards St. Martin's he threads his path, and, anticipating an orgy as he nears his favorite haunts, jingles the silver in his pockets; and now the two forms are at his heels. "Hail to thee, O Freedom!" muttered John Burley; "thy dwelling is in cities, and thy palace is the tavern." "In the king's name," quoth a gruff voice; and John Burley feels the horrid and familiar tap on the shoulder. The two bailiffs who dogged have seized their prey. "At whose suit?" asked John Burley, falteringly. "Mr. Cox, the wine-merchant." "Cox! A man to whom I gave a cheque on my bankers not three months ago!" "But it war'nt cashed." "What does that signify?--the intention was the same. A good heart takes the will for the deed. Cox is a monster of ingratitude; and I withdraw my custom." "Sarve him right. Would your honor like a jarvey?" "I would rather spend the money on something else," said John Burley. "Give me your arm, I am not proud. After all, thank heaven, I shall not sleep in the country." And John Burley made a night of it in the Fleet. CHAPTER XII. Miss Starke was one of those ladies who pass their lives in the direst of all civil strife--war with their servants. She looked upon the members of that class as the unrelenting and sleepless enemies of the unfortunate householders condemned to employ them. She thought they ate and drank to their villanous utmost, in order to ruin their benefactors--that they lived in one constant conspiracy with one another and the tradesmen, the object of which was to cheat and pilfer. Miss Starke was a miserable woman. As she had no relations or friends who cared enough for her to share her solitary struggle against her domestic foes; and her income, though easy, was an annuity that died with herself, thereby reducing various nephews, nieces, or cousins, to the strict bounds of a natural affection--that did not exist; and as she felt the want of some friendly face amidst this world of distrust and hate, so she had tried the resource of venal companions. But the venal companions had never staid long--either they disliked Miss Starke, or Miss Starke disliked them. Therefore the poor woman had resolved upon bringing up some little girl whose heart, as she said to herself; would be fresh and uncorrupted, and from whom she might expect gratitude. She had been contented, on the whole, with Helen, and had meant to keep that child in her house as long as she (Miss Starke) remained upon the earth--perhaps some thirty years longer; and then, having carefully secluded her from marriage, and other friendship, to leave her nothing but the regret of having lost so kind a benefactress. Agreeably with this notion, and in order to secure the affections of the child, Miss Starke had relaxed the frigid austerity natural to her manner and mode of thought, and been kind to Helen in an iron way. She had neither slapped nor pinched her, neither had she starved. She had allowed her to see Leonard, according to the agreement made with Dr. Morgan, and had laid out tenpence on cakes, besides contributing fruit from her garden for the first interview--a hospitality she did not think it fit to renew on subsequent occasions. In return for this, she conceived she had purchased the right to Helen bodily and spiritually, and nothing could exceed her indignation when she rose one morning and found the child had gone. As it never had occurred to her to ask Leonard's address, though she suspected Helen had gone to him, she was at a loss what to do, and remained for twenty-four hours in a state of inane depression. But then she began to miss the child so much that her energies woke, and she persuaded herself that she was actuated by the purest benevolence in trying to reclaim this poor creature from the world, into which Helen had thus rashly plunged. Accordingly, she put an advertisement into the _Times_, to the following effect, liberally imitated from one by which, in former years, she had recovered a favorite Blenheim: TWO GUINEAS REWARD. Strayed, from Ivy Cottage, Highgate, a Little Girl, answers to the name of Helen; with blue eyes and brown hair; white muslin frock, and straw hat with blue ribbons. Whoever will bring the same to Ivy Cottage, shall receive the above Reward. _N. B._--Nothing more will be offered. Now, it so happened that Mrs. Smedley had put an advertisement in the _Times_ on her own account, relative to a niece of hers who was coming from the country, and for whom she desired to find a situation. So, contrary to her usual habit, she sent for the newspaper, and, close by her own advertisement she saw Miss Starke's. It was impossible that she could mistake the description of Helen; and, as this advertisement caught her eye the very day after the whole house had been disturbed and scandalized by Burley's noisy visit, and on which she had resolved to get rid of a lodger who received such visitors, the good-hearted woman was delighted to think that she could restore Helen to some safe home. While thus thinking, Helen herself entered the kitchen where Mrs. Smedley sat, and the landlady had the imprudence to point out the advertisement, and talk, as she called it, "seriously" to the little girl. Helen in vain and with tears entreated her to take no step in reply to the advertisement. Mrs. Smedley felt it was an affair of duty, and was obdurate, and shortly afterwards put on her bonnet and left the house. Helen conjectured that she was on her way to Miss Starke's, and her whole soul was bent on flight. Leonard had gone to the office of the _Beehive_ with his MSS.; but she packed up all their joint effects, and, just as she had done so, he returned. She communicated the news of the advertisement, and said she should be so miserable if compelled to go back to Miss Starke's, and implored him so pathetically to save her from such sorrow that he at once assented to her proposal of flight. Luckily, little was owing to the landlady--that little was left with the maid-servant; and, profiting by Mrs. Smedley's absence, they escaped without scene or conflict. Their effects were taken by Leonard to a stand of hackney vehicles, and then left at a coach-office, while they went in search of lodgings. It was wise to choose an entirely new and remote district; and before night they were settled in an attic in Lambeth. CHAPTER XIII. As the reader will expect, no trace of Burley could Leonard find; the humorist had ceased to communicate with the _Beehive_. But Leonard grieved for Burley's sake; and, indeed, he missed the intercourse of the large wrong mind. But he settled down by degrees to the simple loving society of his child companion, and in that presence grew more tranquil. The hours in the daytime that he did not pass at work he spent as before, picking up knowledge at book-stalls; and at dusk he and Helen would stroll out--sometimes striving to escape from the long suburb into fresh rural air; more often wandering to and fro the bridge that led to glorious Westminster--London's classic land--and watching the vague lamps reflected on the river. This haunt suited the musing melancholy boy. He would stand long and with wistful silence by the balustrade--seating Helen thereon, that she too might look along the dark mournful waters which, dark though they be, still have their charm of mysterious repose. As the river flowed between the world of roofs and the roar of human passions on either side, so in those two hearts flowed Thought--and all they knew of London was its shadow. CHAPTER XIV. There appeared in the _Beehive_ certain very truculent political papers--papers very like the tracts in the Tinker's bag. Leonard did not heed them much, but they made far more sensation in the public that read the _Beehive_ than Leonard's papers, full of rare promise though the last were. They greatly increased the sale of the periodical in the manufacturing towns, and began to awake the drowsy vigilance of the Home Office. Suddenly a descent was made upon the _Beehive_, and all its papers and plans. The editor saw himself threatened with a criminal prosecution, and the certainty of two years' imprisonment: he did not like the prospect, and disappeared. One evening, when Leonard, unconscious of these mischances, arrived at the door of the office, he found it closed. An agitated mob was before it, and a voice that was not new to his ear, was haranguing the bystanders, with many imprecations against "tyrans." He looked, and, to his amaze, recognized in the orator Mr. Sprott the Tinker. The police came in numbers to disperse the crowd, and Mr. Sprott prudently vanished, Leonard learned then what had befallen, and again saw himself without employment and the means of bread. Slowly he walked back. "O, knowledge, knowledge!--powerless indeed!" he murmured. As he thus spoke, a handbill in large capitals met his eyes on a dead wall--"Wanted, a few smart young men for India." A crimp accosted him--"You would make a fine soldier, my man. You have stout limbs of your own." Leonard moved on. "It has come back, then, to this. Brute physical force after all. O Mind, despair! O Peasant, be a machine again." He entered his attic noiselessly, and gazed upon Helen as she sat at her work, straining her eyes by the open window--with tender and deep compassion. She had not heard him enter, nor was she aware of his presence. Patient and still she sat, and the small fingers plied busily. He gazed, and saw that her cheek was pale and hollow, and the hands looked so thin! His heart was deeply touched, and at that moment he had not one memory of the baffled Poet, one thought that proclaimed the Egotist. He approached her gently, laid his hand on her shoulder--"Helen, put on your shawl and bonnet, and walk out--I have much to say." In a few moments she was ready, and they took their way to their favorite haunt upon the bridge. Pausing in one of the recesses or nooks, Leonard then began,--"Helen, we must part." "Part?--Oh, brother!" "Listen. All work that depends on mind is over for me; nothing remains but the labor of thews and sinews. I cannot go back to my village and say to all, 'My hopes were self-conceit and my intellect a delusion!' I cannot. Neither in this sordid city can I turn menial or porter. I might be born to that drudgery, but, my mind has, it may be unhappily, raised me above my birth. What, then, shall I do? I know not yet--serve as a soldier, or push my way to some wilderness afar, as an emigrant, perhaps. But whatever my choice, I must henceforth be alone; I have a home no more. But there is a home for you, Helen, a very humble one, (for you, too, so well born,) but very safe--the roof of--of--my peasant mother. She will love you for my sake, and--and----" Helen clung to him trembling, and sobbed out. "Any thing, any thing you will. But I can work; I can make money, Leonard. I do, indeed, make money--you do not know how much--but enough for us both till better times come to you. Do not let us part. "And I--a man, and born to labor, to be maintained by the work of an infant! No, Helen, do not so degrade me." She drew back as she looked on his flushed brow, bowed her head submissively, and murmured, "Pardon.'" "Ah," said Helen, after a pause; "if now we could but find my poor father's friend! I never so much cared for it before." "Yes, he would surely provide for you." "For _me_!" repeated Helen, in a tone of soft deep reproach, and she turned away her head to conceal her tears. "You are sure you would remember him, if we met him by chance?" "Oh, yes. He was so different from all we see in this terrible city, and his eyes were like yonder stars, so clear and so bright; yet the light seemed to come from afar off, as the light does in yours, when your thoughts are away from all things round you. And then, too, his dog whom he called Nero--I could not forget that." "But his dog may not be always with him." "But the bright clear eyes are! Ah, now you look up to heaven, and yours seems to dream like his." Leonard did not answer, for his thoughts were indeed less on earth than struggling to pierce into that remote and mysterious heaven. Both were silent long; the crowd passed them by unheedingly. Night deepened over the river, but the reflection of the lamplights on its waves was more visible than that of the stars. The beams showed the darkness of the strong current, and the craft that lay eastward on the tide, with sail-less spectral masts and black dismal hulks, looked deathlike in their stillness. Leonard looked down, and the thought of Chatterton's grim suicide came back to his soul, and a pale, scornful face with luminous haunting eyes seemed to look up from the stream, and murmur from livid lips,--"Struggle no more against the tides on the surface--all is calm and rest within the deep." Starting in terror from the gloom of his reverie, the boy began to talk fast to Helen, and tried to soothe her with descriptions of the lowly home which he had offered. He spoke of the light cares which she would participate with his mother--for by that name he still called the widow--and dwelt, with an eloquence that the contrast round him made sincere and strong, on the happy rural life, the shadowy woodlands, the rippling cornfields, the solemn lone churchspire soaring from the tranquil landscape. Flatteringly he painted the flowery terraces of the Italian exile, and the playful fountain that, even as he spoke, was flinging up its spray to the stars, through serene air untroubled by the smoke of cities, and untainted by the sinful sighs of men. He promised her the love and protection of natures akin to the happy scene: the simple affectionate mother--the gentle pastor--the exile, wise and kind--Violante, with dark eyes full of the mystic thoughts that solitude calls from childhood,--Violante should be her companion. "And oh!" cried Helen, "if life be thus happy there, return with me, return--return!" "Alas!" murmured the boy, "if the hammer once strike the spark from the anvil, the spark must fly upward; it cannot fall back to earth until light has left it. Upward still, Helen--let me go upward still!" CHAPTER XV. The next morning Helen was very ill--so ill that, shortly after rising, she was forced to creep back to bed. Her frame shivered--her eyes were heavy--her hand burned like fire. Fever had set in. Perhaps she might have caught cold on the bridge--perhaps her emotions had proved too much for her frame. Leonard, in great alarm, called on the nearest apothecary. The apothecary looked grave, and said there was danger. And danger soon declared itself--Helen became delirious. For several days she lay in this state, between life and death. Leonard then felt that all the sorrows of earth are light, compared with the fear of losing what we love. How valueless the envied laurel seemed beside the dying rose. Thanks, perhaps, more to his heed and tending than to medical skill, she recovered sense at last--immediate peril was over. But she was very weak and reduced--her ultimate recovery doubtful--convalescence, at best, likely to be very slow. But when she learned how long she had been thus ill, she looked anxiously at Leonard's face as he bent over her, and faltered forth--"Give me my work! I am strong enough for that now--it would amuse me." Leonard burst into tears. Alas! he had no work himself; all their joint money had melted away; the apothecary was not like good Dr. Morgan; the medicines were to be paid for, and the rent. Two days before, Leonard had pawned Riccabocca's watch; and when the last shilling thus raised was gone, how should he support Helen? Nevertheless he conquered his tears, and assured her that he had employment; and that so earnestly that she believed him, and sank into soft sleep. He listened to her breathing, kissed her forehead, and left the room. He turned into his own neighboring garret, and, leaning his face on his hands, collected all his thoughts. He must be a beggar at last. He must write to Mr. Dale for money--Mr. Dale, too, who knew the secret of his birth. He would rather have begged of a stranger--it served to add a new dishonor to his mother's memory for the child to beg of one who was acquainted with her shame. Had he himself been the only one to want and to starve, he would have sunk inch by inch into the grave of famine, before he would have so subdued his pride. But Helen, there on that bed--Helen needing, for weeks perhaps, all support, and illness making luxuries themselves like necessaries! Beg he must. And when he so resolved, had you but seen the proud bitter soul he conquered, you would have said--"This which he thinks is degradation--this is heroism. Oh, strange human heart!--no epic ever written achieves the Sublime and the Beautiful which are graven, unread by human eye, in thy secret leaves," Of whom else should he beg? His mother had nothing, Riccabocca was poor, and the stately Violante, who had exclaimed, "Would that I were a man!"--he could not endure the thought that she should pity him, and despise. The Avenels! No--thrice No. He drew towards him hastily ink and paper, and wrote rapid lines that were wrung from him as from the bleeding strings of life. But the hour for the post had passed--the letter must wait till the next day; and three days at least would elapse before he could receive an answer. He left the letter on the table, and, stifling as for air, went forth. He crossed the bridge--he passed on mechanically--and was borne along by a crowd pressing towards the doors of Parliament. A debate that excited popular interest was fixed for that evening, and many bystanders collected in the street to see the members pass to and fro, or hear what speakers had yet risen to take part in the debate, or try to get orders for the gallery. He halted amidst these loiterers, with no interest, indeed, in common with them, but looking over their heads abstractedly towards the tall Funeral Abbey--Imperial Golgotha of Poets, and Chiefs, and Kings. Suddenly his attention was diverted to those around by the sound of a name--displeasingly known to him. "How are you, Randal Leslie? Coming to hear the debate?" said a member who was passing through the street. "Yes; Mr. Egerton promised to get me under the gallery. He is to speak himself to-night, and I have never heard him. As you are going into the House, will you remind him?" "I can't now, for he is speaking already, and well too. I hurried from the Athenæum, where I was dining, on purpose to be in time, as I heard that his speech was making a great effect." "This is very unlucky," said Randal, "I had no idea he would speak so early." "M---- brought him up by a direct personal attack. But follow me; perhaps I can get you into the House; and a man like you, Leslie, of whom we expect great things some day, I can tell you, should not miss any such opportunity of knowing what this House of ours is on a field night. Come on!" The member hurried towards the door; and as Randal followed him, a bystander cried--"That's the young man who wrote the famous pamphlet--Egerton's relation." "Oh, indeed!" said another. "Clever man, Egerton--I am waiting for him." "So am I." "Why, you are not a constituent, as I am." "No; but he has been very kind to my nephew, and I must thank him. You are a constituent--he is an honor to your town." "So he is; enlightened man!" "And so generous!" "Brings forward really good measures," quoth the politician. "And clever young men," said the uncle. Therewith one or two others joined in the praise of Audley Egerton, and many anecdotes of his liberality were told. Leonard listened at first listlessly, at last with thoughtful attention. He had heard Burley, too, speak highly of this generous statesman, who, without pretending to genius himself, appreciated it in others. He suddenly remembered, too, that Egerton was half-brother to the Squire. Vague notions of some appeal to this eminent person, not for charity, but employ to his mind, gleamed across him--inexperienced boy that he yet was! And while thus meditating, the door of the House opened, and out came Audley Egerton himself. A partial cheering, followed by a general murmur, apprised Leonard of the presence of the popular statesman. Egerton was caught hold of by some five or six persons in succession; a shake of the hand, a nod, a brief whispered word or two, sufficed the practised member for graceful escape; and soon, free from the crowd, his tall erect figure passed on, and turned towards the bridge. He paused at the angle and took out his watch, looking at it by the lamp-light. "Harley will be here soon," he muttered--"he is always punctual; and now that I have spoken, I can give him an hour or so. That is well." As he replaced his watch in his pocket, and re-buttoned his coat over his firm broad chest, he lifted his eyes, and saw a young man standing before him. "Do you want me?" asked the statesman, with the direct brevity of his practical character. "Mr. Egerton," said the young man, with a voice that slightly trembled, and yet was manly amidst emotion, "you have a great name, and great power--I stand here in these streets of London without a friend, and without employ. I believe that I have it in me to do some nobler work than that of bodily labor, had I but one friend--one opening for my thoughts. And now I have said this, I scarcely know how, or why, but from despair, and the sudden impulse which that despair took from the praise that follows your success, I have nothing more to add." Audley Egerton was silent for a moment, struck by the tone and address of the stranger; but the consummate and wary man of the world, accustomed to all manner of strange applications, and all varieties of imposture, quickly recovered from a passing and slight effect. "Are you a native of ----?" (naming the town he represented as member.) "No, sir." "Well, young man, I am very sorry for you; but the good sense you must possess (for I judge of that by the education you have evidently received) must tell you that a public man, whatever be his patronage, has it too fully absorbed by claimants who have a right to demand it, to be able to listen to strangers." He paused a moment, and, as Leonard stood silent, added, with more kindness than most public men so accosted would have showed--"You say you are friendless--poor fellow. In early life that happens to many of us, who find friends enough before the close. Be honest, and well-conducted; lean on yourself, not on strangers; work with the body if you can't with the mind; and, believe me, that advice is all I can give you, unless this trifle,"--and the minister held out a crown piece. Leonard bowed, shook his head sadly, and walked away. Egerton looked after him with a slight pang. "Pooh!" said he to himself, "there must be thousands in the same state in these streets of London. I cannot redress the necessities of civilization. Well educated! It is not from ignorance henceforth that society will suffer--it is from over-educating the hungry thousands who, thus unfitted for manual toil, and with no career for mental, will some day or other stand like that boy in our streets, and puzzle wiser ministers than I am." As Egerton thus mused, and passed on to the bridge, a bugle-horn rang merrily from the box of a gay four-in-hand. A drag-coach with superb blood-horses rattled over the causeway, and in the driver Egerton recognised his nephew--Frank Hazeldean. The young Guardsman was returning, with a lively party of men, from dining at Greenwich; and the careless laughter of these children of pleasure floated far over the still river. It vexed the ear of the careworn statesman--sad, perhaps, with all his greatness, lonely amidst all his crowd of friends. It reminded him, perhaps, of his own youth, when such parties and companionships were familiar to him, though through them all he bore an ambitious aspiring soul--"_Le jeu vaut-il la chandelle?_" said he, shrugging his shoulders. The coach rolled rapidly past Leonard, as he stood leaning against the corner of the bridge, and the mire of the kennel splashed over him from the hoofs of the fiery horses. The laughter smote on his ear more discordantly than on the minister's, but it begot no envy. "Life is a dark riddle," said he, smiting his breast. And he walked slowly on, gained the recess where he had stood several nights before with Helen; and dizzy with want of food, and worn out for want of sleep, he sank down into the dark corner; while the river that rolled under the arch of stone muttered dirge-like in his ear;--as under the social key-stone wails and rolls on for ever the mystery of Human Discontent. Take comfort, O Thinker by the stream! 'Tis the river that founded and gave pomp to the city; and without the discontent, where were progress--what were Man? Take comfort, O Thinker! wherever the stream over which thou bendest, or beside which thou sinkest, weary and desolate, frets the arch that supports thee;--never dream that, by destroying the bridge, thou canst silence the moan of the wave! FOOTNOTES: [18] Continued from page 259. [19] Fact. In a work by M. GIBERT, a celebrated French physician, on diseases of the skin, he states that that minute troublesome kind of rash, known by the name of _prurigo_, though not dangerous in itself, has often driven the individual afflicted by it to--suicide. I believe that our more varying climate, and our more heating drinks and ailments, render the skin complaint more common in England than in France, yet I doubt if any English physician could state that it had ever driven one of his _English_ patients to suicide. From the London Art-Journal. INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. The recent judgment of Lord Campbell in Boosey _v._ Jeffreys, which has settled finally the much litigated question of the right of a foreigner to copyright in this country, whether of books, pictures, or music, has been alleged as an excuse for a public meeting of authors and publishers, to appeal against the concession of such a right, and to procure a reversal of the decision, should his lordship be disposed to overrule his own judgment in the House of Lords. The direct impulse to the present agitation, however, appears to have been certain proceedings commenced against Mr. Bohn and others, by Mr. Murray, for their alleged invasion of his copyrights in the works of Washington Irving; of which cheap editions have been issued, on the faith of a recent opinion of Lord Cranworth, wholly at variance with that which has lately been pronounced by the Court of Error, by no fewer than four publishers. The defendants in these cases are of course the leading instigators of this movement, and appear to have prevailed upon Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton to take the chair at a public meeting of Authors and Publishers, at the Hanover Square Rooms, for the purpose of discussing the question in all its bearings. Although the authors and publishers of England were but slenderly represented on the occasion, and even those who were present were far from unanimous, several ingenious and even brilliant speeches were delivered, and resolutions were carried, tending to support the Chairman's view of the subject; viz., to procure a revision of the law which declares foreign authors resident abroad, to be entitled to copyright in this country; to form a society to consider the steps necessary to obtain the proposed readjustment of the law; and lastly, to collect subscriptions to indemnify the gentlemen now acting on the defensive, in the various actions for the alleged invasion of copyright, in the expensive process of appealing against Lord Campbell's decision to the House of Lords. We confess that we have not been convinced by any of the arguments adduced on this occasion, able and plausible as many of them were, that we should violate that great principle of justice, which forbids that we should do evil that good may come; and that because foreign nations cannot be brought to a sense of the dishonesty of their habitual invasions of British Copyright, we should make reprisals upon their authors, and deny them that protection which they so dishonestly withhold to us. Still less can we affirm a proposition which would go back from twenty five to thirty years, and deprive English booksellers of copyrights for which, on the faith of the law as it then stood, they have paid very considerable sums of money. The impression, that if we deprive American authors of the copyright they have hitherto enjoyed in England, we shall force them and their readers to agree to an international arrangement, we believe to be entirely fallacious. There are very few American authors whose copyrights have proved of any material value to English publishers; and even of that few, the majority have retired for some years past, almost wholly from the field of literature. Washington Irving, Cooper, and Prescott, are almost the only authors who have a marketable value in this country; and two out of the three have written little that is worthy of their genius for many years. Besides, the American buccaneer knows full well that the chief weight of the sacrifice, if American copyrights were to be declared null and void in this country, would fall upon neither Mr. Irving, Mr. Cooper, nor Mr. Prescott, but upon Messrs. Murray and Bentley, the British possessors of their copyrights. If, therefore, the question be mooted at all, it should not be with a view to a retrospective operation. But we more than doubt, if America, uninfluenced by worthier motives, will ever be driven to a recognition of the rights of British authors, for the sake of protecting the interests of the very few of its native writers who look to England for the chief reward of their literary labor. America, in her rage for cheap editions, has almost annihilated her own literature, and her unwarrantable piracy of our best authors, does but react on those of her own. If unable to understand the impolicy of her present course, will mulcting Mr. Murray and Mr. Bentley induce her to abandon her wholesale appropriations of English literary property? or, will our becoming robbers ourselves diminish the wholesale piracy of our neighbors? We think not. The arguments of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, which apply to the conduct of America in refusing to entertain the question of international copyright, are unanswerable; but if she prefers the selfish demands of the million to the interests of her own writers, she is not likely to be deterred from continuing the work of spoliation because we, at length, determine to follow her example. It cannot be doubted, for one moment, that it was the _intention_ of the act at present in force, to recognize the copyright of foreigners whose works were first published in this country, and it is equally clear that the law for the protection of the patents of foreigners in England, was conceived in the same spirit. Why should we refuse protection to the writings of a foreign author, and concede it to his scientific discoveries? If we are to interpret the law as Sir E. Bulwer Lytton and Mr. Bohn would have us do, why should we grant to any foreign inventor the patent by which his property is secured in this country? More than twenty years ago the late Mr. Murray paid Washington Irving 1500_l._ for his Tales of a Traveller; 3000_l._ for his Columbus; 1000_l._, for his Granada; and 1000_l._ for his Bracebridge Hall. Is it to be endured, that because American booksellers are engaged in an unauthorized republication of every English book which they consider worth reprinting, we should, after so long a forbearance, become pirates in our turn; and thus despoil, not the foreign aggressor, but our own respectable publishers, of a right in which so large an amount of capital and enterprise has been embarked. Whatever difference of opinion, therefore, there may be as to the measures which are most likely to force upon our neighbors a fair recognition of the rights of our authors, by a system of reprisal which we could never be brought to admire, and which we consider beneath the dignity of our national character, there can be none as to the absurdity of attempting so to do, by a retrospective operation which has neither justice nor common honesty to recommend it. We are far from desiring to attach any moral blame to the gentlemen whose reprints, in this country, of the works of Irving and others, have given occasion for the present controversy. The state of the law, as interpreted by Lord Cranworth, and other of our eminent jurists, appears to have warranted their belief that they were perfectly authorized in so doing. There are, however, considerations of courtesy which ought always to be observed by persons of the same profession towards each other, which should prevent them from doing all that even the law entitles them to do, where, by such a course, they are prejudicing the interests of their respectable brother tradesmen, on occasions on which they had good ground to believe that they have done every thing they could to secure the rights to which they lay claim. Neither is the position of the author to be wholly overlooked. So far back as 1813 or 1814, Washington Irving was a resident in this country, engaged in mercantile pursuits, as a partner in a British firm, and was as much an Englishman as either Mr. Leslie or Mr. Stuart Newton. He was, indeed, a resident in England at the date of the publication of several of his works. But the principle, if carried out fairly, would compromise the interests of painters and print-publishers, as well as of litterateurs and booksellers. If the arguments employed at the late meeting, are at all tenable, the valuable copyrights of Messrs. Moon, Graves & Co., Colnaghi, or Hogarth, and other printsellers, in the engravings executed from the works of Leslie, Newton, Ohalon, and others, are completely at the mercy of any one who may think it worth his while to reproduce them. The sort of retaliation, therefore, which is now suggested, would be equivalent to that of cutting off the nose for the purpose of being revenged upon the face. It is quite true that in 1845, in Chappell _v._ Purday, the Court of Exchequer was of opinion that a foreign author residing abroad, who composed a work there, could have no copyright in this country; a decision which was subsequently confirmed in the same Court in Boosey v. Purday. These judgments have, however, been entirely overruled by Lord Campbell, who on a late occasion pronounced an opinion in the teeth of these decisions, and whose impressions on this question are said to be shared by a large majority of the Judges of the Court of Queen's Bench. The point may therefore be considered as settled; and as further litigation in the Court of Chancery can only be productive of ruinous expense and vexation, it is much to be desired that an amicable arrangement of the differences of the respective publishers may be entered into, which, whilst it recognizes the proper principle, will avert the necessity of further contests on the subject. Mr. Colburn was, it appears, in favor of the anti-foreign copyright disputants, and has, therefore, clearly invited the invasion of his own copyrights of the works of American authors. As, however, he is understood to have virtually, if not ostensibly, retired from the publishing trade, he has for the future, at least, but little interest in the matter. The speeches of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and of Mr. Bohn, at the late meeting, contain many facts and illustrations, which will be found of service in considering the question of international copyright. Mr. Bohn has already done much by the publication of cheap editions of standard authors, at a very moderate price, to render good books accessible to the public, and is placed by his position as a bookseller, beyond the suspicion of having been actuated by mercenary or unworthy motives in the matter. We question however if the general interests of authors and publishers have not suffered materially from his reprints. When Mr. Colburn attributed to American piracy the discouraging fact that for books for which he could once afford to pay 1000_l._, he cannot now give more than from 100_l._ to 150_l._, he appears to have overlooked the prevalence of cheap literature generally in this country; and the ruinous competition which is now going on among rival booksellers. Who is likely to purchase his guinea and a half editions of Cooper's novels, when he can obtain from Mr. Bohn the works of Washington Irving (large and handsomely printed volumes) at two shillings each? Besides, the same system of piracy was at work when he purchased Mr. Cooper's copyrights, as is in operation now. He recommends British publishers not to purchase another copyright from an American author until his government have consented to enter into some international arrangement; and so far we agree with him in his suggestion. It is a remarkable fact, however, that whilst British authors are protesting in their speeches and writings against foreign appropriations of their copyrights, they are often very much flattered by their adoption. The audacious single-volume piracies of Galignani and Baudry of Paris, of the poetry of Byron, Scott, Southey, Moore, Coleridge, Shelley and others, were often looked upon by the parties who might be expected to consider themselves most aggrieved, as conferring a distinction upon their writings calculated to increase their reputation in this country. In several instances within our knowledge, the materials for the biographical notices which prefaced the respective volumes were supplied by the authors themselves! Lord Byron, so far from expressing any indignation at the liberty which Messrs. Galignani had taken with his writings, assisted them in identifying them, and wrote interesting autograph letters to aid in their illustration. Southey, as we gather from one of his letters, was rather flattered than otherwise at the republication of his poetry in Paris, and if rumor may be credited, Moore corrected the proofs, and furnished materials for the biography of one or more of the foreign editions of his works. Mr. Bowles and several other poets whose writings were included in this series, not only furnished notes for the Biographical Prefaces, but indicated to the editor the publications from which their fugitive writings should be collected. Mrs. Hemans furnished several notes and suggestions for one of the American editions of her works, and sent copies to her friends as evidence of her translantic popularity. In fact we have rarely met with an author whose writings have been deemed worthy of being reprinted abroad, who has not considered himself flattered by the preference. We do not of course profess to believe that their publishers were equally complimented by this unceremonious invasion of their property. So long as the sale of such piracies were limited to the continent, we doubt if they were the means of abstracting a great deal from the pockets of either the author or publisher; but for very many years they were allowed to be imported in single copies, during which period they were introduced into this country in large quantities. They were, however, purchased rather from their compactness than for their cheapness, and the instant Mr. Murray published a handsomely printed single volume edition of the Poetry of Lord Byron at a moderate price, the trade in French and Belgian piracies of British copyrights was almost destroyed. Why should we not print cheap editions for exportation? The drawback on the paper, and the superiority of our printing and binding would be sufficiently obvious to enable us to obtain a better price than would be given for such coarse reprints as are usually hurried into circulation in America. We cannot but believe that such an enterprise might be carried out successfully. There is scarcely an edition, at a moderate price, of any American author, that is worthy of the library; and looking at the quality of the paper and print, we doubt if the American booksellers could afford a volume of similar quality at the price charged by Mr. Bohn for his reprints. Any plan is, however, better than that suggested at the late meeting, of becoming pirates ourselves to cure our neighbors of their buccaneering propensities. The comparatively small number of works of mark which are now produced in America (there have been no prose writers of any very great eminence since the heyday of the literary lives of Irving, Cooper, and Channing, if we except Mr. Prescott) goes far to show that national literature is all but annihilated in that country, and that the evil must eventually, in a great measure, correct itself. In a recent American newspaper it is stated that protection is not refused in that country to any British author who will go through the necessary forms by which he becomes qualified for the privilege. Our readers will smile to hear that one of these conditions consists of an oath, by which the candidate for copyright in America is required to "renounce for ever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereign, whatever, and particularly _to the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland!"_ The late Captain Marryat declined to comply with these terms, although another English author, of undeniable reputation, has, it is affirmed, not scrupled to bolt this denationalizing pill. We have not heard if he has turned his privilege to any account. From Fraser's Magazine. A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN AT HOME. BY C. ASTOR BRISTED. It was a lovely October day; the temperature perfectly Elysian--not half a degree too hot or too cold--and the air moister than is usual in the dry climate of the Northern States, altogether reminding one of Florence in early autumn, only less enervating. Ashburner and the Harry Bensons were gliding up the Hudson in a 'floating palace,' which is American penny-a-liner for a northriver steamboat. Gerard Ludlow was on board, handsome and _distingué_ as ever, but a little thinned and worn by numberless polkas. He had got rid of his wife by a mighty effort, and was going to play _le Mari à la Campagne_--not at Ravenswood, however, but with some of the Van Hornes who lived higher up the river. While the young exquisite was rattling on in a sort of Macaronic French to Mrs. Benson about the mountains of Switzerland and the pictures of Italy, the ascent of the Nile and "that glorious _Clos-Vougeot Blanc Mousseux_ at the _Anglais_"--every topic, in short, that had not the least connection with America--Ashburner was witnessing for the third time, with unabated admiration, the magnificent scenery of the classic American river--for classic it is to a New-Yorker since Washington Irving has immortalized its legends. "I am glad to see you are not ashamed to show a little enthusiasm," said Benson, as he marked his friend leaning over the forward railing, absorbed in the view before him. "Some people don't care much for this sort of thing. There's my cousin Ludlow, how supremely indifferent he is to it all! He is talking to my wife about the last comic opera he saw in Paris, which represents Shakespeare and Queen Bess getting very jolly together." "Certainly one would hardly be able to tell what countryman Ludlow was, without previous knowledge. He seems, like many of your fashionables, very much out of place here." "That's true enough; and the man most out of place among them all is my brother Carl, whom we are just going to visit." Ashburner's recollection and knowledge of Carl Benson were pretty much comprised in a certain luncheon at Ravenswood, which he had found very much in place, and a very good place for. Henry went on to explain himself. "He prides himself on a regard for two things--sincerity and equity--two very estimable virtues, no doubt, but capable of being ridden to death like all hobbies." Benson further proceeded to state that he was afraid they would find his brother in no very genial mood--that, in fact, he had two special reasons at that time for being in bad humor. The anti-rent epidemic had broken out in the vicinity, and his place was threatened with perforation by a railroad. The former, however perilous to some of his acquaintance, was no very terrible danger to Carl himself, he having as many tenants in the country as his brother had in town--to wit, just one. The latter was considerably more serious in itself, and rendered particularly aggravating by attendant circumstances. An equally convenient and much safer inland route for the railway had been originally proposed; but Mr. Jobson, the chief engineer, started the project of a new one close along the shore, running through the beautiful private grounds that lined the whole east bank of the river for a hundred and fifty miles. The true motive for this change was, that the company would thus have to pay less for right of way, since the inland route would have passed through the cornfields and vegetable-grounds of farmers, to whom they must have made full compensation at the market value of the land, whereas by cutting through a private lawn they could take the ground at a merely nominal rate, the damage caused to a gentleman by the destruction of his place for all the purposes of a country-seat being a "fancy value," which jurors and commissioners chosen from the mass of the people, and regarding the aristocratic landholder with an envious eye, would never pay the least attention to. But either from a lingering regard for outward decency, or from some other motive, this, the real reason, met with only a passing allusion in Mr. Jobson's report. He came out boldly, and recommended the river route as calculated to improve the appearance of the shore, by filling up bays and cutting off sharp points.[20] What made it worse was, that the majority of these very gentlemen proprietors had been induced to subscribe largely to the road under the solemn assurance from leading members of the company (which took care not to make itself officially and corporately responsible) that the inland route would be adopted, which assurance was thrown to the winds as soon as the books were filled up. Carl was not to be taken in so; he had refused to subscribe to the road, and opposed it to the extent of his small influence from the first; he might be the victim of such people, but he would not be their dupe. This was one consolation to him. Another was, that the railway, when it did come upon him, which would not be for two years yet, would not absolutely ruin his place. It would not go through his house, or across the lawn in front of it, or break down his terrace, for which Nature was to be thanked, and not Mr. Jobson. Ravenswood was partly within one of the to-be-improved bays, and, consequently, the rails would cut it close along the water under the terraced bank. It merely stopped his access to the river, which, as he did not yacht, and had room for the little boating he wanted in the adjoining bay, was no great deprivation. At any rate, the danger anticipated by Harry turned out all moonshine. When they stopped at Van Burenopolis (the landing nearest Ravenswood), Carl's rockaway was on the ground, and in ten minutes their host received them at his front door, both his hands out-stretched, and his face lighted up with unfeigned pleasure. Carl Benson was an unflattered likeness of his brother, with a larger nose, large feet, that got into every one's way, coarser hair, and narrower chest; altogether a rougher and inferior type of form; but he had a fresh and ruddy complexion, and though he was Henry's senior by six years, there did not seem to be more than a twelve-month between them. In dress he was as quiet as Harry was gay; never cared how old his clothes were, so long as he had plenty of clean linen; was often two years behind the fashion; affected black coats and gray trousers; eschewed enamelled chains, jewelled waistcoat-buttons, and other similar fopperies of Young New-York; preferred shoes (not of patent leather) to boots, and usually tied his cravat in the smallest possible bow. Nor was the contrast in manner between the two brothers less marked; the elder was shy and retiring before strangers, and would have been called a very awkward man anywhere but in England. You might easily guess from his way of behaving himself on a first introduction, the uncertain style of his movements, and his "butter-finger" fashion of taking hold of things, that he had none of that dexterity in the little every-day occasions of life which distinguished Harry; who, for instance, could harness a horse about as soon as his groom, while Carl would have been half the day about it, and not have done it well after all; Harry could carry out a complicated affair of business at one interview, without coming off worst; but his elder brother would have pottered about it three days, and probably been cheated in the end. This inaptitude for small business, this want of promptitude and dexterity, of presence of mind and body, so to speak, is not very detrimental in Europe, where a gentleman with a tolerably well-filled purse can have so much done for him; but in America, where the richest man has to do so much for himself, it is a constantly recurring inconvenience, and it struck the Englishman almost immediately that this, though not especially alluded to by Henry, was one of the things that made Carl out of place in his own fatherland. The mansion at Ravenswood, which had braved the storms of eighty-five winters (a venerable age for an American house), was pitched on a hill commanding a view of the Hudson for forty miles. Without, it was built of rough stone, with an ample wooden _stoop_ running all round it, and a great variety of vines and creepers running round all the pillars of the stoop;--within, it branched off into large halls and spacious rooms, filled with antediluvian furniture, and guiltless of the ambitious upholstery attempts of Young New-York, which in such matters goes ahead of Paris itself. The library alone, in which Carl lived,--that is to say, he did everything but dining and sleeping there,--was fitted up in modern style, furnished with luxurious arm-chairs and sofas, the walls and ceiling neatly painted in oak, and the principal window composed of one oval pane of glass set in a frame, to which the external landscape supplied an exquisite picture. The hill swept down to the water's edge almost, where it terminated abruptly in a lofty terrace, ninety feet above the level of the shore. The woodlands all about--on Benson's place, on the places adjoining, on the opposite bank--would have been beautiful at any time of the year; now, when the foliage was changing color, in anticipation of the coming frost, they were surpassingly so. As the trees change not all at once, but different ones assume different tints successively, the natural kaleidoscope is varied from day to day. The sumach leaf is one of the first to alter; it becomes a vivid scarlet; then the maple assumes a brilliant red and gold; then others put on a rich sienna, and others a warm olive. Here and there were interspersed patches of evergreens, pines looking almost blue, and cedars looking quite black from the contrast of the gorgeous and fiery coloring that surrounded them. The river water was deep blue; in the little bay north of Ravenswood it shaded off into a soft olive from the reflection of the foliage and grass about it; while beyond the further bank of the Hudson rose the Kaatskill[21] chain, richly wooded to their summits, and painted with the myriad dyes of autumn,--a fitting background to the landscape. Of course the finest part of this view was beyond the limits of Ravenswood, but so much of it as belonged to Carl (and his grounds covered some two hundred acres) was cleverly disposed with the help of an ingenious landscape-gardener; the trees were cut into picturesque clumps and vistas, opened at the desirable points. Henry, who bragged for all the family as well as for himself, took care to inform Ashburner how, when the place came into Carl's possession (or rather into his wife's, for by the laws of New-York, the wife's property is absolutely hers, and out of her husband's control) by the demise of his father-in-law, there was hardly a carriage-road on it, and how he had devoted all his spare income to it for seven years, "and made it what you see it." As the Englishman had nothing to do for some days but to ramble about Ravenswood, and talk to the owner of it, he had full opportunity of ascertaining how far his brother's estimate of him was correct, and also how far the difference between the two, particularly in their practical aptitude for business, was attributable to the fact, that one of them had finished his education in England, and the other in America, which, for a New-Yorker, means in Paris, in Germany, half over the continent of Europe, in short. His conclusion was, that some of the qualities which made his host so "out of place" were natural, and that others had been superinduced upon these by his English education. Harry Benson had truly stated, that his brother's prominent trait of character was sincerity. He used to say of himself, that the fairy had bestowed on him true Thomas's gift, "the tongue that ne'er could lie," and that the consequent incapacities predicted by the Scottish minstrel had fallen upon him; he could neither buy nor sell, nor pay court to prince or peer, (that is, in America, to the sovereign people,) nor win favor of fair lady. Certainly this is a dangerous quality in any country, unless tempered with an exquisite tact, which was not among Carl's possessions; but it is peculiarly dangerous in America, for there is no public (not excepting the French or Irish) that feeds so greedily on pure humbug as the American. _Populus vult decipi_ there with a vengeance; and when the general current of feeling has set towards any show or phantasm, moral, political, literary, or social, woe to the individual who plants himself in its way! Equally correct was the assertion that equity was a leading idea of his mind. "Give the devil his due," was one of his favorite proverbs; and when he said that a thing "was not fair," it seemed to him a conclusive argument against it. His conception of the virtues was the genuine Aristotelian one--a medium between two extremes. Not that he was a lukewarm partisan on all subjects; but of the people he most disliked--and he was a really "good hater" of some classes, Romanists, for instance, and Frenchmen, and Southern slaveholders--he could not bring himself to take any unfair advantage. Now it is no news to any one who knows anything of the Americans, that they are a nation of violent extremes; the different political parties, theological sects, geographical divisions--the literati of different cities, even--vituperate and assail one another fearfully, hardly respecting the laws of the land, much less the principles of natural justice. Add to all this, that Carl had a naturally elegant and fastidious taste, certain to make him aristocratic in sentiment, however democratic he might be in principle, and it will be seen that he had a tolerable stock of incompatibilities to start with before having anything to do with England. But, as if to settle his business completely, and prevent him from ever becoming a contented and contenting citizen of his own country, it chanced that just at the period of his youth, when, according to the wont of Young America, dress and billiards formed the main topic of his conversation, and he was aspiring to the possession of a fast trotter, accident took him to England, and a series of accidents kept him there, and caused him to make it his home for several years, and his standpoint for all his continental excursions. He grew up to mature manhood among and along with a generation of Englishmen. He acquired a taste for classical studies, and for that literary society, and those habits of literary and ethical criticism which are nowhere else found in such perfection. His life had always been strictly, even prudishly moral; and while casting off the frivolities and fopperies of his boyhood, he also parted with much of the impulsive and imperfectly understood religion of his younger days, and replaced it by a more sedate and permanent feeling, which never rose to ecstasy of emotion, but was always present to him as a daily habit, and was deeply earnest, with little outward show. Such a man's tendencies were visibly towards the church; and had Carl been an Englishman, or continued his sojourn in England, he would have taken orders naturally and inevitably, and might have made a tolerable parson. But at home he soon found it impossible to assimilate himself to that Evangelical party which constitutes the great bulk of the American religious community. The three leading tendencies of his character already alluded to, fostered as they were by his residence abroad, had ended by making him very eclectic and very unconventional. He took what seemed good to him from every quarter, without reference to antecedents; and the fact that all the world about him were going one way, was just the reason to make him go the other. The Puritan denunciations of all who differed from them on points of transcendental theology, or of social institutions, seemed to him illiberal and uncharitable. His religion acted upon him somewhat like the Socratic Dæmon; it restrained him from actions, rather than prompted him to them. He abhorred all parade of godliness, and shrunk from disclosing his religious experiences, as he would have done from disclosing his loves to a mixed assemblage. There were many things about these people besides their abhorrence of the fine arts, that shocked his æsthetic sensibility, and their inquisitive censoriousness he deemed ungentlemanly in point of manners, and little short of persecution in point of principle. What most of all repelled him was their unmitigated "seriousness." A certain notorious personage, whom it is no scandal to call the greatest of living charlatans, is reported to have taken for his motto, "Praise God, and be merry." Now this was exactly what Carl wanted to do, to praise God, and be merry; and he did not think the latter clause of the device implied any necessary incompatibility with the former. He held strongly to the "_neque semper arcum_," and thought that a man was all the better man, and better Christian, for an occasional season of healthy enjoyment. He did not think "teetotalism" necessary to prevent gentlemen from becoming drunkards, and he took his regular exercise on Sunday as well as on other days. His sincere nature revolted equally from the idea of dissembling a merriment which he felt, and from that of simulating a religious enthusiasm which he did not feel. With all personal respect for such men, and all reverence for the service they had done to the cause of vital religion, and civil, no less than religious liberty, he very soon found that he could not amalgamate with them, and gave up all intention of going into the church. Thus it came to pass, that letting himself slide into the place which his fortune and connections had marked out for him, he became a man of society, and a gentleman of the world. It proved that he was not entirely free from the national error of quitting one extreme for another: it could only be said in his defence, that his new _rôle_ rather came to, than was sought for by him. Perhaps his fastidiousness partly led him into it; but this trait of his mind showed itself more in intellectual criticism than in material Sybaritism, and more in the choice of companions than either. Certainly he had no great qualifications for the part, especially in New-York, and very wild work he made of it with his peculiar ideas, some of which were rather English, and all of which were considerably the reverse of American. The first offence that Carl gave was by getting married in church as quietly as anything can be done in New-York, and going out of the way immediately afterwards, instead of standing his bride up for eight hundred people to look at. He was shamefully negligent of his duties to society in not having given "a reception." Carl said that he married for the present happiness and future comfort of himself and his wife, not for the amusement of society; and that was all the explanation he deigned to give his fashionable acquaintances. His next eccentricity was refusing to read _The Sewer_, to let it enter his house, or to talk about it. He said, that in Europe, scandalous newspapers were not taken in by respectable families, that even young men read them at their clubs and by stealth, and never mentioned them before ladies; that people making pretensions to superior morality and decency ought not to patronize an immoral and blasphemous print--and more to the same effect. Men and women who referred to France as the standard of half the things they did, taunted him with referring to England. Benson did not think it worth while to discuss the merits of that case, but answered by a quotation from Aristophanes, how "clever folks learn many things from their enemies,"--which he had to translate before his auditors understood it,--and by another of like purport from a Latin bard, which they were less slow to comprehend, as it has become part of the stock in trade of our public speakers, and even the editors know what it means. Then one man liked _The Sewer_ because it had the best reports of trotting matches; and another, because it published the news from Washington half-an-hour sooner than any of its contemporaries; and they all said, that all the papers were so bad, it was merely a question of degree, and not of kind. Nobody agreed with Carl, not even the people who were abused by _The Sewer_, and he made no converts out of his own family--his wife, brother, and sister. But his great crime was blaspheming the polka, for which I believe Young New-York thought him absolutely insane, and would gladly have put him into a straight-jacket. He thought that a _matinée_ which lasted from noon to midnight was an absurd and wicked waste of time; that even six hours a day was too much for a reasonable being to devote to the Redowa; that at a ball or party there should be some place for people who like to converse, and a non-dancing man should not be stuck into a corner all the evening on pain of being knocked over by the waltzers; that the tipsy excesses of the young gentlemen who lorded it in the ball-room rendered their society not the most edifying for ladies; and as whatever he thought he gave utterance to in pretty plain language, he made himself prodigiously unpopular, and was a great nuisance to the exclusives. On the other hand, he found things enough to annoy him. He had no like-minded, and it seemed no _like-bodied_ men to associate with; no gentlemen to converse with on classical subjects, no acquaintances to join him in his long walks and drives. He was not over-fond of the French. "They make the best coffee and gloves in the world," he used to say, "but coffee and gloves, after all, are a very small part of life." Therefore it was irksome to him to hear the French always appealed to as the standard of dress, furniture, and manners. Above all, it worried him to find their language the recognized one of the _salon_ and the opera. That two or three persons, whose native tongue was English, should go on talking imperfect French, (for the knowledge acquired by a two years' residence in Paris must be comparatively imperfect,) though no foreigners were present, struck him as a mischievous absurdity, and directly calculated to hinder mental growth. But all these were petty troubles compared to the misery he endured from the gossiping and scandalous propensities of his fashionable acquaintance. He now found his error in supposing that there is any peculiar illiberality and uncharitableness in a religious community, as distinguished from a worldly one; and discovered, that in avoiding the Evangelical connection, he had not escaped the spirit of inquisitive censoriousness. A common error of young men is this: they fancy, that because people of the world talk of their liberality, and parade it ostentatiously, they must possess an extra share of it. And doubtless they are more charitable towards their favorite propensities; the "jolly good fellow" will judge leniently of his bottle companion's trippings, and so on through the calender of vices: though even this proposition is not to be received absolutely. Catiline will sometimes be found complaining of sedition; most offenders have some lingering sense remaining of original right and wrong; not enough to keep them straight, but enough to blame others for the self-same obliquities. But to try the question correctly, we should examine the worldly, not in their judgments of one another, but in their judgments of the religious, and see how much liberality they show them. We should watch the hatred of virtue and purity, and the envy of fair fame, developing themselves in every form of slander and detraction, from the sly innuendo to the open falsehood. All merely fashionable society has a necessary tendency to be scandalous; fashionable people must talk a great deal without any definite purpose, and personal topics are always the readiest at hand for small talk, in a momentary dearth of others--this one's dress and appearance--that one's style of living--who is attentive to whom--and so on; so that besides the gossip which springs from deliberate wickedness, there is a great deal that is the result of mere thoughtlessness and vacuity. And New-York fashionable society is probably more scandalous than any other, because there are fewer public amusements for persons of leisure than in the continental cities of Europe, while the men have not that vent in political life, or the women in outdoor exercise, which Londoners find. Now Carl was imbued with the idea (I believe it was one of his acquired English ones), that the first duty of a gentleman is to mind his own business. He had a horror of interfering with any one's private affairs, and an equal horror of any one interfering with his. It sickened him, therefore, to be among people who were always speaking ill of one another, and fetching and carrying stories. He grew tired of every one in the not very large circle of his acquaintance, which his fastidiousness, before adverted to, had always kept small; for he hated immoral people, and had a very imperfect sympathy for vulgar ones; and the man who begins by excluding these two classes, will make a large hole in his visiting list. He was in danger of becoming morbid and misanthropic. The natural and proper resource for a person so situated, is to take up some active and steady occupation--ride some hobby, if he can do nothing better,--at any rate, give himself enough to do. Carl was not a man of hobbies, and all the available ones were ridden to death already. The first resort of a young Englishman, with good fortune and connections, is politics; it is the very last resort of a New-Yorker similarly situated. He usually has enough of it at college; is a violent politician at sixteen, and by nineteen gives up all thoughts of shining in that way. _Why_ this is so, I will not stop to explain at present, as I have no intention of writing a treatise _à la De Tocqueville_ on the working of democratic institutions in America. I only mention the fact; perhaps you will find some further light thrown on it before we get to the end of this paper. Two refuges lay open before him--business and literature. "Business"--banking, or commerce of some sort, is the shortest way for a New-Yorker to dispose of himself; but Carl had neither taste nor ability for trading or finance, and was too frank and unsuspecting to make his way profitably in a very sharp mercantile community. To literature his ideas naturally turned; and in some countries a productive literary life might have been his happy destiny. He was not necessitated to write for a livelihood, and was just the sort of man to write for reputation. It was the occupation for which his tastes and his education fitted him. But he had been too well educated for an American _litterateur_. His standard of excellence was pitched too high. The popular models provoked his criticism, not his emulation. The exaggerated flattery of newspaper puffs, and the Little-Peddlingtonism of sectional cliques disgusted him. He would not toady others, and disliked being toadied himself. He had too correct an appreciation of newspaper editors, and too much candor to disguise this appreciation. His accurate taste was shocked by little mechanical deficiencies--the carelessness of compositors and proofreaders--the impossibility of getting a Greek quotation set up correctly. He wrote for elegantly and thoroughly educated men, such as had been the associates of his youth, and found few of his countrymen to read, and fewer to understand him; consequently, after a brief experience, he gave up all writing for publication except one species of authorship, which had only a semblance of doing others any good, and which did himself a great deal of harm. This was the controversial and satirical, to which he was prompted by an honest abhorrence of shams, and in which he was encouraged by the morbid public appetite for any thing savoring of personality or approaching to a "row" upon paper. Carl had a knack of saying disagreeable things in a disagreeable way, with some point and smartness--was clever in prose parody, in the _reductio ad absurdum_, in quoting a man against himself,--in short, up to all the "dodges" of belligerent criticism, and had a lively sense and keen perception of the ridiculous; but not priding himself as a gentleman and a Christian on these accomplishments, he did his best to keep them down, just as he did to keep down any tendency to say ill-natured things in social intercourse, and only gave them play when provoked by any flagrant exhibition of imposture. But having once found by experiment how this sort of writing took, how an hour's ebullition of sarcasm would command attention, when two months of research and polish were unheeded, and having no lack of material to tempt him, he was seduced into it again and again. If a sciolist undertook to put forth a new theory of the Platonic philosophy without having mastered his Greek grammar, Carl Benson was at hand to turn him inside out, and show up his pretensions. If a demagogue took up the formulas and watchwords of other times and countries, to malign his betters, and stir up one class against another, Carl was the first to dissent from the popular voice of panegyric, and demonstrate in plain terms what mischievous nonsense the lecturer had been uttering. If a Radical magazine blazoned out the discovery of some prodigious mare's nest--some awful conspiracy of England against American liberty or letters, who was so ready as Carl to point out that the editor could not spell the most ordinary foreign name straight, and did not exactly know the difference between _Fraser_ and the _Edinburgh!_ Booksellers and periodicals were glad enough to publish these squibs, and the reading public read them fast enough, with considerable amusement, and no profit or intention of profiting by them; it was _parvis componere magna_, like Aristophanes and Cleon; the bystanders cheered the exposer, and followed the exposed as fast as ever. Carl began to set up for a professed satirist,--one of the worst things that can befall a man, for the benefit he confers on others is very problematical, and the evil he inflicts on himself positive and inevitable. He who had been the merriest of young men found himself growing ill-natured and morbid when he should have been in the prime of life. It was hard to say which he disliked most, the exclusives or the democracy, and he uttered his mind about both pretty freely. He was sick of the newspapers, with their bad print and worse principles--of the endless debates about the same old questions in Congress--of literary pretenders and the thousand and one "most remarkable men among us,"--of all the continuously succeeding popular delusions--of the gossiping young men in illimitable cravats, and all the personal intelligence about Mr. Brown and Miss Jones. Still he clung to old Gotham for a reason that influenced few people in it. He had strong conservative feelings and local attachments; his childhood (unlike his brother's) had been spent in the city, and the scenes of his childhood were dear to him, however little interest he might feel in the new characters that peopled them. But when in the rapid march of "up town" progress, the house which his father built, where his parents had died, and he and his brother and sister played as children, became so surrounded by shops, and stores, and manufactories, that he was fairly driven out of it, then he withdrew from the city altogether, and established himself for all the year round at his--that is to say, at his wife's--place on the Hudson. His contemporaries speedily forgot him, or if they ever thought of him, it was only as an unhappy recluse, Bellerophon-like, eating his own heart, and shunning the ways of men. He was nothing of the sort. In quitting the town, he quitted most of his sources of discontent. He had great capacity of self-amusement when fairly left to himself, and could always find interesting occupation in his library. He now reaped the fruit of his early studies, though not exactly in the way he had once hoped and anticipated. His place, too, amused him greatly, and, not keeping up two establishments, he had money in abundance to spend on it. He revelled in out-of-door exercise; it was a constant pleasure to him to gallop his blood mare (a taste for horses ran in the family) over fresh grass, where there were no omnibuses or fast trotters in his way. Nor was he without society; those who are unpopular with the majority can generally boast a few of the warmest personal friends, and it was so in his case. They came to visit him by intervals and relays,--real worthies of literature, who had been his father's friends before they were his,--quiet men of general tastes and accomplishments, like Philip Van Horne; now and then a like-minded stranger, such as Ashburner, or his sister and her husband, a good-natured, gentlemanly, ornamental Philadelphian; or his brother Harry. But most of all was he happy in his family circle: a man of the warmest domestic affections, he rejoiced in the society of his children and the cheering presence of his wife. We owe this lady an apology for not bringing her forward sooner: it would have been more in accordance with the grammar of gallantry to "put the more worthy person first." And yet, reader, may it not be better to keep the good wine till the last, and after telling you a great deal about a man whom you may not like, then to tell you something about a woman whom you must, or, at least, you ought to like? So let me present you to Mrs. Carl Benson. Henry Benson used to say that Carl had carried out his eclectic principles in the choice of his wife, for she was something between a blonde and a brunette, and had dark eyes and light hair. She was a tall woman (according to the American standard of female height--I am not sure that she would have been considered so in England), and her figure rose up straight and springy as a reed. Altogether, she was in beautiful preservation, which is more than can be said for every American woman who has mounted into "the thirties," and is the mother of three children. Her shoulders were magnificent, her bust good, her arms and hands exquisitely moulded, her feet and ankles neatly turned, her features regular, yet not wanting in expression, and her complexion almost perfect. Still, with all these elements of beauty, and though of good family (she was one of the Van Hornes) and sufficient worldly prospects, she had never been a great belle, and this was an additional charm in her husband's eyes, who would never have deeply loved a woman that all the world ran after. Indeed, she had not belle accomplishments or tastes, preferred singing English ballads to Italian arias, and galloping over the county all the morning to dancing at a ball all night. And she was so insensible to the advantage of a cavalier _per se_, that she would rather talk to an amusing woman than to a stupid man, however handsome and fashionable. Of toilet mysteries she knew enough to keep her from dressing badly, but not enough to make her dress well and effectively. Her talents were not of the showy order, and did not fit her for shining in a _salon_. She had good (not extraordinary) natural abilities, and had been beautifully "coached," first by her father, and afterwards by her husband, so that without any pedantry or _bas-bleu_-ism, she displayed an extensive acquaintance with literary topics, but she was not brilliant in small talk, in playful raillery, or cut-and-thrust repartee. When she was in Paris (as Miss Louisa Van Horne), the French could make nothing of her; they thought her a handsome bit of marble, cold, unimpassioned, and uninteresting. And when more lately Vincent Le Roi came, as Henry's _umbra_, to pass a few days at Ravenswood, the Vicomte went away saying that Madame Carl Benson was undoubtedly an angel, but, for his part, he didn't like angels; they were very misty and insipid; he much preferred _les filles d'Eve_. And all who knew Le Roi agreed that he would not know well what to do with an angel. On the other hand, it must be set off against the deficiencies above mentioned, that she was a true and loving wife, a fond mother, a benevolent lady, and a sincere Christian. Such was--no, such was not the mistress of Ravenswood. I feel the attempted portrait is inadequate. A passing description cannot do justice to the woman any more than a passing interview. Her superficial blemishes--want of ease in her conversation, or of crinoline in her dress,--were obvious to the casual observer; but the sterling qualities of her character, her truth and honesty, her constancy of affection, her unworldly disposition, her loftiness of soul--all these, as they could only be properly appreciated by those who had known her for years, so can they only be generally and vaguely hinted at in a brief sketch like this. The great mystery was, how she came to marry Carl. Every one said she was too good for him, and he would have been the last man to deny it. Perhaps she was pleased with his simple integrity, and foresaw that he would make a most affectionate husband, though it was not in his nature to be a passionate lover. Perhaps she pardoned his awkwardness in regard for his honesty. After all, I would not claim that she was morally perfect; very few of us are. I am afraid she was rather censorious, and judged harshly of sinners; that in her own comfortable position she did not always weigh accurately the temptations of others. It is a common practice of very good and moral people to indemnify themselves for their virtue by depreciation of others; 'tis an error that lurks at the heels of Christian duty; for are we not _commanded_ to hate sin? and the transition from the abstract to the concrete is so easy. I fancy, too, she did not harmonize altogether with Mrs. Henry Benson. Indeed, the two sisters-in law made little secret of their mutual incompatibility. Clara said that Louisa was very proper and very stupid, regular as a machine, and with no fun or frolic in her--that the only man she ever had about her, her cousin Philip, was as dull as herself,--that she dressed badly, and talked bad French,--that she went to church in the morning, and gossiped in the afternoon, and was more charitable to the bodies of her inferiors than to the souls of her equals. Louisa looked down upon Clara as a worldly and frivolous little creature, who fostered her beauty to attract admirers and worried her husband to death by her caprices, who wasted her time in dancing and flirting, and her money in Parisian nick-nacks, or in giving parties to people who did not care for her. In short, the two ladies said many hard things of each other when separate, and were painfully amiable when together. But these bickerings did not greatly impair the happiness of our party at Ravenswood. The brothers loved each other as much as if they had _not_ been brothers, and had not had to divide a large family estate between them. Even their wives' quarrels could not make them quarrel. Many a jolly turn had they and their guest, lounging with their cigars after breakfast on the vine-trellised stoop, or under the spreading horse-chesnuts at one corner of the house, watching the white sails that glided by on the sunny water, and the fantastic cloudlets that floated in the clear sky; strolling through the winding walks, or across the terrace at evening, when the setting sun had piled red clouds like a huge volcano over the Hudson, and the Kaatskills looked like great blocks of lapis lazuli, their summits half veiled in fiery mist; riding through the adjacent country in bright moonlight nights, now threading their way among the uncertain bridle-paths of a dense wood, and anon startling a village with their clattering hoofs and boisterous merriment as they swept by it at full gallop; driving four-in-hand a livelong day to visit friends who lived north or south of them on the rivers, by roads that rose up over the hills and showed all the glorious panorama of the Hudson, and then dipped down inland among picturesque glens and water-courses and mill-streams. Capital game breakfast they had, which the women were not too sentimental to help them in doing justice to; and excellent plain dinners, with oceans of iced champagne; and when the cloth was drawn, Carl would chirp over his claret with as comfortable a melancholy as ever any "ruined" Protectionist gentleman in Old England gave utterance to. At a very early period of their acquaintance, Henry Benson had put Ashburner up to the way of getting at the dark side of things in America. "Never assail anything," he said; "if you do, the people will tackle you, from the highest to the lowest. _Let an American gentleman talk_; give him his head, and he will soon lead you on the track you want." Acting on this hint, the Englishman let his host talk; what little he said himself would come in the form of a query or suggestion. "You lead a very nice life here," he would say, "but it is rather quiet. I should think an active man like yourself would choose some more stirring form of existence." Then Carl blazed out. "Go into politics, I suppose! A nice business that for an honest man and a gentleman! Why, Ashburner, the democracy of our State, who are always in fear of being reduced to vassalage by a few thousand easy and unambitious rich men, have lost their liberties without perceiving it to hundreds of thousands of alien settlers with their foreign priests. A successful politician here is either a hack lawyer of thirty years' standing, who has had opportunity enough of getting used to the devil's work in his first business, or an upstart demagogue, who has made his way by dint of sheer brass; either a blind partisan, who knows nothing outside of "the regular ticket," or a "non-committal" man, who says everything to everybody, and never gave an intelligible, manly, straightforward opinion in his life. One party would sell us body and soul to the Slaveholders, and the other to the Anti-renters, and both to the Irish. If I could bring myself to enter the lists with such people, I should have to start with the dead weight of being a "millionaire" (as they call every man here who has two or three hundred thousand dollars) and an "aristocrat" (as they call every man who has the habits and education of a gentleman). There is not a voter in this county has less influence than I have;--to be sure, I don't try for any, because I well know that by doing so, I should only make myself more unpopular, without becoming any more influential. Or be a leader of fashion, perhaps--one of those people who talk scandal about one another all day long when they are not dancing, who try to pursue pleasure in a place where every one else is at work, and are so destitute of resources, that they quarrel for pure want of something to do. See what they have made of my brother, who is a clever fellow and a well-educated man, though I say it. He is becoming a third-rate dancer--one of Tom Edwards's _corps_; is growing frivolous and scandalous, and getting his earnest honesty knocked out of him every day. Or profess literature, possibly--Henry does a little of that too; you may see him in the magazines sandwiched between the last learned cobbler and the newest Laura Matilda of the West. No, I don't want to belong to any "Mutual Admiration" Society, and if I did, it's too late now. My mind has been spoken so often and so freely, that were I to write a book as good as one of Fenimore Cooper's, (if you can imagine the possibility of such a thing even in hypothesis) no editor would notice it, and no one read it--unless it contained something personal. Here I shall stay and amuse myself in what one of our ex-great men used to call "dignified retiracy;" and if this railroad drives me out, why, then, _ingens iterabimus æquor_--to England, were I a bachelor, but my wife couldn't live there; no American woman can, after the attention she has been used to at home, except the ambassador's wife--so it will probably be to Italy, or perhaps to Paris, for a man can find occupation there, whatever be his peculiar bent, and fill up his time well in the place without knowing or liking the people." "It does surprise me," said Ashburner, "that the terminus of a refined American's dream should always be Paris,--that whenever a man has means and leisure, he runs off thither, and stays as long as he can: and if not there, in some other place--anywhere but at home." "Come now," broke in Henry Benson; he had retired with the ladies after dinner, and now rejoined the men to have some more claret,--"don't you English run over to Paris perpetually, and all around the continent? Don't we meet you everywhere in the four quarters of the globe? You don't like to stay at home any more than we do; only we are franker than you, and avow it." "We _go_ away from home, but we don't like to _stay_ away," replied the Englishman. "Exactly; and if we had a _pied-à-terre_ close to the continent as you have, we should not like to stay away from home either--more than half the year. Here has Carl been making his moan to you about our unappreciated condition; it's always his way over the decanters--one of his amusements merely. (Carl, old fellow, pass the Laffitte this way.) Well, I think," and he paused to fill a brimming glass, "that we are very jolly victims; and for my part, I am quite disposed to play, regardless of my doom. Look at our wives and children, our houses and horses, our whole style of living. Ponder well on this _Bourdeaux;_ ruminate on those woodcocks we have been discussing. What miserable misused fellows we are! We _do_ live in a great country--we have such civil and religious liberty as is enjoyed in only one other country in the world; and if we don't have the management of the government, why no one here or abroad holds us responsible for what the government does, and that is just the condition Plato thought a philosopher should pray for. Fill up again, brother mine, and thank your stars that you have your time to yourself, and are not a parliament man, as Ashburner is going to be, and are not set to work twelve hours a day among blue books and red tape." And now, reader, these papers, which have been running on for a year or more, are wound up. I did not begin them intending to give you anything marvellous, or new, or profound about the aspect, prospects, and destiny, political, religious, or literary, of the great people among whom I am a small unit. I only intended to present you with some phases of outward life and manners--such things as would strike or interest a stranger in our beloved Gotham, and in the places to which regular Gothamites--American cockneys, so to speak--are wont to repair. For I am but a cockney in my own country; I have never travelled far in it,--good reason why, when they are apt to hang up a man at one end of the Union for what is a sort of religion at the other. They did not aspire to be "Sketches of American Society" (that was an honorary prefix of yours, Mr. Editor), nor even Sketches of New-York Society, but only of a very small class of persons in New-York; and therefore I had originally headed them "The Upper Ten Thousand," in accordance with a phrase established by Mr. Willis, though even that is an exaggeration, for the people so designated are hardly as many hundred. In truth, I began the series chiefly to amuse some Cantab friends of mine, who were curious to know how the gentlemen that were their contemporaries and representatives in our Atlantic cities, lived, and eat, and dressed, and amused themselves; what their habits and pursuits and propensities were. The last thing that I expected was that any of them should be read, much less republished, on my side the water. To a New-Yorker, many things which they contain must necessarily appear stale, stupid, and commonplace. For instance, in one number half a page is taken up with the description of a trotting-wagon; to an American I should as soon think of describing a pair of boots; the one is as familiar an object to him as the other. But at the very first number, some clever folks took it into their heads that they were to be very personal,--that every character described or even alluded to in them was to represent a real living prototype; that was enough to make them sought after. And it really did happen that in that first number I had described a sleigh which actually existed in real wood and iron somewhere about the city; and the inference above detailed was obvious. It is not every story in Gotham that has so much foundation; in fact, they get them up frequently without any foundation to speak of, only unfortunately the narratives don't fall to the ground as readily as the houses do. It is hardly worth while contradicting such idle rumors, but to my American readers (since I have some, much to my own amazement) I wish to say one thing once for all--that Harry Benson is not meant to represent any living individual whatsoever, and that his wife, house, horses, and other accessaries, are not designed after the corresponding appurtenances of any real person. And the same remark applies with equal force to all the appendages of Carl Benson, as delineated in this very sketch. Still, I suppose I ought to be obliged to the members of "our set" who got up this idea; for the factitious interest thus communicated to these papers has caused them to be reprinted (in the cheap and multitudinous style of American reprints), and thus to become known to the outsiders both of our own city and of other parts of the country, who could perhaps judge them more fairly on their own merits, from having no knowledge of, or interest in, the local celebrities supposed to be portrayed in them. Some have been disposed to accept them as what they were really meant for--light sketches of life and manners in a certain circle; some have had the bad taste to wax furious at them. I understand that a few southern editors have departed from their usual stoical calmness and dignified reserve on the subject, to assail me for my occasional allusions to "the peculiar institution;" and am told (life is too short, and time too precious, to read such things oneself, but there are always good-natured friends to put you up to them) that a correspondent of the _Ochloratic Review and No Government Advocate_, who probably never wore a decent coat in his life, and regards every man in a clean shirt as an oppressor of the people, has seriously taken me to ask for representing some of my characters as elegantly dressed! If this individual could find nothing worse to say of my papers, _after nine months examination of them_, methinks he might have continued to hold his tongue; but I suppose any trash will do for the _Ochlocratic_. Whether the abuse of these persons, or the praise of others, or my own inclination, may tempt me hereafter to essay something more definite and connected, I will not say at present. Of the things that "lie on the knees of the Gods," it becomes no man to speak prematurely. Meanwhile, make a long arm across the Atlantic--So--shake hands, and good-bye! FRANK MANHATTAN. FOOTNOTES: [20] A literal fact. Washington Irving's residence was among those disfigured by this operation, which made havoc of all the oldest and most beautiful properties in the State. [21] Commonly written _Catskill_; but I believe the above is the genuine Dutch orthography. From Dickens's Household Words. THE FLYING ARTIST. Karl Herwitz is a German. He is about fifty years of age, and one of the most original of characters. Since I have know [known] him, I have passed whole nights in listening to his adventures, which are in general as instructive as they are amusing. Married at a very early age, he left the military career for that of inventions. He had a most marvellous talent for conceiving novel machines, often of practical utility; but his soul was set upon perfecting a flying machine. To this he had devoted nearly his whole life. He made models, he tried experiments, he brought to bear all his prodigious knowledge of mathematics on the subject of travelling in air, with an enthusiasm, a childish earnestness, which is not uncharacteristic of genius. He studied every natural law which was likely to advance him towards the consummation of all his hopes and desires--namely, the ability to fly. At one time his little garden was turned into an aviary. He filled it with birds of various kinds, to study the mechanism of their powers of flight. There was the eagle and the dove, the vulture and the sparrow, all of which were made subservient to his darling object. He has often explained all this to me. "The Golden Eagle," he once said, "can cleave the air at the rate of forty miles an hour. Now, if I can succeed in imitating the mechanism by which he travels in space, exactly and efficiently, of course, my machine will move in the air at the same pace." What could I say? No argument, no warning, availed. Still he went on, hoping and working, and buying expensive tools and materials. He completed aërial ships one after another; and although none of them answered, he was never discouraged. At one time, however, he thought he had succeeded. His contrivance was a curious affair, shot out of a bomb; but it was about as buoyant as a shot, fell, and failed, disheartening everybody but the persevering projector. Still he did not wholly neglect useful productions, and several times made improvements in mechanism, and sold them for very good prices. But the money went as fast as it came. His winged Pegasus was a merciless Ogre, which swallowed up all the money the old German earned. Last Christmas-eve, in Paris, five of us were collected, after dinner, round a roaring fire, half wood, half charcoal. For some time the conversation was general enough. We spoke of England and of an English Christmas. The magic spell of the fireside was felt, and the word "home" hung on the trembling lip of all; for we were in a foreign land; we were all English, save one. There was a lawyer, the most unlawyer-like man I ever knew, a noble-hearted fellow, whom to know is to like; there was a poet, of an eccentric order of merit, whose love of invective, bitter satire, and intense propensity to hate--whose fantastic and Germanic cast of philosophy will ever prevent his succeeding among rational beings; then there was an artist, a young man well known in the world, not half so much as he deserves, if kindness of soul could ever make a man famous; there was Citizen Karl Herwitz, as he loved to be called; lastly myself. I had been speaking of some far-off land, relating some personal adventure; and, with commendable modesty, feeling that I had held possession of the chair quite long enough, paused for a reply. "Tell us your adventures at the Court of Konningen," said the poet, standing up to see that his hair hung tastefully around his shoulders, addressing at the same time Karl, and mentioning the name of one of the smaller German states. "I have heard it before, but it will be new to the rest, and I promise them a rich treat." "Ah!" sighed the German, with a huge puff at his long pipe; "that _was_ an adventure--or rather a whole string of adventures. I have told it several times; but, if you like, I will tell it again." All warmly called on the German to keep his promise. After freshly loading his pipe, and taking a drain at his glass, he drew his arm-chair closer to the fire, settled his feet on the _chenets_, and began his narrative in a quaint and strange English, which I shall not seek to copy:-- "I had spent all my money. I had sold all my property. There remained nothing but a little furniture in my house, which was in a quiet retired quarter of the town; but then I had completed a machine, and sent it for the approval of the Minister of the Interior, who promised to purchase it for the government. I now looked forward with delight to a long career of success, and saw the completion of my flying machine in prospect. On this I depended, and still depend, for fame, reputation, and fortune. "I had then a good wife and four children; she is dead now." The German paused, puffed away vigorously at his pipe, and tried to hide his emotion from our view by enveloping himself in smoke. "I was naturally impatient for some result," he continued, when his face became once more visible.--"I used to go every day to the Minister, and wait in the antechamber, with other suitors, for my turn. Weeks passed, and then months, and yet it never came. But we must all eat, and six mouths are not fed for nothing. We had no resources, save our clothes and our furniture. My clothes were needed to go out with, so the furniture went first. One article was sold, and the produce applied by my careful wife to the wants of the family. We had come to that point when food is the only thing which must be looked on as a necessity. We lived hardly indeed. Bread, and a little soup, was all we ever attempted to indulge in." Six months passed without any change for the better. I went to the Minister's every day; sometimes I saw him, and sometimes I did not. He was always very polite, bowed to me affably, said my machine was under consideration, should be reported on immediately, and passed on his way. It was the dead of winter. Every article of furniture was now gone, my wife and children having not gone out for two months for want of clothes. We huddled together, for warmth, on two straw mattresses, in the corner of an empty room, without table, without chairs, without fire. Catherine had nothing to wear but an old cotton gown and one under-garment. We had not eaten food for a day and a night, when I rose in the morning to go to the Minister's. I felt savage, irate, furious. I thought of my starving and perishing family, of the long delay which had taken place in the consideration of my machine. I compared the luxurious ease of the Minister with my own position, and was inclined to do some desperate act. I think I could have turned conspirator, and have overthrown the Government. I was already half a misanthrope. When I entered the Minister's antechamber, I placed myself, as usual, near the stove. I kept away from the well-dressed mob as much as possible. They were solicitors, it is true, and humble enough, some of them; but then they had good coats on, smart uniforms, polite boots, and came, perhaps, in carriages. I came on foot, clad in a long frock reaching almost to my heels, patched in several places; with trousers so darned about the calves as to be almost falling to pieces; with boots which were absolutely only worn for look, for they had no soles to them. My hat, too, was a dreadful-looking thing. This day, being faint with hunger, and pinched by the cold, the heat of the room overcame me, and I grew dizzy. I am sure I knew nothing of what passed around. I saw my wife and children, through a misty haze, starving with hunger and cold. A basket full of logs of wood lay beside my knee. Reckless, wild, not caring who saw me, I took a thick log, huddled it under my frock, and went away. I passed the porter's lodge unseen; I was in the open air; I was proud, I was happy. _I had stolen a log of wood_; but my children would have fire for one day. When I got home I went to bed. I was feverish and ill; wild shapes floated round me; I saw the officers of justice after me; I beheld a furious mob chasing me along interminable fields; and on every hedge, and every tree, and every house, and every post, I read, in large letters, the word "thief." It was evening when I awoke. I looked around for some minutes without moving or speaking; a delicious fragrance seemed to fill the air, a fire blazed on the hearth, and round it huddled my wife and children, sitting on logs of wood. I rubbed my eyes. The presence of these logs of wood seemed to convince me that I still dreamed. But there was an odor of mutton broth, which was too real to be mistaken. "Catherine," said I, "why, you seem to have some food." All came rushing to my bedside, mother and children. They scarcely spoke; but one brought a basin of broth, another a hunch of bread, another a plate of meat and potatoes, which had been kept hot before the fire. I was too faint and sick to talk. I took my broth slowly. Never did food prove a greater blessing. Life, reason, courage, hope, all seemed to return, as mouthful by mouthful I swallowed the nourishing liquid. It spread warmth and comfort through every fibre of my frame. When I had taken this, I ate the meat, and vegetables, and bread, without fear. While I did so, my wife, sending the children back to the fire-place, told me, in a whisper, how she had procured such unexpected subsistence. It seems that scarcely had I got home, and, after flinging my log on the ground, rushed to bed, when a knock came to the door. Catherine went to answer it. A man of middle age entered. He gave a hurried glance around, seemed to shudder at its emptiness, looked at the next room through the open door, saw that it was as bare as the other, turned his eyes away from the crouching form of my half-dressed wife, and spoke:-- "Have you any children?" "Four," said Catherine, tremblingly; but, still, answering at once, so peremptory was the tone of the stranger. "How long have you been in this state?" "Six months." "Your husband is Karl Herwitz, the mechanist?" "He is, sir." "Well, madam, please to tell him that I recognized him as he came out of the Minister's of the Interior, and, noticing what he clutched with such wild energy, followed him here. Tell him, I am not rich, but I can pay my debts; I owe him the sum contained in this purse. I am happy to pay it." "And did he owe it you?" said I, anxiously. No, replied Karl; he had never seen me or heard of me before. Generous Englishman! I shall never forget him. I found out afterwards that he was a commercial traveller, with a large family and a moderate income. On what he left we lived a month, by exercising strict economy. I did not go to the Minister's for several days. I feared some one might have seen me, and I was bowed by shame. But, at last, I mustered courage, and presented myself at the audience. I was, as usual, totally unnoticed, and I resumed my wretched dangling in the antechamber, as usual. The result was always the same. Generally I caught a glimpse of the Minister; but, when I did, it was eternally the same words. Meanwhile time swept rapidly by, and soon my misery was as great as ever. My children, who during the past month had recovered a little their health and looks, looked pale and wan again. I was more shabby, more dirty, more haggard and starved-looking than ever. Once again I went out, after our all being without food for some twenty-four hours. I knew not what to do. I walked along the street turning over every possible expedient in my mind. Suddenly I saw, on the opposite side of the way, a lieutenant belonging to the regiment I had quitted. He had been my intimate friend, but so shabby was I, that I sought to avoid him. He saw me, however, and, to my surprise, hurried across and shook me heartily by the hand. I could scarcely restrain tears; so sure was I, in my present state, to be cut by even old friends. But, in my worst troubles, something has always turned up to make me love and cherish the human heart. "My poor Karl," said he, "the world uses you badly." "Very;" said I: and in a few words I told my story. "My dear Karl!" he exclaimed, when I had concluded, "I was going to ask you to dine with me on what I have left. I am come up to claim a year's arrears of pay, and have been sent back with a free passage and promises. But I have a little silver; and, as I said, meant to ask you to devour it. But after what you have told me, will you share my purse with me for your wife and children's sake?" And he pulled out a purse containing about the value of five shillings English, forced me to take half, shook me heartily by the hand, and hurried away to escape my thanks. Home I rushed with mad eagerness, a loaf in one hand, the rest of the money in the other. My poor wife once more could give food to her little ones. On the morning of the third day after I had obtained this little help, I lay in bed, ruminating. I was turning over in my mind every possible expedient by which to raise enough money to go on with, a brief time, until my machine was really decided on by the Government. Suddenly I sat up in my bed and addressed my wife: "How much money have you got left, Catherine?" She had threepence of your money. "Can you manage with the loaf of bread then, and three-halfpence for to-day?" "I have often managed on less," said she. "Then give me three-halfpence to take out with me." "But what are you going to do? We may have nothing to-morrow, and then the three-halfpence will be missed." "Give!" said I, rather sternly, reflecting as I was on my scheme; "be assured, it is for our good." My poor wife gave me the money with a very ill grace, but without another word; and, rising, I went out. When in the street, I directed my footsteps towards the outskirts. They were soon reached. I halted before a tavern frequented wholly by workmen, and going into the public room, called for a _choppe_ of beer. I had purposely chosen my position. Before me was a handsome, neatly-dressed young workman, who, like all his companions, was smoking and drinking beer. Quietly, without saying a word, I drew out a small note-book and a drawing-pencil. I was then considered a very good artist; but had only used my pencil to sketch models. But I now sketched the human face with care and anxiety. Presently, as my pencil was laid down, a man sitting next to me peeped over my shoulder. "Why!" he cried, "that's Alexis, to the life." "How so?" said the man I had been sketching, holding out his hand, into which I put my note-book. "Good!" cried he, while a smile of satisfaction covered his face. "Will you sell this? I should like to keep it." "I will sell it if you like," replied I, as quietly as I could, though my heart was nigh bursting with excitement. "How much?" I knew my man, and asked but six sous, threepence, which the workman gladly paid, while five others followed his example, at the same price. I went home a proud and happy man with my thirty-six pence of copper. Would you believe it? that was the commencement of a long and prosperous career, which lasted until the Revolution of 1848 threw me back again. Six months after, I received a thousand florins for a portrait in oil of the Grand Duchess of B----; and about the end of the same year I drove up to the Hotel of the Minister of the Interior in a splendid carriage, a gentleman by my side; it was the English commercial traveller. We had a letter of audience, and were admitted at once. The Minister rose, and after a very warm greeting, requested us to be seated. We took chairs. "My dear Herwitz," said the Minister, a little, bowing, smirking man, "what can I do for you? Glad to see you doing so well. The Grand Duchess says wonders of you. I will have the committee on your machine." "I beg your pardon," said I, "but I have come to request your written order for its removal. I have sold it to the English house represented by this gentleman." "Its removal!" cried the astonished Minister; "impossible! so excellent an invention should not pass into the hands of foreigners." "So I thought," replied I, coldly, "when for nine months I waited daily in your antechamber, with my family starving at home. But it is now sold. My word is my bond." The Minister bit his lip, but made no reply. He took up a sheet of paper, and wrote the order for removal. I took it, bowed stiffly, and came away. We all heartily thanked the old German for his narrative. Since the Revolution, and the consequent impossibility of selling his machines in Germany, he has come to Paris, and taken to portrait-painting once more. His perseverance and endurance are untiring. His wife died long since, and he is like a mother to his four girls;--all of whom are most industrious and devoted. He still believes in his flying machine; but, for the sake of his parental love, his hard-working head and fingers--for the sake of his goodness of soul, his eccentricities, he must be forgiven for this invincible credulity. None can fail to admire the original dreamer when he is also a practical worker; while few will be willing to patronize the mere visionary, who is always thinking and never doing. From Ainsworth's Magazine. ART EXPRESSION. "What is the highest degree of expression that art can delineate?" said Piombino. "Sleep," replied the master, to the surprise of all present, not excepting Leonardo. "I will explain," resumed Michael Angelo, "lest you should have misapprehended me. When I say that sleep is the highest expression that artist can put into form, I mean that it is the last and crowning effort of art; that it is the figure surmounting the pyramid on whose sides are prefigured life's many phases--all passion, emotion, thought. And to elevate the idea to its highest limit, it is necessary to depict it in youth--witness the Venus asleep--in order that man may feel how turbulent a sea of life is calmed under its spell." "But would not death itself express as much--a peace to the same passions, a peace more lasting?" said Piombino. "No," said Michael Angelo, "the passions live in sleep; are growing; in death they are at an end; hence in sleep the eye is closed to hide the naked forms of passion that lie within; in death the eye is open and sightless, a circumstance so effectually related in marble--a material in which the open eye has a look of death united to immortality."... "But you have not told us," said Leonardo da Vinci, on observing that Piombino was satisfied, "in what consists this long debated notion which we call the fine ideal?" "By the fine ideal," said Michael Angelo. "I presume we both understand not the work of art itself, but the conception out of which it springs. Art is the exercise of an imitative faculty upon visible things; but fine art is the transcendental idea entertained after the study of nature, and transferred from the mind itself to the canvas or marble." "How is that idea acquired?" asked Leonardo. "The study of unsophisticated nature yields the ideal, or similitude of things seen; and this study, impressing the recollection, affords in due time a conception of abstract beauty itself to curious and sensitive minds." "By what process can such conception be achieved?" "Alas! to make real progress in this enterprise demands, on setting out, the possession of the finest faculties; powers so transcendental as few are able to value. Such is, however, the prospect of all who deserve success in the highest departments of knowledge." "Let us suppose one to be thus endowed; what then?" "Well, let him go forth in a genial mood and make himself master of the real; this done, he will have observed the groupings of inanimate forms, and have learned nature's failures and successes in giving features to the world. He will then ask what each feature would express, whether it be not something spiritual which lies deeper than the outer shape. Does the human face alone give utterance through its lineaments to thought and feeling? are not those of the landscape also pregnant with meaning?" From the Paris Journal des Debats. THE MEETING OF THE VEGETARIANS. The Vegetarians lately held a meeting in London, under the presidency of Mr. Brotherton, M.P. There were about 400 persons present; as many women as men; a great many children, and a great many Quakers; and as in that country people dine _à propos_ of everything, even when they only live on vegetables, there was a banquet of Vegetarians. We have no need to say that the flesh of all kinds of animals was rigorously excluded; the bill of fare consequently could be neither so brilliant nor so full of variety as those of Guildhall or the Hotel de Ville. These was only little pies of mushrooms, toasted bread and parsley, rice cakes, _blanc mange_, cheese tarts, and all sorts of pastry. The desert was composed of raspberries, cherries, and preserves; the whole washed down with tea, milk, coffee, and iced water. After dinner there naturally came speeches. It is probable, from the bill of fare, that the speakers were in full possession of their _sang froid_; they have then no excuse for making, and it is not permitted for any one to make, after such dinners, such speeches as they delivered. If a speech be inevitable in an English banquet, there is also something inevitable in the speech, a quotation from the Bible. The Bible (we ask pardon for the expression on account of the circumstance) is served up with all sorts of sauce. The President of the Vegetarians, then, relied on the verse in Genesis, in which it is said: "And God said--Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed: to you it shall be for meat." That is very good, but something else is to be found in the Bible; and if the Vegetarians quote to us the 29th verse of the first chapter of Genesis, we may answer them with the 28th, in which God, after having created man and woman, said: "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth!" So much for the theological part of the question; but there remains the political part, that of economy and health. In a political point of view, the Vegetarians place their panacea above all others; according to them, society will not be regenerated until all men shall live on parsley and tapioca: "Passing in review," says the report, "all the plans of social reform, the Peace Congress, popular education, &c.," the chairman expressed the opinion that none of these plans attack the root of the evil, and that a reform in eating and drinking should precede all others, "For," said he, "a man who, from conscientious motives, shall abstain from the slaughter of animals, will not be guilty of murder of his fellow creatures." As to the economic part of the question, the Vegetarians are decided free-traders, decided partisans of direct exchange. "It has been proved," said the chairman, "that the nutritious quality of animals is derived from vegetables, and, consequently, men take their good second-hand." The Vegetarians declare then for the abolition of intermediaries and for direct consumption. As for health, the advantages of the vegetable system are presented to us under the most encouraging colors. Thus, the East Indians, the porters of Cairo and Constantinople, and in general a great part of the Orientals, never eat meat, and yet they are the finest types of the human race. The Russians eat black wheat, the Scotch oats, and they are very industrious laborers. To this it may be answered, that if the Orientals eat little or no flesh, it is probably for them an affair of temperature as well as of temperament; that the conditions of health are not the same in all countries; that if the peasants of the North do not eat meat, it is probably because they cannot get it; if the English army were fed on rice, oats, and milk, instead of roast beef and beer, we should be curious to know the results of the _régime_. But that does not prevent men from being in good health by indulging in an enormous consumption of parsley; that herb is only fatal to parrots. The chairman of the Vegetarians, Mr. Brotherton, is a living proof of it. For forty two years he has followed the vegetable _régime_, and he affirms that it suits him. There was also in the meeting an American, who came expressly all the way from Philadelphia, and who had belonged to the fraternity for forty years. He declared that he enjoyed the best health, that he had five children, all well, that his children had married vegetarians, that he had twenty-one grandchildren, who could never be made to taste meat. There is in the society _one_ member of parliament, and, we may perceive sometimes, that the others do not live on raspberries and cream; there is a magistrate, before whom there will be no necessity of appealing to Philip Sober; there is an alderman, and we hope that he was not the other day at the Hotel de Ville; there are 21 medical men, but they are there for the sake of experiment; there are ten members of the clergy, but that is not many; there are ten literary men--alas! it is, perhaps, not their fault! And there are 50 lawyers, 26 merchants, 11 fundholders, 871 workmen--in all 718, of whom 513 are men, and 205 female. We remember having seen at Paris an Englishman who made a very large fortune by selling pills entirely composed of extracts of vegetables. A caricature once represented his patients in full flower, that is covered with carrots, turnips, and potatoes, proving the success of the medicine. Perhaps we shall see it proved that it is forbidden to men to eat animals, and we do not despair of seeing it proved that it is permitted to animals to eat men. _Authors and Books._ The magazine literature of Germany is quite different from ours, a fact which generally speaking is not to its discredit. Indeed there are several periodicals in Germany which may be compared with the best English magazines for their varied excellence, while their cost is comparatively trifling. Among these are the _Deutsche Monatschrift_, a republican monthly, edited by ADOLF KOLATSCHECK, and published at Stuttgart; and the _Grenzboten_, a weekly, of conservative and constitutional opinions, edited by GUSTAV FREYTAG, and JULIAN SCHMIDT, and published at Leipzig. The American reader of these two periodicals, will have an excellent apprehension of the general scope and tendencies of current thought in Germany, as well as some knowledge of the new books as they make their appearance. Those who wish a convenient and cheap mode of becoming acquainted with the productions of German novelists, may find it in the _Illustrirtes Familienbuch_, (Illustrated Family Book), published monthly at Treves. This is mainly made up of romances by the best writers of the day; there is also a department for artistic criticism, but it is not very good. The engravings are tolerable. * * * * * German Poets are prolific just now. Mr. HOPPL has brought out a volume at Stuttgart, full of suppressed tears and melancholy miseries. He is unloved and unappreciated, and must, therefore, have a bad time in this dreary and woeful world. Of a similar strain is the second edition of CARL AUGUST LEBRET'S _Gedichte_, likewise published at Stuttgart; if anything he is more pitiable and stupid than Hoppl. ADOLPH GLASSBRENNER, of Berlin, serves up poems of another sort, in his freshly printed third edition. He is known to every reader of current German literature as a comic writer of no small ability, and these poems prove his talent. They are mostly political in their tendency, and are good of their kind. _Dunkles Laub_ (Dark Leaves) is a youthful poem of Mr. _Frederik Ruperti_, published at Bremen. It recounts the awful experiences, and spiritual and other struggles of the author's youth. He suffers especially from an unhappy passion, and is apparently convinced that the man never lived who endured so much. Still, he shows great poetic ability, and now that his youth is disposed of something may be hoped from him. * * * * * FREILIGRATH, the German poet, is the subject of a searching, yet mildly expressed criticism, in that excellent periodical, the _Grenzboten_, of Leipzig. The writer finds that he is superficial in feeling, without a genuine sense of poetic melody, and not remarkable for mental power. * * * * * A tenth edition of BROCKHAUS'S _Conversations-Lexicon_ is now passing through the press. The first edition was published in 1796. Of the fifth edition, which appeared in 1818, 32,000 copies were sold; of the seventh (1826) 27,000; of the eighth (1832) 31,000; of the ninth (1843) 30,000. The supplementary works issued between the editions, and devoted to current matters, have also had a large sale. Of _the Conversations-Lexicon der Neuesten Zeit und Literatur_, (4 vols. 1832-34) 27,000 copies were sold; of the _Conversations-Lexicon der Gegenwart_ (4 vols. 1838-1841) 18,000; and the _Gegenwart_ which is now appearing is also sold largely. The new edition promises to be written in the same spirit of moderation and liberalism as its predecessors, but if the articles of the _Gegenwart_ afford an indication, it will be more "progressive" and radical, and less careful to satisfy all parties. * * * * * An excellent German critic says of the preface to LAMARTINE'S _History of the Restoration_, that it is as coquettish as everything in the historic way that has come from Lamartine's pen of late years. He coquets with the conflict of his own understanding and sentiments. His heart still beats for the ancient dynasty; his mind decides for the republic--a very serious state of things, not only for a statesman, who is called to share in the immediate development of affairs, and who can never arrive at unity of action, as long as feeling and reflection impel him to different courses, but also for the historian. Lamartine, says the writer, is a remarkable example of that mixture which is often found among the French, of fantastic sentimentality, and frivolous, superficial reflection. He is especially remarkable, because he has converted this mixture, of which in most cases, the person is unconscious, into a sort of system, and justifies it accordingly. The understanding says Yes, the heart says No, but both speak vivaciously and clearly, showing that he has them both in a high degree. This consoles him for the want of harmony between the two; he never thinks that in such harmony the reality of both consists. * * * * * ROBERT PRUTZ, the well-known German historian, has just made his appearance as a novelist with a romance in three parts, called _Das Engelchen_ (The Little Angel). A large portion of it has been previously published in the _Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_, where it has excited a profound interest. From the author's previous achievements as a lyric and dramatic poet, his success in this new sphere is only what was to be expected. The Little Angel is a novel of modern society. * * * * * _Zwrei Monate in Paris_ (Two Months in Paris), by ADOLPHE STAHR, is published by Schulze in Oldenburg. Lest our readers should infer from the name of the author that this is a political work of solid character, we subjoin the following remark by a German reviewer, "Written in a light, easy, careless vein, this work helps to augment the already colossal pile of books relating to Paris, but is by no means such as we should have expected from the representative of the Prussian revolution. Nay, it has been already surpassed by two recent and similar productions--the one by a lady, a little art-criticism, a little literature, a few theatrical items, a _bal mabille_, a visit to Heine, and the sketch of a meeting of workmen, with their songs, all written in that tolerably piquant, lively style, with which we have however of late been surfeited, form a book, agreeable enough, it is true, but not such as we should, in these earnest, serious times, have expected from such a writer." The American reader may however draw a very different conclusion from that of this "earnest and serious reviewer." * * * * * The last lesson usually taken by the student of ancient art is that in gems--cameos, intaglios, and the like--a fact the more surprising since nine-tenths of the spirit of classic life and beauty is thus extant in miniature. The Venus di Medicis and the Apollo Belvidere, the Parthenon and the Temple of the Winds--every variety of mosaic, and half-obliterated scrap of fresco are familiar to the dilettante, ere he reflects over the incredible grace, beauty, and spirit displayed in the exquisite design of nearly every classic gem. Those, however, who have learned to appreciate this department of ancient art, will welcome the appearance of KOHLER'S _Gesammelte Schriften_, (and the collected essays of H. K. E. KOHLER), forming the best work known on this subject. In it we find, treated in a masterly manner, all the intricate methods of judging of ancient gems with modern inscriptions, gems of an uncertain era, and modern imitations of ancient cutting. The "darker side" of the work consists of violent and unmerited attacks on rival writers. Published by Leopold Vossin, Leipzig. * * * * * Among the cheapest and most attractive books for children which we have met with are the recently published _Munich Bilderbücher_, or picture-books, consisting of thin folios of all manner of neatly-designed fancies, many of them by eminent artists. They contain fairy tales, humorous sketches, historical illustrations, and a vast number of pictures in the well-known _Slovenly Peter_ style, but far more attractive. Many are colored, and the publisher has judiciously printed a number on thick, parchment-like paper, well adapted to withstand the wear and tear of the nursery. * * * * * Books are no longer written in Latin. For literature and learning that good old language has finally given way, in almost every country, during the present century. In the United States there have been produced some fifty volumes in Latin since the Revolution, nearly all of which are by foreigners. The Life of Washington, by Francis Glass, a western schoolmaster, is the most considerable contribution to Latin literature by a native American. In Europe only a few pedantic churchmen continue to write to dead nations, and it is perhaps well enough that they should do so, since scarce any of them have fit thoughts for the living age, or for tongues that have been used by free and thinking men. We find an exception to the prevailing law in _De Caroli Timothei Zumptii Vita et Studiis Narratio August. Wilh. Zumptii_. Every body is familiar with the name of Zumpt as that of one of the most learned Latinists of the last half century, and it is appropriate that his life should be written in a language to the study and illustration of which it was almost entirely devoted. The Lives of Hemsterhuys by Ruhnken, of Ruhnken by Wyttenbach, and of Wyttenbach by Mahne, have long been the delight of scholars, and have furnished some of the best specimens of modern Latinity. Zumpt will not take rank among philologers with these great lights of the eighteenth century, but he rendered services to learning which will deserve a memorial, and in moral qualities he was not inferior to any of them. He became in succession a teacher in other Gymnasia in Berlin, and ultimately Professor of History in the Military College, and of Latin Eloquence in the University. He published the first edition of his celebrated _Grammar_ in 1818, and it soon became known throughout the civilized world. Of his other publications the most considerate is his edition of the _Verrine Orations of Cicero_; his _Dissertations on the Population of the Ancient World, De Legibus Judiciisque Repetundarum_, and several others, show that he was well versed in antiquities, but grammar, criticism, and style were his proper field. Wolf pronounced himself and Zumpt the only men in Berlin who could write Latin. His incessant labors undermined his constitution, and brought on a premature decay; and for some time before his death he had become entirely blind. He died at Carlsbad in 1849. * * * * * A third edition of THIBAUT'S well-known work, _Uber Reinheit der Tonkunst_, with a preface by the Minister R. Bahr, and a portrait of Palestrina, has just made its appearance, from the establishment of the well-known publisher Mohr, of Heidelberg. * * * * * A new course of _Proces Celebres_ is to be published by Brockhaus, of Leipsic. Number one contains the _Proces du Comte et de la Comtesse Bocarme_. * * * * * _Remak Rob. Untersuchungen über d. Enturckelung der Wirbelthiere_, Berlin, 1851. All who are interested in theories of the development of organic life will welcome the appearance of this work, which has been received with cordial approbation by the most eminent German physiologists. This second volume is devoted to the development of "the chicken in the egg," and is illustrated with seven admirable copper-plates. Notwithstanding the researches of Everard Horne, Ratke, and others into this department, this work of Remak's is distinguished by an even more accurate and detailed examination of phenomena, and it may confidently be classed among the first of the age. This is the opinion of _The Centralblatt_. The engravings are by Haase. This Robert Remak is the brother of Gustav Remak, an eminent German lawyer in Philadelphia. * * * * * In the _Archives for the Study of Modern Languages and Literature_ we observe a paper by one G. JAP, entitled, _Why does the English Language, in its acquisition and combination of new words, rather incline to the classic tongues than the copious and flexible German element?_ To which we may answer, "Alas, _why_, indeed?" Why is not the study of the Saxon Testament generally introduced? and why are not school-boys familiarized with the older forms of our own language--as they are in Germany made to study the Neibelungen Lied, and Wackernagel's Reader? We can imagine no argument in favor of a study of Greek which might not be with equal force applied to Saxon and good _old_ English. * * * * * A work has recently appeared in Breslan bearing the title, _The Higher Classes, as they are, and as they should be_, by Count ARNIM BLUMBERG: _written in the month of February, 1851_. That the aristocracy of Germany at the present day are far from being the practical philanthropists which they should be is beyond a doubt, but that they will become such by inspiring them with piety, in the unfortunate, melancholy sense in which that word is generally taken at the present day on the continent, is still more doubtful. _Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord_, is piety in America--something contrasting remarkably with the mystical and world-renouncing _pietismus_ of modern Germany. * * * * * A second "completely renewed and greatly increased" edition of BERTHOLD AUERBACH'S _Deutsche Abende_, or German Evenings, has been published by Bassorman, of Mannheim. Auerbach is in this country rapidly attaining the popularity which was held a few years since by Zschokke. Apropos of the latter, we remark a neat and very cheap edition of all his works, now publishing by Sauerländer, of Aarau. * * * * * One of the most important architectural works which has ever made its appearance is now being published by Meissner, of Hamburg, bearing the title _Denkmaler der Bankunst aller Zeiten und Lander_ (Monuments of the Architecture of every Era and Country), by JULES GAILHABAND, and published for Germany under care and contribution of Dr. Franz Kugler. The literary and artistic excellence of the original work is too well known to render description necessary, and its improvement is guaranteed from its being under the care of Kugler, who is perhaps better qualified, æsthetically, for such a task, than any German, or indeed any one living. The 197 and 198 _livraisons_ which now appear, contain engravings of the Chateau Chambord in France, the Mosque of Hassan in Cairo, the Temple of Gerschen in Nubia, the Baths of Caracalla, sketches of bridges of the middle ages, the Palace of Strozzi, and many others. In connection with this we may mention the _Entwurfez Land-und. Stadt Gebauden_, or Sketches for Domestic Architecture by F. W. HOLZ, a work which may be commended as _suggestive_ rather than practical, but still on that very account to be commended to young architects desirous of developing their creative powers. * * * * * Without wishing to render aught save honor to all who diligently pursue the minutest departments of science, we are still at times reminded, by occasional works, of the professor who was honored as one inspired by "a full German blood and a Fatherland's spirit," for a book--the result of thirty years' unwearied application--on bigamy and polygamy among grasshoppers. We are irresistibly reminded of this anecdote by a "preliminary notice" of some thirty odd years' observations of "certain varieties of thrushes," which are shortly to appear in an ornithological magazine at Stuttgart. * * * * * Among a mass of Lutheran Church literature recently published in Germany, we observe VOGEL ERNST GUST'S _Bibliotheca Biographica Lutherana, Ubersicht der zedruckten Dr. Martin Luther betreffenden biograph. Schriften, id est_, (Gustavus Ernst Vogel's Biographical Lutheran Library: a notice of all the printed works extant referring to the life of Dr. Martin Luther.) This work will be found extremely interesting to all readers of the History of the Reformation, since it embraces notices of many important works which might otherwise escape attention. * * * * * A work interesting to those who like to follow out the different political trains of thought developed in these "working" times, has recently been published by Rumpfer of Hanover, bearing the title. _The Excellence of a Constitutional Monarchy for England, and its inapplicability to the other countries of Europe_. * * * * * The German critics notice an increased interest in what relates to Art and Literature in the Middle Ages. Among other singular but interesting works, we observe the commencement of a series of "Manufacturing or Trade Chronicles" of that time, containing "researches into the mediæval sources and archives of many German cities, and consisting of items never before printed," published at St. Gall, in Switzerland, by Scheitlin and Zollikoffer. As Switzerland is eminently the country wherein the ancient _guilds_, or business associations of the Middle Ages, have longest continued in their original form, we may remark a peculiar appropriateness in the fact that such a work should there make its first appearance. This volume consists of _The Chronicles of the honorable Association of Butchers_. Also, the publication of a manuscript, _Thetmari magistri, iter ad Terram Sanctum_, 1217, (Thetmar's Journey to the Holy Land, in 1217,) by Huber & Co., of St. Gall: edited by T. TOBLER. With which we would cite _Koninc Ermenrikes Düt_. The death of King Ermenrich, an old Flemish Song and Legend of Theodoric, discovered with notes, by Jac. Grimm, Hanover: pub. by Ehlerman, price 15s. groschen. This work, which we have as yet not seen, has, however, been spoken of in terms of high praise, as "although in many places wanting, still excellent, as giving yet another glance into the rich vein of German Legendary, and Lyrical Life." Fault is, however, found with the publisher for a want of precision and accuracy. CONRAD SCHWENCK publishes through SAUNERLANDER, a "_Mythology of the Ancient German_" while the "_Origin of the three oldest cities on the Rhine_," namely, Mayence, Bonn, and Cologne, by Franz Ritter, is not without claims to interest. * * * * * One of the most exquisite artistic literary productions which has for years appeared in Germany, is that which has lately been published by RUDOLPH BESSER, of Hamburg, bearing the title, _Dr. Martin Luther, der Deutsche Reformator: In bildlichen Darstellunzen von Gustav König; in geschichtlichen Umrissen von Heinrich Gelzer_. (Dr. Martin Luther, the German reformer: artistically illustrated by Gustavus König, with historical sketches, by Henry Gelzer.) This is one of the works of which Protestant Germany may well feel proud, inasmuch as it has in every line the impress and spirit of national art. The entire work sets forth the artistic feeling which characterized the Nuremberg artists of the sixteenth century, and we are continually and irresistibly reminded, in turning over these exquisite engravings, of Albert Dürer, Cranach Wohlgemuth and Hans Sebald Beham. The work consists in a great part of short sketches and scenes from the life of Luther, illustrated, as the title implies, by the eminent artist König, who, though an artist of Munich, is by birth a Coburger. From Munich he has, however, drawn all the learning and inspiration of the middle age and high Catholic art, the which knowledge he has however admirably and consistently applied to an eminently Protestant subject. Peculiarly in the modernised Dürer style, is one of the first engravings representing Luther as a boy singing for bread, (as is even yet the custom in some parts of Germany,) before the door of a house. Luther gives himself a naive account of this: "They say, (quoth Luther,) and truly, that the Pope himself hath been in his time a wandering student, therefore let us not despise the lads who beg before the doors '_panem propter Deum_', and sing for bread. Such an one have I also been, and received bread before the doors of houses, particularly at Eisenach, in mine own dear town." Very animated and expressive is also the scene representing Luther as accidentally coming upon a copy of the Bible for the first time in the University Library. In his left hand he holds a massy folio Aristotle, and near him lie tomes of scholastic philosophy and theology, while his eye with the rapid glance of intelligence and conviction peruses the history of _Anna_. This is in short a work which every patron of art will certainly obtain, nor will it prove less acceptable to the scholar and theologian from the graphic and excellent character of the literary matter. * * * * * _Deutsches Volkskalender auf das Jahr_, 1852. _Herausg, von Gustav. Nientz._ There are two works, which, generally speaking, are found in every Christian family--the Bible and--the almanac. The Almanac has in fact the greater antiquity of the twain, for in the remote East, as in Norway, it was universally published "for the million," on blocks of wood or stone, or on walking-canes, even in the days of paganism. And since it _is_ so generally distributed, would it not be well for some of our higher literati to take the matter in hand, and make it a medium for something better than criminal trials, quack advertisements, and similar subjects? This of Nieritz is well gotten up, and contains excellent contributions from Jer. Gotthelf, Karl Barth, A. Wildenhahn, Karl Simrock, and A. Grube. The best in the collection appears to be _The Broom-maker of Rychiswyl_, by Gotthelf. All of the engravings are admirable, and the work is published for "next to nothing." * * * * * An _Austrian Biographical Dictionary_ is now publishing, by Moritz Bermann, at Vienna; useful to students of history and politics. * * * * * In SWEDEN, is the title of two volumes of _Sketches of Travel_, by HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, just published at Leipzic. They are replete with all the poetic charm and genial humor which his pen imparts to every subject it touches. * * * * * HENRICH ZEISE is a Danish novelist with whose works we have in this country no acquaintance, but who has just been introduced to the Germans by a translation into their language of his _Novels of Christian Winther_, which are praised by the critics as not only well written, but as affording an excellent idea of Danish social life. Zeise is the son of a country parson of Lolland; was born in 1796; and first distinguished himself by his fugitive poems, which in 1820 were collected in a volume. He travelled in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, and in 1832 published a collection of translations from the German poets and other writers. In 1835, he brought out a second series of his own poems, in which he abandoned to a great degree his previous popular style, and put on the manners of fashionable society. This was not a successful experiment. His novels are more recent; the best, _Osterie_, was published in 1843. In 1849 he translated _Reinecke Fuchs_ into Danish, preserving the original metre. He now has a pension from government, and lives at Copenhagen. * * * * * TEGNER, the great Swedish poet, is known to American and English readers through _Frithiof's Saga_ and Longfellow's translations of his _Children of the Lord's Supper_. A German version of his more recent writings is now making its appearance at Leipzic. The first number contains _Gerda_, a fragment of an unfinished heroic poem which is spoken of as very admirable, and a few little comic poems which are said to be charming. Adam and Eve figure in one of these. * * * * * HEINRICH VON ORTENBURG has published a second edition of his poetical tale, entitled _Nachtbluthen_--Night-blooms, or Night-flowers--and JOHN G. SEIDE, the Viennese, an increased edition of _The Songs of the Night_. The two will serve to bind up with _Voices of the Night_--though perhaps there _are_ German or Sclavonic poems that would better serve this purpose. * * * * * _Bomische Rosen, Czechische Volkslieder_ (Bohemian Roses, or National Songs), by IDA VON DURINGSFELD, and published by Kern, of Breslau, will undoubtedly attract the attention of the rapidly increasing circle of friends of Sclavonic literature. Also Sketches of Travel, by the same authoress, published by Schlodtmann, of Bremen. * * * * * An edition of _Hoffman von Fallersleben's Heimatklange_, or Regrets for Home, a collection of songs, has just made its appearance. Apropos of ultra-liberal political bards, we see that FRELIGRATH publishes the second volume of _Neuere Polit und Sociale Gedichte_, or Recent Political and Social Poems, by Schaub, of Düsseldorf. Freligrath's reputation as a poet appears to have much advantage from his persecution as a patriot. * * * * * The Italians were surprised lately by the announcement that the ex-minister GUERRAZZI, who is in prison awaiting trial for high treason, was about to publish _An Apology for his Political Life_, and that sheets of this Apology are from time to time forwarded to Signor Lami, Minister of Greece and Justice, who revises them, when they are returned to Guerrazzi for final correction. It seems incredible--altogether inconsistent with Italian policy--that a state prisoner should thus be suffered to pre-occupy the public mind with his defence. But the ministerial paper of the 8th of August indiscreetly solved the mystery with the following notice: "The publisher, Lemonnier, at Florence, is now printing, and will shortly publish a thick volume, containing 'The Apology for the Political Life of Guerrazzi,' written by himself. The announcement of this publication, is of a nature to excite great curiosity; it will at the same time be a thunderbolt to the Neo-Moderati, and the most conclusive condemnation of their acts during the period Guerrazzi was in power. Guerrazzi therein unpitifully and ably scourges their political weaknesses, and their _portefeuille_ rivalries, which obliged the Grand Duke in the end to throw himself into the arms of the democratic party. This book of Guerrazzi's will be a peremptory reply to the proudly-compiled apology of the Italian Constitutional party, published by Messrs. Gualterio and Farini, and especially to the base and calumnious imputations, directed by the latter against our excellent and loyal Grand Duke, in the recently published third volume of his work. Not only will the Constitutionalists be denounced in the book of Guerrazzi, but the intrigues of the Piedmontese Government with regard to Tuscany will be exposed, as likewise those of Sir G. Hamilton, British ambassador at Florence." This certifies the publication to be a bargain between Guerrazzi and the Tuscan Ministry to give vent to their hatred of the Constitutional party and of Piedmont. Guerrazzi writes in prison, from prison sends to the printers, and the Minister acts as reviser. It is really an odd thing--but characteristic of Italian affairs, perhaps,--for a disgraced and impeached minister to buy his life by turning "States' Evidence." In better days such results were for rascals of a lower grade. * * * * * F. A. GUALTERIO brings out an account of the late Italian revolution--_Gliultimi Rivolgimenti Italiani, Memorie Storiche, con Documenti inediti_--the first part of which, in three large octavo volumes, only comes down to the accession of Pius IX. to the Pontificate. The work is published in Florence, and has made considerable sensation, especially in Tuscany and Piedmont. The publications on the subject that appear in Italy are of course all on one side. The other side is represented by a party, or by several parties, who are in exile, and the number of books published on Italy and Italian affairs, in London and in Paris, is very great: more than a hundred during the last year. * * * * * In Berlin we observe that Sigismund Wiese, the author of two pious plays, entitled respectively _Moses_ and _Jesus of Nazareth_, has put forth another pair of similar dramatic productions, bearing the names of the _Apostle Peter_, and _The Apostle Paul_. Whether this be a retrograde movement toward the ancient Bible mysteries of the middle ages, or whether the theatre in Berlin (as we should infer from certain recent curious works and movements) is actually undergoing a spiritual renovation, we have not as yet ascertained. * * * * * A work called _Essai de Socialisme Rationnel_, by M. COLINS, has appeared at Paris, where it is exciting some attention. It is dedicated to Emile de Girardin, though in the dedication the author declares his complete dissent from the doctrines of that eminent journalist. M. Anatole Leroy is reviewing it in a series of articles in _La Presse_. The motto of M. Colins is this: "What I understand by socialism is the abolition of all pauperism, whether moral relating to knowledge, or material relating to riches. I affirm that this socialism has become necessary to order, and that it can be established without disorder." * * * * * Pleasant reading is there in the _Memoires Pittoresques d'un Officier de Marine_, just published at Paris in two handsome octavos, with the name of Captain F. LACONTE as their author. The French in general are not great travellers, but the best narrators in the world. Our Captain adds to the reputation of his people in both respects. He tells the story of his adventures and experiences in out-of-the-way parts of the world with a gayety and _laissez-aller_ which charm the reader. For the rest, what he saw in the South Sea, in Russia, in Turkey, at Madagascar, was well worth the telling in such a style. When he prints another book we hope to hear of it. * * * * * A book which our students of belles-lettres should have is M. de la VILLEMARQUE'S _Poemes des Bardes Bretons du VIe Siecle_. It is an excellent proof of the thorough study now devoted to the early popular literature of France, whose richness, by the way, is not much suspected by the elegant scholars of other countries. M. de la Villemarque has treated his subject with equal conscientiousness and affection. He gives abundant specimens of the songs of the bards in the form of translations from the original Celtic into French. The work is concluded by some philological disquisitions of value to whoever wishes to study the Celtic tongue. * * * * * M. PERRYMOND, one of the most intelligent and learned staticians of France, has published a reply to Thiers's Report on Paupers and Public Charity: the title of PERRYMOND'S work is _Le Pain du Proletaire, ou le Commerce des Peuples_. It is socialistic. * * * * * The political and social theory of Mazzini, and especially his doctrine that the idea of duty, with the utter subjection of the individual to the general interest, is the sole base for society and government, is the subject of some vigorous and unmerciful essays in the _Journal des Debats_, by Alexandre Thomas. * * * * * A late number of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, has an article by M. TAILLANDIER, on the Swiss popular poets, in which they are duly praised, and considerable extracts given from their writings. M. Taillandier thinks, however, that Switzerland is in serious danger of moral and mental corruption from the inroads of the Hegelian philosophy. * * * * * Those who wish in the briefest space to get an idea of the philosophical system of AUGUSTE COMTE, will find a valuable aid in some articles by M. ROMAIN CORNUT, now published in _La Presse_. M. Cornut proposes to give a succinct yet complete summary of all the teachings of the great Positivist. * * * * * A work has just begun to appear at Paris, which must excite the attention of every student of history, and claim a place in every library that pretends to any degree of completeness. It is a collection of the speeches and parliamentary reports of the principal French orators from 1789 to the present day. The first volume is published containing the speeches of MIRABEAU, with a biography and a great variety of critical notices of the great revolutionist and his career. The speeches of Robespierre will appear promptly, as well as those of Bussot, Vergniaud, Danton, Maury, Cazalles, &c. The price is seven francs the volume. * * * * * We have mentioned with the praise which we believe it deserved, the _History of the Protestants of France_, by G. S. FELICE, lately published by Mr. Walker. This work was simultaneously translated, by the author of Mr. Walker's version, and by a very accomplished woman whose labors that version made profitless. On the same subject we have from Lea & Blanchard, of Philadelphia, in two volumes, a _History of the Protestant Reformation in France_, by Mrs. MARSH, the authoress of "Emily Wyndham," &c. This work will be popular. Several years ago we read a _History of the Reformed Religion in France_, by Mr. SMEDLEY, published by the Harpers, who still, we believe, have it on their trade lists. It is quite as eloquently written, as dramatic, and in all respects as able as either of the others; and any of the three may be commended as not less engrossing than the last new novel. * * * * * The library of the poet Gray, which had been kept together in the family of William Penn, was at length scattered by a sale at auction, in London, on the 26th of August. * * * * * When M. GUIZOT, many years ago, published his "Collection of Memoirs relating to the History of the Revolution in England," in twenty-seven volumes, he added to that great work biographical sketches of the various authors whose works he had translated. Those biographical studies, carefully revised and corrected, with some that he had contributed to dictionaries, and others entirely new, are now collected into a volume of _Bohn's Library_ (New-York, Bangs & Brother), and, with the memoirs of General Monk, constitute a sort of gallery of portraits, in which personages of the most different characters appear in contrast--chiefs or champions of sects or parties, Parliamentarians, Cavaliers, Republicans, and Levellers, who, either at the termination of the political conflicts in which they were engaged, or when in retirement towards the close of their lives, described themselves, their own times, and the parts they played therein. M. Guizot has written the History of the English Revolution in these lives of the Revolutionists; for _all_ parties were revolutionary in those days--the Cavaliers by their denial of right no less than the Parliamentarians by their assertion of it. The studies are of Denzil Hollis, Edmund Ludlow, Thomas May, Sir P. Warwick, John Lilburne, Fairfax, Mr. Hutchinson, Sir Thomas Herbert, John Price, Lord Clarendon, Burnet, the Duke of Buckingham, Sir John Reresby, with notices of the _Eikôn Basiliké_, &c, and Memoirs of James II.--a sufficient variety to enable the author to exhibit all the facettes of the diamond. * * * * * At the distribution of prizes awarded to pupils in the various colleges of Paris, three or four weeks ago, the new Superior Council of Public Instruction, including MM. Thenard, Giraud, Daniel-Poinsot, and Ortila, attended officially at the Sorbornne: they were placed behind the Minister of Public Instruction, beside whom were M. Portalis, President of the Court of Cassation, and M. Saint-Marc Girardin, Secretary of the Council. The other members of the Council who assisted the Minister were M. Dupin, President of the National Assembly; M. Laplagne-Barras, wearing the magnificent dress of the superior officers of the Court of Cassation; Cardinal Gousset, seated, wearing the scarlet robe and hat of his office, &c. But the real hero of the solemnity was GUIZOT, who, on his entrance into the hall to resume his ancient place among the professors, was greeted with loud acclamations and the most respectful salutations, which were repeated still more warmly when the name of his son, William Guizot, was pronounced as of one of the prizemen. * * * * * A new novel, in two volumes, by EUGENE SUE, with the title of _Miss Mary;_ a tale by HENRI MURGER, called _Claude et Marianne_; and volumes iv. and v. of _Ange Pitou_, by ALEXANDER DUMAS, have just appeared in Paris. * * * * * The witty feuilletoniste, JULES JANIN, has published in a volume the letters he wrote from London during the Great Exhibition to the _Journal des Debats_. J. J., as everybody knows, is the most delightful journalist of art and society in the world, and all Paris anticipates the articles under his signature as a principal part of each day's satisfaction. Apropos of this new book of his, the London _Morning Chronicle_ says, "From the first line to the last, he has rioted in his own peculiar style--laughed, cried, sung, danced, in the same, and almost in every breath--jumped about in one page like a kitten catching its tail--and struck himself into an awful attitude of moral meditation, with an aspect as wise as Aristotle's, in the next--accomplishing all these literary feats by a most miraculous outpouring of words--capital words, fanciful, witty, fantastic, scholarly words--and jumbled, tossed, piled up on each others' backs--jerked this way and that--sharpened one against the other, glittering and gleaming, one by the aid of another--a perfect firework of words, Roman-candle sentences, and Catherine-wheel periods--rockets of epithets, and girandoles of antitheses!" But yet Janin's self-respect would not allow him to say that, in some instances, he has "sacrificed thought and sense, pith and shrewdness, to build up a barley-sugar temple of verbal prettiness, and to deck and wreath it with artificial flowers of rhetoric and of phraseology, which for a moment may seem to have smell, and sap, and savor, but which, upon closer inspection, too often reveal themselves in their true, and dry, and dreary substance of wire, and gauze, and calico." * * * * * One M. LEON DE MONTBEILLARD has published a work on SPINOZA. If that Philosopher has one characteristic more eminent than another, it is commonly supposed to be the precision and exactness of his logic. To say that Spinoza was a rigorous logician is a platitude, a truism. M. Montbeillard declines to walk in such a beaten path. He denies that Spinoza has any skill whatever in the science of reason, that he is a mere rhapsodist! * * * * * M. XAVIER SAURIAC, author of the Socialist tragedy entitled _The Death of Jesus Christ_, was lately tried, along with his two booksellers, for pernicious and insurrectionary doctrines put into the mouth of the Redeemer. They were heard by counsel, and the dramatist was admitted to plead at length; but the jury convicted the three, and the court inflicted long imprisonment, and fines. * * * * * MR. THEODORE MARTEN, a frequent contributor to the Edinburgh Review, and the author of the well-known _Bon Gaultier Papers_ in Tait's Magazine, has been married to the celebrated actress, Miss Helen Faucit Saville (best known without the last name). * * * * * THOMAS COOPER, author of the _Purgatory of Suicides_, &c., has been on a lecturing tour through Ireland and Scotland, lately, and has given an account of what he observed, in several letters to the London _Leader_. We copy from them a few paragraphs: I had two hours delightful conversation with Mr. de Quincy, at Lasswade, and was as deeply impressed with his intellectual power in talking, as I was with his writing when, in my boyhood, I read his "Confessions of an English Opium Eater." On my return from visiting Kirk Alloway, and the cottage of Burns, I called on his remaining sister, Mrs. Begg, a highly intelligent woman of eighty, who gave me some information of an important character, as I deem it to be. Her daughter, Isabella, was present while I had the short conversation with her. I told her that I entertained strong doubts of the truth of many things which were said about her illustrious brother, and I wished to have the benefit of her own personal knowledge respecting him. She replied that she would have pleasure in giving me all the information in her power. I told her that a person in Glasgow had declared to me, the other day, that he believed all the accounts of her brother's irregular life; for a friend of his had called on Mrs. Begg lately, and _she_ had said that she had often seen her brother sit at the table in a morning, after a night's debauch, shading his face with his hand, while the big tears of remorse were dropping on the board before him. Mrs. Begg seemed moved painfully. "Nothing is more false," she replied; "I never had such a conversation; and never could say so, for I never saw my brother either drunk, or showing any such feeling; nor did I ever know him to be drunk. It is true, I saw but little of him in the latter part of his life; but his son, who was with him almost constantly, told me that he never saw his father the worse for liquor but once; and then he was sick, but yet perfectly conscious. His son also said, that though his father would come home late during the latter part of his life, when they lived in Dumfries; yet he was always able to examine bolts and bars, went to observe that the children were right in bed and always acted like a sober man. Besides," added the intelligent old lady, "how was it possible that my brother could be a drunkard, when he had so small an income, and yet, a few weeks before his death, owed nobody a shilling? That speaks for itself." Mrs. Begg furthermore confirmed what I also learned in Glasgow from persons conversant with those who had known every circumstance of the close of Burns's life, that Allan Cunningham has sorely misstated many matters. Burns did _not_ die in the dramatic style which Allan tells of. Allan was never in Ayrshire in his life; but had his materials from some old fellow who went about poking into every corner and raking out every false story about Burns. A writer in Glasgow, in whose company I sat for a short time in the evening after I had delivered my oration there on Burns, contradicted Allan Cunningham's account of Burns's death, from personal knowledge--just at the time when Allan's _Life of Burns_ appeared; but Allan never took any notice of the pamphlet, and never corrected the misstatement. Mrs. Begg said that she had seen the two volumes of the new life of her brother, by Robert Chambers, and the account was fairer than any she had seen before. The name of the "Baroness VON BECK" has been familiar through the English reviews, during the last year or two, as the authoress of a book on the late Hungarian war. This woman turns out to have been no baroness, not even a "friend" of Kossuth, but a paid spy in the service of the National Hungarian Government, and lately a paid spy in the "recently established foreign branch of the English police force." She was on the thirtieth of August apprehended at Birmingham for obtaining money under false pretences, and died in the anteroom of the court, from a sudden affection of the heart, induced by the emotion caused by her detection. She had played a remarkable part. Her Memoirs were published by Bentley, and had a large sale, but they appear to have been written by another person. At the time of her arrest she was procuring subscriptions for a new volume descriptive of her pretended Adventures. * * * * * Mr. THACKERAY is writing a novel in three volumes, to be published in the winter. The scene is in England early in the eighteenth century, and among the characters will be Bolingbroke, Swift, and Pope; and Steele will play a prominent part. Mr. Thackeray has concluded to publish no more "serials," and we hope his new scenes and persons will suggest to him a little respect for human nature, which hitherto he appears to have regarded as a mere trick and imposture. * * * * * A pension of 200_l._ a year on the civil list has been conferred on Mr. Silk Buckingham. A pension of 200_l._ a year has also been given to Colonel Torrens, the author of several works on political economy. Mr. Buckingham had just obtained 400_l._ a year, as we have before mentioned, from the East India Company. It seems to us that these pensions can have but little to do with the "encouragement of literature." * * * * * The venerable poet JAMES MONTGOMERY will be eighty years of age on the fifth of November, and the people of Sheffield are preparing suitable honors for the occasion. A statue, to be set up in a conspicuous place, is talked of, and a general desire is felt that the festival which is proposed, and the honors which are to be given, shall be worthy of the man and the city. * * * * * A curious Diary of EDMUND BOHEN, a voluminous writer of the seventeenth century, has been discovered in Suffolk, England, his native county, and is about to be published under the editorship of S. W. RIX, of Beccles, author of the Fauconberge Memorial. * * * * * JOHN STUART MILL, we are advised by letters from England, is hereafter to be editor of the _Westminster Review_, which is now the grand organ of the socialists and disorganizers of society. * * * * * We have from Mr. Hart, of Philadelphia, in two beautiful volumes, _Memoirs of the Life of Mary Queen of Scots_, by Miss BENGER. They are written with neatness, and could not fail of a dramatic interest. Indeed, we know of no memoir of Mary Stuart, in the two or three dozen we have read with more or less attention, that is in all respects as attractive as Miss Benger's. But it seemed an unfortunate time to publish this, when the _History of Mary Queen of Scots_ by M. MIGNET, Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, was advertised, and it was known that its character would be such as necessarily to give it precedence of all other works on the subject. We noticed the design of M. Mignet two or three months ago, and we have now before us a translation, published by Bentley, of London, of his first volume. It fully realizes our expectations, in evident candor, research, and ability. It owes its existence to Prince Labanoff's collection of the queen's letters, and is the substance of a series of papers on that extraordinary work in the _Journal des Savants_. But M. Mignet had obtained access to original documents (chiefly the dispatches of the Spanish embassies in England, France, and Rome) which even Prince Labanoff had not explored, and has thus been able to give an original character to his narrative. It is an excellent specimen of condensed yet clear historical writing. Leading incidents stand out boldly, and no essential facts are omitted, yet there is not an excess of details. Motives are discriminated, and doubtful questions cleared, while we are spared the fatigue of elaborate disquisition. The book is little more than a sketch--but it is a most valuable one. With more materials before him than any previous biographer, the author has had to contend with fewer prejudices of his own. He is neither the apologist, nor the traducer of his heroine. Neither as Catholic nor as Protestant, as Scotchman nor as Englishman, does he sit in judgment on her history; he views the scenes of her career with an impartiality as far removed from harshness as from indulgence and may perhaps be pronounced her first unbiassed biographer. It is right at the same time to add that his historic coldness of temperament does not always enable him to judge quite fairly the difficulties under which both parties (but especially the Protestant party) labored at particular times; and perhaps it stops short, now and then, of the compassionate considerations which would best explain some points of Mary's conduct. Upon the whole, it will be seen from M. Mignet's judicial and masterly exhibition of the case, that there is very little ground upon which to base a belief of the poor queen's innocence of the great crimes of which she is accused. For her wit, beauty, and misfortunes, notwithstanding her wickedness, the world clings to her memory, and until human nature is changed men will receive proofs of her guilt as they would such proofs against a sister. M. Mignet presents these proofs so that they cannot be rejected. Among the recent French Lives of Mary Stuart, is one by M. Duguard--a sentimental romance that acquired a temporary rage, and was aided by George Sand in an elaborate letter of compliment addressed to the author. Miss Agnes Strickland will devote to the same heroine one entire volume of her _Lives of the Queens of Scotland._ * * * * * Among the recently established publishing houses of this country no one appears to be conducted with more judgment--so far at least as the selection and execution of books is concerned--than that of W. M. Moore & Co. of Cincinnati. Among their original publications we have _Service Afloat and Ashore During the Mexican War_, by Lieut. SEMMES, (a second edition is just issued,) which by the common consent of reviewers is in attractiveness and absolute value inferior to none among the very large number of works that treat of the Mexican campaigns; and the list of their republications includes _The Course of Creation_, by the Rev. Dr. ANDERSON, of Scotland, in which, with unusual ability, candor, and eloquence, the relations of natural science and the divine revelation are discussed; _The Footprints of the Creator_, the most able, and, in a scientific point of view, the most interesting of the works of HUGH MILLER; and _Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland_, by the same author--a singularly entertaining performance. They have in press a volume on _Aesthetiks_, by Professor MOFFAT, of Miami University, said to be written with singular ability, and designed chiefly for purposes of education. * * * * * Among the most attractive books in recent religious literature is _The Ancient and Modern History of the Rivers of the Bible_, lately published in London and just reprinted in New-York by Stringer & Townsend, with an introduction by the Rev. Dr. George B. Cheever. The Euphrates, the Hiddekel or Tigris, the Chebar, the Ulai, the Jordan, the Jarmuk, the Jahbok, the Arnon, the Kishon, and the Nile, the brooks Zered, Cherith, Kedron, Elah, Eshcol, and Besor, and the pool of Siloam, are treated with a degree of knowledge and a pleasing simplicity of style somewhat rare in works of this description. The author has given particular attention to the discoveries of Rich, Layard, and others, by the Euphrates and the Tigris, and we have nowhere else a better exhibition in brief of the appearance of the classical and sacred lands through which these rivers have flowed, half the time since the creation was witness of the most remarkable events in human history. The volume is illustrated by excellent wood-engravings of natural scenery, antiquities, and existing cities. * * * * * Among the passengers from this port to Europe, in the steamer of the 10th September, was the Abbe BRASSEUR DE BOURBOURG, for three years past an active archæological student in Mexico--that land of monuments and traditions, whose ancient history is second only to that of Egypt in its features of gloom and mystery. Some of the results of the Abbe's researches have been indicated in his recently published _Cartas_, addressed to the Duc de Valmy, which are only the introduction to an elaborate work, within which it is the author's design to bring all that is known of the ancient and modern history of Mexico. Among the various materials for the illustration of that part of this work relating to the aborigines, the Abbe has succeeded in obtaining from the neglected and not yet half explored libraries of Mexico, the following original and valuable materials. 1. Part 1. of a manuscript, by a priest of Chiapas, named Ordoñes, entitled, "Historia del Cielo y de la Tierra," etc. etc., being a translation of an ancient Tzendal hieroglyphical MS. containing the Indian account of the first settlement of Southern Mexico, the founding of _Na Chan_, or Palenque, etc. Also, portions of Part II. of the same MS. 2. Another manuscript of Ordoñes, without title, being a sort of memoir upon the ruins of Palenque, and on Antonio Del Rio's expedition. 3. A few chapters of a MS. of Santa Clara, taken from an inedited history of Peru, but relative to Mexico. 4. The original MS. of Cabrera upon Palenque. 5. Principles of a Grammar of the Tzotzil language. 6. Principles of a Grammar, Doctrinarium, and part of a Vocabulary of the Tzoque language (Chiapas). 7. A complete Vocabulary of the Maya and Spanish, with a great many etymological explanations. 8. A Vocabulary of the Spanish and Maya, less complete, 9. Codex Chimalpopoca, being the manuscript of the collection of Boturini, catalogued under the name of "Historia de los Reyes de Culhuacan," in the Aztec or Nahua language. 10. Codex Gondra, being the same known in the collection of Boturini, under the name of "Historia Tultaca," often cited by Gama; Spanish and Mexican. 11. "Fuente de los Verbos y Substantives Mexicanos," a host of Spanish and Mexican vocabularies. 12. Relacion que le envia su Magestad por D. Juan Baptista de Pomar, en 9 dias de Marz de 1582. This is a relation concerning Tezcuco. 13. A MS. in Mexican hieroglyphics, being a title of property in the Kingdom of the Tezcucan Prince Nezahualpilli, with a portrait of this prince, all on _Papel Maguey_. 14. Several prayer books in Mexican (MS.). 15. A few prayers in Maya, MS. 16. The original MS. explanation of the Codex Borgia, composed by the Father Fabrega, for Cardinal Borgia, of which speaks Baron Humboldt in his "Vues de Cordilleres," etc. in Italian. 17. A short vocabulary of the Huabi language spoken near Tehuantepec. The Abbe has also four or five Mexican Grammars printed in Mexico, and other rare books not included in the catalogue of Ternaux Compans. The collection is, therefore, more complete than any other made by any individual, and in the hands of an indefatigable student like the Abbe Bourbourg, will not fail to throw a flood of light on the ancient history of Mexico. * * * * * A few weeks ago Mr. SCHOOLCRAFT published a complaint that his _Indian in his Wigwam_ had been published without his knowledge by G. H. Derby & Co, of Buffalo, under the title of "The American Indians, their History, Condition and Prospects." Messrs. Derby & Co. have replied in the _Literary World_, that they came honestly by the stereotype plates of the book, and that as to the title, they "_had an undoubted right to alter it_." We beg these gentlemen and all others in like circumstances to reflect a little upon this doctrine, before endorsing it too positively. _However indisputable the title of Derby & Co. to the copyright of the book in question, they had no more right to change its name than they had to steal Mr. Schoolcraft's money._ He is a very silly person who maintains the contrary. Only the _author_ of a book has the right to change even the place of a comma in it. * * * * * Mr. SIMMS has just published _Norman Maurice, or the Man of the People, an American Drama, in Five Acts_. The scene is partly in Philadelphia, partly in St. Louis, and the plot involves the election of a senator from Missouri--as various passages disclose, in the present time. This is one of the chief faults of the piece, as the history of Missouri politics is so familiar that no illusion in the case is possible. Aside from this, it is in many respects an admirable play--bold, simple, and yet striking in conception, and wrought out with a general fitness and force of incident and style that should secure it, in our opinion, immediate and very eminent success on the stage. There has never been acted an _American_ play of equal merit. It was originally printed in the Southern Literary Messenger. * * * * * We are gratified to learn that the Rev. Dr. ALBRO, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has in preparation a complete edition of the works of the "learned and renowned Mr. Thomas Shepherd," who was the first minister in that town. These works will fill several octavo volumes, and we regard them as among the most valuable relics of the Puritan age in New-England. We have had for several years the very rare but incomplete collection of them published by Prince, in 1747. Dr. Albro will have some advantages in writing Shepherd's biography, which have not been enjoyed by others who have recently essayed that service. * * * * * A new edition of _The Works of Henry Fielding_ will be published in a few weeks by Stringer & Townsend. Monsieur de Marivaux in France, says Bishop Warburton, and Henry Fielding, in England, stand the foremost among those who have given a faithful and chaste copy of life and manners, and by enriching their romance with the best part of the comic art, may be said to have brought it to perfection. Without attempting a defence of the impurities which may be found in the novels and descriptions of Fielding, it should not be forgotten that the language used, and the manners depicted were those of the age in which he lived, and for which he wrote without further regard to posterity than as his would serve as records and illustrations of past times. In our admiration of a new school of comic writers, many may have forgotten this "prose Homer of human nature," and it will not be an unpleasing or profitless task for any to review and compare Fielding and Smollet with Dickens, Lever, Thackeray and others now living, who have attempted in the same manner to add to the general happiness. * * * * * The _Theory of Human Progression, and Natural Probability of a Reign of Justice_, a work which has received much attention in England, has just been republished by B. B. Mussey & Co., of Boston. The author says, "The truth I endeavor to inculcate is--That _Credence rules the world_--that credence determines the condition and fixes the destiny of nations--that _true_ credence must ever entail with it a correct and beneficial system of society, while false credence must ever be accompanied by despotism, anarchy, and wrong--that before a nation can change its _condition_, it must change its credence; that change of credence will of necessity be accompanied sooner or later by change of condition: and consequently, that true credence, or in other words _knowledge_, is the only means by which man can work out his well being and ameliorate his condition on the globe." The author, who appears to be familiar in some way with the writings of Comte, is unquestionably a man of abilities, and the work is in some respects eminently suggestive; but it has not escaped severe criticism in some of the theological and philosophical journals. * * * * * Mr. BARTLETT'S _Nile Boat, or Glimpses of the Land of Egypt_, has been republished in a beautiful large octavo by the Harpers. The well-known author aims at affording a few distinct and lively impressions, by pencil and pen, of the more interesting objects on the banks of the Nile, with such historical and archæological explanation as may satisfy the reader without confusing him with redundant details. Exaggeration has been studiously avoided, and accuracy studied, and the illustrations have been copied from original sketches taken on the spot. * * * * * Dr. KITTO'S very valuable _Daily Bible Illustrations_ have been published by Messrs. Carter in four small octavo volumes. The entire work is to consist of eight volumes, and will comprise a series of original readings on selected passages of Scripture, illustrative of the history, biography, geography, antiquities, and theology of the Bible. The subjects are arranged so as to extend over two years' daily reading. While specially designed for the family circle, to the youthful members of which the illustrations will render the Scripture histories particularly agreeable, the work is characterized by a degree of scholarship and ability that will make it eminently entertaining and instructive to even the best informed general reader. * * * * * The _Early Life and First Campaigns of Napoleon_, with a History of the Bonaparte Family, and a Review of French Politics, to the year 1796, by B. P. POORE, has been published by Ticknor & Co. of Boston, and will be continued in several parts, completing the life of the Emperor. Mr. Poore while residing in Europe as the Historical Agent of Massachusetts, collected many important documents illustrating his subject, and he will undoubtedly succeed in producing not only a very interesting biography, but a comparatively original one. * * * * * Mr. GEORGE TAYLOR, a young lawyer who has distinguished himself in his profession, is the author of a clever book, entitled _Indications of the Creator, or the Natural Evidences of a Final Cause_. (Charles Scribner.) Mr. Taylor takes the side of the Christian Religion, and of the real against the sham student of nature, in a reviewal of the general subject, in astronomy, geology, comparative physiology, and natural geography. * * * * * The _History of Pontiac_, which, while in press, several weeks ago, we noticed at considerable length in this magazine, has since been published by Little & Brown of Boston, and Bentley of London, and by the common consent of the reviewers it places Mr. PARKMAN among our most able and pleasing historians. Certainly no subject of its kind has hitherto been treated with as much felicity. * * * * * The beautiful edition of the _Works of Thomas De Quincey_, which Ticknor & Co. have for some time been publishing in Boston, will soon be completed, and the eight or ten duodecimos which it will comprise will be added to as many libraries as are owned by persons of a genuine appreciation in literature. They have never before appeared collectively. * * * * * Mrs. (Fanny Forester) JUDSON has been several weeks in England, on her way via the Cape of Good Hope, to the United States. She is in better health than she had been during the last year of her residence in the East. * * * * * An octavo volume has just been published in Philadelphia under the title of _The Female Prose Writers of America, with Portraits, Biographical Notices, and Specimens of their Writings, by_ JOHN S. HART, LL. D. The book is beneath criticism, and we will dismiss it very briefly after demonstrating the truth of this statement. We have scarcely ever seen so melancholy an illustration of incompetence for a task voluntarily assumed. It appears that to every woman whose name he had ever seen in print Dr. John S. Hart sent nearly a year ago a circular from which the following paragraphs are extracts: Authors _interested in having their merits placed on a proper footing before the public_, will contribute important facilities to the accomplishment of this end by furnishing me with information in regard to the following particulars: 1. The name in full (the middle name, as well as the first and last), and written carefully so as to prevent misprints. 2. Date of birth, _where there is no objection_. 6. Extracts.--_Indicate any passages_, amounting in all to five or six octavo pages, that, in the opinion of the author or her friends, may be taken as fair specimens of her style. The passages should be such as are complete in themselves, and contain something of general interest. 8. Critiques and commendatory notices.--Well-written critiques upon the author's style or writings, whether published or unpublished, will be acceptable. In almost every case, probably, articles of this kind have been published, or _exist in manuscript_, or _may be written for the occasion_ by those _entirely acquainted with the subject_, and if forwarded would furnish the present editor the most reliable means of doing full justice in each particular case. The sort of "criticism" which the volume contains may easily be inferred, as may be the class of literary women who would take any notice of an application conceived in a spirit so offensive to delicacy and common self-respect. Accounts of the writings of Miss Sedgwick, Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Oakes Smith, Mrs. Sigourney, Miss McIntosh, Margaret Fuller, and a few more, were to be found in a well-known book published in the same city, and of course therefore are included, but to show how ignorant the author is of the field he attempts to survey, let us place in one column some of the names he has altogether omitted, and in another an equal number from among those he has inserted. _Names omitted._ _Dr. Hart's Female Prose Writers._ MRS. ROBINSON, [Talvi.] Sarah Hall, MRS. RICHARD K. HAIGHT, Sarah H. Browne, MRS. WM. C. RIVES, Maria J.B. Browne, MRS. T.J. CONANT, Elizabeth Larcombe, EMMA WILLARD, Clara Moore, F. WRIGHT D'ARUSMONT, Ann E. Porter, CATHERINE E. BEECHER, Ann T. Wilbur, ANNA CORA MOWATT, Eliza L. Sproat, ELIZA BUCKMINSTER LEE, E. W. Barnes, ELIZABETH P. PEABODY, Caroline Orne, ELIZA L. FOLLEN, Caroline May, MARIA BROOKS, Julia C.R. Dorr, SARAH HELEN WHITMAN, Mary E. Morange, MISS H. LEE, Mary Elizabeth Lee, MRS. PUTNAM, Elizabeth Bogart, MRS. SOUTHWORTH, Mary J. Windle, MISS A. E. DUPUY, Frances B. M. Brotherson, MISS ALICE CAREY, &c. &c., &c. &c. Of the persons named in the second column we believe _not one_ has the slightest claim to be mentioned in a survey of the compositions of the Female Prose Writers of America. It is not unlikely that some of them have capacities for literature, but if so the public has no sufficient proof of it. On the other hand, see whose places they occupy. Mrs. Robinson and Madame d'Arusmont were born in Europe, but this fact could not have influenced Dr. Hart, who has given a conspicuous place to Miss Caroline May, an Englishwoman, who has been in this country less than a quarter as long as either of these distinguished persons. Mrs. Robinson is the wife of our great orientalist, and is herself one of the most learned women in the world; she has distinguished herself in American history, in romance, and in criticism, beyond almost any writer of her sex. The authoress of "A Few Days in Athens," must certainly be regarded as one of the most able literary women of this age, whatever may be thought of some of her principles. Mrs. Haight is well known by two of the most brilliant volumes of travels ever published by the Harpers. Mrs. Rives (wife of our minister to France), in her "Tales and Souvenirs of a Residence in Europe" (published by Lea and Blanchard), and in other writings, displays abilities that make her right to recognition in such a work unquestionable. Mrs. Conant (wife of the eminent Hebrew professor) is a woman of great and varied erudition, and ranks, generally, with Mrs. Robinson. Mrs. Willard is universally known by her valuable writings on education, in history, and in science, and by her interesting "Journal of a Residence in Europe." Catherine E. Beecher, the authoress of "Letters on the Difficulties of Religion," we believe is regarded as one of the ablest of the celebrated family to which she belongs, and as having the most profound and masculine intelligence exhibited in contributions made by her countrywomen to literature. Mrs. Mowatt is entitled to a high rank among our female novelists. Mrs. Lee, by her lives of Jean Paul and the Buckminsters and the Old Painters, her novel of "Naomi or Boston Two Hundred Years Ago," and other works, is omitted with about as much reason as the Prince of Denmark might be from Hamlet. Another lady of this name, the authoress of "The Huguenots," "The Three Experiments of Living," "The Life and Times of Luther," &c., we believe has done more good by her writings than any other woman in America, and for literary abilities she is entitled to distinguished praise. Miss Peabody is too well known by her essays in Æsthetics to need characterization. Mrs. Follen is one of the best known, and most esteemed female writers of the time. Mrs. Brooks's "Idomen, a Tale of the Vale of Yumuri," is an exquisite production, which alone would preserve the name of _Maria del Occidente_ in the lists of illustrious women. Mrs. Whitman is a writer of remarkable acuteness and richness, as is shown by her essays on the Transcendental Philosophy. Mrs. Putnam (a sister of James Russell Lowell), is distinguished not more for that masterly controversy which she carried on last summer with the _North American Review_, respecting the Revolutions in Northern Europe, than for that extensive and varied learning, among the fruits of which were the first American translations of Swedish and Danish literature, including some of the novels of Miss Bremer. Mrs. Southworth, by her "Deserted Wife," "Mother-in-law," &c., appears to have acquired a larger share of popularity than is enjoyed by any of her female American contemporaries. Miss A. E. Dupuy, authoress of "The Conspirator" (lately published by the Appletons), has won praise from eminent critics in the same department. Miss Alice Carey, by her "Ill-starred," and other novelettes, has evinced the possession of such genius as entitles her to a place in the very highest rank of our literary women. And who that knows any thing of American literature forgets Mrs. Sedgwick, who wrote "Allen Prescott;" or Mrs. Louisa J. Hall, who wrote "Joanna of Naples?" We think we have shown that Dr. John S. Hart knows nothing about "The Female Prose Writers of America." Our readers certainly can judge for themselves; but to us the selection of the persons who are named in the second of the above columns, to the exclusion of those whose names are in the first column, would seem to be an elaborate quiz, if the manner of the thing did not evince a genuine earnestness of purpose. We might have dismissed the book with half a dozen lines, but when we have occasion to condemn any performance thus decidedly, we think it but fair to prove the justice of our judgment. * * * * * A second edition of MRS. LEE'S _Memoirs of the Rev. Joseph Buckminster, D.D., and of his Son, the Rev. Joseph Stevens Buckminster_, has just been issued by Ticknor, Reed & Fields, of Boston. In the religious and literary history of this country there have been few more interesting characters than the Buckminsters, and this volume of their memoirs is very judiciously and tastefully written. Mrs. Lee began her task in an attempt to furnish some materials respecting her father, and brother, for the Rev. Dr. Sprague, of Albany, who has been several years engaged on a work to be entitled "Annals of the American Pulpit, or Biographical Notices of Eminent American Clergymen, of various Denominations." * * * * * A very elegant edition of the Moral Reflections, Sentences and Maxims, of ROCHEFOUCAULD, has been published by the well-known bibliopole, Mr. Gowan, of Fulton-street. The wise French worldling maintains still a precedence of all the writers of his class, and such an impression of his master-work will increase his audience. * * * * * Among the new works announced by Mr. Hart of Philadelphia is the _Principles of Organic Chemistry_, by Dr. CARL LOEWIG, professor of Chemistry in the University of Zurich, translated by David Breed, M.D., of New-York. * * * * * In a brief and hastily written paragraph in the last _International_, we referred to a novel by DR. HUNTINGTON, as _Alice, or the Mysteries_, instead of _Alice, or the New Una_,--a mistake which any reader of ordinary intelligence, who had ever seen the work in question, might easily have corrected. The character of the literary performances of Dr. Huntington is such as to justify some curiosity respecting his personal history, and in too carelessly attempting to give it, we fell into some errors, which he "corrects" in a letter to the _Courier and Enquirer_, saying-- "The novel of _Alice, or the Mysteries, I did not write_, although I am forced to admit that it 'displayed a great deal of talent as well as a very peculiar morality;' (indeed its morality I never did quite approve)--_I never was a village doctor--I never was a Congregational minister--and I am not now a Catholic priest._" We may amend our statement thus: Dr. Huntington is the author of a work entitled, _Alice, or the New Una_, which was very commonly regarded as the most licentious publication of its season; we understand that in his youth he was somewhat remarkable for the grimness of his Calvinism; that while a Congregationalist he became a doctor in medicine; that he afterwards took orders in the Episcopal church; that he left that church to enter a society of Roman Catholics; and that it was rumored soon after that he had become a priest, but, it is now understood, was prevented by disqualifying domestic relations. We admit that our paragraph had some little inaccuracies, but certainly they are more easy of explanation than Dr. Huntington's intimation in his letter of July to the London _Morning Chronicle_ that the author of _Alban_ and _Alice_ is a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church! * * * * * HARPER & BROTHERS have just published _Forest Life and Forest Trees_, by G. S. Springer, of Boston; Judge Haliburton's recent work on America which we noticed last month; and Lamartine's _Restoration of the Monarchy in France_, the most brilliant, superficial and false production of a writer never remarkable for depth or conscience. They have in press a new volume of Mr. Hildreth's capital _History of the United States_; Mr. G. P. R. James's _Lectures on Civilization_, delivered in various parts of the country last winter; _Sixteen Months in the Gold Diggings_, by Daniel B. Woods; _Wesley and Methodism_, by Isaac Taylor; _The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World_, by Professor Creasy; new volumes of _Memoirs of Dr. Chalmers_ and Miss Strickland's _Lives of the Queens of Scotland_; and several new English and American novels. * * * * * A very interesting handbook of London, somewhat different from any work of the kind yet published, is soon to appear in this city under the title of _Memories of the Great Metropolis_, profusely illustrated with wood engravings, and with a higher literary finish than is common in such performances. * * * * * The Rev. Dr. HENRY A. BOARDMAN, of Philadelphia, one of the wise, learned and faithful divines by whom is preserved the best reputation of the best vocation, has just published (Lippincott, Grambo, & Co.) a volume of discourses entitled, _The Bible in the Family, or Hints on Domestic Happiness_. It is quite aside, and evidently was intended to be, from the usual routine, though not beyond the legitimate domain of the pulpit. We have treatises on the relative duties, but no book, we believe, of this sort--not a treatise,--which is adapted to American society. Dr. Boardman's work is attractive for its original and striking observation and scholarly finish as a piece of literature, while calculated to be eminently useful for its illustrations of practical religion. * * * * * Among the novelties about to be issued from the press of Mr. Redfield, of Clinton Hall, is a series of Portraits or Biographies by ARSENE HOUSSAYE, of the men and women of the eighteenth century, comprising the philosophers, poets, artists--indeed all who lent a grace to or stamped their impress on the long and desolate reign of Louis Quinze. They are executed with a firm hand and possess the brilliant coloring of fiction, without deviating from historic truth. It is the only work that gives a just idea of the gay, witty and dissipated society that existed in France previous to the Revolution, and was one of the causes of that event. Mr. Redfield also announces _The Ladies of the Covenant_, a series of interesting biographical illustrations of the religious history of Scotland, by the Rev. JAMES ANDERSON; _Sorcery and Magic_, by THOMAS WRIGHT, of the Shakspeare and Percy societies; and a volume of _Tales and Sketches_, by Miss CAROLINE CHESEBRO. * * * * * There is in the possession of descendants of JONATHAN EDWARDS a MS. volume of Discourses on Christian Love, in his own handwriting. The paper looks dingy, but the writing is regular and clear. It is now being transcribed, and will be published during the autumn by Robert Carter & Brothers. The same house have in the press _Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity, delivered at the University of Virginia, during the Session of 1850-51_, among the contributors to which are the Rev. Drs. Alexander, Breckenridge, Plumer, McGill, Rice, Sampson, Ruffner, &c. * * * * * The _Knickerbocker_ has recently contained several chapters under the title of _The Sketch Book of Me, Meister Karl_, which have the best quality of Rabelais and Sterne. We have heard them attributed to Mr. CHARLES G. LELAND, of Philadelphia--one of the youngest of our authors, and one of the finest scholars and rarest humorists of this time, We believe Pennsylvania has no other son or citizen who gives fairer promise of distinction in letters. * * * * * ISAAC TAYLOR'S _Elements of Thought, a concise Explanation of the Principal Terms employed in the several branches of Intellectual Philosophy_, has been published by W. Gowans, from the ninth London edition. * * * * * Mr. CARLYLE'S _Life of John Stirling_ is in the press of Phillips & Sampson of Boston, and will soon be issued. From the same house we are to have _Memoirs of Sarah Margaret Fuller, Marchesa d' Ossoli_, edited by Ralph Waldo Emerson and William H. Channing; and a new and very beautiful edition of Robinson Crusoe, with new illustrations. * * * * * The American annuals for the present season are not very numerous. Mr. Walker, of Fulton-street, has published _The Odd Fellow's Offering_, which contains excellent contributions by Mr. Simms, Mr. Saunders, Mrs. Hewitt, Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Kimball, Mrs. Oakes Smith, and other writers; and Lippencott, Grambo & Co., of Philadelphia, have published the handsomest book of its class for the year, in _The Iris_, with unique and beautiful illustrations from drawings by Captain Eastman, U.S.A., whose wife writes a large portion of the contents. * * * * * _Vagamundo, or the Attaché in Spain_, by JOHN E. WARREN, is a very delightful book illustrative of society, scenery, &c., in "old, renowned, romantic Spain," where the author was attached to the American legation. As Mr. Warren while abroad was a correspondent of _The International_, it may be suspected that we have some prejudice in his favor--which indeed is very true--and therefore we inform our readers that of the English edition of this work, and of the American edition, all the critics have given such opinions as delight an author and bring money to his publisher. Mr. Warren is the author of _Para, or Scenes and Adventures on the Banks of the Amazon_, lately published by Putnam. It is his vocation to travel and make books, as these two performances very plainly show. (Charles Scribner.) * * * * * Mr. CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED, whose very clever sketches of American Society we have copied from month to month from _Fraser's Magazine_, has in the press of Putnam a work entitled _Five Years in an English University_. Mr. Putnam has in press also _The Shield_, by Miss FENIMORE COOPER, and _The Monuments of Central and Western America_, by Dr. HAWKS, besides several beautiful souvenir volumes, for the coming holidays, which embrace contributions by the best authors and artists of the country. Mr. SIMMS, has just published (by A. Hart), a new novel under the title of _Catherine Walton_, which is equal to his best productions. The scene is in South Carolina, during the Revolution. _The Fine Arts._ PAUL DELAROCHE'S picture of _Marie Antoinette_ is to be engraved on a large scale. Delaroche has represented the unfortunate _Autrichienne_ descending the stairs from the terrible tribunal which pronounced her death-sentence. She is attired in black, with a white scarf round her shoulders. A singular but striking effect, which the painter has rendered with habitual felicity, is the altered color of her hair, which is said to have turned white. The artist has shown the alteration, by a few stray auburn locks, blanched at the root. In the background is represented the mob which greeted with execrations the "widow Capet" on the morning of the 15th October, 1793. * * * * * The Print of the London Art-Union for the current year is from one of Mr. Frith's pictures, _An English Merry-making in the Olden Time_, engraved by Holt, so carefully as to bring out every detail and shade of character in the original with the greatest fidelity and spirit. The merry-making consists mainly in the performance, beneath some noble trees, of the old country-dance of Sir Roger de Coverley, by a party of rustics. A couple of lovers are seated in the foreground, and close by them is a group of merry damsels hauling a jolly old farmer to the dance, while the dame encourages their attack. * * * * * A few friends of the poet Motherwell, of Glasgow, have just erected a beautiful monument to him in that city. It is the work of Mr. Fillans, a friend of the deceased, and is in the form of a small Gothic temple, consisting of a quadrangular pediment of solid masonry, supporting a light dome on four pillars; the dome being decorated with carvings of shields and _fleurs de lis_. In the space between the pillars is a sarcophagus, on which is placed a termini bust of the poet. * * * * * The German Painter WINTERHALTER, whose pencil is mainly dedicated to courtly chronicles and countenances, has just completed another of his numerous royal family groups. It represents the Duke of Wellington in the act of offering an affectionate _souvenir_ to his little godson Prince Arthur, on the occasion of his first birth-day anniversary. * * * * * The Count de THUN, a distinguished Austrian painter, and M. Ruben, director of the Royal Academy of the Fine Arts in Prague, have been commissioned by the Austrian government to examine into the several organizations of the schools of the arts of design in England, France, and Germany, with a view to propose such ameliorations as the examination may suggest in the various schools of Austria. * * * * * In the closing weeks of the Great Exhibition in London, several _chef-d'oeuvres_ of art have been received, and among them one by the celebrated Dutch sculptor, Van der Ven, representing the Temptation of Eve. It attracts a great deal of attention. The treatment of the subject is bold and original, the form of the first woman being developed with freedom, grace, and life-like effect. One of its chief excellencies is, that in its composition there is no trace of that disposition to borrow from the classic styles of antiquity, instead of relying upon nature, which so often detracts from the merit of modern sculpture. Mr. Spense, an English artist at Rome, has also lately contributed a statue of Burns's Highland Mary, which is much admired. * * * * * MR. RUSKIN has published a new pamphlet entitled _Pre-Raphaelitism_, in which nature, and not the critical writers, the applauded models of the day, or tradition, is declared the only true guide to excellence in art; and all modern art is held to be depraved in taste, as it were, an arid desert, in which he endeavors to set up two landmarks, John Everett, Millais, and Joseph Mallord Turner. Between these two poles stand William Hunt, who paints still life; Samuel Prout, of street architecture renown; John Lewis, the harem-scene delineator; and finally, Mulready and Landseer. The essay is keenly reviewed in the _Athenæum_, _Times_, &c., but is admitted by all to be characteristically eloquent. * * * * * The _American Art-Union_ opened its galleries on Monday evening, September 22. The collection of pictures we understand is unusually good. The occasion was one of much good feeling and enjoyment. Speeches were made by the President of the Art-Union, by Mr. Conrad, Secretary of War, by Rev. Dr. Osgood, Parke Godwin, C. A. Dana, Mr. Thompson of the Southern Literary Messenger, Judge Campbell, General Wetmore, and several other gentlemen. * * * * * POWERS'S celebrated statue of EVE, which was lost off Cape Palos in May, 1850, arrived in New-York a few days ago, in the British schooner Volo, from Carthagena, not having sustained any material injury. A letter from Mr. Powers respecting this statue was printed in the last number of _The International_. * * * * * MR. LEUTZE, after a long absence from this country, has returned, bringing with him his greatest work, _Washington Crossing the Delaware_, which will soon be exhibited at the Stuyvesant Institute. Mr. Leutze was received with great applause at the late meeting of the Art-Union. _Historical Review of the Month._ In the UNITED STATES, since our last publication, no events have occupied more attention than the great _Agricultural State Fair_ which was held recently at Rochester, and of which we shall give a particular account, illustrated with numerous engravings, in our next number; and the _Railroad Festival_ at Boston, which was held at the same time. At the latter were present the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and other members of the Cabinet, the Governor-General of Canada, his Aids and Cabinet, the principal members of the Canadian Parliament, and the leading merchants in the Canadian cities, the Governors of New England states, the Presidents of the railways in New England, the Mayors of the cities of New England and many other influential persons interested in railways and steam navigation. Speeches were made by the President of the United States, by Lord Elgin, Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, and many others, and the occasion was altogether one of the most brilliant and satisfactory of its kind ever known in this country. On the 10th of September Mr. Gorsuch, a citizen of Maryland, accompanied by several officers and other persons, proceeded from Philadelphia to Christiana, near Lancaster, for the purpose of arresting two negroes claimed under a law of the United States as fugitive slaves. In order to resist the execution of the law the negroes of the vicinity rallied to the number of seventy or eighty, armed themselves with guns, and fired on the party of whites, killing Mr. Gorsuch, and mortally wounding his son. The negroes were also considerably injured by a discharge from revolvers by the party with the officers. It appears from a statement published by the Rev. Mr. Gorsuch, a son of the claimant of the negroes, that a conspiracy was planned beforehand, to resist the officers of the law in the execution of their duty; and that it was not confined to the negroes, but was apparently under the guidance and control of whites. Mr. Gorsuch says that while the officers were awaiting the decision of the blacks, a white man rode up; that his presence seemed to inspire the negroes with renewed hostility; that he refused, when summoned, to aid the officers, and threatened them with bloodshed if they persisted in executing the law. It is further alleged that it was after receiving some communication from this person that the negroes rushed on the officers and killed Mr. Gorsuch. Since then a correspondence on the subject has been held between the national executive and the executives of the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania. The slaves have not been recovered, but many arrests have been made of persons charged with conspiracy to prevent the execution of the laws, and with treason. The Free Soil party of Massachusetts, at a State Convention, held Sept. 16, nominated for Governor, John G. Palfrey, and for Lieutenant-Governor, Amasa Walker. The nomination for Governor was first tendered to Stephen C. Phillips, of Salem, who declined. The democrats held their State Convention on the 26th of August. They passed resolutions decidedly in favor of the Union, and against all anti-national and anti-sectional agitation. George S. Boutwell was nominated for Governor, and Henry W. Cushman for Lieutenant-Governor, and Charles G. Greene, Henry H. Childs, and Isaac Davis, were appointed delegates to the National Democratic Convention, which was recommended to be holden at Baltimore in May, 1852. The Whig State Convention was held at Springfield on the 10th of September and, on the first ballot, Robert C. Winthrop was nominated as their candidate for Governor, and George Grinnell as their candidate for Lieutenant-Governor. The proceedings were very harmonious, and the address of the chairman, and the resolutions passed by the convention, were of a strong national and Union character. Edward Everett, George Ashmun, and Seth Sprague, were chosen delegates from the State at large to the National Whig Convention. In New-York the Whig State Convention assembled at Syracuse on the 11th of September. George W. Patterson, was nominated for Controller; James M. Cook, for Treasurer; Samuel A. Foote, for Judge of the Court of Appeals; James C. Forsyth, for Secretary of State; Daniel Ullmann, Jr., for Attorney-General; Henry Fitzhugh, for Canal Commissioner; and A. H. Wells, for State Prison Inspector. Resolutions were adopted, declaring that the proceeding of the two Whig State Committees at Albany, for the union and co-operation of the party, was "the result of honorable and patriotic devotion to the Constitution, and for the best interests of the whole people, and that it is adopted and approved by this Convention;" and pledging the whigs to the most liberal conduct in the matter of internal improvements. The Democratic Convention met at the same place on the tenth. Resolutions were adopted reaffirming the principles avowed in the resolutions adopted by the State Convention held at the same place last year. The following persons were nominated for the several state offices: John C. Wright, for Controller; Henry S. Randall, for Secretary of State; Levi S. Chatfield, for Attorney-General; Benjamin Welch, Jr., for Treasurer; Horace Wheaton, for Canal Commissioner; W. J. M'Alpine, for State Engineer; General Storms, for Inspector of State Prisons; and A. S. Johnson, for Judge of the Court of Appeals. The Maryland Whig State Convention at Baltimore, September 17th, nominated, with great unanimity, the following State ticket: For Controller of the Treasury, George C. Morgan; Lottery Commissioner, O. H. Hicks; Commissioner of the Land Office, George C. Brewer. The Democrats, at their State Convention held at Baltimore, on the 12th, nominated Philip Francis Thomas, of Baltimore City, for Controller; James Murray, of Annapolis, for Commissioner of the Land Office; Thomas R. Stewart, of Caroline, for Lottery Commissioner. In Virginia, an election for members of Congress, under the old system and apportionment, takes place on the fourth Thursday in the present month. The question of the ratification of the new constitution is to be decided under the universal suffrage system, on the same day. Members of the Legislature are also to be elected, according to the old apportionment; but if the new constitution is ratified, the legislative election is to be superseded by a new election, under the new apportionment, in December next. At the same time, a Governor and Lieutenant-Governor &c., are to be elected; and next spring, the county officers will be chosen in another election; after which the State elections will occur regularly from time to time. In South Carolina a large meeting was held at Charleston, on the 28th of August, in favor of co-operation between the slaveholding states, and opposed to separate State Action for the purpose of resistance to the National Government. John Rutledge presided, and in the list of other officers we find the names of many of the most distinguished citizens of the State. Our advices from California, to the 14th of August, are of a favorable character. In San Francisco business is active in spite of the effects of the recent conflagration, and the administration of justice is placed on a more substantial basis. Great activity prevails in the mining districts, and the work of constructing canals on various gold-bearing streams is vigorously advancing. Accounts from Utah represent the new territory in a prosperous condition, with the exception of some slight Indian difficulties. The crops are unusually fine. The emigrants for Salt Lake and Oregon are progressing prosperously. The Mormons have extended their settlements along the base of the mountains, northward, and facing the Great Salt Lake, ninety miles, nearly to Bear River ferry. They are fast taking up all the good land in the Valley, and are engaged in building a railroad to the mountain, some seven or eight miles, on which to transport the materials for their great temple. Dr. John M. Bernhisel has been chosen Territorial Delegate to Congress. It has been stated that the Survey of the Mexican Boundary Commission was progressing rapidly westward. The astronomers and surveyors of the American and Mexican Commissioners had joined forces, and their advanced parties had reached a point thirty miles west of Rio Mienlies. The line was to run eight or ten miles south of Cooks Spring, thus giving the United States the whole of the road to the Copper Mines, and the only route which can be traversed by wagons. We have later intelligence, that in consequence of a disagreement between the Commissioners and the Surveyor, the operations of the Commission are almost suspended. Dr. Gardner, of fraudulent Mexican claim notoriety, has returned to Washington, surrendered himself into the hands of the United States authorities, and given bail in the sum of $40,000 to appear for trial at the December term. Senator Chase, of Ohio, has issued a manifesto in which he announces his intention to adhere to the platform and support the ticket of the Ohio Democratic Convention. But the ground of this determination is, that he considers the action of that Convention, besides being acceptable on other topics, as in effect indorsing the Free Soil doctrines. John McPherson Berrien has declared his intention of acting with the Union party. Gen. Quitman, before the late election, withdrew from the contest, as the secession candidate for Governor of Mississippi. The Special Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church for the election of an Assistant Bishop fur the Diocese of Illinois, was held at Pekin, Sept. 8, and resulted in the election of Dr. Whitehouse, of New-York. The annual meeting of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was held at Portland, on the 9th day of September. The President, Theodore Frelinghuysen, presided, and the affairs of the society and its prospects, were presented in several very interesting reports. In the last number of this magazine, we stated the failure of some ineffectual risings in CUBA, and supposed that the peace of that island was reestablished, at least for a considerable period. But, about the end of August, the country became exceedingly interested respecting the fate of the steamer Pampero, which, it had become known, had left New Orleans with several hundred men, under the command of General Narciso Lopez, with the intention of landing at some point on the Cuban coast. It afterwards was disclosed that the party, which consisted of 480 men, designed to go to the River St. John, and effect a junction with an artillery force which was waiting there, and then land at some point in the central department; but on touching at Key West for stores, they were informed of a revolt of the Vuelta de Abajo, and Lopez resolved to land in that district. The party disembarked at the small town of Morillos, at two o'clock, on the morning of the 12th of August; and, soon after, General Lopez sent a pronunciamento to Los Pazos, in which he informed the inhabitants he was about to march on them, and would give no quarter to any who did not join him. Being without means of transportation, he ordered Colonel Crittenden to remain and protect the baggage, together with 1000 musket cartridges, 3000 muskets, and 700 pounds of powder in kegs. He told Crittenden that he would send for him at Los Pazos, and took with him 323 men, leaving 130 with Crittenden, who, at 11 o'clock that night, started to rejoin him. Their advance was slow, and on the morning of the 13th, while eating breakfast, they were surprised by a report of musketry, and the whistling of bullets, from a body of the enemy, who were repulsed with a loss of nine killed. A short time after they repeated the attack. Crittenden charged, and forced them to retreat to a chaparral, from which, as the invaders advanced, they opened a destructive fire. Finding he could not maintain his position, Crittenden ordered a return, and the enemy again advanced. At this time, he wished a small party to attain a position at the right flank of the enemy, to charge from that side at the same moment he charged on the front. Lieutenants Van Vechten and Crafts, with twenty men, volunteered, and attained the position. After remaining about half an hour, and hearing nothing of Crittenden, they were compelled to retreat, leaving their baggage and stores. The next morning this party succeeded in joining Lopez at Los Pazos, half an hour before he marched from that place. Gen. Enna, commander of the Spanish troops, immediately attacked Lopez with 800 men. After a hard fight, the enemy retreated, leaving a large number (among whom were several of their highest officers) dead and wounded. Lopez lost in killed and wounded, thirty men, among whom were Col. Dowzeman, Lieut. Laviseau, killed; Gen. Pragay, Capts. Brigham and Gonti, mortally wounded. On the morning of the 14th, Lopez marched into the mountains, and on that day he was attacked by 900 men. The action lasted three hours, and the Spaniards retreated with a large loss. At the moment that the Spaniards retreated in one direction, Lopez issued an order to retreat in an opposite one, and made a forced march of 18 miles in 5 hours, over a mountain road. On the 19th, being still in the mountains, two leagues from Bahia, he was overtaken by a heavy rain storm, which destroyed the greater part of his ammunition, and rendered the firearms entirely useless. On the morning of the 20th, the sentry was surprised and shot, and Lopez was completely routed, flying to the mountains. Lopez escaped on horseback, with nothing but what he wore. He encamped on one of the mountains, exposed to the violence of a terrific storm. On the evening of the 21st, having been forty-eight hours without food, a horse was killed and divided among 125 men, who were all that remained with him. They wandered about until mid-day of the 24th, when a halt was ordered, and on examination it was found that they had only 60 serviceable muskets, and about 40 dry cartridges. They commenced a retreat, when a force of 900 charged on the party. They dispersed, threw away their arms, and fled to the mountains; seven men only remaining with Lopez, and a large number being overtaken and killed. Lopez was taken with six of his men in the _Pinos de Rangel_; his captors were Jose Antonio Castañeda, guide of a pursuing force, and fifteen peasants of the country. The capture took place on the 29th, just seventeen days from his landing. The news of it spread at once through the country, and people began to flock into the camp to see the prisoners; to avoid inconvenience, Col. Ramon de Lago, who commanded the column, conveyed them to Havana by a night march. The second day after being separated from Lopez, the party under Colonel Crittenden was captured by a detachment of Spanish soldiers and carried into Havana, where, on the sixteenth of August they were shot, by order of the Captain General. Very much exaggerated accounts of the circumstances attending their execution were circulated in the United States; and by forged letters respecting successes by the invaders, adhesions to them by the people of the island, indignities to Americans, &c., it was sought to excite the public indignation so that further expeditions should be set on foot that would be altogether irresistible. The party whose managements consisted of such systematic and persevering falsehood lost all its energy when news came of the capture of Lopez and the remnants of his army. At seven o'clock on the morning of the first of September, Lopez was _garroted_--that being the Spanish punishment for treason--in the presence of from eight to ten thousand troops. Brought from the prison he ascended the platform with a firm and steady step. Facing the multitude he made a short speech, and his last words were, "I die for my beloved Cuba." He then took his seat--the machine was adjusted; at the first twist of the screw his head dropped forward--and he was dead. He was a brave man, but of feeble capacities, and the leading members of the Cuban junta in the United States had no confidence in any movements subject to his direction. A few of the prisoners taken about the time of the capture of Lopez have been set at liberty, and others have been transported to Spain. The result of the whole business shows that the bodies of the prisoners shot at Havana with Crittenden and Kerr, were not mutilated nor anywise maltreated, as had been stated, but that the story that they had been was fabricated to excite indignation and procure reinforcements in this country; that the invaders achieved no important success at any time, beyond the killing of General Enna and the consequent repulse of the detachment led by him; that they killed not more than two hundred of the Spaniards; that they at no time were able to act on the offensive, but fought for their lives from the first, and were at length surprised and utterly routed; that, though they were landed in the very quarter of Cuba where Lopez was most likely to obtain aid, yet they received none of any kind, and were not joined by a single corporal's guard from the hour of their setting foot on the soil of Cuba; that the Creoles, or natives of Cuba, so far from affording them such aid as even cowards friendly to them might safely have done, evinced the most active and deadly hostility throughout to the invaders and their cause. We cannot doubt that they furnished the information which led to the surprise and route of Lopez; we know that they finally deceived, betrayed, bound and delivered him to Concha. The CANADIAN PARLIAMENT was prorogued by the Governor-General on Saturday, the 30th of August, to the 8th of October. The royal speech represents the revenue as in a satisfactory state, and refers to the grants for improving the navigation of the St. Lawrence, and to the reduction of the emigrant tax. Six bills were reserved for the approval of the Queen, three of which relate to churches and rectories, two to the reduction of salaries, and one to the incorporation of the Fort Erie and Buffalo Suspension Bridge Company. The reciprocity question was left unsettled. The paraphernalia of the Canadian Government has since been removed from Toronto to Quebec. The general election in the Province of Nova-Scotia for members of Parliament, has resulted in a majority for the existing Government. The Provincial Secretary, the Attorney-General, the Financial Secretary, leading members of the Cabinet, have been reëlected. The construction of the railway from Halifax to Portland, and through New-Brunswick to Quebec, may be considered as secured. The question has been one of the prominent points in the election--the Liberals being in favor of, and the Conservatives opposed to it. The Mexican Congress have passed a bill for the formation of an alliance, offensive and defensive, between all the Spanish American republics. With a foreign debt beyond her ability to pay; with a deficit accruing every year; with a whig government, threatened by insurrection at home, and blockade from a foreign power, Mexico may well look around her for some method of prolonging her existence. Opposition continues to the Tehuantepec treaty; and it is stated that two vessels sent from New-Orleans to commence the canal were seized by the Mexican authorities. In SOUTH AMERICA there has been more than the usual amount of revolution. The President of Ecuador, General Nueva, left Querto on the seventeenth of July, to visit his family at Guayaquil. On approaching the city he was met by a military cavalcade, apparently for the purpose of escorting him in: but was seized by them, and hurried off to sea in a vessel lying in the river; the destination of the vessel, and the fate of the prisoner were unknown. General Urbina immediately entered upon the administration of affairs. In Chili, Don Manuel Montt has been elected President by a large majority. Advices from Montevideo to July thirtieth, state that Urguiza and Garzon passed the Uraguay on the twentieth with seven thousand five hundred men, and that General Servando Gomez at once went over to them from the army of Oribe with two thousand cavalry, some staff officers and one thousand extra horses. It is expected that all of Oribe's forces will desert him in the same manner. Garzon, who formerly served with Oribe, is very popular among his forces. A Brazilian army of twelve thousand men is marching to join Urguiza and Garzon. The war will now be carried into the territories of Buenos Ayres. It will doubtless be a most ferocious contest; with Rosas it is a matter of life and death; the power he has built up with such bloodshed and tyranny will either be destroyed utterly or confirmed by the result. In Peru, the best understanding is said to exist between the Legislative and Executive bodies in the Government. Movements are being made for the greater extension of freedom of trade, and for prohibiting the circulation of Bolivian money within the Republic. A revolution has broken out in the provinces of Antiochia and Popayan, in New-Grenada, which at the last advices (July twenty-fourth), was rapidly spreading over the country. The rising is headed by General Borrero, who took up arms with one thousand men, and has since received large accessions to his forces. General Borrero has the reputation of being an accomplished soldier and a sincere patriot. The city of Carthagena was thrown into great confusion by the reception of the intelligence, the militia being called out and the people supplied with arms. In Nicaragua a revolution has displaced the government, and M. Montenegro, who was elected successor of the deposed President, died in a few days after, and the chief of the opposite faction, General Muños, is probably now in authority. From GREAT BRITAIN the news is various but generally of small importance. The Queen and Royal Family have been making a tour in Scotland, which gave occasion to the usual rejoicings and demonstrations of loyalty. The most grave questions discussed in the journals are connected with the Roman Catholic Disabilities subject. On the 19th August a great gathering of the Roman Catholic clergy and laity took place at the Rotunda in Dublin. The object in view was the organization of a party and the commencement of an agitation to bring about the repeal of the obnoxious act of Parliament. So strongly was public feeling excited on the occasion, that the military and police forces were held in readiness for action. Fortunately the peace was not disturbed; although the spiritual leaders themselves boldly set the law at defiance by the use, in one of their resolutions, of the very titles prohibited by the recent enactment. Among the notices of motion that have been placed on the books of the House of Commons for "next session," is one by Mr. Hume to move that "after a day to be fixed by Parliament, no person, male or female, shall be admitted to the service of the public, in any permanent civil office or department, unless they shall pass an examination by competent persons appointed for that purpose, and shall be found capable of fluently reading and writing the English language". In England the Railway Companies have held their annual meetings. The increase of travel has not kept pace with the increase of railways; the average profit is 3 per cent. The _Times_ has had some forcible articles recently on the possibility of running a railroad straight from London to Constantinople, and thence through Ask Minor to India, so as to make Calcutta accessible in seven days. This the _Times_ describes not only as practicable, but even of probable accomplishment, in a given number of years. The harvest in England, Scotland, and Ireland has been of the most gratifying description. The weather was generally favorable, and a large quantity of grain was secured in excellent condition. As the harvest proceeded the reports from the agricultural districts improved, and previous estimates of crops, both as to quantity and quality, under rather than over what is realised. The aggregate produce of the kingdom is expected to be fully equal to that of good average seasons. Accounts of the potato blight have been greatly exaggerated. The disease has no doubt reappeared, but in much less degree than at the corresponding time in any previous year since its first appearance. But notwithstanding the prospect of a good harvest, the tide of emigration continues to roll on as unceasingly as in the spring months. Day after day the journals chronicle the departure of hundreds of emigrants, the major portion of whom are represented as possessing sufficient capital to enable them to purchase land on their arrival in America. The Monaghan Standard remarks that the greater proportion of emigrants now are of a very different description from the hordes of unhappy creatures, poverty stricken and debilitated with disease, who formerly struggled across the Atlantic. The greater number of those who now crowd our emigrant ships are men who, with a capital varying from £100 to £300, have been in the habit of conducting, with the aid of their sons and daughters, the cultivation of their land. An honorable trait of the character of the Irish in America is shown in a fact stated in the _Ballinesloe Star_, that in six weeks upwards of £20,000 were received from relations in America, in sums varying from £5 to £30, by persons in Ireland, the great majority of whom had been receiving relief in the work-houses up to the time of the money reaching them. In many cases the poor people have kept the matter secret, through a mistaken fear that if it were known to the poor law officials, a portion of the money would be impounded to pay for their maintainance while in the work-house. The money is consigned to some third party--some shopkeeper, or person who could be depended upon, to have it safely conveyed to its intended destination, without the knowledge of the work-house officers. Much excitement has been created in England by a match between the yacht America, owned by Mr. John C. Stevens, of New-York, and the yacht Titania, and by other matches between the America and the most celebrated yachts in England, in all of which the America was successful. The America arrived out early in July. Hitherto the dozen or more yacht clubs in the United Kingdom had never dreamed of foreign competition. It was just known that there was an Imperial Yacht Club of St. Petersburg, maintained to encourage a nautical spirit among the nobility; and that owners of yachts at Rotterdam had enrolled themselves as the "Royal Netherlands Yacht Club;" but, till the America appeared, the few who were aware of the fact that there was a flourishing club at New York did not regard it as of the slightest consequence, or as at all likely to interfere with their monopoly of the most useful of sports. The few trial runs the America made after her arrival proved she was possessed of great speed, and that the owners were not so little justified as at first they had been thought in offering to back an untried vessel against any yacht in the English waters for the large sum of £10,000. As the day of the Royal Squadron's grand match drew near, the entries became numerous. In the memory of man Cowes never presented such an appearance as on the 22d of August. A large portion of the peerage and gentry of the United Kingdom had left their residences, and forsaken the sports of the moors, to witness the struggle. There must have been a hundred yachts lying at anchor in the roads; the beach was crowded, from Egypt to the piers; the esplanade in front of the Club thronged with ladies and gentlemen, and with the people inland, who came over in shoals, with wives, sons, and daughters, for the day. Eighteen yachts entered as competitors; the largest of which was a three-mast schooner, the Brilliant, 392 tons; and the smallest a cutter, Volante, 48 tons. Nine of the yachts were of above 100 tons, and nine were of less than 100 tons. The America's burden is 170 tons. The umpire in the case was Earl Wilton, and the triumph of the America complete. The "Cup of All Nations" was presented to Commodore Stephens and his brother, the owners of the America, after a dinner in the club-house that night. Mr. Abbot Lawrence was present, and acknowledged the compliments paid to this country. The yacht has since been sold to an English gentleman,--to be a model for British naval architects. [Illustration: THE YACHT "AMERICA"] In the American section of the Great Exhibition, Mr. Hobbs has been the great centre of attraction, and his colloquial powers have been severely tested by the thousand and one explanations he is obliged to give of the mode in which his late achievements were effected. He contents himself with asserting the vulnerability of all British locks and the impregnability of his own. He looks on the picking of Chubb's locks as the smallest of his feats; and it appears that the Directors of the Bank of England (no bad judges in such matters), have given in their adhesion, by ordering several of Mr. Hobbs's patent locks. "Every practical success of the season," says the _Times_, "belongs to the Americans." Their reaping machines, their revolvers, their yachts, are great "facts," and every one in England seems willing to admire the skill and enterprise that produced them. Narrow-minded critics, who are too wise to learn, find out that the reasons for the "America's" success were exceedingly trifling; it was only a difference in her build, and in the construction of the sails, &c. Precisely so, and it was only a stroke with a knife that enabled the egg of Columbus (which it is true must be stale by this time) to stand perpendicular. Every one can do it _now_, just as with the aid of fire and coals, and some water, they can rush from continent to continent, and baffle the wind or the waves. Every discovery that is useful is simple. In the works of nature, there is no perplexing machinery. The war at the Cape of Good Hope, still threatens to be expensive and protracted. The British troops have shown great gallantry in action, and the greatest endurance and even cheerfulness under the severe fatigue inseparable from the nature of the country, and the wide range embraced by the operations. But they are few in number; the policy of the insurgents is to avoid as much as possible a general engagement; the frontier is too extended to be effectually protected by stationary posts; the troops, therefore, are necessarily harrassed by constant patrol duty, and with no more decisive result than an occasional skirmish, in which four, five, or six Caffres are put _hors de combat_. The directors of the Manchester Commercial Association, and of the Chamber of Commerce, continue to prosecute their endeavors to encourage the cultivation of cotton in India. In the early part of this year, letters were received by the association that fresh New-Orleans cotton seed was scarce in the districts of Tinnivelly and Coimbetore, and other parts of the Madras territory; and fearing that the India Board, if appealed to, might not be sufficiently prompt in supplying that deficiency. Mr. John Peal, one of the members of the association, has imported at his own risk thirty tons of this seed, and placed it at the disposal of the Court of Directors. A California has been discovered in an interior county of New South Wales. The _Sydney Morning Herald_ of May 20, quotes from the _Bathurst Free Press_ of a few days previous, an article which describes "a tremendous excitement" in the town of Bathurst and the surrounding district of the counties Bathurst, Roxburg, and Westmoreland, on the discovery that "the country from the mountain ranges to an indefinite extent in the interior is one immense gold field." In India the British government has derided to take and keep possession of certain parts of the Nizam's dominions unless he repays at once the monies due to the Government of India, amounting to upwards of eighty lacs of rupees, with interest at six per cent. The districts of country about to be absorbed are, it is said, all those on the other side of the Kishna river, Bachore, and Neildroog, besides Berar. But it is considered in Bombay that the Nizam "has the means to pay," and that at the eleventh hour he will pay and save his territory. Traces appear to have been discovered of the movements of Sir John Franklin, in the earlier part of his voyage, but throwing little light, as we apprehend, on the painful question of his subsequent fate--of little more importance, in fact, than would be the vestiges he may have left behind him in Scotland. Yet we doubt whether it would be justifiable to abandon the pursuit, until their fate has been demonstrated by actual observation. This melancholy satisfaction, at least, is due to science, to humanity, and to surviving relatives. The Americans are foremost in this work of philanthropy. They have furnished the latest and most valuable information on the subject. Captain de Haven, Mr. Penny, and Dr. Kane, of the United States expedition, are especially entitled, with the officers and crews of their ships, to general admiration. On the 1st August, a large party of the Corporation of London, and of the Royal Commissioners of the Great Exhibition, repaired to Paris, by invitation of the Prefect of the Seine. They were entertained on the way, and on August 2, a magnificent banquet was given at the Hotel de Ville in Paris, followed by a comedy and a concert. The total number of persons present was 4,000. The next day, Sunday, the wonders of Versailles and the _grandes eaux_ were exhibited, and it is supposed that 100,000 persons were present. On Monday, the Lord Mayor and his suite, with the other distinguished visitors, inspected some of the most remarkable prisons in Paris, and in the afternoon left for St. Cloud, where they were received by the President, who expressed the extreme happiness he derived from the visit of the chief magistrate of the city of London, and his warm sense of the kind feeling towards France; manifested by the English nation. On Tuesday, a splende _déjeuner_ was given at the English Embassy, in honor of the English visitors; and in the evening a grand ball took place at the Hotel de Ville, which was attended by 6000 persons. On Wednesday a mimic fight took place in the Champ de Mars; and in the evening, at the Grand Opera, an operatic entertainment was produced called _Les Nations_, written expressly in honor of Great Britain, by M. Adolpbe Adam. It was a tasteful and well-imagined trifle, of two scenes, the principal being one of the Crystal Palace. From FRANCE the political news is of little moment, or at least is without any distinguishing event. The project for a revision of the constitution having failed, all parties are preparing for the important event of electing a new President. The Prince Joinville may be considered to be in the field as the representative of the Bourbon dynasty; and it is probable that the real conflict will be fought between the adherents of Napoleon and those of the exiled monarchy. A majority of the Councils of Arrondissement--according to some, a majority of no less than two thirds--have decided against any revision of the Constitution. At Lyons a conspiracy against the state was discovered, its leaders arrested, and their trial has excited much attention. Their object it is said was to give the south-eastern departments of France a secret organization, sufficiently strong and complete to enable them to break out in simultaneous insurrection on a given signal; to secure the frontier of Switzerland and of Savoy as a means of assistance or retreat; to support the French movement by the advance of the refugees collected at Geneva; to take possession, if possible, of the ports of Toulon and Marseilles, and thus to command Algiers and the fleet; to inflame by this insurrection the south-eastern provinces pledged to the movement, and subsequently the eastern departments supposed to be favorable to it; and thus to lead to a general republican rising throughout the country, especially where the garrisons--were weakest. The prisoners were tried by a council of war, and their council in the course of the trial threw up their briefs in despair of obtaining a fair inquisition. Three of the prisoners, M. Gent, their leader, who had been conspicuous in affairs during the provisional government, and Longomazino, and Ode--were condemned to deportation; thirteen to detention for terms from three to fifteen years as felons, with police surveillance for life; nine to imprisonment for short terms; eleven were acquitted, besides ten who were condemned, and two acquitted by default. The punishment of deportation is the highest penalty for political offences now known to the French law, and has been expressly substituted by a recent enactment for the punishment of death. It consists in transportation to Nonkahiva or Vuitkan, in the Marquesas, the most desolate islands in the Pacific Ocean, one day to be peopled, as an enterprising public writer has observed, with the chiefs and leaders of political parties in France. At Paris, on the 31st of August, 125 persous were arrested, charged with a conspiracy against the State. Among the number was an advocate, named Maillard, formerly Secretary to Ledru Rollin. Rollin is said to be implicated in the conspiracy. A general Socialist Revolution was the object of the conspiracy. There was less excitement upon the subject in Paris than might have been anticipated. It is reported that an expedition will be sent to the Sea of Japan, under the orders of a rear-admiral, who has long navigated in the Pacific Ocean and the Chinese seas. The expedition will, it is added, be at once military, commercial and scientific, and has for its object the opening to European commerce of ports which have been closed against it since the sixteenth century. We learn from Paris, that the Cabinet had held two councils, at which the President of the Republic presided, to discuss the Cuban affairs, and it was unanimously resolved to take, if necessary, efficient measures, with or without the concurrence of England, to protect the rights of Spain. Letters from Toulon state that the Mediterranean squadron has received orders to proceed forthwith to the coast of Italy. The disturbed state of the Peninsula, and especially of Naples, is said to be the cause of this movement on the part of the French. Naples, and indeed all Italy, is becoming daily more and more uneasy. In ITALY there is little of importance, except constant atrocities by the government, irritating more and more the people of the several states, and driving them toward such excitements as will make revolution unavoidable. An "Italian League of Princes" is talked of, at the head of which is to be Austria; and a visit of the Cardinal Prince Altieri to Lombardy is said to be for the purpose of coming to an understanding with that Court on the subject. The Pope would be nominal president of the league, the object of which is to preserve the peace of Italy, and unite in suppressing every revolutionary movement at home, and aggression from abroad. A profound sensation has been created throughout Europe by the publication of two letters by Mr. Gladstone, a member of the British Parliament, exposing the despotism of the government of Naples. Mr. Gladstone, a scholar, a man of academic reputation, an eminent member of the conservative party of English politicians, and distinguished among members of that party for his calm and logical mind, and for his profound views of the nature and functions of a church--this man went to Italy in the winter of 1850-51, and spent three months in Naples, where, against his will, he was convinced that the conduct of the government was more cruel and unjust than had ever before been tolerated in a civilized country. He returned to England to arraign the despot Ferdinand at the bar of public opinion. Of his disclosures we can merely state, that twenty thousand of the most intelligent and virtuous men in that kingdom are now suffering both moral and physical torture as prisoners of state. Besides this, a catechism is used in the schools inculcating the most absolute doctrines of despotic government. What is thus proved of Naples is equally true of Modena. In fact, it pervades Italy. The organs of the Neapolitan Government give the lie to Mr. Gladstone's statements, and hirelings have been employed in London and Paris to answer them, but the result has been a triumphant vindication of his letters. The correspondent of the _Daily News_, at Naples, states that more than one of the hangers-on of the Neapolitan Court have offered to reply to Mr. Gladstone's Setters, and n notorious spy has sent a manuscript to his Majesty: but "the King, I am assured, prefers availing himself of such journals in England or France as are open to an offer." Material has been sent off to the _Univers_, the organ of the Jesuits in France; and "an Englishman, well known for certain transactions in Italy, is to do all the pen fighting work for Ferdinand in London. Really," says the _Daily News_, "the princes of this epoch have much to redeem. Almost every crowned, or would-be crowned, head, as he appears on the scene, does so as a mean intriguer, a lying varlet, a wearer of false colors. None have the courage to avow the nature of their policy or claims; all pretending to be all things, and all as unscrupulous as the most reckless of adventurers in private life." The Voss Gazette of Berlin, publishes a letter from Vienna of the 7th, which states that an extensive conspiracy has been discovered in Italy, and it was on that account the rigors of the state of siege in the Austrian provinces have been increased. It is added that on the fourth of July a gentleman at Venice died suddenly of apoplexy, and that on placing seals on his papers the scheme of a conspiracy, signed by more than 400 persons, was discovered. The object of it was, it is said, to kill the Emperor in the event of his going to Italy, and to kill all Austrian officers on the same night. Only one conspirator resided at Venice; thirty-seven were at Brescia, and the rest at Bologna. All have, it is said, been arrested. There is considerable activity among the military in ITALY. The Austrian garrison and stations are strengthened along the whole line of frontier, especially towards Piedmont. Radetzky is understood to have applied for reinforcements from Germany. Connected with these movements--perhaps arising out of them--are numerous but rather vague reports of plots and contemplated insurrections. The Court of Saxony, long notorious for its zeal in propagating the Roman Catholic faith, has offered to mediate between the King of Sardinia and the Pope. The intimate family relations which connect the Courts of Saxony and Turin have prompted this step: it appears to be contemplated not without alarm by the Italian Liberals. Great excitement has been created throughout Europe, by the promulgation of the two decrees of the Emperor of AUSTRIA, in which he declares that his ministers are henceforth to be responsible to no other political authority than the throne. The very terms of the Constitutional Government are abolished. The Emperor has violently suppressed the "Free Congregations," established by Ronge, and that once popular reformer has published some masterly letters on the subject, calling on the people of England to give the aid of their sympathy to the liberal thinkers of Germany. The Austrian Government has summarily expelled from its dominions Mr. Warrens, late Consul-General of the United States at Vienna, and for the last few years the proprietor of the widely-known newspaper, _The Lloyds_. The cause assigned is the publication of some unpalatable political remarks. This circumstance, coupled with the late bad treatment of Mr. Brace, will embitter our diplomatic relations with Austria. From RUSSIA information as to the war in its Caucasian departments is indefinite and uncertain. There had been several conflicts but none decisive or very important. The Emperor of Russia has declared himself hostile to the incorporation of the non-German territories of Austria into the Germanic Confederation. This would seem to indicate that the Autocrat still clings to his project of a Panaslavonic union. In the beginning of July, several prisoners, detained in the citadel at Warsaw, were condemned by Court Martial, and had their sentences communicated to them. The families of these unfortunates expected to obtain their pardon from the Emperor during his stay in Warsaw, or at all events during the celebration at Moscow on the 25th anniversary of his coronation, but they had hoped in vain. On the 20th of July, four of the convicted were publicly flogged. One received 2,000 lashes, two 1,500 each, and the fourth 2,000. This last fell dead after having received 1,000 lashes, and they placed the body of the dying man on a stretcher, where they administered the remaining thousand to his corpse. Thirty others, of whom the greater part were entitled to the amnesty granted to refugees, were sent to Siberia. The census for Hungary, recently published in Austria, gives the following statistics: The collective mass of the native population is given at 7,659,151 souls. Of these there are 3,782,627 males, 3,876,624 females. These again are divided into 2,090,459 unmarried males, 1,943,946 unmarried females; 1,580,465 married males, 1,588,772 married females. One of the consequences of the civil war is to be found in the fact, that there are 134,113 more widows than bereaved males! The following is an estimate of the polyglott population--Magyars, 3,749,652--Sclavonians or Sclaves, 8,656,311--Germans, 834,350--Romanis, 538,373--Ruthenians, 347,734--Jews, 23,564--Croats, 82,003--Wends, 49,116--Gipsies, 47,609--Serfs, 20,994. Other nationalities, made up of Illyrians, Moravians, Bohemians, Italians, Armenians, Poles, 81 French, 25 English, 12 Swiss, and 2 Belgian, in all, 9,435. These classified according to religion, show of--Roman Catholics, 4,122,738--Greek Catholics, 676,398--Protestants of both confessions, 2,139,520--Greek not united, 396,931. Revolution appears to be making the tour of the globe. Even the supposed unchangeable China is visited by the spirit of mutability. According to the latest intelligence, it is highly probable that the malcontents, who have been variously represented as brigands and rebels, are masters of all the provinces south of the Yellow River, and have seized upon the great entrepot of Canton. This would be a revolution; for Pekin, which derives its supplies of provisions by the great canal from those Southern provinces, would be starved into submission; and the principal seat of foreign commerce would fall into the hands of a party more bigotedly hostile to intercourse with foreigners than even the Celestial Government. Nor is such a revolution either impossible or improbable. Our knowledge of Chinese history is dim and obscure; yet enough appears to show that the Mantchoo authority has never been so firmly established to the South as to the North of the Yellow River--that the purely Chinese element of society has always preponderated in the Southern provinces. The pretended Emperor, at the last dates, was reported to be stopping at Sinchau, a departmental city of Kwang-si, having a water communication with Canton, whence it is distant about 200 miles. In a letter from one of his followers, it is stated that Teen-teh is himself at the head of the rebel forces, whom he led to victory "in the middle term of the third month of the present year" (early in June), "when 10,000 of the Government troops were destroyed, being hemmed in in a narrow pathway through a wood in a mountain pass." Having been duly proclaimed Emperor, Teen-teh dates the commencement of his reign from the month of September of last year, and has published an almanac, which his emissaries are busy distributing in various parts of the empire. In SIAM two changes of policy appear to be impending. The King, who refused to treat with Sir James Brooke, died on the 3d of April, and his throne is now occupied by two of his brothers; the eldest being first, and the other second king. This division of authority is not without precedent in Siam, and has taken place in the present instance in accordance with a legal nomination, made by the late King. There is little doubt but that for the future a different and more enlightened course of policy will be pursued towards foreigners. The new ruler-in-chief is a man of more than usual education, speaking English, and being somewhat acquainted with literature and science, and he has stated that if the English and American ambassadors return, they will be kindly received, and liberal treaties negotiated with them. _Scientific Discoveries and Proceedings of Learned Societies._ At a recent meeting of the _Royal Society of Literature_, Colonel Rawlinson read a most interesting paper, containing the announcement of a discovery of great historical importance. In looking over the large collection of new cuneiform inscriptions recently brought by Mr. Layard from Assyria, he has met with one recording the annals of the "Koyunjik King." Under the head of the third year occurs a notice which determinately proves the king in question to be the biblical Senacherib, and contains some other remarkable verifications of Scripture. The record, after giving an account of the king's war against the king of Sidon, and describing the battle between the Assyrians and Egyptians, in conformity with the statements of Josephus and Herodotus, presents a distinct notice of the proceedings of Senacherib against Hezekiah, king of Judea. The names in the inscription are _Khazakiyah_, _Ursalimma_, _Jehuda_; and the tribute which the Jewish king pays, in order to free himself from his enemy, is stated almost in the very words of Scripture. The annals of Senacherib in this inscription extend over seven years, and a cylinder has been met with which gives the events of two years more. Other points of identity between these annals and the Greek and the biblical notices of Senacherib likewise occur; but the chief point of interest is the establishment of the identity of the king who built the great palace of Koyunjik with that sovereign. A secure starting-place is now obtained for historical research, and it rapid progress will be made in fixing the Assyrian chronology. Colonel Rawlinson's paper was read at one of the four evening meetings which the Society has held this season for the reception of its foreign members and friends. The Earl of Carlisle was in the chair. * * * * * Attempts to discover a PERPETUAL MOTION are still made in almost every country. In the United States a successful result is attained, according to the newspapers, about twice a year, and in Europe the inventive genius of the people is nearly as well rewarded. We read in the French paper appearing in Constantinople, that a Polish refugee of the name of Rudinski has discovered a sort of _perpetuum mobile_, at least an engine which somewhat approaches perpetual motion, for when once put in motion it can preserve it for twenty years. The power of this engine is said to be greater than that of any other yet known. The article in the same paper says that the inventor has made as a model a small carriage, 22 inches long, 11 inches wide and 14 inches high; that it carries a burden of one ton; and that its speed is a mile in a minute. The inventor is now occupied in building a mill after his method for the Turkish Government. The last American effort in this line is a "Static Pressure Rotary Engine," advertised by a Mr. Sawyer, and vindicated by Mr. Andrews, in a series of letters in the Tribune. Professor Loomis, of the New-York University, has taken the trouble to show that there is no discovery in the case. Mr. Sawyer's machine consist a of a covered cylindrical basin, 26 inches in diameter and two inches deep, to which is attached a vertical tube four inches in diameter and of any required length. A spiral groove runs the whole length of the tube, and this, together with the basin, is supposed to be filled with quicksilver. The whole is to be rapidly revolved about a vertical axis, when the centrifugal force of the mercury in the basin drives the mercury out through a valve on the edge of the basin, and leaves a vacuum behind. The mercury, as it escapes from the basin, falls into a reservoir communicating with the bottom of the spiral groove, through which it is forced by the pressure of the atmosphere with such velocity that the reaction of the sides of the groove causes the tube and the attached basin to revolve with great momentum, evolving new centrifugal force by which the vacuum is perpetuated. Mr. Sawyer supposes that the centrifugal force of the revolving mercury is sufficient to maintain its own revolution unimpaired, and leave a large surplus capable of being applied to any useful purpose. This conclusion is founded upon the computations of Professor Bull. Professor Bull has computed that a wheel 16 inches in diameter, and weighing 531 pounds, revolving 25 times in 10 seconds, will have a centrifugal force of 2,716 pounds; and that this velocity may be produced by a power of 166 pounds applied 1-1/2 inches from the centre, or a power of 452 pounds acting on the spiral groove already mentioned. Hence, says Mr. Sawyer, we have "a clear surplus of 2,264 pounds more than is required to turn the wheel." If this were so, it would constitute the most beautiful perpetual motion ever dreamed of by the visionary. Professor Loomis discusses the subject at length, and his chief objection may be summed up as follows: According to Sawyer &, Co.'s own data, _the centrifugal force of a revolving wheel exceeds the power required to produce the rotation only at exceedingly high velocities--and in order to avail themselves of the full extent of this centrifugal force, they must employ air of such density that no vessel could possibly resist its pressure_. * * * * * In the archives of Venice an interesting discovery has been made, from which it would appear that a Frenchman of the name of Gautier, professor of mathematics at Nancy, and member of the Royal Society at Paris, was the first to invent navigation by steam. In the year 1756 he submitted his plan to the society, of which he was a member, and it met with no countenance from that body. He then published a treatise on the subject, which attracted the attention of the Venetian Republic, and procured for him an invitation to the shores of the Adriatic; he went, but death soon put an end to his labors. A year or two afterwards the theory of Gautier was practically exemplified on the Seine, amidst the acclamations of the Parisians. The treatise by Gautier on "Navigation by Fire" the discovery alluded to above. * * * * * A paper was read before the British Association entitled "A Comparison of Athletic Men of Great Britain with Greek Statues," by Mr. J. B. Brent. Mr. Brent, in order to obtain those of the athletic, measured and weighed celebrated boxers, cricketers, wrestlers, rowers, pedestrians, and others. These he compared to the heights and weights of soldiers and policemen, and thence with certain celebrated Greek statues. And from such a comparison it appears that the wrestlers of Cornwall, Devon, and the north of England, are not inferior to those statues. * * * * * A letter from St. Petersburg says that the _Geographical Society_ of that city is displaying great activity. "Scarcely has the expedition which is sent to seek out the sources of the Nile returned when the society is preparing a new expedition having for its object to explore the peninsula of Kamskatka. The Count de Czapski is to have the direction of this new attempt, and he has subscribed 20,000f. a year towards the expense." * * * * * A recent traveller in Abyssinia has discovered a tribe of Jews in that country. They are called Falasha. Their chief priest, the Rabbi Yshaq (Isaac), told the traveller that they first entered the country in the time of King Solomon, and that they have uninterrupted traditions, though no written history, of the principal events that have occurred to them since that remote period. Their religious rites and belief are the same in substance as those of the European Jews, but some of their doctrines are quasi-Christian. Indeed, they say that it was from them that the early Christians took some of their customs and points of belief. They have a tradition of St. Paul having been in communication with them, and they hold him in great respect. They never, it seems, quitted their own country, and were shocked at the idea of going to sea in ships. "How at sea," they asked, "can the Sabbath be respected?" They know little or nothing of Europe; but on being told that vast numbers of their fellow believers resided in it, expressed pleasure and sent them their fraternal good wishes. * * * * * A French gentleman, M. Mariette, has made some important discoveries in the ruins of Memphis, and the _Academy of Moral and Political Sciences_ has called on the government to afford him the pecuniary means of continuing his researches. The National Assembly, on the demand of the government, voted 20,000 francs ($6,000) for this purpose. M. Mariette has brought to light a number of basso-relievos, some statues, and about five hundred bronze figures. But his greatest discovery is the Temple of Serapis, and it is to free it from the soil which has covered it for ages that the money has been specially granted. One of the most magnificent temples which this deity possessed, or, indeed, which existed in the world, was that at Memphis; and it enjoys the peculiarity of containing ornaments in the Grecian as well as the Egyptian style, it having been in its highest glory about the time at which some of the Grecian idolatry was introduced into the ancient worship of Egypt. It is known to contain twelve statues of deities mounted on symbolical animals, all of more gigantic size than any hitherto found, also two splendid figures of the Sphinx, and two enormous lions in the Egyptian style: but the Sanctuary of the Temple, which has not yet been explored, will, it is expected, bring to light things far more curious, and of the highest historical importance. Altogether, it is expected that M. Mariette's excavations at Memphis will rival those of Dr. Layard at Nineveh. * * * * * It will be remembered that an island, about 120 feet high and 2,000 feet in circumference, suddenly sprang up in 1831 between Sicily and La Pantellaria. It disappeared about a month after, and at a later period even the sounding lead could give no indications of its existence; but vessels passing over the place it had formerly occupied would sometimes feel a sort of shock, which showed that it was of volcanic origin. In March last, however, the French vessel Eole, which was taking soundings in the vicinity, discovered some traces of its existence; and we now learn from Naples that in the course of the last month Her Majesty's ship Scourge, Captain Kerr, verified the truth of the preceding observation, and further discovered that the island, which had been christened "Isola Giulia," was only nine feet under water. Captain Kerr had a pole with a streamer and an inscription set up on the spot. * * * * * The experiments for the production of PHOTOGRAPHS in NATURAL COLORS appears to have been carried on simultaneously by Mr. Hill in this country and by several persons abroad. The _Athenæum_ says that in some experiments made by Sir John Herschel a colored impression of the prismatic spectrum was obtained on paper stained with a vegetable juice. Mr. Robert Hunt published some accounts of the indications of color in their natural order obtained on sensitive photographic surfaces. These were, however, exceedingly faint, and M. Biot and others regarded the prospect of producing photographs in colors visionary,--not likely, from the dissimilar action of the solar rays, ever to become a reality. M. Becquerel has a process by which, on plates of metal, many of the more intense colors have been produced; but it appears to have been reserved for the nephew of the earliest student in photography, Niepce, to produce on the same plate, by _one_ impression of the solar rays, all the colors of the chromatic scale. Of this process, called by the discoverer, _Heliochromy_--sun-coloring--we have had the opportunity of seeing specimens. They are three copies of colored engravings,--a female dancer and two male figures in fancy costumes; and every color of the original pictures is faithfully impressed on the prepared silver tablet. The preparation of the plates remains a secret with the inventor, but the plate when prepared presents a dark brown, nearly a black surface, and the image is _eaten out_ in colors. We have endeavored by close examination to ascertain something of the laws producing this remarkable effect; but it is not easy at present to perceive the relations between the colorific action of light and the associated chemical influence. The female figure has a red silk dress, with purple trimming and white lace. The flesh tints, the red, the purple, and the white are well preserved in the copy. One of the male figures s remarkable for the delicacy of its delineation:--here, blue, red, white and pink are perfectly impressed. The third picture is injured in some parts:-but it is, from the number of colors which contains, the most remarkable of all. Red, blue, yellow, green, and white are distinctly marked,--and the intensity of the yellow is very striking. Such are the facts as they have been examined by the _Athenæum_, and these results superior to those which were given to the world when photography was first announced. _Recent Deaths._ JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, the first American who gave to American literature a name in other nations, and the most illustrious of the authors of his country, died at Otsego Hall, his residence in Cooperstown, on Sunday, the fourteenth of September, aged sixty-two years. Of his literary life and character we have recently written at large in these pages; of his noble personal qualities, which entitled him to no less eminence in society, we shall have occasion to speak hereafter. * * * * * REV. THOMAS H. GALLAUDET, LL, D., the pioneer of Deaf-Mute Instruction in this country, died in Hartford, Connecticut, the 10th of September, at the age of sixty-four. At an early period of his life, Mr. Gallaudet became interested in the Deaf and Dumb. In the autumn of 1807, a child of Dr. Mason F. Cogswell, of Hartford, through a malignant fever, lost her hearing and soon after her speech. Mr. Gallaudet interested himself in the case of this child, and attempted to converse with and instruct her. His efforts was rewarded with partial success; and through the exertions of Dr. Cogswell, he was commissioned to visit Europe for the purpose of becoming a teacher of the Deaf and Dumb in this country. Seven gentlemen of Hartford subscribed sufficient funds to defray his expenses, and he departed on the 25th of May, 1815. Meanwhile, the friends of the project employed the interval in procuring an incorporation from the Legislature, in May, 1816. In May, 1819, the name of "the American Asylum at Hartford for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb," was bestowed on the first Institution for Deaf-Mutes established in this country. After spending several months in assiduous prosecution of his studies, under the Abbe Sicard and others, Mr. Gallaudet returned in August, 1816, accompanied by Mr. Laurent Clerc, a deaf and dumb professor of the Institution at Paris, well known in Europe as a most intelligent pupil of Sicard. Mr. Clerc is now living in a vigorous old age and is still a teacher at Hartford. The Asylum was opened on the 15th of April, 1817, and during the first week of its existence received seven pupils; it now averages 220 annually. Mr. Gallaudet became the Principal at its commencement, and held the office until April, 1830, when he resigned, and he has since officiated as Chaplain of the Retreat for the Insane at Hartford. His interest in the cause of the Deaf-Mute Education has continued unabated, and his memory will be warmly cherished by that unfortunate class, as well as by a large class of devoted friends. His last act in connection with the great cause to which all his best energies had been devoted, was the dictation of the following letter to his son, Mr. Gallaudet of the New-York Institute, who presented it to the recent Convention at Hartford: HARTFORD, Aug. 29, 1851. _To the President, Officers and Members of the Convention of those interested in the Cause of Instruction of Deaf-Mutes, vote in session in this City--_ GENTLEMEN: With deep regret I perceive that the state of my health is such as to prevent my enjoying the pleasures and the privileges of participating with you in the objects of the Convention. Look to God for His wisdom and peace, and may it be richly imparted to you. Accept the assurances of my personal regard and best wishes for your success in your various operations. Yours sincerely, T. H. GALLAUDET. * * * * * M. BEVERLEY TUCKER, the half-brother of John Randolph, died on the 26th of August, of a chronic affection, at Winchester, in Virginia. He was one of the last of a generation and family, every member of which was remarkable for high and peculiar endowment. The subject of our notice was not inferior to the kinsman whose fame was so peculiar, in all the essentials of a high character and an exquisite genius. His writings, like the speeches of John Randolph, were distinguished by freedom, grace, wonderful raciness and spirit, and remarkable eloquence and point. He was the author of a series of lectures on Government--that of the United States in particular. He was a politician of the States Rights School, unbending and unyielding in his faith and tenacious of its minutest points. These lectures cannot be too carefully studied, especially by the young men of the north, as they embody the doctrines of Virginia and the South generally, and exhibit the extent of the political requisition of that great section of our country. They are beautifully written--are, in short, among the best specimens of political writing which we possess. Judge Tucker (he was sometime on the Bench in Missouri) was the author of many other works which deserve to be better known. His province was fiction as well as politics, and he wrote poetry with singular vigor. He was the translator of Goethe's Iphigenia, which was published in the Southern Literary Messenger, and has left among other manuscripts, an original drama, entitled "Viola," written in blank verse. His novel of "George Balcombe," will be remembered by many readers, as a prose fiction at once highly interesting and well written. His "Partisan Leader," another prose fiction in two volumes, is a political romance, embodying the Southern hostility to Mr. Van Buren's administration, and "illustrating the tendencies of his party to a general usurpation of all the attributes of sovereign power." His latest production, we believe, is a scattering criticism in the July issue of the Southern Quarterly Review, of Garland's life of John Randolph, a work which he bitterly denounced. Like his half-brother, the orator of Roanoke, Judge Tucker, was a person of intense feelings and great excitability, an eager impulse, and a keen power of sarcasm. He wrote with all the eloquence with which the latter spoke. His style is marked by great ease and freedom, by felicities of expression which give an epigrammatic point to his sentences, and by a sweetness and harmony of arrangement, which bestow music upon the ear without falling into monotony. His thought was equally free and melodious. He thought deeply and earnestly, and was never satisfied with the shallows of thought. In diving, he was no less clear than deep; he brought up pearls where the awkward diver brings up mud only. Judge Tucker was a fine man; of warm passions, but noble nature; of powers of satire, but of benevolent heart. He was probably sixty-eight years old when he died. He has left a wife and several children. We must not omit to mention that at the time of his death he held the chair of Law in the College of William and Mary, at Williamsburg, Va. Judge Tucker's last appearance in affairs was as a member of the Nashville Convention. * * * * * LEVI WOODBURY was born in 1790, at Francestown, a good farming village in the interior of New Hampshire, where he received his early education, attending the district school during the winter months, and working on his father's farm in the summer. From his boyhood he showed a decided taste for learning, and on attaining the proper age, was sent to an academy, in order to prepare for college. He entered Dartmouth college in 1805, and after passing through the usual course, received his first degree, with a high reputation among his teachers and classmates for industry, talent, and uncommon perseverance. He at once selected the law as his future profession, and having studied for the requisite term of three years at Litchfield, Boston, and Exeter, as well as his native place, was admitted to the bar in 1812. At that time party spirit was raging with intense fervor in every portion of New England. Mr. Woodbury took a decided stand in favor of Madison's administration and the war with Great Britain. He was soon acknowledged as a shrewd and powerful leader of the party, which was then in the minority in his native state. Devoted with youthful zeal to the cause which he had espoused, he exerted no small influence in changing the political character of the state, and aiding the Democratic party in gaining the ascendency, which they secured in 1816. On the first meeting of the legislature, after his friends came into power, Mr. Woodbury was chosen Secretary of the Senate, and at the commencement of the following year was appointed a Judge of the Superior Court He was then but twenty-seven years of age, the youngest Judge, so far as we remember, that was ever elevated to a seat on the bench. The appointment caused great surprise to men of all parties, on account of the comparative youth of the incumbent, and his limited experience of practice at the bar. He acquitted himself, however, of the duties of his arduous station with great credit. His name became still more widely known, and in 1823 he was elected Governor of New Hampshire by a large majority. Failing to be chosen, for a second term, he resumed the practice of his profession in Portsmouth, to which place he had removed in 1819, and where he continued to have his permanent residence until the time of his decease. He immediately entered upon an extensive practice of his profession, and was surrounded with clients from all quarters. In 1825 he was chosen to the state legislature from the town of Portsmouth, and at the commencement of the session was elected Speaker of the House, although it was the first time that he had been a member of any legislative assembly. During this session he was chosen to fill a vacancy which had occurred in the Senate of the United States, and upon taking his seat in that body, he ably sustained the position of a leader of his party. His term of service in the Senate expired in March, 1831. He had previously declined a re-election. On the reorganization of President Jackson's cabinet, in the month of April following, he was invited to take the office of Secretary of the Navy. He accepted the appointment, and discharged the duties of the office until 1834, when he became Secretary of the Treasury, in place of Mr. Taney, whose nomination had been rejected by the Senate. He continued in that post till the close of Mr. Van Buren's presidency, when he resumed his seat in the Senate, to which he had been elected for six years from the 4th of March, 1841. Mean time, on the decease of Judge Story, during the administration of Mr. Polk, he was appointed to fill the place of that eminent jurist, and became a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1846. From that time the deceased withdrew from active participation in political life, and devoted himself to the duties of his high station, which he discharged with assiduity and success. He died at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, September 3d, at the age of 61. Without possessing the highest order of intellect, remarks the Tribune, Judge Woodbury had a large share of native shrewdness and unfailing quickness of political forecast, a very retentive memory, and a more than common power of logical reasoning. He was an effective speaker in debate, and understood the art of bringing men over to his views, even if they failed to comprehend his arguments. His style of writing was turgid and obscure, doing little justice to his acknowledged clearness of intellect. He made little use of common artifices for obtaining personal popularity, and though respected for his intelligence and solidity of character, was never a great public favorite. In the private relations of life his character was unblemished. * * * * * GEN. MCCLURE, of Elgin, Illinois, died at that place on the 15th of August, at the age of eighty years. Gen. McClure was a native of Londonderry, Ireland, and emigrated to this country and settled at Bath, in the county of Steuben, prior to the year 1800. He removed from Bath to his late residence in Illinois, in 1835. During his residence in that state he held many offices of distinction, such as Surrogate, Judge, Sheriff, and member of the legislature. In 1813 he was in command of the American forces on the Buffalo frontier. He was severely censured for the burning of Newark (now Niagara), which took place whilst he was in command, but a subsequent discussion of that matter resulted in a very general conviction that the Secretary of War, General Armstrong, was mainly responsible for the act. Whatever of error he may have committed during a protracted life spent mostly in the service of the public, he will be remembered by the early settlers of Western New York as an active and enterprising man, possessed of a sound head and an honest heart. * * * * * LORENZ OKEN, who was in his seventy-third year, died early in August The _Leader_ says, "He will be known to many readers as the originator of that theory of cranial homologies which has effected so great a revolution in anatomical science. His discovery of the skull as a continuation of the vertebral column--of its being, in fact, nothing but a congeries of four vertebræ, as the brain itself is but a congeries of nervous ganglia --will immortalize his name; but if any unwary man of science opens the _Lehrbuch der Natur Philosophie_ with the expectation of studying a work of positive science, he will be considerably astonished at finding Nature subjected to the forms of Schelling's metaphysics; nor will he be reconciled to its startling formulas by Oken's assuring him, that where God is called Fire or Water, these expressions are only to be understood symbolically--_nur symbolisch zunehmen seyn_. The British reader is the last to learn with patience that "Nothing exists but the Nothing:" _es existirt nichts als das Nichts_. Nor can you pacify him by the assurance that _Nichts_ does not mean _no existence_, but means _no special phenomenon_, the only true existence being _The Absolute._ He very properly discards such "metaphysic wit:" and when Oken teaches that, "God is the self-conscious Nothing; Creation is but God's act of self-consciousness; and that God came first to his self-consciousness through the spoken word ([Greek: logos]) _the world_. If God did not think, there would be no world; nay, he himself would not be"--when we say Oken teaches him in all seriousness such "high arguments" as these, the British reader is apt to ask, "My dear sir, _how do you know all this?_" A translation of Oken was published by Mr. Tulk among the works of the Ray Society, and excited both astonishment and merriment in England. But, as we said, Oken's name is indelibly associated with a great advance in science; to his labors we owe the admirable researches of Professor Owen, and no amount of German metaphysics can quite obscure his renown." The incidents of Oken's life are not many. In 1816, he began a journal called _Isis_, to which he intended to give an encyclopædic character. As the government of Saxe-Weimar then allowed the press greater freedom than other German states, many complainants selected this journal as their organ. Oken, whose views were liberal, printed such complaints whenever they were of general interest. The consequence was, that the government of Saxe-Weimar was compelled, by the great powers of the German confederacy, to make him discontinue the _Isis_, or discharge him from the professorship. Oken chose to give up the latter, and continued to live in Jena, with few interruptions. In 1827, he was made professor in the new university of Munich, where he has continued to lecture ever since. His activity is apparent from the list of his works: Outlines of the Philosophy of Nature, of the Theory of the Senses, and the Classification of Animals founded thereon, 1802; Generation, 1805; Biology, a text-book for his Lectures, 1805; Oken's and Kieser's Contributions to Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, 1806; On the Signification of the Bones of the Cranium, 1807; On the Universe, a Continuation of the System of the Senses, 1808; First Ideas towards a Theory of Light, Darkness, Colors, and Heat, 1808; Sketch of the Natural System of Metals, 1809; On the Value of Natural History, 1809; Origin and Cure of Hernia Umbilicalis, 1810; Manual of the Philosophy of Nature, 1808, 1810, and 1811; Manual of Natural History, 1813, 1815, and 1816; New Armament, New France, New Germany, 1813; Natural History for Schools, 1821. In 1833 he became professor at Zurich, and it was there he wrote his General Views of Natural History, for all Classes, from 1833 to 1846. * * * * * COUNT VON KIELMANSEGGE, the Hanoverian general, died lately at Linden, aged eighty-three. He was born at Ratzebourg, in the Duchy of Lauenburg, in the year 1768, entered the army in 1793, and served against the French at Nieuport in Holland, at Hamburg, at Quatre Bras, and Waterloo, where he commanded a brigade. * * * * * H. E. G. PAULUS, Doctor of Theology, of Philosophy, and of Laws, a man who, for more than half a century, has been celebrated as one of the most able and active among the theological and philosophical writers of Germany, died at Heidelberg, on the 10th of August. Dr. Paulus was born at Lemberg, near Stuttgard, in 1760. He studied chiefly at Tubingen, but visited several other universities in Germany, Holland, and England. While at Oxford, in the year 1784, he was appointed Professor of Oriental Languages at Jena, chiefly through the recommendations of Griesbach. In 1793, he succeeded to the theological chair, and gave lectures on theology above forty years at Jena, Wurtzberg, and Heidleberg, till advancing age and its infirmities compelled him to retire from his public duties. He published upwards of thirty different works, and gave us the best edition of Spinoza. He was a man of truly German erudition; and with Eichorn, Planck, and Lessing, one of the leaders of Rationalism, which has ended in Strass and Bruno Bauer--unless we are to carry the influence further, and leave it in the hands of Feierbach and Max Steiner, avowed Atheists. His profound learning, penetrating judgment, unshrinking courage, and unwearied assiduity, obtained for his writings, which were very numerous, a wide circulation, and his researches, historical and critical, as well as the inferences he deduced from them, produced, without doubt, considerable effect on the public mind. In private life he was singularly amiable, easy of access, courteous to strangers, bestowing kind and unostentatious attention on all who sought his assistance, and ever actively employed up to his ninetieth year in endeavoring to promote freedom, order, and peace, piety, virtue, and humanity. Paulus had the degree of Doctor of Laws from Frieberg, in consequence of his critique of the famous process of Fonk. We have referred to the number of his works (those on oriental literature are enumerated by _Meusel_), but allusion should be made to his periodicals: his _Sophronizon_, established in 1819, devoted to church and state, and received with great favor by both Protestants and Catholics. In 1825 he began _Der Denkglaubige_, (the Thinking Believer), and in 1827, _Kirchenbeleuchtungen_, in which he aimed to show the true state of Romanism and Protestantism. * * * * * JOSEPH RUSIECKI, one of the oldest and the most distinguished of the Polish emigrants in France, died early in August, in the hospital at Vierzon. He was born in 1770, and commenced his military career in 1787. He fought against the Russians in 1794, under the command of the immortal Koscinsko. After the partition of Poland he entered the service of the French Republic, fondly hoping, like many others who were equally deceived, that his country's independence would be restored through French influence. He made the campaigns of Italy with the First Consul, and formed part of the expedition to St. Domingo under Rochambeau. He served subsequently in the cuirassiers, commanded by General Hautpoul, who died in his arms on the sanguinary field of Eylau. On the cuirassiers, who were cut to pieces in that battle, being reorganized, it was observed to Napoleon that Lieutenant Rusiecki was not the height for a cuirassier. The Emperor commanded him to alight, and placing himself back to back with him, he remarked to his aid-de-camp, "You are mistaken, sir, he is not a dwarf, he is my size," and at the same time he promoted him to the rank of captain in that corps. He was named Major in the year 1812, during the campaign of Russia. He commanded the 22d regiment of the line during the war of Independence, in the year 1831. His remains were accompanied to the grave by the principal inhabitants of Vierzon, and by the National Guard. * * * * * JOHN GOTTFRIED GRUBER, Professor of Philosophy at Halle, was born at Naumburg on the 29th November, 1774, and educated at the University of Leipsic, where he was distinguished for attainments in philosophy, philology, mathematics, and natural science generally. In addition to numerous learned works on history, archæology, mythology, etc., he was the principal editor of the celebrated Universal Encyclopædia, in 109 volumes. He died at Halle about the middle of August. * * * * * JOHN HOBART, second Earl of Clare, was born in Queens, 1792, and graduated at Christchurch, Oxford, where in 1812, he was second in classics. He, throughout life, cultivated his taste for literature, and for the society of literary men. He was a college associate and intimate friend of Lord Byron. He was a Knight of St Patrick, G.C.H., a Privy Councillor, Vice President of the Royal Society, and far many years was Governor of Bombay. He died at Brighton on the 18th of August. * * * * * SIR HENRY JARDINE, a son of Rev. Dr. Jardine, who projected the first Edinburgh Review, in 1755, was born in Edinburgh on the 30th of January, 1766, and after a successful career in the law, retired from public employment in 1837, with a yearly pension of £1400. He was knighted by King George IV., on the 29th of April, 1825. He was a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and of most of the literary, scientific, and charitable institutions of Edinburgh. The Society of Antiquaries, in particular, profited largely by the interest which he took in its affairs for many years. He was a contributor to the Bannatyne Club, of the pleasing and characteristic "Diary of James Melville, minister of Kilrenny." In private life, Sir Henry Jardine had many friends, among whom were Sir Walter Scott, and other distinguished men of his time. * * * * * LADY LOUISA STUART died in London on the 4th of August, aged nearly 94. She was the youngest daughter of the Earl of Bute, the celebrated minister during our revolution, and was granddaughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, to whose works she wrote the charming introductory anecdotes prefixed in Lord Wharncliffe's edition. She remembered to have seen her grandmother, Lady Mary, when at old Wortley's death that celebrated woman returned to London after her long and still unexplained exile from England. Lady Louisa herself was a charming letter-writer. _Ladies' Late Summer Fashions._ The season being now far advanced, no change of fashions can be looked for until autumn shall have fairly set in; but a great variety in costume is obtained by the different combinations of the articles already introduced. [Illustration] _White Muslin Mantelets_ are much worn. The selection for our illustration is of the shawl form, much rounded at the back. The ends in front are also slightly rounded. The mantelet is made of thin, soft, white muslin, and is trimmed with worked volants from six to seven inches broad, and set on rather full. The back and front are edged with two volants; and a third, passing over the armhole, forms a sort of sleeve. The dress worn with this mantelet is of white muslin, ornamented with needlework; but the mantelet is intended to be worn in outdoor costume with a dress of silk or barège. The pattern of the needlework consists of a deep scallop, with a notched or dentated edge. Within each large scallop there is a sprig, the leaves of which are formed in open work. [Illustration] Several _Evening Dresses_, worn at the most recent parties, are of a style which would not be inappropriate for winter soirées; for instance, some of the new silk dresses intended for evening wear are trimmed with black lace flounces, the corsage ornamented and edged with narrow black velvet. Many dresses of printed organdy have been prepared for evening costume; one has the design printed in pink, the pattern being small bouquets; another, with the pattern in blue, is made with seven flounces, and each flounce is edged with narrow gauze ribbon, the corsage also ornamented with gauze ribbons. This style of trimming renders the dress very elegant. The _Headdresses_ worn at evening parties present no novelty. Natural flowers may be worn in the hair with greater advantage at this season than at any other, as they fade less rapidly, than the summer flowers. [Illustration] The newest style of _Full Dress for Little Girls_ comprises some very pretty white muslin dresses, ornamented with tabliers of needlework. Bows of ribbon ornament the sleeves, and one is fixed at the waist behind. A white muslin dress, worn over a pink or blue slip is a fashionable style for little girls. With these dresses should be worn a sash with flowing ends. Some of these dresses are made with basques, notwithstanding that the corsage is low and the sleeves short. The skirt is always short, and trousers are indispensable. For _Little Boys_ who have not yet attained the age for wearing the jacket, the tunic or blouse is adopted. The Russian blouse is made all in one piece, but opening on the left side; or the blouse may be made in a style called the Scottish blouse, namely, with a plain corsage, having basques or tails, the skirt very full, and cut bias way. Either of the above forms are fashionable, and they are made of almost every kind of material, but those of chequered silk, especially for very little boys, are the most distingué. Short trousers and socks complete the costume. The dress in the first of the above figures is of a plaided barège, of a delicate pink. The second is of a light silk dress of salmon-colored silk, van-dyked; bonnet of white chip. In all the recent patterns the advance toward autumn modes is too slight to need specification. 
35345	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections.) THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE Of Literature, Art, and Science. Vol. V. NEW-YORK, APRIL 1, 1852. No. IV. WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS, LL.D. [Illustration] A steadily growing reputation for almost twenty years, justified by the gradually increasing evidence of those latent, exhaustless, ever-unfolding energies which belong to genius, has inwoven the name of Simms with the literature of America, and made it part of the heirloom which our age will give to posterity. Asking and desiring nothing to which he could not prove himself justly entitled, he has wrested a reputation from difficulty and obstacle, and conquered an honorable acknowledgment from opposition and indifference. Even if we had not proofs of genius in the treasury of thought and imagination constituted by his writings, still the nobility of the example of energy, perseverance, and high-toned hopefulness, which he has given, would deserve a grateful homage. William Gilmore Simms is the second, and only surviving, of three brothers, sons of William Gilmore Simms, and Harriet Ann Augusta Singleton. His father was of a Scotch-Irish family, and his mother of a Virginia stock, her grandparents having removed to South Carolina long before the Revolution, in which they took an active part on the Whig side. He was born on the 17th of April, 1806. His mother died when he was an infant. His father, failing in business as a merchant, removed first to Tennessee, and then to Mississippi. While in Tennessee he volunteered and held a commission in the army of Jackson (in Coffee's brigade of mounted men), which scourged the Creeks and Seminoles after the massacre of Fort Mims. Our author, left to the care of a grandmother, remained in Charleston, where he received an education which circumstances rendered exceedingly limited. He was denied a classical training, but such characters stand little in need of the ordinary aids of the schoolmaster, and, with indomitable application, he has not only stored his mind with the richest literature, but has received an unsolicited tribute to his diligence and acquisitions, in the degree of Doctor of Laws, conferred upon him by the respectable University of Alabama. At first it was designed that he should study medicine, but his inclination led him to the law. He was admitted to the bar of South Carolina when twenty-one, practised for a brief period, and became part proprietor of a daily newspaper, which, taking ground against nullification, ruined him--swallowing up a small maternal property, and involving him in a heavy debt which hung upon and embarrassed him for a long time after. In 1832, he first visited the North, where he published Atalantis. Martin Faber followed in 1834, and periodically the long catalogue of his subsequent performances. There are few writers who have exhibited such versatility of powers, combined with vigor, originality of copious and independent ideas, and that faculty of condensation which frequently by a single pregnant line suggests an expansive train of reflection. As a poet, he unites high imaginative powers with metaphysical thought--by which we mean that large discourse of reason which generalizes, and which seizes the universal, and perceives its relations to individual phenomena of nature and psychology. His poems abound in appropriate, felicitous, and original similes. His keen and fresh perception of nature, furnishes him with beautiful pictures, the truthfulness and clearness of which are admirably presented in the lucid language with which they are painted, and, in his expression of deep personal feelings, we find a noble union of sad emotion and manliness of tone. He draws from a full treasury of varied experience, active thought, close observation, just and original reflection, and a spirit which has drank deeply and lovingly from the gushing founts of nature. His inspiration is often kindled by the sunny and luxuriant scenery of the beautiful region to which he was born, and besides the freshness and glow which this imparts to his descriptive poetry, it makes him emphatically the poet of the South. Not only has he sung her peculiar natural aspects with the appreciation of a poet and the feeling of a son, but he has a claim to her gratitude for having enshrined in melodious verse her ancient and fading traditions. Mr. Simms commenced writing verses at a very early period. At eight years of age he rhymed the achievements of the American navy in the last war with Great Britain. At fifteen, he was a scribbler of fugitive verse for the newspapers, and before he was twenty-one he had published two collections of miscellaneous poetry, which his better taste and prudence subsequently induced him to suppress. Two other volumes of poems followed, in a more ambitious vein, which are also now beyond the reach of the collector, and were issued while he was engaged in the occupations of a newspaper editor and a student and practitioner of law. These volumes were followed by Atalantis, a poem which has been highly praised by the best critics of our time. As a prose writer, his vigorous, copious, and original ideas are clothed in a manly, flexible, pure, and lucid style. His first production, Martin Faber, succeeded Atalantis. It was the initial of a series of tales, which we may describe as of the metaphysical and passionate or moral imaginative class. These, with two or more volumes of shorter tales, are numerous, and perhaps among the most original of his writings. They comprise Martin Faber and other Tales, Castle Dismal, Confessions, or the Blind Heart, Carle Werner and other Tales, and the Wigwam and Cabin. There are other compositions belonging to this category, and, it may be, not inferior in merit to any of these, which have appeared in periodicals and annuals, but have not yet been collected by their author. The first novel of Mr. Simms belonged to our border and domestic history. This was Guy Rivers; and to the same class he has contributed largely, in Richard Hurdis, Border Beagles, Beauchampe, Helen Halsey, and other productions. In historical romance, he has written The Yemassee, the Damsel of Darien, Pelayo, and Count Julian, each in two volumes. The scenes of the two last are laid in Europe. His romances founded on our revolutionary history, are The Partisan, Mellichampe, and The Kinsmen. In biography and history, he is the author of The Life of Marion; The Life of Captain John Smith, founder of Virginia; a History of South Carolina; a Geography of the same State; a Life of Bayard; and a Life of General Greene. It is impossible to enumerate accurately his poetical productions, as many, published in periodicals, have never been printed together; but the collection of his poems now in course of publication at Charleston, will supply a desideratum to the lovers of genuine American letters and art. Atalantis, Southern Passages and Pictures, Donna Florida, Grouped Thoughts and Scattered Fancies, Areytos, Lays of the Palmetto, The Cassique of Accube and other Poems, Norman Maurice, and The City of the Silent, constituting distinct volumes, are, however, well known. The orations of Mr. Simms, which have been published, comprise one delivered before the Erosophic Society of the Alabama University, entitled, The Social Principle--the true source of National Permanence; another before the town council and citizens of Aiken, South Carolina, on the Fourth of July, 1844, entitled, The Sources of American Independence; and one delivered before literary societies in Georgia, entitled Self-development. As a writer of criticism, Mr. Simms is known by numerous articles contributed to periodicals; by a review of Mrs. Trolloppe, in the American Quarterly, and of Miss Martineau in the Southern Literary Messenger (both subsequently republished in pamphlets, and received with general approval), as well as by many others of equal merit--a selection from which, wholly devoted to American topics, has been published in two volumes, under the title of Views and Reviews in American History and Fiction. Scarcely a production of Mr. Simms has been unmarked by a cordial reception from the best literary journals; and the praise of the London _Metropolitan_ and _Examiner_--the former when under the conduct of Thomas Campbell, the latter of Albany Fonblanque--was generously bestowed, especially on _Atalantis_; of which the _Metropolitan_ said, "What has the most disappointed us is, that it is so thoroughly English: the construction, the imagery, and, with a very few exceptions, the idioms of the language, are altogether founded on our own scholastic and classical models;" and Fonblanque, in reviewing a tale by Simms, entitled, _Murder will Out_, said, "But all we intended to say about the originality displayed in the volume has been forgotten in the interest of the last story of the book, _Murder will Out_. This is an American ghost story, and, without exception, the best we ever read. Within our limits, we could not, with any justice, describe the whole course of its incident, and it is in that, perhaps, its most marvellous effect lies. It is the _rationale_ of the whole matter of such appearances, given with fine philosophy and masterly interest. We never read any thing more perfect or more consummately told." But the testimony of the critical press, or even of the successful sale of an author's works, is not so suggestive of merit as the fact that his productions have entered into the popular mind; and this tribute Mr. Simms has received in the fact that in regions which he has identified with legends created for them by his own genius, localities of his different incidents are pointed out with a sincere belief in their historical verity. The dramatic powers manifested in his novels, have been still more largely displayed in his _Norman Maurice_, a play of singular originality, in design, character, and execution, the nervous language and felicitous turns of expression in which remind us of the best of the old dramatists. We have heretofore expressed in the _International_ a conviction that Norman Maurice is the best American drama that has yet been published--the most American, the most dramatic, the most original. As a member of the Legislature of his native State, and on various public occasions, Mr. Simms has vindicated a title to fame as an orator; and a recent nomination for the presidency of the South Carolina College, although he declined being a candidate, is an evidence of the impression which his ability, information, and high character have produced on his fellow citizens. His intense intellectual activity, united with a habitually reflective and philosophical mode of thought, and unwearied laboriousness, enable him to accomplish an almost incredible amount of literary labor. The catalogue of his works which is subjoined, gives but an inadequate idea of what he has really performed; for multifarious productions, many of them of the highest order in their respective classes, are scattered in the pages of periodicals, or still in manuscript; while the unceasing demands on his pen, with his arduous editorship, prevent him from accomplishing many fruitful designs, whose inception he has hinted in various ways. To his intellectual gifts, he unites a brave, generous nature, a kindly, and strong heart, a genial, impulsive, yet faithful and determined disposition, warm affection and friendship, a spirit to do and to endure, and a soul as much elevated above the petty envies and jealousies which too often deform the _genus irritabile_, as it is in large sympathy with the beautiful, the true, the just--with humanity and with nature. P. * * * * * _CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS BY MR. SIMMS._ 1. Lyrical and other Poems: 18mo, pp. 208, Charleston, Ellis & Noufvillle, 1827. 2. Early Lays: 12mo. pp. 108, Charleston, A. E. Miller, 1827. 3. The Vision of Cortes, and other Poems: Charleston, J. S. Burgess. 4. The Tri-Color, or Three Days of Blood in Paris, 1830: Charleston. 5. Atalantis, a Story of the Sea: New-York, J. & J. Harper, 1832. 6. Martin Faber, a Tale: New-York, J. & J. Harper, 1833. 7. The Book of My Lady, a Melange: Phila., Key & Biddle, 1833. 8. Guy Rivers, a Tale of Georgia: 2 vols. 12mo., New-York, Harper & Brothers, 1834. 9. The Yemassee, a Romance of Carolina: 2 vols., New-York, Harper & Brothers, 1835. 10. The Partisan, a Tale of the Revolution: 2 vols., New-York, Harper & Brothers, 1836. 11. Mellichampe, a Legend of the Santee: 2 vols., New-York, Harper & Brothers, 1836. 12. Martin Faber, and other Tales: a new edition, 2 vols., New-York, Harper & Brothers, 1836. 13. Pelayo, a Story of the Goth: 2 vols., New-York, Harper & Brothers, 1838. 14. Carl Werner, an Imaginative Story, with other Tales of the Imagination: 2 vols., New-York, George Adlard, 1838. 15. Richard Hurdis, or the Avenger of Blood, a Tale of Alabama: 2 vols., Philadelphia, Carey & Hart, 1838. 16. Southern Passages and Pictures: 1 vol., New-York, G. Adlard, 1839. 17. The Damsel of Darien: 2 vols., Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard. 18. Border Beagles, a Tale of Mississippi: 2 vols., Philadelphia, Carey & Hart, 1840. 19. The Kinsman, or the Black Riders of the Congaree: 2 vols., Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard, 1841. 20. Confession, or the Blind Heart: 2 vols., Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard. 21. Beauchampe, or the Kentucky Tragedy, a Tale of Passion: 2 vols., Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard, 1842. 22. History of South Carolina: 1 vol. 12mo., Charleston, Babcock & Co. 23. Geography of South Carolina: 1 vol. 12mo., Charleston, Babcock. 24. Life of Francis Marion: 1 vol., New-York, J. & H. G. Langley. 25. Life of Capt. John Smith, the Founder of Virginia: 1 vol., New-York, Langley. 26. Count Julian: 2 vols. 8vo., New-York, Taylor & Co., 1845. 27. The Wigwam and the Cabin: 2 vols., New-York, Wiley & Putnam. 28. Views and Reviews in American History, Literature and Art: 2 vols., New-York, Wiley & Putnam, 1846. 29. Life of Chev. Bayard: 1 vol., New-York, Harper & Brothers, 1848. 30. Donna Florida: 1 vol. 18mo., Charleston, Burgess & James, 1848. 31. Grouped Thoughts and Scattered Fancies, a Collection of Sonnets: 1 vol. 18mo., Richmond, McFarlane. 32. Slavery in the South: 1 vol 8vo., Richmond, McFarlane, 1831. 33. Araytos, or the Songs of the South: 1 vol, 12mo., Charleston, John Russell, 1846. 34. Lays of the Palmetto, a Tribute to the South Carolina Regiment in the War with Mexico: 12mo., Charleston, John Russell, 1848. 35. Atalantis, a Story of the Sea, with the Eye and Wing (Poems chiefly Imaginative): 1 vol. 12mo., Carey & Hart, 1848. 36. Life of Nathaniel Greene: 12 mo., New-York, Coolidge & Bro., 1849. 37. Supplement to Writings of Shakspeare, Edited with Notes: (First collected edition) 1 vol. 8vo., New-York, Coolidge & Brothers. 38. The Social Principle, the true Secret of National Permanence, an Oration: 1842. 39. The Sources of American Independence, an Oration: 1844. 40. Self Development, an Oration: 1847. 41. Castle Dismal, a Novelette: 1 vol. 12mo., Burgess & Stringer. 42. Helen Halsey, 1 vol, 12mo., New-York, Burgess & Stringer. 43. Katherine Walton, or the Rebel of Dorchester, a Romance of the Revolution: A. Hart, Philadelphia, 1851. 44. The Golden Christmas; a Chronicle of St. John's, Berkeley: Charleston, Walker & Richards, 1852. THE PALACES OF TRADE. [Illustration: PETERSON & HUMPHREY'S CARPET HOUSE.] It were well if not only William B. Astor, Stephen Whitney, the heirs of Peter Stuyvesant (of blessed memory), and others who own real estate in this city, and likewise all mayors, common councilmen, and others in authority, were endued with more taste, with a higher regard to the general interest, and a juster sense of the matters that pertain to a good administration, so that it might be said in after times that the beneficence of the Creator (who in things natural has done more for ours than for any other city), had been seconded by the pious wisdom of the creature, and Manhattan pointed to as in all respects the metropolis of the world. Why not? If the very stones in the streets of London, Paris, and Vienna, were turned to pure gold, they would not purchase for those cities advantages that should be compared with such as we already possessed by our beautiful island--a giant mosaic, set in emerald, studding the bosom of Nature. Whatever may be said by our excellent neighbor, the minister of the dingy-looking red brick meeting-house round the corner, it is not less a work of piety to create any work of beauty--a beautiful house, or shop, or poem, for example--than to teach a class in the Sunday school,--which doctrine may be incidentally fortified from Jonathan Edwards's Theory of True Virtue, and more directly from the best philosophies of later years. It is ordered that the dignity of human nature shall in a great degree be dependent upon a sympathetic association with what is admirable. It was Hazlitt, we believe,--certainly it was some one who appreciatingly recognized the highest earthly ministry,--who said it was impossible to entertain an angry feeling in the presence of a lovely woman's portrait,--which, done fitly, is the highest accomplishment of art. Whatever is beautiful or sublime has the same purifying and ennobling tendency. The beggars do shrewdly who sit in _front_ of Stewart's. The same person who would give a shilling there, would as likely as not steal a penny from the hat of the blind man round the corner, where those detestable red bricks so outrage every principle known to a builder fit to handle the trowel. There is nothing more offensive than this custom of making of different materials the various fronts of the same edifice. It may be allowable to construct the _rear_ of a house, or a side that is to be built against speedily, of a cheaper stone; but to make the face upon one street of marble, and the face around the corner of brick, as in the case of Stewart's store, and the Society Library, is an outrage as ridiculous as it would be to make alternate gores of a woman's skirt of Petersham and Brussels lace. Bricks are very respectable; we say nothing in their dispraise; but to any man of taste, an edifice is much more beautiful built entirely of bricks than it is with but one of two exposed parts of marble; and let us say to the affluent merchant to whom New-York is indebted for the structure just mentioned, that until he paints his bricks on Reade-street, so that they correspond as nearly as may be with his fronts on Chambers-street and Broadway, his store will indicate but a shabby gentility, an unnatural association of tow cloth and satin, copper and silver, poverty and riches, which should blush in the face of the most inferior exhibition of consistency. With the abolition of this strong contrast, the observer who goes down Broadway will contemplate with delight the classical air of this most imposing Palace of Trade that has yet been erected in the cities of the United States. How easily Broadway, for the money that its piles of brick and stone will have cost in ten years, might be made the most splendid street in Christendom, by a mere observance of the principles of taste and unity! [Illustration: PRINCIPAL HALL OF PETERSON & HUMPHREY'S CARPET HOUSE.] In a little hamlet of five or fifteen hundred inhabitants, great buildings are out of place. In a city like ours, every thing should be in keeping, and the predominant principle should be the _gigantesque_. If the lot-holders from Bowling Green to the New Park would but consider the matter, with intelligent reference not only to the glory of the city but to their own profit; if each separate square were built as if it were _one_ edifice (as, without any blending of property, it might be very easily), though these squares were all of plain brick, and no more costly than the well-known row of stores in William-street, what an imposing spectacle they would present! But if one block were like the Astor House, the next like Stewart's (except only the Reade street front), the next a row of free-stone, the next one of brick, the next one of granite,--here a Gothic, there a Byzantine, then a Corinthian, then, if you please, as plain a front as that of the New-York Hotel--with here and there a church, library, lyceum, or art gallery, of a style less suitable for shops or dwellings,--and there would be nothing in the world to compare with Broadway. But this running of democracy into the ground, this whim of every vulgar fellow who owns a front of twenty feet, that he must illustrate his independence by building on it in his own peculiar way, is baulking Providence, and for the full cost of magnificence confining us to tricksy meanness. Two or three years ago rose the chaste and simple front of 349 Broadway, in a row of decayed brick shops, which, it was hoped would give place to an entire range in imitation of the initial structure. But since then, the owner of a couple of adjoining lots--a Connecticut man probably--has caused to be put up two stores of a different style, not of half the value of continuations of the less expensive edifice which they join. If instead of this patchwork, now planted here for half a century, there had been an extension of uniform stores from corner to corner--though either Beck's or the building we have mentioned had been the model--the single splendid edifice would have been a pride and boast of the city, and the separate stores would have been of much greater value than the best can be now. It is as revolting (and much more vexatious, for its publicity) as the worst case of Saxon and Congo amalgamation. A magnificent pile has been erected in Wall-street on the corner west of the Exchange; but some person, ignorant, it is to be hoped for his soul's sake, of the true obligations of morality applicable in the case, has built, at the same time, at the same cost, of the same height, and without any conceivable justifying reason, an utterly incongruous basket of offices, as if for the special purpose of vexing the eyes of men who have instincts of decency. [Illustration: THOMPSON'S SALOON.] The imposing edifice on the corner of Broadway and White-street, of which a view is presented on a preceding page, is one of the improvements of the city made during the last year. In the great carpet-house of Peterson & Humphrey are offered the productions of the best looms in the world, in a variety and profusion probably unequalled elsewhere in America. The principal saloon is like a street, and it is almost always thronged with people. Not far from the store of Peterson & Humphrey--at 359 Broadway--is the new and beautiful building erected by the well-known confectioners, Thompson & Son. This was opened to the public but a few weeks ago, and it is the most splendid establishment of the kind in America. The several sales during the last three quarters of a century of the ground upon which it is built, illustrate the rapid increase of value in real estate in this city during that period. The lot formed a part of the De Peyster farm, and was called pasture ground. On the death of Major De Peyster, the farm was divided, and this lot, then thirty-two feet wide, was on the 13th of December, 1784, sold for £100 New-York currency; in 1789 it was sold for £150; in 1805 for $1500; in 1820 for $4000; in 1825 for $11,000; and in 1850 it was bought by Mr. Thompson for $60,000, and he has expended $50,000 in the erection of the building with which it is now occupied, and which is twenty-eight feet wide, one hundred and ninety feet deep, and sixty-two feet high. It is built in a very rich style, of Paterson stone, similar to that used in Trinity church. The architects were Field and Correja, and the decorations in fresco are by Rossini. Mr. Thompson, senior, has been a quarter of a century in the business for which he has erected this new edifice, and in which he has accumulated his fortune. In 1820 there were but one or two houses of the kind in New-York, and these were of limited capacity and in every way inferior to Taylor's, Weller's, or Thompson's, of the present day. These are among the most luxurious and comfortable resorts for ladies and gentlemen who visit the city but for a part of a day, or who have not time or inclination to go to houses in distant parts of the town, to lunch or dine, or for those who come down Broadway to do shopping, and need a resting place, or enjoy an exchange for gossip. [Illustration: PRINCIPAL SALOON AT THOMPSON'S.] The next of the Palaces of Trade recently erected in the city, for which we have now room for any description, is the great silk house of the well-known merchants, Bowen & McNamee, constituting one of the most attractive features of the lower part of Broadway. It is built of white marble, and the style of architecture is Elizabethan, and peculiarly elaborate and effective. The building is thirty-seven and a half feet wide, one hundred and forty-seven deep, and four stories high; and each story consists of a single unbroken hall, lined with the richest English, German, French, Italian and Indian goods. The architect was Mr. Joseph C. Wells, and his plans were used in all the minutest details of ornament and furniture. It is regarded, we believe, as the greatest triumph of its kind of which our commercial metropolis has to boast; indeed in magnificence of design, beauty of execution, and perfect adaptation to its purposes, there is nothing superior to it, probably, among the buildings devoted to trade in all the world. It was said by Jefferson that the genius of Architecture would never make her abode in America; but the new edifices in New-York, of which we have described some prominent specimens, may lead others to a different conclusion. And we are of opinion that the progress of this country, in the last quarter of a century, has been less conspicuous in any thing else than in this noble art, little as it is now understood, much as it is still disregarded. In some recent speculations on the subject, the _Tribune_ observes: "There is no American architecture, unless the Lowell factories may be regarded as such. Our churches are small and imperfect imitations of a miscellaneous Gothic, and our exchanges, colleges, lyceums, banks and custom-houses affect the Greek, with as much propriety as our merchants, professors and clerks would indue themselves with the Athenian costume. There is no hope of the churches and banks. They are nothing if not Gothic and Grecian. We shall not discuss the probable character of our architecture. It is clear that New-York will build brick houses, and in blocks. But beauty costs no more than ugliness, and although every man has the right to build a house of that appearance which best pleases himself, yet every citizen is bound to have at heart the beauty of the city. He cannot escape it. His pride compels it; and therefore every man who builds a house ought to consult, to some extent, the general effect of his building, and as he would not paint it blue or black, he should no less consider its form than its color. "Cheapness and convenience will, of course, be the first principles in our building, beauty and picturesqueness will be secondary. The point is to combine these without much compromising either. At present our cities are the unhandsomest in the world. The street architecture is monotonous and heavy. The houses, compared with those of other capitals, are low, but they are not light. Paris and the Italian cities have always a festal air. Vienna is brilliant. Even grim old Rome seems waiting to be gay. You do not immediately see the reason of this. The houses are high, the streets narrow, shutting out the sky, and the swarms of passengers do not explain the charm. But if you look narrowly you will see that the difference of effect produced, arises, not so much from any essential architectural superiority; because the mass of building in any city is of about the same general character--but that it is due to the "broken and various lines which every where meet the eye, relieving the heavy gravity of the smooth fronts which with us are entirely unrelieved. Sometimes, indeed, a street is built with regard to its architectural beauty, as the _Rue de Rivoli_, in Paris, of which the harmony is uniformity and not monotony. One side of this street is the garden of the Tuileries, and the other is like a prolonged palace front. The northern side of the _Boulevards des Italiens_ is truly picturesque, but for directly the contrary reason--the infinite variety of line presented. [Illustration: BOWEN & M'cNAMME'S SILK HOUSE.] "It is to these lines of gallery and balcony which break and lighten the mass of building, that we must look for a hint of very feasible improvement. If any city reader wishes an illustration of this fact, let him observe how the iron verandah upon the Collamore House redeems the otherwise bald, dead weight of that building. Then let him cast his eye up Broadway to the long front of Niblo's Hotel--unrelieved and blank--and consider the cheerful effect of a continuous gallery along each story, or separate balconies at every window, as on the beautiful _Chiaja_ at Naples. On the other hand let him ask his Metropolitan pride how it would like a street of such edifices as the City Assembly Rooms on the site of Tattersalls? So, also, in dwelling-houses, the balcony which is now confined to the parlor floor might occasionally be carried up through the other stories, and this, in narrow streets, with a peculiarly happy effect, as is seen in such streets of foreign cities, where the style, if elaborated in lattices and bay-windows, becomes romantic and poetic. "Greater variety in the mouldings of doors and windows, and in the designs of porticoes, might easily be obtained, with an infinite gain of grace to the city. The Broadway Theatre illustrates this, for it is certainly one of the most impressive buildings upon that street. The question, it must be remembered, is not one of art, so much as of picturesqueness and effect. The galleries and balconies, &c., are only a subterfuge. If an edifice is intrinsically beautiful and well-proportioned, it claims no such accessories, as Stewart's building, which, although a simple square mass, yet from the admirable proportion, rather than the material, is as stately and imposing as many a foreign palace. But where there is no regard--as is the usual case--to the dignity or propriety of form, there we must take advantage of an alleviation, and obtain lightness, gayety, and variety as we best can. "There is, however, one point peculiar to American, or more properly to New-York building, which calls for the determined and constant censure of every man who values human life. We mean the flimsy style of building arising from the frenzied haste with which we do every thing. This has long been our reproach. Scarcely a year passes that we do not record some disaster of this kind, often involving a melancholy waste of life. '_Is it strong?_' is a question constantly asked of a new building, and a question which, in any civilized community, it should be as unnecessary to ask, as whether the public wells are poisoned. "We know many who will not pass under buildings now going up or recently erected. A friend walked down Broadway one morning, while a building was in course of erection on the site of the present Waverly House, and returning in the afternoon found that it had all tumbled down. Our readers have not forgotten the frightful fall of a block in Twenty-first street last spring. One is curious to know if nothing is ever to be done--if the city means to take no security for the lives of the citizens in this matter. It would be very easy to prevent this flimsy building, and even were it very difficult it should be effectually done. This, too, is a matter in which every citizen is interested. "Stores and Warehouses have their own proprieties. Warehouses properly avoid even the _appearance_ of lightness. They are devoted to heavy storage. No life, save of bales and boxes,--and not of the contents of bales and boxes--is associated with them. Security is the first and only thing we demand of them, provided the structures are not painfully disproportioned. So with Prisons. In fact, in architecture, the ornament must depend upon the use, must be developed from the use. For the same reason that balconies become a dwelling-house they disfigure a warehouse. Stores again should partake, in their appearance, of the intrinsic character and associations of shops. When shop-keeping becomes royal, it should be royally housed, as in Stewart's building. "The theme unravels itself endlessly. It is one of those common interests of constantly recurring importance which it is always worth while to talk about. Because there is no American architecture, there is no occasion for making our buildings mere piles of brick and mortar, punctured here and there for light--and because we are a commonsense, go-ahead people, there is no need that our houses should offend the eye; but--for that reason--great need that they should please it. "Lorenzo of Florence was the magnificent, not because he was rich, but because he knew the use of riches." Despite all drawbacks, our city is growing wonderfully in splendor as well as in size; and perhaps no previous season has promised so many improvements in Broadway, uptown, or by the different parks, as the present. Surpassing already any metropolis in the world in the number and magnificence of our hotels, we are to have in occupancy within a few weeks the splendid St. Nicholas and the gigantic Metropolitan, besides half a dozen of inferior pretensions, which will yet surpass the best in other cities; and new churches, and galleries, and public halls, are talked of, in number and capacity, as in beauty, sufficient for all the possible contingencies of a great capital, increasing in wealth, and power, and beauty, with such unexampled rapidity. The power and magnificence of New-York have been built up by her merchants, whose private enterprise, public spirit, and intelligence and taste, are especially conspicuous in the new edifices devoted to trade, of which we have given descriptions. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF BOWEN & M'cNAMEE'S SILK HOUSE.] HERMAN HOOKER, D.D. [Illustration] Herman Hooker is one of the most able and peculiar writers in religion and religious philosophy now living in America. Indeed, we are inclined to doubt whether the Episcopal Church in the United States embraces another author whose name will be as long or as respectfully remembered in the Christian world. If he is not mentioned in "every day's report," it is because he adds to genius an unobtrusive modesty, as rare as are the admirable qualities with which in his case it is associated. Dr. Hooker is a native of Poultney, Rutland county, Vermont. He was graduated at Middlebury College in 1825, and soon after entered upon the study of divinity at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Princeton. He subsequently took orders in the Episcopal Church, and acquired considerable reputation as a preacher; but at the end of a few years ill health compelled him to abandon the pulpit, and he has since resided in Philadelphia. The distinction of Doctor in Divinity was conferred upon him three or four years ago by Union College. Dr. Hooker published in 1835 _The Portion of the Soul, or Thoughts on its Attributes and Tendencies as Indications of its Destiny_; in the same year _Popular Infidelity_, which in later editions is entitled, _The Philosophy of Unbelief, in Morals and Religion, as discernible in the Faith and Character of Men_; in 1846, _The Uses of Adversity and the Provisions of Consolation_; in 1848, _The Christian Life a Fight of Faith_; and soon after, _Thoughts and Maxims_, a book worthy of Rochefoucauld for point, of Herbert for piety, and Bacon for wisdom. Upon meeting with qualities like Dr. Hooker's in one not known among the popular authors of the country, we are prompted to say with Wordsworth, "Strongest minds are often those of whom the world hears least," or in the bolder words of Henry Taylor, "The world knows nothing of its greatest men." It is surprising that a voice like his should have awakened no echoes. He deserves a place among the first religious writers of the age: for he has been faithful to the great mission laid upon the priesthood, which is, not to labor upon "forms, modes, shows," of devotion, nor to dispute of systems, schools, and theories of faith, but to be witnesses of a law above the world, and prophets of a consolation that is not of mortality. When we take up one of his books, we could imagine that we had fallen upon one of those great masters in divinity, who in the seventeenth century illustrated the field of moral relations and affections with a power and splendor peculiar to that age. These great writers possessed an apprehension of spiritual subjects, sensitive, yet profoundly rational; a vision on which the rays of a higher consciousness streamed in lustre so transcending that the light of earth seemed like a shadow thrown across its course; which differed from inspiration in degree rather than in kind. The resemblance of Dr. Hooker to these great authors is obviously not an affectation. It is not confined to style, but reaches to the constitution and tone of the mind. His productions indicate the same temper of deep thoughtfulness upon man's estate and destiny; the same union of a personal sympathy with a judicial superiority, which suffers in all the human weaknesses which it detects and condemns; the same earnest sense of their subjects as realities, clear, present and palpable; the same quick feeling, toned into dignity by pervading, essential wisdom; and that direct cognizance of the substances of religion, which does not deduce its great moral truths as consequences of an assumed theory, but seizes them as primary elements that verify themselves and draw the theories after them by a natural connection. Fretted and wearied with metaphysical theologies; vexed by the self-illustration, the want of candor, the fierceness, the ungenial and unsatisfying hollowness of popular religionism, we turn with a grateful relief to this soothing and impressive system which speculates not, wrangles not, reviles not, but, while it every where testifies of the degradation we are under, touches our spirits to power and purity by the constant exhortation of "sursem corda!" The style of Dr. Hooker abounds in spontaneous interest and unexpected graces. It seems to result immediately from his character, and to be an inseparable part of it. It is free from all the commonplaces of fine writing; has nothing of the formal contrivance of the rhetorician, the balanced period, the pointed turn, the recurring cadence. Yet the charms of a genuine simplicity, of a directness almost quaint, of primitive gravity, and calm, native good sense, renders it singularly agreeable to a cultivated taste. Undoubtedly there is in spiritual sensibility something akin to genius, and like it tending to utterance in language significant and beautiful. We meet at times in Dr. Hooker's writings with phrases of the rarest felicity and of great delicacy and expressiveness; in which we know not whether most to admire the vigor which has conceived so striking a thought, or the refinement of art which has fixed it in words so beautifully exact. SUNSET. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE. BY R. S. CHILTON See with what pomp the golden sun goes down Behind yon purple mountain!--far and wide His mellow radiance streams; the steep hill-side Is clothed with splendor, and the distant town Wears his last glory like a blazing crown. We cannot see him now, and yet his fire Still lingers on the city's tallest spire,-- Chased slowly upward by the gathering frown Of the approaching darkness. God of light! Thou leavest us in gloom,--but other eyes Watch thy faint coming now in distant skies:-- There drooping flowers spring up, and streams grow bright, And singing birds plume their moist wings for flight, And stars grow pale and vanish from the sight! NEW-YORK SOCIETY, BY THE LAST ENGLISH TRAVELLER. The Hon. HENRY COPE has lately published in London a _Ride across the Rocky Mountains, to California_--a book abounding in striking adventure and description, and illustrating in its general tone the spirit of an English gentleman. Its temper and good sense may be inferred from the following specimen, on the never-failing subject of Society in New-York: "Any observations I might be tempted to make on New-York, or even, I am inclined to think, on any of the civilized parts of the states, would probably be neither novel nor interesting. I am not ambitious of circulating more 'American notes,' nor do I care to follow in the footsteps of Mrs. Trollope. Enough has been written to illustrate the singularities of second-rate American society. Good society is the same all over the world. General remarks I hold to be fair play. But to indulge in personalities is a poor return for hospitality; and those Americans who are most willing to be civil to foreigners, receive little enough encouragement to extend that civility, when, as is too often the case, those very foreigners afterwards attempt to amuse their friends on one side of the Atlantic, at the expense of a breach of good faith to their friends on the other. Every one has his prejudices: I freely confess I have mine. I like London better than New-York, but it does not, therefore, follow that I dislike New-York, or Americans either. I have a great respect for almost every thing American--I do not mean to say that I have any affection for a thorough bred Yankee, in our acceptation of the term; far from it, I think him the most offensive of all bipeds in the known world. Yankee snobs too I hate--such as infest Broadway, for instance, genuine specimens of the genus, according to the highest authorities. The worst of New-York is its superabundance of snobbism. The snob here is a snob "_sui generis_" quite beyond the capacities of the old world. There is no mistaking him. He is cut out after the most approved pattern. If he differs from the original, or whatever that might have been, it must be in a surpassing excellence of snobbism which does credit to the progressive order of things. Tuft-hunting is a sport he pursues with delight to himself, but without remorse or pity for his victim. It is necessary for the object of his persecutions to be constantly on the alert. He is frequently seen prowling about in white kid gloves, patent leather boots, and Parisian hat. Whenever this is the case, he must be considered dangerous and bloody-minded, for in all probability he is meditating a call. Often he has been known to run his prey to ground in the Opera or other public places, and there to worry them within less than an inch of their good temper. Offensive as he is, generally speaking, he sometimes acts on the defensive; for, not very well convinced of his own infallibility, he is particularly susceptible of affronts, to which his assumed consequence not unfrequently makes him liable. Baits are often proffered by these swell-catchers to lure the unwary. Such as an introduction to the nymphs of the _corps de ballet_; the _entré_ to all the theatres, private gambling-houses, &c., &c. But beware of such seductions." EMILIE DE COIGNY. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY RICHARD B. KIMBALL. [Illustration: EMILIE DE COIGNY AND THE STUDENTS.] A morning at _Là Morgue_ is hardly as agreeable as a day at the Louvre, yet it is not without a certain fascination. Let but the influence once fasten on you, and it will be very hard to shake it off. At one period I confess it was to me almost irresistible, and I shudder sometimes when I recollect how punctually every morning at the same hour I took my place on one side of that fearful room--not for the purpose of inspecting the bodies of the suicides (I rarely turned to look at them), but to regard the countenances of the anxious ones who came to realize the worst, or to take hope till the morrow. Literally there are no spectators in that dismal solitude--if we except an occasional visit from the foreign sight-hunter, who comes in charge of a valet, and passes in and out and away to the "next place." In London or in New-York, an establishment so public would be thronged with persons eager to gratify a prurient curiosity. Not so in Paris. The French possess a sensibility so refined--it may be called a species of delicacy--that they cannot enjoy such a spectacle, can scarcely endure it: and if the tourist will bring the subject to mind, he will recollect that while his guide pointed out the entrance, he himself declined going into the apartment. I know not how it happened, but, as I have remarked, the habit of visiting this spot every morning, was fastened on me. Never shall I forget some of the faces I encountered there. One image is impressed on me indelibly; it is that of a woman of middle age, with a very pale face, and having the appearance of one struggling with some wearing sorrow, who for two weeks in succession came in daily, and walking painfully up to the partition, looked intently through the lattice work, and turned and went away. I never before felt so strong an impulse to accost a person, without yielding to it. Indeed I had resolved to speak to her on the morning of the fifteenth day, but she did not come and I never saw her again. Who was she? did her fears prove groundless? what became of her? An old man I remember to have seen--a very old man, feeble and decrepit, who came once only, looked at the dead, shook his head despairingly, and tottered away: I know not if he discovered the object of his search. Young girls who had quarrelled with their lovers, and lovers who in moments of jealousy had been cruel to their sweethearts, would look anxiously in, and generally with relieved spirits pass out, almost smilingly, resolving no doubt to make all up before night should again tempt to suicide. Another incident I cannot omit, although it is impossible to recall it without a dreadful pang. One morning a pretty fair-haired child, not more than four years old, came running in, and clasping the wooden bar with one hand, pointed with her little finger through the opening, and with a tone of innocent curiosity said, "There's mamma!" The same moment two or three rushed in, and seizing the unconscious orphan, carried her hastily away. She had wandered after some of the family, and heard enough as they came from the fatal place to lead her to suppose her lost mamma was there, and so she ran to see. What could be the circumstances so untoward, that even the child could not bind the mother to life? A long chapter might be written of the occurrences at my singular rendezvous, but I had no design, when I began, of alluding to them, and I will only remark here that, leaving Paris some time after for the south of Europe, I got rid of this nightmare impulse, and although I returned the following season I never again entered _La Morgue_.... It was in the spring when I came back. The foliage was deep and green, and in the _Jardin des Plants_, which was near my quarters, the various flowers and shrubs and trees filled the atmosphere with fragrance, and tempted us to frequent strolls along its avenues. "Come with me at six o'clock," said my friend Partridge, "and you shall see an apparition." "Where?" "I will not tell you, till we are on the Spot." "I will go, but hope the rendezvous will be an agreeable one." Just then, I know not why, I thought of _La Morgue_, and shuddered. "The most agreeable in all Paris." This conversation took place in the Hospital _de Notre Dame de Pitie_, just as we were finishing our morning occupation of following the celebrated LOUIS through the fever wards. Partridge was my room-mate, and generally a fellow traveller, but I had left him behind in my late tour, to devote himself more entirely to his medical pursuits, while I, to my shame be it spoken, began to tire of the lectures of Broussais, and the teachings of Majendie; and, even now that I had returned, was tempted every day to slip across to the _Rue Vivienne_, where were staying some fascinating strangers, whose acquaintance I had made _en route_, and who had begun to engross me too much for any steady progress in my studies; at least so thought Partridge, who shook his head and said it would not do for a student to cross the Seine--he ought to stay in his own _quartier_; that I had had too much recreation as it was--I should forget the little I know, and as for the _Rue Vivienne_, and the _Boulevard des Italiens_, the _Rue de la Paix_, &c., I must break off all such associations or be read out of the community. I was glad, therefore, to appease my friend by consenting to go with him--I knew not where--and see an apparition. Accordingly a few minutes before six, we started together on the strange adventure. We passed down the street which leads to the _Jardin des Plants_, and entering through the main avenue, walked nearly its entire length, when my companion turned into a narrow path, almost concealed by the foliage, which brought us into a small open space. Here he motioned me to stop, and pointing to a rustic bench we both sat down. At the same moment, the chimes from a neighboring chapel pealed the hour of six, and while I was still listening to them, my friend seized my arm and exclaimed in a whisper, "Look!" I cast my eyes across to the other side, and beheld a figure advancing slowly toward us. It was that of a young girl, in appearance scarcely seventeen. Her form was light and graceful, simply draped in a loose robe of white muslin. On her head she wore a straw hat, in which were placed conspicuously a bunch of fresh spring blossoms. The gloves and mantelet seemed to have been forgotten. Her demeanor was one of gentleness and modesty. She cast her eyes around as if expecting to meet a companion, and then quietly sat down on a rude seat not very far from where we were. I remained for ten minutes patiently waiting a demonstration of some kind, either from my companion or the strange appearance near us. But now I began to yield to the influence of the scene. The sun was declining, and cast a mellow and saddening light over the various objects around. Gradually as I gazed on the motionless form of the maiden, I felt impressed with awe, which was heightened by the solemn manner of my friend, who appeared as much under the charm as myself. At length I whispered to him, "For Heaven's sake tell me what does all this mean?" A low "Hush," with an expressive gesture to enforce quiet, was the only response. I made no further attempt to interrupt the silence, but sat spell-bound, always looking at the figure, until I was positively afraid to take my eyes from it. Again the chimes began their peal for the completion of the last quarter. It was seven o'clock. The moment they ceased, the girl rose from her seat, glanced slowly, sadly, earnestly around, pressed her hand across her eyes, and proceeded in the path toward us. We both stood up as she came near; my friend lifted his hat from his head in the most respectful manner as the maiden passed, while she in return gazed vacantly on him, and walking slowly by, disappeared in the direction opposite that from which she came. We did not remain, but proceeded with a quickened pace to our lodgings. Arrived there, I asked for an explanation of what we had witnessed. "Do you remember," said Partridge, "Alfred Dervilly?" "Perfectly well. He was your room-mate after I left you last summer, and twenty times I have been on the point of inquiring for him, but something at each moment prevented. Where is he?" "Dead." "Dead! How, when?" "Killed by the apparition yonder." "Nonsense! Do not talk any more in riddles. Out with what you have to say about Dervilly and the apparition, as you call it, and this afternoon's adventure." "_Bien_, let us light the candles, fasten the doors, close the windows, and take a fresh cigar." This was soon done, and accommodating himself to his seat in a comfortable manner, my companion commenced: "Yes--you recollect Dervilly of course, and must remember that before you left us we used to joke him about a fair unknown, who was engaging so much of his time." "I had forgotten--but I now recall the circumstance; I remember, I was walking with him near the 'Garden,' and he made some trivial excuse to leave me and turn into it. You afterwards told me he had an appointment there, but I thought little of it." "Well, I will give you the story as I now have it, quite complete, for I was partly in Dervilly's confidence, and was with him during his illness and when he died. He was born in Louisiana, of French parents, who, after spending some years in America, returned to their native country. He spoke English fluently, as you know, and when you deserted me we became very intimate. Then it was I learned how deeply the poor fellow was in love, actually _in love_. No mere transitory emotion--no momentary passion for an adventure--no affair of gallantry, was this: his very being was absorbed--he became wholly changed--it seemed as if he had bound himself, body and soul, to some spirit of another world. I never saw, never read, of so engrossing a feeling. At last he confessed to me. He said he had met, a few months before, at the house of a former friend of his family, who had been of considerable consequence under the previous reign, but was now reduced, and lived in obscurity, a creature of most exquisite shape and feature, who proved on acquaintance to be possessed with a loveliness of character, a modesty, an irresistible charm of manner, which took him captive. Dervilly became completely enamored with Emilie de Coigny. This he discovered to be her name, but on inquiring of the persons at whose house he first met her, he could get no satisfactory information; indeed a very singular reserve, as poor Dervilly thought, was maintained whenever her name was mentioned, so that he could not, in fact, glean the slightest particulars about her. This did not prevent him from confessing his passion, for the girl came frequently to this house, and their acquaintance ripened very fast. Emilie de Coigny felt for the first time that her heart was occupied, and all that restlessness of spirit caused by the unconscious longing of the affections laid at rest, and Alfred Dervilly became the sole object of her thoughts and of her hopes, if hopes she had. All this, I repeat, Emilie de Coigny felt; but, singular to say, she hesitated to confess what was in her heart, even when her lover passionately entreated; it seemed as if something stood between her and happiness, to which she feared to allude. It is not easy to deceive the _heart_, and Dervilly knew, despite the apparent calmness of Emilie, despite her sometimes cold demeanor, that he was loved in return. But one thing troubled and perplexed him; one thing filled him with vague fears and apprehensions, and checked the ecstatic feelings which were ready to overflow his heart. A mystery hung about this beautiful girl; she claimed no one for her friend, she spoke of no acquaintances, she never alluded to parents, or to brother or sister, or other relation; she made no mention of her home. Besides, a strange sadness, strange in one so young, seemed to possess her, and to pervade her spirit, and while contemplating that imperturbable countenance, Dervilly at times felt an awe come over him for which he could not account, and which for moments subdued even the force of his passion. It appeared to him then, as if he were under a spell; but presently, when a gentle smile illumined her face, her eyes would be turned on him so lovingly, and her look express, as plainly as look could, that all her trust was in him and in him only. Dervilly would forget every thing in the raptures of such moments; indeed in his ecstasy he would be driven almost to madness; for of all characters," continued Partridge, "hers was the one to set a youth of ardent temperament absolutely crazy. So matters advanced, or rather I should say, so time advanced, while affairs did not. It was at this period," said my friend, "that Dervilly gave me his confidence. Our intimacy had gradually increased from the hour of your leaving us, and at length he unbosomed himself completely. My first impression, after hearing his story, was that the pretty mademoiselle was no more nor less than an arrant flirt; that her charms were magnified to a lover's vision, and that the mystery which attended her would turn out to be no mystery at all--so I treated the case lightly, laughed at his description, called Mademoiselle Emilie a coquette, and added, a little seriously, that it was a shame for her to trifle with so warm-hearted a fellow. You know how grating are the disparaging remarks of a friend about one in whom we confess to ourselves a deeper interest than we care to acknowledge. What I had said was kindly intended, but it touched Dervilly to the quick. 'I did not think you capable,' he exclaimed, 'of thus making light of my confidence--I find I was deceived--you are at liberty to make as much sport of me as you will. I have learned a lesson which I shall take care to remember.' 'You must not speak so,' I said,' I really was not serious. I take back every word. I would not wound you for the world--forgive me.' Then we shook hands, and Dervilly assured me I had misjudged his Emilie; he would ask her permission to introduce me, and I should see for myself. The permission was never accorded, although Dervilly urged to Mademoiselle de Coigny, that I was his best and almost his only friend. She was unyielding; she would not see me. Meanwhile his passion increased with every impediment--yet he gained no assurance of its being returned, save what his heart whispered to him. In the _Jardin des Plants_ they were accustomed to meet daily, when the weather was propitious--so much Emilie yielded to her lover--and spend an hour together; and if they could not meet in the open air, they repaired to the house where they first became acquainted. On one occasion Dervilly, unable to bear suspense any longer, seized her hand, and passionately pledged himself, his existence, his soul, his all to Emilie de Coigny; he swore his fate was indissolubly linked with hers, that their destiny could not be severed, and he demanded from her an avowal of the truth of what he said. The violence of Dervilly alarmed her; she drew her hand from his, and looking him steadily in the face, inquired: "'What has prompted Monsieur to this sudden show of feeling?' "'Do you ask what?' exclaimed Dervilly; 'it is _you_. Are you not answered? How can I resist what is inevitable? how curb myself when _all_ hold is lost? Are you then so cruel? _Dieu merci!_ be not so deadly calm--it means the worst for me--be angry, vexed, any thing, but look not on me with that glazed look--it maddens me.' "'Monsieur Dervilly,' said Emilie, without change of tone or manner, 'what you have said, if it means any thing, means every thing; it means all a maiden longs to hear from lips that are beloved. To respond, I must be assured how far your judgment will confirm what now seems to be a mere passionate ebullition. Excuse me,' she continued, as Dervilly made an impatient gesture; 'I have heard and read of similar protestations which had little true significance.' "'I accept any conditions,' interrupted the young man, 'and will bless you from the depths of my soul for naming any, even the hardest; yes, the hardest--I care not what, so that they are from you.' The girl regarded Dervilly as if she would search his very nature. 'You are silent--speak; I can no longer contain myself,' exclaimed he, wildly. "'Monsieur,' once more observed Mademoiselle de Coigny, 'you know not to whom you address yourself; should I tell you, you would retract all those strong words, and hasten to escape in the least humiliating way possible.' "'Never. Heaven is my witness, never! I care not who you are; I will never seek to know; when you choose, you shall inform me. You need never tell me. I say, I care not, so that you are mine.' "'And you will be _mine_ for ever?' said the girl, slowly. "'For ever.' "'I am yours--yours,' and Emilie de Coigny sunk into the arms of her lover. "In one instant the fortunes of Dervilly were changed--from despair he was raised to a condition of delicious joy. His raptures were so unnatural, that I cautioned him against such violent indulgence of them. But he was too excited to listen to me. Indeed, I feared he would lose his reason. It seemed as if more than ordinary passion had possession of him, and that it was inspired by something unearthly; and, without ever having seen the girl, I began to attribute to her a supernatural influence. Besides, Dervilly confessed he knew as little of his affianced as before, and that occasionally the same icy look would be turned on him, as it were quite inadvertently, and hold him spell-bound with horror, while it still served to increase his frenzy beyond all bounds. Then, her endearing smiles, her truthful and confiding love, her absolute reliance, her entire dependence, on Dervilly, made him so frantic with happiness, that he lost all capacity to reason. "The summer passed away, but Dervilly had learned nothing more of the history of his betrothed; she still avoided the subject, and, when he alluded to it, she would beg him to desist, and hide her face in his bosom and weep. "Strange thoughts at last found their way into his brain, fearful surmises began to disturb his peace, and, when absent from Emilie, he would resolve at their next interview, to insist on knowing all. But when the time came, and he met, turned on him, the open and innocent look of the maiden's clear eyes, which expressed so earnestly how entirely her soul rested on his, all courage failed him, and he could not go on..... * * * * * "One evening," continued Partridge, after a pause, and with the tone of a person approaching an unpleasant subject, "One evening, after dinner--I think it was the first week in September--when the day had been excessively sultry, I strolled into the large garden, which you recollect belonged to our old lodgings in the _Rue d' Enfer_ and after a while sat down in the summer-house. Presently little Sophie Lecomte came running out to me, and I remained amusing myself with the child's prattle till it was dark. The moon shone brightly, and I did not perceive how late it was, until reminded of the hour by finding that Sophie was fast asleep in my lap. I rose and carried her into the house, and went quietly to my room. I seated myself near the window without lighting the candles, feeling that the glare would not just then harmonize with my feelings. The truth is, I was thinking of you, and of that romantic passage across the Apennines, and of the fair stranger, and so forth. I sat by the window, the moonlight streaming across the room, over the top of the old chapel, the windows and doors open, and every thing still except the monotonous chirping of a single cricket, louder than that of any French cricket I ever heard before, and which sung the very same song I used to hear when a boy from under the large kitchen hearthstone at home. I began to feel a little lonely, and so started up, and stamped with my feet in order to silence the solitary insect, or arouse the rest of the family, but the old one only sung the harder, and the others would not wake, and I sat down again, and half closed my eyes in order to lose myself, if I could, in some pleasant revery. My eyes _were_ half closed, the perfume from the graperies filled the room, and had a pleasant effect upon my senses, and thus I began to forget where I was and what was about me. Presently I heard a rapid unsteady step along the corridor; it grew more rapid and more unsteady; I raised my head, and at that instant Dervilly hurried into the room. 'I knew it--I knew it,' he exclaimed, wildly; 'one of the sirens sent from hell! I have sold myself, body and soul!--I am lost--lost. Ah! I knew it--I knew it.' Shocked and surprised as I was by such an extraordinary scene, I did not forget that Dervilly was of a most nervous and excitable temperament. I rose, took hold of him kindly, and asked him what had happened. As I placed my hand on his head, I perceived that the veins were distended, and that the carotid and temporal arteries were throbbing violently. I hastened to strike a light, while he continued to repeat nearly the words I have just mentioned, in a wild and incoherent manner. I could now see his countenance, and it seemed as if the destroyer had been ravaging it. His cap was gone. His hair, which was usually so neatly arranged, was tossed over his face in twisted locks; his eyes were fixed, and bloodshot, and sparkling. "'My dear friend, you are ill--you are excited--let me bring you to your bed' (we occupied the large room in common, with a small bedroom for each, leading from it); with this I took his arm, and gently urged him to his apartment. "'Not there, not there!' he cried vehemently; 'Have I not lain _there_, night after night, thinking of her?--have I not dreamed there happy dreams, and seen dear delightful visions? Not there--never--never again!' "'You shall not,' I said, endeavoring to humor him; 'you shall lie in my bed, and I will watch by you till you are better.' "The young man burst into tears. This action evidently relieved him, and made him more rational, for he took my arm and I assisted him to bed, and tried to soothe him; but he soon relapsed into an excited fever. Shortly after, he called me to him, and throwing his arms closely around me, exclaimed, 'Partridge, we were born in the same land; I implore you, by that one common tie, not to leave me an instant; I am a doomed wretch; but save me, save me from the fiend, as long as it is possible.' "I now became very much alarmed. My first impulse was to administer an opiate; but the case seemed so critical that I determined to send at once for Louis, whose sympathy for the students, you know, is universal. I called to young Stabb, who occupied the next room, and he set off immediately. After a few minutes Dervilly dozed a little; and then he started up, and gazed around, as if attempting to discern some object. "'Do you wish for any thing?' I said. He took no notice of my question, but continued to glance piercingly in every direction. "'What do you see?' I asked. "'_La Morgue!_' he exclaimed, with a shudder, and pointing into the other room--'_La Morgue!_' "He continued to gaze madly in the same way, still holding his arm outstretched, while his whole frame seemed convulsed with terror; but I could gain no clue to the catastrophe which had fallen so terribly on the ill-fated sufferer. "It seemed to me an age--it really was but an hour--before Stabb returned. He was accompanied by Louis. It was the great Louis whose skill as a physician, and especially in the treatment of fevers, is world renowned. I had 'followed' him during the whole of your absence; had become, as a matter of course, one of his warmest admirers; and was fortunate enough to secure his friendship. He also knew Dervilly. Hearing them enter, I stepped into the principal room, to meet him. '_Mon Dieu! Monsieur Partridge, quel est le mal?_' said Louis, with great feeling. 'Monsieur Dervilly was at the hospital in the morning, and I met him as late as six o'clock this afternoon, passing into the _Jardin des Plants_.' "'God only knows,' I replied. 'Something horrible has suddenly befallen him.' And I gave an account of what had occurred since Dervilly came to his rooms. Louis was silent for a moment, and then began to question me very minutely about him, while Stabb went in to keep watch over the poor fellow.--Among other things, I mentioned his love affair; and believing it to be my duty to do so, I told Louis, briefly, all Dervilly had confided to me. He listened with great attention, and after I had concluded, we passed into the little chamber where Dervilly lay. He started up with violence as we came in, as if a severe paroxysm were about to follow. He stared wildly on seeing Louis, and seizing his hand, he exclaimed, 'Ah, _mon Professeur_, you are a very great man, and you are very kind to come to me, but your knowledge avails nothing here,' touching his forehead. Suddenly he extended his finger, and cried again, '_La Morgue--La Morgue._' "'What see you in _La Morgue_?' said Louis, tenderly. "'See? _Her, her!_' screamed Dervilly. "'Who, _mon enfant_? said the Professor, very gently. "'Who, but the fiend--the fiend! She has my soul--lost, lost for ever.' "'You should not speak so harshly of Mademoiselle de Coigny,' continued Louis, in a soothing tone. "'Pronounce not that name: a bait, a trap, a wile of Satan; repeat it, and I will tear you piecemeal!' cried the maniac. "'But, _mon pauvre enfant_, what does she at La Morgue?' "'_She?_ the fiend--the fiend--sits perched on the top of the wooden rail all night, watching--watching--and when some of the corpses show signs of life, sails down, and sits upon, and strangles them. Keep me away from there. Ah, _mon Professeur_, do not let me go there, to lie on the board, and have her bending over me, eyeing me, watching me, ready to strangle me. There again! keep those glazed eyes away--keep them away, I say--' "All this time Louis was making a minute examination of Dervilly's symptoms. "The latter presently seemed aware of what he was doing, for he exclaimed, 'The usual symptoms, _eh, mon Professeur_; strongly marked, _n'est ce pas_? Act promptly and decisively, as you say sometimes. Let blood--let blood--_appliquez des sangsues_--ha, ha, ha! that's what we call bleeding, both general and local, ha, ha, ha! then come on with your cold applications: ice, ice, a mountain of ice piled round about the head! follow up with cathartics, refrigerant diaphoretics, after depleting blister!--say you not so?--blisters to the nape of the neck--blisters behind the ears--shave the scalp--I forgot that--shave the scalp--strange I had not thought of it,--and the hair. _Mon Professeur_, I know you will think me very foolish, but--save the hair--I shan't have another growth--save the hair. Where was I?--ah, the blisters--that will pretty nearly do for me--keep every thing quiet, very quiet--after a while, digitalis and nitre--digitalis and nitre, _mon Professeur_--have I not said my lesson well?' "Louis stood perfectly still, regarding the poor fellow with a mournful interest. As Dervilly paused, he took off his spectacles, and wiped his eyes. 'Ah, Monsieur Louis, you talk very eloquently about medical science, but I baffle you; I am sure of it. Call the class together--_Ah, Notre Dame de Pitie_--call the class together; _voila la clinique_. Thus being thus, it must necessarily be thus. That's a wise saying, _mon Professeur_. Call the class together; propound why of necessity you can do nothing? because of a necessity nothing can be done. Call the class together; be active--vigorously antiphlogistic; time is precious--the patient in danger. Purgatives--I doubt as to purgatives. What think you?' And Dervilly paused, and cast on Louis a look so naturally inquiring, that the latter replied, as it were, involuntarily, '_Moi aussi je doute._' And it was so; with all his genius, all his knowledge, all his experience, and all his skill, the great practitioner stood, while minute after minute was lost, apparently hesitating what to do. At last he called me into the other room. 'Is it not possible to find Mademoiselle de Coigny?' he inquired. "'I have no means of knowing where to seek her,' I replied. At the same time I remembered she was in the habit of visiting the house in which Dervilly first met her, and fortunately knew the street and number. "'Let her be sent for instantly,' said Louis. 'Do not go yourself; you may be of service here.' Accordingly I gave Stabb the direction, and instructed him to procure Mademoiselle de Coigny's address, if possible; but if he were unsuccessful in this, to communicate the fact of Dervilly's alarming illness, and beg that Mademoiselle might be immediately summoned. "We returned to the sick room, and Louis, seating himself in a chair, remained lost in thought for nearly a quarter of an hour, while I did what I could, to pacify the sufferer. I could not help wondering that a man, so prompt and so efficient, should lose a moment when the least delay was to be avoided; and as I was reflecting on this, Louis rose so suddenly from his seat that I was startled. 'There is but one course, and the poor boy has very accurately defined it. Let his head be shaved, and pillowed in ice; bleed him at once--if he faints, all the better.' 'No danger of that,' shouted Dervilly. 'No syncope with me but the _last_ syncope--no syncope--ha, ha, ha! double the ounces--you are timid--no syncope, I say--' He continued the whole time raving, much in the manner I have described. The room was kept quite dark, and no one was permitted to come in. Louis did not leave the bedside the entire night. Dervilly never slept for an instant. On one occasion he threw himself close on one side, and screamed, 'Take her away--take her away!' "'What is it?' I asked. "'Do you not see her?' he shrieked, 'sitting on the bed, looking into my eyes; take her away, take her away!' "I need not detail to you," continued Partridge, "the whole of these fearful scenes. Late in the evening Stabb returned; he had found the house; and although he could not obtain Mademoiselle de Coigny's address, he was promised that his message should be communicated early in the morning. "'It will be too late,' said Louis, mournfully. "What a long night it was. The morning dawned at last, but it brought no change to poor Dervilly. I had sent for his nearest relative, who lived over on the _Boulevard Poissonnière_, and was awaiting his arrival with considerable anxiety. It was not later than nine. Stabb, the good fellow, had relieved me from my watch, and I was in the sitting-room, in my large arm-chair, still anxious and fearful, when there came a slight tap at the door; it opened--and Emilie de Coigny stood before me. Ah, how beautiful she was, yet how terrified! It was not terror of excitement--mere surface passion--but from the depths of her soul. She was stirred by intense emotion. 'Tell me,' she said, coming earnestly up to me, 'tell me where he is, and what has happened to him!' I put my finger on my lips to prevent her from saying more, and led her to the further corner of the room; but she would not sit down; she begged to be told every thing at once; and I, in a low voice, gave Mademoiselle do Coigny a minute account of all I had witnessed. When I came to Dervilly's exclamation, '_La Morgue--La Morgue_,' the young girl became suddenly very pale, her fortitude forsook her, and she murmured faintly, 'He saw me go in--he saw me go in.' I must admit I was, for the moment, not a little tremulous. I recollected stories of devils taking possession of the dead bodies of virgins, in order to lure young men to perdition. I thought of the tale of the German student, who, on retiring with his bride, beheld her head roll from her body (she had been guillotined that morning), leaving him wedded to the foul fiend. In spite of me, I looked on the pale stricken creature before me as in one way or another connected with the adversary, and holding a commission from the Prince of the Power of the Air. I had little time for thought on the subject, for Mademoiselle de Coigny insisted on seeing Dervilly. I hesitated, but she was decided. She threw aside her pretty straw hat, and a light shawl, and stepped toward the apartment where her lover lay. She passed the threshold before he saw her. She called him by his name, 'Alfred.' He turned, and as his eyes fell on her, he uttered mad exclamations; crouching frantically in the furthest corner of the bed. 'Avaunt,' he screamed; 'vampyre--devil--owl of hell--come no nearer, (she still advanced, calling to him tenderly); I know that syren voice; it has damned and double damned me.--Partridge! Stabb! take her away, or,' he continued, in a fierce tone, 'I will do second execution on her.' "Poor girl--it was too much--she swooned away.... "You may imagine that it was a terrible scene," continued Partridge. "I set to work immediately for her recovery, having first carried her out of the room where Dervilly lay. She opened her eyes at last, but what a look of anguish was in them! 'Is he better?' she asked in a faint tone. I shook my head. 'Tell me,' she exclaimed, 'will he die? oh, will he, _must_ he die?' "'He is very sick, Mademoiselle.' "'I have killed him, I have killed him,' she cried. "'Pardon me', said I, 'Monsieur Dervilly is in great danger; still if we knew the cause of this dreadful attack we might gain some advantage by it.' "'Ah, it is my work,' murmured the fair mystery to herself, without heeding my observation; 'I have done it, and if he dies, I am a murderer--_his_ murderer.' She appeared no way disposed to betray her secret, and I did not press the subject. Presently Louis came in. He made his inquiries of me, and then went to the patient. There was no change, except in the increase of fatal symptoms. The delirium was more furious, the pulse hard, full, frequent, and vibrating. The most vigorous course was adopted; two other students were called in to assist Stabb and myself, and every means used to give effect to the prescribed treatment. "As for Mademoiselle de Coigny, she remained in the sitting-room, the picture of intense anguish. I urged her to retire, but she shook her head. I now begged her to tell me what had caused this strange attack, but she was silent. At length I went and called Madame Lecomte--you recollect what a kind-hearted creature she was--and told her briefly the little I knew of the unfortunate girl. She answered the summons at once, and in the most gentle manner endeavored to persuade Mademoiselle de Coigny to go with her. It was in vain. She would not leave the room. Occasionally, through the day, she would step to Dervilly's bedside, and in the softest, sweetest, gentlest tone I ever heard, say, 'Alfred.' The effect was always the same as at first--exciting the poor fellow to still deeper paroxysms, and more violent exclamations. On the fourth day he died; the symptoms becoming more and more aggravating, until _coma_ supervened to delirium. During the whole period of his sickness Mademoiselle de Coigny never left the house--scarcely the room--Madame Lecomte on two or three occasions almost forcing the wretched girl away to her own apartments. When poor Dervilly sunk into that deep lethargic slumber, so much dreaded by the physician, because so fatal, she came almost joyfully into his chamber, and threw her arms tenderly around him, 'He sleeps at last,' she said, 'is it not well?' "I would have given the world for the freedom of bursting into tears, so deeply was I affected by that hopeful, trustful question. What could I do, but shake my head mournfully and hasten out of the place.... He died, and made no sign; not a word, not a look, not the slightest pressure of the hand, for the one he loved so tenderly, and who watched so anxiously for some slight token. 'Oh,' I exclaimed to myself, as the hardness of such a fate was impressed on me, 'God is just, there is a hereafter, these two _must_ meet again.' ... Emilie de Coigny left the room where her dead lover lay, only when he himself was borne to his last resting-place. She followed him to the spot where he was buried in _Pere la Chaise_, and remained standing by it after every one else had come away. In this position she was found--standing over the grave--late at night by her friends--some members of the family I have mentioned--who sought her out. She left that splendid city of the dead bereft of reason, and so she has ever since continued. When the day is fine, she invariably keeps her fancied engagement with her lover at the appointed place in the _Jardin des Plants_; she patiently sits the hour, and retires sadly, as you saw her. When the weather is forbidding, she goes to her friend's house and waits the same period, never showing the least symptom of impatience, but, on the contrary, evincing the signs of a bruised but most gentle spirit." ... Here Partridge paused, as if at the end of his story. "Is that all?" said I. "That is all," he responded. "Surely not," I continued; "you have said nothing about the strange mystery which killed our poor friend, and which, as it seems to me, is the main point, in the story." "True enough--it is singular I should have left it out, but it is explained in a word. These same friends of Mademoiselle de Coigny gave me the information. It appears that on one inclement night, as the _keeper of the Morgue_ was returning from an official visit to the Chief of Police, toward his own quarters, which are adjoining and over the _dead room_--he stumbled over something which a flash of lightning at the instant showed to be the body of a man. He was quite dead, but, nestled down close by his side, with one of her little hands on his face, was a child, about two years of age. Jean Maurice Sorel, although long inured to repulsive sights, had not grown callous to misery. By birth he was considerably above his somewhat ignominious office; he had narrowly escaped with his life when Louis XVI. was brought to the scaffold, for some indiscreet expressions that savored too much of royalty; but in the tumults which succeeded, he had, he scarcely knew how, through some influence with the chief of one of the departments, been appointed to this repulsive duty. But as I have said, his heart was just as kind as ever, after many years discharge of it; and Jean Maurice Sorel, instead of repining at his lot, blessed God daily that he had the means of supporting a wife and children, while so many of his old friends had literally starved to death. Such was the person who stumbled over the body of the dead man, and discovered the living child beside it. He called at once for assistance, and had the corpse conveyed to his house, while he carried the little girl in his arms. She was too young to give any information about herself, but on searching the pockets of the deceased, several papers were found which disclosed enough to satisfy Jean Maurice Sorel that in the wasted, attenuated form before him, he beheld his once friend and benefactor the Marquis de Coigny, who, he supposed, had perished by the guillotine in the revolution. The papers permitted no doubt of the fact that the little girl was his granddaughter and only descendant, and she was commended to the care of the kind-hearted when death should overtake him. "The old Marquis was buried, and the little Emilie adopted into the family of the good Jean Maurice. Her education was conducted in a manner far superior to that of his own children, and the choicest garments of those which fell to him were selected to be made over for her. Perhaps unwisely, her history was explained to her, so that she lived all her life with the sense that she belonged in a different sphere--not that she was ungrateful or unamiable--quite the contrary--she was sweet tempered, affectionate and gentle, and loved by Jean Maurice and all his family with a devoted fondness: but the world had charms for her which the world withheld; she felt that she never could become an object of love where she could love in return, and so she repined at her destiny. By accident she made the acquaintance of the family where Dervilly first met her. They had known her father and her grandfather, and she loved them for that. She resisted for a long time the feeling for her lover which she perceived was taking strong hold of her, and when she could resist no longer, she yet delayed to tell him what a home she inhabited. This was her pride--her weakness--and how terribly did she pay the penalty! Day after day (so I was told), she resolved to explain all, but she procrastinated, till her lover, no longer able to restrain his anxiety, and full of excitements and fears and perturbations, followed her at some little distance, just at twilight, and saw or fancied he saw her enter _La Morgue_. It was too much for his nervous temperament. His brain caught fire--he came home raving with delirium--and DIED! Now you have the whole." A LEGEND. TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL FROM THE SPANISH, BY MRS. M. E. HEWITT. "Sin vos, y sin Dios y mi." The motto that with trembling hand I write, And deep is traced upon this heart of mine, In olden time a loyal Christian knight Bore graven on his shield to Palestine. "_Sin vos_," it saith, "if I am without thee," Beloved! whose thought surrounds me every where-- "_Sin Dios_," I am without God, "_y mi_," And in myself I have no longer share. Where pealed the clash of war, the mighty din, Where trump and cymbal crashed along the sky; High o'er the "Il Allah!" of the Moslemin, "God and my lady!" rang his battle-cry. His white plume waved where fiercest raged the flight, His arm was strong the Paynim's course to stem: His foot was foremost on the sacred height, To plant the Cross above Jerusalem. False proved the lady, and thenceforth the knight, Casting aside the buckler and the brand, Lived, an austere and lonely anchorite, In a drear mountain-cave in Holy Land. There, bowed before the Crucifix in prayer, He would dash madly down his rosary, And cry "Beloved!" in tones of wild despair, "I have lost God, and self, in losing thee!" And I, if thus my life's sweet hope were o'er, An echo of the knight's despair must be; Thus I were lost, if loved by thee no more, For, ah! myself and heaven are merged in thee. CAGLIOSTRO, THE MAGICIAN. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY CHARLES WYLLYS ELLIOT. "Know, then, that in the year 1743, in the city of Palermo, the family of Signor Pietro Balsamo, a shopkeeper, were exhilarated by the birth of a boy. Such occurrences have now become so frequent, that, miraculous as they are, they occasion little astonishment;" and, it may be well to add, that, except in some curious cases, there is no longer that exhilaration now felt, but, as in Ireland, a leaden sense of future woe. We are not told by the parents that any strange or miraculous appearance attended or preceded this advent, though one cannot but believe that the future Archimagus and his followers must have had a more or less distinct opinion upon this point. Not to lose time in speculation, we learn that "we have here found in the Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (the above-named boy), pupil of the sage, Altholas--foster-child of the Scherif of Mecca--probable son of the last king of Trebizond; named also Acharat, and unfortunate child of nature; by profession, healer of diseases, abolisher of wrinkles, friend of the poor and impotent, grand-master of the Egyptian Mason lodge of High Science, spirit summoner, gold cork, grand cophta, prophet, priest, and thaurmaturgic moralist and swindler; really a LIAR of the first magnitude; thorough-paced in all provinces of lying, what one may call their king." Under the common tent, the great canopy of life, it would not be fair to prejudge the mind of the reader upon so grave a thing as character, which we are now considering--it might be best to let each come to an after-thought respecting it--upon our caustic and noble author let the blame, if any, hang, while we now proceed to dip in, here and there, to his magic page. As the boy grows, we learn, that "as he skulks about there, plundering, pilfering, playing dog's-tricks, with his finger in every mischief, he already gains character. Shrill housewives of the neighborhood, whose sausages he has filched, whose weaker sons maltreated, name him Beppo Maldetto, and indignantly prophecy that he will be hanged--a prediction which the issue has signally falsified." We also may learn, what, in the treatment of our whole subject it is extremely important to remember, that, in the "boy," a "brazen impudence developes itself, the crowning gift," &c. "To his astonishment," though, "he finds that even here he is in a conditional world, and if he will employ his capability of eating (or enjoying) must first, in some measure, work and suffer. Contention enough hereupon; but now dimly arises, or reproduces itself, the question. Whether there were not a _shorter_ road--that of stealing!" But how he was entered into the convent, and under the convent apothecary proceeded to learn certain arts and mysteries of the retorts and alembics (which lucky knowledge, after that, came to use), while he was learning his other trade of monkery and mass-chanting, we will omit. It is enough to know, that he would not answer for the convent, and was again afloat on the wide sea of existence. That he floated is certain; for "he has a fair cousin living in the house with him, and she again has a lover. Beppo stations himself as go-between; delivers letters; fails not to drop hints that a lady to be won or kept must be generously treated; that such and such a pair of ear-rings, watch, or sum of money, would work wonders: which valuables, adds the wooden Roman biographer, he then appropriated furtively." Slowly but certainly he makes his way: "tries his hand at forging" theatre tickets--a will even, "for the benefit of a certain religious house;" and, further on, can tell fortunes, and show visions in a small way--all these inspirations are vouchsafed him, or, rather, these things he is permitted to do, and others not to be mentioned here. It is well to note, that in all times, and among all peoples, there is a deep and profound conviction that there _is_ not only a "short and certain" way of getting to heaven, and to know the eternal truths, but also that these earthly treasures do exist, in untold quantity, in the elements; and if one could only discover the secret by which the gases could be condensed into solid gold, or the gnomes be persuaded or compelled to give them up, ready solidified to hand, it would at least save time and be satisfactory. It is only curious, as a matter of speculation, to know what we shall eat when the lucky age arrives, and spirits will do our bidding in this matter of gold and diamonds. The "boy," as he grew, discovered this world-wide capacity; and who should have this power of setting the "spirits" to work but he? "Walking one day in the fields with a certain ninny of a goldsmith, named Marano, Beppo begins in his oily voluble way to hint that treasures often lay hid; that a certain treasure lay hid there (as he knew by some pricking of his thumbs, divining rod, or other talismanic monition), which treasure might, by the aid of science, courage, secrecy, and a small judicious advance of money, be fortunately lifted. The gudgeon takes--advances, by degrees, to the length of 'sixty gold ounces'--sees magic circles drawn in the wane or the full of the moon, blue (phosphorous) flames arise--split twigs auspiciously quiver--and at length demands, peremptorily, that the treasure be dug!" Alas! why is it that the "spirits" so often fail us at our sorest need? Do _they_ deceive us; and, if not, who does? The treasure vanishes, or does not appear, "the conditions are imperfect," and the "ninny of a goldsmith" being roughly handled by these spiritual visitants, threatens to stiletto the adept; who, overcome with the ingratitude of the world, concludes to quit;--at least, in the words of his Inquisition biographer, "he fled from Palermo, and overran the whole earth." We may see how he has grown--how, as in ordinary mortals, he advances step by step--even he, the favorite son of the higher intelligences, learns as he goes. How is it, then, that we can have no full-grown inspiration; that we know of no perfection--that we only go on towards it? Can it be that prophets and priests really do _learn_, and that even now, men may grow into the future? Might not a more thorough and scientific seminary for this purpose be established than any we now have--theologic, thaumaturgic, theosophic, or other variety? It is a question easier asked than answered. "The Beppic Hegira brings us down in European history to somewhere about the period of the peace of Paris"--(A.D. ----), supervening upon which is a portentous time--"the multitudinous variety of quacks that, along with Beppo, overran all Europe during that same period--the latter half of the last century. It was the very age of impostors, cut-purses, swindlers, double gaugers, enthusiasts, ambiguous persons, quacks simple, quacks compound, crack-brained or with deceit prepense, quacks and quackeries of all colors and kinds. How many mesmerists (so speaks this strange author), magicians, cabalists, Swedenborgians, illuminati, crucified nuns, and devils of Loudun! To which the Inquisition biographer adds vampyres, sylphs, rosicrucians, free-masons, and an _et cetera_. Consider your Schropfers, Cagliostros, Casanovas, Saint Germains, Dr. Grahams, the Chevalier d'Eon, Psalmanazar, Abbé Paris, and the Ghost of Cock-lane!--as if Bedlam had broken loose!" The great, the inexplicable, the mysterious Beppo, being now fairly afloat, let us try to comprehend how he has begun to touch upon the edge of those trade winds, which shall drive him along toward the golden Indies, Ophir, and the land of promise, for which the men of this world do so hunger and thirst. He married a beautiful Seraphina, afterward countess, graceful and lady-like, once the daughter of a girdle-maker, and named Lorenza Feliciani. Every one, simple or sedate, knows that it is best to hunt in couples. What one has not the other may have. So Seraphina had beauty, lightness, buoyancy, and could float up her count when the demons and harpies of a certain troublesome devil, called law or justice, seemed bent upon his swift destruction. Could she not, too, "enlist the sympathies of admiring audiences"--by her sweet smiles and "artless ways," gain belief, and "a wish to believe?" More than that, could she not turn the heads of young and old? "noble" perhaps, perhaps "ignoble"--"moneyed do-nothings" (so says this writer), whereof in this vexed earth there are many, ever lounging about such (?) places--scan and comment on the foreign coat-of-arms--ogle the fair foreign woman, who timidly recoils from their gaze, timidly responds to their reverences, as in halls and passages they obsequiously throw themselves in her way. Ere long, one moneyed do-nothing (from amid his tags, tassels, sword-belts, fop-tackle, frizzled hair, without brains beneath it) is heard speaking to another--"Seen the countess?--divine creature that!" Indeed, one cannot but wonder that any should question the unity of the race, at least, of those known as "civilized." In a small way, or in a large way, how this thing ever goes on--on church steps, on Broadways, in Metropolitan Halls, Congresses, the Palais-Royal, at home and abroad! And men do yet call _this_ "reverence for the sex," and holy sentiment; and indulge in hallelujahs to that hoary myth, "a gentleman of the old school;" while women--God help us--women loving it, hate those who, hating it, hate hollowness and hell. With slight imagination, then, one may see how important an element this "divine creature" must have become in any conjuration or mystic "renovation of the universe," which the high mystagogue might be impressed to set on foot. Enough, that _she_ helped and learned the arts of prophecy and perfection faster than her master! But we read--alas! alas!--"As his seraphic countess gives signs of withering, and one luxuriant branch of industry will die and drop off, others must be pushed into budding." He, the indefatigable count, is not idle. "Faded dames of quality (over all Europe, all creation) have many wants: the count has not studied in the convent laboratory, or pilgrimed to the Count St. Germain, in Westphalia, to no purpose. With loftiest condescension he stoops to impart somewhat of his supernatural secrets--for a _consideration_. Rowland's Kalydor is valuable; but what to the beautifying water of Count Alessandro! He that will undertake to smooth wrinkles, and make withered, green parchment into a fair carnation skin, is he not one whom faded dames of quality will delight to honor? Or, again, let the beautifying-water succeed or not, have not such dames (if calumny may in aught be believed) another want? This want, too, the indefatigable Cagliostro will supply--for a consideration. For faded gentlemen of quality the count likewise has help. Not a charming countess alone, but a "wine of Egypt" (Cantharides not being unknown to him), sold in drops, more precious than nectar; which, what faded gentlemen of quality will not purchase with any thing short of life. Consider, too, what may be done with potions, washes, charms, love-philters, among a class of mortals idle from their mother's womb," &c., &c. It is well to know, once for all, that the count, chief-priest of his order--which yet thrives, and if not great, deserves to be called for its number, Legion--made money out of this his enterprising trade; that he was enabled to pay his way; to ride post with the ever potent "voucher of respectability, a coach-and-four," with out-riders and beef-eaters, and couriers and lackeys, and the other paraphernalia which the greedy tooth of man desires--which helps one forward so far toward happiness, provided always that "there _is_ no heaven above and no hell beneath," of which let each first make sure; and more than all, let such as wish to travel this road, take great courage from the contemplation of this one model. We must hasten to the year 1776, a year rather noted in our annals, and in that of England, perhaps, independently of this the "first visit" of the famed Count Cagliostro to its shores, which happened then. Should it have so chanced that he had lived now, would he have stopped there does the reader think? Having an insight into _their_ national character, and finding "great greed and need," and but small heed, what might he not have done on this transatlantic shore, whose free people can so nobly cherish even its Barnum, its----, its----! But let names go. We make the most of what we have, and if not equal to the greatest, the fault rests not on our shoulders. We are not responsible for the past, if for the present or future. 'Twas in England that the master developed most bravely the art of prophecy; perhaps finding there a demand for his supply--such, according to some, being the only law of God or man. It is enough to know that he does a trade in foretelling the lucky lottery numbers by means of his "occult science," whereby at least he put money in _his_ purse, and satisfied good-natured men that as there were gulls, and necessarily a guller, he above all others deserved praise and not blame; the whole thing, this life, being really a juggle, and the smartest fellow of course the best juggler. As man goes on he developes, so many think--so did Cagliostro, and in his growth he reaches to masonry--Egyptian masonry--and in "sworn secrecy" finds a new Talisman, for which men will pay five guineas each. He resolves to "free it from all vile ingredients, and make it a new Evangile." "No religion is excluded from the Egyptian society"--for is it not certain that religion _pays_? Charity too, pays, as we shall see by-and-by. No religion is tabooed--none--all who admit the existence of a God, and the immortality of the soul, may, for the small sum of five guineas, be certain to gain "perfection by means of a physical and moral regeneration." He promises them by the former or physical to find the _prime matter_ or philosopher's stone, and the _acacia_ which consolidates in man the forces of the most vigorous youth, and renders him immortal; and by the latter or moral, to procure them a Pentagon which shall restore man to his primitive state of innocence, lost by his original sin. It must be understood that this masonry was founded by Enoch and Elias, had been corrupted by the Egyptian priests, but was now restored to its pristine vigor by its last and greatest Grand Cophta, and includes not only men but women, of whom the Countess Seraphina is Cophtess. We cannot do better than to gain some insight into the forms and symbolic practices of these worshippers; and especially will those who desire to practise this or any short and easy way to perfection or happiness, be glad to learn what has been done, and thus be encouraged to begin. In the _Essai sur les Illuminés_, printed in Paris in 1789, are the following details quoted by this before-mentioned known author.[1] These bear an air of truth and probability which will win for them easy admission. Many of them are not unlike what we have seen amongst us during the few past years. "They take a young lad or a girl who is in the state of innocence: such they call the _Pupil_ or _Colomb_: the Venerable communicates to him the power he would have had before the fall of man; which power consists mainly in commanding the pure spirits: these spirits are to the number of seven. It is said they surround the shrine, and that they govern the seven planets. Their names are Arael, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Uriel, Zobiachel, Anachiel." Nothing certainly can begin more favorably. We learn that "she the Colomb," can act in two ways, either behind a curtain, behind a hieroglyphically-painted screen with table and three candles, or before the Caraffe and showing face. If the _miracle fail_ it can only be because she is not "in the state of innocence." _An accident must be guarded against._ Surely our mystic professors, both clerical and lay, will take heed to these things. Much may be learned. Cagliostro accordingly (it is his own story) brought a little boy into the lodge, son of a nobleman there. He placed him on his knees before a table, whereon stood a bottle of pure water, and behind this some lighted candles. He made an exorcism round the boy, put his hand on head, and both in this attitude addressed their prayers to God for the happy accomplishment of the work. Having then bid the child look into the bottle, directly the child cried that he saw a garden. Knowing hereby that Heaven assisted him [why this is so proven he does not explain], Cagliostro took courage, and bade the child ask of God the grace to see the Archangel Michael. At first the child said, "I see something white; I know not what it is." Then he began jumping and stamping like a possessed creature, and cried, "Now, I see a child like myself, which seems to have something angelical (!)" _All the assembly and Cagliostro himself remained speechless with emotion...._ [How like this is to what we at this day have seen.] The child being anew exorcised with the hands of the Venerable on his head, and the customary prayers addressed to Heaven, he looked into the bottle, and said he saw his sister at that moment coming down stairs, and embracing one of her brothers. That appeared impossible, the brother in question being then hundreds of miles off. However Cagliostro felt not disconcerted; said they might send to the country-house, where the sister was, and see--if they chose! Do some still doubt? Time nor paper will allow us to allay that doubt. We must, as rapidly as we can, introduce what may yet be useful in certain cases of the like kind, either in whole or in part. It is the introduction of a novice into the holy Mysteries. "The recipiendary is led by a darksome path into a large hall, the ceiling, the walls, the floor of which are covered by a black cloth, sprinkled over with red flames and menacing serpents; three sepulchral lamps emit from time to time a dying glimmer, and the eye half distinguishes, in this lugubrious den, certain wrecks of mortality suspended by funeral crapes; a heap of skeletons forms in the centre a sort of altar; on both sides of it are piled books; some contain menaces against the perjured; others the deadly narrative of the vengeance which the invisible spirit has exacted; of the infernal evocations for a long time pronounced in vain. "Eight hours elapse. Then phantoms, trailing mortuary vails, slowly cross the hall and sink in caverns, without audible noise of trapdoors or of falling. You notice only that they are gone by a fetid odor exhaled from them. "The novice remains four and twenty hours in this gloomy abode, in the midst of a freezing silence. A rigorous fast has already weakened his thinking faculties. Liquors prepared for the purpose first weary and at length wear out his senses. At his feet are placed three cups, filled with a drink of a greenish color. Necessity lifts them to his lips: involuntary fear repels them. "At last appear two men: looked upon as the ministers of Death. These gird the pale brow of the recipiendary with an auroral-colored-ribbon dipped in blood, and full of silvered characters mixed with our lady of Loretto. He receives a copper crucifix, of two inches length: to his neck are hung a sort of amulets wrapped in violet cloth. He is stripped of his clothes; which two ministering brethren deposit on a funeral pile, erected at the other end of the hall. With blood on his naked body are traced crosses. In this state of suffering and humiliation, he sees approaching with large strides five Phantoms armed with swords, and clad in garments dropping blood. Their faces are vailed: they spread a velvet carpet on the floor; kneel there, pray; and remain with outstretched hands crossed on their breasts, and faces fixed on the ground in deep silence. An hour passes in this painful attitude. After which fatiguing trial, plaintive cries are heard; the funeral pile takes fire, yet casts only a pale light; the garments are thrown on it and burnt. A colossal and almost transparent figure rises from the very bosom of the pile. At sight of it the five prostrated men fall into convulsions insupportable to look on: the too faithful image of those foaming struggles wherein a mortal, at hand-grips with a sudden pain, ends by sinking under it. "Then a trembling voice pierces the vault, and articulates the formula of those execrable oaths that are to be sworn: my pen falters: I think myself almost guilty to retrace them." Strange as it may seem, we stop here with Monsieur the Author. Strange too that some deny the reality of all this--and tell of magic lanterns and science--stranger still that men are who believe all--all--'tis to them a spasmodic miracle, and he is an infidel of course who doubts. Strange too is it, that men do not see here the monstrous power of what is called Symbolism, and that they should not help nor hinder; who say, Let the world go--who cares! Men live and women too who say, "There's _something_ in it"--there must be! and is there not? Figure now all this boundless cunningly devised agglomerate of royal arches, deaths' heads, hieroglyphically painted screens, "columns in the state of innocence, with spacious masonic halls--dark, or in the favorablest theatrical light-and-dark: Kircher's magic lantern, Belshazzar handwritings (of phosphorus), plaintive tones, gong-beatings, hoary head of a supernatural Grand Cophta emerging through the gloom--and how it all acts, not only directly through the foolish senses of men, but also indirectly connecting itself with Enoch and Elias, with philanthropy, immortality," &c. Let such as _will_ now say there is nothing in it--something there is, for a thoughtful man to consider well of, asking himself what also does this of clairvoyance, and spiritual knockings, and Jenny-Lind manias, and Jerkers--truly mean? and what kind of a person am _I who have had_ part and lot with these? But the lofty science of Egyptian Masonry flourishes, lodges are established over Europe, and the Grand Master travels hither and thither, "mounts to the seat of the Venerable, and holds high discourse, hours long, on masonry, morality, universal science, divinity, and things in general," with a "sublimity, and emphasis and unction," proceeding it appears "from the special inspiration of the Holy Ghost." He is received with shouts and exultation--every where the great heart of man thrills at the coming of this mystic symbol, which contains--cunningly enfolded, as their eyes can and do see--every virtue, every greatness--is he not indeed the Incarnation of these, and therefore to be worshipped; such gift of reverence is in the heart of man, and to such things does he again and again bow down! To go on. Cheers, and the ravishment of thronging audiences can make him maudlin; render him louder in eloquence of theory; and "philanthropy," "divine science," "depth of unknown worlds," "finer feelings of the heart"--and so shall draw tears from most asses of sensibility. "The few reasoning mortals scattered here and there, that see through him, deafened in the universal hub-bub, shut their lips in sorrowful disdain, _confident in the grand remedy, Time_." So says our author, and can we blame him? Will the reader allow the current of this prosperity to be checked for one moment by a certain Count M.? One of the chosen few at Warsaw, who having spent the night with the "dear Master," in conversing with spirits, had returned to the country to transmute metals perhaps--perhaps to do other mighty works. Count M. seems to have been afflicted with doubts, to have supposed that by sleight-of-hand the "sweet Master" had substituted the crucible with melted ducats, for the other--carefully filled with red lead, "smelted and set to cool," "and now found broken and hidden among these bushes"--the whole golden crucible standing in its place. "Neither does the Plenagon or Elixir of Life, or whatever it was, prosper better--our sweet master enters into expostulation--swears by his great God, and his honor, that he will finish the work and make us _happy_." In vain--"the shreds of the broken crucible lie there before your eyes"--and the usurper has its place. That "resemblance of a sleeping child, grown visible in the magic cooking of our Elixir, proves to be an inserted rosemary leaf. The Grand Cophta cannot be gone too soon." Already it has been said that "Charity pays," philanthropy, benevolence, all these--sometimes? if one sows his bread on the waters shall he not expect its return after many or after few days?--the sooner the better for your Cagliostros, your Barnums. Shout it daily to an envious world--"Am I not a charitable man? If I have done wrong myself (as who has not?) has not a great deal of good _grown out_ of my wickedness? I have therefore done my share, for which if the world has paid me in 'praise and pudding,' it is no more than it has done before, and will do again!" Take courage! Cagliostro doctors--heals--the poor, for nothing!--even gives them alms--does a great deal of good--who but he? At Strasburg in the year 1783 (year of our peace with England), he "appears in full bloom and radiance, the envy and admiration of the world. In large hired hospitals, he with open drug-box (containing 'Extract of Saturn'), and even with open purse, relieves the suffering poor; unfolds himself lamblike, angelic, to a believing few, of the rich classes. Medical miracles have at all times been common, but what miracle is this of an occidental or oriental Serene-highness that 'regardless of expense,' employs himself in curing sickness, in illuminating ignorance?" We at the present day know nothing like it; the mere giving of a few surplus hundreds or thousands to certain Slavery, Anti-Slavery, Peace, Temperance or other societies, is benevolence of the "rocking chair" species--is not to be mentioned with this, of the self-denying Cagliostro's diving into cellars, and mounting into garrets, to seek and to save--at the risk of not only life but comfort--the first of which happily was not thus sacrificed:--nor indeed on the whole was comfort lost sight of, as the "coach-and-four with liveries and sumptuosities bears witness." There is often profound wisdom in this thing called _public_ or newspaper charity. Does it--or does it not--pay? The favorite of the gods, he who holds high discourse with spirits, and to whom is opened the hidden secret of earth and heaven, finds ready acceptance--backed as he is by charities, by elegancies: finds acceptance with the poor, the ignorant to whom he ministers--but also "with a mixture of sorrow and indignation" it is recorded, among the great--and not only they, but among the learned, "even physicians and naturalists." It does not seem worth while to expend sorrow and indignation upon this fact, not at all new, as we now fifty years farther along have discovered; for we can show our physicians and naturalists, and also our priests and prophets, in small crowds with whom marvels find acceptance. We shall see more of them by and by. But one among the rich and great, was the Cardinal Prince Count Rohan, Archbishop of Strasburg. "Open-handed dupe," as some term him--now out of favor with the Queen Marie Antoinette (after that beheaded and called unfortunate). Banished from his beloved Paris and the sunshine of royalty, what should he do but to regain his pedestal? necessary no doubt, for the glory of God, and his church; necessary at least for the Count Rohan. Cagliostro is all powerful--he will help the Cardinal Prince--not only by philters and charms, but by prophecies from the gods, who speaking through their earthly oracle, will of course (it paying best), promise success and not failure. The Archbishop tries all things, and at last the far-famed "diamond necklace," upon the queen, which no woman's heart can withstand, not even the queen's. Sad to tell, the miserable queen knew nothing of the necklace; and only the Md'lle De la Motte, styled countess, by superior arts had outjuggled Cagliostro himself, Cardinal Rohan, queen and all: the diamonds were gone--the queen's character blackened, cardinal, cophta, and countess, all in the Bastille, where they lay some nine months (year 1781), disastrous months, when "high science" wasted itself in eating out its own heart. Cagliostro escaped, was let go--but a plundered, banished, suspected high priest, was quite another thing from a golden cophta, with the foreign coat-of-arms, serene countess--and open purse relieving the unfortunate. Cagliostro now flits to England, to Bale, to Brienne, to Aix, to Turin, he wanders hither and thither; we cannot follow him. The end of all, the lofty and the low, must come--that seems drawing near to Cagliostro too--but how? not in ruddy splendor as of departing day, not quiet, serene, as of nature sinking to rest--rather like the disastrous death of the bleeding shark it seems: his brethren, his friends--- sharks of his own kind, of all kinds, high and low--rush upon the wounded shark, as to a banquet to which they were bidden. He is exiled here, he is persecuted there--imprisonment, despair, degradation haunt him--the houseless, unfortunate--now vagabond, once renovator of the human race, and friend of lords and friend of gods and princes. Such is gratitude! such is popular favor! a thing to be bought and bargained for, to be given when _not needed_. Such, no doubt, Cagliostro decided! He is sore bested, and begins "to confess himself to priests," for a man must do something in his extremity. It avails him not; he is at last in the gripe of the holy Inquisition at Rome, "in the year of our Lord, 1789, December 29," and must match himself with a power which this world knows something of: face to face, hand to hand, at last. Have they juggles equal to his juggles, miracles equal to his--high science equal to his--legions of angels equal to his?--enough that they have dungeons, and sbirri--and in his case, hearts harder than the nether mill-stone--not to be softened "by demands for religious books"--assertions of the divinity of the Egyptian Masonry--promises of wonderful revelations--oaths, flatteries, or any of the mystic paraphernalia of the now powerless professor and prophet: they will not let him out! but rather will introduce him to a new art, that of becoming a Christian, and get him, the toughest in a tough time, into heaven as they best can. Did they find Loyola's twenty days sufficient, and was the article then turned out of hand complete for that other state? The Inquisition biographer does not dwell upon this, it was perhaps as well. We learn at last that he died in the year 1795, and went, the writer says, "_Whither_ no man knows!" So ended a Magician! NEW HAVEN, Feb., 1852. FOOTNOTES: [1] T. Carlyle. BITTER WORDS. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE, BY R. H. STODDARD. Bitter words are easy spoken; Not so easily forgot; Hearts it may be can be broken-- Mine cannot! When thou lovest me I adore thee; Hating, I can hate thee too; But I will not bow before thee-- Will not sue! Even now, without endeavor, Thou hast wounded so my pride, I could leave thee, and for ever-- Though I died! THE MURDER OF LATOUR. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE, BY HON. W. H. STILES.[2] The cabinet remained in deliberation at the Ministry of War, situated at the corner of the square called the Hof. The tide of insurrection now rose to an unconquerable height. The nearest shots of the retiring cannons, the advancing shouts of the infuriated people, warned the ministers that all defence was rapidly becoming hopeless. The building itself still offered some means of resistance, and there were two cannons in the court; but at that crisis was issued a written order, signed by Latour and Wessenberg, "to cease the fire at all points," and given to officers for distribution.[3] It was in vain. The popular torrent rolled on toward the seat of government, which was destined ere long to be disgraced by atrocious crime. The minister of war, Count Latour, prepared for defence. The military on guard in front of the war office were withdrawn into the yards, with two pieces of artillery loaded with grape. The gates were closed, the military distributed to the different threatened points, and the cannons directed towards the two gates; soon the scene of battle had reached the Bogner Gasse, immediately under the windows of the war department; the ministers in consultation heard the cry, "The military retreat." The great square of the Hof was soon cleared, the soldiers retiring by the way of the Freyung. The guards and academic legion pursuing; the military commander's quarters in the Freyung are soon captured. The retiring military not being able to escape through the Schotten-Thor, as they had expected, that gate being closed and barricaded, they cut their way through the Herrn Gasse. So intent were the respective combatants, either in retreat or pursuit, that the whole tempest of war swept over the Hof, and left that square, for a short time, deserted and silent. But that stillness was but of short duration; a few moments only had elapsed, when a number of straggling guards, students, and people, came stealing silently from the Graben, through the Bogner, Naglus, and Glosken Gasse, on to the Hof, and removed the dead and the wounded into the neighboring dwellings, and into the deserted guard-house in the war department. These were soon followed by a fierce and noisy mob, armed with axes, pikes, and iron bars, which halted before the war office, and began to thunder at its massive doors. The officer of ordnance in vain attempted to communicate to the crowd the order of the ministry, that all firing should cease. A member of the academic legion, from the window, over the gateway, waved with a white handkerchief to the tumultuous masses, and, exhibiting the order signed by Latour and Wessenberg, read its contents to the crowd. But a pacification was not to be thought of; the people were too excited, their fury could only be appeased by blood; that delayed measure was not sufficient; they made negative gesticulations, and summoned the student to come down and open the portals to their admission. The tumult increased from minute to minute; the closed doors at length gave way under the axes of the mob, and the people streamed in, led by a man "in a light gray coat." The secretary of war, having by this time abandoned the idea of defence, on the ground either that it was useless or impolitic, no shots were fired or active resistance offered; but the orderlies with their horses retired to the stables, and the grenadiers into an inner court. At first only single individuals entered, and their course was not characterized by violence; then groups, proceeding slowly, listening, and searching; and, at last the tumultuous masses thundered in the rear. Ere long the cry rung on the broad staircase, "Where is Latour? he must die!" At this moment the ministers and their followers in the building, with the exception of Latour himself, found means to escape, or mingled with the throng. The deputies, Smolka, Borrosch, Goldmark, and Sierakowski, who had undertaken to guarantee protection to the threatened ministers, arrived in the hope of restraining the mob. The numerous corridors and cabinets of the war office (formerly a monastery of the Jesuits) were filled with the crowd; the tide of insurrection now rose to an uncontrollable height; and the danger of Latour became every moment more imminent. The generals who were with him, perceiving the peril, entreated him to throw himself upon the Nassau regiment or the Dutch Meister grenadiers, and retreat to their barracks. He scorned the proposal, denied the danger, and even refused, for some time, to change his uniform for a civilian's dress, until the hazard becoming more evident, he put on plain clothes, and went up into a small room in the roof of the building, where he soon after signed a paper declaring that, with his majesty's consent, he was ready to resign the office of minister of war. A Tecnicker, named Ranch,[4] who, it was said, had come to relieve the secretary of war, was seized and hung in the court by his own scarf, but fortunately cut down by a National Guard before life was extinct. The mob rushed into the private apartment of the minister, but plundered it merely of the papers, which were conveyed to the university. They came with a sterner purpose. The act of resignation, exhibited to the crowd by the deputy Smolka, was scornfully received by the people, while the freshness of the writing, the sand adhering still to the ink, betrayed the proximity of the hand which had just traced it. Meanwhile, the crowd had penetrated the corridors of the fourth story, and were not long in discovering the place of Latour's concealment. Hearing their approach, and recognizing the voice of Smolka, vice-president of the assembly, who was doubtless anxious to protect him, Latour came out of his retreat. They descended together from the fourth story by a narrow stairway, on the right-hand side of the building, and entered the yard by the pump. At each successive landing place, the tumult and the crowd increased; but the descent was slow, and rendered more and more difficult by the numbers which joined the crowd at every turn of the stairs. At length they reached the court below, and Count Latour, although he had been severely pressed, was still unhurt; but here the populace, which awaited them, broke in upon the group that still clustered around Latour, and dispersed it. In vain did the deputies, Smolka and Sierakowski, endeavor to protect the minister; in vain did the Count Leopold Gondrecourt attempt to cover him by the exposure of his own body. A workman struck the hat from his head; others pulled him by his gray locks, he defending himself with his hands, which were already bleeding. At length a ruffian, disguised as a Magyar, gave him, from behind, a mortal blow with a hammer, the man in the gray coat cleft his face with a sabre, and another plunged a bayonet into his heart. A hundred wounds followed, and, with the words, "I die innocent!" he gave up his loyal and manly spirit. A cry of exultation from the assembled crowd rent the air at this event. Every indignity was offered to his body; before he had ceased to breathe even, they hung him by a cord to the grating of a window in the court of the war office. He had been suspended there but a few minutes when, from the outrages committed on it, the body fell. They then dragged it to the Hof, and suspended it to one of the bronze candelabras that adorn that extensive, and much frequented square, and there treated it with every indignity; it remained for fourteen hours exposed to the gaze of a mocking populace. FOOTNOTES: [2] A chapter from Mr. Stiles's forthcoming work on Austria, which we have mentioned elsewhere in this number of the International. [3] The last order issued by the unfortunate Latour was instructed to Colonel Gustave Schindler, of the imperial engineers, an efficient officer, as well as a most amiable and accomplished gentleman, and one well and favourably known in the United States, from his kind attention to Americans who have visited the Austrian capital. The colonel was in the act of passing out of the great door of the war office, which opens on the Hof, when the mob reached that spot. Recognized by his imperial uniform, he was instantly surrounded and attacked. He received many blows on the head, inflicted by the crowd with clubs and iron bars; was most severely wounded, and would probably have been killed but for the timely interference of one of the rabble, who, riding up on horseback between the colonel and the mob, shielded him from further blow, and finally effected his escape. [4] A student of the Polytechnic school, for brevity, usually called Tecnickers. SOME SMALL POEMS. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE, BY R. H. STODDARD. SONG. I hung upon your breast in pain, And poured my kisses there like rain; A flood of tears, a cloud of fire, That fed and stifled wild desire, And lay like death upon my heart, To think that we must learn to path; For we must part, and live apart! Had I, that hour of dark unrest, But plunged a dagger in your breast And in mine own, it had been well; For now I had been spared the hell That racks my lone and loving heart, To think that we must learn to part;-- For we must part, and die apart! LU LU. The shining cloud that broods above the hill, Casts down its shadows over all the lawns, The snowy swan is sailing out to sea, Leaving behind a ruffled surge of light! Lu Lu is like a cloud in memory, And shades the ancient brightness of my mind: A swan upon the ocean of my heart, Floating along a path of golden thought! The light of evening slants adown the sky, Poured from the inner folds of western cloud; But in the cast there is a spot of blue, And in that heavenly spot the evening star! The tresses of Lu Lu are like the light, Gushing from out her turban down her neck; And like that Eye of heaven, her mild blue eye, And in its deeps there hangs a starry tear! THOSE WHO LOVE LIKE ME. Those who love like me, When their meeting ends Friends can hardly be, But less or more than friends! With common words, and smiles, We cannot meet, and part, For something will prevent-- Something in the heart! The thought of other days, The dream of other years; With other words, and smiles, And other sighs and tears! For all who love like me, When their parting ends, Friends must never be, But more or less than friends! TO THE WINDS Blow fair to-day, ye changing Winds! And smooth the story sea; For now ye waft a sacred bark, And bear a friend from me. From you he flies, ye Northern Winds, Your Southern mates to seek; So urge his keel until he feels Their kisses on his cheek: And when their tropic kisses warm, And tropic skies impart, Their floods of sunshine to his veins, Their gladness to his heart-- Blow fair again, ye happy Winds! And smooth again the sea, For then ye'll waft the blessed bark, And bear my friend to me! "WIND OF SUMMER, MURMUR LOW." Wind of summer, murmur low, Where the charméd waters flow, While the songs of day are dying, And the bees are homeward flying, As the breezes come and go. Come and go, hum and blow, Winds of summer, sweet and low, Ere my lover sinks to rest, While he lies upon my breast, Kiss his forehead, pale and fair, Kiss the ringlets of his hair, Kiss his heavy-lidded eyes, Where the mist of slumber lies; Kiss his throat, his cheek, his brow, And his red, red lips, as I do now, While he sleeps so sound and slow, On the heart that loves him so, Dreaming of the sad, and olden, And the loving, and the golden Wind of summers long ago! THE LATE ELIOT WARBURTON. The melancholy fate of the author of _The Crescent and the Cross_, _Canada_, _Darien_, &c., has been stated in these pages. In Great Britain, where he was well known and highly esteemed by literary men, there have been many feeling and apparently just tributes to his memory, one of the most interesting of which is a memoir in the _Dublin University Magazine_, from which we transcribe the following paragraphs: "It was during an extended tour in the Mediterranean about ten years ago, that Mr. Warburton sent some sheets of manuscript notes to Mr. Lever, at that time Editor of the _Dublin University Magazine_. These at once caught that gentleman's attention, and he gladly gave them publicity, under the title of "Episodes of Eastern Travel," in successive numbers of the magazine, where they were universally admired for the grace and liveliness of their style. Mr. Lever, however, soon saw that though for the purposes of his periodical these papers were extremely valuable, the author was not consulting his own best interests by continuing to give his travels to the world in that form; and, with generous disinterestedness, advised him to collect what he had already published, and the remainder of his notes, and make a book of the whole. Mr. Warburton followed his advice, entered into terms with Mr. Colburn, and published his travels under the title of 'The Crescent and the Cross.' "Of this book it is needless for us to speak. In spite of the formidable rivalry of an 'Eothen,' which appeared about the same time, it sprang at once into public favor, and is one of the very few books of modern travels of which the sale has continued uninterrupted through successive editions to the present time. Were we to pronounce upon the secret of its success, we should lay it to its perfect _right-mindedness_. A changeful truth, a versatile propriety of feeling initiates the author, as it were, into the heart of each successive subject; and we find him as profoundly impressed with the genius of the Holy Land, as he is steeped, in the proper place, in the slumberous influences of the dreamy Nile, upon whose bosom he rocks his readers into a trance, to be awakened only by the gladsome originality of these melodies which come mirthfully on their ears from either bank. And, we may observe in passing, it is precisely the _want_ of this, which prevents the indisputable power and grace of 'Eothen' from having their full effect with the public. "Passages of beauty, almost of sublimity, stand isolated from our sympathies by the interposed cynicism of a few caustic remarks; and scenes of the world's most ancient reverence and worship become needlessly disenchanted under the spell of some skeptical sneer. "But we must not turn aside to criticise. Since the publication of the 'Crescent and the Cross,' Mr. Warburton has written, or edited, a number of works, some historical, others of fiction, of which his last romance, 'Darien,' only appeared as he was on the eve of departing on the fatal voyage. It has been remarked as a singular circumstance, that in this tale has prefigured his own fate. A burning ship is described in terms which would have served as a picture of the frightful reality he was himself doomed to witness. The coincidence, casual as it is, has imparted a melancholy interest to that story, which will long be wept over as the parting and presaging legacy of a gifted spirit, prematurely snatched away. "These lighter effusions most probably grew out of the craving of the publishers for the _prestige_ of his name, already found to be valuable even on title-pages; and the ready market they commanded could not but prove an excitement to continue and multiply them. This might be considered in an ulterior sense unfortunate; for we are inclined to think that the true bent of Mr. Warburton's mind, if not of his talents, was towards graver and less imaginative studies; and we know that this propensity was growing upon him with maturer years and soberer reflections. "It is not exclusively from the bearing of his researches and the general drift of his correspondence that we infer this; though both set latterly in that direction. He had for some time been actually at work with definite objects in view. One subject which he took up warmly was a _British_ History of Ireland; that is, a history intended to deal impartial justice between the Irish people on the one side, and the British empire on the other; reviewing the politics of successive periods, neither from the Irish nor the English side of the question, but with reference to the general interests of the whole. "The task, would have proved an arduous one, under any circumstances--perhaps an invidious one; but what was worse, even when accomplished, the book might have turned out a dull affair. So, with a view to lightening the reading, he had proposed to embody with it memoirs of the Viceroys, thus keeping the British connection prominent, while enlivening the pages with biographical touches. "Acting on these ideas, he had actually begun a 'History of the Viceroys' in conjunction with a literary friend, and was only deterred from prosecuting it by the apathy, or rather discouragement, of the London publishers, who felt no inclination to venture upon an Irish historical speculation. Unfortunately, neither he nor his friend could afford to pursue the task gratuitously, and it was accordingly abandoned. "Still later, he employed himself in collecting materials for a History of the Poor--a vast theme; perhaps too vast for a single intellect to grasp. To him, however, it was a labor of love; and he had succeeded in getting together a considerable mass of curious and valuable material _pour servir_. His last visit to his native country had researches of this nature for one of its objects; and we are sure many persons connected with the charitable institutions of Dublin, will recollect the persevering zeal with which he visited the haunts of poverty, as well as the asylums for its relief, noting down every thing which might prove afterwards serviceable on that suggestive topic. "With an upwelling of philanthropy so pure and perennial as this, the preliminary investigations could have been only a delight to him. Other men might be forced to them as a revolting duty; he chose the inquiry, with very dubious hopes of bettering himself by prosecuting it, because his heart was full of compassion, and he thought he might do good. We repeat, what we can state from personal knowledge, that the bent of Mr. Warburton's mind was latterly towards works of general utility; and it is with great satisfaction we learn, what we had not been aware of until the public papers announced it, that his projected visit to the New World was a mission, in which the interests of humanity were to have in him an advocate and champion. "Into his private life we feel that, under present circumstances, it would be indelicate, as well as out of place, to enter. Surrounded as he was with all the blessings which the domestic relations can bestow, beloved by his intimates, caressed by the gifted and the good, Eliot Warburton lived the centre of a radiating circle of happiness. His personal qualities were of no common order. His society was eagerly sought after. With a fastidious lassitude of air, and an apparent disinclination to exertion, he possessed remarkable force of thought and fluency of diction; and it was no uncommon thing to see him, when he had begun to relate passages from his experience in foreign countries, or adventures in his own, the centre of a gradually increasing audience, amidst which he sat, improvisating a sort of romantic recitation, until he was completely carried away on the current of his own eloquence, and lost every sense of where he was or what he was doing, in the enthusiasm he had fanned up and saw reflected around him. This power was a peculiar gift; and he loved to exercise it. In this form many of his happiest effusions have been given utterance to; and every body who has heard him at such inspired moments has felt regret that the brilliant bursts which so delighted him, should have been stamped upon no more retentive tablets than the ears of ordinary listeners. "Of this amiable, refined and gifted individual, we are afraid to speak as warmly as our heart would dictate. Before us lie the few hasty lines--but not too hurried to be the channel of a parting kindness--scrawled to us on the first day of this year--the last day the writer was ever to pass in England. They are, perhaps, amongst the latest words he ever wrote. 'I am off,' they run 'for the West Indies to-morrow. _But I have accomplished your affair._' Oh, vanity of human purpose! Man proposes--God disposes. We were next to hear of him, standing on the deck of the burning vessel in the Atlantic, alone with the captain, after every other soul had disappeared, surveying--we feel convinced, with a courage of a lion--the awful twofold death close before him, and which he had in probability deliberately preferred to an early relinquishment of his companions to their fate. It is a fine picture--one that shall every hang framed with his image in our memory; helping us to believe that "'-----Lycidas our sorrow is not dead. Sunk though he be beneath the watery flood,'-- But that he hath mounted to a higher sphere-- "'Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves.'" AUTHOR OF "THE FOOL OF QUALITY." Of the interesting papers in the February Dublin University Magazine, we have read none with more satisfaction than the biographical sketch and portrait of one of the most distinguished Irishmen of his own or any age, the gifted and pure minded author of _Gustavus Vasa_ and _The Fool of Quality_, HENRY BROOKE. Of his literary fate it might be said that the most unfortunate thing he did was to assert the patriotism of Dean Swift; and the most unfortunate thing was to be left out of Doctor Johnson's "Lives of the Poets." Trials had he to undergo, although not absolutely driven to the wall, like many children of "the fatal dowry," and those of Irish complexion, in particular; but he bravely bore up against them. Those who deem that relatives may live more happily apart, and that friendship is best preserved in full dress, may look at the picture of Henry Brooke, the poet and politician, and Robert Brooke, the painter, with their wives and children, not less than twenty, living together in perfect peace and amity at Daisy Park, in the flattest part of Kildare, where, in those dull seats and distant times, a family breeze might now and then have been looked on in the Irish sense as a "convenience and a comfort." "While Henry wrote," says the biographer, "Robert painted, and sold his pictures; and thus these two loving brothers, having lost their property, made a right and manful use of their intellectual gifts, and supported their large families by the sweat of their brows." "In his politics, Brooke was of the old whig school; and, had he lived in 1829, he would probably have been an emancipator. He was a right-minded, ardent Irishman in his love for fatherland; hated oppression; idolized liberty; wrote most keenly against Poyning's infamous laws; mourned over the misrule and misgovernment of his country, under the tyranny and rapacity of the Stuart dynasty; admired King William, and was an exulting Protestant; yet greatly loved his Roman Catholic neighbors, and would preserve to them their properties, though he disliked their principles, and deprecated their ascendency." Dr. Johnson's feelings respecting Brooke are accounted for, not improbably, as follows: "It may be asked why did Dr. Johnson exclude Brooke from his 'Lives of the Poets,' where so many names of little note are to be found? In 1739, Johnson had written in Brooke's praise in his 'Complete Vindication,' and twenty years afterwards, when the learned Dr. Campbell showed a spirited 'Prospectus of a History of Ireland' written by him, to the great moralist, he read it with much pleasure and praise, saying that 'every line breathed the true fire of genius.' It is recorded that, on this occasion, Johnson lamented that 'the vanity of Irishmen, even if their patriotism were extinct, did not enable Brooke to carry his design into execution.' In Johnson's letter to Charles O'Connor we have his mind on the subject. To Brooke he appears never to have written; there had been an ancient quarrel between them. They had argued and disagreed; and the traditionary story in Brooke's family bears _so_ heavily on the manner of the philosopher, and is _so_ flattering to the courtesy of the poet, that we should prefer not to write it down. Brooke was at all times strangely careless of fame; independent to a fault, and more proud than vain; and though much urged by his friends to humble himself, yet he could not be induced to 'bow down' to the cap of this literary Gesler, much as he regarded his learning and noble intellect. This dislike of the Doctor continued during his life; and Boswell narrates that on the occasion of a play being read to him (it was Brooke's _Gustavus Vasa_) and a circle of friends, on coming to the line-- "Who rules o'er free men should himself be free!' the company applauded, but Johnson said it might as well be said-- "'Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat--' a stupid and inapt verbal sophism, and unworthy of his great and good mind; but such was often his way. In this fashion one might string endless parodies on the line, and equally inapplicable; for example:-- "'Who keeps a madhouse should himself be mad!' "Mr. Brooke's elegant and honest mind probably had in view that word of Scripture which saith, 'he that ruleth his own spirit is better than he who taketh a city'--(Prov. xvi. 32.) "By this unhappy difference Brooke lost his Johnsonian niche in the temple of biographical fame. Yet we must remember that a better fate was his,--'his record is on high,'--and his spirit with that Saviour who loved him and made him what he was. Faults and inconsistency were in him, no doubt, but still we know not of any of whom it could be so well and suitably said-- "'His life was gentle, and the elements So mixed him, that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, 'This was a man.'" BANCROFT'S AMERICAN REVOLUTION.[5] From the Westminster Review. Among the historians who have attained a high and deserved reputation in the United States, within the last few years, we are inclined to yield the first place to George Bancroft. His great work on the history of the United States has been brought down from the commencement of American colonization to the opening of the Revolutionary War, to which subject it is understood that he intends devoting the three succeeding volumes. His researches in the public offices of England, while he was Minister of the United States at the Court of St. James, have brought to light a great mass of documentary evidence on the antecedents and course of the Revolution, which have not yet been made public. With his critical sagacity in sifting evidence, his hound-like instinct in scenting every particle of testimony that can lead him on the right-track, and his plastic skill in moulding the most confused and discordant materials into a compact, symmetrical, and truthful narrative, he cannot fail to present the story of that great historical drama with a freshness, accuracy, and artistic beauty, worthy of the immortal events which it commemorates. Mr. Bancroft is now exclusively occupied in the completion of this work. He pursues it with the drudging fidelity of a mechanical laborer, combined with the enthusiasm of a poet and the comprehensive wisdom of a statesman. With strong social tastes, he gives little time to society. His favorite post is in his library, where he labors the live-long day in the spirit of the ancient artist, _Nulla dies sine linea_. His experience in political and diplomatic life, no less than his rare and generous culture, and his singular union of the highest mental faculties, enable us to predict with confidence that this work will be reckoned among the genuine masterpieces of historical genius. The volumes of the History of the United States already published, are well known to intelligent readers both in Great Britain and America. They are distinguished for their compact brevity of statement, their terse and vigorous diction, their brilliant panoramic views, and the boldness and grace of their sketches of personal character. A still higher praise may be awarded to this history for the tenacity with which it clings to the dominant and inspiring idea of which it records the development. Whoever reads it without comprehending the standpoint of the author, is liable to disappointment. For it must be confessed that as a mere narrative of events, the preference may be given to the productions of far inferior authors. But it is to be regarded as an epic in prose of the triumph of freedom. This noble principle is considered by Mr. Bancroft as an essential attribute of the soul, necessarily asserting itself in proportion to the spiritual supremacy which has been achieved. The history, then, is devoted to the illustration of the progress of freedom, as an out-birth of the spontaneous action of the soul. It is in this point of view that the remarkable chapters on the Massachusetts Pilgrims, the Pennsylvania Quakers, and the North American Indians, were written; and their full purport, their profound significance, can only be appreciated by readers whose minds possess at least the seeds of sympathy and cognateness with this sublime philosophy. The chapter on the Quakers is a pregnant psychological treatise. Sparkling all over with the electric lights of a rich humanitary philosophy, it invests the theologic visions of Fox and Barclay with a radiance and beauty which have been ill-preserved in the formal and lifeless organic systems of their successors. The parallel run by the historian between William Penn and John Locke is one of the most characteristic productions of his peculiar genius. Original, subtle, suggestive, crowded with matter and frugal of words, it brings out the distinctive features of the spiritual and mechanical schools in the persons of two of their 'representative men,' with a breadth and reality which is seldom found in philosophical portraitures. Mr. Bancroft was the son of an eminent Unitarian clergyman in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was born about the beginning of the present century, and is consequently a little more than fifty years of age. He graduated at Harvard University, with distinguished honors, before he had completed his fifteenth year. Soon after he sailed for Europe, and continued his studies at the German Universities, returning to his own country just before the attainment of his majority. Devoting himself for several years to literary and educational pursuits, he acquired a brilliant reputation as a poet, critic, and essayist; and at a subsequent period, entering the career of politics, he has signalized himself by his attachment to democratic ideas, and the eloquence and force with which on all occasions he has sustained the principles with the prevalence of which he identifies the progress of humanity. * * * * * From the Athenæum. The further this work proceeds, the more do we feel that it must take its place as an essentially satisfactory history of the United States. Mr. Bancroft is thoroughly American in thought and in feeling, without ceasing to have those larger views and nobler sympathies which result from cosmopolitan rather than from local training. His style is original and national. It breathes of the mountain and the prairie--of the great lakes and wild savannahs of his native land. A strain of wild and forest-like music swells up in almost every line. The story is told richly and vividly. It has hitherto been thought by Americans themselves, even more than by Europeans, that the story of the English colonies presented but a dreary and lifeless succession of petty squabbles between the settlers and the crown officers--of unintelligible persecutions of each other on the ground of differences of opinion in religion. Mr. Bancroft has shown how ill founded has been this impression. In his hands American history is full of fine effects. Steeped in the colors of his imagination, a thousand incidents hitherto thought dull appear animated and pictorial. Between Hildreth and Bancroft the difference is immense. In the treatment of the former, dates, facts, events are duly stated--the criticism is keen, the chronology indisputable,--but the figures do not live, the narrative knows no march. The latter is all movement. His men glow with human purposes,--his story sweeps on with the exulting life of a procession. Yet because Mr. Bancroft contrives to bring out the more romantic aspects of his theme, it is not to be supposed that he fails in that strict regard to truth--truth of character as well as of incident--which is the historian's first duty, and without which all other qualities are useless. Of all American writers who have written on the history of their own country, we would pronounce him to be the most conscientious. His former volumes were remarkable for the amplitude and accuracy of their references. The authorities cited were often recondite and obscure,--yet it was evident that they had been sifted carefully and critically. The same may be said of the volume before us. Careful research had enabled Mr. Bancroft to throw new light on several points connected with the settlement and early history of his country. As his dates approach nearer to the present time, the sources of new information open on him in abundance. The MS, additions to our knowledge of the times treated of in these volumes are considerable; but they are spread pretty fairly over the entire narrative--lending a new light to the events and adding a new trait to the characters--rather than thrown into masses. The effect produced is more that of greater roundness and completion than of absolute change in old historical verdicts. We quote one out of innumerable instances of these minute but characteristic additions. The historian is speaking of the Duke of Newcastle,--whose ignorant government of the colonies was one of the chief sources of their discontent:-- "For nearly four-and-twenty years he remained minister for British America; yet to the last, the statesman, who was deeply versed in the statistics of elections, knew little of the continent of which he was the guardian. He addressed letters, it used to be confidently said, to 'the island of New England,' and could not tell but that Jamaica was in the Mediterranean. Heaps of colonial memorials and letters remained unread in his office; and a paper was almost sure of neglect unless some agent remained with him to see it opened. His frivolous nature could never glow with affection, or grasp a great idea, or analyze complex relations. After long research, I cannot find that he ever once attended seriously to an American question, or had a clear conception of one American measure." Walpole had told us that Newcastle did not know where Jamaica was:--the amusing address "Island of New England" Mr. Bancroft finds referred to in a manuscript letter of J. Q. Adams. It serves to suggest that what is usually thought to be a joke of Walpole's was probably the literal truth:--the man who is sufficiently innocent of geography to make New England an island, would have no difficulty in confounding the East and West Indies. In this volume we first meet with the great character who is to be the hero of the Revolution now looming before the reader. Mr. Bancroft treats us to no full-length portrait of George Washington:--instead of a picture he presents us with the man. Washington comes before us at twenty-one,--in the chamber of Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia; from whom he is accepting a perilous but most important mission--to cross the forests, rivers, and mountains which separate Williamsburg and Lake Erie, in the depths of a severe winter, and there endeavor to detach the Delaware Indians from the French alliance. All the elements of Washington's greatness--his courage, hardihood, military prescience, and merciful disposition--are stamped indelibly on this the first act of his public life:-- "In the middle of November, with an interpreter and four attendants, and Christopher Gist as a guide, he left Will's Creek, and following the Indian trace through forest solitudes, gloomy with the fallen leaves, and solemn sadness of late autumn, across mountains, rocky ravines, and streams, through sleet and snows, he rode in nine days to the fork of the Ohio. How lonely was the spot, where, so long unheeded of men, the rapid Allegheny met nearly at right angles 'the deep and still' water of the Monongahela! At once Washington foresaw the destiny of the place. 'I spent some time,' said he, 'in viewing the rivers;' 'the land in the Fork has the absolute command of both.' 'The flat, well-timbered land all around the point lies very convenient for building.' After creating in imagination a fortress and a city, he and his party swam their horses across the Allegheny, and wrapt their blankets around them for the night, on its northwest bank. From the Fork the chief of the Delawares conducted Washington through rich alluvial fields to the pleasing valley at Logstown. There deserters from Louisiana discoursed of the route from New Orleans to Quebec, by way of the Wabash and the Maumee, and of a detachment from the lower province on its way to meet the French troops from Lake Erie, while Washington held close colloquy with the half-king; the one anxious to gain the west as a part of the territory of the ancient dominion, the other to preserve it for the Red Men. 'We are brothers,' said the half-king in council; 'we are one people; I will send back the French speech-belt, and will make the Shawnees and the Delawares do the same.' On the night of the twenty-ninth of November, the council-fire was kindled an aged orator was selected to address the French the speech which he was to deliver was debated and rehearsed; it was agreed that, unless the French would heed this third warning to quit the land, the Delawares also would be their enemies; and a very large string of black and white wampun was sent to the Six Nations as a prayer for aid. After these preparations, the party of Washington, attended by the half-king, and envoys of the Delawares, moved onwards to the post of the French at Venango. The officers there avowed the purpose of taking possession of the Ohio; and they mingled the praises of La Salle with boasts of their forts at Le Boeuf and Erie, at Niagara, Toronto, and Frontenac. 'The English,' said they, 'can raise two men to our one; but they are too dilatory to prevent any enterprise of ours.' The Delawares were intimidated or debauched; but the half-king clung to Washington like a brother, and delivered up his belt as he had promised. The rains of December had swollen the creeks. The messengers could pass them only by felling trees for bridges. Thus they proceeded, now killing a buck and now a bear, delayed by excessive rains and snows, by mire and swamps, while Washington's quick eye discerned all the richness of the meadows. At Waterford, the limit of his journey, he found Fort Le Boeuf defended by cannon. Around it stood the barracks of the soldiers, rude log-cabins, roofed with bark. Fifty birch-bark canoes, and one hundred seventy boats of pine, were already prepared for the descent of the river, and materials were collected for building more. The Commander, Gardeur de St. Pierre, an officer of integrity and experience, and, for his dauntless courage, both feared and beloved by the Red Men, refused to discuss questions of right. 'I am here,' said he, 'by the orders of my general, to which I shall conform with exactness and resolution.' And he avowed his purpose of seizing every Englishman within the Ohio Valley. France was resolved on possessing the great territory which her missionaries and travellers had revealed to the world. Breaking away from courtesies, Washington hastened homewards to Virginia. The rapid current of French Creek dashed his party against rocks; in shallow places they waded, the water congealing on their clothes; where the ice had lodged in the bend of the rivers, they carried their canoe across the neck. At Venango, they found their horses, but so weak, the travellers went still on foot, heedless of the storm. The cold increased very fast; the paths grew 'worse by a deep snow continually freezing.' Impatient to get back with his despatches, the young envoy, wrapping himself in an Indian dress, with gun in hand and pack on his back, the day after Christmas quitted the usual path, and, with Gist for his sole companion, by aid of the compass, steered the nearest way across the country for the Fork. An Indian, who had lain in wait for him, fired at him from not fifteen steps' distance, but, missing him, became his prisoner. 'I would have killed him,' wrote Gist, 'but Washington forbade.' Dismissing their captive at night, they walked about half a mile, then kindled a fire, fixed their course by the compass, and continued travelling all night, and all the next day, till quite dark. Not till then did the weary wanderers 'think themselves safe enough to sleep,' and they encamped, with no shelter but the leafless forest-tree. On reaching the Allegheny, with one poor hatchet and a whole day's work, a raft was constructed and launched. But before they were half over the river, they were caught in the running ice, expecting every moment to be crushed, unable to reach either shore. Putting out the setting-pole to stop the raft, Washington was jerked into the deep water, and saved himself only by grasping at the raft-logs. They were obliged to make for an island. There lay Washington, imprisoned by the elements; but the late December night was intensely cold, and in the morning he found the river frozen. Not till he reached Gist's settlement, in January, 1754, were his toils lightened." Washington reported the state of affairs on the Lakes,--and active measures were consequently adopted. Of the rapid and brilliant development of his military genius, we are not now to trace the progress; but it is scarcely possible to read without a shudder of "the hair-breadth 'scapes" of the young man whose life was of such inestimable consequence to his country. Thus, in the battle fought by Braddock--to whom Washington acted as aide-de-camp--against the French and Indians in 1755, he appeared to others as well as to himself to bear a charmed life. In this action, says Mr. Bancroft,-- "Of eighty-six officers, twenty-six were killed--among them, Sir Peter Halket,--and thirty-seven were wounded, including Gage and other field officers. Of the men, one half were killed or wounded. Braddock braved every danger. His secretary was shot dead; both his English aids were disabled early in the engagement, leaving the American alone to distribute his orders. 'I expected every moment,' said one whose eye was on Washington, 'to see him fall.' Nothing but the superintending care of Providence could have saved him. An Indian chief--I suppose a Shawnee--singled him out with his rifle, and bade others of his warriors do the same. Two horses were killed under him; four balls penetrated his coat. 'Some potent Manitou guards his life,' exclaimed the savage. 'Death,' wrote Washington, 'was levelling my companions on every side of me, but, by the all-powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected.' 'To the public,' said Davis, a learned divine, in the following month, 'I point out that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, whom I cannot but hope Providence has preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country.' 'Who is Mr. Washington?' asked Lord Halifax, a few months later. 'I know nothing of him,' he added, 'but that they say he behaved in Braddock's action as bravely as if he really loved the whistling of bullets.'" Thus opened that career of glory, moderation, and success--thus, at the period of nascent manhood were exhibited the marking traits of that serene and devoted character--which have placed the name of Washington on the noblest and loftiest pedestal in the Temple of Fame. Leaving for a while the only figure in that scene of miserable and savage warfare on which the mind can dwell with any degree of trust and satisfaction, we will move to the north-east of the English settlements, and follow the story of the unhappy people of Acadia. Mr. Bancroft has drawn a touching picture of the homely virtues and obscure happiness of this rural population before the interference of the British officers changed their joy into wailing, and endowed their simple annals with a dark and tragic interest:-- "After repeated conquests and restorations, the treaty of Utrecht conceded Acadia, or Nova Scotia, to Great Britain. Yet the name of Annapolis, the presence of a feeble English garrison, and the emigration of hardly five or six English families, were nearly all that marked the supremacy of England. The old inhabitants remained on the soil which they had subdued, hardly conscious that they had changed their sovereign. They still loved the language and the usages of their forefathers, and their religion was graven upon their souls. They promised submission to England; but such was the love with which France had inspired them, they would not fight against its standard or renounce its name. Though conquered they were French neutrals. For nearly forty years from the peace of Utrecht they had been forgotten or neglected, and had prospered in their seclusion. No tax-gatherer counted their folds, no magistrate dwelt in their hamlets. The parish priests made their records and regulated their successions. Their little disputes were settled among themselves, with scarcely an instance of an appeal to English authority at Annapolis. The pastures were covered with their herds and flocks; and dikes, raised by extraordinary efforts of social industry, shut out the rivers and the tide from alluvial marshes of exuberant fertility. The meadows, thus reclaimed, were covered by richest grasses, or fields of wheat, that yielded fifty and thirty fold at the harvest. Their houses were built in clusters, neatly constructed and comfortably furnished, and around them all kinds of domestic fowls abounded. With the spinning-wheel and the loom, their women made, of flax from their own fields, of fleeces from their own flock, coarse, but sufficient clothing. The few foreign luxuries that were coveted could be obtained from Annapolis or Louisburgh, in return for furs, or wheat, or cattle. Thus were the Acadians happy in their neutrality and in the abundance which they drew from their native land. They formed, as it were, one great family. Their morals were of unaffected purity. Love was sanctified and calmed by the universal custom of early marriages. The neighbors of the community would assist the new couple to raise their cottage, while the wilderness offered land. Their numbers increased, and the colony, which had begun only as the trading station of a company, with a monopoly of the fur trade, counted, perhaps, sixteen or seventeen thousand inhabitants." The transfer of this colony from French to English rule could not fail to be productive of some untoward results. The native priests feared the introduction among them of heretical opinions:--the British officers treated the people with insolent contempt. "Their papers and records" says our historian, "were taken from them" by their new masters:-- "Was their property demanded for the public service? 'they were not to be bargained with for the payment.' The order may still be read on the Council records at Halifax. They must comply, it was written, without making any terms, 'immediately,' or 'the next courier would bring an order for military execution upon the delinquents.' And when they delayed in fetching firewood for their oppressors, it was told them from the governor, 'If they do not do it in proper time, the soldiers shall absolutely take their houses for fuel.' The unoffending sufferers submitted meekly to the tyranny. Under pretence of fearing that they might rise in behalf of France, or seek shelter in Canada, or convey provisions to the French garrisons, they were ordered to surrender their boats and their firearms; and, conscious of innocence, they gave up their barges and their muskets, leaving themselves without the means of flight, and defenceless. Further orders were afterwards given to the English officers, if the Acadians behaved amiss to punish them at discretion; if the troops were annoyed, to inflict vengeance on the nearest, whether the guilty one or not,--'taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'" There is no reason to believe that these atrocious orders were not executed in the spirit in which they had been conceived. But worse remained to come:-- "The Acadians cowered before their masters, hoping forbearance; willing to take an oath of fealty to England; in their single-mindedness and sincerity, refusing to pledge themselves to bear arms against France. The English were masters of the sea, were undisputed lords of the country, and could exercise clemency without apprehension. Not a whisper gave a warning of their purpose till it was ripe for execution. But it had been 'determined upon' after the ancient device of Oriental despotism, that the French inhabitants of Acadia should be carried away into captivity to other parts of the British dominions. * * France remembered the descendants of her sons in the hour of their affliction, and asked that they might have time to remove from the peninsula with their effects, leaving their lands to the English; but the answer of the British Minister claimed them as useful subjects, and refused them the liberty of transmigration. The inhabitants of Minas and the adjacent country pleaded with the British officers for the restitution of their boats and their guns, promising fidelity, if they could but retain their liberties, and declaring that not the want of arms, but their conscience, should engage them not to revolt. 'The memorial,' said Lawrence in Council, 'is highly arrogant, insidious and insulting.' The memorialists, at his summons, came submissively to Halifax. 'You want your canoes for carrying provisions to the enemy,' said he to them, though he knew no enemy was left in their vicinity. 'Guns are no part of your goods,' he continued, 'as by the laws of England all Roman Catholics are restrained from having arms, and are subject to penalties if arms are found in their houses. It is not the language of British subjects to talk of terms with the Crown, or capitulate about their fidelity and allegiance. What excuse can you make for your presumption in treating this government with such indignity as to expound to them the nature of fidelity? Manifest your obedience by immediately taking the oaths of allegiance in the common form before the Council.' The deputies replied that they would do as the generality of the inhabitants should determine; and they merely entreated leave to return home and consult the body of their people. The next day, the unhappy men, foreseeing the sorrows that menaced them, offered to swear allegiance unconditionally." But it was now too late. The savage purpose had been formed. That the cruelty might have no excuse, it happened that while the scheme was under discussion letters arrived leaving no doubt that all the shores of the Bay of Fundy were in the possession of the British. It only remained to be fixed how the exportation should be effected:-- "To hunt them into the net was impracticable; artifice was therefore resorted to. By a general proclamation, on one and the same day, the scarcely conscious victims, 'both old men and young men, as well as all the lads of ten years of age,' were peremptorily ordered to assemble at their respective posts. On the appointed 5th of September, they obeyed. At Grand Pré, for example, 418 unarmed men came together. They were marched into the church, and its avenues were closed, when Winslow, the American commander, placed himself in their centre, and spoke:--'You are convened together to manifest to you His Majesty's final resolution to the French inhabitants of this his province. Your lands, and tenements, cattle of all kinds, and live stock of all sorts, are forfeited to the crown, and you yourselves are to be removed from this his province. I am, through his Majesty's goodness, directed to allow you liberty to carry off your money and household goods, as many as you can, without discommoding the vessels you go in.' And he then declared them the King's prisoners. Their wives and families shared their lot; their sons, 527 in number, their daughters, 576; in the whole, women and babes and old men and children all included, 1,923 souls. The blow was sudden; they had left home but for the morning, and they never were to return. Their cattle were to stay unfed in the stalls, their fires to die out on their hearths. They had for that first day even no food for themselves or their children, and were compelled to beg for bread. The 10th of September was the day for the embarkation of a part of the exiles. They were drawn up six deep, and the young men, 161 in number, were ordered to march first on board the vessel. They could leave their farms and cottages, the shady rocks on which they had reclined, their herds and their garners; but nature yearned within them, and they would not be separated from their parents. Yet of what avail was the frenzied despair of the unarmed youth? They had not one weapon; the bayonet drove them to obey; and they marched slowly and heavily from the chapel to the shore, between women and children, who kneeling, prayed for blessings on their heads, they themselves weeping, and praying, and singing hymns. The seniors went next; the wives and children must wait till other transport vessels arrived. The delay had its horrors. The wretched people left behind were kept together near the sea, without proper food or raiment, or shelter, till other ships came to take them away; and December with its appalling cold had struck the shivering, half-clad, broken-hearted sufferers before the last of them were removed. 'The embarkation of the inhabitants goes on but slowly,' wrote Monckton, from Fort Cumberland, near which he had burned three hamlets, 'the most part of the wives of the men we have prisoners are gone off with their children, in hopes I would not send off their husbands without them.' Their hope was vain. Near Annapolis, a hundred heads of families fled to the woods, and a party was detached on the hunt to bring them in. 'Our soldiers hate them,' wrote an officer on this occasion, 'and if they can but find a pretext to kill them, they will.' Did a prisoner seek to escape, he was shot down by the sentinel. Yet some fled to Quebec; more than 3,000 had withdrawn to Miramichi and the region south of the Ristigouche; some found rest on the banks of the St. John's and its branches; some found a lair in their native forests; some were charitably sheltered from the English in the wigwams of the savages. But 7,000 of these banished people were driven on board ships, and scattered among the English colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia alone; 1,020 to South Carolina alone. They were cast ashore without resources; hating the poor-house as a shelter for their offspring, and abhorring the thought of selling themselves as laborers. Households, too, were separated; the colonial newspapers contained advertisements of members of families seeking their companions, of sons anxious to reach and relieve their parents, of mothers mourning for their children. The wanderers sighed for their native country; but to prevent their return, their villages, from Annapolis to the isthmus, were laid waste. Their old homes were but ruins. In the district of Minas, for instance, 250 of their houses, and more than as many barns, were consumed. The live stock which belonged to them, consisting of great numbers of horned cattle, hogs, sheep, and horses, were seized as spoils and disposed of by the English officials. A beautiful and fertile tract of country was reduced to a solitude. There was none left round the ashes of the cottages of the Acadians but the faithful watch-dog, vainly seeking the hands that fed him. Thickets of forest-trees choked their orchards; the ocean broke over their neglected dikes, and desolated their meadows." Nor were the woes of this ill-treated people ended: "Relentless misfortune pursued the exiles whereever they fled. Those sent to Georgia, drawn by a love for the spot where they were born as strong as that of the captive Jews, who wept by the side of the rivers of Babylon for their own temple and land, escaped to sea in boats, and went coasting from harbor to harbor; but when they had reached New England, just as they would have set sail for their native fields, they were stopped by orders from Nova Scotia. Those who dwelt on the St. John's were torn once more from their new homes. When Canada surrendered, hatred with its worst venom pursued the 1,500 who remained south of the Ristigouche. Once more those who dwelt in Pennsylvania presented a humble petition to the Earl of Loudoun, then the British Commander in-Chief in America; and the cold-hearted peer, offended that the prayer was made in French, seized their five principal men, who in their own land had been persons of dignity and substance, and shipped them to England, with the request that they might be kept from ever again becoming troublesome by being consigned to service as common sailors on board ships of war." And so it was throughout:--"We have been true," said they in one of their petitions, "to our religion, and true to ourselves; yet nature appears to consider us only as the objects of public vengeance."--"I know not," writes Mr. Bancroft, "if the annals of the human race keep the records of wounds so wantonly inflicted, so bitter and so perennial as fell upon the French inhabitants of Acadia." American history has at least one element of peculiar character. The voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers--the settlement of the Virginia cavaliers--the foundation of Pennsylvania,--though all events of profound moral interest, as well as productive of fine pictorial effects, are not without parallels more or less close in the varied tale of ancient and modern colonization. But that which is distinctive and peculiar in the story of American civilization is, its struggle against the Red Men. Settlers, it is true, have often found themselves in strange company. In Africa the Greek colonizer elbowed the swarthy Ethiop. In South America the Spaniard stood beside the Peruvian and the Carib. Dutchmen have encountered the Malay and the Dyak. For two centuries English settlers have had to deal with the uncivilized races of the East and West--from the Bushmen of the Cape to the savages of New Zealand. But none of these races present the same attractive features as the brethren of the Iroquois and the Mohicans. About these latter there are points of romantic and chivalric interest. Though not free from the vices of the savage, they often exhibit virtues which might shame the European. There is something of dignity in their aspect and bearing. They are seldom without a natural and original poetic sense,--and their language has a wild Ossianic music. They are bold in metaphor and apt in natural illustration. A group of actors on the scene having characteristics so peculiar and so attractive as the Red Skin is invaluable to a historian whose tendency is to see events and note character under their most pictorial aspects. The part taken by the Indians in that war between the French and English in America which ended in the conquest of Quebec and the expulsion of the Lilies from Canada is narrated at great length by Mr. Bancroft,--and the atrocious nature of the conflict is well brought out. At the commencement of the war, we are allowed a glimpse at a curious war-council: "'Brothers,' said the Delawares to the Miamis, 'we desire the English and the Six Nations to put their hands upon your heads, and keep the French from hurting you. Stand fast in the chain of friendship with the Government of Virginia.' 'Brothers,' said the Miamis to the English, 'your country is smooth; your hearts are good; the dwellings of your governors are like the spring in its bloom.' 'Brothers,' they added to the Six Nations, holding aloft a calumet ornamented with feathers, 'the French and their Indians have struck us, yet we kept this pipe unhurt;' and they gave it to the Six Nations, in token of friendship with them and with their allies. A shell and a string of black wampum were given to signify the unity of heart; and that, though it was darkness to the westward, yet towards the sun-rising it was bright and clear. Another string of black wampum announced that the war-chiefs and braves of the Miamis held the hatchet in their hand, ready to strike the French. The widowed Queen of the Piankeshaws sent a belt of black shells intermixed with white. 'Brothers,' such were her words, 'I am left a poor, lonely woman, with one son, whom I commend to the English, the Six Nations, the Shawnees, and the Delawares, and pray them to take care of him.' The Weas produced a calumet. 'We have had this feathered pipe,' said they, 'from the beginning of the world; so that when it becomes cloudy, we can sweep the clouds away. It is dark in the west, yet we sweep all clouds away towards the sun-rising, and leave a clear and serene sky.' Thus, on the alluvial lands of Western Ohio, began the contest that was to scatter death broadcast through the world. All the speeches were delivered again to the Deputies of the Nations, represented at Logstown, that they might be correctly repeated to the head Council at Onondaga. An express messenger from the Miamis hurried across the mountains, bearing to the shrewd and able Dinwiddie, the Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, a belt of wampum, the scalp of a French Indian, and a feathered pipe, with letters from the dwellers on the Maumee and on the Wabash. 'Our good brothers of Virginia,' said the former, 'we must look upon ourselves as lost, if our brothers, the English, do not stand by us and give us arms.' 'Eldest brother,' pleaded the Picts and Windaws, 'this string of wampum assures you, that the French King's servants have spilled our blood, and eaten the flesh of three of our men. Look upon us and pity us, for we are in great distress. Our chiefs have taken up the hatchet of war. We have killed and eaten ten of the French and two of their negroes. We are your brothers; and do not think this is from our mouth only; it is from our very hearts.' Thus they solicited protection and revenge." The Duke of Newcastle was unequal to the task of driving the soldiers of France from Canada or from the valley of the Mississippi. The North and South were both in the hands of France. The route of the Ohio and the Mississippi had been discovered by adventurers and missionaries of that nation; and a few years of quiet possession of the territory would have allowed French statesmen to consolidate their power in those regions, and to draw a strong cordon around the entire group of English colonies on the Atlantic sea-board. But Pitt's genius was brought to bear at a critical moment on the arrangement of this great question--and he conceived the project of breaking the Mississippi line and attacking the enemy in their strongholds on the St. Lawrence. Three expeditions were fitted out. Amherst and Wolfe were ordered to join the fleet under Boscawen, destined to act against Louisburgh--Forbes was sent to the Ohio Valley--Abercrombie was intrusted with the command against Crown Point and Ticonderoga, though Lord Howe was sent out with the last named as the real soul of the enterprise. Mr. Bancroft writes: "None of the officers won favor like Lord Howe and Wolfe. Both were still young. To high rank and great connections Howe added manliness, humanity, capacity to discern merit, and judgment to employ it. As he reached America, he entered on the simple austerity of forest warfare. James Wolfe, but thirty-one years old, had already been eighteen years in the army; was at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and had won laurels at Laffeldt. Merit made him at two-and-twenty a lieutenant-colonel, and his active genius improved the discipline of his battalion. He was at once authoritative and humane, severe, yet indefatigably kind; modest, but aspiring and secretly conscious of ability. The brave soldier dutifully loved and obeyed his widowed mother, and his gentle nature saw visions of happiness in scenes of domestic love, even while he kindled at the prospect of glory, as 'gunpowder at fire.'" On the 28th of May the expedition reached Halifax.-- "For six days after the British forces on their way from Halifax to Louisburgh, had entered Chapeau Rouge Bay, the surf, under a high wind, made the rugged shore inaccessible, and gave the French time to strengthen and extend their lines. The sun still dashed heavily, when, before daybreak, on the 8th of June, the troops, under cover of a random fire from the frigates, attempted disembarking. Wolfe, the third brigadier, who led the first division, would not allow a gun to be fired, cheered on the rowers, and, on coming to shoal water, jumped into the sea; and, in spite of the surf, which broke several boats and upset more, in spite of the well-directed fire of the French, in spite of their breastwork and rampart of felled trees, whose interwoven branches made one continued wall of green, the English landed, took the batteries, drove in the French, and on the same day invested Louisburgh. At that landing, none was more gallant than young Richard Montgomery; just one-and-twenty; Irish by birth; an humble officer in Wolfe's brigade; but also a servant of humanity, enlisted in its corps of immortals. The sagacity of Wolfe honored him with well-deserved praise, and promotion to a lieutenancy. On the morning of the 12th, an hour before dawn, Wolfe, with light infantry and Highlanders, took by surprise the light-house battery on the north-east side of the entrance to the harbor; the smaller works were successively carried. On the 23d, the English battery began to play on that of the French on the island near the centre of the mouth of the harbor. Science, sufficient force, union among the officers, heroism, pervading mariners and soldiers, carried forward the siege, during which Barre by his conduct secured the approbation of Amherst and the confirmed friendship of Wolfe. Of the French ships in the port, three were burned on the 21st of July; in the night following the 25th, the boats of the squadron, with small loss, set fire to the Prudent, a seventy-four, and carried off the Bienfaisant. Boscawen was prepared to send six English ships into the harbor. But the town of Louisburgh was already a heap of ruins; for eight days, the French officers and men had had no safe place for rest; of fifty-two cannon opposed to the English batteries forty were disabled. The French had but five ships of the line and four frigates. It was time for the Chevalier de Drucour to capitulate. The garrison became prisoners of war, and, with the sailors and marines, in all 5,637, were sent to England. On the 27th of July, the English took possession of Louisburgh, and, as a consequence, of Cape Breton and Prince Edward's Island. Thus fell the power of France on our eastern coast. Halifax being the English naval station, Louisburgh was deserted. The harbor still offers shelter from storms; the coast repels the surge: but a few hovels only mark the spot which so much treasure was lavished to fortify, so much heroism to conquer. Wolfe, whose heart was in England, returned home with the love and esteem of the army. His country was full of exultation; the trophies were deposited with pomp in the cathedral of St. Paul's; the churches gave thanks; Boscawen, himself a member of parliament, was honored by a unanimous tribute from the House of Commons. New England, too, triumphed; for the praises awarded to Amherst and Wolfe recalled the heroism of her own sons." This success inspired Pitt to still greater efforts. He resolved to annex the "boundless north," as it was then called, to the British empire in America; and early in the spring Wolfe again went out,--this time, to conquer Quebec and find a soldier's grave. Many of his companions in arms were then and afterwards famous men:--Jervis, afterwards the renowned Earl St. Vincent, James Cook, the navigator, George Townshend, Barre, and Colonel Howe. "On the 26th of June, the whole armament arrived, without the least accident, off the Isle of Orleans, on which, the next day, they disembarked. A little south of west the cliff of Quebec was seen distinctly, seemingly impregnable, rising precipitously in the midst of one of the grandest scenes in nature. To protect this guardian citadel of New France, Montcalm had of regular troops no more than six wasted battalions; of Indian warriors few appeared, the wary savages preferring the security of neutrals; the Canadian militia gave him the superiority in numbers; but he put his chief confidence in the natural strength of the country. Above Quebec, the high promontory on which the upper town is built expands into an elevated plain, having towards the river the steepest acclivities. For nine miles or more above the city, as far as Cape Rouge, every landing-place was intrenched and protected. The river St. Charles, after meandering through a fertile valley, sweeps the rocky base of the town, which it covers by expanding into sedgy marshes. Nine miles below Quebec, the impetuous Montmorenci, after fretting itself a whirlpool route, and leaping for miles down the steps of a rocky bed, rushes with velocity towards the ledge, over which, falling two hundred and fifty feet, it pours its fleecy cataract into the chasm. As Wolfe disembarked on the Isle of Orleans, what scene could be more imposing? On his left lay at anchor the fleet with the numerous transports; the tents of his army stretched across the island; the intrenched troops of France, having their centre at the village of Beanport, extended from the Montmorenci to the St. Charles; the city of Quebec, garrisoned by five battalions, bounded the horizon. At midnight on the 28th, the short darkness was lighted up by a fleet of fire-ships, that, after a furious storm of wind, came down with the tide in the proper direction. But the British sailors grappled with them and towed them free of the shipping. The river was Wolfe's; the men-of-war made it so; and, being master of the deep water, he also had the superiority on the south-shore of the St. Lawrence. In the night of the 29th, Monckton, with four battalions, having crossed the south channel, occupied Point Levi; and where the mighty current, which below the town expands as a bay, narrows to a deep stream of but a mile in width, batteries of mortars and cannon were constructed. The citizens of Quebec, foreseeing the ruin of their houses, volunteered to pass over the river and destroy the works; but, at the trial, their courage failed them, and they retreated. The English, by the discharge of red-hot balls and shells, set on fire fifty houses in a night, demolished the lower town, and injured the upper. But the citadel was beyond their reach, and every avenue from the river to the cliff was too strongly intrenched for an assault." The summer was going rapidly, and as yet no real progress had been made. Wolfe was eager for action,--and he pursued his researches into the nature of the formidable position with extraordinary eagerness:-- "He saw that the eastern bank of the Montmorenci was higher than the ground occupied by Montcalm, and, on the 9th of July, he crossed the north channel and encamped there; but the armies and their chiefs were still divided by the river precipitating itself down its rocky way in impassable eddies and rapids. Three miles in the interior, a ford was found; but the opposite bank was steep, woody, and well intrenched. Not a spot on the line of the Montmorenci for miles into the interior, nor on the St. Lawrence to Quebec, was left unprotected by the vigilance of the inaccessible Montcalm. The General proceeded to reconnoitre the shore above the town. In concert with Saunders, on the 18th of July, he sailed along the well-defended bank from Montmorenci to the St. Charles: he passed the deep and spacious harbor, which, at four hundred miles from the sea, can shelter a hundred ships of the line; he neared the high cliff of Cape Diamond, towering like a bastion over the waters, and surmounted by the banner of the Bourbons; he coasted along the craggy wall of rock that extends beyond the citadel; he marked the outline of the precipitous hill that forms the north bank of the river,--and every where he beheld a natural fastness, vigilantly defended, intrenchments, cannon, boats, and floating batteries guarding every access. Had a detachment landed between the city and Cape Rouge, it would have encountered the danger of being cut off before it could receive support. He would have risked a landing at St. Michael's Cove, three miles above the city, but the enemy prevented him by planting artillery and a mortar to play upon the shipping. Meantime, at midnight, on the 28th of July, the French sent down a raft of five-stages, consisting of nearly a hundred pieces; but these, like the fire-ships a month before, did but light up the river, without injuring the British fleet. Scarcely a day passed but there were skirmishes of the English with the Indians and Canadians, who were sure to tread stealthily in the footsteps of every exploring party. Wolfe returned to Montmorenci. July was almost gone, and he had made no effective advances. He resolved on an engagement. The Montmorenci, after falling over a perpendicular rock, flows for three hundred yards, amidst clouds of spray and rainbow glories, in a gentle stream to the St. Lawrence. Near the junction, the river may, for a few hours of the tide, be passed on foot. It was planned that two brigades should ford the Montmorenci at the proper time of the tide, while Monckton's regiments should cross the St. Lawrence in boats from Point Levi. The signal was made, but some of the boats grounded on a ledge of rocks that runs out into the river. While the seamen were getting them off, and the enemy were firing a vast number of shot and shells, Wolfe, with some of the navy officers as companions, selected a landing-place; and his desperate courage thought it not yet too late to begin the attack. Thirteen companies of grenadiers, and two hundred of the second battalion of the Royal Americans, who got first on shore, not waiting for support, ran hastily towards the intrenchments, and were repulsed in such disorder that they could not again come into line; though Monckton's regiment had arrived, and had formed with the coolness of invincible valor. But hours hurried by; night was near; the clouds of midsummer gathered heavily, as if for a storm; the tide rose; and Wolfe, wiser than Frederic at Colin, ordered a timely retreat." In this unsuccessful attempt Wolfe lost 400 men. On the tortures of a body wasted by fever and a mind preyed on by its own restless energy, we will not dwell. Wolfe reckoned on assistance from the corps of Amherst,--but this did not arrive. At last he perceived that his fate rested in his own hands alone,--and he conceived the daring plan of attack which has given to his name the soldier's immortality. We extract Mr. Bancroft's account of the brilliant attack which cost our young hero his life and the French their dominions in Northern America:-- "Every officer knew his appointed duty, when, at one o'clock in the morning of the 13th September, Wolfe, with Monckton and Murray, and about half the forces, set off in boats, and without sail or oars, glided down with the tide. In three-quarters of an hour the ships followed, and, though the night had become dark, aided by the rapid current, they reached the cove just in time to cover the landing. Wolfe and the troops with him leaped on shore; the light infantry, who found themselves borne by the current a little below the intrenched path, clambered up the steep hill, staying themselves by the roots and boughs of the maple and spruce and ash trees that covered the precipitous declivity, and, after a little firing, dispersed the picket which guarded the height. The rest ascended safely by the pathway. A battery of four guns on the left was abandoned to Colonel Howe. When Townshend's division disembarked, the English had already gained one of the roads to Quebec, and, advancing in front of the forest, Wolfe stood at daybreak with big invincible battalions on the plains of Abraham, the battle-field of empire. 'It can be but a small party come to burn a few houses and retire,' said Montcalm, in amazement, as the news reached him in his intrenchments the other side of the St. Charles; but, obtaining better information,--'Then,' he cried, 'they have at last got to the weak side of this miserable garrison; we must give battle and crush them before mid-day.' And before ten, the two armies, equal in numbers, each being composed of less than five thousand men, were ranged in presence of one another for battle. The English, not easily accessible from intervening shallow ravines, and rail fences, were all regulars, perfect in discipline, terrible in their fearless enthusiasm, thrilling with pride at their morning's success, commanded by a man whom they obeyed with confidence and love. The doomed and devoted Montcalm had what Wolfe had called but 'five weak French battalions,' of less than two thousand men, 'mingled with disorderly peasantry,' formed on ground which commanded the position of the English. The French had three little pieces of artillery, the English one or two. The two armies cannonaded each other for nearly an hour; when Montcalm, having summoned Bougainville to his aid, and despatched messenger after messenger for De Vaudreuil, who had fifteen hundred men at the camp, to come up, before he should be driven from the ground, endeavored to flank the British and crowd them down the high bank of the river. Wolfe counteracted the movement by detaching Townshend with Amherst's regiment, and afterwards a part of the Royal Americans, who formed on the left with a double front. Waiting no longer for more troops, Montcalm led the French army impetuously to the attack. The ill-disciplined companies broke by their precipitation and the unevenness of the ground; and fired by platoons, without unity. The English, especially the forty-third and forty-seventh, where Monckton stood, received the shock with calmness; and after having, at Wolfe's command, reserved their fire till their enemy was within forty yards, their line began a regular, rapid, and exact discharge of musketry. Montcalm was present every where, braving danger, wounded, but cheering by his example. The second in command, De Sennezergues, an associate in glory at Ticonderoga, was killed. The brave but untried Canadians, flinching from a hot fire in the open field, began to waver; and, so soon as Wolfe, placing himself at the head of the twenty-eighth and the Louisburgh grenadiers, charged with bayonets, they every where gave way. Of the English officers, Carleton was wounded; Barre, who fought near Wolfe, received in the head a ball which destroyed the power of vision of one eye, and ultimately made him blind. Wolfe, also, as he led the charge, was wounded in the wrist, but still pressing forward, he received a second ball; and, having decided the day, was struck a third time, and mortally, in the breast. 'Support me,' he cried to an officer near him: 'let not my brave fellows see me drop.' He was carried to the rear, and they brought him water to quench his thirst. 'They run, they run,' spoke the officer on whom he leaned. 'Who run?' asked Wolfe, as his life was fast ebbing. 'The French,' replied the officer, 'give way every where.' 'What,' cried the expiring hero, 'do they run already? Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton; bid him march Webb's regiment with all speed to Charles River to cut off the fugitives.' Four days before, he had looked forward to early death with dismay. 'Now, God be praised, I die happy.' These were his words as his spirit escaped in the blaze of his glory. Night, silence, the rushing tide, veteran discipline, the sure inspiration of genius had been his allies; his battle-field, high over the ocean-river, was the grandest theatre on earth for illustrious deeds; his victory, one of the most momentous in the annals of mankind, gave to the English tongue and the institutions of the Germanic race the unexplored and seemingly infinite West and North. He crowded into a few hours actions that would have given lustre to length of life; and filling his day with greatness, completed it before its noon." In that terrible action fell also "the hope of New France." In attempting to rally a body of fugitive Canadians in a copse near St. John's Gate, Montcalm was mortally wounded. We have quoted enough from this volume to show how varied and stirring are the subjects with which Mr. Bancroft here deals. FOOTNOTES: [5] _History of the American Revolution._ By George Bancroft. Vol. I. Boston, Little & Brown, 1852. From the London Literary Gazette LIFE IN CANADA. BY MRS. MOODIE.[6] If there be one of life's affairs in which woman has a peculiar right to have her wishes considered and her veto respected, it is that of emigration. For, in the arduous task of establishing a new home in a half-settled country, let man do what he will to alleviate, on her fall the burthen and heat of the day. Hers are the menial toils, the frequent anxieties, the lingering home-sickness, the craving after dear friends' faces and a beloved native land. Hers, too, the self-imposed duty and unselfish effort to hide regret under cheerful smiles, when the weary brother or husband returns at evening from toil in field and forest. Blessed and beautiful are the smiles of the sad-hearted, worn to wile away another's cares! Love in a cottage has long been jeered at, and depicted as flying out of the window. It seems miraculous to behold the capricious little deity steadfastly braving, for many a long year, the chilly atmosphere of a log-hut in an American forest. In the year 1832, Mrs. Moodie (here better remembered as Miss Susanna Strickland, sister of the well-known historian of the English and Scottish Queens) accompanied her husband, a half-pay subaltern, to the backwoods of Canada. Many were her misgivings, and they did not prove unfounded. Long and cruel was the probation she underwent, before finding comparative comfort and prosperity in the rugged land where at first she found so much to embitter her existence. Nobly did she bear up under countless difficulties and sufferings, supported by an energy rare in woman, and by her devoted attachment to the husband of her choice. For some years her troubles were not occasional, but continual and increasing. Her first installation in a forest home could hardly have been more discouraging and melancholy than it was: "The place we first occupied was purchased of Mr. C----, a merchant, who took it in payment of sundry large debts, which the owner, a New England loyalist, had been unable to settle. Old Joe H--, the present occupant, had promised to quit it with his family at the commencement of sleighing; and as the bargain was concluded in the month of September, and we were anxious to plough for fall wheat, it was necessary to be upon the spot. No house was to be found in the immediate neighborhood save a small dilapidated log tenement, on an adjoining farm (which was scarcely reclaimed from the bush), that had been some months without an owner. The merchant assured us that this could be made very comfortable until such time as it suited H--to remove." With singular want of caution, Mr. and Mrs. Moodie neglected to visit this "log tenement" before signing an agreement to rent it. On a rainy September day they proceed to take possession: "The carriage turned into a narrow, steep path, overhung with lofty woods, and after laboring up it with considerable difficulty, and at the risk of breaking our necks, it brought us at length to a rocky upland clearing, partially covered with a second growth of timber, and surrounded on all sides by the dark forest. 'I guess,' quoth our Yankee driver, 'that at the bottom of this 'ere swell, you'll find yourself _to hum_;' and plunging into a short path cut through the wood, he pointed to a miserable hut, at the bottom of a steep descent, and cracking his whip, exclaimed, 'It's a smart location that. I wish you Britishers may enjoy it.' I gazed upon the place in perfect dismay, for I had never seen such a shed called a house before. 'You must be mistaken; that is not a house, but a cattle-shed, or pig-sty.' The man turned his knowing keen eye upon me, and smiled, half humorously, half maliciously, as he said, 'You were raised in the old country, I guess; you have much to learn, and more perhaps than you'll like to know, before the winter is over.'" The prophet of evil spoke truly. It was a winter of painful instruction for the inexperienced young woman, and her not very prudent husband. We might fill columns with a bare list of their vexations and disasters. Amongst the former, not the least arose from the borrowing propensities of their neighbors. They had 'located' in a bad neighborhood, in the vicinity of a number of low Yankee squatters, "ignorant as savages, without their courtesy and kindness." These people walked unceremoniously at all hours into their wretched dwelling, to criticise their proceedings, make impertinent remarks, and to borrow--or rather to beg or steal, for what they borrowed they rarely returned. The most extraordinary loans were daily solicited or demanded; and Mrs. Moodie, strange and timid in her new home, and amongst, these semi-barbarians--her husband, too, being much away at the farm--for some time dared not refuse to acquiesce in their impudent extortions. Here is a specimen of the style of these miscalled 'borrowings.' On the first day of their arrival, whilst they were yet toiling to exclude wind and rain from the crazy hovel, which their baggage and goods filled nearly to the roof, a young Yankee 'lady' squeezed herself into the crowded room: "Imagine a girl of seventeen or eighteen years of age, with sharp, knowing-looking features, a forward impudent carnage, and a pert flippant voice, standing upon one of the trunks, and surveying all our proceedings in the most impertinent manner. The creature was dressed in a ragged, dirty, purple stuff gown, cut very low in the neck, with an old red cotton handkerchief tied over her head; her uncombed, tangled locks falling over her thin, inquisitive face in a state of perfect nature. Her legs and feet were bare, and in her coarse, dirty, red hands she swung to and fro an empty glass decanter." The mission of this squalid nymph was not to borrow but to lend. She "guessed the strangers were fixin' there," and that they'd want a glass decanter to hold their whisky, so she had brought one over. "But mind--don't break it," said she; "'tis the only one we have to hum, and father says it's so mean to drink out of green glass"--a sentiment worthy of a colonel of hussars. Although quite pleased by such disinterested kindness and attention, Mrs. Moodie declined the decanter, on the double ground of having some of her own, and of not drinking whisky. The refusal was unavailing. The lady in ragged purple set down the bottle on a trunk, as firmly as if she meant to plant it there, and took herself off. The next morning cleared up the mystery of her perseverance. "Have you done with that 'ere decanter I brought across yesterday?" said the 'cute damsel, presenting herself before Mrs. Moodie with her bare red knees peeping through her ragged petticoats, and with face and hands innocent of soap. The English lady returned the bottle, with the remark that she had never needed it. "'I guess you won't return it empty,' quoth the obliging neighbor; 'that would be mean, father says. He wants it filled with whisky.'" The hearty laugh which this solution of the riddle provoked from the inmates of the log-house offended the female Yankee, who tossed the decanter from hand to hand and glared savagely about her. But the ridicule was insufficient to deter her from the whisky hunt. When assured there was none in the place, she demanded rum, and pointed to a keg, in which she said she smelt it. Her keen olfactories had not deceived her. The rum, she was told, was for the workmen: "'I calculate,' was the reply, 'when you've been here a few months, you'll be too knowing to give rum to helps. But old-country folks are all fools, and that's the reason they get so easily sucked in, and be so soon wound up. Cum, fill the bottle, and don't be stingy. In this country we all live by borrowing. If you want any thing, why, just send and borrow from us.'" When the decanter was filled and delivered to this saucy mendicant, Mrs. Moodie ventured to petition for a little milk for her infant, but Impudence in purple laughed in her face, and named an exorbitant price at which she would _sell_ it her, for cash on delivery. It seems incredible that, after this ingratitude, Mrs. Moodie continued her 'lendings' to the family of which her new acquaintance was a distinguished ornament. "The very day our new plough came home, the father of this bright damsel, who went by the familiar name of _Old Satan_, came over to borrow it (though we afterwards found out that he had a good one of his own). The land had never been broken up, and was full of rocks and stumps, and he was anxious to save his own from injury; the consequence was, that the borrowed implement came home unfit for use, just at the very time we wanted to plough for fall wheat. The same happened to a spade and trowel, bought in order to plaster the house. Satan asked the loan of them for _one_ hour, for the same purpose, and we never saw them again." The other neighbors were no better. One Yankee dame used to send over her son, a hopeful youth, Philander by name, almost every morning, to borrow the bake-kettle, in which hot cakes were cooked for breakfast. One day, when Mrs. Moodie was later than usual in rising, she heard from her bedroom the kitchen latch lifted. It was Philander, come for the kettle. "_I (through the partition):_ 'You can't have it this morning. We cannot get our breakfast without it,' _Philander:_ 'No more can the old woman to hum,' and, snatching up the kettle, which had been left to warm on the hearth, he rushed out of the house, singing at the top of his voice, 'Hurrah for the Yankee boys!' When James (the servant) came home for his breakfast, I sent him across to demand the kettle, and the dame very coolly told him, that when she had done with it I might have it; but she defied him to take it out of her house with her bread in it." Since the request of the drover who begged his comrade to lend him a bark of his dog, we have not heard of queerer loans than some of those solicited of Mrs. Moodie:-- "Another American squatter was always sending over to borrow a small-tooth comb, which she called a _vermin destroyer_; and once the same person asked the loan of a towel, as a friend had come from the States to visit her, and the only one she had, had been made into a best 'pinny' for the child: she likewise begged a sight in the looking-glass, as she wanted to try on a new cap, to see if it were fixed to her mind. This woman must have been a mirror of neatness when compared with her dirty neighbors. One night I was roused up from my bed for the loan of a pair of 'steelyards.' For what purpose, think you, gentle reader? To weigh a new-born infant. The process was performed by tying the poor squalling thing up in a small shawl, and suspending it to one of the hooks. The child was a fine boy, and weighed ten pounds, greatly to the delight of the Yankee father. One of the drollest instances of borrowing I have ever heard of was told me by a friend. A maid-servant asked her mistress to go out on a particular afternoon, as she was going to have a party of her friends, and _wanted the loan of the drawing-room_." Traits such as these exhibit, more vividly than volumes of description, the sort of savages amongst whom poor Mrs. Moodie's lot was cast. They had all the worst qualities of Yankee and Indian--the good ones of neither. They had neither manners, heart, nor honesty. The basest selfishness, cunning, and malignity were their prominent characteristics. A less patient and good-tempered person than Mrs. Moodie would, however, have had little difficulty in getting rid of the troublesome and intrusive borrowers. They could not bear a sharp rebuke, and, more than once, a happy and pointed retort rid her, for weeks, or even for ever, of the pestilent presence of one or other of them. An English farmer, settled near at hand, to whom she mentioned her annoyances, laughed--as well he might--at her easy-going toleration. "Ask them sharply what they want," he said, "and, failing a satisfactory answer, bid them leave the house. Or--a better way still--buy some small article of them, and bid them bring the change." Mrs. Moodie tried the latter plan, and with no slight success. "That very afternoon, Miss Satan brought me a plate of butter for sale. The price was three and nine pence; twice the sum, by-the-bye, that it was worth. 'I have no change,'--giving her a dollar--'but you can bring it to me to-morrow.' Oh! blessed experiment! for the value of one quarter dollar I got rid of this dishonest girl for ever. Rather than pay me, she never entered the house again." The strange names of some of the farmers and squatters in Mrs. Moodie's neighborhood exceed belief. Amongst the substantial yeomen thereabouts were Solomon Sly, Reynard Fox, and Hiram Dolittle. Ammon and Ichabod were two hopeful Canadian youths, the former of whom--a child of tender years--was in the habit of hideously swearing at his father, and then scampering across the meadow, and defying the pursuit of his pursy progenitor. This is another family of which Mrs. Moodie gives amusing glimpses, in a style sufficiently masculine, but therefore all the better adapted to the subject:-- "The conversation was interrupted by a queer-looking urchin of five years old, dressed in a long-tailed coat and trowsers, popping his black shock head in at the door and calling out, 'Uncle Joe! You're wanted to hum.' 'Is that your nephew?' 'No! I guess it's my woman's eldest son,' said uncle Joe, rising; 'but they call me Uncle Joe. 'Tis a spry chap that--as cunning as a fox. I tell you what it is--he will make a smart man. Go home, Ammon, and tell your ma that I am coming.' 'I won't,' said the boy; 'you may go hum and tell her yourself. She has wanted wood cut this hour, and you'll catch it!' Away ran the dutiful son, but not before he had applied his forefinger significantly to the side of his nose, and, with a knowing wink, pointed in the direction of hum. Uncle Joe obeyed the signal, drily remarking that he could not leave the barn door without the old hen clucking him back. At this period we were still living in Old Satan's log house, and anxiously looking out for the first snow to put us in possession of the good substantial log dwelling occupied by Uncle Joe and his family, which consisted of a brown brood of seven girls and this highly-prized boy." The names of the squatter ladies were of a far superior description to those to which their brothers answered. Looking down upon the Old Testament, their godfathers had resorted for suggestions to the Italian Opera, the heathen mythology, and the Minerva press. She of the purple garment was called Emily. This was quiet enough. But her associates were Cinderellas, Minervas, and Almerias; and Amanda was the baptismal appellation of one of Ammon's sisters. Old Joe, it will be remembered, had agreed to quit, when winter set in, the house belonging to the farm which Mr. Moodie had purchased. But even in civilized and lawyer-ridden England possession is held to be nine points of the law, and in Canada the other tenth is thrown in. Old Joe's mother, an abominable Yankee Hecate, grinned like a whole bag-full of monkeys when informed that her son was expected to dis-locate as soon as sleighing began. "'Joe,' she guessed, 'would take his own time. The house was not built which was to receive him; and he was not the man to turn his back upon a warm hearth to camp in the wilderness. It was neither the first snow nor the last frost that would turn Joe out of his comfortable home.'" Mrs. Hecate spoke a true word. Frost came, sledges ran, thaw began--not an inch budged Joe. The sun gained power, a soft south wind fanned the frozen earth, the snow disappeared--still the reckless, dishonest scamp made no sign of removing, and replied with abuse to the remonstrances of those to whom his dwelling belonged. In the States, and with a brother Yankee, his obstinacy might have led to revolver and rifle work. The English emigrants patiently waited, to their own great inconvenience. Joe reckoned he shouldn't move till his 'missus' was confined--an interesting event which was expected to come off in May. About the middle of that month the Joe family was increased by a sturdy boy, whereupon its chief declared his intention of turning out in a fortnight, if all went well. Mrs. Moodie did not believe him--he had lied so often before; but he was determined to take her in at last, as he had done at first, for this time he was as good as his word. On the last day of May they went, bag and baggage, and Mrs. Moodie sent over her Scotch maid-servant and Irish serving-man to clear out the dwelling, which she justly expected would be in bad enough condition. But her expectations were far exceeded by the reality. The malignity of these people, who from her had received nothing but kindness and good offices, was degrading to human nature. Presently the Irishman returned, panting with indignation: "'The house,' he said, 'was more filthy than a pig-sty.' But that was not the worst of it; Uncle Joe, before he went, had undermined the brick chimney, and let all the water into the house. 'Oh! but if he comes here agin,' he continued, grinding his teeth and doubling his fist, 'I'll thrash him for it. And thin, Ma'arm, he has girdled round all the best graft apple-trees, the murtherin' owld villain, as if it would spile his digestion our ating them.' "John and Bell scrubbed at the house all day, and in the evening they carried over the furniture, and I went to inspect our new dwelling. It looked beautifully clean and neat. Bell had whitewashed all the black, smoky walls, and boarded ceilings, and scrubbed the dirty window-frames, and polished the fly-spotted panes of glass, until they actually admitted a glimpse of the clear air and the blue sky. Snow-white-fringed curtains, and a bed with furniture to correspond, a carpeted floor, and a large pot of green boughs on the hearthstone, gave an air of comfort and cleanliness to a room which, only a few hours before, had been a loathsome den of filth and impurity. This change would have been very gratifying, had not a strong, disagreeable odor almost deprived me of my breath as I entered the room. It was unlike any thing I had ever smelt before, and turned me so sick and faint, that I had to cling to the door-post for support. "'Where does this dreadful smell come from?' "'The guidness knows, ma'am; John and I have searched the house from the loft to the cellar, but we canna find out the cause of the stink.' "'It must be in the room, Bell, and it is impossible to remain here, or to live in the house, until it is removed.' "Glancing my eyes all round the place, I spied what seemed to me a little cupboard, over the mantel-shelf, and I told John to see if I was right. The lad mounted upon a chair, and pulled open a small door, but almost fell to the ground with the dreadful stench which seemed to rush from the closet. "'What is it, John?' I cried from the open door. "'A skunk! ma'arm, a skunk! Sure, I thought the devil had scorched his tail, and left the grizzled hair behind him. What a strong perfume it has!' he continued, holding up the beautiful but odious little creature by the tail. "'By dad! I know all about it now. I saw Ned Layton, only two days ago, crossing the field with Uncle Joe, with his gun on his shoulder, and this wee bit baste in his hand. They were both laughing like sixty. 'Well, if this does not stink the Scotchman out of the house,' said Joe, 'I'll be content to be tarred and feathered;' and thin they both laughed until they stopped to draw breath.' "I could hardly help laughing myself; but I begged Monaghan to convey the horrid creature away, and putting some salt and sulphur into a tin plate, and setting fire to it, I placed it on the floor in the middle of the room, and closed all the doors for an hour, which greatly assisted in purifying the house from the skunkification. Bell then washed out the closet with strong ley, and in a short time no vestige remained of the malicious trick Uncle Joe had played off upon us." The smell of skunk and Yankee eradicated, there still was much to be done before the house could be deemed habitable. It swarmed with mice, which all the night long performed fantastical dances over the faces and pillows of the new comers. The old logs which composed the walls of the dwelling were alive with bugs and large black ants, and the fleas upon the floor were as thick as sand-grains in the desert. With the warm weather, then just setting in, came legions of mosquitoes, that rose in clouds from the numerous little streams intersecting the valley. But in spite of all these discomforts, summer was felt to be a blessing, and "roughing it" in the woods was far less painful than in the season of snow, and frost, and storm. "The banks of the little streams abounded with wild strawberries, which, although small, were of a delicious flavor. Thither Bell and I, and the baby, daily repaired to gather the bright red berries of nature's own providing. Katie, young as she was, was very expert at helping herself, and we used to seat her in the middle of a fine bed, whilst we gathered farther on. Hearing her talking very lovingly to something in the grass, which she tried to clutch between her white hands, calling it 'pitty, pitty,' I ran to the spot and found it was a large garter-snake that she was so affectionately courting to her embrace. Not then aware that this formidable looking reptile was perfectly harmless, I snatched the child up in my arms, and ran with her home, never stopping until I reached the house and saw her safely seated in her cradle." Sixteen years elapsed after the departure of Joe and his brood from her neighborhood before Mrs. Moodie heard any thing of their fate. A winter or two ago, tidings of them reached her through one who had lived near them. Hecate, almost a centenarian, occupied a corner of her son's barn. She could not dwell in harmony under the same roof with her daughter-in-law. The lady in purple and her sisters were married and scattered abroad. Joe himself, who could neither read nor write, had turned itinerant preacher. No account was given of the hopeful Ammon. Mrs. Moodie's work, unaffectedly and naturally written, though a little coarse, will delight ladies, please men, and even amuse children. On our readers' account we regret our inability to make further extracts from its amusing pages. The book is one of great originality and interest. FOOTNOTES: [6] _Roughing it in the Bush; or, Life in Canada._ 2 vols. Bentley. From the London Literary Gazette. MR. SQUIER ON NICARAGUA.[7] Many causes are combining to give great importance to the States of Central America. Their own fertility and natural advantages, the commerce of the Pacific, and the gold of California, unite to attract the earnest attention of enterprising men and politicians towards them. At the present moment, the appearance of this full and able account of Nicaragua is peculiarly well-timed. The writer of it describes himself as "late _chargé d'affaires_ of the United States to the Republics of Central America." His official position has evidently enabled him to get at much information that would otherwise have been inaccessible. His name is well and favorably known to ethnologists and antiquarians by his researches into the history of the aboriginal monuments of the United States, and by his very curious, though somewhat fanciful, essay on "The Serpent Symbol, and the Worship of the Reciprocal Principles of Nature in America." The bias and extent of his studies make him a very competent person to investigate the antiquities of Nicaragua. The chapters devoted to this subject in the work before us are full of interest, and highly to be valued for the abundance of fresh observations they contain. Like many American archæologists and historians, Mr. Squier is inclined to over-estimate the peculiarities and antiquity of the aborigines of the New World. If we understand rightly, he claims for them an independent origin. His ethnology is of the romantic school, and rather loose. His imagination gets the better of his reasoning, and his "organ of wonder," to speak in the manner of phrenologists, is over-developed. His habits of mind and training do not seem to be such as to qualify him for strict scientific research. He is more of the _littérateur_ than the philosopher. His writings are, in consequence, very amusing, but require to be dealt with cautiously. The facts must be winnowed from the fancies with which they are mingled, if we wish to use them for scientific purposes. Imaginative men are usually warm lovers and fierce haters. Our American envoy's appreciation of female charms is so intense, that he cannot pass a pretty woman without inscribing a memorandum respecting her in his note-book, afterwards to be printed more at length with additional expressions of admiration. A pair of black eyes cannot sparkle behind a lattice without being duly recorded. His affection for the ladies is only equalled by his dislike of the "Britishers." The handsomest girl and the ugliest idol could scarcely distract his thought from the vices and crimes of England and the English. If he is to be trusted, the whole population of Central America regards every Englishman as a bitter enemy. He paints us in the blackest hues, and prophesies the fall of England with undisguised delight. Bluster about Britain is the prominent fault of the book, and one for which the writer will, when he knows more about us, be ashamed of himself. Every day it is becoming more and more the interest of Englishmen and Americans to pull together. Consanguinity and the love of constitutional liberty are strong ties. They may be forgotten for a time, but in the end must work uppermost. Recent events have done much to remind us of our near relationship with our transatlantic cousins, and them of the Anglo-Saxon blood to which they owe their pre-eminence among the nations of the New World. The grasping and interfering qualities that bring down upon us the unmitigated censures of Mr. Squier are quite as prominently manifested in the doings of his countrymen; and whilst in one chapter he censures our meddlings with, and claims upon, the Mosquito shore, in another he anticipates something very like the annexation of all Central America to the United States. The Mosquito country, about which we have seen of late so many very unsatisfactory paragraphs in our newspapers, is a thinly populated and most unhealthy tract on the Atlantic sea-board of Central America. It is inhabited by a mixed breed of Indians and Negroes, supposed to be ruled by a semi-civilized individual, who rejoices in the entomological title of King of the Mosquitoes, one by no means inappropriate, considering the amount of small annoyance we have endured through disputes about his territory. He is supposed to be under British protection; it is difficult to understand exactly why. The main purpose we have in view seems to be the securing a proper supply of the peculiar hard woods of this region. Britons at home generally make peace over their mahogany; abroad they seem to pick quarrels over it. Central America includes an era of 150,000 square miles. Under Spanish dominion it was divided into the provinces of Guatemala, Honduras, San Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. These became independent states in 1821, and subsequently united to form the "Republic of Central America." They separated again, in 1839, into so many distinct republics. Nicaragua, Honduras, and San Salvador have recently confederated. The entire region of Central America presents very marked and important physical features. These are the great plain, six thousand feet above the sea, upon which stands the city of Guatemala; the high plain forming the centre of Honduras and part of Nicaragua; and the elevated country of Costa Rica. Between the two latter lies the basin of the Nicaraguan Lakes, with broad and undulating verdant slopes broken by steep volcanic cones, and a few ranges of hills along the shores of the Pacific, intermingled with undulating plains. Of the two great lakes, the lesser, Managua, is one hundred and fifty-six feet, and the larger, Nicaragua, one hundred and twenty-eight feet above the Pacific ocean. The former is fifty or sixty miles in length by thirty-five wide, the latter above a hundred miles long by fifty wide. On or near their western borders are the chief cities of the country. Enormous isolated volcanic cones rise to the height of from 4000 to 7000 feet in their neighborhood or on the islands that stud them. Numerous remains of antiquity, ruins of temples, and deserted monolithic idols, give interest to their precincts, whilst the scenery is described as being surpassingly grand and beautiful. The sole outlet is the river San Juan, a magnificent stream flowing from the southeastern extremity of Lake Nicaragua, for a length of about ninety miles, into the Atlantic. The climate is generally healthy, more especially towards the Pacific side. Nicaragua is inhabited by a population of about 260,000, one-half of which, or more, is composed of mixed breeds, Indians, in great part civilized, coming next in number, then whites, of whom there are about 25,000, and, lastly, some 15,000 Negroes. They live chiefly in towns, and cultivate the soil, which is very productive, and capable of supporting a much larger population. The natural resources of Nicaragua appear to be very great. Sugar, cotton, coffee, indigo, tobacco, rice, and maize, are the chief productions. There is, besides, great mineral wealth. In ancient times the aborigines appear to have occupied considerable cities, and to have attained a civilization comparable with that of the Mexicans. Indeed, Mr. Squier has proved, by philological and other evidence, that a Mexican colony did exist in Nicaragua at the period of the discovery of the country in the fifteenth century. This had been surmised before, but not clearly made out. Much interest attaches to the population of Nicaragua, on account of the large proportion of families of Indian blood, pure and mixed, of whom it is made up. The qualities which enabled the ancient Indian people of Mexico, Central America, and Peru, to become civilized nations after a peculiar fashion, are not extinct, and seem to be retained and re-developed in proportion to the prevalence of Indian over Spanish blood. The Indians of Nicaragua are remarkable for industry and docility; they are unobtrusive, hospitable, and brave, although, fortunately for themselves, not warlike. They make good soldiers, yet have no morbid taste for the military profession. The men are agriculturists; the women occupy themselves with the weaving of cotton, and make fabrics of good quality and tasteful design. It is interesting to find the Tyrian dye still employed in their manufactures. They procure it from a species of _Murex_ inhabiting the shores of the Pacific. They take the cotton thread to the sea-side, where, having gathered together a sufficient quantity of shell-fish, they patiently squeeze over the cotton the coloring fluid, at first pellucid and colorless, from the animals, one by one. At first the thread is pale blue, but on exposure to the atmosphere becomes of the desired purple. This color is so prized that purple thread dyed by cheaper and speedier methods, imported from Europe, cannot supplant the native product. With mingled humanity and thrift they replace the whelks in their native element, after these shell-fish have yielded up the precious liquor for which they were originally gathered. The Indian population also exclusively manufacture variegated mats and hammocks from the Pita, a species of Agave, and are as skilful as their ancient ancestors in the making of pottery. They do not use the potter's wheel. Politically they enjoy equal privileges with the whites, and all positions in church and state are open to them. Among them are men of decided talent. Physically they are a smaller and paler race than the Indians of the United States, but are well developed and muscular. Their women are not unfrequently pretty, and when young are often very finely formed. Happily in Nicaragua no distinctions of caste are recognized, or, at any rate, they have no influence. Such of the people as claim to be of pure Spanish blood are, in most instances, evidently partly of Indian descent. The Sambos, or offspring of Indian and Negro parents, are a fine race of people, taller and stronger than the Indians. Mr. Squier's admiration for the gentler (in Nicaragua we can scarcely say the _fair_) sex, has led him to picture very vividly the charms and appearance of the ladies he encountered during his travels. The following is a precise and tempting description: "The women of pure Spanish stock are very fair, and have the _embonpoint_ which characterizes the sex under the tropics. Their dress, except in a few instances where the stiff costume of our own country had been adopted, was exceedingly loose and flowing, leaving the neck and arms exposed. The entire dress was often pure white, but generally the skirt, or _nagua_, was of some flowered stuff, in which case the _guipil_ (_anglicè_, vandyke) was white, heavily trimmed with lace. Satin slippers, a red or purple sash wound loosely round the waist, and a rosary sustaining a little golden cross, with a narrow golden band or a string of pearls extending around the forehead and binding the hair, which often fell in luxuriant waves upon their shoulders, completed a costume as novel as it was graceful and picturesque. To all this, add the superior attractions of an oval face, regular features, large and lustrous black eyes, small mouth, pearly white teeth, and tiny hands and feet, and withal a low but clear voice, and the reader has a picture of a Central American lady of pure stock. Very many of the women have, however, an infusion of other families and races, from the Saracen to the Indian and the Negro, in every degree of intermixture. And as tastes differ, so many opinions as to whether the tinge of brown, through which the blood glows with a peach-like bloom, in the complexion of the girl who may trace her lineage to the caziques upon one side, and the haughty grandees of Andalusia and Seville on the other, superadded, as it usually is, to a greater lightness of figure and animation of face,--whether this is not a more real beauty than that of the fair and more languid señora, whose white and almost transparent skin bespeaks a purer ancestry. Nor is the Indian girl, with her full, little figure, long, glossy hair, quick and mischievous eyes, who walks erect as a grenadier beneath her heavy water-jar, and salutes you in a musical, impudent voice as you pass--nor is the Indian girl to be overlooked in the novel contrasts which the 'bello sexo' affords in this glorious land of the sun." The Nicaraguan ladies occupy themselves with smoking and displaying little feet in satin slippers when daily they go to church and back. In the early evening they occasionally pay visits, and if a number of both sexes happen to assemble at the same house a dance is improvised, though regular parties or balls are rare and ceremonial. At festival seasons the Nicaraguans have some curious customs, apparently derived from their ancient heathen worship. In some of the Nicaraguan towns, especially in Leon, the pernicious practice of burying the dead within the walls of city churches is persisted in, even as in London, and, just as with us, against the opposition of all sensible persons, including the government itself. Fees to the church and attendant officials are at the root of the evil, and give it a vitality that defies all attempts at eradication. The priests of Leon have evaded all edicts about this nuisance, and have improved upon the practice of our metropolitan parishes; for, not content with the revenues they derive from funerals, they charge according to the length of time (from ten to twenty-five years) the dead are to be permitted by them to rest in their graves. When the purchased time is up, the bones and the earth derived from the decomposed corpses are removed and sold to the manufacturers of nitre! The least warlike of citizens may thus in the end become a defender of his country, when converted into a constituent of gunpowder. The most quiet and unambitious of mortals may complete his career by making a noise in the world, when fired off from a mortar. Assuredly this is a very novel and original method of shooting churchyard rubbish, and we recommend a fair consideration of it to our vested parochial authorities. Mr. Squier claims to be the first person who has described the ancient monuments of Nicaragua, or, indeed, to have indicated their existence. Excellent and numerous plates and cuts of these very interesting though rather frightful relics are given in his work. Hitherto the antiquities of the northern portion of Central America only have been explored, and are familiar to us through the researches of Stephens and of Catherwood. The Indians still reverence the shrines and statues of their ancient gods, and are apt to conceal their knowledge about their localities and existence. Those described by our traveller have mostly suffered dilapidation through the religious zeal of the conquerors. They appear to differ among themselves somewhat in degree of antiquity, but there is no good reason--this is the conclusion to which Mr. Squier comes--for supposing that they were not made by the nations found in possession of the country. The structures in or about which, they were originally placed were probably of wood, and great mounds and earthworks, like the teocallis of Mexico, were associated with them. A section of Mr. Squier's work is devoted to an elaborate dissertation on the proposed interoceanic canal, illustrated by an excellent map. We recommend these chapters to the consideration of all who are interested upon this important subject. Like most parts of his book it is defaced by not a few sneers at, and misstatements about, the English. About the bad taste of these outbursts we shall not say more. That they should come from a man who is professionally a diplomatist, is evidence of his indiscretion and unfitness for his political calling. As an amusing traveller and diligent antiquarian, however, we can do Mr. Squier full honor, and were glad to see the just compliment lately paid to him in London, when our Antiquarian Society elected him an honorary member. [This interesting and important work of our countryman is reviewed in a flattering manner in most of the great organs of critical opinion in England, and its sale there, as well as in this country, has been very large for one so costly.] FOOTNOTES: [7] Nicaragua; its People, Scenery, Monuments, and the Proposed Inter-oceanic Canal. By E. G. Squier. New-York: Appletons. From the Dublin University Magazine. THE HEIRS OF RANDOLPH ABBEY.[8] IV. THE MIDNIGHT VOICE AND ITS ANSWERED CALL. Lady Randolph took leave of Lilias at the door of her room, and she having, with infinite trepidation, declined the services of the lady's maid, who seemed to her rather more awful and stately than the lady herself, soon remained alone in the magnificent apartment which had been assigned to her. She looked all around it with a glance of some disquietude, for the vastness of the room, and the dark oak furniture, made it look very gloomy. She contemplated the huge bed, which bore an unpleasant resemblance to a hearse, with the utmost awe; it seemed to her that there was room for a dozen concealed robbers within the massive folds of the sombre curtains, and the reflection of her own figure in the tall mirrors, looked strangely like a white ghost wandering stealthily to and fro; the only gleam of comfort that shone in upon her, was from the glimpse of the midnight sky that could be seen through the chinks of the window-shutters. As the night was not cold she went and threw the window open, feeling that the companionship of the stars would destroy all these fantastic fancies; and very soon her sense of loneliness and oppression passed away, for there came a soft wind that lifted the curls of her long fair hair, and kissed her cheek caressingly, and she could not help believing it was a breeze from the Irish hills that bore to her the blessing of her kind old grandfather; gayly as ever she closed the window and went to sit down, wondering if ever she should feel inclined to sleep again after the excitement of the last two days. She had unbound her hair and let it fall around her like a golden veil, when, suddenly, a sound came floating towards her, on the still night air, which irresistibly attracted her attention. It was a sound of music, deep solemn music, rising with a power and richness of melody she had never heard before; whence it came, or how it was produced, she could not conceive, for it seemed to her unpractised ear not to proceed from one instrument, but from many, and yet there was through it all a unity of harmony which could result from the influence of a single mind alone: now, it swelled out into soft thunders that vibrated through the long passages up to the very roof of her vaulted room, and deep into her beating heart, then it died away to a whisper faint as the sigh of a child, only to rise again more glorious than before; and, over all, heard distinct as the lark in heaven at morning's dawn, there thrilled a voice of such unearthly sweetness that she could not believe it belonged to an inhabitant of this world. Lilias had one of those sensitive passionate souls over whom music has an uncontrollable power; but as yet she had heard no other instrument than an antique harpsichord of her grandmother's, and such singing as the village girls regaled her with when they stood at work in the fields. No wonder, then, that this wonderful strain had an effect upon her like that of enchantment; it seemed to take possession of her whole soul, and absorb every faculty. She became, as she listened, utterly unconscious of all things, save that this entrancing melody drew her towards it with an irresistible attraction; the sound was so distant, yet so clear, she could not tell if even it were within the house at all; but she did not ponder on its position, or on the nature of it; only, like one who walks in sleep, she rose mechanically on her feet to go to it. If her mind, steeped in that marvellous melody, could reflect at all, it was to conclude that she had fallen asleep and was dreaming, so that she had no thought but the longing not to awake from a dream so beautiful. Slowly drawn by the sweet sounds, as by invisible chains, she moved towards the door and opened it; then, sweeter, louder than before, floating into her very soul, came that angel voice, with the full swelling chords that seemed, as it were, to clothe it, filling her with a sense of enjoyment so intense, that she would have felt constrained to follow after it, even had she known it would lure her to some murderous precipice, like the dangerous sirens in the haunted woods of Germany. Truly there was a strange fascination in this soft and sublime music, filling the quiet night as with a soul, whose breathing was melody. And Lilias yielded without a thought, or effort, to the entrancing power, which, like a mesmeric influence, drew her imperiously towards it, panting and breathless, as though she feared the sounds would die before she reached them--every faculty concentrated in the sense of hearing. She hastened rapidly along the passages down the wide staircase, and, guided by the deepening, volume of the strain, reached the door of the great hall, which stood open. She passed within it, and at once discerned, that from this room proceeded the wonderful harmony, which had so allured her, the instrument whose solemn tones formed the accompaniment was evidently the magnificent organ, which stood at the further end of the hall; and, as she had never heard one before, it is not to be wondered at that now, when a hand endowed with extraordinary skill drew forth its full power, she should have been enraptured; but it was not so much the majesty of sound, swelling from the noblest instrument in the world, that had so won the very soul within her as the voice, sounding almost celestial to her ears, which still was thrilling with unutterable sweetness through the echoing hall. However glorious those deep low chords, it was yet only the metal which gave them forth; but there was a spirit in that voice which touched her own spirit, and never again could her young soul be free and independent as it had been before that mysterious contact. A little while only does the new-created child of dust stand lonely upon earth, as Adam stood in Eden before he woke from his deep sleep to meet the living glance of Eve--a little while in the passionless ignorance of youth, and then is the mortal being free--free from thought, from affection, from desire; but soon, through all the wild tumult and turmoil of the world, he hears the voice calling to him, which demands the surrender of his whole being in one deep human love, and no sooner is that whisper heard echoing in the depths of his heart than, straightway, he yields up the sweet empire of his life's affections; and henceforward, whether he is blest in close companionship, or divided by some gulf impassable, over which, most vain and mournfully, he stretches out the longing arms that only grasp the vacant air, still never more is he alone, or free, for he must live in another's life, and, even in death, desire another's grave. And was it to be thus with Lilias! the gentle, single-hearted child? As she stood at the door of the hall, the words which that angel voice was breathing into music came with a strange, deep meaning on her ears. There was no light save that of the moon, which streamed in long, soft rays from the one large window, and reached even the gilded fluting of the organ, yet, through the dim shadows, she could perceive that a musician sat before it. The face only was visible to her in that half light; the upturned face, with the dark hair falling round it, and the deep gray eyes made luminous by the living soul that was shining through them. Never had she looked on him who sat there before, nor could she tell if in truth that countenance had any beauty; only there was upon it now a spiritual loveliness emanating from the solemn thoughts that moved him, which entered into her heart and there abode, to fade only when itself should moulder beneath the coffin lid. And now, still drawn onwards by the voice, her noiseless feet went down the hall, till, by the side of the unconscious musician, she knelt down meekly, for it seemed to her as though adoring reverence were the needful homage of one who could create such harmony; and there, in breathless rapture, with parted lips, and folded hands, she remained all motionless, till the soft music died away, as if those sounds had been withdrawn again into the heaven to which they belonged. Then he turned, and his eyes fell upon the kneeling figure by his side; he started violently, and remained mute with surprise, his heart well nigh stopping in its beating with astonishment; almost it seemed to him as if his music had drawn down an angel from the regions of perpetual melody; so fair and spotless did she seem, the moonlight falling on her soft white robes, and weaving her floating hair into a golden tissue with the mingling of its own bright rays. Speechless he remained gazing with the earnest wish that this pure vision might not pass away into a dream. But meantime the cessation of music had unbound the chains that held her young soul captive, and when the sweet face turned towards him the childlike features, solemn with intensity of feeling, he saw that they were human eyes which met his own, eyes that could weep for sorrow, and grow beautiful with tenderness, for now a timid glance stole into them, and a faint smile to the parted lips. Unconsciously, he let his hands fall softly on her head and said: "Where have you come from? who are you?" "Lilias," she answered, simply, as a child that tells its name when asked. "Lily, indeed," he said, "most fair and lovely as the snow-white lilies are; but no such gentle vision ever came to me before in these dark hours, though I have been here lonely, night by night. I thought at first it was a spirit kneeling there; and it is scarce less marvellous to me that a human being should visit me in my solitude, than that some merciful angel should come to cheer me. How is it, then, that you are here?" "The music seemed to call me and I came," she said; "it was so very beautiful it drew my whole soul after it; but I know I should not have ventured here at such an hour, and now I will go back, only----" She hesitated, and looked up pleadingly into the eyes that were turned with such admiring wonder on her---- "You live in this house?" she asked. "I do," he replied, and then bowed his head as though the answer were one of shame. "Then will you promise me," she said, "that I shall hear these glorious sounds once more? I feel as though I could have no rest till I may listen to them yet again, and to the voice that was as a soul within them. May I come here to-morrow, and will you bestow on me the greatest pleasure I have ever known, for, indeed, I never felt such deep enjoyment as in hearing that solemn strain?" "Most gladly would I--most gladly see you again, sweet Lily; since that is your sweet name; but do you know who I am?" "No, excepting that I think you will be my friend,--at least I shall hope it,--for the soul that could utter that divine song must be so worthy of all friendship." These gentle words seemed literally to make him tremble, as another might to hear the ravings of passion. "Oh do not speak so softly to me," he said, "I am unused to kindness, and it unmans me; besides, soon you will know all, and then you will neither have the will nor power to befriend me, and it were better for me not to have the hope of your future sympathy, thus given for a moment and then withdrawn." "But why withdrawn?" she said, with her gaze of innocent surprise. "You are Sir Michael's niece, are you not, the child of his favorite brother--his heiress probably?" "I am his niece, but not his heiress surely; there are so many worthier heirs, are you not one of them?" "I! I am Hubert Lyle." He seemed to expect that at the sound of that name she would recoil in fear or indignation, but she only repeated the words "Hubert Lyle," and then shook her head gently to intimate that it was an unknown sound to her; he smiled with pleasure to hear his name so softly spoken by the lips of one who seemed to him the purest, sweetest vision that ever had blest his eyes on earth. "I see you have not yet learned all the secrets of this house," he said, "but it will not be long before Sir Michael's niece shall have been taught that there is one beneath this roof whom she must hate, hate even with a deadly animosity. I think it will be a hard lesson for such a gentle nature;" he added almost pityingly. A new light seemed to break in upon her. "Oh, is it possible?" she exclaimed; "was it then of you that my uncle spoke with such a bitter animosity, as it makes me shiver to think one human being should ever have the power to feel towards another?" "I am, indeed, the object of his abhorrence." "But unjustly," she exclaimed, fixing her candid eyes steadily on his face. "I know, I feel, you have not deserved this cruel hatred." "Not at your uncle's hands, indeed, not, I think, at those of any human being, for I know that wilfully I have injured none; but, doubtless, this discipline is all too little for my deserts, as I must seem unto no mortal sight, and so it must be borne patiently." This humanity touched Lilias to the very heart, her voice trembled with eagerness as she said: "But do not speak as though I or any other could ever share in the wrong he does you; rather is it our part to make you forget it, as you have forgiven it, by our friendship justly and gladly granted to you." "Most innocent child," he said, "it is plain you never yet have listened to the voice of your worldly interest; but when that world shall have taught you the value of Sir Michael's favor, then will even this guileless heart be moved to feel or simulate a due abhorrence for his enemy." "Never!" she exclaimed, lifting up her childlike head with a noble dignity, and throwing back the long hair that she might stand face to face with him to whom she spoke. "Listen, I do not know you; as yet I cannot tell if in very deed you are worthy of the loyal true-hearted friendship, which it is a blessing to give and to receive from our fellow-creatures; but my heart tells me you are so, even to the very uttermost, for I think that none could be otherwise, and dare to sing such solemn strains before high heaven at dead of night; and if it be so--if indeed you are worthy of the esteem and sympathy of all who can distinguish between right and wrong--then is it your lawful due, of which I would not dare defraud you, for it were high treason against the truth and majesty of goodness. If we are bound to adore perfection in its eternal Source and Essence, so is it our very duty and service to pay tribute to the faint reflection of that spirit in the frail human creature; and neither my uncle, nor any other on this earth, has a right to ask of me, or shall compel me, to act a lie against the sovereign virtue I am sworn to worship loyally, by withholding the homage of my friendship to all that are good and true of heart." "Pray heaven no taint from this bad world may ever reach your soul," were the words that burst from the lips of Hubert Lyle. "Yes, keep--keep your pure wisdom and your noble principle; blessed is he who taught them to you; but, alas! if ever I were worthy of the gift of your esteem on the basis of that rectitude of which you speak, could even your beautiful philosophy stand the test to which it would be put before you could give to _me_ the name of friend. The darkness covers me and you do not yet know what I am--how smitten of heaven as well as hunted down of men; how, by the very decree of nature, repugnant in their sight, not less than hated for another's sake. But I will not deceive you; none could look upon your face and hide one shadow of the bitterest truth: come, and let me show you what I am, and do not fear to shrink away from me when you have seen that sight. I hope for nothing else from any on this earth, for the gentlest look that human eyes have ever had for me, has been one of sorrowing pity." He took her by the hand, and led her slowly down the hall towards the window, where the moonlight was streaming with a full clear radiance. Through the shadows they went solemnly hand in hand, and a sensation of awe took possession of her; she felt as if he were leading her to the threshold of a new life; strange and unknown feelings were stirring at her heart, and a deep instinct whispering there, seemed to tell her that what he was about to reveal would have an influence on her whole future existence. He dropped her hand when they passed within the circle of light, and, placing himself where the beams fell brightest, he turned and looked upon her. Then she saw that he was smitten indeed, and that heaven had laid a load upon his mortal frame, heavy, as that which man had built upon his shrinking soul. Hubert Lyle was hopelessly and fearfully deformed. It would seem as though it were designed for him that he should be crushed both in body and in spirit, for his neck was bowed as by an iron power, and the sadness of a life's long humiliation was stamped on that upturned face; unlike the countenance of many who are deformed in body, there was no beauty on it save in the deep, thoughtful eyes, and the pale forehead, whence dark masses of hair were swept aside. Oh, how the heart of Lilias trembled as she looked upon him and read the measure of his twofold suffering. An outcast, by deformity, from the common race of man, and trodden down in soul by unmerited contumely or hate. How to the very depths was stirred within her that well of tenderness and pity for the oppressed which gushes in every woman's heart, as she saw in his whole aspect the evidence of a resolute and noble endurance, a patient meekness, untinged by a trace of bitterness! She could have wept over him, for she was one of those unhappily gifted whose soul is like a sensitive plant, and shrinks from the touch of sufferings in others with an exquisite susceptibility. Her natural delicacy, however, taught her that she must hide from him how deeply his infirmity had moved her; he must see in her no evidence of the insulting pity to which alone he seemed accustomed. He had spoken of her shrinking away from him; she drew nearer, and lifting up her eyes, smiled one quiet, gentle smile, as though in token that she had seen nought to surprise or grieve her; that look was balm to him, used only to the half-averted glance of sad repugnance which we are wont to cast on an unsightly object. His voice shook with mingled eagerness and delight as he said: "Could you indeed take such a deformed wretch as I am by the hand, and stand forth before all the world to acknowledge him your friend?" "Is it, then, the perishable, mortal body that we love and hold communion with, in those who are mercifully given to be our friends?" she answered; "the frame that shall be a thing of dust and worms so soon? Is it not the indestructible soul to which we give our sympathy, and is not that sympathy immortal as itself? for nothing good and pure that ever was created can have power to perish, though it be only the subtle feeling of a human heart; and so the friendship which is given by one deathless spirit to another is a link between them for their eternity of life, and what has it to do with the outward circumstances of our brief sojourn here?" She paused, and then anxious to dispel the sort of solemnity which had gained on both of them, she said, playfully: "You have not yet found a good reason why I should not some day be your friend; but I think I shall soon give you little cause to wish for my acquaintance, if I keep you any longer in conversation at this strange hour of the night. I must go; for, indeed, I have lingered too long; but, no doubt, we shall meet again." He did not seek to detain her; he felt that he ought not; but he knew that the smile so sweet and kindly with which she had looked on his unsightly frame would linger like a sunbeam in his memory; and that, yet more, the words of pure, calm wisdom she had uttered would never depart from his sad heart; for the faith she had shown in that one deep truth, that all things good, and beautiful, and worth the having, are created for eternity, and in no sense to be influenced by the accidents (so to speak) of this mere outward life, had suddenly lightened the load of his deformity, which so long had crushed down his entire being, and made him feel that it was his undying soul which stood face to face with hers--no less immortal--and that he, the actual _ego_ the very self, had nought to do with this poor frame, the magnet, as he long had deemed it, of the world's hate and scorn, but, in truth, only the temporary clothing, soon to be put off, and now unworthy of a thought: he had felt this, as regards the life which was to come, when he should be disembarrassed of his mortal body; but he had not understood what a deep joy the truth of this principle could cast even into this present existence. None had taught him, by the sweet teaching of entire sympathy, that all true affection is but planted in the germ here, and has its full fruition only in eternity. These thoughts rose like morning light on his soul, as he stood gazing, thoughtfully, upon her; whilst she, now that the enthusiasm, which had been called forth by the expression of her own bright faith had died away, had yielded to her womanly timidity, and stood half shy, half embarrassed, not knowing how to take leave of the companion she had so strangely encountered. He saw this, and, with a ready courtesy, opened the door for her, and bade her good night, thanking her gently for the sweet words of comfort she had spoken. She expressed a hope once more that they should meet again, and so vanished from his sight. The white figure passing away into the shadows, like some fair dream into the darkness of a deeper sleep. He remained standing on the spot where she left him, clasping his hands tightly on his breast. "Meet again!" he repeated thoughtfully, echoing the words she had uttered. "I will not desire it; I will not seek it: surely it were the greatest peril that ever has crossed my path. How have I labored for peace these many years, and have attained it only by stripping my life of every hope and wish connected with this world. I have so veiled my eyes to its allurements, from which I am for ever exiled, that all the living things within it have become to me as moving shadows in the twilight; whilst my own soul has been bathed in the sunlight of an eternal hope; but if the smile of these sweet eyes came falling on my heart again--if the spirit that looked through them be, indeed, as beautiful as I believe it--if, day by day, I saw the outward loveliness, and felt the inward beauty, infinitely fairer, it could not fail, but I should grow to love her. I--I--the deformed outcast! Oh! could my worst enemy--could even he who hates the very ground on which I walk, desire for me a deeper curse than that I should bring upon myself, if ever I made room in this my soul for human love. It must not be; I can and will avoid her. I will believe that I have slept and woke again; and this night shall be to me but as one in which I have dreamt a brighter dream than usual." He resumed his habitual composure as these thoughts passed through his mind; the resolute calm, which was the habitual expression of his face, returned to it, and quietly he left that old hall where the first scene in the drama of Lilias Randolph's life had been enacted. She soon was lying in a tranquil slumber--the deep sleep of an innocent heart that is altogether at rest; but through all her dreams that night, there went a voice whose echo was to haunt her soul for evermore. V. A MEETING FOR THE DISSECTION OF SOULS. Lilias, like most blythe young spirits, never could sleep after the morning beams came to visit her eyelids; and, despite the unusual excitement of the preceding night, she was roaming through the house at a very early hour, looking bright and fresh as the day-dawn itself. She passed through the old hall with timid steps, though it was now deserted by the musician, with whom her thoughts had been busy ever since she awoke. Deep was the pity that had sprung to life, never more to die in her young heart for him: not a barren pity, but active, tender, _woman-like_, that would take no rest till it had found some means of ministering to his happiness. For the present it expended itself in an earnest desire to discover all concerning him, and most especially whether, amongst all the inhabitants of Randolph Abbey, he had no friend to counterbalance the animosity of his one known enemy. To see him again likewise, not once but often, was a determination which she could not fail to form after the conversation she had held with him; her generous spirit was in some sense bound to this, and it did but deepen her longing to draw near to one so doubly stricken. Occupied with these thoughts, Lilias passed through the drawing-room to a verandah which opened from it, and where she could enjoy the fresh air whilst sheltered from the sun. There were couches placed there, and as Lilias moved towards one of them, she was startled by perceiving a motionless figure extended upon it. It was Aletheia, apparently in a profound slumber; but to Lilias she seemed like a corpse laid out for burial, so pale, so rigid was her face. The cold, white hands were folded on her breast as in dumb supplication, and they were scarce stirred by her slow breathing, or the dull, heavy beating of her heart. Her countenance bore an expression of extreme fatigue, and it seemed plain to Lilias that she had been walking to a great distance. Her hair, matted with dew, was clinging wet to her temples, and her bonnet lay on the ground beside her. Lilias gazed at her with a feeling almost of awe, wondering what was the secret of this strange cousin's life, and a slight movement which she made awoke Aletheia. Slowly the eyelids rose over those sad eyes, and revealed, as the power of thought stole into them, a depth of pain, of mute entreaty, which seemed to indicate an imploring desire that she might not be commanded to take up the burden of returning life. She tried to close them again, but in vain; the light sleep was altogether broken, and, raising herself up, with a heavy sigh she turned a look of involuntary reproach on Lilias. "I am so sorry I awoke you," said the latter, breathlessly. "I did not mean it, indeed; you were not resting well; but I am afraid you did not wish to be awakened." "No," said the low voice of Aletheia, which seemed ever to come from her lips without stirring them, "for it is the only injury any one can do to me." "An injury!" said Lilias, in her innocent surprise, "to wake on this bright morning and beautiful world." "Bright and beautiful," said Aletheia, musingly, "how these words are like dreams of long, long ago. My days have no part in them now; but think no more of having awakened me, it matters nothing; and it would have been strange, indeed, if such as you had known how many are roused to the morning light with the one cry in their heart--'must I, must I live again?'" "I cannot conceive it," said Lilias; "I always wish there were no night, it seems so sad to go away and shut one's eyes on all one loves and admires." "Yet, believe me, to some sleep is precious--more precious even than death, for all it seems so like an angel of rest and mercy; the brief forgetfulness of sleep is certain, whilst in death the soul feels there is no oblivion." It was to the gay, young Lilias, as though Aletheia were speaking in an unknown tongue; her unclouded spirit understood none of these things; but in spite of her prejudice against this strange person, she felt struck with pity as she saw her sitting there with the wet hair clinging to her cold, white cheek. "You are very tired; I am afraid," she said, "you have walked a long distance." Aletheia started, and the pale lips grew paler, as she exclaimed, almost passionately-- "You have been watching me!" "No, indeed," said Lilias, distressed at the idea, "how could you think me capable of it? I did not see you until I came into the verandah; but I guessed you had gone out early, because your clothes are all wet with dew." Aletheia rose up. "Lilias, you are come to live in the same house with me, and therefore is it necessary I should make to you one prayer. I do beseech you, as you hope that men will deal mercifully with your life, grant me the only mercy they can give to mine--leave me alone; forget that I exist; live as if I did not, or were dead. I ask nothing but this, to be unmolested and forgotten." She turned to go into the room as she spoke, but she was stopped by the appearance of Gabriel, who was creeping, with his quiet, stealthy step, towards her; his blue eyes, usually so soft, glowing with the intensity of his ardent gaze. She paused and looked at him sadly. "Gabriel, you heard what I said to Lilias just now; it is nothing new to you; you know well and deeply what is my one desire--the petition I make to all. Why, then, will you live, as it were in my shadow--why will you persecute me?" He made no answer, but by folding his hands in mute appeal and bowing his head humbly over them. She passed him in silence, and went into the house. He followed softly after her, and Lilias was left alone. The poor child drew a long breath, and felt at the moment an intense desire to be at liberty amongst the Connaught hills again, where the thoughts and words of the rough country people seemed free and fresh as the winds that blew there; all seemed so strange and mysterious in this house; she had been brought suddenly into contact with that deep human passion of which she knew nothing, and felt as if she were in the midst of some entangled web, where nothing plain or regular was to be seen. Her momentary wish to escape, however, died away, as the recollection came upon her, borne as it were, by the wings of memory, of the one sweet haunting voice, and solemn strain. Nor was she long left to her own reflections; Sir Michael, who so rarely left his own rooms, came in search of her, and fairly monopolized her during the whole of the day. He persuaded her to stay with him in his laboratory, and seemed to take infinite pleasure in hearing her talk of all that had been joy to her in her past life. And truly it was a strange sight to see her in that dark little den, with her innocent face and her fair white robes, sitting so fearlessly at the feet of the old man, telling him stories of Irish banshees, and sunny nooks in her native valley, where her nurse said the fairies danced all night long. To hear her talk, and to have her sweet presence, was to Sir Michael as though some fresh breeze were passing over his withered soul; and the tones of her voice were so like those of his long-lost brother, that at times he could dream they were side by side again, both young, full of hope that was to bear fruit, for him at least, in bitterest despair, and with passions yet unchained from the depth of his heart. The first pleasure he had tasted for years was in Lilias's society, and he inwardly determined to enjoy as much of it henceforward as was possible--a resolution which we may so far anticipate as to mention he rigidly kept, to the sore discomfiture of poor little Lilias. He had a deeper motive for it in the movement of jealousy he had witnessed in his beautiful wife, when he took his niece in his arms the day before. Indifferent as she was to him, she was too thorough a woman to relish the idea, that the sole and undivided dominion she had maintained over his heart was to be diminished by the entrance even of the most natural affection. She need have had no fears; the passion of a life was not now to be tempered by any such influence. Lilias was to him simply an occupation for his restless mind; she preserved him from thinking, better than his chemical experiments, and, above all, she gave him the exquisite delight of feeling that he had power to move his scornful wife even yet; so Lilias was doomed from that day to be his constant companion. He did not suppose she would like it, though he did not guess, as she sat by his side, how restlessly her poor little feet were longing to be away bounding on the soft, green grass; but he resolved to compensate her for her daily imprisonment by making her his heiress: a determination subject to any change of circumstances that might cause him to alter it, which he did not conceal either from her or the rest of the family. We are anticipating, however; the first day of Lilias's probation is not yet over. Very wearily it passed, because her eager mind was bent on seeing Hubert Lyle; and not only did her uncle never mention his name, but she found no opportunity of asking any one who and what he was, and where she could meet with him again. It was not till the evening that she found the family once more assembled, and as she gazed round amongst them all with this object in her thoughts, she felt there was but one who inspired her with any confidence, or to whom she could speak freely. This was Walter, with his fine frank countenance and winning smile; and she was very glad when they found themselves accidentally alone in the music-room, where Sir Michael left them, after listening, with evident pleasure, to her sweet voice singing like a bird in the sky. Lilias turned round hastily to Walter, with such a pair of speaking eyes, that he laughed gayly, and answered them at once---- "How can I help you? I see you have a great deal to say." "Oh, yes, cousin Walter; I have been longing to speak to you; you are the only one in all this house I am not afraid of. I want you to tell me so many things!" "And what things, dear Lilias? This is rather vague." "Oh, every thing about every body, they are all so mysterious." "Well, so they are," he said laughing: "I find them so myself. I can quite fancy how you feel, like a poor little fly, caught in some great web, and surrounded by spiders of all kinds and dimensions, each weaving their separate snares." "Precisely; and now I want you to explain all the spiders to me; you must classify them, and tell me which are venomous, and which are not," she said, laughing along with him. "I wish I could," answered Walter, "but they are quite beyond me--they are not in my line at all, I assure you. I never could keep a secret in my life; but I will do my best to enlighten you. I can tell you certain peculiarities at all events. Suppose we make a sort of catechism of it; you shall question and I shall answer." "Very well," said Lilias, entering into the spirit of his gayety, "and so to begin--Why does Lady Randolph look so strangely at Sir Michael, and always seem anxious to go out of the room whenever he comes in?" "Because she hates him," replied Walter. "How very strange; people seem to hate a good deal at Randolph Abbey; but is it always their nearest relations, as in this case?" "Why no; as you proceed in your catechism I doubt not we shall have occasion to mention certain hatreds in this household, which are in no sense affected by natural ties." "Well to proceed," said Lilias; "why does Gabriel hour after hour keep his eyes fixed on Aletheia, with a strange look which makes me fancy he thinks she would die if he were to cease gazing on her?" "Because he loves her," answered Walter. "But she does not love him," exclaimed Lilias, with a woman's instinct. "Most certainly not." "There is so much I have to ask about her. Tell me why it is that she has such imploring eyes. I never, on a human face, saw an expression of such mute entreaty; I saw it once in the wistful look of a poor deer which they killed on our Irish hills. I remember so well when it lay wounded, and the gamekeeper came near with the knife, it lifted up its great brown eyes with just such a dumb beseeching gaze, but that was only for a moment. It soon died, poor thing; and with Aletheia, that mournful supplication seems stamped on her countenance, as though her very life were to be spent in it." "Ah! if you ask me about Aletheia," said Walter, "I am powerless at once. I can tell you nothing of her; she is a greater mystery in herself than all the rest put together; this only seems plain to me, that her existence is, for some unexplicable reason, one living agony." "If I thought so I should be so angry with myself for having felt prejudiced against her, which, I confess, I have done, for a reason I could not name to you. She is so cold and statue-like, I thought she seemed lost to all human feeling; but if it be suffering, and not insensibility, which makes her move about amongst us as if she had been dead, and forced unwillingly to live again, I should try to overcome the sort of awe with which she has inspired me." "I believe it matters little how you feel respecting her, for you will never conquer her impenetrable reserve; even poor Gabriel, who seems fascinated by her to a marvellous extent, has ever struggled vainly against her implacable calm. It is seldom, I think, that one human being can so lavish all his sympathies upon another, as he has done on her, without gaining some sign of life at least; but he tells me it is as though the living soul within her were cased in iron; he cannot draw it out of the dungeon where she seems to have buried it, to meet even for a moment his own ardent spirit." "But I hardly wonder at this, if she does not love him," said Lilias. "You mistake me," replied Walter: "I do not expect that she should return his affection; but she seems utterly unaware of its existence; she appears ever to be so intent in listening to some voice we cannot hear, that all human words are unheeded by her; those deep, beseeching eyes of hers are ever gazing out, as though the world and all the things of it, were but moving shadows for her, because of the greatness of some one thought which is alone reality to her; yet that there lives a most burning soul within that statue of ice, I can no more doubt than that the snows of Etna hide, but do not quench its fiery heart." "And does no one know the secret of her life?" asked Lilias. "No one, that I am aware of--none at least, now living; that her father did, whose idol she was, I have reason to think from some remarks of Sir Michael's; he himself knows possibly somewhat more than we do, though assuredly not the real truth, nor more than some external peculiarities of her position. I have heard, however, that before she would consent to come here, even for six months, and that with the chance of being chosen as the heiress, she made certain conditions with her uncle respecting the liberty she was to be allowed. I presume this to refer chiefly to a strange visit which she receives one day in every month, on which day alone I believe has any human being seen her moved." "And who is this visitor?" exclaimed Lilias. "That is more than I can tell you; and all I know of him is that I have heard his sharp quick step, which certainly is the step of a man, going across the hall to the library, where Aletheia receives him; and an hour or so later I have heard the same tread as he leaves the house; then the galloping of his horse sounds for a moment on the gravel, and that is all that any one at Randolph Abbey hears of the only friend she seems to possess." "Does even Gabriel not know him?" "He may have seen him; but he does not know him, I am sure; it is quite wonderful how little knowledge he has acquired concerning Aletheia, considering the means he has taken to penetrate her secret--means which, I confess to you, I should have scorned to employ, even though, like him, my dearest interests were at stake; for instance, he has actually more than once tracked her in her mysterious morning walks." "What! does she walk every day," said Lilias, in astonishment; "I found her this morning lying quite exhausted in the verandah. She must have been to a great distance; surely she does not do the same every day?" "Every day, so far as I know, she does walk to precisely the same spot, and that several miles distance; it is certainly beyond her strength, for she is often in a state of frightful exhaustion when she returns; but even in the coldest spring mornings she used to leave the house, long before it was light, to make this pilgrimage; it seems she wishes to avoid the observation she would incur later in the day." "Then it was cruel of Gabriel to follow her." "It was; but I think he is often maddened to find how his great love comes beating up against the rock of her impenetrable calm, like waves upon the shore, leaving no trace behind." "Do you know," said Lilias, with a wondering look in her cloudless eyes, "I think Gabriel has his mysteries too, like every one else in this strange house. I can understand his watching Aletheia, if his whole heart is for ever turning to her, as you describe; but it is not her alone, for in the short time I have know him, I am sure he has managed to find out more about me than ever I knew myself; those soft blue eyes of his seem to look so stealthily into one's soul. I am convinced he could tell you every thing I have done and said the whole of this day. You know Sir Michael made me stay with him ever since morning, but I never passed out of this room without meeting Gabriel in the passage." "That I can easily believe. I always feel as if Gabriel acted in this delectable abode the part of a cat watching innumerable mice; he has an anomalous sort of character; but one of his qualities is sufficiently distinct, which is a very acute penetration; he can divine the most intricate affairs from the smallest possible indications. For my own part, I make not the slightest attempt to conceal my innermost thoughts from him; happily I have nothing to hide, but if I had, I should let him know it at once; it would save all trouble, as he would infallibly find it out." "But what do you mean by an anomalous character?" asked Lilias. "A sort of double nature; he seems to me to have naturally good impulses on which some guiding hand has ingrafted a calculating disposition that sorely warps them; he has no control whatever over his passions, yet the most perfect over his outward words and actions, whereby he effectually conceals them when he so pleases. Certain it is, that he has an indomitable will to which every thing else is subservient; but much of this inconsistency of his character may be attributed to his position; here he is the nephew of Sir Michael Randolph--the possible heir of Randolph Abbey; but he was educated by a person whom we know to be of low station, and I believe must be equally so in mind." "His mother?" asked Lilias. "Yes; I know nothing of her, nor does he ever allude to his past life. I do not even know where she lives; he is simply ashamed of her, I presume, and I sometimes think we should have the key-stone to Gabriel's character in a violent ambition, were it not so neutralized by his not less violent love for Aletheia. Dear Lilias, why do you start so, what do you see?" "He is there," she said, half frightened, and glancing to the open door through which, with his soft steps, Gabriel was gliding. "Of course, considering whom we were speaking of," said Walter, laughingly, "it is an invariable rule, you know. Come along, Gabriel," he added, turning to his cousin, "I need not mention that we were discussing you, as by the simple rule of cause and effect, it was that circumstance which produced your appearance." "Not by my overhearing you," said Gabriel, quickly. "My dear fellow, there was not the least occasion for that; you were obeying a mysterious law, which is summarily stated in a proverb quite unfit for ears polite; but your arrival is most opportune; your services will be very available to Lilias and myself; allow me to offer you a chair, and invest you at once with your office." "And how am I to be made useful?" said Gabriel, attempting, by a forced smile, to sympathize in Walter's playful manner of viewing the subject. "Why, you must know," and he laid an emphasis on the word _must_, for Lilias's behoof, "that Miss Lilias Randolph and I have begun a course of moral dissection of the inhabitants of this house, in which she acts the part of a young and very inexperienced surgeon, and I that of a most grave and potent doctor. We had just finished you off, and were proceeding to the dismemberment of the rest of the family; in this interesting study I think you can materially assist us, seeing you have some very sharp and subtle instrument for this species of anatomy." "I was not aware I possessed any such," said Gabriel; "it would ill befit me in my position to make myself a judge of any here." "Now don't begin to be humble and make us ashamed of ourselves. I consider it quite an important matter to Lilias that she should know her ground here so far as possible; so let us parade the remainder of our dear relations before her as fast as we can." A strange smile passed over Gabriel's face, as if he doubted that the gentle Lilias, and the frank-hearted Walter, would discover much concerning that intricate ground on which they stood; but he made no remark, and simply said-- "And who stands next on the list after my unworthy self?" "That is for Lilias to determine; we wait your orders, lady dear." "You are learning to speak Irish," she said, smiling. "A most likely consummation," murmured Gabriel. "Oh! I could say better things than that in Irish," said Walter, coughing off the slight confusion his cousin's remark had produced; "but you must really tell us whom you mean to propose for our inspection, or this council of war will last till midnight." "This council for the preliminaries of war," said the low voice of Gabriel, giving an unpleasant aspect of truth to an expression which Walter had carelessly used with no special meaning. For a moment Lilias made no answer; the thought which had been present with her throughout the whole of this conversation, and that which had alone, indeed, given it any interest for her, was, that she might obtain some information respecting Hubert Lyle; yet now that the time was come when she must name him or lose her opportunity, she felt, in a lower degree, something of that unwillingness to broach the subject, which we have to mention any secret act of self-devotion. The solemn music which had been the means of leading her into his presence; the unearthly serenity with which his soul had looked at her through those eyes that reminded her of the still waters of some unruffled lake, where only the glory of heaven is reflected; and above all, his infirmity, so meekly borne, had invested him with a sacredness in her mind which made her feel as if it was almost a profanation to speak of him to indifferent ears. With a slight trembling in the voice, which did not escape the quick perception of Gabriel, she said, "There is yet one of whom I would inquire--Hubert Lyle." Both her cousins started at the name, but Gabriel instantly repressed his astonishment, while Walter as freely gave vent to his. "Is it possible you have heard of him already? who can have been bold enough to mention him?" he said. "Why, I have not only heard of him, I have seen him." "Seen him!" even Gabriel exclaimed at this. Lilias looked up with a smile. "I think he must be the most mysterious of all," she said, "you seem so surprised." "You would not wonder at that if you knew more of the 'secrets of this prison-house,'" said Walter, "which you must know is no inapt quotation as regards Hubert Lyle, for he certainly acts, in some sense, the part of Hamlet." "Without Hamlet's soul," said Gabriel, softly. "Without Hamlet's madness, rather, I should say; for I cannot doubt, from all I have heard, that Hubert has a noble soul, though not one which would lead him, like the Prince of Denmark, to make to himself an idol of the principle of vengeance." "And Lilias is waiting meanwhile to tell us where she saw him," said Gabriel. "Is it Lilias or you who are waiting?" said Walter, laughing; "for my part, I frankly confess that my curiosity is greatly excited, so pray tell us." And she did so at once, for there was not a thought of guile in this young girl's heart. She told how, in the quiet night, she had heard a solemn voice of music that had called her spirit with an irresistible allurement; and how she had risen up and followed where it led, till it had brought her into the presence of him of whom they spoke; but she went no farther; she said nothing of the conversation which had drawn those stranger souls more closely together than weeks of ordinary intercourse could have done; for she felt that Lyle had been surprised into speaking of his private feelings; and the subject of his infirmity was one she could not have brought herself to mention; the sympathy with which he had inspired her was of that nature which made her feel as sensitive as she would have done had the affliction been her own. Yet, though she did not enter into details, the deep interest she felt for him gave a soft tremulousness to her voice, which was duly noticed by Gabriel, as he sat looking intently at her with the keen gaze which his meek eyes knew so well how to give from under their long lashes. "And now," said she, "tell me who and what he is, he seems to occupy so strange a position in this house?" "Not more strange than cruel," said Walter; "he is the son of Lady Randolph, by her first husband; she had been engaged to Sir Michael before she met Mr. Lyle, who was his first cousin, but she had never cared for him, and yielded at once to the intense passion which sprung up between Mr. Lyle and herself; she married him, and from that hour Sir Michael hated him with such a hate, I believe, as this world has rarely seen. When his rival died, he transferred this miserable, bitter feeling to the son, Hubert, simply because the widow had, in like manner, turned all the deep love she had felt for the dead husband on the living son--not for his own merits, for poor Hubert has few attractions, but solely because he bears his father's name, and looks at her with his father's eyes. I believe she has even the cruelty to tell him so. She worships so the memory of her early love, that she will not have it thought her heart could spare any affection, even to her child, were he not his son also. It has always seemed to me the saddest fate for her unhappy son, to be thus the object of such vehement hate, and no less powerful love, and yet to feel that he has neither deserved the one, nor gained the other, in his own person, but solely as the representative of a dead man who can feel no more." "Miserable, indeed," said Lilias, folding her hands as though she would have asked mercy for him; "how cruel! how cruel! but his mother, how could she marry Sir Michael when she so loved, and still loves, another? this seems to me a fearful thing." "Starvation is more so," muttered Gabriel. "Starvation!" exclaimed Lilias. "Yes," said Walter; "Mrs. Lyle and her son were actually left in such destitution at her husband's death, that she certainly married Sir Michael for no other purpose but to procure a home for herself and her child. How it came to pass that she was in this extreme poverty, I know not; report says that it was the result of Sir Michael's persecution of Mr. Lyle in his lifetime; but I can hardly believe this of our uncle." "No, indeed," said Lilias. "One thing is certain, that it sorely diminished Sir Michael's delight in marrying the woman he had loved so long, to find that he must submit to the continual presence of her son in the house; but she forced him to enter into a solemn agreement that Hubert was always to reside with them, and he agreed, on condition that he crossed his path as seldom as possible. This part of the arrangement is almost overdone by poor Lyle, who is, I believe, like most persons afflicted with personal infirmity, singularly sensitive and full of delicate feeling. He never leaves his own rooms except to go to his mother's apartments, unless Sir Michael happens to be absent, when Lady Randolph generally forces him to make his appearance among us. I believe his only amusement is playing on the organ half the night, as you found him." "And do none of you ever go to see him, and try to comfort him," exclaimed Lilias; "do none befriend him in all this house?" "You forget," said Gabriel, hastily, evidently desirous to prevent Walter from answering till he had spoken himself, "that any one who sought out Hubert Lyle, and made a friend of him, would incur Sir Michael's displeasure to such a degree that he would strike him at once off the list of his heirs, and the penalty of his philanthropy would be nothing less than the loss of Randolph Abbey." As he said this he bent his eyes with the most ardent gaze on Lilias, that he might read to her inmost soul the effect of his speech; but it needed not so keen a scrutiny; the indignation with which it had filled her sent the color flying to her cheek, and kindled a fire in her clear eyes seldom seen within them. "And who," she exclaimed, "could dare withhold their due tribute of charity and sympathy to a suffering fellow-creature for the sake of the fairest lands that ever the world saw! who could be so base, for the love of his own interest, as to pander to an unjust hatred, the evil passion of another, and join with the oppressor in persecuting one who is guiltless of all save deep misfortune! Can there be any such?" she added, in her turn fixing her gaze upon Gabriel. A triumphant smile passed over his lips; her answer seemed precisely what he had hoped it would be; but Walter anxiously exclaimed: "Pray do me the justice to believe that I would not act so, Lilias; I never should have thought of the motive Gabriel assigned as a reason for not visiting Hubert; but, to tell the truth, I have no desire to do so, because I believe him, from all I have heard, to be a poor morbid visionary, who desires nothing so much as solitude, and with whom I should not have an idea in common." "Nor should I be deterred from showing him any kindness for this reason, I trust," said Gabriel, with his meekest voice; "I merely wished to place you in possession of facts with which I thought it right you should be acquainted in case Hubert should afford you the opportunity of intercourse which he has not granted to us; for it is one of the noble traits of his fine character, that he will not risk our incurring Sir Michael's displeasure for his sake. He is the more generous in this, that, from his relationship to our uncle, he would be heir-at-law after us four. But in fact I believe there exists not a more high-minded and amiable man than he is, in no sense meriting the misfortunes that have fallen upon him; and his dignified, unmurmuring endurance of them could never be attributed to insensibility, for he is singularly gifted; his wonderful musical talent is the least of his powers." "Why, Gabriel," said Walter, looking round in great surprise, "I never heard you say so much in praise of Hubert before;--or, indeed, of any one," he added, _sotto voce_. "I know him, perhaps, better than you do," said Gabriel, watching, with delight the softened expression of Lilias's face, which proved to him how artfully his words had been calculated to produce the effect he desired. He read in her thoughtful eyes, as easily as he would have done in a page of fair writing, how she was quietly determining in that hour that she would seek by every means in her power to become the friend of this unfortunate man, and teach him how sweet a solace there may be even in human sympathy, and that, all the more, because her worldly prospects would be endangered thereby. It would prove to Hubert that her friendship had at least the merit of sincerity, since, in her humility, she imagined it could possess no other;--but Gabriel had no time to say more, for Sir Michael at this moment joined them, and Lilias, rising up, said she believed it was late, and turned to go into the other drawing-room. Sir Michael looked sharply at the trio, and, as Walter followed his cousin, he turned to Gabriel with considerable irritation-- "How came you here, sir; I left those two together?" "They invited me to join them, or I should not have intruded," said Gabriel, with his customary meekness, but a smile curled his lips, which he could not repress. Sir Michael saw and understood it at once; he paused for a moment in thought, and then deciding, apparently like Walter, that it was no use to conceal any thing from Gabriel, and more advantageous to be open with him at once, he said-- "Gabriel, understand me, if your quick eyes have divined any of my plans, it will work you no good to thwart them." "But, possibly, it might avail me were I to further them," said the nephew, very softly. "It might," said Sir Michael; "the broad lands of Randolph Abbey could, with little loss, furnish a handsome compensation to the person who should assist me in placing therein, the heirs I desire to choose." Gabriel's reply was merely a significant look of acquiescence, and the old man, bestowing on him a smile of approbation such as he had never before vouchsafed him, went away well pleased. He was firmly convinced that he had enlisted in support of the plan that was already a favorite one with him, the individual amongst all his heirs who he was the most positively resolved should never inherit the Abbey, both because he rather disliked him personally, and because he could not forgive him his mother's low birth. Could he have seen the sneer with which Gabriel looked after him, he would have been somewhat unpleasantly enlightened as to the real value of the ally he had obtained. VI. THE DEAD FATHER IS MADE THE PERSECUTOR OF THE LIVING SON. Very strange was the contrast between the splendid drawing-room, blazing with light and heat, where the Randolph family were assembled, and the small room in the other wing of the house which was occupied by Hubert Lyle. It contained barely the furniture necessary for his use, and this was by his own desire, for it was already sufficiently bitter to him to eat the bread dealt out so grudgingly, and at least he would not be beholden to his stepfather for more than the actual necessaries of existence. Sorely against his proud mother's wish, he had chosen for his sitting-room one of the very meanest and poorest in the house, with a single window, low and narrow, which looked out on a deserted part of the grounds. Hubert liked it all the better for this, as there was no flower-garden or green-house near to bring the head-gardener, with his trim, mathematical mind, amongst the wild beauties of nature. The grass was left in this part to come up against the very wall of the house, and the ivy and honeysuckle which grew round the window were allowed to penetrate almost into the room. Fortunately, the noble trees which filled the park stood somewhat apart in this place, and their arching branches formed at this moment a sort of framework to the most glorious picture that ever is given to mortal eyes to look upon--the lucid sky of night, filled as it were to overflowing with radiant worlds, each hanging in its own atmosphere of glory. It was no wonder that Hubert turned from the low, dark room, so dimly lit with its single candle, to look upon this the bright landscape of the skies. Within, the scene was certainly uninviting. The heavy deal table, the scanty supply of chairs, the plain writing-desk, evidently many years in use, were the only objects on which the eye could rest, excepting a few books and a small piano, the gift of Aletheia, with which, greatly to his astonishment, she had presented him one day--for she was as completely a stranger to him as she was to all the rest of the family, and had always avoided intercourse with him as much as she did with every one else. This thoughtful act of kindness on her part, however, produced no increased acquaintance between them, as she shrank from hearing his expressions of gratitude on that occasion, and, indeed, they seldom met. Aletheia was never in Lady Randolph's rooms, where alone Hubert was to be met, excepting at rare intervals, when Sir Michael was absent. Hubert sat now at the window; he had laid down his heavy head upon the wooden ledge, and his hands fell listlessly on his knee. He seemed full of anxious thoughts, and sighed very deeply more than once. From time to time, apparently with a violent effort, he looked up and gazed fixedly on the tranquil stars, seeming to drink in their pure glory, as though he sought to steep his soul in this light of higher spheres; but ever a sort of trembling passed over his frame, and he would sink down again oppressed and weary. This was most unlike Hubert Lyle's usual condition. He was a man of the most ardent and sensitive feelings; but, at the same, possessed of that moral strength and _truthfulness of soul_ which can only belong to a great character--by this last expression, we mean that he was what few are in this world, neither a deceiver nor deceived. He did not deceive himself in any case, nor would he allow life to deceive him; he saw things as they really were, and he permitted not the bright coloring of hope or imagination to deck them with false apparel; he did not live as most men do, figuring to himself that he was as it were the centre of the universe, and that all around him thought of him and felt for him as he did for himself. He weighed himself in the balance not of his own self-love, but of other men's judgment, and rated himself accordingly. Thus, in the earlier days of his maturity, he constrained his spirit to rise up and look his position in the face. And truly it was one which might have appalled a less feeling heart than his. His outward circumstances were as bitter as could well be to a high-minded man. He was a dependent on the grudging charity of one who abhorred him; and though he would right thankfully have gone out from these inhospitable doors, even to starve, in preference, yet was he bound to endure existence within them, by a promise which his mother had extorted from him as a condition of their marriage, that he never would leave Randolph Abbey without her consent. This marriage he knew was to save her from a blighting penury which was killing her; and, moreover, she concealed from him that cruel hatred of Sir Michael, which was the only heritage his dead father left him, and, thinking no evil, he had given them the promise which bound him as with an iron chain to abide under the roof of his unprovoked enemy. But heavier even than unjust hatred was the weight upon soul and body of his own deformity; for if the first shut up one human heart from him, and turned its power of affection to gall for his sake, the other cast him out for ever from the love of all human kind. He knew that his unsightly frame could call forth no other feeling from them but a cold, most often a contemptuous pity. And yet, when he looked out into the world--the dark, tumultuous, agonizing world--that very sea of human hearts, all beating up upon the stony shores of a life, against which they are for ever broken and shattered, he saw passing through the midst of it all a soft, pure light, shedding warmth and brightness even on the dreariest scenes, and causing men to forget all pain, and privation, and misery--a light to which the saddest eyes turned with a joyous greeting, and on which the gaze of the dying lingered mournfully, till the coffin-lid for ever shut it out from their fond longing. And he knew that this one blessed thing, which could overcome the strong, fierce evils of life, like the maid in the pride of her purity, before whom the lion would turn and flee, was called Human Love in the doting hearts of men--Human Love--the one sole, unfailing joy of our merely mortal existence. And was it for him? Should he ever have any share in it? Was its sweetness ever to be for his hungry and thirsty heart? Never! The seal was set upon him in his repulsive appearance, that he was to be an outcast from his fellow-men; his deformity was as a burden bound upon his back, with which he was driven out into the wilderness, there to abide in utter solitude of soul. The promise of life was abortive for him ere yet he had begun it. Hubert Lyle understood all this at once; he saw how it stood with him, and how it was to be, on to the very door of the grave; so he folded his hands upon his breast and bowed down his head; he accepted his destiny, for he felt that this was not the all of existence. He knew how strangely sweet beyond the tomb shall seem all the bitterness of this life; he saw that the earth was to be to his soul what it is to the outward eyes on a starry winter's night. We know what a contrast there is in that hour between the world above and the world below: the one lies so dark and cold, full only of black shadows and the howling of mournful winds, while the lucid sky that overhangs it, replete with brightness and glory, teems with radiant stars, which are the type of those eternal and glorious hopes that cluster for us on the outskirts of the heaven of revelation. And so it was to be for him: his spirit was to walk in this world as in a bleak and sunless desert; but it was to be for ever canopied over with one bright and boundless thought, wherein were set immutable and numberless, the starlike hopes of one eternity. Thus was he to live, wholly independent of earth, and indifferent to it. But no man can walk free while there are chains upon his hands and feet, and he felt that he was bound to his fellow-creatures by two ropes, as it were, of iron: the longing to love, and to be beloved. Of these he must free himself, tearing them off his shrinking flesh as a prisoner would his manacles. And he did so. He taught himself to look upon all human beings as not of his kind. Even when every nerve and fibre in his frame cried out that they were bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, he learned to consider them inaccessible for him as the angels in heaven. Yes, even far more; for he trusted that yet a little while, and these holy ones should be his dear companions; and so he held communion with them now. But with men he dared not hazard so much as to give them a place in his thoughts, for he knew that the dream of their friendship would become the longing for it, and the longing in his case must turn to agony; so it came to pass that his strong will, his stern resignation, compassed that which one might have believed well nigh unattainable to flesh and blood. He divested himself of all earthly inclinations and desires, all natural wishes and sympathies, and lived in this world as though he were utterly alone in it, and sole representative of a race, differing from those angelic friends whom only he consented to know as the living population of the universe--a solitary being placed on this earth as in a desert place, where he was commanded, for his own needful discipline, to abide, till the world of spirits should be revealed to him, and he entering there should find a home and loving friends. It was for this cause that Hubert shunned all intercourse with the Randolph family, as he did with all others--a resolution strengthened in their case by the generous motives Gabriel had assigned to him; for whatever might have been the reasons of this latter for pronouncing his eulogium, he had said no more than the truth in his account of his character. When Hubert Lyle had gone through the mental process we have detailed, very deep was the calm that entered into his soul. It became like the pure waters of a deep still well, walled in and protected from all sights and sounds of the world without, and with the light and the glory of heaven alone mirrored within it. And why, then, was the quiet now gone from his heart, and the repose from his eyes? Why did he look up with that earnest gaze to the evening sky, as though some shadow had come over its brightness? It was because the terror had come upon him, that the greatest enemy he ever could know in this life was about to rise up from its deathlike torpor and assail him--even his own human nature; he felt that all those natural feelings and passions which he had crushed down deep into his heart as unto a grave, were now stirring themselves like men that had been buried alive, and were waking in torture; they _would_ live, they were bursting the cerements of that strong heart. How were they to be beaten to death again? There--rampant and fierce was the craving for sympathy, for love. There, sickening in its intensity, was the yearning to give and to receive that greatest of earthly gifts, the blessing of a mutual pure affection; the heart moulded from dust reasserted its birthright, and cried out for its kindred dust. It was not that these feelings were as yet at work with any definite object within Hubert Lyle, it was but the shadow and the prophecy of them that lay upon him, like a thick cloud charged with lightning. And all this had been done by the murmur of one voice, one sweet voice, speaking in the accents of that tender sympathy which never before had sounded in the cold, joyless region of his life, whispering hope to him. He was not so mad as to love Lilias Randolph, whom he had seen but for one half-hour, but her tenderness, her generous, loving kindness, had aroused the slumbering nature within him, and he felt that were he much in contact with one so pure, so gentle, so noble, as she seemed to him, he might come to love. Oh! how madly, how miserably to love! he, the deformed cripple! Was not this a frenzy against which he had armed all the powers of his being? what tyrant, what enemy could be more fearful to him than an earthly love? what would it do for him but crush and torture him, and hold up far off the cup of this world's joy, where his parched lips could not reach, and he dying of thirst? Was it a presentiment that made him feel as if the spirit he had so chained down were rebelling against him, and required but the master-touch of some kindly and winning child of earth to abandon itself to unutterable madness? But, at all events, whatever were the source of this terror which had come upon him, whether it were a foreshadowing of future evil, or the warning of his good angel, it cannot pass unheeded. He must, with a strong will, compel his spirit to realize in all the bitterness of detail the truth of his exile from mankind, his needful isolation, as decreed by the seal of that deformity which made him an unsightly object in their eyes. He would force himself to remember that the music of human voices, however softly they might greet him, must be for him like those melodies of nature when wind and stream make the air musical, to which we listen with pleasure, but in which we have no part; and the aspect of goodness and gentleness, so lovely in the fallen child of Adam, must be to him like the light of a star shining far off in regions unattainable. Yet, while he felt within himself the courage thus to act, were he brought in contact again with her, whose sweet face had come beaming in so strangely on the darkness of his perpetual solitude, his very soul shrank from the struggle, and the longing so often before experienced to quit this house, where he was so unwelcome, returned upon him with redoubled force. Whilst he was still sitting thinking on these things, his head resting on his clasped hands, there was a sound of rustling silks in the passage--the door opened, a measured, stately step went through the room, and Lady Randolph stood by the side of her deformed son. He looked up. "Dear mother, I am so glad you have come, I was wishing at this very moment to speak to you." There was an expression of displeasure and annoyance on her beautiful face as she looked at him. "It cost me no small effort to come, I can tell you, Hubert; it is so wretched to find you here in this miserable room, with every thing so mean and neglected round you. You seem ever to do what you can to render your own appearance uninviting, crouching down there with your matted hair and melancholy face." There was little of the accents of love in these words, and a slight shiver seemed to agitate the frame of Hubert as he felt at that moment that he was repulsive even to the mother who bore him; but he lifted his dark gray eyes to her face with the sweet, patient smile which filled his countenance at times with a spiritual beauty, and said gently: "I did not expect you at this hour, or I should have tried to make both my little den and myself look more cheerful in your honor." There was something in his expression which touched with an intense power a never-slumbering memory. She flung her arms round his neck and bent over him. "Oh, my Henry--my Henry--it was his eyes that looked at me just now, as they have often looked in their tenderness, for ever perished--his eyes that I kissed in death with my poor heart broken--broken--as it is to this day--his eyes sealed up now with the horrible clog of his deep grave--oh, my Henry--my Henry--come back to me!" She pressed the head of her son close to her beating heart and wept. He waited till she was more composed; then, gently disengaging himself, he made her sit down beside him, and held her hand in both his own. "Dear mother," he said very gently, "it is my father whom you love in me and not myself; when I do not wear this passing likeness of him, which at times only draws your heart to me, there remains nothing in myself to win your affections, and you do not love me." "It is true," she answered calmly; "living I loved him only--dead, it is his memory alone which I adore." "Then I think you cannot refuse the prayer I have to make to you this day," said Hubert, not the least flush of indignation tinging his pale cheek at this unfeeling announcement; "I think it cannot in truth be any pleasure to you to see in me the marred and hateful resemblance of that which was so beautiful, and so dear; better surely to feed on his image pure and unchanged in the depths of your heart, and never have it brought so painfully before you in my miserable person." He paused a moment whilst she looked wondering at him, and then, suddenly, he exclaimed, with a passionate burst of feeling, "Mother, let me go--let me go--from this house, where my presence is abhorred by some and sought by none; nothing has kept me here but my fatal promise to you: I would I had died ere I made it; but it will cost you nothing to part from me, and you know not what it may cost me to stay here; it is cruel to keep me--let me go." "Let you go! Hubert think what you are saying, you would go to starve!" "It matters not! better so than to live on here. Mother, you would have had no power to detain me in this place but for that rash promise; not even your wishes should have kept me. I beseech you release me from it." "Never!" He almost writhed as she spoke, yet he went on-- "Do not keep me because you fancy I should starve; no man does who has energy and perseverance. I have a head and hands to labor with, and how far sweeter were the worst of toil than the bitter bread of charity." "But do you know," said Lady Randolph almost fiercely, "that I could not give you the means of buying that bread one day, I am so utterly in Sir Michael's power. He succeeded in laying hold of me because I was poverty-stricken beyond what flesh and blood could bear, and now by the same means he binds me down; he never has relaxed his hold; every thing is his; I could not command a shilling. These very baubles with which he loads me are not my own." And she tore the bracelets from her arms and flung them down. "He calls them family jewels on purpose to keep me to the veriest trifle in his power. "Mother, mother," exclaimed Hubert, "do you think, though he placed the wealth of millions in your hands, that I would not rather perish than touch it; it is too much already that I have been so long indebted to him for the roof that shelters me; but I do not fear that I could gain enough for my own living, if only you will let me go from this Egyptian bondage." "Hubert, what is it that has excited you in this manner? I never saw you so unlike yourself; you are usually so calm and so enduring. Was it your unfortunate meeting with Sir Michael last night? Was he more than usually insulting?" "No, it was not that," said Hubert gently. "I am so used to his bitter words that I could not feel more pained than I have ever been; but it matters not that you should be wearied with the detail of all the thoughts that have made me at this time so desirous to leave Randolph Abbey; dear mother, let it suffice you that I do implore you to release me from my promise." "Hubert, I tell you NO a thousand times. I will not see you starved to death for any Quixotic fancy; and, besides, do you think any power on this earth would induce me to gratify my worst enemy, my life-long enemy, whom chiefly I hate because he has the power to call me _wife_--that dear name I so loved to hear from the beloved lips that are choked up with dust? Do you think I would gratify him by giving him that which he has labored for, by the persecution of my own dearest husband, even to the death, and of myself to worse than death, a life with him? Do you know that the one thing he has always desired has been to obtain possession of me without having you for ever before his eyes as the living monument of that buried love which was his torturer, and to which I am faithful still? And do you think that to brighten even your life, much less to peril it, I would grant him this his heart's desire, and put it out of my power to show him, in every caress I lavish upon you, my poor deformed son, how I adored your father?" Hubert let her hand fall, and his features assumed an expression of severity. "Mother, forgive me that as your son I venture to judge you; but this is unworthy, most unworthy." She seemed almost awed by his rebuke, but hastily throwing her arms round him, she said more gently: "Hubert, forgive me; but I cannot--cannot part with you, the last shattered fragment of my ruined happiness. You do not know what it is to me to see you; to hear your voice coming to me like an echo from the grave, telling of departed love; to find in your eyes at times a glance as from the light of the past. It was such joy, such deep, deep joy when he lived, and my happiness was hid in his true heart, that often I think I never, never could have been so blest: and in truth that it is all a dream, too unutterably sweet to have been true; life seems to faint within me at that thought, for it is something to feel, barren and desolate as my existence is now, that I _have_ loved and been loved as once I was; and, Hubert, it is your presence alone that makes all this reality to me. His kiss has been upon your lips--his voice has called you his dear son. Ah! take not from me those last relics of him." She laid her head upon his breast in a passion of weeping. He raised her tenderly, and said with a calm voice: "Mother, it is not my vocation in this world to give pain to others for the sake of my own will or pleasure: take comfort, I will never more trouble you concerning this matter; I will not ask again to leave you." Silently she pressed her lips to his forehead, and then, as if ashamed that even her own son should have seen her so moved, she rose up without speaking and left the room. FOOTNOTES: [8] Continued from page 387. From Bentley's Miscellany. SEQUEL TO THE JEWISH HEROINE. A magnificent saloon, dazzling with oriental splendor, and brilliant with Arabic decorations, was allotted to Sol's reception; and there she was immediately attended by six Moorish damsels, who came to receive her orders. Fatigued by the length of her journey, and covered with the dust of the road, she begged for water to refresh herself, and a room where she might repose. Scarcely were the words pronounced when she beheld around her vessels of silver, brought to her by six other damsels, clothed in white, and offering her that for which she had asked with respect and humility. They brought her clothes of the finest cambric, fragrant essences of Arabia, and exquisitely-worked garments of divers colors, and of the highest value, all of which the humble Sol rejected, scarcely accepting from them even those things which were indispensable to her, and declining to change her dress. But one of the ladies of the court, seeing this, told her that she had received orders to clothe her according to the custom of the country, for which purpose she had collected together these garments for her choice. Sol, nevertheless, after expressing her gratitude, endeavored to excuse herself, but the request was pressed upon her with so much urgency, that she found it impossible to decline; and, at length, among the many varieties of dress prepared for her express use, selected one of a black hue, bordered with white, as indicative of the sadness of her heart; when, after a place of rest had been pointed out to her, she was left alone. All the women who had been employed about the young Hebrew repeated to the wives of the imperial prince the warmest praises of her extreme beauty and amiability. The emperor himself visited the house of his son, and inquiring with minute curiosity into all the incidents that have been related, and listening with delight to the praises heaped upon his young captive, he renewed his commands that she should be treated with gentleness, that every thing which could flatter her sight, or gratify her wishes, should be given her, and that nothing should be denied her by which her mind could be favorably impressed previously to the interview which he proposed to have with her on the day following,--saying, as he departed, that the moment of her conversion by his means would be an epoch in his life, which he would mark by the most princely magnificence to all that had contributed to it. All promised the most punctual compliance with the commands of the emperor and the prince, and all vied with one another in inventing every expedient to effect the object which the most subtle arts could have recourse to. During the night the wearied maiden slept profoundly, while the Moorish women in attendance watched her in silence, anxious not to disturb her slumbers, and not venturing to move from their posts. Morning dawned at last. The nightingale, the goldfinch, and the swift-flying bunting, announced the rising of the orb of day; the flowers unclosed their buds in the transparent morning ray, wafting forth their delicious odors, and perfuming with their fragrance the tranquil abode where breathed this innocent and lovely maiden. This abode was within a small gallery, decorated with crystal; and surrounded by vast shrubberies of the laurel, cypress, and myrtle, whose dark foliage mingled with the fragrant boughs of the citron and lemon. Through occasional vistas might be remarked, amid these labyrinths of eternal green, the deep mulberry-colored branches of the towering spice-tree, while the rose, the jessamine, and the mallow, crowned the raised terraces in sweet luxuriance, seeming to vie with the tall cassia, and darkening the bowers where the sunlight had been allowed to penetrate by the abundance of their white and crimson bloom. The blue-bell, the white lily, and the lily of the valley, blossomed beneath, shedding their perfume on the lower earth, as though too lowly to mingle with the clouds of fragrance emitted by the loftier plants, above which in their turn the ambitious woodbine exalted its gay festoons; and in the more distant shades of the garden, the green sward spread a soft and variegated carpet over the ground, spangled with plants of the dwarf violet, and aromatic spikenard. It was upon these scenes that the eyes of the fair Hebrew unclosed, after her long and profound sleep. So fair a sight filled her with a tranquil and serene pleasure; the warbling of the singing birds that fluttered amid the branches around her, or flew here and there amid the flowery mazes of the garden, were heard with delight, and while she watched them she envied them their liberty. It was with surprise and admiration that the young Jewess examined the embellishments of this gallery, which were, indeed, a triumph of art and ingenuity. Again and again did she admire it, reclining on her couch. One of the Moorish ladies, seeing her attention thus engaged, addressed her, with an affectionate salutation. Sol replied in accents of kindness, and entered into conversation with her, speaking with innocent admiration of the picturesque beauty of the landscape she beheld from this gallery. A black slave, clothed in white, came to give notice to Sol that the kaidmia[9] waited to receive her. With haste, therefore, she took leave of the Moorish ladies, and placed herself under the conduct of that officer. She was at once conducted into the presence of the emperor, who received her in a magnificent hall, sitting on an ottoman of crimson velvet, richly fringed with gold. Opposite to him was a cushion, which he desired the young Hebrew to occupy, and commanded his slaves to serve _esfa_,[10] and tea with the herb _luisa_.[11] Having thus, by every demonstration of kindness and affability, prepared her to converse with him--the emperor told Sol, he had long since heard of her mental acquirements and talents, and was not ignorant of the arguments she had used in the palace of his son, nor of her obstinate refusal to embrace the Law of the Prophet; but that he looked upon that merely as a morbid feeling of her mind, arising from delusion, and trusted that when _he_ should have argued awhile with her, she would not long continue in her present opinion. "Thou art called Sol," proceeded the emperor, "is it not so?" The young Jewess replied in the affirmative. "Well, then, beloved Sol," said he, "I have prepared a boon beyond all the powers of thine imagination to conceive. Since first I heard of thy beauty and virtue from Arbi Esid, the governor of Tangier, I decided that thou shouldst become the enchantress of my court. I saw thee enter Fez; and was delighted with all I saw; I heard thee speak in the palace of my son, and was charmed with all I heard. I was beside thee, though unseen, and I rejoiced with the Prophet, over so fair a captive. This morning, while thou wast conversing upon the state of men by birth, I was in the garden; the Tolva,[12] who accompanied me, said to me, 'this Jewess will indeed be a noble Mahometan!' At that moment, I had decided to reward thy beauty by giving thee in marriage to my nephew,--a handsome, rich, and brave youth; I had determined to bestow upon thee a diamond, whose value exceeds all the riches that any prince can possess; see, beautiful Sol, these are indeed gifts worthy to be appreciated, and thou wilt not, I am certain, disappoint me." "My lord," replied Sol, "I must confess, that in my present condition, nothing can attract or fix my attention: and my mind is tormented by the remembrance of my parents and of my brother." "Thy parents and thy brother," said the emperor, "shall be sent for immediately after thy recantation." "Say, rather," exclaimed Sol, "after my death, for never can I become a Mahometan!" "Innocent creature!" said the emperor, "who has urged you to this temerity? Reflect but for an instant; then consider if you would renounce my favor, and embrace Death as an alternative! Resolve quickly; or I would even grant delay, if you desire it." "My Lord," said Sol, "I am well aware that you have distinguished me in a manner of which I am undeserving; the offers that you have made me are, indeed, worthy of so great a prince; but I, a miserable Jewess, cannot accept them. I have determined never to change my creed; if this resolve should merit death, I will patiently submit; order, then, my execution, and the God of justice, knowing my innocence, will avenge my blood." "Unhappy girl!" exclaimed the emperor; "you were not born to be so beautiful, yet so unfortunate! From this moment I abandon you: my pride forbids me to persuade you further; yet I leave you with sorrow--the laws of my realm must judge you, and already I foresee that your blood will be poured out upon the earth!" So speaking, and casting a compassionate glance upon Sol, the monarch departed with a measured and thoughtful step. The afflicted Sol remained immovable, but gave way to a torrent of tears. Before long the kaidmia appeared and desired her to follow him, which she did without opposition. The emperor, although he had decreed that the cadi, as superior judge of the law, should try her cause, had urged upon him to withhold the extreme penalties of the law till every means had been tried that persuasion and mildness could suggest. To the house of this magistrate she was now conducted, with this especial recommendation from the emperor, in consequence of which, instead of being sent to the prison, a room in the cadi's own house was set apart for her, where he could be near her continually, and frequently engage her in conversation; yet all these marks of kindness did the young Sol receive as part of her martyrdom, and now thought on nothing but death, as the means of her wished-for release. The Jew who had accompanied the captive maiden at the request of her parents, had written news of all these events to Tangier. In Fez they excited a very great sensation; and, especially among the resident Jews, who showed their interest in all that passed whenever they could do so without injuring the success of the means devised to save the victim, of which they never lost sight for a moment. But they were now, although they knew it not, engaged in a hopeless undertaking; for the Moors had entered into a compact, having for its object the conversion of Sol, and from this there was no escape. The cadi, a zealous servant of the emperor, conducted his task with masterly subtlety; six hours were almost daily occupied by him in arguments and entreaties to the young Jewess; but all was vain, the steadfast maiden, firm in her resolution, adhered to the law of her fathers, and listened with reluctance to all the exhortations of the cadi. He admired her fortitude of spirit, while he pitied her fate, knowing that unless she became a proselyte, her sentence must inevitably be pronounced. In order to hasten the crisis, however, he concerted a scheme to surprise her into a decision by which she might either escape, or fall into his snare.[13] One morning early, after nine days had been spent in useless persuasion, the cadi entered the apartment of Sol: "My daughter," said he, "I bring you news of consolation; I, that have beheld you with eyes of compassion, that would weep over your death as for that of a daughter, have sought the Jajamins[14] of your creed; with them I have considered your present position; they assure me that your fear of forfeiting the glories which are to come, which causes you to reject the laws of the Prophet, is groundless; they ensure you that future glory, on the word of their conscience, provided that your life is not thus forfeited. I wish the emperor to remain unacquainted with the step I have thus taken for your sole benefit, my dear daughter, and from motives of kindness and affection only. You will be visited by the Jajamins, who will repeat what you now hear from my lips; and thus, convinced of the truth, you will give me the delight of your conversion, and of your rescue from death. But I perceive you are but little affected by this news!" Sol had not ceased, during this conversation, to regard the cadi with a serious expression of countenance, which very clearly indicated the state of mental vacillation produced by his words; nevertheless, she answered only, that she was beyond measure anxious to speak to the Jajamins, on whose judgment would probably depend her final determination. Now this plot, so far from being undertaken without the knowledge of the emperor, had been concerted between himself and the cadi; and by his desire the latter informed the Jajamins, that unless they succeeded in the conversion of the young Hebrew, she would suffer death, and they would be exposed to the emperor's rigorous displeasure. This threat produced the desired effect upon the Jajamins, who came to Sol prepared by every means in their power to change her resolution. On the ensuing day, when she received their visit, they professed to her their wish to console her in her affliction, and to hear from her own lips the reasons why she had negatived the urgent wishes of the emperor; adding, that this mission was a part of their duty, to which they much desired to conform. The beautiful Jewess listened with attention to this exordium; and replied, though with many sighs, in the following terms:--"God, who was concealed from our view by the dense cloud which no human sight could penetrate, delivered the Tables of the Law to Moses on the Mountain of the Desert. He prompts my heart to remain faithful to those laws, imposed on the people of Israel. More than once have I read in those sacred books of the horrible persecutions endured by the Israelites who violated that law; I have studied the prophecies of our Patriarchs, and have observed their gradual fulfilment. Mahomet was but a false innovator, a renegade from the primitive law;[15] neither to his laws nor to the future pleasures of his paradise, can I lend an ear; faithful to my own rites, the name of the only true God remains engraven on my heart; to whom Abraham offered his son Isaac in sacrifice; and I, a daughter of Abraham, would make sacrifice of my life to the same God. He ordains fidelity, and I will keep His commandments as a faithful Hebrew ought to keep them. Can any one on earth oppose the decree written by the right hand of the Most High?" The Jajamins listened attentively to the reasons of the youthful Sol, and urged, in reply, arguments full of hope; but perceiving that Sol, with an indescribable firmness, set these all aside, one of them at length addressed her as follows: "Our law imposes on us, as a duty, after God, to respect the king. The king's will is that you should wear the turban; and his will is sacred upon earth. I dare not advise otherwise, for I should then lift up my counsel against the law of the country that gives us a home. Besides, there are certain circumstances of human life which are of such exigency, that the God of Abraham looks upon them with leniency and toleration. As, for instance, young maiden, the unforeseen and impending danger of your present situation. You have parents--a brother; Jews, in great numbers, reside in this vast empire; and all these will, on your account, be exiled, persecuted, and ill-used. While, on the contrary, your conversion will not only liberate yourself from death, but will avert these threatening ills to them, and will bring down upon them honors and privileges; and we will, in the name of God, insure your future glory, and save your conscience, by taking on ourselves the responsibility of the act." The young Jewess listened in expressive silence, but without any visible emotion, to the foregoing address. At the close of it she arose, and expressed herself thus: "I respect your words, wise men of our faith; but if our laws impose respect--after God, to the king--the king cannot violate the precepts of the One God. I am resolved to sacrifice my life on the altar of my faith. To myself only can this resolve be fatal: my parents and kindred will be strengthened, and protected, and freed from the fury of that fanaticism by which I suffer. I will not, even in outward appearance, accede to the terms proposed. I will lay down my head to receive the axe of the executioner, and the remembrance of my death and constancy will excite only remorse in those who have oppressed me. Pardon me, if I have offended you; and, I pray you, tell my parents that they live in my heart. Entreat the cadi to molest me by no further importunities. My determination is fixed, and all further attempts to shake it will be vain." The tone of firmness in which she spoke convinced the jajamins that there was no hope; and they left her, overwhelmed with surprise. The cadi, who had listened to the whole conference from another apartment, went to meet the anxious and unsuccessful jajamins. "I know all," said he; "I have heard every thing. Your mission is fulfilled, and I shall report your fidelity to the emperor. Fear nothing, therefore, but rely upon my word." He then dismissed them, and going at once to his office, he took the papers that related to the cause of the young Sol, and added to them a transcript of her late contumelious expressions respecting the Law of the Prophet, which he represented as being blasphemed by her, and sentenced her, in consequence, to public execution. He next repaired to the palace of the emperor, and after reporting to him the result of the late conference with the jajamins, he handed to him the sentence of death. The emperor was much moved, and showed symptoms of surprise and concern. "How!" said he; "is there no remedy? Must this Jewess die?" "My lord," answered the cadi, "by the law she stands condemned; and there is no remedy." "Well, then," said the emperor, "but one more hope remains. I command that preparations for the execution be made with the utmost publicity; that all the troops of Fez, and at the intermediate stations, be assembled, and that nothing may be omitted which can make the spectacle an imposing one. Let her be awe-stricken; let her even be partially wounded before her head be finally severed. Perchance the sight of her own blood, flowing down, may produce some effect upon her, and we may, at the last moment, accomplish her conversion by intimidation. Leave me; I am sorely displeased at the fate of this young Hebrew--lovely as her name. And, mark me, strain every point, neglect nothing. We may yet gain her over. Alas! may Alà protect her!" And the emperor turned away with manifest signs of heavy displeasure. The cadi well perceived how greatly his royal master was grieved at the idea of Sol's death: but there was now no remedy. The law, barbarous and unjust as it was, was final; and her death was, therefore, inevitable. Before her execution, nevertheless, he paid her a final visit, when he found her kneeling in prayer, and displayed to her the writ of execution. "Behold," said he, "your sentence. Your head will roll on the ground, and the dust of the earth shall be dyed with your blood. Your tomb shall be covered with maledictions, and amidst them will your last end be remembered. Yet, fair Sol, there is a remedy; think yet upon it. To-morrow, at this very hour, I will return, either to present you, crowned with the jessamine flowers, to the emperor, or to lead you to your death." With these words he departed, leaving the young Hebrew still in the position in which he had found her upon his entrance, and from which she stirred not, but remained in a contemplative ecstasy commending her soul fervently to her Creator. It was soon publicly known in Fez that the day approached when the beautiful young Jewess was to be beheaded for blaspheming the name of the Prophet. The Moors, whose religious fanaticism is great beyond comparison, looked upon this execution as an occasion for rejoicings. The Jews, powerless to remedy it, were overcome by the deepest feelings of despondency: unwilling to remain entirely passive, they commenced a subscription, ready to be invested in any way that might best suit the emergency. The parents and relations, who were in Tangier, whose efforts to save this beloved victim would have been unavailing, even had they been capable of devising any means for her rescue, were plunged into despair; their hopes had suffered shipwreck upon the rock of a relentless fatality, and they, like the young maiden herself, had no consolation but those imparted from heaven. The afflicted Sol spent the whole day in meditation, she refused all food, and looked anxiously for the hour which would end her life. That fatal hour arrived at length. With a trembling step, the cadi entered her apartment, and found her, as before, in prayer. He was much agitated, and could speak to her only with the utmost difficulty. At length he said:-- "Sol--beautiful Sol! the arbiters of life and death may meet together. Behold me here! Know you wherefore I am come?" "I do know it," replied the maiden. "And have you determined upon your fate?" asked the cadi. Rising from the ground, and with firmness, Sol answered:--"I have determined. Lead me to the place where I am to shed my blood." "Unhappy girl!" said the cadi, "never, till my death, will thine image leave my memory!" He then desired a soldier to handcuff and lead her to the prison. The authorities of Fez, at the emperor's desire, having determined to give the scene as much publicity as possible, resolved that the execution should take place upon the Soco--a large square in Fez, where the market is held. The previous day, too, having been one of the weekly market days, when the concourse of persons was always very considerable, the news had circulated far and wide, and but little else was talked of. Very early in the morning, a strong picquet of soldiers had been posted on the Soco, in order to excite attention, and attract more spectators; but so numerous was the crowd that this precaution was scarcely necessary. The Jews who resided in Fez, when they saw that hope was at an end, went to the emperor and proffered the large sum they had collected, as was previously stated, in exchange for the permission to inter the remains of the young Sol after her execution; to which the emperor offered no opposition. The dreadful moment had now arrived, when the fair victim was to be conducted from her prison to the place of execution. Till it arrived, her devotions had been uninterrupted, and the executioners, sent to fetch her, found her still praying to that Eternal Being in whom her faith was centred, that He would endow her with strength and fortitude to receive the bitter cup that awaited her. When the door of her prison opened, she saw the executioners enter without manifesting any emotion or surprise, but looked meekly towards them, waiting for the fulfilment of their mission. But these men, whose nature is hardened to the most savage cruelty, after intimating to her that they were come to conduct her to death, tied around her neck a thick rope, by which they commenced dragging her along as though she were a wild beast. The lovely young girl, wrapped in her haïque,[16] her eyes fixed on the earth, which she moistened with her bitter tears, followed them with faltering steps. As she passed, compassion, grief, tenderness, and every painful emotion of the heart, might be traced in the countenances of the Jews; but among the Mahometans there were no visible relentings of humanity. The Moors, of all sects and ages, who crowded the streets, rent the air with their discordant rejoicings. "She comes!" they cried; "she comes, who blasphemed the name of the Prophet. Let her die for her impiety!" From the prison to the Soco, the crowds every minute augmented, though the square formed by the troops prevented their penetrating to the scaffold. Every alley and lane was crowded, and amid the most extreme confusion the executioner arrived with Sol at the appointed spot. The pen refuses to describe the incidents of the few succeeding moments. Some few, even amongst the Moors, were moved, and wept freely and bitterly. The executioner[17] unsheathed his sharp scimetar, and whirled it twice or thrice in the air, as a signal for silence, when the uproar of the Moors was hushed. The beautiful Sol was then directed to kneel down,--at which moment she begged for a little water to wash her hands. It was immediately brought, when she performed the ablution required by the Jewish custom before engaging in prayer. The spectators were anxiously observant of all the actions of the victim. Lifting her eyes to heaven, and amid many tears, she recited the Semà (the prayer offered by those of her nation before death), and then, turning to the executioners, "I have finished," said she, "dispose of my life;" and, fixing her gaze upon the earth, she knelt to receive the fatal stroke. The scene had by this time begun to change its aspect. The vast concourse of people, seeing Sol's meek gentleness, could not but be moved; many wept, and all felt a degree of compassion for her faith. The executioner, then, seizing the arms of the victim, and twisting them behind her back, bound them with a rope, and whirling his sword in the air, laid hold of the long hair of Sol's head, and wounded her slightly, as he had been commanded, yet so that the blood flowed instantly from the wound, dyeing her breast and garments. But Sol, turning her face to the cruel executioner, replied-- "There is yet time," said they to her; "be converted, your life may yet be spared." "Slay me, and let me not linger in my sufferings; dying innocently, as I do, the God of Abraham will judge my cause." These were her last words, at the close of them the scimetar descended upon her fair neck, and the courageous maiden was no more. The Jews had paid six Moors to deliver to them the corpse with the blood-stained earth on which it lay, immediately after the execution of the sentence. This was accordingly done, and the remains, wrapped in a fine linen cloth, were deposited in a deep sepulchre of the Jewish cemetery by the side of those of a learned and honored sage of the law of Moses. Amidst tears and sighs was the Hebrew martyr buried. Even some of the Moors followed her, mourning to her grave, and still visit her tomb, and venerate her resting place as that of a true and faithful martyr to the creed she held. FOOTNOTES: [9] Or "captain of a hundred," centurion. From the Arabic _kaid_, a leader or chief, _mia_, a hundred. The Kaidmia is adjutant of the empire. [10] A kind of sweetmeat prepared for the emperor and persons of high rank, composed of milk, sugar, butter, and cinnamon. [11] A herb like sweet marjoram, usually accompanying tea in Morocco. [12] A learned professor of the law. It is the common practice in Arabia to have whispering-galleries and watch-rooms in most houses, so that what passes in one apartment may be overheard in another. [13] It may here be mentioned, that the Moorish law cannot _force_ a Jew to change his religion; this conversion must be voluntary. The cadi could not, therefore, condemn Sol to death, because she refused to become a Mahometan, unless she had made use of some expressions impugning the law of Mahomet. This will be seen by the sequel. [14] The Jajamins or Hajamins are Jews invested with certain dignities--_Anglicè_, "wise men," and respected as such. [15] On these words was the sentence of Sol framed, impeaching, as they did, the Mahometan creed. [16] The _haïque_, a sort of bonded cloak, is worn in Africa by the Jews as well as the Moors. [17] All Moorish executions are performed with a sword. From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. ADVENTURES OF AN ARMY PHYSICIAN. A REMINISCENCE OF THE BRITISH RULE IN NEW-YORK. Robert Jackson, the son of a small landed proprietor of limited income but respectable character in Lanarkshire, was born in 1750, at Stonebyres, in that county. He received his education first at the barony school of Wandon, and afterwards under the care of Mr. Wilson, a teacher of considerable local celebrity at Crawford, one of the wildest spots in the Southern Highlands. He was subsequently apprenticed to Mr. William Baillie, in Biggar; and in 1766 proceeded, for the completion of his professional training, to the university of Edinburgh, at that time illustrated and adorned by the genius and learning of such men as the Monros, the Cullens, and the Blacks. In pursuing his studies at this favored abode of science and literature, young Jackson is said to have evinced all that purity of morals and singleness of heart which characterised him in after-life, and to have resisted the allurements of dissipation by which, in those days especially, the youthful student was tempted to wander from the paths of virtuous industry. His circumstances were, however, distressingly narrow; and not only was he forced to forego the means of professional improvement open only to the more opulent student; but in order to meet the expenses of the winter-sessions, he was obliged to employ the summer, not in the study but in the practice of his profession. He engaged himself as medical officer to a Greenland whaler, and in two successive summers visited, in that capacity, "the thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;" returning on each occasion with a recruited purse and a frame strengthened and invigorated by exposure and exercise. During these expeditions he occupied his leisure with the study of the Greek and Roman languages, and the careful and repeated perusal of the best authors in both. His third winter-sessions at Edinburgh having passed away, he was induced to go out and seek his fortune in Jamaica, and accordingly proceeded thither in a vessel commanded by one Captain Cunningham, who had previously been employed as master of a transport at the siege of Havannah. It is far from improbable that it was from his conversations with this individual that Jackson derived those hints, of which at a future time he availed himself, respecting the transmission of troops by sea without injury to their health; but it is quite certain his conviction of the enormous value of cold-water affusions as a curative agent in the last stage of febrile affections, was imbibed from this source. Arriving in Jamaica, he in 1774 became assistant to an eminent general practitioner at Savana-la-Mar, Dr. King, who was also in medical charge of a detachment of the first battalion of the 50th regiment. This latter he consigned to Jackson's care; and well worthy of the trust did our young adventurer, though but twenty-four years of age, approve himself--visiting three or four times a day the quarters of the troops to detect incipient disease, and studying with ardor and intelligent attention the varied phenomena of tropical maladies. Four years thus passed profitably away, and they would have been as pleasant as profitable, but for one circumstance. The existence of slavery and its concomitant horrors, appears to have made a deep impression on Jackson's mind, and, at last, to have produced in him such sentiments of disgust and abhorrence, that he resolved on quitting the island altogether, and, as the phrase is, trying his luck in North America, where the revolutionary war was then raging. This resolution--due perhaps, as much to his love of travel as to the motive assigned--was not altogether unfortunate, for shortly after his departure, October 3, 1780, Savana-la-Mar was totally destroyed, and the surrounding country for a considerable distance desolated, by a terrible hurricane and sweeping inroad of the sea, in which Dr. King, his family and partner, together with numbers of others, unhappily perished. The law of Jamaica forbade any one to leave the island without having given previous notice of his intention, or having obtained the bond of some respectable person as security for such debts as he might have outstanding. Jackson, when he embarked for America, had no debts whatever, and was, moreover, ignorant of the law, with whose requirements therefore he did not comply. Nor did he become aware of his mistake until, when off the easternmost point of the island, the master of the vessel approached him and said: "We are now, sir, off Point-Morant; you will therefore have the goodness to favor me with your security-bond. It is a mere legal form, but we are obliged to respect it." Finding this "legal form" had not been complied with, the master then, in spite of Jackson's protestations and entreaties, set him on shore, and the vessel continued on her voyage. What was to be done? Almost penniless, landed on a part of the coast where he knew not a soul, Jackson well-nigh gave himself up to despair. There was a vessel for New-York loading, it was true, at Lucea; but Lucea was 150 miles distant, on the westernmost side of the island, and not to be reached by sea, whilst our adventurer's purse would not suffer him to hire a horse. No choice was left him but to walk, and that in a country where the exigencies of the climate make pedestrianism perilous in the extreme to the white man. Having reached Kingston, which was in the neighborhood, in a boat, and obtained the necessary certificate, he started on his dangerous expedition, and on the first day walked eighteen miles, being sheltered at night in the house of a benevolent planter. The next day he pushed on for Rio Bueno, which he had almost reached, when, overcome by thirst, he stopped by the way to refresh himself, and imprudently standing in an open piazza exposed to a smart easterly breeze, whilst his lemonade was preparing, contracted a severe chill that almost took from him the power of motion, and left him to crawl along the road slowly and with pain, until he reached his destination. Having finally arrived, friendless and moneyless, in New-York, then in the occupation of the British, he endeavored first to obtain a commission in the New-York volunteers, and afterwards employment as mate in the Naval Hospital. In his endeavors, he was kindly assisted by a Jamaica gentleman, a fellow-passenger, whose regard during the voyage he had succeeded in conciliating by his amiable manners and evident abilities; but his efforts were all in vain, and poor Jackson, familiar with poverty from childhood, began now to experience the misery of destitution. In truth, starvation stared him in the face, and a sense of delicacy withheld him from seeking from his Jamaica friend the most trifling pecuniary assistance. In this, his state of desperation, he determined upon passing the British lines, and endeavoring to obtain amongst the insurgents the food he had hitherto sought in vain; resolving, however, under no circumstances to bear arms against his native country. Whilst moodily and slowly walking towards the British outposts to carry into execution this scheme, having in one pocket a shirt, and in another a Greek Testament and a Homer, he was met half-way by a British officer, who fixed his eyes steadily on him in passing. Jackson in his agitation thought he read in the glance a knowledge of his purpose and a disapprobation of it. Struck by the incident, he turned back, and, after a moment's reflection, resolved on offering himself as a volunteer in the first battalion of the 71st regiment (Sutherland Highlanders), then in cantonment near New-York. Arriving at the place, he presented himself to the notice of Lieutenant-Colonel (afterwards Sir Archibald) Campbell, who, having first ascertained that he was a Scotsman, inquired to whom he was known at New-York. Jackson replied, to no one; but that a fellow-passenger from Jamaica would readily testify to his being a gentleman. "I require no testimony to your being a gentleman," returned the kind-hearted colonel. "Your countenance and address satisfy me on that head. I will receive you into the regiment with pleasure; but then I have to inform you, Mr. Jackson, that there are seventeen on the list before you, who are of course entitled to prior promotion." The next day, at the instance of Colonel Campbell, the regimental surgeon, Dr. Stuart, appointed Jackson acting hospital or surgeon's mate--a rank now happily abolished in the British army; for those who filled it, whatever might be their competency or skill, were accounted and treated no better than drudges. Although discharging the duties that now devolve on the assistant-surgeon, they were not, like him, commissioned, but only warrant-officers, and therefore had no title to half-pay. Dr. Stuart, who appears to have been a man superior to vulgar prejudice, and to have appreciated at once the extent of Jackson's acquirements and the vigor of his intellect, relinquished to him, almost without control, the charge of the regimental hospital. Here it was that this able young officer began to put in practice that amended system of army medical treatment which since his time, but in conformity with his teachings, has been so successfully carried out as to reduce the mortality amongst our soldiery from what it formerly was--about fifteen per cent--to what it is now, about two and a half per cent. In the army hospitals, at the period Jackson commenced a career that was to eventuate so gloriously, there was no regulated system of diet, no classification of the sick. What are now well known as "medical comforts," were things unheard of; the sick soldier, like the healthy soldier, had his ration of salt-beef or pork, and his allowance of rum. The hospital furnished him with no bedding; he must bring his own blanket. Any place would do for a hospital. That in which Jackson began his labors had originally been a commissary's store; but happily its roof was water-tight--an unusual occurrence--and its site being in close proximity to a wood, our active surgeon's mate managed, by the aid of a common fatigue party, to surround the walls with wicker-work platforms, which served the patients as tolerably comfortable couches. A further and still more important change he effected related to the article of diet. He suggested, and the suggestion was adopted--honor to the courageous humanity which did not shrink from so righteous an innovation!--that instead of his salt ration and spirits, which he could not consume, the sick soldier should be supplied with fresh meat, broth, &c.; and that, as the quantity required for the invalid would be necessarily small, the quarter-master should allow the saving on the commuted ration to be expended in the common market on other comforts, such as sago, &c., suitable for the patient. Thus proper hospital diet was furnished, without entailing any additional expense on the state.[18] Indefatigable in the discharge of his interesting duties, Mr. Jackson speedily obtained the confidence of his military superiors, who remarked with admiration not only his intelligent zeal in performing his hospital functions, but his calmness, quickness of perception, and generous self-devotion when in the field of battle. On one occasion, although suffering at the time from severe indisposition, he remained, under a heavy fire, succoring the wounded, in spite of the remonstrances of the officers present. On another, having observed the British commander, Colonel (afterwards General) Tarleton, in danger of falling into the hands of the enemy, who had routed the royalist troops, he galloped up to the colonel--whom a musket-ball had just dismounted-pressed him to mount his own horse and escape, whilst he himself, with a white handkerchief displayed, quietly proceeded in the direction of the advancing foe, and surrendered himself at once. The American commander, who did not know what to make of such conduct, asked him who he was? He replied: "I am assistant surgeon in the 71st regiment. Many of the men are wounded, and in your hands. I come, therefore, to offer my services in attending them." He was accordingly sent to the rear as a prisoner; but was well treated, and spent the first night of his captivity in dressing his soldiers' wounds, taking off his shirt, and tearing it up into bandages for the purpose. He afterwards did the same good office for the American sufferers; and when the wounded English could be exchanged, Washington sent him back, not only without exchange, but even without requiring his parole. At a subsequent period during the same unhappy war, when the British under Lord Cornwallis were in full retreat, the sick and wounded were placed in a building--which the colonists, on their approach, began to riddle with shot. Several surgeons, not caring to incur the risk of entering so exposed an edifice, agreed to cast lots who should go in and see to the invalids; but Jackson, with characteristic nerve and simplicity, at once stepped forward: "No, no," said he, "I will go and attend to the men!" He did so, and returned unhurt. After this we find him a prisoner in the hands of the Americans and French at Yorktown, Virginia. As on the former occasion, he was treated with all imaginable kindness; and, being released on parole, returned to Europe early in 1782, and proceeded by way of Cork, Dublin, and Greenock to Edinburgh, where he abode for a short time. Thence he started for London: and, desirous of testing the best way of sustaining physical strength during long marches, and urged perhaps also by economical considerations, he resolved to make the journey on foot. His West Indian and American experience had taught him that spare diet consisted best with pedestrian efficiency, and it was accordingly his practice, during this long walk, to abstain from animal food until the close of day, nor often then to partake of it. He would walk some fourteen miles before breakfast--a meal of tea and bread; rest then for an hour or an hour and a half; then pace on until bedtime--a salad, a tart, or sometimes tea and bread, forming his usual evening fare. He found that on this diet he arose every morning at dawn with alacrity, and could prosecute without inconvenience his laborious undertaking. By way of experiment he twice or thrice varied his plan--dining on the road off beefsteaks, and having a draught of porter in the course of the afternoon; but the result justified his anticipations. The stimulus of the beer soon passing off, lassitude succeeded the temporary strength it had lent him; and, worse than all, his disposition to early rising sensibly diminished. His stay in London, which he reached in this primitive fashion, was not long. His kind friend Dr. Stuart, who had exchanged into the Royal Horse-Guards, gave him the shelter of his roof; but so poor was Mr. Jackson, that, although ardently desirous of improving himself in his profession, he was unable to attend any one of the medical schools with which London abounds. The peace of 1783 having opened the continent to the curiosity of the British traveller, Jackson curtly announced to his friends, that "he was going to take a walk." His poverty allowed him no other mode of locomotion; so off he set on the grand tour, carrying with him a map of France, a bundle of clothes, and a scanty supply of money. Crossing the Channel, he reached Calais, a place which Horace Walpole, writing from Rome, declared had astonished him more than any thing he had elsewhere seen, but in which our adventurer found nothing more astonishing than a superb Swiss regiment. He proceeded to Paris, and thence through Switzerland, by Geneva and Berne, into Germany, at a town of which--Günz in Suabia--he met with a comical enough adventure. On entering the town he was challenged by a soldier, who, having learned he had no passport, carried him before a magistrate, by whom he was forthwith condemned as a vagabond, and remitted to the custody of a recruiting sergeant. This worthy, in turn, introduced him to the commanding officer, who politely gave our traveller the choice of serving his Imperial and Apostolic Majesty, the Emperor of Germany, either in his cavalry or his infantry forces. But Jackson, strangely insensible to the honor, flatly refused to serve his Majesty in these or any other ways, and desired to be at once set free, and suffered to continue his journey. The officer, doubtless, amazed at such presumption, desired the sergeant to convey him to the barracks, where he was placed in a large room, in which were congregated some two hundred or so involuntary recruits like himself--harmless travellers, who, being destitute of passports, the emperor forcibly enlisted into his service. Jackson found his co-mates in misfortune very dirty, very ragged, but perfectly civil and good-tempered. Having a little recovered his serenity--for it is easy to see, though our hero is described as a man of placid demeanor and somewhat Quakerly appearance, he could be not a little fiery at times--he sat down and wrote to the commanding officer, entreating leave to sleep at an inn, and proffering the deposit of all his money as a pledge for his reappearance next morning. The reply was an order that he should surrender his writing materials. At seven o'clock, the appointed sleeping hour, the sergeant returned and gave the signal for bed by rapping with his cane on the floor, which was speedily covered by a number of dirty bags of mouldy straw--the regulation mattresses, it would seem, for involuntary recruits. Jackson--peppery again--refused to lie down, but was at last compelled to do so, and between two of the dirtiest fellows of the lot, each of whom had a leg chained to an arm. The next morning, at his own request, he was brought before the commandant of the town, who had only arrived late the preceding evening, and whom he found seated in his bedroom, "with all his officers standing round him receiving orders," says Jackson, "with more humility than orderly-sergeants." The commandant repeated the offer of "cavalry or infantry;" adding that a war was about to commence with the Turks, and that good-behavior would insure promotion. However, finding Jackson obstinately persistent in his refusal, he quietly observed, in conclusion, that the emperor, as a matter of rule and of right, "impressed" into his army all such as entered his dominions without certificates of character. "The order was so tyrannical," declares our _détenu_, "that I could not contain myself. 'Put me in chains, if you please,' I said, 'but I tell you, all Germany shall not make me carry a musket for the emperor.'" This impetuous burst of indignation seems to have alarmed the pglegmatic commandant, who accordingly let our adventurer go, counselling him, however, to write to the English ambassador at Vienna for a passport, lest he should get into further trouble. Jackson passed through the Tyrol into Italy, every where indulging his love of scenery and still greater love of adventure; studying with all the acuteness of his countrymen the varied characters of the people he met with, and in his correspondence with home friends, sketching them in language striking for its force, its propriety, and originality. Some of his remarks on men and manners are conceived in a truly Goldsmithian vein, whilst all testify at once to the goodness of his heart and the quickness of his perceptions. At Venice he says that he felt it to be "such a feast of enjoyment as seldom falls to the lot of man, and never to the lot of any but a poor man, who has nothing conspicuous about him to attract the notice of the crowd," to possess such facilities as he did for learning what the people of foreign countries really were. At Albenga, in Piedmont, Jackson arrived one night, tired, hungry, and drenched with rain. Intending to put up at the "Albergo di San Dominico," which he had been informed was the best inn, he went by accident to the convent of the same name, and entering, called loudly to be shown to a private room. "Instead of telling me I was wrong," he says, "the young brethren looked waggish, and began to laugh: when a man is cold and hungry, he can ill brook being the sport of others;" so accordingly--peppery again--he shook his stick angrily at the young monks. And at last one of the most courteous and demure of the number, coming forward, said that although theirs was not exactly a public house, still the stranger was heartily welcome to walk in, rest, and refresh himself. Discovering his mistake, Jackson of course lost no time in making his bow, his apologies, and acknowledgments. He returned to England by way of France, having but six sous in his pockets when he reached Bordeaux, where an English merchant, a total stranger, advanced him a few pounds. On the road, he was frequently taken for an Irishman, and not seldom for an Irish priest; under which impression, many civilities were paid him by the simple inhabitants of the country he traversed. Ultimately he landed at Southampton, with just four shillings in his possession: his once black coat having turned a rusty brown, his hat shovel-shaped by ill-usage, and his whole aspect so comical, that the mob hooted him, under the belief that he was a Methodist preacher. Proceeding inland on foot, in the direction of Southampton, he overtook a poor man walking along the road, whose looks of unutterable misery induced our traveller to stop and inquire what ailed him. He told Jackson he had a son and daughter dying of a disorder apparently contagious, and that no physician would attend them, as he was too poor to pay the fees. Jackson at once offered his services, which were gratefully accepted. He saw his patients, and prescribed for them, and his heart was touched by their simple expressions of gratitude. "Their thankfulness," he says, "for a thing that would perhaps do them no good, gave me more pleasure than a fee of, I believe, twenty guineas, much in need of it as I was." The night had gathered in before he reached Winchester, where, at a respectable inn, he partook of such refreshment as his means afforded, and then desired to be shown to his bedroom. The answer was, that the house contained no bedroom for such as he, and he was finally driven out with the coarsest abuse into the streets. The hour was ten o'clock, the month December, and the severity of the weather may be guessed from the fact, that the snow lay deep on the ground. After wandering about for some time, he at last obtained shelter in a small house in the outskirts of the city. The next day he fared little better. "On Sunday morning," he relates, "I was sixty-four miles from London, and had only one shilling in my pocket. I was hungry, but durst not eat; thirsty, and I durst not drink, for fear of being obliged to lie all night at the side of a hedge in a cold night in December. After dark, I travelled over to Bagshot; was denied admittance into some of the public-houses, ill used in others." He sought in vain permission even to lie in a barn; but a laborer he fortunately fell in with conducted him to a house, where, at the sacrifice of his last shilling, he secured at length a bed. The next day--foot-sore, penniless and starving--he entered London. After remaining there a brief space--January, 1784--in spite of the inclement season, he set off, again on foot, to Perth--a journey that occupied him three weeks, as he was detained on the way by some friends whom he visited. At Perth, where his old regiment then lay previous to its disbandment, he amused himself by studying Gaelic, and the controversy respecting Ossian and his poems. Quitting Perth, he travelled, still on foot, through the Highlands, the inhabitants of which he was, in the first instance, disposed to class with savages; but when he had observed the originality of conception, the breadth of humor, and the elevated sentiments which mark the Celt, his opinions underwent a total revolution. He was especially delighted with a ragged old reiver or cattle-lifter whom he encountered, and who had given shelter to the Young Chevalier in the braes of Glenmoriston after the battle of Culloden. On his return to Edinburgh, Jackson married a lady of fortune, the daughter of Dr. Stephenson, and niece of his old friend Colonel Francis Shelley, of the 71st regiment; and was enabled by this accession to his means once again to visit Paris, where he not only resumed his medical studies, but acquired the mastery of several languages, Arabic amongst the rest. Having graduated M. D. at Leyden, he came back again to England, and commenced practice at Stockton-upon-Tees, in Durham. Although his reputation speedily became considerable, especially in cases of fever, he seems scarcely to have liked his new avocation. He found solace, however, in his favorite study of language, which he pursued with unremitting ardor--constantly reading through the Greek and Latin classics, and not only rendering himself familiar with the best works of the modern continental authors, but also with the literature of the Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, and Gaelic tongues. The _Bostan_ of Saadi is said to have been one of his most favorite poems. On the war breaking out in 1793, Dr. Jackson--who, in 1791, had published a valuable work on the fevers of Jamaica and continental America--applied for employment as army-physician; but Mr. Hunter, the director-general of the medical department of the army, considering none eligible for such employment who had not served as staff or regimental surgeon, or apothecary to the forces, Jackson agreed to accept, in the first instance, the surgeoncy of the 3d Buffs, on the understanding, that at a future time, he should be nominated physician as he desired. Mr. Hunter, however, ever, died soon after this; and his promise was not fulfilled by the Board which succeeded him in the medical direction of the army, and which appears to have pursued Dr. Jackson with uniform hostility. Returning to England with the troops, it was offered to him to accompany, in the capacity of chief medical officer, Sir Ralph Abercromby's expedition against some of the West India islands; and although no employment could possibly have been more agreeable to his taste, he, much to Sir Ralph's chagrin, declined the flattering proposal, on the grounds, that lower terms had been offered to him than to another professional man. Nothing but a sense of professional delicacy, it is plain, governed him in this transaction, for he immediately afterwards embarked (April, 1796) as _second_ medical officer in another expedition to San Domingo. During his abode in this island, he was unwearied in enlarging his acquaintance with tropical diseases--observing the rule he had followed in Holland of noting down by the patient's bedside the minutest particulars of every case he attended, the effects of the treatment pursued, and whatever else might shed light on the intricacies of pathological science. He also gave a larger practical operation to the scheme he had years before devised of amending the dietaries of military hospitals. After the evacuation of San Domingo in 1798, our physician paid a visit to the United States, where he was received with signal distinction, his reputation having preceded him. The latter part of the year found him again at Stockton, publishing a work on contagious and endemic fevers, "more especially the contagious fever of ships, jails, and hospitals, vulgarly called the yellow-fever of the West Indies;" together with "an explanation of military discipline and economy, with a scheme for the medical arrangements of armies." He undertook, about this time, by desire of Count Woronzow, the Russian ambassador, the medical charge of seventeen hundred Russian soldiers, who were stationed in the Channel Islands in a sad state of disease and disorganization; and so admirably did he acquit himself, and so perfect were the hospital provisions he made, that (1800) the commander-in-chief nominated him physician and head of the army-hospital depôt at Chatham--as he says, "without any application or knowledge on his part." This appointment was the cause of his subsequent misfortunes. At Chatham, with the warm approbation of Major-General Hewett, commanding the depôt, he introduced that system of hospital reform form which had elsewhere operated so successfully. The changes he effected, as soon as they were made, became known to the Medical Board, and were publicly approved of by one of its members. However, shortly afterwards, an epidemic broke out in the depôt (then removed to the Isle of Wight), arising from the fact, that the barracks were overcrowded with young recruits, but which the medical board ascribed to Jackson's innovations, and reported so to the Horse-Guards. The commander-in-chief directed an inquiry to take place before a medical board impannelled for the purpose, and the result of that inquiry may be guessed from a communication made by the War-Office to the commandant of the depôt. This states "the unanimous opinion of the board to have exculpated Dr. Jackson from all improper treatment of diseases in the sick," and the commander-in-chief's gratification, "than an opportunity has thus been given to that most zealous officer of proving his fitness for the important situation in which he is placed." The result of this wretched intrigue, however, was that Jackson, disgusted with the whole affair, requested to be placed on half-pay, to which request the Duke of York, with marked reluctance, at last (March 1803) acceded. In his retirement at Stockton, Jackson put forth two valuable works, one on the medical economy of armies, and another on that of the British army in particular, and was much gratified by an offer to accompany, as military secretary, General Simcoe, just appointed commander-in-chief in India. The general's sudden death, however, put an end to this plan; and Jackson continued at Stockton, addressing frequent representations to government on the defective medical arrangements in the military service--representations the very receipt of which were not acknowledged by Mr. Pitt, to whom they were forwarded. The Peninsular war commencing, Dr. Jackson was again named Inspector of Hospitals, but was not, thanks to the persevering enmity of the Medical Board, sent on foreign service, although he volunteered to sink his rank, and go in any capacity. The Board even succeeded, by calumnious statements, that he had purchased his diploma--statements he readily confuted--in preventing his appointment to the Spanish liberating army; although the British government had formally requested him to accept such an appointment, and agreed to give credentials testifying to his capacity and trustworthiness. This last appointment led him, in an unguarded moment--peppery to the last--to inflict a slight personal chastisement on the surgeon-general, for which he was imprisoned six months in the King's Bench. But the triumph of his enemies was not of long duration. In 1810 the Board was dissolved, and the control of the medical department vested in a director-general, with three principal inspectors subordinate to him. Then did Jackson return to active service, and from 1811 to 1815 was employed in the West Indies; his reports from whence embracing every topic relating to medical topography, to sanitary arrangements, and to the observed phenomena of tropical disease, are, it is not too much to say, invaluable. His hints as to the choice of sites for barracks, the propriety of giving to soldiers healthy employment and recreation, as a means of averting sickness, his suggestions as to the treatment of fevers and other endemic diseases, may be found in the various works he has published, embodying the fruits of his West Indian experience. In 1819, he was sent by government to Spain, where the yellow-fever had broken out, and his report upon its characteristics has been universally admitted to supply the fullest information on the subject that had hitherto been communicated to the public. He availed himself of his presence in that part of Europe to pay a visit to Constantinople and the Levant; and, retaining his energy to the last, when a British force was sent to Portugal in 1827, he desired permission to accompany it. The sands of his life, however, were then fast running out, and on the 6th of April in the same year he died, after a short illness, at Thursby, near Carlisle, in the seventy-seventh year of his age. Thus closed a long career of usefulness; for it is not too much to say, that few men of his time labored harder to benefit his fellow-creatures than did Dr. Robert Jackson. * * * * * SPANISH NAMES.--A Spanish journal gives the following singular names as those of two _employés_ in the Finance department at Madrid:--Don Epifanio Mirurzururdundua y Zengotita, and Don Juan Nepomuceno de Burionagonatotorecagogeazcoecha. The journal would have done well to have given some directions as to the pronunciation. FOOTNOTES: [18] The late Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, when in command, during the war, of a frigate on the coast of Calabria, finding sickness appear amongst his crew, purchased on his own responsibility some bullocks, for the purpose of supplying them with fresh meat. Lord Collingwood having heard of this, and considering it a breach of discipline, sent for Codrington, and addressed him: "Captain Codrington, pray have you any idea of the price of a bullock In this place?" "No, my lord," was the reply, "I have not; but I know well the value of a British sailor's life!" From Dicken's Household Words. STRINGS OF PROVERBS. When a saying has passed into a national proverb, it is regarded as having received the "hall-mark" of the people, with respect to its prudence or practical wisdom. Proverbs deal only with realities, generally of the most homely and every-day kind, and are always supposed to comprise the most sage advice, or the most broad worldly truth, within the least possible compass. Now, while we admit that proverbs are for the most part true, and useful in their teaching, and that they very often inculcate excellent maxims, we must at the same time enter our protest against the infallibility of most of them. Numbers will be found, on the least examination (which is seldom given to them) to be one-sided truths; others, inculcate an utterly selfish conduct, under the guise of prudence or worldly wisdom; and some of them are absolutely false, or only of the narrowest application. The majority of the proverbs, of all modern nations, originate with the people, and with the humbler classes (we must except the Chinese and Arabic, which are evidently the product of their sages), as witnessed by the homeliness of the allusions, and the frequent vulgarity, but, in all cases, the actual experience of life and its ordinary occurences with regard to men and things. They are full of corn, with a proportionate quantity of chaff and straw. Let us no longer, therefore, take all these "sayings" for granted; let us rather take them to task a little, for their revision and our own good. Proverbs being the common property of all mankind, and often to be traced to very remote geographical sources, we shall observe no national classification; but string a few together now and then from Arabia and China, from Spain, Italy, France, or England, just as they may occur. So, now to our first string. _Honesty is the best policy._ This is true in the higher sense; but doubtful in the sense usually intended. It is true as to the general good, but not usually for the individual, except in the long run. (We pass over the obvious truth, that it is better policy to earn a guinea, than to steal one, because the proverb has a far wider range of meaning than that.) To be a "politic," clever fellow, a vast deal more humoring of prejudices, errors, and follies, is requisite, than at all assorts with true honesty of character. If, however, we regard this proverb only on its higher moral ground, then, of course, we must at once admit its truth. The reader will probably be surprised, as we were, to find that it comes from the Chinese, and will be found in the translation of the novel of "_Iu-Kiao-Li_." _A leap from a hedge is better than a good man's prayer._ (Spanish.) The leap (of a robber) from his lurking-place, being preferable to asking charity, and receiving a blessing, is one of those proverbs, the impudent immorality of which is of a kind that makes it impossible to help laughing. Its frank atrocity amounts to the ludicrous. It is an old Spanish proverb, and occurs in "Don Quixote"--of course in the mouth of Sancho. _A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush._ The extreme caution ridiculed by this proverb is of a kind which one would hardly have expected to be popular in a commercial country. If this were acted upon, there would be an end of trade and commerce, and all capital would lie dead at the banker's--as a bird who was held safe. The truth is, our whole practice is of a directly opposite kind. We regard a bird in the hand as worth only a bird; and we know there is no chance of making it worth two birds--not to speak of the hope of a dozen--without letting it out of the hand. Inasmuch, however, as the proverb also means to exhort us not to give up a good certainty for a tempting uncertainty, we do most fully coincide in its prudence and good sense. It is identical with the French "_Mieux vaut un_ 'tiens' _que deux_ 'tu l'auras,'"--one "take this" is better than two "thou shalt have it;"--identical also with the Italian: _E meglio un uovo oggi, che una gallina domani_; an egg to-day is better than a hen to-morrow. It owes its origin to the Arabic--"A thousand cranes in the air, are not worth one sparrow in the fist." _Enough is as good as a feast._ The best comment on this proverb that occurs to us was the reply made by Rooke, the composer (a man who had a fund of racy Irish wit in him), at a time when he was struggling with considerable worldly difficulties. "How few are our real wants!" said a consoling friend; "of what consequence is a splendid dinner? Enough is as good as a feast."--"Yes," replied Rooke, "and therefore a feast is as good as enough--and I think I prefer the former." _Love me, love my dog._ At first sight this has a kindly appearance, as of one whose interest in a humble friend was as great as any he took in himself; but, on looking closer into it, we fear it involves a curious amount of selfish encroachment upon the kindness of others--a sort of doubling of the individuality, with all its exactions. My dog (in whatever shape) may be an odious beast; or, at best, one who either makes himself, or, whose misfortune it is to be, very disagreeable to certain people; but, never mind--what of that, if he is _my_ dog? Society could not go on if this were persisted it. _Set a beggar on horseback, and he'll ride to the devil._ The direction in which he will ride depends entirely on the character of the beggar--or poor man suddenly risen to power. Some sink over the other side of the horse, and drop into utter sloth and pampered sensualism; but others do their best to ride well, and sometimes succeed. Masaniello and Rienzi did not ride long in the best way; but several patriots, who have rapidly risen from obscurity to power, have set noble examples. _Throw him into a river, and he will rise with a fish in his mouth._ (Arabic.) Some men are so fortunate that nothing can sink them. Where another man would drown they find fish or pearls. _The monkey feared transmigration, lest he should become a gazelle._ (Arabic.) The matchless conceit of some people, and utter ignorance of themselves, either as to appearance or abilities, are finely expressed in the above. _The baker's wife went to bed hungry._ (Arabic.) How often is it seen, that those who follow a profession or trade, are among the last to display a special benefit from their calling! Our proverb, that "Shoemakers' wives are the worst shod," seems to be derived from the same source. _Chat échaudé craint l'eau froide_; the scalded cat fears (even) cold water. This is a better version of the English proverb of "A burnt child dreads the fire." That the proverb is by no means of general application, the experience of every one can avouch. It would be the saving of many a child, of whatever age, who having been burnt should entertain a salutary dread of the fire ever after. But it is not so; witness how many are burnt--_i.e._, ruined, wounded, shot, drowned, made ridiculous, who had all been previously well warned by "burning their fingers" with losses, injuries by land and sea, and failures in attempts involving dangerous chances. _Crom a boo_; I will burn. This Irish proverb, or saying, may serve in many respects as an adverse commentary on the preceding. There are people who are never at rest when they are out of hot water--nor contented when they are in. "I will burn" is the motto of the Duke of Leinster. It would do capitally for Mr. Smith O'Brien. Perhaps, however, it should not be read as a resolution to suffer, but as a threat to inflict a burning. Still, the vagueness of this threat--a dreadful announcement with no definite object--would render it equally applicable. _Bis dat qui cito dat_; he gives double who gives promptly. The truth of this is well illustrated by the converse it suggests; that he who long delays and tantalizes before giving, earns less gratitude than scorn. It requires more generosity and a finer mind to confer a favor in the best way, than to confer double the amount of the favor in itself. _What I gain afore I lose ahint._ (Scotch.) To be engrossed with a fixed object, is to forget what is going on all around us. I am closely engaged with what is passing before my eyes, while I am deceived and injured behind my back. This quaint old proverb has been ludicrously illustrated by a characteristic story. A Highlander, in a somewhat scanty kilt, was crossing a desolate moor one winter's night, and being very cold, he hastened to a light he saw at no great distance. It turned out to be a decomposed cod's head, which sent forth phosphoric gleams. He stooped down to try and warm his hands at it; but finding the bleak winds whistling all round his legs, he made the sage observation above, which has passed into a proverb. _Entfloh'nes Wort, geworf'ner Stein, die kommen nimmermehr herein_; the hasty word, and hasty stone, can never be recalled. How truthful, how home to the mark, does this proverb fly; how excellent is the warning and the self-command it inculcates! _To-day a fire, to-morrow ashes._ (Arabic.) Violent passions are the soonest exhausted; to-day all-powerful, to-morrow nothing, or the consequences. _Reading the psalms to the dead._ (Arabic.) This is the original of our "Preaching to the dead," to express the fruitlessness of exhortations, applications, or petitions, to certain insensible people. _Follow the owl, she will lead thee to ruin._ (Arabic.) A most picturesque proverb, giving its own scenery with it. But it strikes one as curious that this should come from the East which seems so familiar to our apprehensions. Not only are the habits of the owl the same, but the owl is equally regarded as the symbol of a purblind fool. Yet, on the other hand, the owl of classic times was a type of wisdom. _Two of a trade can never agree._ It is curious, and, in most instances, highly gratifying, to see how many of these sayings of our ancestors are becoming falsified by the great advances made, of late years, in social feelings and arrangements. Trades' unions, co-operative societies--in fact, all our great companies prove how well two of a trade can agree; and so do all combinations of masters or of workmen. Yes, it will be said, but they "agree," and co-operate for their mutual interests, and they do not agree with those opposed to them. Of course not; the sensible thing, therefore, is obvious, to enlarge the sphere of good understanding and reciprocal fair dealing in matters of business, and thus to supersede the bad feeling and injury of greedy rivalries and selfish antagonisms. _There was a wife who always took what she had, and never wanted._ (Scotch.) A good practical advice, showing the importance of using what you possess, instead of hoarding it, or reserving it, even when most needed, for some possible contingency, which may never occur. It seems to refer chiefly to articles of dress, clothing, domestic utensils, or other household matters. _Dat Deus immiti cornua curta bovi_; God curtails the power to do evil in those who desire to do it. _There is honor among thieves._ This is, no doubt, quite true, though you must be a thief yourself to derive much benefit from it. They stand by their order. The suggestion is--since there is honor towards each other among the most unprincipled classes, surely Mr. Sweepstakes, and Mr. Moses Battledore, who are both respectable members of society, and belong to clubs, would not cheat me. But this does not logically follow; for we by no means know how far the respectable individual makes his view of his own interest an excuse to himself for an occasional exception to the code of morality he professes. There's honor among thieves; and there are thieves (here and there) among honorably-connected men, "all honorable men." Life is a "mingled yarn" of good and evil; and society is a motley aggregate of all sorts of yarns. _A rose-bud fell to the lot of a monkey._ (Arabic.) The monkey appreciated the rose-bud quite as much as swine appreciate the pearls which are said to be cast before them. _Of what use to a fool is all the trouble he gives himself?_ (Chinese.) None whatever; but his folly may cause a vast deal of trouble to people of sense. One false move of an utterly incompetent man in office, and the force of the saying becomes very expansive. _There are no lies so wicked as those which have some foundation._ (Chinese.) A saying which is but too true, and which ought to be universally understood in society, as some protection against slander. _Many preparations before the sour plum sweetens._ (Chinese.) Great results do not hastily ripen; great and important changes must undergo a gradual process. _Spare the rod and spoil the child._ This seems to be derived from the old Spanish proverb, which we find in Don Quixote, "He loves thee well who makes thee weep." They are unkindly and dangerous maxims, which tend to inculcate severity, and to justify harsh treatment upon the plea of future advantage. We readily admit that nothing can well be worse than a "spoilt child," nor can a more injurious system exist than that of pampering or spoiling--except the direct opposite, that of frequently causing tears. _A tea-spoonful of honey is worth a pound of gall._ An indiscriminate use of the sweets of life is a stupidity and an injury; but the judicious use of them is of far more service in the production of good results, than the bitter lessons which are often considered to be of most advantage. It is better to soften the heart than to harden it. "A soft word turneth away wrath." _What the ant collects in a year, the priest eats up in a night._ (Arabic.) The tithe-taxes, and other revenues of the state-clergy, derived from the industry of the working classes, are not very tenderly dealt with in this proverb. _The walls have ears._ (Arabic.) This is one of the many instances of our homeliest proverbs in every-day use, being derived from the East. No doubt the saying, that "Little pitchers have great ears" (in allusion to the sharpness of hearing in children), is also derived from the domestic utensils of foreign countries in ancient times. The British Museum contains many such little pitchers, as well as the Foundling Hospital. _The ox that ploughs must not be muzzled._ (Arabic.) The laborer ought to be allowed freedom of speech, or at least free breathing. We have a nautical saying akin to this--"A sailor never works well if he does not grumble." _Three united men will ruin a town._ (Arabic.) The power of combination was never more excellently expressed. _He begins the quarrel who gives the second blow._ (Spanish.) There are but few who possess the requisite degree of wise and kindly forbearance and magnanimous self-command implied in this saying. To strike again, or rather (as the _blow_ is figurative) to retort an angry word, is natural to most men; to preserve a reproving silence, or administer a dignified rebuke, is in the power only of great characters, and not with them at all times. But it is quite possible, as we live in a very pugnacious world, that such forbearance should not be thrown away upon every one, or the small majority of the magnanimous would soon be beaten out of existence. The above proverb, we believe, is originally Spanish, and, coming from a people so proverbially revengeful, seems very extraordinary, and only to be accounted for as the result of an abstract thought of some lofty-minded hidalgo, speculating on friendship. Don Quixote might have said it. _A stitch in time saves nine._ One of the most sensible and practical of all proverbs, as every body's experience can avouch. Yet, in defiance of all their own experience, how many people we often see who constantly neglect the stitch in time! They do not forget it, or overlook it; and when they do, if you point it out to them, they still neglect it. _Chi non sa niente, non dubita di niente_; he who knows nothing, doubts of nothing. The converse is equally true. He who knows much, is careful how he doubts of any thing. This is peculiarly inculcated, at the present time, by the extraordinary discoveries and success of science. From the Ladies' Companion. A CHAPTER ON WATCHES. We have no means of telling how long a period elapsed from that primal time when the "evening and the morning made the first day," ere man's ingenuity devised a means of calculating the passing by of those precious moments of which his duration is composed, in order to economize them to the purposes of life. Shadows by day and stars at night appear to have indexed the flight of time for the ancient Hebrews; though it is very evident that long before the sun-dial of Ahaz was made memorable by the Prophet Isaiah, the Chaldeans, accustomed to calculate eclipses, and other astronomical phenomena, must have been in possession of some much more accurate instrument for its computation. Days, months, and years, are constantly referred to in the books of the Old Testament, but nothing is said of more minute divisions of time, save that of the day into the natural ones of morning, noon, eventide, and night, until Judea became tributary to Rome, when three of the Evangelists, in describing the crucifixion, and the supernatural darkness subsequent to that event, remark that it lasted from the sixth _hour_ to the ninth; and it is on record, that the Clepsydra, or water-clock, (said by Vitrivius to have been invented by one Ctesibius of Alexandria, in the reign of Ptolemy Evergetes), was introduced at Rome by P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica, in the 595th year of the city, and consequently many years before the birth of Christ. This simple time-keeper was so constructed, that the water issued, drop by drop, through a hole in the vessel, and fell into another, in which a light floating body marked the height of the water as it rose, and by this means the time that had elapsed. These instruments, we are told, were set full of water in the courts of judicature, and by them the lawyers pleaded; in order, as Phavorinus tells us, to prevent babbling, and cause those who spoke to be brief in their speeches. Hour, or sand-glasses, are also said to have originated at Alexandria, and to have been introduced into domestic use amongst the Romans eight years afterwards, or 158 years before the Christian era. The earliest attempt at measuring time in this country appears to have been on the part of Alfred the Great, by means of waxen tapers. The exact period when those direct ancestors of our subject, clocks, or, as they were primitively called, horologes, came into use, is one of those things over which time has cast so thick a veil, that not even the researches of the encyclopædists can penetrate it. By some, the invention of clocks with wheels is ascribed to Pacificus, archdeacon of Verona, as early as the ninth century. And though we read that clocks (without water) were set up in churches toward the end of the twelfth, the author of the "Divina Commedia" is the first writer on record, who distinctly applies the term horologium to a clock that struck the hours; and he was born 1265, and died 1321. In 1288, during the reign of the 1st Edward, the _English Justinian_, as he has been called, it is said that a fine levied on a lord chief justice was applied to the purpose of furnishing the famous clock-house near Westminster Hall with an horologe, which it is farther stated was the work of an English artist. Mention is also made of the setting up of a clock in Canterbury Cathedral about the same period, and in that of Wells in 1325. So that those three Dutch horologiers, from Delft, who came over (as Rymer tells us) at the invitation of Edward III. in 1368, were not, as some imagined, the introducers of the art, though they very possibly helped us to improve it. Up to the time when Henry de Wic astonished the Emperor Charles V. with those seemingly living toys with which he was wont to surround himself after dinner, and watch the beating and revolving of their curious machinery, those rude prototypes of our subject, which are said to have resembled small table clocks rather than watches, and yet were true specimens, we imagine, since they continued going in a horizontal position, which is the only mechanical distinction between a watch and clock--up to this period, we were about to say, clocks appear to have endured a very ascetic existence, living in tall houses, built on purpose for them, or shut up in church towers and monastic buildings-- "Fell sickerer[19] was his crowning in his loge, As is a clock, or any _abbey orloge_," wrote Chaucer in the fourteenth century. And it is not until nearly the end of the fifteenth that we find them domesticated in houses. From a description of some, which appear in an inventory of articles in the king's palaces of Westminster and Hampton Court, copied by Strutt, the pendules of the period must have been equally ornate with those in modern drawing-rooms, and much more curious. Thus one, we are told, not only showed the course of the planets, and the days of the year, but was richly gilt, and enamelled, and ornamented with the king's (Henry the Eighth's) coat of arms; it also possessed a chime. Speaking of this monarch reminds us, that previous to the scattering of the treasures of Strawberry Hill, there was preserved in the library there a little clock, of silver gilt, the gift of Henry, on the morning of his marriage, to the ill-fated Anne Boleyn. It was elaborately chased and engraved, and adorned with fleurs-de-lys, and other heraldic devices, and had on the top a lion supporting the arms of England. The gilded weights represented _true-lovers-knots_, inclosing the initials of Henry and Anne; and one bore the inscription, "The most happye," the other the royal motto. Though more than three hundred years had passed since the tragic ending of time with its original possessor, it was still going when the ivory hammer of the famous Robins struck it down to another new and more fortunate owner, About this period watches are said to have been in use; and in the Holbein chamber of the collection just mentioned, a bust of the royal _wife-slayer_, carved in box-wood, represented him with a dial suspended on his breast. The earliest watch known was one in Sir Ashton Lever's Museum, which bore date 1541; but from various imperfections in the workmanship, they were not very generally used till towards the end of Elizabeth's reign. Shakspeare frequently mentions the clock, and in "Twelfth Night" he makes Malvolio--"While exclaim, in his babblings of fancied greatness I, perchance, _wind up my watch_, or play with some rich jewel," an expression that would lead us to suppose that they were even then regarded rather as toys or ornaments than things of necessary use. Archbishop Parker, in 1575, left by will to the Bishop of Ely his staff of Indian cane, with a _watch_ in the top of it; a position that savors more of whim than utility. Yet the excellence of some of these ancient timekeepers is remarkable; for Derham, in his "Artificial Clockmaker," mentions a watch of Henry VIII., which was in order in 1714, and of which Dr. Demanbray had often heard Sir Isaac Newton and Demoivre speak; and the old wooden-framed clock of Peterborough Cathedral, which, instead of the usual key or winch, is wound up by long handles or spikes--a sufficient proof of its antiquity--still strikes, says Denison, upon a bell of considerable size. Guy Fawkes carried a watch in a more practical spirit than Malvolio or Archbishop Parker; Stowe tells us, one was found upon him which he and Percy had bought the day before, "to try conclusions for the long and short burning of the touch-wood with which he had prepared to give fire to the train of powder;" a proof that even in the third year of the reign of James I. watches were not commonly worn, or the circumstance would not have been mentioned. In the next reign, however, we find the London "Clock-Makers' Company," incorporated 1631--a sign of the increased use of these instruments, and the growing importance of their manufacture; and as this charter prohibits the importation of clocks, watches, and alarms, it proves that we had even then artists sufficiently skilful in the various manipulations requisite in the construction of these articles, to render us independent of foreign workmanship. It is a singular feature in the history of this branch of art, that it has remained until very lately concentrated in the metropolis; besides which, Liverpool and Coventry are said to be the only places in England where a complete watch can be manufactured. At the latter place the business has only been introduced since the commencement of the present century, but the number of persons employed are said to equal the number in London. But before passing from this event in the history of our subject (the incorporation of a company for the protection of their manufacture in the reign of Charles I.), we may as well describe a watch of the period, which a few years before the publication of the "Encyclopædia Londinensis" (in 1811) had been in the possession of the proprietor. It was dug up but a few years previously, near the site of the ancient castle of Winchester, where it had probably lain from the time of Cromwell, who, it is well known, destroyed that edifice. It was of an octagon form, and had no minute hand; a piece of catgut supplied the place of a chain; it required winding up every twelve hours, had no balance spring, and appeared never to have had one; and it shut like a hunting-watch without any glass. But to compensate for this interior rudeness in its construction, the lid and bottom of the case, as well as the dial-plate, were of silver, very neatly engraved, with pieces of Scripture history in the centre, and in the compartments the four Evangelists, and St. Peter, St. Paul, St. James, and St. Jude: it had no date. The reign of Charles II., who (like his namesake the emperor, in whose time they first appeared) is said to have been very partial to these instruments, was remarkable for the improvements made in them. Spring pocket-watches were invented by Hooke, 1658; and repeaters were introduced, one of the first of which Charles sent as a present to Louis XIV. of France. According to some authorities, _reproduced_ would be the juster phrase here, for it is stated in "Memoirs of Literature," that some of the most ancient watches were strikers, and that such having been stolen both from Charles V. and Louis XI. whilst they were in a crowd, the thief was detected by their striking the hour! Perhaps the most remarkable repeating watch extant, is that in the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg, and which, like the old Nuremberg watches, is about the size of an egg: within is represented the holy sepulchre, with the sentinels, and the stone at the mouth; and while the spectator is admiring this curious piece of mechanism, the stone is suddenly removed, the sentinels drop down, the angels appear, the women enter the tomb, and the same chant is heard which is performed in the Greek Church on Easter Eve. Germany, by the way, has always been famous for the manufacture of clocks and watches, these latter claiming Nuremberg for their birthplace; and from this circumstance, and their oval shape, Dopplemayer tells us they were originally known as Nuremberg _animated eggs_. At present this branch of horometry is chiefly to be found on the other side of the Alps, at or near Geneva, and at Chaux de Fond, in the principality of Neufchatel, where vast numbers of watches are manufactured. But the wooden clocks, which tick on every cottage wall, and which are erroneously called Dutch, are in fact German, and are nearly all made in the Black Forest, the village of Freyburg being the centre of the manufacture, whence it is said 180,000 wooden clocks on an average are yearly exported. The Swiss, or _Geneva_ watches, as they are commonly called, owing to the poverty of the workmen, the employment of women, and the subdivision of labor, which is carried to even a greater extent than with us, sell at a much lower price than those made in England; but an English watch has hitherto been a desideratum in every part of the world. Here, at present, the term watch-maker is no longer applicable, every portion of the instrument being the work of a different artisan, and the separate parts are often sent hundreds of miles, to meet in the metropolis, and make a whole of excellent workmanship. There are innumerable places in which some branch or other of the manufacture is carried on; but the best movements are made at Prescot, in Lancashire, while the town of Whitchurch, in Hampshire, is employed wholly in making hands. In London, Clerkenwall Green has long been the resort of artificers employed in the various nice and delicate manipulations requisite in the construction of our subject: here, slide-makers, jewellers, motion-makers, wheel-cutters, cap-makers, dial-plate-makers, the painter, the case-maker, the joint-finisher, the pendent-maker, the engraver, the piercer, the escapement-maker, the spring-maker, the chain-maker, the finisher, the gilder, the fusee-cutter, the hand-maker, the glass-maker, and pendulum spring wire-drawer, are all located; for, owing to the minute division of labor, which tends greatly to facilitate its execution after the movements (which have previously passed through thirteen workmen's hands in the provinces) are received in town, the watch progresses through those of these other twenty-one artificers before it comes forth complete. Owing to this delicate and varied workmanship, materials originally not worth sixpence are frequently converted into watches worth a hundred pounds and more, so costly may their appendages be made. But in all these different branches of a business which maintains thousands of families, the only part of it which falls to women in this country is the polishing of the cases, which the casemakers' wives are sometimes employed to do. Perhaps no object of man's ingenuity has been made the exponent of so many grave morals as the _watch_. Poets and philosophers have managed that its beatings should be only a little less gloomy to the imagination than the associations of a passing bell; but Paley has thrown a glory round this gloom, and aggrandized it from a peevish reminder of passing time into a fair argument of a Creator's presence, in the delicate and wonderful machinery of nature, which could no more come by chance than could this little instrument have been formed without a contriver. What the author of the "Old Church Clock" has said of that branch of our subject, may be equally applied to this--"there is no dead thing so like a living one." Day by day, year by year, its iron heart throbs on, some of them surviving, as we have seen, for centuries, though they are said to beat 17,160 times in an hour. Well would it be for us if the time-keeper in our bosoms, beating momently the escape of our allotted term, acted as lightly on the frame; but all its emotions help to wear this out. In the dawn of its appearance, in an age when every science that set men wondering was in some degree regarded as the work of magic, what a sensation must these "animated eggs" have occasioned, and how suggestive! unless the fanciful belief of some of the early fathers of the church, who averred that gems and precious metals were first made known to mortals by fallen angels, who also inspired the desire to profit by, and be adorned with them, had any thing to do with the tabooing of evil by holy signatures--how suggestive are the quaint gravings of saints and scriptural subjects on the cover of the watch dug up at Winchester, of the antique custom of inscribing trinkets with sacred symbols, and so converting them into amulets; a custom which the Greeks and Romans borrowed from the Egyptians, and which the early Christians perpetuated after them. We have seen the watch, originally oval, take an octagon form; after which it subsided into its present shape, the only variation being in size, and degrees of roundness. At present watches are frequently made not thicker than a crown piece, and yet perform their functions with exactness; nay, there are some with perfect works, compressed into a smaller compass than a shilling! A friend of the writer's saw one, not long since, set in a ring, the hands and figures being composed of brilliants, upon a dial of blue enamel; and at the recent exhibition one filled the place usually occupied by a seal at the end of a pencil-case, and another appeared as an appendage to a lady's bracelet. There was also a large silver watch, such as mariners are fond of wearing, immersed in a vase of water, and yet impervious to any ill effects. Our subject is one which grows under our hands, and we might go on _ad libitum_ describing their different idiosyncracies; for watches, like individuals, have their several temperaments and ways of going. We have all met with _fast watches_ and slow ones, and some (a disposition they are apt to contract from their wearers) are very irregular--varieties of character, which so puzzled their first owner, the Emperor Charles V., who amused himself on his retirement to the monastery of St. John, by endeavoring to keep in order these by-gone companions of his dinner-table, that they produced a reflection on the absurdity of his attempts to keep together the powers of Europe, when even these little pieces of mechanism baffled him. * * * * * American women have less courtesy than any others in the world. A thousand rules of deference are established by concessions of the other sex, which they enforce with ungracious arrogance, as if they were but recognitions of "inalienable rights." This is their offence to all well-bred Europeans.--_Correspondent London Morning Post._ FOOTNOTES: [19] Sickerness--steady, secure. From Sharpe's Magazine. F�TE DAYS AT ST. PETERSBURG. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF ALEXANDER DUMAS BY JANE STRICKLAND. New-Year's day and the Benediction of the Waters provide the inhabitants of St. Petersburg with two great national festivals, in which all classes share in the pleasures and devotion of the sovereign. The first is an imperial fête, the second an imposing religious ceremony. On New-Year's day, in virtue of an old and touching custom by which the Emperor and Empress of Russia are designated by their poorest subjects Father and Mother, these potentates at the commencement of the year receive their children as their own invited guests. Their family being too vast to invite by name, they adopt the simple but efficacious plan of scattering about the streets of their capital twenty-five thousand cards of invitation, indicative that they will be at home to such a number of their children. These cards bear no address, but they give admission to the bearers to the splendid saloons of the Winter Palace without the slightest distinction of rank or wealth. It was thus that the Emperor Alexander, according to custom, kept the first day of the year 1825, the last he was ever destined to see. The rumor of the conspiracy that embittered the closing months of his life and reign, though it had reached his ears and troubled his repose, did not appear to him any reason for depriving his subjects of their annual visit to their sovereign. From these unknown guests the Russian Autocrat felt assured he had nothing to fear. With them he was not only popular but adored. He therefore directed the Master of the Police to order no alteration in the usual costume of the male part of the company, whom he was to admit in masks according to custom on these occasions. In the darkest annals of barbarism, despotic sovereigns dreaded and often found the dagger of the assassin in the hands of some member of their own family. Civilization, however limited, changes the objects of suspicion to the aristocracy, who are always, under these unfortunate constitutions, of the military profession. Now the want of the counterpoise of the middle classes creates this secret but perpetual warfare between the absolute monarch and the nobility--the nobility who in free countries are the natural bulwark of the throne. In Russia the Autocrat is never afraid of the multitude, with whom he holds a twofold claim to their veneration, as supreme pontiff, or head of the Church, and Czar. The cards of invitation, being transferable, are, as a matter of course, purchaseable; and among his masked guests who were privileged to shake hands with Alexander, some cowardly assassin might take that opportunity to murder the sovereign; yet he, with a firm but touching reliance on God, ordered at seven o'clock on the New-Year's evening, the gates of the Winter Palace to be thrown open as usual, to his motley company. No extra precautions were taken by the police; the sentinels were on duty, according to custom, at the palace gates, but the Emperor was without any guards in the interior of the imperial residence, vast as the Tuileries. In the absence of all precaution or even regulations for the behavior of an undisciplined crowd, it was surprising what natural politeness effected. Veneration for the presence of the sovereign was alone sufficient to produce good breeding; there was no pushing nor striving, nor clamor, and the entrance was made with as little noise as if gratitude for the favor accorded to the guests had induced each to give a precautionary admonition to his neighbor. While the thronging thousands were gaining admission to his palace, the Emperor Alexander was seated by the Empress in the Hall of St. George in the midst of the imperial family, when the door was opened to the sound of music, for the saloons were filled with his visitors, and a grand _coup d'oeil_ of grandees, peasants, princesses, and grisettes was discerned. At this moment the Emperor advanced and gave his hand to the English, French, Spanish, and Austrian ambassadors, the representatives of their several sovereigns. He then moved alone to the door, that his guests might behold in their sovereign and host the father of his people. It was a moment anarchy was said to have dedicated to his assassination, and that parricidal and regicidal act could have been easily effected at such a juncture had it really been in contemplation. Alexander was no longer in appearance a melancholy and suffering invalid, he looked happy and smiling; and if his smile was counterfeited, he wore the mask ably and well. The instant the Autocrat appeared, the motley group made a forward movement, and then a precipitate retreat. The danger vanished with them. The Emperor regarded the retiring waves of this human sea with imperturbable serenity, a remarkable feature in his character, a moral re-action, which a courageous mind can alone bestow, and which he had shown on several trying occasions. One of these was at a ball given by M. Caulincourt, Duke of Vicenza, the French Ambassador; the other was at a fête at Zakret, near Wilna. The ball was at its height, when the ambassador was informed that the house was on fire; fearful that the news of the conflagration might occasion more ill consequences than the fire itself, he posted an aide-de-camp at every door, and ordered his people to keep the misfortune a profound secret, after which he communicated the accident in a low voice to the Emperor, and assured him that no one should be permitted to withdraw till he and the imperial family were in perfect safety; he was going to see the fire extinguished, and he hoped the efforts made to get it under would be successful; adding, that even if a report should circulate in the saloons as to this startling fact, no one would credit it while they saw the Emperor and his family still there. "Very well, then, I will remain," coolly remarked the Emperor; and when Caulincourt returned some time after to announce the extinction of the fire, he found the Russian Autocrat dancing a polonaise. The guests of the ambassador heard on the morrow that their festivities had been kept over the mouth of a volcano. At the fête held at Zakret not only the life but the empire of Alexander was at stake. In the middle of the dance he was apprised that the advanced guard of a guest he had forgotten to invite had passed the Niemen. This was the Emperor Napoleon, his old host at Erfurth, who might momentarily be expected to enter the hall, followed by six hundred thousand dancers. Alexander gave his orders with great coolness, chatting while he issued them with his aide-de-camps. He walked about, praised the manner in which the saloons were lighted, which he declared was only second to the beautiful moonlight, supped, and remained till dawn. His gay manner and the serenity of his countenance prevented the guests from even suspecting the nature of the communication he had received, and the entrance of the French into the city was the first intimation the inhabitants had received of their approach. He was in imminent peril in this Polish city, from which his great self-command delivered him. His retreat at early morning was made before the approach of an enemy he had hitherto found invincible. Very different might have been the result of Napoleon's campaign in Russia, if the inhabitants of Wilna had known during the fête of Zakret of his vicinity. These incidents naturally occurred to the guests of the Emperor Alexander, during this New-Year's day festival, when they beheld him approach alone to show himself to the multitude, amongst whom he had reason to believe many conspirators, or even assassins lurked. If such indeed were there, the calm serenity of his countenance disarmed them, and none dared raise an arm against the life he fearlessly trusted, if not to their loyalty at least to their honor. Indeed the suffering and melancholy Emperor, the last time he received his people, seemed to have shaken off his lassitude and depression, and appeared full of life and energy, traversing with rapidity the immense saloons of the Winter Palace. He led off the sort of galoppe peculiar to the Russian Court, which, however, terminated about nine o'clock. At ten, the illuminations of the Hermitage being finished, those persons who had cards for the spectacle went there. Twelve negroes, superbly arrayed in rich oriental costumes, kept the doors of the theatre, to admit or restrain the crowd, and examine the authenticity of the vouchers of the guests. Here the admission was not promiscuous, a certain number alone being allowed to be present at the banquet. Upon entering the theatre, the spectators found themselves in a land of enchantment--a vast hall encircled with tubes of crystal, bent in every possible way, meeting at top in order to form the ceiling, united by silver threads of imperceptible fineness, behind which hung 10,000 colored lamps, whose light, reflected and refracted by these transparent columns, illuminated the gardens, groves, flowers, cascades, and fountains, like an enchanted landscape, which seen across this veil of light resembled the poetical phantasm of a dream. The splendid illuminations cost twelve thousand roubles, and lasted two months. At eleven a flourish of musical instruments announced the arrival of the Emperor, who entered with the Empress and the imperial family, the ambassadors, the ambassadresses, the officers of the household, and the ladies in waiting, who all took their places at the middle supper-table; two other tables were filled by six hundred guests, mostly composed of the first-class nobility. The Emperor alone remained standing, moving about the tables, conversing by turns with his numerous guests. Nothing could exceed the magnificent effect produced by the banquet, and the appearance of the court; the sovereign and his officers and nobility covered with gold and embroidery, the Empress and her ladies glittering with diamonds and splendid velvets, tissues, and satins. No other fête in Europe could produce such a grand _coup d'oeil_ as the New-Year's fête at the Hermitage. At the conclusion of the banquet the Court returned to the Saloon of St. George, where the music struck up a polonaise, which was led off by the Emperor. This dance was his farewell to his guests, for as soon as it was finished he withdrew. The departure of their sovereign gave pleasure to those loyal subjects who trembled for his personal safety; but the courageous and ever paternal confidence reposed in his subjects by Alexander, turned away from him every murderous weapon. No one could resolve to assassinate a kind father in the midst of his children, for as such the Emperor had received his numerous guests. The second annual fête was of a religious character, "The Benediction of the Waters," to which the recent disastrous calamity of the most terrible inundation on record in Russia, the preceding year, had given deeper solemnity. The preparations were made with an activity tempered by care, which denoted the national character to be essentially religious. Upon the Neva a great pavilion was erected of a circular form, pierced with eight openings, decorated by four paintings, crowned with a cross; to this pavilion access was given by a jetty forming the hermitage. The temporary edifice, on the morning of the ceremony, was to have its pavement of ice cut through in order to permit the Patriarch to reach the water. The cold was already twenty degrees below zero, when at nine o'clock in the morning the whole population of St. Petersburg assembled themselves on the frozen waters of the Neva, then a solid mass of crystal. At half-past eleven the Empress and Grand-Duchesses took their places in the glass balcony of the Hermitage, and their appearance announced to the crowd that the _Te Deum_ was concluded. The whole corps of the Imperial Guards, amounting to forty thousand men, marched to the sound of martial music and formed in line of battle on the river, from the hotel of the French embassy to the fortress. The palace gates opened as soon as this military evolution was effected, and the banners, sacred pictures, and the choristers of the chapel, appeared preceding the Patriarch and his clergy; then came the pages and the colors of the different regiments of guards, borne by their proper officers; then the Emperor, supported by the Grand-Dukes Nicholas and Michael, followed by the officers of his household, his aide-de-camps and generals. As soon as the Emperor reached the door of the pavilion, which was nearly filled with priests and banners, the Patriarchs gave the signal, and the sweet solemn chant of more than a hundred voices rose to heaven, unaccompanied by music indeed, yet forming a divine harmony hardly to be surpassed on earth. During the prayer, which lasted twenty minutes, the Emperor stood bareheaded, dressed in his uniform, without fur or any defence from the piercing cold, running more risk by this disregard to climate, than if he had faced the fire of a hundred pieces of artillery in the front of battle. The spectators, enveloped in fur mantles and caps, presented a complete contrast to the religious imprudence of their rash sovereign, who had been bald from his early youth. As soon as the second _Te Deum_ was concluded, the Patriarch took a silver cross from the hand of the young chorister, and encircled by the kneeling crowd, plunged it through the opening made in the ice into the waters below. He then filled a vase up with the consecrated element, which he presented to the Emperor. After this ceremonial of blessing the waters, came the benediction of the standards, which were reverently inclined towards the Patriarch for that purpose. A sky-rocket was immediately let off from the pavilion, and its silvery smoke was answered by a terrible explosion, for the whole artillery of the fortress gave from their metallic throats a loud _Te Deum_, and these salvos were heard three times during the benediction of the standards; at the third, the Emperor commenced his return to the palace. He was more melancholy than usual, for during this religious ceremony he felt no need of courage or presence of mind; he was secured by the natural veneration of a superstitious people. He knew it, and, therefore, wore no mask in the semblance of a joyless smile. On the same day, this imposing ceremonial is used at Constantinople, only the winter is a mere name and the water has no ice. The Patriarch stands on the deck of a vessel, and drops his silver cross into the calm blue waves of the Bosphorus, which a skilful diver restores to him before it reaches the bottom. To these religious ceremonies succeed sports and pastimes of all kinds. Booths and barracks are erected on the frozen Neva from quay to quay, Russian mountains, down which sledges slide with inconceivable velocity, and the Carnival commences with as much zest as in cities enjoying a southern temperature. Plays are performed on the ice, and curious pantomimes, in which a marmot performs the part of a baby very cleverly, while the man who shows him off under the character of the good father of the family, finds resemblances in this black-nosed imp to all his supposed human relatives, to the infinite delight of the spectators. Sleighing on the ice is, as in Canada, a favorite diversion with the Russians, whose sledges are lined with fur and ornamented with silver bells and ribbons of every color. Sometimes a wind loaded with vapor puts an end to these diversions by rendering the ice unsafe, in which case they are interdicted by the police, and the sports and pastimes of the people are transferred to _terra firma_; but the Carnival is considered to come to an abrupt conclusion if this misfortune occurs at its commencement, for the Neva is to the inhabitants of St. Petersburg what Vesuvius is to the Neapolitans, and the absence of the ice robs their Saturnalia of its greatest attraction. In countries where the Greek religion is the national standard of faith, Lent is preceded by the same unbounded festivity as in those which are Roman Catholic; but the Court does not display in these days so much barbarous magnificence as in those earlier times when civilization was unknown. The Carnival was, however, held during the last century by Anna Ivanovna, in a style surpassing that of her ancestors. This pleasure-loving princess, the daughter of the elder brother of Peter the Great, covered her usurpation of a throne she had snatched not only from the decendants of her mighty uncle, but also from her own elder sister and niece, by conducing to the popular amusements of her people, who in their turn forgot her defective title to the throne. This popular female sovereign founded the largest bell in the world, and gave the most magnificent Carnival ever held in Russia. Thus she maintained her sway by the aid of pleasure and devotion, a twofold cord her subjects never broke. In 1740 Anna Ivanovna resolved to surpass every preceding Carnival by her unique manner of providing her people with amusement during this merry season. It was customary for the sovereign of Russia to be attended by a dwarf, who united the privileged character of a jester to the tiny proportions of a little child. This empress possessed two of these diminutive personages, and she chose for her own amusement and that of her loving subjects, that they should be married during this Carnival, and "whether nature did this match contrive," or it was the consequence of her own despotic will, cannot be known without a peep into the jealously guarded archives of Russia; but the nuptials of these sports of nature was the ostensible cause of the fête. This the Autocrat gave on a new and splendid scale. She directed her governors to send her two natives of the hundred districts they ruled in her name, clothed in their national costume, and with the animals they were accustomed to use on their journeys. The idea was certainly a brilliant one, and worthy of the sovereign lady of so many nations, tongues, and languages. Anna Ivanovna was punctually obeyed, and at the appointed time a motley procession, including the purest types of the Caucasian race and the ugliest of the Mongolian, astonished the eyes of the Empress, who had scarcely known the greater part of these distant tribes by name. There she beheld the Kamtchadale with his sledge drawn by dogs, the Russian Laplander with his reindeer, the Kalmuck with his cows, the Tartar on his horse, and the native of Bochara with his camel, the Ostiak on his clogs. Then for the first time, the beautiful Georgian and Circassian, with their dark ringlets and unrivalled features, looked with astonishment upon the red hair of the Finlander. The gigantic Cossack of the Ukraine eyed with contempt the pigmy Samoiede--and in fact, for the first time were brought into contact by the will of their sovereign lady, who classed each race under one of four banners, representing spring, summer, autumn, and winter; and these two hundred persons, during eight days, paraded the streets of St. Petersburg, to the infinite delight of the population, who had never seen the power of the throne displayed in a manner so agreeable to their taste before. Upon the wedding day of her dwarfs, these important personages had been attended to the altar by this singular national procession, where they plighted their faith in the presence of the Empress and all her Court, after which they heard Mass, and then, accompanied by their numerous escort, took possession of the palace prepared for them by the direction of their imperial mistress. This palace was not the least fanciful part of the fête. It was entirely composed of ice, and resembled crystal in its brilliancy and fine cutting and polish. This beautiful fabric was fifty-two feet in length and twenty in width; the roof, the floor, the furniture, chandeliers, and even the nuptial bed, were formed of the same cold, glittering, and transparent materials. The doors, the galleries, and the fortifications,--even the six pieces of cannon that guarded this magical palace, were of ice; one of these, charged with a single ice-bullet, and fired by the aid of a pound of powder, perforated at seventy paces a plank of twelve inches thickness. This was done to salute the bridal party, and welcome them home. The most curious piece of mechanism, and which pleased the Russians the most, was a colossal elephant, mounted by an armed Persian, and led by twelve slaves. This gigantic beast threw from his trunk a column of water by day, and at night a stream of fire, uttering from time to time roars which were heard from one end of St. Petersburg to the other. These noble roars were produced by twelve Russians concealed in the body and legs of the phantom elephant, whose costly housings hid the men whose noise so delighted their countrymen. This Carnival of the fête-loving feany male usurper has never been surpassed by Russian sovereign, though, with the exception of the assembly of her distant subjects, its taste was barbarous enough. From Household Words. RAINBOW MAKING. It is a great idea--too large to be arrived at but by degrees--that the fleece of sheep can clothe nations of men. The fleece of a sheep, when pulled and spread out, looks much larger than while covering the mutton; but still it is with a sort of despair that we think of the quantity required, and of the dressing and preparation necessary, for clothing fifteen million of men in one country, and double the number in another (to say nothing of the women), and of the number of countries, each containing its millions, which are incessantly demanding the fleeces of sheep to clothe their inhabitants. We remember the hill-sides of our own mountainous districts; and the wide grassy plains of Saxony; and the boundless table lands of Thibet, and the valleys of Cashmere, all speckled over with flocks; we think of the Australian sheep-walks, where there are flocks of such unmanageable size, that the whole sheep is boiled down for tallow; we think of Prince Esterhazy's reply to the question of an English nobleman, when shown vast flocks, and asked how his sheep in Hungary would compare in number with these,--that his shepherds outnumbered the Englishman's sheep; we think of these things, and by degrees begin to understand how wool enough may be produced to furnish the broadcloths and flannels of the world. But the most strong and agile imagination is confounded when the material of silk is considered in the same way. Compare a caterpillar with a sheep; compare the cocoon of a silkworm (the achievement of its life) with the annual fleece of a sheep; and the supply of silk for the looms of Europe, Asia, and America, seems a mere miracle. The marvel is the greater, not the less, when one is in a silk-growing region, attending to the facts and appearances, than when trying to conceive of them at home. In Lombardy, we travel from day to day, during the whole month of May, between rows of mulberry trees, where the peasants are busy providing food for the worms; a man in the tree stripping off the leaves, and two women below with sacks, to carry home the foliage. We see what tons of leaves per mile must be thus gathered daily for weeks together; we go into houses in every village to inspect the worm; we mount to the flat roofs of the dwellings, and find in each countless multitudes of the worms; we pass on, from country to country, till we mount to the hamlets, perched on the rocky shelves of the Lebanon; and we find every where the insect secreting its gum, or spinning it forth as silk; we remember that the same process is going forward in the heart of our Indian Peninsula, and throughout China; we look at the broad belt round the globe where the little worm is forming its cocoons; and still we find it impossible to imagine how enough silk is produced to supply the wants of the world, from the brocade of the Asiatic potentate to the wedding ribbon of the English dairy-maid. Nowhere is the speculation more difficult than in a dye-house at Coventry. Probably there was as much wonder excited by the same thought, when King Henry VIII. wore the first pair of silk stockings brought to England from Spain; and when Francis I. looked after the mulberry trees in France, and fixed some silk weavers at Lyons; and when our Queen Mary passed a law forbidding servant-maids to wear ribbons on bonnets; and when monarch after monarch passed acts to teach how silk should be boiled, and whence it should be brought, and who should, and who should not, wear it when wrought; but the perplexity and amazement of king, lords, and commons could hardly, at any time, have exceeded that of the humblest visitor of to-day in any dye-house at Coventry. We know something of the fact of this astonishment; for we have been noting the wonders that are to be found on the premises of Messrs. Leavesley and Hands at Coventry. On entering, we see, ranged along the counters, half round the room, bundles of glossy silk, of the most brilliant colors. Blues, rose-colors, greens, lilacs, make a rainbow of the place. It is only two days since this silk was brought in in a very different condition. The throwster (to throw, means to twist or twine), after spinning the raw silk, imported from Italy, Turkey, Bengal, and China, into thread fit for the loom, sent it here in bundles, gummy, harsh, dingy; except, indeed, the Italian, which looks, till washed, like fragments of Jason's fleece. If bundles, and regiments of bundles, like these, come into one dye-house every few days, to be prepared for the weaving of ribbons alone, and for the ribbon-weaving of a single town, it is overwhelming to think of the amount of production required for the broad silk-weaving of England, of Europe, of the world. Of the silk dyed at Coventry, about eighty per cent. is used for the ribbon-weaving of the city and neighborhood; and the quantity averages six tons and a half weekly. Of the remaining twenty per cent., half is used for the manufacture of fringes; and the other half goes to Macclesfield, Congleton, and Derby. The harsh gummy silk that comes in from the throwing mills is boiled, wrung out, and boiled again. If it wants bleaching, there is a sort of open oven of a house; a vault in the yard where it is "sulphured." The heat, and the sensation in the throat, inform us in a moment where we have got to. When the hanks come forth from this process, every thread is separated from its neighbor, and the whole bundle is soft, dry, and glossy. Then follows the dyeing. To make the silk receive the colors, it is dipped in a mordant in some diluted acid, or solution of metal which enables the color to bite into the fibre. To make pinks of all shades, the silk is dipped in diluted tartaric acid for the mordant, and then in a decoction of safflower for the hue. To make plum-color or puce, indigo is the dye, with a cochineal. To make black, nitrate of iron first; then a washing follows; and then a dipping in logwood dye, mixed with soap and water. For a white, pure enough for ribbons, the silk has to pass through the three primary colors, yellow, red, and blue. The dipping, wringing, splashing, stirring, boiling, drying, go on vigorously, from end to end of the large premises, as may be supposed, when the fact is mentioned that the daily consumption of water amounts to one hundred thousand gallons. A reservoir, in the middle of the yard, formerly supplied the water; but it proved insufficient, or uncertain; and now it is about to be filled up, and an Artesian well is opened to the depth of one hundred and ninety-five feet. The dyeing sheds are paved with pebbles or bricks, crossed with gutters, and variegated with gay puddles. Stout brick-built coppers are stationed round the place. Above each copper are cocks, which let in hot and cold water from the pipes that travel round the walls of the sheds. There are wooden troughs for the dye; and to these troughs the water is conveyed by spouts. The silk hangs down into the dye from poles, smoothly turned and uniform, which are laid across the troughs by the dozen or more at once. These staves are procured from Derby. They cost from six shillings to twenty-four shillings per dozen, and constitute an independent subsidiary manufacture. The silk hanks being suspended from those poles, two men, standing on either side the trough, take up two poles, souse, and shake, and plunge the silk, and turn that which had been uppermost under the surface of the liquor, and pass on to the next two. When done enough, the silk is wrung out and pressed, and taken to the drying-house. The heat in that large chamber is about one hundred degrees. On entering it, everybody begins to cough. The place is lofty and large. The staves, which are laid across beams, to contain the suspended silk, make little movable ceilings here and there. This chamber contains five or six hundred-weights of silk at once. Our minds glance once more towards the spinning insects on hearing this; and we ask again, how much of their produce may be woven into fabrics in Coventry alone? We think we must have made a mistake in setting down the weekly average at six tons and a half. But there was no mistake. It is really so. While speaking of weight, we heard something which reminded us of King Charles I.'s opinions about some practices which were going forward before our eyes. It appears, that the silk which comes to the dye-house is heavy with gum, to the amount of one-fourth of its weight. This gum must be boiled out before the silk can be dyed. But the manufacturers of cheap goods require that the material shall not be so light as this process would leave it. It is dipped in well-sugared water, which adds about eight per cent. to its weight. Many tons of sugar per year are used as (what the proprietor called) "the silk-dyer's devil's dust." It was this very practice which excited the wrath of our pious King Charles, in all his horror of double-dealing. A proclamation of his, of the date of 1630, declares his fears of the consequences of "a deceitful handling" of the material, by adding to its weight in dyeing, and ordains that the whole shall be done as soft as possible; that no black shall be used but Spanish black, "and that the gum shall be fair boiled off before dyeing." He found, in time, that he had meddled with a matter that he did not understand, and had gone too far. Some of the fabrics of his day required to be made of "hard silk;" and he took back his orders in 1638, having become, as he said, "better-informed." From trough to trough we go, breathing steam, and stepping into puddles, or reeking rivulets rippling over the stones of the pavement; but we are tempted on, like children, by the charm of the brilliant colors that flash upon the sight whichever way we turn. What a lilac this is! Is it possible that such a hue can stand? It could not stand even the drying, but for the alkali into which it is dipped. It is dyed in orchil first, and then made bluer, and somewhat more secure, by being soused in a well-soaped alkaline mixture. That is a good red brown. It is from Brazil wood, with alum for its mordant. This is a brilliant blue; indigo, of course? Yes, sulphate of indigo, with tartaric acid. Here are two yellows: how is that? One is much better than the other; moreover, it makes a better green; moreover, it wears immeasurably better. But what is it? The inferior one is the old-fashioned turmeric, with tartaric acid. And the improved yellow? Oh! we perceive. It is a secret of the establishment, and we are not to ask questions about it. But among all these men employed here, are there none accessible to a bribe from a rival in the art? There is no saying; for the men cannot be tempted. They do not know, any more than ourselves, what this mysterious yellow is. But why does it not supersede the old-fashioned turmeric? It will, no doubt; and it is gaining rapidly upon it; but it takes time to establish improvements. The improvement in greens, however, is fast recommending the new yellow. This deep amber is a fine color. We find it is called California, which has a modern sound in it. This Napoleon blue (not Louis Napoleon's) is a rich color. It gives a good deal of trouble. There is actually a precipitation of metal, of tin, upon every fibre, to make it receive the dye; and then it has to be washed; and then dipped again, before it can take a darker shade; and afterwards washed again, over and over, till it is dark enough; when it is finally soused in water which has fuller's earth in it, to make it soft enough for working and wear. What is doing with that dirty-white bundle? It is silk of a thoroughly bad color. Whether it is the fault of the worm, or of the worm's food, or what, there is no saying--that is the manufacturer's affair. He sent it here. It is now to be sulphured, and dipped in a very faint shade of indigo, curdled over with soap. This will improve it, but not make it equal to a purer white silk. Next, the wet hanks have to be squeezed in the Archimedean press, and then hung up in that large, hot drying-room. One serious matter remains unintelligible to us. Plaid ribbons--that is, all sorts of checked ribbons--have been in fashion so long now, that we have had time to speculate (which we have often done), on how they can possibly be made. About the colors of the warp (the long way of the ribbon), we are clear enough. But how, in the weft, do the colors duly return, so as to make the stripes, and therefore the checks, recur at equal distances? We are now shown how this was done formerly, and how it is done now. Formerly, the hanks were tied very tightly, at equal distances, and the alternate spaces closely wrapped round with paper, or wound round with packthread. This took up a great deal of time. We were shown a much better plan. A shallow box is made, so as to hold within it the halves of several skeins of silk; these halves being curiously twisted, so as to alternate with the other halves when the hanks are shaken back into their right position for winding. One half being within the box, and the other hanging out, the lid is bolted down so tight that the dye cannot creep into the box; and the out-hanging silk is dipped. So much can be done at once, that the saving of time is very great, and, judging by the prodigious array of plaid ribbons that we saw in the looms afterwards, the value of the invention is no trifle. The name of this novelty is the Clouding Box. We see a bundle of cotton. What has cotton to do here? It is from Nottingham--very fine and well twisted. It is a pretty pink, and it costs one shilling and sixpence per pound to dye. But what is it for? Ah! that is the question! It is to mix in with silk, to make a cheap ribbon. Another pinch of devil's dust! There is a calendering process employed in the final preparation of the dried silk, by which, we believe, its gloss is improved; but it was not in operation at the time of our visit. We saw, and watched with great curiosity, a still later process--more pretty to witness than easy to achieve--the making up of the hanks. This is actually the most difficult thing the men have to learn in the whole business. Of course, therefore, it is no matter for description. The twist, the insertion of the arm, the jerk, the drawing of the mysterious knot, may be looked at for hours and days, without the spectator having the least idea how the thing is done. We went from workman to workman--from him who was making up the blue, to him who was making up the red--we saw one of the proprietors make up several hanks at the speed of twenty in four minutes and a half, and we are no more likely to be able to do it, than if we had never entered a dye-house. Peeping Tom might spy for very long before he would be much the wiser; when done, the effect is beautiful. The snaky coils of the polished silk throw off the light like fragments of mirrors. Another mysterious process is the marking of the silk which belongs to each manufacturer. The hanks and bundles are tied with cotton string; and this string is knotted with knots at this end, at that end, in the middle, in ties at the sides, with knots numbering from one to fifteen, twenty, or whatever number may be necessary; and the manufacturer's particular system of knots is posted in the books with his name, the quantity of silk sent in, the dye required, and all other particulars. We were amused to find that there is a particular twist and a particular dye for the fringe of brown parasols. It is desired that there should be a claret tint on this fringe, when seen against the light; and here, accordingly, we find the claret tint. The silk is somewhat dull, from being hard twisted; it is to be made more lustrous by stretching, and we accompany it to the stretching machine. There it is suspended on a barrel and movable pin; by a man's weight applied to a wheel, the pin is drawn down, the hank stretches, and comes out two or more inches longer than it went in, and looking perceptibly brighter. A hank of bad silk snaps under this strain; a twist that will stand it is improved by it. Looking into a little apartment, as we return through the yard, we find a man engaged in work which the daintiest lady might long to take out of his hands. He is making pattern-cards and books. He arranges the shades of all sorts of charming colors, named after a hundred pretty flowers, fruits, and other natural productions,--his lemons, lavenders, corn flowers, jonquils, cherries, fawns, pearls, and so forth; takes a pinch of each floss, knots it in the middle, spreads it at the ends, pastes down these ends, and, when he has a row complete, covers the pasted part with slips of paper, so numbered as that each number stands opposite its own shade of color. A pattern-book is as good as a rainbow for the pocket. This looks like a woman's work; but there are no women here. The men will not allow it. Women cannot be kept out of the ribbon-weaving; but in the dye-house they must not set foot, though the work, or the chief part of it, is far from laborious, and requires a good eye and tact, more than qualities less feminine. We found many apprentices in the works, receiving nearly half the amount of wages of their qualified elders. The men earn from ten shillings to thirty shillings a week, according to their qualifications. Nearly half of the whole number earn about fifteen shillings a week at the present time. And, now, we are impatient to follow these pretty silk bundles to the factory, and see the weaving. It is strange to see, on our way to so thoroughly modern an establishment, such tokens of antiquity, or reminders of antiquity, as we have to pass. We pass under St. Michael's Church, and look up, amazed, to the beauty and loftiness of its tower and spire; the spire tapering off at a height of three hundred and twenty feet. The crumbling nature of the stone gives a richness and beauty to the edifice, which we would hardly part with for such clear outlines as those of the restored Trinity Church, close at hand. And then, at an angle of the market-place, there is Tom, peeping past the corner,--looking out of his window, through his spectacles, with a stealthy air, which, however ridiculous, makes one thrill, as with a whiff of the breeze which stirred the Lady Godiva's hair, on that memorable day, so long ago. It is strange, after this, to see the factory chimney, straight, tall, and handsome, in its way, with its inlaying of colored bricks, towering before us, to about the height of a hundred and thirty feet. No place has proved itself more unwilling than Coventry to admit such innovations. No place has made a more desperate resistance to the introduction of steam power. No place has more perseveringly struggled for protection, with groans, menaces, and supplications. Up to a late period, the Coventry weavers believed themselves safe from the inroads of steam power. A Macclesfield manufacturer said, only twenty years ago, before a Committee of the House of Commons, that he despaired of ever applying power-looms to silk. This was because so much time was employed in handling and trimming the silk, that the steam power must be largely wasted. So thought the weavers, in the days when the silk was given out in hanks or bobbins, and woven at home, or, when the work was done by handloom weavers in the factory--called the loom-shop. The day was at hand, however, when that should be done of which the Macclesfield gentleman despaired. A small factory was set up in Coventry by way of experiment, in the use of steam power, in 1831. It was burned down during a quarrel about wages,--nobody knows how or by whom. The weavers declared it was not their doing; but their enmity to steam power was strong enough to restrain the employers from the use of it. It was not till every body saw that Coventry was losing its manufacture,--parting with it to places which made ribbons by steam,--that the manufacturers felt themselves able to do what must be done, if they were to save their trade. The state of things now is very significant. About seventy houses in Coventry make ribbons and trimmings, (fringes and the like.) Of these, four make fringes and trimmings, and no ribbons; and six or eight make both. Say that fifty-eight houses make ribbons alone. It is believed that three-fourths of the ribbons are made by no more than twenty houses out of these fifty-eight. There are now thirty steam powerloom factories in Coventry, producing about seven thousand pieces of ribbons in the week, and employing about three thousand persons. It seems not to be ascertained how large a proportion of the population are employed in the ribbon manufacture: but the increase is great since the year 1838, when the number was about eight thousand, without reckoning the outlying places, which would add about three thousand to the number. The total population of the city was found, last March, to amount to nearly thirty-seven thousand. So, if we reckon the numbers employed in connection with the throwing-mills and dye-houses, we shall see what an ascendency the ribbon manufacture has in Coventry. At the factory we are entering, the preparatory processes are going forward at the top and the bottom of the building. In the yard is the boiler fire, which sets the engine to work; and, from the same yard, we enter workshops, where the machinery is made and repaired. The ponderous work of the men at the forge and anvils contrasts curiously with the delicacy of the fabric which is to be produced by the agency of these masses of iron and steel. Passing up a step-ladder, we find ourselves in a long room, where turners are at work, making the wooden apparatus required, piercing the "compass boards," for the threads to pass through, and displaying to us many ingenious forms of polished wood. While the apparatus is thus preparing below, the material of the manufacture is getting arranged, four stories overhead. There, under a skylight, women and girls are winding the silk from the hanks, upon the spools, for the shuttles. Here we see, again, the clouded silk, which is to make plaid ribbons, and the bright hues which delighted our eyes at the dyeing-house. This is easy work,--many of the women sitting at their reels; and the air is pure and cool. The great shaft from the engine, passing through the midst of the building, carries off the dust, and affords excellent ventilation. Besides this, the whole edifice is crowned by an observatory, with windows all round; and no complete ceilings shut off the air between this chamber and the rooms of two stories below. In clear weather, there is a fine view from this pinnacle, extending from the house, gardens, and orchard of the Messrs. Hamerton below, over the spires of Coventry, to a wide range of country beyond. Descending from the long room, where the winding is going on, we find ourselves in an apartment which it does one good to be in. It is furnished with long narrow tables, and benches put there for the sake of the work-people, who may like to have their tea at the factory, in peace and quiet. They can have hot water, and make themselves comfortable here. Against the door hangs a list of books, read, or to be read, by the people: and a very good list it is. Prints, from Raffaelle's Bible, plainly framed, are on the walls. In the middle of the room, on, and beside, a table, are four men and boys, preparing the "strapping" of a Jacquard loom for work. The cords, so called, are woven at Shrewsbury. We next enter a room where a young man is engaged in the magical work of "reading in from the draught." The draught is the pattern of the intended ribbon, drawn and painted upon diced paper,--like the patterns for carpets that we saw at Kendal, but a good deal larger, though the article to be produced here is so much smaller. The young man sits, as at a loom. Before him hangs the mass of cords he is to tie into pattern, close before his face, like the curtain of a cabinet piano. Upreared before his eyes is his pattern, supported by a slip of wood. He brings the line he has to "read in" to the edge of this wood, and then, with nimble fingers, separates the cords, by threes, by sevens, by fives, by twelves, according to the pattern, and threads through them the string which is to tie them apart. The skill and speed with which he feels out his cords, while his eyes are fixed on his pattern, appear very remarkable; but when we come to consider, it is not so complicated a process as playing at sight on the piano. The reader has to deal thus with one chapter, or series, or movement, of his pattern. A _da capo_ ensues: in other words, the Jacquard cards are tied together, to begin again; and there is a revolution of the cards, and a repetition of the pattern, till the piece of ribbon is finished. In the same apartment is the press in which the Jacquard cards are prepared; just in the way which may be seen wherever silk or carpet weaving, with Jacquard looms, goes forward. All the preparations having been seen--the making of the machinery, the filling of the spools, the drawing and "reading in" of the pattern, and the tying of the cords or strapping, we have to see the great process of all, the actual weaving. We certainly had no idea how fine a spectacle it might be. Floor above floor is occupied with a long room in each, where the looms are set as close as they can work, on either hand, leaving only a narrow passage between. It may seem an odd thing to say; but there is a kind of architectural grandeur in these long lofty rooms, where the transverse cords of the looms and their shafts and beams are so uniform, as to produce the impression that symmetry, on a large scale, always gives. Looking down upon the details, there is plenty of beauty. The light glances upon the glossy colored silks, depending, like a veil, from the backs of the looms, where women and girls are busy piercing the imperfect threads with nimble fingers. There seems to be plenty for one person to do; for there are thirteen broad ribbons, or a greater number of narrow ones, woven at once, in a single loom; yet it may sometimes be seen that one person can attend the fronts, and another the backs of two looms. In the front we see the thirteen ribbons getting made. Usually, they are of the same pattern, in different colors. The shuttles, with their gay little spools, fly to and fro, and the pattern grows, as of its own will. Below is a barrel, on which the woven ribbon is wound. Slowly revolving, it winds off the fabric as it is finished, leaving the shuttles above room to ply their work. The variety of ribbons is very great, though in this factory we saw no gauzes, nor, at the time of our visit, any of the extremely rich ribbons which made such a show at the Exhibition. Some had an elegant and complicated pattern, and were woven with two shuttles (called the double-batten weaving) which came forward alternately, as the details of the rich flower or leaf required the one or the other. There were satin ribbons, in weaving which only one thread in eight is taken up,--the gloss being given by the silk loop which covers the other seven. On entering, we saw some narrow scarlet satin ribbons, woven for the Queen. Wondering what Her Majesty could want with ribbon of such a color and quality, we were set at ease by finding that it was not for ladies, but horses. It was to dress the heads of the royal horses. There were bride-like, white-figured ribbons, and narrow flimsy black ones, fit for the wear of the poor widow who strives to get together some mourning for Sundays. There were checked ribbons, of all colors and all sizes in the check. There were stripes of all varieties of width and hue. There were diced ribbons, and speckled, and frosted. There were edges which may introduce a beautiful harmony of coloring; as primrose with a lilac edge, green with a purple edge, rose color and brown, puce and amber, and so on. The loops of pearl or shell edges are given by the silk being passed round horse-hairs, which are drawn out when the thing is done. There are belts,--double ribbons,--which have other material than silk in them; and there are a good many which are plain at one edge, and ornamented at the other. These are for trimming dresses. One reason why there are so few gauzes, is that the French beat us there. They grow the kind of silk that is best for that fabric, and labor is cheap with them; so that any work in which labor bears a large proportion to the material, is peculiarly suitable for them. We have spent so much time among the looms, that it is growing dusk in their shadows, though still light enough in the counting house for us to look over the pattern-book, and admire a great many patterns, most, till we see more. Young women are weighing ribbons in large scales; and a man is measuring off some pieces, by reeling. He cuts off remnants, which he casts into a basket, where they look so pretty that, lest we should be conscious of any shop-lifting propensities, we turn away. There is a glare now through the window which separates us from the noisy weaving room. The gas is lighted, and we step in again, just to see the effect. It is really very fine. The flare of the separate jets is lost behind the screens of silken threads, which veil the backs of the looms, while the yellow light touches the beams, and gushes up to the high ceiling in a thousand caprices. Surely the ribbon manufacture is one of the prettiest that we have to show. If the Coventry people were asked whether their chief manufacture was in a flourishing state, the most opposite answers would probably be given by different parties equally concerned. Some exult, and some complain, at this present time. As far as we can make out, the state of things is this. From the low price of provisions, multitudes have something more to spare from their weekly wages than formerly, for the purchase of finery: and the demand for cheap ribbons has increased wonderfully. As always happens when any manufacture is prosperous, the operatives engage their whole families in it. We may see the father weaving; his wife, on the verge of her confinement, winding in another room, or, perhaps, standing behind a loom, piecing the whole day long. The little girls fill the spools; the boys are weaving somewhere else. The consequences of this devotion of whole households to one business, are as bad here as among the Nottingham lace-makers, or the Leicester hosiers. Not only is there the misery before them of the whole family being adrift at once, when bad times come, but they are doing their utmost to bring on those bad times. Great as is the demand, the production has, thus far, much exceeded it. The soundest capitalists may be heard complaining that theirs is a losing trade. Less substantial capitalists have been obliged to get rid of some of their stock at any price they could obtain: and those ribbons, sold at a loss, intercept the sales of the fair-dealing manufacturer. This cannot go on. Prosperous as the working-classes of Coventry have been, for a considerable time, a season of adversity must be within ken, if the capitalists find the trade a bad one for them. We find the case strongly stated, and supported by facts, in a tract, on the Census of Coventry, which has lately been published there. It might save a repetition of the misery which the Coventry people brought upon themselves formerly--by their tenacity about protective duties, and their opposition to steam power--if they would, before it is too late, ponder the facts of their case, and strive, every man in his way, to yield respect to the natural demand for the great commodity of his city; and to take care that the men of Coventry shall be fit for something else than weaving ribbons. From the Examiner. BARTHOLD NIEBUHR, THE HISTORIAN.[20] Niebuhr was born pre-eminently gifted, was trained by intellectual and tender parents, and his whole career is one story of the progress made by a mind which united extraordinary powers with untiring industry. But Niebuhr was not only born to achieve greatness. He achieved love and friendship in every relation of his life, he was a high-minded and in the purest sense of the word an earnest man. In intellect he was a giant among us; but in him the intellect was not a statue raised above the moral life, on which it trod as on a pedestal, a block of mere stone-mason's work; his heart had not been used up in the making of his brains, or his soul cleared out a sacrifice to make room for a new stock of understanding. We may yield our minds up to admire Niebuhr unreservedly, and it is pleasant therefore to get a _Life_ of him in English, so full as this is of the actual man, as he poured out portions thereof to his bosom friends, and wherein the large lumps of true Niebuhr gold are contained in a biographic deposit which itself is a long way removed from dross. The quiet, unaffected way in which this work has been done by the English writer of the book before us, her elegant simplicity of style, her thorough mastery of the subject, enable us to pass from Life to Letters, and from Letters back to Life, without any sense but of a perfect harmony between both. The two volumes are of a kind that can be read through from the beginning to the end with unremitting pleasure. We strongly suspect that Niebuhr, at the age of twelve, would have bewildered with his knowledge some few of our university professors. Here is part of a sketch, representing him when he was not very far removed from long clothes: How keenly alive he was to poetical impressions appears from a letter of Boje's written in 1783: "This reminds me of little Niebuhr. His docility, his industry, and his devoted love for me procure me many a pleasant hour. A short time back I was reading 'Macbeth' aloud to his parents without taking any notice of him, till I saw what an impression it made upon him. Then I tried to render it all intelligible to him, and even explained to him how the witches were only poetical beings. When I was gone, he sat down (he is not yet seven years old), and wrote it all out on seven sheets of paper without omitting one important point, and certainly without any expectation of receiving praise for it; for, when his father asked to see what he had written, and showed it to me, he cried for fear he had not done it well. Since then he writes down every thing of importance that he hears from his father or me. We seldom praise him, but just quietly tell him where he has made any mistake, and he avoids the fault for the future. "The child's character early exhibited a rare union of the faculty of poetical insight with that of accurate practical observation. The amusements he contrived for himself afford an illustration of this. During the periods of his confinement to the house, before he was old enough to have any paper given him, he covered with his writings and drawings the margins of the leaves of several copies of Forskaal's works, which were used in the house as waste paper. Then he made copy books for himself, in which he wrote essays, mostly on political subjects. He had an imaginary empire called Low-England, of which he drew maps, and he promulgated laws, waged wars, and made treaties of peace there. His father was pleased that he should occupy himself with amusements of this kind, and his sister took an active part in them. There still exist among his papers many of his childish productions; among others, translations and interpretations of passages of the New Testament, poetical paraphrases from the classics, sketches of little poems, a translation of Poncet's Travels in Ethiopia, an historical and geographical description of Africa, written in 1787 (the two last were undertaken as presents to his father on his birth-day), and many other things mostly written during these years." Here is Niebuhr, at the age of thirty-four, Professor in Berlin, after he had retired from official trusts which had imposed as many toils upon him as would have made an enormously active life for one of the most ancient tenants of our English pension list to look back upon: "Niebuhr's relinquishment of office, in 1810, forms an important epoch in his life. He was now thirty-four years of age, and since his twentieth year (with the exception of the sixteen months passed in England and Scotland), had been actively engaged in the public service. During this period he had indeed never lost sight of his philological researches, but he had only been able to devote to them his few hours of leisure; now, it was to be seen whether he could find satisfaction in the life of a student, after years passed in the midst of the great world, and surrounded by exciting circumstances. How far he had, however, turned these leisure hours to account, may be judged by the following memorandum, found, with many others of a similar kind, among his papers, and written most probably in Copenhagen about 1803: "Works which I have to complete: 1. Treatise on Roman Domains. 2. Translation of El Wakidi 3. History of Macedon. 4. Account of the Roman Constitution at its various Epochs. 5. History of the Achæan Confederation, of the Wars of the Confederates, and of the Civil Wars of Marius and Sylla, 6. Constitutions of the Greek States. 7. Empire of the Caliphs." "No detailed outlines of these, or any of his other literary undertakings are to be found; but it must not be inferred that such memoranda contain mere projects, towards whose execution no steps were ever taken. That Niebuhr proposed any such work to himself, was a certain sign that he had read and thought deeply on the subject, but he was able to trust so implicitly to his extraordinary memory, that he never committed any portion of his essays to paper, till the whole was complete in his own mind. His memory was so wonderfully retentive, that he scarcely ever forgot any thing which he had once heard or read, and the facts he knew remained present to him at all times, even in their minutest details. "His wife and his sister once playfully took up Gibbon, and asked him questions from the table of contents about the most trivial things, by way of testing his memory. They carried on the examination till they were tired, and gave up all hope of even detecting him in a momentary uncertainty, though he was at the same time engaged in writing on some other subject. He was once conversing with a party of Austrian officers about Napoleon's Italian campaigns. Some dispute arose respecting the position of different corps in the battle of Marengo. Niebuhr described exactly how they were placed, and the progress of the action. The officers contradicted him; but on maps being brought he was found to be in the right, and to know more of the details of the conflict than the very officers who had been present. One day, when he was talking with Professor Welcker of Bonn, the conversation happened to turn on the weather, and Niebuhr quoted the results of barometrical observations in the different years, as far back as 1770, with perfect accuracy. This power was not a merely mechanical faculty; it was intimately connected with the power of instantaneously seizing on all the relations of any fact placed before him, and with his wonderful imagination; his imagination, however, was that of an historian, not of a poet--it was not creative, but enabled him to form from the most various, and apparently inadequate sources, distinct and truthful pictures of scenes, actions, and characters. Hence his keen delight in travels: hence, too, his habit of pronouncing judgment on the men of other countries and of past times, with all the warmth of a fellow-countryman and a contemporary. "With his warm affections, and clear-sighted moral sense, it was impossible for him to form such opinions on past or present history, coolly standing aloof, as it were, and regarding the subject with calm superiority; he could not but condemn and despise all that was pernicious and base; he could not but love and reverence, with his whole heart, whatever was noble and beautiful. Such opinions and feelings he expressed with the utmost frankness, sometimes even with vehemence, when prudence would have counselled more guarded language." Here is Professor Niebuhr holding up a bright example to our friends who fear to look ridiculous in rifle clubs: "On the evacuation of Berlin by the French in February, 1813, Niebuhr shared in the national rejoicings, and not less in the enthusiasm displayed in the preparations for the complete re-conquest of freedom. When the Landwehr was called out, he refused to evade serving in it, as he could take no other part in the war. His wish was to act as secretary to the general staff; but if this were not possible, he meant to enter the service as a volunteer with some of his friends. For this purpose he went through the exercises, and when the time came for those of his age to be summoned, sent in his name as a volunteer to the Landwehr. He would have preferred entering a regular regiment, and applied to the King for permission to do so; but this request was refused by him, and he added that he would give him other commissions more suited to his talents. "Niebuhr's friends in Holstein could hardly trust their eyes when he wrote them word that he was drilling for the army, and that his wife entered with equal enthusiasm into his feelings. The greatness of the object had so inspired Madame Niebuhr, who was usually anxious, even to a morbid extent, at the slightest imaginable peril for the husband in whom she might truly be said to live, that she was willing and ready to bring even her most precious treasure as a sacrifice to her country." Hitherto we have quoted the biography, but on this point, and at a time when we are seeking to forearm ourselves against the chance of evil, it may edify us to hear Niebuhr himself speak on the theme of ball practice. Niebuhr, it should be remembered, writes at a time when two volumes of his great work, the "History of Rome," had been appreciated by the public: "I come from an employment in which you will hardly be able to fancy me engaged--namely, exercising. Even before the departure of the French, I began to go through the exercise in private, but a man can scarcely acquire it without companions. Since the French left, a party of about twenty of us have been exercising in a garden, and we have already got over the most difficult part of the training. When my lectures are concluded, which they will be at the beginning of next week, I shall try to exercise with regular recruits during the morning, and as often as possible practice shooting at a mark..... By the end of a month I hope to be as well drilled as any recruit who is considered to have finished his training. The heavy musket gave me so much trouble at first, that I almost despaired of being able to handle it; but we are able to recover the powers again that we have only lost for want of practice. I am happy to say that my hands are growing horny; for as long as they had a delicate bookworm's skin, the musket cut into them terribly." And now let us give a view of Niebuhr as Professor in Bonn, together with a few well-written notes upon his character: "We have seen that, at Berlin, Niebuhr delivered his lectures _verbatim_ from written notes. At Bonn, on the contrary, his only preparation consisted in meditating for a short time on the subject of his lecture, and referring to authorities for his data, when he found it necessary, and he brought no written notes with him to the lecture-room. His success in imparting his ideas varied greatly at different times, as it depended almost entirely on his mental and physical condition at the moment. He always felt a certain difficulty in expressing himself. He grasped his subject as a whole, and it was not easy to him to retrace the steps by which he had arrived at his results. Hence his style was harsh and often disjointed; and yet he possessed a species of eloquence whose value is of a high order--that of making the expression the exact reflection of the thought--that of embodying each separate idea in an adequate, but not redundant form. The discourse was no dry, impersonal statement of facts and arguments, or even opinions; the whole man, with his conceptions, feelings, moral sentiments, nay passions too, was mirrored forth in it. Hence Niebuhr not merely informed and stimulated the minds of his hearers, but attracted their affections. That he did this in an eminent degree, was not indeed owing to his lectures alone, but also to his kind and generous conduct. All who deserved it were sure of his sympathy and assistance, whether oppressed by intellectual difficulties, or pecuniary cares. During the first year, he delivered his lectures without remuneration; afterwards, on its being represented to him that this would be injurious to other professors who could not afford to do the same, he consented to take fees, but employed them in assisting poor scholars and founding prizes. He often, however, still remitted the fee privately, when he perceived that a young man could not well afford it, and never took any from friends. "But those who were admitted to his domestic circle were the class most deeply indebted to him. His interest in all subjects of scientific or moral importance was always lively; and it was impossible to be in his company without deriving some accession of knowledge and incentive to good. From his associates he only required a warm and pure heart and a sincere love of knowledge, with a freedom from affectation or arrogance. Where he found these, he willingly adapted himself to the wants and capacities of his companions; would receive objections mildly, and take pains to answer them, even when urged by mere youths, and weigh carefully every new idea presented to him. He was fond of society, and while his irritability not seldom gave rise to slight misunderstandings and even temporary estrangements in the circle of his acquaintance, there were some friends with whom he always remained on terms of unbroken intimacy, among whom may be named Professors Brandis, Arndt, Nitzsch, Bleek, Näke, Welcker, and Hollweg. He enjoyed wit in others, and in his lighter moods racy and pointed sayings escaped him not unfrequently. "His intercourse was not confined to literary circles. In all the civil affairs of the town and neighborhood he took an active interest from principle as well as inclination, for he considered a man as no good citizen who refused to take his share of the public business of the neighborhood in which he lived; and the loss which left so great a blank in the world of letters, was also deeply regretted by his fellow-townsmen of Bonn. Niebuhr's mode of life at Bonn was very regular, and his habits simple. He hated show and unnecessary luxury in domestic life. He loved art in her proper place, but could not bear to see her degraded into the mere minister of outward ease. His life in his own family showed the erroneousness of the assertion that a thorough devotion to learning is inconsistent with the claims of family affection. He liked to hear of all the little household occurrences, and his sympathy was as ready for the little sorrows of his children as for the misfortunes of a nation. He was in the habit of rising at seven in the morning, and retiring at eleven. At the simple one o'clock dinner, he generally conversed cheerfully upon the contents of the newspapers which he had just looked through. The conversation was usually continued during the walk which he took immediately afterwards. The building of a house, or the planting of a garden, had always an attraction for him, and he used to watch the measuring of a wall, or the breaking open of an entrance, with the same species of interest with which he observed the development of a political organization. The family drank tea at eight o'clock, when any of his acquaintance were always welcome. But during the hours spent in his library, his whole being was absorbed in his studies, and hence he got through an immense amount of work in an incredibly short time." Finally, here is the death of the immortal historian: "The last political occurrence in which Niebuhr was strongly interested, was the trial of the ministers of Charles the Tenth; it was indirectly the cause of his death. He read the reports in the French journals with eager attention; and as these newspapers were much in request at that time, from the universal interest felt in their contents, he did not in general go to the public reading-rooms where he was accustomed to see the papers daily, until the evening. On Christmas Eve and the following day, he was in better health and spirits than he had been for a long while, but on the evening of the 25th of December he spent a considerable time waiting and reading in the hot news-room, without taking off his thick fur cloak, and then returned home through the bitter frosty night air, heated in mind and body. Still full of the impression made on him by the papers, he went straight to Classen's room, and exclaimed, 'That is true eloquence! You must read Sauzet's speech; he alone declares the true state of the case; that this is no question of law, but an open battle between hostile powers! Sauzet must be no common man! But,' he added immediately, 'I have taken a severe chill, I must go to bed.' And from the couch which he then sought, he never rose again, except for one hour, two days afterwards, when he was forced to return to it quickly with warning symptoms of his approaching end. "His illness lasted a week, and was pronounced, on the fourth day, to be a decided attack of inflammation on the lungs. His hopes sank at first, but rose with his increasing danger and weakness; even on the morning of the last day he said, 'I may still recover.' Two days before, his faithful wife, who had exerted herself beyond her strength in nursing him, fell ill and was obliged to leave him. He then turned his face to the wall, and exclaimed with the most painful presentiment, 'Hapless house! To lose father and mother at once!' And to the children he said, 'Pray to God, children! He alone can help us!' And his attendants saw that he himself was seeking comfort and strength in silent prayer. But when his hopes of life revived, his active and powerful mind soon demanded its wonted occupation. The studies that had been dearest to him through life, remained so in death; his love to them was proved to be pure and genuine by its unwavering perseverance to the last. While he was on his sick bed, Classsen read aloud to him for hours the Greek text of the Jewish History of Josephus, and he followed the sense with such ease and attention, that he suggested several emendations in the text at the moment; this may be called an unimportant circumstance, but it always appeared to us one of the most wonderful proofs of his mental powers. The last learned work in which he was able to testify his interest, was the description of Rome by Bunsen and his friends, which had just been sent to him; the preface to the first volume was read aloud to him, and called forth expressions of pleasure and approbation. He also asked for light reading to pass the time, but our attempts to satisfy him were unsuccessful. A friend proposed the 'Briefe eines Verstorbenen,' which was then making a great sensation; but he declined it, faying he feared that its levity would jar upon his feelings. One of Cooper's novels was recommended to him, and excited his ridicule by its extraordinary verbiage; he was much amused by trying an experiment he proposed, which consisted in taking one period at hap-hazard on each page; and by the discovery that this mode of reading did little violence to the connection of the story. The 'Colnishe Zeitung' was read aloud to him up to the last day, with extracts from the French and other journals. He asked for them expressly, only twelve hours before his death, and gave his opinion half in jest about the change of ministry in Paris. But on the afternoon of the 1st of January, 1831, he sank into a dreamy slumber; once on awakening, he said that pleasant images floated before him in sleep; now and then he spoke French in his dreams; probably he felt himself in the presence of his departed friend De Serre. As the night gathered, consciousness gradually faded away; he woke up once more about midnight, when the last remedy was administered; he recognized in it a medicine of doubtful operation, never resorted to but in extreme cases, and said in a faint voice, 'What essential substance is this? Am I so far gone?' These were his last words; he sank back on his pillow, and within an hour his noble heart had ceased to beat." "Niebuhr's wife died nine days after him, on the 11th of the same month, about the same hour of the night. She died, in fact, of a broken heart, though her disease was, like his, an inflammation of the chest. She could shed no tears, though she longed for them, and prayed God to send them; once her eyes grew moist, when his picture was brought to her at her own request, but they dried again, and her heavy heart was not relieved. She had her children often with her, particularly her son, and gave them her parting counsels. And so her loving and pure soul went home to God. Both rest in one grave, over which the present King of Prussia has erected a monument to the memory of his former instructor and counsellor. The children were placed under the care of Madame Hensler, at Kiel." Our copious extracts from the biographic portion of the work will amply satisfy the mind of any one who needs more than report to convince him of the tact and good taste which have presided over the transformation of Madame Hensler's _Lebensnachrichten_ into a readable and interesting book, which is likely to be read for years as the best English record of a life that will be looked back upon with interest by all posterity. FOOTNOTES: [20] The Life and Letters of Barthold George Niebuhr; with Essays on his Character and Influence, by the Chevalier Bunsen and Professors Brandis and Loebell. Two volumes. Chapman & Hall. From Household Words. PICTURE ADVERTISING IN SOUTH AMERICA. The concentrated wisdom of nations used formerly to be sought for in their proverbs; we look for it now-a-days in their newspapers. Whether we always find what we seek, in this respect, may be a question; but something is sure to turn up in them that will repay the search, though the leading article, the records of parliament and of law, or even the letters of "our own correspondent," may fail to disclose it. The "intelligent" reader will at once see that we point to the advertising columns, but we are not going to inflict an epitome of the first and second pages of the _Times_, or present an abstract of its Supplement, characteristic of our country as the result might prove. We purpose to go somewhat further afield, and tread upon ground hitherto unbroken. A file of South American newspapers has suggested to us that it might prove amusing, if not instructive, to describe the wants and wishes, the habits of life, and something of the pervading tone of society, in certain parts of that hemisphere, as shown in the advertisements of the periodical journals. We have selected the city of Buenos Ayres for this illustration, and turn at once to our file. The political feature is absent here, for where men have always arms in their hands to establish a new "Constitution," or destroy an old one, they look elsewhere than to a newspaper advertisement for the arena wherein to exhibit their valor or patriotism. Their "London Tavern," their "Town Hall," their "Copenhagen Fields," or "Bull-ring," are to be found on their wide-spreading Pampas, or in the fastnesses of their Sierras, with the _lasso_ at the saddle-bow, the sharp spur on the heel, the _trabrigo_ (carbine) in the holster, and the lance or sabre in the grasp. These politicians have no time for reading or writing advertisements, nor would it answer any very useful purpose if they did. The only attempt that is ever made to catch the patriotic eye, is where a formal notice is issued by the authorities, touching taxes, or a muster of militia for some peaceful end; on these occasions, a "_Viva la Federation!_" (Long live the Confederation!) appears at the head of the advertisement announcing the fact; and when it has a quasi-military character attached to it, the portrait of an infantry soldier under arms, in white tights, Hessian boots, crossbelts, stiff stock, and ponderous chako (none of them very pleasant things to think of in latitude thirty-four degrees south, with the thermometer ninety-six in the shade), is invariably added. But the confederation is not appealed to merely because the nature of the advertisement may seem to require it; we find the same heart-stirring refresher associated with ass's milk, live turtle, runaway slaves--with everything, indeed, that has an interest for the community, portable or edible, necessary to its comfort, or serviceable to its desires. But if liberty has very little claim on the advertising columns of a newspaper in Buenos Ayres, there is a large set-off in favor of slavery. The papers teem with notices concerning that portion of the people who have the misfortune not to belong to themselves. And here it may be desirable to advert to a feature which is essential to the success of an advertisement in South America; it must be pictorial. Our own country newspapers, and most of the continental ones,--those of our Parisian friends in particular,--show us what can be done in this way; but they do not elaborate their subject after the manner of the Buenos-Ayreans. With them the advertisement must have a double chance; they who can read may enjoy the advantages of a liberal education in plain type;--they who have not been introduced to the schoolmaster may gather the meaning of the "noticia" from the greater or less striking resemblance of the object advertised to the woodcut which illustrates it. It is true, a difficulty may sometimes arise in the latter case, owing to an economical employment of the same block to represent a great variety of actions; the same slave is always in the attitude of a fugitive, whether he be described as running away with all his might, or quietly standing still to be sold; the same horse is always in a high trotting condition, whether he be supposed to career across the plain, or hold up a foot to be shod; the same bull has always his head bent down, with the same mischievous poke of the horns, whether he be advertised for slaughter or recommended for sport. A cook who might make a pudding with quick-lime instead of flour, and instead of a bath-brick send in a real one, would not accord with the notions of an English housewife. Female slaves who are to be sold, are represented as like to Atalanta, as the males are to Hippomenes. They, too, attired in a long night-gown, which has very much the look of impeding their flight, are always bolting with a bundle, which probably contains the bonnet they never appear in, or the shoes they are not supposed to wear. In like manner, if you wish to buy (_se desca comprar_) a slave, of either sex, you do so with your eyes open; for the great probability that the new purchase will vanish on the first favorable opportunity, is vividly get forth in the woodcut that speaks for all. The prices are tolerably high,--a boy, as we have seen, fetches nine hundred dollars; a woman-servant (_una criada_), fifteen hundred; and a man in the prime of his age,--for manual labor,--eighteen hundred, or two thousand. What a fortune Louis Napoleon might make, if he could establish a market-value for those whom he proscribes! M. Thiers would then be worth four hundred pounds! The next step is to religion,--or, at least, to its forms and ceremonies. We see the vignette of an altar-table, covered with a fair cloth, whereon stand a crucifix, and a pair of long waxen tapers, in full blaze, a holy-water pot, and a sprinkling-brush, are placed beside the table, beneath which is spread a handsome carpet. So much for the emblem; now for the text: "Doña Agustina Lopez de Rosas, the citizens Don Prudencio and Don Gervacio Ortiz de Rosas, and others, brothers, wife, and sons of the deceased Don Leon Ortiz de Rosas (Q.E.P.D.), invite those gentlemen who, by accident, have not received notes of invitation, to accompany them to pray to God for mercy on the soul of the aforesaid deceased, in the Cathedral Church, at ten o'clock of the 20th of March current, by which they will feel under infinite obligation." The next is a more than half-obliterated impression of an image of the sun, partly obscured by clouds, with the obligato crucifix in the midst, headed "Ave Maria;"--it is the third advertisement (_tercer aviso_), and is addressed by the Superiors (Mayordomos) of the most Holy Rosary to all faithful and devout sons of the most holy Mary. The text of this address we need not give; the substance will be sufficient. It tells the history of the completion of the two naves and other parts of the church of the Patriarch San Domingo, which have been painted, whitewashed, and otherwise decorated, in the sight of all the faithful (_à la vista de todos los fieles_), and--to make a long story short--money is wanted to make it what the priests wish it, and' therefore the superiors intend to stand daily in the chief porch to receive subscriptions, the smallest sums being--as in England, and every where else--most gratefully received. The mortuary advertisements are not absolutely a transition "from praying to purse-taking;" only a variety of the same general mode of dealing. We select two of these:--In the first, we behold a lady in the full-dress evening costume of the Empire, with a very short waist, and very little drapery above it, leaning pensively against a funereal monument; an embroidered pocket-handkerchief being placed beneath one elbow, to protect it from the cold marble; in her left hand she carries a substantial wooden cross, which is held so as to fall over the shoulder; a weeping willow on the opposite side to the mourning lady balances the composition. Below the picture is the announcement that "Funereal letters (_Esquelas de Funerales_) of every tasteful description, engraved as well as lithographic, and at a very moderate price, are to be obtained at the printing-office of the Mercantile Gazette, in the street of Cangallo, No. 75, where designs of all kinds maybe seen." The second is more sombre in outward show, but less applicable to the general business of the advertiser. It is headed, "Interesting to all whom it may concern." (_Interesante à quienes conguenga._) We have here a very black tree, a very black tombstone, and a very black sky; the outline of the two former relieved by gleams of light from a very full moon; and having gazed our fill on these melancholy objects, are told that--"In the street of Victory, at No. 63-1/2, at all hours of the day, an individual is to be met with who undertakes to supply every description of cards or notes of invitation, whether for funerals or any other kind of entertainment; he undertakes at the same time to serve those gentlemen who may honor him with their orders, with the very best goods, &c.," after the approved fashion of advertisers all over the globe. Natural history affords the Buenos-Ayreans great scope for their artistical genius. Don Federico Costa announces a grand spectacle of wild beasts; and that there may be no mistake about what he has to show, he heralds his collections with the full-length portrait of an Uran-utan (_Orangutan_), which he describes as a native of Africa. This interesting animal is seated on a bank, with a large stick in one hand, looking over his shoulder, and displays an endless amount of fingers and toes; the greater the number, the nearer, in Don Federico's opinion, the creature's approach to humanity. There is a wonderful bit of shadow thrown from one of the Uran-utan's legs, which puts one in mind of the footprint that so startled Robinson Crusoe; and, indeed, the general appearance of the animal is not unlike some of the earlier portraits of that renowned mariner, only nature has done for the Uran-utan what art and goat-skins accomplished for the solitary of Juan Fernandez. The moral attributes of Don Federico's pet are strongly insisted upon in the advertisement,--his excellent disposition, the ingenuity of his mind, and (included in "_la moral_") the surprising dexterity with which he scoops out the contents of a cocoa-nut "in a manner most pleasing (_muy agradáble_) to the beholders." His companions in captivity are porcupines, tiger-cats, ounces, armadillos, and a number of animals bearing local names, besides divers snakes of different colors, two thousand well-preserved insects, and, finally, (_por último_,) a collection of antiquities from Mexico. The price of admission is two _reales_--the universal shilling; and children, in Buenos Ayres, as in London, are admitted for half-price. A livelier turtle than that which is figured for the edification of the gourmands who frequent the Hotel of Liberty in the street of the 25th of May, it would be difficult to find even in the celebrated cellars of Leadenhall-street. If we were wholly unacquainted with the domestic habits of these scaly delicacies, we might easily imagine, from the picture here given, that the way a turtle gets over the ground is by flying, his outstretched feet and flippers serving him for wings. This advertisement is brief,--on the principle that good wine needs no bush. We are merely informed that turtle-soup, cutlets, and broiled fins, are to be had from mid-day till sunset. There is no occasion for the hotel proprietor to waste his money in commending wares such as these. The picture and the hour of consummation would have been enough. It is well that invalids should be told, that at No. 76, in the Street of Maipú, the milk of an ass "recently confined" is always on sale; but the woodcut attached to the advertisement makes the fact appear doubtful; for a sturdier male animal than the "burro" there depicted, was never painted by Morland or Gainsborough. This, however, may arise from the necessity which exists for one of a sort doing duty for all. But there is another singularity in this advertisement. With no line to indicate a fresh subject, as is the case in every other instance, the portrait of the ass is always followed by the words "Long live the Confederation! Death to the Unitarians!" These lines have puzzled us; and we hesitate to give the only explanation that strikes us: something disrespectful, in short, to the Confederation of Buenos Ayres. It is not only the slaves that run away in that part of South America: the infection extends to dogs, horses, and oxen, all of which, like Caliban, seem for ever on the look out to "have a new master, get a new man," to hunt, ride, or drive them. There is a daily column, headed "Perdida," in which long-tailed horses, with flowing manes, pointers in immovable attitudes, for ever pointing, and sinister-looking bulls--thorough-paced gamblers, always ready for pitch-and-toss--are advertised as having left their owners, who strive to win them back by rewards varying twenty to fifty dollars. In all these cases the missing animals are described as having "disappeared" (_desaparecido_)--a mild term for "stolen;" it being the Spanish custom to refrain from "wounding ears polite"--except when the blood is up; then, indeed, they may take the field against Uncle Toby's army, that swore so terribly in Flanders. This delicate mode of appealing to the consciences of thieves--which, carried fairly out, would probably bear a strong resemblance in the end to the politeness of Mr. Chucks--is extended to property of all kinds. A large watch, of the genus turnip, the hands pointing to half-past eleven, the time, perhaps, when the robbery is supposed to have taken place, and accompanied by the expressive word "Ojo" (look sharp) thrice repeated, indicates, what the advertisement soon plainly tells, that from No. 69, in Emerald-street, there have "disappeared" a valuable lot of articles, which give a very good idea of the turn-out of a well-mounted horseman in South America. There are, first, several pairs of large silver spurs--and a pair of Spanish spurs, when melted down, would make a decent service of plate,--quite enough for a "testimonial" to ourselves; and then come braided headstalls and bridles, with twisted chains and cavessons of silver; the reins hung with silver-bells, and decorated with silver bosses, and the bits and curbs heavily mounted with the same costly metal. This robbery has been evidently "a put-up thing," for there is no word of housebreaking,--merely a disappearance; and all silversmiths, pawnbrokers, and the public in general, are entreated (_se suplica à los, &c._) to detain the article, if offered, and a reward of two hundred dollars will be given. Perhaps the gentlemen who caused the horses to disappear have taken this mode of procuring caparisons! Quack-medicine vendors are not wanting in Buenos Ayres to render important services to humanity. Two magnificent cut-glass decanters, gigantic in proportion to a tree of wondrous virtues which stands between them, are stated to be full of a healing medicine, which will do the business of all whom the faculty have given up or are otherwise incurable, as effectually as Parr's Life Pills or Holloway's Ointment. The chief establishment for the sale of this elixir is very carefully pointed out; and for the benefit of future travellers we may mention, that it is to be found at No. 496 in the street of Cangallo, and in the very last door on the left-hand side, behind the windmill; and that in the court-yard of the house there is a garden filled with statues, of which the originals are probably defunct; but whether the elixir out of the two large decanters had any thing to do with this apotheosis, we refrain from conjecturing. The preceding advertisements are the most noticeable for embellishment and style. The ordinary kind of wants are set forth with woodcuts and text of a less striking kind, but almost all are illustrated. Wine has a barrel for its sign; music, a violin; travelling, a carriage; gardening, a flower-pot; upholstery, a chair; the cobbler's mystery, a top-boot; the hatter's, a beaver; and the letter of lodgings, a house full of windows. Not all of them are confined to the Spanish language, for there are many English merchants and traders; and to accommodate the last, a notice like the following recommends the aforementioned Street of Piety: "To Det. To roms in altos one Squaz from the Place of Victory." The author of this announcement certainly had not achieved a victory over the English language. From the London Examiner. GUIZOT AND MONTALEMBERT. The greatest novelty now in Paris is a speech. Any specimen of oratory that the police will first allow to be spoken, and then to be printed, is quite an attraction. Indeed there is but one remaining chance of perpetrating a speech, and that is by achieving your election as a member of the Institute, or being appointed as an old member to welcome the newly-elected academician. These are the only legitimate opportunities for making one's voice heard in public that M. Bonaparte's code has left to the Frenchman. In pursuance of this solitary permission on the part of the authorities, the Paris journals have contained reports of two remarkable speeches, the one uttered by Count Montalembert on his being elected to the seat in the Academy, rendered vacant by the death of M. Droz; the other spoken by M. Guizot, in the form of an address of welcome to the new academician, M. de Montalembert. Now in the speeches of these, the first authorized orators of the new despotic _regime_, we find so little to awaken the susceptibilities of even M. Bonaparte's police, that we have heard with unaffected wonder of the scissors of the censorship having been applied even to them. The philosophy of the speeches is terribly Conservative. M. Bonaparte himself could have desired no other. If his highness the President had embraced the two academicians after their speeches, and decorated them with the Grand Cordon of his new Order, it would have been but a tribute justly due to these lay preachers of absolutism. Eulogy of Droz was the theme which afforded Count Montalembert the opportunity to ventilate his opinions, as M. Guizot's theme was the eulogy of Montalembert. Montalembert depicted how Droz, who had reached youth at the commencement of the great revolution, joined in all its theories, its hopes, and its excesses, anathematizing kings and priests, and believing in the happy and final reign of pure democracy; and how all this the same Droz lived to unlearn and to correct, and to settle down as quiet and as arrant a Conservative as ever supported monarchic government and a restored church. This is the true path of repentance, exclaimed Montalembert, and the only road to wisdom. The compliment to tergiversation, which M. Montalembert thus paid to Droz, M. Guizot applied to Montalembert himself, whom he (M. Guizot) had remembered commencing his political career in full opposition, thundering against corrupt majorities, against kingly influence, and even against that want of spirit which preferred being at peace with neighbors to provoking them. But all that sort of constitutional opposition leads, as the people have seen, to the triumph of socialism; and so all wise people, like M. Montalembert, naturally become sick of it, and abandon it, betaking themselves for a preference to the old political religion of legitimacy and worship of absolutism. Of all the national disgraces inflicted upon France by M. Bonaparte's triumph, we know of none greater than such a hymn to servility, such anathemas and farewells to constitutional freedom, uttered by these two Talleyrands of the professorial and ecclesiastical schools, who have been changing principles all their lives, and now proclaim at last that absolutism is the only anchor to hold by. On one point M. Montalembert impugned the philosophy of M. Droz, and in doing so impugned not less the opinion of M. Thiers, and most of the eminent men who have written histories or judgments upon the great events of the Revolution. Droz, relating these events in after life, saw in their march and series the influence of stern necessity. Such was the congregated mass of evils of all kinds produced by the long misgovernment of the despotism and corrupt regime of the Bourbons, that a catastrophe like that of the Great Revolution was, according to Droz, not to be avoided. No human power could stop it, no moderation, no wisdom. In its path men were like the mere vegetable growth of a valley down which a torrent comes in inundation, sweeping all before it. But M. Montalembert, for his own part, has another way of viewing the events of the Revolution. He denies the doctrine of fatalism or of necessity. He will not allow that the follies of the monarchy drew down after them the crimes of the Republic as a natural consequence. He sees in all those events, on the contrary, a direct intervention of Providence, who inflicted the sufferings of the Revolution upon the French simply as retribution for their crimes and a punishment for their sins. Providence, in the imagination of Count Montalembert, is a Nemesis with sword and scourge in hand, exercising its chief duty in castigating humanity; and thus doth the French Academy in the middle of the nineteenth century proclaim the philosophy of history. M. Guizot avoided the recognition of any assertion so extravagant as this, and so very unfair to poor Jaques Bonhomme. The crimes of the old monarchy were confined to the court, the clergy, the aristocracy, and the financiers; whereas the poor peasant was ground to poverty, yet a proverbially honest and cheerful fellow amidst his ignorance and privations. But, according to Montalembert, Providence sent the Revolution to punish the crimes of duchesses; and this Revolution decimated, arrested, and sent to perish all over the world poor Jaques Bonhomme. Was this justice? M. Guizot did not, as we say, endorse this portion of the Montalembert philosophy. But he warned the Count of having in his early life made one grand mistake, in allying religion with liberalism, and putting the names of both combined on the banners of opposition. M. Guizot could hardly mean that religion, like fortune, should be always on the side of the greatest number of battalions. For should not this be the creed of M. Bonaparte, rather than of his illustrious Academicians? From Household Words. AN ACCOUNT OF SOME TREATMENT OF GOLD AND GEMS. Those who visit the metal works of Birmingham naturally desire to know where the metals come from; and especially the precious metals. Among the materials shown to the visitor, are drawers full of the brightest and cleanest gold; and ingots of silver, pure, or slightly streaked with copper. We have handled to-day an ingot which contains, to ninety-two ounces ten pennyweights of silver, seven ounces ten pennyweights of copper. We ask whether the gold comes from California; but we find that it has just arrived--from a much nearer place--from a refinery next door. We hear high praises of the Californian gold. It is so pure that some of it can be used, without refining, for second-rate articles. Some small black specks may be detected in it, certainly, though they are so few and so minute, that the native gold is wrought in large quantities. But what _is_ this neighboring refinery? Whence does it obtain the metals it refines? Let us go and see. It is a strange murky place; a dismal inclosure, with ugly sheds, and yards not more agreeable to the eye. Its beauties come out by degrees, as the understanding opens to comprehend the affairs of the establishment. In the sheds, are ranges of musty-looking furnaces; some cold and gaping, others showing, through crevices, red signs of fire within. There are piles of blocks of coal, of burnt ladles and peels, and rivulets of black refuse, which has flowed out from the furnaces into safe beds of red sand. In a special shed, is a black moist-looking heap of what appears to be filth, battened into the shape of a large compost bed. A man is filling a barrow with this commodity, and smoothing it down with loving care. And well he may; for this despicable-looking dirt is the California of the concern! Here is their gold mine, and their silver mine, and their copper mine. In another shed, is a mill-stone on edge, revolving with the post to which it is fixed, to crush the material which is to be calcined. In the yard, we see heaps of scoriæ--the shining, heavy, glassy-looking fragments, which tell tales of the prodigious heat to which they have been subjected. We see picks, and more ladles, and lanterns, and a most sordid-looking bonfire. A heap of refuse is burning on the stones; old rags, fragments of shoes, cinders, dust, and nails--the veriest sweepings that can be imagined. Something precious is there; but the mass must be burned to become manageable. The ashes will be swept up for the refinery. But what is it that yields gold, and silver, and copper, and brass? What is that heap of dirt in the special shed? It is the sweepings of the Birmingham manufactories. What economy! In all goldsmiths' shops every effort is made to save all the filings, and the minutest dust of the metals used. The floors are swept, and every thing recoverable is picked up. Yet the imperceptible loss is so valuable to the refiners, that they pay, and pay high, for the scrapings, sweepings, and picking of the work-rooms. A cart load of dirt is taken from a fork-and-spoon manufactory to the refinery, and paid for on the instant; and the money thus received is one of the regular items in the books of the concern. Perhaps it pays the wages of one of the workmen. Another establishment receives two hundred pounds a year for its sweepings. It is worth noting these methods in concerns which are flourishing, and which have been raised to a prosperous condition by pains and care; less flourishing people may be put in the way of similar methods. For instance, how good it would be for farmers if, instead of thinking there is something noble in disregard of trifling economy, they could see the wisdom and beauty of an economy which hurts nobody, but benefits every body! It would do no one any good to throw away these scattered particles of precious metal, while their preservation affords a maintenance to many families. In the same way, the waste of dead leaves, of animal manure, of odds and ends of time, of seed, of space in hedges, in the great majority of farms, does no good, and gives no pleasure to any body; while the same thrift on a farm that we see in a manufactory, would sustain much life, bestow much comfort, narrow no hearts, and expand the enjoyment of very many. We must take care of our eyes when the ovens are opened--judging by the scarlet rays that peep out, here and there, from any small crevice. Prodigious! What a heat it is, when, by the turn of a handle, a door of the furnace is raised! The roasting, or calcining, to get rid of the sulphur, is going on here. The whole inside--walls, roof, embers, and all--are a transparent salmon-color. As a shovel, inserted from the opposite side, stirs and turns the burning mass, the sulphur appears above--a little blue flame, and a great deal of yellow smoke. We feel some of it in our throats. We exclaim about the intensity of the heat, declaring it tremendous. But we are told that it is not so; that, in fact, "it is very cold--that furnace;" which shows us that there is something hotter to come. The Refiner's Test is pointed out to us;--a sort of shovel, with a spout, lined throughout with a material of burnt bones, the only substance which can endure unchanged the heat necessary for testing the metals. Of this material are made the little crucibles that we see in the furnaces, which our conductor admits to be "rather warm." There they are, ranged in rows, so obscured by the mere heat, which confounds every thing in one glow, that their circular rims are only seen by being looked for. Yet, one little orifice, at the back of this furnace, shows that even this heat can be exceeded. That orifice is a point of white heat, revealed from behind. We do not see the metal in the crucibles; but we know that it is simmering there. One more oven is opened for us--the assay furnace, which is at a white heat. As the smallest quantities of metal serve for the assay, the crucibles are here on the scale of dolls' tea-things. The whole concern of that smallest furnace looks like a pretty toy; but it is a very serious matter--the work it does, and the values it determines. The metals, which run down to the bottom, in the melting furnaces, are separated (the gold and silver by aquafortis), and cast in moulds, coming out as ingots; or, in fragments, of any shape they may have pleased to run into. Some of the gold fragments are of the cleanest and brightest yellow. Other, no less pure, are dark and brownish. They are for gilding porcelain. Lastly, we see a pretty curiosity. In the counting-house, a little glass chamber is erected upon a counter, with an apparatus of great beauty--a pair of scales, thin and small to the last degree, fastened by spider-like threads to a delicate beam, which is connected with an index, sensitive enough to show the variation of the hundredth part of a grain. The glass walls exclude atmospheric disturbance. Behind the rusty-looking doors were the white glowing crucibles; within the drawers was the yellow gold; and, hidden in its glass house, was the fairy balance. Now, we will follow some of the gold and silver to a place where skilled hands are ready to work it curiously. First, however, we may as well mention, in confidence to our readers, that our feelings are now and then wounded by the injustice of the world to the Birmingham manufacturers. We observe with pain, that the very virtues of Birmingham manufacture are made matters of reproach. Because the citizens have at their command extraordinary means of cheap production, and produce cheap goods accordingly, the world jumps to the conclusion that the work must be deceptive and bad. Fine gentlemen and ladies give, in London shops, twice the price for Birmingham jewelry that they would pay, if no middlemen stood, filling their pockets uncommonly fast, between them and the manufacturer; and they admire the solid value and great beauty of the work; but, as soon as they know where the articles were wrought, they undervalue them with the term "Brummagem." In the Great Exhibition there was a certain case of gold-work and jewelry, rich and thorough in material and workmanship. The contents of that case were worth many hundred pounds. A gentleman and lady stopped to admire their contents. The lady was so delighted with them that she supposed they must be French. The gentleman reminded her that they were in the British department. After a while, they observed the label at the top of the case, and instantly retracted their admiration. "Oh!" said the gentleman, pointing to the label, "these are Brummagem ware--shams!" Whatever may have been Brummagem-gold-beating in ancient times, and in days of imperfect art when long wars impeded the education of English taste, it is mere ignorance to keep up the censure in these times. It is merely accepting and retailing vulgar phrases without any inquiry, which is the stupidest form of ignorance. Perhaps some of the prejudice may be removed by a brief account of what a Birmingham manufacture of gold chains is at this day. Twenty years ago, the making of gold chains occupied a dozen or twenty people in Birmingham. Now, the establishment we are entering, alone, employs probably eight times that number. Formerly, a small master undertook the business in a little back shop: drew out his wire with his own hands; cut the devices himself; soldered the pieces himself; in short, worked under the disadvantage of great waste of time, of effort, and of gold. Into the same shop more and more machinery has been since introduced as it was gradually devised by clever heads. This machinery is made on the spot, and the whole is set to work by steam. Few things in the arts can be more striking than the contrast between the murky chambers where the forging and grinding--the Plutonic processes of machine-making--are going on, and the upper chambers, light and quiet, where the delicate fingers of women and girls are arranging and fastening the cobweb links of the most delicate chain-work. The whole establishment is most picturesque. While in some speculative towns in our island great warehouses and other edifices have sprung up too quickly, and are standing untenanted, a rising manufacture like this cannot find room. In the case before us, more room is preparing. A large steam-engine will soon be at work, and the processes will be more conveniently connected. Mean time, house after house has been absorbed into the concern. There are steps up here, and steps down there; and galleries across courts; and long ranges of low-roofed chambers; and wooden staircases, in yards;--care being taken, however, to preserve in the midst an isolated, well-lighted chamber, where part of the stock is kept, where some high officials abide, and where there are four counters or hatches, where the people present themselves outside, to receive their work. All this has grown out of the original little back-shop. Below, there is a refinery. It is for the establishment alone; but, just like that we have already described--only on a smaller scale. First, the rolling-mill shows us its powers by a speedy experiment;--it flattens a halfpenny, making it oblong at the first turn, and, by degrees, with the help of some annealing in the furnace, drawing it out into a long ribbon of shining copper, which is rolled up, tied with a wire, and presented to us as a curiosity. Next, we see coils of thick round wire, of a dirty white, which we can hardly believe to be gold. It is gold, however, and is speedily drawn out into wire. Then, there are cutting, and piercing, and snipping machines--all bright and diligent; and the women and girls who work them are bright and diligent too. Here, in this long room, lighted with lattices along the whole range, the machines stand, and the women sit, in a row--quiet, warm, and comfortable. Here we see sheets of soft metal (for solder) cut into strips or squares; here, again, a woman is holding such a strip to a machine, and snipping the metal very fine, into minute shreds, all alike. These are to be laid or stuck on little joins in the chain-work, or clasps, or swivel hinges, where soldering is required. Next, we find a dozen workwomen, each at her machine, pushing snips of gold into grooves, where they are pierced with a pattern, or one or two holes of a pattern, and made to fall into a receiver below. Each may take about a second of time. Farther on, slender gold wire is twisted into links by myriads. At every seat the counter is cut out in a semicircle, whereby room is saved, and the worker has a free use of her arms. Under every such semicircle hangs a leathern pouch, to catch every particle that falls, and to hold the tools. On shelves every where are ranges of steel dies; and larger pieces of the metal, for massive links or for clasps, or for watch-keys and other ornaments, are stamped from these. On the whole, we may say, that in these lower rooms the separate pieces are prepared for being put together elsewhere. That putting together appears to novices very blinding work; but, we are assured that it becomes so easy, by practice, that the girls could almost do it with their eyes shut. In such a case we should certainly shut ours; for they ache with the mere sight of such poking and picking, and ranging of the white rings--all exactly like one another. They are ranged in a groove of a plate of metal, or on a block of pumice-stone. When pricked into a precise row, they are anointed, at their points of junction, with borax. Each worker has a little saucer of borax, wet, and stirred with a camel-hair pencil. With this pencil she transfers a little of the borax to the flattened point of a sort of bodkin, and then anoints the links where they join. When the whole row is thus treated, she turns on the gas, and, with a small blow-pipe, directs the flame upon the solder. It bubbles and spreads in the heat, and makes the row of links into a chain. There would be no end of describing the loops and hoops, and joints and embossings, which are soldered at these gas-pipes, after being taken up by tiny tweezers, and delicately treated by all manner of little tools. Suffice it, that here every thing is put together, and made ready for the finishing. In the middle of one room is a counter, where is fixed the machine for twisting the chains--with its cog-wheels, and its nippers, whereby it holds one end of a portion of chain, while another is twisted, as the door-handle fixes the schoolboy's twine, while he knots or loops his pattern, or twists his cord. Here, a little girl stands, and winds a plain gold chain into this or that pattern, which depends upon the twisting. These ornaments of precious metal do not look very ornamental at present; being of the color of dirty soap-suds, and tossed together in heaps on the counters. We are now to see the hue and brightness of the gold brought out. We take up a chain, rather massive, and reminding us of some ornament we have somewhere seen; but it is so rough! and its flakes do not appear to fit upon each other. A man lays it along the length of his left hand, and files it briskly; as he works, the soapy white disappears, the polish comes out, the parts fit together, and it is, presently, one of those flexible, scaly, smooth, glittering chains that we have seen all our lives. Of course, the filings are dropped carefully into a box, to go to the refinery. There is, here, a home-invented and home-made apparatus for polishing and cutting topazes, amethysts, bloodstones and the like, into shield shapes, for seals, watch-keys, and ornaments of various kinds. The strongest man's arm must tire; but steam and steel need no consideration--so there go the wheels and the emery, smoothing and polishing infallibly; with a workman to apply the article, and a boy to drop oil when screw or socket begins to scream. This polishing and filing was such severe work, in the lapidary department, in former days, that the nervous energy of a man's arm was destroyed--a serious grief to both worker and employer. At this day, it is understood that the lapidary is past work at forty, from the contraction of the sinews of the wrist, consequent on the nature of his labor. The period of disablement depends much on the habits of the men; but, sooner or later, it is looked for as a matter of course. Here, the wear and tear is deputed to that which has no nerve. As the proprietor observes, it requires no sympathy. It may be asked how there comes to be any lapidary department here? Do we never see gold chains the links whereof are studded with turquoises, or garnets, or little specks of emerald? Are there no ruby drops to ladies' necklaces?--no jewelled toys hanging from gentlemen's watch-guards? We see many of these pretty things here; besides cameos for setting. After the delicate little filings (which must be done by hand) are all finished, the articles must be well washed, dried in box-wood sawdust, and finally hand-polished with rouge. The people in one apartment look grotesque enough--two women powdered over with rouge, and men of various dirty hues, all dressed alike, in an over-all garment of brown holland. A washerwoman is maintained on the establishment expressly to wash these dresses on the spot--her soap-suds being preserved, like all the other washes, for the sake of the gold-dust contained in them. Her wash-tubs are emptied, like every thing else, into the refinery. In the final burnishing room, we observe a row of chemists's globes--glass vases filled with water, ranged on a shelf. A stranger might guess long before he would find out what these are for. They are to reflect a concentrated blaze from the gas-lights in the evening, to point out specks and dimnesses, to the eyes and fingers of the burnishers. What curious finger-ends they have--those women who chafe the precious metals into their last degree of polish! They are broad--the joint so flexible that it is bent considerably backwards when in use; and the skin has a peculiar smoothness: more mechanical, we fancy, than vital. However that may be, the burnish they produce is strikingly superior to any hitherto achieved by friction with any other substance. In departing, the sense of contrast comes over us once more. We have just seen all manner of elegancies in ornament, from the classical and dignified to the minute, fanciful, and grotesque; in going out, we give a look to the unfinished engine-house, and the smiths' shop. All this hard work; all those many dwellings thrown into one establishment; all these scores of men, and women, and children, busy from year's end to year's end; all those diggers far away in California; all those lapidaries in Germany; all those engineers in their studies; all those ironmasters in their markets; all those miners in the bowels of the earth--all are enlisted in making gold chains; and some of us have no more knowledge and no more thought than to call the product "Brummagem shams!" Well! the price charged for them in London shops, where they are as good as French, is something real; and it is a real comfort to think how swingingly some fine folks pay, though the bulk of the profit comes, not to the manufacturer, but to the middlemen. Of these middlemen there are always two; the factor and the shopkeeper--often more. Their intervention is very useful, of course, or they would not exist; but somebody or other makes a prodigious profit of Birmingham jewelry, after it has left the manufacturer's hands. It was only yesterday that we saw, among a rich heap of wonderful things, a pair of elegant bracelets--foreign pebbles, beautifully set. We were told the wholesale price they were to be sold for; which was half the shop price. The transference to the London shop was to cost as much as the whole of the previous processes: from the digging of the silver and the collecting of the pebbles, through all the needful voyages and travels, to the burnishing and packing at Birmingham! We have seen, however, something which may throw a little light on the prejudice against Birmingham jewelry. It is not conceivable that any one should despise such an establishment as we have been describing. But, we found ourselves, the other day, passing through a little dwelling where the housewife, with a baby on her arm, and where more than half-a-dozen children were housed; and then crossing a little yard, and mounting a flight of substantial brick steps with a stout hand-rail, and entering the most curious little work-room we ever were in. It would just hold four or five people, without allowing them room to turn round more than one at a time. In one corner, was a very small stove. A lattice-window ran along the whole front, and made it pleasant, light, and airy. A work-bench or counter was scalloped out, in the same way as in larger establishments, so as to accommodate three workers in the smallest possible space. The three workers had each his stool, his leathern pouch on his knees, and his gas-pipe. A row of tools bristled along the whole length of the lattice; and there was another row on a shelf behind. The principal workman was the father of those many children below. One son was at work at his elbow, and the remaining workman was an apprentice. This working jeweller was as thorough a gentleman, according to our notions, as anybody we have seen for a long time past. Tall, stout, and handsome; collar white and stiff; apron white and sound; his whole dress in good repair; his voice cheerful as his face; his manner open and courteous; his information exactly what we wanted. We could not help wishing that some rural grandee, who avows that he hates all manufacturers, could see this fair specimen of an English handicraftsman. As for his work, he told us he supplies the factors to order. It would not answer for him to keep a stock. The factors would not buy what he should offer, but dictate to him what he shall make. Fashions change incessantly, and he has only to keep up with them as well as he can. It is not for him to invent new patterns and get steel dies made for them; but to get the same steel dies that other makers are procuring. These dies are, of course, for the metallic part of his work. The boxes of lockets and hair brooches (now vehemently in fashion), and devices, and colored stones, he procures at "the French shops" in the town; and he showed us some variety of these, ready for setting. Then came out the "Brummagem" feature of the case; showing us how the gold setting that he was preparing--perforating and filing--was to be backed by a blue stone. He observed that it was not thought worth while to get costly stones for a purpose like that; for blue glass would do as well. I certainly thought so, considering that the stone was to be only the back-ground of his work. Of the specimens I saw in that airy little workshop, some were in excellent taste, and all, I believe, of good workmanship. These small masters are as punctilious about employing only regularly qualified workmen, as any members of any guild in the country. Their journeymen must all have served an apprenticeship; not only because they are thus best fitted for their business, but because the value of apprenticeship is thus kept up; and these small capitalists will not part with the advantage of having journeymen, under the name of apprentices, completely under their command during the last two or three years of their term. One of the most remarkable sights, to those who knew Birmingham a quarter of a century ago, is such a manufacture as that of Messrs. Parker and Acott's ever-pointed pencils. Those of us whose fathers were in business in the days of the war, when the arts were not flourishing, may remember the bulky pocket-book, with its leather strap (always shabby after the first month), and its thick cedar pencil, which always wanted cutting; always blackening whatever came near it; always getting used up; the lead turning to dust at the most critical point of a memorandum. There was a fine trade in cedar pencils at Keswick in those days. It seemed a tale too romantic to be true, when we were told of ever-pointed pencils. First, we, of course, refused to believe in their existence;--what improvement have we not refused to believe in? Then, when we found there was a screw in the case, and that the pencil was not ever-pointed by a vital action of its own, we were sure we should not like it. We grew humble, and were certain we could never learn to manage it. And now, what have we not arrived at? We are so saucy as to look beyond our improved pencils; beyond pen and ink; beyond our present need of a cumbrous apparatus to carry about with us; ink that will spill and spot; leads that will break and use up; pens, paper, syllables, letters, pot-hooks, dots and crossings, and all the process of writing. Perhaps the electric telegraph has spoiled us: enabling us to imagine some process by which thoughts may record themselves; some brief and complete method of making "mems," without the complicated process of writing down hundreds of letters, and scores of syllables, to preserve one single idea. All this, however, is as romantic now as ever-pointed pencils seemed to be at first; and instead of dreaming of what is not yet achieved, let us look at the reality before our eyes. Here is something wonderful enough, on our very entrance. Here is a silver pencil-case, neat and serviceable, though not of the most elegant form; handsome enough to have been praised for its looks, thirty years ago. This pencil-case carries two feet of lead. It is intended to be the commercial traveller's joy and treasure. It will last him his life, unless he take an unconscionable amount of orders. Unscrewing the top, we see that the upper end of the tube is divided into compartments,--which look like the mouth of a revolver; and here, protected from each other, the leads are bestowed, safe--despite their great length, through their owner's roughest travelling. Some drawers in a counter are pulled out. One is divided into compartments, each of which holds a handful of something different from all the rest. This drawer contains one hundred gross of pencil-cases in parts; the tube, the rack and barrel, the propelling wire, the slide, the top, the various chambers, and screws, and niceties. In another drawer, there is a dazzling and beautiful heap of pure amethysts and topazes from far countries, of vast aggregate value: and, farther on, we see the elegant onyx and white cornelian from South America (a very recent importation), and the sardonyx, now in high favor for seals and the tops of pencil-cases. Its delicate layer of white upon red, (or the reverse,) the undermost color coming out in the engraving, makes it singularly fit for the purpose. Then, there is a paperful of small turquoises, which are poured out and handled like a sample of lentils. These are from Persia; and they have to be re-cut in England, the Persian tools being of the roughest. Then, there are bloodstones, and pebbles out of number, and pints of glittering fragments of Californian gold; rich materials tossed together, to be drawn out for use at the bidding of capricious fashion; for, fashion seems to be as capricious here, among these stones and ores that have required cycles of ages to compose, as in the milliner's shop, where the materials are drawn from the pods of a season and the insects of a summer. On shelves against the walls, are ranged rows and piles of steel dies,--that pretty and costly piece of apparatus, which we find in almost all these manufactories--together with the inexhaustible stamping and cutting machines, the blow-pipe, the borax, and soft metal for solder, the pumice-stone and wirebed, the turning wheel, the circular saw, and the bath of diluted aquafortis, and the pan of box-wood sawdust, in which the pretty things are dried when they come out of "pickle." From buttons to epergnes, we find this apparatus every where. The steel dies are an everlasting study: the block, like the conical weight of a pair of warehouse scales, seeming very large for the little figure indented in the upper surface. Here, in this manufactory, the figures are of the bugle, a favorite form of watch-key--the deer's foot, (a pretty study for the same purpose,) and a large variety of patterns--the tulip, the acanthus, and other foliage, flowers or fruit, climbing up the summit of the pencil-case, as if it were a little Corinthian capital. And now for the process. The silver or gold comes from the rolling-mill, and is passed in slips through a series of draw-plates, each smaller than the last, and finally through the one which is to give it its fluted or other pattern. Soldering at the joint, filing away the roughness left by the solder, washing in an aquafortis bath come next. A slit for the slide is then made; the rims and screws and slides are added, and you have a pencil-case complete. We observed that a large proportion of the tops are hexagonal, or of some angular form, to prevent their rolling off the table. Some of the pencil-cases are so small, and some of the watch-keys are so elaborate, that it requires a moment's consideration to decide which is which; and again, ladies' crochet-needles, of gold, diversely ornamented, are very like pencil-cases. Some of each kind are specked over with turquoise or garnets; and all appear to be designed for ornament, rather than for use. It is quite a relief to turn the eye upon a shovelful of the yellow sawdust, where substantial pencil-cases, fit for manly fingers, are drying. On the whole, perhaps, the most striking feature is the prodigious extent of the production. We ask where all these can possibly go; for a pencil-case is a thing which lasts half a century, as the manufacturer himself observes. These do not go to America; for, in such things, the Americans are our chief rivals. They supply their own wants, and a good deal more. We send our pencil-cases and trinkets over a good part of the world, however; and the caprice of fashion causes a great adventitious demand at home. In reply to our remark about this vast production, the manufacturer observes, "Yes, we cut up gold and silver as the year comes in, and as the year goes out." Something of a change, this, since the old days of cedar pencils! Here is a steel die with an elegant pyramidal pattern; the half of a watch-key. We see the inch of metal stamped; and then another inch, for the other half: and then the filing and snipping of the edges; and then the laying in of the solder inside; and the binding together of the two halves with wire; and the repose on the bed of wire on the pumice-stone, to be broiled red-hot; and the neat cleaning when cool; the polishing, and the leaving certain parts of the pattern dead, while others are burnished; and the firing of the steel cylinder at the point, and the turning of the rims. All this for a watch-key! But, we are shown another, which does not look like anything very studied; and we are told, and are at once convinced, that it consists of no less than thirteen parts. Other keys, which look more fanciful, consist of ten, eight, or seven. None are the simple affair that a novice would suppose, now that we require the convenience of being able to wind up our watches without twisting the chain or ribbon with every turn of the key. But we must leave these niceties; the little pistols, the deers feet, the bugle-horns, and all the dainty fancies embodied in watch-keys and knick-knacks. Here, as elsewhere, every atom is saved, of sweeping and wash; and we now find ourselves, writer and readers, like the materials of which we have been speaking, brought back, after all these various processes, to the refinery from which we set out. MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[21] BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. BOOK X.-INITIAL CHAPTER. It is observed by a very pleasant writer--read now-a-days only by the brave pertinacious few who still struggle hard to rescue from the House of Pluto the souls of departed authors, jostled and chased as those souls are by the noisy footsteps of the living--it is observed by the admirable Charron, that "judgment and wisdom is not only the best, but the happiest portion God Almighty hath distributed amongst men; for though this distribution be made with a very uneven hand, yet nobody thinks himself stinted or ill-dealt with, but he that hath never so little is contented in _this_ respect."[22] And, certainly, the present narrative may serve in notable illustration of the remark so drily made by the witty and wise preacher. For whether our friend Riccabocca deduce theories for daily life from the great folio of Machiavel; or that promising young gentleman, Mr. Randal Leslie, interpret the power of knowledge into the art of being too knowing for dull honest folks to cope with him; or acute Dick Avenel push his way up the social ascent with a blow for those before, and a kick for those behind him, after the approved fashion of your strong New Man; or Baron Levy--that cynical impersonation of Gold--compare himself to the Magnetic Rock in the Arabian tale, to which the nails in every ship that approaches the influence of the loadstone fly from the planks, and a shipwreck per day adds its waifs to the Rock: questionless, at least, it is, that each of those personages believed that Providence had bestowed on him an elder son's inheritance of wisdom. Nor, were we to glance towards the obscurer parts of life, should we find good Parson Dale deem himself worse off than the rest of the world in this precious commodity--as, indeed, he had signally evinced of late in that shrewd guess of his touching Professor Moss;--even plain Squire Hazeldean took it for granted that he could teach Audley Egerton a thing or two worth knowing in politics; Mr. Stirn thought that there was no branch of useful lore on which he could not instruct the squire; and Sprott, the tinker, with his bag full of tracts and lucifer matches, regarded the whole framework of modern society, from a rick to a constitution, with the profound disdain of a revolutionary philosopher. Considering that every individual thus brings into the stock of the world so vast a share of intelligence, it cannot but excite our wonder to find that Oxenstiern is popularly held to be right when he said, "See, my son, how little wisdom it requires to govern states;"--that is, men! That so many millions of persons, each with a profound assurance that he is possessed of an exalted sagacity, should concur in the ascendency of a few inferior intellects, according to a few, stupid, prosy, matter-of-fact rules as old as the hills, is a phenomenon very discreditable to the spirit and energy of the aggregate human species! It creates no surprise that one sensible watch-dog should control the movements of a flock of silly grass-eating sheep; but that two or three silly grass-eating sheep should give the law to whole flocks of such mighty sensible watch-dogs--_Diavolo!_ Dr. Riccabocca, explain _that_, if you can! And wonderfully strange it is, that notwithstanding all the march of enlightenment, notwithstanding our progressive discoveries in the laws of nature--our railways, steam-engines, animal magnetism, and electro-biology--we have never made any improvement that is generally acknowledged, since men ceased to be troglodytes and nomads, in the old-fashioned gamut of flats and sharps, which attunes into irregular social jog-trot all the generations that pass from the cradle to the grave;--still, "_the desire for something we have not_" impels all the energies that keep us in movement, for good or for ill, according to the checks or the directions of each favorite desire. A friend of mine once said to a _millionaire_, whom he saw for ever engaged in making money which he never seemed to have any pleasure in spending, "Pray, Mr.----, will you answer me one question: You are said to have two millions, and you spend £600 a-year. In order to rest and enjoy, what will content you?" "A little more," answered the _millionaire_. That "little more" is the mainspring of civilization. Nobody ever gets it! "Philus," saith a Latin writer, "was not so rich as Lælius; Lælius was not so rich as Scipio; Scipio was not so rich as Crassus: and Crassus was not so rich--as he wished to be!" If John Bull were once contented, Manchester might shut up its mills. It is the "little more" that makes a mere trifle of the National Debt!--Long life to it! Still, mend our law-books as we will, one is forced to confess that knaves are often seen in fine linen, and honest men in the most shabby old rags; and still, notwithstanding the exceptions, knavery is a very hazardous game; and honesty, on the whole, by far the best policy. Still, most of the Ten Commandments remain at the core of all the Pandects and Institutes that keep our hands off our neighbors' throats, wives, and pockets; still, every year shows that the parson's maxim--_quieta non movere_--is as prudent for the health of communities as when Apollo recommended his votaries not to rake up a fever by stirring the Lake Camarina; still people, thank Heaven, decline to reside in parallelograms; and the surest token that we live under a free government is, when we are governed by persons whom we have a full right to imply, by our censure and ridicule, are blockheads compared to ourselves! Stop that delightful privilege, and, by Jove! sir, there is neither pleasure nor honor in being governed at all! You might as well be--a Frenchman! CHAPTER II. The Italian and his friend are closeted together. "And why have you left your home in ----shire? And why this new change of name?" "Peschiera is in England." "I know it." "And bent on discovering me; and, it is said, of stealing from me my child." "He has the assurance to lay wagers that he will win the hand of your heiress. I know that too; and therefore I have come to England--first to baffle his design--for I do not think your fears are exaggerated--and next to learn from you how to follow up a clue which, unless I am too sanguine, may lead to his ruin, and your unconditional restoration. Listen to me. You are aware that, after the skirmish with Peschiera's armed hirelings sent in search of you, I received a polite message from the Austrian government, requesting me to leave its Italian domains. Now, as I hold it the obvious duty of any foreigner, admitted to the hospitality of a state, to refrain from all participation in its civil disturbances, so I thought my honor assailed at this intimation, and went at once to Vienna to explain to the Minister there (to whom I was personally known), that though I had, as became man to man, aided to protect a refugee, who had taken shelter under my roof, from the infuriated soldiers at the command of his private foe, I had not only not shared in any attempt at revolt, but dissuaded, as far as I could, my Italian friends from their enterprise; and that because, without discussing its merits, I believed, as a military man and a cool spectator, the enterprise could only terminate in fruitless bloodshed. I was enabled to establish my explanation by satisfactory proof; and my acquaintance with the Minister assumed something of the character of friendship. I was then in a position to advocate your cause, and to state your original reluctance to enter into the plots of the insurgents. I admitted freely that you had such natural desire for the independence of your native land, that, had the standard of Italy been boldly hoisted by its legitimate chiefs, or at the common uprising of its whole people, you would have been found in the van, amidst the ranks of your countrymen; but I maintained that you would never have shared in a conspiracy frantic in itself, and defiled by the lawless schemes and sordid ambition of its main projectors, had you not been betrayed and decoyed into it by the misrepresentations and domestic treachery of your kinsman--the very man who denounced you. Unfortunately, of this statement I had no proof but your own word. I made, however, so far an impression in your favor, and, it may be, against the traitor, that your property was not confiscated to the State, nor handed over, upon the plea of your civil death, to your kinsman." "How, I do not understand. Peschiera has the property?" "He holds the revenues but of one half upon pleasure, and they would be withdrawn, could I succeed in establishing the case that exists against him. I was forbidden before to mention this to you; the Minister, not inexcusably, submitted you to the probation of unconditional exile. Your grace might depend upon your own forbearance from farther conspiracies--forgive the word. I need not say I was permitted to return to Lombardy. I found, on my arrival, that--that your unhappy wife had been to my house, and exhibited great despair at hearing of my departure." Riccabocca knit his dark brows, and breathed hard. "I did not judge it necessary to acquaint you with this circumstance, nor did it much affect me. I believed in her guilt--and what could now avail her remorse, if remorse she felt? Shortly afterwards I heard that she was no more." "Yes," muttered Riccabocca, "she died in the same year that I left Italy. It must be a strong reason that can excuse a friend for reminding me even that she once lived!" "I come at once to that reason," said L'Estrange gently. "This autumn I was roaming through Switzerland, and, in one of my pedestrian excursions amidst the mountains, I met with an accident, which confined me for some days to a sofa at a little inn in an obscure village. My hostess was an Italian; and as I had left my servant at a town at some distance, I required her attention till I could write to him to come to me. I was thankful for her cares, and amused by her Italian babble. We became very good friends. She told me she had been servant to a lady of great rank, who had died in Switzerland; and that, being enriched by the generosity of her mistress, she had married a Swiss innkeeper, and his people had become hers. My servant arrived, and my hostess learned my name, which she did not know before. She came into my room greatly agitated. In brief, this woman had been servant to your wife. She had accompanied her to my villa, and known of her anxiety to see me, as your friend. The government had assigned to your wife your palace at Milan, with a competent income. She had refused to accept of either. Failing to see me, she had set off towards England, resolved upon seeing yourself; for the journals had stated that to England you had escaped." "She dared!--shameless! And see, but a moment before, I had forgotten all but her grave in a foreign soil--and these tears had forgiven her," murmured the Italian. "Let them forgive her still," said Harley, with all his exquisite sweetness of look and tone. "I resume. On entering Switzerland, your wife's health, which you know was always delicate, gave way. To fatigue and anxiety succeeded fever, and delirium ensued. She had taken with her but this one female attendant--the sole one she could trust--on leaving home. She suspected Peschiera to have bribed her household. In the presence of this woman she raved of her innocence--in accents of terror and aversion, denounced your kinsman--and called on you to vindicate her name and your own." "Ravings indeed! Poor Paulina!" groaned Riccabocca, covering his face with both hands. "But in her delirium there were lucid intervals. In one of these she rose, in spite of all her servant could do to restrain her, took from her desk several letters, and reading them over, exclaimed piteously, 'But how to get them to him?--whom to trust? And his friend is gone!' Then an idea seemed suddenly to flash upon her, for she uttered a joyous exclamation, sat down, and wrote long and rapidly; inclosed what she wrote, with all the letters, in one packet, which she sealed carefully, and bade her servant carry to the post, with many injunctions to take it with her own hand, and pay the charge on it. 'For, oh!' said she (I repeat the words as my informant told them to me)--'for, oh, this is my sole chance to prove to my husband that, though I have erred, I am not the guilty thing he believes me; the sole chance, too, to redeem my error, and restore, perhaps, to my husband his country, to my child her heritage.' The servant took the letter to the post; and when she returned, her lady was asleep, with a smile upon her face. But from that sleep she woke again delirious, and before the next morning her soul had fled." Here Riccabocca lifted one hand from his face, and grasped Harley's arm, as if mutely beseeching him to pause. The heart of the man struggled hard with his pride and his philosophy; and it was long before Harley could lead him to regard the worldly prospects which this last communication from his wife might open to his ruined fortunes. Not, indeed, till Riccabocca had persuaded himself, and half persuaded Harley, (for strong, indeed, was all presumption of guilt against the dead,) that his wife's protestations of innocence from all but error had been but ravings. "Be this as it may," said Harley, "there seems every reason to suppose that the letters inclosed were Peschiera's correspondence, and that, if so, these would establish the proof of his influence over your wife, and of his perfidious machinations against yourself. I resolved, before coming hither, to go round by Vienna. There I heard with dismay that Peschiera had not only obtained the imperial sanction to demand your daughter's hand, but had boasted to his profligate circle that he should succeed; and he was actually on his road to England. I saw at once that could this design, by any fraud or artifice, be successful with Violante, (for of your consent, I need not say, I did not dream,) the discovery of this packet, whatever its contents, would be useless: his end would be secured. I saw also that his success would suffice for ever to clear his name; for his success must imply your consent, (it would be to disgrace your daughter, to assert that she had married without it,) and your consent would be his acquittal. I saw, too, with alarm, that to all means for the accomplishment of his project he would be urged by despair; for his debts are great, and his character nothing but new wealth can support. I knew that he was able, bold, determined, and that he had taken with him a large supply of money, borrowed upon usury;--in a word, I trembled for you both. I have now seen your daughter, and I tremble no more. Accomplished seducer as Peschiera boasts himself, the first look upon her face, so sweet yet so noble, convinced me that she is proof against a legion of Peschieras. Now, then, return we to this all-important subject--to this packet. It never reached you. Long years have passed since then. Does it exist still? Into whose hands would it have fallen? Try to summon up all your recollections. The servant could not remember the name of the person to whom it was addressed; she only insisted that the name began with a B, that it was directed to England, and that to England she accordingly paid the postage. Whom, then, with a name that begins with B, or (in case the servant's memory here misled her) whom did you or your wife know, during your visit to England, with sufficient intimacy to make it probable that she would select such a person for her confidant?" "I cannot conceive," said Riccabocca, shaking his head. "We came to England shortly after our marriage. Paulina was affected by the climate. She spoke not a word of English, and indeed not even French as might have been expected from her birth, for her father was poor, and thoroughly Italian. She refused all society. I went, it is true, somewhat into the London world--enough to induce me to shrink from the contrast that my second visit as a beggared refugee would have made to the reception I met with on my first--but I formed no intimate friendships. I recall no one whom she could have written to as intimate with me." "But," persisted Harley, "think again. Was there no lady well acquainted with Italian, and with whom, perhaps, for that very reason, your wife became familiar?" "Ah, it is true. There was one old lady of retired habits, but who had been much in Italy. Lady--Lady--I remember--Lady Jane Horton." "Horton--Lady Jane!" exclaimed Harley; "again! thrice in one day--is this wound never to scar over?" Then, noting Riccabocca's look of surprise, he said, "Excuse me, my friend; I listen to you with renewed interest. Lady Jane was a distant relation of my own; she judged me, perhaps harshly--and I have some painful associations with her name; but she was a woman of many virtues. Your wife knew her?" "Not, however, intimately--still, better than any one else in London. But Paulina would not have written to her; she knew that Lady Jane had died shortly after her own departure from England. I myself was summoned back to Italy on pressing business; she was too unwell to journey with me as rapidly as I was obliged to travel; indeed, illness detained her several weeks in England. In this interval she might have made acquaintances. Ah, now I see; I guess. You say the name began with B. Paulina, in my absence, engaged a companion; it was at my suggestion--a Mrs. Bertram. This lady accompanied her abroad. Paulina became excessively attached to her, she knew Italian so well. Mrs. Bertram left her on the road, and returned to England, for some private affairs of her own. I forget why or wherefore; if, indeed, I ever asked or learned. Paulina missed her sadly, often talked of her, wondered why she never heard from her. No doubt it was to this Mrs. Bertram that she wrote!" "And you don't know the lady's friends or address?" "No." "Nor who recommended her to your wife?" "No." "Probably Lady Jane Horton?" "It may be so. Very likely." "I will follow up this track, slight as it is." "But if Mrs. Bertram received the communication, how comes it that it never reached--O, fool that I am, how should it! I, who guarded so carefully my incognito!" "True. This your wife could not foresee; she would naturally imagine that your residence in England would be easily discovered. But many years must have passed since your wife lost sight of this Mrs. Bertram, if their acquaintance was made so soon after your marriage; and now it is a long time to retrace--long before even your Violante was born." "Alas! yes. I lost two fair sons in the interval. Violante was born to me as the child of sorrow." "And to make sorrow lovely! how beautiful she is!" The father smiled proudly. "Where, in the loftiest house of Europe, find a husband worthy of such a prize?" "You forget that I am still an exile--she still dowerless. You forget that I am pursued by Peschiera; that I would rather see her a beggar's wife--than--Pah, the very thought maddens me, it is so foul. _Corpo di Bacco!_ I have been glad to find her a husband already." "Already! Then that young man spoke truly?" "What young man?" "Randal Leslie. How! You know him?" Here a brief explanation followed. Harley heard with attentive ear, and marked vexation, the particulars of Riccabocca's connection and implied engagement with Leslie. "There is something very suspicious to me in all this," said he. "Why should this young man have so sounded me as to Violante's chance of losing fortune if she married an Englishman?" "Did he? O, pooh! excuse him. It was but his natural wish to seem ignorant of all about me. He did not know enough of my intimacy with you to betray my secret." "But he knew enough of it--must have known enough to have made it right that he should tell you I was in England. He does not seem to have done so." "No--_that_ is strange; yet scarcely strange--for, when we last met, his head was full of other things--love and marriage. _Basta!_ youth will be youth." "He has no youth left in him!" exclaimed Harley, passionately. "I doubt if he ever had any. He is one of those men who come into the world with the pulse of a centenarian. You and I never shall be as old--as he was in long-clothes. Ah, you may laugh; but I am never wrong in my instincts. I disliked him at the first--his eye, his smile, his voice, his very footstep. It is madness in you to countenance such a marriage; it may destroy all chance of your restoration." "Better that than infringe my word once passed." "No, no," exclaimed Harley; "your word is not passed--it shall not be passed. Nay, never look so piteously at me. At all events, pause till we know more of this young man. If he be worthy of her without a dower, why, then, let him lose you your heritage. I should have no more to say." "But why lose me my heritage?" "Do you think the Austrian government would suffer your estates to pass to this English jackanapes, a clerk in a public office? O, sage in theory, why are you such a simpleton in action?" Nothing moved by this taunt, Riccabocca rubbed his hands, and then stretched them comfortably over the fire. "My friend," said he, "the heritage would pass to my son--a dowry only goes to the daughter." "But you have no son." "Hush! I am going to have one; my Jemima informed me of it yesterday morning; and it was upon that information that I resolved to speak to Leslie. Am I a simpleton now?" "Going to have a son," repeated Harley, looking very bewildered; "how do you know it is to be a son?" "Physiologists are agreed," said the sage positively, "that where the husband is much older than the wife, and there has been a long interval without children before she condescends to increase the population of the world--she (that is, it is at least as nine to four)--she brings into the world a male. I consider that point, therefore, as settled, according to the calculations of statistics and the researches of naturalists." Harley could not help laughing, though he was still angry and disturbed. "The same man as ever; always the fool of philosophy." "_Cospetto!_" said Riccabocca, "I am rather the philosopher of fools. And talking of that, shall I present you to my Jemima?" "Yes; but in turn I must present you to one who remembers with gratitude your kindness, and whom your philosophy, for a wonder, has not ruined. Some time or other you must explain that to me. Excuse me for a moment; I will go for him." "For him;--for whom? In my position I must be cautious; and--" "I will answer for his faith and discretion. Meanwhile, order dinner, and let me and my friend stay to share it." "Dinner? _Corpo di Bacco!_--not that Bacchus can help us here. What will Jemima say?" "Henpecked man, settle that with your connubial tyrant. But dinner it must be." I leave the reader to imagine the delight of Leonard at seeing once more Riccabocca unchanged, and Violante so improved; and the kind Jemima, too. And their wonder at him and his history, his books and his fame. He narrated his struggles and adventures with a simplicity that removed from a story so personal the character of egotism. But when he came to speak of Helen, he was brief and reserved. Violante would have questioned more closely; but, to Leonard's relief, Harley interposed. "You shall see her whom he speaks of, before long, and question her yourself." With these words, Harley turned the young man's narrative into new directions; and Leonard's words again flowed freely. Thus the evening passed away, happily to all save Riccabocca. But the thought of his dead wife rose ever and anon before him; and yet when it did, and became too painful, he crept nearer to Jemima, and looked in her simple face, and pressed her cordial hand. And yet the monster had implied to Harley that his comforter was a fool--so she was, to love so contemptible a slanderer of herself, and her sex. Violante was in a state of blissful excitement; she could not analyze her own joy. But her conversation was chiefly with Leonard; and the most silent of all was Harley. He sat listening to Leonard's warm, yet unpretending eloquence--that eloquence which flows so naturally from genius, when thoroughly at its ease, and not chilled back on itself by hard, unsympathizing hearers--listened, yet more charmed, to the sentiments less profound, yet no less earnest--sentiments so feminine, yet so noble, with which Violante's fresh virgin heart responded to the poet's kindling soul. Those sentiments of hers were so unlike all he heard in the common world--so akin to himself in his gone youth! Occasionally--at some high thought of her own, or some lofty line from Italian song, that she cited with lighted eyes and in melodious accents--occasionally he reared his knightly head, and his lips quivered, as if he had heard the sound of a trumpet. The inertness of long years was shaken. The Heroic, that lay deep beneath all the humors of his temperament, was reached, appealed to; and stirred within him, rousing up all the bright associations connected with it, and long dormant. When he rose to take leave, surprised at the lateness of the hour, Harley said, in a tone that bespoke the sincerity of the compliment, "I thank you for the happiest hours I have known for years." His eye dwelt on Violante as he spoke. But timidity returned to her with his words--at his look; and it was no longer the inspired muse, but the bashful girl that stood before him. "And when shall I see you again?" asked Riccabocca disconsolately, following his guest to the door. "When? Why, of course, to-morrow. Adieu! my friend. No wonder you have borne your exile so patiently,--with such a child!" He took Leonard's arm, and walked with him to the inn where he had left his horse. Leonard spoke of Violante with enthusiasm. Harley was silent. CHAPTER III. The next day a somewhat old-fashioned, but exceedingly patrician, equipage stopped at Riccabocca's garden-gate. Giacomo, who, from a bedroom window, had caught sight of it winding towards the house, was seized with undefinable terror when he beheld it pause before their walls and heard the shrill summons at the portal. He rushed into his master's presence, and implored him not to stir--not to allow any one to give ingress to the enemies the machine might disgorge. "I have heard," said he, "how a town in Italy--I think it was Bologna--was once taken and given to the sword, by incautiously admitting a wooden horse, full of the troops of Barbarossa, and all manner of bombs and Congreve rockets." "The story is differently told in Virgil," quoth Riccabocca, peeping out of the window. "Nevertheless, the machine looks very large and suspicious; unloose Pompey." "Father," said Violante, coloring, "it is your friend, Lord L'Estrange; I hear his voice." "Are you sure?" "Quite. How can I be mistaken?" "Go, then, Giacomo; but take Pompey with thee--and give the alarm if we are deceived." But Violante was right; and in a few moments Lord L'Estrange was seen walking up the garden, and giving the arm to two ladies. "Ah," said Riccabocca, composing his dressing-robe round him, "go, my child, and summon Jemima. Man to man; but, for Heaven's sake, woman to woman." Harley had brought his mother and Helen, in compliment to the ladies of his friend's household. The proud Countess knew that she was in the presence of Adversity, and her salute to Riccabocca was only less respectful than that with which she would have rendered homage to her sovereign. But Riccabocca, always gallant to the sex that he pretended to despise, was not to be outdone in ceremony; and the bow which replied to the curtsey would have edified the rising generation, and delighted such surviving relicts of the old Court breeding as may linger yet amidst the gloomy pomp of the Faubourg St. Germain. These dues paid to etiquette, the Countess briefly introduced Helen, as Miss Digby, and seated herself near the exile. In a few moments the two elder personages became quite at home with each other; and really, perhaps, Riccabocca had never, since we have known him, showed to such advantage as by the side of his polished, but somewhat formal visitor. Both had lived so little with our modern, ill-bred age! They took out their manners of a former race with a sort of pride in airing once more such fine lace and superb brocade. Riccabocca gave truce to the shrewd but homely wisdom of his proverbs--perhaps he remembered that Lord Chesterfield denounces proverbs as vulgar;--and gaunt though his figure, and far from elegant though his dressing-robe, there was that about him which spoke undeniably of the _grand seigneur_--of one to whom a Marquis de Dangeau would have offered a _fauteuil_ by the side of the Rohans and Montmorencies. Meanwhile, Helen and Harley seated themselves a little apart, and were both silent--the first from timidity; the second, from abstraction. At length the door opened, and Harley suddenly sprang to his feet--Violante and Jemima entered. Lady Lansmere's eyes first rested on the daughter, and she could scarcely refrain from an exclamation of admiring surprise; but then, when she caught sight of Mrs. Riccabocca's somewhat humble, yet not obsequious mien--looking a little shy, a little homely, yet still thoroughly a gentlewoman, (though of your plain rural kind of that genus)--she turned from the daughter, and with the _savoir vivre_ of the fine old school, paid her first respects to the wife; respects literally, for her manner implied respect,--but it was more kind, simple, and cordial than the respect she had shown to Riccabocca;--as the sage himself had said, here "it was Woman to Woman." And then she took Violante's hand in both hers, and gazed on her as if she could not resist the pleasure of contemplating so much beauty. "My son," she said softly, and with a half sigh--"my son in vain told me not to be surprised. This is the first time I have ever known reality exceed description!" Violante's blush here made her still more beautiful; and as the Countess returned to Riccabocca, she stole gently to Helen's side. "Miss Digby, my ward," said Harley pointedly, observing that his mother had neglected her duty of presenting Helen to the ladies. He then reseated himself, and conversed with Mrs. Riccabocca; but his bright quick eye glanced ever at the two girls. They were about the same age--and youth was all that, to the superficial eye, they seemed to have in common. A greater contrast could not well be conceived; and, what is strange, both gained by it. Violante's brilliant lovelieness seemed yet more dazzling, and Helen's fair gentle face yet more winning. Neither had mixed much with girls of her own age; each took to the other at first sight. Violante, as the less shy, began the conversation. "You are his ward--Lord L'Estrange's?" "Yes." "Perhaps you came with him from Italy?" "No, not exactly. But I have been in Italy for some years." "Ah! you regret--nay, I am foolish--you return to your native land. But the skies in Italy are so blue--here it seems as if nature wanted colors." "Lord L'Estrange says that you were very young when you left Italy; you remember it well. He, too, prefers Italy to England." "He! Impossible!" "Why impossible, fair skeptic?" cried Harley, interrupting himself in the midst of a speech to Jemima. Violante had not dreamed that she could be overheard--she was speaking low; but, though visibly embarrassed, she answered distinctly-- "Because in England there is the noblest career for noble minds." Harley was startled, and replied with a slight sigh, "At your age I should have said as you do. But this England of ours is so crowded with noble minds, that they only jostle each other, and the career is one cloud of dust." "So, I have read, seems a battle to the common soldier, but not to the chief." "You have read good descriptions of battles, I see." Mrs. Riccabocca, who thought this remark a taunt upon her daughter-in-law's studies, hastened to Violante's relief. "Her papa made her read the history of Italy, and I believe that is full of battles." _Harley._--"All history is, and all women are fond of war and of warriors. I wonder why." _Violante_, (turning to Helen, and in a very low voice, resolved that Harley should not hear this time.)--"We can guess why--can we not?" _Harley_, (hearing every word, as if it had been spoken in St. Paul's Whispering Gallery.)--"If you can guess, Helen, pray tell me." _Helen_, (shaking her pretty head, and answering with a livelier smile than usual.)--"But I am not fond of war and warriors." _Harley_ to Violante.--"Then I must appeal at once to you, self-convicted Bellona that you are. Is it from the cruelty natural to the female disposition?" _Violante_, (with a sweet musical laugh.)--"From two propensities still more natural to it." _Harley._--"You puzzle me: what can they be?" _Violante._--"Pity and admiration; we pity the weak, and admire the brave." Harley inclined his head, and was silent. Lady Lansmere had suspended her conversation with Riccabocca to listen to this dialogue. "Charming!" she cried. "You have explained what has often perplexed me. Ah, Harley, I am glad to see that your satire is foiled: you have no reply to that." "No; I willingly own myself defeated--too glad to claim the Signorina's pity, since my cavalry sword hangs on the wall, and I can have no longer a professional pretence to her admiration." He then rose, and glanced towards the window. "But I see a more formidable disputant for my conqueror to encounter is coming into the field--one whose profession it is to substitute some other romance for that of camp and siege." "Our friend Leonard," said Riccabocca, turning his eye also towards the widow. "True; as Quevedo says wittily, 'Ever since there has been so great a demand for type, there has been much less lead to spare for cannon-balls.'" Here Leonard entered. Harley had sent Lady Lansmere's footman to him with a note, that prepared him to meet Helen. As he came into the room, Harley took him by the hand, and led him to Lady Lansmere. "The friend of whom I spoke. Welcome him now for my sake, ever after for his own;" and then, scarcely allowing time for the Countess's elegant and gracious response, he drew Leonard towards Helen. "Children," said he, with a touching voice, that thrilled through the hearts of both, "go and seat yourselves yonder, and talk together of the past. Signorina, I invite you to renewed discussion upon the abstruse metaphysical subject you have started; let us see if we cannot find gentler sources for pity and admiration than war and warriors." He took Violante aside to the window. "You remember that Leonard, in telling you his history last night, spoke, you thought, rather too briefly of the little girl who had been his companion in the rudest time of his trials. When you would have questioned more, I interrupted you, and said, 'You should see her shortly, and question her yourself.' And now what think you of Helen Digby? Hush, speak low. But her ears are not so sharp as mine." _Violante_--"Ah! that is the fair creature whom Leonard called his child-angel? What a lovely innocent face!--the angel is there still." _Harley_, (pleased both at the praise and with her who gave it.)--"You think so, and you are right. Helen is not communicative. But fine natures are like fine poems--a glance at the first two lines suffices for a guess into the beauty that waits you, if you read on." Violante gazed on Leonard and Helen as they sat apart. Leonard was the speaker, Helen the listener; and though the former had, in his narrative the night before, been indeed brief as to the episode in his life connected with the orphan, enough had been said to interest Violante in the pathos of their former position towards each other, and in the happiness they must feel in their meeting again--separated for years on the wide sea of life, now both saved from the storm and shipwreck. The tears came into her eyes. "True," she said very softly, "there is more here to move pity and admiration than in"--She paused. _Harley._--"Complete the sentence. Are you ashamed to retract? Fie on your pride and obstinacy." _Violante._--"No; but even here there have been war and heroism--the war of genius with adversity, and heroism in the comforter who shared it and consoled. Ah! wherever pity and admiration are both felt, something nobler than mere sorrow must have gone before: the heroic must exist." "Helen does not know what the word heroic means," said Harley, rather sadly; "you must teach her." Is it possible, thought he as he spoke, that a Randal Leslie could have charmed this grand creature? No "Heroic" surely, in that sleek young placeman. "Your father," he said aloud, and fixing his eyes on her face, "sees much, he tells me, of a young man, about Leonard's age, as to date; but I never estimate the age of men by the parish register; and I should speak of that so-called young man as a contemporary of my great-grandfather; I mean Mr. Randal Leslie. Do you like him?" "Like him?" said Violante slowly, and as if sounding her own mind. "Like him--yes." "Why?" asked Harley, with dry and curt indignation. "His visits seem to please my dear father. Certainly, I like him." "Hum. He professes to like you, I suppose?" Violante laughed, unsuspiciously. She had half a mind to reply, "Is that so strange!" But her respect for Harley stopped her. The words would have seemed to her pert. "I am told he is clever," resumed Harley. "O, certainly." "And he is rather handsome. But I like Leonard's face better." "Better--that is not the word. Leonard's face is as that of one who has gazed so often upon heaven; and Mr. Leslie's--there is neither sunlight nor starlight reflected there." "My dear Violante!" exclaimed Harley, overjoyed; and he pressed her hand. The blood rushed over the girl's cheek and brow; her hand trembled in his. But Harley's familiar exclamation might have come from a father's lips. At this moment, Helen softly approached them, and looking timidly into her guardian's face, said, "Leonard's mother is with him: he asks me to call and see her. May I?" "May you! A pretty notion the Signorina must form of your enslaved state of pupilage, when she hears you ask that question. Of course you may." "Will you take me there?" Harley looked embarrassed. He thought of the widow's agitation at his name; of that desire to shun him, which Leonard had confessed, and of which he thought he divined the cause. And, so divining, he too shrank from such a meeting. "Another time, then," said he, after a pause. Helen looked disappointed, but said no more. Violante was surprised at this ungracious answer. She would have blamed it as unfeeling in another. But all that Harley did was right in her eyes. "Cannot I go with Miss Digby?" said she, "and my mother will go too. We both know Mrs. Fairfield. We shall be so pleased to see her again." "So be it," said Harley; "I will wait here with your father till you come back. Oh, as to my mother, she will excuse the--excuse Madame Riccabocca, and you too. See how charmed she is with _your_ father. I must stay to watch over the conjugal interests of _mine_." But Mrs. Riccabocca had too much good old country breeding to leave the Countess; and Harley was forced himself to appeal to Lady Lansmere. When he had explained the case in point, the Countess rose and said-- "But I will call myself, with Miss Digby." "No," said Harley, gravely, but in a whisper. "No--I would rather not. I will explain later." "Then," said the Countess aloud, after a glance of surprise at her son, "I must insist on your performing this visit, my dear Madam, and you, Signorina. In truth, I have something to say confidentially to--" "To me," interrupted Riccabocca. "Ah, Madame la Comtesse, you restore me to five-and-twenty. Go, quick--O jealous and injured wife; go, both of you, quick; and you, too, Harley." "Nay," said Lady Lansmere, in the same tone, "Harley must stay, for my design is not at present upon destroying your matrimonial happiness, whatever it may be later. It is a design so innocent that my son will be a partner in it." Here the Countess put her lips to Harley's ear, and whispered. He received her communication in attentive silence; but when she had done, pressed her hand, and bowed his head, as if an assent to a proposal. In a few minutes, the three ladies and Leonard were on their road to the neighboring cottage. Violante, with her usual delicate intuition, thought that Leonard and Helen must have much to say to each other; and ignorant, as Leonard himself was, of Helen's engagement to Harley, began already, in the romance natural to her age, to predict for them happy and united days in the future. So she took her step-mother's arm, and left Helen and Leonard to follow. "I wonder," she said, musingly, "how Miss Digby became Lord L'Estrange's ward, I hope she is not very rich, nor very high-born." "La, my love," said the good Jemima, "that is not like you; you are not envious of her, poor girl?" "Envious! Dear mamma, what a word! But don't you think Leonard and Miss Digby seem born for each other? And then the recollections of their childhood--the thoughts of childhood are so deep, and its memories so strangely soft!" The long lashes drooped over Violante's musing eyes as she spoke. "And therefore," she said after a pause "therefore I hoped that Miss Digby might not be very rich, nor very high-born." "I understand you now, Violante," exclaimed Jemima, her own early passion for match-making instantly returning to her; "for as Leonard, however clever and distinguished, is still the son of Mark Fairfield the carpenter, it would spoil all if Miss Digby was, as you say, rich and high-born. I agree with you--a very pretty match--a very pretty match, indeed. I wish dear Mrs. Dale were here now she is so clever in settling such matters." Meanwhile Leonard and Helen walked side by side a few paces in the rear. He had not offered her his arm. They had been silent hitherto since they left Riccabocca's house. Helen now spoke first. In similar cases it is generally the woman, be she ever so timid, who does speak first. And here Helen was the bolder: for Leonard did not disguise from himself the nature of his feelings, and Helen was engaged to another; and her pure heart was fortified by the trust reposed in it. "And have you ever heard more of the good Dr. Morgan, who had powders against sorrow, and who meant to be so kind to us--though," she added, coloring, "we did not think so then?" "He took my child-angel from me," said Leonard, with visible emotion; "and if she had not returned, where and what should I be now? But I have forgiven him. No, I have never met him since." "And that terrible Mr. Burley?" "Poor, poor Burley! He, too, is vanished out of my present life. I have made many inquiries after him; all I can hear is that he went abroad, supposed as a correspondent to some journal. I should like so much to see him again, now that perhaps I could help him as he helped me." "_Helped_ you--ah!" Leonard smiled with a beating heart, as he saw again the dear, prudent, warning look, and involuntarily drew closer to Helen. She seemed more restored to him and to her former self. "Helped me much by his instructions; more, perhaps, by his very faults. You cannot guess, Helen--I beg pardon, Miss Digby--but I forgot that we are no longer children: you cannot guess how much we men, and, more than all perhaps, we writers, whose task it is to unravel the web of human actions, owe even to our own past errors; and if we learn nothing by the errors of others, we should be dull indeed. We must know where the roads divide, and have marked where they lead to, before we can erect our sign-posts; and books are the sign-posts in human life." "Books!--And I have not yet read yours. And Lord L'Estrange tells me you are famous now. Yet you remember me still--the poor orphan child, whom you first saw weeping at her father's grave, and with whom you burdened your own young life, over-burdened already. No, still call me Helen--you must always be to me--a brother! Lord L'Estrange feels _that_; he said so to me when he told me that we were to meet again. He is so generous, so noble. Brother!" cried Helen, suddenly, and extending her hand, with a sweet but sublime look in her gentle face--"brother, we will never forfeit his esteem; we will both do our best to repay him? Will we not--say so?" Leonard felt overpowered by contending and unanalyzed emotions. Touched almost to tears by the affectionate address--thrilled by the hand that pressed his own--and yet with a vague fear, a consciousness that something more than the words themselves was implied--something that checked all hope. And this word "brother," once so precious and so dear, why did he shrink from it now?--why could he not too say the sweet word "sister?" "She is above me now and evermore," he thought, mournfully; and the tones of his voice, when he spoke again, were changed. The appeal to renewed intimacy but made him more distant; and to that appeal itself he made no direct answer; for Mrs. Riccabocca, now turning round, and pointing to the cottage which came in view, with its picturesque gable ends, cried out-- "But is that your house, Leonard? I never saw any thing so pretty." "You do not remember it then," said Leonard to Helen, in accents of melancholy reproach "there where I saw you last! I doubted whether to keep it exactly as it was, and I said, No! the association is not changed because we try to surround it with whatever beauty we can create: the dearer the association, the more the Beautiful becomes to it natural.' Perhaps you don't understand this--perhaps it is only we poor poets who do." "I understand it," said Helen, gently. She looked wistfully at the cottage. "So changed--I have so often pictured it to myself--never, never like this; yet I loved it, commonplace as it was to my recollection; and the garret, and the tree in the carpenter's yard." She did not give these thoughts utterance. And they now entered the garden. CHAPTER IV. Mrs. Fairfield was a proud woman when she received Mrs. Riccabocca and Violante in her grand house; for a grand house to her was that cottage to which her boy Lenny had brought her home. Proud, indeed, ever was Widow Fairfield; but she thought then in her secret heart, that if ever she could receive in the drawing-room of that grand house the great Mrs. Hazeldean, who had so lectured her for refusing to live any longer in the humble tenement rented of the Squire, the cup of human bliss would be filled, and she could contentedly die of the pride of it. She did not much notice Helen--her attention was too absorbed by the ladies who renewed their old acquaintance with her, and she carried them all over the house, yea, into the very kitchen; and so, somehow or other, there was a short time when Helen and Leonard found themselves alone. It was in the study. Helen had unconsciously seated herself in Leonard's own chair, and she was gazing with anxious and wistful interest, on the scattered papers, looking so disorderly (though, in truth, in that disorder there was method, but method only known to the owner), and at the venerable, well-worn books, in all languages, lying on the floor, on the chairs--any where. I must confess that Helen's first tidy woman-like idea was a great desire to arrange the latter. "Poor Leonard," she thought to herself--"the rest of the house so neat, but no one to take care of his own room and of him!" As if he divined her thought, Leonard smiled, and said, "It would be a cruel kindness to the spider, if the gentlest hand in the world tried to set its cobweb to rights." _Helen._--"You were not quite so bad in the old days." _Leonard._--"Yet even then, you were obliged to take care of the money. I have more books now, and more money. My present housekeeper lets me take care of the books, but she is less indulgent as to the money." _Helen_, (archly.)--"Are you as absent as ever?" _Leonard._--"Much more so, I fear. The habit is incorrigible, Miss Digby--" _Helen._--"Not Miss Digby--sister, if you like." _Leonard_, (evading the word that implied so forbidden an affinity.)--"Helen, will you grant me a favor? Your eyes and your smile say 'yes.' Will you lay aside, for one minute, your shawl and bonnet? What! can you be surprised that I ask it? Can you not understand that I wish for one minute to think you are at home again under this roof?" Helen cast down her eyes, and seemed troubled; then she raised them, with a soft angelic candor in their dovelike blue, and, as if in shelter from all thoughts of more warm affection, again murmured "_brother_," and did as he asked her. So there she sat, amongst the dull books, by his table, near the open window--her fair hair parted on her forehead--looking so good, so calm, so happy! Leonard wondered at his own self-command. His heart yearned to her with such inexpressible love--his lips so longed to murmur--"Ah, as now so could it be for ever! Is the home too mean?" But that word "brother" was as a talisman between her and him. Yet she looked so at home--perhaps so at home she felt!--more certainly than she had yet learned to do in that stiff stately house in which she was soon to have a daughter's rights. Was she suddenly made aware of this--that she so suddenly arose--and with a look of alarm and distress on her face-- "But--we are keeping Lady Lansmere too long," she said, falteringly. "We must go now," and she hastily took up her shawl and bonnet. Just then Mrs. Fairfield entered with the visitors, and began making excuses for inattention to Miss Digby, whose identity with Leonard's child-angel she had not yet learned. Helen received these apologies with her usual sweetness. "Nay," she said, "your son and I are such old friends, how could you stand on ceremony with me?" "Old friends!" Mrs. Fairfield stared amazed, and then surveyed the fair speaker more curiously than she had yet done. "Pretty, nice spoken thing," thought the widow; "as nice spoken as Miss Violante, and humbler-looking-like--though, as to dress, I never see any thing so elegant out of a picter." Helen now appropriated Mrs. Riccabocca's arm; and after a kind leave-taking with the widow, the ladies returned towards Riccabocca's house. Mrs. Fairfield, however, ran after them with Leonard's hat and gloves, which he had forgotten. "'Deed, boy," said she kindly, yet scoldingly, "but there'd be no more fine books, if the Lord had not fixed your head on your shoulders. You would not think it, marm," she added to Mrs. Riccabocca, "but sin' he has left you, he's not the 'cute lad he was; very helpless at times, marm!" Helen could not resist turning round, and looking at Leonard, with a sly smile. The widow saw the smile, and catching Leonard by the arm, whispered, "But, where before have you seen that pretty young lady? Old friends!" "Ah, mother," said Leonard, sadly, "it is a long tale; you have heard the beginning, who can guess the end?"--and he escaped. But Helen still leant on the arm of Mrs. Riccobocca, and, in the walk back, it seemed to Leonard as if the winter had resettled in the sky. Yet he was by the side of Violante, and she spoke to him with such praise of Helen! Alas! it is not always so sweet as folks say, to hear the praises of one we love. Sometimes those praises seem to ask ironically, "And what right hast thou to hope because thou lovest? _All_ love _her_." CHAPTER V. No sooner had Lady Lansmere found herself alone with Riccabocca and Harley than she laid her hand on the exile's arm, and, addressing him by a title she had not before given him, and from which he appeared to shrink nervously, said--"Harley, in bringing me to visit you, was forced to reveal to me your incognito, for I should have discovered it. You may not remember me, in spite of your gallantry. But I mixed more in the world than I do now, during your first visit to England, and once sat next to you at dinner at Carlton House. Nay, no compliments, but listen to me. Harley tells me you have cause for some alarm respecting the designs of an audacious and unprincipled--adventurer, I may call him; for adventurers are of all ranks. Suffer your daughter to come to me, on a visit, as long as you please. With me, at least, she will be safe; and if you, too, and the--" "Stop, my dear madam," interrupted Riccabocca, with great vivacity, "your kindness overpowers me. I thank you most gratefully for your invitation to my child; but--" "Nay," in his turn interrupted Harley, "no buts. I was not aware of my mother's intention when she entered this room. But since she whispered it to me, I have reflected on it, and am convinced that it is but a prudent precaution. Your retreat is known to Mr. Leslie--he is known to Peschiera. Grant that no indiscretion of Mr. Leslie's betray the secret; still I have reason to believe that the Count guesses Randal's acquaintance with you. Audley Egerton this morning told me he had gathered that, not from the young man himself, but from questions put to himself by Madame di Negra; and Peschiera might, and would, set spies, to track Leslie to every house that he visits--might and would, still more naturally, set spies to track myself. Were this man an Englishman, I should laugh at his machinations; but he is an Italian, and has been a conspirator. What he could do, I know not; but an assassin can penetrate into a camp, and a traitor can creep through closed walls to one's hearth. With my mother, Violante must be safe; that you cannot oppose. And why not come yourself?" Riccabocca had no reply to these arguments, so far as they affected Violante; indeed, they awakened the almost superstitious terror with which he regarded his enemy, and he consented at once that Violante should accept the invitation proffered. But he refused it for himself and Jemima. "To say truth," said he simply, "I made a secret vow, on re-entering England, that I would associate with none who knew the rank I had formerly held in my own land. I felt that all my philosophy was needed, to reconcile and habituate myself to my altered circumstances. In order to find in my present existence, however humble, those blessings which make all life noble--dignity and peace--it was necessary for poor, weak human nature, wholly to dismiss the past. It would unsettle me sadly, could I come to your house, renew a while, in your kindness and respect--nay, in the very atmosphere of your society--the sense of what I have been; and then (should the more than doubtful chance of recall from my exile fail me) to awake, and find myself for the rest of life--what I am. And though, were I alone, I might trust myself perhaps to the danger--yet my wife: she is happy and contented now; would she be so, if you had once spoiled her for the simple position of Dr. Riccabocca's wife? Should I not have to listen to regrets, and hopes, and fears that would prick sharp through my thin cloak of philosophy? Even as it is, since in a moment of weakness I confided my secret to her, I have had 'my rank' thrown at me--with a careless hand, it is true--but it hits hard, nevertheless. No stone hurts like one taken from the ruins of one's own home; and the grander the home, why, the heavier the stone! Protect, dear madam--protect my daughter, since her father doubts his own power to do so. But--ask no more." Riccabocca was immovable here. And the matter was settled as he decided, it being agreed that Violante should be still styled the daughter of Dr. Riccabocca. "And now, one word more," said Harley. "Do not confide to Mr. Leslie these arrangements; do not let him know where Violante is placed--at least, until I authorize such confidence in him. It is sufficient excuse, that it is no use to know unless he called to see her, and his movements, as I said before, may be watched. You can give the same reason to suspend his visits to yourself. Suffer me, meanwhile, to mature my judgment on this young man. In the mean while also, I think that I shall have means of ascertaining the real nature of Peschiera's schemes. His sister has sought to know me; I will give her the occasion. I have heard some things of her in my last residence abroad, which make me believe that she cannot be wholly the Count's tool in any schemes nakedly villanous; that she has some finer qualities in her than I once supposed; and that she can be won from his influence. It is a state of war; we will carry it into the enemy's camp. You will promise me, then, to refrain from all further confidence to Mr. Leslie." "For the present, yes," said Riccabocca, reluctantly. "Do not even say that you have seen me, unless he first tell you that I am in England, and wish to learn your residence. I will give him full occasion to do so. Pish! don't hesitate; you know your own proverb-- 'Boccha chiusa, ed occhio aperto Non fece mai nissun deserto.' 'The closed mouth and the open eye,' &c." "That's very true," said the Doctor, much struck. "Very true. '_In bocchac hiusa non c'entrano mosche_.' One can't swallow flies if one keeps one's mouth shut. _Corpo di Bacco!_ that's very true!" Harley took aside the Italian. "You see if our hope of discovering the lost packet, or if our belief in the nature of its contents, be too sanguine, still, in a few months it is possible that Peschiera can have no further designs on your daughter--possible that a son may be born to you, and Violante would cease to be in danger, because she would cease to be an heiress. Indeed, it may be well to let Peschiera know this chance; it would, at least, make him delay all his plans while we are tracking the document that may defeat them for ever." "No, no! for heaven's sake, no!" exclaimed Riccabocca, pale as ashes. "Not a word to him. I don't mean to impute to him crimes of which he may be innocent. But he meant to take my life when I escaped the pursuit of his hirelings in Italy. He did not hesitate, in his avarice, to denounce a kinsman; expose hundreds to the sword, if resisting--to the dungeon, if passive. Did he know that my wife might bear me a son, how can I tell that his designs might not change into others still darker, and more monstrous, than those he now openly parades, though, after all, not more infamous and vile? Would my wife's life be safe? Not more difficult to convey poison into my house, than to steal my child from my hearth. Don't despise me; but when I think of my wife, my daughter, and that man, my mind forsakes me: I am one fear." "Nay, this apprehension is too exaggerated. We do not live in the age of the Borgias. Could Peschiera resort to the risks of a murder, it is for yourself that you should fear." "For myself!--I! I!" cried the exile, raising his tall stature to its full height. "Is it not enough degradation to a man who has borne the name of such ancestors, to fear for those he loves! Fear for myself! Is it you who ask if I am a coward?" He recovered himself as he felt Harley's penitential and admiring grasp of the hand. "See," said he, turning to the Countess with a melancholy smile, "how even one hour of your society destroys the habits of years. Dr. Riccabocca is talking of his ancestors!" CHAPTER VI. Violante and Jemima were both greatly surprised, as the reader may suppose, when they heard, on their return, the arrangements already made for the former. The Countess insisted on taking her at once, and Riccabocca briefly said, "Certainly, the sooner the better." Violante was stunned and bewildered. Jemima hastened to make up a little bundle of things necessary, with many a woman's sigh that the poor wardrobe contained so few things befitting. But among the clothes she slipped a purse, containing the savings of months, perhaps of years, and with it a few affectionate lines, begging Violante to ask the Countess to buy her all that was proper for her father's child. There is always something hurried and uncomfortable in the abrupt and unexpected withdrawal of any member from a quiet household. The small party broke into still smaller knots. Violante hung on her father, and listened vaguely to his not very lucid explanations. The Countess approached Leonard, and according to the usual mode of persons of quality addressing young authors, complimented him highly on the books she had not read, but which her son assured her were so remarkable. She was a little anxious to know where Harley had met with Mr. Oran, whom he called his friend; but she was too high-bred to inquire, or to express any wonder that rank should be friends with genius. She took it for granted that they had formed their acquaintance abroad. Harley conversed with Helen. "You are not sorry that Violante is coming to us? She will be just such a companion for you as I could desire; of your own years too." _Helen_, (ingenuously.)--"It is hard to think I am not younger than she is." _Harley._--"Why, my dear Helen?" _Helen._--"She is so brilliant. She talks so beautifully. And I--" _Harley._--"And you want but the habit of talking, to do justice to your own beautiful thoughts." Helen looked at him gratefully, but shook her head. It was a common trick of hers, and always when she was praised. At last the preparations were made--the farewell was said. Violante was in the carriage by Lady Lansmere's side. Slowly moved on the stately equipage with its four horses and trim postillions, heraldic badges on their shoulders, in the style rarely seen in the neighborhood of the metropolis, and now fast vanishing even amidst distant counties. Riccabocca, Jemima, and Jackeymo continued to gaze after it from the gate. "She is gone," said Jackeymo, brushing his eyes with his coat-sleeve. "But it is a load off one's mind." "And another load on one's heart," murmured Riccabocca. "Don't cry, Jemima; it may be bad for you, and bad for _him_ that is to come. It is astonishing how the humors of the mother may affect the unborn. I should not like to have a son who has a more than usual propensity to tears." The poor philosopher tried to smile; but it was a bad attempt. He went slowly in and shut himself up with his books. But he could not read. His whole mind was unsettled. And though, like all parents, he had been anxious to rid himself of a beloved daughter for life, now that she was gone but for a while, a string seemed broken in the Music of Home. CHAPTER VII. The evening of the same day, as Egerton, who was to entertain a large party at dinner, was changing his dress, Harley walked into his room. Egerton dismissed his valet by a sign, and continued his toilet. "Excuse me, my dear Harley, I have only ten minutes to give you. I expect one of the royal dukes, and punctuality is the stern virtue of men of business, and the graceful courtesy of princes." Harley had usually a jest for his friend's aphorisms; but he had none now. He laid his hand kindly on Egerton's shoulder--"Before I speak of my business, tell me how you are--better?" "Better--nay, I am always well. Pooh! I may look a little tired--years of toil will tell on the countenance. But that matters little--the period of life has passed with me when one cares how one looks in the glass." As he spoke, Egerton completed his dress, and came to the hearth, standing there, erect and dignified as usual, still far handsomer than many a younger man, and with a form that seemed to have ample vigor to support for many a year the sad and glorious burden of power. "So now to your business, Harley." "In the first place, I want you to present me, at the first opportunity, to Madame di Negra. You say she wished to know me." "Are you serious?" "Yes." "Well, then, she receives this evening. I did not mean to go; but when my party breaks up"-- "You can call for me at 'The Travellers.' Do! "Next--you knew Lady Jane Horton better even than I did, at least in the last year of her life." Harley sighed, and Egerton turned and stirred the fire. "Pray, did you ever see at her house, or hear her speak of, a Mrs. Bertram?" "Of whom?" said Egerton, in a hollow voice, his face still turned towards the fire. "A Mrs. Bertram; but heavens! my dear fellow, what is the matter? Are you ill?" "A spasm at the heart--that is all--don't ring--I shall be better presently--go on talking. Mrs.---- why do you ask?" "Why! I have hardly time to explain; but I am, as I told you, resolved on righting my old Italian friend, if Heaven will help me, as it ever does help the just when they bestir themselves; and this Mrs. Bertram is mixed up in my friend's affairs." "His! How is that possible?" Harley rapidly and succinctly explained. Audley listened attentively, with his eyes fixed on the floor, and still seeming to labor under great difficulty of breathing. At last he answered, "I remember something of this Mrs.--Mrs.--Bertram. But your inquiries after her would be useless. I think I have heard that she is long since dead; nay, I am sure of it." "Dead!--that is most unfortunate. But do you know any of her relations or friends? Can you suggest any mode of tracing this packet if it came to her hands?" "No." "And Lady Jane had scarcely any friend that I remember, except my mother, and she knows nothing of this Mrs. Bertram. How unlucky! I think I shall advertise. Yet, no. I could only distinguish this Mrs. Bertram from any other of the same name, by stating with whom she had gone abroad, and that would catch the attention of Peschiera, and set him to counterwork us." "And what avails it?" said Egerton. "She whom you seek is no more--no more!" He paused, and went on rapidly--"The packet did not arrive in England till years after her death--was no doubt returned to the post-office--is destroyed long ago." Harley looked very much disappointed. Egerton went on in a sort of set mechanical voice, as if not thinking of what he said, but speaking from the dry practical mode of reasoning which was habitual to him, and by which the man of the world destroys the hopes of an enthusiast. Then starting up at the sound of the first thundering knock at the street door, he said, "Hark! you must excuse me." "I leave you, my dear Audley. Are you better now?" "Much, much--quite well. I will call for you, probably between eleven and twelve." CHAPTER VIII. If any one could be more surprised at seeing Lord L'Estrange at the house of Madame di Negra that evening than the fair hostess herself, it was Randal Leslie. Something instinctively told him that this visit threatened interference with whatever might be his ultimate projects in regard to Riccabocca and Violante. But Randal Leslie was not one of those who shrink from an intellectual combat. On the contrary, he was too confident of his powers of intrigue, not to take a delight in their exercise. He could not conceive that the indolent Harley could be a match for his own restless activity and dogged perseverance. But in a very few moments fear crept on him. No man of his day could produce a more brilliant effect than Lord L'Estrange, when he deigned to desire it. Without much pretence to that personal beauty which strikes at first sight, he still retained all the charm of countenance, and all the grace of manner which had made him in boyhood the spoiled darling of society. Madame di Negra had collected but a small circle round her, still it was of the _élite_ of the great world; not, indeed, those more precise and reserved _dames du chateau_, whom the lighter and easier of the fair dispensers of fashion ridicule as prudes; but, nevertheless, ladies were there, as unblemished in reputation as high in rank; flirts and coquettes, perhaps--nothing more; in short, "charming women"--the gay butterflies that hover over the stiff parterre. And there were ambassadors and ministers, and wits and brilliant debaters, and first-rate dandies (dandies, when first-rate, are generally very agreeable men). Amongst all these various persons, Harley, so long a stranger to the London world, seemed to make himself at home with the ease of an Alcibiades. Many of the less juvenile ladies remembered him, and rushed to claim his acquaintance, with nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles. He had ready compliments for each. And few indeed were there, men or women, for whom Harley L'Estrange had not appropriate attraction. Distinguished reputation as a soldier and scholar, for the grave; whim and pleasantry for the gay; novelty for the sated; and for the more vulgar natures, was he not Lord L'Estrange, unmarried, heir to an ancient earldom, and some fifty thousand a-year? Not till he had succeeded in the general effect--which, it must be owned, he did his best to create--did Harley seriously and especially devote himself to his hostess. And then he seated himself by her side; and as if in compliment to both, less pressing admirers insensibly slipped away and edged off. Frank Hazeldean was the last to quit his ground behind Madame di Negra's chair; but when he found that the two began to talk in Italian, and he could not understand a word they said, he too--fancying, poor fellow, that he looked foolish, and cursing his Eaton education that had neglected, for languages spoken by the dead, of which he had learned little, those still in use among the living, of which he had learned naught--retreated towards Randal, and asked wistfully, "Pray, what age should you say L'Estrange was? He must be devilish old, in spite of his looks. Why, he was at Waterloo!" "He is young enough to be a terrible rival," answered Randal, with artful truth. Frank turned pale, and began to meditate dreadful bloodthirsty thoughts, of which hair-triggers and Lord's Cricket-ground formed the staple. Certainly there was apparent ground for a lover's jealousy. For Harley and Beatrice now conversed in a low tone, and Beatrice seemed agitated, and Harley earnest. Randal himself grew more and more perplexed. Was Lord L'Estrange really enamored of the Marchesa? If so, farewell to all hopes of Frank's marriage with her! Or was he merely playing a part in Riccabocca's interest; pretending to be the lover, in order to obtain an influence over her mind, rule her through her ambition, and secure an ally against her brother? Was this _finesse_ compatible with Randal's notions of Harley's character? Was it consistent with that chivalric and soldierly spirit of honor which the frank nobleman affected, to make love to a woman in a mere _ruse de guerre_? Could mere friendship for Riccabocca be a sufficient inducement to a man, who, whatever his weaknesses or his errors, seemed to wear on his very forehead a soul above deceit, to stoop to paltry means, even for a worthy end? At this question, a new thought flashed upon Randal--might not Lord L'Estrange have speculated himself upon winning Violante?--would not that account for all the exertions he had made on behalf of her inheritance at the court of Vienna--exertions of which Peschiera and Beatrice had both complained? Those objections which the Austrian government might take to Violante's marriage with some obscure Englishman would probably not exist against a man like Harley L'Estrange, whose family not only belonged to the highest aristocracy of England, but had always supported opinions in vogue amongst the leading governments of Europe. Harley himself, it is true, had never taken part in politics, but his notions were, no doubt, those of a high-born soldier, who had fought, in alliance with Austria, for the restoration of the Bourbons. And this immense wealth--which Violante might lose if she married one like Randal himself--her marriage with the heir of the Lansmeres might actually tend only to secure. Could Harley, with all his own expectations, be indifferent to such a prize?--and no doubt he had learned Violante's rare beauty in his correspondence with Riccabocca. Thus considered, it seemed natural to Randal's estimate of human nature, that Harley's more prudish scruples of honor, as regards what is due to women, could not resist a temptation so strong. Mere friendship was not a motive powerful enough to shake them, but ambition was. While Randal was thus cogitating, Frank thus suffering, and many a whisper, in comment on the evident flirtation between the beautiful hostess and the accomplished guest, reached the ears both of the brooding schemer and the jealous lover, the conversation between the two objects of remark and gossip had taken a new turn. Indeed, Beatrice had made an effort to change it. "It is long, my lord," said she, still speaking Italian, "since I have heard sentiments like those you address to me; and if I do not feel myself wholly unworthy of them, it is from the pleasure I have felt in reading sentiments equally foreign to the language of the world in which I live." She took a book from the table as she spoke: "Have you seen this work?" Harley glanced at the title-page. "To be sure I have, and I know the author." "I envy you that honor. I should so like also to know one who has discovered to me deeps in my own heart which I had never explored." "Charming Marchesa, if the book has done this, believe me that I have paid you no false compliment--formed no overflattering estimate of your nature; for the charm of the work is but in its simple appeal to good and generous emotions, and it can charm none in whom those emotions exist not!" "Nay, that cannot be true, or why is it so popular?" "Because good and generous emotions are more common to the human heart than we are aware of till the appeal comes." "Don't ask me to think that! I have found the world so base." "Pardon me a rude question; but what do you know of the world?" Beatrice looked first in surprise at Harley, then glanced round the room with significant irony. "As I thought; you call this little room 'the world.' Be it so. I will venture to say, that if the people in this room were suddenly converted into an audience before a stage, and you were as consummate in the actor's art as you are in all others that please and command--" "Well?" "And were to deliver a speech full of sordid and base sentiments, you would be hissed. But let any other woman, with half your powers, arise and utter sentiments sweet and womanly, or honest and lofty--and applause would flow from every lip, and tears rush to many a worldly eye. The true proof of the inherent nobleness of our common nature is in the sympathy it betrays with what is noble wherever crowds are collected. Never believe the world is base;--if it were so, no society could hold together for a day. But you would know the author of this book? I will bring him to you." "Do." "And now," said Harley rising, and with his candid winning smile, "do you think we shall ever be friends?" "You have startled me so, that I can scarcely answer. But why would you be friends with me?" "Because you need a friend. You have none?" "Strange flatterer!" said Beatrice, smiling, though very sadly; and looking up, her eye caught Randal's. "Pooh!" said Harley, "you are too penetrating to believe that you inspire friendship _there_. Ah, do you suppose that, all the while I have been conversing with you, I have not noticed the watchful gaze of Mr. Randal Leslie? What tie can possibly connect you together I know not yet; but I soon shall." "Indeed! you talk like one of the old Council of Venice. You try hard to make me fear you," said Beatrice, seeking to escape from the graver kind of impression Harley had made on her, by the affectation, partly of coquetry, partly of levity. "And I," said L'Estrange, calmly, "tell you already, that I fear you no more." He bowed, and passed through the crowd to rejoin Audley, who was seated in a corner, whispering with some of his political colleagues. Before Harley reached the minister, he found himself close to Randal and young Hazeldean. He bowed to the first, and extended his hand to the last. Randal felt the distinction, and his sullen, bitter pride was deeply galled--a feeling of hate towards Harley passed into his mind. He was pleased to see the cold hesitation with which Frank just touched the hand offered to him. But Randal had not been the only person whose watch upon Beatrice the keen-eyed Harley had noticed. Harley had seen the angry looks of Frank Hazeldean, and divined the cause. So he smiled forgivingly at the slight he had received. "You are like me, Mr. Hazeldean," said he. "You think something of the heart should go with all courtesy that bespeaks friendship-- "The hand of Douglas is his own." Here Harley drew aside Randal. "Mr. Leslie, a word with you. If I wished to know the retreat of Dr. Riccabocca, in order to render him a great service, would you confide to me that secret?" "That woman has let out her suspicions that I know the exile's retreat," thought Randal; and with rare presence of mind, he replied at once-- "My Lord, yonder stands a connection of Dr. Riccabocca's. Mr. Hazeldean is surely the person to whom you should address this inquiry." "Not so, Mr. Leslie; for I suspect that he cannot answer it, and that you can. Well, I will ask something that it seems to me you may grant without hesitation. Should you see Dr. Riccabocca, tell him that I am in England, and so leave it to him to communicate with me or not; but perhaps you have already done so?" "Lord L'Estrange," said Randal, bowing low, with pointed formality, "excuse me if I decline either to disclaim or acquiesce in the knowledge you impute to me. If I am acquainted with any secret intrusted to me by Dr. Riccabocca, it is for me to use my own discretion how best to guard it. And for the rest, after the Scotch earl, whose words your lordship has quoted, refused to touch the hand of Marmion, Douglas could scarcely have called him back in order to give him--a message!" Harley was not prepared for this tone in Mr. Egerton's _protégé_, and his own gallant nature was rather pleased than irritated by a haughtiness that at least seemed to bespeak independence of spirit. Nevertheless, L'Estrange's suspicions of Randal were too strong to be easily set aside, and therefore he replied, civilly, but with covert taunt-- "I submit to your rebuke, Mr. Leslie, though I meant not the offence you would ascribe to me. I regret my unlucky quotation yet the more, since the wit of your retort has obliged you to identify yourself with Marmion, who, though a clever and brave fellow, was an uncommonly--tricky one." And so Harley, certainly having the best of it, moved on, and joining Egerton, in a few minutes more both left the room. "What was L'Estrange saying to you?" asked Frank. "Something about Beatrice, I am sure." "No; only quoting poetry." "Then, what made you look so angry, my dear fellow? I know it was your kind feeling for me. As you say, he is a formidable rival. But that can't be his own hair. Do you think he wears a _toupet_? I am sure he was praising Beatrice. He is evidently very much smitten with her. But I don't think she is a woman to be caught by _mere_ rank and fortune! Do you? Why can't you speak?" "If you do not get her consent soon, I think she is lost to you," said Randal slowly; and, before Frank could recover his dismay, glided from the house. CHAPTER IX. Violante's first evening at the Lansmeres, had seemed happier to her than the first evening, under the same roof, had done to Helen. True that she missed her father much--Jemima somewhat; but she so identified her father's cause with Harley, that she had a sort of vague feeling that it was to promote that cause that she was on this visit to Harley's parents. And the Countess, it must be owned, was more emphatically cordial to her than she had ever yet been to Captain Digby's orphan. But perhaps the real difference in the heart of either girl was this, that Helen felt awe of Lady Lansmere, and Violante felt only love for Lord L'Estrange's mother. Violante, too, was one of those persons whom a reserved and formal person, like the Countess, "can get on with," as the phrase goes. Not so poor little Helen--so shy herself, and so hard to coax into more than gentle monosyllables. And Lady Lansmere's favorite talk was always of Harley. Helen had listened to such talk with respect and interest. Violante listened to it with inquisitive eagerness--with blushing delight. The mother's heart noticed the distinction between the two, and no wonder that the heart moved more to Violante than to Helen. Lord Lansmere, too, like most gentlemen of his age, clumped all young ladies together, as a harmless, amiable, but singularly stupid class of the genus-Petticoat, meant to look pretty, play the piano, and talk to each other about frocks and sweethearts. Therefore this animated, dazzling creature, with her infinite variety of look and play of mind, took him by surprise, charmed him into attention, and warmed him into gallantry. Helen sat in her quiet corner, at her work, sometimes listening with mournful, though certainly unenvious, admiration at Violante's vivid, yet ever unconscious, eloquence of word and thought--sometimes plunged deep into her own secret meditations. And all the while the work went on the same, under the small noiseless fingers. This was one of Helen's habits that irritated the nerves of Lady Lansmere. She despised young ladies who were fond of work. She did not comprehend how often it is the resource of the sweet womanly mind, not from want of thought, but from the silence and the depth of it. Violante was surprised, and perhaps disappointed, that Harley had left the house before dinner, and did not return all the evening. But Lady Lansmere, in making excuse for his absence, on the plea of engagements, found so good an opportunity to talk of his ways in general--of his rare promise in boyhood--of her regret at the inaction of his maturity--of her hope to see him yet do justice to his natural powers, that Violante almost ceased to miss him. And when Lady Lansmere conducted her to her room, and kissing her cheek tenderly, said, "But you are just the person Harley admires--just the person to rouse him from melancholy dreams, of which his wild humors are now but the vain disguise"--Violante crossed her arms on her bosom, and her bright eyes, deepened into tenderness, seemed to ask, "He melancholy--and why?" On leaving Violante's room, Lady Lansmere paused before the door of Helen's; and, after musing a little while, entered softly. Helen had dismissed her maid; and, at the moment Lady Lansmere entered, she was kneeling at the foot of the bed, her hands clasped before her face. Her form, thus seen, looked so youthful and childlike--the attitude itself was so holy and so touching, that the proud and cold expression on Lady Lansmere's face changed. She shaded the light involuntarily, and seated herself in silence, that she might not disturb the act of prayer. When Helen rose, she was startled to see the Countess seated by the fire; and hastily drew her hand across her eyes. She had been weeping. Lady Lansmere did not, however, turn to observe those traces of tears, which Helen feared were too visible. The Countess was too absorbed in her own thoughts; and as Helen timidly approached, she said--still with her eyes on the clear low fire--"I beg your pardon, Miss Digby, for my intrusion; but my son has left it to me to prepare Lord Lansmere to learn the offer you have done Harley the honor to accept. I have not yet spoken to my lord; it may be days before I find a fitting occasion to do so; meanwhile, I feel assured that your sense of propriety will make you agree with me, that it is due to Lord L'Estrange's father, that strangers should not learn arrangements of such moment in his family, before his own consent be obtained." Here the Countess came to a full pause; and poor Helen, finding herself called upon for some reply to this chilling speech, stammered out, scarce audibly-- "Certainly, madam, I never dreamed of--" "That is right, my dear," interrupted Lady Lansmere, rising suddenly, and as if greatly relieved. "I could not doubt your superiority to ordinary girls of your age, with whom these matters are never secret for a moment. Therefore, of course, you will not mention, at present, what has passed between you and Harley, to any of the friends with whom you may correspond." "I have no correspondents--no friends, Lady Lansmere," said Helen, deprecatingly, and trying hard not to cry. "I am very glad to hear it, my dear; young ladies never should have. Friends, especially friends who correspond, are the worst enemies they can have. Good night, Miss Digby. I need not add, by the way, that, though we are bound to show all kindness to this young Italian lady, still she is wholly unconnected with our family; and you will be as prudent with her as you would have been with your correspondents--had you had the misfortune to have any." Lady Lansmere said the last words with a smile, and pressed a reluctant kiss (the step-mother's kiss) on Helen's bended brow. She then left the room, and Helen sat on the seat vacated by the stately unloving form, and again covered her face with her hands, and again wept. But when she rose at last, and the light fell upon her face, that soft face was sad indeed, but serene--serene, as if with some inward sense of duty--sad, as with the resignation which accepts patience instead of hope. FOOTNOTES: [21] Continued from page 411. [22] Translation of _Charron on Wisdom_. By G. Stanhope, D.D., late Dean of Canterbury (1729). A translation remarkable for ease, vigor, and (despite that contempt for the strict rules of grammar, which was common enough amongst writers at the commencement of the last century) for the idiomatic raciness of its English. From Household Words. CHOICE SECRETS. "Light a room with spermaceti, anoint your face with the same substance, and you will seem to all beholders to have the head of a sperm whale upon your shoulders." "When you would have men in the house seem to be without heads: take yellow brimstone with oil, and put it in a lamp and light it, and set it in the midst amongst men, and you shall see a wonder." These are two out of a large mass of facts which form a compact body of ancestral wisdom. They lie before us in a venerable volume, whose grave frontispiece is adorned with the portraitures of Alexis, Albertus Magnus, Dr. Reade, Raymond Lully, Dr. Harvey, Lord Bacon, and Dr. John Wecker. John Wecker, Doctor in Physic, first compiled the book, and Dr. R. Read augmented and enlarged it. "A like work never before was in the English tongue." It was printed in the year 1661, for Simon Miller, at the Starre in St. Paul's Church Yard, and it is entitled, "Eighteen Books of the Secrets of Art and Nature, being the Summe and Substance of Naturall Philosophy, Methodically Digested." The book is one of considerable size and pretension, written by wise doctors in the good old time, two hundred years ago. Let us not be conceited and harp only on the strings provided to our fingers in the nineteenth century. For a few minutes, at least, it will not do us harm to get a little scientific information from our ancestors. We shall glean, therefore, some random facts out of the harvest-field of Doctors Mead and Wecker, selecting, of course, most characteristic, those which our forefathers may call exclusively their own. The volume opens with scientific information on the subject of Angels and Devils, including, of course, the fact that "Witches kill children, and divers cattle, which we find by various experience, and by relation of others that are worthy to be believed. But if you will say they are mere delusions of the Devil, whereby he makes foolish women mad that are entangled by him, that they believe they do those things which neither they nor the devil can do; if we can so avoid it, we may as well deny any thing else, be it never so evident. "--If you deny that, you may deny any thing--is a phrase not yet dead. Applied two hundred years ago to the experience concerning witches, it has been industriously employed to the present day, and is employed still on behalf of a great many fresh delusions. As for the gentleman, whom truth is said to shame, he claimed his distinct chapter in the minds of old physicians, because, as the book before us has it, he "can cause many diseases, of the reasons whereof we are ignorant. Also he can do this, or that; being subtile, he can easily pass through all parts of the body, which he can bind, pull back, or torment otherwise." Passing on now, as we follow the march of high philosophy, to secrets of the sun and moon; it may be worth while to understand, as our forefathers taught, that "it is easie to guess at the fortune of every year by the stars, if a man consider twelve, nineteen, eight, four, and thirty." Somebody wants to know what luck he will have in 1853. Let him consider 1841 (twelve years back), let him consider 1834 (nineteen years back), and, for the eight, four, thirty, let him look back to the years 1845, 1849, and 1823. Let him reflect on the nature of his fortune in each of those years, look up his old diaries, combine their results, and that will give him the character of his fate in 1853. Jupiter is somehow at the bottom of this, but we are too modern and ignorant to understand the author's explanation. Among secrets concerning fire, are those two facts connected with spermaceti and brimstone already stated. Any one living in the country, whom the croaking of the frogs may trouble of a night, will doubtless be glad to hear of a remedy: "Take the fat of a crocodile, and make it up with wax while in the sun, and make a candle of it, and light it in the place where frogs are, and when they see that they will presently cease crying." Where crocodile's fat cannot be had, "the fat of a dolphin" will do. Prescriptions abound, by the use of which men may appear to wear the heads of asses, horses, dogs, or to resemble elephants. There is a receipt also for making "a faire light, that the house may seem all full of serpents so long as the wick doth burn." But we pass over these pleasant methods of illumination, simply remarking, that if our wise ancestors were right, the volume now before us would procure a sudden fortune to the lessees of Vauxhall. By the use of some dozen kinds of cunningly prepared lamps, the Royal Gardens might in good faith be chronicled in its bills as a "scene of enchantment." At one turn of a walk, all visitors would show their heads, and at another, none; in another grove they would be elephants, and in another they would look like angels. The Rotunda might be lighted for a diabolical effect, and the Dark Walk illuminated brilliantly with dolphin's fat, funeral cloth and Azemat, whose light makes every body invisible. This, again, is no bad hint for a country tallow-chandler, who supplies light to the ladies of a solemn village, where he is annoyed by the neglect of any gayeties that would create large orders for composite or sperm: "_To make women rejoice mightily._ Make candles of the fat of hares, and light them, and let them stand awhile in the middle where women are: they will not be so merry as to dance; yet sometimes that falls out also." "It is a wonder that some report how that the tooth of a badger, or his left foot bound to a man's right arm will strengthen the memory." Boys, who have lessons to learn, may like to know that fact; and teachers, who have idle pupils, must not flog, but feed them upon cresses. "Cresses eaten make a man industrious." Young ladies, who believe in their ancestors, will thank us for repeating their opinion that the use of a ring, which was lain for a certain time in a sparrow's nest, will procure love. Nor need any dread the penalties of matrimony, since the man who carries with him a hartshorn "shall alwaies have peace with his wife:" and also, "the heart of a male quail, carried by the man, and the heart of a female quail, by the woman, will cause that no quarrels can ever arise between them." The man who carries a quail's heart in his pocket may face his wife, and never have to feel his own heart quailing underneath his ribs. Old Parr dined probably upon serpents, not, as is commonly reported, upon pills. "It is known that stags renew their age by eating serpents; so the phoenix is restored by the nest of spices shee makes to burn in. The pelican hath the same virtue, whose right foot, if it be put under hot dung, after three months a pelican will be bred from it. Wherefore some physicians, with some confections, made of a viper and hellebore, and of some of the flesh of these creatures, do promise to restore youth, and sometimes they do it." If the Zoological Society has proper respect for our ancestors, they will not delay to sow a hot-bed with pelicans' feet. Young shoots of pelican would be much more appropriate beside the gravel-walks than your mere vegetable pelargonium. In the way of practice of medicine, we moderns say that any thing like scientific principles, on which one can depend, have only been attained in our own lifetime. "Doctors differed," and bumped against each other, only because all alike were feeling through the dark. In our own day there is light enough to keep doctors from differing very grossly,--gross difference springing generally more from the want of knowledge in an individual, than in the profession generally. Although there is yet a vast deal to be learned. In the first century, Asclepiades dubbed the medical system of Hippocrates, "a cold meditation of death." Under Nero there arose a Dr. Thessalus, who taught that Nature was the guide to follow and obey in all diseases; and, therefore, under his system patients were simply to be liberally and rapidly supplied with every thing they fancied. Paracelsus, in the sixteenth century, looked for a patient's symptoms in the stars; so we must not be surprised if the "Secrets in Physic and Surgery," published among the other secrets in this volume now before us, contain odd information. Here is a nice cure for a quartan ague, which might tickle a patient's stomach sooner than his fancy: "Seven wig-lice of the bed, wrapped in a great grape husk, and swallowed down alive before the fit." Another cure is effected when the patient eats the parings of his nails and toes, mingled with wax. There are many remedies against the Plague; but that one which is recommended as "_The Best Thing against the Plague_," is for a man to wash his mouth with vinegar and water before he goes out, drinking also a spoonful of the liquor; then to press his nose and stop his breath, so that "by the vapor and steam held in your mouth, the brain be moistened." In the following prescription we believe entirely: "_For Melancholy._ It is no small remedy to cure melancholy, to rub your body all over with nettles." Book Five contains secrets for beautifying the human body. The following receipt, which comes first, for giving people a substantial look, seems to be somewhat too efficacious to be often tried: "_To make men fat._ If you mingle with the fat of a lizard, salt-petre and cummin and wheat-meal, hens fatted with this meat will be so fat, that men that eat of them, will eat until they burst." A degree of fatness in hens equal to this will never be communicated by our degenerate modern agriculturists. For the hair-dyes, favored by our forefathers, we cannot, however, say much, for we must differ in taste very decidedly. Recipes are given for obtaining, not only black, but white hair, yellow hair, red hair, and "To make your hair seem GREEN." Nobody in these days will use a course of the distilled water of capers to make his hair look like a meadow; and even, if any body among us, too fastidious as we now are, wanted yellow hair, we do _not_ think that he would consent to rub into his head for that purpose honey and the yolk of eggs. There are also in this part of the work some ungallant recommendations of substances, which a man may chew in order that, presently breathing near a lady's cheek, he may discolor it, and so detect her artifice, if she should happen to be painted. Among "secrets for beautifying the body," we cannot but think this also indicative of an odd taste; "If you would change the color of children's eyes, you shall do it thus; with the ashes of the small nut-shells, with oil you must anoint the forepart of their head; _it will make the whites of children's eyes black_; DO IT OFTEN!" Concerning wine, it is worth knowing, that to cure a man of drunkenness, you should put eels into his wine. Delightful dreams will visit the couch of him who has eaten moderately, for supper, of a horse's tongue, and taken balm for salad. This is "A means to make a man sleep sweetly," which we recommend to the attention of all restless people, who have proper faith in their forefathers. As we have passed over a good many pages, and come to the "secrets of asses," we may put down, _à propos_ to nothing, that "If an ass have a stone bound to his tail he cannot bray." The following may be tried in a few months by ladies in the country, who rise early on a fine spring morning; they may thus earn the delight of exhibiting to their friends one of the prettiest balloon ascents that any body can conceive: "In May, fill an egg-shell with May-dew, and set it in the hot sun at noon-day, and the sun will draw it up." The secrets of gardening, known to our forefathers, annihilate all claim in Sir Joseph Paxton to the commonest consideration. They taught how to get the blue roses by manuring with indigo, or green roses by digging verdigris about the roots. They taught the whole art of perfuming fruit, by steeping the seeds of the future tree in oil of spike, or rose-water and musk. If, say our ancestors, you would have peaches, plums, or cherries without any stone, you have only, when the tree is a twig, to pick out all the pith before you set it. To get your filbert-trees to bear you fruit all kernel, you have only to crack a nut, and sow the kernel only, covered with a little wool. And very much more marvellous, in the annals of gardening, is the receipt for getting peach-trees that bear fruit covered with inscriptions: "When you have eaten the peach, steep the stone two or three days in water, and open it gently, and _take the kernal out of it(!)_ and write something within the shell with an iron graver, what you please, yet not too deep, then wrap it in paper and set it; whatever you write in the shell you shall find written in the fruit." Such shrewd things mingled with the more ordinary knowledge of our ancestors upon affairs of gardening. It will be seen that for many of these "facts" there was a "reason" close at hand. Our forefathers were wise enough to know that every thing required properly accounting for. Thus, for example, in "the secrets of metals:" "Some report that a candle lighted of man's fat, and brought to the place where the treasures are hid, will discover them with the noise; and when it is near them it will go out. If this be true, it ariseth from sympathy; for fat is made of blood, and blood is the seat of the soul and spirits, and both these are held by the desire of silver and gold, so long as a man lives; and therefore they trouble the blood; so here is sympathy." If a man would prevent hail from coming down, he is to walk about his garden, with a crocodile--stuffed, of course--and hang it up in the middle. Pieces of the skin of a hippopotamus, wherever they are buried, keep off storms. A thunder-storm also can be put to rout by firing cannons at it; "for by the force of the sound moving the air, the exhalations are driven upward." (In the same way, the plague was said to yield before a cannonade.) "Some who observe hail coming on, bring a huge looking-glass, and observe the largeness of the cloud, and by that remedy,--whether objected against, or despised by it, or it is displeased with it; or whether, being doubled, it gives way to the other" (in some way or other one must find out a reason), "they suddenly turn it off and remove it." An owl stuck up in the fields, with its wings spread, served also as a scare-crow to the tempests. As lightning conductor on a roof, it was thought wise to put an egg-shell, out of which a chicken had been hatched on Ascension-day. Thunderbolt stones were said to sweat during a storm, which was not thought a more wonderful "fact" than the perspirations streaming out of glass windows "in winter when the stove is hot." Our ancestors were far too wise to be surprised at any thing. Secrets of alchemy, magic, and astrology are, of course, very profound; we pass over these and many more; among secrets of cookery we pause, shuddering. Whipping young pigs to death, to make them tender eating, used to be quite bad enough; and some of our own hidden devices in the meat trade are, even now, equally revolting; but here we meet with a device of the wise ancestors, which may, perhaps, stand at the head of all culinary horrors. Remembering that these cooks were also apt at roasting men, we will inflict this illustration on our readers: "_To roast a Goose alive._ Let it be a duck or goose, or some such lively creature; but a goose is best of all for this purpose; leaving his neck, pull off all the feathers from his body, then make a fire round about him, not too wide, for that will not roast him; within the place set here and there small pots full of water, with salt and honey mixed therewith, and let there be dishes set full of roasted apples, and cut in pieces in the dish, and let the goose be basted with butter all over, and larded to make him better meat, and he may roast the better; put fire to it; do not make too much haste, when he begins to roast, walking about, and striving to fly away; the fire stops him in, and he will fall to drink water to quench his thirst; this will cool his heart, and the other parts of his body, and, by this medicament, he looseneth his belly and grows empty. And when he roasteth and consumes inwardly, always wet his head and heart with a wet sponge; but when you see him run madding and stumble, his heart wants moisture, take him away, set him before your guests, and he will cry as you cut off any part from him, and will be almost eaten up before he be dead; it is very pleasant to behold." Degenerate moderns would most certainly be unable to enjoy such hospitality, and would be cured as thoroughly of any appetite as if their host had employed another of the secrets of our ancestors. "That guests may not eat at table, do this: You must have a needle that dead people are often sewed up in their winding-sheet; and at beginning of supper secretly stick this under the table; this will hinder the guests from eating, that they will rather be weary to sit, than desirous to eat; take it away when you have laughed at them awhile." Take it away, we must say now to the old book. As we have said, our specimens, drawn from an immense mass of the same kind, do not represent the sole character of the volume. It states, also, a very large number of facts, confirmed and explained in the present day, being a fair transcript of the average standard of opinion among learned doctors upon a great number of things. Have we not made a little progress since those good old times, and would it be a pleasant thing to get them back again? To come home to every man's breakfast-table, we may ask the public to decide between the coffee now made, and the coffee of the good old times. In a somewhat expensive book, addressed only to wealthy readers, Drs. Read and Weckir disclose this secret of good coffee, for the ladies and gentlemen of 1660:--"Take the berry, put it in a tin pudding-pan, and when bread hath been in the oven about half-an-hour, put in your coffee; there let it stand till you draw your bread; then beat it and sift it; mix it thus: first boyl your water about half-an-hour; to every quart of water put in a spoonful of the pouder of coffee; then let it boyl one-third away; clear it off from the setlings; and the next day put fresh water; and so add every day fresh water, so long as any setlings remain. _Often Tryed._" Authors and Books. ARTHOR SCHOPENHAUER, of Berlin, has recently published _Parerga und Paralipomena, or little Philosophical Writings_, in which, according to a Leipsic reviewer, "the author asserts that _his_ philosophy is not merely the _only_ advance in that department since the days of Kant, but that _his_ system bears the same relation to all earlier philosophy, that the New Testament bears to the Old. In addition to this, he attempts to solve the problem, how can it be possible that he has ever been as unknown to the literary and scientific world as the Man in the Moon, while the absurdest and most ridiculous theories, such, for example, as those of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, have been so generally accepted. But as he, in spite of the most earnest endeavors, can find no internal ground for this unaccountable blindness of the public, he seeks it in another direction. These impudent sophists, it seems, have had no other ground than simply _that of making money_! With the hocus-pocus of common charlatans they have carried their wares to market, and as _candidates_ and teachers of philosophy generally spring up from the same effort, there resulted an alliance of charlatans whose object it was on the one side to raise themselves to heaven, and on the other to suppress all true thinking, so that the public might be prevented, by a just consideration of their own worthlessness." "Such accusations as those," continues our reviewer, "awaken an unfavorable impression, which is not in the least diminished by continued boasting and grandiloquence, and a clumsy roughness of style, which not unfrequently falls into downright burlesque. The work itself is an odd mixture of actual recollections and arbitrary fancies, of explanations and superstitions, which force us to regret that many really admirable thoughts which occasionally surprise the reader in an assembly of trivialities and paradoxes, must inevitably be lost. Those philosophers certainly provoke sharp criticism when we separate their truly scientific contents from their visions and dispositions, and it would perhaps be more in accordance with the spirit of the age to return more earnestly to _Kant_ than most of the more recent philosophers are accustomed to do. Still nothing is in the least gained for the negative aim of criticism, when the critic makes it such an easy matter to cast away, without further consideration, all of the latest advances in philosophy, because he believes that he has detected errors in their pretended fundamental thoughts, without first ascertaining whether these fundamental thoughts are really the leading principle of the system, and when he on his own side falls into suppositions which have certainly received long since a satisfactory refutation from the later philosophy; as, for example, in the Kantean opposition of things in themselves, and their appearances. The _positive_, with which Herr Schopenhauer believes that he has enriched science, the derivation of united spiritual functions from the will, and the correction of the course of the world, by the idea that the true aim of life is to scorn it, might with greater propriety be classed in the sphere of 'visions and dispositions,' which he so fiercely attacks, than in that of science. The discussions which fill these two volumes, and are spread out over every imaginable subject, even to ghosts, the possibility of whose existence is admitted, have naturally a very varied character, and can only, by a continued polemic, and a fragmentary system of examination harmonizing therewith, be brought into unity." * * * * * The second part of WACHSMUTH'S _Allgemeine Culturgeschichte_ (History of Civilization, for so we venture to translate the word Cultur), which indicates more strictly all referring to those social influences which refine, form, and educate society, has recently appeared. The volume referred to contains _The Middle Ages_, and is highly spoken of for the skilful manner in which the author has treated the influence exerted by the Byzantine and Mohammedan races. Another historical work of importance is the fourth and concluding volume containing the tenth and twelfth books of HAMMER PURGSTALL'S _Life of Cardinal Khlesl_, compiled from contemporary documents. In it we have the last diplomatic acts of the Cardinal, of the intrigues of the Grand Dukes Ferdinand and Maximilian relative to him, and of his consequent arrest and abduction. The eleventh book details his imprisonment in Innspruck and in the Abbey St. Georgenberg, the negotiations with the Pope relative to him, and his delivery to the latter on the 24th October, 1622. In the twelfth we have the details of his residence in Rome, of the part he took in instituting the Propaganda, his return home after an absence of ten years, his subsequent clerical exertions, and his testament. The conclusion gives a parallel drawn between Khlesl, Wolsey, and Ximenes--a description of his personal appearance and an explanation of the exertions of power brought to bear against him, with the final judgment that those truly to blame were the grand dukes and not Khlesl, and that the Cardinal, if not entirely devoid of blame, was still a great character, and one of the most illustrious statesmen of Austria. Another new historical work is the _Laben des Herzogs von Sachsen-Gotha und Altenburg, Freiderich II. Ein Bei trazzur Geschichte Gotha's beim Wechsel d. 17, und 18, Jahrh. Herausgegeben nach dessen Tode von Dr._ AD. MORITZ SCHULZE, _Director d. Burgerschule zu Gotha_ (or Life of the Duke of Saxe Gotha and Altenburg, Frederic the II.) A contribution to the history of Gotha during the changes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Published after the death of the author by Dr. Ad. Moritz Schulze, director of the Citizen School of Gotha, this work appears to be well and warmly, though impartially written. * * * * * In theology, we observe the publication, by ALBERT WESSEL VON HENGEL, of _Commentarius Perpetuus in Prioris Pauli ad Corinthios Epistolæ Caput Quintum Decimum cum Epistola ad Winerum, Theol. Lips. Haag._ (Boedeker in Rotterdam). In this book we perceive that the important fifteenth chapter of the Letter to the Corinthians is philologically treated with true Dutch thoroughness and remarkable erudition, but that the results to which he comes are often untenable, and that a satisfactory decision as to the proposed dogmatic questions, such as advanced theological science requires, is not given. The peculiar views of the author as to the aim or object of the chapter have also had an effect on the explanation of many passages. It is asserted, for instance, _a la_ Bush, that Paul does not speak of the resurrection of the body, but that he means by this resurrection the return of all men into life, or immortality; and regarding this, has in view only those who admit Christ, and their future happiness; and that even verse forty-nine contains only a comparison of the _moral_ condition of Christians in this and a better life. Yet notwithstanding this he finds himself compelled to admit, by the fifty-second verse, that the same bodies which we have here on earth, again return to life. By the [Greek: parousia] of Christ (v. 23) he understands _earthly life_, and by [Greek: oi tou Christou en tê parousia autou], those Christians who already believed on him while yet on earth, and by the [Greek: telos], not the end of the world with its universal resurrection and judgment, but the resurrection of the later Christians. The oft-repeated [Greek: speiretai] (v. 43) he translates by it is begotten or generated, and understands it as referring to an entry into earthly life, and that the [Greek: choikos] of the forty-seventh verse refers to the earthly _disposition_ or _inclination_, and the [Greek: ex ournou] and [Greek: epouranios] to that of the heavenly. * * * * * Among recent books of travel we have _A Journey to Persia and the country of the Koords_, and the preceding sketch, _Souvenirs of the Danube and Bosphorus_, by MORITZ WAGNER. The Journey to Persia contains much curious information and observation of a country but little known to the outer world, while in the Souvenirs we have bitter complaints and merciless revelations relative to the Metternich policy in the East, and the conduct and character of the Austrian diplomatic representative by the Porte. Many curious facts are also given relative to the present condition of Turkey, the personal appearance of the Sultan and divers Constantinopolitan dignitaries and foreign ambassadors. The commendatory characteristic of this work appears to consist in the fact, that the author, unlike the great majority of those who are elevated to constant familiarity with men of high standing and influence, is remarkably independent and unselfish in his views, and invariably speaks bold plain truth, even of individuals in whose power it actually lies to do him very decided injury. No person desirous of being _au courant_ as to the great political world of the present day, should be ignorant of this work. * * * * * A work has recently been published at Ratisbon, entitled. _Die Katholischon Missionen, Geschildert aus der Neuzeit, Miteinem Anhange, Zwei Missionen in dem Jahr 1716 und 1718_ (Catholic Missions, Sketched from recent times, with a supplement; Two Missions in the years 1716 and 1718). Of this performance a German review remarks, that it was once believed that the power of the Jesuits was for ever broken, but lo! they again lift their heads in power. "Missions are one of the means by which they act upon the people--a number of Jesuits repair to a certain place, and day after day its inhabitants are preached to, taught, confessions heard, and mass read festally." The book is a eulogium of Catholicism, and especially of the Jesuits, as its truest representatives, with occasional passes at democracy, the unbelievers, the administration, and bureaucracy. It praises Catholicism as the only means whereby the revolution can be restrained; it tells of devotions to the heart of the Virgin Mary and her medals, and of the plenary remission which the missions bring. It exalts the obedience of the Jesuits to their superiors, and praises the principle that they, without any will of their own, should be _perinde ac cadaver_--like a corpse. According to this book, the consequences of these missions are incalculable, and the love bestowed upon them by the Jesuits truly affecting. It well-nigh appears the same as if one were reading Chateaubriand's praises of the _Patres_. Only that history, for the past three hundred years, has given a somewhat strong contrast to this ideal. The best parts of the book are sketches of life in the _Bagnos_ of Toulon and Brest. * * * * * At Berlin, the Scientific Society (_Winenschaftlicher Vereins_) have been giving a course of lectures to a large and aristocratic audience, invited by members of the society. Their success has brought out the Evangelical Society, in another course of a more theological and religious nature. In the first-named society, Professor Brandes lately lectured upon the Mormons; but it seems that the majority of the elegant gentlemen and ladies, did not fully appreciate his efforts for their instruction, for want of the necessary elementary knowledge. "When the doctor rose and announced his subject, the question was at once whispered in all parts of the hall," "Who are the Mormons?" The ladies in the most brilliant costume were generally the most eager in this inquiry. But unfortunately they got no satisfaction; the common reply of the gentleman appealed to being, "I am sorry to say I have forgotten." Some, more learned than others, however, assured their lovely companions that the Mormons were an Indian tribe of America, closely connected with, if not directly descended from, the Hurons, so frequently mentioned in Cooper's novels. Another amusing misunderstanding recently occurred in the same course. The lectures are not generally announced before-hand, but one day the newspapers got hold of the subject, and informed all the world that Professor Diterici would read a lecture upon _Pera and the desert festivals_. A great crowd of ladies was the consequence, all agog to hear about the picturesque costumes and strange ways of Pera, the national festivals of the Bedouins, and, perhaps, to have a glimpse at the mysteries of the seraglio. How great was the disappointment of the fashionable auditory when the learned doctor rose and began his discourse upon _Petra, the Fastness of the Desert_. That evening the ladies went home in very ill humor. * * * * * A work which political students and legislators may read, with advantage, is the _Wesen und Verfassung der Laadgemeinde_ (Nature and Constitution of the Country Towns, and of the tenure of Real Estate in Lower Saxony and Westphalia, with special regard to the Kingdom of Hanover.) It is by Mr. STUVE, recently the Prime Minister of Hanover, and is interesting, especially as exhibiting the extent to which the principle of local self-government obtains in Germany, and the probabilities and methods of its extension. For its historical view of the organization of the _commune_ or township in Germany, it is very valuable. * * * * * The second part of the _System of Ethics_, by IMANUEL HERMANN (not Johann Gottlieb) FICHTE, has recently appeared. The anticipations awakened by the first historico-critical part of the work do not appear to be satisfactorily realized by this second dogmatic division. * * * * * Among the most entertaining "books of autobiography must always be reckoned _The Memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth_, daughter of Frederic William I., and sister of Frederic the Great of Prussia. They are among the chief sources of the history of the German states during the last century, and they afford the most striking, if not the most pleasing, view we have of aristocratic German manners for the same period. In the London _Literary Gazette_ it is stated that-- "The revelations of the Princess, especially concerning the King of Prussia and his court, if true, are at least not flattering to the Prussian dynasty; and strenuous attempts have for years past been making to represent the 'Memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth' as a spurious work, concocted by the enemies of Prussia, for the express purpose of humiliating the descendants of Frederic William I. It so happened, that at the first publication of the book, in 1810, a rival edition was almost immediately given to the world in another part of Germany. The publishers of either book pretended to be in exclusive possession of the original MS. of the unfortunate Princess. These conflicting claims furnished the partisans of the court of Berlin with a very plausible pretext for doubting the genuineness of either. But of late, Dr. Pertz, of Berlin, when engaged in collecting still further proofs of the 'literary imposition' practised by the editors of the two MS., happened to stumble on the original autograph copy of the Princess among the books and papers of the Protonotarius Blanet, at Celle, in Hanover. Herr Blanet had the MS. from Dr. E. Spangenberg, of Celle, who died in 1833, and who bought it from Colonel Osten, who, in his turn, had received the MS. from Dr. Superville, physician to the Princess, to whom it had been presented by that lady. From a paper read by Dr. Pertz, to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin, (Berlin: Keimer. London: Williams and Norgate,) it appears that, of the two existing editions, the one published at Brunswick, in 1810, is a copy, though not a faithful or complete one, of the original MS. This copy in particular wants several sheets. At all events, the question as to the genuineness of the 'Memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth' is now completely set at rest; for although Dr. Pertz demonstrates at some length that many important phrases and parts of phrases are wanting in the Brunswick edition, he has not ventured to affirm that any phrases or statements have been added by the editor." * * * * * A recent book of travels published at Munich is not utterly devoid of interest, though it appears to be far inferior to what we should have expected from the subject. We refer to the _Errimerungen an Italien, Sicilian and Grieohenland aus den Jahren, 1826-1844_ (Recollections of Greece, Italy, and Sicily, in the Years 1826-1844), by HEINRICH FARMBACHER. In company with the king of Bavaria, and as his secretary, Herr Farmbacher travelled twice to Sicily, once to Greece, and frequently through Italy. The descriptions of scenes and events appear in no instance to rise above mediocrity, nor do we find any of that artistic spirit and observation which might have been anticipated from an intelligent attendant of the great royal connoisseur. His anecdotes relative to the monarch himself are rare, trivial, and worthless, for it does not seem to have occurred to the royal secretary that in such a work his master to the general reader is a far more attractive individual than himself. As regards style, the book gives from time to time curious glimpses of that court lackey language so habitual to the upper class _flunkies_ of Herr Farmbacher's description, and which it is impossible for him to entirely suppress even in writing. * * * * * The distinguished and lamented orientalist KLAPROTH has left behind him a large map of Central Asia, in four sheets, engraved at Paris by Berthe, the geographer. This map is the product of ten years' researches, and exhibits the topography of those vast regions, with the cities it contains, many of which have hitherto been unknown, and the names of the tribes inhabiting it. The map is based not only upon the explorations of travellers, but on the Chinese maps made by order of the Emperor Kiang-Long, and by missionaries in China and Tartary. It extends on the north to the frontiers of Siberia, including the great lake Balaton; on the south to Hindostan; on the west to the sea of Aral and Persia; and on the east to China. * * * * * HAFIS is the title prefixed to a new collection of poems, by G. F. DAUMER, just published at Nuremberg. Daumer is one of the most original writers in the whole scope of the present German literature. His _Evangelium_ is especially worthy of a far greater degree of attention than it has received. It is a volume of brief poems, discussing the gravest questions with as much warmth and freshness of imagination as elevation and beauty of style. In this country Daumer is known but to the few whose acquaintance with German literature extends beyond the classic writers whose names are familiar to all the world. A Catholic critic in Germany says of him, that the epitaph once proposed for the gravestone of Voltaire will suit equally well that of Daumer. It is as follows: "In poesi magnus, In historia parvus, In philosophia minimus, In religione nullus." * * * * * GUTZKOW'S _Ritter vom Geiste_ has just appeared in a second edition in Germany--no trifling success for a romance in nine stout volumes; another German _litterateur_ has also dramatized a part of it. Gutzkow is, beyond dispute, one of the foremost among the living writers of Germany. His collected works, published some years since, in twelve volumes, have lately been increased by a thirteenth, containing several fugitive stories, and one or two plays that he has brought out at various times. * * * * * We heard little of Scandinavian literature until the translations of Tegner, Frederica Bremer, Oelenschlager, and Hans Christian Andersen, called our attention to the rich treasures of intellectual activity produced under that cold northern sky. Of course constant additions are being made to this literature. Among its recent productions is a comedy by ANDERSEN, based on a fairy story, called _Hyldemöer_, which has lately been performed upon the Danish stage with not very brilliant success. It is admitted to be inferior to his stories, as have been his former attempts at dramatic composition. C. MOLBACH announces, at Copenhagen, a Danish translation of DANTE'S _Divina Commedia_; the same author has just published a volume of original poems under the title of _Twilight_. A very industriously-prepared and useful work is J. H. EOSLEN'S _General Literary Dictionary_, from the year 1814 to 1840, of which the thirteenth part has just appeared. In Norway, F. M. BUGGE announces a translation of the _Iliad_ into Norwegian hexameters, to be published by subscription. A Norwegian dictionary, by IWAR AASEN is highly commended. * * * * * A very sharp controversy is now being waged by the scholars of Denmark and Schleswig. The Danes resort to philology in order to prove the right of their country to extend its government over the Germans of that Duchy, and the other party meet their onslaught with weapons equally keen, drawn also from the arsenals of dictionaries and grammars. The best of the quarrel hitherto seems to be on the side of the Schleswigers, whose great champion is one Herr Clement, a man of as much learning as talent. In a recent essay, he establishes that the original inhabitants of Schleswig were not Danes but Angles, or Frieslanders, essentially the same race as the original Saxon stock of England. In illustration of this doctrine he adduces an immense list of names of places which are the same in Schleswig and England--as, for instance, Ripen and Ripon, Ellum and Elham, Rödding and Reading, Meldorp and Milthorp, Wilstrup and Wilthorpe, &c., &c. This essay will probably be expanded into a book. * * * * * The German critics are discussing with high encomiums a volume of poems by ANNETTE VON DROSTE, a deceased poetess of Westphalia. It is entitled _Das Religiöse Jahr_ (The Religious Year), and is inspired with that absolute devotion which lends so great a charm to the poems of Montgomery, the Moravians, and the mystical writers generally. * * * * * BYRON'S _Manfred_, with musical accompaniments, by R. Schumann, is about to be produced at the Weimar theatre. * * * * * JAHN, the well-known Leipsic professor, is engaged in writing a life of Beethoven. * * * * * RICHARD WAGNER, the revolutionist, musical composer, and writer upon æsthetics, has published a new work, entitled _Oper und Drama_ (Opera and Drama), which the German critics fall upon with considerable ferocity. They complain that while he entirely rejects the old form of the opera, he does not indicate what is the new kind of musical drama to be substituted for it. Wagner has also published _Three Opera Poems_, which the same critics cannot but praise for their originality, power, and inspiration. If the music of these operas is adequate to the _libretti_, say they, they are really new and grand productions. This would seem, also, to be proved by the fact that one of them has been brought out at Weimar, through the influence and under the direction of Liszt. The author is living in exile in Switzerland, and is engaged upon a dramatic trilogy with a prelude. He no longer professes to write operas, but musical dramas. * * * * * An attempt has been made in Germany to register the enormous number of books and pamphlets which the Germans themselves have published on their two great poets, Goethe and Schiller. A catalogue of the Goethean literature in Germany, from 1793 to 1851, has been published by Balde, at Cassel, and in London by Williams and Norgate. The Schiller literature, from 1781 to 1851, is likewise announced by the same firm. * * * * * A very excellent translation of sundry old Scottish and English ballads has just made its appearance at Munich, from the pen of W. DOENNIGER. It contains sixteen Scotch and seventeen English ballads, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, all rendered with great fidelity, and in the true spirit of the original. So successful is the book that a second edition of it is about to appear, with illustrations by Kaulbach, Voltzen, and other eminent artists. * * * * * The _Augsburg Gazette_ states that the Congregation of the Index has just prohibited all the works of Eugene Sue and Proudhon; also a clerical Turin paper, called the _Buona Novella_; a work on animal magnetism, by Tomasi; a manual for schoolmasters, printed at Asti in 1850; and all the works of Gioberti. * * * * * A book to be read by the students of literature and by critics is HETTNER'S _Moderne Drama_, just published at Brunswick. We do not know of a profounder and keener discussion of the principles and laws of dramatic writing, or of more just and striking dramatic criticisms than it contains. * * * * * LAYARD'S popular account of his excavations and discoveries at Nineveh has been translated into German by one of the Meissners (not the poet, we believe), and is published at Leipsic. * * * * * FRAULEIN FRIEDERIKE FRIEDEMANN has published, at Leipsic, a metrical version of Lord BYRON'S _Corsair_, which is worthy of all commendation. The gloomy hue and passionate vehemence of the original are preserved in the translation with surprising fidelity, and the rhythm is hardly less perfect than in Byron's English itself. * * * * * The last number of the _Theologische Quartalschrift_ (Theological Quarterly), published at Tübingen, by Laupp, contains an interesting paper on the pretended objections to the historical truth of the Pentateuch, by WELTE; the critical historical examination of the xxxi. xxxii. Jeremiah, by REINKE; and the Aloge, with their relations to the Montanists, by HEFELE. * * * * * MR. GEORGE STEPHENS, the translator of Tegner's _Frithiof's Saga_, and whose intimate acquaintance with the early literature of Sweden has been shown by the collection of legends of that country which he edited in conjunction with Hylten-Cavallius, and by various works superintended by him for the _Svenska Fornskrift-Salskapet_, (a sort of Stockholm Camden Society,) has removed to Copenhagen in consequence of his having been appointed Professor of the English Language and Literature in the University there. The subject of his first course of lectures was Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. We have in our possession the MS. translations of some very interesting ancient Swedish poems made by Mr. Stephens some five years ago, and not yet published. * * * * * The London _Leader_, socialist and avowedly and industriously infidel, says of EUGENE SUE, not long ago the rage of half the world: "We have to announce the third and last volume of Eugene Sue's _Fernand Duplessis_, wherein the memoirs of a husband are recounted with a license which only a French public could permit. Perhaps the worst thing in Sue is not his positive passion for what is criminal and odious, so much as the way in which he always contrives to render the good people odious. Much as we reprobate his pictures of vice, we think them less offensive than his pictures of virtue. How a man so essentially vulgar-minded could ever have attained the position he had once!" * * * * * M. ALFRED VILLEFORT has published at Paris a treatise on literary and artistic property in an international point of view. It not only discusses the question as a matter of principle, but gives the history of the negotiations and treaties which France has made in that respect with the nations. * * * * * Among the pleasant books recently published in France is ARSENE HOUSSAYE'S volume of stories, _Les Filles d'Eve_, very piquant and French in its treatment. A translation is announced in this city by Redfield. * * * * * The literary event of the month at Paris is the publication of the third volume of LOUIS BLANC'S _History of the French Revolution_. Of all the works written upon that memorable epoch, none is more marked by originality of thought and power of treatment than this, and we can only hope that the present volume, which we have not yet seen, may prove equal to its predecessors. Its table of contents is as follows: Attitude of Property toward the Revolution, Attitude of the Gospel toward the Revolution, Tableau of the Constituent Assembly, First Labors of the Constituent Assembly, Administration of Necker, People Starving, Treasury Empty, A New Power, Journalism, Faction of the Count de Provence, The Fifteen Complots, The Women of Versailles, The King brought to Paris, The Court at the Tuileries, Municipal and Military Organization of the Bourgeoisie, The Wealth of the Clergy Denounced, War of the Bourgeoisie on the Clergy, The Authority of the Parliaments Discussed, War of the Bourgeoisie on the Parliaments, The Ambition of Mirabeau, Complots of the Luxembourg, New Organization of the Kingdom. The _Leader_ mentions that Mr. Blanc undertakes to _prove_ that Egalité was not at the bottom of those conspiracies with which his name has been associated, but that the real culprit was the Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis XVIII. * * * * * M. EDMOND TEXIER, one of the most fresh and agreeable of that race of literary butterflies, the _feuilletonists_ of Paris, is publishing a large work upon that great capital, which promises to be as readable as its exterior is splendid. It is to be ornamented with some two thousand engravings on wood, representing all the prominent and famous public edifices and places which not only figure so largely in history, but are so splendid in themselves. The title of M. Texier's work is the _Tableau de Paris_. It appears in parts. * * * * * The publication of the magnificent work, the _Catacombs de Rome_, for which the French National Assembly voted $40,000, will shortly commence, under the direction of a commission nominated by the Government, consisting of Messrs. Ampere (now in the United States), Ingres, Prosper, Merinice, and Vitel, all members of the Institute. The work will contain exact copies of the architecture, mural paintings, inscriptions, figures, symbols, sepulchres, lamps, vases, rings, instruments, in a word, of every thing belonging to, or connected with, the primitive Christians, which by the most diligent search, exercised during many years, have been brought to light in the catacombs of ancient Rome. Its enormous price, between $250 and $300, will, however, keep it out of the hands of all but the wealthy. Another work on the same subject and of similar character is announced in Rome, under the direction of the ecclesiastical government. * * * * * A volume purporting to contain thirty hitherto unpublished Letters of SHELLEY, appeared a few weeks ago from the press of Moxon, in London, edited by Robert Browning. It appears from an article in the _Athenæum_ that these--letters, and many others recently sold to publishers and autograph collectors, are forgeries. The book referred to is of course suppressed. The _Athenæum_ inquires: "From whom did Mr. Moxon buy these letters? They were bought at Sotheby & Wilkinson's, at large prices. From whom did Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinson receive them for sale? 'We had them from Mr. White, the bookseller in Pall Mall, over against the Reform Club.' Off runs the gentle man-detective. 'From whom did you, Mr. White, obtain these letters?' 'I bought them of two women--I believed them to be genuine, and I paid large prices for them in that belief.' Such are the words supposed to have been spoken by Mr. White. The two women would appear to have been like the man in a clergyman's band, but with a lawyer's gown, who brought Pope's letters to Curll. "It is proper to say thus early that there has been of late years, as we are assured, a most systematic and wholesale forgery of letters purporting to be written by Byron, Shelley, and Keats,--that these forgeries carry upon them such marks of genuineness as have deceived the entire body of London collectors,--that they are executed with a skill to which the forgeries of Chatterton and Ireland can lay no claim,--that they have sold at public auctions, and by the hands of booksellers, to collectors of experience and rank--and that the imposition has extended to a large collection of books bearing not only the signature of Lord Byron, but notes in many of their pages--the matter of the letters being selected with a thorough knowledge of Byron's life and feelings, and the whole of the books chosen with the minutest knowledge of his tastes and peculiarities. "But the 'marvel' of the forgery is not yet told. At the same sale at which Mr. Moxon bought the Shelley letters were catalogued for sale a series of (unpublished) letters from Shelley to his wife, revealing the innermost secrets of his heart, and containing facts, not wholly dishonorable facts to a father's memory, but such as a son would wish to conceal. These letters were bought in by the son of Shelley, the present Sir Percy Shelley--and are now proved, we are told, to be forgeries. To impose on the credulity of a collector is a minor offence compared with the crime of forging evidence against the dead, and still minor as, in one instance, against the fidelity of a woman. "The forgery of Chatterton injured no one but an imaginary priest; the forgery of Ireland made a great poet seem to write worse than Settle could have written; but this forgery blackens the character of a great man, and, worse still, traduces female virtue. "Mr. Moxon is not the only publisher taken in. Mr. Murray has been a heavy sufferer, though not to the same extent. Mr. Moxon has printed his Shelley purchases; Mr. Murray--wise through Mr. Moxon's example--_will not_ publish his Byron acquisitions." These forgeries seem to us to have been very clumsily executed. * * * * * The London _Athenæum_ contains a very interesting letter from Mr. PAYNE COLLIER, in which he gives an account of the discovery of a copy of the second folio edition of Shakspeare, with numerous important corrections of the text, apparently by some learned contemporary actor, whose memory of parts, or access to original MSS., enabled him to restore all the readings vitiated by careless transcription or printing. Mr. Collier has such faith in these _errata_ that he does not hesitate to avow that he would have adopted a large portion of them in his own edition of Shakspeare, had they been known to him when that was printed. Of the several instances he offers, this will serve as a specimen: "An embarrassment meets us in the very outset of _Measure for Measure_,--where the Duke, addressing Escalus, observes, in the ordinary reading: "'Of government the properties to unfold Would seem in me t' affect speech and discourse; Since I am put to know, that your own science Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice My strength can give you: then, no more remains, But that to your sufficiency as your worth is able, And let them work.' --The meaning is pretty evident; but the expression of that meaning is obscure and corrupt,--as indeed the measure alone would establish. Various conjectural modes of setting the passage right have been proposed; and perhaps what follows from my corrected folio of 1632 has no better foundation,--but, at all events, it restores both the sense and the metre, and may, for aught we know, give the very words of Shakspeare: "'Of government the properties to unfold Would seem in me t' affect speech and discourse; Since I am _apt_ to know, that your own science Exceeds (in that) the lists of all advice My strength can give you; Then, no more remains But _add_ to your sufficiency your worth, And let them work.' --How 'that' in the old editions came to be printed for _add_ and how 'is able' came to be foisted in, most unnecessarily and awkwardly, at the end of the same line, it is not easy to explain. The third line is also much cleared by the substitution of _apt_ for 'put,'--which was an easy misprint: 'Apt to know' is an expression of every-day occurrence." * * * * * SIR JAMES STEPHEN, whose excellent _Lectures on the History of France_ have been so well received, proposes to deliver, at Cambridge, a series of twenty lectures on the _Diplomatic History of France during the reign of Louis XIV._, comprising a review of the treaties of Westphalia, of the Pyrenees, of Breda, of the Triple Alliance, of Aix-la-Chapelle, of Nimeguen, of Ryswick, and of Utrecht. * * * * * MISS CHARLOTTE VANDENHOFF, whose professional tour in the United States will be remembered by old play-goers, has written a piece under the title of _Woman's Heart_, possessing considerable poetical merits, and herself sustained the character of the heroine in its representation. * * * * * MR. CARLYLE, is engaged upon a new work in history, but its subject is not disclosed, nor its extent. * * * * * MRS. ROBINSON, who left New-York several months ago to visit her relations in Germany, writes from Berlin to the _Athenæum_, under date of February 2, as follows: "A work appeared in London last summer with the following title: _Talvi's History of the Colonization of America_, edited by William Hazlitt, in two volumes. It seems proper to state that the original work was written under favorable circumstances _in German_, and published in Germany. It treated only of the colonization of _New England_: and that only stood on its title-page. The above English publication, therefore, is a mere translation, and it was made without the consent or knowledge of the author. The very title is a misnomer; all references to authorities are omitted; and the whole work teems with errors, not only of the press, but also of translation,--the latter such as could have been made by no person well acquainted with the German and English tongues. For the work in this form, therefore, the author can be in no sense whatever responsible. TALVI." From a more recent number of the _Athenæum_ it appears that Mr. Hazlitt is not himself the translator of the original work; and the responsibility, not only of the translation, but of all the faults charged which might seem more especially editorial, is transferred by him to another. Mr. Hazlitt, we believe, is a son of the great critic of the last age. * * * * * There are connected with the newspapers a considerable number of weak-minded and absurd persons, who delight in strange coincidences and the most inconceivable relations, and who, for a certain consciousness they have of their own slight claims to consideration are anxious to find on every occasion, some indication of regard for their vocation, as if credit won by any journalist or writer were portion of a common fund of respectability from which they could draw a dividend. In no other way can we account for the thousand-and-one articles in which the appointments of Dr. LAYARD and Mr. D'ISRAELI have been referred to as "honor," "homage," &c., to literature. Dr. Layard was selected by Lord Granville to be an Under-Secretary of State, because he had shown himself in the admirable manner in which he discharged certain important diplomatic functions in the East, better fitted, in Lord Granville's opinion, than any other person for the new duties to which it was proposed to summon him. Mr. D'Israeli has long been one of the most conspicuous and astute politicians in England, and owes his present office solely to his activity and eminence in affairs. There was as little of "recognition of the claims of literature" in either case, as there was praise of fiddlesticks or Carolina potatoes. It would not be a whit more ridiculous to say that the French people, remembering the happy genius displayed by Napoleon Bonaparte in his "Supper of Beaucaire," chose him to be their emperor. In the new British ministry are an unusual number of book-makers. The most conspicuous in authorship is the now Right Honorable Benjamin D'Israeli, "the wondrous boy who wrote _Alroy_, in rhyme and prose, only to show how long ago victorious Judah's lion banner rose." Sir Emerson Tennent, Sir Edward Sugden, Lord John Manners, Mr. Whiteside, the Earl of Malmesbury, Lord de Roos, are all known as authors, as well as politicians. The Duke of Northumberland also is favorably known as a zealous promoter of arts and learning. * * * * * The author of _Life in Bombay and the Neighboring Stations_, pays the following testimony to the abilities of the manoeuvring mammas of Bombay: "The bachelor civilians are always the grand aim; for, however young in the service they may be, their income is always vastly above that of the military man, to say nothing of the noble provision made by the fund for their widows and children. We remember being greatly amused, soon after our arrival in the country, at overhearing a lady say, in reference to her daughter's approaching marriage with a young civilian: 'Certainly, I could have wished my son-in-law to be a little more steady; but then it is £300 a-year for my girl, dead or alive!'" * * * * * A volume of brilliant French criticism will be published in a few days by Charles Scribner, under the title of _Anglo-American Literature and Manners_, by PHILARETE CHASLES, Professor in the College of France. Mr. Chasles, in a book of five hundred pages, considers the literature and manners of the people of the United States--their institutions, capacity for self-government, actual condition and probable future--with all the sprightly grace of a Frenchman, and with a great deal of cleverness prosecutes his industrious researches from the landing of the Mayflower to the present day. He finds in the United States neither an Utopia, nor a land worthy merely of ridicule. He does not simply condemn, like some travellers, nor give us universal and unreasonable praise, as our egotism and contentment lead us to desire, but takes a fair view of the country, its claims, position, and prospects. In the beginning of his performance he considers that the most essential thing for the founding of a new commonwealth, is moral force; this he finds in the Puritans, who possessed "sincerity, belief, perseverance, courage;" they could "wait, fight, suffer." Their energy, he thinks, comes from their Teutonic or Saxon blood; their indomitable perseverance is a fruit of Calvinism, added to which they are clannish, or mutual helpers one of another. This is the key to the philosophical, political and prophetic portion of his work. The literary part is honest criticism, freely spoken, by the aid of such light as happened to be around him. He begins with the landing of the Pilgrims, speaks of their literature, which, like all other American literature down to the present day, he regards as destitute of originality. Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and others, all lack this quality. The author of the _American Cultivator_ has the most of it; but Franklin is made up of Fénelon, Banyan, and Addison; Edwards partakes of Hobbes, Priestley, and in his better moments of the close reasoning Descartes. He gives us then a politician, a journalist, and a gentleman, "the American Aristocrat" as he calls him, Gouverneur Morris, our minister at Paris during the old revolution. Brockden Brown is characterized as a copyist of Monk Lewis; and he comes then to Washington Irving, but while all the charms of this delightful writer are thoroughly appreciated and minutely described, it is denied that he has originality. "In some square house in Boston, he sees in thought St. James's Park: in reveries he is led through the umbrageous alleys of Kensington--he talks with Sterne--he shakes hands with Goldsmith." "It is a copy, somewhat timid, of Addison, of Steele, of Swift." You would think of him as of "a young lady of good family, a slave to propriety, never elevating her voice, never exaggerating the _ton_, never committing the sin of eloquence;" "a refined continuation of the style of Addison," &c. Nevertheless a dawn of freshness appears in his writings when they treat of forest scenes. This dawn advances into day in Cooper, upon whom we have an admirable critique. The author of _The Spy_, M. Chasles thinks, has a native vigor unknown to Irving. Paulding is dismissed with but very little consideration. Channing occupies the critic longer, but is found to be an unsatisfactory and too general reasoner. Audubon furnishes the most attractive chapter in the book, which closes with what is called the First Literary Epoch of the United States. The next division is of the _Literature of the People, and the falsely popular Literature of England and the States_. One thoughtful chapter is given to the infancy and future of America; the age and despair of Europe, of emigration, and colonization. Then, the popular movements in France and England are treated of, and the education of the masses. Crabbe, Burns, Elliott, Thomas Cooper and others serve as a text. Popular literature is found to be less anarchical in America than in Europe. We have a chapter on Herman Melville; and then the Americans are viewed through the spectacles of Marryatt, Trolloppe, Dickens, and their exaggerations are noted. The force of public opinion and of the press conclude the section. Our poets have two chapters: I. Barlow, Dwight, Colton, Payne, Sprague, Dana, Drake, Pierrepont; Female Poets; and Street and Halleck. II, Bryant, Emerson, and Longfellow. _Tom Stapleton_, by an Irish Sunday newspaper reporter, and _Puffer Hopkins_, by Mr. Cornelius Matthews, one chapter; Stephens, Silliman, and others represent the travellers; a chapter is dedicated to Arnold and Andre; Haliburton's _Sam Slick_ concludes the criticism; and the book ends with _The Future of Septentrional America and the United States_--what a "Bee" is, how an American village is got up, the aggregative principles of Americans, the Lowell Lectures, Democrats and Whigs--and then, far-seeing prophetic talking, conclude what the author has to say about us. * * * * * The well-known school book publishers of Philadelphia, THOMAS, COWPERTHWAIT, & CO., have just published a large duodecimo of five hundred and fifty-eight pages. _The Standard Speaker, containing Exercises in Prose and Poetry, for Declamation in Schools, Academies, Lyceums, and Colleges, newly Translated or Compiled from celebrated Orators, Authors, and Popular Debaters, Ancient and Modern; a Treatise on Oratory and Elocution; and Notes Explanatory and Biographical_--by EPES SARGENT. This book bears abundant evidences of editorial research and labor. The original translations would form a volume of respectable size, and they are all strikingly adapted to the purpose of elocutionary practice. Some passages of fervid eloquence from Mirabeau, Robespierre and Victor Hugo are given. Ancient eloquence is also well represented in new and spirited translations. The department of British Parliamentary oratory, shows extracts from Pym, Chatham, Barre, Wilkes, Thurlow, Grattan, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Curran, Canning, Brougham, O'Connell, Sheil, Macaulay, Croker, Talfourd, Palmerston, Cobden, and many others, and in nine instances out of ten the exercises are compiled originally for this volume. The American department is quite rich, and while the old masterpieces of Patrick Henry, Ames, Randolph, Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Hayne, and others are retained, a large number of fresh and striking pieces are introduced from the eloquence of Congress and the American lecture room. In its dramatic and poetical novelties the work is of course amply supplied. Mr. Sargent's editorial experience here has enabled him to add much that other compilers have entirely overlooked. In the adaptation of the exercises, great discrimination has been shown. They are of the right length, pithy, and calculated to engage the attention of the young. A new and valuable feature of the work is the introduction of notes, biographical and explanatory. In the instances of authors not contemporary the dates of their birth and death are given. An introductory treatise, comprising much practical information on the subject of elocution, gives completeness to the volume. Such is the Standard Speaker; and while it will be found to justify its title in the retention of all the standard specimens of rhetoric suitable for its purposes, it presents in its large proportion of new exercises of a high character, fresh and enduring claims to popularity. * * * * * _The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli_, by RALPH WALDO EMERSON, WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, and JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE, published a few weeks ago by Phillips, Sampson & Co., of Boston, are generally praised in the critical journals, but in this country, where the subject was generally known in literary circles, there is a common feeling of surprise at the artistic and successful _exaggeration_ of her capacities and virtues. The book, however, is in parts delightfully written, and the melancholy fate of the heroine gives it a character of romance apart from its merits as a biographical and critical composition. The _Athenæum_ thus refers to some additional _material_ for her memoirs, which, it strikes us, should have been communicated to the custodians of her reputation at an earlier day: "We have received permission to state that poor Margaret Fuller, on the eve of that visit to the Continent which was to prove so eventful and disastrous, left in the hands of a friend in London a sealed packet, containing, it is understood, the journals which she kept during her stay in England. Margaret Fuller--as they who saw her here all know--contemplated at that time a return to England at no very distant date;--and the deposit of these papers was accompanied by an injunction that the packet should then be restored with unbroken seal into her hands. No provision was of course made for death:--and here we believe the lady in possession feels herself in a difficulty, out of which she does not clearly see her way. The papers are likely to be of great interest, and were doubtless intended for publication; but the writer had peremptorily reserved the right of revision to herself, and forbidden the breaking of the seals, on a supposition which fate has now made impossible. It seems to us, that the equity of the case under such circumstances demands only a reference to Margaret Fuller's heir, whoever that may be; and with his or her concurrence, the lady to whom these MSS. were intrusted--and who probably knows something of the author's feeling as to their contents--may very properly constitute herself literary executor to her unfortunate friend." * * * * * Of BAYARD TAYLOR _The Tribune_ said a few days ago: "By the Niagara's mail we have had the pleasure of receiving letters from our friend and associate Bayard Taylor,--or as he his known among the Arabs, Taylor Bey,--dated at Khartoum, the chief city of Sennaar, situated at the confluence of the White and the Blue Nile, about half way between Cairo and the Equator. He arrived there on the 12th of January in excellent health and spirits, after a journey on camels across the Nubian Desert, during which he had sundry fortunate adventures, and received every friendly attention from the native chieftains. He was the first American ever seen so far toward Central Africa, and like a good patriot never slept without the stars and stripes floating above his tent. Every where good luck had attended him,--in truth he seems to have been born to it,--but at Khartoum especially he was received with unexpected honors. The governor of the city had presented him with a horse, and had entertained him in a banquet of genuine Ethiopic magnificence, while the commander of the troops had stationed a nightly guard of honor around his tent. In company with Dr. Knoblecher, the venerable Catholic missionary bound for the equatorial regions whom he had overtaken at Khartoum, and of Dr. Deitz, the Austrian Counsel, Mr. Taylor had also attended a banquet at the palace of the daughter of the late king of Sennaar, a very stately and ebon princess, who entertained her guests chiefly upon sheep roasted whole. Others of the first families among the Ethiopian aristocracy had also welcomed the strangers with distinguished civilities. Mr. Taylor expected to reach Cairo on his return about the 1st of April, though we should not be surprised to learn that he had changed his mind, and, in company with the Jesuit mission, plunged still farther into the mysterious country about the equator and the sources of the Nile." * * * * * Several new works by our literary women are on the eve of publication. Redfield has nearly ready _Lyra and other Poems_, by ALICE CAREY--a book containing more illustrations of unquestionable genius than any other written by a woman in America; and he will also publish soon, _Isa, a Pilgrimage_, a romance by Miss Caroline CHEESEBRO', which is likely to attract a great deal of attention. Putnam has in press, _The Shield, a Story of the New World_, by Miss FENIMORE COOPER, whose _Rural Hours_, last year, commanded every where so much well-merited praise, and a new story by Miss WARNER, of whose _Wide, Wide World_ (edited in London by a "Clergyman of the Church of England"), a recent number of the _Literary Gazette_ says: "This American tale has met with extraordinary success across the Atlantic. Within a very short time several large impressions were disposed of, and the sale still continues to be rapid. Of the causes of this popularity, there is one which will rather operate against a similar run of favor on this side of the water. A large part of the book refers to 'the old country,' and American readers eagerly seek what pertains to English life or history. But the book has many merits, apart from the incidents of its scenery and character. The authoress writes with liveliness and elegance; her power of discriminating and presenting character is great; in describing the feelings and ways of young people, she is especially happy, and an air of cheerful piety pervades the whole work. We shall not attempt to give any idea of the story, or of its principal personages, but content ourselves with commending it as a book which will please and instruct others than the young, for whom it is chiefly intended. The authoress seems herself young, and if so, we may expect other works from a spirit so lively and communicative. Who the editor is we have no knowledge, but he has taken liberties with the original not always warranted, and to an extent greater than can be approved without previous consultation. On the whole, however, he has done his part well, and in his prefatory note justly characterizes the merits of the writer, of whom we shall gladly hear more." Miss Warner's new book is entitled _Queechy_--the name of its scene, we suppose--and it is said to be very different in character from her first production. * * * * * Dr. DUNGLISON'S _Medical Dictionary_, of which a new and much enlarged edition has been published by Blanchard & Lea, is one of those professional works which are almost indispensable in a gentleman's library. Every person has sometimes occasion to consult a work of this kind, and there is no other in English so masterly in treatment, or so perspicuous in style. Dr. Dunglison keeps up with all the departments of the literature of his science, and, through his quick, comprehensive, and practical understanding, we have in this volume the best results of the world's experiment and study in medicine down to the beginning of the present half century. * * * * * A new and complete edition of the Poetical Works of GEORGE P. MORRIS will be published in October, amply and most elaborately illustrated with engravings after original designs by Robert W. Weir. The distinction of Gen. Morris is, that he is a great song writer. The naturalness, simplicity, unity, and pervading grace of his pieces, do not so much constitute their characteristic, as the exquisite music of their cadences, justifying the praise of Braham, that they sing themselves. The new edition will surpass any other in completeness, and in artistic execution will not be inferior to any volume ever published in the United States. * * * * * Mr. C. L. BRACE, who has tasted in person the sweets of Austrian rule, by his imprisonment in Hungary, has in press a book of Hungarian travels, and observations upon the political situation and prospects of that country. The personal history of an American in Hungary, who enjoyed rare opportunities of intimate intercourse with the inhabitants, will be a very valuable addition to our literature, and will make a most readable and seasonable book. Of the quality of Mr. BRACE'S ability, and of the faithfulness of his observation and record, his letters to the New-York _Tribune_ are satisfactory evidence. (Scribner.) * * * * * Mr. TICKNOR'S admirable _History of Spanish Literature_ by no means fails of the high consideration to which it is entitled from the best critics of Europe. One of the best translations of it is in Spanish, by Don PASCUAL DE GAYANGOS Y DON ENRIQUE DE VEDIA (_con adiciones y notas criticas_), Mr. Ticknor having communicated some notes and corrections to the two translators, who have added from their own store. A second translation is coming out in Germany, also containing important additions, in part from material and suggestions furnished by the accomplished author. * * * * * ARVINE'S _Anecdotes of Literature and the Arts_ is an agreeable miscellany; but the neglect of the editor to give credits in cases where he adopts entire pages from well-known books, deserves rebuke. The eighth number has been published by Gould & Lincoln of Boston, and it completes the work. * * * * * The work of Mr. STILES, which we have noticed elsewhere in this number of the _International_, we understand, will be published by the Harpers, in two large octavo volumes, about the first of May. It contains a complete history of the revolutionary proceedings in the Austrian empire in 1848. Mr. Stiles witnessed much that he describes. Each section is introduced by an historical survey of the country where the events described occurred. Thus Venice, Prague, and Vienna are brought before the reader in all their past glory and recent political vicissitudes. The Hungarian war is amply chronicled. The work is moderate in tone, authentic, fresh, and abounding in interesting facts. It will be illustrated by engravings, executed in Germany, of the Emperor, Archduke John, Kossuth, and other chief characters. * * * * * Dr. A. K. GARDINER, whose clever book about Paris, under the title of _Old Wine in New Bottles_, is well known, has just published a noticeable lecture, delivered before the College of Physicians and Surgeons, on the _History of the Art of Midwifery_. It is most conclusive upon the point of the unfitness of women for any of the more delicate and important duties in obstetrics, and is a sufficient argument for the immediate abolition of the so-called "Female Colleges." We recommend it to the attention of readers who feel any interest in the subject.--(Stringer & Townsend.) * * * * * Mrs. H. C. CONANT, wife of the learned Professor of Hebrew in the Rochester University, has published (through Lewis Colby, Nassau-street) another of NEANDER'S Commentaries, done into terse and vigorous English--_The Epistle of James Practically Explained_. It is needless to praise the great German, and it will readily be believed, by those who are acquainted with the fine abilities and thorough scholarship of Mrs. Conant, that this translation is in all respects admirable. * * * * * We are soon to have a new dramatic poem from Mr. GEORGE H. BOKER, whose _Calaynos_, _Anne Bullen_, and _Ivory Carver and other Poems_, have secured to him very high and well-deserved reputation as a literary artist. We do not think any sonnets written in this country are to be preferred to Mr. Boker's, and his _Ballad of Sir John Franklin_, published a few months ago in this magazine, is full of imagination, and is marked throughout with the nicest skill in execution. * * * * * The last work of the late Professor STUART, a _Commentary on the Book of Proverbs_, has been published by M. W. DODD, in a large duodecimo volume. It contains a full account of the principal commentaries written on this book, and the translations and paraphrases made into different languages, with a new version, and exegetical remarks. A memoir of Professor Stuart is in preparation. * * * * * Mr. RICHARD B. KIMBALL, the accomplished author of _St. Leger_, leaves New York in a few days for a tour through Europe. No one among our younger authors has risen more rapidly in the public regard, or established a good reputation in literature upon a surer basis. Imagination, scholarship, and profound reflection, characterize nearly all his performances. The admirable story written by him for the present number of the _International_, we believe, is true in every essential but the name of the heroine. It is a reminiscence of Mr. Kimball's student life in Paris, where, for a time, he walked the hospitals with his friend, the well-known Dr. O. H. Partridge, now one of the most distinguished physicians of Philadelphia, who is one of the dramatis personæ of _Emilie de Coigny_. * * * * * Mr. JOHN P. KENNEDY pronounced, in Baltimore, on the anniversary of the birth of Washington, a very eloquent and wise discourse, in which the state of the nation with respect to possible entanglements in foreign affairs, and implications by needless artificial ties in the vicissitudes of European politics, were treated in a manner worthy of a statesman of the school of the Great Chief. The occasion was also improved in Philadelphia by the Rev. Dr. BOARDMAN, who, in a discourse entitled _Washington or Kossuth_ (published by Lippincott, Grambo, & Co.), discusses the same great subjects in a masterly argument for the observance of the principles of the Farewell Address. * * * * * An elaborate attack on the Society of Friends appeared lately in Dublin, and has been republished in Philadelphia, under the title of _Quakerism, or the Story of My Life_. It was written by a Mrs. GREER, the daughter of an eminently respectable Irish Quaker, who was herself connected with the society for forty years, and so had abundant opportunities of becoming familiar with the peculiarities of the system. But the book is vulgar, malignant, and evidently altogether undeserving of credit in regard to facts. The points obnoxious to ridicule are broadly caricatured, and the most distinguished and blameless characters are introduced in the most offensive manner, as if to gratify personal spleen or a disposition to slander. * * * * * The Neander Library, recently purchased by the University of Rochester, consists of 4,500 volumes, and the price paid was only $2,300. About 350 of the volumes are large folios, and many of the works in the collection are of the choicest and rarest editions. We observe that an attempt to show that there was even the slightest possible degree of unfairness on the part of the Rochester faculty in obtaining this library, which was much desired by a western college, has most signally failed. * * * * * We commend to our readers as the best literary journal in this country, the _To Day_, recently established in Boston by CHARLES HALE, a thoroughly educated and judicious editor. _Recent Deaths_ WILLIAM WARE was born at Hingham, in Massachusetts, on the third of August, 1797. He was a descendant in the fifth generation from Robert Ware, one of the earliest settlers of the colony, who came from England about the year 1644. His father was Henry Ware, D. D., many years honorably distinguished by his connection with the Divinity School at Cambridge, and the late Henry Ware, jr., D. D., was his elder brother. His only living brother is Dr. John Ware, who also shares of the literary tastes and talents of his family, and has written its history. William Ware was graduated at Harvard University in 1816. After reading theology the usual term he was on the 18th of December, 1821, settled over the Unitarian society of Chambers street, New-York, where he remained about sixteen years. He gave little to the press except a few sermons, and four numbers of a religious miscellany called _The Unitarian_, until near the close of this period, when he commenced the publication in the Knickerbocker Magazine of those brilliant papers which in the autumn of 1836 were given to the world under the title of _Zenobia, or the Fall of Palmyra, an Historical Romance_. Before the completion of this work he had resigned his pastoral office and removed to Brookline, near Boston. The romance of Zenobia is in the form of letters to Marcus Curtius, at Rome, from Lucius Manlius Piso, a senator, who is supposed to have been led by circumstances of a private nature to visit Palmyra toward the close of the third century, to have become acquainted with the queen and her court, to have seen the City of the Desert in its greatest magnificence, and to have witnessed its destruction by the Emperor Aurelian. For the purposes of romantic fiction the subject is perhaps the finest that had not been appropriated in all ancient history; and the treatment of it, which is highly picturesque and dramatic throughout, shows that the author had been a successful student of the institutions, manners and social life of the age he attempted to illustrate. Mr. Ware's second romance, _Probus, or Rome in the Third Century_, was published in the summer of 1838. It is a sort of sequel to the Zenobia, and is composed of letters purporting to be written by Piso from Rome to Fausta, the daughter of Gracchus, one of the old Palmyrene ministers. In the first work Piso meets with Probus, a Christian teacher, and is partially convinced of the truth of his doctrine; he is now a disciple, and a sharer of the persecutions which marked the last days of the reign of Aurelian. The characters in Probus are skilfully drawn and contrasted, and with a deeper moral interest, from the frequent discussions of doctrine which it contains, the romance has the classical style and spirit which characterized its predecessor. Mr. Ware's third work is entitled _Julian, or Scenes in Judea_, and was published in 1841. The hero is a Roman, of Hebrew descent, who visits the land of his ancestors, to gratify a liberal curiosity, during the last days of the Saviour. Every thing connected with Palestine at this period is so familiar that the ground might seem to be sacred to History and Religion; but it has often been invaded by the romancer, and perhaps never with more success than in the present instance. Although Julian has less freshness than Zenobia, it has an air of truth and sincerity that renders it scarcely less interesting. About the time of the publication of Julian, Mr. Ware was attacked with Epilepsy, while in his pulpit, at Lexington, near Boston, and he suffered all the residue of his life from disease and apprehension; but his illness did not affect his intelligence or its activity, and he continued to devote himself to congenial studies, for several years, chiefly as editor of _The Christian Examiner_. For a short period he was pastor of the Unitarian society at West Cambridge, but the condition of his health did not permit a regular discharge of his functions, for which, indeed, he was scarcely fitted in any thing but a spirit of humility and piety. His tastes and capacities would have secured for him greater triumphs in any department of pictorial or plastic art, to which he was always insensibly drawn by instinct and congenial studies. In 1848 Mr. Ware passed several months abroad, and after his return he delivered in _Lectures on European Capitals_ the best fruits of his travel. These Lectures have recently been published in a very attractive volume, which has been favorably received in this country and in England. Among his unprinted writings is a series of Lectures on the _Life, Works, and Genius of Washington Allston_. He died on the 19th of February. The romances of Mr. Ware betray a familiarity with the civilization of the ancients, and are written in a graceful, pure and brilliant style. In our literature they are peculiar, and they will bear a favorable comparison with the most celebrated historical romances relating to the same scenes and periods which have been written abroad. They have passed through many editions in Great Britain, and have been translated into German and other languages of the continent. * * * * * JOHN FRAZEE, the sculptor, died at the age of sixty, on the--th of March, at the house of his daughter, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The _Evening Post_ remarks that "he was a man of decided talent for sculpture, but the necessity of employing himself in other occupations, prevented his attaining that skill which, under more auspicious circumstances, would have been within his reach." Mr. Frazee was born in Brunswick, N.J., and in early life was a farmer and stone-cutter. One of his first attempts at sculpture which attracted notice, was a clever female bust, a likeness of one of his own family, exhibited in the gallery of the Academy of Design. He afterwards, at the request of the bar of New-York, was employed in the mural tablet and bust of John Welles, which fills a conspicuous place in St Paul's Church. This production, with others subsequently executed, attracted the attention of the Trustees of the Boston Athenæum, and at their request, in 1834, he proceeded to Boston, and modelled a series of busts of eminent men in that city--Webster, Bowditch, Prescott, Story, J. Lowell, and T. H. Perkins. Afterwards he went to Richmond, where he produced the likeness of John Marshall, copies of which adorn the Court rooms of New York, New-Orleans, and the Capitol of Virginia. On his return he visited President Jackson, at whose house he executed an inimitable head of that extraordinary man. Among his other productions were heads of General Lafayette, in 1824, De Witt Clinton, John Jay, Bishop Hobart, Dr. Milnor, Dr. Stearns, Nathaniel Prime, George Griswold, Eli Hart, &c. The monument, however, which is destined to perpetuate his fame, is the New York Custom-House. This edifice was commenced in 1834 by another gentleman, who, when he had finished the base, abandoned the work and withdrew his plans. Mr. Frazee was obliged to commence _de novo_, and in 1843 had completed the work. During the erection of the Custom-House, from the dampness of its material and concomitant causes, he contracted a disorder which caused paralysis, from which he never recovered. For several years he held a subordinate post under the Collector. His last effort with the chisel was in giving the finishing touch to the bust of General Jackson, which had remained in his studio seventeen years, without an order for completion. This was in November last, and while assiduously at work, his mallet fell from his hand, and his worn-out body followed it to the floor." * * * * * JOHN PARK, M. D., died in Worcester, Massachusetts, on the 2d of March, aged seventy-eight. He was an active member of the old Federal party in Massachusetts, during the administration of Jefferson and Madison, and exerted a wide and important influence by his well-known journal, _The Boston Repertory_. At a subsequent period, he established a private school for young women, which acquired a celebrity second to that of no similar educational institution in the old Commonwealth. He was distinguished for his cultivated literary tastes, his uncommon purity of character, his fine social qualities, and his cordial and attractive manners. Dr. Park was the father of Mrs. L. G. Hall, wife of the Rev. Dr. Hall, of Providence, the authoress of _Miriam_, and other successful productions, and of Mr. John C. Park, an eminent lawyer in Boston. Mrs. Osgood and several other distinguished literary women were among his pupils. * * * * * WILLIAM THOMPSON, of Belfast, the naturalist of Ireland, died in London on the 17th February. Mr. Thompson was born in 1805, and from earliest youth was attached to scientific and literary studies. For the last fifteen years his name has been before the world of science in connection with arduous researches on the natural history of Ireland. The numerous memoirs published by him, chiefly in scientific periodicals, and latterly in the _Annals of Natural History_, of which he was a warm supporter, extend in their subjects over all departments of zoology, and several are devoted to botanical investigations. He was constantly on the watch for new facts bearing on the natural history of his native island, which could boast of no more truly patriotic son. At the meeting of the British Association, at Cork, he read an elaborate report on the _Fauna of Ireland_, since published _in extenso_ in the Association _Transactions_; and it was his intention to communicate a continuation of that report at the Belfast meeting. He did not confine his inquiries to Irish subjects, but added considerably to the natural history of several parts of England and Scotland; and when Professor Forbes proceeded to the �gean at the invitation of Captain Graves, Mr. Thompson, himself an intimate friend of that distinguished officer, accompanied him, and devoted the short time he was in the Archipelago to zoological observations, since published, chiefly on the migration of birds. His love of ornithology was intense, and the results of his labors in that department are narrated with charming details in the volumes that have been published of his great work on _The Natural History of Ireland_. His name is associated with many discoveries, and numerous species of new creatures have been named after him. His reputation stood equally high on the Continent and in America, and he had been elected an honorary member of several foreign societies. He numbered among his intimate friends and correspondents all the eminent naturalists of the day. His love of the fine arts was second only to his love of science, and for many years he was one of the most active promoters of tasteful pursuits, especially of painting, in Ireland. He was a gentleman of independent means, and of no profession. * * * * * ROBERT REINICK, deservedly the most popular of recent song writers in Germany, died at Dresden early in February. He was born at Dantzic, in 1805, and was educated an artist, but he never painted more than one picture which attained any considerable reputation. His sketches were, however, remarkable for great delicacy of feeling, and of touch, a genial humor and an endless variety of fancy. But it was his songs that first and most widely made him known to the public. Without any surprising features of genius, they were so natural, so replete with true and happy sentiment, and flowed so sweetly and melodiously in a spontaneous beauty of language, that they were every where taken up, and still remain the intimate favorites of the people, but especially of artists, to whose peculiar life and customs many of them are devoted. One of the most pleasing books ever published in Germany, was his _Songs of a Painter_, which was illustrated with designs from all the prominent artists of Düsseldorf. Its appearance made an epoch in the book trade, and introduced the many splendid illustrated works that have succeeded it. It is some years since we read these songs, but their naiveté, tenderness, and frolic humor are still fresh in our memory. Reinick also had a great skill in the writing of story books for children, and illustrating them with his own drawings. One of these, the _Black Aunt_, has been translated into English, and was published in this city some three or four years since. The poet died quite suddenly, and was snatched from a life full of happiness, amid constant artistic activity, and the love of his family, and a boundless circle of friends. All Dresden sorrowed at his death, and his funeral procession seemed to embrace the entire city. * * * * * WILLIAM HENRY OXBERRY, comedian, was the son of the once eminent actor Oxberry, and was born in Brownlow-street, Bloomsbury, on the 21st of April, 1808. He was educated at Merchant Tailors' school; and subsequently studied with an artist and in a lawyer's office. At length he was apprenticed to a surgeon: and was asked by Sir Astley Cooper, during an examination, whether, "when he saw his father convulse the audience with laughter, he felt no ambition to tread in his shoes?" No doubt he did, for he soon after made his essay at the Rawstone-street private theatre, in the character of _Abel Day_, which he performed to the _Captain Careless_ of Mr. F. Matthews. His public commencement was deferred till the 17th March, 1825, for the Olympic, in the part of _Sam Swipes_, in "The High Road to Marriage." He remained not long there, but took a situation under Mr. Leigh Hunt, on the _Examiner_. Shortly afterwards he returned to the stage, and went on a provincial tour, and finally appeared in 1832 at the Strand Theatre, as _Fathom_, in "The Hunchback." Since that period he was seen with credit in turn at every theatre in the metropolis. On the 11th December, 1831, he married Ellen Malcombe Lancaster. He also became manager of the English Opera-House, but was not successful. The loss of his wife was a misfortune, and his subsequent career was not prosperous. He died on the 28th of February. * * * * * The REV. CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON, died at Edinburgh, on the 7th of February, aged seventy. He was best known as the author of _Annals of the English Bible and The History of Irish Literature_. He was educated at Bristol, at the college of which Dr. Ryland was president. He intended in early life to accompany Drs. Carey, Marshman, and Ward, to India, when the Baptist Societies' Mission was established in the east; but being prevented by the state of his health he settled in Edinburgh, where he has for nearly half a century been the respected pastor of a Baptist church. In missionary work, both at home and abroad, he always took deep and active interest. He travelled much through Ireland, and knew well the state of the people. His historical narration of the various attempts to educate the Irish in their own tongue is referred to by all who are engaged in Irish education and missions. He visited Copenhagen many years ago in order to obtain the protection of the Danish Government for the Serampore mission. The king granted him an interview, received him cordially, and granted a charter of incorporation. It is from the Serampore press that the Scriptures first began to be issued in the languages of the east, and the names of Carey and the other superintendents of the Serampore mission are memorable in the records of literature as well as of the church. He published in 1845 the _Annals of the English Bible_, an historical account of the different English translations and editions of the Bible, a work of learning and research, lately reprinted in New-York by the Carters. * * * * * The mother of M. Thiers has expired at Batignolles, where she has long resided on a pension allowed her by her son. M. Thiers was the only child of this woman, although his father had other children by a former marriage, one of whom keeps a restaurant in Paris. * * * * * The some time expected death of THOMAS MOORE occurred on the 26th of February, at Sloperton Cottage, near Devizes. Like Southey and Scott, the British Anacreon had for several years before his decease, quite lost his intelligence, and he lingered in seclusion, and in half slumbering unconsciousness, personally well nigh forgotten by the world. His history is little more than a history of his writings. He was deservedly popular in society, for his amiable qualities, and fascinating manners; he shared the intimacy of the greatest men and greatest writers of his age, more prolific of eminent characters than any other since that of Shakspeare, Raleigh, and Sidney; and dividing his time between the quiet charms of domestic ease, and the smiles of the most elevated classes, he may be said to have been a fortunate and happy man. As a song writer, he was doubtless unrivalled. His versification is exquisitely finished, harmonious, and musically toned. The sense is never obviously sacrificed to the sound; on the contrary, he delighted in that species of antithetical and epigramatic turn, which is generally held to excuse some roughness, and to be scarcely compatible with perfect melody of rhythm. In grace, both of thought and diction, in easy, fluent wit, in melody, in brilliancy of fancy, in warmth (but scarcely depth) of sentiment, and even in purity and simplicity, when he chose to be pure and simple, no one has been superior to Moore; but in grandeur of conception, power of thought, and above all, unity of purpose, and a high aim, he was singularly deficient, and these are necessary to the character, not of a sweet minstrel, but of a great poet. The London _Morning Chronicle_ furnishes a biography of Moore, which we slightly abridge. With him, says the _Chronicle_, is snapped the last tie, save perhaps one, represented by the veteran Rogers, which connects the present generation with the outburst of "all the talents" which signalized the opening of the century. That great kindling of genius--embracing almost all sides of imaginative literature, of criticism and philosophy--is becoming more a thing of history than of fact. Year by year, the lights are going out. Wordsworth was the last extinguished before Moore; and now, to all intents and purposes, the great galaxy which poured such a flood of light on the literature of fifty years ago--which extinguished Rosa Matilda fiction and Delia Cruscan poetry--substituted true criticism for technical carping upon philological points, and established new styles in every branch of the _belles-lettres_--this great constellation may now be said to have disappeared. One of the brightest, if not of the largest stars, has long been obscured, and is now quite put out. The fame of Moore is fairly a matter of discussion. It cannot, we believe, be denied that much of his serious and more ambitious verse, founded on promptings of a more luscious and florid fancy than the present tastes incline to admit, and no inconsiderable portion even of his lyric pieces,--refined to attenuation--are less read and admired than they were a score or thirty years ago. A severer and sterner school of poetry has succeeded--one of deeper feeling and more sober thought; and the representatives of those who revelled in _Lalla Rookh_, and delighted in the strains of Mr. Little, now generally address themselves to more staid and philosophic musings. The _Irish Melodies_, too--exquisite as is their word-music--fanciful as is their conception--delightful as is their playfulness, and touching as is their pathos--even the _Irish Melodies_, we believe are declining in popular estimation. The reasons are obvious. In the first place, the _Irish Melodies_ are not particularly Irish; they have grace, sparkling fancy, delicious feeling; but they are too fine-spun to do the work-a-day duty of popular songs. As literary performances, nine-tenths of Burns's are inferior to Moore's; and all Dibdin's are immeasurably beneath them. Yet the probability is that _When Willie Brewed_, and _Poor Tom Bowling_, will be in the full tide of popularity, where _Rich and Rare_, and _Oh Breathe not His Name_, will be unsung and forgotten. In a certain circle, and among people of a certain reading and appreciation, Moore will live as long as the language; but his genius was delicate and acute rather than catholic and strong. He had a rich play of fancy, but none of the soaring imagination of Shelley or Byron. His mind, in fact, was a first-class second-rate. It had no pretensions to stand in the line of the giants of his time. Brightly fanciful, rather than continuously imaginative--teeming with poetic imagery--loving to sparkle along the floweriest paths, and beneath the balmiest skies--revelling always in fays and flowers--in love, and mingled intellectual and sensual pleasures--playful in the extreme, and always ready to stop to make mirth as joyous and as delightful as the passion--his muse, in his great romantic poems, is the incarnation of a charming Epicureanism; and the mirth and jolity could go a long step further. He had wit, which sparkled as brightly as it could cut deeply; and humor, and sense of the ludicrous, which could be as well, if not more effectually applied to living persons and actual things than to the creations of his own fancy; and accordingly we find him loving to turn from the etherealized voluptuousness of _Loves of the Angels_, or the mystic imaginings of the _Epicurean_, to the sharp and brilliant hittings of political and social squibs--the restless satire with which, in the _Fudge Family_ and hundreds of ephemeral but not the less clever lays, he quizzed his political and literary opponents, abolished the Earl of Mountcashell, or shot stinging shafts through the heart of the Benthamites. It is, indeed, far from probable that Moore's political and satiric poetry, little perhaps as he thought of it at the time, will live after his more ambitious works have sunk into that chronic state of classicism, in which books are labelled with an excellent character, and shelved--turned into the category of works without which no gentleman's library is complete, and doomed, not to actual obscurity, but to honorable retirement. The last of his political squibs and short poems were given to the world in the columns of the _Morning Chronicle_; and referred principally to the earlier struggles of the Anti-Corn Law League--the verses having in most cases been suggested by pasting political events. Thomas Moore died at the ripe age of seventy-two. He was born on the 28th of May, 1780, in Angier-street, Dublin, where his father, a strict Roman Catholic, carried on a grocery and spirit business. As a child, he is said to have been remarkable for personal beauty; but his appearance in after life hardly carried out the promise of infancy. He was short, with a heavy, expressive, but not handsome face, which, however, lightened up wonderfully when conversing or singing his own ballads. He was educated at Dublin, and one of big first noted peculiarities was a fondness and a talent for private theatricals. Taking advantage of the boon, as it was then considered, the young Roman Catholic was entered at Trinity College. He could not, of course, obtain a degree; but some English verses tendered at an examination, in lieu of the usual Latin composition, procured a copy of the _Travels of Anacharsis_, as a reward. The wild times of the Irish rebellion were approaching, and the poet was naturally to be found in the ranks led by the Emmetts and Arthur O'Connor; but his treasonable lucubrations, though, as his own sister remarked, "rather strong," were passed over without any measures against the enthusiastic young champion of liberty. Politics, however, were by no means the only subject of his muse. At the age of fourteen he published poetry in a Dublin magazine, and afterwards composed many semi-burlesque pieces for private representation. In his twentieth year, giving up republicanism for ever, Moore came to London to study at the Middle Temple, and publish his translations, or rather paraphrases, of _Anacreon_. As may be imagined, he attended much more to the Greek than to Coke upon Lyttleton, and permission, obtained through the friendship of Lord Moira, to dedicate the work to the Prince Regent, was the means of his introduction to those elevated circles in which he was afterwards to move and shine. His _Anacreon_ was highly successful, and was succeeded, in 1801, by _Poems and Songs, by Thomas Little_. Whatever objections may be raised by the present generation to either of these works, there can be no doubt of their vivid play of fancy, their singular grace, even when verging on improprieties, and their exquisite melody of versification. His translations of the _Old Greek Lover_, and of _Women and Wine_, are probably the finest and richest versions of these often rendered songs in the English language--always excepting the rough but thoroughly racy version of the last, by quaint old Mr. Donne. In the days of the regency, poets came in for patronage, and Mr. Moore, made registrar to the Court of Admiralty at Bermuda--as singularly appropriate an appointment as some we have seen in our own day--went out to the islands, appointed a deputy, took a glance at the United States, and came home again. He then published _Sketches of Travel and Society beyond the Atlantic_--a satiric work in heroic verse, vigorously written, but politically evincing a miserable short-sightedness. Soon afterwards, a savage review in the _Edinburgh_, of a republication of _Juvenile Songs, &c._, led to the celebrated rencontre between Moore and Jeffrey, at Hampstead, when the great critic, as Byron asserted, stood valiantly up: "When Little's leadless pistol met his eye And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by." The affair was ultimately arranged, mainly through the intervention of Mr. Rogers, and at his house Moore shortly afterwards made his first acquaintance with Byron and Campbell. The long and affectionate intimacy between Moore and the author of _Childe Harold_, we need here only allude to. Moore had about this time married. His wife was a Miss Dyke, a woman, of strong sense and character, as well as great beauty and amiability. Their children are all dead. A couple of political satires of no great merit--one setting forth a sober and earnest panegyric upon ignorance--were followed by the famous _Two-penny Post Bag_, a bundle of rollicking satire and humor. It made a great hit. Not so its author's next venture, a farce called the _Blue Stocking_, damned at the Lyceum. Moore's intimacy with Byron and Hunt was broken off by the outspoken tone of the _Liberal_, and especially by the _Vision of Judgment_. Moore thought his friends had gone too far. What would Carlton House say! For if, as Byron said, "Little Tommy dearly loved a lord," with how much more affection did he worship a prince of the blood royal? The _Melodies_ were his next, and perhaps most popular compositions. Charming as they are, and exquisitely finished as is their lyrical workmanship, we doubt whether they have the stamina and heart-rooted earnestness, which are requisite to make songs immortal. Only the strongest heart and the manliest brain produce offspring to suit all tastes and to last all time. It was in 1812 that Moore determined to write an Indian poem. Mr. Perry, of the _Morning Chronicle_, accompanied the poet to the Messrs. Longman, and through his intervention the great sum of 3,000 guineas was settled on as the price of a piece of which not one word was yet written. Moore then retired to Mayfield Cottage, a desolate place in Derbyshire, and after a long and hard struggle with a coquettish muse--after a three years' retirement--he sent forth _Lalla Rookh_. Its success was immense; the poem ran rapidly through several editions, and Moore's fame stood upon a higher and surer pedestal than ever. The tales were the triumph of poetic lusciousness; but not a few old judges stigmatized their taste by preferring Fadladeen and his criticisms, even to the Fireworshippers, or the tribulations of the Peri. We need hardly say that the judgment of these tough critics has now a far greater number of adherents than it once commanded. After a continental tour, Moore wrote the clever and popular _Fudge Family_. In the following year he met Byron in Italy, and then the latter intrusted to him his memoirs for publication. These memoirs Moore sold to Murray for two thousand guineas; but, as is well known and a good deal regretted, the purchase money was refunded, and the papers regained, and destroyed. Pecuniary difficulties connected with the misconduct of his Bermuda deputy, about this time, compelled Moore to seek a temporary refuge in Paris, and there he led a pleasant social life, such as he loved, and composed the _Loves of the Angels_, which is not much more than an elaborate and carefully wrought repetition of all his previous love-and-flower poetry. The whole thing is dreamy, lulling, and beautiful, but vague and misty. The words tinkle like falling fountains, and the essence of the closing fancy floats about one like perfume; but this enervating species of composition is far from high or true poetry, and accordingly the work is now far oftener alluded to than it is read. In Paris he occupied the same hotel for a long time with his intimate friend Washington Irving. In 1825 Moore paid a visit to Scott, who pronounced the Irish melodist the "prettiest warbler" he had ever heard. One evening Scott and his guest visited the theatre at Edinburgh. Soon after their unmarked entrance, the attention of the audience, which had been engrossed by the Duchess of St. Albans, was directed towards the new comers; and, according to a newspaper report, copied and published by Mr. Moore in one of his last prefaces, considerable excitement ensued. "Eh!" exclaimed a man in the pit, "eh, yon's Sir Walter, wi' Lockhart and his wife; and wha's the wee body wi' the pawkie een? Wow, but it's Tarn Moore, just." "Scott, Scott! Moore, Moore!" immediately resounded through the house. Scott would not rise; Moore did, and bowed several times, with his hand on his heart. Scott afterwards acknowledged the plaudits of his countrymen; and the orchestra, during the rest of the evening, played alternately Scotch and Irish airs. Soon after this period, Moore was established, by the kind offices of his old and stanch friend the Marquis of Lansdowne, in Sloperton Cottage, where he passed the remainder of his days, and where he ended them. It was here that he commenced his career as a biographer, and produced successively the memoirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Lord Byron, and Sheridan. The two latter are well known and highly appreciated. It was in the previous year that the poet first came out as a prose writer in the _Memoirs of Captain Rock_, a bitter and unfair account of--or rather commentary on--the English government of Ireland, and a curious instance of warped and twisted views in a man of the world like Moore, almost unavoidable in an Irishman writing of his country. His next serious work--he continued his squibs and sparkles of occasional verse--was the _Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion_--in which he attempted to show that the doctrines and practises of the Roman Catholic Church date from the apostolic period. The last of his prose works, and that which has attained a greater sale, we believe, than any of them, was the romance of _The Epicurean_. Here Moore's style, always too florid, is occasionally redeemed by passages of eloquence and natural feeling. There is much out-of-the-way learning in the book, but a pompous and cumbrous ornament overlays every thing. The book had great success, but of what Mr. Carlyle calls the "wind-bag" nature. The wind inside was very highly perfumed, and sighed with very pleasing murmurs, but it was only wind, and, as such, will ooze out presently, and the Epicurean bag will be little regarded. From this time political and social squibs were the only literary occupations to which Mr. Moore devoted himself until, gradually and fitfully mental darkness came down on him. Of critical estimates of Moore, we have seen none to which we more perfectly agree, than one (sometimes attributed to Richard H. Dana, but) written by Professor Edward T. Channing, for the _North American Review_ soon after that Review was established. The best edition of Moore's works ever published in this country, is the very beautiful one in octavo, from the press of the Appletons, embracing all the revisions, introductions, notes, &c., of the author's recent ten volume edition, printed in London. * * * * * The well-known artist, SAMUEL PROUT, died in London on the 10th of February. The _Athenæum_ remarks that he was long and popularly known by a style of Art which he may be said to have originated,--and to the influence of his example may be ascribed the distinctive character and the successes of the English school of painters of architectural subjects. Born at Plymouth about the year 1784, like his townsmen distinguished in art, he owed little to the patronage of his native town, unless their share in the praises which he ultimately commanded may be counted to them as encouragement. In the metropolis his first patron, was Mr. Palser, the printseller, who used to take all his water color drawings at low prices, and had a ready sale for them. When Mr. Prout had arrived at distinction, he never omitted grateful mention of the advantages he had derived from the acquaintance and transactions. Mr. Prout early gained the notice of the late Mr. Ackermann; and the many drawing-books for learners, and other prints which he undertook for that gentleman, soon gave currency to his name. His transcripts of Gothic architecture at home it is superfluous to commend; and when the allied armies had made it safe to venture to the Continent, he was among the earliest of the English to travel there. His love of the picturesque was gratified amid the new and remarkable combinations of form which met his eye at Nürnberg and in many of the adjacent cities. He was among the first English artists to add to what had been already made known of Venice by Canaletto. Nor must it be forgotten that he was among the first when Senefelder's newly discovered process was imported to try his hand at it. The powers of the art of Lithography, though its processes may have been improved and amplified since,--were never better exhibited than in Mr. Prout's broad and vigorous touch. The _Landscape Annual_ is another record of his powers. Other books of the class testify to his unwearied industry and graphic skill. For many years suffering from ill-health, Mr. Prout, in convalescent intervals, labored cheerfully at the vocation which he had so illustrated in better times. * * * * * The venerable Dr. MURRAY, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, died at his residence in that city on the 25th of February. The death of this excellent prelate, whose life has been a model of Christian forbearance in a country where such an example is invaluable, the journals say is deeply regretted by moderate men of all the religious denominations of the country. * * * * * Dr. M'NICHOLAS, titular Bishop of Achonry, died about the middle of February. He was regarded as one of the ripest scholars among the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Ireland, and belonged to the advanced school of "educationists." * * * * * The London papers announce the death of Mr. HOLCROFT, son of the more famous Thomas Holcroft, the dramatist,--who was for many years connected with the press, and, perhaps, in that capacity most prominently known as the musical and dramatic critic of one of the leading daily papers. * * * * * M. BENCHOT, the editor of Voltaire's works, lately died at Paris. He devoted thirty years to studies preparatory to the execution of his undertaking, which he finally completed in 1834. He also published in 1811 a laborious work on French bibliography, which is still a standard manual. * * * * * JOHANN KOLLAR, Professor of Slavonian antitiquities at the University of Vienna, died on January 24th, last, in his sixtieth year. He was born at Mursotz, in Hungary, and was educated as a Protestant clergyman; he was appointed Professor in 1849. He contributed greatly to the intellectual movement of recent years among the Austrian and Prussian Slavonians. His literary reputation was first established by _Slavy dcera_ (The Daughter of Fame) a lyrical epic poem, published in 1824. His ideal end was the creation of an independent Slavonic literature, which should preserve his race from the ever increasing influence of German culture, by which he foresaw that it must be absorbed, unless it could be aroused to a development strictly its own. During the Hungarian war he remained an adherent of the Austrian side. He leaves two nearly finished works; the one is _Slavonic Italy in Early Times_; the other is upon Slavonic Mythology, and is entitled _The Gods of Retra_. They are written in the Bohemian or Tschechic language. * * * * * The widow of VON KOTZEBUE, the author of _The Stranger_ and _Pizarro_ (the former of which still keeps possession of the German provincial stage), who was assassinated at Mannheim by the student Sand, died at Heidelberg, on the 4th of February, at the age of 73. She was Kotzebue's third wife, and had lived for many years in strict retirement. * * * * * BARON KRUDENER, Russian Minister in Stockholm since 1844, died early in February. * * * * * M. LUCAS DE MONTIGNY, the adopted son of Mirabeau, died in Paris, early in February. On his death-bed Mirabeau took him in his arms, and called on his friends to protect him. He left him all his papers and correspondence, and some years ago M. Lucas compiled from them eight volumes of _Mémoires Biographiques_ of _le grand homme_. He naturally entertained a profound veneration for the memory of his benefactor; and, it is said, spent not less than 100,000 francs ($20,000), of his private fortune, in buying up letters and documents calculated to cast dishonor upon it. These papers he of course destroyed, and it does not appear that he left behind him any calculated to throw new light on the character or career of the tribune. * * * * * Belgian journals announce the death of a M. SMITS, a great compiler of statistics, and a poet: two vocations rather dissimilar. He wrote three tragedies, called _Marie de Bourgogne_, _Jeanne de Flandre_, _Elfrida, ou la Vengeance_, which were applauded by his countrymen; also several poems on different subjects, and especially on the rising of the Spaniards and Greeks for liberty. * * * * * DR. EYLERT, first Bishop of Prussia, died a short time since at Potsdam, aged eighty-two. He was the author of several works on theology, and on the sciences. For a long time he was a member of the Ministry of Public Worship and Instruction. * * * * * VICTOR FALCK, a distinguished French ornithologist, has just died at Stockholm. _Ladies Fashions for April._ [Illustration: LA VIVANDIERE] The spring has brought to the several departments of fashion the usual amount of changes, but at our last advices there were many points of some consequence undecided, as for example, the length of dresses, which some authorities make greater than ever in recent years, and others less, by a few inches. Among the chief novelties we notice _La Vivandiere_, which, with various styles of the _gilet_, or waist, has been introduced into New-York by Bulpin of Broadway. The waistcoat will remain in vogue. The Parisiennes, who had begun to turn it into ridicule, still patronize it; and the provinciales need not fear to adopt it. But some conditions are necessary in order to render it becoming and stylish. The figure of the wearer should be thin, tall, and sylph-like; all others should avoid the style. Rounded, white shoulders appear to much more advantage in toilette Pompadour than in toilet Louis XIII. The corsage Louis XIII., and the waistcoat accord so well together that they are scarcely ever separated. However, some bodies a basquines are made to be worn without the waistcoat. They are then trimmed with velvet or ribbon bands, which cross the chest and fasten with buttons; the chemisette being composed of frills of English point or Valenciennes, separated by embroidered insertion. [Illustration: INFANT'S STRAW BEDFORD HAT.] [Illustration: THE BATEMAN CAP.] [Illustration: THE CLEMENTINE RIDING HAT.] [Illustration: THE ST. NICHOLAS CAP.] [Illustration: BOY'S STRAW BRUSSELS HAT.] [Illustration: MISSES LEGHORN HATS.] The recent fine bright weather has brought out many very elegant spring bonnets. The most fashionable are of Leghorn, which, during the approaching season, is likely to recover the favor it enjoyed some years ago. The shape of new Leghorn bonnets is elegant and becoming--the brim is wide and circular, and the crown gently sloping backwards. The _bavolet_ at the back is made of the Leghorn itself, instead of being composed of silk or ribbon, as in bonnets of straw or other materials. The favorite style of trimming Leghorns is with fancy straw, tastefully intermingled with velvet or ribbon, of some dark rick color. On one side may be placed a small ostrich feather, of the color of the Leghorn, or shaded in the hues of the bird of Paradise. As the season advances, flowers will be employed for trimming these bonnets. Genin has introduced a great variety of new and fanciful styles from the recent Paris modes, for children, and for ladies' riding dresses. They are of Leghorn, felt, and beaver, all of which will be in vogue through April, and they are generally very tasteful and elegant. [Illustration] In the above figure we have a _Promenade or Carriage Costume_, of rich figured silk; the sleeves open at the ends, with under sleeves of white muslin; with a Leghorn bonnet, trimmed with fancy straw and violet-colored ribbon, tastefully intermingled; on one side a Leghorn colored feather, waving spirally. Under-trimming, loops of narrow ribbon in various shades of violet; and gloves of pale yellow kid. The _taffetas d'Athenes_ is appropriate for ball dresses, and obtains generally; the ground is white, blue, or pale pink, brochees in silk of all colors in wreaths, or bouquets, forming undulating festoons round the bottoms of the triple skirts. The upper skirt is flowered over in small designs to the waist, as is also the body and sleeves. The _taffetas flore_ has a white ground, covered with small bouquets of wild field flowers. The _taffetas rose_ has wreaths of large roses, brochees in white silk round each skirt, and rose-buds over the top skirt and body. This toilet should be accompanied with a coiffure, of a wreath of white roses, fixed behind by a bow and long floating ends of satin ribbon, forming an elegant evening toilette for a bride. The manteaux, with hoods, continue in fashion; they are generally made of cloth. The mantelet-echarpe has been cited for its elegance and taste. It is more dressy than the manteaux, marking the waist, and descending in front in square ends. Sorties de bal, are very fanciful. Some of white cachemire, trimmed with beads, silk, and jet, with magnificent lace or deep fringe. Others of white or pink satin, edged with ruches of guipure lace, or rouleaux of marabouts. They have hoods and large Venetian sleeves. 
36131	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections.) THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE Of Literature, Art, and Science. Vol. III. NEW-YORK, JUNE 1, 1851. No. III. HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, "FRANK FORESTER." [Illustration] We doubt whether the wood-engravers of this country have ever produced a finer portrait than the above of the author of "The Brothers," "Cromwell," "Marmaduke Wyvil," "The Roman Traitor," "The Warwick Woodlands," "Field Sports," "Fish and Fishing," &c., &c. It is from one of the most successful daguerreotypes of Brady. HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT is the eldest son of the late Hon. and Rev. William Herbert, Dean of Manchester, and of the Hon. Letitia Allen. His father was the second son of the second Earl of Carnarvon, who was of the nearest younger branch of the house of Pembroke. He was a member of Parliament in the earlier part of his life, and being a lawyer in Doctors' Commons was largely employed on the part of American shipmasters previous to the war of 1812. At a later period he took orders, became Dean of Manchester, was distinguished as a botanist, and as the author of many eminent works, especially "Attila," an epic poem of great power and learning. He died about three years ago. His mother was the second daughter of Joshua, second Viscount Allen, of Kildare, Ireland,--closely connected with the house of Leinster. Mr. Herbert was born in London on the seventh of April, 1807; he was educated at home under a private tutor till 1819, and then sent to a private school near Brighton, kept by the Rev. Dr. Hooker, at which he remained one year he was then transferred to Eton, and was at that school from April, 1820, till the summer of 1825, when he left for the university, and entered Caius College, Cambridge, in October. Here he obtained two scholarships and several prizes,--though not a hard-reading man, and spending much of his time in field sports--and he graduated in the winter of 1829-30, with a distinguished reputation for talents and scholarship. In November, 1831, he sailed from Liverpool for New York, and for the last twenty years he has resided nearly all the time in this city and at his place near Newark in New Jersey, called the Cedars. [Illustration] In 1832, in connection with the late A. D. Patterson, he started _The American Monthly Magazine_, nearly one half the matter of which was composed by him. After the first year Mr. Patterson retired from it, and during twelve months it was conducted by Mr. Herbert alone. On the conclusion of the second year it was sold to Charles F. Hoffman, Mr. Herbert continuing to act as a joint editor. At the commencement of the fourth year Park Benjamin being associated in the editorship, it was contemplated to introduce party politics into the work, and Mr. Herbert in consequence declined further connection with it. [Illustration] By this time Mr. Herbert had made a brilliant reputation as a scholar and as an author. In the _American Monthly_ he had printed the first chapters of _The Brothers, a Tale of the Fronde_, and the entire novel was published by the Harpers in 1834, and so well received that the whole edition was sold in a few weeks. In 1836 and 1837 he edited _The Magnolia_, the first annual ever printed in America on the system of entire originality both of the literary matter, and of the embellishments, which were all executed by American engravers from American designs. A considerable portion of the matter for both years was furnished by Mr. Herbert. In 1837 the Harpers published his second novel, _Cromwell_, which did not sell so rapidly as _The Brothers_, though generally praised by the reviewers. It 1840 it was reprinted by Colburn in London, and was eminently successful. In 1843 he published in New-York and London his third novel, _Marmaduke Wyvil, or the Maid's Revenge_, a story of the English civil wars, and in 1848 the most splendid of his romances, _The Roman Traitor_, founded on the history of Cataline, a work which must be classed with the most remarkable of those specimens of literary art in which it has been attempted to illustrate classical scenes, characters, and manners. In romantic fiction, besides the above works, Mr. Herbert has written for the magazines of this country and Great Britain tales and sketches sufficient to make twenty to thirty stout volumes. The subjects of his best performances have been drawn from the middle ages and from southern Europe, and they display besides very eminent capacities for the historical novel, and a familiarity with the institutions of chivalry and with contemporary manners hardly equaled in any writer of the English language. In 1839 Mr. Herbert commenced in the New-York _Turf Register_ a series of papers, under the signature of "Frank Forester," from which have grown _My Shooting Box, The Warwick Woodlands, Field Sports of the United States and British Provinces_, and _Fish and Fishing in the United States and British Provinces_--works which by the general consent of the sporting world are second to none in their department, in any of the qualities which should distinguish this sort of writing. The principal distinction between these and all other sporting works lies in this, that such works in general treat only of game in the field and flood, and the modes of killing it, while these are in great part natural histories, containing minute and carefully digested accounts of every specie of game, beast, bird, and fish, compiled from Audubon, Wilson, Giraud, Godman, Agassiz, De Kay, and other authorities, besides long disquisitions into their habits, times of migration, breeding, &c., from the personal observation and experience of the author. Any person is at once enabled by them to distinguish between any two even closely allied species, and to adopt the proper nomenclature, with a knowledge of the reason for it. The sporting precepts are admitted, throughout the western country especially, to be superior to all others, as well as the papers relating to the breaking and the kennel and field management of dogs, &c. The same may be said of what he has written of guns and gunnery. Mr. Herbert has hunted, shot, and fished during the last twenty years in every state of the Union, from Maine to Maryland, south of the great lakes, and from below Quebec to the Sault St. Marie northward of them. Not having visited the southern or south western states, the accounts of sporting in those regions are collected from the writings or oral communications of their best sportsmen, and on these points much valuable new information, especially as to the prairie shooting and the sports of the Rocky Mountains, will be contained in the new edition of the _Field Sports_ to appear in the coming autumn. Besides his contributions to romantic and sporting literature, Mr. Herbert has written largely in criticism, he has done much as a poet, and his capacities in classical scholarship have been illustrated by some of the finest examples of Greek and Latin translation that have appeared in our time. In the aggregate his works would now make scarcely less than fifty octavo volumes. As we have intimated, the portrait at the beginning of this article is remarkably good. Mr. Herbert is about five feet ten high, of athletic habits, and an untiring and fast walker; fond, of course, of all field sports, especially horsemanship and shooting, and priding himself upon killing as much if not more game than any other gentleman in the country out of New-York. [Illustration] TRENTON FALLS [Illustration] In a story called _Edith Linsey_, written by Mr. WILLIS, soon after he left college, occurs the following description of Trenton Falls: "Trenton Falls is rather a misnomer. I scarcely know what you would call it, but the wonder of nature which bears the name is a tremendous torrent, whose bed, for several miles, is sunk fathoms deep into the earth--a roaring and dashing stream, so far below the surface of the forest in which it is lost, that you would think, as you come suddenly upon the edge of its long precipice, that it was a river in some inner world (coiled within ours, as we in the outer circle of the firmament,) and laid open by some Titanic throe that had cracked clear asunder the crust of this 'shallow earth.' The idea is rather assisted if you happen to see below you, on its abysmal shore, a party of adventurous travellers; for, at that vast depth, and in contrast with the gigantic trees and rocks, the same number of well-shaped pismires, dressed in the last fashions, and philandering upon your parlor floor, would be about of their apparent size and distinctness. "They showed me at Eleusis the well by which Proserpine ascends to the regions of day on her annual visit to the plains of Thessaly--but with the _genius loci_ at my elbow in the shape of a Greek girl as lovely as Phryne, my memory reverted to the bared axle of the earth in the bed of this American river, and I was persuaded (looking the while at the _feronière_ of gold sequins on the Phidian forehead of my Katinka) that supposing Hades in the centre of the earth, you are nearer to it by some fathoms at Trenton. I confess I have had, since my first descent into those depths, an uncomfortable doubt of the solidity of the globe--how the deuse it can hold together with such a crack in its bottom! "It was a night to play Endymion, or do any Tomfoolery that could be laid to the charge of the moon, for a more omnipresent and radiant atmosphere of moonlight never sprinkled the wilderness with silver. It was a night in which to wish it might never be day again--a night to be enamored of the stars, and bid God bless them like human creatures on their bright journey--a night to love in, to dissolve in--to do every thing but what night is made for--sleep! Oh heaven! when I think how precious is life in such moments; how the aroma--the celestial bloom and flower of the soul--the yearning and fast-perishing enthusiasm of youth--waste themselves in the solitude of such nights on the senseless and unanswering air; when I wander alone, unloving and unloved, beneath influences that could inspire me with the elevation of a seraph, were I at the ear of a human creature that could summon forth and measure my limitless capacity of devotion--when I think this, and feel this, and so waste my existence in vain yearnings--I could extinguish the divine spark within me like a lamp on an unvisited shrine, and thank Heaven for an assimilation to the animals I walk among! And that is the substance of a speech I made to Job as a sequitur of a well-meant remark of his own, that 'it was a pity Edith Linsey was not there.' He took the clause about the 'animals' to himself, and I made an apology for the same a year after. We sometimes give our friends, quite innocently, such terrible knocks in our rhapsodies! "Most people talk of the _sublimity_ of Trenton, but I have haunted it by the week together for its mere loveliness. The river, in the heart of that fearful chasm, is the most varied and beautiful assemblage of the thousand forms and shapes of running water that I know in the world. The soil and the deep-striking roots of the forest terminate far above you, looking like a black rim on the inclosing precipices; the bed of the river and its sky-sustaining walls are of solid rock, and, with the tremendous descent of the stream--forming for miles one continuous succession of falls and rapids--the channel is worn into curves and cavities which throw the clear waters into forms of inconceivable brilliancy and variety. It is a sort of half twilight below, with here and there a long beam of sunshine reaching down to kiss the lip of an eddy or form a rainbow over a fall, and the reverberating and changing echoes:-- "Like a ring of bells whose sound the wind still alters," maintain a constant and most soothing music, varying at every step with the varying phase of the current. Cascades of from twenty to thirty feet, over which the river flies with a single and hurrying leap (not a drop missing from the glassy and bending sheet), occur frequently as you ascend; and it is from these that the place takes its name. But the falls, though beautiful, are only peculiar from the dazzling and unequaled rapidity with which the waters come to the leap. If it were not for the leaf which drops wavering down into the abysm from trees apparently painted on the sky, and which is caught away by the flashing current as if the lightning had suddenly crossed it, you would think the vault of the steadfast heavens a flying element as soon. The spot in that long gulf of beauty that I best remember is a smooth descent of some hundred yards, where the river in full and undivided volume skims over a plane as polished as a table of scagliola, looking, in its invisible speed, like one mirror of gleaming but motionless crystal. Just above, there is a sudden turn in the glen which sends the water like a catapult against the opposite angle of the rock, and, in the action of years, it has worn out a cavern of unknown depth, into which the whole mass of the river plunges with the abandonment of a flying fiend into hell, and, reappearing like the angel that has pursued him, glides swiftly but with divine serenity on its way. (I am indebted for that last figure to Job, who travelled with a Milton in his pocket, and had a natural redolence of 'Paradise Lost' in his conversation.) "Much as I detest water in small quantities (to drink), I have a hydromania in the way of lakes, rivers, and waterfalls. It is, by much, the _belle_ in the family of the elements. _Earth_ is never tolerable unless disguised in green. _Air_ is so thin as only to be visible when she borrows drapery of water; and _Fire_ is so staringly bright as to be unpleasant to the eyesight; but water! soft, pure, graceful water! there is no shape into which you can throw her that she does not seem lovelier than before. She can borrow nothing of her sisters. Earth has no jewels in her lap so brilliant as her own spray pearls and emeralds; Fire has no rubies like what she steals from the sunset; Air has no robes like the grace of her fine-woven and ever-changing drapery of silver. A health (in wine!) to WATER! [Illustration] "Who is there that did not love some stream in his youth? Who is there in whose vision of the past there does not sparkle up, from every picture of childhood, a spring or a rivulent woven through the darkened and torn woof of first affections like a thread of unchanged silver? How do you interpret the instinctive yearning with which you search for the river-side or the fountain in every scene of nature--the clinging unaware to the river's course when a truant in the fields in June--the dull void you find in every landscape of which it is not the ornament and the centre? For myself, I hold with the Greek: "Water is the first principle of all things: we were made from it and we shall be resolved into it."" [Illustration] Of subsequent visits to this loveliest of spots, years after, Mr. Willis has given descriptions in letters addressed to General Morris for publication in the _Home Journal_, and we are soon to have from Putnam in a beautiful volume all that he has written on the subject, together with notices of the manner in which he enjoyed himself at Mr. Moore's delightful hotel at the Falls, which is represented as farthest of all summer resorts from the turmoil of the world and nearest of all to the gates of Paradise. We borrow from these letters a few characteristic and tempting paragraphs: "I was here twenty years ago, but the fairest things slip easiest out of the memory, and I had half forgotten Trenton. To tell the truth, I was a little ashamed, to compare the faded and shabby picture of it in my mind with the reality before me, and if the waters of the Falls had been, by any likelihood, the same that flowed over when I was here before, I should have looked them in the face, I think, with something of the embarrassment with which one meets, half-rememberingly, after years of separation, the ladies one has vowed to love for ever. "The peculiarity of Trenton Falls, I fancy, consists a good deal in the space in which you are compelled to see them. You walk a few steps from the hotel through the wood, and come to a descending staircase of a hundred steps, the different bends of which are so over-grown with wild shrubbery, that you cannot see the ravine till you are fairly down upon its rocky floor. Your path hence, up to the first Fall, is along a ledge cut out of the base of the cliff that overhangs the torrent, and when you go to the foot of the descending sheet, you find yourself in very close quarters with a cataract--rocky walls all round you--and the appreciation of power and magnitude, perhaps, somewhat heightened by the confinement of the place--as a man would have a much more realizing sense of a live lion, shut up with him in a basement parlor, than he would of the same object, seen from an elevated and distant point of view. "The usual walk (through this deep cave open at the top) is about half a mile in length, and its almost subterranean river, in that distance, plunges over four precipices in exceedingly beautiful cascades. On the successive rocky terraces between the falls, the torrent takes every variety of rapids and whirlpools, and, perhaps, in all the scenery of the world, there is no river, which, in the same space, presents so many of the various shapes and beauties of running and falling water. The Indian name of the stream (the Kanata, which means the _amber river_) expresses one of its peculiarities, and, probably from the depth of shade cast by the two dark and overhanging walls 'twixt which it flows, the water is everywhere of a peculiarly rich lustre and color, and, in the edges of one or two of the cascades, as yellow as gold. Artists, in drawing this river, fail, somehow, in giving the impression of _deep-down-itude_ which is produced by the close approach of the two lofty walls of rock, capped by the overleaning woods, and with the sky apparently resting, like a ceiling, upon the leafy architraves.... If there were truly, as the poets say figuratively, "worlds _within_ worlds," this would look as if an earthquake had cracked open the outer globe, and exposed, through the yawning fissure, one of the rivers of the globe below--the usual underground level of "down among the dead men," being, as you walk upon its banks, between you and the daylight. "Considering the amount of surprise and pleasure which one feels in a walk up the ravine at Trenton, it is remarkable how little one finds to say about it, the day after. Is it that mere scenery, without history, is enjoyable without being suggestive, or, amid the tumult of the rushing torrent at one's feet, is the milk of thought too much agitated for the cream to rise? I fancied yesterday, as I rested on the softest rock I could find at the upper end of the ravine, that I should tumble you out a letter to-day, with ideas pitching forth like saw-logs over a waterfall; but my memory has nothing in it to-day but the rocks and rapids it took in--the talent wrapped in its napkin of delight remaining in unimproved _statu-quo_-sity. One certainly gets the impression, while the sight and hearing are so overwhelmed, that one's mind is famously at work, and that we shall hear from it to-morrow; but it is Jean Paul, I think, who says that 'the mill makes the most noise when there is no grist in the hopper.' "We have had the full of the moon and a cloudless sky for the last two or three nights, and of course we have walked the ravine till the 'small hours,' seeing with wonder the transforming effects of moonlight and its black shadows on the falls and precipices. I have no idea (you will be glad to know) of trying to reproduce these sublimities on paper--at least not with my travelling stock of verbs and adjectives. To 'sandwich the moon in a muffin,' one must have time and a ladder of dictionaries. But one or two effects struck me which perhaps are worth briefly naming, and I will throw into the lot a poetical figure, which you may use in your next song.... "The fourth Fall, (or the one that is flanked by the ruins of a saw-mill) is, perhaps, a hundred feet across; and its curve over the upper rock and its break upon the lower one, form two parallel lines, the water everywhere falling the same distance with the evenness of an artificial cascade. The stream not being very full, just now, it came over, in twenty or thirty places, thicker than elsewhere; and the effect, from a distance, as the moonlight lay full upon it, was that of twenty or thirty immovable marble columns connected by transparent curtains of falling lace, and with bases in imitation of foam. Now it struck me that this might suggest a new and fanciful order of architecture, suitable at least to the structure of green-houses, the glass roofs of which are curved over and slope to the ground with very much the contour of a waterfall.... "Subterranean as this foaming river looks by day, it looks like a river in cloud-land by night. The side of the ravine which is in shadow, is one undistinguishable mass of black, with its wavy upper edge in strong relief against the sky, and, as the foaming stream catches the light from the opposite and moonlit side, it is outlined distinctly on its bed of darkness, and seems winding its way between hills of clouds, half black, half luminous. Below, where all is deep shadow except the river, you might fancy it a silver mine laid open to your view amid subterranean darkness by the wand of an enchanter, or (if you prefer a military trope, my dear General), a long white plume laid lengthwise between the ridges of a cocked hat." [Illustration] NEW PROOF OF THE EARTH'S ROTATION. "The earth does move, notwithstanding," whispered Galileo, leaving the dungeon of the Inquisition: by which he meant his friends to understand, that if the earth did move, the fact would remain so in spite of his punishment. But a less orthodox assembly than the conclave of Cardinals might have been staggered by the novelty of the new philosophy. According to Laplace, the apparent diurnal phenomena of the heavens would be the same either from the revolution of the sun or the earth; and more than one reason made strongly in favor of the prevalent opinion that the earth, not the sun, was stationary. First, it was most agreeable to the impression of the senses; and next, to disbelieve in the fixity of the solid globe, was not only to eject from its pride of place our little planet, but to disturb the long-cherished sentiment that we ourselves are the centre--the be-all and end-all of the universe. However, the truth will out; and this is its great distinction from error, that while every new discovery adds to its strength, falsehood is weakened and at last driven from the field. That the earth revolves round the sun, and rotates on its polar axis, have long been the settled canons of our system. But the rotation of the earth has been rendered _visible_ by a practical demonstration, which has drawn much attention in Paris and London, and is beginning to excite interest in this country. The inventor is M. Foucault; and the following description has been given of the mode of proof: "At the centre of the dome of the Panthéon a fine wire is attached, from which a sphere of metal, four or five inches in diameter, is suspended so as to hang near the floor of the building. This apparatus is put in vibration after the manner of a pendulum. Under and concentrical with it is placed a circular table, some twenty feet in diameter, the circumference of which is divided into degrees, minutes, &c., and the divisions numbered. Now, supposing the earth to have the diurnal motion imputed to it, and which explains the phenomena of day and night, the plane in which this pendulum vibrates will not be affected by this motion, but the table, over which the pendulum is suspended, will continually change its position, in virtue of the diurnal motion, so as to make a complete revolution round its centre. Since, then, the table thus revolves, and the pendulum which vibrates over it does not revolve, the consequence is, that a line traced upon the table by a point projecting from the bottom of the ball will change its direction relatively to the table from minute to minute and from hour to hour, so that if such point were a pencil, and that paper were spread upon the table, the course formed by this pencil would form a system of lines radiating from the centre of the table. The practised eye of a correct observer, especially if aided by a proper optical instrument, may actually see the motion which the table has in common with the earth, under the pendulum between two successive vibrations. It is, in fact, apparent that the ball, or rather the point attached to the bottom of the ball, does not return precisely to the same point of the circumference of the table after two successive vibrations. Thus is rendered visible the motion which the table has in common with the earth." Crowds are said to flock daily to the Panthéon to witness this interesting experiment. It has been successfully repeated by Professor Ansted at the Russell Institution, in London, in a manner similar to the experiment at the Panthéon at Paris. The wire, which suspended a weight of twenty-eight pounds, was of the size of the middle C-string of a piano. It was thirty feet long, and vibrated over a graduated table fixed to the floor. The rotation of the table, implying that of the earth on which it rested, was visible in about five minutes, and the wonderful spectacle was presented of the rotation of the room round the pendulum. The experiment excited the astonishment of every beholder, and many eminent scientific gentlemen who were present expressed their great delight in witnessing a phenomenon which they considered the most satisfactory they had witnessed in the whole course of their lives. Although nothing, to minds capable of comprehending it, can add to the force or clearness of the demonstration by which the rotation of the earth has been established, yet even the natural philosopher himself cannot regard the present experiment without feelings of profound interest and satisfaction; and to the great mass, to whom the complicated physical phenomena by which the rotation of the earth has been established are incomprehensible, M. Foucault's very ingenious illustration is invaluable. A correspondent of the Newark _Daily Advertiser_ appears to have anticipated the experiment of M. Foucault, suspending a fifty-six pound weight by a small wire from the rafters of a barn. But however simple and conclusive the illustration, it should be attempted only by scientific men. Professor Sylvester, writing to the _Times_, of experiments made in London, says: "The experiments connected with the practical demonstration of the phenomenon require to be conducted with great care; and some discredit has been brought upon attempts to illustrate it in England by persons who have not taken the necessary precautions to protect the motion from the excentric deviation to which it is liable, and which may, and indeed must, have the effect of causing, in some cases, an apparent failure, and in others a still more unfortunate, because fallacious, success. I believe, from the character of the persons connected with the experiments, that the true phenomenon has been accurately produced and observed in Paris. I doubt whether as much can be said, with entire confidence, of any of the experiments hitherto performed here in London. "Any want of symmetry in the arrangements for the suspension of the wire, or in the centering of the weight, exposure to currents of air, or the tremulous motion occasioned by the passage of vehicles, may operate to cause a phenomenon to be brought about curious enough in itself, as a result of mathematical laws, but quite different from that supposed. The phenomenon of the progression of the apsides of an oval orbit, which is here alluded to, is familiar to all students in mechanics. "It is perfectly absurd for persons unacquainted with mechanical and geometrical science to presume to make the experiment. Indeed, such efforts deserve rather the name of conjuring than of experiment; but in this, as in many other matters of life, it is true that "fools rush in where angels fear to tread." Perhaps the too hasty rush at the experimental verification of Foucault's law may account for some persons in England, whose opinions when given with due deliberation are entitled to respect, having allowed themselves to express doubts (which I understand, however, have been since retracted) as to the truth of the law itself. In Paris there was no difference of opinion among such men as Lamé, Poinsol, Binet, Leonville, Sturm, Chasles, Bruvues, I believe Arago, Hermite, and many others with whom I conversed on the subject, except as to the best mode of making the theory popularly intelligible." Explanations will be necessary from lecturers and others who give imitations of M. Foucault's ingenuity to render it intelligible to those unacquainted with mathematics, or with the laws of gravity and spherical motion. For instance, it will not be readily understood by every one why the pendulum should vibrate in the same plane, and not partake of the earth's rotation in common with the table; but this could be _shown_ with a bullet suspended by a silkworm's thread. Next, the apparent horizontal revolution of the table round its centre will be incomprehensible to many, as representative of its own and the earth's motion round its axis. Doubtless we shall soon have public exhibitions of the demonstration in all our cities. The pendulum is indeed an extraordinary instrument, and has been a useful handmaid to science. We are familiar with it as the time-regulator of our clocks, and the ease with which they may be made to go faster or slower by adjusting its length. But neither this nor the Panthéon elucidation constitutes its sole application. By it the latitude may be approximately ascertained, the density of the earth's strata in different places, and its elliptical eccentricity of figure. The noble Florentine already quoted was its inventor; and it is related of Galileo, while a boy, that he was the first to observe how the height of the vaulted roof of a church might be measured by the times of the vibration of the chandeliers suspended at different altitudes. Were the earth perforated from London to our antipodes, and the air exhausted, a ball dropped through would at the centre acquire a velocity sufficient to carry it to the opposite side, whence it would again descend, and so oscillate forward and backwards from one side of the globe's surface to the other in the manner of a pendulum. Very likely, the Cardinals of the Vatican would deem this heresy, or "flat blasphemy." [Illustration] THE BUTCHERS' LEAP AT MUNICH. A correspondent of the London _Athenæum_, writing from Munich, gives the following account of the festival of the Butchers' Leap in the Fountain: "This strange ceremonial, like the _Schäffler Tanz_, is said to have its origin in the time of the plague. While the Coopers danced with garlands and music through the streets, the Butchers sprang into the fountain in the market-place, to show their fellow-citizens that its water was no longer to be dreaded as poisoned. Perhaps they were the Sanitary Commissioners of those days; and by bathing themselves in the water and dashing it about on the crowd would teach the true means of putting pestilence to flight. "Though the Coopers' Dance takes place only once in seven years, the Butchers' Leap occurs annually, and always on _Fasching Montag_,--the Monday before Shrove Tuesday. I believe the ceremony is of great importance to the trade of the Butchers; as certain privileges granted to them are annually renewed at this time, and in connection with the Leap. These two ceremonies--of the Coopers' Dance and the Butchers' Leap--are now almost the last remains of the picturesque and quaint customs of old Munich. "The Butchers commence proceedings by attending High Mass in St. Peter's Church,--close to the Schrannien Platz, or market-place, in which the fountain is situated. It is a desolate-looking church, this St. Peter's, as seen from without,--old, decaying, and ugly; within, tawdry and--though not desolate and decaying--ugly. From staringly white walls frown down on the spectator torture-pictures, alternating with huge gilt images of sentimental saints in clumsy drapery. The altars are masses of golden clouds and golden cherubs. "Music, as from the orchestra of a theatre rather than from the choir of a church, greeted us as we entered. The Butchers were just passing out. We caught glimpses of scarlet coats; and saw two huge silver flagons, covered with a very panoply of gold and silver medals, borne aloft by pompous officials clothed in scarlet. Having watched the procession--some half-dozen tiny butchers' sons, urchins of five and six years old, with rosy, round faces and chubby hands, mounted on stalwart horses and dressed in little scarlet coats, top-boots, and jaunty green velvet hats--seven butchers' apprentices, the Leapers of the day, also dressed in scarlet and mounted on horseback--the musicians,--the long train of master-butchers and journeymen in long dark cloaks and with huge nosegays in their hats--and the scarlet officials bearing the decorated flagons,--having watched, I say, all these good folk wend their way in long procession up the narrow street leading from the church, and seen them cross the market-place in the direction of the Palace, where they are awaited by the King,--let us look around, and notice the features of the market-place:--for it is, in fact, a quaint old bit of the city, and well worth a glimpse. "If I love the Ludwig Strasse as the most beautiful portion of the new Munich, I almost equally love the Schrannien Platz as about the quaintest part of old Munich. It is long and narrow as a market-place, but wide as a street. The houses are old; many of them very handsome, and rich with ornamental stucco-work,-- 'All garlanded with carven imageries Of fruit and flowers and bunches of knot-grass.' The roofs are steep, red tiled, and perforated with rows of little pent-house windows. The fronts of the houses are of all imaginable pale tints,--stone colors, pinks, greens, greys, and tawnies. Three of the four corners of the market-place are adorned with tall pepper-box towers, with domed roofs and innumerable narrow windows. At one end is the fountain; and in the centre a heavy, but quaint shrine,--a column supporting a gilt figure of the Madonna. The eye wanders down various picturesque streets which open into the market-place; and on one hand, above steep roofs, gaze down the two striking red-brick towers of the _Frauen Kirche_--the cathedral of Munich:--those two red towers which are seen in all views of this city, and which belong as much to Munich as the dome of St. Paul's does to the city of London,--those towers which in the haze of sunset are frequently transformed into violet-tinted columns, or about which in autumn and winter mists cling with a strange dreariness as if they were desolate mountain peaks! "But the quaintest feature of all in the Schrannien Platz is a sort of arcade which runs around it. Here, beneath the low and massy arches, are crowded thick upon each other a host of small shops. What queer, dark little cells they are,--yet how picturesque! Here is a dealer in crucifixes,--next to him a woollen-draper, displaying bright striped woollen goods for the peasants,--then a general dealer, with heaps and bundles and tubs and chests containing every thing most heterogeneous,--and next to him a dealer in pipes. There are bustle and gloom always beneath these heavy low arches,--but they present a glorious bit of picturesque life. There are queer wooden booths, too, along one portion of the Schrannien Platz where it rather narrows, losing its character of market-place, and descending to that of an ordinary street. But the booths do not degenerate in their picturesque character. The earthenware booths--of which there are several--are truly delicious. Such rows and piles of dark green, orange, ruddy chocolate-brown, sea-green, pale yellow, and deep blue and grey vessels of all forms and sizes--all quaint, all odd--jugs, flagons, pipkins, queer pots with huge lids, queer tripods for which I know no name--things which always seem to me to come out of a witch's kitchen, but by means of which I suspect that my own dinner is cooked every day. All these heaps of crockery lie about the doors, and load the windows of the wooden booths, and line shelves and shelves within the gloom of the little shops themselves. When I first came here these old crockery shops were a more frequent study to me than any thing else in the old town. "We ascended a steep, narrow staircase leading out of this arcade into one of the houses above it, from which we were to witness the leaping into the fountain. I looked out of the window on the crowd that began to collect around the fountain, and noticed the tall roofs and handsome fronts of the houses opposite, and the crowd of pigeons--scores and scores of pigeons--assembled just opposite the fountain on the edge of the steep roof which rose like a red hill-side behind them. They seemed solemnly met to witness the great festivities about to be celebrated, and sat in silent expectation brooding in the sunshine. Then, I wondered what attraction the icy water could have for the children who leaned over the fountain's side--dabbling in the water as though it had been midsummer. The crowd increased and increased; and seven new white buckets were brought and placed on a broad plank which extended across one side of the fountain basin. "A shout from the crowd announced the arrival of the Butchers. First of all came the tender Butcher-infants, in scarlet coats, top-boots, and green velvet hats, borne in the arms of their fathers through the crowd in order that they might witness the fun. Then followed the scarlet officials:--and then came seven of the queerest beasts man ever set eyes on. What were they, if human? Were they seven Esquimaux chiefs, or seven African mumbo-jumbos? They were the heroes of the day--the seven Butcher-apprentices, clothed in fur caps and garments--covered from shoulder to heel with hundreds of dangling calves' tails--red, white, black, dun! "You may imagine the shouts that greeted them,--the peels of laughter. Up they sprang on the broad plank,--leaping, dancing, making their tails fly round like trundled mops. The crowd roared with laughter. A stately scarlet official--a butcher (_Altgesell_)--stands beside them on the plank. Ten times they drink the health of the royal family and prosperity to the butchers' craft. The _Altgesell_ then striking many blows on the shoulder of the nearest apprentice, frees him and all the remaining six from their indentures. They are henceforth full-grown butchers. Then, they plunge into the very centre of the fountain with a tremendous splash. The crowd shout,--the startled pigeons wheel in wild alarm above the heads and laughter of the crowd. The seven Tritons dash torrents of water on the multitude,--who fly shrieking and laughing before the deluge. The seven buckets are plied with untiring arms;--lads are enticed within aim by showers of nuts flung by the 'Leapers,' and then are drenched to the skin. It is a bewilderment of water, flying calves' tails, pelting nuts, and shrieking urchins. "The 'Leapers' then ascend out of their bath,--shake themselves like shaggy dogs,--have white cloths pinned round their necks as though they were going to be shaved,--and have very grand medals hung round their necks suspended by gaudy ribbons. "The procession retires across the market-place to its '_Herberge_,' and the crowd disperses,--but disperses only to re-assemble in various public-houses for the merriment of the afternoon and night. That night and the next day are 'the maddest, merriest of all the year.' Music is every where--dancing every where. It is the end of the Carnival. Ash Wednesday comes,--and then, all is gloom." NEGLECT OF THE PRESERVATION OF EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES. A writer in the London _Athenæum_, writing from Alexandria, endeavors to convince those who profess an interest in Egyptian antiquities, that if their present neglect continues, nothing will remain of the stupendous relics now lying over the land, but a quantity of pulverized fragments. The colossal statue at Memphis, said to belong to the British Museum, for years depended on the precarious protection of an old Arab woman, who was continually expecting and claiming a small salary of five or six pounds per annum as guardian. She received about so much from a variety of consuls, for a time, but the payment was at last discontinued, and, from what was told her, she based her hopes on the learned or the powerful in England. "But the learned and the powerful never, I suppose," says the writer, "heard of her, and she died, leaving the statue in charge of her son, who, in his turn, seems to live in hope. There is little prospect of his getting any thing, however; and very probably, in spite of his unrewarded zeal, the magnificent statue--by far the finest in Egypt--will ere long be burnt for lime. The neighboring pyramid of Dashour is being, as I have already said, worked as a quarry, and I shall be very much surprised if this handy block of stone escape notice." He suggests the formation of a committee, consisting of the principal consuls and residents in Egypt, to watch over the preservation of the monuments of the country, and to be supplied, by governments or by the voluntary contributions of the learned, with the funds necessary to pay guardians and inspectors. A very valuable museum of Egyptian antiquities we believe is now on the way to the United States; but it embraces no such great works as have been transported to Rome and Paris. Is it not worth while for the New-York merchants to set up in Union or Washington Square, the great statue of Memphis? Or it would not be altogether inappropriate for the Smithsonian Institution to have it imported into Washington. How much the diffusion of "knowledge" would be promoted by such a movement it is not easy to say: but a figure of this kind on Capitol Hill would have such an effect on our eloquence! and our juvenile poets could go there and in its shade invoke the presence of twenty centuries. HENRY ROWE SCHOOLCRAFT. [Illustration] Mr. Schoolcraft is of English descent by the paternal side, his great-grandfather having come from England during the wars of Queen Anne, and settled in what is now Schoharie county in New-York, where in old age he taught the first English school in that part of the country, from which circumstance his name was not unnaturally changed by the usage of the people from Calcraft to Schoolcraft. Our author recently attempted in his own person to revive the old family name, but soon abandoned it, and concluded to retain that which was begotten upon his native soil, and by which he has long been so honorably distinguished. He is a son of Colonel Lawrence Schoolcraft, who joined the revolutionary army at seventeen years of age, and participated in the movements under Montgomery and Schuyler, and the memorable defence of Fort Stanwix under Gansevoort. He was born in Guilderland, near Albany, on the twenty-eighth of March, 1793. In a secluded part of the country, where there were few advantages for education, and scarce any persons who thought of literature, he had an ardent love of knowledge, and sat at home with his books and pencils while his equals in age were at cock-fights and horse-races, for which Guilderland was then famous. He is still remembered by some of the octogenarians of the village as the "learned boy." At thirteen he drew subjects in natural history, and landscapes, which attracted the attention of the late Lieutenant-Governor Van Rensselaer, then a frequent visitor of his father, through whose agency he came near being apprenticed to one Ames, the only portrait-painter at that time in Albany; but as it was demanded that he should commence with house-painting the plan was finally abandoned. At fourteen he began to contribute pieces in prose and verse to the newspapers, and for several years after he pursued without aid the study of natural history, English literature, Hebrew, German, and French, and the philosophy of language. Mr. Schoolcraft's first work was an elaborate treatise, but partially known to the public, entitled Vitreology, which was published in 1817. The design of it was to exhibit the application of chemistry to the arts in the fusion of siliceous and alkaline substances in the production of enamels, glass, etc. He had had opportunities of experimenting largely and freely by his position as conductor for a series of years of the extensive works of the Ontario Company at Geneva in New-York, the Vermont Company at Middlebury and Salisbury in Vermont, and the foundry of crystal glass at Keene in New Hampshire. In 1818, and the following year, he made a geological survey of Missouri and Arkansas to the spurs of the Rocky Mountains, and in the fall of 1819 published in New-York his View of the Lead Mines of Missouri, which is said by Professor Silliman to have been "the only elaborate and detailed account of a mining district in the United States" which had then appeared. It attracted much attention, and procured for the author the friendship of many eminent men. In the same year he printed Transallegania, a poetical _jeu d'esprit_ of which mineralogy is the subject, and which preceded some clever English attempts in the same vein. It was republished in London by Sir Richard Phillips in the next year. Early in 1820 he published a Journal of a Tour in the Interior of Missouri and Arkansas, extending from Potosi toward the Rocky Mountains. His writings having attracted the notice of the government, he was commissioned by Mr. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, to visit the copper region of Lake Superior, and to accompany General Cass in his expedition to the head waters of the Mississippi. His Narrative Journal of this tour was published in 1821, and was eminently successful, an edition of twelve hundred copies being sold in a few weeks. In the same year he was appointed secretary to the commission for treating with the Indian tribes at Chicago, and on the conclusion of his labors published his sixth work, entitled Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley, in which he described the country between the regions of which he had given an account in his previous works. His reputation was now widely and firmly established as an explorer, and as a man of science and letters. From this time his attention was devoted principally to the Red Race, though he still cultivated natural history, and wrote occasionally for the reviews and magazines. In 1822 he was appointed by President Monroe agent for Indian Affairs, to reside at St. Mary's, at the foot of Lake Superior. In the years 1825, 1826, and 1827, he attended the important convocations of the north-west tribes at Prairie du Chien, Pont du Lac, and Buttes des Morts. In 1831 he was sent on a special embassy, accompanied by troops, to conciliate the Sioux and Ojibwas, and bring the existing war between them to a close. In 1832 he proceeded in the same capacity to the tribes near the head waters of the Mississippi, and availed himself of the opportunity to trace that river, in small canoes, from the point where Pike stopped in 1807 and Cass in 1820 to its true source in Itasca Lake, upon which he entered on the thirteenth of July, the one hundred and forty-ninth anniversary of the discovery of the mouth of the river by La Salle. His account of this tour was published in New-York in 1834, under the title of An Expedition to Itasca Lake, and attracted much attention in all parts of the country. From 1827 to 1831 Mr. Schoolcraft was a member of the legislative council of Michigan. In 1828 he organized the Michigan Historical Society, in which he was elected president, on the removal of General Cass to Washington, in 1831. In the fall of the same year he set on foot the Algic Society at Detroit, before which he delivered a course of lectures on the grammatical construction of the Indian languages,[1] and at its first anniversary a poem on The Indian Character. Guided by patriotism and good taste, he took a successful stand in the west against the absurd nomenclature which has elsewhere made such confusion in geography by repeating over and over the names of European places and characters, giving us Romes, Berlins, and Londons in the wilderness, and Hannibals, Scipios, Homers, and Hectors, wherever there was sufficient learning to make its possessors ridiculous. He submitted to the legislature of the territory a system of county and township names based upon the Indian vocabularies with which he was familiar, and happily secured its general adoption. At Sault Ste. Marie Mr. Schoolcraft became acquainted with Mr. John Johnston, a gentleman from the north of Ireland, who had long resided there, and in the person of his eldest daughter married a descendant of the hereditary chief of Lake Superior, or Lake Algoma, as it is known to the Indians. She had been educated in Europe, and was an accomplished and highly interesting woman. After a residence there of eleven years he removed to Michilimackinac, and assumed the joint agency of the two districts. In 1836 he was appointed by President Jackson a commissioner to treat with the north-west tribes for their lands in the region of the upper lakes, and succeeded in effecting a cession to the United States of some sixteen millions of acres. In the same year he was appointed acting Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Department, and in 1839 principal disbursing agent for the same district. In the last mentioned year he published two volumes of Algic Researches, comprising Indian Tales and Legends, and soon after, having passed more than twenty years as a traveller or resident on the frontiers, he removed to the city of New-York, intending to prepare for the press the great mass of his original papers which he had accumulated in this long period. In 1841 he issued proposals for an Indian Cyclopedia, geographical, historical, philological, etc., of which only one number was printed, no publisher appearing willing to undertake so costly and extensive a work of such a description. In 1842 he visited England, France, Germany, Prussia, and Holland. During his absence his wife died, at Dundee, in Canada West, where she was visiting her sister. Soon after his return he made another journey to the west, to examine some of the great mounds, respecting which he has since communicated a paper to the Royal Geographical Society of Denmark, of which he was many years ago elected an honorary member, and soon after published a collection of his poetical writings, under the title of Alhalla, or the Lord of Talladega, a Tale of the Creek War, with some miscellanies, chiefly of early date. In 1844 he commenced in numbers the publication of Oneota, or the Red Race in America, their History, Traditions, Customs, Poetry, Picture Writing, etc., in extracts from Notes, Journals, and other unpublished writings, of which one octavo volume has been completed. In 1845 he delivered an address before a society known as the "Was-ah Ho-de-no-sonne, or New Confederacy of the Iroquois," and published Observations on the Grave Creek Mound in Western Virginia, in the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society; and early in the following year presented in the form of a Report to the legislature of his native state, his Notes on the Iroquois, or Contributions to the Statistics, Aboriginal History, and General Ethnology of Western New-York. The last and most important of Mr. Schoolcraft's works, the crowning labor of his life, for the composition of which all his previous efforts were but notes of preparation, is the Historical and Statistical Information respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States: Collected and prepared under the Direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, per act of March 3, 1847. The initial volume of this important national publication, profusely illustrated with engravings from drawings by Captain Eastman, of the Army, has lately been issued in a very large and splendid quarto, by Lippincott. Grambo & Co., of Philadelphia, under authority of Congress. It embraces the general, national, and tribal history of the Indian race, with their traditions, manners, customs, languages, mythology, &c., and when completed will probably extend to six or seven volumes. Until more of it is published, it will not be possible to form any exact judgment of it, except such as is warranted by a knowledge of the author's previous works: but such a judgment must be in the highest degree favorable. Mr. Schoolcraft's ethnological writings are among the most important contributions that have been made to the literature of this country. His long and intimate connection with the Indian tribes, and the knowledge possessed by his wife and her family of the people from whom they were descended by the maternal side, with his power of examining their character from the European point of view, have enabled him to give us more authentic and valuable information respecting their manners, customs, and physical traits, and more insight into their moral and intellectual constitution, than can be derived, perhaps, from all other authors. His works abound in materials for the future artist and man of letters, and will on this account continue to be read when the greater portion of the popular literature of the day is forgotten. With the forests which they inhabited, the red race have disappeared with astonishing rapidity. Until recently they have rarely been the subjects of intelligent study; and it began to be regretted, as they were seen fading from our sight, that there was so little written respecting them that had any pretensions to fidelity. I would not be understood to undervalue the productions of Eliot, Loskiel, Heckewelder, Brainerd, and other early missionaries, but they were restricted in design, and it is not to be denied that confidence in their representations has been much impaired, less perhaps from doubts of their integrity than of their ability and of the advantages of the points of view from which they made their observations. The works on Indian philology by Roger Williams and the younger Edwards are more valuable than any others of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it now appears that these authors knew very little of the philosophy of the American language. Du Ponceau's knowledge was still more superficial, and excepting Mr. Gallatin and the late Mr. Pickering, who made use of the imperfect data furnished by others, I believe no one besides Mr. Schoolcraft has recently produced any thing on the subject worthy of consideration. Something has been done by General Cass, and Mr. McKenny and Mr. Catlin have undoubtedly accomplished much in this department of ethnography; but allowing all that can reasonably be claimed for these artist-travellers, Mr. Schoolcraft must still be regarded as the standard and chief authority respecting the Algic tribes. The influence which the original and peculiar myths and historical traditions of the Indians is to have on our imaginative literature, has been recently more than ever exhibited in the works of our authors. The tendency of the public taste to avail itself of the American mythology as a basis for the exhibition of "new lines of fictitious creations" has been remarked by Mr. Schoolcraft himself in Oneota, and he refers to the tales of Mrs. Oakes Smith, and to the Wild Scenes in the Forest and the Prairie, and the Vigil of Faith, by Mr. Charles F. Hoffman, as works in which this tendency is most distinctly perceptible. In the writings of W. H. C. Hosmer, the legends of Mr. Whittier, and some of the poems of Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Lowell, we see manifestations of the same disposition. No one who has not had the most ample opportunities of personal observation should attempt to mould Indian life and mythology to the purposes of fiction without carefully studying whatever Mr. Schoolcraft has published respecting them. The chief distinction of the Algic style with which he has made us acquainted is its wonderful simplicity and conciseness, with which the common verbosity, redundant description, false sentiment, and erroneous manners of what are called Indian tales, are as little in keeping as "English figures in moccasins, and holding bows and arrows." The excellent portrait at the beginning of this article is from a daguerreotype by Simons, of Philadelphia. FOOTNOTES: [1] Two of these lectures were published in 1834, translated into French by the late Mr. du Ponceau, and subsequently read before the National Institute of France. THE MARGRAVINE OF ANSPACH. The death, in London, a few weeks ago, of a daughter of the celebrated Lady Craven, afterwards Margravine of Anspach, has recalled attention to the history of that remarkable and celebrated person, whose life has the interest of a romance. ELIZABETH BERKELEY, Margravine of Anspach, was born in December, 1750. She was the daughter of Augustus, fourth Earl of Berkeley, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Drax of Charborough. She was brought up under the care of a native of Switzerland, the wife of a German tutor of her uncle. She describes herself as having been a delicate, diminutive child, addicted at an early age to reading, and of timid and retired habits. She first beheld a play when she was twelve years old, and from that occasion she dates the growth of her subsequent partiality for theatrical entertainments. At the age of thirteen she paid a short visit to France with her mother and her elder sister, and at fourteen she had been, as she says she afterwards discovered, "in love without knowing it" with the Marquis de Fitz James. On the 10th May, 1767, she was married to William Craven, nephew and heir of the fifth Lord Craven, whom he succeeded in 1769. She professes to have felt indifference when receiving his addresses, but the marriage was for some time a happy one, and she says, "My husband seemed to have no other delight than in procuring for me all the luxuries and enjoyments within his power, and it was an eternal dispute (how amiable a dispute!) between us; _he_ always offering presents, and _I_ refusing whenever I could." Gifted with genius and beauty, both of which she knew well how to apply; a woman of Lady Craven's rank naturally drew around her a large circle of admirers. She says of herself very characteristically, "In London the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough showed their partiality to me, and Mr. Walpole, afterwards Lord Orford, Dr. Johnson, Garrick, and his friend Colman, were among my numerous admirers; and Sir Joshua Reynolds did not conceal his high opinion of me. Charles Fox almost quarrelled with me because I was unwilling to interfere with politics--a thing which I always said I detested, and considered as being out of the province of a woman." It appears to have been in the year 1779 that Lady Craven discovered the infidelities with which she charged her husband, when she requested of him the favor "that he would not permit his mistress to call herself Lady Craven." After an interval of about three years spent in partial reconciliation, a separation took place. The indifferent tone in which she treats the whole of this transaction, and her professed readiness to overlook every slight that was not public and glaring, are a stain on her character, which she has by her own animated pen exhibited to an age which had forgotten the accusations to which she was subjected. At the time of her separation from her husband she was the mother of seven children. Lady Craven had in the mean time produced her first play, "The Sleepwalker," a translation from the French, printed in 1778, at her friend Walpole's press at Strawberry Hill. In 1779 she published "Modern Anecdotes of the Family of Kinvervankotsprakengatchdern, a Tale for Christmas." This was a caricature of the ceremonious pomposity of the petty German courts; it was dramatized by Mr. M. P. Andrews. Soon after the separation, she passed some time in France, where she met with the Margrave of Anspach. They formed a sudden friendship for each other, and agreed to consider each other (we are told) as brother and sister. In June, 1785, Lady Craven commenced a tour, in which, starting from Paris, she passed by the Rhine to Italy, went thence by the Tyrol to Vienna, passed on to Warsaw, Petersburg, and Moscow, proceeded by the Don to Turkey, and returned by Vienna, which she reached in August, 1786. On this occasion she ran, by her own account, a serious risk of being made Empress of Austria. In 1789 she published an account of her tour (1 vol. 4to), in letters addressed to the margrave, saying in the dedication, "Beside curiosity, my friends will in these letters see, at least for some time, where the real Lady Craven has been, and where she is to be found--it having been the practice for some years past for a Birmingham coin of myself to pass in most of the inns in France, Switzerland, and England, for the wife of my husband. My arms and coronet sometimes supporting in some measure this insolent deception; by which, probably, I may have been seen to behave very improperly." This work is interesting from the many sketches it contains of eminent people--such as the Empress Catharine, the Princess Dashcoff, Prince Potemkin, Count Romanzoff, Admiral Mordvinoff, the Duc de Choiseul, and others. It is full of accurate observation and lively description, expressed in clear and simple English--a style from which in later life she considerably diverged. She descended into the grotto of Antiparos, being the first female to undertake the adventure. The French biographers maintain that the tameness of her description of the scene shows a deficiency of appreciation of the wonderful and sublime. She does not indeed ornament her description with hyperboles and exclamations, but it is clear and expressive, and by the distinctness of the impression which it conveys to the reader, shows that the scene was fully noticed and comprehended by the writer. After her return from her journey, she visited England to see her children, and then proceeded to France, where she joined the margrave and accompanied him to Anspach. Here, during a residence of a few years, she established a theatre, which was chiefly supplied with dramatic entertainments of her own composition. They were collected into two volumes 8vo, under the title of "Nouveau Théâtre d'Anspach et de Triesdorf," the latter being the name of a country seat nine miles from Anspach, where she laid out a park and garden in the English manner. She established at the same time "a society for the encouragement of arts and sciences." She soon afterwards visited, in company with the margrave, the congenial court of Naples, where she made the acquaintance of Sir William and Lady Hamilton. Her conduct was the subject of much censure both in England and among the officials of the court of Anspach, to whom her interference was a natural subject of distrust; and if it should even be admitted that her own account of the purity of her motives and conduct is correct, it cannot be denied that she afforded material for forming the worst interpretations of them. She maintains that she always opposed the cession of his dominions to the crown of Prussia by the margrave in 1791, but she was almost his sole adviser on the occasion. She states that she received the first hint of his design at Naples. One day while she was dressing for dinner, a servant intimated that the margrave desired to see her. On her appearance he said, "I must go to Berlin _incog._--will you go with me? it is the only sacrifice of your time I will ever require of you." They set out together, and on the way through Anspach they found the establishment nearly in open revolt against her influence. The king, however, was kind and generous in the extreme, and the contracting parties are represented as only striving to excel each other in generosity. Meanwhile the margrave's first wife died, and Lord Craven's death occurred six months afterwards, on the 26th September, 1791. Immediately on hearing of this event, Lady Craven was married to the margrave. "It was six weeks," she says, "after Lord Craven's decease that I gave my hand to the margrave, which I should have done six hours after, had I known it at the time." As the cession of the margraviate to Prussia dates 2d December, 1791, the marriage must have taken place about three weeks before it. The nuptials were solemnized at Lisbon, whence the new married pair passed through Spain and France to England. The margrave, on the sale of his principality, resolved to spend his days with his wife in England. They had no sooner arrived, however, than the storm of family and public indignation which had been brewing against the margravine burst upon her head. She received a letter from her three daughters, saying, "with due deference to the Margravine of Anspach, the Miss Cravens inform her that, out of respect to their father, they cannot wait upon her," and her eldest son, Lord Craven, refused to countenance her. The margrave received a message from the queen, through the Prussian minister, to the effect that his wife, though she had received a diploma from the emperor, could not be received at court as a princess of the empire. She says that she refused to derogate from her dignity by appearing merely as a peeress of England; but it is not clear that she would have been received in that capacity. She addressed a memorial on the subject to the House of Lords, but they gave her no redress; indeed it would not have been consistent with the practice of that body to interfere on such an occasion. Soon after their arrival, the margrave purchased through trustees, Lord Craven's estate of Benham, and the mansion of Brandenburgh House, a place celebrated as afterwards affording a retreat to Queen Caroline, the wife of George IV. Until the margrave's death in 1806, it was a scene of continued profusion and gayety, in which the luxuries and amusements of an English mansion were united with those of a German court, "My whole enjoyment," says the margravine, "during the margrave's valuable life, was to do every thing in my power, to make him not only comfortable, but happy. Under my management, the world imagined that he spent double his income." Her attachment to her second husband was strong. She speaks of him with an enthusiasm and devotion which bear the stamp of sincerity. "I believe," she says, "a better man never existed. There never was a being who could act upon more sincere principles. Nothing could divert him from what was right. None could bear with patience, like himself, the ill conduct of those to whom he was attached. None could more easily forgive." After his decease, the margravine, who succeeded to the large property which he left, felt impatient to recommence her wanderings. On the restoration she sailed for France, and, after being interrupted in her movements by the reign of the hundred days, reached Rome, where it was said that she kept open house for all the revolutionists of all countries who chose to accept her hospitalities. The King of Naples afterwards presented her with a small estate, in which she built a palace, where she resided till her death, which occurred on January 13, 1828. Only two years previously, and when she was seventy-six years old, she surprised and delighted the English world by the publication of her well-known memoirs. This work is perhaps one of the best examples of the French memoirs which English literature possesses. It is indeed thoroughly French, not only in spirit but in idiom, and, to the reader, has all the appearance of a translation from that language. It thus affords, in its style, a remarkable contrast to the book of travels above noticed. It contains a vast variety of anecdotes and sketches of character, always amusing if not always accurate. It has no continuity of narrative, leaping backwards and forwards through all ages, and among every variety of subject: from a description of the monument which she erected to the memory of her husband, she takes occasion to give a rapid sketch of the history of the art of sculpture. The least pleasing feature in the work is its intense egotism. The margravine was a woman of wonderfully versatile genius. She wrote with fluency in French and German. She was an accomplished musician and actress; and she tells us, "I have executed many busts myself, and among others one of the margrave, which is generally allowed to be extremely like him." LONDON DESCRIBED BY A PARISIAN. M. Francis Wey, who is a college professor and _litterateur_ of some eminence in Paris, has published for visitors from the continent to the Great Exhibition, a volume entitled _Guides à Londres_, composed, we believe, of a series of articles, _Les Anglais chez Eux_ (the English at Home), which he had contributed to the _Musée des Familles_, an old and favorite Parisian journal. It is very amusing to see the manner in which these things are received by the British press. The sensitiveness of which the Americans are accused is quite equalled in that which is displayed in the London criticisms of Monsieur Wey. And just at this time it is all the more pleasant to us, for that our amiable Mother-Country critics are quoting with so much enjoyment the characterizations of us poor United-Statesers, done in the same way, by a gentleman of the same country. Even _Blackwood_ does not seem to have a suspicion that a Frenchman could caricature or in any way exaggerate the publicities or domesticities of New-York; but all the independent, care-for-nothing John Bulls see only "rancor," "ill-will," and "absurdity" in the Frenchman's views of English society. The _Literary Gazette_, the _Weekly News_, and all the rest, have the same tone. French travellers, it is said-- "Instead of patiently collecting their facts, they _invent_ them. Instead of representing social usages as they really are, they state them as what they choose to suppose. They mistake flippancy for wit, and imperturbable assurance for knowledge. They speak _ex cathedra_ of matters of which they are profoundly ignorant. And the consequence of all this is that they commit the drollest blunders, make the most startling assertions, indulge in the most grotesque appreciations, and flounder in the most extravagant absurdities." We wonder if a single British reviewer will introduce, with such a paragraph, his extracts from the Letters on America, by M. XAVIER MARMIER? Not a bit of it. On the English language, M. Wey says-- "The Englishman has invented for himself a language adapted to his placid manners and silent tastes. This language is a murmur, accompanied by soft hissings; it falls from the lips, but is scarcely articulated; if the chest or throat be employed to increase the power of the voice, the words become changed and scarcely intelligible; if cried aloud, they are hoarse, and resemble the confused croaking of frogs in marshes." "The English are passionately attached to their language. They have only consented to borrow one single word from us, and that is employed by their innkeepers--_table d'hôte_, which they pronounce _taible dott_. And yet we have taken hundreds of words from them!" English women-- "English women give to us the preference over their own countrymen. Our gallantry is something new to them, and our politeness touches their hearts. But though they love us, we are not liked by their lords and masters. There is no exaggeration in all that has been said of the beauty of English women--an assemblage of them would realize the paradise of Mahomet." Their dresses-- "Many white gowns are to be seen. White is a _recherché_ luxury in that land of tallow and smoke, where linen becomes dirty in three hours. However, good taste is making some progress. Ladies may be met with who are well dressed, although, generally speaking, a sort of audacity is displayed in wearing the most irreconcilable colors. What gives English women a somewhat _bizarre_ appearance, is the custom they have of swelling out their petticoats, by means of circles of whalebone or iron:--this causes them to resemble large bells in movement." English manners-- "English manners, rigid and cold, and dominated by arid rationalism, are the work of Cromwell. His bigotry and hypocrisy, his exterior austerity, his narrow formalism, suit the Englishman; he keeps up Cromwell's character, and admires himself in his usages. But he has no pity for his model--he never forgives Cromwell for having made him what he is. His spite towards that man is the last cry of nature, and the vague regret of a liberty of imagination of which neither the joys or the aspirations have been known since his time." "They have no grace, no _desinvoltura_, no poesy in them, but are methodical, reasonable, indefatigable in work and in amassing lucre." How the English love-- "They love nothing with the heart; when they do love, it is exclusively of the head." English bankers-- "In France we have the love of display; but in London it is not so. There, some of the principal bankers go every morning to the butchers' shops to buy their own chops, and they carry them ostensibly to some tavern in Cheapside or Fleet Street, where they cook them themselves. Then they buy three pennyworth of rye-bread, and publicly eat this Spartan breakfast. The exhibition fills their clients with admiration. But in the evening these good men make up for this by taking in their own palaces suppers worthy of Lucullus." Flunkeys-- "The English aristocracy are distinguished by the number, the canes, and the wigs of their lacqueys. Seeing constantly a footman, well powdered and bewigged, carry horizontally a large Voltaire cane behind certain sumptuous carriages, I asked for an explanation; it was soon given--wig, powder, and cane are aristocratic privileges. Not only must a man have a certain number of quarterings to be authorized to make his servants use such things, but he must pay so much tax for the lacquey, so much for the wig, so much for the tail to the wig, and so much for the cane." What most strikes a Frenchman in London-- "The coldness of the men towards the fair sex, and their profound passion for horses." Officers of the life and horse guards-- "Cupid seems to have chosen them--they are possessed of such ideal beauty." English taverns-- "The Englishman likes to be alone, even at the tavern. He fastens himself up in a box, where none can see him. There he drinks with taciturn phlegm. He takes tea, boiling grog, porter of the color of ink, and beer not less black. He is very fond of brandy, and drinks large glasses of it at a draught. He does not go to the tavern to amuse himself, but because drinking is a grave occupation. The more he swallows the calmer he is. One can however scarcely decide if his obstinate moroseness be a precaution against drunkenness, or the effect of spirituous liquors taken in excess. At some of the taverns are three gentlemen, dressed in black, with white cravats, who sing after one of them has struck the table with a little hammer; they are as serious as Protestant ministers or money-changers." English food-- "Thick stupefying beer, meat almost raw and horribly spiced; strong libations of port wine, followed by plum-pudding--such is the meat of these islanders." How the English eat-- "They eat at every hour, every where, and incessantly. The iron constitution of their complaisant stomachs enables them to feed in a manner which would satisfy wolves and lions. The delicate repast of a fair and sentimental young lady would be too much for a couple of Parisian street porters." Stables and museums-- "Stables are clean and brilliant as museums ought to be; and the museums are as filthy as stables in Provence." The Queen's stables-- "They form a college of horses, with pedantic grooms for professors, and a harness room for a library:" English omnibuses-- "The omnibuses of London are worn out, ill built, and remarkably dirty. Even in wet weather nobody is ever allowed to enter the interior so long as any places are vacant outside. We had expected to find them built of mahogany and lined with velvet." London-- "London, wholly devoted to private interests, offers nothing to the heart or mind. The city is too large; a man is lost in it; you elbow thousands of people without the hope of meeting any one you know. Even if you have a large fortune you would be ignored. Originality is there without effect; vanity without an object; and the desire of shining is chimerical. Intelligence has therefore only one opening, politics; pride only one object, the national sentiment; but as the people must feel enthusiasm for something, they adore horses; and as they must admire somebody, they burn incense under Lord Wellington's nose." After midnight-- "At midnight the English leave the taverns, the public gardens, the theatres, and the open air balls, and fill up the supper saloons (not very reputable places), and the oyster rooms, where they eat till morning. After sunrise, the policemen are occupied in picking up in the gutters drunkards of both sexes, and all conditions." London rain-- "It is tallow melted in water, and perfectly black." A bad quarter-- "Between Cornhill Street and Thames Street, there lives what is called the populace of London; there pauperism is frightful. The wretched inhabitants of that district are brawlers, drunkards, and prize-fighters." At Westminster Abbey-- "Shakspeare slumbers at a few steps from Richard II. The tombs bear traces of Presbyterian mutilations; but in other places the Calvinists scattered the bones of the deceased Bishops of Geneva. Such is the intolerance of the Protestants that they have not admitted the statue of Byron to the Abbey, and his shadow may be heard groaning at the door." At Her Majesty's Theatre-- "To go with a blue cravat is _shocking_. When the doors are open, blows with the fist and the elbow are given without regard to age or sex. It is the peculiar fashion of entering which the natives have. If a Frenchman be recognized the people cry _French dog_. In the pit, the man behind you will place his foot on your shoulder. The ladies are plunged up to the neck in boxes. In the theatre there is an echo, which produces an abominable effect; but such is the vile musical taste of the English that they have never found it out. In the saloon you hear the continual hissing of teakettles." The English Parliament-- "The House of Commons at present meets in a hole. The peers are in their new chamber. It is small, not monumental, and heavily ornamented. It reminds one of our tea shops, or a _boudoir_. The lords, when assembled, are generally placed on their backs, or rather lean on the back of the neck, and keep their legs above their heads. The Queen's throne, like constitutional royalty, is a gilded cage." The new Houses of Parliament-- "They are an immense architectural plaything, and the English only admire them because they cost a vast sum." English love of titles-- "One of my friends gave me a letter of introduction to Sir William P----, _Esquire_. I left the letter with my card at the Reform Club, Pall Mall. Two hours after Sir William came to my residence; but as I was not at home he wrote a line, and addressed it to me with the flattering designation of _Esquire_. England is the country of legal equality; but this sort of equilibrium does not extend to social usages; and although our _penchant_ for distinctions seems puerile to the English, it would be easy to prove that they are not exempt from it. They have not, as we have, the love of uniforms, laced coats, epaulettes, or decorations; their button-holes often carry a flower, but never a rosette or knot of ribbon. But every body pretends to the title of _Sir_, which was formerly reserved exclusively to members of the House of Commons, to Baronets, and to some public functionaries. As, however, the title _Sir_ has become too vulgar, every body calls himself _Esquire_ to distinguish himself from his neighbor. This remark, nevertheless, does not concern my friend Sir William, for he is really an Esquire." English soldiers-- "The noise which announces their approach is very singular. Picture to yourself the monotonous music of a bear's dance, executed by twenty fifers, whilst a man beats a big drum. The coats of the infantry are too short, and are surmounted with large white epaulettes. The men sway their bodies about to the beating of the drum, and carry their heads so stiffly that they appear to be balancing spoons on their noses. All the officers and non-commissioned officers carry long sticks with ivory handles." Resemblance of Englishmen one to another-- "All Englishmen are alike. They live in the same way, are subject to the same logical rules, condemned to the same amusements. The proof that there exists only one character amongst them, and that they have only one way of living, is, that it is impossible, on seeing them, to divine their profession. A lord, a minister, a domestic, a street singer, a merchant, an admiral, a soldier, a general, an artist, a judge, a prize-fighter, and a clergyman, have all the same appearance, the same language, the same costume, and the same bearing. Each one has the air of an Englishman, and nothing more. They live in the same way, work at the same hours, eat at the same time, and of the same sort of food, and are all sequestrated when away from home from the society of women." The French at London-- "At London the French labor under two subjects of anxiety, caused by their national prejudices. Accustomed to consider themselves as the first people in the world, to dazzle some, to despise others, and to display every where the confident pride of their supremacy, they, on treading the British soil, experience the impression of a greatness not borrowed from them; they are astonished at finding a people as remarkable as ours, as original as we are, and carrying to a still prouder degree the sentiment of their pre-eminence. Then our countrymen become disquieted; the intolerance of their national faith becomes mitigated; they are ill at ease, and for the first time in their lives feel constraint. Ceasing to believe themselves amongst slaves as in Italy, amongst vassals as in Belgium, or amongst innkeepers as in Switzerland or Germany, they endeavor to resemble sovereigns visiting other sovereigns, and by forced politeness render them involuntary homage." Feeling of the English toward the French-- "They honor us with a marked attention, though they are indifferent to the rest of mankind. Our opinions respecting them cause them anxiety. They either admire us enthusiastically, or disparage us bitterly; but, in reality, they are obsequious and servile toward us!" After a good deal of the numerous statues to Wellington, this at English admiration of Waterloo-- "The trumpet of Waterloo which has been sounded in London every where incessantly, and in every tone, during thirty-five years, diminishes the grandeur of the English nation. This intoxication seems that of a people who, never having won more than one battle, and despairing to conquer a second time, cannot recover from their surprise, nor bear in patience an unhoped-for glory." How the English judge Napoleon-- "Public opinion has avenged the prisoner of St Helena; but does it follow that in 1815 the English protested with sufficient energy against his imprisonment! No. Englishmen are naturally indifferent and indulgent as regards their foreign neighbors, so long as patriotism or private interest is not at stake. Napoleon was the most terrible of their enemies; he placed England within ten steps of bankruptcy, and seriously menaced national manufactures. Not possessed of military instinct, the English do not pretend to chivalrous generosity. On the fall of the Empire, caused by the implacable perseverance of coalitions, the nation remembered that the Hundred Days cost its government a million an hour, and so long as the deficit was not made up, their resentment underwent no diminution. But now if you celebrate his glory before them, they will not display hostility. You must not, however, touch the till of this tribe of tradesmen, or they will be your bitter enemies. And the proof that they are nothing but shopkeepers is that their first functionary sits in a gilded arm chair on a wool-sack." THE BEAUTIFUL STREAMLET AND THE UTILITARIAN. Alphonse Karr's new book, _Travels in my Garden_, is full of social heresies, but quite as full of wit. We find in _Fraser's Magazine_ for May translations of some admirable passages, with specimens of his peculiar speculation. Karr is an ardent lover of Nature; he takes note of all her caprices, and respects them,--remarks under what shade the violet loves to dwell, and tells us how certain plants--the volubulis, the scarlet-runner, and the Westeria, for instance--invariably twine their spiral tendrils from left to right, whereas hops and honeysuckles as infallibly twist theirs from right to left. He knows which are the plants that fold, when evening comes, their leaves in two, lengthwise,--which are those that close them up like fans, and which are the careless ones that crumple them up irregularly with happy impunity, for the next morning's sun smooths them all alike. He loves Nature in all her details, but with disinterested love, and has no idea of making her subservient to his pride, or selfishly monopolizing her; he has evidently no wish to wall in woods and meadows, and call them a park, or to dam up sparkling, bubbling, dancing streams, and turn them into cold, spiritless, aristocratic sheets of water. Indeed, in one of the first chapters of the book, there is a fanciful bit of sentiment about a happy little stream that falls into the hands of a pitiless utilitarian, which we are tempted to quote:-- "That stream which runs through my garden gushes from the side of a furze-covered hill; for a long time it was a happy little stream; it traversed meadows where all sorts of lovely wild flowers bathed and mirrored themselves in its waters, then it entered my garden, and there I was ready to receive it; I had prepared green tanks for it; on its edge and in its very bed I had planted those flowers which all over the world love to bloom on the banks and in the bosom of pure streams; it flowed through my garden, murmuring its plaintive song; then, fragrant with my flowers, it left the garden, crossed another meadow, and flung itself into the sea, over the precipitous sides of the cliff, which it covered with foam. "It was a happy stream; it had literally nothing to do beyond what I have said,--to flow, to bubble, to look limpid, to murmur, amidst flowers and sweet perfumes. It led the life I have chosen, and that I continue to lead, when people let me alone, and when knaves and fools and wicked men do not force me--who am at once the most pacific and the most battling man on earth--to return to the fight. But heaven and earth are jealous of the happiness of gentle indolence. "One day my brother Eugene, and Savage, the clever engineer, were talking together on the banks of the stream, and to a certain degree abusing it. "'There,' said my brother, 'is a fine good-for-nothing stream for you, forsooth, winding and dawdling about, dancing in the sunshine, and revelling in the grass instead of working and paying for the place it takes up, as an honest stream should. Could it not be made to grind coffee or pepper?' "'Or tools?' added Savage. "'Or to saw boards?' said my brother. "I trembled for the stream, and broke off the conversation, complaining loudly that its detractors (its would-be tyrants) were treading down my forget-me-nots. Alas! it was but against them alone I could protect it. Before long there came into our neighborhood a man whom I noticed more than once hanging about the spot where the stream empties itself into the sea. The fellow I plainly saw was neither seeking for rhymes, nor indulging in dreams and memories upon its banks,--he was not lulling thought to rest with the gentle murmur of its waters. 'My good friend,' he was saying to the stream, 'there you are, idling and meandering about, singing to your heart's content, while I am working and wearing myself out. I don't see why you should not help me a bit; you know nothing of the work to be done, but I'll soon show you. You'll soon know how to set about it. You must find it dull to stay in this way, doing nothing,--it would be a change for you to make files or grind knives.' Very soon wheels of all kinds were brought to the poor stream. From that day forward it has worked and turned a great wheel, which turns a little wheel, which turns a grindstone; it still sings, but no longer the same gently-monotonous song in its peaceful melancholy. Its song is loud and angry now,--it leaps and froths and works now,--it grinds knives! It still crosses the meadow, and my garden, and the next meadow; but there, the man is on the watch for it, to make it work. I have done the only thing I could do for it. I have dug a new bed for it in my garden, so that it may idle longer there, and leave me a little later; but for all that, it must go at last and grind knives. Poor stream! thou didst not sufficiently conceal thy happiness in obscurity,--thou hast murmured too audibly thy gentle music." SIR EMERSON TENNANT ON AMERICAN MISSIONS IN CEYLON. One of the most respectable persons employed in the English colonial service, is Sir EMERSON TENNANT, LL. D., K. C. B. &c., who was for many years connected with the administration in Ceylon, and is now, we believe, Governor of St. Helena. He has recently published a volume entitled _Christianity in Ceylon_, in which there are some passages of especial interest to American readers, displaying in a favorable light, the services rendered to civilization by the missionaries of this country. These parts of his work have attracted much consideration. The _Dublin University Magazine_ remarks: "We describe the American Mission, which acts under the direction of one of the oldest and most remarkable of the existing associations for the dissemination of Christianity, "The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions," whose head-quarters are at Boston, in Massachusetts. The first settlers in Massachusetts, like those of New England generally, were missionary colonists. Their charter, given by Charles I., states that one of the objects of the king and of the planters was the conversion of the natives to the true faith; and the seal of the company thus incorporated bore the device of a North American Indian, with the motto "_Come over and help us_." It may be interesting to add, that the "pilgrim fathers" of the New England States were, indirectly, the cause of the Protestant missions of the Dutch. They were, as our author states, 'the first pioneers of the Protestant world, and the first heralds of the Reformed religion to the heathen of foreign lands. Their mission is more ancient than the Propaganda of Rome, and it preceded by nearly a century any other missionary association in Europe. It was encouraged by Cromwell, and incorporated by Charles II.; and Cotton Mather records that it was the example of the New England fathers, and their success amongst the Indians, that first aroused the energy of the Dutch for the conversion of the natives of Ceylon.' "We cannot doubt that amongst the main causes of the prosperity of North America are, the permanence of religious feeling, and the blessing attendant on the fact, that the missionary spirit has never perished. The labors of this great people on their own vast continent have been conducted with the greatest judgment, and marked by a success which encouraged their extension in other lands. In the year 1812, they turned their attention to the East, and, under an act of incorporation from the state of Massachusetts, commenced their missionary efforts in the Old World. Their first missionaries to India appeared there in 1812, but were ordered by the Governor-General to leave Calcutta by the same vessel in which they had arrived. One of them landing in Ceylon, on his voyage home, was so struck with the openings which it presented for missionary enterprise, and so much encouraged by the Governor, Sir Robert Brownrigg, to engage in it, that, on his representations, the American Board, in 1816, sent out three clergymen and their wives, who fixed their residence at Jaffina, which has been ever since the scene of their remarkable labors. These were reinforced in 1829, and for many years their establishment has consisted of from seven to eleven ordained ministers, with a physician, conductors of the press, and other lay assistants; these are selected from Congregationalists and Presbyterians. It is gratifying to be enabled to add, that a most cordial good-will and desire to co-operate has from the beginning prevailed between them and the other Protestant missionaries in their neighborhood. For thirty years they have assembled periodically in a "missionary union," to decide on measures and compare results. "With all of them education is," as our author says, "a diurnal occupation; whilst in their purely clerical capacity they have felt the necessity of proceeding with more cautious circumspection, improving rather than creating opportunities, relying less upon formal preaching than on familiar discourses, and trusting more to the intimate exhortation of a few than to the effect of popular addresses to indiscriminate assemblies.' "'The first embryo instruction is communicated by them in free village schools, scattered everywhere throughout the district, in which the children of the Tamils are taught in their own tongue the simplest elements of knowledge, and the earliest processes of education--to read from translations of the Christian Scriptures, and to write their own language, first by tracing the letters on the sand, and eventually by inscribing them with an iron style upon the prepared leaves of the _Palmyra palm_. It will afford an idea of the extent and perseverance with which education has been pursued in these primitive institutions, that, in the free schools of the Americans alone, 4,000 pupils, of whom one-fourth are females, are daily receiving instruction, and upwards of 90,000 children have been taught in them since their commencement, a proportion equal to one-half the present population of the peninsula.'" "It was soon seen that, in addition to these primary schools, the establishment of boarding schools was extremely desirable, for the purpose of separating the pupils from the influence of idolatry. The attempt was made, but proved to be attended with difficulties which would have appeared to many insurmountable. In the first place, the natives were suspicious, not conceiving that strangers could undertake such toil, trouble, and expense, without an interested object. The more positive difficulty was connected with caste, with the reluctance of parents to permit their children to associate with those of a lower rank. "'This the missionaries overcame, not so much by inveighing against the absurdity of such distinctions as by practically ignoring them, except wherever expediency or necessity required their recognition. In all other cases where the customs and prejudices of the Tamils were harmless in themselves, or productive of no inconvenience to others, they were in no way contravened or prohibited; but as intelligence increased, and the minds of the pupils became expanded, the most distinctive and objectionable of them were voluntarily and almost imperceptibly abandoned. "'When the boarders were first admitted to one of the American schools at Batticotta, a cook-house was obliged to be erected for them on the adjoining premises of a heathen, as they would not eat under the roof of a Christian; but after a twelvemonth's perseverance, the inconvenience overcame the objection, and they removed to the refectory of the institution. But here a fresh difficulty was to be encountered; some of the high caste youths made an objection to use the same wells which had been common to the whole establishment; and it was agreed to meet their wishes by permitting them to clear out one in particular, to be reserved exclusively for themselves. They worked incessantly for a day, but finding it hopeless to draw it perfectly dry, they resolved to accommodate the difficulty, on the principle, that having drawn off as much water as the well contained when they began, the remainder must be sufficiently pure for all ordinary uses.'" "In addition to these primary and boarding-schools, the American Mission, in 1830, established schools for teaching English, and for elementary instruction of a more advanced description. These were all under a discipline avowedly Christian, yet the missionaries found that they were able not only to enforce the fee demanded, but to maintain their regulations without loss of numbers. "'And it is a fact,' says Sir Emerson Tennent, 'suggestive of curious speculation as to the genius and character of this anomalous people, that in a heathen school recently established by Brahmans in the vicinity of Jaffna, the Hindoo Community actually compelled those who conducted it to introduce the reading of the Bible as an indispensable portion of the ordinary course of instruction.'" "This does not seem so strange to us. The shrewd Tamils, as we collect from other observations in the work before us, perceived how the Bible-reading children had improved in demeanor, conduct, and success in life. For these same reasons, and possibly in some cases from a deeper feeling never yet avowed, the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland, before the introduction of the National System of Education, and previously to, and, in many cases, long after, the expressed hostility of their priesthood, anxiously sent their children to the schools of the Kildare-place and the Hibernian Bible Societies. "The other missionaries, we need hardly say, were as active as the Americans. After some years of further experience, they all felt the necessity of founding educational institutions of a still more advanced description for the instruction of the natives in their own language. It became plain to them that, from physical as well as moral causes, the conversion of the natives could be only hoped for through the medium of their well-taught and well-trained countrymen. The niceties of the language and their modes of thought presented difficulties of a most serious character to others; the very terms of the ordinary address of a missionary suggested ideas altogether different from what he intended. Thus, when GOD is spoken of, they probably understand one of their own deities who yields to every vile indulgence; by SIN, they mean ceremonial defilement, or evil committed in a former birth, for which they are not accountable; _hell_ with them is only a place of temporary punishment; and _heaven_ nothing more than absorption, or the loss of individuality. Under these impressions each of the missionary bodies at Jaffna formed for themselves a collegiate institution, in which the best scholars from their other schools were admitted to a still more advanced course, and taught the sciences of Europe. That of the Church Missionary Society of England was established at Nellore, but subsequently removed to Chundically; the Wesleyans commenced theirs in the great square of Jaffna; and that of the Americans was founded at Batticotta, in the midst of a cultivated country, within sight of the sea, and at a very few miles distant from the fort." "'It was opened in 1823, with about fifty students chosen from the most successful pupils of all the schools in the province; and the course of education is so comprehensive as to extend over a period of eight years of study. With a special regard to the future usefulness of its alumni in the conflict with the errors of the Brahmanical system, the curriculum embraces all the ordinary branches of historical and classical learning, and all the higher departments of mathematical and physical science, combined with the most intricate familiarization with the great principles and evidences of the Christian religion. "'The number which the building can accommodate is limited, for the present, to one hundred, who reside within its walls, and take their food in one common hall, sitting to eat after the custom of the natives. For some years the students were boarded and clothed at the expense of the mission; but such is now the eagerness for instruction that there are a multitude of competitors for every casual vacancy; and the cost of their maintenance during the whole period of pupilage is willingly paid in advance, in order to secure the privilege of admission. "'Nearly six hundred students have been under instruction from time to time since the commencement of the American Seminary at Batticotta, and of these upwards of four hundred have completed the established course of education. More than one-half have made an open profession of Christianity, and all have been familiarized with its doctrines, and more or less imbued with its spirit. The majority are now filling situations of credit and responsibility throughout the various districts of Ceylon; numbers are employed under the missionaries themselves, as teachers and catechists, and as preachers and superintendents of schools; many have migrated, in similar capacities, to be attached to Christian missions on the continent of India; others have lent their assistance to the missions of the Wesleyans and the Church of England in Ceylon; and amongst those who have attached themselves to secular occupations, I can bear testimony to the abilities, the qualifications, and integrity, of the many students of Jaffna, who have accepted employment in various offices under the Government of the colony.'" "Another of the instruments of conversion adopted by these indefatigable men is _the press_. They were long obliged to have their tracts written out on _olahs_, or strips of the Palmyra leaf, which, when the missionary took for distribution, were strung round the neck of his horse. The printing establishment of the American Mission has for many years given constant employment to upwards of eighty Tamil workmen. Their publications are either religious or educational; and one of their ulterior objects is to supersede the degraded legends still in circulation. The natives of Ceylon, like most other Asiatics, have a strong repugnance to reading. This, however, has been to some extent already overcome, both on the continent of India and in Ceylon, as is evident from the facts of the establishment of native presses in Hindostan, and of the success of a missionary newspaper in Ceylon for the last seven years, which has now more than seven hundred subscribers, of whom five-sixths are Tamils. The Church Missionary Society have also a press amongst the Tamils; the Wesleyans established theirs in the Singhalese districts, and the Baptists have one at work in Kandy. One of the greatest, among the many triumphs of the missionaries in Ceylon, has been in the education of girls. The position of woman in that island, as in most parts of the East, was one of inferiority and toil. She was not permitted to sit at table with the males, or even to eat in the presence of her husband. Her education was so wholly neglected that, amongst the Tamils, no woman knew her alphabet, except such as rather gave the accomplishment a bad name--the dancing girls and prostitutes attached to the temples, who learned to read and write that they might copy songs and the legends of their gods. It was, however, plain that no extensive good would be effected without the education of women. The male converts could not get suitable wives, and the children would be in the hands of idolaters. In addition to their natural influence in a family, the women of the Tamils, where this new attempt in education was first made, had rights of property, which, notwithstanding the inferiority of their social position, gave them peculiar influence. "'It is, we are told, a paramount object of ambition with Tamil parents to secure an eligible alliance for their daughters by the assignment of extravagant marriage portions. These consist either of land, or of money secured upon land; and as the law of Ceylon recognizes the absolute control of the lady over the property thus conveyed to her sole and separate use, the prevalence of the practice has, by degrees, thrown an extraordinary extent of the landed property of the country into the hands of the females, and invested them with a corresponding proportion of authority in its management.'" Impressed with the urgency of the object, the missionaries attempted the establishment of female schools, and especially of boarding schools, where Hindoo girls might be trained, and separated from evil influences until they could be settled with the approbation of the guardians. They had at first great difficulty in getting pupils, and only enticed them by presents of dress, or some such cogent bribe, or by engagements to give fortunes of five or six pounds to all who remained in their institutions until suitably married. Even with these allurements their early efforts promised no success. Parents were inveighed against for allowing their daughters to be instructed, and so strong was native prejudice that the children, when learning to read, blushed with shame. These and other obstacles have been surmounted, and, as the following extract shows, the missionaries have no longer to allure, but must select their scholars. The Americans made the first experiment at Oodooville, a few miles distant from the fort of Jaffna:-- "'The hamlet of Oodooville is in the centre of a tract of very rich land, and the buildings occupied by the Americans were originally erected by the Portuguese for a Roman Catholic church, and the residence of a friar of the order of St. Francis. It is a beautiful spot, embowered in trees, and all its grounds and gardens are kept in becoming order, with the nicest care and attention. "'The institution opened in 1824, with about thirty pupils, between the ages of five and eleven; and this, after eight years of previous exertion and entreaty, was the utmost number of female scholars who could be prevailed on to attend from the whole extent of the province. This difficulty has been long since overcome. Instead of solicitations and promises, to allure scholars, the missionaries have long since been obliged to limit their admissions to one hundred, the utmost that their buildings can accommodate; and now, so eager are the natives to secure education for their daughters, that a short time before my visit, on the occasion of filling up some vacancies, upwards of sixty candidates were in anxious attendance, of whom only seventeen could be selected, there being room for no more. The earliest inmates of the institution were of low castes and poor; whereas the pupils and candidates now are, many of them, of most respectable families, and the daughters of persons of property and influence in the district. "'The course of instruction is in all particulars adapted to suit the social circumstances of the community; along with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures and the principles of the Christian religion, it embraces all the ordinary branches of female education, which are communicated both in Tamil and in English; and combined with this intellectual culture, the girls are carefully trained, conformably to the usages of their country, in all the discipline and acquirements essential to economy and domestic enjoyments at home. Of two hundred and fifty females who have been thus brought up at Oodooville, more than half have been since married to Christians, and are now communicating to their children the same training and advantages of which they have so strongly felt the benefit themselves.'" "The consequence of these proceedings is, that the number of households is fast increasing, where the mother, trained in the habits of civilized life, and instructed in the principles of Christianity, is anxious to give to her children the like advantages." A PAPER OF ... TOBACCO. We find a lively passage on tobacco in the pleasant new book by Alphonse Karr. It must be borne in mind that, in France, tobacco is a monopoly--and a very productive one--in the hands of government:-- "There is a family of poisonous plants, amongst which we may notice the henbane, the datura stramonium, and the tobacco plant. The tobacco plant is perhaps a little less poisonous than the datura, but it is more so than the henbane, which is a violent poison. Here is a tobacco plant--as fine a plant as you can wish to see. It grows to the height of six feet; and from the centre of a tuft of leaves, of a beautiful green, shoot out elegant and graceful clusters of pink flowers. "For a long while the tobacco plant grew unknown and solitary in the wilds of America. The savage to whom we had given brandy gave us in exchange tobacco, with the smoke of which they used to intoxicate themselves on grand occasions. The intercourse between the two worlds began by this amiable interchange of poisons. "Those who first thought of putting tobacco dust up their noses were first laughed at, and then persecuted more or less. James I., of England, wrote against snuff-takers a book entitled _Misocapnos_. Some years later, Pope Urban VIII. excommunicated all persons who took snuff in churches. The Empress Elizabeth thought it necessary to add something to the penalty of excommunication pronounced against those who used the black dust during divine service, and authorised the beadles to confiscate the snuff-boxes to their own use. Amurath IV. forbade the use of snuff under pain of having the nose cut of. "No useful plant could have withstood such attacks. If before this invention a man had been found to say, Let us seek the means of filling the coffers of the state by a voluntary tax; let us set about selling something which every body will like to do without. In America there is a plant essentially poisonous; if from its leaves you extract an empyreumatic oil, a single drop of it will cause an animal to die in horrible convulsions. Suppose we offer this plant for sale chopped up or reduced to a powder. We will sell it very dear, and tell people to stuff the powder up their noses. "'That is to say, I suppose, you will force them to do so by law?' "'Not a bit of it. I spoke of a voluntary tax. As to the portion we chop up, we will tell them to inhale it, and swallow a little of the smoke from it besides.' "'But it will kill them.' "'No; they will become rather pale, perhaps feel giddy, spit blood, and suffer from colics, or have pains in the chest--that's all. Besides, you know, although it has been often said that habit is second nature, people are not yet aware how completely man resembles the knife, of which the blade first and then the handle had been changed two or three times. In man there is no nature left--nothing but habit remains. People will become like Mithridates, who had learnt to live on poisons. "'The first time that a man will smoke he will feel sickness, nausea, giddiness, and colics; but that will go off by degrees, and in time he will get so accustomed to it, that he will only feel such symptoms now and then--when he smokes tobacco that is bad, or too strong--or when he is not well, and in five or six other cases. Those who take it in powder will sneeze, have a disagreeable smell, lose the sense of smelling, and establish in their nose a sort of perpetual blister.' "'Then, I suppose it smells very nice.' "'Quite the reverse. It has a very unpleasant smell; but, as I said, we'll sell it very dear, and reserve to ourselves the monopoly of it.' "'My good friend,' one would have said to any one absurd enough to hold a similar language, 'nobody will envy you the privilege of selling a weed that no one will care to buy. You might as well open a shop and write on it: Kicks sold here; or, Such-a-one sells blows, wholesale and retail. You will find as many customers as for your poisonous weed.' "Well! who would have believed that the first speaker was right, and that the tobacco speculation would answer perfectly! The kings of France have written no satires against snuff, have had no noses cut off, no snuff-boxes confiscated. Far from it. They have sold tobacco, laid an impost on noses, and given snuff-boxes to poets with their portraits on the lid, and diamonds all round. This little trade has brought them in I don't know how many millions a year. The potato was far more difficult to popularize, and has still some adversaries." LORD JEFFREY AND JOANNA BAILLIE. Joanna Baillie's first volume of poems was severely criticised in the _Edinburgh Review_ by Jeffrey. In an article upon the deceased poetess in _Chambers's Journal_, we have an account of her subsequent relations with the reviewer. She visited Edinburgh in 1808. "As she did not refuse to go into company, she could not be long in that city without encountering Francis Jeffrey, the foremost man in the bright train of _beaux-esprits_ which then adorned the society of the Scottish capital. He would gladly have been presented to her; and if she had permitted it, there is little doubt that in the eloquent flow of his delightful and genial conversation, enough of the admiration he really felt for her poetry must have been expressed, to have softened her into listening at least with patience to his suggestions for her improvement. But in vain did the friendly Mrs. Betty Hamilton (authoress of 'The Cottagers of Glenburnie') beg for leave to present him to her when they met in her hospitable drawing-room; and equally in vain were the efforts made by the good-natured Duchess of Gordon to bring about an introduction which she knew was desired at least by one of the parties. It was civilly but coldly declined by the poetess; and though the dignified reason assigned was the propriety of leaving the critic more entirely at liberty in his future strictures than an _acquaintance_ might perhaps feel himself, there seems little reason to doubt that soreness and natural resentment had something to do with the refusal." "It was in the autumn of 1820 that Miss Baillie paid her last visit to Scotland, and passed those delightful days with Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, the second of which is so pleasantly given in Mr. Lockhart's life of the bard. Her friends again perceived a change in her manners. They had become blander, and much more cordial. She had probably been now too long admired and reverently looked up to not to understand her own position, and the encouragement which, essentially unassuming as she was, would be necessary from her to reassure the timid and satisfy the proud. She had magnanimously forgiven and lived down the unjust severity of her Edinburgh critic, and now no longer refused to be made personally known to him. He was presented to her by their mutual friend, the amiable Dr. Morehead. They had much earnest and interesting talk together, and from that hour to the end of their lives entertained for each other a mutual and cordial esteem. After this, Jeffrey seldom visited London without indulging himself in a friendly pilgrimage to the shrine of the secluded poetess; and it is pleasing to find him writing of her in the following cordial way in later years: "_London_, April 28, 1840.--I forgot to tell you that we have been twice out to Hampstead to hunt out Joanna Baillie, and found her the other day as fresh, natural, and amiable as ever--and as little like a Tragic Muse. Since old Mrs. Brougham's death, I do not know so nice an old woman." And again, in January 7, 1842.--"We went to Hampstead, and paid a very pleasant visit to Joanna Baillie, who is marvellous in health and spirits, and youthful freshness and simplicity of feeling, and not a bit deaf, blind, or torpid."" _Authors and Books._ DR. TITUS TOBLER, a Swiss savan, has just published a work entitled _Golgotha, its Churches and Cloisters_, in the course of which he undertakes the "Jerusalem question," or the discussion of the probable localities of the Scripture narrative of the crucifixion. Among the able German accounts of this treatise, which cannot fail to arrest the attention of the sacred student, we find the following notice of Professor Robinson, the first profound and adequate contemporary authority upon the subject: "Until the American Robinson, all the early comparisons and criticisms upon the holy sepulchre were based much more upon instinct and furious sectarianism, than upon a generous love of truth and a genuine insight into the matter. Only with wearisome effort, and not without the consent of the whole Church power, was Robinson's mighty grasp upon pious tradition repelled. In the main question the learned Yankee was not altogether wrong. But he is too rash in battle, too impatient, too reckless, too ambitious, and his armor was evidently not proof in all parts. Even the knowledge of the Semitic orient, of its antiquities and customs, seems, if we may say so without offence to transatlantic vanity, a little threadbare. But the Robinsonian breach in the wall was not to be entirely plastered up and its traces concealed. This American has first recognized the right way of breaking into the citadel of tradition; others, with more or less skill, have followed his track and widened the breach. But it was reserved for the inflexible ability of Dr. Tobler to dig up the very foundations, although he is no centaur, no giant, and in the pride of strength, does not scorn a childlike faith." * * * * * Among recent German romances we note second and third editions of JEREMIAS GOTTHELF'S _Sylvester-Dream_, and the _Peasant's Mirror, or a Life-History_. The author is not much known beyond Germany, but is there recognized as having the greatest certainty and correctness in delineation, the most genial principle, and the soundest and freshest life of any contemporary writer. The Sylvester-Dream is as vague and fantastic, and of the same electrical effect, as the similar sparkling flights of Dickens and Jean Paul. _Uriel the Devil_, a satirical romance, in eight pictures, bears the name of Kaulbach, but whether the author is related to William Kaulbach, the great painter, we have no means of ascertaining. This, with the _Memorabilia of a German House-Servant_ are spoiled by their imitations of Jean Paul, and the latter is somewhat strongly infected with Hoffman's Phantasies. But they are both books of more than common talent. Two romances by two women are most curtly and contemptuously noticed, in a style of uncourteous condemnation hardly to be paralleled in England or America, in which countries the chivalry of private respect for the fair sex always ameliorates condemnation of their writings. "Of these two books there is little else to say than that they are moral and respectable, and extremely well written for women. The former author has the rare and memorable heroism in a woman to allow her heroine to reach her thirty-fourth year." Levin Schuneking formerly Grand-Master at the Court of the Elector of Cologne, has just published _The Peasant Prince_, a romance, called in Germany his best work. * * * * * KOHL, the traveller or writer of travels, has just published a book upon the Rhine, which is not of the usual character of his works, as the author perhaps feared too much the criticising contrast of Victor Hugo's _Rhine_, to undertake a detailed and sprightly description of the present life and aspect of the country. The new work is, in fact, an attempt to portray, according to Ritter's principles, a famous river region in its geological, historical and statistical relations; and from this point of view to present it vividly to the mind. The contents are simple and succinctly arranged, and the book is a signal success in the popularization of the results of recent geographical research. It has the same relation to the old river guide books, that Ritter's philosophical geography has to the old geographies. * * * * * ANASTASIUS GRUN, the famous German poet, has just edited the poetical remains of Nicolaus Lenau, of whom Auerbach wrote a graceful reminiscence for the German _Museum_, under the title of _Lenau's last Summer_. The chief poem of the collection is entitled _Don Juan_, which, although not fully finished, the German critics highly extol. Soon after the death of Lenau, in a madhouse, last year, we gave some account of him in the _International_. * * * * * Of Sir CHARLES LYELL'S Second Journey in America, which Mr. E. Dieffenbach has rendered into German, the Germans say that its geniality and _gentlemanliness_, its graceful and striking pictures of the state of society, politics, and religion, and its popular treatment of scientific subjects, make it altogether charming. A reviewer notes what Lyell says of the universal tendency to read among the American laboring classes, and quotes some interesting facts, as that one house published eighty thousand copies of Eugene Sue's Wandering Jew, in various forms and at various prices. The same house had sold forty thousand copies of Macaulay's History of England, at the end of the first three months, at prices varying from fifty cents to four dollars, while other houses had sold twenty thousand copies, and this sale of sixty thousand copies while Longman was selling fifteen thousand at one pound twelve shillings. * * * * * The Countess HAHN-HAHN, who for several years has occupied in German literature a position corresponding to that of George Sand in France, with whose views of life and society she strongly sympathized, and whose "Faustina" and other works were republished here, has recently become a Roman Catholic, as our readers will have seen, and has just written the following letter to a Hamburg journal: "To correct some misapprehension, I feel it to be my duty to declare that the new edition of my complete works announced by Alexander Duncker in Berlin is no new series, but an edition with a new title. A new series of those writings will never appear, as I no longer recognize as my own the spirit in which they were written. IDA, COUNTESS HAHN-HAHN." * * * * * DAVID COPPERFIELD has been translated into German, with the peculiarities of speech of the different classes of characters unattempted. Old Pegotty and Ham speak "pure Castilian." It is easy to see how the dramatic character of the book is thus lost. Indeed, Dickens is almost the only very famous English author who is not much translated. The Battle of Life, one of the least valuable and characteristic of his works, is well known upon the Continent, because it was so easy to translate. But what can a descendant of Dante, for instance, ever know of the drolleries of Sam Weller? Fancy a _spiritual_ Frenchman trying to catch the fun of Pickwick! * * * * * Mr. Judd's _Richard Edney_ induces a German critic to say of him, "This is a new English poet of the Carlyle and Emerson school, who, inspired by the example of Jean Paul, turn the English language topsy-turvy, and introduce a jargon that makes us satisfied with our own romantic barbarism." * * * * * Mrs. S. C. HALL'S _Sorrows of Women_ has been also translated into German, and is highly praised. * * * * * In Vienna, most of the recent publications have more or less relation to affairs. There is very little of pure literature. M. de Zsedényi, one of the most capable Hungarian political writers, has published a work entitled _Responsibility of the Cabinet and the State of Hungary_. The author of _The Genesis of the Revolution_, (supposed to be Count Hartig, who was a Minister without portfolio under Prince Metternich) has again appeared before the public with 146 closely printed pages of _Night Thoughts_, some of which had better never have seen the light of day. A Mr. Schwarz has published a work advocating "protection," and in it he spares neither England nor the Austrian Minister of Commerce. Free trade notions have indeed been attacked in a score of books by continental thinkers lately, and free trade opinions seem to have received, throughout Europe, a most decided check. * * * * * The late Prince VALDIMAR, of Russia, made three or four years ago a journey to India, and besides taking part with the British army in sundry engagements, occupied himself busily in investigating the manners and customs of the people, the antiquities, history, and natural productions of the country. He wrote an account of his journey, and illustrated it with numerous drawings. His family is now causing this to be printed and the drawings to be engraved, and in a short time the work will be completed. Only three hundred copies are to be struck off, and they are to be presented to royal and illustrious personages. The getting up of the publication will cost 40,000 thalers. * * * * * M. LEON DE MONBEILLARD has written a little treatise upon the _Ethics of Spinoza_, in which--being a spiritualist who admits the dogma of the creation and of human personality--he is said to have refuted the great philosopher, yet without calumniating or disfiguring his doctrines, and with a constant admiration of all that is truly admirable in Spinoza. The work has not yet crossed the sea, but we cannot help thinking that the colossal views of so great a mind are not to be entirely disproved in the delicate dimensions of an "_opuscule_," as the able little treatise of M. Montbeillard is called by the critics. * * * * * JOSEPH RUSSEGGER, imperial director of the mines at Schemnitz, has published the results of five years' travel in Europe, Asia, and Africa, comprising a universal scientific and artistic as well as social and picturesque view of those countries. It is in four volumes, very splendidly illustrated in all these departments, and is published at a cost of forty dollars. * * * * * Dr. DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS, the famous rationalist, has published a work entitled _Christian Marklein_, a picture of life and character from the present time, giving charming if not very new views of the Wurtemberg theological schools. * * * * * In the _German Universities_, it appears from the census just taken, with the exceptions of those of Königsberg, Kiel, and Rostock, the numbers for which have not been officially returned, there were for the last term on the registers 11,945 students. The universities may be classed, according to the number of students at each, in this order: Berlin, Munich, Bonn, Leipsic, Breslau, Tubingen, Göttingen, Wurzburg, Halle, Heidelberg, Giessen, Erlangen, Friburg, Jena, Marburg, Greifswalde. Berlin has 2,107 students, and Greifswalde only 189. The number studying the law is 3,973; of theological students, 2,539; pursuing the study of philosophy and philology, 2,357; medical students, 2,146; and there are 549 engaged in political economy. Halle reckons the greatest proportional number of theological students, there being 330 out of a total of 597; Heidelberg has most students of law; Wurzburg, most of medicine; and Jena, most students of theology. The greatest numbers of foreign students are to be found at Heidelberg, Gottingen, Jena, Wurzburg, and Leipsic. * * * * * The _Independence Belge_ gives an account of Frau Pfeiffer, a woman who left Vienna several years ago to travel alone in the most distant and unfrequented parts of the world. After visiting Palestine and Egypt, Scandinavia and Iceland, she landed in Brazil, penetrated the primitive forests, and lived among the natives; from Valparaiso she traversed the Pacific to Otaheite, thence to China, Singapore, Ceylon, Hindostan, to the caves of Adjunta and Ellora to Bombay, whence she sailed up the Tigris, to Bagdad, and then entered upon the arduous journey to Babylon, Nineveh, and into Kurdistan; and passing to the Caucasus, she embarked for Constantinople, visiting Greece in her way home to Germany. She is now in London, visiting the Great Exposition. * * * * * FERDINAND HILLER, Superintendent of the Cologne Musical Academy, and a contemporary and friend of Mendelssohn, whom, in the beginning, it was supposed he would surpass as a composer, has been recently in Paris, renewing his old experiences. He saw there most of the famous literary and artistic notabilities, and gossips pleasantly about them in the _feuilleton_ of a German journal. He saw Henry Heine, whose body is almost dead, but whose mind is as vigorous as ever. Hiller says that Heine chatted with him about God and himself, of the King of Prussia, and of Hiller--of the Frankfort Parliament and his own songs. Heine's features, he says, are interesting, and even more beautiful than they were formerly. The fallen cheeks leave the noble oval of the head and the delicately chiselled nose mournfully apparent. The eyes are closed. He can only see with the left, by elevating the lid with his finger. He wears a close-trimmed beard, and his hair is as brown and luxuriant as ever. The slim white hand is ideally beautiful. It belongs, according to the doctrine of Carns, to the class of the purely psychological. Heine had just written a song for a German composer; and that no poet can sing more sweetly for music, the many of his verses which Schubert has "married to immortal" tune sufficiently indicate. Mendelssohn also composed the most dreamily delicate music to Heine's "Moonlight on the Ganges." Ingres, the painter, now seventy years old, the pride and model of the severe classicists of the French school, is a comely old man, with rich dark hair, luminous eye, and smooth brow. He is still light and active in movement, and a genial serenity broods over his whole character and manner. His love of music is no less enthusiastic than that of a lover for his mistress. The great German composers are great gods to Ingres. The remembrance of a beautiful sonata fills his eyes with tears. Ingres has recently finished a portrait, which is not inferior to any thing he has ever done. Of musical men, Hiller saw Halevy, a successful composer and genial companion, with a gentle strain of irony in his conversation. Hector Berlioz has not grown to be fifty without some of the snowy tracks of time, but the volcanic genius is still alive. His conversation is like an eruption, now a burning lava-stream of glowing inspiration, now sulphurous mockery and scorn, and now, wide-flying, a shower of sharp stones of criticism. He tells the most laughable stories of his London life, and his musical difficulties and experiences there. In Paris he is only librarian of the "Conservatoire," and director of great concerts. Jules Janin, the sparkling "J. J." of the _Journal des Débats_, and the grand seigneur of the Parisian _feuilletonistes_, leads the most loitering, pleasant life, and grows merry and fat thereby. He sits upon a luxurious ottoman, wrapped in a gorgeous _robe de chambre_, by the fire-place of his beautifully adorned study, and there among his books and bijoux of taste and art, gives audience to all the world. He has visits without end. He gives instruction and advice, hears all that every body has to say, applauds extravagantly, as he writes, all things in this world and some more, until it is time to go to dinner, or to see a new vaudeville. He has beside a beautiful wife, and suffers with the gout. Could his cup be fuller? The poet Beranger, too, who seems to Hiller the songfullest of song-writers, charmed him by the gravity, and sweetness, and nobility of his character. Beranger received him quietly at Passy, near Paris, where he resides, a hale old man of more than seventy years. His hair is white, but his face has the freshness of blooming health. In his features there is a remarkable blending of geniality and intelligent sharpness. They are largely moulded, and their general expression is as generous, fine, and graceful as his verses. The perfect simplicity of his household is very striking. The only hints of any luxury are some medallion portraits, among which Hiller observed Napoleon and Lamartine. Yet this severity is so evidently the result of taste and not of poverty, that it has no unpleasant effect. The beauty and richness of his conversation filled his visitor with the greatest regret that he could not record it all. His first great remembrance is the destruction of the Bastille. His essay in literature was by the songs which circulated universally in manuscript before they were printed. But his literary ambition was toward works of great scope and extent, and it was not until after thirty years of age that he felt distinctly what he could do best. Of his songs he said, "I present to myself a song, as a great composition--I sketch a complete plan, beginning, middle, and end, and make the refrain the quintessence of the whole." While Beranger was finding a letter, he opened a drawer, in which Hiller saw scraps of song and sketches of poems, which he longed to seize, as a wistful boy would grab at the money piles in a banker's window. The following is the letter in which Beranger speaks of the Marseillaise: "I thank you, Madame, for the pleasant letter which you addressed to me. It has revealed to me a noble heart, and although I do not believe such hearts as rare as many say, it is always a fair fortune to meet them. "What you say of the Marseillaise is entirely just. But remember, Madame, that it is the people itself, which always selects its songs, words, and melodies, uninfluenced by any one in the world. Once made, this choice endures, with authority even among the later generations, whose experience would not have made it. "I have often enough thought about a new song of the kind, but I am too old now, and the circumstances of the time have robbed my voice of power. You, Madame, saw the true thought of the song which should be now sung, and I lament that you find the poetical harness not flexible enough for it. "As to your remarks upon my new songs, I must say that I trouble myself as little about the destiny of my younger daughters as about that of their elder sisters. And I am surprised that you speak to me of a Lierman, who should have known me. Excuse, Madame, my delay in acknowledging and thanking you for your letter, and believe me your devoted, BERANGER." * * * * * A recent Italian translation of the _Diplomats and Diplomacy of Italy_, which first appeared in Professor Von Raumer's _Pocket Book_ for 1841, contains three hitherto unprinted MSS. from the Venetian archives. They are curious and interesting, as indicating the strict surveillance which the republic maintained, by means of its ambassadors, over the whole world of the period. * * * * * MR. WILLIS'S _Hurry-Graphs_ have a French rival in the _Pensées d'un Emballeur_, by M. Commerson, chief editor of the _Tintamarre_ (Paris journal.) They are called fantastic, original and forcible. * * * * * A work to create some surprise, coming from Spain, is the _Persecution of the Spanish Protestants by Philip the Second_, by Don ADOLPHO DE CASTRO. The name of Castro is honorably distinguished in Spanish literature. The present author is a grandson, we believe, of Rodriguez de Castro, who wrote the BIBLIOTECA ESPAÑOLA. He displays abilities and a temper suitable for the task he attempted; he has joined to careful and intelligent research a bravery of characterization which quite relieves his work from the censures which belong to most Spanish compositions of its class. That he could print in Madrid a work in which statecraft and ecclesiastical persecutions are so frankly dealt with, is a fact of more significance than a dozen such revolutions as have vexed the slumbers of other states. In Spain, above all countries, the spread of a taste for historical studies must be regarded as pregnant with important consequences. It shows that the barriers of ignorance and self-conceit, which have so long isolated that country from the rest of Europe, are beginning to be effectually broken down. To the common Protestant reader, indeed, De Castro's work will appear studiously moderate, or perhaps timid. But it should be remembered that it was written for a public which is four or five centuries behind our own, in all that constitutes true liberty and enlightenment; and what would appear most gratuitous cowardice here may easily enough be remarkable courage in Spain. To speak in favor of Protestantism at all, still more to become the biographer of the Protestant martyrs, is an undertaking which demands from a Spaniard, even of the present day, no ordinary amount of resolution. And we should be by no means surprised to hear that De Castro has been, in one way or another, made to pay some penalty of his rash enterprise. That it is both a dangerous and an unpopular one is manifest from the caution with which historical as well as religious topics are treated. Compiling what we cannot better characterize than as a Spanish supplement to Fox's "Book of Martyrs," the author nowhere professes himself a Protestant. And the slow and gradual way in which he unmasks the character of Philip II., shows how haughty and sensitive are the public whom he has undertaken to disabuse of a portion of the inveterate pride and prejudice which they nourish on all subjects affecting their church or their country. On the whole, however, though the Protestant reader will occasionally desiderate a little more warmth and indignation when chronicling such atrocities, we should say that the book rather gains than loses by this studied moderation both in tone and opinions. It certainly gains in dignity and impressiveness; and it is vastly better adapted to make its way with the author's countrymen, than if he had betrayed at the outset a sectarian bias, which would have revolted them, before they had time to make acquaintance with the sad and sanguinary events of which he is the historian. The ground gone over is necessarily much the same as in M'Crie's _History of the Reformation in Spain_, a work which possibly suggested the undertaking, and to which De Castro gives due credit for learning and ability. His advantage over the Scottish historian consists in his command of a variety of documents in print and in manuscript, to which access could be had only in Spain, especially the publications of the Spanish reformers themselves, which are exceedingly rare in consequence of the pains taken to destroy them by the Inquisition. The most remarkable result obtained by De Castro's researches, and the feature in his work for which he claims the greatest credit is the new light he has thrown on the history of Don Carlos. But unfortunately the question as to the Protestantism of that prince remains in much the same obscurity as before. His having been tainted by heretical opinions would aid certainly in accounting for his father's malignity towards him; but otherwise there seems to be no proof of the fact; and our own opinion is, that his tolerant views as to the treatment of the Flemish provinces were misconstrued into bias towards Protestant doctrines. The inference relied on by De Castro and others, that if he had remained Catholic he must have shared his father's extravagant bigotry, is lame. Don Carlos did no more than follow the usual course of heirs apparent when he disapproved of his father's tyranny; and his sympathies with Aragon are not less marked than those with Flanders. * * * * * LONGWORTH, who distinguished himself in the Hungarian troubles, is writing a history of them. There is promise of so many books upon the subject that we shall be able to find out nothing about it. By the way, we wonder that no one has yet chosen for a motto to place upon his title-page, this sentence, which Lord Bolingbroke wrote more than a hundred years ago: "_I mean to speak of the troubles in Hungary. Whatever they become in their progress, they were caused originally by the usurpations and persecutions of the emperor. And when the Hungarians were called rebels first, they were called so for no other reason than this, that they would not be slaves_." It is from his _Letters on History_, and occurs where he has been speaking of the hostility of foreign powers to Austria. * * * * * A PENNY MAGAZINE, in the Bengalese language, is to be established in Calcutta, under the editorship of Baboo Rajendralal Mittra, the librarian of the Asiatic Society. It is to be illustrated by electrotypes executed in England, of woodcuts which have already appeared in the _Penny Magazine_, the _Saturday Magazine_, and the _Illustrated News_. * * * * * A NATIVE of India has translated the tragedy of _Othello_ into Bengalee Othello's cognomen in the Oriental version is Moor Bahadoor (General Moor). * * * * * IN ITALY, at Turin and Florence, a great number of valuable works have been issued, illustrative of the recent revolutions. They do not claim to be histories, for history is impossible, while events are contemporary and cannot be contemplated from a universal point of principle and analysis. But these volumes are what the French with their happy facility would call studies for history. They are the material from which the great historic artists must compose their pictures--they are the diary of the movement--they follow all the changes of the time, hopeful or despondent, with the fidelity and closeness of an Indian upon the trail. We have seen several of these publications, and hope ere many months to see a treatise upon the republican movement in Europe from a pen well able to sketch it, and which is fed by ink which is never for a moment red. The largest and most important of these works is that of M. Gualterio, just published in Florence, which comprises several letters of the Austrian lackey, Francis IV., Duke of Modenas, and throws light upon many of the darkest passages of the dark Austria-Italico policy. Among other letters, also, one of the most remarkable is that of the Cardinal Gonsalvi, well known as the able and humane Prime Minister of Pius VII., and to whose memory there is now upon the walls of St. Peter's a monument by Thorwaldsen, of which a statue of the Cardinal is part. This letter speaks of the miserable conduct of the political trials, and "justice," he says, "charity, the most ordinary decency demands that all humanity shall not be so trampled under foot. What will the English and French journals say--not the Austrian, when they learn of this massacre of the innocents." This was thirty years ago. But at this moment, were there an able and humane minister at the Vatican, how truly might he repeat Gonsalvi's words! It is in works like these, and in the journals and pamphlets published during the intensity of the struggle, that the still-surviving Italian genius, which it has been so long the northern policy to smother and repress, betrayed itself. Nor among these works, as striking another key, ought we to omit the Souvenirs of the War of Lombardy by M. de Talleyrand-Perigord. Duke of Dino--and the history of the Revolution of Rome by Alphonse Balleydier. The Souvenirs are devoted to the glory of the unhappy King Charles Albert, the dupe of his own vanity and the victim of his own weakness. Upon the pages of M. le Duc de Dino, however, he blazes very brilliantly as a martyr--martyr of a cause hopeless even in the first flush of success--martyr of an army without enthusiasm, of a liberalism without freedom or heroism. The English royalists, the reader will remember, were fond of the same title for the unhappy Charles I. In M. Balleydier's history of the Roman revolution, Rossi is the central figure, in whose fate there was something extremely heroic, because he had received information, just as he quitted the Pope's palace to go to the assembly, from a priest who had heard it in confidence, that he was to be attacked, and he must have known the Italian, and especially the Roman character, sufficiently to have felt assured of his fate. After hearing the priest, Rossi said to him calmly: "I thank you, Monseigneur, the cause of the Pope is the cause of God," and stepping into his carriage drove to the palace of the Cancelleria, at whose door he fell dead, by a stroke that wounded much more mortally the cause which condemned him, than the cause he espoused. * * * * * With all our waste of money, and continual boasts of encouraging individual merit, we have not yet a single pension in this country except to homicides. "They manage these things better in France." A return just published in the official _Moniteur_, shows that one department of the government, that of Public Instruction, distributes the following pensions to literary persons: five of from $400 to $480 a year; nine of $300 to $360; twenty-nine of $200 to $240; thirty-four of $120 to $180; and fifteen of $40 to $100. To the widows and families of deceased authors, two of $400 to $450; six of $300 to $360; seventeen of $200 to $240; twenty-five of $120 to $180; and thirty-one of $40 to $100. In addition to this, it may be mentioned, that the same department distributes a large sum annually, under the title of "Encouragements," to authors in temporary distress, or engaged in works of literary importance and but small pecuniary profit. It also awards several thousands to learned societies, for literary and scientific missions, purchases of books, &c. The department of the Interior gives $2,500 a year in subscriptions to different works, and nearly $30,000 for "indemnities and assistance to authors." The other departments of the government also employ considerable sums in purchasing books, and in otherwise encouraging literary men. It is said indeed to be no unusual thing for an author, laboring under temporary inconvenience, to apply for a few hundred, or, in some cases, thousand francs, and they are almost always awarded. No shame whatever is attached to the application, and no very extraordinary credit to the gift. Surely, France must be a Paradise for authors. * * * * * A BOOKSELLER in Paris announces: "Reflections upon my conversations with the Duke de la Vauguyon, by Louis-Augustus Dauphin, (Louis XVI.,) accompanied by a fac simile of the MS., and with an introduction by M. FALLOUX, formerly Minister of Public Instruction." Falloux is a churchman of the stamp of Montalembert. We are apt to doubt the genuineness of these luckily discovered MSS. of eminent persons. We have no more faith in this case than we had in that of the Napoleon novels, mentioned in the last _International_. * * * * * The late M. De BALZAC, who, besides being one of the cleverest writers of the age, was a brilliant man of society, and a very notorious _roué_, left, it appears, voluminous memoirs, to be printed without erasure or addition, and his friends are much alarmed by the prospect of their appearance. It is said that his custom of extorting letters from his friends upon any subject at issue, under pretence of possessing an imperfect memory, and his method of classing them, will render his memoirs one of the completest scandalous _tableaux_ of the nineteenth century that could ever be presented to the contemplation of another age. Opposition to the publication has already been offered, but without success, and the princess-widow is busily engaged with the preparations for printing, intending to have the memoirs before the world early in June. They extend minutely over more than twenty years. * * * * * M. E. QUINET, who was long associated with Michelet, in the College of France, and who is known as a writer by his _Alemagne et Italie, Ultramontanisme, Vacances en Espagne_, etc. has published in Paris _L'Enseignement du Peuple_. "On the 24th day of February, 1848," he says, "a social miracle places in the hands of France the control of its destiny. France, openly consulted, replies by taking up a position in the scale of nations between Portugal and Naples. There must be a cause of this voluntary servitude; the object of these pages is to discover this cause, and, if possible, to protect futurity against the effects of its operation." This is the problem he proposes to solve, and he concludes that the important secret is in the fact, that the "national religion is in direct contradiction with the national revolution." "Chained by the circumstance of its religion to the middle ages, France believes that it can march onward to the end of a career opened to it solely because of its protest against every great principle of government which those ages held sacred." He has worked ten years, he tells us, to demonstrate two things: The first, that catholic states are all perishing; the second, that no political liberty can be realized in those states. "I have shown," he continues, "Italy the slave of all Europe, Spain a slave within, Portugal a slave within and without, Ireland a slave to England, Poland a slave to Russia, Bohemia, Hungary, slaves of Austria--Austria herself, the mother of all slavery, a slave to Russia. Looking for similar proofs out of Europe, I have shown in America, on the one hand, the increasing greatness of the heretical United States; on the other hand, the slavery of the catholic democracies and monarchies of the south: _in the former a_ WASHINGTON, _in the second a_ ROSAS." M. Quinet considers that the only remedy applicable to an evil of this magnitude is the utter separation of church and state. Leave but the slightest connection between the two, and the former will inevitably overpower the latter. The one is a compact, organized, single-minded body; the other is scattered, loosely put together, swayed to and fro by every change in the political atmosphere, and can offer no resistance that is sufficient to oppose the steady, unremittent attacks of its enemy. The two, therefore, must not be placed in collision. The very indifference manifested towards the national religion by the great bulk of the French people is the cause why so much danger is to be apprehended from the efforts of the church. Because a religion is dead, says M. Quinet, there is the danger. A living religion, like that of the puritans, may certainly mould the government into a despotic form, but it communicates to it, at least, a portion of its own power and energy, whilst a dead religion infallibly occasions death to the state and to the people with which it is politically and organically united. He argues the whole subject with eloquent force, and with not a little of the earnestness which reminds the reader of his personal controversies with the Roman Catholic Church. * * * * * A history of _Marie Stuart_, by I. M. Dargaud, has just been published in Paris, and for its brilliancy, completeness, clearness, and impartiality, attracts much attention. Queen Mary of Scotland was one of the famously beautiful women whose history is romance. She must be named with the heroines of history and the figures of poetry, with Helen, and Aspasia, and Cleopatra. Certainly, we trace no more sparkling and sorrowful career than hers upon the confused page of history, and our admiration, condemnation, surprise, sorrow and delight, fall, summed in a tear, upon her grave. In this work it appears that she was undoubtedly privy to the death of Darnley. During his assassination, she was dancing at Holyrood. The fearful fascination of a brigand like Bothwell, for so proud and passionate a nature as Mary's, is well explained by M. Dargaud. He is just, also, to her own tragedy, the long and bitter suffering, the betrayal of friends; the final despair, and the laying aside two crowns to mount the scaffold. She died nobly, and as most of the illustrious victims of history have died; as if nature, unwilling that they should live, would yet compassionately show the world in their ending, that heroism and nobility were not altogether unknown to them. _Apropos_ of this history of Queen Mary, Lamartine has written a letter to Beranger, which praises the work exceedingly, but much more glorifies himself. The letter is a perfect specimen of that vanity, wherein only Lamartine is sublime: "Ah! if you or I had had such a heroine at twenty years, what epic poems and what songs would have been the result!" * * * * * THE COUNT MONTALEMBERT, the fervid champion of Catholicism in the French chamber, has just published a work, entitled _The higher and lower Radicalism: in its enmity to Religion, Right, Freedom and Justice, in France, Switzerland and Italy_. * * * * * Although M. GUIZOT appears to be as busily engaged as ever in politics, the advertisements of the booksellers would induce a belief that his whole attention is given to literary studies. He has just published _Etudes Biographiques sur la Révolution de l'Angleterre_, which, with his sketch of General Monk, he says, "form a sort of gallery of portraits of the English Revolution, in which personages of the most different characters appear together--chiefs or champions of sects or parties, parliamentarians, cavaliers, republicans, levellers, who, either at the end of the political conflicts in which they were engaged, or when in retirement towards the close of their lives, resolved to describe themselves, their own times, and the part they played therein. In the drawing together of such men," he adds, "and in the mixture of truth and vanity which characterize such works, there is, if I do not deceive myself, sufficient to interest persons of serious and curious minds, especially among us and in these times; for in spite of the profound diversity of manners, contemporary comparisons and applications will present themselves at every step, whatever may be the pains taken not to seek them." The studies here collected we suppose are not new; they are doubtless the articles which the author contributed to the _Biographie Universelle_ and other works before he became a minister--perhaps, as in the cases of his "Monk" and "Washington," with scarcely a word of alteration. The work is, however, interesting. The period of English history to which it refers has been profoundly studied by Guizot, and it would probably be impossible to select a mode of treating it that would admit of more effective or attractive delineation. The life of Ludlow appears as the first of the series. * * * * * French Literature tends in a remarkable degree towards monarchical institutions. Guizot and his associates publicly advocate the Restoration. M. Cousin has published a new argument against Republicanism, and M. Romieu, whose curious book, which men doubted whether to receive as a jest or an earnest argument, _The Era of the Cæsars_--in which he declared his belief that the true and only law for France is _force_--is before the public again, in a volume entitled _Le Spectre Rouge de 1852_. He predicts the subversion of all order, and such terrible scenes as have never been witnessed even in France, unless some one bold, resolute, scorning all "constitutional" figments, and relying solely on his soldiers--some one who shall say _L'état c'est moi!_ shall save France. A Cromwell, a Francia, or in default of such Louis Napoleon--any one who will constitute himself an autocrat, will become the saviour of France! * * * * * The COUNT DE JARNAC, formerly secretary and _chargé d'affaires_ of the French embassy in London, has published a novel which is well spoken of, entitled the _Dernier d'Egmont_. * * * * * A French traveller in upper Egypt has collected for the Parisian Ethnological Museum copies of many curious inscriptions upon the walls of the great temple of Philæ. Among others, there is the modern one of Dessaix, which the Parisians think "reflects the grandiose simplicity of the Republic." "The sixth year of the Republic, the thirteenth Messidor, a French army commanded by Bonaparte descended upon Alexandria; twenty days after, the army having routed the Mamelukes at the Pyramids, Dessaix, commanding the first division, pursued them beyond the Cataracts, where he arrived the thirteenth Ventose of the year seven, with Brigadier-Generals Davoust, Friant, and Belliard. Donzelot, chief of the staff, La Tournerie, commanding the artillery, Eppler, Chief of the twenty-first Light Infantry. The thirteenth Ventose, year seven of the Republic, third March, year of J.C., 1799. Engraved by Casteix." The last date, however, strikes us as a base compromise to the _temporal_ prejudices of the world, on the part of the author of this "simple and grandiose" inscription. * * * * * M. de Saint Beauve has published in Paris some hitherto inedited MSS. of MIRABEAU, consisting of _Dialogues_ between the great orator and the celebrated Sophie (Madame de Monnier), written when Mirabeau was confined in the fortress of Vincennes, principally, it seems, from the pleasure he had in reflecting on the object of his passion. He gives an account of their first meeting, the growth of their love, and their subsequent adventures, in the language, no doubt, as well as he could recollect, that had passed between them, in conversation or in letters. There is not much that is absolutely new in these papers, or that throws any peculiar light on Mirabeau's character, but nothing could have been written by him which is without a certain interest, especially upon the subject of these _Dialogues_. Circulating-library people had always a morbid desire to see illustrious personages while under the influence of the tender passion. * * * * * _Progression Constante de la Démocratie pendant soixante ans_, is the title of a new Parisian brochure well noticed. Of the same character is the _Le Mont-Saint-Michel_, by Martin Bernard, a serial publication devoted to the details of the sufferings of Democratic martyrs. The author is now in exile, having shown himself too republican for the present Republic. * * * * * Victor Hugo's paper, _L'Evènement_, says of Louis Philippe's Gallery at the Palais Royal, which the heirs now wish to sell, that it has two paintings of Gericault's, the Chasseur and the Cuirassier, and that they symbolize the two phases of the Empire, victorious France and the Invasion. He hopes, therefore, that they will not be permitted to go out of France. * * * * * William Howitt is writing a life of George Fox. * * * * * Mr. Ticknor's _History of Spanish Literature_ is reviewed in _La Revue des Deux Mondes_ by PROSPER MERIMEE, of whose recent travels in the United States we have had occasion to speak once or twice in _The International_. M. Merimee is the author of a _Life of Peter the Cruel_, of which a translation has been published within a few months by Bentley in London, and he professes to be thoroughly acquainted with Spanish literature, from a loving study of it while residing in Spain. Perhaps he had some thought of writing its history himself; he certainly seems to bestow unwillingly the praises he is compelled to give Mr. Ticknor, whose extraordinary merits he however distinctly admits. "The writer of this History," he says, "has gone into immense researches; he has applied himself deeply and conscientiously to the Castilian language and the Spanish authors: he has read, he has examined, every thing that the English, French, and Germans, had published on this subject. He possessed an advantage over the critics of old Europe--that of being able to treat literary questions without mixing up with them recollections of national rivalries." He concludes his article by saying, "This work is an inestimable repertory; it must be eminently useful in a library. It comprises very good biographical notices of the Spanish authors, and numerous abstracts which obviate the necessity of reference to the original authorities. The translations, which are copious, are executed with surpassing taste, to afford an idea of the style of the Spanish poets. Thanks to the flexibility of the English language, and the ability or command of the author in using it, the translations are of signal fidelity and elegance. The rhythm, the flow, the idiomatic grace and _curiosa felicitas_, are rendered in the most exact and the happiest manner." * * * * * By a letter in the London _Times_, signed ERNESTO SUSANNI, it appears that M. LIBRI may be a very much wronged person. The readers of the _International_ will remember his trial, a few months ago, and his condemnation to ten years' imprisonment (in default of judgment), and deprivation of the various high offices he held, for having, as was alleged, stolen from the Mazarine Library, besides others, the following volumes: _Petrarca, gli Triomphi_, 1475: Bologna, in folio; _Pamphyli poetæ lepidissimi Epigrammatum libri quatuor; Faccio degli Uberti, opera chiamata Ditta Munde Venezia_, 1501, quarto; _Phalaris Epistole, traducte del Latino da Bartol: Fontio_, 1471, quarto; _Dante, Convivio_: Florence, 1490, quarto; &c. M. Susanni alleges that the learned bibliographer, M. Silvestre, has discovered in the Mazarine Library that, contrary to the very circumstantial affirmation of the deed of accusation, the above-mentioned books _are still in their places on the shelves of that library_, from which they have never been absent, and where any one may go and see them, and verify the fact for himself. The persons employed to draw up the charges against M. Libri never appeared to understand that two different editions of a work were totally different things, and they have accused M. Libri of having stolen a work from a public library, simply because M. Libri possessed an edition of that work, though different from the one the library had lost, or, better still, which it had never lost at all. Considering all the circumstances, and the attention which was attracted to the case throughout the learned world, this is very curious: it will form one of the most remarkable of the _causes célèbres_. * * * * * The new Paris review, _La Politique Nouvelle_, starts bravely its career as a rival of _La Revue des Deux Mondes_. The leading article, "La Constitution, c'est l'order," is by M. Marie, who was one of the chiefs of the Provisional Government, and Henri Martin, Gustave Cazavan, and Paul Rochery, are among the contributors; but the best attraction of the work to those who do not care for its politics, is the beginning of a charming novel by Madame Charles Reybaud, the authoress of Tales of the Old Convents of Paris. * * * * * Lamartine's reputation declines with every new attempt of his at money-making. There was never a man capable of doing well a half of what he advertises. He is writing a romance on the destruction of the Janizaries, for the _Pays_, another romance for the _Siecle_, and occasionally gives _feuilletons_ to other journals; he is re-editing a complete edition of his own works, writing a history of the Restoration, and a history of Turkey, and has lately begun to edit a daily paper. He also continues the monthly pamphlet, of between thirty and forty pages, the _Conseiller du Peuple_, on political matters, and produces once a month a periodical, _Les Foyers du Peuple_, in which he gives an account of his travels, with tales and verses. * * * * * The Paris correspondent of the London _Literary Gazette_ states, that an Assyrian, named FURIS SCHYCYAC, is at present attracting some attention in the literary circles. He had just arrived from London, where, it appears, he translated the Bible into Arabic, for one of the religious associations. He has accompanied his _début_ in Parisian society with a _mudh_, or poem, to Paris, in which he almost out-Orientals the Orientals in his exaggerated compliments and gorgeous imagery. Paris, he declares, amongst other things, is the "terrestrial paradise," the "_séjour_ of houris," and "Eden;" whilst the people are, _par excellence_, "the strong, the generous, the brave, the sincere-hearted, with no faults to diminish their virtues." This master-stroke has opened the Parisian circles to the cunning Assyrian. * * * * * M. Leroux has published in Paris a volume of Reminiscences of Travel and Residence in the United States, with observations on the Administration of Justice in this country. * * * * * The last _Edinburgh Review_ has an article on COUSIN, in which a general survey is taken of his life and of his works, of which he has just completed the publication of a new edition. The _London Leader_ says that the critic ingeniously represents all Cousin's plagiarisms as the consequences of the progressive and _assimilative_ intellect of the eclectic chief; that it would be easy with the same facts to tell a very different story; and correct the reviewer's "mistake," where he talks of Cousin as the translator of Plato. Cousin's name is on the title-page; but not one dialogue, the _Leader_ avers, did he translate; it even doubts his ability to translate one. What he did was to take old translations by De Grow and others, here and there polishing the style; and the dialogues that were untranslated he gave to certain clever young men in want of employment and glad of his patronage. He touched up their style and wrote the Preface to each Dialogue, for which the work bears his name! _This_ explains the puzzling fact that the translator of Plato should so completely misunderstand the purpose of the dialogue he is prefacing. Gigantic indeed would be the labors of Cousin--if he performed them himself. * * * * * Walter Savage Landor is now seventy-six years of age. He writes no more great works, but he is hardly less industrious than a penny-a-liner in writing upon all sorts of subjects for the journals. We find his communications almost every week in _The Examiner_, _The News_, _The Leader_, _Leigh Hunt's Journal_, and other periodicals. Sometimes he rises to his earlier eloquence, and we hear the voice that was loudest and sweetest in the "Imaginary Conversations;" but for the most part his newspaper pieces are feeble and splenetic, unworthy of him. One of his latest composures has relation to Lord Lyndhurst, by whose speech against the revolutionary aliens in England had been excited the ire of the old poet. "In your paper of this day, April 12," he writes to the editor of _The Examiner_, "I find repeated an expression of Lord Lyndhurst's, which I am certain will be offensive to many of your readers. General Klapka, a man illustrious for his military knowledge, and for his application of it to the defence of his country and her laws, is contemptuously called _one_ Klapka. The most obscure and the most despicable (and those only) are thus designated. Surely to have been called by the acclamations of a whole people to defend the most important of its fortresses is quite as exalted a distinction as to be appointed a Lord Chamberlain or a Lord Chancellor by the favor of one minister, and liable to be dismissed the next morning by another. With all proper respect for the cleverness of Lord Lyndhurst, I must entreat your assistance in discovering one sentence he ever wrote, or spoke, denoting the man of lofty genius or capacious mind. Memorable things he certainly has said--such as calling by the name of aliens a third part of our fellow-subjects in these islands, and by the prefix of a _certain_ to the name of Klapka. It is strange that sound law should not always be sound sense; strange that the great seal of equity should make so faint and indistinct an impression. Klapka will be commemorated and renowned in history as one beloved by the people, venerated by the nobility; whose voice was listened to attentively by the magistrate, enthusiastically by the soldier. The fame of Lord Lyndhurst is ephemeral, confined to the Court of Chancery and the House of Peers; dozens have shared it in each, and have gone to dinner and oblivion. Those, and those alone, are great men whose works or words are destined to be the heirlooms of many generations. God places them where time passes them without erasing their footsteps. Kings can never make them. They, if minded so, could more easily make kings. England hath installed one Chancellor who might have been consummately great, had there only been in his composition the two simple elements of generosity and honesty. Bacon did not hate freedom, or the friends of freedom; and, although he cautiously kept clear of so dangerous a vicinity, he never came voluntarily forth, invoking the vindictive spirit of a dead law to eliminate them in the hour of adversity from their sanctuary." * * * * * The Rev. Moses Margoliouth, who was once a Jew, and who last year published a narrative of a journey to Palestine, under the title of "A Visit to the Land of My Fathers," has just given to the world, in three octavos, a _History of the Jews in Great Britain_. The book is insufferably tame and feeble; the author is of the class called in England "religious flunkies:" a mastiff to the poor and a spaniel to the proud. His first book was disgusting for its feebleness and servility, and this is scarcely better, notwithstanding the richness of its materials and the curious interest of its subject. A good History of the Jews in England will be a work worth reading. * * * * * The _Ecclesiastical History Society_ have published in London _Strype's Memorials of Cranmer_, _Heylyn's History of the Reformation_, and _Field's Treatise of the Church_. Strype and Heylyn are more familiar than Field, whose work is a sort of supplement to Hooker's _Polity_. Field resembled his illustrious master and friend in judgment, temper, and learning. In his own day his reputation was great. James I. regretted, when he heard of his death, that he had not done more for him; Hall, in reference to his own deanery of Worcester, which had been sought for Field, speaks of that "better-deserving divine," who "was well satisfied with greater hopes;" and Fuller, with his accustomed humor of thoughtfulness, bestows his salutation on "that learned divine whose memory smelleth like a _field_ that the Lord hath blessed." * * * * * THE LIFE OF WORDSWORTH, by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, has appeared in London, and with some additions by Professor Henry Reed, of Philadelphia, will soon be issued by Ticknor, Reed & Fields, of Boston. From what the critics write of it we suspect it is a poor affair. The _Leader_ says that, "all things considered, it is perhaps the worst biographical attempt" it "ever waded through." The _Examiner_ and other leading papers admit its dulness as a biography, and its worthlessness in criticism, but claim for it a certain value as a collection of facts respecting the histories of Wordsworth's different poems. The work indeed professes to be no more than a biographical commentary on the poet's writings. It does not even affect to be critical, or to offer any labored exposition of the principles on which Wordsworth's poems were composed. The author describes his illustrious relative as having had no desire that any such disquisition should be written. "He wished that his poems should stand by themselves, and plead their own cause before the tribunal of posterity." Strictly, then, the volumes are so exclusively subordinate and ministerial to the poetry they illustrate, that apart from the latter they possess hardly any interest. By enthusiasts for the poems they will be eagerly read, but to any other class of readers we cannot see that they present attraction. Dr. Wordsworth's part in them, though small, is not particularly well done; and the poet's part almost exclusively consists of personal memoranda connected with his poems dictated in later life, and seldom by any chance refers to any thing but himself. Nevertheless there are in the volumes many delightful and characteristic details, much genuine and beautiful criticism (chiefly in the poet's letters), and occasional passages of fine sentiment and pure philosophy. Here is Wordsworth's own description of one of his latest visits to London, and of his appearance at court, in a letter to an American correspondent: "My absence from home lately was not of more than three weeks. I took the journey to London solely to pay my respects to the Queen, upon my appointment to the laureateship upon the decease of my friend Mr. Southey. The weather was very cold, and I caught an inflammation in one of my eyes, which rendered my stay in the south very uncomfortable. I nevertheless did, in respect to the object of my journey, all that was required. The reception given me by the Queen at her ball was most gracious. Mrs. Everett, the wife of your minister, among many others, was a witness to it, without knowing who I was. It moved her to the shedding of tears. This effect was in part produced, I suppose, by American habits of feeling, as pertaining to a republican government. To see a gray-haired man of seventy-five years of age, kneeling down in a large assembly to kiss the hand of a young woman, is a sight for which institutions essentially democratic do not prepare a spectator of either sex, and must naturally place the opinions upon which a republic is founded, and the sentiments which support it, in strong contrast with a government based and upheld as ours is. I am not, therefore, surprised that Mrs. Everett was moved, as she herself described to persons of my acquaintance, among others to Mr. Rogers the poet. By the by, of this gentleman, now I believe in his eighty-third year, I saw more than of any other person except my host, Mr. Moxon, while I was in London. He is singularly fresh and strong for his years, and his mental faculties (with the exception of his memory a little) not at all impaired. It is remarkable that he and the Rev. W. Bowles were both distinguished as poets when I was a schoolboy, and they have survived almost all their eminent contemporaries, several of whom came into notice long after them. Since they became known, Burns, Cowper, Mason the author of 'Caractacus' and friend of Gray, have died. Thomas Warton, Laureate, then Byron, Shelley, Keats, and a good deal later Scott, Coleridge, Crabbe, Southey, Lamb, the Ettrick Shepherd, Cary the translator of Dante, Crowe the author of 'Lewesdon Hill,' and others of more or less distinction, have disappeared. And now of English poets advanced in life, I cannot recall any but James Montgomery, Thomas Moore, and myself, who are living, except the octogenarian with whom I began. I saw Tennyson, when I was in London, several times. He is decidedly the first of our living poets, and I hope will live to give the world still better things. You will be pleased to hear that he expressed in the strongest terms his gratitude to my writings. To this I was far from indifferent, though persuaded that he is not much in sympathy with what I should myself most value in my attempts, viz., the spirituality with which I have endeavored to invest the material universe, and the moral relations under which I have wished to exhibit its most ordinary appearances." Of the mention of Alfred Tennyson in the foregoing extract the _Examiner_ remarks, that it is perhaps the greatest stretch of appreciation or acknowledgment in regard to any living or contemporary poet in Wordsworth. His mention of Southey's verses is always reserved and dry. He takes no pains to conceal his poor opinion of Scott's. His allusions to Rogers are respectful, but cold. His objection to Byron may be forgiven. There is less reason for his appearing quite to lose his ordinarily calm temper when Goethe is even named, or for his extending this unreasoning dislike to Goethe's great English expositor, Carlyle. Yet we must not omit, on the other hand, what he says of Shelley. Shelley, he admits (much to our surprise), to have been "one of the best artists of us all; I mean in workmanship of style." * * * * * The London _Standard of Freedom_ remarks of the article on "Some American Poets" in the last number of _Blackwood_, that "it assumes more ignorance in England as to American poetry than actually exists." Our readers will readily believe this when advised that the critic regards _Longfellow_ as a greater poet than Bryant! whom he classes with Mrs. Hemans. * * * * * M. COMTE has quitted metaphysics to reform the calendar, but probably will not succeed better than those who attempted the same thing during the first French revolution. We find a synopsis of his scheme in the _Leader_. He proposes that each month shall be consecrated to one of the great names that represent the intellectual and social progress of humanity. He specializes the names of Moses, Homer, Aristotle, Archimedes, Cæsar, St. Paul, Charlemagne, Dante, Descartes, Guttenberg (whom he probably thinks had something to do with the invention of printing), Columbus and Frederic the Great, as most appropriate for the designation of the twelve months; recommending, however, particular fêtes for minor heroes in the months under which they may best be grouped--for Augustin, Hildebrand, Bernard, and Bossuet, in St. Paul's month; Alfred and St. Louis, in Charlemagne's month; Richelieu and Cromwell in the month of Frederic the Great, and so on. Supplying a defect of Catholicism in this respect, he proposes what he calls "fêtes of reprobation" for the greatest scoundrels of history--for such retrogressive men as Julian the Apostate, Philip II. of Spain, and Bonaparte, (we don't agree to the classification, unless he means President Louis Napoleon, who indeed is not a _great_ scoundrel, though disposed to be sufficiently retrogressive.) According to this new calendar, a follower of Comte, writing a letter in March, would have to date it as written on such or such a day of _Aristotle_. We fear the proposal won't do even in France, but this, at least, may be said for it, that it is as good as the Puseyite practice of dating by saints' days, besides being novel, and Parisian, and scientific. Sydney Smith used, in jest of the Puseyite practice, to date his letters "_Washing Day--Eve of Ironing Day_;" Comte's plan is better than that of the Puseyites--almost as good as Peter Plimley's. * * * * * Among the many books lately printed in England upon the ecclesiastical controversies, is one entitled _Remonstrance against Romish Corruptions in the Church, addressed to the People and Parliament of England in 1395_, now for the first time published, edited by the Rev. F. Forshall. Biographers of Wycliffe have referred to this tract and quoted passages in evidence of the Wycliffite heresies; but they appear to have failed altogether of perceiving its larger scope, or understanding its political bearing and significance. There can hardly be a doubt, as Mr. Forshall suggests, that it was drawn up to influence the famous parliament which met in the eighteenth year of Richard the Second, and which was a scene of unusual excitement on the subject of religion from the sudden clash of the old Papal party with the new and increasing band of patriotic reformers. Wycliffe had then been dead, and his opinions gradually on the increase, for more than ten years. The author of the Remonstrance was his friend John Purvey, who assisted him in the first English version of the Bible, shared with him the duties of his parish, and attended his death-bed. He was the most active of the reformers, the most formidable to the ecclesiastical authorities. Another old MS. from the Cottonian collection in the British Museum, is the _Chronicle of Battel Abbey, from 1066 to 1176, now first translated, with Notes, and an Abstract of the subsequent History of the Establishment_, by Mark Antony Lower. This is extremely curious, and contains, besides the important histories of the controversies between the ecclesiastical authorities and Henry the Second, some very striking exhibitions of manners. * * * * * The vitality of SCOTT'S popularity is shown by the fact that the Edinburgh publishers of his _Life_ and _Works_ printed and sold the following quantities of them during the period from 1st January, 1848, to 26th March, 1851, viz.: Novels (exclusive of the Abbotsford edition), 4,760 sets; Poetical Works, 4,360; Prose Writings, 850; Life, 2,610; Tales of a Grandfather (independently of those included in the complete sets of the Prose Works), 2,990; and Selections, 4,420. It may serve as a "curiosity of literature" to give a summary of the printing of the Writings and Life since June, 1829, when they came under the management of the late proprietor, Mr. Cadell: Waverley Novels, 78,270 sets; Poetical Works, 41,340; Prose Works, 8,260; Life, 26,860; Tales of a Grandfather (independently of those included in the complete sets of the Prose Works), 22,190; Selections, 7,550. The popularity to which the "People's Edition" has attained appears from the fact that the following numbers, originally published in weekly sheets, have been printed: Novels, 7,115,197; Poetry, 674,955; Prose, 269,406; Life, 459,291; total sheets, 8,518,849. The whole copyrights, stocks, &c., of Scott's works, as possessed for many years by Cadell, have now been transferred to the hands of Messrs. Adam and Charles Black. The copyrights and stock have been acquired by the present purchasers for £27,000, or £10,000 less than Mr. Cadell paid for copyrights alone. * * * * * ELIZABETH BARRET BROWNING has published a new poem, _Casa Guidi Windows_, which gives a vivid picture of the tumult and heroism of Italian struggles for independence, as seen from the poet's windows, at Florence, with the fervid commentary of her hopes and aspirations. * * * * * A novel by MRS. CAROLINE LEE HENTZ, published by Mr. Hart, of Philadelphia, has been dramatized by Mr. Henry Paul Howard, for the Haymarket Theatre in London, and brought out in a very splendid style, with J. W. Wallack in the leading character. * * * * * COLONEL CUNNINGHAM, a son-in-law of Viscount Hardinge, has just published in London "Glimpses of the Great Western Republic in the year 1850." * * * * * We shall look with much interest for the result of the new scheme for the encouragement of life assurance, economy, &c., among literary men and artists in England. To bring this project into general notice, and to form the commencement of the necessary funds, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, one of its originators, has written and presented to his associates in the cause, a new comedy in five acts, under the significant title, _Not So Bad as we Seem_. It was to be produced on the sixteenth ult., under the management of Mr. Charles Dickens, in a theatre constructed for the purpose, and performed by Robert Bell, Wilkie Collins, Dudley Costello, Peter Cunningham, Charles Dickens, Augustus Egg, A.R.A., John Forster, R. H. Horne, Douglass Jerrold, Charles Knight, Mark Lemon, J. Westland Marston, Frank Stone, and others. The tickets were twenty-five dollars each, and the Queen and Prince Albert were to be present. The comedy is hereafter to be performed in public; and the promoters of the scheme are sanguine of its success. Mr. Maclise has offered to paint a picture (the subject to be connected with the performance of the comedy), and to place it at the disposal of the guild, for the augmentation of its funds. The prospects are encouraging. * * * * * The REV. C. G. FINNEY, so well known in the Presbyterian churches of this country, has passed some time in London, and an edition of his _Lectures on Systematic Theology_ has just been published there, with a preface by the Rev. Dr. Redford, of Worcester, who confesses, that "when a student he would gladly have bartered half the books in his library to have gained a single perusal of these Lectures; and he cannot refrain from expressing the belief, that no young student of theology will ever regret their purchase or perusal." The book makes an octavo of 1016 pages. * * * * * "TALVI," the wife of Professor ROBINSON, will leave New-York in a few days, we understand, to pass some time in her native country. She will be absent a year and a half, and will reside chiefly in Berlin. We have recently given an account of the life and writings of this very eminent and admirable woman, in the _International_, and are among the troops of friends who wish her all happiness in the fatherland, and a safe return to the land of her adoption. We presume the public duties of Dr. Robinson will prevent him from being absent more than a few weeks. * * * * * ALBERT SMITH has dramatised a tale from Washington Irving's "Alhambra" for the Princess's Theatre--making a burlesque comedy. * * * * * MRS. SOUTHWORTH must be classed among our most industrious writers. The Appletons have just published a new novel by her, entitled _The Mother-in-Law_, and she has two others in press--one of which is appearing from week to week in the _National Era_. * * * * * DR. SPRING, whose religious writings appear to be as popular in Great Britain as in this country, and every where to be regarded as among the classics of practical religious literature, has issued a second edition of his two octavos entitled _First Things_. In style, temper, and all the best qualities of such works, the discourses embraced in this work are deserving of eminent praise. (M. W. Dodd.) * * * * * Of HENRY MARTIN, whom the religious world regards with a reverent affection like that it gives to Cowper and Heber, the hitherto unpublished _Letters and Journals_ have just appeared, and they seem to us even more interesting than the so well-known Memoirs of his Life published soon after he died. (M. W. Dodd.) * * * * * MRS. SIGOURNEY has published a volume entitled _Letters to my Pupils, with Narrative and Biographical Sketches_. It embraces reminiscences of her experience as a teacher, and we have read none of her prose compositions that are more suggestive or more pleasing. (Robert Carter & Brothers.) * * * * * A _Life of Algernon Sydney_, by G. Van Santvoord (a new author), has been published by Charles Scribner. To describe the history and writings of this noble republican was a task worthy of an American scholar. Mr. Van Santvoord has performed it excellently well. * * * * * BAYARD TAYLOR and R. H. STODDARD have new volumes of poems in the press of Ticknor, Reed & Fields, of Boston, and that house has never published original volumes of greater merit, or that will be more popular. * * * * * THE POEMS OF WILLIAM P. MULCHINOCK, in one volume, lately published by Mr. Strong, Nassau-street, appear to have been received with singular favor by the critics. Mr. Mulchinock has remarkable fluency, and a genial spirit. His book contains specimens of a great variety of styles, and some pieces of much merit. * * * * * TICKNOR & CO. have published a novelette entitled _The Solitary_, by Santaine, the author of "Picciola." It is of the Robinson Crusoe sort of books--better than any other imitation of Defoe. * * * * * The _Pocket Companion, for Machinists, Mechanics, and Engineers_, by OLIVER BYRNE, is a remarkable specimen of perspicuous condensation. In a beautiful pocket-book it embraces for the classes for whom it is designed the pith of two or three ordinary octavos. * * * * * Among the new volumes of poems is one of Dramatic and Miscellaneous Pieces, by CHARLES JAMES CANNON, published by Edward Dunigan. Mr. Cannon is a writer of much cultivation, and, in his dramatic poems, especially, there are passages of much force and elegance. * * * * * MR. JOHN E. WARREN, whose pleasant letters from the south of Europe were a chief attraction of some of the early numbers of the _International_, has in the press of Putnam, to be published in a few days, _Paria, or Scenes and Adventures on the Banks of the Amazon_. He saw that magnificent but little known country under such peculiar advantages, and he writes with such spirit and so natural a grace, that we may promise the public one of the most delightful books of the season in "Paria." Here is a specimen, from the opening chapter. "The shades of evening were gathering fast upon the waters, when the little bark, in which we had safely crossed the wide expanse of ocean, now quietly anchored in the mighty river of the Amazons. Through the rich twilight we were able to discern the white sandy shore, skirting a dense forest of perennial luxuriance and beauty. Gentle zephyrs, fraught with the most delightful fragrance from the wilderness of flowers, softly saluted our senses; while occasionally the plaintive voices of southern nightingales came with mellowed sweetness to our ears. The moon, unobscured by a single cloud, threw an indescribable charm over the enchanting scene, reflecting her brilliant rays upon the placid surface of the river, and shrouding the beautiful foliage of the forest in a drapery of gold. Innumerable stars brightly glittered in the firmament, and the constellation of the 'Southern Cross' gleamed above us like a diadem. All around seemed to be wrapped in the most profound repose. Not a sound disturbed the silence of the interminable solitude save the hushed and mournful notes of evening birds, the distant howling of prowling jaguars, or the rustling of the wind through the forest trees. Nature appeared to us, for the first time, in her pristine loveliness, and seemed indeed, to our excited imagination, to present but a dreamy picture of fairy land. "At an early hour in the morning we weighed anchor, and with a fresh breeze and strong tide rapidly moved up the noble river, gliding by the most beautiful scenery that fancy can conceive. The nearly impenetrable forest which lined the shore was of a deep emerald green, and consisted of exceedingly lofty trees, of remarkably curious and grotesque figures, interlaced together by numerous vines, the interstices of which were filled up with magnificent shrubbery. We observed, towering high above the surrounding trees, many singular species of palms, among which the far-famed cocoa-nut probably stood pre-eminent. This beautiful tree gives a peculiar witchery to a tropical landscape, which those only who have seen it can possibly realize. The trunk grows up perfectly perpendicular to a great height, before it throws out its curious branches, which bend over as gracefully as ostrich plumes, and quiver in the slightest breeze. Consequently, the general appearance of the tree at a distance is somewhat similar to that of an umbrella. "As we gradually proceeded, we now and then caught a glimpse of smiling cottages, with the snug little verandahs and red-tiled roofs peering from amid the foliage of the river's banks, and giving, as it were, a character of sociability and animation to the beauteous scene. Perhaps the most interesting spot that we noticed was an estate bearing the name of Pinherios, which had been formerly the site of a Carmelite convent, but which was lately sold to the government for a 'Hospital dos Lazaros.' Here also was an establishment for the manufacture of earthenware tiles, which are extensively used throughout the Brazilian empire for roofing houses. "So low is the valuation of land in this section of Brazil, that this immense estate, embracing within its limits nearly three thousand acres, and situated, as it is, within twenty miles of the city of Para, was sold for a sum equivalent to about _four thousand dollars_. This may be taken as a fair standard of the value of real estate in the vicinity of Para. That of the neighboring islands is comparatively trifling; while there are millions of fertile acres now wholly unappropriated, which offer the richest inducements to emigrants who may be disposed to direct their fortunes thither. "The city of Para is delightfully situated on the southern branch of the Amazon, called, for the sake of distinction, 'The Para River.' It is the principal city of the province of the same name,--an immense territory, which has very appropriately been styled 'The Paradise of Brazil.' The general aspect of the place, with its low venerable looking buildings of solid stone, its massive churches and moss-grown ruins, its red-tiled roofs and dingy-white walls, the beautiful trees of its gardens, and groups of tall banana plants peeping up here and there among the houses, constituted certainly a scene of novelty, if not of elegance and beauty. "The first spectacle which arrested our attention on landing was that of a number of persons of both sexes and all ages bathing indiscriminately together in the waters of the river, in a state of entire nudity. We observed among them several finely-formed Indian girls of exceeding beauty, dashing about in the water like a troop of happy mermaids. The heat of the sun was so intense that we ourselves were almost tempted to seek relief from its overpowering influence by plunging precipitately amid the joyous throng of swimmers. But we forbore! "The natives of Para are very cleanly, and indulge in daily ablutions; nor do they confine their baths to the dusky hours of evening, but may be seen swimming about the public wharves at all hours of the day. The government has made several feeble efforts to put a restraint upon these public exposures, but at the time of our departure all rules and regulations on the subject were totally disregarded by the natives. The city is laid out with considerable taste and regularity, but the streets are very narrow, and miserably paved with large and uneven stones. The buildings generally are but of one story in height, and are, with few exceptions, entirely destitute of glass windows; a kind of latticed blind is substituted, which is so constructed that it affords the person within an opportunity of seeing whatever takes place in the street, without being observed in return. This lattice opens towards the street, and thus affords great facilities to the beaux and gentlemen of gallantry, who, by stepping under this covering, can have an agreeable _tête-à-tête_ with their fair mistresses, as secretly almost as if they were in a trellised arbor together. "We noticed several strange spectacles as we slowly walked through the city. Venders of fruit marching about, with huge baskets on their heads, filled with luscious oranges, bananas, mangoes, pineapples, and other choice fruits of the tropics; groups of blacks, carrying immense burdens in the same manner; invalids reclining in their hammocks, or ladies riding in their gay-covered palanquins, supported on men's shoulders; and water-carriers moving along by the side of their heavily-laden horses or mules." In his excursions along the small streams which penetrate the forests our traveller met with some magnificent scenes. Here is a description of one of them: "Now the grassy table-land would extend away for miles to our left, gemmed here and there with solitary trees, waving their branches mournfully in the wind, and looking like spectres in the mystic starlight. On the outer side, a gloomy yet splendid wilderness ran along the margin of the stream, flinging tall shadows across the water, and adding grandeur to the imposing landscape. As we advanced the brook gradually narrowed, and became more and more crooked in its course, until finally the thick clustering foliage met in a prolonged arch of verdure over our heads. "While winding through this natural labyrinth, the sun emerged from his oriental couch, and besprinkled us with a shower of luminous beams, which, falling through the interstices of the leaves, seemed like the spirits of so many diamonds. A more divine spectacle of beauty never was beheld. The most gorgeous creations of the poet's imagination, if realized, could not surpass in magnificence this sun-lighted arbor, with its roses and flowers of varied hues, all set like stars in a canopy of green. Sprightly humming-birds flitted before us, sparkling like jewels for a moment, then vanishing away from our sight for ever. Butterflies with immense wings, and moths of gay and striking colors, flew also from flower to flower, seeming like appropriate inhabitants of this little paradise. But the indefatigable mosquitoes, who were continually pouncing upon our unprotected faces and hands, as well as the mailed caymans, who now and then plunged under our canoe with a terrific snort, preserved in us the conviction of our own mortality. "As we were moving through a wider passage of the stream, a sudden noise in the bushes on our left arrested our attention; in a moment after, we perceived a large animal running as expeditiously as he was able along the banks of the stream. We immediately raised our guns simultaneously and fired. Although we evidently gave the creature their full contents, yet it produced no other visible effect than to cause him to give a boisterous snort, and then dart away furiously into the heart of the thicket." Here is something much more natural than Melville's introduction of Fayaway: "Among our olive-complexioned neighbors were two young girls, whose fine forms and pretty faces especially elicited our admiration. The one was named Teresa, the other Florana. The former could not have been more than fourteen years of age, and was rather short in stature, with exquisitely rounded arms, and a bust of noble development; the latter was somewhat taller, and at least three years older; they both, however, had attained their full size. Animated as they were beautiful, they were always overflowing with vivacity and life; their conversation, which was incessant, was like the chirping of nightingales, and their laughter, like strings of musical pearls. These, then, beloved reader, were, during our stay at least, decidedly the belles of Jungcal. At the close of every day we were visited by all the juveniles in the place, who, in their own sweet tongue, bade us 'adieus,' and at the same time besought our blessing, which latter request we only answered by patting them gently on the head. The pretty maidens we have just alluded to, instead of shaking hands with us, were accustomed to salute us at eventide with a kiss on either cheek. The propriety of this we at first doubted, but the more we reflected upon the sweetness and innocence of the damsels, the more inclined were we to pardon them; and, in fact, we finally began to think their manner much more sensible and agreeable than that of those who consider any thing beyond cold and formal shaking of hands a grievous sin. Besides, it must be borne in mind, that this was a sacred custom of the place, which it would have been great rudeness in us to have resisted. Therefore, kind reader, do not judge us too severely; for know, O chary one! that extreme bashfulness and modesty have always been considered two of our principal failings! One day, Teresa and Florana invited us to take a bathe with them in the stream. This we declined point-blank. They then charged us with fear of alligators. This was a poser--our courage was now called in question, and we were literally forced to submit. Pray what else could we have done under the circumstances? When they had once got us into the water they took ample revenge upon us for the uncourteous manner in which we had at first treated their request. As we were encumbered by our clothes, they had altogether the advantage, and, in less than ten minutes, we cried out lustily for quarter, but no quarter would they give us, and, to tell the truth, we were somewhat apprehensive of being drowned by them, to say nothing of being devoured by bloodthirsty alligators. Emerging from the water, we walked up to Anzevedo's cottage, revolving in our mind the severe ordeal through which we had just passed, and determined henceforth never to refuse any request, sweetened by the lips of a pretty maiden, unless, perchance (though highly improbable), she should ask us for our heart! which, alas! we have not to give...." * * * * * An _Album_ sent to the great Exhibition by the Emperor of Austria, and to be presented after the show to Victoria, is thus described by a Vienna correspondent of the _Times_: "It contains the notes in manuscript of the national airs and dances, and far surpasses any thing that I have ever seen in the bookbinding department. On one side there are fourteen exquisite vignettes in oil colors, representing different national costumes; the ornaments in enamel, carved ivory, and ebony, are exquisite. A second album contains the works of the ancient and modern Austrian composers; the third, Austrian scenery, by different native artists. The bindings of some of the two hundred and seventy volumes of Austrian authors will also not fail to excite the astonishment--I had almost said the envy--of the trade. The whole will form a truly imperial gift." _The Fine Arts._ During the present month there are four Public Exhibitions of Paintings in the city: that of the NATIONAL ACADEMY, of the ART-UNION, of the ARTIST'S ASSOCIATION, and the DÜSSELDORF GALLERY. The first three are composed mainly of the works of native American artists, and it is impossible to repress an expression of regret that some arrangement of union has not yet been effected, by which, at least, the works of the same men should not be exhibited gratis at one place, and for a charge at another. In the present state of things, the gallery of the Art-Union and that of the National Academy are brought into direct opposition, and this, beyond doubt, without the slightest jealousy on either side, as the works painted for the Academy and purchased by the Art-Union clearly show. But certainly the fact is lamentable enough to challenge immediate attention, and to induce a radical change. A free gallery of the selected works of artists will be very apt to carry the day against an exhibition at a quarter of a dollar of the miscellaneous and unselected works of the same men. But here we do not mean to vex this question farther. We aim at a general review of the peculiarities and excellences of each exhibition. It is undoubtedly in landscape art that American talent is destined first to excel, and the Academy exhibition and that of the Art-Union are added proofs of the fact. The landscapes are much the most distinguishing and distinguished feature. Mr. DURAND contributes several characteristic works. His style is so uniform and pronounced that it is never difficult to recognize his pictures. We should hardly say that he does better this year than usual, but we should certainly not say that he does worse. In the front rank of this department stand also KENSETT and CROPSEY, both of whom show beautiful results of summer study and winter work. Mr. Cropsey is mainly distinguished by a really gorgeous imagination. Proof of this is to be sought in the sketches of his portfolio rather than in his finished pictures, for in these a thousand influences seduce an artist away from the simplicity and splendor of his study into a care of public approbation and satisfaction. Mr. Cropsey is as yet too much enamored of the details and even of the mechanism of his art. And this is a tendency that is fatal to breadth and largeness of impression. Yet his "Southern Italy," and a "View in Rockland County," in the exhibition, are great advances in this respect. On the other hand, the two large American landscapes at the Art-Union, while the background in one is a splendid success, and the brilliant atmosphere of the other is no less successful, yet they are too much detailed, and the interest is nowhere sufficiently concentrated. Mr. Kensett is remarkable for his just sentiment and profound appreciation of natural beauty. It is a sentiment singularly free from sentimentality, and an appreciation as poetic as it is profound. The very delicacy of his touch and style indicate the character of his enjoyment and perception of nature. Mr. CHURCH, too, is perhaps the other name that we should mention with these two as full of hope and promise. If he avoids a little mannerism, to which he seems to be susceptible--not of course forgetting that all greatness has its own manner--and pursues with the same devotion as hitherto his studies of sea and sky, a very happy and brilliant career seems open to him. The works of none of the younger artists have attracted more attention. And the fame and position of Turner show the reward of a devoted student and artistic delineator of the peculiarities of atmospheric phenomena. We exhort Mr. Church to entire boldness in his attempts. Why should he hope always to please those who have only a vague susceptibility of natural observation for their standard of criticism? He is to show us in the splendid play of the light, and air, and clouds, that which we do not see, or seeing, do not perceive. Messrs. CRANCH, BOUTELLE, GIFFORD, and others, take high rank among the landscapists, nor must we omit a very beautiful winter piece of GIGNOUX, at the Academy, in which the crisp clearness of the sharp air, the brittle outline of the bare boughs, and the quality of ice, are most accurately and poetically rendered. We are arrested by the feeling and promise of Mr. RICHARD'S contributions, and the very beautiful poetic sentiment of Mr. HUBBARD'S. Mr. HUNTINGDON is not great, this year. His landscapes are not natural, and his portraits lack that vigorous moulding to which we are accustomed upon his canvas. Mr. RANNEY has some characteristic hunting-pieces. They are getting too much mannered. On a prairie, the chief interest of art is not a horse or a buffalo, but the sentiment of space. But we do not yield to any in our satisfaction at the spirit and vigor of these works. Leaving the landscape, we find the figure compositions of the year not very successful, if we except the "Aztec Princess" of Mr. HICKS, which we understand is a study from life of a Mexican woman, but which is treated in so large, and thoughtful, and skilful a manner, that it is most impressive for character and color, and gives the key to the whole side of the room upon which it hangs. This artist exhibits also some portraits, which have never been surpassed by any modern portraits that we recall. No. 128 upon the Academy Catalogue is the most brilliantly-colored portrait upon the walls. It is treated with all the happy heroism of a master, and while many quarrel with its _spotty_ color, the initiated perceive that easy mastery of the palette which with genius is the secret of artistic success. No. 405 is equally remarkable for its vigorous moulding. This portrait shows the accurate knowledge, as No. 128 reveals the sumptuous sentiment of the genuine artist. Mr. ELLIOTT'S portraits have the same quiet truthfulness as heretofore, the same easy success, but we would gladly see more confidence in color, and a likeness more as the subject appears to the mind than to the eye. Mr. SHEGOGUE'S productions are certainly very pastoral. So sheepy are his sheep that all the figures, trees, and landscape, are unmitigatedly sheepish. Mr. FLAGG'S portraits are not successful. There is an unnatural smoothness and hardness in his works. Mr. KELLOGG'S General Scott is vigorous and effective. The action of the figure seems to require some explanation, however. It contrasts well with the monotony of its pendant, Mr. VANDERLYN'S General Taylor; but no spectator in regarding this latter work has a right to forget that it is the production of one who has grown gray at his post, and the winter of whose age has not yet frozen, and can never freeze, the freshness of enthusiasm and single-hearted devotion to art which are for ever young. Mr. LANG'S No. 44 is a very large likeness of a very comely lady, but the work will hardly live long in the spectator's memory. Mr. ROSSITER takes the field boldly with "The Ideals, Types of Moral, Intellectual, and Physical Beauty." Except for the brilliance of color, and a certain sentiment, by which the light proceeds from the moral type, we do not much admire the picture. The difficulty with the spectator will be, we are sure, that he recalls within his own circle of friends types more beautiful for each ideal. Mr. Rossiter's portraits of his brother artists, Messrs. DARLEY and DUGGAN, are admirable likenesses, each somewhat mellowed in expression by the artist. The sharp intellectual precision of Mr. Duggan's countenance, and the bright nervous sensibility of Mr. Darley's, are both somewhat subdued upon the canvas. What we candidly say of these pictures we say boldly, because we recognize and appreciate the fine feeling which animates the artist. Mr. GRAY'S No. 54, "King Death," attracts much attention. But is it the "Jolly Old Fellow," or the "King of Terrors," or the "easeful death" of which the poet was enamored? There is something fine in the picture--a strain of Egyptian placidity permeates the features. And such colossal placidity is full of fate. There is a latitude allowed the artist in these themes. Yet we do not feel satisfied, much as we like the picture. Mr. ROTHERMEL'S No. 5, "Murray's Defence of Toleration," is a very pleasant picture of the Düsseldorf style. We like one thing in this work, and that is its preservation of the balance of history, by showing that the Catholics were not always the persecutors. The contrast of the religious repose of the rear with the jangling fanaticism of the foreground is in harmony with the differing qualities of light. It is a thoughtful and beautiful picture, Mr. FREEMAN'S 359, "Study for an Angel's Head," has a Titianesque fascination, and the earnest regard of the faces is extremely lovely. It is none the less charming that it has a mortal loveliness--if we might say so without treason to the immortality of all beauty. We have no doubt, in our own critical mind, that any beautiful woman would make a beautiful angel. Mr. MOUNT'S No. 118, "Who'll turn Grindstone?" is one of his characteristic Yankee incidents. It is very true and genuine in feeling, but the picture is too white and streaked. No. 344 is a natural and spirited portrait of the poet Stoddard by Mr. PRATT. But we must pause here, leaving many works of which we would willingly speak. At the Düsseldorf Gallery, LESSING'S "Martyrdom of Huss" is still the great attraction. It is a work so full of careful study and skilful treatment that we are not surprised at the universal pleasure in its contemplation. We cannot in this space, however, enter into a consideration of its artistic claims and character, but must record our impression that it is not in the highest style of art--if there be in art a higher style than the adequate representation of the simple incident. The dexterous detail of the Düsseldorf pictures is remarkable, but the fault and tendency of the school is to direct imitation, and consequently to a hopeless struggle with nature. These pictures are the worst possible models for the student of art. The Art-Union Gallery is by no means full, but certainly does not merit the harsh criticism of the daily press. The pictures are on an average quite as good as usual. The names of most of the distinguished artists are on the catalogue, and the specimens of their works are characteristic and admirable. There are several poor copies of famous pictures, and these undoubtedly somewhat neutralize the effect of the native works. Beside, the Art-Union does not profess to open its gallery with a complete collection. It buys as the pictures are produced, and the criticisms, thus far, have been no less ignorant than ill-natured. It does not follow that fifty thousand dollars' worth of good pictures are annually painted because that sum may be subscribed to purchase good pictures. Nor is it at all true, as we would undertake to show, had we the space, that artists are necessarily the best managers of a popular institution for the advance of art. The Exhibition of the Artists' Association offers little for remark. We are not sufficiently acquainted with the secret of the origin of this association to speak of the institution itself, but we observe many of the names familiar to us at the Academy and the Art-Union, and can truly wish that the pictures were upon the walls of one of those galleries. On the whole, we remark an unwonted activity and interest in art. It is impossible not to rejoice at the fact, and at the brilliant proofs of artistic ability that illuminate the walls of the various galleries. The contemporary exhibitions of foreign capitals do not, altogether, surpass those of their younger sister. American books are now not all unread, and those who delight in galleries in which only Turner, Kaulbach, and Couture are eminently great, could not be unjust to these promises of American artistic success. * * * * * LEUTZE, the artist, has been again distinguishing himself by a work just exhibited in Düsseldorf, "The Amazon with her Children." It represents a beautiful and majestic woman, lying half-erect, arms and neck bare, contemplating the gambols of her two naked children. The brilliant golden-tone of the complexion is said to be entirely worthy of the masterly skill in color of the artist, and was perhaps inspired by the poet's dream, "I will take some savage woman; she shall rear my dusky race." But in respect of composition and drawing it is called an attempt to imitate the art of the old Italian virtuosos. The artist is proceeding with surprising rapidity with his Washington. A portrait of Roting by Leutze is most highly commended. Roting is in the same atelier with Leutze, and is busy upon a scene from the life of Columbus. * * * * * The Managers of the ART-UNION promise rich returns to the subscribers for the present year. We quote the _Art-Union Journal_: "We have never before offered so many powerful motives to membership as the programme of the present year affords. The improvements in the Bulletin render it a publication that is almost indispensable to those who desire to have in a convenient form the most recent Art intelligence, as well as much original matter upon the subject that meets the constant approbation of instructed readers. The numbers of this work are furnished gratuitously to each member from the date of his subscription. He will also be entitled to the large engraving of _Mexican News_ by JONES, after Woodville, and to the second part of the _Gallery of American Art_, which contains five line engravings on steel, by the best artists, after the following pictures: Cropsey's _Harvesting_, Kensett's _Mount Washington_, Woodville's _Old '76 and Young '48_, Ranney's _Marion crossing the Pedee_, and Mount's _Bargaining for a Horse_. We desire to call attention again to the fact that these subjects are all American in their character, illustrating the scenery, history, or manners of the country. They are also striking and valuable as pictures, and we should have every reason to feel proud of them in whatever contrast they might be placed. "This project of presenting a work which shall contain in process of time the Gems of American Art, is original with the Art-Union. Its value must be apparent to every reader. It is a mode by which subscribers in the most distant parts of the country, who are deprived of the opportunity of visiting the large towns, may become well acquainted with the character and progress of our principal artists--and even those members who have the advantage of resorting to public galleries, may enjoy here the privilege of studying many pictures that from their location in private collections must be accessible to them. The first part of this work was given to the members of 1850, and is now ready for distribution, Besides the inducements just enumerated, there remains a share in the allotment of works of art purchased by the Association, and which, judging from the two hundred already obtained, will be the most attractive collection ever offered by the Art-Union. The importance of early subscriptions need not be enlarged upon at present. The opportunity it affords of securing complete sets of the Bulletin, and better impressions of the engravings, seems to be recognized in all quarters. The Association at no period of its history has had so long a roll of members at this early season." * * * * * PAUL DELAROCHE has just completed, at Nice, a grand historical composition, which the most intelligent judges decree to be his _chef d'oeuvre_. The picture represents a tragical moment in the life of Marie Antoinette. After a night of anguish before the revolutionary tribunals the unhappy Queen has just heard the verdict of her guilt. The President asks her if she has any thing to say in arrest of the sentence. For her sole answer, she rises calm and majestic, and takes silently the way back again to her dungeon. The artist has seized this instant, as she passes erect and still before a crowd of revolutionists. A man with a tri-colored scarf walks by her side, regarding her as a tiger gloats upon a lamb. It is the personification of terror. A single girl, too young to be cruel, yet attracted with the others, perhaps, to applaud the punishment of the _Widow Capet_, looks pityingly upon the Queen, her trembling lips murmur a prayer, and the tears start in her eyes. Upon the lips of the Queen there is almost a smile, a thought of disdain, for the outrages of men upon a solitary and defenceless woman. From the descriptions of which we select the prominent points, it is evident that this is another of the representations of historical incident for which Paul Delaroche has made himself so famous a name, as in his Death of Elizabeth, the Children of Edward in the Tower, Cromwell at the Coffin of Charles I, the Execution of Strafford, of Lady Jane Grey, Napoleon Crossing the Alps, &c., &c. And there is no reason that this last work should not be, as claimed, the greatest, since the artist adds to the greater cunning of his hand, the sympathies of chivalrous artistic feeling for the sorrow of a beautiful woman and a Queen of France. The picture is already sold in London, and will presently be forwarded to its destination; on the way it will remain a short time in Paris for the homage of the many admirers of this artist's genius. * * * * * Mr. MINER K. KELLOGG, who since his professional tours in the East and long residence in Italy, has spent some half dozen years in his native country, has just returned to Florence, where, with his companion from boyhood, Hiram Powers, he will probably pass the remainder of his life. He is an artist of peculiar and great merits, and there is not perhaps among American painters a man more uniformly regarded with respect and affection. * * * * * The Brussels _Herald_ gives an account of a curious and costly work of art, which a great landholder of the Walloon Provinces has ordered of the Depaepes, of Bruges. These artists are instructed to copy in Gothic letters _L'Imitation de Jésus Christ_, by the Abbé d'Assance. The work will fill six hundred and seventy pages, each of which will be about three-quarters of a yard in height, by eighteen inches wide. They will have to execute one hundred and fourteen engravings, from the great masters of the Flemish school, Van Eyck, Memling, Pourbus, Classens, &c. The pages on which will be displayed the _Imitation of Jesus Christ_, will be encircled with garlands and other ornaments, in blue and gold. * * * * * At the last annual meeting of the NATIONAL ACADEMY OF DESIGN, the rank of _Academician_ was conferred on T. Hicks, G.A. Baker, H.K. Brown, J.A. Cropsey, T. Addison Richards, R. Gignoux, P.P. Duggan, Alfred Jones, R.M. Pratt, J.W. Casilear, James Smillie and George W. Flagg. At the same time, Messrs R.W. Hubbard, J. Thompson, and Vincent Colyer, were made associates; and Messrs. Darley, Falconer, Lacombe, Kellogg and Ruggles, honorary members. From the Times. THE MEETING OF THE NATIONS IN HYDE PARK. BY W. M. THACKERAY. But yesterday a naked sod, The dandies sneered from Rotten-row, And cantered o'er it to and fro; And see, 'tis done! As though 'twere by a wizard's rod, A blazing arch of lucid glass Leaps like a fountain from the grass To meet the sun! A quiet green but few days since, With cattle browsing in the shade, And lo! long lines of bright arcade In order raised; A palace as for fairy prince, A rare paradise, such as man Saw never, since mankind began And built and glazed! A peaceful place it was but now, And lo! within its shining streets. A multitude, of nations meets: A countless throng, I see beneath the crystal bow, And Gaul and German, Russ and Turk, Each with his native handiwork, And busy tongue. I felt a thrill of love and awe To mark the different garb of each, The changing tongue, the various speech Together blent. A thrill, methinks like His who saw "All people dwelling upon earth Praising our God with solemn mirth And one consent." High Sovereign in your Royal state! Captains and Chiefs and Councillors, Before the lofty palace doors Are open set. Hush! ere you pass the shining gate; Hush! ere the heaving curtain draws, And let the Royal pageant pause A moment yet. People and Prince, a silence keep! Bow coronet and kindly crown, Helmet and plume bow lowly down; The while the priest Before the splendid portal step, While still the wondrous banquet stays, From Heaven supreme a blessing prays Upon the feast! Then onwards let the triumph march; Then let the loud artillery roll, And trumpets ring and joy-bells toll, And pass the gate; Pass underneath the shining arch, 'Neath which the leafy elms are green-- Ascend unto your throne, O Queen, And take your State! Behold her in her Royal place: A gentle lady--and the hand That sways the sceptre of this land How frail and weak! Soft is the voice, and fair the face; She breathes amen to prayer and hymn, No wonder that her eyes are dim, And pale her cheek. This moment round her empire's shores The winds of Austral winter sweep, And thousands lie in midnight sleep At rest to-day. O! awful is that crown of yours, Queen of innumerable realms, Sitting beneath the budding elms Of English May! A wondrous sceptre 'tis to bear, Strange mystery of God which set Upon her brow yon coronet,-- The foremost crown Of all the world on one so fair! That chose her to it from her birth, And bade the sons of all the earth To her bow down. The representatives of man, Here from the far Antipodes, And from the subject Indian seas, In Congress meet; From Afric and from Hindostan, From Western continent and isle, The envoys of her empire pile Gifts at her feet. Our brethren cross the Atlantic tides, Loading the gallant decks, which once Roared a defiance to our guns, With peaceful store; Symbol of peace, their vessel rides![2] O'er English waves float Star and Stripe, And from their friendly anchors gripe The father-shore! From Rhine and Danube, Rhone and Seine, As rivers from their sources gush, The swelling floods of nations rush, And seaward pour: From coast to coast in friendly chain, With countless ships we bridge the straits; And angry Ocean separates Europe no more. From Mississippi and from Nile-- From Baltic, Ganges, Bosphorus, In England's Ark assembled thus Are friend and guest. Look down the mighty sunlit aisle, And see the sumptuous banquet set, The brotherhood of nations met Around the feast! Along the dazzling colonnade, Far as the straining eye can gaze, Gleam cross and fountain, bell, and vase, In vistas bright. And statues fair of nymph and maid, And steeds and pards and Amazons, Writhing and grappling in the bronze, In endless fight. To deck the glorious roof and dome, To make the Queen a canopy, The peaceful hosts of industry Their standards bear. Yon are the works of Brahmin loom; On such a web of Persian thread The desert Arab bows his head, And cries his prayer. Look yonder where the engines toil; These England's arms, of conquest are, The trophies of her bloodless war: Brave weapons these. Victorious over wave and soil, With these she sails, she weaves, she tills Pierces the everlasting hills, And spans the seas. The engine roars upon its race, The shuttle whirrs along the woof, The people hum from floor to roof, With Babel tongue. The fountain in the basin plays, The chanting organ echoes clear, An awful chorus 'tis to hear, A wondrous song! Swell organ, swell your trumpet blast, March, Queen, and Royal pageant, march By splendid aisle and springing arch Of this fair Hall: And see! above the fabric vast, God's boundless Heaven is bending blue, God's peaceful Sun is beaming through And shining over all. April 29. FOOTNOTES: [2] The St. Lawrence. THE SECOND WIFE: OR, THE TABLES TURNED. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. Subordination is the _apparent_ lot of woman. From the domination of nurses, parents, guardians, and teachers, during infancy and youth, to the magisterial rule of her lord and master, during married life, and the softer control of her children, through that valley of the shadow of death, old age, it rarely ceases, until the neatly-crimped borders of the death-cap rest upon the icy brow, and the unfortunate subject is screwed down in one of those exceedingly awkward mahogany tenements, henceforth "all which it may inhabit." There are two ways of meeting this destiny of the sex. One is merely to kiss the rod, and bend before the will of the oppressor, meekly turning both cheeks to be smitten at once, and offering to lend both coat and cloak, even before either is required. The other mode is to boldly face down the enemy, and by a never-tiring guerilla warfare, to hamper his movements, cut off his provisions, and finally hem him in, after a manner that shall cause him ignominiously to surrender, to lay down his arms, pass under the yoke, and at length--converting his sword into a pruning-hook--leave his conqueror undisputed possession of the land. The usual injustice of the world is seen in the success which ordinarily attends the latter method; while the meek and gentle, who, it is promised, shall inherit the earth, must look for a new heaven and a new earth before they can come into their property. Husbands, it is premised, have no small share in this domestic despotism. How often do we see--to the shame of the male sex generally, be it spoken--some rough, coarse-minded tyrant, linked to a quiet, amiable woman, who after a long period of hectoring and dragooning, ordering and counter-ordering, sinks into the grave of a broken heart--or what is worse, a broken spirit. And sometimes--for fate is sometimes just--the said patient wife is replaced by some undaunted avenger of her wrongs, who in her turn dragoons, and hectors Othello, until indeed his "occupation's gone." My old acquaintance, Charles Boldenough, was pronounced to be, by the tutors, as well as by the students of D---- College, "the most unlicked cub" who ever misconstrued Virgil. Their experience was undoubtedly great in this species of natural history, but of all the hard characters who fell under their inspection and jurisdiction, I question if there were one who could with any share of success, dispute with him the enviable claim of being the hardest. Tall, athletic, with a huge frame capable of any fatigue, and health that never failed him; with a passionate temper, and a stentorian voice whose thunders were the terror of the younger boys, Charles Boldenough contrived to overawe with brute force all the small fry, and to convince the older collegians that it was best to yield passively to pretensions which could only be contended with any chance of success, by wrestling powers equal to his own. He was in fact the gladiator of D----College,--champion I should have called him, were it not that he was constantly at war with the professors and faculty, who might be said to represent it. The incorrigible laziness and ignorance which marked his scholastic career, were fruitful sources of complaint and reprimand; the frequent boating expeditions, the sporting excursions, and fishing parties, on which he was absent, sometimes for entire days, would unquestionably have terminated the course of his studies, and released the freshmen from their dreaded tyrant, by his early expulsion, had it not been for the influence of powerful family connections, and the personal interference of his friends. But in the course of time, he finished his collegiate labors, with all the honors, and a scarcity of black eyes, and bloody noses, immediately prevailed at D----, such as had not occurred for years. I separated from him at that time, and heard nothing of him for a long interval. When I next saw him, he was married. The person whom my pugnacious acquaintance had made the object of his choice, was a fair blue-eyed timid little woman, with a frail figure, delicate health, and temper mild as the summer morning. What could have induced her, to ally herself with this belligerent power, I never could imagine. Whether she had fallen in love with that great burly countenance, and loud voice; or whether, as the youngest of ten children, she had snatched at the crown matrimonial as affording an escape from a disagreeable home, or whether some one of her friends compelled her to do it, I have always found it impossible to determine. I only know that at the first interview, I saw enough to pity the poor being in my heart. She hung upon the arm of her Alcides, like a snow-drop on a rock. My friend had never had many pretensions to beauty; and his rough red visage and portly figure, bore witness of a right boisterous and jolly style of living. His first act after his marriage, was to engage in a violent quarrel with his wife's father and eight stalwart brothers, the result of which was a total cessation of intercourse between the two families. His young partner was compelled to receive the boon companions of her better half, to the entire exclusion of her own friends. The home of Charles Boldenough was a constant scene of dinner parties, and oyster suppers innumerable, which, as they frequently ended by an altercation between the host and his guests, were a continual source of agitation to his wife. A perfect angel of peace and gentleness she was. She bore, with unexampled resignation, the thraldom which was destroying her health and comfort. She tried, with patience, every means of pleasing a man who never allowed her to know what he liked, as it would have taken away all room for grumbling. With scrupulous care she attended to his little vexatious wants, his epicurean tastes, his trifling whimsical peculiarities. If she wished to remain at home, he forced her to go abroad; if she were desirous of going out, he made her stay within doors. If she liked a person more than commonly, he, in the words of the vulgar, "made the house too hot to hold them." If, on the contrary, she was annoyed by the presence of one of his acquaintances, she had time and opportunity to get rid of her abhorrence, since she was continually visited with their company. He scolded, grumbled, and found fault with every thing she did; with her acts and her intentions alike. If she ordered a servant to perform any particular duty, he immediately countermanded the orders; if she made any change, however slight, in the family arrangements, no penance could expiate the offence. So she lived on, with almost a struggle for her existence, having learned the important mythological lesson, that Hymen, like Janus, wears two faces, and that the temple of the former god, unlike that of the latter, is _never_ closed. She had several children (who fortunately all died before their mother), but Boldenough, on the ground that women were not fit to bring up boys, constantly interfered in the education of the girls, and made his wife as wretched by this means as by any other. He punished when she rewarded, and indulged when she reproved; he sent them to school when she would have educated them at home, and reaped his reward, by having them secretly fear and hate him. Poor Mrs. Boldenough complained not, but she grew thinner and paler every year, and her voice, as if lost amid the loud tones, forever reverberating in her ears, became so low as to be scarcely audible. At last she died. When it became necessary to inform him of the danger she was in, he was at first stupefied by the unexpected intelligence, and the feeling that he was to lose a household object, which time had rendered not dear, but familiar. Then he flew into a violent rage, quarreled with the attendants, servants, even the friends and relatives. Having recovered from the shock in some degree, he set about persecuting his poor wife during her last moments, in the same manner he had done while she enjoyed her health, with this difference: that it was now killing with kindness. He sent away in a rage the family physician, although his dying wife begged him, almost with tears, to retain him. He brought strange attendants to wait upon her, and insisted upon her eating when she had no appetite, and when the very sight of food created disgust. The sight of his big, cross, burly countenance, perpetually haunting her, and his loud questions, to which he _would_ have answers, and the eternal remedies, which he disturbed her feverish sleep that she might swallow--were causes, as the nurse averred, which positively sent the poor lady out of the world--"for he wouldn't," said that worthy person, "he wouldn't have let her get well, even if she'd been a mind to." Poor thing! a man who, as it was universally agreed, had broken his wife's heart, was not likely to regret her very deeply, or very long. But he was rougher and ruder than ever; the confusion into which his family matters immediately fell, the dishonesty of servants, the diabolical gastronomy of his _cuisine_, and the insufferable dullness of a home in which there was no family circle to be made uncomfortable and to be railed at every hour in the day, induced Charles Boldenough to mingle more freely in society, in order, as it was immediately said, that he might marry again. Many were the denunciations of wrath and sorrow to come, which were showered upon the head of that wretched woman who should accept Charles Boldenough's huge bony hand. He had the name of the worst of husbands, and it was confidently said that he would never succeed in contracting a second alliance: an assertion to which he gave the lie by espousing, one year after the death of the first Mrs. Boldenough, an intrepid successor, in the person of a damsel whom he had long been known to admire. The second Mrs. Boldenough was a complete and entire contrast to the first. She was so nearly equal to her husband in stature and in size that she might almost have succeeded in giving him, what no person had ever been known to do, and what he certainly had long required: namely, a good flogging. She had a pair of cheeks like nothing in _this_ world except two prize Spitzenberg apples, black eyes, fierce and bright and far-seeing almost to a miracle, and a voice that went through your head like a milkman's whistle, whilst the continued sound of her conversation resembled a gong at the great hotels. Boldenough she was by name, and Boldenough by nature; her carriage, erect and firm, and rapid as a locomotive, seemed to require the ringing of a little bell before her, to keep the unwary off the tracks, after the manner of most railway trains. She was afraid of nothing in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. She could break the most unruly horse, fire at a mark with a perfect aim, and collar any man who should show her any impertinence, with a coolness and strength of limb perfectly wonderful to behold. Born to command, she was not angry but merely surprised that any one should dream of controlling her. It was only after a long resistance to her wishes that the full torrent of her rage burst forth, but with an overwhelming fury. The French say "C'est le coeur qui fait le grenadier." If this be true, what a very respectable regiment might be formed from the ranks of the fair sex in all parts of the world, were they but armed and equipped as the law directs! What an irresistible army would that be which should be formed of troops like these! My friend, Mrs. Boldenough, would have made an excellent commander to these imaginary forces, and would, no doubt, have been as entirely successful in overrunning the enemy's country and driving him from his last entrenchments, as she was in the domestic circle triumphant over husband and servants, and sweeping before her the convivial revellers of the former by means of the rapid extinction of feudal customs, in the shape of suppers and dinner parties. Mr. Boldenough attempted to make a gallant defence; he stormed, raved, threatened, commanded, and exhorted; scenes of conflict, dreadful to witness, took place between the warlike hosts. The lord of the mansion's burly visage turned pale at finding himself stormed down with a noise and clatter which almost burst the tympanum of his ears. If _he_ had scolded _she_ had raved more loudly, if _he_ had thundered _she_ rang out her high shrill treble with as much force and strength as a dinner-bell. Fairly beaten and vanquished, he shrunk from the ground; she, undismayed, "keeping the natural ruby of her cheeks, while his were pale from fear." Voe victis! Wo to the conquered! The reign of Mr. Boldenough was over; a new dynasty took possession of the throne. The old servants were packed, bag and baggage, out of the mansion; the old acquaintances of the host were impressively given to understand that they were "never to come there no more." The longer any arbitrary power is established the more secure its authority becomes. So it proved with regard to Mrs. Boldenough. There was no escaping from her military despotism; she was an excellent housewife, and the best of good managers, and as might have been expected, she immediately restrained and cut off the lavish expenditure of the household. Mr. Boldenough made a few faint expiring efforts in behalf of his favorite luxuries. Not the better part of valor, is, as he discovered, discretion; for his helpmate held in her hands the buying and the ordering of his dinners and his daily food, and if he complained he was sure to find his condition worse than it was before. In the course of time six sturdy Boldenoughs sprung up, robust, hardy, noisy, and passionate as their mother, whose authority they served to confirm and strengthen. Then, indeed, it was that my friend Charles's shadow perceptibly grew less. He shrank from the notice of his wife and the bold Titans, his sons. The first Mrs. Boldenough's memory was certainly avenged. * * * * * The last time I met my friend he was evidently sinking slowly but surely into the vale of years. His great rubicund countenance was sunken and emaciated, his figure bent and meagre, his voice weak and faint as a whisper, and his hearing _entirely gone_. From what cause my readers may perhaps imagine. He was, indeed, stone deaf. I question, however, if this were not almost a mercy, considering the tower of Babel in which he dwelt. Nobody cared what became of him, for he had never cared for any body. Charles Boldenough departed this life shortly after having survived his second marriage fifteen years. The physician had the effrontery to ascribe to paralysis what evidently was no natural death. His end might have excited some pity from his acquaintances and friends, if it had not been for two things, namely, that he had no friends, and that he merely received himself the same treatment which he had given others. I was not sorry for him, I confess. Justice is so rare in this world of ours, that I am not disposed to undervalue it when it is summarily executed. The Amazonian relict of my friend Charles never re-married. Whether she never found that daring man, who was Van Amburgh-like enough to put his head in the lioness's mouth without fear of having it snapped off at one blow, or whether the charge of her young giants was sufficient for her occupation, or whether she was conscious of having fulfilled her _mission_, I do not know. She retained her formidable name to the end of her days. Reader! I have done. If you are a woman you may smile, and if a man you will sneer; but I assure you there is a moral in the _petite histoire_ of the second wife. Adieu! A STORY WITHOUT A NAME[3] WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ. _Continued from page 200._ CHAPTER XXVI. There are seasons in the life of man, as well as in the course of the year; and well, unhappily, have many poets painted them in all their various aspects. But these seasons are subject to variations with different men, as with different years. The summer of one man is all bright and calm--a lapse of tranquil sunshine, and soft airs, and gentle dews. With another, the same season passes in the thunder-storm of passion--the tempests of war or ambition--and often, the gloomy days of autumn or of winter overshadowed the rich land, and spoiled the promised harvest. It was an autumn-like period during the next three or four months of the family of Sir Philip Hastings. For the first time, uncertainty and doubt fell upon the family generally. There had been differences of temper and of character. There had been slight inconveniences. There had been occasional sickness and anxiety. There had been all those things which in the usual course of events diminished the sum of human happiness even to the most happy. But there had been nothing the least like uncertainty of position. There had been no wavering anxiety from day to day as to what the morrow was to bring forth. There had been none of that poison-drop in which the keenest shafts of fate are dipped, "the looking for of evil." Now, every day brought some new intelligence, and some new expectation, and the mass was altogether unfavorable. Had the blow fallen at once--had any one been in power to say, "Sir Philip Hastings, you must resign all your paternal estates, and pay back at once the rents for nearly twenty years--you must give up the rank and station which you have hitherto held, and occupy a totally different position in society!" Sir Philip would have submitted at once, and with less discomfort than most of my readers can imagine. But it was the wearing, irritating, exciting, yet stupefying progress of a lawsuit which had a painful and distressing effect upon his mind. One day, he thought he saw the case quite clearly--could track the tricks of his adversary, and expose the insecure foundation of his claim; and then would come two or three days of doubt and discussion, and then disappointment, and a new turn where every thing had to begin again. But gradually proofs swelled up, first giving some show of justice to the pretence that John Ayliffe had some claim, then amounting to a probability in his favor, then seeming, to unlearned eyes, very powerful as to his right. I am no lawyer, and therefore cannot pursue all the stages of the proceeding; but John Ayliffe had for his assistants unscrupulous men, whose only aims were to succeed, and to shield themselves from danger in case of detection; and their turns, and twists, and new points, were manifold. Sir Philip Hastings was tortured. It affected his spirits and his temper. He became more gloomy--occasionally irritable, often suspicious. He learned to pore over law papers, to seek out flaws and errors, to look for any thing that might convey a double meaning, to track the tortuous and narrow paths by which that power which bears the name of Justice reaches the clear light of truth, or falls into the thorny deep of error. All this disturbed and changed him; and these daily anxieties and discomforts affected his family too--Emily, indeed, but little, except inasmuch as she was grieved to see her father grieve. But Lady Hastings was not only pained and mortified herself--she contrived to communicate a share of all she felt to others. She became sad--somewhat sullen--and fancied all the time while she was depressing her husband's spirits, and aggravating all he felt by despondency and murmurs, instead of cheering and supporting him by making light of the threatened evils, that she was but participating sympathetically in his anxieties, and feeling a due share of his sorrows. She had no idea of the duty of cheerfulness in a wife, and how often it may prove the very blessing that God intended in giving man a helpmate. Sickness, it is true, had diminished somewhat the light spirits of her youth, but she had assuredly become a creature of repinings--a murmurer by habit--fit to double rather than divide any load of misfortune which fate might cast upon a husband's shoulders. Lady Hastings strove rather to look sad, Emily Hastings to be gay and cheerful, and both did it perhaps a little too much for the mood and circumstances in which Sir Philip then was. He wondered when he came home, after an anxious day, that Lady Hastings did nothing to cheer him--that every word was gloomy and sad--that she seemed far more affected at the thought of loss of fortune and station than himself. He wondered also that Emily could be so light and playful, so joyous and seemingly unconcerned, when he was suffering such anxiety. Poor Emily! she was forcing spirits in vain, and playing the kindliest of hypocrites--fashioning every word, and every look, to win him away from painful thought, only to be misunderstood. But the misunderstanding was heightened and pointed by the hand of malice. The emotion which Sir Philip had displayed in the court had not been forgotten by some whom a spirit of revenge rendered keen and clear-sighted. It seemed impossible to mingle Emily's name directly with the law proceedings which were taking place; but more than once in accidental correspondence it was insinuated that secret information, which had led to the development of John Ayliffe's claim, had been obtained from some near relation of Sir Philip Hastings, and it became generally rumored and credited in the county, that Emily had indiscreetly betrayed some secrets of her father's. Of course these rumors did not reach her ears, but they reached Sir Philip Hastings, and he thought it strange, and more strange, that Emily had never mentioned to him her several interviews with John Ayliffe, which he had by this time learned were more than one. Some strange feelings, disguised doubtless by one of those veils which vanity or selfishness are ever ready to cast over the naked emotions of the human heart, withheld him from speaking to his child on the subject which caused him so much pain. Doubtless it was pride--for pride of a peculiar kind was at the bottom of many of his actions. He would not condescend to inquire, he thought, into that which she did not choose to explain herself, and he went on in reality barring the way against confidence, when, in truth, nothing would have given Emily more relief than to open her whole heart to her father. With Marlow, Sir Philip Hastings was more free and communicative than with any one else. The young man's clear perceptions, and rapid comprehensions on any point in the course of the proceedings going on, his zeal, his anxiety, his thoughtfulness, and his keen sense of what was just and equitable, raised him every day higher in the opinion of Sir Philip Hastings, and he would consult with him for hours, talk the whole matter over in all its bearings, and leave him to solve various questions of conscience in which he found it difficult himself to come to a decision. Only on one point Sir Philip Hastings never spoke to him; and that was Emily's conduct with regard to young Ayliffe. That, the father could not do; and yet, more than once, he longed to do it. One day, however, towards the end of six months after the first processes had been issued, Sir Philip Hastings, in one of his morning consultations with Marlow, recapitulated succinctly all the proofs which young John Ayliffe had brought forward to establish a valid marriage between his mother and the elder brother of the baronet. "The case is very nearly complete," said Sir Philip. "But two or three links in the chain of evidence are wanting, and as soon as I become myself convinced that this young man is, beyond all reasonable doubt, the legitimate son of my brother John, my course will be soon taken. It behooves us in the first instance, Marlow, to consider how this may affect you. You have sought the hand of a rich man's daughter, and now I shall be a poor man; for although considerable sums have accumulated since my father's death, they will not more than suffice to pay off the sums due to this young man if his claim be established, and the expenses of this suit must be saved by hard economy. The property of Lady Hastings will still descend to our child, but neither she nor I have the power to alienate even a part of it for our daughter's dowry. It is right, therefore, Marlow, that you should be set free from all engagements." "When I first asked your daughter's hand, Sir Philip," replied Marlow, "I heartily wished that our fortunes were more equal. Fate has granted that wish, apparently, in making them so; and believe me, I rejoice rather than regret that it is so, as far as I myself am concerned. We shall have enough for comfort, Sir Philip, and not too much for happiness. What need we more? But I cannot help thinking," he continued, "that this suit may turn out differently from that which you expect. I believe that the mind has its instincts, which, though dangerous to trust to, guide us nevertheless, sometimes, more surely than reason. There is an impression on my mind, which all the evidence hitherto brought forward has been unable to shake, that this claim of John Ayliffe is utterly without foundation--that it is, in fact, a trumped up case, supported by proofs which will fall to pieces under close examination." Sir Philip Hastings shook his head. "But one thing more," he said, "and I am myself convinced. I will not struggle against conviction, Marlow; but the moment I feel morally sure that I am defending a bad cause, that instant I will yield, be the sacrifice what it may. Nothing on earth," he continued, in a stern abstracted tone, "shall ever prevent my doing that which I believe right, and which justice and honor require me to do. Life itself and all that makes life dear were but a poor sacrifice in the eyes of an honest man; what then a few thousand acres, and an empty designation?" "But, my dear Sir Philip," replied Marlow, "let us suppose for one moment that this claim is a fictitious one, and that it is supported by fraud and forgery, you will allow that more than a few months are required to investigate all the particulars thoroughly, and to detect the knavery which may have been committed?" "My dear Marlow," replied Sir Philip, "conviction comes to each mind accordingly as it is naturally constituted or habitually regulated. I trust I have studied the nature of evidence well--well enough to be satisfied with much less than mere law will require. In regard to all questions which come under the decision of the law, there are, in fact, two juries who decide upon the merits of the evidence--one, selected from our fellow men--the other in the bosom of the parties before which each man shall scrupulously try the justice of his own cause, and if the verdict be against him, should look upon himself but as an officer to carry the verdict into execution. I will never act against conviction. I will always act with it. My mind will try the cause itself; and the moment its decision is pronounced, that instant I will act upon it." Marlow knew that it was in vain to argue farther, and could only trust that something would occur speedily to restore Sir Philip's confidence in his own rights. Sir Philip, however, was now absent very frequently from home. The unpleasant business in which he was engaged, called him continually to the county town, and many a long and happy hour might Marlow and Emily have passed together had not Lady Hastings at this time assumed a somewhat new character--apparently so only--for it was, in fact, merely a phase of the old one. She became--as far as health and indolence would admit--the most prudent and careful mother in the world. She insinuated that it was highly improper for Emily to walk or ride alone with her acknowledged lover, and broadly asserted that their previous rambles had been permitted without her knowledge, and from inadvertence. During all Marlow's afternoon visits, she took especial care to sit with them the whole time, and thus she sought to deprive them of all means of free and unconstrained communication. Such would have been the result, too, indeed, had it not been for a few morning hours snatched now and then; partly from a habit of indulgence, and partly from very delicate health, Lady Hastings was rarely, if ever, down to breakfast, and generally remained in her drawing-room till the hour of noon was past. The hours of Sir Philip's absence were generally tedious enough to himself. Sometimes a day of weary and laborious business occupied the time; but that was a relief rather than otherwise. In general the day was spent in a visit to the office of his lawyer, in finding the information he wanted, or the case he had desired to be prepared, not ready for him, in waiting for it hour after hour, in tedious gloomy meditation, and very often riding home without it, reflecting on the evils of a dilatory system which often, by the refusal of _speedy_ justice, renders ultimate justice unavailable for any thing but the assertion of an abstract principle. He got tired of this mode of proceeding: he felt that it irritated and disordered him, and after a while, whenever he found that he should be detained in suspense, he mounted his horse again, and rode away to amuse his mind with other things. The house of Mrs. Hazleton being so near, he more than once paid her a visit during such intervals. His coming frequently was not altogether convenient to her; for John Ayliffe was not an unfrequent visitor at her house, and Mrs. Hazleton had to give the young man a hint to let her see him early in the morning or late in the evening. Nevertheless, Mrs. Hazleton was not at all displeased to cultivate the friendship of Sir Philip Hastings. She had her objects, her purposes, to serve, and with her when she put on her most friendly looks towards the baronet she was not moved merely by that everyday instinctive hypocrisy which leads man to cover the passions he is conscious of, with a veil of the most opposite appearances, but it was a definite hypocrisy, with objects distinctly seen by herself, and full of purpose. Thus, and for these reasons, she received Sir Philip Hastings on all occasions with the highest distinction--assumed, with a certain chameleon quality which some persons have, the color and tone of his mind to a considerable degree, while yet the general features of her own character were preserved sufficiently to shield her from the charge of affectation. She was easy, graceful, dignified as ever, with a certain languid air, and serious quietness which was very engaging. She never referred in her conversations with Sir Philip to the suit that was going on against him, and when he spoke of it himself, though she assumed considerable interest, and seemed to have a personal feeling in the matter, exclaiming, "If this goes on, nobody's estates will be secure soon!" she soon suffered the subject to drop, and did not recur to it again. One day after the conversation between Sir Philip and Marlow, part of which has been already detailed, Sir Philip turned his horse's head towards Mrs. Hazleton's at a somewhat earlier hour than usual. It was just half past ten when he dismounted at the door, but he knew her matutinal habits and did not expect to find her occupied. The servant, however, instead of showing him into the small room where she usually sat, took him to the great drawing-room, and as he went, Sir Philip heard the voices of Mrs. Hazleton and another person in quick and apparently eager conversation. There was nothing extraordinary in this, however, and he turned to the window and gazed out into the park. He heard the servant go into the morning room, and then immediately all sound of voices ceased. Shortly after, a horse's feet, beating the ground rapidly, caught the baronet's ear, but the rider must have mounted in the courtyard and taken the back way out of the park; for he came not within Sir Philip's sight. A moment or two after, Mrs. Hazleton appeared, and there was an air of eagerness and excitement about her which was not at all usual. She seated Sir Philip beside her, however, with one of her blandest looks, and then laying her hand on his, said, in a kind and sisterly tone, "Do tell me, Sir Philip--I am not apt to be curious, or meddle with other people's affairs; but in this I am deeply interested. A rumor has just reached me from Hartwell, that you have signified your intention of abandoning your defence against this ridiculous claim upon your property. Do tell me if this is true?" "Partly, and partly false," replied Sir Philip, "as all rumors are. Who gave you this information?" "Oh, some of the people from Hartwell," she replied, "who came over upon business." "The tidings must have spread fast," replied Sir Philip; "I announced to my own legal advisers this morning, and told them to announce to the opposite party, that if they could satisfy me upon one particular point, I would not protract the suit, putting them to loss and inconvenience and myself also." "A noble and generous proceeding, indeed," said Mrs. Hazleton, with an enthusiastic burst of admiration. "Ah, dear Emily, I can see your mediation in this." Sir Philip started as if a knife had been plunged into him, and with a profound internal satisfaction, Mrs. Hazleton saw the emotion she had produced. "May I ask," he said, in a dry cold tone, after he had recovered himself a little, "May I ask what my daughter can have to do with this affair?" "Oh, really--in truth I don't know," said Mrs. Hazleton, stammering and hesitating, "I only thought--but I dare say it is all nonsense. Women are always the peacemakers, you know, Sir Philip, and as Emily knew both parties well, it seemed natural she should mediate between them." "Well?--" said Sir Philip Hastings to himself, slowly and thoughtfully, but he only replied to Mrs. Hazleton, "No, my dear Madam, Emily has had nothing to do with this. It has never formed a subject of conversation between us, and I trust that she has sufficient respect for me, and for herself, not to interfere unasked in my affairs." The serpent had done its work; the venom was busy in the veins of Sir Philip Hastings, corrupting the purest sources of the heart's feelings, and Mrs. Hazleton saw it and triumphed. CHAPTER XXVII. Emily was as gay as a lark. The light of love and happiness was in her eyes, the hue of health was upon her cheek, and a new spirit of hope and joy seemed to pervade all her fair form. So Sir Philip Hastings found her on the terrace with Marlow when he returned from Hartwell. She was dressed in a riding habit, and one word would have explained all the gaiety of her mood. Lady Hastings, never very consequent in her actions, had wished for some one of those things which ladies wish for, and which ladies only can choose. She had felt too unwell to go for it herself; and although she had not a fortnight before expressed her strong disapprobation of her daughter and Mr. Marlow even walking out alone in the park, she had now sent them on horseback to procure what she wanted. They had enjoyed one of those glorious rides over the downs, which seem to pour into the heart fresh feelings of delight at every step, flooding the sense with images of beauty, and making the blood dance freely in the veins. It seemed also, both to her and Marlow, that a part of the prohibition was removed, and though they might not perhaps be permitted to walk out together, Lady Hastings could hardly for the future forbid them to ride. Thus they had come back very well pleased, with light hearts within, and gay hopes fluttering round them. Sir Philip Hastings, on the other hand, had passed a day of bitterness, and hard, painful thought. On his first visit to the county town, he had, as I have shown, been obliged once more to put off decision. Then came his conference with Mrs. Hazleton. Then he had returned to his lawyer's office, and found that the wanting evidence had been supplied by his opponents. All that he had demanded was there; and no apparent flaw in the case of his adversary. He had always announced his attention of withdrawing opposition if such proofs were afforded, and he did so now, with stern, rigid, and somewhat hasty determination--but not without bitterness and regret. His ride home, too, was troubled with dull and grievous thoughts, and his whole mind was out of tune, and unfit to harmonize with gaiety of any kind. He forgot that poor Emily could not see what had been passing in his bosom, could not know all that had occurred to disturb and annoy him, and her light and cheerful spirits seemed an offence to him. Sir Philip passed on, after he had spoken a few words to Marlow, and sought Lady Hastings in the room below, where she usually sat after she came down. Sir Philip, as I have shown, had not been nurtured in a tender school, and he was not very apt by gentle preparation to soothe the communication of any bad tidings. Without any circumlocution, then, or prefatory remarks of any kind, he addressed his wife in the following words: "This matter is decided, my dear Rachel. I am no longer Sir Philip Hastings, and it is necessary that we should remove from this house within a month, to your old home--the Court. It will be necessary, moreover, that we should look with some degree of accuracy into the state of our future income, and our expenditure. With your property, and the estate which I inherit from my mother, which being settled on the younger children, no one can take from me, we shall still have more than enough for happiness, but the style of our living must be altered. We shall have plenty of time to think of that, however, and to do what we have to do methodically." Lady Hastings, or as we should rather call her now, Mistress Hastings, seemed at first hardly to comprehend her husband's meaning, and she replied, "You do not mean to say, Philip, that this horrible cause is decided?" "As far as I am concerned, entirely," replied Sir Philip Hastings. "I shall offer no farther defence." Lady Hastings fell into a fit of hysterics, and her husband knowing that it was useless to argue with her in such circumstances, called her maid, and left her. There was but a dull dinner-party at the Hall that day. Sir Philip was gloomy and reserved, and the news which had spread over the house, as to the great loss of property which he had sustained, soon robbed his daughter of her cheerfulness. Marlow, too, was very grave; for he thought his friend had acted, not only hastily, but imprudently. Lady Hastings did not come down to dinner, and as soon as the meal was over Emily retired to her mother's dressing-room, leaving Marlow and her father with their wine. Sir Philip avoided the subject of his late loss, however, and when Marlow himself, alluded to it, replied very briefly. "It is done," he said, "and I will cast the matter entirely from my mind, Marlow. I will endeavor, as far as possible, to do in all circumstances what is right, whatever be the anguish it costs me. Having done what is right, my next effort shall be to crush every thing like regret or repining. There is only one thing in life which could give me any permanent pain, and that would be to have an unworthy child." Marlow did not seem to remark the peculiar tone in which the last words were uttered, and he replied. "There, at least, you are most happy, Sir Philip; for surely Emily is a blessing which may well compensate for any misfortunes." "I trust so--I think so," said Sir Philip, in a dry and hasty manner, and then changing the subject, he added, "Call me merely Philip Hastings, my good friend. I say with Lord Verulam, 'The Chancellor is gone.' I mean I am no longer a baronet. That will not distress me, however, and as to the loss of fortune, I can bear it with the most perfect indifference." Mr. Hastings reckoned in some degree without his host, however. He knew not all the petty annoyances that were in store for him. The costs he had to pay, the back-rents which were claimed, the long and complicated accounts that were to be passed, the eager struggle which was made to deprive him of many things undoubtedly his own; all were matters of almost daily trouble and irritation during the next six months. He had greatly miscalculated the whole amount of expenses. Having lived always considerably within his income, he had imagined that he had quite a sufficient amount in ready money to pay all the demands that could be made upon him. But such was far from being the case. Before all the debts were paid, and the accounts closed, he was obliged to raise money upon his life-interest in his mother's property, and to remain dependent, as it were, upon his wife's income for his whole means. These daily annoyances had a much greater effect upon Mr. Hastings than any great and serious misfortune could have had. He became morose, impatient, gloomy. His mind brooded over all that had occurred, and all that was occurring. He took perverted views of many things, and adhered to them with an obstinacy that nothing could shake. In the mean time all the neighbors and friends of the family endeavored to show their sympathy and kindness by every means in their power. Even before the family quitted the Hall, the visitors were more numerous than they had ever been before, and this was some consolation to Mistress Hastings, though quite the contrary to her husband, who did not indeed appear very frequently amongst the guests, but remained in his own study as much as possible. It was a very painful day for every one, and for Emily especially, when they passed the door of the old Hall for the last time, and took their way through the park towards the Court. The furniture in great part, the books, the plate, had gone before; the rooms looked vacant and desolate, and as Emily passed through them one by one, ere she went down to the carriage, there was certainly nothing very attractive in their aspect. But there were spots there associated with many dear memories--feelings--fancies--thoughts--all the bright things of early, happy youth; and it was very bitter for her to leave them all, and know that she was never to visit them again. She might, and probably would, have fallen into one of her deep reveries, but she struggled against it, knowing that both her father and her mother would require comfort and consolation in the coming hours. She exerted herself, then, steadily and courageously to bear up without a show of grief, and she succeeded even too well to satisfy her father. He thought her somewhat light and frivolous, and judged it very strange that his daughter could quit her birth-place, and her early home, without, apparently, one regretful sigh. He himself sat stern, and gloomy, and silent, in the carriage, as it rolled away. Mistress Hastings leaned back, with her handkerchief over her eyes, weeping bitterly. Emily alone was calmly cheerful, and she maintained this demeanor all the way along till they reached the Court, and separated till dinner-time. Then, however, she wept bitterly and long. Before she had descended to meet her parents at dinner, she did her best to efface all traces of her sad employment for the last hour. She did not succeed completely, and when she entered the drawing-room, and spoke cheerfully to her father, he raised his eyes to her face, and detected, at once, the marks of recent tears on her swollen eyelids. "She has been weeping," said Mr. Hastings to himself; "can I have been mistaken?" A gleam of the truth shot through his mind, and comforted him much, but alas, it was soon to be lost again. From feelings of delicacy, Marlow had absented himself that day, but on the following morning he was there early, and thenceforward was a daily visitor at the Court. He applied himself particularly to cheer Emily's father, and often spent many hours with him, withdrawing Mr. Hastings' mind from all that was painful in his own situation, by leading it into those discussions of abstract propositions of which he was so fond. But Marlow was not the only frequent visitor at the Court. Mrs. Hazleton was there two or three times in the week, and was all kindness, gentleness, and sympathy. She had tutored herself well, and she met Mr. Marlow as Emily's affianced husband, with an ease and indifference which was marvellously well assumed. To Mrs. Hastings she proved the greatest comfort, although it is not to be asserted that the counsels which she gave her, proved at all comfortable to the rest of the household, and yet Mrs. Hazleton never committed herself. Mrs. Hastings could not have repeated one word that she said, that any one on earth could have found fault with. She had a mode of insinuating advice without speaking it--of eking out her words by looks and gestures full of significance to the person who beheld them, but perfectly indescribable to others. She was not satisfied, however, with being merely the friend and confidante of Mrs. Hastings. She must win Emily's father also, and she succeeded so well that Mr. Hastings quite forgot all doubts and suspicions, and causes of offence, and learned to look upon Mrs. Hazleton as a really kind and amiable person, and as consistent as could be expected of any woman. Not one word, however, did Mrs. Hazleton say in the hearing of Emily's father which could tend in any degree to depreciate the character of Mr. Marlow, or be construed into a disapproval of the proposed marriage. She was a great deal too wise for that, knowing the character of Mr. Hastings sufficiently to see that she could effect no object, and only injure herself by such a course. To Emily she was all that was kind and delightful. She was completely the Mrs. Hazleton of former days; but with the young girl she was less successful than with her parents. Emily could never forget the visit to her house, and what had there occurred, and the feelings which she entertained towards Mrs. Hazleton were always those of doubt. Her character was a riddle to Emily, as well it might be. There was nothing upon which she could definitely fix as an indication, of a bad heart, or of duplicity of nature, and yet she doubted; nor did Marlow at all assist in clearing her mind; for although they often spoke of Mrs. Hazleton, and Marlow admitted all her bright and shining qualities, yet he became very taciturn when Emily entered more deeply into that lady's character. Marlow likewise had his doubts, and to say sooth, he was not at all well pleased to see Mrs. Hazleton so frequently with Mrs. Hastings. He did not well know what it was he feared, but yet there was a something which instinctively told him that his interests in Emily's family would not find the most favorable advocate in Mrs. Hazleton. Such was the state of things when one evening there was assembled at the house of Mr. Hastings, a small dinner party--the first which had been given since his loss of property. The summer had returned, the weather was beautiful, the guests were cheerful and intellectual, and the dinner passed off happily enough. There were several gentlemen and several ladies present, and amongst the latter was Mrs. Hazleton. Politics at that time ran high: the people were not satisfied altogether with the King whom they had themselves chosen, and several acts of intolerance had proved that promises made before the attainment of power are not always very strictly maintained when power has been reached. Mr. Hastings had never meddled in the strife of party. He had a thorough contempt for policy and politicians, but he did not at all object to argue upon the general principles of government, in an abstract manner, and very frequently startled his hearers by opinions, not only unconstitutional, and wide and far from any of the received notions of the day, but sometimes also, very violent, and sometimes at first sight, irreconcilable with each other. On the present occasion the conversation after dinner took a political turn, and straying away from their wine, the gentlemen walked out into the gardens, which were still beautifully kept up, and prolonged their discussion in the open air. The ladies too--as all pictures show they were fond of doing in those days--were walking amongst the flowers, not in groups, but scattered here and there. Marlow was naturally making his way to the side of Emily, who was tying up a shrub at no great distance from the door, but Mrs. Hazleton unkindly called him to her, to tell her the name of a flower which she did not know. In the mean time Mr. Hastings took his daughter by the arm, leaning gently upon her, and walking up and down the terrace, while he continued his discussion with a Northumberland gentleman known in history as Sir John Fenwick. "The case seems to be this," said Mr. Hastings, in reply to some question or the other; "all must depend upon the necessity. Violent means are bad as a remedy for any thing but violent evils, but the greatness of the evil will often justify any degree of vigor in the means. Will any one tell me that Brutus was not justified in stabbing Cæsar? Will any one tell me that William Tell was not justified in all that he did against the tyrant of his country? I will not pretend to justify the English regicides, not only because they condemned a man by a process unknown to our laws, and repugnant to all justice, but because they committed an act for which there was no absolute necessity. Where an absolute necessity is shown, indeed--where no other means can be found of obtaining freedom, justice and security, I see no reason why a King should not be put to death as well as any other man. Nay more, he who does the deed with a full appreciation of its importance, a conscience clear of any private motives, and a reasoning sense of all the bearings of the act he commits, merits a monument rather than a gibbet, though in these days he is sure to obtain the one and not the other." "Hush, hush, do not speak so loud, my dear sir," said Sir John Fenwick; "less than those words brought Sidney's head to the block." "I am not afraid of mine," replied Mr. Hastings, with a faint smile; "mine are mere abstract notions with regard to such things; very little dangerous to any crowned heads, and if they thought fit to put down such opinions, they would have to burn more than one half of all the books we have derived from Rome." Sir John Fenwick would not pursue the subject, however, and turned the conversation in another course. He thought indeed that it had gone far enough, especially when a young lady was present; for he was one of those men who have no confidence in any woman's discretion, and he knew well, though he did not profit much by his knowledge, that things very slight, when taken abstractedly, may become very dangerous if forced into connection with events. Philip Hastings would have said what he did say, before any ears in Europe, without the slightest fear, but as it proved, he had said too much for his own safety. No one indeed seemed to have noticed the very strong opinions he had expressed except Sir John Fenwick himself, and shortly after the party gathered together again, and the conversation became general and not very interesting. CHAPTER XXVIII. Men have lived and died in the pursuit of two objects the least worthy, on which the high mind of man could ever fix, out of all the vain illusions that lead us forward through existence from youth to old age: the philosopher's stone, and the elixir of life. Gold, gold, sordid gold--not competence--not independence, but wealth--profuse, inexhaustible wealth--the hard food of Croesus; strange that it should ever form the one great object of an immortal spirit! But stranger still, that a being born to higher destinies should seek to pin itself down to this dull earth forever--to dwell in a clay hut, when a palace gates are open--to linger in a prison, when freedom may be had--to outlive affections, friendships, hope and happiness--to remain desolate in a garden where every flower has withered. To seek the philosopher's stone--even could it have been found--was a madness: but to desire the elixir of life was a worse insanity. There was once, however, in the world's history a search--an eager search, for that which at first sight may seem nearly the same as the great elixir; but which was in reality very, very different. We are told by the historians of America, that a tradition prevailed amongst the Indians of Puerto Rico, that in one of the islands on the coast, there was a fountain which possessed the marvellous power of restoring, to any one who bathed in its waters, all the vigor and freshness of youth, and that some of the Spanish adventurers sought it anxiously, but sought in vain. Here indeed was an object worthy of desire--here, what the heart might well yearn for, and mourn to find impossible. Oh, that fountain of youth, what might it not give back! The easy pliancy of limb: the light activity of body: the calm, sweet sleep; the power of enjoyment and acquisition: the freshness of the heart: the brightness of the fancy: the brilliant dreams: the glorious aspirations: the beauty and the gentleness: the innocence: the love. We, who stand upon the shoal of memory, and look back in our faint dreams, to the brighter land left far behind, may well long for that sweet fountain which could renew--not life--but youth. Oh youth--youth! Give me but one year of youth again. And it shall come. I see it there, beyond the skies, that fountain of youth, in the land where all flowers are immortal. It is very strange, however, that with some men, when youth is gone, its very memories die also. They can so little recollect the feelings of that brighter time, that they cannot comprehend them in others: that they become a mystery--a tale written in a tongue they have forgotten. It was so with Philip Hastings, and so also with his wife. Neither seemed to comprehend the feelings of Marlow and Emily; but her father understood them least. He had consented to their union: he approved of her choice; but yet it seemed strange and unpleasant to him, that her thoughts should be so completely given to her lover. He could hardly believe that the intense affection she felt for another, was compatible with love towards her parent. He knew not, or seemed to have forgotten that the ordinance to leave all and cleave unto her husband, is written in woman's heart as plainly as in the Book. Nevertheless, that which he felt was not the least like jealousy--although I have seen such a thing even in a parent towards a child. It was a part of the problem of Emily's character, which he was always trying to solve without success. "Here," he thought, "she has known this young man, but a short time--no years--not very many months; and yet, it is clear, that in that short space, she has learned to love him better than those to whom she is bound by every tie of long enduring affection and tenderness." Had he thought of comparing at all, her conduct and feelings with those of his own youth, he would still have marvelled; for he would have said, "I had no tenderness shown me in my young days--I was not the companion, the friend, the idol, the peculiar loved one of father or mother, so long as my elder brother lived. I loved her who first really loved me. From _my_ parents, I had met small affection, and but little kindness. It was therefore natural that I should fix my love elsewhere, as they had fixed theirs. But with my child, the case is very different." Yet he loved Marlow well--was fond of his society--was well pleased that he was to be his daughter's husband; but even in his case, Mr. Hastings was surprised in a certain degree; for Marlow did not, and could not conceal that he loved Emily's society better than her father's--that he would rather a great deal be with her than with Brutus himself or Cato. This desire on the part of Marlow to be ever by her side, was a great stumbling-block in the way of Mr. Hastings' schemes for re-educating Marlow, and giving that strength and vigor to his character of which his future father-in-law had thought it susceptible. He made very little progress, and perhaps Marlow's society might even have had some influence upon him--might have softened--mitigated his character; but that there were counteracting influences continually at work. All that had lately happened--the loss of fortune and of station--the dark and irritating suspicions which had been instilled into his mind in regard to his child's conduct--the doubts which had been produced of her frankness and candor--the fact before his eyes, that she loved another better, far better, than himself, with a kind word, now and then, from Mrs. Hazleton, spoken to drive the dart deeper into his heart, had rendered him somewhat morose and gloomy,--apt to take a bad view of other people's actions, and to judge less fairly than he always wished to judge. When Marlow hastened away from him to rejoin Emily, and paint, with her, in all the brightest colors of imagination, a picture of the glowing future, her father would walk solitary and thoughtful, giving himself up to dark and unprofitable reveries. Mrs. Hastings in the mean time would take counsel with Mrs. Hazleton, and they would settle between them that the father was already dissatisfied with the engagement he had aided to bring about, and that a little persevering opposition on the part of the mother, would ultimately bring that engagement to an end. Mrs. Hastings, too, thought--or rather seemed to feel, for she did not reduce it to thought--that she had now a greater right to exercise some authority in regard to her daughter's marriage, as Emily's whole fortune must proceed from her own property. She ventured to oppose more boldly, and to express her opinion against the marriage, both to her husband and her child. It was against the advice of Mrs. Hazleton that she did so; for that lady knew Mr. Hastings far better than his own wife knew him; and while Emily's cheek burned, and her eye swam in tears, Mr. Hastings replied in so stern and bitter a tone that Mrs. Hastings shrunk back alarmed at what she herself had done. But the word had been spoken: the truth revealed. Both Mr. Hastings and Emily were thenceforth aware that she wished the engagement between her daughter and Marlow broken off--she was opposed to the marriage; and would oppose it. The effect of this revelation of her views upon her child and her husband, was very different. Emily had colored with surprise and grief--not, as her father thought, with anger; and she resolved thenceforth to endeavor to soften her mother's feelings towards him she loved, and to win her consent to that upon which all her own happiness depended; but in which her own happiness could not be complete without a mother's approbation. Mr. Hastings, on the contrary, entertained no expectation that his wife would ever change her views, even if she changed her course. Some knowledge--some comprehension of her character had been forced upon him during the many years of their union; and he believed that, if all open remonstrance, and declared opposition had been crushed by his sharp and resolute answer, there would nevertheless be continual or ever recurring efforts on Mrs. Hastings' part, to have her own way, and thwart both his purposes and Emily's affection. He prepared to encounter that sort of irritating guerrilla warfare of last words, and sneers, and innuendoes, by which a wife sometimes endeavors to overcome a husband's resolutions; and he hardened himself to resist. He knew that she could not conquer in the strife; but he determined to put an end to the warfare, either by some decided expression of his anger at such proceedings, or by uniting Emily to Marlow, much sooner than he had at first proposed. The latter seemed the easiest method, and there was a great chance of the marriage, which it had been agreed should be delayed till Emily was nineteen, taking place much earlier, when events occurred which produced even a longer delay. One of the first steps taken by Mr. Hastings to show his wife that her unreasonable opposition would have no effect upon him, was not only to remove the prohibition of those lovers' rambles which Mrs. Hastings had forbidden, but to send his daughter and her promised husband forth together on any pretext that presented itself. He took the opportunity of doing so, first, when his wife was present, and on the impulse of the moment, she ventured to object. One look--one word from her husband, however, silenced her; for they were a look and word too stern to be trifled with, and Emily went to dress for her walk; but she went with the tears in her eyes. She was grieved to find that all that appertained to her happiness was likely to become a cause of dissension between her father and her mother. Had Marlow not been concerned--had his happiness not been also at stake--she would have sacrificed any thing--every thing--to avoid such a result; but she felt she had no right to yield to caprice, where he was to suffer as well as herself. The walk took place, and it might have been very sweet to both, had not the scene which had immediately preceded poured a drop of bitterness into their little cup of joy. Such walks were often renewed during the month that followed; but Emily was not so happy as she might have been; for she saw that her father assumed a sterner, colder tone towards his wife, and believed that she might be the unwilling cause of this painful alienation. She knew not that it proceeded partly from another source--that Mr. Hastings had discovered, or divined, that his wife had some feeling of increased power and authority from the fact of his having lost his large estates, and of her property being all that remained to them both. Poor Emily! Marlow's love, that dream of joy, seemed destined to produce, for a time at least, nothing but grief and anxiety. Her reveries became more frequent, and more deep, and though her lover could call her from them in a moment, no one else had the power. One day, Marlow and his Emily--for whom every day his love increased; for he knew and comprehended her perfectly, and he was the only one--had enjoyed a more happy and peaceful ramble than usual, through green lanes, and up the hill, and amidst the bright scenery which lay on the confines of the two counties, and they returned slowly towards the house, not anticipating much comfort there. As they approached, they saw from the road a carriage standing before the door, dusty, as if from a long journey, but with the horses still attached. There were three men, too, with the carriage, besides the driver, and they were walking their horses up and down the terrace, as if their stay was to be but short. It was an unusual number of attendants, even in those days, to accompany a carriage in the country, except upon some visit of great ceremony; and the vehicle itself--a large, old, rumbling coach, which had seen better days--gave no indication of any great state or dignity on the part of its owner. Why, she knew not, but a feeling of fear, or at least anxiety, came over Emily as she gazed, and turning to Marlow, she said, "Who can these visitors be?" "I know not, indeed, dear love," he answered, "but the equipage is somewhat strange. Were we in France," he added, with a laugh, "I should think it belonged to an exempt, bearing a _lettre de cachet_." Emily smiled also, for the idea of her father having incurred the anger of any government or violated any law seemed to her quite out of the question. When they approached the door, however, they were met by a servant, with a grave and anxious countenance, who told her that her father wished to see her immediately in the dining hull. "Is there any one with him?" asked Emily, in some surprise. "Yes, Mistress Emily," replied the man, "there is a strange gentleman with him. But you had better go in at once; for I am afraid things are not going well." Marlow drew her arm through his, and pressed it gently to make her feel support; and then went into the eating-room, as it was usually called, by her side. When they entered they found the scene a strange and painful one. Mr. Hastings was seated near a window, with his hat on, and his cloak cast down on a chair beside him. His wife was placed near him, weeping bitterly; and at the large table in the middle of the room was a coarse-looking man, in the garb of a gentleman, but with no other indication but that of dress of belonging to a superior class. He was very corpulent, and his face, though shadowed by an enormous wig, was large and bloated. There was food and wine before him, and to both he seemed to be doing ample justice, without taking any notice of the master of the house or his weeping lady. Mr. Hastings, however, rose and advanced towards his daughter, as soon as she entered, and in an instant the eye of the gormandizing guest was raised from his plate and turned towards the party, with a look of eager suspicion. "Oh, my dear father, what is this?" exclaimed Emily, running towards him. "One of those accidents of life, my child," replied Mr. Hastings, "from which I had hoped to be exempt--most foolishly. But it seems," he continued, "no conduct, however reserved, can shield one from the unjust suspicions of princes and governments." "Very good cause for suspicion, sir," said the man at the table, quaffing a large glass of wine. "Mr. Secretary would not have signed a warrant without strong evidence. Vernon is a cautious man, sir, a very cautious man." "And who is this person?" asked Marlow, pointing to the personage who spoke. "A messenger of the powers that be," replied Mr. Hastings; "it seems that because Sir John Fenwick dined here a short time ago, and has since been accused of some practices against the state, his Majesty's advisers have thought fit to connect me with his doings, or their own suspicions, though they might as well have sent down to arrest my butler or my footman, and I am now to have the benefit of a journey to the Tower of London under arrest." "Or to Newgate," said the messenger, significantly. "To London, at all events," replied Mr. Hastings. "I will go with you," said Marlow, at once; but before the prisoner could answer, the messenger interfered, saying, "That I cannot allow." "I am afraid you must allow it," replied Marlow, "whether it pleases you or not." "I will have no one in the carriage with my prisoner," said the messenger, striking the table gently with the haft of his knife. "That may be," answered Marlow; "but you will not, I presume, pretend to prevent my going where I please in my own carriage; and when once in London, I shall find no difficulty, knowing Mr. Vernon well." The latter announcement made a great change in the messenger's demeanor, and he became much more tame and docile from the moment it struck his ear. Mr. Hastings indeed would fain have persuaded his young friend to remain where he was, and looked at Emily with some of that tenderer feeling of a parent which so often prompts to every sacrifice for a child's sake. But Emily thanked Marlow eagerly for proposing to go; and Mrs. Hastings, even, expressed some gratitude. The arrangements were soon made. There being no time to send for Marlow's own carriage and horses, it was agreed that he should take a carriage belonging to Mr. Hastings, with his horses, for the first stage; the prisoner's valet was to accompany his friend, and immediate orders were given for the necessary preparations. When all was ready, Emily asked some question of her father, in a low tone, to which he replied, "On no account, my child. I will send for you and your mother should need be; but do not stir before I do. This is a mere cloud--a passing shower, which will soon be gone, and leave the sky as bright as ever. We do not live in an age when kings of England can play at foot-ball with the heads of innocent men, and I, as you all know, am innocent." He then embraced his wife and child with more tenderness than he was wont to show, and entering the carriage first, was followed by the messenger. The other men mounted their horses, and Marlow did not linger long behind the sad cavalcade. CHAPTER XXIX. Philip Hastings had calculated much upon his Roman firmness; and he could have borne death, or any great and sudden calamity, with fortitude; but small evils often affect us more than great ones. He knew not what it is to suffer long imprisonment, to undergo the wearing, grinding process of life within a prison's walls. He knew not the effect of long suspense either, of the fretful impatience for some turn in our fate, of the dull monotony of long continued expectation and protracted disappointment, of the creeping on of leaden despair, which craves nothing in the end but some change, be it for better or for worse. They took him to Newgate--the prison of common felons, and there, in a small room, strictly guarded, he remained for more than two months. At first he would send for no lawyer, for he fancied that there must either be some error on the part of the government, or that the suspicion against him must be so slight as to be easily removable. But day went by on day, and hour followed hour, without any appearance of a change in his fate. There came a great alteration, however, in his character. He became morose, gloomy, irritable. Every dark point in his own fate and history--every painful event which had occurred for many years--every doubt or suspicion which had spread gloom and anxiety through his mind, was now magnified a thousand-fold by long, brooding, solitary meditation. He pondered such things daily, hourly, in the broad day, in the dead, still night, when want of exercise deprived him of sleep, till his brain seemed to turn, and his whole heart was filled with stern bitterness. Marlow, who visited him every day by permission of the Secretary of State, found him each day much changed, both in appearance and manner; and even his conversation gave but small relief. He heard with small emotion the news of the day, or of his own family. He read the letters of his wife and daughter coldly. He heard even the intelligence that Sir John Fenwick was condemned for high treason, and to die on a scaffold, without any appearance of interest. He remained self-involved and thoughtful. At length, after a long interval--for the government was undecided how to proceed in his and several other cases connected with that famous conspiracy--a day was appointed for his first examination by the Secretary of State; for matters were then conducted in a very different manner from that in which they are treated at present; and he was carried under guard to Whitehall. Vernon was a calm and not unamiable man; and treating the prisoner with unaffected gentleness, he told him that the government was very anxious to avoid the effusion of any more blood, and expressed a hope that Mr. Hastings would afford such explanations of his conduct as would save the pain of proceeding against him. He did not wish by any means, he said, to induce him to criminate himself; but merely to give such explanations as he might think fit. Philip Hastings replied, with stern bitterness, that before he could give any explanations, he must learn what there was in his conduct to explain. "It has ever been open, plain, and straightforward," he said. "I have taken no part in conspiracies, very little part in politics. I have nothing to fear from any thing I myself can utter; for I have nothing to conceal. Tell me what is the charge against me, and I will answer it boldly. Ask what questions you please; and I will reply at once to those to which I can find a reply in my own knowledge." "I thought the nature of the charge had been made fully known to you," replied Vernon. "However, it is soon stated. You are charged, Mr. Hastings, with having taken a most decided part in the criminal designs, if not in the criminal acts, of that unfortunate man Sir John Fenwick. Nay, of having first suggested to him the darkest of all his designs, namely, the assassination of his Majesty." "I suggest the assassination of the King!" exclaimed Mr. Hastings. "I propose such an act! Sir, the charge is ridiculous. Has not the only share I ever took in politics been to aid in placing King William upon the throne, and consistently to support his government since? What the ministers of the crown can seek by bringing such a charge against me, I know not; but it is evidently fictitious, and of course has an object." Vernon's cheek grew somewhat red, and he replied warmly, "That is an over-bold assertion, sir. But I will soon satisfy you that it is unjust, and that the crown has not acted without cause. Allow me, then, to tell you, that no sooner had the conspiracy of Sir John Fenwick been detected, and his apprehension been made known, than information was privately given--from your own part of the country--to the following effect;" and he proceeded to read from a paper, which had evidently been folded in the form of a letter, the ensuing words: "That on the ---- day of May last, when walking in the gardens of his own house, called 'The Court,' he--that is yourself, sir--used the following language to Sir John Fenwick: 'When no other means can be found of obtaining justice, freedom, and security, I see no reason why a king should not be put to death as well as any other man. He who does the deed merits a monument rather than a gibbet.' Such was the information, sir, on which government first acted in causing your apprehension." The Secretary paused, and for a few moments Mr. Hastings remained gazing down in silence, like a man utterly confounded. Vernon thought he had touched him home; but the emotions in the prisoner's bosom, though very violent, were very different from those which the Secretary attributed to him. He remembered the conversation well, but he remembered also that the only one who, besides Sir John Fenwick, was with him at the moment, was his own child. I will not dwell upon his feelings, but they absorbed him entirely, till the Secretary went on, saying--"Not satisfied with such slender information, Mr. Hastings, the government caused that unhappy criminal, Sir John Fenwick, to be asked, after his fate was fixed, if he recollected your having used those words to him, and he replied, 'something very like them.'" "And I reply the same," exclaimed Philip Hastings, sternly. "I did use those words, or words very like them. But, sir, they were in connection with others, which, had they been repeated likewise, would have taken all criminal application from them. May I be permitted to look at that letter in your hand, to see how much was really told, how much suppressed?" "I have read it all to you," said Mr. Vernon, "but you may look at it if you please," and he handed it to him across the table. Philip Hastings spread it out before him, trembling violently, and then drew another letter from his pocket, and laid them side by side. He ran his eye from one to the other for a moment or two, and then sunk slowly down, fainting upon the floor. While a turnkey and one of the messengers raised him, and some efforts were made to bring him back to consciousness, Mr. Vernon walked round the table and looked at the two letters which were still lying on it. He compared them eagerly, anxiously. The handwriting of the one was very similar to that of the other, and in the beginning of that which Mr. Hastings had taken from his pocket, the Secretary found the words, "My dear father." It was signed, "Emily Hastings;" and Vernon instantly comprehended the nature of the terrible emotion he had witnessed. He was really, as I have said, a kind and humane man, and he felt very much for the prisoner, who was speedily brought to himself again, and seated in a chair before the table. "Perhaps, Mr. Hastings," said Vernon, "we had better not protract this conversation to-day. I will see you again to-morrow, at this hour, if you would prefer that arrangement." "Not at all, sir," answered the prisoner, "I will answer now, for though the body be weak, the spirit is strong. Remember, however, that I am not pleading for life. Life is valueless to me. The block and axe would be a relief. I am only pleading to prevent my own character from being stained, and to frustrate this horrible design. I used the words imputed to me; but if I recollect right, with several qualifications, even in the sentence which has been extracted. But before that, many other words had passed which entirely altered the whole bearing of the question. The conversation began about the regicides of the great rebellion, and although my father was of the party in arms against the King, I expressed my unqualified disapprobation of their conduct in putting their sovereign to death. I then approached as a mere matter of abstract reasoning, in which, perhaps, I am too apt to indulge, the subject of man's right to resist by any means an unendurable tyranny, and I quoted the example of Brutus and William Tell; and it was in the course of these abstract remarks, that I used the words which have been cited. I give you my word, however, and pledge my honor, that I entertained no thought, and had no cause whatever to believe that Sir John Fenwick who was dining with me as an old acquaintance, entertained hostile designs against the government of his native land." "Your admitted opinions, Mr. Hastings," said Vernon, "seem to me to be very dangerous ones." "That may be," replied the prisoner, "but in this country at least, sir, you cannot kill a man for opinions." "No; but those opinions, expressed in conversation with others who proceed to acts," replied Vernon, "place a man in a very dangerous position, Mr. Hastings. I will not conceal from you that you are in some peril; but at the same time I am inclined to think that the evidence, without your admissions this day, might prove insufficient, and it is not my intention to take advantage of any thing you have said. I shall report to his Majesty accordingly; but the proceedings of the government will be guided by the opinion of the law officers of the crown, and not by mine. I therefore can assure you of nothing except my sincere grief at the situation in which you are placed." "I little heed the result of your report, sir," replied Mr. Hastings; "life, I say, is valueless to me, and if I am brought to trial for words very innocently spoken, I shall only make the same defence I have done this day, and I shall call no witness; the only witness of the whole," he added with stern, concentrated bitterness, "is probably on the side of the crown." Mr. Hastings was then removed to Newgate, leaving the two letters on the table behind him, and as soon as he was gone, Mr. Vernon sent a messenger to an inn near Charing Cross, to say he should be glad to speak for a few moments with Mr. Marlow. In about half an hour Marlow was there, and was received by Vernon as an old acquaintance. The door was immediately closed, and Marlow seated himself near the table, turning his eyes away, however, as an honorable man from the papers which lay on it. "I have had an interview with your friend, Mr. Marlow," said the Secretary, "and the scene has been a very painful one. Mr. Hastings has been more affected than I expected, and actually fainted." Marlow's face expressed unutterable astonishment, for the idea of Philip Hastings fainting under any apprehension whatever, could never enter into the mind of any one who knew him. "Good God!" he exclaimed, "what could be the cause of that? Not fear, I am sure." "Something more painful than even fear, I believe," replied Mr. Vernon; "Mr. Hastings has a daughter, I believe?" "Yes, sir, he has," replied Marlow, somewhat stiffly. "Do you know her handwriting?" asked the Secretary. "Yes, perfectly well," answered Marlow. "Then be so good as to take up that letter next you," said Vernon, "and tell me if it is in her hand." Marlow took up the paper, glanced at it, and at once said, "Yes;" but the next instant he corrected himself, saying, "No, no--it is very like Emily's hand--very, very like; but more constrained." "May not that proceed from an attempt to disguise her hand?" asked Vernon. "Or from an attempt on the part of some other to imitate it," rejoined Marlow; "but this is very strange, Mr. Vernon; may I read this through?" "Certainly," replied the Secretary, and Marlow read every word three or four times over with eager attention. They seemed to affect him very much, for notwithstanding the Secretary's presence, he started up and paced the room for a minute or two in thought. "I must unravel this dark mystery," he said at length. "Mr. Vernon, there have been strange things taking place lately in the family of Mr. Hastings. Things which have created in my mind a suspicion that some secret and external agency is at work to destroy his peace as well as to ruin his happiness, and still more, I fear, to ruin the happiness of his daughter. This letter is but one link in a long chain of suspicious facts, and I am resolved to sift the whole matter to the bottom. The time allowed me to do so, must depend upon the course you determine to pursue towards Mr. Hastings. If you resolve to proceed against him I must lose no time--although I think I need hardly say, there is small chance of your success upon such evidence as this;" and he struck the letter with his fingers. "We have more evidence, such as it is," replied Vernon, "and he himself admits having used those words." Marlow paused thoughtfully, and then replied, "He may have used them--he is very likely to have used them; but it must have been quite abstractedly, and with no reference to any existing circumstance. I remember the occasion on which Sir John Fenwick dined with him, perfectly. I was there myself. Now let me see if I can recall all the facts. Yes, I can, distinctly. During the whole of dinner--during the short time we sat after dinner, those words were never used; nor were conspiracies and treason ever thought of. I remember, too, from a particular circumstance, that when we went out into the gardens Mr. Hastings took his daughter's arm, and walked up and down the terrace with Sir John Fenwick at his side. That must have been the moment. But I need hardly point out to you, Mr. Vernon, that such was not a time when any man in his senses, and especially a shrewd, cunning, timid man, like Sir John Fenwick, would have chosen for the development of treasonable designs." "Were any other persons near?" asked Vernon; "the young lady might have been in the conspiracy as well as her father." Marlow laughed. "There were a dozen near," he answered; "they were subject to interruption at any moment--nay, they could not have gone on for three minutes; for that pace of time did not elapse after the gentlemen entered the garden where the ladies were, before I was at Emily's side, and not one word of this kind was spoken afterwards." "Then what could have induced her to report those words to the government?" asked Mr. Vernon. "She never did so," replied Marlow, earnestly; "this is not her handwriting, though the imitation is very good--and now, sir," he continued, "if it be proper, will you explain to me what course you intend to pursue, that I may act accordingly? For as I before said, I am resolved to search this mystery out into its darkest recesses. It has gone on too long already." Vernon smiled. "You are asking a good deal," he said, "but yet my views are so strong upon the subject, that I think I may venture to state them, even if the case against Mr. Hastings should be carried a step or two farther--which might be better, in order to insure his not being troubled on an after occasion. I shall strongly advise that a _nolle prosequi_ be entered, and I think I may add that my advice will be taken." "You think I have asked much already, Mr. Vernon," said Marlow, "but I am now going to ask more. Will you allow me to have this letter? I give you my word of honor that it shall only be used for the purposes of justice. You have known me from my boyhood, my dear sir; you can trust me." "Perfectly, my young friend," replied Vernon, "but you must not take the letter to-day. In two days the action of the government will be determined, and if it be such as I anticipate you shall have the paper, and I trust it will lead to some discovery of the motives and circumstances of this strange transaction. Most mysterious it certainly is; for one can hardly suppose any one but a fiend thus seeking to bring a father's life into peril." "A fiend!" exclaimed Marlow, with a scoff, "much more like an angel, my dear sir." "You seem to think so," said Vernon, smiling, "and I trust, though love is blind, he may have left you clear-sighted in this instance." "I think he has," answered Marlow, "and as this young lady's fate is soon to be united to mine, it is very necessary I should see clearly. I entertain no doubt, indeed, and I say boldly, that Emily never wrote this letter. It will give me, however, a clue which perhaps may lead me to the end of the labyrinth, though as yet I hardly see my way. But a strong resolution often does much." "Might it not be better for you," asked Vernon, "to express your doubts in regard to this letter to Mr. Hastings himself? He was terribly affected, as well he might be, when he saw this document, and believed it to be his own child's writing." Marlow mused for some time ere he replied. "I think not," he answered at length; "he is a man of peculiar disposition; stern, somewhat gloomy, but honorable, upright, and candid. Now what I am going to say may make me appear as stern as himself, but if he is suffering from doubts of that dear girl, knowing her as well as he does, he is suffering from his own fault, and deserves it. However, my object is not to punish him, but thoroughly, completely, and for ever to open his eyes, and to show him so strongly that he has done his child injustice, as to prevent his ever doing the like again. This can only be done by bringing all the proofs upon him at once, and my task is now to gather them together. To my mere opinion regarding the handwriting, he would not give the slightest heed, but he will not shut his eyes to proofs. May I calculate upon having the letter in two days?" "I think you may," replied Vernon. "Then when will Mr. Hastings be set free?" asked Marlow; "I should wish to have some start of him into the country." "That will depend upon various circumstances," replied the Secretary; "I think we shall take some steps towards the trial before we enter the _nolle prosequi_. It is necessary to check in some way the expression of such very dangerous opinions as he entertains." Marlow made no reply but by a smile, and they soon after parted. * * * * * One of the writers upon German politics reproduces the story of the Englishman, Frenchman, and German, who were required by some unknown power to draw a sketch of a camel. The Frenchman hied him to the Jardin des Plantes, and came back with his sketch in no time. The more conscientious Briton at once took ship for the East, and returned with his drawing from the life of nature. But the German went to the library of the prince of his country to ascertain what a camel was. He lived to a great age, with the reputation of being very learned, and a little crazed with the depth of his researches, and on his death-bed told his physician in confidence that he did not believe there was such an animal at all! FOOTNOTES: [3] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by G. P. R. James, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE: OR, THE SPY IN SOCIETY.[4] TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF H. DE ST. GEORGES. _Continued from page 211_ VIII.--THE FOUR PULCINELLI. Doctor Matheus, as the reader must have guessed from the previous chapter, was Freiderick von Apsberg, one of the four Pulcinelli of the ball of San Carlo, the young German who was the son of the venerable pastor of the city of Ellogen, in Bohemia. Freiderick von Apsberg had been educated in one of the most celebrated universities of Germany, that of Leipsic,--where he had imbibed that very social contagion, a passion for detestable demagogic fancies, with which all those scientific _lazaretti_ of Germany were filled. The dreamy and often poetic forms in which those ideas were enunciated, easily touched the heart of that long peaceable nation, and opened to it a field of mad and resistless hopes which could not but plunge it into that abyss of disorder, trouble, and crime, in which it has been recently seen sweltering. Freiderick, not thinking his country yet prepared for the propagation of his principles, sought for an echo among other European nations. The rising _Carbonarism_ of Italy opened its arms to him, and received him as one of its future supporters. There he had become acquainted with Monte-Leone, and participated in the religion of which he was the high priest. On his return to Germany, after his expulsion from Italy, he had discovered that the work had advanced during his absence, that the myth had been personified, and that the seed had germinated. Germany, especially the _poor_ of Germany, began to be deeply agitated; the _Carbonaro_ made many proselytes, and won many new members to the association. The death of his father having endowed him with some fortune, he completed his studies, and became one of the most fervent apostles of that mysterious science of which he spoke to the Duke d'Harcourt; but, being made uncomfortable by the German police, he left his country, after having established a connection with the _Vente_ which had been formed there. He then came to France, where we find him under the name of Doctor Matheus, and living in the awful No. 13 of Babylonne street;--his house was the rendezvous of the principal members of the _Vente_ of Paris, where his profession amply accounted for the many visitors he received. His three friends, however, fearing that their frequent visits would be remarked, often had recourse to disguises. Thus it is that we saw the Englishman, the Auvergnot, and the peasant, so cavalierly treated by Mlle Crepineau. "This is the hour of consultation, my dear Doctor," said the Viscount to Von Apsberg; "where are the patients?" In a serious tone the latter replied, "In France, Italy, Germany, and all the continent.--Their disease is a painful oppression, an extreme lassitude in every member of the social body, a slow fever, and general feeling of indisposition." "What physician will cure so many diseases?" asked the Viscount. "_Carbonarism!_" "Are you sure of this?" asked d'Harcourt, who, probably for the first time in his life, said any thing reasonable. This was a doubt, almost a defection to that cause into which his generous and enthusiastic nature had cast him. René d'Harcourt had originally formed but a passing intimacy with Monte-Leone, the object of which was pleasure alone. The latter, however, soon discovered his friend's courage and truth, and ultimately initiated him in all his political mysteries and dreams. D'Harcourt, attracted by the occult power exerted by the Count over his associates, and led astray to a degree by his specious theories in relation to national happiness, which Monte-Leone knew how to dress so well in the most energetic language, was carried away by the temptation of becoming a political personage; perhaps, also, as la Felina said at the Etruscan villa, not a little under the influence of idleness, and the wish to be able to tell wonders of himself, joined in all these plots. He had become affiliated to the society of which Monte-Leone was the chief, and when he was expelled from Italy, represented himself to his particular friends as a martyr of political faith: he had, by the by, a very faint confidence in it, and cared very little about it; and this, even, was insensibly lessened when, on his return to France and his family, he saw the high distinction which his father enjoyed, and was aware that by rank and birth he would one day be called on to play a conspicuous part in the history of his country. He could not understand, therefore, how this country could demand a general convulsion to obtain a hypothetical better, in place of a positive good. This, as we have said, was the state of his mind, when Monte-Leone, Taddeo, and Frederick returned to Paris. They talked to him of his oaths, of the pledge they had taken, of his position as a _Carbonaro_,--to which he would make no reply. The Viscount a second time falling under the influence of Monte-Leone, captivated again by the charms of friendship, and the glory of being the regenerator of his country, fancied himself also bound by his honor to pursue the path on which he had entered. He therefore resumed his old chains, and became the SEIDE of a cause to which he was attracted neither by sympathy nor by reason. The phrase which had escaped from the lips, or rather the good sense of the young man, sounded to Monte-Leone like a false note in a chorus. He said, "René, God forbid that we should seek to link you to our fate if you do not believe in our cause. Remain inactive in the strife about to ensue; your honor will be a sufficient pledge for your silence in relation to our secrets. Henceforth be a brother to us only in love. Von Apsberg, the grand archivest of the association, will efface your name from our list; and whatever misfortune befall us, I shall at least have the satisfaction of knowing that you were not involved in our ruin." This offer, instead of being received by René d'Harcourt, increased his zeal, which otherwise would have died away. "Leave you?" said he,--"abandon you, when the hour of danger has come?--desert the field of battle when the combat is about to begin? My friendship, my courage, and my honor, all forbid me to do so." The four friends clasped their hands, and Monte-Leone said,--"Now listen to me, for time is precious. The _Vente_ of the kingdom of Naples, and those of all Italy, of which I refuse to be any longer the chief, do not on that account distrust me, but have just given me a striking proof of their confidence. It is so great that I hesitate even to accept it." "Speak," said all the friends at once. "I have received this letter," said Monte-Leone. "The delegates of all the Italian _Vente_, relying on the prudence, valor, and judgment of Count Monte-Leone, refer to him the decision of the time when, and the manner in which, it is proper for them to manifest their principles. Count Monte-Leone is requested to open a communication with the Vente of France, that there may be a simultaneous movement with those of Italy." "Thus," said the Count, "in accepting this mission, I become the god, the sovereign arbiter of this immense work, and have its fate in my hands." Von Apsberg said, "you have that of Italy and Germany--for the _Vente_ of my country will act when I speak, or rather when you do." An expression of pride flashed across Monte-Leone's face. He had evidently been mortified at not becoming supreme director, yet the staff of command was again placed in his grasp. It was not now, though, to confer the command of a single country, but, to use his own words, he became the all-powerful controller of Europe, and, in his opinion, the hope of the universe. This strange man, made up of greatness and littleness, like all the political idealists who erect altars to the creatures of their dreams, and ignorantly make a sacrifice of logic, good sense and reason--this man who sighed for universal liberty, was delighted at the prospect of great, despotic, and aristocratic power, to be exerted by his will alone in three great countries. The Count then yielded willingly to the persuasions of his friends, and promised to fulfil the wishes of the Italian _Vente_. He said, "The time for action is not come. The French police, in fact, is busy only with the known enemies of the Government, with persons who are compromised in these petty plots originated by self-love--regret for the past, and ambition. Our object is greater; for we do not serve a man, but an idea, or rather the assemblage of ideas, to be expanded everywhere at once, and to replace the darkness of old civilization by torrents of far more dazzling light. The dawn of that light though has not yet come." "Yet," said Von Apsberg, "the notes I receive announce the formation of new _Vente_ on all sides of us." "Paris is filled with Carbonari," added d'Harcourt. "Our secret and masonic sign reveals the existence of brothers everywhere to me. I see them in the public places, on the benches of the lawyers, and among the very judges." "True," said Von Apsberg, "and as an evidence of what d'Harcourt says, look at these voluminous names." The friends examined them carefully. "It matters not," said Monte-Leone, "too much precipitation would ruin all. Remember our device, _an auger piercing the globe_." During all this conversation, Taddeo had remained silent and thoughtful, and the Count at last observed it. "My friend," said he, "why are you so sad? Can it be, like d'Harcourt just now, that you have any doubt or scruple about our cause? Do you hesitate at the dangers?" Taddeo, as if he were aroused from a dream, said: "The dangers I anxiously invite, as likely to free me from a life which is become a burden." Monte-Leone grew pale at these words, for he knew the reason of his deep despair; and the iron of remorse pierced his heart. Before, however, Taddeo's friends could question him, a strange accident attracted the attention of the actors of this scene. A noise, at first faint and then louder, which resembled that of the spider in its web, suddenly interrupted the conversation. It seemed to come from the interior of one of the panels. "Here it is," said Monte-Leone, pointing at one of the book-cases. "Yes," said Von Apsberg, with a sign of admiration. "Can we have been overheard?" said d'Harcourt. "I think so," said the false Matheus. The Visconte and Taddeo at once took pistols from their pockets and cocked them. "It is of no use," said the physician, pointing to the arms of his friends. "Put on your disguises, for it is unnecessary even that the brothers should know you. Kant has said, _When there is a secret to be kept it is desirable that all who are intrusted with it should be deaf, blind, and dumb_. Let us then tempt no one, and remember there is no one here but a doctor and two patients." "But the Count," said d'Harcourt, "is he forgotten?" "Ah," said the doctor, "he must be seen." The noise increased, and something of impatience was remarkable in the little taps on the wood-work. "It is he, is it not?" said Monte-Leone. "Yes," said Frederick, "for no one else uses that entrance." Von Apsberg then approached the library and touched a spring which threw open a panel on which the books were arranged. With a key the doctor then opened another door, through which a man entered. The day was advanced, and the shades of night enwrapped almost all the room. The scene we describe took place in the most remote and consequently in the darkest portion of the vast studio. The appearance of the man assumed a terrible and fantastic air. "Ah! what is there so urgent that you trouble thus, my dear Pignana?" said the Count to the new comer. Signor Pignana, our old Neapolitan acquaintance, the pretended tailor and owner of the Etruscan House, the mysterious guide of the Count among the ruins of San Paolo, bowed to the earth as he always did before the Count, and was evidently about to speak, when he stopped short and pointed to the peasant and my lord, the profiles of whom he could see distinctly in a moonbeam which came through one of the windows. "They are brethren," said Matheus, "you may speak." "Well then," said Pignana, piqued by the brusque manner of the Count, "I thought the case _urgent_, (he accented the last word,) and therefore came to warn your excellency of danger." "What danger?" asked the Count, with his usual _sang-froid_. "And since his excellency," said Pignana, "forbade me to come to his house, I was obliged to come here, though I believe my appearance is respectable enough to pass scrutiny anywhere." "Signor Pignana, I must now, once for all, tell you the motives of my conduct. I would not do so in any case were I not satisfied how devoted you are to me." Pignana bowed again. "Your appearance," said the Count, "is certainly very honest and respectable. The _fund_ of honesty is, however, perhaps not so good; for as a smuggler, a skimmer of the seas----, but I stop here, lest I should displease you, for you may, after all, have something on your conscience. There is, you know, a certain Neapolitan Ambassador at Paris who was once a minister of police in our beautiful country. Now, Signor Pignana, people never have to do with the police without some very unpleasant consequences. I have an idea also that the Duke of Palma, at whose house I was a fortnight ago, did not fail to inform the Prefect of the Police of the city, of my being in Paris. This is a delicate attention from one police to another. The Duke, also, probably pointed out many of my old acquaintances, among whom you have the honor to be; you will understand, by aid of your knowledge of _doubtful affairs_, that if it be known that I receive you here, people will not think you come to teach me to play _the mandoline_, on which instrument you are, I learn, a great performer. Consequently, and not to rob myself of your invaluable services, and the care over my household which you exercise, we have made a means of entrance for you here, and through him you can communicate with me--how Signor Pignana, an intelligent man like you, should understand this, without its being necessary for me to give all these details." "I am delighted to be assured," said Signor Pignana, proudly, "that without these grave reasons the Count would not be unwilling to see me." "But," said Taddeo, "what is the danger of which you spoke just now?" "Ah! Signor Taddeo Rovero!" said the shrewd Pignana, who had recognized the voice of the young man. "This is bad!" murmured Frederick. "I am delighted to meet Signor Taddeo Rovero," said Pignana, "especially as what I have to say relates also to him." "To me?" said Taddeo. "Come to the point, then," said the Count. "Thus it is, Monsignore," said Pignana: "I was, in obedience to orders, hanging about your excellency's house, and until to-day never saw any thing suspicious. This evening I saw two dark figures planted opposite to your hotel, at the corner of Verneuil-street. The motionless position of these men seemed strange, and the manner that they examined others who came in and out of the hotel was more so, until at last I became satisfied that they watched you. I was confirmed in this when approaching them in the dark I heard one of the men say to his companion: '_He has gone out on foot, his carriage has not left!_'" "Go on," said the Count, "this becomes interesting." "This is not all," said Pignana; "the same man said in a brusque tone to his companion: '_Go to Saint Dominique-street, the other lives there!_'" "That is myself," said Taddeo, "and the Marquis, my sister, and I do live in that street, in the Hotel of the Prince de Maulear." "So I thought," said Pignana, bowing to Taddeo, "and I hurried hither where I knew Count Monte-Leone was to be found. Your excellency will now see that it was a matter of importance." "Do not go home to-night!" said d'Harcourt. "Remain here!" said von Apsberg. "Leave Paris!" said Pignana. "Why should I not go home? Because it pleases some robber to wait near my hotel, to rob me? or because some bravo wishes, _a la Venitienne_, to make a dagger-sheath of my heart? The man must act, too, _on his own account_, for I know of no enemies in this city. Every where I am sought for and _fêted_, and our secret associates, with whom the world is full, and who know my old adventures, secure every day a triumphal reception for me in the saloons of Paris. But if the mysterious watchers of whom Signor Pignana speaks, be by chance of the birds of night--owls who have escaped from the police, I make myself more liable to suspicion by staying away, than by returning to my hotel. Then, by ----, as my old friend Pietro used to say--I did not furnish a house to sleep out of it. To remain here as Von Apsberg suggests, would be a greater mistake yet; for in this house are all our documents and the lists of our associates. This is the treasury, the holy ark of the society, and here, under the name of Matheus, is the very soul. Let us then beware how we give the huntsman any clue to this precious deposit, or all will be lost. Pignana proposes that I should leave Paris, but I will not do so. Here are all our hopes of probable success. The light which will illumine Paris, must radiate hence. Besides, gentlemen," continued Monte-Leone, "I find that you all become easily excited at a very natural thing. In case even of a judicial investigation, you forget--_The brethren know each other, but can furnish no evidence of the participation of each other in any enterprise_. Our records or our deeds alone can betray us; our papers are here beneath three locks, and our actions are yet to be. Do not, therefore, be uneasy about my fate, and let Taddeo and myself discover the explanation of this riddle." "Do not be imprudent," said Von Apsberg to Monte-Leone, as he saw him hurriedly dress himself in the costume of an Auvergnat; "remember that we are in Paris, where the streets are crowded, and not in Naples--that a dagger-thrust is a great event here." "Do not be uneasy," said the Count, "for I always conform to the usages and customs of the country in which I am. In Italy I use the dagger, and in France the stick." Taking hold of the baton which Taddeo bore, more completely to assume the roll of the villager, he brandished and twisted it in his fingers, well enough to have made Fan-Fan, the king of the stick-players of the day, envious. "Shall I follow your _eccelenza_?" asked Signor Pignana. "Certainly," said he, "but as a rear-guard, twenty paces behind me, in order that you may give evidence, as a mere passer by, that the man I shall beat to death wished to beat me. This will make me more interesting in the eyes of the people this difficulty will attract." When he saw Signor Pignana about to leave the room with him, he said, "No! Mademoiselle Crepineau, the Argus of this house, saw only three men come in; what will she think when she sees four leaving? Go out then by the secret door, Pignana, and join us at the corner of the _rue_ Belle-Chasse." The door of the library was closed on Signor Pignana. "Do you not wish me to go with you?" asked the Vicomte of Monte-Leone. "For shame!" said Monte-Leone, "four to one--we would look like the allied army marching against Monaco. Remain then a few minutes with the doctor. The consultation of the Milord naturally enough may be long." The Auvergnat and the peasant of the boulirue passed before the chair of Mademoiselle Crepineau, one with his handkerchief over his cheek, and the other with a bandage over his eye. Recollecting that they had been since eight o'clock with the doctor, she could not refrain from saying, "The doctor is a very skilful man, but he is slow. After all," added she, "he may have taken a multitude of things from them, though no one heard them cry out. People of their rank do not mind pain." As they approached Verneuil-street, the Count proceeded a few steps in advance of Taddeo. "Wait for me here," said he, pointing out a house which stood yet farther back than the others, on the alignment of the street, "and come to me if I call out." He then left the young man, assumed a vulgar air, and straggled towards his hotel. Soon he saw in an angle of the wall opposite to his house a motionless shadow, which was certainly that of the man Pignana had pointed out to him. The Count had a quick and keen eye, which recognized objects even in the dark. He saw the two eyes which watched him, and which were fixed on his hotel. They were moved from time to time, but only that on turning again they might more easily recognize every passer. Monte-Leone, with the presence of mind which never left him, and which characterized all the decisive actions of his life, no sooner conceived his plan than he put it into execution. He was anxious to know with what enemies he had to deal, and could conceive of no better way than to question the man himself. The question he put, it is true, was rather _brusque_, as will be seen. When a few paces behind the man, who had not the least suspicion, and had suffered him to come close to him, the Count faced about and rushed on the stranger. He clasped his throat with one hand, and with the other seized the stranger's weapons, which he naturally enough concluded he wore. The latter uttered a cry, and an only cry, which, by the by, was terrible. He was then silent. A stranger passing by might have fancied those men were speaking confidentially together, but never that one was strangling the other. "One word," said Monte-Leone. "Tell me why you are here." "On my own business," said the man. "That is not true," said the Count. "You are not a robber--you have been here for two hours. Many persons well dressed have down this street, yet you did not attack them." The living vice which bound his throat was again compressed. The man made a sign that he wished to speak. The Count relaxed his hold. "Whom do you watch?" "Yourself." "You know me, then?" "Yes." "Who bade you watch me?" The stranger was silent. Feeling the iron hand again clasp him, he muttered, "A great lady sent me." "Her name?" said the Count, who began to guess, but who wished to be sure. "The Neapolitan ambassadress." "And why does your companion stand in the Rue Saint-Dominique?" "Then you know all?" said the wretch. "All that I wish to," said the Count. "Speak out," said he, again clasping his fingers tightly as if they had been a torture-collar. "Speak now, or you will never do so again." "Well," said the man, "my companion is ordered to ascertain if you were not at the hotel of the Prince de Maulear. Why should I know any thing about it?" "Ah! this is unworthy," said the Count. "When her passions are concerned nothing restrains this woman." A painful sigh was the only reply to this exclamation. The Count looked around, and saw Taddeo standing by him, pale and trembling. IX.--A LETTER. Leaning over the white shoulders of the charming Marquise de Maulear, we are about to tempt our readers to the commission of a great indiscretion. We will force them to listen to a letter which that lady was writing to her mother the Signora Rovero, to inform the latter of all her secret thoughts, and of what during the last two years had taken place in her household. She sat, one morning, about nine o'clock, in a beautiful boudoir, hung with rose-colored silk, over which were falls of India muslin. This room was on the second floor of the house, and there, with her head on her hand, Aminta wrote, on a small table incrusted with Sevres porcelain, the following letter, exhibiting the most intimate thoughts of her soul: "MY KIND MOTHER: Twenty months ago I left Italy and yourself, to accompany the Marquis de Maulear and his excellent father to Paris. Since then my letters have not suffered you to want details of things about which you are so curious, which occurred in the course of my trip from Naples hither, and of my reception by my husband's family. The family of the Marquis, as you already know, is one of the most important of Paris, both from rank, fortune, and nobility, and did not therefore dare to receive with coldness a stranger who came thus to take a place in its bosom. The tender protection of my father-in-law made it a duty to them to seem to me what they really were to him, benevolent, kind, and affectionate. Long ago, I saw that the sentiments they exhibited were not sincere; and I guessed that beneath the affectionate manners of my new family, there was hidden an icy vanity, and want of sympathy with the young woman who had no ancestors, no birth, and almost no fortune, who had thus, as it were, come among them to usurp name, position, and influence, to which no one should pretend who had not a lineage at least as princely as theirs. I soon learned how little faith I should have in their politeness, and the anxiety in my behalf which were exacted by the _exigences_ of society, and above all by the paternal protection of the Prince de Maulear. I was eager to find in the friendship of those with whom I was cast something of that kind reciprocity of sentiments which I was anxious to exhibit to them. The first person to whom I appealed replied to me by cold glances. On this person, dear mother, I relied, not as a substitute for yourself, but as one to advise me in the new life I was about to lead amid a society the customs and language of which I was almost ignorant of. This person was the Countess of Grandmesnil, sister of the Prince, and aunt of my husband. The Countess was passionately fond of my husband, whom she educated, and perhaps was wounded at the idea of his having married without consulting her. This union also put an end to hopes which had long before been formed in relation to a similar connection with that of the Duke d'Harcourt's, one of the first families in France. Mademoiselle de Grandmesnil, therefore, received me with cautious urbanity, repelled my confidence, and made me look on her whom I had considered an affectionate protectress as an enemy. The Marquis was not aware of the Countess's sentiments to me, for when they saw how fond he was, they redoubled their apparent care and attention. I did not, though, remain ignorant of the thorn hidden in the rose. This strange kind of intuition, dear mother, which you have often remarked in me, was made apparent by the most unimportant acts of the Countess, in which she evidently exhibited an expression of her indifference to me, and dissatisfaction at my marriage; I armed myself with courage, and promised to contend with the enemy provided for me by my evil fate. I resolved not to suffer my husband to know any thing of my troubles, nor to suffer the Countess's treatment to diminish my husband's attachment towards the person who had provided for his youth. To recompense me, however, for this want of affection, I had two substitutes--the perpetually increasing love of the Marquis, his tender submission to my smallest wish, and the attachment of the Prince--an enigma he has always refused to explain. Beyond all doubt this reason is powerful and irresistible, for the mention of my father's name made him open his arms, which, as I told you, he at first was determined to close hermetically. Strange must have been those talismanic sounds, changing the deeply-rooted sentiments of an old man's heart, and making him abandon the invariable principles of his mind, so as to induce him to present me, the daughter of a noble of yesterday, as one descended from a person whose virtues had won for him an immortal blessing. I must also tell you that I have seen more than one of the old friends of the Prince stand, as if they were petrified, at hearing him speak thus. I have recounted all those happy scenes, dear mother, merely to compare the past with the present, which presents, alas, a far different aspect. My brilliant sky is obscured--I see in the horizon nothing but clouds. Perhaps I am mistaken, and my too brilliant imagination, against which you have often warned me, fills my mind with too melancholy ideas. Were you but with me, could I but cast myself in your arms, press you to my heart, and imbibe confidence from you! Listen, then, to words I shall confide to this cold paper, read it with the eyes of your soul, and tell me if I am mistaken or menaced with misfortune. "During the early portion of my residence in Paris, I lived amid a whirlwind of pleasures, balls, and entertainments, which soon resulted in satiety and lassitude. The attention I attracted, the homage paid to me, flattered my vanity, and pleased me; for they seemed to increase the Marquis's love, and to make me more precious to him. After the winter came a calmer season, and I welcomed it gladly, thinking the Marquis and myself, to a degree, would live for each other, and that this feverish, agitated and turbulent life, would be followed by a period of more happiness. Three months passed away in that kind of retirement in which those inhabitants of Paris, who do not leave the city, indulge. The Prince left us to visit his estates in another part of France, and the Marquis and myself were alone. The Countess, it is true, was with us; but her society, instead of adding to our pleasures, was as annoying as possible. Accustomed during my whole life to out-door existence, to long excursions in the picturesque vicinity of our villa, I was sometimes anxious to take morning strolls in the beautiful gardens of Paris. The Countess said to my husband, one day, that a woman of my age should not go out without him. As the Marquis often rode, an exercise with which I am not familiar, and as he had friends to see, and political business to attend to, I was unable to go out but rarely. Then I will say he offered me his arm anxiously, but this exercise neither satisfied my taste, nor the demands of health. There was also a perpetual objection to dramatic performances, of which I was very fond; Henri did not like them. The Countess, also, from religious scruples, was opposed to them, and by various little and ingeniously contrived excuses, I was utterly deprived of this innocent amusement. My toilette was also a subject of perpetual comment. The Countess said that I exaggerated the fashions, that I looked foreign, and that the court was opposed to innovations in the toilette, or again that the court preferred the severe forms of dress. A young and brilliant princess, though, gives tone to her court, and by her elegance, luxury and taste, procures a support for crowds of the Parisian work-people. Henri, over whom his aunt has never ceased to exercise the same influence she did in childhood, while he wished to support my ideas, really supported hers. I saw with regret that the chief defect of the Marquis was weakness of character, and perpetual controversies about little matters produced a state of feeling between us, which subsequently required a kind of effort for us to overcome. This, however, dear mother, is nothing; for I have not come to the really painful point of my confessions. The gay season has returned, and the principal people of Paris have returned to their hotels. I liked to see Henri jealous, because this passion was, in my opinion, an assurance of his love. Henri, who during the early period of our marriage, would not have left me alone for the world, now confides me exclusively to the care of his father. The first time this took place, his absence was a plausible excuse. He does not now even seek a pretext; a whim, an appointment, are sufficient motives for him to leave me. Whither does he go? How does he occupy himself? This is the subject of my uneasiness and torment--yet he loves me, he says, but a heart like mine, dear mother, is not easily deceived. He does not love me as he used to. A magnificent ball was given during the last month, by the Neapolitan Ambassador, the Duke of Palma, who married the famous Felina. Henri left the Prince and myself, as soon as we came to the rooms; the whole night nearly passed away without our seeing him. At last, however, he returned, pale and exhausted. The Prince, who was unacquainted with what had transpired at Sorrento, between his son and Monte-Leone, introduced me to him, and asked me to receive him at our hotel. I hesitated whether I should consent or not; when the Marquis, with an air which lacerated my very heart, asked the Count to visit me, assuring him that he would always be welcome. "_Welcome to him!_ dear mother. You understand that this man had been his rival, and loved me. I will confess to you, dear mother, as I do to God. He loves me yet, I am sure, though he never told me so; for his looks are what they were, and when he spoke, his emotion told me that he was unaltered. Since that ball, Monte-Leone, thus authorized by the Marquis, has visited me. My husband is not at all displeased at it; tell me, do you think he loves me still? Yesterday, dear mother, I went into my husband's room, to look for a bottle of salts I had forgotten. The Marquis was absent, and his secretary was open, a strange disorder pervaded the room; a few papers were lying about, and among others, I saw a column of figures; I was about to look at them, and had already extended my hand towards it, when I heard a cry, and on turning around saw my husband, pale and alarmed. He advanced towards me, and seizing my arm convulsively, said, Signora, who gave you a right to examine my papers? It is an abuse of confidence which I never can forgive. I grew pale with surprise and grief. 'Sir, said I, such a reproach is unmerited, if there be any thing improper, it is your tone and air.' I left the room, for I was overpowered, and did not wish to weep before him. One hour afterwards, on his knees, he besought me to pardon him for an excitement which he would never be able to pardon himself. He was once more, dear mother, kind as he had ever been; he repeated his vows of eternal love, and exhibited all his former tenderness. His looks hung on me as they used to, and I began to hope he would continue to love me. A cruel idea, however, pursued me, what was the secret shut up in the paper he would not suffer me to read? Why did he, usually so calm and cold, become so much enraged?" Just then the letter of the Marquise de Maulear was interrupted by the bell which announced the coming of visitors. Aminta remembered that it was reception day, and persons came to say that several visitors awaited her. She went down stairs. On the evening of the same day she resumed her letter. "I resume my pen to tell you of a strange circumstance which occurred to-day. When I broke off so suddenly, I found some visitors awaiting me. Visiting in Paris is insignificant and meaningless, performed on certain fixed days. Conversation on these occasions is commonplace. People only talk of the pleasure of meeting, and slander is so much the vogue that it is not prudent to leave certain rooms until every one else has gone, lest you should be hacked to pieces by those left behind. My father-in-law came into the room and gave some life to the conversation. The Prince was not alone, for Count Monte-Leone came with him. Why, dear mother, should I conceal from you, that the presence of the Count causes always an invincible distress? This man is so decided and resolute that he never seemed to me like other people. He seems half god and half demon. His keen and often expressive glance, his firm voice made mild by emotion, the _tout ensemble_ of his character, seems to call him to great crimes or sublime actions. "The Prince said, 'Do you know, Aminta, that the Count is the only person in Paris whom I have to beg to come to see you? I have absolutely to use violence. I had just now almost to use violence to bring him hither.' "'The Prince, Madame,' said the Count, respectfully, 'looks on respect as reserve. The pleasure of seeing you is too great for me to run the risk of losing it by abusing the privilege.' "'Bah! bah!' said the Prince, 'mere gallantry, nothing more. We _emigrés_, from associating with the English, have lost some of our peculiarities; and I, at least, have contracted one excellent custom. When an Englishman says to a man, "my house is yours," he absolutely means what he says, and the privilege should be used. Your host looks on you as a part of his family, and people of the neighborhood esteem you as much a part of the household as the old grandfather's chair is. You go, come, sit at the table, eat and drink, as if you were at home. This generous hospitality pleases me, because it recalls that of our own ancestors.' "'Brother,' said the Countess, 'this hospitality can never be acclimated in France, especially in households where there are as pretty women as in ours.' "'Sister, such privileges are accorded only to people of the honor of whom we are well-assured, like the Count. Besides, travellers like ourselves are hard to please in beauty. Not that the Marquise is not beautiful; but if you had been as we were at Ceprano, if you had only read the interesting chapter I have written in relation to that country, you would see that many perfections are needed to wound hearts that are so cosmopolitan as ours.' "The Count was about to reply, when the doors were opened and the Duchess of Palma was announced. I looked at Monte-Leone just then, and he changed countenance at once. I saw him immediately go to the darkest part of the room. This was the first time I had ever received the Duchess of Palma. There seemed no motive for her visit. I had paid mine after the ball, and there was no obligation between us. The Duchess is a beautiful, elegant, and dignified woman. It is said she is of a noble family; and her manners evidently betoken high cultivation. The Duchess told me kindly that she had not seen enough of me at the ball, and that I must take the visit as an evidence of her devotion and admiration. The Prince of Maulear approached. 'We are especially flattered, Duchess,' said he, and he emphasized the word, looking at the same time at some ladies I received; 'we are especially flattered by the honor you confer on us. We know how careful you are in the bestowal of such favors. It is a favor, as pleasant as it is honorable.' "'I have been suffering, Prince,' replied the Duchess, 'with deep distress, and I will not reflect on any one the burden of my sorrows.' "'You are,' said the Prince, 'like those beautiful tropical flowers, the source of the life of which is the sun, and which grow pale on their stems in our land. Neapolitans need Naples, the pure sky, the balmy air, the perfume of orange groves, and the reflection of the azure gulf. I am distressed, Duchess, at what you say, and hope you will content yourself with our country. We will not permit you to leave it.' "'But I am dying,' said the Duchess, in a strange tone. "'You are now alive, though,' said the Prince. "The uneasy eyes of the Duchess passed around the room, and when she saw the Count, became strangely animated. 'Ah!' she remarked, 'here is Count Monte-Leone.' The Count advanced. "'The Count,' said the Prince, 'is your compatriot, and one of your most fervent admirers.' "'Do you think so?' said the Duchess, almost ironically. "'One,' said the Prince, 'to be any thing else, must neither have seen nor heard your grace.' "'Once, perhaps,' said she, 'I had some means of attraction, but now all is forgotten; for I am a Duchess like all others--less even, because I am indebted to chance for my rank and title.' "'You owe thanks to yourself alone,' said the Prince, 'and the Duke was a lucky man to have it in his power to lay them at your feet.' "'Madame,' said I to the Duchess, 'since you deign to remind us of your deathless talent, may I venture to ask you to sing once more?' "'Never!' said the Duchess, 'I left my voice on the banks of the _Lago di Como_, and have not forgotten my last song.' "''Twas indeed a sad epoch,' said the Prince, 'If it was the funeral of your talent.' "'I will never sing again!' said the Duchess, 'I remember that day as I do all the unhappy ones of my life. Ah! they are far more numerous than our happy days. It was evening, and in a gay room of my villa, whither I had come still trembling at having seen a traveller nearly drowned in the lake. I know not what sad yet pleasant memory was nursed in my heart, but I went to my piano and sung an air I had sung for the last time at San Carlo. Tell me, Count Monte-Leone--you were there--what was it?' "'_La Griselda._' "'It was. On that evening all my enthusiasm returned to me. While singing, however, a strange fancy took possession of me. I thought I saw in the mirror in front of me, the features of one who had long been dead--dead at least to me. My emotion was so instinct with terror and happiness, that since then I have not sung.' "'That is a perfect romance,' said the Prince, 'like those of the dreamy Hoffman I met at Vienna.' "'No, sir, it is a fact, or rather the commencement of a series of facts, which, however, will interest no one here. For that reason I do not tell it.' "The Duchess of Palma rose to leave. The Prince offered her his hand. "'No, Prince,' said she, 'I will not trouble you, for I am about to ask the Count to accompany me. Excuse me,' said she, 'excuse me for taking him away, but I need not use ceremony with a countryman.' "Without giving him time to reply, she passed her arm through his, went out, or rather dragged him out with her. "I do not know why, dear mother, I have told you all this long story, which has led me to write far differently from what I had intended. I like, though, to talk so much with you; and then the visit of the Count and that Duchess agitated me, I know not why. Some instinct tells me those mysterious beings exert an influence over my life. You think me foolish and strange--but what can I do? I am now so sad that I seem to look at life through a dark veil. I am wrong, am I not? Reassure yourself and tell me what you think of my husband's conduct. That, most of all, interests "Your own AMINTA. "P.S.--The Prince, the Countess and myself in vain waited all day for the Marquis. It is now midnight and he has not yet come." X.--JEALOUSY. A month had passed since the Marquise had written to her mother, during which time the Marquis, more sedulous in his attentions to Aminta, had begun to make her forget her fears and suspicions. A new event, though, aroused them again. A magnificent ball had been given by Madame de L----, in her splendid hotel in the _rue_ d'Antin. M. de L---- aspired to the ministry; and the fact of his having received the Duke de Bevry at his magnificent entertainments, the favor he enjoyed at the _château_, and his frequent entertainments to the _corps diplomatique_, seemed to make his final success certain. M. de L---- aspired to popularity by attracting around him all who seemed likely to advance his views. He delighted to receive and mingle together in his drawing-room all the political enemies of the tribune and the press, who, meeting as on a central ground, thought themselves obliged to boast of the wit of their Amphitryron, beneath whose roof they exchanged all the phrases of diplomatic politeness to the accompaniment of Collinet's flageolet, sat together at the card-tables, and courteously bowed at the door of every room. On this account they did not cease to detest each other, though their apparent reconciliation being believed at court, contributed in no little degree to the advancement of M. L----'s views. The Marquis and Aminta were at the ball--and Henri left his wife for several hours in charge of his father, who was proud of her, and exhibited her with pride in all the rooms. The Prince heaped attention on her, as all well-bred persons love to on those who are dear to them. He carefully waited on her during every waltz and contra-dance; and with paternal care replaced the spotless ermine on her whiter shoulders. Then resuming his task of cicerone, he explained to her the peculiarities of French society, which seemed so brilliant and singular to a young Italian. The Marquis rejoined his wife about one o'clock. He was very gay, and Aminta had not for a long time seen him so amiable and lively. The Prince expressed a desire to return home, and the young people gladly consented. As they were about to leave the last room, an Englishman of distinguished air, but pale and agitated, passed close to the Marquis, and as he did so, said in his native tongue, "all is agreed." The Marquis replied in the same words, and the Englishman left. Aminta asked what the stranger had said, "Nothing of importance," said Henri, "a mere commonplace." A quarter of an hour after, the carriage of the young people entered _rue_ Saint Dominique. The Prince embraced the Marquise and retired to his room, which was in the left wing of the hotel, and exactly opposite the apartments of the young couple. About two all the hotel was quiet. Aminta, though, from some peculiar presentiment, could not sleep, yet, with her eyes half closed, she fell into that dreamy torpor in which every passion is exaggerated. In this half-real, half-fantastic state, Aminta saw pass before her all the important events of her life, the horrible episode of the _casa di Tasso_, the coming of Maulear, and the heroic devotion of _Scorpione_. Another shadow, that of Monte-Leone, glided before her. The looks of this man were fixed on hers, as if to read the depths of her soul. There came also a thousand chimeras and countless mad and terrible fictions. La Felina, pale and white as a spectre, sang, or sought to sing, for though her lips moved no sound was heard. With her hand raised towards Aminta, the ducal singer seemed to heap reproaches on her. Alarmed at these sombre visions, the young woman sought to return to real life, and arose from her bed; just then she thought she heard a door open. Terrified, she reached toward a bell near her, but paused. The door which was opened could be no other than that of the Marquis, for their apartments, though separate, were side by side. She thought, too, that the _valet de chambre_ had been detained later than usual with the Marquis, and unwilling to make an alarm, she repressed her agitation. No noise disturbed the profound silence. The clock above struck the several hours with that slow and monotonous regularity, which is so painful to those who cannot sleep; she did not, however, win the rest she was so anxious for. All the fancies which had occupied her just before had disappeared, but were replaced by a newer fancy, occasioned by the remark of the Englishman, which she had not understood. The features of the stranger, so deathly pale, constantly returned to her. She fancied some danger menaced the man to whom she had devoted her life; that a strange danger menaced him, and, yielding to a feverish agitation, which she could not repress, wrapping herself in a shawl, and afraid almost to breathe, she went to the Marquis's room, when at the door she paused and thought. "What would Henri say, and how could she excuse this strange visit?" She hesitated and was about to return, when she saw that the door was not closed, and that she could thus enter his room and satisfy herself without disturbing him. She decided--the door turned on its hinges, and Aminta entered. Crossing the antechamber, she had reached the bedroom, which was separated from it by a curtained door. She advanced to the bed, which she found had not been slept in. With a faint cry of terror she sank on an arm-chair. The clock struck four, and when she had heard the noises which had disturbed her it was nearly two; since then, therefore, the Marquis had been away. Yet this had occurred when he was within a few feet of her, and the care and secrecy with which it was accomplished showed that it had been premeditated. Not a sound except the opening of the door had reached Aminta's ears. The Marquise felt the most agonizing distress--no thought of perfidy, however, annoyed her; the idea of danger only occupying her mind. Just then her eyes fell on an open note which had doubtless been dropped by Maulear amid his hurry and trouble. She took it up, saying to herself, this note doubtless contains a challenge--a rendezvous--she approached the night lamp, and with difficulty suppressing her agitation, read as follows--"Dear Marquis, do not fail to come to-night. You know how anxiously you are expected, "FANNY DE BRUNEVAL." The letter was indeed a rendezvous, but not of the kind she had expected. The terms of the note were clear and precise; and the woman's name dissipated the mist from before her eyes, Maulear had deserted her and his home in the silence of night for such a person. She it was whom he deceived--she who had been so loyal and true, she who sought, even when Maulear asked her hand, to protect him--who begged him to distrust his impressions and not to act in haste. "I was right," said she, "to fear the bonds he wished to impose on me--I was right to object to a marriage which could not make him happy--only two years," said she, with a voice of half stifled emotion, "and he is already cold and indifferent to me. He has already abandoned me--and worse still, he has done so with treachery. Mother! mother! why did you not keep me with you? This then, is the reward of my generous devotion. Alas! when I accepted him--when I wrested him from the death which menaced him--when I gave myself to him, I did not love him, I did not hesitate when perhaps----" Aminta blushed amid her tears. "Above all," said she, "I do not wish him to find me here--I do not wish him to reproach me as he has done with seeking to penetrate his secrets." She returned to her room, and from exhaustion and tears sank on her bed. Day came at last, and Aminta dressed herself. She wished to conceal from her servants all that she suffered. Above all, she did not wish the conduct and disorder of the Marquis to be made a subject of discussion. When her _femme de chambre_ entered her room, she found her mistress on her knees at her morning devotions before a crucifix. Had any persons, however, approached the Marquise, they must have seen the tears falling on the delicate fingers which covered her face, and heard her sobs. The bell rang for breakfast. Aminta started as if from a dream; being thus recalled to real life, she saw that while the evening before she had been happy and gay, one night had converted all to sorrow and suffering. Aminta, though ordinarily of strong nerve, sank beneath the blow. She felt herself wounded in her heart, her dignity, and in her confidence, by one for whom alone she had lived. Henceforth her life would be uncertain, and circumstances might lead her she knew not whither. When the Marquise entered, the Prince and Countess were about to go to the table. The former said, "It is evident, my child, from your face, that you are fatigued; and that balls are to you what the sun is to roses. It does not detract from their beauty, but it makes them pale." And finally, the Countess added, "it withers them completely. That is the fate of all young women who turn night into day, and who, like my beautiful niece, only really live between evening and morning." "Come," said the Prince, "that will not do. My sister is like the fox in the fable, she finds the ball too gay to suit herself, or rather herself too sombre for the ball." "A witticism," said the Countess, "is not a reason, but often exactly the reverse. The one, my brother is familiar with; to the other, I am sorry to say, he is more a stranger." "You see, my child," said the Prince, with an air of submission and resignation, "it is not well to have any trouble with the Countess, for she returns shot for shot; though she fires a pistol in reply to a cannon. Luckily for us, she is not a good shot. But my son does not come down. Can it be that, though he did not dance, he is more fatigued than his wife?" "A letter for Madame la Marquise, from the Marquis," said a servant. Aminta took the letter from the plateau, and looked at the Prince, as if to ask whether she should read it. "Read, my child, read," said her father-in-law, affectionately. "The letter of a husband loved and loving, for thank God both are true, should be read without any delay." Aminta unsealed the letter, and glanced rapidly over it. Then succumbing to emotion, deprived of strength and courage, and especially revolting at what she had read, felt her sight grow dim, and finally fainted. The Countess, whose mind alone was embittered for the reasons Aminta had explained to her mother, but whose soul and heart were generous as possible, ran to the Marquise, took her in her arms, and was as kind as possible. The Prince, paler than Aminta, rushed towards the window, which he threw open, and pulled away at the bell-ropes to call the servants, and send them for the physicians. The old nobleman exhibited the greatest alarm. The young Marquise was taken to the drawing-room, and a few moments after she opened her eyes. Her heart, however, was crushed; and she wept bitter tears. The Prince was struck with terror and distress. He was alarmed for his son's sake, and a father's anxiety was apparent. "What has happened to my son?" said he, rushing to find the letter, which Aminta had let fall. He read it anxiously, and when he had concluded, laughed loud and long. "Indeed," said he, "we have come back to the days of the Astræa. All reminds us of the _Calprenède_, of _Urfé_, or _Scudéri_ herself. We are on the _Tendros_. This kind of love would make that of Cyrus and Mandane trifling. Cyrus writes to Mandane, that he went out to ride in the Bois de Cologne, and therefore has to deprive himself of the pleasure of breakfasting with her. Mandane therefore is suddenly taken ill. This is magnificent and touching; but my precious child, it is a little exaggerated." "What, then, is the matter?" said the Countess, as she handed her niece the salts. "What a singular man you are! One never knows what the facts of any thing are from you. You are either in the seventh heaven or in despair. Your very gayety is enough to destroy our niece's nerves." "Ah!" said the Prince, "how sorry I am for the nerves. Read, however, the letter yourself, Countess," and he gave it to Mademoiselle Grandmesuil. "You will see the Marquise is too fond of her husband. Her love has really become a dangerous passion. She is really _love-mad_, and if it continues, we shall have a rehearsal of Milon's ballet, with the exception of _Bigotini_." The Countess read as follows: "MY DEAR WIFE: I am unwilling to disturb your slumbers, and have therefore left for the wood at five o'clock, having a rendezvous with some sportsmen. We will probably breakfast together, and I will not return until dinner-time. Remember me affectionately. "HENRI." The habitual coldness of the Countess returned while she read the letter. "I will say that I think my nephew very likely to inspire deep love. I cannot however conceive how there can be cause for such despair. We Frenchwomen have not such an exaggerated devotion as our niece has. I beg her not to use it up now, for in the career of life she will find it difficult to do without it." As if regretting that she had soothed sorrows in which she had no sympathy, the Countess sent for her prayer-book, and went to mass. As soon as the young Marquise was alone with the Prince, she arose, threw herself in the old man's arms, and said: "My father, I am very unhappy." The face of the Prince at once became serious, and taking Aminta to a sofa, bade her sit down, and said, kindly as possible, "Excuse my gayety and irony, my child. _Non est hic locus_, as the sublime Horace, the favorite of our good king Louis XVIII., once wrote. I repent of my volatility and trifling, for I should have remembered, when I think of the elevation of your mind, that something more important than the absence of your husband for a few hours annoyed you. Speak to me--open your heart to me--for I love you too well not to have a right to your confidence and your secrets." "He does not love me," said Aminta, leaning her head on the Prince's shoulder. "Alas! my daughter," said M. de Maulear, "I am about to make a strange confession to you. I am not acquainted with my son. His soul, sentiments, inclination, and moral nature, are unknown to me. When, four years ago, I saw the child now twenty-six, whom I had left an infant, and found his air, manners, and appearance distingué as possible, and was pleased with him, I was assured that his soul was exalted, his character true, and his sentiments honorable. I was therefore satisfied. Two years after, he went to Naples, where I procured a diplomatic post for him; and consequently I have neither studied nor fathomed his instincts and habits. What I apprehend in relation to you, my child, is a capital fault. I have discovered in my son an extreme weakness of character, which may lead him into error. For that reason, I wrote to him, that I would have preferred that he had tasted of the pleasures of life before marriage. I would thus have had an assurance of his subsequent prudence. Believe me, though, my child, I will watch over him and you, and if I was able to forgive his marrying without my consent, when I knew whom he married, I never will pardon him if he make her unhappy. The deuce! we did not bring you hither from Italy to break your heart." Fearful lest his father should become angry with Maulear, Aminta restrained the secret which seemed ready to burst from her lips. She spoke of vague suspicions and anxiety at the Marquis's uneasiness, but said nothing particular. The Prince, who never in his life had known what jealousy was, had some difficulty in understanding how it could create such despair. His attention, however, was not the less vigilant in relation to the affairs of the young couple. A circumstance which occurred soon after enabled him to ascertain much. A number of persons assembled one night at the rooms of the Marquise de Maulear. Count Monte-Leone had become one of Aminta's most assiduous visitors. The tacit permission he had received from Aminta, the formal authority of the Marquis, the sympathy of the old Prince, to whom the pleasant, energetic character of the Count, and his noble bearing, made him every day more attractive--all taken in connection with the intimacy of Taddeo and Monte-Leone, authorized him to visit the Marquise freely. The devotion of Monte-Leone to Aminta had never been diminished. He had felt only an inclination towards La Felina, an error of the senses and imagination, excited by mortified love, and favored by the isolation of the Lago di Como. His heart had little share in it. When, therefore, he saw the Marquise de Maulear more attractive than ever, he discovered that in his whole life he had loved her alone. The Marquis de Maulear appeared but rarely at the hotel, coming home at a late hour and going out early. Monte-Leone and Taddeo were talking together, and this fragment of their conversation struck the ear of the old Prince, who seemed entirely absorbed by a game of whist. "Will not the Marquis be here to-night?" said the Count to Taddeo. "I doubt it: sometimes the master of the hotel is here less frequently than any one else." "Perhaps he is now," said the Count, "where he goes almost every night, they say." "You jest," said Taddeo; "I think he is here every night." "He should, but he is not. All I can say is, that on the night of M.L.'s ball, he was ... where I saw him." "Where was he?" asked Taddeo, impatiently. "I will tell you--but come away from the whist-table." * * * * * "But you do not return my lead," said the Prince's partner, "you should play hearts." "True," said the Prince, musing; and he led hearts. His eyes, though, followed Taddeo and Monte-Leone. The Prince lost five points, much to his partner's discontent. He played very badly that night, breaking up his suits, mistaking the cards, and violating every rule, much to the surprise of the lookers-on, who knew how well he played the game, which the emigrés had imported from England. At last they stopped, and the Prince sought for Monte-Leone through all the rooms. The Count and Taddeo, however, had both left. The Marquis, though, had returned, and the company soon dispersed. The Prince went to his room, but soon left, well wrapped up, and with his hat over his face. "Pardieu!" said he, "I will settle things, and find out where my son passes the nights. Can any place be more pleasant than the bedchamber of a pretty woman?" Standing at a little distance from door, he waited about half an hour. His patience was nearly exhausted, when the Marquis came out. Henri went to the Rue de Bac, took the quai, crossed the pont Royale, the Carousel, and entered la Rue de Richelieu. The poor Prince panted after him, and kept him in sight all the time, cursing his curiosity. Sustained by a deep interest for his daughter's happiness, he kept on. When the Marquis came to the Rue de Menors, he paused, and turned to see that no one followed him. The Prince had barely time to get behind a coach which stood at the corner. The Marquis went some distance down the Rue de Menors, and stopped at No. 7. The door was opened, and Henri entered. "On my honor," said the Prince, "I would not have come so far before bed, unless I could also have found out _why_ the Marquis visits No. 7." The Prince then stopped at the door, and knocked. The door was opened. "What do you want?" said the porter, rather surlily. "I wish," said the Prince, and he put a louis d'or in the porter's hand, "to know why that man has come hither." "Indeed," said he, pocketing the louis, "it is a great deal to pay for so little. The gentleman has gone, as many others go, to see Mlle. Fanny de Bruneval." FOOTNOTES: [4] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by Stringer & Townsend, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. A FESTIVAL UPON THE NEVA. TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF KAUFMANN. On the banks of a majestic river, where, in later times, has arisen a city of eight thousand houses, of granite causeways, monuments, obelisks, and palaces, nothing was to be seen at the commencement of the eighteenth century but a few huts scattered over a marshy waste. On one of those days, when the intense cold had transformed the river into a plain of ice, a numerous crowd were hastening through the streets of the young St. Petersburg. Some directed their steps towards a little cottage; and others, over the frozen waters, towards a fortified island. Every one looked with a curious eye at the cottage, and the numerous sledges that were gathering for the escort at hand. Presently, a sledge drawn by three horses covered with bear-skins, dashed up to the cottage-gate. It was quickly opened, and an old man of a high stature and proud bearing came forth, wearing a blue sable. He slowly advanced and took his place. "Pardon me, sir," said one of middle age, who hastened to take a seat by the side of the former, "the gracious Czar had--" "It is sufficient," prince Menzikoff, interrupted the first, in a quick and stern tone; "I am not much accustomed to wait, but I know, however, that it is the Czar only who can be the cause of this delay." "You see the boyard, Alexis Nicolajewitz Tscherkaski," said one of those present, in a whisper to his companion. "You are not the first to tell me that," replied Nikita. "It is not sixty years since his grandfather traversed the Caucasus with his savage Tschetschences. He would be a little surprised if he saw his son to-day decorated with the golden key of chamberlain, and enjoying himself at festivals in sacred Russia. But they give the signal of departure, for they are tying a tame bear to the sledge. Indeed, it is a strange animal!" "I must see him nearer," said the first. "Come, Andyuschka, let us survey the whole train." * * * * * They came at last to an edifice such as was never seen before or since. It was built upon the Neva--but not of stones. The walls, roof, and partitions, were of solid ice; and the steps leading to the entrance cut out of one enormous block. Two large cannons made of ice, pierced with the greatest care, and which they were foolish enough to charge with powder, were placed in front of this singular palace. The interior presented an appearance not less novel. A long table, formed of a single piece of ice, and covered with a hundred exquisite dishes, was the principal object--oysters, in silver plates, excited the appetite--sea-fish, of every species, from the gulf of Finland and Pont-Euxin to the Caspian and frozen seas, disputed the supremacy with shell-fish from the Istar and Volga. By the side of the hams of Bayonne were roasts of bear surrounded with citron; and the sturgeon was placed in the middle of delicious preserves. Many sledges were filled with bottles. But all these cold dishes composed but half the feast. Four kitchens, built of wood, at some distance from the palace, threw up constantly clouds of smoke. There boiled stags and elks, pullets of Archangel, and boars of Podolie. But that which particularly attracted the attention of the spectators were the large fires where whole oxen turned round upon spits, for the benefit of the people, to whom were to be also given tuns of brandy. The sun shone yet above the horizon when the great hall of the palace of crystal was lighted with wax candles in chandeliers of sparkling ice. A thousand lights were thus reflected and broken upon the transparent walls and windows. It seemed a fairy scene in the approaching night. While a legion of cooks, with their assistants, worked without cessation, the two personages, the boyard Tscherkaski and the prince Menzikoff, were not less busy in the interior of the palace. It was readily seen that they had the charge of directing the festival about to commence. The last-mentioned, spreading a bear-skin upon each of the seats of ice, was addressed by his companion. "Truly, Alexandre Michailowitz, the Czar could not have selected a better manager of the feast than yourself. If I had any thing to do but to take exclusive charge of the bottles, I am afraid I should oblige every one to sit upon the naked blocks. What grimaces those hungry foreign guests would make, such as the Frenchman Lefort, and those like him, whom the west is ever sending to fatten upon the blood of Russia. I should like to see them shivering to death, and at the same time politely struggling to appear pleased in the presence of the Czar." "But do you know how the Czar would regard such pleasantry? You remember Dimitri Arsenieff?" "Arsenieff! I hope you do not compound me with that herd whom a single glance of the Czar made tremble in their shoes. There was a time, it is true, but all is changed now--there was a time when those submissive slaves who filled the courts of the Kremlin, disappeared when they heard the steps of the old Alexis Nicolajewitz. His services were once required. He was not idle during the massacre of the Strelitz; they had need of Tscherkaski then. But all this has passed away. I have but one wish; it is, that in the hour of trial the swords of those Frenchmen, or of other foreigners, may leap as slowly from the scabbard as mine on that day when men of a nobler spirit were assassinated." "The Czar has not forgotten that you have--" "O, truly," replied the boyard, with a bitter smile, "the gracious Czar has made me the first chamberlain. He must have been in a good humor at that time; for Poliwoi--you know him--he is skilful in sealing bottles--he was a _valet de chambre_ in his youth--and that English Melton or Milton, who has imported some good dogs--both of them, at the same time with myself, received the key of the chamberlaincy." "But you cannot deny, Alexis, that in general the choice of our sovereign--" "Is the best. But what is strange about it is, that he finds so many excellent men, and that he selects from so large a circle, when others who, in times of calamity, are no longer considered unworthy, never obtain their turn for preferment." "You appear to be not in a very good humor, to-day, boyard.... Would you fall into disfavor with the Czar?" "Why," exclaimed the boyard, "should I not tell a friend what probably he will learn to-day, if indeed he is ignorant of it now? You know," he continued with an affected calmness, "the domain of the crown adjacent to my lands in Tula?" "I do not," said the embarrassed Prince. "Indeed you do, Alexandre Michailowitz; or at least you ought to. It separates my property from yours." "Ah! the manor." "The same. It is not very extensive, containing only three villages and a thousand serfs. But its situation suits me and I desire its possession." "Well, you ought to propose to the Czar to sell it. He will not refuse you." "He has already refused. 'I am sorry,' he coldly said, 'that I cannot grant you the lands you ask; I have disposed of them to another.' I was about to reply, but turning to speak to some one, he closed our conversation." "And do you know to whom he granted the domain?" "Who? Perhaps a vicious flatterer--an intrusive coward--some fellow from abroad who comes among us to appease his hunger; or, what is worse, an upstart, whose only pleasure is to overturn my dearest hopes to fulfil his own. Who is he? One of those who daily make fortunes by hundreds in our Russia, in place of meeting with the rope which they merit--one of those who drive out honest men to occupy their places--a rustic bore, a cobbler, a pastry-cook!" The features of the boyard took an expression of the most violent anger; the muscles of his mouth contracted by a convulsive movement, and his fiery eye gave sign that he was remembering the sanguinary vengeance of his brethren, the sons of the Caucasus. The countenance of Menzikoff grew dark. The word "pastry-cook," in bringing to his recollection his former condition, awoke sentiments whose expression it was difficult for him to restrain. "I had intended," he said, "to ask the Czar to give me those very lands; but I am glad that I have not done so. I would have been unhappy in interfering with your projects, if it were even for the sake of your amiable daughter, who, in your old days, will reward you largely for all the grievances you experience at the Court." "You think so, eh, Michailowitz? But you are a Russian. You belong not to those foreign plebeians. Alexis Tscherkaski is a man who never hides what he thinks, and I confess frankly that I do not love you; I have never loved you. Yet I do not confound you with those vile favorites of whom I have spoken. You are the first who has ever said to my face that I was not born to walk in the slippery paths of a court. You will have the honor also of offering the first counsel that I have ever followed. Yes, Prince Menzikoff, I am firmly resolved to leave the capital in a few days. In my solitude, accompanied only by my Mary, I hope to forget the Czars, their favors, and all that I have done to obtain them. Since the death of my Fedor--but let us stop here--with him all my hopes are buried. My daughter only remains--" "Who will be a glory to you in the evening of your life. She will bloom as the rose, she will be a mother of sons who--" "Yes, I desire to see her happy. She will freely choose her husband; and if she wishes to unite her destiny with none, she shall live with me, and one day close my eyes in death. It is among the descendants of the boyards that she will find her beloved. He shall be a noble son of old and sacred Russia. And I swear by all the saints interred in the convent of Kiew, that no will, not even that of the Czar, but her own, shall influence the choice of my daughter." The Prince was about to reply, when loud voices were heard in front of the house. "They come! they come!" A long train of sledges took the direction of the Isle of the Neva, and presented as strange a spectacle as one could well imagine. Instead of couriers who, according to the usages of the time, took the lead in this description of festivals, there was a sledge drawn by four horses of different colors. In it were four men dressed in white with a red girdle, having in their hands a staff ornamented with ribbons, and upon their heads a bonnet decorated with plumes. The oddest thing in this group was, that the youngest was not less than seventy; two of them wanted a leg; the third was without an arm; and the fourth, blind. Then came two sledges filled with musicians who joyously sounded their instruments. They were divided into two sections; the first would have pleased the ear by their performances, if it were not for the second section, every one of whom was deaf. They could not follow the movements of the director, and he himself, also deaf, was constantly behind the time, so that the two companies, although playing the same air, produced one which we might imagine proceeded from mischievous demons in a concert prepared in Pandemonium for the benefit of condemned musicians. In a third sledge came a patriarch of eighty years. His long white beard and hair carefully dressed, the precious ornaments with which he was covered, and the priests seated at his side, all announced that the old man was going to celebrate some solemn ceremony. As he was an intolerable stammerer, who had been released from the public services of the church during the greater part of his life, he was fitly chosen to deliver a discourse upon the present occasion. The sledge following that of the patriarch's, gave to the cortege the unmistakeable character of a nuptial festivity; for, of the four individuals who occupied it, two wore crowns, such as those prescribed by the Greek church to the newly married. The couple who sat in the place of honor, and for whom this fête had been prepared were indeed very curious looking persons. The bridegroom was an old and wrinkled dwarf, hardly four feet high. His enormous head seemed to weigh down his slender body, and to bend his legs into the form of sabres. His toilette was according to the French mode of that period. A frock coat of silver cloth, a sky blue vest and crimson velvet pantaloons, and immense ruffles covered his long, sepulchral hands. A perruque with a long tail, the nuptial crown, and a silver sword, which completed his dress, confirmed the remark of one of our friends, who compared the unfortunate bridegroom to a monkey on the rack. The dwarf and his affianced resembled each other as two drops of water. Upon the head of the hump-backed bride also shone the marriage crown. Her dress was of gold cloth of the most recent Parisian mode. Their exterior, however, presented a single contrast which rendered them still more ridiculous; for upon the wide face of the future wife was a presumptuous smile, while the husband, suffering under some recent sorrow, made the most frightful grimaces. In order better to distinguish the ugliness of this deformed couple, there were placed upon the second seat of the sledge two children of angelic beauty--one a girl of five years; the other, a boy of six to eight. They both wore the ancient Russian costume, which in its simplicity so well became the celestial sweetness of the countenance of the rosy-cheeked girl, and the spiritual gayety which beamed from the large black eyes of the boy. These children appeared destined to serve as bridesboy and bridesmaid; and certainly Hymen could not have made a better choice. "It is the daughter of the boyard Tscherkaski! It is the little Fedor Menzikoff!" cried the crowd. A large number of sledges passed on. All those who occupied them were disguised in the strangest manner. By the side of a coarse Kirghese was a fashionable Parisien. Behind them a Chinese mandarin waited upon a maiden Tyrolese. In the cortege could be seen not only the costumes of all the tribes under the sceptre of Peter the Great, but of almost every nation of Europe and Asia. The masquerade extended even to the trappings of the horses and sledges. Some of the horses' heads wore gilded horns of the stag and the elk, and others great wings, which made them resemble the poet's idea of Pegasus. The last sledge in the train worthily closed this fantastic procession. It was drawn by three horses, and contained a single personage. Two horsemen, habited as Turks, galloped by his side, and announced his high rank. His thick-set figure was of the ordinary height, his face was full of a spirit of gayety and frolic, and in the smile with which he responded to the acclamations of the people could be perceived his satisfaction in the preparations for the fête of the day. His dress was that of a northern countryman, and he who had ever seen one would be at a loss to say whether Peter the Great was an original or a copy. The countryman held in his hand a large gold-headed cane, and tormented a tame bear, which, standing erect upon its hind feet, and fulfilling the functions of lackey, was from time to time punished for his unskilfulness, to the amusement of the people. The train arrived at the crystal palace; and although all had descended from the sledges, none had crossed the threshold. Every one appeared desirous to yield the first entrance to the bridegroom and his partner, or to him who gave the feast. Prince Menzikoff and the boyard at last advanced, bare-headed, into the presence of the Czar, who was still occupied in teasing his bear to divert the multitude. "What are you waiting for?" he said, at the same time taking the cap of the Prince, and replacing it upon his head. "Why these marks of respect? Have you quite forgotten all the duties of gallantry in thus permitting the happy couple to wait at the door of the marriage-house? But I see--and if I did not see, the odors of the dishes and of the brandy would be evidence of it--that you have well performed your duties. With this conviction, Alexandre, that you have done well for the palates of the guests by delicious dishes, and that my old Tscherkaski does not permit me to have a doubt as to his performances concerning the cellar--it is, I say, from these considerations that I pardon you both for forgetting that I am and wish to be nothing more to-day than Peter, the countryman, who has come to celebrate with his friends the nuptials of a couple who love each other tenderly. Come, let us hasten, lest the temperature of the marriage-palace cool our dinner." "As your Majesty wishes," responded the Prince, respectfully. "Not Majesty," replied the Emperor, and in the same moment he ran to excuse himself to the affianced for unintentionally causing them to wait so long. They entered, and very soon the sound of music announced that they were being seated at table. The Prince, at a sign from the Czar, conducted the bride and bridegroom to the place of honor, and beside them the two children. The rest took their places without distinction of rank. The Holland ambassador sat next the Emperor, and in front of him the boyard Tscherkaski, and Menzikoff sat next to Tscherkaski. II. The conversation, at first grave and little animated, gradually became more lively. The Czar was in a good humor, a thing which often occurred at the dinner-table, if nowhere else. Peter the Countryman was not slow to assail the embarrassed couple with pleasantries, some more or less good, and others rather equivocal. He at last requested the old patriarch, who was perspiring with fear at the anticipation of the request, to repeat the discourse which he had pronounced to the great pleasure of his Majesty. A noisy gayety filled the hall, and outside it was at its height. At the moment in which the Emperor offered a toast to the married couple, the cannon of ice was discharged. It flew in pieces in every direction, and instead of producing any serious sensation lest some accident might have occurred, it only increased the tumultuous hilarity. The wines of Champagne and Bourgogne ran in streams. The servants were hardly sufficient to supply the thirst of the guests. The Czar ordered to their assistance soldiers, who, taking half a dozen bottles under each arm, rolled them as nine-pins upon the table--a circumstance which the ambassador of the powerful states thought so remarkable that he mentioned it in his report à la Haye. This intemperate drinking soon showed its effects upon the greater part of the guests. Peter gave himself up completely to the infatuation of the vine, and Menzikoff, who preserved his accustomed sobriety, saw with inquietude the Czar swallow one after another numerous glasses of Bourgogne. The face of the monarch became foolish--the perspiration stood upon his forehead in large drops, and in order to cool himself he took off his perruque, and placed it upon the head of his neighbor the ambassador, who received the insult respectfully, but without power to repress a deep sigh. However pleasant all this might have been, Menzikoff took no part in the enjoyments of the society, troubled as he was through fears founded upon an intimate knowledge of the character of his master. Experience had too often taught him how easily the Czar passed from humor and hilarity to anger and violence. He knew that such changes took place almost invariably after indulgences of the bottle, and that a single word--a single gesture--threw him into a passion that made him detestable, while by nature he was generous and noble. The event proved how reasonable were the presentiments of Menzikoff. The festival was coming to an end. The Czar arose and commanded silence. "Hitherto," he said, in smiling, "we have only drank to the health of the happy pair. It is time to give them a substantial token of our friendship. Since I am myself the originator of this joyful marriage, I must give the first example--so take that, Alexandre; put in it what I told you, and pass it round." At these words the Emperor pointed to a little silver basket that lay on the table. Menzikoff took the basket, and drawing from his bosom a draft for 8000 roubles, and emptying his own purse, passed the basket to his neighbor the boyard. The latter seemed to reflect a moment, took from his pocket a handful of gold and silver, and with an air of contempt, cast an old rouble into the basket, and passed it from him. This circumstance did not escape the notice of the Emperor. His brow darkened, but soon his gayety returned, and he said, smiling, to Menzikoff: "You see, Alexandre, the prudence of our Prince de Tscherkaski. He gives only a rouble. He means to say by this that he has no very particular interest in the married parties. It is only a ruse on his part in order to remove any jealousy that a greater gift might awaken. I will wager you that to-morrow he will send a present to the young woman more becoming her rank and position." "Your Majesty would lose the wager," responded Tscherkaski, in a haughty tone. "The farces of fools and jugglers have never amused me, and I have always pitied those who know not better how to employ their time than to lose it with such creatures. Thus my contribution is at the same time conformed to the circumstances and to my rank, since I do not appreciate beyond measure the office of chamberlain, with which you have gratified me." The Emperor at first smiled at these words, but his countenance became more stern. "Our chamberlain," said he, after a pause, "gets angry to get calm again. He must be in a bad humor to-day. I hope he will change his language by the time that another affair occurs, which will interest him more nearly." Tscherkaski did or wished not to understand the words of the Czar. His wandering and disdainful eyes glanced at the basket offered to the bride and bridegroom. It was filled with gold, rings, bracelets, jewels, and other precious gifts. The universal happiness of the evening had removed from the mind of the Czar the remembrance of the murmurings of the boyard, and Menzikoff had hardly taken his place when the Emperor whispered to him: "The dispositions you have made to-day in regard to this festivity do you honor. You have perfectly agreed with my own taste in such matters. You have surpassed my expectations." "It is not I alone," humbly replied the Prince. "The boyard as well as myself----" "Without doubt, you and he have perfectly fulfilled my intentions. I take not into the account the silver rouble, however," added the Czar, "let that be as it may, ten years hence this place shall be the scene of a similar festivity; and to let you see how I can surpass you, I will myself take charge of the preparations. You may smile, Alexandre, but you will be forced to admit, that without your aid I can arrange a nuptial feast. It is besides the less difficult, since the essentials are already decided upon--the persons to be married." These words were overheard by those present, and a profound silence ensued. "Would I be guilty of too much curiosity," said Menzikoff, "if...." "Ah! you wish to know the young couple," exclaimed the Emperor. "I ought, perhaps, to leave you in ten years' uncertainty; but thanks to this brilliant society whom I invite from to-day, you will know now. Alexis Nicolajewitz," continued he, in addressing the boyard, "you asked me the other day for certain lands near Tula, situated between the boundaries of your property and those of Prince Menzikoff." "I did, and your Majesty has thought fit to refuse them." "I refused them, because I had reserved them for another. I wish to give them as a dowry to your daughter." The astonishment of the boyard was great He attempted to speak. "Silence! I have attached to the grant one condition," said the Czar. "Your Majesty will order nothing contrary to my conscience and the honor of my house. I humbly ask, then...." "The condition is, that your daughter shall receive her husband at my hands." "I have sworn upon the tomb of my wife," responded the boyard, after a pause, "that my daughter shall espouse him only whom she herself freely chooses. But, she is still a child,... and in ten years...." "Indeed," interrupted the Emperor, whose countenance was sorrowful, "if your daughter should not accept him whom I would propose, the lands will yet belong to her; are you content now?" "And the rank, the condition of the parties?" "They are to be the same." "A single word from our gracious sovereign, is at any time sufficient to destroy all inequalities of rank," said one of the guests. "You are right, Kurakin," returned the boyard; "as to myself, I rely upon the word of our monarch, who has just said that there is nothing to equalize. Every one to his opinion upon that which concerns him." "There is a tone of very high pride in your discourse, Alexis Nicolajewitz," responded Peter, who repressed his anger with difficulty. "I have a great mind not to name to you to-day the husband which I, your sovereign, have chosen for the daughter of one of my subjects. But let your insolent vanity subside. Your future son-in-law is of birth equal with your's and your daughter's; he is the only son of a man whom I dearly esteem and honor with distinguished favors. I say it in his presence, and it is my desire he should be honored by others. In a word, your future son-in-law is the companion of your daughter at the feast to-day; he is the little Fedor Menzikoff." This name came to the ears of the boyard as a thunder-clap, so great was his astonishment. The assembly waited in vain his response, but he was silent. "Ah well, Alexis," continued the Czar, "if these two manors are hardly worth thanks, why should I wait for you to consent to the proposed union?" All eyes were directed to the boyard. No one spoke, and the Czar's impatience yielded to a furious anger. "And what motive," he at last said, "induces you to reject this gift?" "The very condition that you have yourself made, gracious sovereign." "The condition?" "Yes, that condition which requires my daughter to give her hand to the son of Prince Menzikoff. It can never be fulfilled. It is impossible to accept the gift of your Majesty." "And why?" fiercely demanded Peter. "The Czar orders--his servant must obey. Prince Menzikoff is the son of a serf, but the daughter of Tscherkaski shall never marry a man of so mean extraction," and the blood mounted to the brow of the boyard. "Insolent dog!" exclaimed Peter, striking his hand upon the table. "Do you not know that a single word from me can make ten serfs ten Princes, and the least among them superior to you in rank and dignity. Oh! by my patron, the prince of the Apostles, why should I patiently listen to this haughty descendant of the brigands of the Caucasus. I can do more than this, proud boyard; by a breath I can degrade thee and all thy tribe." Hitherto Tscherkaski held his eyes downward, but now he lifted them and looked steadily at his monarch. "Your look braves and menaces me," thundered the Czar, beside himself, and shaking his fist towards the boyard. "Reply if you dare, and it is not impossible that your rebellious head rolls from your body this very night, this hour, this minute." "Certainly, I do not doubt your power. How could I doubt the power of one who, on the same day, without pity and without humanity, cut off the heads of thousands. Surely, the man who tramples under his feet those who were once the support of his crown and authority; who has not only stained his own hands in their blood, but that of his own son--surely he would not hesitate to destroy an old servant, the necessary but guilty instrument of his past vengeance. Come! the arm that was steeped in the massacre of the Kremlin, can hardly take a redder hue from the blood of an unimportant slave." Peter looked with burning eyes upon his adversary. He arose, as by an impulse, and inclining his head forward, seemed to be engaged in discovering the meaning of those vehement words. But he was endeavoring to stay the tempest that was sweeping over his heart. Some minutes elapsed before he recovered himself from those bitter recollections; and looking with an affected air of calmness and dignity upon the astonished assembly, he said-- "Faithful Russians! you have heard the serious accusation brought by a subject against his monarch. Whatever may be the number of the Strelitz fallen in an unhappy day, I am not at all concerned about it; they died for the safety and well-being of sacred Russia. If innocent blood flowed at the Kremlin--if, among so many guilty, the sword severed the head of one innocent, I am ready to defend the act. It was from me that the whole transaction originated; it is mine only, and I take the responsibility of it. I had no other means of saving our country from the barbarism that encumbered it, and impeded its elevation to the rank which it should occupy among the nations of Europe. As the bold boyard has truly said, it is I who have brandished the sword, and I ask who is the Russian who dares cite me to his tribunal?" The anger of the Czar was rekindled, and he began anew. "It is to the tutelary patron of the empire that I am indebted for the power of having executed a resolution which I judged necessary. A disease was undermining the constitution of the empire--the evil was terrible and appeared incurable: like a skilful physician I at once employed the medicine which could alone be successful in arresting the progress of the disease. Could I, in the moment of execution, place the instrument in the trembling hands of a charlatan? No; it was my own hand that held the knife. I felt the wounds which I made; and I say to-day, before God and man, it is I to whom the action belongs, and for which I am ready to answer on earth and on high. Now, as to you, Tscherkaski, you have audaciously rejected the favor I was willing to grant. You have not even feared to accuse your sovereign in the midst of his subjects. If my ancestors were alive your white head would fall from the block, but far from me the thought of shedding the blood of an old brother in arms. Retract, and you may pass your days tranquilly on your own lands. If not," and the voice of the Czar grew more stern, "I send you this night into eternal exile." "Is it permitted me to take with me my daughter?" cooly asked the old man. "The child belongs to its parent," replied the Emperor, surprised and hesitating. "Then, Alexander Michailowitz," said the boyard to Menzikoff, "give me two of those bear-skins you placed upon the ice-chairs; it is all that is necessary." "Take him away at once; we have had enough of his arrogance and audacity!" exclaimed the furious Peter, and he repelled Menzikoff, who was endeavoring to intercede for the boyard. "And whither?" asked the prince with a trembling voice. "To Bareson upon the Ob----No; to Woksarski upon the Frozen sea," added Peter, as he beheld the smiling and triumphing air of the boyard. A few moments after the old man and his daughter entered a sledge. A party of horsemen accompanied them, and away they went with the swiftness of an eagle towards the dreary regions of the north-west. Ten years later, Prince Menzikoff, despoiled of his goods, his honors, and his rank, came to share the exile of the boyard. Similar misfortune reconciled two enemies, and the union of their children accomplished the prediction of the Czar. POLITENESS: IN PARIS AND LONDON. BY SIR HENRY LYTTON BULWER. "Je me recommande à vous," was said to me the other day by an old gentleman dressed in very tattered garments, who was thus soliciting a "sou." The old man was a picture: his long gray hairs fell gracefully over his shoulders. Tall--he was so bent forward as to take with a becoming air the position in which he had placed himself. One hand was pressed to his heart, the other held his hat. His voice, soft and plaintive, did not want a certain dignity. In that very attitude, and in that very voice, a nobleman of the ancient "régime" might have solicited a pension from the Duc de Choiseul in the time of Louis XV. I confess that I was the more struck by the manner of the venerable suppliant, from the strong contrast which it formed with the demeanor of his countrymen in general: for it is rare, now-a-days, I acknowledge, to meet a Frenchman with the air which Lawrence Sterne was so enchanted with during the first month, and so wearied with at the expiration of the first year, which he spent in France. That look and gesture of the "petit marquis," that sort of studied elegance, which, at first affected by the court, became at last natural to the nation, exist no longer, except among two or three "grands seigneurs" in the Faubourg St. Germain, and as many beggars usually to be found on the Boulevards. To ask with grace, to beg with as little self-humility as possible, here perchance is the fundamental idea which led, in the two extremes of society, to the same results: but things vicious in their origin are sometimes agreeable in their practice. "Hail, ye small sweet courtesies of life, far smoother do ye make the road of it--like grace and beauty, which beget inclination at first sight, 'tis ye who open the door and let the stranger in." I had the Sentimental Journey in my hand--it was open just at this passage, when I landed not very long ago on the quay of that town which Horace Walpole tells us caused him more astonishment than any other he had met with in his travels. I mean Calais. "Hail, ye small sweet courtesies of life," was I still muttering to myself, as gently pushing by a spruce little man, who had already scratched my nose and nearly poked out my eyes with cards of "Hotel ...," I attempted to pass on towards the inn of Mons. Dessin. "Nom de D...," said the Commissionaire, as I touched his elbow, "Nom de D..., Monsieur, _Je suis Francais_! il ne faut pas me pousser, moi ... _je suis Francais_!"--and this he said, contracting his brow, and touching a moustache that only wanted years and black wax to make it truly formidable. I thought that he was going to offer me his own card instead of Mr. Meurice's. This indeed would have been little more than what happened to a friend of mine not long ago. He was going last year from Dieppe to Paris. He slept at Rouen, and on quitting the house the following morning found fault with some articles in the bill presented to him. "Surely there is some mistake here," said he, pointing to the account. "Mistake, sir," said the _aubergiste_, adjusting his shoulders with the important air of a man who was going to burthen them with a quarrel--"mistake, sir, what do you mean?--a mistake--do you think I charge a sou more than is just? Do you mean to say that? _Je suis officier, Monsieur, officier Francais, et j'insiste sur ce que vous me rendiez raison!!_" Now, it is undoubtedly very pleasant to an Englishman, who has the same idea of a duel that a certain French marquise had of a lover, when, on her death-bed, she said to her grand-daughter, "Je ne vous dis pas, ma chère, de ne point avoir d'amans; je me rappelle ma jeunesse. Il faut seulement n'en prendre jamais qui soient au-dessous de votre état"--it is doubtless very unpleasant to an Englishman, who cares much less about fighting than about the person he fights with, to have his host present him a bill in one hand and a pistol in the other. In one of the islands which we ought to discover, whenever the king sneezes all his courtiers are expected to sneeze also. The country of course imitates the court, and the empire is at once affected with a general cold. Sneezing here then becomes an art and an accomplishment. One person prizes himself on sneezing more gracefully than another, and, by a matter of general consent, all nations who have not an harmonious manner of vibrating their nostrils are justly condemned as savages and barbarians. There is no doubt that the people of this island are right; and there is no doubt that we are right in considering every people with different usages from ourselves of very uncivilized and uncomfortable behavior. We then, decidedly, are the people who ought justly to be deemed the most polite. For instance--you arrive at Paris: how striking the difference between the reception you receive at your hotel, and that you would find in London! In London, arrive in your carriage! (_that_ I grant is necessary)--the landlord meets you at the door, surrounded by his anxious attendants; he bows profoundly when you alight--calls loudly for every thing you want, and seems shocked at the idea of your waiting an instant for the merest trifle you can possibly _imagine_ that you desire. Now try your Paris hotel--you enter the courtyard--the proprietor, if he happen to be there, receives you with careless indifference, and either accompanies you saunteringly himself, or orders some one to accompany you to the apartments which, on first seeing you, he determined you should have. It is useless to expect another. If you find any fault with this apartment, if you express any wish that it had this little thing, that it had not that, do not for one moment imagine that your host is likely to say, with an eager air, that he "will see what can be done"--that he "would do a great deal to please so respectable a gentleman." In short, do not suppose him for one moment likely to pour forth any of those little civilities with which the lips of your English innkeeper would overflow. On the contrary, be prepared for his lifting up his eyes, and shrugging up his shoulders, (the shrug is not the courtier-like shrug of antique days,) and telling you that the apartment is as you see it, that it is for Monsieur to make up his mind whether he take it or not. The whole is the affair of the guest, and remains a matter of perfect indifference to the host. Your landlady, it is true, is not quite so haughty on these occasions. But you are indebted for her smile rather to the coquetry of the beauty, than to the civility of the hostess. She will tell you, adjusting her head-dress in the mirror standing upon the chimney-piece in the little "salon" she recommends--"que Monsieur s'y trouvera fort bien, qu'un milord Anglais, qu'un prince Russe, ou qu'un colonel du ----ième de dragons, a occupé cette même chambre"--and that there is just by an excellent restaurateur and a "cabinet de lecture"--and then--her head-dress being quite in order--the lady expanding her arms with a gentle smile, says, "Mais après tout, c'est à Monsieur à se décider." It is this which makes your French gentleman so loud in praise of English politeness. One was expatiating to me the other day on the admirable manners of the English. "I went," said he, "to the Duke of Devonshire's, '_dans mon pauvre fiacre_:' never shall I forget the respect with which a stately gentleman, gorgeously apparelled, opened the creaking door, let down the steps, and--courtesy of very courtesies--picked, actually picked, the dirty straws of the ignominious vehicle that I descended from, off my shoes and stockings." This occurred to the French gentleman at the Duke of Devonshire's. But let your English gentleman visit a French "grand seigneur!" He enters the antechamber from the grand escalier. The servants are at a game of dominos, from which his entrance hardly disturbs them, and fortunate is he if any one conduct him with a careless lazy air to the "salon." So, if you go to Boivin's, or if you go to Howel's and James's, with what politeness, with what celerity, with what respect your orders are received at the great man's of Waterloo Place--with what an easy nonchalance you are treated in the Rue de la Paix! All this is quite true; but there are things more shocking than all this. I know a gentleman, who called the other day on a French lady of his acquaintance, who was under the hands of her "coiffeur." The artiste of the hair was there, armed cap-à-pié, in all the glories of national-guardism, brandishing his comb with the grace and dexterity with which he would have wielded a sword, and recounting, during the operation of the toilette--now a story of "_Monsieur son Capitaine_"--now an anecdote, equally interesting, of "_Monsieur son Colonel_"--now a tale of "_Monsieur son Roi_, that excellent man, on whom he was going to mount guard that very evening." My unhappy friend's face still bore the most awful aspect of dismay, as he told his story. "By G--d, there's a country for you," said he; "can property be safe for a moment in such a country? There can be no religion, no morality, with such manners--I shall order post-horses immediately." I did not wonder at my friend--at his horror for so fearful a familiarity. What are our parents always, and no doubt wisely repeating to us? "You should learn, my dear, to keep _a certain kind of persons_ at their proper distance." In no circumstances are we to forget this important lesson. If the clouds hurled their thunders upon our heads, if the world tumbled topsy-turvy about our ears, "Si fractus illabatur orbis," it is to find the well-bred Englishman as it would have found the just Roman--and, above all things, it is not to derange the imperturbable disdain with which he is enfeoffed to his inferiors. Lady D. was going to Scotland: a violent storm arose. Her ladyship was calmly dressing her hair, when the steward knocked at the cabin-door. "My lady," said the man, "I think it right to tell you there is every chance of our being drowned." "Do not talk to me, you impertinent fellow, about drowning," said her aristocratical ladyship, perfectly unmoved--"that's the captain's business, and not mine." Our great idea of civility is, that the person who is poor should be exceedingly civil to the person who is wealthy: and this is the difference between the neighboring nations. Your Frenchman admits no one to be quite his equal--your Englishman worships every one richer than himself as undeniably his superior. Judge us from our servants and our shopkeepers, it is true we are the politest people in the world. The servants, who are paid well, and the shopkeepers, who sell high--scrape, and cringe, and smile. There is no country where those who have wealth are treated so politely by those to whom it goes; but at the same time there is no country where those who are well off live on such cold, and suspicious, and ill-natured, and uncivil terms among themselves. The rich man who travels in France murmurs at every inn and at every shop; not only is he treated no better for being a rich man--he is treated worse in many places, from the idea that because he is rich he is likely to give himself airs. But if the lower classes are more rude to the higher classes than with us, the higher classes in France are far less rude to one another. The dandy who did not look at an old acquaintance, or who looked impertinently at a stranger, would have his nose pulled and his body run through with a small-sword--or damaged by a pistol-bullet--before the evening was well over. Where every man wishes to be higher than he is, there you find people insolent to their fellows, and exacting obsequiousness from their inferiors--where men will allow no one to be superior to themselves, there you see them neither civil to those above them, nor impertinent to those beneath them, nor yet very courteous to those in the same station. The manners, checkered in one country by softness and insolence, are not sufficiently courteous and gentle in the other. Time was in France, (it existed in England to a late date,) when politeness was thought to consist in placing every one at his ease. A quiet sense of their own dignity rendered persons insensible to the fear of its being momentarily forgotten. Upon these days rested the shadow of a bygone chivalry, which accounted courtesy as one of the virtues. The civility of that epoch, as contrasted with the civility of ours, was not the civility of the domestic or the tradesman, meant to pamper the pride of their employer, but the civility of the noble and the gentleman, meant to elevate the modesty of those who considered themselves in an inferior state. Corrupted by the largesses of an expensive and intriguing court, the "grand seigneur," after the reign of Louis XIV., became over-civil and servile to those above him. Beneath the star of the French minister beat the present heart of the British mercer--and softly did the great man smile on those from whom he had any thing to gain. As whatever was taught at Versailles was learnt in the Rue St. Denis, when the courtier had the air of a solicitor, every one aped the air of the courtier; and the whole nation with one hand expressing a request, and the other an obligation, might have been taken in the attitude of the graceful old beggar, whose accost made such an impression upon me. But a new nobility grew up in rivalry to the elder one; and as the positions of society became more complicated and uncertain, a supreme civility to some was seen side by side with a sneering insolence to others--a revolution in manners, which embittered as it hastened the revolution of opinions. Thus the manners of the French in the time of Louis XVI. had one feature of similarity with ours at present. A moneyed aristocracy was then rising into power in France, as a moneyed aristocracy is now rising into power in England. This is the aristocracy which demands obsequious servility--which is jealous and fearful of being treated with disrespect; this is the aristocracy which is haughty, insolent, and susceptible; which dreams of affronts and gives them: this is the aristocracy which measures with an uncertain eye the height of an acquaintance; this is the aristocracy which cuts and sneers--this aristocracy, though the aristocracy of the revolution of July, is now too powerless in France to be more than vulgar in its pretensions. French manners, then, if they are not gracious, are at all events not insolent; while ours, unhappily, testify on one hand the insolence, while they do not on the other represent the talent and the grace of that society which presided over the later suppers of the old regime. We have no Monsieur de Fitz-James, who might be rolled in a gutter all his life, as was said by a beautiful woman of his time, "without ever contracting a spot of dirt." We have no Monsieur de Narbonne, who stops in the fiercest of a duel to pick up the ruffled rose that had slipped in a careless moment from his lips during the graceful conflict! You see no longer in France that noble air, that "_great manner_," as it was called, by which the old nobility strove to keep up the distinction between themselves and their worse-born associates to the last, and which of course those associates _assiduously imitated_. That manner is gone: the French, so far from being a polite nation at the present day, want that easiness of behavior which is the first essential to politeness. Every man you meet is occupied with maintaining his dignity, and talks to you of _his_ position. There is an evident effort and struggle, I will not say to appear better than you are, but to appear _all_ that _you are_, and to allow no person to think that you consider him better than you. Persons, no longer ranked by classes, take each by themselves an individual place in society. They are so many atoms, not forming a congruous or harmonious whole. They are too apt to strut forward singly, and to say with a great deal of action, and a great deal of emphasis, "I am--_nobody_." The French are no longer polite, but in the French nation, as in every nation, there is an involuntary and traditionary respect which hallows what is gone-by; and among the marvels of modern France is a religion which ranks an agreeable smile and a graceful bow as essential virtues of its creed. Nor does the Père Enfantin stand alone. There is something touching in the language of the old "seigneur," who, placed as it were between two epochs, looking backwards and forwards to the graces of past times and the virtues of new, thus expresses himself: "Les progrès de la lumière et de la liberté ont certainment fait faire de grands pas à la raison humaine; mais aussi dans sa route, n'a-t-elle rien perdu? Moi qui ne suis pas un de ces opiniâtres prôneurs de ce bon vieux temp qui n'est plus, je ne puis m'empêcher de regretter ce bon goût, cette grâce, cette fleur d'enjouement et d'urbanité qui chassait de la societé tout ennui en permettant au bon sens de sourire et à la sagesse de se parer. Aujourd 'hui beaucoup de gens ressemblent à un propriétaire morose, qui, ne songeant qu'a l'utile, bannirait de son jardin les fleurs, et ne voudrait y voir que du blé, des foins et des fruits." From Fraser's Magazine. THE LION IN THE TOILS. BY C. ASTOR BRISTED. What followed the events related in our last number gave Ashburner a lesson against making up his mind too hastily on any points of character, national or individual. A fortnight after his arrival at Oldport he would have said that the Americans were the most communicative people he had ever fallen in with, and particularly, that the men of "our set" were utterly incapable of keeping secret any act or purpose of their lives, any thing that had happened, or was going to happen. _Now_ he was surprised at the discretion shown by the men cognizant of the late row (and they comprised all the fashionables left in the place, and some of the outsiders, like Simpson); their dexterity and careful management, first, to prevent the affair from coming to a fight, and then, if that were impossible, to keep it from publicity until the parties were safe over the border into Canada, where they might "shoot each other like gentlemen," as a young gentleman from Alabama expressed it. Sedley himself, whose officiousness had precipitated the quarrel, did all in his power to prevent any further mischief, and was as sedulous for the promotion of _silencio_ and _misterio_, as if he had been leader of a chorus of Venetian Senators. _The Sewer_ reporters, who, in their eagerness to collect every bit of gossip and scandal, would have given the ears which an outraged community had permitted them to retain for a knowledge of the fracas and its probable consequences, never had the least inkling of it. Indeed, so quietly was the whole managed, that Ashburner never made out the cause of the old feud, nor was able to form any opinion on the probability of its final issue. On the former point he could only come to the conclusion from what he heard, that Hunter had been mythologizing, as his wont was, something to Benson's discredit several years before, and had been trying to make mischief between him and some of his friends or relations; but what the exact offence was, whether Sumner was involved in the quarrel from the first, and if so, to what extent; and whether the legend about the horse was a part of, or only an addition to the original grievance;--on these particulars he remained in the dark. As to the latter, he knew that Hunter had not challenged Benson, and that he had left the place, but whether to look up a friend or not, no one seemed to know, or if they did, no one cared to tell. At any rate, he did not return for a week and more, during which time Ashburner had full opportunity of studying the behavior and feelings of a man with a duel in prospect. Those who defend and advocate the practice of duelling, if asked to explain the motives leading a gentleman to fight, would generally answer somewhat to this effect: in the first place, personal courage which induces a man to despise danger and death, in comparison with any question affecting his own honor, or that of those connected with him; secondly, a respect for the opinion of the society in which he moves, which opinion, to a certain extent, supplies and fixes the definition of honor. Hence it would follow that, given a man who is neither physically brave, nor bound by any particular respect for the opinion of his daily associates, and the world he moves in, such a man would not be likely to give or accept a challenge. The case under Ashburner's observation afforded a palpable contradiction to this conclusion. Henry Benson was not personally valorous; what courage he possessed was rather of a moral than a physical kind. Where he appeared to be daring and heedless, it proved on examination to be the result of previous knowledge and practice, which gave him confidence and armed him with impunity. Thus he would drive his trotters at any thing, and shave through "tight places" on rough and crowded roads, his whiffle-trees tipping and his hubs grazing the surrounding wheels in a way that at first made Ashburner shudder in spite of himself; but it was because his experience in wagon-driving enabled him to measure distances within half-an-inch, and to catch an available opening immediately. On the other hand, in their pedestrian trips across country in Westchester, he was very chary of jumping fences or ditches till he had ascertained by careful practice his exact capacity for that sort of exercise. He would ride his black horse, Daredevil, who was the terror of all the servants and women in his neighborhood, because he had made himself perfectly acquainted with all the animal's stock of tricks, and was fully prepared for them as they came; but he never went the first trip in a new steamboat or railroad line. He ate and drank many things considered unhealthy, because he understood exactly from experience what and how much he could take without injury; but you could not have bribed him to sit fifteen minutes in wet boots. In short, he was a man who took excellent care of himself, _canny_ as a Scot or a New-Englander, loving the good things of life, and not disposed to hazard them on slight grounds. Then as to the approbation or disapprobation of those about him, he was almost entirely careless of it. On any point beyond the cut of a coat, the decoration of a room, the concoction of a dish, or the merits of a horse, there were not ten people in his own set whose opinion he heeded. To the remarks of foreigners he was a little more sensitive, but even these he was more apt to retort upon by a _tu quoque_ than to be influenced by. Add to all this, that he had the convenient excuse of being a communicant at church, which, in America, implies something like a formal profession of religion. Yet at this time he was not only willing, but most eager to fight. The secret lay in his state of recklessness. A moment of passion had overturned all his instincts, principles, and common-sense, and inspired him with the feverish desire to pay off his old debts to Storey Hunter, at whatever cost. And as neither the possession of extraordinary personal courage, nor a high sense of conventional honor, nor a respect for the opinion of society, necessarily induces a feeling of recklessness, so neither does the absence of these qualities prevent the presence of this feeling, exactly the most favorable one to make a man engage in a duel. Moralists have called such a condition one of temporary madness, and it has probably as good grounds to be classed with insanity as many of the pleas known to medical and criminal jurisprudence. Be this as it may, Ashburner had a good opportunity of observing--and the example, it is to be hoped, was of service to him--the demoralization induced upon a man by the mere impending possibility of a duel. Benson seemed careless what he did. He danced frantically, and drank so much at all hours, that the Englishman, though pretty strong-headed himself, wondered how he could keep sober. He was openly seen reading _The Blackguard's Own_, a weekly of _The Sewer_ species. He made up trotting-matches with every man in the place who owned a "fast crab," and with some acquaintances at a distance, by correspondence. He kept studiously out of the way of his wife and child, lest their influence might shake his determination. All this time he practised pistol-shooting most religiously. Neither of the belligerents had ever given a public proof of skill in this line. Hunter's ability was not known, and Benson's shooting so uncertain and variable when any one looked on, that those in the secret suspected him of playing dark and disguising his hand. All which added to the interest of the affair. But when eleven days had passed without signs or tidings of Hunter, and it seemed pretty clear that he had gone away "for good," Benson started up one morning, and went off himself to New-York, at the same time with Harrison, whose brief and not very joyous holidays had come to a conclusion. He accompanied the banker, in accordance with the true American principle, always to have a lion for your companion when you can; and as Harrison was still a man of note in Wall-street, however small might be his influence in his own household, Benson liked to be seen with him, and to talk any thing--even stocks--to him, though he had no particular interest in the market at that time. But whether an American is in business himself or not, the subject of business is generally an interesting one to him, and he is always ready to gossip about dollars. The unexampled material development of the United States is only maintained by a condition of society which requires every man to take a share in assisting that development, and the most frivolous and apparently idle men are found sharp enough in pecuniary matters. This trait of national character lies on the surface, and foreigners have not been slow to notice it, and to draw from it unfavorable conclusions. The supplementary and counterbalancing features of character to be observed in these very people,--that it is rather the fun of making the money than the money itself which they care for; that when it is made, they spend it freely, and part with it more readily than they earned it; that they are more liberal both in their public and private charities (considering the amount of their wealth, and of the claims upon it) than any nation in the world,--all these traits strangers have been less ready to dwell upon and do justice to. Benson was gone, and Ashburner stayed. Why? He had been at Oldport nearly a month; the place was not particularly beautiful, and the routine of amusements not at all to his taste. Why did he stay? He had his secret, too. It is a melancholy but indisputable fact, that even in the most religious and moral country in the world, the bulwark of evangelical faith, and the home of the domestic virtues (meaning, of course, England), a great many mothers who have daughters to marry, are not so anxious about the real welfare, temporal and eternal, of their young ladies, as solicitous that they should acquire riches, titles, and other vanities of the world,--nay, that many of the daughters themselves act as if their everlasting happiness depended on their securing in matrimony a proper combination of the aforesaid vanities, and put out of account altogether the greatest prize a woman can gain--the possession of a true and loving heart, joined to a wise head. Now, Ashburner being a very good _parti_ at home, and having run the gauntlet of one or two London seasons, had become very skittish of mammas, and still more so of daughters. He regarded the unmarried female as a most dangerous and altogether to be avoided animal, and when you offered to introduce him to a young lady, looked about as grateful as if you had invited him to go up in a balloon. He expected to be rather more persecuted, if any thing, in America than he had been at home; and when he met Miss Vanderlyn at Ravenswood, if his first thought had found articulate expression, it would probably have been something like this:--"Now that young woman is going to set her cap at me; what a bore it will be!" Never was a man more mistaken in his anticipations. He encountered many pretty girls, not at all timid, ready enough to talk, and flirty enough among their own set, but not one of them threw herself at him, and least of all did Miss Vanderlyn. Not that the young lady was the victim of a romantic attachment, for she was perfectly fancy free and heart whole; nor, on the other hand, that she was at all insensible to the advantages of matrimony, for she kept a very fair lookout in that direction, and had, if not absolutely down on her books, at least engraved on the recording tablets of her mind, four distinct young gentlemen, combining the proper requisites, any of whom would suit her pretty well, and one of whom--she didn't much care which--she was pretty well resolved to marry within the next two years. And as she was stylish and rather handsome, clever enough, and tolerably provided with the root of all evil, besides having that fortunate good humor and accommodating disposition which go so far towards making a woman a belle and a favorite, there was a sufficient probability that before the expiration of that time, one of the four would offer himself. But all her calculations were founded on shrewd common sense; her imagination took no flights, and her aspirations only extended to the ordinary and possible. That this young and strange Englishman, travelling as a part of education, the son of a great man, and probably betrothed by proxy to some great man's daughter, or going into parliament to be a great man himself, and remain a bachelor for the best part of his life,--that between him and herself there should by any thing in common, any point of union which could make even a flirtation feasible, never entered into her head. She would as soon have expected the King of Dahomey to send an embassy with ostrich feathers in their caps, and rings in their noses, formally to ask her hand in marriage. Nay, even if the incredible event had come to pass, and the young stranger had taken the initiative, even then she would not by any means have jumped at the bait. For in the first place, she was fully imbued with the idea that the Vanderlyns were quite as good as any other people in the world, and that (the ordinary conceit of an American belle) to whatever man she might give her hand, all the honor would come from her side, and all the gain be his; therefore she would not have cared to come into a family who might suspect her of having inveigled their heir, and look down upon her as something beneath them, because she came from a country where there were no noblemen. Secondly, there is a very general feeling among the best classes in America, that no European worth any thing at home comes to America to get married. The idea is evidently an imperfect generalization, and liable to exceptions; but the prevalence of it shows more modesty in the "Upper Ten's" appreciation of themselves than they usually have credit for. As soon, therefore, as a foreigner begins to pay attention to a young lady in good society, it is _primâ facie_ ground of suspicion against him. The reader will see from all this how little chance there was of Ashburner's running any danger from the unmarried women about him. With the married ones the case was somewhat different. It may be remembered, that at his first introduction to Mrs. Henry Benson, the startling contrast she exhibited to the adulation he had been accustomed to receive, totally put him down; and that afterwards she softened off the rough edge of her satire, and became very _piquante_ and pleasing to him. And as she greatly amused him, so he began to suspect that she was rather proud of having such a lion in her train, as no doubt she was, notwithstanding the somewhat rough and cub-like stage of his existence. So he began to hang about her, and follow her around in his green awkward way, and look large notes of admiration at her; and she was greatly diverted, and not at all displeased at his attentions. I don't know how far it might have gone; Ashburner was a very correct and moral young man, as the world goes, but rather because he had generally business enough on hand to keep him out of mischief, than from any high religious principle; and I am afraid that in spite of the claims of propriety, and honor, and friendship, and the avenging Zeus of hospitality, and every other restraining motive, he would have fallen very much in love with Mrs. Benson but for one thing. He was hopelessly in love with Mrs. Harrison. How or when it began he couldn't tell; but he found himself under the influence imperceptibly, as a man feels himself intoxicated. Sometimes he fancied that there had been a kind of love at first sight--that with the first glimpse he had of her, something in his heart told him that that woman was destined to exert a mastery over him; yet his feelings must have undergone a change and growth, for he would not now have listened to any one speaking of her as Benson had done at that time. _Why_ it was, he could still less divine. His was certainly not the blind admiration which sees no fault in its idol; he saw her faults plainly enough, and yet could not help himself. He often asked himself how it happened that if he _was_ doomed to endure an illicit and unfortunate passion, it was not for Mrs. Benson rather than Mrs. Harrison; for the former was at least as clever, certainly handsomer, palpably younger, indubitably more lady-like, and altogether a higher style of woman. Yet with this just appreciation of them, there was no comparison as to his feelings towards the two. The one amused and delighted him when present; the other, in her absence, was ever rising up before his mind's eye, and drawing him after her; and when they met, his heart beat quicker, and he was more than usually awkward and confused.--Perhaps there had been, in the very origin of his entanglement and passion, some guiding impulse of honor, some sense that Benson had been his friend and entertainer, and that to Harrison he was under no personal obligations. For there are many shades of honor and dishonor in dishonorable thoughts, and a little principle goes a great way with some people, like the wind commemorated by Joe Miller's Irishman, of which there was not much, _but what there was, was very high_. Be this as it may, he was loving to perdition--or thought so, at least; and it is hard to discriminate in a very young man's case between the conceit and the reality of love. His whole heart and mind were taken up with one great, all-pervading idea of Mrs. Harrison, and he was equally unable to smother and to express his flame. He was dying to make her a present of something, but he could send nothing without a fear of exciting suspicion, except bouquets; and of these floral luxuries, though they were only to be procured at Oldport with much trouble and expense, she had always a supply from other quarters. He did not like to be one of a number in his offerings; he wanted to pay her some peculiar tribute. He would have liked to fight some man for her, to pick a quarrel with some one who had said something against her. Proud and sensitive to ridicule as he was, he would have laid himself down in her way, and let her walk over him, could he have persuaded himself that she would be gratified by such a proof of devotion, and that it would help his cause with her. Had Benson been in Oldport now, there might have been trouble, inasmuch as he was not particular about what he said, and not too well disposed towards Mrs. Harrison, while Ashburner was just in a state of mind to have fought with his own father on that theme. But Benson was away, and his absence at this time was not a source of regret to Ashburner, who felt a little afraid of him, and with some reason, for our friend Harry was as observant as if he had a fly's allowance of eyes, and had a knack of finding out things without looking for them, and of knowing things without asking about them; and he would assuredly have noticed that Ashburner began to be less closely attached to his party, and to follow in the train of Mrs. Harrison. As for Clara Benson, she never troubled herself about the Englishman's falling off in his attentions to her; if any thing, she was rather glad of it; her capricious disposition made her tire of a friend in a short time; she could not endure any one's uninterrupted company--not even her husband's, who therefore wisely took care to absent himself from her several times every year. Moreover, though Ashburner was seen in attendance on the lioness, it was not constantly or in a pointed manner. He was still fighting with himself, and, like a man run away with, who has power to guide his horse though not to stop him, he was so far able to manage his passion as to keep it from an open display. So absolutely no one suspected what was the matter with him, or that there was any thing the matter with him, except the lady herself. Catch a woman not finding out when a man is in love with her! Sometimes she may delude herself with imagining a passion where none exists, but she never makes the converse mistake of failing to perceive it where it does. And how did the gay Mrs. Harrison, knowing and perceiving herself to be thus loved, make use of her knowledge? What alteration did it produce in her conduct and bearing towards her admirer? Absolutely none at all. Precisely as she had treated him at their first introduction did she continue to treat him--as if he were one of her everyday acquaintances, and nothing more. And it is precisely this line of action that utterly breaks down a man's defences, and makes him more hopelessly than ever the slave of his fair conqueror. If a woman declares open hostilities against him, runs him down behind his back, snubs him to his face, shuns his society,--this at least shows that she considers his attachment of some consequence--consequence enough to take notice of, though the notice be unfavorable. His self-respect may come to the rescue, or his piqued vanity may save him by converting love into enmity. But a perseverance in never noticing his love, and feigning to be ignorant of its existence, completely establishes her supremacy over him. A Frenchman, who has conceived designs against a married lady, only seeks to throw dust in the husband's eyes, and then if he cannot succeed in his final object, at least to establish sufficient intimacy to give him a plausible pretext for saying that he has succeeded; for in such a matter he is not scrupulous about lying a little--or a great deal. An American, bad enough for a similar intention (which usually presupposes a considerable amount of _Parisianization_), acts as much like a Frenchman--if anything, rather worse. An Englishman is not usually moved to the desire of an intrigue by vanity, but driven into it by sheer passion, and his first impulse is to run bodily off with the object of his misplaced affection; to take her and himself out of the country, as if he could thereby travel out of his moral responsibilities. Reader, did you ever notice, or having noticed, did you ever ponder upon the geographical distribution of morals and propriety which is so marked and almost peculiar a feature of the Anglo-Saxon mind? In certain outward looks and habits, the English may be unchangeable and unmistakeable all over the globe; but their ethical code is certainly not the same at home and abroad. It is pretty much so with an American, too, before he has become irreparably Parisianized. When he puts on his travelling habits, he takes off his puritan habits, and makes light of doing things abroad which he would be the first to anathematize at home. Observe, we are not speaking of the deeply religious, nor yet of the openly profligate class in either country, but of the general run of respectable men who travel; they regard a great part of their morality and their manners as intended solely for home consumption; while a Frenchman or a German, if his home standard is not so high, lives better up to it abroad. And yet many Englishmen, and some Americans, wonder why their countrymen are so unpopular as foreign travellers! Ashburner, then, wanted to run away with Mrs. Harrison. How he could have supported her never entered into his thoughts, nor did he consider what the effect would be on his own prospects. He did not reflect, either, how miserably selfish it was in him, after all, to expect that this woman would give up her fortune and position, her children, her unbounded legitimate domination over her husband, for his boyish passion, and how infinitesimally small the probability that she would do so crazy a thing. Nor did Harrison ever arise before his mind as a present obstacle or future danger; and this was less frantic than most of his overlookings. The broker was a strong and courageous man, and probably had been once very much in love with his wife; but at that time, so far from putting a straw in the way of any man who wanted to relieve him of her, he would probably have been willing to pay his expenses into the bargain. But how to declare his passion--that was the question. He saw that the initiatory steps, and very decided ones, must be taken on his part; and it was not easy to find the lady alone ten minutes together. People lived at Newport as if they were in the open air, and the volunteer police of ordinary gossip made private interviews between well-known people a matter of extreme difficulty. A Frenchman similarly placed would have brought the affair to a crisis much sooner: he would have found a thousand ways of disclosing his feelings, and at the same time dexterously leaving himself a loop-hole of escape. Very clever at these things are the Gauls; they will make an avowal in full ball-room, under cover of the music, if there is no other chance to be had. But tact in love affairs is not a characteristic of the Englishman, especially at Ashburner's age. He had none of this mischievous dexterity; perhaps it is just as well when a man has not, both for himself and for society. He thought of writing, and actually began many letters or notes, or billet-doux, or whatever they might be called; but they always seemed so absurd (as truly they were), that he invariably tore them up when half-finished. He thought of serving up his flame in verse (for about this time the unhappy youth wrote many verses, which on his return to sanity he very wisely made away with); but his emotion lay too deep for verse, and his performances seemed even to himself too ridiculous for him to dream of presenting them. Still he must make a beginning somehow; he could not ask her to run away with him apropos of nothing. One of his great anxieties, you may be sure, was to find out if any other man stood in his way, and who that man might be. His first impulses were to be indiscriminately jealous of every man he saw talking or walking with her; but on studying out alone the result of his observations, he could not discover that she affected any one man more than another. For this was one of her happy arts, that she made herself attractive to all without showing a marked preference for any one. White, who among his other accomplishments had a knack of quoting the standard poets, compared her to Pope's Belinda--saying, that her lively looks disclosed a sprightly mind, and that she extended smiles to all, and favors to none. So that Ashburner's jealousy could find no fixed object to light on. At one time he had been terribly afraid of Le Roi, chiefly from having heard the lady praise him for his accomplishments and agreeable manners. But once he heard Sedley say, that Mrs. Harrison had been worrying Le Roi half out of his wits, and quite out of his temper. "How so?" "Oh, she was praising you, and saying how much she liked the English character, and how true and honest your countrymen were--so much more to be depended on than the French--and more manly, too; and altogether she worked him up into such a rage against _ces insulaires_, that he went off ready to swear." And then Ashburner suspected what he afterwards became certain of--that this was only one of the pleasant little ways the woman had of amusing herself. Whenever she found two men who were enemies, or rivals, or antagonists in any way, she would praise each to the other, on purpose to aggravate them: and very successful she was in her purpose; for she had the greatest appearance of sincerity, and whatever she said seemed to come right out of her heart. But if any lingering fears of Le Roi still haunted the Englishman's mind, they were dispelled by his departure along with the main body of the exclusives. Though always proud to be seen in the company of a conspicuous character like Mrs. Harrison, the Vicomte more particularly cultivated the fashionables proper, and gladly embraced the opportunity of following, in the train of the Robinsons. Perhaps, after all, Ashburner would have preferred being able to concentrate his suspicions upon one definite person, to feeling a vague distrust of somebody he knew not whom, especially as the presence of a rival might have brought the affair to a crisis sooner. To a crisis it was approaching, nevertheless, for his passion now began to tell on him. He looked pale, and grew nervous and weak--lay awake at nights, which he had never done before, except when going in for the Tripos at Cambridge--and was positively off his feed, which he had never been at any previous period of his life. He thought of tearing himself away from the place--the wisest course, doubtless; but, just as he had made up his mind to go by the next stage, Mrs. Harrison, as if she divined what he was about, would upset all his plans by a few words, or a look or smile--some little expression which meant nothing, and could never be used against her; but which, by a man in his state, might be interpreted to mean a great deal. One morning the crisis came--not that there was any particular reason for it then more than at any other time, only he could hold out no longer. It was a beautiful day, and they had been strolling in one of the few endurable walks the place afforded--a winding alley near the hotel, but shrouded in trees, and it was just at the time when most of the inhabitants were at ten-pins, so that they were tolerably alone. Now, if ever, was the time; but the more he tried to introduce the subject, the less possible he found it to make a beginning, and all the while he could not avoid a dim suspicion that Mrs. Harrison knew perfectly well what he was trying to drive at, and took a mischievous pleasure in saying nothing to help him along. So they talked about his travels and hers, and great people in England and France, and all sorts of people then at Oldport, and the weather even--all manner of ordinary topics; and then they walked some time without saying anything, and then they went back to the hotel. There he felt as if his last chance was slipping away from him, and in a sudden fit of desperate courage he followed her up to her parlor without waiting for an invitation. Hardly was the door closed--he would have given the world to have locked it--when he begged her to listen to him a few minutes on a subject of the greatest importance. The lady opened her large round eyes a little wider; it was the only sign she gave of any thing approaching to surprise. Then the young man unbosomed himself just as he stood there--not upon his knees; people used to do that--in books, at least--but nobody does now. He told her how long he had been in love with her--how he thought of her all day and all night, and how wretched he was--how he had tried to subdue his passion, knowing it was very wrong, and so forth; but really he couldn't help it, and--and--there he stuck fast; for all the time he had been making this incoherent avowal, like one in a dream, hardly knowing what he was about, but conscious only of taking a decisive step, and doing a very serious thing in a very wild way--all this time, nevertheless, he had most closely watched Mrs. Harrison, to anticipate his sentence in some look or gesture of hers. And he saw that there did not move a line in her face, or a muscle in her whole figure--not a fibre of her dress even stirred. If she had been a great block of white marble, she could not have shown less feeling, as she stood up there right opposite him. If he had asked her to choose a waistcoat pattern for him, she could not have heard him more quietly. As soon as he had fairly paused, so that she could speak without immediate interruption, she took up the reply. It was better that he should go no further, as she had already understood quite enough. She was very sorry to give him pain--it was always unpleasant to give pain to any one. She was also very sorry that he had so deceived himself, and so misapprehended her character, or misunderstood her conversation. He was very young yet, and had sense enough to get over this very soon. Of course, she would never hear any repetition of such language from him; and, on her part, she would never mention what had occurred to any one--especially not to Mr. Harrison (it was the first time he had ever heard her allude to the existence of that gentleman); and then she wound up with a look which said as plainly as the words could have done, "Now, you may go." Ashburner moved off in a more than usual state of confusion. As he approached the door it opened suddenly, and he nearly walked over one of the little Bleeckers, a flourishing specimen of Young New-York, with about three yards of green satin round his throat, and both his hands full of French novels, which he had been commissioned to bring from the circulating library. Ashburner felt like choking him, and it was only by a great effort that he contrived to pass him with a barely civil species of nod. But as he went out, he could not refrain from casting one glance back at Mrs. Harrison. She had taken off her bonnet (which in America is denominated a hat), and was tranquilly arranging her hair at the glass. Somehow or other he found his way down stairs, and rushed off into the country on a tearing walk, enraged and disgusted with every thing, and with himself most of all. When a man has made up his mind to commit a sin, and then has been disappointed in the fruition of it--when he has sold the birthright of his integrity, without getting the miserable mess of pottage for it which he expected, his feelings are not the most enviable. Ashburner was angry enough to marry the first heiress he met with. First, he half resolved to get up a desperate flirtation with Mrs. Benson; but the success of his first attempt was not encouraging to the prosecution of a second. To kill himself was not in his line; but he felt very like killing some one else. He still feared he might have been made a screen for some other man. But if the other man existed, he could only be reached by fighting successively all the single men of "our set," and a fair sprinkling of those in the second set. Then he thought he must at least leave the place, but his pride still revolted at the idea of running away before a woman. Finally, after walking about ten miles, and losing his dinner, he sobered down gradually, and thought what a fool he had been; and the issue of his cogitations was a very wise double conclusion. He formed a higher opinion of the virtue of American women, and he never attempted any experiments on another. From Sharpe's London Magazine. THE MAN OF TACT. There is no distinctive term more frequently employed, and less generally understood, than the word "Tact." It is in every one's mouth, and many have a vague notion of its meaning, who yet, if required, would find no slight difficulty in giving its definition. It is the application of perceptive common-sense to life's practical details; the correct adaptation of means to ends, from an intuitive knowledge of character, blended with a careful concealment, a discreet evasion of our own, except when amiable faults are avowed, to enhance the impression of our candor. Cameleon-like, "tact" assumes the color of contingent circumstances,--is the vague, yet potent spirit, with its shadowless finger arresting the impulses; an unseen ruler of the thoughts, winding its gossamer yet adamantine meshes like a spell; the uncaught "hic et ubique" arbiter of mortal destinies embodied in a fellow-mortal. When we speak of the "man of tact," as of one in whom this quality predominates,--as hereafter we shall speak of the man of honor, of genius, and of sense, we must confess that above most other characteristics, this is especially absorbent in its influence, and generally usurps the government of the whole man. It collects into its own stream the channels of other motives, which it renders tributary, until it pervades the whole moral surface with one obliterating deluge. If not watched, it will hence induce a general deceptiveness, for the other impulses will partake of its color, shrewdness will become cunning, discretion will change into artful dexterity. Its very progress is sinuous and oblique, never more so than when assuming the guise of straightforwardness and truth; but if divested of its baser elements, it will soar into the higher intellectuals, and will claim affinity to practical observation, or, to speak phrenologically, to causality. In this view it combines with prudence, also with self-discipline, in the regulation of the temper; in fact, is the child of judgment, inheriting with its parent's calmness somewhat of her coldness too. Observe that man sitting in the private room of one of our largest mercantile establishments. Risen from a low grade to the direction of a vast concern, at one time intrusted with a mission abroad of a most important yet delicate character, he owes the eminence he has attained entirely to tact. The features are now in repose, take your opportunity to watch them (for they are seldom so, and if he were aware of observation, would assume a different expression); how the wear upon nerves, even of such flexibility, imparts to the fatigued countenance an air of study, ceaseless even in comparative inaction. The open and bald forehead, clear, expansive, impending over deep-set, small, yet fathomless eyes, restless and anxious in their motion; the lips fullish, wearing at the corner a half-contemptuous yet good-humored self-contentment, which tells of the owner's disdain for the game of life, and yet of triumphant complacency at his own successful skill in it. He smiles! Ah! he is thinking of how he deluded that shallow fop, Lord F----, whom fortune raised kindly to conceal his puerilites by a coronet; or perhaps (as his eye dilates with haughtier gaze) he dreams of having struck a nobler quarry, when he outwitted the subtle Count de P----; for neither thought they were following aught but the suggestion of their own will. This is the mystery and mastery of tact. Had his victims seen that smile, the game would have been lost; but he was different to each, the man was changed. The lordling saw before him a free hearty abettor of youthful folly, an Apicius, not a Mentor, one versed in life's vanities, yet still ready to quaff the draught he satirized; sagacious in criticising pleasure, yet reckless as the youngest in its pursuit; but to the Count, the deferential air, the silent evidence of every action, so sedulously courteous, yet so artless, attesting the listener's (for he spoke but to inquire as if of an oracle, and demurred but to render conviction more gracefully attractive) reverence for the old diplomatist's sagacity; the rejoinder dexterously introduced to confirm confidence in his visitor that he was not wasting his instruction,--these and the thousand nameless points of tact, dipped in the fountain of his own deep counsel, instilled the wary practiser's motives into the mind of one, apparently his confessed master in the art of diplomacy, convinced the Count that he was regarded as the condensation of profound thought, of astute sagacity; and it so happened, that if there was one qualification in which the foreigner especially exulted more than any other, it was upon his dexterity in deciphering disposition--in his thorough knowledge of human nature! We have said he was an adept in listening: indeed it was averred that he obtained a large estate by the quiet attention with which he listened to the toothless twaddle of a senile Dowager--age's garrulity--the echo of an empty hall which thought has quitted. He rarely, however, in any case interrupts the driest drawler, for he has tutored attendants who understand not only whom to admit, but also a hint as to the proper duration of a conference, and these with ready message cut short the intruder's dull delay. If, also, in public or private he be himself interrupted, he never loses his temper or the point; resumes the thread just where it was broken, and with polite, yet unswerving pertinacity, directs the minds of all to the wished-for end, in spite of every purposed or involuntary attempt to distract them into devious channels. Some men, like jackdaws, proclaim with noisy loquaciousness their most private matters, alarming the public horizon with egotistical chatter about their own nests: "tact," as the master of it, Cromwell, knew, acknowledges the "safety of silence," and like the rat,--a subtle politician!--saps vast fabrics by an insidious, unheard gnawing underground! Briefly, this man listens much, speaks little--mostly the latter when he would conceal his thoughts--keeps his eyes and ears open, his mouth and his heart closed. With numerous admirers, he has many enemies--the latter's hostility is however repressed by fear, and the regard of the other, somehow, never ripens into love; it may be that selfishness, the concomitant of tact, forbids affection. We have shown the fair side of the portrait hitherto drawn from the respectable sphere (as it is called) of life; but it has its evil counterpart or reverse to be seen in a notorious receiver of stolen property, ever watched by, yet ever baffling the police,--one, who, having helped many to the hulks, has by sheer cunning (tact in motley!) himself escaped. The consciences of both are similarly guided by the law of public not private morality--interest is the ruling principle of both; even the drudgery of each assimilates, for a life of dissimulation is a very hard one. What actor would be _always_ on the stage? Both are commercial men in a sense, though one lives at the west-end, the other near Seven-dials; sometimes they meet,--the rich, upon--the poor, before, the bench--"the Justice" in silk "frowns" on the speciously "simple thief" in rags; yet nature has cut the countenances of both from the same piece, and true it is that her "one touch," the prevalence of tact, successful here,--in hard confronting there--renders both "akin." Yet not always does "tact" array itself in silken softness, or "stoop to conquer:" some ply the trade with no less success under the guise of rough and candid honesty: these men declare loudly that they always speak their minds: come upon us with a bluff sincerity, disarming prudence by an appearance of incautious trust and open-heartedness. They "cannot cog," they cannot sue, they profess noisily to abhor "humbug," as they term it, in every shape:--a strange ingratitude _to what they chiefly thrive by_; for certain it is, that though doubtlessly "all honorable men," these are the most insidious tacticians, and generally of the worst kind. Hitherto we have spoken of "tact" in its deteriorated shape, and indeed the word seems to have got so bad a name that its bare mention breathes distrust. Yet there is a medium class of men who, like William of Orange, reduce violent feelings even to frigidity, and allowing discretion her widest scope, do not entirely obliterate the affections. Machiavelli says that "seldom men of mean fortunes attain to high degrees without force or fraud, and generally rather by the latter than the former," and hence he recommends guile to be adopted--but these, to whom we now allude, practise prudence, yet preserve their guileless sincerity. Here, though the term is rather univocal, and seems to apply only to our concerns with others, its healthy action is forcibly evinced on the individual's mind, for it disciplines the impulses and reviews for ready co-action reason's powers. So high did the ancients in their sense regard it, that they elevated it to a divinity--"Nullum numen adest si sit Prudentia," though, as Addison observes, "this sort of discretion has no place in private conversation between intimate friends. It occupies a neutral ground between caution and art, uses expediency instead of integrity, and hence deceives us by the first, when we look for the consistency of the latter." Almost ever combined with conceit (the pride of questionable success), it never possesses the magnanimity to confess an error; for this detracting from its arrogated infallibility might deteriorate its influence: it will acknowledge vices (if polite), but will never plead guilty to mistakes, since the grossest charge against the "man of tact" at the bar of self, much more of public judgment, is not the perpetration of a sin--but the commission of a blunder! From the "Revue des Deux Mondes." A WRECK OF THE OLD FRENCH ARISTOCRACY. AN INCIDENT OF TRAVEL IN THE LIMOUSIN. It is truly a great mistake to measure the interest of a journey by its duration, and that of a country by its remoteness; and one is deceived in supposing that it is necessary to go afar in quest of adventures, and make a voyage two years long in order to see curious sights. There is a certain author who has made "a journey around his room" more fruitful in incidents of all descriptions than the numberless voyages of an infinity of sailors that I know; and one may make, thank heaven! many an interesting trip without passing beyond the "neighboring shores" from which La Fontaine forbids us to wander. The only thing is, that it is less easy to travel after this fashion than the other, and that it requires a lengthened preparation. In order to observe skilfully, one must be accustomed to look around one. We scarcely become curious except after long habit, and, strange to say, our curiosity seems to increase in proportion as we satisfy it. When we know a great deal we desire to know still more, and it is remarkable that those alone desire to see no sights who have never had any sights to see. Moreover, it is necessary to have contemplated the grandest spectacles of nature in order to understand and love her least conspicuous wonders; for nature does not surrender herself to the first comer. She is a chaste and severe divinity, who admits to her intimacy those alone who have deserved it by long contemplations and a constant worship: and I firmly believe that it is necessary to have travelled round the world in order profitably and agreeably to make the tour of one's garden. If many years of youth spent in wandering by land and sea, can render me an authority in regard to travels, then am I justified in declaring, that in none of my more distant courses have I found more interest and pleasure than in the little trip I am now about to narrate. There were, then, four of us, all alike young, gay, active, clad in shooting costume, going straight ahead, without fixed plan or preconcerted itinerary, marching at hap-hazard in these desert _landes_, respiring freely the pungent odor of the broom, roaming from hill to hill without other rallying point than the top of a mountain which pointed out the direction of the low lands. After four hours' walk we discovered that this mountain was still very far distant, and that the sun was sinking below the horizon. We had already left behind us the wildest part of the department of the _Correze_. To woods of pine and birch succeeded enormous chestnut-trees; the sterile heath gave place to cultivated fields. Here and there some houses displayed their straw-colored roofs, and some scattered laborers beheld us pass by with gaping suspicion. To tell the truth, we had all of us a tolerably gallows look. In this wretched country, where every one lives on from day to day without quitting his little inclosure, without even hearing an echo from afar, four bearded marauders like ourselves, avoiding the beaten road, and marching rapidly across stubble and thicket, presented no ordinary rencontre. All on a sudden the clouds began to gather, and, by way of varying our sensations, a terrific tempest burst over our heads. It was the first incident of our journey. Drenched through in a moment by this diluvian rain, we rushed, with the ardor of soldiers mounting a breach, towards a village perched like a magpie's nest on the summit of the hill we were ascending. A house of capacious size, but of dismal and ruinous appearance, arose before us. We rushed in at a charging pace, and found that it was deserted, except that near the hearth, where smouldered the embers of the most miserable fire in the world, an infant was deposited in, or rather tied to, his cradle, according to the fashion of the country. By the aid of a stout bandage they had swaddled him up like a mummy, and duly sealed him to the planks of the little box, which served him for a bed. In addition, his head was carefully turned toward the fire, so that his cranium was in a state of continual ebullition, such being the appointed regimen of the neighborhood. At the sight of our strange visages, the little one, after staring at us for a moment or two, proceeded to utter the most lamentable outcries. I rocked his cradle with the most paternal solicitude, but could not succeed in quieting him. On the contrary, his screams became positively heart-rending, and we were almost ready to smother him outright in order to put a stop to his roaring. At this summons a woman entered abruptly into the house, and stared at us with an expression of alarm. It was incumbent on us to explain that we were no pilferers, and this was no easy matter. The young mother evidently looked on us with suspicion. She was not altogether a mere peasant,--at least she wore, instead of the little straw hat trimmed with black velvet, which is the ordinary head-dress of the countrywomen, a bonnet, which in the Limousin is a certain indication of pretensions to the rank of the _bourgeoise_. Her robe, besides, however inelegant it might be, was nevertheless town-made. These matters I noticed at a glance, whilst one of my companions gave the needful explanations as to our pacific intentions. Our hostess pretended to be satisfied. She removed the cradle, threw some shavings into the fire to revive it, and sat herself down with a cold, constrained manner, in which I could discover at once considerable embarrassment, accompanied by a certain air of dignity. Never had I seen a Limousin peasant take a seat in the presence of _gentlemen_, and I speedily made another discovery which not a little perplexed me. The fire as it revived had thrown a glow upon the hearthstone, which was of cast-iron, and presented a large armorial escutcheon. This display astonished me. I looked round again at the smoke-dried kitchen in which we sat; it was a miserable place. The ceiling was falling piecemeal; in the pavement, disjointed and worn, were three or four muddy holes but rarely cleared out, the dampness of which was kept up by the continual dripping of a dozen cream cheeses, suspended in a long basket of osiers. Two beds, a large table, and a few dilapidated chairs, composed the furniture of the apartment, which was pervaded by a sour and offensive smell, apparently very attractive to a huge sow whose grunting snout was ever and anon thrust into the entrance of the doorway. Whence, then, this curious hearthstone? I looked more attentively at the young woman, and discovered in her countenance a certain air of distinction. I then inquired of her at what place we were. "Monsieur is jesting at me, doubtless," she pretty sharply replied. I assured her I had no such intention, and was really ignorant of the name of the village. "It is not a village, sir," she resumed, "it is a town. You are at the Puy d'Arnac, in the Canton of Beaulieu." A native of Marseilles would hardly have named the _Canebiere_ with greater satisfaction. I knew that the Puy d'Arnac gave its name to a celebrated growth of the _Correze_, and I thought I understood the lofty tone of the reply. All on a sudden, one of my companions, whom we nicknamed the "Broker," because he groped into all sorts of places, and, with amusing perseverance, hunted out objects of art and curiosity even in hovels, touched my elbow, and asked me if I had noticed the picture which was half-hidden under the serge curtains of one of the beds. I had not yet observed it, and got up to look at it. It was the portrait of a general officer of the time of Louis XV. The frame, sculptured and gilt, struck me still more, being really beautiful. "This is a discovery indeed," said my friend to me, while I inquired of the young woman where such a portrait could have come from. "Where could it have come from, Monsieur?" she haughtily replied; "it is the portrait of my grandfather." "Aha!" we exclaimed, all four of us, turning ourselves round with surprise. With one hand our hostess stirred the fire, with an indifference evidently affected, while with the other she rocked the little box in which her infant was asleep. "Might I presume to inquire the name of Monsieur your grandfather?" said I, drawing near to her. "He was the Count of Anteroches," was her reply. "What, the Count of Anteroches, who commanded the French guards at the battle of Fontenoy?"[5] "You have heard him spoken of, then?" resumed the peasant girl, with a smile. My friend the Broker stood as if stupefied before the picture. All of a sudden he wheeled round, and, gravely removing his cap, repeated with a theatrical air the celebrated saying of M. d'Anteroches,--"Fire first, _Messieurs les Anglais_; we are Frenchmen, and must do you the honors!" This anecdote is, to my thinking, the most charming and most thoroughly stamped with the image of the age of any recorded in history. With regard to these celebrated sayings uttered in battles, I must indeed confess that I am very skeptical. Little as I may be of a soldier, I have a notion that it is not in an engagement as at the Olympic Circus, and that in the midst of fire, smoke, and musketry, generals must have other work on their hands than to utter these pretty epigrams, which there is moreover no shorthand writer at hand to take down. I know that Cambronne was annoyed when they recalled to him his splendid exclamation at Waterloo, "_La garde meurt et ne se rend pas!_" (The guard dies, and does not surrender!) "an invention the more clumsy," said he, "that I am not yet dead, and that I really did surrender." I have even discovered that this saying was invented by a member of the Institute, for the greater satisfaction of the readers of the "Yellow Dwarf," in which he wrote, in 1815, together with Benjamin Constant and many other celebrated malcontents.[6] The speeches of Leonidas find me equally incredulous. But, wheresoever they may come from, I delight in these anecdotes, which personify an entire epoch, and engrave it upon the memory with a single stroke. We may defy the historian who seeks to characterize the end of the last century and the beginning of the present, to find two epigrams more striking than the words attributed to Anteroches and Cambronne--to two French officers--one commanding the French guards, the other the old guard; both fighting for their country, at an interval of seventy years, with the same enemy, and on the same ground: for it is a singular coincidence that Fontenoy and Waterloo are but little distant from each other, and Heaven saw fit to ordain that the game of success and reverse should be played out almost upon the same fields. "Fire first, _Messieurs les Anglais_!" Is it not the type of that easy and adorable, that ironical and _blasé_ nobility, who pushed the contempt of life even to insanity, and the worship of courtesy and honor even to the sublime?--who endowed their country with such a renown for elegance, high-breeding, and gallantry, that all its demagogic saturnalia never have effaced it, and never will?--a nobility reckless, if you please, but assuredly charming, and perfectly French withal, who gayly passed through life without ever doing the morrow the honor of thinking about it, and who, beholding one day the earth give way beneath their feet, looked into the abyss without a wink, without alarming themselves, without belying themselves, and went down alive and whole into the gulf, disdaining all defence, "without fear," if not "without reproach." Between the saying of Anteroches and that of Cambronne there is a great gap; we find that the revolution has passed through it. The gentleman, refined even to exaggeration, has disappeared, and we have instead the rude language of democracy--"_La garde meurt et ne se rend pas_"--this is heroism, no doubt, but heroism of another sort. Never did the _chauvinism_ of this present time light upon a more cornelian device, but do you not see in it the theatrical affectation, the melo-dramatic emphasis of another race? That he had no fear of death, and no idea of surrendering--this is what the gentleman of Fontenoy had no intention of declaring; it ought to have been well known--his followers had already given proof of it for ages past. To be brave alone to him was nothing--he must be as elegant in battle as he was at the ball. What signified death to that incomparable race who afterwards composed madrigals in prison, and ascended the scaffold with a smile, their step elastic, and their hand in the waistcoat pocket, a cocked hat under their arm, and a rose-bud between their lips? This epoch was personified in my eyes by the handsome and gentle countenance of the Count of Anteroches. After more than a hundred years I had discovered by chance, myself, an obscure wayfarer, in an unknown and miserable cabin, where his grand-daughter was living in the midst of her poultry, the portrait of this brilliant officer, to whose name will ever attach an elegant and charming renown; for if, like Cambronne, Anteroches did not really utter the words attributed to him, they have still been lent to him, and if thus lent, assuredly because there were grounds for it. After these over-lengthy reflections, I turned toward the peasant woman, who now inspired me with profound commiseration. She continued to rock to and fro her bandaged infant, who was in very right and deed the Count of Anteroches. I inquired what was the occupation of her husband. "He is dead," she replied; "I was better off during his lifetime. He was a _gendarme_, Monsieur." "A _gendarme_!" I repeated with surprise. "Yes," replied Madame d'Anteroches, who understood not the cause of my astonishment, "he had even passed as a brigadier during his latter years: we managed our little affairs very comfortably." He was a brigadier of gendarmerie--content to be so--he managed his little affairs very comfortably--and his grandfather, as I find it in the "Military Records of France," had been named Marshal on the 25th of July, 1762; at the same time as the Marquis of Boufflers and the Duke of Mazarine! Would not the rabble of Paris do well to inquire a little before exclaiming so loudly against the privileges of the aristocracy? Moreover, it seems to me that the government of France should not allow the grandchildren of the Count of Anteroches to be sunk--as they are--into deplorable indigence. Apocryphal or otherwise the epigram of Fontenoy should at least be worth subsistence to all who bear this name. Many enjoy pensions and are maintained by France, who would find it very difficult to produce a similar claim, and the new republic would act wisely by repairing, when occasion turns up, the injustices of her eldest sister. But it was now high time for us to leave. It was evident that we embarrassed our hostess, and since we had discovered her name we were no less embarrassed ourselves. I could not get over her coarse stuff gown, her filthy kitchen, and her familiar sow. It would have been cruel to ask for her hospitality, and how could we offer to pay our score? Besides, we knew that a rich proprietor of our acquaintance resided not far from Puy d'Arnac; we, therefore, took our leave of the high-born peasant with many excuses and thanks. At the moment I passed the threshold, I cast a parting glance upon the portrait. The fire lighted it up at that instant with so singular a brilliancy that it almost appeared animated. It seemed as if the countenance of M. d'Anteroches was alive, and that the handsome officer looked sadly down from the height of his gilded frame upon the utter misery of his descendants. "Oh! decadence! decadence of France!" I exclaimed to myself, and rushed bravely forth with my companions into the pelting rain. FOOTNOTES: [5] Fontenoy, we should here observe, is, we believe, the _only_ battle in which the English were defeated by the French, and it is, of course, a subject of no little glorification with our neighbors. [6] The well-known burst of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo, "Up, guards, and at them!" has been declared, upon the best authority, namely, his own, to be no less apocryphal than those above-mentioned. From Fraser's Magazine THE CLOISTER-LIFE OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. The 28th of September, 1556, was a great day in the annals of Laredo, in Biscay. Once a commercial station of the Romans, and, in later times, the naval arsenal whence St. Ferdinand sailed to the Guadalquivir and the conquest of Seville, its haven is now so decayed and sand-choked, that it can scarcely afford shelter to a fishing-craft. Here, however, on the day in question, three centuries ago, a fleet of seventy Flemish and Spanish sail cast anchor. From a frigate bearing the imperial standard of the house of Austria came a group of gentlemen and ladies, of whom the principal personage was a spare and sallow man, past the middle age, and plainly attired in mourning. He was received at the landing-place by the bishop of Salamanca and some attendants, and being worn with suffering and fatigue, he was carried up from the boat in a chair. By his side walked two ladies, in widows' weeds, who appeared to be about the same age as himself, and whose pale features, both in cast and expression, strongly resembled his own. Since Columbus stepped ashore at Palos, with his red men from the New World, Spain had seen no debarkation so remarkable; for the voyagers were, the emperor Charles V. and his sisters, Mary queen of Hungary, and Eleanor, queen of Portugal and France, now on their way from Brussels, where they had made their last appearance on the stage of the world, to those Spanish cloisters, wherein they had resolved to await the hour when the curtain should drop on life itself. Charles himself appears to have been powerfully affected by the scene and circumstances around him. Kneeling upon the long-desired soil of Spain, he is said to have kissed the earth, ejaculating, "I salute thee, O common mother! Naked came I forth of the womb to receive the treasures of the earth, and naked am I about to return to the bosom of the universal mother." He then drew from his bosom the crucifix which he always wore, and kissing it devoutly, returned thanks to the Saviour for having thus brought him in safety to the wished-for haven. The ocean itself furnished its comment upon the irretraceable step which he had taken. From Flushing to Laredo, the weather had been calm, and the voyage prosperous: but the evening of the day of landing closed with a storm, which shattered and dispersed the fleet, and sunk the frigate which the emperor had quitted a few hours before. This accident must have recalled to his recollection a similar escape which he had made many years before on his coronation-day at Bologna. There he had just passed through a wooden gallery which connected his palace with the church where the pope and the crown awaited him, when the props upon which the structure rested gave way, and it fell with a sudden crash, killing several persons in the street below. The emperor's first care, after landing, was to send a message to the general of the order of St. Jerome, requiring his attendance at Valladolid, and desiring that no time might be lost in preparing the convent of Yuste for his reception. He himself set forward, as soon as he was able, and was carried sometimes in a horse-litter, sometimes in a chair on men's shoulders, by slow and painful stages to Burgos. Near that ancient city he was met by the constable of Castille, Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, who lodged him for some days in the noble palace of his family, known as the Casa del Cordon, from a massive cord of St. Francis, wrought in stone, with which the architect has adorned and protected the great portal. The little town of Dueñas was the next resting-place, and there its lord, the count of Buendia, did the honors of his feudal castle on the adjacent height rising abruptly from the bare plains of the Arlanzon. At Torquemada, the royal party was received by the bishop of the diocese, Pedro de Gasca, a divine, whose skilful diplomacy, in repressing a formidable rebellion, had saved Peru to Castille, and who had lately been rewarded by the emperor with the mitre of Palencia. But in spite of these demonstrations of respect and gratitude, Charles was made painfully sensible of the change which his own act had wrought in his condition. The barons and the great churchmen, who, a few months before, would have flocked from all parts to do him honor, now appeared in very scanty numbers, or they permitted him to pass unnoticed through the lands and by the homes which they perhaps owed to his bounty. He and his sister Eleanor must have remembered with a sigh the time when he first set foot in Spain, thirty-eight years before, and found the shores of Asturias, and the highways of Castille, thronged with loyal crowds, hastening to tender their homage. In the forgetfulness of the new generation, he may also have been reminded how he himself had treated, with coldness and slighting, the great cardinal Ximenes, who had worn out his declining years in defending and maintaining the prerogatives of the catholic crown. His long and varied experience of men made him incapable of deriving any pleasure from their applause, but not altogether incapable of being pained by their neglect. His pride was hurt at finding himself so quickly forgotten; and he is said to have evinced a bitter sense of the surprise, by the remark, "I might well say that I was naked!" It is probable, therefore, that he declined the honors of a public entry into Valladolid, not merely from a desire to shun the pomps and vanities of state, but also from a secret apprehension that it might prove but a pitiful shadow of former pageants. That the citizens might not be balked of their show, while the emperor entered privately on the 23rd of October, it was agreed that the two queens, his sisters, should make their appearance there in a public manner the next day. Valladolid was at that time the opulent and flourishing capital of Spain, and the seat of government, carried on under the regency of the emperor's daughter, Juanna. This young princess was the widow of the prince of Brazil, heir-apparent of the crown of Portugal, and mother of the unfortunate king Sebastian. She performed the duties of her high place with great prudence, firmness, and moderation; but with this peculiarity, that she appeared at her public receptions closely veiled, allowing her face to be seen only for a moment, that the foreign ambassadors might be satisfied of her personal identity. With her nephew, Don Carlos, then a boy of ten years old, by her side, the Infanta met her father on the staircase of the palace of the Count of Melito, which he had chosen for his place of sojourn. The day following, the arrival of the two queens was celebrated by a grand procession, and by an evening banquet and ball in the royal palace, at which the emperor appears to have been present. Some few of the grandees, the Admiral and the Constable of Castille, Benavente, Astorga, Sesa, and others, were there to do honor to their ancient lord, whose hand was also kissed in due form by the members of the council of Castille. At this ball, or perhaps at some later festivity, Charles caused the wives of all his personal attendants to be assembled around him, and bade each, in particular, farewell. Perico de Sant Erbas, a famous jester of the court, passing by at the moment, the emperor good-humoredly saluted him by taking off his hat. "What! do you uncover to me?" said the bitter fool; "does it mean that you are no longer emperor?" "No, Pedro," replied the object of the jest; "it means that I have nothing to give you beyond this courtesy." During his stay of ten days, Charles bestowed but a passing glance on the machine of government over which he had so long presided, and which was now directed by his demure daughter. The secretary of the council, Juan Vazquez de Molina, an old and trusted servant of his own, was the only public man with whom he held any confidential converse. The new rooms which he had caused to be erected at Yuste, and the ordering of his life there, were now of more moment to him than the movements of the leaguers in Flanders, or the state of opinion in Germany. He therefore gave frequent audiences to Francisco de Tofiño, the general of the Jeromites, and to Fray Martin de Angulo, prior of Yuste. Having resolved that his solitude should be shared by his natural son, Don Juan of Austria, a nameless lad of ten, then living in the family of his mayordomo, Luis de Quixada, he despatched that trusty follower to remove his household from Castille to Estremadura. It was at Valladolid that Charles saw for the first and last time the ill-fated child who bore his name, and had the prospect one day of wearing some of his crowns. Although only ten years old, Don Carlos had already shown symptoms of the mental malady which darkened the long life of queen Juana, his great-grandmother by the side both of his father, Philip of Spain, and of his mother, Mary of Portugal. Of a sullen and passionate temper, he lived in a state of perpetual rebellion against his aunt, and displayed in the nursery the weakly mischievous spirit which marked his short career at his father's court. His grandfather appears not to have suspected that his mind was diseased, but to have regarded him as a forward and untractable child, whose future interests would be best served by an unsparing use of the rod. He therefore recommended increased severity of discipline, and remarked to his sisters, that he had observed with concern the boy's unpromising conduct and manners, and that it was very doubtful how the man would turn out. This opinion was conveyed by queen Eleanor to Philip II., who had requested his aunt to note carefully the impression left by his son on the emperor's mind; and it is said to have laid the foundation for the aversion which the king entertained towards Carlos. Following the advice of her father, the Infanta soon after ordered the removal of the prince to Burgos; but the plague breaking out in that city, he was sent, by an ominous chance, to Tordesillas, to the palace from whose windows the unhappy Juana, dead to the living world, had gazed for forty-seven years at the sepulchre of her fair and faithless lord. A sojourn of about ten days at Valladolid sufficed the emperor for rest, and for the preparations for his journey. His daughter was occupied with the duties of administration; and of his sisters he appears to have seen enough on the way from Flanders. Whether it was that he was weary of these royal matrons, or that he regarded their society as a worldly enjoyment which he ought to forego, he declined their proposal to come and reside near his retreat, at Plasencia. After much debate, they finally chose Guadalaxara as their residence, where they quarelled with the duke of Infantado for refusing them his palace, and went to open war with the alcalde for imprisoning one of their serving-men. Early in November,[7] their brother set out on his last earthly journey. The distance from Valladolid to Yuste was between forty and fifty leagues, or somewhere between 130 and 150 English miles. The route taken has not been specified by the emperor's biographers. The best and the easiest road lay through Salamanca and Plasencia. But as he does not appear to have passed through the latter city, he probably likewise avoided the former, and the pageants and orations with which the doctors of the great university would have delighted to celebrate his visit. In that case, he must have taken the road by Medina del Campo and Peñaranda. At Medina he doubtless was lodged in the fine old palace of the crown, called the Torre de Mota, where, fifty years before, his grandmother, Isabella the Catholic, ended her noble life and glorious reign; and at Peñaranda he was probably entertained in the mansion of the Bracamontes. These two towns rise like islands in their naked undulating plains, covered partly with corn, partly with marshy heath. Southward, the country is clothed with straggling woods of evergreen oak, becoming denser at the base and on the lower slopes of the wild Sierra of Bejar, the centre of that mountain chain which forms the backbone of the Peninsula, extending from Moncayo in Aragon, to the Rock of Lisbon on the Atlantic. At the alpine town of Bejar, cresting a bold height, and overhanging a tumbling stream, the great family of the Zuñigas, created dukes of the place by Isabella, and known to fame in arts and arms and the dedication of Don Quixote, possess a noble castle, ruined by the French, which there can be little doubt served as a halting-place for the imperial pilgrim. He advanced by very short stages, travelling in a litter, and often suffering great pain. But his spirits rose as he neared the desired haven. In the craggy gorge of Puertonuevo, as he was being carried over some unusually difficult ground in a chair, his attendants were deploring the extreme ruggedness of the pass. "I shall never have to go through another," said he, "and truly it is worth enduring some pain to reach so sweet and healthy a resting place as Yuste." Having crossed the mountains without mischance, he arrived on the eleventh of November, St. Martin's day, at Xarandilla, a little village at the foot of the steep Peñanegra, and then, as now, chiefly peopled with swineherds, whose pigs, feeding in the surrounding forests, maintain the fame of porciferous Estremadura. Here he took up his abode in the castle of the count of Oropesa, head of a powerful branch of the great house of Toledo, and feudal lord of Xarandilla. This visit, which was intended to be brief, was prolonged for nearly three months. Before entering the cloister of Yuste, the emperor wished to pay off the greater part of his retinue. But for this purpose money was needful, and money was the one thing always wanting in the affairs of Spain. The delay which took place in providing it on this occasion has often been cited as an instance of the ingratitude of Philip II.; but it is probable that a bare exchequer and a clumsy system of finance, which crippled his actions as a king, have also blackened his character as a son. The emperor endured the annoyance with his usual coolness. On his arrival at the castle, he was waited on by the prior of Yuste, with whom he had already become acquainted at Valladolid. He afterwards repaid the attention by making a forenoon excursion to Yuste, and inspecting more carefully the spot which his memory and his hope had so long pictured as the sweetest nook in a world of disappointment. This visit took place on the 23d of November, St. Catharine's day. On alighting at the convent, Charles immediately repaired to the church, and prayed there awhile; after which, he was conducted over the monastic buildings, and then over the new apartments which had been erected for his reception. The plan of this addition had been made by the architect, Gaspar de Vega, from a sketch, it is said, drawn by the emperor's own hand. He now expressed himself as quite satisfied with the accuracy with which his ideas had been wrought out, and returned through the wintry woods in high good humor. The arrival at Xarandilla of Luis Quixada, with Don Juan of Austria, was another of those little incidents which had become great events in the life of Charles. As he did not choose during his life to acknowledge the youth as his son, the future hero of Lepanto passed for the page of Quixada, and was presented to his father as bearer of an offering from Doña Magdalena de Ulloa. He was then in his twelfth year, and was remarkable for his personal beauty and his engaging manners. These so captivated Charles, that he ever afterwards liked to have the boy about him; and it was one of the few solaces of his solitude to note the princely promise of this unknown son of his old age. At length, the tardy treasury messenger arrived, bearing a bag of thirty thousand ducats for the former possessor of Mexico and Peru. The emperor was now enabled to pay their wages to the servants whom he was about to discharge. Some of these he recommended to the notice of the king or the princess-regent; to others he dispensed sparing gratuities in money; and so he closed his accounts with the world. On the afternoon of the third of February, 1557, being the feast of St. Blas, he was lifted into his litter for the last time, and was borne westward along the rough mountain track, beneath the leafless oaks, to the monastery of Yuste. He was accompanied by the count of Oropesa, Don Fernando de Toledo, and his own personal suite, including the followers whom he had just discharged, but who evinced their respect by attending him to his journey's close. The cavalcade reached Yuste about five in the evening. Prior Angulo was waiting to receive his imperial guest at the gate. On alighting, the emperor, being unable to walk, was placed in a chair, and carried to the door of the church. At the threshold he was met by the whole brotherhood in procession, chanting the _Te Deum_ to the music of the organ. The altars and the aisle were brilliantly lighted up with tapers, and decked with their richest frontals, hangings, and plate. Borne through the pomp to the steps of the high altar, Charles knelt down and returned thanks to God for the happy termination of his journey, and joined in the vesper service of the brotherhood. When that was ended, the friars came to be presented to him one by one, each kissing his hand and receiving his fraternal embrace. During this ceremony, his departing servants stood round, expressing their emotion by tears and lamentations, which were still heard late in the evening, around the gate of the convent. Attended by the count of Oropesa and the gentlemen of his suite, Charles then retired to take possession of his new home, and to enter upon that life of prayer and repose for which he had so long sighed. The monastery of Yuste stands on the lower slopes of the lofty mountain chain which walls towards the north the beautiful Vera, or valley of Plasencia. The city of Plasencia is seated seven leagues to the westward in the plains below; the village of Quacos lies about an English mile to the south, towards the foot of the mountain. The monastery owes its name to a streamlet which descends from the sierra, and its origin to the piety of one Sancho Martin of Quacos, who granted in 1402 a piece of land to two hermits from Plasencia. Here these holy men built their cells and planted an orchard, and obtained, in 1408, by the favor of the Infanta Don Fernando, a bull for the foundation of a Jeromite house in the rule of St. Augustine. In spite, however, of this authority, while the works were still in progress, the friars of a neighboring convent, armed with an order from the bishop of Plasencia, set upon them and dispossessed them of their land and unfinished walls, an act of violence against which they appealed to the archbishop of Santiago. The judgment of the primate being given in their favor, they next applied for aid to their neighbor, Garci Alvarez de Toledo, lord of Oropesa, who accordingly came forth from his castle of Xarandilla, and drove out the intruders. Nor was it only with the strong hand that this noble protected the young community; for at the chapter of St. Jerome held at Guadalupe in 1415, their house would not have been received into the order but for his generosity in guaranteeing a revenue sufficient for the maintenance of a prior and twelve brethren under a rule in which mendicancy was forbidden. The buildings were also erected at his cost, and his subsequent benefactions were large and frequent. He was therefore constituted by the grateful monks protector of the convent, and the distinction became hereditary in his descendants, the counts of Oropesa. Their early struggles past, the Jeromites of Yuste grew and prospered. Gifts and bequests were the chief events in their peaceful annals. They became patrons of the chapelries and hermitages; they made them orchards and olive-groves, and their corn and wine increased. Their hostel, dispensary, and other offices, were patterns of monastic comfort and order; and in due time, they built a new church, a simple, solid, and spacious structure, in the pointed style. A few years before the emperor came to live amongst them, they had added to their small antique cloister a new quadrangle of stately proportions and elegant classical design. Though more remarkable for the natural beauty around its walls than for the vigor of the spiritual life within, Yuste did not fail to boast of its worthies. The prior Jerome, a son of the great house of Zuniga, was cited as a model of austere and active holiness. The lay brother, Melchor de Yepes, crippled in felling a huge chesnut-tree in the forest, was a pattern of bed-ridden patience and piety. Fray Hernando de Corral was the scholar and book collector of the house; although he was also, for that reason, perhaps, considered as scarcely of a sound mind. He left many copious notes in the fly-leaves of his black-letter folios. Fray Juan de Xeres, an old soldier of the great Captain, was distinguished by the gift of second-sight, and was nursed on his death-bed by the eleven thousand virgins. Still more favored was Fray Rodrigo de Caceres, for the Blessed Mary herself, in answer to his repeated prayers, came down in visible shape, and received his spirit on the eve of the feast of her Assumption. And prior Diego de San Geronimo was so popular in the Vera as a preacher, that when he grew old and infirm, the people of Garganta la Olla endeavored to lure him to their pulpit by making a road, which was called that of Fray Diego. In works of charity--that redeeming virtue of the monastic system--the fathers of Yuste were diligent and bounteous. Six hundred fanegas, or about one hundred and twenty quarters of wheat, in ordinary years, and in years of scarcity, as much as fifteen hundred fanegas, were distributed at the convent-gate; large donations of bread, meat, and oil, and some money, were made, either publicly or in private, by the prior, at Easter and other festivals; and the sick poor in the village of Quacos were freely supplied with food, medicine, and advice. The lodging, or palace, as the friars loved to call it, of the emperor, was constructed under the eye of Fray Antonio de Villacastin, a brother of the house, and afterwards well known to fame as the master of the works at the Escorial. The site of it had been inspected in May, 1554, by Philip II., then on his way to England to marry queen Mary Tudor. Backed by the massive south wall of the church, the building presented its simple front of two stories to the garden and the noontide sun. Each story contained four chambers, two on either side of a corridor, which traverses the structure from east to west, and leads at either end into a broad porch, or covered gallery, supported on pillars, and open to the air. All the rooms were furnished with ample fire-places, in accordance with the Flemish wants and ways of the inhabitants. The chambers which look on the garden are bright and pleasant, but those on the north side are gloomy, and even dark, the light being admitted only by windows opening on the corridor, or on the external and deeply-shadowed porches. Charles inhabited the upper rooms, and slept in that at the north-east corner, from which a door or window had been cut through the church wall, within the chancel, and close to the high altar. From the eastern porch, or gallery, an inclined path led down into the garden, to save him the fatigue of going up and down stairs. His attendants were, for the most part, lodged in apartments built for them near the new cloister; and the hostel of the convent was given up to the physician, the bakers, and the brewers. His private rooms being surrounded on three sides by the garden, he took exclusive possession of that, and put it under the care of gardeners of his own. The friars established their potherbs in a piece of ground to the eastward, behind some tall elm trees, and adjoining the emperor's domain, but separated from it by a high wall, which they caused to be built when they found that he wished for complete seclusion. Time, with its chances and changes, has dealt rudely with this fair home of the monarch and the monk. Yuste was sacked in 1809 by the French invader; and in later years, the Spanish reformer has annihilated the race of picturesque drones, who, for a while, re-occupied, and might have repaired the ruins of their pleasant hive. Of the two cloisters, the greater is choked with the rubbish of its fallen upper story, its richly-carved capitals peeping here and there from the soil and wild shrubs. Two sides of the smaller and older cloister still stands, with tottering blackened walls, and rotting floors and ceilings. The strong, granite-vaulted church is a hollow shell; the fine wood-work of its stalls has been partly used for fuel, partly carried off to the parish church of Quacos; and the beautiful blue and yellow tiles which lined the chancel are fast dropping from the walls. In the emperor's dwelling, the lower chambers are turned into a magazine of firewood, and in the rooms above, where he lived and died, maize and olives are garnered, and the silkworm winds its cocoon in dust and darkness. But the lovely face of nature, the hill, the forest, and the field, the generous soil and the genial sky, remain with charms unchanged, to testify how well the imperial eagle chose the nest wherein to fold his wearied wings. From the balcony of Charles's cabinet the eye ranges over a foreground of rounded knolls, clad in walnut and chestnut, in which the mountain dies gently away into the broad bosom of the Vera. Not a building is in sight, but a summer-house, peering above mulberry tops, at the lower side of the garden, and a hermitage of Our Lady of Solitude, about a mile distant, hung upon a rocky height, that swells like an isle out of the sea of forest. Immediately below the windows the garden slopes gently to the sun, shaded here and there with the massive foliage of the fig, or feathery almond boughs, and breathing perfume from tall orange-trees, cuttings of which some monks, themselves transplanted, vainly strove to keep alive at the bleak Escorial. And beyond the west wall, filling all the wide space in front of the gates of the convent and the palace, rises the noble shade of the great walnut-tree, _el nogal grande_, of Yuste--a forest king, which has seen the hermit's cell rise into a royal convent, and sink into a ruin; which has seen the beginning and the end of the Spanish order of Jerome, and the Spanish dynasty of Austria. At Xarandilla, Charles had cast aside the last shreds of the purple. The annual revenue which he had reserved to himself out of the wealth of half the world, was twelve thousand ducats, or about fifteen hundred pounds sterling. His confidential attendants were eleven in number: Luis Quixada, chamberlain and chief of the household; Martin Gatzelu, secretary; William Van Male, gentleman of the chamber; Moron, gentleman of the chamber and almoner; Juan Gaytan, steward; Henrique Matisio Charles Pubest, usher; and two valets. Juanelo Turiano, an Italian engineer, who had acquired a considerable reputation by his hydraulic works to supply water to the Alcazar of Toledo, was engaged to assist in the philosophical experiments and mechanical labors which formed the emperor's principal amusement. Last, but not least, a Jeromite father from Sta. Engracia, at Zaragoza, Fray Juan de Regla, filled the important post of confessor. The lower rank of servants, cooks, brewers, bakers, grooms, and scullions, and a couple of laundresses, swelled the total number of his household to about sixty persons, an establishment not greater than was then maintained by many a private hidalgo. The mayordomo, Luis Quixada, or, to give him his entire appellation, Luis Mendez Quixada Manuel de Figueredo y Mendoza, is worthy of notice, not only as first minister of this tiny court, but as being closely associated with one of the greatest names in the military history of Europe. A courtier and soldier from his early youth, he was heir of an elder brother, slain before Tunis, who had been one of the most distinguished captains of the famous infantry of Castille; and he had been himself for many years the tried companion-in-arms and the trusted personal friend of the emperor. In 1549, he married Doña Magdalena de Ulloa, a lady of ancient race and gentlest nature, with whom he retired for a while to his patrimonial lordship of Villagarcia, near Valladolid. On his quitting the court at Brussels, Charles confided to his care his illegitimate son, Don Juan of Austria, then a boy of four years old, exacting a promise of strict secrecy as to his parentage. The boy was accordingly brought up with the tenderest care by the childless Magdalena: and the secret of his birth so well kept, that she, for many years, suspected him to be the fruit of some early attachment of her lord. When the emperor retired to Yuste, Quixada followed him thither, removing his household from Villagarcia, and establishing it in the neighborhood of the convent, probably in the village of Quacos. He was thus enabled to enjoy somewhat of the society of his wife, and the emperor had the gratification of seeing his son when he chose. Don Juan was now a fine lad, in his eleventh year. He passed amongst the neighbors for Quixada's page, and remained under the guardianship of Doña Magdalena, whose efforts to imbue him with devotion towards the Blessed Virgin are supposed by his historians to have borne good fruit in the banners, embroidered with Our Lady's image, which floated from his galleys at Lepanto. He likewise exercised in the Yuste forest the cross-bow, which had dealt destruction amongst the sparrows of Leganes, his early home in Castille. If the number of servants in the train of Charles should savor, in this age, somewhat of unnecessary parade, the ascetic character of the recluse will be redeemed by a glance at the interior of his dwelling. "The palace of Yuste, when prepared for his reception, seemed," says the historian Sandoval, "rather to have been newly pillaged by the enemy, than furnished for a great prince." Accustomed from his infancy to the finest tapestry designed by Italian pencils for the looms of Flanders, he now lived within walls entirety bare, except in his bedchamber, which was hung with coarse brown or black cloth. The sole appliances for rest to be found in his apartments were a bed and an old arm-chair, not worth four reals. Four silver trenchers of the plainest kind, for the use of his table, were the only things amongst his goods and chattels which could tempt a thief to break through and steal. A few choice pictures alone remained with him, as memorials of the magnificence which he had foregone, and of the arts which he had so loved. Over the high altar of the convent church, and within sight of his bed, he is said to have placed that celebrated composition known as The Glory of Titian, a picture of the Last Judgment, in which Charles, his beautiful empress, and their royal children, were represented, in the great painter's noblest style, as entering the heavenly mansions of life eternal. He had also brought with him a portrait of the empress, and a picture of Our Lord's Agony in the Garden, likewise from the easel of Titian; and there is now at the Escorial a masterpiece by the same hand--St. Jerome praying in his garden, which is traditionally reputed to have hung in his oratory at Yuste. From the garden beneath the palace windows the emperor's table was supplied with fruit and vegetables: and a couple of cows, grazing in the forest, furnished him with milk. A pony and an old mule composed the entire stud of the prince, who formerly took peculiar pleasure in possessing the stoutest chargers of Guelderland, and the fleetest genets of Cordova. To atone, perhaps, for such deficiency of creature comforts, the general of the Jeromites and the prior of Yuste had been at some pains to provide their guest with spiritual luxuries. Knowing his passionate love of music, they had recruited the force of their choir with fourteen or fifteen brethren, distinguished for their fine voices and musical skill. And for his sole benefit and delectation, they had provided no less than three preachers, the most eloquent in the Spanish fold of Jerome. The first of these, Fray Juan de Açaloras, harangued his way to the bishopric of the Canaries; the second, Fray Francisco de Villalva, also obtained by his sermons great fame, and the post of chaplain to Philip II.; while the third, Fray Juan de Santandres, though less noted as an orator, was had in reverence as a prophet, having foretold the exact day and hour of his own death. A short time sufficed for the emperor to accustom himself to the simple and changeless tenor of monastic life. Every morning his confessor appeared at his bed-side, to inquire how he had passed the night, and to assist him in his private devotions. At ten he rose, and was dressed by his valets; after which he heard mass in the convent church. According to his invariable habit, which in Italy was said to have given rise to the saying, _dalla messa, alla mensa_ (from mass to mess), he went from church to dinner, about noon. Eating had ever been one of his favorite pleasures, and it was now the only physical gratification which he could still enjoy, or was unable to resist. He continued, therefore, to dine upon the rich dishes against which his ancient and trusty confessor, Cardinal Loaysa, had vainly protested a quarter of a century before. Eel-pasties, anchovies, and frogs were the savory food which he loved, unwisely and too well, as Frederick afterwards loved his polenta. The meal was long, for his teeth were few and far between; and his hands, also, were much disabled by gout, in spite of which he always chose to carve for himself. His physician attended him at table, and at least learned the cause of the mischiefs which his art was to counteract. While he dined, he conversed with the doctor on matters of science, generally of natural history, and if any difference of opinion arose between them, the confessor was sent for to settle the point out of Pliny. When the cloth was drawn, Fray Juan de Regla came to read to him, generally from one of his favorite divines,--Augustine, Jerome, or Bernard; an exercise which was followed by conversation and an hour of slumber. At three o'clock, the monks were assembled in the convent to hear a sermon delivered by one of the imperial preachers, or a passage read from the Bible, usually from the epistle to the Romans, the emperor's favorite book. To these discourses or readings Charles always listened with profound attention; and if sickness or letter-writing prevented his attendance, he never failed to send a formal excuse to the prior, and to require from his confessor an account of what had been preached or read. The rest of the afternoon he sometimes whiled away in the workshop of Turriano, and in the construction of pieces of mechanism, especially clocks, of which more than a hundred were said, in one rather improbable account, to tick in the emperor's apartments, and reckon to a fraction the hours of his retired leisure. Sometimes he fed his pet birds, which appear to have taken the place of the stately wolf-hounds that followed at his heel in the days when he sat to Titian; or a stroll amongst his fruit-trees and flowers filled up the time to vespers and supper. At the lower end of the garden, approached by a closely shaded path, there may still be seen the ruins of a little summer-house, closely enbowered, and looking out upon the woodlands of the Vera. Beyond this limit the emperor rarely extended his excursions, which were always made, slowly and painfully, on foot; for the first time that he mounted his pony he was seized with a violent giddiness, and almost fell into the arms of his attendants. Such was the last appearance, in the saddle, of the accomplished cavalier, of whom his troopers used to say, that had he not been born a king, he would have been the prince of light-horsemen, and whose seat and hand excited at Calais gate the admiration of the English knights fresh from the tournays-- "Where England vied with France in pride On the famous field of gold." Music, which had been one of the chief pleasures of his secular life, continued to solace and cheer him to the last. In the conduct of the organ and the choir he took the greatest interest, and through the window which opened from his bedchamber upon the high altar, his voice might often be heard accompanying the chant of the friars. His ear never failed to detect a wrong note, and the mouth whence it came; and he would frequently mutter the name of the offender, with the addition of "_hideputa bermejo_," or some other epithet which savored rather of the soldier than the saint. Guerrero, a chapel-master of Seville, having presented him with his book of masses and motets, he caused one of the former to be performed before him. When it was ended, he remarked to his confessor that Guerrero was a cunning thief; and going over the piece, he pointed out the plagiarisms with which it abounded, and named the composers whose works had suffered pillage. In laying down the sceptre, Charles had resolved to have no farther personal concern with temporal affairs. The petitioners, who at first besieged his retreat, soon ceased from troubling when they found themselves referred to the princess-regent at Valladolid, or to the king in Flanders. He declined giving any attention to matters beyond the walls of the convent, unless they concerned the interests of his children or the church. His advice was, however, frequently asked by his son and daughter, and couriers often went and came between Yuste and the courts. But with the patronage of the state he never interfered, except on two occasions, when he recommended the case of a Catalonian lady to the favorable consideration of the Infanta, and asked for an order of knighthood for a veteran brother in arms. The rites of religion now formed the business of his life, and he transacted that business with his usual method and regularity. No enthusiast novice was ever more solicitous to fulfil to the letter every law of his rubric. On the first Sunday of his residence at the convent, as he went to high mass, he observed the friar who was sprinkling the holy water, hesitate when his turn came to be aspersed. Taking the hyssop, therefore, from his hand, he bestowed a plentiful shower upon his own face and clothes, saying as he returned the instrument, "This, father, is the way you must do it, next time." Another friar, offering the pyx to his lips in a similar diffident manner, he took it between his hands, and not only kissed it fervently, but applied it to his forehead and eyes with true oriental reverence. Although provided with an indulgence for eating before communion, he never availed himself of it but when he was suffering from extreme debility; and he always heard two masses on the days when he received the eucharist. On Ash Wednesday, he required his entire household, down to the meanest scullion, to communicate, and on these occasions he stood on the top step of the altar, to observe that the muster was complete. For the benefit of his Flemings, he had a chaplain of their country, who lived at Xarandilla, and came over at stated times, when his flock were assembled for confession. The emperor himself usually heard mass from the window of his bedchamber, which looked into the church; but at complines he went up into the choir with the fathers, and prayed in a devout and audible tone, in his tribune. During the season of Lent, which came round twice during his residence at Yuste, he regularly appeared in his place in the choir, on Fridays, when it was the custom of the fraternity to perform their discipline in public; and at the end of the appointed prayers, extinguishing the taper which he, like the rest, held in his hand, he flogged himself with such sincerity of purpose, that the scourge was stained with blood, and the beholders singularly edified. On Good Friday, he went forth at the head of his household, to adore the holy cross; and although he was so infirm that he was obliged to be almost carried by the men on whom he leaned, he insisted upon prostrating himself three times upon the ground, in the manner of the friars, before he approached the blessed symbol with his lips. The feast of St. Matthew, his birthday--a day of great things in his life,--he always celebrated with peculiar devotion. He appeared at mass, in a dress of ceremony, and wearing the collar of the Fleece; and at the time of the offertory, he went forward, and expressed his gratitude to God by a large donation. The church was thronged with strangers; and the crowd who could not gain admittance was so great, that one sermon was preached outside, whilst another was being pronounced before the emperor and his household within. With the friars, his hosts, Charles lived on the most familiar and friendly footing. When the visitors of the order paid their triennial visit of inspection to Yuste, they represented to him, with all respect, that his majesty himself was the only inmate of the convent with whom they had any fault to find; and they entreated him to discontinue those benefactions which he was in the habit of bestowing on the fraternity, and which the rule of St. Jerome did not allow his children to receive. He knew all the fathers by name and by sight, and frequently conversed with them, as well as with the prior. One of his favorites was a lay-brother, called Alonso Mudarra, once a man of rank and family in the world, and now working out his own salvation in the humble post of cook to the convent. This worthy had an only daughter, who did not share her father's contempt for mundane things. When she came with her husband to visit him at Yuste, Fray Alonso, arrayed in his dirtiest apron, thus addressed her: "Daughter, behold my gala apparel; obedience is now my treasure and my pride; for you, in your silks and vanities, I entertain profound pity." So saying, he returned to his kitchen, and would never see her more: an effort of holiness to which he appears to owe his place in the chronicles of the order. The emperor was conversing one day with his confessor, Regla, when that priest chose to speak, in the mitre-shunning cant of his cloth, of the great reluctance which he had felt in accepting a post of such weighty responsibility. "Never fear," said Charles, somewhat maliciously, and as if conscious that he was dealing with a hypocrite; "before I left Flanders, four doctors were engaged for a whole year in easing my conscience; so you have nothing to answer for but what happens here." When he had completed a year of residence at the convent, some good-humored bantering passed between him and the master of the novices about its being now time for him to make profession; and he afterwards said that he was prevented from taking the vows of the order, and becoming a monk in earnest, only by the state of his health. St. Blas's day, 1558, the anniversary of his arrival, was held as a festival, and celebrated by masses, the _Te Deum_, a precession by the fathers, and a sermon by Villalva. In the afternoon, the emperor gave a sumptuous repast to the whole convent, out in the fields, it being the custom of the fraternity to celebrate any accession to their number by a pic-nic. The country people about Plasencia sent a quantity of partridges and kids to aid the feast, which was likewise enlivened by the presence of the Flemish servants, male and female, and his other retainers, from the village of Quacos. The prior provided a more permanent memorial of the day by opening a new book for the names of brethren admitted into the convent, on the first leaf of which the emperor inscribed his name--an autograph which remained the pride of the archives till their destruction by the dragoons of Buonaparte. The retired emperor had not many visitors in his solitude; and of these few, Juan de Vega, president of the council of Castille, was the only personage in high office. He was sent down by the princess-regent, apparently to see that her father was treated with due attention by the provincial authorities. But with his neighbors, great and small, Charles lived in a state of amity which it would have been well for the world had he been able to maintain with his fellow-potentates of Christendom. The few nobles and gentry of the Vera were graciously received when they came to pay their respects at Yuste. Oropesa and his brothers frequently rode forth from Xarandilla, to inquire after the health of their former guest. From Plasencia came a still more distinguished and no less welcome guest, Luis de Avila, comendador-mayor of Alcantara. Long the _fidus Achates_ of the emperor, this soldier-courtier had obtained considerable fame by becoming his Quintus Curtius. His Commentaries on the Wars against the Protestants of Germany, first published in 1546, had been several times reprinted, and had already been translated into Latin, French, Flemish, English, and Italian. Having married the wealthy heiress of the Zuñigas, he was now living in laurelled ease at Plasencia, in that fine palace of Mirabel, which is still one of the chief ornaments of the beautiful city. The memoirs of the campaigns in Africa, which he is said to have left in manuscript, were perhaps the occupation of his leisure. Charles always received his historian with kindness, and it is characteristic of the times, that it was noted as a mark of singular favor, that he ordered a capon to be reserved for him from his own well-supplied board. It may seem strange that a retired prince, who had never been a lover of parade, should not have broken through the ceremonial law which condemned a monarch to eat alone. But we must remember that he was a Spaniard living amongst Spaniards; and that, near a century later, the force of forms was still so strong, that the great minister of France, when most wanting in ships, preferred that the Spanish fleet should retire from the blockade of Rochelle rather than that the admiral should wear his grandee hat in the Most Christian presence. The emperor was fond of talking over his feats of arms with the veteran who had shared and recorded them. One day, in the course of such conversation, Don Luis said he had caused a ceiling of his house to be painted in fresco, with a view of the battle of Renti, and the Frenchmen flying before the soldiers of Castille. "Not so," said Charles; "let the painter modify this if he can; for it was no headlong flight, but an honorable retreat." This was not the less candid, that French historians claim the victory for their own side. Considering that the action had been fought only three or four years before it was said to have been painted, it is possible that Renti has been substituted for the name of some other less doubtful field. But Luis de Avila was of easy faith when the honor of Castille was concerned, and may well be supposed capable of setting down a success to the wrong account, when he did not hesitate to record it in his book, that the miracle of Ajalon had been repeated at Muhlberg. Some years afterwards, the duke of Alva, who had been in that battle, was asked by the French king whether he had observed that the sun stood still. "I was so busy that day," said the old soldier, "with what was passing on earth, that I had no time to notice what took place in heaven." An anecdote of Avila and his master, though not falling within the period of their retirement to Estremadura, may be related here, as serving to show the characters of the two men. Some years before his abdication, Charles had amused the leisure of his sick-room by making a prose translation of Olivier de la Marches' forgotten allegorical poem, _Le Chevalier deliberé_. He then employed Fernando de Acunha, a man of letters attached to the Saxon court, to turn his labors into Castillian verse, and he finally handed it over to William Van Male, one of the gentlemen of the chamber, telling him that he might publish it for his own benefit. Avila and the other Spaniards, hearing of the concession, wickedly affected the greatest envy at the good fortune of the Fleming; the historian, in particular, in his quality of author, assuring the emperor that the publication could not fail to realize a profit of five hundred crowns. That desire to print, which, more or less developed, exists in every man who writes, being thus stimulated by the suggestion, that to gratify that desire, would be to confer a favor which should cost him nothing, Charles became impatient to see his lucubrations in type. Insisting that his bounty should be accepted at once, he turned a deaf ear to the timid hints of Van Male, as to the risk and expense of the speculation; and the end was, that the poor man had to pay Jean Steels for printing and publishing two thousand copies of a book which is now scarce, probably because the greater part of the impression passed at once from the publisher to the pastry-cook. The waggery on the part of Avila was the more wicked, because the victim had translated his Commentaries into Latin for him. It forms, however, the subject of an agreeable letter, wherein Van Male complains of the undue expectations raised in the emperor's mind by his "windy Spaniards," and ruefully looks forward to reaping a harvest of mere straw and chaff. It was not only by calling at Yuste that the noble lieges of the emperor testified their homage. Mules were driven to his gate laden with more substantial tokens of loyalty and affection. The Count of Oropesa kept his table supplied with game from the forest and the hill; and the prelates of Toledo, Mondoñedo, Segovia, and Salamanca, offered similar proofs that they had not forgotten the giver of their mitres. The Jeromites of Guadalupe, rich in sheep and beeves, sent calves, lambs fattened on bread, and delicate fruits; and from his sister Catharine, queen of Portugal, there came every fortnight a supply of conserves and linen. The villagers of Quacos alone furnished some exceptions to the respect in which their imperial neighbor was held. Although they received the greater part of the hundred ducats which he dispensed every month for charitable purposes, they poached the trout in the fish-ponds which had been formed for his service in Garganta la Olla; and they drove his cows to the parish pound whenever they strayed beyond their legitimate pastures. One fellow having sold the crop on his cherry-tree, at double its value, to the emperor's purveyor, when he found that it was left ungathered for a few days, took the opportunity of disposing of it a second time to another purchaser, who, of course, left nothing but bare boughs to the rightful owner of the fruit. Wearied with these annoyances, the emperor complained to the president of Castille, who administered to the district judge, one Licentiate Murga, a severe rebuke, which that functionary, in his turn, visited upon the unruly rustics. Several culprits were apprehended; but while Castillian justice was taking its deliberate course, some of them who were related to friars of Yuste, by the influence of their friends at court, got the emperor himself to petition that the sentence might be light. To his servants Charles was a kind and lenient master. He bore patiently with Adrian the cook, though he left the cinnamon that he loved out of the dishes; and he contented himself with mildly admonishing Pelayo, the baker, who got drunk and neglected his oven, of which the result was burnt bread that sorely tried the toothless gums of his master. His old military habits, however, still adhered to him, and though gentle in his manner of enforcing it, he was something of a martinet in maintaining the discipline of his household and the convent. Nor had he lost that love of petty economies which made him sit bare-headed in the rain without the walls of Naumburg, saving a new velvet cap under his arm, while they fetched him an old one from the town. Observing in his walks, or from his window, that a certain basket daily came and went between his garden and the garden of the friars, he caused Moron to institute an examination, which led to the harmless discovery that his Flemings were in the habit of bartering egg-plants with the Jeromites for onions. He had also been disturbed by suspicious gatherings of young women at the convent-gate, who stood there gossiping under pretence of receiving alms. When the visitors came their rounds, he therefore brought the matter under their notice. The result of the complaint was that the conventional dole was ordered to be sent round in certain portions to the alcaldes of the various villages, for distribution on the spot; and, moreover, the crier went down the straggling, uneven street of Quacos, making the ungallant proclamation, that any woman who should be found nearer to Yuste than a certain oratory, about two gunshots from the gate, should be punished with a hundred stripes. In the month of September, 1557, the emperor received a visit from his sisters, the queens Eleanor and Mary. These royal widows, weary of Guadalaxara, its unyielding duke, and its troublesome alcalde, were once more in search of a residence. They had cast their eyes on the banks of the Guadiana, and they were now on their way to that frontier of Portugal. Neither the convent nor the palace of Yuste being sufficiently commodious to receive them, they lived at Xarandilla, as guests of Oropesa. The shattered health of the queen of France rendered the journey from the castle to the convent, although performed in a litter, so fatiguing to her, that she accomplished it only twice. Nor was her brother's strength sufficient to enable him to return the visits of his favorite sister. But queen Mary was seven years younger, and still possessed much of the vigor which amazed Roger Ascham, when he met her galloping into Tongres, far ahead of her suit, although it was the tenth day she had passed in the saddle. She therefore mounted her horse almost every day, and rode through the fading forest to converse with the recluse at Yuste. At the end of a fortnight, the queens took a sorrowful leave of their brother, and proceeded on their way to Badajoz, whither the Infanta Mary of Portugal, daughter of queen Eleanor, had come from Lisbon to receive them. After this meeting, which was destined to be the last, the queens returned to the little town of Talaverilla, on the bare plains of Merida, where they had determined to fix their abode. But they found there no continuing city. In a few weeks, Eleanor was seized with a fever, which carried her off on the 25th of February, 1558, the sixtieth year of her age. When the emperor heard of her illness, he dispatched Luis Quixada to attend upon her; but she was already at rest ere the mayordomo reached Talaverilla. Queen Mary went back with Quixada to Yuste. Her health being much shaken, and the emperor being unable to move from the convent, she was lodged, on this occasion, in his apartments. At the end of eight days she bade him a last farewell, and retired to Cigales, a hamlet two leagues north of Valladolid, and crowning a vine-clad hill on the western side of the valley of the Pisuerga. FOOTNOTES: [7] Sandoval says he left on the 4th November; Cabrera, that he left on the 1st; and Siguenca gives the end of October as the time of his departure. From Household Words. OUR PHANTOM SHIP AMONG THE ICE. Yonder is the coast of Norway; we shall soon be at Spitzbergen. The "Phantom" is fitted out for Arctic exploration, with instructions to find her way, by the north-west, to Behring Straits, and take the South Pole on her passage home. Just now, we steer due north, and yonder is the coast of Norway. From that coast parted Hugh Willoughby, three hundred years ago; the first of our countrymen who wrought an ice-bound highway to Cathay. Two years afterwards his ships were found, in the haven of Arzina, in Lapland, by some Russian fishermen; near and about them Willoughby and his companions--seventy dead men. The ships were freighted with their frozen crews, and sailed for England; but, "being unstaunch, as it is supposed by their two years' wintering in Lapland, sunk, by the way, with their dead, and them also that brought them." Ice floats about us now, and here is a whale blowing; a whale, too, very near Spitzbergen. When first Spitzbergen was discovered, in the good old times, there were whales here in abundance; then a hundred Dutch ships in a crowd, might go to work, and boats might jostle with each other, and the only thing deficient would be stowage room for all the produce of the fishery. Now one ship may have the whole field to itself, and travel home with an imperfect cargo. It was fine fun in the good old times; there was no need to cruise. Coppers and boilers were fitted on the island, and little colonies about them, in the fishing season, had nothing to do but tow the whales in, with a boat, as fast as they were wanted by the copper. No wonder that so enviable a Tom Tidler's ground was claimed by all who had a love for gold and silver. The English called it theirs, for they first fished; the Dutch said, nay, but the island was of their discovery; Danes, Hamburghers, Biscayans, Spaniards, and French put in their claims; and at length, it was agreed to make partitions. The numerous bays and harbors which indent the coast were divided among the rival nations; and to this day, many of them bear, accordingly, such names as English Bay, Danes Bay, and so forth. One bay there is, with graves in it, named Sorrow. For it seemed to the fishers most desirable, if possible, to plant upon this island permanent establishments, and condemned convicts were offered, by the Russians, life and pardon, if they would winter in Spitzbergen. They agreed; but, when they saw the icy mountains and the stormy sea, repented, and went back, to meet a death exempt from torture. The Dutch tempted free men, by high rewards, to try the dangerous experiment. One of their victims left a journal, which describes his sufferings and that of his companions. Their mouths, he says, became so sore that, if they had food, they could not eat; their limbs were swollen and disabled with excruciating pain; they died of scurvy. Those who died first were coffined by their dying friends; a row of coffins was found, in the spring, each with a man in it; two men uncoffined, side by side, were dead upon the floor. The journal told, how once the traces of a bear excited their hope of fresh meat and amended health; how, with a lantern, two or three had limped upon the track, until the light became extinguished, and they came back in despair to die. We might speak, also, of eight English sailors, left, by accident, upon Spitzbergen, who lived to return and tell their winter's tale; but a long journey is before us, and we must not linger on the way. As for our whalers, it need scarcely be related that the multitude of whales diminished as the slaughtering went on, until it was no longer possible to keep the coppers full. The whales had to be searched for by the vessels, and thereafter it was not worth while to take the blubber to Spitzbergen to be boiled; and the different nations, having carried home their coppers, left the apparatus of those fishing stations to decay. Take heed. There is a noise like thunder, and a mountain snaps in two. The upper half comes, crashing, grinding, down into the sea, and loosened streams of water follow it. The sea is displaced before the mighty heap; it boils and scatters up a cloud of spray; it rushes back, and violently beats upon the shore. The mountain rises from its bath, sways to and fro, while water pours along its mighty sides; now it is tolerably quiet, letting crackers off as air escapes out of its cavities. That is an iceberg, and in that way are all icebergs formed. Mountains of ice formed by rain and snow--grand Arctic glaciers, undermined by the sea or by accumulation overbalanced--topple down upon the slightest provocation (moved by a shout, perhaps) and where they float, as this black looking fellow does, they need deep water. This berg in height is about ninety feet, and a due balance requires that a mass nine times as large as the part visible should be submerged. Icebergs are seen about us now which rise two hundred feet above the water's level. There are above head plenty of aquatic birds; ashore, or on the ice, are bears, foxes, reindeer; and in the sea there are innumerable animals. We shall not see so much life near the North Pole, that is certain. It would be worth while to go ashore upon an islet there, near Vogel Sang, to pay a visit to the eider-ducks. Their nests are so abundant that one cannot avoid treading on them. When the duck is driven by a hungry fox to leave her eggs, she covers them with down, in order that they may not cool during her absence, and, moreover, glues the down into a case with a secretion supplied to her by Nature for that purpose. The deserted eggs are safe, for that secretion has an odor very disagreeable to the intruder's nose. We still sail northward, among sheets of ice, whose boundaries are not beyond our vision from the mast-head--these are "floes;" between them we find easy way, it is fair "sailing ice." In the clear sky to the north, a streak of lucid white light is the reflection from an icy surface; that is "ice-blink," in the language of these seas. The glare from snow is yellow, while open water gives a dark reflection. Northward still; but now we are in fog the ice is troublesome; a gale is rising. Now, if our ship had timbers, they would crack, and if she had a bell it would be tolling; if we were shouting to each other we should not hear, the sea is in a fury. With wild force its breakers dash against a heaped-up wall of broken ice, that grinds and strains and battles fiercely with the water. This is "the pack," the edge of a great ice-field broken by the swell. It is a perilous and exciting thing to push through pack ice in a gale. Now there is ice as far as eye can see, that is "an ice-field." Masses are forced up like colossal tombstones on all sides; our sailors call them "hummocks;" here and there the broken ice displays large "holes of water." Shall we go on? Upon this field, in 1827, Parry adventured with his men, to reach the North Pole, if that should be possible. With sledges and portable boats they labored on, through snow, and over hummocks; launching their boats over the larger holes of water. With stout hearts, undaunted by toil or danger, they went boldly on, though by degrees it became clear to the leaders of the expedition, that they were almost like mice upon a treadmill cage, making a great expenditure of leg for little gain. The ice was floating to the south with them, as they were walking to the north; still they went on. Sleeping by day to avoid the glare, and to get greater warmth during the time of rest, and travelling by night,--watch-makers' days and nights, for it was all one polar day,--the men soon were unable to distinguish noon from midnight. The great event of one day on this dreary waste was the discovery of two flies upon an ice hummock; these, says Parry, became at once a topic of ridiculous importance. Presently, after twenty-three miles walking, they only had gone one mile forward, the ice having industriously floated twenty-two miles in an opposite direction; and then, after walking forward eleven miles, they found themselves to be three miles behind the place from which they started. The party accordingly returned, not having reached the Pole, not having reached the eighty-third parallel, for the attainment of which there was a reward of a thousand pounds held out by government. They reached the parallel of eighty-two degrees, forty-five minutes, which was, and still is, the most northerly point trodden by the foot of man. From that point they returned. In those high latitudes they met with a phenomenon, common in alpine regions, as well as at the Pole, red snow. The red color being caused by the abundance of a minute plant, of low development, the last dweller on the borders of the vegetable kingdom. More interesting to the sailors was a fat she bear which they killed and devoured with a zeal to be repented of; for on reaching navigable sea, and pushing in their boats to Table Island, where some stones were left, they found that the bears had eaten all their bread, whereon the men agreed that "Bruin was now square with them." An islet next to Table Island--they are both mere rocks--is the most northern land discovered. Therefore, Parry applied to it the name of lieutenant--now Sir James--Ross. This compliment Sir James Ross has acknowledged in the most emphatic manner, by discovering on his part, at the other Pole, the most southern land yet seen, and giving to it the name of Parry: "Parry Mountains." It very probably would not be difficult under such circumstances as Sir W. Parry has since recommended, to reach the North Pole along this route. Then (especially if it be true, as many believe, that there is a region of open sea about the Pole itself) we might find it as easy to reach Behring Straits, by travelling in a straight line over the North Pole, as by threading the straits and bays north of America. We turn our course until we have in sight a portion of the ice-barred eastern coast of Greenland, Shannon Island. Somewhere about this spot in the seventy-fifth parallel is the most northern part of that coast known to us. Colonel--then Captain--Sabine in the "Griper," was landed there to make magnetic and other observations; for the same purpose he had previously visited Sierra Leone. That is where we differ from our forefathers. They commissioned hardy seamen to encounter peril for the search of gold ore, or for a near road to Cathay, but our peril is encountered for the gain of knowledge, for the highest kind of service that can now be rendered to the human race. Before we leave the northern sea, we must not omit to mention the voyage by Spitzbergen northward, in 1818, of Captain Buchan in the "Dorothea," accompanied by Lieutenant Franklin, in the "Trent." It was Sir John Franklin's first voyage to the Arctic regions. This trip forms the subject of a delightful book by Captain Beechey. On our way to the south point of Greenland we pass near Cape North, a point of Iceland. Iceland, we know, is the centre of a volcanic region, whereof Norway and Greenland are at opposite points of the circumference. In connection with this district there is a remarkable fact; that by the agency of subterranean forces a large portion of Norway and Sweden is being slowly upheaved. While Greenland, on the west coast, as gradually sinks into the sea, Norway rises at the rate of about four feet in a century. In Greenland the sinking is so well known that the natives never build close to the water's edge, and the Moravian missionaries more than once have had to move farther inland the poles on which their boats are rested. Our Phantom Ship stands fairly now along the western coast of Greenland into Davis Straits. We observe that upon this western coast there is, by a great deal, less ice than on the eastern. That is a rule generally. Not only the configuration of the straits and bays, but also the earth's rotation from west to east, causes the currents here to set towards the west, and wash the western coasts, while they act very little on the eastern. We steer across Davis Strait, among "an infinite number of great countreys and islands of yee;" there, near the entrance, we find Hudson Strait, which does not now concern us. Islands probably separate this well-known channel from Frobisher Strait to the north of it, yet unexplored. Here let us recall to mind the fleet of fifteen sail, under Sir Martin Frobisher, in 1578, tossing about and parting company among the ice. Let us remember how the crew of the "Anne Frances," in that expedition, built a pinnace when their vessel struck upon a rock, although they wanted main timber and nails. How they made a mimic forge, and "for the easier making of nails, were forced to break their tongs, gridiron, and fire-shovel, in pieces." How Master Captain Best, in this frail bark, with its imperfect timbers held together by the metamorphosed gridiron and fire-shovel, continued in his duty, and did "depart up the straights as before was pretended." How a terrific storm arose, and the fleet parted, and the intrepid captain was towed "in his small pinnace, at the stern of the 'Michael,' thorow the raging seas; for the bark was not able to receive or relieve half its company." The "tongs, gridyron, and fire-shovell," performed their work only for as many minutes as were absolutely necessary, for "the pinesse came no sooner aboord the ship, and the men entred, but she presently shivered and fell in pieces, and sunke at the ship's stern with all the poor men's furniture." Now, too, as we sail up the strait, explored a few years after these events by Master John Davis, how proudly we remember him as a right worthy forerunner of those countrymen of his and ours who since have sailed over his track. Nor ought we to pass without calling to mind the melancholy fate, in 1606, of Master John Knight, driven, in the "Hopwell," among huge masses of ice, with a tremendous surf, his rudder knocked away, his ship half full of water, at the entrance to these straits. Hoping to find a harbor, he set forth to explore a large island, and landed, leaving two men to watch the boat, while he, with three men and the mate, set forth and disappeared over a hill. For thirteen hours the watchers kept their post; one had his trumpet with him, for he was a trumpeter, the other had a gun. They trumpeted often and loudly, they fired, but no answer came. They watched ashore all night for the return of their captain and his party, "but they came not at all." The season is advanced. As we sail on, the sea steams like a lime-kiln, "frost-smoke" covers it. The water, cooled less rapidly, is warmer now than the surrounding air, and yields this vapor in consequence. By the time our vessel has reached Baffin's Bay, still coasting along Greenland, in addition to old floes and bergs, the water is beset with "pancake ice." That is the young ice when it first begins to cake upon the surface. Innocent enough it seems, but it is sadly clogging to the ships. It sticks about their sides like treacle on a fly's wing; collecting unequally, it destroys all equilibrium, and impedes the efforts of the steersman. Rocks split on the Greenland coast with loud explosions, and more icebergs fall. Icebergs we soon shall take our leave of; they are only found where there is a coast on which glaciers can form; they are good for nothing but to yield fresh water to the vessels; it will be all field, pack, and salt-water ice presently. Now we are in Baffin's Bay, explored in the voyages of Bylot and Baffin, 1615-16. When, in 1817, a great movement in the Greenland ice caused many to believe that the northern passages would be found comparatively clear; and when, in consequence of this impression, Sir John Barrow succeeded in setting a-foot that course of modern Arctic exploration, which has been continued to the present day, Sir John Ross was the first man sent to find the north-west passage. Buchan and Parry were commissioned at the same time to attempt the North Sea route. Sir John Ross did little more on that occasion than effect a survey of Baffin's Bay, and prove the accuracy of the ancient pilot. In the extreme north of the bay there is an inlet or a channel, called by Baffin Smith's Sound; this Sir John saw, but did not enter. It never has been explored. It may be an inlet only; but it is also very possible that by this channel ships might get into the Polar Sea, and sail by the north shore of Greenland to Spitzbergen. Turning that corner, and descending along the western coast of Baffin's Bay, there is another inlet called Jones's Sound by Baffin, also unexplored. These two inlets, with their very British titles, Smith and Jones, are of exceeding interest. Jones's Sound may lead by a back way to Melville Island. South of Jones's Sound there is a wide break in the shore, a great sound, named by Baffin, Lancaster's, which Sir John Ross, in that first expedition, failed also to explore. Like our transatlantic friends at the South Pole, he laid down a range of clouds as mountains, and considered the way impervious; so he came home. Parry went out next year, as a lieutenant, in command of his first and most successful expedition. He sailed up Lancaster Sound, which was in that year (1819) unusually clear of ice: and he is the discoverer whose track we now follow in our Phantom Ship. The whole ground being new, he had to name the points of country right and left of him. The way was broad and open, due west, a most prosperous beginning for a north-west passage. If this continued, he would soon reach Behring Strait. A broad channel to the right, directed, that is to say, southward, he entered on the Prince of Wales's birthday, and so called it the "Prince Regent's Inlet." After exploring this for some miles, he turned back to resume his western course, for still there was a broad strait leading westward. This second part of Lancaster Sound, he called after the Secretary of the Admiralty who had so indefatigably labored to promote the expeditions, Barrow's Strait. Then he came to a channel, turning to the right or northward, and he named that Wellington Channel. Then he had on his right hand ice, islands large and small, and intervening channels; on the left, ice, and a cape visible, Cape Walker. At an island, named after the First Lord of the Admiralty Melville Island, the great frozen wilderness barred further progress. There he wintered. On the coast of Melville Island they had passed the latitude of one hundred and ten degrees, and the men had become entitled to a royal bounty of five thousand pounds. This group of islands Parry called North Georgian, but they are usually called by his own name, Parry Islands. This was the first European winter party in the Arctic circle. Its details are familiar enough. How the men cut in three days through ice seven inches thick, a canal two miles and a half long, and so brought the ships into safe harbor. How the genius of Parry equalled the occasion; how there was established a theatre and a _North Georgian Gazette_, to cheer the tediousness of a night which continued for two thousand hours. The dreary dazzling waste in which there was that little patch of life, the stars, the fog, the moonlight, the glittering wonder of the northern lights, in which, as Greenlanders believe, souls of the wicked dance tormented, are familiar to us. The she-bear stays at home; but the he-bear hungers, and looks in vain for a stray seal or walrus--woe to the unarmed man who meets him in his hungry mood! Wolves are abroad, and pretty white arctic foxes. The reindeer have sought other pasture-ground. The thermometer runs down to more than sixty degrees below freezing, a temperature tolerable in calm weather, but distressing in a wind. The eye-piece of the telescope must be protected now with leather, for the skin is destroyed that comes in contact with cold metal. The voice at a mile's distance can be heard distinctly. Happy the day when first the sun is seen to graze the edge of the horizon; but summer must come, and the heat of a constant day must accumulate, and summer wane, before the ice is melted. Then the ice cracks, like cannons over-charged, and moves with a loud grinding noise. But not yet is escape to be made with safety. After a detention of ten months, Parry got free; but, in escaping, narrowly missed the destruction of both ships, by their being "nipped" between the mighty mass and the unyielding shore. What animals are found on Melville Island, we may judge from the results of sport during ten months' detention. The Island exceeds five thousand miles square, and yielded to the gun, three musk oxen, twenty-four deer, sixty-eight bears, fifty-three geese, fifty-nine ducks, and one hundred and forty-four patarmigans, weighing together three thousand seven hundred and sixty-six pounds--not quite two ounces of meat per day to every man. Lichens, stunted grass, saxifrage, and a feeble willow, are the plants of Melville Island, but in sheltered nooks there are found sorrel, poppy, and a yellow butter-cup. Halos and double suns are very common consequences of refraction in this quarter of the world. Franklin returned from his first and most famous voyage with his men all safe and sound, except the loss of a few fingers, frost-bitten. We sail back only as far as Regent's Inlet, being bound for Behring Strait. The reputation of Sir John Ross being clouded by the discontent expressed against his first expedition, Mr. Felix Booth, a rich distiller, provided seventeen thousand pounds to enable his friend to redeem his credit. Sir John accordingly, in 1829, went out in the "Victory," provided with steam-machinery that did not answer well. He was accompanied by Sir James Ross, his nephew. He it was who, on this occasion, first surveyed Regent's Inlet, down which we are now sailing with our Phantom Ship. The coast on our right hand, westward, which Parry saw, is called North Somerset, but farther south, where the inlet widens, the land is named Boothia Felix. Five years before this, Parry, in his third voyage, had attempted to pass down Regent's Inlet, where among ice and storm, one of his ships, the "Hecla," had been driven violently ashore, and of necessity, abandoned. The stores had been removed, and Sir John was able now to replenish his own vessel from them. Rounding a point at the bottom of Prince Regent's Inlet, we find Felix Harbor, where Sir John Ross wintered. His nephew made from this point scientific explorations; discovered a strait, called after him the Strait of James Ross, and on the northern shore of this strait, on the main land of Boothia, planted the British flag on the Northern Magnetic Pole. The ice broke up, so did the "Victory;" after a hairbreadth escape, the party found a searching vessel, and arrived home after an absence of four years and five months, Sir John Ross having lost his ship, and won his reputation. The friend in need was made a baronet for his munificence; Sir John was reimbursed for all his losses, and the crew liberally taken care of. Sir James Ross had a rod and flag signifying "Magnetic Pole," given to him for a new crest, by the Heralds' College, for which he was no doubt greatly the better. We have sailed northward to get into Hudson Strait, the high road into Hudson Bay. Along the shore are Exquimaux in boats, extremely active, but these filthy creatures we pass by; the Exquimaux in Hudson Strait are like the negroes of the coast, demoralized by intercourse with European traders. These are not true pictures of the loving children of the north. Our "Phantom" floats on the wide waters of Hudson Bay--the grave of its discoverer. Familiar as the story is of Henry Hudson's fate, for John King's sake how gladly we repeat it. While sailing on the waters he discovered, in 1611, his men mutinied; the mutiny was aided by Henry Green, a prodigal, whom Hudson had generously shielded from ruin. Hudson, the master, and his son, with six sick or disabled members of the crew, were driven from their cabins, forced into a little shallop, and committed helpless to the water and the ice. But there was one stout man, John King, the carpenter, who stepped into the boat, abjuring his companions, and chose rather to die than even passively be partaker in so foul a crime. John King, we who live after, will remember you. Here on an island, Charlton Island, near our entrance to the bay, in 1631, wintered poor Captain James with his wrecked crew. This is a point outside the Arctic circle, but quite cold enough. Of nights, with a good fire in the house they built, hoar frost covered their beds, and the cook's water in a metal pan before the fire, was warm on one side, and froze on the other. Here "it snowed and froze extremely, at which time we, looking from the shore towards the ship, she appeared a piece of ice in the fashion of a ship, or a ship resembling a piece of ice." Here the gunner, who had lost his leg, besought that, "for the little time he had to live, he might drink sack altogether." He died and was buried in the ice far from the vessel, but when afterwards two more were dead of scurvy, and the others, in a miserable state, were working with faint hope about their shattered vessel, the gunner was found to have returned home to the old vessel; his leg had penetrated through a porthole. They "digged him clear out, and he was as free from noisomness," the record says, "as when we first committed him to the sea. This alteration had the ice, and water, and time, only wrought on him, that his flesh would slip up and down upon his bones, like a glove on a man's hand. In the evening we buried him by the others." These worthy souls, laid up with the agonies of scurvy, knew that in action was their only hope; they forced their limbs to labor, among ice and water, every day. They set about the building of a boat, but the hard frozen wood had broken all their axes, so they made shift with the pieces. To fell a tree, it was first requisite to light a fire around it, and the carpenter could only labor with his wood over a fire, or else it was like stone under his tools. Before the boat was made they buried the carpenter. The captain exhorted them to put their trust in God; "His will be done. If it be our fortune to end our days here, we are as near Heaven as in England. They all protested to work to the utmost of their strength, and that they would refuse nothing that I should order them to do to the utmost hazard of their lives. I thanked them all." Truly the North Pole has its triumphs. If we took no account of the fields of trade opened by our Arctic explorers, if we thought nothing of the wants of science in comparison with the lives lost in supplying them, is not the loss of life a gain, which proves and tests the fortitude of noble hearts, and teaches us respect for human nature? All the lives that have been lost among these Polar regions, are less in number than the dead upon a battle-field. The battle-field inflicted shame upon our race--is it with shame that our hearts throb in following these Arctic heroes? March 31st, says Captain James, "was very cold, with snow and hail, which pinched our sick men more than any time this year. This evening, being May eve, we returned late from our work to our house, and made a good fire, and chose ladies, and ceremoniously wore their names in our caps, endeavoring to revive ourselves by any means. On the 15th, I manured a little patch of ground that was bare of snow, and sowed it with pease, hoping to have some shortly to eat, for as yet we could see no green thing to comfort us." Those pease saved the party; as they came up the young shoots were boiled and eaten, so their health began to mend, and they recovered from their scurvy. Eventually, after other perils, they succeeded making their escape. A strait, called Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome, leads due north out of Hudson Bay, being parted by Southampton Island from the strait through which we entered. Its name is quaint, for so was its discoverer, Luke Fox, a worthy man, addicted much to euphuism. Fox sailed from London in the same year in which James sailed from Bristol. They were rivals. Meeting in Davis Straits, Fox dined on board his friendly rival's vessel, which was very unfit for the service upon which it went. The sea washed over them and came into the cabin, so says Fox, "sauce would not have been wanted if there had been roast mutton." Luke Fox being ice-bound and in peril, writes, "God thinks upon our imprisonment with a _supersedeas_;" but he was a good and honorable man as well as euphuist. His "Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome," leads into Fox Channel; our "Phantom Ship" is pushing through the welcome passes on the left-hand Repulse Bay. This portion of the Arctic regions, with Fox Channel, is extremely perilous. Here Captain Lyon, in the "Griper," was thrown anchorless upon the mercy of a stormy sea, ice crashing around him. One island in Fox Channel is called Mill Island, from the incessant grinding of great masses of ice collected there. In the northern part of Fox Channel, on the western shore, is Melville Peninsula, where Parry wintered on his second voyage. Here let us go ashore and see a little colony of Esquimaux. Their huts are built of blocks of snow, and arched, having an ice pane for a window. They construct their arched entrance and their hemispherical roof, on the true principles of architecture. Those wise men, the Egyptians, made their arch by hewing the stones out of shape, the Esquimaux have the true secret. Here they are, with little food in winter and great appetites; devouring a whole walrus when they get it, and taking the chance of hunger for the next eight days--hungry or full, for ever happy in their lot--here are the Esquimaux. They are warmly clothed, each in a double suit of skins sewn neatly together. Some are singing, with good voices, too. Please them, and they straightway dance; activity is good in a cold climate. Play to them on the flute, or if you can sing well, sing, or turn a barrel-organ, they are mute, eager with wonder and delight; their love of music is intense. Give them a pencil, and, like children, they will draw. Teach them, and they will learn, oblige them, and they will be grateful. "Gentle and loving savages," one of our old worthies called them, and the Portuguese were so much impressed with their teachable and gentle conduct, that a Venetian ambassador writes, "His serene majesty contemplates deriving great advantage from the country, not only on account of the timber, of which he has occasion, but of the inhabitants, who are admirably calculated for labor, and are the best I have ever seen." The Esquimaux, of course, will learn vice, and in the region visited by whale ships, vice enough has certainly been taught him. Here are the dogs, who will eat old coats, or any thing; and, near the dwellings, here is a snow-bunting,--robin redbreast of the Arctic lands. A party of our sailors once, on landing, took some sticks from a large heap, and uncovered the nest of a snow-bunting with young, the bird flew to a little distance, but seeing that the men sat down and harmed her not, continued to seek food and supply her little ones, with full faith in the good intentions of the party. Captain Lyon found a child's grave partly uncovered, and a snow-bunting had built its nest upon the infant's bosom. Sailing round Melville Peninsula, we come into the gulf of Akkolee, through Fury and Hecla Straits, discovered by Parry. So we get back to the bottom of Regent's Inlet, which we quitted a short time ago, and sailing in the neighborhood of the magnetic pole, we reach the estuary of Black's River, on the north-east coast of America. We pass then through a straight, discovered in 1839, by Dean and Simpson, still coasting along the northern shore of America, on the Great Stinking Lake, as Indians call this ocean. Boats, ice permitting, and our "Phantom Ship," of course, can coast all the way to Behring Strait. The whole coast has been explored by Sir John Franklin, Sir John Richardson, and Sir George Back, who have earned their knighthoods through great peril. As we pass Coronation Gulf--the scene of Franklin, Richardson, and Back's first exploration from the Coppermine River--we revert to the romantic story of their journey back, over a land of snow and frost, subsisting upon lichens, with companions starved to death; where they plucked wild leaves for tea, and ate their shoes for supper; the tragedy by the river; the murder of poor Hood, with a book of prayers in his hand; Franklin at Fort Enterprise, with two companions at the point of death, himself gaunt, hollow-eyed, feeding on pounded bones, raked from the dunghill; the arrival of Dr. Richardson and the brave sailor; their awful story of the cannibal Michel;--we revert to these things with a shudder. But we must continue on our route. The current still flows westward, bearing now large quantities of drift-wood, out of the Mackenzie River. At the name of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, also, we might pause, and talk over the bold achievements of another arctic hero; but we pass on, by a rugged and inhospitable coast, unfit for vessels of large draught,--pass the broad mouth of the Youcon, pass Point Barrow, Icy Cape, and are in Behring Strait. Had we passed on, we should have found the Russian Arctic coast line, traced out by a series of Russian explorers; of whom the most illustrious--Baron Von Wrangell--states, that beyond a certain distance to the northward, there is always found what he calls the _Polynja_ (open water.) This is the fact adduced by those who adhere to the old fancy that there is a sea about the pole itself quite free from ice. We pass through Behring Straits. Behring, a Dane by birth, but in the Russian service, died here in 1741, upon the scene of his discovery. He and his crew, victims of scurvy, were unable to manage their vessel in a storm; and it was at length wrecked on a barren island, there, where "want, nakedness, cold, sickness, impatience, and despair were their daily guests." Behring, his lieutenant, and the master died. Now we must put a girdle round the world, and do it with the speed of Ariel. Here we are already in the heats of the equator. We can do no more than remark, that if air and water are heated at the equator, and frozen at the poles, there will be equilibrium destroyed, and constant currents caused. And so it happens, so we get the prevailing winds, and all the currents of the ocean. Of these, some of the uses, but by no means all, are obvious. We urge our "Phantom" fleetly to the southern pole. Here, over the other hemisphere of the earth, there shines another hemisphere of heaven. The stars are changed; the southern cross, the Magellanic clouds, the "coal-sack" in the milky way, attract our notice. Now we are in the southern latitude that corresponds to England in the north; nay, at a greater distance, from the pole, we find Kerguelen's Land, emphatically called "The Isle of Desolation." Icebergs float much further into the warm sea on this side of the equator, before they dissolve. The South Pole is evidently a more thorough refrigerator than the North. Why is this? We shall soon see. We push through pack-ice, and through floes and fields, by lofty bergs, by an island or two covered with penguins, until there lies before us a long range of mountains, nine or ten thousand feet in height, and all clad in eternal snow. That is a portion of the Southern Continent. Lieutenant Wilkes, in the American exploring expedition, first discovered this, and mapped out some part of the coast, putting a few clouds in likewise,--a mistake easily made by those who omit to verify every foot of land. Sir James Ross, in his most successful South Pole Expedition, during the years 1839-43, sailed over some of this land, and confirmed the rest. The Antarctic, as well as the Arctic honors he secured for England, by turning a corner of the land, and sailing far southward, along an impenetrable icy barrier, to the latitude of seventy-eight degrees, nine minutes. It is an elevated continent, with many lofty ranges. In the extreme southern point reached by the ships, a magnificent volcano was seen spouting fire and smoke out of the everlasting snow. This volcano, twelve thousand four hundred feet high, was named Mount Erebus; for the "Erebus" and "Terror," now sought anxiously among the bays, and sounds, and creeks of the North Pole, then coasted by the solid ice-walls of the south. Only as "Phantoms" can we cross this land and live. These lofty mountain-ranges, cold to the marrow, these vast glaciers, and elevated plains of ice, no wonder that they cast a chill about their neighborhood. Our very ghosts are cold, and the volcanoes only make the frost colder by contrast. We descend upon the other side, take ship again, and float up the Atlantic, through the tropics. We have been round the world now, and among the ice, and have not grown much older since we started. * * * * * Other "Phantoms" are to be added to those thus described. Besides the expeditions now in the ice regions, from England and America, one, and perhaps two more, have in the last two months started in the search for Franklin. MADAME DE GENLIS AND MADAME DE STAËL. This curious piece has recently appeared in the _Gazette de France_, and has excited much remark. It is given out to be the production of Charles X., when Monsieur, and was communicated to M. Neychens by the Marquis de la Roche Jacqueleine. "Before the Revolution, I was but very slightly acquainted with Mme. de Genlis, her conduct during that disastrous period having not a little contributed to sink her in my estimation; and the publication of her novel, 'The Knights of the Swan' (the _first_ edition), completed my dislike to a person who had so cruelly aspersed the character of the queen, my sister-in-law. "On my return to France, I received a letter full of the most passionate expressions of loyalty from beginning to end; the missive being signed Comtesse de Genlis; but imagining this could be but a _plaisanterie_ of some intimate friend of my own, I paid no attention whatever to it. However, in two or three days it was followed by a second epistle, complaining of my silence, and appealing to the great sacrifices the writer had made in the interest of my cause, as giving her a _right_ to my favorable attention. Talleyrand being present, I asked him if he could explain this enigma. "'Nothing is easier,' replied he; 'Mme. de Genlis is unique. She has lost her own memory, and fancies others have experienced a similar bereavement.' "'She speaks,' pursued I, 'of her virtues, her misfortunes, and Napoleon's persecutions.' "'Hem! In 1789 her husband was quite ruined, so the events of that period took nothing from _him_; and as to the tyranny of Bonaparte, it consisted, in the first place, of giving her a magnificent suite of apartments in the Arsenal; and in the second place, granting her a pension of six thousand francs a year, upon the sole condition of her keeping him every month _au courant_ of the literature of the day.' "'What shocking ferocity!' replied I, laughing; 'a case of infamous despotism indeed. And this martyr to our cause asks to see me.' "'Yes; and pray let your royal highness grant her an audience, were it only for once: I assure you she is most amusing.' "I followed the advice of M. de Talleyrand, and accorded to the lady the permission she so pathetically demanded. The evening before she was to present herself, however, came a third missive, recommending a certain Casimir, the _phénix_ of the _époque_, and several other persons besides; all, according to Mme. de Genlis, particularly celebrated people; and the postscript to this effusion prepared me also beforehand for the request she intended to make, of being appointed governess to the children of my son, the Duc de Berry, who was at that time not even married. "Just at this period it so happened that I was besieged by more than a dozen persons of every rank in regard to Mme. de Staël, formerly exiled by Bonaparte, and who had rushed to Paris without taking breath, fully persuaded every one there, and throughout all France, was impatient to see her again. Mme. de Staël had a double view in thus introducing herself to me; namely, to direct my proceedings entirely, and to obtain payment of the two million francs deposited in the treasury by her father during his ministry. I confess I was not prepossessed in favor of Mme. de Staël, for she also, in 1789, had manifested so much hatred towards the Bourbons, that I thought all she could possibly look to from us, was the liberty of living in Paris unmolested: but I little knew her. She, on her side, imagined we ought to be grateful to her for having quarrelled with Bonaparte--her own pride being, in fact, the sole cause of the rupture. "M. de Fontanes and M. de Chàteaubriand were the first who mentioned her to me; and to the importance with which they treated the matter, I answered, laughing, 'So, Mme. la Baronne de Staël is then a supreme power?' "'Indeed she is, and it might have very unfavorable effects did your royal highness overlook her: for what she asserts, every one believes, and then--she has suffered _so_ much!' "'Very likely; but what did she make my poor sister-in-law, the queen, suffer? Do you think I can forget the abominable things she said, the falsehoods she told? and was it not in consequence of them, and the public's belief of them, that she owed the possibility of the ambassadress of Sweden's being able to dare insult that unfortunate princess in her very palace?' "Mme. de Staël's envoys, who manifested some confusion at the fidelity of my memory, implored me to forget the past, think only of the future, and remember that the genius of Mme. de Staël, whose reputation was European, might be of the utmost advantage, or the reverse. Tired of disputing I yielded; consented to receive this _femme célèbre_, as they all called her, and fixed for her reception the same day I had notified to Mme. de Genlis. "My brother has said, 'Punctuality is the politeness of kings'--words as true and just as they are happily expressed; and the princes of my family have never been found wanting in good manners; so I was in my study waiting when Mme. de Genlis was announced. I was astonished at the sight of a long, dry woman, with a swarthy complexion, dressed in a printed cotton gown, any thing but clean, and a shawl covered with dust, her habit-shirt, her hair even bearing marks of great negligence. I had read her works, and remembering all she said about neatness, and cleanliness, and proper attention to one's dress, I thought she added another to the many who fail to add example to their precepts. While making these reflections, Mme. de Genlis was firing off a volley of curtsies; and upon finishing what she deemed the requisite number, she pulled out of a great huge bag four manuscripts of enormous dimensions. "'I bring,' commenced the lady, 'to your royal highness what will amply repay any kindness you may show to me--No. 1 is a plan of conduct, and the project of a constitution; No. 2 contains a collection of speeches in answer to those likely to be addressed to Monsieur; No. 3, addresses and letters proper to send to foreign powers, the provinces, &c., and in No. 4, Monsieur will find a plan of education, the only one proper to be persued by royalty, in reading which, your royal highness will feel as convinced of the extent of my acquirements as of the purity of my loyalty.' "Many in my place might have been angry; but, on the contrary, I thanked her with an air of polite sincerity for the treasures she was so obliging as to confide to me, and then condoled with her upon the misfortunes she had endured under the tyranny of Bonaparte. "'Alas! Monsieur, this abominable despot dared to make a mere plaything of _me_! and yet I strove, by wise advice, to guide him right, and teach him to regulate his conduct properly: but he would not be led. I even offered to mediate between him and the pope, but he did not even so much as answer me upon this subject; although (being a most profound theologian) I could have smoothed almost all difficulties when the Concordat was in question.' "This last piece of pretension was almost too much for my gravity. However, I applauded the zeal of this new mother of the church, and was going to put an end to the interview, when it came into my head to ask her if she was well acquainted with Mme. de Staël. "'God forbid!' cried she, making a sign of the cross: 'I have no acquaintance with _such people_; and I but do my duty in warning those who have not perused the works of that lady, to bear in mind that they are written in the worst possible taste, and are also extremely immoral. Let your royal highness turn your thoughts from such books; you will find in _mine_ all that is necessary to know. I suppose Monsieur has not yet seen _Little Necker_?' "'Mme. la Baronne de Staël Holstein has asked for an audience, and I even suspect she may be already arrived at the Tuileries.' "'Let your royal highness beware of this woman! See in her the implacable enemy of the Bourbons, and in me their most devoted slave.' "This new proof of the want of memory in Madame de Genlis amused me as much as the other absurdities she had favored me with; and I was in the act of making her the ordinary salutations of adieu, when I observed her blush purple, and her proud rival entered. "The two ladies exchanged a haughty bow, and the comedy, which had just finished with the departure of Mme. de Genlis, recommenced under a different form when Mme. de Staël appeared on the stage. The baroness was dressed, not certainly dirty, like the countess, but quite as absurdly. She wore a red satin gown, embroidered with flowers of gold and silk; a profusion of diamonds; rings enough to stock a pawnbroker's shop; and, I must add, that I never before saw so low a cut corsage display less inviting charms. Upon her head was a huge turban, constructed on the pattern of that worn by the Cumean sybil, which put a finishing stroke to a costume so little in harmony with her style of face. I scarcely understand how a woman of genius _can_ have such a false, vulgar taste. Mme. de Staël began by apologizing for occupying a few moments which she doubted not I should have preferred giving to Mme. de Genlis. 'She is one of the illustrations of the day,' observed she, with a sneering smile--'a colossus of religious faith, and represents in her person, she fancies, all the literature of the age. Ah! ah! Monsieur, in the hands of _such people_ the world would soon retrograde; while it should, on the contrary, be impelled forward, and your royal highness be the first to put yourself at the head of this great movement. To you should belong the glory of giving the impulse, guided by _my experience_.' "'Come,' thought I, 'here is another going to plague me with plans of conduct, and constitutions, and reforms, which I am to persuade the king my brother to adopt. It seems to be an insanity in France this composing of new constitutions.' While I was making these reflections, madame had time to give utterance to a thousand fine phrases, every one more sublime than the preceding. However, to put an end to them, I asked her if there was any thing she wished to demand. "'Ah, dear!--oh yes, prince!' replied the lady in an indifferent tone. 'A mere trifle--less than nothing--two millions, without counting the interest at five per cent. But these are matters I leave entirely to my men of business, being for my own part much more absorbed in politics and the science of government.' "'Alas! madame, the king has arrived in France with his mind made up upon most subjects, the fruit of twenty-five years' meditation; and I fear he is not likely to profit by your good intentions.' "'Then so much the worse for him and for France! All the world knows what it cost Bonaparte his refusing to follow my advice, and pay me my two millions. I have studied the Revolution profoundly, followed it through all its phases, and I flatter myself I am the only pilot who can hold with one hand the rudder of the state, if at least I have Benjamin for steersman.' "'Benjamin! Benjamin--who?' asked I in surprise. "'It would give me the deepest distress,' replied she, 'to think that the name of M. le Baron de Rebecque Benjamin de Constant has never reached the ears of your royal highness. One of his ancestors saved the life of Henry Quatre. Devoted to the descendants of this good king, he is ready to serve them; and among several _constitutions_ he has in his portfolio, you will probably find one with annotations and reflections by myself, which will suit you. Adopt it, and choose Benjamin Constant to carry the idea out.' "It seemed like a thing resolved--an event decided upon--this proposal of inventing a constitution for us. I kept as long as I could upon the defensive, but Mme. de Staël, carried away by her zeal and her enthusiasm, instead of speaking of what personally concerned herself, knocked me about with arguments, and crushed me under threats and menaces; so, tired to death of entertaining, instead of a clever, humble woman, a roaring politician in petticoats, I finished the audience, leaving her as little satisfied as myself with the interview. Mme. de Genlis was ten times less disagreeable, and twenty times more amusing. "That same evening I had M. le Prince de Talleyrand with me, and I was confounded by hearing him say, 'So, your royal highness has made Mme. de Staël completely quarrel with me now?' "'Me! I never so much as pronounced your name.' "'Notwithstanding that, she is convinced that I am the person who prevents your royal highness from employing her in your political relations, and that I am jealous of Benjamin Constant. She is resolved on revenge.' "'Ha, ha!--and what can she do?' "'A very great deal of mischief, Monseigneur. She has numerous partisans; and if she declares herself Bonapartiste, we must look to ourselves.' "'That _would_ be curious.' "'Oh, I shall take upon myself to prevent her going so far; but she will be Royalist no longer, and we shall suffer from that.' "At this time I had not the remotest idea of what a mere man, still less a mere woman, could do in France: but now I understand it perfectly, and if Mme. de Staël was living--Heaven pardon me!--I would strike up a flirtation with her." From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. THE SMUGGLER MALGRE LUI. There is perhaps no more singular anomaly in the history of the human mind than the very different light in which a fraud is viewed according to the circumstances in which it is practised. The singular revelations made to the Chancellor of the Exchequer by a late deputation will probably be fresh in the remembrance of most of our readers. Even the learned gentleman himself could hardly maintain his professional gravity when informed of the ingenious contrivances adopted for defrauding the revenue. Advertisements floating through the air attached to balloons, French gloves making their way into the kingdom in separate detachments of right and left hands, mutilated clocks travelling without their wheels--such were some of the divers modes by which the law was declared to be evaded, and the custom-house officers baffled. We are by no means disposed either to think or speak with levity of this system of things. However much a man may succeed in reconciling any fraud to his own conscience, or however leniently it may be viewed by his fellow-men, it will yet assuredly help to degrade his moral nature, and its repetition will slowly, but surely, deaden the silent monitor within his breast. All we affirm is the well-known fact, that laws are in most cases ineffective, except in so far as they harmonize with the innate moral convictions of mankind; and that many a man who would not for worlds cheat his next door neighbor of a penny, will own without a blush, and perhaps even with a smile of triumph, that he has cheated the government of thousands! It is not often, however, that so daring and successful a stroke of this nature is effected as that which we find related of a celebrated Swiss jeweller, who actually succeeded in making the French director-general of the customs act the part of a smuggler! Geneva, as must be well known to all our readers, supplies half Europe with her watches and her jewelry. Three thousand workmen are kept in continual employment by her master goldsmiths; while seventy-five thousand ounces of gold, and fifty thousand marks of silver, annually change their form, and multiply their value beneath their skilful hands! The most fashionable jeweller's shop in Geneva is unquestionably that of Beautte; his trinkets are those which beyond all others excite the longing of the Parisian ladies. A high duty is charged upon these in crossing the French frontier; but, in consideration of a brokerage of five per cent., M. Beautte undertakes to forward them safely to their destination through contraband channels; and the bargain between the buyer and seller is concluded with this condition as openly appended and avowed as if there were no such personages as custom-house officers in the world. All this went on smoothly for some years with M. Beautte; but at length it so happened that M. le Comte de Saint-Cricq, a gentleman of much ability and vigilance was appointed director-general of the customs. He heard so much of the skill evinced by M. Beautte in eluding the vigilance of his agents, that he resolved personally to investigate the matter, and prove for himself the truth of the reports. He consequently repaired to Geneva, presented himself at M. Beautte's shop, and purchased thirty thousand francs' worth of jewelry, on the express condition that they should be transmitted to him free of duty on his return to Paris. M. Beautte accepted the proposed condition with the air of a man who was perfectly accustomed to arrangements of this description. He, however, presented for signature to M. de Saint-Cricq a private deed, by which the purchaser pledged himself to pay the customary five per cent. _smuggling dues_, in addition to the thirty thousand francs' purchase-money. M. de Saint-Cricq smiled, and taking the pen from the jeweller's hand, affixed to the deed the following signature--"L. de Saint-Cricq, Director-General of the Customs in France." He then handed the document back to M. Beautte, who merely glanced at the signature, and replied with a courteous bow-- "_Monsieur le Directeur des Douanes_, I shall take care that the articles which you have done me the honor of purchasing shall be handed to you in Paris directly after your arrival." M. de Saint-Cricq, piqued by the man's cool daring and apparent defiance of his authority and professional skill, immediately ordered post-horses, and without the delay of a single hour set out with all speed on the road to Paris. On reaching the frontier, the Director-General made himself known to the _employés_ who came forward to examine his carriage--informed the chief officer of the incident which had just occurred, and begged of him to keep up the strictest surveillance along the whole of the frontier line, as he felt it to be a matter of the utmost importance to place some check upon the wholesale system of fraud which had for some years past been practised upon the revenue by the Geneva jewellers. He also promised a gratuity of fifty louis-d'ors to whichever of the _employés_ should be so fortunate as to seize the prohibited jewels--a promise which had the effect of keeping every officer on the line wide awake, and in a state of full activity, during the three succeeding days. In the meanwhile M. de Saint-Cricq reached Paris, alighted at his own residence, and after having embraced his wife and children, and passed a few moments in their society, retired to his dressing-room, for the purpose of laying aside his travelling costume. The first thing which arrested his attention when he entered the apartment was a very elegant looking casket, which stood upon the mantelpiece, and which he did not remember to have ever before seen. He approached to examine it; his name was on the lid; it was addressed in full to "M. le Comte de Saint-Cricq, Director-General of Customs." He accordingly opened it without hesitation, and his surprise and dismay may be conceived when, on examining the contents, he recognized at once the beautiful trinkets he had so recently purchased in Geneva! The count rung for his valet, and inquired from him whether he could throw any light upon this mysterious occurrence. The valet looked surprised, and replied, that on opening his master's portmanteau, the casket in question was one of the first articles which presented itself to his sight, and its elegant form and elaborate workmanship having led him to suppose it contained articles of value, he had carefully laid it aside upon the mantelpiece. The count, who had full confidence in his valet, and felt assured that he was in no way concerned in the matter, derived but little satisfaction from this account, which only served to throw a fresh veil of mystery over the transaction; and it was only some time afterwards, and after long investigation, that he succeeded in discovering the real facts of the case. Beautte, the jeweller, had a secret understanding with one of the servants of the hotel at which the Comte de Saint-Cricq lodged in Geneva. This man, taking advantage of the hurried preparations for the count's departure, contrived to slip the casket unperceived into one of his portmanteaus, and the ingenious jeweller had thus succeeded in making the Director-General of Customs one of the most successful _smugglers_ in the kingdom! THE TRUE HISTORY OF AGNES SOREL. BY R. H. HORNE, AUTHOR OF "ORION," ETC. Agnes Sorel was born in 1409, at the village of Fromenteau, in Touraine. Her father was the Seigneur de St. Gérand, a gentleman attached to the house of the Count de Clermont. At the age of fifteen, she was placed as maid of honor to Isabel of Lorraine, duchess of Anjou, and accompanied this princess when she went to Paris, in 1431. At this period, Agnes Sorel was considered to be the most beautiful woman of her day. Her conversation and wit were equal to her beauty. In the "Histoire des Favorites" she is said to have been noble-minded, full of generosity, with sweetness of manners, and sincerity of heart. The same writer adds that every body fell in love with her, from the king to the humblest officers. Charles VII. became passionately attached to her; and in order to insure her constant presence at court, he placed her as maid of honor to the queen. The amour was conducted with secrecy; but the fact became manifest by the favors which the king lavished upon the relations of Agnes, while she herself lived in great magnificence amidst a very poor court. She was fond of splendor, and has been quaintly described by Monstrelet as "having enjoyed all the pleasures of life, in wearing rich clothes, furred robes, and golden chains of precious stones, and whatever else she desired." When she visited Paris, in attendance upon the queen, the splendor and expense of Agnes were so excessive that the people murmured greatly; whereupon the proud beauty exclaimed against the Parisians as churls. During the time that the English were actually in possession of a great part of France, it was in vain that the queen (Mary of Anjou) endeavored to rouse her husband from his lethargy. That the king was not deficient in energy and physical courage, is evident from the manner in which he signalized himself on various occasions. At the siege of Montereau in 1437, (according to the Chronicle de Charles VII. par M. Alain Chartier, Nevers, 1594,) he rushed to the assault, now thrusting with the lance, now assisting the artillery, now superintending the various military engines for heaving masses of stone or wood; but during the period above-mentioned he was lost to all sense of royal glory, and had given himself up entirely to hunting and all sorts of pleasures. He was recalled by Agnes to a sense of what was due to his kingdom. She told him, one day, says Brantoine, that when she was a girl, an astrologer had predicted that she would be loved by one of the most valiant kings of Christendom; that when His Majesty Charles VII. had done her this honor, she thought, of course, he was the valiant king who had been predicted; but now, finding he was so weak, and had so little care as to what became of himself and his affairs, she saw that she had made a mistake, and that this valiant prince could not be Charles, but the King of England. Saying these words, Agnes rose, and bowing reverentially to the king, asked leave to retire to the court of the English king, since the prophecy pointed at him. "Charles," she said, "was about to lose his crown, and Henry to unite it to his." By this rebuke the king was much affected. He gave up his hunting, left his gardens for the field of battle, and succeeded in driving the English out of France. This circumstance occasioned Francis I. to make the following verses, which, it is said, he wrote under a portrait of Agnes:-- "Plus de louange et d'honneur tu mérite, La cause étant de France recouvrer, Que ce que peut dedans un cloitre ouvrer, Close nonnain, ou bien dévol hermite." The king lavished gifts and honors upon Agnes. He built a château for her at Loches; he gave her, besides the comté de Penthièvre, in Bretagne, the lordships of Roche Servière, of Issoudun, in Berri, and the Château de Beauté, at the extremity of the wood of Vincennes, that she might be, as he said, "in deed and in name the Queen of Beauty." It is believed that she never made a bad use of her influence with the king for any political purposes or unkind private feelings; nevertheless, the Dauphin (afterwards Louis XI.) conceived an implacable jealousy against her, and carried his resentment so far, on one occasion, as to give her a blow. She retired, in 1445, to Loches, and for nearly five years declined appearing at court; but the king's love for her still continued, and he took many journeys into Touraine to visit her. But eventually the queen, who had never forgotten her noble counsels to the king, which had roused him from his lethargy, persuaded her to return to court. The queen appears to have felt no jealousy, but to have had a regard for her. It seems, also, that Agnes had become very popular, partly from her beauty and wit, partly because she was considered in a great measure, to have saved France, and partly because she distributed large sums in alms to the poor, and to repair decayed churches. After the taking of Rouen, and the entire expulsion of the English from France, the king took up his winter-quarters in the Abbey of Jumiège. Agnes hastened to the Château de Masnal la Belle, a league distant from this abbey, for the purpose of warning the king of a conspiracy. The king only laughed at the intelligence; but the death of Agnes Sorel, which immediately followed, gives some grounds for crediting the truth of the information which she communicated. At this place Agnes, still beautiful, and in perfect health, was suddenly attacked by a dysentery which carried her off. It is believed that she was poisoned. Some affirm that it was effected by direction of the Dauphin; others accuse Jacques Coeur, the king's goldsmith (as the master of the treasury was then called), and others attribute it to female jealousy. The account given of her death by Monstrelet is to the following effect: Agnes was suddenly attacked by a dysentery which could not be cured. She lingered long, and employed the time in prayer and repentance; she often, as he relates, called upon Mary Magdalen, who had also been a sinner, and upon God and the blessed Virgin for aid. After receiving the sacrament, she desired the book of prayers to be brought her, in which she had written with her own hand the verses of St. Barnard, and these she repeated. She then made many gifts, which were put down in writing: and these, including alms and the payment of her servants, amounted to 60,000 crowns. The fair Agnes, the once proud beauty, perceiving her end approaching, and now feeling a disgust to life proportioned to the fulness of her past enjoyment of all its gayeties, vanities, and pleasures, said to the Lord de la Tremouille and others, and in the presence of all her damsels, that our insecure and worldly life was but a foul ordure. She then requested her confessor to give her absolution, according to a form she herself dictated, with which he complied. After this, she uttered a loud shriek, and gave up the ghost. She died on Monday, the 9th day of February, 1449, about six o'clock in the afternoon, in the fortieth year of her age. This account, though bearing every appearance of probability, is yet open to some doubts, from the manifestation of a tendency, on the part of Monstrelet, to give a coloring to the event, and to the character of Agnes Sorel. He even attempts to throw a doubt upon her having been the king's mistress, treating the fact as a mere scandal. He says that the affection of the king was attributable to her good sense, her wit, her agreeable manners, and gayety, quite as much as to her beauty. This was, no doubt, the case; but it hardly helps the argument of the historian. Monstrelet finds it difficult, however, to dispose of the children that she had by the king: he admits that Agnes had a daughter which she said was the king's, but that he denied it. The compilation by Denys Codefroy takes the same view, but nearly the whole account is copied verbatim from Monstrelet, without acknowledgment. The heart and intestines of Agnes were buried at Jumiège. Her body was placed in the centre of the choir of the collegiate church of the Château de Loches, which she had greatly enriched. Her tomb was in existence at Loches, in 1792. It was of black marble. The figure of Agnes was in white marble; her head resting upon a lozenge, supported by angels, and two lambs were at her feet. The writer of the life of Agnes Sorel in the "Biographie Universelle," having access to printed books and MSS. of French history which are not in the public libraries of this country, the following statements are taken from that work: the writer does not give his authorities. The canons of the church pretended to be scandalized at having the tomb of Agnes placed in their choir, and begged permission of Louis XI. to have it removed. "I consent," replied the king, "provided you give up all you have received from her bounty." The poets of the day were profuse in their praises of the memory of Agnes. One of the most memorable of these is a poem by Baïf, printed at Paris in 1573. In 1789 the library of the chapter of Loches possessed a manuscript containing nearly a thousand Latin sonnets in praise of Agnes, all acrostics, and made by a canon of that city. A marble bust of her was long preserved at the Château de Chinon, and is now placed in the Muséum des Augustins. Agnes Sorel had three daughters by Charles VII., who all received dowries, and were married at the expense of the crown. They received the title of daughters of France, the name given at that time to the natural daughters of the kings. An account of the noble families into which they married, together with the honors bestowed upon the brother of Agnes, will be found in Moreri's "Dictionnaire Historique." From the London Examiner. PROSPECTS OF AFRICAN COLONIZATION. Africa has never been propitious to European settlement or colonization, but quite the contrary. The last founded state of the Anglo-American Union, of about two years' growth, is alone, at this moment, worth more than all that has been effected by the European race in Africa in two-and-twenty centuries. The most respectable product of African colonization is a Cape boor, and this is certainly not a finished specimen of humanity. Assuredly, for the last three hundred years, Africa has done nothing for the nations of Europe but seduce them into crime, folly, and extravagance. The Romans were the first European settlers in Africa; it was at their very door, and they held it for eight centuries. Now, there is not left in it hardly a trace of Roman civilization; certainly fewer, at all events, than the Arabs have left in Spain. The Vandal occupation of Mediterranean Africa lasted only half a century. We should not have known that Vandals had ever set their feet on the Continent but for the written records of civilized men. There is nothing Vandal there, unless Vandalism in the abstract. The Dutch came next, in order of time, in another portion of Africa, and we have already alluded to the indistinct "spoor" which they have left behind them after an occupation of a hundred and fifty years. The English have settled in two different quarters of the African continent, one of them within eight degrees of the equatorial line, and the other some thirty-four south of it. The first costs us civil establishments, forts, garrisons, and squadrons included (for out of Africa and its people comes the supposed necessity for the squadron), a good million a year. The most valuable article we get from tropical Africa is the oil of a certain palm, which contributes largely towards an excise duty of about a million and a half a year, levied on what has been justly called a second necessary of life--to wit, soap. We have been in possession of the southern promontory of Africa for above fifty years. In this time, besides its conquest twice over from a European power, and in addition to fleets and armies, it has cost us, in mere self-defence against savages, three million pounds, while at this moment we are engaged in the same kind of defence, with the tolerable certainty of incurring another million. No one will venture to say that this sum alone does not far exceed the value of the fee simple and sovereignty of the southern promontory of Africa. What we get from it consists chiefly in some purgative aloes, a little indifferent wool, and a good deal of execrable wine, on the importation of which we pay a virtual bounty! As for _our subjects_ in this part of the African continent, they amount to about two hundred thousand, and are composed of Anglo-Saxons, Dutch, Malays, Hottentots, Bushmen, Gaikas, Tambookies, Amagarkas, Zulas, and Amazulas, speaking a very Babel of African, Asiatic, and European tongues, perilous to delicate organic structures even to listen to. Now for French African colonization. If we have not been very wise ourselves, our neighbors, who have never been eminently happy in their attempts at colonization, have been much less so. They have been in possession of an immense territory in Algeria for twenty years, and have now about fifty thousand colonists there, with an army which has generally not been less than one hundred thousand, so that every colonist requires two soldiers to keep his throat from being cut, and his property from being robbed or stolen. This is about ten times the regular army that protects twenty-eight millions of Anglo-Americans from nearly all the savages of North America. The local revenue of Algeria is half a million sterling; but the annual cost of the experiment to France amounts to eight times as much as the revenue; and it has been computed that the whole charge to the French nation, from first to last (it goes on at the same rate), has been sixty million pounds. This is without exception the most monstrous attempt at colonization that has ever been made by man. If war should unfortunately arise with any maritime power, the matter will be still worse. At least one hundred thousand of the flower of the French army will then be worse than lost to France. For, pent up as it will be in a narrow strip of eighty miles broad along the shore of the Mediterranean, it may be blockaded from the sea by any superior naval power; and assuredly will be so, from the side of the desert, by a native one. To hold Algeria is to cripple France. What, then, is the cause of the fatality which has thus ever attended African colonization by Europeans? In tropical Africa, the heat and insalubrity, and consequently the total unfitness for European life, are causes quite sufficient to account for the failure; and the failure has been eminent with French, Dutch, English, and Danes. But this will not account for want of success in temperate Africa, whether beyond the northern or southern tropic. The climate of this last, especially, is very good; and that of the first being nearly the same as their own, ought not to be hurtful to the constitutions of southern Europeans. Drought, and the intermixture of deserts and wastes of sand with fertile lands, after the manner of a chess-board, without the regularity, is, of course, unpropitious to colonization, but cannot prevent its advancement, as we see by the progress of our Australian colonies. These causes, however, combined with the character of the native or congenial inhabitants of the country, have been quite sufficient to prove insuperable obstacles to a prosperous colonization. A nomad and wandering population has in fact been generated, incapable either of advancement or amalgamation, having just a sufficient knowledge of the arts to be dangerous neighbors, not capable of being driven to a distance from the settlers, nor likely to be destroyed by gunpowder or brandy. The lion and shepherd recede before the white man in southern Africa, but not the Caffir. The inhabitant of northern Africa, whether Arabian or Numidian, is, in relation to an European colony, only a more formidable Caffir, from greater numbers and superior skill. Heretofore, a garrison of five thousand men at the most has been sufficient to protect the Cape colony, although six thousand miles distant from England. The territory of Algeria, of about the same extent, requires about twenty times that number, although within a day's sail of France. Arab and Numidian seem to be alike untamable both by position and by race. The Arabs (and it shows they were capable of better things) were a civilized and industrious people while in the fair regions of Spain; driven from it, they have degenerated into little more than predatory shepherds, or freebooters; but they are only the more formidable to civilized men on this very account. What, then, will be the fate of the French and English colonies in temperate Africa? We confess we can hardly venture to predict. Assuredly, neither north nor south Africa will ever give birth to a great or flourishing community, such as North America has done, and as Australia and New Zealand will certainly do. The Caffirs may possibly be driven to a distance, after a long course of trouble and expense; but the Arabs and Kabyles are as inexpungable as the wandering tribes of Arabia Petræa or Tartary. With them, neither expulsion, nor extermination, nor amalgamation is practicable. Very likely France and England will get heartily tired of paying yearly millions for their unavailable deserts, and there is no knowing what they may be driven to do in such an extremity. At all events, we may safely assert that France would have saved sixty millions of pounds, and the interminable prospect of a proportional annual expenditure, had she confined herself to the town and fortress of Algiers; and England would have been richer and wiser, had she kept within the bounds of the original Dutch colony. The best thing we ourselves can do with our extra-tropical Africa, is to leave the colonists to govern, and also to defend themselves from all but enemies by sea: that the French, unfortunately, cannot do. MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. _Continued from page 269._ BOOK V.--INITIAL CHAPTER. "I hope, Pisistratus," said my father, "that you do not intend to be dull!" "Heaven forbid, sir! what could make you ask such a question? _Intend!_ No! if I am dull it is from innocence." "A very long Discourse upon Knowledge!" said my father; "very long. I should cut it out!" I looked upon my father as a Byzantian sage might have looked on a Vandal. "Cut it out!" "Stops the action, sir!" said my father, dogmatically. "Action! But a novel is not a drama." "No, it is a great deal longer--twenty times as long, I dare say," replied Mr. Caxton with a sigh. "Well, sir--well! I think my Discourse upon Knowledge has much to do with the subject--is vitally essential to the subject; does not stop the action--only explains and elucidates the action. And I am astonished, sir, that you, a scholar, and a cultivator of knowledge--" "There--there!" cried my father, deprecatingly; "I yield--I yield. What better could I expect when I set up for a critic! What author ever lived that did not fly into a passion--even with his own father, if his father presumed to say--'Cut out!' _Pacem imploro_--" _Mrs. Caxton._--"My dear Austin, I am sure Pisistratus did not mean to offend you, and I have no doubt he will take your--" _Pisistratus_, (hastily.)--"Advice _for the future_, certainly. I will quicken the action and--" "Go on with the Novel," whispered Roland, looking up from his eternal account-book. "We have lost £200 by our barley!" Therewith I plunged my pen into the ink, and my thoughts into the "Fair Shadowland." CHAPTER II. "Halt!" cried a voice; and not a little surprised was Leonard when the stranger who had accosted him the preceding evening got into the chaise. "Well," said Richard, "I am not the sort of man you expected, eh! Take time to recover yourself." And with these words Richard drew forth a book from his pocket, threw himself back, and began to read. Leonard stole many a glance at the acute, hardy, handsome face of his companion, and gradually recognized a family likeness to poor John, in whom, despite age and infirmity, the traces of no common share of physical beauty were still evident. And, with that quick link in ideas which mathematical aptitude bestows, the young student at once conjectured that he saw before him his uncle Richard. He had the discretion, however, to leave that gentleman free to choose his own time for introducing himself, and silently revolved the new thoughts produced by the novelty of his situation. Mr. Richard read with notable quickness--sometimes cutting the leaves of the book with his penknife, sometimes tearing them open with his forefinger, sometimes skipping whole pages altogether. Thus he galloped to the end of the volume--flung it aside--lighted his cigar, and began to talk. He put many questions to Leonard relative to his rearing, and especially to the mode by which he had acquired his education; and Leonard, confirmed in the idea that he was replying to a kinsman, answered frankly. Richard did not think it strange that Leonard should have acquired so much instruction with so little direct tuition. Richard Avenel himself had been tutor to himself. He had lived too long with our go-ahead brethren, who stride the world on the other side the Atlantic with the seven-leagued boots of the Giant-killer, not to have caught their glorious fever for reading. But it was for a reading wholly different from that which was familiar to Leonard. The books he read must be new; to read old books would have seemed to him going back in the world. He fancied that new books necessarily contained new ideas--a common mistake--and our lucky adventurer was the man of his day. Tired with talking, he at length chucked the book he had run through to Leonard, and, taking out a pocket-book and pencil, amused himself with calculations on some detail of his business, after which he fell into an absorbed train of thought--part pecuniary, part ambitious. Leonard found the book interesting; it was one of the numerous works, half-statistic, half-declamatory, relating to the condition of the working-classes, which peculiarly distinguish our century, and ought to bind together rich and poor, by proving the grave attention which modern society bestows upon all that can affect the welfare of the last. "Dull stuff--theory--clap-trap," said Richard, rousing himself from his reverie at last: "it can't interest you." "All books interest me, I think," said Leonard, "and this especially; for it relates to the working-class, and I am one of them." "You were yesterday, but you mayn't be to-morrow," answered Richard good-humoredly, and patting him on the shoulder. "You see, my lad, that it is the middle class which ought to govern the country. What the book says about the ignorance of country magistrates is very good; but the man writes pretty considerable trash when he wants to regulate the number of hours a free-born boy should work at a factory--only ten hours a-day--pooh! and so lose two to the nation! Labor is wealth: and if we could get men to work twenty-four hours a-day, we should be just twice as rich. If the march of civilization is to proceed," continued Richard, loftily, "men, and boys too, must not lie a-bed doing nothing _all night_, sir." Then with a complacent tone--"We shall get to the twenty-four hours at last; and, by gad, we must, or we shan't flog the Europeans as we do now." On arriving at the inn at which Richard had first made acquaintance with Mr. Dale, the coach by which he had intended to perform the rest of the journey was found to be full. Richard continued to perform the journey in post chaises, not without some grumbling at the expense, and incessant orders to the postboys to make the best of the way. "Slow country this, in spite of all its brag," said he--"very slow. Time is money--they know that in the States; for why, they are all men of business there. Always slow in a country where a parcel of lazy idle lords, and dukes, and baronets, seem to think 'time is pleasure.'" Towards evening the chaise approached the confines of a very large town, and Richard began to grow fidgety. His easy cavalier air was abandoned. He withdrew his legs from the window, out of which they had been luxuriously dangling; pulled down his waistcoat; buckled more tightly his stock: it was clear that he was resuming the decorous dignity that belongs to state. He was like a monarch who, after travelling happy and incognito, returns to his capital. Leonard divined at once, that they were nearing their journey's end. Humble foot-passengers now looked at the chaise, and touched their hats. Richard returned the salutation with a nod--a nod less gracious than condescending. The chaise turned rapidly to the left, and stopped before a smart lodge, very new, very white, adorned with two Doric columns in stucco, and flanked by a large pair of gates. "Hollo!" cried the postboy, and cracked his whip. Two children were playing before the lodge, and some clothes were hanging out to dry on the shrubs and pales round the neat little building. "Hang those brats! they are actually playing," growled Dick. "As I live, the jade has been washing again! Stop, boy." During this soliloquy, a good-looking young woman had rushed from the door--slapped the children, as catching sight of the chaise, they ran towards the house--opened the gates, and, dropping a curtsey to the ground, seemed to wish that she could drop into it altogether, so frightened and so trembling seemed she to shrink from the wrathful face which the master now put out of the window. "Did I tell you, or did I not," said Dick, "that I would not have these horrid disreputable clubs of yours playing just before my lodge gates?" "Please, sir--" "Don't answer me. And did I tell you, or did I not, that the next time I saw you making a drying-ground of my lilacs, you should go out, neck and crop--" "Oh, please, sir--" "You leave my lodge next Saturday: drive on, boy. The ingratitude and insolence of those common people are disgraceful to human nature," muttered Richard, with an accent of the bitterest misanthropy. The chaise wheeled along the smoothest and freshest of gravel roads, and through fields of the finest land, in the highest state of cultivation. Rapid as was Leonard's survey, his rural eye detected the signs of a master in the art agronomial. Hitherto he had considered the Squire's model farm as the nearest approach to good husbandry he had seen: for Jackeymo's finer skill was developed rather on the minute scale of market-gardening than what can fairly be called husbandry. But the Squire's farm was degraded by many old fashioned notions, and concessions to the whim of the eye, which would not be found in model farms now-a-days,--large tangled hedgerows, which, though they constitute one of the beauties most picturesque in old England, make sad deductions from produce; great trees, overshadowing the corn, and harboring the birds; little patches of rough sward left to waste; and angles of woodland running into fields, exposing them to rabbits, and blocking out the sun. These and such like blots on a gentleman's agriculture, common-sense and Giacomo had made clear to the acute comprehension of Leonard. No such faults were perceptible in Richard Avenel's domain. The fields lay in broad divisions, the hedges were clipped and narrowed into their proper destination of mere boundaries. Not a blade of wheat withered under the cold shade of a tree; not a yard of land lay waste; not a weed was to be seen, not a thistle to waft its baleful seed through the air: some young plantations were placed, not where the artist would put them, but just where the farmer wanted a fence from the wind. Was there no beauty in this? Yes, there was beauty of its kind--beauty at once recognizable to the initiated--beauty of use and profit--beauty that could bear a monstrous high rent. And Leonard uttered a cry of admiration which thrilled through the heart of Richard Avenel. "This _is_ farming!" said the villager. "Well, I guess it is," answered Richard, all his ill-humor vanishing. "You should have seen the land when I bought it. But we new men, as they call us--(damn their impertinence)--are the new blood of this country." Richard Avenel never said any thing more true. Long may the new blood circulate through the veins of the mighty giantess; but let the grand heart be the same as it has beat for proud ages. The chaise now passed through a pretty shrubbery, and the house came into gradual view--a house with a portico--all the offices carefully thrust out of sight. The postboy dismounted, and rang the bell. "I almost think they are going to keep me waiting," said Mr. Richard, well-nigh in the very words of Louis XIV. But that fear was not realized--the door opened; a well-fed servant out of livery presented himself. There was no hearty welcoming smile on his face, but he opened the chaise-door with demure and taciturn respect. "Where's George? why does not he come to the door?" asked Richard, descending from the chaise slowly, and leaning on the servant's outstretched arm with as much precaution as if he had had the gout. Fortunately, George here came into sight, settling himself hastily into his livery coat. "See to the things, both of you," said Richard, as he paid the postboy. Leonard stood on the gravel sweep, gazing at the square white house. "Handsome elevation--classical, I take it--eh?" said Richard, joining him. "But you should see the offices." He then, with familiar kindness, took Leonard by the arm, and drew him within. He showed him the hall, with a carved mahogany stand for hats; he showed him the drawing-room, and pointed out its beauties--though it was summer the drawing-room looked cold, as will look rooms newly furnished, with walls newly papered, in houses newly built. The furniture was handsome, and suited to the rank of a rich trader. There was no pretence about it, and therefore no vulgarity, which is more than can be said for the houses of many an honorable Mrs. Somebody in Mayfair, with rooms twelve feet square, chokeful of buhl, that would have had its proper place in the Tuileries. Then Richard showed him the library, with mahogany book-cases and plate glass, and the fashionable authors handsomely bound. Your new men are much better friends to living authors than your old families who live in the country, and at most subscribe to a book-club. Then Richard took him up-stairs, and led him through the bedrooms--all very clean and comfortable, and with every modern convenience; and, pausing in a very pretty single gentleman's chamber, said, "This is your den. And now, can you guess who I am?" "No one but my Uncle Richard could be so kind," answered Leonard. But the compliment did not flatter Richard. He was extremely disconcerted and disappointed. He had hoped that he should be taken for a lord at least, forgetful of all that he had said in disparagement of lords. "Pish!" said he at last, biting his lip--"so you don't think that I look like a gentleman! Come, now, speak honestly." Leonard wonderingly saw he had given pain, and with the good breeding which comes instinctively from good nature, replied--"I judged you by your heart, sir, and your likeness to my grandfather--otherwise I should never have presumed to fancy we could be relations." "Hum!" answered Richard. "You can just wash your hands, and then come down to dinner; you will hear the gong in ten minutes. There's the bell--ring for what you want." With that, he turned on his heel; and, descending the stairs, gave a look into the dining-room, and admired the plated salver on the sideboard, and the king's pattern spoons and forks on the table. Then he walked to the looking-glass over the mantel-piece; and, wishing to survey the whole effect of his form, mounted a chair. He was just getting into an attitude which he thought imposing, when the butler entered, and being London bred, had the discretion to try to escape unseen; but Richard caught sight of him in the looking-glass, and colored up to the temples. "Jarvis," said he mildly--"Jarvis, put me in mind to have these inexpressibles altered." CHAPTER III. Apropos of the inexpressibles, Mr. Richard did not forget to provide his nephew with a much larger wardrobe than could have been thrust into Dr. Riccabocca's knapsack. There was a very good tailor in the town, and the clothes were very well made. And, but for an air more ingenuous, and a cheek that, despite study and night vigils, retained much of the sunburnt bloom of the rustic, Leonard Fairfield might now have almost passed, without disparaging comment, by the bow-window at White's. Richard burst into an immoderate fit of laughter when he first saw the watch which the poor Italian had bestowed upon Leonard; but, to atone for the laughter, he made him a present of a very pretty substitute, and bade him "lock up his turnip." Leonard was more hurt by the jeer at his old patron's gift than pleased by his uncle's. But Richard Avenel had no conception of sentiment. It was not for many days that Leonard could reconcile himself to his uncle's manner. Not that the peasant could pretend to judge of its mere conventional defects; but there is an ill breeding to which, whatever our rank and nurture, we are almost equally sensitive--the ill breeding that comes from want of consideration for others. Now, the Squire was as homely in his way as Richard Avenel, but the Squire's bluntness rarely hurt the feelings: and when it did so, the Squire perceived and hastened to repair his blunder. But Mr. Richard, whether kind or cross, was always wounding you in some little delicate fibre--not from malice, but from the absence of any little delicate fibres of his own. He was really, in many respects, a most excellent man, and certainly a very valuable citizen. But his merits wanted the fine tints and fluent curves that constitute beauty of character. He was honest, but sharp in his practice, and with a keen eye to his interests. He was just, but as a matter of business. He made no allowances, and did not leave to his justice the large margin of tenderness and mercy. He was generous, but rather from an idea of what was due to himself than with much thought of the pleasure he gave to others; and he even regarded generosity as a capital put out to interest. He expected a great deal of gratitude in return, and, when he obliged a man, considered that he had bought a slave. Every needy voter knew where to come, if he wanted relief or a loan; but woe to him if he had ventured to express hesitation when Mr. Avenel told him how he must vote. In this town Richard had settled after his return from America, in which country he had enriched himself--first, by spirit and industry--lastly, by bold speculation and good luck. He invested his fortune in business--became a partner in a large brewery--soon bought out his associates--and then took a principal share in a flourishing corn-mill. He prospered rapidly--bought a property of some two or three hundred acres, built a house, and resolved to enjoy himself, and make a figure. He had now become the leading man of the town, and the boast to Audley Egerton that he could return one of the members, perhaps both, was by no means an exaggerated estimate of his power. Nor was his proposition, according to his own views, so unprincipled as it appeared to the statesman. He had taken a great dislike to both the sitting members--a dislike natural to a sensible man of modern politics, who had something to lose. For Mr. Slappe, the active member--who was head-over-ears in debt--was one of the furious democrats rare before the Reform Bill--and whose opinions were held dangerous even by the mass of a liberal constituency; while Mr. Sleekie, the gentleman member, who laid by £5000 every year from his dividends in the Funds, was one of those men whom Richard justly pronounced to be "humbugs"--men who curry favor with the extreme party by voting for measures sure not to be carried; while, if there were the least probability of coming to a decision that would lower the money market, Mr. Sleekie was seized with a well-timed influenza. Those politicians are common enough now. Propose to march to the Millennium, and they are your men. Ask them to march a quarter of a mile, and they fall to feeling their pockets, and trembling for fear of the footpads. They are never so joyful as when there is no chance of a victory. Did they beat the Minister, they would be carried out of the house in a fit. Richard Avenel--despising both these gentlemen, and not taking kindly to the Whigs since the great Whig leaders were Lords--looked with a friendly eye to the Government as it then existed, and especially to Audley Egerton, the enlightened representative of commerce. But in giving Audley and his colleagues the benefit of his influence, through conscience, he thought it all fair and right to have a _quid pro quo_, and, as he had so frankly confessed, it was his whim to rise up "Sir Richard." For this worthy citizen abused the aristocracy much on the same principle as the fair Olivia depreciated Squire Thornhill--he had a sneaking affection for what he abused. The society of Screwstown was, like most provincial capitals, composed of two classes--the commercial and the exclusive. These last dwelt chiefly apart, around the ruins of an old abbey; they affected its antiquity in their pedigrees, and had much of its ruin in their finances. Widows of rural thanes in the neighborhood--genteel spinsters--officers retired on half-pay--younger sons of rich squires, who had now become old bachelors--in short, a very respectable, proud, aristocratic set--who thought more of themselves than do all the Gowers and Howards, Courtenays and Seymours, put together. It had early been the ambition of Richard Avenel to be admitted into this sublime coterie; and, strange to say, he had partially succeeded. He was never more happy than when he was asked to their card-parties, and never more unhappy than when he was actually there. Various circumstances combined to raise Mr. Avenel into this elevated society. First, he was unmarried, still very handsome, and in that society there was a large proportion of unwedded females. Secondly, he was the only rich trader in Screwstown who kept a good cook, and professed to give dinners, and the half-pay captains and colonels swallowed the host for the sake of the venison. Thirdly, and principally, all these exclusives abhorred the two sitting members, and "idem nolle idem velle de republica, ea firma amicitia est;" that is, congeniality in politics pieces porcelain and crockery together better than the best diamond cement. The sturdy Richard Avenel--who valued himself on American independence--held these ladies and gentlemen in an awe that was truly Brahminical. Whether it was that, in England, all notions, even of liberty, are mixed up historically, traditionally, socially, with that fine and subtle element of aristocracy which, like the press, is the air we breathe; or whether Richard imagined that he really became magnetically imbued with the virtues of these silver pennies and gold seven-shilling pieces, distinct from the vulgar coinage in popular use, it is hard to say. But the truth must be told--Richard Avenel was a notable tuft-hunter. He had a great longing to marry out of this society; but he had not yet seen any one sufficiently high-born and high-bred to satisfy his aspirations. In the mean while, he had convinced himself that his way would be smooth could he offer to make his ultimate choice "My Lady;" and he felt that it would be a proud hour in his life when he could walk before stiff Colonel Pompley to the sound of "Sir Richard." Still, however disappointed at the ill success of his bluff diplomacy with Mr. Egerton, and however yet cherishing the most vindictive resentment against that individual--he did not, as many would have done, throw up his political convictions out of personal spite. He resolved still to favor the ungrateful and undeserving administration; and as Audley Egerton had acted on the representations of the mayor and deputies, and shaped his bill to meet their views, so Avenel and the Government rose together in the popular estimation of the citizens of Screwstown. But, duly to appreciate the value of Richard Avenel, and in just counterpoise to all his foibles, one ought to have seen what he had effected for the town. Well might he boast of "new blood;" he had done as much for the town as he had for his fields. His energy, his quick comprehension of public utility, backed by his wealth, and bold, bullying, imperious character, had sped the work of civilization as if with the celerity and force of a steam-engine. If the town were so well paved and so well lighted--if half-a-dozen squalid lanes had been transformed into a stately street--if half the town no longer depended on tanks for their water--if the poor-rates were reduced one-third,--praise to the brisk new blood which Richard Avenel had infused into vestry and corporation. And his example itself was so contagious! "There was not a plate-glass window in the town when I came into it," said Richard Avenel; "and now look down the High Street!" He took the credit to himself, and justly; for, though his own business did not require windows of plate-glass, he had awakened the spirit of enterprise which adorns a whole city. Mr. Avenel did not present Leonard to his friends for more than a fortnight. He allowed him to wear off his rust. He then gave a grand dinner, at which his nephew was formally introduced, and, to his great wrath and disappointment, never opened his lips. How could he, poor youth, when Miss Clarina Mowbray only talked upon high life; till proud Colonel Pompley went in state through the history of the siege of Seringapatam. CHAPTER IV. While Leonard accustoms himself gradually to the splendors that surround him, and often turns with a sigh to the remembrance of his mother's cottage and the sparkling fount in the Italian's flowery garden, we will make with thee, O reader, a rapid flight to the metropolis, and drop ourselves amidst the gay groups that loiter along the dusty ground, or loll over the roadside palings of Hyde Park. The season is still at its height; but the short day of fashionable London life, which commences two hours after noon, is in its decline. The crowd in Rotten Row begins to thin. Near the statue of Achilles, and apart from all other loungers, a gentleman, with one hand thrust into his waistcoat, and the other resting on his cane, gazed listlessly on the horsemen and carriages in the brilliant ring. He was still in the prime of life, at the age when man is usually the most social--when the acquaintances of youth have ripened into friendship, and a personage of some rank and fortune has become a well-known feature in the mobile face of society. But though, when his contemporaries were boys scarce at college, this gentleman had blazed foremost amongst the princes of fashion, and though he had all the qualities of nature and circumstance which either retain fashion to the last, or exchange its false celebrity for a graver repute, he stood as a stranger in that throng of his countrymen. Beauties whirled by to the toilet--statesmen passed on to the senate--dandies took flight to the clubs; and neither nods, nor becks, nor wreathed smiles, said to the solitary spectator, "Follow us--thou art one of our set." Now and then, some middle-aged beau, nearing the post of the loiterer, turned round to look again; but the second glance seemed to dissipate the recognition of the first, and the beau silently continued his way. "By the tombs of my fathers!" said the solitary to himself, "I know now what a dead man might feel if he came to life again, and took a peep at the living." Time passed on--the evening shades descended fast. Our stranger in London had well-nigh the Park to himself. He seemed to breathe more freely as he saw that the space was so clear. "There's oxygen in the atmosphere now," said he, half aloud; "and I can walk without breathing in the gaseous fumes of the multitude. O those chemists--what dolts they are! They tell us crowds taint the air, but they never guess why! Pah, it is not the lungs that poison the element--it is the reek of bad hearts. When a periwig-pated fellow breathes on me, I swallow a mouthful of care. _Allons!_ my friend Nero; now for a stroll." He touched with his cane a large Newfoundland dog, who lay stretched near his feet; a dog and man went slow through the growing twilight, and over the brown dry turf. At length our solitary paused, and threw himself on a bench under a tree. "Half-past eight!" said he, looking at his watch--"one may smoke one's cigar without shocking the world." He took out his cigar-case, struck a light, and in another moment reclined at length on the bench--seemed absorbed in regarding the smoke, that scarce colored ere it vanished into air. "It is the most barefaced lie in the world, my Nero," said he, addressing his dog, "this boasted liberty of man! Now here am I, a free-born Englishman, a citizen of the world, caring--I often say to myself--caring not a jot for Kaisar or Mob; and yet I no more dare smoke this cigar in the Park at half-past six, when all the world is abroad, than I dare pick my Lord Chancellor's pocket, or hit the Archbishop of Canterbury a thump on the nose. Yet no law in England forbids me my cigar, Nero! What is law at half-past eight, was not crime at six and a-half! Britannia says, 'Man, thou art free,' and she lies like a commonplace woman. O Nero, Nero! you enviable dog!--you serve but from liking. No thought of the world costs you one wag of your tail. Your big heart and true instinct suffice you for reason and law. You would want nothing to your felicity, if in these moments of ennui you would but smoke a cigar. Try it, Nero!--try it!" And, rising from his incumbent posture, he sought to force the end of the weed between the teeth of the dog. While thus gravely engaged, two figures had approached the place. The one was a man who seemed weak and sickly. His threadbare coat was buttoned to the chin, but hung large on his shrunken breast. The other was a girl of about fourteen, on whose arm he leant heavily. Her cheek was wan, and there was a patient sad look on her face, which seemed so settled that you would think she could never have known the mirthfulness of childhood. "Pray rest here, papa," said the child softly; and she pointed to the bench, without taking heed of its pre-occupant, who now, indeed, confined to one corner of the seat, was almost hidden by the shadow of a tree. The man sat down with a feeble sigh; and then, observing the stranger, raised his hat, and said in that tone of voice which betrays the usages of polished society, "Forgive me, if I intrude on you, sir." The stranger looked up from his dog, and seeing that the girl was standing, rose at once, as if to make room for her on the bench. But still the girl did not heed him. She hung over her father, and wiped his brow tenderly with a little kerchief which she took from her own neck for the purpose. Nero, delighted to escape the cigar, had taken to some unwieldy curvets and gambols, to vent the excitement into which he had been thrown; and now returning, approached the bench with a low look of surprise, and sniffed at the intruders on his master's privacy. "Come here, sir," said the master. "You need not fear him," he added, addressing himself to the girl. But the girl, without turning round to him, cried in a voice rather of anguish than alarm, "He has fainted! Father! father!" The stranger kicked aside his dog, which was in the way, and loosened the poor man's stiff military stock. While thus charitably engaged, the moon broke out, and the light fell full on the pale care-worn face of the unconscious sufferer. "This face seems not unfamiliar to me, though sadly changed," said the stranger to himself; and bending towards the girl, who had sunk on her knees and was chafing her father's hands, he asked, "My child, what is your father's name?" The child continued her task, too absorbed to answer. The stranger put his hand on her shoulder, and repeated the question. "Digby," answered the child, almost unconsciously; and as she spoke, the man's senses began to return. In a few minutes more he had sufficiently recovered to falter forth his thanks to the stranger. But the last took his hand, and said, in a voice at once tremulous and soothing, "Is it possible that I see once more an old brother in arms? Algernon Digby, I do not forget you; but it seems England has forgotten!" A hectic flush spread over the soldier's face, and he looked away from the speaker as he answered-- "My name is Digby, it is true, sir; but I do not think we have met before. Come, Helen, I am well now--we will go home." "Try and play with that great dog, my child," said the stranger--"I want to talk with your father." The child bowed her submissive head, and moved away; but she did not play with the dog. "I must re-introduce myself, formally, I see," quoth the stranger. "You were in the same regiment with myself, and my name is L'Estrange." "My lord," said the soldier, rising, "forgive me that--" "I don't think that it was the fashion to call me 'my lord' at the mess-table. Come, what has happened to you?--on half pay?" Mr. Digby shook his head mournfully. "Digby, old fellow, can you lend me £100?" said Lord L'Estrange, clapping his _ci-devant_ brother officer on the shoulder, and in a tone of voice that seemed like a boy's--so impudent was it and devil-me-carish. "No! Well, that's lucky, for I can lend it to you." Mr. Digby burst into tears. Lord L'Estrange did not seem to observe the emotion. "We were both sad extravagant fellows in our day," said he, "and I dare say I borrowed of you pretty freely." "Me! Oh, Lord L'Estrange?" "You have married since then, and reformed, I suppose. Tell me, old friend, all about it." Mr. Digby, who by this time had succeeded in restoring some calm to his shattered nerves, now rose, and said in brief sentences, but clear firm tones,-- "My Lord, it is idle to talk of me--useless to help me. I am fast dying. But, my child there, my only child, (he paused an instant, and went on rapidly.) I have relations in a distant country, if I could but get to them--I think they would at least provide for her. This has been for weeks my hope, my dream, my prayer. I cannot afford the journey except by your help. I have begged without shame for myself; shall I be ashamed, then, to beg for her?" "Digby," said L'Estrange with some grave alteration of manner, "talk neither of dying, nor begging. You were nearer death when the balls whistled round you at Waterloo. If soldier meets soldier and says, 'Friend, thy purse,' it is not begging, but brotherhood. Ashamed! By the soul of Belisarius! if I needed money, I would stand at a crossing with my Waterloo medal over my breast, and say to each sleek citizen I had helped to save from the sword of the Frenchman, 'It is your shame if I starve.' Now, lean upon me; I see you should be at home--which way?" The poor soldier pointed his hand towards Oxford Street, and reluctantly accepted the proffered arm. "And when you return from your relations, you will call on me? What!--hesitate? Come, promise." "I will." "On your honor." "If I live, on my honor." "I am staying at present at Knightsbridge, with my father; but you will always hear of my address at No. -- Grosvenor Square, Mr. Egerton's. So you have a long journey before you?" "Very long." "Do not fatigue yourself--travel slowly. Ho, you foolish child!--I see you are jealous of me. Your father has another arm to spare you." Thus talking, and getting but short answers, Lord L'Estrange continued to exhibit those whimsical peculiarities of character, which had obtained for him the repute of heartlessness in the world. Perhaps the reader may think the world was not in the right. But if ever the world does judge rightly of the character of a man who does not live for the world, nor talk of the world, nor feel with the world, it will be centuries after the soul of Harley L'Estrange has done with this planet. CHAPTER V. Lord L'Estrange parted company with Mr. Digby at the entrance of Oxford Street. The father and child there took a cabriolet. Mr. Digby directed the driver to go down the Edgeware Road. He refused to tell L'Estrange his address, and this with such evident pain, from the sores of pride, that L'Estrange could not press the point. Reminding the soldier of his promise to call, Harley thrust a pocket-book into his hand, and walked off hastily towards Grosvenor Square. He reached Audley Egerton's door just as that gentleman was getting out of his carriage; and the two friends entered the house together. "Does the nation take a nap to-night?" asked L'Estrange. "Poor old lady! She hears so much of her affairs, that she may well boast of her constitution: it must be of iron." "The House is still sitting," answered Audley seriously, and with small heed of his friend's witticism. "But it is not a Government motion, and the division will be late, so I came home; and if I had not found you here, I should have gone into the park to look for you." "Yes--one always knows where to find me at this hour, 9 o'clock P.M.--cigar--Hyde Park. There is not a man in England so regular in his habits." Here the friends reached a drawing-room in which the member of Parliament seldom sat, for his private apartments were all on the ground floor. "But it is the strangest whim of yours, Harley," said he. "What?" "To affect detestation of ground-floors." "Affect! O sophisticated man, of the earth, earthy! Affect!--nothing less natural to the human soul than a ground-floor. We are quite far enough from heaven, mount as many stairs as we will, without grovelling by preference." "According to that symbolical view of the case," said Audley, "you should lodge in an attic." "So I would, but that I abhor new slippers. As for hair-brushes, I am indifferent!" "What have slippers and hair-brushes to do with attics?" "Try! Make your bed in an attic, and the next morning you will have neither slippers nor hair-brushes!" "What shall I have done with them?" "Shied them at the cats!" "What odd things you do say, Harley!" "Odd! By Apollo and his nine spinsters! there is no human being who has so little imagination as a distinguished Member of Parliament. Answer me this, thou solemn right honorable--Hast thou climbed to the heights of august contemplation? Hast thou gazed on the stars with the rapt eye of song? Hast thou dreamed of a love known to the angels, or sought to seize in the Infinite the mystery of life?" "Not I indeed, my poor Harley." "Then no wonder, poor Audley, that you cannot conjecture why he who makes his bed in an attic, disturbed by base catterwauls, shies his slippers at cats. Bring a chair into the balcony. Nero spoiled my cigar to-night. I am going to smoke now. You never smoke. You can look on the shrubs in the Square." Audley slightly shrugged his shoulders, but he followed his friend's counsel and example, and brought his chair into the balcony. Nero came too, but at sight and smell of the cigar prudently retreated, and took refuge under the table. "Audley Egerton, I want something from Government." "I am delighted to hear it." "There was a cornet in my regiment, who would have done better not to have come into it. We were, for the most part of us, puppies and fops." "You all fought well, however." "Puppies and fops do fight well. Vanity and valor generally go together. Cæsar, who scratched his head with due care of his scanty curls, and, even in dying, thought of the folds in his toga; Walter Raleigh, who could not walk twenty yards, because of the gems in his shoes; Alcibiades, who lounged into the Agora with doves in his bosom, and an apple in his hand; Murat, bedizened in gold lace and furs; and Demetrius, the City-Taker, who made himself up like a French _Marquise_,--were all pretty good fellows at fighting. A slovenly hero like Cromwell is a paradox in nature, and a marvel in history. But to return to my cornet. We were rich; he was poor. When the pot of clay swims down the stream with the brass-pots, it is sure of a smash. Men said Digby was stingy; I saw he was extravagant. But every one, I fear, would be rather thought stingy than poor. _Bref._--I left the army, and saw him no more till to-night. There was never shabby poor gentleman on the stage more awfully shabby, more pathetically gentleman. But, look ye, this man has fought for England. It was no child's play at Waterloo, let me tell you, Mr. Egerton; and, but for such men, you would be at best a _sous-prefet_, and your Parliament a Provincial Assembly. You must do something for Digby. What shall it be?" "Why, really, my dear Harley, this man was no great friend of yours--eh?" "If he were, he would not want the Government to help him--he would not be ashamed of taking money from me." "That is all very fine, Harley; but there are so many poor officers, and so little to give. It is the most difficult thing in the world that which you ask me. Indeed, I know nothing can be done: he has his half-pay?" "I think not; or, if he has it, no doubt it all goes on his debts. That's nothing to us: the man and his child are starving." "But if it is his own fault--if he has been imprudent?" "Ah--well, well; where the devil is Nero?" "I am so sorry I can't oblige you. If it were any thing else--" "There is something else. My valet--I can't turn him adrift--excellent fellow, but gets drunk now and then. Will you find him a place in the Stamp Office?" "With pleasure." "No, now I think of it--the man knows my ways: I must keep him. But my old wine-merchant--civil man, never dunned--is a bankrupt. I am under great obligations to him, and he has a very pretty daughter. Do you think you could thrust him into some small place in the colonies, or make him a King's Messenger, or something of the sort?" "If you very much wish it, no doubt I can." "My dear Audley, I am but feeling my way: the fact is, I want something for myself." "Ah, that indeed gives me pleasure!" cried Egerton, with animation. "The mission to Florence will soon be vacant--I know it privately. The place would quite suit me. Pleasant city; the best figs in Italy--very little to do. You could sound Lord ---- on the subject." "I will answer beforehand. Lord ----would be enchanted to secure to the public service a man so accomplished as yourself, and the son of a peer like Lord Lansmere." Harley L'Estrange sprang to his feet, and flung his cigar in the face of a stately policeman who was looking up at the balcony. "Infamous and bloodless official!" cried Harley L'Estrange; "so you could provide for a pimple-nosed lackey--for a wine-merchant who has been poisoning the king's subjects with white-lead or sloe-juice--for an idle sybarite, who would complain of a crumpled rose-leaf; and nothing, in all the vast patronage of England, for a broken down soldier, whose dauntless breast was her rampart!" "Harley," said the member of Parliament, with his calm, sensible smile, "this would be a very good clap-trap at a small theatre; but there is nothing in which Parliament demands such rigid economy as the military branch of the public service; and no man for whom it is so hard to effect what we must plainly call a job, as a subaltern officer, who has done nothing more than his duty--and all military men do that. Still, as you take it so earnestly, I will use what interest I can at the War Office, and get him, perhaps, the mastership of a barrack." "You had better; for if you do not, I swear I will turn radical, and come down to your own city to oppose you, with Hunt and Cobbett to canvass for me." "I should be very glad to see you come into Parliament, even as a radical, and at my expense," said Audley, with great kindness. "But the air is growing cold, and you are not accustomed to our climate. Nay, if you are too poetic for catarrhs and rheums, I'm not--come in." CHAPTER VI. Lord L'Estrange threw himself on a sofa, and leant his cheek on his hand thoughtfully. Audley Egerton sat near him, with his arms folded, and gazed on his friend's face with a soft expression of aspect, which was very unusual to the firm outline of his handsome features. The two men were as dissimilar in person as the reader will have divined that they were in character. All about Egerton was so rigid, all about L'Estrange so easy. In every posture of Harley there was the unconscious grace of a child. The very fashion of his garments showed his abhorrence of restraint. His clothes were wide and loose, his neckcloth tied carelessly, left his throat half bare. You could see that he had lived much in warm and southern lands, and contracted a contempt for conventionalities; there was as little in his dress as in his talk of the formal precision of the north. He was three or four years younger than Audley, but he looked at least twelve years younger. In fact, he was one of those men to whom old age seems impossible--voice, look, figure, had all the charm of youth; and, perhaps, it was from this gracious youthfulness--at all events, it was characteristic of the kind of love he inspired--that neither his parents, nor the few friends admitted into his intimacy, ever called him, in their habitual intercourse, by the name of his title. He was not L'Estrange with them, he was Harley; and by that familiar baptismal I will usually designate him. He was not one of those men whom author or reader wish to view at a distance, and remember as "my lord"--it was so rarely that he remembered it himself. For the rest, it had been said of him by a shrewd wit--"He is so natural, that every one calls him affected." Harley L'Estrange was not so critically handsome as Audley Egerton; to a commonplace observer he was, at best, rather good-looking than otherwise. But women said that he had a beautiful countenance, and they were not wrong. He wore his hair, which was of a fair chestnut, long, and in loose curls; and instead of the Englishman's whiskers, indulged in the foreigner's moustache. His complexion was delicate, though not effeminate; it was rather the delicacy of a student than of a woman. But in his clear gray eye there was wonderful vigor of life. A skilful physiologist, looking only into that eye, would have recognized rare stamina of constitution--a nature so rich that, while easily disturbed, it would require all the effects of time, or all the fell combinations of passion and grief, to exhaust it. Even now, though so thoughtful, and even so sad, the rays of that eye were as concentred and stedfast as the light of the diamond. "You were only, then, in jest," said Audley, after a long silence, "when you spoke of this mission to Florence. You have still no idea of entering into public life. "None." "I had hoped better things when I got your promise to pass one season in London. But, indeed, you have kept your promise to the ear to break it to the spirit. I could not presuppose that you would shun all society, and be as much of a hermit here as under the vines of Como." "I have sat in the Strangers' Gallery, and heard your great speakers; I have been in the pit of the opera, and seen your fine ladies; I have walked your streets, I have lounged in your parks, and I say that I can't fall in love with a faded dowager, because she fills up her wrinkles with rouge." "Of what dowager do you speak?" asked the matter-of-fact Audley. "She has a great many titles. Some people call her fashion, you busy men, politics: it is all one--tricked out and artificial. I mean London life. No, I can't fall in love with her, fawning old harridan!" "I wish you could fall in love with something." "I wish I could, with all my heart." "But you are so _blasé_." "On the contrary, I am so fresh. Look out of the window--what do you see?" "Nothing!" "Nothing--" "Nothing but houses and dusty lilacs, my coachman dozing on his box, and two women in pattens crossing the kennel." "I see none of that where I lie on the sofa. I see but the stars. And I feel for them as I did when I was a schoolboy at Eton. It is you who are _blasé_, not I--enough of this. You do not forget my commission, with respect to the exile who has married into your brother's family?" "No; but here you set me a task more difficult than that of saddling your cornet on the War Office." "I know it is difficult, for the counter influence is vigilant and strong; but, on the other hand, the enemy is so damnable a traitor that one must have the Fates and the household gods on one's side." "Nevertheless," said the practical Audley, bending over a book on the table, "I think that the best plan would be to attempt a compromise with the traitor." "To judge of others by myself," answered Harley with spirit, "it were less bitter to put up with wrong than to palter with it for compensation. And such wrong! Compromise with the open foe--that may be done with honor; but with the perjured friend--that were to forgive the perjury." "You are too vindictive," said Egerton; "there may be excuses for the friend, which palliate even--" "Hush! Audley, hush! or I shall think the world has indeed corrupted you. Excuse for the friend who deceives, who betrays! No, such is the true outlaw of Humanity; and the Furies surround him even while he sleeps in the temple." The man of the world lifted his eye slowly on the animated face of one still natural enough for the passions. He then once more returned to his book, and said, after a pause, "It is time you should marry, Harley." "No," answered L'Estrange, with a smile at this sudden turn in the conversation--"not time yet; for my chief objection to that change in life is, that all the women now-a-days are too old for me, or I am too young for them; a few, indeed, are so infantine that one is ashamed to be their toy; but most are so knowing that one is a fool to be their dupe. The first, if they condescend to love you, love you as the biggest doll they have yet dandled, and for a doll's good qualities--your pretty blue eyes, and your exquisite millinery. The last, if they prudently accept you, do so on algebraical principles; you are but the X or the Y that represents a certain aggregate of goods matrimonial--pedigree, title, rent-roll, diamonds, pin-money, opera-box. They cast you up with the help of mamma, and you wake some morning to find that _plus_ wife _minus_ affection equals--the Devil!" "Nonsense," said Audley, with his quiet grave laugh. "I grant that it is often the misfortune of a man in your station to be married rather for what he has, than for what he is; but you are tolerably penetrating, and not likely to be deceived in the character of the woman you court." "Of the woman I _court_?--No! But of the woman I _marry_, very likely indeed. Woman is a changeable thing, as our Virgil informed us at school; but her change _par excellence_ is from the fairy you woo to the brownie you wed. It is not that she has been a hypocrite, it is that she is a transmigration. You marry a girl for her accomplishments. She paints charmingly, or plays like St. Cecilia. Clap a ring on her finger, and she never draws again--except perhaps your caricature on the back of a letter, and never opens a piano after the honeymoon. You marry her for her sweet temper; and next year, her nerves are so shattered that you can't contradict her but you are whirled into a storm of hysterics. You marry her because she declares she hates balls and likes quiet; and ten to one but what she becomes a patroness at Almacks, or a lady in waiting." "Yet most men marry, and most men survive the operation." "If it were only necessary to live, that would be a consolatory and encouraging reflection. But to live with peace, to live with dignity, to live with freedom, to live in harmony with your thoughts, your habits, your aspirations--and this in the perpetual companionship of a person to whom you have given the power to wound your peace, to assail your dignity, to cripple your freedom, to jar on each thought and each habit, and bring you down to the meanest details of earth, when you invite her, poor soul, to soar to the spheres--that makes the to be, or not to be, which is the question." "If I were you, Harley, I would do as I have heard the author of _Sandford and Merton_ did--choose out a child, and educate her yourself after your own heart." "You have hit it," answered Harley, seriously. "That has long been my idea--a very vague one, I confess. But I fear I shall be an old man before I find even the child." "Ah," he continued, yet more earnestly, while the whole character of his varying countenance changed again--"ah! if indeed I could discover what I seek--one who with the heart of a child has the mind of a woman; one who beholds in nature the variety, the charm, the never feverish, ever healthful excitement that others vainly seek in the bastard sentimentalities of a life false with artificial forms; one who can comprehend, as by intuition, the rich poetry with which creation is clothed--poetry so clear to the child when enraptured with the flower, or when wondering at the star? If on me such exquisite companionship were bestowed--why, then"--he paused, sighed deeply, and, covering his face with his hand, resumed in faltering accents,-- "But once--but once only, did such vision of the Beautiful made human rise before me--amidst 'golden exhalations of the dawn.' It beggared my life in vanishing. You know only--you only--how--how"-- He bowed his head, and the tears forced themselves through his clenched fingers. "So long ago!" said Audley, sharing his friend's emotion. "Years so long and so weary, yet still thus tenacious of a mere boyish memory." "Away with it, then!" cried Harley, springing to his feet, and with a laugh of strange merriment. "Your carriage still waits; set me home before you go to the House." Then laying his hand lightly on his friend's shoulder, he said, "Is it for you, Audley Egerton, to speak sneeringly of boyish memories? What else is it that binds us together? What else warms my heart when I meet you? What else draws your thoughts from blue-books and beer-bills, to waste them on a vagrant like me? Shake hands. Oh, friend of my boyhood! recollect the oars that we plied and the bats that we wielded in the old time, or the murmured talk on the moss-grown bank, as we sat together, building in the summer air castles mightier than Windsor. Ah! they are strong ties, those boyish memories, believe me! I remember as if it were yesterday my translation of that lovely passage in Perseus, beginning--let me see--ah!-- "Quum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit," that passage on friendship which gushes out so livingly from the stern heart of the satirist. And when old ---- complimented me on my verses, my eye sought yours. Verily, I now say as then, "Nescio quod, certe est quod me tibi temperet astrum."[8] Audley turned away his head as he returned the grasp of his friend's hand; and while Harley, with his light elastic footstep, descended the stairs, Egerton lingered behind, and there was no trace of the worldly man upon his countenance when he took his place in the carriage by his companion's side. Two hours afterwards, weary cries of "Question, question!" "Divide, divide!" sank into reluctant silence as Audley Egerton rose to conclude the debate--the man of men to speak late at night, and to impatient benches: a man who would be heard; whom a Bedlam broke loose would not have roared down; with a voice clear and sound as a bell, and a form as firmly set on the ground as a church-tower. And while, on the dullest of dull questions, Audley Egerton thus, not too lively himself, enforced attention, where was Harley L'Estrange? Standing alone by the river at Richmond, and murmuring low fantastic thoughts as he gazed on the moonlit tide. When Audley left him at home, he had joined his parents, made them gay with his careless gayety, seen the old-fashioned folks retire to rest, and then--while they, perhaps, deemed him once more the hero of ball-rooms and the cynosure of clubs--he drove slowly through the soft summer night, amidst the perfumes of many a garden and many a gleaming chestnut grove, with no other aim before him than to reach the loveliest margin of England's loveliest river, at the hour the moon was fullest and the song of the nightingale most sweet. And so eccentric a humorist was this man, that I believe, as he there loitered--no one near to cry "How affected!" or "How romantic!"--he enjoyed himself more than if he had been exchanging the politest "how-d'ye-do's" in the hottest of London drawing-rooms, or betting his hundreds on the odd trick with Lord de R---- for his partner. FOOTNOTES: [8] "What was the star I know not, but certainly some star it was that attuned me unto thee." From the London Examiner. A GLIMPSE OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION. There is one country which is not represented at the Great Exhibition, one power which refused to send any specimens of its produce, lest the having done so should be considered as a tribute to the commercial greatness of England, and lest exhibitors and exhibited should incur contamination by contact with specimens of the world's industry. One is not sorry that this should be the case, and that the felon power of Europe should have thus passed judgment on itself, and of its own accord placed itself in Coventry. The country we allude to is Naples. The horror which the king entertains of any thing constitutional since his Majesty took the oath to his own constitution, and since he hanged those who committed the same crime without afterwards perjuring themselves after the royal example, has induced him to prohibit the sending of any specimens to London. Naples, to be sure, has little to exhibit. Industry in that country, so blessed by nature, has been crushed and annihilated by the hand of tyranny. Sulphur and other volcanic products, wine which science has never enabled to bear exportation, silk in its _brut_ state, with some coarse fabrics of cloth and linen, and hats in imitation of Tuscany, compose all the industry of one of the finest countries in Europe. No marvel, therefore, it should have shrunk upon any pretence from occupying a booth at the Great Exhibition. A very different place in that great show is held by Piedmont, which has furnished a large assortment of raw materials and manufactured articles. On the other hand, Florence and Venice are far, we fear, from even keeping up a shadow of their old reputation. The country of Benvenuto Cellini has lost the gift of the arts with that of freedom; and the manufactures with which Venice used to pay for the merchandise of the East are no more. Strange to say, however, Milan supplies one of the most interesting and perfect compartments of the Exhibition, that of small sculptures, in which the youth of the region are so skilled as to distance all competition. The United States must be held to have furnished far less valuable specimens of either art or nature than might have been expected; and this will be the more evident, as its stall occupies the great compartment of the Exhibition adjoining the eastern entrance, and first meeting the eye. France and Germany, especially North Germany, hold their ground well. One thing, however, seems certain, and the more remarkable as it was not altogether expected, which is, that England is not inferior to her competitors in any department. That her machinery, and the results of her science and skill in working in metals should distance all competition, might have been looked for. But what will greatly astonish people, is her very signal success in so many departments of the ornamental: and whilst of natural productions her various colonies have supplied specimens the most novel and most startling, the produce of the looms as well as of the mines of Indostan offer among the most novel and interesting sights that the curious could flock to see. In a general way it is not yet possible to guess what effect the Exhibition is likely to have. So many persons will crowd to it with widely different views, that it is extremely difficult to sum up its probable impression on the whole. But we believe that those most gratified will be scientific persons, who can see and compare for the first time all raw materials and all finished productions gathered together under the same roof. It is, indeed, as a creator of new combinations and of new ideas, that the Great Exhibition must in any permanent sense be chiefly valuable; for it is hardly conceivable but that many most startling inventions in art manufacture must ultimately spring from it. But these will be silent enjoyments, and for a long time secret profits. Those on whose fertile minds the good seed of new ideas may fall, will silently cherish and allow them to germ in the shade, and years may elapse ere we see the growth or the fruit. What meanwhile we may count upon hearing most of for the moment will be the enjoyment of the curious at the view of the Koh-i-noor, and the other mere sight-wonders of the Exhibition. Let us add that not the least pleasure of this kind is the view which each race of the human family will be enabled to take of the other. The crowds now brought together are essentially, the greater part of them, of the middle and artisan class, although it may be generally of those already successful and enriched. This is a kind of people that would never have come amongst us but upon an occasion such as the present, and whom to see and be seen by, cannot but be productive of large, friendly, humane, cosmopolitan results. From Leigh Hunt's Journal. DR. DAVID STRAUSS IN WEIMAR. The Visitor's Book of the Elephant Hotel in Weimar contains, under the date of the 12th August, a rather remarkable autograph, which the curious collector would do well to buy, if possible, or, if not possible, then to beg or steal. Perhaps, among the many distinguished names which the long series of _Fremdenbücher_ kept at Weimar during the last fifty years must necessarily exhibit, there are few to which an earnest, thinking man would attach the same profound, though somewhat painful degree of interest. It is the name of "_Dr. David Strauss, aus Ludwigsburg_," written by himself. "How!" you exclaim in a mingled tone of surprise and incredulity, "Dr. Strauss in Weimar? David Strauss among the pilgrims to the tomb of the poets?" It does sound apocryphal--_mythical_, if you will. One would almost as soon expect to hear of the late Dr. Jordan Faust himself paying a visit to the ghost of Goethe. Nevertheless, and in spite of all that learned critics, a thousand years hence, may advance and prove to the contrary, a veritable fact it is, Strauss actually has been among us--has been seen here in the body during several days by several witnesses, the present writer being one. It is my intention here briefly to record the impression which I still retain of my transient intercourse with this celebrated man. Such a record can scarce be considered as a breach of confidence, an invasion of the sacred domains of private life: the author of the "_Leben Jesu_" is a public, I had almost said, an historical character. Up to his arrival in Weimar, my relation to Strauss had been merely of that mystic, invisible, and impersonal description, which usually subsists between a gifted writer and his readers. But even before I knew the language, and, by consequence, before I could read the works of Strauss, I had heard much and often of the young Tubingen theologian, who, at the age of twenty-seven years, with all the moral courage of a Luther, all the critical skill, and more than all the learning of a Lessing, had arisen and _implicitly_ declared to the whole German nation, and to the world at large, that their belief rested on a false basis (in his opinion). Though educated in a country where every man reads and reverences his Bible, I had likewise arrived at that, in every sense, _critical_ period, which is, I suppose, common to all men of an inquiring disposition. I, too, had eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge--had become as a god in my own conceit, knowing good from evil. I had passed through the French and English schools of skepticism, with my orthodoxy, if not intact, at least not vitally injured. To study Strauss, therefore, seemed a mere matter of course. Well; I read his celebrated work. It contained nothing absolutely new, either in assertion or opinion. I had met with the same or similar elsewhere. And yet the very same _wooden_ arguments I had so often smiled at in the writings of the French and English free-thinkers, seemed here to annihilate me. In vain I said to myself, "they are still wooden!" Strauss had so sheathed and bound them with his triple fold of _brass_. In other words, had so supported and confirmed them with his unheard-of array of learning, logic, and science; that nothing, I thought, could resist them. It seemed as if the world-old, hereditary feud between faith and reason were here to be terminated for ever. As I read, the solid earth seemed to be giving way beneath me; and when I at length closed the ominous volume, I could have almost cried out with the chorus in Faust: "Woe! woe! thou hast shattered the lovely world!" It is unusual, I believe, to speak out these bosom secrets in this way; but I thought it necessary to give you this, by no means exaggerated description of my first spiritual encounter with the author of the _Leben Jesu_, in order that you might have some idea of the feelings with which, on the third morning after his arrival in Weimar, I received and read the following whimsical note: _Weimar_, 15th August. "A. S. requests the pleasure of Mr. M----'s company to-day, at two o'clock, to soup and Strauss." How busily my fancy was employed the whole of that forenoon, I need not stop here to tell. Enough, that of all the various pictures she then drew for me, not one resembled the pale, the slightly made, and, but for a partial stoop, the somewhat tall, half-lay, half-clerical figure in spectacles, to whom I was presented on arriving at my friend's apartments. This was Strauss himself, whose portrait I may as well go on and finish here at once as well as I can, and so have done with externals. Judging from appearance, Strauss's age might be any where between forty and fifty. But for his light brown, glossy hair, I should have said nearer the latter than the former. I have since ascertained, however, that he is, or was then, exactly forty-one years of age. His head is the very contrary of massive,--as, indeed, his whole figure is the opposite of robust or muscular. But it--the head--is of a purely classical form, having none of those bumps and extravagant protuberances, which phrenologists delight in. His profile, in particular, might be called truly Grecian, were it not for the thin and somewhat pinched lips, which give it an almost ascetical character. Strange enough, too, this same character of ascetism, or something akin to it, seems likewise indicated by a peculiar expression in his otherwise fine, dark-brown eyes. It is not a squint, as at first sight it appears, but a frequent turning-upward of the eye-balls, like a Methodist at his devotions, which, in Strauss's case, is of course involuntary. Perhaps it is to conceal this slight blemish that he wears spectacles, for his large and lustrous eyes did not else appear to need them. I have said that Strauss was slightly made; and, in fact, this is so much the case as to suggest the idea of a consumptive habit. Nor do his narrow shoulders and hollow breast, together with a certain swinging serpentine gait when he walks, seem to contradict the supposition. I have little more to add to this feeble sketch of Strauss's outward man; for it would, I suppose, be too trifling a circumstance to mention that I had seldom seen a more _thorough-bred_ hand and foot than his! My entrance had interrupted a conversation, which Strauss presently resumed, and which proved to be on the eternal topic of politics. His voice was strong and deep, but he spoke (and it seemed to be a habit with him) in a subdued tone, and with a very decided Wurtemberg accent. I was surprised at some of the high-Tory opinions to which he gave utterance. I had not expected to find the author of the _Leben Jesu_ on the Conservative side of any question. It seemed inconsistent. But I recollected that the man was now on the wrong side of forty; and I could not help thinking that if, instead of publishing his destructive book at the age of twenty-seven, he had waited with it till now, he might possibly have postponed it altogether. At table, our talk was of the usual commonplace description; and it may be worth while observing, that even Strauss could be commonplace with as good a grace as any. Our host and he had, it seems, been fellow-students together, and, of course, there was no want of anecdotes and reminiscences of those early days, all of which appeared to give him exquisite pleasure. In particular, I remember that he spoke with much fervor of the fine mountain scenery in the neighborhood of Heidelberg; and when a friendly discussion arose amongst us as to whether the mountains or the ocean were the sublimer spectacle, Strauss argued warmly in favor of the former. Some one (myself, I believe) happening to say that, like Goethe and Schiller, they were both _superlative_, and not to be _compared_--"Bravo!" cried Strauss, and good humoredly gave up his position. The conversation now naturally turned upon Goethe, and upon all the localities in and about Weimar, connected with his memory. Like a pious pilgrim, as he was, Strauss, as I found, had already been to all these places, with the exception of the garden-house and garden. It was proposed to conduct him thither immediately. The extreme and almost primitive simplicity of the house in which Goethe had spent some of the happiest days of his life, seemed to astonish Strauss. He made few remarks to that effect, however, but there was no end to his eager questionings. He touched the walls, the doors, the locks--whatever it might be supposed Goethe had touched. He peeped into every corner, scrutinized even the minutest details; and all this with the utmost outward composure, so that, if I had not closely watched him, it might have escaped my notice! In the garden, I showed him Goethe's favorite walk, and some oaks and firs planted by the poet's own hand. He gathered an oak-leaf, and put it in his pocket-book. He did the same by the flower of a hollyhock, the only kind of flower remaining, which plant I knew for certain dated its existence from the time of Goethe. The pocket-book was already full of such relics. From this time forth, therefore, let no man say that Strauss is devoid of veneration! Man was made for adoration. He cannot help it. Pity, only, that he sometimes mistakes the object of it. In the mean while Strauss and I had somehow drawn nearer to each other, and had begun to hold little dialogues apart together. We talked of England, where he had never been,--of English literature, which he knew chiefly through the medium of translation. Shakspeare of course was duly discussed,--for, like all educated Germans, Strauss was an enthusiast about Shakspeare. He asked me if I had read Gervinus's new work, and was evidently pleased with the way in which I spoke of it. By-and-by I ventured to allude to the _Leben Jesu_. It was not without considerable hesitation. He seemed, I think, to enjoy my embarrassment,--and told me he had seen several specimens of an English translation of the _Leben Jesu_, which a young lady, a Miss Brabant, was preparing for publication! There was something _Mephistophelian_ in the smile with which he told me this. Such a work, he continued, was, however, not likely to succeed in England: for there was Hennel, who had published an amazingly clever work of the same kind in London, and yet the British public seemed to have made a point of completely _ignoring_ it. The work had, however, been translated into German, and he (Strauss himself) had written a preface to it. As I now perceived that the subject was any thing but a delicate one with Strauss, I determined upon accepting a proposal he had made me to accompany him on the morrow to Doornburg and Jena. There were inconsistencies in his system, which I had the vanity to think I might convince him of, and a _tête-à-tête_ like the one in prospect was just what I wanted. We returned to _S--'s_ for tea, with the addition to our party of a distinguished philologian of this town, whose presence seemed to call forth all the intellectual energies of Strauss, so that, in the course of the evening, I had more than one occasion to admire the variety and depth of the man's attainments. It is impossible to recollect every thing, but what especially excited my attention was, that in a very learned discussion concerning the comparative merits of the ancient and modern drama, Strauss suggested the character and fate of Tiberius as the best subject for a tragedy in the whole compass of history. I was struck, too, and with reason, I think, with a new and flagrant instance of the conservative tendency which his mind seems of late to have fallen into. In talking of Horace, whose works, and particularly whose odes, he appeared to have at his fingers' ends, he defended the elder state of the texts with amazing pertinacity, treating with contempt every change and suggestion of such, which the sacrilegious commentators of our times have ventured upon. Such opinions in the mouth of the author of the _Leben Jesu_ sounded strange enough, and again I could not help saying to myself, "Why the deuce did he publish that destructive work of his twenty-seventh year?" The following day, being prevented by pressing engagements from leaving town, I prevailed upon Strauss to put off his journey for a day longer. I saw little of him in the mean time, and had therefore leisure to bring into some kind of order and method a series of objections which I had noted down during a second and more critical perusal of the _Leben Jesu_. On mature reflection, it had occurred to me that, after all, the Christian religion had, in the course of eighteen centuries, survived far worse things than even Strauss's book. This idea now gave me courage to look this Goliah in the face, and, though I was but a youth (so to speak), and he a "man of war," to go up against him, if occasion offered, even with my "scrip" and "sling," and my "five smooth stones out of the brook." Next morning, then, in pursuance of our plan, Strauss and I started with the first train for Apolda, whence we went on foot across the fields to Doornburg. There we breakfasted in Goethe's room, saw the poet's handwriting on the wall, walked along his favorite terrace-walk, where I, for the time as much of a hero-worshipper as Strauss himself, recited aloud the beautiful song, _Da droben auf jenem Berge_, &c., which Goethe is said to have composed on this very spot. I expected Strauss to be moved almost to tears, instead of which he burst out in a most incontrollable fit of laughter, in which I as incontrollably joined when he told me the cause, which was this:--In Munich or Ludwigsburg, I forget which, there was once a house of public entertainment, called from its sign "The Lamb's Wool," as its proprietor was called "The Lamb's Wool landlord." This landlord had, it seems, been one of his own best customers, in consequence of which he soon became bankrupt, which sad event a poet of the same town, most probably another of the landlord's best customers, commemorated in a few stanzas entitled, _Des Lamswollswirthes Klagelied_ (The Host of the Lamb's Wool's Lament), a parody on the above song of Goethe's, and suggested, doubtless, by these two lines-- "Ich bin _herunter gekommem_, Und weiss doch selber nicht wie!"[9] Nothing could exceed the humor with which Strauss told me this droll anecdote, and, for my part, I feel that I shall never again be able to recite Goethe's pathetic song with becoming gravity. From Doornburg we walked to Jena, where we arrived to dinner. It rained torrents, but Strauss was not to be balked of what he came for. We trudged like _Schwarmer_ (enthusiasts), as he said, through mud and rain, to all the Goethe and Schiller relics, the library, the observatory, and, last of all, the Princess's garden, where the statue of the eagle with its three poetical inscriptions long detained us. Returned to our inn and about to take a final leave of Strauss; now, I thought, or never, was the time to fulfil the object for which I had accompanied him thus far. All day, hitherto, our talk had been of the poets--Greek, Roman, English, and German, and so much erudition, taste, and feeling, I had rarely found united. His mind seemed to have fed on poetry and nothing else; and I know not how it was, but I could not till now resolve to speak the word which I knew would disenchant him. Now, however, the probability that we should never see each other again on this side eternity gave a solemn, perhaps superstitious, turn to my thoughts. As he sat there in silence before me, like the sphinx of which he had spoken so mysteriously in descanting that morning on the master piece of Sophocles, I felt that now I must speak out, or else look to be devoured. I at once entered on the subject, therefore, and delivered myself of all the objections I had so elaborately arranged and prepared. His answer was evasive; and the topic was changed into an argument. Strauss was to leave with the diligence at eight o'clock for Rudolstadt. I cordially shook hands with him, bade God bless him, and, hiring a conveyance, drove directly back to Weimar. On the way home, I conceived the plan of a poem, which, if it were completed, I would insert here. It will probably never be completed. Instead of it, therefore, I will communicate something far more interesting--a copy of verses written by Strauss himself, on returning from his pilgrimage to the tomb of the poets; and with which I conclude what I had to say regarding Dr. David Strauss in Weimar. [Dr. Strauss, as a poet, being almost a _lusus naturæ_, according to English ideas of him, we have thought it right to translate this poem. Here, accordingly, is the best English version possible to us in the little time allowed by an inexorable printer:--] On pilgrim staff I homeward come, Way worn, but still with pleasure warmed; At the great prophet's holy tomb, The pious rites I have performed. I, in his garden's shady walk, Recalled the prints of footsteps lost: And from the tree his care had raised, I plucked a greeting from his ghost. I saw in letters and in poems, His honored hand's laborious toil; And many loving recollections, Inquiry won me for my spoil. Through every chamber, small and homely, With holy reverence did I roam, Where oft the gods in radiant concourse Came thronging to their loved one's home. By the bed stood I where the poet In placid sleep his eyes reposed, Till summoned to a nobler being For the last time their lids he closed. In reading of the holy places, Henceforth have I a doubled zeal, I have a being in the writing, For all of it I know and feel. FOOTNOTES: [9] To explain this joke to the un-Germanized reader, it will be necessary to inform him that the title of Goethe's poem is "The Shepherd's Lament," wherein a shepherd, leaving his native hills, gives a lingering look up at the familiar mountain, and sings regretfully "I have to the valley descended, And how I cannot tell." _Herunter kommen_, means also to decline, _to fail_, and upon this turns the joke. From Eliza Cook's Journal GREAT MEN'S WIVES. Probably, greatness does not conform with domesticity. The literary man is wrapped up in his books, and the wife does not brook a divided affection. He lives in the past or the future, and his mind can with difficulty be brought to condescend to the carking cares of the present--perhaps not even to its quiet daily life. His lofty meditations are disturbed by the puling infant, or it may be, by a call for house-rent, or the amount of the chandler's bill. Or, take the leader of some great political or social movement; or the commander of armies, at whose nod ten thousand swords are unsheathed, and the air made blatant with the discharge of artillery; can you expect such a person to subside into the quiet, husband-life, like any common, ordinary man, and condescend to inquire into the state of the children's teething, Johnny's progress at school, and the thousand little domestic attentions which constitute a wife's happiness? We shall not, however, discuss the question of whether happiness in marriage be compatible with genius, or not, but proceed to set forth a few traits of the wives of great men. We shall not dwell on Xantippe, the wife of Socrates, whose name has become familiar to us almost as a proverb. But she was not without her uses, for she taught her great husband at least the virtue of patience. Many of the great Greeks and Romans, like Socrates, were unhappy in their wives. Possibly, however, we have heard only of the bad ones among them; for the life of good wives is rarely made matter of comment by the biographer, either in ancient or modern times. The advent of Christianity placed woman in a greatly improved position, as regarded marriage. Repudiation, as among the Greeks and Romans, was no longer permitted; the new religion enforced the unity and indissolubility of marriage; it became a sacrament, dispensed at the altar, where woman had formerly been a victim, but was now become an idol. The conjugal union was made a religious contract; the family was constituted by the priest; the wife was elevated to the function of Educator of the Family--the _alma mater_; and thus, through her instrumentality, was the regeneration of the world secured. But it did not follow that all women were good, or that all were happy. Life is but a tangled yarn at the best; there are blanks and prizes drawn by women still, and not unfrequently "great men" have proved the greatest of blanks to them. Henry the Eighth was not, perhaps, entitled to the appellation of a great man, though he was an author, for which the Pope conferred on him the title, still retained by our monarchs, of "Defender of the Faith." The history of his six wives is well known. Nor was the married life of Peter the Great, and his three wives, of a more creditable complexion. LUTHER married Catharine de Bora, an escaped nun--a remarkably handsome woman. In his letters to his friends, he spoke of her as "My rib Kitty, my loved Kitty, my Empress Kitty." A year after his marriage, when struggling with poverty, he said, in one of these letters, "Catharine, my dear rib, salutes you. She is quite well, thank God; gentle, obedient, and kind, in all things; quite beyond my hopes. I would not exchange my poverty with her, for all the riches of Croesus without her." A dozen years after, he said, "Catharine, thou hast a pious man, who loves thee; thou art a very empress!" Yet Luther had his little troubles in connection with his married life. Catharine was fond of small-talk, and, when Luther was busily engaged in solving the difficulties of the Bible, she would interrupt him with such questions as--whether the king of France was richer than his cousin the emperor of Germany? if the Italian women were more beautiful than the German? if Rome was as big as Wittenberg? and so on. To escape these little inquiries, Luther saw no other way than to lock himself up in his study, with a quantity of bread and cheese, and there hold to his work. But Catharine still pursued him. One day, when he was thus locked up, laboring at his translation of the twenty-second Psalm, the door was assailed by the wife. No answer was given. More knocking followed, accompanied by Catharine's voice, shouting--"if you don't open the door, I will go fetch the locksmith." The Doctor entreated his wife not to interrupt his labors. "Open! open!" repeated Catharine. The doctor obeyed. "I was afraid," said she, on entering, "that something had vexed you, locked up in this room alone." To which Luther replied, "the only thing that vexes me now is yourself." But Luther, doubtless, entertained a steady, though sober affection for his wife; and in his will, in which he left her sole executrix, bequeathing to her all his property, he speaks of her as "always a gentle, pious, and faithful wife to me, and that has loved me tenderly. Whatever," he adds, "may happen to her after my death, I have, I say, full confidence that she will ever conduct herself as a good mother towards her children, and will conscientiously share with them whatever she possesses." The great Genevese Reformer, CALVIN, proceeded in his search for a wife in a matter-of-fact way. He wrote to his friends, describing to them what sort of an article he wanted, and they looked up a proper person for him. Writing to Farel, one of his correspondents, on this subject, he said,--"I beseech you ever to bear in mind what I seek for in a wife. I am not one of your mad kind of lovers, who dote even upon faults, when once they are taken by beauty of person. The only beauty that entices me is, that she be chaste, obedient, humble, economical, patient; and that there be hopes that she wilt be solicitous about my health. If, therefore, you think it expedient that I should marry, bestir yourself, lest somebody else anticipate you. But, if you think otherwise, let us drop the subject altogether." A rich young German lady, of noble birth, was proposed; but Calvin objected, on the ground of the high birth. Another was proposed to him, but another failure resulted. At last a widow, with a considerable family of children, Odelette de Bures, the relict of a Strasburg Anabaptist, whom he had converted, was discovered, suited to his notions, and he married her. Nothing is said about their wedded life, and, therefore, we presume it went on in the quiet, jog-trot way. At her death, he did not shed a tear; and he spoke of the event only as an ordinary spectator would have done. The brothers CORNEILLE married the two sisters Lampèrière; and the love of the whole family was cemented by the double union. They lived in contiguous houses, which opened into each other, and there they lived in a community of taste and sentiment. They worked together, and shared each other's fame; the sisters, happy in the love and admiration of their husbands, and in each other's sympathy. The poet Racine was greatly blessed in his wife; she was pious, good, sweet-tempered, and made his life happy. And yet she had no taste for poetry, scarcely knowing what verse was; and knew little of her husband's great tragedies except by name. She had an utter indifference for money. One day, Racine brought from Versailles a purse of a thousand golden louis; and running to his wife, embraced her: "Congratulate me," said he, "here is a purse of a thousand louis that the king has presented to me!" She complained to him of one of the children, who would not learn his lessons for two days together. "Let us talk of that another time," said he, "to-day we give ourselves up to joy." She again reverted to the disobedient child, and requested the parent to reprimand him; when Boileau (at whose house she was on a visit) lost patience, and cried, "what insensibility! Can't you think of a purse of a thousand louis?" Yet these two characters, though so opposite, consorted admirably, and they lived long and happily together. To please his friends, LA FONTAINE married Mary Hericat, the daughter of a lieutenant-general. It was a marriage of convenience, and the two preferred living separate,--he at Paris, she in the country. Once a year La Fontaine paid her a visit, in the month of September. If he did not see her, he returned home as happy as he had gone. He went some other day. Once, when he visited her house, he was told she was quite well, and he returned to Paris, and told his friends he had not seen his wife, because he understood she was in very good health. It was a state of indifference on both sides. Yet the wife was a woman of virtue, beauty, and intelligence; and La Fontaine himself was a man of otherwise irreproachable character. There were many such marriages of indifference in France in those days. Boileau and Racine both tried to bring the married pair together, but without success; and, in course of time La Fontaine almost forgot that he was married. MOLIERE was extremely unhappy in his marriage. He espoused an actress, and she proved a coquette. He became extremely jealous, and, perhaps, he had reason. Yet he loved her passionately, and bore long with her frailties. He thus himself describes her: "She has small eyes, but they are full of fire, brilliant, and the most penetrating in the world. She has a large mouth, but one can discern beauties in it that one does not see in other mouths. Her figure is not large, but easy and well-proportioned. She affects a _nonchalance_ in her speech and carriage; but there is grace in her every act, and an indescribable charm about her, by which she never fails to work her way to the heart. Her mental gifts are exquisite; her conversation is charming, and, if she be capricious more than any other can be, all sits gracefully on the beautiful,--one bears any thing from the beautiful." She was an excellent actress, and was run after by the town. Moliere, her husband, was neglected by her, and suffered agonies of torture. He strove against his passion as long as he could. At last, his patience was exhausted, and a separation took place. We know nothing of the married life of SHAKSPEARE; indeed, we know but little of any portion of that great man's life. But we know that he married young, and we know the name of his wife, Anne Hathawaye, the daughter of a yeoman, in the neighborhood of Stratford-on-Avon. He was little more than eighteen when he married her, and she was twenty-six. The marriage was hastened by circumstances which need not be explained here. He seems to have gone alone to London, leaving her with her little family of children at Stratford-on-Avon, (for her name does not once appear in his married life;) and yet she survived him seven years. In his will he left her only his "second-best bed." Judging from his sonnets one would be disposed to infer that Shakspeare's life was not more chaste than that of his age; for we find him, in one of these, excusing his friend for robbing him of his mistress,--a married woman. One could almost wish, with Mr. Hallam, that Shakspeare had not written many of those sonnets, beautiful in language and imagery though they unquestionably are. MILTON was three times married,--the first time very unhappily. Mary Powell was the daughter of a royalist cavalier of Oxfordshire, and Milton was a zealous republican. He was, moreover, a studious man, whereas his wife was possessed by a love of gayety and pleasure. They had only been married a month, when she grew tired of the studious habits and philosophical seclusion of the republican poet, and requested his permission to return to her father's house. She went, but refused to return to him, preferring the dissipated society of the brawling cavaliers who surrounded her. He beseeched her to come back, but she persistently refused, treating his messengers with contumely and contempt. He bore this for a long time; but at last he grew angry, and repudiated her. He bethought himself of the social mischiefs resulting from ill-assorted marriages like his own; and, full of the subject, he composed and published his celebrated treatise on divorce. On public grounds he pleaded his own cause in this work, which contains, perhaps, the finest passages that are to be found in his prose writings. He proceeded to solicit the hand of another young and beautiful lady, the daughter of Dr. Dawes; but his wife, hearing of this, became repentant, and, returning to him, fell upon her knees, and entreated his forgiveness. Milton, like his own Adam, was "fondly overcome with female charms," and consented. Four children were born to them, but the wife died in child-bed of the fifth infant. It is to Milton's honor, that he behaved to his deceased wife's relatives with great generosity, when, a short time after, they became involved in ruin in the progress of the civil wars. His second wife, Catharine Woodcock, also died in child-bed, only a year after marriage. He seems to have loved her fondly, and most readers will remember his beautiful sonnet, consecrated to her memory. With his third wife he seems to have lived happily; the young wife devoted herself to his necessities--for he was now blind--"in darkness, and with dangers compassed round, and solitude." DR. RICHARD HOOKER, was very unfortunate in his wife. He was betrayed into marrying her by his extraordinary simplicity and ignorance of the world. The circumstances connected with the marriage were these: Having been appointed to preach at St. Paul's Cross, he went up to London from Oxford, and proceeded to the house set apart for the reception of the preachers. He was very wet and weary on his arrival, and experienced much kindness from the housekeeper. She persuaded him that he was a man of very tender constitution, and urged that he ought, above all things, to have a wife, to nurse and take care of him. She professed to be able to furnish him with such, if he thought fit to marry. Hooker authorized her to select a wife for him, and the artful woman presented her own daughter--"a silly, clownish woman, and withal a mere Xantippe." Hooker, who had promised to marry whomsoever she should select, thought himself bound to marry her, and he did so. They led a most uncomfortable life, but he resigned himself as he best could, lamenting that "saints have usually a double share in the miseries of this life." When Cranmer and Sandys went to see him at his rectory in Buckinghamshire, they found him reading Horace and tending sheep, in the absence of the servant. When they were conversing with him in the house, his wife would break in upon them, and call him away to rock the cradle and perform other menial offices. The guests were glad to get away. This unfortunate wife was long a thorn in his side. The famous Earl of ROCHESTER appears in very favorable light in his letters to his wife: they are remarkably tender, affectionate, and gentle. In one of them, he says: "'Tis not an easy thing to be entirely happy; but to be kind is very easy, and that is the greatest measure of happiness. I say not this to put you in mind of being kind to me--you have practised that so long, that I have a joyful confidence you will never forget it--but to show that I myself have a sense of what the method of my life seemed so utterly to contradict." DRYDEN married Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. The match added little to his wealth, and less to his happiness. It was an altogether unhappy union. On one occasion, his wife wished to be a book, that she might enjoy more of his company. Dryden's reply was: "Be an almanac, then, my dear, that I may change you once a year." In his writings afterwards, he constantly inveighed against matrimony. ADDISON also "married discord in a noble wife." He was tutor to the young Earl of Warwick, and aspired to the hand of the Dowager Countess. She married him, and treated him like a lacquey. She never saw in him more than her son's tutor. SWIFT (his contemporary) cruelly flirted with two admirable women; he heartlessly killed one of them, and secretly married the other, but never publicly recognized her; she, too, shortly after died. STERNE treated his wife with such severity, that she abandoned him, and took retreat in a convent with her daughter; she never saw him after. Who would have suspected this from the author of "Lefevre" and "The Sentimental Journey?" FARQUHAR, the play-writer, married, early in life, a woman who deceived him by pretending to be possessed of a fortune, and he sunk, a victim to disappointment and over-exertion, in his thirtieth year, leaving behind him "two helpless girls;" his widow died in the utmost indigence. These are rather unhappy instances of the wives of great men; but there are others of a happier kind. Indeed we hear but little of the happy unions: it is the brawling, rocky brook that is the most noisy: the slow, deep waters are dump. Every one will remember the wife of Lord WILLIAM RUSSELL, whose conduct by the side of her husband, on his trial, stands out as one of the most beautiful pictures in all history. How devotedly her husband loved her need not be said: when he had taken his final farewell, all he could say was: "The bitterness of death is now past!" She lived many years after the execution of her husband, and a delightful collection of her letters has since been published. BUNYAN speaks with the greatest tenderness of his wife, who helped to lead him into the paths of peace. He says: "My mercy was to light upon a wife, whose father and mother were counted godly: this woman and I, though we came together as poor as poor might be (not having so much household stuff as a dish or a spoon betwixt us both); yet this she had for her part, 'The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven,' and 'The Practice of Piety,' which her father had left her when he died." And the perusal of these books, together with his good wife's kindly influence, at last implanted in him strong desires to reform his vicious life, in which he eventually succeeded. PARNELL and STEELE were both happy in their wives. The former married a young woman of beauty and merit, but she lived only a few years, and his grief at his loss so preyed on his mind, that he never recovered his wonted spirits and health. STEELE'S letters to his wife, both before and after his marriage, are imbued with the most tender feeling, and exhibit his affection for her in the most beautiful light. YOUNG, the poet, like Dryden and Addison, married into a noble house, espousing the daughter of the Earl of Litchfield; but he was happier than they. It was out of the melancholy produced by her death that his famous "Night Thoughts" took their rise. When JOHNSON married Mrs. Porter, her age was twice his own; yet the union proved a happy one. It was not a love-match, but it was one of inclination and of reciprocal esteem. Johnson was any thing but graceful or attractive, yet he possessed admirable qualities. Mrs. Porter was rather ungainly; but Johnson was very shortsighted, and could not detect personal faults. In his eyes, she was beautiful; and, in an affectionate epitaph which he devoted to her, he painted her in glowing colors. Indeed, his writings contain many proofs of the lively and sincere affection which he entertained for her. While such have been the wives of a few of the great men of past times, it must be stated that, probably, the greatest of them all led a single life. The greatest of the philosophers were bachelors, such as Bacon, Newton, Gassendi, Galileo, Descartes, Bayle, Locke, Leibnitz, Hume, Gibbon; and many poets also as Pope, Goldsmith, and Thompson. Bacon says that wife and children are "impediments to great enterprises;" and that "certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men, which, both in affection and reason, have married and endowed the public." But these were the words of a bachelor, and, perhaps, not strictly correct. The great men of more recent times have generally been married; and, at another time, we shall probably complete this paper by a brief account of the more distinguished of their wives. A LEGEND OF ST. MARY'S. BY ALICE CAREY. One night, when bitterer winds than ours On hill-sides and in valleys low, Built sepulchres for the dead flowers, And buried them in sheets of snow,-- When over ledges dark and cold, The sweet moon rising high and higher, Tipped with a dimly burning gold St. Mary's old cathedral spire,-- The lamp of the confessional, (God grant it did not burn in vain,) After the solemn midnight bell, Streamed redly through the lattice-pane. And kneeling at the father's feet, Whose long and venerable hairs, Now whiter than the mountain sleet, Could not have numbered half his prayers, Was one--I cannot picture true The cherub beauty of his guise; Lilies, and waves of deepest blue, Were something like his hands and eyes! Like yellow mosses on the rocks, Dashed with the ocean's milk-white spray, The softness of his golden locks About his cheek and forehead lay. Father, thy tresses, silver-sleet, Ne'er swept above a form so fair; Surely the flowers beneath his feet Have been a rosary of prayer! We know not, and we cannot know, Why swam those meek blue eyes with tears; But surely guilt, or guiltless wo, Had bowed him earthward more than years. All the long summer that was gone, A cottage maid, the village pride, Fainter and fainter smiles had worn, And on that very night she died! As soft the yellow moonbeams streamed Across her bosom, snowy fair, She said, (the watchers thought she dreamed,) "'Tis like the shadow of his hair!" And they could hear, who nearest came, The cross to sign and hope to lend, The murmur of another name Than that of mother, brother, friend. An hour--and St. Mary's spires, Like spikes of flame, no longer glow-- No longer the confessional fires Shine redly on the drifted snow. An hour--and the saints had claimed That cottage maid, the village pride; And he, whose name in death she named, Was darkly weeping by her side. White as a spray-wreath lay her brow Beneath the midnight of her hair, But all those passionate kisses now Wake not the faintest crimson there! Pride, honor, manhood, cannot check The vehemence of love's despair-- No soft hand steals about his neck, Or bathes its beauty in his hair! Almost upon the cabin walls Wherein the sweet young maiden died, The shadow of a castle falls, Where for her young lord waits a bride! With clear blue eyes and flaxen hair, In her high turret still she sits; But, ah! what scorn her ripe lips wear-- What shadow to her bosom flits! From that low cabin tapers flash, And, by the shimmering light they spread, She sees beneath its mountain ash, Leafless, but all with berries red, Impatient of the unclasped rein, A courser that should not be there-- The silver whiteness of his mane Streaming like moonlight on the air! Oh, love! thou art avenged too well-- The young heart, broken and betrayed, Where thou didst meekly, sweetly dwell, For all its sufferings is repaid. Not the proud beauty, nor the frown Of her who shares the living years From her the winding-sheet wraps down, Can ever buy away the tears! From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. MARY KINGSFORD. FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF A POLICE-OFFICER. Towards the close of 1836, I was hurriedly dispatched to Liverpool for the purpose of securing the person of one Charles James Marshall, a collecting clerk, who, it was suddenly discovered, had absconded with a considerable sum of money belonging to his employers. I was too late--Charles James Marshall having sailed in one of the American liners the day before my arrival in the northern commercial capital. This fact well ascertained, I immediately set out on my return to London. Winter had come upon us unusually early; the weather was bitterly cold; and a piercing wind caused the snow, which had been falling heavily for several hours, to gyrate in fierce, blinding eddies, and heaped it up here and there into large and dangerous drifts. The obstruction offered by the rapidly-congealing snow greatly delayed our progress between Liverpool and Birmingham; and at a few miles only distant from the latter city, the leading engine ran off the line. Fortunately, the rate at which we were travelling was a very slow one, and no accident of moment occurred. Having no luggage to care for, I walked on to Birmingham, where I found the parliamentary train just on the point of starting, and with some hesitation, on account of the severity of the weather, I took my seat in one of the then very much exposed and uncomfortable carriages. We travelled steadily and safely, though slowly along, and reached Rugby Station in the afternoon, where we were to remain, the guard told us, till a fast down-train had passed. All of us hurried as quickly as we could to the large room at this station, where blazing fires and other appliances soon thawed the half-frozen bodies, and loosened the tongues of the numerous and motley passengers. After recovering the use of my benumbed limbs and faculties, I had leisure to look around and survey the miscellaneous assemblage about me. Two persons had travelled in the same compartment with me from Birmingham, whose exterior, as disclosed by the dim light of the railway carriage, created some surprise that such finely-attired, fashionable gentlemen should stoop to journey by the plebeian penny-a-mile train. I could now observe them in a clearer light, and surprise at their apparent condescension vanished at once. To an eye less experienced than mine in the artifices and expedients familiar to a certain class of "swells," they might perhaps have passed muster for what they assumed to be, especially amidst the varied crowd of a "parliamentary;" but their copper finery could not for a moment impose upon me. The watch-chains were, I saw, mosaic; the watches, so frequently displayed, gilt; eye-glasses the same; the coats, fur-collared and cuffed, were ill-fitting and second-hand; ditto of the varnished boats and renovated velvet waistcoats; while the luxuriant moustaches and whiskers, and flowing wigs, were unmistakably mere _pieces d'occasion_--assumed and diversified at pleasure. They were both apparently about fifty years of age; one of them perhaps one or two years less than that. I watched them narrowly, the more so from their making themselves ostentatiously attentive to a young woman--girl rather she seemed--of a remarkably graceful figure, but whose face I had not yet obtained a glimpse of. They made boisterous way for her to the fire, and were profuse and noisy in their offers of refreshment--all of which, I observed, were peremptorily declined. She was dressed in deep, unexpensive mourning; and from her timid gestures and averted head, whenever either of the fellows addressed her, was, it was evident, terrified as well as annoyed by their rude and insolent notice. I quietly drew near to the side of the fire-place, at which she stood, and with some difficulty obtained a sight of her features. I was struck with extreme surprise--not so much at her singular beauty, as from an instantaneous conviction that she was known to me, or at least that I had seen her frequently before, but where or when I could not at all call to mind. Again I looked, and my first impression was confirmed. At this moment the elder of the two men I have partially described placed his hand, with a rude familiarity, upon the girl's shoulder, proffering at the same time a glass of hot brandy and water for her acceptance. She turned sharply and indignantly away from the fellow; and looking round as if for protection, caught my eagerly-fixed gaze. "Mr. Waters!" she said impulsively. "Oh I am so glad!" "Yes," I answered, "that is certainly my name; but I scarcely remember----Stand back, fellow!" I angrily continued, as her tormentor, emboldened by the spirits he had drank, pressed with a jeering grin upon his face, towards her, still tendering the brandy and water. "Stand back!" He replied by a curse and a threat. The next moment his flowing wig was whirling across the room, and he standing with his bullet-head bare but for a few locks of iron-gray, in an attitude of speechless rage and confusion, increased by the peals of laughter which greeted his ludicrous, unwigged aspect. He quickly put himself in a fighting attitude, and, backed by his companion, challenged me to battle. This was quite out of the question; and I was somewhat at a loss how to proceed, when the bell announcing the instant departure of the train rang out, my furious antagonist gathered up and adjusted his wig, and we all sallied forth to take our places--the young woman holding fast by my arm, and in a low, nervous voice, begging me not to leave her. I watched the two fellows take their seats, and then led her to the hindmost carriage, which we had to ourselves as far as the next station. "Are Mrs. Waters and Emily quite well?" said the young woman, coloring and lowering her eyes beneath my earnest gaze, which she seemed for a moment to misinterpret. "Quite--entirely so," I almost stammered. "You know us, then?" "Surely I do," she replied, reassured by my manner. "But you, it seems," she presently added with a winning smile, "have quite forgotten little Mary Kingsford." "Mary Kingsford!" I exclaimed almost with a shout. "Why, so it is! But what a transformation a few years have effected!" "Do you think so! Not _pretty_ Mary Kingsford now, then?" she added with a light, pleasant laugh. "You know what I mean, you vain creature!" I rejoined; for I was overjoyed at meeting with the gentle, well-remembered playmate of my own eldest girl. We were old familiar friends--almost father and daughter--in an instant. Little Mary Kingsford, I should state, was, when I left Yorkshire, one of the prettiest, most engaging children I had ever seen; and a petted favorite not only with us, but of every other family in the neighborhood. She was the only child of Philip and Mary Kingsford--a humble, worthy, and much-respected couple. The father was gardener to Sir Pyott Dalzell, and her mother eked out his wages to a respectable maintenance by keeping a cheap children's school. The change which a few years had wrought in the beautiful child was quite sufficient to account for my imperfect recognition of her; but the instant her name was mentioned, I at once recognised the rare comeliness which had charmed us all in her childhood. The soft brown eyes were the same, though now revealing profounder depths, and emitting a more pensive expression; the hair, though deepened in color, was still golden; her complexion, lit up as it now was by a sweet blush, was brilliant as ever; whilst her child-person had became matured and developed into womanly symmetry and grace. The brilliancy of color vanished from her cheek as I glanced meaningly at her mourning dress. "Yes," she murmured in a sad quivering voice--"yes, father is gone! It will be six months next Thursday, that he died! Mother is well," she continued more cheerfully, after a pause: "in health, but poorly off; and I--and I," she added with a faint effort at a smile, "am going to London to seek my fortune!" "To seek your fortune!" "Yes; you know my cousin, Sophy Clark? In one of her letters, she said she often saw you." I nodded without speaking. I knew little of Sophia Clarke, except that she was the somewhat gay, coquettish shopwoman of a highly-respectable confectioner in the Strand, whom I shall call by the name of Morris. "I am to be Sophy's assistant," continued Mary Kingsford; "not of course at first at such good wages as she gets. So lucky for me, is it not, since I _must_ go to service? And so kind, too, of Sophy, to interest herself for me!" "Well, it may be so. But surely I have heard--my wife at least has--that you and Richard Westlake were engaged? Excuse me, I was not aware the subject was a painful or unpleasant one." "Richard's father," she replied with some spirit, "has higher views for his son. It is all off between us now," she added; "and perhaps it is for the best that it should be so." I could have rightly interpreted these words without the aid of the partially-expressed sigh which followed them. The perilous position of so attractive, so inexperienced, so guileless a young creature, amidst the temptations and vanities of London, so painfully impressed and preoccupied me, that I scarcely uttered another word till the rapidly-diminishing rate of the train announced that we neared a station, after which it was probable we should have no farther opportunity for private conversation. "Those men--those fellows at Rugby--where did you meet with them?" I inquired. "Thirty or forty miles below Birmingham, where they entered the car in which I was seated. At Birmingham I managed to avoid them." Little more passed between us till we reached London. Sophia Clark received her cousin at the Euston station, and was profuse of felicitations and compliments upon her arrival and personal appearance. After receiving a promise from Mary Kingsford to call and take tea with my wife and her old playmate, on the following Sunday, I handed the two young women into a cab in waiting, and they drove off. I had not moved away from the spot when a voice, a few paces behind me, which I thought I recognised, called out; "Quick, coachee, or you'll lose sight of them!" As I turned quickly round, another cab drove smartly off, which I followed at a run. I found, on reaching Lower Seymour Street, that I was not mistaken as to the owner of the voice, nor of his purpose. The fellow I had unwigged at Rugby thrust his body half out of the cab window, and pointing to the vehicle which contained the two girls, called out to the driver "to mind and make no mistake." The man nodded intelligence, and lashed his horse into a faster pace. Nothing that I might do could prevent the fellows from ascertaining Mary Kingsford's place of abode; and as that was all that, for the present at least, need be apprehended, I desisted from pursuit, and bent my steps homewards. Mary Kingsford kept her appointment on the Sunday, and in reply to our questioning, said she liked her situation very well. Mr. and Mrs. Morris were exceedingly kind to her; so was Sophia. "Her cousin," she added in reply to a look which I could not repress, "was perhaps a little gay and free of manner, but the best-hearted creature in the world." The two fellows who had followed them had, I found, already twice visited the shop; but their attentions appeared now to be exclusively directed towards Sophia Clarke, whose vanity they not a little gratified. The names they gave were Hartley and Simpson. So entirely guileless and unsophisticated was the gentle country maiden, that I saw she scarcely comprehended the hints and warnings which I threw out. At parting, however, she made me a serious promise that she would instantly apply to me should any difficulty or perplexity overtake her. I often called in at the confectioner's, and was gratified to find that Mary's modest propriety of behavior, in a somewhat difficult position, had gained her the good will of her employers, who invariably spoke of her with kindness and respect. Nevertheless, the care of a London life, with its incessant employment and late hours, soon, I perceived, began to tell upon her health and spirits; and it was consequently with pleasure I heard from my wife that she had seen a passage in a letter from Mary's mother, to the effect that the elder Westlake was betraying symptoms of yielding to the angry and passionate expostulations of his only son, relative to the engagement with Mary Kingsford. The blush with which she presented the letter was, I was told, eloquent. One evening, on passing Morris's shop, I observed Hartley and Simpson there. They were swallowing custards and other confectionary with much gusto; and, from their new and costly habiliments, seemed to be in surprisingly good case. They were smiling at the cousins with rude confidence; and Sophia Clarke, I was grieved to see, repaid their insulting impertinence by her most elaborate graces. I passed on; and presently meeting with a brother-detective, who, it struck me, might know something of the two gentlemen, I turned back with him, and pointed them out. A glance sufficed him. "Hartley and Simpson you say?" he remarked after we had walked away to some distance: "those are only two of their numerous _aliases_. I cannot, however, say that I am as yet on very familiar terms with them; but as I am especially directed to cultivate their acquaintance, there is no doubt we shall be more intimate with each other before long. Gamblers, blacklegs, swindlers, I already know them to be; and I would take odds they are not unfrequently something more, especially when fortune and the bones run cross with them." "They appear in high feather just now," I said. "Yes; they are connected, I suspect, with the gang who cleaned out young Garslade last week in Jermyn Street. I'd lay a trifle," he added as I turned to leave him, "that one or both of them will wear the Queen's livery, gray, turned up with yellow, before many weeks are past. Good-by." About a fortnight after this conversation, with my wife I paid a visit to Astley's, for the gratification of our youngsters, who had long been promised a sight of the equestrian marvels at that celebrated amphitheatre. It was the latter end of February; and when we came out, we found the weather changed; dark and sleety, with a sharp, nipping wind. I had to call at Scotland-Yard; my wife and children consequently proceeded home in a cab without me; and after assisting to quell a slight disturbance originating in a gin-palace close by, I went on my way over Westminister Bridge. The inclement weather had cleared the streets and thoroughfares in a surprisingly short time; so that, excepting myself, no foot-passenger was visible on the bridge till I had about halfcrossed it, when a female figure, closely muffled up about the head, and sobbing bitterly, passed rapidly by on the opposite side. I turned and gazed after the retreating figure; it was a youthful, symmetrical one; and after a few moments' hesitation, I determined to follow at a distance, and as unobservedly as I could. On the woman sped, without pause or hesitation, till she reached Astley's, where I observed her stop suddenly, and toss her arms in the air with a gesture of desperation. I quickened my steps, which she observing, uttered a slight scream, and darted swiftly off again, moaning as she ran. The momentary glimpse I had obtained of her features, suggested a frightful apprehension, and I followed at my utmost speed. She turned at the first cross-street, and I should soon have overtaken her, but that in darting round the corner where she disappeared, I ran butt against a stout, elderly gentleman, who was hurrying smartly along out of the weather. With the suddenness of the shock and the slipperiness of the pavement, down we both reeled; and by the time we regained our feet, and growled savagely at each other, the young woman, whoever she was, had disappeared, and more than half an hour's eager search after her proved fruitless. At last I bethought me of hiding at one corner of Westminster Bridge. I had watched impatiently for about twenty minutes, when I observed the object of my pursuit stealing timidly and furtively towards the bridge on the opposite side of the way. As she came nearly abreast of where I stood, I darted forward; she saw, without recognizing me, and uttered an exclamation of terror, flew down towards the river, where a number of pieces of balk and other timber were fastened together, forming a kind of loose raft. I followed with haste, for I saw that it was indeed Mary Kingsford and loudly called to her to stop. She did not seem to hear me, and in a few moments the unhappy girl had gained the end of the timber raft. One instant she paused, with clasped hands, upon the brink, and in another had thrown herself into the dark and moaning river. On reaching the spot where she had disappeared, I could not at first see her in consequence of the dark mourning dress she had on. Presently I caught sight of her, still upborne by her spread clothes, but already carried by the swift current beyond my reach. The only chance was to crawl along a piece of round timber which projected farther into the river and by the end of which she must pass. This I effected with some difficulty; and laying myself out at full length, vainly endeavored with outstretched, straining arms, to grasp her dress. There was nothing left for it but to plunge in after her. I will confess that I hesitated to do so. I was encumbered with a heavy dress, which there was no time to put off, and moreover, like most inland men, I was but an indifferent swimmer. My indecision quickly vanished. The wretched girl, though gradually sinking, had not yet uttered a cry or appeared to struggle; but when the chilling waters reached her lips, she seemed to suddenly revive to a consciousness of the horror of her fate; she fought wildly with the engulfing tide, and shrieked for help. Before one could count ten, I grasped her by the arm, and lifted her head above the surface of the river. As I did so, I felt as if suddenly encased and weighed down by leaden garments, so quickly had my thick clothing and high boots sucked in the water. Vainly, thus burdened and impeded, did I endeavor to regain the raft; the strong tide bore us outwards, and I glared round, in inexpressible dismay, for some means of extrication from the frightful peril in which I found myself involved. Happily, right in the direction the tide was drifting us, a large barge lay moored by a chain-cable. I seized and twined one arm firmly round it, and thus partially secure, hallooed with renewed power for assistance. It soon came; a passer had witnessed the flight of the girl, and my pursuit, and was already hastening with others to our assistance. A wherry was unmoored; guided by my voice, they soon reached us; and but a brief interval elapsed before we were safely housed in an adjoining tavern. A change of dress, with which the landlord kindly supplied me, a blazing fire, and a couple of glasses of hot brandy and water, soon restored warmth and vigor to my chilled and partially benumbed limbs; but more than two hours elapsed before Mary, who had swallowed a good deal of water, was in a condition to be removed. I had just sent for a cab, when two police officers, well known to me, entered the room with official briskness. Mary screamed, staggered towards me, and clinging to my arm, besought me with frantic earnestness to save her. "What _is_ the meaning of this?" I exclaimed, addressing one of the police officers. "Merely," said he, "that the young woman that's clinging so tight to you has been committing an audacious robbery"---- "No--no--no!" broke in the terrified girl. "Oh! of course you'll say so," continued the officer. "All I know is, that the diamond brooch was found snugly hid away in her own box. But come, we have been after you for the last three hours; so you had better come along at once." "Save me!--save me!" she sobbed, tightening her grasp upon my arm and looking with beseeching agony in my face. "Be comforted," I whispered; "you shall go home with me. Calm yourself, Miss Kingsford," I added in a louder tone: "I no more believe you have stolen a diamond brooch than that I have." "Bless you!--bless you!" she gasped in the intervals of her convulsive sobs. "There is some wretched misapprehension in this business, I am quite sure," I continued; "but at all events I shall bail her--for this night at least." "Bail her! That is hardly regular." "No; but you will tell the superintendent that Mary Kingsford is in my custody, and that I answer for appearance to-morrow." The men hesitated; but I stood too well at head-quarters for them to do more than hesitate; and the cab I had ordered being just then announced, I passed with Mary out of the room as quickly as I could, for I feared her senses were again leaving her. The air revived her somewhat, and I lifted her into the cab, placing myself beside her. She appeared to listen in fearful doubt whether I should be allowed to take her with me; and it was not till the wheels had made a score of revolutions that her fears vanished; then throwing herself upon my neck in an ecstacy of gratitude, she burst into tears, and continued till we reached home crying on my bosom like a broken-hearted child. She had, I found, been there about ten o'clock to seek me, and being told that I was gone to Astley's, had started off to find me there. She still slept, or at least she had not risen when I left home the following morning to endeavor to get at the bottom of the strange accusation preferred against her. I first saw the superintendent, who, after hearing what I had to say, quite approved of all I had done, and intrusted the case entirely to my care. I next saw Mr. and Mrs. Morris and Sophia Clarke, and then waited upon the prosecutor, a youngish gentleman by the name of Saville, lodging in Essex Street, Strand. One or two things I heard, made necessary a visit to other officers of police, incidentally, as I found, mixed up with the affair. By the time all this was done, and an effectual watch had been placed upon Mr. Augustus Saville's movements, evening had fallen, and I wended my way homewards, both to obtain a little rest, and to hear Mary Kingsford's version of the story. The result of my inquiries may be thus summed up. Ten days before. Sophia Clarke told her cousin that she had orders for Covent-Garden Theatre; and as it was not one of their busy nights, she thought they might obtain leave to go. Mary expressed her doubt of this, as both Mr. and Mrs. Morris, who were strict and somewhat fanatical Dissenters, disapproved of play-going, especially for young women. Nevertheless Sophia asked, informed Mary that the required permission had been readily accorded, and off they went in high spirits; Mary especially, who had never been to a theatre in her life before. When there they were joined by Hartley and Simpson, much to Mary's annoyance and vexation, especially as she saw that her cousin expected them. She had, in fact, accepted the orders from them. At the conclusion of the entertainments, they all four came out together, when suddenly there arose a hustling and confusion, accompanied with loud outcries, and a violent swaying to and fro of the crowd. The disturbance was, however, soon quelled; and Mary and her cousin had reached the outer door, when two police-officers seized Hartley and his friend, and insisted upon their going with them. A scuffle ensued; but other officers being at hand, the two men were secured, and carried off. The cousins, terribly frightened, called a coach, and were very glad to find themselves safe at home again. And now it came out that Mr. and Mrs. Morris had been told that they were going to spend the evening at _my_ house, and had no idea they were going to the play! Vexed as Mary was at the deception, she was too kindly tempered to refuse to keep her cousin's secret; especially knowing as she did that the discovery of the deceit Sophia had practised would in all probability be followed by her immediate discharge. Hartley and his friend swaggered on the following afternoon into the shop, and whispered Sophia that their arrest by the police had arisen from a strange mistake, for which the most ample apologies had been offered and accepted. After this matters went on as usual, except that Mary perceived a growing insolence and familiarity in Hartley's manner towards her. His language was frequently quite unintelligible, and once he asked her plainly "if she did not mean that he should go _shares_ in the prize she had lately found?" Upon Mary replying that she did not comprehend him, his look became absolutely ferocious, and he exclaimed; "Oh, that's your game, is it? But don't try it on with me, my good girl, I advise you." So violent did he become, that Mr. Morris was attracted by the noise, and ultimately bundled him, neck and heels, out of the shop. She had not seen either him or his companion since. On the evening of the previous day, a gentleman whom she never remembered to have seen before, entered the shop, took a seat, and helped himself to a tart. She observed that after a while he looked at her very earnestly, and at length approaching quite close, said, "You were at Covent-Garden Theatre last Tuesday evening week?" Mary was struck, as she said, all of a heap, for both Mr. and Mrs. Morris were in the shop, and heard the question. "Oh no, no! you mistake," she said hurriedly, and feeling at the same time her cheeks kindle into flame. "Nay, but you were though," rejoined the gentleman. And then lowering his voice to a whisper, he said, "And let me advise you, if you would avoid exposure and consign punishment, to restore me the diamond brooch you robbed me of on that evening." Mary screamed with terror, and a regular scene ensued. She was obliged to confess she had told a falsehood in denying she was at the theatre on the night in question, and Mr. Morris after that seemed inclined to believe any thing of her. The gentleman persisted in his charge; but at the same time vehemently iterating his assurance that all he wanted was his property; and it was ultimately decided that Mary's boxes, as well as her person should be searched. This was done; and to her utter consternation the brooch was found concealed, they said, in a black silk reticule. Denials, asseverations, were in vain. Mr. Saville identified the brooch, but once more offered to be content with its restoration. This Mr. Morris, a just, stern man, would not consent to, and he went out to summon a police-officer. Before he returned, Mary, by the advice of both her cousin and Mrs. Morris, had fled the house, and hurried in a state of distraction to find me, with what result the reader already knows. "It is a wretched business," I observed to my wife, as soon as Mary Kingsford had retired to rest, at about nine o'clock in the evening. "Like you, I have no doubt of the poor girl's perfect innocence; but how to establish it by satisfactory evidence is another matter. I must take her to Bow Street the day after to-morrow." "Good God, how dreadful! Can nothing be done? What does the prosecutor say the brooch is worth?" "His uncle, he says, gave a hundred and twenty guineas for it. But that signifies little, for were its worth only a hundred and twenty farthings, compromise is, you know, out of the question." "I did not mean that. Can you show it me? I am a pretty good judge of the value of jewels." "Yes, you can see it." I took it out of the desk in which I had locked it up, and placed it before her. It was a splendid emerald, encircled by large brilliants. My wife twisted and turned it about, holding it in all sorts of lights, and at last said, "I do not believe that either the emerald or the brilliants are real--that the brooch is, in fact, worth twenty shillings intrinsically." "Do you say so?" I exclaimed, as I jumped up from my chair, for my wife's words gave color and consistence to a dim and faint suspicion which had crossed my mind. "Then this Saville is a manifest liar, and perhaps confederate with----But give me my hat: I will ascertain this point at once." I hurried to a jeweller's shop, and found that my wife's opinion was correct. Apart from the workmanship, which was very fine, the brooch was valueless. Conjectures, suspicions, hopes, fears, chased each other with bewildering rapidity through my brain, and in order to collect and arrange my thoughts, I stepped out of the whirl of the streets into Dolly's Chop-house, and decided, over a quiet glass of negus, upon my plan of operations. The next morning there appeared at the top of the second column of the "Times" an earnest appeal, worded with careful obscurity, so that only the person to whom it was addressed should easily understand it, to the individual who had lost or been robbed of a false stone and brilliants at the theatre, to communicate with a certain person--whose address I gave--without delay, in order to save the reputation, perhaps the life, of an innocent person. I was at the address I had given by nine o'clock. Several hours passed without bringing any one, and I was beginning to despair, when a gentleman of the name of Bagshawe was announced: I fairly leaped for joy, for this was beyond my hopes. A gentleman presently entered, of about thirty years of age, of a distinguished, though somewhat dissipated aspect. "This brooch is yours?" said I, exhibiting it without delay or preface. "It is; and I am here to know what your singular advertisement means." I briefly explained the situation of affairs. "The rascals!" he broke in, almost before I had finished. "I will briefly explain it all. A fellow of the name of Hartley, at least that was the name he gave, robbed me, I was pretty sure, of this brooch. I pointed him out to the police, and he was taken into custody; but nothing being found upon him, he was discharged." "Not entirely, Mr. Bagshawe, on that account. You refused, when arrived at the station-house, to state what you had been robbed of; and you, moreover, said, in presence of the culprit, that you were to embark with your regiment for India the next day. That regiment, I have ascertained, did embark, as you said it would." "True; but I had leave of absence, and shall take the overland route. The truth is, that during the walk to the station-house, I had leisure to reflect, that if I made a formal charge, it would lead to awkward disclosures, This brooch is an imitation of one presented me by a valued relative. Losses at play--since, for this unfortunate young woman's sake, I _must_ out with it--obliged me to part with the original; and I wore this, in order to conceal the fact from my relative's knowledge." "This will, sir," I replied, "prove, with a little management, quite sufficient for all purposes. You have no objection to accompany me to the superintendent?" "Not in the least: only I wish the devil had the brooch, as well as the fellow that stole it." About half-past five o'clock on the same evening, the street-door was quietly opened by the landlord of the house in which Mr. Saville lodged, and I walked into the front room on the first floor, where I found the gentleman I sought languidly reclining on a sofa. He gathered himself smartly up at my appearance, and looked keenly in my face. He did not appear to like what he read there. "I did not expect to see you to-day," he said, at last. "No, perhaps not: but I have news for you. Mr. Bagshawe, the owner of the hundred-and-twenty guinea brooch your deceased uncle gave you, did _not_ sail for India, and--" The wretched cur, before I could conclude, was on his knees, begging for mercy with disgusting abjectness. I could have spurned the scoundrel where he crawled. "Come, sir!" I cried, "let us have no snivelling or humbug: mercy is not in my power, as you ought to know. Strive to deserve it. We want Hartley and Simpson, and cannot find them: you must aid us." "Oh yes; to be sure I will," eagerly rejoined the rascal. "I will go for them at once," he added, with a kind of hesitating assurance. "Nonsense! _Send_ for them, you mean. Do so, and I will wait their arrival." His note was despatched by a sure hand; and meanwhile I arranged the details of the expected meeting. I, and a friend, whom I momently expected, would ensconce ourselves behind a large screen in the room, while Mr. Augustus Saville would run playfully over the charming plot with his two friends, so that we might be able to fully appreciate its merits. Mr. Saville agreed. I rang the bell, an officer appeared, and we took our posts in readiness. We had scarcely done so, when the street-bell rang, and Saville announced the arrival of his confederates. There was a twinkle in the fellow's green eyes which I thought I understood. "Do not try that on, Mr. Augustus Saville," I quietly remarked: "we are but two here, certainly, but there are half-a-dozen in waiting below." No more was said, and in another minute the friends met. It was a boisterously jolly meeting, as far as shaking hands and mutual felicitations on each other's good looks and health went. Saville was, I thought, the most obstreperously gay of all three. "And yet, now I look at you, Saville, closely," said Hartley, "you don't look quite the thing. Have you seen a ghost?" "No; but this cursed brooch affair worries me." "Nonsense!--humbug!--it's all right: we are all embarked in the same boat. It's a regular three-handed game. I prigged it; Simmy here whipped it into pretty Mary's reticule, which she, I suppose, never looked into till the row came; and _you_ claimed it--a regular merry-go-round, eh? Ha! ha! ha!" "Quite so, Mr. Hartley," said I, suddenly facing him, and at the same time stamping on the floor; "as you say, a delightful merry-go-round; and here, you perceive, I added, as the officers crowded into the room, are more gentlemen to join in it." I must not stain the paper with the curses, imprecations, blasphemies, which for a brief space resounded through the apartment. The rascals were safely and separately locked up a quarter of an hour afterwards; and before a month had passed away, all three were transported. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that they believed the brooch to be genuine, and of great value. Mary Kingsford did not need to return to her employ. Westlake the elder withdrew his veto upon his son's choice, and the wedding was celebrated in the following May with great rejoicing; Mary's old playmate officiating as bridesmaid, and I as bride's-father. The still young couple have now a rather numerous family, and a home blessed with affection, peace, and competence. It was some time, however, before Mary recovered from the shock of her London adventure; and I am pretty sure that the disagreeable reminiscences inseparately connected in her mind with the metropolis will prevent at least _one_ person from being present at the World's Great Fair. _Historical Review of the Month._ THE UNITED STATES. Our record of home affairs for the past month presents several points of more than usual interest. Two different movements, both of which originated in the Southern States, kept awake the public curiosity for three or four weeks past, though at the time these sheets are going through the press both appear to be rapidly subsiding. Soon after the withdrawal of the Government prosecution against Gen. Henderson, Lopez, Gen. Quitman, and the other persons arraigned for trial as having been engaged in getting up a hostile expedition against Cuba, rumors of a second attempt being in preparation, began to be circulated through the country. Little attention was at first paid to these rumors, but the matter soon assumed a more definite shape, and the Southern newspapers began to notice the congregation of suspicious persons at different points on or near the coast. From the intelligence which the Government received, it became evident that an extensive expedition, was on foot, the object of which was the invasion of Cuba. The United States officers were ordered to be on the watch, for the purpose of obtaining more particular intelligence of its movements. Two or three thousand men had collected in the neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida, which had been selected as the principal rendezvous of the expedition. These men awaited the arrival of a steamer from New-York, which had been chartered by parties there. The Government, however, had already received intelligence of their plans, and instructions were at once sent to the United States Marshal at New-York, to prevent the departure of the steamer. This officer, accompanied by a police force, sailed down the bay in search of the suspected craft. In the mean time it was found that the steamer Cleopatra, a large boat, formerly employed on the Sound as a passenger boat, was the vessel indicated. She was then lying at one of the piers on the North River, and was immediately seized and placed under the supervision of the United States authorities. She was alleged to be bound to Galveston, Texas. A large quantity of coal was found on board, and a great number of water casks, and but few arms or ammunition of any kind. A file of marines from the Navy Yard was placed on board, and all communication with the shore forbidden. No final disposition has yet been made of the vessel, though orders were received to deliver her cargo to any person who may establish his ownership to the articles found on board. At the same time, notice was received by the Marshal that a number of Germans and others had assembled at South Amboy for the purpose of embarking on some secret expedition, and one of the Deputy Marshals was sent there for the purpose of procuring information. Disguising himself as a German emigrant, he obtained sufficient evidence to warrant the arrest of the following six persons: William T. Rogers, Jr., John L. O'Sullivan, Capt. Lewis, of the steamboat Creole, a member of the former expedition; Major Louis Schlesinger, one of the Hungarian refugees; Pedro Sanchez Yznaga, a Cuban refugee; and Dr. Daniel H. Burtnett. Each of the parties was held to bail in the sum of $3,000, to appear for examination. The movement must have been of considerable magnitude, but there was evidently a want of concert among its members, which may have led to its abandonment. From what could be ascertained, it was not the intention of the leaders to organize the expedition in this country, but to sail to some point beyond the limits of the United States, and there concentrate their forces for the invasion. The South Carolina State Rights Convention assembled at Charleston on the 5th of May. The Hon. J. P. Richardson, Ex-Governor of the State, was appointed President. Forty district associations were represented, and 431 Delegates took their seats. The President, in his opening address, reviewed the present position of the South, and considered that, under existing circumstances, Southern institutions could not exist twenty years. He discussed at some length the want of affinity between the two sections of the Union, and expressed his conviction that those whom God and Nature have put asunder should not be joined together. On the second day, a letter from the Hon. Langdon Cheves was read, excusing his non-attendance. He deprecated separate State action, believing that one State cannot stand alone in the midst of her sister States. A committee of twenty-one was appointed to prepare resolutions and an address, which were adopted, after considerable discussion. The following are the resolutions, which embody the sentiments of the Convention: 1. _Resolved_, That in the opinion of this meeting the State of South Carolina cannot submit to the wrongs and aggressions which have been perpetrated by the Federal Government and the Northern States, without dishonor and ruin; and that it is necessary for her to relieve herself therefrom, whether with or without the co-operation of other Southern States. 2. _Resolved_, That concert of action with one or more of our sister States of the South, whether through the proposed Southern Congress, or in any other manner, is an object worth many sacrifices, but not the sacrifice involved in submission. 3. _Resolved_, That we hold the right of secession to be essential to the sovereignty and freedom of the States of this confederacy; and that the denial of that right would furnish to an injured State the strongest additional cause for its exercise. 4. _Resolved_, That this meeting looks with confidence and hope to the Convention of the People, to exert the sovereign power of the State in defence of its rights, at the earliest practicable period and in the most effectual manner, and to the Legislature, to adopt the most speedy and effectual measures toward the same end. Mr. Barnwell and two other members of the Committee presented a minority Report, referring the whole matter to the action of the Legislature. Judge Butler, U. S. Senator, also recommended a postponement of any decisive step. The original Report, however, was adopted, and the Convention adjourned _sine die_. The subject has occasioned but little excitement out of South Carolina, and it is not anticipated that any other State will pursue a similar course. The Mexican Government has made a formal complaint to the President of the United States, in relation to the Indian outrages along the frontier, which the United States were bound to suppress, according to the Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo. It is believed that a demand of a million of dollars will be made for damages which the Indians have already caused; besides which, Mexico refuses to ratify the Tchuantepec Treaty, unless these provisions are fulfilled. At the last session of Congress, the appropriation asked by the War Department for this purpose, was not made; besides which, the troops most serviceable for such a warfare have been disbanded. An order has been issued by the President, that the tracts of land in Iowa, occupied by General Ujhazy and the other Hungarian exiles, shall be withheld from sale until the end of the next session of Congress, with a view to making application to that body for a grant of the lands. The Massachusetts Legislature, after a struggle of four months, succeeded in electing a U. S. Senator on the 24th of April. Charles Sumner, Esq., the Free Soil Candidate, was chosen on that day, by 193 votes, precisely the number necessary for election. The Boston Board of Aldermen, who had passed a resolution refusing the use of Faneuil Hall for a public address by Daniel Webster, have since then retracted the step and concurred with the Common Council in inviting Mr. Webster to address the citizens of Boston. Faneuil Hall, hereafter, is to be granted on all occasions, at the application of one hundred voters. Before leaving Boston, Mr. Webster delivered a speech to the citizens of Boston, from the steps of the Revere House. The Legislature of New-York adjourned on the 17th of April. The question of the enlargement of the Erie Canal was before the Senate, when twelve of the Democratic members of that body resigned their seats in order to prevent the passage of the bill, by leaving the senate without a quorum. The usual annual appropriations had not been voted, and the Government was thus placed without the means of sustaining its operations. An extra session of the Legislature has been called by Governor Hunt, for the 10th of June. Elections have been ordered, in the mean time, to fill the vacancies caused by the resignation of the Senators. The Members of the Assembly, of both parties, published manifestoes in relation to the question. The Atlantic Coast and the Lakes have been visited this spring with a succession of tremendous gales, which have done an immense amount of damage in various quarters. A storm arose along the Northeastern coast, on the 15th of April, and at noon on the following day the tide was higher at Boston than had ever been known before. On the principal wharves of the city the water was three or four feet deep, and the streets were so flooded that a large boat could be rowed around the Custom House. An immense amount of damage was done to private property, and many lives were lost. The railroad tracks all around the city were submerged, and in many places torn up and washed away. All along the coast, from New Bedford to Portland, the gale raged with nearly equal violence, causing much injury to the shipping. The loss of property is estimated at more than one million of dollars. On the night of the 17th of April, the third day of the storm, the light-house on Minot's Ledge, at the entrance of Boston harbor, was carried away, and the two men in it at the time drowned. Mr. Bennett, the keeper, who had been to Boston, was prevented from returning to it by the rough sea, and thus escaped. It was formed of wrought iron bars, riveted into the rock, and rising to the height of sixty feet, having chambers in the upper part for the keeper and his assistants. The light-house had been severely tested in the late equinoctial storm, and was considered secure. His Excellency, President Fillmore, accompanied by the Hon. Daniel Webster, Secretary of State; Hon. William A. Graham, Secretary of the Navy; Hon. J. J. Crittenden, Attorney General; and Hon. N. K. Hall, Postmaster General, left Washington on the 12th of May, in order to be present at the opening of the Erie Railroad from New-York to Dunkirk. They were received with great enthusiasm on the way; at Baltimore and Wilmington they were officially welcomed, and were met at the latter place by the Mayor and Common Council of Philadelphia, who escorted them to that city. Here the people turned out to give them a public reception, and speeches were made by the President and Mr. Webster. On their way to New-York they were met at Amboy by the Erie Railroad Company's steamer and conveyed to the city, saluted on the way by national salutes from the forts in the harbor, and the military companies of the city, who were drawn up on the Battery, to receive the distinguished visitors. The ceremonies of welcome were performed in Castle Garden, where the President and Secretaries were welcomed by Mayor Kingsland. Eloquent speeches were made in return by the President, Mr. Webster, and Mr. Crittenden. A military procession more than a mile in length, was then formed, and marched through the principal streets, which were thronged with spectators. Flags were waving from every point, and as the day was remarkably bright and warm, the spectacle was one of unusual life and animation. The Company's boat left New-York at 6 o'clock on the morning of the 14th, having on board the President and Secretaries, all the principal State officers except Governor Hunt, the officers of the Erie Railroad Company, a large representation from the State Senate and Assembly, and both boards of the Common Council of the city, besides a number of other distinguished persons. At Piermont, three special trains received the company, 600 in all, and the grand march of 450 miles, through what was lately the wilderness of the State, from the Hudson to Lake Erie, commenced. All along the line of the road the people turned out _en masse_, cannons were fired and bells rung as the trains passed, and triumphal arches erected over the road. Brief addresses were made at the principal stations by the President, Mr. Webster, Mr. Seward, Mr. Crittenden, and other distinguished guests. The trains stopped at Elmira for the night, and proceeded next day to Dunkirk, which they reached in the afternoon. Here the crowning celebration was made. All the country, far and near, arose to hail the completion of the greatest railroad enterprise in the world. After the meeting, a grand barbecue was held: two oxen and ten sheep were roasted whole, and the company regaled on a magnificent scale. The day following this opening excursion, the regular passenger trains commenced running from New-York to Dunkirk. The distance between the Ocean and Lake Erie is now but a summer's day. In the Connecticut Legislature the Democratic candidate for Governor, Mr. Seymour, was elected by a majority of one vote. The Legislature of Rhode Island, on the 10th of May, restored to Ex-Gov. Dorr, (well-known as the leader of "Dorr's Rebellion,") all the rights and privileges of a citizen. M. Bois Le Compte, the French Minister at Washington, who has been recalled by his Government, took leave of the President on the 2d of May, and will shortly return to France. Jenny Lind reached New-York in the beginning of May, after a triumphant tour of five months in the South and West. She commenced a series of farewell concerts on the 7th. She was received with as full a house and scarcely less enthusiasm than on the night of her first appearance in America. The Firemen of the city, in return for her donation of $3000 to the Widows' and Orphans' Fund, have presented her with a resolution of thanks inclosed in a gold box, and a copy of Audubon's Birds of America in a rosewood case. A fire occurred at Santa Fe, New Mexico, on the 22d of April, which destroyed the finest hotel in the place. Col. Sumner, who is to take command of the United States military force in the Department, carries with him a large amount of seeds, grains, improved stock, farming utensils, and apparatus for developing the capacity of the soil. It is designed to make the United States troops in New Mexico support themselves as far as possible. The Apache Indians have been very troublesome, but a treaty of amity has been effected with their principal chief, Chacon. The Mexican citizens are well satisfied with the establishment of the Territorial Government. The California mails of March 15th and April 1st have been received. The steamers which sailed from San Francisco on those days took away more than $3,500,000 in gold dust for the Atlantic States. The news is generally of a very favorable character. The severe drought which had prevailed through the whole winter, terminated on the 17th of March, when a succession of heavy showers commenced, the effect of which had been to revive business of all kinds. The miners in the dry diggings had a sufficiency of water to wash out their piles of dirt, and the gold dust, flowing into the centres of trades, soon dissipated the dulness which had fallen upon business of all kinds. Agricultural prospects have also brightened, and the crops of California will this year be an important feature of her products. The odious tax of $20 per month on all foreign miners has been repealed, and the Mexicans and Chilians who were last year driven out of the country will probably return. The Legislature still continues in session, and since its futile attempt to elect a United States Senator, has gone vigorously to work. The sale of lottery tickets has been prohibited; the sum of $200,000 appropriated for the pay of persons engaged in military operations against the Indians, and the State Treasurer authorized to obtain a loan of $500,000. The District Court of Sacramento has given a decision sustaining the suitors of claims on all lands on which the city is located. A fugitive slave case--the first in California--has been settled at San Francisco. The owner of a slave, who had employed him in the mines for three or four months, was about to return with him to the Atlantic States. But as the slave preferred remaining, a writ of habeas corpus was procured and a hearing had before the Court, which decided that the negro was at liberty to stay and could not be removed against his will. A fire broke out in a bowling alley in Nevada City, on the 12th of March, and spread so rapidly that before it could be subdued, the largest and best portion of the city was in ashes. One hundred and twenty-eight houses were destroyed, and the entire loss is estimated at $300,000. Accounts from all parts of the gold region give flattering accounts of the golden harvest for the present year. The richest locality appears to be the district lying between Feather River and the American Fork, embracing the Yuba and its tributaries. The northern mines, on Trinity, Scott's and Klamath Rivers, continue to attract attention. On the Mokelumne River, gold is found in large quantities on the sides and summits of the hills. A placer of the precious metal has also been discovered by the Mexicans near San Diego. The operations in quartz mining promise to be very profitable. A vein near Nevada City has been sold for $130,000. Later accounts from the Gold Bluff are more encouraging. The top sand was washed away during a severe gale, and the heavy substratum, being washed, was found to yield from three to eight ounces to each pailful. Messrs. Moffat & Co., who obtained the Government contract for assaying gold, received deposits of gold dust amounting to $100,000 in two hours after opening their office. The operations of the office had such an effect that the bankers of San Francisco were compelled to raise the price of gold dust to $17 per ounce, in order to have any share in the trade. Professor Forest Shepard, of New-Haven, who has been prosecuting geological explorations in different parts of California, has discovered a remarkable valley in the Coast Range, north of Napa Valley. It is an immense chasm, 1000 feet deep, in the bottom of which was a large number of boiling springs and jets of steam, with here and there a fountain of hot water, similar to the geysers of Iceland. There are more than two hundred in all, within a compass of half a mile square. The soil of the valley was so warm that, although it was in the middle of winter, flowers were in full bloom and a luxuriant vegetation springing on all sides. It is Professor Shepard's intention to claim a portion of the valley, build a house thereon, and plant tropical trees in the warm soil. The Hon. Samuel R. Thurston, Delegate to Congress from Oregon Territory, died on the 9th ult., on board the steamer California, bound from Panama to San Francisco. His remains were taken to Acapulco for interment. Our news from Oregon is to the 22d of March. A discovery has been made by Capt. George Drew, of a vein of coal on the Cowlitz River, eighteen miles from its junction with the Columbia, and about one mile from the main Cowlitz. The vein is two feet thick and about half a mile in width, fifteen feet above high water mark and about forty feet below the surface of the bluff mountain. Governor Ogden, of the Hudson's Bay Company, at Vancouver, sent a boat and crew to bring a quantity away, that it may be fairly tested. EUROPE. The Grand Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, in the Crystal Palace at LONDON, was opened on Thursday, May 1, with appropriate and imposing ceremonies. Just before twelve o'clock, which was the hour appointed for the arrival of the Queen, the rain that had been falling at intervals during the day ceased altogether, and the sun shone forth from a cloudless sky. On the appearance of the Royal cortêge, the utmost enthusiasm was manifested by the people who thronged the vicinity of the Palace, and, in the midst of the cheers of the multitude, and the flourish of military music, the Queen, accompanied by Prince Albert, the Prince of Wales, and the Princess Royal, was ushered into the interior of the building. She was welcomed by the vast assemblage with repeated and universal cheers, ladies waved their handkerchiefs, gentlemen their hats, and the whole scene presented a spectacle of unrivalled splendor. After she had ascended the throne, which was a raised platform surmounted with a blue canopy ornamented with feathers, the National Anthem was sung by an immense choir under direction of Sir Henry Bishop. When the music had ceased, Prince Albert presented to the Queen the report of the proceedings of the Commissioners, to which she replied in a short speech. The Archbishop of Canterbury then offered the prayer of inauguration, at the close of which the Hallelujah Chorus was sung. A procession was now formed, composed of the architect, contractors, and officials engaged in the construction of the Crystal Palace, the Foreign Commissioners, the Royal Commissioners, Foreign Ambassadors, and the members of the Royal Family. After making the circuit of the building in the procession, the Queen resumed her seat on the platform, and announced by a herald that the Exhibition was opened. A flourish of trumpets and a discharge of artillery proclaimed the fact to the thronging multitudes on the outside. The Queen, attended by the Court, then withdrew from the building; the choir again struck up the strain of the National Anthem; the barriers, which had confined the spectators within certain limits, were removed; and the whole mass of visitors poured over every part of the magnificent edifice, eager to gratify a highly excited curiosity. The number of exhibitors, whose productions are now displayed in the Crystal Palace, is about 15,000. One-half of these are British subjects. The remainder represent the industry of more than forty other nations, comprising nearly every civilized country on the globe. The Exhibition is divided into four classes; 1. Raw Materials; 2. Machinery; 3. Manufactures; 4. Sculpture and the Fine Arts. A further division is made, according to the geographical position of the countries represented, those which lie within the warmer latitudes being placed near the centre of the building, and the colder countries at the extremities. The Crystal Palace, which was commenced on the 26th of September, and has accordingly been completed in the short space of seven months, occupies an extent of about 18 acres, measuring 1,851 feet in length, and 556 in breadth, and affords a frontage for the exhibition of goods amounting in the aggregate to over 10 miles. It can accommodate at one time 40,000 visitors. An interesting debate took place in the BRITISH House of Commons on the 3d of April, upon a motion by Mr. Herries for the repeal of the Income Tax. In an elaborate speech supporting his motion, Mr. Herries maintained that the Income Tax was proposed by Sir Robert Peel in order to meet a peculiar emergency occasioned by the maladministration of the Whigs prior to 1841. He presented a minute calculation for the purpose of showing that two-sevenths of the tax might be remitted without damage to the financial interests of the nation, and that the remission of £1,560,000 would be a greater relief than the removal of the window-tax. In reply to Mr. Herries, the Chancellor of the Exchequer contended that the measures contemplated in the motion were of the most disastrous tendency, and recommended the House to vote an Income Tax for three years. On a division of the House, Mr. Herries' motion was lost by a majority of 48. The subject of Colonial Expenditures has elicited a warm debate in the House of Commons. Sir William Molesworth argued in favor of giving the means of local self-government to all colonies which are not military stations nor convict settlements. The colonies cost the United Kingdom the enormous sum of £4,000,000 sterling. He believed the military force maintained in the various colonies might be cut down to less than half the present establishment without injury to the Government. Under proper regulations, 17,000 men would be sufficient for the colonial garrisons, instead of 45,000. For colonial services the troops should be paid by the colonies--for Imperial purposes, by the General Government. He contended that in the North American colonies, the expenditure for military affairs should be reduced £400,000 per annum, and in the West Indies £250,000. From the Australian colonies nearly the whole military force might be withdrawn to advantage. Unless the military operations were discontinued in South Africa, the war would cost £1,000,000 more than the value of the colony. In conclusion, he estimated that the adoption of his measures would save the Government at least £1,800,000 in military and civil expenditure. The views of Sir William Molesworth were ably sustained by other members, while, on the contrary, Lord John Russell declared they were of a ruinous tendency, and earnestly protested against their adoption. If the plan were carried into effect, the glory of the British nation would be destroyed. She could no longer maintain her proud position before the world. The integrity of her empire would be annihilated, and she would be exposed to the attack of foreign powers. The debate was finally adjourned without a division. The latest intelligence concerning Miss Talbot, whose relation to the Roman Catholic controversy has produced such a general excitement in England, is her decision to accept of a proposal of marriage from Lord Edward Howard, a Catholic nobleman of wealth and character. Application was made by the friends of the parties for the consent of the Lord Chancellor, which was given without hesitation. The British Government has presented a memorial to the Courts of Berlin and Vienna, on the subject of admitting non-German territories into the Confederation, and insisting on a strict adherence to the Treaty of Vienna. A new cabinet has been formed in FRANCE, consisting of Baroche, Rouher, Fould, Leon-Faucher, Buffet, Chasseloup Laubat, de Crouseilhes, Randon and Maque. The most prominent of these ministers are Baroche, Fould, and Leon-Faucher. They are all taken from the minority of the Assembly, and their choice will increase the difference between the President and that body. Baroche and Fould were members of the ministry which was obliged to retire in January last, before the opposition of the Assembly. Leon-Faucher labors under the stigma of having used the telegraph for electioneering purposes, for which he was condemned by the vote of the constituent assembly. Buffet was minister of commerce and agriculture in the administration of O'Dillon-Barrot. He is inclined to free trade sentiments, agreeing for the most part with Leon-Faucher in his commercial views. De Crouseilhes is a legitimist. He is an ex-peer of France, but has been more distinguished for his private worth than his political ability. Chasseloup Laubat has been in official employment since 1828, though he is still under fifty years of age. The best debater in the new ministry is undoubtedly Baroche, whose sagacity and mental vigor cannot be mistaken. The political condition of France is still the subject of much speculation, but no definite conclusions can be arrived at in the present fluctuations of parties. Every thing shows the uncertainty which pervades the public mind. The President has renounced the hope of improving his political prospects, by obtaining a revision of the constitution. This could not be carried without a majority of three-fourths of the Assembly, while at least nearly 190 of the most strenuous republicans are decidedly opposed to the measure. The government is now sustained by the legitimists, who perceive no immediate hope of the accomplishment of their favorite plans. The partisans of Cavaignac are in favor of the speedy resignation of the President. In their opinion, this is necessary, in order to anticipate the general election, and thus prevent the difficulties that would ensue by the dissolution of the Assembly, without an established executive. Others, on the contrary, are in favor of extending the Presidential term for the period of ten years. A reconciliation was about to take place, according to the general rumor, between the President and General Changarnier. The government has demanded of the cabinet at London the expulsion of Ledru Rollin and other active politicians among the French refugees. With the present facilities of communication between London and Paris, their influence was believed to be adverse to the policy of the French government, and to increase the difficulties of the existing crisis. An insurrection, headed by the Duke of Saldanha, has been attempted in Cientra, PORTUGAL. The insurgents were about five thousand in number, and displayed considerable determination. Their leader is a man of great energy, and has had no small experience in political disturbances. He belongs to the reactionary party. The King, who commands the army in person, has occupied the fortress of Santarem, and the chances of the insurgents appear desperate, although they are said to have some friends in the royal army. The garrison at Oporto have declared for Saldanha, and the inhabitants of that city are generally on his side. He had decided to abandon the contest, and embark for England, but was recalled by the insurgents. The King of NAPLES has prohibited his subjects from taking part in the Exhibition of the World's Fair, and from being present at it as visitors. The King of Sardinia proposes to visit England during the Exhibition. The Emperor of RUSSIA has appointed a Committee of manufacturers and scientific men, under the Presidency of the Director General of Public Works to visit the Exhibition, and also to examine the principal manufacturing establishments of France. He has also given permission to his subjects who may attend the exhibition, to pass through France on complying with certain conditions. The city of DRONTHEIM has again suffered from a popular outbreak, although not from political causes. The military and burgher guard were compelled to interfere, and several arrests took place. The difficulty originated in the prohibition of the sale of fish by the peasantry, in compliance with the demands of the licensed fishermen. A misunderstanding of a serious nature has occurred between the Emperor of AUSTRIA and the Sultan of TURKEY. This has resulted in the withdrawal of the Austrian minister from Constantinople. The Sultan is charged with refusing to comply with the demands of the Emperor in regard to Kossuth and the other Hungarian prisoners. He declines detaining them after the expiration of the year during which he had promised to hold them in custody. An additional offence is his presentation of a claim upon the Austrian treasury for the expenses of the detention. At our last dates from TURKEY, the Bosnian insurrection had been conducted with great activity, although it has probably been suppressed by Omer Pasha. A sanguinary engagement between the Sultan's troops and a body of fifteen thousand insurgents has taken place in the vicinity of Jaicza, in which several hundred of the combatants on both sides were killed or mortally wounded. The conflict terminated in favor of the rebels. _Recent Deaths._ CAPTAIN J. D. CUNNINGHAM, of the Bengal Engineers, author of the _History of the Sikhs_, died in India on the twenty-eight of February, in consequence, it is said, of his removal from the political agency of Bhopaul, where his services and abilities had been highly valued. The act of the "Company" fell with peculiar hardship upon an officer who had passed twenty years of honorable and uninterrupted service in every climate of India, and whose error (if any were committed by the publication in question) was certainly not of a character demanding censure so grave. It will be recollected that the book threw some new light on the conduct of Lord Hardinge at Sobraon, and that the writer was dismissed on the charge of having, "without authority," published documents officially intrusted to his charge. The friends of Captain Cunningham aver that he had formerly asked permission, and he construed the reply to be an expression of indifference on the part of the directors. It was never pretended that an unworthy motive had influenced him, or that he had acted on any other than a desire (however mistaken) to promote the welfare of the government to which he was attached. It is understood that Captain Cunningham's health broke soon after this painful misunderstanding, and that its effects pursued him to his death. He was a son of Allan Cunningham, had distinguished himself greatly in all his Indian employments, and had not completed his fortieth year. * * * * * The _Glasgow Citizen_ calls attention to the death of Mr. JOHN HENNING, the well-known Paisley artist, whose studies from the Elgin marbles and cartoons after Raphad obtained so much distinction for himself, and contributed so largely to the diffusion of a general taste for the fine arts amongst his countrymen. Mr. Henning was a self-taught sculptor, and devoted twelve years of his life, under great difficulties, to the restoration of the Greek marbles brought over by Lord Elgin. His copies of these on a reduced scale are so well known and esteemed as to render eulogium on their merits here unnecessary. Many busts of his contemporaries remain to testify further to the excellence of his hand. He was one of the men whom his native town "delighted to honor." * * * * * PADRE ROZAVEN, one of the most famous of modern Jesuits, and distinguished by divers polemical treatises, as well as by a long residence and religious warfare in Russia, has just died in Rome in his eighty-second year. * * * * * PRINCE WITTGENSTEIN, Minister of the Royal House of Prussia, died on the 11th April, at Berlin, at the age of eighty-one. He had been in the service of the state fifty-six years, and had filled the post in which he died since 1819. * * * * * HENRY BICKERSTETH, LORD LANGDALE, late Master of the Rolls, died on Good Friday, at Tunbridge Wells, to which place he had lately repaired for the benefit of his health--impaired by long-continued mental labor, resulting in a paralytic stroke, which took place shortly before his death. He was born on the eighteenth of June, 1783, in the county of Westmoreland, where his father was possessed of a small property. Originally destined for the medical profession (of which his father was a member), in which he had completed his studies, he visited the Continent with the family of the late Earl of Oxford, by whose advice he was induced to embark on the career of the bar. He entered Caius College, Cambridge, where he took his degrees as senior wrangler in 1808. Three years afterwards he was called to the bar, and engaged at once in the duties of his profession. He rapidly rose to great eminence in the Equity Courts, to which he confined his practice. On the nineteenth of January, 1836, he was appointed to succeed Lord Cottenham as Master of the Rolls, and was at the same time called to the House of Peers. But a few months had elapsed after his accession to the mastership of the rolls when Lord Langdale delivered in the House of Lords his remarkable speech on the administration of justice in the Court of Chancery, and on the appellate jurisdiction of their lordships' house, and to the opinions expressed in that speech, and in favor of the division of the duties of the Great Seal, he constantly adhered. On the resignation of Lord Cottenham last year, the Great Seal was more than once tendered to Lord Langdale by the head of the present administration; but though he consented to act as first commissioner, and sat for a short time in the Lord Chancellor's court, and in the House of Lords, in that capacity, the intense application to which the state of the Court of Chancery had condemned him forbade a further stretch of his powers. * * * * * GENERAL E. J. ROBERTS, for many years conspicuous as an editor and a politician in the state of New York, died at the age of fifty-five, a few weeks ago, at Detroit. He formerly edited _The Craftsman_, at Rochester, and in 1830 was editor of a journal of that title in Albany. He removed to Michigan in 1834, and filled very important offices in that state. He was a member of the state senate at the time of his death. * * * * * From Stockholm is announced the death, at the age of seventy-one, of the distinguished botanist and geologist, M. GOREAN-WAHLENBERG, Professor at the University of Upsal, and director of the botanical garden in the same institution. M. Wahlenberg is stated to have spent thirty out of his seventy-one years in scientific journies through the different countries of Europe; and the results of these travels he has recorded in a variety of learned works. He left his rich collection and numerous library to the University of Upsal; in which he was a student,--and to which he was attached in various capacities during upwards of forty-three years. * * * * * We lack room for notices of the lives of Archbishop ECLESTON, of Baltimore; General BRADY, of the United States Army; and Mr. PHILIP HONE, three eminent persons who have died since our last publication. E. E. MARCY, M.D., AUTHOR OF THE "HOMOEOPATHIC THEORY AND PRACTICE." [Illustration] Dr. Marcy is one of the thousand or more physicians of the old school who have become homoeopathists. With professional eminence, and a liberal fortune, he joined the converts to the doctrine of Hahnemann, and at once took rank among the most distinguished physicians of the new practice. Homoeopathy is one of the grand facts of this age. It is no longer laughed at, but has reached that condition which enables it to challenge a respectful consideration from all who would not themselves be subjects of ridicule. Of educated and thoughtful men, in our large cities, it is contended that more than one-half are of its supporters. In Great Britain we see that Archbishop Whately, the Chevalier Bunsen, and Dr. Scott of Owen's College, constitute a trio of its literary adherents. Cobden, Leslie, and Wilson, are examples of its parliamentary partizans. Radetzky, Pulzsky, and General Farquharson, rank among its numerous military defenders. Leaf, Sugden, and Forbes, are three of its great London merchants. The Duke of Hamilton, the Earls of Wilton, Shrewsbury, Erne, and Denbigh, and Lords Robert Grosvenor, Newport, and Kinnaird, may serve for its guard of honor. Queen Adelaide was one of its numerous royal and noble patients, and the Duchess of Kent is the patroness of a great fair to be held for the benefit of some of its institutions in London during this present month of June--in the very heyday of the exhibition season. In France, Guizot, Changarnier, Comte, Lamartine, and some forty members of the Academy, are among its advocates. Here in New-York, it is sufficient to say of the character of the society in which it is received, that it includes Bryant, who has been among the most active of its lay teachers. It is clear that homoeopathy not only spreads apace, but that it also spreads in all sorts of good directions, through the present fabric of society. And this fact certainly conveys the idea that there must be some sort of truth in homoeopathy; whether pure or mixed, whether negative or affirmative, whether critical of something old, or declaratory of something new. Dr. Marcy is one of the leaders of the sect. He is the son of an eminent lawyer, who for more than twenty years has been in the legislature of Massachusetts; he was graduated at Amherst College, took his degree of Doctor in Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and for ten years devoted himself with great success to medicine and surgery in Hartford: in surgery, on several occasions, commanding the applause of both European and American academies. As a chemist, also, he greatly distinguished himself; and it is not too much to say, that in the application of chemistry to the arts, he has been more fortunate than any other American. At length, while travelling in Europe, he became a convert to the theory, _similia similibus curantur_, and renouncing his earlier notions, gave himself up to the study of it. He published, six months ago, in a volume of six hundred pages, _The Homoeopathic Theory and Practice of Medicine_, of which a second edition is now in press; and he is industriously occupied, when not attending to the general business of his profession, with a voluminous work on _Animal Chemistry_. It is admitted by the most wise and profoundly learned physicians of the allopathic practice, that the laws of that practice are for the most part vague and uncertain. The cumulative experiences of many ages have shown indeed that certain substances have certain effects in certain conditions of the human organism; but the processes by which these effects are induced are unknown, or not so established as justly to be regarded as a part of science. Facts have been observed, and hypotheses have been formed, but there has been no demonstrative generalization, really no philosophy of disease and cure; and while in almost every other department, investigation and reflection have led by a steady and sure advance to the establishment of positive and immutable principles, medicine has made, except in a few specialities, no advance at all, unless the theory here disclosed shall prove a solution of its secrets. Of these specialities, the most important has been the discovery of the homoeopathic law in the isolated case of smallpox. Every body knows how difficult and slow was the reception of the principle of inoculation--of _similia similibus curantur_--in this disease; but it was received at last universally; and then arose Hahnemann, to claim for every disorder of the human system the application of the same principle. Right or wrong, the father of homoeopathy gave us a system, perfect in its parts, universal in its fitness, and eminently beautiful in its simplicity. It has been half a century before the world, and though all the universities have parleyed and made truce with other innovations and asserted heresies, and opened against this their heaviest and best plied artillery, it is not to be denied that homoeopathy has made more rapid, diffusive, and pervading advances, than were ever before made by any doctrine of equal importance, either in morals or physics. We cannot but admit that we have been accustomed to regard the theories of Hahnemann with distrust, and that the principle of the attenuation of drugs, etc., viewed as it was by us through the media of prejudiced and satirical opposition, seemed to be trivial and absurd. We heard frequently of remarkable cures by Hahnemann's disciples, and even witnessed the benefits of their treatment, but so perfectly had the sharp ridicule of the allopathists warped our judgment and moulded our feelings, that we felt a sort of humiliation in confessing an advantage from an "infinitesimal dose." We could never forget the keen and brilliant wit with which our friend Holmes, for example, assailed a system which threatened to take away his practice and patients, deprive him of his income, and consign his professional erudition and ingenious speculation to oblivion. But the work of Dr. Marcy displayed these matters to us in an entirely different light, and guarded by walls of truths and arguments quite impenetrable by the most finely pointed or most powerful satire. His well-known abilities, great learning, and long successful experience as an allopathist, gave us assurance that his conversion to the school of Hahnemann could have been induced only by inherent elements of extraordinary force and vitality in its principles, and we looked to him confidently, when we understood that he was preparing for the press an exhibition and vindication of homoeopathy, for such a work as should at least screen the layman who accepted its doctrines from the reproach of fanatical or credulous weakness. We were not disappointed. He has given us a simple and powerful appeal to the common sense upon the whole subject. In language terse, direct, and perspicuous, and with such bravery as belongs to the consciousness of a championship for truth, he displays every branch of his law, with its antagonism, and leads his readers captive to an assenting conclusion. Dr. Marcy's work is the first by an American on the Homoeopathic Theory and Practice of Medicine; it is at least a very able and attractive piece of philosophical speculation; and to those who are still disposed to think with little respect of the Hahnemannic peculiarities, we specially commend, before they venture another jest upon the subject, or endure any more needless nausea and torture, or sacrifice another constitution or life upon the altar of prejudice, the reading of his capital chapters on Allopathy, Homoeopathy, and the Attenuation of Drugs and Repetition of Doses. The London _Leader_ demands attention to the scholarship of the homoeopathic physicians, to their respectability as thinkers and as men, and to the character of their writings; and surveying the extraordinary and steady advances of the homoeopathic sect, urges that every thing, which has at any time won for itself a broad footing in the world, must have been possessed by some spirit of truth. Every thoughtful person knows that no system stands fast in virtue of the errors about it. It is the amount of truth it contains, however little and overlaid that may be, which enables an institution or a doctrine to keep its ground. The extent and quality of that ground, taken together with the length of time it is kept, constitute a measure of the quantity of truth by which a militant institute is inspired and sustained. _Ladies' Fashions for the Season._ [Illustration] In Paris and London the chief novelties have been preparations for the London season. Head-dress is particularly rich, by no means lacking lively colors, and ornamented with gold, silver, and beads. We only speak here of fancy head-dress; for diamonds are always very much admired for a rare and _recherchée parure_. Never have they been so well set as at the present day, both as regards elegance, lightness, and convenience. Thus, each night a lady may change the disposition of her brilliants: to-day she may form them into a band, like a diadem; to-morrow, a row of pins for the body of her dress; another time she can place them on a velvet necklace, and so forth. Fancy head-dresses are made of lace, blond, silk, gold, or silver. Flowers of all kinds are also worn, and above all foliage of velvet and satin, deep shaded, enriched with white or gold beads, and gold or silver fruit. We have also seen a _coiffure_ of gold blond, forming a small point at the top of the head, and ornamented on each side with a branch of green foliage and golden fruit in little flexible bunches. Ball dresses have nearly all two skirts, which are ornamented with a profusion of flounces, trimmed with ribbons or flowers, which follow the shade of the first or upper skirt; or they are used to raise it at the sides, or on one side only. We have also seen a dress of white net with two skirts, the first (the under) trimmed with two net flounces at the extremity with two gathers through the middle, and satin ribbon. On each of these flounces was a trimming of Brussels application lace, with a gather of ribbon at the top, of the same width as those of the extremity. The second skirt was trimmed at the bottom with two gathers of ribbon, and one lace flounce with a ribbon gathering at the top; the body was an intermixture of gathered ribbons and lace flounces. Capotes will be more in vogue than bonnets, their style allowing spangling, for which bonnets are not suited. We have seen capotes of taffeta, and ribbon applied like flounces as ornaments to the crown; these ribbons are cut into teeth or plain, but with a narrow border of much brighter shade. We have also seen very pretty capotes covered with net, made of very lively colored taffeta. The tops of all these bonnets are widened more than they are high; however, they are drawn near the bottom, and are quite closed. Dresses, it is certain, will be open in front and heart-shaped to the bottom of the waist. Low square-fronted chemisettes suit this kind of bodice, with breast-plates of embroidery and lace. At concerts, many dresses are seen either with flounces or apron-shaped fronts; that is to say, the front breadth has a much richer pattern, and different from the other breadths of the skirt. This pattern is generally an immense bouquet, whose branches entwine to the top, diminishing in size; or there are two large columns of stripes, which form undulating wreaths. Dresses of white or other ground of taffeta warped will be the fashion this spring for walking; however, we must wait for Longchamps, at the latter end of April, to decide the question. In the illustration on the following page is a lace cap, trimmed with flowers without foliage; African velvet dress; body with Spanish basks or skirts cut out into teeth, trimmed with a small white lace, having at the top a small gathering of ribbon; the body trimmed with lace facing, edged with a gathering of ribbon; black velvet ribbon round the neck, fastened with a diamond buckle; bracelets the same. Bonnet of pink taffeta, very plain; and plain dress of Valencias, with festooned teeth. Small felt bonnet, with bunch of ribbons; Nacaret velvet dress; trowsers of cambric muslin, with embroideries; gaiters of black cloth, and mousquetaire pardessus, trimmed with gimp or lace, put on flat. [Illustration] Mantelets will certainly enjoy more than their usual vogue this season, and from what we have seen of the new forms, we must own they are very superior to any that have before appeared; the novelty of the forms, and the taste displayed in the garnitures even of those intended for common use, show that the progress of _la mode_ is quite as great as any other sort of progress in this most progressing age. First, then, for the mantelets in plain walking dress; they are for the most part composed of black taffeta; several are embroidered in sentache, and bordered with deep flounces of taffeta; others are trimmed with fringe of a new and very light kind, and a number, perhaps indeed the majority, are finished with lace. The materials for robes, in plain morning neglige, are silks of a quiet kind, and some slight woollen materials, as coutil de laine, balzerine, striped Valencias; some in very small, others in large stripes; corded muslins, and jaconet muslins, flowered in a variety of patterns. We cannot yet say any thing positively respecting plain white muslins for morning dress, but we have reason to believe they will not be much adopted. Taffeta has resumed all its vogue for robes; it is adopted both for public promenade, half dress, and evening robes. Some of the most elegant mantelets are of white taffeta. 
29246	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections.) THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE Of Literature, Art, and Science. Vol. III. NEW-YORK, MAY 1, 1851. No. II. GEORGE WILKINS KENDALL. [Illustration] We have here a capital portrait of the editor in chief of the New Orleans _Picayune_, GEORGE W. KENDALL, who, as an editor, author, traveller, or _bon garçon_, is world-famous, and every where entitled to be chairman in assemblies of these several necessary classes of people. Take him for all in all, he may be described as a new Chevalier Bayard, baptized in the spirit of fun, and with a steel pen in lieu of a blade of Damascus. He is a Vermonter--of the state which has sent out Orestes Brownson, Herman Hooker, the Coltons, Hiram Powers, Hannah Gould, and a crowd of other men and women with the sharpest intellects, and for the most part the genialist tempers too, that can be found in all the country. His boyhood was passed in the delightful village of Burlington, from which, when he was of age, he came to New-York, and here he lived until about the year 1835, when he went to New Orleans, where his subsequent career may be found traced in the most witty and brilliant and altogether successful journal ever published in the southern or western states. Partly for the love of adventure and partly for advantage to his health, in the spring of 1841 Mr. Kendall determined to make an excursion into the great south-western prairies, and the contemplated trading expedition to Santa-Fe offering escort and agreeable companions, he procured passports from the Mexican vice-consul at New-Orleans, and joined it, at Austin. The history of this expedition has become an important portion of the history of the nation, and its details, embracing an account of his own captivity and sufferings in Mexico, were written by Mr. Kendall in one of the most spirited and graphic books of military and wilderness adventure, vicissitude, and endurance, that has been furnished in our times. The work was published in two volumes, by the Harpers, in 1844. It has since passed through many editions, and for the fidelity and felicity, the bravery and _bon hommie_, that mark all its pages, it is likely to be one of the choicest chronicles that will be quoted from our own in the new centuries. After the publication of his narrative of the Santa Fe Expedition, Mr. Kendall resumed his more immediate services in the _Picayane_--always, it may be said without injustice to his associates, most attractive under his personal supervision; and in the angry and war-tending controversies with Mexico which filled the public mind in the succeeding years, he was one of the calmest as well as wisest of our journalists. When at length the conflict came on, he attended the victorious Taylor as a member of his staff along the mountains and valleys which that great commander marked with the names of immortal victories, and had more than satisfaction for all griefs of his own in seeing the flag of his country planted in every scene in which his country had been insulted in his own person. Upon the conclusion of the war, Mr. Kendall commenced the preparation of the magnificent work which has lately been published in this city by the Appletons, under the title of _The War between the United States and Mexico, by George W. Kendall, illustrated by pictorial drawings by Carl Nebel_. Mr. Nebel may be regarded as one of the best battle-painters living. He accompanied Mr. Kendall during the war, and made his sketches while on the several fields where he had witnessed the movements of the contending armies; and in all the accessories of scenery, costume, and general effect, he has unquestionably been as successful as the actors in the drama admit him to have been in giving a vivid and just impression of the distinguishing characteristics of each conflict. The subjects of the plates are the Bombardment of Vera Cruz, the Battle of Cerro Gordo, the Storming of Chepultepec, the Assault on Contreras, the Battle of Cherubusco, the Attack on Molino del Rey, General Scott's Entrance into Mexico, the Battle of Buena Vista, the Battle of Palo Alto, and the Capture of Monterey. In some cases, there are two representations of the same scene, taken from different points of view. These have all been reproduced in colored lithography by the best artists of Paris. The literary part of the work, comprising very careful and particular accounts of these events, is excellently written--so compactly and perspicuously, with so thorough a knowledge and so pure a taste, as to be deserving of applause among models in military history. Mr. Kendall passed about two years in Europe for the purpose of superintending its publication, and its success must have amply satisfied the most sanguine anticipations with which he entered upon its composition. New England is largely represented among the leading editors of the South and West, and it is a little remarkable that the two papers most conspicuous as representatives of the idiosyncrasies which most obtain in their respective states--the _Picayune_ and George D. Prentice's _Louisville Journal_--are conducted by men from sections most antagonistical in interest and feeling, men who have carried with them to their new homes and who still cherish there all the reciprocated affections by which they were connected with the North. When George W. Kendall leaves New Orleans for his summer wandering in our more comfortable and safe latitudes, an ovation of editors awaits him at every town along the Mississippi, and, crossing the mountains, he is the most popular member of the craft in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New-York, or Boston--an evidence that the strifes of party may exist without any personal ill-feeling, if the editor never forgets in his own person to sustain the character of a gentleman. WASHINGTON. It is a truth, illustrated in daily experience, and yet rarely noted or acted upon, that, in all that concerns the appreciation of personal character or ability, the instinctive impressions of a community are quicker in their action, more profoundly appreciant, and more reliable, than the intellectual perceptions of the ablest men in the community. Upon all those subjects that are of moral apprehension, society seems to possess an intelligence of its own, infinitely sensitive in its delicacy, and almost conclusive in the certainty of its determinations; indirect, and unconscious in its operation, yet unshunnable in sagacity, and as strong and confident as nature itself. The highest and finest qualities of human judgment seem to be in commission among the nation, or the race. It is by such a process, that whenever a true hero appears among mankind, the recognition of his character, by the general sense of humanity, is instant and certain: the belief of the chief priests and rulers of mind follows later, or comes not at all. The perceptions of a public are as subtly-sighted as its passions are blind. It sees, and feels, and knows the excellence, which it can neither understand, nor explain, nor vindicate. These involuntary opinions of people at large explain themselves, and are vindicated by events, and form at last the constants of human understanding. A character of the first order of greatness, such as seems to pass out of the limits and courses of ordinary life, often lies above the ken of intellectual judgment; but its merits and its infirmities never escape the sleepless perspicacity of the common sentiment, which no novelty of form can surprise, and no mixture of qualities can perplex. The mind--the logical faculty--comprehends a subject, when it can trace in it the same elements, or relations, which it is familiar with elsewhere; if it finds but a faint analogy of form or substance, its decision is embarrassed. But this other instinct seems to become subtler, and more rapid, and more absolute in conviction, at the line where reason begins to falter. Take the case of Shakspeare. His surpassing greatness was never acknowledged by the learned, until the nation had ascertained and settled it as a foregone and questionless conclusion. Even now, to the most sagacious mind of this time, the real ground and evidence of its own assurance of Shakspeare's supremacy, is the universal, deep, immovable conviction of it in the public feeling. There have been many acute essays upon his minor characteristics; but intellectual criticism has never grappled with Shaksperian ART in its entireness and grandeur, and probably it never will. We know not now wherein his greatness consists. We cannot demonstrate it. There is less indistinctness in the merit of less eminent authors. Those things which are not doubts to our consciousness, are yet mysteries to our mind. And if this is true of literary art, which is so much within the sphere of reflection, it may be expected to find more striking illustration in great practical and public moral characters. [Illustration: THE NATIONAL MONUMENT AT WASHINGTON.] These considerations occur naturally to the mind in contemplating the fame of Washington. An attentive examination of the whole subject, and of all that can contribute to the formation of a sound opinion, results in the belief that General Washington's _mental_ abilities illustrate the very highest type of greatness. His _mind_, probably, was one of the very greatest that was ever given to mortality. Yet it is impossible to establish that position by a direct analysis of his character, or conduct, or productions. When we look at the incidents or the results of that great career--when we contemplate the qualities by which it is marked, from its beginning to its end--the foresight which never was surprised, the judgment which nothing could deceive, the wisdom whose resources were incapable of exhaustion--combined with a spirit as resolute in its official duties as it was moderate in its private pretensions, as indomitable in its public temper as it was gentle in its personal tone--we are left in wonder and reverence. But when we would enter into the recesses of that mind--when we would discriminate upon its construction, and reason upon its operations--when we would tell how it was composed, and why it excelled--we are entirely at fault. The processes of Washington's understanding are entirely hidden from us. What came from it, in counsel or in action, was the life and glory of his country; what went on within it, is shrouded in impenetrable concealment. Such elevation in degree of wisdom, amounts almost to a change of kind, in nature, and detaches his intelligence from the sympathy of ours. We cannot see him as he was, because we are not like him. The tones of the mighty bell were heard with the certainty of Time itself, and with a force that vibrates still upon the air of life, and will vibrate for ever. But the clock-work, by which they were regulated and given forth, we can neither see nor understand. In fact, his intellectual abilities did not exist in an analytical and separated form; but in a combined and concrete state. They "moved altogether when they moved at all." They were in no degree speculative, but only practical. They could not act at all in the region of imagination, but only upon the field of reality. The sympathies of his intelligence dwelt exclusively in the national being and action. Its interests and energies were absorbed in them. He was nothing out of that sphere, because he was every thing there. The extent to which he was identified with the country is unexampled in the relations of individual men to the community. During the whole period of his life he was the thinking part of the nation. He was its mind; it was his image and illustration. If we would classify and measure him, it must be with nations and not with individuals. This extraordinary nature of Washington's capacities--this impossibility of analyzing and understanding the elements and methods of his wisdom--have led some persons to doubt whether, intellectually, he was of great superiority; but the public--the community--never doubted of the transcendent eminence of Washington's abilities. From the first moment of his appearance as the chief, the recognition of him, from one end of the country to the other, as THE MAN--the leader, the counsellor, the infallible in suggestion and in conduct--was immediate and universal. From that moment to the close of the scene, the national confidence in his capacity was as spontaneous, as enthusiastic, as immovable, as it was in his integrity. Particular persons, affected by the untoward course of events, sometimes questioned his sufficiency; but the nation never questioned it, nor would allow it to be questioned. Neither misfortune, nor disappointment, nor accidents, nor delay, nor the protracted gloom of years, could avail to disturb the public trust in him. It was apart from circumstances; it was beside the action of caprice; it was beyond all visionary, and above all changeable feelings. It was founded on nothing extraneous; not upon what he had said or done, but upon what he was. They saw something in the man, which gave them assurance of a nature and destiny of the highest elevation--something inexplicable, but which inspired a complete satisfaction. We feel that this reliance was wise and right; but why it was felt, or why it was right, we are as much to seek as those who came under the direct impression of his personal presence. It is not surprising, that the world, recognizing in this man a nature and a greatness which philosophy cannot explain, should revere him almost to religion. The distance and magnitude of those objects which are too far above us to be estimated directly--such as stars--are determined by their parallax. By some process of that kind we may form an approximate notion of Washington's greatness. We may measure him against the great events in which he moved; and against the great men, among whom, and above whom, his figure stood like a tower. It is agreed that the war of American Independence is one of the most exalted, and honorable, and difficult achievements related in history. Its force was contributed by many; but its grandeur was derived from Washington. His character and wisdom gave unity, and dignity, and effect to the irregular, and often divergent enthusiasm of others. His energy combined the parts; his intelligence guided the whole: his perseverance, and fortitude, and resolution, were the inspiration and support of all. In looking back over that period, his presence seems to fill the whole scene; his influence predominates throughout; his character is reflected from every thing. Perhaps nothing less than his immense weight of mind could have kept the national system, at home, in that position which it held, immovably, for seven years; perhaps nothing but the august respectability which his demeanor threw around the American cause abroad, would have induced a foreign nation to enter into an equal alliance with us, upon terms that contributed in a most important degree to our final success, or would have caused Great Britain to feel that no great indignity was suffered in admitting the claim to national existence of a people who had such a representative as Washington. What but the most eminent qualities of mind and feeling--discretion superhuman--readiness of invention, and dexterity of means, equal to the most desperate affairs--endurance, self-control, regulated ardor, restrained passion, caution mingled with boldness, and all the contrarieties of moral excellence--could have expanded the life of an individual into a career such as this? If we compare him with the great men who were his contemporaries throughout the nation; in an age of extraordinary personages, Washington was unquestionably the first man of the time in ability. Review the correspondence of General Washington--that sublime monument of intelligence and integrity--scrutinize the public history and the public men of that era, and you will find that in all the wisdom that was accomplished was attempted, Washington was before every man in his suggestions of the plan, and beyond every one in the extent to which he contributed to its adoption. In the field, all the able generals acknowledged his superiority, and looked up to him with loyalty, reliance, and reverence; the others, who doubted his ability, or conspired against his sovereignty, illustrated, in their own conduct, their incapacity to be either his judges or his rivals. In the state, Adams, Jay, Rutledge, Pinckney, Morris--these are great names; but there is not one whose wisdom does not vail to his. His superiority was felt by all these persons, and was felt by Washington himself, as a simple matter of fact, as little a subject of question, or a cause of vanity, as the eminence of his personal stature. His appointment as commander-in-chief, was the result of no design on his part, and of no efforts on the part of his friends; it seemed to take place spontaneously. He moved into the position, because there was a vacuum which no other could supply: in it, he was not sustained by government, by a party, nor by connections; he sustained himself, and then he sustained every thing else. He sustained Congress against the army, and the army against the injustice of Congress. The brightest mind among his contemporaries was Hamilton's; a character which cannot be contemplated without frequent admiration, and constant affection. His talents took the form of genius, which Washington's did not. But active, various, and brilliant, as the faculties of Hamilton were, whether viewed in the precocity of youth, or in the all-accomplished elegance of maturer life--lightning quick as his intelligence was to see through every subject that came before it, and vigorous as it was in constructing the argumentation by which other minds were to be led, as upon a shapely bridge, over the obscure depths across which his had flashed in a moment--fertile and sound in schemes, ready in action, splendid in display, as he was--nothing is more obvious and certain than that when Mr. Hamilton approached Washington, he came into the presence of one who surpassed him in the extent, in the comprehension, the elevation, the sagacity, the force, and the ponderousness of his mind, as much as he did in the majesty of his aspect, and the grandeur of his step. The genius of Hamilton was a flower, which gratifies, surprises, and enchants; the intelligence of Washington was a stately tree, which in the rarity and true dignity of its beauty is as superior, as it is in its dimensions. [Illustration: THE GRAVE OF WASHINGTON.] WILLIAM HOGARTH. The great comedian in pictorial art forms one of the subjects of Mrs. Hall's sketches, in the _Pilgrimages to English Shrines_, and we think her article upon visiting his tomb as interesting as any in this popular series: Hogarth, the great painter-teacher of his age and country, was born in the parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, in London, on the 10th of November, 1697, and his trusty and sympathizing biographer, Allan Cunningham, says, "we have the authority of his own manuscripts for believing he was baptized on the 28th of the same month;" but the parish registers have been examined for confirmation with "fruitless solicitude." Cunningham gives December as the month of his birth; this is a mistake; so also is his notice of the painter's introduction of the Virago into his picture of the "Modern Midnight Conversation." No female figure appears in this subject. It is in the third plate of the "Rake's Progress" the woman alluded to is introduced. A small critic might here find a fit subject for vituperation, and loudly condemn Cunningham as a writer who was too idle to examine the works he was describing; pouncing on his minute errors, and forgetting the totality of his generous labors. Much of this spirit infests literature; and merges the kindly exposition of error into the bitterness of personal attack. The fallibility of human nature should teach us charity, and our own faults lead us to "more gently scan our brother man,"--a thing too often unthought of by those who are nothing if not critical, and as frequently nothing when they are. The painter was descended from a Westmoreland family. Sprung from an industrious race of self-helping yeomen, whose hardy toil brought them health and contentment, Hogarth had an early advantage, derived from his father's love of letters, which eventually drew him away from field and wood to the great London mart. Like thousands of others, he was unsuccessful. Fortunately, in this instance, his want of success in literature stimulated the strong mind of his son to seek occupation of more certain profit; and those who feel interest in the whereabouts of celebrated men, may think upon the days when William Hogarth wrought in silver, as the apprentice of Ellis Gamble, in Cranbourne Street, and speculate upon the change of circumstances, wrought by his own exertions, when, as a great painter, in after time, he occupied the house, now known as the Sabloniere Hotel, in Leicester Square. Hogarth's character of mind, evidenced in his works and proved by his biography, is so perfectly honest, open, home-bred English, that we claim him with pride--as belonging exclusively to England. His originality is of English growth; his satire broad, bold, fair-play English. He was no screened assassin of character, either with pen or pencil; no journalist's hack to stab in secret--concealing his name, or assuming a forged one; no masked caricaturist, responsible to none. His philosophy was of the straightforward, clear-sighted English school; his theories--stern, simple, and unadorned--thoroughly English; his determination--proved in his love as well as in his hate--quite English; there is a firmness of purpose, a rough dignity, a John-Bull look in his broad intelligent face; the very fur round his cap must have been plain English rabbit-skin! No matter what "schools" were in fashion, Hogarth created and followed his own; no matter what was done, or said, or written, Hogarth maintained his opinion unflinchingly; he was not to be moved or removed from his resolve. His mind was vigorous and inflexible, and withal, keen and acute; and though the delicacy of his taste in this more refined age may be matter of question, there can be no doubt as to his integrity and uprightness of purpose--in his determination to denounce vice, and by that means cherish virtue. Professor Leslie, in his eloquent and valuable Lectures on Painting, delivered in the spring of the present year to the students of the Royal Academy, has nobly vindicated Hogarth as an artist and a man, in words that all who heard will long remember. "Hogarth," he said, "it is true, is often gross; but it must be remembered that he painted in a less fastidious age than ours, and that his great object was to expose vice. _Debauchery is always made by him detestable, never attractive._" Charles Lamb, one of the best of his commentators, who has viewed his labors in a kindred spirit, speaking of one of his most elaborate and varied works, the "Election Entertainment," asks, "What is the result left on the mind? Is it an impression of the vileness and worthlessness of our species? Or is not the general feeling which remains after the individual faces have ceased to act sensibly on the mind, _a kindly one in favor of the species_?" Leslie speaks of his "high species of humor, pregnant with moral meanings," and no happier choice of phrase could characterize his many works. Lamb, with true discrimination, says: "All laughter is not of a dangerous or soul-hardening tendency. There is the petrifying sneer of a demon, which excludes and kills love, and there is the cordial laughter of a man, which implies and cherishes it." Hogarth's works are before us all; and are lessons as much for to-day as they were for yesterday. We have no intention of scrutinizing their merits or defects; we write only of the influence of a class of art such as he brought courageously before the English public. Every one is acquainted with the "Rake's Progress," and can recall subject after subject, story after story, which he illustrated. Comparatively few can judge of him as a painter, but all can comprehend his moral essays--brave as true! His fearlessness and earnestness are above all price; independent, in their high estate, of all praise. We would send "Marriage à la Mode" into general circulation during the London season, where the market for wives and husbands is presided over by interest rather than affection. The matrimonial mart was as bravely exposed by the great satirist, as the brutal and unmanly cock-fight, which at that period was permitted to take place at the Cock-pit _Royal_, on the south side of St. James's Park. Society always needs such men as William Hogarth--true, stern men--to grapple with and overthrow the vices which spring up--the very weeds both of poverty and luxury,--the latter filled with the more bitter and subtle poison. Calling to mind the period, we the more honor the great artist's resolution; if the delicacy of our improved times is offended by what may seem deformity upon his canvas, we must remember that we do not shrink from _Hogarth's_ coarseness, but from the coarseness he labored, by exposing, to expel. He painted what Smollett, and Fielding, and Richardson wrote far more offensively; but he surpassed the novelists both in truth and in intention. He painted without sympathizing with his subjects, whom he lashed with unsparing bitterness or humor. He never idealized a vice into a virtue--he never compromised a fact, much less a principle. He has, indeed, written fearful sermons on his canvas; sermons which, however exaggerated they may seem to us in some of their painful details of human sin and human misery, are yet so real, that we never doubt that such things _were_, and _are_. No one can suspect Hogarth to have been tainted by the vices he exposed. In this he has the advantage of the novelists of his period: he gives vice no loophole of escape: it is there in its hideous aspect, each step distinctly marked, each character telling its own tale of warning, so that "he who runs may read." Whoever desires to trace the life of this English artist--to note him in his apprenticeship--when he tamed as well as his rough nature would permit, his hand to the delicate graving so cherished by his master, Ellis Gamble; and when freed from his apprenticeship, he sought art through the stirring scenes of life, saying quaintly enough, that "copying other men's works resembled pouring wine out of one vessel into another; there was no increase of quantity, and the flavor of the vintage was liable to evaporate;"--whoever would study the great, as well as the small, peculiarities of the painter who converted his thumb-nail into a palette, and while transcribing characters and events both rapidly and faithfully, complained of his "constitutional idleness:"--whenever, we say, our readers feel desirous of revelling in the biography of so diligent, so observing, so faithful, so brave a spirit, we should send them to our old friend Allan Cunningham's most interesting history of the man. Honest Allan had much in common with our great national artist: though of different countries, they sprung from the same race--sturdy yeomen; they were alike lovers of independence, fighting for the best part of life manfully and faithfully enjoying the noble scorn of wrong, and battling for the right from the cradle to the grave. Self-educated--that is to say, educated by Nature, which gave and nourished his high intellect and independent soul--Allan could comprehend and appreciate the manly bearing and stern self-reliance of the painter, whose best resources were in himself; thus the biography of Hogarth is among the finest examples of its class which our language supplies. Allan's sympathies were with his subject; and his knowledge also came to his aid: for the poet was thoroughly imbued with a love of art. Allan Cunningham was a better disciplinarian, and less prone to look for or care for enjoyment, than Hogarth; though we have many pleasant memories how he truly relished both music and conversation. But there was more sentiment in the Scottish poet than in the English painter; and the deep dark eyes of the Scot had more of fervor and less of sarcasm in their brightness. We repeat, Allan, of all writers, could thoroughly appreciate Hogarth; and his biography is written _con amore_. He says that "all who love the dramatic representations of actual life,--all who have hearts to be gladdened by humor,--all who are pleased with judicious and well-directed satire,--all who are charmed with the ludicrous looks of popular folly, and all who can be moved with the pathos of human suffering, are admirers of Hogarth." But to our thinking; Hogarth had a calling even more elevated than the Scottish poet has given him in this eloquent summing-up of his attributes; "he is one of our greatest teachers--a TEACHER to whom is due the _highest_ possible honor; and the more we feel the importance of the teacher, the more we value those who teach well. In grappling with folly and in combating with crimes, he was compelled to reveal the nature of that he proposed to satirize; he was obliged to set up sin in its high place before he could crown it with infamy." The times were full of internal as well as foreign disturbance, and Hogarth's studio was no hermitage to exclude passing events or their promoters. He lived with the living, moving _present_,--his engravings being his pleasures; portraits, as they are now to many a high-hearted man of talent, his means of subsistence; heavy weights of mortality that fetter and clog the ascending spirit. His controversies and encounters with the worthless Wilkes,--his defence of his own theories,--his determined dislike to the establishment of a Royal Academy--his various other controversies--rendered his exciting course very different from that of the lonely artists of the present day, who are but too fond of living in closed studios, "pouring," as Hogarth would have said,--"pouring wine from one vessel into another,"--pondering over tales and poems for inspiration, and transcribing the worn-out models of many seasons into attitudes of bounding and varied life! Is it not wonderful, as sad, that the artist will not feel his power, will not take his own place, assume his high standing as of old, and demand the duty of respect from the world by the just exercise of his glorious privilege! "Entertainment and information are not all the mind requires at the hand of an artist; we wish to be elevated by contemplating what is noble,--to be warmed, by the presence of the heroic,--and charmed and made happy by the light of purity and loveliness. We desire to share in the lofty movements of fine minds--to have communion with their image of what is godlike, and to take a part in the rapture of their love, and in the ecstasies of all their musings. This is the chief end of high poetry, of high painting, and high sculpture; and the man misunderstands the true spirit of those arts who seeks to deprive them of a portion of their divinity, and argues that entertainment and information constitute their highest aim." We have quoted this passage because it expresses our notions of the power of art more happily than we are able to express it; but we must add that the _teaching_ as well as the _poetic_ painter has much to complain of from society; it is impossible to mingle among the "higher classes" without being struck by their indifference to every phase of British art,--except portraiture. "Have you been to the Exhibition? Are there many nice miniatures? are the portraits good? Lady D.'s lace is perfect; Mrs. A.'s velvet is inimitable." Such observations strike the ear with painful discord, when the mind is filled with memories of those who are brave or independent enough to "look forward" with creative genius. There are many noble exceptions among our aristocracy; but with far too great a number art is a mere fashion. [Illustration: HOGARTH'S HOUSE.] As a people, neither our eyes nor our ears are yet opened to its instructive and elevating faculty. We mistake the outlay of money for an expenditure of sympathy. Hogarth's portraits were almost too faithful to please his sitters: he was too truthful to flatter, even on canvas; and the wonder is that he achieved any popularity in this fantastic branch of his art. Allan Cunningham has said of him, that he regarded neither the historian's page, nor the poet's song. He was contented with the occurrences of the passing day, with the folly or the sin of the hour; yet to the garb and fashion of the moment, he adds story and sentiment for all time. It is quite delicious to read the excuses Allan makes for the foibles of the man whose virtues had touched his own generous heart; he confesses with great _naiveté_ that he looked coldly--"too coldly, perhaps"--on foreign art, and perhaps too fondly on his own productions; and then adds that, "where vanity soonest misleads the judgment he thought wisely; he contemplated his own works, not as things excellent in themselves, but as the rudiments of future excellence, and looked forward with the hope that some happier Hogarth would raise, on the foundation he had laid, a perfect and lasting superstructure." We must humbly differ from the poet in this matter; we believe, if the characteristic cap were removed from that sturdy brow, we should find an admirable development of the organ of self-esteem. He thought as little of a future and "happier Hogarth," as he did of the old masters. He was Monarch of the Present--and he knew it! The age we live in talks much about renovation, but it is not a conservative age; on the contrary, it would pull down Temple Bar, if it dared, to widen the passage from the Strand into Fleet Street; and it demolishes houses, shrines of _noble memories_, with a total absence of respect for what it ought to honor. We never hear of an old house without a feeling that it is either going to be destroyed or modernized; and this inevitably leads to a desire to visit it immediately. Having determined on a drive to Chiswick to make acquaintance with the dwelling of Hogarth, and look upon his tomb--we became restless until it was accomplished. We had seen, by the courtesy of Mr. Allison, the piano-forte manufacturer in Dean Street, the residence of Sir James Thornhill, whose daughter Hogarth married: the proprietor bestows most praiseworthy care on the house, which was formerly one of considerable extent and importance. Mr. Allison says there can be little doubt that the grounds extended into Wardour Street. Once, while removing a chimney-piece in the drawing-room, a number of cards tumbled out--slips of playing-cards, with the names of some of the most distinguished persons of Hogarth's time written on the backs; the residences were also given, proving that the "gentry" then dwelt where now the poorer classes congregate. But the most interesting part of the house is the staircase, with its painted ceiling; the wall of the former is divided into three compartments, each representing a sort of ball-room back-ground, with groups of figures life-size, looking down from a balcony; they are well preserved, and one of the ladies is thought to be a very faithful portrait of Mrs. Hogarth. Hogarth must have spent some time in that house:--but we were resolved, despite the repute of its being old and ugly, to visit his dwelling-place at Chiswick; and though we made the pilgrimage by a longer _route_ than was necessary, we did not regret skirting the beautiful plantations of the Duke of Devonshire, nor enjoying the fragrance of the green meadows, which never seem so green to us, as in the vale of the Thames. The house is a tall, narrow, abrupt-looking place, close to the roadside wall of its inclosed garden; numbers of cottage dwellings for the poor have sprung up around it, but in Hogarth's day it must have been very isolated: not leading to the water, as we had imagined, but having a dull and prison-like aspect; if, indeed, any place can have that aspect where trees grow, and grass is checkered by their ever-varying shadows. The house was occupied from 1814 to 1832 by Cary, the translator of Dante; and it would be worth a pilgrimage if considered only as the residence of this truly-excellent and highly-gifted clergyman. [Illustration: ROOM IN HOGARTH'S HOUSE.] We have received from his son an interesting note relative to its features at the period when it came into his father's possession. "The house," he says, "stands in one corner of a high-walled garden of about three quarters of an acre, that part of the garden which faced the house was divided into long, narrow, formal flower-beds. Five large trees, whose ages bespoke their acquaintance with Hogarth, showed his love of the beautiful as well as the useful, a mulberry, walnut, apricot, double-blossomed cherry, and a hawthorn: the last of these was a great favorite with my father, from its beauty, and the attraction it was to the nightingale, which never failed to visit it in the spring: the gardeners were their mortal enemies, and alas, have at length prevailed. A few years ago, when I went to visit the old place, only one of the trees remained, (the mulberry seen in our sketch); in a nook at one side of the garden was a nut-walk, with a high wall and a row of filbert-trees that arched triumphantly over it; at one end of this walk was a stone slab, on which Hogarth used to play at nine-pins; at the other end were the two little tombstones to the memory of a bird and a dog." The house is as you see it here, the rooms with low ceilings and all sorts of odd shapes,--up and down, in and out,--yet withal pleasant and comfortable, and rendered more so by the gentle courtesy of their mistress and her kindly servant; the very dogs seemed to partake of the human nature of their protector, and attended us wherever we went, with more than ordinary civility. Hogarth might have been tempted to immortalize one of them for its extreme ugliness, and the waggish spirit with which it pulled at its companion's ears, who in vain attempted to tug at the bits of stumps that stuck out at either side of its tormentor's head. Mr. Fairholt was permitted to sketch the drawing room; the open door leads to the chamber from whence, it is said, Miss Thornhill eloped with Hogarth. Mr. Cary, in the note to which we have already alluded, says, "there can hardly be a doubt that the house belonged to Sir James Thornhill, and that Hogarth inherited it from him. Mrs. Hogarth lived there after her husband's death, and left it by will to a lady from whose executor my father bought it in the year 1814. The room from which Miss Thornhill is said to have eloped is the inner room, on the first floor; this room was used by my father as his study. Over the dining-room fireplace was a spirited pencil sketch of five heads, and under them written 'five jolly fellows,' by Hogarth--during an absence the servants of a tenant carefully washed all out." We can easily imagine how the union between Hogarth and his daughter, commenced after such a fashion, outraged not only the courtliness, but the higher and better feelings of Sir James Thornhill. Hogarth's innate consciousness of power may at that time have appeared to him vulgar effrontery; and it is not to be wondered at, that, until convinced of his talent, he refused him all assistance. There is something so false and wrong in the concealment that precedes an elopement, and the elopement of an only child from an aged father, that we marvel how any one can treat lightly the outraged feelings of a confiding parent. Earnest tender love so deeply rooted in a father's heart may pardon, but cannot reach forgetfulness as quickly as it is the custom of play-writers and novelists to tell us it may do. Sir James Thornhill was greatly the fashion; he was the successor of Verrio, and the rival of La Guerre, in the decorations of our palaces and public buildings. His demands for the painting of Greenwich Hall were contested; and though La Fosse received two thousand pounds for his works at Montague House, besides other allowances, Sir James, despite his dignity as Member of Parliament for his native town of Weymouth, could obtain but forty shillings a square yard for painting the cupola of St. Paul's! Thus the patronage afforded "native talent" kept him poor; and though it must have been necessary (one of the cruel necessities induced by love of display in England), to have an establishment suited to his public position in London, nothing could be more unpretending than his _ménage_ at Chiswick. Mrs. Hogarth, advised by her mother, skilfully managed to let her father see one of her husband's best productions under advantageous circumstances. Sir James acknowledged its merit at once, exclaiming, "Very well! very well! The man who can make works like this can maintain a wife without a portion;" and soon after became not only reconciled, but generous to the young people. Hogarth had tasted the bitterness of labor; he had even worked for booksellers, and painted portraits!--so that this summer brightness must have been full of enjoyment. He appreciated it thoroughly, and was ever the earnest admirer and the ready defender of Sir James Thornhill; thus the old knight secured a friend in his son; and it was pleasanter to think of the hours of reconciliation and happiness they might have passed within the walls of that inclosed garden, beneath the crumbling trellice, or the shadow of the old mulberry tree, than of the fortuneless artist wooing the confiding daughter from her home and her filial duties. [Illustration: HOGARTH'S PAINTING-ROOM.] We were invited to inspect Hogarth's painting-room--a mere loft, of most limited dimensions, over the stable, which the imagination could easily furnish with the necessary easel, or still less cumbrous graver's implements. It is situated at the furthest part of the garden from the house; a small door in the garden-wall leads into a little inclosure, one side of which is occupied by the stable. The painting-room is over the stable, and is reached by a stair; it has but one window which looks towards the road. It must have been sufficiently commodious for Hogarth's purposes; but possesses not the conveniences of modern painting-rooms. The house at Chiswick could only have been a place for recreation and repose, where relaxation was cared for, and where sketches were prepared to ripen into publication. There are traditions about Chiswick of Hogarth having, while studying and taking notes, frequented a little inn by the roadside, and almost within sight of his dwelling. It has been modernized throughout--and supplies no subject for the pencil--yet it retains some indications, not without interest, of a remote date. The Painter must have been familiar with every class of character; and Chiswick was then enough of a country village to supply him amply with material. But, although a keen satirist, it is certain that he had as much tenderness for the lower orders of creation, as a young loving girl. In a corner of this quaint old garden, two tiny monuments are affixed to the wall, one chiselled perhaps by Hogarth's own hand, to the memory of his canary bird! The _thinking_ character of the painter's mind is evidenced in this as in every thing he did--the engraving on the tomb suggesting reflection. Charles Lamb said of him truly, that the quantity of _thought_ which he crowded into every picture, would alone "_unvulgarize_" every subject he might choose; and the refined Coleridge exclaims, "Hogarth! in whom the satirist never extinguished that love of beauty which belonged to him as a poet." There is something inexpressibly tender and touching in this memento of his affection for a little singing bird: the feeling must have been entirely his own, for he had no child to suggest the tribute to a feathered favorite. The tomb was afterwards accompanied with one to Mrs. Hogarth's dog. They are narrow, upright pieces of white stone laid against the brick-wall, but they are records of gentle and generous sympathies not to be overlooked. That Hogarth was more than on friendly terms with the canine race, the introduction of his own dog into his portrait clearly tells, and doubtless his bird often brought with its music visions of the country into the heat and dust of Leicester Square--soothing away much of his impatience. Men who have to fight the up-hill battle of life, must have energy and determination; and Hogarth was too out-spoken and self-confident not to have made many enemies. In after years his success (limited though it was, in a pecuniary point of view, for he died without leaving enough to support his widow respectably), produced its ordinary results--envy and enmity: and insults were heaped upon him. He was not tardy of reply, but Wilkes and Churchill were in strong health when nature was giving way with the great painter; an advantage they did not fail to use with their accustomed malignity. The profligate Churchill, turning the poet's nature into gall, infested the death-bed of Hogarth with unfeeling sarcasm, anticipating the grave, and exulting over a dying man. [Illustration: TOMBS OF DOG AND BIRD.] Hogarth, warned by the autumn winds, and suffering from the restlessness of approaching dissolution, left Chiswick on the 25th of October, 1764, and returned to his residence in Leicester Square. He was cheerful--in full possession of his mental faculties, but lacked the vigor to exert them. The very next day, having received an agreeable letter from Doctor Franklin, he wrote a rough copy of his answer, but exhausted with the effort, retired to bed. Seized by a sudden sickness, he arose--rung the bell with alarming violence--and within two hours expired! Of all the villages in the neighborhood of London, rising from the banks of the Thames, (and how numerous and beautiful they are!) few are so well known as that of Chiswick. The horticultural fêtes are anticipated with anxiety similar to that our grandmothers felt for the fêtes of Ranelagh; the _toilettes_ of the ladies rival the flowers, and the only foe to the fascinating fair ones is the weather; but all which the crowd care about in Chiswick is confined to the "Duke's grounds" and the Society's Gardens. The Duke's beautiful little villa, erected by the last Earl of Burlington, is indeed a shrine worthy of deep homage; within its walls both Charles James Fox and George Canning breathed their last; and if, for a moment, we recall the times of Civil War, when each honest English heart fought bravely and openly for what was believed "the right," we may picture the struggle between Prince Rupert and the Earl of Essex, terminating with doubtful success, for eight hundred high born cavaliers were left dead on the plain that lies within sight of the gardens so richly perfumed by flowers, and echoing not to the searching trumpet or rolling drum, but to the gossamer music of Strauss and Jullien. The Duke of Devonshire's grounds, containing about ninety acres, are filled with mementos, pleasant to the eye and suggestive to the imagination; but we must seek and find a more solemn scene, where the churchyard of Chiswick incloses the ashes of some whose names are written upon the pages of History. Though the church is, in a degree, surrounded by houses, there is much of the repose of "a country churchyard" about it; the Thames belts it with its silver girdle, and when we visited its sanctuary, the setting sun cast a mellow light upon the windows of the church, touching a headstone or an urn, while the shadows trembled on the undulating graves. Like all church-yards it is crowded, and however reverently we bent our footsteps, it was impossible to avoid treading on the soft grass of the humble grave, or the gray stone that marks the resting-place of one of "the better order." [Illustration: HOGARTH'S TOMB.] How like the world was that silent churchyard! High and low, rich and poor, mingled together, and yet avoiding to mingle. The dust of the imperious Duchess of Cleveland found here a grave; while here too, as if to contrast the pure with the impure, repose the ashes of Mary, daughter of Oliver Cromwell; Holland the actor, the friend of David Garrick, here cast aside his "motley." Can we wonder at the actor's love of applause?--posterity knows him not; present fame alone is his--the lark's song leaves no record in the air!--Lord Macartney, the famous ambassador to China, a country of which our knowledge was then almost as dim as that we have of the moon--the ambassador rests here, while a Chinese junk is absolutely moored in the very river that murmurs beside his grave! Surely the old place is worthy of a pilgrimage. Loutherbourg, the painter, found a resting-place in its churchyard. Ralph, the historian and political writer, whose histories and politics are now as little read as the Dunciad which held them up to ridicule, is buried here; and confined as is the space, it is rich in epitaphs,--three are from the pen of David Garrick, two from that of Arthur Murphy. Hogarth's monument has been very faithfully copied by Mr. Fairholt. It is remarkable among the many plainer "stones" with which the churchyard is crowded, but is by no means distinguished for that artistic character--which it might have received as covering the remains of so great an artist. A small slab, in relief, takes from it, however, the charge of insipidity; it contains a comic mask, an oak branch, pencils and mahl-stick, a book and a scroll, and the palette, marked with the "line of beauty." It has been remarked, that "while he faithfully followed nature through all her varieties, and exposed, with inimitable skill, the infinite follies and vices of the world, he was in himself an example of many virtues." And the following poetical tribute by David Garrick is inscribed on the tomb: "Farewell! great painter of mankind, Who reached the noblest point of Art; Whose pictured morals charm the mind, And through the eye correct the heart If Genius fire thee, reader, stay; If Nature touch thee, drop a tear; If neither move thee, turn away, For Hogarth's honored dust lies here!" Dr. Johnson also composed an epitaph, which Cunningham considers "more to the purpose, but still unworthy:" "The hand of him here torpid lies, That drew the essential forms of grace; Here closed in death the attentive eyes That saw the manners in the face." The tributes--in poetry and prose--are just, examine the works of this great painter-teacher as closely and suspiciously as we may, we can discover nothing that will induce a momentary doubt of his integrity of purpose in all he did; his shafts were aimed at Vice,--in no solitary instance was he ever guilty of arraigning or assailing Virtue. Compare him with the most famous of the Dutch masters, and he rises into glory; coarseness and vulgarity in them had no point out of which could come instruction. If they picture the issues of their own minds, they must have been gross and sensual; they ransacked the muck of life, and the grovelling in character, for themes that one should see only by compulsion. But Hogarth's subjects were never without a lesson, and, inasmuch as he resorted for them to the open volume of humanity, like those of the most immortal of our writers, his works are "not for an age but for all time." [Illustration] NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. [Illustration] The author of _The House of Seven Gables_ is now about forty-five years of age. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and is of a family which for several generations has "followed the sea." Among his ancestors, I believe, was the "bold Hawthorne," who is celebrated in a revolutionary ballad as commander of the "Fair American." He was educated at Bowdoin College in Maine, where he graduated in 1825. Probably he appeared in print before that time, but his earliest volume was an anonymous and never avowed romance which was published in Boston in 1832. It attracted little attention, but among those who read it with a just appreciation of the author's genius was Mr. S. G. Goodrich, who immediately secured the shrouded star for _The Token_, of which he was editor, and through which many of Hawthorne's finest tales and essays were originally given to the public. He published in 1837 the first and in 1842 the second volume of his _Twice-Told Tales_, embracing whatever he wished to preserve from his contributions to the magazines; in 1845 he edited _The Journal of an African Cruiser_; in 1846 published _Mosses from an Old Manse_, a second collection of his magazine papers; in 1850 _The Scarlet Letter_, and in the last month the longest and in some respects the most remarkable of his works, _The House of Seven Gables_. In the introductions to the _Mosses from an Old Manse_ and _The Scarlet Letter_ we have some glimpses of his personal history. He had been several years in the Custom-House at Boston, while Mr. Bancroft was collector, and afterwards had joined that remarkable association, the "Brook Farm Community," at West Roxbury, where, with others, he appears to have been reconciled to the old ways, as quite equal to the inventions of Fourier, St. Simon, Owen, and the rest of that ingenious company of schemers who have been so intent upon a reconstruction of the foundations of society. In 1843, he went to reside in the pleasant village of Concord, in the "Old Manse," which had never been profaned by a lay occupant until he entered it as his home. In the introduction to _The Mosses_ he says: "A priest had built it; a priest had succeeded to it; other priestly men, from time to time, had dwelt in it; and children, born in its chambers, had grown up to assume the priestly character. It was awful to reflect how many sermons must have been written there. The latest inhabitant alone--he, by whose translation to Paradise the dwelling was left vacant--had penned nearly three thousand discourses, besides the better, if not the greater number, that gushed living from his lips. How often, no doubt, had he paced to and fro along the avenue, attuning his meditations, to the sighs and gentle murmurs, and deep and solemn peals of the wind, among the lofty tops of the trees! In that variety of natural utterances, he could find something accordant with every passage of his sermon, were it of tenderness or reverential fear. The boughs over my head seemed shadowy with solemn thoughts, as well as with rustling leaves. I took shame to myself for having been so long a writer of idle stories, and ventured to hope that wisdom would descend upon me with the falling leaves of the avenue; and that I should light upon an intellectual treasure, in the Old Manse, well worth those hoards of long-hidden gold, which people seek for in moss-grown houses. Profound treatises of morality--a layman's unprofessional, and therefore unprejudiced views of religion;--histories (such as Bancroft might have written, had he taken up his abode here, as he once purposed), bright with picture, gleaming over a depth of philosophic thought;--these were the works that might fitly have flowed from such a retirement. In the humblest event, I resolved at least to achieve a novel, that should evolve some deep lesson, and should possess physical substance enough to stand alone. In furtherance of my design, and as if to leave me no pretext for not fulfilling it, there was, in the rear of the house, the most delightful little nook of a study that ever offered its snug seclusion to a scholar. It was here that Emerson wrote 'Nature;' for he was then an inhabitant of the Manse, and used to watch the Assyrian dawn and the Paphian sunset and moonrise, from the summit of our eastern hill. When I first saw the room, its walls were blackened with the smoke of unnumbered years, and made still blacker by the grim prints of puritan ministers that hung around. These worthies looked strangely like bad angels, or, at least, like men who had wrestled so continually and so sternly with the devil, that somewhat of his sooty fierceness had been imparted to their own visages. They had all vanished now; a cheerful coat of paint, and gold tinted paper hangings, lighted up the small apartment; while the shadow of a willow-tree, that swept against the overhanging eaves, attempered the cheery western sunshine. In place of the grim prints there was the sweet and lovely head of one of Raphael's Madonnas, and two pleasant little pictures of the Lake of Como. The only other decorations were a purple vase of flowers, always fresh, and a bronze one containing graceful ferns. My books (few, and by no means choice; for they were chiefly such waifs as chance had thrown in my way) stood in order about the room, seldom to be disturbed." In his home at Concord, thus happily described, in the midst of a few congenial friends, Hawthorne passed three years; and, "in a spot so sheltered from the turmoil of life's ocean," he says, "three years hasten away with a noiseless flight, as the breezy sunshine chases the cloud-shadows across the depths of a still valley." But at length his repose was invaded by that "spirit of improvement," which is so constantly marring the happiness of quiet-loving people, and he was compelled to look out for another residence. "Now came hints, growing more and more distinct, that the owner of the old house was pining for his native air. Carpenters next appeared, making a tremendous racket among the outbuildings, strewing green grass with pine shavings and chips of chesnut joists, and vexing the whole antiquity of the place with their discordant renovations. Soon, moreover, they divested our abode of the veil of woodbine which had crept over a large portion of its southern face. All the aged mosses were cleared unsparingly away; and there were horrible whispers about brushing up the external walls with a coat of paint--a purpose as little to my taste as might be that of rouging the venerable cheeks of one's grandmother. But the hand that renovates is always more sacrilegious than that which destroys. In fine, we gathered up our household goods, drank a farewell cup of tea in our pleasant little breakfast-room--delicately-fragrant tea, an unpurchasable luxury, one of the many angel-gifts that had fallen like dew upon us--and passed forth between the tall stone gate-posts, as uncertain as the wandering Arabs where our tent might next be pitched. Providence took me by the hand, and--an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is no irreverence in smiling at--has led me, as the newspapers announce while I am writing, from the old Manse into a Custom House! As a story-teller, I have often contrived strange vicissitudes for my imaginary personages, but none like this. The treasure of intellectual gold which I had hoped to find in our secluded dwelling, had never come to light. No profound treatise of ethics--no philosophic history--no novel, even, that could stand unsupported on its edges--all that I had to show, as a man of letters, were these few tales and essays, which had blossomed out like flowers in the calm summer of my heart and mind." The _Mosses from an Old Manse_ he declared the last offering of their kind he should ever put forth; "unless I can do better," he wrote in this Introduction, "I have done enough in this kind." He went to his place in the Custom House, in his native city, and if President Taylor's advisers had not been apprehensive that in his devotion to ledgers he would neglect the more important duties of literature, perhaps we should have heard no more of him; but those patriotic men, remembering how much they had enjoyed the reading of the _Twice-Told Tales_ and the _Mosses_, induced the appointment in his place of a whig, who had no capacity for making books, and in the spring of last year we had _The Scarlet Letter_. Like most of his shorter stories, The Scarlet Letter finds its scene and time with the earlier Puritans. Its argument involves the analysis and action of remorse in the heart of a person who, himself unsuspected, is compelled to assist in the punishment of the partner of his guilt. This peculiar and powerful fiction at once arrested attention, and claimed for its author the eminence as a novelist which his previous performances had secured for him as a writer of tales. Its whole atmosphere and the qualities of its characters demanded for a creditable success very unusual capacities. The frivolous costume and brisk action of the story of fashionable life are easily depicted by the practised sketcher, but a work like The Scarlet Letter comes slowly upon the canvas, where passions are commingled and overlaid with the deliberate and masterly elaboration with which the grandest effects are produced in pictorial composition and coloring. It is a distinction of such works that while they are acceptable to the many, they also surprise and delight the few who appreciate the nicest arrangement and the most high and careful finish. The Scarlet Letter will challenge consideration in the name of Art, in the best audience which in any age receives Cervantes, Le Sage, or Scott. Following this romance came new editions of _True Stories from History and Biography_, a volume for youthful readers, and of the _Twice-Told Tales_. In the preface to the latter, underrating much the reputation he has acquired by them, he says: "The author of _Twice-Told Tales_ has a claim to one distinction, which, as none of his literary brethren will care about disputing it with him, he need not be afraid to mention. He was for a good many years the obscurest man of letters in America. These stories were published in magazines and annuals, extending over a period of ten or twelve years, and comprising the whole of the writer's young manhood, without making (so far as he has ever been aware) the slightest impression on the public. One or two among them, the _Rill from the Town Pump_, in perhaps a greater degree than any other, had a pretty wide newspaper circulation; as for the rest, he has no grounds for supposing that on their first appearance they met with the good or evil fortune to be read by any body. Throughout the time above specified he had no incitement to literary effort in a reasonable prospect of reputation or profit; nothing but the pleasure itself of composition--an enjoyment not at all amiss in its way, and perhaps essential to the merit of the work in hand, but which, in the long run, will hardly keep the chill out of a writer's heart, or the numbness out of his fingers. To this total lack of sympathy, at the age when his mind would naturally have been most effervescent, the public owe it (and it is certainly an effect not to be regretted, on either part), that the author can show nothing for the thought and industry of that portion of his life, save the forty sketches, or thereabouts, included in these volumes. Much more, indeed, he wrote; and some very small part of it might yet be rummaged out (but it would not be worth the trouble) among the dingy pages of fifteen or twenty year old periodicals, or within the shabby morocco covers of faded Souvenirs. The remainder of the works alluded to had a very brief existence, but, on the score of brilliancy, enjoyed a fate vastly superior to that of their brotherhood, which succeeded in getting through the press. In a word, the author burned them without mercy or remorse, and, moreover, without any subsequent regret, and had more than one occasion to marvel that such very dull stuff as he knew his condemned manuscripts to be, should yet have possessed inflammability enough to set the chimney on fire!... "As he glances over these long-forgotten pages, and considers his way of life while composing them, the author can very clearly discern why all this was so. After so many sober years, he would have reason to be ashamed if he could not criticise his own work as fairly as another man's; and, though it is little his business and perhaps still less his interest, he can hardly resist a temptation to achieve something of the sort. If writers were allowed to do so, and would perform the task with perfect sincerity and unreserve, their opinions of their own productions would often be more valuable and instructive than the works themselves. At all events, there can be no harm in the author's remarking that he rather wonders how the _Twice-Told Tales_ should have gained what vogue they did, than that it was so little and so gradual. They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade--the coolness of a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every sketch. Instead of passion, there is sentiment; and, even in what purport to be pictures of actual life, we have allegory, not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the reader's mind without a shiver. Whether from lack of power or an unconquerable reserve, the author's touches have often an effect of tameness; the merriest man can hardly contrive to laugh at his broadest humor, the tenderest woman, one would suppose, will hardly shed warm tears at his deepest pathos. The book, if you would see any thing in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.... "The author would regret to be understood as speaking sourly or querulously of the slight mark made by his earlier literary efforts on the public at large. It is so far the contrary, that he has been moved to write this preface, chiefly as affording him an opportunity to express how much enjoyment he has owed to these volumes, both before and since their publication. They are the memorials of very tranquil, and not unhappy years. They failed, it is true--nor could it have been otherwise--in winning an extensive popularity. Occasionally, however, when he deemed them entirely forgotten, a paragraph or an article, from a native or foreign critic, would gratify his instincts of authorship with unexpected praise,--too generous praise, indeed, and too little alloyed with censure, which, therefore, he learned the better to inflict upon himself. And, by-the-by, it is a very suspicious symptom of a deficiency of the popular element in a book, when it calls forth no harsh criticism. This has been particularly the fortune of the _Twice-Told Tales_. They made no enemies, and were so little known and talked about, that those who read, and chanced to like them, were apt to conceive the sort of kindness for the book, which a person naturally feels for a discovery of his own. This kindly feeling (in some cases, at least) extended to the author, who, on the internal evidence of his sketches, came to be regarded as a mild, shy, gentle, melancholic, exceedingly sensitive, and not very forcible man, hiding his blushes under an assumed name, the quaintness of which was supposed, somehow or other, to symbolize his personal and literary traits. He is by no means certain that some of his subsequent productions have not been influenced and modified by a natural desire to fill up so amiable an outline, and to act in consonance with the character assigned to him; nor, even now, could he forfeit it without a few tears of tender sensibility. To conclude, however,--these volumes have opened the way to most agreeable associations, and to the formation of imperishable friendships; and there are many golden threads, interwoven with his present happiness, which he can follow up more or less directly, until he finds their commencement here; so that his pleasant pathway among realities seems to proceed out of the Dream-Land of his youth, and to be bordered with just enough of its shadowy foliage to shelter him from the heat of the day. He is therefore satisfied with what the _Twice-Told Tales_ have done for him, and feels it to be far better than fame." That there should be any truth in this statement that the public was so slow to recognize so fine a genius, is a mortifying evidence of the worthlessness of a literary popularity. But it may be said of Hawthorne's fame that it has grown steadily, and that while many who have received the turbulent applause of the multitude since he began his career are forgotten, it has widened and brightened, until his name is among the very highest in his domain of art, to shine there with a lustre equally serene and enduring. Mr. Hawthorne's last work is _The House of Seven Gables_, a romance of the present day. It is not less original, not less striking, not less powerful, than The Scarlet Letter. We doubt indeed whether he has elsewhere surpassed either of the three strongly contrasted characters of the book. An innocent and joyous child-woman, Phoebe Pyncheon, comes from a farm-house into the grand and gloomy old mansion where her distant relation, Hepzibah Pyncheon, an aristocratical and fearfully ugly but kind-hearted unmarried woman of sixty, is just coming down from her faded state to keep in one of her drawing-rooms a small shop, that she may be able to maintain an elder brother who is every moment expected home from a prison to which in his youth he had been condemned unjustly, and in the silent solitude of which he has kept some lineaments of gentleness while his hair has grown white, and a sense of beauty while his brain has become disordered and his heart has been crushed and all present influences of beauty have been quite shut out. The House of Seven Gables is the purest piece of imagination in our prose literature. The characteristics of Hawthorne which first arrest the attention are imagination and reflection, and these are exhibited in remarkable power and activity in tales and essays, of which the style is distinguished for great simplicity, purity and tranquillity. His beautiful story of Rappacini's Daughter was originally published in the Democratic Review, as a translation from the French of one M. de l'Aubépine, a writer whose very name, he remarks in a brief introduction, (in which he gives in French the titles of some of his tales, as _Contes deux foix racontées_, _Le Culte du Feu,_ etc.) "is unknown to many of his countrymen, as well as to the student of foreign literature." He describes himself, under this _nomme de plume_, as one who-- "Seems to occupy an unfortunate position between the transcendentalists (who under one name or another have their share in all the current literature of the world), and the great body of pen-and-ink men who address the intellect and sympathies of the multitude. If not too refined, at all events too remote, too shadowy and unsubstantial, in his mode of development, to suit the taste of the latter class, and yet too popular to a satisfy the spiritual or metaphysical requisitions of the former, he must necessarily find himself without an audience, except here and there an individual, or possibly an isolated clique." His writings, to do them justice, he says-- "Are not altogether destitute of fancy and originality; they might have won him greater reputation but for an inveterate love of allegory, which is apt to invest his plots and characters with the aspect of scenery and people in the clouds, and to steal away the human warmth out of his conceptions. His fictions are sometimes historical, sometimes of the present day, and sometimes, so far as can be discovered, have little or no reference either to time or space. In any case, he generally contents himself with a very slight embroidery of outward manners,--the faintest possible counterfeit of real life,--and endeavors to create an interest by some less obvious peculiarity of the subject. Occasionally a breath of nature, a rain-drop of pathos and tenderness, or a gleam of humor, will find its way into the midst of his fantastic imagery, and make us feel as if, after all, we were yet within the limits of our native earth. We will only add to this cursory notice, that M. de l'Aubépine's productions, if the reader chance to take them in precisely the proper point of view, may amuse a leisure hour as well as those of a brighter man; if otherwise, they can hardly fail to look excessively like nonsense." Hawthorne is as accurately as he is happily described in this curious piece of criticism, though no one who takes his works in the "proper point of view," will by any means agree to the modest estimate which, in the perfect sincerity of his nature, he has placed upon them. He is original, in invention, construction, and expression, always picturesque, and sometimes in a high degree dramatic. His favorite scenes and traditions are those of his own country, many of which he has made classical by the beautiful associations that he has thrown around them. Every thing to him is suggestive, as his own pregnant pages are to the congenial reader. All his productions are life-mysteries, significant of profound truths. His speculations, often bold and striking, are presented with singular force, but with such a quiet grace and simplicity as not to startle until they enter in and occupy the mind. The gayety with which his pensiveness is occasionally broken, seems more than any thing else in his works to have cost some effort. The gentle sadness, the "half-acknowledged melancholy," of his manner and reflections, are more natural and characteristic. His style is studded with the most poetical imagery, and marked in every part with the happiest graces of expression, while it is calm, chaste, and flowing, and transparent as water. There is a habit among nearly all the writers of imaginative literature, of adulterating the conversations of the poor with barbarisms and grammatical blunders which have no more fidelity than elegance. Hawthorne's integrity as well as his exquisite--taste prevented him from falling into this error. There is not in the world a large rural population that speaks its native language with a purity approaching that with which the English is spoken by the common people of New England. The vulgar words and phrases which in other states are supposed to be peculiar to this part of the country are unknown east of the Hudson, except to the readers of foreign newspapers, or the listeners to low comedians who find it profitable to convey such novelties into Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont. We are glad to see a book that is going down to the next ages as a representative of national manners and character in all respects correct. Nathaniel Hawthorne is among the first of the first order of our writers, and in their peculiar province his works are not excelled in the literature of the present day or of the English language. YEAST: A PROBLEM. The Rev. Mr. KINGSLEY, author of _Alton Locke_, has collected into a book the series of vehement and yeasty papers which have appeared from his pen in _Fraser's Magazine_ under the above title, and a new impulse is thus given in England to the discussion of the Problem of Society. The declared object of the work--which is of the class of philosophical novels--is to exhibit the miseries of the poor; the conventionalisms, hypocrisies, and feebleness of the rich; the religious doubts of the strong, and the miserable delusions and superstitions of the weak; the mammon-worship of the middling and upper classes, and the angry humility of the masses. The story is very slight, but sufficient for the effective presentation of the author's opinions. The best characters are an Irish parson, a fox-hunting squire and his commonplace worldly wife, and a thoughtless and reckless but not unkind man of the world. Here is a sketch of a commonplace old English vicar, such as has been familiar in the pages of novels and essays time out of mind: "He told me, hearing me quote Schiller, to beware of the Germans, for they were all Pantheists at heart. I asked him whether he included Lange and Bunsen, and it appeared that he had never read a German book in his life. He then flew furiously at Mr. Carlyle, and I found that all he knew of him was from a certain review in the _Quarterly_. He called Boëhmen a theosophic Atheist. I should have burst out at that, had I not read the very words in a High Church review, the day before, and hoped that he was not aware of the impudent falsehood which he was retailing. Whenever I feebly interposed an objection to any thing he said (for, after all he talked on), he told me to hear the Catholic Church. I asked him which Catholic Church? He said the English. I asked him whether it was to be the Church of the sixth century, or the thirteenth, or the seventeenth, or the eighteenth? He told me the one and eternal Church, which belonged as much to the nineteenth century as to the first. I begged to know whether, then, I was to hear the Church according to Simeon, or according to Newman, or according to St. Paul; for they seemed to me a little at variance? He told me, austerely enough, that the mind of the Church was embodied in her Liturgy and Articles. To which I answered, that the mind of the episcopal clergy might, perhaps, be; but, then, how happened it that they were always quarreling and calling hard names about the sense of those very documents? And so I left him, assuring him that living in the nineteenth century, I wanted to hear the Church of the nineteenth century, and no other; and should be most happy to listen to her, as soon as she had made up her mind what to say." English travellers in America give very minute accounts of the bad grammar and questionable pronunciation they sometimes hear among our common people: with what advantage they might go into the rural neighborhoods of their own country for exhibitions in this line is shown by the following description of a scene in a booth, which one of the characters of Mr. Kingsley enters at night: "Sadder and sadder, Lancelot tried to listen to the conversation of the men around him. To his astonishment he hardly understood a word of it. It was half articulate, nasal, guttural, made up almost entirely of vowels, like the speech of savages. He had never before been struck with the significant contrast between the sharp, clearly-defined articulation, the vivid and varied tones of the gentleman, or even of the London street-boy, when compared with the coarse, half-formed growls, as of a company of seals, which he heard round him. That single fact struck him perhaps more deeply than any; it connected itself with many of physiological fancies; it was the parent of many thoughts and plans of his after-life. Here and there he could distinguish a half sentence. An old shrunken man opposite him was drawing figures in the spilt beer with his pipestem, and discoursing of the glorious times before the great war, 'when there was more food than there were mouths, and more work than there hands.' 'Poor human nature,' thought Lancelot, as he tried to follow one of those unintelligible discussions about the relative prices of the loaf and the bushel of flour, which ended, as usual, in more swearing and more quarreling, and more beer to make it up: 'poor human nature! always looking back, as the German sage says, to some fancied golden age, never looking forward to the real one which is coming." The descriptive powers of the author are illustrated in many fine passages, of which this delineation of an English day in March will serve as a specimen: "A silent, dim, distanceless, steaming, rotting day in March. The last brown oak-leaf, which had stood out the winter's frost, spun and quivered plump down, and then lay, as if ashamed to have broken for a moment the ghastly stillness, like an awkward guest at a great dumb dinner-party. A cold suck of wind just proved its existence, by toothaches on the north side of all faces. The spiders, having been weather-be-witched the night before, had unanimously agreed to cover every brake and brier with gossamer-cradles, and never a fly to be caught in them; like Manchester cotton-spinners madly glutting the markets in the teeth of 'no demand.' The steam crawled out of the dank turf, and reeked off the flanks and nostrils of the shivering horses, and clung with clammy paws to frosted hats and dripping boughs. A soulless, skyless, catarrhal day, as if that bustling dowager, old mother Earth--what with match-making in spring, and _fêtes champetres_ in summer, and dinner-giving in autumn--was fairly worn out, and put to bed with the influenza, under wet blankets and the cold-water cure." "Yeast," says the _Spectator_, "may be looked at as a series of sketches, loosely strung together, descriptive of palpable social evils in the mass, and of metaphysical broodings among the more thoughtful youth; a struggle which perhaps is always taking place, and which is no further distinctive of the present age than the form that is given by our intellectual and religious activity. The origin of evil, its presence in the world, what man was made for, what he struggles for, what becomes of him, have been questions that excited the speculative of all ages, taking various channels according to the circumstances of the time. Considered from this point of view, as a life-like picture of the heavings of the mass, and the mental fermentation going on among individuals--of the _yeast_ of society--the book displays great ability, and challenges careful attention. It is powerful, earnest, feeling, and eloquent; the production of a man acquainted with society, who has looked closely upon its various classes, and has the power of reading the signs of the times. He has a truthful vigor of description, a rhetorical rather than a dramatic power; or he sacrifices the latter to his habit of expressing his opinions in dialogue, where the author talks rather than the dramatis personæ. There is a genial warmth of feeling in the book, and wide human sympathies, but with a tendency to extremes in statement and opinion--a disposition to deepen the shadows of English life; for go where the author would, pictures quite as bad or worse may be drawn of the condition of mankind, from the 'noble savage,' the beau ideal of Rousseau, to the educated 'Prussian,' who was within a little while the model man of a certain school of philosophers." THE LITTLENESS OF A GREAT PEOPLE. The future historians of this age will have to record no more mortifying illustration of the difficulties which in a republic prevent the success of great ideas than that which is presented in the case of Mr. Whitney, who early in the last month sailed for England. We transcribe with especial approval the following paragraphs respecting him and his labors, from the _Tribune_: "If we are not mistaken, it is now nearly ten years since Mr. Whitney first devoted himself to his great project, and he has pursued it with a force of purpose, an intelligent apprehension of all its bearings and consequences upon the world, a nobility of ambition, and a sustained, intellectual enthusiasm which belongs to the rarest and most admirable characters. We do not know in any country a man in whom great intellectual and practical elements are more happily combined. It is not with the warm partiality of private friendship that we thus speak of Mr. Whitney, for, like all men of ideas, and all of nature positive and deep enough to have a special mission in the world, he puts others into relation with the thoughts which engage him rather than with his own personality, and you become intimate with them, not with him. A native, as we believe, of Connecticut, brought up to business in this city, where he acquired a competence, having conceived the idea of a vaster and more inspiring enterprise than the political and industrial world had ever attempted, he quitted the pursuits of trade, and the certain wealth they promised him, to perfect and realize his conception. He studied the great routes of the world, and the causes of their adoption. In a residence in Europe and by voyages in the East he made himself acquainted with the facts relating to the trade and productive capacities of Asia. He thoroughly surveyed and mastered the whole subject before beginning its discussion. Then he proposed the scheme to his countrymen, and for many years has sought exclusively to commend it to their favor. He has travelled in every direction, addressing public bodies and meetings of citizens, writing newspaper articles and pamphlets, and sparing no occasion to bring the idea and the facts connected with it to the knowledge of all. Wherever he has gone he has left some sparks of his own genial enthusiasm. The plan has found advocates in every section; many state legislatures have formally endorsed it, and a large party in Congress have been in its favor. Dependent altogether on his own pecuniary resources, Mr. Whitney, without compensation or assistance, has labored with a constancy and fidelity which could only proceed from a great purpose. But after this period of arduous exertion he has failed to carry his plan through Congress, while a great part of the lands on which he must depend for its execution, have already passed from the control of the federal Legislature. Accordingly, though he would greatly prefer that his own country should reap the splendid harvest of honor and substantial power which the building of this world's highway would assure, he has no choice but to consider the means which may be offered him for making it through British America. To the world at large the consequences would be the same, though to the United States very different. "The route through British America is, in some respects, even preferable to that through our own territory. By the former, the distance from Europe to Asia is some thousand miles shorter than by the latter. Passing close to the northern shore of Lake Superior, traversing the watershed which divides the streams flowing toward the Arctic Sea from those which have their exit southward, and crossing the Rocky Mountains at an elevation some three thousand, feet less than at the South Pass, the road could here be constructed with comparative cheapness, and would open up a region abounding in valuable timber and other natural products, and admirably suited to the growth of grain and to grazing. Having its Atlantic seaport at Halifax, and its Pacific Depot near Vancouver's Island, it would inevitably draw to it the commerce of Europe, Asia, and the United States. Thus British America, from a mere colonial dependency, would assume a controlling rank in the world. To her other nations would be tributary, and in vain would the United States attempt to be her rival; for we could never dispute with her the possession of the Asiatic commerce, or the power which that confers." But the matter reaches beyond the suggestions of national interest, and has a wider scope than the mere sentiment of patriotism. We have hoped that this republic might make the easy effort necessary to grasp a prize so magnificent, but we shall hail with satisfaction the actual commencement of such a work, wherever and by whomsoever it is undertaken. A JEW AND A CHRISTIAN. A few days ago, a man of various genius and acquirement, with whose writings people of many countries have been delighted, entered an office, holding in his hand two black-bordered notes, inviting him to funerals. So--other friends have gone! who now? Two persons very unlike each other. Truly I have never known more striking contrasts. I was meditating of popular prejudices by which their lives were more or less affected, by which their reputations were certainly much affected: one was a Jew, and the other a Christian. Proceed with your morality. I was very poor when I came to this country. I sought occupation in the pursuits for which I was best fitted by my education: for a time with little success; and at length I was offered for the translation of two wretched French novels, the meager sum of fifty dollars. I sold some of my wife's trinkets to purchase paper and ink, and worked diligently, you can guess how many weeks, until they were in English as readable as the French of their author. The task accomplished, I went to my patron, expecting of course to have the pittance counted down in current notes or gold; but----the market for such literature was by this time over stocked; he had supplied it too liberally; and with some insulting excuse he refused the manuscripts. You have an invitation to his funeral? Yes--he was rich--always speculating in the sweat of brains--and we had business relations afterward. The other history? I chanced one day to meet a gentleman, with whom I had no personal acquaintance, though our names were known to each other, and conversing of a subject with which I was familiar he inquired if I would write something upon it for his journal. I replied that I would be very happy to do so, and as we shook hands, at parting, he left in my palm two twenty-dollar notes. He would gladly have avoided a word of explanation, but seeing my surprise he said, "It is merely a retainer, as the lawyers have it; consider it upon account of the articles you will write me." I wrote the articles; it was but an evening's work; and wrote frequently afterward for the same person, always receiving a liberal reward--always more than I asked--though my employer was himself by no means rich. You will think that in the first place he expected a profit for the money he gave me, but I knew better: he cared not a fig for the papers I was to prepare; he simply suspected that I was in need of money, and took that delicate way to relieve me, as, in his time, he relieved hundreds of men. A noble characteristic of a man perhaps in all respects deserving of admiration: But what of the prejudice you were meditating? It is this--that even in this land, where many an old world superstition has found life impossible--the community regard a _Jew_ as an incarnation of all selfishness, meanness and dishonor. A hundred to one, being told that the hero of one of these two histories was an Israelite, would swear instantly that the name of him who swindled me was Moses. But it was not: that person will to-morrow have Christian burial, and the other--one of the most sincere and generous men of the age, was an officer of the synagogue. You know--we both know--that the Hebrew race are not only before the other races in all fine intelligence, but that in defiance of prejudices and disabilities which might turn any other people into hordes of robbers, they are of the most honorable portion of mankind. POLICARPA LA SALVARIETTA, THE HEROINE OF COLOMBIA. There are not many subjects for poetry or romance in American history more suggestive than that furnished in the following incidents, translated from Restrepo's _Historia de la Revolucion de la Colombia_: "After the standard of liberty had been raised in all the provinces, and the people had struck a successful blow for freedom, Morillo, with an overwhelming force, re-conquered the country for Spain. During six months this fiendish savage held undisputed sway over Colombia. The best men of the provinces were by him seized and shot, and each of his officers had the power of death over the inhabitants of the districts in which they were stationed. It was during this period that the barbarous execution of Policarpa La Salvarietta--a heroic girl of New Granada--roused the Patriots once more to arms, and produced in them a determination to expel their oppressors or die. This young lady was enthusiastically attached to the cause of liberty, and had, by her influence, rendered essential aid to the Patriots. The wealth of her father, and her own superior talents and education, early excited the hostility of the Spanish commander against her and her family. She had promised her hand in marriage to a young officer in the Patriot service, who had been compelled by Morillo to join the Spanish army as a private soldier. La Salvarietta, by means that were never disclosed, obtained, through him an exact account of the Spanish forces, and a plan of their fortifications. The Patriots were preparing to strike a decisive blow, and this intelligence was important to their success. She had induced Sabarain, her lover, and eight others, to desert. They were discovered, and apprehended. The letters of La Salvarietta, found on the person of her lover, betrayed her to the vengeance of the tyrant of her country. She was seized, brought to the Spanish camp, and tried by court martial. The highest rewards were promised her if she would disclose the names and plans of her associates. The inducements proving of no avail, torture was employed to wring from her the secret, in which so many of the best families of Colombia were interested, but even on the rack she persisted in making no disclosure. The accomplished young lady, hardly eighteen years of age, was condemned to be shot. She calmly and serenely heard her sentence, and prepared to meet her fate. She confessed to a Catholic priest, partook of the sacrament, and with a firm step walked to the open square, where a file of soldiers, in presence of Morillo and his officers, were drawn up, with loaded muskets. Turning to Morillo, she said, "I shall not die in vain, for my blood will raise up heroes from every hill and valley of my country." She had scarcely uttered the above, when Morillo himself gave the signal to the soldiers to fire, and in the next moment La Salvarietta was a mangled and bleeding corpse. The Spanish officers and soldiers were overwhelmed with astonishment at the firmness and patriotism of this lovely girl, but the effect upon her own countrymen was electrical. The Patriots lost no time in flying to arms, and their war cry, "_La Salvarietta_!" made every heart burn to inflict vengeance upon her murderers. In a very short time the army of Morillo was nearly cut to pieces, and the commander himself escaped death only by flight, and in disguise." In Mexico a dramatic piece, which we have seen described as possessing considerable merit, has been founded upon this tragical history. In the Spanish American wars there have been numerous instances of remarkable heroism by women, which is the more noticeable for the little the sex has had to gain by the political independence of the Spanish race on this continent. A REAL AMERICAN SAINT. Mrs. Jameson, in her beautiful book lately published in London, _Legends of the Monastic Orders_, has the following account of the only American woman ever canonized: "Santa Rosa di Lima was born at Lima, in Peru, in 1586. This flower of sanctity, whose fragrance has filled the whole Christian world, is the patroness of America, the St. Theresa of Transatlantic Spain. She was distinguished, in the first place, by her austerities. 'Her usual food was an herb bitter as wormwood. When compelled by her mother to wear a wreath of roses, she so adjusted it on her brow that it became a crown of thorns. Rejecting a host of suitors, she destroyed the lovely complexion to which she owed her name, by an application of pepper and quicklime. But she was also a noble example of filial devotion, and maintained her once wealthy parents, fallen on evil days, by the labor of her hands.' All day she toiled in a garden, and at night she worked with her needle. She took the habit of the third order of St. Dominic, and died in 1617. She was canonized by Clement X. According to the Peruvian legend, the Pope, when entreated to canonize her, absolutely refused, exclaiming, 'India y santa! asi como llueven rosas!' (India and saint! as much so as that it rains roses!') Whereupon, a miraculous shower of roses began to fall in the Vatican, and ceased not till the incredulous pontiff acknowledged himself convinced." Among men saints have been more plentiful. Authors and Books. We have already briefly spoken of Dr. ANDREE'S work on America which is now publishing at Brunswick, Germany, by the house of Westermann, a branch of which is established in this city at the corner of Broadway and Duane-streets. The book in question is to consist of three volumes of some six hundred and fifty octavo pages each, devoted respectively to North, Central, and South America. It is published in numbers of some eighty pages each; of these numbers four are already issued, and we have read them with great satisfaction. The broad and philosophical spirit, the exhaustive learning, and the spirited and picturesque style of Dr. Andree are beyond praise; among all the books on America which we have met with this impresses us as unique, and if the remainder shall prove equal to what is already published, we hope that some American publisher may undertake a translation of the whole into English. The work opens with an introduction of some forty odd pages, in which, first, the physical characteristics of the new world are set forth with great clearness and beauty: its mountains, rivers, lakes, climate, vegetable and animal kingdoms; the origin of the aboriginal inhabitants, their languages, races, manners, customs, and civilization; the settlements of Europeans, the Spaniards, the Spanish and Portuguese states, the Creoles, Mexico, Brazil, &c. Amalgamation of races, the negroes, Slavery, influence of the Latin races, the Teutonic race, the United States, their growth and destiny, are made the subjects of a continuous discussion, remarkable alike for an air at least of breadth and profundity, careful and comprehensive knowledge, and for concise and often eloquent expression. The introduction is followed by chapters on Iceland, Greenland, and the various expeditions to the polar regions of the north, treating those topics both historically and ethnographically, and with a clear presentation of every interesting and important fact. Next follows a general survey of the continent north of the fiftieth, degree of latitude, its rivers, lakes, forests, animals, men, and commerce, including an account of the various Indian tribes, and the trading companies dealing with them. The trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company, Lord Selkirk's colony on Red River, Labrador, Newfoundland, the British Possessions on the West coast, Russian America, are successively treated. Next the Indians in Canada and the United States are considered at length, in respect of their history, traditions, languages, monuments, customs, the influence of the whites upon them, and their probable destiny. In this connection we notice that Dr. Andree frequently cites Gallatin, Schoolcraft, Squier, and other American writers. The remainder of the first volume will treat of the United States, their political history and organization, their soil, climate, people, &c., not failing to give whatever information may be useful to the European settler looking for a new home, as well as to the _savan_ looking for light upon ethnographic and social problems. From this general outline the scope of the book may be inferred, but our readers will permit us to refer to one or two points which are dwelt upon in the introduction. Dr. Andree contends with the earnestness of a determined partisan for the originality of the vegetable and animal creations, as well as of the human race upon this continent, rejecting entirely the theory that either was transplanted from the eastern hemisphere. The unity of the human family, he maintains with a class of writers distinguishable chiefly for a sleepless activity in assailing the authority of the Christian religion, does not require the assumption of numerical identity of origin, but rather the contrary. "It is not necessary," he says, "to assume the arithmetical _oneness_ of mankind, and the derivation of all from a single pair, thus arbitrarily confining and limiting the creative power of the Highest Being;" and this position he proceeds to advocate by a variety of arguments, at the same time controverting the opposite opinion, and especially the notion of the late Major Noah that the Indians of this continent were descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel. In this impertinence is the only noteworthy fault we discover in the book. Discussions of such controverted points as this belong exclusively to the audience of scholars. A far more interesting and satisfactory part of the introduction is that devoted to the Spanish and Portuguese in America, and their influence on the native tribes, and _vice versa_. The contrast which these races and the states they have founded exhibit to the Germanic race in North America is brought out by Dr. Andree in a striking manner. All the South American republics except Chili are in a condition of comparative or actual disorder: no signs of expanding life and progress are visible among them; every where the conflict of races and castes is active or only partially suppressed; Brazil alone, by the monarchical form of its executive, (though its institutions are fundamentally democratic,) is spared from the anarchy which prevails among its neighbors, and there too, alone, the black, yellow, and red races are politically equal and in the way of complete amalgamation; but in all these states the European element, instead of growing more powerful and influential, tends constantly to greater weakness, and is likely to be completely absorbed and swallowed up; since the wars of independence the white race has diminished, not increased in number; and instead of conferring on the native races the civilization and refinement which was its native property, it is so far dominated by them as to relapse toward their ignorance and rudeness; and after three centuries all Spanish America, the West Indies included, contains not more than fifteen millions of inhabitants, about a fifth of whom are whites, that is to say as many as are found in the State of New-York alone. Or, reckoning for all America south of the United States, five millions of whites, this population still falls far short of that which within thirty years has taken possession of the country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Such is the difference between the Latin and the Saxon races. The latter has spread itself with astonishing rapidity, never mixing, to any extent, with negroes or Indians, nor allowing mixed races to get the upper hand, or even exercise any influence. The Anglo-Saxon civilizes the other races or devotes them to extinction. And yet South America is naturally better than North. It is richer and more productive, and endowed with a system of rivers compared with which that of the Mississippi seems trifling. Had it been settled by Anglo-Saxons and Germans instead of Creoles and mixed breeds, it would long since have worn another aspect; steamboats would have covered the rivers up to the very foot of the Cordilleras, and the vast plains would have been occupied by flourishing towns and cultivated fields. The parallel which Dr. Andree draws between the history of the United States and Europe for the last fifty years is so strikingly put, that we make room for a single passage by way of specimen: "A comparison of the history of Europe and of North America during the time since the first French revolution is in every respect to the advantage of the United States. The old world has been convulsed by wars, a military emperor has had the sway of Europe, and broken kingdoms into fragments; blood has flowed in torrents, and thousands of millions have been wasted for unproductive purposes and on royal vanity. Since the fall of the Great Soldier the nations have incessantly risen against their rulers, and more than a million of men now stand in arms to restrain the people and serve the passions of monarchs and their cabinets. Only sixty years ago the entire valley of the Mississippi was still a desert, a wide wilderness, with hardly here and there a settlement. Now we see this empire in subjection--conquered, not by soldiers, with waving banners and sounding trumpets, but by the toil of the farmer, the skill of the artisan, the enterprising spirit of the merchant. They have drained morasses, cleared up forests, opened roads, dug canals, built ships, and founded flourishing states. Within the period of two generations they have peopled that wilderness with ten millions of industrious inhabitants, and opened a new home to the arts of peace, to civil and religious liberty, to culture and progress. In these sixty years, not so much blood has been shed in wars against Indians in the Mississippi valley as in one of the hundreds of battles fought by the soldiers of European states, most of them for useless or even pernicious ends. No blessing has followed the wars and conquests in Europe, but in the Great West, conquered by labor and enterprise, all is progress and unexampled prosperity." There are numerous other passages tempting us to translate them, but our space is already exhausted, and we forbear. * * * * * We have already taken occasion to commend the _Tausend und ein Tag im Orient_ (Thousand and One Days in the East) by BODENSTEDT, the well-known author of the Wars of the Circassians. No writer gives so just an insight into the character of that portion of the great Oriental family which he visited--the Circassians and Georgians. The second part of his present book (lately published at Berlin) contains some interesting criticisms of a Tartar poet, whom Bodenstedt knew at Tiflis, upon European poetry. Our traveller, partly by way of practice in the Tartar language, and partly to inspire his eastern friend with greater respect for the bards of the Occident, used to translate English and German songs into Tartar. Mirza Shaffy, the name of the Tartar sage and poet, proved himself no contemptible critic of these foreign productions. Not once could he be induced to tolerate a poem whose only merit was the beauty and melody of its language in the original, nor to swallow the mere sentimentalism which plays so great a part in German poetry especially. This sentimentalism, says Bodenstedt, is as unknown as it is unintelligible to the Oriental poet. He aims always at a real and tangible object, and in gaining it puts heaven and earth in motion. No image is too remote, no thought too lofty for his purpose. The new moon is a golden shoe for the hoof of his heroes' steed. The stars are golden nails, with which the Lord has fastened the sky, lest it should fall with admiration and desire for his fair one. The cypresses and cedars grow only to recall the lithe and graceful form of Selma. The weeping willow droops her green hair to the water, grieving because she is not slender like Selma. The eyes of his beloved are suns which make all the faithful fire-worshippers. The sun itself is but a gleaming lyre, whose beams are golden strings, whence the dawn draws the loveliest accords to the praise of the earth's beauty and the power of love. Mirza Shaffy was a great lover of Moore and Byron, and some of their songs which were translated needed no explanation to render them intelligible to him. Wolfe's marvellous poem on the death of Sir John Moore made a deep impression on him, and was a special favorite. Goëthe and Heine he liked greatly, especially Goethe's song of Mignon, "Knowst thou the Land," and Heine's Fisher's Song (which Schubert has set to such delicious and befitting music) which ends-- "My heart is like the ocean, Has storm, and ebb, and flow, And many a lovely pearlet Rests in its depths below." Schiller he could not so well understand, and often the attempt adequately to translate this poet had to be given up in despair. However, Mirza Shaffy admitted that some of his poems had substance in them. Uhland and Geibel were not much to his mind. One day, Bodenstedt translated into Tartar a song by the latter, which we in our turn thus render into English: The silent water lily Springs from the earth below, The leaves all greenly glitter, The cup is white as snow. The moon her golden radiance Pours from the heavens down, Pours all her beams of glory This virgin flower to crown. And, in the azure water, A swan of dazzling white Floats longing round the lily, That trances all his sight. Ah low he sings, ah sadly, Fainting with sweetest pain; O lily, snow white lily, Hear'st thou the dying strain? Mirza Shaffy cast the song aside, with the words, "A foolish swan!" "Don't the song please you?" asked the translator. "The conclusion is foolish," replied the Tartar; "what does the swan gain by fainting?--he only suffers himself, and does no good to the rose. I would have ended-- "Then in his beak he takes it, And bears it with him home." * * * * * Mr. Ross, the editor of _Allgemeine Auswanderungszeitung_ (Universal Journal of Emigration), an excellent and useful German periodical, has just published in Germany the _Auswanderer's Handbuch_ (Emigrant's Manual), devoted especially to the service of those who design emigrating to the United States. His manual is a valuable collection of whatever a new comer into this country should know. The constitution and political arrangements of the Union, its legislation, its means of intercourse, the peculiarities of soil and climate proper to different sections, the state of agriculture, and the chances of employment for persons of different classes, professions, and degrees of education, are all given. Mr. Ross was himself born in the United States, and understands what he writes about. At the same time his book gives a fair and thorough view of the difficulties with which the emigrant to this country must contend. * * * * * At Pesth, Hungary, is about to appear a biographical work on Hungarian statesmen and orators who were prominent before the revolutionary period. Paul Nagy, Eugen Beöthy, Franz Déak, Stephan Bezerédy, Bartholomaus Szemere, the two Wesselenyis, the two Dionys Pazmandys, Stephan Szechényi, and Joseph Eötvos (the last known in the United States by translations of his novels), are among the characters described. * * * * * A new book on the new world is the _Europa ed America_, by Dr. ANT. CACCIA, an Italian litterateur, who has apparently been in this country and describes it, as he professes to do, from nature. He says that he found the people of New-York occupied mainly in making money. The German authoress FANNY LEWALD, has in press a book entitled _England und Schottland_ (England and Scotland), made up from the notes of a journey through those countries. Its publication just at this moment is for the benefit of the crowds of Germans who are going to the World's Fair, and who may find in it all sorts of preparatory information. A specimen chapter published in one of our German papers reads pleasantly. Fanny Lewald is a phenomenon, of a class of women who know something about every thing. Nothing is too high or too low to become an object of consideration to these female Teufelsdröcks, petticoated professors of "the science of things in general." The intellectual cultivation among the middle and higher class of society in Prussia, the patronage bestowed by the court upon learning, the arts, and sciences; the encouragement to discuss freely every imaginable theme in politics or religion, with the single exception of the measures of the administration, all tended to create a taste for mental display in which it was necessary that women should participate, if they wished to retain their old position in the social world. In the salons of Berlin, therefore, women have been heard taking a prominent part in conversations in which the most abstruse questions in religion, politics, and general science were discussed. The philosophers, male and female, debarred by the spy system from any open investigation of passing political events, revenged themselves by treating these events as mere temporary phases of the great system of evolutions which forms the _material_ of history, scarcely worthy of notice, and directed their attention to the great principles which underlie all great social and religious developments. A strange tone was thus given to conversation. Listening to the talkers at a Berlin conversazione, one might have fancied, judging from the nature of the subjects of conversation, that a number of gods and goddesses were debating on the construction of a world. Vulgar bricks and mortar they ignored, and were anxious only about primary and secondary geological formations. The actual state of any society was scarcely cared for, except in illustration of a principle, and the great forces which must unite to form the best possible society, were the only subjects of investigation. It may be taken as a great proof of the wonderful facility of adaptation of the female mind, that women joined in these conversations as readily as men, and frequently with far more brilliancy, in spite of the range of reading which it must require to obtain even a superficial knowledge of the subjects of discourse. Fanny Lewald is one of these prodigies. She has studied every thing from the Hegelian philosophy downwards. She is as great in revolutions as in ribbons, and is as amusing when talking sentiment over oysters and Rheinwein, in the Rathskiller at Bremen, as when meditating upon ancient art and philosophy in Wilhelm von Humboldt's castle of Tegel near Berlin. * * * * * We have read with great interest a series of articles which have appeared in the recent numbers of the _Grenzboten_ upon GEORGE SAND. Though we have often failed to agree with the view of the writer, Mr. Julian Schmidt, one of the editors of that paper, we have rarely met with literary criticism of more ability, and a more just and catholic spirit. We translate the conclusion of the last article, in which Mr. Schmidt gives the result of his careful analysis of all the works of the author: "The novel, on account of its lax and variable form, and the caprice which it tolerates, is in my opinion not to be reckoned among those kinds of art, which, as classic, will endure to posterity. The authors who have been most read in modern times have already been checked in their popularity by the greater attraction of novelty offered by their successors. This is the case even with Walter Scott. Besides, in most of her writings, George Sand has dealt with problems whose justification later times will not understand; and thus it may happen that hereafter she will be regarded as of consequence in the history of literature alone. But in that sphere she will have a permanent importance. Future centuries will regard her as the most significant image of the morbid but intense striving which marks this generation. When it has long been agreed that the lauded works of Victor Hugo, Eugene Sue, Lamartine, Alfred de Musset, and others, are but the barren outgrowths of an untamed and unrestrained fancy, and a perverted reflection; when the same verdict has been pronounced on the poems of M. de Chateaubriand, whose value is now taken as a matter of belief and confidence, because there are few who have read them; then the true poetic element in the works of George Sand will, in spite of all its vagaries, still be recognized. And more than this, since the period of sentimentalism will be seen as more extensive, and as the works of Richardson, Rousseau (of course only those which belong in this category), and of Madame de Staël and others, will be included in it, then we say that the better productions of our authoress will carry off the prize from all the rest." * * * * * Two collections of songs, national and lyric, have made their appearance in Germany. The one is by GEORGE SCHERER, and is called _Deutsche Volkshelier_, the other, by WOLFGAND MENZEL, is entitled _Die Gesange der Volker_ (The Songs of the Nations). The former is exclusively German; the latter contains songs from every civilized tongue under heaven, as well as from many of the uncivilized, in German versions, of course. Both are elegantly printed, and highly commended by the knowing in that line of literature. * * * * * HENRI MURGER has published a companion volume to his _Scènes de la Bohéme_ in the shape of some stories called _Scènes de la Vie de Jeunesse_. * * * * * A curious specimen of what may be done by a ready writer who is scrupulous only about getting his pay, is afforded by a book just published at Leipzic, called _Zahme Geschichten aus wilder Zeit_ (Tame Stories of a Wild Time), by Frederick Ebeling. In these "tame stories" the heroes of the late revolutionary movements are held up now in one light, and now in another, with the most striking disregard of consistency. Jellachich, for instance, is lauded in one place as the most genial and charming of men, a scholar and gentleman, without equal, and almost in the next page he is called a ferocious butcher, who never wearies of slaughtering human beings. These discrepancies are accounted for by the fact that Mr. Ebeling wrote for both conservative and radical journals, and adapted his opinions to the wants of the market he was serving. He would have done well to reconcile his articles with each other before putting them into a book. * * * * * A valuable work on national law is entitled _Du Droits et des Devoirs des Nations Neutres en Temps de Guerre Maritime_, by M. L. B. Hautefeuille, a distinguished French jurist, lately published at Paris in four octavos. It is praised by no less an authority than the eminent advocate M. Chaix d'Est Ange, as the fruit of mature and conscientious study: he calls it the most complete and one of the best works on modern national law ever produced. The author in the historical part of his treatise, criticises the monopolizing spirit and policy of the English without mercy, and insists that the balance of power on the sea is of no less importance than that on land. He would have established a permanent alliance of armed neutrality, with France and the United States at its head, to maintain the maritime rights of weaker states in time of war, against the encroachments of British commerce and ambition. * * * * * A Vienna publishing establishment has offered GRILLPARZER, the German dramatist, $4,000 for his writings, but he refuses, not because he thinks the price too low, but because he will not take the trouble of preparing and publishing a collected edition of his dramas, the last of which was entitled _Maximilian Robespierre_, a five act tragedy. He has also a variety of unpublished manuscripts, which it is feared will never see the light. * * * * * Students and amateurs of music will find their account in taking the _Rheinische Musikzeitung_ (Rhine Musical Gazette), published at Cologne, under the editorial care of Prof. Bisehof. Its criticism is impartial, intelligent, and free from the prejudices of the schools. German musical criticism has no better organ. * * * * * The German poet SIMROCK has just published a new version of the two Eddas, with the mythical narratives of the Skalda, which is spoken of as a valuable contribution to literature. * * * * * The _Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries_ held its annual session on the 15th February at the palace of Christianbourg, the King of Denmark presiding. Mr. RAFN read the report of the transactions of the Society during the year, and laid before the meeting a new number of the Annals of the archaeology and history of the North, and the completed volume of the Archaeological Journal, published by the Society. He also announced that the second volume of his own work on Russian Antiquities was in preparation, and that about half of it was already printed. To give an idea of this work, he read from it a biographical notice on Biorucon, of Arngeirr, an Icelander by birth, distinguished alike as a warrior and a poet, and by his exploits in Russia where he served Vladimir the Great. After this, other members of the Society gave interesting accounts of the results of their various labors during the year. The King presented a paper on excavations made under his personal direction in the ruins of the castles of Saborg and Adserbo, in the North of Seland. These castles date from the middle ages; the memoir was accompanied by drawings. * * * * * The _Historisches Tashcenbuch_ (Historical Pocket-Book), edited by the learned Prussian Raumer is a publication eminently worthy of notice. The number for the year 1851 opens with biographical sketches of three women, Ines de Castro and Maria and Lenora Telley, who played important parts in Spanish and Portuguese history in the XIVth Century. They are followed by a concise history of the German marine by Bartholdy, twelve letters by John Voigt on the manners and social life of the princes at the German Diets, a picture from the XVIth Century, the sequel of a memoir by Guhrauer on Elizabeth, Abbess of Herford, a friend of William Penn, and a correspondent of Malebranche, Leibnitz and Descartes, &c., &c. &c. * * * * * An interesting account of a most eventful period and country is the _Bilder aus Oestreich_, just published at Leipzic, by a German traveller. The traveller is understood to be one of the editors of the _Grenzboten_, and the period he describes comprises the revolutionary years 1848-9. His account of Vienna in the memorable October days of 1848, is graphic, and even thrilling. * * * * * COTTA, of Stuttgart, has just published a new collection of poems by FRANZ DINGELSTEDT, under the title of "Night and Morning." The themes are drawn from the revolution, its hopes and its disappointments. * * * * * FREDERIC LOUIS JAHN, the celebrated German professor, who invented the modern system of gymnastics, is writing his personal memoirs. He is about seventy years of age, and his long life has been full of significant incidents. To those who seek a good acquaintance with the current belles-lettres literature of Germany, we can cordially recommend the _Deutsches Museum_, published semi-monthly at Leipsic, under the editorial care of Professor Robert Prutz and Wilhelm Wolffson, and sold in this city by Westermann, 290 Broadway. Each number contains eighty-five close pages, filled by some of the leading writers of German science, art and politics. In the number now before us, are articles by Gutzkow, Böch, the philologist, Berthold Auerbach, Emanuel Geibel and Julius Mosen. The entire range of politics, philosophy, antiquities, art, poetry, romances and literary criticism is included in the scope of the _Museum_, except that it is designed not for the learned world, but for the mass of the people, and accordingly aims at general not technical instruction. Among the art notices, we observe a brief criticism on the Gallery of Illustrious Americans, in which the lithography of the pictures is praised as well as the faces themselves. The critic is delighted with the energy, originality and freshness of character expressed in their features. * * * * * A valuable contribution to current political history is the _Verfassungskampf in Kurhessen_ (Constitutional Struggle in Electoral Hesse), by Dr. H. Gräfe, which has just made its appearance in Germany. The conflict of the people and parliament and public officers, against the selfish, arbitrary and foolish Elector, is the turning point of recent German politics, and the defeat of the former after their patience and firmness, acting always within the limits of the constitution, had gained a decided victory, and compelled the faithless prince to fly the country,--a defeat accomplished only by the intervention of Austrian and Prussian troops, was the final downfall of every form of political liberty in Germany. Dr. Gräfe has wisely abstained from treating the events of this crisis as a philosophical historian; they are too fresh, and his own share in them was too decided to allow him to undertake that successfully. He accordingly does little more than simply report the transactions in a compendious way, with all the documents necessary to a full understanding of the subject. Whoever wishes for a thorough apprehension of the German tragi-comedy, may derive aid from his work. * * * * * The resources of philology have just been enriched by the publication at Tubingen of a dictionary of six of the dialects of Eastern Africa, namely, the Kisuaheli, Kinika, Kikamba, Kipokomo, Kihian, and Kigalla. This is accompanied by a translation of Mark's Gospel into the Kikamba dialect, and a short grammar of the Kisuaheli. The author of these works is the Protestant minister Krap, who has been for fifteen years in Ethiopia, and has collected and presented to the University at Tubingen a considerable number of most valuable Ethiopian manuscripts. * * * * * A notable and interesting book is BEHSE'S _Geschichte des preussischen Hofes und Adels_ (History of the Prussian Court and Nobility) of which the two first volumes have just been published at Hamburg by Hoffman & Campe. The whole work will contain from thirty to forty small volumes, and will treat all the states of Germany, only some half dozen volumes being devoted to Prussia. The two now published bring the history down to the reign of Frederic William II. They abound in most curious historic details. For instance, the acquisition of the title of King of Prussia by the Elector of Brandenburgh, Frederic III., is narrated at length. It seems that this prince, who was deformed in body, but as politic as he was ambitious in spirit, after many fruitless efforts obtained from the Emperor at Vienna the grant of the royal dignity, by a bribe of two hundred thousand thalers, paid to the Jesuit Father Wolff, as a compensation for the influence of the Society, whose members were flattered that the most powerful of the Protestant princes of Germany should solicit their assistance. The whole cost of the grant was six millions of thalers, an enormous sum for these times. The Papal Court refused to recognize the new king, and did not until Frederic the Great. * * * * * We believe a general _Biographical Dictionary of Illustrious Women_, now in course of publication in Berlin, is to be reproduced here, with suitable additions. We need, while discussions of the sphere and capacities of women are so common among us, a work of real learning and authority, in which the part which the sex has borne and is capable of bearing in the business of civilizing, shall be carefully and honestly exhibited. There are fifteen or twenty volumes of short biographies of women now in print in this country, with prospects of others--all worthless except this extensive German work, which is considerably advanced, and for its literary merit as well as for the interest of its materials, will command an unusual degree of attention. * * * * * Countess Ida Hahn Hahn is writing a work to be called _My Way from Darkness to Light, from Error to Truth_. She has became a Catholic, and this book is intended to tell why. A cheap edition of her works is publishing at Berlin. We presume they are no longer in her control, but belong to her publishers, as she could scarcely consent to reprint some of them. * * * * * A new work bearing as its title the single word _Italia_, is about to be published at Frankfort on the Main. It is a complete artistic, historic and poetic manual for travellers in that lovely peninsula. * * * * * The Cologne Musical Society lately offered a prize for the best symphony. Eighty-three have been offered, of which one only seems to be a pure plagiarism. * * * * * A book just published in Germany under the title of _Berlin und die Berliner_ contains some exceedingly interesting details concerning the great naturalist ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT, from which the _International_ translates the following: "When, in the years 1834-5, we young students thronged into lecture room No. VIII., at eight o'clock on winter mornings, to hear Böckh on Greek literature and antiquities, we used to see in the crowd of students in the dark corridor a small, white-haired, old, and happy-looking man, dressed in a long brown coat. This man was the _studiosus philologiæ_, Alexander von Humboldt, who came, as he said, to go through again what he had neglected in his youth. When we met him in the lecture-room we respectfully made way for him; for though we had no respect for any body, especially professors, Humboldt was an exception, for he knew 'a hellish deal.' To his own honor, the German student still respects this quality. During the lecture Humboldt sat on the fourth or fifth bench near the window, where he drew a piece of paper from a portfolio in his pocket, and took notes. In going home he liked to accompany Böckh, so as in conversation to build some logical bridge or other from the old world to the new, after his ingenious fashion. There was then in the class a man who has since distinguished himself in political literature, but whom we had nicknamed 'Mosherosh,' that is Calves'-head, on account of his stupid appearance. As Mosherosh generally came in late, it was the fashion to receive him with a magnificent round of stamping. One day, Humboldt came too late, and just at the usual time of Mosherosh, and without looking up we gave the regular round, while Humboldt, blushing and embarrassed, made his way to his place. In a moment the mistake was seen, and a good-natured laugh succeeded. Humboldt also attended the evening lectures of Ritter on universal geography, and let the weather be as bad as it might, the gray-haired man never failed. If for a rarity he chanced not to come, we said among ourselves in students' jargon, 'Alexander cuts the college to-day, because he's gone to King's to tea.' Once, on occasion of discussing an important problem of physical geography, Ritter quoted him, and every body looked up at him. Humboldt bowed to us, with his usual good nature, which put the youngsters into the happiest humor. We felt ourselves elevated by the presence of this great thinker and most laborious student. We seemed to be joined with him in the pursuit of great scientific ends." * * * * * The rewards of Authors, we suspect, are greatest in France. In Germany, England and the United States they are about the same. Cooper, Irving and Prescott, in this country, have each received for copyrights more than one hundred thousand dollars. In England, Dickens has probably received more than any other living author--and in France Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Dumas, Scribe, Thiers, and many others, have obtained large fortunes by writing. In Germany Dieffenbach received for his book on Operative Surgery some $3,500; and Perthes of Hamburg, paid to Neander on a single work, more than $20,000, exclusive of the interest his heirs still have in it. Poets like Uhland, Freiligrath, Geibel, have also received as much as $6,000 or $12,000 on the sales of a single volume. Long ago in Boston, Robert Treat Paine received $1,500 for a song. Of our living poets, Longfellow has been most liberally paid. * * * * * George Stephens, the learned translator of the _Frithiof's Saga_ of BISHOP TEGNER, in a letter to _The International_ states that he is now printing at Copenhagen three Anglo-Saxon poems of the eleventh century, namely: _The Old Testament Story, On the Sixth Day's Work_, and _The New Testament Story_, by Aelfric, Archbishop of York, now just translated into the metre and alliteration of the original. The three poems will make a quarto volume of about thirty sheets, and copies may be ordered (price three dollars), through the Hon. H. W. Ellsworth, late United States _Charge d'Affaires_ in Sweden, at New-York, or Dr. S. H. Smith, of Cincinnati. Of the ability and fidelity with which the work will be executed, the readers of the Frithiof's Saga need no other assurance. * * * * * "Etherization," after all, is not a modern discovery, and Wells, Jackson, and Morton, are alike undeserving of the praise they have received on account of it. The Paris _Siècle_ states that a manuscript, written by Papin, known, for his experiments connected with the motive power of steam, has been discovered near Marburg in Electoral Hesse; that the work bears the name of _Traité des Opérations sans Douleur_, and that in it are examined the different means that might be employed to deaden, or altogether nullify, sensibility when surgical operations are being performed on the human body, Papin composed this work in 1681, but his contemporaries treated it with ridicule, and he abandoned the medical profession. * * * * * A new five-act play, tragic of course, has just appeared at Berlin, founded on the history of Philip Augustus of France. It is by a lady of the aristocratic circles of the Prussian capital, who now makes her debut in literature. It is praised as excellent by those who are not in the habit of being satisfied with the writings of ladies. A collection of poems from the same pen is shortly to appear. * * * * * M. Bianchi's _Turkish and French Dictionary_, in two large octavos, has reached a second edition at Paris. It is all that could be desired for the use of diplomatic and consular agents, traders, navigators, and other travellers in the Levant, but not designed for critics in the language or its literature. * * * * * The students of geography and foreign modes of life, owe a debt to the French General DAUMAS, for his three works on north-western Africa. The first entitled, _Le Sahara Algerien_, is an exact and thorough and scientific account of the desert in Algiers, given, however, with a flow of manly, soldatesque imagination, which imparts life and charm to the narrative, and even adorned with frequent quotations from the Arab poets, who have sung the various localities he describes. The second of these works is called _Le Grand Desert_: in form it is a series of romances, the author having chosen that as the best manner of conveying to the reader a distinct impression. The hero is a dweller in the interior, a member of the tribe of Chambas, who came to Algiers, as he says, because he had predestined him to make that journey. The general interrogates him, and the Arab recounts his adventures. As he had thrice traversed the desert to the negro country beyond, and had seen beside all the usual events in the life of that savage region, the author violates no probability in putting into his mouth the most strange and characteristic stories. The whole are told with a fictitious reproduction of the teser and somewhat monotonous, yet figurative style, proper to all savages. _La Grande Kabylie_ recounts the personal experiences of the author in that yet unconquered country of the Arabs, whither he went with Marshal Bugeaud in his last expedition. Kabylia he describes as a picturesque and productive region. There are deep, sheltered valleys, where along the shores of winding streams, nature has planted hedges of perpetual flowers, while the mountains on each side stand yellow with the ripe and ripening grain. The people are braver and more energetic, their habitations more substantial, and their fields more valuable than those in other parts of Algeria. Gen. Daumas would have France subjugate this country and add it to her African dominions. * * * * * M. de Conches, who is well known for his illustrations of early French literature, is an enthusiastic admirer of La Fontaine: and he has spent a vast sum in having printed _one copy_ only, and for himself alone, of an edition of his works, illustrated by the first artists of the day, accompanied by notes and prefaces of the most eminent writers, and forming a very miracle of expensive and _recherché_ typography and binding. Dibdin had never so good a subject for his _Bibliomania_. * * * * * Jules Sandeau, one of the most _spirituel_ and elegant of French romance writers, announced a new novel, _Catherine_, to appear on the 15th of April. * * * * * Another book on the _Fall of Louis Philippe_ has been published at Paris by M. Francois de Groiseillez. It is in the Orleanist interest, and is praised by the _Journal des Débats_. * * * * * The most profligate woman of whom we have any account in Roman history was the empress Massalina, and nothing is more natural than that she should be selected for a heroin by a Frenchman. In a new five act play of which the Parisian journals give us elaborate criticisms, she is represented as a very virtuous wife, by the ingenious contrivance of giving a certain courtezan such a striking personal resemblance to her that it was impossible to distinguish between the two, and making the courtezan commit all the atrocities of the real Massalina. The play is not without literary merit. It is called _Valeria_--the heroine's _other_ name being considered too strong to figure on a play-bill. Rachel plays the two characters of Massalina and the courtezan--of course with the most perfect success. * * * * * A new Review has been established in Paris under the title of _La Politique Nouvelle_. It comes out as the rival of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and as the champion of the new republican _régime_ (as opposed to the conservative tendencies of the older established Review), offers battle with a promising array of names of future contributors. The department of English criticism is confided to M. Léon de Wailly, author of _Stella and Vanessa_ and the translator of Burns; whose name promises a knowledge and intelligent appreciation of English literature. The first two numbers contain contributions from the brilliant and caustic pen of Eugene Pelletan, and a serial from Madame Charles Reybaud, author of the _Cadet de Calubrieres, Helene, &c_. * * * * * Victor Hugo, since the appearance of the last volume of _Le Rhine_, four or five years ago, has not printed a new book. The proprietor of his copyrights, who had brought out two splendid editions of his complete works, one in twenty-five volumes, and another, illustrated by the best artists of France, in twelve, made a contract with him by which he has been prevented from any original publications. The term is now nearly expired, and it is announced that he will at once issue three volumes of poetry, and twelve of romances. He is now engaged in finishing a novel entitled _Misery_, which is spoken of by those who have seen portions of it as a magnificent work. * * * * * M. de St. Beuve, since October, 1849, the literary critic of _Le Constitutionnel_, a writer who has pushed himself up in the world far ahead of his merits, has published at Paris a volume, _Causeries du Lundi_ (Monday Gossipings), which is no great things. These gossipings are taken from the columns of that journal, where they are regularly published on Mondays, and where we have occasionally had the benefit of seeing them. If they were not written by a member of the French Academy, and an eminent _litterateur_, we should say they were rather stupid, as far as ideas go, and not very elegant in respect of style. * * * * * We had recently the _Cooks of Paris_, in a handsome volume, with portraits; _The Journals and Editors of Paris_, in another volume, and now one Paul Lacroix, sometimes called _bibliophile Jacob_, has announced a _History_, _Political_, _Civil_, _Religious_, _Military_, _Legislative_, _Judicial_, _Moral_, _Literary_, _and Anecdotic_, _of the Shoe and the Bootmakers of France_. He treats of the ancient corporations, their discipline, regulations, and of the fraternities, with their obligations and devices, sketching the whole history of _La Chaussure_. Shoemakers have been well represented among the famous men of all nations, and the craft may be proud of Hans Sachs, Jacob Boehme, Gifford, Bloomfield, Drew, Holcraft, Lackington, Sherman, William Carey, George Fox, and a hundred others, besides the heroes of Monsieur Lacroix. * * * * * _Bibliophile Jacob_ LACROIX, we see by the Paris papers, has also discovered a _comedie-ballet_ by Molière, written in 1654, and never included in any edition of his works. It is entitled _Le Ballet des incompatibies_, and appears to have been written by order of the Prince de Conti, and acted before him by Molière himself and other persons of the Prince's circle. That it remained so long unknown is explained by the circumstance of a few copies only having been printed for the favored spectators. The plot is described as ingenious, and the verses not unworthy of the author. It is known that when the Prince de Conti presided over the states of Languedoc in 1654, he invited thither Molière and his company. He professed so much admiration for the actor that he offered him the confidential situation of secretary, which was declined; but it seems natural enough that he should have shown his gratitude by composing one of those entertainments which cost him so little trouble. This Prince de Conti was at one time so passionately fond of theatricals that he made it his occupation to seek out subjects for new plays, but at a later period he wrote a treatise in which theatres were severely condemned on religious grounds, and Molière himself was personally and violently attacked. * * * * * Among the new biographical works announced in Paris, is one on the Life, Virtues and Labors of the late Right Rev. Dr. FLAGET, Roman Catholic Bishop of Bardstown and Louisville, Kentucky. The author is a clergyman, who accompanied the late Bishop in one of his last missions to Europe. Bishop Flaget died at the age of eighty-seven. * * * * * M. Xavier Marmier, whose visit to the United States we noticed some months ago, has published his _Letters on Canada, the United States, Cuba, and Rio La Plata_, in two volumes--constituting one of the most agreeable works ever published in Paris upon this country. We shall soon, we believe, have occasion to review a translation of the Letters, by a New-Yorker. * * * * * Guizot and Thiers--the most eminent living statesmen of France, as well as her greatest living historians--were for a long time connected with the Paris journals, and each made his first appearance as a writer in criticisms on the Fine Arts. For several years the former published series of articles on the exhibitions of the Louvre, which were remarkable both for artistic knowledge and literary _verve_. The latter also published in 1810 a pamphlet on the exhibition in the Louvre, which excited great sensation--more, however, from its having a political tendency than for its critical importance. * * * * * MR. MIGNET, whose condensed _History of the French Revolution_ is best known to American readers in the cheap reprint of Bohn's Library, and which in Paris has passed through numberless editions--will soon have completed his History of Mary Stuart, which is destined, probably, to supersede every other in the French language. Mignet is perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Moral Sciences, and was for many years head of the department of Archives in the Foreign Office. As a man of letters and a sedulous inquirer, no French author enjoys higher reputation. * * * * * Lamartine has just published in Paris _The History of the Restoration, from 1814 to_ 1830, in eight volumes. The work has been composed hastily, and probably by several hands, for money. The poet has also published _The Stone Cutter of Saint-Pont_, to which we have before referred--a new book of sentimental memoirs: they pall after two administrations. * * * * * The _Histoire des Races Maudites et les Classes Réprouvés_, by Francisque Michel and Edouard Fournier, publishing at Paris, with illustrations, has advanced to the twentieth number. The whole is to contain a hundred numbers, forming three volumes. * * * * * M. Michelet, the well-known professor of history in the College de France, has incurred a vote of censure from his associates on account of his lectures to the students, which, we infer from notices of them, are quite too republican and socialistic to be approved by the directors of affairs. * * * * * A new work, by M. Theophile Lavallée, entitled _L'Histoire de Paris et ses Monumens_ from ancient times to 1850, has just been published at Paris, with illustrations by M. Champin. It is warmly commended by the _Débats_. * * * * * MULLIE, of the University of France, has published in two large octavos, a Biographical Dictionary of the Military Celebrities of France, from 1789 to 1850. * * * * * A second edition of the new _Life of the great Chancellor D'Auguesseau_, by M. BOUILLE, has been published in Paris. The book continues to be praised. * * * * * A Romance and Tales, said to have been written by NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, when he was a youth, are announced for publication in the Paris _Siècle_. Though the _Siècle_ is a very respectable journal, and it engages that these compositions are perfectly authentic, and shall be accompanied by proofs of their genuineness, we do not believe a word of the pretence of their authorship. It is a fact, however, not unworthy of note, in a psychological point of view, that the earliest development of Napoleon's ambition and powers, before a fit field of action had been opened to them, was in a literary form. At the age of fifteen, when at the royal school at Paris, he voluntarily prepared a memoir upon the luxury and expense attending education at that place, in which he urged the propriety of the students adopting hardy habits and a simple fare, and themselves to such toils and exposure as they would encounter in war. In 1787, at the age of eighteen, at Valence, he gained, anonymously, a prize proposed to the Academy of Lyons by the Abbé Raynal, on the question, "What are the principles and institutions best adapted to advance mankind in happiness?" In this essay he defined happiness as consisting in the "perfect enjoyment of life according to the laws of our physical and moral organization:" and the forcible views, well adapted to the temper of the times, and the vivid style of writing, attracted much attention. When he was emperor, he was one day conversing with Talleyrand about this essay, and the latter, a few days after, took occasion to present it to him, having procured it from the archives of the academy at Lyons. The emperor took it, and after reading a few pages, threw it into the fire, saying, "One can never observe every thing." Talleyrand had not taken the precaution to transcribe it; but it has been said that Louis Bonaparte had had it copied, and that it is now in print. About the same time he began a history of Corsica, which he dedicated to the Abbé Raynal, by whom he had been noticed and caressed. He corresponded with Paoli in relation to it, and was in treaty with M. Joly, a bookseller of Dole, for its publication. Raynal, who read the manuscript, advised its completion; but some change of purpose prevented its being finished, and it is now lost. During his residence at Auxonne, in 1790, Napoleon wrote and printed a letter to Buttafoco, the Corsican deputy for the nobles in the National Assembly. It is a brilliant and powerful piece of argument and invective, strongly on the revolutionary side. It produced a marked impression, and was adopted and reprinted by the patriotic society at Ajaccio. While at Marseilles, in 1793, Napoleon wrote and published a political dialogue, called "The Supper of Beaucaire"--a judicious, sensible, and able essay, intended to allay the agitation then existing in that city. A copy of it was brought to him in later days, but seeing no advantage in reviving, under the circumstances of a different time, a production written for a temporary and local excitement, he ordered its suppression. * * * * * The Life of Calvin, by Paul Henry, has been translated from the German by the Rev. Dr. Henry Stebbing, of London, and we have the first of the two octavos of which it consists, from the press of Robert Carter & Brothers. So much inexcusable ignorance, so much perverse misrepresentation, so much insolent lying, may be found scattered through modern literature, respecting the great Genevan, that Dr. Henry deserves well the thanks of the christian world for exhibiting the chief facts of his history, so plainly that every partisan knave who would repeat the old slanders, shall be silent hereafter for very shame. John Calvin was unquestionably subject to the infirmities of our human nature; so was John Milton; but the inherent and indefectable greatness of these two men was such, that they dwell apart like stars, in glory scarcely approachable by mortal virtue or intelligence. John Calvin and John Milton were in an extraordinary degree the authors of modern institutions of liberty, and it would be difficult to decide which has most merit of this praise. The late Albert Gallatin was wont to say that when we celebrated our condition on the fourth of July, we should first drink to the memory of John Calvin, and then to the immediate authors of the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Gallatin did not hold to all the dogmas of Calvin, but he could not speak of the creatures--like Dyer, for example--who employ their pennyworth of wit to prejudice the vulgar against him, without some signs of scorn. We can never forget his merciless characterization of a malicious feeble-mind, who in a book entitled _A Monograph of Moral Sense_, declared that Calvin never had enough humanity in his nature to select even one verse by the _Evangelists_ for pulpit illustration,--though the Reformer really preached some folio volumes of commentaries upon the Gospels, preached from them as much as he did from any other portion of the Bible. This person--his name was Smith--was not more reckless of truth than it has been the fashion for anti-Calvinists to be, when writing of that great man and his doctrines, which they seem to have thought could be put down by petty libels. Calvin is now being born into a new life, as it were; the critics and printers of each particular language are as busy with him as the English have been with Shakspeare. His amazing wit, and genius, and learning, are found as attractive and powerful now as they were three hundred years ago. And this life of him by Henry, embodying whatever of contemporary records is most needful for the illustration of his writings, will be likely to have a large sale with every class of historical students, as they discover that the popular and partisan notions of him are untrue. Certainly no one should attempt to form an opinion of Calvin without thoroughly acquainting himself with Henry. * * * * * In Paris, M. MILLER, librarian to the Assembly, has made an important discovery among some old Greek MSS. of a lost work by Origen. The _Journal des Débats_ describes the original work as being in ten books; the first of which is already known to the world under the title of _Philosophumena_. The last seven books have just been printed at the university press in Oxford, under the editorial direction of M. Miller, who went to England for that purpose. They make an octavo volume of about three hundred and fifty pages. The _Débats_ says the work is "a refutation of heresies, in which the author endeavors to prove that the heresiarchs have all taken their doctrines from the ancient philosophers:"--a very curious task for Origen to perform, since he was himself chiefly remarkable for the mixture of Zeno, Plato, and Aristotle, which he compounded with his Christianity. But apart from its controversial interest, the recovered manuscript will throw new light on the opinions and practices of the Neo-Platonists, and on the manners and customs of ancient times. Discoveries like this point out the necessity for a larger and more combined action of learned societies in the search for ancient manuscripts. Origen's _Stromata_ might even yet be completed: and it is not to be supposed that all the existing fragments of his _Hexapla_ were collected by Montfaucon. * * * * * From Constantinople we learn that very important discoveries of ancient Greek MSS. have been made, in a cave, near the foot of Mount Athos, bringing to light a vast quantity of celebrated works quoted by various ancient writers, and hitherto deemed entirely lost. They furnish, according to the accounts in the journals, an extensive list of proper names calculated to throw great light upon many obscure periods of history. Among these volumes, it is said, some are calculated to give a complete interpretation of hieroglyphic writing--the discoverer having already successfully applied them to the interpretation of the inscriptions engraved on the obelisk of the Hippodrome at Constantinople. This may be quite true, but such statements are to be received with some suspicion. * * * * * A literal prose translation of Homer, by Mr. T. A. Buckley, has just appeared in London. No prose version will cause any just notion of the spirit of Homer. Of the half dozen metrical translations published recently, we think that of our countryman Munford the best. Henry W. Herbert has given us parts of the Iliad in admirable style. No one, however, has yet equalled old Chapman--certainly not Pope nor Cowper. The most successful translation into a modern language is unquestionably the German one by Voss. Mure and Grote have written the ablest dissertations in English upon the Homeric controversy, but they are not poets, and could not if they would translate the great bard. * * * * * R. P. GILLIES, a contemporary of the great authors of the last age, has published in three volumes _Memoirs of a Literary Veteran_. More than half a century spent in the society of the lions of literature, could hardly fail to furnish a store of amusing anecdotes, and a sprinkling of interesting information. Mr. Gillies has also this advantage over many collectors of similar reminiscences, that he was not only an author among authors, but that his social position in early life gave him access to the best circles. Scott, Wordsworth, Campbell, the Ettrick Shepherd, Rogers, Galt, Maginn, Haydon, and many more names of interest, figure frequently in his pages. Upon the whole, however, his work is tedious, and quite too much occupied with matters that can be entertaining only to his most intimate associates. Gillies was one of the early contributors to "Blackwood," and figured as "Kemperhausen" in the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_. He was also the originator and first editor of the Foreign Quarterly Review, and was one of the first to make German literature familiar in England. * * * * * It appears that only the Harpers' edition of Lord HOLLAND'S _Reminiscences_ is complete. The London copies are full of asterisks, marking the places of cancelled passages. The cancellings, it was suggested, were occasioned by the interposition of Lord John Russel. A correspondent of _The Times_, however, (understood to be Mr. Panizzi of the British Museum,) came out with a denial, saying "his lordship never saw a word of the _Reminiscences_ till after they were published, and that no responsibility whatever could attach to him. I speak thus," he adds, "of my own knowledge, and beg to inclose my name as a voucher for the truth of this statement." The _Athenæum_ thinks that if Mr. Panizzi had said "printed" instead of "published," his voucher would have been less rashly ventured, as "Lord John _did_ see the work before it was actually published, but not before it had been actually printed; and here, if we be not misinformed, arises a somewhat amusing _contretemps_, which is likely to render the cancels ineffectual. Lord John, in fact, had not the opportunity of interfering until the work had been so far published to the world that an 'uncancelled' copy, with all the passages since sought to be suppressed, had been dispatched to America beyond recall. The next American mail will, doubtless, supply us with the whole of the suppressed passages." * * * * * The meeting of the _British Association_, at Ipswich, is to commence on Wednesday, July the 2d, and extend over seven or eight days. The secretaries have received the names of several hundred intending visitors, among whom are Lucien Buonaparte, Sir R. Murchison, Sir H. de la Beche, Sir W. Jardine, Sir Charles Lyell, Sir David Brewster; Professors Daubeny, Silliman (of America), Owen, Ansted, and the celebrated naturalist, M. Lorrillier, a relative of the late Baron Cuvier. * * * * * Of the new book on _Man's Nature and Development_, by Miss Martineau and Mr. Atkinson, the _Westminster Review_ for April says: "Strange and wonderful is the power of self-delusion! Here we have two clever well-informed people, persuading themselves that they experience extraordinary raptures mingled with the most exquisite philosophic calm, from believing that unconscious matter is the cause of conscious thought, that the truest human affection is nothing worthier than the love of a spoonful of nitric acid for a copper half-penny, and that annihilation is the most satisfactory end of human life. From such views both the intellect and the heart of man will recoil with well-founded disgust--his logical powers will perceive the absurdity of the argument, and his taste and affections will lead him to exclaim with Wordsworth:-- ----'Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn: So might I standing on this pleasant lea Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus, rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.' "The new lights promised by our authors turn out to be chiefly composed of very old-fashioned rays of darkness, and, after a careful perusal, many will come to the conclusion that the way to be a modern philosopher, is to quote the ancients, praise Bacon, and talk 'bosh.'" * * * * * New editions of the works of Fielding and Smollett, profusely illustrated by Cruikshank and Kenny Meadows, will soon be published by Stringer & Townsend. These great classics will never cease to be read with the keenest relish by all the English race. The London publishers of the present edition of Fielding observe in their advertisement: "It is altogether unnecessary to enlarge upon the genius of Henry Fielding. There is no man in the brilliant history of English literature, with the single exception of Shakspeare, to whose genius has been paid the homage of a more general attestation. Calumny and misrepresentation--the offspring of envy and malice--these, in his day, he had to endure or to deride, and these, with their authors, have long sunk into oblivion. The greatest of his contemporaries knew and acknowledged his transcendent merit, and since his death, there has not been one man of genius whose opinion of Fielding is recorded, that has not spoken of him with veneration and delight. Dr. Johnson, spite of a personal enmity, could not but concede his extraordinary powers. Lady Mary Wortley Montague reluctantly confessed that 'cousin Fielding' was the greatest original genius of the age; the fastidious Gray was charmed with him; and the more fastidious Gibbon has left his opinion on record, that the illustrious house of Hapsburg, from which Fielding was descended--its name erased, its towers crumbled,--will be forgotten, when the romance of _Tom Jones_ shall flourish in eternal youth. If Coleridge classed him, as one of the true immortals, with Shakspeare, Goëthe could not, nor was willing to contest, that he was so; if Byron could cheer his heart and refresh his mind with his pages, so can, and so does, Wordsworth. In a word, the matchless drawing of his characters, which are not likenesses from life, but copies from Nature--the one being a shallow art, the other a profoundly creative power--his exquisite wit, his abounding humor, his natural and manly pathos--in these no writer of narrative fiction has ever approached him. "While, therefore, nothing can be less likely than that the fame of Fielding should ever be suffered to die, or that, as long as literature exists it can ever diminish, nothing can be more proper than to attempt to extend his popularity--a consummation inevitably to be effected by producing his works at a price accessible, and in a form attractive, to all classes. The late Rowland Hill once observed, that it was not fitting that the arch-enemy of mankind should have all the best tunes to himself. In a like spirit it may be remarked, that it ought not to be permitted to inferior writers to monopolize all the appliances and means of popularity that art can bestow. Accordingly, the proprietors have secured the hearty and zealous co-operation of Kenny Meadows. It would be invidious, and from the purpose, to institute a comparison between this gentleman and his contemporaries; but it may be asserted that no living artist has shown an equal versatility of genius, which points him out as the man best fitted to trace the many-colored life of Fielding. From the illustration, almost page by page, of Shakspeare, where is the man but would have shrunk? but that work of our artist has secured not merely an English, not only a European reputation, but a world-wide celebrity. The proprietors are assured, that from the hand of Kenny Meadows such an edition of Fielding will proceed as we have not yet seen, and shall not hereafter see." * * * * * Of Mr. JOHN BIGELOW'S work on _Jamaica_, (published a few weeks ago by Putnam,) the London _Examiner_ of April 5th, remarks: "It contains the most searching analysis of the present state of Jamaica, and, moreover, the most sagacious prognostications of the future prospects of the island that have ever been published. Mr. Bigelow is an accomplished, acute, and liberal American. As such, an eye-witness and a participator of the greatest and most successful colonial experiment which the world has ever seen, he is, necessarily, a better and more impartial judge of the subject he treats of than any Englishman of equal capacity and acquirement. Mr. Bigelow makes short and easy work of planters, attornies, book-keepers, sophistries, and Stanleys. In doing so, his language is invariably that of a man of education and a gentleman. He might have crushed them with a sledge-hammer, but he effects his purpose as effectually with a pass or two of a sharp and polished broad-sword." * * * * * The publication of a translation in the Bohemian language of Lamartine's _History of the Girondins_, has been recently prohibited at Prague by the Austrian authorities. * * * * * MACREADY, in retiring from the stage, had more honors showered upon him than ever before sweetened the leave-taking of any hero of the buskin: among them, this dedication of George Sand's latest publication, _Le Château des Désertes_, which is now appearing in _La Revue des Deux Mondes_: "To W. C. MACREADY:--This little work, attempting to set forth certain ideas on Dramatic Art, I place under the protection of a great name, and of an honorable friendship. GEORGE SAND." * * * * * The first volume of _The Stones of Venice_, by Mr. RUSKIN, has been republished by Mr. Wiley, and we trust it will have a very large sale in this country, which was never in greater need of instructions upon any subject than it is now upon that of architecture. In all our cities there is remarkable activity in building; the surplus wealth of the American people is largely applied for the increase of the magnificence of town and country residences--for the most part so ignorantly applied, that the Genius of Architecture might almost be frightened from our shores by the spectacles reared here to vex and astonish the next ages. To bring about a reform, to lead the way for rationalism, in the noblest of the practical arts, Mr. Ruskin has approved himself worthy by his previous works. The _Stones of Venice_ will increase the fame won by his "Modern Painters." The _Literary Gazette_ says: "It is a book for which the time is ripe, and it cannot fail to produce the most beneficial results, directly and indirectly, on our national architecture. The low condition into which that has fallen has been long felt. Mr. Ruskin has undertaken to lead us back to the first principles of the art, and, in doing so, to enable every reader who will bestow the necessary attention to his exposition, to discover for himself the causes of this decline, and to master the principles, by attention to which, the significance and dignity of the art may be restored. The subject is one of the widest interest; but it has been so hedged about with technical difficulties as to debar from its study all who had not more leisure, more perseverance, and more money, than fall to the lot of the majority of even cultivated minds. At once popular and profound, this book will be gratefully hailed by a circle of readers even larger than Mr. Ruskin has found for his previous works. He has so written as to catch the ear of all kinds of persons: 'Every man,' he says truly, 'has at some time of his life personal interest in architecture. He has influence on the design of some public building; or he has to buy, or build, or alter his own house. It signifies less, whether the knowledge of other arts be general or not; men may live without buying pictures or statues; but in architecture all must in some way commit themselves; they _must_ do mischief, and waste their money, if they do not know how to turn it to account. Churches, and shops, and warehouses, and cottages, and small row, and place, and terrace houses, must be built and lived in, however joyless and inconvenient. And it is assuredly intended that all of us should have knowledge, and act upon our knowledge, in matters in which we are daily concerned, and not be left to the caprice of architects, or mercy of contractors." "Those who live in cities are peculiarly dependent for enjoyment upon the beauty of its architectural features. Shut out from mountain, river, lake, forest, cliff, and hedgerow, they must either find in streets and squares food for pleasant contemplation, or be drawn into indifference by meaningless, ill-proportioned, or unsightly forms. 'We are forced,' says Mr. Ruskin, 'for the sake of accumulating our power and knowledge, to live in cities; but such advantage as we have in association with each other, is in great part counterbalanced by our loss of fellowship with nature. We cannot all have our gardens now, nor our pleasant fields to meditate in at eventide. Then the function of our architecture is, as far as may be, to replace these; to tell us about nature; to possess us with memories of her quietness; to be solemn and full of tenderness like her, and rich in portraitures of her; full of delicate imagery of the flowers we can no more gather, and of the living creatures now far away from us in their own solitude. If ever you felt or found this in a London street; if ever it furnished you with one serious thought, or any ray of true and gentle pleasure; if there is in your heart a true delight in its green railings, and dark casements, and wasteful finery of shops, and feeble coxcombry of club-houses, it is well; promote the building of more like them. But if they never taught you any thing, and never made you happier as you passed beneath them, do not think they have any mysterious goodness of occult sublimity. Have done with the wretched affectation, the futile barbarism, of pretending to enjoy; for, as surely as you know that the meadow grass, meshed with fairy rings, is better than the wood pavement cut into hexagons; and as surely as you know the fresh winds and sunshine of the upland are better than the choke-damp of the vault, or the gaslight of the ball-room, you may know that the good architecture which has life, and truth, and joy in it, is better than the bad architecture, which has death, dishonesty, and vexation of heart in it from the beginning to the end of time. "To show what this good architecture is, how it is produced, and to what end, is the object of the present volume. It is, consequently, purely elementary, and introductory merely to the illustration, to be furnished in the next volume from the architectural riches of Venice, of the principles, to the development of which it is devoted. Beginning from the beginning, Mr. Ruskin carries his reader through the whole details of construction with an admirable clearness of exposition, and by a process which leaves him at the close in a position to apply the principles which he has learned by the way, and to form an intelligent and independent judgment upon any form of architectural structure. The argument of the book hangs too closely together to be indicated by extracts, or by an analysis within the limits to which we are confined." We perceive that the work of which the first volume is here noticed, is to be followed immediately by _Examples of the Architecture of Venice_, selected and drawn to measurement from the edifices, by Mr. Ruskin: to be completed in twelve parts, of folio imperial size, price one guinea each. These will not be reproduced in this country, and as the author probably has little advantage from the American editions of his works, we trust that for his benefit as well as for the interests of art, the _Examples_ will be largely imported. * * * * * The new play written by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, as his contribution towards the fund raising for the new Literary Institute, is in the hands of the literary and artistic amateurs by whom it is to be enacted, and rehearsals are in progress. The first performance will take place probably in June. * * * * * It was a custom when the world was younger than it is now, for disappointed lovers, and outlaws, and portionless youths too proud to labor and afraid to steal, to go into the wars; nobility, that would not suffer them to become journeymen mechanics, led them to hire out as journeymen butchers. But at length the field of military adventure is almost every where closed. There is no region, ever so remote, where a spirited and adventurous youth could hope ever to learn the art martial. A few skirmishes on the Parana and the Plata, on the Fish River, or the Keiskamma, form all the fighting that is going on upon the globe; and that fighting offers no premium to the adventurer. There is no native prince of great wealth and numerous followers, no mogul, or sultan, or sikh, with whom the turbulent European might make a good bargain for his courage. The last field for such enterprise was the country of the Mahrattas, where French and English mercenaries--with a sprinkling of Americans--created a colony which enabled the ignorant, bigoted and jealous savages to keep in check the best European armies. A Frenchman named Person was a pioneer in the business. He was succeeded by the Savoyard, De Boigne, whose statue now adorns the principal square of Chamberry. James Skinner, whose _Memoirs_ have just been published in London by the novelist and traveler Mr. Bailie Fraser, began a similar career under De Boigne. Some idea may be formed of the Mahratta army, when the Peishwa at times brought 100,000 horse into the field. A trusted officer, as Skinner afterwards became, might thus command a division of twenty, thirty, or forty thousand men, equal in fact to the largest European armies in the last century. When men played with such tools as these, it may be easily imagined how they themselves rose and fell; how empires crumbled, or were reared anew. When Wellesley and Loke overthrew the Mahrattas, Skinner entered the British service, and it appears from the book before us that he died in 1836 a knight of the Bath. * * * * * "Hitherto," says M. de Sainte Beuve, "the real learning of women has been found to be pretty much the property of their lovers;" and he ridicules the notion that even Mrs. Somerville has any scholarship that would win the least distinction for a man. It may be so. We see, however, that a Miss FANNY CORBAUX has lately communicated to the Syro-Egyptian Society in London a very long and ambitious paper _On the Raphaïm and their connexion with Egyptian History_, in which she quotes Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, &c., with astonishing liberality. * * * * * Carlyle's translation of the _Apprenticeship and Travels of Wilhelm Meister_, has been issued in a very handsome edition, by Ticknor, Reed & Fields, of Boston. * * * * * Mr. Macaulay has been passing the Winter and Spring in Italy. * * * * * The Late Mr. John Glanville Taylor, an Englishman, left in MS. a work upon _The United States and Cuba_, which has just been published by Bentley, and is announced for republication by Mr. Hart of Philadelphia. Mr. Taylor was born in 1810, and when about twenty-one years of age he left Liverpool for the United States, on a mining speculation. After travelling a few months in this country, he was induced to go to Cuba to examine a gold vein of which he thought something might be made. The place in Cuba which was to be the scene of his operations, was the neighborhood of Gibara, on the north-eastern side of the island, which he reached by sailing from New-York to St. Jago de Cuba, and travelling across the island forty-five leagues. The gold vein turned out a wretched failure; and, after having been put to some disagreeable shifts to maintain himself, Mr. Taylor resolved to settle as a planter in Holguin--the district to which Gibara forms the port of entry. Returning to the United States, he made the necessary arrangements; and in the summer of 1843, was established on his _hacienda_, in partnership with an American who had been long resident in that part of the island. In this and the following year, however, the east of Cuba was visited by an unprecedented drought; causing famine which, though it destroyed many lives and ruined thousands of proprietors, attracted no more attention, he says, in England, than was implied by "a paragraph of three lines in an English newspaper." The west of Cuba was at the same time devastated by a tremendous hurricane, accompanied by floods; and, all his Cuban prospects being thus blasted, the author was glad to return to New-York in September, 1845, whence, after a short stay, he returned to England. He did not long, however, remain in his native country, but left it for Ceylon, where he died suddenly in January, of the present year. His _United States and Cuba: Eight Years of Change and Travel_, was left in MS., and within a few weeks has been printed. It is a work of much less value than Mr. Kimball's _Cuba and the Cubans_, published in New-York last year. Of that very careful and judicious performance Mr. Taylor appears to have made considerable use in the preparation of his own, and his agreement with Mr. Kimball may be inferred from the fact that, though pointedly protesting that he does not advocate the annexation of Cuba to the United States, he holds that "worse things might happen,"--and indeed hints that sooner or later the event is inevitable. Of _Cuba and the Cubans_, we take this opportunity to state that a new and very much improved edition will soon be issued by Mr. Putnam. * * * * * Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley has in the press of Bentley her _Travels in the United States_. She passed about two years, we believe, in this country. She has written several books, in verse and prose, but we never heard that any body had read one of them. * * * * * The _Nile Notes_, by Mr. CURTIS, have been republished in London by Bentley, and the book is as much approved by English as by American critics. The _Daily News_ says: "The author is evidently a man of great talent." Leigh Hunt, in his _Journal_, that-- "It is brilliant book, full of thought and feeling." The _Athenæum_, that-- "The author of _Nile Notes_, we may now add, is richly poetical, humorous, eloquent, and glowing as the sun, whose southern radiance seems to burn upon his page. An affluence of fancy which never fails, a choice of language which chastens splendor of expression by the use of simple idioms, a love for the forms of art whether old or new, and a passionate enjoyment of external nature such as belongs to the more poetic order of minds--are the chief characteristics of this writer." The _Literary Gazette_-- "The genial and kindly spirit of this book, the humor and vivacity of personal descriptions, redeemed by an exquisite choice of expression from the least taint of the common or the coarse; the occasional melody and music of the diction, cadenced, as it were, by the very grace and tenderness of the thought it clothes, or the images of beauty it evokes; the broad, easy touches, revealing as at a glance the majestic and tranquil features of the Eastern landscape, and the ultimate feeling of all its accessories of form and hue; the varied resources of learning, tradition, poetry, romance, with which it is not encumbered but enriched, as a banquet table with festal crowns and sparkling wines--all these, and many other characteristics, to which our space forbids us to do justice, render these 'Nile Notes' quite distinct from all former books of Eastern travel, and worthy 'to occupy the intellect of the thoughtful and the imagination of the lively.' Never did a wanderer resign his whole being with more entire devotion to the silence and the mystery that brood, like the shadow of the ages, over that dead, dumb land. A veritable lotus-eater is our American Howadji!'" And a dozen other London journals might be quoted to the same effect. But critics disagree, as well as doctors, and the Boston _Puritan Recorder_ comes down on the Howadji in the following exemplary manner: "This is a much-vaunted book, by a young American, but one in which we take no pleasure. In the first place, it is written in a most execrable style,--all affectation, and verbal wriggling and twisting for the sake of originality. The veriest sophomore ought to be "rusticated" for such conceited phrases as "beautiful budburstiness of bosom,"--"her twin eyes shone forth liquidly lustrous"--and innumerable expressions in the same namby-pamby dialect. But dellacruscan folly is but a trifle compared with the immoral tendency of the descriptions of the _gahzeeyah_, or dancing girls of Egypt, and the luscious comments on their polluted ways and manners. We thought the Harpers had done publishing this indecent trash." * * * * * D. M. Moir, the "Delta" of _Blackwood's Magazine_, has just published in Edinburgh, _Sketches of the Poetical Literature of the Past Half Century_, in six Lectures, delivered at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution. * * * * * The Rev. Satan Montgomery, otherwise called _Robert_ Montgomery, is not dead, as some have supposed, but is still making sermons and verses--probably sermons and verses of equally bad quality; and we see with some alarm that the Rivingtons advertise, as in preparation, a complete edition of his _Poetical Works_ [we never saw any works by him that were poetical] in one octavo volume, similar in size and appearance to the octavo editions of Southey, Wordsworth, &c., &c., and including the whole of the author's poems--_Satan_, _Woman_, _Hell_, and all the rest,--in a revised form, with some original minor pieces, and a general preface. We don't suppose he will take our counsel, yet we will venture it, that he make use of Macaulay's reviewal of his poems, instead of any "general preface" of his own. * * * * * Documentary History of New-York.--The forthcoming (third) volume of this State contribution to our historical literature will well sustain the reputation of its predecessors and of its zealous editor. Dr. O'CALLAGHAN is an enthusiast in his zeal for lighting up "the dark ages of our history," as Verplanck called the Dutch period; and he has done as much as any man living to rescue the fast perishing memorials of the founders of the Empire State. It is fortunate for the State that his industry and patient research are secured for the proper arrangement of the Archives--too long neglected and subject to loss and mutilation. The new volume has come to hand too late for any elaborate notice or review of its contents; but a glance at the list of papers and illustrations alone warrants the opinion we have expressed. We notice particularly the account of Champlain's explorations in Northern New-York, &c., from 1609 to 1615--translated from the edition of 1632. The historical student cannot fail to note the coincidence of discovery and exploration by the Dutch and French; and the credit due to the "Founder of New France;" to which we have alluded in the article on the Jesuit Relations. The translations of the extracts from Wassenaar (1624, etc.), give an interesting cotemporaneous view of the progress of the European discoveries and settlements in America. A chapter on Medals and Coins contains attractive matter, particularly that portion which relates to the "Rosa Americana coins," connected as they are with the "Wood's half-pence," immortalized by Dean Swift. The notes and biographical sketches by the editor, scattered through the volume, add materially to its value--as also the numerous maps and engravings. We have heard hints that some small suggestions of disinterested economists of the public money, or other considerations less creditable, have been brought to bear against the continuation of this publication--but we trust that they will end when they begin. New-York owes it to her own great history to make its material accessible to all. * * * * * Colonel Albert J. Pickett, of Montgomery, has in the press of Walker and James, of Charleston, _The History of Alabama, and incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period_. It will make two handsome volumes, and from some passages of it which we have read, we believe it will be a work of very unusual attraction. It will embrace an account of the invasion of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, by De Soto, in 1539-41; of the Aborigines of these states, their appearance, manners and customs, games, amusements, wars, and religious ceremonies, their ancient mounds and fortifications, and of the modern Indians, the Creeks, Chickasaws Choctaws, Alabamas, Uchees, Cherokees, and other tribes; the discovery and settlement of Alabama and Mississippi by the French, and their occupation until 1763; the occupation of Alabama and Mississippi by the British for eighteen years; the colonization of Georgia by the English; the occupation of Alabama and Mississippi by the Spaniards for thirty years; and the occupation of these states by the Americans from 1800 until 1820. One whole chapter is taken up with an interesting account of the arrest of Aaron Burr in Alabama in 1807; and the exciting controversies between Georgia, the Federal Government, Spain, and the Creek Indians, are treated at length. The work will be illustrated by really valuable engravings, after original drawings made by a French traveller in 1564. * * * * * Mrs. Farnham, author of _Prairie-Land_, (a very clever book published three or four years ago by the Harpers), and widow of the late Mr. Farnham who wrote a book of travels in Oregon and other parts of the Pacific country, is now living in a sort of paradise, about seventy miles south of San Francisco. In a published letter she gives the following description of her farm: "It is very heavily timbered and watered with clear living streams running through valleys of the most fertile soil, on which delicious vegetables grow ten months of the year. The region is especially famed for potatoes, which become almost a fruit here. The farm I live on is charmingly situated about a mile from the old Mission, and two from the beach, on which a tremendous surf breaks and thunders day and night. From my house I look over the coast-table and range of mountains, the hills of Monterey, the bay, and a near landscape, exquisitely diversified by plain and wood, hill and valley, and almost every shade that herbage and foliage, in a country without frost, can show. The rainy season is about a month old, and the earth as green as it is at home in June. Another month will pile it with clover, and less than another variegate it with an inconceivable variety of the most exquisite flowers--for this is the land of flowers as well as of gold. Our prairies are quite insignificant in their floral shows, compared to it. The country and climate are faultless--except in the lack of showers through the dry months. Nearly every thing one can desire may be grown upon one's own farm here." * * * * * Mr. Charles Gayarre, a gentleman distinguished in the affairs of Louisiana, in which state he has held some important offices, has just published in a handsome octavo, _Louisiana, its Colonial History and Romance_, (Harper & Brothers.) It appears from the preface, that Mr. Gayarre has had excellent opportunities for the collection of materiel for a really good book of the sort indicated by his title; but this performance is utterly worthless, or worse than worthless, being neither history nor fiction, but such a commingling of the two that no one can tell which is one or which the other. The uncertainty with which it is read will be disagreeable in proportion to the interest that it excites; and, knowing something of the colonial history of Louisiana, we are inclined to think that a book quite as entertaining as this might have been composed of authenticated facts. Indeed the _Historical Collections of Louisiana_, by Mr. French, (published by Daniels and Smith, Philadelphia,) must be to even the most superficial reader a far more attractive volume. * * * * * The _Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution_, by BENSON J. LOSSING, (Harper & Brothers,) is a work that cannot well be praised overmuch. There have been an immense number of illustrated and pictorial histories of this country, all or nearly all of which are worthless patchwork; but Mr. Lossing's is a production of equal attractive interest and value. The first volume only has been completed; one more will follow with all convenient haste, ending the work. The letter-press is written from original materials, the drawings of scenery are made from original surveys, the engravings are executed, all by Mr. Lossing himself; and in every department he evinces judgment and integrity. The Field Book will not serve the purposes of a general history, but to the best informed and most sagacious it will be a useful companion in historical reading, while to those who seek only amusement in books, it may be commended, for its pleasant style and careful art, as one of the most entertaining works of the time. * * * * * We are glad to perceive that Mr. J. H. INGRAHAM, author of _The Southwest, by a Yankee; Burton, or the Sieges_; and a large number of the vilest yellow-covered novels ever printed in this country, has been admitted to the deaconate in the Episcopal church at Natchez, and intends shortly to remove to Aberdeen, in the same state, to found a society in that city. * * * * * Mrs. Judson ("Fanny Forrester") left Calcutta in January for the United States, by way of England, and she is now daily expected home, by her old and warmly attached friends here. We see suggested a volume of her poems--some of which have much tenderness and beauty; and hope that measures will be taken to insure such a publication, for her exclusive benefit, immediately. * * * * * Our contemporary, the Philadelphia _Lady's Book_, is a little out of season in its fashions. The April number of that excellent periodical contains the Parisian Fashions which appeared in _The International_ for February; and for this present month of May, we see in _The Lady's Book_ the altogether too warm and heavily made dresses given in _The International_ for last January--mid-winter. Certainly Philadelphia ought not to be so far behind New-York in these matters. In its literary character the _Lady's Book_ is still sustained by the contributions of its favorite critic Mr. Henry T. Tuckerman, with those of Mr. T. S. Arthur, Miss Adaliza Cutter, and Mrs. Sarah J. Hale. * * * * * We regret that the terms in which we lately announced Mr. J. R. TYSON'S forthcoming _History of the American Colonies_ were capable of any misapprehension. We know Mr. Tyson quite too well to entertain a doubt of his perfect integrity as a historian; but it has been a subject of frequent observation in the middle and southern states that the New-England writers, who have furnished most of our histories, have exaggerated the influence of the Puritans and depreciated that of the Quakers and Cavaliers: Mr. Tyson himself, we believe, has been of this opinion; and we merely look for an able, fair, and liberal history, from his point of view. * * * * * Mr. VALENTINE is preparing a new volume of his _Manual of the Common Council of New-York_. The volumes hitherto published have been edited with great care and judgment; they embody an extraordinary amount and variety of interesting and important facts connected with the advancement and condition of the city; and the series is indispensable to any one who would write a history of New-York, or the lives of its leading citizens. The last volume was unusually rich in maps and statistics, and we understand that the next one will be even more interesting and valuable. * * * * * Mr. WILLIS has just published (through Charles Scribner) a new volume under the characteristic title of _Hurry-graphs, or Sketches of Scenery, Celebrities and Society_, taken from life. It embraces the author's letters to the Home Journal, from Plymouth, Montrose, the Delaware, the Hudson, the Highlands, and other summer resorts, with personal descriptions of Webster, Everett, Emerson, Cooper, Jenny Lind, and many other notabilities. It will be a delightful companion for the watering places this season. * * * * * Among the most beautiful books from the American press is _Episodes of Insect Life_, by ACHETA DOMESTICA, just reprinted by J. S. Redfield. The natural history and habits of insects of every class are delineated by a close observer with remarkable minuteness, and in a style of unusual felicity; and the peculiar illustrations of the book are more spirited and highly finished than we have noticed in any publication of a similar character. * * * * * The Harpers have published a new edition of the _Greek Grammar_ of Philip Buttman, revised and enlarged by his son, Alexander Buttman, and translated from the eighteenth German edition by Dr. EDWARD ROBINSON. It is not to be doubted, we suppose, that this grammar, in the shape in which it is now presented, is altogether the best that exists of the Greek language. We are not ourselves competent to a judgment in the case, but from all we have seen upon the subject by the best scholars, we take this to be the general opinion. * * * * * JOHN P. KENNEDY has in the press of Putnam a new and carefully revised edition of his _Swallow Barn, or a Sojourn in the Old Dominion_, one of the most pleasant books illustrative of local manners and rural life that has ever been written. It is more like Irving's Bracebridge Hall than any other work we can think of, and is as felicitous a picture of old Virginia as Jeffrey Crayon has given us of Merrie England. The first edition of Swallow Barn was published twenty years ago; the new one is to be beautifully illustrated in the style of Irving's _Sketch Book_. * * * * * Dr. FRANCIS LIEBER, the learned Professor of the South Carolina College, has been elected a member of the National Institute of France. Dr. Lieber is a German, but he has resided in this country many years. Among Americans who have been thus complimented are Mr. Prescott and Mr. Bancroft. The late Henry Wheaton was also a member of the Institute. * * * * * The entertaining book, _Ship and Shore_, by the late Rev. WALTER COLTON, has just been published by A. S. Barnes & Co., who will as soon as practicable complete the republication of all Mr. Colton's works, under the editorship of the Rev. Henry T. Cheever. * * * * * The _Domestic Bible_, by the Rev. Ingram Cobbin, just published in a very handsome quarto volume in this city by S. Hueston, we think decidedly the best edition of the Scriptures for common use that has ever been printed in the English language. Its chief merit consists in this, that without embracing a syllable of debatable matter in the form of notes, it contains every needful explanation and illustration of the text that can be gathered from ancient art, literature and history, expressed with great distinctness and compactness, together with such well-executed wood engravings as unquestionable knowledge in this age could suggest--omitting altogether the absurd fancy embellishments which in most of the illustrated Bibles are so offensive to the taste, and so worthless as guides to the understanding. The editor we believe is a clergyman of the Episcopal Church in England, but he has had the good sense to avoid, so far as we can see, everything that would vex the sectarian feelings of any one who admits that the Bible itself is true. * * * * * The _Life, Speeches, Orations, and Diplomatic Papers of Lewis Cass_, are in press at Baltimore, under the editorship of Mr. George H. Hickman. _The Speeches, Forensic Arguments, and Diplomatic Papers_ of Daniel Webster (to be comprised in six large octavo volumes), are in the press of Little & Brown of Boston, under the care of Mr. Edward Everett. _The Memoirs and Works of the late John C. Calhoun_ are soon to be published in Charleston, by Mr. R. K. Craller, and we hear of collections of the Speeches and Public Papers of Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Benton. All these are important works in literature, affairs or history. * * * * * Professor GILLESPIE, of Union College, has just published (Harper & Brothers) a translation of The Philosophy of Mathematics, from the _Cours de Philosophie Positive_ of AUGUSTE COMTE. The intellect of Europe in this century has evolved no greater work than the Philosophie Positive, and Professor Gillespie has done a wise thing in rendering into English that part of it which relates to the field of mathematical science. * * * * * Professor LINCOLN'S edition of Horace (recently published by the Appletons) is the subject of much commendatory observation from critical scholars. For purposes of instruction it is likely to have precedence of any other that has been printed in this country. Those having marginal translations may be very convenient for indolent boys, but they are not altogether the most serviceable. * * * * * A work of very great ability has appeared in Paris, under the title of _De la Certitude_, (Upon Certainty), by A. JAVARY. It makes an octavo of more than five hundred pages, and for originality of ideas and illustrations, and cumulative force of logic, is almost unrivalled. The sceptical speculation of the time is reduced by it to powder, and thrown to the winds. * * * * * Mr. MCCONNELL, who gave us last year a brilliant volume under the title of "Talbot and Vernon," has just published, _The Glenns, a Family History_, by which his good reputation will be much increased. It displays much skill in the handling, and is altogether an advance from his previous performance. (C. Scribner.) * * * * * The wife of a shipmaster trading from Boston in the Pacific, has just published a volume entitled _Life in Fejee, or Five Years among the Cannibals_. It is a very entertaining book, and we are obliged to the cannibals for not eating the author. * * * * * Noticing the appointment of Mr. S. G. GOODRICH to be consul for the United States at Paris, the London _News_ says: "In these days of testimonials and compliments, we should not be surprised to hear of an address of congratulation to the admired Peter, from the 'children of England.'" * * * * * Of recent American Novels, the best that have fallen under our notice (except those of Hawthorne and McConnell, before noticed), are, _The Rangers, or the Tory's Daughter_, a very interesting tale illustrative of the revolutionary history of Vermont, by D. P. Thompson, author of "The Green Mountain Boys," (B. B. Mussey & Co., Boston); _Mount Hope, or Philip, King of the Wampanoags_, by C. H. Hollister, (Harper & Brothers); _Rebels and Tories, or the Blood of the Mohawk_, by Lawrence Labree, (Dewitt and Davenport); and _Second Love_, a pleasant domestic story, by an anonymous writer, (G. P. Putnam.) * * * * * The Hakluyt Society, in London, has commenced its series of publications with _Divers Voyages touching the Discovery of America and the Islands adjacent_, collected and published by Richard Hakluyt, Prebendary of Bristol, in the year 1582: edited, with notes and an introduction, by John Winter Jones. The society should have many subscribers in this country. * * * * * Dr. MAYO has published a new book of tales, not unworthy of the author of "Kaloolah" and "The Berber," under the title of "_Romance Dust from the Historic Placers._" We shall give it attention hereafter. (Putnam.) * * * * * MASANIELLO is suppressed at Berlin, as _Tell_ had been--not modern imitations of those heroes, but the operas so called, by Rossini and Auber. The Prussian Government, liberal as it was a few months ago in professions, cannot stand the performance of operas! * * * * * Mr. THACKERAY is to commence in London, about the middle of the present month, a course of lectures embracing biographical reminiscences of some of the comic writers of England during the eighteenth century. * * * * * Mr. ALISON, the historian, has been chosen Rector of the University of Glasgow, by the casting vote of Col. Mure, the historian of Greek Literature, who occupied the same place before Macaulay. The Fine Arts. The engravings of the several Art-Unions of this country for the coming year will be from excellent pictures. The American Art-Union will offer its subscribers Mr. Woodville's _Mexican News_, engraved by Alfred Jones; the Philadelphia Art-Union, Huntington's _Christiana and Her Children_, by Andrews; and for the same purpose, Mr. Perkins, of Boston, has allowed the New-England Art-Union to make use of his magnificent picture of _Saul and the Witch of Endor_, painted by Alston, and generally considered one of the finest historical productions of that eminent artist. Each of the Unions, we believe, will also publish some less important works for distribution or prizes. The twenty-sixth exhibition of the _National Academy of Design_, has commenced under favorable auspices. Upon the whole, the collection of pictures is the best ever made by the society. We have not space for any particular criticism, but must refer to Mr. Durand's admirable landscapes; the Greek Girl and full length portrait of General Scott by Mr. Kellogg; Mount Desert Island by Mr. Church; The Defence of Toleration by Mr. Rothermel; The Edge of the Wood by Mr. Huntington; Mr. Gignoux's Winter Sunset, and other pictures in the same department by Richards, Cropsey, and Kensett; and portraits by Elliott, Osgood, Hicks and Flagg,--are the works which strike us as deserving most praise. * * * * * The _Bulletin of the American Art-Union_ for April, describes the opposition to the institution of which it is the organ, as directed by "envy, malice, and uncharitableness," and intimates that it is occasioned by the inability or unwillingness of the committee to purchase the trashy productions of incompetent painters constantly offered to them. We submit to the gentlemen connected with the Art-Union, that they should not suffer the hirelings they may sometimes employ upon the Bulletin, thus to refer to such artists and such men as Durand, Wier, Kellogg, Elliott, and many others, who have ventured to think that their Association does not present altogether the best means to be devised for the promotion of the fine arts. Taste may be displayed in writing, as well as in buying pictures. * * * * * There was recently sold at auction at Paris, for 2,700 francs, a picture by GIRODET, which in its time caused not a little amusement to the Parisians. It was originally a portrait of an actress of the Theatre Français, who married a rich banker. Girodet tried to get the pay for his picture, but the lady and her husband obstinately refused. Hereupon he transformed her into a Danae, receiving the shower of gold, adding other figures, such as a turkey cock representing the eagle of Jove, which rendered the whole work as laughable as it was uncomplimentary to its subject. It was exhibited in one of the expositions in the time of the empire, and no picture was ever more successful with the public. * * * * * KOTZBUE, a historical painter, now residing at Munich, has nearly completed a large picture representing the battle of Züllichau, in 1759, where the Germans under General Wedel were defeated by the Russians under Soltikoff. The work is highly praised, and its author even compared with Horace Vernet for vividness of narrative, truth in detail, and force and harmony of color. * * * * * Mr. ELLIOTT, probably the best portrait painter now living, will soon visit Marshfield, where Mr. Webster has promised to sit to him, for a friend of his in this city. * * * * * Two statues by the lamented SCHWANTHALER have just been set up in the royal library at Munich. The first represents Albert V., Duke of Bavaria, the founder of the library, and a great patron of science. Of course, he is presented in middle-age costume; his head is bare, his face reflective, and his right hand supports his chin,--an image of repose, after a work is accomplished. The other statue is of King Louis (of Lola Montes memory), in royal robes, the left hand resting on his sword, and his right holding the plan of the edifice containing the library, which was built by him. His whole expression is the opposite to that of the Duke, not repose, but restless activity in search of new objects. A critic says that these statues do not stand well on their feet, and that the knees are bent as if one leg was lame, a fault, he says, not peculiar to Schwanthaler. * * * * * We last month spoke of the New Museum at Berlin, one of the finest edifices of modern times. It may be interesting to our readers to know that the total expense of the building and interior decoration was in round numbers $1,100,000. Of this sum the execution of the ornamental work and works of art in the interior, including the frescoes of Kaulbach and others, with the arrangement of objects of art and furniture necessary for their display, cost upwards of $220,000. * * * * * The Exhibition of the Munich Art-Union took place in the beginning of March. Among the pictures, attention was particularly drawn to a series of sketches from Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor, by Löfller. Baade exhibited a Norwegian picture, representing an effect of moonlight: Peter Hess two small humorous pieces from military life, which were greatly admired, as was especially a series of aquarelles representing scenes in Switzerland and Italy, by Suter, a Swiss artist. * * * * * KAULBACH only works at Berlin on his frescoes in the New Museum during the pleasant season. The second picture, the Destruction of Jerusalem, was nearly finished last fall when the cold came on. He left it, and it is now covered and concealed by brown paper till he shall again set to work on it. * * * * * M. LAMARTINE recently presented in the French Assembly a petition from William Tell Poussin, formerly minister of the Republic in the United States, praying the French Government to grant a block of granite, taken from the quarries of Cherbourg, for the national monument to Washington. * * * * * WIDNMANN, the sculptor, of Munich, has recently completed in plaster a group of the size of life, of a man defending his wife and child against the attack of a tiger. The figures are nude, and the only figure yet finished, that of the man, is spoken of as a model. HAS THERE BEEN A GREAT POET IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY! The _Eclectic Review_ for the last month, in an article upon the writings of Joanna Baillie, answers this question in the manner following: "We may enumerate the following names as those of real poets, dead or alive, included in the first half of the nineteenth century in Britain:--Bloomfield, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Campbell, Moore, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Professor Wilson, Hogg, Croly, Maturin, Hunt, Scott, James Montgomery, Pollok, Tennyson, Aird, Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Hemans, Joanna Baillie, and the author of 'Festus.' We leave this list to be curtailed, or to be increased, at the pleasure of the reader. But, we ask, which of those twenty-three has produced a work uniquely and incontestably, or even, save in one or two instances, professedly GREAT? Most of those enumerated have displayed great powers; some of them have proved themselves fit to begin greatest works; but none of them, whether he has begun, or only thought of beginning, has been able to finish. Bloomfield, the tame, emasculate Burns of England, has written certain pleasing and genuine poems smelling of the soil, but the 'Farmer's Boy' remained what the Scotch poet would have called a 'haflin callant,' and never became a full-grown and brawny man. Wordsworth was equal to the epic of the age, but has only constructed the great porch leading up to the edifice, and one or two beautiful cottages lying around. Coleridge could have written a poem--whether didactic, or epic, or dramatic--equal in fire and force to the 'Iliad,' or the 'Hamlet,' or the 'De Rerum Natura,' and superior to any of the three in artistic finish and metaphysical truth and religious feeling--a work ranking immediately beside the 'Paradise Lost;' but he has, instead, shed on us a shower of plumes, as from the wing of a fallen angel--beautiful, ethereal, scattered, and tantalizing. Southey's poems are large without being great--massive, without being majestic--they have rather the bulk of an unformed chaos than the order and beauty of a finished creation. Campbell, in many points the Virgil of his time, has, alas! written no Georgies; his odes and lesser poems are, 'atoms of the rainbow;' his larger, such as 'Gertrude of Wyoming,' may be compared to those segments of the showery arch we see in a disordered evening sky; but he has reared no complete 'bow of God.' Moore's 'Lalla Rookh' is an elegant and laborious composition--not a shapely building; it is put together by skilful art, not formed by plastic power. Byron's poems are, for the most part, disjointed but melodious groans, like those of Ariel from the centre of the cloven pine; 'Childe Harold' is his soliloquy when sober--'Don Juan' his soliloquy when half-drunk; the 'Corsair' would have made a splendid episode in an epic--but the epic, where is it? and 'Cain,' his most creative work, though a distinct and new world, is a bright and terrible abortion--a comet, instead of a sun. So, too, are the leading works of poor Shelley, which resemble Southey in size, Byron in power of language, and himself only in spirit and imagination, in beauties and faults. Keats, like Shelley, was arrested by death, as he was piling up enduring and monumental works. Professor Wilson has written '_Noctes_' innumerable; but where is his poem on a subject worthy of his powers, or where is his _work_ on any subject whatever? Hogg has bound together a number of beautiful ballads, by a string of no great value, and called it the 'Queen's Wake.' Scott himself has left no solid poem, but instead, loose, rambling, spirited, metrical romances--the bastards of his genius--and a great family of legitimate chubby children of novels, bearing the image, but not reaching the full stature, of their parent's mind. Croly's poems, like the wing of his own 'seraph kings,' standing beside the sleeping Jacob, has a 'lifted, mighty plume,' and his eloquence is always as classic as it is sounding; but it is, probably, as much the public's fault as his, that he has never equalled his first poem, 'Paris in 1815,' which now appears a basis without a building. Maturin has left a powerful passage or two, which may be compared to a feat performed by the victim of some strong disease, to imitate which no healthy or sane person would, could, or durst attempt. James Montgomery will live by his smaller poems--his larger are long lyrics--and when was a long lyric any other than tedious? Hunt has sung many a joyous carol, and many a pathetic ditty, but produced no high or lasting poem. Pollok has aimed at a higher object than almost any poet of his day; he has sought, like Milton, to enshrine religion in poetic form, and to attract to it poetic admirers: he did so in good faith, and he expended great talents and a young life, in the execution; but, unfortunately, he confounded Christianity with one of its narrowest shapes, and hence the book, though eloquent in passages, and dear to a large party, is rather a long and powerful, though unequal and gloomy sermon, than a poem; he has shed the sunshine of his genius upon his own peculiar notions, far more strongly than on general truths; and the spirit of the whole performance may be expressed in the words of Burns, slightly altered,--'Thunder-tidings of damnation.' _His_ and _our_ friend, Thomas Aird, has a much subtler, more original and genial mind than Pollok's, and had he enjoyed a tithe of the same recognition, he might have produced a Christian epic on a far grander scale; as it is, his poems are fragmentary and episodical, although Dante's 'Inferno' contains no pictures more tremendously distinct, yet ideal, than his 'Devil's Dream upon Mount Acksbeck. Tennyson is a greater Calvinist in one sense than either of the Scotch poets we have named--he owes more to the general faith of others in his genius than to any special or strong works of his own; but let us be dumb, he is now Laureate--the crowned grasshopper of a summer day! Bailey of 'Festus' has a vast deal more power than Tennyson, who is only his delicate, consumptive brother; but 'Festus' seems either different from, or greater than, a _work_. We are reminded of one stage in the history of the nebular hypothesis, when Sir W. Herschel, seeing a central mass in the midst of a round burr of light, was almost driven to the conclusion that it was _something immensely greater than what we call a star_--a kind of monster sun. So with the prodigious birth men call 'Festus.' Our gifted young friend Yendys is more likely than any, if he live and avoid certain tendencies to diffusion and over-subtlety, to write a solid and undying POEM. "It were easy to extend the induction to our lady authors, and to show that Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Browning, and Joanna Baillie, Mrs. Shelley, &c., have abounded rather in effusions or efforts, or tentative experiments, than in calm, complete, and perennial works." The critic appears never to have heard of our Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Poe, Longfellow, or Maria Brooks, any one of whom is certainly superior to some of the poets mentioned in the above paragraph; and his doctrine that a great poem must necessarily be a long one--that poetry, like butter and cheese, is to be sold by the pound--does not altogether commend itself to our most favorable judgment. THE REAL ADVENTURES AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF GEORGE BORROW. Generally, we believe, _Lavengro_, though it has sold well everywhere, has not been very much praised. It has been conceded that the author of "the Bible in Spain" must be a Crichton, but his last performance looked overmuch like trifling with the credulity of his readers. We find in Colburn's _New Monthly Magazine_ for April a sort of vindication of Borrow, which embraces some curious particulars of his career, and quote the following passages, which cannot fail to interest his American readers: "We have yet to learn where our author was during the years intervening from the epoch of the dingle to the date of Spanish travel; that he was neither in mind nor body inactive, ample testimony may be adduced, not only in the form of writings made public during that interval, but in the internal evidence afforded by them of laborious research. In a work published at St. Petersburgh in 1835, known but to few, entitled "Targum; or, Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and Dialects, by George Borrow," we find indications of how those intervening years were spent. He says, in the preface to this work, "The following pieces, selections from a huge and undigested mass of translation, accumulated during several years devoted to philological pursuits, are with much diffidence offered to the public," &c. These translations are remarkable for force and correct emphasis, and afford demonstration of what power the author possesses over metre. We shall cite but few examples, however, for it is believed that not only that huge mass, but many an additional song and ballad now is digested, and lies side by side with the glorious "Kæmpe Viser," the "Ab Gwilym," and other learned translations, by means of which it may be hoped that the gifted Borrow will ere long vindicate his lasting claim to scholarship--a claim to which it is to be feared he is indifferent, for he is no boaster, and does himself no justice; or, if he boasts at all, prefers, as with a species of self-sarcasm, the mention of his lesser, on which he dwells with zest, to that of his greater and more enduring triumphs. The "Targum" consists of translations from the following languages: Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Tartar, Tibetian, Chinese, Mandchou, Russian, Malo-Russian, Polish, Finnish, Anglo-Saxon, Ancient Norse, Suabian, German, Dutch, Danish, Ancient Danish, Swedish, Ancient Irish, Irish, Gaellic, Ancient British, Cambrian British, Greek, Modern Greek, Latin, Provençal, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Rommany. A few specimens from this work may be acceptable to the English reader--a work so rare, that the authorities of a German university not long ago sent a person to St. Petersburgh to endeavor to discover a copy:" ODE TO GOD. FROM THE HEBREW. Reign'd the Universe's master ere were earthly things begun; When his mandate all created, Ruler was the name he won; And alone He'll rule tremendous when all things are past and gone; He no equal has, nor consort, He the singular and lone Has no end and no beginning, His the sceptre, might, and throne; He's my God and living Saviour, rock to which in need I run; He's my banner and my refuge, fount of weal when call'd upon; In his hand I place my spirit, at nightfall and rise of sun, And therewith my body also;--God's my God,--I fear no one. PRAYER. FROM THE ARABIC. O Thou who dost know what the heart fain would hide; Who ever art ready whate'er may betide; In whom the distressed can hope in their woe, Whose ears with the groans of the wretched are plied-- Still bid Thy good gifts from Thy treasury flow; All good is assembled where Thou dost abide; To Thee, save my poverty, nought can I show, And of Thee all my poverty's wants are supplied; What choice have I save to Thy portal to go? If 'tis shut, to what other my steps can I guide? 'Fore whom as a suppliant low shall I bow, If Thy bounty to me, Thy poor slave, is denied? But, oh! though rebellious full often I grow, Thy bounty and kindness are not the less wide. O LORD! I NOTHING CRAVE BUT THEE. FROM THE TARTAR. O Thou from whom all love doth flow, Whom all the world doth reverence so, Thou constitut'st each care I know; O Lord! I nothing crave but Thee. O keep me from each sinful way; Thou breathedst life within my clay; I'll therefore serve Thee night and day; O Lord! I nothing crave but Thee. I ope my eyes, and see Thy face, On Thee my musings all I place, I've left my parents, friends, and race; O Lord! I nothing crave but Thee. Take Thou my soul, my every thing; My blood from out its vessels wring; Thy slave am I, and Thou my King; O Lord! I nothing crave but Thee. I speak--my tongue on Thee doth roam; I list--the winds Thy title boom; For in my soul has God his home; O Lord! I nothing crave but Thee. The world the shallow worldling craves, And greatness need ambitious knaves; The lover of his maiden raves; O Lord! I nothing crave but Thee. The student needs his bookish lore, The bigot shrines to pray before, His pulpit needs the orator; Oh Lord! I nothing crave but thee. Though all the learning 'neath the skies, And th' houries all of paradise, The Lord should place before my eyes, O Lord! I'd nothing crave but Thee. When I through paradise shall stray, Its houries and delights survey, Full little gust awake will they; O Lord! I'll nothing crave but Thee. For Hadgee Ahmed is my name, My heart with love of God doth flame; Here and above I'll bide the same; O Lord! I nothing crave but Thee. Nor was this the only literary labor performed by Mr. Borrow while at St. Petersburgh: to the "Targum" he appended a translation of "The Talisman," and other pieces from the Russian of Alexander Pushkin. He also edited the Gospel in the Mandchou Tartar dialect while residing in that city. In connection with the latter undertaking there is an anecdote told of which, like the story of his making horse-shoes, shows his resources, and redounds to his credit. It runs thus:--"It was known that a fountain of types in the Mandchou Tartar character existed at a certain house in the city of St. Petersburgh, but there was no one to be found who could set them up. In this emergency the young editor demanded to inspect the types; they were brought forth in a rusty state from a cellar; on which, resolved to see his editorial labors complete, he cleaned the types himself, and set them up with his own hand." Of his journeyings in Spain Mr. Borrow has been his own biographer; but here again his higher claims to distinction are lightly touched on, or not named. In 1837 a book was printed at Madrid, having the following curious title-page: "_Embèo e Mafaró Lucas. Brotoboro randado andré la chipe griega, acáana chibado andré o Romanó, ó chipe es Zincales de Sese._ "_El Evangelio segun S. Lucas, traducido al Romaní, ó dialecto de los Gitanos de España. 1837._" And this work is no other than the remarkable antecedent of the "Zincali,"--the translation of St. Luke's Gospel into the Gipsy dialect of Spain.[A] Of the Bible in Spain it is unnecessary to speak; there can be no better evidence of the estimation it is held in than the fact of its having been translated into French and German, while it has run through at least thirty thousand copies at home. But it is on the "Zincali" that Borrow's reputation will maintain its firm footing; the originality and research involved in its production, the labors and dangers it entailed, are duly appreciated at home and abroad. During the past year a highly interesting account of the Gipsies and other wandering people of Norway, written in Danish, was published at Christiana; it is entitled "Beretning om Fante--eller Landstrygerfolket i Norge" (Account of the Fant, or Wandering People of Norway), by Eilert Sundt. At the twenty-third page of this work, the Danish author, in allusion to the subject of this notice, says: "This Borrow is a remarkable man. As agent for the British Bible Society he has undertaken journeys into remote lands, and acquainted from his early youth, not only with many European languages, but likewise with the Rommani of the English Gipsies, he sought up with zest the Gipsies every where, and became their faithful missionary. He has made himself so thoroughly master of their ways and customs that he soon passed for one of their blood. He slept in their tents in the forests of Russia and Hungary, visited them in their robber caves in the mountainous _pass_ regions of Italy, lived with them five entire years (towards 1840) in Spain, where he, for his endeavors to distribute the Gospel in that Catholic land, was imprisoned with the very worst of them for a time in the dungeons of Madrid. He at last went over to North Africa, and sought after his Tartars even there. It is true, no one has taken equal pains with Borrow to introduce himself among this rude and barbarous people, but on that account he has been enabled better than any other to depict the many mysteries of this race; and the frequent impressions which his book has undergone within a short period, show with what interest the English public have received his graphic descriptions." Of the extraordinary acquisitions of Mr. Borrow in languages, a pleasant story is told by Sir William Napier, who, looking into a courtyard, from the window of a Spanish inn, heard a man converse successively in a dozen tongues, so fluently and so perfectly, that he was puzzled to decide what was his country,--Germany, Holland, France, Italy, Russia, Portugal, or Spain; and coming down he joined his circle, asked the question of him, and was astonished by the information that he was an English Bible agent. Between the historian of the Peninsular War and the missionary an intimacy sprung up, which we believe has continued without any interruption to the present time. THE FAUN OVER HIS GOBLET. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY R. H. STODDARD. I. My goblet was exceeding beautiful; It was the jewel of my cave; I had A corner where I hid it in the moss, Between the jagged crevices of rock, Where no one but myself could find it out; But when a nymph, or wood-god passed my door, I filled it to the brim with bravest wine, And offered them a draught, and told them Jove Had nothing finer, richer at his feasts, Though Ganymede and Hebe did their best: "His nectar is not richer than my wine," Said I, "and for the goblet, look at it!" But I have broken my divinest cup And trod its fragments in the dust of Earth! II. My goblet was exceeding beautiful. Sometimes my brothers of the woods, the fauns, Held gay carousals with me in my cave; I had a skin of Chian wine therein, Of which I made a feast; and all who drank From out my cup, a feast within itself, Made songs about the bright immortal shapes Engraven on the side below their lips: But we shall never drain it any more, And never sing about it any more; For I have broken my divinest cup And trod its fragments in the dust of Earth! III. My goblet was exceeding beautiful. For Pan was 'graved upon it, rural Pan; He stood in horror in a marshy place Clasping a bending reed; he thought to clasp Syrinx, but clasped a reed, and nothing more! There was another picture of the god, When he had learned to play upon the flute; He sat at noon within a shady bower Piping, with all his listening herd around; (I thought at times I saw his fingers move, And caught his music: did I dream or not?) Hard by the Satyrs danced, and Dryads peeped From out the mossy trunks of ancient trees; And nice-eared Echo mocked him till he thought-- The simple god!--he heard another Pan Playing, and wonder shone in his large eyes! But I have broken my divinest cup, And trod its fragments in the dust of Earth! IV. My goblet was exceeding beautiful. For Jove was there transformed into the Bull Bearing forlorn Europa through the waves, Leaving behind a track of ruffled foam; Powerless with fear she held him by the horns, Her golden tresses streaming on the winds; In curvéd shells, young Cupids sported near, While sea gods glanced from out their weedy caves, And on the shore were maids with waving scarfs, And hinds a-coming to the rescue--late! But I have broken my divinest cup, And trod its fragments in the dust of Earth! V. My goblet was exceeding beautiful. For rosy Bacchus crowned its rich designs: He sat within a vineyard full of grapes, With Ariadne kneeling at his side; His arm was thrown around her slender waist, His head lay in her bosom, and she held A cup, a little distance from his lips, And teased him with it, for he wanted it. A pair of spotted pards where sleeping near, Couchant in shade, their heads upon their paws; And revellers were dancing in the woods, Snapping their jolly fingers evermore! But all is vanished, lost, for ever lost, For I have broken my divinest cup, And trod its fragments in the dust of Earth! FOOTNOTES: [A] The writer has before him another translation of St. Luke's Gospel in the Basque, edited by George Borrow while in Spain--(Evangeloia S. Lucasen Guissan.--El Evangelio segun S. Lucas. Traducido al Vascuere. Madrid. 1838). THE JESUIT RELATIONS. DR. O'CALLAGHAN'S MEMOIR--NEW DISCOVERIES IN ROME, &c. At the stated meeting of the New-York Historical Society, in October, 1847, Dr. E. B. O'CALLAGHAN, well known as the author of a valuable history of New-York under the Dutch,[B] and now engaged in superintending the publication of the Documentary History of the State, under the act of March 13, 1849, communicated a paper, which was read at the subsequent meeting in November, and published in the "Proceedings," on the "_Jesuit Relations of Discoveries and other Occurrences in Canada and the Northern and Western States of the Union, 1632-1672_."[C] This memoir embraces notices of the authors of the Relations, a catalogue raisonnée, and a table showing what volumes are in this country and Canada, and where they are to be found. A French translation of this work, with notes, corrections and additions, has been published (in 1850) at Montreal, by the Rev. Father MARTIN, Superior of the Jesuits in Canada. As the notes and additions contain valuable information, especially upon the discovery of new matter for the illustration of the general subject, we shall endeavor to present an intelligible compend of their substance. The French editor carries back the history to 1611, when the first Jesuit missionaries to North America, Father Pierre Biard and Enmond Masse, arrived in Acadia. They took part in the establishment of Port Royal and that of St. Sauveur, in Pentagoet, now Mount Desert Island. The former wrote a Relation of his voyage. Dr. O'Callaghan had spoken of the _nomadic_ race which was to be subjected to the influences of the gospel, under the auspices of the Jesuit missionaries, as inhabiting the country extending from the island of Anticosti to the Mississippi. The translator qualifies this statement by a note, in which he says that this term _nomadic_ is applicable to the nations of Algonquin origin, but not to the Hurons nor the Iroquois, who had fixed abodes and regularly organized villages or towns. The Five Nations were the Agniers (Mohawks), the Oneionts (Oneidas), the Onontagues (Onondagas), the Goiogoiens (Cayugas), and the Tsonnontouans (Senecas). The Tuscaroras, a tribe from the south, were admitted to the confederation, making thus Six Nations, during the last century. CHAMPLAIN was the first European who reached the Atlantic shores of the state of Maine from the St. Lawrence by way of the Kennebec. This illustrious discoverer was sent in 1629 to explore that route as far as the coast of the Etechemins, "in which he had been before in the time of the Sieur du Mont."[D] The French editor adds the following notices of two of the fathers who filled the office of Superior in Canada, not mentioned by Dr. O'Callaghan. PIERRE BIARD, according to the history of Jouvency, was born at Grenoble, and entered the Society of Jesus while yet very young. He came to Port Royal in 1611, and took part in the establishment of St. Sauveur à Pentagoet, in 1613. The English came from Virginia to destroy this settlement, scarcely yet commenced. After having suffered greatly from the enemies of Catholicism and the Jesuits, Father Biard was sent back to France. He taught theology at Lyons for nine years, and died at Avignon, November 17, 1622. He was then chaplain to the King's troops. He left a _Relation de la Nouvelle France_, and of the _Voyage of the Jesuits_, as well as some other works. CHARLES LALEMANT was born at Paris in 1587, and entered the Society of Jesus, at the age of twenty. Two of his brothers, Louis and Jerome, shortly afterwards followed his example, and the second labored for a long time in the Canadian mission. He first came to Canada in 1625. Charlevoix says he accompanied the expedition from Acadia in 1613, for the establishment of Pentagoet. He crossed the ocean four times in behalf of his beloved mission, and was twice shipwrecked. Having been captured by the English in one of these voyages, he was retained some time as a prisoner. His last voyage to Canada was made in 1634. In the following year, he took charge of the House of our Lady of Recovery, which was then established in the lower city of Quebec, and commenced at the same time the first schools for the French children. It was this father who was with Champlain in his last moments. Many years afterward, he returned to France, when he was successive chief of the Colleges of Rouen, of La Flèche and Paris, and Superior of the Maison Professe in the last named city. He died there, on the eighteenth of November, 1674, aged eighty-seven years. Father CHARLES wrote an interesting _Relation on Canada_, inserted under the date of August 1, in the _Mercure Français_ of 1626, and a letter on his shipwrecks, which Champlain published in his edition of 1632. We have also some religious works left by him. The _Relation_ of Father Biard was published at Lyons, 1612 and 1616, in 32mo. It gives an account of his travels and labors--the nature of the country, its mineral and vegetable productions, &c. That of Father Lalemant is a long letter addressed to his brother Jerome, and inserted in the _Mercure Français_, 1627-28: Paris, 1629. It treats of the manners and customs of the Indians, the nature of the country, and the fatal change which trade had undergone since it had become a monopoly. Continuing the researches of Dr. O'Callaghan, Father Martin found, from a catalogue of manuscripts on Canada, preserved among the archives of the Jesuits at Rome, that there was a _Relation du Canada_ for 1676 and for 1677: but it was not ascertained whether these were complete. Other manuscripts were found in the same collection, but fragmentary, and could only serve as the materiel of a general Relation. But a more important acquisition was made in the recovery of valuable manuscripts in Canada. There have been found two complete Relations, following that of 1672, and continuing the series to 1679. One is the Relation of 1673, and the other comprises a period of six years, from 1673 to 1679. They fortunately escaped the pillage of the Jesuit College at Quebec, Father Casot, the last of the old race of Jesuits, dying at Quebec in 1800, had confided them, with other manuscripts, to the pious hands of the nuns of the Hotel Dieu, in that city, who preserved them for a long time as a sacred trust, and restored them, to the Jesuits, when they returned to Canada in 1842. What increases the value of these historical monuments, is the fact, that they are contemporary with the facts to which they relate. They bear numerous corrections, notes, and even entire pages, in the handwriting of Father Dablon, then superior of the missions in Canada, who, without doubt, prepared them for publication. That of 1672-3 is anonymous, and in three parts. The first is on the Huron mission near Quebec, the second on the Iroquois missions, and the third on the various missions to the west of the great lakes. In the last part, consisting of eighty-seven pages, the thirty-ninth and fortieth are missing. The Relation for 1673-9 is also anonymous and without a general title, but on the back of the last leaf is an endorsement in the handwriting of Father Dablon, "Relation en 1679, abrégé des précédentes." On the first page the writer announces that the relation embraces a period of six years. It is divided into eight chapters, subdivided into paragraphs. The second chapter is devoted to an account of the last labors and heroic death of Father MARQUETTE, on the lonely shore of the "Lac des Illinois," now Lake Michigan. This relation passes in review all the missions of the west, and enters into minute details concerning the missions to the Iroquois, the Montagnais, the Gaspésiens, those of the Sault St. Louis, and Lorette. It extends to 147 pages, but unfortunately one entire sheet is lost, embracing the pages 109 to 118. This last Relation should have included the other voyages of Father Marquette, and especially the discovery of the Mississippi in 1673; but another manuscript of the same epoch, and which bears the same evidence of authenticity, explains the omission. Under the title of "Voyage and Death of Father Marquette," it recites in sixty pages the labors which have immortalized that celebrated missionary. This curious manuscript furnished Thevenot with the materiel for his publication in 1687, entitled "Voyage et Découverte de quelques Pays et Nations de l'Amerique Septentrionale, par le P. Marquette et le Sr. Joliet."[E] What adds great value to the manuscript is the fact that it is much more extended than the publication of Thevenot. The causes and the preparations for the expedition are recounted; and we can follow the missionary in his various travels, even to his last moments in 1675. Two other documents, which complete this valuable historical discovery, are noticed by Father Martin: 1. The autograph journal of Marquette's last voyage, from the twenty-fifth of October 1674 to the sixth of April 1679, about a month before his death. 2. The autograph map (by Marquette) of the Mississippi, as discovered by him. This extends no farther than the "A Kansea" (Arkansas), where his voyage in that direction terminated. The map published by Thevenot, and recently reproduced by Rich, Bancroft, and others, is incorrect in many particulars, especially with regard to this fact of the Arkansas being the lowest point reached by Marquette. Besides the two Relations (MS.) aforesaid, and the Marquette manuscripts, fragments of the Relations for the years 1674, 1676, 1678, and the following years, have been found, but incomplete. In addition to all these, Father Martin calls attention to one of the printed Relations, little known out of Italy, in the language of which it was written. It was printed at Macerata in 1653. A recent letter from Father Martin announces that he has completed translations into French and English, which will soon be published. It is the work of Father Francois Joseph Bressani, and is thus noticed by Charlevoix: "Father Bressani, a Roman by birth, was one of the most illustrious missionaries to Canada, where he suffered a cruel captivity, and severe tortures. He speaks little of himself in his history, which is well written, but which relates almost entirely to the Huron mission, in which he labored with great zeal so long as it continued. After the almost entire destruction of that nation, and the dispersion of the remainder, he returned to Italy, where he continued to preach until his death, with the greater success, inasmuch as he bore in his mutilated hands the glorious marks of his apostleship among the heathen."[F] The translation by Father Martin will be illustrated by maps and engravings. Recent letters from Italy announce further discoveries in the library of the Dominican Friars at Rome. We congratulate the historical student on the recovery of these and similar memorials of the early history of the country. Especially the labors of the Jesuit missionaries deserve to be more generally familiar to the readers of history; and we cordially respond to the sentiment of approbation with which the services of Dr. O'Callaghan and Father Martin have been greeted heretofore by the press. FOOTNOTES: [B] History of New Netherland, or New-York under the Dutch. &c. 2 vols. 8vo. New-York: Appleton & Co., 1846-8. [C] Proceedings of the New-York Historical Society. For the year 1847, pp. 140-158. [D] Voyage du Champlain. Ed. 1632. p. 209. [E] A copy of this very rare work was destroyed with the valuable library in the burning of the Parliament House in Montreal, 26th April, 1849. [F] Charlevoix: Hist. Nouv. France. Liste des Auteurs. THE HAT REFORM AGITATION. New hats are inevitable. Genin, who appears to be as clever in writing as in making hats, has avowed himself a conservative, and in a long argument has vindicated the style of which he is so eminent a manufacturer. But the "people" are for reform, and we must all bend to the will of the people; land reform, bank reform, all kinds of reform, now are forgotten in the cry for a reform in hats; this has rallied around it all ranks, classes and orders: they say, "Take off your funnels!" It has been responded to with enthusiasm. From the lord of one hundred thousand acres to the hard-worker for his daily bread--from the ultra-conservative to the ultra-destructive--from the High-Churchman to the No-Churchman--from the Puseyite to the Presbyterian--from the gentleman down to the veriest "gent," this new question of Reform has drawn unanimous adhesion. In fact, the attempted revolution in our head gear, more fortunate than the other revolutions talked about of late years, promises to be successful. Says the London _News_, "The ladies are as unanimous as the gentlemen on the subject, and give the potent assistance of their voices to the movement, and wonder how it is that men, who have so keen a sense of the beautiful, should have been so long blinded to the ugliness imposed upon their lordly foreheads by the hat-makers. A few of the most conservative of these hat-makers are the only persons who venture a word in defence of the ancient barbarism which it is the object of the revolutionists to remove. Now and then a hatter of all novelties, whether of hats or of ideas, will venture to come to the aid of the hat-makers, and to ask if any one can suggest a better head 'accoutrement' than the old familiar hat which it is attempted to scout out of society with such hasty ignominy. But, if hatters and the hat conservatives are closely pressed to tell us what recommendation the article has, they are obliged to give up the argument in despair--to intrench themselves in the old fortress of such reasoners, and to defend what is, merely because it is. They would stand on the old ways, were they knee-deep in slush; and they would wear the old hat, were it not only of the shape, but of the material and the color of a chimney-pot. "Every body who has worn a hat, has perceived it to be a nuisance, although he may never have said any thing on the subject till the present cry was raised. As soon as a man gets out of the streets of the capital, or of his own accustomed provincial town, and sets foot in a railway carriage or on board of a steamboat, his first care is to make himself comfortable by disembarrassing his aching temples of his hat. The funnel is put away, and a cap, more ornamental and a thousand times more easy, is elevated to the place of honor, to the great satisfaction of the wearer. Who ever wears a hat at the sea-side? One might as well go to bed in a hat, as wear one out of the purlieus of the town. At the sea-side, or in travelling, or sporting, or rambling over the hills, the ordinary hat is utterly out of the question. Not only is the hat unsightly, expensive, and incommodious;--not only does it offend those _æsthetic_ notions which are so fashionable in our time, but it may be safely alleged that it is hostile to all mental effort. Did any man ever make an eloquent speech with a hat on? Could a painter paint a good picture if he had a hat on while engaged at the easel? Could a mathematician solve a problem? could a musician compose a melody or arrange a harmony? could a poet write a song, or a novelist a novel, or a journalist a leading article, with a hat on? The thing is impossible. Would any man who respected himself, or the feelings of his family and friends, consent to have his portrait painted with the offensive article upon his cranium? It would be almost a proof of insanity, both in the sitter who should insist upon, and the artist who should lend himself to, the perpetration of such an atrocity. We have but to fancy one out of the thousand statues of bronze or marble which it is proposed to erect to the memory of Sir Robert Peel in our great towns and cities, surmounted with a hat of marble or of bronze, to see, at a glance, the absurdity of the thing, and the reasonableness of the demand for a change. There is a very good bust of Chaucer, with a cap on, and there is a still more excellent bust of Lorenzo de Medici, which has also a cap; but we put the question to the most conservative of hatters, and to the greatest stickler for the _etatus quo_ in head attire, whether he would tolerate the marble or bronze portraiture of either of those worthies with the modern hat upon its head? The idea is so preposterous, that, if fairly considered, it would make converts of the most obstinate sticklers for the hat of the nineteenth century. "Seriously, the suggestion for the reform of this article of costume is entitled to the utmost respect. Already Englishmen, when they throw off the trammels of ceremony, and wish to be at their ease, substitute for the stiff, uncomfortable, and inelegant hat, such other article as the taste and enterprise of the hat and cap manufacturers have provided; and in France and Germany the hat has, for the last six or seven years, been gradually altering its form and substance, until it bids fair to be restored, at no distant day, to the more sensible and picturesque shape which it had a couple of centuries ago. So much unanimity has been expressed on the desirability of a change, so much sober truth has been uttered under the thin veil of jest on this matter, and so keenly felt are the inconveniences--to say nothing of the inelegance--of the tube which has usurped and maintained a place upon our heads for so long a period, that there can be no doubt the time is ripe for the introduction of an article of male head-dress more worthy of an educated, civilized, and sensible people. The Turks, under the influence of that great reformer, Sultan Mahmoud, and his worthy successor, Abdul Medjid, have been for some time assimilating themselves in dress to the other inhabitants of Europe. They have adopted our coats, our trousers, our vests, our boots. They have got steamboats and newspapers--but Sultan Mahmoud stopped short at the hat. With all his _penchant_ for imitating the 'Giaours,' he could not bring himself to recommend the hat to a people whom he was desirous to civilize. Any man of taste and enterprise, who would take advantage of the present feeling on the subject to manufacture a hat or cap of a more picturesque form, would confer a public benefit, and would not lack encouragement for his wares. An article which would protect the face from the sun, which the present 'funnel' does not--which should be light, which the hat is not--which should be elegant, and no offence to the eye of taste if painted in a portrait or sculptured in a statue, which the hat is not--and which should meet the requirements of health, as well as those of comfort and appearance, which the hat is very far from doing--would, all jest and _persiflage_ apart, be a boon to the people of this generation. It needs but example to effect the change, for the feeling is so strong and universal that a good substitute would meet with certain popularity. We have no doubt that, sooner or later, this reform will be made; and that the historian, writing fifty years hence, will note it in his book as a remarkable circumstance, and a proof of the pertinacity with which men cling to all which habit and custom have rendered familiar--that for three-quarters of a century, if not longer, a piece of attire so repugnant to the eye of taste, and so deficient in any quality which should recommend it to sensible people, should have been not only tolerated, but admired. In all seriousness, we hope that the days of the tubular hat are numbered, and that in this instance philosophy in sport will become reformation in earnest." PROFESSIONAL DEVOTION. Lord Campbell said lately in the House of Lords, that the bill for the Registration of Assurances was drawn by Mr. Duval, and he related an anecdote illustrative of that gentleman's entire devotion to his professional pursuits. A gentleman one day said to him, "But do you not find it very dull work poring from morning until night over those dusty sheep-skins?" "Why," said Duval, "to be sure it is a little dull, but every now and then I come across a brilliant deed, drawn by a great master, and the beauty of that recompenses me for the weariness of all the others." "THE WILFULNESS OF WOMAN." In an early number of _The International_ we mentioned a MS. comedy by the late Mrs. OSGOOD, in connection with the commendations which the dramatic pieces of that admirable woman and most charming poet had received from Sheridan Knowles and other critics in that line. We transcribe the opening scene of the play, which strikes us as excellently fitted for the stage. The friends of the lamented authoress will perceive that it is an eminently characteristic production, though having been written at an early age it scarcely illustrates her best style of dialogue. ACT FIRST.--SCENE FIRST. _A room in the Chateau de Beaumont. Victorine de Vere and Rosalinde--the former sitting._ ROSALINDE.--But consider, sweet lady, you have been betrothed from childhood to my lord the Count. You say it was your father's dying wish that you should marry him, and he has been brought up to consider you his own. VICTORINE.--And for that reason wed I _not_ the Count; I might have loved him had I not been _bid_, For he is noble, brave, and passing kind. But, Rosalinde, when 'mid my father's vines, A child I roamed, I shunned the rich, ripe fruit Within my reach, and stretched my little arm Beyond its strength, for that which farthest hung, Though poorest too perchance. Years past away, The wilful child is grown a woman now, Yet wilful still, and wayward as the child. (_She Sings._) Though you wreathe in my raven hair jewels the rarest That ever illumined the brow of a queen, I should think the least one that were wanting, the fairest, And pout at their lustre in petulant spleen. Tho' the diamond should lighten there, regal in splendor, The topaz its sunny glow shed o'er the curl, And the emerald's ray tremble, timid and tender-- If the pearl were not by, I should sigh for the pearl! Though you fling at my feet all the loveliest flowers That Summer is waking in forest and field, I should pine 'mid the bloom you had brought from her bowers For some little blossom spring only could yield. Take the rose, with its passionate beauty and bloom, The lily so pure, and the tulip so bright-- Since I miss the sweet _violet's_ lowly perfume, The violet _only_ my soul can delight! I prize not Henri--for a breath, a nod, Can make him mine for ever. _One_ I prize Whose pulse ne'er quickened at my step or voice, Who cares no more for smile from Victorine, Whom princes sue--than Victorine for them. But he _shall_ love me--ay, and when he too Lies pleading at my feet!--I make no doubt But I shall weary of mine idle whim, And rate him well for daring to be there! ROS.--Please you, my lady, who is this new victim? VIC.--Whom think you, Rosalinde? Eugene Legard! the brave young captain--lover of Carille--betrothed to her--about to marry her! ROS.--But who's Carille, my lady? VIC.--(_Impatiently_.) Now know you not the youthful village belle whose face my gallant cousin raves about? I would he'd wed the girl, and leave Legard and me _as free_, to wed! (_Enter the Count._) What, torment! here again! (_Exit Rosalinde._) COUNT HENRI.--Where should I be, sweet coz? I love the sunshine! VIC.--So love you not this room--for here the sun ne'er shines. COUNT.--The sun--_my_ sun is smiling on me now! VIC.--Oh, don't! I'm so tired of all that! COUNT.--Lady, it shall not weary you again; I've borne your light caprice too long already. For the last time I come to ask of you, madam, Is it your pleasure we fulfil at once your father's last injunction? VIC.--Ah! but this isn't the _last_ time, Henri; I'll wager you this hand with my heart in it, you will ask me the same question a dozen times yet ere you die. COUNT.--I'll not gainsay you, lady; time will show. (_A short pause._) Yet, by my sword, if such your wager be, I will be dumb till doomsday. VIC.--Then book the bet! and claim my heart and hand--(_she pauses--he waits in eager hope_)--on--doomsday morning, cousin! COUNT.--I claim thee now or never! VIC.--If they only hadn't said we _must_, Henri! COUNT.--Pshaw! VIC.--Beside, all the world _expects_ it you know; I do so hate to fulfil people's expectations: it is so commonplace and humdrum! COUNT.--Depend upon it, Lady Victorine, nobody ever expected you to do any thing reasonable or commonplace or humdrum! (_He Sings._) Archly on thy cheek, Worth a god's imprinting, Starry dimples speak, Rich with rosy tinting,-- What a pity, love, Anger's burning flushes E'er should rise above Those bewitching blushes! Warm thy lip doth glow, With such lovely color, Ruby's heart would show Hues of beauty duller,-- What a shame, the while, Scorn should ever curl it, And o'ercast the smile That should still enfurl it! Soft thy dark eye beams, With the star-night's splendor, Now with joy it gleams, Now with tears 'tis tender,-- Ah! what pain to feel, Ere another minute, Passion's fire may steal All the softness in it! VIC.--There! you CAN _sing_! I'll give the----hem!--his due. I only wish you could make love as well as you make verses. COUNT.--And how should I make love? VIC.--How? You should be at my feet all day and under my window all night; you should call black white when _I_ call it so, and--wear a single hair of my eyelash next your heart for ever. COUNT.--Hum! Any thing more, cousin? VIC.--Yes: you should write sonnets on the sole of my shoe, and study every curve of my brow, as if life and death were in its rise or fall! (_He turns away._) Henri, come here! (_He approaches._) Come! you are a good-looking man enough, after all! Ah! why couldn't my poor father have _forbidden_ me to marry you! He might have known I should have been _sure_ in that case to have fallen desperately in love with you, Henri! COUNT.--By Heaven, I will bear this trifling no longer! I will write instantly and propose to the peasant girl, Carille--_she_ will be proud to be called La Contesse de Beaumont. VIC.--_Will_ you do so? Oh, you darling cousin! I shall love you dearly when you are once married! And, cousin, I don't believe she'll live till doomsday, do you? Don't forget that I'm to be your second--on doomsday morning, cousin. (_Exit Count in a rage._) I am so happy--and Carille will be so happy too--I am sure she will! I know if I were a village girl I should be dying to be a lady--for now I am a lady I am dying to be a village girl--heigh-ho. (_Exit._) A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[G] WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ. _Continued from page 57._ CHAPTER XXII. In a very gaudily furnished parlor, and in a very gaudy dress, sat a lady of some eight or nine and thirty years of age, with many traces of beauty still to be perceived in a face of no very intellectual expression. Few persons perhaps would have recognized in her the fair and faulty girl whom we have depicted weeping bitterly over the fate of Sir Philip Hastings' elder brother, and over the terrible situation in which he left her. Her features had much changed: the girlish expression--the fresh bloom of youth was gone. The light graceful figure was lost; but the mind had changed as greatly as the person, though, like it, the heart yet retained some traces of the original. When first she appeared before the reader's eyes, though weak and yielding, she was by no means ill disposed. She had committed an error--a great and fatal one; but at heart she was innocent and honest. She was, however, like all weak people, of that plastic clay moulded easily by circumstances into any form; and, in her, circumstances had shaped her gradually into a much worse form than nature had originally given her. To defraud, to cheat, to wrong, had at one time been most abhorrent to her nature. She had taken no active part in her father's dealings with old Sir John Hastings, and had she known all that he had said and sworn, would have shrunk with horror from the deceit. But during her father's short life, she had been often told by himself, and after his death had been often assured by the old woman Danby, that she was rightly and truly the widow of John Hastings, although because it would be difficult to prove, her father had consented to take an annuity for himself and her son, rather than enter into a lawsuit with a powerful man; and she had gradually brought herself to believe that she had been her lover's wife, because in one of his ardent letters he had called her so to stifle the voice of remorse in her bosom. The conviction had grown upon her, till now, after a lapse of more than twenty years, she had forgotten all her former doubts and scruples, believed herself and her son to be injured and deprived of their just rights, and was ready to assert her marriage boldly, though she had at one time felt and acknowledged that there was no marriage at all, and that the words her seducer had used were but intended to soothe her regret and terror. There was a point however beyond which she was not prepared to go. She still shrunk from giving false details, from perjuring herself in regard to particular facts. The marriage, she thought, might be good in the sight of heaven, of herself, and of her lover; but to render it good in the eyes of the law, she had found would require proofs that she could not give--oaths that she dared not take. Another course, however, had been proposed for her; and now she sat in that small parlor gaudily dressed, as I have said, but dressed evidently for a journey. There were tears indeed in her eyes; and as her son stood by her side she looked up in his face with a beseeching look as if she would fain have said, "Pray do not drive me to this!" But young John Ayliffe had no remorse, and if he spoke tenderly to her who had spoiled his youth, it was only because his object was to persuade and cajole. "Indeed, mother," he said, "it is absolutely necessary or I would not ask you to go. You know quite well that I would rather have you here: and it will only be for a short time till the trial is over. Lawyer Shanks told you himself that if you stayed, they would have you into court and cross-examine you to death; and you know quite well you could not keep in one story if they browbeat and puzzled you." "I would say any where that my marriage was a good one," replied his mother, "but I could not swear all that Shanks would have had me, John--No, I could not swear that, for Dr. Paulding had nothing to do with it, and if he were to repeat it all over to me a thousand times, I am sure that I should make a blunder, even if I consented to tell such a falsehood. My father and good Mrs. Danby used always to say that the mutual consent made a marriage, and a good one too. Now your father's own letter shows that he consented to it, and God knows I did. But these lawyers will not let well alone, and by trying to mend things make them worse, I think. However, I suppose you have gone too far to go back; and so I must go to a strange out of the way country and hide myself and live quite lonely. Well, I am ready--I am ready to make any sacrifice for you, my boy--though it is very hard, I must say." As she spoke, she rose with her eyes running over, and her son kissed her and assured her that her absence should not be long. But just as she was moving towards the door, he put a paper--a somewhat long one--on the table, where a pen was already in the inkstand, saying, "just sign this before you go, dear mother." "Oh, I cannot sign any thing," cried the lady, wiping her eyes; "how can you be so cruel, John, as to ask me to sign any thing just now when I am parting with you? What is it you want?" "It is only a declaration that you are truly my father's widow," said John Ayliffe; "see here, the declaration, &c., you need not read it, but only just sign here." She hesitated an instant; but his power over her was complete; and, though she much doubted the contents, she signed the paper with a trembling hand. Then came a parting full of real tenderness on her part, and assumed affection and regret on his. The post-chaise, which had been standing for an hour at the door, rolled away, and John Ayliffe walked back into the house. When there, he walked up and down the room for some time, with an impatient thoughtfulness, if I may use the term, in his looks, which had little to do with his mother's departure. He was glad that she was gone--still gladder that she had signed the paper; and now he seemed waiting for something eagerly expected. At length there came a sound of a quick trotting horse, and John Ayliffe took the paper from the table hastily, and put it in his pocket. But the visitor was not the one he expected. It was but a servant with a letter; and as the young man took it from the hand of the maid who brought it in, and gazed at the address, his cheek flushed a little, and then turned somewhat pale. He muttered to himself, "she has not taken long to consider!" As soon as the slipshod girl had gone out of the room, he broke the seal and read the brief answer which Emily had returned to his declaration. It would not be easy for an artist to paint, and it is impossible for a writer to describe, the expression which came upon his face as he perused the words of decided rejection which were written on that sheet; but certainly, had poor Emily heard how he cursed her, how he vowed to have revenge, and to humble her pride, as he called it, she would have rejoiced rather than grieved that such a man had obtained no hold upon her affection, no command of her fate. He was still in the midst of his tempest of passion, when, without John Ayliffe being prepared for his appearance, Mr. Shanks entered the room. His face wore a dark and somewhat anxious expression which even habitual cunning could not banish; but the state in which he found his young client, seemed to take him quite by surprise. "Why what is the matter, John?" he cried, "what in the name of fortune has happened here?" "What has happened!" exclaimed John Ayliffe, "look there," and he handed Mr. Shanks the letter. The attorney took it, and with his keen weazel eyes read it as deliberately as he would have read an ordinary law paper. He then handed it back to his young client, saying, "The respondent does not put in a bad answer." "Damn the respondent," said John Ayliffe, "but she shall smart for it." "Well, well, this cannot be helped," rejoined Mr. Shanks; "no need of putting yourself in a passion. You don't care two straws about her, and if you get the property without the girl so much the better. You can then have the pick of all the pretty women in the country." John Ayliffe mused gloomily; for Mr. Shanks was not altogether right in his conclusion as to the young man's feelings towards Emily. Perhaps when he began the pursuit he cared little about its success, but like other beasts of prey, he had become eager as he ran--desire had arisen in the chase--and, though mortified vanity had the greatest share in his actual feelings, he felt something beyond that. While he mused, Mr. Shanks was musing also, calculating results and combinations; but at length he said, in a low tone, "Is she gone?--Have you got that accomplished?" "Gone?--Yes.--Do you mean my mother?--Damn it, yes!--She is gone, to be sure.--Didn't you meet her?" "No," said Mr. Shanks; "I came the other way. That is lucky, however. But harkee, John--something very unpleasant has happened, and we must take some steps about it directly; for if they work him well, that fellow is likely to peach." "Who?--what the devil are you talking about?" asked John Ayliffe, with his passion still unsubdued. "Why, that blackguard whom you would employ--Master Tom Cutter," answered Mr. Shanks. You know I always set my face against it, John; and now----" "Peach!" cried John Ayliffe, "Tom Cutter will no more peach than he'll fly in the air. He's not of the peaching sort." "Perhaps not, where a few months' imprisonment are concerned," answered Mr. Shanks; "but the matter here is his neck, and that makes a mighty difference, let me tell you. Now listen to me, John, and don't interrupt me till I've done; for be sure that we have got into a very unpleasant mess, which we may have some difficulty in getting out of. You sent over Tom Cutter, to see if he could not persuade young Scantling, Lord Selby's gamekeeper, to remember something about the marriage, when he was with his old father the sexton. Now, how he and Tom manage their matters, I don't know; but Tom gave him a lick on the head with a stick, which killed him on the spot. As the devil would have it, all this was seen by two people, a laborer working in a ditch hard by, and Scantling's son, a boy of ten years old. The end of it is, Tom was instantly pursued, and apprehended; your good uncle, Sir John, was called to take the depositions, and without any remand whatever, committed our good friend for trial. Tom's only chance is to prove that it was a case of chance-medley, or to bring it under manslaughter, as a thing done in a passion, and if he thinks that being employed by you will be any defence, or will show that it was a sudden burst of rage, without premeditation, he will tell the whole story as soon as he would eat his dinner." "I'd go over to him directly, and tell him to hold his tongue," cried John Ayliffe, now fully awakened to the perils of the case. "Pooh, pooh! don't be a fool," said Mr. Shanks, contemptuously. "Are you going to let the man see that you are afraid of him--that he has got you in his power? Besides, they will not let you in. No, the way must be this. I must go over to him as his legal adviser, and I can dress you up as my clerk. That will please him, to find that we do not abandon him; and we must contrive to turn his defence quite another way, whether he hang for it or not. We must make it out that Scantling swore he had been poaching, when he had done nothing of the kind, and that in the quarrel that followed, he struck the blow accidentally. We can persuade him that this is his best defence, which perhaps it is after all, for nobody can prove that he was poaching, inasmuch as he really was not; whereas, if he were to show that he killed a man while attempting to suborn evidence, he would speedily find himself under a cross-beam." "Suborn evidence," muttered John Ayliffe to himself; for though ready to do any act that might advance his purpose, he did not like to hear it called by its right name. However that might be, he agreed to the course proposed by the attorney, and it was determined that, waiting for the fall of night, they should both go over to the prison together, and demand admittance to the felon's cell. The conversation then reverted to Emily's distinct rejection of the young man's suit, and long did the two ponder over it, considering what might be the effect upon the plans they were pursuing. "It may hurry us desperately," said Mr. Shanks, at length, "unless we can get her to hold her tongue; for depend upon it, as soon as Sir Philip hears what we are doing, he will take his measures accordingly. Don't you think you and Mrs. Hazleton together can manage to frighten her into silence? If I were you, I would get upon my horse's back directly, ride over, and see what can be done. Your fair friend there will give you every help, depend upon it." John Ayliffe smiled. "I will see," he said. "Mrs. Hazleton is very kind about it, and I dare say will help, for I am quite sure she has got some purpose of her own to serve." The attorney grinned, but made no answer, and in the space of a quarter of an hour, John Ayliffe was on the road to Mrs. Hazleton's dwelling. After quarter of an hour's private conversation with the lady of the house, he was admitted to the room in which Emily sat, unconscious of his being there. She was displeased and alarmed at seeing him, but his words and his conduct after he entered, frightened and displeased her still more. He demanded secrecy in a stern and peremptory tone, and threatened with vague, but not ill-devised menaces, to be the ruin of her father and his whole house, if she breathed one word of what had taken place between them. He sought, moreover, to obtain from her a promise of secrecy; but that Emily would on no account give, although he terrified her greatly; and he left her still in doubt as to whether his secret was safe or not. With Mrs. Hazleton he held another conference, but from her he received better assurances. "Do not be afraid," she said; "I will manage it for you. She shall not betray you--at least for a time. However, you had better proceed as rapidly as possible, and if the means of pursuing your claim be necessary--I mean in point of money--have no scruple in applying to me." Putting on an air of queenly dignity, Mrs. Hazleton proceeded in search of Emily, as soon as the young man was gone. She found her in tears; and sitting down by her side, she took her hand in a kindly manner, saying, "My dear child, I am very sorry for all this, but it is really in some degree your own fault. Nay, you need not explain any thing. I have just had young Ayliffe with me. He has told me all, and I have dismissed him with a sharp rebuke. If you had confided to me last night that he had proposed to you, and you had rejected him, I would have taken care that he should not have admittance to you. Indeed, I am surprised that he should presume to propose at all, without longer acquaintance. But he seems to have agitated and terrified you much. What did he want?" "He endeavored to make me promise," replied Emily, "that I would not tell my father, or any one, of what had occurred." "Foolish boy! he might have taken that for granted," replied Mrs. Hazleton, forgetting for an instant what she had just said. "No woman of any delicacy ever speaks of a matter of this kind, when once she has taken upon herself to reject a proposal unconditionally. If she wishes for advice," continued the lady, recollecting herself, "or thinks that the suit may be pressed improperly, of course she's free to ask counsel and assistance of some female friend, on whom she can depend. But the moment the thing is decided, of course, she is silent for ever; for nothing can be more a matter of honorable confidence than an avowal of honorable love. I will write him a note, and tell him he is in no danger, but warn him not to present himself here again, so long as you are with me." Emily made no answer, trying to decide in her own mind whether Mrs. Hazleton's reasoning was right; and that lady, choosing to take her assent for granted, from her silence, hurried away, to give her no opportunity for retracting. FOOTNOTES: [G] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by G. P. R. James, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. CHAPTER XXIII. Before the door of a large brick building, with no windows towards the street, and tall walls rising up till they overtopped the neighboring houses, stood two men, about an hour after night had fallen, waiting for admittance. The great large iron bar which formed the knocker of the door, had descended twice with a heavy thump, but yet no one appeared in answer to the summons. It was again in the hand of Mr. Shanks and ready to descend, when the rattling of keys was heard inside; bolts were withdrawn and bars cast down, and one half of the door opened, displaying a man with a lantern, which he held up to gaze at his visitors. His face was fat and bloated, covered with a good number of spots, and his swollen eyelids made his little keen black eyes look smaller than they even naturally were, while his nose, much in the shape of a horsechestnut, blushed with the hues of the early morning. "How are you, Cram, how are you?" asked the attorney. "I haven't been here for a long time, but you know me, I suppose." "Oh, yes, I know you, Master Shanks," replied the jailer, winking one of his small black eyes; "who have you come to see? Betty Diaper, I'll warrant, who prigged the gentleman's purse at the bottom of the hill. She's as slink a diver as any on the lay; but she's got the shiners and so must have counsel to defend her before the beak, I'll bet a gallon." "No, no," answered Mr. Shanks, "our old friend Tom Cutter wants to see me on this little affair of his." "You'll make no hand of that, as sure as my name's Dionysius Cram," replied the jailer. "Can't prove an _alibi_ there, Master Shanks, for I saw him do the job; besides he can't pay. What's the use of meddling with him? He must swing some time you know, and one day's as good as another. But come in, Master Shanks, come in. But who's this here other chap?" "That's my clerk," replied Mr. Shanks, "I may want him to take instructions." The man laughed, but demurred, but a crown piece was in those days the key to all jailers' hearts, and after a show of hesitation, Shanks and his young companion were both admitted within the gates. They now found themselves in a small square space, guarded on two sides by tall iron railings, which bent overhead, and were let into the wall somewhat after the manner of a birdcage. On the left-hand side, however, was another brick wall, with a door and some steps leading up to it. By this entrance Mr. Dionysius Cram led them into a small jailer's lodge, with a table and some wooden chairs, in the side of which, opposite to the entrance, was a strong movable grate, between the bars of which might be seen a yawning sort of chasm leading into the heart of the prison. Again Mr. Cram's great keys were put in motion, and he opened the grate to let them pass, eyeing John Ayliffe with considerable attention as he did so. Locking the grate carefully behind him, he lighted them on with his lantern, muttering as he went in the peculiar prison slang of those days, various sentences not very complimentary to the tastes and habits of young John Ayliffe, "Ay, ay," he said, "clerk be damned! One of Tom's pals, for a pint and a boiled bone--droll I don't know him. He must be twenty, and ought to have been in the stone pitcher often enough before now. Dare say he's been sent to Mill Dol, for some minor. That's not in my department, I shall have the darbies on him some day. He'd look handsome under the tree." John Ayliffe had a strong inclination to knock him down, but he restrained himself, and at length a large plated iron door admitted the two gentlemen into the penetralia of the temple. A powerful smell of aqua vitæ and other kinds of strong waters now pervaded the atmosphere, mingled with that close sickly odor which is felt where great numbers of uncleanly human beings are closely packed together; and from some distance was heard the sounds of riotous merriment, ribald song, and hoarse, unfeeling laugh, with curses and execrations not a few. It was a time when the abominations of the prison system were at their height. "Here, you step in here," said Mr. Cram to the attorney and his companion, "and I'll bring Tom to you in a minute. He's having a lush with some of his pals; though I thought we were going to have a mill, for Jack Perkins, who is to be hanged o' Monday, roused out his slack jaw at him for some quarrel about a gal, and Tom don't bear such like easily. Howsumdever, they made it up and clubbed a gallon. Stay, I'll get you a candle end;" and leaving them in the dark, not much, if the truth must be told, to the satisfaction of John Ayliffe, he rolled away along the passage and remained absent several minutes. When he returned, a clanking step followed him, as heavy irons were dragged slowly on by unaccustomed limbs, and the moment after, Tom Cutter stood in the presence of his two friends. The jailer brought them in a piece of candle about two inches long, which he stuck into a sort of socket attached to an iron bar projecting straight from the wall; and having done this he left the three together, taking care to close and lock the door behind him. Chair or stool in the room there was none, and the only seat, except the floor, which the place afforded was the edge of a small wooden bedstead or trough, as it might be called, scantily furnished with straw. Both Mr. Shanks and John Ayliffe shook hands with the felon, whose face, though somewhat flushed with drinking, bore traces of deeper and sterner feelings than he chose to show. He seemed glad to see them, however, and said it was very kind of them to come, adding with an inquiring look at Mr. Shanks, "I can't pay you, you know, Master lawyer; for what between my garnish and lush, I shall have just enough to keep me till the 'sizes; I shan't need much after that I fancy." "Pooh, pooh," cried the attorney, "don't be downhearted, Tom, and as to pay, never mind that. John here will pay all that's needful, and we'll have down counsellor Twistem to work the witnesses. We can't make out an _alibi_, for the folks saw you, but we'll get you up a character, if money can make a reputation, and I never knew the time in England when it could not. We have come to consult with you at once as to what's the best defence to be made, that we may have the story all pat and right from the beginning, and no shifting and turning afterwards." "I wish I hadn't killed the man," said Tom Cutter, gloomily; "I shan't forget his face in a hurry as he fell over and cried out 'Oh, my poor--!' but the last word choked him. He couldn't get it out; but I fancy he was thinking of his wife--or maybe his children. But what could I do? He gave me a sight of bad names, and swore he would peach about what I wanted him to do. He called me a villain, and a scoundrel, and a cheat, and a great deal more besides, till my blood got up, and having got the stick by the small end, I hit him with the knob on the temple. I didn't know I hit so hard; but I was in a rage." "That's just what I thought--just what I thought," said Mr. Shanks. "You struck him without premeditation in a fit of passion. Now if we can make out that he provoked you beyond bearing--" "That he did," said Tom Cutter. "That's what I say," continued Mr. Shanks, "if we can make out that he provoked you beyond bearing while you were doing nothing unlawful and wrong, that isn't murder, Tom." "Hum," said Tom Cutter, "but how will you get that up, Mr. Shanks? I've a notion that what I went to him about was devilish unlawful." "Ay, but nobody knew any thing of that but you and he, and John Ayliffe and I. We must keep that quite close, and get up a likely story about the quarrel. You will have to tell it yourself, you know, Tom, though we'll make counsellor Twistem let the jury see it beforehand in his examinations." A gleam of hope seemed to lighten the man's face, and Mr. Shanks continued, "We can prove, I dare say, that this fellow Scantling had a great hatred for you." "No, no, he had not," said Tom Cutter, "he was more civil to me than most, for we had been boys together." "That doesn't matter," said Mr. Shanks, "we must prove it; for that's your only chance, Tom. If we can prove that you always spoke well of him, so much the better; but we must show that he was accustomed to abuse you, and to call you a damned ruffian and a poacher. We'll do it--we'll do it; and then if you stick tight to your story, we'll get you off." "But what's the story to be, master Shanks?" asked Tom Cutter, "I can't learn a long one; I never was good at learning by heart." "Oh, no; it shall be as short and simple as possible," replied Shanks; "you must admit having gone over to see him, and that you struck the blow that killed him. We can't get over that, Tom; but then you must say you're exceedingly sorry, and was so the very moment after." "So I was," replied Tom Cutter. "And your story must refer," continued Mr. Shanks, "to nothing but what took place just before the blow was struck. You must say that you heard he accused you of putting wires in Lord Selby's woods, and that you went over to clear yourself; but that he abused you so violently, and insulted you so grossly, your blood got up and you struck him, only intending to knock him down. Do you understand me?" "Quite well--quite well," replied Tom Cutter, his face brightening; "I do think that may do, 'specially if you can make out that I was accustomed to speak well of him, and he to abuse me. It's an accident that might happen to any man." "To be sure," replied Mr. Shanks; "we will take care to corroborate your story, only you get it quite right. Now let us hear what you will say." Tom Cutter repeated the tale he had been taught very accurately; for it was just suited to his comprehension, and Shanks rubbed his hands, saying, "That will do--that will do." John Ayliffe, however, was still not without his anxieties, and after a little hesitation as to how he should put the question which he meditated, he said, "Of course, Tom, I suppose you have not told any of the fellows here what you came over for?" The ruffian knew him better than he thought, and understood his object at once. "No, no, John," he said, "I have'nt peached, and shall not; be you sure of that. If I am to die, I'll die game, depend upon it; but I do think there's a chance now, and we may as well make the best of it." "To be sure--to be sure," answered the more prudent Shanks; "you don't think, Mr. Ayliffe, that he would be fool enough to go and cut his own throat by telling any one what would be sure to hang him. That is a very green notion." "Oh, no, nor would I say a word that could serve that Sir Philip Hastings," said Tom Cutter; "he's been my enemy for the last ten years, and I could see he would be as glad to twist my neck as I have been to twist his hares. Perhaps I may live to pay him yet." "I'm not sure you might not give him a gentle rub in your defence," said John Ayliffe; "he would not like to hear that his pretty proud daughter Emily came down to see me, as I'm sure she did, let her say what she will, when I was ill at the cottage by the park gates. You were in the house, don't you recollect, getting a jug of beer, while I was sitting at the door when she came down?" "I remember, I remember," replied Tom Cutter, with a malicious smile; "I gave him one rub which he didn't like when he committed me, and I'll do this too." "Take care," said Mr. Shanks, "you had better not mix up other things with your defence." "Oh, I can do it quite easily," replied the other with a triumphant look; "I could tell what happened then, and how I heard there that people suspected me of poaching still, though I had quite given it up, and how I determined to find out from that minute who it was accused me." "That can do no harm," said Shanks, who had not the least objection to see Sir Philip Hastings mortified; and after about half an hour's farther conversation, having supplied Tom Cutter with a small sum of money, the lawyer and his young companion prepared to withdraw. Shanks whistled through the key-hole of the door, producing a shrill loud sound as if he were blowing over the top of a key; and Dionysius Cram understanding the signal, hastened to let them out. Before we proceed farther, however, with any other personage, we may as well trace the fate of Mr. Thomas Cutter. The assizes were approaching near at this time, and about a fortnight after, he was brought to trial; not all the skill of counsellor Twistem, however, nor the excellent character which Mr. Shanks tried to procure for him, had any effect; his reputation was too well established to be affected by any scandalous reports of his being a peaceable and orderly man. His violence and irregular life were too well known for the jury to come to any other conclusion than that it would be a good thing to rid the country of him, and whether very legally or not, I cannot say, they brought in a verdict of wilful murder without quitting the box. His defence, however, established for him the name of a very clever fellow, and one portion of it certainly sent Sir Philip Hastings from the Court thoughtful and gloomy. Nevertheless, no recommendation to mercy having issued from the Judge, Tom Cutter was hanged in due form of law, and to use his own words, "died game." CHAPTER XXIV. We must go back a little, for we have somewhat anticipated our tale. Never did summons strike more joyfully on the ear of mortal than came that of her recall home to Emily Hastings. As so often happens to all in life, the expected pleasure had turned to ashes on the lip, and her visit to Mrs. Hazleton offered hardly one point on which memory could rest happily. Nay, more, without being able definitely to say why, when she questioned her own heart, the character of her beautiful hostess had suffered by close inspection. She was not the same in Emily's esteem as she had been before. She could not point out what Mrs. Hazleton had said or done to produce such an impression; but she was less amiable,--less reverenced. It was not alone that the trappings in which a young imagination had decked her were stripped off; but it was that a baser metal beneath had here and there shown doubtfully through the gilding with which she concealed her real character. If the summons was joyful to Emily, it was a surprise and an unpleasant one to Mrs. Hazleton. Not that she wished to keep her young guest with her long; for she was too keen and shrewd not to perceive that Emily would not be worked upon so easily as she had imagined; and that under her very youthfulness there was a strength of character which must render one part of the plans against her certainly abortive. But Mrs. Hazleton was taken by surprise. She could have wished to guard against construction of some parts of her conduct which must be the more unpleasant, because the more just. She had fancied she would have time to give what gloss she chose to her conduct in Emily's eyes, and to prevent dangerous explanations between the father and the daughter. Moreover, the suddenness of the call alarmed her and raised doubts. Whereever there is something to be concealed there is something to be feared, and Mrs. Hazleton asked herself if Emily had found means to communicate to Sir Philip Hastings what had occurred with John Ayliffe. That, however, she soon concluded was impossible. Some knowledge of the facts, nevertheless, might have reached him from other sources, and Mrs. Hazleton grew uneasy. Sir Philip's letter to his daughter, which Emily at once suffered her hostess to see, threw no light upon the subject. It was brief, unexplicit, and though perfectly kind and tender, peremptory. It merely required her to return to the Hall, as some business rendered her presence at home necessary. Little did Mrs. Hazleton divine the business to which Sir Philip alluded. Had she known it, what might have happened who can say? There were terribly strong passions within that fair bosom, and there were moments when those strong passions mastered even strong worldly sense and habitual self-control. There was not much time, however, for even thought, and less for preparation. Emily departed, after having received a few words of affectionate caution from Mrs. Hazleton, delicately and skilfully put, in such a manner as to produce the impression that she was speaking of subjects personally indifferent to herself--except in so much as her young friend's own happiness was concerned. Shall we say the truth? Emily attended but little. Her thoughts were full of her father's letter, and of the joy of returning to a home where days passed peacefully in an even quiet course, very different from that in which the stream of time had flowed at Mrs. Hazleton's. The love of strong emotions--the brandy-drinking of the mind--is an acquired taste. Few, very few have it from nature. Poor Emily, she little knew how many strong emotions were preparing for her. Gladly she saw the carriage roll onward through scenes more and more familiar at every step. Gladly she saw the forked gates appear, and marked the old well-known hawthorns as they flitted by her; and the look of joy with which she sprang into her father's arms, might have convinced any heart that there was but one home she loved. "Now go and dress for dinner at once, my child," said Sir Philip, "we have delayed two hours for you. Be not long." Nor was Emily long; she could not have been more rapid had she known that Marlow was waiting eagerly for her appearance. Well pleased, indeed, was she to see him, when she entered the drawing-room; but for the first time since she had known him--from some cause or other--a momentary feeling of embarrassment--of timidity, came upon her; and the color rose slightly in her cheek. Her eyes spoke, however, more than her lips could say, and Marlow must have been satisfied, if lovers ever could be satisfied. Lady Hastings was lying languidly on a couch, not knowing how to intimate to her daughter her disapproval of a suit yet unknown to Emily herself. She could not venture to utter openly one word in opposition; for Sir Philip Hastings had desired her not to do so, and she had given a promise to forbear, but she thought it would be perfectly consistent with that promise, and perfectly fair and right to show in other ways than by words, that Mr. Marlow was not the man she would have chosen for her daughter's husband, and even to insinuate objections which she dare not state directly. In her manner to Marlow therefore, Lady Hastings, though perfectly courteous and polite--for such was Sir Philip's pleasure--was as cold as ice, always added "Sir" to her replies, and never forgot herself so far as to call him by his name. Emily remarked this demeanor; but she knew--I should rather have said she was aware; for it was a matter more of sensation than thought--a conviction that had grown up in her mind without reflection--she was aware that her mother was somewhat capricious in her friendships. She had seen it in the case of servants and of some of the governesses she had had when she was quite young. One day they would be all that was estimable and charming in Lady Hastings' eyes, and another, from some slight offence--some point of demeanor which she did not like--or some moody turn of her own mind, they would be all that was detestable. It had often been the same, too, with persons of a higher station; and therefore it did not in the least surprise her to find that Mr. Marlow, who had been ever received by Lady Hastings before as a familiar friend, should now be treated almost as a stranger. It grieved her, nevertheless, and she thought that Marlow must feel her mother's conduct painfully. She would fain have made up for it by any means in her power, and thus the demeanor of Lady Hastings had an effect the direct reverse of that which she intended. Nor did her innuendos produce any better results, for she soon saw that they grieved and offended her husband, while her daughter showed marvellous stupidity, as she thought, in not comprehending them. Full of love, and now full of hope likewise, Marlow, it must be confessed, thought very little of Lady Hastings at all. He was one of those men upon whom love sits well--they are but few in the world--and whatever agitation he might feel at heart, there was none apparent in his manner. His attention to Emily was decided, pointed, not to be mistaken by any one well acquainted with such matters; but he was quite calm and quiet about it; there was no flutter about it--no forgetfulness of proprieties; and his conversation had never seemed to Emily so agreeable as that night, although the poor girl knew not what was the additional charm. Delightful to her, however, it was; and in enjoying it she forgot altogether that she had been sent for about business--nay, even forgot to wonder what that business could be. Thus passed the evening; and when the usual time for retiring came, Emily was a little surprised that there was no announcement of Mr. Marlow's horse, or Mr. Marlow's carriage, as had ever been the case before, but that Mr. Marlow was going to spend some days at the hall. When Lady Hastings rose to go to rest, and her daughter rose to go with her, another thing struck Emily as strange. Sir Philip, as his wife passed him, addressed to her the single word "Beware!" with a very marked emphasis. Lady Hastings merely bowed her head, in reply; but when she and Emily arrived at her dressing-room, where the daughter had generally stayed to spend a few minutes with her mother alone, Lady Hastings kissed her, and wished her good night, declaring that she felt much fatigue, and would ring for her maid at once. Lady Hastings was a very good woman, and wished to obey her husband's injunctions to the letter, but she felt afraid of herself, and would not trust herself with Emily alone. Dear Emily lay awake for half an hour after she had sought her pillow, but not more, and then she fell into a sleep as soft and calm as that of childhood, and the next morning rose as blooming as the flower of June. Sir Philip was up when she went down stairs, and walking on the terrace with Marlow. Lady Hastings sent word that she would breakfast in her own room, when she had obtained a few hours' rest, as she had not slept all night. Thus Emily had to attend to the breakfast-table in her mother's place; but in those days the lady's functions at the morning meal were not so various and important as at present; and the breakfast passed lightly and pleasantly. Still there was no mention of the business which had caused Emily to be summoned so suddenly, and when the breakfast was over, Sir Philip retired to his library, without asking Emily to follow, and merely saying, "You had better not disturb your mother, my dear child. If you take a walk I will join you ere long." For the first time, a doubt, a notion--for I must not call it a suspicion--came across the mind of Emily, that the business for which she had been sent might have something to do with Mr. Marlow. How her little heart beat! She sat quite still for a minute or two, for she did not know, if she rose, what would become of her. At length the voice of Marlow roused her from her gently-troubled reverie, as he said, "Will you not come out to take a walk?" She consented at once, and went away to prepare. Nor was she long, for in less than ten minutes, she and Marlow were crossing the park, towards the older and thicker trees amidst which they had rambled once before. But it was Marlow who now led her on a path which he chose himself. I know not whether it was some memory of his walk with Mrs. Hazleton, or whether it was that instinct which leads love to seek shady places, or whether, like a skilful general, he had previously reconnoitred the ground; but something or other in his own breast induced him to deviate from the more direct track which they had followed on their previous walk, and guide his fair companion across the short dry turf towards the thickest part of the wood, through which there penetrated, winding in and out amongst the trees, a small path, just wide enough for two, bowered overhead by crossing branches, and gaining sweet woodland scenes of light and shade at every step, as the eye dived into the deep green stillness between the large old trunks, carefully freed from underwood, and with their feet carpeted with moss, and flowers, and fern. It was called the deer's track, from the fact that along it, morning and evening, all the bucks and does which had herded on that side of the park might be seen walking stately down to or from a bright, clear-running trout-stream, that wandered along about a quarter of a mile farther on; and often, in the hot weather, a person standing half way down the walk might see a tall antlered fellow standing with his forefeet in the water and his hind-quarters raised upon the bank, gazing at himself in the liquid mirror below, with all his graceful beauties displayed to the uttermost by a burst of yellow light, which towards noon always poured upon the stream at that place. Marlow and Emily, however, were quite alone upon the walk. Not even a hind or shart was there; and after the first two or three steps, Marlow asked his fair companion to take his arm. She did so, readily; for she needed it, not so much because the long gnarled roots of the trees crossed the path from time to time, and offered slight impediments, for usually her foot was light as air, but because she felt an unaccountable languor upon her, a tremulous, agitated sort of unknown happiness unlike any thing else she had ever before experienced. Marlow drew her little hand through his then, and she rested upon it, not with the light touch of a mere acquaintance, but with a gentle confiding pressure which was very pleasant to him, and yet the capricious man must needs every two or three minutes, change that kindly position as the trees and irregularities of the walk afforded an excuse. Now he placed Emily on the one side, now on the other, and if she had thought at all (but by this time she was far past thought,) she might have fancied that he did so solely for the purpose of once more taking her hand in his to draw it through his arm again. At the spot where the walk struck the stream, and before it proceeded onward by the bank, there was a little irregular open space not twenty yards broad in any direction, canopied over by the tall branches of an oak, and beneath the shade about twelve yards from the margin of the stream, was a pure, clear, shallow well of exceedingly cold water, which as it quietly flowed over the brink went on to join the rivulet below. The well was taken care of, kept clean, and basined in plain flat stones; but there was no temple over it, Gothic or Greek. On the side farthest from the stream was a plain wooden bench placed for the convenience of persons who came to drink the waters which were supposed to have some salutary influence, and there by tacit consent Marlow and Emily seated themselves side by side. They gazed into the clear little well at their feet, seeing all the round variegated pebbles at the bottom glistening like jewels as the branches above, moved by a fresh wind that was stirring in the sky, made the checkered light dance over the surface. There was a green leaf broken by some chance from a bough above which floated about upon the water as the air fanned it gently, now hither, now thither, now gilded by the sunshine, now covered with dim shadow. After pausing in silence for a moment or two, Marlow pointed to the leaf with a light and seemingly careless smile, saying, "See how it floats about, Emily. That leaf is like a young heart full of love." "Indeed," said Emily, looking full in his face with a look of inquiry, for perhaps she thought that in his smile she might find an interpretation of what was going on in her own bosom. "Indeed! How so?" "Do you not see," said Marlow, "how it is blown about by the softest breath, which stirs not the less sensitive things around, how it is carried by any passing air now into bright hopeful light, now into dim melancholy shadow?" "And is that like love?" asked Emily. "I should have thought it was all brightness." "Ay, happy love--love returned," replied Marlow, "but where there is uncertainty, a doubt, there hope and fear make alternately the light and shade of love, and the lightest breath will bear the heart from the one extreme to the other--I know it from the experience of the last three days, Emily; for since last we met I too have fluctuated between the light and shade. Your father's consent has given a momentary gleam of hope, but it is only you who can make the light permanent." Emily shook, and her eyes were bent down upon the water; but she remained silent so long that Marlow became even more agitated than herself. "I know not what I feel," she murmured at length,--"it is very strange." "But hear me, Emily," said Marlow, taking her unresisting hand, "I do not ask an immediate answer to my suit. If you regard me with any favor--if I am not perfectly indifferent to you, let me try to improve any kindly feelings in your heart towards me in the bright hope of winning you at last for my own, my wife. The uncertainty may be painful--must be painful; but--" "No, no, Marlow," cried Emily, raising her eyes to his face for an instant with her cheek all glowing, "there must be no uncertainty. Do you think I would keep you--you, in such a painful state as you have mentioned? Heaven forbid!" "Then what am I to think?" asked Marlow, pressing closer to her side and gliding his arm round her. "I am almost mad to dream of such happiness, and yet your tone, your look, my Emily, make me so rash. Tell me then--tell me at once, am I to hope or to despair?--Will you be mine?" "Of course," she answered, "can you doubt it?" "I can almost doubt my senses," said Marlow; but he had no occasion to doubt them. They sat there for nearly half an hour; they then wandered on, with marvellous meanderings in their course, for more than an hour and a half more, and when they returned, Emily knew more of love than ever could be learned from books. Marlow drew her feelings forth and gave them definite form and consistency. He presented them to her by telling what he himself felt in a plain and tangible shape, which required no long reverie--none of their deep fits of thoughtfulness to investigate and comprehend. From the rich store of his own imagination, and the treasury of deep feeling in his breast, he poured forth illustrations that brightened as if with sunshine every sensation which had been dark and mysterious in her bosom before; and ere they turned their steps back towards the house, Emily believed--nay, she felt; and that is much more--that without knowing it, she had loved him long. CHAPTER XXV. This must be a chapter of rapid action, comprising in its brief space the events of many months--events which might not much interest the reader in minute detail, but which produced important results to all the persons concerned, and drew on the coming catastrophe. The news that Mr. Marlow was about to be married to Emily, the beautiful heiress of Sir Philip Hastings, spread far and wide over the country; and if joy and satisfaction reigned in the breasts of three persons in Emily's dwelling, discontent and annoyance were felt more and more strongly every hour by Lady Hastings. A Duke, she thought, would not have been too high a match for her daughter, with all the large estates she was to inherit; and the idea of her marrying a simple commoner was in itself very bitter. She was not a woman to bear a disappointment gracefully; and Emily soon had the pain of discovering that her engagement to Marlow was much disapproved by her mother. She consoled herself, however, by the full approval of her father, who was somewhat more than satisfied. Sir Philip for his part, considering his daughter's youth, required that the marriage should be delayed at least two years, and, in his theoretical way, he soon built up a scheme, which was not quite so successful as he could have wished. Marlow's character was, in most respects, one after his own heart; but as I have shown, he had thought from the first, that there were weak points in it,--or rather points rendered weak by faults of education and much mingling with the world. He wanted, in short, some of that firmness--may I not say hardness of the old Roman, which Sir Philip so peculiarly admired; and the scheme now was, to re-educate Marlow, if I may use the term, during the next two years, to mould him in short after Sir Philip's own idea of perfection. How this succeeded, or failed, we shall have occasion hereafter to show. Tidings of Emily's engagement were communicated to Mrs. Hazleton, first by rumor, and immediately after by more certain information in a letter from Lady Hastings. I will not dwell upon the effect produced in her. I will not lift up the curtain with which she covered her own breast, and show all the dark and terrible war of passions within. For three days Mrs. Hazleton was really ill, remained shut up in her room, had the windows darkened, admitted no one but the maid and the physician; and well for her was it, perhaps, that the bitter anguish she endured overpowered her corporeal powers, and forced seclusion upon her. During those three days she could not have concealed her feelings from all eyes had she been forced to mingle with society; but in her sickness she had time for thought--space to fight the battle in, and she came forth triumphant. When she at length appeared in her own drawing-room no one could have imagined that the illness was of the heart. She was a little paler than before, there was a soft and pleasing languor about her carriage, but she was, to all appearance, as calm and cheerful as ever. Nevertheless she thought it better to go to London for a short time. She did not yet dare to meet Emily Hastings. She feared _herself_. Yet the letter of Lady Hastings was a treasure to her, for it gave her hopes of vengeance. In it the mother showed but too strongly her dislike of her daughter's choice, and Mrs. Hazleton resolved to cultivate the friendship of Lady Hastings, whom she had always despised, and to use her weakness for her own purposes. She was destined, moreover, to have other sources of consolation, and that more rapidly than she expected. It was shortly before her return to the country that the trial of Tom Cutter took place; and not long after she came back that he was executed. Many persons at the trial had remarked the effect which some parts of the evidence had produced on Sir Philip Hastings. He was not skilful in concealing the emotions that he felt, and although it was sometimes difficult, from the peculiarities of his character, to discover what was their precise nature, they always left some trace by which it might be seen that he was greatly moved. Information of the facts was given to Mrs. Hazleton by Shanks the attorney, and young John Ayliffe, who dwelt with pleasure upon the pain his successful artifice had inflicted; and Mrs. Hazleton was well pleased too. But the wound was deeper than they thought. It was like that produced by the bite of a snake--insignificant in itself, but carrying poison into every vein. Could his child deceive him? Sir Philip Hastings asked himself. Could Emily have long known this vulgar youth--gone secretly down to see him at a distant cottage--conferred with him unknown to either father or mother? It seemed monstrous to suppose such a thing; and yet what could he believe? She had never named John Ayliffe since her return from Mrs. Hazleton's; and yet it was certain from Marlow's own account, that she had seen him there. Did not that show that she was desirous of concealing the acquaintance from her parents? Sir Philip had asked no questions, leaving her to speak if she thought fit. He was now sorry for it, and resolved to inquire; as the fact of her having seen the young man, for whom he felt an inexpressible dislike, had been openly mentioned in a court of justice. But as he rode home he began to argue on the other side of the question. The man who had made the assertion was a notorious liar--a convicted felon. Besides, he knew him to be malicious; he had twice before thrown out insinuations which Sir Philip believed to be baseless, and could only be intended to produce uneasiness. Might not these last words of his be traced to the same motive? He would inquire in the first place, he thought, what was the connection between the convict and John Ayliffe, and stopping on the way for that purpose, he soon satisfied himself that the two were boon companions. When he reached his own dwelling, he found Emily seated by Marlow in one of her brightest, happiest moods. There was frank candor, graceful innocence, bright open-hearted truth in every look and every word. It was impossible to doubt her; and Sir Philip cast the suspicion from him, but, alas! not for ever. They would return from time to time to grieve and perplex him; and he would often brood for hours over his daughter's character, puzzling himself more and more. Yet he would not say a word--he blamed himself for even thinking of the matter; and he would not show a suspicion. Yet he continued to think and to doubt, while poor unconscious Emily would have been ready, if asked, to solve the whole mystery in a moment. She had been silent from an unwillingness to begin a painful subject herself; and though she had yielded no assent to Mrs. Hazleton's arguments, they had made her doubt whether she ought to mention, unquestioned, John Ayliffe's proposal and conduct. She had made up her mind to tell all, if her father showed the slightest desire to know any thing regarding her late visit; but there was something in the effects which that visit had produced on her mind, which she could not explain to herself. Why did she love Mrs. Hazleton less? Why had she lost so greatly her esteem for her? What had that lady done or said which justified so great a change of feeling towards her? Emily could not tell. She could fix upon no word, no act, she could entirely blame--but yet there had been a general tone in her whole demeanor which had opened the poor girl's eyes too much. She puzzled herself sadly with her own thoughts; and probably would have fallen into more than one of her deep self-absorbed reveries, had not sweet new feelings, Marlow's frequent presence, kept her awake to a brighter, happier world of thought. She was indeed very happy; and, could she have seen her mother look brighter and smile upon her, she would have been perfectly so. Her father's occasional moodiness she did not heed; for he often seemed gloomy merely from intense thought. Emily had got a key to such dark reveries in her own heart, and she knew well that they were no true indications either of discontent or grief, for very often when to the eyes of others she seemed the most dull and melancholy, she was enjoying intense delight in the activity of her own mind. She judged her father from herself, and held not the slightest idea that any word, deed or thought of hers had given him the slightest uneasiness. Notwithstanding the various contending feelings and passions which were going on in the little circle on which our eyes are fixed, the course of life had gone on with tolerable smoothness as far as Emily and Marlow were concerned, for about two months, when, one morning, Sir Philip Hastings received a letter in a hand which he did not know. It reached him at the breakfast table, and evidently affected him considerably with some sort of emotion. His daughters instantly caught the change of his countenance, but Sir Philip did not choose that any one should know he could be moved by any thing on earth, and he instantly repressed all agitation, quietly folded up the letter again, concluded his breakfast, and then retired to his own study. Emily was not deceived, however. There were moments in Sir Philip's life when he was unable to conceal altogether the strong feelings of his heart under the veil of stoicism--or as he would have termed it--to curb and restrain them by the power of philosophy. Emily had seen such moments, and knew, that whatever were the emotions produced by that letter, whether of anger or grief or apprehension--her father was greatly moved. In his own study, Sir Philip Hastings seated himself, spread the letter before him, and read it over attentively. But now it did not seem to affect him in the least. He was, in fact, ashamed of the feelings he had experienced and partly shown. "How completely," said he to himself, "does a false and fictitious system of society render us the mere slaves of passion, infecting even those who tutor themselves from early years to resist its influence. Here an insolent young man lays claim to my name, and my inheritance, and coolly assumes not only that he has a title to do so, but that I know it; and this instead of producing calm contempt, makes my heart beat and my blood boil, as if I were the veriest schoolboy." The letter was all that Sir Philip stated; but it was something more. It was a very artful epistle, drawn up by the joint shrewdness of Mr. Shanks, Mr. John Ayliffe, and Mrs. Hazleton. It concisely stated the claims of the young man who signed it, to all the property of the late Sir John Hastings and to the baronetcy. It made no parade of proofs, but assumed that those in the writer's possession were indisputable, and also that Sir Philip Hastings was well aware that John Ayliffe was his elder brother's legitimate son. The annuity which had been bought for himself and his mother was broadly stated to have been the purchase-money of her silence, negotiated by her father, who had no means to carry on a suit at law. As long as his mother lived, the writer said, he had been silent out of deference to her wishes, but now that she was dead in France, he did not feel himself bound to abide by an arrangement which deprived him at once of fortune and station, and which had been entered into without his knowledge or consent. He then went on to call upon Sir Philip Hastings in the coolest terms to give up possession and acknowledge his right without what the writer called "the painful ceremony of a lawsuit;" and in two parts of the letter allusion was made to secret information which the writer had obtained by the kind confidence of a friend whom he would not name. It was probably intended to give point to this insinuation at an after period, but if it was aimed at poor Emily, it fell harmless for the time, as no one knew better than Sir Philip that she had never been informed of any thing which could affect the case in question. Indeed, the subject of the annuity was one which he had never mentioned to any one since the transaction had been completed many years before; and the name of John Ayliffe had never passed his lips till Marlow mentioned having seen that young man at Mrs. Hazleton's house. When he had read the letter, and as soon as he thought he had mastered the last struggle of passion, he dipped the pen in the ink and wrote the few following words: "Sir Philip Hastings has received the letter signed John Ayliffe Hastings. He knows no person of that name, but has heard of a young man of the name of John Ayliffe. If that person thinks he has any just claim on Sir Philip Hastings, or his estate, he had better pursue it in the legal and ordinary course, as Sir Philip Hastings begs to disclaim all private communication with him." He addressed the letter to "Mr. John Ayliffe," and sent it to the post. This done, he rejoined Marlow and Emily, and to all appearance was more cheerful and conversable than he had been for many a previous day. Perhaps it cost him an effort to be cheerful at all, and the effort went a little beyond its mark. Emily was not altogether satisfied, but Lady Hastings, when she came down, which, as usual, was rather late in the day, remarked how gay her husband was. Sir Philip said nothing to any one at the time regarding the contents of the letter he had received. He consulted no lawyer even, and tried to treat the subject with contemptuous forgetfulness; but his was a brooding and tenacious mind, and he often thought of the epistle, and the menaces it implied, against his own will. Nor could he or any one connected with him long remain unattentive or ignorant of the matter, for in a few weeks the first steps were taken in a suit against him, and, spreading from attorneys' offices in every direction, the news of such proceedings travelled far and wide, till the great Hastings case became the talk of the whole country round. In the mean time, Sir Philip's reply was very speedily shown to Mrs. Hazleton, and that lady triumphed a good deal. Sir Philip was now in the same position with John Ayliffe, she thought, that she had been in some time before with Mr. Marlow; and already he began to show, in her opinion, a disposition to treat the case very differently in his own instance and in hers. There he had strongly supported private negotiation; here he rejected it altogether; and she chose to forget that circumstances, though broadly the same, were in detail very different. "We shall see," she said to herself, "we shall see whether, when the proofs are brought forward, he will act with that rigid sense of justice, which he assumed here." When the first processes had been issued, however, and common rumor justified a knowledge of the transaction, without private information, Mrs. Hazleton set out at once to visit "poor dear Lady Hastings," and condole with her on the probable loss of fortune. How pleasant it is to condole with friends on such occasions. What an accession of importance we get in our own eyes, especially if the poor people we comfort have been a little bit above us in the world. But Mrs. Hazleton had higher objects in view; she wanted no accession of importance. She was quite satisfied with her own position in society. She sought to see and prompt Lady Hastings--to sow dissension where she knew there must already be trouble; and she found Sir Philip's wife just in the fit frame of mind for her purpose. Sir Philip himself and Emily had ridden out together; and though Mrs. Hazleton would willingly have found an opportunity of giving Sir Philip a sly friendly kick, and of just reminding him of his doctrines announced in the case between herself and Mr. Marlow, she was not sorry to have Lady Hastings alone for an hour or two. They remained long in conference, and I need not detail all that passed. Lady Hastings poured forth all her grief and indignation at Emily's engagement to Mr. Marlow, and Mrs. Hazleton did nothing to diminish either. She agreed that it was a very unequal match, that Emily with her beauty and talents, and even with her mother's fortune alone, might well marry into the highest family of the land. Nay, she said, could the match be broken off, she might still take her rank among the peeresses. She did not advise, indeed, actual resistance on the part of her friend; she feared Lady Hastings' discretion; but she insinuated that a mother and a wife by unwavering and constant opposition, often obtained her own way, even in very difficult circumstances. From that hour Mrs. Hazleton was Lady Hastings' best friend. NATURAL REVELATION. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY ALFRED B. STREET. Does not the heart alone a God proclaim! Blot revelation from the mind of man! Yea, let him not e'en Nature's features scan; There is within him a low voice, the same Throughout the varied scenes of being's span, That whispers, God. And doth not conscience speak Though sin its wildest force upon it wreak! Born with us--never dying--ever preaching Of right and wrong, with reference aye to Him-- And doth not Hope, on toward the future reaching-- The aspirations struggling from the Dim Up toward the Bright--a ceaseless unrepose Of something unattained--a ceaseless teaching Of unfulfilled desire--the eternal truth disclose! HEART-WHISPERS. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY MARY E. HEWITT. What if he loved me!--How the unwhispered thought Comes o'er me, with a thrill of ecstacy! And yet, when constant eve his step hath brought, I timid shrink as he approaches me. Last night, when greeting words were on his lips, My ears grew deaf between my faint replies; And when he pressed my trembling finger tips, I felt me turn to marble 'neath his eyes. What if he loved me! If 'twere mine to share His thought! to be of his proud being part! Hush! lest the tell-tale wind should idly bear To him this wild, wild beating of my heart For should he guess--who in my soul hath name-- That I, unsought, love him, ah! I should die of shame. THE SNOWDROP IN THE SNOW. BY SYDNEY YENDYS. O full of Faith! The Earth is rock,--the Heaven The dome of a great palace all of ice, Russ-built. Dull light distils through frozen skies Thickened and gross. Cold Fancy droops her wing, And cannot range. In winding-sheets of snow Lies every thought of any pleasant thing. I have forgotten the green earth; my soul Deflowered, and lost to every summer hope, Sad sitteth on an iceberg at the Pole; My heart assumes the landscape of mine eyes Moveless and white, chill blanched with hoarest rime; The Sun himself is heavy and lacks cheer Or on the eastern hill or western slope; The world without seems far and long ago; To silent woods stark famished winds have driven The last lean robin--gibbering winds of fear! Thou only darest to believe in spring, Thou only smilest, Lady of the Time! Even as the stars come up out of the sea Thou risest from the Earth. How is it down In the dark depths? Should I delve there, O Flower, For beauty? Shall I find the Summer there Met manifold, as in an ark of peace? And Thou, a lone white Dove art thou sent forth Upon the winter deluge? It shall cease, But not for thee--pierced by the ruthless North And spent with the Evangel. In what hour The flood abates thou wilt have closed thy wings For ever. When the happy living things Of the old world come forth upon the new I know my heart shall miss thee; and the dew Of summer twilights shall shed tears for me --Tears liker thee, ah, purest! than mine own-- Upon thy vestal grave, O vainly fair! Thou shouldst have noble destiny, who, like A Prophet, art shut out from kind and kin! Who on the winter silence comest in A still small voice. Pale Hermit of the Year, Flower of the Wilderness! oh, not for thee The jocund playmates of the maiden spring. For when the danceth forth with cymballed feet, Waking a-sudden with great welcoming, Each calling each, they burst from hill to dell In answering music. But thou art a bell. A passing bell, snow-muffled, dim and sweet. As is the Poet to his fellow-men, So mid thy drifting snows, O Snowdrop, Thou. Gifted, in sooth, beyond them, but no less A snowdrop. And thou shalt complete his lot And bloom as fair as now when they are not. Thou art the wonder of the seasons, O First-born of Beauty. As the Angel near Gazed on that first of living things which, when The blast that ruled since Chaos o'er the sere Leaves of primeval Palms did sweep the plain, Clung to the new-made sod and would not drive, So gaze I upon thee amid the reign Of Winter. And because thou livest, I live. And art thou happy in thy loneliness? Oh couldst thou hear the shouting of the floods, Oh couldst thou know the star among the trees When--as the herald-voice of breeze on breeze Proclaims the marriage pageant of the Spring Advancing from the South--each hurries on His wedding-garment, and the love-chimes ring Thro' nuptial valleys! No, serene and lone, I will not flush thy cheek with joys like these. Songs for the rosy morning; at gray prime To hang the head and pray. Thou doest well. I will not tell thee of the bridal train. No; let thy Moonlight die before their day A Nun among the Maidens, thou and they. Each hath some fond sweet office that doth strike One of our trembling heartstrings musical. Is not the hawthorn for the Queen of May? And cuckoo-flowers for whom the cuckoo's voice Hails, like an answering sister, to the woods? Is not the maiden blushing in the rose? Shall not the babe and buttercup rejoice, Twins in one meadow? Are not violets all By name or nature for the breast of Dames! For them the primrose, pale as star of prime, For them the wind-flower, trembling to a sigh, For them the dew stands in the eyes of day That blink in April on the daisied lea? Like them they flourish and like them they fade And live beloved and loving. But for thee-- For such a bevy how art thou arrayed Flower of the Tempests? What hast thou with them? Thou shalt be pearl unto a diadem Which the Heavens jewel. _They_ shall deck the brows Of joy and wither there. But _thou_ shalt be A Martyr's garland. Thou who, undismayed, To thy spring dreams art true amid the snows As he to better dreams amid the flames.--_Athenæum._ THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE: OR, THE SPY IN SOCIETY.[H] TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF H. DE ST. GEORGES. _Continued from page 70._ V.--THE ENTERTAINMENT. The name of Count Monte-Leone produced great sensation in the numerous assemblage. The adventures of the Count and the report of his trial had been published in all the Parisian papers, and in the eyes of some he was a lucky criminal, and of others a victim and a martyr to his opinions, whom God alone had preserved. The women especially were interested in the hero of this judicial drama, on account of the exaggerated representations of his personal attractions. Received with general curiosity, which, however, he did not seem to notice, and crossing the rooms with his usual dignified air, Monte-Leone approached the Duchess of Palma and expressed his gratitude for her kindness in including him among her guests. The Duchess recognized the Count politely, and replied to him with a few meaningless phrases. She then left him to meet the young Marquise de Maulear, who came in leaning on the arm of her father, the old Prince. The Prince knew the Neapolitan Ambassador, whom he had often seen with the Duchess. He had been one of the first to visit the Duchess of Palma. A man of intelligence and devotion to pleasure, he thought he did not at all derogate from his dignity by civility to a young and beautiful woman, who bore so nobly the name which was conferred on her by love and hymen. "Duchess," said the Prince, presenting Aminta, "you have often questioned me about my daughter-in-law, and know what I told you. I am, I confess, proud for you to be able now to judge for yourself." In the _interim_ La Felina had taken in the whole person of Aminta at a single glance, and the result of this rapid examination exerted a strange influence on her. She grew pale, and her voice trembled, as she told the Prince that the praises he had bestowed on the Marquise were far less than the truth. "The Marquis de Maulear," added she, "is an old acquaintance," and bowing kindly to him, she offered Aminta a seat and then left her, under the influence of an emotion which, actress as she was, she could repress with great difficulty. The Prince sat by his daughter-in-law, and passing in review before her the distinguished personages of the room, described them with that skeptical wit, that courteous irony, of which the nobles of other days were so completely the masters. He spoke like the Duke d'Ayer of old, that caustic wit, of whom a lady of the court said that she was amazed that his tongue was not torn out twenty times a day, so full of pointed needles was all he said. Aminta smiled at the pencil sketches of the Prince, or rather at his dagger blow. Had the old man, however, been twenty times as bitter, she would not have found fault with her father-in-law, for she knew he was kind and she was grateful to him--one day we shall know whence these sentiments originated in his mind. The Marquis de Maulear had left his young wife to speak to his numerous acquaintances: and while the Prince for Aminta's amusement flayed alive the various personages who were led before him by their evil fate, Count Monte-Leone, who had seen the Ambassador, sought in vain to pierce the crowd which surrounded him. The Duke was not in the room when Monte-Leone was announced. It was then with surprise and almost with terror that he saw the Count approach him. "I have not had the honor," said he, "to approach your Excellency since the visit paid me at the Castle _Del Uovo_. And I am doubly gratified at being able to return it in your hotel amid so splendid a festival." "Count," said the Duke, seeking to conquer the emotion caused by the unexpected presence of Monte-Leone, "I dared not hope that you would honor me by accepting my invitation; for you cannot be ignorant that an Ambassador represents his king. It is then, in some degree, as if we meet to-day in the palace of his Majesty Fernando King of Naples: and I think I may venture to tell you, in the name of my Sovereign, that if your conduct is a token of reconciliation offered by you to his cause, Fernando IV will acknowledge it as cheerfully as I do now." Count Monte-Leone appreciated the graceful perfidy of the language of the Duke, and was ready to curse the secret motive which had led him to the Embassy. His eyes, however, turned, almost contrary to his wishes, to the other side of the room, and there he seemed to find something to sustain him. He replied to the Duke as naturally as possible, that in coming to his house, he had remembered only the urbanity of his host and his frankness, being aware that the Duke would never convert a mere visit of pleasure into a political question. The Duke bit his lips when he heard this evasive answer, and saw that he had met his equal in diplomacy. A young man then approached and passed his arm into that of Monte-Leone's, thus putting an end to this annoying interview. This young man had an eloquent and _distingué_ air, and handsome features, though they were delicate and betokened but feeble health. "Do you know, my dear Duke," said the new comer to the Ambassador, "that one must have a very perfect character, and be invited to a very charming ball, to come as I do to your house, after the manner we parted eighteen months ago at Naples. Listen!--one goes for health-sake to Naples to pass the winter, to enjoy the Carnival in peace. After one or two intrigues with beautiful women having dark eyes, not, however, comparable with those of the Duchess of Palma, one fine night in the middle of a Pulcinello supper, you send us in place of a dessert a company of black-looking _sbirri_, who rush like vultures upon us, and rust with dirty hands our Venetian daggers which they wrest from us. Twelve to three, they then separate Taddeo, Von Apsbury and myself, and placing us in rickety carriages, take one of us to prison, another to the frontier, and hurry me on board a miserable little vessel, from which they tumble me like a package of damaged goods on the _quai_ of Marseilles. I had expected to make the tour of Italy." "Vicompte," said the Duke, with a smile, "the air of Italy was not healthy for you. Very excellent physicians told me your life was unsafe in that country, and that you should leave it as soon as possible. So complain to the faculty, but thank me for having followed their directions." "Now what mistakes," said the young man, "people make. I have always heard that the climate of Naples was excellent for the chest." "True," said the Duke, "but it is bad for the head." "Of that I know something," said Monte-Leone, bowing to the Duke. "Well, then, suppose it is," continued d'Harcourt, who wished at any price to avenge himself on the _sbirri_ of his Excellency, in the person of the Duke himself. "It may be the climate exaggerates and sometimes destroys the head, but it is excellent for the heart--a suffering heart--a heart which is attacked is easily cured in Naples. True, the remedies are sometimes priceless, but patients in desperate cases do not hesitate on that account." "I hope, Count," said the Duke, who would not understand the allusion of the young man to his marriage, "that the climate of Paris suits you better than that of Naples. Besides, the Duc d'Harcourt, your father, that most influential nobleman, will prevent you henceforth from endangering an existence you held too cheaply in Italy." "Luckily," said D'Harcourt, with a smile, "your Excellency watched over me, and it is no slight honor to have as a physician the minister of police of a kingdom. Excuse me, however," added he to the Duke, "I hear the prelude of Collinet's orchestra, and I have a family duty to fulfil: my sister Mary has promised to dance this contradance with me, and I must humor the whim of a spoiled child." The wild young man hurried to take his sister's arm, and to get into place with her. Marie d'Harcourt, René's sister, was a charming girl, with blonde hair and a rosy complexion, fair and lithe as a northern elf. The blue veins were visible beneath her transparent skin, so fair that one might often have fancied the blood was about to come gushing through it. The Duke d'Harcourt had lost two of his sons of that terrible pulmonary disease against which medicine, alas, is powerless. The distress of the father was intense, for two of the scions of this family had been cut off by death; and of the five offshoots from the family tree, but two remained. All his love was therefore centred in René, now his only son, and in Marie, the young girl of whom we have just spoken. From a sentiment of tender respect, the Duke had not permitted his last son to assume the title of those he had lost, and René continued to be called the Vicompte d'Harcourt. There were already apparent sad indications that René would become a prey to the monster which had devoured his two brothers: Marie, a few years younger, gave her father great uneasiness, on account of the excessive delicacy of her constitution and organization. All Paris had participated in the grief of the Duke d'Harcourt; for all Paris respected him. Rich, kind, and benevolent, in an enlightened manner, and within the bounds of reason, rejecting all social Utopias, popular as they might make all who sustained them, the Duke d'Harcourt was a Christian philanthropist, that is to say, a charitable man. Charity is the holiest and purest of earthly virtues, and that in which this patriarch indulged shunned noise and renown. He did not wait until misfortune came to him to soothe it, but sought it out. When this second providence was known to those whom he aided, the Duke imposed secrecy on them as a reward for all he had done. He was, so to say, an impersonation of French honor, and the arbiter of all the differences which arose between the members of the great aristocratic families of France. His word was law, and his decisions sovereign. The Prince de Maulear had determined to marry his son to the daughter of this noble old man, and had been forced by the Marquis's marriage to abandon the plan. The Duke still remained the friend of the Prince, though he had not unfrequently blamed his somewhat lax principles. Whenever he discovered the Prince in any peccadillo, he used to say, "Well, we must be lenient to youth." Now, the Prince de Maulear was a young man of seventy. The beauty of Aminta, her extreme paleness alone, would have sufficed to fix attention, and created a very revolution in the saloons of the Embassy. The Duchess of Palma did not produce her ordinary effect. The animation she experienced in the beginning of the evening gradually left her, and the sadness under which she had previously suffered, but which she had thrown off during the early hours of the entertainment, began again to take possession of her features and person. One man alone remarked the Duchess, for he had never lost sight of her. Leaning against the door of the boudoir, his eye followed her wherever she went, and appeared to sympathize with all the constraint inflicted on her as mistress of the house. When, however, the Duchess thought she had paid sufficient personal attention, and was satisfied that the pleasures of the evening would be sustained without her, the man who examined her with such care, saw her come towards the boudoir where he was. He went in without being seen by her, and yielding to one of those promptings which a man in his cooler moments would resist, went behind a drapery which covered a door leading into a gallery of pictures, and waited motionless. The Duchess of Palma entered the boudoir, and assuring herself by a glance that she was alone, fell rather than sat on a divan, and suffered two streams of tears to flow from her eyes. "I was strangling," said she. "I would die a thousand deaths. My cruel experiment has succeeded. _He loves her yet_--I am sure of it. For her sake he came to this entertainment, to which he would not have come for mine. He would have made an excuse of his old difficulties with the Duke, of his political position. I would have believed him, and have sacrificed my wish to see him to propriety and his honor. He never ceases to look at her. He thinks of her alone. He is busied with her alone, yet he has no look, no thought for me." The Duchess began to weep again. Steps were heard in the gallery--the drapery at the door was agitated. "Oh, my God!" said the Duchess, "if met with here, and in this condition, what shall I do and say!" The steps approached. Hurrying then to one of the outlets of the boudoir, she opened it hastily, and went into the garden. The steps the Duchess had heard were those of two persons, who, after having been the rounds of the room, were about to go into the picture-gallery. The two persons were René d'Harcourt and Count Monte-Leone. "Ah ha!" said the Count, "what the devil is Taddeo doing there against the drapery, there like a jealous Spaniard at a corner of Seville, listening to a serenade given by his rival?" "True! true!" replied d'Harcourt, "but I think the serenade has been given, for his features express the most malevolent expression." The emotion of Taddeo was so violent when he heard the words of the Duchess, that he had not strength to leave. He, however, restrained himself, and listened to the raillery of his friends. "Like yourselves," said he, with a quivering voice, "I was in search of fresh air, for it is fearfully warm." "Do not get sick here," said d'Harcourt, "for Doctor Matheus is not here to cure you." "Silence," said Taddeo, changing his expression at once, "how imprudent you are to pronounce his name." All three of them entered the boudoir. "True," said d'Harcourt, "my tongue is always quicker than my mind. I will however try and make them keep time." "When will there be a consultation?" asked Taddeo, trying to be calm. "Eight days hence!" "At what hour?" "Midnight!" "Are there many patients?" "More than ever," said the Count, "and the poor devils are anxious as possible to be cured!" "Then," said d'Harcourt, "the practice of the Doctor increases." "Every day. He will soon be unable to turn around." "That does not make me uneasy," said d'Harcourt, "our Doctor is a skilful man, a great philosopher, and fully acquainted with the new medicine." "Yes, very new;--he treats the mind, rather than the body." "Ah, that is its very essence," replied the Vicompte, "and I know some wonderful cures of his--so wonderful, indeed, that on the other day I presented him to my father." "To the Duke?" said Monte-Leone,--"introduce Doctor Matheus to the Duke d'Harcourt?" Then in a low voice he continued, "Why did you present him to the Doctor?" "For a reason which was important and very dear to my heart. My young sister was suffering; my father, who consulted in behalf of my brothers the most eminent practitioners of Paris, lost all confidence in the faculty when he lost his sons. He did not know whom to consult about his daughter; I spoke to him of Matheus, and told him several wonderful cures he had effected, and the Duke became very anxious to see him." "And did the stern Matheus consent to go to your father's house?" "He was anxious to do so, and as his house is not far from ours, I in a few minutes was able to introduce him into the patient's room; and would you believe it, a few of the simplest remedies possible exerted a great effect. The agitation of my sister was calmed--her cough arrested--and this evening you see her dancing and waltzing, pretty and gay as possible." The conversation of the three friends was soon interrupted by the entrance of two other of the personages of our story. The Prince de Maulear entered with the _Marquise_ on his arm, seeking in this retired spot some repose from the fatigues of the ball, and a less heated air than that of the ball-rooms. Aminta leaned heavily on the arm of the Prince when she saw Monte-Leone thus unexpectedly. She had observed him during the evening, and in the course of the winter they had more than once met together. The Count, however, had never referred to their parting at Sorrento. Far from seeking her out, Monte-Leone seemed to avoid her. Satisfied with saluting her respectfully as often as they met, the Count used always to leave her. This reserved and proper conduct was sufficiently explained by the old rivalry of the Marquis de Maulear and the Count. Recollection of this rivalry, without doubt, caused in Aminta's mind the great emotion she always felt when in the presence of Monte-Leone. "What," said the Prince, when he saw the Count, "are you here, my dear colleague? This chance delights me. My daughter," said he to the young Marquise, "let me introduce to you the Count Monte-Leone, a great traveller, to whom I am indebted for the best chapter of my Italian voyages; all action, I will read it to you one of these days! Ah! but for the Count, I would never have perfected it." "Monsieur," said Monte-Leone, with a low bow, "I have the honor of the _Marquise_'s acquaintance; and Signora Rovero, her mother, deigned sometimes to receive me at her house before the marriage of the Marquis de Maulear and Madame--" The Count as he spoke felt as if his heart would burst. The Prince, however, did not perceive it. "You know my daughter," said the Count, "yes, you have not called on her, you did not seek to see me, who am so glad to see you. This is bad, Count--you will not, however, remain away any longer, and I will not quit you until you promise me a speedy visit." "I do not know if I should," said the Count, with a hesitation which was not natural to him--and looking timidly at Aminta. "We shall be happy to receive the Count; but you know, Monsieur, I receive no one without the consent of the Marquis--" "But the Marquis," said the Prince, "will be delighted to receive so charming a gentleman and erudite a traveller as Count Monte-Leone." "But I also know M. de Maulear," said the Count. "Indeed! then you know every one," said the old man. "Why then be so ceremonious? People of our rank easily understand each other. Besides, if the invitation of my son is all you need, here he comes to speak for himself." D'Harcourt and Taddeo, especially the latter, who knew how devotedly Monte-Leone had loved Aminta, participated in the embarrassment of the scene. Aminta trembled. "Ah! you here at last, Monsieur," said the Prince to his son, as he appeared at the door of the boudoir. "You are a lucky fellow to have your father as your wife's _cavalier servente_, for you have not been near her during the whole evening." The Marquis turned pale, and said with agitation, "Excuse me, sir, but I met some old friends who kept possession of me all the evening." "Ah!" said the Prince, "_apropo_ of old friends--or old acquaintances, if you will, here is one of yours--the Count Monte-Leone, who wants only for a word from your mouth to renew his acquaintance and visit me." Henri looked at Monte-Leone, whom he had not seen before. Without trouble, without agitation, or any apparent effort, he said, "Count Monte-Leone will always be welcome whenever he pleases to visit me." Aminta cast a glance full of surprise, grief, and reproach on the Marquis, and a secret voice repeated in her very heart:--"He is no longer jealous, and therefore does not love me." "Very well," said the Prince to his son, and turning to Monte-Leone, and giving him his hand, he said, "We shall meet again, my dear colleague." He continued, "We will talk of our travels, and especially of the chapter of Ceprano." Then taking the arm of Aminta, who could scarcely support herself, he returned to the ball-room. VI.--JOURNAL OF A HEART. The entertainment continued, and the joyous sounds of the orchestra reached the very extremity of the garden of the Hotel, where the Duchess of Palma had taken refuge to conceal her tears from all observers. She heard a faint noise beneath a neighboring hedge, and looking towards it, saw Taddeo gazing at her with an expression of great grief. "Taddeo," said she. "Yes," said the young man, "Taddeo, who pities and suffers with you because he knows all and suffers all that unappreciated love can inflict on the heart--" This was said with an expression of deep pity. "Who has told you," said the Duchess proudly, "that I suffered as you say?" "Your tears," said Taddeo, "and the memory of the past. Better still, yourself. The words you uttered not long ago in the boudoir, and which by chance I heard." "Signor," replied the Duchess with indignation, "do not attribute to chance what you owe to ignoble curiosity. To watch a woman--to surprise the secrets of her heart, is infamous, and betrays the hospitality extended to you. It shows a want of respect for me, and absence of honor in yourself." "Signora, my only excuse is my ardent passion, which has lasted in spite of time and contempt. I have no motive for my fault but my sad interest in your suffering, the cruel progress of which I have read on your features since the commencement of the entertainment;--that is all----" "But, Signor, what have I said? What words have I uttered?" said the Duchess, every feature being instinct with terror. "Nothing, alas! that my heart has not long been aware of. He that you loved, you love still, and his coldness and insensibility for your devotion, makes you lament his ingratitude and indifference." The Duchess seemed, as it were, relieved of an enormous burden which oppressed her. She breathed more freely and murmured these words with a burst of gratitude to God who had preserved her--"He knows nothing." "Taddeo," said she, giving him her hand, "I pardon you, for I am myself guilty, very guilty in still preserving my old sentiments in the face of my new obligations, voluntarily contracted. I have, I am certain, lost the right to reproach you with a fault, which passion induced you to commit, while I commit one far greater. For pity's sake forget what you have heard, and to ask me to explain it would be an offence. Pity me in your heart. Ah! pity me, for I am most unfortunate." Then drying her eyes, she continued, "No more of this--be a friend to me as you promised six months ago, when we came to Paris. On this condition alone you know that I permitted you to see me. Now give me your arm, and let us return to the ball-room, whence, probably, our absence has been remarked." They walked in silence down the alley which led to the ball-room. Two hours after, all was calm and silent where every thing had been gay and brilliant. The lights were out, and the darkness of night replaced the thousand lamps which a few minutes before were seen to glitter within the palace windows. But one person in all the Hotel of the Duke of Palma was awake. A woman sat alone, in a room of rare elegance, still wearing her ball attire, but with her hair dishevelled and her heart crushed. Her eyes were fixed and dry, and yet red with the tears she had shed. She was in all the brilliancy of youth and beauty, but which was already defaced somewhat, by the iron claws of sorrow, which by sleepless nights and the ravages of jealousy seemed resolved yet more to lacerate her. With her head resting on her hands, beautiful and touching as Canova's Magdalen, she looked with sorrow over the papers which lay strewn on a rich ebony desk before her. A lamp, the upper portion of which was shrouded in blue tulle, cast a pale and sad light over her brow. Her fine white hand rested on the papers which she seemed afraid to touch. "No," said she, "it is impossible; all that these contain are but falsehoods. No, this journal of my heart, written by myself, day by day, cannot be a romance created by the imagination in its delirium. No! all I wrote there was true. I felt the joys and bitternesses, yet it now seems to me a dream. A dream! can it be a dream?" Taking up the papers convulsively she read as follows:--"It is he. I have seen him again and free. I thought that he, like myself, had contracted a life-long obligation. Is this joy or grief? The ties he was about to form, the ties the mere thought of which caused me a terrible anguish, were imposed on me by myself. Oh my God! what have I done? What perfidious demon inspired me when I yielded to another than to him the _right_ to love me? When I promised a love I knew could be given to no other than to him? Why on the day of that fatal marriage did I see him only when I was about to leave the church? I would have broken off had I stood at the foot of the altar--I would have told him who was about to give me his name--ask me not to perjure myself! do not ask me to pledge you a faith I cannot keep! my heart, my soul, my love are his. I thought, alas! because he was not free that I too might cease to be. I fancied my agony to be power, my spite to be courage. When, however, I saw him pale and sombre, leaning against the door of the temple, I felt the coldness of death take possession of me, and I doubted long after that sad day, if I had seen a shadow, if some hallucinations of my senses had not evoked a phantom of my vanished love, to inspire me with eternal regret. Yet HE it was! HE it was! and when at the risk of my very life I would have flown towards that man, I was forced to follow another." The poor woman paused; for a mist obscured her sight, a distillation of burning tears. She resumed her task:--"I am a Duchess but of what value is that vain title which I sought, as an ægis against memory, to me? Have I found it such? For a long time, I thought so. I should, however, never have seen him again. I should have passed no happy days near him, and have been ignorant of the delirium and intoxication of his presence, which I never can forget. I had been the wife of the Duke of Palma six months, when a mission of the King of Naples forced him to leave me at a villa on the _Lago di Como_, while he went in a foreign country to discharge the duties his monarch had imposed on him. I scarcely dared to confess to myself, in spite of the kindness of the Duke, how I was delighted during his absence, for it gave me a liberty of mind and thought which was absolutely necessary to my heart. Resolved to discharge all my duties, I lived, or rather vegetated, in this existence, so unoccupied and objectless as all marriages contracted without love must be. Amid, however, the dead calm of a marriage contracted without love, there glittered sometimes a burst of passion repressed, but alas! not stifled. Dark passions filled my bosom, and I felt the poison of regret. I found myself often longing for my independence, which, however, would not have contributed to my happiness, but would at least have permitted me to indulge in my secret sorrow. My temporary solitude, therefore, became precious to me, for I was about to abandon myself to sadness without annoying any one, and without exciting a curiosity which it was impossible for me to satisfy. When one evening I had been wandering alone on the banks of the lake, I was terrified by a terrible scene on the water. At a great distance a man made every effort to approach the shore--for his boat was evidently sinking beneath him. Some opening, beyond doubt, permitted the water to penetrate, and his danger became every moment more imminent. I was too far from the villa to send him any assistance, and as a secret presentiment was joined to the horror and pity caused by the spectacle, I felt the greatest anxiety about the stranger. The night was near, and the sky became darker every moment. By the flashes of lights here and there, I saw the bark almost sinking, and ere long, it was entirely gone--and the tranquil waves of the lake, calm as they are wont to be, rolled over it. My strength deserted me, and almost in a fainting condition, I fell on the strand. I did not absolutely lose consciousness; for far in the distance I heard the sound of sudden blows on the water, for which at the time I could not account. The noise approached, and grew every moment more distinct. I then heard the sound, as it were, of a body falling on the sand, accompanied by a painful cry. I heard no more. Soon I saw the light of the torches of my servants, who being uneasy, had come to look for me. They found me, and also a half inanimate body, dripping with water. It was doubtless the person whose boat had foundered in the water, and I ordered him to be taken to the villa and carefully attended to. It was late, and I returned. A few hours had passed since the event, and I was sitting alone at the piano. Fancy bore me back to my last appearance at San-Carlo, where a mad and infatuated public had bade me so enthusiastic an adieu. While all that crowd had eyes, for him alone I wished to be beautiful--for him alone to be worthy of the admiration I excited. Dreaming this, my fingers run over the keys, and joining my voice to the instrument, I sang almost unconsciously that touching air in which I had been so much applauded. My song was at first low and half-whispered, but gradually increased in power. I thought I spoke to him, and that his eyes were fixed on mine. At last I paused, pale with surprise, joy and terror. In the glass before me I saw Count Monte-Leone." The memory of this event was so distinct and exciting, that the Duchess paused and looked around for the apparition which had caused her such keen emotion. Then, as if she delighted to place the knife in the wound, she took up the manuscript, and continued:-- "'Excuse me, Madame,' said the Count, 'for having thus introduced myself into your house; but I am come to thank you for the cares I have received in your name.' "'You--you here?' said I, yet doubting my eyes. 'Is it a dream or vision? Speak, speak once more, that, I may be sure I do not dream.' "'Felina,' said he, in a tone full of melancholy, 'I know not why our fate should thus constantly bring us together. But one might think, that still faithful to your old oath, you continue the providence you used to be to me. When a few months since, after the wreck of all my hopes of happiness, after having been misconceived by those for whom I had done so much, when sad and desperate, I cursed my egotistical and cold career, you appeared to me in the Church of Ferentino and cast on me, in the face of your marriage vows, one of those deep-loving looks which cheer the heart and attach it to life. And when on the lake, exhausted with fatigue and ready to yield under the struggle necessary to avert my threatened fate, you again came to my relief. You see, then,' continued he, smiling sadly, 'that in becoming the good angel of the Duke of Palma, you do not cease to be mine.' "Never had the Count spoken thus to me. He had always been cold, and seemed most unwillingly to acknowledge the services I had rendered him. I had never received an affectionate word from his mouth before. He saw the trouble he gave me, and taking my hand, said, with a voice full of sensibility, 'Are you happy?' At this question, it seemed as if my heart would break, and I burst into tears. "'Felina,' said he, 'why do you weep? what is the meaning of this?' "'Do not question me,' said I. 'Let me keep the cause of those tears a secret, for you can neither dry up nor understand them. Tell me though about yourself, said I. Tell me of your marriage.' "Monte-Leone grew pale, and said, 'I am not married, I am free.' "I could not repress a feeling of joy. "'Ah!' said he, bitterly, 'Do you enjoy my misfortune?' "This word restored me to my _sang-froid_. I became more calm, and questioned him. The Count told me all. "For many months, he had travelled and returned to Europe to arrange some pecuniary matters previous to his return to France, where he purposed to remain. Passing by _la Tremezzina_, he learned, indirectly, that certain malevolent reports had been circulated in relation to him by the brothers of the powerful association, of which he had been the chief. A venta was to meet on the opposite shore of Lake Como. Taking a rude costume--he had gone thither, for the purpose of protesting against the perfidious insinuations of his enemies. Afraid, however, of being watched by some agent of his enemies, he resolved to cross the lake alone and at night. Thus he became so near being lost. The Count wished to leave me that night, for he was aware of the absence of the Duke of Palma, and was afraid of compromising me. I, however, retained him for several days in the villa, for the purpose of throwing off the vigilance of his enemies. Alas! how have I regretted those days, the only happy ones of my life. How rapidly they passed away! The Count knew the mystery I wished to hide from him. He read it in my soul, the only thought of which he long had been. He knew why I had married, what tears and sorrow I had known, and what anguish it had caused me. Touched by this vast sacrifice, understanding the extent of my love, I saw the ice of his heart gradually begin to melt. But as his heart warmed to mine, a secret terror took possession of me. Tasting all the joy of seeing arise in the heart of the Count, sentiments which, when I was free I could not have heard without pride and satisfaction, I trembled at the idea of being able to listen to them only with crime. Soon it was I who besought the Count to fly--to leave me--to see me no more. Strange, however, is the human heart; the passion of Monte-Leone seemed to feed on my opposition. He forgot the past, he could not realize it to have existed. "Sitting by my side during the long days, beneath the flowery bowers of the villa, the Count, as he said, saw through the darkness in which he had been enveloped--his eyes recovered their vision, and at last I appeared to him, for the first time, the most charming, the most adorable of women. Never was there a more eloquent tenderness than his--and to me who lived for him alone--whose image was ever before me, who had loved him in spite of his coldness and indifference, almost his contempt, to me he used this language of entreaty.... Yet he did so to a woman who loved him. A month passed in this cruel contest of love and duty. The contest was not equal, and passion triumphed. The Count had left the villa, but was concealed in the vicinity, and I saw him every day become more tender and affectionate. One must have suffered as I have to understand the intoxication of my happiness. To be loved by him had never seemed possible; and to possess this life-dream, to read in his looks a passion I alone had experienced hitherto, was a veil, thin indeed, but this prevented me from discerning how great was my fault. If it did become known to me, I loved it; for in my delirium I thought that I gave to this man a heart which belonged to him, and a person of which, in defiance of his rights, another was possessed. The other though, whom I doubly injured by this thought, had given me truly, loyally, and nobly, his heart, his rank, his name. So completely, however, was I led astray, that I censured the Duke for this very generosity. Sometimes, however, my life of love had its sorrows. The Count would be sad, and in his moments of melancholy, forgot my presence, and spoke slightingly on the volatility of women and of their caprices. I used to look at him with surprise, and seek to discover his secret thoughts. One day it was revealed to me. "'When women are young,' said he, 'they suffer themselves to be led away by brilliant exterior, and by that studied gallantry of which the French make such a display.' A few words full of venom escaped him involuntarily in relation to a rival that she whom he _had_ loved preferred to him. So shocked was I, that I asked him, if ill-humor at his repulse alone had led him to my feet. Without knowing how he had done so, the Count saw he had wounded me, and by increased care and tenderness lulled a suspicion which ultimately was to rise in all its power and agony. "One day, we were to separate. The Count was obliged to go to Naples, where he was impatiently waited for. My despair at this intelligence was terrible. How could I leave this sweet happiness which had grown around me in two months! It seemed above my power and ability. Nothing seemed to influence the Count. I knew him well, and was aware that he never yielded. I soon ceased to contend, and he left me--not, however, without the tenderest oaths of constancy. 'We will soon meet again,' he remarked, 'and in Paris: in that vast city where mystery is so easy, and where secret love finds an impenetrable shelter, we will reside--you still as beautiful, I devoted as ever.'" This was the end of the manuscript. "Vain promises," said La Felina, crushing the papers in her hands. "I wished to read these pages once more. I wrote them after he had gone, and they are the history of my fleeting happiness. I wished to be satisfied that I had been happy. I doubt it sometimes, for during the three months the Count has been here, I see him every day resume more and more his old coldness to me. Formerly, I could reproach myself with nothing. I had betrayed no one; and he, in his disdain, had violated no promise. Now, though, he has created eternal remorse and regret. He has revived in my heart a flame which was nearly out--yet has nothing but indifference and contempt for me. He forgets, though, how dangerous it is to offend an Italian woman. He has forgotten what he read in my letter to his friend: 'Had I been to the Count but an ordinary woman, the charms of whom would have fixed him for a time, but whom he would repudiate as he has his other conquests, _I would have killed him_.'" VII.--DOCTOR MATHEUS. At the time we write of, there was in _la rue Babylonne_, near the faubourg Saint-Germain, an old house, the owner of which was really to be pitied. In consequence of a kind of fate which overhung this house, no room had been occupied for many years, and the persons who went thither in search of room, terrified at their sombre air, heard, subsequently, such stories of what had happened within its walls, took good care not to take up their abode there, even if they had given the _denier-à-Dieu_, an important matter in Paris, and a kind of bargain between the lodger and landlord, made in the presence of the porter, who is the notary, witness, and depository of the contract. If, however, any quiet family, led astray by the retirement of the house, established themselves in it, the servants soon heard such stories from their neighbors in No. 15, that they lived in perpetual terror--madame grew pale, and as often as monsieur sang louder than usual, or came in without noise, had nervous attacks. The unfortunate lodgers, menaced by jaundice or some other bilious complaint, in consequence of the repeated emotions to which they were subjected, were anxious always to go, even under the penalty of indemnifying the landlord. The latter saw himself again forced to submit to the reign of solitude in the old halls, which were gilt and painted _à la Louis XV._, and saw the mildew and dust again rest on the windows and cells, as soon as the fires ceased to burn; not even the presence of a trunk, belonging to a chance sojourner in this desert isle, relieved the landlord from apprehensions of the recurrence of his old calamity. The Crusoe of this desert island had declared that he had rather pay the lodging three, six, or nine-fold, than live in such proximity with the miserable ideas which the house suggested. True, the Crusoe was an Englishman, predisposed to the _spleen_, and the sadness of his abode would soon have led him to augment by a new scene the dramas which had already happened in this house. The landlord, afraid that he would do so, hurried to conclude matters as soon as possible with the islander. The following was the reason of the bad repute of No. 13: A man had hung himself there for love. This was a horrid story, but it was not the whole drama. Three years after, two very old men, who were very rich, and said to be retired merchants, were found stifled beneath their mattress, and the criminal was never found out. The people of the quartier, however, knew all about it, and said who was the murderer. They maintained it was the old suicide, the shadow of whom was ill at ease, and had a mortal aversion to any one who disagreed with him about a suitable and pleasant residence. Yet for some time No. 13 had looked like all the other houses in the vicinity. People went in and came out, just as if it had been the domicile of no ghost. The knocker on the door was often heard, and when the porter opened his door, a little flower-garden was seen, with various horticultural treasures, expanding beneath the spring sun. At length a lodger was found, a very godsend to No. 13, whose lofty reason was superior to all the fables told of the house, and, by his presence defended it from the calumny which had been circulated about it; not by words but deeds, for he lived there, and was neither hung nor stifled, like the old merchants, who had several very evil disposed nephews, and who, to say the least, assisted the man that was hung in procuring the rich inheritance for them. This house had a large ground-floor, and many handsome rooms on the first story. The second story was very expensive, having previously been the _studio_ of a painter, but which had been appropriated by the new lodger to an object which we will describe by and by. We will not attempt a description of this new lodger, but will introduce to our readers one more competent to do it. This person is Mlle. Celestine Crepineau, an old maid between thirty-seven and forty-nine years of age. She was tall and thin, and had all her life rejoiced at this, for she had a form three fingers in diameter. True, a broomstick can be grasped between the thumb and index finger, and yet is not very graceful. Let not any one think, though, in spite of this infantine vanity, that Mlle. Crepineau was of those virgins whom the Bible condemns _as foolish about their beauty_. She was a prudent honest-minded girl, the heart of whom if it ever spoke, did so in such low terms, that no one ever heard it. Mademoiselle Celestine's virtue was a proverb. Mothers in all that part of the town spoke of her as a model of prudence, and fathers pointed her out to their sons as a warning against the passions of youth. Without father or mother, from her very childhood Mlle. Crepeneau had no protector but her god-father, an old lawyer, who owned No. 13 of Babylonne-street. The worthy lawyer had provided for the youth of Mlle. Celestine, and had long intrusted her with the control of his kitchen: discovering, however, how little talent his god-daughter had for the art of _Cussy_ and _Brillot-Savarin_, and wishing to provide an honorable and comfortable home for her, he removed her from the charge of her personal to that of his real property. We will see how fully Mlle. Celestine justified the esteem of her god-father: with what martial courage she took possession of this kingdom of shadows; and how, after sprinkling the whole house with holy water and hung a bough of a blessed tree, she had declared that this asylum, thus purified, henceforth would be unapproachable to the man who had been hung. The fact is, for three years, neither the suicide nor any one else had violated this sanctuary of virtue. But Mlle. Celestine was not only a virtuous and sensible woman, but a woman of eloquence. Nothing could be more attractive than the harangues she made use of to induce lodgers to occupy her rooms. Honey flowed from her mouth, and many persons were led away by the siren's song. But generally they soon became terrified and fled from the terrors which besieged them. Mlle. Celestine Crepeneau therefore could not praise her new lodger too highly. "What a charming man," said she to her neighbors in 11 and 51, the porters of which looked on her as an oracle. "Doctor Matheus is an angel, pure as those of Paradise. God forgive me for saying so, for I think he is handsomer than they, with his magnificent whiskers and moustache. I do not see why angels do not wear them! I am sure they are very becoming. Besides, he is so kind to other people. Only the other day he wished to set _Tamburin's_ leg, which some Jacobin had broken." In Mlle. Crepeneau's mind, a Jacobin was capable of any thing. "And what a magnificent room he has! how beautiful: all full of noble skeletons, Jacobins' heads, and books enough to fill all the Place Louis XV. He has also a fine practice, and patients of every kind coming on horseback, in carriages, on foot, and in wooden shoes. He refuses no one, and cures every body--even _Tamburin_. The poor animal is very fond of him, never barking when he passes, but wagging his tail as if he knew his physician. I alone attend to Doctor Matheus," continued Mlle. Crepeneau, "and I flatter myself he is well waited on. He has a great deal of trouble, too, especially on his consultation days. One would think then all Paris met at his house. He is a brave man, and is not afraid of ghosts! Yet he said the other day, 'I have killed so many people that one more would run me mad.'" Yet while Mlle. Crepineau was thus prodigal of her praises, in front of No. 13, her lodger, as she called him, was in the third story of the house, and was shut up in his room engaged in the strangest manner. The studio had preserved nothing of its original destination but its name. Instead of pictures, plaster casts, statuettes, and manikins, the table was covered with manuscripts, books, pamphlets, and loose papers; on this battle-field, where science, art and politics seemed to contend together, stood a noble Japan vase from which arose a noble bouquet of white camelias--above this hung the portrait of a protestant preacher. Doctor Matheus, as Mlle. Celestine had said, was young and handsome. He had luxuriant fair hair, hanging in clusters around his face and falling on his shoulders, so as to give a seraphic air to his face, very well calculated to touch the heart of pious Celestine. In his mild blue eyes, however, there was an expression of will, decision and daring which strangely contrasted with the rest of his face. The Doctor was tall and elegantly formed, and wore at home the costume yet popular at Leipsig, Gottingen and Heidelberg, a doublet of velvet and a kind of cap surmounted by a plume. He had suppressed the plume. This is exactly the costume of Karl de Moor in Schiller's robber; and in 1847 we saw the pupils of those venerable universities strolling through the streets of the German capitals in this very theatrical costume, precisely that of Wilhelm Meister's actors when they met Mignon on the Ingolstadt road just after their unfortunate representation of Hamlet. The Doctor, we have said, was strangely engaged. He leaned over a vast chart of Europe, extended before him like a body waiting for the knife of the anatomist. His eyes were expanded, his brow flushed, and from time to time he stuck black pins into this chart, and whenever he did so consulted the manuscripts which he held in his hand. When he had inserted the last pin, he arose, and with a cry of joy looked around like a conqueror; as great men are wont to survey their fields of triumphs. "Europe is ours," said he, "and the world is Europe's." The vaccine of _Carbonarism_ has taken, and courses from vein to vein, to the very noblest portion of the social body. It has reached and taken possession of the heart. The old man is dead and a new being is about to be born. Better still, Lazarus, regenerated, is about to burst from the tomb. Afraid to yield to a false hope, trembling lest he should be deceived in his calculations, the Doctor leaned again over his chart, and began to compute the black pins which, like a mourning cloak, covered the map of Europe. And indeed the terrible monster he had named was a pall thrown over the happiness of the people of the world. The idealists and ambitious men who sought to extend it were the murderers of all prosperity. A Gothic clock which leaned against the wall struck eleven. The features of the Doctor at once changed their expression, and infinite grief replaced the enthusiasm which pervaded them. He hurried to a low window of his cabinet, and pushing aside the curtain, looked anxiously into a garden which was behind the house he dwelt in, and from which he was separated only by the _parterre_ of which we have spoken before. This garden belonged to a magnificent hotel in the street of Verennes. A large portal decked with flower vases led to rooms on the ground-floor. This door was just then opened and a beautiful girl hurried past, when the Doctor went to the window of his cabinet. The young girl walked down an alley well lighted; she seemed to seek for the generous heat of the sun, and turned toward it like a true Heliotrope. She seemed to take no care of her complexion, for her head was scarcely covered by a straw-hat which could not avert the heat. A thin dress of embroidered muslin with short sleeves displayed her arms, and a blue sash surrounded her thin and delicate form. She gathered a few flowers, and cut away a few bad branches of the rose-trees with an elegant English pruning-knife. Then after having passed two or three times up and down the alley in front of the portal, she put her hand to her brow as if to make a visor to shield her eyes from the burning rays of the sun. Just in front of her was the window--the curtain of which Doctor Matheus had drawn aside, and there he stood more beautiful and radiant than ever. The young girl blushed slightly and looked hastily away, for the sun probably appeared too bright just then. The Doctor seemed fascinated by what he had seen, and we cannot say how long his ecstasy continued. At last a well-known voice exclaimed on the other side of the door, which was closed even to Mlle. Celestine Crepineau, "Doctor--you are wanted in the parlor. A gentleman--a patient. He has given me his card to bring you." "Very well," said the Doctor, "I am coming." "But, sir, if you will open the door I will give you his card." "Keep it," said the Doctor, "as I am coming down and do not need it." "Yet," said the inquisitive porteress.--"Monsieur may wish to know the name in advance." "I do not," said the Doctor, "and hope Mlle. Crepineau that you will go away." "My God!" said Mlle. Celestine, terrified at the Doctor's manner. "What is the matter with my new lodger? Why will he not let me enter his cabinet? Perhaps though he is cutting up some human body, and has respect for my sex." The Doctor left his room, and locked the door carefully; putting the key in his pocket, he went down. When he entered the room he was amazed to see who was waiting for him. "The Duke d'Harcourt here!" said he, bowing respectfully to his visitor. The Duke said, "My visit should not surprise you, for I came, after all, only to thank you for your services to my dear Marie." "Duke," said Doctor Matheus, "your benevolent reception, when I had the honor to be presented to you, has converted a duty into a pleasure. The natural interest," added he, with profound emotion, "with which your daughter inspires all who see her, would make me most proud of her cure." "Doctor," said the Duke, looking most earnestly at the physician, "you inspire me with a confidence I have had in none of your brethren. Your reply, therefore, to my question, I shall look on as a sentence. Do not fear to be frank, Doctor, for I am prepared for every misfortune; already crushed by my sufferings, my heart looks forward to no earthly happiness. The lives of my two surviving children are the objects of my own life, but uncertainty is too much for me. Reply therefore, I beg you, sincerely to me whether the life of my child is in danger." "Duke," said Doctor Matheus, "the hand of God is more powerful than that of science.--HE often strikes down the strong, and preserves the weak, so that none here can tell when to expect his blows. I can, however, assure you on my honor, that your daughter, delicate as she is, at this time has not even a germ of the terrible malady which has ravaged your hearth. This germ is always in the blood of members of the same family. Art establishes this, though it can provide no remedy.--This secret enemy, however," said the physician, with a kind of pride, "before which all known remedies are powerless, I can perhaps oppose and conquer." "Tell me, Doctor, tell me!" said the Duke, clasping the Doctor's hands, "save my child, grant her life, and my fortune is yours." "Duke," said Matheus, "if I had the honor of a better acquaintance with you, I would not listen to such language as you have used.--Gold has little value in my eyes, and reputation no more, for I do not place my hopes for the future in my profession. Since, however, study has revealed to me the art of assisting those who suffer, and of saving those who are in danger, I would esteem it a crime not to do so; and I promise this art shall be employed in the cure of Mlle. d'Harcourt. "And," said the Duke, "will this be a secret to me?" "No, Duke; I will use it in your presence. I will also own that I have already made use of it, though but slightly, in the case of Mlle. d'Harcourt; what I have done, satisfies me that I may hope to see her completely restored." "It is true;" said the Duke. "The interview and the simple remedies you prescribed, have sufficed to soothe the sufferings of my daughter. Ah! Monsieur," added he, clasping the Doctor's hand kindly, "how can I discharge my obligations towards you?" "By granting me a boon, invaluable to me, and which all Paris will envy, and of which I know you are prodigal indeed, your esteem--the respect of the Duke d'Harcourt--the most honorable and virtuous of men. You see, Monsieur, I place a great value on my consultations; and few persons have received so noble a recompense from you." "Doctor," said the Duke d'Harcourt, with a smile, "in that case you are already paid; for I know all that you do in Paris, and especially in this neighborhood. I know that want meets here with a better reception than opulence, and that you look on all sufferers as having an equal claim on your attention. You must be aware, that knowing this I have already given you all you ask." "Well, then," said the Doctor, "let me continue to have your respect, and we shall be equal." Just then Mlle. Celestine Crepineau knocked at the door. "Come in," said Doctor Matheus. "Sir, there are in the reception-room an English Milord, and two miserable creatures waiting to see you." "Who are the latter?" "One is an Auvergnat, very badly dressed, with a bandage over his eye, who has already been here once or twice." Doctor Matheus seemed annoyed, and turned away lest the Duke should observe it. "The other is a peasant from the environs, who has a handkerchief over his face as if he _enjoyed a fluxion_." "I will go," said the Duke, "for your visitors are impatient, and sorrow should not wait. I will give place to Milord." "Mademoiselle," said the Doctor, "show in the poor wretches." "Very well," said the Duke, "the poor before the rich, I expected that." Bowing kindly to the Doctor, the old nobleman left. As he passed through the reception room, he saw the Doctor's visitors, each of whom looked towards him. The _Milord_ rushed towards a window, which luckily was closed. The other two were introduced to the Doctor's room. No sooner were they there, than the one threw off his handkerchief, and the Auvergnat his bandage. The Doctor gave them his hand and exclaimed, "MONTE-LEONE! Taddeo." "And here, too, am I," said the Milord, entering the room and throwing aside his red wig and burning whiskers. "D'Harcourt, too"--said the Doctor, hurrying to meet the new comer--and then closing the curtains, "Here we all are," said he. "Yes, dear Von Apsbury," said the Count, embracing him. "_The Pulcinelli of the Etruscan villa are again united._" * * * * * Dr. Franklin's father had seventeen children. He was the fifteenth. He says in his autobiography, that his father died at the age of eighty-nine, and his mother at the age of eighty-five, and that neither were ever known to have any sickness except that of which they died. FOOTNOTES: [H] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by Stringer & Townsend, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. From Fraser's Magazine. LIFE AT A WATERING PLACE. THE DOG OF ALCIBIADES. BY C. ASTOR BRISTED. We left Tom Edwards mysteriously swallowed up, like a stage ghost down a trap-door. And do you know, reader, I am very near leaving him so for good and all, and suspending these sketches indefinitely,--yea, even to the time of the Mississippi dividends, or any other period beyond the Greek Calends that your imagination can conjure up. For the wise men--and the wise women, too--of Gotham are wroth with me, and one says that I am writing on purpose to libel this man or puff that woman, and another charges me with sketching my own life in _Fraser_, for self-glorification, and a third holds up the last number of _Pendennis_ at me and says, "If you could write like _that_, there would be some excuse for you, but you won't as long as you live." "Alas, no!" said I, and was just going to burn my unfinished papers, and vow that I would never again turn aside from my old craft of reviewing. But then came reflection in the shape of a bottle of true Dutch courage--genuine Knickerbocker Madeira--and said, "Why should you be responsible for resemblances you never meant, if people will insist on finding them? Consider how prone readers, and still more hearers who take their reading at second-hand, are to suppose that the author, be he great or small, must have represented himself in some one of his personages." True enough, Mr. Bottle; for instance, any one of our fashionables will tell you that "our _spirituel_ and accomplished friend" (as Slingsby calls him), M. Le Vicomte Vincent Le Roi, is the hero of his thrilling romance, _Le Chevalier Bazalion_--why they should, or what possible resemblance they can find between the real man in New-York, and the ideal one in the novel, it passeth my poor understanding to discover. Bazalion is a stalwart six-footer, who goes about knocking people's brains out, scaling inaccessible precipices, defending castles single-handed against a regiment or two, and, by way of relaxation after this hard work, victimizing all the fair dames and blooming damsels that come in his way--breaking the hearts of all the women when he has broken the heads of all the men. Le Roi is a nice gentlemanly man, of the ordinary size, who sings prettily and talks well, and makes himself generally agreeable, and not at all dangerous in society--much the more Christian and laudable occupation, it seems to me. If ever he does bore you, it is with his long stories, not with a long pike as Bazalion used to do. Be the absurdity, then, on the head of him who makes it; _Qui vult decipi decipiatur_: if any one chooses to think that I am bodied forth under the character of Harry Benson, and am, in consequence, a handsome young man, who can do a little of every thing instead of----but never mind what; your actor has not yet sufficient standing to come down before the footlights, and have his little bit of private chaff with the audience. Only this will I say, so help me N. P. Willis, I mean to go on with these sketches till they are finished, provided always that _Fraser_ will take them so long and that you continue to read them, or fall into a sweet and soothing slumber over them, as the case may be. For if we are all to shut up shop until we can write as well as Mr. Titmarsh, there will be too extensive a bankruptcy of literary establishments. Before Ashburner could form any conjecture to account for the evanishment of Edwards--indeed before he could altogether realize it to himself--the little man's head reappeared above the ground, though there were no signs of his horse; and at the same time Benson began to ride round the scene of the catastrophe, at an easy canter, laughing immoderately. The Englishman shook up his brute into the best gallop he could get out of him, and a few more strides brought him near enough to see the true state of things. There was a marsh at no great distance, which rendered the grass in the immediate vicinity moist and sloppy, and just in this particular spot the action of the water had caved away a hole precisely large enough to receive a horse and rider--it could hardly have made a more accurate grave had they been measured for it--and so marked by a slight elevation in front, that it was ten to one any person riding over the ground at such a rate, and unacquainted with the position of this trap, but must fall headlong into it, as Edwards had done. There was some reason to suspect that our friend Harry, who was an habitual rider, and knew all the environs of Oldport pretty well, and was fonder of short cuts and going over grass than most American horsemen are, had not been altogether ignorant of the existence of the pitfall; it looked very much as if he had led Edwards, who was no particular friend of his, purposely into it: but if such was the case, he kept his own counsel. When the fallen man and mare had scrambled out of the hole, which they did before Benson had offered to help them, or Ashburner had time to be of any assistance, it appeared that she had sprained her off foreankle, and he his nigh wrist. But they were close to the main road; by good luck a boy was found to conduct the animal home, and by a still greater piece of good luck the Robinsons' carriage happened to be coming along just then, so the little man, who did not take up much room, was popped into it, and as much pitied and mourned over by the lady occupants as was _père Guilleri_ in the French song. And, to do him justice, even without this consolation, he had taken his mishap very quietly from the first, as soon as he found himself not injured in any vital, _i. e._ dancing part. Having finished their road at a more leisurely pace, our two horsemen arrived at the glen after most of the company were assembled there. And as the place was one of general resort, they noticed traces of other parties, people of the Simpson class, hail-fellow-well-met men, who didn't dance but took it out in drinking, and who in their intercourse with the other sex, betrayed more vulgar familiarity and less refined indecency than characterized the men and boys of White, Edwards, Robinson, and Co.'s set. But of these it may be supposed that the set took no heed. There was some really pretty scenery about the glen, but they took no heed of that either--to be sure, most of them had seen it at least once before. They had gone straight to the largest parlor of the house, and led, as usual, by the indefatigable Edwards, had begun their tricks with the chairs. Booted and spurred as he was, and with his arm in a sling, the ever-ready youth had already arranged the German cotillion, taking the head himself, and constituting Sumner his second in command. Benson was left out of this dance for coming too late, one of the ladies told him; but he did not find the punishment very severe, as he rather preferred walking with Ashburner, and showing him the adjacent woods. As they passed out through several specimens of the Simpson species, who were smoking and lounging around the door, Ashburner nearly ran over a very pretty young woman who was coming up the steps. She was rather rustically, but not unbecomingly dressed, and altogether so fresh and rosy that it was a treat to see her after the fine town ladies, even the youngest of whom were beginning to look faded and jaded from the dissipation of the season. But when she opened her mouth in reply to Benson's affable salutation, it was like the girl in the fairy tale dropping toads and adders, so nasal, harsh, and inharmonious was the tone in which she spoke. "That's Mrs. Simpson," said Harry, as they went on, "the Bird's wife. Pretty little woman: what a pity she has that vulgar accent! She belongs to New England originally; one finds many such girls here, every way charming until they begin to talk. But I suppose you saw no difference between her and any of us. In your ears we all speak with a barbarous accent--at least you feel bound to think so." "What do you think yourself? You have known a good many of my countrymen, and heard them talk, and are able to make the comparison. Do you, or do you not, find a difference?" "To say the truth, I do; it is a thing I never think seriously of denying, for it seems to me neither singular nor to be ashamed of. You can tell an Irishman from a Londoner by his accent; so you can a Scotchman; or a Yorkshireman for that matter: why should you not be able to tell an American? The error of your countrymen consists in attributing to all our people the nasal twang, which is almost peculiar to one section of the country. If I were asked the peculiar characteristic of a New-Yorker's speech, I should say _monotone_. Notice any one of our young men--you will find his conversational voice pitched in the same key. Sumner goes on at the same uniform growl, Edwards in an unvaried buzz. When I first landed in England, I was struck with the much greater variety of tone one hears in ordinary conversation. Your women, especially, seemed to me always just going to sing. And I fancied the address of the men affected--just as, very likely, this monotone of ours seems affected to you." "What I remark most is a hardness and dryness of voice, as if the extremes of climate here had an injurious effect on the vocal organs." "Perhaps they do; and yet I think you will find a better average of singers, male and female, in our society than in yours, notwithstanding our fashionables are so engrossed by dancing. Holla! here's Harrison. How are you, old fellow? and how are the Texas Inconvertibles?" It was indeed the broker, wandering moodily alone. What had he in common with the rest of the company--the fops and flirts, the dancing men and dancing women? The males all snubbed and despised him, from tall White down to little Robinson; the women were hardly conscious of his existence. He knew, too, that he could thrash any man there in a fair stand-up fight, or buy out any three of them, ay, or talk any of them down in the society of sensible and learned people; and this very consciousness of superiority only served to embitter his position the more. There were other sets, doubtless, who would have welcomed him gladly, but either they were not sufficiently to his taste to attract him, or he was in no mood to receive consolation from their sympathy. So he had wandered alone, untouched by the charming scenery about him--a man whom nobody cared for; and when Benson addressed him genially, and in an exuberance of spirits threw his arm over the other's neck as they walked side by side, the broker's heart seemed to expand towards the man who had shown him even this slight profession of kindness, his intelligent eyes lighted up, and he began to talk out cheerfully and unassumingly all that was in him. Harrison's own narrative of his personal prowess, as well as the qualified panegyric pronounced upon him by Benson, had led Ashburner to expect to find in him a manly person with some turn for athletic sports and good living, but no particular intellectual endowments beyond such as his business demanded. He was, therefore, not a little astonished at (inasmuch as he was altogether unprepared for) the variety of knowledge and the extent of mental cultivation which the broker displayed as their conversation went on. They talked of the hills and valleys, and ravines and water-courses around them, and Harrison compared this place with others in a way that showed a ready observer of the beauties of nature. They talked of Italy, and Harrison had at his fingers' ends the principal palaces in every city, and the best pictures in every palace. They talked of Greece, and Harrison quoted Plato. They talked of England and France, and Harrison displayed a familiar acquaintance, not merely with the statistics of the two countries, but also with the habits and characteristics of their people. Finally, they talked on the puzzling topic of American society--puzzling in its transition state and its singular contrasts--and, whether the broker's views were correct or not, they were any thing but commonplace or conventional. "Our fashionable society has been all a mistake hitherto," said Harry (Ashburner could not well make out whether there was a spice of irony in his observation); "Mrs. Benson and some others are going to reform it indifferently. The women thus far have been lost sight of after marriage, and have left the field to the young girls. Now they are beginning to wake up to their rights and privileges." "They will not remedy any of the present evils in that way," answered Harrison, apparently addressing himself to Ashburner, but he seemed to be talking at Benson and through him at Benson's wife, or his own, or both of them. "Our theory and practice was that a young girl should enjoy herself in all freedom; that her age and condition were those of pleasure and frolic--of dissipation, if you will--that after her marriage she, comparatively speaking, retired from the world, not through any conventional rule or imaginary standard of propriety, but of her own free will, and in the natural course of things; because the cares of maternity and her household gave her sufficient employment at home. A woman who takes a proper interest in her family gives them the first place in her thoughts, and is always ready to talk about them. Now these domestic details are the greatest possible bore to a mere fashionable casual drawing-room acquaintance. Hence you see that the French, whose chief aim is to talk well in a drawing-room or an opera box, utterly detest and unmercifully ridicule every thing connected with domesticity or home life. On the other hand, if a married woman never talks of these things or lets you think of them, she does not take a proper interest in her family. No, the fault of youth is with the other sex. There are too few men about, and too many boys. And the more married belles there are the more will the boys be encouraged. For your married belles like to have men about them younger than themselves--it makes them appear younger, or at least they think so; and besides, such youths are more easily managed and more subservient. But, still worse, the more these boys usurp the place of men in society, the more boyish and retrograde will the few men become who continue to divide the honors of society with them. When Plato enumerated among the signs of a republic in the last stage of decadence, that the youth imitate and rival old men, and the old men let themselves down to a level with the youth, he anticipated exactly the state of things that has come to pass among us. Look at that little friend of yours with the beard--I don't mean Edwards, but an older man about his size." "Dicky Bleecker, I suppose you mean," growled Benson: "he's as much your friend--or your wife's--as he is mine." "Well, he is my contemporary, I may say; perhaps five years at most my junior. What perceptible sign of mature age or manliness is there about him? In what is he superior to or distinguishable from young Snelling, who but this season rejoices in his first white tie and first horse, and in the fruits of his first course of dancing lessons?" "Well, but consider," said Benson, who was always ready to take up any side of an argument--it was one of the first criticisms Ashburner made on American conversation, that the men seemed to talk for victory rather than for truth--"it stands to reason, that an intelligent married woman must be better able than a girl to converse with a mature man, and her conversation must have more attraction for him. As to our boys coming out too soon, doubtless they do, but that depends not on the persons ready to receive them, but on the general social system of the country which pushes them into the world so early. For instance, I was left my own master at twenty-one. So, too, with the want of proper progress and growth in knowledge of the men. It is and must be so with the man of fashion every where, for he is not occupied in learning things that have a tendency to develop or improve his mind, but the contrary. I myself have seen Frenchmen of fifty as easily amused and as eager after trifles as boys." "Frenchmen?" sneered the other; "yes, but they _are_ boys all their lives, except in innocence." "Very amusing and pleasant, at any rate; the best people for travelling acquaintances that I know." "Exactly--very pleasant to know for a little while. I have met with a great many Frenchmen who impressed me favorably, and I used to think as you say, what amusing people they were, but I never had occasion to live with one for any length of time without finding him a bore and a nuisance. A Frenchman turns himself inside out, as it were, at once. He shows off all that there is to show on first acquaintance. You see the best of him immediately, and afterwards there is nothing left but repetitions of the same things, and eternal dissertations on himself and his own affairs. He is like a wide, shallow house, with a splendid front externally, and scanty furniture inside." "Very true, and an Englishman (don't blush Ashburner) is like a suite of college-rooms in one of his own university towns--a rusty exterior, a dark, narrow passage along which you find your way with difficulty; and when you do get in, jolly and comfortable apartments open suddenly upon you; and as you come to examine them more carefully, you discover all sorts of snug, little, out-of-the-way closets and recesses, full of old books and old wine, and all things rich and curious. But the entrance is uninviting to a casual acquaintance. Now, when you find an American of the right stamp (here Benson's hands were accidentally employed in adjusting his cravat), he hits the proper medium, and is accessible as a Frenchman and as true as an Englishman." Ashburner was going to express a doubt as to the compatibility of the two qualities, when Harrison struck in again. "On that account I never could see why Frenchmen should be dreaded as dangerous in society. They fling out all their graces at once, exhaust all their powers of fascination, and soon begin to be tiresome. How many cases I have seen where a Frenchman fancied he was making glorious headway in a lady's affections, and that she was just ready to fall into his arms, when she was only ready to fall asleep in his face, and was civil to him only from a great sacrifice of inclination to politeness!" "Very pleasant it must be to a lady," said Ashburner, "that a man should be at the same time wearying her to death with his company, and perilling her reputation out of doors by his language." "By Jove, it's dinner time!" exclaimed Benson, pulling out a microscopic Geneva watch. "I thought the clock of my inner man said as much." And back they hurried through the woods to the Glen House, but were as late for the dinner as they had been for the dance. Harrison and Benson found seats at the lower end of the table, where they established themselves together and began, _à propos_ of Edwards's misadventure, to talk horse, either because they had exhausted all other subjects, or because they did not think the company worthy a better one. Mrs. Benson beckoned Ashburner up to a place by her, but, somehow, he found himself opposite Mrs. Harrison's eyes, and though he could not remember any thing she said ten minutes after, her conversation, or looks, or both, had the effect of transferring to her all the interest he was beginning to feel for her husband--of whom, by the way, she took no more notice than if he had not belonged to her. "Poor Harrison!" said Benson, as he and Ashburner were walking their horses leisurely homeward that evening (they both had too much sense to ride fast after dinner), "he is twice thrown away! He might have been a literary gentleman and a lover of art, living quietly on a respectable fortune; but his father would make him go into business. He might be a model family man, and at the same time a very entertaining member of society; but his wife has snubbed and suppressed him for her own exaltation. If, instead of treating him thus, she would only show him a little gratitude as the source of all her luxury and magnificence, her dresses and her jewelry, her carriage and horses (what a pair of iron-grays she does drive!), and all her other splendors--if she would only be proud of him as the great broker--not to speak of his varied knowledge, of which she might also well be proud--if she would take some little pains to interest herself in his pleasures and to bring him forward in society--how easily she could correct and soften his little uncouthnesses of person and dress, if she would take the trouble! Why should she be ashamed of him? He is older than she--how much? ten years perhaps, or twelve at most. He is not a beauty; but in a man, I should say, mind, comes before good looks; and how infinitely superior he is in mind and soul to any of the frivolous little beaux, native or foreign, whom she delights to draw about her!" "I fear I shall never be able to regard Mr. Harrison with as much respect as you do. It may be ignorance, but I never could see much difference between a speculator in stocks and a gambler." "When a man is in his predicament domestically there are three things, to one, two, or all of which he is pretty sure to take--drink, gambling, and horses. Harrison is too purely intellectual a man to be led away by the vulgar animal temptation of liquor, though he has a good cellar, and sometimes consoles himself with a snug bachelor dinner. Stock-jobbing is, as you say, only another sort of gambling, and this is his vice: at the same time you will consider that it is his business, to which he was brought up. Then, for absolute relaxation, he has his 'fast crab.' Put him behind his 2' 45" stepper and he is happy for an hour or two, and forgets his miseries--that is to say, his wife." "But you talk as if his marriage was the cause of his speculations, whereas you told me the other day that his speculations were the indirect cause of his marriage." "You are right: I believe the beginning of that bad habit must be set down to his father's account; but the continuance of it is still chargeable on his wife. I have heard him say myself that he would have retired from business long ago but for Mrs. Harrison--that is to say, he had to go on making money to supply her extravagance." One fine morning there was a great bustle and flurry; moving of trunks, and paying of bills, and preparations for departure. The fashionables were fairly starved out, and had gone off in a body. The brilliant equipages of Ludlow and Löwenberg, the superfine millinery of the Robinsons, the song and story of the Vicomte, the indefatigable revolutions of Edwards, were all henceforth to be lost to the sojourners at Oldport. Mr. Grabster heeded not this practical protest against the error of his ways. He had no difficulty in filling the vacant rooms, for a crowd of people from all parts of the Union constantly thronged Oldport, attracted by its reputation for coolness and salubrity; and he rather preferred people from the West and South, as they knew less about civilized life, and were more easily imposed upon. To be sure, even they would find out in time the deficiencies of his establishment, and report them at home; but meanwhile he hoped to fill his pockets for two or three seasons under cover of _The Sewer's_ puffs, and then, when business fell off, to impose on his landlord with some plausible story, and obtain a lowering of his rent. Some few--a very few--of "our set" were left. Our friend Harry stayed, because the air of the place agreed remarkably with the infant hope of the Bensons; and a few of the beaux remained--among them Sumner, White, and Sedley--either out of friendship for Benson, or retained by the attractions of Mrs. Benson, or those of Mrs. Harrison; for the _lionne_ stayed of course, it being her line to do just whatever the exclusives did not do. But though Benson remained, he was not disposed to suffer in silence. All this while _The Sewer_ had been filled with letters lauding every thing about the Bath Hotel; and communications equally disinterested, and couched in the same tone, had found their way into some more respectable prints. Benson undertook the thankless task of undeceiving the public. He sat down one evening and wrote off a spicy epistle to _The Blunder and Bluster_, setting forth how things really were at Oldport. Two days after, when the New-York mail arrived, great was the wrath of Mr. Grabster. He called into council the old gentleman with the melodious daughter, _The Sewer_ reporters, and some other boarders who were in his confidence; and made magnificent, but rather vague promises, of what he would do for the man who should discover the daring individual who had thus bearded him in his very den; simultaneously he wrote to _The Blunder and Bluster_, demanding the name of the offender. With most American editors such a demand (especially if followed up with a good dinner or skilfully-applied tip to the reporter or correspondent) would have been perfectly successful. But he of _The Blunder and Bluster_ was a much higher style of man. As Benson once said of him, he had, in his capacity of the first political journalist in the country, associated so much with gentlemen, that he had learned to be something of a gentleman himself. Accordingly he replied to Mr. Grabster, in a note more curt than courteous, that it was impossible to comply with his request. So the indignant host was obliged to content himself for the time with ordering _The Sewer_ to abuse the incognito. Before many days, however, he obtained the desired information through another source, in this wise. Oldport had its newspaper, of course. Every American village of more than ten houses has its newspaper. Mr. Cranberry Fuster, who presided over the destinies of _The Oldport Daily Twaddler_, added to this honorable and amiable occupation the equally honorable and amiable one of village attorney. Though his paper was in every sense a small one, he felt and talked as big as if it had been _The Times_, or _The Moniteur_, or _The Blunder and Bluster_. He held the President of the United States as something almost beneath his notice, and was in the habit of lecturing the Czar of Russia, the Emperor of Austria, and other foreign powers, in true Little Pedlington style. Emboldened by the impunity which attended these assaults, he undertook to try his hand on matters nearer home, and boldly essayed one season to write down the polka and redowa as indecent and immoral. But here he found, as Alexander, Napoleon, and other great men, had done before him, that there is a limit to all human power. He might better have tried to write off the roof of the Bath Hotel, which was rather a fragile piece of work, and might have been carried away by much less wind than usually served to distend the columns of _The Twaddler_. The doughty Tom Edwards snapped his heels, so to speak, in the face of the mighty editor, and the exclusives continued to polk more frantically than ever in the teeth of his direst fulminations. One practical effect, however, these home diatribes had, which his luminous sallies on foreign affairs altogether failed to effect--they put money into his pocket. The next thing Americans like to hearing themselves well praised, is to hear somebody, even if it be themselves, well abused; and accordingly, on the mornings when Mr. Fuster let out an anti-polka article, the usually small circulation of his small sheet was multiplied by a very large factor--almost every stranger bought a copy, the million to see the abuse of the fashionables, the fashionables to see the abuse of themselves. Benson, in the course of his almost annual visits to Oldport Springs, had been frequently amused by the antics of this formidable gentleman, and had laudably contributed to make them generally known. Once, when Mr. Fuster had politely denominated the Austrian emperor "a scoundrel," Harry moved _The Blunder and Bluster_ to say, that it was very sorry for that potentate, who would undoubtedly be overwhelmed with mortification when he learned that _The Twaddler_ entertained such an opinion of him. Whereupon Fuster, who was of a literal dulness absolutely joke-proof, struck off a flaming article on "the aristocratic sympathies" of _The Blunder and Bluster_, which, like a British Whig and Federal journal as it was, always came to the rescue of tyrants and despots, &c. &c. On another occasion--the very morning of a State election--_The Twaddler_ had announced, with a great flourish, "that before its next sheet was issued Mr. Brown would be invested with the highest honors that the State could confer upon him." But even American editors are not always infallible; Mr. Brown came out sadly in the minority, and the day after _The Blunder and Bluster_ had a little corner paragraph to this effect:-- "_We sincerely regret to see that our amusing little contemporary, THE OLDPORT DAILY TWADDLER, has suspended publication_." At this Mr. Fuster flared up fearfully, and threatened to sue _The Blunder and Bluster_ for libel. Now this magniloquent editor, who professed to be a great moral reformer at home, and to regulate the destinies of nations abroad, was in truth the mere creature and toady of Mr. Grabster, the greater part of the revenue of his small establishment being derived from printing the bills and advertisements of the Bath Hotel. As in duty bound, therefore, he set to work to abuse the anonymous assailant of that atrociously-kept house, calling him a quantity of heterogeneous names, and more than insinuating that he was a person who had never been in good society, and did not know what good living was, _because_ he found fault with the living at the Bath Hotel. The leader wound up with a more than ever exaggerated eulogy of Mr. Grabster and his "able and gentlemanly assistants." Benson happened to get hold of this number of _The Twaddler_ one evening when he had nothing to do, and those dangerous implements, pen, ink, and paper, were within his reach. Beginning to note down the absurdities and _non sequiturs_ in Mr. Fuster's article, he found himself writing a very chaffy letter to _The Twaddler_. He had an unfortunate talent for correspondence had Benson, like most of his countrymen; so, giving the reins to his whim, he finished the epistle, making it very spicy and satirical, with a garnish of similes and classical quotations--altogether rather a neat piece of work, only it might have been objected to as a waste of cleverness, and building a large wheel to break a very small bug upon. Then he dropped it into the post-office himself, never dreaming that Cranberry would publish it, but merely anticipating the wrath of the little-great man on receiving such a communication. It chanced, however, not long before, that Benson, in the course of some legal proceedings, had been to sign papers, and "take fifty cents' worth of affidavit," as he himself phrased it, before Mr. Fuster in his legal capacity. The latter gentleman had thus the means of identifying by comparison, the handwriting of the pseudonymous letter. In a vast fit of indignation, not unmingled with satisfaction, he brought out next day Harry's letter at full length, to the great peril of the Latin quotations, and then followed it up with a rejoinder of his own, in which he endeavored to take an attitude of sublime dignity, backed up by classical quotations also, to show that he understood Latin as well as Benson. But the attempt was as unsuccessful as it was elaborate, for his anger broke through in every other sentence, making the intended "smasher" an extraordinary compound of superfine writing and vulgar abuse. When in the course of human events (he began) it becomes necessary for men holding our lofty and responsible position to stoop to the chastisement of pretentious ignorance and imbecility, we shall not be found to shrink from the task. The writer of the above letter is Mr. Henry Benson, a young man of property, and a Federal Whig. He insinuates that we are very stupid. It's no such thing; we are not stupid a bit, and we mean to show Mr. B. as much before we have done with him. Mr. Benson is a pompous young aristocrat, and Mr. Grabster is more of a gentleman than he is--and so are we too for that matter. He says the Bath Hotel is a badly kept house. We say it isn't, and we know a great deal better than he does. We have dined there very often, and found the fare and attendance excellent: and so did the Honorable Theophilus Q. Smith, of Arkansas, last summer, when he came to enjoy the invigorating breezes of this healthful locality. That distinguished and remarkable man expressed himself struck with the arrangements of the Bath Hotel, which left him no cause, he said, to regret the comforts of his western home. But this establishment cannot please the fastidious Mr. Benson! _O tempora, O Moses!_ as Cicero said to Catiline, _quousque tandem_? And so on for three columns. Likewise, _The Sewer_, which had begun to blackguard _The Blunder and Bluster's_ correspondent while he remained under the shelter of his pseudonym, now that his name was known, came out with double virulence, and filled half a sheet with filthy abuse of Harry, including collateral assaults on his brother, grandmother, and second cousins, and most of the surviving members of his wife's family. But as Benson never read _The Sewer_, this part of the attack was an utter waste of Billingsgate so far as he was concerned. What did surprise and annoy him was to find that _The Inexpressible_, which, though well-known to be a stupid, was generally considered a decent paper, had taken the enemy's side, and published some very impertinent paragraphs about him. Afterwards he discovered that he had been the victim of a principle. _The Inexpressible_ and _Blunder and Bluster_ had a little private quarrel of their own, and the former felt bound to attack every thing in any way connected with the latter. Nevertheless Benson was not very much distressed even at this occurrence, for a reason which we shall now give at length, and which will at the same time explain the propriety of the heading we have given to this number. While every body was reading _The Sewer_ and _The Twaddler_, and the more benevolent were pitying Harry for having started such a nest of editorial and other blackguards about his ears, and the more curious were wondering whether he would leave the hotel and resign the field of battle to the enemy, our friend really cared very little about the matter, except so far as he could use it for a blind to divert attention from another affair which he had on hand, and which it was of the greatest importance to keep secret, lest it should draw down the interference of the local authorities: in short, he had a defiance to mortal combat impending over him, which dangerous probability he had brought upon himself in this wise. Among the beaux who remained after the Hegira of the fashionables was a Mr. Storey Hunter, who had arrived at Oldport only just before that great event, for he professed to be a traveller and travelling man, and, to keep up the character never came to a place when other people did, but always popped up unexpectedly in the middle, or at the end, of a season, as if he had just dropped from the moon, or arrived from the antipodes. He had an affectation of being foreign--not English, or French, or German, or like any particular European nation, but foreign in a general sort of way, something not American; and always, on whichever side of the Atlantic he was, hailed from some locality; at one time describing himself in hotel books as from England, at another as from Paris, at another from Baden--from anywhere, in short, except his own native village in Connecticut. In accordance with this principle, moreover, he carefully eschewed the indigenous habits of dress; and while all the other men appeared at the balls in dress coats, and black or white cravats, he usually displayed a flaming scarlet or blue tie, a short frock coat, and yellow or brown trousers. A man six feet high, and nearly as many round, is a tolerably conspicuous object in most places, even without any marked peculiarities of dress; and when to this it is added, that Mr. Hunter exhibited on his shirt-front and watch-chain trinkets enough to stock a jeweller's shop, and that he was always redolent of the most fashionable perfumes, it may be supposed that he was not likely to escape notice at Oldport. His age no one knew exactly; some of the old stagers gave him forty years and more, but he was in a state of wonderful preservation, had a miraculous dye for his whiskers, and a perpetually fresh color in his cheeks. Sedley used to say he rouged, and that you might see the marks of it inside his collar; but this may have been only an accident in shaving. He rather preferred French to English in conversation; and with good reason, for when he used the former language, you might suppose (with your eyes shut) that you were talking to a very refined gentleman, whereas, so soon as he opened his mouth in the vernacular, the provincial Yankee stood revealed before you. As to his other qualities and merits, he appeared to have plenty of money, and was an excellent and indefatigable dancer. Ashburner, when he saw him spin round morning after morning, and night after night, till he all but melted away himself, and threatened to drown his partner, thought he must have the laudable motive of wishing to reduce his bulk, which, however, continued undiminished. Notwithstanding his travels and accomplishments, which, especially the dancing, were sufficient to give him a passport to the best society, there were some who regarded him with very unfavorable eyes, more particularly Sumner and Benson. Supposing this to be merely another of the frivolous feuds that existed in the place, and among "our set," Ashburner was not over-anxious or curious to know the cause of it. Nor, if he had been, did the parties seem disposed to afford him much information. Benson had, indeed, observed one day, that _that_ Storey Hunter was the greatest blackguard in Oldport, except _The Sewer_ reporters; but as he had already said the same thing of half-a-dozen men, his friend was not deterred thereby from making Hunter's acquaintance--or rather, from accepting it; the difficulty at Oldport being, _not_ to make the acquaintance of any man in society. And he found the fat dandy, to all appearance, an innocent and good-natured person, rather childish for his years, and well illustrating Harrison's assertion, that the men in fashionable life rather retrograded than developed from twenty to forty; but in no apparent respect formidable, save for a more than American tendency to gossip. He had some story to the prejudice of every one, but seemed to tell all these stories just as an _enfant terrible_ might, without fully understanding them, or at all heeding the possible consequences of repeating them. The glory of the balls had departed with Edwards and the Robinsons, but the remaining fashionables kept up their amusement with much vigor; and the absence of the others, though detracting much from the brilliancy of the place, was in some respects the gain of a loss. White came out in all his glory now that most of the young men were gone. With his graceful figure, neat dress, and ever-ready smile and compliment, he looked the very ideal of the well-drilled man of fashion. Sumner, though he could not have talked less if he had been an English heavy dragoon-officer, or an Hungarian refugee, understanding no language but his own, was very useful for a quiet way he had of arranging every thing beforehand without fuss or delay, and, moreover, had the peculiar merit (difficult to explain, but which we have all observed in some person at some period of our lives) of _being good company without talking_. Benson, with less pretence and display than he had before exhibited, showed an energy and indefatigableness almost equal to Le Roi's; whatever he undertook, he "kept the pot a-boiling." In short, the people of "our set," who were left, went on among themselves much better than before, because the men's capabilities were not limited to dancing, and the women had less temptation to be perpetually dressing. Besides, the removal of most of the fashionables had encouraged the other portions of the transient population to come more forward, and exhibit various primitive specimens of dancing, and other traits worth observing. One evening there was a "hop" at the Bellevue. Ashburner made a point of always looking in at these assemblies for an hour or so, and scrutinizing the company with the coolness and complacency which an Englishman usually assumes in such places, as if all the people there were made merely for his amusement. Benson, who had literally polked the heel off one of his boots, and thereby temporarily disabled himself, was lounging about with him, making observations on men, women, and things generally. "You wouldn't think that was only a girl of seventeen," said Harry, as a languishing brunette, with large, liquid black eyes, and a voluptuous figure, glided by them in the waltz. "How soon these Southerners develope into women! They beat the Italians even." "I wonder the young lady has time to grow, she dances so much. I have watched her two or three evenings, and she has never rested a moment except when the music stopped.--Something must suffer, it seems to me. Does her mind develope uniformly with her person? She is a great centre of attraction, I observe; is it only for her beauty and dancing?" "I suppose a beautiful young woman, with fifty or sixty thousand a year, may consider mental accomplishments as superfluous. She knows, perhaps, as much as a Russian woman of five-and-twenty. How much that is, you, who have been on the Continent, know." "Ah, an heiress; acres of cotton-fields, thousands of negroes, and so on." "Exactly. I put the income down at half of what popular report makes it; these southern fortunes are so uncertain: the white part of the property (that is to say, the cotton) varies with the seasons; and the black part takes to itself legs, and runs off occasionally. But, at any rate, there is quite enough to make her a great prize, and an object of admiration and attention to all the little men--not to the old hands, like White and Sumner; they are built up in their own conceit, and wouldn't marry Sam Weller's 'female marchioness,' unless she made love to them first, like one of Knowles's heroines. But the juveniles are crazy about her. Robinson went off more ostentatiously love-sick than a man of his size I ever saw; and Sedley is always chanting her praises--the only man, woman, or child, he was ever known to speak well of. I don't think any of them will catch her. Edwards might dance into her heart, perhaps, if he were a little bigger; but as it is, she will, probably, make happy and rich some one in her own part of the world. She says the young men there suit her better, because they are 'more gentlemanly' than we Northerners." "I have heard many strangers say the same thing," said Ashburner, prudently refraining from expressing any opinion of his own for he knew Benson's anti-southern feelings. "If education has any thing to do with being a gentleman, then, whether you take _education_ in the highest sense, as the best discipline and expansion of the mind by classical and scientific study; or in the utilitarian sense, as the acquisition of useful knowledge, and a practical acquaintance with men and things; or in the fine lady sense, as the mastery of airs, and graces, and drawing-room accomplishments; or in the moralist's sense, as the curbing of our mischievous propensities, and the energizing of our good ones--in every case, we are more of gentlemen than the Southerners. If the mere possession of wealth, and progress in the grosser and more material arts of civilization, have any thing to do with it, then, too, we are more of gentlemen. Their claims rest on two grounds: first, they live on the unpaid labor of others, while we all work, more or less, for ourselves, holding idleness as disgraceful as they do labor; secondly, they are all the time fighting duels." "Are there no duels ever fought in this part of the country?" "Scarcely any since Burr shot Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton was one of our greatest men, and his death excited a feeling throughout the Northern States which put down the practice almost entirely; and I certainly think it a step forward in real civilization." "Do you mean to say that it is with you as with us, where, if a man becomes so involved in a quarrel that he is challenged, it is against him and almost ruin to him whether he fights or does not fight? Or is public opinion decidedly in favor of the man who does not fight, and against the man who does? For instance, suppose you were challenged yourself?" "A man can't say beforehand what he would do in an emergency of the kind; but my impression is that I should not fight, and that the opinion of society would bear me out." "But suppose a man insulted your wife or sister?" "It is next door to impossible that an American gentleman should do such a thing; but if he did, I should consider that he had reduced himself to the level of a snob, and should treat him as I would any snob in the streets,--knock him down, if I was able; and if I wasn't, take the law of him: and if a man had wronged me irreparably, I fancy I should do as these uncivilized Southerners themselves do in such a case,--shoot him down in the street, wherever I could catch him. What sense or justice is there in a duel? It is as if a man stole your coat, and instead of having him put into prison, you drew lots with him whether you or he should go." "But suppose a man was spreading false reports about you; suppose he said you were no gentleman, or that you had cheated somebody?" "Bah!" replied Benson, dexterously evading the most important part of the question, "if I were to fight all the people that spread false reports about me, I should have my hands full. There is a man in this room that slandered me as grossly as he could four years ago, and was very near breaking off my marriage. That fat man there, with all the jewelry--Storey Hunter." "Indeed!" exclaimed the other, really surprised, for he had just seen Mrs. Benson conversing with the ponderous exquisite, apparently on most amicable terms. "Yes, and it was entirely gratuitous. I never gave the scamp any provocation. By Jupiter!" Benson turned very white and then very red, "if he isn't dancing with my wife! His impudence is too much, and----. I believe one of our women would put up with any thing from a man here if he can only dance well. They have no self-respect." Benson appeared to have very little himself at that moment, and not to care much what he said or did. He trembled all over with rage, and his friend expected to see an immediate outbreak; but, as if recollecting himself, he suddenly stammered out something about the necessity of changing his boots, and limped off accordingly for that purpose. He was not gone more than five minutes, but in that time had contrived not only to supply his pedal deficiency, but also to take a drink by way of calming himself; and after the drink he took a turn with Miss Friskin, and whirled her about the room, till he knocked over two or three innocent bystanders, all of which tended very much to compose his feelings. Ashburner had a presentiment that something would happen, and stayed longer that night than his wont; indeed, till the end of the ball, which, as there was now no German cotillion, lasted till only one in the morning. But the universal panacea of the polka had its mollifying effect on Benson, and every thing might have passed off quietly but for an unlucky accident. Some of the young Southerners had ordered up sundry bottles of champagne, and were drinking the same in a corner. Hunter, who was much given to toadying Southerners (another reason for Benson's dislike of him), mingled among them, and partook of the inspiring beverage. _In vino veritas_ is true as gospel, if you understand it rightly as meaning that wine develops a man's real nature. Hunter, being by nature gossipy and mendacious, waxed more and more so with every glass of Heidseck he took down. Ashburner chancing to pass near the group, had his attention arrested by hearing Benson's name. He stopped, and listened: Hunter was going on with a prolix and somewhat confused story of some horse that Benson had sold to somebody, in which transaction Sumner was somehow mixed up, and the horse hadn't turned out well, and the purchaser wasn't satisfied, and so on. "If Benson hear this!" thought Ashburner. And Benson did hear it very promptly, for Sedley was within ear-shot, and, delighted at having a piece of mischief to communicate, he tracked Harry out at the further extremity of the room, to inform him of the liberties Storey Hunter was taking with his name. Whereupon the slandered one, with all his wrath reawakened, traversed the apartment in time to hear the emphatic peroration that, "bad as Sumner was, Benson was a thousand times worse." "I can't stand this," exclaimed he. "Where is Frank Sumner?" Sumner was not visible. "Ashburner, will you stand by me if there's a row?" By this time the ball was breaking up, and Benson, on going back to look for his party, found that Mrs. B., like a true watering-place _belle_, had gone off without waiting for him. This was exactly what he wanted. Keeping his eye on Hunter, he followed him out to the head of the staircase, where he had just been bidding good night to some ladies. No one was in sight but Ashburner, who happened to be standing just outside the door-way. The fat man nodded to Harry as if they had been the best friends in the world. "Curse his impudence!" exclaimed Benson, now fairly boiling over. "Holloa, you Hunter! did you know you were an infernal scoundrel? Because you are." "What for?" quoth the individual in question, half sobered and half disconcerted by this unceremonious address. "And a contemptible blackguard," continued Benson, following up his verbal attack. "You're another," retorted Hunter. Ashburner wondered if the two men were going to stand slanging each other all night. "I ought to have pulled your nose three years ago, and now take that!" and Benson, who had been working at his glove ever since the parley began, twitched it off and slapped Hunter in the face with it. When an Irishman sees two people fighting, or going to fight, his natural impulse is to urge them on. A Scotchman or an American tries to part them. A Frenchman runs after the armed force. An Englishman does nothing but look quietly on, unless one side meets with foul play. Thus it was with Ashburner in the present instance. He took Benson's request "to stand by him in case of a row," _au pied de la lettre_. He stood by him, and that was all. As soon as Hunter felt the glove in his face he struck out at Benson, who stopped the blow very neatly, and seemed about to return it with a left-hander; then suddenly changing his style of attack, he rushed within the other's guard, and catching him by the throat with both hands, did his best to strangle him. Hunter, unable to call for help or to loosen the throttling grasp of his assailant, threw himself bodily upon him. As he was about twice Benson's size and weight, the experiment succeeded. Harry was thrown off his feet and precipitated against the banisters, which being of slight material, gave way like so much paper, and both men tumbled over into the landing-place below amid a great scattering of splinters. Lighting on their feet, they began to pummel each other without doing more damage than a couple of children, for they were at such close quarters and so blinded by rage that they hit wild; but Benson had caught his man by the throat again and was just getting him into chancery, when White, Sedley, and some of the Southerners, attracted by the noise, ran down stairs, calling on the "gentlemen" to "behave as such," and words proving ineffectual, endeavoring to pull them apart; which was no easy matter, for Benson hung on like grim death, and when his hand was removed from Hunter's collar, caught him again by the nose, nor would he give up till Mr. Simson, who was one of the stoutest and most active men in the place, caught him up from behind and fairly carried him off to the hall below. Then he seemed to come to himself all at once, and recollected that he had invited the remains of "our set" to supper that night. And accordingly, after taking a rapid survey of himself in a glass, and finding that his face bore no mark of the conflict, and that his dress was not more disordered than a man's usually is when he has been polkaing all the evening, he went off to meet his company, and a very merry time they had of it. Ashburner was surprised to find that the spectators of the fray were able to ignore it so completely. If they had been old men and old soldiers, they could not have acted with more discretion, and it was impossible to suspect from their conversation or manner that any thing unpleasant had occurred. "These people do know how to hold their tongues sometimes," thought he. Next morning while strolling about before breakfast (he was the earliest riser of the young men in the place, as he did not dance or gamble), he heard firing in the pistol-gallery. He thought of his conversation with Benson and the occurrences of last night, and then recollected that he was out of practice himself, and that there would be no harm in trying a few shots. So he strode over to the gallery, and there, to his astonishment, found on one side of the door the keeper, on the other Frank Sumner (who had given a most devoted proof of friendship by getting up two hours earlier in the morning than he had ever been known to do before); and between them Benson, blazing away at the figure, and swearing at himself for not making better shots. "Take time by the forelock, you see," said he as he recognized Ashburner. "_Nunquam non paratus_. The fellow will send me a challenge this morning, I suppose, and I want to be ready for him." "But do you know," said the Englishman, "if after this you should kill your man, we in our country would call it something very like murder?" "That may be," answered Harry, as he let fly again, this time ringing the bell; "but we only call it practice." * * * * * John Adams, in his Diary, states, that out of eight prominent members of the Boston bar in 1763, with whom he was one evening discussing the encroachments of England upon the colonies, only one, Adams himself, lived through the Revolution, as an advocate of American independence. Five adhered to Great Britain: Gridley, Auchmuty, Fitch, Kent, and Hutchinson. Thatcher died in 1765, and Otis became incapacitated in 1771. From Colburn's New Monthly Magazine THE TWIN SISTERS. A TRUE STORY. BY W. WILKIE COLLINS, AUTHOR OF "ANTONINA." Among those who attended the first of the King's _levées_, during the London season of 18--, was an unmarried gentleman of large fortune, named Streatfield. While his carriage was proceeding slowly down St. James's Street, he naturally sought such amusement and occupation as he could find in looking on the brilliant scene around him. The day was unusually fine; crowds of spectators thronged the street and the balconies of the houses on either side, all gazing at the different equipages with as eager a curiosity and interest, as if fine vehicles and fine people inside them were the rarest objects of contemplation in the whole metropolis. Proceeding at a slower and slower pace, Mr. Streatfield's carriage had just arrived at the middle of the street, when a longer stoppage than usual occurred. He looked carelessly up at the nearest balcony; and there among some eight or ten ladies, all strangers to him, he saw one face that riveted his attention immediately. He had never beheld any thing so beautiful, any thing which struck him with such strange, mingled, and sudden sensations, as this face. He gazed and gazed on it, hardly knowing where he was, or what he was doing, until the line of vehicles began again to move on. Then--after first ascertaining the number of the house--he flung himself back in the carriage, and tried to examine his own feelings, to reason himself into self-possession; but it was all in vain. He was seized with that amiable form of social monomania, called "love at first sight." He entered the palace, greeted his friends, and performed all the necessary Court ceremonies, feeling the whole time like a man in a trance. He spoke mechanically, and moved mechanically--the lovely face in the balcony occupied his thoughts, to the exclusion of every thing else. On his return home, he had engagements for the afternoon and the evening--he forgot and broke them all; and walked back to St. James's Street as soon as he had changed his dress. The balcony was empty; the sight-seers, who had filled it but a few hours before, had departed--but obstacles of all sorts now tended only to stimulate Mr. Streatfield; he was determined to ascertain the parentage of the young lady, determined to look on the lovely face again--the thermometer of his heart had risen already to Fever Heat! Without loss of time, the shopkeeper to whom the house belonged was bribed to loquacity by a purchase. All that he could tell, in answer to inquiries, was that he had let his lodgings to an elderly gentleman and his wife, from the country, who had asked some friends into their balcony to see the carriages go to the _levée_. Nothing daunted, Mr. Streatfield questioned and questioned again. What was the old gentleman's name?--Dimsdale.--Could he see Mr. Dimsdale's servant?--The obsequious shopkeeper had no doubt that he could: Mr. Dimsdale's servant should be sent for immediately. In a few minutes the servant, the all-important link in the chain of Love's evidence, made his appearance. He was a pompous, portly man, who listened with solemn attention, with a stern judicial calmness, to Mr. Streatfield's rapid and somewhat confused inquiries, which were accompanied by a minute description of the young lady, and by several explanatory statements, all very fictitious, and all very plausible. Stupid as the servant was, and suspicious as all stupid people are, he had nevertheless sense enough to perceive that he was addressed by a gentleman, and gratitude enough to feel considerably mollified by the handsome _douceur_ which was slipped into his hand. After much pondering and doubting, he at last arrived at the conclusion that the fair object of Mr. Streatfield's inquiries was a Miss Langley, who had joined the party in the balcony that morning, with her sister; and who was the daughter of Mr. Langley, of Langley Hall, in ----shire. The family were now staying in London, at ---- Street. More information than this, the servant stated that he could not afford--he was certain that he had made no mistake, for the Miss Langleys were the only very young ladies in the house that morning--however, if Mr. Streatfield wished to speak to his master, he was ready to carry any message with which he might be charged. But Mr. Streatfield had already heard enough for his purpose, and departed at once for his club, determined to discover some means of being introduced in due form to Miss Langley, before he slept that night--though he should travel round the whole circle of his acquaintance--high and low, rich and poor--in making the attempt. Arrived at the club, he began to inquire resolutely, in all directions, for a friend who knew Mr. Langley, of Langley Hall. He disturbed gastronomic gentlemen at their dinner; he interrupted agricultural gentlemen who were moaning over the prospects of the harvest; he startled literary gentlemen who were deep in the critical mysteries of the last Review; he invaded billiard-room, dressing-room, smoking-room; he was more like a frantic ministerial whipper-in, hunting up stray members for a division, than an ordinary man; and the oftener he was defeated in his object, the more determined he was to succeed. At last, just as he had vainly inquired of every body that he knew, just as he was standing in the hall of the clubhouse thinking where he should go next, a friend entered, who at once relieved him of all his difficulties--a precious, an estimable man, who was on intimate terms with Mr. Langley, and had been lately staying at Langley Hall. To this friend all the lover's cares and anxieties were at once confided; and a fitter depositary for such secrets of the heart could hardly have been found. He made no jokes--for he was not a bachelor; he abstained from shaking his head and recommending prudence--for he was not a seasoned husband, or an experienced widower; what he really did was to enter heart and soul into his friend's projects--for he was precisely in that position, the only position, in which the male sex generally take a proper interest in match-making: he was a newly married man. Two days after, Mr. Streatfield was the happiest of mortals--he was introduced to the lady of his love--to Miss Jane Langley. He really enjoyed the priceless privilege of looking again on the face in the balcony, and looking on it almost as often as he wished. It was perfect Elysium. Mr. and Mrs. Langley saw little or no company--Miss Jane was always accessible, never monopolized--the light of her beauty shone, day after day, for her adorer alone; and his love blossomed in it, fast as flowers in a hot-house. Passing quickly by all the minor details of the wooing to arrive the sooner at the grand fact of the winning, let us simply relate that Mr. Streatfield's object in seeking an introduction to Mr. Langley was soon explained, and was indeed visible enough long before the explanation. He was a handsome man, an accomplished man, and a rich man. His two first qualifications conquered the daughter, and his third the father. In six weeks Mr. Streatfield was the accepted suitor of Miss Jane Langley. The wedding-day was fixed--it was arranged that the marriage should take place at Langley Hall, whither the family proceeded, leaving the unwilling lover in London, a prey to all the inexorable business formalities of the occasion. For ten days did the ruthless lawyers--those dead weights that burden the back of Hymen--keep their victim imprisoned in the metropolis, occupied over settlements that never seemed likely to be settled. But even the long march of the law has its end like other mortal things: at the expiration of the ten days all was completed, and Mr. Streatfield found himself at liberty to start for Langley Hall. A large party was assembled at the house to grace the approaching nuptials. There were to be _tableaux_, charades, boating-trips, riding-excursions, amusements of all sorts--the whole to conclude (in the play-bill phrase) with the grand climax of the wedding. Mr. Streatfield arrived late; dinner was ready: he had barely time to dress, and then bustle into the drawing-room, just as the guests were leaving it, to offer his arm to Miss Jane--all greetings with friends and introductions to strangers being postponed till the party met round the dining-table. Grace had been said; the covers were taken off; the loud, cheerful hum of conversation was just beginning, when Mr. Streatfield's eyes met the eyes of a young lady who was seated opposite, at the table. The guests near him, observing at the same moment, that he continued standing after every one else had been placed, glanced at him inquiringly. To their astonishment and alarm, they observed that his face had suddenly become deadly pale--his rigid features looked struck by paralysis. Several of his friends spoke to him; but for the first few moments he returned no answer. Then, still fixing his eyes upon the young lady opposite, he abruptly exclaimed, in a voice, the altered tones of which startled every one who heard him:--"_That_ is the face I saw in the balcony!--_that_ woman is the only woman I can ever marry!" The next instant, without a word more of either explanation or apology, he hurried from the room. One or two of the guests mechanically started up, as if to follow him; the rest remained at the table, looking on each other in speechless surprise. But before any one could either act or speak, almost at the moment when the door closed on Mr. Streatfield, the attention of all was painfully directed to Jane Langley. She had fainted. Her mother and sisters removed her from the room immediately, aided by the servants. As they disappeared, a dead silence again sank down over the company--they all looked around with one accord to the master of the house. Mr. Langley's face and manner sufficiently revealed the suffering and suspense that he was secretly enduring. But he was a man of the world--neither by word nor action did he betray what was passing within him. He resumed his place at the table, and begged his guests to do the same. He affected to make light of what had happened; entreated every one to forget it, or, if they remembered it at all, to remember it only as a mere accident which would no doubt be satisfactorily explained. Perhaps it was only a jest on Mr. Streatfield's part--rather too serious a one, he must own. At any rate, whatever was the cause of the interruption to the dinner which had just happened, it was not important enough to require every body to fast around the table of the feast. He asked it as a favor to himself, that no further notice might be taken of what had occurred. While Mr. Langley was speaking thus, he hastily wrote a few lines on a piece of paper, and gave it to one of the servants. The note was directed to Mr. Streatfield; the lines contained only these words:--"Two hours hence, I shall expect to see you alone in the library." The dinner proceeded; the places occupied by the female members of the Langley family, and by the young lady who had attracted Mr. Streatfield's notice in so extraordinary a manner, being left vacant. Every one present endeavored to follow Mr. Langley's advice, and go through the business of the dinner, as if nothing had occurred; but the attempt failed miserably. Long, blank pauses occurred in the conversation; general topics were started, but never pursued; it was more like an assembly of strangers, than a meeting of friends; people neither ate nor drank, as they were accustomed to eat and drink; they talked in altered voices, and sat with unusual stillness, even in the same positions. Relatives, friends, and acquaintances, all alike perceived that some great domestic catastrophe had happened; all foreboded that some serious, if not fatal, explanation of Mr. Streatfield's conduct would ensue: and it was vain and hopeless--a very mockery of self-possession--to attempt to shake off the sinister and chilling influences that recent events had left behind them, and resume at will the thoughtlessness and hilarity of ordinary life. Still, however, Mr. Langley persisted in doing the honors of his table, in proceeding doggedly through all the festive ceremonies of the hour, until the ladies rose and retired. Then, after looking at his watch, he beckoned to one of his sons to take his place; and quietly left the room. He only stopped once, as he crossed the hall, to ask news of his daughter from one of the servants. The reply was, that she had had a hysterical fit; that the medical attendant of the family had been sent for; and that since his arrival she had become more composed. When the man had spoken, Mr. Langley made no remark, but proceeded at once to the library. He locked the door behind him, as soon as he entered the room. Mr. Streatfield was already waiting there--he was seated at the table, endeavoring to maintain an appearance of composure, by mechanically turning over the leaves of the books before him. Mr. Langley drew a chair near him; and in low, but very firm tones, began the conversation thus:-- "I have given you two hours, sir, to collect yourself, to consider your position fully--I presume, therefore, that you are now prepared to favor me with an explanation of your conduct at my table, to-day." "What explanation can I make?--what can I say, or think of this most terrible of fatalities?" exclaimed Mr. Streatfield, speaking faintly and confusedly; and still not looking up--"There has been an unexampled error committed!--a fatal mistake, which I could never have anticipated, and over which I had no control!" "Enough, sir, of the language of romance," interrupted Mr. Langley, coldly; "I am neither of an age nor a disposition to appreciate it. I come here to ask plain questions honestly, and I insist, as my right, on receiving answers in the same spirit. _You_, Mr. Streatfield, sought an introduction to _me_--you professed yourself attached to my daughter Jane--your proposals were (I fear unhappily for _us_) accepted--your wedding-day was fixed--and now, after all this, when you happen to observe my daughter's twin-sister sitting opposite to you--" "Her twin-sister!" exclaimed Mr. Streatfield; and his trembling hand crumpled the leaves of the book, which he still held while he spoke. "Why is it, intimate as I have been with your family, that I now know for the first time that Miss Jane Langley has a twin-sister?" "Do you descend, sir, to a subterfuge, when I ask you for an explanation?" returned Mr. Langley, angrily. "You must have heard, over and over again, that my children, Jane and Clara, were twins." "On my word and honor, I declare that--" "Spare me all appeals to your word or your honor, sir; I am beginning to doubt both." "I will not make the unhappy situation in which we are all placed, still worse, by answering your last words, as I might, at other times, feel inclined to answer them," said Mr. Streatfield, assuming a calmer demeanor than he had hitherto displayed. "I tell you the truth, when I tell you that, before to-day, I never knew that any of your children were twins. Your daughter Jane has frequently spoken to me of her absent sister Clara, but never spoke to me of her as her twin-sister. Until to-day, I have had no opportunity of discovering the truth; for until to-day, I have never met Miss Clara Langley since I saw her in the balcony of the house in St. James's street. The only one of your children who was never present during my intercourse with your family in London, was your daughter Clara--the daughter whom I now know, for the first time, as the young lady who really arrested my attention on my way to the _levée_--whose affections it was really my object to win in seeking an introduction to you. To _me_, the resemblance between the twin-sisters has been a fatal resemblance; the long absence of one, a fatal absence." There was a momentary pause, as Mr. Streatfield sadly and calmly pronounced the last words. Mr. Langley appeared to be absorbed in thought. At length he proceeded, speaking to himself:-- "It _is_ strange! I remember that Clara left London on the day of the _levée_, to set out on a visit to her aunt; and only returned here two days since, to be present at her sister's marriage. Well, sir," he continued, addressing Mr. Streatfield, "granting what you say, granting that we all mentioned my absent daughter to you, as we are accustomed to mention her among ourselves, simply as 'Clara,' you have still not excused your conduct in my eyes. Remarkable as the resemblance is between the sisters, more remarkable even, I am willing to admit, than the resemblance usually is between twins, there is yet a difference, which, slight, indescribable though it may be, is nevertheless discernible to all their relations and to all their friends. How is it that you, who represent yourself as so vividly impressed by your first sight of my daughter Clara, did not discover the error when you were introduced to her sister Jane, as the lady who had so much attracted you." "You forget, sir," rejoined Mr. Streatfield, "that I have never beheld the sisters together until to-day. Though both were in the balcony when I first looked up at it, it was Miss Clara Langley alone who attracted my attention. Had I only received the smallest hint that the absent sister of Miss Jane Langley was her _twin-sister_, I would have seen her, at any sacrifice, before making my proposals. For it is my duty to confess to you, Mr. Langley (with the candor which is your undoubted due), that when I was first introduced to your daughter Jane, I felt an unaccountable impression that she was the same as, and yet different from, the lady whom I had seen in the balcony. Soon, however, this impression wore off. Under the circumstances, could I regard it as any thing but a mere caprice, a lover's wayward fancy? I dismissed it from my mind; it ceased to affect me, until to-day, when I first discovered that it was a warning which I had most unhappily disregarded; that a terrible error had been committed, for which no one of us was to blame, but which was fraught with misery, undeserved misery, to us all!" "These, Mr. Streatfield, are explanations which may satisfy _you_," said Mr. Langley, in a milder tone, "but they cannot satisfy _me_; they will not satisfy the world. You have repudiated, in the most public and most abrupt manner, an engagement, in the fulfilment of which the honor and the happiness of my family are concerned. You have given me reasons for your conduct, it is true; but will those reasons restore to my daughter the tranquillity which she has lost, perhaps for ever? Will they stop the whisperings of calumny? Will they carry conviction to those strangers to me, or enemies of mine, whose pleasure it may be to disbelieve them? You have placed both yourself and me, sir, in a position of embarrassment--nay, a position of danger and disgrace, from which the strongest reasons and the best excuses cannot extricate us." "I entreat you to believe," replied Mr. Streatfield, "that I deplore from my heart the error--the fault, if you will--of which I have been unconsciously guilty. I implore your pardon, both for what I said and did at your table to-day; but I cannot do more. I cannot and I dare not pronounce the marriage vows to your daughter, with my lips, when I know that neither my conscience nor my heart can ratify them. The commonest justice, and the commonest respect towards a young lady who deserves both, and more than both, from every one who approaches her, strengthen me to persevere in the only course which it is consistent with honor and integrity for me to take." "You appear to forget," said Mr. Langley, "that it is not merely your own honor, but the honor of others, that is to be considered in the course of conduct which you are now to pursue." "I have by no means forgotten what is due to _you_," continued Mr. Streatfield, "or what responsibilities I have incurred from the nature of my intercourse with your family. Do I put too much trust in your forbearance, if I now assure you, candidly and unreservedly, that I still place all my hopes of happiness in the prospect of becoming connected by marriage with a daughter of yours? Miss Clara Langley--" Here the speaker paused. His position was becoming a delicate and a dangerous one; but he made no effort to withdraw from it. Almost bewildered by the pressing and perilous emergency of the moment, harassed by such a tumult of conflicting emotions within him as he had never known before, he risked the worst, with all the blindfold desperation of love. The angry flush was rising on Mr. Langley's cheek; it was evidently costing him a severe struggle to retain his assumed self-possession; but he did not speak. After an interval, Mr. Streatfield proceeded thus:-- "However unfortunately I may express myself, I am sure you will do me the justice to believe that I am now speaking from my heart on a subject (to _me_) of the most vital importance. Place yourself in my situation, consider all that has happened, consider that this may be, for aught I know to the contrary, the last opportunity I may have of pleading my cause; and then say whether it is possible for me to conceal from you that I can only look to your forbearance and sympathy for permission to retrieve my error, to--to--Mr. Langley! I cannot choose expressions at such a moment as this. I can only tell you that the feeling with which I regarded your daughter Clara, when I first saw her, still remains what it was. I cannot analyze it; I cannot reconcile its apparent inconsistencies and contradictions; I cannot explain how, while I may seem to you and to every one to have varied and vacillated with insolent caprice, I have really remained, in my own heart and to my own conscience, true to my first sensations and my first convictions. I can only implore you not to condemn me to a life of disappointment and misery, by judging me with hasty irritation. Favor me, so far at least, as to relate the conversation which has passed between us to your two daughters. Let me hear how it affects each of them towards me. Let me know what they are willing to think and ready to do under such unparalleled circumstances as have now occurred. I will wait _your_ time, and _their_ time; I will abide by _your_ decision and _their_ decision, pronounced after the first poignant distress and irritation of this day's events have passed over." Still Mr. Langley remained silent; the angry word was on his tongue; the contemptuous rejection of what he regarded for the moment as a proposition equally ill-timed and insolent, seemed bursting to his lips; but once more he restrained himself. He rose from his seat, and walked slowly backwards and forwards, deep in thought. Mr. Streatfield was too much overcome by his own agitation to plead his cause further by another word. There was a silence in the room now, which lasted for some time. We have said that Mr. Langley was a man of the world. He was strongly attached to his children; but he had a little of the selfishness and much of the reverence for wealth of a man of the world. As he now endeavored to determine mentally on his proper course of action--to disentangle the whole case from all its mysterious intricacies--to view it, extraordinary as it was, in its proper bearings, his thoughts began gradually to assume what is called, "a practical turn." He reflected that he had another daughter, besides the twin-sisters, to provide for; and that he had two sons to settle in life. He was not rich enough to portion three daughters; and he had not interest enough to start his sons favorably in a career of eminence. Mr. Streatfield, on the contrary, was a man of great wealth, and of great "connections" among people in power. Was such a son-in-law to be rejected, even after all that had happened, without at least consulting his wife and daughters first? He thought not. Had not Mr. Streatfield, in truth, been the victim of a remarkable fatality, of an incredible accident, and were no allowances, under such circumstances, to be made for him? He began to think there were. Reflecting thus, he determined at length to proceed with moderation and caution at all hazards; and regained composure enough to continue the conversation in a cold, but still in a polite tone. "I will commit myself, sir, to no agreement or promise whatever," he began, "nor will I consider this interview in any respect as a conclusive one, either on your side or mine; but if I think, on consideration, that it is desirable that our conversation should be repeated to my wife and daughters, I will make them acquainted with it, and will let you know the result. In the mean time, I think you will agree with me, that it is most fit that the next communications between us should take place by letter alone." Mr. Streatfield was not slow in taking the hint conveyed by Mr. Langley'a last words. After what had occurred, and until something was definitely settled, he felt that the suffering and suspense which he was already enduring would be increased tenfold if he remained longer in the same house with the twin sisters--the betrothed of one, the lover of the other! Murmuring a few inaudible words of acquiescence in the arrangement which had just been proposed to him, he left the room. The same evening he quitted Langley Hall. The next morning the remainder of the guests departed, their curiosity to know all the particulars of what had happened remaining ungratified. They were simply informed that an extraordinary and unexpected obstacle had arisen to delay the wedding; that no blame attached to any one in the matter; and that as soon as every thing had been finally determined, every thing would be explained. Until then, it was not considered necessary to enter in any way into particulars. By the middle of the day every visitor had left the house; and a strange and melancholy spectacle it presented when they were all gone. Rooms were now empty and silent, which the day before had been filled with animated groups, and had echoed with merry laughter. In one apartment, the fittings for the series of "Tableaux" which had been proposed, remained half completed: the dresses that were to have been worn, lay scattered on the floor; the carpenter who had come to proceed with his work, gathered up his tools in ominous silence, and departed as quickly as he could. Here lay books still open at the last page read; there was an album, with the drawing of the day before unfinished, and the color-box unclosed by its side. On the deserted billiard-table, the positions of the "cues" and balls showed traces of an interrupted game. Flowers were scattered on the rustic tables in the garden, half made into nosegays, and beginning to wither already. The very dogs wandered in a moody, unsettled way about the house, missing the friendly hands that had fondled and fed them for so many days past, and whining impatiently in the deserted drawing-rooms. The social desolation of the scene was miserably complete in all its aspects. Immediately after the departure of his guests, Mr. Langley had a long interview with his wife. He repeated to her the conversation which had taken place between Mr. Streatfield and himself, and received from her in return such an account of the conduct of his daughter, under the trial that had befallen her, as filled him with equal astonishment and admiration. It was a new revelation to him of the character of his own child. "As soon as the violent symptoms had subsided," said Mrs. Langley, in answer to her husband's first inquiries, "as soon as the hysterical fit was subdued, Jane seemed suddenly to assume a new character, to become another person. She begged that the Doctor might be released from his attendance, and that she might be left alone with me and with her sister Clara. When every one else had quitted the room, she continued to sit in the easy-chair where we had at first placed her, covering her face with her hands. She entreated us not to speak to her for a short time, and, except that she shuddered occasionally, sat quite still and silent. When she at last looked up, we were shocked to see the deadly paleness of her face, and the strange alteration that had come over her expression; but she spoke to us so coherently, so solemnly even, that we were amazed; we knew not what to think or what to do; it hardly seemed to be _our_ Jane who was now speaking to us." "What did she say?" asked Mr. Langley, eagerly. "She said that the first feeling of her heart, at that moment, was gratitude on her own account. She thanked God that the terrible discovery had not been made too late, when her married life might have been a life of estrangement and misery. Up to the moment when Mr. Streatfield had uttered that one fatal exclamation, she had loved him, she told us, fondly and fervently; _now_, no explanation, no repentance (if either were tendered), no earthly persuasion or command (in case Mr. Streatfield should think himself bound, as a matter of atonement, to hold to his rash engagement), could ever induce her to become his wife." "Mr. Streatfield will not test her resolution," said Mr. Langley, bitterly; "he deliberately repeated his repudiation of his engagement in this room; nay, more, he--" "I have something important to say to you from Jane on this point," interrupted Mrs. Langley. "After she had spoken the first few words which I have already repeated to you, she told us that she had been thinking--thinking more calmly perhaps than we could imagine--on all that had happened; on what Mr. Streatfield had said at the dinner-table; on the momentary glance of recognition which she had seen pass between him and her sister Clara, whose accidental absence, during the whole period of Mr. Streatfield's intercourse with us in London, she now remembered and reminded me of. The cause of the fatal error, and the manner in which it had occurred, seemed to be already known to her, as if by intuition. We entreated her to refrain from speaking on the subject for the present; but she answered that it was her duty to speak on it--her duty to propose something which should alleviate the suspense and distress we were all enduring on her account. No words can describe to you her fortitude, her noble endurance--." Mrs. Langley's voice faltered as she pronounced the last words. It was some minutes ere she became sufficiently composed to proceed thus: "I am charged with a message to you from Jane--I should say, charged with her entreaties, that you will not suspend our intercourse with Mr. Streatfield, or view his conduct in any other than a merciful light--as conduct for which accident and circumstances are alone to blame. After she had given me this message to you, she turned to Clara, who sat weeping by her side, completely overcome; and said that _they_ were to blame, if any one was to be blamed in the matter, for being so much alike as to make all who saw them apart doubt which was Clara and which was Jane. She said this with a faint smile, and an effort to speak playfully, which touched us to the heart. Then, in a tone and manner which I can never forget, she asked her sister--charging her, on their mutual affection and mutual confidence, to answer sincerely--if _she_ had noticed Mr. Streatfield on the day of the _levée_, and had afterwards remembered him at the dinner-table, as _he_ had noticed and remembered _her_? It was only after Jane had repeated this appeal, still more earnestly and affectionately, that Clara summoned courage and composure enough to confess that she _had_ noticed Mr. Streatfield on the day of the _levée_, had thought of him afterwards during his absence from London, and had recognized him at our table, as he had recognized her. "Is it possible! I own I had not anticipated--not thought for one moment of that," said Mr. Langley. "Perhaps," continued his wife, "it is best that you should see Jane now, and judge for yourself. For _my_ part, her noble resignation under this great trial, has so astonished and impressed me, that I only feel competent to advise, as she advises, to act as she thinks fit. I begin to think that it is not _we_ who are to guide _her_, but _she_ who is to guide _us_." Mr. Langley lingered irresolute for a few minutes; then quitted the room, and proceeded along to Jane Langley's apartment. When he knocked at the door, it was opened by Clara. There was an expression partly of confusion, partly of sorrow on her face; and when her father stopped as if to speak to her, she merely pointed into the room, and hurried away without uttering a word. Mr. Langley had been prepared by his wife for the change that had taken place in his daughter since the day before; but he felt startled, almost overwhelmed, as he now looked on her. One of the poor girl's most prominent personal attractions, from her earliest years, had been the beauty of her complexion; and now, the freshness and the bloom had entirely departed from her face; it seemed absolutely colorless. Her expression, too, appeared to Mr. Langley's eye, to have undergone a melancholy alteration; to have lost its youthfulness suddenly; to have assumed a strange character of firmness and thoughtfulness, which he had never observed in it before. She was sitting by an open window, commanding a lovely view of wide, sunny landscape; a Bible which her mother had given her, lay open on her knees; she was reading in it as her father entered. For the first time in his life, he paused, speechless, as he approached to speak to one of his own children. "I am afraid I look very ill," she said, holding out her hand to him; "but I am better than I look; I shall be quite well in a day or two. Have you heard my message, father? have you been told?"-- "My love, we will not speak of it yet; we will wait a few days," said Mr. Langley. "You have always been so kind to me," she continued, in less steady tones, "that I am sure you will let me go on. I have very little to say, but that little must be said now, and then we need never recur to it again. Will you consider all that has happened, as something forgotten? You have heard already what it is that I entreat you to do; will you let _him_--Mr. Streatfield--" (She stopped, her voice failed for a moment, but she recovered herself again almost immediately.) "Will you let Mr. Streatfield remain here, or recall him if he is gone, and give him an opportunity of explaining himself to my sister? If poor Clara should refuse to see him for my sake, pray do not listen to her. I am sure this is what ought to be done; I have been thinking of it very calmly, and I feel that it is right. And there is something more I have to beg of you, father; it is, that, while Mr. Streatfield is here, you will allow me to go and stay with my aunt.--You know how fond she is of me. Her house is not a day's journey from home. It is best for every body (much the best for _me_) that I should not remain here at present; and--and--dear father! I have always been your spoiled child; and I know you will indulge me still. If you will do what I ask you, I shall soon get over this heavy trial. I shall be well again if I am away at my aunt's--if--" She paused; and putting one trembling arm round her father's neck, hid her face on his breast. For some minutes, Mr. Langley could not trust himself to answer her. There was something, not deeply touching only, but impressive and sublime, about the moral heroism of this young girl, whose heart and mind--hitherto wholly inexperienced in the harder and darker emergencies of life--now rose in the strength of their native purity superior to the bitterest, cruellest trial that either could undergo; whose patience and resignation, called forth for the first time by a calamity which suddenly thwarted the purposes and paralyzed the affections that had been destined to endure for a life, could thus appear at once in the fullest maturity of virtue and beauty. As the father thought on these things; as he vaguely and imperfectly estimated the extent of the daughter's sacrifice; as he reflected on the nature of the affliction that had befallen her--which combined in itself a fatality that none could have foreseen, a fault that could neither be repaired nor resented, a judgment against which there was no appeal--and then remembered how this affliction had been borne, with what words and what actions it had been met, he felt that it would be almost a profanation to judge the touching petition just addressed to him, by the criterion of _his_ worldly doubts and _his_ worldly wisdom. His eye fell on the Bible, still open beneath it; he remembered the little child who was set in the midst of the disciples, as teacher and example to all; and when at length he spoke in answer to his daughter, it was not to direct or to advise, but to comfort and comply. They delayed her removal for a few days, to see if she faltered in her resolution, if her bodily weakness increased; but she never wavered; nothing in her appearance changed, either for better or for worse. A week after the startling scene at the dinner-table, she was living in the strictest retirement in the house of her aunt. About the period of her departure, a letter was received from Mr. Streatfield. It was little more than a recapitulation of what he had already said to Mr. Langley--expressed, however, on this occasion, in stronger and, at the same time, in more respectful terms. The letter was answered briefly: he was informed that nothing had, as yet, been determined on, but that the next communication would bring him a final reply. Two months passed. During that time, Jane Langley was frequently visited at her aunt's house, by her father and mother. She still remained calm and resolved; still looked pale and thoughtful, as at first. Doctors were consulted: they talked of a shock to the nervous system; of great hope from time, and their patient's strength of mind; and of the necessity of acceding to her wishes in all things. Then, the advice of the aunt was sought. She was a woman of an eccentric, masculine character, who had herself experienced a love-disappointment in early life, and had never married. She gave her opinion unreservedly and abruptly, as she always gave it. "Do as Jane tells you!" said the old lady, severely; "that poor child has more moral courage and determination than all the rest of you put together! I know better than any body what a sacrifice she has had to make; but she has made it, and made it nobly--like a heroine, as some people would say; like a good, high-minded, courageous girl, as _I_ say! Do as she tells you! Let that poor, selfish fool of a man have his way, and marry her sister--he has made one mistake already about a face--see if he doesn't find out, some day, that he has made another, about a wife! Let him!--Jane is too good for _him_, or for any man! Leave her to me; let her stop here; she shan't lose by what happened! You know this place is mine--I mean it is to be hers, when I'm dead. You know I've got some money--I shall leave it to her. I've made my will: it's all done and settled! Go back home; send for the man, and tell Clara to marry him without any more fuss! You wanted my opinion--There it is for you!" At last Mr. Langley decided. The important letter was written, which recalled Mr. Streatfield to Langley Hall. As Jane had foreseen, Clara at first refused to hold any communication with him; but a letter from her sister, and the remonstrances of her father, soon changed her resolution. There was nothing in common between the twin-sisters but their personal resemblance. Clara had been guided all her life by the opinions of others, and she was guided by them now. Once permitted the opportunity of pleading his cause, Mr. Streatfield did not neglect his own interests. It would be little to our purpose to describe the doubts and difficulties which delayed at first the progress of his second courtship--pursued as it was under circumstances, not only extraordinary, but unprecedented. It is no longer with him, or with Clara Langley, that the interest of our story is connected. Suffice it to say, that he ultimately overcame all the young lady's scruples; and that, a few months afterwards, some of Mr. Langley's intimate friends found themselves again assembled round his table as wedding-guests, and congratulating Mr. Streatfield on his approaching union with Clara, as they had already congratulated him, scarcely a year back, on his approaching union with Jane! The social ceremonies of the wedding-day were performed soberly--almost sadly. Some of the guests (especially the unmarried ladies) thought that Miss Clara had allowed herself to be won too easily--others were picturing to themselves the situation of the poor girl who was absent; and contributed little toward the gayety of the party. On this occasion, however, nothing occurred to interrupt the proceedings; the marriage took place; and, immediately after it, Mr. Streatfield and his bride started for a tour on the Continent. On their departure, Jane Langley returned home. She made no reference whatever to her sister's marriage; and no one mentioned it in her presence. Still the color did not return to her cheek, or the old gayety to her manner. The shock that she had suffered had left its traces on her for life. But there was no evidence that she was sinking under the remembrances which neither time nor resolution could banish. The strong, pure heart had undergone a change, but not a deterioration. All that had been brilliant in her character was gone; but all that was noble in it remained. Never had her intercourse with her family and her friends been so affectionate and so kindly as it was now. When, after a long absence, Mr. Streatfield and his wife returned to England, it was observed, at her first meeting with them, that the momentary confusion and embarrassment were on _their_ side, not on _hers_. During their stay at Langley Hall, she showed not the slightest disposition to avoid them. No member of the family welcomed them more cordially, entered into all their plans and projects more readily, or bade them farewell with a kinder or better grace, when they departed for their own home. Our tale is nearly ended: what remains of it, must comprise the history of many years in a few words. Time passed on; and Death and Change told of its lapse among the family at Langley Hall. Five years after the events above related, Mr. Langley died; and was followed to the grave, shortly afterwards, by his wife. Of their two sons, the eldest was rising into good practice at the bar; the youngest had become _attaché_ to a foreign embassy. Their third daughter was married, and living at the family seat of her husband, in Scotland. Mr. and Mrs. Streatfield had children of their own, now, to occupy their time and absorb their care. The career of life was over for some--the purposes of life had altered for others--Jane Langley alone, still remained unchanged. She now lived entirely with her aunt. At intervals--as their worldly duties and avocations permitted them--the other members of her family, or one or two intimate friends, came to the house. Offers of marriage were made to her, but were all declined. The first, last love of her girlish days--abandoned as a hope, and crushed as a passion; living only as a quiet grief, as a pure remembrance--still kept its watch, as guardian and defender, over her heart. Years passed on and worked no change in the sad uniformity of her life, until the death of her aunt left her mistress of the house in which she had hitherto been a guest. Then it was observed that she made fewer and fewer efforts to vary the tenor of her existence, to forget her old remembrances for awhile in the society of others. Such invitations as reached her from relations and friends were more frequently declined than accepted. She was growing old herself now; and, with each advancing year, the busy pageant of the outer world presented less and less that could attract her eye. So she began to surround herself, in her solitude, with the favorite books that she had studied, with the favorite music that she had played, in the days of her hopes and her happiness. Every thing that was associated, however slightly, with that past period, now acquired a character of inestimable value in her eyes, as aiding her mind to seclude itself more and more strictly in the sanctuary of its early recollections. Was it weakness in her to live thus; to abandon the world and the world's interests, as one who had no hope, or part in either? Had she earned the right, by the magnitude and resolution of her sacrifice, thus to indulge in the sad luxury of fruitless remembrance? Who shall say!--who shall presume to decide that cannot think with _her_ thoughts, and look back with _her_ recollections! Thus she lived--alone, and yet not lonely; without hope, but with no despair; separate and apart from the world around her, except when she approached it by her charities to the poor, and her succor to the afflicted; by her occasional interviews with the surviving members of her family and a few old friends, when they sought her in her calm retreat; and by the little presents which she constantly sent to brothers' and sisters' children, who worshipped, as their invisible good genius, "the kind lady" whom most of them had never seen. Such was her existence throughout the closing years of her life: such did it continue--calm and blameless--to the last. * * * * * Reader, when you are told, that what is impressive and pathetic in the Drama of Human Life has passed with a past age of Chivalry and Romance, remember Jane Langley, and quote in contradiction the story of the TWIN SISTERS! * * * * * When about nine years old, Southey attended a school at Bristol, kept by one Williams, a Welshman, the one, he says, of all his schoolmasters, whom he remembered with the kindliest feelings. This Williams used sometimes to infuse more passion into his discipline than was becoming, of which Southey records a most ridiculous illustration. One of his schoolmates--a Creole, with a shade of African color and negro features--was remarkable for his stupidity. Williams, after flogging him one day, made him pay a half-penny for the use of the rod, because he required it so much oftener than any other boy in school. From Fraser's Magazine. ALFIERI. Vittorio Alfieri was born at Asti, a city of Piedmont, on the 17th of January, 1749,--the year in which his great contemporary, Goëthe, first saw the light. His father, Antonio Alfieri, was a nobleman of high rank in his own country; his mother, whose name was Monica Maillard di Tournon, was of Savoyard descent. At the time of Vittorio's birth his father was sixty years of age; and as until then he had had no son, the entrance of the future poet into the world was to him a subject of unspeakable delight: but his happiness was of short duration, for he overheated himself one day by going to see the child at a neighboring village where he was at nurse, and died of the illness that ensued, his son being at the time less than a year old. The countess, his widow, did not long remain so, as she very shortly married again, her third husband (she was a widow when the count married her) being the Cavalier Giacinto Alfieri, a distant member of the same family. When about six years old, Alfieri was placed under the care of a priest called Don Ivaldi, who taught him writing, arithmetic, Cornelius Nepos, and Phædrus. He soon discovered, however, that the worthy priest was an ignoramus, and congratulates himself on having escaped from his hands at the age of nine, otherwise he believes that he should have been an absolute and irreclaimable dunce. His mother and father-in-law were constantly repeating the maxim then so popular among the Italian nobility, that it was not necessary that a gentleman should be a doctor. It was at this early age that he was first attacked by that melancholy which gradually assumed entire dominion over him, and throughout life remained a most prominent feature in his character. When only seven years of age, he made an attempt to poison himself by eating some noxious herbs, being impelled to this strange action by an undefined desire to die. He was well punished for his silliness by being made very unwell, and by being, moreover, shut up in his room for some days. No punishment for his youthful transgressions was, however, so effectual as being sent in a nightcap to a neighboring church. "Who knows," says he, "whether I am not indebted to that blessed nightcap for having turned out one of the most truthful men I ever knew?" In 1758, his paternal uncle and guardian, seeing what little progress he was making, determined to send him to the Turin Academy, and accordingly he started in the month of July. "I cried (he says, in his autobiography) during the whole of the first stage. On arriving at the post-house, I got out of the carriage while the horses were being changed, and feeling thirsty, instead of asking for a glass, or requesting any body to fetch me some water, I marched up to the horse-trough, dipped the corner of my cap in the water, and drank to my heart's content. The postilions, seeing this, told my attendant, who ran up and began rating me soundly; but I told him that travellers ought to accustom themselves to such things, and that no good soldier would drink in any other manner. Where I fished up these Achilles-like ideas I know not, as my mother had always educated me with the greatest tenderness, and with really ludicrous care for my health." He describes his character at this period, where he ends what he calls the epoch of childhood, and begins that of adolescence, as having been as follows: "I was taciturn and placid for the most part, but occasionally very talkative and lively; in fact, I generally ran from one extreme to another. I was obstinate and restive when force was exerted, most docile under kind treatment; restrained more by fear of being scolded than by any thing else; susceptible of shame even to excess, and inflexible when rubbed against the grain." He entered the Academy on the 1st of August. It was a magnificent quadrangular building, of which two of the sides were occupied by the King's Theatre and the Royal Archives; another side was appropriated to the younger students, who composed what were called the second and third apartments, while the fourth contained the first apartment, or the older students, who were mostly foreigners, besides the king's pages, to the number of twenty or twenty-five. Alfieri was at first placed in the third apartment, and the fourth class, from which he was promoted to the third at the end of three months. The master of this class was a certain Don Degiovanni, a priest even more ignorant than his good friend Ivaldi. It may be supposed that under such auspices he did not make much progress in his studies. Let us hear his own account: "Being thus an ass, in the midst of asses, and under an ass, I translated Cornelius Nepos, some of Virgil's _Eclogues_, and such-like; we wrote stupid, nonsensical themes, so that in any well-directed school we should have been a wretched fourth class. I was never at the bottom; emulation spurred me on until I surpassed or equalled the head boy; but as soon as I reached the top, I fell back into a state of torpor. I was perhaps to be excused, as nothing could equal the dryness and insipidity of our studies. It is true that we translated Cornelius Nepos; but none of us, probably not even the master himself, knew who the men were whose lives we were translating, nor their countries, nor the times in which they lived, nor the governments under which they flourished, nor even what a government was. All our ideas were contracted, false, or confused; the master had no object in view; his pupils took not the slightest interest in what they learned. In short, all were as bad as bad could be; no one looked after us, or if they did, knew what they were about." In November, 1759, he was promoted to the humanity class, the master of which was a man of some learning. His emulation was excited in this class by his meeting a boy who could repeat 600 lines of the _Georgics_ without a single mistake, while he could never get beyond 400. These defeats almost suffocated him with anger, and he often burst out crying, and occasionally abused his rival most violently. He found some consolation, however, for his inferior memory, in always writing the best themes. About this time he obtained possession of a copy of Ariosto in four volumes, which he rather believes he purchased, a volume at a time, with certain half-fowls that were given the students on Sundays, his first Ariosto thus costing him two fowls in the space of four weeks. He much regrets that he is not certain on the point, feeling anxious to know whether he imbibed his first draughts of poetry at the expense of his stomach. Notwithstanding that he was at the head of the humanity class, and could translate the _Georgics_ into Italian prose, he found great difficulty in understanding the easiest of Italian poets. The master, however, soon perceived him reading the book by stealth, and confiscated it, leaving the future poet deprived for the present of all poetical guidance. During this period he was in a wretched state of health, being constantly attacked by various extraordinary diseases. He describes himself as not growing at all, and as resembling a very delicate and pale wax taper. In 1760 he passed in the class of rhetoric, and succeeded, moreover, in recovering his Ariosto, but read very little of it, partly from the difficulty he found in understanding it, and partly because the continued breaks in the story disgusted him. As to Tasso, he had never even heard his name. He obtained a few of Metastasio's plays as _libretti_ of the Opera at carnival time, and was much pleased with them, and also with some of Goldoni's comedies that were lent to him. "But the dramatic genius, of which the germs perhaps existed in me, was soon buried or extinguished for want of food, of encouragement, and every thing else. In short, my ignorance and that of my instructors, and the carelessness of every body in every thing exceeded all conception." The following year he was promoted into the class of philosophy, which met in the adjoining university. The following is his description of the course: "This school of peripatetic philosophy was held after dinner. During the first half-hour we wrote out the lecture at the dictation of the professor, and in the subsequent three-quarters of an hour, when he commented upon it, Heaven knows how, in Latin, we scholars wrapped ourselves up comfortably in our mantles, and went fast asleep; and among the assembled philosophers, not a sound was heard except the drawling voice of the professor himself, half asleep, and the various notes of the snorers, who formed a most delightful concert in every possible key." During his holidays this year, his uncle took him to the Opera for the first time, where he heard the _Mercato di Malmantile_. The music produced a most extraordinary effect upon him, and for several weeks afterwards he remained immersed in a strange but not unpleasing melancholy, followed by an absolute loathing of his usual studies. Music all through life affected him most powerfully, and he states that his tragedies were almost invariably planned by him when under its influence. It was about this time that he composed his first sonnet, which was made up of whole or mutilated verses of Metastasio and Ariosto, the only two Italian poets of whom he knew any thing. It was in praise of a certain lady to whom his uncle was paying his addresses, and whom he himself admired. Several persons, including the lady herself, praised it, so that he already fancied himself a poet. His uncle, however, a military man, and no votary of the Muses, laughed at him so much, that his poetical vein was soon dried up, and he did not renew his attempts in the line till he was more than twenty-five years old. "How many good or bad verses did my uncle suffocate, together with my first-born sonnet!" He next studied physics and ethics--the former under the celebrated Beccaria, but not a single definition remained in his head. These studies, however, as well as those in civil and canon law, which he had commenced, were interrupted by a violent illness, which rendered it necessary for him to have his head shaved, and to wear a wig. His companions, at first, tormented him greatly about this wig, and used to tear it from his head; but he soon succeeded in appeasing the public indignation, by being always the first to throw the unhappy ornament in question up in the air, calling it by every opprobrious epithet. From that time he remained the least persecuted wig-wearer among the two or three who were in this predicament. He now took lessons on the piano, and in geography, fencing, and dancing. He imbibed the most invincible dislike to the latter, which he attributed to the grimaces and extraordinary contortions of the master, a Frenchman just arrived from Paris. He dates from this period that extreme hatred of the French nation which remained with him through life, and which was one of the strangest features in his character. His uncle died this year (1763), and as he was now fourteen, the age at which, by the laws of Piedmont, minors are freed from the care of their guardians, and are placed under curators, who leave them masters of their income, and can only prevent the alienation of their real estates, he found himself possessed of considerable property, which was still farther increased by his uncle's fortune. Having obtained the degree of master of arts, by passing a public examination in logic, physics, and geometry, he was rewarded by being allowed to attend the riding-school, a thing he had always ardently desired. He became an expert horseman, and attributes to this exercise the recovery of his health, which now rapidly improved. "Having buried my uncle, changed my guardian into a curator, obtained my master's degree, got rid of my attendant Andrea, and mounted a steed, it is incredible how proud I became. I told the authorities plainly that I was sick of studying law, and that I would not go on with it. After a consultation, they determined to remove me into the first apartment, which I entered on the 8th May, 1763." He now led an extremely idle life, being little looked after. A crowd of flatterers, the usual attendants upon wealth, sprung up around him, and he indulged in amusements and dissipations of every kind. A temporary fit of industry, which lasted for two or three months, came over him, and he plunged deeply into the thirty-six volumes of Fleury's _Ecclesiastical History_. Soon, however, he resumed his old course, and conducted himself so badly that the authorities found it necessary to place him under arrest, and he remained for some months a prisoner in his own apartment, obstinately refusing to make any apology, and leading the life of a wild beast, never putting on his clothes, and spending most of his time in sleep. He was at length released, on the occasion of his sister Giulia's marriage to the Count Giacinto di Cumiana, in May, 1764. On regaining his former position he bought his first horse, and soon afterwards another, on the pretence of its being delicate. He next purchased two carriage horses, and went on thus till in less than a year he had eight in his possession. He also had an elegant carriage built for him, but used it very seldom, because his friends were obliged to walk, and he shrunk from offending them by a display of ostentation. His horses, however, were at the service of all, and as his love for them could not excite any feelings of envy, he took the greatest delight in them. It was now that he first felt the symptoms of love, excited by a lady who was the wife of an elder brother of some intimate friends of his, to whom he was on a visit. His transient passion, however, soon passed away, without leaving any trace behind it. The period had now arrived for his leaving the academy, and in May, 1766, he was nominated ensign in the provincial regiment of Asti, which met only twice a-year for a few days, thus allowing ample opportunity for doing nothing; the only thing, he says, he had made up his mind to do. But he soon got tired of even this slight restraint. "I could not adapt myself to that chain of graduated dependence which is called subordination, and which although the soul of military discipline, could never be the soul of a future tragic poet." He therefore obtained permission, though with great difficulty, to accompany an English Catholic tutor, who was about to visit Rome and Naples with two of his fellow-students. He chooses this moment for commencing the epoch of youth, which he describes as embracing ten years of travel and dissipation. On reaching Milan, the travellers visited the Ambrosian library. "Here the librarian placed in my hands a manuscript of Petrarch, but, like a true Goth, I threw it aside, saying it was nothing to me. The fact was, I had a certain spite against the aforesaid Petrarch; for having met with a copy of his works some years before, when I was a philosopher, I found on opening it at various places by chance that I could not understand the meaning in the least; accordingly I joined with the French and other ignorant pretenders in condemning him, and as I considered him a dull and prosy writer, I treated his invaluable manuscript in the manner above described." At this time he always spoke and wrote in French, and read nothing but French books. "As I knew still less of Italian, I gathered the necessary fruit of my birth in an amphibious country, and of the precious education I had received." They proceeded afterwards to Florence, Rome, and Naples. At the latter place he obtained permission from his own court, through the intercession of the Sardinian minister, to leave the tutor, and travel for the future alone. Attended only by his faithful servant Elia, who had taken the place of the worthless Andrea, and for whom he felt a great affection, he returned to Rome, and had the honor of kissing the Pope's toe. The pontiff's manner pleased him so much, that he felt no repugnance to going through the ceremony, although he had read Fleury, and knew the real value of the aforesaid toe. Having obtained leave to travel for another year, he determined to visit France, England, and Holland. He went first to Venice, and there was assailed by that melancholy, _ennui_, and restlessness, peculiar to his character. "I spent many days without leaving the house, my chief employment being to stand at the window, and make signs, and hold brief dialogues with a young lady opposite; the rest of the day I spent in sleeping, in thinking of I know not what, and generally crying, I knew not why." All through life he was subject to these periodical fits, which came on every spring, and materially influenced his powers of composition. He proceeded afterwards to France, expecting to be delighted with Paris; but on arriving there he found it so unlike what he had anticipated, that he burst into a violent fit of passion at having made so much haste, undergone so much fatigue, and had his fancy excited to such a pitch of frenzy, only to plunge into that filthy sewer, as he calls it! His anger is quite ludicrous; but he, notwithstanding, remained there five months, during which time he was presented to Louis XV. at Versailles, but the cold reception he met with greatly annoyed him. "Although I had been told that the king did not speak to ordinary foreigners, and although I did not care much for his notice, yet I could not swallow the Jove-like superciliousness of the monarch, who surveyed from head to foot the people presented to him, without appearing to receive the slightest impression. It was as if somebody said to a giant, 'I beg to present an ant to you;' and he were either to stare or to smile, or to say, it may be, 'Oh, what a little creature!'" He was as much delighted with England as he had been disgusted with France. He falls into perfect raptures when speaking of our national character and our national institutions, and regrets that it was not in his power to remain here for ever. In June, 1768, he went to Holland, and at the Hague fell violently in love with the wife of a rich gentleman whom he knew. When the lady was obliged to go into Switzerland, he was thrown into such a state of frenzy that he attempted to commit suicide, by tearing off the bandages from the place where he had had himself bled, under pretence of illness. His servant, however, suspected his intentions, and prevented him from carrying his resolution into effect. He gradually recovered his spirits, and determined to return to Italy. On reaching Turin, he was seized by a desire to study. The book in which he took most delight was Plutarch's Lives: "Some of these, such as Timoleon, Cæsar, Brutus, Pelopidas, and Cato, I read four or five times over, with such transports of shouting, crying, and fury, that any person in the next room must have thought me mad. On reading any particular anecdotes of those great men, I used often to spring to my feet in the greatest agitation, and quite beside myself, shedding tears of grief and rage at seeing myself born in Piedmont, and in an age and under a government where nothing noble could be said or done, and where it was almost useless to think or to feel." His brother-in-law now strongly urged him to marry, and he consented, although unwillingly, that negotiations should be entered into on his behalf with the family of a young, noble, and rich heiress, whose beautiful black eyes would, doubtless, soon have driven Plutarch out of his head. The end, however, was that she married somebody else, to Alfieri's internal satisfaction. "Had I been tied down by a wife and children, the Muses would certainly have bid me good bye." The moment he felt himself free he determined to start again on his travels. On reaching Vienna, the Sardinian minister offered to introduce him to Metastasio; but he cared nothing at that time for any Italian author, and, moreover, had taken a great dislike to the poet, from having seen him make a servile genuflexion to the Empress Maria Theresa in the Imperial Gardens at Schönbrunn. On entering the dominions of Frederick the Great, he was made extremely indignant by the military despotism that reigned there. When presented to the king he did not appear in uniform. "The minister asked me the reason of this, seeing that I was in the service of my own sovereign. I replied, 'Because there are already enough uniforms here.' The king said to me his usual four words; I watched him attentively, fixing my eyes respectfully on his, and thanked Heaven that I was not born his slave." Denmark, Sweden, and Russia, were then successively visited by him. He had heard so much of the latter country, that when he reached St. Petersburgh his expectations were wrought up to a great pitch. "But, alas! no sooner did I set foot in this Asiatic encampment of tents, than I called to mind Rome, Genoa, Venice, and Florence, and began to laugh. The longer I remained in the country, the more were my first impressions confirmed, and I left it with the precious conviction that it was not worth seeing." He refused to be presented to the celebrated female autocrat, Catherine II., whom he stigmatizes as "a philosophical Clytemnestra." He next visited England for the second time, arriving at the end of 1770. During his stay in London, which lasted for seven months, he became involved in an affair which excited an extraordinary sensation at the time, and which is even remembered by the scandal-mongers of the present day. He formed the acquaintance of the wife of an officer of high rank in the Guards, and this intimacy soon assumed a criminal character. Her husband, a man of a very jealous temperament, suspected his wife's infidelity, and had them watched. On finding his suspicions confirmed, he challenged Alfieri, and they fought a duel with swords in the Green Park, in which the future poet was wounded in the arm. The husband pressed for a divorce, and Alfieri announced his intention of marrying the lady as soon as she was free; but, to his horror, she confessed to him one day, what was already known to the public through the newspapers, although he was ignorant of it, that before she knew him she had been engaged in an intrigue with a groom of her husband! Despite this discovery, it was some time before his affection for her abated; but at length, on her announcing her determination to enter a convent in France, he quitted her at Rochester, and left this country himself almost immediately afterwards. He went to Paris, and there bought a collection of the principal Italian poets and prose-writers in thirty-six volumes, which from that time became his inseparable companions, although he did not make much use of them for two or three years. However, he now learned to know at least something of the six great luminaries, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, Boccaccio, and Machiavelli. He next proceeded to Spain and Portugal. At Lisbon he formed the acquaintance of the Abate Tommaso di Caluso, younger brother of the Sardinian minister. The society of this distinguished man produced the most beneficial effect on him. One evening, when the Abate was reading to him the fine _Ode to Fortune_ of Alessandro Guidi, a poet whose name he had never even heard, some of the stanzas produced such extraordinary transports in him, that the former told him that he was born to write verses. This sudden impulse of Apollo, as he calls it, was however only a momentary flush, which was soon extinguished, and remained buried for a long time to come. He now bent his steps homewards, and reached Turin in May, 1772, after an absence of three years. He took a magnificent house in the Piazza di San Carlo, furnished it sumptuously, and commenced leading a merry life with about a dozen friends, who formed a society, which met at his house every week. This Society was governed by strict rules, one of which was that all should contribute something in writing for their reciprocal amusement; these contributions being placed in a chest, of which the president for the time being kept the key, and read aloud by him at their meetings. They were all written in French, and Alfieri mentions one of his which was very successful. It described the Deity at the last judgment demanding from every soul an account of itself, and the characters he drew were all those of well-known individuals, both male and female, in Turin. It was not long before he fell in love for the third time, the object of his passion now being a lady some years older than himself, and of somewhat doubtful reputation. For the space of nearly two years she exercised unbounded dominion over him. Feeling that he could not support the fetters of Venus and of Mars at one and the same time, he with some little difficulty obtained permission to throw up his commission in the army. While attending at his mistress's bedside, during an illness by which she was attacked in January, 1744, the idea first struck him of writing a dramatic sketch. He wrote it without the slightest plan, in the form of a dialogue between three persons, called respectively, Photinus, Lachesis, and Cleopatra. He gives a specimen of it in a note, and it is certainly not of the very highest order of merit. On the recovery of the lady he placed it under the cushion of her couch, where it remained forgotten for a year, and thus were the first fruits of his tragic genius brooded over, as it were, by the lady and all who chanced to sit upon the couch. At length he threw off the chains which had so long bound him. The exertion was, however, so great that he was actually obliged to get his servant Elia to tie him to his chair, that he might not quit the house. When his friends came to see him, he dropped his dressing gown over the bandages, so that his forced imprisonment was not perceived. His first appearance in public was at the carnival of 1775, where he dressed himself up as Apollo, and recited at the public ball at the theatre a masquerade he had composed on the subject of love, twanging a guitar vigorously all the time. He was afterwards heartily ashamed of this freak, which he wonders he could ever have been guilty of. An ardent desire for glory now seized him, and after some months spent in constant poetical studies, and in fingering grammars and dictionaries, he succeeded in producing his first tragedy; which, like the sketch already mentioned, he entitled _Cleopatra_. It was performed at Turin, on the 16th June, 1775, at the Carignan Theatre, and was followed by a comic after-piece, also written by him, called _The Poets_, in which he introduced himself under the name of Giusippus, and was the first to ridicule his own tragedy; which, he says, differed from those of his poetical rivals, inasmuch as their productions were the mature offspring of an erudite incapacity, whilst his was the premature child of a not unpromising ignorance. These two pieces were performed with considerable success for two successive evenings, when he withdrew them from the stage, ashamed at having so rashly exposed himself to the public. He never considered this _Cleopatra_ worthy of preservation, and it is not published with his other works. From this moment, however, he felt every vein swollen with the most burning thirst for real theatrical laurels, and here terminates the epoch of Youth and commences that of Manhood. Up to this point we have seen Alfieri's character as formed by nature, and before it was influenced by study, or softened down by intercourse with the world. We have seen him ardent, restless beyond all belief, passionate, oppressed by unaccountable melancholy, acting under the toiling impulse of the moment, whether in love or hate, and, what is of extreme disadvantage to him as respects the career he is about to enter upon, suffering from a deficient education. We have now to see how he overcame all the obstacles arising from his natural character, and from a youth wasted in idleness and dissipation; and how he gradually won his way from victory to victory, until he at length attained the noble and enviable eminence which is assigned to him by universal consent as the greatest, we had almost said the only, modern Italian poet. He describes the capital with which he commenced his undertaking as consisting in a resolute, indomitable, and extremely obstinate mind, and a heart full to overflowing with every species of emotion, particularly love, with all its furies, and a profound and ferocious hatred of tyranny. To this was added a faint recollection of various French tragedies. On the other hand, he was almost entirely ignorant of the rules of tragic art, and understood his own language most imperfectly. The whole was enveloped in a thick covering of presumption, or rather petulance, and a violence of character so great as to render it most difficult for him to appreciate truth. He considers these elements better adapted for forming a bad monarch than a good author. He began by studying grammar vigorously; and his first attempt was to put into Italian two tragedies, entitled _Filippo_ and _Polinice_, which he had some time before written in French prose. At the same time he read Tasso, Ariosto, Dante, and Petrarch, making notes as he proceeded, and occupying a year in the task. He then commenced reading Latin with a tutor; and shortly afterwards went to Tuscany in order to acquire a really good Italian idiom. He returned to Turin in October, 1776, and there composed several sonnets, having in the meantime made considerable progress with several of his tragedies. The next year he again went to Tuscany, and on reaching Florence in October, intending to remain there a month, an event occurred which--to use his own words--"fixed and enchained me there for many years; an event which, happily for me, determined me to expatriate myself for ever, and which by fastening upon me new, self-sought, and golden chains, enabled me to acquire that real literary freedom, without which I should never have done any good, if so be that I _have_ done good." Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, was at that time residing in Florence, in company with his wife, the Countess of Albany, whose maiden name was Louisa Stolberg, of the princely house of that name. The following is Alfieri's description of her:-- "The sweet fire of her very dark eyes, added (a thing of rare occurrence) to a very white skin and fair hair, gave an irresistible brilliancy to her beauty. She was twenty-five years of age, was much attached to literature and the fine arts, had an angelic temper, and, in spite of her wealth, was in the most painful domestic circumstances, so that she could not be as happy as she deserved. How many reasons for loving her!" Her husband appears to have been of a most violent and ungovernable temper, and to have always treated her in the harshest manner.--No wonder, then, that an impassioned and susceptible nature like Alfieri's should have been attracted by such charms! A friendship of the closest and most enduring description ensued between them; and although a certain air of mystery always surrounded the story of their mutual attachment, there is no reason whatever to suppose that it partook in the slightest degree of a dishonorable character. Instead of finding his passion for the Countess an obstacle to literary glory and useful occupations, as had always been the case previously with him, when under the influence of similar emotions, he found that it incited and spurred him on to every good work, and accordingly he abandoned himself, without restraint, to its indulgence. That he might have no inducement to return to his own country, he determined to dissolve every tie that united him to it, and with that intent made an absolute donation for life of the whole of his estates, both in fee and freehold, to his natural heir, his sister Giulia, wife of the Count di Cumiana. He merely stipulated for an annual pension, and a certain sum in ready money, the whole amounting to about one-half of the value of his property. The negotiations were finally brought to a conclusion in November, 1778. He also sold his furniture and plate which he had left in Turin; and, unfortunately for himself, invested almost the whole of the money he now found himself possessed of in French life annuities. At one period of the negotiations he was in great fear lest he should lose every thing, and revolved in his mind what profession he should adopt in case he should be left penniless. "The art that presented itself to me as the best for gaining a living by, was that of a horse-breaker, in which I consider myself a proficient. It is certainly one of the least servile, and it appeared to me to be more compatible than any other with that of a poet, for it is much easier to write tragedies in a stable than in a court." He now commenced living in the simplest style, dismissed all his servants, save one; sold or gave away all his horses, and wore the plainest clothing. He continued his studies without intermission, and by the beginning of 1782 had nearly finished the whole of the twelve tragedies which he had from the first made up his mind to write, and not to exceed. These were entitled respectively _Filippo_, _Polinice_, _Antigone_, _Agamennone_, _Oreste_, _Don Garzia_, _Virginia_, _La Congiura de' Pazzi_, _Maria Stuarda_, _Ottavia_, _Timoleone_ and _Rosmunda_.--Happening, however, to read the _Merope_ of Maffei, then considered the best Italian tragedy, he felt so indignant, that he set to work, and very shortly produced his tragedy of that name, which was soon followed by the _Saul_, which is incomparably the finest of his works. The Countess had obtained permission at the end of 1780 to leave her husband, in consequence of the brutal treatment she experienced at his hands, and to retire to Rome. It was not long before Alfieri followed her, and took up his habitation there also. At the end of 1782, his _Antigone_ was performed by a company of amateurs--he himself being one--before an audience consisting of all the rank and fashion of Rome. Its success was unequivocal, and he felt so proud of his triumph, that he determined to send four of his tragedies to press, getting his friend Gori, at Siena, to superintend the printing; and they were accordingly published. The intimacy between Alfieri and the Countess now inflamed the anger of Charles Edward and his brother, Cardinal York, to such a pitch, that Alfieri found it prudent to leave Rome, which he did in May, 1783, in a state of bitter anguish. He first made pilgrimages to the tombs of Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto, at Ravenna, Arquà, and Ferrara; at each of which he spent some time in dreaming, praying, and weeping, at the same time pouring forth a perfect stream of impassioned poetry. On getting to Siena, he superintended personally the printing of six more of his tragedies, and for the first time felt all the cares of authorship, being driven nearly distracted by the sad realities of censors, both spiritual and temporal, correctors of the press, compositors, pressmen, &c., and the worry he experienced brought on a sharp attack of gout. On recovering, he determined to start off once more on his travels, making as a plea his desire to purchase a stud of horses in England, his equestrian propensities having returned with violence. He accordingly left his tragedies, both published and unpublished, to shift for themselves, and proceeded to England, where, in a few weeks, he bought no less than fourteen horses. That being the exact number of the tragedies he had written, he used to amuse himself by saying, "For each tragedy you have got a horse," in reference to the punishment inflicted on naughty schoolboys in Italy, where the culprit is mounted on the shoulders of another boy, while the master lays on the cane. He experienced almost endless trouble and difficulty in conveying his acquisitions safely back to Italy. The account he gives of the passage of the Alps by Mount Cenis, from Lanslebourg to the Novalese, is really quite romantic; and he compares himself to Hannibal on the occasion, but says that if the passage of the latter cost him a great deal of vinegar, it cost him (Alfieri) no small quantity of wine, as the whole party concerned in conveying the horses over the mountain, guides, farriers, grooms, and adjutants, drank like fishes. On reaching Turin, he was present at a performance of his _Virginia_ at the same theatre where, nine years before, his early play of _Cleopatra_ had been acted. He shortly received intelligence that the Countess had been permitted to leave Rome and to go to Switzerland. He could not refrain from following her, and accordingly rejoined her at Colmar, a city of Alsace, after a separation of sixteen months. The sight of her whom he loved so dearly again awakened his poetic genius, and gave birth, at almost one and the same moment, to his three tragedies of _Agide_, _Sofonisba_, and _Mirra_, despite his previous resolve to write no more. When obliged to leave the Countess, he returned to Italy, but the following year again visited her, remaining in Alsace when she proceeded to Paris. She happened to mention in a letter that she had been much pleased with seeing Voltaire's _Brutus_ performed on the stage. This excited his emulation. "What!" he exclaimed, "_Brutuses_ written by a Voltaire? I'll write _Brutuses_, and two at once, moreover, time will show whether such subjects for tragedy are better adapted for me or for a plebeian-born Frenchman, who for more than sixty years subscribed himself _Voltaire, Gentleman in Ordinary to the King_." Accordingly he set to work, and planned on the spot his _Bruto Primo_ and _Bruto Secondo_; after which he once more renewed his vow to Apollo to write no more tragedies. About this period he also sketched his _Abel_, which he called by the whimsical title of a _Tramelogedy_. He next went to Paris, and made arrangements with the celebrated Didot for printing the whole of his tragedies in six volumes. On returning to Alsace, in company with the Countess, he was joined by his old friend the Abate di Caluso, who brought with him a letter from his mother, containing proposals for his marriage with a rich young lady of Asti, whose name was not mentioned. Alfieri told the Abate, smilingly, that he must decline the proffered match, and had not even the curiosity to inquire who the lady was. Shortly afterwards he was attacked by a dangerous illness, which reduced him to the point of death. On recovering, he went with his friends to Kehl, and was so much pleased with the printing establishment of the well-known Beaumarchais, that he resolved to have the whole of his works, with the exception of his tragedies, which were in Didot's hands, printed there; and accordingly, by August, 1789, all his writings, both in prose and poetry, were printed. In the mean time, the Countess of Albany had heard of the death of her husband, which took place at Rome, on the 31st January, 1788. This event set her entirely free, and it is generally believed that she was shortly afterwards united in marriage to Alfieri; but the fact was never known, and to the last the poet preserved the greatest mystery on the subject. Paris now became their regular residence, and it was not long before the revolutionary troubles commenced. In April, 1791, they determined to pay a visit to England, where the Countess had never been. They remained here some months, and on their embarking at Dover on their return, Alfieri chanced to notice among the people collected on the beach to see the vessel off, the very lady, his intrigue with whom twenty years before had excited so great a sensation. He did not speak to her, but saw that she recognized him. Accordingly, on reaching Calais, he wrote to her to inquire into her present situation. He gives her reply at full length in his _Memoirs_. It is in French; and we regret that its length precludes us from giving it here, as it is a very remarkable production. It indicates a decisive and inflexible firmness of character, very unlike what is usually met with in her sex. After visiting Holland and Belgium, Alfieri and the Countess returned to Paris. In March, 1792, he received intelligence of his mother's death. In the mean time the war with the emperor commenced, and matters gradually got worse and worse. Alfieri witnessed the events of the terrible 10th of August, when the Tuileries was taken by the mob after a bloody conflict, and Louis XVI. virtually ceased to reign. Seeing the great danger to which they would be exposed if they remained longer in Paris, they determined on a hasty flight; and after procuring the necessary passports, started on the 18th of the same month. They had a narrow escape on passing the barriers. A mob of the lowest order insisted on their carriage being stopped, and on their being conducted back to Paris, exclaiming that all the rich were flying away, taking their treasures with them, and leaving the poor behind in want and misery. The few soldiers on the spot would have been soon overpowered; and nothing saved the travellers except Alfieri's courage. He at length succeeded in forcing a passage; but there is little doubt that if they had been obliged to return, they would have been thrown into prison, in which case they would have been among the unhappy victims who were so barbarously murdered by the populace on the 2d September. They reached Calais in two days and a half, having had to show their passports more than forty times. They afterwards learned that they were the first foreigners who had escaped from Paris and from France after the catastrophe of the 10th August. After stopping some time at Brussels, they proceeded to Italy, and reached Florence in November. That city remained Alfieri's dwelling-place, nearly uninterruptedly, from this moment to the period of his death. In 1795, when he was forty-six years old, a feeling of shame came over him at his ignorance of Greek, and he determined to master that language. He applied himself with such industry to the task, that before very long he could read almost any Greek author. There are few instances on record of such an effort being made at so advanced a period of life. Yet, perhaps, a still more remarkable case than that of our poet is that of Mehemet Ali, who did not learn to read or write till more than forty years of age. His son, Ibrahim, never did even that. At the same time that he was learning Greek, Alfieri amused himself by writing satires, of which he had completed seventeen by the end of 1797. The fruit of his Greek studies appeared in his tragedies of _Alceste Prima_ and _Alceste Seconda_, which he composed after reading Euripides' fine play of that name. He calls these essays his final perjuries to Apollo. We have certainly seen him break his vow sufficiently often. The twelve tragedies he pledged himself not to exceed had now grown to their present number of twenty-one, besides the tramelogedy of _Abel_. He remained quietly and happily at Florence till the French invasion in March, 1799, when he and the Countess retired to a villa in the country. He marked his hatred of the French nation by writing his _Misogallo_, a miscellaneous collection in prose and verse of the most violent and indiscriminate abuse of France, and every thing connected with it, as its name imports. On the evacuation of Florence by the French in July, they returned to the city, but again left it on the second invasion in October, 1800. The French commander-in-chief wrote to Alfieri, requesting the honor of the acquaintance of a man who had rendered such distinguished services to literature: but he told him in reply, that if he wrote in his quality as Commandant of Florence, he would yield to his superior authority; but that if it was merely as an individual curious to see him, he must beg to be excused. We now find him irresistibly impelled to try his hand at comedy, and he accordingly wrote the six which are published with his other works. They are entitled respectively, _L'Uno_, _I Pochi_, _Il Troppo_, _Tre Velene rimesta avrai l'Antido_, _La Finestrina_, and _Il Divorzio_. The first four are political in their character, and written in iambics, like his tragedies. The last is the only one that can be ranked with modern comedies. Sismondi truly remarks, that in these dramas he exhibits the powers of a great satirist, not of a successful dramatist. His health was by this time seriously impaired, and he felt it necessary to cease entirely from his labors. On the 8th December, 1802, he put the finishing stroke to his works, and amused himself for the short remainder of his life in writing the conclusion of his _Memoirs_. Feeling extremely proud at having overcome the difficulties of the Greek language in his later years, he invented a collar, on which were engraved the names of twenty-three ancient and modern poets, and to which was attached a cameo representing Homer. On the back of it he wrote the following distich: [Greek: Auton poiêsas Alphêrios hippe Homêron Koiranikês timên êlphane zeioteran,] which may be thus Englished: "Perchance Alfieri made no great misnomer When he dubb'd himself Knight of the Order of Homer." With the account of this amusing little incident, Alfieri terminates the history of his life. The date it bears is the 14th of May, 1803, and on the 8th October of the same year he breathed his last, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. The particulars of his death are given in a letter addressed by the Abate di Caluso to the Countess of Albany. An attack of gout in the stomach was the immediate cause of it. The delicate state of his health greatly accelerated the progress of the disease, which was still further promoted by his insisting on proceeding with the correction of his works almost to the very last. He was so little aware of his impending dissolution, that he took a drive in a carriage on the 3d October, and tried to the last moment to starve his gout into submission. He refused to allow leeches to be applied to his legs, as the physicians recommended, because they would have prevented him from walking. At this period, all his studies and labors of the last thirty years rushed through his mind; and he told the Countess, who was attending him, that a considerable number of Greek verses from the beginning of Hesiod, which he had only read once in his life, recurred most distinctly to his memory. His mortal agony came on so suddenly, that there was not time to administer to him the last consolations of religion. He was buried in the church of Santa Croce at Florence, where already reposed the remains of Machiavelli, of Michael Angelo, and of Galileo. A monument to his memory, the work of the great Canova, was raised over his ashes by direction of the Countess of Albany. Such then was Alfieri! And may we not draw a moral from the story of his life as faintly and imperfectly shadowed forth in the preceding sketch? Does it not show us how we may overcome obstacles deemed by us insuperable, and how we may seek to become something better than what we are? The poet's name will go down to future ages as the idol of his countrymen; may the beneficial effect produced by a mind like his upon the character and aspirations of the world be enduring! From the Dublin University Magazine ANECDOTES OF PAGANINI. Paganini was in all respects a very singular being, and an interesting subject to study. His talents were by no means confined to his wonderful powers as a musician. On other subjects he was well informed, acute, and conversible, of bland and gentle manners, and in society, perfectly well bred. All this contrasted strangely with the dark, mysterious stories which were bruited abroad, touching some passages in his early life. But outward semblance and external deportment are treacherous as quicksands, when taken as guides by which to sound the real depths of human character. Lord Byron remarks, that his pocket was once picked by the civilest gentleman he ever conversed with, and that by far the mildest individual of his acquaintance was the remorseless Ali Pacha of Yanina. The expressive lineaments of Paganini told a powerful tale of passions which had been fearfully excited, which might be roused again from temporary slumber, or were exhausted by indulgence and premature decay, leaving deep furrows to mark their intensity. Like the generality of his countrymen, he looked much older than he was. With them, the elastic vigor of youth and manhood rapidly subside into an interminable and joyless old age, numbering as many years but with far less both of physical and mental faculty, to render them endurable, than the more equally poised gradations of our northern clime. It is by no means unusual to encounter a well-developed Italian, whiskered to the eyebrows, and "bearded like the pard," who tells you, to your utter astonishment, that he is scarcely seventeen, when you have set him down from his appearance as, at least, five-and-thirty. The following extract from Colonel Montgomery Maxwell's book of Military Reminiscences, entitled, "My Adventures," dated Genoa, February 22nd, 1815, supplies the earliest record which has been given to the public respecting Paganini, and affords authentic evidence that some of the mysterious tales which heralded his coming were not without foundation. He could scarcely have been at this time thirty years old. "Talking of music, I have become acquainted with the most _outré_, most extravagant, and strangest character I ever beheld, or heard, in the musical line. He has just been emancipated from durance vile, where he has been for a long time incarcerated on suspicion of murder. His long figure, long neck, long face, and long forehead; his hollow and deadly pale cheek, large black eye, hooked nose, and jet black hair, which is long, and more than half hiding his expressive, Jewish face; all these rendered him the most extraordinary person I ever beheld. There is something scriptural in the _tout ensemble_ of the strange physiognomy of this uncouth and unearthly figure. Not that, as in times of old, he plays, as Holy Writ tells us, on a ten-stringed instrument; on the contrary, he brings the most powerful, the most wonderful, and the most heart-rending tones from one string. His name is Paganini; he is very improvident and very poor. The D----s, and the Impressario of the theatre got up a concert for him the other night, which was well attended, and on which occasion he electrified the audience. He is a native of Genoa, and if I were a judge of violin playing, I would pronounce him the most surprising performer in the world!" That Paganini was either innocent of the charge for which he suffered the incarceration Colonel Maxwell mentions, or that it could not be proved against him, may be reasonably inferred from the fact that he escaped the gallies of the executioner. In Italy, there was then, _par excellence_ (whatever there may be now), a law for the rich, and another for the poor. As he was without money, and unable to buy immunity, it is charitable to suppose he was entitled to it from innocence. A nobleman, with a few _zecchini_, was in little danger of the law, which confined its practice entirely to the lower orders. I knew a Sicilian prince, who most wantonly blew a vassal's brains out, merely because he put him in a passion. The case was not even inquired into. He sent half a dollar to the widow of the defunct (which, by the way, he borrowed from me, and never repaid), and there the matter ended. Lord Nelson once suggested to Ferdinand IV. of Naples, to try and check the daily increase of assassination, by a few salutary executions. "No, no," replied old Nasone, who was far from being as great a fool as he looked, "that is impossible. If I once began that system, my kingdom would soon be depopulated. One half my subjects would be continually employed in hanging the remainder." Among other peculiarities, Paganini was an incarnation of avarice and parsimony, with a most contradictory passion for gambling. He would haggle with you for sixpence, and stake a rouleau on a single turn at _rouge et noir_. He screwed you down in a bargain as tightly as if you were compressed in a vice; yet he had intervals of liberality, and sometimes did a generous action. In this he bore some resemblance to the celebrated John Elwes, of miserly notoriety, who deprived himself of the common necessaries of life, and lived on a potato skin, but sometimes gave a check for £100 to a public charity, and contributed largely to private subscriptions. I never heard that Paganini actually did this, but once or twice he played for nothing, and sent a donation to the Mendicity, when he was in Dublin. When he made his engagement with me, we mutually agreed to write no orders, expecting the house to be quite full every night, and both being aware that the "sons of freedom," while they add nothing to the exchequer, seldom assist the effect of the performance. They are not given to applaud vehemently; or, as Richelieu observes, "in the right places." What we can get for nothing we are inclined to think much less of than that which we must purchase. He who invests a shilling will not do it rashly, or without feeling convinced that value received will accrue from the risk. The man who pays is the real enthusiast; he comes with a pre-determination to be amused, and his spirit is exalted accordingly. Paganini's valet surprised me one morning, by walking into my room, and with many "_eccellenzas_" and gesticulations of respect, asking me to give him an order. I said, "Why do you come to me? Apply to your master--won't he give you one?" "Oh, yes; but I don't like to ask him." "Why not?" "Because he'll stop the amount out of my wages!" My heart relented; I gave him the order, and paid Paganini the dividend. I told him what it was, thinking, as a matter of course, he would return it. He seemed uncertain for a moment, paused, smiled sardonically, looked at the three and sixpence, and with a spasmodic twitch, deposited it in his own waistcoat pocket instead of mine. Voltaire says, "no man is a hero to his valet de chambre," meaning, thereby, as I suppose, that being behind the scenes of every-day life, he finds out that Marshal Saxe, or Frederick the Great, is as subject to the common infirmities of our nature, as John Nokes or Peter Styles. Whether Paganini's squire of the body looked on his master as a hero in the vulgar acceptation of the word, I cannot say, but in spite of his stinginess, which he writhed under, he regarded him with mingled reverence and terror. "A strange person, your master," observed I. "_Signor_," replied the faithful Sancho Panza, "_e veramente grand uomo, ma da non potersi comprendere_." "He is truly a great man, but quite incomprehensible." It was edifying to observe the awful importance with which Antonio bore the instrument nightly intrusted to his charge to carry to and from the theatre. He considered it an animated something, whether demon or angel he was unable to determine, but this he firmly believed, that it could speak in actual dialogue when his master pleased, or become a dumb familiar by the same controlling volition. This especial violin was Paganini's inseparable companion. It lay on his table before him as he sat meditating in his solitary chamber; it was placed by his side at dinner, and on a chair within his reach when in bed. If he woke, as he constantly did, in the dead of night, and the sudden _estro_ of inspiration seized him, he grasped his instrument, started up, and on the instant perpetuated the conception which otherwise he would have lost for ever. This marvellous Cremona, valued at four hundred guineas, Paganini, on his death-bed, gave to De Kontski, his nephew and only pupil, himself an eminent performer, and in his possession it now remains. When Paganini was in Dublin, at the musical festival of 1830, the Marquis of Anglesea, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, came every night to the concerts at the theatre, and was greatly pleased with his performance. On the first evening, between the acts, his Excellency desired that he might be brought round to his box, to be introduced, and paid him many compliments. Lord Anglesea was at that time residing in perfect privacy with his family at Sir Harcourt Lee's country house, near Blackrock, and expressed a wish to get an evening from the great violinist, to gratify his domestic circle. The negotiation was rather a difficult one, as Paganini was, of all others, the man who did nothing in the way of business without an explicit understanding, and a clearly-defined con-si-de-ra-tion. He was alive to the advantages of honor, but he loved money with a paramount affection. I knew that he had received enormous terms, such as £150 and £200 for fiddling at private parties in London, and I trembled for the vice-regal purse; but I undertook to manage the affair, and went to work accordingly. The aid-de-camp in waiting called with me on Paganini, was introduced in due form, and handed him a card of invitation to dinner, which, of course, he received and accepted with ceremonious politeness. Soon after the officer had departed, he said suddenly, "This is a great honor, but am I expected to bring my instrument?" "Oh, yes," I replied, "as a matter of course--the Lord Lieutenant's family wish to hear you in private." "_Caro amico_," rejoined he, with petrifying composure, "_Paganini con violino e Paganini senza violino,--ecco due animali distinti_." "Paganini with his fiddle and Paganini without it are two very different persons." I knew perfectly what he meant, and said, "The Lord Lieutenant is a nobleman of exalted rank and character, liberal in the extreme, but he is not Croesus; nor do I think you could with any consistency receive such an honor as dining at his table, and afterwards send in a bill for playing two or three tunes in the evening." He was staggered, and asked, "What do you advise?" I said, "Don't you think a present, in the shape of a ring, or a snuff-box, or something of that sort, with a short inscription, would be a more agreeable mode of settlement?" He seemed tickled by this suggestion, and closed with it at once. I dispatched the intelligence through the proper channel, that the violin and the _grand maestro_ would both be in attendance. He went in his very choicest mood, made himself extremely agreeable, played away, unsolicited, throughout the evening, to the delight of the whole party, and on the following morning a gold snuff-box was duly presented to him, with a few complimentary words engraved on the lid. A year or two after this, when Paganini was again in England, I thought another engagement might be productive, as his extraordinary attraction appeared still to increase. I wrote to him on the subject, and soon received a very courteous communication, to the effect, that although he had not contemplated including Ireland in his tour, yet he had been so impressed by the urbanity of the Dublin public, and had moreover conceived such a personal esteem for my individual character, that he might be induced to alter his plans, at some inconvenience, provided always I could make him a more enticing proposal than the former one. I was here completely puzzled, as on that occasion I gave him a clear two-thirds of each receipt, with a bonus of twenty-five pounds per night in addition, for two useless coadjutors. I replied, that having duly deliberated on his suggestion, and considered the terms of our last compact, I saw no possible means of placing the new one in a more alluring shape, except by offering him the entire produce of the engagement. After I had dispatched my letter, I repented bitterly, and was terrified lest he should think me serious, and hold me to the bargain; but he deigned no answer, and this time I escaped for the fright I had given myself. When in London, I called to see him, and met with a cordial reception; but he soon alluded to the late correspondence, and half seriously said, "That was a curious letter you wrote to me, and the joke with which you concluded it by no means a good one." "Oh," said I, laughing, "it would have been much worse if you had taken me at my word." He then laughed too, and we parted excellent friends. I never saw him again. He returned to the Continent, and died, having purchased the title of Baron, with a patent of nobility, from some foreign potentate, which, with his accumulated earnings, somewhat dilapidated by gambling, he bequeathed to his only son. Paganini was the founder of his school, and the original inventor of those extraordinary _tours de force_ with which all his successors and imitators are accustomed to astonish the uninitiated. But he still stands at the head of the list, although eminent names are included in it, and is not likely to be pushed from his pedestal. * * * * * Julius Cornet of Hamburgh understands thirty-eight different languages, not in the superficial manner of Elihu Burritt, but so well that he is able to write them with correctness, and to make translations from one into the other. He has issued a circular to the German public, offering his services as a universal translator, and refers to some of the most prominent publishers of Leipsic, whom he has many years served in that capacity. BIOGRAPHY OF FRENCH JOURNALISTS. Fraser's magazine contains a reviewal of Texier's new book on the Paris journals and editors, from which we copy the following paragraphs: THE DÉBATS. The _Débats_ is chiefly read by wealthy landed proprietors, public functionaries, the higher classes of the magistracy, the higher classes of merchants and manufacturers, by the agents de change, barristers, notaries, and what we in England would call country gentlemen. Its circulation we should think 10,000. If it circulate 12,000 now, it certainly must have considerably risen since 1849. The chief editor of the _Débats_ is Armand Bertin. He was brought up in the school of his father, and is now about fifty years of age, or probably a little more. M. Bertin is a man of _esprit_, and of literary tastes, with the habits, feelings, and demeanor of a well-bred gentleman. Of an agreeable and facile commerce, the editor of the _Débats_ is a man of elegant and Epicurean habits; but does not allow his luxurious tastes to interfere with the business of this nether world. According to M. Texier, he reads with his own proprietary and editorial eyes all the voluminous correspondence of the office on his return from the _salon_ in which he has been spending the evening. If in the forenoon there is any thing of importance to learn in any quarter of Paris, M. Bertin is on the scent, and seldom fails to run down his game. At a certain hour in the day he appears in the Rue des Prêtres, in which the office of the _Débats_ is situate, and there assigns to his collaborators their daily task. The compiler of the volume before us, who, as we stated, is himself connected with the Parisian press, writing in the _Siècle_, and who, it may therefore be supposed, has had good opportunities for information, states that, previous to the passing of the Tinguy law, M. Bertin never wrote in his own journal, but contented himself with giving to the products of so many pens the necessary homogeneity. But be this as it may, it is certain he has often written since the law requires the _signature obligatoire_. Under the Monarchy of the Barricades the influence of M. Bertin was most considerable, yet he only used this influence to obtain orders and decorations for his contributors. As to himself, to his honor and glory be it stated, that he never stuck the smallest bit of riband to his own buttonhole, or, during the seventeen years of the monarchy of July, ever once put his feet inside the Tuileries. At the Italian Opera or the Variétés, sometimes at the Café de Paris, the Maison Dorée, or the Trois Frères, M. Bertin may be seen enjoying the music, or his dinner and wine, but never was he a servile courtier or trencher-follower of the Monarch of the Barricades. It is after these enjoyments, or after his _petit souper_, that M. Bertin proceeds for the last time for the day, or rather the night, to the office of the paper. There shutting himself up in his cabinet, he calls for proofs, reads them, and when he has seen every thing, and corrected every thing, he then gives the final and authoritative order to go to press, and towards two o'clock in the morning turns his steps homeward. M. Bertin, says our author with some malice, belongs to that class of corpulent men so liked by Cæsar and Louis Phillippe. Personally, M. Bertin has no reverence for what is called nobility, either ancient or modern. He is of the school of Chaussée d'Antin, which would set the rich and intelligent middle classes in the places formerly occupied by _Messieurs les Grands Seigneurs_. The ablest man, connected with the _Débats_, or indeed, at this moment, with the press of France, is M. DE SACY. De Sacy is an advocate by profession, and pleaded in his youth some causes with considerable success. At a very early period of his professional existence he allied himself with the _Débats_. His articles are distinguished by ease and flow, yet by a certain gravity and weight, which is divested, however, of the disgusting doctoral tone. He is, in truth, a solid and serious writer, without being in the least degree heavy. Political men of the old school read his papers with pleasure, and most foreigners may read them with profit and instruction. M. de Sacy is a simple, modest, and retiring gentleman, of great learning, and a taste and tact very uncommon for a man of so much learning. Though he has been for more than a quarter of a century influentially connected with the _Débats_, and has, during eighteen or twenty years of the period, had access to men in the very highest positions--to ministers, ambassadors, to the sons of a king, and even to the late king himself, it is much to his credit that he has contented himself with a paltry riband and a modest place, as Conservateur de la Bibliothèque Mazarine. M. de Sacy belongs to a Jansenist family. _Apropos_ of this, M. Texier tells a pleasant story concerning him. A Roman Catholic writer addressing him one day in the small gallery reserved for the journalist at the Chamber of Deputies, said, "You are a man, M. de Sacy, of too much cleverness, and of too much honesty, not to be one of us, sooner or later." "Not a bit of it," replied promptly M. de Sacy; "_je veux vivre et mourir avec un pied dans le doute et l'autre dans la foi_." SAINT-MARC GIRARDIN is certainly, next to De Sacy, the most distinguished writer connected with the _Débats_. He was originally a _maître d'étude_ at the College of Henry IV., and sent one fine morning an article to the _Débats_, which produced a wonderful sensation. The article was without name or address; but old Bertin so relished and appreciated it, that he was not to be foiled in finding out the author. An advertisement was inserted on the following day, requesting the writer to call at the editor's study, when M. Saint-Marc Girardin was attached as a regular _soldat de plume_ to the establishment--a profitable engagement, which left him at liberty to leave his miserable _métier_ of _maître d'étude_. The articles written in 1834 against the Emperor of Russia and the Russian system were from the pen of M. Girardin.--The _maître d'étude_ of former days became professor at the College of France--became deputy, and exhibited himself, able writer and dialectician as he was and is, as a mediocre speaker, and ultimately became academician and _un des quarante_. Another distinguished writer in the _Débats_ is Michel Chevalier. Chevalier is an _élève_ of the Polytechnic School, who originally wrote in the _Globe_. When editor and _gérant_ of the _Globe_, he was condemned to six months' imprisonment for having developed in that journal the principles of St. Simonianism. Before the expiration of his sentence he was appointed by the Government to a sort of travelling commission to America; and from that country he addressed a series of memorable letters to the _Débats_, which produced at the time immense effect. Since that period, Chevalier was appointed Professor of Political Economy at the College of France, a berth from whence he was removed by Carnot, Minister of Public Instruction, but afterwards reinstated by subsequent ministers. Chevalier, though an able man, is yet more of an economic writer than a political disquisitionist. His brother Augustus is Secretary-general of the Elysée. Among the other contributors are PHILARETE CHASLES, an excellent classical scholar, and a man well acquainted with English literature; Cuvillier Fleury, unquestionably a man of taste and talent; and the celebrated Jules Janin. The productions of the latter as a _feuilletoniste_ are so well known that we do not stop to dwell upon them. Janin is not without merit, and he is highly popular with a certain class of writers: but his articles after all, apart from the circumstances of the day, are but a _rechauffé_ of the style of Marivaux. THE CONSTITUTIONNEL. The history of the _Constitutionnel_ follows that of the _Débats_. The _Débats_, says M. Texier, is ingenious, has tact without enthusiasm, banters with taste, and scuds before the wind with a grace which only belongs to a _fin voilier_--to a fast sailing clipper. But, on the other hand, none of these qualities are found in the _Constitutionnel_, which, though often hot, and not seldom vehement and vulgar, is almost uniformly heavy. For three-and-thirty years--that is to say, from 1815 to 1848--the _Constitutionnel_ traded in Voltairien principles, in vehement denunciations of the _Parti Prêtre_ and of the Jesuits, and in the intrigues of the emigrants and royalist party _quand même_. For many years the literary giant of this Titanic warfare was Etienne, who had been in early life secretary to Maret, duke of Bassano, himself a mediocre journalist, though an excellent reporter and stenographer. Etienne was a man of _esprit_ and talent, who had commenced his career as a writer in the _Minerve Française_. In this miscellany, his letters on Paris acquired as much vogue as his comedies. About 1818, Etienne acquired a single share in the _Constitutionnel_, and after a year's service became impregnated with the air of the Rue Montmartre--with the spirit of the _genius loci_. When one has been some time writing for a daily newspaper, this result is sure to follow. One gets habituated to set phrases--to pet ideas--to the traditions of the locality--to the prejudices of the readers, political or religious, as the case may be. Independently of this, the daily toil of newspaper writing is such, and so exhausting, that a man obliged to undergo it for any length of time is glad occasionally to find refuge in words without ideas, which have occasionally much significancy with the million, or in topics on which the public love to dwell fondly. Under the reign of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. it lost no opportunity, by indirection and innuendo, of hinting at the "Petit Caporal," and this circumstance during the life of the emperor, and long after his death, caused the journal to be adored--that is really the word--by the old army, by the _vieux de vieille_, and by the _durs à cuirs_. In these good old bygone times the writers in the _Constitutionel_ wore a blue frock closely buttoned up to the chin, to the end that they might pass for officers of the old army on half-pay. In 1830 the fortunes of the _Constitutionnel_ had reached the culminant point. It then counted 23,000 subscribers, at 80 francs a year. At that period a single share in the property was a fortune. But the avatar of the Citizen King spoiled in a couple of years the sale of the citizen journal. The truth is, that the heat of the Revolution of July had engendered and incubated a multitude of journals, great and little, bounding with young blood and health--journals whose editors and writers did not desire better sport than to attack the _Constitutionnel_ at right and at left, and to tumble the dear, fat, rubicund, old gentleman, head over heels. Among these was the _Charivari_, which incontinently laughed at the whole system of the establishment, from the crapulous, corpulent, and Voltairien Etienne, down to the lowest printer's devil. The metaphors, the puffs, _canards_, the _réclames_, &c. of the _Constitutionnel_ were treated mercilessly and as nothing--not even Religion itself can stand the test of ridicule among so mocking a people as the French; the result was, that the _Constitutionnel_ diminished wonderfully in point of circulation. Yet the old man wrote and spoke well, and had, from 1824 to 1829, as an ally the sharp and clever Thiers, and the better read, the better informed, and the more judicious Mignet. It was during the Vitelle administration that the _Constitutionnel_ attained the very highest acme of its fame. It was then said to have had 30,000 subscribers, and to have maintained them with the cry of "Down with the Jesuits!" In 1827-28, during its palmiest days, the _Constitutionnel_ had no _Roman feuilleton_. It depended then on its leading articles, nor was it till its circulation declined, in 1843, to about 3500, that the proprietors determined to reduce the price one-half. They then, too, adopted the _Roman feuilleton_, giving as much as 500 francs for an article of this kind to Dumas or Sue. From 1845 or 1846 to 1848, the _Consitutionnel_ had most able contributors of leading articles; Thiers, De Remusat, and Duvergier d'Hauranne, having constantly written in its columns. The circulation of the journal was then said to amount to 24,000. When the _Constitutionnel_ entered into the hands of its present proprietor, Docteur Louis Veron, it was said to be reduced to 3000 subscribers. How many subscribers it has now we have no very accurate means of knowing, but we should say, at a rough guess, it may have 9000 or 10,000. It should be remembered, that from being an anti-sacerdotal journal it has become a priests' paper and the organ of priests; from being an opponent of the executive, it has become the organ and the apologist of the executive in the person of M. L. N. Buonaparte, and the useful instrument, it is said, of M. Achille Fould. Every body knows, says M. Texier, with abundant malice prepense, that Dr. Veron, the chief editor of the _Constitutionnel_, has declared that France may henceforth place her head on the pillow and go quietly to sleep, for the doctor confidently answers for the good faith and wisdom of the president. But who is DOCTOR VERON, the editor-in-chief, when one finds his excellency _chezelle_? The ingenuous son of Esculapius tells us himself that he has known the _coulisses_ (the phrase is a queer one) of science, of the arts, of politics, and even of the opera. It appears, however, that the dear doctor is the son of a stationer of the Rue du Bac, who began his career by studying medicine. If we are to believe himself, his career was a most remarkable one. In 1821 he was received what is called an _interne_ of the Hôtel Dieu. After having walked the hospitals, he enrolled himself in the Catholic and Apostolic Society of '_bonnes lettres_,' collaborated with the writers in the _Quotidienne_, and, thanks to Royalist patronage, was named physician-in-chief of the Royal Museums. Whether any of the groups in the pictures of Rubens, Salvator Rosa, Teniers, Claude, or Poussin--whether any of the Torsos of Praxiteles, or even of a more modern school, required the assiduous care or attention of a skilful physician, we do not pretend to state. But we repeat that the practice of Dr. Veron, according to M. Texier, was confined to these dumb yet not inexpressive personages. In feeling the pulse of the Venus de Medici, or looking at the tongue of the Laocoon, or the Apollo Belvidere, it is said the chief, if not the only practice of Dr. Louis Veron consisted. True, the doctor invented a _pâte pectorale_, approved by all the emperors and kings in Europe, and very renowned, too, among the commonalty; but so did Dr. Solomon, of Gilead House, near Liverpool, invent a balm of Gilead, and Mrs. Cockle invent anti-bilious pills, taken by many of the judges, a majority of the bench of bishops, and some admirals of the blue, and general officers without number, yet we have never heard that Moses Solomon or Tabitha Cockle were renowned in the practice of physic, notwithstanding the said Gilead and the before-mentioned pills. Be this, however, as it may, Veron, after having doctored the pictures and statues, and patepectoraled the Emperor, the Pope, the Grand Turk, the Imaum of Muscat, the Shah of Persia, and the Great Mogul himself, next established the _Review of Paris_, which in its turn he abandoned to become the director of the Opera. Tired of the Opera after four or five years' service, the doctor became a candidate of the dynastic opposition at Brest. This was the "artful dodge" before the Revolution of July 1848, if we may thus translate an untranslateable phrase of the doctor's. At Brest the professor of the healing art failed, and the consequence was, that instead of being a deputy he became the proprietor of the _Constitutionnel_. Fortunate man that he is! In _Robert le Diable_ at the Opera, which he would not at first have at any price, the son of Esculapius found the principal source of his fortune, and by the _Juif Errant_ of Eugène Sue, for which he gave 100,000 francs, he saved the _Constitutionnel_ from perdition. _Apropos_ of this matter, there is a pleasant story abroad. When Veron purchased the _Constitutionnel_, Thiers was writing his _Histoire du Consulat_, for which the booksellers had agreed to give 500,000 francs. Veron wished to have the credit of publishing the book in the _Constitutionnel_, and with this view waited on Thiers, offering to pay down, _argent comptant_, one-half the money. Thiers, though pleased with the proposition, yet entrenched himself behind his engagement with the booksellers. To one of the leading booksellers Veron trotted off post-haste, and opened the business. "Oh!" said the sensible publisher, "you have mistaken your _coup_ altogether." "How so?" said the doctor. "Don't you see," said the Libraire Editeur, "that the rage is Eugène Sue, and that the _Débats_ and the _Presse_ are at fistycuffs to obtain the next novelty of the author of the _Mystères de Paris_? Go you and offer as much again for this novel, whatever it may be, as either the one or other of them, and the fortune of the _Constitutionnel_ is made." The doctor took the advice, and purchased the next novelty of Sue at 100,000 francs. This turned out to be the _Juif Errant_, which raised the circulation of the _Constitutionnel_ to 24,000. Veron is a puffy-faced little man, with an overgrown body, and midriff sustained upon an attenuated pair of legs; his visage is buried in an immense shirt collar, stiff and starched as a Norman cap. Dr. Veron believes himself the key-stone of the Elyséan arch, and that the weight of the government is on his shoulders. Look at him as he enters the Café de Paris to eat his _purée à la Condé_, and his _suprême de volaille_, and his _filet de chevreuil piqué aux truffes_, and you would say that he is not only the prime, but the favorite minister of Louis Napoleon, _par la grace de Dieu et Monsieur le Docteur Président de la République_. "_Après tout c'est un mauvais drôle, que ce pharmacien_," to use the term applied to the doctor by General Changarnier. A short man of the name of Boilay washes the dirty linen of Dr. Veron, and corrects his faults of grammar, of history, &c. Boilay is a small, sharp, stout, little man, self-possessed, self-satisfied, with great readiness and tact. Give him but the heads of a subject and he can make out a very readable and plausible article. Boilay is the real working editor of the _Constitutionnel_, and is supported by a M. Clarigny, a M. Malitourne, and others not more known or more respected. Garnier de Cassagnac, of the _Pouvoir_, a man of very considerable talent, though not of very fixed principle, writes occasionally in the _Constitutionnel_, and more ably than any of the other contributors. M. St. Beuve is the literary critic, and he performs his task with eminent ability. THE NATIONAL. We now come to the _National_, founded by Carrel, Mignet, and Thiers. It was agreed between the triad that each should take the place of _rédacteur en chef_ for a year. Thiers, as the oldest and most experienced, was the first installed, and conducted the paper with zest and spirit till the Revolution of 1830 broke out. The _National_ set out with the idea of changing the incorrigible dynasty, and instituting Orléanism in the place of it. The refusal to pay taxes and to contribute to a budget was a proposition of the _National_, and it is not going too far to say, that the crisis of 1830 was hastened by this journal. It was at the office of the _National_ that the famous protest, proclaiming the right of resistance, was composed and signed by Thiers, De Remusat, and Canchois Lemaire. On the following day the office of the journal was bombarded by the police and an armed force, when the presses were broken. Against this illegal violence the editors protested. After the Revolution, Carrel assumed the conduct of the journal, and became the firmest as well as the ablest organ of democracy. To the arbitrary and arrogant Perier, he opposed a firm and uncompromising resistance. Every one acquainted with French politics at that epoch is aware of the strenuous and stand-up fight he made for five years for his principles. He it was who opposed a bold front to military bullies, and who invented the epithet _traîneurs de sabre_. This is not the place to speak of the talent of Carrel. He was shot in a miserable quarrel in 1836, by Emile Girardin, then, as now, the editor of the _Presse_. On the death of Carrel, the shareholders of the paper assembled together to name a successor. M. Trelat, subsequently minister, was fixed upon. But as he was then a _détenu_ at Clairvaux, Bastide and Littré filled the editorial chair during the interregnum. On the release of Trelat, it was soon discovered that he had not the peculiar talent necessary. The sceptre of authority passed into the hands of M. Bastide, named Minister of Foreign Affairs in the ending of 1848, or the beginning of 1849. M. Bastide, then a _marchand de bois_, divided his editorial empire with M. Armand Marrast, who had been a political prisoner and a refugee in England, and who returned to France on the amnesty granted on the marriage of the Duke of Orleans. M. Marrast, though a disagreeable, self-sufficient, and underbred person, was unquestionably a writer of point, brilliancy, and vigor. From 1837 to the Revolution of 1848 he was connected with the _National_, and was the author of a series of articles which have not been equalled since. Like all low, vulgar-bred, and reptile-minded persons, Marrast forgot himself completely when raised to the position of President of the Chamber of Deputies. In this position he made irreconcileable enemies of all his old colleagues, and of most persons who came into contact with him. The fact is, that your schoolmaster and pedagogue can rarely become a gentleman, or any thing like a gentleman. The writers in the _National_ at the present moment are, M. Léopold Duras, M. Alexandre Rey, Caylus, Cochut, Forques, Littré, Paul de Musset, Colonel Charras, and several others whose names it is not necessary to mention here. THE SIÈCLE. We come now to the _Siècle_, a journal which, though only established in 1836, has, we believe, a greater sale than any journal in Paris--at least, had a greater sale previous to the Revolution of February 1848. The _Siècle_ was the first journal that started at the low price of 40 francs a-year, when almost every other newspaper was purchased at a cost of 70 or 80 francs. It should also be recollected, that it was published under the auspices of the deputies of the constitutional opposition. The _Siècle_ was said, in 1846, to have had 42,000 subscribers. Its then editor was M. Chambolle, who abandoned the concern in February or March 1849, not being able to agree with M. Louis Perrée, the _directeur_ of the journal. Since Chambolle left a journal which he had conducted for thirteen years, M. Perrée has died in the flower of his age, mourned by those connected with the paper, and regretted by the public at large. Previous to the Revolution of 1848, Odillon Barrot and Gustave de Beaumont took great interest and an active part in the management of the _Siècle_. That positive, dogmatical, self-opinioned, and indifferent newspaper writer, Léon Faucher, was then one of the principal contributors to this journal. The _Siècle_ of 1851 is somewhat what the _Constitutionnel_ was in 1825, 6, and 7. It is eminently City-like and of the _bourgeoisie_, "earth, earthy," as a good, reforming, economic National Guard ought to be. The success of the journal is due to this spirit, and to the eminently fair, practical, and business-like manner in which it has been conducted. Perrée, the late editor and manager of the journal, who died at the early age of 34, was member for the Manche. The writers in the journal are Louis Jourdan, formerly a St. Simonian; Pierre Bernard, who was secretary to Armand Carrel; Hippolite Lamarche, an ex-cavalry captain; Auguste Jullien (son of Jullien de Paris, one of the commissaries of Robespierre); and others whom it is needless to mention. THE PRESSE. The _Presse_ was founded in 1836, about the same time as the _Siècle_, by Emile de Girardin, a son of General de Girardin, it is said, by an English mother. Till that epoch of fifteen years ago, people in Paris or in France had no idea of a journal exceeding in circulation 25,000 copies, the circulation of the _Constitutionnel_, or of a newspaper costing less than seventy or eighty francs per annum. Many journals had contrived to live on respectably enough on a modest number of 4000 or 5000 _abonnés_. But the conductors of the _Presse_ and of the _Siècle_ were born to operate a revolution in this routine and jog-trot of newspaper life. They reduced the subscription to newspapers from eighty to forty francs per annum, producing as good if not a better article. This was a great advantage to the million, and it induced parties to subscribe for, and read a newspaper, more especially in the country, who never thought of reading a newspaper before. In constituting his new press, M. Girardin entirely upset and rooted out all the old notions theretofore prevailing as to the conduct of a journal. The great feature in the new journal was not its leading articles, but its _Roman feuilleton_, by Dumas, Sue, &c. This it was that first brought Socialism into extreme vogue among the working classes. True the _Presse_ was not the first to publish Socialist _feuilletons_, but the _Débats_ and the _Constitutionnel_. But the _Presse_ was the first to make the leading article subsidiary to the _feuilleton_. It was, even when not a professed Socialist, a great promoter of Socialism, by the thorough support which it lent to all the slimy, jesuitical corruptions of Guizoism, and all the turpitudes and chicanery of Louis Philippism. When the _Presse_ was not a year old it had 15,000 subscribers, and before it was twelve years old the product of its advertisements amounted to 150,000 francs a-year. Indeed this journal has the rare merit of being the first to teach the French the use, and we must add the abuse, of advertisements. We fear the _Presse_, during these early days of the gentle Emile and Granier Cassagnac, was neither a model of virtue, disinterestedness, nor self-denial. Nor do we know that it is so now, even under the best of Republics. There are strange tales abroad, even allowing for the exaggeration of Rumor with her hundred tongues. One thing, however, is clear; that the _Presse_ was a liberal paymaster to its _feuilletonistes_. To Dumas, Sand, De Balzac, Théophile Gautier, and Jules Sandeau, it four years ago paid 300 francs per day for contributions. The _Presse_, as M. Texier says, is now less the collective reason of a set of writers laboring to a common intent, than the expression of the individual activity, energy, and wonderful mobility of M. Girardin himself. The _Presse_ is Emile de Girardin, with his boldness, his audacity, his rampant agility, his Jim Crowism, his inexhaustible cleverness, wonderful fecundity, and indisputable talent. The _Presse_ is bold and daring; but no man can tell the color of its politics to-day, much less three days, or three months hence. On the 25th of July, 1848, it was as audacious, as unabashed, and as little disconcerted as two days before. When the workmen arrived in crowds to break its presses, the ingenious Emile threw open the doors of the press-room, talked and reasoned with the greasy rogues, and sent them contented away. The number of journals in Paris is greater--much greater, relatively--than the number existing in London. The people of Paris love and study a newspaper more than the people of London, and take a greater interest in public affairs, and more especially in questions of foreign policy. Previous to the Revolution of February 1848, it cannot, we think, be denied that newspaper writers in France held a much higher rank than contributors to the daily press in England, and even still they continue to hold a higher and more influential position, though there can be no good reason why they should have done so at either time. For the last fifteen years there cannot be any doubt or question that the leading articles in the four principal daily London morning papers exhibit an amount of talent, energy, information, readiness, and compression, which are not found in such perfect and wonderful combination in the French press. For the last three years, however, the press of France has wonderfully deteriorated. It is no longer what it was antecedent to the Revolution. There is not the literary skill, the artistical ability, the energy, the learning, and the eloquence which theretofore existed. The class of writers in newspapers now are an inferior class in attainments, in scholarship, and in general ability. There can be little doubt, we conceive, that the press greatly increased and abused its power, for some years previous to 1848. This led to the decline of its influence--an influence still daily diminishing; but withal, even still the press in France has more influence, and enjoys more social and literary consideration, than the press in England. We believe that newspaper writers in France are not now so generally well paid as they were twenty or thirty years ago. Two or three eminent writers can always command in Paris what would be called a sporting price, but the great mass of leading-article writers receive considerably less in money than a similar class in London, though they exercise a much greater influence on public opinion, and enjoy from the peculiar constitution of French society a higher place in the social scale. --We see by the last papers from Paris that Veron and the President have quarreled. From the Cincinnati Commercial Advertiser. PROPHECY. BY ALICE CAREY. I think thou lovest me--yet a prophet said To-day, Elhadra, if thou laidest dead, From thy white forehead would he fold the shroud, And thereon lay his sorrow, like a crown. The drenching rain from out the chilly cloud, In the gray ashes beats the red flame down! And when the crimson folds the kiss away No longer, and blank dulness fills the eyes, Lifting its beauty from the crumbling clay, Back to the light of earth life's angel flies. So, with my large faith unto gloom allied, Sprang up a shadow sunshine could not quell, And the voice said, Would'st haste to go outside This continent of being, it were well: Where finite, growing toward the Infinite, Gathers its robe of glory out of dust, And looking down the radiances white, Sees all God's purposes about us, just. Canst thou, Elhadra, reach out of the grave, And draw the golden waters of love's well? _His_ years are chrisms of brightness in time's wave-- Thine are as dewdrops in the nightshade's bell! Then straightening in my hands the rippled length Of all my tresses, slowly one by one, I took the flowers out.--Dear one, in thy strength Pray for my weakness. Thou hast seen the sun Large in the setting, drive a column of light Down through the darkness: so, within death's night, O my beloved, when I shall have gone, If it might be so, would my love burn on. From Household Words THE MODERN HAROUN-AL-RASCHID. In the district of Ferdj' Onah (which signifies _Fine Country_), Algeria, lives a Scheik named Bou-Akas-ben-Achour. He is also distinguished by the surname of _Bou-Djenoni_ (the Man of the Knife), and may be regarded as a type of the eastern Arab. His ancestors conquered Ferdj' Onah, but he has been forced to acknowledge the supremacy of France, by paying a yearly tribute of 80,000 francs. His dominion extends from Milah to Rabouah, and from the southern point of Babour to within two leagues of Gigelli. He is forty-nine years old, and wears the Rahyle costume; that is to say, a woollen _gandoura_, confined by a leathern belt. He carries a pair of pistols in his girdle, by his side the Rahyle _flissa_, and suspended from his neck a small black knife. Before him walks a negro carrying his gun, and a huge greyhound bounds along by his side. He holds despotic sway over twelve tribes; and should any neighboring people venture to make an incursion on his territory, Bou-Akas seldom condescends to march against them in person, but sends his negro into the principal village. This envoy just displays the gun of Bou-Akas, and the injury is instantly repaired. He keeps in pay two or three hundred Tolbas to read the Koran to the people; every pilgrim going to Mecca, and passing through Ferdj' Onah, receives three francs, and may remain as long as he pleases to enjoy the hospitality of Bou-Akas. But whenever the Scheik discovers that he has been deceived by a pretended pilgrim, he immediately dispatches emissaries after the impostor; who, wherever he is, find him, throw him down, and give him fifty blows on the soles of his feet. Bou-Akas sometimes entertains three hundred persons at dinner; but instead of sharing their repast, he walks round the tables with a baton in his hand, seeing that the servants attend properly to his guests. Afterwards, if any thing is left, he eats; but not until the others have finished. When the governor of Constantinople, the only man whose power he recognizes, sends him a traveller; according to the rank of the latter, or the nature of the recommendation Bou-Akas gives him his gun, his dog, or his knife. If the gun, the traveller takes it on his shoulder; if the dog, he leads it in a leash; or if the knife, he hangs it round his neck: and with any one of these potent talismans, of which each bears its own degree of honor, the stranger passes through the region of the twelve tribes, not only unscathed, but as the guest of Bou-Akas, treated with the utmost hospitality. When the traveller is about to leave Ferdj' Onah, he consigns the knife, the dog, or the gun to the care of the first Arab he meets. If the Arab is hunting, he leaves the chase; if laboring in the field, he leaves his plough; and, taking the precious deposit, hastens to restore it to the Bou-Akas. The black-handled knife is so well known, that it has given the surname of "Bou-Djenoni, _the man of the knife_," to its owner. With this implement he is accustomed to cut off heads, whenever he takes a fancy to perform that agreeable office with his own hand. When first Bou-Akas assumed the government, the country was infested with robbers, but he speedily found means to extirpate them. He disguised himself as a poor merchant; walked out, and dropped a _douro_ (a gold coin) on the ground, taking care not to lose sight of it. If the person who happened to pick up the _douro_, put it into his pocket and passed on, Bou-Akas made a sign to his _chinaux_ (who followed him, also in disguise, and knew the Scheik's will) rushed forward immediately, and decapitated the offender. In consequence of this summary method of administering justice, it is a saying amongst the Arabs that a child might traverse the regions which own Bou-Akas's sway, wearing a golden crown on his head, without a single hand being stretched out to take it. The Scheik has great respect for women, and has ordered that when the females of Ferdj' Onah go out to draw water, every man who meets them shall turn away his head. Wishing one day to ascertain whether his commands were attended to, he went out in disguise: and, meeting a beautiful Arab maiden on her way to the well, approached and saluted her. The girl looked at him with amazement, and said: "Pass on, stranger; thou knowest not the risk them hast run." And when Bou-Akas persisted in speaking to her, she added: "Foolish man, and reckless of thy life; knowest thou not that we are in the country of Bou-Djenoni, who causes all women to be held in respect?" Bou-Akas is very strict in his religious observances; he never omits his prayers and ablutions, and has four wives, the number permitted by the Koran. Having heard that the Cadi of one of his twelve tribes administered justice in an admirable manner, and pronounced decisions in a style worthy of King Solomon himself, Bou-Akas, like a second Haroun-Al-Raschid, determined to judge for himself as to the truth of the report. Accordingly, dressed like a private individual, without arms or attendants, he set out for the Cadi's towns, mounted on a docile Arabian steed. He arrived there, and was just entering the gate, when a cripple seizing the border of his burnous, asked him for alms in the name of the prophet. Bou-Akas gave him money, but the cripple still maintained his hold. "What dost thou want?" asked the Scheik; "I have already given thee alms." "Yes," replied the beggar, "but the law says, not only--'Thou shalt give alms to thy brother,' but also, 'Thou shalt do for thy brother whatsoever thou canst.'" "Well! and what can I do for thee?" "Thou canst save me,--poor crawling creature that I am!--from being trodden under the feet of men, horses, mules and camels, which would certainly happen to me in passing through the crowded square, in which a fair is now going on." "And how can I save thee?" "By letting me ride behind you, and putting me down safely in the market-place, where I have business." "Be it so," replied Bou-Akas. And stooping down, he helped the cripple to get up behind him; a business which was not accomplished without much difficulty. The strangely assorted riders attracted many eyes as they passed through the crowded streets; and at length they reached the market-place. "Is this where you wish to stop?" asked Bou-Akas. "Yes." "Then get down." "Get down yourself." "What for?" "To leave me the horse." "To leave you my horse! What mean you by that?" "I mean that he belongs to me. Know you not that we are now in the town of the just Cadi, and that if we bring the case before him, he will certainly decide in my favor?" "Why should he do so, when the animal belongs to me?" "Don't you think that when he sees us two,--you with your strong straight limbs, which Allah has given you for the purpose of walking, and I with my weak legs and distorted feet,--he will decree that the horse shall belong to him who has most need of him?" "Should, he do so, he would not be the _just_ Cadi," said Bou-Akas. "Oh! as to that," replied the cripple, laughing, "although he is just, he is not infallible." "So!" thought the Scheik to himself, "this will be a capital opportunity of judging the judge." He said aloud, "I am content--we will go before the Cadi." Arrived at the tribunal, where the judge, according to the eastern custom, was publicly administering justice, they found that two trials were about to go on, and would of course take precedence of theirs. The first was between a _taleb_ or learned man, and a peasant. The point in dispute was the _taleb's_ wife, whom the peasant had carried off, and whom he asserted to be his own better half, in the face of the philosopher who demanded her restoration. The woman, strange circumstance! remained obstinately silent, and would not declare for either; a feature in the case which rendered its decision excessively difficult. The judge heard both sides attentively, reflected for a moment, and then said, "Leave the woman here, and return to-morrow." The _savant_ and the laborer each bowed and retired; and the next cause was called. This was a difference between a butcher and an oil-seller. The latter appeared covered with oil, and the former was sprinkled with blood. The butcher spoke first:--"I went to buy some oil from this man, and in order to pay him for it, I drew a handful of money from my purse. The sight of the money tempted him. He seized me by the wrist. I cried out, but he would not let me go; and here we are, having come before your worship, I holding my money in my hand, and he still grasping my wrist. Now, I swear by the Prophet, that this man is a liar, when he says that I stole his money, for the money is truly mine own." Then spoke the oil-merchant:--"This man came to purchase oil from me. When his bottle was filled, he said, 'Have you change for a piece of gold?' I searched my pocket, and drew out my hand full of money, which I laid on a bench in my shop. He seized it, and was walking off with my money and my oil, when I caught him by the wrist, and cried out 'Robber!' In spite of my cries, however, he would not surrender the money, so I brought him here, that your worship might decide the case. Now, I swear by the Prophet that this man is a liar, when he says that I want to steal his money, for it is truly mine own." The Cadi caused each plaintiff to repeat his story, but neither varied one jot from his original statement. He reflected for a moment, and then said, "Leave the money with me, and return to-morrow." The butcher placed the coins, which he had never let go, on the edge of the Cadi's mantle. After which he and his opponent bowed to the tribunal, and departed. It was now the turn of Bou-Akas and the cripple. "My lord Cadi," said the former, "I came hither from a distant country, with the intention of purchasing merchandise. At the city gate I met this cripple, who first asked for alms, and then prayed me to allow him to ride behind me through the streets, lest he should be trodden down in the crowd. I consented, but when we reached the market-place, he refused to get down, asserting that my horse belonged to him, and that your worship would surely adjudge it to him, who wanted it most. That, my lord Cadi, is precisely the state of the case--I swear it by Mahomet!" "My lord," said the cripple, "as I was coming on business to the market, and riding this horse, which belongs to me, I saw this man seated by the roadside, apparently half dead from fatigue. I good naturedly offered to take him on the crupper, and let him ride as far as the market-place, and he eagerly thanked me. But what was my astonishment, when, on our arrival, he refused to get down, and said that my horse was his. I immediately required him to appear before your worship, in order that you might decide between us. That is the true state of the case--I swear it by Mahomet!" Having made each repeat his deposition, and having reflected for a moment, the Cadi said, "Leave the horse here, and return to-morrow." It was done, and Bou-Akas and the cripple withdrew in different directions. On the morrow, a number of persons besides those immediately interested in the trials assembled to hear the judge's decisions. The _taleb_ and the peasant were called first. "Take away thy wife," said the Cadi to the former, "and keep her, I advise thee, in good order." Then turning towards his _chinaux_, he added, pointing to the peasant, "Give this man fifty blows." He was instantly obeyed, and the _taleb_ carried off his wife. Then came forward the oil-merchant and the butcher. "Here," said the Cadi to the butcher, "is thy money; it is truly thine, and not his." Then pointing to the oil-merchant, he said to his _chinaux_, "Give this man fifty blows." It was done, and the butcher went away in triumph with his money. The third cause was called, and Bou-Akas and the cripple came forward. "Would'st thou recognize thy horse amongst twenty others?" said the judge to Bou-Akas. "Yes, my lord." "And thou?" "Certainly, my lord," replied the cripple. "Follow me," said the Cadi to Bou-Akas. They entered a large stable, and Bou-Akas pointed out his horse amongst twenty which were standing side by side. "'Tis well," said the judge. "Return now to the tribunal, and send me thine adversary hither." The disguised Scheik obeyed, delivered his message, and the cripple hastened to the stable, as quickly as his distorted limbs allowed. He possessed quick eyes and a good memory, so that he was able, without the slightest hesitation, to place his hand on the right animal. "'Tis well," said the Cadi; "return to the tribunal." His worship resumed his place, and when the cripple arrived, judgment was pronounced. "The horse is thine," said the Cadi to Bou-Akas. "Go to the stable, and take him." Then to the _chinaux_, "Give this cripple fifty blows." It was done; and Bou-Akas went to take his horse. When the Cadi, after concluding the business of the day, was retiring to his house, he found Bou-Akas waiting for him. "Art thou discontented with my award?" asked the judge. "No, quite the contrary," replied the Scheik. "But I want to ask by what inspiration thou hast rendered justice; for I doubt not that the other two cases were decided as equitably as mine. I am not a merchant; I am Bou-Akas, Scheik of Ferdj' Onah, and I wanted to judge for myself of thy reputed wisdom." The Cadi bowed to the ground, and kissed his master's hand. "I am anxious," said Bou-Akas, "to know the reasons which determined your three decisions." "Nothing, my lord, can be more simple. Your highness saw that I detained for a night the three things in dispute?" "I did." "Well, early in the morning I caused the woman to be called, and I said to her suddenly--'Put fresh ink in my inkstand.' Like a person who had done the same thing a hundred times before, she took the bottle, removed the cotton, washed them both, put in the cotton again, and poured in fresh ink, doing it all with the utmost neatness and dexterity. So I said to myself, 'A peasant's wife would known nothing about inkstands--she must belong to the _taleb_." "Good," said Bou-Akas, nodding his head. "And the money?" "Did your highness remark that the merchant had his clothes and hands covered with oil?" "Certainly, I did." "Well; I took the money, and placed it in a vessel filled with water. This morning I looked at it, and not a particle of oil was to be seen on the surface of the water. So I said to myself, 'If this money belonged to the oil-merchant it would be greasy from the touch of his hands; as it is not so, the butcher's story must be true.'" Bou-Akas nodded in token of approval. "Good," said he. "And my horse?" "Ah! that was a different business; and, until this morning, I was greatly puzzled." "The cripple, I suppose, did not recognize the animal?" "On the contrary, he pointed him out immediately." "How then did you discover that he was not the owner?" "My object in bringing you separately to the stable, was not to see whether you would know the horse, but whether the horse would acknowledge you. Now, when you approached him, the creature turned towards you, laid back his ears, and neighed with delight; but when the cripple touched him, he kicked. Then I knew that you were truly his master." Bou-Akas thought for a moment, and then said: "Allah has given thee great wisdom. Thou oughtest to be in my place, and I in thine. And yet, I know not; thou art certainly worthy to be Scheik, but I fear that I should but badly fill thy place as Cadi!" From the Manchester Examiner. LOVE.--A SONNET. BY J. C. PRINCE. Love is an odor from the heavenly bowers, Which stirs our senses tenderly, and brings Dreams which are shadows of diviner things Beyond this grosser atmosphere of ours. An oasis of verdure and of flowers, Love smiteth on the Pilgrim's weary way; There fresher air, there sweeter waters play, There purer solace charms the quiet hours. This glorious passion, unalloyed, endowers With moral beauty all who feel its fire; Maid, wife, and offspring, brother, mother, sire, Are names and symbols of its hallowed powers. Love is immortal. From our head may fly Earth's other blessings; Love can never die! _Ashton, 5th March._ From the Spectator. THE HISTORY OF SORCERY AND MAGIC.[I] The rationale of magic, when a combination of skill and fraud imposed upon the vulgar, is easily settled. The priests of the ancient mythology, the adepts of the middle ages, turned their knowledge of chemistry and mechanics and their proficiency in legerdemain to account; and before we denounce the latter as impostors, we should bear in mind the ignorance of the times in which they lived. People would not have believed any natural explanation, though they might have felt inclined to persecute the man when stripped of his magical character: we should also consider how far the general belief might influence even the man himself; how far he could in his inmost mind draw the distinction between what we call natural philosophy and what the age considered magic--a lawful if a riskful power over nature and spirits, by means of occult knowledge. An allowance is further to be made for the stories as they have come down to us; a distinction is to be drawn between the actual facts and the fancy of the narrator, between the reality and the romance of magic. Sorcery and witchcraft (to which, notwithstanding its title, Mr. Wright's book chiefly relates) was a more vulgar pursuit, and is a more difficult matter to determine. The true magician was a master over both the seen and the unseen world. His art could _compel_ spirits or demons to obey him, however much against their will. It seems a question whether a spell of sufficient potency could not control Satan himself. The witch or wizard was a vulgar being, a mere slave of the Evil One, with no original power, very limited in derived power, and, it would appear, with no means of acting directly except upon the elements. The facts relating to witchcraft, being often matter of legal record, are more numerous and more correctly narrated than those relating to magic. The difficulty of fixing the exact boundary between truth and falsehood, guilt and innocence, in the case of witchcraft, is not so easily settled as the sciolist in liberal philosophy imagines. Of course we all know that men and women could not travel through the air on broomsticks, or cause storms, or afflict cattle. Their innocence of the intention is not always so certain: their power over a nervous or weakly person, especially in bad health, might really, through the influence of imagination, produce the death threatened, and the miserable patient might pine away as his real or supposed waxen image slowly melted before the fire. At a time when the belief in witchcraft was entertained by society in general, as well as by the majority of educated men, it is not likely that the persons who were generally accused of it were skeptical on the subject. Their innocence would lie, not in their disbelief of its power, but in their rejection of the practice. That an accusation of witchcraft was sometimes made from political, religious, or personal motives, is true; and numbers of innocent victims were sacrificed in times of public mania on the subject. The question is, whether many did not attempt unlawful arts in full belief of their efficacy; and whether some, a compound of the self-dupe and the impostor, did not make use of their reputed power to indulge in the grossest license and to perpetrate abominable crimes. The great difficulty, however, is the confessions. In many cases, no doubt, the victims, worn down by terror and torture, said whatever their examiners seemed to wish them to say; in other cases, their statements were exaggerated by the reporters. Yet enough remains, after every deduction, to render witches' confessions a very curious mental problem. Was it vision, or monomania, or nervous delusion, all influenced by foregone conclusion? or was it, as the mesmerists seem to hold, an instance of clairvoyance in a high degree? The case of Gaufridi is of this puzzling nature. Gaufridi was a French priest of licentious character, who succeeded by the opportunities which his priestly influence gave him, or by some pretended supernatural arts. His crimes were discovered through the confession of one of his victims, a nun whom he had abused before profession. After a time, she appeared to be possessed; and, under treatment by a celebrated exorcist, (an inferior hand having failed,) she, or the demon in possession, among other things accused Gaufridi. _Her_ revelations may be resolved into an imposture instigated by revenge, or a pious fraud caused by remorse, or hysterical fits, with utterance shaped by memory; but what can be said of Gaufridi's, made with a full knowledge of consequences? "The priests who conducted this affair seem almost to have lost sight of Louis Gaufridi, in their anxiety to collect these important evidences of the true faith. It was not till towards the close of winter that the reputed wizard was again thought of. A warrant was then obtained against him, and he was taken into custody, and confined in the prison of the conciergerie at Marseilles. On the fifth of March he was for the first time confronted with sister Magdalen, but without producing the result anticipated by his persecutors. Little information is given as to the subsequent proceedings against him; but he appears to have been treated with great severity, and to have persevered in asserting his innocence. Sister Magdalen, or rather the demon within her, gave information of certain marks on his body which had been placed there by the Evil One; and on search they were found exactly as described. It is not to be wondered at, if, after the intercourse which had existed between them, sister Magdalen were able to give such information. Still Gaufridi continued unshaken, and he made no confession; until at length, on Easter Eve, the twenty-sixth of March, 1611, a full avowal of his guilt was drawn from him, we are not told through what means, by two Capuchins of the Convent of Aix, to which place he had been transferred for his trial. At the beginning of April, another witness, the Demoiselle Victoire de Courbier, came forward to depose that she had been bewitched by the renegade priest, who had obtained her love by his charms; and he made no objection to their adding this new incident to his confession. "Gaufridi acknowledged the truth of all that had been said by sister Magdalen or by her demon. He said that an uncle, who had died many years ago, had left him his books, and that one day, about five or six years before his arrest on this accusation, he was looking them over, when he found amongst them a volume of magic, in which were some writings in French verse, accompanied with strange characters. His curiosity was excited, and he began to read it; when, to his great astonishment and consternation, the demon appeared in a human form, and said to him, 'What do you desire of me, for it is you who have called me?' Gaufridi was young, and easily tempted; and when he had recovered from his surprise and was reassured by the manner and conversation of his visitor, he replied to his offer, 'If you have power to give me what I desire, I ask for two things: first, that I shall prevail with all the women I like; secondly, that I shall be esteemed and honored above all the priests of this country, and enjoy the respect of men of wealth and honor.' We may see, perhaps, through these wishes, the reason why Gaufridi was persecuted by the rest of the clergy. The demon promised to grant him his desires, on condition that he would give up to him entirely his 'body, soul, and works;' to which Gaufridi agreed, excepting only from the latter the administration of the holy sacrament, to which he was bound by his vocation as a priest of the church. "From this time Louis Gaufridi felt an extreme pleasure in reading the magical book, and it always had the effect of bringing the demon to attend upon him. At the end of two or three days the agreement was arranged and completed, and, it having been fairly written on parchment, the priest signed it with his blood. The tempter then told him, that whenever he breathed on maid or woman, provided his breath reached their nostrils, they would immediately become desperately in love with him. He soon made a trial of the demon's gift, and used it so copiously that, he became in a short time a general object of attraction to the women of the district. He said that he often amused himself with exciting their passions when he had no intention of requiting them, and he declared that he had already made more than a thousand victims. "At length he took an extraordinary fancy to the young Magdalen de la Palude; but he found her difficult of approach, on account of the watchfulness of her mother, and he only overcame the difficulty by breathing on the mother before he seduced the daughter. He thus gained his purpose; took the girl to the cave in the manner she had already described, and became so much attached to her that he often repeated his charm on her, to make her more devoted in her love. Three days after their first visit to the cave, he gave her a familiar named Esmodes. Finding her now perfectly devoted to his will, he determined to marry her to Beelzebub, the prince of the demons; and she readily agreed to his proposal. He immediately called the demon prince, who appeared in the form of a handsome gentleman; and she then renounced her baptism and Christianity, signed the agreement with her blood, and received the demon's mark.... "The priest gave an account of the Sabbaths, at which he was a regular attendant. When he was ready to go--it was usually at night--he either went to the open window of his chamber, or left the chamber, locking the door, and proceeded into the open air. There Lucifer made his appearance, and took him in an instant to their place of meeting, where the orgies of the witches and sorcerers lasted usually from three to four hours. Gaufridi divided the victims of the Evil One into three classes: the masqués, (perhaps the novices,) the sorcerers, and the magicians. On arriving at the meeting, they all worshipped the demon according to their several ranks; the masqués falling flat on their faces, the sorcerers kneeling with their heads and bodies humbly bowed down, and the magicians, who stood highest in importance, only kneeling. After this they all went through the formality of denying God and the Saints. Then they had a diabolical service in burlesque of that of the church, at which the Evil One served as priest in a violet chasuble; the elevation of the demon host was announced by a wooden bell, and the sacrament itself was made of unleavened bread. The scenes which followed resembled those of other witch-meetings. Gaufridi acknowledged that he took Magdalen thither, and that he made her swallow magical 'characters' that were to increase her love to him; yet he proved unfaithful to her at these Sabbaths with a multitude of persons, and among the rest with 'a princess of Friesland.' The unhappy sorcerer confessed, among other things, that his demon was his constant companion, though generally invisible to all but himself; and that he only left him when he entered the church of the Capuchins to perform his religious duties, and then he waited for him outside the church door. "Gaufridi was tried before the Court of Parliament of Provence at Aix. His confession, the declaration of the demons, the marks on his body, and other circumstances, left him no hope of mercy. Judgment was given against him on the last day of April, and the same day it was put in execution. He was burnt alive." _Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_ is a skilful and popular selection of stories or narratives relating to the subject, not a philosophic treatise. We are carried to France, Germany, England, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, and America, by turns. We have the most remarkable trials for witchcraft in these countries, as well as cases in which supernatural agency was only an incidental part,--as that of the Earl and Countess of Somerset, for the murder of Overbury. By way of showing that Mr. Wright is by no means an indifferent story-teller, we may refer to the following legend: "The demons whom the sorcerer served seem rarely to have given any assistance to their victims when the latter fell into the hands of the judicial authorities; but if they escaped punishment by the agency of the law, they were only reserved for a more terrible end. We have already seen the fate of the woman of Berkeley. A writer of the thirteenth century has preserved a story of a man who, by his compact with the Evil One, had collected together great riches. One day, while he was absent in the fields, a stranger of suspicious appearance came to his house and asked for him. His wife replied that he was not at home. The stranger said, 'Tell him when he returns, that to-night he must pay me my debt.' The wife replied that she was not aware that he owed any thing to him. 'Tell, him,' said the stranger, with a ferocious look, 'that I will have my debt to-night.' The husband returned, and when informed of what had taken place, merely remarked that the demand was just. He then ordered his bed to be made that night in an outhouse, where he had never slept before, and he shut himself in it with a lighted candle. The family were astonished, and could not resist the impulse to gratify their curiosity by looking through the holes in the door. They beheld the same stranger, who had entered without opening the door, seated beside his victim, and they appeared to be counting large sums of money. Soon they began to quarrel about their accounts, and were proceeding from threats to blows, when the servants, who were looking through the door, burst it open, that they might help their master. The light was instantly extinguished; and when another was brought, no traces could be found of either of the disputants, nor were they ever afterwards heard of. The suspicious-looking stranger was the demon himself, who had carried away his victim." FOOTNOTES: [I] Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, from the most Authentic Sources. By Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., &c., &c. In two volumes. Published by Bentley. From the Examiner. HARTLEY COLERIDGE AND HIS GENIUS. Hartley Coleridge was a poet whose life was so deplorable a contradiction to the strength and subtlety of his genius, and the capability and range of his intellect, that perhaps no such sad example has ever found similar record.[J] Indeed we are obliged with sincere grief to doubt, whether, as written here, the memoir should have been written at all. With much respect for Mr. Derwent Coleridge, who is himself no unworthy inheritor of a great name, his white neckcloth is somewhat too prominently seen in the matter. There are too many labored explainings, starched apologies, and painful accountings for this and that. The writer was probably not conscious of the effort he was making, yet the effort is but too manifest, A simple statement of facts, a kindly allowance for circumstances, a mindful recollection of what his father was in physical as well as mental organization, extracts from Hartley's own letters, recollections of those among whom his latter life was passed--this, as it seems to us, should have sufficed. Mr. Derwent Coleridge brings too many church-bred and town-bred notions to the grave design of moralizing and philosophizing his brother's simple life and wayward self-indulgences. His motives will be respected, and his real kindness not misunderstood; but it will be felt that a quiet and unaffected little memoir of that strange and sorry career, and of those noble nor wholly wasted powers, remains still to be written. Meanwhile we gratefully accept the volumes before us, which in their contents are quite as decisive of Hartley Coleridge's genius as of what it might have achieved in happier circumstances. A more beautiful or more sorrowful book has not been published in our day. "Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burned is Apollo's laurel-bough, That sometime grew within this learned man." Hartley Coleridge was the eldest son of the poet, and with much of his father's genius (which in him, however, took a more simple and practical shape than consisted with the wider and more mystical expanse of his father's mind), inherited also the defects of his organization and temperament. What would have become of the elder Coleridge but for the friends in whose home his later years found a refuge, no one can say. With no such friends or home, poor Hartley became a cast-away. After a childhood of singular genius, manifested in many modes and forms, and described with charming effect by his brother in the best passages and anecdotes of the memoir, he was launched without due discipline or preparation into the University of Oxford, where the catastrophe of his life befell. He had first fairly shown his powers when the hard doom went forth which condemned them to waste and idleness. He obtained a fellowship-elect at Oriel, was dismissed on the ground of intemperance before his probationary year had passed, and wandered for the rest of his days by the scenes with which his father most wished to surround his childhood-- ("But thou, my babe, shall wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountains, and beneath the clouds Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags") --listening with hardly less than his father's delight to the sounds and voices of nature, in homely intimacy with all homely folk, uttering now and then piercing words of wisdom or regret, teaching little children in village schools, and----. Well, it would be perhaps too much to say that he continued to justify the rejection of the Oriel fellows. Who knows how largely that event may itself have contributed to what it too hastily anticipated and too finally condemned? It appears certain that the weakness had not thus early made itself known to Hartley's general acquaintance at the University. Mr. Dyce had nothing painful to remember of him, but describes him as a young man possessing an intellect of the highest order, with great simplicity of character and considerable oddity of manner; and he hints that the college authorities had probably resented, in the step they took, certain attacks more declamatory than serious which Hartley had got into the habit of indulging against all established institutions. Mr. Derwent Coleridge touches this part of the subject very daintily. "My brother was, however, _I am afraid_, more sincere in his invectives against establishments, as they appeared to his eyes at Oxford, and elsewhere, _than Mr. Dyce kindly supposes_." How poor Hartley would have laughed at that! One thing to the last he continued. The simplicity of character which Mr. Dyce attributes to his youth remained with him till long after his hair was prematurely white. As Wordsworth hoped for him in his childhood, he kept "A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flock;" --and some delightful recollections of his ordinary existence from day to day among the lakes and mountains, and in the service of the village schools, are contributed to his brother's Memoir. Here is one, from one of the scholars he taught: "I first saw Hartley in the beginning, I think, of 1837, when I was at Sedbergh, and he heard us our lesson in Mr. Green's parlor. My impression of him was what I conceived Shakespeare's idea of a gentleman to be, something which we like to have in a picture. He was dressed in black, his hair, just touched with gray, fell in thick waves down his back, and he had a frilled shirt on; and there was a sort of autumnal ripeness and brightness about him. His shrill voice, and his quick, authoritative 'right! right!' and the chuckle with which he translated 'rerum repetundarum' as 'peculation, a very common vice in governors of all ages,' after which he took a turn round the sofa--all struck me amazingly; his readiness astonished us all, and even himself, as he afterwards told me; for, during the time he was at the school, he never had to use a dictionary once, though we read Dalzell's selections from Aristotle and Longinus, and several plays of Sophocles. He took his idea, so he said, from what De Quincy says of one of the Eton masters fagging the lesson, to the great amusement of the class, and, while waiting for the lesson, he used to read a newspaper. While acting as second master he seldom occupied the master's desk, but sat among the boys on one of the school benches. He very seldom came to school in a morning, never till about eleven, and in the afternoon about an hour after we had begun. I never knew the least liberty taken with him, though he was kinder and more familiar than was then the fashion with masters. His translations were remarkably vivid; of [Greek: mogera mogerôs] 'toiling and moiling;' and of some ship or other in the Philoctetes, which he pronounced to be 'scudding under main-top sails,' our conceptions became intelligible. Many of his translations were written down with his initials, and I saw some, not a long while ago, in the Sophocles of a late Tutor at Queen's College, Oxford, who had them from tradition. He gave most attention to our themes; out of those sent in he selected two or three, which he then read aloud and criticised; and once, when they happened to agree, remarked there was always a coincidence of thought amongst great men. Out of school he never mixed with the boys, but was sometimes seen, to their astonishment, running along the fields with his arms outstretched, and talking to himself. He had no pet scholars except one, a little fair-haired boy, who he said ought to have been a girl. He told me that was the only boy he ever loved, though he always loved little girls. He was remarkably fond of the travelling shows that occasionally visited the village. I have seen him clap his hands with delight; indeed, in most of the simple delights of country life, he was like a child. This is what occurs to me at present of what he was when I first knew him; and, indeed, my after recollections are of a similarly fragmentary kind, consisting only of those little, numerous, noiseless, every-day acts of kindness, the sum of which makes a Christian life. His love of little children, his sympathy with the poor and suffering, his hatred of oppression, the beauty and the grace of his politeness before women, and his high manliness,--these are the features which I shall never forget while I have any thing to remember." The same writer afterwards tells us: "On his way to one of these parties he called on me, and I could not help saying, 'How well you look in a white neckcloth!' 'I wish you could see me sometimes,' he replied; 'if I had only black-silk stockings and shoe-buckles I should be quite a gentleman.' Those who had only seen him in the careless dress that he chose to adopt in the lanes--his trowsers, which were generally too long, doubled half way up the leg, unbrushed, and often splashed; his hat brushed the wrong way, for he never used an umbrella; and his wild, unshaven, weather-beaten look--were amazed at his metamorphose into such a faultless gentleman as he appeared when he was dressed for the evening. 'I hate silver forks with fish,' he said; 'I can't manage them.' So did Dr. Arnold, I told him. 'That's capital; I am glad of such an authority. Do you know I never understood the gladiator's excellence till the other day. The way in which my brother eats fish with a silver fork made the thing quite clear.' "He often referred to his boyish days, when he told me he nearly poisoned half the house with his chemical infusions, and spoiled the pans, with great delight. The 'Pilgrim's Progress' was an early favorite with him. 'It was strange,' he said, 'how it had been overlooked. Children are often misunderstood. When I was a baby I have often been in the greatest terror, when, to all appearance, I was quite still;--so frightened that I could not make a noise. Crying, I believe, is oftener a sign of happiness than the reverse. I was looked upon as a remarkable child. My mother told me, when I was born she thought me an ugly red thing; but my father took me up and said, 'There's no sweeter baby any where than this.' He always thought too much of me. I was very dull at school, and hated arithmetic; I always had to count on my fingers. "He once took me to the little cottage where he lived by the Brathey, when Charles Lloyd and he were school-companions. Mrs. Nicholson, of Ambleside, told me of a donkey-race which they had from the market-cross to the end of the village and back, and how Hartley came in last, and minus his white straw hat." Those who remember the ordinary (and most extraordinary) dress that hung about his small eager person, will smile at this entry in his journal of a visit to Rydal chapel, and the reflections awakened therein: "17th.--Sunday.--At Rydal chapel. Alas! I have been _Parcus Deorum cultor et infrequens_ of late. Would I could say with assurance, _Nunc interare cursus cogor relictos_. I never saw Axiologus (Wordsworth) look so venerable. His cape cloak has such a gravity about it. Old gentlemen should never wear light great coats unless they be military; and even then Uncle Toby's Roquelaure would be more becoming than all the frogs in Styx. On the other hand, loose trowsers should never invest the nether limbs of led. It looks as if the Septuagenarian were ashamed of a diminished calf. The sable silk is good and clerical, so are the gray pearl and the partridge. I revere gray worsted and ridge and furrow for [Greek: Omak rites] his sake, but perhaps the bright white lamb's wool doth most set off the leg of an elderly man. The hose should be drawn over the knees, unless the rank and fortune require diamond buckles. Paste or Bristol stones should never approach a gentleman of any age. Roomy shoes, not of varnished leather. Broad shoe-buckles, well polished. Cleanliness is an ornament to youth, but an indispensable necessity to old age. Breeches, velvet or velveteen, or some other solid stuff. There may be serious objections to reviving the trunk breeches of our ancestors. I am afraid that hoops would follow in their train. But the flapped waistcoat, the deep cuffs, and guarded pocket-holes, the low collar, I should hail with pleasure; that is, for grandfathers and men of grandfatherly years. I was about to add the point-lace ruffles, cravat, and frill, but I pause in consideration of the miseries and degraded state of the lace makers." Occasional passages in his letters are very beautiful, and very sad. Here is one--adverting to some attack made upon him: "'This jargon,' said my orthodox reviewer, 'might be excused in an alderman of London, but not in a Fellow elect of Oriel,' or something to the same purpose, evidently designing to recall to memory the most painful passage of a life not over happy. But perhaps it is as well to let it alone. The writer might be some one in whom my kindred are interested; for I am as much alone in my revolt as Abdiel in his constancy." We are glad to see valuable testimony borne by Mr. James Spedding as to his habits having left unimpaired his moral and spiritual sensibility: "Of his general character and way of life I might have been able to say something to the purpose, if I had seen more of him. But though he was a person so interesting to me in himself, and with so many subjects of interest in common with me, that a little intercourse went a great way; so that I feel as if I knew him much better than many persons of whom I have seen much more; yet I have in fact been very seldom in his company. If I should say ten times altogether, I should not be understating the number; and this is not enough to qualify me for a reporter, when there must be so many competent observers living, who really knew him well. One very strong impression, however, with which I always came away from him, may be worth mentioning; I mean, that his moral and spiritual sensibilities seemed to be absolutely untouched by the life he was leading. The error of his life sprung, I suppose, from moral incapacity of some kind--his way of life seemed in some things destructive of self-respect; and was certainly regarded by himself with a feeling of shame, which in his seasons of self-communion became passionate; and yet it did not at all degrade his mind. It left, not his understanding only, but also his imagination and feelings, perfectly healthy,--free, fresh, and pure. His language might be sometimes what some people would call gross, but that I think was not from any want of true delicacy, but from a masculine disdain of false delicacy; and his opinions, and judgment, and speculations, were in the highest degree refined and elevated--full of chivalrous generosity, and purity, and manly tenderness. Such, at least, was my invariable impression. It always surprised me, but fresh observations always confirmed it." When Wordsworth heard of his death, he was much affected, and gave the touching direction to his brother:--"Let him lie by us: he would have wished it." It was accordingly so arranged. "The day following he walked over with me to Grasmere--to the churchyard, a plain enclosure of the olden time, surrounding the old village church, in which lay the remains of his wife's sister, his nephew, and his beloved daughter. Here, having desired the sexton to measure out the ground for his own and for Mrs. Wordsworth's grave, he bade him measure out the space of a third grave for my brother, immediately beyond. "'When I lifted up my eyes from my daughter's grave,' he exclaimed, 'he was standing there!' pointing to the spot where my brother had stood on the sorrowful occasion to which he alluded. Then turning to the sexton, he said, 'Keep the ground for us,--we are old people, and it cannot be for long.'" "In the grave thus marked out, my brother's remains were laid on the following Thursday, and in little more than a twelvemonth his venerable and venerated friend was brought to occupy his own. They lie in the south-east angle of the churchyard, not far from a group of trees, with the little beck, that feeds the lake with its clear waters, murmuring by their side. Around them are the quiet mountains." We have often expressed a high opinion of Hartley Coleridge's poetical genius. It was a part of the sadness of his life that he could not concentrate his powers, in this or any other department of his intellect, to high and continuous aims--but we were not prepared for such rich proof of its exercise, within the limited field assigned to it, as these volumes offer. They largely and lastingly contribute to the rare stores of true poetry. In the sonnet Hartley Coleridge was a master unsurpassed by the greatest. To its "narrow plot of ground" his habits, when applied in the cultivation of the muse, most naturally led him--and here he may claim no undeserved companionship even with Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth. We take a few--with affecting personal reference in all of them. Hast thou not seen an aged rifted tower, Meet habitation for the Ghost of Time, Where fearful ravage makes decay sublime, And destitution wears the face of power? Yet is the fabric deck'd with many a flower Of fragrance wild, and many-dappled hues, Gold streak'd with iron-brown and nodding blue, Making each ruinous chink a fairy bower. E'en such a thing methinks I fain would be, Should Heaven appoint me to a lengthen'd age; So old in look, that Young and Old may see The record of my closing pilgrimage: Yet, to the last, a rugged wrinkled thing To which young sweetness may delight to cling! Pains I have known, that cannot be again, And pleasures too that never can be more: For loss of pleasure I was never sore, But worse, far worse is to feel no pain. The throes and agonies of a heart explain Its very depth of want at inmost core; Prove that it does believe, and would adore, And doth with ill for ever strive and strain. I not lament for happy childish years, For loves departed, that have had their day, Or hopes that faded when my head was gray; For death hath left me last of my compeers: But for the pain I felt, the gushing tears I used to shed when I had gone astray. A lonely wanderer upon the earth am I, The waif of nature--like uprooted weed Borne by the stream, or like a shaken reed, A frail dependent of the fickle sky. Far, far away, are all my natural kin; The mother that erewhile hath hush'd my cry, Almost hath grown a mere fond memory. Where is my sister's smile? my brother's boisterous din? Ah! nowhere now. A matron grave and sage, A holy mother is that sister sweet. And that bold brother is a pastor meet To guide, instruct, reprove a sinful age, Almost I fear, and yet I fain would greet; So far astray hath been my pilgrimage. How shall a man fore-doom'd to lone estate, Untimely old, irreverently gray, Much like a patch of dusky snow in May, Dead sleeping in a hollow--all too late-- How shall so poor a thing congratulate The blest completion of a patient wooing, Or how commend a younger man for doing What ne'er to do hath been his fault or fate? There is a fable, that I once did read. Of a bad angel that was someway good, And therefore on the brink of Heaven he stood, Looking each way, and no way could proceed; Till at the last he purged away his sin By loving all the joy he saw within. Here is another poem of very touching reference to his personal story: "When I received this volume small, My years were barely seventeen; When it was hoped I should be all Which once, alas! I might have been. "And now my years are thirty-five, And every mother hopes her lamb, And every happy child alive, May never be what now I am. "But yet should any chance to look On the strange medley scribbled here. I charge thee, tell them, little book, I am not vile as I appear. "Oh! tell them though thy purpose lame In fortune's race, was still behind,-- Though earthly blots my name defiled, They ne'er abused my better mind. "Of what men are, and why they are So weak, so wofully beguiled, Much I have learned, but better far, I know my soul is reconciled." Before we shut the volumes--which will often and often be re-opened by their readers--we may instance, in proof of the variety of his verse, some masterly heroic couplets on the character of Dryden, which will be seen in a series of admirable "sketches of English poets" found written on the fly-leaves and covers of his copy of _Anderson's British Poets_. The successors of Dryden are not less admirably handled, and there are some sketches of Wilkie, Dodsley, Langhorne, and rhymers of that class, inimitable for their truth and spirit. FOOTNOTES: [J] Poems by Hartley Coleridge. With a Memoir of his Life. By his Brother. Two vols. Moxon. From the Cincinnati Commercial Advertiser. LYRA.--A LAMENT. BY ALICE CAREY. Maidens, whose tresses shine, Crowned with daffodil and eglantine, Or, from their stringed buds of brier-roses, Bright as the vermeil closes Of April twilights, after sobbing rains, Fall down in rippled skeins And golden tangles, low About your bosoms, dainty as new snow; While the warm shadows blow in softest gales Fair hawthorn flowers and cherry blossoms white Against your kirtles, like the froth from pails O'er brimmed with milk at night, When lowing heifers bury their sleek flanks In winrows of sweet hay, or clover banks-- Come near and hear, I pray, My plained roundelay: Where creeping vines o'errun the sunny leas, Sadly, sweet souls, I watch your shining bands Filling with stained hands Your leafy cups with lush red strawberries; Or deep in murmurous glooms, In yellow mosses full of starry blooms, Sunken at ease--each busied as she likes, Or stripping from the grass the beaded dews, Or picking jagged leaves from the slim spikes Of tender pinks--with warbled interfuse Of poesy divine, That haply long ago Some wretched borderer of the realm of wo Wrought to a dulcet line: If in your lovely years There be a sorrow that may touch with tears The eyelids piteously, they must be shed FOR LYRA, DEAD. The mantle of the May Was blown almost within summer's reach, And all the orchard trees, Apple, and pear, and peach, Were full of yellow bees, Flown from their hives away. The callow dove upon the dusty beam Fluttered its little wings in streaks of light, And the gray swallow twittered full in sight-- Harmless the unyoked team Browsed from the budding elms, and thrilling lays Made musical prophecies of brighter days; And all went jocundly; I could but say. Ah! well-a-day! What time spring thaws the wold, And in the dead leaves come up sprouts of gold, And green and ribby blue, that after hours Encrown with flowers; Heavily lies my heart From all delights apart, Even as an echo hungry for the wind, When fail the silver-kissing waves to unbind The music bedded in the drowsy strings Of the sea's golden shells-- That, sometimes, with their honeyed murmurings Fill all its underswells: For o'er the sunshine fell a shadow wide When Lyra died. When sober Autumn, with his mist-bound brows, Sits drearily beneath the fading boughs, And the rain, chilly cold, Wrings from his beard of gold, And as some comfort for his lonesome hours, Hides in his bosom stalks of withered flowers, I think about what leaves are drooping round A smoothly shapen mound; And if the wild wind cries Where Lyra lies, Sweet shepherds, softly blow Ditties most sad and low-- Piping on hollow reeds to your pent sheep-- Calm be my Lyra's sleep. Unvexed with dream of the rough briers that pull From his strayed lambs the wool! O, star, that tremblest dim Upon the welkin's rim, Send with thy milky shadows from above Tidings about my love; If that some envious wave Made his untimely grave, Or if, so softening half my wild regrets, Some coverlid of bluest violets Was softly put aside, What time he died! Nay, come not, piteous maids, Out of the murmurous shades; But keep your tresses crowned as you may With eglantine and daffodillies gay, And with the dews of myrtles wash your cheek, When flamy streaks, Uprunning the gray orient, tell of morn-- While I, forlorn, Pour all my heart in tears and plaints, instead, FOR LYRA, DEAD. From Fraser's Magazine. MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. _Continued from page 126._ PART VIII.--CHAPTER XIII. Mr. Dale had been more than a quarter of an hour conversing with Mrs. Avenel, and had seemingly made little progress in the object of his diplomatic mission, for now, slowly drawing on his gloves, he said,-- "I grieve to think, Mrs. Avenel, that you should have so hardened your heart--yes--you must pardon me--it is my vocation to speak stern truths. You cannot say that I have not kept faith with you, but I must now invite you to remember that I specially reserved to myself the right of exercising a discretion to act as I judged best, for the child's interests, on any future occasion; and it was upon this understanding that you gave me the promise, which you would now evade, of providing for him when he came into manhood." "I say I will provide for him. I say that you may 'prentice him in any distant town, and by-and-by we will stock a shop for him. What would you have more, sir, from folks like us, who have kept shop ourselves? It ain't reasonable what you ask, sir!" "My dear friend," said the Parson, "what I ask of you at present is but to see him--to receive him kindly--to listen to his conversation--to judge for yourselves. We can have but a common object--that your grandson should succeed in life, and do you credit. Now, I doubt very much whether we can effect this by making him a small shopkeeper." "And has Jane Fairfield, who married a common carpenter, brought him up to despise small shopkeepers?" exclaimed Mrs. Avenel, angrily. "Heaven forbid! Some of the first men in England have been the sons of small shopkeepers. But is it a crime in them, or their parents, if their talents have lifted them into such rank or renown as the haughtiest duke might envy? England were not England if a man must rest where his father began." "Good!" said, or rather grunted, an approving voice, but neither Mrs. Avenel nor the Parson heard it. "All very fine," said Mrs. Avenel, bluntly. "But to send a boy like that to the university--where's the money to come from?" "My dear Mrs. Avenel," said the Parson, coaxingly, "the cost need not be great at a small college at Cambridge; and if you will pay half the expense, I will pay the other half. I have no children of my own, and can afford it." "That's very handsome in you, sir," said Mrs. Avenel, somewhat touched, yet still not graciously, "But the money is not the only point." "Once at Cambridge," continued Mr. Dale, speaking rapidly, "at Cambridge, where the studies are mathematical--that is, of a nature for which he has shown so great an aptitude--and I have no doubt he will distinguish himself; if he does, he will obtain, on leaving, what is called a fellowship--that is a collegiate dignity accompanied by an income on which he could maintain himself until he made his way in life. Come, Mrs. Avenel, you are well off; you have no relations nearer to you in want of your aid. Your son, I hear, has been very fortunate." "Sir," said Mrs. Avenel, interrupting the Parson, "it is not because my son Richard is an honor to us, and is a good son, and has made his fortin, that we are to rob him of what we have to leave, and give it to a boy whom we know nothing about, and who, in spite of what you say, can't bring upon us any credit at all." "Why? I don't see that." "Why?" exclaimed Mrs. Avenel, fiercely--"why? you know why. No, I don't want him to rise in life; I don't want folks to be speiring and asking about him. I think it is a very wicked thing to have put fine notions in his head, and I am sure my daughter Fairfield could not have done it herself. And now, to ask me to rob Richard, and bring out a great boy--who's been a gardener, or ploughman, or such like--to disgrace a gentleman who keeps his carriage, as my son Richard does--I would have you to know, sir, no! I won't do it, and there's an end to the matter." During the last two or three minutes, and just before that approving "good" had responded to the Parson's popular sentiment, a door communicating with an inner room had been gently opened, and stood ajar; but this incident neither party had even noticed. But now the door was thrown boldly open, and the traveller whom the Parson had met at the inn walked up to Mr. Dale, and said, "No! that's not the end of the matter. You say the boy's a cute, clever lad?" "Richard, have you been listening?" exclaimed Mrs. Avenel. "Well, I guess, yes--the last few minutes." "And what have you heard?" "Why, that this reverend gentleman thinks so highly of my sister Fairfield's boy that he offers to pay half of his keep at college. Sir, I'm very much obliged to you, and there's my hand, if you'll take it." The Parson jumped up, overjoyed, and, with a triumphant glance towards Mrs. Avenel, shook hands heartily with Mr. Richard. "Now," said the latter, "just put on your hat, sir, and take a stroll with me, and we'll discuss the thing business-like. Women don't understand business; never talk to women on business." With these words, Mr. Richard drew out a cigar-case, selected a cigar, which he applied to the candle, and walked into the hall. Mrs. Avenel caught hold of the Parson. "Sir, you'll be on your guard with Richard. Remember your promise." "He does not know all, then?" "He? No! And you see he did not overhear more than what he says. I'm sure you're a gentleman, and won't go agin your word." "My word was conditional; but I will promise you never to break the silence without more reason than I think there is here for it. Indeed, Mr. Richard Avenel seems to save all necessity for that." "Are you coming, sir?" cried Richard, as he opened the street door. CHAPTER XIV. The Parson joined Mr. Richard Avenel on the road. It was a fine night, and the moon clear and shining. "So, then," said Mr. Richard, thoughtfully, "poor Jane, who was always the drudge of the family, has contrived to bring up her son well; and the boy is really what you say, eh?--could make a figure at college?" "I am sure of it," said the Parson, hooking himself on to the arm which Mr Avenel proffered. "I should like to see him," said Richard. "Has he any manner? Is he genteel, or a mere country lout?" "Indeed, he speaks with so much propriety, and has so much modest dignity, I might say, about him, that there's many a rich gentleman who would be proud of such a son." "It is odd," observed Richard, "what difference there is in families. There's Jane now--who can't read nor write, and was just fit to be a workman's wife--had not a thought above her station; and when I think of my poor sister Nora--you would not believe it, sir, but _she_ was the most elegant creature in the world--yes, even as a child, (she was but a child when I went off to America.) And often, as I was getting on in life, often I used to say to myself, 'My little Nora shall be a lady after all. Poor thing--but she died young.'" Richard's voice grew husky. The Parson kindly pressed the arm on which he leaned, and said, after a pause-- "Nothing refines us like education, sir. I believe your sister Nora had received much instruction, and had the talents to profit by it. It is the same with your nephew." "I'll see him," said Richard, stamping his foot firmly on the ground, "and if I like him, I'll be as good as a father to him. Look you, Mr.--what's your name, sir?" "Dale." "Mr. Dale, look you, I'm a single man. Perhaps I may marry some day; perhaps I shan't. I'm not going to throw myself away. If I can get a lady of quality, why--but that's neither here nor there; meanwhile, I should be glad of a nephew whom I need not be ashamed of. You see, sir, I'm a new man, the builder of my own fortunes; and, though I have picked up a little education--I don't well know how--as I scrambled on, still, now I come back to the old country, I'm well aware that I am not exactly a match for those d----d aristocrats--don't show so well in a drawing-room as I could wish. I could be a Parliament man if I liked, but I might make a goose of myself; so, all things considered, if I can get a sort of junior partner to do the polite work, and show off the goods, I think the house of Avenel & Co. might become a pretty considerable honor to the Britishers. You understand me, sir?" "Oh, very well," answered Mr. Dale, smiling, though rather gravely. "Now," continued the New Man, "I'm not ashamed to have risen in life by my own merits; and I don't disguise what I've been. And, when I'm in my own grand house, I'm fond of saying, 'I landed at New-York with ten pounds in my purse, and here I am!' But it would not do to have the old folks with me. People take you with all your faults, if you're rich, but they won't swallow your family into the bargain. So, if I don't have my own father and mother, whom I love dearly, and should like to see sitting at table, with my servants behind their chairs, I could still less have sister Jane. I recollect her very well, and she can't have got genteeler as she's grown older. Therefore I beg you'll not set her on coming after me; it won't do by any manner of means. Don't say a word about me to her. But send the boy down here to his grandfather, and I'll see him quietly, you understand." "Yes, but it will be hard to separate her from the boy." "Stuff! all boys are separated from their parents when they go into the world. So that's settled. Now, just tell me. I know the old folks always snubbed Jane--that is, mother did. My poor dear father never snubbed any of us. Perhaps mother has not behaved altogether well to Jane. But we must not blame her for that; you see this is how it happened. There were a good many of us, while father and mother kept shop in the High Street, so we were all to be provided for, anyhow; and Jane, being very useful and handy at work, got a place when she was a little girl, and had no time for learning. Afterwards my father made a lucky hit, in getting my Lord Lansmere's custom after an election, in which he did a great deal for the Blues, (for he was a famous electioneerer, my poor father.) My Lady stood godmother to Nora; and then most of my brothers and sisters died off, and father retired from business; and when he took Jane from service, she was so common-like that mother could not help contrasting her with Nora. You see Jane was their child when they were poor little shop people, with their heads scarce above water; and Nora was their child when they were well off, and had retired from trade, and lived genteel: so that makes a great difference. And mother did not quite look on her as on her own child. But it was Jane's own fault; for mother would have made it up with her if she had married the son of our neighbor the great linen-draper, as she might have done; but she would take Mark Fairfield, a common carpenter. Parents like best those of their children who succeed best in life. Natural. Why, they did not care for me until I came back the man I am. But to return to Jane: I'm afraid they've neglected her. How is she off?" "She earns her livelihood, and is poor, but contented." "Ah, just be good enough to give her this," and Richard took a bank-note of fifty pounds from his pocket-book. "You can say the old folks sent it to her; or that it is a present from Dick, without telling her he had come back from America." "My dear sir," said the Parson, "I am more and more thankful to have made your acquaintance. This is a very liberal gift of yours; but your best plan will be to send it through your mother. For, though I don't want to betray any confidence you place in me, I should not know what to answer if Mrs. Fairfield began to question me about her brother. I never had but one secret to keep, and I hope I shall never have another. A secret is very like a lie!" "You had a secret, then," said Richard, as he took back the bank-note. He had learned, perhaps, in America, to be a very inquisitive man. He added point-blank, "Pray what was it?" "Why, what it would not be if I told you," said the Parson, with a forced laugh,--"a secret!" "Well, I guess we're in a land of liberty. Do as you like. Now, I daresay you think me a very odd fellow to come out of my shell to you in this off-hand way. But I liked the look of you, even when we were at the inn together. And just now I was uncommonly pleased to find that, though you are a parson, you don't want to keep a man's nose down to a shop-board, if he has any thing in him. You're not one of the aristocrats--" "Indeed," said the Parson with imprudent warmth, "it is not the character of the aristocracy of this country to keep people down. They make way amongst themselves for any man, whatever his birth, who has the talent and energy to aspire to their level. That's the especial boast of the British constitution, sir!" "Oh, you think so do you!" said Mr. Richard, looking sourly at the Parson. "I daresay those are the opinions in which you have brought up the lad. Just keep him yourself, and let the aristocracy provide for him!" The parson's generous and patriotic warmth evaporated at once, at this sudden inlet of cold air into the conversation. He perceived that he had made a terrible blunder; and, as it was not his business at that moment to vindicate the British constitution, but to serve Leonard Fairfield, he abandoned the cause of the aristocracy with the most poltroon and scandalous abruptness. Catching at the arm which Mr. Avenel had withdrawn from him, he exclaimed: "Indeed, sir, you are mistaken; I have never attempted to influence your nephew's political opinions. On the contrary, if, at his age, he can be said to have formed any opinion, I am greatly afraid--that is, I think his opinions are by no means sound--that is constitutional. I mean, I mean--" And the poor Parson, anxious to select a word that would not offend his listener, stopped short in lamentable confusion of idea. Mr. Avenel enjoyed his distress for a moment, with a saturnine smile, and then said: "Well, I calculate he's a Radical. Natural enough, if he has not got a sixpence to lose--all come right by-and-by. I'm not a Radical--at least not a destructive--much too clever a man for that, I hope. But I wish to see things very different from what they are. Don't fancy that I want the common people, who've got nothing, to pretend to dictate to their betters, because I hate to see a parcel of fellows, who are called lords and squires, trying to rule the roast. I think, sir, that it is men like me who ought to be at the top of the tree! and that's the long and short of it. What do you say?" "I've not the least objection," said the crestfallen Parson basely. But, to do him justice, I must add that he did not the least know what he was saying! CHAPTER XV. Unconscious of the change in his fate which the diplomacy of the Parson sought to effect, Leonard Fairfield was enjoying the first virgin sweetness of fame; for the principal town in his neighborhood had followed the then growing fashion of the age, and set up a Mechanic's Institute; and some worthy persons interested in the formation of that provincial Athenæum had offered a prize for the best Essay on the Diffusion of Knowledge,--a very trite subject, on which persons seem to think they can never say too much, and on which there is, nevertheless, a great deal yet to be said. This prize Leonard Fairfield had recently won. His Essay had been publicly complimented by a full meeting of the Institute; it had been printed at the expense of the Society, and had been rewarded by a silver medal--delineative of Apollo crowning Merit, (poor Merit had not a rag to his back; but Merit, left only to the care of Apollo, never is too good a customer to the tailor!) And the County Gazette had declared that Britain had produced another prodigy in the person of Dr. Riccabocca's self-educated gardener. Attention was now directed to Leonard's mechanical contrivances. The Squire, ever eagerly bent on improvements, had brought an engineer to inspect the lad's system of irrigation, and the engineer had been greatly struck by the simple means by which a very considerable technical difficulty had been overcome. The neighboring farmers now called Leonard "_Mr._ Fairfield," and invited him on equal terms, to their houses. Mr. Stirn had met him on the high road, touched his hat, and hoped that "he bore no malice." All this, I say, was the first sweetness of fame; and if Leonard Fairfield comes to be a great man, he will never find such sweets in the after fruit. It was this success which had determined the Parson on the step which he had just taken, and which he had long before anxiously meditated. For, during the last year or so, he had renewed his old intimacy with the widow and the boy; and he had noticed, with great hope and great fear, the rapid growth of an intellect, which now stood out from the lowly circumstances that surrounded it in bold and unharmonizing relief. It was the evening after his return home that the Parson strolled up to the Casino. He put Leonard Fairfield's Prize Essay in his pocket. For he felt that he could not let the young man go forth into the world without a preparatory lecture, and he intended to scourge poor Merit with the very laurel wreath which it had received from Apollo. But in this he wanted Riccabocca's assistance; or rather he feared that, if he did not get the Philosopher on his side, the Philosopher might undo all the work of the Parson. CHAPTER XVI. A sweet sound came through the orange boughs, and floated to the ears of the Parson, as he wound slowly up the gentle ascent--so sweet, so silvery, he paused in delight--unaware, wretched man! that he was thereby conniving at Papistical errors. Soft it came, and sweet: softer and sweeter--"Ave Maria!" Violante was chanting the evening hymn to the Virgin Mother. The Parson at last distinguished the sense of the words, and shook his head with the pious shake of an orthodox Protestant. He broke from the spell resolutely, and walked on with a sturdy step. Gaining the terrace he found the little family seated under an awning. Mrs. Riccabocca knitting; the Signor with his arms folded on his breast: the book he had been reading a few moments before had fallen on the ground, and his dark eyes were soft and dreamy. Violante had finished her hymn, and seated herself on the ground between the two, pillowing her head on her step-mother's lap, but with her hand resting on her father's knee, and her gaze fixed fondly on his face. "Good evening," said Mr. Dale. Violante stole up to him, and, pulling him so as to bring his ear nearer to her lip, whispered,--"Talk to papa, do--and cheerfully; he is sad." She escaped from him, as she said this, and appeared to busy herself with watering the flowers arranged on stands round the awning. But she kept her swimming lustrous eyes wistfully on her father. "How fares it with you, my dear friend?" said the Parson kindly, as he rested his hand on the Italian's shoulder. "You must not let him get out of spirits, Mrs. Riccabocca." "I am very ungrateful to her if I ever am so," said the poor Italian, with all his natural gallantry. Many a good wife, who thinks it is a reproach to her if her husband is ever 'out of spirits,' might have turned peevishly from that speech more elegant than sincere, and so have made bad worse. But Mrs. Riccabocca took her husband's proffered hand affectionately, and said with great _naïveté_: "You see I am so stupid, Mr. Dale; I never knew I was so stupid till I married. But I am very glad you are come. You can get on some learned subject together, and then he will not miss so much his--" "His what?" asked Riccabocca, inquisitively. "His country. Do you think that I cannot sometimes read your thoughts?" "Very often. But you did not read them just then. The tongue touches where the tooth aches, but the best dentist cannot guess at the tooth unless one opens one's mouth. _Basta!_ Can we offer you some wine of our own making, Mr. Dale?--it is pure." "I'd rather have some tea," quoth the Parson hastily. Mrs. Riccabocca, too pleased to be in her natural element of domestic use, hurried into the house to prepare our national beverage. And the Parson, sliding into her chair, said-- "But you are dejected, then? Fie! If there's a virtue in the world at which we should always aim, it is cheerfulness." "I don't dispute it," said Riccabocca, with a heavy sigh. "But though it is said by some Greek, who, I think, is quoted by your favorite Seneca, that a wise man carries his country with him at the soles of his feet, he can't carry also the sunshine." "I tell you what it is," said the Parson bluntly, "you would have a much keener sense of happiness if you had much less esteem for philosophy." "_Cospetto!_" said the Doctor, rousing himself. "Just explain, will you?" "Does not the search after wisdom induce desires not satisfied in this small circle to which your life is confined? It is not so much your country for which you yearn, as it is for space to your intellect, employment for your thoughts, career for your aspirations." "You have guessed at the tooth which aches," said Riccabocca with admiration. "Easy to do that," answered the Parson. "Our wisdom teeth come last, and give us the most pain. And if you would just starve the mind a little, and nourish the heart more, you would be less of a philosopher, and more of a--" The Parson had the word "Christian" at the tip of his tongue: he suppressed a word that, so spoken, would have been exceedingly irritating, and substituted, with inelegant antithesis, "and more of a happy man!" "I do all I can with my heart," quoth the Doctor. "Not you! For a man with such a heart as yours should never feel the want of the sunshine. My friend, we live in an age of over mental cultivation. We neglect too much the simple healthful outer life, in which there is so much positive joy. In turning to the world within us, we grow blind to this beautiful world without; in studying ourselves as men, we almost forget to look up to heaven, and warm to the smile of God." The philosopher mechanically shrugged his shoulders, as he always did when another man moralised--especially if the moraliser were a priest; but there was no irony in his smile, as he answered thoughtfully-- "There is some truth in what you say. I own that we live too much as if we were all brain. Knowledge has its penalties and pains, as well as its prizes." "That is just what I want you to say to Leonard." "How have you settled the object of your journey?" "I will tell you as we walk down to him after tea. At present, I am rather too much occupied with you." "Me? The tree is formed--try only to bend the young twig!" "Trees are trees, and twigs twigs," said the Parson dogmatically; "but man is always growing till he falls into the grave. I think I have heard you say that you once had a narrow escape of a prison?" "Very narrow." "Just suppose that you were now in that prison, and that a fairy conjured up the prospect of this quiet home in a safe land; that you saw the orange trees in flower, felt the evening breeze on your cheek; beheld your child gay or sad, as you smiled or knit your brow; that within this phantom home was a woman, not, indeed, all your young romance might have dreamed of, but faithful and true, every beat of her heart all your own--would you not cry from the depth of the dungeon, "O fairy! such a change were a paradise." Ungrateful man! you want interchange for your mind, and your heart should suffice for all!" Riccabocca was touched and silent. "Come hither, my child," said Mr. Dale, turning round to Violante, who still stood among the flowers, out of hearing, but with watchful eyes. "Come hither," he said, opening big arms. Violante bounded forward, and nestled to the good man's heart. "Tell me, Violante, when you are alone in the fields or the garden, and have left your father looking pleased and serene, so that you have no care for him at your heart,--tell me, Violante, though you are all alone, with the flowers below and the birds singing overhead, do you feel that life itself is happiness or sorrow?" "Happiness!" answered Violante, half shutting her eyes, and in a measured voice. "Can you explain what kind of happiness it is?" "Oh no, impossible! and it is never the same. Sometimes it is so still--so still--and sometimes so joyous, that I long for wings to fly up to God, and thank him!" "O friend," said the Parson, "this is the true sympathy between life and nature, and thus we should feel ever, did we take more care to preserve the health and innocence of a child. We are told that we must become as children to enter into the kingdom of heaven; methinks we should also become as children to know what delight there is in our heritage of earth!" CHAPTER XVII. The maid servant (for Jackeymo was in the fields) brought the table under the awning, and, with the English luxury of tea, there were other drinks as cheap and as grateful on summer evenings--drinks which Jackeymo had retained and taught from the customs of the south--unebriate liquors, pressed from cooling fruits, sweetened with honey, and deliciously iced; ice should cost nothing in a country in which one is frozen up half the year! And Jackeymo, too, had added to our good, solid, heavy English bread, preparations of wheat much lighter, and more propitious to digestion--with those crisp _grissins_, which seem to enjoy being eaten, they make so pleasant a noise between one's teeth. The Parson esteemed it a little treat to drink tea with the Riccaboccas. There was something of elegance and grace in that homely meal, at the poor exile's table, which pleased the eye as well as taste. And the very utensils, plain Wedgewood though they were, had a classical simplicity, which made Mrs. Hazeldean's old India delf, and Mrs. Dale's best Worcester china look tawdry and barbarous in comparison. For it was a Flaxman who gave designs to Wedgewood, and the most truly refined of all our manufactures in porcelain (if we do not look to the mere material) is in the reach of the most thrifty. The little banquet was at first rather a silent one; but Riccabocca threw off his gloom, and became gay and animated. Then poor Mrs. Riccabocca smiled, and pressed the _grissins_; and Violante, forgetting all her stateliness, laughed and played tricks on the Parson, stealing away his cup of warm tea when his head was turned, and substituting iced cherry juice. Then the Parson got up and ran after Violante, making angry faces, and Violante dodged beautifully, till the Parson, fairly tired out, was too glad to cry "Peace," and come back to the cherry juice. Thus time rolled on, till they heard afar the stroke of the distant church clock, and Mr. Dale started up and cried, "But we shall be too late for Leonard. Come, naughty little girl, get your father his hat." "And umbrella!" said Riccabocca, looking up at the cloudless moonlit sky. "Umbrella against the stars?" asked the Parson laughing. "The stars are no friends of mine," said Riccabocca, "and one never knows what may happen!" The Philosopher and the Parson walked on amicably. "You have done me good," said Riccabocca, "but I hope I am not always so unreasonably melancholic as you seem to suspect. The evenings will sometimes appear long, and dull too, to a man whose thoughts on the past are almost his sole companions." "Sole companions?--your child?" "She is so young." "Your wife?" "She is so--," the bland Italian appeared to check some disparaging adjective, and mildly added, "so good, I allow; but you must own that we cannot have much in common." "I own nothing of the sort. You have your house and your interests, your happiness and your lives, in common. We men are so exacting, we expect to find ideal nymphs and goddesses when we condescend to marry a mortal; and if we did, our chickens would be boiled to rags, and our mutton come up as cold as a stone." "Per Bacco, you are an oracle," said Riccabocca, laughing. "But I am not so sceptical you are. I honor the fair sex too much. There are a great many women who realize the ideal of men to be found in--the poets!" "There's my dear Mrs. Dale," resumed the Parson, not heeding this sarcastic compliment to the sex, but sinking his voice into a whisper, and looking round cautiously--"there's my dear Mrs. Dale, the best woman in the world--an angel I would say, if the word was not profane; BUT--" "What's the BUT?" asked the Doctor, demurely. "BUT I too might say that 'we have not much in common,' if I were only to compare mind to mind, and, when my poor Carry says something less profound than Madame de Staël might have said, smile on her in contempt from the elevation of logic and Latin. Yet, when I remember all the little sorrows and joys that we have shared together, and feel how solitary I should have been without her--oh, then I am instantly aware that there _is_ between us in common something infinitely closer and better than if the same course of study had given us the same equality of ideas; and I was forced to brace myself for a combat of intellect, as I am when I fall in with a tiresome sage like yourself. I don't pretend to say that Mrs. Riccabocca is a Mrs. Dale," added the Parson, with lofty candor--"there is but one Mrs. Dale in the world; but still, you have drawn a prize in the wheel matrimonial! Think of Socrates, and yet he was content even with his--Xantippe!" Dr. Riccabocca called to mind Mrs. Dale's "little tempers," and inly rejoiced that no second Mrs. Dale had existed to fall to his own lot. His placid Jemima gained by the contrast. Nevertheless, he had the ill grace to reply, "Socrates was a man beyond all imitation!--Yet I believe that even he spent very few of his evenings at home. But, _revenons à nos moutons_, we are nearly at Mrs. Fairfield's cottage, and you have not yet told me what you have settled as to Leonard." The Parson halted, took Riccabocca by the button, and informed him, in very few words, that Leonard was to go to Lansmere to see some relations there, who had the fortune, if they had the will, to give full career to his abilities. "The great thing, in the meanwhile," said the Parson, "would be to enlighten him a little as to what he calls--enlightenment." "Ah!" said Riccabocca, diverted, and rubbing his hands, "I shall listen with interest to what you say on that subject." "And must aid me; for the first step in this modern march of enlightenment is to leave the poor Parson behind; and if one calls out, 'Hold! and look at the sign-post.' the traveller hurries on the faster, saying to himself, 'Pooh, pooh!--that is only the cry of the Parson!' But my gentleman, when he doubts me, will listen to you--you're a philosopher!" "We philosophers are of some use now and then, even to Parsons!" "If you were not so conceited a set of deluded poor creatures already, I would say 'Yes,'" replied the Parson generously; and, taking hold of Riccabocca's umbrella, he applied the brass handle thereof, by way of a knocker, to the cottage door. CHAPTER XVIII. Certainly it is a glorious fever that desire To Know! And there are few sights in the moral world more sublime than that which many a garret might afford, if Asmodeus would bare the roofs to our survey--viz., a brave, patient, earnest human being, toiling his own arduous way, athwart the iron walls of penury, into the magnificent Infinite, which is luminous with starry souls. So there sits Leonard the Self-taught in the little cottage alone; for though scarcely past the hour in which great folks dine, it is the hour in which small folks go to bed, and Mrs. Fairfield has retired to rest, while Leonard has settled to his books. He had placed his table under the lattice, and from time to time he looked up and enjoyed the stillness of the moon. Well for him that, in reparation for those hours stolen from night, the hardy physical labor commenced with dawn. Students would not be the sad dyspeptics they are if they worked as many hours in the open air as my scholar-peasant. But even in him you could see that the mind had begun a little to affect the frame. They who task the intellect must pay the penalty with the body. Ill, believe me, would this work-day world get on if all within it were hard-reading, studious animals, playing the deuce with the ganglionic apparatus. Leonard started as he heard the knock at the door; the Parson's well-known voice reassured him. In some surprise he admitted his visitors. "We are come to talk to you, Leonard," said Mr. Dale, "but I fear we shall disturb Mrs. Fairfield." "Oh no, sir! the door to the staircase is shut, and she sleeps soundly." "Why, this is a French book--do you read French, Leonard?" asked Riccabocca. "I have not found French difficult, sir. Once over the grammar, and the language is so clear; it seems the very language for reasoning." "True. Voltaire said justly, 'Whatever is obscure is not French,'" observed Riccabocca. "I wish I could say the same of English," muttered the Parson. "But what is this?--Latin too?--Virgil?" "Yes, sir. But I find I make little way there without a master. I fear I must give it up," (and Leonard sighed.) The two gentlemen exchanged looks and seated themselves. The young peasant remained standing modestly, and in his air and mien there was something that touched the heart while it pleased the eye. He was no longer the timid boy who had sunk from the frown of Mr. Stirn, nor that rude personation of simple physical strength, roused to undisciplined bravery, which had received its downfall on the village-green of Hazeldean. The power of thought was on his brow--somewhat unquiet still, but mild and earnest. The features had attained that refinement which is often attributed to race, but comes, in truth, from elegance of idea, whether caught from our parents or learned from books. In his rich brown hair, thrown carelessly from his temples, and curling almost to the shoulders--in his large blue eye, which was deepened to the hue of the violet by the long dark lash--in that firmness of lip, which comes from the grapple with difficulties, there was considerable beauty, but no longer the beauty of the mere peasant. And yet there was still about the whole countenance that expression of goodness and purity which the painter would give to his ideal of the peasant lover--such as Tasso would have placed in the _Aminta_, or Fletcher have admitted to the side of the Faithful Shepherdess. "You must draw a chair here, and sit down between us, Leonard," said the Parson. "If any one," said Riccabocca, "has a right to sit, it is the one who is to hear the sermon; and if any one ought to stand, it is the one who is about to preach it." "Don't be frightened, Leonard," said the Parson, graciously; "it is only a criticism, not a sermon," and he pulled out Leonard's Prize Essay. CHAPTER XIX. _Parson._--"You take for your motto this aphorism[K]--'_Knowledge is Power._'--BACON." _Riccabocca._--"Bacon make such an aphorism! The last man in the world to have said any thing so pert and so shallow." _Leonard_ (astonished).--"Do you mean to say, sir, that that aphorism is not in Lord Bacon! Why, I have seen it quoted as his in almost every newspaper, and in almost every speech in favor of popular education." _Riccabocca._--"Then that should be a warning to you never again to fall into the error of the would-be scholar--viz. quote second-hand. Lord Bacon wrote a great book to show in what knowledge is power, how that power should be defined, in what it might be mistaken. And, pray, do you think so sensible a man would ever have taken the trouble to write a great book upon the subject, if he could have packed up all he had to say into the portable dogma, 'Knowledge is power?' Pooh! no such aphorism is to be found in Bacon from the first page of his writings to the last." _Parson_ (candidly).--"Well, I supposed it was Lord Bacon's, and I am very glad to hear that the aphorism has not the sanction of his authority." _Leonard_ (recovering his surprise).--"But why so?" _Parson._--"Because it either says a great deal too much, or just--nothing at all." _Leonard._--"At least, sir, it seems to be undeniable." _Parson._--"Well, grant that it is undeniable. Does it prove much in favor of knowledge? Pray, is not ignorance power too?" _Riccabocca._--"And a power that has had much the best end of the quarter-staff." _Parson._--"All evil is power, and does its power make it any thing the better?" _Riccabocca._--"Fanaticism is power--and a power that has often swept away knowledge like a whirlwind. The Mussulman burns the library of a world--and forces the Koran and the sword from the schools of Byzantium to the colleges of Hindostan." _Parson_ (bearing on with a new column of illustration).--"Hunger is power. The barbarians, starved out of their energy by their own swarming population, swept into Italy and annihilated letters. The Romans, however degraded, had more knowledge, at least, than the Gaul and the Visigoth." _Riccabocca_ (bringing up the reserve).--"And even in Greece, when Greek met Greek, the Athenians--our masters in all knowledge--were beat by the Spartans, who held learning in contempt." _Parson._--"Wherefore you see, Leonard, that though knowledge be power, it is only _one_ of the powers of the world; that there are others as strong, and often much stronger; and the assertion either means but a barren truism, not worth so frequent a repetition, or it means something that you would find it very difficult to prove." _Leonard._--"One nation may be beaten by another that has more physical strength and more military discipline; which last, permit me to say, sir, is a species of knowledge;--" _Riccabocca._--"Yes; but your knowledge-mongers at present call upon us to discard military discipline, and the qualities that produce it, from the list of the useful arts. And in your own essay, you insist upon knowledge as the great disbander of armies, and the foe of all military discipline." _Parson._--"Let the young man proceed. Nations, you say, may be beaten by other nations less learned and civilized?" _Leonard._--"But knowledge elevates a class. I invite my own humble order to knowledge, because knowledge will lift them into power." _Riccabocca._--"What do you say to that, Mr. Dale?" _Parson._--"In the first place, is it true that the class which has the most knowledge gets the most power? I suppose philosophers, like my friend Dr. Riccabocca, think they have the most knowledge. And pray, in what age have philosophers governed the world? Are they not always grumbling that nobody attends to them?" "Per Bacco," said Riccabocca, "if people had attended to us, it would have been a droll sort of world by this time!" _Parson._--"Very likely. But, as a general rule, those have the most knowledge who give themselves up to it the most. Let us put out of the question philosophers (who are often but ingenious lunatics), and speak only of erudite scholars, men of letters and practical science, professors, tutors, and fellows of colleges. I fancy any member of Parliament would tell us that there is no class of men which has less actual influence on public affairs. They have more knowledge than manufacturers and ship-owners, squires and farmers; but, do you find that they have more power over the Government and the votes of the House of Commons!" "They ought to have," said Leonard. "Ought they?" said the Parson: "we'll consider that later. Meanwhile, you must not escape from your own proposition, which is that knowledge _is_ power--not that it _ought_ to be. Now, even granting your corollary, that the power of a class is therefore proportioned to its knowledge--pray, do you suppose that while your order, the operatives, are instructing themselves, all the rest of the community are to be at a stand-still? Diffuse knowledge as you may, you will never produce equality of knowledge. Those who have most leisure, application, and aptitude for learning, will still know the most. Nay, by a very natural law, the more general the appetite for knowledge, the more the increased competition would favor those most adapted to excel by circumstances and nature. At this day, there is a vast increase of knowledge spread over all society, compared with that in the Middle Ages; but is there not a still greater distinction between the highly-educated gentleman and the intelligent mechanic, than there was then between the baron who could not sign his name and the churl at the plough? between the accomplished statesman, versed in all historical law, and the voter whose politics are formed by his newspaper, than there was between the legislator who passed laws against witches, and the burgher who defended his guild from some feudal aggression? between the enlightened scholar and the dunce of to-day, than there was between the monkish alchemist and the blockhead of yesterday? Peasant, voter, and dunce of this century are no doubt wiser than the churl, burgher, and blockhead of the twelfth. But the gentleman, statesman, and scholar of the present age are at least quite as favorable a contrast to the alchemist, witch-burner, and baron of old. As the progress of enlightenment has done hitherto, so will it ever do. Knowledge is like capital: the more there is in a country, the greater the disparities in wealth between one man and another. Therefore, if the working class increase in knowledge, so do the other classes; and if the working class rise peacefully and legitimately into power, it is not in proportion to their own knowledge alone, but rather according as it seems to the knowledge of the other orders of the community, that such augmentation of proportional power is just, and safe, and wise." Placed between the Parson and the Philosopher, Leonard felt that his position was not favorable to the display of his forces. Insensibly he edged his chair somewhat away, and said mournfully: "Then, according to you, the reign of knowledge would be no great advance in the aggregate freedom and welfare of man?" _Parson._--"Let us define. By knowledge, do you mean intellectual cultivation?--by the reign of knowledge, the ascendency of the most cultivated minds?" _Leonard_ (after a pause).--"Yes." _Riccabocca._--"Oh indiscreet young man, that is an unfortunate concession of yours; for the ascendency of the most cultivated minds would be a terrible obligarchy!" _Parson._--"Perfectly true; and we now reply to your exclamation, that men who, by profession, have most learning ought to have more influence than squires and merchants, farmers and mechanics. Observe, all the knowledge that we mortals can acquire is not knowledge positive and perfect, but knowledge comparative, and subject to all the errors and passions of humanity. And suppose that you could establish, as the sole regulators of affairs, those who had the most mental cultivation, do you think they would not like that power well enough to take all means their superior intelligence could devise to keep it to themselves? The experiment was tried of old by the priests of Egypt; and in the empire of China, at this day, the aristocracy are elected from those who have most distinguished themselves in learned colleges. If I may call myself a member of that body, 'the people,' I would rather be an Englishman, however much displeased with dull Ministers and blundering Parliaments, than I would be a Chinese under the rule of the picked sages of the Celestial Empire. Happily, therefore, my dear Leonard, nations are governed by many things besides what is commonly called knowledge; and the greatest practical ministers, who, like Themistocles, have made small states great--and the most dominant races who, like the Romans, have stretched their rule from a village half over the universe--have been distinguished by various qualities which a philosopher would sneer at, and a knowledge-monger would call 'sad prejudices,' and 'lamentable errors of reason.'" _Leonard_ (bitterly).--"Sir, you make use of knowledge itself to argue against knowledge." _Parson._--"I make use of the little I know to prove the foolishness of idolatry. I do not argue against knowledge; I argue against knowledge-worship. For here, I see in your Essay, that you are not contented with raising human knowledge into something like divine omnipotence, you must also confound her with virtue. According to you, we have only to diffuse the intelligence of the few among the many, and all at which we preachers aim is accomplished. Nay more; for whereas we humble preachers have never presumed to say, with the heathen Stoic, that even virtue is sure of happiness below (though it be the best road to it), you tell us plainly that this knowledge of yours gives not only the virtue of a saint, but bestows the bliss of a God. Before the steps of your idol the evils of life disappear. To hear you, one has but 'to know,' in order to be exempt from the sins and sorrows of the ignorant. Has it ever been so? Grant that you diffuse amongst the many all the knowledge ever attained by the few. Have the wise few been so unerring and so happy? You supposed that your motto was accurately cited from Bacon. What was Bacon himself? The poet tells you: 'The wisest, brightest, _meanest_ of mankind.' Can you hope to bestow upon the vast mass of your order the luminous intelligence of this 'Lord Chancellor of nature?' Grant that you do so--and what guarantee have you for the virtue and the happiness which you assume as the concomitants of the gift? See Bacon himself; what black ingratitude! what miserable self-seeking! what truckling servility! what abject and pitiful spirit! So far from intellectual knowledge, in its highest form and type, insuring virtue and bliss, it is by no means uncommon to find great mental cultivation combined with great moral corruption." (Aside to Riccabocca)--"Push on, will you?" _Riccabocca._--"A combination remarkable in eras as in individuals. Petronius shows us a state of morals at which a commonplace devil would blush, in the midst of a society more intellectually cultivated than certainly was that which produced Regulus or the Horatii. And the most learned eras in modern Italy were precisely those which brought the vices into the most ghastly refinement." _Leonard_ (rising in great agitation, and clasping his hands).--"I cannot contend with you, who produce against information so slender and crude as mine the stores which have been locked from my reach. But I feel that there must be another side to this shield--a shield that you will not even allow to be silver. And, oh, if you thus speak of knowledge, why have you encouraged me to know?" CHAPTER XX. "Ah! my son!" said the Parson, "if I wished to prove the value of Religion, would you think I served it much, if I took as my motto, 'Religion is power?' Would not that be a base and sordid view of its advantages? And would you not say he who regards religion as a power, intends to abuse it as a priestcraft?" "Well put!" said Riccabocca. "Wait a moment--let me think. Ah--I see, sir!" said Leonard. _Parson._--"If the cause be holy, do not weigh it in the scales of the market; if its objects be peaceful, do not seek to arm it with the weapons of strife; if it is to be the cement of society, do not vaunt it as the triumph of class against class." _Leonard_ (ingenuously).--"You correct me nobly, sir. Knowledge is power, but not in the sense in which I have interpreted the saying." _Parson._--"Knowledge is _one_ of the powers in the moral world, but one that, in its immediate result, is not always of the most worldly advantage to the possessor. It is one of the slowest, because one of the most durable, of agencies. It may take a thousand years for a thought to come into power; and the thinker who originated it might have died in rags or in chains." _Riccabocca._--"Our Italian proverb saith that 'the teacher is like the candle, which lights others in consuming itself.'" _Parson._--"Therefore he who has the true ambition of knowledge should entertain it for the power of his idea, not for the power it may bestow on himself; it should be lodged in the conscience, and, like the conscience, look for no certain reward on this side the grave. And since knowledge is compatible with good and with evil, would not it be better to say, 'Knowledge is a trust?'" "You are right, sir," said Leonard cheerfully; "pray proceed." _Parson._--"You ask me why we encourage you to KNOW. First, because (as you say yourself in your Essay), knowledge, irrespective of gain, is in itself a delight, and ought to be something far more. Like liberty, like religion, it may be abused; but I have no more right to say that the poor shall be ignorant, than I have to say that the rich only shall be free, and that the clergy alone shall learn the truths of redemption. You truly observe in your treatise that knowledge opens to us other excitements than those of the senses, and another life than that of the moment. The difference between us is this, that you forget that the same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains--the horny hand of the peasant feels not the nettles which sting the fine skin of the scholar. You forget also, that whatever widens the sphere of the desires, opens to them also new temptations. Vanity, the desire of applause, pride, the sense of superiority--gnawing discontent where that superiority is not recognized--morbid susceptibility, which comes with all new feelings--the underrating of simple pleasures apart from the intellectual--the chase of the imagination, often unduly stimulated, for things unattainable below--all these are surely amongst the first temptations that beset the entrance into knowledge." Leonard shaded his face with his hand. "Hence," continued the Parson, benignantly--"hence, so far from considering that we do all that is needful to accomplish ourselves as men, when we cultivate only the intellect, we should remember that we thereby continually increase the range of our desires, and therefore of our temptations; and we should endeavor, simultaneously, to cultivate both those affections of the heart which prove the ignorant to be God's children no less than the wise, and those moral qualities which have made men great and good when reading and writing were scarcely known: to wit, patience and fortitude under poverty and distress; humility and beneficence amidst grandeur and wealth; and, in counteraction to that egotism which all superiority, mental or worldly, is apt to inspire, Justice, the father of all the more solid virtues, softened by Charity, which is their loving mother. Thus accompanied, knowledge indeed becomes the magnificent crown of humanity--not the imperious despot, but the checked and tempered sovereign of the soul." The Parson paused, and Leonard, coming near him, timidly took his hand, with a child's affectionate and grateful impulse. _Riccabacca._--"And if, Leonard, you are not satisfied with our Parson's excellent definitions, you have only to read what Lord Bacon himself has said upon the true ends of knowledge, to comprehend at once how angry the poor great man, whom Mr. Dale treats so harshly, would have been with those who have stinted his elaborate distinctions and provident cautions into that coxcombical little aphorism, and then misconstrued all he designed to prove in favor of the commandant, and authority of learning. For," added the sage, looking up as a man does when he is taxing his memory, "I think it is thus that after saying the greatest error of all is the mistaking or misplacing the end of knowledge, and denouncing the various objects for which it is vulgarly sought;--I think it is thus that he proceeds.... 'Knowledge is not a shop for profit or sale, but a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of men's estate.'"[L] _Parson_ (remorsefully)--"Are those Lord Bacon's words? I am very sorry I spoke so uncharitably of his life. I must examine it again. I may find excuses for it now that I could not when I first formed my judgment. I was then a raw lad at Oxford. But I see, Leonard, there is still something on your mind." _Leonard._--"It is true, sir. I would but ask whether it is not by knowledge that we arrive at the qualities and virtues you so well describe, but which you seem to consider as coming to us through channels apart from knowledge?" _Parson._--"If you mean by the word knowledge something very different from what you express in your essay, and which those contending for mental instruction, irrespective of religion and ethics, appear also to convey by the word ---- you are right; but, remember, we have already agreed that by the word knowledge we mean culture purely intellectual." _Leonard._--"That is true--we so understood it." _Parson._--"Thus, when this great Lord Bacon erred, you may say that he erred from want of knowledge--the knowledge that moralists and preachers would convey. But Lord Bacon had read all that moralists and preachers could say on such matters; and he certainly did not err from want of intellectual cultivation. Let me here, my child, invite you to observe, that He who knew most of our human hearts and our immortal destinies, did not _insist_ on this intellectual culture as essential to the virtues that form our well-being here, and conduce to our salvation hereafter. Had it been essential, the Allwise One would not have selected humble fishermen for the teachers of his doctrine, instead of culling his disciples from Roman portico or Athenian academy. And this, which distinguishes so remarkably the Gospel from the ethics of heathen philosophy, wherein knowledge is declared to be necessary to virtue, is a proof how slight was the heathen sage's insight into the nature of mankind, when compared with the Saviour's; for hard indeed would it be to men, whether high or low, rich or poor, if science and learning, or contemplative philosophy, were the sole avenues to peace and redemption; since, in this state of ordeal, requiring active duties, very few in any age, whether they be high or low, rich or poor, ever are or can be devoted to pursuits merely mental. Christ does not represent heaven as a college for the learned. Therefore the rules of the Celestial Legislator are rendered clear to the simplest understanding as to the deepest." _Riccabocca._--"And that which Plato and Zeno, Pythagoras and Socrates, could not do, was done by men whose ignorance would have been a by-word in the schools of the Greek. The gods of the vulgar were dethroned; the face of the world was changed! This thought may make us allow, indeed, that there are agencies more powerful than mere knowledge, and ask, after all, what is the mission which knowledge should achieve?" _Parson._--"The Sacred Book tells us even that; for after establishing the truth that, for the multitude, knowledge is not essential to happiness and good, it accords still to knowledge its sublime part in the revelation prepared and announced. When an instrument of more than ordinary intelligence was required for a purpose divine--when the Gospel, recorded by the simple, was to be explained by the acute, enforced by the energetic, carried home to the doubts of the Gentile--the Supreme Will joined to the zeal of the earlier apostles the learning and genius of St. Paul--not holier than the others--calling himself the least, yet laboring more abundantly than them all--making himself all things unto all men, so that some might be saved. The ignorant may be saved no less surely than the wise; but here comes the wise man who helps to save! And how the fulness and animation of this grand Presence, of this indomitable Energy, seem to vivify the toil, and to speed the work! 'In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils amongst false brethren.' Behold, my son! does not Heaven here seem to reveal the true type of knowledge--a sleepless activity, a pervading agency, a dauntless heroism, an all-supporting faith? A power--a power indeed--a power apart from the aggrandizement of self--a power that brings to him who owns and transmits it but 'weariness and painfulness; in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness'--but a power distinct from the mere circumstance of the man, rushing from him as rays from a sun--borne through the air, and clothing it with light--piercing under earth, and calling forth the harvest! Worship not knowledge--worship not the sun, O my child! Let the sun but proclaim the Creator; let the knowledge but illumine the worship!" The good man, overcome by his own earnestness, paused; his head drooped on the young student's breast, and all three were long silent. CHAPTER XXI. Whatever ridicule may be thrown upon Mr. Dale's dissertations by the wit of the enlightened, they had a considerable, and I think a beneficial, effect upon Leonard Fairfield--an effect which may perhaps create less surprise, when the reader remembers that Leonard was unaccustomed to argument, and still retained many of the prejudices natural to his rustic breeding. Nay, he actually thought it possible that, as both Riccabocca and Mr. Dale were more than double his age, and had had opportunities not only of reading twice as many books, but of contracting experience in wider ranges of life--he actually, I say, thought it possible that they might be better acquainted with the properties and distinctions of knowledge than himself. At all events, the Parson's words were so far well-timed, that they produced in Leonard very much of that state of mind which Mr. Dale desired to effect, before communicating to him the startling intelligence that he was to visit relations whom he had never seen, of whom he had heard but little, and that it was at least possible that the result of that visit might be to open to him greater facilities for instruction, and a higher degree in life. Without some such preparation, I fear that Leonard would have gone forth into the world with an exaggerated notion of his own acquirements, and with a notion yet more exaggerated as to the kind of power that such knowledge as he possessed would obtain for itself. As it was, when Mr. Dale broke to him the news of the experimental journey before him, cautioning him against being over sanguine, Leonard received the intelligence with a serious meekness, and thoughts that were nobly solemn. When the door closed on his visitors, he remained for some moments motionless, and in deep meditation; then he unclosed the door, and stole forth. The night was already far advanced, the heavens were luminous with all the host of stars. "I think," said the student, referring, in later life, to that crisis in his destiny--"I think it was then, as I stood alone, yet surrounded by worlds so numberless, that I first felt the distinction between _mind_ and _soul_." "Tell me," said Riccabocca, as he parted company with Mr. Dale, "whether you think we should have given to Frank Hazeldean, on entering life, the same lecture on the limits and ends of knowledge which we have bestowed on Leonard Fairfield." "My friend," quoth the Parson, with a touch of human conceit, "I have ridden on horseback, and I know that some horses should be guided by the bridle, and some should be urged by the spur." "_Cospetto!_" said Riccabocca; "you contrive to put every experience of yours to some use--even your journey on Mr. Hazeldean's pad. And I see now why, in this little world of a village, you have picked up so general an acquaintance with life." "Did you ever read White's _Natural History of Selborne_?" "No." "Do so, and you will find that you need not go far to learn the habits of birds, and know the difference between a swallow and a swift. Learn the difference in a village, and you know the difference wherever swallows and swifts skim the air." "Swallows and swifts!--true; but men--" "Are with us all the year round--which is more than we can say of swallows and swifts." "Mr. Dale," said Riccabocca, taking off his hat with great formality, "if ever again I find myself in a dilemma, I will come to you instead of to Machiavelli." "Ah!" cried the Parson, "if I could but have a calm hour's talk with you on the errors of the Papal relig--" Riccabocca was off like a shot. CHAPTER XXII. The next day, Mr. Dale had a long conversation with Mrs. Fairfield. At first, he found some difficulty in getting over her pride, and inducing her to accept overtures from parents who had so long slighted both Leonard and herself. And it would have been in vain to have put before the good woman the worldly advantages which such overtures implied. But when Mr. Dale said, almost sternly, "Your parents are old, your father infirm; their least wish should be as binding to you as their command," the Widow bowed her head, and said,-- "God bless them, sir, I was very sinful--'Honor your father and mother.' I'm no scollard, but I know the Commandments. Let Lenny go. But he'll soon forget me, and mayhap he'll learn to be ashamed of me." "There I will trust him," said the Parson; and he contrived easily to reassure and soothe her. It was not till all this was settled that Mr. Dale drew forth an unsealed letter, which Mr. Richard Avenel, taking his hint, had given to him, as from Leonard's grandparents, and said,--"This is for you, and it contains an inclosure of some value." "Will you read it, sir? As I said before, I'm no scollard." "But Leonard is, and he will read it to you." When Leonard returned home that evening, Mrs. Fairfield showed him the letter. It ran thus: "Dear Jane,--Mr. Dale will tell you that we wish Leonard to come to us. We are glad to hear you are well. We forward, by Mr. Dale, a bank-note for £50, which comes from Richard, your brother. So no more at present from your affectionate parents, "JOHN AND MARGARET AVENEL." The letter was in a stiff female scrawl, and Leonard observed that two or three mistakes in spelling had been corrected, either in another pen or in a different hand. "Dear brother Dick, how good in him!" cried the widow. "When I saw there was money, I thought it must be him. How I should like to see Dick again. But I s'pose he's still in Amerikay. Well, well, this will buy clothes for you." "No; you must keep it all, mother, and put it in the Savings' Bank." "I'm not quite so silly as that," cried Mrs. Fairfield, with contempt; and she put the fifty pounds into a cracked teapot. "It must not stay there when I'm gone. You may be robbed, mother." "Dear me, dear me, that's true. What shall I do with it?--what do I want with it, too! Dear me! I wish they hadn't sent it. I shan't sleep in peace. You must e'en put it in your own pouch, and button it up tight, boy." Lenny smiled, and took the note; but he took it to Mr. Dale, and begged him to put it into the Savings' Bank for his mother. The day following he went to take leave of his master, of Jackeymo, of the fountain, the garden. But, after he had gone through the first of these adieus with Jackeymo,--who, poor man, indulged in all the lively gesticulations of grief which make half the eloquence of his countrymen; and then, absolutely blubbering, hurried away--Leonard himself was so affected that he could not proceed at once to the house, but stood beside the fountain, trying hard to keep back his tears. "You, Leonard--and you are going!" said a soft voice; and the tears fell faster than ever, for he recognized the voice of Violante. "Do not cry," continued the child, with a kind of tender gravity. "You are going, but papa says it would be selfish in us to grieve, for it is for your good; and we should be glad. But I am selfish, Leonard, and I do grieve. I shall miss you sadly." "You, young lady--you miss me!" "Yes. But I do not cry, Leonard, for I envy you, and I wish I were a boy: I wish I could do as you." The girl clasped her hands, and reared her slight form, with a kind of passionate dignity. "Do as me, and part from all those you love!" "But to serve those you love. One day you will come back to your mother's cottage, and say, 'We have conquered fortune.' Oh that I could go forth and return, as you will. But my father has no country, and his only child is a useless girl." As Violante spoke, Leonard had dried his tears; her emotion distracted him from his own. "Oh," continued Violante, again raising her head loftily, "what it is to be a man! A woman sighs, 'I wish,' but man should say, 'I will.'" Occasionally before, Leonard had noted fitful flashes of a nature grand and heroic, in the Italian child, especially of late--flashes the more remarkable from their contrast to a form most exquisitely feminine, and to a sweetness of temper which made even her pride gentle. But now it seemed as if the child spoke with the command of a queen--almost with the inspiration of a muse. A strange and new sense of courage entered within him. "May I remember these words!" he murmured half audibly. The girl turned and surveyed him with eyes brighter for their moisture. She then extended her hand to him, with a quick movement, and, as he bent over it, with a grace taught to him by genuine emotion, she said,--"And if you do, then, girl and child as I am, I shall think I have aided a brave heart in the great strife for honor!" She lingered a moment, smiled as if to herself, and then, gliding away, was lost amongst the trees. After a long pause, in which Leonard recovered slowly from the surprise and agitation into which Violante had thrown his spirits--previously excited as they were--he went, murmuring to himself, towards the house. But Riccabocca was from home. Leonard turned mechanically to the terrace, and busied himself with the flowers. But the dark eyes of Violante shone on his thoughts, and her voice rang in his ear. At length Riccabocca appeared, followed up the road by a laborer, who carried something indistinct under his arm. The Italian beckoned to Leonard to follow him into the parlor; and after conversing with him kindly, and at some length, and packing up, as it were, a considerable provision of wisdom in the portable shape of aphorisms and proverbs, the sage left him alone for a few moments. Riccabocca then returned with his wife, and bearing a small knapsack:-- "It is not much we can do for you, Leonard, and money is the worst gift in the world for a keepsake; but my wife and I have put our heads together to furnish you with a little outfit. Giacomo, who was in our secret, assures us that the clothes will fit: and stole, I fancy, a coat of yours for the purpose. Put them on when you go to your relations: it is astonishing what a difference it makes in the ideas people form of us, according as our coats are cut one way or another. I should not be presentable in London thus; and nothing is more true than that a tailor is often the making of a man." "The shirts, too, are very good holland," said Mrs. Riccabocca, about to open the knapsack. "Never mind details, my dear," cried the wise man; "shirts are comprehended in the general principle of clothes. And, Leonard, as a remembrance somewhat more personal, accept this, which I have worn many a year when time was a thing of importance to me, and nobler fates than mine hung on a moment. We missed the moment, or abused it, and here I am, a waif on a foreign shore. Methinks I have done with Time." The exile, as he thus spoke, placed in Leonard's reluctant hands a watch that would have delighted an antiquary, and shocked a dandy. It was exceedingly thick, having an outer case of enamel, and an inner one of gold. The hands and the figures of the hours had originally been formed of brilliants; but the brilliants had long since vanished. Still, even thus bereft, the watch was much more in character with the giver than the receiver, and was as little suited to Leonard as would have been the red silk umbrella. "It is old-fashioned," said Mrs. Riccabocca, "but it goes better than any clock in the country. I really think it will last to the end of the world." "_Carissima mia!_" cried the Doctor, "I thought I had convinced you that the world is by no means come to its last legs." "Oh, I did not mean any thing, Alphonso," said Mrs. Riccabocca, coloring. "And that is all we do mean when we talk about that of which we can know nothing," said the Doctor, less gallantly than usual, for he resented that epithet of "old-fashioned," as applied to the watch. Leonard, we see, had been silent all this time; he could not speak--literally and truly, he could not speak. How he got out of his embarrassment, and how he got out of the room, he never explained to my satisfaction. But, a few minutes afterwards, he was seen hurrying down the road very briskly. Riccabocca and his wife stood at the window gazing after him. "There is a depth in that boy's heart," said the sage, "which might float an Argosy." "Poor dear boy! I think we have put every thing into the knapsack that he can possibly want," said good Mrs. Riccabocca musingly. _The Doctor_ (continuing his soliloquy).--"They are strong, but they are not immediately apparent." _Mrs. Riccabocca_ (resuming hers.)--"They are at the bottom of the knapsack." _The Doctor._--"They will stand long wear and tear." _Mrs. Riccabocca._--"A year, at least, with proper care at the wash." _The Doctor_ (startled).--"Care at the wash! What on earth are you talking of, ma'am?" _Mrs. Riccabocca_ (mildly).--"The shirts, to be sure, my love? And you?" _The Doctor_ (with a heavy sigh).--"The feelings, ma'am!" Then, after a pause, taking his wife's hand affectionately--"But you did quite right to think of the shirts; Mr. Dale said very truly--" _Mrs. Riccabocca._--"What?" _The Doctor._--"That there was a great deal in common between us--even when I think of feelings, and you but of--shirts." CHAPTER XXIII. Mr. and Mrs. Avenel sat within the parlor--Mr. Richard stood on the hearth-rug, whistling Yankee Doodle. "The Parson writes word that the lad will come to-day," said Richard suddenly--"let me see the letter--ay, to-day. If he took the coach as far as ----, he might walk the rest of the way in two or three hours. He should be pretty nearly here. I have a great mind to go and meet him: it will save his asking questions, and hearing about me. I can clear the town by the back-way, and get out at the high road." "You'll not know him from any one else said Mrs. Avenel. "Well, that is a good one! Not know an Avenel! We've all the same cut of the jib--have not we, father?" Poor John laughed heartily, till the tears rolled down his cheeks. "We were always a well-favored family," said John, recomposing himself. "There was Luke, but he's gone; and Harry, but he's dead too; and Dick, but he's in Amerikay--no, he's here; and my darling Nora, but--" "Hush!" interrupted Mrs. Avenel; "hush, John!" The old man stared at her, and then put his tremulous hand to his brow. "And Nora's gone too!" said he, in a voice of profound woe. Both hands then fell on his knees, and his head drooped on his breast. Mrs. Avenel rose, kissed her husband on the forehead, and then walked away to the window. Richard took up his hat, and brushed the nap carefully with his handkerchief; but his lips quivered. "I'm going," said he, abruptly. "Now mind, mother, not a word about Uncle Richard yet; we must first see how we like each other, and (in a whisper) you'll try and get that into my poor father's head?" "Ay, Richard," said Mrs. Avenel, quietly. Richard put on his hat, and went out by the back way. He stole along the fields that skirted the town, and had only once to cross the street before he got into the high road. He walked on until he came to the first milestone. There he seated himself, lighted his cigar, and awaited his nephew. It was now nearly the hour of sunset, and the road before him lay westward. Richard from time to time looked along the road, shading his eyes with his hand; and at length, just as the disc of the sun had half sunk down the horizon, a solitary figure came up the way. It emerged suddenly from the turn in the road; the reddening beams colored all the atmosphere around it. Solitary and silent it came as from a Land of Light. CHAPTER XXIV. "You have been walking far, young man," said Richard Avenel. "No, sir, not very. That is Lansmere before me, is it not?" "Yes, it is Lansmere; you stop there, I guess?" Leonard made a sign in the affirmative, and walked on a few paces; then seeing the stranger who had accosted him still by his side, he said-- "If you know the town, sir, perhaps you will have the goodness to tell me whereabouts Mr. Avenel lives?" "I can put you into a straight cut across the fields, that will bring you just behind the house." "You are very kind, but it will take you out of your way." "No, it is in my way. So you are going to Mr. Avenel's?--a good old gentleman." "I've always heard so; and Mrs. Avenel--" "A particular superior woman," said Richard. "Any one else to ask after--I know the family well." "No, thank you, sir." "They have a son, I believe; but he's in America, is not he?" "I believe he is, sir." "I see the Parson has kept faith with me," muttered Richard. "If you can tell me any thing about him," said Leonard, "I should be very glad." "Why so, young man?--perhaps he is hanged by this time." "Hanged!" "He was a sad dog, I am told." "Then you have been told very falsely," said Leonard, coloring. "A sad wild dog--his parents were so glad when he cut and run--went off to the States. They say he made money; but, if so, he neglected his relations shamefully." "Sir," said Leonard, "you are wholly misinformed. He has been most generous to a relative who had little claim on him; and I never heard his name mentioned but with love and praise." Richard instantly fell to whistling Yankee Doodle, and walked on several paces without saying a word. He then made a slight apology for his impertinence--hoped no offence--and with his usual bold but astute style of talk, contrived to bring out something of his companion's mind. He was evidently struck with the clearness and propriety with which Leonard expressed himself, raised his eyebrows in surprise more than once, and looked him full in the face with an attentive and pleased survey. Leonard had put on the new clothes with which Riccabocca and wife had provided him. They were those appropriate to a young country tradesman in good circumstances; but as he did not think about the clothes, so he had unconsciously something of the ease of the gentleman. They now came into the fields. Leonard paused before a slip of ground sown with rye. "I should have thought grass land would have answered better, so near a town," said he. "No doubt it would," answered Richard; "but they are sadly behind-hand in these parts. You see that great park yonder, on the other side of the road? That would answer better for rye than grass; but then what would become of my Lord's deer? The aristocracy eat us up, young man." "But the aristocracy did not sow this piece with rye, I suppose?" said Leonard, smiling. "And what do you conclude from that?" "Let every man look to his own ground," said Leonard, with a cleverness of repartee caught from Doctor Riccabocca. "'Cute lad you are," said Richard; "and we'll talk more of these matters another time." They now came within sight of Mr. Avenel's house. "You can get through the gap in the hedge, by the old pollard oak," said Richard; "and come round by the front of the house. Why, you're not afraid--are you?" "I am a stranger." "Shall I introduce you? I told you that I knew the old couple." "Oh no, sir! I would rather meet them alone." "Go; and--wait a bit,--harkye, young man, Mrs. Avenel is a cold-mannered woman; but don't be abashed by that." Leonard thanked the good-natured stranger, crossed the field, passed the gap, and paused a moment under the stinted shade of the old hollow-hearted oak. The ravens were returning to their nests. At the sight of a human form under the tree, they wheeled round, and watched him afar. From the thick of the boughs, the young ravens sent their hoarse low cry. CHAPTER XXV. The young man entered the neat, prim, formal parlor. "You are welcome!" said Mrs. Avenel, in a firm voice. "The gentleman is heartily welcome," cried poor John. "It is your grandson, Leonard Fairfield," said Mrs. Avenel. But John, who had risen with knocking knees, gazed hard at Leonard, and then fell on his breast, sobbing aloud--"Nora's eyes!--he has a blink in his eyes like Nora's." Mrs. Avenel approached with a steady step, and drew away the old man tenderly. "He is a poor creature," she whispered to Leonard--"you excite him. Come away, I will show you your room." Leonard followed her up the stairs, and came into a room--neatly, and even prettily furnished. The carpet and curtains were faded by the sun, and of old-fashioned pattern, but there was a look about the room as if it had long been disused. Mrs. Avenel sank down on the first chair on entering. Leonard drew his arm round her waist affectionately: "I fear that I have put you out sadly--my dear grandmother." Mrs. Avenel glided hastily from his arm, and her countenance worked much--every nerve in it twitching as it were; then, placing her hand on his locks, she said with passion, "God bless you, my grandson," and left the room. Leonard dropped his knapsack on the floor, and looked around him wistfully. The room seemed as if it had once been occupied by a female. There was a work-box on the chest of drawers, and over it hanging shelves for books, suspended by ribbons that had once been blue, with silk and fringe appended to each shelf, and knots and tassels here and there--the taste of a woman, or rather of a girl, who seeks to give a grace to the commonest things around her. With the mechanical habit of a student, Leonard took down one or two of the volumes still left on the shelves. He found SPENSER'S _Fairy Queen_, RACINE in French, TASSO in Italian; and on the fly-leaf of each volume, in the exquisite handwriting familiar to his memory, the name "Leonora." He kissed the books, and replaced them with a feeling akin both to tenderness and awe. He had not been alone in his room more than a quarter of an hour, before the maid-servant knocked at his door and summoned him to tea. Poor John had recovered his spirits, and his wife sate by his side holding his hand in hers. Poor John was even gay. He asked many questions about his daughter Jane, and did not wait for the answers. Then he spoke about the Squire, whom he confounded with Audley Egerton, and talked of elections and the Blue party, and hoped Leonard would always be a good Blue; and then he fell to his tea and toast, and said no more. Mrs. Avenel spoke little, but she eyed Leonard askant, as it were, from time to time; and after each glance the nerves of the poor severe face twitched again. A little after nine o'clock, Mrs. Avenel lighted a candle, and placing it in Leonard's hand, "You must be tired--you know your own room now. Good night." Leonard took the light, and, as was his wont with his mother, kissed Mrs. Avenel on the cheek. Then he took John's hand and kissed him too. The old man was half asleep, and murmured dreamily, "That's Nora." Leonard had retired to his room about half an hour, when Richard Avenel entered the house softly, and joined his parents. "Well, mother?" said he. "Well, Richard--you have seen him?" "And like him. Do you know he has a great look of poor Nora?--more like her than Jane." "Yes; he is handsomer than Jane ever was, but more like your father than any one. John was so comely. You take to the boy, then?" "Ay, that I do. Just tell him in the morning that he is to go with a gentleman who will be his friend, and don't say more. The chaise shall be at the door after breakfast. Let him get into it: I shall wait for him out of the town. What's the room you give him?" "The room you would not take." "The room in which Nora slept? Oh, no! I could not have slept a wink there. What a charm there was in that girl!--how we all loved her! But she was too beautiful and good for us--too good to live!" "None of us are too good," said Mrs. Avenel with great austerity, "and I beg you will not talk in that way. Good night--I must get your poor father to bed." When Leonard opened his eyes the next morning, they rested on the face of Mrs. Avenel, which was bending over his pillow. But it was long before he could recognize that countenance, so changed was its expression--so tender, so motherlike. Nay, the face of his own mother had never seemed to him so soft with a mother's passion. "Ah!" he murmured, half rising and flinging his young arms round her neck. Mrs. Avenel, this time, and for the first, taken by surprise, warmly returned the embrace; she clasped him to her breast, she kissed him again and again. At length with a quick start she escaped, and walked up and down the room, pressing her hands tightly together. When she halted, her face had recovered its usual severity and cold precision. "It is time for you to rise, Leonard," said she. "You will leave us to-day. A gentleman has promised to take charge of you, and do for you more than we can. A chaise will be at the door soon--make haste." John was absent from the breakfast-table. His wife said that he never rose till late, and must not be disturbed. The meal was scarce over, before a chaise and pair came to the door. "You must not keep the chaise waiting--the gentleman is very punctual." "But he is not come." "No, he has walked on before, and will get in after you are out of the town." "What is his name, and why should he care for me, grandmother?" "He will tell you himself. Now, come." "But you will bless me again, grandmother? I love you already." "I do bless you," said Mrs. Avenel firmly. "Be honest and good, and beware of the first false step." She pressed his hand with a convulsive grasp, and led him to the outer door. The postboy clanked his whip, the chaise rattled off. Leonard put his head out of the window to catch a last glimpse of the old woman. But the boughs of the pollard oak, and its gnarled decaying trunk, hid her from his eye. And look as he would, till the road turned, he saw but the melancholy tree. FOOTNOTES: [K] This aphorism has been probably assigned to Lord Bacon upon the mere authority of the index to his works. It is the aphorism of the index-maker, certainly not of the great master of inductive philosophy. Bacon has, it is true, repeatedly dwelt on the power of knowledge, but with so many explanations and distinctions, that nothing could be more unjust to his general meaning than to attempt to cramp into a sentence what it costs him a volume to define. Thus, if in one page he appears to confound knowledge with power, in another he sets them in the strongest antithesis to each other; as follows, "Adeo, signanter Deus opera potentiæ et sapientiæ discriminavit." But it would be as unfair to Bacon to convert into an aphorism the sentence that discriminates between knowledge and power as it is to convert into an aphorism any sentence that confounds them. [L] "But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge:--for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite: sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession,"--(that is, for most of those objects which are meant by the ordinary citers of the saying, 'Knowledge is power;') "and seldom sincerely to give a true account of these gifts of reason to the benefit and use of men; as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit or sale--and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of men's estate."--ADVANCEMEMT OF LEARNING, Book I. From the new novel, "Rose Douglass." A FAMILY OF OLD MAIDS. Such a family of old maids! The youngest mistress was forty, and the two servants were somewhat older. They had each their pets too, except I think the eldest, who was the clearest-headed of the family. The servants had the same Christian name, which was rather perplexing, as neither would consent to be called by her surname. How their mistresses managed to distinguish them I do not recollect; but the country people settled it easily amongst themselves by early naming them according to their different heights, "lang Jenny," and "little Jenny." They were characters in their way as well as their mistresses. They had served them for upwards of twenty years, and knew every secret of the family, being as regularly consulted as any of the members of it. They regulated the expenses too, much as they liked, which was in a very frugal, economical manner. The two Jennies had not much relished their removal to the country, and still often sighed with regret for the gossipings they once enjoyed in the Castlegate of Lanark. But they could not bear to part from the family; so they now boomed at their wheels or mended the household linen in the damp dull kitchen of Burnside, instead of performing the same work in their old cosy, comfortable one in the burgh town, and tried to indemnify themselves for their privations by establishing a kind of patronizing familiarity with various of the cottagers' wives. Miss Jess and Miss Jean were the names of the younger ladies. There was that species of resemblance among all the sisters, both mental and personal, which is often to be observed in members of the same family. Menie, the eldest sister, was, however, much superior to the others in force of character, but her mind had not been cultivated by reading. Jess, the second, was a large coarse-looking woman, with a masculine voice, and tastes decidedly so. An excellent wright or smith she would have made, if unfortunately she had not been born a gentlewoman. She had a habit of wandering about the grounds with a small hammer and nails in her huge pocket, examining the fences, and mending them if necessary. She could pick a lock too, when needed, with great neatness and dispatch. I rather think she could repair one also. I have still in my possession a small box of her making, which, for execution and durability, I will match against the performance of any rival amateur of the opposite sex. In spite, however, of such freaks, and as if to make amends for them, Miss Jess possessed one of the softest and most impressionable hearts which ever fell to the lot of a mature maiden of forty-five. She had suffered from no less than six different attachments during her life (she made me her confidante), and most unfortunately they had never been to the right individual, for they were not returned. But poor Miss Jess cherished no malice; she freely forgave them their insensibility. Indeed, she had not the heart to kill a fly. Every beggar imposed on her, and her sisters were obliged for her own sake to restrain her charities. Her dress, like her pursuits, had always a certain masculine air about it. She wore large rough boots, coarse gloves, and a kind of man's cravat constantly twisted about her neck when out of doors. In short, she was one of those persons one cannot help liking, yet laughing at. Jean, the youngest sister, had been a beauty in her time, and she still laid claim to the distinction resulting from it. It was a pity, considering the susceptibility of her second sister, that her charms had not been shared by her. Jean was coquettish, and affected a somewhat youthful manner and style of dress, which contrasted ill with her time of life. But the rest of the family, in which of course I include the servants, evidently considered her a young thoughtless thing for whom much allowance must be made. _Historical Review of the Month._ THE UNITED STATES. Since the close of the Executive Session of the Senate and the departure of the members for their homes, Washington has relapsed into the usual quiet of its summer season. Mr. Corwin, Secretary of the Treasury, has been dangerously ill, but is now slowly recovering. The duties of the office were temporarily performed by the Chief Clerk of the Department. Señor Molina, Chargé to the United States from the Central American State of Costa Rica, has presented his credentials to the President. M. Bois le Comte, the French Minister Plenipotentiary, having been superseded by the appointment of M. de Sartiges, has sold his furniture and gone to Havana. A public dinner was given to Mr. Webster at Annapolis, Maryland, on the 24th of March, by the Delegates of the Maryland State Convention. It was attended by a large number of distinguished persons. Mr. Webster then proceeded to Harrisburgh, where he had been invited by the Legislature of Pennsylvania. A grand reception was given him in the Hall of the House of Representatives. Gov. Johnson introduced the distinguished guest in a brief address of welcome, to which Mr. Webster responded in a speech of an hour's length. He spoke of the commanding physical position of Pennsylvania, forming, as it were, the key-stone between the North and the South, the waters of the Atlantic and the Mississippi. Occupying, thus, a middle ground between the two conflicting portions of the Union, he considered her disposed to do her duty to both, regardless of the suggestions of local prejudices. He then pronounced a most glowing and eloquent eulogium on the Constitution, and concluded by affirming his belief that ages hence the United States will be free and republican, still making constant progress in general confidence, respect, and prosperity. Mr. Webster is at present on his Marshfield estate, recovering from an indisposition consequent on his labors during the past winter. The State Convention of Ohio has framed a new Constitution, which is to be submitted to the people for acceptance. It provides for the maintenance of religious freedom, equality of political rights, liberty of speech and of the press, and no imprisonment for debt. The members of each branch of the Legislature are chosen biennially. The Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Treasurer, and Attorney General, are to be chosen by the people for a term of two years, and the Judges for a term of five years. The Legislature is to provide a system of Free Education, and Institutions for the Insane, Blind, Deaf and Dumb are to be supported by the State. The Ohio Legislature has passed resolutions in favor of the repeal or modification of the Fugitive Slave Law, principally on account of its denial of a trial by jury to the fugitive. The Union feeling is entirely in the ascendant throughout the Southern States. A Committee of the Virginia Legislature, to whom the resolutions of the South Carolina Convention were referred, reported a preamble and series of resolutions of the most patriotic character. They declare that while Virginia deeply sympathizes with South Carolina, she cannot join in any action calculated to impair the integrity of the Union. She believes the Constitution sufficient for the remedy of all grievances, and invokes all who live under it to adhere more strictly to it, and to preserve inviolate its safeguards. Virginia also declines to send Delegates to the proposed Southern Congress. In Georgia, a number of Delegates have been elected to a State Convention of the Union party for the nomination of a Candidate for Governor. The State Convention of Missouri has adopted an address and resolutions fully sustaining Mr. Benton in his course in opposition to the Disunionists. In Mississippi, the Union party have taken measures for a thorough organization. Delegates have been chosen to a State Convention for the nomination of a ticket. The Southern party are about forming a similar organization, the old party lines having been almost entirely abandoned. The only counter-movement in the North, is the assembling of a State Convention in Massachusetts, in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law, without distinction of party. In Tennessee, the friends of the Free School System have called a General State Convention, to be held at Knoxville. The New-Jersey Legislature has enacted a law prohibiting the employment of children under ten years of age in factories, and providing that ten hours shall be considered a legal day's labor in all manufacturing establishments. The Annual Election in Rhode Island resulted in the choice of Philip Allen, the Democratic Candidate for Governor, by 600 majority. The Legislature stands--Senate, 14 Democrats and 13 Whigs; Assembly, 31 Democrats and 25 Whigs. The Election in Connecticut gave the following returns for the next Legislature: Senate, 13 Whigs and 8 Democrats; Legislature 113 Whigs and 110 Democrats. As the election of Governor falls upon the Legislature, the probability is that the Governor and the United States Senator for the next six years will be chosen from the Whig party. The Legislature of New-York paid a visit to the cities of New-York and Brooklyn, about the end of March. They remained four days, during which time they visited all the charitable institutions on the island, in company with the city authorities. This is the first instance on record of an official visit of the Legislature to the commercial metropolis of the State. Boston has been the theatre of some disturbing and exciting proceedings, growing out of the anti-slavery feeling of a portion of the community. A fugitive slave named Sims, who had escaped from Savannah, and had been in Boston about a month, was arrested by the Deputy United States Marshal, at the instance of an agent of the owner. On being taken, he drew a knife and inflicted a severe wound on one of the officers in attendance. An abolitionist lawyer, who attempted to interfere, was arrested and sent to the watch-house. Fletcher Webster, Esq., son of the Secretary of State, was also seized and taken to jail, on account of having attempted to prevent a watchman from ringing the bell of King's Chapel, under the supposition that it was a trick of the Abolitionists to collect a mob. The next day, this sect called a meeting on Boston Common, which was largely attended. Rev. Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and other speakers, addressed the meeting, urging instant and armed resistance to the operation of the law. The Police, on the other hand, took every precaution to prevent a forcible rescue of the prisoner. The Court-House, in which he was confined, was surrounded by chains to keep off the crowd, and guarded by a strong force; several military companies were also kept in readiness. The friends of the fugitive endeavored to make use of the case for the purpose of testing the constitutionality of the law, and a hearing was had before the United States Commissioner, in which the question was argued at length. In order to prevent the delivery of Sims, a complaint was instituted for assault and battery with intent to kill the officer who arrested him. Chief Justice Shaw, of the Supreme Court, however, decided that a writ of habeas corpus could not be granted, and the United States Commissioner having, from the evidence adduced, remanded Sims to the keeping of his claimant, authority was given to take him back to Savannah. As an assault was feared from the abolitionists and colored people in Boston, the brig Acorn was chartered to proceed to Savannah, and Sims taken on board, in custody of the United States Deputy Marshal and several police officers. A large number of persons offered their services in case any attack should be made. A large crowd collected on the wharf as the party embarked, and a clergyman present knelt down and pronounced a prayer for the rescue of the fugitive. No open act of violence was committed, and after laying a day off Nantasket Beach, the schooner proceeded on her way to Savannah. The Equinoctial storm, this spring, commenced on the 16th of March, and raged for three days with unusual violence. It was severely felt along the Atlantic coast, and did much damage to the shipping. Amin Bey, the Turkish Envoy to the United States, sailed from Boston on the 9th of April, on his return to Constantinople. The election of a United States Senator by the Massachusetts Legislature has twice again been tried, unsuccessfully. On the last ballot, Mr. Sumner lacked 12 votes of an election. It was then further postponed to the 23d of April. The census of Virginia has been completed, showing an aggregate population of 1,421,081, about 473,000 of whom are slaves. At the last accounts Jenny Lind was in Cincinnati, after having given two very successful concerts in Nashville and two in Louisville. She has also paid a visit to the Mammoth Cave. Several large crevasses have broken out on the Mississippi River, and another overflow of the plantations is threatened. The latest mails from Texas bring us little news beyond the continuance of Indian depredations on the frontier. Several American outlaws, who had crossed the Rio Grande for the purposes of plunder, were captured by the Mexicans and executed. Major Bartlett, the United States Boundary Commissioner, arrived at San Antonio from El Paso, on the 17th of March, with a train of fifty wagons. He immediately proceeded to New Orleans for the purpose of arranging for the transmission of supplies. Four persons, who were concerned in the murder of Mr. Clark and others, at a small village near El Paso, have been captured, convicted by a jury summoned on the instant, and hung. The Boundary Commissioners have at last agreed on the starting point of the survey, which will secure to the United States a much larger and more valuable tract of territory than was anticipated. The point established is the intersection of the parallel of 32° with the Rio Grande, which is about 18 miles north of El Paso. From this place the line runs due west till it strikes some branch of the Gila, or if no branch is met, to the point nearest the Gila River, whence it runs due north to the river. It is ascertained that the only branch of the Gila which this line can strike is about one hundred and fifty miles west of the gold and copper mines, leaving that rich mineral region within the United States. This boundary lies to the south of the old limits of New Mexico, and takes in a large region that has always belonged to the State of Chihuahua. We have accounts from Santa Fe to the 17th of February. The winter had been unusually mild, and the prospects of the spring trade were very favorable. The United States Marshal had completed the census of the Territory. The total population is 61,574, of whom only 650 are Americans. Of the Mexicans over 21 years of age, only one in 103 is able to read. The number of square miles in the Territory is 199,027-1/2. The depredations of the Indians are on the increase. The tribes have become bolder than ever, and the amount of stock driven off by them, is enormous. Great preparations are making at Fort Laramie, on the Platte, and all the other stations on the overland route, to accommodate the summer emigration. A substantial bridge has been built over the North Fork of the Platte, 100 miles above Fort Laramie. Here, also, blacksmith's shops have been erected to accommodate those who need repairs to their wagons. Two mails and about $3,000,000 in gold dust have arrived from California during the past month. The accounts from San Francisco are to the 5th of March. The Joint Convention of the Legislature, which assembled on the 17th of February for the purpose of choosing a United States Senator, adjourned till the first day of January next, after one hundred and forty-four ineffectual ballots. On the last ballot, the Hon. T. Butler King, the Whig candidate, had twenty votes, lacking four of an election; Col. Fremont nine, and Col. Weller eighteen. Another Legislature is to be elected before the next session. The bonds offered by Gen. Vallejo have been accepted, so that nothing but their fulfilment remains to secure the seat of government for the yet unbuilt city. The weather still continued to be remarkably dry and mild, owing to which cause, the miners were doing less than usual, and business was consequently dull. In many localities, the miners, after waiting in vain for showers enough to enable them to wash out their piles of dirt, set themselves to work at constructing races to lead off the mountain streams. In some places mountains have been tunneled to divert the water into the desired channels. The yield of gold, wherever mining can be diligently carried on, has in nowise diminished, and new placers of remarkable richness are announced as having been discovered on the Yuba, Feather, Scott and Klamath Rivers, and in the neighborhood of Monterey, Los Angeles and San Diego. Veins of gold in quartz are far more abundant and of richer character than was anticipated; several companies have been formed for working them with machinery. Dredging-machines, attached to steamboats, have also been introduced on the Yuba River, the bed of which has been dug up and washed out in some places, with much success. The excitement in relation to the Gold Bluff is over. Several vessels have returned filled with disappointed adventurers. The black sand on the beach contains a large quantity of gold, but in particles so fine as to prevent its being separated by the ordinary process of washing. On Pitt River, the principal affluent of the Upper Sacramento, a hill of pure carbonate of magnesia, 100 feet high, has been discovered. Large masses are easily detached, and thousands of wagons could be loaded with very little labor. The Indian hostilities have not yet ceased. After the taking of the stronghold on Fresno Creek, Major Burney and Mr. Savage returned to Mariposa for provisions. They raised a force of 150 men, which they divided into two parties, one of which met the Indians on San Joaquin River, when a running fight ensued that lasted all day. The Indians were driven off, after the loss of forty men. The Legislature has passed a law authorizing a loan of $500,000 for the purpose of prosecuting the war, but upon such terms that it is doubtful whether the money can be obtained. The condition of society in California shows an alarming tendency among the people to take the law into their own hands. The papers ascribe this state of things to the imperfect and corrupt manner in which the officers of the law have discharged their functions. Acts of violence and crime are frequent in all parts of the country, and the mining communities, with few exceptions, administer summary punishment wherever the offender is captured. Sacramento City has been the scene of a case of this kind, where the people, having no confidence in the ordinary process of the law, took the avenging power in their own hands. A gambler named Roe having shot an inoffensive miner, an immense crowd assembled around the guard-house where he was kept, a jury of the citizens was chosen, witnesses summoned, and the case formally investigated. The jury decided that Roe was guilty of the act, and remanded him for trial. This, however, did not satisfy the crowd, who clamored for instant punishment, and finally succeeded in forcing the doors of the jail and overcoming the officers. The prisoner was hurried forth, amid the shouts and execrations of the multitude, a scaffold was erected, and at nine o'clock the same evening he was hung, with the ceremonies usually observed. An attempt at lynching was made in San Francisco about the same time. Two ruffians, having attempted to rob and murder a merchant of that city, the people assembled on the plaza and demanded an instant trial, with the understanding that if found guilty, the prisoners should be immediately hung. An examination was held, but the jury could not agree, after which the accused were given into the charge of the regular tribunal. An unfortunate catastrophe occurred in the Bay of San Francisco, on the 4th of March. The steamer Santa Clara, lying at Central Wharf, took fire, which communicated to the steamer Hartford, lying near, and to the rigging of several vessels. The latter boat was considerably damaged before the conflagration could be extinguished; the Santa Clara was entirely destroyed. She was the first steamboat ever built in San Francisco, and was running on the line between that port and Stockton. The loss by the fire was about $90,000. News from Oregon to the 1st of March state that the Legislature had adjourned, having established the seat of Government at Salem, in Maryland county, the Penitentiary at Portland, in Washington county, and the University at Marysville, in Benton county. The Governor, however, had refused to sign this act. The agricultural prospects, both of California and Oregon, are very flattering. During the past winter a great deal of land has been broken up and planted, and the fields promise abundant harvests. EUROPE. The ministerial crisis in ENGLAND terminated on the 3d of March by the recall of the Russell Cabinet, entire and unchanged. In making this announcement in the House of Commons, Lord John Russell stated that a coalition between himself and the party of Sir James Graham and Lord Aberdeen was impossible, on account of the refusal of the latter to consent to the Papal Aggression Bill. In returning to power, however, the whigs brought up this bill in a modified and milder form. The situation of the ministry was hardly less precarious than before their resignation. They were again defeated in the Commons, on a motion to reform the administration of the woods and forests, 120 voting for the reform, and 119 voting with the ministers against it. The Papal Aggression Bill has been the cause of several exciting debates in the House of Commons, Mr. Drummond, an ultra Protestant member, created quite a disturbance by ridiculing the relics which have lately been displayed in various parts of the Continent. At the latest dates the bill had passed to a second reading by a vote of 438 to 95, the radical members voting in the minority. The fate of the bill is still far from being decided; the ministry are weak, and it is predicted that the Cabinet will not last longer than the session of Parliament. Lord John Russell has brought in a bill reforming the administration of the Court of Chancery, but the new budget, which has been looked for with a great deal of interest, has not yet made its appearance. During the debate on the Papal Aggression Bill, Mr. Berkley Craven demanded legal interference in the case of his step-daughter, the Hon. Miss Talbot, who, being an heiress in her own right to eighty thousand pounds, had been prevailed upon to enter a convent for the purpose of taking the veil. As the ceremony was to be performed before she had attained her majority, this sum would in all probability go to the funds of the Catholic Church. The statement of this case produced a strong sensation throughout England, and added to the violent excitement on the Catholic Question. The preparations for the World's Fair are going on with great energy, workmen being employed, day and night in finishing the building and arranging the goods. The severest tests have been used to try the strength of the galleries, which sustained an immense weight without the least deflection. In rainy weather the roof leaks in places, a defect which it has been found almost impossible to remedy. Several changes have been made in the exhibition regulations, to which the American delegates in London take exceptions, and they have appointed a Committee to confer with the Commissioners on the subject. A splendid dinner was given to Macready, the actor, on the 1st of March, on the occasion of his retirement from the stage. Sir E. Bulwer Lytton presided, and speeches were made by Charles Dickens, Chevalier Bunsen, Mr. Thackeray, and others. Three hundred Hungarian exiles recently arrived at Liverpool, from Constantinople, on their way to the United States. A large number of them, of Polish origin, preferred remaining in England, to wait a new revolution on the Continent. A terrible accident took place at a coal-pit near Paisley, in Scotland. Sixty-three men and boys were at work when an explosion took place, supposed to have been caused by fire-damp. Of the whole number in the pit but two were rescued alive. The third anniversary of the Republic was celebrated in FRANCE with imposing ceremonies. During the Carnival week, however, the people in various localities chose to hang the President in effigy, and utter socialist cries. For these offences arrests were made in more than fifty towns. These facts, with the suspension of Michelet as Professor of History in the College of France, because his lectures were considered too democratic, denote an unquiet state of things in the Republic. As the term of Louis Napoleon approaches its termination, the position of parties becomes more nervous and uncertain. In the Assembly, the proposition of M. Creton to take into consideration the abolition of the law exiling the Orleans family, brought on the most violent debate of the session. The adherents of the Mountain were strongly in favor of continuing the exile. Negotiations have been carried on for some time past between the Orleanists and the Legitimists, and early in March it was announced that an alliance had been effected, the Orleanists to acknowledge the right of precedence of the Count de Chambord, (Henri V.,) who, in his turn, was to proclaim the young Count of Paris as his successor. The Count de Chambord was at this time dangerously ill, and his recovery was scarcely hoped for. Since then it appears that there is much confusion between the two parties, the duchess of Orleans refusing to set aside the claims of her son, on any consideration whatever. The party of Louis Napoleon are intriguing to prolong the presidential term, and it is said that in this they will be joined by the Orleanists. No permanent ministry has yet been organized. It is rumored that Odillon Barrot refused to accept the principal place, which was tendered to him, unless Louis Napoleon would agree to leave his office at the end of his term. A quarrel has broken out in the French Catholic Church. Some time ago the Archbishop of Paris issued a pastoral letter, recommending the clergy to avoid engaging in political agitations, and appearing to the world as party men. The letter was mild but decisive in its tone, and met with general approval. Lately, the Bishop of Chartres has published a sort of counter-blast, in the shape of a pastoral to his own clergy, written in the most severe and denunciatory forms. This letter he ordered to be published in the religious journals of Paris; and the Archbishop has referred the matter to the Provincial Council, which will be called this year. GERMANY is still pursuing her ignis-fatuus of Unity, which is no nearer than when she first set out. The Dresden Conference is still in session, and up to the 20th of March had not adopted any plan of a Federal Diet. It is almost impossible to conjecture what will be the basis of the settlement. More than twenty of the smaller states protested against the plans proposed by Austria; and Prussia, assuming the character of protector, refused to allow their further arrangement. The King of Prussia also refuses to accede to an agreement which his delegates had made, allowing Austria to bring her non-German provinces to the confederacy. In this he is sustained by Russia, who would not willingly see the former country restored to virtual independence by the supremacy which this plan would give her. A return to the old Diet is spoken of in some quarters, but perhaps the most likely result will be the concession of the presidency to Austria, on the part of Prussia. A meeting between the ministers of the two countries is contemplated. The entire population of Prussia, by the census taken last year, is 16,331,000. A fire in Berlin has destroyed the building in which the Upper House of Parliament held its meetings. The old order reigns in HESSE-CASSEL, Baron Haynau having issued a proclamation to the Hessian army, in which he declares that _he_ is the Constitution, and will crush under foot the "God-abandoned, pernicious gang, which threatens the welfare of the State." Nevertheless, the popular feeling remains unchanged. Lately, the citizens of Cassel were forbidden to shout or make any demonstration, on the return of a regiment which had been marked by the Government for its sympathy with the popular cause. The people preserved silence, but adroitly expressed their feelings by chalking the word "Hurrah!" in large letters on the backs of their coats and walking in front of the regiment. The Government of SWITZERLAND has at last yielded to the demands of Austria and Prussia, and authorized the Cantons to refuse shelter to political refugees. Those already there may be expelled, should the Cantons see fit. After the insurrection in Baden, the refugees who entered the Swiss territory, amounted to about 11,000, but they have so decreased by emigration to England and America, that at present there are but 482 remaining. The Government of Switzerland lately endeavored to procure passage through Piedmont for some Austrian deserters from the army in Lombardy, who wished to sail from Genoa for Montevideo; but the Piedmontese Government refused to allow it. ITALY is fermenting with the elements of revolution. The bandits, who have been committing such depredations in the Roman States, are not robbers, it now appears, but revolutionary bands. Their extermination is almost impossible, on account of the secrecy and adroitness with which the peasants are enrolled into the service of their chief, Il Passatore. They only meet at a general rendezvous, when some important expedition is contemplated, and afterwards return to their own avocations. They receive regular pay from the moment of their enlistment, and as the links of the organization extend over a wide extent of country, the system must require a considerable amount of money. It is conjectured that this band is the preparative of a political revolution, instigated by the agents of Mazzini. In Lombardy the most severe restrictions have been issued by Radetsky. An interdict has been laid upon a hat of particular form, and a republican song in favor of Mazzini. The populace, however, inserted the name of Radetsky in place of the triumvir, and now sing the song with impunity. A plot has been discovered among the aristocratic party of Piedmont, to deliver the country into the hands of the Absolutists. The army of the kingdom is to be put upon a war footing. Washington's birthday was celebrated in Rome, with interesting ceremonies. About one hundred Americans met in the Palazzo Poli, where they partook of a splendid banquet, at which Mr. Cass, the U. S. Chargé, presided. In NORWAY the Thirteenth _Storthing_, or National Assembly, has been opened by King Oscar. In his speech, he spoke of the tranquillity which the Scandinavian Peninsula had enjoyed, while the other nations of Europe had been convulsed with revolutions, and warned the people against delusive theories and ideas which lead only to discontent with existing relations. He also recommended the construction of a railroad from the city of Christiana to Lake Mjösen. Several serious riots have taken place in Stockholm, and Drontheim, in Norway. On February 14th, the students of the University of Upsala, to the number of 500, paraded the streets of Stockholm, and were not dispersed till a collision took place between them and the police. The same scenes were renewed next day, when the students were joined by the people; the streets were cleared by squadrons of cavalry, and the principal rioters arrested. The dispute between TURKEY and EGYPT is still far from being settled. Abbas Pacha, however, is not at present in a condition to come to an open rupture with the Sublime Porte, and these differences will probably be quietly settled. The Pacha is also involved in a dispute with the French Consul-General, in relation to the claims of certain French officers, who were dismissed from the Egyptian service before the expiration of their terms. Late advices from Constantinople state that a definite arrangement has been made with regard to the Hungarian refugees. The Emperor of Austria has granted a full amnesty to all except eight, among whom are Kossuth and Bathyany, on condition that they shall make no attempt to return to Hungary. The eight proscribed persons are to remain at Kutahya until further orders. General Dembinski had reached Constantinople, where he was well received, and would shortly leave for Paris. BRITISH AMERICA. An interesting election has just been held in the county of Haldimand, Canada West, to supply a vacancy in the Canadian Parliament, occasioned by the death of David Thompson, Esq. There were four candidates, one of whom was the noted William Lyon Mackenzie, leader of the Rebellion of 1837. The election resulted in the choice of Mackenzie, who, after an exile of twelve years, resumes his seat in the Legislative Assembly. The Government had previously recognized his claim for $1,000, with interest, for services rendered antecedent to the rebellion. The annexation feeling is reviving in some portions of Lower Canada. At a public meeting recently held in the county of Huntingdon, several of the speakers expressed themselves very strongly in favor of annexation to the United States. The Catholic clergy oppose the movement. One of the leading Canadian politicians has drawn up a scheme of Federal Union for the British Provinces, including the Hudson's Bay Company's Territories, modelled on the federal system of the United States. The Canadian Government recently had under consideration the expediency of closing the Welland Canal against American vessels, on account of the refusal of the United States Government to adopt reciprocity measures. This course, which would seriously injure our commercial interests on the Lakes, has not yet been pursued, and the Government will probably abandon the idea. MEXICO. The administration of Gen. Arista is still a subject of much interest and some curiosity. According to the representations of his friends, he is about to take a firm stand in the accomplishment of his leading measures; while, on the other hand, he is charged with weakness and subjection to the influence of irresponsible favorites. Our latest accounts from the Mexican capital predict that the Government will soon be in a state of great embarrassment. The American indemnity money was nearly spent, and there was already a deficiency of near $2,000,000 in the Treasury. In consequence of the many robberies recently committed in and around the city of Mexico and on the road to Vera Cruz, the most stringent measures have been adopted for the preservation of order. Congress is still in session, but has made no modification in the Tariff bill, as was anticipated. It is feared that the Tehuantepec Railroad Treaty will be rejected, notwithstanding that Arista is known to be strongly in its favor. The exclusive privilege of a railroad from Vera Cruz to Medellin, has been granted for one hundred years to Don José Maria Estera. The revolutionary difficulties in the State of Oaxaca, have not yet been settled. A treaty was made not long since, between Muñoz, the Governor of the State, and the rebel, Melendez, which gave great offence to the people. In order to reinstate himself in their favor, Muñoz pretended that the treaty had been violated on the part of Melendez, marched against him, and drove him and his followers into the mountains of Chimalapa, where he has since remained concealed. The Tehuantepec Surveying Expedition is now encamped at La Ventosa, a port on the Pacific. The route of the Railroad across the mountains has not yet been decided upon, the survey being a matter of difficulty on account of the dense forests with which the country is covered. In YUCATAN, the war between the Spanish and Indian races is raging with great ferocity. The Indians, who are supplied with arms and ammunition by the English at Belize, have advanced to within thirty miles of Merida, where a line of defence has been established by the Spaniards. Fourteen thousand soldiers are there opposed to more than twenty thousand Indians, and the subjugation of the latter, without help from abroad, is impossible. The troops of Yucatan are destitute of clothing and supplies, and as most of the wealthy citizens of the State have been reduced to beggary by these reverses, the threatened extermination of the Spanish race seems near at hand. A conspiracy to burn the city of Merida, formed by some of the soldiers, in conjunction with the convicts in the city prison, was discovered but a short time before it was to have been carried into effect. The conspirators were condemned to death. CENTRAL AMERICA. The hostilities between Guatemala on the one hand and the States of Honduras and San Salvador on the other, have been temporarily suspended, since the defeat of the latter States. The armies met at a little village called La Arada. The battle lasted four hours, when the allied army, commanded by Vasconcelos, President of San Salvador, was completely routed, with a loss of 500 men. His arrival at the capital was the occasion of a riot among the lower classes, and he did not immediately resume his executive functions. Carrera in the mean time advanced to Santa Anna, thirty miles from the frontier, where he made propositions for peace. The provisional President of San Salvador replied that no negotiations could take place until the troops were withdrawn from the territory. This was done, but at the last accounts no treaty had been made. The President of the National Diet of Central America has issued a proclamation demanding the cessation of hostilities. The blockade of the port of Amapala, in Honduras, has been abandoned by the British fleet. Three iron steamers, intended for the navigation of the San Juan River and Lake Nicaragua, are now building in Wilmington, Delaware, and will be placed upon the route on the 1st of July, at which time the line will be complete, and steamships will leave New-York and San Francisco direct for Central America. The journey from sea to sea will be made in about twenty-four hours. THE WEST INDIES. The Island of CUBA is at present in an excited state on account of rumors that another piratical expedition was being fitted out in the United States, the vessels of which were to rendezvous at Apalachicola Bay. This was at first looked upon as entirely groundless, but letters from Georgia and Alabama have since partially confirmed the statement. There is an active force of 25,000 men on the island, and any attempt at invasion will be unsuccessful. The Captain-General, Concha, continues his course of reform, abolishing all useless restrictions, and establishing needful regulations, so far as his power extends. The Venezuelan Consul at Havana has been discharged from his functions, and ordered to leave the island in eight days, in consequence of having furnished money to Gen. Lopez, with whom he is connected by marriage. Mr. Clay, during his stay on the island, was honored with every expression of respect. In HAYTI, the efforts of the American, English, and French Consuls have thus far succeeded in preventing a war between the Haytiens and the Dominicans. A commission of four persons has been appointed to confer with the Consuls in regard to this subject. Several of the Dominican chiefs have arrived at Port-au-Prince, where they were very kindly received, and it was believed that peace will be speedily established. A political conspiracy has been detected at Port-au-Prince. Among the persons concerned in it was the late Chief Justice, M. Francisque, and one of the three ministers of Soulouque. A large number of arrests were made, and the prisoners tried by court-martial. Eight of them, including the Chief Justice, were condemned and publicly shot. The cholera has not yet wholly disappeared from JAMAICA. The budget for the island estimates the liabilities at £248,300, and the income at £215,850, leaving a deficiency in the revenue of £32,450. SOUTH AMERICA. There are now about 900 persons employed on the Panama Railroad, and the track to Gatun, a distance of twenty-six miles, will be ready for the locomotive by the 1st of July next. There was much excitement on the Isthmus towards the close of March, caused by a report that the specie train, carrying $1,000,000 in silver for the British steamer, had been attacked by robbers. It happened, however, that only a single mule-load was taken, which was afterwards abandoned by the robbers and recovered. Three of the boatmen arrested for the murder of passengers on the Chagres River have been found guilty and sentenced to be shot. A large fire broke out on the island of Taboga, in the bay of Panama, destroying fifty huts, and property to the amount of $50,000. Several parties have returned to Panama from the gold region of Choco, in New Grenada. They found the rivers of the region abounding in rich gold-washings, but were forced to abandon the enterprise from want of supplies. In CHILI, the 12th of February, the anniversary of Chilian independence, was celebrated with imposing ceremonies. The municipality of Valparaiso are making exertions to establish a general system of primary instruction for the children of the city. The survey of the railroad to Santiago has been carried about fifty miles, to which distance a favorable line has been obtained. The island of Chilöe, in the southern part of the Republic, was suffering from a protracted drought. The election for President was to take place in the month of March. In BUENOS AYRES, the opening of the Legislature and the Annual Message of the President have been postponed by mutual agreement. The financial affairs of the republic are in an exceedingly prosperous condition, the available resources on hand for the present year amounting to more than $36,000,000. By order of the government, the civil and military officers were directed to wear the customary mourning on the 24th of January, "as a token of grief for the death and respect for the memory of the illustrious General Zachary Taylor, late President of the United States of America." A terrible accident occurred in the harbor of Rio Janeiro on the 8th of February. The French schooner Eliza, while at anchor near the fort, with a large quantity of gunpowder on board, blew up with a tremendous explosion, and soon after sank. She had 240 passengers, only a few of whom were on board at the time. Ten were killed and twenty wounded. ASIA. In BRITISH INDIA, a portion of the Nizam's territory has been made over to the East India Company, as an equivalent for a debt of £60,000 due to it. Lord Dalhousie is engaged in introducing a system of education into the Punjaub. The Sikhs warmly second him in his endeavors. The English authorities are also engaged in constructing 350 miles of canal in this district. Late news from CHINA confirms the intelligence of the death of Commissioner Lin. Key-ing, the former Commissioner, has been disgraced, on account of his liberal course towards the Europeans. A system of smuggling, on a very extensive scale, has been discovered in the neighborhood of Shanghai. It is announced that a race of Jews has been discovered by some agents of the London Missionary Society in the interior of China, about 350 miles beyond Pekin. AFRICA. A fierce and devastating war has broken out at the Cape of Good Hope, between the British Colonists and the native tribe of the Kaffirs. The savages arose in large bands and commenced a general attack on all the farms along the frontier. The native servants of the settlers joined them, and they had penetrated into the older and more thickly populated districts on the coast, before they received any check from the Government forces. Several battles have taken place, in which the Kaffirs were generally routed, but they are a brave and warlike race, and cannot be subdued without a stronger force than has yet been sent against them. In the Beaufort and Fort Cradock districts, the country for the distance of 150 miles was abandoned, the homesteads burnt, and the stock driven off. At the latest dates, the Governor, Sir Harry Smith, was raising a force of 10,000 men. We have news from LIBERIA to the 23d of January. At a late trial for a capital offence in Monrovia, several native Africans sat on the jury. Other natives hold commissions as policemen and other minor functionaries. Bassa Cove, on the coast, had been very unhealthy for some months. POLYNESIA. Some difficulty has arisen at the Sandwich Islands, between the commander of the French frigate Sérieuse and the Hawaiian Government. The French commander demanded the payment of $25,000 as a commutation for customs alleged to have been collected contrary to treaty obligations. The King refused to accede to this claim, and threw himself on the protection of Great Britain and the United States. Upon this the French commander landed his men at Honolulu, where he has prevented several Hawaiian vessels from proceeding to sea. Several different parties of exploration are now endeavoring to penetrate into the interior of the African continent. Mr. Livingston, at the last accounts, was proceeding northward from Lake Ngami. Dr. Beke, in Abyssinia, and the Rev. Mr. Thompson, on the Gaboon River, have also made some very interesting discoveries in African geography and natural history. _Record of Scientific Discovery._ NEW MOTORS.--Sir JOHN SCOTT LILLIE, Companion of the Bath, of Paris, has just received an English patent for improvements in the application of motive powers. One of these improvements consists in directing currents of air, or other gaseous fluids, through inverted troughs or channels, for the propulsion of boats and barges in the conveyance of goods and passengers. The troughs are placed longitudinally, one on each side of the vessel; or one may be placed between two vessels having one deck. Their form may be either square or oblong; and they are left open so that the currents of air in their passage to, and escape at or near, the stern of the vessel, may act upon the water, until they pass off into the air. They are supplied by air through a shaft, passing vertically through the centre of the deck. Another of the improvements consists in suspending paddle-wheels at or near the stern of the vessel, which are set in motion by the action of the currents as they pass off into the air, thereby increasing the motive power; or such paddle-wheels may be moved without the intervention of the troughs or channels, by the motion of currents of air or other gaseous fluids, forced through tubes or cylinders. The patent was enrolled in the early part of March. * * * * * WATER GAS.--The English patent for Paine's Light was enrolled on the 12th of December, in the name of Alfred Vincent Newton, of Chancery Lane, Middlesex. The _London Patent Journal_ publishes the specifications and figures, remarking that the report has been ready for some time, but was not published at the particular request of the assignee of the patent in England. It states that the invention is for decomposing water by means of electricity, and producing therefrom a gas, which, after being made to pass through spirits of turpentine or other hydro-carbonous fluids, will, when ignited, burn with great brilliancy. The invention is known by the name of "Paine's Light"--this being, in fact, Mr. Paine's specification, in which he states, that although water has been spoken of as decomposed by the electric currents, he wishes it to be understood that this is merely to accord with the generally received chemical doctrines and phraseology, and that water, after all, may be a simple element; however that may be, the patentee wishes, at present, to lay it down as certain that by discharging electricity through water, large quantities of gases are evolved; and that one of such gases, at least, when passed through turpentine, in the manner described, will burn and give a highly illuminating light. Mr. Paine's affairs in England being thus adjusted, it is possible that more will be heard of it on this side. The benefits of the invention are hid under a bushel. * * * * * IMPROVEMENTS IN THE STEAM-ENGINE.--An English patent has been granted to Mr. GEORGE SMITH, of Manchester, engineer, for four improvements upon the steam-engine. The first is an improved arrangement of apparatus by which cold water is made to enter the exhaust passages of steam cylinders, as near the valves as possible; by condensing a portion of the exhausted steam it becomes hot and then passes off, while the uncondensed steam passes either into the condenser or the atmosphere. This improvement is applicable to marine, stationary, and locomotive engines. The second improvement consists in an improved apparatus applied to low-pressure boilers, by which the water in the boiler is maintained at a regular height, and by which the danger of explosions from deficiency of water is removed. The third, consists of hot and cold water pumps, and is also applicable to air-pumps and lifting-pumps. The fourth is in the construction of metallic packing of pistons for steam cylinders, air-pumps, and other similar pistons, by which greater strength and elasticity are obtained. * * * * * NEW APPLICATIONS OF ZINC AND ITS OXIDES.--Mr. WILLIAM EDWARD NORTON has obtained a patent in England for improvements in obtaining, preparing and applying zinc and other volatile metals, and their oxides, and in the application of zinc, to the preparation of certain metals, and alloys of metals. The improvements are six in number; consisting of an improved furnace for the preparation of zinc and its white oxide, with new forms of front and rear walls--a mode of dispensing with the common retorts for the reduction of the ores of zinc into oxides, and replacing them by one large retort, in which the ore is more advantageously treated--the application of zinc to the alloy of iron and steel, which are thereby rendered more malleable and less liable to oxidation--a saving of the products of distillation and oxidation of zinc and other volatile metals, by means of a cotton, woollen, flaxen, or other similar fabric, in connection with a suitable exhausting apparatus,--the application of zinc to the formation of pigments,--and, lastly, the application of the ore called Franklinite to the reduction of iron from its ores, and its subsequent purification, and in saving the volatile products by means of a suitable condensing or receiving apparatus. Franklinite, which has hitherto only been found in any quantity near the Franklin forge, Sussex county, in the State of New Jersey, consists of the following substances, according to Berthier and Thomson: Peroxide of iron, 66; oxide of zinc, 17; sesqui-oxide of manganese, 16; total, 99. * * * * * A new adaptation of _Lithography_ to the process of printing in oil has lately been invented by M. Kronheim of Paternoster-row, London. Hitherto no strictly mechanical means have existed for successfully producing copies of paintings, combining the colors and brilliant effects as well as the outlines and shadings of the original. The ingenious invention of Mr. Kronheim, while it enables him to supply copies of the great masters wonderfully accurate in every respect, reduces the cost of such copies to one-half the price of steel-engravings, and is a far more expeditious process. The invention has reduced to a certainty the practice of a new process by which the appreciation of art may be more widely extended, and the works of great artists popularized. * * * * * THE ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY, (published in Boston by Gould and Lincoln), is an excellent abstract of all the chief movements and discoveries in the scientific world for the year 1850. We advise all our readers interested in any of the sciences to procure it, and its companion volume for the previous year. The work will be continued, and it will be invaluable as a library of facts and suggestions. * * * * * OXYGEN FROM ATMOSPHERIC AIR.--M. BOUSSINGAULT has recently obtained some interesting results from his investigations in relation to oxygen. The problem upon which he has been engaged was the extraction of oxygen gas, in a state of purity and in a considerable quantity, from the azote in the atmosphere. For this purpose, a preference was given to baryte, owing to its property of remaining in oxygen of a moderate temperature, and abandoning it under the influence of a heat sufficiently intense. Ten kilogrammes of baryte, completely oxidized, were found able to take and afterward return 730 litres of gas. This is the number indicated by theory; for celerity of operation, more than 600 litres can be counted on. In that limit, and in operating on 100 kilos. of matter, 6,000 litres of oxygen gas might be disengaged at each disoxidization; four or five operations might be performed in 24 hours, which would thus furnish from 24,000 to 30,000 litres of gas. * * * * * The discovery of the virtues of a _Whitened Camera for Photography_, announced in our last issue, has excited a remarkable sensation in England. Mr. Kilburn, photographer to the Queen, who has experimented upon the new plan with great success, is sparring with M. Claudet. The point in dispute is the tendency of the improved method to weaken the image. If the statements of those who claim to have succeeded are reliable, it is evident that the ordinary form of camera may be abandoned, and any image be received directly from the lens upon plates or paper exposed to a diffused light. * * * * * M. LABORDE states, in a paper on Photography read before the Paris Society for the Encouragement of Arts, that the nitrate of zinc may be substituted for acetic acid in the preparation of photographs on paper; that it increases the sensitiveness of the silver coating, and even allows an alkaline reaction to the iodide of potassium bath. * * * * * A paper was lately read by Professor ABICH, before the Geographical Society of London, on the _Climate of the Country between the Black and Caspian Seas_. Professor Abich noticed the outlines of the extraordinary variety of climate in the lands between these bodies of water, and sketched the geological and orological structure of the country, which he has minutely examined for several years by order of the Russian Government. The whole tract is divided by three different lines of elevation--viz. that of S. E. to N. W.--that of W. to E., and that of S. W. to N. E. The isothermal line of 57° and 59°, after traversing the country between the Black and the Caspian Seas, inflects abruptly toward the South again, reaching the Caspian. The mean temperature along the shores of the two seas is for the year about equal; but the difference of the temperature of the seasons is very great. Lenkoran, in the same latitude as Palermo and Smyrna, with an annual temperature of 61° and 63°, has the summer of Montpellier 76°, and the winter of Maestricht and Turin, 35°. In Calchis, there is the winter of the British Isles, 41° and 42°, and the summer of Constantinople, 72° and 73°. Tiflis, with the winter of Padua, 37°, has the summer of Madrid and Naples, 74°. The extremes of Asiatic climate are found on the volcanic highlands of Armenia. * * * * * The Academy of Sciences at Paris has recently heard a report on certain explorations made in 1847-8-9 by M. Rochet d'Hericourt, a traveller in north-eastern Africa. This traveller has, by repeated observations, determined the latitude of Mt. Sinai to be 28° 33' 16", of Suez 29° 57' 58", of Devratabor 11° 51' 12", and of Gondar 12° 36' 1". Mt. Sinai is 1978 metres (about 6500 feet) high. Mt. Dieu 2174 metres (7200 feet), and the highest of the Horch Mountains 2477 metres (8100 feet). The Lake of Frana, south of Gondar, is 1750 metres (5700 feet) below the level of the sea, and its depth in one place is 197 metres (645 feet). Rar-Bonahite, the highest peak in Abyssinia, is 4330 metres (14,200 feet) high, but not high enough to have snow. The traveller describes a great variety of hot-springs, some of which contained living fish an inch long. The geology of Abyssinia he has thoroughly investigated. In the north, the principal rocks are granite and syenite. Among the plants he describes is a magnificent lobelia, almost large enough to be called a tree, which is found to the very summits of the mountains, and to a height which would not be supposed to admit of such a growth. He also finds the plant whose root has been found to be a specific against hydrophobia. Of this he brought back seeds, which have been planted in the Jardin des Plantes with success. A peculiar breed of sheep M. Rochet d'Hericourt thought worthy of being transferred to France, but of the pair he sent the female died on the route. This sheep has a very long and silky fleece. On the shores of Lake Frana he also found a very large sort of spiders, whose cocoons, he said, were converted into excellent silk. He thinks these spiders might be brought to Europe, and employed in producing silk, but in this he probably does not enough consider the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of domesticating and feeding these insects. * * * * * Enormous fossil eggs were found a few weeks since subjects of curious discussion in Paris, and several notices were translated for the New-York papers. The eggs were discovered in Madagascar. M. Isodore Geoffrey St. Hilliare, in a recent report to the _Academie des Sciences_, furnished further details; and three eggs and some bones belonging to a gigantic bird, which have been presented to the Museum of Natural History in Paris, would seem to leave no room for doubt. Fairy tales are daily thrown into shade by the authentic records of science. This discovery appears to have been stumbled on curiously enough. The captain of a merchant vessel trading to Madagascar noticed one day a native who was using for domestic purposes a vase which much resembled an enormous egg, and on questioning him was informed that many such were to be found in the interior of the island. The largest of these eggs would hold two gallons. The volume equals that of 135 hen's eggs. Some doubts were at first entertained as to the nature of the animal to which the fossil bones belonged; but M. St Hilliare--a competent judge in such matters--has pronounced them to be those of a bird to which he has given the name of _Epiornis_. * * * * * The sum of £1000 has been placed by the British Government at the disposal of the _Royal Institution_, for scientific purposes. * * * * * In the PARIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCES (first meeting in March), M. Leverrier submitted a communication from Mr. W. C. Bond, entitled Observations on the Comet of Faye, made at the Observatory of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Every thing is prized that comes from that quarter. M. Boussingault, the scientific agriculturist, read an extract from his memoir on the extraction of oxygen gas from atmospheric air. His undertaking was to extract, in a state of purity and in considerable quantity, the oxygen gas mixed with azote in atmospheric air, and he thinks that he has fully succeeded, by a process not attended with much difficulty. He details some unexpected results from his experiments. Cauchy made profound reports (from committees) respecting the _Researches on Algebraic Functions_ by M. Puiseux, and the studies of Crystallography by M. Bravais. Papers on the speed of sound in iron, and on respiration in plants, and new schemes of atmospheric railroads were submitted. Attention was given to M. Burg's new observations concerning the advantageous use to be made of metallic bands in various nervous disorders in which the ordinary therapeutic expedients are found ineffectual. M. Peligot mentioned a memoir which he was soon to put forth as a sequel to the Researches on the nature and properties of the different Sugars, which he published in 1838. He has succeeded in extracting, by means of lime, the crystallizable sugar, in large quantity, contained in molasses. He got twenty-five per cent., by the agency of lime, carbonic acid, or sulphuric acid. Lime is cheap and harmless. Other circumstances recommend his series of experiments. A scientific reporter writes mysteriously of the discovery of a very simple and easy method of extracting sugar from the beet-root; with an apparatus which costs very little, any one may make his sugar with as much facility as he boils his pot. * * * * * Of the EXPEDITION TO CENTRAL AFRICA, we learn from the _Athenæum_ that letters from Dr. Barth and Dr. Overweg have been received in London by Chevalier Bunsen, by which it appears that up to October last the travellers were still detained in the kingdom of Aïr. A previous communication gave an account of difficulties and dangers which they had met with on entering that country; the inhabitants of which had shown themselves hostile to them, so that their fate seemed entirely to depend on the protection of the Prince En-Nur, sultan of the Kelvës. This hoped-for protection they have been fortunate enough to secure; though it appears not to have been sufficient to insure their safety beyond Tin-Tellus, the residence of the Prince, in consequence of which they have been obliged to forego the exploration of the country, and to remain with the Prince. They have however been enabled, while thus stationary, to collect a good deal of oral information,--especially respecting the tract of country to the west and southwest of Ghat: which, instead of being a monotonous desert, proves to be intersected by many fertile wadys with plenty of water. Among these novel features, not the least interesting is a lake, between Ghat and Tuat, infested with crocodiles. At the date of Dr. Barth's letter (2d of October) the travellers were on the point of setting out on an excursion to Aghades, the capital of Aïr; the new sultan having promised them his protection, and the valiant son-in-law of En-Nur accompanying them on their journey. The latitude of Tin-Tellus has been found to be 18° 34' N.; the longitude has not been finally determined. The rainy season lasts till September, and thunder-storms occur daily in the afternoon between two and three o'clock, accompanied by a west wind, while at other times it blows from the east. It seems yet uncertain when the expedition will be able to start for lake Tchad. * * * * * GEN. RADOWITZ, the late Minister of Prussian Affairs in Prussia, and undeniably one of the most brilliant Germans now living, recently appeared with great success in the character of a philologist before the Academy of Useful Sciences at Erfurt. A much larger audience than usual present, drawn thither by the oratorical reputation of the General, who was announced to deliver an essay on the Development of the Celtic Race in England, and especially in Wales. Great was the astonishment, when, instead of the usual thick manuscript, the General drew forth a single sheet containing his notes, and proceeded to speak from it for above an hour. He dwelt with pride on the fact that a German (Dr. Meyer, the private secretary of Prince Albert) had cast a reconciling light on the long contest between English and Erse archæologists. He then said there had been two Celtic immigrations, an eastern and a western. The latter was the more ancient and important; its route was through Syria, Northern Africa, and Spain, to England, where it appeared in three phases, one under _Alv_, whence the name of the country Albion (_ion_, a circle, an isolated thing, an island); another under _Edin_, whence _Edinburgh_, in old documents _Car Edin_ (_Car_ Breton, _Ker_ burgh, as in Carnaervon, Carmarthen, &c.); and the third under _Pryd_, whence _Britain_ (_ain--ion_). Such etymologic analyses marked this brilliant discourse. _Fingal_ he derived from _fin_ fair, and _gal_ a stranger, and proved the affinity between the _Gauls_ and _Gael_, the later word meaning vassal, while Gaul comes from _gal_. In the second part of his essay he demonstrated that the Celts were the inventors of rhyme, and in the discussion which followed maintained this position against several distinguished philologists who were present. * * * * * MR. CAGNIARD LATOUR has brought to the notice of the Paris Academy of Sciences a process for making artificial coal, by putting different woods in a closed tube, and slowly charring them over burning charcoal. The coal varies in character according to the age and hygrometric state of the woods employed. The wood of young trees is converted into a glutinous coal; the old wood, of dry fire, into a dry coal. But these last, if soaked in water before being placed in the tube, give a glutinous coal like the young wood, and sometimes a brown rosin, similar to asphaltum. * * * * * A scientific Congress has been sitting in Paris. Several men of high reputation, Mr. Walsh says, took part in its proceedings, which gave promise of unusual interest. Charles Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, was prominent as an orator. Recently, he could rally but two votes in the Academy of Sciences, as a candidate for a vacant seat. The man is not so much prized, we may believe, as the ornithologist. * * * * * M. EOELMEN, the director of the national porcelain manufactory of Sevres, has succeeded in producing crystalized minerals, resembling very closely those produced by nature--chiefly precious and rare stones employed by jewelers. To obtain this result, he has dissolved in boric acid, alum, zinc, magnesia, oxydes of iron, and chrome, and then subjecting the solution to evaporation during three days, has obtained crystals of a mineral substance, equaling in hardness and in beauty and clearness of color the natural stones. With chrome, M. Eoelmen has made most brilliant rubies, from two to three millimetres in length, and about as thick as a grain of corn. If rubies can be artificially made, secrets which were pursued by the alchemists of old cannot be very far off. * * * * * At a late meeting of the _Liverpool Polytechnic Society_, Captain PURNELL read a paper in explanation of his plan for preventing vessels being water-logged at sea. Cisterns are to be provided on each side in the interior of the vessel, fitted with valves opening by pressure from within. The water would thus be kept below a certain level, and the ship be enabled to carry sail. * * * * * PROF. HASSENSTEIN, of Gotha, recently illuminated the public square before the Council House in that city with his new electric sun. The effect was most brilliant, as if a bevy of full moons had risen together, and the applause of the beholders, the newspapers assure us, was unbounded. * * * * * THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE will this year meet at Cincinnati, on the approaching 5th of May. _Recent Deaths._ SAMUEL FARMER JARVIS, D.D., one of the most learned men in the Episcopal Church in the United States, died at Middletown, Connecticut, on the 26th of March. Dr. Jarvis was born in Middletown, where his father (afterward Bishop Jarvis) was then rector of Christ's Church, on the 20th of January, 1787. His childhood and early youth (we compile from the Hartford _Calendar_), were passed at Middletown till the Bishop removed with him to Cheshire, where, in the Academy established by Bishop Seabury, he completed his preparation for College. He entered at Yale, in 1802, commenced Bachelor of Arts in 1805, and proceeded Master in 1808. On the 18th of March, 1810, he was ordained Deacon by his father, in New Haven; and on the fifth of April, in the year following, in the same place, was admitted Priest. Immediately after, he became Rector of St. Michael's and St. James' Churches, on the island of New-York. In 1819, he was appointed Professor of Biblical Criticism, in the General Theological Seminary, with the understanding that he was to perform also, all the duties of instruction, except those relating to Ecclesiastical History. For various reasons, in 1820 he resigned this position, and removing to Boston, became the first Rector of St. Paul's Church in that city. In 1826, he sailed with his family for Europe, in different parts of which he remained nine years. Here he chiefly devoted himself to studies connected with Theology and the History of the Church. He by no means, however, omitted the proper duties of his office. His longest and most continuous service was in Siena; on leaving which place, the congregation presented to him a paten and chalice of exquisite workmanship, as a testimony of respect for his character, and of appreciation of his services. During his residence abroad, he was appointed Professor of Oriental Languages and Literature in Trinity College, Hartford, and on returning to the United States in 1835, he established himself at the College; attending not only to various duties in connection with the College Classes, but also instructing the students in Theology. Those who were there under his instruction, will not soon forget the delightful evenings in his study, when the recitation being over, conversation took its place, and stores of the most useful and varied learning were opened to them, with a kindness and unreservedness, which never could have been surpassed. In 1837, he became Rector of Christ Church, Middletown, and in this position--having with him during the last year of its continuance only, an Assistant Minister--he remained till the spring of 1842. He then resigned the Rectorship, and devoted himself to the especial work to which the Church had called him. Still he evinced the same readiness as ever to perform at all times and in all places, the duties of his sacred office; and his missionary labors during this period, will ever attest his faithfulness to his vows as a priest of God. In 1843 Dr. Jarvis went to England, with a view to certain arrangements in connection with the publication of his Chronological Introduction, and returned in time for the General Convention of 1844. From this period, he was steadily engaged in the prosecution of the first volume of his History: though his attention was frequently called off by other demands upon his time and knowledge, among which may be particularly mentioned the compilation of a Harmony of the Gospels, the preparation of a work on Egypt--neither of which have yet been published--and the drawing up a reply to Milner's End of Controversy. At the same time, he was serving the Church as a Trustee of Trinity College, and of the General Theological Seminary; as the Secretary of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Connecticut, and Secretary and Treasurer of the Christian Knowledge Society; and as a member of Diocesan and General Conventions. Besides all this, there was a large field of service and usefulness--the labor and worth of which can only be estimated by one who should see the correspondence which it entailed--which was opened to him, by the requests continually made from all quarters, for his opinions on matters of Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship. His life was one of constant labor, and labor and trial wrought their work upon him. Scarcely had his last work (the first volume of his History) been issued from the press, when aggravated disease came upon him; and after lingering for some time, with unmurmuring patience and resignation, he died on the 26th of March, 1851, at the age of sixty-four. * * * * * THOMAS BURNSIDE, one of the justices of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, died in Germantown on the twenty-fifth of March. He was born in the county of Tyrone, Ireland, July 28th, 1782, and came to this country, with his father's family, in 1792. In November, 1800, he commenced the study of the law, with Mr. Robert Porter, in Philadelphia, and in the early part of 1804 was admitted to the bar, and removed to Bellefonte. In 1811 he was elected to the state Senate, and was an active supporter of the administration of Governor Snyder in all its war measures. In 1815 he was elected to Congress, and served during the memorable session of 1816. In the summer of the same year he was appointed by Governor Snyder President Judge of the Luzerne district. He resigned this post in 1818, and resumed the practice of his profession at Bellefonte. In 1823 he was again elected to the State Senate, of which body he was made speaker. In 1826 he was appointed President Judge of the Seventh Judicial District, which office he held until 1841. He was then appointed President Judge of the Fourth Judicial District, comprising the counties of Bucks and Montgomery. On the first of January, 1845, he was commissioned one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, an office which he filled at the time of his death. Judge Burnside was a man of fine social qualities, and few persons have had more friends. * * * * * ISAAC HILL, Governor of New Hampshire, United States senator, &c., was born at Cambridge, the part now called Somerville, Mass., April 6th, 1788. He was a descendant of Abraham Hill of Charlestown, who was admitted _freeman_ 1640, and died at Malden, February 13, 1670, leaving two sons, Isaac and Abraham. From the latter of these, and fifth in descent, was Isaac, the father of Governor Hill. His mother was Hannah Russell, a descendant of the Cambridge family of that name, "ever distinguished in the annals of Massachusetts."[M] His ancestors were stanch patriots, on both sides, and served with credit in the old French and Indian wars, and his immediate predecessors were among the earliest and the most efficient of the "Sons of Liberty," well known for their undaunted spirit in encouraging resistance to the arbitrary and oppressive acts which occasioned the Revolution. The circumstances in which the war and other calamities had placed his family were extremely unfavorable to the enjoyment of any educational privileges, and he was debarred from most opportunities of acquiring even the rudiments of that culture now common and free to all. But he struggled manfully with these difficulties, the sharp discipline of Necessity giving to him an early training well calculated to impress his character with the seal of manliness and self-reliance. His intellectual constitution was early accustomed to the keen atmosphere of wholesome severity; and it nerved and braced him for the warfare of his subsequent career. In it, too, we may find the origin of his peculiar traits as a writer and a politician. He wrote in a vigorous but not polished style, and all his productions were more forcible than elegant. But their very bareness and sinewy proportions opened their way to the hearts of the people whom he addressed. His prejudices were their prejudices, and in the most earnest expression of his own strongest feeling and passion he found the echo from the multitude of the democracy of his adopted state. His childhood and early youth thus formed, his next step was in the learning his trade, or acquiring his profession: for if any occupation in life combines more elements of professional knowledge than another, it is that of a printer-editor. Though not an indented apprentice, he served his _seven years' time_ with faithfulness, and acquired those habits of patient, persevering industry which characterized his whole subsequent career. The printing-office has been the college and university to many of the most distinguished of our citizens: and that which he founded at Concord has been the _Alma Mater_ of a series of graduates, of whom old Dartmouth might justly be proud, could she enroll them among her Alumni. Although the paper published by Mr. Cushing, with whom young Hill learned his profession, was strongly federal, he retained the strong democratic prejudices of his father's house, which he afterwards so zealously advocated in more responsible positions. He went to Concord, N. H, on the 5th April 1809, the day before he attained his majority. He bought an establishment of six months' standing, from which had been issued the _American Patriot_, a democratic paper, but not conducted with any great efficiency, and therefore not considered as yet "a useful auxiliary in the cause of republicanism." On the 18th of April, 1809, was issued the first number of the _New Hampshire Patriot_, a paper destined to exert an immense influence in that state from that time to the present. The press on which it was printed was the identical old _Ramage_ press on which had been struck off the first numbers of the old _Connecticut Courant_, forty-five years before, that is, in 1764. The first number of the paper is before us. It bears for its motto the following sentiment of Madison, "Indulging no passions which trespass on the rights of others, it shall be our true glory to cultivate peace by observing justice." Among the selections is a portion of the famous speech of William B. Giles, in the Senate, February 13th, 1809, in support of the resolution for a repeal of the Embargo, and substituting non-intercourse with the aggressing belligerents, offered by him on the 8th of the same month. In the next number of the paper the editor expresses the opinion that "the man, who, after reading this lucid exposition of British aggressions, can blame his own government--can accuse the administration of a want of forbearance, and a wish to provoke a war with England without cause, must be wilfully blind or perversely foolish." This recalls at once the circumstances of the time, shortly after the beginning of Madison's administration, and during the Embargo. Democracy was odious in New England, where the prostration of her commercial interests, the ruin of many and serious injury of all her citizens, had rendered the administration exceedingly unpopular. The _Patriot_, however, steadily defended the administration and the war which followed. Probably there will always exist a difference of opinion with respect to the necessity or expediency of the war of 1812; but public opinion has given its sanction to what is now known as the "Second War of Independence." Since that time its advocates have been steadily supported by the country, and among them the subject of this sketch, who always referred with peculiar pride to that portion of his career--"the dark and portentous period which preceded the war." Mr. Hill continued to edit the Patriot until 1829, a period of twenty years; during which time he was twice chosen clerk of the State Senate, once Representative from the town of Concord, and State Senator four times. In 1828, he was the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senator, but was not elected. In 1829, he received the appointment of Second Comptroller of the Treasury Department from General Jackson, and discharged the duties of that office until April, 1830, when his nomination was rejected by the Senate of the United States. The light in which his rejection was regarded in New Hampshire, may be inferred from the fact that its result was his triumphant election to represent that State in the body which had rejected him. He continued in the Senate until 1836, when he was elected Governor of the State of New Hampshire by a very large majority. He was twice reëlected, in 1837 and 1838. In 1840, he was appointed Sub Treasurer at Boston, which he held until removed, in March, 1841, by the Harrison administration. About this time the policy of the radical party in New Hampshire, to which Mr. Hill had always adhered, became tainted with an ultraism, which he could not approve. He opposed their hostility to railroad and other corporations, with the same vigor which had always characterized his career. He was subjected to the proscription of the party, and formally "read out" of the church of the New Hampshire Democracy. He established a new paper, "Hill's New Hampshire Patriot," in which he revived his old reputation as an editor and political writer. The importance of the great internal improvements which he advocated, to the prosperity of the State, brought back the party from their wanderings into abstractions, and with this return to the old ways, came also the acknowledgment of the political orthodoxy of Mr. Hill. The new paper was united with the old Patriot--and one of his sons associated in the establishment. During the latter years of his life, he also published and edited the Farmer's Monthly Visiter, an agricultural paper. It was commenced January 15, 1839, and has been continued to the present time. It was devoted to the farming and producing interests, and its volumes contain much valuable matter; of which Gov. Hill's own personal sketches and reminiscences form no small portion. During the latter years of his life he suffered much from the disease which finally conquered his vigorous constitution. He bore little active part in political affairs--but took a lively interest in the success of the compromise measures--to which he referred in his last hours, as, in his opinion, most important in their bearing on the safety of the Union. He made great efforts to promote their passage, and probably did some service in the cause of the Union, to which he was ardently devoted. He recognized the compromises of the Constitution, with unwavering fidelity to its spirit. We regret our inability to give in this place some extracts from a letter of Daniel Webster, addressed to one of Mr. Hill's sons, upon the occasion of his death, which reflects equal honor upon the writer and its subject, in its recognition of the services to which we have referred. The present occasion affords no opportunity to review more particularly the events of Mr. Hill's political career of public service. It is to be hoped that some one may hereafter prepare the history of his life and times--which involves an important part of the political history of New Hampshire, and a corresponding connection with that of the whole country. We quote the following concluding paragraph of the notice in the New Hampshire Patriot of the 27th March, written by the present editor, Mr. Butterfield: "We have thus hastily and imperfectly noticed the prominent events in Governor Hill's life. Few men in this country have exerted so great an influence over the people of their States as he has over those of New Hampshire. He possessed great native talent, indomitable energy, industry and perseverance. As a political editor he had few equals, and his reputation in that field extended throughout the country. As a son, a husband, a brother, and a father, he has left a reputation honorable to himself, and which will cause his memory to be cherished. Although afflicted for many years with a painful disease, exerting at times an unfavorable influence upon his equanimity, yet we believe the "sober second thought" of those who reflect upon his past history and services and trials, will accord with what we have said of his estimable private character, and his naturally kind and amiable disposition. And now that his spirit has gone to another, and, we trust, a better world, the unkindness engendered by political and personal differences will be forgotten, the faults and errors of the dead will be forgiven, and our thoughts will rest only upon his many private virtues and eminent public services." The last illness of Mr. Hill was of about five weeks duration. He died of catarrhal consumption, in the city of Washington, Saturday, the 22d of March, 1851, at four o'clock, P. M. His remains were removed to Concord, New Hampshire, where his funeral took place on the 27th of March. [We have made free use in the preceding notice of C. P. Bradley's sketch (1835), and various articles in newspapers of the day.] * * * * * DAVID DAGGETT, LL. D., son of Thomas Daggett, of Attleborough, Massachusetts, was born in that town on the last day of the year 1764. He entered Yale College at fourteen, and graduated there with distinction in 1783. Pursuing his legal studies in New Haven, while he held the rectorship of the Hopkins Grammar School, he was admitted to the bar in 1785. For sixty-five years his life was identified with the history and prosperity of New Haven and of Connecticut. Besides the municipal offices which he held, including that of Mayor of New Haven, he was long a Professor of Yale College, in the Law School of which he was especially eminent. His last public station was that of Chief Justice of the State, from the duties of which he retired at the age of seventy, through the jealous wisdom of the constitution of Connecticut. His connection with the law school, however, continued till within a very few years, when his health became gradually impaired through the advance of age, though for the last year he enjoyed an unusual exemption from his infirmities. About the end of March his family became apprehensive of a change for the worse, and on Saturday, April 12th, he died, at the advanced age of eighty-six years. * * * * * MAJOR JAMES REES, born in Philadelphia in 1766, died at Geneva, New-York, on the 24th of March. He was in his youth a confidential cleric to Robert Morris, the financier; during the Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsylvania, he was a Deputy Quarter-Master General under Washington, and he held the same office under Wilkinson and under Izard, in the war of 1812. * * * * * MORDECAI M. NOAH, who for nearly half a century had been eminent as a politician and a journalist, and who was one of the most distinguished Jews of the present age, died in New-York on the 2nd of March. He was born in Philadelphia on the 19th of July, 1785, and at an early age was apprenticed to a carver and gilder in that city; but a love of literature and affairs induced the abandonment of that vocation for the more congenial one to which he devoted the chief part of his life. His editorial career commenced in Charleston, S. C., and some interesting passages of his history there are given in the first volume of Thomas's _Reminiscences_. In 1811 Mr. Madison appointed him consul at Riga, but he declined the place. In 1813 he was appointed by Mr. Monroe consul to Tunis, with a mission to Algiers. On the voyage his vessel was captured by a British frigate and taken to Plymouth. His diplomatic position exempted him from imprisonment, but he was detained several weeks, and did not reach his destination until February, 1814. Having accomplished the object of his mission, he crossed the Pyrenees, and visited Paris. After a brief residence in that city, he proceeded to Tunis, where he remained until recalled, in 1816. In 1819 he published a book of _Travels_, containing the result of his observations in Europe and Northern Africa, during a three years' residence in those countries. He now became one of the editors and proprietors of the _National Advocate_, in which he published the _Essays on Domestic Economy_, signed "Howard," which were subsequently printed in a volume. The next paper with which he was connected was the _Enquirer_, afterwards Courier & Enquirer, in the management of which he was associated with Colonel Webb. The several papers of which he was at various times editor or proprietor, or both, were the _National Advocate_, _Enquirer_, _Courier & Enquirer_, _Evening Star_, _Sun_, _Morning Star_, and _Weekly Messenger_. His most successful journal was the _Evening Star_, but he was eminently popular at all times as an editorial writer, and was very fortunate when he had, as in the _Evening Star_, or the _Sunday Times_, judicious business partners. Soon after his return from Africa occurred his celebrated attempt to assemble all the Jews of the world on this continent, and build a new Jerusalem at Grand Island, in the Niagara River. In 1821 he was elected sheriff of the city and county of New-York. During his term of office the yellow fever broke out, and he opened the doors of the prisons and let go all who were confined for debt--an act of generous humanity which cost him several thousand dollars. He was admitted to the bar of this city in 1823, and to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1829. In 1829 he was also appointed, by President dent Jackson, Surveyor of the Port of New-York, which office he shortly afterward resigned. In the political contest of 1840, he took part against Mr. Van Buren, whom he had long regarded with distrust, and voted for General Harrison. In 1841 he was appointed by Governor Seward, Judge of the Court of Sessions. He was probably the only Hebrew who occupied a judicial station in Christendom. During the same year he was made Supreme Court Commissioner. When a change in the organization of the Court of Sessions took place he resigned his seat on the bench, and soon returned to his old profession. In 1843 he became one of the editors and proprietors of the _Sunday Times_, with which he was connected when he died. Major Noah was a very rapid and an industrious writer. Besides his _Travels in England, France, Spain, and the Barbary States, in the Years 1813, 1814, and 1815_, and the _Howard Papers on Domestic Economy_, he published several orations and addresses on political, religious and antiquarian subjects; edited _The Book of Jasher_, and wrote numerous successful plays, of which an account may be found in Dunlap's _History of the Stage_. The most prominent of them were, _She would be a Soldier, or the Plains of Chippewa_; _Ali Pacha, or the Signet Ring_; _Marion, or the Hero of Lake George_; _Nathalie, or the Frontier Maid_; _Yusef Caramali, or the Siege of Tripoli_; _The Castle of Sorrento_, _The Siege of Daramatta_, _The Grecian Captive_, and _Ambition._ He for a long time contemplated writing _Memoirs of his Times_, and he published in the _Evening Star_ many interesting reminiscences intended to form part of such work. Major Noah was a man of remarkable generosity of character, and in all periods of his life was liberal of his means, to Christians as well as to Jews: holding the place of President in the Hebrew Benevolent Society, and being frequently selected as adviser in other temporary or permanent associations for the relief of distress. As a politician he was perhaps not the most scrupulous in the world, but there was rarely if ever any bitterness in his controversies. In religion he was sincere and earnest, and the Hebrews in America we believe uniformly held his character in respect * * * * * JOHN S. SKINNER, who was for a long time editor of the _Turf Register_ at Baltimore, and who more recently conducted the very able magazine _The Plow, the Loom, and the Anvil_, died from an accident, in Baltimore, on the 28th of March, aged about sixty years. He had held the appointment of Post-Master at Baltimore for a period of twenty years, though removed from it fifteen years ago, and he was afterward Assistant Post-Master General. Intending to hurry out from the Baltimore Post-Office--which he had entered for some business with his successor--into the street, he inadvertently opened a door leading to the basement of the building, and before he could recover himself, plunged head foremost down the flight of steps. His skull was fractured, and he survived in a state of insensibility for a few hours only. * * * * * BREVET-MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE M. BROOKE, of the United States Army, died at San Antonio, Texas, on the ninth of March. General Brooke entered the army, from Virginia, on the third of May, 1808, as First Lieutenant in the Fourth Infantry. He had received four brevets during his military life, and at the time of his death he was in command of the Eighth Military Department, (Texas,) and engaged in planning an expedition against the Indians. * * * * * FERDINAND GOTTHELF HAND, Professor of Greek Literature at the University of Jena, died on the 14th March, at the age of sixty-five. He is best known for his work on the _Æsthetik der Foukunst_. He had filled his professorship since 1817. * * * * * M. JACOBI died on the nineteenth of February at Berlin. He was well known to the scientific world by his electro-chemical researches. * * * * * HANS CHRISTIAN OERSTED, the great Danish naturalist, died at Copenhagen on the seventeenth of March, aged seventy-four. He was the son of an apothecary of Rudkjobing, in the province of Larzeland. Fourteen days before his death he gave a scientific lecture at the University of Copenhagen, where he was Professor of Natural Science. He was nearly of the same age with Thorwaldsen and Oehlenschlager. His last work, _Der Geist in der Natur_, was not long since the subject of remark in these pages. His fame as the discoverer of electro-magnetism, (which discovery he made, after laborious researches, on the fifth of June 1821,) and as a profound and genial thinker, will be immortal. At Rudkjobing he received his early education with his brother Anders Sandöe Oersted, a distinguished senator of Denmark, and for some years one of the ministers of state. Christian Oersted was sent to Copenhagen to study medicine. After completing his course of pharmacy, he directed his powers to the study of natural philosophy, and greatly distinguished himself in that science, of which he subsequently became University Professor. His grand discovery of electro-magnetism led to the subsequent development of the electric telegraph. In 1807 he wrote his work reviving the hypothesis of the identity of magnetism and electricity, in which he arrived at the conclusion--that "in galvanism the force is more latent than in electricity, and still more so in magnetism than in galvanism; it is necessary, therefore, to try whether electricity, in its latent state, will not affect the magnetic needle." No experiment appears, however, to have been made to determine the question until 1820, when Oersted placed a magnetic needle within the influence of a wire connecting the extremities with a voltaic battery. The voltaic current was now, for the first time, observed to produce a deviation of the magnetic needle in different directions, and in different degrees, according to the relative situation of the wire and needle. By subsequent experiment Oersted proved that the wire became, during the time the battery was in action, magnetic, and that it affected a magnetic needle through glass, and every other non-conducting body, but that it had no action on a needle similarly suspended, that was not magnetic. To Professor Oersted is also due the important discovery, that electro-magnetic effects do not depend upon the intensity of the electricity, but solely on its quantity. By these discoveries an entirely new branch of science was established, and all the great advances which have been made in our knowledge of the laws which regulate the magnetic forces in their action upon matter, are to be referred to the discovery by Oersted, that by an electric current magnetism could be induced. He promulgated a theory of light, in which he referred luminous phenomena to electricity in motion; it has not, however, been favorably received. One of the most important observations first made by him, and since then confirmed by others, was, that a body falling from a height not only fell a little to the east of the true perpendicular--which is, no doubt, due to the earth's motion--but that it fell to the _south_ of that line; the cause of this is at present unexplained. It is, no doubt, connected with some great phenomena of gravitation which yet remain to be discovered. At the meeting of the British Association at Southampton, Professor Oersted communicated to the Chemical Section some curious examples of the influence of time in determining chemical change, as shown in the action of mercury upon glass in hermetically sealed vessels. The character of Professor Oersted's mind was essentially searching and minute; thus he observed results which escaped detection in the hands of those who took more general and enlarged views of natural phenomena. To this was due the discovery of electro-magnetism, which will for ever connect his name with the history of inductive science. As Director of the Polytechnic Institution of Copenhagen, of which he was the founder, and of the Society for the Diffusion of Natural Sciences, and as Perpetual Secretary of the Royal Academy of Sciences since 1815, his labors were unceasing and of great benefit to his country. He was for many years attached to the Military College of Cadets of Copenhagen, and only resigned when he could be succeeded by one of his own pupils. His manners and demeanor were extremely modest and unobtrusive. The British Royal Society awarded him the Copley Medal for his discovery in electro-magnetism, and the Academy of Sciences of Paris presented him with their Gold Medal. Both Societies elected him a Foreign Member. * * * * * HENRI DELATOUCHE, who died early in March at Aulnay, France, was born February 3d, 1785. His first work was _Fragoletta_, a book treating in an original way the revolution of Naples in 1799; it was the fruit of a long sojourn in Italy, a genuine production of genius, in which the chapters devoted to antique art are especially remarkable. During the Hundred Days he was the secretary of Marshal Brune, and was made sub-prefect of Toulon. The downfall of Napoleon deprived him of office, and restored him to literature and general politics. During the Restoration he gained great applause by his eloquent and successful defence of his father, who was tried before a political court, and but for his son would have been one of the victims of that bloody period. He was prominent in the agitation of public questions through that time, and through the ten first years of Louis Philippe. He was intimate with B. Constant Chateaubriand, Madame Recamier, Gros, Gerard, Armand Carrel, Godfrey Cavaignac, Beranger, and George Sand. He was one of the editors of the _National_, and the chief writer of the brilliant and effective _Figaro_. His books were _Fragoletta_, _Aymar_, _France et Marie_, _Lettres de Clement XIV. et de Carlo Bertinazzi_, _Les Adieux_. Though he adopted the form of romance, the purpose of his writings was historical and didactic. In the latter part of his life he made preparations to write a _Histoire des Conjurations pour la Liberté_, but did not accomplish it. He was a man of noble character and remarkable genius. His conversation was brilliant and fascinating. Since Diderot, it is said that France has produced no talker to be compared with him. George Sand frequently compares him to Rousseau. Like that philosopher, toward the close of his life he manifested a passionate love of nature and solitude. He spent his time laboring in his garden, and living in the most frugal manner. The aged and manly poet was beloved of the neighboring peasants, as well as by the friends he had left behind him in the great world; and though he had often criticised his contemporaries with extreme severity, sometimes even with injustice, he left no enemies. * * * * * Among the persons lately deceased who are worthy of mention is Madame DE SERMETZY, who died at her country seat, near the French city of Lyons, at the age of eighty-one years. Had circumstances favored the development of her genius, she would have acquired a name among the sculptors of the time. She left behind her a number of works in terra cotta. A Psyche of life-size is said to be full of expression and grace; a Plato is remarkable for anatomical correctness and manly force. Both are in the Academy at St. Pierre. She also modelled a Sappho, a Lesbia, and some dozen busts. Of smaller works, statuettes and groups, she has left some two hundred in terra cotta, among them a St Augustine, said to be admirable for expression and nobleness. The churches constantly received from her gifts of beautiful angels and madonnas. A few years before her death she modelled a madonna of the size of life, which is one of her best works. Want of means alone prevented her from executing her productions in marble. She was also familiar with the literature, not only of her own nation, but of the Latin, Spanish, Italian, and English languages, which she spoke with fluency and correctness, a rare accomplishment for a French woman. During the Empire and the Restoration she was intimate with Madame Recamier and Madame de Staël, and for penetration and readiness of mind and charm of manners was not unworthy to be named with these remarkable women. * * * * * MARSHAL DODE DE LA BRUNIERE, one of the soldiers of Napoleon, who raised him to the rank of Lieutenant-General, and employed him in many important services, died at Paris on the 28th February, aged seventy-seven. He served in the campaign of Egypt as a lieutenant of engineers. After the siege of Saragossa he was made a colonel. He participated in all the great battles of the empire, and was finally made a peer of France and a marshal by Louis Philippe, after having directed the construction of the gigantic fortifications around Paris. He was a frank, affable, and kind-hearted man. * * * * * M. MAILLAU, one of the most productive of Paris dramatists, died in that city March, twelfth, aged forty-five. He was born in Guadaloupe, and began life in France as a lawyer, but soon abandoned that profession to write for the stage. He wrote a large number of dramas, some of which were very successful. The last one, called _La Révolution Française_, has run a hundred and fifty nights, and is still performing. He was an excellent fellow, and nobody's enemy but his own. * * * * * DR. HENRY DE BRESLAU, senior of the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Munich, died lately. He was second medical officer on the staff of Napoleon, under Larrey, and followed the French army in the Russian campaign. He was made prisoner on the field of Waterloo. France, Bavaria, Saxony, Greece, and Portugal, had recognized his scientific eminence by severally enrolling his name among their orders of chivalry. * * * * * COMMISSIONER LIN, whose seizure and destruction of the opium in 1839 led to the war with China, died suddenly on the eighteenth of November last, while on his way to the insurrectionary district of Quan-si. * * * * * JOHN LOUIS YANOSKI was born at Lons-le-Saulnier, France, March 9, 1813, and died at Paris early in February last. Though not known much out of his own country, few literary men have possessed more admirable and substantial qualities. He was feeble in bodily powers, but endowed with indefatigable ardor in the pursuit of intellectual objects, and a mind at once penetrating and judicious. He was educated in the College of Versailles. In 1836 he became a tutor in history at the University at Paris. Subsequently he was selected by Thierry to assist in the preparation of his history of the Tiers-Etat, and spent four years in working upon it. At the same time he labored assiduously in other directions. In 1839 he gained two prizes from the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, one for a memoir on the organization of the national forces from the twelfth century to the reign of Charles VII; the other for an essay on the abolition of slavery in antiquity. In 1841 the Academy selected him to prepare, under the direction of M. Mignet, a view of the progress of the moral and political sciences, a work which was not completed when he died. In 1840 he was made professor of history in Stanislas College; in 1842 Michelet chose him for his substitute at the College of France, but in that capacity he gave but a single lecture, being seized while speaking with hemorrhage of the lungs, from which he did not recover for several months. Notwithstanding the labors required by all these occupations he found time to write for Didot's _Univers Pittoresque_ a history of Carthage from the second Punic war to the Vandal invasion, a history of the Vandal rule and the Byzantine restoration, another of the African Church, and one of the Church of Ancient Syria. He also furnished many important articles to the Encyclopedic Dictionary, wrote often for the _National_ newspaper, and for two years was chief editor of the _Nouvelle Revue Encyclopédique_. He was a republican in sentiment, and a character of exceeding nobleness and energy. * * * * * COLONEL COUNT D'HOZIER, a distinguished French officer, who was compromised in the affair of Georges Cadoudal, died early in March, in Paris, aged seventy-seven. On the occasion of the conspiracy referred to, he was sentenced to death, but obtained his pardon through the interference of the Empress Josephine, and as a commutation of his punishment was imprisoned until the year 1814 in the prison of the Chateau d'If--the scene of the confinement of Dumas' hero, the Comte de Montechristo. * * * * * M. GEORGE BRENTANO, the oldest banker at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, died a few weeks ago, aged eighty-eight. He was brother of two persons well known in the world of letters, M. Clement Brentano and the Countess Bettina d'Arnim, the correspondent of Goëthe. * * * * * FREDERIC XAVIER FERNBACH, the inventor of that mode of encaustic painting which is called by his name, died at Munich on the 27th February. A history of his experiments and inventions was published many years ago. * * * * * M. JULES MARTIEN, author of a volume on _Christianity in America_, died in Paris on the twenty-first of March. FOOTNOTES: [M] Farmer's Genealogical Register: Articles _Hill-Russell_. "OTSEGO HALL," THE RESIDENCE OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. [Illustration] In the delightful home which in the above engraving is reflected with equal spirit and fidelity, our great novelist has composed the larger portion of those admirable tales and histories that display his own capacities, and the characteristics and tendencies of our people. Here also was written the beautiful work by Mr. COOPER'S daughter, entitled "Rural Hours." Could any thing tempt to such authorship more strongly than a residence thus quiet, and surrounded with birds, and flowers, and trees, and all the picturesque varieties of land and water which render Cooperstown a paradise to the lover of nature? In the last _International_ we sketched the career of Mr. Cooper, and gave an account of his writings, and an estimate of their value. What we add here shall relate to the work which entitles his daughter to share his eminence. "Rural Hours" is one of the most charming contributions literature has ever received from the hand of a woman. Though in the simple form of a diary, it is scarcely less than Thomson's "Seasons" a poem; yet while seeming continually to reflect the most poetical phases of nature and of rural life--so delicate is the appreciation of natural beauty, and so pure and unaffected and exquisitely graceful the style of composition--it has throughout even a Flemish truth and particularity of detail. If we were called upon to name a literary performance that is more than any other American in its whole character, we cannot now think of one that would sooner receive this praise. A record of real observations during the daily walks of many years in a secluded town, or of the changes which the seasons brought with their various gifts and forces into domestic experience, it is a series of pictures which could no more have been made in another country than so many paintings on canvas of scenes by Otsego lake. The leaves are blown over by Otsego airs, or if the eye grows heavy and the pages are unturned it is for slumberous spells that attach to delineations of the sunshine and silence of Otsego's August noons. And the views Miss Cooper gives us of the characters and occupations of the agricultural population in that part of the country, who wear curiously interblended the old English and Dutch habits with here and there a sign of the French, and the republican freedom which in three generations has taken the tone of nature, are as distinctive as the descriptions of changes which the maple assumes in the autumn, or of the harvest of Indian corn, or a deer hunt in the snow. Upon a careless reading of "Rural Hours" we might fancy that Miss Cooper was less familiar than perhaps should be for such a task with botany and other sciences, but a closer study of the book reveals the most minute and comprehensive knowledge, so interfused that it is without technical forms only, and never deficient in precision. The style is everywhere not only delightfully free, while artistically finished, but it is remarkably pure, so that there is in the literature of this country not a specimen of more genuine English. In this respect the work of one of the most highly and variously educated women of our time, to whom the languages of the politest nations were through all her youth familiar in their courts, may be well compared with the compositions which "literary ladies" with Phrase Books make half French or half Italian. GEORGE W. DEWEY. [Illustration] Of our younger and minor poets no one has more natural grace and tenderness than GEORGE W. DEWEY. The son of a painter, and himself the Secretary of the Philadelphia Art Union, it may be supposed that he is well instructed in the principles upon which effect depends; but while native genius, as it is called, is of little value without art, no man was ever made a poet by art alone, and it is impossible to read "Blind Louise," "A Memory," or "A Blighted May," without perceiving that Mr. Dewey's commission has both the sign and the countersign, in due form, so that his right to the title of poet is in every respect unquestionable. He has not written much, but whatever he has given to the public is written well, and all his compositions have the signs of a genuineness that never fails to please. There is no collection of his poems, but from the journals to which he contributes we have selected the following specimens: A MEMORY. It was a bright October day-- Ah, well do I remember! One rose yet bore the bloom of May, Down toward the dark December. One rose that near the lattice grew, With fragrance floating round it: Incarnardined, it blooms anew In dreams of her who found it. Pale, withered rose, bereft and shorn Of all thy primal glory, All leafless now, thy piercing thorn Reveals a sadder story. It was a dreary winter day; Too well do I remember! They bore her frozen form away, And gave her to December! There were no perfumes on the air, No bridal blossoms round her, Save one pale lily in her hair To tell how pure Death found her. The thistle on the summer air Hath shed its iris glory, And thrice the willows weeping there Have told the seasons' story, Since she, who bore the blush of May, Down towards the dark December Pass'd like the thorn-tree's bloom away, A pale, reluctant ember. BLIND LOUISE. She knew that she was growing blind-- Forsaw the dreary night That soon would fall, without a star, Upon her fading sight: Yet never did she make complaint, But pray'd each day might bring A beauty to her waning eyes-- The loveliness of Spring! She dreaded that eclipse which might Perpetually inclose Sad memories of a leafless world-- A spectral realm of snows. She'd rather that the verdure left An evergreen to shine Within her heart, as summer leaves Its memory on the pine. She had her wish: for when the sun O'erhung his eastern towers, And shed his benediction on A world of May-time flowers-- We found her seated, as of old, In her accustom'd place, A midnight in her sightless eyes, And morn upon her face! A BLIGHTED MAY. Call not this the month of roses-- There are none to bud and bloom; Morning light, alas! discloses But the winter of the tomb. All that should have deck'd a bridal Rest upon the bier--how idle! Dying in their own perfume. Every bower is now forsaken-- There's no bird to charm the air! From the bough of youth is shaken Every hope that blossom'd there; And my soul doth now inrobe her In the leaves of sere October Under branches swaying bare. When the midnight falls beside me, Like the gloom which in me lies, To the stars my feelings guide me, Seeking there thy sainted eyes; Stars whose rays seem ever bringing Down the soothing air, the singing Of thy soul in paradise. Oh, that I might stand and listen To that music ending never, While those tranquil stars should glisten On my life's o'erfrozen river, Standing thus, for ever seeming Lost in what the world calls dreaming, Dreaming, love, of thee, forever! THE SHADY SIDE. I sat and gazed upon thee, ROSE, Across the pebbled way, And thought the very wealth of mirth Was thine that winter day; For while I saw the truant rays Within thy window glide, Remember'd beams reflected came Upon the shady side. I sat and gazed upon thee, ROSE, And thought the transient beams Were leaving on thy braided brow The trace of golden dreams; Those dreams, which like the ferry-barge On youth's beguiling tide, Will leave us when we reach old age, Upon the shady side. Ah! yes, methought while thus I gazed Across the noisy way, The stream of life between us flow'd That cheerful winter day; And that the bark whereon I cross'd The river's rapid tide, Had left me in the quietness Upon the shady side. Then somewhat of a sorrow, ROSE, Came crowding on my heart, Revealing how that current sweeps The fondest ones apart; But while you stood to bless me there, In beauty, like a bride, I felt my own contentedness, Though on the shady side. The crowd and noise divide us, ROSE, But there will come a day When you, with light and timid feet, Must cross the busy way; And when you sit, as I do now, To happy thoughts allied, May some bright angel shed her light Upon the shady side! _Ladies' Fashions for the Early Summer._ [Illustration] _Costume for a Young Girl._--In the above engraving the largest figure has boots of pale violet cachmere and morocco; trowsers of worked cambric; and dress of a pale chocolate cachmere, trimmed with narrow silk fringe, the double robings on each side of the front as well as the cape, on the half-high corsage, ornamented with a double row of narrow silk fringe, this trimming repeated round the lower part of the loose sleeve; the chemisette of plaited cambric, headed with a broad frill of embroidery; full under sleeves of cambric, with a row of embroidery round the wrist; open bonnet of pink satin, a row of white lace encircling the interior next the face. The second miss has button gaiter boots of chocolate cachmere; trowsers and undersleeves of white embroidered cambric; frock of plaided cachmere; _paletot_ of purple velvet; hat of a round shape, of white satin, the low crown adorned with a long white ostrich feather. _The Boy's Dress_ is made to correspond as nearly as may be with that of the youngest girl--embroidered pantalettes, and under sleeves trimmed with pointed lace. [Illustration] _Ladies' Morning Promenade Costume._--A high dress of black satin, the body fitting perfectly tight; has a small jacket cut on the _biais_, with row of black velvet laid on a little distance from the edge; the sleeves are rather large, and have a broad cuff turned back, which is trimmed to correspond with the jacket; the skirt is long and full; the dress is ornamented up the front in its whole length by rich fancy silk trimmings, graduating in size from the bottom of the skirt to the waist, and again increasing to the throat. _Capote_ of plum-colored satin; sometimes plain, sometimes with a bunch of hearts-ease, intermixed with ribbon, placed low on the left side, the same flowers, but somewhat smaller, ornamenting the interior. _Evening Dress_ of white _tulle_, worn over a _jape_ of rich pink satin; the waist and point of a moderate length; the sleeves and front of the corsage covered with fullings of _tulle_, clasped at equal distances by narrow bands of green satin; the skirt extremely full, and looped up on each side; the trimming, which reaches from the waist on each side the point to the bottom of the skirt, composed of loops of green satin ribbon edged with gold. Magnificent ribbons or beautiful flowers accompany the light trimmings which ornament the lighter evening dresses. A young lady is never more beautiful than when dressed in one of those robes, so rich in their simplicity, and distinguished by their embroideries, form, and trimmings. A robe of tarlatane, trimmed with seven flounces, deeply scalloped and worked with straw colored silk, is much in vogue. The same trimming, proportionably narrow, covers the berthe and sleeves. When worked with white silk, this dress is still more stylish. White or black lace canezous, worn with low-bodied silk dresses, are very much admired. They are open over the chest, and more or less worn with basques or straight trimmings round the waist, with half long sleeves, fastened up on the front, for the arm, by a ribbon bow. _Dress Hats_ are principally made of _tulle_ or gauze _lisse_--those of the latter texture, made in white, of folds with rows of white gauze ribbon. 
37904	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections.) THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE Of Literature, Art, and Science. Vol. IV. NEW-YORK, NOVEMBER 1, 1851. No. IV. THE GREAT EXHIBITION OF THE NEW-YORK STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY AT ROCHESTER. [Illustration: EXTERIOR OF THE FAIR.] This is an age of Exhibitions. From the humble collection of cattle and counter-panes, swine and "garden sauce," at the central village of some secluded County, up to the stupendous "World's Fair" at London, wherein all nations and all arts are represented, "Industrial Expositions," as the French more accurately term them, are the order of the day. And this is well--nay, it is inspiring. It proves the growth and diffusion of a wider and deeper consciousness of the importance and dignity of Labor as an element of national strength and social progress. That corn and cloth are essential to the comfortable subsistence of the human family, and of every portion of it, was always plain enough; but the truth is much broader than that. Not food alone, but knowledge, virtue, power, depend upon the subtle skill of the artificer's fingers, the sturdy might of the husbandman's arm. Let these fail, through the blighting influence of despotism, licentiousness, superstition, or slavery, and the national greatness is cankered at the root, and its preservation overtasks the ability of Phocion, of Hannibal, of Cato. A nation flourishes or withers with the development and vigor of its Industry. It may prosper and be strong without statesmen, warriors, or jurists; it fades and falls with the decline of its arts and its agriculture. Wisely, therefore, do rulers, nobles, field marshals and archbishops, unite in rendering the highest honors to eminence in the domain of Industry, dimly perceiving that it is mightier and more enduring than their petty and fragile potencies. The empire of Napoleon, though so lately at its zenith, has utterly passed away, while that of Fulton is still in its youth. A State Agricultural Society, numbering among its members some thousands of her foremost citizens, mainly but not wholly farmers, is one of the most commendable institutions of this great and growing commonwealth. Aided liberally by the State government, it holds an Annual Fair at some one of the chief towns of the interior, generally on the line of the Erie Canal, whereby the collection of stock and other articles for exhibition is facilitated, and the cost thereof materially lessened. Poughkeepsie, Albany, Saratoga Springs, Utica, Syracuse (twice), Auburn, Rochester (twice), and Buffalo, are the points at which these Fairs have been held within the last ten years. Recently, the railroads have transported cattle, &c., for exhibition, either at half-price, or entirely without charge, while the State's bounty and the liberal receipts for admission to the grounds have enabled the managers to stimulate competition by a very extensive award of premiums, so that almost every recurrence of the State Fair witnesses a larger and still more extensive display of choice animals. Whether the improvement in quality keeps pace with the increase in number is a point to be maturely considered. The Fair of this year was held at ROCHESTER, in a large open field about a mile south of the city, and of course near the Genesee river. Gigantic stumps scattered through it, attested how recently this whole region was covered with the primeval forest. Probably fifty thousand persons now live within sight of the Rochester steeples, though not a human being inhabited this then dense and swampy wilderness forty years ago. And here, almost wholly from a region which had less than five thousand white inhabitants in 1810, not fewer than one hundred thousand persons, two-thirds of them adult males, were drawn together expressly to witness this exhibition. The number who entered the gates on Thursday alone exceeded seventy-five thousand, while the attendance on the two preceding days and on Friday, of persons who were not present on Thursday, must have exceeded twenty-five thousand. Of course, many came with no definite purpose, no previous preparation to observe and learn, and so carried home nothing more than they brought there, save the head-ache, generated by their irregularities and excesses while absent; but thousands came qualified and resolved to profit by the practical lessons spread before them, and doubtless went away richly recompensed for the time and money expended in visiting the Fair. This Annual Exhibition is as yet the Farmers' University; they will in time have a better, but until then they do well to make the most of that which already welcomes them to its cheap, ready and practical inculcations. [Illustration: ROCHESTER.] The President of the State Society for this year is Mr. JOHN DELAFIELD, long a master spirit among our Wall-street financiers, and for some years President of the Phenix bank. He was finally swamped by the rascality of the State of Illinois in virtually repudiating her public debt, whereby Mr. Delafield, who had long acted as her financial agent in New-York, and had staked his fortune on her integrity, was reduced from affluence to need. Nothing daunted by this reverse, he promptly transferred his energies from finance to agriculture, taking hold of a large farm in Seneca County, near the beautiful village of Geneva; and on this farm he soon proved himself one of the best practical agriculturists in our State. Before he had been five years on the soil, he was already teaching hundreds of life-long cultivators, by the quiet force of his successful example, how to double the product of their lands and more than double their annual profits. His enlightened and admirable husbandry has finally called him to the post he now occupies--one not inferior in true dignity and opportunity for usefulness to that of Governor of the State. And this is a fair specimen of the elasticity of the American character and its capacity for adapting itself to any and every change of circumstances. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE FAIR.] The Annual Address at this Fair was delivered by the Hon. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, now U. S. Senator from Illinois, and a very probable "Democratic" candidate for next President of the United States. It was an able and well enunciated discourse, devoted mainly to political economy as affecting agriculture, taking the "free trade" view of this important and difficult subject, and evidently addressed quite as much to southern politicians as to New-York farmers; but it embodied many practical suggestions of decided force and value. This address has already received a very wide circulation. A public entertainment was proffered on Thursday evening to the officers of the State Society, on behalf of the city of Rochester, which was attended by ex-President TYLER, GOV. WASHINGTON HUNT, ex-Governor and ex-Secretary MARCY, GEN. WOOL, Governor WRIGHT of Indiana, &c. &c. Senator DOUGLAS arrived in the train just before the gathering broke up. The presence of ladies, and the absence of liquors, were the most commendable features of this festivity, which was convened at an absurdly late hour, and characterized by an afflictive amount of dull speaking. Such an entertainment is very well on an occasion like this, merely as a means of enabling the congregated thousands to see and hear the celebrities convened with them; but it should be given in the afternoon or beginning of the evening, should cost very little (the speaking being dog-cheap and the eatables no object), and should in nearly all respects be just what the Rochester festival was not. As an exercise in false hospitality, however, and a beacon for future adventurers in the same line, this entertainment had considerable merit. [Illustration: AZALIA. _The best Short-Horned Durham Cow over Three Years Old: Owned by Lewis G. Morris._] [Illustration: LORD ERYHOLM. _The best Two Year Old Short-Horned Durham Bull: Owned by Lewis G. Morris._] NEAT CATTLE stood first in intrinsic value among the classes of articles exhibited at the Fair. Probably not less than One Thousand of these were shown on this occasion, including imported bulls and cows, working-oxen, fat steers, blood-heifers, calves, &c. &c. Of these we could not now say whether the Durham or Devonshire breed predominated, but the former had certainly no such marked ascendency as at former Fairs. Our impression from the statements of disinterested breeders was and is, that where cattle are bred mainly for the market, a larger weight of flesh may be obtained at an early age from the Durham than from any rival breed, though not of the finest quality; while for milk or butter the Devon is, and perhaps one or two other breeds are, preferable. But this is merely the inference of one, who has no experience in the premises, from a comparison of the statements of intelligent breeders of widely differing preferences. Probably each of the half-dozen best breeds is better adapted to certain localities and purposes than any other; and intelligent farmers assert, that we still need some breeds not yet introduced in this country, especially the small Black Cattle of the Scottish Highlands, which, from their hardiness, excellence of flesh, small cost for wintering, &c., are specially adapted to our own rugged upland districts, particularly that which half covers the north-eastern quarter of our State. The subject is one of the deepest interest to agriculturists, and is destined to receive a thorough investigation at their hands. [Illustration: EARL SEAHAM. _The best Short-Horned Durham Bull over Three Years Old: Owned by J. M. Sherwood and A. Stevens._] [Illustration: DEVON. _The best Devon Bull over Three Years Old: Owned by W. P. and C. S. Wainwright._] [Illustration: TROMP. _The best Hereford Bull, over Three Years Old: Owned by Allen Ayrault._] [Illustration: KOSSUTH AND BRISKA. _Best Foreign (Hungarian) Cattle, over Two Years Old: Owned by Roswell L. Colt._] Of Horses, the number exhibited was of course much smaller--perhaps two hundred in all--embracing many animals of rare spirit, symmetry, and beauty. Some Canadian horses, and a few specimens of a famous Vermont breed (the Morgan) were among them. Our attention was not specially drawn in this direction, and we will leave the merits of the rival competitors to the awards of the judges. [Illustration: DEVON HEIFER. _Best three-fourth bred Devon Heifer: owned by George Shaeffer._] [Illustration: OLD CLYDE. _Best Foreign Horse: owned by Jane Ward, Markham, Canada West._] [Illustration: CONSTERNATION. _Best thorough-bred horse over four years old: owned by John B. Burnet._] [Illustration: SOUTH DOWN SHEEP. _Best Middle-Wooled Ewe, over Two Years Old: Owned by Lewis G. Morris._] Of Sheep, there were a large number present--at a rough guess, Two Thousand--embracing specimens of widely contrasted varieties. The fine-wooled Saxonies and Merioes were largely represented; so were coarse-wooled but fine-fleshed Bakewells and Southdowns. For three or four years past, the annual product of wool, especially of the finer qualities, has been unequal to the demand, causing a gradual appreciation of prices, until a standard has this year been reached above the value of the staple. Speculators, who had observed the gradual rise through two or three seasons, rushed in to purchase this year's clip, at prices which cannot be maintained, and the farmers have received some hundreds of thousands of dollars more for their wool than the buyers can ever sell it for. This has naturally reacted on the price of sheep, whereof choice specimens for breeding have been sold for sums scarcely exceeded during the celebrated Merino fever of 1816-18. _Bona fide_ sales for $100 each and over have certainly been made; and it is confidently asserted that picked animals from the flocks of a famous Vermont breeder were sold, to improve Ohio flocks, at the late Fair of that State--a buck for $1,000, and six ewes for $300 each. These reports, whether veritable or somewhat inflated, indicate a tendency of the times. Where sheep are grown mainly for the wool, it is as absurd to keep those of inferior grades, as to plant apple-trees without grafting and grow two or three bushels of walnut-sized, vinegar-flavored fruit on a tree which might as well have borne ten bushels of Spitzenbergs or Greenings. But there is room also for improvement and profit in the breeding of sheep other than the fine-wooled species. The famous roast-mutton of England ought to be more than rivaled among us; for we have a better climate and far better sheep-walks than the English in the rugged mountain districts of New-England, of Pennsylvania, and of our own State. The breeding of large, fine-fleshed sheep of the choicest varieties, on the lines of all the railroads communicating with the great cities, is one of the undertakings which promise largest and surest returns to our farmers, and it is yet in its infancy. A hundred thousand of such sheep would be taken annually by New-York and Philadelphia at largely remunerating prices. Thousands of acres of sterile, scantily timbered land on the Delaware and its branches might be profitably transformed into extensive sheep-walks, while they must otherwise remain useless and unimproved for ages. These lands may now be bought for a song, and are morally certain to be far higher within the next dozen years. [Illustration: LONG-WOOLED SHEEP. _Best long-wooled buck and ewe over two years old: owned by J. McDonald and Wm. Rathbone._] Of Swine there were a good many exhibited at the Fair, but we did not waste much time upon them. The Hog Crop once stood high among the products of the older States, but it has gradually fallen off since the settlement of the great West, and the cheapening of intercommunication between that section and the East, and is destined to sink still lower. Pork can be made on the prairies and among the nutwood forests and corn-bearing intervales of the West for half the cost of making it in New-England; no Yankee can afford to feed his hogs with corn, much less potatoes, as his grandfather freely did. Only on a dairy farm can any considerable quantity of pork be profitably made east of the Ohio; and he who keeps but a pig or two to eat up the refuse of the kitchen cares little (perhaps too little) for the breed of his porkers. So let them pass. "Fancy" Fowls are among the hobbies of our day, as was abundantly evinced at the State Fair. Coops piled on coops, and in rows twenty rods long, of Chinese, Dorking, and other breeds of the most popular domestic bird, monopolized a large share of attention; while geese, ducks, turkies, &c., were liberally and creditably represented. The "Hen Convention," which was a pet topic of Boston waggery a year or two since, might have been easily and properly held at Rochester. Many of these choice barn-yard fowls were scarcely inferior in size while doubtless superior in flavor to the ordinary turky, while the farmer who opens the spring with a hundred of them may half feed his family and at the same time quite keep down his store-bill with their daily products. Small economies steadily pursued are the source of thrift and competence to many a cultivator of flinty and ungenial acres; few farmers can afford to disregard them. If thrice the present number of fowls were kept among us, their care and food would scarcely be missed, while their product would greatly increase the aggregate not only of thrift but of comfort. [Illustration: J. DELAFIELD'S CHINESE HOGS.] "Floral Hall" was the name of a temporary though spacious structure of scantling and rough boards, in which were exhibited, in addition to a profusion of the flowers of the season, a display of Fruits and Vegetables whereof Rochester might well be proud. This city seems the natural centre of the finest fruit-growing district on the American continent--yes, in the whole world. Its high latitude secures the richest flavors, while the harsh northern winds, which elsewhere prove so baneful, are here softened by passing over lake Erie or Ontario, and a climate thus produced, which, for fruit, has no rival. Large delicious grapes of innumerable varieties; excellent peaches; delicate, juicy, luscious pears; quinces that really tempt the eye, though not the palate; and a profusion of fair, fragrant, golden, mammoth apples,--these were among the products of the immediate vicinity of Rochester exhibited in bounteous profusion. In the department of Vegetables also there were beets and turnips of gigantic size; several squashes weighing about one hundred and thirty pounds each; with egg-plants, potatoes, tomatoes, and other edibles, which were all that palate could desire. The fertility of western New-York is proverbial; but it was never more triumphantly set forth than in the fruit and vegetables exhibited at the State Fair. Of butter, cheese, honey, (obtained without destroying the bees,) maple-sugar &c., the display was much better than we have remarked on any former occasion. And in this connection the rock salt from our own State works around Syracuse deserves honorable mention. New-York salt has been treated with systematic injustice by western consumers. In order to save a shilling or two on the barrel, they buy the inferior article produced by boiling instead of the far better obtained by solar evaporation; then they endeavor to make a New-York standard bushel of fifty six pounds do the work of a measured bushel of Turks Island weighing eighty pounds; and because the laws regulating the preservation and decomposition of animal substances will not thus be swindled, they pronounce the New-York salt impure and worthless. Now there is no purer, no better salt than the New-York solar; but, even of this, fifty-six pounds will not do the work of eighty. Buy the best quality, (and even this is dog cheap,) use the proper quantity, and no salt in the world will preserve meats better than this. The New-York solar salt exhibited at Rochester could not be surpassed, and that which had been _ground_ has no superior in its adaptation to the table. There were many tasteful Counterpanes and other products of female skill and industry exhibited, but the perpetual crowd in the 'halls' devoted to manufactures allowed no opportunity for their critical examination. Of stoves and ranges, heating and (let us be thankful for it, even at this late day) ventilating apparatus and arrangements, there was a supply; and so of daguerreotypes, trunks, harness, &c. &c. Nothing, however, arrested our attention in this hall but the specimens of FLAX-COTTON and its various proportions exhibited by E. G. Roberts, assignee of Claussen's patents for the United States. We saw one intelligent influential citizen converted from skepticism to enthusiasm for flax-cotton by his first earnest examination. It _will_ go inevitably. A cotton fibre scarcely distinguishable from Sea Island may be produced from flax by Claussen's process for six cents per pound; and a machine for breaking out the fibre from the unrotted stalk was exhibited by Mr. Clemmons of Springfield, Massachusetts, which is calculated materially to expedite the flax-cotton revolution. This machine renders the entire fibre, with hardly a loss of two per cent. as 'swingle-tow,' straight and wholly separated from the woody substance or 'shives,' at a cost which can hardly equal one cent per pound of dressed flax. Its operation is very simple, and any man who has seen it work a day may manage it. Its entire cost is from $125 to $200, according to size. It will be a shame to American agricultural enterprise if flax-cotton and linen are not both among our country's extensive and important products within the next three years. The department of Agricultural Machinery and Implements was decidedly the most interesting of any. No other can at all equal it in the rapidity and universality of progress from year to year. Of Plows, there cannot have been less than two hundred on the ground, exhibiting a great variety of novel excellence. One with two shares, contrived to cut two furrows at once, seemed the most useful of any recently invented. The upper share cuts and turns the sward to the depth of five inches, which is immediately buried seven inches deep by the earth turned up by the deeper share. Since it is impossible to induce one farmer in twenty to subsoil, this, as the next best thing, ought to be universally adopted. Seed-Sowers, Corn-Planters, Reapers, Fanning-Mills, Straw-Cutters, &c., &c., were abundant, and evinced many improvements on the best of former years. A Mower with which a man, boy, and span of horses, will cut and spread ten acres per day of grass, however heavy, on tolerably level land--both cutting and spreading better than the hand-impelled scythe and stick will do--was among the new inventions; also two threshers and cleaners, each of them warranted to thresh and nearly clean, by the labor of four men, a boy, and two horses, over one hundred bushels of wheat or two hundred bushels of oats per day. The testimony of candid citizens who had used them, and the evidence of our own senses, left no doubt on our mind of the correctness of these assertions. But we do not write to commend any article, but to call attention to the great and cheering truth which underlies them all. Agriculture is a noble art, involving the knowledge of almost all the practical sciences--chemistry, geology, climatology, mechanics, &c. It is not merely progressive, but rapidly progressing, so that fifty days' labor on the same soil produce far more grain or hay now than they did half a century ago. And every year is increasing and rendering more palpable the pressing need of a PRACTICAL COLLEGE, wherein Agriculture, Mechanics, and the sciences auxiliary thereto shall be ably and thoroughly taught to thousands and tens of thousands of our countrymen, who shall in turn become the disseminators of the truths thus inculcated to the youth of every county and township in the country. And thus shall Agriculture be rendered what it should be--not only the most essential but the most intellectual and attractive among the industrial avocations of mankind. HORACE GREELEY [Illustration: THE VIRGINIA REAPER. _Exhibited at the Crystal Palace, and the New-York State Agricultural Fair, by Cyrus H. McCormick_.] WILLIAM ROSS WALLACE. [Illustration] Of the large number of young men in this country who write verses, we scarcely know of one who has a more unquestionable right to the title of poet than WILLIAM ROSS WALLACE, who has just published, in a very handsome volume, a collection of his writings, under the title of _Meditations in America_. Mr. WALLACE has written other things which in their day have been sufficiently familiar to the public; in what we have to say of his capacities we shall confine ourselves to the pieces which he has himself here selected as the truest exponents of his genius, and without giving them indiscriminate praise shall hope to find in them evidences of peculiar and remarkable powers, combined with a spirit eminently susceptible to the influences of nature and of ideal and moral beauty. Mr. Wallace is a western man, and was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in the year 1819. His father was a Presbyterian minister, of good family, and marked abilities, who died soon after, leaving the future poet to the care of a mother whose chief ambition in regard to him was that he should be so trained as to be capable of the most elevated positions in society. After the usual preparatory studies, he went first to the Bloomington College, and afterwards to the South Hanover College, in Indiana, and upon graduating at the latter institution studied the law in his native city. When about twenty-two years of age, having already acquired considerable reputation in literature, by various contributions to western and southern periodicals, he came to the Atlantic states, and with the exception of a few months passed in Philadelphia, and a year and a half in Europe, he has since resided in New-York, occupied in the practice of his profession and in the pursuits of literature. Of his numerous poetical compositions, this is the first collection, and the only volume, except _Alban, a Romance_, intended to illustrate the influence of certain prejudices of society and principles of law on individual character and destiny, which was published in 1848. His works generally are distinguished for a sensuous richness of style, earnestness of temper, and much freedom of speculation. Throughout the _Meditations in America_ we perceive that he is most at home in the serious and stately rhythms and solemn fancies of such pieces as the hymn "To a Wind Going Seaward," "The Mounds of America," "The Chant of a Soul," &c.; but he occasionally writes in livelier and less peculiar measures. The late Mr. Poe in his _Marginalia_ refers to the following as one of the finest things in American literature; it is certainly very characteristic. THE CHANT OF A SOUL. My youth has gone--the glory, the delight That gave new moons unto the night, And put in every wind a tone And presence that was not its own. I can no more create, What time the Autumn blows her solemn tromp, And goes with golden pomp Through our unmeasurable woods: I can no more create, sitting in youthful state Above the mighty floods, And peopling glen, and wave, and air, With shapes that are immortal. Then The earth and heaven were fair, While only less than gods seem'd all my fellow-men. Oh! the delight, the gladness, The sense yet love of madness, The glorious choral exultations, The far-off sounding of the banded nations, The wings of angels at melodious sweeps Upon the mountain's hazy steeps,-- The very dead astir within their coffin'd deeps; The dreamy veil that wrapp'd the star and sod-- A swathe of purple, gold, and amethyst; And, luminous behind the billowy mist, Something that look'd to my young eyes like GOD. Too late I learn I have not lived aright, And hence the loss of that delight Which put a moon into the moonless night I mingled in the human maze; I sought their horrid shrine; I knelt before the impure blaze; I made their idols mine. I lost mine early love--that love of balms Most musical with solemn psalms Sounding beneath the tall and graceful palms. Who lives aright? Answer me, all ye pyramids and piles That look like calmest power in your still might. Ye also do I ask, O continents and isles! Blind though with blood ye be, Your tongues, though torn with pain, I know are free. Then speak, all ancient masses! speak From patient obelisk to idle peak! There is a heaving of the plains, A trailing of a shroud, A clash of bolts and chains-- A low, sad voice, that comes upon me like a cloud, "Oh, misery, oh, misery!"-- Thou poor old Earth! no more, no more Shall I draw speech from thee, Nor dare thy crypts of legendary lore: Let silence learn no tongue; let night fold every shore. Yet I have something left--the will, That Mont Blanc of the soul, is towering still. And I can bear the pain, The storm, the old heroic chain; And with a smile Pluck wisdom from my torture, and give back A love to Fate from this my mountain-rack. I do believe the sad alone are wise; I do believe the wrong'd alone can know Why lives the world, why spread the burden'd skies, And so from torture into godship grow. Plainer and plainer beams this truth, the more I hear the slow, dull dripping of my gore; And now, arising from yon deep, 'Tis plain as a white statue on a tall, dark steep. Oh, suffering bards! oh spirits black With storm on many a mountain-rack Our early splendor's gone. Like stars into a cloud withdrawn-- Like music laid asleep In dried-up fountains--like a stricken dawn Where sudden tempests sweep. I hear the bolts around us falling, And cloud to cloud forever calling: Yet WE must nor despair nor weep. Did WE this evil bring? Or from our fellows did the torture spring? Titans! forgive, forgive! Oh, know ye not 'tis victory but to live? Therefore I say, rejoice with harp and voice! I know not what our fate may be: I only know that he who hath a time Must also have eternity: One billow proves and gives a whole wide sea. On this I build my trust, And not on mountain-dust, Or murmuring woods, or starlit clime, Or ocean with melodious chime, Or sunset glories in the western sky: Enough, I _am_, and shall not choose to die. No matter what my future fate may be: To live is in itself a majesty! Oh! there I may again create Fair worlds as in my youthful state; Or Wo may build for me a fiery tomb Like Farinata's in the nether gloom: Even then I will not lose the name of man By idle moan or coward groan, But say, "It was so written in the mighty plan!" The next poem is in a vein of lofty contemplation, and the rhetoric is eminently appropriate and well sustained. It is one of the most striking pieces in the book. THE MOUNDS OF AMERICA. Come to the mounds of death with me. They stretch From deep to deep, sad, venerable, vast, Graves of gone empires--gone without a sighn, Like clouds from heaven. They stretch'd from deep to deep Before the Roman smote his mailéd hand On the gold portals of the dreaming East; Before the Pleiad, in white trance of song, Beyond her choir of stars went wandering. The great old Trees, rank'd on these hills of death, Have melancholy hymns about all this; And when the moon walks her inheritance With slow, imperial pace, the Trees look up And chant in solemn cadence. Come and hear. "Oh patient Moon! go not behind a cloud, But listen to our words. We, too, are old, Though not so old as thou. The ancient towns, The cities throned far apart like queens, The shadowy domes, the realms majestical, Slept in thy younger beams. In every leaf We hold their dust, a king in every trunk. We, too, are very old: the wind that wails In our broad branches, from swart Ethiop come But now, wail'd in our branches long ago, Then come from darken'd Calvary. The Hills Lean'd ghastly at the tale that wan Wind told; The Streams crept shuddering through the tremulous dark; The Torrent of the North, from morn till eve, On his steep ledge hung pausing; and o'er all Such silence fell, we heard the conscious Rills Drip slowly in the caves of central Earth. So were the continents by His crownéd grief Together bound, before that Genoese Flamed on the dim Atlantic: so have we, Whose aspect faced the scene, unchallenged right Of language unto all, while memory holds. "O patient Moon! go not behind a cloud, But hear our words. We know that thou didst see The whole that we could utter--thou that wert A worship unto realms beyond the flood-- But we are very lonesome on these mounds, And speech doth make the burden of sad thought Endurable; while these, the people new, That take our land, may haply learn from us What wonder went before them; for no word E'er came from thee, so beautiful, so lone. Throned in thy still domain, superbly calm And silent as a god. Here empires rose and died; Their very dust, beyond the Atlantic borne In the pale navies of the charter'd wind, Stains the white Alp. Here the proud city ranged Spire after spire, like star ranged after star Along the dim empyrean, till the air Went mad with splendor, and the dwellers cried, "Our walls have married Time!"--Gone are the marts, The insolent citadels, the fearful gates, The pictured domes that curved like starry skies; Gone are their very names! The royal Ghost Cannot discern the old imperial haunts, But goes about perplexéd like a mist Between a ruin and the awful stars. Nations are laid beneath our feet. The bard Who stood in Song's prevailing light, as stands The apocalyptic angel in the sun, And rained melodious fire on all the realms; The prophet pale, who shuddered in his gloom, As the white cataract shudders in its mist; The hero shattering an old kingdom down With one clear trumpet's will: the Boy, the Sage, Subject and Lord, the Beautiful, the Wise-- Gone, gone to nothingness. The years glide on, The pitiless years! and all alike shall fail, State after State rear'd by the solemn sea, Or where the Hudson goes unchallenged past The ancient warder of the Palisades, Or where, rejoicing o'er the enormous cloud, Beam the blue Alleghanies--all shall fail: The Ages chant their dirges on the peaks; The palls are ready in the peopled vales; And nations fill one common sepulchre. Nor goes the Earth on her dark way alone. Each star in yonder vault doth hold the dead In its funereal deeps: Arcturus broods Over vast sepulchres that had grown old Before the earth was made: the universe Itself is but one mighty cemetery Rolling around its central, solemn sun. "O patient Moon! go not behind a cloud, But listen to our words. We, too, must die-- And thou!--the vassal stars shall fail to hear Thy queenly voice over the azure fields Calling at sunset. They shall fade. The Earth Shall look and miss their sweet, familiar eyes, And, crouching, die beneath the feet of GOD. Then come the glories, then the nobler times, For which the Orbs travail'd in sorrow; then The mystery shall be clear, the burden gone; And surely men shall know why nations came Transfigured for the pangs; why not a spot Of this wide world but hath a tale of wo; Why all this glorious universe is Death's. "Go, Moon! and tell the stars, and tell the suns, Impatient of the wo, the strength of him Who doth consent to death; and tell the climes That meet thy mournful eyes, one after one, Through all the lapses of the lonesome night, The pathos of repose, the might of Death!" The voice is hush'd; the great old wood is still: The Moon, like one in meditation, walks Behind a cloud. We, too, have them for thought, While, as a sun, GOD takes the West of Time And smites the pyramid of Eternity. The shadow lengthens over many worlds Doom'd to the dark mausoleum and mound. We do not remember any poem on Mahomet finer than the following: EL AMIN. Who is this that comes from Hara? not in kingly pomp and pride, But a great, free son of Nature, lion-souled and eagle-eyed! Who is this before whose presence idols tumble to the sod? While he cries out--"Allah Akbar! and there is no god but God!" Wandering in the solemn desert, he has wondered like a child Not as yet too proud to wonder, at the sun, and star, and wild. "Oh, thou moon! who made thy brightness? Stars! who hung you there on high? Answer! so my soul may worship: I must worship or die!" Then there fell the brooding silence that precedes the thunder's roll; And the old Arabian Whirlwind called another Arab soul. Who is this that comes from Hara? not in kingly pomp and pride, But a great, free son of Nature, lion-souled and eagle-eyed! He has stood and seen Mount Hara to the Awful Presence nod; He has heard from cloud and lightning--"Know there is no god but God!" Call ye this man an imposter? He was called "The Faithful," when, A boy, he wandered o'er the deserts, by the wild-eyed Arab men. He was always called "The Faithful." Truth he knew was Allah's breath; But the Lie went darkly gnashing through the corridors of Death. "He was fierce!" Yes! fierce at falsehood--fierce at hideous bits of wood, That the Koreish taught the people made the sun and solitude. But his heart was also gentle, and Affection's graceful palm, Waving in his tropic spirit, to the weary brought a balm. "Precepts?" "Have on each compassion:" "Lead the stranger to your door:" "In your dealings keep up justice:" "Give a tenth unto the poor." "Yet ambitious!" Yes! ambitious--while he heard the calm and sweet Aiden-voices sing--to trample troubled Hell beneath his feet. "Islam?" Yes! "Submit to Heaven!" "Prophet?" To the East thou art! What are prophets but the trumpets blown by God to stir the heart? And the great heart of the desert stirred unto that solemn strain, Rolling from the trump at Hara over Error's troubled main. And a hundred dusky millions honor still El Amin's rod-- Daily chanting--"Allah Akbar! know there is no god but God!" Call him then no more "Impostor." Mecca is the Choral Gate Where, till Zion's noon shall take them, nations in her morning wait. Mr. Wallace has published a few songs. They have not the stately movement of his other pieces, and the one which follows needs the application of the file; but it is, like the others, very spirited: AVELINE. ----The sunny eyes of the maiden fair Give answer better than voice or pen That as he loves he is loved again.--C. C. LEEDS. Love me dearly, love me dearly with your heart and with your eyes; Whisper all your sweet emotions, as they gushing, blushing rise; Throw your soft white arms about me; Say you cannot live without me: Say, you are my Aveline; say, that you are only mine, That you cannot live without me, young and rosy Aveline! Love me dearly, dearly, dearly: speak you love-words silver-clearly, So I may not doubt thus early of your fondness, of your truth. Press, oh! press your throbbing bosom closely, warmly to my own: Fix your kindled eyes on mine--say you live for me alone, While I fix my eyes on thine, Lovely, trusting, artless, plighted; plighted, rosy Aveline! Love me dearly; love me dearly: radiant dawn upon my gloom: Ravish me with Beauty's bloom:-- Tell me "Life has yet a glory: 'tis not all an idle story!" As a gladdened vale in noonlight; as a weary lake in moonlight, Let me in thy love recline: Show me life has yet a splendor in my tender Aveline. Love me dearly, dearly, dearly with your heart and with your eyes: Whisper all your sweet emotions as they gushing, blushing rise. Throw your soft white arms around me; say you _lived not_ till you found me-- Say it, say it, Aveline! whisper you are only mine; That you cannot live without me, as you throw your arms about me, That you _cannot_ live without me, artless, rosy Aveline! Our limits will not permit us to quote any of the remaining poems of this volume in full, and we conclude our extracts with a few passages penciled while in a hasty reading. In the piece entitled The Kings of Sorrow, the poet sings: Was HE not sad amid the grief and strife, the Lord of light and life, Whose torture made humanity divine, upon that woful hill of Palestine? Then is it not far better thus to be, thoughtful, and brave, and melancholy, Than given up to idle revelry, amid the unreligious brood of folly? For our sorrow is a worship, worship true, and pure, and calm, Sounding from the choir of duty like a high, heroic psalm, In its very darkness bearing to the bleeding heart a balm. Brothers, we must have no wailing: do we agonize alone? Look at all the pallid millions; hear a universal moan, From the mumbling, low-browed Bushman to a Lytton on his throne. Nor shall we have coward faltering: Brothers! we must be sublime By due labor at the forges blazing in the cave of Time; Knowing life was made for duty, and that only cowards prate Of a search for Happy Valley and the hard decrees of fate: Seeing through this night of mourning all the future as a star, And a joy at last appearing on the centuries afar, When the meaning of the sorrow, when the mystery shall be plain, When the Earth shall see her rivers roll through Paradise again. O! the vision gives to sorrow something white and purple-plumed: Even the hurricane of Evil comes a hurricane perfumed. In the same: ... The Storm is silent while we speak; The awe-struck Cloud hath paused above the peak; The far Volcano statlier waves on high His smoking censer to the solemn sky; And see, the troubled Ocean folds his hands With a great patience on the yellow sands. In Rest: So rest! and Rest shall slay your many woes; Motion is god-like--god-like is repose, A mountain-stillness, of majestic might, Whose peaks are glorious with the quiet light Of suns when Day is at his solemn close. Nor deem that slumber must ignoble be. Jove labored lustily once in airy fields; And over the cloudy lea He planted many a budding shoot Whose liberal nature daily, nightly yields A store of starry fruit. His labor done, the weary god went back Up the long mountain track To his great house; there he did wile away With lightest thought a well-won holiday; For all the Powers crooned softly an old tune Wishing their Sire might sleep Through all the sultry noon And cold blue night; And very soon They heard the awful Thunderer breathing low and deep. And in the hush that dropped adown the spheres, And in the quiet of the awe-struck space, The worlds learned worship at the birth of years: They looked upon their Lord's calm, kingly face. And bade Religion come and kiss each starry place. In the same: See what a languid glory binds The long dim chambers of the darkling West, While far below yon azure river winds Like a blue vein on sleeping Beauty's breast. In The Gods of Old: Not realmless sit the ancient gods Upon their mountain-thrones In that old glorious Grecian Heaven Of regal zones. A languor o'er their stately forms May lie, And a sorrow on their wide white brows, King-dwellers of the sky! But theirs is still that large imperial throng Of starry thoughts and firm but quiet wills, That murmured past the blind old King of Song, When staring round him on the Thunderer's hills. In the same: ... Still Love, sublime, shall wrap His awful eyebrows in Olympian shrouds. Or take along the Heaven's dark wilderness His thunder-chase behind the hunted clouds. And mortal eyes upturned shall behold Apollo's robe of gold Sweep through the long blue corridor of the sky That, kindling, speaks its Deity: And He, the Ruler of the Sunless Land Of restless ghosts, shall fitfully illume With smouldering fires, that stir in caverned eyes, Hell's mournful House of Gloom. In the Hymn to a Wind, Going Seaward: Move on! Move on, Wind of the wide wild West! Tell thou to all The Isles, tell thou to all the Continents The grandeur of my land! Speak of its vales Where Independence wears a pastoral wreath Amid the holy quiet of his flock; And of its mountains with their cloudy beards Tossed by the breath of centuries; and speak Of its tall cataracts that roll their bass Amid the choral of the midnight storms; And of its rivers lingering through the plains So long, that they seem made to measure time; And of its lakes that mock the haughty sea; And of its caves where banished gods might find Night large enough to hide their crownless heads; And of its sunsets broad and glorious there O'er Prairies spread like endless oceans on-- And on--and on--over the far dim leagues Till vision shudders o'er immensity. In the same: ----Troubled France Shall listen to thy calm deep voice, and learn That Freedom must be calm if she would fix Her mountain moveless in a heaving world. In a Chant to the East: Still! Oh still! Despite of passion, sin, and ill, Despite of all this weary world hath brought, An angel band from Zion's holy hill Walks gently through the open gate of Thought. Oh, still! Oh, still! Despite of passion, sin, and ill, ONE in red vesture comes in sorrow's time-- ONE crowned with thorns from that far Orient clime, Who pitying looks on me And gently asks, "Poor man, what aileth thee?" In the same: The nations must forever turn to thee, Feeling thy lustrous presence from afar; And feed upon thy splendor as a sea Feeds on the shining shadow of a star. In Wordsworth: And many a brook shall murmur in my verse; And many an ocean join his cloudy bass; And many a mountain tower aloft, whereon The black storm crouches, with his deep-red eyes Glaring upon the valleys stretch'd below; And many a green wood rock the small, bright birds To musical sleep beneath the large, full moon; And many a star shall lift on high her cup Of luminous cold chrysolite, set in gold Chased subtilely over by angelic art; To catch the odorous dews which poets drink In their wide wanderings; and many a sun Shall press the pale lips of the timorous morn Couch'd in the bridal east: and over all Will brood the visible presence of the ONE To whom my life has been a solemn chant. In the Last Words of Washington: There is an awful stillness in the sky, When after wondrous deeds and light supreme, A star goes out in golden prophecy. There is an awful stillness in the world, When after wondrous deeds and light supreme, Sceptres refused and forehead crowned with truth, A Hero dies, with all the future clear Before him, and his voice made jubilant By coming glories, and his nation hushed, As though they heard the farewell of a god. A great man is to earth as God to Heaven. In Greenwood Cemetery: O, ye whose mouldering frames were brought and placed By pious hands within these flowery slopes And gentle hills, where are ye dwelling now? For man is more than element! The soul Lives in the body as the sunbeam lives In trees or flowers that were but clay without. Then where are ye, lost sunbeams of the mind? Are ye where great Orion towers and holds Eternity on his stupendous front? Or where pale Neptune in the distant space Shows us how far, in his creative mood, With pomp of silence and concentred brows, The Almighty walked? Or haply ye have gone Where other matter roundeth into shapes Of bright beatitude: Or do ye know Aught of dull space or time, and its dark load Of aching weariness? Mr. Wallace is somewhat too much of a rhetorician, and he has a few defects of manner which, from this frequent repetition, he seems to regard as beauties. Peculiar phrases, of doubtful propriety, but which have a musical roll, occur in many of his poems, so that they become very prominent; this fault, however, belongs chiefly to his earlier pieces; the extracts we have given, we think will amply vindicate to the most critical judgments, the praise here awarded to him as a poet of singular and unusual powers, original, earnest, and in a remarkable degree _national_. It can scarcely be said of any of our bards that they have caught their inspiration more directly from observation and experience, or that their effusions, whatever the distinction they have in art, are more genuine in feeling. AMERICA AS ABUSED BY A GERMAN. Having made it a point to faithfully report all that is said of our country by foreign travellers or journalists, we deem it a duty to lay before our readers not only the more agreeable accounts given by those who have impartially examined our institutions and manners, but also the more prejudiced relations of those who, urged by interest or ill-nature, have sketched simply the darker and more irregular outlines. And we are the more induced to follow this course since we are fully convinced that it is productive of equal good with the former. We have--particularly to English eyes--appeared as a people who eagerly devour all that is said to our discredit, and at the same time fiercely repudiate the slightest insinuation that we in any thing fall short of perfection. As regards the latter, we shall content ourselves with remarking, that even the disposition to deny the existence of imperfection among us, redounds far more to our credit, than the complacent exaltation of our weaker points to virtues; while as to the former, we are certain that a higher feeling than mere nervous, sensitive vanity, induces in us the desire "To see ourselves as others see us," since there is no nation which more readily avails itself of the remarks of others, even when by far too bitter or unjust to improve. True to our national character of youthfulness, we are ever ready to act on every hint. We are, _par excellence_, a _learning_ nation. Send even the _young_ Englishman on his continental tour, and the chances are ten to one that he returns with every prejudice strengthened, and his vanity increased. But the American--ductile as wax, evinces himself even at an advanced period of life, susceptible of improvement, yet firm in its retention. That we earnestly strive in every respect to improve is evident from many "little things" which foreigners ridicule. For instance, the habitual use of "fine language," and the attempt to clothe even our ordinary trains of thought in an elegant garb, which has been time and again cruelly ridiculed by Yankee goaders, is to a reflecting mind suggestive of commendation, from the very fact, that an attempt at least is made _to improve_. Better a thousand times the impulse to progress, even through the whirlwinds of hyperbole and inflated expression, than the heavy miasma of a patois, the lightest breath of which at once proclaims the cockney or provincial. For the entertainment of those who are willing to live, laugh, and learn, we are induced to give our readers a few extracts from a recently published work, by a German, entitled, _Skizzen aus den Vereinigten Staaten von Nord Amerika: Von_ DR. A. KIRSTEN, (or, _Sketches of the United States of North America_, by Dr. A. KIRSTEN,) a work in which the author, after exhausting all the three-penny thunder of ignorant abuse, coolly informs his readers, that he has by no means represented things in their worst light. The American public at large are not aware that among the rulers of Germany, emigration to America is sternly yet anxiously discouraged. Rejoiced as they are to behold our country a receptacle for the sweepings of their prisons and _Fuchthaüser_, or houses of correction, they still gaze with an alarmed glance at the almost incredible "forth-wandering" which has at times depopulated entire villages, and borne with it an amount of wealth, which, trifling as it may appear to us, is in a land of economy and poverty of immense importance. The reader who judges of Germany by Great Britain and Ireland, is mistaken. That emigration which is to the government of the latter countries health and safety, brings to the former death and destruction. As a proof of this, we need only point to the tone of all the German papers which are in any manner connected with the interests of their respective courts. In all we find the old song: Depreciation of America, as far as applicable to the prevention of emigration. To accomplish this end, writers are hired and poets feed; remedies against emigration are proposed by political economists, and where possible, even clergymen are induced to persuade their flocks to nibble still in the ancient stubble, or among the same old barren rocks. Dr. Kirsten, it would appear, is either a natural and habitual grumbler, or a paid hireling. If the former, we can only pity--if the latter, despise him. Could our voice be heard by his patrons, we would, however, advise them to employ a better grumbler--one who can wield lance and sword against his foes, instead of mops and muddy water. A weaker lancer, or more impotent and impudent abuser, has rarely appeared, even among our earlier English decriers. Like many other weak-minded individuals, the Herr Doctor appears to have started under the fullest conviction that our country was, if not a true "_Schlaraffen Land_," or _Pays de Cocagne_, or Mahomet's Paradise, in which pigeons ready roasted fly to the mouth, at least a realized _Icarie_, or perfected Fourier-dom. All the books which he had read, relative to America, described it in glowing colors, and inclined his mind favorably toward it. Such was his faith in these books, or also so great his fear, that these glorious dreams might be dissipated, that he did not even ascertain or confirm their truth by the personal experience of those who had been there, and we are informed naively enough in the preface, that previous to his departure he had but once had an opportunity of conversing with an educated German, who had resided for a long time in America. Such weak heedlessness as this does not, to our ears at least, savor of the characteristic prudence and deliberation of the German, and strongly confirms us in the belief, that the doctor wandered forth well knowing what he was about--in other words, that he went his way with his opinions already cut and dried. "After an eight weeks' voyage I arrived in New-York. It was at the end of August. Even in the vicinity of the Gulf Stream a terrible heat oppressed us, which increased as we approached land; but it was in that city that I became aware of what the heat in America really was. Many visits which I was obliged to make, caused during the day a cruel exhaustion, while at night I found no refreshment in slumber, partly because the heat was hardly diminished, and partly from the musquitoes, and to me unaccustomed alarms of fire, which were nightly repeated, from which I found that life in America was by no means so agreeable as I had been led to infer from books and popular report." From the single, mysterious, educated German with whom the doctor had conferred previous to his departure, he had learned that, in the United States, any thing like marked distinction of class, rank, or caste, did not exist; and that this was particularly the case among Germans living there. "The educated and refined knew how to draw into their society the less gifted, and it was really singular to observe in how short a time the latter rose to a higher degree of culture. People actually destitute of knowledge and manners, in fact could not be found. Moreover, I there anticipated a southern climate, for which I had some years longed." How miserably the poor doctor was disappointed in these moderate and reasonable anticipations, appears from the following lamentable account: "Ere long I, indeed, became acquainted with many Germans, who received me in the kindest manner, and of whom recollections will ever be dear to me. But this was not the case with the Americans, as I had been led to anticipate, nor indeed with the Germans, generally. Among these I found neither connection nor unity, and they mostly led a life such as I had in Germany never met with, while nothing like social cultivation, in a higher sense, was to be found. Led into the society of those who by day were devoted to business, but in the evening scattered themselves, here and there, without a point of union, I found myself in the noisy, but pleasure-wanting city, forlorn and unwell. Many, to whom I complained of what I missed in New-York, thought that it might be found in Philadelphia." But even in Philadelphia our pilgrim found not the promised Paradise, where there was no distinction of rank or family, and where the more educated and refined would eagerly adopt him, the lowly brother, into their Icarian circle. Neither did he discover the golden tropical region--the southern heaven--for which his soul had longed for years. Alas! no. "After a residence of four weeks in New-York, I repaired to Philadelphia, and there found that among the Germans, things were the same as in New-York--_in fact, there was even less unity among them_." But although the doctor did not discover any Germans inspired with the sublime spirit of harmony, he certainly appears to have met with several who had acquired the American virtue of common sense. "A German who had been for a long time resident in the United States asserted that he had, as yet, met with no fellow-countryman, who had been in the beginning satisfied with America. Others were of the opinion, that I would first be pleased with the country when I had found a profitable employment. _And some others, that I would never be satisfied._" And so the doctor, ever dependent on others for happiness, looked here and there, like the pilgrim after Aden, or the hero of the Morning Watch, for the ideal of his dreams. The so-called entirely German towns in Pennsylvania were German only in name. The heat disgusted him with the south--the cold with the north. After residing nine months in Poughkeepsie, he returned to New-York, and there remained for some time, occupied, as it would appear, solely with acquiring information. This residence at an end, he returned to Germany. We pass over the first chapters of his work, devoted to an ordinary account of the climate, animals, and plants of the country, to a more interesting picture, namely--its inhabitants. From this we learn that the American is cold, dry, and monosyllabic, in his demeanor and conversation. During his return to Germany he was delayed for a period of something less than nine days at Falmouth, England, where, during his daily walks, he experienced that in comparison with us the English are amiable, communicative, and agreeable. Indeed, he found that when, during a promenade in America, strangers returned his greetings, these polite individuals were invariably Britons, "which proves that while in more recent times, the English have assumed or approached the customs of other nations, the Americans have remained true to the character and being of the earlier emigrants, and are at present totally distinct from the English of to-day. "This is especially shown by the demeanor of Americans towards foreigners, and nearly as much so by their conduct to one another. Regard them where we will, they are ever the same. In the larger or the smaller towns, in the streets or in the country, every one goes his own way without troubling himself about others, and without saluting those with whom he is unacquainted. Never do we see neighbors associating with each other; and neighborly friendship is here unknown. If acquaintances meet, they nod to each other, or the one murmurs, '_How do you do?_' while the other replies, '_Very well_,' without delaying an instant, unless business affairs require a conversation. This concluded, they depart without a word, unless, indeed, as an exception, they wish each other good morning, or evening. Nor are they less distant in hotels, or during journeys in railroad cars and steamboats."--"Continued conversations, in which several take part, are extremely rare. Any one speaking frequently to a stranger, at table or during a journey, runs the risk not merely of being regarded as impertinent, but as entertaining dishonest views; and, indeed, one should invariably be on his guard against Americans who manifest much friendliness, since, in this manner, pickpockets are accustomed to make their advances. "In a corresponding degree this coldness of disposition is manifested towards more intimate acquaintances. Never do we observe among friends a deep and heart-inspired, or even a confiding relationship. Nay, this is not even to be found among members of the same family. The son or the daughter, who has not for several days seen his or her parents, returns and enters the room without a greeting, or without any signs of joy being manifested by either. Or else the salutation is given and returned in such a manner that scarcely a glance passes between the parties. The direst calamities are imparted and listened to with an apathy evincing no signs of emotion, and a great disaster, occurring on a railroad or steamboat, in the United States, excites in Germany more attention and sympathy than in the former country, even when friends and perhaps relatives have thereby suffered. Even the loss of a member of the family is hardly manifested by the survivors." In a recent English work we were indeed complimented for our _patience_, but it was reserved for Doctor Kirsten to discover in us, this degree of iron-hearted, immovable, _nil admirarism_. But when he goes on to assert that "in the most deadly peril--in such moments as those which precede the anticipated explosion of a steamboat boiler, even their ladies preserve the same repose and equanimity," so that any expression from a stranger is coldly listened to, without producing evident impression, _our_ surprise is changed to wonder, and we are tempted to inquire, Can it be possible, that we are such Spartans--endowed with such superior human stoicism? "This coldness of the American is legibly impressed on his features. In both sexes we frequently meet with pretty, and occasionally beautiful, faces; but seldom, however, do we perceive in either, aught cheerful or attractive. In place thereof we observe, even in the fairest, a certain earnestness, verging towards coldness. From the great majority of faces we should judge that no emotion could be made to express itself upon them, and such is truly the case. "That the nearest acquaintances address each other with _Sir_ and _Master_, or _Miss_ and _Mistress_, and that husband and wife, parents and children, yes, even the children themselves employ these titles to each other, has undoubtedly much to do with their marked and cold demeanor. But this must have a deeper ground than that merely caused by the use of distant forms of salutation. "And yet, the Americans are by no means of a bad disposition, since they are neither crafty and treacherous, nor revengeful, nor even prone to distrust; on the contrary, quite peaceable, and by the better classes, there is much charity for apparent misery; seldom does one suffering with bodily ailments leave the house of a wealthy man without being munificently aided; the which charity is silently extended to him, without a sign of emotion. Those who are capable of work--no matter what the cause of their sufferings may be, seldom receive alms, for the Americans go upon the principle that work is not disgraceful, and without reflecting that the applicant may not have been accustomed to work, refuse in any manner to aid him. If any man want work, he can apply to the overseers of the poor, who are obliged to receive him in a poor-house, and maintain him until he find such. Much is done at the state's expense for the aged, sick, and insane." After this our doctor lets fall a few flattering drops of commendation by way of admitting that this iron immobility of the American is not without its good points, but fearing that he has spoken too favorably, he brings up the chapter by remarking that-- "The here-mentioned good traits in the American character can, however, by no means overbalance or destroy the evil impression which their coldness produces, but merely soften it." From our appearance and deportment he proceeds to a bold, hasty, and remarkably superficial criticism of education in America. The father of a family in America, we are informed, is occupied with business from morning to night, and leaves all care for the education and training of his children to the mother, who is, however, generally quite incapable to fulfil such duty. No teacher dare correct a child, for fear of incurring legal punishment, in consequence of which they grow up destitute of decency, order, or obedience. Some few, indeed, find their way eventually into academies and colleges, which are not so badly managed; but, as for school-boys, since there is no one to insure their regular attendance at school, they play truant _à discrétion_. As for the children of the lower and middle classes, they pass their boyhood in idleness, and grow up in ignorance, until at a later period they enter into business, when they are compelled to perfect themselves in the arts of reading and writing, yet they quickly acquire the business spirit of their fathers. "The education of the girls is, however, of an entirely different nature. On them the mothers expend much care and trouble, which is, however, of the most perverted kind, since it is in its nature entirely external. Before all, do they seek to give them an air of decency and culture, which is, nevertheless, more apparent than real. In accordance with the republican spirit of striving after equality, every mother--no matter how poor, or how low her rank may be--desires to bring her daughter up in such a manner that she may be inferior in respectability and external culture to no one." "In fact, the daughters of the poorest workman bear themselves like those of the richest merchant. In their mien we see a pride flashing forth, which can hardly be surpassed by that of the haughtiest daughters of the highest German nobility. And that their daughters may in every respect equal those of others, we see poor men lavishing upon them their last penny; and while the boys run in the streets, covered with ragged and dirty fragments of clothing, the sisters wear bonnets with veils, bearing parasols, and while at school, short dresses and drawers." After this fearful announcement, we are informed, that the poor girls profit as little in school as their unhappy brothers, and that no regard is paid to their future destiny. "Even after the maiden has left school, her mother instructs her in no feminine employment, not even in domestic affairs, and least of all, in cookery. While the former lives, and the daughter remains unmarried, she (the mother,) attends to housekeeping, as far as the word can be taken in the German sense, while her daughter passes the time in reading, more frequently with bedecking herself, but generally in idleness. When the daughter, however, marries, we may well imagine how a house is managed in such hands. The principal business henceforth is self-adornment and housekeeping. All imaginable care is bestowed upon these branches, but none whatever on any other. Cookery is of the lowest grade; nearly every day sees the same dishes, and those, also, which are prepared with the least trouble. Very frequently, indeed, the husbands are obliged to prepare their meals before and after their business hours. Knitting and spinning, either in town or country, is unknown; only manufactured or woven stockings are worn, and shirts are generally purchased ready-made in the shops." "Washing is the only work which they undertake, and this is done by young ladies of wealthy family. This takes place every Monday, for there are very few families who own linen sufficient for more than a single week's wear. "So long as the father lives, his daughters stick to him, useless as they are, and heavy as the burden may be to him. It is _his_ business to see where the money comes from wherewith to nourish and decently clothe them: on this account the servant girls in America generally consist of Irish, Germans, and blacks. Even these, taking pattern from their mistresses, refuse to perform duties which are expected from every housemaid in Germany--for examples, boot-brushing, clothes-cleaning, and the bringing of water across the way, as well as street and step-cleaning; for which reason we often see respectable men performing these duties." From this terrible plague of daughters, and daughterly extravagance, the doctor finds that poorer men in America are by no means as well off as would be imagined from their high wages. "The father with many daughters, so far from advancing in wealth, generally falls behind. Fearing the cost of a family, many men remain unmarried, and in no country in the world are there so many old maids as in the United States." From which the author finds that dreadful instances of immorality and infanticide result. Filial duty, he asserts, is unknown. When the son proposes emigration to another place, or the undertaking of a new business, he announces it to his father "perhaps the evening before; while the daughters act in like manner as regards marriage, or, it may be, mention it to him for the first time after it has really taken place--from which the custom results that parents give their children no part of their property before death. Nothing is known of a true family life, in which parents are intimately allied to children, or brothers and sisters to each other." We spare our readers the sneer at those writers who have praised the Americans in their domestic relations, with which this veracious, high-minded, and unprejudiced chapter concludes. In science and art, we are sunk, it seems, almost beneath contempt; the former being cultivated only so far as it is conducive to money-making. The professions of Divinity, Law, and Medicine, are badly and superficially taught and acquired. "There are, indeed," says the doctor, "in New-York and Philadelphia, institutions where the student has opportunities of becoming, if he will, an excellent physician; but these are far from being well patronized." As regards general education, he asserts that, though a few professors in our colleges are highly educated men, this cannot be said of their pupils, since the latter set no value on knowledge not directly profitable, "and the backward condition of ancient languages, natural science, even geography, history and statistics, save as applicable to their own country, is really a matter of wonder." But in the fine arts, it appears, we are sunk so far beneath contempt that we really wonder that the doctor should have found it, in this particular, worth while to abuse us. "There are but two monuments in all America worthy of mention, and both are in Baltimore. Philadelphia and New-York have nothing of the kind to show, though each city possesses two public squares or parks planted with trees, which are well adapted to receive such works of art, and where the eye sadly misses them." "Public and private collections of statues and pictures are altogether wanting, and the walls of the rich are generally devoid of paintings and copper-plate engravings. What they have generally consists of family portraits, or those of Washington and other presidents. But to dazzle the eye, we find in the possession of the wealthy, the most worthless pictures in expensive gold frames. Of late years a public gallery has been established in New-York for the sale of such productions. As far however as the works of native artists are concerned, we find among them none inspired by high art; on the contrary, they are generally, to the last degree, mediocre affairs, or mere daubs (_wahre Klecksereien_) not worth hanging up; the better however are exaggerated and unnatural both in subject and color. This is also the case with most of the copper-plate engravings exposed for sale in the French shop-windows, and which appear almost as if manufactured in Paris expressly for the American taste. The inferior appreciation of art in the Americans and their delight in extravagance is particularly shown in the political caricatures, which are entirely deficient in all refined wit, consisting either of stupid allusions to eminent men or party leaders, or direct and clumsy exaggerations." By way of amends for all this abuse, our author admits that we excel in all practical arts and labor-saving inventions. "But in proportion to the backward state of the fine arts, is the advance which the Americans have made in all pertaining to mechanics, and technical art. Particular attention is paid to the supplanting of hand labor by machinery. Even the most trifling apparatus or tool is constructed with regard to practical use, and it only needs a more careful observation of this to convince us that in all such matters they have the advantage of Germany. "It is often truly startling to see how simply and usefully those articles used in business are constructed--for example, the one-horse cars (_drays or trucks?_) and hand-carts, employed in conveying merchandise to and from stores. As a proof how far the Americans have advanced in mechanic arts, we may mention that high houses, of wood or brick, several stories high and entire, are transported on rollers to places several feet distant. Occasionally, to add a story, the house is raised by screws into the air and the building substructed. In either case the family remains quietly dwelling therein." But alas, even these few rays of commendatory comfort vanish in the dark, after reflection, that it is precisely this ingenuity and enterprise in business and practical matters which unfits us for all the kinder and more social duties, and renders us insensible to every soothing and refining influence. No allowance for past events, unavoidable circumstances, or our possible future destiny, appears to cross the doctor's mind. All is dark and desolate. True, every man of high and low degree--the laborer and shop-man--the lawyer and clergyman, pause in the street to study any mechanical novelty which meets their eye--but ere they do this the doctor is mindful to suggest _that they pass picture shop-windows without deigning to glance therein_. The professions are studied like trades, and in matters of criminal law our condition is truly deplorable. It happened not many months since, he informs us, that the publisher of a slanderous New-York paper, was castigated by a lady, with a hunting whip, in Broadway, at noon. The said lady had been (according to custom) unjustly and cruelly abused in the journal referred to. So great was her irritation that she actually followed the editor along the streets, lashing him continually. But the _finale_ of this startling incident consists of the fact that the lady, on pleading guilty, was fined six cents. There is an obscurity attached to his manner of narrating this anecdote, which leaves the opinion of the author a little uncertain. Six cents would in some parts of Germany be a serious fine, worthy of appeal, mercy, and abatement. In different parts of Suabia and even Baden, notices may be seen posted up, in which the commission of certain local offences is prohibited by fines ranging from four to twelve cents. On the whole, as a zealous defender of the purity and dignity of woman, when unjustly assailed, we are inclined to think that the author sides with _the_ LADY. But we need not follow the doctor further in his career of discontent and prejudice. Before concluding, we would however caution the reader against supposing that he expresses views in any degree accordant with the feelings and opinions of his countrymen. The best, the most numerous, the most impartial, and we may add, by far the most favorable works on America, are from German pens. In confirmation of our assertion that his work is unfavorably regarded at home we may adduce the fact that it has been severely handled by excellent reviewers among them; take for example the following, from the Leipzig _Central Blatt_. After favorably noticing the late excellent work of QUENTIN on the United States, he proceeds to say of the doctor's _Sketches_, that "HERR KIRSTEN seems to desire to be that for North America, which _Nicolai_ of noted memory was in his own time for Italy. Already, on arrival, we find him in ill temper, caused by the excessive heat, which ill-humor is aggravated by his being obliged to make many calls by day, and _the musquitoes and alarms of fire which disturbed his slumbers during the night_. In other places he was no better pleased. "The Germans were disagreeable on account of their want of unity, the Americans from their coldness--in short, he missed home life--could not accustom himself to the new country, and returned after a sojourn of less than two years to Germany. In 'sketches,' resulting from such circumstances, we naturally encounter only the darker side of American life. Much may indeed be true of what he asserts regarding the natural capabilities, climate, soil, and inhabitants of the land, the manners and customs of the latter, their common and party spirit, education of children, and the condition of science and art; but particulars are either too hastily generalized, or else the better points, as for example, the characteristic traits of the people, their extraordinary progress in physical and mental culture, and the excellent management of the country, are either entirely omitted or receive by far too slight notice. His narrow-minded and ill-natured disposition to find fault is also shown by his reproaching the Americans with faults which they share in common with every nation in America, _ourselves included_, as, for example, excesses committed by political partisans. Still, the book may not be entirely without value, at least to those who see every thing on the other side of the water only in a rosy light, and believe that the German emigrant as soon as his foot touches shore, enters a state of undisturbed happiness." So much for the critical doctor's popularity at home. In conclusion, we may remark that our main object in this notice, in addition to amusing our readers, has been to prove by this exception, and the displeasure which it excites in Germany, the rule, that by the writers of that country our own has been almost invariably well spoken of. And we have deemed these remarks the more requisite, lest some reader might casually infer that Dr. Kirsten expressed the views and sentiments of any considerable number of his countrymen. REMINISCENCES OF THE LATE MR. COOPER.--HIS LAST DAYS. A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL. BY JOHN W. FRANCIS, M. D., LL. D. NEW-YORK, _October 1st, 1851_. MY DEAR SIR,--I readily comply with your wish that I should furnish you with such reminiscences of the late Mr. Cooper as occur to me, although the pressure of professional engagements absolutely forbids such details as I would gladly record. For nearly thirty years I have been the occasional medical adviser, and always the ardent personal friend of the illustrious deceased; but our intercourse has been so fragmentary, owing to the distance we have lived apart, and the busy lives we have both led, that the impressions which now throng upon and impress me are desultory and varied, though endearing. I first knew Mr. Cooper in 1823. He at that time was recognized as the author of "Precaution," of "the Spy," and of "the Pioneers." The two last-named works had attracted especial notice by their widely extended circulation, and the novelty of their character in American literature. He was often to be seen at that period in conversation at the City Hotel in Broadway, near Old Trinity, where many of our most renowned naval and military men convened. He was the original projector of a literary and social association called the "Bread and Cheese Club," whose place of rendezvous was at Washington Hall. They met weekly, in the evening, and furnished the occasion of much intellectual gratification and genial pleasure. That most adhesive friend, the poet Halleck, Chancellor Kent, G. C. Verplanck, Wiley, the publisher of Mr. Cooper's works, Dekay, the naturalist, C. A. Davis (Jack Downing), Charles King, now President of Columbia College, J. Depeyster Ogden, J. W. Jarvis, the painter, John and William Duer, and many others, were of the confederacy. Washington Irving, at the period of the formation of this circle of friends, was in England, occupied with his inimitable "Sketch Book." I had the honor of an early admittance to the Club. In balloting for membership the bread declared an affirmative; and two ballots of cheese against an individual proclaimed non-admittance. From the meetings of this society Mr. Cooper was rarely absent. When presiding officer of the evening, he attracted especial consideration from the richness of his anecdotes, his wide American knowledge, and his courteous behavior. These meetings were often signally characterized by the number of invited guests of high reputation who gathered thither for recreative purposes, both of mind and body; jurists of acknowledged eminence, governors of different States, senators, members of the House of Representatives, literary men of foreign distinction, and authors of repute in our own land. It was gratifying to observe the dexterity with which Mr. Cooper would cope with some eastern friend who contributed to our delight with a "Boston notion," or with Trelawny, the associate of Byron, descanting on Greece and the "Younger Son," or with any guests of the Club, however dissimilar their habits or character; accommodating his conversation and manners with the most marvellous facility. The New-York attachments of Mr. Cooper were ever dominant. I witnessed a demonstration of the early enthusiasm and patriotic activity of our late friend in his efforts, with many of our leading citizens, in getting up the Grand Castle Garden Ball, given in honor of Lafayette. The arrival of the "Nation's Guest" at New-York, in 1824, was the occasion of the most joyful demonstrations, and the celebration was a splendid spectacle; it brought together celebrities from many remote parts of the Union. Mr. Cooper must have undergone extraordinary fatigue during the day and following night; but nearly as he was exhausted, he exhibited, when the public festivals were brought to a close, that astonishing readiness and skill in literary execution for which he was always so remarkable. Adjourning near daybreak to the office of his friend Mr. Charles King, he wrote out more quickly than any other hand could copy, the very long and masterly report which next day appeared in Mr. King's paper--a report which conveyed to tens of thousands who had not been present, no inconsiderable portion of the enjoyment they had felt who were the immediate participants in this famous festival. The manly bearing, keen intelligence, and thoroughly honorable instincts of Mr. Cooper, united as they were with this gift of writing--soon most effectively exhibited in his literary labors, now constantly increasing--excited my highest expectations of his career as an author, and my sincere esteem for the man. There was a fresh promise, a vigorous impulse, and especially an American enthusiasm about him, that seemed to indicate not only individual fame, but national honor. Since that period I have followed his brilliant course with no less admiration than delight. It was to me a cause of deep regret that soon after his return from Europe, crowned with a distinct and noble reputation, he became involved in a series of law-suits, growing out of libels, and originating partly in his own imprudence, and partly in the reckless severity of the press. But these are but temporary considerations in the retrospect of his achievements; and if I mistake not, in these difficulties he in every instance succeeded in gaining the verdict of the jury. It was a task insurmountable to overcome a _fact_ as stated by Mr. Cooper. Associated as he was in my own mind with the earliest triumphs of American letters, I think of him as the creator of the genuine nautical and forest romances of "Long Tom Coffin" and "Leatherstocking;" as the illustrator of our country's scenes and characters to the Europeans; and not as the critic of our republican inconsistencies, or as a litigant with caustic editors. It is well known that for a long period Mr. Cooper, at occasional times only, visited New-York city. His residence for many years was an elegant and quiet mansion on the southern borders of Otsego Lake. Here--in his beautiful retreat, embellished by the substantial fruits of his labors, and displaying everywhere his exquisite taste, his mind, ever intent on congenial tasks, which, alas! are left unfinished, surrounded by a devoted and highly cultivated family, and maintaining the same clearness of perception, serene firmness, and integrity of tone, which distinguished him in the meridian of his life--were his mental employments prosecuted. He lived chiefly in rural seclusion, and with habits of methodical industry. When visiting the city he mingled cordially with his old friends; and it was on the last occasion of this kind, at the beginning of April, that he consulted me with some earnestness in regard to his health. He complained of the impaired tone of the digestive organs, great torpor of the liver, weakness of muscular activity, and feebleness in walking. Such suggestions were offered for his relief as the indications of disease warranted. He left the city for his country residence, and I was gratified shortly after to learn from him of his better condition. During July and August I maintained a correspondence with him on the subject of his increasing physical infirmities, and frankly expressed to him the necessity of such remedial measures as seemed clearly necessary. Though occasionally relieved of my anxieties by the kind communications of his excellent friend and attending physician, Dr. Johnson, I was not without solicitude, both from his own statements as well as those of Dr. Johnson himself, that his disorder was on the increase; certain symptoms were indeed mitigated, but the radical features of his illness had not been removed. A letter which I soon received induced me forthwith to repair to Cooperstown, and on the 27th of August I saw Mr. Cooper at his own dwelling. My reception was cordial. With his family about him he related with great clearness the particulars of his sufferings, and the means of relief to which he was subjected. Dr. Johnson was in consultation. I at once was struck with the heroic firmness of the sufferer, under an accumulation of depressing symptoms. His physical aspect was much altered from that noble freshness he was wont to bear; his complexion was pallid; his interior extremities greatly enlarged by serous effusion; his debility so extreme as to require an assistant for change of position in bed; his pulse sixty-four. There could be no doubt that the long continued hepatic obstruction had led to confirmed dropsy, which, indeed, betrayed itself in several other parts of the body. Yet was he patient and collected. That powerful intellect still held empire with commanding force, clearness, and vigor. I explained to him the nature of his malady; its natural termination when uncontrolled; dwelt upon the favorable condition and yet regular action of the heart, and other vital functions, and the urgent necessity of endeavoring still more to fulfil certain indications, in order to overcome the force of particular tendencies in the disorder. I frankly assured him that within the limits of a week a change in the complaint was indispensable to lessen our forebodings of its ungovernable nature. He listened with fixed attention; and now and then threw out suggestions of cure such as are not unfrequent with cultivated minds. The great characteristics of his intellect were now even more conspicuous than before. Not a murmur escaped his lips; conviction of his extreme illness wrought no alteration of features; he gave no expression of despondency; his tone and his manner were equally dignified, cordial, and natural. It was his happiness to be blessed with a family around him whose greatest gratification was to supply his every want, and a daughter for a companion in his pursuits, who was his intelligent amanuensis and correspondent as well as indefatigable nurse.[1] I forbear enlarging on matters too professional for present detail. During the night after my arrival he sustained an attack of severe fainting, which convinced me still further of his great personal weakness. An ennobling philosophy, however, gave him support, and in the morning he had again been refreshed by a sleep of some few hours' duration. I renewed to him and to his family the hopes and the discouragements in his case. Never was information of so grave a cast received by any individual in a calmer spirit. He said little as to his prospects of recovery. Upon my taking leave of him, however, shortly after, in the morning, I am convinced from his manner that he shared my apprehensions of a fatal termination of his disorder. Nature, however strong in her gifted child, had now her healthful rights largely invaded. His constitutional buoyancy and determination, by leading him to slight that distant and thorough attention demanded by primary symptoms, doubtless contributed to their subsequent aggravation. I shall say but a few words more on this agonizing topic. The letters which I received, after my return home, communicated at times some cheering facts of renovation, but on the whole, discouraging demonstrations of augmenting illness, and lessened hope, were their prominent characteristics. A letter to me from his son-in-law, of the 14th of September, announced: "Mr. Cooper died, apparently without much pain, to-day at half-past one, P.M., leaving his family, although prepared by his gradual failure, in deep affliction. He would have been sixty-two years old to-morrow." A life of such uniform and unparalleled excellence and service, a career so brilliant and honorable, closed in a befitting manner, and was crowned by a death of quiet resignation. Conscious of his approaching dissolution, his intelligence seemed to glow with increased fulness as his prostrated frame yielded by degrees to the last summons. It is familiarly known to his most intimate friends, that for some considerable period prior to his fatal illness, he appropriated liberal portions of his time to the investigation of scriptural truths, and that his convictions were ripe in Christian doctrines. With assurances of happiness in the future, he graciously yielded up his spirit to the disposal of its Creator. His death, which must thus have been the beginning of a serene and more blessed life to him, is universally regarded as a national loss. Will you allow me to add a few words to this letter, already perhaps of undue extent. It has been my gratification during a life of some duration to have become personally acquainted with many eminent characters in the different walks of professional and literary avocation. I never knew an individual more thoroughly imbued with higher principles of action than Mr. Cooper: he acted upon principles, and fully comprehended the principles upon which he acted. Casual observers could scarcely, at times, understand and appreciate his motives or conduct. An independence of character worthy of the highest respect, and a natural boldness of temper which led him to a frank, emphatic, and intrepid utterance of his thoughts and sentiments, were uncongenial to that large class of people, who, from the want of moral courage, or a feeble physical temperament, habitually conform to public opinion, and endeavor to conciliate the world. Mr. Cooper was one of the most genuine Americans in his tone of mind, in manly self-reliance, in sympathy with the scenery, the history, and the constitution of his country, which it has ever been my lot to know. His genius was American, fresh, vigorous, independent, and devoted to native subjects. The opposition he met with on his return from Europe, in consequence of his patriotic, though, perhaps, injudicious attempts to point out the faults and duties of his countrymen, threw him reluctantly on the defensive, and sometimes gave an antagonistic manner to his intercourse; but, whoever, recognizing his intellectual superiority, and respecting his integrity of purpose, met him candidly, in an open, cordial and generous spirit, soon found in Mr. Cooper an honest man, and a thorough patriot. How strongly is impressed upon my memory his personal appearance, so often witnessed during his rambles in Broadway and amidst the haunts of this busy population. His phrenological development might challenge comparison with that of the most favored of mortals. His manly figure, high, prominent brow, clear and fine gray eye, and royal bearing, revealed the man of will and intelligence. His intellectual hardihood was remarkable. He worked upon a novel with the patient industry of a man of business, and set down every fact of costume, action, expression, local feature, and detail of maritime operations or woodland experience, with a kind of consciousness and precision that produced a Flemish exactitude of detail, while in portraying action, he seemed to catch by virtue of an eagle glance and an heroic temperament, the very spirit of his occasion and convey it to the reader's nerves and heart, as well as to his understanding. Herein Mr. Cooper was a man of unquestionable originality. As to his literary services, some idea may be formed of the consideration in which they are held by the almost countless editions of many of his works in his own country, and their circulation abroad by translations into almost every living tongue. I may add a word or two on the extent of his sympathies with humanity. What a love he cherished for superior talents in every ennobling pursuit in life--how deep an interest he felt in the fortunes of his scientific and literary friends--what gratification he enjoyed in the physical inquiries of Dekay and Le Conte, the muse of Halleck and of Bryant, the painting of Cole, the sculpture of Greenough! Dunlap, were he speaking, might tell you of his gratuities to the unfortunate playwright and the dramatic performer. With the mere accumulators of money--those golden calves whose hearts are as devoid of emotion as their brains of the faculty of cogitation--he held no congenial communion at any time: they could not participate in the fruition of his pastime; and he felt in himself an innate superiority in the gifts with which nature had endowed him. He was ever vigilant, a keen observer of men and things; and in conversation frank and emphatic. It was a gratifying spectacle to encounter him with old Col. Trumbull, the historical painter, descanting on the many excellencies of Cole's pencil, in the delineation of American forest-scenery--a theme the richest in the world for Mr. Cooper's contemplation. A Shylock with his money-bags never glutted over his possessions with a happier feeling than did these two eminent individuals--the venerable Colonel with his patrician dignity, and Cooper with his somewhat aristocratic bearing, yet democratic sentiment; the one fruitful with the glories of the past, the other big with the stirring events of his country's progress, in the refinement of arts, and national power. Trumbull was one of the many old men I knew who delighted in Cooper's writings, and who in conversation dwelt upon his captivating genius. To his future biographer Mr. Cooper has left the pleasing duty rightly to estimate the breadth and depth of his powerful intellect--psychologically to investigate the development and functions of that cerebral organ, which for so many years, with such rapid succession and variety, poured out the creations of poetic thought and descriptive illustration--to determine the value of his capacious mind by the influence which, in the dawn of American literature, it has exercised, in rearing the intellectual fabric of his country's greatness--and to unfold the secret springs of those disinterested acts of charity to the poor and needy, which signalized his conduct as a professor of religious truth, and a true exampler of the Christian graces. He has unquestionably done more to make known to the transatlantic world his country, her scenery, her characteristics, her aboriginal inhabitants, her history, than all preceding writers. His death may well be pronounced a national calamity. By common consent he long occupied an enviable place--the highest rank in American literature. To adopt the quaint phraseology of old Thomas Fuller, the felling of so mighty an oak must needs cause the increase of much underwood. Who will fill the void occasioned by his too early departure from among us, time alone must determine. With much consideration, I remain, Dear sir, yours most truly, JOHN W. FRANCIS. PUBLIC HONORS TO THE MEMORY OF MR. COOPER. In the last number of the _International_ we were able merely to announce the death of our great countryman Mr. Cooper. The following account of proceedings in reference to the event is compiled mainly from the _Evening Post_. A meeting of literary men, and others, was held at the City Hall in New-York, on the 25th of September, for the purpose of taking the necessary measures for rendering fit honors to the memory of the deceased author. Rufus W. Griswold, calling the meeting to order, said it had been convened to do justice to the memory of the most illustrious American who had died in the present century. Since the design of such a meeting had first been formed, a consultation among Mr. Cooper's friends had been held, and it had been determined that the present should be only a preparatory meeting, for the making of such arrangements as should be thought necessary for a more suitable demonstration of respect for that eminent person, whose name, more completely than that of any of his cotemporaries and countrymen, had filled the world. On motion of Judge Duer, Washington Irving was elected President of the meeting. On motion of Joseph Blunt, Fitz Greene Halleck and Rufus W. Griswold were appointed Secretaries. Mr. Blunt said, that as it had been thought proper to consider this occasion as merely preliminary, and for the purpose of making arrangements to do honor to the distinguished author who has left us, he would move that a committee of five be appointed by the chair, to report what measures should be adopted, by the literary gentlemen of this city and of the country, so far as they may see fit to join them, for the purpose of rendering appropriate honors to the memory of the late J. Fenimore Cooper. The motion was adopted, and the chair appointed the following gentlemen members of the committee: Judge Duer, Richard B. Kimball, Dr. Francis, Fitz Greene Halleck, and George Bancroft; to whom Washington Irving and Rufus W. Griswold were subsequently added. The meeting then adjourned. This committee afterwards met and appointed as a General Committee to carry out the designs of the meeting: Washington Irving, James K. Paulding, John W. Francis, Gulian C. Verplanck, Charles King, Richard B. Kimball, Rufus W. Griswold, Lewis Gaylord Clarke, Francis L. Hawks, John A. Dix, George Bancroft, Fitz Greene Halleck, John Duer, William C. Bryant, George P. Morris, Charles Anthon, Samuel Osgood, J. M. Wainright, and William W. Campbell. R. W. Griswold, Donald G. Mitchell, Parke Godwin, C. F. Briggs, and Starbuck Mayo were appointed a Committee of Correspondence. Besides letters from many of the gentlemen present, others had been received from some twenty of the most eminent literary men of the United States, all expressing the warmest sympathy in the proposal to do every possible honor to the memory of Mr. Cooper. We copy from these the following: _From Washington Irving._ SUNNYSIDE, Thursday, Sept. 18, 1851. MY DEAR SIR:--The death of Fenimore Cooper, though anticipated, is an event of deep and public concern, and calls for the highest expression of public sensibility. To me it comes with something of a shock; for it seems but the other day that I saw him at our common literary resort at Putnam's, in full vigor of mind and body, a very "castle of a man," and apparently destined to outlive me, who am several years his senior. He has left a space in our literature which will not easily be supplied.... I shall not fail to attend the proposed meeting on Wednesday next. Very respectfully, your friend and servant, WASHINGTON IRVING. Rev. RUFUS W. GRISWOLD. _From William C. Bryant._ ROCHESTER, Friday, Sept. 19, 1851. MY DEAR SIR:--I am sorry that the arrangements for my journey to the West are such that I cannot be present at the meeting which is about to be held to do honor to the memory of Mr. Cooper, on losing whom not only the country, but the civilized world and the age in which we live, have lost one of their most illustrious ornaments. It is melancholy to think that it is only until such men are in their graves that full justice is done to their merit. I shall be most happy to concur in any step which may be taken to express, in a public manner, our respect for the character of one to whom we were too sparing of public distinctions in his lifetime, and beg that I may be included in the proceedings of the occasion as if I were present. I am, very respectfully yours, WM. C. BRYANT. Rev. R. W. GRISWOLD. _From Bishop Doane._ RIVERSIDE, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 1851. MY DEAR SIR:--...I beg you to say, generally, in your discretion, that I yield to no one who will be present, in my estimate of the distinguished talents and admirable services of Mr. Cooper, or in my readiness to do the highest honor to his illustrious memory. His name must ever find a place among the "household words" of all our hearts; a name as beautiful for its blamelessness of life, as it is eminent for its attainments in letters, which has subordinated to the higher interests of patriotism and piety, the fervors of fancy and the fascinations of romance. Very faithfully, your friend and servant, G. W. DOANE. Rev. RUFUS W. GRISWOLD. _From Mr. Bancroft._ NEWPORT, R. I., Thursday, Sept. 18, 1851. MY DEAR SIR:--I heartily sympathize with the design of a public tribute to the genius, manly character, and great career of the illustrious man whose loss we deplore. Others have combined very high merit as authors, with professional pursuits. Mr. Cooper was, of those who have gone from among us, the first to devote himself exclusively to letters. We must admire the noble courage with which he entered on a course which none before him had tried; the glory which he justly won was reflected on his country, of whose literary independence he was the pioneer, and deserves the grateful recognition of all who survive him. By the time proposed for the meeting, I fear I shall not be able to return to New-York; but you may use my name in any manner that shall strongly express my delight in the writings of our departed friend, my thorough respect for his many virtues, and my sense of that surpassing ability which has made his own name and the names of the creations of his fancy, household words throughout the civilized world. I remain, dear sir, very truly yours, GEORGE BANCROFT. Rev. R. W. GRISWOLD. _From John P. Kennedy._ BALTIMORE, October, 1851. DEAR SIR:--Your invitation reached me too late to enable me to participate in the meeting which has just been held at the City Hall in your city, to render appropriate honors to the memory of Mr. Cooper. I rejoice to see what has been done and what you propose to do. It is due to the eminent merits of Fenimore Cooper, that there should be an impressive public recognition of the loss which our country has sustained in his death. He stood confessedly at the head of a most attractive and popular department of our literature, in which his extraordinary success had raised him up a fame that became national. The country claimed it as its own. This fame was acknowledged and appreciated not only wherever the English tongue is the medium of thought, but every where amongst the most civilized nations of Europe. Our literature, in the lifetime of the present generation, has grown to a maturity which has given it a distinction and honorable place in that aggregate which forms national character. No man has done more in his sphere to elevate and dignify that character than Fenimore Cooper: no man is more worthy than he, for such services, of the highest honors appropriate to a literary benefactor. His genius has contributed a rich fund to the instruction and delight of his countrymen, which will long be preserved amongst the choicest treasures of American letters, and will equally induce to render our national literature attractive to other nations. We owe a memorial and a monument to the man who has achieved this. This work is the peculiar privilege of the distinguished scholars of New-York, and I have no doubt will be warmly applauded, and if need be, assisted, by every scholar and friend of letters in the Union. With the best wishes for the success of this enterprise, I am, my dear sir, very truly yours, JOHN P. KENNEDY. Rev. RUFUS W. GRISWOLD. _From C. J. Ingersoll._ FONTHILL, PHILADELPHIA, September, 30th, 1851. DEAR SIR:--Your favor, inviting me to a meeting of the friends of Fenimore Cooper, did not reach me till this morning, owing probably to irregularity of the post-office. Otherwise I should have tried to attend the proposed meeting, not only as a friend of Mr. Cooper, but as one among those of his countrymen who consider his memory a national trust for honored preservation. In my opinion of Fenimore Cooper as a novelist he is entitled to one merit to which few if any one of his cotemporary European romance writers can lay claim, to wit, originality. Leatherstocking is an original character, and entirely American, which is probably one of the reasons why Cooper was more appreciated in Continental Europe than even Scott, whose magnificent fancy embellished every thing, but whose genius, I think, originated nothing. And then, in my estimate of Mr. Cooper's superior merits, was manly independence--a rare American virtue. For the less free Englishman or Frenchman, politically, there was a freeness in the expression as well as adoption of his own views of men and things. And a third kindred merit of Cooper was high-minded and gentlemanly abstinence from self-applause. No distinguished or applauded man ever was less apt to talk of himself and his performances. Unlike too many modern poets, novelists, and other writers, apt to become debauchees, drunkards, blackguards and the like (as if, as some think, genius and vice go together), Mr. Cooper was a gentleman remarkable for good plain sense, correct deportment, striking probity and propriety, and withal unostentatiously devout. Not meaning to disparage any one in order by odious comparisons to extol him, I deem his Naval History a more valuable and enduring historical work than many others, both English and American, of contemporaneous publication and much wider dissemination. In short, if the gentlemen whose names I have seen in the public journals with yours, proposing some concentrated eulogium, should determine to appoint a suitable person, with time to prepare it, I believe that Fenimore Cooper may be made the subject of illustration in very many and most striking lights, justly reflecting him, and with excellent influence on his country. I do not recollect, from what I read lately in the newspapers, precisely what you and the other gentlemen associated with you in this proceeding propose to do, or whether any thing is to take place. But if so, whatever and wherever it may be, I beg you to use this answer to your invitation, and any services I can render, as cordial contributions, which I shall be proud and happy to make. I am very respectfully your humble servant, C. J. INGERSOLL. Rev. RUFUS W. GRISWOLD. _From G. P. R. James._ STOCKBRIDGE, Mass., 23d September, 1851. DEAR DOCTOR GRISWOLD:--I regret extremely that it will not be in my power to be present at the meeting to testify respect for the memory of Mr. Cooper. I grieve sincerely that so eminent a man is lost to the country and the world; and though unacquainted with him personally, I need hardly tell you how highly his abilities as an author, and his character, were appreciated by yours faithfully, G. P. R. JAMES. _From Mr. Everett._ CAMBRIDGE, 23d September, 1851. DEAR SIR:--I received this afternoon your favor of the 17th, inviting me to attend and participate in the meeting to be held in your City Hall, for the purpose of doing honor to the memory of the late Mr. Fenimore Cooper. I sincerely regret that I cannot be with you. The state of the weather puts it out of my power to make the journey. The object of the meeting has my entire sympathy. The works of Mr. Cooper have adorned and elevated our literature. There is nothing more purely American, in the highest sense of the word, than several of them. In his department he is _facile princeps_. He wrote too much to write every thing equally well; but his abundance flowed out of a full, original mind, and his rapidity and variety bespoke a resolute and manly consciousness of power. If among his works there were some which, had he been longer spared to us, he would himself, on reconsideration, have desired to recal, there are many more which the latest posterity "will not willingly let die." With much about him that was intensely national, we have but one other writer (Mr. Irving), as widely known abroad. Many of Cooper's novels were not only read at every fireside in England, but were translated into every language of the European continent. He owed a part of his inspiration to the magnificent nature which surrounded him; to the lakes, and forests, and Indian traditions, and border-life of your great state. It would have been as difficult to create Leatherstocking anywhere out of New-York, or some state closely resembling it, as to create Don Quixotte out of Spain. To have trained and possessed Fenimore Cooper will be--is already--with justice, one of your greatest boasts. But we cannot let you monopolize the care of his memory. We have all rejoiced in his genius; we have all felt the fascination of his pen; we all deplore his loss. You must allow us all to join you in doing honor to the name of our great American novelist. I remain, dear sir, with great respect, very truly yours, EDWARD EVERETT. Rev. RUFUS W. GRISWOLD. Letters of similar import were received from Richard H. Dana, George Ticknor, William H. Prescott, John Neal, and many other eminent men, all approving the design to render the highest honors to the illustrious deceased. At the meeting of the New-York Historical Society, on the evening of Tuesday, the 7th of October, after the transaction of the regular business, the following resolutions were moved by Rev. Rufus W. Griswold, and seconded by Mr. George Bancroft:-- _Whereas_, It has pleased Almighty God to remove from this life our illustrious associate and countryman, JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, while his fame was in its fulness, and his intelligence was still unclouded by age or any infirmity, therefore: Resolved, That this society has heard of the death of James Fenimore Cooper with profound regret: That it recognizes in him an eminent subject and a masterly illustrator of our history: That, in his contributions to our literature he displayed eminent genius and a truly national spirit: That, in his personal character, he was honorable, brave, sincere, and generous, as respectable for unaffected virtue as he was distinguished for great capacities: That this society, appreciating the loss which, however heavily it has fallen upon this country and the literary world, has fallen most heavily upon his family, instructs its officers to convey to his family, assurances of respectful sympathy and condolence. Dr. JOHN W. FRANCIS addressed the society in a very interesting speech, in support of these resolutions. Among the great men of letters, he said, whom our country has produced, there were none greater than Mr. Cooper. I knew him for a period of thirty years, and during all that time I never knew any thing of his character that was not in the highest degree praiseworthy. He was a man of great decision of character, and a fair expositor of his own thoughts on every occasion--a thorough American, for I never knew a man who was more entirely so in heart and principle. He was able, with his vast knowledge, and a powerful physical structure, to complete whatever he attempted. He had studied the history of this country with a large philosophy, and understood our people and their character better than any other writer of the age. He was not only perfectly acquainted with our general history, but was thoroughly conversant with that of every state, county, village, lake, and river. And with his vast knowledge he was no less remarkable for ability as a historian than for his intrepidity of personal character. I could not, said Dr. Francis, allow this opportunity to pass without paying my tribute to the merits of this truly great man. Mr. GEORGE BANCROFT next addressed the society. My friend, he said, has spoken of the illustrious deceased as an American--I say that he was an embodiment of the American feeling, and truly illustrated American greatness. We were endeavoring to hold up our heads before the world, and to claim a character and an intellect of our own, when Cooper appeared with his powerful genius to support our pretensions. He came forth imbued with American life, and feeling, and sentiment. Another like Cooper cannot appear, for he was peculiarly suited to his time, which was that of an invading civilization. The fame and honor which he gained, were not obtained by obsequious deference to public opinion, but simply by his great ability and manly character. Great as he was in the department of romantic fiction, he was not less deserving of praise in that of history. In Lionel Lincoln he has described the battle of Bunker Hill better than it is described in any other work. In his naval history of the United States he has left us the most masterly composition of which any nation could boast on a similar subject. Mr. Bancroft proceeded in a masterly analysis of some of Mr. Cooper's characters, and ended with an impressive assertion of the purity of his contributions to our literature, the eminence of his genius, and the dignity of his personal character. Dr. HAWKS spoke with his customary eloquence of the personal character of Mr. Cooper, his indefectible integrity, his devotion to the best interests of his country, and his religious spirit. He approved the resolutions which had been offered to the society. The Rev. SAMUEL OSGOOD said: It must seem presumptuous in me, Mr. President, to try to add any thing to the tribute which has been paid to the memory of Cooper, by gentlemen so peculiarly qualified from their experience and position to speak of the man and his services. But all professions have their own point of view, and I may be allowed to say a few words upon the relation of our great novelist to the historical associations and moral standards of our nation. I cannot claim more than a passing acquaintance with the deceased, and it belongs to friends more favored to interpret the asperities and illustrate the amenities which are likely to mark the character of a man so decided in his make and habit. With his position as an interpreter of American history and a delineator of American character, we are in this society most closely concerned. None in this presence, I am sure, will rebuke me for speaking of the novelist as among the most important agents of popular education, powerful either for good or ill. Is it not true, Sir, that the romance is the prose epic of modern society, and that we now look to its pages for the most graphic portraitures of men, manners, and events? Social and political life is too complex now for the stately march of the heroic poem, and this age of print needs not the carefully measured verse to make sentences musical to the ear, or to save them from being mutilated by circulation. The romance is now the chosen form of imaginative literature, and its gifted masters are educators of the popular ideal. What epic poem of our times begins to compare in influence over the common mind with the stories of Scott and Cooper? Our novelist loved most to treat of scenes and characters distinctively national, and his name stands indelibly written on our fairest lakes and rivers, our grandest seas and mountains, our annals of early sacrifice and daring. With some of his criticisms on society, and some of his views of political and historical questions, I have personally little sympathy. But, when it is asked, in the impartial standard of critical justice, what influence has he exerted over the moral tone of American literature, or to what aim has he wielded the fascinating pen of romance, there can be but one reply. With him, fancy has always walked hand in hand with purity, and the ideal of true manhood, which is everywhere most prominent in his works, is one of which we may well be proud as a nation and as men. The element of will, perhaps more strongly than intellectual analysis, or exquisite sensibility, or high imagination, is the distinguished characteristic of his heroes, and in this his portraitures are good types of what is strongest in the practical American mind. His model man, whether forester, sailor, servant, or gentleman, is always bent on bringing some especial thing to pass, and the progress from the plan to the achievement is described with military or naval exactness. Yet he never overlooks any of the essential traits of a noble manhood, and loves to show how much of enterprise, courage, compassion, and reverence, it combines with practical judgment and religious principle. It has seemed to me that his stories of the seas and the forests are fitted to act more than ever upon the strong hearts in training for the new spheres of triumph which are now so wonderfully opening upon our people. Who does not wish that his noted hero of the backwoods might be known in every loghouse along our extending frontier, and teach the rough pioneer always to temper daring by humanity? Who can ever forget that favorite character, as dear to the reader as to the author--that paladin of the forest, that lion-heart of the wilderness, Leatherstocking, fearless towards man--gentle towards woman--a rough-cast gentleman of as true a heart as ever beat under the red cross of the crusader. The very qualities needed in those old times of frontier strife are now needed for new emergencies in our more peaceful border life, and our future depends vastly upon the characters that give edge to the advancing mass of our population now crowding towards the rocky mountains and the Pacific coast. It is well that this story-teller of the forest has been so true to the best traits of our nature, and in so many points is a moralist too. As a romancer of the sea, Cooper's genius may perhaps be but beginning to show its influence, as a new age of commercial greatness is opening upon our nation. Mr. Cooper did not shrink from battle scenes and had no particular dread of gunpowder, yet his best laurels upon the ocean have been won in describing feats of seamanship and traits of manhood that need no bloody conflict for their display, and may be exemplified in fleets as peaceful and beneficent as ever spread their sails to the breezes to bear kindly products to friendly nations. As we sit here this evening under the influence of the hour, the images of many a famous exploit on the water seems to come out from his well-remembered pages and mingle themselves with recent scenes of marine achievement. Has not the "Water Witch" herself reappeared of late in our own bay, and laden not with contraband goods, but a freight of stout-hearted gentlemen, borne the palm as "Skimmer of the Seas," from all competitors in presence of the royalty and nobility of England? And the Old Ironsides, has not she come back again, more iron-ribbed than ever--not to fight over the old battles which our naval chronicler was so fond of rehearsing, but under the name of the Baltic or (better omen) the Pacific, to win a victory more honorable and encouraging than ever was carried by the thundering broadsides of the noble old Constitution! The commanders and pilots so celebrated by the novelist, have they not successors indomitable as they? and just now our ship-news brings good tidings of their achievements, as they tell us of the Flying Cloud that has made light of the storms of the fearful southern cape, and of the return of the adventurous fleet that has stood so well the hug of the Polar icebergs, and shown how nobly a crew may hunt for men on the seas with a Red Rover's daring and a Christian's mercy. It is well that the most gifted romancer of the sea is an American, and that he is helping us to enact the romance of history so soon to be fact. The empire of the waters, which in turn has belonged to Tyre, Venice, and England, seems waiting to come to America, and no part of the world now so justly claims its possession as that state in which Cooper had his home. Who does not welcome the promise of the new age of powerful commerce and mental blessing? Who does not feel grateful to any man who gives any good word or work to the emancipation of the sailor from his worst enemies, and to the freedom of the seas from all the violence that stains its benignant waters? While proud of our fleet ships, let us not forget elements in their equipment more important than oak and iron. In this age of merchandise, let us adorn peace with something of the old manhood that took from warfare some of its horrors. Did time allow, I might try to illustrate the power of an attractive literature in keeping alive national associations and moulding national character, but I am content to leave these few fragmentary words with the society as my poor tribute to a writer who charmed many hours of my boyhood, and who has won regard anew as the entertaining and instructive beguiler of some recent days of rural recreation. May we not sincerely say that he has so used the treasures of our national scenery and history as to elevate the true ideal of true manhood, and quicken the nation's memory in many respects auspiciously for the nation's hopes? It is understood that a public discourse on the life and genius of Mr. Cooper will be delivered by one of the most eminent of his contemporaries, at Tripler Hall, early in December, and that measures will be adopted to secure the erection of a suitable monument to his memory in one of the public squares or parks of the city. On this subject Mr. Washington Irving has written the following letter: SUNNYSIDE, October, 1851. MY DEAR SIR:--My occupations in the country prevent my attendance in town at the meeting of the committee, but I am anxious to know what is doing. I signified at our first meeting what I thought the best monument to the memory of Mr. Cooper--a statue. It is the simplest, purest, and most satisfactory--perpetuating the likeness of the person. I understand there is an excellent bust of Mr. Cooper extant, made when he was in Italy. He was there in his prime; and it might furnish the model for a noble statue. Judge Duer suggested that his monument should be placed at Washington, perhaps in the Smithsonian Institute. I was rather for New-York, as he belonged to this State, and the scenes of several of his best works were laid in it. Besides, the seat of government may be changed, and then Washington would lose its importance; whereas New-York must always be a great and growing metropolis--the place of arrival and departure for this part of the world--the great resort of strangers from abroad, and of our own people from all parts of the Union. One of our beautiful squares would be a fine situation for a statue. However, I am perhaps a little too local in my notions on this matter. Cooper emphatically belongs to the nation, and his monument should be placed where it would be most in public view. Judge Duer's idea therefore may be the best. There will be a question of what material the statue (if a statue is determined on) should be made. White marble is the most beautiful, but how would it stand our climate in the open air? Bronze stands all weathers and all climates, but does not give so clearly the expression of the countenance, when regarded from a little distance. These are all suggestions scrawled in haste, which I should have made if able to attend the meeting of the committee. I wish you would drop me a line to let me know what is done or doing. Yours very truly, WASHINGTON IRVING. The Rev. RUFUS GRISWOLD. The plan thus recommended by Mr. Irving will undoubtedly be approved by the committee and the public, and there is little doubt that it will soon be carried into execution. FOOTNOTES: [1] The accomplished authoress of "Rural Hours."--_Ed. International._ THE LONDON TIMES ON AMERICAN INTERCOMMUNICATION. We are by no means confident that the Mexican War, with all its victories, was more serviceable to our reputation in Europe, than the single victory of Mr. Stevens, in his yacht America, off the Isle of Wight. This triumph has been celebrated in a dinner at the Astor House, but the city might have well afforded to welcome the returning owner of the America with an illumination, or the fathers, in council assembled, might have voted him a statue. Mr. Collins and Mr. Stevens have together managed to deprive England of the "trident of the seas," and as soon as it was transferred there began a shower of honors, which continues still, from the _Times_ down to the very meanest of its imitators. From that time the Americans have had all the "solid triumphs" in the Great Exhibition. We have been regarded as a wonderful people, and our institutions as the most interesting study that is offered for contemporary statesmen and philosophers. We copy below a specimen of the leaders with which the _Times_ has honored us, and commend it to our readers, not more for its tone than for the valuable information contained in it:-- LOCOMOTION BY RIVER AND RAILWAY IN THE UNITED STATES. England has been so dazzled by the splendor of her own achievements in the creation of a new art of transport by land and water within the last thirty years, as to become in a measure insensible to all that has been accomplished in the same interval and in the same department of the arts elsewhere, improvements less brilliant, indeed, intrinsically, than the stupendous system of inland transport, which we lately noticed in these columns, and having a lustre mitigated to our view by distance, yet presenting in many respects circumstances and conditions which may well excite profound and general interest, and even challenge a respectful comparison with the greatest of those advances in the art of locomotion of which we are most justly proud. It will not, therefore, be without utility and interest, after the detailed notice which we have lately given of our own advances in the adaptation of steam to locomotion, to direct attention to the progress in the same department which has been simultaneously made in other and distant countries, and first, and above all, by our friends and countrymen in the other hemisphere. The inland transport of the United States is distributed mainly between the rivers, the canals, and the railways, a comparatively small fraction of it being executed on common roads. Provided with a system of natural water communication on a scale of magnitude without any parallel in the world, it might have been expected that the "sparse" population of this recently settled country might have continued for a long period of time satisfied with such an apparatus of transport. It is, however, the character of man, but above all of the Anglo-Saxon man, never to rest satisfied with the gifts of nature, however munificent they be, until he has rendered them ten times more fruitful by the application of his skill and industry, and we find accordingly that the population of America has not only made the prodigious natural streams which intersect its vast territory over so many thousands of miles, literally swarm with steamboats, but they have, besides, constructed a system of canal navigation, which may boldly challenge comparison with any thing of the same kind existing in the oldest, wealthiest, and most civilized States of Europe. It appears from the official statistics that, on the 1st of January, 1843, the extent of canals in actual operation amounted to 4,333 miles and that there were then in progress 2,359 miles, a considerable portion of which has since been completed, so that it is probable that the actual extent of artificial water communication now in use in the United States considerably exceeds 5,000 miles. The average cost of executing this prodigious system of artificial water communication was at the rate of 6,432_l._ per mile, so that 5,000 miles would have absorbed a capital of above 32,000,000_l._ This extent of canal transport, compared with the population, exhibits in a striking point of view the activity and enterprise which characterize the American people. In the United States there is a mile of canal navigation for every 5,000 inhabitants, while in England the proportion is 1 to every 9,000 inhabitants, and France 1 to every 13,000. The ratio, therefore, of this instrument of intercommunication in the United States is greater than in the United Kingdom, in proportion to the population, as 9 to 5, and greater than in France in the ratio of 13 to 5. The extent to which the American people have fertilized, so to speak, the natural powers of those vast collections of water which surround and intersect their territory, is not less remarkable than their enterprise in constructing artificial lines of water communication. Besides the internal communication supplied by the rivers, properly so called, a vast apparatus of liquid transport is derived from the geographical character of their extensive coast, stretching over a space of more than 4,000 miles, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the delta of the Mississippi, indented and serrated with natural harbors and sheltered bays, fringed with islands forming sounds, throwing out capes and promontories which inclose arms of the sea in which the waters are free from the roll of the ocean, and which, for all the purposes of navigation, have the character of rivers and lakes. The lines of communication formed by the vast and numerous rivers are, moreover, completed in the interior by chains of lakes presenting the most extensive bodies of fresh water in the known world. Whatever question may be raised on the conflicting claims for the invention of steam navigation, it is an incontestable fact that the first steamboat practically applied for any useful purpose was placed on the Hudson, to ply between New-York and Albany, in 1808; and, from that time to the present that river has been the theatre of the most remarkable series of experiments of locomotion on water ever recorded in the history of man. The Hudson is navigable by steamers of the largest class as high as Albany, a distance of nearly 150 miles from New-York. The steam navigation upon this river is entitled to attention, not only because of the immense traffic of which it is the vehicle, but because it forms a sort of model for all the rivers of the Atlantic States. Two classes of steamers work upon it--one appropriated to the swift transport of passengers, and the other to the towing of the vast traffic which is maintained between the city of New-York and the interior of the State of that name, into the heart of which the Hudson penetrates. The passenger steamers present a curious contrast to the sea-going steamers with which we are familiar. Not having to encounter the agitated surface of the ocean, they are supplied with neither rigging nor sails, are built exclusively with a view to speed, are slender and weak in their structure, with great length in proportion to their beam, and have but small draught of water. The position and form of the machinery are peculiar. The engines are placed on deck in a comparatively elevated situation. It is but rarely that two engines are used. A single engine placed in the centre of the deck drives a crank constructed on the axle of the enormous paddle-wheels, the magnitude of which, and the velocity imparted to them, enable them to perform the office of fly-wheels. These vessels, which are of great magnitude, are splendidly fitted up for the accommodation of passengers, and have been within the last ten or twelve years undergoing a gradual augmentation of magnitude, to which it would seem to be difficult to set a limit. In the following table, which we borrow from the work on _Railway Economy_, from which we have already derived so large a portion of our information, are given the dimensions and the details of fourteen of the principal steamers plying on the Hudson in the year 1838:-- |Length of deck. | |Breadth of beam. | | |Draught. | | | |Diameter of wheels. | | | | |Length of paddles. | | | | | |Depth of paddles. | | | | | | |Number of engines. | | | | | | | |Diameter of cylinder. | | | | | | | | |Length of stroke. | | | | | | | | | |Number of | | | | | | | | | |revolutions. | | | | | | | | | | |Part of stroke | | | | | | | | | | |at which steam Names. | | | | | | | | | | |is cut off. -------------+----+----+----+----+----+---+--+----+----+----+-----+ | ft.| ft.| ft.| ft.| ft.|ft.| | in.| ft.| | | Dewit Clinton| 230|28 |5·5 |21 |13·7|36 |1 |65 | 10 |29 |·75 | Champlain | 180|27 |5·5 |22 |15 |34 |2 |44 | 10 |27·5|·50 | Erie | 180|27 |5·5 |22 |15 |34 |2 |44 | 10 |27·5|·50 | North America| 200|30 |5 |21 |13 |30 |2 |44·5| 8 |24 |·50 | Independence | 148|26 | -- | -- | -- |-- |1 |44 | 10 | -- | -- | Albany | 212|26 | -- |24·5|14 |30 |1 |65 | -- |19 | -- | Swallow | 233|22·5|3·75|24 |11 |30 |1 |46 | -- |27 | -- | Rochester | 200|25 |3·75|23·5|10 |24 |1 |43 | 10 |28 | -- | Utica | 200|21 |3·5 |22 | 9·5|24 |1 |39 | 10 | -- | -- | Providence | 180|27 |9 | -- | -- |-- |1 |65 | 10 | -- | -- | Lexington | 207|21 | -- |23 | 9 |30 |1 |48 | 11 |24 | -- | Narraganset | 210|26 |5 |25 |11 |30 |1 |60 | 12 |20 |·50 | Massachusetts| 200|29·5|8·5 |22 |10 |28 |2 |44 | 8 |26 | -- | Rhode Island | 210|26 |6·5 |24 |11 |30 |1 |60 | 11 |21 | -- | +----+----+----+----+----+---+--+----+----+----+-----+ Averages | 200|26 |5·6 |24·8|11 |30 |--|50·8| 10 |24·8| -- | -------------+----+----+----+----+----+---+--+----+----+----+-----+ The changes more recently made all have a tendency to increase the magnitude and power of those vessels--to diminish their draught of water--and to increase the play of the expansive principle. Vessels of the largest class now draw only as much water as the smallest drew a few years ago, four feet five inches being regarded as the _maximum_. It appears from the following table that the average length of these prodigious floating hotels is above 300 feet; some of them approaching 400. In the passenger accommodation afforded by them no water communication in any country can compete. Nothing can exceed the splendor and luxury with which they are fitted up, furnished, and decorated. Silk, velvet, the most costly carpetings and upholstery, vast mirrors, gilding, and carving, are profusely displayed in their decoration. Even the engine-room in some of them is lined with mirrors. In the Alida, for example, the end of the engine-room is one vast mirror, in which the movements of the brilliant and highly-finished machinery are reflected. All the largest class are capable of running from twenty to twenty-two miles an hour, and average nearly twenty miles without difficulty. In the annexed table are exhibited the details of ten of the most recently constructed passenger vessels:-- ---------------+------------------------+----------------+------------------ | DIMENSIONS OF | ENGINE. | PADDLE- | VESSEL. | | WHEEL. +------------------------+----------------+------------------ | |Diameter of | | |cylinder. | |Length. | |Length of |Diameter. | |Breadth. | |stroke. | |Length of | | |Depth of | | |Number | |bucket. Names. | | |Hold. | | |of | | |Depth of | | | |Tonnage.| | |strokes.| | |bucket. ---------------+----+-----+----+--------+---+---+--------+----+----+-------- | ft.| ft. | ft.| |in.|ft.| | ft.|ft. | in. Isaac Newton |333 |40·4 |10·0| |81 |12 | 18-1/2 |39·0|12·4| 32 Bay State |300 |39·0 |13·2| |76 |12 | 21-1/2 |38·0|10·3| 32 Empire State |304 |39·0 |13·6| |76 |12 | 21-1/2 |38·0|10·3| 32 Oregon |308 |35·0 | -- | |72 |11 | 18 |34·0|11·0| 28 Hendrick Hudson|320 |35·0 | 9·6| 1,050 |72 |11 | 22 |33·0|11·0| 33 C. Vanderbilt |300 |35·0 |11·0| 1,075 |72 |12 | 21 |35·0| 9·0| 33 Connecticut |300 |37·0 |11·0| |72 |13 | 21 |35·0|11·6| 36 Commodore |280 |33·0 |10·6| |65 |11 | 22 |31·6| 9·0| 33 New-York |276 |35·0 |10·6| |76 |15 | 18 |44·6|12·0| 36 Alida |286 |28·0 | 9·6| |56 |12 | 24-1/2 |32·0|10·0| 32 ---------------+----+-----+----+-------+----+----+-------+----+----+-------- Averages |310 |35·8 |11·0| |71·8|12·1|20·8 |35·0|10·8| 37 ---------------+----+-----+----+-------+----+----+-------+----+----+-------- It may be observed, in relation to the navigation of those eastern rivers (for we do not here speak of the Mississippi and its tributaries), that the occurrence of explosions is almost unheard of. During the last ten years not a single catastrophe of this kind has been recorded, although cylindrical boilers ten feet in diameter, composed of plating 5-16ths of an inch thick, are commonly used with steam of 50lb. pressure. Previously to 1844 the lowest fare from New-York to Albany, a distance of 145 miles, was 4s. 4d.; at present the fare is 2s. 2d.--and for an additional sum of the same amount the passenger can command the luxury of a separate cabin. When the splendor and magnitude of the accommodation is considered, the magnificence of the furniture and accessories, and the luxuriousness of the table, it will be admitted that no similar example of cheap locomotion can be found in any part of the globe. Passengers may there be transported in a floating palace, surrounded with all the conveniences and luxuries of the most splendid hotel, at the average rate of twenty miles an hour, for less than _one-sixth of a penny per mile_! It is not an uncommon occurrence during the warm season to meet persons on board these boats who have lodged themselves there permanently, in preference to hotels on the banks of the river. Their daily expenses in the boat are as follows: Fare 2_s._ 2_d._ Separate bedroom 2 2 Breakfast, dinner, and supper 6 6 ------ Total daily expense for board, lodging, 10 10 attendance, and travelling 150 miles, at 20 miles an hour Such accommodation is, on the whole, more economical than a hotel. The bedroom is as luxuriously furnished as the handsomest chamber in an hotel or private house, and is much more spacious than the room similarly designated in the largest packet ships. The other class of steamers, used for towing the commerce of the river, corresponds to the goods trains on railways. No spectacle can be more remarkable than this class of locomotive machines, dragging their enormous load up the Hudson. They may be seen in the midst of this vast stream, surrounded by a cluster of twenty or thirty loaded craft of various magnitudes. Three or four tiers are lashed to them at each side, and as many more at their bow and at their stern. The steamer is almost lost to the eye in the midst of this crowd of vessels which cling around it, and the moving mass is seen to proceed up the river, no apparent agent of propulsion being visible, for the steamer and its propellers are literally buried in the midst of the cluster which clings to it and floats round and near it. As this _water-goods train_, for so it may be called, ascends the river, it drops off its load, vessel by vessel, at the towns which it passes. One or two are left at Newburgh, another at Poughkeepsie, two or three more at Hudson, one or two at Fishkill, and, finally, the tug arrives with a residuum of some half-dozen vessels at Albany. The steam navigation of the Mississippi and the other western rivers is conducted in a manner entirely different from that of the Hudson. Every one must be familiar with the lamentable accidents which happen from time to time, and the loss of life from explosion which continually takes place on those rivers. Such catastrophes, instead of diminishing with the improvement of art, seem rather to have increased. Engineers have done literally nothing to check the evil. In a Mississippi steamboat the cabins and saloons are erected on a flooring six or eight feet above the deck, upon which and under them the engines are placed, which are of the coarsest and most inartificial structure. They are invariably worked with high-pressure steam, and in order to obtain that effect which in the Hudson steamers is due to a vacuum, the steam is worked at an extraordinary pressure. We have ourselves actually witnessed boilers of this kind, on the western rivers, working under a full pressure of 120lb. per square inch above the atmosphere, and we have been assured that this pressure has been recently considerably increased, so that it is not unfrequent now to find them working with a bursting pressure of 200lb. per square inch! As might naturally be expected, the chief theatre of railway enterprise in America is the Atlantic States. The Mississippi and its tributaries have served the purposes of commerce and intercommunication to the comparatively thinly scattered population of the Western States so efficiently that many years will probably elapse, notwithstanding the extraordinary enterprise of the people, before any considerable extent of railway communication will be established in this part of the States. Nevertheless, the traveller in these distant regions encounters occasionally detached examples of railways even in the valley of the Mississippi. In the State of Mississippi there are five short lines, ten or twelve in Louisiana, and a limited number scattered over Florida, Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. These, however, are generally detached and single lines, unconnected with the vast network which we shall presently notice. To the traveller in these wild regions the aspect of such artificial agents of transport in the midst of a country, a great portion of which is still in the state of native forest, is most remarkable, and strongly characteristic of the irrepressible spirit of enterprise of its people. Travelling in the back woods of Mississippi, through native forests, where till within a few years human foot never trod, through solitudes, the silence of which was never broken, even by the red man, we have been sometimes filled with wonder to find ourselves transported by an engine constructed at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and driven by an artisan from Liverpool, at the rate of twenty miles an hour. It is not easy to describe the impression produced by the juxtaposition of these refinements of art and science with the wildness of the country, where one sees the frightened deer start from its lair at the snorting of the ponderous machine and the appearance of the snakelike train which follows it. The first American railway was opened for passengers on the last day of 1829. According to the reports collected and given in detail in the work already quoted, it appears that in 1849, after an interval of just twenty years, there were in actual operation 6,565 miles of railway in the States. The cost of construction and plant of this system of railways appears by the same authority to have been 53,386,885_l._, being at the average rate of 8,129_l._ per mile. The reports collected in Dr. Lardner's work come up to the middle of 1849. We have, however, before us documents which supply data to a more recent period, and have computed from them the following table, exhibiting the number of miles of railway in actual operation in the United States, the capital expended in their construction and plant, and the length of the lines which are in process of construction, but not yet completed:-- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Railways | Cost of | Projected |Cost per | in | Building and | and in | Mile. | operation. | Plant. | progress. | ------------------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+-------- | Miles. | £ | Miles. | £ Eastern States, | | | | including Maine, New | | | | Hampshire, Vermont, | | | | Massachusetts, Rhode | | | | Island, and Connecticut| 2,845 | 23,100,987 | 567 | 8,123 | | | | Atlantic States, | | | | including New-York, the | | | | Jerseys, Pennsylvania, | | | | Delaware, and Maryland | 3,503 | 27,952,500 | 2,020 | 7,979 | | | | Southern States, | | | | including Virginia, the | | | | Carolinas, Georgia, | | | | Florida, and Alabama | 2,103 | 8,253,130 | 1,283 | 3,919 | | | | Western States, | | | | including Mississippi, | | | | Louisiana, Texas, | | | | Tennessee, Kentucky, | | | | Ohio, Michigan, Indiana,| | | | Illinois, Missouri, | | | | Iowa, and Wisconsin | 1,835 | 7,338,290 | 5,762 | 3,999 |-------------+--------------+-------------+-------- Totals and averages | 10,289 | 66,653,907 | 9,632 | 6,478 ------------------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+-------- It must be admitted that the results here exhibited present a somewhat astonishing spectacle. It appears from this statement that there are in actual operation in the United States 10,289 miles of railway, and that there are 9,632 projected and in process of execution. So that when a few years more shall have rolled away, this extraordinary people will actually have 20,000 miles of iron road in operation. It appears from the above report, compared with the previous report quoted from Dr. Lardner, that the average cost of construction has been diminished as the operations progressed. According to Dr. Lardner, the average cost of construction of the 6,500 miles of railway in operation in 1849 was 8,129_l._ per mile whereas, it appears from the preceding table that the actual cost of 10,289 miles now in operation has been at the average rate of 6,478_l._ per mile. On examining the analysis of the distribution of these railways among the States, it appears that this discordance of the two statements is apparent rather than real, and proceeds from the fact that the railways opened since Dr. Lardner's report, being chiefly in the southern and western States, are cheaply constructed lines, in which the landed proprietors have given to a great extent their gratuitous co-operation, and in which the plant and working stock is of very small amount, so that their average cost per mile is a little under 4,000_l._--the average cost per mile in the eastern and northern States corresponding almost to a fraction with Dr. Lardner's estimate. It is also worthy of observation that the distribution of this network of railways is extremely unequal, not only in quantity, but in its capability, as indicated by its expense of construction. Thus, in the populous and wealthy States of Massachusetts, New-Jersey, and New-York, the proportion of railways to surface is considerable, while in the southern and western States it is trifling. In the following table is given the number of miles of surface for each mile of railway in some of the principal States:-- Square miles of surface for each mile of railway. Massachusetts 7 New-Jersey 22 New-York 28 Maryland 31 Ohio 58 Georgia 76 When it is considered that the railways in this country have cost upon an average about 40,000_l._ per mile, the comparatively low cost of the American railways will doubtless appear extraordinary. This circumstance, however, is explained partly by the general character of the country, partly by the mode of constructing the railways, and partly by the manner of working them. With certain exceptions, few in number, the tracts of country over which these lines are carried, is nearly a dead level. Of earthwork there is but little; of works of art, such as viaducts and tunnels, commonly none. Where the railways are carried over streams or rivers, bridges are constructed in a rude but substantial manner of timber supplied from the roadside forest, at no greater cost than that of hewing it. The station houses, booking offices, and other buildings, are likewise slight and cheaply constructed of timber. On some of the best lines in the more populous States the timber bridges are constructed with stone pillars and abutments, supporting arches of trusswork, the cost of such bridges varying from 46s. per foot, for 60 feet span, to 6_l._ 10s. per foot for 200 feet span, for a single line, the cost on a double line being 50 per cent. more. When the railways strike the course of rivers such as the Hudson, Delaware, or Susquehanna--too wide to be crossed by bridges--the traffic is carried by steam ferries. The management of these ferries is deserving of notice. It is generally so arranged that the time of crossing them corresponds with a meal of the passengers. A platform is constructed level with the line of railway and carried to the water's edge. Upon this platform rails are laid by which the wagons which bear the passengers' luggage and other matters of light and rapid transport are rolled directly upon the upper deck of the ferry boat, the passengers meanwhile going under a covered way to the lower deck. The whole operation is accomplished in five minutes. While the boat is crossing the spacious river the passengers are supplied with their breakfasts, dinner, or supper, as the case may be. On arriving at the opposite bank the upper deck comes in contact with a like platform, bearing a railway upon which the luggage wagons are rolled; the passengers ascend, as they descended, under a covered way, and, resuming their places in the railway carriages, the train proceeds. But the prudent Americans have availed themselves of other sources of economy by adopting a mode of construction adapted to the expected traffic. Formed to carry a limited commerce the railways are generally single lines, sidings being provided at convenient situations. Collision is impossible, for the first train that arrives at a siding must enter it and remain there until the following train arrives. This arrangement would be attended with inconvenience with a crowded traffic like that of many lines on the English railways, but even on the principal American lines the trains seldom pass in each direction more than twice a day, and their time and place of meeting is perfectly regulated. In the structure of the roads, also, principles have been adopted which have been attended with great economy compared with the English lines. The engineers, for example, do not impose on themselves the difficult and expensive condition of excluding all curves but those of large radius, and all gradients exceeding a certain small limit of steepness. Curves of 500 feet radius, and even less, are frequent, and acclivities rising at the rate of 1 foot in 100 are considered a moderate ascent, while there are not less than 50 lines laid down with gradients varying from 1 in 100 to 1 in 75, nevertheless these lines are worked with facility by locomotives, without the expedient, even, of assistant or stationary engines. The consequences of this have been to reduce in an immense proportion the cost of earthwork, bridges, and viaducts, even in parts of the country where the character of the surface is least favorable. But the chief source of economy has arisen from the structure of the line itself. In many cases where the traffic is lightest the rails consist of flat bars of iron, 2-1/2 inches broad and 6-10ths of an inch thick, nailed and spiked to planks of timber laid longitudinally on the road in parallel lines, so as to form what are called continuous bearings. Some of the most profitable American railways, and those of which the maintenance has proved least expensive, have been constructed in this manner. The road structure, however, varies according to the traffic. Rails are sometimes laid weighing only from 25lb. to 30lb. per yard. In some cases of great traffic they are supported on transverse sleepers of wood like the European railways, but in consequence of the comparative cheapness of wood and the high price of iron, the strength necessary for the road is mostly obtained by reducing the distance between the sleepers so as to supersede the necessity of giving greater weight to the rails. The same observance of the principles of economy is maintained with regard to their locomotive stock. The engines are strongly built, safe and powerful, but are destitute of much of that elegance of exterior and beauty of workmanship which has excited so much admiration, in the machines exhibited in the Crystal Palace. The fuel is generally wood, but on certain lines near the coal districts coal is used. The use of coke is nowhere resorted to. Its expense would make it inadmissible, and in a country so thinly inhabited the smoke proceeding from coal is not objected to. The ordinary speed, stoppages included, is from 14 to 16 miles an hour. Independently of other considerations, the light structure of many of the roads would not allow a greater velocity without danger; nevertheless we have frequently travelled on some of the better constructed lines at the ordinary speed of the English railways, say 30 miles an hour and upwards. Notwithstanding the apparently feeble and unsubstantial structure of many of the lines, accidents to passenger trains are scarcely ever heard of. It appears by returns now before us that of 9,355,474 passengers booked in 1850 on the crowded railways of Massachusetts, each passenger making an average trip of 18 miles, there were only 15 who sustained accidents fatal to life or limb. It follows from this, by the common principles explained by us in a former article, that when a passenger travels one mile on these railways the chances against an accident producing personal injury, even of the slightest kind, are 11,226,568 to 1, and of course in a journey of 100 miles the chances against such accident are 112,266 to 1. We have shown in a former article that the chances against accident on an English railway, under like circumstances, are 85,125 to 1. The American railways are, therefore, safer than the English in the ratio of 112 to 85. The great line of communication is established, 400 miles in length, between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, on the left bank of the Ohio, composed partly of railway and partly of canal. The section from Philadelphia to Columbia (82 miles) is railway; the line is then continued by canal for 172 miles to Holidaysburg; it is then carried by railway 37 miles to Johnstown, whence it is continued 104 miles further to Pittsburg by canal. The traffic on this mixed line of transport is conducted so as to avoid the expense and inconvenience of transhipment of goods and passengers at the successive points where the railway and canals unite. The merchandise is loaded and the passengers accommodated in the boats adapted to the canals at the dépôt in Market-street, Philadelphia. These boats, which are of considerable magnitude and length, are divided into segments by partitions made transversely and at right angles to their length, so that such boat can be, as it were, broken into three or more pieces. These several pieces are placed each on two railway trucks, which support it at the ends, a proper body being provided for the trucks adapted to the form of the bottom and keel of the boat. In this manner the boat is carried in pieces, with its load, along the railway. On arriving at the canal the pieces are united so as to form a continuous boat, which being launched, the transport is continued on the water. On arriving again at the railway the boat is once more resolved into its segments, which, as before, are transferred to the railway trucks and transported to the next canal station by locomotive engines. Between the dépôt in Market-street and the locomotive station which is situated in the suburbs of Philadelphia the segments of the boat are drawn by horses on railways conducted through the streets. At the locomotive station the trucks are formed into a continuous train and delivered over to the locomotive engine. As the body of the truck rests upon a pivot, under which it is supported by wheels, it is capable of revolving, and no difficulty is found in turning the shortest curves, and these enormous vehicles, with their contents of merchandise and passengers, are seen daily issuing from the gates of the dépôt in Market-street, and turning with facility the corners at the entrance of each successive street. By a comparison of the returns published by Dr. Lardner, in his work already quoted, with the more recent results which we have already given, it will appear that within the last two years not less than 3,700 miles of railway have been opened for traffic in the United States. Among these are included several of the most important lines, among which are more especially to be noticed the great artery of railway communication extending across the State of New York to the shores of Lake Erie, the longest line which any single company has yet constructed in the United States, its length being 467 miles. The total cost of this line, including the working stock, has been 4,500,000_l._ sterling, being at the average rate of 9,642_l._ per mile--a rate of expense about 50 per cent. above the average cost of American railways taken collectively. This is explained by the fact that the line itself is one constructed for a large traffic between New York and the interior, and therefore built to meet a heavy traffic. Although it is but just opened, its average receipts have amounted to 11,000_l._ per week, which have given a net profit of 6-1/2 per cent. on the capital, the working expenses being taken at 50 per cent. of the gross receipts. One of the great lines in a forward state, and likely to be opened by the close of the present year, connects New York with Albany, following the valley of the Hudson. It will no doubt create surprise, considering the immense facility of water transport afforded by this river, that a railway should be constructed on its bank, but it must be remembered that for a considerable interval during the winter the navigation of the Hudson is suspended from the frost. A great line of railway, which will intersect the States from south to north, connecting the port of Mobile on the Gulf of Mexico with Lake Michigan and the lead mines of Galena on the Upper Mississippi, is also in progress of construction, large grants of land being conceded to the company by the Federal Government. This line will probably be opened in 1854. It is difficult to obtain authentic reports from which the movement of the traffic on the American railways can be ascertained with precision. Dr. Lardner, however, obtained the necessary statistical data relating to nearly 1,200 miles of railway in the States of New England and New York, from which he was enabled to collect all the circumstances attending the working of these lines, the principal of which are collected in the following table:-- Tabular analysis of the average daily movement of the traffic on 28 of the principal railways in the States of New England and New York. PASSENGER TRAFFIC.--Number booked 23,981 Mileage 437,350 Receipts £2,723 Mileage of trains 8,091 GOODS TRAFFIC.--Tons booked 6,547 Mileage 248,351 Receipts £1,860 Mileage of trains 4,560 Total length of the above railways in the State of New York 490 miles Ditto, in the States of New England 670 " ----- Total 1,160 miles. Average cost of construction and stock in the State of New York £7,010 Ditto, in the States of New England £10,800 General average £9,200 | Receipts | Expenses. | Profits. --------------------------------------+----------+------------+---------- Total average receipts, expenses, | | | and profits per day in the State of | £ | £ | £ New York | 1,654 | 684 | 970 | | | Ditto, States of New England | 3,040 | 1,505 | 1,535 +----------+------------+---------- Totals | 4,694 | 2,189 | 2,505 | | | Per cent. | Per mile | Per mile | per annum |of railway| run by | on | per day. | trains. | capital. --------------------------------------+----------+------------+---------- | £ | | Receipts | 4,05 | 7s. 5d. | 16,1 Expenses | 1,89 |3s. 5-1/2d. | 7,5 +----------+------------+---------- Profits | 2,16 |2s.11-1/2d. | 8,6 Expense per cent. of receipts 46,8 Average receipts for passengers booked 27,0d. Average distance travelled per passenger 18,2 miles Average receipts per passenger per mile 1,47d. Average number of passengers per train 54,0 Total average receipts per passenger train per mile 7s. Average receipts per ton of goods booked 6s. 8-1/2d. Average distance carried per ton 38,0 miles Average receipts per ton per mile 1s. 8d. Average number of tons per train 54,5 Total average receipts per goods per mile 8,2s. The railways, of whose traffic we have here given a synopsis, are those of the most active and profitable description in the United States. It would, therefore, be a great error to infer from the results here exhibited general conclusions as to the financial condition of the American railways. It appears, on the other hand, from a more complete analysis, that the dividends on the American lines, exclusive of those contained in the preceding analysis, are in general small, and in many instances nothing. It is, therefore, probable that in the aggregate the average profits on the total amount of capital invested in the American railways does not exceed, if it indeed equal, the average profits obtained on the capital invested in English railways, which we have in a former article shown to produce little more than 3 per cent. The extraordinary extent of railway constructed at so early a period in the United States has been by some ascribed to the absence of a sufficient extent of communication by common roads. Although this cause has operated to some extent in certain districts it is by no means so general as has been supposed. In the year 1838 the United States' mails circulated over a length of way amounting on the whole to 136,218 miles, of which two-thirds were land transport, including railways as well as common roads. Of the latter there must have been about 80,000 miles in operation, of which, however, a considerable portion was bridle-roads. The price of transport in the stage coaches was, upon an average, 3.25d. per passenger per mile, the average price by railway being about 1.47d. per mile. Of the entire extent of railway constructed in the United States, by far the greater portion, as has been already explained, consists of single lines, constructed in a light and cheap manner, which in England would be regarded as merely serving temporary purposes; while, on the contrary, the entire extent of the English system consists, not only of double lines, but of railways constructed in the most solid, permanent, and expensive manner, adapted to the purposes of an immense traffic. If a comparison were to be instituted at all between the two systems, its basis ought to be the capital expended, and the traffic served by them, in which case the result would be somewhat different from that obtained by the mere consideration of the length of the lines. It is not, however, the same in reference to the canals, in which it must be admitted America far exceeds all other countries in proportion to her population. The American railways have been generally constructed by joint stock companies, which, however, the State controls much more stringently than in England. In some cases a major limit to the dividends is imposed by the statute of incorporation, in some the dividends are allowed to augment, but when they exceed a certain limit the surplus is divided with the State; in some the privilege granted to the companies is only for a limited period, in some a sort of periodical revision and restriction of the tariff is reserved to the State. Nothing can be more simple, expeditious, and cheap than the means of obtaining an act for the establishment of a railway company in America. A public meeting is held at which the project is discussed and adopted, a deputation is appointed to apply to the Legislature, which grants the act without expense, delay, or official difficulty. The principle of competition is not brought into play as in France, nor is there any investigation as to the expediency of the project with reference to future profit or loss as in England. No other guarantee or security is required from the company than the payment by the shareholders of a certain amount, constituting the first call. In some States the non-payment of a call is followed by the confiscation of the previous payments, in others a fine is imposed on the shareholders, in others the share is sold, and if the produce be less than the price at which it was delivered the surplus can be recovered from the shareholder by process of law. In all cases the act creating the companies fix a time within which the works must be completed, under pain of forfeiture. The traffic in shares before the definite constitution of the company is prohibited. Although the State itself has rarely undertaken the execution of railways, it holds out in most cases inducements in different forms to the enterprise of companies. In some cases the State takes a great number of shares, which is generally accompanied by a loan made to the company, consisting in State Stock delivered at par, which the company negotiate at its own risk. This loan is often converted into a subvention. The great extent of railway communication in America in proportion to its population must necessarily excite much admiration. If we take the present population of the United States at 24,000,000, and the railways in operation at 10,000 miles, it will follow that in round numbers there is one mile of railway for every 2,400 inhabitants. Now, in the United Kingdom there are at present in operation 6,500 miles of railway, and if we take the population at 30,000,000, it will appear that there is a mile of railway for every 4,615 inhabitants. It appears, therefore, that in proportion to the population the length of railways in the United States is greater than in the United Kingdom in the ratio of 46 to 24. On the American railways passengers are not differently classed or received at different rates of fare as on those of Europe. There is but one class and one fare. The only distinction observable arises from color. The colored population, whether emancipated or not, are generally excluded from the vehicles provided for the whites. Such travellers are but few, and are usually accommodated either in the luggage van or in the carriage with the guard or conductor. But little merchandise is transported, the cost of transport being greater than goods in general are capable of paying; nevertheless, a tariff regulated by weight alone, without distinction of classes, is fixed for merchandise. Although Cuba is not yet _annexed_ to the United States, its local proximity here suggests some notice of a line of railway which traverses that island, forming a communication between the city of Havana and the centre of the island. This is an excellently constructed road, and capitally worked by British engines, British engineers, and British coals. The impressions produced in passing along this line of railway, though different from those already noticed in the forests of the far west, is not less remarkable. We are here transported at 30 miles an hour by an engine from Newcastle, driven by an engineer from Manchester, and propelled by fuel from Liverpool, through fields yellow with pineapples, through groves of plantain and cocoa-nut, and along roads inclosed by hedge-rows of ripe oranges. To what extent this extraordinary rapidity of advancement made by the United States in its inland communications is observable in other departments will be seen by the following table, exhibiting a comparative statement of those _data_, derived from official sources, which indicate the social and commercial condition of a people through a period which forms but a small stage in the life of a nation: 1793. 1851. Population 3,939,325 24,267,488 Imports £6,739,130 £38,723,545 Exports £5,675,869 £32,367,000 Tonnage 520,704 3,535,451 Lighthouses, beacons, and lightships 7 373 Cost of their maintenance £2,600 £115,000 Revenue £1,230,000 £9,516,000 National expenditure £1,637,000 £8,555,000 Post offices 209 21,551 Post roads (miles) 5,642 178,670 Revenue of Post-office £22,800 £1,207,000 Expenses of Post-office £15,650 £1,130,000 Mileage of mails ---- 46,541,423 Canals (miles) 0 5,000 Railways (miles) 0 10,287 Electric telegraph (miles) 0 15,000 Public libraries (volumes) 75,000 2,201,623 School libraries (volumes) 0 2,000,000 If they were not founded on the most incontestable statistical data, the results assigned to the above table would appear to belong to fable rather than history. In an interval of little more than half a century it appears that this extraordinary people have increased above 500 per cent. in numbers; their national revenue has augmented nearly 700 per cent., while their public expenditure has increased little more than 400 per cent. The prodigious extension of their commerce is indicated by an increase of nearly 500 per cent. in their imports and exports and 600 per cent. in their shipping. The increased activity of their internal communications is expounded by the number of their post offices, which has been increased more than a hundred-fold, the extent of their post roads, which has been increased thirty-six-fold, and the cost of their post-office, which has been augmented in a seventy-two-fold ratio. The augmentation of their machinery of public instruction is indicated by the extent of their public libraries, which have increased in a thirty-two-fold ratio, and by the creation of school libraries, amounting to 2,000,000 volumes. They have completed a system of canal navigation, which, placed in a continuous line, would extend from London to Calcutta, and a system of railways which, continuously extended, would stretch from London to Van Diemen's Land, and have provided locomotive machinery by which that distance would be travelled over in three weeks, at the cost of 1-1/2d. per mile. They have created a system of inland navigation, the aggregate tonnage of which is probably not inferior in amount to the collective inland tonnage of all the other countries in the world, and they possess many hundreds of river steamers, which impart to the roads of water the marvellous celerity of roads of iron. They have, in fine, constructed lines of electric telegraph which, laid continuously, would extend over a space longer by 3,000 miles than the distance from the north to the south pole, and have provided apparatus of transmission by which a message of 300 words despatched under such circumstances from the north pole might be delivered _in writing_ at the south pole in one minute, and by which, consequently, an answer of equal length might be sent back to the north pole in an equal interval. These are social and commercial phenomena for which it would be vain to seek a parallel in the past history of the human race. THE LAST EARTHQUAKE IN EUROPE. A correspondent of the _Athenæum_ gives the following account--the best we have yet seen--of the recent earthquake at Amalfi, in the kingdom of Naples:-- "I have, however, seen several persons from Malfi; and from their narratives will endeavor to give you some idea of this awful visitation. The morning of the 14th of August was very sultry, and a leaden atmosphere prevailed. It was remarked that an unusual silence appeared to extend over the animal world. The hum of insects ceased--the feathered tribes were mute--not a breath of wind moved the arid vegetation. About half-past two o'clock the town of Malfi rocked for about six seconds, and nearly every building fell in. The number of edifices actually levelled with the earth is 163--of those partially destroyed 98, and slightly damaged 180. Five monastic establishments were destroyed, and seven churches including the cathedral. The awful event occurred at a time when most of the inhabitants of a better condition were at dinner; and the result is, that out of the whole population only a few peasants laboring in the fields escaped. More than 700 dead bodies have already been dug out of the ruins, and it is supposed that not less than 800 are yet entombed. A college accommodating 65 boys and their teachers is no longer traceable. But the melancholy event does not end here. The adjoining village of Ascoli has also suffered:--32 houses laving fallen in, and the church being levelled with the ground. More than 200 persons perished there. Another small town, Barile, has actually disappeared; and a lake has arisen from the bowels of the earth, the waters being warm and brackish. "I proceed to give a few anecdotes, as narrated by persons who have arrived in Naples from the scene of horror:--'I was travelling,' says one, 'within a mile of Malfi when I observed three cars drawn by oxen. In a moment the two most distant fell into the earth; from the third I observed a man and a boy descend and run into a vineyard which skirted the road. Shortly after, I think about three seconds, the third car was swallowed up. We stopped our carriage, and proceeded to the spot where the man and boy stood. The former I found stupified--he was both deaf and dumb; the boy appeared to be out of his mind, and spoke wildly, but eventually recovered. The poor man still remains speechless.' Another informant says:--'Malfi, and all around present a singular and melancholy appearance: houses levelled or partially fallen in--here and there the ground broken up--large gaps displaying volcanic action--people wandering about stupified--men searching in the ruins--women weeping--children here and there crying for their parents, and some wretched examples of humanity carrying off articles of furniture. The authorities are nowhere to be found.' A third person states:--'I am from Malfi, and was near a monastery when the earthquake occurred. A peasant told me that the water in a neighboring well was quite hot,--a few moments after I saw the building fall. I fell on the ground, and saw nothing more. I thought that I had had a fit.' "The town of Malfi--or, Amalfi--is 150 miles from Naples, and about the centre of the boot. It is difficult, therefore, to gain information. The government, I should add, sent a company of sappers and miners to assist the afflicted _nine days after the earthquake_!--and a medical commission is to set off to-morrow. In conclusion, I may observe, that Vesuvius has for a long time been singularly quiet. The shock of the earthquake was felt slightly, though sensibly, from Naples round to Sorrento. I have just heard that the shocks have not ceased in the district of Malfi; and it is supposed that volcanic agency is still active. Indeed, my informant anticipates that an eruption will take place; and probably some extraordinary phenomena may appear in this neighborhood. The volcanic action appears to have taken the direction of Sicily, as reports have arrived stating that the shocks were felt in that direction far more strongly than in that of Naples. I shall send you further particulars as soon as I can do so with certainty." MR. JEFFERSON ON THE STUDY OF THE ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGE. The trustees of the University of Virginia have had printed a few copies of _An Essay towards facilitating Instruction in the Anglo-Saxon and Modern Dialects of the English Language_: _By_ THOMAS JEFFERSON. The MS. has been preserved in the library of their University ever since Mr. Jefferson's death. It is a very characteristic production, and is printed in a thin quarto volume, prefaced by the following letter from Mr. Jefferson to Herbert Croft, LL.B., of London: MONTICELLO, _Oct. 30th, 1798_. Sir; The copy of your printed letter on the English and German languages, which you have been so kind as to send me, has come to hand; and I pray you to accept of my thanks for this mark of your attention. I have perused it with singular pleasure, and, having long been sensible of the importance of a knowledge of the Northern languages to the understanding of English, I see it, in this letter, proved and specifically exemplified by your collations of the English and German. I shall look with impatience for the publication of your "English and German Dictionary." Johnson, besides the want of precision in his definitions, and of accurate distinction in passing from one shade of meaning to another of the same word, is most objectionable in his derivations. From a want probably of intimacy with our own language while in the Anglo-Saxon form and type, and of its kindred languages of the North, he has a constant leaning towards Greek and Latin for English etymon. Even Skinner has a little of this, who, when he has given the true Northern parentage of a word, often tells you from what Greek and Latin source it might be derived by those who have that kind of partiality. He is, however, on the whole, our best etymologist, unless we ascend a step higher to the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary; and he has set the good example of collating the English word with its kindred word in the several Northern dialects, which often assist in ascertaining its true meaning. Your idea is an excellent one, in producing authorities for the meanings of words, "to select the prominent passages in our best writers, to make your dictionary a general index to English literature, and thus to intersperse with verdure and flowers the barren deserts of Philology." And I believe with you that "wisdom, morality, religion, thus thrown down, as if without intention, before the reader, in quotations, may often produce more effect than the very passages in the books themselves;"--"that the cowardly suicide, in search of a strong word for his dying letter, might light on a passage which would excite him to blush at his want of fortitude, and to forego his purpose;"--"and that a dictionary with examples at the words may, in regard to every branch of knowledge, produce more real effect than the whole collection of books which it quotes." I have sometimes myself used Johnson as a Repertory, to find favorite passages which I wished to recollect, but too rarely with success. I was led to set a due value on the study of the Northern languages, and especially of our Anglo-Saxon, while I was a student of the law, by being obliged to recur to that source for explanation of a multitude of law-terms. A preface to Fortescue on Monarchies, written by Fortescue Aland, and afterwards premised to his volume of Reports, developes the advantages to be derived to the English student generally, and particularly the student of law, from an acquaintance with the Anglo-Saxon; and mentions the books to which the learner may have recourse for acquiring the language. I accordingly devoted some time to its study, but my busy life has not permitted me to indulge in a pursuit to which I felt great attraction. While engaged in it, however, some ideas occurred for facilitating the study by simplifying its grammar, by reducing the infinite diversities of its unfixed orthography to single and settled forms, indicating at the same time the pronunciation of the word by its correspondence with the characters and powers of the English alphabet. Some of these ideas I noted at the time on the blank leaves of my Elstob's Anglo-Saxon Grammar: but there I have left them, and must leave them, unpursued, although I still think them sound and useful. Among the works which I proposed for the Anglo-Saxon student, you will find such literal and verbal translations of the Anglo-Saxon writers recommended, as you have given us of the German in your printed letter. Thinking that I cannot submit those ideas to a better judge than yourself, and that if you find them of any value you may put them to some use, either as hints in your dictionary, or in some other way, I will copy them as a sequel to this letter, and commit them without reserve to your better knowledge of the subject. Adding my sincere wishes for the speedy publication of your valuable dictionary, I tender you the assurance of my high respect and consideration. THOMAS JEFFERSON." Of the Essay itself we have room for only the initial paragraph, which is as follows: "The importance of the Anglo-Saxon dialect towards a perfect understanding of the English language seems not to have been duly estimated by those charged with the education of youth; and yet it is unquestionably the basis of our present tongue. It was a full-formed language; its frame and construction, its declension of nouns and verbs, and its syntax were peculiar to the Northern languages, and fundamentally different from those of the South. It was the language of all England, properly so called, from the Saxon possession of that country in the sixth century to the time of Henry III. in the thirteenth, and was spoken pure and unmixed with any other. Although the Romans had been in possession of that country for nearly five centuries from the time of Julius Cæsar, yet it was a military possession chiefly, by their soldiery alone, and with dispositions intermutually jealous and unamicable. They seemed to have aimed at no lasting settlements there, and to have had little familiar mixture with the native Britons. In this state of connection there would probably be little incorporation of the Roman into the native language, and on their subsequent evacuation of the island its traces would soon be lost altogether. And had it been otherwise, these innovations would have been carried with the natives themselves when driven into Wales by the invasion and entire occupation of the rest of the Southern portion of the island by the Anglo-Saxons. The language of these last became that of the country from that time forth, for nearly seven centuries; and so little attention was paid among them to the Latin, that it was known to a few individuals only as a matter of science, and without any chance of transfusion into the vulgar language. We may safely repeat the affirmation, therefore, that the pure Anglo-Saxon constitutes at this day the basis of our language. That it was sufficiently copious for the purposes of society in the existing condition of arts and manners, reason alone would satisfy us from the necessity of the case. Its copiousness, too, was much favored by the latitude it allowed of combining primitive words so as to produce any modification of idea desired. In this characteristic it was equal to the Greek, but it is more specially proved by the actual fact of the books they have left us in the various branches of history, geography, religion, law, and poetry. And although since the Norman conquest it has received vast additions and embellishments from the Latin, Greek, French, and Italian languages, yet these are but engraftments on its idiomatic stem; its original structure and syntax remain the same, and can be but imperfectly understood by the mere Latin scholar. Hence the necessity of making the Anglo-Saxon a regular branch of academic education. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was assiduously cultivated by a host of learned men. The names of Lambard, Parker, Spelman, Wheeloc, Wilkins, Gibson, Hickes, Thwaites, Somner, Benson, Mareschal, Elstob, deserve to be ever remembered with gratitude for the Anglo-Saxon works which they have given us through the press, the only certain means of preserving and promulgating them." THE OBELISKS OF EGYPT. In the last number of the _International_ we gave an interesting article from the London _Times_ respecting "Cleopatra's Needle." The subject of its removal has since been largely discussed in England, and Mr. Tucker, a civil engineer, has been sent out to Alexandria to "report on the condition and site of the obelisk," and Lord Edward Russell has been appointed to the Vengeance to proceed to Egypt for the purpose of bringing it to England. On the publication of these facts Mr. Nathaniel Gould writes to the _Times_ as follows: How far a "man-of-war" is a proper vessel for this purpose may be seen hereafter. The Premier is, however, ready enough to appropriate some little _éclat_ to a member of his own family. I stated that, so far as I could make out, the bringing the obelisk of Luxor to Paris had cost the French Government 40,000_l._; but it is stated by Mr. Gliddon, late United States Consul at Cairo, that it actually cost France 2,000,000f., or 80,000_l._! Private offers have been made to bring the Needle to England for from 7,000_l._ to 12,500_l._ within a twelvemonth; it remains to be seen what it will cost when brought on Government account. Notwithstanding that so much has of late appeared upon the subject of Egyptian obelisks, but little has been given of value to the public touching the nature, origin, inscriptions, numbers, and localities of these curious and interesting objects. Perhaps, Sir, you may not think it out of the way to give room for such information as I have got together in my researches, while contemplating the removal of the obelisk from Alexandria. Obelisks are of Egyptian invention, and are purely historical records, placed in pairs before public buildings, stating when, by whom, and for what purpose the building was erected, and the divinity or divinities to whom it was dedicated. We read that the ancient Hebrews set up stones to record signal events, and such stones are called by Strabo "books of history;" but, as they were uninscribed, the Egyptian monoliths are much more so. The Celts, too, have left similar stones in every country in which they settled, as our own islands sufficiently prove, whether in those of the Channel or of Ireland and Scotland. The Scandinavian nations have in more recent periods left similar records, some of them inscribed with Runic characters, which, like the hieroglyphics of Egypt, are now translated. Egyptian obelisks are all of very nearly similar proportions, however they may differ in height; the width of the base is usually about one-tenth of the length of the shaft, up to the finish or pyramidion, which, again, is one-tenth of the length of the shaft. The image of gold set up by king Nebuchadnezzar agrees with these proportions--viz., sixty cubits high and six cubits wide. They are generally cut out of granite, though there are two small ones in the British Museum of basalt, and one at Philoe of sandstone. The pyramidions of several appear to be rough and unfinished, leading some persons to suppose that they were surmounted with a cap of bronze, or of rays. Bonom writes, that Abd El Latief saw bronze coverings on those of Luxor and that of Materiah in the 13th century; with such a belief it is not improbable that the obelisk of Arles, in France, found and re-erected to the glory of the Great Louis, was surmounted with a gilt sun. The temples of Egypt may be considered not only as monuments of the intelligence and ancient civilization of mankind, as vignettes in the great book of history, but also as possessing a peculiar interest, as belonging to a people intimately connected with sacred records. As regards the original sites of the obelisks, none are found on the west bank of the Nile, neither are any pyramids found on the eastern bank of Egypt Proper; this caused Bonomi to think that obelisks were intended as decorations to the temples of the living, symbolized by the rising sun, and pyramids decorations of the temples of the dead, symbolized by its setting. The greater number of obelisks are engraven on the four faces; some are engraven on one face only, and some have never been inscribed. Some of the faces are engraven in one column, some in two, and some in three columns. In some instances the side or lateral columns have been additions in after times, in different and inferior styles of engraving; and in some instances the name of the king, within the oval or cartouche, has been erased and another substituted. The inscriptions are hieroglyphic or sacred writing, which have been unintelligible till within the last few years. The French occupation of Egypt commenced that discovery, which has been perfected by the key of Young and the alphabet of Champollion--though mainly perhaps indebted to the Rosetta Stone, found in 1799, engraven in three characters, hieroglyphic, Demotic and Greek. The more ancient inscriptions are beautifully cut, and as fresh as if just from the tool, and are curiously caved inwardly, and exquisitely polished. It would take too much of your space and of my time to give a history of the progress of this wonderful discovery, by which we now know more of the Egyptian history before the time of Abraham than of England before Alfred the Great, or of France before Charlemagne. Some of these monuments are considered to date as far back as 2,000 years before the Christian era. It is sufficiently evident, from the small number that are known to exist, that they were a most costly production, requiring a long time for their completion, and the most elaborate skill of the most perfect sculptors to execute. Bonomi, to whose indefatigable research, and clear and positive style of writing, and condensation of his knowledge I am indebted, out of his papers read before the Royal Society of Literature (of which I am a member), gives us an account of all the known obelisks. The number of Egyptian obelisks now standing is 30; of which there are remaining in Egypt, 8; in Italy, 14; in Constantinople, 2; in France, 2; in England, 4. The loftiest is that of the "Lateran," at Rome, which is 105 feet, though 4 feet were cut from its broken base, to enable it to stand when re-erected. The shortest is the minor "Florentine," which is 5 feet 10 inches. The number of prostrate obelisks known is 12, viz.: at Alexandria, 1; in the ruins of Saan, or Tanais, 9; at Carnack, 2; all in Egypt, and all colossal, and of the 18th and 20th dynasties. Thus it seems that, like the cedars of Lebanon, there are more in other parts of the world than in the country of their original location. The 12 obelisks at Rome were conveyed thither by the Cæsars to adorn the eternal city; that of the Lateran was brought by Constantine from Heliopolis to Alexandria, and from Alexandria by Constantius, and placed in the "Circus Maximus." It was brought from Alexandria in an immense galley. When the barbarians sacked Rome they overthrew all the obelisks, which were broken in their fall; this was in three pieces, and the base so destroyed that when raised by Fontana in 1588, by order of Sixtus V., above 4 feet were cut from its base; it is now 105 feet 7 inches in shaft. It is sculptured on all four sides, and the same subject on each. There are three columns--the inner the most ancient and best cut. The obelisk of the Piazza del Popolo was brought from Heliopolis by Augustus, and, like the preceding, was broken in three pieces, and required above three feet to be cut off its damaged base. This, too, was re-erected by order of Sixtus V., in 1589. Its height, as now shortened, is 87 feet 5 inches. It is sculptured on all four sides in three columns of different age and excellence. The obelisk of "Piazza Rotunda" was re-erected by Clement XI., A. D., 1711. It is 19 feet 9 inches shaft. It has only one column of hieroglyphics, with the name of Rameses on each. Those of Materiah and the Hippodrome at Constantinople also have but one centre column engraved. So much for some of those at Rome. Of the four in England, two small ones, of basalt, are in the British Museum; they are only 8 feet 1 inch in height. That at Alnwick Castle was found in the Thebaid, and presented to Lord Prudhoe by the Pacha in 1838, and got to England by Bonomi. It is of red granite, 7 feet 3 inches in height, and 9-3/4 inches at the base. It is inscribed on one face only. That at Corfe Castle was brought over for Mr. Bankes by the celebrated Belzoni. It is of granite, and 22 feet in height. Mr. Gould proceeds to repeat the particulars respecting Cleopatra's Needle, which were contained in the October number of this magazine. Signor Tisvanni D'Athanasi also writes to the _Times_, proposing to undertake the removal of this obelisk, and says: "Every body knows that from the time of the Romans up to the present century the only colossal objects which have been transported from Egypt, with the exception of the obelisk of Luxor, are the two sphynxes which are now at St Petersburgh, and which were found and sent to Alexandria through my means." DR. LATHAM ON THE MOSKITO KINGDOM. The last portion of Dr. ROBERT G. LATHAM'S learned work on the Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies, treats of American ethnology, a branch of the subject which, though extensively investigated, is greatly in want of systematic arrangement. Some of Dr. Latham's views are novel. The following sketch of the Nicaraguan Indians is interesting at the present moment for political reasons:-- "The Moskito Indians are no subjects of England, any more than the Tahitians are of France, or the Sandwich Islanders of America, France, and England conjointly. The Moskito coast is a Protectorate, and the Moskito Indians are the subjects of a native king. The present reigning monarch was educated under English auspices at Jamaica, and, upon attaining his majority, crowned at Grey Town. I believe that his name is that of the grandfather of our late gracious majesty. King George, then, King of the Moskitos, has a territory extending from the neighborhood of Truxillo to the lower part of the River San Juan; a territory whereof, inconveniently for Great Britain, the United States, and the commerce of the world at large, the limits and definition are far from being universally recognized. Nicaragua has claims, and the Isthmus canal suffers accordingly. The King of the Moskito coast, and the Emperor of the Brazil, are the only resident sovereigns of the New World. The subjects of the former are, really, the aborigines of the whole line of coast between Nicaragua and Honduras--there being no Indians remaining in the former republic, and but few in the latter. Of these, too--the Nicaraguans--we have no definite ethnological information. Mr. Squier speaks of them as occupants of the islands of the lakes of the interior. Colonel Galindo also mentions them; but I infer, from his account, that their original language is lost, and that Spanish is their present tongue; just as it is said to be that of the aborigines of St. Salvador and Costa Rica. This makes it difficult to fix them. And the difficulty is increased when we resort to history, tradition, and archæology. History makes them Mexicans--Asteks from the kingdom of Montezuma, and colonists of the Peninsula, just as the Phoenicians were of Carthage. Archæology goes the same way. A detailed description of Mr. Squier's discoveries is an accession to ethnology which is anxiously expected. At any rate, stone ruins and carved decorations have been found; so that what Mr. Stephenson has written about Yucatan and Guatemala, may be repeated in the case of Nicaragua. Be it so. The difficulty will be but increased, since whatever facts make Nicaragua Mexican, isolate the Moskitos. They are now in contact with Spaniards and Englishmen--populations whose civilization differs from their own; and populations who are evidently intrusive and of recent origin. Precisely the same would be the case if the Nicaraguans were made Mexican. The civilization would be of another sort; the population which introduced it would be equally intrusive; and the only difference would be a difference of stage and degree--a little earlier in the way of time, and a little less contrast in the way of skill and industry. But the evidence in favor of the Mexican origin of the Nicaraguans is doubtful; and so is the fact of their having wholly lost their native tongue; and until one of these two opinions be proved, it will be well to suspend our judgment as to the isolation of the Moskitos. If, indeed, either of them be true, their ethnological position will be a difficult question. With nothing in Honduras to compare them with--with nothing tangible, or with an apparently incompatible affinity in Nicaragua--with only very general miscellaneous affinities in Guatemala--their ethnological affinities are as peculiar as their political constitution. Nevertheless, isolated as their language is, it has undoubtedly general affinities with those of America at large; and this is all that it is safe to say at present. But it is safe to say this. We have plenty of data for their tongue, in a grammar of Mr. Henderson's, published at New-York, 1846. The chief fact in the history of the Moskitos is that they were never subject to the Spaniards. Each continent affords a specimen of this isolated freedom--the independence of some exceptional and impracticable tribes, as compared with the universal empire of some encroaching European power. The Circassians in Caucasus, the Tshuktshi Koriaks in North-Eastern Asia, and the Kaffres in Africa, show this. Their relations with the buccaneers were, probably, of an amicable description. So they were with the negroes--maroon and imported. And this, perhaps, has determined their _differentiæ_. They are intertropical American aborigines, who have become partially European, without becoming Spanish. Their physical conformation is that of the South rather than the North American; and, here it must be remembered, that we are passing from one moiety of the new hemisphere to the other. With a skin which is olive-colored rather than red, they have small limbs and undersized frames; whilst their habits are, _mutatis mutandis_, those of the intertropical African. This means, that the exuberance of soil, and the heat of the climate, make them agriculturists rather than shepherds, and idlers rather than agriculturists, since the least possible amount of exertion gives them roots and fruits, whilst it is only those wants which are compatible with indolence that they care to satisfy. They presume rather than improve upon the warmth of their suns, and the fertility of the soil. When they get liquor, they get drunk; when they work hardest, they cut mahogany. Canoes and harpoons represent the native industry. Wulasha is the name of their evil spirit, and Liwaia that of a water-dog. I cannot but think that there is much intermixture amongst them. At the same time, the data for ascertaining the amount are wanting. Their greatest intercourse has, probably, been with the negro; their next greatest with the Englishman. Of the population of the interior we know next to nothing. Here their neighbors are Spaniards. They are frontagers to the river San Juan. This gives them their value in politics. They are the only well known extant Indians between Guatemala and Veragua. This gives them their value in ethnology. The populations to which they were most immediately allied have disappeared from history. This isolates them; so that there is no class to which they can be subordinated. At the same time, they are quite as like the nearest known tribes as the American ethnologist is prepared to expect. What they were in their truly natural state, when, unmodified by either Englishman or Spaniard, Black or Indian, they represented the indigenous civilization (such as it was) of their coast, is uncertain." GOLD-QUARTZ AND SOCIETY. The Burns Ranch Union Mining Company in California have published a prospectus--we suppose to facilitate the sale of their stock--and the writer indulges in some speculations respecting the influence of the discovery that the chief mineral riches of the new state are in mines, instead of the sands of rivers, thus: It appears to be the destiny of America to carry on the greatness of the future, and that Providence--which shapes the ends of nations as well as of persons, at a time when it was most needful for the prosecution of her mission, when war and the expedients of political strategy are out of vogue, and the people is most powerful of which the individual civilization, energy, ambition, and resources are greatest--that Providence, at this crisis, has opened the veins of the Continent, slumbering so many thousand years, in order that we might derive from them all that remained necessary for investing the United States with the leadership of the world. The first intelligence of the discovery of gold in California fell upon the general mind like news of a great and peculiar revolution. It was at once--even before the statements on the subject assumed a definite or certain form--it was at once felt that a new hour was signally on the dial-plate of history. Immediately, those immense fortunes which were acquired by the Portuguese and Spaniards nearly four centuries ago--fortunes which, in the decline of nations, have still remained in families as the sign and substance of the only nobility and power which mankind at large acknowledge--those astonishing fortunes which raised the enterprising poor man to the dignity and happiness of the most elevated classes in society, were recalled, and made suggestive of like successes to new and more hardy adventurers. The reports came with increased volume; every ship confirmed the rumors brought by its predecessor, and new intelligence, that, in its turn, tasked the popular credulity; and it came soon to be understood that we had found a land literally flowing with gold and silver, as that promised to the earlier favorites of Heaven did with milk and honey. As many as were free from controlling engagements, and had means with which to do so, started for our El Dorado, making haste, in fear that the wealth of the country would quickly be exhausted--not dreaming, even yet, that there was any thing to be acquired but flakes and scales and scattered masses of ore, which would be exhausted by the first hunters who should scour the rivers and turn the surface soil. But at length the geologists began to apprehend, what experience soon confirmed, that, extraordinary as were the amounts of gold found in drifts of gravel, and deposits that had been left in the beds of streams, these were merely the signs of far greater riches--merely indexes of the presence of rocks and hills, and underlayers of plains, impregnated with gold, in quantities that the processes of nature could never disclose, and that would reward only the scientific efforts of miners having all the mechanical appliances which the laborious experiments of other nations had invented. The fact of the existence of veins of gold in vast quartz formations, and ribs of gold in hills, was as startling almost as the first news of the presence of the precious metal in the country. This at once changed the prospect, and from a game of chance, elevated the pursuit of gold in California to a grand industrial purpose, requiring an energy and sagacity that invest it with the highest dignity, and to such energy and sagacity promising, with absolute certainty, rewards that make it worthy of the greatest ambition. Now, men of character and capital--the class of men whose speculating spirit is held in subjection by the most exact reason--began to turn to the subject their investigations, and to connect with it their plans. This will account for the fact that has so much astonished the world, which had supposed our Pacific colony to be composed of the reckless, profligate and desperate only--the fact, that when California made her constitution of government, it shot at once in unquestionable wisdom directly and far in advance of all the states on the Atlantic, presenting to mankind the very highest type of a free government that had ever been conceived. The demonstration that California was a _mine_, like other mines in all but its surpassing richness, elevated it from a scene of gambling to one for the orderly pursuit of riches, and by the splendor of its promises, drew to it the most sagacious and most heroical intelligences of the time. Astonishing as are the present and prospective results of the discovery in California, however, we are not to suppose that there is any possibility of a decline in the value of the precious metals. In absolute material civilization, the world in the last three-quarters of a century has advanced more than it had in any previous three full centuries; and the supply of gold, for currency and the thousand other objects for which it was demanded, was becoming alarmingly insufficient, so that the addition of more than thirty per cent. to the total annual product of the world, which we are led by the officially-stated results thus far to expect from California, will merely preserve the historical and necessary proportion and standard value. INEDITED LETTER OF DR. FRANKLIN. The following characteristic and interesting letter by Dr. Franklin is first printed in the _International_. Captain Falconer, to whom it is addressed, took Dr. Franklin to France when he was appointed commissioner, and proceeded thence with his ship to London. The letter is directed _To Captain Nathaniel Falconer, at the Pennsylvania Coffee-house, Birchin Lane, London_, and the autograph is in the collection of Mr. George W. Childs, of Philadelphia: PASSY, July 28, 1783. DEAR FRIEND:--I received your favor of the 18th. Captain Barney brought us the dispatches we so long expected. Mr. Deane as you observe is lost. Dr. Bancroft is I believe steady to the interest of his country, and will make an agreeable passenger if you can take him. You desire to know something of the state of affairs here. Every thing goes well with respect to this court and the other friendly powers; what England is doing or means to do, or why the definitive treaty is so long delayed, I know perhaps less than you do; as, being in that country, you may have opportunities of hearing more than I can. For myself, I am at present as hearty and well as I have been these many years; and as happy as a man can be where every body strives to make him so. The French are an amiable people to live with; they love me, and I love them. Yet I do not feel myself at home, and I wish to die in my own country. Barney will sail this week with our dispatches. A good voyage to you, my friend, and may God ever bless you. B. FRANKLIN. CAPTAIN FALCONER. A BALLAD OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. FROM A FORTHCOMING VOLUME OF POEMS BY GEORGE H. BOKER. "The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around."--COLERIDGE. O, whither sail you, Sir John Franklin? Cried a whaler in Baffin's Bay. To know if between the land and the pole I may find a broad sea-way. I charge you back, Sir John Franklin, As you would live and thrive; For between the land and the frozen pole No man may sail alive. But lightly laughed the stout Sir John, And spoke unto his men:-- Half England is wrong, if he is right; Bear off to westward then. O, whither sail you, brave Englishman? Cried the little Esquimaux. Between the land and the polar star My goodly vessels go. Come down, if you would journey there, The little Indian said; And change your cloth for fur clothing, Your vessel for a sled. But lightly laughed the stout Sir John, And the crew laughed with him too:-- A sailor to change from ship to sled, I ween, were something new! All through the long, long polar day, The vessels westward sped; And wherever the sail of Sir John was blown, The ice gave way and fled. Gave way with many a hollow groan, And with many a surly roar; But it murmured and threatened on every side, And closed where he sailed before. Ho! see ye not, my merry men, The broad and open sea? Bethink ye what the whaler said, Think of the little Indian's sled! The crew laughed out in glee. Sir John, Sir John, 'tis bitter cold, The scud drives on the breeze, The ice comes looming from the north, The very sunbeams freeze. Bright summer goes, dark winter comes-- We cannot rule the year; But long ere summer's sun goes down, On yonder sea we'll steer. The dripping icebergs dipped and rose, And floundered down the gale; The ships were staid, the yards were manned, And furled the useless sail. The summer's gone, the winter's come, We sail not on yonder sea: Why sail we not, Sir John Franklin? A silent man was he. The summer goes, the winter comes-- We cannot rule the year: I ween, we cannot rule the ways, Sir John, wherein we'd steer. The cruel ice came floating on, And closed beneath the lee, Till the thickening waters dashed no more; 'Twas ice around, behind, before-- My God! there is no sea! What think you of the whaler now? What of the Esquimaux? A sled were better than a ship, To cruise through ice and snow. Down sank the baleful crimson sun, The northern light came out, And glared upon the ice-bound ships, And shook its spears about. The snow came down, storm breeding storm, And on the decks was laid; Till the weary sailor, sick at heart, Sank down beside his spade. Sir John, the night is black and long, The hissing wind is bleak, The hard, green ice is strong as death:-- I prithee, Captain, speak! The night is neither bright nor short, The singing breeze is cold, The ice is not so strong as hope-- The heart of man is bold! What hope can scale this icy wall, High over the main flag-staff? Above the ridges the wolf and bear Look down with a patient, settled stare, Look down on us and laugh. The summer went, the winter came-- We could not rule the year; But summer will melt the ice again, And open a path to the sunny main, Whereon our ships shall steer. The winter went, the summer went, The winter came around; But the hard, green ice was strong as death, And the voice of hope sank to a breath, Yet caught at every sound. Hark! heard you not the noise of guns? And there, and there again? 'Tis some uneasy iceberg's roar, As he turns in the frozen main. Hurra! hurra! the Esquimaux Across the ice-fields steal: God give them grace for their charity! Ye pray for the silly seal. Sir John, where are the English fields, And where are the English trees, And where are the little English flowers That open in the breeze? Be still, be still, my brave sailors! You shall see the fields again, And smell the scent of the opening flowers, The grass, and the waving grain. Oh! when shall I see my orphan child? My Mary waits for me. Oh! when shall I see my old mother And pray at her trembling knee? Be still, be still, my brave sailors! Think not such thoughts again. But a tear froze slowly on his cheek; He thought of Lady Jane. Ah! bitter, bitter grows the cold, The ice grows more and more; More settled stare the wolf and bear, More patient than before. Oh! think you, good Sir John Franklin, We'll ever see the land? 'Twas cruel to send us here to starve, Without a helping hand. 'Twas cruel, Sir John, to send us here, So far from help or home, To starve and freeze on this lonely sea: I ween, the Lords of the Admiralty Had rather send than come. Oh! whether we starve to death alone, Or sail to our own country, We have done what man has never done-- The open ocean danced in the sun-- We passed the Northern Sea! REMARKABLE PROPHECY. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF M. LAHARPE FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE. BY H. J. BEYERLE, M.D. It seems to me as if it had been but yesterday, and yet it happened in the beginning of the year 1788. We were at table with one of our colleagues of the Academy, a respectable and lively gentleman. The company was numerous, and selected from all ranks: nobles, judges, professional men, academicians, &c. We had enjoyed ourselves as is customary at a well-loaded table. At the desert, the _malvasier_ and Cape wine exalted the pleasure and increased in a good company that kind of liberty which does not remain within precise limits. People in the world had then arrived at the point where it was allowed to say every thing, if it was the object to excite laughter. Chamfort had read to us some of his blasphemous and unchaste tales, and the noble ladies heard them without even taking for refuge to the fan. Then followed a whole volley of mockery on religion. One mentioned a tirade from the Pucelle; the other reminded us of those philosophical stanzas of Diderot, wherein he says: "With the intestines of the last priest tie up the throat of the last king;" and all clapped approbation. Another rises, holds up the full tumbler, and cries: "Yes, gentlemen, I am just as certain that there is no God, as I am certain that Homer was a fool!" and really, he was of the one as certain as he was of the other: we had just spoken of Homer and of God, and there were guests present, too, who had said something good of the one and of the other. The conversation now became more serious. We spoke with astonishment of the revolution Voltaire had effected, and we agreed that it is the most distinguished foundation of his fame. He had given the term to his half-century; he had written in such a manner, that he is read in the anteroom as well as in the hall. One of the guests told us with great laughter, that his hairdresser, as he powdered him, said, "You see, sir, though I am only a miserable fellow, I yet have not more religion than others." We concluded that the revolution would soon be completed, and that superstition and fanaticism must absolutely yield to philosophy; we calculated the probability of the time, and who of this company may have the happiness to live to see the reign of reason. The older ones were sorry that they could not flatter themselves to see this; those younger rejoiced with the hope that they shall live to the time, and we particularly congratulated the Academy for having introduced the great work, and that they have been the chief source, the centre, the mainspring of freedom of thought. One of the guests had taken no part in this gay conversation, and had even scattered a few jokes in regard to our beautiful enthusiasm. It was M. Cazotte, an agreeable and original gentleman; but who, unfortunately, was prepossessed by the idle imaginations of those who believe in a higher inspiration. He took the word, and said, in the most serious manner: "Sirs, rejoice; you all will be witnesses of that great and sublime revolution for which you wish so much. You are aware that I make some pretensions to prophecy. I repeat it to you, you will all see it!" "For this a man needs no prophetic gifts," was answered him. "This is true," he replied, "but probably a little more for what I have to tell you yet. Do you know what will arise from this revolution (where, namely, reason will triumph in opposition to religion)? what her immediate consequence, her undeniable and acknowledged effects will be?" "Let us see," said Condorcet, with his affected look of simplicity, "a philosopher is not sorry to meet a prophet." "You, M. Condorcet," continued M. Cazotte, "you will be stretched out upon the floor of a dungeon, there to yield up your ghost. You will die of poison, which you will swallow to save yourself from the hangman--of the poison which the good luck of the times, which then will be, will have compelled you always to have carried with you." This at first excited great astonishment, but we soon remembered that the good Cazotte occasionally dreamed waking, and we all laughed heartily. "M. Cazotte," said one of the guests, "the tale you relate to us here is not as merry as your 'Devil in Love' (a romance which Cazotte had written). What kind of a devil has given you the dungeon, the poison, and the hangman?--what has this in common with philosophy, and with the reign of Reason?" "This is just what I told you," replied Cazotte. "In the name of philosophy, in the name of humanity, of liberty, of reason, it shall be that you shall take such an end; and then reason will still reign, for she will have temples; yes, at the same time there will be no temples in all France, but temples of Reason." "Truly," said Chamfort, with a scornful smile, "you will not be one of the priests in these temples?" "This I hope," replied Cazotte, "but you, M. de Chamfort, who will be one of them--and very worthy you are to be one--you will open your veins with twenty-two incisions of the razor--and yet you will only die a few months afterwards." They look at each other, and continue to laugh. Cazotte continues: "You, M. Vicq d'Azyr, you will not open your veins yourself; but afterwards you will get them opened six times in one day, and during the night you will die." "You, M. Nicolli, you will die on the scaffold." "You, M. Bailly, on the scaffold!" "You, M. Malesherbes--you, on the scaffold!" "God be thanked," exclaimed M. Roucher, "it appears M. Cazotte has it to do only with the Academy; he has just started a terrible butchery among them; I--thanks to heaven--" Cazotte interrupted him: "you?--you, too, will die on the scaffold." "Ha! this is a bet," they exclaimed from all sides; "he has sworn to extirpate everything!" _Cazotte._--"No, it is not I that has sworn it." "Then we must be put under the yokes of the Turks and Tartars?--and yet--" _Cazotte._--"Nothing less: I have told you already; you will then be only under the reign of philosophy and reason; those who shall treat you in this manner, will all be philosophers, will always carry on the same kind of conversation which you have peddled out for the last hour, will repeat all your maxims; they will, like you, cite verses from Diderot and the Pucelle." It was whispered into one another's ear: "You all see that he has lost his reason--(for he remains very serious while he is talking)--Do you not see that he is joking?--and you know that he mixes something mysterious into all his jokes." "Yes," said Chamfort, "but I must confess his mysteries are not agreeable, they are too scaffoldish! And when shall all this occur?" _Cazotte._--"Six years will not expire, before all I told you will be fulfilled." "There are many wonders." This time it was I (namely Laharpe) who took the word, "and of me you say nothing?" "With you," replied Cazotte, "a wonder will take place, which will at least be as extraordinary; you will then be a Christian!" Here was a universal exclamation. "Now I am easy," cried Chamfort, "if we don't perish until Laharpe is a Christian, we shall be immortal!" "We, of the female sex," then said the Duchess de Grammont, "we are lucky that we shall be counted as nothing with the revolutions. When I say nothing, I do not mean to say as if we would not mingle ourselves a little into them; but it is assumed that nobody will, on that account, loath at us or at our sex." _Cazotte._--"Your sex will this time not protect you, and you may ever so much desire not to mingle into anything; you will be treated just like men, and no distinction will be made!" _Duchess._--"But what do you tell us here, M. Cazotte? You preach to us the end of the world!" _Cazotte._--"That I do not know; but what I do know, is, that you, Madame Duchess, will be led to the scaffold, you, and many other ladies, and on the public cart, with your hands tied on your back!" _Duchess._--"In this case, I hope I shall have a black trimmed coach?" _Cazotte._--"No, madam! Nobler ladies than you, shall, like you, be drawn on that same cart, with the hands tied on the back!" _Duchess._--"Nobler ladies? How? the princesses by birth?" _Cazotte._-"Nobler yet!" Now was observed a visible excitement in the whole company, and the master of the table took on a dark appearance; they began to see that the joke had been carried too far. Madame de Grammont, to scatter the clouds which the last answer had occasioned, contented herself by saying in a facetious tone: "You shall see that he will not even allow me the comfort of a father confessor!" _Cazotte._--"No, madam! you will not get one; neither you nor any one else! The last one executed, who, out of mercy, will have received a father confessor"--here he stopped a moment-- _Duchess._--"Well, who will be the fortunate one, when this fortunate preference will be granted?" _Cazotte._--"It will be the only preference that he shall yet keep; and this will be the king of France!" Now the host arose from the table, and all with him. He went to Cazotte, and said with an excited voice, "My dear M. Cazotte, this lamentable jest has lasted long. You carry it too far, and within a degree where you place the company in which you are, and yourself, into danger." Cazotte answered not, and made himself ready to go away, when madame Grammont, who always tried to prevent the matter from being taken seriously, and exerted herself to restore the gaiety of the company, went to him, and said: "Now, M. Prophet! you have told us all our fortunes, but you say nothing of your own fate?" He was silent and cast down his eyes; then he said: "Have you, madame, read, in Josephus, the history of the siege of Jerusalem?" _Duchess._--"Certainly! who has not read it? but you seem to think that I have not!" _Cazotte._--"Well, madame, during the siege a man went round the city, upon the walls, for seven days, in the face of the besiegers and the besieged, and cried continually, with a mournful voice, 'Wo unto Jerusalem! Wo unto Jerusalem!' but on the seventh day he cried, 'Wo unto me!' and at that moment he was dashed to pieces by an immense stone, which the machines of the enemy had thrown." After these words, M. Cazotte bowed himself, and went away. In relation to the above extraordinary prediction, a certain M.... has inserted the following article in the public journals of Paris: "That he well knew this M. Cazotte, and has often heard from him the announcement of the great oppression which was to come over France, and this at a time when not the least of it was suspected. The attachment to the monarchy was the reason why, on the second of September, 1792, he was brought to the abbey, and was saved from the hands of the bloodthirsty rabble only through the heroic courage of his daughter, who mitigated the raging populace. This same rabble which wanted to destroy him, led him to his house in triumph. All his friends came to congratulate him, that he had escaped death. A certain M. D... who visited him after the terrible days, said to him: "Now, you are saved!"--"I believe it not," answered Cazotte; "in three days I shall be guillotined!"--"How can this be?" replied M. D... Cazotte continued: "Yes, my friend, in three days I will die on the scaffold!" As he said this he was very much affected, and added: "Shortly before your arrival, I saw a gend'armes enter, who fetched me by order of Petion; I was under the necessity of following him: I appeared before the mayor of Paris, who ordered me to the _Conciergerie_, and thence I came before the revolutionary tribunal. You see, therefore (by this vision, namely, which Cazotte had seen), my friend, that my hour has arrived; and I am so much convinced of this, that I am arranging my papers. Here are papers for which I care very much, which you will deliver to my wife; I entreat you to give them to her, and to comfort her."" M. D... declared this all folly, and left him with the conviction, that his reason had suffered by the sight of the scenes of terror from which he had escaped. The next day he came again; but he learned that a gensd'arme had taken M. Cazotte to the Municipality. M. D... went to Petion; arrived at the mayoralty, he heard that his friend had just been taken to prison; he hurried thither; but he was informed that he could not speak to him, he would be tried before the revolutionary tribunal. Soon after this, he heard that his friend had been condemned and executed. GREENWOOD. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY MAUNSELL B. FIELD. I would that I were dreaming, Where lovely flowers are gleaming, And the tall green grass is streaming O'er the gone--for ever gone. MOTHERWELL. The evening glories of a summer sky Brimming the heart with yearnings to be blest; The wood-bird's wailing as he soars on high Winging his weary way to distant nest; The murmuring billows as they kiss the strand, Bearing dim memories of stranger land; The sad mysterious voices of the night, Bathing the soul in reverie and love; The low wind, whispering of its former might To the tall trees that sigh the hills above, Like angel-tones that roll from sphere to sphere And dimly echo to the faithful ear; The flitting shadows glancing o'er the sail Of some proud ship that's dreaming on the sea; The lighthouse fires that fitful glow and pale; The far-off strains of martial minstrelsy; Wechawken's hoary head o'er hill and dell, Gloomy and proud, a giant sentinel; Such the soft charms, thou Paradise of Death! My languid spirit hath erewhile confest, When wearied with the city's tainted breath, Fever'd and faint I've sought thy shades of rest, Where all combines in heaven, and earth, and sea, To image life, death, immortality!-- Here where the dusky savage twanged his bow In the old time at startled doe or fawn, Raised the shrill war-whoop at the approach of foe, His wild eye flashing with revenge and scorn; Here where the Indian maiden told her love To the soft sighing spirits of the grove. Here, where the bloody fiend of frantic war Flapped its red wings o'er hill-top and o'er plain-- Where the sharp musket ring, and cannon roar, Crashed o'er the valley, thundered o'er the main, No sound is heard, save the sweet symphony Of Nature's all-pervading harmony. Here the pale willow, drooping o'er the wave, Dips its long tresses in the silvery flood; Here the blue violet, blooming o'er the grave, Distils its fragrance to the enamored wood, While the complaining turtle's mournful woe Steals on the ear in murmurs soft and low. Here its cold shaft the polished marble rears; Here, eloquent of grief, the sculptured urn Bares its white bosom to the dewy tears, Dropt pure from heaven, far purer to return! Here the grim granite's sempeternal pile In monumental grandeur stands the while. Where the still stars with gentlest radiance shine On forest green and flower-enamelled vale, Two simple columns circled by one vine, Tell to the traveller's eye the tender tale Of constancy in life and death--and love, Not e'en the horrors of the tomb could move. Here strained, and struggling with the unequal might Of sea and tempest, the poor foundering bark, And the snapp'd cable, chiselled on yon height, Where calmly sleeps the wave-tossed pilot mark; Hope, with her anchor, pointing to the sky, Triumphant hails the spirit flight on high! Hark! how the solemn spirit dirge ascends In floating cadence on the evening air, Where with clasped hands the weeping angel bends In human grief o'er her that's buried there; The gentle maid, in festive garments hurled From life's gay glitter to the gloomy world! Thy childish laughter lingers on mine ear, Thy fairy form still floats before mine eye; Still is the music of thy footsteps near, Visioned to sense by tenderest memory; Thy soul too pure for purest mortal love, Enraptured seraphs snatched to realms above! Here where the sparkling fountain flings its spray In sportive freedom, frolicksome and wild, Mocking the wood-nymphs with its gladsome lay, Serenely sleeps the dark-eyed forest child-- Her kinsman's glory and her nation's pride! A chieftain's daughter and a warrior's bride! Oft shall the pale face, pensive o'er thy mound, Weep for the white man's shame, the red man's wrong; Oft from spring warblers, o'er this hallowed ground, Shall gush the tenderest melody of song, For the poor pilgrim to that distant shore, Her fathers loved, their sons shall see no more! Pause, weary wanderer, pause! In yon lone glade Where silence reigns in deep funereal gloom, Where the pale moonbeams struggle through the shade, Open the portals of "The Stranger's Tomb!" No holier symbol taught since time began The sacred sympathy of man for man! Dear Greenwood! when the solemn heights I tread, And catch the gray old ocean's sullen roar, Chanting the dirge of the mighty dead, Over whose graves the oblivious billows pour, A tearful prayer is gushing from my breast, "Here in thy peaceful bosom may I rest!-- "Rest till the signal calls the ransomed throng With shouts their Saviour and their God to greet; Rest till the harp, the trumpet, and the song Summon the dead, Death's conqueror to meet; And love, imperfect, man's best gift below, In heaven eternal rapture shall bestow!" AN AUGUST REVERIE. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY A. OAKLEY HALL. I have "laid" the tiniest ghost of my professional duties. I shook off city dust twenty hours ago, and my lungs are rejoicing this August morning with the glorious breezes that sweep from the summits of the "Trimountains" of Waywayanda lake--that stretches its ten miles expanse before my freshened vision. Waywayanda lake? A Quere. Shall I play geographer to those who are learned in the nomenclature of snobbism? Who allow innkeepers and railroad guides to assassinate Aboriginal terms in order that petty pride may exult in petty fame? No! But if snobbism has a curiosity, I refer it to the first landscape painter of its vicinage: or the nearest fisherman amateur: or the Recorder of New-York: or sportsman Herbert and the pages of his "Warwick Woodlands;" a list of references worthy of the spot. And as I gaze and breathe I feel as if the waters before me had bubbled from the fountains of rejuvenescence for which Ponce de Leon so enthusiastically searched in the everglades of Florida; and as if, too, I had just emerged from their embraces. My pocket almanac says that I am living in the dogdays. Perhaps so. But "Sirius" hath no power around these mountains and primeval solitudes. Were the fiercest theological controversialist at my elbow, he would be as cool as an Esquimaux. I feel at peace with all things. My friend M. says the conscience lieth in the stomach. Perhaps so; and perhaps I owe my quietude of spirit to the influence of as comforting a breakfast as ever blessed the palate of a scientific egg-breaker. Shall I join forces with the laughing beauties who are handling maces in the billiard room of the inn hard by? Shall I challenge my "Lady Gay Spanker" of last night's acquaintance to a game of bowling? Shall I tempt the unsophisticated pickerel of the lake under the shadow of yonder frowning precipice, with glittering bait? Shall I clamber the mountain side and feast my vision with an almost boundless view--rich expanses of farm land stretching away for miles and miles, and edging themselves in the blue haze of the horizon where the distant Catskill peaks rise solitary in their sublimity? It is very comfortable here. Is there always poetry in motion? How far distant are the confines of dreamland: that magical kingdom where the tired soul satiates itself in the intoxications of fancy? I had just carefully deposited upon a velvety tuft of grass Ik Marvel's "Reveries of a Bachelor." I had arrived at the conclusion that its pages should be part and parcel of the landscape about. Surely there is a unison between them both. There are always certain places where only certain melodies can be sung to the proper harmony of the heart-strings. Who ever learned "Thanatopsis" on the summit of the Catskills, and afterwards forgot a line of it? Now I have seen these same "Reveries" of the said bachelor upon many a centre-table: in the lap of many a town beauty, half cushioned in the velvet of a drawing room sofa: but the latter half of the volume never looked so inviting as it does here just in the middle of one of nature's lexicons. May the page of it never be blurred. Reveries of a Bachelor! 'Tis a sugared pill of a title. Its morals are sad will o' wisps. And if the definition "that happiness consists in the search after it" be true, it is so when the definition settles itself on the mind of a bachelor. Hath _he_ reveries half so sweet for morsels under the tongues of memory and fancy as those which come nigh to the brain of the married man? As sure as the lesser is always included in the greater: as certain as the maxim _de minimis lex non curat_: the reveries of the first are but bound up in the reveries of the last; one is a _pleasing_ romance, the other its enchanting sequel. What is that yonder? There is a merry-faced form in the distant haze, shaking a dreamy negative with his head. A head whose reality is miles and miles away, airing its brow of single blessedness in foreign travel. Let us argue the point: he smiles as if willing. Man socially is at least a three volumed work: however much longer the James-like pen of destiny may extend him. Volume first--bachelor. Volume second--husband. Volume third--father. There _may_ be a dozen more--there _should_ be none less. You have been a bachelor: you are a husband and a father. You always had, perhaps, a bump of self-esteem attractive to the digits of Fowler. You never believed half so well of yourself as when one morning at your business you were first asked concerning the well being of your _family_. At the moment, you were in a fog, like the young attorney upon the first question of his first examination: next, memory rallied and your face brightened; your stature increased as you replied. You felt you were going up in the social numeration table of life. Two years ago you were a unit: you next counted your importance by tens over the parson's shoulder; when your child was born you felt that the leap to hundreds in the scale was far from enough and should have been higher. Before the publication of your third volume--the father--you had been measurably blind. Your mental sight was afflicted with amaurosis. Like the philosopher of old you are now tempted to grasp every one by the hand and cry "Eureka." How indignantly you take down "Malthus" from your upper library shelf and bury him on the lowest among the books of possible reference. Your political views upon education are cured of their jaundice. You pray of Sundays in the service for the widow and the orphan with a double unction. You walk the streets with a new mantle of comfort. The little beggar child whose importunities of the last wet day at the street crossings excited your petulance, upon the next wet day invites your sympathies. You stop and talk to her, nor perceive until you have ascertained where her hard-hearted parents live, and that she is uncommonly bright for the child of poverty and wretchedness, and that you have a half dollar unappropriated--nor perceive until these are found out, I say, that your umbrella has been dripping upon the skirts of your favorite coat, and that you have stood with one foot in a puddle. How this would have annoyed you years ago. But now--? How unconcernedly of the curious looks from pedestrians around do you stop the careless nurse in Broadway, who has allowed her infant charge to fall asleep in a painful attitude, and lay "it" tenderly and comfortably in position. You recall to mind with much remorse the execrations of five years ago, when the moanings of a dying babe in the next apartment to your own at the hotel disturbed your rest; and you wonder whether the mother still thinks of the little grave and the white slab which a sympathetic fancy _now_ brings up before you. You are at your business: the lamps are lighting: in the suggestions of profit by an hour or longer at the desk you recognize an unholy temptation. Now, as often before, through all the turmoils of business memory suggests the lines of Willis: "I sadden when thou smilest to my smile, Child of my love! I tremble to believe That o'er the mirror of thine eye of blue The shadow of my soul must always pass-- That soul which from its conflicts with the world Comes _ever_ to thy guarded cradle home, And careless of the staining dust it brings, Asks for its idol!" And you dwell on them. You bless the author first, and truly think how cruelly unjust are they who can call into torturing question the loyalty as husband and father of him whose soul could plan and whose pen could write such holy lines. And then you think deeper of the sentiments. And then the profit-tempter hides himself in the farthest corner of the money-drawer; and you begin to think your clerk a very clever manager: and wonder if _his_ remaining will not do as well--poor fellow, he's _only_ a bachelor. And then you decide that he will, and so yourself, "careless of the staining dust" your coming brings, fly to "the guarded cradle home." You have been in Italy. Or you have studied the pictures in the _Louvre_. But the hours which you passed before the canvas whereon was embodied Madonna and child never seemed so agreeable in their realization as they now appear in the glass of memory, as you see the child of your love in the arms of your life companion whose eyes, always bright to yours, and brighter still at your coming after absence, grow brightest when they are lifted from the slumbering innocence beneath them. Men call you rough in your bearing, perhaps. What would they say to see how gently your arms receive the sleeping burthen and transfer it softly to its snowy couch? Your step abroad is heavy and impetuous: how noiselessly it falls upon the floor--_now!_ And how the modulated voice accords with every present thought! You cannot give the child a sweeter sleep by watching over him so intently: and yet you choose to stay. Moments are not so precious to you that at this one household shrine they will become valueless in some most chastened heart-worship! Your infant does not when awake understand the language which your affection addresses: and yet you look with rapture to the future, when the now inquiring eye will become one of understanding; when the cautiously put forth arms will clasp in loving confidence; when the fond endearing name now half intelligibly and doubtingly lisped forth will be uttered in the boldness of love. The shadowy form in the distant cloud over the lake has been listening intently. It listens still; and the face of it bends towards me as if to say, there's a hidden truth and mysterious sympathy in all you say; and yet the language soundeth strangely in these bachelor ears-- Bachelor ears! Listless and deaf, as yet, to all the sweeter human music of our nature. Deafer yet to the clarion call of emulation in the race of life and struggles for power, rank, and fame. Deafest of all to that which spurreth on man to be a king of kings among the great men of his race. You are a father, then, I say; and working in your mental toil by night and day, in the severest and darkest frowning of all professions. But in the crowded senate-room, and in the close committee-chamber; and in the court-room among the multitudes of faces all about, (some of these anticipating in their changing features defeat and disgrace,) there is a _something_ which overrides all agitation: clears the heavy brain, and oils the tongue with every pungency of rhetoric. What is that "something?" Were I home and in my library the downturned leaf of the duodecimo biography in the left corner of the first shelf would tell it you at a glance. The biography of Lord Erskine; marked at the page which speaks of his dauntless legal debut in the Sandwich case, when not the necessity of speaking in a crowded court-room from the obscure back benches: when not the sarcastic eyes of a hundred (etiquette-ly termed) brethren; when not the awful presence of Lord Mansfield nor his rebuking interruption at a critical sentence frightened the self-possession of the enthusiastic advocate, or stopped the current of his eloquent invective. The biography, which goes on to tell how, when the speech was ended, all the attorneys in the room flocked around the debutant with retainers--needed, more than all the smiles and congratulations to be drawn from earnest heart-wells: and how the advocate replied--(when some one, timid of the judge, asked how the barrister had the courage to stand the rebuking interruption, and never to quail with embarrassment before it)--_I felt my little children tugging at my gown and crying, now is the time, father, to get us bread_. How eloquent! How worthy of a father's heart! And in the reference, the dullest mind cannot fail to read the "something" which, to every father in a like position, nerves the will, disarms all agitation, clears the heavy brain, and oils the tongue with every pungency of rhetoric. --The shadowy form turns closer towards me as my reverie yet chains me to the lake side, where the mountain breezes still are freshening all the August air.-- You have a purpose now in life, which, like the messenger of the king, that every morning knocked at his bedroom door to say, "Oh king, remember all this day that you are mortal," hourly brings to mind the bright reward of every toil and every aspiration. Besides a physical frame there is a mental constitution hinging on your own. There's a long life far beyond your own brief years of breath to provide for. Your name is to be perpetuated. In the very evening of your life there is to be a star that is now in its morning of existence, which will cheer and enliven. You feel all this as in some sad hour of the sickly night; you pace your room with the little sufferer wrestling with disease, and you feel that in the future will be found ample rewards for all your present bitter draughts of anxiety. Wrestling with disease! The thought is ugly to the mental sight. I pause to brush its cobweb from my August Reverie as an idle vaporish thing. But the shadowy form, in the edge of the distant cloud, over the far off waters of the lake, hisses the words back into my brain. And then it comes nearer. And then the atmosphere grows more dreamy and hazy about. And I half feel the mountain breezes, and half miss them from off my temples. And next I feel my thoughts less concentrate, as the shadowy form I know so well seems to be looking under my half-closed lids, and dwelling on the words I brushed like cob-webs--"wrestling with disease." And I think of the still chamber, with the blue edge of the bracket, as it is rimmed with the faintest glimmer of the turned-down gas. And I see the half-closed shutters. And the tumbler with its significant spoon on the mantel. And the pale watcher by the ghostly curtains of the bed. And I am bending silently and almost pulseless over the sleeping boy, upon whose face each minute the fever-flushes play like summer lightning under a satin cloud. And days go by. There is a strange hush in the household, with a horridly sensitive jarring from the vehicles in the street, which never, never were before so noisy, neither have the thronging passengers from the pavements ever gossipped so discordantly, as they go under the windows of the silent house. There's a strange echo of infantile prattle by the niches on the landings of the stairs, and from the couches, and behind the curtains; but the substantive music, whence the conjured-up echo came, is nowhere found. Then the echo itself becomes but an illusion. And Memory is strangely and impassionately chid for its creation. I pass into a little room scarcely wide enough to wheel a sofa within. It seems as boundless in its desolation as an untenanted temple-ruin. There are mournful spirits in the little atmosphere which sting me to the heart--not to be torn away. The little cotton-dog, and morocco-ball, and jingling-bells, and coral-toys, so strangely scattered all about, are prodigious ruins to the sight. There's a gleeful laugh, a cunning smile, an artless waving of the hands, which should be here as tenants of the room. All gone! all gone into that hushed and silent chamber where yet the patient-watcher is by the snowy curtains; and the sickly blue still edges the rim of the bracket light, and the fever-flushes still play about the wasted cheek. How long to last? What next to come? And the shadowy form no longer can peep under the all-closed eyelids, but enters its whisperings through the delicate passages of the ear into the brain, which tortures in a maze of bitter conjecture and horrid contemplation. And my reverie becomes a painful nightmare dream. * * * * * But the mountain-breezes, and the uprising-to-meridian sun, are merciful. The shadowy form my reverie hinged itself upon is blown away. The open eyes once more glance upon the glassy waters of the lake close by the shore, and onward to the dancing ripples far away. And a merry prattling voice, from out of loving arms, is coming nearer and nearer over the velvety lawn--a voice so full of spirit, and life, and health, and sparkling innocence of care, that in a moment the frightful nightmare-dream is quite forgotten. More-- My reverie turns itself into a lesson of bright reality; a present study of budding mind; a jealous watch of care encroaching upon innocence; a kindly outpouring of the father's manly heart upon the shrine of his idol. Could such a reverie better end? HEROINES OF HISTORY--LAURA. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY MARY E. HEWITT. Laura, rendered immortal by the love and lyre of Petrarch, was the daughter of Audibert de Noves, who was of the _haute noblesse_ of Avignon. He died in the infancy of Laura, leaving her a dowry of one thousand gold crowns, (about fifty thousand dollars,) a magnificent portion for those times. She was married at the age of eighteen to Hugh de Sade, a young noble only a few years older than his bride, but not distinguished by any advantages either of person or mind. The marriage contract is dated in January, 1325, two years before her first meeting with Petrarch; and in it her mother, the Lady Ermessende, and her brother, John de Noves, stipulate to pay the dower left by her father; and also to bestow on the bride two magnificent dresses for state occasions; one of green, embroidered with violets; the other of crimson, trimmed with feathers. In all the portraits of Laura now extant, she is represented in one of these two dresses, and they are frequently alluded to by Petrarch. He tells us expressly that when he first met her at matins in the church of Saint Claire, she was habited in a robe of green spotted with violets. Mention is also made of a coronal of silver with which she wreathed her hair; of her necklaces and ornaments of pearls. Diamonds are not once alluded to because the art of cutting them had not then been invented. From all which it appears that Laura was opulent, and moved in the first class of society. It was customary for women of rank in those times to dress with extreme simplicity on ordinary occasions, but with the most gorgeous splendor when they appeared in public. There are some beautiful descriptions of Laura surrounded by her young female companions, divested of all her splendid apparel, in a simple white robe and a few flowers in her hair, but still preëminent over all by her superior loveliness. She was in person a fair, Madonna-like beauty, with soft dark eyes, and a profusion of pale golden hair parted on her brow, and falling in rich curls over her neck. The general character of her beauty must have been pensive, soft, unobtrusive, and even somewhat languid. This softness and repose must nave been far removed from insipidity, for Petrarch dwells on the rare and varying expression of her loveliness, the lightning of her smile, and the tender magic of her voice, which was felt in the inmost heart. He dwells on the celestial grace of her figure and movements, and describes the beauty of her hand and the loveliness of her mouth. She had a habit of veiling her eyes with her hand, and her looks were generally bent on the earth. In a portrait of Laura, in the Laurentinian library at Florence, the eyes have this characteristic downcast look. Laura was distinguished, then, by her rank and fortune, but more by her loveliness, her sweetness, and the untainted purity of her life and manners in the midst of a society noted for its licentiousness. Now she is known as the subject of Petrarch's verses, as the woman who inspired an immortal passion, and, kindling into living fire the dormant sensibility of the poet, gave origin to the most beautiful and refined, the most passionate, and yet the most delicate amatory poetry that exists in the world. Petrarch was twenty-three years of age when he first felt the power of a violent and inextinguishable passion. At six in the morning on the sixth of April, A. D. 1327, (he often fondly records the exact year, day and hour,) on the occasion of the festival of Easter, he visited the church of Saint Claire at Avignon, and beheld, for the first time, Laura de Sade. She was just twenty years of age, and in the bloom of beauty--a beauty so touching and heavenly, so irradiated by purity and smiling innocence, and so adorned by gentleness and modesty, that the first sight stamped the image in the poet's heart, never thereafter to be erased. Petrarch beheld the loveliness and sweetness of the young beauty, and was transfixed. He sought acquaintance with her, and while the manners of the times prevented his entering her house, he enjoyed many opportunities of meeting her in society, and of conversing with her. He would have declared his love, but her reserve enforced silence. "She opened my breast and took my heart into her hand, saying 'speak no word of this,'" he writes. Yet the reverence inspired by her modesty and dignity was not always sufficient to restrain her lover. Being alone with her on one occasion, and she appearing more gracious than usual, Petrarch tremblingly and fearfully confessed his passion; but she, with altered looks, replied, "I am not the person you take me for!" Her displeasure froze the very heart of the poet, so that he fled from her presence in grief and dismay. No attentions on his part could make any impression on her steady and virtuous mind. While love and youth drove him on, she remained impregnable and firm; and when she found that he still rushed wildly forward, she preferred forsaking to following him to the precipice down which he would have hurried her. Meanwhile, as he gazed on her angelic countenance, and saw purity painted on it, his love grew spotless as herself. Love transforms the true lover into a resemblance of the object of his passion. In a town, which was the asylum of vice, calumny never breathed a taint upon Laura's name: her actions, her words, the very expression of her countenance, and her slightest gestures were replete with a modest reserve combined with sweetness, and won the applause of all. Francesco Petrarch was of Florentine extraction, and the son of a notary, who, being held in great esteem by his fellow-citizens, had filled several public offices. When the Ghibelines were banished Florence, in 1302, Petraccolo was included in the number of exiles; his property was confiscated, and he retired with his wife, Eletta Canigiani, whom he had lately married, to the town of Arrezzo, in Tuscany. And here on the night of the 20th of July, 1304, Petrarch first saw the light. When the child was seven months old his mother was permitted to return from banishment, and she established herself at a country house belonging to her husband near Ancisa, a small town fifteen miles from Florence. The infant who, at his birth, it was supposed would not survive, was exposed to imminent peril during this journey. In fording a rapid stream, the man who had charge of him carried him, wrapped in swaddling clothes, at the end of a stick; he fell from his horse, and the babe slipped from the fastenings into the water; but he was saved, for how could Petrarch die until he had seen his Laura? The youth of Petrarch was obscure in point of fortune, but it was attended by all the happiness that springs from family concord, and the excellent character of his parents. At the age of fifteen he was sent to study in the university of Montpellier, then frequented by a vast concourse of students. His father intended his son to pursue the study of the law, as the profession best suited to ensure his reputation and fortune; but to this pursuit Francesco was invincibly repugnant. He was soon after sent to Bologna, where, as at Montpellier, he continued to display great taste for literature, much to his father's dissatisfaction. At Bologna, Petrarch made considerable progress in the study of the law, moved thereto, doubtless, by the entreaties of his excellent parent. After three years spent at Bologna, Petrarch was recalled to France by the death of his father. Soon after his mother died also, and he and his brother were left entirely to their own guidance, with very slender means, and those diminished by the dishonesty of those whom his father named as trustees to their fortune. Under these circumstances Petrarch entirely abandoned the profession of the law, as it occurred to both him and his brother that the clerical profession was their best resource in a city where the priesthood reigned supreme. They resided at Avignon, and became the favorites and companions of the ecclesiastical and lay nobles who formed the papal court. His talents and accomplishments were of course the cause of this distinction; besides that his personal advantages were such as to prepossess every one in his favor. He was so handsome as frequently to attract observation when he passed along the streets. When, to the utmost simplicity and singleness of mind, were added splendid talents, the charm of poetry, so highly valued in the country of the Troubadours, an affectionate and generous disposition, vivacious and pleasing manners, an engaging and attractive exterior; we cannot wonder that Petrarch was the darling of his age, the associate of its greatest men, and the man whom princes delighted to honor. The passion of Petrarch for Laura was purified and exalted at the same time. She filled him with noble aspirations, and divided him from the common herd. He felt that her influence made him superior to vulgar ambition, and rendered him wise, true, and great. She saved him in the dangerous period of youth, and gave a worthy aim to all his endeavors. The manners of his age permitted one solace; a Platonic attachment was the fashion of the day. The Troubadours had each a lady to adore, to wait upon, and to celebrate in song; without its being supposed that she made him any return beyond a gracious acceptance of his devoirs, and allowing him to make her the heroine of his verses. Petrarch endeavored to merge the living passion of his soul into this airy and unsubstantial devotion. Laura permitted the homage: she perceived his merit and was proud of his admiration; she felt the truth of his affection, and indulged the wish of preserving it and her own honor at the same time. Without her inflexibility, this had been a dangerous experiment: but she always kept her lover distant from her; rewarding his reserve with smiles, and repressing by frowns all the overflowings of his heart. By her resolute severity, she incurred the danger of ceasing to be the object of his attachment, and of losing the gift of an immortal name, which he has conferred upon her. But Petrarch's constancy was proof against hopelessness and time. He had too fervent an admiration of her qualities ever to change: he controlled the vivacity of his feelings, and they became deeper rooted. "Untouched by my prayers," he says, "unvanquished by my arguments, unmoved by my flattery, she remained faithful to her sex's honor; she resisted her own young heart, and mine, and a thousand, thousand things, which must have conquered any other. She remained unshaken. A woman taught me the duty of a man! to persuade me to keep the path of virtue, her conduct was at once an example and a reproach." But whether, in this long conflict, Laura preserved her heart untouched, as well as her virtue immaculate; whether she shared the love she inspired; or whether she escaped from the captivating assiduities and intoxicating homage of her lover, "fancy free;" whether coldness, or prudence, or pride, or virtue, or the mere heartless love of admiration, or a mixture of all together, dictated her conduct, is at least as well worth inquiry as the color of her eyes, or the form of her nose, upon which we have pages of grave discussion. She might have been _coquette par instinct_, if not _par calent_; she might have felt, with feminine _tacte_, that to preserve her influence over Petrarch, it was necessary to preserve his respect. She was evidently proud of her conquest: she had else been more or less than woman; and at every hazard, but that of self-respect, she was resolved to retain him. If Petrarch absented himself for a few days, he was generally better treated on his return. If he avoided her, then her eye followed him with a softer expression. When he looked pale from sickness of heart and agitation of spirits, Laura would address him with a few words of pitying tenderness. When he presumed on this benignity, he was again repulsed with frowns. He flew to solitude,--solitude! Never let the proud and torn heart, wrung with the sense of injury, and sick with unrequited passion, seek that worst resource against pain, for there grief grows by contemplating itself, and every feeling is sharpened by collision. Petrarch sought to "mitigate the fever of his heart" amid the shades of Vaucluse, a spot so gloomy, and so solitary, that his very servants forsook him; and Vaucluse, its fountains, its forests, and its hanging cliffs, reflected only the image of Laura. He passed several years thus, cut off from society; his books were his great resource; he was never without one in his hand. Often he remained in silence from morning till night, wandering among the hills when the sun was yet low; and taking refuge, during the heat of the day, in his shady garden. At night, after performing his clerical duties (for he was canon of Lombes), he rambled among the hills; often entering, at midnight, the cavern, whose gloom, even during the day, struck his soul with awe. "Fool that I was!" he exclaims in after life, "not to have remembered the first school-boy lesson--that solitude is the nurse of love!" While living at Vaucluse, Petrarch, invited to Rome by the Roman Senate, repaired thither to receive the laurel crown of poesy. The ceremony was performed in the Capitol with great solemnity, in presence of all the nobles and high-born ladies of the city. Leaving Rome soon after his coronation, he repaired to Parma, where Clement VI. rewarded him for subsequent political services by naming him prior of Migliarino in the diocese of Pisa. Petrarch returned to Avignon. The sight of Laura gave fresh energy to a passion which had survived the lapse of fifteen years. She was no longer the blooming girl who had first charmed him. The cares of life had dimmed her beauty. She was the mother of many children, and had been afflicted at various times by illness. Her home was not happy. Her husband, without loving or appreciating her, was ill-tempered and jealous. Petrarch acknowledged that if her personal charms had been her sole attraction he had already ceased to love her. But his passion was nourished by sympathy and esteem; and, above all, by that mysterious tyranny of love, which, while it exists, the mind of man seems to have no power of resisting, though in feebler minds it sometimes vanishes like a dream. Petrarch was also changed in personal appearance. His hair was sprinkled with gray, and lines of care and sorrow trenched his face. On both sides the tenderness of affection began to replace, in him the violence of passion, in her the coyness and severity she had found necessary to check his pursuit. The jealousy of her husband opposed obstacles to their seeing each other. They met as they could in public walks and assemblies. Laura sang to him, and a soothing familiarity grew up between them as her fears became allayed, and he looked forward to the time when they might sit together and converse without dread. At length he resolved to leave Laura and Avignon forever; and instead of plunging into solitude, to seek the wiser resource of travel and society. Laura saw him depart with regret. When he went to take leave of her, he found her surrounded by a circle of her ladies. Her mien was dejected; a cloud overcast her face, whose expression seemed to say, "Who takes my faithful friend from me?" Petrarch was struck to the heart by a sad presentiment: the emotion was mutual; they both seemed to feel that they should never meet again. Petrarch departed. The plague, which had been extending its ravages over Asia, entered Europe. It spread far and wide: nearly one half the population of the world became its prey. Petrarch saw thousands die around him, and he trembled for his friends. He heard that it was at Avignon. A thousand sad presentiments haunted his mind. At last the fatal truth reached him, Laura was dead! By a singular coincidence, she died on the anniversary of the day when he first saw her. She was taken ill on the third of April, and languished but three days. As soon as the symptoms of the plague declared themselves, she prepared to die: she made her will, which is dated on the third of April, and received the sacraments of the church. On the sixth she died, surrounded by her friends and the noble ladies of Avignon, who braved the dangers of infection to attend on one so lovely and so beloved. On the evening of the same day on which she died, she was interred in the chapel of the Cross which her husband had lately built in the church of the Minor Friars at Avignon. Her tomb was discovered and opened in 1533, in the presence of Francis the First, whose celebrated stanzas on the occasion are well known. Of the fame which, even in her lifetime, love and poetical adoration of Petrarch had thrown around his Laura, a curious instance is given which will characterize the manners of the age. When Charles of Luxembourg (afterwards Emperor) was at Avignon, a grand fête was given, in his honor, at which all the noblesse were present. He desired that Petrarch's Laura should be pointed out to him; and when she was introduced, he made a sign with his hand that the other ladies present should fall back; then going up to Laura, and for a moment contemplating her with interest, he kissed her respectively on the forehead and on the eyelids. Petrarch survived her twenty-six years, dying in 1374. He was found lifeless one morning in his study, his hand resting on a book. THE KING AND OUTLAW. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. Robin Hood was a gentleman, An outlaw bold was he; He lost his Earldom and his land, And took to the greenwood tree. The king had just come home from war With the Soldan over sea; And Robin dwelt in merry Sherwood, And lived by archerie. Five bucks as fat as fat could be, Were bleeding on the ground, When up there came a hunter bright, With a horn and leashéd hound. "Who's this, who's this, i' th' merry greenwood? Who's this with horn and hound? We'll hang him, an' he pay not down For his life a thousand pound. "Come hither, hither, Friar John, And count your rosarie, And shrive this sinful gentleman, Under the greenwood tree!" "Stand back, stand back, thou wicked Friar, Nor dare to stop my way; I'll tear your cowl and cassock off, And hurl your beads away!" "Nay! hold your hands, my merry man! I like his gallant mood; Sir Hunter pray you take a staff, And play with Robin Hood." They played an hour with quarter staffs, A good long hour or more, And Robin Hood was beat at the game, That never was beat before. "Hold off, hold off," he said at length, And wiped the blood away; "Thou art a noble gentleman, Come dine with me to-day." "With the quarter staff, as a yeoman might, For love I played with thee; Now draw thy sword, as fits a knight, And play awhile with me." They fought an hour with rapiers keen, A weary hour or more, And Robin Hood began to fail, That never failed before. But still he fought as best he might, In the summer's burning heat, Till he sank at last with loss of blood, And fell at the Stranger's feet. He brought him water from the spring, And took him by the hand; "Rise up!" he said, "my good old Earl, The best man in the land! "Rise up, rise up, Earl Huntington, No longer Robin Hood; I will be king in London town, And you in green Sherwood!" SAINT ESCARPACIO'S BONES. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE. Upon a fine May morning in the year 1585, a Spanish vessel lay at anchor in the Port of St. Jago, in the island of Cuba. She was about to sail for Cadiz, the passengers were on board, and the sailors at their several stations, awaiting the word of command. The captain, a small, tight-built, shrewd-looking man, with the voice and manner of a naval officer, which, indeed, he had formerly been, was brave and experienced, and although somewhat wild and daring, he was a good fellow at heart, but now and then violent and headstrong to a fault, in short, Captain Perez was the terror of his men. He was walking the deck with rapid strides, and exhibiting the greatest impatience, now stopping to observe the direction of the wind, and casting a glance at the shore, then resuming his walk with a preliminary stamp of disappointment and vexation; no one, in the meanwhile, daring to ask why he delayed getting under way. At length strains of church music at a distance are heard on board the vessel, and all eyes are directed to the shore. A long procession of monks, holding crosses and lighted wax tapers, and singing, is seen approaching the beach opposite the vessel. The procession moves slowly and solemnly to the cadence of the music. Between two rows of monks dressed in deep black is a coffin richly decorated with all the symbols of the Catholic faith, and covered with garlands and chaplets, and, what is singular, the coffin is carried with difficulty by six stout negroes. Four venerable Jesuits support the corners of the pall, and, immediately behind the coffin, walks alone, with a grave and dignified step, the Right Reverend Father Antonio, superior of the Jesuit missionaries of the island of Cuba. An immense crowd of citizens, the garrison of the island, and the military and civil authorities, piously form the escort. Suddenly the singing ceases, the procession halts, the coffin is placed on elevated supporters. Father Antonio approaches it, and, kissing the pall with reverence, exclaims, with a solemnity befitting the occasion, "Adieu! Saint Escarpacio, thou worthy model of our order, adieu! In separating myself from thy holy remains, I fulfil thy last wishes; may they piously repose in our happy Spain, and may thy saintly vows and aspirations be thus accomplished. But before their departure from our shores, we conjure thee, holy saint, to look down from thy holy place of rest in heaven, and deign to bless this people, and us, thy mourning friends on earth." The whole assembly then knelt upon the ground, after which the negroes, resuming their heavy burden, carried it on board a boat, closely followed by Father Antonio. With vigorous rowing the boat soon reached the vessel's side, and the coffin was hoisted on board. "You are very late, reverend father," said Captain Perez, "and you know _wind and tide wait for no man_. I ought to have been far on my way long before this hour." "We could not get ready sooner, my son," the holy father replied, "but fear not, God will reward you for the delay, and these precious remains will speed you on your voyage. I hope you have made your own private cabin, as you promised, worthy of their reception?" "Yes, certainly, I have." "You must not for a moment lose sight of the coffin." "Make yourself easy on that point, holy father; I shall watch over it as if it were my own. Hollo there forward, bear a hand aft," the captain cried. Four sailors place themselves at the corners of the coffin, but they can hardly raise it from the deck; two more are called, and the six, bending under its weight, succeed in carrying it down into the cabin, followed by the Captain and by Father Antonio. When the coffin was properly bestowed, the reverend father addressed Captain Perez in the most earnest and solemn manner: "I hope you will be found worthy of the great confidence and trust I now repose in you. These precious remains should occupy your every moment, and you will sacredly and faithfully account to me for their safety--the smallest negligence will cost you dear. On your arrival at Cadiz, you will deliver the coffin to none other than Father Hieronimo, and not to him even, unless he shall first place in your hands a letter from me--you understand my instructions and commands? Now depart, and may God speed you on your way." Father Antonio then came upon deck, and bestowed his benediction upon the vessel, and upon all it contained; after which, descending to the boat, he was rowed to the shore. As he placed himself at the head of the procession, the singing recommenced, the anchor was weighed, and, to the sound of music, the cheering of the people, and the roar of cannon, the vessel moved slowly on her destined voyage. When fairly at sea, the wind was favorable, and all went well. The second evening out, Captain Perez was alone in his private cabin, and in a contemplative mood, when the feeble light of the single lamp glancing across the coffin, as the vessel rocked from side to side, attracted his attention, and led him to think about the singularity of its great weight. "It is very strange," he said musingly, "six stout fellows to carry a man's dry bones!--it cannot be possible. But what does the coffin contain if it does not contain the saint's bones? Father Antonio was very, _very_ particular. I should really like to know what there is in the coffin. It took a good half dozen strong healthy negroes, and then as many sailors, to carry it: what can there be in the coffin? Why, after all, I _can_ know if I please. I have but to take out a few screws, it can be done without the slightest noise, and I am alone, and the cabin door is easily fastened." Suiting the action to his soliloquy, he bolted the door of the cabin, took from his tool-chest a screw-driver, and, after a moment's indecision, began cautiously to loosen one of the screws in the lid of the coffin, his hands all the while trembling violently. "If," thought he, "I am committing a heinous sin, if the saint should start up, and if, in his anger, he should in some appalling manner punish my sacrilegious meddling with his bones?" A cold sweat overspread his bronzed visage, and he stood still a moment, hesitating as to whether he should go on. But curiosity conquered, and he rallied his energies with the reflection, that if he opened the coffin, Saint Escarpacio himself well knew it was only to find out what made his bones so heavy; there could be no impiety in that--quite the contrary. His conscience was by this time somewhat fortified, his superstitious fears gradually grew fainter, and keeping his eyes steadily fixed upon the lid of the coffin--to be sure the saint did not stir--he slowly and silently took out the first screw. He then stopped short: the saint showed no signs of anger. "I knew it," said Perez, going to work more boldly upon the second screw, "I knew there was nothing sinful in opening the coffin, for the sin lies in the intention." All the screws were soon drawn out, and to gratify his curiosity it only remained to raise the coffin lid, and here his heart beat violently--but courage--Perez did raise the lid, _and, and, he saw--no saint, but hay--the hay is carefully removed--then strips of linen--they are removed--then hay again, but no saint, nothing like the bone of a saint--but a wooden box_. "Well, that is odd," thought Perez, "and what can there be in it? I must open the box, but how? there is no key, what is to be done? Shall I force the lock, or break the cover of the box? Either attempt would make a noise, which the passengers or sailors might hear, but what is to be done? Good Saint Escarpacio, take pity on me, and direct me how to open the box," whispered Perez, and there was perhaps a little irony in the supplication. In feeling among the hay surrounding the box, Perez found a key at one of its corners secured by a small iron chain. "Ah! ha! I have it at last" Perez cried, "_the key, the key_," and quickly putting it into the key-hole, he opened the Box--and he saw--what? _Leathern bags filled to the top_ according to the beautifully written tickets, with GOLD PISTOLES--SILVER CROWNS, closely ranged in shining piles--all in the most perfect order. "But what is this? a letter? I must read it," exclaimed the excited Perez--"_by your leave, gentle wax_," and he tears the letter open. It began thus: "Father Antonio, of Cuba, to the reverend fathers in Cadiz, greeting. "As agreed between us, Most Reverend Fathers, I send you THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND LIVRES, in the name, and under the semblance of Father Escarpacio, whose bones I am supposed to be sending to Spain. The annexed memorandum of accounts will show that this sum comprises the whole of our little gleanings and savings up to this time, for the benefit of our Holy Order. You will pardon I am sure this innocent artifice on our part, Most Reverend Fathers, as it will prove a safeguard to the treasure, and avoid awakening the avarice and cupidity of the person to whom I am obliged to intrust it. (Signed) ANTONIO, of Cuba." "Three hundred thousand livres! there are, then, three hundred thousand livres," exclaimed Perez in amazement, as he realized that this immense sum lay in real gold and silver coin before his eyes. "Oh, reverend, right reverend and worthy fellows of the crafty Ignatius! you are indeed cunning foxes! a hundred to one your trick was not discovered, for who but a Jesuit could have imagined it, and who could have guessed that the coffin contained _money_? And so these bags of gold are your _holy remains_, and I too, old sea shark as I am, to be humbugged like a land lubber, with your procession and your mummery--but I am deceived no longer, my eyes are opened; and by my patron saint, trick for trick my pious masters--bones you shall have, and burn me for a heretic, if you get any thing better than bones;" and he began to untie and examine the contents of the money-bags. "Let me consider" said he, "I want some bones, and where the devil shall I find them?" He was on his knees, his body bent over the box, with his hands in the open gold-bags. His agitated countenance expressed with energy the mingled emotions, of desire to keep the rich booty all to himself, and of fear that in some mysterious manner it might elude his grasp--but he must, he _must_ have it. "A lucky thought strikes me," said he; "what a fool I am to give myself any trouble about it. What says my bill of lading? '_Received from the Reverend Father Antonio, a coffin containing bones, said to be those of Saint Escarpacio._' A coffin containing bones, said to be those, &c.--very good, and have I seen the bones, _said_ to be delivered to me, and _said_ to be the saint's bones? certainly not, and the coffin might contain--any thing else--_the said coffin containing_--what you please--how should I know? _said to be the bones of Saint Escarpacio_," &c. &c. In short, Captain Perez began noiselessly and methodically to empty the box of its bags of gold and piles of silver, taking care to stow the treasure away in a chest, to which he alone had access. He then filled the box with whatever was at hand, bits of rusty iron, lead, stones, shells, old junk, hay, &c., substituting as nearly as possible pound for pound in weight if not in value, conscientiously adding some bones which were far removed from _canonisation_, and at last carefully screwing down the lid, the right reverend father Antonio himself, had he been on board, could not have discovered that the coffin had been touched by mortal hand. In about a month the vessel arrived at the port of Cadiz. The quarantine for some unexplained reason was much shorter than usual, and had hardly expired, when a venerable Jesuit was the first person who stood before the captain, a few minutes only after he had taken possession of his lodgings on shore. "I would speak with Captain Perez," said the Jesuit, gravely. "I am he," the captain replied, somewhat disconcerted at the abruptness of the inquiry. Quickly recovering his presence of mind, however, he added, with perfect calmness, "You have probably come, holy father, to take charge of the precious remains intrusted to my care by Father Antonio, of Cuba?" The Jesuit bowed his head, in token of assent. "And I have the honor of addressing Father Hieronimo?" "You have," was the reply. "You are no doubt the bearer of a letter for me, from Father Antonio?" "Here it is," said Father Hieronimo, handing Captain Perez a letter. "I beg a thousand pardons, holy father," the captain said, with much humility, "but I hope you will not take offence at these necessary precautions?" "On the contrary they speak in your favor." "I see all is right," said the captain, "and I will go myself and order the coffin brought on shore." The captain went immediately on board, Father Hieronimo meanwhile placing himself at an open window whence he could over-look the vessel and watch every movement. The coffin was brought on shore by eight sailors, who, bending under its weight, slowly approach the captain's quarters. "How heavy it is, how _very_ heavy," said the Jesuit, rubbing his hands in exultation. Captain Perez had of course accompanied the coffin from the vessel, and now that he was about to deliver it into Father Hieronimo's keeping, he said to him, in a solemn and impressive manner, "I place in your hands, holy father, the precious remains intrusted to my care." "I receive them with pious joy." "The responsibility was great." "It will henceforth be mine." "It was a precious treasure." "Very precious." "I have watched over it with vigilance." "God will reward you." "I hope so." "From this hour every thing will prosper with you." "Do you think so, holy father?" "I am sure of it. I must now bid you adieu." "You have forgotten, holy father, to give me a receipt; but if--" "You are right," said the Jesuit, "it had escaped me." And he seated himself at a table on which lay writing materials, first sending a servant for his carriage. The receipt spoke of the piety and zeal of Captain Perez in the most flattering terms; and, while the captain was reading it with becoming humility, the carriage drew up opposite to the coffin, which was soon resting upon the cushioned seats within the vehicle. "I go immediately to Madrid," said Father Hieronimo. "You can no doubt imagine the impatience of the holy fathers to possess the sacred relics; they have waited so long. Once more adieu, believe me we shall never forget you." With these words, and a parting benediction on Perez, Father Hieronimo stepped into the carriage, and, with his holy remains by his side, started at a brisk trot of his well-fed mules on the road to Madrid. When fairly out of sight and hearing of Captain Perez, the good father laughed aloud. "The captain, poor simple soul," said he, "suspects nothing." And Perez, he too would have laughed aloud if he had dared; indeed he could with difficulty restrain himself in presence of his crew. "The crafty old fox," he said exultingly, "he has got his holy remains--ha! ha!--and he _suspects nothing_." A day or two after the delivery of the coffin, Captain Perez sailed for Mexico. After an interval of ten years, during which period, according to the Jesuit's prediction, prosperity had constantly waited upon Perez, he became weary of successful enterprise, and tired of the roving and laborious life he was leading. Worth a million, and a bachelor, he wisely resolved to give the remainder of his days to enjoyment. Seville was judiciously selected for his residence, where a magnificent mansion, extensive grounds, a well furnished cellar, good cooks, chosen friends, with all the other et ceteras which riches can bring, enabled him to pass his days and nights joyously. Captain Perez was indeed a _happy dog_. One night he was at table, surrounded by his friends of both sexes. The cook had done his duty; there were excellent fruits from the tropics; there were wines in abundance and variety, and with songs and laughter the very windows rattled, when Perez, the jolly Perez, _half seas over_, begged a moment's silence. "I say, my worthy friends, I have something to tell you better than all your singing. I must tell you a story that will make you split your sides--a real good one, about a capital trick I served them poor devils the Jesuits. You must know I was lying at anchor in Cuba, and--" Suddenly the door of the apartment is thrown open with great violence, and a monk, clothed in deep black, enters, followed by a guard of _alguazils_ armed to the teeth. "Profane impious wretches!" he cried, in a voice of appalling harshness, "is it thus you do penance for your sins? Is it in riotous feasting and drunkenness you spend the holy season of Lent?" Then, turning to Captain Perez, he said, "Follow me to the palace of the Holy Inquisition. Before that tribunal you must answer for your sacrilegious conduct." The guests were stupefied with fear, and Perez, now completely sobered, stared in affright at the monk. "Do you recollect me, Captain Perez?" said the monk. "No--but--it appears to me I have somewhere seen--" "I am Father Antonio, of Cuba," cried the monk, fixing his eyes, sparkling with savage fury, upon Perez. "And you are a member of the Holy Inquisition?" Perez faltered out in trembling accents. "I am. Again I say, follow me on the instant." Poor Captain Perez, or rather rich Captain Perez, at the early day in which he lived had, perhaps, never heard the avowal made by a man who, in speaking of honesty and dishonesty, declared _honesty to be the best policy, for_, said he, _I have tried both_. That the captain was not born to be hanged is certain; and although from childhood a sojourner upon the ocean, it was not his destiny to be drowned. There is a tradition handed down, that had it not been for very considerable donations, under his hand and seal, to a religious community in Spain, a method of bidding adieu to this life more in accordance with the pious notions prevalent three hundred years ago, would certainly have been chosen for our hero. Indeed, there were not wanting many heretic-hating persons who affirmed that an _auto-da-fe_ was got up expressly for the occasion. But we have ascertained beyond a doubt that he reformed in his manner of living, that he secured to the Holy Order the donations already mentioned, that the reverend fathers kindly took from his legal heirs all trouble in the division of his riches, and that he died in his bed at last, as a pious Catholic should die, and was buried in consecrated ground, with every rite and ceremony belonging to the community he had so munificently contributed to enrich. DIRGE FOR AN INFANT. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. He is dead and gone--a flower Born and withered in an hour. Coldly lies the death-frost now On his little rounded brow; And the seal of darkness lies Ever on his shrouded eyes. He will never feel again Touch of human joy or pain; Never will his once-bright eyes Open with a glad surprise; Nor the death-frost leave his brow-- All is over with him now. Vacant now his cradle-bed, As a nest from whence hath fled Some dear little bird, whose wings Rest from timid flutterings. Thrown aside the childish rattle, Hushed for aye the infant prattle-- Little broken words that could By none else be understood Save the childless one that weeps O'er the grave where now he sleeps. Closed his eyes, and cold his brow-- All is over with him now! R. S. CHILTON. THE CHIMES. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY E.W. ELLSWORTH. It was evening in New England, And the air was all in tune, As I sat at an open window, In the emerald month of June. From the maples by the roadway, The robins sang in pairs, Listening and then responding, Each to the other's airs. Sounds of calm that wrought the feeling Of the murmur of a shell, Of the drip of a lifted bucket In a wide and quiet well. And I thought of the airs of bargemen, Who tunefully recline, As they float by Ehrenbreitstein, In the twilight of the Rhine. And then of an eve in Venice, And the song of the gondolier, From the far lagunes replying To the wingéd lion pier. And then of the verse of Milton, And the music heard to rise, Through the solemn night from angels Stationed in Paradise. Thus I said it is with music, Wheresoe'er at random thrown, It will seek its own responses, It is loth to die alone. Thus I said the poet's music, Though a lovely native air, May appeal unto a rhythm That is native everywhere. For although in scope of feeling, Human hearts are far apart, In the depths of every bosom, Beats the universal heart; Beats with wide accordant motion, And the chimes among the towers Of the grandest of God's temples Seem as if they might be ours. And we grow in such a seeming, Till indeed we may control To an echo, our communion With the good and grand in soul. As an echo in a valley May revive a cadence there, Of a bell that may be swaying In a lofty Alpine air. As a screen of tremulous metal, From the rolling organ tone, Rings out to a note of the music That can never be its own. As an earnest artist ponders On a study nobly wrought, Till his fingers gild his canvas With a touch of the self-same thought. But the sun had now descended Far along his cloudy stairs, And the night had come like the angels To Abraham, unawares. A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[2] WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ. CHAPTER XLVI. Mrs. Hazleton fancied herself in high good luck; for just as she was passing through the door into the hall, Lady Hastings' maid crossed and made her a curtsey. Mrs. Hazleton beckoned her up, saying in a quiet, easy, every-day tone, "I suppose your lady is awake by this time?" "No, madam," replied the maid, "she is asleep still. She did not take her nap as early as usual to-day; for Mistress Emily was with her, and my lady would not go to sleep till she went out to take a walk." Mrs. Hazleton was somewhat alarmed at this intelligence; for she had not much confidence in her good friend's discretion. "How is Miss Emily?" she said in a tender tone. "She seemed very sad and low when last I saw her." "She is just the same, Madam," replied the maid. "She did not seem very cheerful when she went out, and has been crying a good deal to-day." Mrs. Hazleton was better satisfied, and paused for an instant to think; but the maid interrupted her cogitations by saying--"I think I may wake my lady now, if you please to come up, Madam." "Oh, dear, no," replied Mrs. Hazleton. "Do not wake her. I will go in quietly and sit with her till she wakes naturally. It is a pity to deprive her of one moment's calm sleep. You needn't come, you needn't come. I will ring for you when your mistress wakes;" and she quietly ascended the stairs, though the maid offered some civil remonstrances to her undertaking the task of watching by her sleeping mistress. The most careful affection could not have prompted greater precautions in opening the door of the sick lady's chamber, than those which were taken by Mrs. Hazleton. It was a good solid door, however, well seasoned, and well hung, and moved upon its hinges without noise. She closed it with the same care, and then with a soft tread glided up to the side of the bed. Lady Hastings was sleeping profoundly and quietly; and as she lay in an attitude of easy grace, a shadow of her youthful beauty seemed to have returned, and all the traces of after cares and anxiety were banished for the time. On the table, near the bed-head, stood the vial of medicine, with the glass and spoon; and Mrs. Hazleton eyed it for a moment or two without touching it. She saw that she had hit the color exactly; but the quantity in that vial, and the one she had with her, was somewhat different. She felt puzzled and doubtful. She asked herself--"Would the difference be discovered when the time came for giving her the medicine?" and a certain degree of trepidation seized her. But she was bold, and said to herself--"They will never see it. They suspect nothing. They will never see it." She took the vial from her pocket, and held it for an instant or two in her hand. Again a doubt and hesitation took possession of her. She gazed at the sleeper with a haggard eye. The face was so calm, so sweet, so gentle in expression, that the pleasant look perhaps did move her a little with remorse. The voice within said again, and again, "Forbear!" She tried to deafen herself against it, or to fill the ear of conscience with delusive sounds. "She is dying," she said--"She will die--she cannot recover. It is but taking away a few short hours, in order to stop that fatal marriage, which shall never be. I am becoming a fool--a weak irresolute fool." Just as she thus thought, Lady Hastings moved uneasily, as if to wake from her slumber. That moment was decisive. With a hurried hand, and quick as light, Mrs. Hazleton changed the two vials, and concealed the one which she had taken away. Then it was, probably for the first time, that all the awful consequences of the deed, for time and for eternity, flashed upon her. The scales fell from her eyes: no longer passion, or mortified vanity, or irritated pride, or disappointed love, distorted the objects or concealed their forms. She stood there consciously a murderer. She trembled in every limb; and, unable to support herself, sunk down in the chair that stood near. Had Lady Hastings slept on, Mrs. Hazleton would have been saved; for her impulse was immediately to reverse the very act she had done--all would have been saved--all to whom that act brought wretchedness. But the movement of the chair--the sound of the vial touching the marble table--the rustle of the thick silk--dispelled what remained of slumber, and Lady Hastings opened her eyes drowsily, and looked round. At the very moment she would have given worlds to recall it. The deed became irrevocable. The barrier of Fate fell: it was amongst the things done; it was written in the book of God as a great crime committed. Nothing remained but to insure, that the end she aimed at would be obtained; that the evil consequences, in this world at least, should be averted from herself. There was a terrible struggle to recover her self-command--a wrestling of the spirit--against the turbulent and fierce emotions which shook the body. She was still much agitated when Lady Hastings recognized her and began to speak; but her determination was taken to obtain the utmost that she could from the act she had committed--to have the full price of her crime. She was no Judas Iscariot, to be content with the thirty pieces of silver for the innocent blood, and then hang herself in despair. Oh no! She had sold her own soul, and she would have its price. But yet, as I have said, the struggle was terrible, and lasted longer than usual with her. "Dear me, my kind friend, is that you?" said Lady Hastings. "Have you been here long? I did not hear you come in." Her words, and her tone, were gentle and affectionate. All the coldness and the sharpness of the preceding day seemed to have passed away, and to have been forgotten; but words and tone were equally jarring to the feelings of Mrs. Hazleton. The sharpest language, the most angry manner, would have been a relief to her. They would have afforded her some sort of strength--some sort of support. It is painful enough to hear sweet music when we are very sad. I have known it rise almost to agony; but the tones of friendship and regard, of gentleness and tender kindness, to the ear of hatred and malice, must be more terrible still. "I have been here but a moment," said Mrs. Hazleton, gloomily--almost peevishly. "I suppose it was my coming in woke you; but I am sure I made as little noise as possible." "Why, what is the matter?" said Lady Hastings. "You look quite pale and agitated, and you speak quite crossly." "Your sudden waking startled me," said Mrs. Hazleton; "and, besides, you looked so ill, my dear friend. I almost thought you were dead till you began to move." There was malice in the sentence, simple as it seemed, and it had its effect. Nervous, hypochondriac, Lady Hastings was frightened at the mere sound, and her heart beat strangely at the very thought of being supposed dead. It seemed to her to augur that she was very ill; that she was much worse than her friends allowed her to believe; that they anticipated her speedy dissolution, and she remained silent and sad for several minutes, giving Mrs. Hazleton time to recover herself completely. She was a little piqued too at the abruptness of Mrs. Hazleton's manner. Neither the speech, nor the mode, nor the speaker, pleased her; and she replied at length--"Nevertheless, I feel a good deal better to-day. I have slept well for, I dare say, a couple of hours; and my dear child Emily has been with me all the morning. I must say she bears opposition and contradiction very sweetly." She knew that would not please Mrs. Hazleton, and she laid some emphasis on the words by way of retaliation. It was petty, but it was quite in her character. "Now I think of it," she added, "you promised to tell me what you discovered in regard to Marlow's relationship to Lord Launceston. I find--but never mind. Tell me what you have found out." Mrs. Hazleton hesitated. The first impulse was to tell a lie--to assert that Marlow was not the old earl's heir; but there was something in Lady Hastings' manner which made her suspect that she had received more certain information, and she made up her mind to speak the truth. "It is very true," she said; "Mr. Marlow is the old lord's nearest male relation, and heir to his title. I suspect," she added with a silly sounding laugh, "you have found this out yourself, my dear friend, and have made your peace with Emily, by withdrawing your opposition to her marriage." Her heart was very bitter at that moment; for she really did suspect all that she said. The idea presented itself to her mind (producing a feeling of fierce disappointment), of all her efforts being rendered fruitless, her dark schemes frustrated, her cunning contrivances without effect, at the very moment when the crime, by which she proposed to insure success, was so far consummated as to be beyond recall. She was relieved on that score in a moment. "Oh dear no," cried Lady Hastings. "I promised you, my dear friend, that I would say nothing till I saw you, and I have said nothing either to my husband or Emily. But I will of course now tell her all immediately, and I do confess it will give me greater satisfaction than any act of my whole life, to withdraw the opposition to her marriage which has made her so miserable, and to bid her be happy with the man of her own choice--an excellent good young man he is too. He has been laboring, I find, for the last fortnight or three weeks, night and day, in our service, and has detected the horrible conspiracy by which my husband was deprived of his rights and property. I shall tell Emily, with great joy, as soon as ever she comes back, that were it for nothing but this zeal in our cause, I would receive him joyfully as my son-in-law." "You had better wait till to-morrow morning," said Mrs. Hazleton, in a cold but significant tone. "Oh dear no," said Lady Hastings, somewhat petulantly, "I have waited quite long enough--perhaps too long. You surely would not have me protract my child's anxiety and sorrow unnecessarily. No, I will tell her the moment she returns. She read me part of a letter from Marlow to-day, which shows me that he has lost no time in seeking to serve us and make us happy, and I will lose no time in making my child and him happy also." "As you please," replied Mrs. Hazleton; "I only thought that in this changeable world, there are so many unexpected things occurring between one day and another, it might be well for you to pause and consider a little--in order, I mean, that after-thought may not show you reason to withdraw your consent, as you now withdraw your objection." "My consent once given, shall never be withdrawn," replied Lady Hastings, in a determined tone. Mrs. Hazleton looked at the vial by the bedside, and then at her watch. "You had better avoid all agitation," she said, "and at all events before you speak with Emily, take a dose of the medicine, which Short tells me he has given you to soothe and calm your spirits--shall I give you one now?" "No, I thank you," replied Lady Hastings, briefly; "not at present." "Is it not the time?" said Mrs. Hazleton, looking at her watch again: "the good man told me you were to take it very regularly." "But he told me," replied Lady Hastings, "that nobody was to give it to me but Emily, and she will be back at the right time, I am sure. What o'clock is it?" "Past five," replied Mrs. Hazleton, advancing the hour a little. "Then it wants three quarters of an hour to the time," said Lady Hastings, "and Emily has only gone to take a walk. We are expecting Marlow to-night, so she will not go far I am sure." Mrs. Hazleton fell into profound thought. In proposing to give Lady Hastings the portion herself, she had deviated a little from her original plan. She had intended all along, that the mortal draught should be administered by the hand of Emily, and she had only been tempted to depart from that purpose by the fear of Lady Hastings withdrawing her opposition to her daughter's marriage with Marlow before the deed was fully accomplished. There was no help for it, however. She was obliged to take her chance of the result; and while she mused at that moment, vague notions--what shall I call them?--not exactly schemes or purposes, but rather dreams of turning suspicion upon Emily herself, of making men believe--suspect, even if they could not prove--that the daughter knowingly deprived the mother of life, crossed her imagination. She meditated rather longer than was quite decorous, and then suddenly recollecting herself she said, "By the way, has Emily yet condescended to particularize her astounding charges against your poor friend? I am really anxious to hear them, and although I confess that the matter has afforded me some amusement, it has brought painful feelings and doubts with it too. I have sometimes fancied, my dear friend, that there is a slight aberration in your poor Emily's mind, and I can account for her conduct in this instance by no other mode. You know her grandfather, Sir John, had moments when he was hardly sane. I have heard your own good father declare upon one occasion, that Sir John was as mad as a lunatic. Tell me then, has Emily brought forward any proofs, or alluded to these accusations since I saw you? You said she would explain all in a few hours." "She has not as yet explained all," replied Lady Hastings, "but I cannot deny that she has alluded to the charges, and repeated them all distinctly. She said that the delay had been rather longer than she expected; but that as soon as Mr. Dixwell came, every thing should be told." "The suspense is unpleasant," said Mrs. Hazleton, somewhat sarcastically; "I trust the young lady does not play with the feelings of her lover as she does with those of her friends, otherwise I should pity Marlow." Lady Hastings was a good deal nettled. "I do not think he much deserves your pity," she replied; "and besides, I think he is quite satisfied with Emily's conduct, as I am also. I am quite confident she has good reason for what she says, my dear Madam--not that I mean to assert that the charges are true, by any means--she may be mistaken, you know--she may be misinformed--but that she brings them in good faith, and fully believes that she can prove them distinctly, I do not for a moment doubt. If she is wrong, nobody will be more grieved, or more ready to make atonement than herself; but whether she is right or wrong, remains to be proved." "All that I have to request then is," said Mrs. Hazleton, "that you will be kind enough to let me know, immediately you are yourself informed, what are the specific charges, and upon what grounds they rest. That they must be false, I know; and therefore I shall give myself no uneasiness about them. All I regret is, that you should be troubled about what must be frivolous and absurd. Nevertheless, I must beg you to let me hear immediately." "Sir Philip will do that," replied Lady Hastings, coldly. "If Emily is right in her views, the matter will require the intervention of a man. It will be too serious for a woman to deal with." "Oh, very well," said Mrs. Hazleton, with an air of offended dignity. "Good morning, my dear Lady;" and she quitted the room. She paused upon the broad staircase for two or three minutes, leaning upon the balustrade in deep thought; but when she descended to the hall, she asked a servant who stood there if Mistress Emily had returned. The man replied in the negative, and she then inquired for Sir Philip, asking to see him. The servant said he was in his library, and proceeded to announce her. She followed him so closely as to enter the room almost at the same moment, and beheld Sir Philip Hastings, with his head leaning on his hand, sitting at the table and gazing earnestly down upon it. There was a book before him, but it was closed. "I beg pardon for intruding, my dear sir," said Mrs. Hazleton, "but I wished to ask if you know where Emily is. I want to speak with her." "I know nothing about her," said Sir Philip, abruptly; and then muttered to himself, "would I knew more." "I thought I saw her in the fields as I came," said Mrs. Hazleton, "gathering flowers and herbs--she is fond of botany, I believe." "I know not," said Sir Philip, recovering himself a little. "Pray be seated. Madam--I have not attended much to her studies lately." "Thank you, I must go," said Mrs. Hazleton. "Perhaps I shall meet her as I drive along. Do not let me interrupt you, do not let me interrupt you;" and she quietly quitted the room. "Gathering herbs!" said Sir Philip Hastings, "what new whim is this?" CHAPTER XLVII. Emily Hastings was not three hundred yards from the house when Mrs. Hazleton drove away from the house door. She had never been more than three hundred yards from it during that day. She had gathered no herbs, she had wandered through no fields; but, at her mother's earnest request, she had gone out to breathe the fresh air for half an hour, and had ascended through the gardens to a little terrace on the hill, where she had continued to walk up and down under the shade of some tall trees; had seen Mrs. Hazleton arrive, and saw her depart. The scene which the terrace commanded was very beautiful in itself, and the house below, the well-cultivated gardens, a fountain here and there, neat hedge-rows, and trim, well-ordered fields, gave the whole an air of home comfort, and peaceful affluence, such as few countries but England can display. I have shown, or should have shown, that Emily was somewhat of an impressible character, and the brightness and the pleasant character of the scene had its usual effect in cheering. Certainly, to any one who had stood near her, looking over even that fair prospect, she herself would have been the loveliest object in it. Every year had brought out some new beauty in her face, and without diminishing one charm of extreme youth, had expanded her fair form into womanly richness. The contour of every limb was perfect: the whole in symmetry complete; and her movements, as she walked to and fro, upon the terrace, were all full of that easy, floating grace, which requires a combination of youth and health, and fine proportion, and a pure, high mind. If there was a defect it was that she was somewhat pale that day; for she had not slept at all during the preceding night from agitated feelings, and busy thoughts that would not rest. But the slight degree of languor, which watching and anxiety had given, was not without its own peculiar charm, and the liquid brightness of her eyes seemed but the more dazzling for the drooping of the eyelid, with its long sweeping fringe. There was a mixture, too, strange as it may seem to say so, of sadness and cheerfulness, in the expression of her face that day--perhaps I should say an alternation of the two expressions; but the change from the one to the other was too rapid for distinctness; and the well of feelings from which the expressions flowed, was of very mingled waters. The scene of death and suffering which she had lately witnessed at the cottage, her father's wild and gloomy manner, her mother's sickness, the displeasure of one parent, however unjust, and the opposition of another, to her dearest wishes, however unreasonable, naturally produced anxiety and sadness. But then again, on the other hand, Marlow's letter had cheered and comforted her much; the prospect of seeing him so speedily, rejoiced her more than she had even anticipated, and the certainty that a few short hours would remove for ever all doubts as to her conduct, her thoughts and her feelings, from the mind of both her parents, and especially from that of her father, gave her strength and happy confidence. Poor Emily! How lovely she looked as she walked along there with the ever varying expressions fluttering over her face, and her rich nut brown hair, free and uncovered, floating in curls on the sportive breath of the breeze. When first she came out the general tone of her feelings was sad; but the bright hopes seemed to gain vigor in the open air, and her mind fixed more and more gladly on the theme of Marlow's letter. As it did so she extracted fresh motives of comfort from it. He had given her many details in regard to his late proceedings. He had openly and plainly spoken of the conduct of Mrs. Hazleton, and told her he could prove the facts which he asserted. He had not even hinted at an injunction to secrecy, and although her first impulse had been to wait for his arrival and let him explain the whole himself, yet, as it was now getting late in the day, and he had not come--as the obligation to secrecy, laid upon her by John Ayliffe, might not be removed till the following morning, and her mother was evidently anxious and uneasy for want of all explanations--Emily thought she might be fully justified in reading more of Marlow's letter to Lady Hastings than she had hitherto done, and showing her that she had asserted nothing without reasonable cause. The sight of Mrs. Hazleton's carriage arriving confirmed her in this intention. She knew that fair lady to possess very great influence over her mother's mind. She believed that influence to have been always exerted balefully, and she judged it better, much better, to cut it short at once, rather than suffer it to endure even for another day. When she saw the carriage drive away, then, she returned rapidly to the house, went to her room to get Marlow's letter, and then proceeded to her mother's chamber. "Mrs. Hazleton has been here, my love," said Lady Hastings, as soon as Emily approached, "and really, she has been very strange and disagreeable. She seems not to have the slightest consideration for me; but even in my weak state, says every thing that can agitate and annoy me." "I trust, my dear mother, that you will see her no more," said Emily. "The full proofs of what I told you concerning her, I cannot yet give; but Marlow lays me under no injunction to secrecy, and I have brought his letter to read you the part in which he speaks of her. That will show you quite enough to convince you that Mrs. Hazleton should never be permitted within these doors again." "Oh read it, pray read it, my dear," said Lady Hastings. "I am all anxiety to know the facts; for really one does not know how to behave to this woman, and I feel in a very awkward position towards her." Emily sat down by the bedside and read, word for word, all that Marlow had written in reference to Mrs. Hazleton, which was interspersed, here and there, with many kindly and respectful expressions towards Lady Hastings and her husband, which he knew well would be gratifying to her whom he addressed. His statements were all clear and precise, and from them Lady Hastings learned he had obtained proof, from various different sources, that her seeming friend had knowingly and willingly supplied John Ayliffe with the means of carrying on his fraudulent suit against Sir Philip Hastings: that she had been his counsel and coöperator in all his proceedings, and had suggested many of the most criminal steps he had taken. The last passage which Emily read was remarkable: "To see into the dark abyss of that woman's heart, my dearest Emily," he said, "is more than I can pretend to do; but it is perfectly clear that she has been moved in all her proceedings for some years, by bitter personal hatred towards Sir Philip, Lady Hastings, and yourself. Mere self-interest--to which she is by no means insensible on ordinary occasions--has been sacrificed to the gratification of malice, and she has even gone so far as to place herself in a situation of considerable peril for the purpose of ruining your excellent father, and making your mother and yourself unhappy. What offence has been committed by any of your family to merit such persevering and ruthless hatred, I cannot tell. I only know that it must have been unintentional; but that it has not been the less bitterly revenged. Perhaps the disclosures which must be made as soon as I return, may give us some insight into the cause; but at present I can only tell you the result." "My dear Emily," said Lady Hastings, "your father should know this immediately. He has been very sad and gloomy since his return. I really cannot tell what is the matter with him; but something weighs upon his spirits, evidently; but this news will give him relief, or, at all events, will divert his thoughts. It was very natural, my dear girl, that you should first tell your mother, but I really think that we must now take him into our councils." "I will go and ask him to come here, at once," said Emily. "I think my dear father has not understood me rightly lately, and has chilled me by cold looks and words when I would fain have spoken to him, and poured my whole thoughts into his bosom. Oh, I shall be glad to do any thing to regain his confidence; and although I know it must be regained in a very, very short space of time, yet I would gladly do any thing to prevent its being withheld from me even a moment longer." She took a step towards the door as she spoke; but Lady Hastings, unhappily, called her back. "Stay, my Emily," she said. "Come hither, my dear child; I have something to say that will cheer you and comfort you, and give you strength to meet any little crosses of your father's with patience and resignation. He has been sorely tried, and is much troubled. But I was going to say, dear Emily," and she threw her arms round her daughter's neck as she leaned over her, "that I have been thinking much of all that was said the other day, in regard to your marriage with Marlow. I see that your heart is set upon it, and that you can only be happy in a union with him. I know him to be a good and excellent young man; and after all that he has done to serve us, I must not interpose your wishes any longer; although, perhaps, I might have chosen differently for you had the choice rested with me. I give you, therefore, my full and free consent, Emily, and trust you will be as happy as you deserve, my dear girl. I think you might very well have made a higher alliance, but----" "But none that would have made me half so happy," replied Emily, embracing her mother. "Oh, dear mother, if you could know the load you take from my heart, you would be amply repaid for any sacrifice of opinion you make to your child's happiness. I cannot conceive any situation more painful to be placed in than a conflict between two duties. My positive promise to Marlow, my obedience to you, are now reconciled, and I thank you a thousand thousand times for having thus relieved me from so terrible a struggle." The tears rose in her eyes as she spoke, and Lady Hastings made her sit down by her bedside, saying--"Nay, my dear child, do not suffer yourself to be so much agitated. I did not know till the other day," she said, feeling some self-reproach at having been brought to play the part she had acted lately, "I did not know till the other day that you were really so much in love, my Emily. But I have known what such feelings are, and can sympathize with you. Indeed I should have yielded long ago if it had not been for the persuasions of that horrid Mrs. Hazleton. She always stood in the way of every thing I wanted to do, and would not even let me know the truth about your real feelings--pretending all the time to be my friend too!" "She has been a friend to none of us, I fear," replied Emily, "and to me especially an enemy; although I cannot at all tell what I ever did to merit such pertinacious hatred as she seems to feel towards me." "Do you know, my child," said Lady Hastings, with a meaning smile, "I have been sometimes inclined to think that she wished to marry Marlow herself?" Emily started and looked aghast, and then that delicate feeling, that sensitiveness for the dignity of woman's nature, which none, I suspect, but woman's heart can clearly comprehend, caused her cheek to glow like a rose with shame at the very thought of a woman loving unloved, and seeking unsought. She felt, however, at once, that there might be--that there probably was--much truth in what her mother said, that she had touched the true point, and had discovered one at least of the causes of Mrs. Hazleton's strange conduct. Nevertheless, she answered, "Oh, dear mother, I hope it is not so. Sure I am that Marlow would never trifle with any woman's love, and I cannot think that Mrs. Hazleton would so degrade herself as even to dream of a man who never dreamt of her; besides, she is old enough to be his mother." "Not quite, my child, not quite," replied Lady Hastings. "She is, I believe, younger than I am; and though old enough to be your mother, Emily, I could not have been Marlow's, unless I had married at ten years old. Besides, she is very beautiful, and she knows it, and may have thought that such beauty as hers, and her great wealth, might well make up for a small difference of years." "Perhaps you are right," replied Emily, thoughtfully, as many a circumstance flashed upon her memory, which had seemed to her dark and mysterious in times past; but to which the cause suggested by her mother seemed now to afford a key. "But if it was me, only, she hated," added Emily, "why should she so persecute my father and yourself?" "Perhaps," replied Lady Hastings, speaking with a clear-sighted wisdom which she seldom evinced, "perhaps because she knew that the most terrible blows are those which are aimed at us through those we love. Besides, one cannot tell what offence your father may have given. He is very plain spoken, and not accustomed to deal very tenderly. Now Mrs. Hazleton is not well pleased to hear plain truths, nor to bear with patience any sharpness or abruptness of manner. Moreover, my child, I have heard that it was old Sir John Hastings' wish, when we were all young and free, that your father should marry Mrs. Hazleton. But he preferred another, perhaps less worthy of him in every respect." "Oh, no, no," cried Emily, with eager affection. "More worthy of him a thousand times in all ways. More good--more kind--more beautiful." "Nay, nay, flatterer," said Lady Hastings, with a smile. "I was well enough to look at once, Emily, and more to his taste. That is enough. My glass tells me clearly that I cannot compete with Mrs. Hazleton now. But it is growing dark, my dear, I must have lights." "I will ring for them, and then go and seek my father," replied Emily. She rang, and the maid appeared from the anteroom, just as Lady Hastings was saying that it was time to take her medicine. Emily took up the vial and the spoon, poured out the quantity prescribed, with a steady hand, very unlike that with which Mrs. Hazleton had held the same bottle an hour before, and having put the dose into a wine-glass, handed it to her mother. "Bring lights," said Lady Hastings, addressing her maid; and the moment after, she raised the glass to her lips, and drank the contents. "It tastes very odd, Emily," she said, "I think it must be spoiled by the heat of the room." "Indeed," said Emily. "That is very strange. The last vial kept quite well. But Mr. Short will be here to-night, and we will make him send some more." She paused for a moment or two, and then added, "Now, shall I go for my father?" "No," said Lady Hastings, somewhat faintly; "wait till the girl comes back with the lights." She was silent for a few moments, and then raised herself suddenly on her arm, saying in a tone of great alarm, "Emily, Emily! I feel very ill.--Good God, I feel very ill!" Emily sprang to her side and threw her arm round her; but the next instant Lady Hastings uttered a fearful scream, like the cry of a sea-bird, and her head fell back upon her daughter's arm. Emily rang the bell violently: ran to the door and shrieked loudly for aid; for she saw too well that her mother was dying. The maid, several of the other servants, and Sir Philip Hastings himself, rushed into the room. Lights were brought: Mr. Short was sent for; but ere the servant had well passed the gates, Lady Hastings, after a few convulsive sobs, had yielded up her spirit. CHAPTER XLVIII. When the surgeon entered the room of Lady Hastings there was a profound silence. Sir Philip Hastings was standing by his wife's bedside, motionless as a statue; gazing with a knitted brow and fixed stony eye upon the features of her whom he had so well and constantly loved. Emily lay fainting upon the floor, with her head supported by one of the maids, while another tried to recall her to life. Two more servants were in the room, but they, like all the rest, remained silent in presence of the awful scene before them. The windows were not yet closed, and the faint, struggling, gray twilight came in, and mingled sombrely with the pale light of the wax candles, giving even a more deathlike hue to the face of the corpse, and throwing strange crossing lights and shades upon features which remained convulsed even after the agony of death was past. "Good God! Sir Philip, what is this I hear?" exclaimed Mr. Short before he caught the whole particulars of the scene. Sir Philip Hastings made no answer. He did not even seem to hear; and the surgeon advanced to the bedside, and gazed for an instant on the face of Lady Hastings. He took her hand in his. It was still warm; but when he put his fingers on her wrist, no pulse vibrated beneath his touch. The heart, too, was quite still: not a flutter indicated a lingering spark of vitality. The breath was gone; and though the surgeon sought on the dressing-table for a small mirror, and applied it to the lips, it remained undimmed. He shook his head sadly; but yet he made some efforts. Ho took a vial of essence from his pocket, and applied it to the nostrils; he opened a vein, and a few drops of blood issued from it, but stopped immediately; and several other experiments he tried, that not a lingering doubt might remain of death having taken possession completely. At length he ceased, saying, "It is in vain. How did this happen? It is very strange. There was not an indication of such an event yesterday. She was decidedly better." "And so she was this morning, sir," said Lady Hastings' maid; "she slept quite well too, sir, before Mrs. Hazleton came." Sir Philip Hastings remained profoundly silent; but Mr. Short gave a sudden start at the name of Mrs. Hazleton, and asked the maid when that lady had left her mistress. "Not half an hour before her death, sir," replied the maid; "and even for a little time after she was gone, my lady seemed quite well and cheerful with Mistress Emily." "Were you with her when she was seized so suddenly?" asked the surgeon. "No, sir," said the maid. "No one was with her but Mistress Emily. My lady had sent me away for lights; but just when I was coming up the stairs, I heard my young lady ringing the bell violently, and screaming for help, and in two minutes after I came in my lady was dead." "I must hear the first symptoms," said Mr. Short, "and this dear young lady needs attending to. If I know her right, this shock will well nigh kill her." He moved towards Emily as he spoke, but in passing across, his eye lighted upon the vial which was standing upon the table at the bedside, with the spoon and wine-glass which had been used in administering the medicine. Something in the appearance of the bottle seemed to strike him suddenly, and he raised it sharply and held it to the candle. "Good God!" exclaimed Mr. Short; "Good God!" and his face turned as pale as death, and a fit of trembling seized upon him. It was several moments before he uttered another word. He put his hand to his brow, and seemed to think deeply and anxiously. Then he examined the bottle again, took out the cork, held it to his nostrils, tasted a single drop poured upon the end of his finger, and shook his head sadly and solemnly. Every eye but those of the maid, who was supporting Emily's head, was now turned upon him. There was something in his manner so unusual, so strange, that even the attention of Sir Philip Hastings was attracted by it; and he looked gloomily at the surgeon for a moment, as if in a dreamy wonder at his proceedings. At length, Mr. Short spoke again. "Can any body tell me," he said, "when Lady Hastings took a dose of this stuff?" No one remarked the irreverent term which he applied to the contents of the vial; for every one who listened to him would probably have given it the same name, had it been a mithridate; but the maid of the deceased lady replied at once, "Only a few minutes before she died, sir. I saw her take it myself." "Who gave it to her?" demanded the surgeon, sternly. "My young lady, sir," answered the maid, "just before I went for the lights, and I am sure she did not give her a drop too much of it; for she measured it out carefully in the spoon before she put it into the glass." Mr. Short remained silent again, and Sir Philip Hastings spoke for the first time with a great effort. "What is the matter, sir?" he asked, gloomily; "you seem confounded, thunder-struck. What has befallen to draw your eyes from that?" and he pointed to the bed of his dead wife. "I am bound to say, Sir Philip," replied Mr. Short, "that it is my belief that the dose given to Lady Hastings from that bottle, has been the cause of her death. In a word, I believe it to be poison." Sir Philip Hastings gazed in his face with a wild look of horror. His teeth chattered in his head, his whole frame shook visibly to the eyes of those around, but he uttered not a word, and it was the maid who answered, exclaiming in a shrill voice, "Oh, how horrible! How could you send my lady such stuff?" "I never sent it to her, woman!" said Mr. Short, sternly; "if you had eyes you would see that it is not of the same color, nor has it the same taste of that which I sent. It is different in every respect; and if no other proof were wanting that which I sent Lady Hastings was harmless, it would be sufficient to say, that the last vial I brought was delivered to you yourself yesterday quite full, that Lady Hastings ought to have taken four or five doses of that medicine between that time and this, and----" "Oh, yes!" exclaimed the maid, interrupting him, "she took it quite regularly. I saw Mistress Emily give her three doses myself." "Well, did those hurt her?" asked Mr. Short, sharply. "I can't say they did," replied the woman, "indeed she always seemed better a little while after taking them." "Well that shows that this is not the same," said Mr. Short; "besides, this bottle has never come out of my surgery. I always choose mine perfectly clear and white, that I may be enabled to see if the medicine is at all troubled or not. This has a green tinge, and must have come from some common druggist's, and the stuff that it contains must be strictly analyzed." As he spoke, Sir Philip Hastings strode up to him, grasped his hand, and wrung it hard, saying in a hollow husky tone, and pointing to the bottle, "What is it you mean? What is it all about? What is that?" "Poison! Sir Philip," replied Mr. Short, moved by the feelings of the moment beyond all his ordinary prudence; "poison! and I very much fear that it has been administered to your poor lady intentionally." "Gathering herbs!--gathering herbs!" screamed Sir Philip Hastings, like a madman; and tearing the hair out of his head, he rushed away from the room, and locked himself into his library. No one could tell to what his words alluded, nor did they trouble themselves much to discover; for every one at once concluded that the shock of his wife's sudden death, and the discovery of its terrible cause, had driven him insane. "Oh, do run after my master, sir," cried the maid; "he has gone into the library, I heard him bang the door." "Has he got any arms there?" asked Mr. Short, "there used to be pistols at the Hall." "No, sir, no," exclaimed one of the house-maids, "they are not there. They are in his dressing-room out yonder." "Well, then, I will leave him alone for the present," said the surgeon; "here is one who demands more immediate care. Poor young lady! If she should discover, in her present state of grief, how her mother has died, and that her hand has been employed to produce such a catastrophe, it will destroy either her life or her intellect." "But who could have done it, sir?" exclaimed Lady Hastings' maid. "Never you mind that for the present," said Mr. Short; "I have my suspicions; but they are no more than suspicions at present. You stay with me here, and let the other woman carry your poor young lady to her room. I will be with her presently, and will give her what will do her good. One of you, as soon as possible, send me up a man-servant--a groom would be best." His orders were obeyed promptly; for he spoke with a tone of decision and command which the terrible circumstances of the moment enabled him to assume; although in ordinary circumstances he was a man of mild and gentle character. As soon as poor Emily was borne away to her own chamber, Mr. Short turned to the maid again, inquiring, "How long had Mistress Hazleton gone when your mistress was seized with these fatal convulsions?" "About half an hour, sir," said the maid. "It couldn't have been longer. Mrs. Hazleton came when my lady was asleep, and went in alone, saying she would not disturb her." "Ha!" cried the surgeon; "was she with her for any time alone?" "All the time that she staid, sir," replied the maid; "for I did not like to go in, and Mistress Emily was walking on the terrace up the hill." "I suppose then you cannot tell how long Mrs. Hazleton remained alone with your lady before she woke?" "Yes, I can pretty nearly, sir," answered the maid, "for though Mrs. Hazleton told me not to come in with her, and said she would ring when my lady waked, I came after her into the anteroom, and sat there all the time. For about five minutes, or it might be ten, all was quiet enough; but at the end of that time I heard my lady and Mrs. Hazleton begin to speak." "You heard no other sounds previously?" asked the surgeon. "Nothing but the rustle of Mrs. Hazleton's gown, as she moved about once or twice," said the maid, "and of that I can't be rightly sure." "You did not by chance look through the key-hole?" asked Mr. Short. "No, that I didn't," said the maid, tossing her head, "I never did such a thing in my life." "Well, well. Get me a sheet of paper," replied the surgeon, "and a pen and ink--oh, they are here are they?" But before he could sit down to write, a groom crept in through the half-open door, and received orders from the surgeon to saddle a horse instantly and return. Mr. Short then sat down and wrote as follows: "MR. ATKINSON:--As you are high constable of Hartwell, I write as a justice of the peace for the county of ----, to authorize and require you to follow immediately the carriage of The Honorable Mistress Hazleton, to apprehend that lady and to keep her in your safe custody, taking care that her person be immediately searched by some proper person, and that any vials, bottles, powders, or other objects whatsoever bearing the appearance of drugs or medicines, or of having contained them, be carefully preserved, and marked for identification. I have not time or means to fill up a regular warrant; but I will justify you in, and be responsible for, whatever you may do to insure that Mrs. Hazleton has no means or opportunity allowed her of concealing or making away with any thing she has carried away from this house, where Lady Hastings has just deceased from the effects of poison. You had better take the fresh horse of the bearer, and lose not an instant in overtaking the carriage." He then signed his name just as the groom returned; but ere he gave the man the paper he added in a postscript: "You had better search the carriage minutely, and make any preliminary investigation that you may think fit before I arrive. The hints given above will be sufficient for your guidance." "Take this paper immediately to Jenny Best's cottage," said Mr. Short to the groom. "Ask if Mr. Atkinson is there. Should he be so, give it to him, and let him take your horse if he requires it. Should you not find him there, seek for him either at the house of Mr. Dixwell, or at the farm close by. Should he be at neither of those places, follow him on to his house near Hartwell at full speed. Do you understand?" "Oh, quite well, sir," said the groom, who was a shrewd, keen fellow; and he left the room without more words. When he got down to the hall door, however, he thought he might as well know more of his errand, and read the paper which he had received with the butler and the footman. A brief consultation followed between them, and not a little horror and anger was excited by the information they had gained from the paper, for Lady Hastings had been well loved by her servants, and Mrs. Hazleton was but little loved by any of her inferiors in station. "Go you on, John, as fast as possible," said the footman. "I'll get a horse and come after you as fast as possible with Harry; for this grand dame has three servants with her, and mayn't choose to be taken easily." "Ay, come along, come along," said the groom; "we'll run her down, I'll warrant," and hurrying away he got to his horse's back. In the mean time Mr. Short had proceeded to the room of poor Emily Hastings, whom he found recovering from her fainting fit, and sobbing in the bitterness of grief. "Oh, Mr. Short," she said, "this is very terrible. There surely was something wrong about that medicine, for my poor mother was taken ill the moment she had swallowed it. She had had the same quantity three times to-day before; but she said that it tasted strange and unpleasant. It could not surely have been spoiled by keeping so short a time, and that could not have killed her even if it had been so. Pray do examine it." "I will, I will, my dear," replied Mr. Short kindly, "but I don't think the medicine I sent could spoil, and if it did it could have no evil effect. Now quiet yourself, my dear Mistress Emily; I am going to give you a draught which will soothe your nerves, and fit you better to bear all these terrible things." He then had recourse to the little store of medicines he usually carried in his pocket, and administered first a stimulant and then a somewhat powerful narcotic. For about ten minutes he remained seated by Emily's bedside with her own maid standing at the foot, and during that time the poor girl spoke once or twice, asking anxiously after her father, and expressing a great desire to go to him. Gradually, however, her eyelids began to droop, her sentences remained unfinished, and, in the end, she fell into a deep and profound sleep. "She will not wake for six or eight hours," said Mr. Short, addressing the maid. "But when she does wake it would be better you should be with her, my good girl. If you like, therefore, you can go and take some rest in the meanwhile; but order yourself to be called at the end of five hours." "If you are quite sure that she will remain asleep, sir," said the maid, "I will lie down, for I am sure sorrow wearies one more than work." "She won't wake," said Mr. Short, "for six hours at least. I will now go and see Sir Philip," and descending the stairs, he knocked at the door of the library, thinking that probably he should find it locked. The stern voice of Sir Philip Hastings, however, said "Come in," in a wonderfully calm tone; and when the surgeon entered he found Sir Philip seated at the library table, and apparently reading a Greek book, the contents of which Mr. Short could not at all divine. CHAPTER XLIX. I must now follow the groom on his road, first to the cottage of good Jenny Best, where he learned that Mr. Atkinson had gone away some five minutes before, and then to the house of the neighboring farm, where he found the person he sought still seated on his horse, but talking to the tenant at the door. "Here, Mr. Atkinson," cried the groom as he came up; "here's a note for you from Mr. Short the surgeon--a sort of warrant, I believe; for he's a justice of the peace, you know, as well as a surgeon. Read it quick, Mr. Atkinson, read it quick; for it won't keep hot long; and if that woman isn't caught I think I'll hang myself." "Bring us a light, farmer," said Mr. Atkinson, "quickly. What is all this about, John?" "Why, Madam Hazleton has poisoned my lady, and she's as dead as a door nail," said the groom, "that's all; and bad enough too. Zounds, I thought she'd do some mischief; she was always so hard upon her horses." "Good heaven!" exclaimed Mr. Atkinson, "you do not mean to say that she has certainly poisoned Lady Hastings?" "Why, Mr. Short believes it, and every one believes it," answered the groom. Mr. Atkinson might have endeavored to reduce the number comprised in the term "every body" to its just proportions; but before he could do so, the farmer returned with a light shaded from the wind by his hat; and the good high constable of Hartwell, bending over his saddle, read hurriedly Mr. Short's brief note. "What's the matter? what's the matter?" cried the farmer; and great was his surprise and consternation to hear that Lady Hastings was dead, and that strong suspicion existed of her having been poisoned by Mrs. Hazleton. There is a stern, dogged love of justice, however, in the English peasant, which rises into energy and excitement; and the farmer was instantly heard calling for his horse. "Zounds, I'll ride with you, Atkinson," he said. "This great dame has got so many servants, she may think fit to set the law at defiance; but she must be taught that high people cannot poison other people any more than low ones. But you go on; you go on. I'll catch you up, perhaps. If not, I'll come in time, don't you be afraid." "I'm going along too," said the groom, "and two others are coming; so if her tall men show fight, I think we'll leather their jackets." Away they went as fast as they could go, and to say truth, Mr. Atkinson was not at all sorry to have some assistance; for without ever committing any one act which could be characterized as criminal, unjust, or wrong, within the knowledge of her neighbors, Mrs. Hazleton had somehow impressed the minds of all who surrounded her with the conviction, that hers was a most daring and remorseless nature. The general world received their impression of her character--and often a false one, be it good or evil--by her greater and more important actions: the little circle that surrounds us forms a slower but more certain judgment from minute but often repeated traits. On rode Mr. Atkinson and the groom, as fast as their horses could carry them. Wherever there was turf by the roadside they galloped; and at the rate of progression made by carriages in that day, they made sure they must be gaining very rapidly upon the object of their pursuit. When first they set out it was very dark; but at the end of twenty minutes, in which period they had ridden somewhat more than four miles, the edge of the moon began to appear above the horizon, and her light showed them well nigh another mile on the road before them. Still no carriage was in sight, and the groom exclaimed, "Dang it, Mr. Atkinson, we must spur on, or she will get home before we catch her." It is impossible to run after any thing without feeling some of the eagerness of the fox-hound, and it is not to be denied that Mr. Atkinson shared in some degree in the impetuous spirit of the chase with the groom. He said nothing about it, indeed; but he made his spurs mark his horse's sides, and on they went up the opposite slope at a quicker pace than ever. From the top was a very considerable descent into the bottom of the valley, in which Hartwell is situated; but the moon had not yet risen high enough to illuminate more than half the scene, and darkness, doubly dark, seemed to have gathered over the low grounds beneath the eyes of the two horsemen. Mr. Atkinson thought he perceived some large object below, moving on towards Hartwell; but he could not be sure of it till he had descended some way down the hill, when the carriage of Mrs. Hazleton, mounting a little rise into the moonlight, became plainly visible to the eye. The groom took off his cap and waved it, saying, "Tally ho!" but neither he nor his companion paused in their rapid course, but went thundering down at the risk of their necks, and of their horses' knees. The carriage moved slowly; the pursuers went very fast: and at the end of about four minutes they had reached and passed the two mounted men-servants, who, as customary in those days, rode behind the vehicle. Robberies on the highway were by no means uncommon; so that it was the custom for the attendants upon a carriage to travel armed, and Mrs. Hazleton's two men instantly laid their hands upon the holsters of their pistols, when those too rapid riders passed them at such a furious pace. Mr. Atkinson, however, was not a man to be easily frightened from anything he undertook, and wheeling his horse sharply when in a little advance of the coachman, he exclaimed, "In the King's name I command you to stop. I am James Atkinson, high constable of Hartwell. You know me, sir; and I command you in the King's name to stop!" "Why, Master Atkinson, what is all this about?" cried the coachman. "There is nobody but Mrs. Hazleton here. Don't you know the carriage?" "Quite well," replied Mr. Atkinson; "but you hear what I say, and will disobey at your peril. John, ride round to the other side, while I speak to the lady here." Now Mrs. Hazleton had heard the whole of this conversation, and had there been sufficient light, Mr. Atkinson, whose eye was turned towards where she sat, would have seen her turn deadly pale. It might naturally be supposed that in any ordinary circumstances she would have directed her first attention to the side from which the sounds proceeded; but so far from that being the case, she instantly put her hand in her pocket, and was almost in the act of throwing something into the road, when John the groom presented himself at the window, and she stopped suddenly. "What is it, Mr. Atkinson?" she exclaimed, turning to the other window, and speaking in a tone of high indignation. "Why do you presume to stop my carriage on the King's highway?" "Because I am ordered, Madam, by lawful authority, so to do," replied Mr. Atkinson. "I am sorry, Madam, to tell you that you must consider yourself as a prisoner." Mrs. Hazleton would fain have asked upon what charge; but she did not dare, and for a moment strength and courage failed her. It was but for a moment, however, and in the next she exclaimed in a loud and more imperious tone than ever, "This is a pretence for robbery or insult. Drive on, coachman. Mathew--Rogerson--clear the way!" She reckoned wrongly, however, if she counted upon any great zeal in her servants. The two men hesitated; for the King's name was a tower of strength which they did not at all like to assail. Their mistress repeated her order in an angry tone, and one of them, with habitual deference to her commands, went so far as to cock the pistol which he now held in his hand; but at that moment the adverse party received an accession of strength which rendered all assistance hopeless. The other two servants of Sir Philip Hastings came down the hill at full speed, and a gentleman, followed by a servant, rode up from the side of Hartwell, and addressed Mr. Atkinson by his name. "Ah, Mr. Marlow!" said Mr. Atkinson. "You come at a very melancholy moment, sir, and to witness a very unpleasant scene; but, nevertheless, I must require your assistance, sir, as this lady seems inclined to resist the law." "What is the matter?" asked Marlow. "I hope there is no mistake here. If I see rightly this is Mrs. Hazleton's carriage. What is she charged with?" "Murder, sir," replied Mr. Atkinson, who had been a little irritated by the lady's resistance, and spoke more plainly than he might otherwise have done. "The murder of Lady Hastings by poison." It was spoken. She heard the words clearly and distinctly. She had been detected. Some small oversight--some accidental circumstance--some precaution forgotten--some accidental word, or gesture, had betrayed the dark secret, revealed the terrible crime. It was all known to men, as well as to God, and Mrs. Hazleton sunk back in the carriage overpowered by the agony of detection. "Oh, ho; here come the other men," said Mr. Atkinson, as the two servants of Sir Philip Hastings rode up. "Now, coachman, drive on till I tell you to stop. You, John, keep close to the other window, and watch it well. I will take care of this one. The others come behind. Mr. Marlow, you had perhaps better ride with us for half a mile or so; for I must stop at the house of Widow Warmington, as I have orders to make a strict search." "Oh, take me to my own house--take me to my own house," said Mrs. Hazleton, in a faint tone. "I dare not venture to do that, Madam," said Mr. Atkinson; "for we are nearly three miles distant, and accidents might happen by the way which would defeat the ends of justice. I must have a full search made at the very first place where I can procure lights. That will be at Mrs. Warmington's; but she is a friend of your own, Madam, and you will be received there with all kindness." Mrs. Hazleton did not reply; and the carriage drove on, Mr. Atkinson keeping a keen watch upon one window, and the groom riding close to the other. A few minutes brought them to the house of the shrewd widow, and the bell was rung sharply by one of the servants. A woman servant appeared in answer to the summons, and without asking whether her mistress was at home, or not, Atkinson took the candle from her hand, saying, "Lend me the light for a moment. I wish to light Mrs. Hazleton into the house. Now, Madam, will you please to descend.--John, dismount, and come round here; assist Mrs. Hazleton to alight, and come with us on her other side." Mrs. Hazleton saw that she could not double or turn there. She withdrew her hand from her pocket where she had hitherto held it, resumed her forgotten air of dignity, and though, to say the truth, she would rather have met her "dearest foe in heaven," than have entered that house so escorted, she walked with a firm step and dauntless eye, with the high constable on one side, and the groom on the other. "They shall not see me quail," she said to herself. "They shall not see me quail. I know the worst, and I can meet it--I have had my revenge." In the mean time, the maid had run in haste to tell her mistress the marvels of the scene she had just witnessed, and Mrs. Warmington had gathered enough, without divining the whole, to rejoice her with anticipated triumph. The arrest of Shanks the attorney on a charge of conspiracy and forgery, had set going the hundred tongues of Rumor, few of which had spared the name of Mrs. Hazleton; and Mrs. Warmington, at the worst, suspected that her dear friend was implicated in the guilt of the attorney. That, however, was sufficient to give the widow considerable satisfaction, for she had not forgotten either some coldness and neglect with which Mrs. Hazleton had treated her for some time, or her impatient and insolent conduct that morning; and though upon the strength of her plumpness, and easy manners, people looked upon Mrs. Warmington as a very good natured person, yet fat people can be very vindictive sometimes. "Good gracious me, my dear, what is the matter?" exclaimed Mrs. Warmington, as the prisoner was brought in, while Mr. Atkinson, speaking to those behind, exclaimed, "Let no one touch or approach the carriage till I return." Mrs. Hazleton made no answer to her dear friend's questions, and the high constable, taking a little step forward, said, "I beg pardon, Mrs. Warmington, for intruding into your house; but I have been ordered to apprehend this lady, and to have her person and her carriage strictly searched, without giving the opportunity for the concealment or destruction of any thing. It seems to me that Mrs. Hazleton has something bulky in that left hand pocket. As I do not like to put my hand rudely upon a lady, may I ask you, Madam, to let me see what that pocket contains?" Without the slightest hesitation, but with a good deal of curiosity, Mrs. Warmington advanced at once and took hold of the rich silk brocade of the prisoner's gown. "Out, woman!" cried Mrs. Hazleton, with the fire flashing from her eyes; and she struck her. But Mrs. Warmington did not quit her hold or her purpose. "Good gracious, what a termagant!" she exclaimed, and at once thrust her right hand into the pocket, and drew forth the vial which had been sent by the surgeon to Lady Hastings. "Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Warmington. "Why, this is the very bottle I saw you mixing stuff in this morning, when you seemed so angry and vexed at my coming into the still-room.--No, it isn't the same either; but it was one very like this, only darker in the color." "Ha!" said Mr. Atkinson. "Madam, will you have the goodness to put a mark upon that bottle by which you can know it again?--Scratch it with a diamond or something." "Oh, poor I have no diamonds," said Mrs. Warmington. "My dear, will you lend me that ring?" Mrs. Hazleton gave her a withering glance, but made no reply; and Marlow pointed to two peculiar spots in the glass of the bottle, saying, "By those marks it will be known, so that it cannot be mistaken." His words were addressed to Mr. Atkinson; for he felt disgusted and sickened by the heartless and insulting tone of Mrs. Warmington towards her former friend. At the sound of his voice--for she had not yet looked at him--Mrs. Hazleton started and looked round. It is not possible to tell the feelings which affected her heart at that moment, or to picture with the pen the varied expressions, all terrible, which swept over her beautiful countenance like a storm. She remembered how she had loved him. Perhaps at that moment she knew for the first time how much she had loved him. She felt too, how strongly love and hate had been mingled together by the fiery alchemy of disappointment, as veins of incongruous metals have been mixed by the great convulsions of the early earth. She felt too, at that moment, that it was this love and this hate which had been the cause of her deepest crimes, and all their consequences--the awful situation in which she there stood, the lingering tortures of imprisonment, the agonies of trial, and the bitter consummation of the scaffold. "Oh, Marlow, Marlow," she cried--in a tone for the first time sorrowful--"to see you mingling in these acts!" "I have nothing to do with the present business, Mrs. Hazleton," replied Marlow, "but I am bound to say that in consequence of information I have procured, it would have been my duty to have caused your apprehension upon other charges, had not this, of which I know nothing, been preferred against you. All is discovered, madam; all is known. With a slight clue, at first, I have pursued the intricate labyrinth of your conduct for the last two years to its conclusion, and every thing has been made plain as day." "You, Marlow, you?" cried Mrs. Hazleton, fixing her eyes steadfastly upon him, and then adding, as he bowed his head in token of assent, "but all is not known, even to you. You shall know all, however, before I die; and perhaps to know all may wring your heart, hard though it be. But what am I talking of?" she continued, her face becoming suddenly suffused with crimson, and her fine features convulsed with rage. "All is discovered, is it? And you have done it? What matters it to me, then, whose heart is wrung--or what becomes of you, or me, or any one? A drop more or less is nothing in the overflowing well. Why should I struggle longer? Why should I hide any thing? Why should I fly from this charge to meet another? I did it--I poisoned her--I put the drug by her bedside. It is all true--I did it all--I have had my revenge as far as it could be obtained, and now do with me what you like. But remember, Marlow, remember, if Emily Hastings marries you, she does it with a mother's curse upon her head--a curse that will fall upon her heart like a milldew, and wither it for ever--a curse that will dry up the source of all fond affections, blacken the brightest hours, and embitter the purest joys--a dying mother's curse! She knows it--she has heard it--it can never be recalled. I have put that beyond fate. Ha ha! It is upon you both; and if you venture to unite your unhappy destinies, may that curse cling to you and blast you for ever." She spoke with all the vehemence of intense passion, breaking, for the first time in life, through strong habitual self-control; and when she had done, she cast herself into a chair, and covered her eyes with her hands. She wept not; but her whole frame heaved and shivered, with the terrible emotion that tore her heart. In the mean time, Marlow and Mrs. Warmington and the high constable spoke upon it, consulting what was to be done with her. The prison system of England was at that time as bad as it could be, and those who condemned and abhorred her the most, were anxious to spare her as long as possible the horrors of the jail. At length, after many difficulties, and a good deal of hesitation, Mr. Atkinson agreed, at the suggestion of Mrs. Warmington, to leave her in the house where she then was, under the charge of a constable to be sent for from Hartwell. There was a high upper room from which there was no possibility of escape, with an antechamber in which the constable could watch, and there he was determined to confine her till she could be brought before the magistrate on the following day. "I must have her thoroughly searched in the first place," said Mr. Atkinson; "for she may have some more of the poison about her, and in her present state, after all she has confessed, she is just as likely to swallow it as not. However, Mr. Marlow, you had better, I think, ride on as fast as possible to see Sir Philip Hastings, and tell him what has occurred here. If I judge rightly, your presence will be very needful there." "It will indeed," said Marlow, a sudden vague apprehension of he knew not what, seizing upon him; "God grant I have not tarried too long already;" and quitting the room, he sprang upon his horse's back again. FOOTNOTES: [2] Continued from page 327. TWO SONNETS. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. TRUTH. For constant truth my aching spirit yearns, And finds no comfort in a glorious cheat; On the firm rock I wish to set my feet, And look upon the star that changeless burns; Yon gorgeous clouds that in the sunset glow, With fire-wrought domes for angel-palace meet, Beneath my gaze their surface beauties fleet; With parting light how dull their splendors grow. I cannot worship vapors, and the hue That on the dove's neck flickers, as it veers, Bewilders, but not charms me; whilst the blue Of the clear sky gives comfort 'mid all fears, And but to think on that unshadowed white, The angels walk in, makes my dark path bright. THE FUTURE. Eternal sunshine withers; constant light Would make the beauty of the world look wan; The storm that sleeps with dark'ning terror on, Leaves verdant freshness where it seemed to blight; Most dreary is the land where comes no night, For there the sun is chill, and slowly drawn Round the horizon, spreads a sickly dawn, No promise of a day more warm and bright. Bless then the clouds and darkness, for we can Discern with awe through them what angel faces Watch and direct, and from their holy places Smile with sublime benignity on man; And dearly cherish sickness, pain, and sorrow, As gloomy heralds of a bright to-morrow. V. THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE: OR, THE SPY IN SOCIETY.[3] TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF H. DE. ST. GEORGES. VIII.--THE GARRET. Half demented, Monte-Leone left the Duke's Hotel. His existence had become a terrible dream, a hideous nightmare, every hour producing a new terror and surprise. D'Harcourt was gone. He went to find Von Apsberg. "He at least will speak. He will say something about this atrocious accusation. He will explain the meaning of the perfidious reply of the chief of police. If he repeated this atrocious calumny, if he persisted in thinking him guilty, his heart would be open to Monte-Leone's blows. He would at least crush and bury one of his enemies." A new misfortune awaited him. The doctor was not to be found. The police had occupied the house at the time that the Vicomte was being arrested. The doctor had beyond a doubt been previously informed of their coming and escaped, but his papers were seized. All the archives and documents of Carbonarism fell into the hands of M. H----. One might have said some evil genius guided the police and led them in their various examinations into the invisible mines of their prey. Furniture, drawers, and all were examined. Count Monte-Leone, when he heard of the disappearance of the Doctor and of the seizure of his papers, felt an increase of rage. The discovery of the archives ruined for a long time, if not for ever, the prospects of the work to which Monte-Leone had consecrated his life. The flight of Matheus also deprived him of any means of extricating himself from the cloud of mystery which surrounded him, and made futile any hope of vengeance. Taddeo alone remained, and he was protected by the oath he had taken to the Marquise. One other deception yet awaited him. A devoted member of the Carbonari, on the next day, came to Monte-Leone's house and informed the Count that on the day after the Vicomte's arrest and the escape of Matheus, a similar course had been adopted against Rovero, who was indebted for his liberty only to information from Signor Pignana on the night before the coming of the police. A note from Aminta told Monte-Leone of the disappearance of Rovero. The Count was then completely at sea, and he was abandoned by all to a horrible imputation which he could neither avenge nor dispute. He could, therefore, only suffer and bide his time. Resignation, doubt, and delay, were terrible punishments to his energetic and imperative character. One hope remained, which, if realized, would enable him to contradict all the imputations on his honor. This was, that he would be able to share the fate of his comrades, not of Von Apsberg and Taddeo, who had escaped, but of those who languished in the cells of _la Force_ and the _Conciergerie_. The Count knew that the police, from the perusal of the archives, must be aware of his position, and awaited hourly and daily his arrest. This did not take place, though he perpetually received anonymous letters of the most perplexing and embarrassing character, charging him, in the grossest terms of the language, with being a spy and a traitor to the association to which he had pledged his life and his honor. He resolved at last to play a desperate game--to exhibit an unheard of energy and power. He repudiated the disdainful impunity which apparently was inflicted on him intentionally. He surrendered himself to the police.... While Count Monte-Leone acted thus courageously, the following scene took place in a hotel whither our readers have been previously taken. A man apparently about thirty years old sat pale and downcast at a table, writing with extreme rapidity. Occasionally he rested his weary head on his hand, and his eyes wandered across the sky which he saw through a trap-window, so usual in that room of houses known as the garret.[4] He then glanced on the paper, and wrote down the inspirations he seemed to have evoked from the abode of angels. He was the occupant of a garret, which, though small, seemed so disguised by taste and luxury that the narrow abode appeared even luxurious. The table at which the writer sat was of Buhl, and was ornamented by vases of Sevres ware. The wooden bedstead was hidden by a silken coverlet, and a large arm-chair occupied a great portion of the room. On the small chimney-piece of varnished stone was a china vase filled with magnificent flowers from hot-houses, above which arose a superb camelia. A curtain of blue shut out the glare of the sun. It was easy to see that female taste had presided over the arrangements of this room. A beautiful woman really had done so. The inmate of the room was Doctor von Apsberg. The girl of whom we have spoken was Marie d'Harcourt. On the day of René's arrest, a fortnight before the one we write of, the Doctor was alone when the secret panel was opened. Pignana suddenly appeared before the Doctor and told him that his house as well as the Doctor's was surrounded by suspicious looking people. Pignana therefore advised him to go at once. Von Apsberg was about to go to his bureau and take possession of his papers. The police did not allow him time to do so; they knocked at that very moment at the door and entered the house before Von Apsberg had time to leave. It will be remembered that the studio of the Doctor in which the archives were kept, was in the third story of the house. Matheus was, therefore, forced to fly through the opening, into Pignana's house, and with his ear to the wall listened to the noise made by the police, with thankfulness for the secret passage. He heard a deep voice say, "If your Jacobin Doctor has escaped, you shall answer for it." This was said to Mlle. Crepineau. The good maiden swore the Doctor was absent, as she thought, or feigned to think. Another voice, with a deep southern accent, said the following words, which the young Doctor heard with surprise and fear: "The one you seek is gone. If, though, you would find him, press that copper nail which you see on the third row of books. You will find the means of his escape into the next house." A cry was heard from the interior of the room. A female voice thus spoke to the man who had just spoken: "Señor Muñez, it is abominable for you thus to betray the poor fellows. You are a bad and heartless man." When the Doctor heard thus revealed the secret of his retreat, he had pushed through the inner door, and it was well he did, for it gave him time to leave the room. The door of the library offered but a feeble resistance, which was soon overcome, and Pignana's house was carefully entered and searched. He at once conceived an idea of a plan of escape. He said to Pignana, "Not a word; but follow me." Von Apsberg, accompanied by Pignana, left the place where they were concealed, went into the yard, and proceeded to a shed which was separated from his house by a few badly joined planks. One of these he removed, passed through the opening, and stood in an outhouse where he remembered he had once made some anatomical inquiries. "But you are going back," said Pignana, "you will again fall in the hands of the enemy." "You would be a bad general, Pignana," said Von Apsberg; "this is a common _ruse de guerre_, and is known as a counter-march. These places have been explored by the enemy, and consequently they will return no more. While the agents are looking where we are not, we will return where they have been." When night came, and at this time of the year it was at four o'clock, Pignana told his companion of his plan. He purposed to scale the wall of the yard by means of the trellices of the vines. When once on the other side they would be in the garden of the Duke d'Harcourt, from which the young physician expected to go to the hotel to obtain protection from the Vicomte. The execution of this plan was easy for one as thin as d'Harcourt, but was impracticable to a person with an abdomen like Pignana. As soon as night had come, the latter said to Von Apsberg, "Go through the air, Doctor, if you can. I intend to adopt a more earthly route--through the door of the house, even if, much to Mlle. Crepineau's terror, I have the audacity to assume the guise of the suicide, and terrify her into opening the door for me. Besides, I am but slightly compromised, and will extricate myself. Adieu, then, Doctor," said he, "and good luck to you amid the clouds!" Von Apsberg clasped his hand, hurried from his retreat, ascended the wall, passed it, and a few minutes after was in the Duke's garden. Taking advantage of the darkness he went to the hotel, every window of which, to his surprise, he found closed. He went without being seen to the door of the reception rooms on the ground floor. The window had not been shut since the arrest of the Vicomte. The Doctor entered it. At the back of this room was a boudoir à la Louis XIV., of rare elegance, and appropriated to Marie d'Harcourt. Amid the darkness he heard a strange sound of sighs and sobs. The Doctor drew near, expecting that there was some pain for him to soothe. "Who is there?" said the Duke d'Harcourt. "It is I, my lord, Doctor Matheus." "You here, sir!" said the Duke; "they told me that, like my unfortunate son, you were arrested; and for the same offence." "What say you, sir?" said Von Apsberg, with deep distress; "René, dear René, arrested?" "Yes, sir," said the old Duke; "arrested and torn from his father's arms. Yet the blow did not overwhelm me. This, though, will take place ere long, and the executioner's axe will strike father and son at once." A footman appeared with lights, and the Doctor saw the whole family weeping. His head rested on Marie's shoulder, and the long white hair of the old man was mingled with the young girl's dark locks, and seemed like the silvery light of the moon resting on her brown hair. The Duke saw at a glance how the Doctor participated in all his sorrows, and how the fate of his son lacerated the heart of his visitor. He gave his hand to the Doctor. "I forgive you," said he, "the part you have had in my son's error, when I remember how you love him, and the care you have taken of Marie." "Alas! Monsieur," said Von Apsberg; "that duty I can discharge no longer. The fate of René must be mine, to-morrow, to-day, in a few moments--for I came to seek for concealment. If, though, he has lost his liberty; if all his plans are destroyed, why should I any longer contend against misfortune? Adieu, Duke! I will rejoin René, share his misfortune, and defend his life; if not against men, at least against the cruel disease which menaces his career." As she heard these words, the cheeks of Marie d'Harcourt became pale as marble, and she said, in tones of deep distress, "Father, will you suffer him to go thus?" Von Apsberg looked at her with trouble and surprise. "No, my child," said the Duke, "the Doctor will not leave us; and we will protect him." Von Apsberg then told the bold means by which he had entered the house. "No one saw," said the Duke, "_how_ you came hither?" "No one." "There is no suspicion?" "None." Assisted by Marie, the Duke contrived a plan for an impenetrable asylum for the Doctor. In the right wing of the hotel were many rooms intended for servants, and uninhabited; for, since the death of his other sons, the Duke had greatly reduced his household. In one of these rooms, carefully decked and furnished, by Marie's care, Doctor Matheus was fixed. The old secretary of the Duke d'Harcourt alone was in the secret, and this worthy man took charge of the food of the Doctor, who saw no one except Marie and her father. The young girl gradually became bolder, and touched with pity at the loneliness of the prisoner, obeyed the dictates of her own heart and went frequently to the young Doctor's room to be sure that he was in want of nothing. Like a consoling angel, she came with her celestial presence to adorn the captive's retreat, and restore something of happiness to his heart. Von Apsberg, who had been for some days left alone, had reflected deeply on his political opinions and on their consequences. The immense difference between all old principles and the innovating ideas of Carbonarism caused him to doubt the triumph of the latter; the great discouragement which Monte-Leone's _apparent treason_ had produced, and the fate of his associates, produced a deep impression on him. Amid all these gloomy thoughts, one fresh and prominent idea reinvigorated his mind, and gave him ineffable joy. Without wishing to analyze his feelings towards Marie, the Doctor was under their influence. He did not dream of ever possessing that aristocratic heart from which he was separated by rank, birth, and fortune. The heart of man, nevertheless, is so constituted, that the most honest and loyal man is never exempt from a shadow of egotism. Perhaps, therefore, in the Doctor's mind there was a feeble hope of approaching that class whose position he so envied. Let this be as it may, abandoning himself to the luxury of seeing always by his side this beautiful creature, whose health his care had already revived, the Doctor blessed his captivity, and lived in anxious expectation of the hours when Marie used to visit him. Von Apsberg possessed that Platonic heart which enabled him to look on Marie as a creature of pure poetry. He entertained so respectful a tenderness for the young girl, that he distrusted her no more than she did him. On the day we found the Doctor writing in his retreat with such ardor, he was writing out a _regime_ for his patient. He told her what to do, and, as if gifted with prescience, provided for her future life. "If," said he, "I be discovered--if the future have in reserve for the heiress d'Harcourt"--and his heart felt as if a sharp iron had transfixed it--"if a noble marriage separate me from her; at least in this painful study of her health she will be able to contend against her family disease, and perhaps will be indebted to me for life, happy and unsuffering." The idea seemed too much for the strength of the young physician as he saw thus fade before him all hope of a union with Marie. Steps just then were heard outside his room just as he was concluding the sad _memoire_ we have spoken of. The Doctor, in obedience to the request of his host, answered no knock, and gave no evidence of life, except at a concerted signal known only to three persons--the Duke, his daughter, and D'Arbel. Therefore he listened. The person who advanced paused for a time before his door, and then left rapidly as it had come. Von Apsberg, however, by means of that lover's intuition, guessed who it was. The eyes of his heart pierced the opacity of the door, to enable him to admire the charming angel who had alighted at his door and flown away. Before this angel had disappeared from the long corridor which led to the Doctor's room, the door was opened, and he paused to glance at the young girl who was ready to escape. Marie returned to the Doctor, and advanced slowly towards him. "Ah! Monsieur," said she to Matheus, "it is wrong in you not to keep your promise better. You promised my father never to open the door without a signal--" "Why then, Mademoiselle, did you not give the signal?" "I did not come to see you," said Marie; "but I brought you books and flowers. I am so afraid you will grow weary in this little room, where you are always alone and sad." As she spoke, the angel girl went to the Doctor's room, as she would have done to her brother's, without any hesitation or trouble. She was robed in innocence; and if her heart beat a little louder than usual then, the child attributed it entirely to the rapidity with which she had ascended the stairs. The Doctor took the books and flowers which she had placed at his door, and put them in the vase on the mantle. He was glad to be able to look away from Marie's face, for he felt that his countenance told all he thought. "I took the most amusing books from my little library," said she. "One learned as you are, always immersed in study, may not approve of my choice. Perhaps though, Monsieur, as you read them you will think of your patient--" "Ah! I do so always," said Von Apsberg. "I was thinking of you when you came." "You were writing," said Marie, as she looked at the sheet Von Apsberg pointed out to her. "Ah! Mademoiselle, I wrote for you. You must follow one rule of conduct in relation to your health, when you are separated from your father--when you are married." "Married!" said Mlle. d'Harcourt, and she grew pale. "I never thought of being married." "But marry you must. You will marry rich; and, Mlle., a husband worthy of you. Ere long you will have many suitors." "Monsieur," said the girl, "our house now is hung with mourning. The life of my brother is in danger, and my health, as you said, is frail and feeble. All this you know is altogether contradictory to what you say. As for myself," said she, with an emotion she experienced for the first time, "I am happy as I now am, and desire no other position, I must leave you, though," added she: "for now my father must have come from the prison where he obtained leave to visit my brother. I am anxious to hear from him. The Duke and myself will soon tell you about him." Light as a vapor, rapid as a cloud, the young girl left the Doctor's room, to his eyes radiant with the lustre she left behind her. IX.--THE CONCIERGERIE. Eight days after the conversation between Von Apsberg and Marie, the Doctor heard a knock at his door. The latter was reading over for the twentieth time one of the books which had been brought him. This book was Telemachus, the poetical romance one might have fancied Homer himself had dreamed of, and which Virgil and Ovid had written--the book in which morals are enwrapped in so dense a covering of flowers, that a reader often refuses to glance at the serious part of the work, and pays attention only to the graceful superficies. Von Apsberg, however, read the book, not for its own sake, but for the sake of her who had given it to him. Marie had read every page, and her hands had turned over every leaf. This fact gave the history of the son of Ulysses an immense value in the eyes of the young Doctor, and made Telemachus, not Fenelon's, but Marie d'Harcourt's book. The knock at the Doctor's door was followed by the concerted signal. He opened it, and saw the Duke's old secretary. "Monsieur," said he, "as the Duke is absent, I am come to say that Mlle. Marie is ill. I know your care will be useful. She does not, though, send for you, being too feeble to come up stairs, and afraid to ask you to come down." "Monsieur d'Arbel, let no one into the hotel; and tell Mlle. I will visit her. "She will see you, Monsieur, in the window next to the drawing-room. I will send the servants out of the way, so that you can see Mlle. Marie without fear of discovery." All the Secretary's arrangements were carried out, and a few minutes after Matheus waited on his fair patient. She was ill. Since her conversation with the Doctor, her health had really changed. Something mental seemed to influence it. Her complexion, sullied by the tears she had shed since her brother's arrest, was faded, and a flush was visible on her cheeks alone. These symptoms made the Doctor unhappy. He, therefore, approached Marie with great uneasiness. She said: "How kind you are, Doctor, to risk your liberty: I could not otherwise have seen you. I have not strength enough." "I will try soon to confer it on you, if God grants me power to attend to you." "I shall die," said she with an anxious voice, which penetrated the Doctor's very heart, "if you cannot." "For your sake," said Matheus, "I will defend my liberty by every means in my power, for I wish to restore your health, and preserve an existence indispensable to your father's happiness." "How I suffer," said Marie, placing her hand on her snowy brow. "I have an intense pain, which passes from temple to temple, and gives me much suffering." "Do you sleep well?" asked Matheus. "No, no, for many days I have not slept, or if I have, phantoms have flitted across my slumbers." She blushed as she spoke. This the Doctor did not see, for he was searching out a remedy. "Well," said he, "I think we must use a remedy which has hitherto succeeded. Magnetism will enable you to sleep, and perhaps will soothe your sufferings." Rising, then, he placed his hand on the patient's brow, as he had done a few months before when the Marquise had experienced such good effects from it. He placed his hands on the young girl's temples, and then made passes across her face, the result of which was that she sank softly to sleep. The state of somnambulism ensued, and Marie unfolded the condition of her heart to the young physician. While he was thus engaged the Duke entered. "You here, Doctor?" said he; "how imprudent!" "_She_ was suffering," said the physician; "now she sleeps." The Duke thanked Von Apsberg for his care, but seemed to centre all his hope in the young Doctor, as the sailor devotes himself to the lord of storms and waves. Now, though, every word the Duke said seemed a reproach. He shuddered as he thought of the confessions of Mlle. d'Harcourt, and asked himself if he participated in her sentiments or had suffered her to divine his. All his delicacy and loyalty revolted from the idea that this confession would cost the unfortunate father the life of his daughter.[5] Von Apsberg saw that henceforth it would be impossible for him to remain longer at the Duke's hotel, and that it would be criminal to remain with one the secret thoughts of whom he knew. He, therefore, made up his mind to speak to the Duke. Just then Marie, who had been for some time free from any magnetic influence, awoke calm and smiling. "How deliciously I have slept," said she; "how well I am!" The Duke kissed her affectionately. He said, "All this you owe to the Doctor; and I thank heaven amid our misfortunes that he has been preserved to us. I am glad I have been able to rescue him from his persecutors, and preserve my daughter's health by means of his own watchful care." Marie gave the Doctor her hand. The young girl did not remember what she had said while she slept. This slumber of the heart, however, could not last, and the young Doctor knew it. He resolved on the painful sacrifice which, but for the waking of his patient, he would at once have communicated to the Prince. The reflections of the night confirmed the Doctor in the course he had resolved to adopt. On the next day he put on a long cloak, which disguised his stature, and went to the room of the Duke, after having also put on a wig which René often wore when he visited Matheus, and which the Duke had sent for to enable him in case of a surprise to leave unrecognized. The distress of the Duke at the Vicomte's imprisonment increased every day. He had only once been able to reach his son, and had contrived to inspire the captive with hopes of liberty he was far from entertaining himself. The Vicomte was actively watched, and his most trifling actions were observed. Ever alone in the sad cell in which he had been confined, ennui and despair took possession of him, and his brilliant mind, to which mirth and activity had been indispensable, became downcast and miserable. Since the visit of his father, also, his delicate chest had begun to suffer. What the Doctor especially apprehended for his friend was the possibility of cold and dampness producing a dangerous irritation of the respiratory organs. This took place; for nothing could be more humid and icy than the cell of René. He had a dry and incessant cough. The keepers paid no attention to it, and the keeper of the Conciergerie treated it as a simple cold of no importance. The Vicomte was unwilling to inform his father of it lest he should be uneasy, and the mere indisposition rapidly became a serious and terrible disease. This was the state of things when Von Apsberg presented himself before the Duke. "What is the matter?" said the old man. "Are you discovered and forced to leave us?" "Duke," said the Doctor, "let me first express my deepest thanks for your generous hospitality. Let me tell you how much your kindness has soothed the cruel suffering to which I have been subjected day and night for three weeks. I would, had it not been for your kindness, have weeks ago shared the captivity of René; and the hope I entertained of being of use to your daughter, alone prevented me from surrendering myself to despair at the prospect of a crushed and prospectless life, when I saw my brethren arrested in consequence of one whom I had always looked on as a devoted friend." "Do not speak to me of that man," said the Duke in a terrible tone, "for my son, in my presence, charged him with having betrayed him." "I have spoken to you of my gratitude," said the Doctor, "that you might not doubt it now at our separation." "What danger now menaces you?" said the Duke, "why do you leave us?" "To avoid being ungrateful," said Von Apsberg. "That you may never accuse your guest of selfishness, and that he may always deserve the esteem with which you honor him." "What is the meaning of this mysterious language?" "Grant me," said the young physician, with a trembling voice, "the boon of being permitted to keep the cause of my departure a secret. You would be as sorry to hear as I would be to tell you." "No," said the old man, "I will not consent to this. You shall not quit the house which shelters you from your enemies: no, you shall not. Ah! sir," continued the Duke, "if you will not remain for your own sake do so for mine, for you alone have preserved the life of my daughter thus far." The Doctor said, as he gave a paper to the Duke: "Here is the result of my study, in which I have traced out all the means known to science calculated to strengthen the health of your daughter, and to parry the dangers which menace her." "Doctor," said the Duke, "do not distress me by leaving the hotel. Do not make me perpetually miserable, Doctor, I am already unfortunate enough." "Well," said the young man, unable to resist his prayers any longer, "you shall know what forces me to go, and shall yourself judge of my duty." He fell at the Duke's feet, and told him all he had learned during Marie's slumber, his combats with himself, and his resolution. "You are an honest man," said the Duke, with an expression of poignant grief, and lifting him up: "but I am a most unfortunate father." D'Asbel just then came in with a letter. "From my son," said the Duke, and he opened it. The features of the old man assumed, as he read, such an expression of terror, that Von Apsberg and the Secretary advanced towards him and sustained him, for he seemed ready to faint. "Read," said he, with a voice half indistinct, and he gave the Doctor the letter. It was as follows: "MY DEAR FATHER:--I can conceal no longer that I am dying. One man alone, who has often soothed me by his care and advice, can now save me. This is Von Apsberg. I cannot, though, ask him to accompany you, for he would endanger his own liberty. Come, then, dear father, to see me for the last time." "Let us go, sir," said the Doctor. "Let us not delay a minute, for in an hour--it may be too late." "But you expose your life, Doctor, by going among your enemies," said the Duke. "But I will save his," said Von Apsberg. The Duke rushed into his arms. Half an hour afterwards two men entered the Conciergerie. They were the Vicomte's father and an English doctor whom the Duke brought to see his son. The Director of the prison did not dare to refuse a father and physician permission to see a sick son and patient. With the turnkeys they passed an iron grate, beyond which was seen a vaulted passage, which, in the darkness, seemed interminable. On the inner side of the grate sat a morose looking man, whom nature seemed to have created exclusively to live in one of these earthly hells. His only duty was to open and shut the grate, to which he seemed as firmly attached as one of its own bars. His duty was not without danger, for in case of a mutiny, the Cerberus had orders to throw on the outside the heavy key he was intrusted with, and thus expose himself, without means of escape, to the rage of the criminals. They showed this man their pass. The key turned in the lock, and the grate permitted them to enter. It then swung to, filling the vaulted passage with its clash. Near this was a dark room, in which were several dark-browed jailers and gend'armes. The Duke and the Doctor were minutely examined. One of them, whose features hidden by a dirty cap might recall one of the persons of this history, left the group, opened the grate, and disappeared rapidly, just as a new jailer guided the visitors to a long corridor in one of the cells, on opening which was the Vicomte D'Harcourt. On a miserable pallet, in a kind of dark cellar, into which the day seemed to penetrate reluctantly, through a grated window, was René D'Harcourt, the last hope of an illustrious house, without air or any of the attentions his situation demanded. The Duke wept to see him. René, with hollow cheeks, and eyes sparkling with a burning fever, arose with pain and extended his arms to his father, who embraced him tenderly. Fifteen days had expanded his disease, the germs of which had long slept in his system. The bad air and icy dew, amid which he lived, the absence of constant and vigilant care, in such cases so indispensable, had, as it were, conspired against him. A violent and dry cough every moment burst from his chest, and at every access his strength seemed more and more feeble. Had he sooner informed his father of his condition, beyond doubt, some active remedy would have been used, not for pity's sake, for at that time little was shown to conspirators, but from fear of the liberal press, whose censure the administration dreaded. René, however, was too disdainful of the persons he called his executioners to ask any favors. The physician of the prison, as we have said, was satisfied with ordering a few trifling palliatives. The Vicomte was dying without his even being aware of it. When the turnkey had introduced the Duke and the Englishman he left, telling them that in a few minutes he would return. Then the Vicomte saw that a stranger was with his father. The latter approached, and taking the young man's hand pressed it to his heart with an affection which told the prisoner who visited him. "Von Apsberg! Ah! father, I knew he would come." "Be silent, dear René; be silent," said the Doctor, "for your sake and mine. Forget that I am your friend, and remember me only as a doctor. Tell me how you suffer. Speak quick, for time is precious. Tell me nothing--and do not exhaust yourself in describing--what is plain enough, I am sorry to say. I see, I read in your eyes, what is your condition." To hide his tears Von Apsberg looked away. A father's heart though could not be deceived, and the Duke had seen the Doctor's tears. The old man said, "Save, Doctor, save my son." Von Apsberg made an effort to surmount the grief which overcame him. "We will save him," said he, calmly; "there is a remedy for such cases, which in a few hours will terminate the progress of the malady, and enable us to adopt other means. He took a card from his pocket and wrote a prescription, which he ordered to be sent immediately to the nearest apothecary. He yet had the card in his hand when the door of the cell was violently thrown open, and several men accompanied by gend'armes rushed in and seized the Doctor. "Arrest him," said an officer. "It is he, the German physician whom we have so long sought for. He has been recognized." Nothing could equal the effect of this scene. The Vicomte made useless attempts to leave his bed and assist his friend. The Duke was pale and agitated; and Von Apsberg, calm and resigned, gave himself up to the men who surrounded him. In anxiety for René he had forgotten himself. "Gentlemen," said he, "you may do as you please with me, but, for heaven's sake, let me remain a few moments with this young man, and one of you hurry for this prescription I have written." "A paper," said the principal agent with joy, when he saw what Von Apsberg had in his hand. "It is, perhaps, a plan of escape. This must be taken to the Director for the _Procureur du Roi_. Another scheme, perhaps, of the Jacobin has come to light----" He put the paper in his huge pocket. "Take this man away, said he to the gens d'armes, and do not let him speak a word to the prisoner." Rushing on Von Apsberg like famished wolves, they bore him away, and left the Duke alone with his son. The shock had done the prisoner much injury. He sunk back on his bed with a violent cough, and felt a mortal coldness glide over his frame and chill his blood. "A doctor, a doctor," said the Duke, rushing towards the door. "A physician, for heaven's sake. My son is dying." The door did not close. The poor father leaning over his child pressed his lips to his burning brow, and then supported his head, from time to time attempting to warm his icy hands with his breath. He continued to call in heaven's name for a physician. Half an hour after Von Apsberg's arrest, and while the Duke yet pressed his son's inanimate body, three men appeared in the room. They were the Director, Doctor, and Jailer of the prison. "Monsieur," said the Duke to the Director, rising to his full stature, and with a tone of painful solemnity, "you are an accomplice in a great crime, and before the country and king, I, Duke d'Harcourt, peer of France, and grand cordon of the Saint Esprit, will accuse you." "What mean you, sir?" said the Director, with a terror he could not conceal. "Of what do you complain?" "That you have placed in a cell, without air and light, as if he were sentenced to death, a man against whom there is now a mere suspicion; for he has not been tried. I complain that you have wrested from me a physician I have brought hither to attend to my son--and that with horrible brutality you have taken possession of a prescription for a remedy which might have preserved him, and have by this means deprived him of life." The Duke spoke but too truly, for a kind of suffocation took possession of the young man. His breast seemed oppressed, and every sign of death was visible. The Director muttered some apology in defence of himself, but the Duke said, "Not another word here, sir; accomplish your task in peace; or at least, give me back the paper. It is the life of my son----" As the Director was about to go in person for it, the Doctor called him back and pointed to the patient over whose countenance death began to steal. He said, "It is too late!" The Vicomte arose with difficulty and said, "Father, forgive me the wrong I have done. Forgive me, as I forgive others. No, no, not so; for there is one person I cannot forgive!" He looked around with an expression of intense hatred and contempt. "He has ruined and destroyed me, and all of us; he has delivered us to our enemies,--_that_ man, hear all of you, is Count Monte-Leone!" His head sank on his breast, and his last breath mingled with the kisses of his father. "I have no son!" said the old man in despair; and he sank by the side of the child God had taken away from him. X.--THE CONFESSION. As we have seen in a previous chapter, Count Monte-Leone went to the Prefect of Police to surrender himself to his enemies. The Count did not hesitate, for he preferred a sudden and cruel death to the intolerable life he now led. The Prefect was as civil as possible, and altogether different from what he would have been three days before to a person pointed out as one of the agents. The reason was, that after the energetic protestation of the Count in the presence of M. H---- at the Duke d'Harcourt's, grave doubts had arisen in the mind of the chief of the political police in relation to the services said to have been rendered by the Neapolitan. Making use then of the police itself, and causing the man who said he was an agent of the Count's to be watched, his conviction of the non-participation of Monte-Leone in the treachery became almost certain, and he began to tremble at the idea that he had been made a dupe in this affair, and at the probable consequences. The first of these was the fear of ridicule, that powerful instrument against a police; next, the just recrimination to which the Count might subject them as having slandered him; and the capital error of having left at liberty the most powerful of the Carbonari in Europe, under the belief that he was an ally of the Government--to which he was a mortal foe. All this crowd of faults H---- had committed in his blind confidence, and had led astray the police and all the agents. Thus uneasy, the Chief of Police saw that but one course of safety was left him. This was both bold and adroit, for it foresaw danger and prepared a conductor to turn its thunders aside. H---- went to the Prefect and owned all. The first anger of the latter having passed away, the two chiefs saw with terror that they were equally compromised--the one for acting, and the other for suffering his subordinate to act. They, therefore, adopted the only course left them, Machiavelian it is true, but which extricated them from a great difficulty. This course was, to deny all participation in the malicious reports circulated in relation to the Count, but to suffer the public to imagine what it pleased, and attribute their inaction to carelessness for the result, or to the mystery necessary to be observed in police matters. Count Monte-Leone, too, since the arrest of his accomplices, and the discovery of his friends, was not greatly to be feared, especially as he was now repelled by society as a double traitor. Two things alone disturbed H----. The first was the course of the strange man who had used the Count's name to unveil so completely the plans of the conspiracy. He, however, was soon restored to confidence by remembering that he was now strictly carrying out this man's plans. Besides, in case of need, there were a thousand methods of securing this man's eternal silence. As for the pass in Monte-Leone's name, which might be a terrible arm in the possession of the Count in case he attacked the Government, H----learned much to his satisfaction, from Salvatori himself, that it had been destroyed. The Prefect, therefore, did not hesitate to receive the Count. "Sir," said the latter, "a horrible slander is circulated against me. In disregard of my character and name I have been charged with being one of your agents, and beg you to contradict this." "The Prefect says your honor is above any such suspicion, and I should fear I injured you even by referring to so idle a tale." "But one of your principal officers has given credit to this rumor by the perfidious reply he made a few days since, when the Vicomte d'Harcourt was arrested." The Prefect rang his bell and sent for M. H----. When the latter arrived, he asked him, sternly, if he had seemed to believe that Count Monte-Leone had any participation in the acts of the Police. H---- said, "The Count is in error, if he understood me thus. I did not believe that his self-accusation was true, for I could not realize that one so exalted in rank as the Count, could be guilty of conspiracy. I had no idea of insulting him, as he thinks. Were it not likely to give the affair too much gravity, I would every where repel it." This amazed the Count. His mind, which seemed to give way beneath so many blows, had looked on this man's reply as an answer. The object of this perfidy yet escaped him; and reason and good sense could form no idea of the motive. "You see, Count," said the Prefect, "all think you so far above the calumny of which you complain, that we would not dare even to defend you; the character of the department makes it impossible for us to mix in discussions about reputations." "I have already asked this gentleman," and the Count pointed to M. H----, "to furnish a striking proof that I am not the creature they say I am. I now ask you the same favor." The two officials were annoyed. "I am as guilty as those you have arrested," continued he, "and demand a fate like that of my associates." The Prefect said, "I never act except from the orders of a higher authority, and have none in relation to you. I prefer to think that your devotion to those you call your associates has caused you to exaggerate your complicity, and when that is proven you will find us just and stern to yourself, as we have been to them." The Prefect bowed and returned to his private office, and the Count left in indescribable agitation. He was deprived of his last justification, of one he wished to buy at the price of his life. His rage and despair had no limits. He was to experience a new shock in the death of Vicomte d'Harcourt, which was circulated through all Paris. He also heard that the Duke charged him with being the cause of his death, and with having denounced him. We will now leave our hero for a few moments, to refer to a terrible event which at this crisis overwhelmed the Royal family and France with grief. This circumstance, yet enwrapped in mystery, was the death of the Duke de Berry. This Prince, the hope of France, expiring in the spring time of life beneath the dagger of a vulgar assassin; the obscurity which covered the details of the murder distressed all Europe. There was a general outcry against secret societies. The one, the chief members of which were now in prison, was especially thought guilty of having instigated the murder. The chiefs of the Carbonari _ventas_ saw their chains grow heavier and their prisons become dungeons. Ober, the banker F----, General A----, and Von Apsberg, were not spared: their papers were examined, their past life scrutinized in search of some connection with this odious murder. The trial of the ruffian was anxiously waited for, in the hope that something would connect him with Carbonarism. Nothing, however, was found in the whole of the long and minute examination; and it soon became evident that the crime had been committed by a fanatic who was isolated, without adherents, instigators, or accomplices. Thus at least France thought of the result of the trial. This was the impression produced by the execution of Louvel. The liberals, who had been for a time terrified by the reports circulated in relation to their partisans, began to regain their courage, and, fortified by their acquittal, complained of the calumnies circulated in relation to them. The first reproach cast on Government, and especially on the ministry of Decazes, was great injustice towards the Carbonari. The ministry was accused of having invented a conspiracy and conspirators--questions of political humanity were mooted--and true or imaginary tortures, to which the prisoners had been subject, were recounted. French generosity and pity became interested for the sake of victims who languished in chains. One voice, though, was heard above all others, and spoke so distinctly, that it touched every heart and mind. It reached the very throne, and aroused one of those powerful influences which truth alone can. This voice was that of the Duke d'Harcourt--a king in virtue and feeling. His word was a law people of every shade of opinion listened to, in consequence of the admiration caused by his life and conduct. The Duke, who was entitled to sympathy from the successive death of his sons, accused those who had taken the last from him of barbarity. He told of the death of the Vicomte while suspected of a crime which perhaps was imaginary; and in the sublime tones of his despair uttered loud charges against the fallen administration. The new one trembled before a unanimous sentiment, and sought to win popularity from clemency. This sentiment, which in Louis XVIII. was innate, his ministers echoed. One by one the prisons were opened and their sad inmates restored to life and light. The chief Carbonari were less fortunate than their followers. Their trial progressed, and though many abortive schemes were discovered, no act was found. There were ideas, utopias, and social paradoxes, but nothing positive. F----, B----, Ober and their associates, whose friends acted busily, were subjected to some months' imprisonment, which, added to their previous incarceration, seemed to their judges a sufficient punishment for their hopes, which, though criminal, had never been realized. General A---- was exiled, and Von Apsberg was detained for a long time in the conciergerie. He was ultimately released. As for Taddeo, all the inquiries of Aminta and of the Prince de Maulear, who loved him as a son, were vain. Every day increased their uneasiness on this account, bringing to light the disappointment of some hope. Thus a year passed.... Early in April, 1821, a man of about forty sat on a bench in a little garden attached to a modest country abode near Neuilly. The garden was on the Seine, which was the limit of a kind of town. The man of whom we speak was almost bent beneath the double weight of grief and suffering. His features were sharp and thin, his eyes sunken, and his hair, almost white, gave him the appearance of one far more advanced in age. In this person prematurely old and wretched, none would have recognized the brilliant and elegant Count Monte-Leone, who once had been so deservedly admired. A deep sorrow had crushed his strong constitution--months to him had become years--and he had suffered all that a mind, richly endowed as his was, could. Pursued by the atrocious slanders we refer to, he had given way beneath the blow. In vain had he striven for some time after his useless visit to the Prefect against them. The hideous monster which pursued him redoubled its attacks, and cries of reprobation burst from every lip. The relations and friends of the prisoners reproached him, and adversity seemed to have seized him with its iron claw. In vain did he protest and call for proof. All appealed to the circumstances. His many duels made people say in his favor only this, "_Brave as he is, he is a spy!_" Despair, then, took possession of him, and he fled from the world which cursed him, and hid himself. One reason alone restrained him from suicide. This was, that he knew another life depended on his, and clung to it as the ivy does to the oak. The Count lived that another might not die. This person was an angel rather than a woman. It was Aminta. Watching the unfortunate man as a mother watches a child, braving the public opinion which dishonored him she adored, Aminta rarely left the Count, whose tears fell on her heart like burning lava. The Marquise had purchased an establishment near the house of Monte-Leone, with whom she passed all her time; for her visits made his desolate heart more serene. On the day we speak of, the Count sat in the garden, and old Giacomo advanced towards him, taking care to announce himself with a slight cough. "Monseigneur," said he, "it is I, your intendant. I am come to speak to you." "I have no intendant," said the Count, "a miserable outlaw like myself can indulge in no such luxury. Do not call me Monseigneur; the title now is become an ironical insult." "It, however, is your excellency's name, and _that_ the slanderous villains cannot deprive you of." "They have done more than that," said the Count, with a bitter smile; "they have destroyed my honor. You shall not call me thus any longer." "Very well," said the good man, whom the Marquise had told not to thwart his master; "I will call Monseigneur, Count only. You are Monseigneur, for all that." "Enough," said the Count, "go away, you fatigue me, you injure me." "I injure you," said Giacomo, "when you know I would die for you?" The Count looked around on the companion of all his life; he saw the tears the old man shed, and threw himself into his arms. "Ah! you love me in spite of all--" "And so does _she_," said Giacomo, whose features became kindled with pleasure at this sudden exhibition of his master's love; "yes, that noble, true woman loves you dearly." "Aminta!" said the Count, "ah! but for her you would have no master." "Monseigneur,--no--Count!" said the old valet; "Madame la Marquise has come hither." "Let her come--let her come--when she is with me, I pass my only happy hours." "True," said Giacomo, "but she is not alone--" "Who accompanies her? Who has come to see the informer? Who dares to brave the leprosy?" The old man said, "The Prince de Maulear." "The Prince! The Prince in my house! No, no! Tell him to go, that I see no one! I will see no one--" "You will see me, Monsieur?" said the old nobleman, advancing with Aminta on his arm. "What do you wish, sir?" said Monte-Leone; "if you insult me again, you are indeed cruel." "Monte-Leone," said Aminta, "the Prince is your friend. His words will be of service; I brought him hither." The Count sank on his seat and was silent. "Count," said the Prince, "had I not been confined at one of my estates for eight months by an obstinate _gout_, you would have seen me long since." "Ah!" said the Count, with surprise. "You would have seen me brought to you by repentance for the injury I did you. I gave way, Monte-Leone, to an indignant feeling I shall regret all my life. Reflection has enlightened me. The account I have heard from my daughter-in-law, the resources which you concealed, and especially your despair, the wasted condition of your health, the ravages of your misery, her love, her respect, have long told me how unjust I was to you." The Count looked at the Prince with mingled astonishment and doubt. The Prince said, "As men of our rank are glad to confess their faults, and ask pardon for them, I beg you, sir, to forgive me." The Prince bowed to Monte-Leone, who seemed overcome by emotion. Taking the Prince's hand he placed it on his heart and said, "Now, sir, feel this palpitation, and tell me whether the heart of a bad or guilty man ever beat thus with joy, at justice being done him." From this day Monte-Leone enjoyed two of the greatest pleasures of life--a tender love, and a noble friendship.... A month after the first visit of the Prince de Maulear to the house at Neuilly, the following scene took place in a sad room of the _rue Casette_ in the Faubourg St. Germain. A sick woman lay on a bed, and a stern dark man sat beside her. "I tell you," said she, "I want a priest, and it is cruel for you to refuse me one." "Bah! Signora, you are not sick enough for that. Why have a confidant in our affairs? Confession is of no use except to the dying!" "I am very sick," said she, "and my strength every day decreases!" "Well, let us come to terms, then, Duchess. You shall have a priest--but you do not intend to make your confession only to him, I know." "Your old ideas again, Stenio!" said La Felina. "They are not my ideas. Did you not say once when you were very sick, '_No, I will not die until I am completely avenged. I wish to know whence came the shaft which crushed him. I wish him to curse me as I have cursed him!_'" "True!" said the Duchess, who, as she listened to the Italian, seemed lost in thought. "It is true, I said all that." "Well, the time is come. You fear you are dying, and would not leave your work incomplete!" "But if I tell all," said La Felina, "do you fear nothing for yourself?" "That man is now but a shadow," said Salvatori, "and now in my strong hand I can grasp him, as he once grasped me, with his iron nerves, when he stabbed me. Besides, no one would believe him. _Is he not a spy?_" The first words of the Italian, "_That man is but a shadow_," had arrested La Felina's attention. She said, "Is he much changed? is he very sick?" She could not restrain her accent. "He? yes, indeed; he is dying. Public contempt has completely crushed the proud giant. We have effected that. Besides," continued he, "in order to make a suitable return for the touching interest you inspired me with just now, I must tell you I am going. You have made me rich, and if I were so unfortunate as to lose you--Ah, words never kill," added he, as he saw how terrified La Felina was--"I would not remain an hour in this accursed country." "Very well," said she; "give me writing materials." She wrote a few lines with a trembling hand. "To the Count," said she, giving them to Salvatori; "I expect him to-morrow." "Very well," said the Italian, sternly. "This will kill him." Scarcely had he left the room when La Felina rang her bell, and the servant who had always accompanied her entered. The Duchess drew her towards her, and placing her lips close to the ear of the woman, as if she was afraid some one would hear her, whispered a few words and sank back completely exhausted. Such was the Duchess of Palma, the famous singer of San Carlo, whom we find dying in this unknown and obscure retreat. The hand of God, who does not always punish the soul of the criminal alone, but who sometimes strikes the living body, weighed heavily on her. The Duke, weary of the ties imposed by marriage on him, and becoming more and more infatuated with his thin _danseuse_, sought for an opportunity to throw off his chains. He soon found one. Feigning to be jealous, the Duke, in consequence of some vague rumors, obtained the key of the bureau in which the Duchess kept the "confessions of the heart," as she called the detail of her brief amour with Monte-Leone. Having gotten possession of this paper, the Duke made a great noise, threatened her with a suit, and easily obtained the separation he desired so much. There was a general burst of indignation. The nobles who had been furious at the _mesalliance_ of the Duke, were more so at the ingratitude of the guilty wife and low-born woman, who had usurped a rank and title of which she showed herself so unworthy. The Duchess disappeared suddenly from the world, which gladly rejected one it had so unwillingly received. La Felina took refuge in a small house in the retired quarter we have mentioned. For, like _Venus attached to her prey_, she would not leave Paris, in which she could not divest herself of the idea that Monte-Leone, completely reinstated, would some day become Aminta's husband. Sickness had gradually enfeebled her, and Salvatori, who was master of her secrets, had established himself in her house. Taking advantage of her complicity, he had, by means of cunning and terror, became in a manner the master and tyrant, now that her health was gone, of one to whom he had been an abject slave. For this reason he had, as we have seen, treated her with such cruel disdain. On the very day this scene took place, Monte-Leone received the following note: "A woman, whose handwriting you will recognize, has but a few hours to live. Come to see her for the sake of that pity she deserves. Do not resist the prayers of one who is on her death-bed." Below was the address of the Duchess. The Count had long lost sight of La Felina; he knew she was separated from her husband, but was so indifferent that he had not even asked why. Always kind and generous, he thought duty required him to go, and on the next day at noon, rang at La Felina's door. Stenio had preceded him a few moments, and in the next room prepared to enjoy the scene. No sooner had the Count entered the bedroom than Salvatori thought he heard steps in a boudoir connected with it, and which opened on a back stairway. Uneasy at this noise, for which he could not account, he was yet unable to satisfy himself; for to do so, he would have been again obliged to cross the Duchess's room, and the Count was already with her. When the Count and La Felina met, a cry of astonishment burst from the lips of each. They seemed to each other two spectres. "Count," said the Duchess, in faint and broken voice, "the time is come when the truth must be told, ere the tongue on which it depends be cold in the grave. You are, therefore, about to hear the truth as the dying tell it who have lost all dread of men and their wrath." "Speak out, Signora; my life has been so strange that nothing now can surprise me," said the Count. "You will be astonished; for I am about to read the riddle, the mystery, which you have so long attempted to penetrate." The Count was attentive. "You have," said La Felina, "sought to know who was the secret enemy who deprived you of name and fame. I am about to tell you." The Count seemed surprised. "Do not interrupt me," said she. "This enemy has followed your steps and poisoned your life. Thus has it been effected: You were ruined, really ruined, but twice have fifty thousand francs been sent to you, and you have been made to believe that this was but a restoration of your fortune." "Did it not come from Lamberti?" said the Count. "No; bankrupts never pay. A forged letter from this banker insisted on silence in relation to this restoration, and thus the mysterious resources were created which awakened the suspicions of the world, and caused the report that you were an agent of the police to be believed." The Count grew pale with horror. "Wait," said La Felina. "A man, a devil, purchased by your enemy, in obedience to orders, went to the house of Matheus, your associate in Carbonarism. This devil opened the drawer in which the archives of the association were kept, and taking possession of the lists, substituted copies for the originals." "Infamous," said Monte-Leone. "This devil did more. He dared to procure you a pass as a 'Spy in Society.' This pass your friend Taddeo Rovero saw." "My God, my God, can I hear aright?" "This man did not think you were as yet sufficiently degraded in the eyes of the world and your brethren. Taking advantage of a visit you paid me, he went into your carriage with a cloak like yours over his shoulders, and was driven to the Prefecture of Police." "This is hell itself," said the Count. "Did I not say this man was a demon?" said La Felina, coldly. "All this evidence was accumulated against you. The French Government was deceived, and did not exert severity towards the powerful chief of the Carbonari, now become, as it believed, its agent. The world and public opinion did their work." "Why was all this? what was the motive?" "You had destroyed the happiness of your enemy, and in return the sacrifice of your honor was exacted; you had deserted one who adored you, and sought to marry another; to prevent this she disgraced you. Now, Count Monte-Leone," said La Felina, rising up, "is it necessary for me to name that woman? Do you know me?" "Wretch!" said the Count, "are you not afraid that I will kill you?" "Why?" said she, "am I not dying?" "Well," said he, "you shall carry to the tomb one crime in addition to the offences you have revealed to me. With honor you destroyed my life." Taking a pistol from his bosom he placed it to his brow, and was about to fire-- At the last words of the Count a door was thrown open, and an arm seized Monte-Leone's hand. He looked around and saw the Duke D'Harcourt. "Count," said he, "one person alone can restore you the honor of which you have been so rudely deprived. That person is the Duke D'Harcourt." "The voice of the man, of the father," said he, and his eyes became suffused with tears, "who charged you publicly with having denounced his son, and surrendered him to the executioners, with having killed him. "Ah! God himself sends you hither," said the Count, with an indescribable accent of hope. "Yes, yes; you have heard all, and will be believed. Monsieur," said he, with great animation, "have you not heard all? You know how I have been treated by those monsters. You will say so. Tell me that you will. I cast myself at your feet to implore you." "Count," said the Duke, lifting up Monte-Leone and embracing him, "I am the guilty man, for louder than any one I have uttered an anathema on the innocent. I have appealed to man and God for vengeance." "Yes," said the Count, "and touched by the immensity of my sufferings God has led you hither." "Yes, God," said the Duke, "and _she_;" pointing to La Felina, whose eyes brightened up with animation, strangely contrasted with the morbid palor of her face. "_She?_" said the Count. "Yes," said the Duke. "Stricken down by repentance, she besought me yesterday to come hither to hear her confession." Scarcely had the Duke pronounced these words, than a cry of hatred, savage as that of the jackal, was heard in the next room. "Save me, save me," said the Duchess, calling Monte-Leone to her, and sheltering herself behind his body, "_He_ will murder me." "_He?_" said the Duke and Count together. "Whom do you refer to?" said Monte-Leone. "To Stenio Salvatori, the accomplice in this tissue of crime." The two noblemen rushed towards the room where the cry had been heard. A door leading to the stairway was open, and there was no one visible. When they returned, the invalid giving way to so severe a shock and exertion was dying. She had only strength to repeat the request she had urged on Stenio the day before. "A priest, for heaven's sake, a priest, that I may repeat to God what I have said to man." The door opened and an ecclesiastic appeared. "Quick, father, quick," said the Duchess. "Tell me that God, like man, will forgive me." The priest stood for a few minutes in the middle of the room, apparently overpowered by emotion. He said, "One person must forgive you, Madame, and that person is the individual whose life you have made miserable, whom you have made use of to strike this innocent man;" and he pointed to the Count. "I, as well as the Duke, was in the adjoining room, and have heard all. That pardon I give you." The Duchess said, "Then Rovero, too, forgives me;" before she had finished his name, Monte-Leone clasped Taddeo in his arms. Two days after, a funeral portage proceeded to a place of eternal rest. Three men followed a body to the grave. They were Monte-Leone, the Duke d'Harcourt, and the Abbé Rovero. Love and friendship having been both betrayed, as he thought, Taddeo sought for consolation in religion. The Divinity, he knew, did not betray those who love him. A fugitive and an outlaw, he had sought refuge in a seminary, and subsequently had become a priest. Chance had assigned him to a church near La Felina's house, and he had been pointed out by the Duchess's confidential servant, as a priest worthy her mistress's confidence. Heaven had accomplished the rest. All Paris, at that time, was filled with a strange report, and with amazement learned the truth in relation to Monte-Leone. A letter from the Duke d'Harcourt appeared in the journals of the day and unfolded this terrible drama. The Duke told Paris and all Europe, what he had overheard in the Duchess's boudoir. It said, if any voice should do justice to this injured man, it is that of a father who wrongfully accused him of being the death of a son. The moral reaction in favor of the Count was as sudden as the censure the world had heaped on him had been. The person who, next to Monte-Leone, enjoyed this complete reparation, was the adorable woman who had never doubted the honor of the man she loved. The King sent for the Duke d'Harcourt; he understood and participated in the grief of an unfortunate father, for he, also, had lost the heir of his throne. When the old noble left the King he bore with him the pardon of René's young friend, the generous Von Apsberg. The Duke went to the conciergerie, and on the Doctor, in his gratitude, asking after Marie, the former said, "She is a patient who will give you a great deal of trouble, both her health and her heart being seriously affected. You will have two grave diseases to attend to, and the husband must assist the physician." EPILOGUE. A month after these events--on the first of May, that festival of sunlight, flowers, and universal rejoicings--two couples, followed by many friends and brilliant attendants, went from the small house on the banks of the Seine, to the village church of Neuilly. The Prince de Maulear, made young by happiness, had Marie d'Harcourt on his arm. The Duke escorted the Marquise, and the Count and Von Apsberg followed them. The priest stood at the foot of the altar. This priest, who made four persons happy, but who looked to heaven alone for his own happiness, was Taddeo Rovero. The three fiery Carbonari gradually felt their revolutionary ardor grow dull. The reason is, these three men were now attached to the society they had sought to destroy, by strong ties. Two were bound to it by family bonds, and the other by religion. _Carbonarism_ was not crushed in Europe, by the disasters of the French association. It slumbered for ten years, but awoke in 1830. The tree has grown, and the world now gathers its bitter fruits. Stenio Salvatori received in Italy the punishment due his great crimes in France. His vile heart became the sheath of the stiletto of one of the brethren of the _Venta_ of CASTEL LA MARC. Our old acquaintance, Mlle. Celestine Crepinean, touched by divine grace, repented of having made so bad a disposition of her pure and virgin love. Like Magdalen, she threw herself at the feet of her Savior, and lived to an advanced age, greatly to the edification of the faithful as dispenser of holy water at the church of Saint THOMAS AQUINAS. END OF THE SPY IN SOCIETY. FOOTNOTES: [3] Concluded from page 327. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by Stringer & Townsend, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. [4] _Mansarde_ Gallice, from the inventor Mansard, uncle of another architect of the same name of the time of Louis XIV. [5] It is one of the maxims of _magnetism_, that when once an entire sympathy between two minds is established equality ensues, and consequently neither can exert influence over the other. A GHOST STORY OF NORMANDY. BY THE AUTHOR OF "HAMON AND CATAR; OR, THE TWO RACKS." From Bentley's Miscellany. I. On a fine summer evening, in 1846, I left my house, which was in the neighborhood of Honfleur, Normandy, to take a stroll. It was July. All the morning and all the afternoon the sun had been busily pouring down streams of radiance like streams of boiling water, and I had kept the house, and kept it closely shut up too, till the orb of day had gone some way down towards the sea, as if, like a fire-eater, or like a locomotive, to get a _drink_ after its work. My wife being asleep, I borrowed her parasol, for English life in France is very free and easy, and I was rather careful of my complexion. I lit a cigar, and starting, soon left the church of St. Catharine behind. My business in the town was to post a letter, which I got safely done, and then passing down the fish-market, I found myself, ere long, at the foot of the Côte de Grace--a steep hill which rises abruptly from the town, and is scaleable at one part by a sandy zigzag. My cigar was a bad one altogether--a bad one to look at and a bad one to blow. Of government manufacture, it cost five sous, and was not worth one. Its skin was as thick as an ass's hide, and no persuasion would make _it_ draw. Like a false friend, it became quite hollow when I put the fire of trial to it; and only waxed hot and oily as it burnt on. It was a French regalia, and had nothing of French royalty about it but bad _smoke_. The tobacco had, I think, lost savor, as salt used to do, in passing through the monopolizing hands of the _Citoyen Roi_. In a word, my gorge rose at it. I stood awhile at the foot of the zigzag, endeavoring to coax it into usefulness, for I was a family man, and had given many hostages to fortune, and dared not to be extravagant. I tried to doctor it by incisions, and by giving it draughts; but all was in vain. At last it began to unwind, and some loose ashes found their way to my eyes. I was about to throw it away in disgust, when a young Frenchman, who had passed me a moment before with a party (I knew him slightly and we had bowed), returned, and observing that my cigar seemed troublesome, asked me to try one of his. His name was Le Brun. We had met occasionally on the pier, where in the quiet evenings I used to take refuge from the uproar of my sanctuary at home, and for awhile almost believed myself a lay bachelor lounging through France without a charming wife and eight children. He and I had succeeded well in chit-chat. The Browns, he was fond of saying, were a numerous race in England, but if he ever settled there he would be distinguished from them as THE Brown. He was vain of this play on his name, and I always laughed when he produced it. I had no hesitation, therefore, when he offered me a cigar: besides, I knew that he always smoked smuggled Cubas. We gossiped for a few moments. At length I saw him glance at my wife's parasol, which was shielding me from the sun. He _said_ nothing, but I felt my cheek burn with a sudden sort of shame, and immediately shut it up. "Madame will return," he said, "and Monsieur attends her." This was not the fact. Monsieur had to return, and Madame attended him. But the observation was put in the narrative form, and if my friend gave me information which I knew to be false, I was not bound to say so. I only bowed, therefore; and he added that he was forced to join his party, and bowed too; and so we separated. He had scarcely left me, when I thought that if I had avowed my solitary state he might have asked me to join his party, which was evidently a merry one; and I internally execrated the parasol, which had been the means of preventing this. If by any accident I should meet him again, I resolved that he should not see me with _it_, and without the lady; so I deposited it at a little lace-maker's, and soon after began to ascend the Côte de Grace, not without hopes of meeting the party as they returned, perhaps from Val-à-Reine. Between each wind of the zigzag path was a flight of wooden steps, by which the adventurous might ascend directly from the bottom of the hill. At the head of some of these flights of steps were rustic seats; they were generally on the outer edge of the path, but a few were placed far back, so that the hill immediately below was unseen. I always climbed the Côte by the steps, as I used ever and anon to lie down on the green carpet which nature has spread over each of the short ascents. On the present occasion I had not mounted far before a pleasant piece of this turf-flooring near the top of one of the little hills seduced me from my toils. I sat down, took Shelley's "Revolt of Islam" from my pocket, finished my cigar, and in consequence of reading half a dozen stanzas from the poem--fell asleep. I woke suddenly, and as soon as I had my faculties about me, noticed that people were speaking, and in loud tones, close above me. Otherwise, all was still around. There was no wind among the little trees; a bee buzzed past me now and then, and insects hummed, but further off down the hill, and these voices sounded harsh and dissonant in the quiet air. I listened, at first mechanically. The conversation was carried on in French. "It is time to end this," said a stern, disagreeable voice; "and I will not wait any longer, M. Raymond." "But M. Gray," answered another and more pleasant voice, "you will think of my situation--my family. I have done all I could." "I have thought too much of your family," replied Gray; "but I must also think of myself. Esther--your daughter--she does not speak with me, for example, as you said she should." "Monsieur!" exclaimed the other. "This Le Brun--she is all ears and eyes for him. She----" "M. Gray!" said Raymond. His voice had been deprecating before--it was firm now. "You are so harsh to me; how can you expect kindness from her?" "Why, sir, you promised to use your influence with her----" "Promised, M. Gray!" Raymond burst in. "You did not think I should sell my daughter for a debt of the table? I do not think, monsieur, you expected me to _sell_ my Esther, for example." And there was an emphasis on these last words which only a Frenchman could give. "I did not say you promised that," replied the other; "but I am seeking for the money you owe me. I love your daughter; you know it; she does not smile, and I must wait. But my creditors will not wait. I owe money, and come to you for what you owe me." The voice that said this was cold and stern. Suddenly, as I listened to it, it seemed familiar to me; but where I had heard it I could not remember. Raymond replied: "And suppose I had not played with you and lost? What would you have done?" "But my friends in England are so dilatory," was the evasive answer. "Still--if Mademoiselle Esther----" "Sacré!" cried Raymond, starting to his feet, and stamping on the path. Gray seemed to rise too. "You press me too far. What do I know of you, monsieur? You live here some few months--you play high--you--you----" "Ah, well, monsieur," said Gray, icily, as he paused. "My daughter, too," cried Raymond; "you use my debt to you as a means----." He stopped again in his sudden passion. "Pardon me, monsieur," said Gray, sternly, "this is only a debt of honor;" and he laid a stress on the word which drove it home. "In England we cannot enforce a debt of honor." "What do you do there when it is not paid?" "First post the guilty man, and then shoot him," was the answer. I felt inclined to start from my concealment and say that this was false. I recollected, however, just in time, that it was true. "But this is folly," pursued Gray, "and we should not quarrel. I am not going to shoot Esther's father, for example." The effect of this cordial and peaceful declaration was instantaneous. Glad apparently to drop his creditor in his friend at any price, Raymond answered kindly, and even proposed to give Gray a small sum on account of his debt, which he accepted. They then began to ascend the zigzag, and ere long their voices died away in the distance. I had remained lying-to where I was all this while, and felt glad when they left the neighborhood. I never overheard a conversation with pleasure since I read how the Rev. Dr. Follett declared that his bamboo, and not his cloth, should protect him from Mr. Eavesdrop. Once, indeed, I had thought of retiring, but put it off so long that I thought I might just as well stay out the interview. I knew Mr. Raymond by name. He was a banker, and reputed rich. He was also thought religious--for a Frenchman, even pious. He crossed himself at all the twopenny representations of the Divine agony. He never galloped past a crucifix, or calvaire, or burial-place. And yet he now showed himself a gambler, and apparently on the way to sell his daughter's hand to a man he did not know, for a gambling debt. The discovery made me feel sick. And yet I thought how many of my own parisioners, who wave their heads at the sacred name in the creed, and appear to men to worship, are as false as this man; packing away their religion like their best hat till next Sunday, when it seems as good to the next pew as ever. But I felt more than an abstract discomfort at my discoveries. Le Brun's name had been mixed up with Esther Raymond's by this Gray. Now his Cuba cigar had bound me indissolubly to The Brown, and as long as he asked nothing but what cost nothing, I was his faithful well-wisher and friend. This was the time to show my friendship; and accordingly I sprang from my couch, put Shelley into my pocket, and resumed my ascent of the Côte. I had gained the top, and, after looking across the water to Harfleur, which showed well in the soft light of the westering sun, was about to walk on, when I saw a party on the rude bench which is set on the seaward side of the top of the Côte--Le Brun with them. I looked back across the Seine, and watched the lights and shades shift on the hills of the opposite shore, collecting my thoughts the while. Ere they were collected, however, he joined me. "Ah! but madame is no longer with monsieur?" he said. "No; she's at home now," I answered, thinking how I should best break ground, and almost inclined to leave him to his own courses now that it was time to act. Why should I meddle in these foreigners' affairs? What were they to me? I felt thus for a moment; Le Brun produced his cigar-case, and I did not feel so for another. "I hope you liked my cigar; it is not French," he said. "Will you try another?" "If you will try one of mine," I answered, ashamed to take without giving, and forgetting that my property consisted of none but the despised French article. The young gentleman took one of the great clown-like regalias with a slight shudder, and I saw him wince as he inhaled a mouthful of its rank produce, and, ere long, quietly drop the thing when he thought I was not looking, and substitute one of his own. The flavor of his Cuba opened my heart to him, and ere long I broached the subject with which I had no earthly business. "You know a certain M. Gray?" I asked. He started. "Yes," he said; "that is him talking to mademoiselle. Shall I introduce you?" "Not at present--no, I thank you," I answered. He looked up at me. "Do you know him?" he asked. My eye had been bent on him for the last few seconds. "I think I do," I said; "I am not sure." "He came here with the Dowlasses; he is the son of an English milord, who allows him a thousand pounds a year." "Why did he leave England, then?" I inquired. "He was too gay, I believe." "And left his debts unpaid, I suppose." He looked up at me again. "If you do know him, or anything about him," he exclaimed, "pray tell me; I am particularly anxious about him." "I know you must be, and so ought mademoiselle to be," I said. He blushed like a girl and was going to speak, but I continued: "If he is the man I think, never play at cards with him, M. le Brun; and, between us, separate his hat from those pink ribbons further than they are now." His curiosity, his anxiety, was thoroughly aroused; but, as he began to speak, a lady's voice called him. It was Esther's. "Will you join us?" he said. In another moment I was being introduced to the party. I was at first surprised to find Gray and his dupe smoking and chatting as gayly as any of the party. I am a good wonderer, but always reason my surprises away. I soon did so now, reflecting that all men use their faces as masks, by which they lie without speaking falsehood. And, though I detest hypocrisy myself, I remembered that I often smiled when I could grind my teeth with rage--that is, if they were not false ones. Le Brun had been summoned to rejoin the circle because a curious topic had been started. M. Raymond was proprietor of an estate near St. Sauveur, the house of which was reported to be haunted, and Esther had dared Gray to spend a night there. "But I don't believe in ghosts," he recommenced, after the introduction. "It would only be to waste a night." "Oh, there _is_ a goblin though," replied the beautiful girl--"a male Amina; always walking into an occupied chamber, so that you're sure to see him. He does not, however, stop to be caught napping in the morning, like La Sonnambula." "I'll tell you what I'll do," answered Gray. "You've called M. le Brun"--and he looked somewhat fiercely at my friend--"if he'll spend a night there, I will. I'm engaged to-night, and to-morrow night, so that he can go first. But I can't believe in your ghost, mademoiselle." "Not if I acknowledge to have seen him myself?" she asked. There was a general movement among the listeners. "Well, I will accept for M. le Brun; he shall go to-night or to-morrow, and you the night after--eh, M. Frederic?" Le Brun murmured something about obedience to her wishes; what, I did not hear. He evidently, however, did not like the scheme, and Gray saw it; but, in the general interest for Esther's tale, no one else did. I do not give it here, for divers reasons. When she had done, it was found to be time to return. I would have left the party, but Raymond having seperated Le Brun from Esther, he joined himself to me, and I was unable to do so. "What will Grace say?" thought I. "I hope she won't wait tea for me." I should have been somewhat crusty if, on an ordinary occasion, I had returned from a stroll and found that she and the rest had _not_ waited. Le Brun asked me--as M. Raymond had already done--to stay all the evening with the party. That, however, I felt to be impossible, and said so. "Well, for the present, then," he said. "What can you tell me of M. Gray?" he added. "I expect my brother here to-morrow," I said, "when I will compare notes with him. Till then I should be cautious, as I may injure an innocent man. But do you be cautious too. How about this challenge? Shall you sleep in the haunted house? It is romantic nonsense--this of a spirit, you know. Mademoiselle has seen a clothes-horse, or a--a part of her dress in moonlight. I don't believe in ghosts myself at all." "Don't you?" said he, somewhat sadly. "I--the truth is, mon cher, I am afraid I do." "You must go on now, though," I said, maliciously. "Oh, yes--of course--go on," he answered; "but, monsieur----" he hesitated. "What is it, my dear friend?" I said. "I thought to ask a favor of you," he replied. "Will you accompany me to this house, monsieur? I feel I ask much--but will you?" "Much, my very dear sir!" I exclaimed, in the fullness of my heart--"not at all too much. I shall be happy to be of any use to you, and will sit and smoke those cigars of yours, and let the ghosts go to old ----." I stopped suddenly. "And what," thought I, "will Grace say to _that_?" A sort of dampness rushed out upon my skin; I had forgotten her. My sentence remained unfinished, and I looked eagerly about me, as if to question the adjoining shrubs as to what on earth I was to do. My dear Grace was the light of my eyes, and the joy of my heart, I'm sure; the best wife, the most amiable of the sex, but yet she had a kind of will of her own, which was apt to get grafted, as it were, upon mine. She never opposed me positively in any thing, but somehow, if she did not like it, it was rarely done. I had just promised what I might not be able to perform; and yet I did not like to confess to this foreigner that my wife led me. "A plague upon his Cubas and him too," I thought. Still, what was to be done? "If you cannot sleep there to-night," he said, noticing my uneasiness, "I will claim the night's grace----" "Grace!" I exclaimed; my wife before me in the word. "Yes, she said to-night or to-morrow." "Oh, to-night?--impossible!" I cried. "I have a very--an engagement to-night. I can not possibly make it to-night. Besides," I exclaimed, grasping at an idea like a drowner at a rope, or any thing saving, "mademoiselle may not give leave to share your danger with any one." "I asked her," he said--I had noticed them exchange whispers--"and she will----" "Bother!" I muttered; but instantly continued, with a smile, "if it is to be so I will be at your service to-morrow. Meanwhile, let me slip away now--that engagement, you know." We were at the foot of the Côte de Grace by this time. He brought the party to a stand-still, and, after some difficulty, I was allowed to desert, Le Brun asking me to join him next day to dinner, to which I agreed. After I left the joyous set I walked away fiercely, like a man with a purpose, till they were out of sight; but, as I neared that sanctuary of the heart where the tea would be waiting for me, the fierceness of my pace abated, and, with hands in pockets and head depressed, I slackened my speed more and more, till at last, when I reached my garden-gate, I came to a stand-still. Unhappily I am tall, and my children are all wonderfully quick. I had not stood at the gate three seconds before I was surrounded by my urchins, whooping, and getting among my legs, and hanging to my tails, and playing the wildest pranks off on me. But suddenly I saw my wife leave the house and come down the garden without her bonnet to welcome me. Oh, how I wished that, just for once, she had been a shrew; I could have brazened out the matter then. But she smiled so sweetly at me! "Well," she exclaimed, heartily, putting her hands in mine, "you have had a splendid afternoon for your walk! Have you enjoyed it?" "Oh, yes," I said, "except for one thing." "What's that?" she asked; "no accident I hope. You've never, surely, been among the orchards again; I'm sure the grass swarms with adders and snakes." And she looked so anxiously and tenderly up into my face that I was forced to stoop and----. But this is weakness. "What was it? I saw you took out that divine Shelley." "Yes," I answered, jumping at any subject foreign to the one at my heart, "he _is_ divine. I'll never deny it again; the very god of sleep." "For shame!" she cried; "and I saw you took something else, too. But where is it?--the parasol, I mean?" I had forgotten it! I think I must have started and changed color, for she immediately proceeded: "Never mind, it's too late to go into the fields for it now. It will be quite destroyed, though, by the dew to-night--there's always so much in this weather. But, never mind--and yet how could you forget it?" "Oh, it's all right," I replied, somewhat pettishly; "we'll get it in the morning. I left it in a shop at the foot of the Côte de Grace." "Well, then, what was the drawback to your walk?" "Oh! never mind it just now," I exclaimed. "Dear Grace, do let me have some tea; I'll tell you by-and-by." And I bustled among the children towards the house, she following in some surprise. As soon as tea was over I dispatched the children into the garden and solemnly commenced my tale. Commenced? I plunged into it heels over head, as a timid bather plunges into the pool when he is the cynosure of the eyes of all swimmers in it, and by appearing on the brink in Nature's undress _uniform_, feels himself pledged to enter the liquid. Like him, too, when once in, I did not find the water so cold as I feared, after all. I had made my promise so strong by constantly referring to it, that Grace never even proposed my giving it up. My brother would arrive by to-morrow's boat, and so that the house would have a guardian she would not object--for once. I inwardly vowed not to put it in her power to refuse or grant such a favor again. II. So on the morrow, at the appointed time, I was comfortably seated at M. le Brun's mahogany; and while, "for this occasion only," I played my old _rôle_ of bachelor, I loosed the hymeneal reins, and actually told some ancient Cider-cellar stories--in French, too,--which produced explosion after explosion of laughter, though whether this was caused by the tales or the telling I cannot of course guess. By-and-by evening came, and it was time to start. Le Brun and I hastened, therefore, to finish the bottles then in circulation; and, as soon as that was done, rose to walk to the haunted property. And now the skeptical blockheads who doubt every thing would say that what follows was the consequence of our libations. Let them say what they like, I only put it to _you_, if it is likely that a thorough-going Church and State rector would be influenced by a few bottles of _vin ordinaire_ and a mere _thought_ of cognac after all. It was about nine o'clock when we arrived within sight of St. Sauveur. It was a lovely night. Beyond the little village in the distance loomed the hills, rising from the Eure, over which the moon was shining brilliantly. Presently my companion turned sharply off from the main road, and we began to ascend a narrow stony lane, so thickly fringed with bushes that the light was excluded; but ere long we came upon a cross-path nearly as narrow, but lighted by the rays of the bright moon; this we followed, till, in a few minutes, we arrived before a gate, which we pushed open, and advanced into a field. Le Brun paused to light a fresh cigar from the smoking ruins of the last, and, as I walked on, I suddenly became reflective. "Your life, my dear and reverend sir," I ejaculated, "has just been like this evening's walk. Your school and college life were all bright and silvery as the highway flooded by the glorious beams, and so forth. Then came the stony lane of curateship, and then you gained a cross-lane, stony still, but lighted by the smiles of Grace, and the prospect of a reversion, which your father got you cheap, because the occupant was young. And then this youthful rector joined the Church of Rome, leaving the gate open for you; and so you stepped into your twelve hundred a year, of which you only need to sacrifice seventy for a hack to do the work. So that after a somewhat pleasant life you can enjoy yourself in foreign parts, and----" "Halloa!" cried a voice behind. I started. In a moment I remembered that I was upon haunted ground, and motioned to fly. I am no coward, but I hate a surprise, and thought that perhaps the hero of this enchanted ground was close beside me. Le Brun's voice, however, dissipated those fears. I had strolled from the right path in my dream, and he wished me to re-rejoin him. I did so, and we pursued our walk. We soon arrived before the house. It was approachable at the rear by a road which led to St. Sauveur, after winding about the country some two or three miles more than necessary, as French roads are apt to do: but the main entrance was from the fields, as we had come. It was a shabby place, and looked in the staring moonlight as seedy as a bookseller's hack would look in the glare of an Almack's ball. The windows were mostly broken, and the portico, like its Greek model, was in ruins. Rude evergreens grew downward from the rails which had fixed them, when young, in the way they were to go, and were sprawling about the nominal garden, which was likewise overrun by weeds and plots of grass, and fallen shrubs and flowers. The moon never looked on a poorer spot, and yet there was an air about the tattered old house which seemed to indicate that it had been good-looking once; as we may see, despite the plaster-work among the wrinkles of some of our dowagers, that they were not altogether hideous, as they now are, in the days of the "Greatest Gentleman" in Europe. We entered. It was too late and too dark in-doors to survey the mansion; so, as Le Brun had been directed to the habitable room, we struck a light, and ascended directly to it. It was handsomely furnished, and a basket containing that refreshment which we had looked forward to stood on the table. The windows were whole; still I thought it well to close the shutters, as I hate Midsummer nights' draughts as much as I love the "Midsummer Night's Dream." This done, I sank on a sofa; Le Brun drew some wine; we fell to at an early supper, and fared well. When we had finished we lighted cigars, and our conversation grew frivolous. Le Brun was in the midst of a description of Esther, when I heard a groan, and said so. He pooh-poohed me, and, half annoyed at the interruption, proceeded. He had not got on very far before the groan was repeated. I started up. "Pooh!--wind!" said my companion, retaining his seat and emitting his smoke. "If so, it must be wind on the stomach, or wind in the lungs," I said. "Hark!" I heard a faint noise. We both listened intently for some minutes, I standing. It was not repeated, however; so, growing tired, I said that I must have been mistaken, and sat down. Le Brun agreed with me, and resumed his description. I followed with a tale; he was reminded by it of another; and so we continued, till our repeated potations, much speaking, and the late hour, made both of us prosy, and then we fell, as with one accord, asleep. I must have slept for a considerable time, as, when I woke, I found that the lamp had burned very low, and looked the worse for having been kept up so late. I woke with a start, caused, as I imagined, by hearing the room-door suddenly opened. That was a sound which, as a father of a large family, I had got to know very well, especially about the smaller hours. I looked towards the door, but my eyes were dim with sleep, and it was not till Le Brun's boot was projected against my shin that I became sufficiently awake to see if my idea was correct or no. It was. Not only was the door open but a person was evidently standing on the threshold. In the sickly light his face was not visible; nothing, in fact, but an outline of him. I rose, and with as much steadiness of voice as I could command, requested the visitor to come in. He made a deep bow, set his hat modestly upon the floor, came across the room, and stood as if awaiting further orders. I had, however, none to give him. I had not sufficient impudence to bid him sit down and help himself to wine, or what he liked; but I kicked Le Brun, in payment for his attack on me, and motioned to him to do the honors. He met the advance of my foot, however, in an unexpected way. "Diable!" he cried, "Est-ce que----" He stopped as if a gag had been thrust between his jaws; for our visitor, doubtless applying the epithet to himself, suddenly turned his back on us, walked to the door, picked up his hat, and, though I cried after him, as the Master of Ravenswood cried after his dead Lucia's ghost, to stop, paid no more heed than that virgin does to Mario, but retired quickly, his boots screaming as he trod upon them like veritable souls in pain. We made no motion to follow, but remained as if glued to our places, looking on each other from our semi-sleepy eyes in a somewhat foolish manner. "He'll come back," said Le Brun. "Hush!" The boots had stopped at the bottom of the stairs; we heard no sound. "If he does, don't name Sathanas, for Heaven's sake," I said. "He doesn't like it. It may recall unpleasant things--seem personal, in fact----" "Hush!" he exclaimed. We listened. The screaming boots were remounting the stairs. The visitor had got over the personality, and was coming back. "What should be done? I am no coward; I've said so before; but I seriously thought of running to, shutting, fastening, and setting chairs against the door. But I did not move. The footsteps approached, and then began to recede again. This suspense of the interest--or, rather, dragging out of it--was most tormenting. What if he should go on walking all night? But the steps were ere long heard once more coming near the room, and once more the visitor stood at the door. But he did not enter now. He looked steadfastly towards us; beckoned slowly; then, turning, began to leave us again. I drew a long, well-satisfied breath as he disappeared and leaned back on the sofa. "I trust he's gone for good now," I said. "He beckoned. We must follow," said Le Brun. "Follow! Pooh, pooh!" I exclaimed. "Let us sit still and be glad." "Not I," was his brave response. "Be he man, or be he----" "Hush!" I cried. "He may hear. He doesn't like the word----" "I do not understand the impulse," said Le Brun; "but we must follow." "I do not _feel_ the impulse," I rejoined. "Still, if you do, and obey it, I will not desert you." "Come," he answered. And with quick steps we chased the vocal boots down the corridor, and ere long saw the wearer of them, having descended the stairs, cross the hall, and wait at the door of the house. The moon was still shining brightly, and its rays came through the broken windows on the ground-floor, and fell on the figure of the mysterious one. He was of middle height, and of broad and muscular build. He seemed more like an English farmer than a French ghost. His garments were seedy, and his hat was old; but his boots were like the boots of Thaddeus of Warsaw, the son of Miss Porter, who was so mortally offended when asked the name of the maker of his Bluchers, and they gleamed like boots of polished steel. All, however, did not seem right about the stranger. His head appeared awry, and his arms out of their places. But perhaps these blemishes were attributable to the moonlight, and not to the man; for he showed that he could turn his head and look at us, and use his arms to open the door. We followed him out into the air. He led us through the field we had already traversed, but in a rather different direction. The night was chilly, and the long grass damp, and I began to grow weary of the adventure. Suddenly, however, our conductor stopped before what appeared to be a ruined cow-shed. He looked at it earnestly for a few moments, then at us, who kept a respectful distance; then, making an abrupt motion of his arm towards it, too rapid for us to understand, he seemed to me to spring into the air. Whether he did so or not, I cannot declare; but I know that when I rubbed my eyes, and looked round about for him, he was nowhere to be seen. We examined the spot, but he had left no traces. Boots, and hat, and all his trappery had gone with him. He had come like a dream, and vanished like a morning dream. We stood for a few moments uncertain what to do, and then it occurred to me that the room we had left was warm and comfortable, and this field cold and dreary; so I proposed to return, especially as, the stranger having vanished, there did not appear to be any business in hand. Le Brun agreed, and we did so, and, after talking awhile over our adventure, went to sleep over our talk; and I did not wake again till morning was staring into the chamber, as Le Brun threw open the shutters. The conversation that took place is as well to be imagined as transcribed. Enough to say that I determined to have no share in Le Brun's narrative, but left him to heighten it for himself. I parted with him at my house, where I found Grace looking out for me; and he promised to return in the course of the morning to pay his respects to her. To my surprise, however, when he came, he asked me for five minutes' conversation, and we went together into the field belonging to my house, which sloped down to the Seine. His countenance was _both_ joyous and anxious, and I saw that he had something heavier on his mind than last night's frolic. "I have spoken to you of M. Gray," he said, "and of Mademoiselle Raymond. I have learnt this morning that M. Gray has her father in his power." "You learnt that from her?" I asked. He blushed and did not answer. I went on. I had compared notes with my brother about this Gray, and found my suspicions correct. I therefore told Le Brun what I had overheard on the zigzag, and he in reply told me that Raymond had accepted a bill for the amount of the debt to Gray. "That's serious," I said. "But before we say more, monsieur, are you engaged to Mademoiselle Esther?" He replied in the affirmative. "Can you live--excuse the question--with her without dowry?" He replied in the affirmative again. "Then," I said, "though it may sound oddly from one of my cloth, you must either elope with her----" "But then M. Raymond?--But his family?" "He must suffer for his folly; not you. And you are only going to marry one daughter, not all of them. The other alternative is--you must pay Raymond's acceptance, as he cannot." "It would be ruin. I cannot, either," he replied. "Then you must lose Esther." "I will not. No. And yet if I was to shoot Gray----" "Shoot?" I interrupted, with the virtuous horror of a man who has never been tempted to fight a duel--"and would you then outrage the laws of divine and human?" "No; it wouldn't do to shoot him," he pursued. "But oh, monsieur, can you not suggest something to help me--to help us?" A thought suddenly came into my head. "Gray is pledged to spend to-night in the haunted house, is he not?" I asked. He answered that it was so. "I believe the man to be an arrant coward," I went on. "To be sure, he shot a dear friend of mine in a duel, and behaved, as the world says, like a brave man before his witnesses. But he's a coward for all that, and we'll test it. I don't believe in our friend the Goblin Farmer; I don't believe we saw any body, or any spirit last night at all. Well, never mind beliefs; don't interrupt me. I think our eyes were made the fools of other senses, and that there's no such thing. Gray has to spend the night there--we'll go again to-night, that is, if my wife will let me, and perhaps get my brother to help us--eh? Suppose we give him a lesson." And I laughed. He laughed too; and after a few more observations, he accompanied me into my drawing-room. Grace and James, with his wife Emma, were sitting talking there. I have said that I am a lazy rector. During my curatehood, however, I had learned to preach sufficiently well for the parish where I worked. To be sure my congregation was neither large or wakeful, except in winter, when the church was like a Wenham ice depôt, and people could not sleep. But I was brief, and no faults were ever found in my time with brevity. My experience in exposition and appeal now stood me in good stead. I introduced Le Brun, and then plunged into matters. I gave a brief account of Esther and her father. I eulogized Le Brun. After that I spoke of Gray, and reminded James of the life and times--the death, too, of John Finnis, whom he saved from being plucked alive in St. James's, only that he might be shot in Hampstead. These dispatched, I opened my plans, which were listened to with great interest; the only alteration proposed was that James should go to find the authorities (if there were any, which he doubted), and give notice of Gray's character to them; after which he was to return to my house, and stay there till Le Brun and I came back from our nocturnal expedition, as Grace and Emma feared to be left alone. Poor Emma, indeed, declared that this was the most romantic thing she had ever heard of, except one which happened in the village where she was born; but as neither James or I liked to hear her speak of her origin, we cut her narrative short. The cresset moon was up in heaven--at least, Emma said it was--when we started. It seemed to me nearly full; but she was poetical. I told her that if it was a cresset, it was tilting up, and ought, therefore, to be pouring out oil, and not light, on the earth. We started, I repeat, and a short time after, in the language of a favorite novelist, two travellers might have been seen slowly wending on their way, bundle in hand, towards the haunted house. In another hour or so, when the wind had sunk into repose, and the birds had ceased their songs, and all things save the ever-watching stars were sleeping (as that favorite historian might go on, if he were telling this tale and not I), a tall and ecclesiastical form crept slowly from a place of concealment near the house, approached it, and gently knocked at the door. It was opened, and he entered cautiously. A few whispered sentences passed with some friend within, which being over, he proceeded, though with some hesitation, to mount the stairs and pace along the corridor. My boots (for I was the ecclesiastic) creaked and crackled like mad boots. Onward I went, like the Ghost in Hamlet, only with very vocal buskins. I reached Gray's room and opened the door. A strange sight met my eyes through the green glass goggles which I wore over them. Gray was pacing up and down, in evident fear. A quantity of half-burnt cigars, some bottles of wine, glasses, the lamp, and, above all, two pistols were on the table. As I opened the door, and the light fell on me, I feared that I should be discovered. But the gambler was afraid--and fear has no eyes. I advanced into the room, and solemnly waved to him to follow. He must have caught up a pistol ere he did so. I led the way. It was my determination to lead him a long chase, and leave him in a ditch if possible, Le Brun being near at hand to cudgel him. He had readily understood my pantomime (I studied under Jones the player when in training for orders), for I found he followed me, though at a distance. But all my plans were disconcerted. As I reached the stair-head I heard a noise, and stopped; so did Gray. It was as of some one forcing the house door. Directly afterwards I heard the loud cries of the real goblin's boots, and the sound of Le Brun in swift pursuit. "Take care, monsieur," he cried up the stairs to me. "By heaven they are robbers--murderers! Help! help!" roared Gray from behind; and as the real apparition came gliding up, he fired his pistol at it. The unexpected sound of the weapon, so close to my ear, too, stunned me for a moment; but I recovered myself directly, and flung myself on him, in fear lest he had his second pistol, too, and might fire at _me_. The real goblin continued to advance, and I felt Gray tremble with terror in my arms as _it_ survived the shot. An unwonted boldness came over me. I felt myself committed to be brave. "Villain!" I muttered in his ear, "you would swindle my descendant out of all he has?" "No--forgive me. I will not take a sou." "His acceptance--where is it? Give it me." He shuddered. "I will give it to you," he said. I released him, and followed to the lamp-lighted chamber. The other apparition creaked after him, too, and at the door I gave it the precedence. It was well I did so. The sudden light seemed to make Gray bold, for snatching up the other pistol he levelled it at the Simon Pure, and before I could utter a word, fired. The shot must have passed clean through the breast of the Mysterious Stranger--he only bowed. Gray was now in mortal fear. "Give up that bill," I said in solemn, pedal tones. He drew it frantically from his pocket, and, leaping up, gave it to the mysterious one. "Go to th----" he began, with a sort of ferocious recklessness. The next moment he was sprawling on the floor. The Goblin reached out his hand, and struck Gray, as it seemed, lightly with it. I would have raised him. I motioned to do so; but my original touched me on the shoulder, handed me the bill, and motioned to me to follow. I did not like his notes of hand--his signature by mark on Gray's face--I therefore at once obeyed. Le Brun had vanished. The stranger led me by the old route till we were again close to the tottering cow-house. Here he paused, as on the last occasion, and was, perhaps, preparing to disappear again. "One moment, sir," I said. "Be good enough to explain yourself more plainly than you did last night. However much I may admire your acting, and it has _beaucoup de l'Esprit_ about it, family arrangements will prevent me from again assisting----" He nodded as though he quite understood me, advanced to the side of the shed, stopped under a sort of window, and then, deliberately sitting down on the grass, began to pull off his boots. I gazed at him in amazement, and was about to address him again, when a little cloud sailed across the moon, and for a moment shaded all the place. As it passed away, and I looked to our mysterious visitant and my mysterious Original, no remains of him were to be seen--except the boots. At this moment Le Brun joined me. I was the first (as before and as ever) to throw aside my natural fears, and I advanced to the spot. There were two highly polished Bluchers, side by side, as if they waited till the occupant of the cow-house was out of bed and shaved. I took one of them up. Something inside chinked. I reversed it, and three Napoleons fell upon the turf. I was wondering why a French farmer-ghost should choose a Blucher to deliver Napoleons into an Englishman's hands, when Le Brun, finding nothing in the other boot, suggested that it would be well to get Gray out of the neighborhood, and perhaps the three Napoleons might be useful to him. To this I agreed at once, though I was somewhat dissatisfied with the little fellow for the small share he had taken in the risks of the evening. I went to the room where the gambler was; he was evidently in mortal fear. I put down the Napoleons on the table, and then in those deep, pedal, and ecclesiastical notes, which have so often hymned my congregation to repose, informed him that friends of John Finnis were in the town, that he was proclaimed to the authorities, and that he had better leave the neighborhood for ever. With this I left him, joined Le Brun, and was soon on my way back to Honfleur. "It was well I drew the shot from his pistols," said Le Brun, as we were parting. I did not then see any latent meaning in his words, nor would he ever afterwards answer any questions on the subject. I had forgotten to remove my ghostly dresses and decorations, and Grace and Emma both uttered gentle screams as I stalked into their presence. My tale was soon told, and we retired to rest. Here the whole tale ends. As the events I recorded recede into the past, I begin almost to doubt the truth of them. But I have one living evidence--now I am glad to say not single--and Le Brun may fairly lay it to me that he has at this moment the most agreeable little lady in all Normandy for his wedded wife. I am not aware if Boots still visits the glimpses of the moon at St. Sauveur, for soon after these events I was obliged to return to my parish to put down the Popish fooleries which I found my hack had begun to introduce. If, however, he does, I only hope his reappearance will be as useful as in the above little narrative, but the Brown, the Gray--and the narrator have now done with him for ever. CREBILLON, THE FRENCH �SCHYLUS. From Fraser's Magazine. About the year 1670, there lived at Dijon a certain notary, an original in his way, named Melchior Jolyot. His father was an innkeeper; but of a more ambitious nature than his sire, the son, so soon as he had succeeded in collecting a little money, purchased for himself the office of head clerk in the Chambres des Comptes of Dijon, with the title of Greffier of the same. During the following year, having long been desirous of a title of nobility, he acquired, at a very low price, a little abandoned and almost unknown fief, that of Crebillon, situated about a league and a half from the city. His son, Prosper Jolyot, the future poet, was at that time a young man of about two-and-twenty years of age, a student at law, and then on the eve of being admitted as advocate at the French bar. From the first years of his sojourn in Paris, we find that he called himself Prosper Jolyot _de Crebillon_. About sixty years later, a worthy philosopher of Dijon, a certain Monsieur J. B. Michault, writes as follows to the President de Ruffey:--"Last Saturday (June 19th, 1762), our celebrated Crebillon was interred at St. Gervais. In his _billets de mort_ they gave him the title of _ecuyer_; but what appears to me more surprising, is the circumstance of his son adopting that of _messire_." Crebillon had then ended by cradling himself in a sort of imaginary nobility. In 1761, we find him writing to the President de Brosse: "I have ever taken so little thought respecting my own origin, that I have neglected certain very flattering elucidations on this point. M. de Ricard, máitre des comptes at Dijon, gave my father one day two titles he had found. Of these two titles, written in very indifferent Latin, the first concerned one Jolyot, chamberlain of Raoul, Duke of Burgundy; the second, a certain Jolyot, chamberlain of Philippe le Bon. Both of these titles are lost. I can also remember having heard it said in my youth by some old inhabitants of Nuits, my father's native place, that there formerly existed in those cantons a certain very powerful and noble family, named Jolyot." O vanity of vanities! would it be believed that, under the democratic reign of the Encyclopoedia, a man like Crebillon, ennobled by his own talents and genius, could have thus hugged himself in the possession of a vain and deceitful chimera! For truth compels us to own that, from the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, the Jolyots were never any thing more or less than honest innkeepers, who sold their wine unadulterated, as it was procured from the black or golden grapes of the Burgundy hills. Meanwhile Crebillon, finding that his titles of nobility were uncontested, pushed his aristocratic weakness so far as to affirm one day that his family bore on its shield an eagle, or, on a field, azure, holding in its beak a lily, proper, leaved and sustained, argent. All went, however, according to his wishes; his son allied himself by an unexpected marriage to one of the first families of England. The old tragic poet could then pass into the other world with the consoling reflection that he left behind him here below a name not only honored in the world of letters, but inscribed also in the golden muster-roll of the French nobility. But unfortunately for poor Crebillon's family tree, about a century after the creation of this mushroom nobility--which, like the majority of the nobilities of the eighteenth century, had its foundation in the sand--a certain officious antiquary, who happened at the time to have nothing better to do, bethought himself one day of inquiring into the validity of his claim. He devoted to this strange occupation several years of precious time. By dint of shaking the dust from off the archives of Dijon and Nuits, and of rummaging the minutes of the notaries of the department, he succeeded at length in ferreting out the genealogical tree of the Jolyot family. Some, the most glorious of its members, had been notaries, others had been innkeepers. Shade of Crebillon, pardon this impious archæologist, who thus, with ruthless hands, destroyed "at one fell swoop" the brilliant scaffolding of your vanity! Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon was born at Dijon, on the 13th of February, 1674; like Corneille, Bossuet, and Voltaire, he studied at the Jesuits' college of his native town. It is well known that in all their seminaries, the Jesuits kept secret registers, wherein they inscribed, under the name of each pupil, certain notes in Latin upon his intellect and character. It was the Abbé d'Olivet who, it is said, inscribed the note referring to Crebillon:--"_Puer ingeniosus sed insignis nebulo._" But it must be said that the collegiate establishments of the holy brotherhood housed certain pedagogues, who abused their right of pronouncing judgment on the scholars. Crebillon, after all, was but a lively, frolicksome child, free and unreserved to excess in manners and speech. His father, notary and later _greffier en chef_ of the "Chambre des Comptes" at Dijon, being above all things desirous that his family should become distinguished in the magistracy, destined his son to the law, saying that the best heritage he could leave him was his own example. Crebillon resigned himself to his father's wishes with a very good grace, and repaired to Paris, there to keep his terms. In the capital, he divided his time between study and the pleasures and amusements natural to his age. As soon as he was admitted as advocate, he entered the chambers of a procureur named Prieur, son of the Prieur celebrated by Scarron, an intimate friend of his father, who greeted him fraternally. One would have supposed that our future poet, who bore audacity on his countenance, and genius on his brow, would, like Achilles, have recognized his sex when they showed him arms; but far from this being the case, not only was it necessary to warn him that he _was_ a poet, but even to impel him bodily, as it were, and despite himself, into the arena. The writers and poets of France have ever railed in good set terms against procureurs, advocates, and all such common-place, every-day personages; and in general, we are bound to confess they have had right on their side. We must, however, render justice to one of them, the only one, perhaps, who ever showed a taste for poetry. The worthy man to whom, fortunately for himself, Crebillon had been confided, remarked at an early stage of their acquaintanceship, the romantic disposition of his pupil. Of the same country as Piron and Rameau, Crebillon possessed, like them, the same frank gayety and good-tempered heedlessness of character, which betrayed his Burgundian origin. Having at an early age inhaled the intoxicating perfumes of the Burgundian wines, his first essays in poetry were, as might be expected, certain _chansons à boire_, none of which, however, have descended to posterity. The worthy procureur, amazed at the degree of power shown even in these slight drinking-songs, earnestly advised him to become a poet by profession. Crebillon was then twenty-seven years of age; he resisted, alleging that he did not believe he possessed the true creative genius; that every poet is in some sort a species of deity, holding chaos in one hand, and light and life in the other; and that, for his part, he possessed but a bad pen, destined to defend bad causes in worse style. But the procureur was not to be convinced; he had discovered that a spark of the creative fire already shone in the breast of Crebillon. "Do not deny yourself becoming a poet," he would frequently say to him; "it is written upon your brow; your looks have told me so a thousand times. There is but one man in all France capable of taking up the mantle of Racine, and that man is yourself." Crebillon exclaimed against this opinion; but having been left alone for a few hours to transcribe a parliamentary petition, he recalled to mind the magic of the stage--the scenery, the speeches, the applause; a moment of inspiration seized him. When the procureur returned, his pupil extended his hand to him, exclaiming, enthusiastically, "You have pointed out the way for me, and I shall depart." "Do not be in a hurry," replied the procureur; "a _chef d'oeuvre_ is not made in a week. Remain quietly where you are, as if you were still a procureur's clerk; eat my bread and drink my wine; when you have completed your work, you may then take your flight." Crebillon accordingly remained in the procureur's office, and at the very desk on which he transcribed petitions, he composed the five long acts of a barbarous tragedy, entitled, "The Death of Brutus." The work finished, our good-natured procureur brought all his interest into play, in order to obtain a reading of the piece at the Comedie Française. After many applications, Crebillon was permitted to read his play: it was unanimously rejected. The poet was furious; he returned home to the procureur's, and casting down his manuscript at the good man's feet, exclaimed, in a voice of despair, "You have dishonored me!" D'Alembert says, "Crebillon's fury burst upon the procureur's head; he regarded him almost in the light of an enemy who had advised him only for his own dishonor, swore to listen to him no more, and never to write another line of verse so long as he lived." Crebillon, however, in his rage maligned the worthy procureur; he would not have found elsewhere so hospitable a roof or as true a friend. He returned to the study of the law, but the decisive step had been taken; beneath the advocate's gown the poet had already peeped forth. And then, the procureur was never tired of predicting future triumphs. Crebillon ventured upon another tragedy, and chose for his subject the story of the Cretan king, Idomeneus. This time the comedians accepted his piece, and shortly afterwards played it. Its success was doubtful, but the author fancied he had received sufficient encouragement to continue his new career. In his next piece, "Atrée," Crebillon, who had commenced as a school-boy, now raised himself, as it were, to the dignity of a master. The comedians learned their parts with enthusiasm. On the morning of the first representation, the procureur summoned the young poet to his bedside, for he was then stricken with a mortal disease: "My friend," said he, "I have a presentiment that this very evening you will be greeted by the critics of the nation as a son of the great Corneille. There are but a few days of life remaining for me; I have no longer strength to walk, but be assured that I shall be at my post this evening, in the pit of the Théâtre Française." True to his word, the good old man had himself carried to the theatre. The intelligent judges applauded certain passages of the tragedy, in which wonderful power, as well as many startling beauties, were perceptible; but at the catastrophe, when Atreus compels Thyestes to drink the blood of his son, there was a general exclamation of horror--(Gabrielle de Vergy, be it remarked, had not then eaten on the stage the heart of her lover). "The procureur," says D'Alembert, "would have left the theatre in sorrow, if he had awaited the judgment of the audience in order to fix his own. The pit appeared more terrified than interested; it beheld the curtain fall without uttering a sound either of approval or condemnation, and dispersed in that solemn and ominous silence which bodes no good for the future welfare of the piece. But the procureur judged better than the public, or rather, he anticipated its future judgment. The play over, he proceeded to the green-room to seek his pupil, who, still in a state of the greatest uncertainty as to his fate, was already almost resigned to a failure; he embraced Crebillon in a transport of admiration: 'I die content,' said he. 'I have made you a poet; and I leave a man to the nation!'" And, in fact, at each representation of the piece, the public discovered fresh beauties, and abandoned itself with real pleasure to the terror which the poet inspired. A few days afterwards, the name of Crebillon became celebrated throughout Paris and the provinces, and all imagined that the spirit of the great Corneille had indeed revisited earth to animate the muse of the young Burgundian. Crebillon's father was greatly irritated on finding that his son had, as they said then, abandoned Themis for Melpomene. In vain did the procureur plead his pupil's cause--in vain did Crebillon address to this true father a supplication in verse, to obtain pardon for him from his sire; the _greffier en chef_ of Dijon was inexorable; to his son's entreaties he replied that he cursed him, and that he was about to make a new will. To complete, as it were, his downfall in the good opinion of this individual, who possessed such a blind infatuation for the law, Crebillon wrote him a letter, in which the following passage occurs: "I am about to get married, if you have no objection, to the most beautiful girl in Paris; you may believe me, sir, upon this point, for her beauty is all that she possesses." To this his father replied: "Sir, your tragedies are not to my taste, your children will not be mine; commit as many follies as you please, I shall console myself with the reflection that I refused my consent to your marriage; and I would strongly advise you, sir, to depend more than ever on your pieces for support, for you are no longer a member of my family." Crebillon, for all that, married, as he said, the most beautiful girl in Paris--the gentle and charming Charlotte Peaget, of whom Dufresny has spoken. She was the daughter of an apothecary, and it was while frequenting her father's shop that Crebillon became acquainted with her. There was nothing very romantic, it is true, in the match; but love spreads a charm over all that it comes in contact with. Thus, a short time before his marriage, Crebillon perceived his intended giving out some marshmallow and violets to a sick customer: "My dear Charlotte," said he, "we will go together, some of these days, among our Dijonnaise mountains, to collect violets and marshmallows for your father." It was shortly after his marriage and removal to the Place Maubert, that he first evinced his strange mania for cats and dogs, and, above all, his singular passion for tobacco. He was, beyond contradiction, the greatest smoker of his day. It has been stated by some of the writers of the time, that he could not turn a single rhyme of a tragedy, save in an obscure and smoky chamber, surrounded by a noisy pack of dogs and cats; according to the same authorities, he would very frequently, also, in the middle of the day, close the shutters, and light candles. A thousand other extravagances have been attributed to Crebillon; but we ought to accept with caution the recitals of these anecdote-mongers, who were far too apt to imagine they were portraying a man, when in reality they were but drawing a ridiculous caricature. When M. Melchior Jolyot learned that his son had, in defiance of his paternal prohibition, actually wedded the apothecary's daughter, his grief and rage knew no bounds. The worthy man believed in his recent nobility as firmly as he did in his religion, and his son's _mesalliance_ nearly drove him to despair: this time he actually carried his threat into execution, and made a formal will, by virtue of which he completely disinherited the poet.--Fortunately for Crebillon, his father, before bidding adieu to the world and his nobility, undertook a journey to Paris, curious, even in the midst of his rage, to judge for himself the merits and demerits of the theatrical tomfooleries, as he called them, of his silly boy, who had married the apothecary's daughter, and who, in place of gaining nobility and station in a procureur's office, had written a parcel of trash for actors to spout. We must say, however, that Crebillon could not have retained a better counsel to urge his claims before the paternal tribunal than his wife, the much maligned apothecary's daughter, one of the loveliest and most amiable women in Paris; and we may add, that this nobility of which his father thought so much--the nobility of the robe--which had not been acquired in a Dijonnaise family until after the lapse of three generations, was scarcely equal to the nobility of the pen, which Crebillon had acquired by the exercise of his own talents. The old greffier, then, came to Paris for the purpose of witnessing one of the sad tomfooleries of that unhappy profligate, who in better times had been his son. Fate so willed it that on that night "Atrée" should be performed. The old man was seized with mingled emotions of terror, grief, and admiration. That very evening, being resolved not to rest until he had seen his son, he called a coach on leaving the theatre, and drove straight to the Faubourg Saint Marceau, to the house which had been pointed out to him as the dwelling of Crebillon. No sooner had the doors opened than out rushed seven or eight dogs, who cast themselves upon the old greffier, uttering in every species of canine _patois_ the loudest possible demonstrations of welcome. One word from Madame Crebillon, however, was sufficient to recall this unruly pack to order; yet the dogs, having no doubt instinctively discovered a family likeness, continued to gambol round the limbs of M. Melchior Jolyot, to the latter's no small confusion and alarm. Charlotte, who was alone, waiting supper for her husband, was much surprised at this unexpected visit. At first she imagined that it was some great personage who had come to offer the poet his patronage and protection; but after looking at her visitor two or three times, she suddenly exclaimed: "You are my husband's father, or at least you are one of the Jolyot family." The old greffier, though intending to have maintained his incognito until his son's return, could no longer resist the desire of abandoning himself to the delights of a reconciliation; he embraced his daughter-in-law tenderly, shedding tears of joy, and accusing himself all the while for his previous unnatural harshness: "Yes, yes," cried he, "yes, you are still my children--all that I have is yours!" then, after a moment's silence, he continued, in a tone of sadness: "But how does it happen that, with his great success, my son has condemned his wife to such a home and such a supper?" "Condemned, did you say?" murmured Charlotte; "do not deceive yourself, we are quite happy here;" so saying she took her father-in-law by the hand, and led him into the adjoining room, to a cradle covered with white curtains. "Look!" said she, turning back the curtains with maternal solicitude. The old man's heart melted outright at the sight of his grandchild. "Are we not happy?" continued the mother. "What more do we require? We live on a little, and when we have no money, my father assists us." They returned to the sitting-room. "What wine is this?" said the old Burgundian, uncorking the bottle intended to form part of their frugal repast. "What!" he exclaimed, "my son fallen so low as this! The Crebillons have always drunk good wine." At this instant, the dogs set up a tremendous barking: Crebillon was ascending the stairs. A few moments afterwards he entered the room escorted by a couple of dogs, which had followed him from the theatre. "What! two more!" exclaimed the father; "this is really too much. Son," he continued, "I am come to entreat your pardon; in my anxiety to show myself your father, I had forgotten that my first duty was to love you." Crebillon cast himself into his father's arms. "But _parbleu_, Monsieur," continued the old notary, "I cannot forgive you for having so many dogs." "You are right, father; but what would become of these poor animals were I not to take compassion upon them? It is not good for man to be alone, says the Scripture. No longer able to live with my fellow-creatures, I have surrounded myself with dogs. The dog is the solace and friend of the solitary man." "But I should imagine you were not alone here," said the father, with a glance towards Charlotte, and the infant's cradle. "Who knows?" said the young wife, with an expression of touching melancholy in her voice. "It is perhaps through a presentiment that he speaks thus. I much fear that I shall not live long. He has but one friend upon the earth, and that friend is myself. Now, when I shall be no more----" "But you shall not die," interrupted Crebillon, taking her in his arms. "Could I exist without you?" Madame Crebillon was not deceived in her presentiments: the poet, who, we know, lived to a patriarchal age, lived on in widowed solitude for upwards of fifty years. Crebillon and his wife accompanied the old greffier back from Paris to Dijon, where, to the great surprise of the inhabitants, the father presented his son as "M. Jolyot de Crebillon, who has succeeded Messieurs Corneille and Racine in the honors of the French stage." Crebillon had the greatest possible difficulty in restraining the enthusiasm of his sire. He succeeded, however, at length, not through remonstrance, but by the insatiable ardor he displayed in diving into the paternal money-bags. After a sojourn of three months at Dijon, Crebillon returned to Paris; and well for him it was that he did so; a month longer, and the father would indubitably have quarrelled with him again, and would have remade his will, disinheriting this time, not the rebellious child, but the prodigal son. Crebillon, in fact, never possessed the art of keeping his money; and in this respect he but followed the example of all those who, in imagination, remove mountains of gold. Scarcely had he arrived in Paris when he was obliged to return to Dijon. The old greffier had died suddenly. The inheritance was a most difficult one to unravel. "I have come here," writes Crebillon to the elder of the brothers Pâris, "only to inherit law-suits." And, true enough, he allowed himself to be drawn blindly into the various suits which arose in consequence of certain informalities in the old man's will, and which eventually caused almost the entire property to drop, bit by bit, into the pockets of the lawyers. "I was a great blockhead," wrote Crebillon later; "I went about reciting passages from my tragedies to these lawyers, who feigned to pale with admiration; and this manoeuvre of theirs blinded me; I perceived not that all the while these cunning foxes were devouring my substance; but it is the fate of poets to be ever like La Fontaine's crow." Out of this property he succeeded only in preserving the little fief of Crebillon, the income derived from which he gave up to his sisters. On his return to Paris, however, he changed altogether his style of living; he removed his penates to the neighborhood of the Luxembourg, and placed his establishment on quite a seignorial footing, as if he had become heir to a considerable property. This act of folly can scarcely be explained. The report, of course, was spread, that he had inherited property to a large amount. Most probably he wished, by acting thus, to save the family honor, or, to speak more correctly, the family vanity, by seeking to deceive the world as to the precise amount of the Jolyot estate. True wisdom inhabits not the world in which we dwell. Crebillon sought all the superfluities of luxury. In vain did his wife endeavor to restrain him in his extravagances; in vain did she recal to his mind their frugal but happy meals, and the homely furniture of their little dwelling in the Place Maubert; "_so gay for all that on sunny days_." "Well," he would reply, "if we must return there, I shall not complain. What matters if the wine be not so good, so that it is always your hand which pours it out." Fortunately, that year was one of successive triumphs for Crebillon. The "Electre" carried off all suffrages, and astonished even criticism itself. In this piece the poet had softened down the harshness of his tints, and while still maintaining his "majestic" character, had kept closer to nature and humanity. "Electre" was followed by "Rhadamiste," which was at the time extolled as a perfect _chef-d'oeuvre_ of style and vigor. There is in this play, if we may be allowed the term, a certain rude nobility of expression, which is the true characteristic of Crebillon's genius. It was this tragedy which inspired Voltaire with the idea, that on the stage it is better to strike hard than true. The enthusiastic auditory admitted, that if Racine could paint love, Crebillon could depict hatred. Boileau, who was then dying, and who, could he have had his wish, would have desired that French literature might stop at his name, exclaimed, that this success was scandalous. "I have lived too long!" cried the old poet, in a violent rage. "To what a pack of Visigoths have I left the French stage a prey! The Pradons, whom we so often ridiculed, were eagles compared to these fellows." Boileau resembled in some respect old "Nestor" of the _Iliad_, when he said to the Greek kings--"I would advise you to listen to me, for I have formerly mixed with men who were your betters." The public, however, amply avenged Crebillon for the bitter judgment of Boileau; in eight days two editions of the "Rhadamiste" were exhausted. And this was not all: the piece having been played by command of the Regent before the court at Versailles, was applauded to the echo. Despite these successes, Crebillon was not long in getting to the bottom of his purse. In the hope of deferring as long as he possibly could the evil hour when he should be obliged to return to his former humble style of living, he used every possible means to replenish his almost exhausted exchequer. He borrowed three thousand crowns from Baron Hoguer, who was the resource of literary men in the days of the Regency; and sold to a Jew usurer his author's rights upon a tragedy which was yet to be written. He had counted upon the success of "Xerxes;" but this tragedy proved an utter failure. Crebillon, however, was a man of strong mind. He returned home that evening with a calm, and even smiling countenance: "Well," eagerly exclaimed Madame Crebillon, who had been awaiting in anxiety the return of her husband. "Well," replied he, "they have damned my play; to-morrow we will return to our old habits again." And, true to his word, on the following morning Crebillon returned to the Place Maubert, where he hired a little apartment near his father-in-law, who could still offer our poet and his wife, when hard pressed, a glass of his _vin ordinaire_ and a share of his dinner. Out of all his rich furniture Crebillon selected but a dozen cats and dogs, whom he chose as the companions of his exile. To quote d'Alembert's words--"Like Alcibiades, in former days, he passed from Persian luxury to Spartan austerity, and, what in all probability Alcibiades was not, he was happier in the second state than he had been in the first." His wife was in retirement what she had been in the world. She never complained. Perhaps even she showed herself in a more charming light, as the kind and devoted companion of the hissed and penniless poet, than as the admired wife of the popular dramatist. Poor Madame Crebillon hid their poverty from her husband with touching delicacy; he almost fancied himself rich, such a magic charm did she contrive to cast over their humble dwelling. Like Midas, she appeared to possess the gift of changing whatever she touched into gold, that is to say, of giving life and light by her winning grace to every thing with which she came in contact. Blessed, thrice blessed is that man, be he poet or philosopher, who, like Crebillon, has felt and understood that amiability and a contented mind are in a wife treasures inexhaustible, compared to which mere mundane wealth fades into utter insignificance. No word of complaint or peevish expression ever passed Madame Crebillon's lips; she was proud of her poet's glory, and endeavored always to sustain him in his independent ideas; she would listen resignedly to all his dreams of future triumphs, and knew how to cast herself into his arms when he would declare that he desired nothing more from mankind. One day, however, when there was no money in the house, on seeing him return with a dog under each arm, she ventured on a quiet remonstrance. "Take care, Monsieur de Crebillon," she said, with a smile, "we have already eight dogs and fifteen cats." "Well, I know that," replied Crebillon; "but see how piteously these poor dogs look at us; could I leave them to die of hunger in the street?" "But did it not strike you that they might possibly die of hunger here? I can fully understand and enter into your feelings of love and pity for these poor animals, but we must not convert the house into a hospital for foundling dogs." "Why despair?" said Crebillon. "Providence never abandons genius and virtue. The report goes that I am to be of the Academy." "I do not believe it," said Madame Crebillon. "Fontenelle and La Motte, who are but _beaux esprits_, will never permit a man like you to seat himself beside them, for if you were of the Academy, would you not be the king of it?" Crebillon, however, began his canvass, but as his wife had foreseen, Fontenelle and La Motte succeeded in having him black-balled. All these little literary thorns, however, only imparted greater charms to the calm felicity of Crebillon's domestic hearth; but we must now open the saddest page of our poet's hitherto peaceful and happy existence. One evening, on his return from the Café Procope, the resort of all the wits and _litterateurs_ of the eighteenth century, Crebillon found his wife in a state of great agitation, half-undressed, and pressing their sleeping infant to her bosom. "Why, Charlotte, what is the matter?" he exclaimed. "I am afraid," replied she, trembling, and looking towards the bed. "What folly! you are like the children, you are frightened at shadows." "Yes, I am frightened at shadows; just now, as I was undressing, I saw a spectre glide along at the foot of the bed. I was ready to sink to the earth with terror, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I could muster strength enough to reach the child's cradle." "Child yourself," said Crebillon, playfully; "you merely saw the shadow of the bed-curtains." "No, no," cried the young wife, seizing the poet's hand--"it was Death! I recognized him; for it is not the first time that he has shown himself to me. Ah! _mon ami_, with what grief and terror shall I prepare to lie down in the cold earth! If you love me as I love you, do not leave me for an instant; help me to die, for if you are by my side at that hour, I shall fancy I am but dropping asleep." Greatly shocked at what he heard, Crebillon took his child in his arms, and carried it back to its cradle. He returned to his wife, pressed her to his bosom, and sought vainly for words to relieve her apprehensions, and to lead back her thoughts into less sombre channels. He at length succeeded, but not without great difficulty, in persuading her to retire to rest; she scarcely closed an eye. Poor Crebillon sat in silence by the bedside of his wife praying fervently in his heart; for perhaps he believed in omens and presentiments even to a greater degree than did Charlotte. Finding, at length, that she had dropped asleep, he got into bed himself. When he awoke in the morning, he beheld Charlotte bending over him in a half-raised posture, as though she had been attentively regarding him as he slept. Terrified at the deadly paleness of her cheeks, and the unnatural brilliancy of her eyes, and sensitive and tender-hearted as a child, he was unable to restrain his tears. She cast herself passionately into his arms, and covered his cheeks with tears and kisses. "'Tis all over now," she whispered, in a broken voice; "my heart beats too strongly to beat much longer, but I die contented and happy, for I see by your tears that you will not forget me." Crebillon rose hastily and ran to his father-in-law. "Alas!" said the poor apothecary, "her mother, who was as beautiful and as good as she, died young of a disease of the heart, and her child will go the same way." All the most celebrated physicians of the day were called in, but before they could determine upon a method of treatment, the spirit of poor Charlotte had taken flight from its earthly tabernacle. Crebillon, inconsolable at his loss, feared not the ridicule (for in the eighteenth century all such exhibitions of feeling were considered highly ridiculous) of lamenting his wife; he wept her loss during half a century--in other words, to his last hour. During the space of two years he scarcely appeared once at the Théâtre Française. He had the air of a man of another age, so completely a stranger did he seem to all that was going on around him. One might say that he still lived with his divine Charlotte; he would speak to her unceasingly, as if her gentle presence was still making the wilderness of his solitary dwelling blossom like the rose. After fifteen years of mourning, some friends one day surprised him in his solitude, speaking aloud to his dear Charlotte, relating to her his projects for the future, and recalling their past days of happiness: "Ah, Charlotte," he exclaimed, "they all tell me of my glory, yet I think but of thee!" The friends of Crebillon, uneasy respecting his future destiny, had advised him during the preceding year to present himself at court, where he was received and recognized as a man of genius. In the early days of his widowhood, he quitted Paris suddenly and took up his residence at Versailles. But at Versailles he lived as he had done in Paris, immured in his chamber, and entirely engrossed with his own sombre and lugubrious thoughts and visions; in consequence of this, he was scarcely noticed; the king seeing before him a species of Danubian peasant, proud of his genius and his poverty, treated him with an almost disdainful coldness of manner. Crebillon did not at first comprehend his position at Versailles. He was a simple-minded philosopher, who had studied heroes and not men. At length, convinced that a poet at court is like a fish out of water, he returned to Paris to live more nobly with his heroes and his poverty. He retired to the Marais, to the Rue des Deux-Portes, taking with him only a bed, a table, two chairs, and an arm-chair, "in case," to use his own words, "an honest man should come to visit him." Irritated at the rebuff he had met with at Versailles, ashamed of having solicited in vain the justice of the king, he believed henceforth only in liberty. "Liberty," said he, "is the most vivid sentiment engraven on my heart." Unintentionally, perhaps, he avenged himself in the first work he undertook after this event: the tragedy of "Cromwell,"--"an altar," as he said, "which I erect to liberty." According to D'Alembert, he read to his friends some scenes of this play, in which our British aversion for absolutism was painted with wild and startling energy; in consequence thereof, he received an order forbidding him to continue his piece. His Cromwell was a villain certainly, but a villain which would have told well upon the stage, from the degree of grandeur and heroic dignity with which the author had invested the character. From that day he had enemies; but indeed it might be said that he had had enemies from the evening of the first representation of his "Electre." Success here below has no other retinue. Crebillon was now almost penniless. By degrees, without having foreseen such an occurrence, he began to hear his numerous creditors buzzing around him like a swarm of hornets. Not having any thing else to seize, they seized at the theatre his author's rights. The affair was brought before the courts, and led to a decree of parliament which ordained that the works of the intellect were not seizable, consequently Crebillon retained the income arising from the performance of his tragedies. Some years now passed away without bringing any fresh successes. Compelled by the court party to discontinue "Cromwell," he gave "Semiramis," which, like "Xerxes," some time previously, was a failure. Under the impression that the public could not bring itself to relish "sombre horrors of human tempests," he sought to arm himself as it were against his own nature, to subdue and soften it. The tragedy of "Pyrrhus," which recalled the tender colors of Racine, cost him five years' labor. At that time, so strong in France was the empire of habit, that this tragedy, though utterly valueless as a work of art, and wanting both in style, relief, and expression, was received with enthusiasm. But Crebillon possessed too much good sense to be blinded by this spurious triumph. "It is," said he, when speaking of his work, "but the shadow of a tragedy." "Pyrrhus" obtained, after all, but a transitory success. After a brief period, the public began to discover that it was a foreign plant, which under a new sky gave out but a factitious brilliancy. In despair at having wasted so much precious time in fruitless labor, and disgusted besides at the conduct of some shameless intriguers who frequented the literary cafés of the capital, singing his defeat in trashy verse, Crebillon now retired almost wholly from the world. He would visit the theatre, however, occasionally to chat with a few friends over the literary topics of the day; but at length even this recreation was abandoned, and he was seen in the world no more. He lived now without any other friends than his heroes and his cats and dogs, devouring the novels of La Calprenède, and relating long-winded romances to himself. His son affirms having seen fifteen dogs and as many cats barking and mewing at one time round his father, who would speak to them much more tenderly than he would to himself. According to Freron's account, Crebillon would pick up and carry home under his cloak all the wandering dogs he met with in the street, and give them shelter and hospitality. But in return for this, he would require from them an aptitude for certain exercises; when, at the termination of the prescribed period, the pupil was convicted of not having profited by the education he had received, the poet would take him under his cloak again, put him down at the corner of a street and fly from the spot with tears in his eyes. On the death of La Motte, Crebillon was at length admitted into the Academy. As he was always an eccentric man, he wrote his "Discourse" of reception in verse, a thing which had never been done before. On pronouncing this line, which has not yet been forgotten-- Aucun fiel n'a jamais empoisonné ma plume-- he was enthusiastically applauded. From that day, but from that day only, Crebillon was recognized by his countrymen as a man of honor and virtue, as well as genius. It was rather late in the day, however; he had lost his wife, his son was mixing in the fashionable world, he was completely alone, and almost forgotten, expecting nothing more from the fickle public. More idle than a lazzarone, he passed years without writing a single line, though his ever-active imagination would still produce, mentally, tragedy after tragedy. As he possessed a wonderful memory, he would compose and rhyme off-hand the entire five acts of a piece without having occasion to put pen to paper. One evening, under the impression that he had produced a masterpiece, he invited certain of his brother Academicians to his house to hear his new play. When the party had assembled, he commenced, and declaimed the entire tragedy from beginning to end without stopping. Judging by the ominous silence with which the conclusion was received, that his audience was not over delighted with his play, he exclaimed, in a pet-- "You see, my friends, I was right in not putting my tragedy on paper." "Why so?" asked Godoyn. "Because, I should have had the trouble of throwing it into the fire. Now, I shall merely have to forget it, which is easier done." When Crebillon seemed no longer formidable in the literary world, and all were agreed he was in the decline of his genius, the very men who had previously denied his power, now thought fit to combat Voltaire by exalting Crebillon, in the same way as they afterwards exalted Voltaire so soon as another star appeared on the literary horizon. "With the intention of humbling the pride of Voltaire, they proceeded," says a writer of the time, "to seek out in his lonely retreat the now aged and forsaken Crebillon, who, mute and solitary for the last thirty years, was no longer a formidable enemy for them, but whom they flattered themselves they could oppose as a species of phantom to the illustrious writer by whom they were eclipsed; just as, in former days, the Leaguers drew an old cardinal from out the obscurity in which he lived, to give him the empty title of king, only that they themselves might reign under his name." The literary world was then divided into two adverse parties--the Crebillonists, and the Voltairians. The first, being masters of all the avenues, succeeded for a length of time in blinding the public. Voltaire passed for a mere wit; Crebillon, for the sole heir of the sceptre of Corneille and Racine. It was this clique which invented the formula ever afterwards employed in the designation of these three poets--Corneille the great, Racine the tender, and Crebillon the tragic. One great advantage Crebillon possessed over Voltaire: he had written nothing for the last thirty years. His friends, or rather Voltaire's enemies, now began to give out that the author of "Rhadamiste" was engaged in putting the finishing hand to a tragedy, a veritable dramatic wonder, by name "Catilina." Madame de Pompadour herself, tired of Voltaire's importunate ambition, now went over with her forces to the camp of the Crebillonists. She received Crebillon at court, and recommended him to the particular care of Louis XV., who conferred a pension on him, and also appointed him to the office of censor royal. "Catilina" was at length produced with great _éclat_. The court party, which was present in force at the first performance, doubtless contributed in a great measure to the success of the piece. The old poet, thus encouraged, set to work on a new play, the "Triumvirat," with fresh ardor; but as was Voltaire's lot in after years, it was soon perceptible that the poet was but the shadow of what he had been. Out of respect, however, for Crebillon's eighty-eight years, the tragedy was applauded, but in a few days the "Triumvirat" was played to empty benches. Crebillon had now but one thing left to do: to die, which, in fact, he did in the year 1762. It cannot be denied that Crebillon was one of the remarkable men of his century. That untutored genius, so striking in the boldness and brilliancy of its creations, but which more frequently repels through its own native barbarity, was eminently the genius of Crebillon. But what, above all, characterizes the genius of the French nation--wit, grace, and polish--Crebillon never possessed; consequently, with all his vigor and all his force, he never succeeded in creating a living work. He has depicted human perversity with a proud and daring hand--he has shown the fratricide, the infanticide, the parricide, but he never succeeded in attaining the sublimity of the Greek drama. And yet J. J. Rousseau affirmed that of all the French tragic poets, Crebillon alone had recalled to him the grandeur of the Greeks. If so, it was only through the nudity of terror, for the "French �schylus" was utterly wanting in what may be termed human and philosophical sentiment. There is a very beautiful portrait of Crebillon extant, by Latour. It would doubtless be supposed that the man, so terrible in his dramatic furies, was of a dark and sombre appearance. Far from it; Crebillon was of a fair complexion, and had an artless expression of countenance, and a pair of beautiful blue eyes. It must, however, be confessed, that by his method of borrowing the gestures of his heroes, coupled, moreover, with the habit he had acquired of contracting his eyebrows in the fervor of composition, Crebillon in the end became a little more the man of his works. He was, moreover, impatient and irritable, even with his favorite dogs and cats, and occasionally with his sweet-tempered and angelic wife, the ever cheerful partner alike of his joys and sorrows, who had so nobly resigned herself to the chances and changes of his good and ill-fortune; that loving companion of his hours of profusion and gaiety, when he aped the _grand seigneur_, as well as the devoted sharer of those days of poverty and neglect, when he retired from the world in disgust, to the old dwelling-house of the Place Maubert. HABITS OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. The principal part of the life of this great monarch was spent in camp, and in a constant struggle with a host of enemies. Yet even then, when the busy day scarcely afforded a vacant moment, that moment, if it came, was sure to be given to study. Let the young shopocracy of Glasgow never forget that Frederic had _very early_ formed an attachment to reading, which neither the opposition of his father--who thought that the scholar would spoil the soldier--nor the schemes of ambition and conquest, which occupied him so much in after life, were able to destroy or weaken. When at last, therefore, he felt himself at liberty to sheathe the sword, he gave himself up to the cultivation and patronage of literature and the arts of peace, as eagerly as he had ever done to the pursuit of military renown. Even before his accession to the throne, and while yet but a young man, he had established in his residence at Rheimsberg nearly the same system of studious application and economy in the management of his time to which he ever afterwards continued to adhere. His relaxations even then were almost entirely of an intellectual character; and he had collected around him a circle of literary associates, with whom it was his highest enjoyment to spend his hours in philosophic conversation, or in amusements not unfitted to adorn a life of philosophy. In a letter written to one of his friends, he says--"I become every day more covetous of my time; I render an account of it to myself, and lose none of it but with great regret. My mind is entirely turned toward philosophy; it has rendered me admirable services, and I am greatly indebted to it. I find myself happy, abundantly more tranquil than formerly; my soul is less subject to violent agitations; and I do nothing till I have considered what course of action I ought to adopt." Let young men contrast such conduct with the frivolities of other noble and royal persons, and be faithful to her whose ways are pleasantness, and whose paths are peace. I shall conclude this paper with a sketch of his doings for the ordinary four-and-twenty hours. Dr. Towers, who has written a history of his reign, informs us that it was his general custom to rise at five o'clock in the morning, and sometimes earlier. He commonly dressed his hair himself, and seldom employed more than two minutes for that purpose. His boots were put at the bedside, for he scarcely ever wore shoes. After he was dressed, the adjutant of the first battalion of his guards brought him a list of all the persons that had arrived at Potsdam, or departed from thence. When he had delivered his orders to this officer he retired into an inner cabinet, where he employed himself in private till seven o'clock. He then went into another apartment, where he drank coffee or chocolate, and here he found all the letters addressed to him from Potsdam and Berlin. Foreign letters were placed upon a separate table. After reading all these letters, he wrote hints or notes on the margin of those which his secretaries were to answer, and then returning into the inner cabinet carried with him such as he meant to write or dictate an answer to himself. Here he employed himself until nine o'clock. At ten the generals who were about his person attended. At eleven he mounted his horse and rode to the parade, when he reviewed and exercised his guards; and at the same hour, says Voltaire, all the colonels did the same throughout the provinces. He afterwards walked for some time in the garden with his generals. At one o'clock he sat down to dinner. He had no carver, but did the honors of the table like a private gentleman. His dinner-time did not much exceed an hour. He then retired into his private apartment, making low bows to his company. He remained in private till five o'clock, when his reader waited on him. His reading lasted about two hours, and this was succeeded by a concert upon the flute which lasted till nine. He supped at half-past nine with his favorite _literati_, and at twelve the king went to bed.--_Communication from David Vedder, in the Glasgow Citizen._ THE OLD MAN'S DEATH. A CHILD'S FIRST SIGHT OF SORROW. From "Recollections of our Neighborhood in the West."[6] BY ALICE CAREY. Change is the order of nature; the old makes way for the new; over the perished growth of last year brighten the blossoms of this. What changes are to be counted, even in a little noiseless life like mine! How many graves have grown green; how many locks have grown gray; how many, lately young, and strong in hope and courage, are faltering and fainting; how many hands that reached eagerly for the roses are drawn back bleeding and full of thorns; and, saddest of all, how many hearts are broken! I remember when I had no sad memory, when I first made room in my bosom for the consciousness of death. We have gained the world's cold wisdom now, We have learned to pause and fear; But where are the living founts whose flow Was a joy of heart to hear! I remember the twilight, as though it were yesterday--grey, and dim, and cold, for it was late in October, when the shadow first came over my heart, that no subsequent sunshine has ever swept entirely away. From the window of our cottage home, streamed a column of light, in which I sat stringing the red berries of the brier rose. I had heard of death, but regarded it only with that vague apprehension which I felt for the demons and witches that gather poison herbs under the new moon, in fairy forests, or strangle harmless travelers with wands of the willow, or with vines of the wild grape or ivy. I did not much like to think about them, and yet I felt safe from their influence. There might be people, somewhere, that would die some time; I did'nt know, but it would not be myself, or any one I knew. They were so well and so strong, so full of joyous hopes, how could their feet falter, and their smiles grow dim, and their fainting hands lay away their work, and fold themselves together! No, no--it was not a thing to be believed. Drifts of sunshine from that season of blissful ignorance often come back, as lightly As the winds of the May-time flow, And lift up the shadows brightly As the daffodil lifts the snow-- the shadows that have gathered with the years! It is pleasant to have them thus swept off--to find myself a child again--the crown of pale pain and sorrow that presses heavily now, unfelt, and the graves that lie lonesomely along my way, covered up with flowers--to feel my mother's dark locks fall upon my cheek, as she teaches me the lesson or the prayer--to see my father, now a sorrowful old man whose hair has thinned and whitened almost to the limit of three score years and ten, fresh and vigorous, strong for the race--and to see myself a little child, happy with a new hat and a pink ribbon, or even with the string of briar buds that I called coral. Now I tie it about my neck, and now around my forehead, and now twist it among my hair, as I have somewhere read great ladies do their pearls. The winds are blowing the last yellow leaves from the cherry tree--I know not why, but it makes me sad. I draw closer to the light of the window, and slyly peep within--all is quiet and cheerful; the logs on the hearth are ablaze; my father is mending a bridle-rein, which "Traveller," the favorite riding horse, snapt in two yesterday, when frightened at the elephant that (covered with a great white cloth), went by to be exhibited at the coming show,--my mother is hemming a ruffle, perhaps for me to wear to school next quarter--my brother is reading in a newspaper, I know not what, but I see, on one side, the picture of a bear: Let me listen--and flattening my cheek against the pane, I catch his words distinctly, for he reads loud and very clearly--it is an improbable story of a wild man who has recently been discovered in the woods of some far-away island--he seems to have been there a long time, for his nails are grown like claws, and his hair, in rough and matted strings, hangs to his knees; he makes a noise like something between the howl of a beast and a human cry, and, when pursued, runs with a nimbleness and swiftness that baffle the pursuers, though mounted on the fleetest of steeds, urged through brake and bush to their utmost speed. When first seen, he was sitting on the ground and cracking nuts with his teeth; his arms are corded with sinews that make it probable his strength is sufficient to strangle a dozen men; and yet on seeing human beings, he runs into the thick woods, lifting such a hideous scream, the while, as make his discoverers clasp their hands to their ears. It is suggested that this is not a solitary individual, become wild by isolation, but that a race exists, many of which are perhaps larger and of more terrible aspects; but whether they have any intelligible language, and whether they live in caverns of rocks or in trunks of hollow trees, remains for discovery by some future and more daring explorers. My brother puts down the paper and looks at the picture of the bear. "I would not read such foolish stories," says my father, as he holds the bridle up to the light, to see that it is nearly mended; my mother breaks the thread which gathers the ruffle; she is gentle and loving, and does not like to hear even implied reproof, but she says nothing; little Harry, who is playing on the floor, upsets his block-house, and my father, clapping his hands together, exclaims, "This is the house that Jack built!" and adds, patting Harry on the head, "Where is my little boy? this is not he, this is a little carpenter; you must make your houses stronger, little carpenter!" But Harry insists that he is the veritable little Harry, and no carpenter, and hides his tearful eyes in the lap of my mother, who assures him that he is her own little boy, and soothes his childish grief by buttoning on his neck the ruffle she has just completed; and off he scampers again, building a new house, the roof of which he makes very steep, and calls it grandfather's house, at which all laugh heartily. While listening to the story of the wild man I am half afraid, but now, as the joyous laughter rings out, I am ashamed of my fears, and skipping forth, I sit down on a green ridge which cuts the door-yard diagonally, and where, I am told, there was once a fence. Did the rose-bushes and lilacs and flags that are in the garden, ever grow here? I think--no, it must have been a long while ago, if indeed the fence were ever here, for I can't conceive the possibility of such change, and then I fall to arranging my string of brier-buds into letters that will spell some name, now my own, and now that of some one I love. A dull strip of cloud, from which the hues of pink and red and gold have but lately faded out, hangs low in the west; below is a long reach of withering woods--the gray sprays of the beech clinging thickly still, and the gorgeous maples shooting up here and there like sparks of fire among the darkly magnificent oaks and silvery columned sycamores--the gray and murmurous twilight gives way to darker shadows and a deeper hush. I hear, far away, the beating of quick hoof-strokes on the pavement; the horseman, I think to myself, is just coming down the hill through the thick woods beyond the bridge. I listen close, and presently a hollow rumbling sound indicates that I was right; and now I hear the strokes more faintly--he is climbing the hill that slopes directly away from me; but now again I hear distinctly--he has almost reached the hollow below me--the hollow that in summer is starry with dandelions and now is full of brown nettles and withered weeds--he will presently have passed--where can he be going, and what is his errand? I will rise up and watch. The cloud passes from the face of the moon, and the light streams full and broad on the horseman--he tightens his rein, and looks eagerly toward the house--surely I know him, the long red curls, streaming down his neck, and the straw hat, are not to be mistaken--it is Oliver Hillhouse, the miller, whom my grandfather, who lives in the steep-roofed house, has employed three years--longer than I can remember! He calls to me, and I laughingly bound forward, with an exclamation of delight, and put my arms about the slender neck of his horse, that is champing the bit and pawing the pavement, and I say, "Why do you not come in?" He smiles, but there is something ominous in his smile, as he hands me a folded paper, saying, "Give this to your mother;" and, gathering up his reins, he rides hurriedly forward. In a moment I am in the house, for my errand, "Here mother is a paper which Oliver Hillhouse gave me for you." Her hand trembles as she receives it, and waiting timidly near, I watch her as she reads; the tears come, and without speaking a word she hands it to my father. That night there came upon my soul the shadow of an awful fear; sorrowful moans and plaints disturbed my dreams that have never since been wholly forgot. How cold and spectral-like the moonlight streamed across my pillow; how dismal the chirping of the cricket in the hearth; and how more than dismal the winds among the naked boughs that creaked against my window. For the first time in my life I could not sleep, and I longed for the light of the morning. At last it came, whitening up the East, and the stars faded away, and there came a flush of crimson and purple fire, which was presently pushed aside by the golden disk of the sun. Daylight without, but within there was thick darkness still. I kept close about my mother, for in her presence I felt a shelter and protection that I found no where else. "Be a good girl till I come back," she said, stooping and kissing my forehead; "mother is going away to-day, your poor grandfather is very sick." "Let me go too," I said, clinging close to her hand. We were soon ready; little Harry pouted his lips and reached out his hands, and my father gave him his pocket-knife to play with; and the wind blowing the yellow curls over his eyes and forehead, he stood on the porch looking eagerly while my mother turned to see him again and again. We had before us a walk of perhaps two miles--northwardly along the turnpike nearly a mile, next, striking into a grass-grown road that crossed it, in an easternly direction nearly another mile, and then turning northwardly again, a narrow lane, bordered on each side by old and decaying cherry-trees, led us to the house, ancient fashioned, with high steep gables, narrow windows, and low, heavy chimneys of stone. In the rear was an old mill, with a plank sloping from the door-sill to the ground, by way of step, and a square open window in the gable, through which, with ropes and pulleys, the grain was drawn up. This mill was an especial object of terror to me, and it was only when my aunt Carry led me by the hand, and the cheerful smile of Oliver Hillhouse lighted up the dusky interior, that I could be persuaded to enter it. In truth it was a lonesome sort of place, with dark lofts and curious binns, and ladders leading from place to place; and there were cats creeping stealthily along the beams in wait for mice or swallows, if, as sometimes happened, the clay nest should be loosened from the rafter, and the whole tumble ruinously down. I used to wonder that aunt Carry was not afraid in the old place, with its eternal rumble, and its great dusty wheel moving slowly round and round, beneath the steady tread of the two sober horses that never gained a hair's breadth for their pains; but on the contrary, she seemed to like the mill, and never failed to show me through all its intricacies, on my visits. I have unraveled the mystery now, or rather, from the recollections I still retain, have apprehended what must have been clear to older eyes at the time. A forest of oak and walnut stretched along this extremity of the farm, and on either side of the improvements (as the house and barn and mill were called) shot out two dark forks, completely cutting off the view, save toward the unfrequented road to the south, which was traversed mostly by persons coming to the mill, for my grandfather made the flour for all the neighbourhood round about, besides making corn-meal for Johny-cakes, and "chops" for the cows. He was an old man now, with a tall, athletic frame, slightly bent, thin locks white as the snow, and deep blue eyes full of fire and intelligence, and after long years of uninterrupted health and useful labor, he was suddenly stricken down, with no prospect of recovery. "I hope he is better," said my mother, hearing the rumbling of the mill-wheel. She might have known my grandfather would permit no interruption of the usual business on account of his illness--the neighbors, he said, could not do without bread because he was sick, nor need they all be idle, waiting for him to die. When the time drew near, he would call them to take his farewell and his blessing, but till then let them sew and spin, and prepare dinner just as usual, so they would please him best. He was a stern man--even his kindness was uncompromising and unbending, and I remember of his making toward me no manifestation of fondness, such as grandchildren usually receive, save once, when he gave me a bright red apple, without speaking a word till my timid thanks brought out his "Save your thanks for something better." The apple gave me no pleasure, and I even slipt into the mill to escape from his cold, forbidding presence. Nevertheless, he was a good man, strictly honest, and upright in all his dealings, and respected, almost reverenced, by everybody. I remember once, when young Winters, the tenant of Deacon Granger's farm, who paid a great deal too much for his ground, as I have heard my father say, came to mill with some withered wheat, my grandfather filled up the sacks out of his own flour, while Tommy was in the house at dinner. That was a good deed, but Tommy Winters never suspected how his wheat happened to turn out so well. As we drew near the house, it seemed to me more lonesome and desolate than it ever looked before. I wished I had staid at home with little Harry. So eagerly I noted every thing, that I remember to this day, that near a trough of water, in the lane, stood a little surly looking cow, of a red color, and with a white line running along her back. I had gone with aunt Carry often when she went to milk her, but, to-day she seemed not to have been milked. Near her was a black and white heifer, with sharp short horns, and a square board tied over her eyes; two horses, one of them gray, and the other sorrel, with a short tail, were reaching their long necks into the garden, and browsing from the currant bushes. As we approached they trotted forward a little, and one of them, half playfully, half angrily, bit the other on the shoulder, after which they returned quietly to their cropping of the bushes, heedless of the voice that from across the field was calling to them. A flock of turkeys were sunning themselves about the door, for no one came to scare them away; some were black, and some speckled, some with heads erect and tails spread, and some nibbling the grass; and with a gabbling noise, and a staid and dignified march, they made way for us. The smoke arose from the chimney in blue, graceful curls, and drifted away to the woods; the dead morning-glory vines had partly fallen from the windows, but the hands that tended them were grown careless, and they were suffered to remain blackened and void of beauty, as they were. Under these, the white curtain was partly put aside, and my grandmother, with the speckled handkerchief pinned across her bosom, and her pale face, a shade paler than usual, was looking out, and seeing us she came forth, and in answer to my mother's look of inquiry, shook her head, and silently led the way in. The room we entered had some home-made carpet, about the size of a large table-cloth, spread in the middle of the floor, the remainder of which was scoured very white; the ceiling was of walnut wood, and the side walls were white-washed--a table, an old-fashioned desk, and some wooden chairs, comprised the furniture. On one of the chairs was a leather cushion; this was set to one side, my grandmother neither offering it to my mother, nor sitting in it herself, while, by way of composing herself, I suppose, she took off the black ribbon with which her cap was trimmed. This was a more simple process than the reader may fancy, the trimming, consisting merely of a ribbon, always black, which she tied around her head after the cap was on, forming a bow and two ends just above the forehead. Aunt Carry, who was of what is termed an even disposition, received us with her usual cheerful demeanor, and then, re-seating herself comfortably near the fire, resumed her work, the netting of some white fringe. I liked aunt Carry, for that she always took especial pains to entertain me, showing me her patchwork, taking me with her to the cowyard and dairy, as also to the mill, though in this last I fear she was a little selfish; however, that made no difference to me at the time, and I have always been sincerely grateful to her: children know more, and want more, and feel more, than people are apt to imagine. On this occasion she called me to her, and tried to teach me the mysteries of her netting, telling me I must get my father to buy me a little bureau, and then I could net fringe and make a nice cover for it. For a little time I thought I could, and arranged in my mind where it should be placed, and what should be put into it, and even went so far as to inquire how much fringe she thought would be necessary. I never attained to much proficiency in the netting of fringe, nor did I ever get the little bureau, and now it is quite reasonable to suppose I never shall. Presently my father and mother were shown into an adjoining room, the interior of which I felt an irrepressible desire to see, and by stealth I obtained a glimpse of it before the door closed behind them. There was a dull brown and yellow carpet on the floor, and near the bed, on which was a blue and white coverlid, stood a high backed wooden chair, over which hung a towel, and on the bottom of which stood a pitcher, of an unique pattern. I know not how I saw this, but I did, and perfectly remember it, notwithstanding my attention was in a moment completely absorbed by the sick man's face, which was turned towards the opening door, pale, livid, and ghastly. I trembled, and was transfixed; the rings beneath the eyes, which had always been deeply marked, were now almost black, and the blue eyes within looked glassy and cold, and terrible. The expression of agony on the lips (for his disease was one of a most painful nature) gave place to a sort of smile, and the hand, twisted among the gray locks, was withdrawn and extended to welcome my parents, as the door closed. That was a fearful moment; I was near the dark steep edges of the grave; I felt, for the first time, that I was mortal too, and I was afraid. Aunt Carry put away her work, and taking from a nail in the window-frame a brown muslin sun bonnet, which seemed to me of half a yard in depth, she tied it on my head, and then clapt her hands as she looked into my face, saying, "bopeep!" at which I half laughed and half cried, and making provision for herself in grandmother's bonnet, which hung on the opposite side of the window, and was similar to mine, except that it was perhaps a little larger, she took my hand and we proceeded to the mill. Oliver, who was very busy on our entrance, came forward, as aunt Carry said, by way of introduction, "A little visitor I've brought you," and arranged a seat on a bag of meal for us, and taking off his straw hat pushed the red curls from his low white forehead, and looked bewildered and anxious. "It's quite warm for the season," said aunt Carry, by way of breaking silence, I suppose. The young man said "yes," abstractedly, and then asked if the rumble of the mill were not a disturbance to the sick room, to which aunt Carry answered, "No, my father says it is his music." "A good old man," said Oliver, "he will not hear it much longer," and then, even more sadly, "every thing will be changed." Aunt Carry was silent, and he added, "I have been here a long time, and it will make me very sorry to go away, especially when such trouble is about you all." "Oh, Oliver," said aunt Carra, "you don't mean to go away?" "I see no alternative," he replied; "I shall have nothing to do; if I had gone a year ago it would have been better." "Why?" asked aunt Carry; but I think she understood why, and Oliver did not answer directly, but said, "Almost the last thing your father said to me was, that you should never marry any who had not a house and twenty acres of land; if he has not, he will exact that promise of you, and I cannot ask you not to make it, nor would you refuse him if I did; I might have owned that long ago, but for my sister (she had lost her reason) and my lame brother, whom I must educate to be a school-master, because he never can work, and my blind mother; but God forgive me! I must not and do not complain; you will forget me, before long, Carry, and some body who is richer and better, will be to you all I once hoped to be, and perhaps more." I did not understand the meaning of the conversation at the time, but I felt out of place some way, and so, going to another part of the mill, I watched the sifting of the flour through the snowy bolter, listening to the rumbling of the wheel. When I looked around I perceived that Oliver had taken my place on the meal bag, and that he had put his arm around the waist of aunt Carry in a way I did not much like. Great sorrow, like a storm, sweeps us aside from ordinary feelings, and we give our hearts into kindly hands--so cold and hollow and meaningless seem the formulæ of the world. They had probably never spoken of love before, and now talked of it as calmly as they would have talked of any thing else; but they felt that hope was hopeless; at best, any union was deferred, perhaps, for long years; the future was full of uncertainties. At last their tones became very low, so low I could not hear what they said; but I saw that they looked very sorrowful, and that aunt Carry's hand lay in that of Oliver as though he were her brother. "Why don't the flour come through?" I said, for the sifting had become thinner and lighter, and at length quite ceased. Oliver smiled, faintly, as he arose, and saying, "This will never buy the child a frock," poured a sack of wheat into the hopper, so that it nearly run over. Seeing no child but myself, I supposed he meant to buy me a new frock, and at once resolved to put it in my little bureau, if he did. "We have bothered Mr. Hillhouse long enough," said aunt Carry, taking my hand, "and will go to the house, shall we not?" I wondered why she said "Mr. Hillhouse," for I had never heard her say so before; and Oliver seemed to wonder, too, for he said reproachfully, laying particular stress on his own name, "You don't bother Mr. Hillhouse, I am sure, but I must not insist on your remaining if you wish to go." "I don't want to insist on my staying," said aunt Carry, "if you don't want to, and I see you don't," and lifting me out to the sloping plank, that bent beneath us, we descended. "Carry," called a voice behind us; but she neither answered nor looked back, but seeming to feel a sudden and expressive fondness for me, took me up in her arms, though I was almost too heavy for her to lift, and kissing me over and over, said I was light as a feather, at which she laughed as though neither sorrowful nor lacking for employment. This little passage I could never precisely explain, aside from the ground that "the course of true love never did run smooth." Half an hour after we returned to the house, Oliver presented himself at the door, saying, "Miss Caroline, shall I trouble you for a cup, to get a drink of water?" Carry accompanied him to the well, where they lingered some time, and when she returned her face was sunshiny and cheerful as usual. The day went slowly by, dinner was prepared, and removed, scarcely tasted; aunt Carry wrought at her fringe, and grandmother moved softly about, preparing teas and cordials. Towards sunset the sick man became easy, and expressed a wish that the door of his chamber might be opened, that he might watch our occupations and hear our talk. It was done accordingly, and he was left alone. My mother smiled, saying she hoped he might yet get well, but my father shook his head mournfully, and answered, "He wishes to go without our knowledge." He made amplest provision for his family always, and I believe had a kind nature, but he manifested no little fondnesses, nor did he wish caresses for himself. Contrary to the general tenor of his character, was a love of quiet jests, that remained to the last. Once, as Carry gave him some drink, he said, "You know my wishes about your future, I expect you to be mindful." I stole to the door of his room in the hope that he would say something to me, but he did not, and I went nearer, close to the bed, and timidly took his hand in mine; how damp and cold it felt! yet he spoke not, and climbing upon the chair, I put back his thin locks, and kissed his forehead. "Child, you trouble me," he said, and these were the last words he ever spoke to me. The sun sunk lower and lower, throwing a beam of light through the little window, quite across the carpet, and now it reached the sick man's room, climbed over the bed and up the wall; he turned his face away, and seemed to watch its glimmer upon the ceiling The atmosphere grew dense and dusky, but without clouds, and the orange light changed to a dull lurid red, and the dying and dead leaves dropt silently to the ground, for there was no wind, and the fowls flew into the trees, and the grey moths came from beneath the bushes and fluttered in the waning light. From the hollow tree by the mill came the bat, wheeling and flitting blindly about, and once or twice its wings struck the window of the sick man's chamber. The last sunlight faded off at length, and the rumbling of the mill-wheel was still: he has fallen asleep in listening to its music. The next day came the funeral. What a desolate time it was! All down the lane were wagons and carriages and horses, for every body that knew my grandfather had come to pay him the last honors. "We can do him no further good," they said, "but it seemed right that we should come." Close by the gate waited the little brown wagon to bear the coffin to the grave, the wagon in which he was used to ride while living. The heads of the horses were drooping, and I thought they looked consciously sad. The day was mild and the doors and windows of the old house stood all open, so that the people without could hear the words of the preacher. I remember nothing he said; I remember of hearing my mother sob, and of seeing my grandmother with her face buried in her hands, and of seeing aunt Carra sitting erect, her face pale but tearless, and Oliver near her, with his hands folded across his breast save once or twice, when he lifted them to brush away tears. I did not cry, save from a frightened and strange feeling, but kept wishing that we were not so near the dead, and that it were another day. I tried to push the reality away with thoughts of pleasant things--in vain. I remember the hymn, and the very air in which it was sung. "Ye fearful souls fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread, Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head. Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his works in vain; God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain." Near the door blue flagstones were laid, bordered with a row of shrubberies and trees, with lilacs, and roses, and pears, and peach-trees, which my grandfather had planted long ago, and here, in the open air, the coffin was placed, and the white cloth removed, and folded over the lid. I remember how it shook and trembled as the gust came moaning from the woods, and died off over the next hill, and that two or three withered leaves fell on the face of the dead, which Oliver gently removed and brushed aside a yellow winged butterfly that hovered near. The friends hung over the unsmiling corpse till they were led weeping and one by one away; the hand of some one rested for a moment on the forehead, and then the white cloth was replaced, and the lid screwed down. The coffin was placed in the brown wagon, with a sheet folded about it, and the long train moved slowly to the burial-ground woods, where the words "dust to dust" were followed by the rattling of the earth, and the sunset light fell there a moment, and the dead leaves blew across the smoothly shapen mound. When the will was read, Oliver found himself heir to a fortune--the mill and the homestead and half the farm--provided he married Carry, which I suppose he did, for though I do not remember the wedding, I have had an aunt Caroline Hillhouse almost as long as I can remember. The lunatic sister was sent to an asylum, where she sung songs about a faithless lover till death took her up and opened her eyes in heaven. The mother was brought home, and she and my grandmother lived at their ease, and sat in the corner, and told stories of ghosts, and witches, and marriages, and deaths, for long years. Peace to their memories! for they have both gone home; and the lame brother is teaching school, in his leisure playing the flute, and reading Shakspeare--all the book he reads. Years have come and swept me away from my childhood, from its innocence and blessed unconsciousness of the dark, but often comes back the memory of its first sorrow! Death is less terrible to me now. FOOTNOTES: [6] In press and soon to be published by J. S. Redfield. MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[7] BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. CHAPTER XVI. Before a table in the apartments appropriated to him in his father's house at Knightsbridge, sat Lord L'Estrange, sorting or destroying letters and papers--an ordinary symptom of change of residence. There are certain trifles by which a shrewd observer may judge of a man's disposition. Thus, ranged on the table, with some elegance, but with soldier-like precision, were sundry little relics of former days, hallowed by some sentiment of memory, or perhaps endeared solely by custom; which, whether he was in Egypt, Italy, or England, always made part of the furniture of Harley's room. Even the small, old-fashioned, and somewhat inconvenient inkstand in which he dipped the pen as he labelled the letters he put aside, belonged to the writing-desk which had been his pride as a school-boy. Even the books that lay scattered round were not new works, not those to which we turn to satisfy the curiosity of an hour, or to distract our graver thoughts: they were chiefly either Latin or Italian poets, with many a pencil-mark on the margin; or books which, making severe demand on thought, require slow and frequent perusal, and become companions. Somehow or other, in remarking that even in dumb inanimate things the man was averse to change, and had the habit of attaching himself to whatever was connected with old associations, you might guess that he clung with pertinacity to affections more important, and you could better comprehend the freshness of his friendship for one so dissimilar in pursuits and character as Audley Egerton. An affection once admitted into the heart of Harley L'Estrange, seemed never to be questioned or reasoned with: it became tacitly fixed, as it were, into his own nature; and little less than a revolution of his whole system could dislodge or disturb it. Lord L'Estrange's hand rested now upon a letter in a stiff legible Italian character; and instead of disposing of it at once, as he had done with the rest, he spread it before him, and re-read the contents. It was a letter from Riccabocca, received a few weeks since, and ran thus:-- _Letter from Signor Riccabocca to Lord Estrange._ "I thank you, my noble friend, for judging of me with faith in my honor, and respect for my reverses. "No, and thrice no to all concessions, all overtures, all treaty with Giulio Franzini. I write the name, and my emotions choke me. I must pause and cool back into disdain. It is over. Pass from that subject. But you have alarmed me. This sister! I have not seen her since her childhood; and she was brought up under his influence--she can but work as his agent. She wish to learn my residence! it can be but for some hostile and malignant purpose. I may trust in you. I know that. You say I may trust equally in the discretion of your friend. Pardon me--my confidence is not so elastic. A word may give the clue to my retreat. But, if discovered, what harm can ensue? An English roof protects me from Austrian despotism; true; but not the brazen tower of Danaë could protect me from Italian craft. And were there nothing worse, it would be intolerable to me to live under the eyes of a relentless spy. Truly saith our proverb, 'He sleeps ill for whom the enemy wakes.' Look you, my friend, I have done with my old life--I wish to cast it from me as a snake its skin. I have denied myself all that exiles deem consolation. No pity for misfortune, no messages from sympathizing friendship, no news from a lost and bereaved country follow me to my hearth under the skies of the stranger. From all these I have voluntarily cut myself off. I am as dead to the life I once lived as if the Styx rolled between _it_ and me. With that sternness which is admissible only to the afflicted, I have denied myself even the consolation of your visits. I have told you fairly and simply that your presence would unsettle all my enforced and infirm philosophy, and remind me only of the past, which I seek to blot from remembrance. You have complied on the one condition, that whenever I really want your aid I will ask it; and, meanwhile, you have generously sought to obtain me justice from the cabinets of ministers and in the courts of kings. I did not refuse your heart this luxury; for I have a child--(Ah! I have taught that child already to revere your name, and in her prayers it is not forgotten.) But now that you are convinced that even your zeal is unavailing, I ask you to discontinue attempts that may but bring the spy upon my track, and involve me in new misfortunes. Believe me, O brilliant Englishman, that I am satisfied and contented with my lot. I am sure it would not be for my happiness to change it. 'Chi non ha provato il male non conosce il bene.' ('One does not know when one is well off till one has known misfortune.') You ask me how I live--I answer, _alla giornata_--to the day--not for the morrow, as I did once. I have accustomed myself to the calm existence of a village. I take interest in its details. There is my wife, good creature, sitting opposite to me, never asking what I write, or to whom, but ready to throw aside her work and talk the moment the pen is out of my hand. Talk--and what about? Heaven knows! But I would rather hear that talk, though on the affairs of a hamlet, than babble again with recreant nobles and blundering professors about commonwealths and constitutions. When I want to see how little those last influence the happiness of wise men, have I not Machiavel and Thucydides? Then, by-and-by, the Parson will drop in, and we argue. He never knows when he is beaten, so the argument is everlasting. On fine days I ramble out by a winding rill with my Violante, or stroll to my friend the Squire's, and see how healthful a thing is true pleasure; and on wet days I shut myself up, and mope, perhaps, till, hark! a gentle tap at the door, and in comes Violante, with her dark eyes that shine out through reproachful tears--reproachful that I should mourn alone, while she is under my roof--so she puts her arms round me, and in five minutes all is sunshine within. What care we for your English gray clouds without? "Leave me, my dear Lord--leave me to this quiet happy passage towards old age, serener than the youth that I wasted so wildly: and guard well the secret on which my happiness depends. "Now to yourself, before I close. Of that same _yourself_ you speak too little, as of me too much. But I so well comprehend the profound melancholy that lies underneath the wild and fanciful humor with which you but suggest, as in sport, what you feel so in earnest. The laborious solitude of cities weighs on you. You are flying back to the _dolce far niente_--to friends few, but intimate; to life monotonous, but unrestrained; and even there the sense of loneliness will again seize upon you; and you do not seek, as I do, the annihilation of memory; your dead passions are turned to ghosts that haunt you, and unfit you for the living world. I see it all--I see it still, in your hurried fantastic lines, as I saw it when we two sat amidst the pines and beheld the blue lake stretched below. I troubled by the shadow of the Future, you disturbed by that of the Past. "Well, but you say, half-seriously, half in jest, 'I _will_ escape from this prison-house of memory; I will form new ties, like other men, and before it be too late; I _will_ marry--aye, but I must love--there is the difficulty'--difficulty--yes, and heaven be thanked for it! Recall all the unhappy marriages that have come to your knowledge--pray have not eighteen out of twenty been marriages for love? It always has been so, and it always will. Because, whenever we love deeply, we exact so much and forgive so little. Be content to find some one with whom your hearth and your honor are safe. You will grow to love what never wounds your heart--you will soon grow out of love with what must always disappoint your imagination. _Cospetto!_ I wish my Jemima had a younger sister for you. Yet it was with a deep groan that I settled myself to a--Jemima. "Now, I have written you a long letter, to prove how little I need of your compassion or your zeal. Once more let there be long silence between us. It is not easy for me to correspond with a man of your rank, and not incur the curious gossip of my still little pool of a world which the splash of a pebble can break into circles. I must take this over to a post-town some ten miles off, and drop it into the box by stealth. "Adieu, dear and noble friend, gentlest heart and subtlest fancy that I have met in my walk through life. Adieu--write me word when you have abandoned a day-dream and found a Jemima. ALPHONSO. "_P. S._--For heaven's sake caution and re-caution your friend the minister, not to drop a word to this woman that may betray my hiding-place." "Is he really happy?" murmured Harley as he closed the letter; and he sank for a few moments into a reverie. "This life in a village--this wife in a lady who puts down her work to talk about villagers--what a contrast to Audley's full existence. And I can never envy nor comprehend either--yet my own--what is it?" He rose, and moved towards the window, from which a rustic stair descended to a green lawn--studded with larger trees than are often found in the grounds of a suburban residence. There were calm and coolness in the sight, and one could scarcely have supposed that London lay so near. The door opened softly, and a lady past middle age, entered; and, approaching Harley, as he still stood musing by the window, laid her hand on his shoulder. What character there is in a hand! Hers was a hand that Titian would have painted with elaborate care! Thin, white, and delicate--with the blue veins raised from the surface. Yet there was something more than mere patrician elegance in the form and texture. A true physiologist would have said at once, "there are intellect and pride in that hand, which seems to fix a hold where it rests; and, lying so lightly, yet will not be as lightly shaken off." "Harley," said the lady--and Harley turned--"you do not deceive me by that smile," she continued sadly; "you were not smiling when I entered." "It is rarely that we smile to ourselves, my dear mother; and I have done nothing lately so foolish as to cause me to smile _at_ myself." "My son," said Lady Lansmere, somewhat abruptly, but with great earnestness, "you come from a line of illustrious ancestors; and methinks they ask from their tombs why the last of their race has no aim and no object--no interest--no home in the land which they served, and which rewarded them with its honors." "Mother," said the soldier simply, "when the land was in danger I served it as my forefathers served--and my answer would be the scars on my breast." "Is it only in danger that a country is served--only in war that duty is fulfilled? Do you think that your father, in his plain manly life of country gentleman, does not fulfil, though obscurely, the objects for which aristocracy is created and wealth is bestowed?" "Doubtless he does, ma'am--and better than his vagrant son ever can." "Yet his vagrant son has received such gifts from nature--his youth was so rich in promise--his boyhood so glowed at the dream of glory?--" "Ay," said Harley very softly, "it is possible--and all to be buried in a single grave!" The Countess started, and withdrew her hand from Harley's shoulder. Lady Lansmere's countenance was not one that much varied in expression. She had in this, as in her cast of feature, little resemblance to her son. Her features were slightly aquiline--the eyebrows of that arch which gives a certain majesty to the aspect: the lines round the mouth were habitually rigid and compressed. Her face was that of one who had gone through great emotion and subdued it. There was something formal, and even ascetic, in the character of her beauty, which was still considerable;--in her air and in her dress. She might have suggested to you the idea of some Gothic baroness of old, half chatelaine, half abbess; you would see at a glance that she did not live in the light world round her, and disdained its fashion and its mode of thought; yet with all this rigidity it was still the face of the woman who has known human ties and human affections. And now, as she gazed long on Harley's quiet, saddened brow, it was the face of a mother. "A single grave," she said, after a long pause. "And you were then but a boy, Harley! Can such a memory influence you even to this day? It is scarcely possible; it does not seem to me within the realities of man's life--though it might be of woman's." "I believe," said Harley, half soliloquising, "that I have a great deal of the woman in me. Perhaps men who live much alone, and care not for men's objects, do grow tenacious of impressions, as your sex does. But oh," he cried aloud, and with a sudden change of countenance, "oh, the hardest and the coldest man would have felt as I do, had he known _her_--had he loved _her_. She was like no other woman I have ever met. Bright and glorious creature of another sphere! She descended on this earth, and darkened it when she passed away. It is no use striving. Mother, I have as much courage as our steel-clad fathers ever had. I have dared in battle and in deserts--against man and the wild beast--against the storm and the ocean--against the rude powers of Nature--dangers as dread as ever pilgrim or Crusader rejoiced to brave. But courage against that one memory! no, I have not!" "Harley, Harley, you break my heart!" cried the Countess, clasping her hands. "It is astonishing," continued her son, so wrapped in his own thoughts that he did not perhaps hear her outcry--"yea, verily, it is astonishing, that considering the thousands of women I have seen and spoken with, I never see a face like hers--never hear a voice so sweet. And all this universe of life cannot afford me one look and one tone that can restore me to man's privilege--love. Well, well, well, life has other things yet--Poetry and Art live still--still smiles the heaven, and still wave the trees. Leave me to happiness in my own way." The Countess was about to reply, when the door was thrown hastily open, and Lord Lansmere walked in. The Earl was some years older than the Countess, but his placid face showed less wear and tear; a benevolent, kindly face--without any evidence of commanding intellect, but with no lack of sense in its pleasant lines. His form not tall, but upright, and with an air of consequence--a little pompous, but good-humoredly so. The pomposity of the _Grand Seigneur_, who has lived much in provinces--whose will has been rarely disputed, and whose importance has been so felt and acknowledged as to react insensibly on himself; an excellent man: but when you glanced towards the high brow and dark eye of the Countess, you marvelled a little how the two had come together, and, according to common report, lived so happily in the union. "Ho, ho! my dear Harley," cried Lansmere, rubbing his hands with an appearance of much satisfaction, "I have just been paying a visit to the Duchess." "What Duchess, my dear father?" "Why, your mother's first cousin, to be sure--the Duchess of Knaresborough, whom, to oblige me, you condescended to call upon; and delighted I am to hear that you admire Lady Mary--" "She is very high-bred, and rather-high-nosed," answered Harley. Then observing that his mother looked pained, and his father disconcerted, he added seriously, "But handsome certainly." "Well, Harley," said the Earl, recovering himself, "the Duchess, taking advantage of our connection to speak freely, had intimated to me that Lady Mary has been no less struck with yourself; and to come to the point, since you allow that it is time you should think of marrying, I do not know a more desirable alliance. What do you say, Catherine?" "The Duke is of a family that ranks in history before the Wars of the Roses," said Lady Lansmere, with an air of deference to her husband; "and there has never been one scandal in its annals, or one blot in its scutcheon. But I am sure my dear Lord must think that the Duchess should not have made the first overture--even to a friend and a kinsman?" "Why, we are old-fashioned people," said the Earl rather embarrassed, "and the Duchess is a woman of the world." "Let us hope," said the Countess mildly, "that her daughter is not." "I would not marry Lady Mary, if all the rest of the female sex were turned into apes," said Lord L'Estrange, with deliberate fervor. "Good Heavens!" cried the Earl, "what extraordinary language is this! And pray why, sir?" _Harley._--"I can't say--there is no why in these cases. But, my dear father, you are not keeping faith with me." _Lord Lansmere._--"How?" _Harley._--"You and my Lady here entreat me to marry--I promise to do my best to obey you; but on one condition--that I choose for myself, and take my time about it. Agreed on both sides. Whereon, off goes your Lordship--actually before noon, at an hour when no lady without a shudder could think of cold blonde and damp orange flowers--off goes your Lordship, I say, and commits poor Lady Mary and your unworthy son to a mutual admiration--which neither of us ever felt. Pardon me, my father--but this is grave. Again let me claim your promise--full choice for myself, and no reference to the Wars of the Roses. What war of the roses like that between Modesty and Love upon the cheek of the virgin!" _Lady Lansmere._--"Full choice for yourself, Harley;--so be it. But we, too, named a condition--Did we not, Lansmere?" The _Earl_ (puzzled).--"Eh--did we! Certainly we did." _Harley._--"What was it?" _Lady Lansmere._--"The son of Lord Lansmere can only marry the daughter of a gentleman." The _Earl._--"Of course--of course." The blood rushed over Harley's fair face, and then as suddenly left it pale. He walked away to the window--his mother followed him, and again laid her hand on his shoulder. "You were cruel," said he gently and in a whisper, as he winced under the touch of the hand. Then turning to the Earl, who was gazing at him in blank surprise--(it never occurred to Lord Lansmere that there could be a doubt of his son's marrying beneath the rank modestly stated by the Countess)--Harley stretched forth his hand, and said, in his soft winning tone, "you have ever been most gracious to me, and most forbearing; it is but just that I should sacrifice the habits of an egotist, to gratify a wish which you so warmly entertain. I agree with you, too, that our race should not close in me--_Noblesse oblige_. But you know I was ever romantic; and I must love where I marry--or, if not love, I must feel that my wife is worthy of all the love I could once have bestowed. Now, as to the vague word 'gentleman' that my mother employs--word that means so differently on different lips--I confess that I have a prejudice against young ladies brought up in the 'excellent foppery of the world,' as the daughters of gentlemen of our rank mostly are. I crave, therefore, the most liberal interpretation of this word 'gentleman.' And so long as there be nothing mean or sordid in the birth, habits, and education of the father of this bride to be, I trust you will both agree to demand nothing more--neither titles nor pedigree." "Titles, no--assuredly," said Lady Lansmere; "they do not make gentlemen." "Certainly not," said the Earl. "Many of our best families are untitled." "Titles--no," repeated Lady Lansmere; "but ancestors--yes." "Ah, my mother," said Harley with his most sad and quiet smile, "it is fated that we shall never agree. The first of our race is ever the one we are most proud of; and pray, what ancestors had he? Beauty, virtue, modesty, intellect--if these are not nobility enough for a man, he is a slave to the dead." With these words Harley took up his hat and made towards the door. "You said yourself, '_Noblesse oblige_,'" said the Countess, following him to the threshold; "we have nothing more to add." Harley slightly shrugged his shoulders, kissed his mother's hand, whistled to Nero, who started up from a doze by the window, and went his way. "Does he really go abroad next week?" said the Earl. "So he says." "I am afraid there is no chance for Lady Mary," resumed Lord Lansmere, with a slight but melancholy smile. "She has not intellect enough to charm him. She is not worthy of Harley," said the proud mother. "Between you and me," rejoined the Earl, rather timidly, "I don't see what good his intellect does him. He could not be more unsettled and useless if he were the merest dunce in the three kingdoms. And so ambitious as he was when a boy! Catherine, I sometimes fancy that you know what changed him." "I! Nay, my dear Lord, it is a common change enough with the young, when of such fortunes; who find, when they enter life, that there is really little left for them to strive for. Had Harley been a poor man's son, it might have been different." "I was born to the same fortunes as Harley," said the Earl, shrewdly, "and yet I flatter myself I am of some use to old England." The Countess seized upon the occasion, complimented her Lord, and turned the subject. CHAPTER XVII. Harley spent his day in his usual desultory, lounging manner--dined in his quiet corner at his favorite club--Nero, not admitted into the club, patiently waited for him outside the door. The dinner over, dog and man, equally indifferent to the crowd, sauntered down that thoroughfare which, to the few who can comprehend the Poetry of London, has associations of glory and of woe sublime as any that the ruins of the dead elder world can furnish--thoroughfare that traverses what was once the courtyard of Whitehall, having to its left the site of the palace that lodged the royalty of Scotland--gains, through a narrow strait, that old isle of Thorney, in which Edward the Confessor received the ominous visit of the Conqueror--and, widening once more by the Abbey and the Hall of Westminster, then loses itself, like all memories of earthly grandeur, amidst humble passages and mean defiles. Thus thought Harley L'Estrange--ever less amidst the actual world around him, than the images invoked by his own solitary soul--as he gained the bridge, and saw the dull lifeless craft sleeping on the "Silent Way," once loud and glittering with the gilded barks of the antique Seignorie of England. It was on that bridge that Audley Egerton had appointed to meet L'Estrange, at an hour when he calculated he could best steal a respite from debate. For Harley, with his fastidious dislike to all the resorts of his equals, had declined to seek his friend in the crowded regions of Bellamy's. Harley's eye, as he passed along the bridge, was attracted by a still form, seated on the stones in one of the nooks, with its face covered by its hands. "If I were a sculptor," said he to himself, "I should remember that image whenever I wished to convey the idea of _despondency_!" He lifted his looks and saw, a little before him in the midst of the causeway, the firm erect figure of Audley Egerton. The moonlight was full on the bronzed countenance of the strong public man,--with its lines of thought and care, and its vigorous but cold expression of intense self-control. "And looking yonder," continued Harley's soliloquy, "I should remember that form, when I wished to hew out from the granite the idea of _Endurance_." "So you are come, and punctually," said Egerton, linking his arm in Harley's. _Harley._--"Punctually, of course, for I respect your time, and I will not detain you long. I presume you will speak to-night." _Egerton._--"I have spoken." _Harley_, (with interest.)--"And well, I hope." _Egerton._--"With effect, I suppose, for I have been loudly cheered, which does not always happen to me." _Harley._--"And that gave you pleasure?" _Egerton_, (after a moment's thought.)--"No, not the least." _Harley._--"What, then, attaches you so much to this life--constant drudgery, constant warfare--the more pleasurable faculties dormant, all the harsher ones aroused, if even its rewards (and I take the best of those to be applause) do not please you?" _Egerton._--"What?--custom." _Harley._--"Martyr!" _Egerton._--"You say it. But turn to yourself; you have decided, then, to leave England next week." _Harley_, (moodily.)--"Yes. This life in a capital, where all are so active, myself so objectless, preys on me like a low fever. Nothing here amuses me, nothing interests, nothing comforts and consoles. But I am resolved, before it be too late, to make one great struggle out of the Past, and into the natural world of men. In a word, I have resolved to marry." _Egerton._--"Whom?" _Harley_, (seriously.)--"Upon my life, my dear fellow, you are a great philosopher. You have hit the exact question. You see I cannot marry a dream; and where out of dreams, shall I find this 'whom?'" _Egerton._--"You do not search for her." _Harley._--"Do we ever search for love? Does it not flash upon us when we least expect it? Is it not like the inspiration to the muse? What poet sits down and says, 'I will write a poem?' What man looks out and says, 'I will fall in love.' No! Happiness, as the great German tells us, 'falls suddenly from the bosom of the gods;' so does love." _Egerton._--"You remember the old line in Horace: 'Life's tide flows away, while the boor sits on the margin and waits for the ford.'" _Harley._--"An idea which incidentally dropped from you some weeks ago, and which I had before half meditated, has since haunted me. If I could but find some child with sweet dispositions and fair intellect not yet formed, and train her up, according to my ideal. I am still young enough to wait a few years, and meanwhile I shall have gained what I so sadly want--an object in life." _Egerton._--"You are ever the child of romance. But what"-- Here the minister was interrupted by a messenger from the House of Commons, whom Audley had instructed to seek him on the bridge should his presence be required-- "Sir, the opposition are taking advantage of the thinness of the House to call for a division, Mr. ---- is put up to speak for time, but they won't hear him." Egerton turned hastily to Lord L'Estrange, "You see you must excuse me now. To-morrow I must go to Windsor for two days; but we shall meet on my return." "It does not matter,"' answered Harley; "I stand out of the pale of your advice, O practical man of sense. And if," added Harley with affectionate and mournful sweetness--"If I worry you with complaints which you cannot understand, it is only because of old school-boy habits. I can have no trouble that I do not confide in you." Egerton's hand trembled as it pressed his friend's; and, without a word, he hurried away abruptly. Harley remained motionless for some seconds, in deep and quiet reverie; then he called to his dog, and turned back towards Westminster. He passed the nook in which had sat the still figure of Despondency. But the figure had now risen, and was leaning against the balustrade. The dog who had preceded his master paused by the solitary form, and sniffed it suspiciously. "Nero, sir, come here," said Harley. "Nero," that was the name by which Helen had said that her father's friend had called his dog. And the sound startled Leonard as he leant, sick at heart, against the stone, he lifted his head and looked wistfully, eagerly, into Harley's face. Those eyes, bright, clear, yet so strangely deep and absent, which Helen had described, met his own, and chained them. For L'Estrange halted also; the boy's countenance was not unfamiliar to him. He returned the inquiring look fixed on his own, and recognized the student by the book-stall. "The dog is quite harmless, sir," said L'Estrange, with a smile. "And you called him Nero?" said Leonard, still gazing on the stranger. Harley mistook the drift of the question. "Nero, sir; but he is free from the sanguinary propensities of his Roman namesake." Harley was about to pass on, when Leonard said falteringly,-- "Pardon me, but can it be possible that you are one whom I have sought in vain, on behalf of the child of Captain Digby?" Harley stopped short. "Digby!" he exclaimed, "where is he? He should have found me easily. I gave him an address." "Ah, Heaven be thanked," cried Leonard. "Helen is saved; she will not die;" and he burst into tears. A very few moments, and a very few words sufficed to explain to Harley the state of his old fellow-soldier's orphan. And Harley himself soon stood in the young sufferer's room, supporting her burning temples on his breast, and whispering into ears that heard him, as in a happy dream, "Comfort, comfort; your father yet lives in me." And then Helen, raising her eyes, said "But Leonard is my brother--more than brother--and he needs a father's care more than I do." "Hush, hush, Helen. I need no one--nothing now!" cried Leonard; and his tears gushed over the little hand that clasped his own. CHAPTER XVIII. Harley L'Estrange was a man whom all things that belong to the romantic and poetic side of our human life deeply impressed. When he came to learn the tie between these two children of nature, standing side by side, alone amidst the storms of fate, his heart was more deeply moved than it had been for many years. In those dreary attics, overshadowed by the smoke and reek of the humble suburb--the workday world in its harshest and tritest forms below and around them--he recognized that divine poem which comes out from all union between the mind and the heart. Here, on the rough deal table, (the ink scarcely dry,) lay the writings of the young wrestler for fame and bread; there, on the other side the partition, on that mean pallet, lay the boy's sole comforter--the all that warmed his heart with living mortal affection. On one side the wall, the world of imagination; on the other this world of grief and of love. And in both, a spirit equally sublime--unselfish Devotion--"the something afar from the sphere of our sorrow." He looked round the room into which he had followed Leonard, on quitting Helen's bedside. He noted the MSS. on the table, and, pointing to them, said gently, "And these are the labors by which you supported the soldier's orphan?--soldier yourself, in a hard battle!" "The battle was lost--I could not support her," replied Leonard mournfully. "But you did not desert her. When Pandora's box was opened, they say Hope lingered last----" "False, false," said Leonard; "a heathen's notion. There are deities that linger behind Hope;--Gratitude, Love, and Duty." "Yours is no common nature," exclaimed Harley, admiringly, "but I must sound it more deeply hereafter; at present I hasten for the physician; I shall return with him. We must move that poor child from this low close air as soon as possible. Meanwhile, let me qualify your rejection of the old fable. Wherever Gratitude, Love, and Duty remain to man, believe me that Hope is there too, though she may be oft invisible, hidden behind the sheltering wings of the nobler deities." Harley said this with that wondrous smile of his, which cast a brightness over the whole room--and went away. Leonard stole softly towards the grimy window; and looking up towards the stars that shone pale over the roof-tops, he murmured, "O thou, the All-seeing and All-merciful!--how it comforts me now to think that though my dreams of knowledge may have sometimes obscured the Heaven, I never doubted that Thou wert there!--as luminous and everlasting, though behind the cloud!" So, for a few minutes, he prayed silently--then passed into Helen's room, and sat beside her motionless, for she slept. She woke just as Harley returned with a physician, and then Leonard, returning to his own room, saw amongst his papers the letter he had written to Mr. Dale; and muttering, "I need not disgrace my calling--I need not be the mendicant now"--held the letter to the flame of the candle. And while he said this, and as the burning tinder dropped on the floor, the sharp hunger, unfelt during his late anxious emotion, gnawed at his entrails. Still even hunger could not reach that noble pride which had yielded to a sentiment nobler than itself--and he smiled as he repeated, "No mendicant!--the life that I was sworn to guard is saved. I can raise against Fate the front of the Man once more." CHAPTER XIX. A few days afterwards, and Helen, removed to a pure air, and under the advice of the first physicians, was out of all danger. It was a pretty detached cottage, with its windows looking over the wild heaths of Norwood, to which Harley rode daily to watch the convalescence of his young charge--an object in life was already found. As she grew better and stronger, he coaxed her easily into talking, and listened to her with pleased surprise. The heart so infantine, and the sense so womanly, struck him much by its rare contrast and combination. Leonard, whom he had insisted on placing also in the cottage, had stayed there willingly till Helen's recovery was beyond question. Then he came to Lord L'Estrange, as the latter was about one day to leave the cottage, and said quietly, "Now, my Lord, that Helen is safe, and now that she will need me no more, I can no longer be a pensioner on your bounty. I return to London." "You are my visitor--not my pensioner, foolish boy," said Harley, who had already noticed the pride which spoke in that farewell; "come into the garden, and let us talk." Harley seated himself on a bench on the little lawn; Nero crouched at his feet; Leonard stood beside him. "So," said Lord L'Estrange, "you would return to London!--What to do?" "Fulfil my fate." "And that?" "I cannot guess. Fate is the Isis whose veil no mortal can ever raise." "You should be born for great things," said Harley, abruptly. "I am sure that you write well. I have seen that you study with passion. Better than writing and better than study, you have a noble heart, and the proud desire of independence. Let me see your MSS., or any copies of what you have already printed. Do not hesitate--I ask but to be a reader. I don't pretend to be a patron; it is a word I hate." Leonard's eyes sparkled through their sudden moisture. He brought out his portfolio, placed it on the bench beside Harley, and then went softly to the further part of the garden. Nero looked after him, and then rose and followed him slowly. The boy seated himself on the turf, and Nero rested his dull head on the loud heart of the poet. Harley took up the various papers before him and read them through leisurely. Certainly he was no critic. He was not accustomed to analyse what pleased or displeased him; but his perceptions were quick, and his taste exquisite. As he read, his countenance, always so genuinely expressive, exhibited now doubt and now admiration. He was soon struck by the contrast in the boy's writings; between the pieces that sported with fancy, and those that grappled with thought. In the first, the young poet seemed so unconscious of his own individuality. His imagination, afar and aloft from the scenes of his suffering, ran riot amidst a paradise of happy golden creations. But in the last, the THINKER stood out alone and mournful, questioning, in troubled sorrow, the hard world on which he gazed. All in the thought was unsettled, tumultuous; all in the fancy, serene, and peaceful. The genius seemed divided into twain shapes; the one bathing its wings amidst the starry dews of heaven; the other wandering "melancholy, slow," amidst desolate and boundless sands. Harley gently laid down the paper and mused a little while. Then he rose and walked to Leonard, gazing on his countenance as he neared the boy, with a new and deeper interest. "I have read your papers," he said, "and recognize in them two men, belonging to two worlds, essentially distinct." Leonard started, and murmured, "True, true!" "I apprehend," resumed Harley, "that one of these men must either destroy the other, or that the two must become fused and harmonized into a single existence. Get your hat, mount my groom's horse, and come with me to London; we will converse by the way. Look you, I believe you and I agree in this, that the first object of every noble spirit is independence. It is towards this independence that I alone presume to assist you; and this is a service which the proudest man can receive without a blush." Leonard lifted his eyes towards Harley's, and those eyes swam with grateful tears; but his heart was too full to answer. "I am not one of those," said Harley, when they were on the road, "who think that because a young man writes poetry he is fit for nothing else, and that he must be a poet or a pauper. I have said that in you there seem to me to be two men, the man of the Ideal world, the man of the Actual. To each of these men I can offer a separate career. The first is perhaps the more tempting. It is the interest of the state to draw into its service all the talent and industry it can obtain; and under his native state every citizen of a free country should be proud to take service. I have a friend who is a minister, and who is known to encourage talent--Audley Egerton. I have but to say to him, 'There is a young man who will well repay to the government whatever the government bestows on him' and you will rise to-morrow independent in means, and with fair occasions to attain to fortune and distinction. This is one offer, what say you to it?" Leonard thought bitterly of his interview with Audley Egerton, and the minister's proffered crown-piece. He shook his head and replied-- "Oh, my lord, how have I deserved such kindness? Do with me what you will; but if I have the option, I would rather follow my own calling. This is not the ambition that inflames me." "Hear, then, the other offer. I have a friend with whom I am less intimate than Egerton, and who has nothing in his gift to bestow. I speak of a man of letters--Henry Norreys--of whom you have doubtless heard, who, I should say, conceived an interest in you when he observed you reading at the book-stall. I have often heard him say, that literature as a profession is misunderstood, and that rightly followed, with the same pains and the same prudence which are brought to bear on other professions, a competence at least can be always ultimately obtained. But the way may be long and tedious--and it leads to no power but over thought; it rarely attains to wealth; and, though _reputation_ may be certain, _Fame_, such as poets dream of, is the lot of few. What say you to this course?" "My lord, I decide," said Leonard, firmly; and then his young face lighting up with enthusiasm, he exclaimed. "Yes, if, as you say, there be two men within me, I feel, that were I condemned wholly to the mechanical and practical world, one would indeed destroy the other. And the conqueror would be the ruder and the coarser. Let me pursue those ideas that, though they have but flitted across me vague and formless--have ever soared towards the sunlight. No matter whether or not they lead to fortune or to fame, at least they will lead me upward! Knowledge for itself I desire--what care I, if it be not power?" "Enough," said Harley, with a pleased smile at his young companion's outburst. "As you decide so shall it be settled. And now permit me, if not impertinent, to ask you a few questions. Your name is Leonard Fairfield?" The boy blushed deeply, and bowed his head as if in assent. "Helen says you are self-taught; for the rest she refers me to you--thinking, perhaps, that I should esteem you less--rather than yet more highly--if she said you were, as I presume to conjecture, of humble birth." "My birth," said Leonard, slowly, "is very--very--humble." "The name of Fairfield is not unknown to me. There was one of that name who married into a family in Lansmere--married an Avenel--" continued Harley--and his voice quivered. "You change countenance. Oh, could your mother's name have been Avenel?" "Yes," said Leonard, between his set teeth. Harley laid his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Then indeed I have a claim on you--then, indeed, we are friends. I have a right to serve any of that family." Leonard looked at him in surprise--"For," continued Harley, recovering himself, "they always served my family; and my recollections of Lansmere, though boyish, are indelible." He spurred on his horse as the words closed--and again there was a long pause; but from that time Harley always spoke to Leonard in a soft voice, and often gazed on him with earnest and kindly eyes. They reached a house in a central, though not fashionable street. A man-servant of a singularly grave and awful aspect opened the door; a man who had lived all his life with authors. Poor devil, he was indeed prematurely old! The care on his lip and the pomp on his brow--no mortal's pen can describe! "Is Mr. Norreys at home?" asked Harley. "He is at home--to his friends, my lord," answered the man, majestically; and he stalked across the hall with the step of a Dangeau ushering some Montmorenci to the presence of _Louis le Grand_. "Stay--show this gentleman into another room. I will go first into the library; wait for me, Leonard." The man nodded, and ushered Leonard into the dining-room. Then pausing before the door of the library, and listening an instant, as if fearful to disturb some mood of inspiration, opened it very softly. To his ineffable disgust, Harley pushed before, and entered abruptly. It was a large room, lined with books from the floor to the ceiling. Books were on all the tables--books were on all the chairs. Harley seated himself on a folio of Raleigh's History of the World, and cried-- "I have brought you a treasure!" "What is it?" said Norreys, good-humoredly, looking up from his desk. "A mind!" "A mind!" echoed Norreys, vaguely. "Your own?" "Pooh--I have none--I have only a heart and a fancy. Listen. You remember the boy we saw reading at the book-stall. I have caught him for you, and you shall train him into a man. I have the warmest interest in his future--for I knew some of his family--and one of that family was very dear to me. As for money, he has not a shilling, and not a shilling would he accept gratis from you or me either. But he comes with bold heart to work--and work you must find him." Harley then rapidly told his friend of the two offers he had made to Leonard--and Leonard's choice. "This promises very well; for letters a man must have a strong vocation as he should have for law--I will do all that you wish." Harley rose with alertness--shook Norreys cordially by the hand--hurried out of the room, and returned with Leonard. Mr. Norreys eyed the young man with attention. He was naturally rather severe than cordial in his manner to strangers--contrasting in this, as in most things, the poor vagabond Burley. But he was a good judge of the human countenance, and he liked Leonard's. After a pause he held out his hand. "Sir," said he, "Lord L'Estrange tells me that you wish to enter literature as a calling, and no doubt to study it is an art. I may help you in this, and you meanwhile can help me. I want an amanuensis--I offer you that place. The salary will be proportioned to the services you will render me. I have a room in my house at your disposal. When I first came up to London, I made the same choice that I hear you have done. I have no cause, even in a worldly point of view, to repent my choice. It gave me an income larger than my wants. I trace my success to these maxims, which are applicable to all professions--1st, Never to trust to genius--for what can be obtained by labor; 2dly, Never to profess to teach what we have not studied to understand; 3dly, Never to engage our word to what we do not do our best to execute. With these rules literature, provided a man does not mistake his vocation for it, and will, under good advice, go through the preliminary discipline of natural powers, which all vocations require, is as good a calling as any other. Without them a shoeblack's is infinitely better." "Possible enough," muttered Harley; "but there have been great writers who observed none of your maxims." "Great writers, probably, but very unenviable men. My Lord, my Lord, don't corrupt the pupil you bring to me." Harley smiled and took his departure, and left Genius at school with Common Sense and Experience. CHAPTER XX. While Leonard Fairfield had been obscurely wrestling against poverty, neglect, hunger, and dread temptations, bright had been the opening day, and smooth the upward path, of Randal Leslie. Certainly no young man, able and ambitious, could enter life under fairer auspices; the connection and avowed favorite of a popular and energetic statesman, the brilliant writer of a political work, that had lifted him at once into a station of his own--received and courted in those highest circles, to which neither rank nor fortune alone suffices for a familiar passport--the circles above fashion itself--the circles of power--with every facility of augmenting information, and learning the world betimes through the talk of its acknowledged masters,--Randal had but to move straight onward, and success was sure. But his tortuous spirit delighted in scheme and intrigue for their own sake. In scheme and intrigue he saw shorter paths to fortune, if not to fame. His besetting sin was also his besetting weakness. He did not aspire--he _coveted_. Though in a far higher social position than Frank Hazeldean, despite the worldly prospects of his old school-fellow, he coveted the very things that kept Frank Hazeldean below him--coveted his idle gaieties, his careless pleasures, his very waste of youth. Thus, also, Randal less aspired to Audley Egerton's repute than he coveted Audley Egerton's wealth and pomp, his princely expenditure, and his Castle Rackrent in Grosvenor Square. It was the misfortune of his birth to be so near to both these fortunes--near to that of Leslie, as the future head of that fallen house,--near even to that of Hazeldean, since as we have seen before, if the Squire had had no son, Randal's descent from the Hazeldeans suggested himself as the one on whom these broad lands should devolve. Most young men, brought into intimate contact with Audley Egerton, would have felt for that personage a certain loyal and admiring, if not very affectionate, respect. For there was something grand in Egerton--something that commands and fascinates the young. His determined courage, his energetic will, his almost regal liberality, contrasting a simplicity in personal tastes and habits that was almost austere--his rare and seemingly unconscious power of charming even the women most wearied of homage, and persuading even the men most obdurate to counsel--all served to invest the practical man with those spells which are usually confined to the ideal one. But indeed, Audley Egerton was an Ideal--the ideal of the Practical. Not the mere vulgar, plodding, red-tape machine of petty business, but the man of strong sense, inspired by inflexible energy, and guided to definite earthly objects. In a dissolute and corrupt form of government, under a decrepit monarchy, or a vitiated republic, Audley Egerton might have been a most dangerous citizen; for his ambition was so resolute, and his sight to its ends was so clear. But there is something in public life in England which compels the really ambitious man to honor, unless his eyes are jaundiced and oblique like Randal Leslie's. It is so necessary in England to be a gentleman. And thus Egerton was emphatically considered a _gentleman_. Without the least pride in other matters, with little apparent sensitiveness, touch him on the point of gentleman, and no one so sensitive and so proud. As Randal saw more of him, and watched his moods with the lynx eyes of the household spy, he could perceive that this hard mechanical man was subject to fits of melancholy, even of gloom, and though they did not last long, there was even in his habitual coldness an evidence of something comprest, latent, painful, lying deep within his memory. This would have interested the kindly feelings of a grateful heart. But Randal detected and watched it only as a clue to some secret it might profit him to gain. For Randal Leslie hated Egerton; and hated him the more because with all his book knowledge and his conceit in his own talents, he could not despise his patron--because he had not yet succeeded in making his patron the mere tool or stepping-stone--because he thought that Egerton's keen eye saw through his wily heart, even while, as if in profound disdain, the minister helped the protégé. But this last suspicion was unsound. Egerton had not detected Leslie's corrupt and treacherous nature. He might have other reasons for keeping him at a certain distance, but he inquired too little into Randal's feelings towards himself to question the attachment, or doubt the sincerity of one who owed to him so much. But that which more than all embittered Randal's feelings towards Egerton, was the careful and deliberate frankness with which the latter had, more than once repeated, and enforced the odious announcement, that Randal had nothing to expect from the ministers--WILL, nothing to expect from that wealth which glared in the hungry eyes of the pauper heir to the Leslies of Rood. To whom, then, could Egerton mean to devise his fortune? To whom but Frank Hazeldean. Yet Audley took so little notice of his nephew--seemed so indifferent to him, that that supposition, however natural, seemed exposed to doubt. The astuteness of Randal was perplexed. Meanwhile, however, the less he himself could rely upon Egerton for fortune, the more he revolved the possible chances of ousting Frank from the inheritance of Hazeldean--in part, at least, if not wholly. To one less scheming, crafty, and remorseless than Randal Leslie with every day became more and more, such a project would have seemed the wildest delusion. But there was something fearful in the manner in which this young man sought to turn knowledge into power, and make the study of all weakness in others subservient to his own ends. He wormed himself thoroughly into Frank's confidence. He learned through Frank all the Squire's peculiarities of thought and temper, and thoroughly pondered over each word in the father's letters, which the son gradually got into the habit of showing to the perfidious eyes of his friend. Randal saw that the Squire had two characteristics which are very common amongst proprietors, and which might be invoked as antagonists to his warm fatherly love. First, the Squire was as fond of his estate as if it were a living thing, and part of his own flesh and blood; and in his lectures to Frank upon the sin of extravagance, the Squire always let out this foible:--"What was to become of the estate if it fell into the hands of a spendthrift? No man should make ducks and drakes of Hazeldean; let Frank beware of _that_," &c. Secondly, the Squire was not only fond of his lands, but he was jealous of them--that jealousy which even the tenderest father sometimes entertains towards their natural heirs. He could not bear the notion that Frank should count on his death; and he seldom closed an admonitory letter without repeating the information that Hazeldean was not entailed; that it was his to do with as he pleased through life and in death. Indirect menace of this nature rather wounded and galled than intimidated Frank; for the young man was extremely generous and high-spirited by nature, and was always more disposed to some indiscretion after such warnings to his self-interest, as if to show that those were the last kinds of appeal likely to influence him. By the help of such insights into the character of father and son, Randal thought he saw gleams of daylight illumining his own chance of the lands of Hazeldean. Meanwhile it appeared to him obvious that, come what might of it, his own interests could not lose, and might most probably gain, by whatever could alienate the Squire from his natural heir. Accordingly, though with consummate tact, he instigated Frank towards the very excesses most calculated to irritate the Squire, all the while appealing rather to give the counter advice, and never sharing in any of the follies to which he conducted his thoughtless friend. In this he worked chiefly through others, introducing Frank to every acquaintance most dangerous to youth, either from the wit that laughs at prudence, or the spurious magnificence that subsists so handsomely upon bills endorsed by friends of "great expectations." The minister and his protégé were seated at breakfast, the first reading the newspaper, the last glancing over his letters; for Randal had arrived to the dignity of receiving many letters--ay, and notes too, three-cornered, and fantastically embossed. Egerton uttered an exclamation, and laid down the paper. Randal looked up from his correspondence. The minister had sunk into one of his absent reveries. After a long silence, observing that Egerton did not return to the newspaper, Randal said, "Ehem--sir, I have a note from Frank Hazeldean, who wants much to see me; his father has arrived in town unexpectedly." "What brings him here?" asked Egerton, still abstractedly. "Why, it seems that he has heard some vague reports of poor Frank's extravagance, and Frank is either afraid or ashamed to meet him." "Ay--a very great fault extravagance in the young!--destroys independence; ruins or enslaves the future. Great fault--very! And what does youth want that it should be extravagant? Has it not every thing in itself merely because it _is_? Youth is youth--what needs it more?" Egerton rose as he said this, and retired to his writing-table, and in his turn opened his correspondence. Randal took up the newspaper, and endeavored, but in vain, to conjecture what had excited the minister's exclamation, and the reverie that succeeded it. Egerton suddenly and sharply turned round in his chair--"If you have done with the _Times_, have the goodness to place it here." Randal had just obeyed, when a knock at the street-door was heard, and presently Lord L'Estrange came into the room, with somewhat a quicker step, and somewhat a gayer mien than usual. Audley's hand, as if mechanically, fell upon the newspaper--fell upon that part of the columns devoted to births, deaths, and marriages. Randal stood by, and noted; then, bowing to L'Estrange, left the room. "Audley," said L'Estrange, "I have had an adventure since I saw you--an adventure that reopened the Past, and may influence my future." "How?" "In the first place, I have met with a relation of--of--the Avenels." "Indeed! Whom--Richard Avenel?" "Richard--Richard--who is he? Oh, I remember; the wild lad who went off to America; but that was when I was a mere child." "That Richard Avenel is now a rich thriving trader, and his marriage is in this newspaper--married to an honorable Mrs. M'Catchley. Well--in this country--who should plume himself on birth?" "You did not say so always, Egerton," replied Harley, with a tone of mournful reproach. "And I say so now, pertinently to a Mrs. M'Catchley, not to the heir of the L'Estranges. But no more of these--these Avenels." "Yes, more of them. I tell you I have met a relation of theirs--a nephew of--of-- "Of Richard Avenel's?" interrupted Egerton; and then added in the slow, deliberate, argumentative tone in which he was wont to speak in public: "Richard Avenel the trader! I saw him once--a presuming and intolerable man!" "The nephew has not those sins. He is full of promise, of modesty, yet of pride. And his countenance--oh, Egerton, he has _her_ eyes." Egerton made no answer. And Harley resumed-- "I had thought of placing him under your care. I knew you would provide for him." "I will. Bring him hither," cried Egerton eagerly. "All that I can do to prove my--regard for a wish of yours." Harley pressed his friend's hand warmly. "I thank you from my heart; the Audley of my boyhood speaks now. But the young man has decided otherwise; and I do not blame him. Nay, I rejoice that he chooses a career in which, if he find hardship, he may escape dependence." "And that career is--" "Letters." "Letters--Literature!" exclaimed the statesman. "Beggary! No, no, Harley, this is your absurd romance." "It will not be beggary, and it is not my romance: it is the boy's. Leave him alone, he is in my care and my charge henceforth. He is of _her_ blood, and I said that he had _her_ eyes." "But you are going abroad; let me know where he is; I will watch over him." "And unsettle a right ambition for a wrong one? No--you shall know nothing of him till he can proclaim himself. I think that day will come." Audley mused a moment, and then said, "Well, perhaps you are right. After all, as you say, independence is a great blessing, and my ambition has not rendered myself the better or the happier." "Yet, my poor Audley, you ask me to be ambitious." "I only wish you to be consoled," cried Egerton with passion. "I will try to be so; and by the help of a milder remedy than yours. I said that my adventure might influence my future; it brought me acquainted not only with the young man I speak of, but the most winning, affectionate child--a girl." "Is this child an Avenel too?" "No, she is of gentle blood--a soldier's daughter; the daughter of that Captain Digby, on whose behalf I was a petitioner to your patronage. He is dead, and in dying, my name was on his lips. He meant me, doubtless, to be the guardian to his orphan. I shall be so. I have at last an object in life." "But can you seriously mean to take this child with you abroad?" "Seriously, I do." "And lodge her in your own house?" "For a year or so while she is yet a child. Then, as she approaches youth, I shall place her elsewhere." "You may grow to love her. Is it clear that she will love you?--not mistake gratitude for love? It is a very hazardous experiment." "So was William the Norman's--still he was William the Conqueror. Thou biddest me move on from the past, and be consoled, yet thou wouldst make me as inapt to progress as the mule in Slawkenbergius's tale, with thy cursed interlocutions, 'Stumbling, by St. Nicholas, every step. Why, at this rate, we shall be all night getting into--' _Happiness!_ Listen," continued Harley, setting off, full pelt, into one of his wild whimsical humors. "One of the sons of the prophets in Israel, felling wood near the River Jordan, his hatchet forsook the helve, and fell to the bottom of the river; so he prayed to have it again, (it was but a small request, mark you;) and having a strong faith, he did not throw the hatchet after the helve, but the helve after the hatchet. Presently two great miracles were seen. Up springs the hatchet from the bottom of the water, and fixes itself to its old acquaintance, the helve. Now, had he wished to coach it to Heaven in a fiery chariot like Elias, be as rich as Job, strong as Samson, and beautiful as Absalom, would he have obtained it, do you think? In truth, my friend, I question it very much." "I cannot comprehend what you mean. Sad stuff you are talking." "I can't help that; Rabelais is to be blamed for it. I am quoting him, and it is to be found in his prologue to the chapters on the Moderation of Wishes. And apropos of 'moderate wishes in point of hatchet,' I want you to understand that I ask but little from Heaven. I fling but the helve after the hatchet that has sunk into the silent stream. I want the other half of the weapon that is buried fathom deep, and for want of which the thick woods darken round me by the Sacred River, and I can catch not a glimpse of the stars." "In plain English," said Audley Egerton, "you want"--he stopped short, puzzled. "I want my purpose and my will, and my old character, and the nature God gave me. I want the half of my soul which has fallen from me. I want such love as may replace to me the vanished affections. Reason not--I throw the helve after the hatchet." CHAPTER XXI. Randal Leslie, on leaving Audley, repaired to Frank's lodgings, and after being closeted with the young guardsman an hour or so, took his way to Limmer's hotel, and asked for Mr. Hazeldean. He was shown into the coffee-room, while the waiter went up stairs with his card, to see if the Squire was within, and disengaged. The _Times_ newspaper lay sprawling on one of the tables, and Randal, leaning over it, looked with attention into the column containing births, deaths, and marriages. But in that long and miscellaneous list, he could not conjecture the name which had so excited Mr. Egerton's interest. "Vexatious!" he muttered; "there is no knowledge which has power more useful than that of the secrets of men." He turned as the waiter entered, and said that Mr. Hazeldean would be glad to see him. As Randal entered the drawing-room, the Squire shaking hands with him, looked towards the door as if expecting some one else, and his honest face assumed a blank expression of disappointment when the door closed, and he found that Randal was unaccompanied. "Well," said he bluntly, "I thought your old school-fellow, Frank, might have been with you." "Have not you seen him yet, sir?" "No, I came to town this morning; travelled outside the mail; sent to his barracks, but the young gentleman does not sleep there--has an apartment of his own; he never told me that. We are a plain family, the Hazeldeans--young sir; and I hate being kept in the dark, by my own son too." Randal made no answer, but looked sorrowful. The Squire, who had never before seen his kinsman, had a vague idea that it was not quite polite to entertain a stranger, though a connection to himself, with his family troubles, and so resumed good-naturedly: "I am very glad to make your acquaintance at last, Mr. Leslie. You know, I hope, that you have good Hazeldean blood in your veins?" _Randal_, (smilingly).--"I am not likely to forget that; it is the boast of our pedigree." _Squire_, (heartily.)--"Shake hands again on it, my boy. You don't want a friend, since my grandee of a half-brother has taken you up; but if ever you should, Hazeldean is not very far from Rood. Can't get on with your father at all, my lad--more's the pity, for I think I could have given him a hint or two as to the improvement of his property. If he would plant those ugly commons--larch and fir soon come into profit, sir; and there are some low lands about Rood that would take mighty kindly to draining." _Randal._--"My poor father lives a life so retired, and you cannot wonder at it. Fallen trees lie still, and so do fallen families." _Squire._--"Fallen families can get up again, which fallen trees can't." _Randal._--"Ah, sir, it often takes the energy of generations to repair the thriftlessness and extravagance of a single owner." _Squire_, (his brow lowering.)--"That's very true. Frank _is_ d----d extravagant; treats me very coolly, too--not coming; near three o'clock. By the by, I suppose he told you where I was, otherwise how did you find me out!" _Randal_, (reluctantly.)--"Sir, he did; and, to speak frankly, I am not surprised that he has not yet appeared." _Squire._--"Eh?" _Randal._--"We have grown very intimate." _Squire._--"So he writes me word--and I am glad of it. Our member, Sir John, tells me you are a very clever fellow, and a very steady one. And Frank says that he wishes he had your prudence, if he can't have your talents. He has a good heart, Frank," added the father, relentingly. "But, zounds, sir, you say you are not surprised he has not come to welcome his own father?" "My dear sir," said Randal, "you wrote word to Frank that you had heard from Sir John and others, of his goings-on, and that you were not satisfied with his replies to your letters." "Well." "And then you suddenly come up to town." "Well." "Well. And Frank is ashamed to meet you. For, as you say, he has been extravagant, and he has exceeded his allowance; and, knowing my respect for you, and my great affection for himself, he has asked me to prepare you to receive his confession and forgive him. I know I am taking a great liberty. I have no right to interfere between father and son; but pray--pray think I mean for the best." "Humph!" said the Squire, recovering himself very slowly, and showing evident pain. "I knew already that Frank had spent more than he ought; but I think he should not have employed a third person to prepare me to forgive him. (Excuse me--no offence.) And if he wanted a third person, was not there his own mother? What the devil!--(firing up)--am I a tyrant--a bashaw--that my own son is afraid to speak to me? Gad, I'll give it him?" "Pardon me, sir," said Randal, assuming at once that air of authority which superior intellect so well carries off and excuses. "But I strongly advise you not to express any anger at Frank's confidence in me. At present I have influence over him. Whatever you may think of his extravagance, I have saved him from many an indiscretion, and many a debt--a young man will listen to one of his own age so much more readily than even to the kindest friend of graver years. Indeed, sir, I speak for your sake as well as for Frank's. Let me keep this influence over him; and don't reproach him for the confidence he placed in me. Nay, let him rather think that I have softened any displeasure you might otherwise have felt." There seemed so much good sense in what Randal said, and the kindness of it seemed so disinterested, that the Squire's native shrewdness was deceived. "You are a fine young fellow," said he, "and I am very much obliged to you. Well, I suppose there is no putting old heads upon young shoulders; and I promise you I'll not say an angry word to Frank. I dare say, poor boy, he is very much afflicted, and I long to shake hands with him. So, set his mind at ease." "Ah, sir," said Randal, with much apparent emotion, "your son may well love you; and it seems to be a hard matter for so kind a heart as yours to preserve the proper firmness with him." "Oh, I can be firm enough," quoth the squire--"especially when I don't see him--handsome dog that he is--very like his mother--don't you think so?" "I never saw his mother, sir." "Gad! Not seen my Harry! No more you have; you must come and pay us a visit. We have your grandmother's picture, when she was a girl, with a crook in one hand and a bunch of lilies in the other. I suppose my half-brother will let you come?" "To be sure, sir. Will you not call on him while you are in town? "Not I. He would think I expected to get something from the Government. Tell him the ministers must go on a little better, if they want my vote for their member. But go. I see you are impatient to tell Frank that all's forgot and forgiven. Come and dine with him here at six, and let him bring his bills in his pocket. Oh, I shan't scold him." "Why, as to that," said Randal, smiling, "I think (forgive me still) that you should not take it too easily; just as I think that you had better not blame him for his very natural and praiseworthy shame in approaching you, so I think, also, that you should do nothing that would tend to diminish that shame--it is such a check on him. And therefore, if you can contrive to affect to be angry with him for his extravagance, it will do good." "You speak like a book, and I'll try my best." "If you threaten, for instance, to take him out of the army, and settle him in the country, it would have a very good effect." "What! would he think it so great a punishment to come home and live with his parents?" "I don't say that; but he is naturally so fond of London. At his age, and with his large inheritance, _that_ is natural." "Inheritance!" said the Squire, moodily--"inheritance! he is not thinking of that, I trust? Zounds, sir, I have as good a life as his own. Inheritance!--to be sure the Casino property is entailed on him; but, as for the rest, sir, I am no tenant for life. I could leave the Hazeldean lands to my ploughman, if I chose it. Inheritance, indeed!" "My dear sir, I did not mean to imply that Frank would entertain the unnatural and monstrous idea of calculating on your death; and all we have to do is to get him to sow his wild oats as soon as possible--marry, and settle down into the country. For it would be a thousand pities if his town habits and tastes grew permanent--a bad thing for the Hazeldean property, that. And," added Randal, laughing, "I feel an interest in the old place, since my grandmother comes of the stock. So, just force yourself to seem angry, and grumble a little when you pay the bills." "Ah, ah, trust me," said the Squire, doggedly and with a very altered air, "I am much obliged to you for these hints, my young kinsman." And his stout hand trembled a little as he extended it to Randal. Leaving Limmer's, Randal hastened to Frank's rooms in St. James's Street. "My dear fellow," said he, when he entered, "it is very fortunate that I persuaded you to let me break matters to your father. You might well say he was rather passionate; but I have contrived to soothe him. You need not fear that he will not pay your debts." "I never feared that," said Frank changing color; "I only fear his anger. But, indeed, I feared his kindness still more. What a reckless hound I have been! However, it shall be a lesson to me. And my debts once paid, I will turn as economical as yourself." "Quite right, Frank. And, indeed, I am a little afraid that when your father knows the total, he may execute a threat that would be very unpleasant to you." "What's that?" "Make you sell out, and give up London." "The devil!" exclaimed Frank, with fervent emphasis; "that would be treating me like a child." "Why, it _would_ make you seem rather ridiculous to your set, which is not a very rural one. And you, who like London so much, and are so much the fashion." "Don't talk of it," cried Frank, walking to and fro the room in great disorder. "Perhaps on the whole, it might be well not to say all you owe, at once. If you named half the sum, your father would let you off with a lecture; and really I tremble at the effect of the total." "But how shall I pay the other half?" "Oh, you must save from your allowance; it is a very liberal one; and the tradesmen are not pressing." "No--but the cursed bill-brokers"-- "Always renew to a young man of your expectations. And if I get into an office, I can always help you, my dear Frank." "Ah, Randal, I am not so bad as to take advantage of your friendship," said Frank warmly. "But it seems to me mean, after all, and a sort of a lie, indeed, disguising the real state of my affairs. I should not have listened to the idea from any one else. But you are such a sensible, kind, honorable fellow." "After epithets so flattering, I shrink from the responsibility of advice. But apart from your own interests, I should be glad to save your father the pain he would feel at knowing the whole extent of the scrape you have got into. And if it entailed on you the necessity to lay by--and give up hazard, and not be security for other men--why it would be the best thing that could happen. Really, too, it seems hard on Mr. Hazeldean, that he should be the only sufferer, and quite just that you should bear half your own burdens." "So it is, Randal; that did not strike me before. I will take your counsel; and now I will go at once to Limmer's. My dear father! I hope he is looking well?" "Oh, very. Such a contrast to the sallow Londoners! But I think you had better not go till dinner. He has asked me to meet you at six. I will call for you a little before, and we can go together. This will prevent a great deal of _gêne_ and constraint. Good-bye till then.--Ha!--by the way, I think if I were you, I would not take the matter too seriously and penitentially. You see the best of fathers like to keep their sons under their thumb, as the saying is. And if you want at your age to preserve your independence, and not be hurried off and buried in the country, like a school-boy in disgrace, a little manliness of bearing would not be amiss. You can think over it." The dinner at Limmer's went off very differently from what it ought to have done. Randal's words had sunk deep, and rankled sorely in the Squire's mind; and that impression imparted a certain coldness to his manner which belied the hearty, forgiving, generous impulse with which he had come up to London, and which even Randal had not yet altogether whispered away. On the other hand, Frank, embarrassed both by the sense of disingenuousness, and a desire "not to take the thing too seriously," seemed to the Squire ungracious and thankless. After dinner, the Squire began to hum and haw, and Frank to color up and shrink. Both felt discomposed by the presence of a third person; till, with an art and address worthy of a better cause, Randal himself broke the ice, and so contrived to remove the restraint he had before imposed, that at length each was heartily glad to have matters made clear and brief by his dexterity and tact. Frank's debts were not in reality, large; and when he named the half of them--looking down in shame--the Squire, agreeably surprised, was about to express himself with a liberal heartiness that would have opened his son's excellent heart at once to him. But a warning look from Randal checked the impulse; and the Squire thought it right, as he had promised, to affect an anger he did not feel, and let fall the unlucky threat, "that it was all very well once in a way to exceed his allowance; but if Frank did not, in future, show more sense than to be led away by a set of London sharks and coxcombs, he must cut the army, come home, and take to farming." Frank imprudently exclaimed, "Oh, sir, I have no taste for farming. And after London, at my age, the country would be so horribly dull." "Aha!" said the Squire, very grimly--and he thrust back into his pocket-book some extra bank-notes which his fingers had itched to add to those he had already counted out. "The country is terribly dull, is it? Money goes there not upon follies and vices, but upon employing honest laborers, and increasing the wealth of the nation. It does not please you to spend money in that way: it is a pity you should ever be plagued with such duties." "My dear father--" "Hold your tongue, you puppy. Oh, I dare say, if you were in my shoes, you would cut down the oaks, and mortgage the property--sell it, for what I know--all go on a cast of the dice! Aha, sir--very well, very well--the country is horribly dull, is it? Pray, stay in town." "My dear Mr. Hazeldean," said Randal, blandly, and as if with the wish to turn off into a joke what threatened to be serious, "you must not interpret a hasty expression so literally. Why, you would make Frank as bad as Lord A----, who wrote word to his steward to cut down more timber; and when the steward replied, 'There are only three signposts left on the whole estate,' wrote back, '_They've_ done growing, at all events--'down with them.' You ought to know Lord A----, sir; so witty; and Frank's particular friend." "Your particular friend, Master Frank? Pretty friends!"--and the Squire buttoned up the pocket, to which he had transferred his note-book, with a determined air. "But I'm his friend, too," said Randal, kindly; "and I preach to him properly, I can tell you." Then, as if delicately anxious to change the subject, he began to ask questions upon crops, and the experiment of bone manure. He spoke earnestly, and with _gusto_, yet with the deference of one listening to a great practical authority. Randal had spent the afternoon in cramming the subject from agricultural journals and Parliamentary reports; and, like all practised readers, had really learned in a few hours more than many a man, unaccustomed to study, could gain from books in a year. The Squire was surprised and pleased at the young scholar's information and taste for such subjects. "But, to be sure," quoth he, with an angry look at poor Frank, "you have good Hazeldean blood in you, and know a bean from a turnip." "Why, sir," said Randal, ingenuously, "I am training myself for public life; and what is a public man worth if he do not study the agriculture of his country?" "Right--what is he worth? Put that question, with my compliments, to my half-brother. What stuff he did talk, the other night, on the malt tax, to be sure!" "Mr. Egerton has had so many other things to think of, that we must excuse his want of information upon one topic, however important. With his strong sense, he must acquire that information, sooner or later; for he is fond of power; and, sir,--knowledge is power!" "Very true;--very fine saying," quoth the poor Squire, unsuspiciously, as Randal's eye rested upon Mr. Hazeldean's open face, and then glanced towards Frank, who looked sad and bored. "Yes," repeated Randal, "knowledge is power;" and he shook his head wisely, as he passed the bottle to his host. Still, when the Squire, who meant to return to the Hall next morning, took leave of Frank, his heart warmed to his son; and still more for Frank's dejected looks. It was not Randal's policy to push estrangement too far at first, and in his own presence. "Speak to poor Frank--kindly now, sir--do;" whispered he, observing the Squire's watery eyes, as he moved to the window. The Squire rejoiced to obey--thrust out his hand to his son--"My dear boy," said he, "there, don't fret--pshaw!--it was but a trifle after all. Think no more of it." Frank took the hand, and suddenly threw his arm round his father's broad shoulder. "Oh, sir, you are too good--too good." His voice trembled so, that Randal took alarm, passed by him, and touched him meaningly. The Squire pressed his son to his heart--heart so large, that it seemed to fill the whole width under his broadcloth. "My dear Frank," said he, half blubbering, "it is not the money; but, you see, it so vexes your poor mother; you must be careful in future; and, zounds, boy, it will be all yours one day; only don't calculate on it; I could not bear _that_--I could not, indeed." "Calculate!" cried Frank. "Oh, sir, can you think it!" "I am so delighted that I had some slight hand in your complete reconciliation with Mr. Hazeldean," said Randal, as the young men walked from the hotel. "I saw that you were disheartened, and I told him to speak to you kindly." "Did you? Ah, I am sorry he needed telling." "I know his character so well already," said Randal, "that I flatter myself I can always keep things between you as they ought to be. What an excellent man!" "The best man in the world!" cried Frank, heartily; and then as his accent drooped, "yet I have deceived him. I have a great mind to go back--" "And tell him to give you twice as much money as you had asked for. He would think you had only seemed so affectionate in order to take him in. No, no, Frank; save--lay by--economize; and then tell him that you have paid half your own debts. Something high-minded in that." "So there is. Your heart is as good as your head. Good night." "Are you going home so early? Have you no engagements?" "None that I shall keep." "Good night, then." They parted, and Randal walked into one of the fashionable clubs. He neared a table, where three or four young men (younger sons, who lived in the most splendid style, heaven knew how) were still over their wine. Leslie had little in common with these gentlemen; but he forced his nature to be agreeable to them, in consequence of a very excellent piece of worldly advice given to him by Audley Egerton. "Never let the dandies call you a prig," said the statesman. "Many a clever fellow fails through life, because the silly fellows, whom half a word well spoken could make his _claqueurs_, turn him into ridicule. Whatever you are, avoid the fault of most reading men: in a word, don't be a prig!" "I have just left Hazeldean," said Randal--"what a good fellow he is!" "Capital," said the honorable George Borrowwell. "Where is he?" "Why, he is gone to his rooms. He has had a little scene with his father, a thorough, rough country squire. It would be an act of charity if you would go and keep him company, or take him with you to some place a little more lively than his own lodgings." "What! the old gentleman has been teasing him?--a horrid shame! Why, Frank is not expensive, and he will be very rich--eh?" "An immense property," said Randal, "and not a mortgage on it; an only son," he added, turning away. Among these young gentlemen there was a kindly and most benevolent whisper, and presently they all rose, and walked away towards Frank's lodgings. "The wedge is in the tree," said Randal to himself, "and there is a gap already between the bark and the wood." CHAPTER XXII. Harley L'Estrange is seated beside Helen at the lattice-window in the cottage at Norwood. The bloom of reviving health is on the child's face, and she is listening with a smile, for Harley is speaking of Leonard with praise, and of Leonard's future with hope. "And thus," he continued, "secure from his former trials, happy in his occupation, and pursuing the career he has chosen, we must be content, my dear child, to leave him." "Leave him!" exclaimed Helen, and the rose on her cheek faded. Harley was not displeased to see her emotion. He would have been disappointed in her heart if it had been less susceptible to affection. "It is hard on you, Helen," said he, "to separate you from one who has been to you as a brother. Do not hate me for doing so. But I consider myself your guardian, and your home as yet must be mine. We are going from this land of cloud and mist, going as into the world of summer. Well, that does not content you. You weep, my child; you mourn your own friend, but do not forget your father's. I am alone, and often sad, Helen; will you not comfort me? You press my hand, but you must learn to smile on me also. You are born to be the Comforter. Comforters are not egotists; they are always cheerful when they console." The voice of Harley was so sweet, and his words went so home to the child's heart, that she looked up and smiled in his face as he kissed her ingenuous brow. But then she thought of Leonard, and felt so solitary--so bereft--that tears burst forth again. Before these were dried, Leonard himself entered, and obeying an irresistible impulse, she sprang to his arms, and, leaning her head on his shoulder, sobbed out, "I am going from you, brother--do not grieve--do not miss me." Harley was much moved: he folded his arms, and contemplated them both silently--and his own eyes were moist, "This heart," thought he, "will be worth the winning!" He drew aside Leonard, and whispered, "Soothe but encourage and support her. I leave you together; come to me in the garden later." It was nearly an hour before Leonard joined Harley. "She was not weeping when you left her?" asked L'Estrange. "No; she has more fortitude than we might suppose. Heaven knows how that fortitude has supported mine. I have promised to write to her often." Harley took two strides across the lawn, and then, coming back to Leonard, said, "Keep your promise, and write often for the first year. I would then ask you to let the correspondence drop gradually." "Drop!--Ah, my lord!" "Look you, my young friend, I wish to lead this fair mind wholly from the sorrows of the Past. I wish Helen to enter, not abruptly, but step by step, into a new life. You love each other now as do two children--as brother and sister. But later, if encouraged, would the love be the same? And is it not better for both of you, that youth should open upon the world with youth's natural affections free and unforestalled?" "True! and she is so above me," said Leonard, mournfully. "No one is above him who succeeds in your ambition, Leonard. It is not _that_, believe me!" Leonard shook his head. "Perhaps," said Harley, with a smile, "I rather feel that you are above me. For what vantage-ground is so high as youth? Perhaps I may become jealous of you. It is well that she should learn to like one who is to be henceforth her guardian and protector. Yet, how can she like me as she ought, if her heart is to be full of you?" The boy bowed his head; and Harley hastened to change the subject, and speak of letters and of glory. His words were eloquent, and his voice kindling; for he had been an enthusiast for fame in his boyhood; and in Leonard's his own seemed to him to revive. But the poet's heart gave back no echo--suddenly it seemed void and desolate. Yet when Leonard walked back by the moonlight, he muttered to himself, "Strange--strange--so mere a child, this cannot be love! Still what else to love is there left to me?" And so he paused upon the bridge where he had so often stood with Helen, and on which he had found the protector that had given to her a home--to himself a career. And life seemed very long, and fame but a dreary phantom. Courage, still, Leonard! These are the sorrows of the heart that teach thee more than all the precepts of sage and critic. Another day, and Helen had left the shores of England, with her fanciful and dreaming guardian. Years will pass before our tale reopens. Life in all the forms we have seen it travels on. And the Squire farms and hunts; and the Parson preaches and chides and soothes. And Riccabocca reads his Machiavelli, and sighs and smiles as he moralizes on Men and States. And Violante's dark eyes grow deeper and more spiritual in their lustre; and her beauty takes thought from solitary dreams. And Mr. Richard Avenel has his house in London, and the honorable Mrs. Avenel her opera box; and hard and dire is their struggle into fashion, and hotly does the new man, scorning the aristocracy, to pant become aristocrat. And Audley Egerton goes from the office to the Parliament, and drudges, and debates, and helps to govern the empire in which the sun never sets. Poor Sun, how tired he must be--but none more tired than the Government! And Randal Leslie has an excellent place in the bureau of a minister, and is looking to the time when he shall resign it to come into Parliament, and on that large arena turn knowledge into power. And meanwhile, he is much where he was with Audley Egerton; but he has established intimacy with the Squire, and visited Hazeldean twice, and examined the house and the map of the property--and very nearly fallen a second time into the Ha-ha, and the Squire believes that Randal Leslie alone can keep Frank out of mischief, and has spoken rough words to his Harry about Frank's continued extravagance. And Frank does continue to pursue pleasure, and is very miserable, and horribly in debt. And Madame di Negra has gone from London to Paris, and taken a tour into Switzerland, and come back to London again, and has grown very intimate with Randal Leslie; and Randal has introduced Frank to her; and Frank thinks her the loveliest woman in the world, and grossly slandered by certain evil tongues. And the brother of Madame di Negra is expected in England at least; and what with his repute for beauty and for wealth, people anticipate a sensation; and Leonard, and Harley, and Helen? Patience--they will all reappear. FOOTNOTES: [7] Continued from page 386. FRAGMENTS FROM A VOLUME OF POEMS BY THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES. [Just Published in London.] NOTHING ALONE. All round and through the spaces of creation No hiding-place of the least air, or earth, Or sea, invisible, untrod, unrained on, Contains a thing alone. Not e'en the bird, That can go up the labyrinthine winds Between its pinions, and pursues the summer,-- Not even the great serpent of the billows, Who winds him thrice around this planet's waist,-- Is by itself in joy or suffering. LOVE. O that sweet influence of thoughts and looks! That change of being, which, to one who lives, Is nothing less divine than divine life To the unmade! Love? Do I love? I walk Within the brilliance of another's thought, As in a glory. INNOCENT WELCOME TO EVIL. How thou art like the daisy in Noah's meadow, On which the foremost drop of rain fell warm And soft at evening; so the little flower Wrapped up its leaves, and shut the treacherous water Close to the golden welcome of its breast,-- Delighting in the touch of that which led The shower of oceans, in whose billowy drops Tritons and lions of the sea were warring. THE IMPARTIAL BANQUET. The unfashionable worm, Respectless of crown-illumined brow, To cheek's bewitchment, or the sceptred clench, With no more eyes than Love, creeps courtier-like, On his thin belly, to his food,--no matter How clad or nicknamed it might strut above, What age or sex,--it is his dinner-time. ARGUMENT FOR MERCY. I have a plea, As dewy piteous as the gentle ghost's That sits alone upon a forest-grave Thinking of no revenge: I have a mandate, As magical and potent as e'er ran Silently through a battle's myriad veins, Undid their fingers from the hanging steel, And drew them up in prayer: I AM A WOMAN. O motherly-remembered be the name, And, with the thought of loves and sisters, sweet And comforting! INTERCESSION BETWEEN A FATHER AND A SON. There stands before you The youth and golden top of your existence, Another life of yours: for, think your morning Not lost, but given, passed from your hand to his The same except in place. Be then to him As was the former tenant of your age, When you were in the prologue of your time, And he lay hid in you unconsciously Under his life. And thou, my younger master, Remember there's a kind of God in him; And, after heaven, the next of thy religion. Thy second fears of God, thy first of man, Are his, who was creation's delegate, And made this world for thee in making thee. Authors and Books. CARL IMMERMAN'S _Theater-Briefe_ (Letters on the Theatre), says a German critic, "is interesting not only as a history of a German theatre, but as an excellent addition to the literature of æsthetic criticism. This work refers more especially to the years 1833-37, during which time, as is well known, Immerman attempted to establish in Düsseldorf an _ideal_ theatre, somewhat in the style of that at Weimar." We have frequently, in conversation with a gentleman who held an appointment in this Düsseldorf _Ideal Theatre_, received amusing and interesting accounts of Immerman's style of management. That his plan did not succeed is undoubtedly for the sake of Art to be regretted; yet we can by no means unconditionally approve of the ideas upon which Immerman based his theories. He was certainly right in endeavoring to form a unity of style in dramatic representations; but how he could have deemed such an unity possible, when grounded upon such diametrically opposed æsthetic bases as those of Shakespeare and Calderon, is to us unintelligible. The remarks on the most convenient and practical style of executing certain pieces--for example, Hamlet--are worthy of attention, as also a few explanations relative to Immerman's own dramatic conceptions. * * * * * KOHL, whose innumerable and well-known books of travel have caused him to be cited even in book-making Germany as an instance of _Ausserordentlichen Fruchtbarkeit_, or extraordinary fertility, has published, through Kuntze of Dresden, yet another work, entitled _Sketches of Nature and Popular Life_, which is however said to be inferior to the average of his works--principally, we imagine, from his falling into the besetting sin of German writers since the late revolutions, namely, of talking politics when he should have quoted poetry. We should not be surprised to find some day a treatise on qualitative chemistry, commencing with an analysis of the Prussian constitution, or an anatomical work, concluding with a dissection of Germany in general. Kohl possesses, however, great faculties of observation, is an accurate describer, and has, perhaps, done as much as any man of the age towards making different countries acquainted with each other. * * * * * The friends of the Italian language and literature, will do well to cast an occasional kindly glance on _L'Eco d'Italia_ (The Echo of Italy), an excellent weekly paper published by Signor SECCHI DE CASALI, in this city, at number 289 Broadway. Many admirable poems find their way from time to time into this periodical, while its foreign correspondence is of a high order of merit. * * * * * The Polish authoress NARCISA ZWICHOWSKA, well known to all who are acquainted with the literature of that country, has received from the Russian authorities an order to enter a convent, and no longer to occupy herself with literature, but with labors of a manual kind, which are more becoming to women. She is to receive from the treasury a silver ruble, or about sixty-two and a half cents a day for her support. * * * * * Cooking is no doubt a great science, and its chief prophet is undeniably EUGENE BARON BAERST. This gentleman, who is well known in Germany and elsewhere for his gallant services in Spain, in the army of Don Carlos, has just brought out a work in two volumes, of some six hundred and fifty pages each, entitled _Gastrosophie, oder die Lehre von den Freuden der Tafel_ (Gastrosophy, or the Doctrine of the Delights of the Table). In this he evinces a thoroughness of knowledge and a fire of enthusiasm well calculated to astonish the reader, who has probably not before been aware of the grandeur of the subjects discussed. He begins with the very elements of his theme. "The man," he exclaims in his preface, "who undertakes to write a cook-book, must begin by teaching the mason how to build a fire-place, so as not merely to produce heat from above or below, but from both at once; he must teach the butcher how to cut his meat, and above all the baker how to make bread, and especially the _semmel_ (a sort of small loaves with caraway or anise seed, much liked in Germany), which are often very like leather and perfectly indigestible. It is true that in Psalm CIV. verse 15, we are told that bread strengthens the heart of man, but the semmel sort does no such thing; and when Linguet affirms,--and it is one of the greatest paradoxes I know of,--that bread is a noxious article of food, he must be thinking of just that kind. Further, it is necessary to instruct the gardener, the vegetable woman, the cattle dealer and feeder, and a hundred other people down to the scullion, who must learn to chop the spinage very fine and rub and tie it well, and also not to wash the salad, &c. And this is all the more necessary, because bad workmen,--and their name is legion,--love no sort of instruction, but fancy that they already know every thing better than anybody else." To this extensive and thankless work of instruction, the Baron declares that he has devoted himself, and that the iron will necessary to its accomplishment is his. The iron health is however wanting, and accordingly he can do nothing better for "the fatherland's artists in eating" than the present work. At the last advices, the valiant Baron was dangerously ill. * * * * * Works on natural history and philosophy seldom possess much interest for the uninitiated in "the physically practical." An exception to this may however be found in the beautiful _Schmetterlingsbuch_, or _Butterfly book_, recently published by Hoffman of Stuttgart, containing eleven hundred colored illustrations of these "winged flowers," as the Chinese poetically term them. Equally attractive to every lover of exquisite works of scientific art, is the recent American _Pomology_, edited by Dr. BRINCKLE of Philadelphia, and published by Hoffy of that city. This, we state on the authority of the Philadelphia Art-Union Reporter, is the most splendid work of the kind ever published in this country or Europe, with a single exception, which was issued under royal patronage. * * * * * A valuable and useful book in these times is STEIN'S _Geschichte der socialen Bewegung in Frankreich von 1789 bis auf unsere Tage_ (History of the Social Movement in France from 1789 to our day). It is in three volumes, published at Leipzig. The _Socialismus und Communismus_ of the same author has given him a wide reputation for impartiality and thoroughness, which the present work must confirm and extend. We do not coincide in all his views, historical or critical, but cordially recommend him to the study of all who desire to inform themselves as to one of the most important phases of modern history. * * * * * An interesting work entitled _Die Macht des Kleinen_, or _The power of the Little, as shown in the formation of the crust of our earth-ball_, has recently been translated from the Dutch of _Schwartzkopt_, by Dr. SCHLEIDEN of Leipzig. This book treats entirely of the works and wonders effected by that "invisible brotherhood" of architects, the _animalculæ_, and shows how greatly the organic world is indebted to coral insects, _foraminiferæ_, polypi, and other cryptic beings, for its existence and progress. The illustrations are truly admirable. * * * * * Among the recent publications at Halle, is a heavy octavo by Dr. J. H. KRAUSE, on the _History of Education, Instruction and Culture among the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans_. It is drawn from the original sources, and is the result of a most studious and thorough investigation of the subject. * * * * * A very intelligent young priest, by name JOSEPH LUTZ, has recently published by Laupp of Tübingen, a _Handbook of Catholic Pulpit Eloquence_. This work will be found highly interesting to those desirous of investigating the history and theories of modern eloquence. We were already aware that in New-England smoking and whistling are regarded as vices, but first learned from the prospectus of this work that, according to Theremin, eloquence is a _virtue_! * * * * * A collection of the popular songs of Southern Russia is now being published at Moscow by Mr. MAKSIMOWITSCH, who for twenty years has been in the Ukraine, engaged in taking down and preserving these interesting products of the early life of his people in that region. This is not the first contribution of the kind that he has made to Russian literature; in 1827 he published the _Songs of Little Russia_, consisting of one hundred and thirty pieces for male and female voices; in 1834 the _Popular Songs of the Ukraine_, consisting of one hundred and thirteen songs for men; and in the same year the _Voices of Ukraine Song_, twenty-five pieces with music. The present work is called by way of distinction _Collectaneum of Ukraine Popular Songs_; it is to be in six parts, containing about two thousand national poems. Each part is to be accompanied with explanatory notes, and the last volume will contain an essay on Russian popular poetry in general, as well as on that of the Ukraine in particular. One volume has already appeared; it is in two divisions: the first of Ukraine _Dumy_, the second of cradle songs and lullabys. The _Dumy_ are a particular sort of poems peculiar to the Ukraine. They are in a most irregular measure, varying from four to twelve syllables, with the cadence varying in each line. The only requirement is that they should rhyme, and frequently several successive lines are made to do so. These poems are the production of the _Vandurists_, or bards of the country, who are even yet found on the southern shore of the Dnieper. These singers, usually blind old men, chant their _Dumy_ and their songs to the people, accompanying themselves with both hands on the many-stringed _vandura_. The _Dumy_ flourished most in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There are some existing composed by Mazeppa after the battle of Pultowa, and one or two other poets have left a _Dumy_ of the eighteenth, but they are not equal to those of more primitive times. Since then there have been no new compositions in the way of popular songs and ballads, but the older works have been repeated with variations and to new melodies. The most frequent subjects of these ballads were, of course, historic personages and warlike deeds; but often they sung of domestic matters and feelings, winding up with a moral for the benefit of the young. In this volume of Mr. Maksimowitsch, are twenty _Dumy_; their subjects are such as these: Fight of the Cossack with the Tartar, the Three Brothers, On the Victory of Gorgsun (1648). He reckons the number in existence at thirty. Of these he publishes, four have not before been known. * * * * * A new edition of Hogarth's Works is in process of republication at Göttingen in a diminished size. There are to be twelve parts at fifty cents each; the third part has been published. * * * * * Of DR. ANDREE'S great work on _America_, whose commencement we noticed some months since, the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth parts have just reached us. The German savan continues to justify the high encomiums we passed upon the earlier portions of his work. He has used with the utmost industry and conscientiousness all the best sources of information on every subject he treats. Gallatin, Morton and Squier he frequently quotes as authorities. These four parts are devoted to the conclusion of the essay on the origin and history of the American race. In this he calls attention to the fact that all the developments of American civilization took place on high plain lands and not in the rich vallies of the great rivers--a fact by the way which confirms Mr. Carey's theory of the first settlement and culture of land, though to this Dr. Andree does not refer. He then treats of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, the Bermudas and the United States. The leading facts in the geography, history, the sources of population, the political constitution, the geological structure, soil, climate, industry, resources, and prospects of these countries are given with admirable succinctness, thoroughness and justice. As a book of ordinary reference, none could be more convenient or reliable. The most difficult questions are considered with a genuine German cosmopolitan impartiality of judgment. The predominant influence in the formation of the American democratic institutions Dr. Andree considers to be English, or more strictly speaking Teutonic. Other races and nations have contributed to the mass of the people, but only the Teutonic has laid the foundation and built the structure of the state. It is a great blessing in the history of the continent that the French did not succeed in their plans of colonization, for they would everywhere have founded not democratic but feudal institutions. The slavery question he treats more in the interest of the south than in the spirit of the abolitionists, whose course he condemns with considerable plainness of expression. On the mode of finally solving this question, he offers no speculations, but contents himself with showing the great difficulties attending colonization and emancipation upon the soil. The former he thinks impossible, the latter can only produce war between the two races, in which the latter must be exterminated. This mode of viewing this subject we can testify is frequent among well-educated Germans. The statistics relating to the United States, Dr. Andree has collected in a most lucid manner; we do not know where they are better or more conveniently arranged. Products, imports, exports, debt of federal and state governments, taxation, shipping, railroads, canals, schools, are all given; nothing escapes the vigilance of this most exemplary ethnographer. His style is no less clear and vivid in these four parts than in those preceding. The remainder will follow regularly. The work may be found at Westermann's, corner of Broadway and Reade street, by whose house in Brunswick, Germany, it is published. * * * * * M. ALEXANDER DUVAL has a long article in the _Journal des Débats_ entitled, _Studies upon German Love_, taking his text from Bettina von Arnim's famous correspondence with Goethe, and from the _Book of Love_, in which the same sentimentalist has recorded her relations with the unfortunate Günderode. M. Duval finds that in his intercourse with Bettina, Goethe played a part which was honorable neither to his mind nor his heart. In the _Book of Love_, says M. Duval, there is a little of every thing--of physics, of metaphysics, of poetry, of natural history, of biographical anecdotes, the history of the first kiss, of the second kiss, and of the third kiss received by Mlle. Bettina, mixed up with apostrophes to the stars, to the ocean, to the mountains, and above all, to the moon, which she loves so much that she never leaves it in peace. In fact, she has such a passion for whatever is lunatic, that the moon above is not sufficient, and she invents another, an interior and metaphysical moon, which enlightens the world of our thoughts. About this she writes to Goethe: "When thou art about to go to sleep, confide thyself to the inward moon, sleep in the light of the moon of thy own nature." French literature was never disgraced by a girl's making a god of its most illustrious representative, and his allowing the silly incense to be burned for years upon his altars; but the evil is getting into France as well. Rousseau did not dare to publish his confessions, but Lamartine has had the courage, and has served up to the public his own letters and the portraits of his mistresses. Madame Sand's _Memoirs_ are also advertised; another step that way and Germany need no longer envy the country of Montesquieu and Voltaire, of good sense and action. * * * * * Readable and instructive is HASE'S _Neue Propheten_ (New Prophets), just published in Germany. The new prophets are Joan d'Arc, Savonarola, and the Anabaptists of Münster. They are treated historically and philosophically, in a style whose simplicity, animation, and clearness, differ most gratefully from the crabbed and long-winded sentences of the earlier German writers, in the study of whom we dug our way into some imperfect acquaintance with that rich and flexible tongue. The book is worthy of translation. * * * * * A new book on a subject which has latterly become prominent among the themes of European observation and thought is called _Südslavische Wanderwagen im Sommer 1850_ (Wandering in Southern Slavonia in the Summer of 1850). It is a series of vivid and interesting pictures of one of the most remarkable races and regions of Europe. * * * * * A singular work has recently been published by Decker of Berlin, entitled _Monasticus Irenæus, von Jerusalem, nach Bethlehem_ (or Irenæus Monasticus: a public message to the noble Lady Ida, Countess of Hahn-Hahn: for the profit and piety of all newly converted Catholics.) In this work we find much talent, deep learning, and abundance of Schleiermachian philosophy; but remark on the other hand the following weak points: Firstly, that the author cuts down a gnat with a scimitar, or in other words overrates the talent and abilities of his adversary; and, secondly, that he affects to assume the tone and style in which her work was written, even in the title. (The reader will remember that the work of the Countess was entitled "_From Jerusalem_," and bore the motto, "SOLI DEO GLORIA.") In other respects also is this work, if not decidedly wrong, at least quite indifferent. * * * * * LAMARTINE'S History of the Restoration is reviewed at length in the _Journal des Débats_, by M. Cuvillier-Fleury. It is a very severe piece of criticism. Lamartine is charged with injustice, confusion, and even a systematic perversion of the truth, especially toward Napoleon. The account of the Emperor's last days at Fontainebleau, is pronounced a tragi-comedy, full of grimaces, of explosions, of puerile hesitations, of impossible exaggerations. Men and facts are judged without reflection, by prejudice, by blind passion, by a sort of fated and involuntary partiality. The method of the book runs into declamation, turgidity, and redundancy; he does not narrate, he discourses or expounds; he falls into mere gossip or is lost in analysis; instead of portraits he paints miniatures, and does not conceive an historical picture without a fancy vignette. His descriptive lyricism, instead of imparting a grandeur to his subject, diminishes it; instead of refining it, renders it petty. Besides, in his overstrained and exaggerated style, he is guilty of writing bad French; M. Cuvillier-Fleury quotes several striking examples of this. The article concludes by saying that the historian writes without ballast, and goes at the impulse of every breeze which swells his sails, and with no other care than the inspiration of the moment. His subject carries him off by all the perspectives it opens to his imagination or his memory. He is like a ship moving out of port with streamers floating from every mast, its poop crowned with flowers, and every sail set, but without a rudder. In spite of all criticism, however, this history has a large sale in France: the first edition is already exhausted. The practice of pirating, usual at Brussels and Leipzic, with reference to French works of importance, has been prevented, in this case, by the preparation of cheap editions for Belgium and Germany, which were issued there cotemporaneously with the publication at Paris. * * * * * The second part of the third volume of HUMBOLDT'S _Kosmos_ is nearly completed, and will soon appear. A fourth volume is to be added, in which the geological studies of the venerable author will be set forth. He is now nearly eighty-one years old, and is as vigorous and youthful in feeling as ever. The first part of the third volume of _Kosmos_ appeared in German and English several months ago. * * * * * A History of Polish Literature, from the remotest antiquity to 1830, is now being published at Warsaw, by Mr. MACIEJOWKI, a writer thoroughly acquainted with the subject. Three parts of the first volume have appeared, bringing the history down to the first half of the seventeenth century. One more part will complete the volume, and three volumes will complete the work. * * * * * The study of Russian archæology and history is prosecuted in that country with a degree of activity and thoroughness that other nations are not aware of, and publications of importance are made constantly. Within the present year the fifth part of the complete collection of _Russian Chronicles_ has appeared, the fourth of the collection of public documents relating to the history of Western Russia, and the beginning of a new collection of foreign historians of Russia. * * * * * A curious contrast of light and shade is exhibited in the titles of two works recently published in Vienna. SIEGFRIED WEISS (or _white_) puts forth a book, _On the present state and trade policy of Germany_, while in the next paragraph of the same list N. SCHWARTZ (or _black_) appears as the author of _The situation of Austria as regards her trade policy_. This latter we should judge to be an excellent illustration of the old phrase, "_nomen et omen!_" * * * * * Periodical literature is making its way into Asia. A literary monthly has made its appearance at Tiflis, in the Georgian language. It will discuss Georgian literature, furnish translations from foreign tongues, and treat of the arts and sciences, and of agriculture. What oriental students will find most interesting in this magazine, will be its specimens of the popular literature of the country. A new Armenian periodical has also been commenced in the Trans-Caucasian country. * * * * * A German version of HAWTHORNE'S _Scarlet Letter_ has been executed by one DU BOIS, and published by Velliagen & Klasing of Nielefeld. * * * * * OTTO HUBNER, the industrious German economist, is about to publish at Leipsic a collection of the tariffs of all nations. * * * * * A work on Freemasonic medals has been published by Dr. MERZDORF, superintendent of the Grand Ducal Library of Oldenburg: with plates. * * * * * The German Universities are well off for teachers. In the twenty-seven institutions of the kind at the last summer term, there were engaged 1586 teachers, viz.: 816 ordinary, 330 extraordinary, and 37 honorary professors, with 403 private tutors, exclusive of 134 masters of languages, gymnastics, fencing and dancing. Münster has the fewest teachers, numbering only 18, Olmütz 22, Innsbruck, 26, Gratz 22, Berne and Basle each 33, Rostock, 38; on the other hand Berlin has 167, Munich 102, Leipzic and Göttingen each 100, Prague 92, Bonn 90, Breslau 84, Heidelberg 81, Tübingen 77, Halle 75, Jena 74. The whole number of students in the last term was 16,074; Berlin counting 2199, Munich 1817, Prague 1204, Bonn 1026, Leipzic 846, Breslau 831, Tübingen 768, Göttingen 691, Würzburg 684, Halle 646, Heidelberg 624, Gratz 611, Jena 434, Giessen 409, Freiburg 403, Erlangen 402, Olmütz 396, Königsberg 332, Münster 323, Marburg 272, Innsbruck 257, Greifswald 208, Zürich 201, Berne 184, Rostock 122, Kiel 119, Basel 65. * * * * * Among the last poetical issues of the German press we notice _Poetis che Schriften_, by A. HENSEL (Vienna, 2 vols.), are exaggerated, almost insane expression of Austrian loyalty running through sonnets, lyrics, ballads and romances; _Friedrichsehre_ (Honor to Frederick), by an anonymous author (Posen), a new wreath for the weather-beaten old brows of Frederick the Great; _Erwachen_ (Waking), seven poems by Hugo le Juge (Berlin), a book with talent in it; _Lebensfrühling_, by Paul Eslin (Liepsic), the second edition of a collection of neat and pleasing poems for children. * * * * * The Russian government has published some book-making statistics of Poland in 1850. In the course of the year, 359 manuscript works were submitted to the censorship, being 19 more than in 1849. Almost all were scientific, the greater part treating of theology, jurisprudence, and medicine; 327 were licensed to be printed, 4 rejected, and 15 returned to their authors for modification; upon 13 no decision has been given. In 1850, there were imported into the kingdom 15,986 works, in 58,141 volumes; this was 749 works less, and 1,027 volumes more than in 1849. * * * * * A new work on Russia is appearing at Paris with the title of _Etudes sur les Forces Productives de la Russie_. Its author is Mr. L. DE TEGOBORSKI, a Russian privy councillor. The first volume, a stout octavo, has been issued. It treats of the geographical situation and extent of Russia, the climate, fertility and configuration of the soil; population; productions of the earth and their gross value; vegetable, animal and mineral productions; agriculture; raising of domestic animals. The whole work will consist of three volumes; the second is in press. * * * * * Notices in the later numbers of the _Europa_, of KARL QUENTIN in America, and _The Art Journal_, are not without interest. The Grenzboten also contains interesting articles on THOMAS MOORE, and OERSTED. * * * * * Of Ritter's great work, the _History of Philosophy_, of which only earlier volumes have appeared in English, a tenth volume is shortly to be published. * * * * * A new and compendious history of philosophy has been published at Leipzic in two octavo volumes, called _Das Buch der Weltweisheit_. It gives in the most succinct form a statement of the doctrines of the leading philosophical thinkers of all times, and is designed for the cultivated among the German people. Men of other nations are however not forbidden to derive from it what advantage they can. * * * * * DE FLOTTE, whose election to the French Assembly made such a stir a year since, has lately published a thick volume entitled _De la Souveraineté du Peuple_. It is a series of essays in which he discusses with great penetration and remarkable power of abstract thought, the spirit, ends, and present results of the great general revolution, of which all the special revolutions that have hitherto occurred, are merely incidents and phases. De Flotte considers that humanity is advancing toward liberty absolute and universal, in politics, religion, industry, and every department of life. "One thing," he says, "has ever astonished me; this is that some men presume to accuse the revolution of denying tradition, because they think only of one age, or of one dynasty, while we think of all sovereigns and of all ages; they oppose, with a curious good faith, the history of a single epoch or a single party, to the history of all epochs and of all men. Strange ignorance and singular forgetfulness! Why do they fail to do in space, what they do in time, in geography what they do in history? Why do they not deny the existence of negroes and of the Chinese because none of them come to France? The reason is that life in space strikes the bodily eye, while life in time strikes the eye of the mind, and theirs is blinded!" * * * * * In France, 78,000 francs have been voted by the National Assembly for excavations at Nineveh. Mr. LAYARD, without further means for the prosecution of his researches there, is in England, and we are sorry to learn, in ill health. His new book, _Fresh Discoveries in Nineveh_, will soon be published by Mr. Putnam. Dr. H. WEISSENBORN has printed in Stuttgart, _Nineveh and its Territory, in respect to the latest excavations in the valley of the Tigris_. Some specimens of the exhumed sculptures of Nineveh have been sent to New-York by Rev. D. W. Marsh, of the American mission at Mosul. * * * * * A second series of EUGENE SUE's _Mystères du Peuple_ is announced as about to commence at Paris. This is an attempt to set forth the history of the French people, or working classes, the form of a modern story being merely a frame in which to set the author's pictures of former times. The first series completes the history of the early Gauls and of Roman domination; the second will treat of feudalism and of the introduction of modern social castes and distinctions. Sue has published a preamble in the form of an address to his readers, in which he draws the outline of the subject he is about to treat, and establishes his main historical positions by reference to a great variety of learned authorities. The same author is now publishing in _La Presse_ a new novel called _Fernand Duplessis, or Memoirs of a Husband_. We have seen some eight or ten numbers of it; so far it is comparatively free from the clap-trap romance machinery in which French writers in general, and Sue in particular, are apt to indulge, while it is otherwise less unobjectionable than the mass of his stories. * * * * * The historian MICHELET has published a new part of his _Revolution Française_. It is devoted to the Girondists. The conclusions of the author are that these unfortunate politicians of a terrible epoch were personally innocent, that they never thought of dismembering France, and had no understanding with the enemy, but that the policy they pursued in the early part of '93, was blind and impotent, and if followed out could only have resulted in the destruction of the republic, and the triumph of the royalists. The whole is treated in the Micheletian manner, in distinct chapters, each elucidating some mind. * * * * * A work _On the Fabrication of Porcelain in China, with its History from Antiquity to the present Day_, that is to say, from 583 to 1821, has just been translated from Chinese into French by STANISLAS JULIEN, and published at Paris. It puts the European manufacturer perfectly in possession of the secrets of Chinese workmen, their methods, and the substances they employ. M. Julien has previously translated a Chinese essay on education of silkworms, and the culture of the mulberry. He is one of the most learned sinologues in Europe. * * * * * A French archæeologist, M. FELIX DE VERNEILH, has published an elaborate essay on the Cologne Cathedral, in which he denies to Germany the credit of inventing the purest model of the pointed arch, and demonstrates that this Cathedral was not planned at the beginning of the most brilliant period of Christian art, but was the climax thereof, and that instead of having served as the archetype in construction of other edifices, it shows the influence of them, and especially of the Cathedral of Amiens. * * * * * An interesting and instructive little work has been published at Paris on the Workingmen's Associations of that city and country. It is by M. ANDR� COCHUT, one of the editors of _Le National_. It gives the history of each of the more important of these establishments, with their mode of organization, number of members, and pecuniary and social results. The title is _Les Associations Ouvrières; Histoire et Théorie des Centatives de Reorganisation Industrielle depuis la Révolution de 1848_. * * * * * A complete edition of the works of GEORGE SAND is now publishing at Paris, in parts, with illustrations by Tony Johannot. It is to be elegant, yet cheap, the whole only costing about $5. There will be some six hundred illustrations. The first part contains _La Mare au Diable_ and _André_, with a new preface to the former, in which the author contradicts the notion that it was intended by her as the beginning of a new order of literature, or was attempted as a new style of writing. Other authors are to follow in the same manner. * * * * * The new volume of THIER's _History of the Consulate and the Empire_ is regarded as the most able and most interesting of the series. There is to be one other volume. * * * * * ALEXANDER DUMAS has written the following letter to the _Presse_: "Sir,--I understand that a publisher who at second hand is the owner of a book of mine called "The History of Louis Philippe," intends to issue the work under the title of "Mysteries of a Royal Family." I have written the history of Louis Philippe, just as I have written the histories of Louis XIV., and Louis XV., and Louis XVI., the history of the revolution, and the history of the empire. I have sold this series of historical works to a single publisher, M. Dufour. I never had the intention to provoke the scandal indicated by the title with which I am threatened in substitution for the one that I had given to the work. In the life of Louis Philippe and the royal family there is nothing mysterious. A fatal obstinacy in a course leading to an abyss: there's for the king. For the queen there is goodness, self-sacrifice, charity, religion, virtue. For the deceased royal prince and his living brothers, there is courage, loyalty, gallantry, intelligence, patriotism. You see in all this there is nothing mysterious. If he persists in giving to my book a title which I regard as infamous, the courts of justice shall decide between me and the publisher. May God keep me from invoking aught but historical truth with regard to a man who touched my hand when a king, and my heart, when an exile. "ALEX. DUMAS." Conduct of this sort--the changing of titles, in violation of the wishes of authors, or any change in a book, by a publisher--is atrocious crime, for the punishment of which a revival of the whipping-post would not be inappropriate. There have been many such cases in this country, and to some of them we may hereafter call particular attention. * * * * * One of the most truly successful of the younger living French writers is ALFRED DE MUSSET. His works are principally poetic and dramatic. He originated a style of pieces called _Caprices_, which have become exceedingly popular not only from their own point and spirit, but from the incomparable manner in which they are rendered on the stage of the _Théâtre Français_. M. de Musset's reputation has been achieved since the revolution of July. The last number of the _Grenzboten_ devotes a long leading article to the discussion of his works and his position in the world of letters. We translate the following paragraph: "We find in him an elegance of language, a truth of views, even though they be true only for him individually, a sensibility to all the problems of the soul and heart, and a freedom from the usual French prejudices, which lay a strong claim to our attention. He never falls into that shallow pathos with which Victor Hugo in his 'greatest moments' sometimes covers an intolerable triviality; phrases never run away with him as they do so often with the king of the romanticists, whose profoundest monologues not seldom turn out to be empty jingle. In clearness, delicacy and grace, he can be compared, among the modern romanticists, with only Prosper Merimée and Charles de Bernard. They also resemble him in the fear of being led away by general modes of expression and reflection. They strive only for _individual_ truth; but he differs from them in the breadth and multiformity of his perspectives, and in a singular power of assimilation which is based on extensive reading. In fact, the combinations of his wit and fancy often go so into the distant and boundless, that we think we are reading a German author." The critic then compares De Musset with Byron; the latter is more original and spontaneous, the former richer and more comprehensive. The questions Byron discusses have forced themselves upon him; those of De Musset are of his own invention. For the rest he has been greatly influenced by Heine and Hoffmann, as well as by the Faust of Goethe. The more important of his works are: _Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie_ (1830); _Un Spectacle dans un Fauteuil_ (1833); _Poésies Nouvelles_ (1835-40); the same (1840-49); _Les Comédies Injouables_, a collection of small dramatic pieces (1838); _Louis, ou il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée_, _Les deux Martiesses_, _Emmeline_, _Le Seuet de Javatte_, _Le Fils de Titien_, _Les Adventures de Laagon_, _La Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle_; romances published between 1830-40. De Musset is still a young man. A good deal has been said at sundry times about his admission to the French Academy, but the vacancies have been filled without him. * * * * * The London _Leader_ announces an abridged translation of AUGUSTE COMTE'S six volumes of _Positive Philosophy_, to appear as soon as is compatible with the exigencies of so important an undertaking. The _Leader_ says: "a very competent mind has long been engaged upon the task; and the growing desire in the public to hear more about this _Bacon_ of the nineteenth century, renders such a publication necessary." But we do not believe in the competence of any one who proposes an _abridgment_ of Comte: the idea is absurd. In this country, we believe, two full translations of the great Frenchman are in progress--one by Professor Gillespie, of which the Harpers have published the first volume, and another by one of the wisest and profoundest scholars of the time--a personal friend of Comte, thoroughly familiar with his system, and master of a style admirably suited for philosophical discussion. * * * * * JULES JANIN has published a new romance called _Gaîté Champêtre_. The preface has reached us in the feuilleton of the _Journal des Débats_. It is in the usual elaborate, learned, and fanciful, but most readable style of the author. He defends his calling as a mere man of letters, a student of form and style, in short an artist. * * * * * We mentioned not long ago (_International_, vol. iii. p. 214,) the pleasant letters of FERDINAND HILLER to a German Gazette, respecting his experiences among authors and artists in Paris. We see that Herr Hiller has been engaged by Mr. Lumley as musical director to Her Majesty's Theatre in London and the Italian Opera in Paris. He has filled the appointments of director to the Conservatoire and Maître de Chapelle, at Cologne, for some considerable time. His post at the Conservatoire is to be occupied by M. Liszt. He will be an important accession to society as well as to the theatres in those cities. * * * * * DR. R. G. LATHAM, whose important works on _The Varieties of Man_, _The English Language_, _the Ethnology of the British Empire_, &c., are familiar to scholars, and have proved their author the most profound and sagacious writer, in a wide and difficult field of science, now living, has in press an edition of the _Germania_ of Tacitus, in which his philological acquisitions and his skill in conjectural history will have ample room for display. * * * * * MR. JAMES T. FIELDS was a passenger in the steamer Pacific, which left New-York on the 11th ult. for Liverpool. Mr. Fields will pass the coming winter in France and Italy. * * * * * We hear of four new histories of the war with Mexico, one of which will be in three large volumes, by an accomplished officer who served under General Scott. * * * * * MR. HORACE MANN is engaged on a work illustrating his ideas of the character, condition, and proper sphere of woman. He does not quite agree with Abby Kelly. * * * * * The old charge that "Garth did not write his own Dispensary," has been revived with exquisite absurdity in the case of General Morris and the song of "Woodman, Spare that Tree!" We have not seen the original accusation which appeared in an obscure sheet in Boston, but we give place with pleasure to the letter of the poet. We can imagine nothing less "apt and of great credit," as Iago defines the requisites of a judicious calumny, than this figment. The characteristics of Morris's style are exceedingly marked, and are altogether different from those of Woodworth, who was an excellent songwriter and a most worthy man, but was as little like Morris in his literary manner as two men can be who write in the same age and country. There are among our living poets few fairer and purer literary reputations than that of General Morris; few that, in a covetous mood, one would be more disposed to envy. It lives not in the tumult of reckless criticism and the noisy dogmatism of friendly reviews, but in the sympathy and enjoyment of thousands of refined and feeling hearts. His calm, delicate, and simple genius has won its way quietly to an apprecient admiration that no assaults can disturb, and it may now look down upon most of its contemporaries without jealousy and without fear. It will shine in its clear brightness when many clamorous notorieties of the day are quenched in night and silence. The charge of the Boston editor is a mere buffoonery. He could not expect that so ridiculous a fabrication would be believed by any body. It is a device of common-place, stupid malice, designed only to annoy a very amiable man. Had we been of counsel with the poet we should have advised him to take no notice of the foolish slander; but as he has seen fit to write a very interesting note on the subject, we are happy to preserve it here. The gentleman to whom the note is addressed gives the following account of the circumstances: "Some two or three months ago, the editor of the Boston Sunday News, took General Morris's literary character to task, and charged him with having obtained the famous song of 'Woodman Spare that Tree,' from the late Samuel Woodworth. In a word, he charged that the General was not the author of a celebrated poem, which has long been before the world in his name. "As the editor in question was a friend of mine, and as I knew that he had done General Morris great injustice, I wrote him a long letter, in which I attempted to set him right, and thus induce him if possible to render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's. In other words, I hoped he would correct his misstatements. Instead of complying with my expressed hope, he thanked me for my letter--very kindly published it; but, in the very same paper, repeated his original charge. In common justice to General Morris, I beg leave to remark, in closing this note, that I have known him intimately and well the last thirty years, and that I never knew a poet or author in any department of literature who was more strictly original. He is incapable of the petty conduct attributed to him, and would scorn to wear honors that belong to another. A more honorable, high-minded gentleman never lived." HOME JOURNAL OFFICE, NEW-YORK, _September 22, 1851_. TO JOHN SMITH, JR., OF ARKANSAS: _My Dear Sir_:--I thank you sincerely for your kind defence of me against the unfounded aspersions of an editor of a Boston paper. Your course was precisely what was to be expected from a just man, and a contemporary who has known me from my boyhood. The editor alluded to, charges me with a crime that I abhor. It is substantially as follows: "_That the ballad of 'Woodman, spare that tree,' was not written by me, but by the late Samuel Woodworth, who, while in a state intoxication, sold it to me, in a public bar-room, for a paltry sum_." A more infamous charge was never made, and the whole story, from beginning to end, without any qualification whatever, is an unmitigated _falsehood_. The history of the song in question is simply this: In the autumn of 1837, Russell, the vocalist, applied to me for an original ballad, and I wrote him "_Woodman, spare that tree_," and handed it to him with a letter which he afterwards read at his concerts, and published in the newspapers of the day. It also accompanied the first edition of the music. Mr. Woodworth never saw or heard of the song until after it appeared in print. I am not indebted to any human being, dead or alive, for a single word, thought, or suggestion, embodied in that song. It is entirely original and entirely my composition, and this is also true of _all_ the productions I have ever claimed to be the author of, with the exception of the play of "Brier Cliff," which is founded upon a novel by Mrs. Thayer, and the opera of the "Maid of Saxony," dramatized from a story by Miss Edgeworth. In both instances I duly acknowledged my indebtedness to the authors from whom I derived my materials for those pieces. The attack upon Mr. Woodworth is also shameful in the extreme, and is in keeping with the whole affair. A more pure and honorable man never drew the breath of life, and it is due to his memory to say that he was not less remarkable for his habits of _temperance_, than for his many excellent qualities of head and heart. I do not think that he was ever intoxicated in the whole course of his life, and he was too upright a man to lend himself to such a bare-faced imposition as I am charged with practising through his agency. If he were alive to answer for himself, he would spurn, as I do, these malicious fabrications. The whole of the charges made against me are _untrue in every particular_, and what motive any one can have for circulating such vile slanders in private life, or for proclaiming them from the house-tops of the press, baffles my ingenuity to determine. Those who know me will doubtless consider this vindication of myself entirely unnecessary. If I were to follow my own inclinations I should not notice the scandalous libel; but, as you justly remarked, "a slander well hoed grows like the devil," and as my silence might possibly be misunderstood, I deem it a duty I owe myself to contradict the infamous and malicious aspersions of the Boston editor, and to declare, in the language of Sheridan, that "there is not one word of truth in all _that gentleman_ has uttered." In conclusion, I would say, that my defamer has either been imposed upon, or that he is one of those lawless bravos of our profession who really imagine, because they are "permitted to print they are privileged to insult." Again, thanking you for your courtesy and kind interposition in my behalf, I remain, my dear sir, yours very cordially. GEORGE P. MORRIS. * * * * * PROFESSOR TORREY, of Vermont University, has published the fourth volume of his translation of Neander's _History of the Christian Religion_--a work which must have rank with the great historical compositions of Niebuhr and Grote, which have or will have superseded all modern histories of the two chief empires of antiquity. The volumes of Professor Torrey's very able translation of Neander's History are regularly republished in rival editions in England, and so he loses half the reward to which his service is entitled. Puthes, of Hamburg, advertises the eleventh part (making half of another volume), which Neander left in MS. This will, of course, be reproduced by Professor Torrey. * * * * * Another translation of the _Divine Comedy_ has been made in England. It is by a Mr. C. B. CAYLEY, and is in the original ternary rhyme. From a hasty examination of it we incline to prefer it to Wright's or Carey's; but we have seen no version of DANTE that in all respects satisfies us so well as that of Dr. THOMAS W. PARSONS, of Boston, of which some ten cantos were published a few years ago, and of which the remainder is understood to be completed for the press. Speaking of Dante, reminds us of the fact that Mr. Richard Henry Wilde's elaborate memoir of the great Italian has not yet been printed. Mr. Wilde wrote to us not long before his death that he had been occupying himself in leisure hours with the revision of some of its chapters, and we have no doubt that the work is completed. If so, for the honor of the lamented author, and for the honor of American criticism, it should be given to the public. * * * * * From a forthcoming volume by ALICE CAREY, _Recollections of Our Neighborhood in the West,_ (to be published early in December by J. S. Redfield,) we copy a specimen chapter, under the title of "The Old Man's Death," into another part of this magazine. It has no particular excellence to distinguish it from the rest of the work; indeed it is rather below than above the average of Miss Carey's recent compositions; but we may safely challenge to it the scrutiny of critics capable of appreciating the finest capacities for the illustration of pastoral life. If we look at the entire catalogue of female writers of prose fiction in this country we shall find no one who approaches Alice Carey in the best characteristics of genius. Like all genuine authors she has peculiarities; her hand is detected as unerringly as that of Poe or Hawthorne; as much as they she is apart from others and above others; and her sketches of country life must, we think, be admitted to be superior even to those delightful tales of Miss Mitford, which, in a similar line, are generally acknowledged to be equal to any thing done in England. It is the fault of our literary women that they are commonly careless and superficial, and that in stories, when they attempt this sort of writing, they are for the most part but feeble copyists, without individuality, and without naturalness. We can point to very few exceptions to this rule, but among such exceptions Alice Carey is eminent. The book which is announced by Mr. Redfield is without the tinsel, or sickly sentiment, or impudent smartness, which distinguish some contemporary publications by women, but it will establish for her an enviable reputation as an original and most graphic delineator of at least one class in American society--the middle class, in the rural neighborhoods, with whom rest, in our own as in other countries, the real distinctions of national character, and the best elements of national greatness. * * * * * Mr. HENRY INGALLS, a writer of considerable abilities, displayed chiefly in anonymous compositions on questions in law, writes to a friend in New-York from Paris, that he has devoted two years to the investigation of pretended miracles in modern Europe; that the number of alleged miracles in the Roman Catholic church of which he has exact historical materials, is over one thousand; that the analyses of these will be amply suggestive of the character of the rest; and that his work on the subject, to make three or four large and closely printed volumes, will conclusively show complicity on the part of the highest authorities of the church, in "the frauds that are now most notorious and most generally acknowledged." Mr. Ingalls is of opinion that his work will be eminently curious in literary, philosophical, and religious points of view, and that it cannot fail of usefulness, especially in illustrating the silly credulity which has obtained in such poor juggleries as have lately been practiced by the Smiths, Davises, Fishes, Harrises, and other imposters and mountebanks of this country. * * * * * Among the new works in press by the Appletons is a new novel entitled _Adrian, or the Clouds of the Mind_--the joint production of Mr. G. P. R. JAMES and Mr. MAUNSELL B. FIELD. Such partnerships in literature were common in the days of Elizabeth, and in our own country we have instances in the production of _Yamoyden_, by Sands and Eastburn, &c. Mr. Field is not yet a veteran, but he is a writer of fine talents and much cultivation. Among the original papers in the present number of the _International_ is a poem from his hand, under the title of _Greenwood_. * * * * * The first volume of a _History of the German Reformed Church_, by the late Rev. Dr. LEWIS MAYER, has been published in Philadelphia; and Professor SCHAFF, of Mercersburg, has printed in German the first volume of a _History of the Christian Church, from its Establishment to the Present Time_. Dr. MURDOCK, the well-known translator of Mosheim's History, has published a translation of the celebrated Syriac version of the New Testament, called the _Peshito_. * * * * * PROFESSOR HACKETT, of the Newton Theological Institution, has added to his claims of distinction in sacred learning by a very able _Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles_, (published by John P. Jewett & Co., of Boston). It is much praised by the best critics. The last _Bibliotheca Sacra_ complains that there is a decline of activity in this department, and that in theology and biblical criticism no important works are now in progress. * * * * * Mr. MELVILLE's new novel, _The Whale_, will be published in a few days, simultaneously, by the Harpers and by Bentley of London. * * * * * Mr. HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, with the general character of whose works our readers must be familiar, will publish immediately (through Charles Scribner), _The Captains of the Old World, from the Persian to the Punic Wars_. The volume embraces critical sketches of Miltiades, Themistocles, Pausanias, Xenophon, Epaminondas, Alexander, and Hannibal, as compared with modern generals--not _lives_ but strategetical accounts of their campaigns, reviewed and described according to the rules and views of modern military science--the armature and mode of fighting in all the various nations--the fields of battle, from personal observation or the best modern travels--with the modern names of ancient places, so that the routes of the armies can be followed on any ordinary map. The causes of the success or failure of this or that action are shown in a military point of view, and the characters of the men are epigrammatically contrasted with those of the men of the late French and English wars, involving incidental notices and critiques of modern fields. The work is of course spirited and well proportioned, and as Mr. Herbert is confessedly one of the best critics of ancient manners and history, it will scarcely need any reviewer's endorsement to insure for it an immediate and very great popularity. * * * * * A new edition of _St. Leger, or the Threads of Life_, by Mr. KIMBALL, has just been published by Putnam, who, we understand, has now in press a sequel to that remarkable and eminently successful novel. Mr. Kimball's abilities as a writer of tales are not as well illustrated in this performance as in several shorter stories, which will soon be collected and reissued with fit designs by Darley. In these we think he has exhibited a very unusual degree of pathos and dramatic skill, so that scarcely any compositions of their class in American literature have such a power upon the feelings or are likely to have a more permanent fame. Mr. Kimball is one of the small number among our young writers who do not disdain elaborately to _finish_ what they choose to submit for public criticism. * * * * * A new edition of Mr. JUDD's remarkable novel of _Margaret_ has just been published, in two volumes, by Phillips & Sampson, of Boston, and the same house has nearly ready _Memoirs of Sarah Margaret Fuller_, in two volumes, edited by William H. Channing and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It will probably embrace a large selection of her inedited writings. * * * * * The Rev. Dr. TEFFT, of Cincinnati, has published (John Ball, Philadelphia and New-Orleans,) a very interesting and judicious work under the title of _Hungary and Kossuth, or an American Exposition of the Hungarian Revolution_. Dr. Tefft appears to have studied the subject well and to have made as much of it as was warranted by his materials. * * * * * Mr. GREELEY has just published in a handsome volume (De Witt & Davenport) his _Glances at Europe_, consisting of the letters written for the _Tribune_ during his half year abroad. We frequently entirely disagree with the author in matters of social philosophy, but we have the most perfect confidence in the honesty of his searching after truth, and in these letters, which were written under very apparent disadvantages, and are here put forward modestly, we are inclined to believe there is for the mass of readers more that is new in fact and sensible in observation than is contained in any other volume by an American on Europe. Even when writing of art, Mr. Greeley never fails at least to entertain. * * * * * Mr. JOHN L. WHEELER, late the treasurer of the state of North Carolina, has in the press of Lippencott, Grambo, & Co., of Philadelphia, _Historical Sketches_ of that State, from 1584 to 1851, from original records, official documents, and traditional statements. It will be in two large octavo volumes. Dr. Hawks has for some time had in preparation a work on the same subject. * * * * * One of those wrongs for which there is no sufficient remedy in law, has been perpetrated by Derby, Miller & Co., of Auburn, in getting up a life of Dr. Judson, to anticipate that by the widow of the great missionary and deprive her of the best part of the profits to which she is entitled. Their excuse is, "A public character is public property, and we will do with one as we please." * * * * * MRS. H. C. CONANT, (wife of the learned Professor Conant of the university of Rochester), has published (through Lewis Colby) _The Epistle of St. Paul to the Philippians, practically Explained by_ Dr. AUGUSTUS NEANDER. Mrs. Conant, as we have before had occasion to observe, is one of the most able and accomplished women of this country, and this version of Neander is worthy of her. * * * * * A small volume entitled _Musings and Mutterings by an Invalid_, has been published by John S. Taylor. The style is rather careless, sometimes, but the work appears to be informed with a genuine earnestness, and to be underlaid with a vein of good sense that contrasts strongly with much of the desultory literature brought out in similar forms. * * * * * Dr. LARDNER's _Handbooks of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy_ have been republished by Blanchard & Lea, of Philadelphia (12mo., pp. 749); carefully revised; various errors which had escaped the attention of the author corrected; occasional omissions supplied; and a series of questions and practical examples appended to each subject. The volume contains treatises on mechanics; hydrostatics, hydraulics, pneumatics, and sound, and optics. The Fine Arts. The London _Art Journal_ for October praises Mr. BURT's engraving of Anne Page, issued this year by the _American Art-Union_, and thus refers to the principal engravings announced for 1852: The prospectus of this society for the present year announces a large engraving by Jones, from Woodville's picture of "American News;" a small etching of this work accompanies the "Bulletin," to which reference has just been made. The composition is clever, but we must warn our friends on the other side of the Atlantic, that it is not by the circulation of such works as this, a feeling for true Art will be generated among their countrymen. The subject is common-place, without a shadow of refinement to elevate its character; it is, we dare say, national, and may, therefore, be popular; but they to whom is intrusted the direction of a vast machine like the American Art-Union, should take especial care that all its operations should tend to refine the taste and advance the intelligence of the community. Our own Mulready, Wilkie, and Webster, have, we know, immortalized their names by a somewhat analogous class of works, in which, nevertheless, we see humor without vulgarity, and truth without affectation. * * * * * The Philadelphia Art-Union issues this year two very beautiful engravings from the well-known masterpieces of Huntington, _Mercy's Dream_ and _Christiana and her Children_, from the celebrated collection of the late Edward C. Carey,--an appreciating patron by whose well-directed liberality the arts, especially painting and engraving, had more advantage than has been conferred by any other individual in this country. _Mercy's Dream_ has been engraved by A. H. Ritchie of this city, and _Christiana and her Children_ by Andrews & Wagstaff of Boston, each on surfaces of sixteen by twenty-two inches; and we know of no more perfect examples of combined mezzotint, stipple, and line engraving. The management may well be praised for such an exercise of judgment as secures to the subscribers of the Art-Union two such beautiful works. A recent visit to Philadelphia afforded us an opportunity to visit its public galleries. Among the additions lately made to that of the Art-Union is one of the finest compositions of Mr. Cropsey, in which the characteristics of the scenery of Italy are combined with remarkable effect. From a bold and vigorously executed foreground, marked by chesnut and cypress tress, the eye is attracted by groves and streams, and convents and palaces, and ruined temples and aqueducts, reposing under such a sky as bends over that land alone, away to shining and sleeping waters that seem to reach close to the gates of paradise. _The Coast of Greece_, by Paul Weber of Philadelphia, is in the grand and imposing style of Achenbach. There is a breadth and massiveness and solemn grandeur in this picture which clearly indicate that the artist, who has hitherto given his attention altogether to landscapes, has in such efforts his true vocation. _Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert_, by A. Woodside, is a cabinet picture which would be regarded as good beside any of the many great productions which illustrate the same subject. In color and composition it is excellent. Mr. Woodside is the painter of a large and attractive picture, _The Introduction of Christianity into Britain_, which was among the prizes of the last distribution of the American Art-Union. _Lager Beer_, by C. Schnessele, is a genre picture, illustrative of German character in Philadelphia at the present day. The scene is an interior of a large beer saloon, by gaslight, in which a dozen or fifteen persons with brimming cups are gathered round a table where a trio are singing songs of the fatherland. The drawing, grouping, light and shade, are highly effective. Mr. Schnessele is a Frenchman, a pupil of Delaroche, and has been in the United States about three years. His works exhibit that skill in detail and general execution which is a result of a cultivation very rare among American painters. _Waiting the Ferry_, by W. T. Van Starkenburgh, is a landscape with cattle and human figures, with some of the best qualities conspicuous in Backhuysen's works of a similar character. _Cattskill Creek_, by G. N. T. Van Starkenburgh,--a brother of the last mentioned painter,--is full of the beauty of that condition of nature which soothes the restless spirit of man, when She glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. Mr. Winner has some vigorous heads of old men, and other artists whom our limits will not suffer us to mention particularly are represented by various creditable works. As the plan of the Philadelphia Art-Union is essentially different from that of any other in this country, we quote from a circular in its last "Reporter" an explanatory paragraph: "The distinguishing and most important feature in our plan, is that which gives the annual prize-holders the right of selecting their prizes from among the productions of American Art in any part of the United States. This plan was adopted as the one which would best secure the object for which we have been incorporated, viz., "The Promotion of the Arts of Design in the United States." It is evident that the distribution of fifty prize certificates among our members, as was the case at our last annual distribution, with which the prize-holders themselves could purchase their own pictures any where in the United States, is preferable to any plan which empowers a committee, composed of a limited number of managers, with the entire right to control the funds involved in the purchase, and make the selection of such a number of pictures. In the one case, individual taste, and local predilection for some particular style of art, or certain class of artists, may influence the decision of a mere picture-buying committee in the selection and purchase of the whole number of the prizes; but in the other case, the various taste of a large number of prize-holders, residing in different sections of our vast country, is made to bear upon Art, and, consequently, there must ensue a diffusion of knowledge upon a subject wherein those persons themselves are the interested parties. Should a subscriber to the Art-Union of Philadelphia, residing in St. Louis, be allotted a prize certificate of one hundred dollars, he has the option to order or select his picture in that city, and thereby encourage the Fine Arts at home, just the same as if that Art-Union were located where he lived, and with just as much advantage to the artist as though it were the result of that progress in art, in his vicinity, which should cause the production of such a picture. And there can be no doubt of the judicious selection on the part of such a subscriber. No man with a hundred dollars to spend for a picture, would be likely to make such a purchase without having some knowledge on the subject himself, or without consulting persons of acknowledged taste in the matter; thereby insuring more general satisfaction to all concerned, than would a picture of the same value awarded by chance from the selection of a committee located in another part of the country. No committee, no matter how great its judgment, or how well performed its duties, could effect a more satisfactory arrangement; for in our case the prize-holder and the artist are the contracting parties, without the intervention of the Art-Union, or the payment of any commission on either side. Another argument in favor of the Art-Union of Philadelphia is the fact, that by this plan the Managers are merely the agents who collect the means which are necessary to promote and foster the Arts of Design in our rapidly progressing country, while the prize-holders themselves actually become the persons who make the disbursements. Thus giving to the people at large the means to exercise a public and universal taste in the expenditure of a large sum--the aggregate of small contributions--large as the liberality of our countrymen, by their generous subscription, may assist us in accumulating." * * * * * The _Western-Art Union_ of Cincinnati has lately published a large and excellent engraving by Booth, of _the Trapper's Last Shot_, and for the coming year, it will give in the same style, _The Committee of Congress Drafting the Declaration of Independence_, from a painting by Rothermel--Mr. Jefferson represented reading the Declaration to the other members of the committee before it was reported to the Congress. For prizes of the next distribution the Union will have a bust of Washington, and one of Franklin, in marble, by Powers, and a beautiful medallion in relief by Palmer, and two pictures are engaged or purchased from Whittridge, two from Rothermel, two from McConkey, one from Read, one from Mrs. Spencer, one from Ranney, and one from Terry, besides others from Sontag, Duncanson, Eaton, and Griswold, and other western painters. * * * * * Mr. HEALY has finished his large picture of _Daniel Webster replying to Robert Y. Hayne, in the Senate of the United States_, and it has been some time on exhibition at the rooms of the National Academy of Design. The canvas is twenty-six feet in length by fifteen in breadth, and embraces one hundred and thirty figures. Many persons not senators are introduced, and it is difficult to conceive a reason for this, in the cases of several of them, who were not then, if they were ever, at Washington. The picture has good points, but on the whole we believe it is admitted to be a failure--so far as the fit presentation of the illustrious orator is concerned, a most complete and melancholy failure. Engravings of it however, if well executed, may perhaps compete with Messrs. Anthony's immense piece of mezzotint, studded with copies of Daguerreotypes, which has been published under the title of Mr. Clay's last Appearance in the Senate. * * * * * The illustrations of the life of MARTIN LUTHER published at Hamburg, from the pencil of GUSTAV K�NIG, of which the fourth series has just appeared, continue to receive the praise which has been bestowed on the previous series. The first, which came out in 1847, consisted of fifteen engravings, the second in 1848 of ten engravings, the third in 1849 of ten, and the fourth, which concludes the work, has thirteen. The accompanying letter-press is furnished by Professor Gelzer, and though very elaborate, is spoken of as only partially successful. The illustrations on the other hand are said by competent judges to leave nothing to be desired, and as far as the earlier series are concerned, we can almost agree with even so unbalanced commendation. Mr. König has every where taken care to give faithful portraits of the personages represented, which adds to the value of his work, for foreign readers especially. At the same time his compositions are undeniably most spirited and effective. * * * * * The long expected work of LEUTZE, _Washington Crossing the Delaware_, is now at the Stuyvesant Institute, and it appears generally to have given the most perfect satisfaction to the critics; to be regarded indeed as the best picture yet given to the world in illustration of American history. Our readers will remember that we have already given in the _International_ a particular description of it, from a German writer who saw it at Düsseldorf: so that it is unnecessary here to enter further into details on the subject. We are pleased to learn that Messrs. Goupil, who own it, intend to have this work engraved in line by Girardet in the highest style, and upon a plate of the largest size ever used. The print will indeed cover a surface equal to that of the famous one of Cardinal Richelieu, which some of our readers will not fail to remember. Noctes Amicæ. The "figure we cut" in the Crystal Palace was for a long time a subject of sneers by amiable foreign critics, and a cause of ingenuous shame by too sensitive young gentlemen in white gloves, who went over from New-York and Boston to see society and the show. We remember that Mr. Greeley was said to be making himself appear excessively ridiculous by writing home that we should come out very well notwithstanding we had no Kohinoor, and but little to boast of in the way of fancy articles in general. An excellent neighbor of ours down Broadway, who left London before the tide turned, sent a letter to the _Evening Post_, we believe, of the regret felt by the "respectable Americans in Europe" that we had been so weak as to enter into this competition at all. But see what the _Times_ has said of the matter since the first of October: "One point that strikes us forcibly on a survey of the last few months is, the extraordinary contrast which the attractive and the useful features of the display present. It will be remembered that the American department was at first regarded as the poorest and least interesting of all foreign countries. Of late it has justly assumed a position of the first importance, as having brought to the aid of our distressed agriculturists a machine which, if it realizes the anticipations of competent judges, _will amply remunerate England for all her outlay connected with the Great Exhibition_. The reaping machine from the United States is the most valuable contribution from abroad to the stock of our previous knowledge that we have yet discovered." Again: "It seems to us that the great event of 1851 will hereafter be found blemished by a _grand oversight_. Attracted by the novelty and splendid success of the occasion, we have certainly yielded more admiration to the grand and the beautiful than to the unostentatious, the practical, and the useful. The captivating luxuries which are adapted to the few have entered more largely into our imaginations and our hearts, than those objects which are adapted to supply the homely comforts and the unpretending wants of the many. We have thought more of gold and silver work--of silks, satins, and velvets--of rich brocades, splendid carpets, glowing tapestry, and all that tends to embellish and adorn life, than of the vast and still unexplored fields which the necessities of the humbler classes all over the world are constantly opening up to us. France has thus been enabled to run quietly away with fifty-six out of about one hundred and sixty of our great medals, while to the department of American "notions" we owe the most confessed and the most important contribution to our industrial system." Again: "Well worthy of notice is the Maynard primer, a substitution for the percussion-cap, which is simply a coil of paper, at intervals in which spots of detonating powder are placed. The action of the doghead carries out from the chamber in which it is contained this cheap and self-acting substitute for the ordinary gun apparatus, which is a vast economy in expense as well as in time. In its character the invention is one which admits of being easily adapted to every description of firearms at present commonly in use, and that at a trifling cost." In the same pleasant way are noticed our Mr. Hobbs, his locks, and a score or so of similarly ingenious productions; and as for Mr. Palmer's _leg_, it is declared the chief astonisher contributed by all the world--so perfect, indeed, that some of the journals recommend a general cutting off of natural understandings in order to adopt the always comfortable and well-conditioned substitute introduced by our countryman. * * * * * A considerable number of shameless women and feeble-minded men met in convention--a sort of caldron of sickly sentimentalism, brazen atheism, and whatever is most ridiculous and disgusting in the diseases of society,--at Worcester in Massachusetts, on the 14th of October, and continued in session three days. A Mrs. Rose (who, we understand, generally makes the leading speeches of the Tom Paine birth-night festivals in New-York), and Abby Kelley Foster, and William L. Garrison, were among the principal actors. The main propositions before this convention, so far as they can be ascertained from the newspaper reports, involve the setting aside of the laws of God as they are revealed in the Bible; the laws of custom in all savage and civilized, pagan and Christian communities, in every age; and the laws of analogy--vindicating the existing order of society--in every grade of animated nature. Complaints have been made that persons of character, like the Rev. H. W. Beecher of Brooklyn, in some way sanctioned the mummery by writing letters to its managers. Such eccentricities may be pardonable, but the public will be sure to remember them. * * * * * A female, probably a cheap dress maker, named Dexter, has been lecturing in London on the "Bloomer costume;" and it appears to have been assumed by her, as well as in many English journals, that this ridiculous and indecent dress is common in American cities, where, as of course our readers know, if it is ever seen, it is on the persons of an abandoned class, or on those of vulgar women whose inordinate love of notoriety is apt to display itself in ways that induce their exclusion from respectable society. _Punch_ has some very clever caricatures of "Bloomerism," but it would surprise the conductor of that sprightly paper to learn, that, except persons who walk our St. Giles's at late hours, scarcely any New-Yorker has ever seen such a dress. * * * * * There have never been remarked so many sudden deaths and suicides in Paris and in the suburbs, as within the last few weeks. The following is one of the most extraordinary cases of suicide: "The body of a young man was found floating in the Seine, near St. Cloud. The corpse appeared to have remained some days in the water. The deceased appeared to have been about 25 years of age, and to have belonged to the higher class of society. His features were handsome, his hair brown, and his beard long and black. His linen was of the finest quality, and his other clothing made in the latest fashion. A small glass bottle, corked and sealed, was suspended from his neck, in which was a paper writing, containing the following words:--"I am about to die! young, it is true! and if my body be discovered a complaint may perhaps be made. This I do not wish. An angel appeared to me in a dream, who said to me, 'I am the Genius of France. Royal blood circulates in your veins; but before you occupy the sovereign power, which parties are disputing in France, you must go to see the Eternal Sovereign of all things.... God! ... die. Let the waters of the Seine swallow your body. Fear not, you shall revive when the hour of your triumph shall have struck! I have spoken!' and the angel disappeared. I have accomplished his desire. But I leave this writing in case the celestial envoy may have deceived me. I pray the Attorney-General to prosecute him, "THE FUTURE KING OF FRANCE." The body has not been claimed, and the police authorities have instituted an inquiry to discover his family. * * * * * The following clever and extraordinary story is told in the Paris _Droit_: "A commercial traveller, whose business frequently called him from Orleans to Paris, M. Edmund D----, was accustomed to go to an hotel, with the landlord of which he was acquainted. Liking, like almost all persons of his profession, to talk and joke, he was the favorite of everybody in the hotel. A few days ago he arrived, and was received with pleasure by all, but it was observed that he was much less gay than usual. The stories that he told, instead of being interesting as formerly, were of a lugubrious character. On Thursday evening, after supper, he invited the people of the hotel to go to his chamber to take coffee, and he promised to tell them a tale full of dramatic incident. On entering the room, his guests saw on the bed, near which he seated himself, a pair of pistols. 'My story,' said he, 'has a sad _dénouement_, and I require the pistols to make it clearly understood.' As he had always been accustomed, in telling his tales, to indulge expressive pantomime, and to take up anything which lay handy, calculated to add to the effect, no surprise was felt at his having prepared pistols. He began by narrating the loves of a young girl and a young man. They had both, he said, promised, under the most solemn oaths, inviolable fidelity. The young man, whose profession obliged him to travel, once made a long absence. Whilst he was away, he received a legacy, and on his return hastened to place it at her feet. But on presenting himself before her he learned that, in compliance with the wishes of her family, she had just married a wealthy merchant. The young man thereupon took a terrible resolution. 'He purchased a pair of pistols, like these,' he continued, taking one in each hand, 'then he assembled his friends in his chamber, and, after some conversation, placed one under his chin, in this way, as I do, saying in a joke that it would be a real pleasure to blow out his brains. And at the same moment he pulled the trigger.' Here the man discharged the pistol, and his head was shattered to pieces. Pieces of the bone and portions of the brain fell on the horrified spectators. The unfortunate man had told his own story." * * * * * We find in the _Evening Post_ the following notice of the citation of Mr. G. P. R. JAMES in the courts, under the head of "Brown Linen against Law Calf:" "Immediately previous to the sort of intermittent equinoctial which has recently prevailed, the full bench of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, presided over by Chief Justice Shaw, were at session at Lenox, in the county of Berkshire. Among the cases that were brought up for adjudication, was an action of _trespass quare clausum fregit_, brought by a farmer against a number of individuals, who in common with many others, had, at a time last winter, when the public highway was rendered impassible by ice and snow, made a temporary road over the farmer's grounds without leave or license first had and obtained. Mr. Sumner, of Barrington, the leading counsel of the county, appeared for the defence, and in enforceing his views, took occasion to read from Macaulay's late History of England, several passages to illustrate the state of land communication in that county, at the time of which he writes. From that author it appears that upon one occasion, worthy Mr. Pepys, our friend of the 'naif' diary, while travelling somewhere (we think in Lincolnshire, but have not the book before us for reference), got his '_belle voiture_', as Cardinal Richelieu used to call his antediluvian vehicle, stuck in the mud so that it could not be extricated, and Mr. Sumner went on to argue, that by the common law, Mr. Pepys then was, and anybody now is, justified, in cases of necessity, in passing over private domains without becoming liable to the owner in damages. Mr. Porter, recently District Attorney, was for the plaintiff, and, in answering that part of his adversary's argument, to which we have above alluded, claimed the indulgence of the court to state, that a certain author had been quoted upon the other side, who had hardly as yet been recognized as authority in a court of justice, upon a mere law question, at least; that such being the case, he claimed the liberty to read from another writer, the late historiographer royal of Great Britain, a gentleman whose statements were certainly entitled to overrule the others in a question of that sort; and thereupon Mr. Porter commenced reading the first chapter of Mr. G. P. R. James's new novel of 'The Fate,' in which he so indignantly denounces the falsity of Macaulay's picture of the social condition of England two centuries ago. This created no little merriment, both on the bench and among the gentlemen of the robe, all admitting that it was the first time within their knowledge, that the black linen and the brown paper had usurped the place of the consecrated law calf, before an American tribunal at least." * * * * * A French critic has just revealed a portrait of the favorite of Lamartine and numerous other writers on the Revolution--St. Just, from which it appears that he was the author of a long poem entitled _Orgaut_. The opinion which the historians have caused the public to form of this man was, that he was a fanatic--implacable, but sincere--a ruthless minister of the guillotine, but deeming wholesale slaughter indispensable for securing, what he conscientiously considered, the welfare of the people. He was, we might imagine, something like the gloomy inquisitors of old, who thought it was doing God service to burn heretics at the stake. A correspondent of the _Athenæum_ observes, that "To justify this opinion, one would have expected to have found in a poem written by him when the warm and generous sentiments of youth were in all their freshness, burning aspirations for what it was the fashion of his time to call _vertu_, and lavish protestations of devotedness to his country and the people. But instead of that, the work is, it appears, from beginning to end, full of the grossest obscenity--it is the delirium of a brain maddened with voluptuousness--it is coarser and more abominable than the 'Pucelle' of Voltaire, and is not relieved, as that is, by sparkling wit and graces of style. In a moral point of view, it is atrocious--in a literary point of view, wretched. The discovery of such a production will be a sad blow to the stern fanatics of these days, who look on the blood-stained men of the Revolution with admiration and awe--who make them the martyred saints of their calendar--and whose hope by day and dream by night is to have the opportunity of imitating them. Of the whole band St. Just has hitherto been considered the purest--he has always been accepted as the very personification of 'virtue' in its most sublime form. Even the immaculate Maximilien Robespierre himself has never had the honor of having admitted that he approached him in moral grandeur. And now, behold! this 'virtuous' angel is proved to have been a debauched and loathsome-minded wretch! But, to be sure, that was before he began cutting off heads, and wholesale murders on the political scaffold redeem a multitude of sins." * * * * * A few days ago the French President received a gift of the most rich bouquets from the market women of Paris, and at the same time an application for permission to visit him at the palace. This was granted, and full three hundred of the flower of the female merchants in fruit and vegetables of the faubourgs, dressed in their utmost finery, were received by the officers in attendance, and ushered through the saloons of the Elysee. The London _Times_ correspondent says: "After admiring the furniture, paintings, &c., they were conducted to the gardens, where they enjoyed themselves for some time. Refreshments were then laid out in the dining-room, and they were invited to partake of the President's hospitality. The champagne was passing round pretty freely when the President entered. They received him with acclamations of '_Vive Napoléon!_' The President, after the usual salutations, took a glass of wine, and proposed the toast, '_A la santé des dames de la Halle de Paris!_' which was responded to in a becoming manner; and '_La santé de Napoléon!_' was in turn proposed by an elderly matron, and loudly cheered. The ladies were particularly pleased at finding the bouquets presented yesterday arranged in the dining-room. Louis Napoleon chatted for some time with his visitors, and expressed, in warm terms, the pleasure he felt at seeing them under his roof. The ladies requested that one of their companions--the most distinguished for personal attractions, as for youth--should be allowed to embrace him in the name of the others. _Such_ a request no man could hesitate to grant, and the fair one who was deputed to bestow the general salute advanced, blushing and trembling, to perform the duty. Louis Napoleon went through the pleasing ceremony with much credit to himself, and apparently to the great satisfaction of those present. In a short time the visitors asked permission to retire, after again thanking the President for the honor he did them. Before separating they united in one last and loud acclamation of '_Vive Napoléon_.'" * * * * * JOHNSON J. HOOPER, the author of _Captain Simon Suggs_, and several other works similar to that famous performance in humor and in the characteristics of southern life, is editor of _The Chambers Tribune_, published somewhere in Alabama. Few papers have as much of the quality which is commonly described by the word "spicy." In a late number we have an election anecdote which will serve as a specimen. The hero is Colonel A. Q. Nicks, of Talladega. We quote: "The Colonel had incurred, somehow, the enmity of a certain preacher--one who had once been ejected from his church and subsequently restored. The parson, besides, was no favorite with his neighbors. Well, when Nicks was nominated, parson Slashem 'norated' it publicly that when Nicks should be elected, his (the parson's) land would be for sale, and himself ready to emigrate. Well, the Colonel went round the county a time or two, and found he was 'bound to go;' and shortly after arriving at that highly satisfactory conclusion, espying the parson in a crowd he was addressing, sung out to him: 'I say, brother Slashem, begin to fix up your _muniments_--draw your deeds--I am going to represent these people, _certain_! But before you leave, let me give you thanks for declaring your intention as soon as you did; for on that account I am getting all of your church and the most part of your neighbors!' The parson has not been heard of since." * * * * * In a late number of Mr. CHARLES DICKENS'S _Household Words_, there is an amusing and suggestive paper on Nursery Rhymes, wherein the ferocious morals embalmed in jog-trot verse are indicated, for the reflective consideration of all parents. A terrible case is made out against these lisping moralists: slaughter, cruelty, bigotry, injustice, wanton delight in terrible accidents and awful punishments for trivial offences, ferocity of every kind--such a mass of "shocking notions" as would people our nurseries with demons, were it not for the happy indifference of children to anything but the rhyme, rhythm, and quaint image. * * * * * In France, we have the _Univers_ regretting that Luther was not burnt, and that the church has not still the power to use the stake; and in England we have the _Rambler_, a journal which is considered the organ of the moderate party, as distinct from that of the _Tablet_, boldly expressing wishes and hopes of an even more debatable character. The creed of the king of Naples is authoritatively declared to be that of every Catholic. In a late number it is said-- "Believe us not, Protestants of England and Ireland, for an instant, when you see us pouring forth our liberalisms. When you hear a Catholic orator at some Catholic assemblage declaring solemnly that 'this is the most humiliating day in his life, when he is called upon to defend once more the glorious principle of religious freedom'--(especially if he says any thing about the Emancipation Act and the 'toleration' it _conceded_ to Catholics)--be not too simple in your credulity. These are brave words, but they mean nothing; no, nothing more than the promises of a parliamentary candidate to his constituents on the hustings. _He is not talking Catholicism, but nonsense and Protestantism_; and he will no more act on these notions in different circumstances, than _you_ now act on them yourselves in your treatment of him. You ask, if he were lord in the land, and you were in a minority, if not in numbers yet in power, what would he do to you? That, we say, would entirely depend upon circumstances. If it would benefit the cause of Catholicism, he would tolerate you: if expedient he would imprison you, banish you, fine you; possibly, _he might even hang you_. But be assured of one thing: he would never tolerate you for the sake of the 'glorious principles of civil and religious liberty.'" Again, it is said-- "Why are we so anxious to make the church wear the garb of the world? Why do we stoop, and bow, and cringe before that enemy whom we are sent to conquer and _annihilate_? Why are we ashamed of the deeds of our more consistent forefathers, _who did only what they were bound to do by the first principles of Catholicism_?... Shall I foster that damnable doctrine, that Socinianism, and Calvinism, and Anglicanism, and Judaism, are not every one of them mortal sins, like murder and adultery? Shall I lend my countenance to this unhappy persuasion of my brother, that he is not flying in the face of Almighty God every day that he remains a Protestant? Shall I hold out hopes to him that I will not meddle with his creed if he will not meddle with mine? Shall I lead him to think that religion is a matter for private opinion, and tempt him to forget _that he has no more right to his religious views than he has to my purse, or my house, or my life-blood_? No! Catholicism is the most intolerant of creeds. It is intolerance itself, for it is truth itself. We might as rationally maintain that a sane man has a right to believe that two and two do not make four, as this theory of religious liberty. Its impiety is only equalled by its absurdity." We refer above to the _Univers_, the organ of the Roman Catholic party in France. The editor of that print, at a dinner recently given for Bishop Hughes, at the Astor House, was complimented in a toast by our excellent collector, Maxwell, who, of course, endorses the following choice paragraph: "A heretic," observes the editor of the _Univers_, "examined and convicted by the church, used to be delivered over to the secular power, and punished with death. Nothing has ever appeared to us more natural, or more necessary. More than 100,000 persons perished in consequence of the heresy of Wicliff; a still greater number by that of John Huss; it would not be possible to calculate the bloodshed caused by the heresy of Luther, and _it is not yet over_. After three centuries we are at the eve of a recommencement. The prompt repression of the disciples of Luther, and a crusade against Protestantism, would have spared Europe three centuries of discord and of catastrophes in which France and civilization may perish. It was under the influence of such reflections that I wrote the phrase which has so excited the virtuous indignation of the Red journals. Here it is:--'For my part, I avow frankly my regret is not only that they did not sooner burn John Huss, but that they did not equally burn Luther; and I regret, further, that there had not been at the same time some prince sufficiently pious and politic to have made a crusade against the Protestants.' Well, this paragraph might have been better penned; but as I have the happiness to belong to those who care little about mere forms of expression, I will not revoke it. I accept it as it is, and with a certain satisfaction at finding myself faithful to my opinions. That which I wrote in 1838 I still believe. Let the Red philanthropists print their declaration in any sort of type they please, and as often as they please. Let them add their commentaries, and place all to my account. The day that I cancel it, they will be justified in holding the opinion of me which I hold of them." Far be it from us to meddle with the quarrels of the theologians--even by reprinting any attack an adversary makes on the worst of them. We merely copy these paragraphs from famous defenders of the Catholic Church, as an act of justice to her, against those slandering Protestants who say she has changed--she, the infallible and ever consistent! * * * * * The "leading journal of the world" occasionally indulges in a pleasantry, as in this example: "A surgical operation under the influence of chloroform has just terminated fatally, to the regret of the public, to whom the patient was well known. One of the brown bears in the Zoological Garden suffering from cataract of the eye, an eminent surgeon and a party of _gelehrter_ assembled to undertake his cure. Bruin was tempted to the bars of his den by the offer of some bread, and then secured by ropes and a muzzle. After a stout resistance, chloroform was administered. In a state of insensibility the cataract was removed, and the bonds untied, but the patient showed no signs of life! Feathers to the nose, cold buckets of water, and bleeding produced no effect. Poor Bruin had gone whither the great tortoise, two ostriches, and the African lion have preceded him, for the managers of the Berlin gardens are decidedly unlucky. With the trifling drawback of the death of the subject, the operation was skilfully and successfully performed." * * * * * We find the following anecdote as related by Baron OLDHAUSEN: it conveys an admirable lesson: "Charles XII., of Sweden, condemned a soldier, and stood at a distance from the place of execution. The fellow, when he heard this, was in hopes of a pardon, but being assured that he was mistaken, replied with a loud voice, 'My tongue is still free, and I will use it at my pleasure.' He did so, and charged the king, with much insolence, and as loud as he could speak, with injustice and barbarity, and appealed to God for revenge. The king, not hearing him distinctly, inquired what the soldier had been saying. A general officer, unwilling to sharpen his resentment against the poor man, told his majesty he had only repeated with great earnestness, 'That God loves the merciful, and teaches the mighty to moderate their anger.' The king was touched by these words, and sent his pardon to the criminal. A courtier, however, in an opposite interest, availed himself of this occasion and repeated to the king exactly the licentious expressions which the fellow uttered, adding gravely, that 'men of quality ought never to misrepresent facts to their sovereign.' The king for some moments stood pausing, and then turned to the courtier, saying, with reproving looks, 'This is the first time I have been betrayed to my advantage; but the lie of your enemy gave me more pleasure than your truth has done.'" * * * * * A report is current in Europe that an expedition is to be sent from France into the sea of Japan. It is said that it will consist of a frigate, a corvette, and a steamer, under the orders of a Rear-Admiral who has long navigated in the Pacific Ocean and the Chinese seas. "This expedition will", it is added, "be at once military, commercial, and scientific, and has for object to open to European commerce states which have been closed against it since the sixteenth century." Notwithstanding the sanction which the principle involved received a few years ago, from an illustrious American, we cannot regard the proposed expedition otherwise than as an act of the most shameless villainy by a nation. The Japanese are a peculiar race, and our readers who have seen a series of articles on the subject of their civilization and polity in late numbers of the _Tribune_, will not be disposed to think the people of Japan inferior to those of France, just now, in any of the best elements of a state. We, as well as the Japanese themselves, understand perfectly well that the opening of their ports to the Europeans and Americans, would be followed by the demoralization and overthrow of their empire. * * * * * Mr. CARLYLE, in the following brief composition, of which the original was shown us a few days ago, furnishes a model for autograph writers. "George W. C----, of Philadelphia, wants my autograph, and here gets it: much good may it do him. T. CARLYLE. LONDON, _November 2, 1850_." * * * * * The following on the silence of wives under conjugal infelicity, is as sententious and as true as any thing in La Bruyère: "However much a woman may detest her husband, the grievance is too irremediable for her to find any comfort in talking about it; there is never any consolation in complaining of great troubles--silence and forgetfulness are the only anodynes. Women have generally a Spartan fortitude in the matter of husbands: if they have made an unblessed choice, it is a secret they instinctively conceal from the world, cloaking their sufferings under every imaginable color and pretence. They apparently feel that to blame their husbands is to blame themselves at second-hand." * * * * * We published in the _International_ some time ago a sketch, pleasantly written, of the eccentric Lord Chancellor Thurlow, and his terrible swearing. The following from the Manchester _Courier_, shows that the great lawyer has a worthy follower in Baron Platt: "At the recent assizes at Liverpool, a stabbing case from Manchester was heard before Baron Platt, who, in summing up to the jury, used these words: 'One of the witnesses tells you that he said to the prisoner, 'If you use your knife you are a d----d coward;' I say also,' continued the learned judge, apparently in deep thought, 'that he was a d----d coward, and any man is a d----d coward who will use a knife.'" * * * * * The printers of London are endeavoring to establish, in imitation of the _Printers' Library_ in New-York, a literary institution to be called "The Printers' Athenæum," and have received considerable encouragement from compositors, and the trades connected with printing, as typefounders, bookbinders, engravers, letter-press and copper-plate printers, &c., the members of which are eligible. The object is to combine the social advantages of a club with the mental improvement of a literary and scientific institution, and to adapt them for the position and circumstances of the working classes. All persons engaged in the production of a newspaper, or book, such as editors, authors, reporters, readers, &c., although strictly not belonging to the profession, are competent to become members, and persons not so connected will be permitted to join the society on their being proposed by a member. It is expected that the Athenæum will be opened before the commencement of the ensuing year. * * * * * A MADRID correspondent writes to one of the London journals: "The infant princess to whom the Duchess of Montpensier has just given birth has received the names of Maria Amalia Luisa Enriqueta Felipa Antonia Fernanda Cristina Isabel Adelaida Jesusa Josefa Joaquina Ana Francisca de Asis Justa Rufina Francisca de Paula Ramona Elena Carolina Bibiana Polonia Gaspara Melchora Baltasara Augustina Sabina." Doubtless there was an extra charge for the christening. Historical Review of the Month. An increasing activity is observable in whatever points to the next Presidential election, and several eminent persons have recently defined their relations to the most exciting and important questions to be affected in that contest. Among others, ex-Vice President Dallas, ex-Secretary of the Navy Paulding, and Mr. Henry Clay, have written letters on the state of the nation as respects the slavery question. Meantime, the people of South Carolina have repudiated the doctrine and policy of secession by electing only two members in the whole state favorable to their views in the Convention called for the consideration of that subject; Georgia and Mississippi have given overwhelming majorities on the same side; and Pennsylvania appears to have asserted not less unquestionably her attachment to the Union and the Compromise, in electing Mr. Bigler governor. The affairs of the several states are without special significance except in the matter of elections, of which we have indicated the general results as altogether favorable to the Union and the enforcement of the laws of Congress. Returns, however, are at the time when we go to press so imperfect, that we attempt no particular details respecting candidates or majorities. In Pennsylvania and Ohio, as in the Southern States, the democrats have a perfect ascendency; in Maryland the whigs have been successful; in California it appears to be doubtful as to the Governor, but the democrats have a control in the Legislature. The most important news from California relates to the movement for dividing the state, and making that part of it lying south of the thirty-seventh degree of north latitude a separate commonwealth. If this project should be carried into effect, slavery would, no doubt, be introduced into Southern California; but there is not much prospect of its being successful. A convention of delegates from the southern counties, to be held at Los Angelos, Santa Barbara, or Monterey, is called for the purpose of interchanging sentiments on the subject, so that the Legislature may take the matter into consideration. The accounts from the mining districts continue to be favorable; improvements are in successful progress in various gold-bearing districts; and the yield of the precious metal is such as to reward the enterprise and industry of the miner. San Francisco and Sacramento have again been disgraced by the conduct of scoundrel bands usurping the functions of government and putting to death such persons as were obnoxious to their prejudices or guilty of offences which the law officers might have punished. From the Mormon City at Salt Lake, intelligence is received of continued prosperity. Mr. Bernheisel, last year agent for the territory in this city to obtain a library for Utah, is chosen territorial delegate to Congress. After a protracted contest for Provisional Bishop of the diocese of New-York, Dr. Creighton, of Tarrytown, has been elected to that office. He is a native of this city, and graduated in Columbia College in 1812, afterwards officiated in Grace Church, was next appointed Rector of St. Mark's, Bowery, whence he was called to Tarrytown, where he now resides. Louis Kossuth, having been set at liberty by the Turkish government, will very soon arrive in the United States, where extraordinary demonstrations of respect will be offered to him in several of the principal cities. About nine months ago Kossuth committed to the care of Mr. Frank Taylor, a young American visiting Broussa, the MS. of an address to the people of this country, which was published in a translation, at New-York, on the 18th of October--having been withheld until that time lest its earlier appearance should affect injuriously the interests of its author in Europe. The friends of liberty will rejoice that Kossuth is free, and in a land of liberty; but it is not improbable that future events will demonstrate, that the Austrian government was not altogether unreasonable in protesting against his enlargement. Kossuth and Mazzini are scarcely less terrible to tyrants, as writers, than as the leaders of armies and the masters of cabinets. Although extraordinary prosperity in a state may sometimes lead to arrogance and injustice, the position of this country toward several European powers who intimate an intention of compelling a certain policy on our part in regard to Spain, must insure a triumphant consideration of the _Union_, in which we have a strength that may laugh their leagues to scorn. The details of an arrangement between Spain, France, and Great Britain, are not yet perfectly understood in the United States, but it is generally known that some plan has been adopted which will be likely to draw from the Secretary of State a sequel to his letter to Mr. Hulseman, the Austrian _chargé d'Affaires_, whose experiences were made known a year ago. The vessels of the American exploring expedition in search of Sir John Franklin returned--the _Advance_ on the 30th of September, and the _Rescue_, which had separated from her on the banks of Newfoundland, a few days after. It is probable that a full account of this heroic enterprise, so honorable to its authors and to all engaged in it, will soon be given to the public, by Dr. Kane, or one of the other officers; and as any such brief statement as we could present of its history would be unsatisfactory, we shall not now go further into details than to say no traces of Sir John Franklin, except such as we have already noticed, were discovered, and that the crews came home after a year's absence in excellent health. The nearly simultaneous return of the British expedition has caused considerable discussion in England. It appears to be felt very generally that it is not justifiable to abandon the pursuit until the fate of Sir John Franklin has been demonstrated by actual observation. Such satisfaction is due to science and to humanity. Proposals are now, we believe, before the Admiralty, for sending into the Arctic seas one or more steamers, with which alone the search can be advantageously prosecuted further. A New-York ship, the Flying Cloud, made the passage round the Horn to San Francisco in ninety days--shorter than any voyage on record. Her fastest day's run was 374 miles, beating the fleetest of Collins's steamers by fifty miles. In three successive days she made 992 miles. At this rate she would cross the Atlantic in less than nine days. Discouraging accounts have been received respecting the whale fleet in the North Pacific Ocean. After wintering in the gulf of Anadir, the fleet attempted to pass into the Arctic Ocean, when it became surrounded with fields of ice, by which not less than eight vessels are known to have been destroyed, and it was supposed that upwards of sixty others had experienced the same fate. Some of the crews of the lost ships reached the main land, but afterwards got into difficulty with the natives and in consequence many of them were killed. The whale fishing, during the season, is said to have been an entire failure, and a number of vessels were on their return to the northwest coast, in the hope of retrieving their ill fortune. Several disastrous "accidents" have recently happened in various parts of the country. On the 21st September, the steamer James Jackson, exploded near Shawneetown in Illinois, killing and wounding 35. On the 26th September, the Brilliant exploded near Bayou Sara, killing a yet larger number; and many such events of less importance, but probably involving more or less criminality, have occurred on steamboats and railroads in various parts of the country. The most destructive fire since the completion of our last number was one at Buffalo, commencing on the 25th September, and continuing until 200 buildings, on more than 30 acres, were destroyed, and an immense number of poor families were made homeless. The fire extended over the meanest part of the town, but the loss is estimated at $300,000. For several days a destructive gale prevailed along the eastern coast, producing an immense loss of life; a large number of dead bodies were taken from the holds of vessels. Great excitement has prevailed in Gloucester, Newburyport and other towns, a large portion of whose populations were exposed to the fury of the storm. Further east, on the coast of Nova-Scotia, the remains of sixty persons, lost during the storm, are said to have been buried in one grave. No less than 160 vessels, of all kinds, are reported to have been wrecked. The Grand Jury sitting at Philadelphia have found bills of indictment against four white men and twenty-seven negroes, for treason, in participating in the outrage at Christiana, in the state of Pennsylvania. At Syracuse on the 1st of October an attempt was made to rescue a slave, but he was captured and his abettors arrested and conveyed to Auburn for examination. The jury in the case of Margaret Garrity, who was tried at Newark for the murder of a man named Drum, who seduced her under a promise of marriage, and afterwards deserted her for another, rendered a verdict of not guilty, on the ground of insanity, on the 13th ult. This disgraceful proceeding had precedents in New Jersey, and it appears to have excited but little of the indignation which it deserved. Margaret Garrity murdered her paramour under extraordinary circumstances, which, doubtless, would have had proper weight with the pardoning power. It is evidently absurd to say, that she, more than any murderess, was insane, and the jury were altogether unjustifiable in rendering a verdict which is unsupported by evidence; and of an assumption of the authority of the Governor of the State, in setting at liberty a criminal for whose conduct there appeared to be merely some sort of extenuation or excuse in the conduct of her victim. It would be as well to have no juries as juries so ignorant or reckless of their obligations. A general council of the once grand confederacy of the Five Nations of Indians, the Mohawks, Onondagas, Oneidas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras--was held at Tonawanda on Friday, September 19th, to celebrate the funeral rites of their last Grand Sachem, John Blacksmith, deceased, and of electing a Grand Sachem in his place, electing Chiefs, &c. Ely S. Parker (Do-ne-ha-ga-wa), was proclaimed Grand Sachem of the Six Nations. He was invested with the silver medal presented by Washington to the celebrated war-chief Red Jacket, and worn by him until his death. The new Canadian Ministry, so far as formed, is as follows: Inspector-General, Mr. Hincks; President of the Council, Dr. Rolph; Postmaster-General, Malcolm Cameron; Commissioner of Crown Lands, William Morris; Attorney-General for Canada West, W. B. Richards; Attorney-General for Canada East, Mr. Drummond; Provincial Secretary, Mr. Morin. Three appointments are yet to be made. The government will be eminently liberal. A revolution set on foot in Northern Mexico promises to be successful. The chief causes alleged by the conspirators are the enormous duties upon imports, and too severe punishment for smuggling, the excessive authority of the Central Government over the individual States, the quartering of regular troops upon citizens, the mal-administration of the national finances, the bad system of military government inherited from the Spanish establishment, and the want of a system of public education. The insurgents declare that they lay aside all idea of secession or annexation, yet it is not impossible that the movement will soon have such an end. The revolution commenced at Camargo, where the insurgents attacked the Mexicans, and came off victorious, having taken the town by storm, with a loss on the side of the Mexicans of 60. The Government troops were intrenched in a church with artillery. The revolutionists are commanded by Carvajal, who has also with him two companies of Texans. At our last dates, the 9th of September, they had taken the town of Reynosa, meeting but little resistance. One field-piece and a quantity of other arms fell into their hands. General Canales, the Governor of Tamaulipas, was approaching Metamoras, and General Avalajos was on the way to meet him, whether as friend or foe is uncertain. It was supposed that Canales would assume the chief command of the revolutionists. From New Grenada we learn that General Herrara has entirely subdued the revolt lately undertaken, and that the country is quiet. A revolt has broken out in Chili (a country remarkable in South America for the stability of its affairs), and in several towns the troops had declared in favor of a new man for the Presidency: the disorganizers were sweeping all before them, and the country was in a most excited condition. From Montevideo the latest intelligence is so confused that we can arrive at no definite conclusion, except that the domestic war is prosecuted with unusual savageness. An insurrection has broken out in the states of San Salvador and Guatemala. General Carrera, with a force of 1,500 men, had attacked the enemy in San Salvador, who mustered 4,000 strong, and defeated them with a loss of four men killed. He then evacuated the country. From Great Britain we have no political news of importance. The royal family were still in the north. The whig politicians appear to be agitating new schemes of parliamentary reform, and several distinguished persons have recently made addresses to their constituents. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton is before his county as a protectionist candidate for the House of Commons, with fair prospects. The submarine telegraph to France has been completed. The great cable which was intended to reach the whole distance proved too short by half a mile, owing to the irregularity of the line in which it was laid down. It was pieced out with a coil of wire coated with gutta percha. This will, however, have to be taken up and supplied with cable. The connection is complete with France, and messages are sent across with perfect success. Mr. Lawrence, the American minister, having gone to Ireland, for the purpose of seeing the scenery of the country, has been embarrassed with honors; public addresses have been presented to him, banquets given to him, railway directors and commissioners of harbors have attended him in his journeys, a steamboat was specially fitted up to carry him down the Shannon, and in every way such demonstrations of interest and honor were offered as were suitable for a people's reception of a messenger from the home of their children. The visit of Mr. Lawrence promises some happy results in directing attention to projects for a steam communication directly with the United States. The differences between the government of Calcutta and the court of Hyderabad, have been arranged for the present without any actual confiscation of the Nizam's territory. A considerable sum has been lodged in the hands of the Resident, and security offered for the partial liquidation of the remainder. Moolraj, the ex-Dewan of Mooltan, expired on the 11th August, while on his journey to the fortress of Allahabad, and the Vizier Yar Mohammed Khan, of Herat, died on the 4th of June. The eldest son of the latter, Seyd Mahommed Khan, has succeeded to the throne of Herat. Dost Mohammed is resolved to oppose him, and, for that purpose, has placed his son, Hyder Khan, at the head of a large army, with orders to invade Herat. The Admiralty have advertised for tenders for a monthly mail line of screw-steamers to and from England and the west coast of Africa. The ports to be touched at are Goree, Bathurst, Sierra Leone, Monrovia (Liberia), Cape Coast Castle, Accra, Whydah Badagry, Lagos, Bonny, Old Calabar, Cameroons, and Fernando Po. The whole range of the slave coast will thus be included; and it is understood that the object of the line, which, in the first instance, of course will carry scarcely any passengers or letters, is to promote the extinction of that traffic, not only by cultivating commerce with the natives, but by the rapid and regular information it will convey from point to point. Of the Caffre war, we have intelligence by an arrival at Boston direct from the Cape of Good Hope, later than has been received by way of England. There appeared to be some prospect of the war being brought to a close; reinforcements of troops had arrived, and Sir Harry Smith, the Governor, was in excellent spirits. In the mean time, however, the Caffres and Hottentots continued making sad havoc on the settlements, and the people were suffering from a lack of provisions, and cattle and stock were starving to death. Efficient measures however had in England been taken for their relief. From France, in the recess of the Assembly, there is no news of general importance. The persecution of the press, by which more than one ruler of that country has heretofore lost his place, is persevered in, and a large number of editors (including two sons of Victor Hugo) have been imprisoned and fined. All foreigners intending to reside permanently in Paris, or exercise any calling there, must henceforth present themselves personally to the authorities, and obtain permission to remain. This new and stringent police-regulation is, it is said, to be extended to every department of France. Such fear of foreigners contrasts strangely with the unsuspicious welcome which they receive in America and England. The President is evidently not willing his "subjects" should know what the world says of his administration. The Government of Naples has caused to be published a formal reply to Mr. Gladstone's letters to Lord Palmerston in respect to its unjustifiable severity to political prisoners, particularly the ex-minister Poerio. It mainly consists of an exposure of some inaccuracies of detail on the part of Mr. Gladstone, such as an exaggeration of the number of political prisoners at present confined in Naples, the alleged innocence of Poerio, the unhealthy state of the prisons, &c.; but it does not do away with the charge of savage severity in the punishment of Poerio and his fellow-prisoners, which formed the main accusation advanced by Mr. Gladstone against the Neapolitan Government, and it is not likely in any considerable degree to affect the opinion of the world on the subject. The Papal Court has addressed a note to the French Government, complaining of the toleration, by the latter, of incendiary writings against Italian states. The note observes that if the French journals were not to publish these writings, the demagogues would be at a loss for organs of circulation, because the English newspapers are much less read in Italy. The Emperor of Austria has been making a tour through his Italian provinces, in which he has been received with "respectful silence" in streets deserted by all except the military and ungoverned children. From a diplomatic correspondence between the representatives of Austria and Turkey, in regard to the liberation of Kossuth and his companions, it is very evident that Austria feels very keenly the discomfiture she has sustained, and that she will be very likely to resent this disregard of her wishes, by seeking cause of war with Turkey. She is stirring up rebellion in the Bosnian provinces, and concentrating her troops upon that frontier, to take advantage of any contingency that may arise. The authorities in Hungary have been absurd enough to evince the spleen of the Austrians in hanging effigies of Kossuth and his associates, condemned for treason _in contumace_. In Portugal vigorous preparations were being made for elections, in which it was expected that Saldanha's friends would generally be defeated. At the Cape de Verde Islands a terrible disease, described as a black plague, was very fatal. The differences between the governments of Turkey and Egypt are still unsettled, and the fate of the Egyptian railroad therefore remains doubtful. Scientific Discoveries and Proceedings of Learned Societies. Some recently received numbers of the _Nordische Biene_ contain interesting information concerning the organization and labors of the Russian Geographical Society. This body, like the Geographical and Statistical Society organized a few weeks since in New-York, is modelled upon the general plan of the Royal Geographical Society in London. It is, however, far from being so universal in its aims; in fact, its members confine their investigations to the Russian empire, and to tribes and countries contiguous therewith. The annual meeting is held on April 5th. At the last, two prizes were given; one of these was a gold medal offered by Prince Constantine, the other a money prize for the best statistical work. The medal was awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel Buckhardt Lemm, for a series of astronomical observations, determining the latitude and longitude of some four hundred places in Russia and the neighboring regions in Asia, as far as Mesched in Persia. These determinations are of particular value for the geography of inner Asia. The statistical prize was awarded to a Mr. Woronoff for a historical and statistical survey of the educational establishments in the district of St. Petersburg from 1715 to 1828. It is in fact a history of the development of mental culture in that most important part of the empire. The annual report, giving a survey of the Society's doings, was interesting. A special object of attention is the publication of maps of the separate governments or provinces. The Society had also caused an expedition to be sent to the Ural, under Colonel Hoffmann. The triangulation of the country about Mount Ararat had been completed. A map of Asia Minor had been prepared by Col. Bolotoff, and sent to Paris to be engraved; a map of the Caspian sea, and the countries surrounding it, was nearly completed by Mr. Chanykoff; the same savan was still at work on a map of Asia between 35° and 40° north latitude, and 61° and 81° east longitude; two astronomers were engaged in that region making observations to assist in its completion. Another map of Kokand and Bokhara was also forthcoming, and the Society had employed Messrs Butakoff and Chanykoff to prepare a complete atlas of Asia between 33° and 56° north latitude and 65° and 100° east longitude. A Russian nobleman had given 12,000 rubles to pay for making and publishing a Russian translation of Ritter's geography, but the society had determined not to undertake so immense a work (it is some 15,000 printed pages), and had determined only to take up those countries which have an immediate interest for Russia, using along with Ritter a great body of materials to which he had not access. These countries are Southern Siberia, Northern China, Turan, Korassan, Afghanistan and Persia. In Ritter's work these occupy 4,500 pages. No doubt the labors of the Society will greatly enrich geographical science. The Society have in hand an expedition to the peninsula of Kamschatka, in which they have been greatly assisted by the contributions of private persons. They also promise a classification of a vast collection of objects they have received bearing upon the ethnography of Russia. * * * * * We learn from the last Number of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ that the French government has lately made a literary acquisition of no ordinary interest and value. A French gentleman of the name of Perret has been engaged for six years in exploring THE CATACOMBS UNDER ROME, and copying, with the most minute and scrupulous fidelity, the remains of ancient art which are hidden in those extraordinary chambers. Under the authority of the papal government, and assisted by M. Savinien Petit, an accomplished French artist, M. Perret has explored the whole of the sixty catacombs together with the connecting galleries. Burying himself for five years in this subterranean city, he has thoroughly examined every part of it, in spite of difficulties and perils of the gravest character: for example, the refusal of his guides to accompany him; dangers resulting from the intricacy of the passages, from the necessity for clearing a way through galleries choked up with earth which fell in from above almost as fast as it was removed; hazards arising from the difficulty of damming up streams of water which ran in upon them from above, and from the foulness of the air and consequent difficulty of breathing and preserving light in the lower chambers;--all these, and many other perils, have been overcome by the honorable perseverance of M. Perret, and he has returned to France with a collection of drawings which extends to 360 sheets in large folio; of which 154 sheets contain representations of frescoes, 65 of monuments, 23 of paintings on glass (medallions inserted in the walls and at the bottoms of vases) containing 86 subjects, 41 drawings of lamps, vases, rings, and instruments of martyrdom to the number of more than 100 subjects, and finally 90 contain copies of more than 500 sepulchral inscriptions. Of the 154 drawings of frescoes two-thirds are inedited, and a considerable number have been only lately discovered. Amongst the latter are the paintings on the celebrated wells of Platonia, said to have been the place of interment, for a certain period, of St. Peter and St. Paul. This spot was ornamented with frescoes by order of Pope Damasus, about A.D. 365, and has ever since remained closed up. Upon opening the empty tomb, by permission of the Roman government, M. Perret discovered fresco paintings representing the Saviour and the Apostles, and two coffins [tombeaux] of Parian marble. On the return of M. Perret to France, the minister of the interior (M. Leon Faucher) entered into treaty with him for the acquisition of his collection for the nation. The purchase has been arranged, and the necessary amount, upwards of 7,500_l._, obtained by a special vote of the National Assembly. The drawings will be published by the French government in a style commensurate with their high importance, both as works of art and as invaluable monuments of Christian antiquity. * * * * * A Dr. JECKER has left the Paris _Academy of Sciences_ $40,000 to found an annual prize in organic chemistry. Recent Deaths. The celebrated Mrs. SHERWOOD, the most popular and universally known female writer of the last generation, died on the 22d of September, at Twickenham, in England. She was a daughter of Dr. George Butt, chaplain to George III., vicar of Kidderminster, and rector of Stanford, in the county of Worcester. Dr. Butt was the representative of the family of Sir William De Butts, well known as physician to Henry VIII., and mentioned as such by Shakspeare. Mary Martha Butt, afterwards Mrs. Sherwood, was born at Stanford, Worcestershire, on the 6th of May, 1775. In 1803 she married her cousin, Henry Sherwood, of the 53d regiment of foot. In 1805 she accompanied her husband to India, where, in consequence of her zealous labors in the cause of religion amongst the soldiers and natives dwelling around her, Henry Martyn and the Right Rev. Daniel Corrie, D.D., late Bishop of Madras, became acquainted with her, and the intimacy which then commenced also remained unbroken until death. Her principal works were that favorite tale of _Little Henry and his Bearer_, _The Lady of the Manor_, _The Church Catechism_, _The Nun_, _Henry Milner_, _The Fairchild Family_, and more recently, _The Golden Garland of Inestimable Delights_. In some of her later compositions, she evinced a tendency to the doctrine of the Universalists, which lessened her popularity. The great number of her books prevents an enumeration of even the most popular of them. Mrs. Sherwood's husband, Captain Sherwood, expired, after a most trying illness, at Twickenham, on the 6th of December, 1849; the fatigue she went through, in devoted attention to him, and the bereavement she experienced at the severance by fate of a union of nearly half a century, were the ultimate causes of her own demise. Though she was of advanced age, her mental faculties never failed her, and she preserved a religious cheerfulness of mind to the last. She expired, surrounded by her family, leaving one son, the Rev. Henry Martyn Sherwood, Rector of Broughton-Hacket, and Vicar of White Ladies Aston, Worcestershire, and two daughters. The elder daughter is the wife of a clergyman, and mother of a numerous family. The younger has always resided with her parent; she has of late years ably assisted in her mother's writings, and bids fair to sustain well her reputation. She has been, we are informed, intrusted, by her mother's especial desire, with the papers containing the records of Mrs. Sherwood's life, which is intended soon for publication. The editions of Mrs. Sherwood's writings have been numerous. The best is that of the Harpers, in ten or twelve volumes. * * * * * Rev. JAMES H. HOTCHKISS, died at Prattsburgh, Steuben county, New-York, on September 2d, aged seventy years. He was the author of a _History of the Churches in Western New-York_, published in a large octavo volume, about two years ago, and had just preached his half-century sermon. He was the son of Rev. Beriah Hotchkiss, the pioneer missionary of large sections of the State of New-York. The son graduated at Williams College, 1800; studied theology with Dr. Porter, of Catskill, was ordained by an Association, installed at East Bloomfield in 1802, removed to Prattsburgh in 1809, and there labored twenty-one years. The _Genesee Evangelist_ gives the following sketch of his character: "He had a mind of a strong, masculine order, well disciplined by various reading, and remarkably stored with general knowledge. The doctrinal views of the good old orthodox New England stamp, which he imbibed at first, he maintained strenuously to the last; and left a distinct impression of them wherever he had an opportunity to inculcate them. His labors, through the half-century, were 'abundant,' and indefatigable; and to him, more than to any other one man probably, is the Genesee country indebted for its present literary, moral and religious character. Under his ministry there were many religious revivals, and some signal ones, especially in Prattsburgh. The years 1819 and 1825 were eminently signalized in this way. He had the happiness of closing his life in the scenes of his greatest usefulness." * * * * * BRIGADIER-GENERAL HENRY WHITING, of the Quartermaster's Department, died at St Louis, Mo., on the 16th of September. He arrived at St Louis, as we learn from the _Republican_ of the 17th, on Sunday, the 14th, from a tour of official duty in Texas, being in his usual health. On Tuesday afternoon, while in his room at the Planter's House, he was, without any premonition whatever, stricken dead instantaneously. The cause of his death, in all probability, was an affection of the heart. His remains were taken to Jefferson Barracks on the 17th, for interment. Gen. Whiting, who was among the oldest officers of the army, was a native of Lancaster, in Massachusetts, a son of Gen. John Whiting, also a native of that place. He was not only an accomplished officer in the department in which he has spent a large portion of his life, but he made extensive scientific and literary attainments, and was a gentleman of great private worth. In hours stolen from official duties, he was for many years a large contributor to the literature of the country. His articles which from time to time appeared in the _North-American Review_, were of an eminently practical and useful character, and highly creditable to his scholarship and sound judgment. The biographical sketch of the late President Taylor, in a recent number, confined chiefly to his military life, and embracing a graphic description of the extraordinary successes in Mexico, was from Gen. Whiting's pen. He published a few years ago an important collection of the _General Orders of Washington_. He was deserving of praise also as a poet and as a dramatic author. * * * * * COMMODORE LEWIS WARRINGTON, of the United States navy, died in Washington, on the 12th October, after a painful illness. He was a native of Virginia, and was born in November, 1782. From a sketch of his life in the _Herald_, it appears that he entered the navy on the 6th of January, 1800, and soon after joined the frigate Chesapeake, then lying at Norfolk. In this ship he remained on the West India station until May, 1801, when he returned to the United States and joined the frigate President, under Commodore Dale, and soon blockaded Tripoli until 1802, when he again returned to the United States, and joined the frigate New-York, which sailed, and remained on the Mediterranean station until 1803. On his return from the Mediterranean he was ordered to the Vixen, and again joined the squadron which had lately left, where he remained during the attack on the gun-boats and batteries of Tripoli, in which the Vixen always took part. In November, 1804, he was made acting lieutenant; and in July, 1805, he joined the brig Siren, a junior lieutenant. In March, 1806, he joined the Enterprise, as first lieutenant, and did not return to the United States until July, 1807--an absence of four years. After his return in 1807 he was ordered to the command of a gun-boat on the Norfolk station, then under the command of Commodore Decatur. This was a position calculated to damp the ardor of the young officer, as it was so far below several he had filled. He, however, maintained his usual bearing for two years, when he was again ordered to the Siren as first lieutenant. On the return of this vessel from Europe, whither she went with dispatches, Lieut. Warrington was ordered to the Essex, as her first lieutenant, in September of the same year. In the Essex he cruised on the American coast, and again carried out dispatches for the government, returning in 1812. He was then ordered to the frigate Congress as her first lieutenant, and sailed, on the declaration of war, with the squadron under Commodore Rodgers, to intercept the British West India fleet, which was only avoided by the latter in consequence of a heavy fog, which continued for fourteen days. He remained in the Congress until 1813, when he became first lieutenant of the frigate United States, in which he remained until his promotion to the rank of master commandant, soon after which he took command of the sloop-of-war Peacock. While cruising in the Peacock, in latitude 27 deg. 40 min., he encountered the British brig-of-war Epervier. His own letter to the Secretary of the Navy, descriptive of that encounter, is as follows: At Sea, April 29, 1814. SIR:--I have the honor to inform you that we have this morning captured, after an action of forty-two minutes, his Britannic Majesty's brig Epervier, rating and mounting eighteen thirty-two pound cannonades, with one hundred and twenty-eight men, of whom eleven were killed and fifteen wounded, according to the best information we could obtain. Among the latter is her first lieutenant, who has lost an arm, and received a severe splinter wound in the hip. Not a man in the Peacock was killed, and only two wounded, neither dangerously. The fate of the Epervier would have been decided in much less time, but for the circumstance of our foreyard having been totally disabled by two round-shot in the starboard quarter, from her first broadside, which entirely deprived us of the use of our fore-topsails, and compelled us to keep the ship large throughout the remainder of the action. This, with a few topmast and topgallant backstays cut away, and a few shot through our sails, is the only injury the Peacock has sustained. Not a round-shot touched our hull, and our masts and spars are as sound as ever. When the enemy struck he had five feet of water in his hold; his maintopmast was over the side; his mainboom shot away; his foremast cut nearly away, and tottering; his forerigging and stays shot away; his bowsprit badly wounded, and forty-five shot-holes in his hull, twenty of which were within a foot of his water-line, above and below. By great exertions we got her in sailing order just as night came on. In fifteen minutes after the enemy struck, the Peacock was ready for another action, in every respect, except the foreyard, which was sent down, fished, and we had the foresail set again in forty-five minutes--such was the spirit and activity of our gallant crew. The Epervier had under convoy an English hermaphrodite brig, a Russian, and a Spanish ship, which all hauled their wind, and stood to the E. N. E. I had determined upon pursuing the former, but found that it would not be prudent to leave our prize in her then crippled state, and the more particularly so as we found she had on board one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in specie. Every officer, seaman, and marine did his duty, which is the highest compliment I can pay them. I am, &c., L. WARRINGTON. Capt. Warrington brought his prize safely home, and was received with great honor, because of his success in the encounter. In the early part of the year 1815, he sailed in the squadron under Commodore Decatur, for a cruise in the Indian Ocean. The Peacock and Hornet were obliged to separate in chasing, and did not again meet until they arrived at Tristan d'Acunha, the place appointed for rendezvous. After leaving that place, the Peacock met with a British line-of-battle ship, from which she escaped, and gained the Straits of Sunda, where she captured four vessels, one of which was a brig of fourteen guns, belonging to the East India Company's service. From this vessel Captain Warrington first heard of the ratification of peace. He then returned to the United States. While in command of the Peacock, Capt. Warrington captured nineteen vessels, three of which were given up to prisoners, and sixteen destroyed. Since the close of the war, Commodore Warrington has filled many responsible stations in the service for a long time, having been on shore-duty for twenty-eight years. He was appointed one of the Board of Naval Commissioners, and subsequently held the post of chief of the Bureau of Ordnance in the Navy Department, which post he held at the time of his death. His whole career of service extended through a period of more than fifty-one years, during all of which time he was respected, and held as one of the most prominent officers of the United States navy. At the time of his death there was but one older officer in service. * * * * * JOHN KIDD, M.D., of the University of Oxford, died suddenly early in September. He was formerly Professor of Chemistry, and since 1822 Regius Professor of Medicine. Dr. Kidd did good service in his time, as his publications testify, in various departments of mineralogical, chemical, and geological research, and about ten years ago he put forth some observations on medical reform. Dr. Kidd was one of the eminent men selected under the Earl of Bridgewater's will to write one of the well-known "Bridgewater Treatises." The subject was, _On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man_. Together with the Regius Professorship of Medicine, to which the mastership of Ewelme Hospital, in the county of Oxford, is attached, Dr. Kidd held the office of librarian to the Radcliffe Library. * * * * * THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE died on the 12th of September, at Palmerstown House, county of Dublin, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. He was lord-lieutenant of the county of Tipperary, and had a seat in the House of Lords as a British peer with the title of Viscount Hutchinson, of Knocklofty, but will be better remembered in history as the gallant Colonel Hutchinson, who was one of the parties implicated in the celebrated escape of Lavalette, in the year 1815, shortly after the restoration of the Bourbons. He is succeeded in his extensive estates in the south of Ireland by Viscount Suirdale, his lordship's son by his first wife, the daughter of the Lord Mountjoy, who lost his life in the royal service during the Irish rebellion of 1798. WILLIAM NICOL, F.R.S.E., died in Edinburgh on the 2nd of September, in his eighty-third year. Mr. Nicol commenced his career as assistant to the late Dr. Moyes, the eminent blind lecturer on natural philosophy. Dr. Moyes, at his death, bequeathed his apparatus to Mr. Nicol, who then lectured on the same subject. His contributions to the _Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_ were various and valuable; the more important being his description of his successful repetition of Döbereiner's celebrated experiment of igniting spongy platina by a stream of cold hydrogen gas; and his method of preparing fossil woods for microscopic investigation, which led to his discovery of the structural difference between the arucarian and coniferous woods, by far the most important in fossil botany. But the most valuable contribution to physical science, with which his name will ever be associated, was his invention of the single image prism of calcareous spar, known to the scientific world as Nicol's prism. * * * * * The Rev. G. G. FREEMAN, the well-known English missionary, died on the 8th of September at the baths of Homburg, in Germany, of an attack of rheumatic fever. Mr. Freeman had only a little while before returned home from a visit to the mission stations in South Africa, and his latest important labor was the writing of a volume, in which the social, spiritual, and political condition of South Africa was depicted. Mr. Freeman was fifty-seven years of age. He was born in London, educated at Hoxton Academy, and after many years of successful devotion to his profession in England, he proceeded in 1827 to Madagascar, under the direction of the London Missionary Society, and for nine years labored there with eminent energy and success. The share he had in translating the Scriptures, in preparing school-books, and in superintending the mission schools, cannot be recited in this brief sketch, but was such as greatly facilitated the progress of the Christian religion, till, in 1835, the queen proscribed Christianity, and virtually expelled the missionaries from the island. Mr. Freeman then went to the Cape of Good Hope, where he became much interested in South African missions, but the ill health of his wife compelled his return to England, where he arrived about the end of 1836. New duties and labors now awaited him; he had to confer with the directors, and to visit the constituents of the London Missionary Society in all parts of the kingdom. The want of an Institution for the education of the daughters of missionaries having been strongly felt, he took a leading part in the establishment of a school for that purpose in the village of Walthamstow, where he had become connected with the congregational church. In 1841, the loss of health having obliged the Rev. William Ellis to relinquish his official connection with the London Missionary Society, he was appointed foreign secretary, and appeared at the annual meeting of that year in that capacity, and shared with Dr. Tidman the labor of reading the report. How faithfully he fulfilled the duties of that office at home, and at what risk of health and life he sought, in a late voyage to the Mauritius, and journey throughout Southern Africa, to inform himself and the Society of the true state of affairs, both in Madagascar and Caffraria, his publications will show. * * * * * JAMES RICHARDSON, the enterprising African traveller, died on the 4th of March last, at a small village called Ungurutua, six days distant from Kouka, the capital of Bornou. Early in January, he and the companions of his mission, Drs. Barth and Overweg, arrived at the immense plain of Damergou, when, after remaining a few days, they separated, Dr. Barth proceeding to Kanu, Dr. Overweg to Guber, and Mr. Richardson taking the direct route to Kouka, by Zinde. There it would seem his strength began to give way, and before he had arrived twelve days' distance from Kouka, he became seriously ill, suffering much from the oppressive heat of the sun. Having reached a large town called Kangarras, he halted three days, and feeling himself refreshed he renewed his journey. After two days, during which his weakness greatly increased, he arrived at the Waddy Mallaha. Leaving this place on the 3d of March, he reached in two hours the village of Ungurutua, when he became so weak that he was unable to proceed. In the evening he took a little food and tried to sleep--but became very restless, and left his tent supported by his servant. He then took some tea and threw himself again on his bed, but did not sleep. His attendants having made some coffee, he asked for a cup, but had no strength to hold it. He repeated several times, "I have no strength;" and after having pronounced the name of his wife, sighed deeply, and expired without a struggle about two hours after midnight. Early in the morning, the body wrapped in linen, and covered with a carpet, was borne to a grave four feet deep, under the shade of a large tree, close to the village, followed by all the principal Sheichs and people of the district. * * * * * Those who have read--and very few persons of middle age in this country have not read--the interesting and somewhat apocryphal narrative of Captain Riley's shipwreck on the coast of Africa and long experience of suffering as a slave among the Arabs, will remember the amiable British Consul of Mogadore, in Barbary, Mr. WILLIAM WILLSHIRE. While Capt. Riley, Mr. Robbins, and others of the crew of the "Commerce" (which was the name of the American ship that was wrecked), were in the midst of the great desert, in utter helplessness, Mr. Willshire heard of some of them, and came to their relief with money and provisions, and paid, himself, the price of their ransom, redeeming them from an otherwise perpetual captivity. He took the afflicted and worn-out Americans to his own house at Mogadore, made them, after long suffering and privation, enjoy the luxuries of a bed and the comforts of a home, his wife and daughters uniting with him to alleviate their sufferings, and he afterwards supplied them with the necessary money and provided them the means of a return to their own country. Riley, in the latter part of his life, settled in Ohio, where the name of _Willshire_ has been given to the town in which he lived, and we believe our government made some demonstration of the general feeling of gratefulness with which the American people regarded Mr. Willshire's noble conduct in this case. Mr. Willshire was a model for consuls, and was kept constantly in service by his government. Several years ago he was appointed to Adrianople, where he died suddenly, at an advanced age, on the 4th of August. The Paris papers announce the death at the age of seventy-six, of M. J. R. DUBOIS,--director successively of the _Gaîté_, the _Porte-Saint-Martin_, and the _Opéra_, under the Restoration,--and author of a great variety of pieces played in the different theatres of Paris thirty or forty years ago. GUSTAV CARLIN, the author of several historical essays, and a novel founded on Mexican legends, died in Berlin on the 15th of September, aged sixty-nine. He resided several years in New-York, we believe as a political correspondent of some German newspaper. Ladies' Autumn Fashions. The light dresses of the summer, with unimportant apparent changes, were retained this year later than usual, but at length the more sober colors and heavier material of the autumn have taken their places. There are indications that furs will be much worn this season, and there are a variety of new patterns. We select-- [Illustration] I. _The Palatine Royale in Ermine_, for illustration and description. The palatine royale is a fur victorine of novel form, and it may fairly claim precedence as being the first article of winter costume prepared in anticipation of the approaching change of season. The addition of a hood, which is lined with quilted silk, and bound with a band of ermine, not only adds to its warmth, but renders it exceedingly convenient for the opera and theatres. This hood, we may mention, can be fixed on and removed at pleasure; an obvious advantage, which no lady will fail to appreciate. To the lower part of the hood is attached a large white silk tassel. We must direct particular attention to the new fastening attached to the palatine royale. This fastening is formed of an India-rubber band and steel clasp, by means of which the palatine will fit comfortably to the throat of any lady. The band and clasp being in the inside are not visible, and on the outside there is an elegant fancy ornament of white silk, of the description which the French call a brandebourg. [Illustration] II. _A Palatine in Sable_, has the same form and make as that just described, except that our engraving shows the back of one made of sable instead of ermine. The hood is lined with brown sable-colored silk, and the tassel and brandebourg are of silk of the same color. We need scarcely mention that the color employed for lining the hood, and for the silk ornaments, is wholly optional, and may be determined by the taste of the wearer. [Illustration] The first figure in the above engraving, displays a very handsome _Walking Dress_. It is of steel-color _poult de soie_, trimmed in a very novel and elegant style with bouillonnées of ribbon. The ribbon employed for these bouillonnées is steel color, figured and edged with lilac. The bouillonnées, which are disposed as side-trimmings on the skirt of the dress, are set on in rows obliquely, and graduated in length, the lowest now being about a quarter of a yard long. The corsage is a pardessus of the same material as the dress; the basque slit up at each side, and the pardessus edged all round with ribbon bouillonnée. The sleeves are demi-long, and loose at the ends, and slit up on the outside of the arm. Loose under-sleeves of muslin, edged with a double frill of needlework. The pardessus has under-fronts of white cambric or coutil, thus presenting precisely the effect of a gentleman's waistcoat. This gilet corsage, as it is termed by the French dressmakers, has recently been gaining rapid favor among the Parisian belles. That which our illustration represents has a row of buttons up the front, and a pocket at each side. It is open at the upper part, showing a chemisette of lace. Bonnet of fancy straw and crinoline in alternate rows, lined with drawn white silk, and trimmed with white ribbon. On one side, a white knotted feather. Undertrimming, bouquets of white and lilac flowers, mixed with white tulle. Over this dress may be worn a rich India cashmere shawl. In the second figure we have an example of the heavy and large plaided silks, and generally our latest Parisian plates, like this, exhibit the use of deep fringes. Flounces of ribbon are in vogue to a degree, but are not likely to be much worn. It will be seen by the first figure on this page that the European ladies are approximating to the styles of gentlemen in the upper parts of their costume, as American women seem disposed to imitation in the matter of inexpressibles. Attempts to introduce the style of dress worn by the lower orders of women in Northern Europe have failed as decidedly in England as in this country. 
45771	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections) [Illustration: DECEMBER. VOL. IV. No. 5 THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE. New-York: STRINGER & TOWNSEND. 1851. J.W. ORR, N.Y.] Contents for December. NAUVOO AND DESERET: THE MORMONS. _Six Engravings_, 577 WINDSOR CASTLE AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS. _Two Engravings_, 585 M. JULES GERARD AND THE BARON MUNCHAUSEN, IN AFRICA, 587 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, AND HIS WORKS: _Portrait_, 588 SLIDING SCALES OF DESPAIR, 592 DEATH IN YOUTH: BY H. W. PARKER, 593 A GERMAN HAND-BOOK OF AMERICA, 593 GONDOLETTAS: TWO SONGS: BY ALICE B. NEAL, 597 THE DUTCH GOVERNORS OF NEW AMSTERDAM: BY J. R. BRODHEAD, 597 AN AUTUMN BALLAD: BY W. A. SUTLIFFE, 598 CARLYLE'S LIFE OF JOHN STERLING, 599 SONGS OF THE CASCADE: BY A. OAKEY HALL, 602 HERMAN MELVILLE'S NEW NOVEL OF "THE WHALE," 602 A STORY WITHOUT A NAME: BY G. P. R. JAMES. _Concluded_, 604 CALCUTTA: SOCIAL, INDUSTRIAL, POLITICAL.--_Bentley's Miscellany_, 611 REVOLUTIONS IN RUSSIA. BY ALEXANDER DUMAS.--_Sharpe's Magazine_, 616 DRINKING EXPERIENCES: A TEMPERANCE LECTURE BY "NIMROD," 621 AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY COMPARED: BY THE LATE J. F. COOPER, 625 A BULL FIGHT AT RONDA.--_United Service Magazine_, 631 VAGARIES OF THE IMAGINATION.--_Chambers's Edinburgh Journal_, 638 THE FRENCH FLOWER GIRL.--_Dickens's Household Words_, 641 THE THREE ERAS OF OTTOMAN HISTORY.--_The Antheneum_, 643 THE CAPTAIN AND THE NEGRO.--_United Service Magazine_, 646 THE VEILED PICTURE: A TRAVELLER'S STORY.--_New Monthly Magazine_, 648 THE SPENDTHRIFT'S DAUGHTER: IN SIX CHAPTERS.--_Household Words_, 664 MY NOVEL: BY SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. _Continued_, 683 AUTHORS AND BOOKS: Pendant to Professor Creasy's _Decisive Battles of the World_, 693.--Correspondence respecting the Thirty Years' War, 693.--German collection of English Songs, 693.--German Philologists, 693.--Weil's History of the Califs, 693.--The Germans in Bohemia, 693.--Andree's Work on America, 694.--Works on Spinoza, 694.--New Goethean Literature, 694.--The British Empire in Europe, by Meidinger, 694.--The Play of the Resurrection, 694.--German History of French Literature, 694.--New work on German Knighthood, &c., 694.--German Romance in the 18th Century, 695.--Madame Blaze de Bury's New Novel, 695.--Richter's History of the Evangelical German Churches, 695.--German Life of Sir Robert Peel, 695.--Zimmermann on the English Revolution, 695.--History of Norway, 695.--Reguly, the Hungarian Traveller, 695.--Political Notabilities of Hungary, 695.--Speeches, &c., by King William of Prussia, 695.--Pictures from the North, 695.--History of the Swiss Confederation, 695.--Bern's System of Chronology, by Miss Peabody, 695.--French Almanacs, 695.--M. Croce-Spinelli's Work on Popular Government, 696.--Works by the Paris Asiatic Society, 696.--Cæsar Daly on Parisian Architecture, 696.--Figuier's Modern Discoveries, 696.--The _Annuaire des Deux Mondes_, 696.--Calvin's Inedited Letters, 697.--Lacretelle, 697.--Critical Studies of Socialism, 697.--Memoirs of Mademoiselle Mars, 697.--The Institute of France, 697.--Grille, on the War in La Vendée, 697.--History of the Bourgeoisie of Paris, 697.--_Archives des Missions Scientifiques_, &c., 697.--Travels in Africa, 698.--Spirit of New Roman Catholic Literature, 698.--Gardin de Tassy on Mr. Salisbury's Unpublished Arabic Documents, 699.--New Travels in Palestine, 698.--The Abbadie Travellers, 699.--French, English, and American Missionaries, as Scholars, 699.--The Westminster Review, 690.--A Grandson of Robert Burns, 699.--Friends in Council, &c., by Mr. Helps, 699.--New English Announcements, 700.--New Dissenters' College, 700.--Sir Charles Lyell, and the "Free Thinkers," 700.--Professor Wilson, 700.--Miss Kirkland's Evening Book, 700.--Works by Mrs. Lee, 701.--Mr. Boyd's edition of Young's Night Thoughts, 702.--"Injustice to the South," 702.--Splendid American Gift Books for 1852, 703.--New American Works in Press, 703, &c. THE FINE ARTS: Leutze's Washington, 703.--Colossal Statue of Washington at Munich, 703.--Kaulbach's Frescoes, 703.--Cadame's Compositions of the Seasons, 703.--Portraits of Bishop White and Daniel Webster, 703. HISTORICAL REVIEW OF THE MONTH: The American Elections, 704.--Kossuth In England, 704.--Europe, and the East, 704. RECENT DEATHS: Archibald Alexander. D. D., 705.--J. Kearney Rogers, M. D., 705.--Rev. William Croswell, D. D., 706.--Granville Sharpe Pattison, M. D., 706.--Mr. Stephens, author of _The Manuscripts of Erdely_, 706.--Mr. Gutzlaff, the Missionary, 707.--Don Manuel Godoy, the Prince of the Peace, 708.--George Baker, 708.--M. De Savigny, 708.--Archbishop Wingard, 708.--Samuel Beaseley, author of _The Roué_, 708.--H. P. Borrell, 708.--James Tyler. R. D., 708.--Emma Martin, 709.--Yar Mohammed, 709.--Alexander Lee, 710.--Prince Frederick of Prussia, 710. GENTLEMEN'S AND LADIES FASHIONS FOR DECEMBER. _Seven Engravings_, 718 THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE Of Literature, Art, and Science. * * * * * Vol. IV. NEW-YORK, DECEMBER 1, 1851. No. V. NAUVOO AND DESERET. IMPOSTURE AND HISTORY OF THE MORMONS. Among the many extraordinary chapters in the history of the Nineteenth Century none will seem in the next age more incredible and curious than that in which is related the Rise and Progress of Mormonism. The creed of the Latter Day Saints, as they style themselves, is not, indeed, more absurd and ridiculous than that of the Millerites, but this last sect had but a very brief existence, and is now almost forgotten; while the imposture of Smith and his associates, commencing before Miller began his prophecies, is still successful, and represented by missionaries in almost every state throughout the world. [Illustration: THE MORMON EXODUS: PASSING THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.] It has been observed with some reason, that had a Rabelais or a Swift told the story of the Mormons under the veil of allegory, the sane portion of mankind would probably have entered a protest against the extravagance of the satirist. The name of the mock hero, his own and his family's ignorance and want of character, the low cunning of his accomplices, the open and shameless vices in which they indulged, and the extraordinary success of the sect they founded, would all have been thought too obviously conceived with a view to ludicrous effects. Yet the Mormon movement has assumed the condition of an important popular feature, and after much suffering and many reverses, its authors have achieved a condition of eminent industrial prosperity. In twenty years the company, consisting of the impostor and his father and brother, has increased to nearly half a million; they occupy one of the richest portions of this continent, have a regularly organized government, and are represented in the Congress of the United States by a delegate having all the powers usually conferred on the members for territories. With missions in every part of the country, in every capital of Europe, in Mecca, in Jerusalem, and among the islands of the Pacific and the Indian Oceans, all of whom are charged with the duty of making converts and gathering them to the Promised Land of Deseret, they must very soon have a population sufficiently large to claim admission as an equal member to the Union, and perhaps to hold the balance of power in its affairs. To illustrate the energy and success with which their missions are prosecuted, we may cite the statement contained in a work just published in London, _The Mormons, or Latter Day Saints, a Contemporary History_, that more than fourteen thousand persons have left Great Britain since 1840 for the "Holy City." The emigrants passing through Liverpool in 1849, amounted to 2,500, generally of the better class of mechanics and farmers, and it was estimated that at least 30,000 converts remained behind. In June, 1850, there were in England and Scotland, 27,863, of whom London contributed 2,529; Liverpool, 1,018; Manchester, 2,787; Glasgow, 1,846; Sheffield, 1,920; Edinburgh, 1,331; Birmingham, 1,909; and Wales, 4,342. And the Mormon census was again taken last January, giving the entire number in the British Isles at 30,747. In fourteen years, more than 50,000 had been baptized in England, of whom nearly 17,000 had "emigrated to Zion." Although the Mormon emigration is commonly of the better class, there are also poor Mormons; and that these as well as their more prosperous brethren may be "gathered to the holy city," there is now amassed in Liverpool a very large fund, under the control of officers appointed by the "Apostles," destined exclusively for the equipment and transportation of converts to their place of Refuge. The interest which recent events have attracted to the community in Deseret or Utah, will render interesting a more particular survey of its origin, progress, and condition. In 1825 there lived near the village of Palmyra, in New-York, a family of small farmers of the name of Smith. They were of bad repute in the neighborhood, notorious for being continually in debt, and heedless of their business engagements. The eldest son, Joseph, says one of his friends, "could read without much difficulty, wrote a very imperfect hand, and had a very limited understanding of the elementary rules of arithmetic." Associated in some degree with Sidney Rigdon, who comes before us in the first place as a journeyman printer, he was the founder of the new faith. The early history of the conspiracy of these worthies is imperfectly known; but it is evident that Rigdon must have been in Smith's confidence from the first. Rigdon, indeed, probably had more to do with the matter than even Smith; but it was the latter who was first put conspicuously forward, and who managed to retain the pre-eminence. The account of the pretended revelation, as given by Smith, is as follows: He all at once found himself laboring in a state of great darkness and wretchedness of mind--was bewildered among the conflicting doctrines of the Christians, and could find no comfort or rest for his soul. In this state, he resorted to earnest prayer, kneeling in the woods and fields, and after long perseverance was answered by the appearance of a bright light in heaven, which gradually descended until it enveloped the worshipper, who found himself standing face to face with two supernatural beings. Of these he inquired which was the true religion? The reply was, that all existing religions were erroneous, but that the pure doctrine and crowning dispensation of Christianity should at a future period be miraculously revealed to himself. Several similar visitations ensued, and at length he was informed that the North American Indians were a remnant of Israel; that when they first entered America they were a powerful and enlightened people; that their priests and rulers kept the records of their history and doctrines, but that, having fallen off from the true worship, the great body of the nation were supernaturally destroyed--not, however, until a priest and prophet named Mormon, had, by heavenly direction, drawn up an abstract of their records and religious opinions. He was told that this still existed, buried in the earth, and that he was selected as the instrument for its recovery and manifestation to all nations. The record, it was said, contained many prophecies as to these latter days, and instructions for the gathering of the saints into a temporal and spiritual kingdom, preparatory to the second coming of the Messiah, which was at hand. After several very similar visions, the spot in which the book lay buried was disclosed. Smith went to it, and after digging, discovered a sort of box, formed of upright and horizontal flags, within which lay a number of plates resembling gold, and of the thickness of common tin. These were bound together by a wire, and were engraved with Egyptian characters. By the side of them lay two transparent stones, called by the ancients, "Urim and Thummim," set in "the two rims of a bow." These stones were divining crystals, and the angels informed Smith, that by using them he would be enabled to decipher the characters on the plates. What ultimately became of the plates--if such things existed at all--does not appear. They were said to have been seen and handled by eleven witnesses. With the exception of three persons, these witnesses were either members of Smith's family, or of a neighboring family of the name of Whitmer. The Smiths, of course, give suspicious testimony. The Whitmers have disappeared, and no one knows any thing about them. Another witness, Oliver Cowdrey, was afterwards an amanuensis to Joseph; and another, Martin Harris, was long a conspicuous disciple. There is some confusion, however, about this person. Although he signs his name, as a witness who has seen and handled the plates, he assured Professor Anthon that he never had seen them, that "he was not sufficiently pure of heart," and that Joseph refused to show him the plates, but gave him instead a transcript on paper of the characters engraved on them. It is difficult to trace the early advances of the imposture. Every thing is vague and uncertain. We have no dates, and only the statements of the prophet and his friends. Meantime, Smith must have worked successfully on the feeble and superstitious mind of Martin Harris. This man, as we have just said, received from him a written transcript of the mysterious characters, and conveyed it to Professor Anthon, a competent philological authority. Dr. Anthon's account of the interview is one of the most important parts of the entire history. Harris told him he had not seen the plates, but that he intended to sell his farm and give the proceeds to enable Smith to publish a translation of them. This statement, with what follows, shows that Smith's original intention, _quoad_ the alleged plates, was to use them as a means for swindling Harris. The Mormons have published accounts of Professor Anthon's judgment on the paper submitted to him, which he himself states to be "perfectly false." The Mormon version of the interview represents Dr. Anthon "as having been unable to decipher the characters correctly, but as having presumed that, if the original records could be brought, he could assist in translating them." On this statement being made, Dr. Anthon described the document submitted to him as having been a sort of _pot-pourri_ of ancient marks and alphabets. "It had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him a book containing various alphabets; Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters, inverted or placed sideways, were arranged in perpendicular columns, and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle, divided into various compartments, decked with numerous strange marks, and evidently copied after the Mexican Calendar given by Humboldt, but copied in such a way as not to betray the source whence it was derived." This account disposes of the statement that the characters were Egyptian, while the very jumble of the signs of different nations, languages, and ages, proves that the impostor was deficient both in tact and knowledge. The scheme seems to have been, at all events, _in petto_ when Smith communicated with Harris; but a satisfactory clue to the fabrication is lost in our ignorance of the time and circumstances under which Smith and Rigdon came together. It must have been subsequent to that event that the "translation," by means of the magic Urim and Thummim, was begun. This work Smith is represented as having labored at steadily, assisted by Oliver Cowdrey, until a volume was produced containing as much matter as the Old Testament, written in the Biblical style, and containing, as Smith said the Angel had informed him, a history of the lost tribes in their pilgrimage to and settlement in America, with copious doctrinal and prophetic commentaries and revelations. The devotion of Harris to the impostor secured a fund sufficient for defraying the cost of printing the pretended revelation, and the sect began slowly to increase. The doctrines of Smith were not at first very clearly defined; it is probable that neither he nor Rigdon had determined what should be their precise character; but like their early contemporary the prophet Matthias (the interesting history of whose career was published in New-York several years ago by the late Colonel Stone), they had no hesitation in deciding on one cardinal point, that the revelations made to Smith at any time should be received with unquestioning and implicit faith, and the earliest of these revelations contemplated a liberal provision for all the prophet's personal necessities. Thus, in February, 1831, it was revealed to the disciples that they should immediately build the prophet a house; on another occasion it was enjoined that, if they had any regard for their own souls, the sooner they provided him with food and raiment, and every thing he needed, the better it would be for them; and in a third revelation, Joseph was informed that "he was not to labor for his living." All these "revelations" were received, and though the impostor seemed to intelligent men little better than a buffoon, his followers soon learned to regard him as almost deserving of adoration, and he began to revel in whatever luxury and profligacy was most agreeable to his vulgar taste and ambition. As in the case of the scarcely more respectable pretender, Andrew Jackson Davis, it was asserted that his original want of cultivation precluded the notion of his having by the exercise of any natural or acquired faculties produced his "revelations." Everywhere his followers said, "The prophet is not learned in a human sense: how could he have become acquainted with all the antiquarian learning here displayed, if it were not supernaturally communicated to him?" But to this question there was soon an answer equally explicit and satisfactory. The real author of the Book of Mormon was a Rev. Solomon Spaulding, who wrote it as a romance. Its entire history and the means by which it came into the possession of Smith are described, in the following statement, by Mr. Spaulding's widow:-- [Illustration: CROSSING THE MISSOURI.] "Since the _Book of Mormon_, or _Golden Bible_ (as it was originally called), has excited much attention, and is deemed by a certain new sect of equal authority with the sacred Scriptures, I think it a duty to the public to state what I know of its origin.... Solomon Spaulding, to whom I was married in early life, was a graduate of Dartmouth college, and was distinguished for a lively imagination, and great fondness for history. At the time of our marriage, he resided in Cherry Valley, New York. From this place, we removed to New Salem, Ashtabula County, Ohio, sometimes called Conneaut, as it is situated on Conneaut Creek. Shortly after our removal to this place, his health failed, and he was laid aside from active labors. In the town of New Salem there are numerous mounds and forts, supposed by many to be the dilapidated dwellings and fortifications of a race now extinct. These relics arrest the attention of new settlers, and become objects of research for the curious. Numerous implements were found, and other articles evincing skill in the arts. Mr. Spaulding being an educated man, took a lively interest in these developments of antiquity; and in order to beguile the hours of retirement, and furnish employment for his mind, he conceived the idea of giving an historical sketch of the long-lost race. Their antiquity led him to adopt the most ancient style, and he imitated the Old Testament as nearly as possible. His sole object in writing this imaginary history was to amuse himself and his neighbors. This was about the year 1812. Hull's surrender at Detroit occurred near the same time, and I recollect the date well from that circumstance. As he progressed in his narrative, the neighbors would come in from time to time to hear portions read, and a great interest in the work was excited among them. It claimed to have been written by one of the lost nation, and to have been recovered from the earth; and he gave it the title of 'The Manuscript Found.' The neighbors would often inquire how Mr. Spaulding advanced in deciphering the manuscript; and when he had a sufficient portion prepared, he would inform them, and they would assemble to hear it read. He was enabled, from his acquaintance with the classics and ancient history, to introduce many singular names, which were particularly noticed by the people, and could be easily recognized by them. Mr. Solomon Spaulding had a brother, Mr. John Spaulding, residing in the place at the time, who was perfectly familiar with the work, and repeatedly heard the whole of it. From New Salem we removed to Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania. Here Mr. Spaulding found a friend and acquaintance, in the person of Mr. Patterson, an editor of a newspaper. He exhibited his manuscript to Mr. Patterson, who was much pleased with it, and borrowed it for perusal. He retained it a long time, and informed Mr. Spaulding that if he would make out a title-page and preface, he would publish it, and it might be a source of profit. This Mr. Spaulding refused to do. Sidney Rigdon, who has figured so largely in the history of the Mormons, was at that time connected with the printing office of Mr. Patterson, as is well known in that region, and, as Rigdon himself has frequently stated, became acquainted with Mr. Spaulding's manuscript, and copied it. It was a matter of notoriety and interest to all connected with the printing establishment. At length the manuscript was returned to its author, and soon after we removed to Amity, Washington county, where Mr. Spaulding died, in 1816. The manuscript then fell into my hands, and was carefully preserved. It has frequently been examined by my daughter, Mrs. M'Kenstry, of Monson, Massachusetts, with whom I now reside, and by other friends. After the Book of Mormon came out, a copy of it was taken to New Salem, the place of Mr. Spaulding's former residence, and the very place where the 'Manuscript Found' was written. A woman appointed a meeting there; and in the meeting read copious extracts from the Book of Mormon. The historical part was known by all the older inhabitants, as the identical work of Mr. Spaulding, in which they had all been so deeply interested years before. Mr. John Spaulding was present, and recognized perfectly the production of his brother. He was amazed and afflicted that it should have been perverted to so wicked a purpose. His grief found vent in tears, and he arose on the spot, and expressed to the meeting his sorrow that the writings of his deceased brother should be used for a purpose so vile and shocking. The excitement in New Salem became so great, that the inhabitants had a meeting, and deputed Dr. Philastus Hurlbut, one of their number, to repair to this place, and to obtain from me the original manuscript of Mr. Spaulding, for the purpose of comparing it with the Mormon Bible--to satisfy their own minds and to prevent their friends from embracing an error so delusive. This was in the year 1834. Dr. Hurlbut brought with him an introduction and request for the manuscript, which was signed by Messrs. Henry, Lake, Aaron Wright, and others, with all of whom I was acquainted, as they were my neighbors when I resided at New Salem. I am sure that nothing would grieve my husband more, were he living, than the use which has been made of his work. The air of antiquity which was thrown about the composition doubtless suggested the idea of converting it to the purposes of delusion. Thus, an historical romance, with the addition of a few pious expressions, and extracts from the sacred Scriptures, has been construed into a new Bible, and palmed off upon a company of poor deluded fanatics as Divine." Similar evidence as to the Spaulding MS. was given by several private friends, and by the writer's brother, all of whom were familiar with its contents. The facts thus graphically detailed have of course been denied, but have never been disproved. Indeed, without them it is impossible to explain the hold which Rigdon always possessed on the Prophet; for he was a poor creature, without education and without talents. At one time--a critical moment in the history of the new church--a quarrel arose between the accomplices; but it ended in Smith's receiving a "revelation," in which Rigdon was raised by divine command to be equal with himself, having plenary power given to him to bind and loose both on earth and in heaven. [Illustration: A MORMON CARAVAN ON THE PRAIRIES.] The remaining history of the Mormons is eminently interesting. Ignorant and superstitious as have been the chief part of the disciples, and atrocious as have been the tricks of the knaves who have led them on amid all the varieties of their good and evil fortune, there have occasionally been displayed among them an enthusiasm and bravery of endurance that demand admiration. Nearly from the beginning the leaders of the sect seem to have contemplated settling in the thinly populated regions of the western states, where lands were to be purchased for low prices, and after a short residence at Kirkland, in Ohio, they determined to found a New Jerusalem in Missouri. The interests of the town were confided to suitable officers, and Smith spent his time in travelling through the country and preaching, until the real or pretended immoralities of the sect led to such discontents that in 1839 they were forcibly and lawlessly expelled from the state. We are inclined to believe that they were not only treated with remarkable severity, but that there was not any reason whatever to justify an interference in their affairs. [Illustration: THE MORMON TEMPLE AT NAUVOO.] From Missouri the saints proceeded to Illinois, and on the sixth of April, 1841, with imposing ceremonies, laid at their new city of Nauvoo the corner-stone of the Temple,[1] an immense edifice, without any architectural order or attraction, which in a few months was celebrated every where as not inferior in size and magnificence to that built by Solomon in Jerusalem. Nauvoo is delightfully situated in the midst of a fertile district, and a careful inquirer will not be apt to deny that it became the home of a more industrious, frugal, and generally moral society, than occupied any other town in the state. Whatever charges were preferred against Smith and his disciples, to justify the outrages to which they were subjected, the history of their expulsion from Nauvoo is simply a series of illustrations of the fact that the ruffian population of the neighboring country set on foot a vast scheme of robbery in order to obtain the lands and improvements of the Mormons without paying for them. We have not room for a particular statement of the discontents and conspiracies which grew up in the city, nor for any detail of the aggressions from without. On the 27th of June, 1844, Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered, while under the especial protection of the authorities of the state. A writer in the _Christian Reflector_ newspaper, soon after, observed of Joseph Smith: "Various are the opinions concerning this singular personage; but whatever may be thought in reference to his principles, objects, or moral character, all agree that he was a most remarkable man.... Notwithstanding the low origin, poverty, and profligacy of these mountebanks, they have augmented their numbers till more than 100,000 persons are now numbered among the followers of the Mormon Prophet, and they never were increasing so rapidly as at the time of his death. Born in the very lowest walks of life, reared in poverty, educated in vice, having no claims to even common intelligence, coarse and vulgar in deportment, the Prophet Smith succeeded in establishing a religious creed, the tenets of which have been taught throughout America; the Prophet's virtues have been rehearsed in Europe; the ministers of Nauvoo have found a welcome in Asia; Africa has listened to the grave sayings of the seer of Palmyra; the standard of the Latter-Day Saints has been reared on the banks of the Nile; and even the Holy Land has been entered by the emissaries of this impostor. He founded a city in one of the most beautiful situations in the world, in a beautiful curve of the 'Father of Waters,' of no mean pretensions, and in it he had collected a population of twenty-five thousand, from every part of the world. The acts of his life exhibit a character as incongruous as it is remarkable. If we can credit his own words and the testimony of eye-witnesses, he was at the same time the vicegerent of God and a tavern-keeper--a prophet and a base libertine--a minister of peace, and a lieutenant-general--a ruler of tens of thousands, and a slave to all his own base passions--a preacher of righteousness, and a profane swearer--a worshipper of Bacchus, mayor of a city, and a miserable bar-room fiddler--a judge on the judicial bench, and an invader of the civil, social, and moral relations of men; and, notwithstanding these inconsistencies of character, there are not wanting thousands willing to stake their souls' eternal salvation on his veracity. For aught we know, time and distance will embellish his life with some new and rare virtues, which his most intimate friends failed to discover while living with him. Reasoning from effect to cause, we must conclude that the Mormon Prophet was of no common genius: few are able to commence and carry out an imposition like his, so long, and so extensively. And we see, in the history of his success, most striking proofs of the credulity of a large portion of the human family." [1] The temple was of white limestone, 128 feet long, 83 feet wide, and 60 feet high. Its style will be seen in the above engraving. It was destroyed by fire, on the 19th of November, 1848. The town of Nauvoo is now occupied by another class of socialists, the Icarians, under M. Cabet, of Paris. [Illustration: THE EXPULSION FROM NAUVOO.] After some dissensions, in which the party of Brigham Young triumphed over that of Sidney Rigdon, the sect were reorganized and for some time were permitted quietly to prosecute their plans at Nauvoo. But early in 1846 they were driven out of their city and compelled in mid winter to seek a new home beyond the farthest borders of civilization. The first companies, embracing sixteen hundred persons, crossed the Mississippi on the 3d February, 1846, and similar detachments continued to leave until July and August, travelling by ox-teams towards California, then almost unknown, and quite unpeopled by the Anglo-Saxon race. Their enemies asserted that the intention of the Saints was to excite the Indians against the government, and that they would return to take vengeance on the whites for the indignities they had suffered. Nothing appears to have been further from their intentions. Their sole object was to plant their Church in some fertile and hitherto undiscovered spot, where they might be unmolested by any opposing sect. The war against Mexico was then raging, and, to test the loyalty of the Mormons, it was suggested that a demand should be made on them to raise five hundred men for the service of the country. They consented, and that number of their best men enrolled themselves under General Kearney, and marched 2,400 miles with the armies of the United States. At the conclusion of the war they were disbanded in Upper California. They allege that it was one of this band who, in working at a mill, first discovered the golden treasures of California; and they are said to have amassed large quantities of gold before the secret was made generally known to the "Gentiles." But faith was not kept with the Mormons who remained in Nauvoo. Although they had agreed to leave in detachments, as rapidly as practicable, they were not allowed necessary time to dispose of their property; and in September, 1846, the city was besieged by their enemies upon the pretence that they did not intend to fulfil the stipulations made with the people and authorities of Illinois. After a three days' bombardment, the last remnant was finally driven out. The terrible hejira of the Mormon emigrants over the Rocky Mountains has been described by Mr. Kane of Philadelphia, in an interesting pamphlet, which is honorable to his own character for good sense and for benevolent feeling. No religious emigration was ever attended by more suffering, no emigration of any kind was ever prosecuted with more bravery. It resulted in the permanent establishment of the "Commonwealth of the New Covenant," in Utah, or Deseret, one of the most attractive portions of the interior of this Continent, near its western border. Of this territory Mr. Kane says: Deseret is emphatically a new country; new in its own characteristic features, newer still in its bringing together within its limits the most inconsistent peculiarities of other countries. I cannot aptly compare it to any. Descend from the mountains, where you have the scenery and climate of Switzerland, to seek the sky of your choice among the many climates of Italy, and you may find welling out of the same hills the freezing springs of Mexico and the hot springs of Iceland, both together coursing their way to the Salt Sea of Palestine, in the plain below. The pages of Malte Brun provide me with a less truthful parallel to it than those which describe the Happy Valley of Rasselas, or the Continent of Ballibarbi. [Illustration: GREAT SALT LAKE CITY OR NEW JERUSAL'M.] The history of the Mormons has ever since been an unbroken record of prosperity. It has looked as though the elements of fortune, obedient to a law of natural re-action, were struggling to compensate their undue share of suffering. They may be pardoned for deeming it miraculous. But, in truth, the economist accounts for it all, who explains to us the speedy recuperation of cities, laid in ruin by flood, fire, and earthquake. During its years of trial, Mormon labor had subsisted on insufficient capital, and under many difficulties, but it _has_ subsisted, and survives them now, as intelligent and powerful as ever it was at Nauvoo; with this difference, that it has in the mean time been educated to habits of unmatched thrift, energy, and endurance, and has been transplanted to a situation where it is in every respect more productive. Moreover, during all the period of their journey, while some have gained by practice in handicraft, and the experience of repeated essays at their various halting-places, the minds of all have been busy framing designs and planning the improvements they have since found opportunity to execute. Their territory is unequalled as a stock-raising country; the finest pastures of Lombardy are not more estimable than those on the east side of the Utah Lake and its tributary rivers, and it is scarcely less rich in timber and minerals than the most fortunate portions of the continent. From the first the Mormons have had little to do in Deseret, but attend to mechanical and strictly agricultural pursuits. They have made several successful settlements; the farthest north is distant more than forty miles, and the farthest south, in a valley called the Sanpeech, two hundred, from that first formed. A duplicate of the Lake Tiberias empties its waters into the innocent Dead Sea of Deseret, by a fine river, which they have named the Western Jordan. It was on the right bank of this stream, on a rich table land, traversed by exhaustless waters falling from the highlands, that the pioneers, coming out of the mountains in the night of the 24th of July, 1847, pitched their first camp in the Valley, and consecrated the ground. This spot proved the most favorable site for their chief settlement, and after exploring the whole country, they founded on it their city of the New Jerusalem. Its houses are diffused, to command as much as possible the farms, which are laid out in wards or cantons, with a common fence to each. The farms in wheat already cover a space nearly as large as Rhode Island. The houses of New Jerusalem, or Great Salt Lake City, as it is commonly called, are distributed over an area nearly as great as that of New York. The foundations have been laid for a temple more vast and magnificent than that which was erected at Nauvoo. The Deseret News, a paper established under the direction of the ecclesiastical authority came to us lately with several columns descriptive of the fourth anniversary celebration of the arrival of the disciples in their Promised Land. Since the preceding paragraphs were written some important information has been received from Utah, justifying apprehensions that the ambition of the chief of the sect, and territorial governor, Brigham Young, will be continually productive of difficulties. It appears that in consequence of his unwarrantable assumptions of authority, the larger and most respectable portion of the territorial officers, including B. O. Harris, Secretary of the Territory, G. K. Brandenburg, Chief Justice, E. P. Bracchas, Associate Justice, H. R. Day, Indian Agent, and Messrs. Gillette and Young, were preparing to leave for the Atlantic States. The particulars of the difficulty are not stated, but it is said that $20,000 appropriated by Congress for territorial purposes had been squandered by Young, and an attempt made by him to take $24,000 from the Treasurer, who refused, and applied to the Court to support him. This was done, and an injunction granted restraining the proceedings of the Governor. [Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE.] Of the numerous objects of interest with which the banks of the Thames are so thickly studded, none are of such surpassing grandeur and regal magnificence as Windsor Castle, with its adjacent chapel of St. George, and Eton College. This massive and stately pile is richly storied with poetic associations, and venerable for its antiquity, in having proudly defied the ravages of Time for some eight centuries. Here kings were born; here they kept royal state amid the blaze of fashion and luxurious indulgence; and here in the adjoining mausoleum, they were buried. Here deeds of chivalry and high renown that shine on us from ancient days were enacted; and it is here the most exemplary of England's monarchy still prefers to hold her suburban residence. This brave old fortress, unlike the Tower of London, with its dark records of crime, is rife with pleasant memories. Not only is the edifice itself, with its gigantic towers, its broad bastions, and its kingly halls, sacred with incident and story, but Shakespeare has also rendered classical the very ground on which it stands. [Illustration: DISTANT VIEW OF WINDSOR CASTLE.] Windsor Forest, with its magnificent old oaks and its richly variegated scenery, of "upland, lawn and stream," has afforded a fruitful theme for the pens of Gray and the poet of "The Seasons;" and Pope, it will be remembered, has felicitously pictured forth its changeful beauties. As far back as the days of the Saxons we have records of palatial residence at Old Windsor, or as its name then was, _Windleshora_, so called from the windings of the Thames in its vicinity. William the Norman built some portions of the Castle, which, until the time of Richard I., seems ever to have been the peaceful abode of royalty. During the civil wars, of which Windsor was a principal scene, the Castle became the most important military establishment in the kingdom. The sanguinary struggles connected with the signing of _Magna Charta_, are familiar to the reader. The birth of Edward III., which took place at Windsor, forms another epoch in its history--that prince having reconstructed the greater part of the Castle, and very largely extended it. William of Wykeham was the architect, with the liberal salary of a shilling a day. It is said he and six hundred workmen employed on the building, at the rate of one penny a day. It was here Richard II. heard the appeal of high treason, brought by the Duke of Lancaster against Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, which resulted in the former becoming Henry IV. It was here the Earl of Surrey, imprisoned for the high crime of eating flesh in Lent, beguiled his solitude, with his muse; and here was the last prison of that unfortunate monarch, Charles I. In Windsor Castle also resided the haughty Elizabeth; and along its terrace might have been seen in the days of the Commonwealth the stern figure of the lion-hearted Cromwell. It was the residence of Henry VIII., and the prison of James I. of Scotland. It is indebted for most of its modern splendor, to the luxurious taste and prodigal expenditure of George IV., who obtained from the House of Commons the sum of £300,000 for the purpose. The suites of royal apartments at present in use by the Queen are superb in the extreme, especially the state drawing rooms, in which are nine pictures by Zuccarelli; and St. George's Hall--a vast apartment in which the state banquets are given. The long walk, extending about three miles in a direct line to the Palace, presents the finest vista of its kind in the world. It extends from the grand entrance of the Castle, to the top of a commanding hill in the Great Park, which affords a panoramic view of enchanting beauty, including many places memorable in history. On the right is the Thames, seen beyond Charter Island, and the plain of Runnymede, where the Barons extorted _Magna Charta_, whilst in the hazy distance are the rising eminences of Harrow and Hampstead. On the summit of this hill stands the equestrian statue of George III. Near the avenue called Queen Elizabeth's Walk, tradition still points out a withered tree as the identical oak of "Herne the Hunter," who, as the tale goes, "Sometimes a keeper here in Windsor Forest, Doth all the winter time, at still midnight, Walk round the oak, with great ragged horns." [We derive this article from an interesting and beautifully illustrated volume of "Memories of the Great Metropolis," by FREDERIC SAUNDERS, to be issued in a few days by one of our leading publishers. We shall notice it again.] MR. GERARD, THE LION KILLER, AND M. LE BARON MUNCHAUSEN, WHO BEAT HIM. Jules Gerard is an officer in the famous army of Africa, who has a passion for lion killing. He is the Gordon Cumming of France. He follows lions alone; hunts them like sheep, for miles; sleeps near them; and patiently awaits their coming. Last year we published (article "Wild Sports in Algeria," _International_, vol. ii. p. 121,) an account of one of his exploits, to which he now refers us. His last adventure is sufficiently exciting, and incredibly daring. It is told in a letter to a friend, and published in the _Journal des Chasseurs_:-- "My dear Léon,--In my narrative of the month of August, 1850, I spoke of a large old lion which I had not been able to fall in with, and of whose sex and age I had formed a notion from his roarings. On the return of the expeditionary column from Kabylia, I asked permission from General St. Armand to go and explore the fine lairs situated on the northern declivity of Mount Aures, in the environs of Klenchela, where I had left my animal. Instead of a furlough, I received a mission for that country, and accordingly had during two months to shut my ears against the daily reports that were brought to me by the Arabs of the misdeeds of the solitary. In the beginning of September, when my mission was terminated, I proceeded to pitch my tent in the midst of the district haunted by the lion, and set about my investigations round about the _douars_ to which he paid the most frequent visits. In this manner I spent many a night beneath the open sky, without any satisfactory result, when, on the 15th, in the morning, after a heavy rain which had lasted till midnight, some natives, who had explored the cover, came and informed me that the lion was ensconced within half a league of my tent. I set out at three o'clock, taking with me an Arab to hold my horse, another carrying my arms, and a third in charge of a goat most decidedly unconscious of the important part it was about to perform. Having alighted at the skirt of the wood, I directed myself towards a glade situated in the midst of the haunt, where I found a shrub to which I could tie the goat, and a tuft or two to sit upon. The Arabs went and crouched down beneath the cover, at a distance of about 100 paces. I had been there about a quarter of an hour, the goat meanwhile bleating with all its might, when a covey of partridges got up behind me, uttering their usual cry when surprised. I looked about me in every direction, but could see nothing. Meanwhile the goat had ceased crying, and its eyes were intently fixed at me. She made an attempt to break away from the fastening, and then began trembling in all her limbs. At these symptoms of fright I again turned round, and perceived behind me, about fifteen paces off, the lion stretched out at the foot of a juniper-tree, through the branches of which he was surveying us and making wry faces. In the position I was in, it was impossible for me to fire without facing about. I tried to fire from the left shoulder but felt awkward. In turning gently round without rising, I was in a favorable position, and just as I was levelling my piece the lion stood up and began to show me all his teeth, at the same time shaking his head, as much as to say, 'What the devil are you doing there?' I did not hesitate a moment, and fired at his mouth. The animal fell on the spot as if struck by lightning. My men ran up at the shot; and as they were eager to lay hands on the lion, I fired a second time between the eyes, in order to secure his lying perfectly still. The first bullet had taken the course of the spine throughout its entire length, passing through the marrow, and had come out at the tail. I had never before fired a shot that penetrated so deeply, and yet I had only loaded with sixty grains. It is true the rifle was one of Devisme's and the bullets steel-pointed. The lion, a black one and among the oldest I have ever shot, supplied the kettles of four companies of infantry who were stationed at Klenchela. Receive, my dear Léon, the assurance of my devoted affection. JULES GERARD." The exploit of 1850 was the chasing of two lions, one of which he killed; the other, supposed to be the one now shot, running away from him and escaping, after a vigorous chase of many miles. Some one--a celebrated author, indeed, with whose astonishing adventures we have been familiar from boyhood--envious of the recent fame of Mr. Arthur Gordon Cumming and M. Jules Gerard, has sent the following letter to the editor of the London _Times_: Sir,--The exploit of M. Jules Gerard, recorded in _The Times_ of the 14th inst., is certainly very wonderful, but by no means equals one performed by myself in South Africa. Observing on one occasion a large black lion, about 18 feet in length, reposing under a caoutchouc tree, I fired, and the bullet, like that of M. Gerard, went right through the backbone and came out at the tail; but, wonderful to relate, it hit against the tree, and rebounding, came back the same way and went straight into the barrel of my rifle, just after I had reloaded with powder. I instantly presented my piece at the lioness, which was reposing by the side of her lord, and fired; and thus I killed two animals (so large that they supplied three regiments of the line and 200 irregular cavalry with food for nearly a week) with one and the same bullet. In case any of your readers should doubt the truth of this statement, I eschew the usual fashion of writing under a false name, and subscribe myself, your very obedient servant, BARON MUNCHAUSEN. _London_, Oct. 15. [Illustration: WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.] We present to the readers of the _International Magazine_, this month, from a recent Daguerrotype by Brady, the best portrait ever published of the greatest living poet who writes the English language. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT was born on the third of November, 1794, in the village of Cummington, Massachusetts. His father, Dr. Peter Bryant of that place, one of the most eminent physicians of the day, was possessed of extensive literary and scientific acquirements, an unusually vigorous and well-disciplined mind, and an elegant and refined taste. He was fond of study, and sought to infuse into the minds of his young and growing family, those habits of intellectual exertion which had been to himself a source of so much exalted pleasure. It was fortunate for the subject of this notice, that such was his character; for when his own genius began to discover signs of its power, he found in his father an able and skilful instructor, who chastened, improved, and encouraged the first rude efforts of his boyhood. That parent did not, like the father of Petrarch, burn the poetic library of his son, amid the tears and groans of the boy; nor, like the relatives of Alfieri, suppress, for nearly one-third of his existence, the poetic fervor which consumed his heart; but, looking upon poetry as a high, perhaps the highest of arts, and poetic eminence as the noblest fame, he nourished with cheerful care the least indications of its presence, and supplied the youth with the means of its culture and growth. Nor were his services unrewarded, as it appears from Mr. Bryant's solemn Hymn to Death, by the subsequent gratitude and success of his pupil. When only ten years of age, Mr. Bryant produced several small poems, which, though of course marked by the defects and puerilities of so immature an age, were yet thought to possess sufficient merit to be published in the newspaper of a neighboring village--the Hampshire Gazette. His friends, though pleased with these early evidences of talent, did not injure him with injudicious flattery, but, in the spirit of Dryden's simile, treated them "As those who unripe veins in mines explore, On the rich bed again the warm turf lay, Till time digests the yet imperfect ore, Knowing it would be gold another day." Mr. Bryant acquired the rudiments of his school education under the care, first of the Rev. Mr. Snell of Brookfield, and then under that of the Rev. Mr. Hallock of Plainfield, Massachusetts. They found in him a sprightly and intelligent pupil, better pleased to lay up knowledge from books, and the silent meditation of nature, than to join in the ordinary pastimes of children. He was quick of apprehension, and diligent in pursuit. He rapidly ran through the usual preliminary studies; and in 1810, then in the sixteenth year of his age, was entered a member of the sophomore class of Williams' College. In that institution, he continued his studies with the same ardor and enthusiasm. He was particularly noted for his fondness for the classics, and in a little while made himself master of the more interesting portions of the literature of Greece and Rome. But he had not been in college more than a year or two, when he asked and procured an honorable dismission, for the purpose of devoting himself to the study of the law. This he did in the office of Judge Howe of Worthington, and afterwards in that of the Hon. William Baylies of Bridgewater, and, in 1815, was admitted to practice at the bar of Plymouth. But, during the period of his studies, Mr. Bryant had not neglected the cultivation of his poetic abilities. In 1808, before he went to college, he had published, in Boston, a satirical poem, which attracted so much attention, that a second edition was demanded in the course of the next year. "When it is remembered," observes Mr. Leggett, "that this work was given to the public by an author who had not completed his fourteenth year, it cannot but be considered a remarkable instance of early maturity of mind. Pope's Ode to Solitude was written at twelve years of age; but it possesses neither fancy nor feeling, and except for the harmony of its versification, is entitled to no particular praise. His Translation of Sappho to Phaon is indeed an extraordinary production, and has uniformly received the warmest commendation from the critics. Yet, it is but a translation, while the poem of our author, written still earlier in life, is an original effort, and as such cannot but be received with greater surprise, on account of the wonderful precocity of judgment, wit, and fancy it exhibits. Like Cowley's Poetical Blossoms, it must have been composed when the writer was little more than thirteen; but in point of merit, it is decidedly superior to these effusions of unripened genius." Certain political strictures on Mr. Jefferson and his party, which this poem contained, have given rise, since Mr. Bryant has become conspicuous as an ardent friend of democracy, to charges of political inconsistency and faithlessness. They are charges, however, that require no refutation; and we refer to them now only to remark, that it is a singular evidence of Mr. Bryant's integrity and discernment, that the only point of attack which embittered enemies have found in his whole life, are his unconsidered mutterings when a stripling of only thirteen, living in times of high political excitement, and among a people who were all of one way of thinking. How few pass through life with characters so pure and unassailable! But what chiefly contributed to give Mr. Bryant rank as a poet, was the publication, in the North American Review of 1816, of the poem of Thanatopsis, written four years before, in 1812. That a young man, not yet nineteen, should have produced a poem so lofty in conception, and so beautiful in execution, so full of chaste language, and delicate and striking imagery--and above all, so pervaded by a noble and cheerful religious philosophy--may well be regarded as one of the most wonderful events of literary history. And the wonder is increased when we learn, that this sublime lyric was followed, in the course of the few next years, by the "Inscription for an Entrance into a Wood," written in 1813, and published in the North American in 1817; by the "Waterfowl," written in in 1816, and published in 1818; and by the "Fragment of Simonides," written in 1811, and published in 1818. In 1821, he wrote his largest poem, "The Ages," which was delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College, and soon after published at Boston, in a small volume, in connection with the poems we have already mentioned, and some others. The appearance of this volume at once established the fame of Mr. Bryant as a poet. In the same year Mr. Bryant married a young and amiable lady, Miss Fairchild, of Great Barrington, Mass., whither he had removed to prosecute his profession. He was both skilful and successful as a lawyer, but the labor of the vocation clashing with his poetic and moral sensibilities, induced him, after a ten years' practice, to remove, in 1825, to the city of New-York, to commence a career of literary effort. His fame, which had preceded him, soon procured him the editorship of the New-York Review, which he managed, in connection with other gentlemen, with great industry and talent. About the same time he joined Mr. Gulian C. Verplanck, Mr. Robert Sands, and Fitz-Greene Halleck, and several young artists of the city, in the production of an Annual called "The Talisman," which for beauty and variety of contents, has not been surpassed, even in these more prolific days of Annuals. Some of Mr. Bryant's contributions to it place him as a prose writer beside the best of any nation. The narrative of the "Whirlwind," for accurate description, condensed energy and eloquence of expression, and touching incident, has always struck us as one of the master-pieces of writing. In 1827, Mr. Bryant became an editor of the New-York Evening Post, and since then, with the exception of the years 1834 and '49, when he travelled with his family in Europe, has had the almost exclusive control of that journal. It is by his conduct in this capacity, that he has acquired his standing as a politician. We have cause, then, to speak of Mr. Bryant's political character. When he first undertook the management of the Evening Post, that paper had taken no decided stand in the politics of the day. Its leanings, however, were towards the aristocratic party. Mr. Bryant soon infused into its columns some portion of his native originality and spirit. Its politics assumed a higher tone, its disquisitions on public measures became daily more pointed and stirring, and, finally, it declared with great boldness on what was considered the more liberal side. From that day to this, it has taken a leading part in political controversies, and exerted a controlling influence over public opinion. In the fierce excitement kindled by General Jackson's attack upon the United States Bank, in the hot debates of the tariff and internal improvement questions, and in the deeply-agitating, almost convulsive contest which prostrated the banking system, the Evening Post maintained the strongest ground, was generally in advance of its day, and never faltered or flinched in the assertion of the severest tenets of the democratic creed. Unlike most journals, it did not satisfy itself with an undiscriminating defence of the temporary doctrines of party, but, regardless alike of friend and foe, yet cautiously and calmly, it expressed the whole truth in its length and breadth. The manner in which Mr. Bryant has conducted these controversies is in the highest degree honorable to him. He has disdained the miserable arts by which small minds achieve the triumphs of their party or their own profit. Drawing his principles from the independent conclusions of his own mind, he has not shifted with every wind of doctrine. He has regarded politics, not as the strife of opposing interests, nor as a factious struggle for party supremacy, nor yet as a predatory warfare for the spoils of success, but as the solemn conflict of great principles. He has studied it as a comprehensive science, in which the rights and happiness of millions of men are interested, and which has issues and dependencies spreading over the events of many years. In this light, he has sought to teach its truths, with conscientious fidelity. His intellectual adaptation to his calling is in many respects a striking one. With a mind of quick sagacity, strong reasoning powers, ready wit, and an inexhaustible fertility, he has been able to perform its incessant and laborious duties with signal success. Disciplined, as well as enriched by severe study, he has added to the learning of books the attainments of extensive observation and travel. His style is remarkable for its purity and elegance, no less than for the felicity of its illustrations. In controversy, he most frequently resorts to a caustic but graceful irony. He is playful without being vulgar, pointed without grossness, sharp as a Damascus blade, and just as polished. Nor are the compactness and strength of his expression less to be admired, than his uniform perspicuity and ease. That he is sometimes unnecessarily cutting, as some complain, is a fault, if it exist, that springs from the native integrity of his mind, and the secluded and refined nature of his pursuits. It has seemed to us, however, that this alleged severity is no more than the spirit of justice as it manifests itself in a pure and honest mind. For we doubt if a man more perfectly just, and less liable to be warped by the questionable compliances of society, ever lived. We shall not enter into any criticism of Mr. Bryant's poetry here, because it has been so fully estimated before, that there is no need of doing so again; but there is one view which has been taken of it, on which we shall offer a few remarks. That view occurs in the following passage of Mr. J. R. Lowell's Fable for Critics: "There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified, As a smooth, silent iceberg that never is ignified, Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights. He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation, (There's no doubt that he stands in supreme ice-olation,) Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on, But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on,-- He's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on: Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has 'em, But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm; If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, Like being stirred up with the very North Pole, "He is very nice reading in summer, but _inter_ _Nos_, we don't want _extra_ freezing in winter; Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is, When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices. But, deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good in him, He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him; And his heart in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is, Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities-- To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet? No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite. If you're one who _in loco_ (add _foco_ here) _desipis_, You will get out of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece; But you'd get deeper down if you came as a precipice, And would break the last seal of its inwardest fountain, If you could only palm yourself off for a mountain. Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning, Some scholar who's hourly expecting his learning, Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth Is worth near as much as your whole tuneful herd's worth. No, don't be absurd, he's an excellent Bryant; But, my friends, you'll endanger the life of your client, By attempting to stretch him up into a giant: If you choose to compare him, I think there are two persons fit for a parallel--Thomson and Cowper; I don't mean exactly,--there's something of each, There's T.'s love of nature, C.'s penchant to preach; Just mix up their minds so that C.'s spice of craziness Shall balance and neutralize T.'s turn for laziness, And it gives you a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet, Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot,-- A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put on The heart which strives vainly to burst off a button,-- A brain which, without being slow or mechanic, Does more than a larger less drilled, more volcanic; He's a Cowper condensed, with no craziness bitten, And the advantage that Wordsworth before him has written. Now, what is the main charge here: that Mr. Bryant, while he has great sympathy with external nature, with mountains and precipices, has no sympathy with his fellow-man. 'Tis a weighty charge--the weightiest that can be made against a man or a poet. It says virtually that he has no soul, no heart, no impulse, no feeling, except for brutes and vegetables; in short, that he is no better than a heathen savage, a regular worshipper of stocks and stones, without natural affection, or without God in the world. "For," as the apostle queries very wisely, "if he love not man, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?" Your lines, then, Mr. Quiz, imply nothing less than black, bleak, barren, unredeemed practical Atheism! But can there be the remotest semblance of truth in them? Is our Bryant such a heathen or atheist as not to know his fellow-men except they present themselves in the disguise of mountains, or he see them, like the prophet, as trees walking? We appeal to you, young ladies, who have been melted into tears by his pathos. We appeal to you, young men, whose every purpose of good has been quickened into livelier action by his words; and to you, old heads, whose experience has learned a riper and mellower wisdom from his fine meditative views of the ends and aims of life. Yet, before you render your concurrent answers, with somewhat of indignation that anybody could put you upon the task, let us, in good American sort, begin with a few statistics. This is a question of fact, and since it has been raised, we will determine it by facts. There are, in Carey & Hart's splendid edition of Bryant--we mean splendid as to the typography and paper, and not inclusive of those ill-drawn sketches of Leutze, who has made the women all German and given Mr. William Tell of Switzerland a straddle as wide as the Dardanelles, to say nothing of the hideous face of Rizpah and that Monk so excessively huge as to stand some forty feet from the pillar against which he leans--this splendid edition, we say, contains just one hundred and thirty-two poems, all told, to which,--stand up and listen, to the sentence, Mr. Lowell!--more than seventy refer wholly to subjects of an exclusively human interest--man in his being and doing, while nine out of ten of the rest, though occupied primarily with some phase of external nature, are yet so managed as to weave a deep and beautiful human philosophy,--with the dull and dead proceedings of the mechanical world. Yes, Mr. Critic, we say that there is a very fine, a very rich, a very noble and very touching vein of human sentiment, which runs through all of Bryant's writings, whereby, even as much as Wordsworth, he makes these mountains and precipices a part of our human life, and whereby, too, he makes the whole of us, who read him lovingly, that is, who read him at all, much better men and women, in our several spheres. No human sympathies forsooth! Why there are hundreds, nay, thousands, of us, who have derived many of their tenderest and noblest humanities from this very cold-blooded He-Daphne; this fleshless marble Apollo,--this Ice-Palace and Alpine glacier,--far shining brilliant, but oh how frigid! By poems of an exclusive human interest, we mean, such as bear directly on man's experience and duties and relations in this life: such as the Ages, for instance, which commemorates the progress of humanity, through all its trials and triumphs: such as Thanatopsis, which makes the grave glorious, and pours the light of a lofty and serene religion around our darkest hour: such as the Old Man's Funeral, more divine in its descriptive beauty than the best sermon we ever heard: such as the Battle Field, which animates us with the voice of trumpet to meet the stern struggles of daily warfare: and such as many others in the same vein, to say nothing of the Murdered Traveller, the Massacre at Scio, the Hunter of the Prairies, the Living Lost, the Crowded Street, the Greek Boy, the Arctic Lover, the African Chief, the Child's Funeral, &c., &c. These could only have been prompted by a strong feeling of sympathy with man, and though executed with the nicest finish of art, are yet full of touching pathos and sentiment. The best proof of this is, that they invariably excite the emotions they were intended to excite--and that, too, in no milk and waterish way. They sink straight into the heart; they open the fountains of the feelings; they send the salt water to the eyes (if that be needed); they make the blood tingle; in short, they produce that all-overishness which comes upon one when he sees a fine action on the stage, or reads a noble passage in an oration, or looks at Lentze's Washington. Try it on yourself, if you don't believe it, or, what is better, try it on your little girl and boy, whose feelings are not yet case-hardened or frozen over! It will be a queer kind of frigidity that they will be witness to. Why, bless your soul, Mr. Lowell, we are free to confess that we have ourselves long, long ago, cried over the Indian Girl's Lament, and the Death of the Flowers,--yes, cried, and we say it without shame,--indeed, with a strange sense of regret that we cannot cry now over things of that sort. _Eheu, eheu fugaces_, &c. More than that, we have asseverated that even in poems which are not immediately emotional, which are directed to some phase of mere external nature, the humanitary tendencies of Bryant break out, or shine through as veins of silver from the rocks. It is, in fact, one of his most charming peculiarities, that he habitually connects great moral and social truths with the various aspects of nature. His muse is never satisfied with celebrating the pomp and glory of the external world; she must find a deeper meaning in all than what the eye sees or the ear hears; she must trace some beautiful analogy, some spiritual significance on which both mind and heart can repose. Bryant's descriptions of nature, it is granted, are accurate to a line; what he speaks he knows; he finds no nightingales nor cowslips just three thousand miles away from where it is possible for them to live; and he never writes from his memory of books; yet his descriptions are more than mere descriptions,--dull scientific catalogues of quantities,--herbariums of dried plants,--museums of withered lifeless twigs, and of stuffed animals standing thereupon! They have all a meaning under them--a hidden wisdom--a genial yet profound human soul. It is thus that he has wound our affections around the North Star, the Winds, Monument Mountain, and even the Ruffled Grouse. How often, too, in the midst of his general meditations and philosophizings, does some touching individual allusion creep in, to show that the poet's heart is all alive with sensibility: as in the Hymn to Death, which closes with that solemn monody on the Departure of his Father: "Alas! I little thought that the stern Power, Whose fearful praise I sung, would try me thus, Before the strain was ended. It must cease.-- For he is in his grave, who taught my youth The art of verse, and in the bud of life Offered me to the Muses. Oh, cut off Untimely! when the reason in its strength Ripened by years of toil and studious search, And watch of Nature's silent lessons, taught The hand to practice best the lenient art, To which thou gavest thy laborious days, And last, thy life. And, therefore, when the earth Received thee, tears were in unyielding eyes, And on hard cheeks, and they who deemed thy skill Delayed their death hour, shuddered and turned pale When thou wert gone. This faltering verse which thou Shalt not, as wont, o'erlook, is all I have To offer at thy grave,--this--and the hope To copy thy example, and to leave A name of which the wretched shall not think As of an enemy's, whom they forgive As all forgive the dead. Rest, therefore, thou Whose early guidance trained my infant steps-- Rest, on the bosom of God, till the brief sleep Of Death is over--and a happier life Shall dawn to waken thine insensible dust!" Does an iceberg write in that strain, we should like to know? Or does it mourn the death of the flowers, in this wise: "And then I think of one, who in her youthful beauty died, The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side, In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf, And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief. Yet not unmeet it was that one like that young friend of ours, So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers." Or do icebergs yearn thus for communion in the after world with the beloved spirits of this: "In meadows fanned by Heaven's life-breathing wind In the resplendence of that glorious sphere, And larger movements of the unfettered mind Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here? The love that lived through all the stormy past, And meekly with my harsher nature bore, And deeper grew and tenderer to the last, Shall it expire with life and be no more?" Truly, that iceberg theory must be surrendered, it must melt and give way before the gentle warmth of these words, and the thousand other such words which any reader of Bryant will instantly recall. But, having convinced and confuted Mr. Critic, we will proceed to observe that there is after all a foundation of truth--a slender one--for his towering superstructure of ridicule. It is this: that in the outset of his career, Mr. Bryant's sympathies were, not too much with external Nature, but too little with Man. At the same time, we maintain that he has been constantly correcting this fault, and has written more and more, the older he has grown, to the human heart. He is not, and we hope never will be, a passionate writer, like Byron: he is not one who deals, like Burns, with the warm, gushing, homely affections of the poor every where: he has none of Schiller's energy of conviction: none of the naive, playful garrulous bonhomie of Beranger; simply, because he is of another order of man from all these. He is quiet, gentle, contemplative, modest,--wise. Yet if no lava-tides of passion burn through his veins, as were said to run through the veins of Alfieri; if he is not, as Carlyle said of Dante, "a red-hot cone of fire" shooting steadily up into the sky; if he cannot, with Shakespeare, or Goethe, make the blood quiver and thrill for weeks by a single word; he is still not a frigid, heartless writer, not altogether an ice mountain, which dazzles always but never warms. He is too earnest, too truthful, too good for that; too deeply penetrated by the spiritual realities of life, too democratic in his aspirations for our race, too hopeful of the future developments of society, in short, too finely touched with that feminine element which is the characteristic of genius. Besides, the great internal fires of the Earth, which shoot up in terrific and explosive violence, stupendous as they are, do not nurse the tender bud into life, nor cover the earth with verdure and fruit. This is left to the genial sunshine and the warm summer rains. In private intercourse, Mr. Bryant is what all his writings, poetical as well as prose, indicate. His life is that of a student of elegant and lofty literature. He is reserved in his manner, almost to repulsiveness, yet in the social circle is witty, amiable, and affectionate. When his sympathies are interested, the spirit of tenderness and benevolence gleams like a flame from his eyes, and plays around his features in a beautiful radiance. In his opinions of men, he endeavors to be just; but when he is not just, the leaning is towards the side of mercy. A strong natural irritability has been disciplined by stern effort into the subjection of reason; and his tastes and habits, though refined by careful culture, are as simple as those of a child. Those who know him best are at a loss which most to admire, the superiority of his faculties, or the modesty of his deportment. SLIDING SCALES OF DESPAIR. The London _Morning Chronicle_, after an observation that a hurriedly written epitaph always appears, in the course of time, to require revisal, expresses its admiration for the good sense of a Parisian sculptor, who, when he took his instructions for a monument, insisted upon the _veuve inconsolable_ or the heartstricken husband penning the intended inscription, and even signing the holograph, as a further authority to him for immortalizing so much utter despair. "The day before the record was actually to be cut for eternity, his habit was to send the inscription book to the mourner's house, lest any correction should be desired. The havoc which, upon receiving back the volume, he usually found made among laudatory adjectives and adverbs of infinity, was, to a good man, a delightful evidence of the cooling and healing powers of time." DEATH IN YOUTH. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY H. W. PARKER. 'Tis sad to leave the lovely world, The blazoned banner of the sky, And all the Earth's sublimity, Are, day by day, in light unfurled, In glory float before the eye. The practised ear and eye are clearer, The heart is deeper, Nature dearer, From year to year: 'tis sad to die. 'Tis hard to leave the busy world-- To feel our courage mounting high On thoughts that just begin to fly, Then arrow-struck and swiftly hurled Downward to dim obscurity. Our life is always a beginning, A hope of honor worth the winning; We hope to do, and hoping, die. 'Tis hard to leave a stormy world, When every watcher may descry A happy Future drawing nigh, And all the nations, onward whirled, Behold the sunny shores that lie Beyond that ever-heaving ocean-- The Present, with its wild commotion; Alas, to see, to sink, to die. And yet to leave a weary earth For higher life, is well, we know, Our being is a constant flow, And death itself is newer birth; The seed decays that it may grow; A world sublime awaits the dying Who purely lived. Away with sighing; The Past is passed; 'tis well to go. A GERMAN HAND-BOOK OF AMERICA. We have at present in our hands several recently published European works relative to America, all of which possess more than ordinary claims to attention. We have, however, chosen the most unpretending as the subject of our present remarks, since, for the thinking majority of our readers, it will undoubtedly prove the most interesting. The volume to which we allude is entitled, _Des Auswanderers' Handbuch_, or, _The Emigrants' Hand-book: a True Sketch of the United States of North America, and Reliable Counsellor for Men of every Rank and Condition who propose Emigrating Thither: by_ GEORGE M. VON ROSS, of North America, Editor of the "_Allgemeinen Auswanderungs-Zeitung_" (Universal Emigration Journal). Published at Elberfeld and Iserlohn, by Julius Baedeker. The author, according to his preface, is an American by birth, and was for many years a farmer in the eastern, western, and southwestern sections of the United States. That he is not without learning and ability is evinced by his remarkably excellent work entitled _Taschen-Fremdwörterbuch, oder Verdeutschung von mehr als 16,000 Fremdwörter_--(_i. e._ a Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Words, or the adoption into German of more than Sixteen Thousand Foreign Words). This book is familiar in Germany, and exhibits great philological acumen, as well as a thorough knowledge of German in its minutest difficulties. At one time Mr. Ross distinguished himself by attacking Schröter's well-known pamphlet relative to the Catholic emigration to St. Mary's, in Pennsylvania, and he has since published a smaller work for emigrants, entitled _Rathschlage und Warnungen_, or, Counsels and Warning. The performance now before us is written in that straightforward practical style which may be best characterized by the statement that "He had something to say, _and he said it_." That it is impartial is not its least merit. A foreigner, it is true, may occasionally be found who passes unprejudiced judgments on another country, but that any one still retaining home-born sympathies and feelings with his native land should do so is a wonder. And we deem it a creditable thing in this work, that where he is called upon to describe any calling, trade, or profession, he is not afraid to say boldly--In this calling the German cannot succeed--in that, he is unapt--in a third, the American surpasses him; while, on the other hand, he amply encourages the emigrant as regards occupations for which he is qualified. Many writers of such books have cast a _couleur de rose_ light over every thing (well knowing that by such means their books would be more saleable), and induced industrious men, following callings unheard of in this country, to emigrate, in the absurd hope of finding more constant and better paid employment here than at home. An intelligent American, who would not cross the Atlantic, or hardly ascend in a balloon, without previously _calculating_ the time and chances of arrival or descent, and who certainly would do neither without first informing himself as to every imaginable particular of his ultimate destination, can hardly conceive the vast necessity of such books. He would, by every means, gather information from those who had visited in person the destined land. Not so the common German emigrant. Thousands embark in the belief that New-York is some mysterious golden-glowing Indian city, surrounded by orange groves and palm-trees. In the village of Weinsberg, in Suabia, several years since, a well-educated student was overheard to remark of some peasants, "Tell them that in your country the people have two heads, and they'll believe you." Let us now, by extracts, give our readers an idea of the manner in which Mr. Von Ross describes the land of his birth to the land of his adoption. The first item of interest is his sketches of the respective characteristics of the Yankee and Southerner. "Superficial observers have spoken of the inhabitant of the Northern States as if money were his only aim--as if he were inspired only by selfishness and avarice--and as if he estimated men by the weight of their purses. But those who regard him closely, and judge otherwise than by first appearances, will discover in him a calculating (_berechnenden_), enterprising, thoroughly practical man, caring little for pleasure, and seeking his recreation (_erholung_) in the domestic circle. They will find in him a man who, with iron industry, fights his way through life, esteeming wealth, it is true--not the inherited, however, but _the earned_, which testifies to the ability of its possessor. A man, in fine, who with unbending courage bears the blow of destiny, and is thereby only stimulated to new exertions. The Southerner, on the contrary, is more _chivalresque_--he lives to live. The climate in which he is born has also a material influence upon his manners, customs, and character: effecting, in reality, the same difference which we observe between the cool, reflective, tough North German, and the jovial, genial, easily excited South German, or Frenchman. We would hardly have deemed it necessary to inform the reader that in _thus_ sketching the inhabitants of the United States in light outlines, we do not include the mixed and Europeanized population of the Atlantic cities, had we not learned by experience that many travellers slightly acquainted only with the Atlantic States and their vicinity, have from these sketched all North America and its people. He who would know the American, must also know the cities of the interior. "If, in addition to these characteristics, we should describe the personal and distinctive appearance of the Northerner and Southerner, we would say that the first are, generally speaking, large, tall, and spare--their ladies beautiful and of delicate complexion; while the Southerners are broad-shouldered and powerful--the female sex being voluptuously formed and beautiful, but when not subject to the influence of exercise and fresh air of a sallow complexion. "Every North American is--and who has a better right so to _be_--an enthusiastic _honorer (vereher) of his fatherland_, but he does not measure out by inches the limits of his native land, or bound his patriotism by the clod on which his cradle rested--for to him the roar of the Rio del Norte, the thunder-peal of Niagara, and the murmur of the Pacific or Atlantic oceans have equally a familiar, home-like sound. Nor less than the land of his birth does he esteem its laws, constitution, and institutions, and regards them in nowise as oppressive, but as protective. Those laws he made for himself, and chose himself as their executor. RESPECT FOR THE LAW is to the American self-respect. "The so often blamed _national pride_ of the American, if not really praiseworthy, is at least pardonable; for a nation which could rise like a single man, and, at every sacrifice, throw off the yoke of England--a nation which has given birth to such men as GEORGE WASHINGTON, THOMAS JEFFERSON, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, and many others whose names are mentioned with wonder all over this world--a nation which occupies the first rank in trade, commerce, and industry, _may_ be proud, and _must_ be proud, as long as its power is free from sloth and lethargy." And here we may be permitted to interrupt for an instant our noble Man of Ross (the reader will observe that he wears the aristocratic _von_), for the sake of saying a good word over this honest, hard-fisted go-ahead eulogium of our country. There be those ultra-Europeanized, or _soi-disant_ refinedly educated Americans, who will complacently smile at this recapitulation of United States excellencies, and if slangily inclined, brand it as "pea-nut," "stump eloquence," and "Fourth-of-Julyism." The sum-total being, that it is vulgar rhodomontade. With all due respect, we think differently. Let the reader remember that this is addressed to a German--a _foreign_--audience, who are greatly in need just at present of a few scraps of such oratory as this, were it only to counteract the malignant influences of the English tourists, whose works are far more extensively read in Germany than we imagine. Mrs. Trollope's work on America, which, at the present day, is regarded only with contempt or laughter by the educated in England, has been, and is even yet, read with a feeling akin to wonder by the honest simple-hearted Germans. A wonder indeed so intense, at the marvellous marvels therein narrated, that it generally results in inspiring in the mind of the reader credulous enough to believe, an intense desire to visit the land of liberty. "In no part of the world are ladies treated with so much respect as in North America. They can make, by land or water, the longest journeys without the apprehension of having their sense of delicacy offended by hearing an improper expression, and, as far as _public_ opinion is concerned, the law allows them privileges greater than they obtain in any other country. By marriage, the wife enters at once into equal possession of her husband's property; the simple testimony of a woman is of the same force as the oath of a man, and the testimony of a woman when confirmed by oath, can only be neutralized by the oaths of three men. The ill-treatment of a wife by her husband is severely punished; but such cases are as unusual of occurrence as that a woman takes undue advantage of her rights. It may moreover be confidently asserted, that America is the true home of connubial love. The consciousness of her rights gives the American lady a dignity of manner which admirably blends with the amiable attractions of her sex. Not a little of the fascination so peculiar to the ladies of North America is, however, due to the circumstance that no woman--not even the poorest--is ever obliged to perform any task based upon merely physical strength. She rules at _home_ undisputed; and this is the reason why the poorest house in America is a model of neatness and order." "'_Help yourself_' (aid yourself), is a favorite phrase of the American, and which has given him the character of wanting in charity, while in fact it is nothing but a simple indication of the means by which every man in sound health can in that country relieve his poverty. _Work_ in America is neither difficult to obtain, nor is it hemmed in and oppressed by the regulations and requirements of _guilds_, unions, and peculiar laws. _Beggars_ and _vagabonds_ find indeed no favor in his eyes; but unfortunate guiltless poverty invariably meets with his warmest aid, as is evidenced by the numerous hospitals, institutions, &c., which would astonish any one reflecting on the youth of the country. Kindness and hospitality may also be included among his virtues. "From which the reader may justly infer, that beggary and theft are rare in the United States; and though it may be alleged that such occurrences are frequent in the large cities, it may be at the same time remembered that these are the _rendezvous_ of the scum of all nations, while on the other hand the fact, that in the country, and even in the villages, locks are rare on house and stable doors, affords the strongest confirmation that America presents by far fewer instances of robbery than the greater part of Europe." After which, Herr Von Ross indulges in a few attractive remarks on the facility of marriage in America, which would, however, prove far less astonishing to our American, than to his German readers: concluding with the following paragraph, which is not devoid of a certain degree of observation: "Young married couples whose means will not permit them to keep house, pass their first year of wedded life in boarding-houses, by which means the facilities to marriage are greatly extended." The following passages on our alleged want of sociability identify us to a certain degree, and to our minds not unpleasantly, with our English cousins. Of all persons, those to be most pitied or despised are "the weak brethren," who, devoid of internal or intellectual resources, or manly self-reliance, declaim against a nation or a society at large because its members, forsooth, do not receive them with open arms. The true _citoyen du monde_--the genuine cosmopolite, never has occasion to make this complaint against any country. For the more a man depends on himself and the less on others for happiness, just in that proportion will it be his luck to attract sympathy and sociability when among strangers. Narrow-minded Spaniards, and those of other nations, _who travel for the express purpose of getting into fashionable society_, are peculiarly liable to this reproach. Such a foreigner have we heard, minutely and boringly detailing to a stern circle of impregnable natives, the noble and munificent style of hospitality with which _they_ would be treated, were they visitors in _his_ fatherland: "In my contree 'spose you come strangére in one cittee, a gentleman take you in hees house. In ze morning come one buttiful gairl wiz coffees. Zen dey send you one horse carriage for make de promenàde. Aftair dinner come buttiful gairls again wiz ticket on silvare waiter for whole opera box! Wat you sink of dat, hey?" "_Think!_" replied a native, "why I think that you take great pains to make a strange gentleman feel _very uncomfortable_." But to return to our writer. "Strangers who have hastily travelled and superficially examined America, and those who have judged by the statements of others rather than by their own experience, have ascribed to the American a want of sociability and a stiff and repulsive manner towards strangers. True it is that in America it is no very easy matter to become intimate with a man or establish one's self in his family circle--but he who has once attained this point, becomes a home friend in the fullest sense of the word, and will find hidden beneath the stern, earnest exterior of the American, a warm heart, and in his conversation a remarkable degree of familiar confidence. Those who have detected in the confident manner and sense of independence which the American manifests, any thing approaching to presumption, must assuredly have been the newly arrived, who could not accustom themselves to the idea that even laborers should consider that they had with others equal right to express their opinions. The man, however, who is free from prejudice will not fail to admire a nation, wherein the poorest is on an equality with the richest, and where the rich, at least, do not take it on themselves to assert their superiority. Seldom, indeed, do we find a native American, conscious of his right to equality, giving a stranger (his possible superior in intelligence or education) to understand that he considers himself quite as good as any one--the right is to him a thing so natural, that it never even occurs to him to boast of it. This is, unfortunately, far from being the case with the majority of the more ignorant German emigrants, accustomed in their own country to oppressive laws, and not unfrequently hard treatment, yet without learning the orderly conduct which these should have taught, and who think that in America they have a right to do as they please. The American Germans seem to entertain the opinion that it is their republican duty, at all times, with or without occasion or provocation, to give to every man belonging in Europe to the higher classes, to understand and feel that the difference of rank is not recognized--as if indeed, in America far more than in Europe, education and culture did not of themselves indicate the rank which a man occupies. These American Germans all nourish the jealousy of trade (_Brodneid_) the miserable little hatreds, and the whole range of German disunity or local enmities, which they brought over with them, with a care and zeal worthy of a better cause. Seldom indeed do we hear a German there call himself German, he remains as of old a Prussian, a Bavarian, a Hanoverian, a Hessian, or an Altenburger. Even the irritation between North and South Germans still continues, but let one of them only get together so many scraps of English as will barely render him intelligible, _then_ he denies his fatherland--Americanizes both Christian and surnames--adopts tobacco chewing, and other evil customs of the New World, and draws on himself with full justice the contempt of his more sensible fellow-countrymen and the ridicule of the Americans. Let no one misunderstand us, we pronounce this hard judgment not against the entire German population of North America, but still a great--a very great portion thereof are with the fullest justice obnoxious to these charges, and he who has lived any time in the German districts of North America, and more particularly among the German, or German descended population of Pennsylvania, will agree with us with all his heart." These are not amiable words, even if merited, but we must still admire the energy with which the blow is given. Often have we despised the contemptible and weak spirit which could induce so many almost newly arrived Germans to change fine sounding and easily enunciable names, into vulgar, snobbish appellatives for which no child would thank them. Often have we wondered at the pitiable impertinence with which ignorant Deutschers have taken it upon themselves, in the second rate American-German journals to abuse our national observance of the Sabbath, or our respect for women, and despised the small-minded eagerness with which they caught up any petty disrespect toward females, and cited it complacently as a proof that this noble attribute was on the wane in _the land of their adoption_. Often have we been amazed at the readiness with which illiterate rascals, whose ideas of government or political liberty, were at home bounded by the word: "_Polizei_," "_Strafe_," "_Wanderbuch_," "_Zuchthaus_," and "_Fechten_" take it upon themselves to curse, ban and vilify the only land in the world where they could find bread or protection. But again, with Mr. Ross, we earnestly protest that we do _not_ believe that such conduct or such foolish ingratitude can ever with justice be attributed to any respectable or well educated Germans. Some few there have been, indeed, who, urged by the selfish stimulant of a desire for popularity, have thus flattered the prejudices of their more ignorant fellow-countrymen, but none who have thus spoken from the heart. In conclusion, we may remark that if, as has generally been said, we are a sensitive race, attaching undue importance to the good opinion of our neighbors, and striving infinitely more than we need to keep up a good national reputation, we ought to be much obliged to all who, like Mr. Ross, preach to other countries in their own tongue and with such a peculiarly distinct enunciation, their candid and unbiased opinion of their native land. What must strike the reader is indeed the remarkably unembarrassed and independent air with which he addresses his audience, and the coolness with which, on their own ground, he points out their own defects, and their general inferiority to the freemen of "this great and glorious country." He tells them that America is a land of hard work--a church-going, Sabbath-keeping, God-fearing, moral land, for which they must prepare themselves; and no Methodist ever assured his flock of his solemn conviction that they were all irreclaimable sinners, with greater earnestness than Mr. Ross announces to his public, in the plainest terms, that the great majority of the German emigrants to America are a pack of graceless, narrow-minded, ignorant, fatherland-denying knaves; ending with an earnest appeal to all whom it may concern, or are therein informed, to know if they do not with heart and soul (_aus vollum Flerzen_) coincide with him in these views. But the American reader who for an instant imagines that Mr. Ross will lose either popularity or reputation among his auditors, is decidedly mistaken. Accustomed as we are to regard with nervous anxiety the slightest opinion of the most insignificant foreigner regarding our country, and to raise high very tornadoes of indignation against such writers as have abused our own manners and customs, we can hardly conceive that an author after "_giving it_" to his readers in such a remarkably hot-and-heavy style, and, to make all perfectly intelligible, concluding with the assurance that it is from his very heart, can still proceed quietly, editing a paper, keeping up his list, and remaining unmobbed. But we trust that the day is not distant when foreigners will no longer be able to taunt us with undue sensitiveness. So rapidly have we of late years increased in power, in wealth, in influence, that our conviction of our own might has not kept pace with its growth. Like the young giant in Rabelais, we have lain in our cradle without an attempt to break the chain. But with the consciousness of our vast and immovable moral and political superiority (a consciousness which despite the good self-opinion so generally attributed to Americans, has hitherto scarce dawned on us), will come a quiet disregard of the united abuse and laughter of all Europe. A Dickens may _then_ issue his "Notes"--a Marryatt, publish his "Diary"--without attracting the attention or anger of the American press from Maine to Mexico. And why need such works irritate our entire public _now_? Nay, we believe the period of our extravagant sensibility to foreign opinions must at length be considered as past, and that hereafter we shall be more in peril of excess of recklessness and bravado. The effect of this loss of a national characteristic we shall not here speculate upon. But a brief period will be necessary for its illustration. GONDOLETTAS. A RECOLLECTION OF MENDELSSHON'S "SONGS WITHOUT WORDS." WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY ALICE B. NEAL. THE PARTING. Far out in the moonlight how softly we glide! Scarce knowing, scarce heeding the lapse of the tide. I watch the light shadows steal over thy face, And pillow thy head in a last, long embrace. Thy heart keeps low music still beating to mine, Thy white arms around me I slowly entwine-- I part the wild tresses that shroud thy pale cheek, I kiss thee--I clasp thee--no word dare I speak. Alas! that star-light should fade from the sky! Alas for the parting that draweth so nigh! Glide slowly--ye ripples--flow softly, oh tide! For the silence of _death_, must the living divide. MEMORIES. Again, but alone, I am out on the sea-- I come, where so often I floated with thee; I list for the tones of thy low evening hymn-- But the breeze hath a moan--and the starlight is dim. I think of thee here, of thy deep mournful eyes, That spoke to my own in mute, thrilling replies; Of thy gentle caress, and thy cold brow, so pale, When I pressed that last kiss--but I utter no wail! I garner in silence the memories of years, With yearnings too tender, too hopeless for tears; For down 'neath the stillness and hush of its waves, _The tide of my life, like the sea, hath its graves_! THE DUTCH GOVERNORS OF NEW AMSTERDAM. COMMUNICATED TO THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY JOHN ROMEYN BRODHEAD.[2] In the year 1649, there appeared in Holland a small anonymous pamphlet of forty-two pages, bearing the imprint of Antwerp, and entitled _Breeden Raedt, aen de Vereenighde Nederlandeche Provintien_, or Plain Counsels to the United Netherlands' Provinces. It is very rare; the only copy I know of, in this country, is the one with which I have been kindly furnished by my friend Mr. Campbell, the Deputy Librarian at the Hague. [2] The substance of this interesting article was read by Mr. Brodhead at the last meeting of the Historical Society.--_Ed. International._ It purports to be a conversation between ten Dutch interlocutors, respecting the trade of the Netherlands West India Company. The chief speaker, is a Dutch "schipper," who had been in New Netherland. In the course of his remarks, he gives many very interesting and novel details, concerning the two directors, Kieft and Stuyvesant, and their respective administrations. As some of these particulars have never before been known to our historians, I propose to translate a few of the most interesting. It is very evident, however, that the narrator was not a mere schipper of a merchant vessel. He was intimately acquainted with the details of the local politics of New Netherland; and evidently was personally unfriendly both to Kieft and Stuyvesant. From internal evidence, and for various other reasons, I have been led to believe that this little work was prepared by or under the superintendence of Cornelius Melyn, who had been one of the foremost and most consistent advocates of the popular cause under Kieft, and who suffered gross injustice from the tyrannical and oppressive conduct of Stuyvesant. The title-page of the tract states that it was "prepared and compiled from divers true and veritable memorials, by 'I. A.,'" who is described as G.W.O., perhaps Gezaghebber, or Director of the West India Company. Whoever these initials, I. A., are meant to represent, the author seems to have fully adopted the views and expressed the feelings of Melyn. While, therefore, some allowance should be made for occasional exhibitions of personal bitterness, the statements in the Breeden Raedt appear to be entitled to full credit, respecting the facts which they relate. Some of these are entirely novel; others are confirmatory of what we have before known; all of them seem to be entirely harmonious with the story of New Netherland. The antecedents of director Kieft, (of whom we have heretofore known little or nothing previously to his arrival at Manhattan in 1638), are thus related: "William Kieft was born at Amsterdam. From youth he was educated as a merchant; and, after having taken charge of, or rather neglected, his own and his master's business, for a certain time, at Rochelle, he happened to fail there. Upon which, according to custom, his portrait was stuck upon the gallows there, as several living witnesses, who have seen it with their own eyes, can yet testify. This man, having been for some time out of business, was employed to ransom several Christian prisoners out of Turkey. To such a bankrupt the money was intrusted. He went and freed some, for whom there was the least to pay; but the others, whose friends had contributed the most money, he left in bondage. For these, their parents and friends were once more obliged to raise funds. This fine brother was appointed by the directors, to be Director over the inhabitants and trade of New Netherland in the year 1637." The events of the Indian war in 1643, are referred to with a distinctness which leaves little doubt that the narrator was himself, one of the witnesses of them. In these respects, the Breeden Raedt confirms the statements of De Vries and other authorities in the Holland documents at Albany. With respect to the transactions on Long Island in 1644, and the civil and religious difficulties which divided the people against director Kieft until his successor arrived in 1647, the pamphlet exhibits several interesting and novel details. Stuyvesant is described as "the son of a clergyman in Friesland, and who formerly, at Franiker (the seat of a famous high school, now extinct), had robbed the daughter of his own landlady. Being caught in the fact, he had been let off for his father's sake; otherwise it would perhaps have been there, that he must have paid the penalty of his first offence." On his arrival in New Netherland, Stuyvesant is described as conducting himself as arrogantly as the "Grand Duke of Moscovy," and as promptly taking the side of his predecessor Keift, against Melyn and Kuyter, the leaders of the popular party. In this, the Breeden Raedt confirms our official accounts. The two patriots were tried, convicted, and sentenced to be fined, and transported to Holland. They were sent as prisoners on board the ship Princess, in which the late director Kieft, and Dominie Everardus Bogardus, the first clergyman in New Netherland also embarked. The ship struck on the English coast, "where this ungodly Kieft seeing death before his eyes, sighing very deeply, dubiously addressed both these (Kuyter and Melyn): 'Friends, I have done you wrong, can you forgive me?' The ship being broken into eight fragments, drove the whole night in the water. By daybreak, the greater part (of passengers) were drowned. Cornelius Melyn lost his son. Dominie Bogardus, Kieft, Captain John De Vries, and a great number of people were drowned. There was swallowed up a great treasure with Kieft, for the ship was returning with more than four hundred thousand guilders. Joachim Petersen Kuyter remained alone on one of the fragments of the ship, upon which there was a piece of cannon sticking out of a port, with which he was saved at daylight. He had taken it for a man and had spoken to it, but receiving no answer thought he was dead. In the end, he was thrown on shore with it, to the great astonishment of the English, who came down to the strand by thousands, and who set up the piece of cannon as a lasting memorial. Melyn floating on his back in the sea, fell in with others who were clinging to a part of the wreck, and was driven on a sand bank, which became dry with the ebb tide." From this place they made their escape to the shore. Kuyter and Melyn, after saving their lives, became most solicitous to secure their papers, which were to serve for their defence in Holland against the sentences which had been pronounced on them in New Netherland. After three days' labor, they fished up a box containing these valued papers. With these they proceeded to Amsterdam, and laid their case before the States General, which granted them an appeal, and meanwhile suspended Stuyvesant's sentence. After describing the escape of the "patriots," Kuyter and Melyn, and their safe arrival in Holland with their papers, the Breeden Raedt continues its review of the Provincial administration, and gives some particulars respecting the chief officers and public affairs in New Netherland, to be found no where else. The narrative is brought down to August, 1649, at which time Melyn, who had returned to New Netherland, seems to have embarked a second time for Holland, to bring his case again before the States General. He appears to have sailed in the same vessel which conveyed Van der Donck, Couwenhoven, and Bont, the delegates who had been commissioned to carry over the "Vertoogh," or remonstrance of the commonalty of New Netherland, against Stuyvesant's arbitrary government. The Breeden Raedt appears to have been printed soon after Melyn's return to the Fatherland. As it contains very severe reflections upon official persons in the Province, and as it was an anonymous tract, it was perhaps judged prudent to publish it with the imprint of Antwerp. I think, however, that it was actually printed in Holland. The Breeden Raedt was one of the earliest, if not the very earliest separate pamphlet respecting New Netherland. It was followed in 1650, by the Vertoogh; in 1651, by Hartger's description; and in 1655, by Van der Donck's larger work, and by De Vries's Journal printed at Alckmaer. AN AUTUMN BALLAD. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY W. A. SUTLIFFE. Come, say the Ave-Mary prayer. And chant the Miserere! The autumn frosts have chilled the air, The winter groweth dreary! The willow, bending o'er the tomb, Moans dolefully for ever,-- The north-wind bloweth in the gloom, The morning cometh never! Avaunt, thou memory, springing up Like demon bold uprising! Full cold and bitter is our cup, Nor needeth thine apprising! The Future glimmereth in the dark, We hear the billows roaring, The wind beleaguereth our barque, The storm will soon be pouring. Of all the visions of our youth, The mind is disenchanted; When manhood sternly paints the truth, The soul is sadly haunted. The sun is sepulchred of night, The flower in autumn bendeth; Fair fruitfulness has soonest blight-- All beauty graveward tendeth. The world is petrified at heart, No sympathy is welling; Each plays in mine his soulless part, Too woful 'tis for telling. Then say the Ave-Mary prayer, And chant the Miserere! The autumn frosts have chilled the air-- The winter groweth dreary! Bethink ye that He made ye all! The same God bends above ye! The same God spreads the light or pall, The same God deigns to love ye! The wind that blows the cultured lea. And through the rich man's hedges, Sighs round the poor man pleasantly, And o'er the barren ledges. The rich go up on Fortune's wheel. The poor are crushed beneath it; Oppression draws the bloody steal, Alas, when will she sheathe it! Then say the Ave-Mary prayer, And chant the Miserere! The autumn frosts have chilled the air, The winter groweth dreary! The beldame sitteth at her loom, She weepeth 'mid the weaving; The orphan lingers at the tomb, He's mickle cause for grieving. The dust is laid with dropping tears; The slave cowers 'neath the scourging; Each day is filled with busy fears, Like restless spirits urging. O, God! within the Heaven unseen! When will the sun be shining; Until the spring-time cometh green, Forgive us for our pining! Then say the Ave-Mary prayer, And chant the Miserere! The autumn frosts have chilled the air, The winter groweth dreary! CARLYLE'S LIFE OF STERLING[3] No work has yet appeared this season in which the better portion of the reading public have felt so deep an interest as in the Life of John Sterling, by THOMAS CARLYLE. But this is less a consequence of the subject than of the authorship. Any thing from the hand of Carlyle is sure of a large audience, but he has hitherto done nothing in which his personality was likely to be so much involved as in this life of his friend "ARCHÆUS." We copy from the London _Spectator_ the following reviewal of it: "The domain of political economy is not unlimited; the laws of supply and demand are not the only or the strongest forces at work in nature. Here is a man whom the world would have been well content to leave quiet in his early grave by the sea-shore in the sweetest of English islands; to leave him there to the soft melodies of the warm wind and the gentle rain, and the pious visits now and then of those who knew and loved him when his eye was bright and his voice eloquent with sparkling thoughts and warm affections. He had done nothing that the public cared for; had left no traces on the sands of Time that the next tide would not have effaced. But he lived amongst men who write books, amongst some of the very best of such; and two of the foremost of them loved him so well, that they could not let his memory die,--thought that the positive actual results of his life made known to the public were but faint indications of the power that lay in him though sorely foiled and baffled, and that he in his individual spiritual progress typified better than most the struggle that the age is passing through, its processes, and its results. But the two men, though united in affection for Sterling, were so different in other respects, that the memorial raised by the one could scarcely fail to be unsatisfactory to the other. Archdeacon Hare, the author of the earlier biography, is a man of encyclopoedic knowledge,--a profound classical scholar, the most learned and philosophical of modern English theologians, at once accurate and wide in his acquaintance with European history and literature. And this large survey of the forms under which the men of the past have thought and acted, has not led in him to an indifference to all forms, but rather to a keener sense of the organic vitality of forms, especially of national institutions, whether civil or ecclesiastical polities, states or churches. Moreover, apart from this general characteristic, which would lead to an intellectual and practical reverence for the institutions of his own land, and a hesitating caution in the introduction of constitutional changes, Mr. Hare is an English churchman of no ordinary cast. He has passed from the region of traditional belief, has skirted the bogs and quicksands of doubt and disbelief, and has found firm footing where alone it seems possible, in a revelation whose letter is colored by the human media through which it has passed, and in a faith whose highest mysteries are not only harmonious with but necessary complements to the truths of reason. The English Church is to him the purest embodiment of his religious idea, as the English constitution was to him, in common with Niebuhr, Coleridge, and other great thinkers, of the idea of a state. Such a man could not write a life like Sterling's without feeling that his relation to Christianity and the Church was the great fact for him as for all of us; and that the change in him, from hearty acceptance of Christian doctrine and church organization to a rejection of the former and something very like contempt for the latter, needed explanation. That explanation he has sought in the overthrow of the balance of Sterling's life through repeated attacks of illness, which shut him out from practical duties, and threw him entirely upon speculation, thereby disproportionately developing the negative side of him, already too strong from early defects of education: and few persons will, we should think, be found to deny Mr. Hare's general position, that the pursuit of speculative philosophy as the business of life has this tendency; Mr. Carlyle, we should have supposed least of all men. But a special cause interferes with Mr. Carlyle's recognition of the principle as applicable to Sterling. Christianity, as understood commonly perhaps everywhere, except, it may be, at Weimar and Chelsea, and church formulas certainly as understood everywhere, he is in the habit of classing under a category which in his hands has become an extensive one--that of _shams_. He calls them by various forcible but ugly names,--as "old clothes," "spectral inanities," "gibbering phantoms," or, with plainer meaning, "huge unveracities and unrealities." That Sterling at any time of his life accepted these for "eternal verities" he cannot consider a step from the "no" to the "yes," nor their repudiation as a step backwards from the "yes" to the "no." Let him speak for himself. He is commenting on Sterling's entry into orders as Mr. Hare's curate at Hurstmonceaux: "Concerning this attempt of Sterling's to find sanctuary in the old Church, and desperately grasp the hem of her garment in such manner, there will at present be many opinions; and mine must be recorded here in flat reproval of it, in mere pitying condemnation of it, as a rash, false, unwise and unpermitted step. Nay, among the evil lessons of his time to poor Sterling, I cannot but account this the worst; properly indeed, as we may say, the apotheosis, the solemn apology and consecration, of all the evil lessons that were in it to him. Alas! if we did remember the divine and awful nature of God's Truth, and had not so forgotten it as poor doomed creatures never did before,--should we, durst we in our most audacious moments, think of wedding it to the world's untruth, which is also, like all untruths, the devil's? Only in the world's last lethargy can such things be done, and accounted safe and pious! Fools! 'Do you think the living God is a buzzard idol,' sternly asks Milton, 'that you dare address Him in this manner?' Such darkness, thick sluggish clouds of cowardice and oblivious baseness, have accumulated on us; thickening as if towards the eternal sleep! It is not now known, what never needed proof or statement before, that Religion is not a doubt; that it is a certainty,--or else a mockery and horror. That none or all of the many things we are in doubt about, and need to have demonstrated and rendered probable, can by any alchemy be made a 'Religion' for us; but are and must continue a baleful, quiet or unquiet, Hypocrisy for us; and bring--_salvation_, do we fancy? I think it is another thing they will bring; and are, on all hands, visibly bringing, this good while!----" Herein consists the whole difference between Hare and Carlyle in their views of Sterling's career. They looked at it from such opposite points that what is the zenith to one is the nadir to the other. What Sterling himself thought of it, was strikingly expressed to his brother, Captain Anthony Sterling, by a comparison, of his case "to that of a young lady who has tragically lost her lover, and is willing to be half-hoodwinked into a convent, or in any noble or quasi-noble way to escape from a world which has become intolerable." The truth seems to be, that Sterling went into orders under the combined influence of remorse for the share he had inadvertently had in causing the disastrous fate of a near relative (Mr. Boyd, who was shot with Torrijos in Spain), and of a gradual disenchantment from trust in mere political schemes for the regeneration of mankind,--a disease more common to the genial young men of his time than of ours. That while in the exercise of his duties as a parish-priest he was energetic, useful, and happy, the evidence in Mr. Hare's book is fully sufficient to show. It is impossible to say whether his scepticism would have come upon him had he continued in that active career; but it is certainly a gratuitous supposition of Mr. Carlyle that the ill-health which put an end to it was only the outward and ostensible cause of its termination, and does not appear to be borne out by a single letter or expression of Sterling's own. Indeed, for years after he left Hurstmonceaux, he seemed to continue as firm in his attachment to Christianity as when he was there; though, on the other hand, it may well be doubted whether a man of Sterling's intellect, who would surrender his beliefs to Strauss's _Leben Jesu_, is likely in the present day to keep them under any conceivable circumstances. We think that Mr. Hare on the one hand has attributed too exclusive an influence to Sterling's forced inactivity, and Mr. Carlyle has certainly not taken it sufficiently into account as a determining cause of his skepticism. [3] The Life of John Sterling. By Thomas Carlyle. Published by Chapman & Hall. [Boston, republished by Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1851.] But whatever subject Mr. Carlyle takes up, and whether he be right or wrong in his opinions, he is sure to write an interesting book. He is never wearisome, and whether his tale have been twice told or not, he clothes it by his original treatment with an attractive charm that few writers can lend even to an entirely new subject. The maxim of the author of _Modern Antiquity_, that "True genius is the ray that flings A novel light o'er common things," has seldom been better illustrated than by this life of Sterling. The facts are most of them neither new nor of a nature in themselves to excite any very strong interest, but the details of the life are told with such simplicity, and yet with such constant reference to the grand educational process which they collectively make up, that one seems listening to a narrative by Sterling's guardian angel, loving enough to sympathize in the smallest minutiæ, and wise enough to see in each of them the greatness of the crowning result. Nor is this impression in the least impaired by the insignificance of the sum total of Sterling's actual achievements. For had they been tenfold greater than they were, they would have been as nothing in the presence of that which Mr. Carlyle looks to as the soul's great achievement--heroic nobleness of struggle and a calm abiding of the issue. After noticing the purity of Sterling's character, and his conformity to "the so-called moralities," his biographer goes on to say: "In clear and perfect fidelity to Truth wherever found, in childlike and soldierlike, pious and valiant loyalty to the Highest, and what of good and evil that might send him,--he excelled among good men. The joys and the sorrows of his lot he took with true simplicity and acquiescence. Like a true son, not like a miserable mutinous rebel, he comported himself in this Universe. Extremity of distress--and surely his fervid temper had enough of contradiction in this world,--could not tempt him into impatience at any time. By no chance did you ever hear from him a whisper of those mean repinings, miserable arraignings and questionings of the Eternal Power, such as weak souls even well disposed will sometimes give way to in the pressure of their despair; to the like of this he never yielded, or showed the least tendency to yield;--which surely was well on his part. For the Eternal Power, I still remark, will not answer the like of this, but silently and terribly accounts it impious, blasphemous, and damnable, and now as heretofore will visit it as such. Not a rebel but a son, I said; willing to suffer when Heaven said, Thou shalt;--and withal, what is perhaps rarer in such a combination, willing to rejoice also, and right cheerily taking the good that was sent, whensoever or in whatever form it came. "A pious soul we may justly call him; devoutly submissive to the will of the Supreme in all things: the highest and sole essential form which Religion can assume in man, and without which all forms of religion are a mockery and a delusion in man." Every one not personally acquainted with Sterling will feel that the great interest of the book is in the light thrown by it on Mr. Carlyle's own belief. For good or evil, Mr. Carlyle is a power in the country; and those who watch eagerly the signs of the times have their eyes fixed upon him. What he would have us leave is plain enough, and that too with all haste, as a sinking ship that will else carry us--state, church, and sacred property--down along with it. But whither would he have us fly? Is there firm land, be it ever so distant? or is the wild waste of waters, seething, warring round as far as eye can reach, our only hope? the pilot-stars, shining fitfully through the parting of the storm-clouds, our only guidance? There are hearts on this land almost broken, whose old traditional beliefs, serving them at least as moral supports, Mr. Carlyle and teachers like him have undermined. Some betake themselves to literature, as Sterling did; some fill up the void with the excitement of politics; others feebly bemoan their irreparable loss, and wear an outward seeming of universal irony and sarcasm. Mr. Carlyle has no right, no man has any right, to weaken or destroy a faith which he cannot or will not replace with a loftier. We have no hesitation in saying, that the language which Mr. Carlyle is in the habit of employing towards the religion of England and of Europe is unjustifiable. He ought to have said nothing, or he ought to have said more. Scraps of verse from Goethe, and declamations, however brilliantly they may be phrased, are but a poor compensation for the slightest obscuring of "the hope of immortality brought to light by the gospel," and by it conveyed to the hut of the poorest man, to awaken, his crushed intelligence and lighten the load of his misery. Mr. Carlyle slights, after his contemptuous fashion, the poetry of his contemporaries: one of them has uttered in song some practical wisdom which he would do well to heed: "O thou that after toil and storm May'st seem to have reached a purer air, Whose faith has centre everywhere, Nor cares to fix itself to form, "Leave thou thy sister, when she prays, Her early heaven, her happy views; Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse A life that leads melodious days. "Her faith through form is pure as thine, Her hands are quicker unto good. Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood To which she links a truth divine! "See thou, that countest reason ripe In holding by the law within, Thou fail not in a world of sin, And even for want of such a type." This life of Sterling will be useful to the class whose beliefs have given way before Mr. Carlyle's destroying energies; because it furnishes hints, not to be mistaken though not obtrusive, as to the extent to which they must be prepared to go if they would really be his disciples. If the path has in its very dangers an attraction for some, while others are shudderingly repelled, in either case the result is desirable, as it is the absence of certainty which causes the pain and paralyzes the power of action. At any rate, the doctrines of this teacher must be so much more intelligible to the mass when applied, as they are here, in commentary upon a life all whose details are familiar, because it is the life of a contemporary and a countryman, that all who read must inevitably be impressed with that great lesson of the philosophic poet-- "The intellectual power through words and things Goes sounding on, _a dim and perilous way_." Though John Sterling is of course the principal figure in the composition, and Mr. Carlyle's treatment the great attraction of the book, yet the figures in the background will be those to make most impression on the general reader. Coleridge stands there in striking but caricatured likeness; and even his most devoted admirers will not be sorry to see a portrait of their master by such a hand: and all will curiously observe the contrast between the sarcastic bitterness which colors the drawing of the philosophic Christian, and the kindly allowance through which the character of John Sterling's father, the famous "Thunderer" of the _Times_, is delineated. We half suspect that Coleridge would have appeared to Mr. Carlyle a much greater man, if he had allowed him to declaim--"Harpocrates-Stentor," as Sterling calls him--with trumpet voice and for time unlimited on the divine virtues of Silence. There are besides, as in all Mr. Carlyle's works, passages of wise thought expressed in most felicitous language: of which not the least important is this advice given to Sterling in reference to his poetic aspirations: "You can speak with supreme excellence; sing with considerable excellence you never can. And the Age itself, does it not, beyond most ages, demand and require clear speech; an Age incapable of being sung to, in any but a trivial manner, till these convulsive agonies and wild revolutionary overturnings readjust themselves? Intelligible word of command, not musical psalmody and fiddling, is possible in this fell storm of battle. Beyond all ages, our Age admonishes whatsoever thinking or writing man it has: Oh speak to me, some wise intelligible speech; your wise meaning, in the shortest and clearest way; behold, I am dying for want of wise meaning, and insight into the devouring fact: speak, if you have any wisdom! As to song so-called, and your fiddling talent,--even if you have one, much more if you have none,--we will talk of that a couple of centuries hence, when things are calmer again. Homer shall be thrice welcome; but only when Troy is _taken_: alas, while the siege lasts, and battle's fury rages every where, what can I do with the Homer? I want Achilleus and Odysseus, and am enraged to see them trying to be Homers!--" These bricks from Babylon convey but scanty intimation of the varied interest of the book. However the readers of it may differ from its opinions, they cannot but find, even in Mr. Carlyle's misjudgments and prejudices, ample matter for serious reflection: for if he misjudges, it is generally because he is looking too intently at a single truth, or a single side of a truth; and such misjudgments are more suggestive than the completest propositions of a less earnest, keen-sighted, and impassioned thinker. He is indeed more a prophet than a logician or a man of science. And one lesson we may all learn from this, as from everything he writes,--and it is a lesson that interferes with no creed,--that honesty of purpose, and resoluteness to do and to say the thing we believe to be the true thing, will give heart to a man's life, when all ordinary motives to action and all ordinary supports of energy have failed like a rotten reed. SONGS OF THE CASCADE. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY A. OAKEY HALL. I. THE CASCADE VAUNTETH ITSELF. Over my pebbly bed I flow: Till foaming--now splashing, Soon leaping--then dashing Into the chasm's bowl below, Where my pearl drops glittering, Rival the driven snow. The chains of Winter I spurn! All Summer and Spring Through the grove I sing, Gladdening lily and fern, And the tired bird who kisses my cheek With a dainty touch of his thirsty beak. And when from the mountain side The sunshines of May Charm the snows away-- The torrent's impulsive tide Mingles its turbid strength with mine, Marking the thicket with surging line. Then as the grove I enter, The tree-tops shake, The granite beds quake, Into their very centre; Whilst the birds around on the soaking ground Hush their song at my thunder sound! Man never with puny arm _My_ power shall curb, _My_ flow disturb! Ha! ha! for nature's charm: Powerful in the rock That human strength doth mock! Long as stern Father Time Shall harvest future years-- Garnering joys and tears-- In every land and clime: So long shall I from the moss-clad steep, Bubble or vaunt in the foaming leap! II. THE CASCADE HUMBLETH ITSELF. Under the dams I go, With sullen plash, And humbled dash, On giant wheels below, That proudly turn where huge fires burn, Mocking the sunset glow! As the "feeders" I enter, High windows shake, And brick walls quake, Deep to their very centre, While _I_ painfully sob to the taunting throb In the heart of my mill tormentor. Afar up the arid hill, Huger wheels are turning-- Fiercer fires are burning-- The mountain torrent is still! And I mourn me now for the thicket's green In the grove where our surging line was see. Man with his stalwart arms, Plying the axe and spade-- Reft the grove of its shade, Dissolving nature's charms; With genius to plan it blasted the granite, As involving the earthquake's aid. Nothing of freedom now I know! For the glare of the brick, The machinery click, And the mist from the wheels below, Blindeth and stunneth--I faint--I reel. I yield my charm to the spell of steel! HERMAN MELVILLE'S WHALE.[4] The new nautical story by the always successful author of _Typee_, has for its name-giving subject a monster first introduced to the world of print by Mr. J. N. Reynolds, ten or fifteen years ago, in a paper for the _Knickerbocker_, entitled _Mocha Dick_. We received a copy when it was too late to review it ourselves for this number of the _International_, and therefore make use of a notice of it which we find in the London _Spectator_: "This sea novel is a singular medley of naval observation, magazine article writing, satiric reflection upon the conventionalisms of civilized life, and rhapsody run mad. So far as the nautical parts are appropriate and unmixed, the portraiture is truthful and interesting. Some of the satire, especially in the early parts, is biting and reckless. The chapter-spinning is various in character; now powerful from the vigorous and fertile fancy of the author, now little more than empty though sounding phrases. The rhapsody belongs to wordmongering where ideas are the staple; where it takes the shape of narrative or dramatic fiction, it is phantasmal--an attempted description of what is impossible in nature and without probability in art; it repels the reader instead of attracting him. [4] The Whale. By Herman Melville, Author of "Typee," "Omoo," "Redburn," "Mardi," "White Jacket." In three volumes. Published by Bentley. [Moby Dick, or the Whale: By Herman Melville: 1 vol. 12mo. New-York, Harper & Brothers.] "The elements of the story are a South Sea whaling voyage, narrated by Ishmael, one of the crew of the ship Pequod, from Nantucket. Its 'probable' portions consist of the usual sea matter in that branch of the industrial marine; embracing the preparations for departure, the voyage, the chase and capture of whale, with the economy of cutting up, &c., and the peculiar discipline of the service. This matter is expanded by a variety of digressions on the nature and characteristics of the sperm whale, the history of the fishery, and similar things, in which a little knowledge is made the excuse for a vast many words. The voyage is introduced by several chapters in which life in American seaports is rather broadly depicted. "The 'marvellous' injures the book by disjointing the narrative, as well as by its inherent want of interest, at least as managed by Mr. Melville. In the superstition of some whalers, (grounded upon the malicious foresight which occasionally characterizes the attacks of the sperm fish upon the boats sent to capture it,) there is a _white_ whale which possesses supernatural power. To capture or even to hurt it is beyond the art of man; the skill of the whaler is useless; the harpoon does not wound it; it exhibits a contemptuous strategy in its attacks upon the boats of its pursuers; and happy is the vessel were only loss of limb, or of a single life, attends its chase. Ahab, the master of the Pequod--a mariner of long experience, stern resolve, and indomitable courage, the high hero of romance, in short, transferred to a whale-ship--has lost his leg in a contest with the white whale. Instead of daunting Ahab, the loss exasperates him; and by long brooding over it his reason becomes shaken. In this condition, he undertakes the voyage; making the chase of his fishy antagonist the sole abject of his thoughts, and, so far as he can without exciting overt insubordination among his officers, the object of his proceedings. "Such a groundwork is hardly natural enough for a regular-built novel, though it might form a tale, if properly managed. But Mr. Melville's mysteries provoke wonder at the author rather than terror at the creation; the soliloquies and dialogues of Ahab, in which the author attempts delineating the wild imaginings of monomania, and exhibiting some profoundly speculative views of things in general, induce weariness or skipping; while the whole scheme mars, as we have said, the nautical continuity of story--greatly assisted by various chapters of a bookmaking kind. "Perhaps the earliest chapters are the best although they contain little adventure. Their topics are fresher to English readers than the whale-chase, and they have more direct satire. One of the leading personages in the voyage is Queequeg, a South Sea Islander, that Ishmael falls in with at New-Bedford, and with whom he forms a bosom friendship. "Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are. "While yet a new-hatched savage, running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green sapling,--even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His father was a high chief, a king; his uncle a high priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins--royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth. "A Sag Harbour ship visited his father's bay; and Queequeg sought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship having her full complement of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father's influence could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets, that grew out into the water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out--gained her side--with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe--climbed up the chains--and throwing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go though hacked in pieces. "In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard--suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists: Queequeg was the son of a king, and Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage--this sea Prince of Whales--never saw the captain's cabin. They put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But, like the Czar Peter content to toil in the ship-yards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might haply gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom--so he told me--he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they were, and more than that, still better than they were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked, infinitely more so than all his father's heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbour, and seeing what the sailors did there, and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians: I'll die a Pagan. "The strongest point of the book is its 'characters.' Ahab, indeed, is a melodramatic exaggeration, and Ishmael is little more than a mouthpiece; but the harpooners, the mates, and several of the seamen, are truthful portraitures of the sailor as modified by the whaling service. The persons ashore are equally good, though they are soon lost sight of. The two Quaker owners are the author's means for a hit at the religious hypocrisies. Captain Bildad, an old sea-dog, has got rid of every thing pertaining to the meeting-house save an occasional 'thou' and 'thee.' Captain Peleg, in American phrase, 'professes religion.' The following extract exhibits the two men when Ishmael is shipped: "I began to think that it was high time to settle with myself at what terms I would be willing to engage for the voyage. I was already aware that in the whaling business they paid no wages, but all hands, including the captain, received certain shares of the profits, called _lays_; and that these lays were proportioned to the degree of importance pertaining to the respective duties of the ship's company. I was also aware that, being a green hand at whaling, my own lay would not be very large: but, considering that I was used to the sea, could steer a ship, splice a rope, and all that, I made no doubt that, from all I had heard, I should be offered at least the two hundred and seventy-fifth lay--that is, the two hundred and seventy-fifth part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage, whatever that might eventually amount to. And though the two hundred and seventy-fifth lay was what they called a rather _long lay_, yet it was better than nothing; and if we had a lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay for the clothing I would wear out on it, not to speak of my three years' beef and board, for which I would not have to pay one stiver. "It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely fortune: and so it was, a very poor way indeed. But I am one of those that never take on about princely fortunes, and am quite content if the world is ready to board and lodge me while I am putting up at this grim sign of the Thunder-cloud. Upon the whole, I thought that the two hundred and seventy-fifth lay would be about the fair thing, but would not have been surprised had I been offered the two hundredth, considering I was of a broad-shouldered make. "But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about receiving a generous share of the profits, was this: ashore, I had heard something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old crony Bildad; how that they, being the principal proprietors of the Pequod, therefore the other and more in considerable and scattered owners left nearly the whole management of the ship's affairs to these two. And I did not know but that the stingy old Bildad might have a deal to say about shipping hands, especially as I now found him on board the Pequod, quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible, as if at his own fireside. Now, while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no small surprise, considering that he was such an interested party in these proceedings--Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself out of his book, '_Lay_ not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth--' "'Well, Captain Bildad,' interrupted Peleg, 'what d'ye say--what lay shall we give this young man?' "'Thou knowest best,' was the sepulchral reply; 'the seven hundred and seventy-seventh wouldn't be too much--would it--'where moth and rust do corrupt, but _lay_--' "Lay indeed, thought I, and such a lay!--the seven hundred and seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for one, shall not _lay_ up many _lays_ here below, where moth and rust do corrupt. It was an exceedingly _long lay_ that, indeed; and though from the magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet the slightest consideration will show that, though seven hundred and seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet when you come to make a _teenth_ of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons. And so I thought at the time. "'Why, b---- t your eyes, Bildad!' cried Peleg, 'thou dost not want to swindle this young man! he must have more than that?' "'Seven hundred and seventy-seventh,' again said Bildad, without lifting his eyes; and then went on mumbling--'for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.' "'I am going to put him down for the three hundredth,' said Peleg; 'do ye hear that, Bildad? The three hundredth lay, I say.' "Bildad laid down his book, and, turning solemnly towards him, said, 'Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but thou must consider the duty thou owest to the other owners of this ship--widows and orphans, many of them; and that, if we too abundantly reward the labors of this young man, we may be taking the bread from those widows and those orphans. The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay, Captain Peleg.' "'Thou Bildad!' roared Peleg, starting up, and clattering about the cabin, 'B---- t ye, Captain Bildad; if I had followed thy advice in these matters, I would afore now had a conscience to lug about that would be heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed round Cape Horn.' "'Captain Peleg,' said Bildad steadily, 'thy conscience may be drawing ten inches of water or ten fathoms--I can't tell; but as thou art still an impenitent man, Captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky one, and will in the end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit, Captain Peleg,'" "It is a canon with some critics that nothing should be introduced into a novel which it is physically impossible for the writer to have known: thus, he must not describe the conversation of miners in a pit if they _all_ perish. Mr. Melville hardly steers clear of this rule, and he continually violates another, by beginning in the autobiographical form and changing _ad libitum_ into the narrative. His catastrophe overrides all rule: not only is Ahab, with his boat's-crew, destroyed in his last desperate attack upon the white whale, but the Pequod herself sinks with all on board into the depths of the illimitable ocean. Such is the go-ahead method." A STORY WITHOUT A NAME[5] WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ. CHAPTER L. Sir Philip Hastings, I have said, was reading a Greek book when Mr. Short entered the library. His face was grave, and very stern; but all traces of the terrible agitation with which he had quited the side of his wife's death-bed, were now gone from his face. He hardly looked up when the surgeon entered. He seemed not only reading, but absorbed by what he read. Mr. Short thought the paroxysm of grief was passed, and that the mind of Sir Philip Hastings, settling down into a calm melancholy, was seeking its habitual relief in books. He knew, as every medical man must know, the various whimsical resources to which the heart of man flies, as if for refuge, in moments of great affliction. The trifles with which some will occupy themselves--the intense abstraction for which others will labor--the imaginations, the visions, the fancies to which others again will apply, not for consolation, not for comfort; but for escape from the one dark predominant idea. He said a few words to Sir Philip then, of a kindly but somewhat commonplace character, and the baronet looked up, gazing at him across the candles which stood upon the library table. Had Mr. Short's attention been particularly called to Sir Philip's countenance, he would have perceived at once, that the pupils of the eyes were strangely and unnaturally contracted, and that from time to time a certain nervous twitching of the muscles curled the lip, and indented the cheek. But he did not remark these facts: he merely saw that Sir Philip was reading: that he had recovered his calmness; and he judged that that which might be strange in other men, might not be strange in him. In regard to what he believed the great cause of Sir Philip's grief, his wife's death, he thought it better to say nothing; but he naturally concluded that a father would be anxious to hear of a daughter's health under such circumstances, and therefore he told him that Emily was better and more composed. [5] Concluded from page 499. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by G. P. R. James, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. Sir Philip made a slight, but impatient motion of the hand, but Mr. Short went on to say, "As she was so severely and terribly affected, Sir Philip, I have given Mistress Emily a composing draught, which has already had the intended effect of throwing her into profound slumber. It will insure her, I think, at least six, if not seven hours of calm repose, and I trust she will rise better able to bear her grief than she would be now, were she conscious of it." Sir Philip muttered something between his teeth which the surgeon did not hear, and Mr. Short proceeded, saying, "Will you permit me to suggest, Sir Philip, that it would be better for you too, my dear sir, to take something which would counteract the depressing effect of sorrow." "I thank you, sir, I thank you," replied Sir Philip, laying his hand upon the book; "I have no need. The mind under suffering seeks medicines for the mind. The body is not affected. It is well--too well. Here is my doctor;" and he raised his hand and let it fall upon the book again. "Well then, I will leave you for to-night, Sir Philip," said the surgeon; "to-morrow I must intrude upon you on business of great importance. I will now take my leave." Sir Philip rose ceremoniously from his chair and bowed his head; gazing upon the surgeon as he left the room and shut the door, with a keen, cunning, watchful look from under his overhanging eyebrows. "Ha!" he said, when the surgeon had left the room, "he thought to catch me--to find out what I intended to do--slumber!--calm, tranquil repose--so near a murdered mother! God of heaven!" and he bent down his head till his forehead touched the pages of the book, and remained with his face thus concealed for several minutes. It is to be remarked that not one person, with a single exception, to whom the circumstances of Lady Hastings' death were known, even dreamed of suspecting Emily. They all knew her, comprehended her character, loved her, had faith in her, except her own unhappy father. But with him, if the death of his unhappy wife were terrible, his suspicions of his daughter were a thousand fold more so. To his distorted vision a multitude of circumstances brought proof all powerful. "She has tried to destroy her father," he thought, "and she has not scrupled to destroy her mother. In the one case there seemed no object. In the other there was the great object of revenge, with others perhaps more mean, but not less potent. Try her cause what way I will, the same result appears. The mother opposes the daughter's marriage to the man she loves--threatens to frustrate the dearest wish of her heart--and nothing but death will satisfy her. This is the end then of all these reveries--these alternate fits of gloom and levity. The ill balanced mind has lost its equipoise, and all has given way to passion. But what must I do--oh God! what must I do?" His thoughts are here given, not exactly as they presented themselves; for they were more vague, confused, and disjointed; but such was the sum and substance of them. He raised his head from the book and looked up, and after thinking for a moment or two he said, "This Josephus--this Jew--gives numerous instances, if I remember right, of justice done by fathers upon their children--ay, and by the express command of God. The priest of the Most High was punished for yielding to human weakness in the case of his sons. The warrior Jephtha spared not his best beloved. What does the Roman teach? Not to show pity to those the nearest to us by blood, the closest in affection, where justice demands unwavering execution. It must be so. There is but the choice left, to give her over to hands of strangers, to add public shame, and public punishment to that which justice demands, or to do that myself which they must inevitably do. She must die--such a monster must not remain upon the earth. She has plotted against her father's life--she has colleagued with his fraudulent enemies--she has betrayed the heart that fondly trusted her--she has visited secretly the haunts of a low, vulgar ruffian--she has aided and abetted those who have plundered her own parents--she has ended by the murder of the mother who so fondly loved her. I--I am bound, by every duty to society, to deliver it from one, who for my curse, and its bane, I brought into the world. She must be put to death; and no hand but mine must do it." He gazed gloomily down upon the table for several minutes, and then paced the room rapidly with agony in every line of his face. He wrung his hands hard together. He lifted up his eyes towards heaven, and often, often, he cried out, "Oh God! Oh God! Is there no hope?--no doubt?--no opening for pause or hesitation?" "None, none, none," he said at length, and sank down into his chair again. His eye wandered round the room, as if seeking some object he could not see, and then he murmured, "So beautiful--so young--so engaging--just eighteen summers; and yet such a load of crime!" He bent his head again, and a few drops of agony fell from his eyes upon the table. Then clasping his forehead tight with his hand, he remained for several minutes thoughtful and silent. He seemed to grow calmer; but it was a deceitful seeming; and there was a wild, unnatural light in his eyes which, notwithstanding all the apparent shrewdness of his reasoning--the seeming connection and clearness of his argument, would have shown to those expert in such matters, that there was something not right within the brain. At length he said to himself in a whisper, as if he was afraid that some one should hear him, "She sleeps--the man said she sleeps--now is the time--I must not hesitate--I must not falter--now is the time!" and he rose and approached the door. Once, he stopped for a moment--once, doubt and irresolution took possession of him. But then he cast them off, and moved on again. With a slow step, but firm and noiseless tread, he crossed the hall and mounted the stairs. No one saw him: the servants were scattered: there was no one to oppose his progress, or to say, "Forbear!" He reached his daughter's room, opened the door quietly, went in, and closed it. Then he gazed eagerly around. The curtains were withdrawn: his fair, sweet child lay sleeping calmly as an infant. He could see all around. Father and child were there. There was no one else. Still he gazed around, seeking perhaps for something with which to do the fatal deed! His eye rested on a packet of papers upon the table. It contained those which Marlow had left with poor gentle Emily to justify her to her father in case of need. Oh, would he but take them up! Would he but read the words within! He turns away--he steals toward the bed! Drop the curtain! I can write no more. Emily is gone! CHAPTER LI. When Mr. Short, the surgeon, left the presence of Sir Philip Hastings, he found the butler seated in an arm-chair in the hall, cogitating sadly over all the lamentable events of the day. He was an old servant of the family, and full of that personal interest in every member of it which now, alas, in these times of improvement and utilitarianism (or as it should be called, selfishness reduced to rule), when it seems to be the great object of every one to bring men down to the level of a mere machine, is no longer, or very rarely, met with. He rose as soon as the surgeon appeared, and inquired eagerly after his poor master. "I am afraid he is touched here, sir," he said, laying his finger on his forehead. "He has not been at all right ever since he came back from London, and I am sure, when he came down to-night, calling out in such a way about gathering herbs, I thought he had gone clean crazy." "He has become quite calm and composed now," replied Mr. Short; "though of course he is very sad: but as I can do no good by staying with him, I must go down to the farm for my horse, and ride away where my presence is immediately wanted." "They have brought your horse up from the farm, sir," said the butler. "It is in the stable-yard." Thither Mr. Short immediately proceeded, mounted, and rode away. When he had gone about five miles, or perhaps a little more, he perceived that two horsemen were approaching him rapidly, and he looked sharp towards them, thinking they might be Mr. Atkinson and the groom. As they came near, the outlines of the figures showed him that such was not the case; but the foremost of the two pulled up suddenly as he was passing, and Marlow's voice exclaimed, "Is that Mr. Short?" "Yes, sir, yes, Mr. Marlow," replied the surgeon. "I am very glad indeed you have come; for there has been terrible work this day at the house of poor Sir Philip Hastings. Lady Hastings is no more, and----" "I have heard the whole sad history," replied Marlow, "and am riding as fast as possible to see what can be done for Sir Philip, and my poor Emily. I only stopped to tell you that Mrs. Hazleton has been taken, the vial of medicine found upon her, and that she has boldly confessed the fact of having poisoned poor Lady Hastings. You will find her and Atkinson, the high constable, at the house of Mrs. Warmington.--Good night, Mr. Short; good night;" and Marlow spurred on again. The delay had been very short, but it was fatal. When Marlow reached the front entrance of the court, he threw his rein to the groom, and without the ceremony of ringing, entered the house. There was a lamp burning in the hall, which was vacant; but Marlow heard a step upon the great staircase, and looked up. A dark shadowy figure was coming staggering down, and as it entered the sphere of the light in the hall, Marlow recognized the form, rather than the features, of Sir Philip Hastings. His face was ashy pale: not a trace of color was discernible in any part: the very lips were white; and the gray hair stood ragged and wild upon his head. His haggard and sunken eye fell upon Marlow; but he was passing onward to the library, as if he did not know him, tottering and reeling like a drunken man, when Marlow, very much shocked, stopped him, exclaiming, "Good God, Sir Philip, do you no know me?" The unhappy man started, turned round and grasped him tightly by the wrist, saying in a hoarse whisper, and looking over his shoulder towards the staircase, "Do not go there, do not go there--come hither--you do not know what has happened." "I do, indeed, Sir Philip," replied Marlow in a soothing tone, "I have heard----" "No, no, no, no!" said Sir Philip Hastings. "No one knows but I--there was no one there--I did it all myself.--Come hither, I say!" and he drew Marlow on towards the library. "He has lost his senses," thought Marlow. "I must try and soothe him before I see my poor Emily. I will try and turn his mind to other things;" and, suffering himself to be led forward, he entered the library with Sir Philip Hastings, who instantly cast himself into a chair, and pressed his hands before his eyes. Marlow stood and gazed at him for a moment in silent compassion, and then he said, "Take comfort, Sir Philip. Take comfort. I bring you a great store of news; and what I have to tell will require great bodily and mental exertions from you, to deal with all the painful circumstances in which you are placed. I have followed out every thread of the shameful conspiracy against you--not a turning of the whole rascally scheme is undiscovered." "She had her share in that too," said Sir Philip, looking up in his face, with a wild, uncertain sort of questioning look. "I know it," replied Marlow, thinking he spoke of Mrs. Hazleton, "She was the prime mover in it all." Sir Philip wrung his hands tight, one within the other, murmuring "Oh, God; oh, God!" "But," continued Marlow, "she will soon expiate her crimes; for she has been taken, and proofs of her guilt found upon her, so strong and convincing, that she did not think fit even to conceal the fact, but confessed her crime at once." Sir Philip started, and grasped both the arms of the chair in which he sat, tight in his thin white hands, gazing at Marlow with a look of bewildered horror that cannot be described. Marlow went on, however, saying, "I had previously told her, indeed, that I had discovered all her dark and treacherous schemes--how she had labored to make this whole family miserable--how she had attempted to blacken the character of my dear Emily--imitated her handwriting--induced you to misunderstand her whole conduct, and thrown dark hints and suspicions in your way. She knew that she could not escape this charge, even if she could conceal her guilt of to-day, and she confessed the whole." "Who--who--who?" cried Sir Philip Hastings, almost in a scream. "Of whom are you talking, man?" "Of Mrs. Hazleton," replied Marlow. "Were you not speaking of her?" Sir Philip Hastings stretched forth his hands, as if to push him farther from him; but his only reply was a deep groan, and, after a moment's pause, Marlow proceeded, "I thought you were speaking of her--of her whose task it has been, ever since poor Emily's ill-starred visit to her house, to calumniate and wrong that dear innocent girl--to make you think her guilty of bitter indiscretions, if not great crimes--who, more than any one, aided to wrong you, and who now openly avows that she placed the poison in your poor wife's room in order to destroy her." "And I have killed her!--and I have killed her!" cried Sir Philip Hastings, rising up erect and tall--"and I have killed her!" "Good God, whom?" exclaimed Marlow, with his heart beating as if it would burst through his side. "Whom do you mean, sir?" Sir Philip remained silent for a moment, pressing his hands tight upon his temples, and then answered in a slow, solemn voice, "Your Emily--my Emily--my own sweet--" but he did not finish the sentence; for ere the last words could be uttered, he fell forward on the floor like a dead man. For an instant, stupified and horror-struck, Marlow remained motionless, hardly comprehending, hardly believing what he had heard. The next instant, however, he rushed out of the library, and found the butler with the late Lady Hastings' maid, passing through the back of the house towards the front staircase. "Which is Emily's room?" he cried,--"Which is Emily's room?" "She is asleep, sir," said the maid. "Which is her room?" cried Marlow, vehemently. "He is mad--he is mad--your master is mad--he says he has killed her. Which is her room?" and he darted up the staircase. "The third on the right, sir," cried the butler, following with the maid, as fast as possible; and Marlow darted towards the door. A fit of trembling, however, seized him as he laid his hand upon the lock. "He must have exaggerated," he said to himself. "He has been unkind--harsh--he calls that killing her--I will open it gently," and he and the two servants entered it nearly together. All was quiet. All was still. The light was burning on the table. There was a large heavy pillow cast down by the side of the bed, and the bed coverings were in some disorder. No need of such a stealthy pace, Marlow! You may tread firm and boldly. Even your beloved step will not wake her. The body sleeps till the day of judgment. The spirit has gone where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. The beautiful face was calm and tranquil; though beneath each of the closed eyes was a deep bluish mark, and the lips had lost their redness. The fair delicate hands grasped the bed-clothes tightly, and the whole position of the figure showed that death had not taken place without a convulsive struggle. Marlow tried, with trembling hands, to unclasp the fingers from the bed-clothes, and though he could not do it, he fancied he felt warmth in the palms of the hands. A momentary gleam of hope came upon him. More assistance was called: every effort that could be suggested was made; but it was all in vain. Consciousness--breath--life--could never be restored. There was not a dry eye amongst all those around, when the young lover, giving up the hopeless task, cast himself on his knees by the bedside, and pressed his face upon the dead hand of her whom he had loved so well. Just at that moment the voice of Sir Philip Hastings was heard below singing a stanza of some light song. It was the most horrible sound that ever was heard! Two of the servants ran down in haste, and the sight of the living was as terrible as that of the dead. Philip Hastings had recovered from his fit without assistance, had raised himself, and was now walking about the room with the same sort of zigzag, tottering step with which he had met Marlow on his return. A stream of blood from a wound which he had inflicted on his forehead when he fell, was still pouring down his face, rendering its deathlike paleness only the more ghastly. His mouth was slightly drawn aside, giving a strange sinister expression to his countenance; but from his eyes, once so full of thought and intellect, every trace of reason had vanished. He held his hands before him, and the fingers of the one beat time upon the back of the other to the air that he was singing, and which he continued to sing even after the entrance of the servants. He uttered not a word to them on their appearance: he took not the slightest notice of them till the butler, seeing his condition, took him by the arm, and asked if he had not better go to bed. Then, Sir Philip attempted to answer, but his words when spoken were indistinct as well as confused, and it became evident that he had a stroke of palsy. The servants knew hardly what to do. Marlow they did not dare to disturb in his deep grief: the surgeon was by this time far away: their mistress, and her fair unhappy daughter were dead: their master had become an idiot. It was the greatest possible relief to them when they beheld Mr. Dixwell the clergyman enter the library. Some boy employed about the stables or the kitchen, had carried down a vague tale of the horrors to the Rectory; and the good clergyman, though exhausted with all the fatigues and anxiety of the day, had hurried down at once to see what could be done for the survivors of that doomed family. He comprehended the situation of Sir Philip Hastings in a moment; but he put many questions to the butler as to what preceded the terrible event, the effects of which he beheld. The old servant answered little. To most of the questions he merely shook his head sadly; but that mute reply was sufficient; and Mr. Dixwell, taking Sir Philip by the hand, said, "You had better retire to rest, sir--you are not well." Sir Philip Hastings gave an unmeaning smile, but followed the clergyman mildly, and having seen him to a bedroom, and left him in the hands of his servants, Mr. Dixwell turned his step towards the chamber of poor Emily. Marlow had risen from his knees; but was still standing by the bedside with his arms folded on his chest. His face was stern and sorrowful; but perfectly calm. Mr. Dixwell approached quietly, and in a melancholy tone, addressed to him some words of consolation--commonplace enough indeed, but well intended. Marlow laid his hand upon the clergyman's arm, and pointed to Emily's beautiful but ghastly face. He only added, "In vain!--Do what is needful--Do what is right--I am incapable;" and leaving the room, he descended to the library, where he closed the door, and remained in silence and solitude till day broke on the following morning. CHAPTER LII. Mrs. Warmington became a person of some importance with the people of Hartwell. All thoughts were turned towards her house. Everybody wished they could get in and see and hear more; for the news had spread rapidly and wide, colored and distorted; but yet falling far short of the whole terrible truth. When Mr. Short himself arrived in town, he found three other magistrates had already assembled, and that Mr. Atkinson and Sir Philip Hastings' groom, John, were already giving them some desultory and informal information as to the apprehension of Mr. Hazleton and its causes. The first consideration after his appearance amongst them, was what was to be done with the prisoner; for one of the justices--a gentleman of old family in the county, who had not much liked the appointment of the surgeon to the bench, and had generally found motives for differing in opinion with him ever since--objected to leaving Mrs. Hazleton, even for the night, in any other place than the common jail. The more merciful opinion of the majority, however, prevailed. Atkinson gave every assurance that the constable whom he had placed in charge of the lady was perfectly to be depended upon, and that the room in which she was locked up, was too high to admit the possibility of escape. Thus it was determined that Mrs. Hazleton should be left where she was for the night, and brought before the magistrates for examination at an early hour on the following morning. Even after this decision was come to, however, the conversation or consultation, if it may be so called, was prolonged for some time in a gossiping, idle sort of way. Gentlemen sat upon the edge of the table with their hats on, or leaned against the mantelpiece, beating their boots with their riding-whips, and some marvelled, and some inquired, and some expounded the law with the dignity and confidence, if not with the sagacity and learning of a Judge. They were still engaged in this discussion when the news of Emily's death was brought to Hartwell, and produced a painful and terrible sensation in the breasts of the lightest and most careless of those present. The man who conveyed the intelligence brought also a summons to Mr. Short to return immediately to Sir Philip Hastings, and only waiting to get a fresh horse, the surgeon set out upon his return with a very sad and sorrowful heart. He would not disturb Mr. Marlow; though he was informed that he was in the library; but he remained with Sir Philip Hastings himself during the greater part of the night, and only set out for his own house to take a little repose before the meeting of the magistrates, some quarter of an hour before the first dawn of day. Full of painful thoughts he rode on at a quick pace, till the yellow and russet hues of the morning began to appear in the east. He then slackened his pace a little, and naturally, as he approached the house of Mrs. Warmington, he raised his eye towards the windows of the room in which he knew that the beautiful demon, who had produced so much misery to others and herself, had been imprisoned. Mr. Short was riding on; but suddenly a sound met his ear, and as his eyes ran down the building from the windows above, to a small plot of grass which the lady of the house called the lawn, he drew up his horse, and rode sharply up to the gate. But it is time now to turn to Mrs. Hazleton. Lodged in the upper chamber which had been decided upon as the one fittest for their purpose, by Mr. Atkinson and the rest, with the constable from Hartwell domiciled in the ante-room, and the door between locked, Mrs. Hazleton gave herself up to despair; for her state of mind well deserved that name, although her feelings were very different from those which are commonly designated by that name. Surely to feel that every earthly hope has passed away--to see that further struggle for any object of desire is vain--to know that the struggles which have already taken place have been fruitless--to feel that their objects have been base, unworthy, criminal--to perceive no gleam of light on either side of the tomb--to have the present a wilderness, the future an abyss, the past and its memories a hell--surely this is despair! It matters not with what firmness, or what fierceness it may be borne: it matters not what fiery passions, what sturdy resolutions, what weak regrets, what agonizing fears, mingle with the state. This is despair! and such was the feeling of Mrs. Hazleton. She saw vast opportunities, a splendid position in society, wealth, beauty, wit, mind, accomplishments, all thrown away, and for the gratification of base passions exchanged for disgrace, and crime, and a horrible death. It was a bad bargain; but she felt she had played her whole for revenge and had lost; and she abode the issue resolutely. All these advantages which I have enumerated, and many more, Mrs. Hazleton had possessed; but she wanted two things which are absolutely necessary to human happiness and human virtue--heart and principle. The one she never could have obtained; for by nature she was heartless. The other might have been bestowed upon her by her parents. But they had failed to do so; for their own proper principles had been too scanty for them to bestow any on their daughter. Yet, strange to say, the lack of heart somewhat mitigated the intensity of the lady's sufferings now. She felt not her situation as bitterly as other persons with a greater portion of sensibility would inevitably have done. She had so trained herself to resist all small emotions, that they had in reality become obliterated. Fiery passions she could feel; for the earthquake rends the granite which the chisel will not touch, and these affected her now as much as ever. At that very moment, as she sat there, with her head resting on her hand, what is the meaning of that stern, knitted brow, that fixed, steadfast gaze forward, that tight compression of the lips and teeth? At that moment Nero's wish was in the bosom of Mrs. Hazleton. Could she have slaughtered half the human race to blot out all evidence of her crimes, and to escape the grinning shame which she knew awaited her, she would have done it without remorse. Other feelings, too, were present. A sense of anger at herself for having suffered herself to be in the slightest degree moved or agitated by any thing that had occurred; a determined effort, too, was there--I will not call it a struggle--to regain entire command of herself--to be as calm, as graceful, as self-possessed, as dignified as when in high prosperity with unsullied fame. It might be, in a certain sense, playing a part, and doubtless the celebrated Madame Tiquet did the same; but she was playing a part for her own eyes, as well as those of others. She resolved to be firm, and she was firm. "Death," she said, "is before me: for that I am prepared. It cannot agitate a nerve, or make a limb shake. All other evils are trifles compared with this. Why then should I suffer them to affect me in the least? No, no, they shall not see me quail!" After she had thus thought for some two hours, gaining more and more self-command every moment, as she turned and returned all the points of her situation in her own mind, and viewed them in every different aspect, she rose to retire to rest, lay down, and tried to sleep. At first importunate thought troubled her. The same kind of ideas went on--the same reasonings upon them--and slumber for more than one hour would not visit her eyelids. But she was a very resolute woman, and at length she determined that she would not think: she would banish thought altogether; she would not let the mind rest for one moment upon any subject whatsoever; and she succeeded. The absence of thought is sleep; and she slept; but resolution ended where sleep begun, and the images she had banished waking, returned to the mind in slumber. Her rest was troubled. Growing fancies seemed to come thick upon her mind; though the eyes remained closed, the features were agitated; the lips moved. Sometimes she laughed; sometimes she moaned piteously; sometimes tears found their way through her closed eyelids; and sobs struggled in her bosom. At length, between three and four o'clock in the morning, Mrs. Hazleton rose up in bed. She opened her eyes, too; but there was a dull glassy look about them--a fixed leaden stare, not natural to her waking hours. Slowly she got out of bed, approached the table, took up a candle which she had left burning there, and which was now nearly down to the socket, and walked straight to the door, saying aloud, "Very dark--very dark--every thing is dark." She tried the door, but found it locked; and the constable slept on. She then returned to the table, seated herself, and for some five or ten minutes continued to twist her long hair round her fingers. She then rose again, and went straight to the window, threw it up, and seemed to look out. "Chilly--chilly," she said. "I must walk to warm myself." The sill of the window was somewhat high, but that was no obstacle; for there was a chair near, and Mrs. Hazleton placed it for herself with as much care as if she had been wide awake. When this was done she stepped lightly upon it, and put her knee upon the window-sill, raised herself suddenly upright, and struck her head sharply against the upper part of the window. It is probable that the blow woke her, but at all events it destroyed her balance, and she fell forward at once out of the window. There was a loud shriek, and then a deep groan. But the constable slept on, and no one knew the fate that had befallen her 'till Mr. Short, the surgeon, passing the house, was attracted to the spot where she had fallen, by a moan, and the sight of a white object lying beneath the window. A loud ringing of the bell, and knocking at the door, soon roused the inhabitants of the house, and the mangled form of Mrs. Hazleton was carried in and stretched upon a bed. She was not dead; and although almost every bone was broken, except the skull, and the terrible injuries she had received precluded all possibility of recovery, she regained her senses before three o'clock of the same day, and continued to linger for somewhat more than a fortnight in agonies both of mind and body, too terrible to be described. With the rapid, though gradual weakening of the corporeal frame, the powers of the mind became enfeebled--the vigorous resolution failed--the self-command abandoned her. Half an hour's death she could have borne with stoical firmness, but a fortnight's was too much. The thoughts she could shut out in vigorous health, forced themselves upon her as she lay there like a crushed worm, and the tortures of hell got hold upon her, long before the spirit departed. Yet a sparkle of the old spirit showed itself even to her last hour. That she was conscious of an eternity, that she was convinced of after judgment, of the reward of good, and of the punishment of evil, that she believed in a God, a hell, a heaven, there can be no doubt--indeed her words more than once implied it--and the anguish of mind under which she seemed to writhe proved it. But yet, she refused all religious consolation; expressed no penitence: no sorrow for what she had done, and scoffed at the surgeon when he hinted that repentance might avail her even then. It seemed that, as with the earthly future, she had made up her mind at once, when first detected, to meet her fate boldly; so with the judgment of the immortal future, she was resolute to encounter it unbending. When urged, nearly at her last hour, to show some repentance, she replied in the weak and faltering voice of death, but in as determined a tone as ever, "It is all trash. An hour's repentance could do no good even if I could repent. But I do not. Nobody does repent. They regret their failure, are terrified by their punishment; but they and I would do exactly the same again if we hoped for success and impunity. Talk to me no more of it. I do not wish to think of hell till it has hold upon me, if that should ever be." She said no more from that moment forward, and in about an hour after, her spirit went to meet the fate she had so boldly dared. But few persons remain to be noticed in this concluding chapter, and with regard to their after history, the imagination of the reader might perhaps be left to deal, without further information. A few words, however, may be said, merely to give a clue to their after fate. The prosecution of Mr. Shanks, the attorney, was carried on but languidly, and it is certain that he was not convicted of the higher offence of forgery. On some charge, however, it would seem he was sentenced to two years imprisonment, and the last that is heard of him, shows him blacking shoes at the inn in Carrington, then a very old man, in the reign of George the First. Sir Philip Hastings never recovered his senses, nor did he seem to have any recollection of the horrible events with which his earthly history may be said to have closed; but his life was not far extended. For about six months he continued in the same lamentable state in which we have last depicted him, sometimes singing, sometimes laughing, and sometimes absorbed in deep melancholy. At the end of that period, another paralytic stroke left him in a state of complete fatuity, from which in two years he was relieved by death. If the reader will look into the annals of the reign of Queen Anne he will find frequent mention in the campaigns of Marlborough and Eugene, of a Major, a Colonel, and a General Marlow. They were all the same person; and they will find that officer often reported as severely wounded. I cannot trace his history much farther; but the genealogies of those times show, that in 1712, one Earl of Launceston died at the age of eighty-seven, and was succeeded by the eighth Earl, who only survived three years, and the title with him became extinct, as it is particularly marked that he died unmarried. As this last of the race is distinguished by the title of Lieutenant-General, the Earl of Launceston, there can be no doubt that this was the lover and promised husband of poor Emily Hastings. It is a sad tale, and rarely perhaps has any such tragedy darkened the page of domestic history in England. A whole family were swept away, and most of those connected with them, in a very short space of time; but it is not the number of deaths within that period that gives its gloominess to the page--for every domestic history is little but a record of deaths--but the circumstances. Youth, beauty, virtue, gentleness, kindness, honor, integrity, punctilious rectitude: reason, energy, wisdom, sometimes, nay often, have no effect as a screen, from misfortune, sorrow, and death. Were this world all, what a frightful chaos would human life be. But the very sorrows and adversities of the good, prove that there is a life beyond, where all will be made even. THE END. From Bentley's Miscellany. CALCUTTA. There are in Calcutta four colleges established by Government, besides numerous other institutions for the diffusion of learning. Education, indeed, is very general in the metropolis, and there are but few, even among the natives, making any pretensions to respectability, who have not some acquaintance with European literature. I have heard as pure English spoken by Hindoos in Calcutta as by men of rank in London, and pieces from our poets recited by a lad of color with a correctness of diction and eloquence that would have done credit to any of our youth at home. Go where you will in Calcutta, enter the narrowest streets and the most obscure alleys, and you will find pedagogues engaged in teaching Pinnock or Goldsmith to the children, and ragged urchins of three or four years old shouting in concert, B-l-a, bla; c-l-a, cla. And then turn your eyes in an opposite direction; look at the wealthy and the noble of mature age, enter their houses, and what will you see and hear? You will see their dwellings furnished and their tables laid out in _English_ style; you will see them possessed of libraries composed of the best works of the most approved _English_ authors; you will see _English_ newspapers regularly filed; you will see them corresponding in _English_ with their friends and connections; and you will hear them conversing on the topics of the day or their own private affairs in the _English_ tongue. A person who had never travelled beyond the metropolis would be apt, on seeing all this, to exclaim, "The people will soon be thoroughly Anglicised!" But it is all confined to Calcutta, and even there is rather, perhaps, the result of a wish to outshine, than of a desire to improve. A Mechanics' Institute was a few years since established in Calcutta. Institutions of this kind are particularly required in India, where the national systems of agriculture, commerce, mechanics, science, literature, and philosophy are so wretched; where prejudice and superstition impede improvement, and sloth and ignorance have had so long a reign. It is surely the duty of those who seek affluence in that country to encourage them, and thus endeavor to benefit the land from whose resources they expect to gain it. But, in spite of the old adage, "What's in a name?" the fate of this institution proved that there is something very important in the nomenclature of a thing. The title "Mechanic" is in a manner _despised_ by the European community of Calcutta and their Euratian brethren; and so long as the Institute continued to bear the title which distinguished it as dedicated to such, notwithstanding the plainness with which it exhibited its claims to support as an institution calculated to disseminate a correct and practical knowledge of science, and a familiar acquaintance with the fine arts throughout the empire, and by the improvements such a knowledge would induce ulteriorly to promote the interests of all connected with India; notwithstanding appeals to the press, public lectures and private solicitations; notwithstanding the most brilliant speeches of the most eloquent orators (among whom may be particularly mentioned Mr. George Thompson), it languished for want of support, gradually decayed, and seemed about to yield up the ghost. It was at last suggested, that though the expedients above alluded to had failed to stay the progress of disease, or invigorate the system, one, powerful as a galvanic battery, yet remained to be tried, a new nomenclature. It was proposed that the vulgar title of "Mechanics' Institute" should be thrown off, and the elegant and euphonious one of "The Lyceum" adopted. This was done; and wonderful was the effect. The young and tender tree revived in an instant, refreshing streams of cash were poured in abundance upon its roots; the very nobles of the land came forward to tend it, and now it flourishes and blooms, and promises ere long to produce a rich abundance of fruit. Still it is in reality the same as before in all but its name. I have alluded to Mr. George Thompson. His arrival in India in 1843 was greeted by all classes of the community with joy. All had heard of his eloquence and his ability, of the interest he had exhibited in the affairs of, and his design in visiting, India, and therefore hailed him as the champion of her interests. Hindoo and Mussulman flocked eagerly around the standard he raised as a patriot leader, listened to his addresses, and, as he enlarged on their rights and wrongs (so far as he knew them) felt discontent, hatred to the rulers of their country, and bold resolutions to free it from their tyranny, rising within them. The press lauded and flattered him; invitations overwhelmed him; patriotic societies rose from nonentity at his presence; and his person and character were themes of inquiry and constant disquisition; imitative would-be orators sprang up in multitudes, and poured forth torrents of anger and abuse against Government, and all was excitement, all radicalism. Suddenly the man on whom the eyes of the people were fixed as their instructor and guide left the metropolis, and when he again appeared in it, did so in the character of ambassador from the Great Mogul. With what abuse he then met, let the periodicals of the day testify. "Where now," it was asked, "are his magniloquent professions of philanthropy, his self-devotedness, and his zeal in the cause of India?" In India, as in England, the public appetite for the drama seems to have been satiated. There is a very elegant theatre in Calcutta, but it is now closed. It languished for want of support, though several talented performers were attached to it. Mrs. Leach, its founder and greatest ornament, was an exquisite actress. A Miss Cowley and a Miss Baxter, too, were both superior and elegant actresses. The latter preserved the theatre to the community on a former occasion, when it seemed about to fall. A circumstance, as true as it is laughable, connected with this theatre, occurred in 1841. Two ladies, engaged in England for it, and sent out, were actually entered among the "imports manifest" for the port of Calcutta, as goods consigned to the manager of the playhouse! The newspaper is as necessary an adjunct to the breakfast table in Calcutta as it is in London. The military man looks eagerly for accounts from the north-west; turns to the lists of promotions and staff appointments, and forgets not to cast his eye at the obituary; the civilian searches for the advertisements which announce fresh arrivals of horses from Persia, Burmah, and Arabia; spinsters' and oilmen's stores from England; and wines and fruits from France; just glancing at the drafts of laws about to be enacted, and conning over the programme of the next races; and the merchant studies the accounts relative to indigo, sugar, and saltpetre. But the greatest excitement prevails when the mail from England is due. How eagerly is it looked for, and when it arrives, how are its contents scanned and analyzed! There are six English newspapers published in Calcutta and its neighborhood. The editors are all men of experience and talent, who know how to suit the appetites of their customers. An English reader, however, taking up one of our Indian newspapers, would think it a very dull affair, for he would find one-third of it editorial and local news, another third advertisements, and the remainder, extracts from the London magazines. Now this is what just suits the Anglo-Indians. The advertisements tell them what to do with their money, the residue informs them of what is going on, and gives them the very pith of literature without putting them to the trouble of cutting it from the crust. The Indian press has been stigmatized in England as a "licentious," a "rascally," and an "unscrupulous" one. This is very far from being the case. It has its faults, but they are not of such a kind. Indeed, it seems to me, that in point of purity, honesty, and morality, it may challenge comparison with the press of Great Britain itself, and most decidedly it possesses a powerful influence with the executive. It has been the means, within the last few years, of causing the abolition of lotteries, the appointment of deputy magistrates, and many other measures tending to the moralization and welfare of the country. It scans and fearlessly criticises the acts of Government; it shows a spirit of active benevolence in pleading the cause of the injured, to whatever class they may belong; and proves itself impartially just. In addition to newspapers several magazines and other periodicals are published in Calcutta. The whole of the periodical publications amount in number to forty. A Quarterly Review has lately been added to those, and also a Magazine, the intended publication of which, and its character, were announced in so curious a manner, that I shall copy the advertisement at full length for the benefit of the reader: "In the press, and will be published on the 1st of July, and continued monthly, a new periodical, entitled, The British India Magazine, and Daily and Monthly Treasury, a most useful Writing and Reading Table Manual of Reference, Memoranda, Expenditure, and Literature, to which is added a Precis of the News of the past month, Political, Fashionable, Social, Commercial, Humorous, and Scientific. It is equally adapted for ladies in general, as for Gentlemen of the Civil, Military, and Uncovenanted Services, Members of the Legal and Medical Professions, Merchants, Indigo and Sugar Planters, and Planters' Assistants, Captains and Officers of Ships, Clerks in Mercantile Houses, &c., or in fact, for all Persons by whom due order and regularity in the expenditure of their Time and Income is considered an object worthy of notice. It is compiled upon a method perfectly novel in the annals of the Press, be it American, Asiatic, or European, and may be had (per dak) in all parts of British India." There, dear reader, match that in Europe, if you can! "Why this is a real Vade Mecum; and, mark you! a _most_ useful one--one equally adapted for ladies in general as for gentlemen, or in fact for _all_ persons." Doubtless it will have a prodigious circulation as soon as its merits are fully known. I have not met with any one who has read it. Books published in India, whatever may be their nature, seldom repay the cost of print and paper. Even the Calcutta newspapers have between them all no more than three or four thousand subscribers, and yet our countrymen there read a great deal. But the works which have emanated from the pens of Anglo-Indian writers have in general been so dull and spiritless, that the community has learned to regard all such with indifference; and as the booksellers regularly supply the newest and best European productions, these inferior viands are almost entirely neglected. An annual has once or twice been published, but did not meet with sufficient patronage to allow of its being regularly continued. The police of India has always been inefficient. Robberies committed under the very noses of the watchmen are common. When they should be on the look-out, they are found sleeping, and when they are awake are careless and negligent. The worst of them in all India are to be found in its great metropolis; in Calcutta, indeed, they seem to possess no honesty or fidelity, and often turn out greater rogues than those they bring to justice. Policemen in the confidence of the European authorities have before now been discovered to be at the head of parties of Thugs, to whom they have thus had the means of communicating all necessary intelligence. The native _employés_ in our courts of justice are equally corrupt. Every Hindoo and Mussulman who has occasion to resort to these courts, takes with him a bribe, knowing that unless he does so, it will be all but impossible for him to obtain a fair and impartial hearing. The _omlah_ who should decline a bribe, would be accounted a fool by his fellow officials. And so some of them make fortunes; _e. g._, a _sheristader_ at one of our civil courts, who had been only ten years in that office, on a salary of one hundred rupees a month, and with no other income save a trifling share in a small patrimonial estate, managed, a short time back, to purchase landed property to the value of fifty thousand rupees. Enter a criminal court, whether the deponent swear by the water of the Ganges held in his hand, or by the Koran laid on his head, or by licking off salt from a sword, or by placing a milk-jug on his back, or any other mode practised among them, you will find that perjury and the grossest exaggeration are with him far more common than truth. If he has received a light box or a gentle kick, he will make oath that he has been half murdered; and if he has been robbed of an article worth twenty rupees, will swear its value was a hundred! A judge has seldom a more conflicting mass of evidence before him on which to decide the merits of a case, than he has who seeks by investigating the principles and conduct of this people to form an opinion of their general character. It seems to me that, as a nation, there is no other people so profligate, so licentious and avaricious, so addicted to lying, dishonesty, procrastination, gossip, and perpetual egotism, so servile, so litigious, and so filthy; and no other so barren of nearly every good quality. Their code of morality, to judge from their practice, is a huge mass of every thing bad, mingled with a few almost imperceptible grains of some things that are good. In India, when we look around us and see the fertility of the earth, the abundance of grain and fruit it produces, we feel astonished that those engaged in agriculture should be, as they really are, almost destitute of a bare subsistence. The Irish peasantry are rarely so badly off as those of Hindostan. Inquiry shows us this is the result of a system prevailing throughout the country, the oppression of the ryots by the Zemindars. Yes, it is not the taxes, which are comparatively light, that cause this evil, but the exactions of the rich natives from the poor ones. The peasantry have no money, they require advances to enable them to cultivate, these are granted to them at the most exorbitant rate of usury by the landlords, and as the one party never gets out of debt, so the other never ceases its extortions. Thus the poor are kept poor. The personal property of a peasant seldom exceeds three or four shillings in value. His wardrobe consists of a piece of coarse cloth, just large enough to gird round his body, a similar piece thrown across the shoulders, and a skull-cap or turban, made of long strips of the same material. And as for his household goods, a few drinking vessels, an earthen jar, an iron plate, and a rickety bedstead comprise in general the whole. Very little attention is paid in Calcutta, or anywhere else in India, to home politics. Indeed they are never discussed at table. Let a man have been ever so violent a Tory or zealous a Whig, six months in India will generally find him, so far as his discourse can testify, neuter. One reason of this is, that if he should attempt to introduce political subjects in conversation, he would not be listened to. It is only when India and Indian interests are concerned, that even a powerful debate in the House meets with the slightest attention. Theatricals, races, retiring funds, public characters, civil and military appointments, these, and such like subjects, form the ordinary topics of discourse. And you may always know when a man has lived any time in India, for a little of the Eastern spice is sure to be found in all his conversation. He cannot conceal it. An anecdote was one day related to me, which exemplifies the sad condition of those habitual consumers of opium, many of whom are to be found among the natives. A Hindoo gentleman, who was accustomed to indulge in it, being about to remove to a distant and almost uninhabited province, in which he knew it would be difficult to procure opium, laid in a large quantity of it to take with him, and made arrangements for having more regularly forwarded. Soon after his arrival at his destination, one of his servants decamped, robbing him of a large amount in money, and a variety of other articles, among which his entire stock of opium was included. The period at which he expected his first auxiliary supply was yet distant; but he immediately sent for a quantity to his agent; as this however did not arrive for a considerable time, he was at a loss for his usual stimulant, pined away in a few days for want of it, and in less than a fortnight died. There are numerous low chop-houses and taverns in Calcutta, to which our poorer countrymen resort, and these are the nests of profligacy and licentiousness. Impositions too, of the grossest and most atrocious nature, are practised by the proprietors of some, on those who frequent them. While in the country I made one of a small party at an annual festival, given by the native officers of a Government establishment in the neighborhood. The worthy _baboo_, who was at the head of the concern, had resolved to prepare for the half-dozen Europeans whom he expected to honor the feast with their presence, two things, of which most _Feringees_ approve, viz., a _pillau_ and a bottle of brandy. Being a Hindoo, however, he had substituted pieces of cheese for meat in the stew, thinking, no doubt, that it would make but little difference to us. Of course, we could not touch it; but we did not mind its loss, as the _aqua vitæ_ yet remained. The master of the ceremonies, however, had forgotten to provide a corkscrew. In this emergency one of our number offered to save the trouble of sending for one by knocking off the neck of the bottle with the butt of his riding-whip. This he attempted, but, missing his aim, broke the bottle and spilt all the liquor. It was too late to send for more, and, as we did not find any thing else to our relish, we came away after all, much to the vexation of our host, without having tasted either bit or drop. How different in the effects they produce on the heart, and in the sentiments they awaken, are the various seasons of the year in India to the same in our native land. How sweetly speaks the changing year to the minds of the unsophisticated and innocent of England's children! Are their hearts oppressed by misfortune? with the spring they revive, and, like nature, shake off the torpor into which, overcome by their sorrows, they were sinking, while Hope, with the flowers, buds once more sweetly forth. The summer sun brings with it cheerfulness and joy; hearts and hopes together expand; they watch, with anxiety and pleasure, the ripening of the dainty fruits, which promise in autumn to replenish their board; they sport in the new-mown and perfume-exhaling fields; they bathe in the clear, unruffled stream, and feel convinced that earth has not yet been despoiled by sin of all its charms, that there are pursuits at once pure and delightful, that man is not made to mourn but to rejoice, and that in nature, the beneficence of the Deity is demonstrated. Even stern winter has something pleasant in his countenance, and is kind enough to make them sometimes long for his return while enjoying the smiles of seasons more congenial; for they with rapture anticipate a meeting with the friends whom he assembles; the sweet congratulations, the merry tales, the laughter-exciting songs, which will then burst forth from affectionate and happy hearts, and make the blazing hearth a scene of unalloyed ecstasy. But it is not thus in the arid and joyless East. We watch the approach of spring with apprehension, for it brings in its train disease and death; we shrink, and seek in the mountains a refuge from the fiery temper and scorching breath of summer; autumn's gloom makes all nature distasteful to us; and winter, though it affords a temporary relief from pain, is totally unproductive of pleasure. During the early part of his Indian career, the military officer in the Hon. Company's service, finds that nearly all the labor, though but a small share of the honor or profit, of sustaining our hardly-earned reputation, falls on his shoulders, and on those of his comrades. The honor is almost entirely engrossed, and what little falls to his share is entirely eclipsed by that allotted to his superiors in rank; the income he derives from his position is insignificant when compared with that of his contemporaries of the civil service. The civilian, it is well known, has a far better chance of making a fortune in twenty, than the soldier in forty years. From the period of his arrival in the country, until after having studied and passed an examination in the Hindee and Persian languages, he is reported qualified for the public service, and receives an appointment; the former enjoys a salary superior to that which is paid to the latter as the allowance of an ensign or cornet. The military man cannot obtain any staff employ which affords an augmentation of pay until he shows himself well qualified in the native languages. Then again, the civilian, if he manifest any ability, may, in ten or twelve years, rise to a high and lucrative post; whereas the poor scarlet-coated hero, unless he have the good fortune to get a quarter-master, or interpreter-ship, or to be appointed an aid-de-camp, has to vegetate on two hundred rupees _per mensem_, for some thirteen or fourteen years, when he may receive an additional hundred with a lieutenancy. Supposing him, however, to have obtained a good snug berth, his income will be a trifle when compared with that of the civilian, who escaped from the school-bench at the same time as himself, while he is always exposed to changes and inconveniences of which the latter knows nothing. But the sub has one comfort amidst all this: "In due time," thinks he, "I may hope to be a general." "Hope told a flattering tale," is, however, the exclamation of many an old veteran in his declining years; and still oftener is it the sorrowful evidence of those who live to mourn over the early extinction of even the most brilliant prospects entertained by youthful relatives, who have fallen a prey to the inclemencies of a climate which their constitutions were unfitted to sustain. But, after all, fortunes are not now-a-days made, even by the most _fortunate_ of our countrymen, so easily as they were some fifty, or even thirty years ago. Nor are we even worthy of comparison with the natives of India in this respect. On the station of Cawnpore are now residing the two sons of a man who, report says, was nothing more than a common _bobarchee_, or cook, in the household of the late king of Lucknow, but who, by his skill in spicing wine, and manufacturing peculiarly delicious draughts of an inebriating nature, attracted the notice of his majesty, a man of licentious and depraved habits, accounted an orthodox Mussulman, but exceedingly fond of the bottle. The monarch having tasted a sample of his _bobarchee's_ elixir, to reward his skill and encourage his merit, presented him with a situation near the royal person, and as, while holding this appointment, he continued to afford him the highest satisfaction, advanced him step by step, and at length, on a vacancy occurring, as a mark of his especial favor, gave him the post of prime minister. This office he continued to hold until his master's decease; and in the mean time obtained so great an influence with the monarch that his majesty is said to have been little better than an automaton, whose movements were regulated by his hand. His chief object, like that of all his countrymen, being to amass wealth, he tyrannized over the people, and left no stone unturned beneath which he deemed it possible that wealth might be discovered. One mode of "raising the wind" was frequently practised by him. A merchant, or other rich man, having just completed the erection of a large and magnificent abode, in which to spend luxuriously the remainder of his days, the minister would forward to him an official dispatch, intimating that the spot on which he had built must be immediately cleared for state purposes, and that no compensation would be given him. Astonished and perplexed at such a notice from an authority it was useless to dispute, the unfortunate victim would, perhaps, endeavor, by pointing out some other eligible spot for the presumed purpose of the government, and offering a _muzzur_ of, it may be, ten thousand rupees, to avert the threatened calamity; but to no purpose, for the wily man, who had risen from the office of a slave to the highest post under the crown, would at first accept of no terms. The petitioner, therefore, turned away in despair, and went back to his house, to which, after a few hours, an emissary of the minister would follow him with a message, intimating that should any thing worthy his acceptance be presented to the premier in his private character, he would use his influence with the king to have the order revoked. Elated with this apparent chance of escape, the unlucky individual thus destined to be "squeezed" would, perhaps, offer a sum larger than the minister had anticipated. But even this was sure to be indignantly refused, and not until the victim had been visited over and over again, and no hope of any larger offer remained, would the bribe be accepted. Thus, and by a variety of other means, the _bobarchee_ gathered a vast amount of wealth. On the death of the monarch who had so blindly favored and elevated him, he fared but poorly, however, for the new king threw him into prison. It was now _his_ turn to bribe, and a timely present of fifty lacs of rupees to an influential person procured his release. Even then he had an immense fortune remaining, and thinking it best to secure both his person and his money against further annoyance and depredation, he left Lucknow, and settled down in our dominions. While residing in Calcutta, I was brought into frequent contact with individuals belonging to the Eurasian or half-caste population, and as comparatively little is known of this class of people in England, I shall here make a few remarks on their character. They are generally the descendants of European fathers by native mothers. The great majority of them are of Portuguese, many of British, and some of French extraction. Altogether they form a community by themselves, as distinct from the European society around them as from the Hindoos and Mahommedans. They do not travel; here they live and multiply, marrying generally among themselves. As they are daily increasing in number, they will, of course, in time become so numerous as to consider themselves a nation, and to demand a place in history. Should such, however, be the case, I do not think they will occupy a very high position in the scale of nations. Great talent (I will not mention _genius_) and sterling abilities seem very scarce amongst them. They devote no attention to the cultivation of the arts, they manifest no zeal in the pursuits of science, no independence, no brotherly feeling towards each other. The females, at best, receive but a superficial education, it generally extending only to reading, writing, and the mechanical performance of music, dancing, and ornamental needlework, and in none of these do they show any extraordinary skill. As girls they are flirts and coquettes; as women they are vain, idle, and slovenly. Let me be candid, however. I have found among the Eurasians men possessing a versatility of talent that would do honor to any of our own countrymen, and females adorned with every grace and accomplishment. But such characters are very, _very_ scarce. From Sharpe's Magazine REVOLUTIONS OF RUSSIA THE ACCESSION OF NICHOLAS I., 1825. FROM THE FRENCH OF ALEXANDER DUMAS. The death of the Emperor Alexander placed the inhabitants of his empire in mourning; for the grief and loyalty of the lower classes were sincere, and their attachment to his person almost idolatrous in its character. The public feeling was increased by the prospect of the reign of an unpopular sovereign afflicted with mental malady, and devoid of courtesy. As for the Grand-duke Nicholas, no one thought of him, but the Russian people dreaded the accession of Constantine, whom they considered their sovereign in right of his primogeniture. In no country in the world has this natural law been so repeatedly broken. Every person in Russia was aware that the heir-presumptive had purchased his marriage with a Polish lady, the object of his ardent affections, by the resignation of his claims to the succession, but that he would abide by that act seemed a conjecture too improbable to be entertained by any one. Constantine was nevertheless sincere when he abandoned his rights, and he hastened to assure his next brother that he was so, by his youngest brother the Grand-duke Michael, through whom he forwarded a letter confirming his resignation of the throne, and acknowledging his next brother as his sovereign. The courier from St. Petersburg crossed the Grand-duke Michael, and brought letters from Nicholas acknowledging Constantine as his Emperor, and urging him to ascend the throne. The wife of Constantine joined her entreaties to those of the next heir, and with rare devotion offered to resign her consort rather than that should give up the empire for her. Constantine, over whose mental agonies the soothing influence of the fair Pole possessed a magical power, continued firm in his resolution to remain in the condition of a subject, and he adhered to the determination he had expressed in the important document of which the Grand-duke Michael was the bearer, and which is here subjoined: "MY VERY DEAR BROTHER,--I received yesterday, with feelings of profound sorrow, intelligence of the death of our adored sovereign, and my benefactor, the Emperor Alexander. In hastening to assure you of the painful feelings this misfortune has excited in my mind, I do only my duty in announcing to you that I have forwarded to her Imperial Majesty, our august mother, a letter, in which I declare, that in consequence of the rescript I obtained from the late Emperor, bearing date February the 2d, 1822, permitting my renunciation of the throne, it is now my unalterable determination to give up to you all my rights to the Empire of Russia. I entreated, at the same time, our beloved mother, to make this declaration public, that the same may be put into immediate execution. After this declaration, I regard it as a sacred duty to beseech your Imperial Majesty to receive the first from me, the oath of fidelity and submission, and to permit me to say that I do not aspire to any other title or dignity than that of Czarowitz, with which my august father deigned to honor my services. My solo happiness, hereafter, will consist in giving your Imperial Majesty continual proofs of my unbounded devotion and respect for your person, of which thirty years of constant and zealous service to the Emperors, my father and brother, are the pledge, in which sentiments I wish to serve your Imperial Majesty, and your successors, until the end of my life, in my present situation and functions. "I am, with the most profound respect, "CONSTANTINE." Upon the receipt of the dispatches which followed this letter, the Grand-duke, called to reign over a vast Empire, by the repeated abdication of his brother of the rights of primogeniture, no longer hesitated,--he published the former correspondence between the Emperor Alexander and the Grand-duke Constantine, with the document already quoted upon the 25th of December, 1825, and fixed the morrow for his recognition as their sovereign by his people. The inhabitants of St. Petersburg, relieved from their dread of a second Paul by the abdication of the heir-presumptive, began to reflect with hope upon the promise which the talents and pure moral character of their new sovereign afforded them. The handsomest and bravest man in his dominions, his fine person attracted attention, and his reserved manners excited awe. His grave carriage, his downcast look, only raised to penetrate to the soul the man who ventured to observe him, with a glance which compelled him to know and reverence his master--his haughty manner of interrogation, so unlike the suavity of Alexander, or the bluntness of Constantine, had isolated him from the rest of the imperial family, and centred him in the bosom of his own domestic circle. The Russian people, feeling their need of a guide, at once comprehended that the cold dignity of this prince concealed an indomitable will, and that, if they themselves had not chosen their new sovereign, God had considered their need, and given to the Russians, who were at once too polished and too barbarous, a man who would grasp the sceptre in an iron hand covered with a velvet glove. The morrow, though considered as a day of joy and festivity, was preceded by some rumors that, like the breath of an approaching tempest, gave warning that some great national crisis was at hand. It was whispered in the evening of the 25th that the abdication of the Czarowitz was a forgery, and that Constantine, then exercising the authority of Viceroy of Poland, was on full march for St. Petersburg with an army to claim the empire as his birthright. In addition to this startling rumor, it was said that several regiments, and among them that of Moscow, had determined to take the oath to no Russian prince but Constantine; and the words, "Let Nicholas live, but let Constantine reign," were heard at intervals in the streets as an intimation of the state of the military pulse. In fact, the conspiracy which had disturbed the last days of the Emperor Alexander was about to raise its head, and seize upon the Great-Duke Constantine's name as its rallying point. This Prince, who had passed his life with the army, was beloved by the soldiers, and the conspirators, who understood little of the character of their new sovereign, supposed the revolt of the regiments stationed in St. Petersburg would compel him to resign his recently acquired rights. They would then summon Constantine to receive the empire, and with it the constitution they had prepared. If he refused to accept it, they intended to imprison him and the rest of the imperial family. They would then establish a republic, an oligarchy in which the despotism of the many would replace the despotism of one. Such was the design of a party composed of military aristocrats, who, bolder than the murderers of Paul, dared, by open force and secret fraud, to contest the throne of Russia with its new sovereign. The soldiers, devoted to Constantine, they designed to make their blind instruments in a conspiracy of which that Prince was not the real object, but their own aggrandisement. Faithful to their plans, the Prince Stah---- and the two Bes---- went to the barracks of the 2d, 3d, 5th and 6th companies of the Regiment of Moscow, whom they knew to be devoted to Constantine. The Prince then informed these men that they were deceived respecting the abdication of the Czarowitz, and pointed out Alexander B---- to their attention, whom he affirmed had been sent from Warsaw to warn them against taking the oath to the Grand-duke Nicholas. The address of Alexander B----, confirming this astounding communication, excited a great sensation among the troops, of which the Prince took advantage by ordering them to load and present. At that instant the Aide-de-camp Verighny and Major-General Fredericks, who commanded the grenadiers, having the charge of the flag, came to invite the officers to visit the colonel of the regiment. Prince Stah----, who believed the favorable moment was come, ordered the soldiers to repulse the grenadiers with _coup-de-crosses_, and to take away their flag, at the same time throwing himself upon Major-General Fredericks, whom B----, on the other side, menaced with a pistol, with the stock of which he felled him to the earth; then, turning upon Major Schenshine, commander of the brigade, who ran to the assistance of his colleague, he knocked him down in a moment, and flinging himself among the grenadiers, successively wounded Grenadier Krassoffski, Colonel Khavosschinski, and Subaltern Moussieff; and cutting his way to the flag, seized and elevated it with a loud and triumphant hurrah. To that cry, and to the sight of the blood so boldly shed to win the flag, the greater part of the regiment replied, "Long live Constantine! down with Nicholas!" Prince Stah----, followed by four hundred men whom he had seduced from their duty, then marched, with drums beating, to the Admiralty quarter. At the gate of the winter palace, the aide-de-camp, the bearer of the news of the revolt, encountered another officer, who brought tidings from the barracks of the grenadier corps of equally alarming import. When that regiment were preparing to take the oath of fidelity to the Emperor Nicholas, the sub-lieutenant Kojenikoff threw himself before the advanced-guard, exclaiming, "It is not to the Grand-duke Nicholas we ought to make oath, but to the Emperor Constantine." He was told that the Czarowitz had abdicated in his next brother's favor. "It is false," was his reply; "totally false; he is on the march for St. Petersburg to reward the faithful and punish the guilty." The regiment, notwithstanding these outcries, continued its march, took the oath of allegiance to the new sovereign, and returned into quarters, without showing any disposition resembling revolt. At dinner-time Lieutenant Suthoff, who had taken the pledge of obedience with the rest, entered at that moment, and addressed himself to his own company in a manner calculated to excite their attention: "My friends, we were wrong to obey the order; the other regiments are in open revolt; they have refused to take the oath, and are at this moment in the Place of the Senate;--put on your uniforms, arm, come on, and follow me; I have your pay in my pocket, which I am ready to distribute without waiting for the ceremony of an order." "But is what you say quite true?" cried many voices. "Stay, here is Lieutenant Panoff,--like myself, one of your best friends,--ask him." "My friends," remarked Panoff, anticipating their question, "you all know that Constantine is your only lawful emperor, and that they wish to dethrone him." "Live Constantine!" replied the soldiers. "Live Nicholas!" exclaimed Colonel Sturler, the commander of the regiment, throwing himself courageously into the hall. "They are deceiving you, my friends; the Czarowitz has really abdicated, and you have now no other emperor than the Grand-duke Nicholas. Live Nicholas!" "Live Constantine!" responded the soldiers. "You are mistaken, soldiers; you are about to take a fatal step; you are deceived," again shouted the colonel. "Comrades, do not abandon me; follow me," cried Panoff; "let those who are for Constantine, unite with me in the cry, 'Long live Constantine!'" More than three parts of those present joined in the cry of "Long live Constantine!" "To the Admiralty! to the Admiralty!" said Panoff, drawing his sword; "follow me, soldiers, follow me." With a wild hurrah two hundred soldiers followed their leader to the place he indicated, whither, though by a different route, the insurgent portion of the Regiment of Moscow had already preceded them. Milarodowich, the military governor of St. Petersburg, a cavalry general, whose splendid charges on the field had gained him the appellation of the Russian Murat, was by this time at the palace, to communicate to his new sovereign the dispositions he had made for the defence of his throne and the capital. He had directed the troops upon whose fidelity he thought he could rely, to march to the winter palace. The first battalion of the regiment Preobrajenski, three regiments of the guard Paulowski, and the battalion of the Sapper and Miners, were those he considered fit for this important service. The emperor saw then that the mutiny was more general than he anticipated; he therefore sent by Major-general Meidhart, to carry orders to the Semenowski guard to repress the mutineers, and to the horse-guards, to hold themselves in readiness to mount. He went down himself to the corps of chief guards of the winter palace, where the regiment of Finland guards were at that time on duty, and ordered them to load their muskets and invest the principal avenues of the palace. At that very moment tumultuous sounds interrupted the voice of the sovereign, occasioned by the approach of the third and sixth companies of the Regiment of Moscow, headed by Prince Stah----, and the two B----, with the captured flag proudly displayed to the wind, and drums beating, to the ominous cry of "Long live Constantine! Down with Nicholas!" The rebel troops debouched on the Admiralty Square, but whether they thought themselves not sufficiently strong, or that they dreaded facing majesty with these treasonable demonstrations, they did not march upon the winter palace, but took up their position against the senate, where they were immediately joined by the grenadier corps, and sixty men in frocks with pistols in their hands, who mingled themselves among the rebel soldiers. The emperor at this crisis appeared from under one of the arches of the palace, approached the grating, and threw a rapid glance on his revolted subjects. He was paler than usual, but was composed and calm. It was whispered that he had resolved to die as became a Christian emperor, and that he had confessed and received absolution of the Church, before he took leave of his family. Every eye was fixed upon him, when the hard gallop of a squadron of cuirassiers was heard on the side of the marble palace; it was the horse-guards, headed by Count Orloff, one of the bravest and most faithful friends of the emperor. Before him the gates expanded; he leaped from his charger, while the regiment ranged itself before the palace. The roll of the drums announced instantly the approach of the grenadiers of Preobrajenski, which arrived in battalions. They entered the court of the palace, where they found the emperor with the empress, and their eldest son, the little Grand-duke Alexander; behind them were ranged the Chevalier guard, who formed an angle with the cuirassiers, leaving between them an open space, which was quickly filled up by the artillery. The revolted regiments regarded these military dispositions with apparent carelessness, while their cries of "Long live Constantine!" "Down with Nicholas!" evidently proved that they expected, and waited there for reinforcements. While affairs were in this state at the palace, the Grand-duke Michael, at the barracks, was opposing his personal influence to the flood-tide of rebellion. Some happy results had followed these attempts, and the bold resolution taken by Count Lieven, captain of the sixth company of the Regiment of Moscow, who arrived in time to shut the gates against the battalion, then about to join their rebel comrades. Placing himself before the soldiers, he drew his sword, and swore on his honor to pass the weapon through the body of the first man who should make a seditious movement to re-open them. At this threat, a young sub-lieutenant advanced, pistol in hand, towards Count Lieven, with the evident intention of blowing out his brains. The count, with admirable presence of mind, struck the officer a blow with the pummel of his sword, which made the instrument leap from his hands; the lieutenant took up the pistol and once more took aim at the count. The young nobleman crossed his arms, and confronted the mutinous officer, while the regiment, mute and motionless, looked on like the seconds of this singular duel. The lieutenant drew back a few steps, followed by the heroic count, who offered him his unarmed breast as if in defiance of his attempt. The lieutenant fired, but the ball took no effect: that it did not strike that generous breast appeared miraculous. Some one knocked at the door. "Who is there?" asked many voices. "His Imperial Highness the Grand-duke Michael," replied those without. Some instants of profound silence followed this announcement. Count Lieven availed himself of the general stupefaction to open the door, no person attempting to prevent that action. The Grand-duke entered on horseback, followed by the officers of ordnance. "What means this inaction at a moment of danger?" asked the Grand-duke. "Am I among traitors or loyal soldiers?" "You are in the midst of the most faithful of your regiments," replied the Count, "of which your Imperial Highness shall have immediate proof." Then raising his drawn sword, he cried, "Long live the Emperor Nicholas!" "Long live the Emperor Nicholas!" shouted the soldiers with one voice. The young sub-lieutenant attempted to speak, but Count Lieven stopped him by touching his arm. "Silence, sir; I shall not mention what has passed; and you will ruin yourself by the utterance of a syllable." His magnanimity awed and convinced the disloyal officer. "Lieven, I confide to you the conduct of this regiment," remarked the Grand-duke emphatically. "I will answer for its loyalty with my life, your Imperial Highness," replied the Count. The Grand-duke departed, and on his rounds, if he received no enthusiastic greeting, at least found what he sought, obedience to the authority of the Emperor Nicholas. Reinforcements came in on every side; the Sappers and Miners drew up in order of battle, before the palace of the Hermitage; the rest of the Regiment of Moscow, rescued from the stain of rebellion by the courage and address of Count Lieven, now proudly debouched by the Perspective of Niewski. The sight of these troops gave a delusive hope to the revolted, who, believing them to be on their side, greeted them with loud cheers; but they were instantly undeceived, for the new-comers ranged themselves along the Hotel of the Tribunals, facing the palace, and with the Cuirassiers, Artillery, and Chevalier guards, inclosed the revolted in a circle of steel. A moment after, they heard the chant of the priests. It was the Patriarch, who came out of the church of Casan, followed by all his clergy, and preceded by the holy banners. He now commanded the revolted "in the name of heaven, to return to their duty." The soldiers, for the first time perhaps in their lives, regarded with contempt the pictures which they had been accustomed from infancy to regard with superstitious veneration, and they desired the Patriarch "to let them alone, since if heavenly things belonged to the priestly jurisdiction, they could take care of those of earth." The Patriarch continued his injunctions to obedience, notwithstanding this discouraging rebuff, but the Emperor ordered him to desist and retire. Nicholas himself was resolved to make one effort to bring back these rebels to their duty. Those who surrounded the Emperor wished to prevent him from risking his person, but he boldly replied, "It is my game that is playing, and it is but fair play on my part to set my life on the stake." He ordered the gate to be opened, but scarcely had he been obeyed, before the Grand-duke Michael approached him, and whispered in his ear that that part of the Regiment Preobrajenski by which he was then surrounded, had made common cause with the rebels, and that the Prince T., their commander, whose absence he had remarked with astonishment, was at the head of the conspiracy. Nicholas remembered that four-and-twenty years before the same regiment had kept guard before the red palace, while its Colonel, Prince Talitzen, strangled the Emperor Paul, his father. His situation was terrible, but he did not even change countenance; he only showed that he had formed a desperate resolution. In an instant he turned and gave his orders to one of his generals, "Bring me hither the Grand-duke." The general returned with the young prince: the Emperor raised the boy in his arms, and advancing to the grenadiers, said, "Soldiers, if I am killed, behold your sovereign. Open your ranks; I confide him to your loyalty." A long, loud hurrah, a cry of enthusiasm that came from the very heart of these suspected soldiers, reëchoed to that of the Emperor, whose magnanimous confidence had won their admiration. The most guilty among them dropped their weapons and opened their arms to receive the heir of the Empire. The imperial pledge was placed with colors in the midst of the regiment, a guarded and sacred asylum for honor and innocence. The Emperor mounted his horse and went out of the gate, where he was met by his generals, who implored him not to go any further, as the rebels openly avowed their intention of killing their sovereign, and their arms were loaded. The Emperor made a sign to them with his hand to leave him a free passage, and forbidding them to accompany him, spurred his horse and galloped forward till he arrived within pistol-shot. "Soldiers," cried he, "I am told that you wish to kill me. Is that true? If it is, here I am!" There was a pause, while the Emperor sat on horseback, remaining like an equestrian statue between the two bodies of troops. Twice the word fire was heard among the rebel ranks, and twice some feeling of respect to the dauntless courage of the sovereign restrained the execution of the order; but at the third command some muskets loaded with ball were discharged, which whistled past the Emperor without striking him, but wounded, at a hundred paces behind him, Colonel Velho and many soldiers. At that moment the Grand-duke Michael and Count Milarodowich galloped towards the Emperor, the regiment of cuirassiers and those of the Chevalier guards made a forward movement--the artillerymen were about to apply their matches to the cannon. "Halt," cried the Emperor. All obeyed. "General," said he to Count Milarodowich, "go to these unfortunate men and endeavor to bring them to their allegiance." The Count and the Grand-duke Michael rode forward, but the rebels received them with a shower of ball, accompanied by their war-cry, "Live Constantine!" "Soldiers," cried the Count, who was conspicuous alike by his fine martial figure and splendid uniform covered with orders; "soldiers, behold this sabre," and he flourished above his head a magnificent Turkish one, the hilt of which was set with jewels, and advancing with it to the front ranks of the rebels, he continued, "This sabre was given me by his Imperial Highness the Czarowitz, and on my honor, I will make oath upon its blade, that you have been deceived, that the Czarowitz has abdicated the imperial crown, and that your real and legitimate sovereign is the Emperor Nicholas." Cries of "Live Constantine!" and the report of a pistol were the replies given by the revolted to the address of the Count, whose action with the sword arm had left his side exposed to the enemy. He was seen to reel in the saddle. Another pistol was aimed at the Grand-duke Michael, but the soldiers of the Marine, though included in the revolt, seized the arm of the assassin. Count Orloff and the cuirassiers faced the heavy fire of the musketry, and enveloped in their ranks the wounded Milarodowich, the Grand-duke Michael and the Emperor Nicholas, whom they carried off by force to the palace. The Count, wounded to death, sat his horse with difficulty, and the moment he arrived at the palace, fell into the arms of those who surrounded him. The Emperor, notwithstanding the late unfortunate attempt, still wished to make one last endeavor to bring back the revolted, but while he was issuing orders to that effect, the Grand-duke Michael seized the match: "Fire," cried he, "fire upon the assassins." At that moment four cannons opened upon the rebels, and paid with usury the deaths they had sent into the loyal ranks of the imperialists. Before the voice of the Emperor could stop the slaughter, a second discharge followed the first. The effect of these volleys within reach of pistol-shot was terrible. More than sixty men of the grenadier corps of the Regiment of Moscow and the Marine guards fell; the rebel troops fled, some by the street Galernain, some by the English quay or by the bridge Isaac, others across the frozen waters of the Neva, then a plain of ice, but all were hotly pursued by the Chevalier guards at full gallop. That evening Count Milarodowich, who was struggling with the agonies of death, expressed a wish to see the bullet which had given him his mortal wound. The chirurgeon, who had successfully traced and extracted the ball, put it into his patient's hand. The expiring warrior carefully examined the missive, its weight, and form, and found it deficient in calibre. "I am satisfied," said he, "that ball was aimed by no soldier." Five minutes after these words, he breathed his last. He then paid the debt of nature, the only debt he ever paid in his life. Handsome, valiant, the finest horseman in the army, and the idol of his own soldiers, the Russian Murat lost his life by the hand of a Russian, but not of a Russian soldier. The rival of the _cidevant_ King of Naples loved display in every shape; but the field of battle, at the head of his cavalry, was the theatre on which he best loved to exhibit his martial form, splendid horsemanship, and daring courage. The gaming-table found him as reckless of his fortune as the field of his life, and the bravest cavalry general in the Russian service was a ruined gamester, loaded with debts which his death acquitted by leaving him insolvent. In paying the debt of nature Count Milarodowich surrendered his only personal possession. The next day, at nine o'clock in the morning, while the population of his capital was yet uncertain whether the rebellion was effectually crushed, Nicholas, Emperor of Russia, gave his hand to the Empress to assist her into a droski which stood before the gates of the winter-palace, and drove through the streets of St. Petersburg. He stopped before the barracks as if to offer his bold bosom to the bullet or the steel of the assassin. The sight of his fine countenance, shadowed by the floating plumes of his military hat, far from exciting treasonable demonstrations, awakened lively expressions of loyalty and devotion to his person, and cries of "Long live Nicholas!" greeted his fortunate rashness. The Russian people knew and recognized in him a brave man and great sovereign. The trial of the chief conspirators took place under the shadow of night and secrecy; they were brought from all parts of the empire to St. Petersburg. The sentence, but not the examination of the guilty, alone was made public; eighty persons were condemned to death, or life-long exile in Siberia. The most powerful, according to the custom of Russia, increased the population of Siberia; among these we find the name of Prince T.: his wife, with rare devotion, petitioned and obtained from the Emperor permission to accompany her husband to that dreary land of woe and crime. The decimation of the disloyal but seduced regiments was an act of severe military justice that astonished Europe, but secured the tranquillity of Russia. The son of the Emperor Paul, whose life and death had been the stake of the military contest of December, 1825, might be better excused than any other man for that tremendous sentence. He had been fired upon by his own soldiers while unarmed and confiding his person to their generosity; his brother, and his plenipotentiary, Count Milarodowich, had been aimed at by assassins, and the Count had died of his wound. A flash of magnanimity enlightened this cloud of severity. In the list of conspirators the Emperor remarked the name of Suwarrow, a name dear to Russia and associated with her victories. He chose to examine this young man, the grandson of the great field-marshal, himself. His countenance and manner, unusually gentle, seemed to inspire confidence. The questions he asked this lieutenant only required a simple affirmative or denial, and they were not of a nature to elicit a confession of guilt. "Gentlemen, you see and hear," remarked the Emperor to his council, "it is as I have told you, a Suwarrow cannot be a rebel," and he acquitted the prisoner, and gave him a captain's commission and sent him back to his regiment; but unfortunately for the conspirators, this lieutenant was the only person who bore that favored name. All were not Suwarrows. It was remarked that those who were executed uttered these words as their last legacy to posterity, "Live Russia! Live Liberty! our avengers are at hand!" Their war-cry of "Live Constantine!" false to their hearts, was not repeated by lips which the presence of death had rendered then the echo of truth. The funeral pomp of the widowed Empress Elizabeth, whose remains were brought for interment to St. Petersburg in this same month of December, turned the thoughts of its inhabitants from these scenes of civil strife and the executions that followed them, to a Princess, whom for twenty-four years they had regarded as a link between the human and angelic natures. The memory of these events seemed buried in that sepulchre, which the tears of a grateful people had consecrated to the remembrance of the consort of the deceased Emperor Alexander. From Nimrod's Bacchanalia Memorabilia. DRINKING EXPERIENCES. The pleasure imparted by wine to me is great, but very short-lived: it appears to mount, as it were, to a crisis; after which it somewhat rapidly declines. In fact, it does not enliven me beyond a certain pitch. It then ceases its charms; doubtless, because my stomach, the centre of all sympathy, feels oppressed by it. I grow dull, my head aches, I am inclined for sleep, and wish for bed.--But it does not rob me of self-possession, nor incline me to wrangle or quarrel. On the contrary, it excites my love, not my hatred, and greatly expands my heart. I have granted many a favor, and promised many more, by the inspiration of the jolly god. I have shaken hands with, sworn eternal friendship for, many a man, and made love to many a woman, for whom, vulgarly speaking, I cared not a rush. In short, I have a hundred times made a fool of myself by talking, boasting--not lying, for I have ever held that low vice in abhorrence--and occasionally laid wagers, and matched horses, without a chance of winning. But, as I have already stated, I never was so overcome by wine as not to know where I was, and what I said. In fact, it never had the power to make me forget that I was born a gentleman; and I am happy in the reflection, that I have travelled thus far through life without having been once called upon to make an apology for an insult given, either when drunk or sober; nor to demand but two, and those were the result of excess in wine. One was tendered to me on the first dawn of returning reason; the other, I am sorry to say, at the pistol's mouth. But the events I am alluding to occurred many years back, when, as a well-known sporting old earl of the last century said of himself, "the devil was very strong in me." I never was drunk, from drinking spirits, more than twice, which was with very strong brandy and water. Now he that praises drunkenness is a sot convicted on his own evidence; but were I to drink for what is called drinking's sake--that is, to acquire an artificial state of pleasurable excitement--brandy should be the liquor I should fly to to secure it. The "divine luxuries of opium" I never yet tasted; but the powers of wine upon me are, comparatively with brandy, truly insignificant. At the period I am alluding to, it not only appeared to afford me a sure panacea for all evils, past, present, and to come, but to open unlimited prospects of future bliss. I felt as if I were possessed of more than human powers, and that there was nothing I willed I could not do. In short, it eventually made me mad; and, on each occasion, I nearly lost my life, together with my senses. On the one, I attempted to go to sea, by moonlight, in a small open boat, without either rudder or sail, and in the current of a strong tide running out of a Welsh bay; on the other, although more than two hundred miles distant from it, I got upon a coachbox to go to London, in my evening dress; and did "go," till I tumbled off it into the road. To the latter excursion I was no doubt indebted to my early propensity to driving coaches; but having at no time of my life had a fancy for the sea, I owed my intended aquatic trip to a member of the yacht club, who was my partner in the debauch. Death, says Johnson, is more than usually unwelcome to a rich man; and as my friend is possessed of ten thousand a year, he was by no means a fit subject to be mangled by Welsh crabs. Had we, however, accomplished our purpose in unmooring the boat, we should never have been heard of in this world any more. The day would have come upon us both "unawares." To return to wine. The effect of wine is generally supposed to invigorate the understanding, and to stimulate the mental powers--of poets, especially. Thus Horace asks Bacchus whither he is about to transport him? But by the words "_tui plenum_," I think he must have meant full, not of his wine, but of his divinity, without the aid of which he felt himself unequal to pen a panegyric upon Octavius. Now, were I to say that it is in the power of wine to sink me below mortality--in other words, to make a brute of me--I should certainly go beyond my tether; but I can safely assert that, if I were a poet, so far from realizing Horace's expectations of it, it would lead me _down_, not up, the hill. In fact, when under its immediate influence--I do not mean drunk, but "pretty considerably sprung," as the term is--I can scarcely indite a common letter. It appears to stultify my ordinary capacities. I must, however, admit that, on the first waking after a plentiful allowance of good wine, some bright thoughts have come across my mind, and, when not lost by an intervening nap, have been found worthy of being noted down, and now and then made serviceable. It would indeed be an act of ingratitude to the jolly god, were I to omit the fact, that I once did rise from my bed, at four o'clock in the morning, after having sacrificed largely the overnight, and wrote the best thing I ever did write; at least, so said a certain learned sergeant, who now wears a silk gown, and who told me he would have given five hundred pounds to have been the author of it. But it never saw the light. It was a satire; and "_Nulla venenato litera mixta joco est_," has ever been, and shall ever continue to be, my motto. I wish not to dip my pen in gall. I have found wine, taken to excess for only a few days, to depress the mind more than the body; that is to say, when, as a friend of mine expresses himself, "the _animus_ is flown;" and I once heard this natural effect of over-mental excitement admirably illustrated by a very illiterate coachman of the old school. "Was Jem drunk when he upset his coach the other night?" was a question I put to one of this fraternity some years back, when drinking to excess with them was the order of both day and night. "Why, sir," he replied, "he warn't drunk, nor he warn't sober; _the liquor was a-dying in him, and he was stupid_." Now, this strongly resembles my own case. Had I to write for a prize, and that prize were immortality, I would not depend much upon the assistance of Bacchus. I would rather rely on my own natural powers, gently stimulated by wine when they flagged. In all ages of the world, however, clever men, and poets especially, have been more or less addicted to drinking to excess. The austere Cato, the voluptuous Cæsar, were each given to what Seneca calls the _intemperantia bibendi_--notwithstanding which, according to Seneca, the wisdom of the former received no blemish from this cause. His daughter, indeed, admitted that it softened the rigor of her father's virtues. Titus, the delight of human kind, sat late after his dinner: his brother, Domitian, the tyrant and fly-tormentor, never later than the setting sun. The influence of wine upon poets has long since been proverbial. Poetry, in fact, has been called the wine of the mind; and wine, like love, makes poets. The old Greeks drank and sang; and Anacreon would not have been Anacreon, but for the inspiring juice of the grape, as he himself tells us in his celebrated hymn to the full-blown rose-- "Crown me, and instant, god of wine, Strains from my lyre shall reach thy shrine." Indeed, the first prize contended for by poets was a cask of wine; and the Bacchic hymn was called "The Hymn of the Cask." Horace, in fact, pronounces a water-drinking poet to be little worth--even the springs of Castalia will not avail; but after his bottle of Falernian, he boldly asserts, in his ode to Bacchus, in which he wishes to soap Cæsar, that no daring was then too great for his muse. Both Homer and Horace must have liked wine, and experience on occasions its good effects, or they would not have been the authors of such glowing panegyrics upon it. It is true the latter is moral in the midst of his gayety, uniting the wisdom of the philosopher with the playfulness of the poet; still, and notwithstanding he preaches up moderation in desires, as the chief source of human happiness, he must have been _secretly_ attached to the Epicurean school, in our acceptation of that term. We may, I think, glean this from various passages of his several works, and especially from the compliment he pays Tibullus on the knowledge he displays of the _savoir vivre_ at his own house and table. Again, although in his ode to Apollo he wished us to believe he did not like it, the one to his Cask is an incentive to _drinking_. In another to Telephus, he himself gets "as drunk as a lord;" and had a pretty good bousing match on his escape from the tree, as well as at his party on Cæsar's birth-day. Then how does he promise to welcome Macænas when he came to sup with him? _To take a hundred bumpers with him for friendship's sake!_ Neither is this all. Notwithstanding his telling his friend that his wine was not such as _he_ ought to drink, it is evident he did not "think small beer of it" himself. He notes its age, seals the casks with his own hands, and taps a fresh one on any very memorable occasion. In short, but for a bodily infirmity to which he was subject, there is little doubt but he would have been one of the jolly dogs of his own day. At all events, as has been elegantly said of him, "he tuned his harp to pleasure, and to easy temper of his own soul." How happens it, it may be asked, that not a single Grecian has ascended Parnassus for so many ages back, and that the vocal hills of Arcadia no longer resound to the Doric reed? There are, we know, several reasons given for this, such as a despotic government, alteration in the language, &c., &c.; but the most powerful cause of the literary degeneracy of this once justly celebrated people is, doubtless, in the substitution of the enervating luxuries of coffee, tobacco, and opium, for the invigorating powers of good wine. It was not so in Anacreon's days. Let us now turn to the eminently gifted men of later times. Sir Richard Steele spent half his hours in a tavern. In fact, he may be said to have measured time by the bottle; as on being sent for by his wife, he returned for answer that "he would be with her in half a bottle." The like may be said of Savage; and Addison was as dull as an alderman till he was three parts drunk. Neither would he stop at that point. It is on record of him that he once drank till he vomited in the company of Voltaire; which called forth the cutting remark, that the only good thing that came out of his mouth, in Voltaire's presence, was the wine that had gone into it. It is also recorded of Pitt, but I cannot vouch for the truth of it, that two bottles of port wine per diem was his usual allowance, and that it was to _potens Bacchus_ he was indebted for the almost superhuman labor he went through during his short, but actively employed life. His friend and colleague, Harry Dundas, a clever man also in his way, went the pace with him over the mahogany; and the joke about the Speaker in his chair, after they had dined together, cannot be forgotten. Pitt could see no Speaker; but his friend, like Horace with the candle, saw two. Sheridan, latterly, without wine, was a driveller. He sacrificed to it talents such as no man I ever heard or read of possessed, for no subject appeared to be beyond his reach. I knew him when I was a boy, and thought him then something more than human. The learned Porson would get drunk in a pothouse--so would Robert Burns, the poet; and Byron drank brandy and water by bucketsful. Fox was a thirsty soul, and drank far too much wine for either a politician or a play-man; yet, like Nestor over the bowl, he was always great. But a contemporary of his, likewise a great play-man and a clever fellow, out-heroded Herod. He estimated his losses in hogsheads of claret; and it was humorously said of John Taylor--for such was his name--that, after a certain hour of the night, "he could not be removed _without a permit_, as he had more than a dozen of claret on board." Two of the finest actors that ever graced the British stage could scarcely be kept sober enough to perform their parts: But enough of this. Wine taken in excess is the bane of talent. Like fire upon incense, it may cause rich fumes to escape; but the dregs and refuse, when the sacrifice is ended, are little worth. By a long continuance, indeed, in any vicious indulgence, the mind, like the body, is reduced to a state of atrophy; and knowledge, like food, passes through it without adding to its strength. But repeated vinous intoxication soonest unfits a man for either mental or bodily exertion. Equally with the effect of violent love, so powerfully set forth by the poet Lucretius, it creates an indolence and listlessness which damps all noble pursuits, as well as a neglect of all useful affairs-- "Labitur interea res et vadimonia fiunt; Languent officia, atque ægrotat fama vacillans." There are countries--half civilised ones, of course--in which intoxication is esteemed the greatest of human pleasures; and Lord Bacon thought it only second to love. Much of the folly of drunkenness, however, in the middle and upper orders of society, proceeds from a laudable desire to exercise in the extreme the rites of hospitality. To the "honest pride of hospitality," as Byron calls it, many a man who hates drinking, has given many a slice of his perhaps already shaken constitution. And here is really something like an excuse. Independently of the making welcome our friends, and seeing ourselves surrounded by them under our own roof, being one of the first among the ordinary comforts of life, hospitality has ever been considered a primary social duty. The best definition of real hospitality is given by Cicero, who admits that there is nothing that contributes more effectually to the happiness of human life than society,--distinguishing from the sensual gratification of the palate, the pleasing relaxation of the mind, which he says is best produced by the freedom of social converse, always most agreeable at the table. Neither does he appear to be an enemy to a cheerful glass; and we must admire the definition he gives of drinking parties. "The Greeks," says he, "call them by a word which signifies computations, whereas we more emphatically denominate them convivial meetings; intimating thereby, that it is in a communication of this nature that life is most truly enjoyed." That Cicero, however, was temperate, may be concluded by the fact of his having written when past his sixtieth year his celebrated Philippies, in which his powers of reasoning are more vigorous, and his language more touching, than in any of his former and younger orations. He used wine in moderation; and it is thus that it answers the ends of Providence. It then exhilarates and strengthens the mind, as well as the body, and, like the bloom on the female cheek, beautifies it, and shows health. There are said to be three modes of bearing the ills of life, indifference, philosophy, and religion; and many add--the bottle. But the effect of wine on grief is of a doubtful nature. It may deaden the pang for a while, but it will return on the morrow with redoubled force, and with the powers of the sufferer less equal to contend with it. Nevertheless, the maxim of Anacreon, that "when Bacchus enters our cares sleep," is in part true; and a temporary oblivion of care and disappointment is generally produced by an agreeable party and good cheer. And thus is Shakespeare justified in calling wine the merry cheerer of the human heart, as well as others who have asserted that it not only creates pleasure, but mitigates pain. For the latter purpose, indeed, it was formerly given to condemned malefactors, previously to their suffering; "Give strong drink to him who is ready to perish," says the author of the book of Proverbs, "and wine unto them that be of heavy hearts. _Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more._" If a tranquil mind and freedom from pain make up the sum of a happy life, how great is the value of this cordial drop, and how thankful should we be for it! How sacred and profane writers agree in the essential qualities of the pure juice, especially in the relief of wretchedness. "See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing," is no exaggeration of its power in lessening anguish from past misfortunes, or present ills; but in the following translation of a fragment of Bacchylides, we see what rays of brightness it can throw over our future prospects: "Thirsty comrade! would'st thou know All the raptures that do flow From those sweet compulsive rules Of our ancient drinking schools? First, the precious draught shall raise Amorous thoughts in giddy maze, Mingling Bacchus' present treasure With the hopes of higher pleasure. Next, shall chase through empty air All th' intolerant hosts of care; Give thee conquest, riches, power; Bid thee scale the guarded tower; Bid thee reign o'er land and sea With unquestioned sov'reignty. Thou thy palace shall behold, Bright with ivory and gold; While each ship that ploughs the main, Filled with Egypt's choicest grain, Shall unload her ponderous store, Thirsty comrade, at thy door." Yet guided by my own experience, of the various effects of wine on the mind, I cannot go quite the length of some of its panegyrists. So far, indeed, from thinking with Ovid that it takes even the wrinkles out of the face, I am more inclined to believe that it adds to their number by the excitement that it creates; and although the festive pleasures of the table, in addition to the society of friends, may cheer the heart, and even irradiate gloom, the talisman is not there by which the cause may be reached, and the pain destroyed, beyond the hour. "Though gay companions o'er the bowl Dispel awhile the sense of ill; Though pleasure fires the madd'ning soul, The heart--the heart is lonely still." No--although I fear I am about to speak without experience now--it is my opinion, that neither the resources of the philosopher, nor the consolations of religion, nor conscious worth, unaccompanied by native fortitude and energy of mind, are of much avail against real grief. Why they should not be, is no business of mine to inquire; nor would it be becoming me to question the designs of Providence. But this much I may affirm without fear of offence,--Human life is prudently chequered with good and evil; and the most likely way to enjoy it, is to make the best of the one while the other is away. The powerful influence of wine on society is estimated by Dr. Johnson, in the _Rambler_: "In the bottle," says he, "discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence." Nothing is more true than this; although it sometimes happens that the first is looked for in vain, the second proves false, and the latter exceeds its bounds. The union of sensual and intellectual enjoyment, however, is requisite to complete the happiness of "the double animal"--the perfect man; and as all mankind are not philosophers, much less abstract ones, after-dinner conversation would generally be flat without the genial influence of good wine. Indeed, the wit of the wittiest man, and the most agreeable companion I ever sat down with, appeared to rise in brilliancy with every glass he drank; and when, to use an expression of his own, he felt himself "vinously inclined,"--that is to say, when he had what Cicero calls the "_furor vinolentus_" upon him, there were no bounds to his humorous sallies. Upon old men wine is generally well bestowed. "----Give me a bowl of wine; I have not that alacrity of spirit Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have," exclaims the bold King Richard; and I once heard a fine old sportsman, and very worthy man, declare, after a bottle of good port, that he would not exchange the present--his eightieth year--for the gayest he had ever spent. Luckily for the credit of the human race--although Cleopatra hunted and _drank_ with Antony--there has been, in all ages of the world, a sense of shame attached to the vice of drunkenness in women, having any pretensions to character, as something contrary to their more refined nature. By the ancient Roman laws it was punishable even by death; and we find that even the abandoned women who celebrated the Bacchanalia were ashamed to do so, except under the disguise of masks. To the credit of the present age, drunkenness in women is not a common failing; but when they once yield to the vice, they have less moderation in the indulgence of it than men have. That such was the case in other ages and countries, may be gleaned from a passage in a comic play-writer, contemporary with Plato, which has been thus accurately rendered: "Remark how wisely ancient art provides, The broad-brimmed cup, with flat expanded sides; A cup contrived for _man's_ discreeter use, And sober potions of the generous juice. But _woman's_ more ambitious, thirsty soul Soon long'd to revel in the plenteous bowl; Deep and capacious as the swelling hold Of some stout bark, she shaped the hollow mould; Then, turning out a vessel like a tun, Simpering, exclaimed--_Observe, I drink but one_." To return to the effect of wine on the ruder sex. Next to a smoky house and a scolding wife, it is the greatest trial of the temper to which that of man is exposed. In fact, it is a test by which it may be proved; and the advice of Horace is excellent, _not to choose a friend till we have put him to this test_. Addison is likewise happy in his remark on this point. "Wine," says he, "is not to be drunk by all who can swallow;" and truer words were never written. It has an extraordinary effect upon low and uncultivated minds; as was exemplified in late times, when war prices and abundance of money placed it within the reach of the English commonalty. Rows and broils, with marked insolence towards superiors, were the concomitant results. Neither is the observation of Pliny a whit less just. He says truth is vulgarly and _properly_ attributed to wine; and I am decidedly of his opinion. In fact, our English term, "disguised in liquor," is improperly used; inasmuch as a blackguard when drunk is in his nature a blackguard when sober. The tongue, says the Bible, is at all times an unruly member; but when under the influence of wine, it is still more apt to run riot. Then, again, drunken men are given to "err in vision and stumble in judgment," and to put constructions upon words which they were not intended to convey. When we sacrifice to Bacchus, we are not favored by Mercury; and the well-known adage of "wine in, wit out," is but an abbreviation of the equally well proved axiom, that wine raises the imagination, but depresses the judgment. Neither is the highly bred gentleman, if much addicted to intoxication, quite safe to be admitted into close friendship, inasmuch as he renders himself, by the practice, unworthy of confidence. Wine so unlocks the cabinet of the heart, that it is easily looked into when we are off our guard. From an article in the "Home Book of the Picturesque," just published by G. P. Putnam. AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY COMPARED. BY J. FENIMORE COOPER. The great distinction between American and European scenery, as a whole, is to be found in the greater want of finish in the former than in the latter, and to the greater superfluity of works of art in the old world than in the new. Nature has certainly made some differences, though there are large portions of continental Europe that, without their artificial accessories, might well pass for districts in our own region; and which forcibly remind the traveller of his native home. As a whole, it must be admitted that Europe offers to the senses sublimer views and certainly grander, than are to be found within our own borders, unless we resort to the Rocky Mountains, and the ranges in California and New Mexico. In musing on these subjects, the mind of the untravelled American naturally turns first towards England. He has pictured to himself landscapes and scenery on which are impressed the teeming history of the past. We shall endeavour to point out the leading distinctions between the scenery of England and that of America, therefore, as the course that will probably be most acceptable to the reader. The prevalent characteristic of the English landscape is its air of snugness and comfort. In these respects it differs entirely from its neighbor, France. The English, no doubt, have a great deal of poverty and squalid misery among them. But it is kept surprisingly out of the ordinary view. Most of it, indeed, is to be found in the towns, and even in them it is concealed in out of the way places and streets seldom entered by the stranger. There are places in America, more especially in the vicinities of the large towns, that have a strong resemblance to the more crowded portions of England, though the hedge is usually wanting and the stone wall is more in favor among ourselves than it appears ever to have been among our ancestors. The great abundance of wood, in this country, too, gives us the rail and the board for our fences, objects which the lovers of the picturesque would gladly see supplanted by the brier and the thorn. All that part of Staten Island, which lies nearest to the quarantine ground, has a marked resemblance to what we should term suburban English landscape. The neighborhoods of most of the old towns in the northern States, have more or less of the same character; it being natural that the descendants of Englishmen should have preserved as many of the usages of their forefathers as were practicable. We know of no portion of this country that bears any marked resemblance to the prevalent characteristics of an ordinary French landscape. In France there are two great distinctive features that seem to divide the materials of the views between them. One is that of a bald nakedness of formal _grandes routes_, systematically lined with trees, a total absence of farm-houses, fences, hedges, and walls, little or no forest, except in particular places, scarcely any pieces of detached woods, and a husbandry that is remarkable for its stiffness and formality. The fields of a French acclivity, when the grain is ripe, or ripening, have a strong resemblance to an ordinary Manchester pattern-card, in which the different cloths, varying in color, are placed under the eye at one glance. The effect of this is not pleasing. The lines being straight and the fields exhibiting none of the freedom of nature. Stiffness and formality, indeed, impair the beauty of nine-tenths of the French landscapes; though as a whole the country is considered fine, and is certainly very productive. The other distinctive feature to which we allude is of a directly contrary character, being remarkable for the affluence of its objects. It often occurs in that country that the traveller finds himself on a height that commands a view of great extent, which is literally covered with _bourgs_ or small towns and villages. This occurs particularly in Normandy, in the vicinity of Paris and as one approaches the Loire. In such places it is no unusual thing for the eye to embrace, as it might be in a single view, some forty or fifty cold, grave-looking, chiselled _bourgs_ and villages, almost invariably erected in stone. The effect is not unpleasant, for the subdued color of the buildings has a tendency to soften the landscape and to render the whole solemn and imposing. We can recall many of these scenes that have left indelible impressions on the mind, and which, if not positively beautiful in a rural sense, are very remarkable. That from the heights of Montmorenci, near Paris, is one of them; and there is another, from the hill of St. Catharine, near Rouen, that is quite as extraordinary. The greater natural freedom that exists in an ordinary American landscape, and the abundance of detached fragments of wood, often render the views of this country strikingly beautiful when they are of sufficient extent to conceal the want of finish in the details, which require time and long-continued labor to accomplish. In this particular we conceive that the older portions of the United States offer to the eye a general outline of view that may well claim to be even of a higher cast, than most of the scenery of the old world. There is one great charm, however, that it must be confessed is nearly wanting among us. We allude to the coast. Our own is, with scarcely an exception, low, monotonous and tame. It wants Alpine rocks, bold promontories, visible heights inland, and all those other glorious accessories of the sort that render the coast of the Mediterranean the wonder of the world. It is usual for the American to dilate on the size of his bays and rivers, but objects like these require corresponding elevation in the land. Admirable as is the bay of New-York for the purposes of commerce, it holds but a very subordinate place as a landscape among the other havens of the world. The comparison with Naples that has so often been made, is singularly unjust, there not being two bays of any extent to be found, that are really less alike than these. It was never our good fortune to see Constantinople or Rio de Janeiro, the two noblest and most remarkable scenes of this kind, as we have understood, known to the traveller. But we much question if either will endure the test of rigid and severe examination better than the celebrated Gulf of Napoli. The color of the water, alone, is a peculiar beauty of all the Mediterranean bays: it is the blue of the deep sea, carried home to the very rocks of the coast. In this respect, the shores of America, also, have less claim to beauty than those of Europe, generally. The waters are green, the certain sign of their being shallow. Similar tints prevail in the narrow seas between Holland and England. The name of Holland recalls a land, however, that is even lower than any portion of our own with which we are acquainted. There are large districts in Holland that are actually below the level of the high tides of the sea. This country is a proof how much time, civilization, and persevering industry, may add even to the interest of a landscape. While the tameness of the American coast has so little to relieve it or to give it character, in Holland it becomes the source of wonder and admiration. The sight of vast meadows, villages, farm-houses, churches, and other works of art, actually lying below the level of the adjacent canals, and the neighboring seas, wakes in the mind a species of reverence for human industry. This feeling becomes blended with the views, and it is scarcely possible to gaze upon a Dutch landscape without seeing, at the same time, ample pages from the history of the country and the character of its people. On this side of the ocean, there are no such peculiarities. Time, numbers, and labor, are yet wanting to supply the defects of nature, and we must be content, for a while, with the less teeming pictures drawn in our youth and comparative simplicity. On the American coast the prevailing character is less marked at the northward and eastward than at the southward. At some future day, the Everglades of Florida may have a certain resemblance to Holland. They are the lowest land, we believe, in any part of this country. Taking into the account the climate and its productions, the adjacent mountains, the most picturesque outlines of the lakes, and the works of art which embellish the whole, we think that most lovers of natural scenery would prefer that around the lakes of Como and Maggiore to that of any other place familiarly known to the traveller. Como is ordinarily conceived to carry off the palm in Europe, and it is not probable that the great mountains of the East or any part of the Andes, can assemble as many objects of grandeur, sweetness, magnificence and art, as are to be found in this region. Of course, our own country has nothing of the sort to compare with it. The Rocky Mountains, and the other great ranges in the recent accession of territory, must possess many noble views, especially as one proceeds south; but the accessories are necessarily wanting, for a union of art and nature can alone render scenery perfect. In the way of the wild, the terrific, and the grand, nature is sufficient of herself: but Niagara is scarcely more imposing than she is now rendered lovely by the works of man. It is true that the celebrated cataract has a marked sweetness of expression, if we may use such a term, that singularly softens its magnificence, and now that men are becoming more familiar with its mysteries, and penetrating into its very mists, by means of a small steamboat, the admirer of nature discovers a character different from that which first strikes the senses. We regard it as hypercritical to speak of the want of Alpine scenery around Niagara. On what scale must the mountains be moulded to bear a just comparison, in this view of the matter, with the grandeur of the cataract! The Alps, the Andes, and the Himmalaya, would scarcely suffice to furnish materials necessary to produce the contrast, on any measurement now known to the world. In fact the accessories, except as they are blended with the Falls themselves, as in the wonderful gorge through which the river rushes, in an almost fathomless torrent, as if frightened at its own terrific leap; the Whirlpool, and all that properly belongs to the stream, from the commencement of the Rapids, or, to be more exact, from the placid, lake-like scenery above these Rapids, down to the point where the waters of this mighty strait are poured into the bosom of the Ontario, strike us as being in singular harmony with the views of the Cataract itself. The Americans may well boast of their waterfalls, and of their lakes, notwithstanding the admitted superiority of upper Italy and Switzerland in connection with the highest classes of the latter. They form objects of interest over a vast surface of territory, and greatly relieve the monotony of the inland views. We do not now allude to the five great lakes, which resemble seas and offer very much the same assemblage of objects to the eye; but to those of greatly inferior extent, that are sparkling over so much of the surface of the northern states. The east, and New-York in particular, abound in them, though farther west the lover of the picturesque must be content to receive the prairie in their stead. It would be a great mistake, however, to attempt to compare any of these lakes with the finest of the old world; though many of them are very lovely and all contribute to embellish the scenery. Lake George itself could not occupy more than a fourth or fifth position in a justly graduated scale of the lakes of Christendom; though certainly very charming to the eye, and of singular variety in its aspects. In one particular, indeed, this lake has scarcely an equal. We allude to its islands, which are said to equal the number of the days in the year. Points, promontories, and headlands are scarcely ever substitutes for islands, which add inexpressibly to the effect of all water-views. It has been a question among the admirers of natural scenery, whether the presence or absence of detached farm-houses, of trees, hedges, walls and fences, most contribute to the effect of any inland view. As these are three great points of distinction between the continent of Europe and our own country, we shall pause a moment to examine the subject a little more in detail. When the towns and villages are sufficiently numerous to catch the attention of the eye, and there are occasional fragments of forest in sight, one does not so much miss the absence of that appearance of comfort and animated beauty that the other style of embellishment so eminently possesses. A great deal, however, depends, as respects these particulars, on the nature of the architecture and the color of the buildings and fences. It is only in very particular places and under very dull lights, that the contrast between white and green is agreeable. A fence that looks as if it were covered with clothes hung out to dry, does very little towards aiding the picturesque. And he who endeavors to improve his taste in these particulars, will not fail to discover in time that a range of country which gives up its objects, chiselled and distinct, but sober, and sometimes sombre, will eventually take stronger hold of his fancy than one that is glittering with the fruits of the paint and the whitewash brushes. We are never dissatisfied with the natural tints of stone, for the mind readily submits to the ordering of nature; and though one color may be preferred to another, each and all are acceptable in their proper places. Thus, a marble structure is expected to be white, and as such, if the building be of suitable dimensions and proportions, escapes our criticism, on account of its richness and uses. The same may be said of other hues, when not artificial; but we think that most admirers of nature, as they come to cultivate their tastes, settle down into a preference for the gray and subdued over all the brighter tints that art can produce. In this particular, then, we give the preference to the effects of European scenery, over that of this country, where wood is so much used for the purposes of building, and where the fashion has long been to color it with white. A better taste, however, or what we esteem as such, is beginning to prevail, and houses in towns and villages are now not unfrequently, even painted in subdued colors. We regard the effect as an improvement, though to our taste no hue, in its artificial objects, so embellishes a landscape as the solemn color of the more sober, and less meretricious looking stones. We believe that a structure of white, with green blinds, is almost peculiar to this country. In the most propitious situations, and under the happiest circumstances, the colors are unquestionably unsuited to architecture, which, like statuary, should have but one tint. If, however, it be deemed essential to the flaunting tastes of the mistress of some mansion, to cause the hues of the edifice in which she resides to be as gay as her _toilette_, we earnestly protest against the bright green that is occasionally introduced for such purposes. There is a graver tint, of the same color, that entirely changes the expression of a dwelling. Place two of these houses in close proximity, and scarcely an intellectual being would pass them, without saying that the owner of the one was much superior to the owner of the other in all that marks the civilized man. Put a third structure in the immediate vicinity of these two, that should have but one color on its surface, including its blinds, and we think that nine persons in ten, except the very vulgar and uninstructed, would at once jump to the conclusion that the owner of this habitation was in tastes and refinement superior to both his neighbors. A great improvement, however, in rural as well as in town architecture, is now in the course of introduction throughout all the northern states. More attention is paid to the picturesque than was formerly the case, and the effects are becoming as numerous as they are pleasing. We should particularize New Haven, as one of those towns that has been thus embellished of late years, and there are other places of nearly equal size that might be mentioned as having the same claims to an improved taste. But to return to the great distinctive features between an ordinary American landscape and a similar scene in Europe. Of the artificial accessories it is scarcely necessary to say any more. One does not expect to meet with a ruined castle or abbey, or even fortress, in America; nor, on the other hand, does the traveller look for the forests of America, or that abundance of wood which gives to nearly every farm a sufficiency for all the common wants of life, on the plains and heights of the old world. Wood there certainly is, and possibly enough to meet the ordinary wants of the different countries, but it is generally in the hands of the governments or the great proprietors, and takes the aspect of forests of greater or less size that are well cared for, cleared and trimmed like the grounds of a park. Germany has, we think, in some respects a strong resemblance to the views of America. It is not so much wanting in detached copses and smaller plantations of trees as the countries farther south and east of it, while it has less of the naked aspect in general that is so remarkable in France. Detached buildings occur more frequently in Germany than in France especially, and we might add also in Spain. The reader will remember that it is a prevalent usage throughout Europe, with the exception of the British Islands, Holland, and here and there a province in other countries, for the rural population to dwell in villages. This practice gives to the German landscape, in particular, a species of resemblance to what is ordinarily termed park scenery, though it is necessarily wanting in much of that expression which characterizes the embellishments that properly belong to the latter. With us this resemblance is often even stronger, in consequence of the careless graces of nature and the great affluence of detached woods. The distinguishing feature existing in the farm-house, fences and outbuildings. Of a cloudy day, a distant view in America often bears this likeness to the park, in a very marked degree, for then the graces of the scene are visible to the eye, while the defects of the details are too remote to be detected. The mountain scenery of the United States, though wanting in grandeur, and in that wild sublimity which ordinarily belongs to a granite formation, is not without attractions that are singularly its own. The great abundance of forest, the arable qualities of the soil, and the peculiar blending of what may be termed the agricultural and the savage, unite to produce landscapes of extraordinary beauty and gracefulness. Vast regions of country possessing this character are to be found in almost all the old states, for after quitting the coast for a greater or less distance, varying from one to two hundred miles, the ranges of the Alleghanies interpose between the monotonous districts of the Atlantic shores and the great plains of the west. We are of opinion that as civilization advances, and the husbandman has brought his lands to the highest state of cultivation, there will be a line of mountain scenery extending from Maine to Georgia, in a north and south direction, and possessing a general width of from one to two hundred miles, from east to west, that will scarcely have a parallel in any other quarter of the world, in those sylvan upland landscapes, which, while they are wanting in the sublimity of the Alpine regions, share so largely in the striking and effective. It is usual for the American to boast of his rivers, not only for their size and usefulness, but for their beauties. A thousand streams, that in older regions would have been rendered memorable, ages since, by the poet, the painter, art in every form, and the events of a teeming history, flow within the limits of the United States still unsung, and nearly unknown. As yet, something is ordinarily wanting, in the way of finish, along the banks of these inferior water-courses. But occasionally, in places where art has, as it might be, accidentally assisted nature, they come into the landscape with the most pleasing influence on its charms. In this respect, the peculiarity of the country is rather in a want of uniformity than in any want of material. To us, it would seem that all the northern states of America, at least, are far better watered than common, and that consequently they possess more of this species of beauty. As for the great streams, the largest, perhaps, have the least claims to high character in this respect in both the old and the new world. The Rhine is an exception, however, for it would be difficult to find another river of equal length and with the same flow of water, that possesses the same diversity of character or one so peculiar. At its source it descends from the high glaciers of the Alps a number of howling brooks, which forcing their way through the upper valleys, unite below in a straggling, rapid, but shallow stream, that finds its way into the lake of Constance, out of which it issues a compact, rapid river, imposing by its volume of water, rather than by its breadth, or any other advantage. Its cataracts, so celebrated in the old world, can scarcely claim to be the equal of the Cohoes, or many others of the secondary falls of this country, though the Rhine has always an abundance of water, which the Mohawk has not. On quitting Switzerland, this remarkable stream assumes many aspects, and decorates, beyond a doubt, as much landscape scenery as falls to the share of any other stream in the known world. We do not think it, however, in its best parts, equal to the Hudson in its whole length, though the characters of these two rivers are so very different as scarcely to admit of a fair comparison. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Rhine is its termination, for after embellishing and serving the purposes of such an extent of country in the very heart of Europe, it disappears, as it might be, in a number of straggling, uninteresting, turbid waters, among the marshes of Holland. This is a very different exit from that which characterizes the majestic flow of the Hudson into the Atlantic. England has no great rivers to boast of, though she has a few of singular claims to notice, on account of the great flow of the tides and the vast amount of commerce that they bear on the bosom. The Thames, so renowned in history, is as uninteresting as possible, until it passes above the bridges of London, where it becomes an ordinary pretty sylvan stream. The Seine, another river, familiar in name, at least, to every reader, has much higher claims than its neighbor of the British Islands, in the way of natural beauty. This stream, from Rouen to the Channel, is not without some very fine scenery, as well as possessing a very variant and interesting character, with both natural and artificial accessories, to say nothing of the historical, that draw largely on the attention. Italy has many rivers that are celebrated in song or story, but not one, we think, that should rank high, on the ground of landscape beauty. Most of her streams are so dependent on the melting of the snows in the Apennines and Alps, as to be either howling torrents, or meagre, straggling pools. The Arno, the Po, the Adige, the Tiber, and all the other rivers of that peninsula, are obnoxious to these objections. Even the Tiber, which is navigable as high as Rome, for vessels of a light draft, is either a tranquil thread, or one of those noisy, turbid streams that overflow their banks and often appear at a loss to know in which direction to pour their waters. The day is not distant, when America must possess a vast extent of territory of a character directly the reverse of that we have described in our mountain scenery, but which, nevertheless, will not be without a certain magnificence from its extent, productions and fertility. We allude to the great plains of the West; those which lie between the bases of the Alleghanies and the semi-sterile steppes that are known in this part of the world as the great prairies. Lombardy, teeming as she is, with population, vines, and all the productions of a fertile soil, in the possession of millions, sinks into insignificance before the vast plains that are destined to be her rivals in this quarter of the world. Perhaps New-York alone could furnish nearly as much of this character of country as is to be found in Upper Italy; for, stretching from the shores of Ontario towards the southern ranges of uplands, and as far east as Utica, is spread to the eye a vast extent of the most fertile plain, slightly relieved in places with a rolling surface of very respectable claims to natural beauty. We question if greater fertility is to be found in any part of the world, than is met with in the region last mentioned, though drainage and the other works of an advanced state of husbandry, are still much wanting to bring forth both its fertility and its beauties. New-York, indeed, in the way of scenery, has very high claims to variety, gracefulness, and even grandeur, among the mountains of the counties bordering on Champlain. By grandeur, however, let there be no mistake, by receiving the term in any other than a limited sense. Any well delineated view of a high-class Swiss scene, must at once convince even the most provincial mind among us that nothing of the sort is to be found in America, east of the Rocky mountains. Nevertheless, the Adirondack has claims to a wild grandeur, which, if it do not approach magnificence, is of a character to impress a region with the seal of a very noble nature. The lovers of the picturesque sustain a great loss by means of the numerous lines of railroads that have recently come into existence. This is true of both Europe and America. In the course of time, it will be found that every where a country presents its best face towards its thoroughfares. Every thing that depends on art, naturally takes this aspect, for men are as likely to put on their best appearance along a wayside in the country as on the streets of a town. All that has been done, therefore, in past ages, in these particulars, is being deranged and in some instances deformed by the necessity of preserving levels, and avoiding the more valuable portions of a country, in order to diminish expense. Thus villages and towns are no longer entered by their finest passages, producing the best effects; but the traveller is apt to find his view limited by ranges of sheds, out-houses, and other deformities of that nature. Here and there, some work of art, compelled by necessity, furnishes a relief to this deformity. But on the whole, the recent system of railroads has as yet done very little towards adding much to the picturesque for the benefit of the traveller. Here and there is to be found an exception, however, to this rule; portions of the Erie railroad, and the whole of the Hudson River, as well as that along the Rhine, necessarily possessing the advantage of sharing in the sublimity and grace through which they pass. Time will, of course, remedy the defects of the whole arrangement; and a new front will be presented, as it may be, to the traveller throughout the civilized world. Whether human ingenuity will yet succeed in inventing substitutes for the smoke and other unpleasant appliances of a railroad train, remains to be seen; but we think few will be disposed to differ from us, when we say that in our view of the matter this great improvement of modern intercourse has done very little towards the embellishment of a country in the way of landscapes. The graceful winding curvatures of the old highways, the acclivities and declivities, the copses, meadows and woods, the half-hidden church, nestling among the leaves of its elms and pines, the neat and secluded hamlet, the farm-house, with all its comforts and sober arrangements, so disposed as to greet the eye of the passenger, will long be hopelessly looked for by him who flies through those scenes, which, like a picture placed in a false light, no longer reflects the genius and skill of the artist. The old world enjoys an advantage as regards the picturesque and pleasing, in connection with its towns, that is wholly unknown, unless it may be in the way of exception, among ourselves. The necessity, in the middle ages, of building for defence, and the want of artillery before the invention of gunpowder, contributed to the construction of military works for the protection of the towns in Europe, that still remain, owing to their durable materials, often producing some of the finest effects that the imagination could invent to embellish a picture. Nothing of the sort, of course, is to be met with here, for we have no castles, have never felt the necessity of fortified towns, and had no existence at the period when works of this nature came within the ordinary appliances of society. On the contrary, the utilitarian spirit of the day labors to erase every inequality from the surface of the American town, substituting convenience for appearance. It is probable there is no one who, in the end, would not give a preference to these new improvements for a permanent residence; but it is not to be denied that so far as the landscape is concerned, the customs of the middle ages constructed much the most picturesque and striking collections of human habitations. Indeed, it is scarcely possible for the mind to conceive of objects of this nature, that are thrown together with finer effects, than are to be met with among the mountainous regions, in particular, of Europe. We illustrate one or two that are to be met with in the Apennines, and the Alps, and even in Germany, as proofs of what we say. The eye, of itself, will teach the reader, that Richmond and Boston, and Washington and Baltimore, and half-a-dozen other American towns that do possess more or less of an unequal surface, must yield the palm to those gloriously beautiful objects of the old world. When it is remembered, too, how much time has multiplied these last, it can be seen that there are large districts in the mountain regions of the other hemisphere, that enjoy this superiority over us, if superiority it can be called, to possess the picturesque, at the expense of the convenient. The imagination can scarcely equal the pictures of this nature that often meet the eye in the southern countries of Europe. Villages, with the chiselled outlines of castles, gray, sombre, but distinct, are often seen, perched on the summits of rocky heights, or adhering, as it might be, to their sides, in situations that are frequently even appalling, and which invariably lend a character of peculiar beauty to the view. There are parts of Europe in which the traveller encounters these objects in great numbers, and if an American, they never fail to attract his attention, as the wigwam and the bark canoe, and the prairie with lines of bisons, would catch the eye of a wayfarer from the old world. To these humbler mountain pictures, must be added many a castle and strong-hold, of royal or semi-royal origin, that are met with on the summits of abrupt and rocky eminences farther north. Germany has many of these strong-holds, which are kept up to the present day, and which are found to be useful as places of security, as they are certainly peculiar and interesting in the landscape. It has often been said by scientific writers, that this country affords many signs of an origin more recent than the surface of Europe. The proofs cited are the greater depths of the ravines wrought by the action of the waters following the courses of the torrents, and the greater and general aspect of antiquity that is impressed on natural objects in the other hemisphere. This theory, however, has met with a distinguished opponent in our own time. Without entering at all into the merits of this controversy, we shall admit that to the ordinary eye America generally is impressed with an air of freshness, youthfulness, and in many instances, to use a coarse but expressive term, rawness, that are seldom, if ever, met with in Europe. It might perhaps be easy to account for this by the labors of man, alone, though we think that natural objects contribute their full share towards deepening the picture. We know of no mountain summits on this side of the Atlantic that wear the hoary hues of hundreds that are seen on the other side of the water; and nearly everywhere in this country that the eye rests on a mountain-top, it encounters a rounded outline of no very decided tints, unless, indeed, it may actually encounter verdure. To our eye, this character of youthfulness is very strongly perceptible throughout those portions of the republic with which we are personally acquainted, and we say this without reference to the recent settlements, which necessarily partake of this character, but to the oldest and most finished of our own landscapes. The banks of the Hudson, for instance, have not the impress of time as strongly marked on their heights and headlands, and bays, and even mountains, as the banks of the Rhine; and we have often even fancied that this distinguishing feature between the old and new worlds is to be traced on nearly every object of nature or art. Doubtless the latter has been the principal agent in producing these effects; but it is undeniable that they form a leading point of distinction in the general character of the scenery of the two continents. As for England, it has a shorn and shaven aspect that reminds one of the husbandman in his Sunday's attire; for we have seen that island in February, when, owing to the great quantity of its grain and the prevalent humidity of the atmosphere, it really appeared to us to possess more verdure than it did in the subsequent July and August. There is one feature in European scenery, generally, more prevalent, however, in Catholic than in other countries, to which we must allude before we close. The bourg, or town, with its gray castellated outlines, and possibly with walls of the middle ages, is, almost invariably, clustered around the high, pointed roofs and solemn towers of the church. With us, how different is the effect! Half a dozen ill-shaped, and yet pretending cupolas, and other ambitious objects, half the time in painted wood, just peer above the village, while the most aspiring roof is almost invariably that of the tavern. It may be easy enough to account for this difference, and to offer a sufficient apology for its existence. But to the observant lover of the picturesque the effect is not only unpleasant but often repulsive. No one of ordinary liberality would wish to interfere with freedom of conscience in order to obtain fine landscapes; but this is one of the hundred instances in which the thoughtful man finds reason to regret that the church, as it exists among us, is not really more Catholic. To conclude, we concede to Europe much the noblest scenery, in its Alps, Pyrenees, and Apennines; in its objects of art, as a matter of course; in all those effects which depend on time and association, in its monuments, and in this impress of the past which may be said to be reflected in its countenance; while we claim for America the freshness of a most promising youth, and a species of natural radiance that carries the mind with reverence to the source of all that is glorious around us. From the United Service Magazine A BULL FIGHT AT RONDA. The ride from Gibraltar to San Roque is familiar to all the inhabitants of the rock, and notwithstanding that the soil, the natives, and their costume vary much from similar objects in England, and that the plants and scenery are totally of a foreign character, yet from the number of English people on the road, one finds it difficult to believe one's-self in Spain until on the other side of San Roque. This last small town is prettily situated on a hill, about five miles from Gibraltar. On passing the drawbridge which crosses the ditch at the Landport point, we got on the isthmus which traverses the inundation, situated at the North Front of this isolated fortress, and which is the only avenue of access or egress. The approach to this is also guarded by two strong outposts. The last of these, called the old North Front, furnishes sentries which guard the intermediate posts between it and the Spanish lines. On arriving at the end of the isthmus, we crossed a place which is called the Neutral ground, and reached a small village garrisoned by a wing of a Spanish regiment, who are there stationed to intercept smugglers. On leaving the village there is no regular road, but those wishing to proceed to Spain have to ride or walk by the shore for a distance of about two miles, until they reach a plain, which is crossed by a road leading to a small village called Campo. This place is often resorted to by the gentry of Gibraltar, who find it much cooler during summer than their residences in the streets of the town. After passing this village, which had certainly little of interest about it, we rode by a circuitous road, generally hedged on each side by plants of the cactus and aloes, and but little wooded, till we reached San Roque. Here we saw in miniature what may be called a specimen of a Spanish town; the windows at the lower story of the houses barred with cages of iron called _regas_, which completely obstruct all entrance by that mode, rendering them in fact like jails. The streets paved with large stones, quite dry, and disposed so irregularly as to make them the most disagreeable to ride in that I ever witnessed. Then there was the small alameda, with its walks, and trees quite neat and regular; where the beauties of the rural town paced with their mantillas and fans: on the other side was a barrack, which contained a Spanish regiment, who were drilling and exercising when we arrived. These were swarthy-looking fellows, mostly young and undersized. As we rode away from the town we descended by a rugged stony road, which was very rough, and in some places nearly precipitous. Our party consisted of four officers besides myself, two mules containing our clothes and provisions, and a guide and servant on horseback. We got packed up in panniers all the loose beer and cold meat, tea, coffee, sugar, biscuit, sausages, hams, and other edibles which we should require for a week's consumption, and did not find that we had at all exceeded our computation, for with the exception of eggs, fowls, milk, butter, chocolate, and indifferent wine, we could get nothing in the way of eating and drinking at the different villages we stopped at. Our cavalcade was consequently delayed very much by being obliged to keep with the mules. We went along this very rough and rugged stony track, which could scarcely be called a road, for about two miles; we then crossed some hills. The country for about three miles from San Roque was quite open. Here it was that we arrived at a mountain pass, which was very thickly planted on each side with brushwood, shrubs, and fern. So thick and impervious was the cover for those who might choose to lie in ambush, that a band of many men, at least amounting to sixty, might have rested concealed quite close to the path which we rode on. I am not disposed to be credulous relative to stories which travellers tell on the subject of hairbreadth escapes and adventures; but, certainly in this country, more than any in Europe, there is presented a more continuous series of scenes which one's fancy might suppose calculated to be the resort of outlawed marauders or wandering bandits. I had heard numerous accounts of parties having been waylaid, and of the danger consequent upon travelling in Spain, and the disposition of the country people is so prone to exaggerate, that every day adds a fresh instance to the catalogue of incidents which those who listen to them hear recorded. The nature of the scenery which we were passing through was such as to recall to our mind the spirited groups of Salvator Rosa's coloring, or the sketches so graphically described by Cervantes or Le Sage. We had not ridden further than a few yards when two men rushed from the cover with their firelocks to their shoulders, and called out "Alto, alto." Their action, their dress, the tone which they used made me conclude that they were bandits, and I rode up to one of our party, the only one who was armed (who carried a pair of pistols in his saddlebags), and asked him to lend me one of them. He had not time to answer before one of the men approached me with his firelock to his shoulder, and said, in Spanish, "I can hit a sombrero at two hundred yards distance." Another of our party advised me to answer him civilly, for, he said, "I see four men from different quarters who have their firelocks levelled at you." On this I demanded of him if he wanted money, or wished for something to drink. He seemed more indignant at this supposition, and informed us that he and his party were carbineros or revenue officers, who were stationed there to intercept any smugglers who might be proceeding into Spain. He said that he would be obliged in any case to detain our mules, and that from what I had said he should be obliged to keep us prisoners until he heard from the Governor at Algeciras. Then the rest of his party all made their appearance, each of them armed with firelock and pistols, and having with them the mules belonging to one of the parties of officers who had been going to Ronda. After a deal of altercation, we rode back with them and decided upon the plan of sending two of our party to Algeciras to the Governor, to ask him relative to the state of the case. It was vexatious being delayed, but there was no help for it. When the two officers started we were about twelve miles from Algeciras. We then rode through a wild country much wooded with shrubs, groves of oleanders, orange groves, hedges of grapes, and other exotics, which are so rare and so much prized at home, and, crossing two rivers, we reached the sea beach at some distance from Algeciras. The mode of crossing the river was by large movable boats which had pullies attached to their frames on deck, and ropes which were fastened to the beams on shore at one end, and at the other to some leathern thongs which the men fastened to their shoulders, and towing them on board, soon passed the boat over from one bank to the other. When we were on the beach, the leader of the party of carbineros fired his piece at a gull which passed and wounded him, but the bird, who was hit in the wing, rested on the water. We did not ride far before our two friends returned, and heartily welcome they were. They produced a paper signed by the Governor, a Spanish General at Algeciras, which ordered our instant liberation; they said that he was very indignant when he heard of our capture. The leader of the party of carbineros on this was satisfied, and gave up the pistols which he had captured from the officer who carried them, and bid us farewell. We then had to ride to San Roque, and on our way back, had much amusement in talking over our adventure. I was certainly very glad that we had offered no resistance to these people; but had we left our mules in their charge it would have been most inconvenient, and in fact I think scarcely safe. The party which preceded us had reason to be very thankful, for by our means they obtained safe carriage for their mules, which they would not have seen for some days, had it not been for our having come up with them. So we were obliged to take up our quarters for that night at the inn at San Roque, which was a nice clean place, and kept by an Englishman and his wife. It is altogether much more like an English house in its accommodation than a Spanish one, which, it is needless to add, is speaking much in its praise. In the evening at dinner the principal topic of conversation was this adventure of ours, and we heard some accounts of the modes of travelling in Spain, and the direful amount of smuggling which exists between its confines and Gibraltar, from an old inhabitant of the rock. He told us a story of his having been stopped, and having his horse taken from him, and being obliged to walk a number of miles. He never saw the horse again, and never heard a word of the robbers who stopped him, and yet he said that it happened at about six miles distance from San Roque. The next morning the weather was certainly beautiful, and numerous parties came in from Gibraltar, to breakfast at San Roque, previous to their long ride to Gaucin, a distance of thirty miles. The merriment that prevailed, the novelty of the expected scenes, the beauty of the wild romantic country they were about to enter, the good spirits and freedom of manners of all, made every party seem exhilarated and happy. Some were dressed in the style of the Spanish Majos, and armed with pistols and daggers. The generality wore light jackets, sashes, and trousers: also the sombrero was very much in use. The Spanish masta, that most useful appendage to a traveller's equipment, was over most of the saddles. We were all enabled to rest confident in the assurance of not being molested or waylaid upon the road, as, being the regular day for visitors to proceed to Ronda, the authorities had posted soldiers in different parts of the road. We came up with and passed many groups of Spaniards. The men were dressed with short jackets, sometimes laced, and having a vast number of small buttons, large red sash, leggings with rows of buttons all the way down on each side, and boltinas or leathern hose worn open. They all wore the sombrero, and most of them were armed with firelocks, slung from their shoulders. The colored mantas, as usual, were strapped on the saddles, in order to render the riding easy, to serve as a cloak in the event of rain, and to answer for bed-clothes on their arrival at the Fonda, where they were going to sleep. The ladies of the Spanish parties were mounted either on mules or barricos seated on cushions, which were strapped on pads, placed on the animals with two cross sticks on the shoulder and two on its crupper. The ladies all wore mantillas, and with the exception of the number of petticoats which they invariably wear, their dress did not vary much from that of English country people. We passed through a broken hilly country until we reached the cork-wood--that forest which stretches for about ten miles from east to west, a most picturesque spot, composed principally of cork-trees and some orange groves. At about ten miles from San Roque we arrived at the Bocea de Leones, that most dangerous pass, where the country was wild and the scenery romantic. There were stationed here some Spanish cavalry who guarded the pass. They were all fine able-bodied men, mounted on strong black horses; they wore blue double-breasted coats, buff belts, jack-boots, and large cocked hats. Past the cork-wood the country was broken and hilly, thickly planted with shrubs and evergreens; reeds and brushwood were also numerous. After this we got into a valley which was well cultivated, and the plantations lay thickly studded with oleanders and wild roses, and we saw frequently a white plant resembling the myrtle. The grounds had a gay and fresh appearance. When we were passing one of the fields where the laborers were at work we saw the curious manner in which the lower order of Spaniards eat--their mess of _gaypacho_ was in a large bowl, which was placed in the centre of a circle formed by about sixty men, and each supplied with a spoon; they then dipped the spoon into this capacious bowl, one after another, in regular routine, until the food was finished. We crossed about twelve different streams in going through this valley, and soon after passing the last, we came to an orange grove, through which the ride was agreeable. The delicious fruit was in abundance, loading the trees on each side of the way, when we arrived at the foot of the hill on which Gaucin is situated, and had an ascent of nearly three miles, which was winding and rugged before we reached the road leading into the town. The difficulty of the road, the nearly impassable ascent of the cliffs, the circuitous track of the route, made it a matter of surprise to us that a town such as this we were approaching should have been built on a site where the supply of almost any articles of merchandise was so inconvenient. Groups of hundreds of children lined the passes calling out to us incessantly, "Oh tio om cherito." We entered the town and were long before we could accommodate ourselves with a night's lodging, which however at last we managed to procure at the private house of a man who called himself a captain in the Spanish army. It was very uncomfortable, although perhaps the best that could be had in the town, and they charged exorbitantly. The town is most picturesquely situated upon a lofty height. After our long ride, which was over such a rough and broken country, we did not feel much disposed to saunter about, but as the evening was far advanced we stayed within doors. We procured merely the means of cooking, and milk, eggs, and fowl; but the people made themselves very agreeable, and we had great amusement and laughter. We set off early the next morning and commenced by descending the lofty mound upon which the town is built, by as tortuous and harassing a path as that by which we approached it. However, after we had proceeded about two miles a vista of as romantic and pleasing a kind as any I had ever seen in any other country opened before me. In the continuous range of hills which lined the road, the vineyards covered both the sides and tops for several miles around, and the valleys in the distance were thickly planted with chestnut woods: further on, the vast range of the ronda sierra lined the horizon. The outline of these mountains was bold and their scenery grand. Their sides and summits were studded throughout with towns, embosomed in the vast woods of chestnuts. They loomed beautiful and picturesque in the different intervals, and it wanted only water to render it an Elysium upon earth. After keeping this in view for several miles, and through a narrow and precipitous track, we came to a line of mountain scenery where the hills were altogether barren, except where, far down their sides, the corn fields were planted, where the road was much worse. We saw another town which went by the name of Gaucin also, and had a large redoubt to defend it, on its right flank; then the route circled round the mountains towards Attogate. We could not take our horses out of a foot pace, and very often I dismounted to lead mine down the craggy rocks. No horses but those shod in the Spanish fashion could manage to get through these descents. Towards the entrance of Attogate it was rather more uneven and dangerous, and I heard that one of the horsemen of the party that preceded us had been thrown. We passed through the miserable village, which was as wretched as any thing that I had ever seen even in Ireland, and went on still by a mountain path, and round by lofty hills, for about three miles. We then got sight of a very spacious plain, like an immense amphitheatre; to the west and to the east were the ranges of the Ronda hills, and to the north, as we approached, was a precipitous cliff of about two thousand feet in height, upon the summit of which was situated the town of Ronda. This seemed at the distance like a large perpendicular mass of earth. From the first place where we viewed it until our entrance to the town, the road or path was even more rugged than that which we traversed during most part of the day. We entered the old town and passed the remains of many Moorish ruins, through a stony street, with houses built like most of the Spanish ones, and came to a large bridge which crossed a ravine through which the river flows. This bridge is at a height of about one thousand feet from the level of the river. We then passed through the plaza and came to the street where we found a lodging. As the bull fights were not to commence until four P.M., the next day, we had a little leisure to look about us. In the streets all the crowded shops showed that an unusual influx of strangers had come to visit the place. We saw some splendid houses; one I particularly remarked, which belonged to the Marquis de Salvittierra; its lofty gateway of stone covered with devices and figures in alto-relievo, reminded me, with the motto inscribed over the summit of its arch, of the entrance to an Eastern palace. My companion, who was taking a sketch of it, after he had finished his labor was standing with me admiring this arch, which had evidently been the work of the Saracen invaders, when we saw two ladies in mantillas, both daughters of the late Marquis, who were walking towards its entrance. We told them in Spanish that we were foreigners--Englishmen, who had come to Ronda to visit it during the time of the fair, and in place of being annoyed at our seeming forwardness in thus addressing them, they invited us into the house. We went through corridors, futios, and up the staircase, which was ornamented with some tolerable paintings, and entered into one of the salas, or large rooms. When we arrived the two graceful girls, one of whom was about twenty and the other about sixteen, stood with their arms folded before them, and their head slightly bowing. They had each large fans in their hands. Their dress was stylish; their slippers beautiful and small; their black lace mantillas waving round their hair; their dress completely of black, made their figures seem elegant and their countenances interesting. Their eyes had the deep languor of the southern aspect, more than the playful loveliness which frequently is seen with those of their age. Their features were regular, and their teeth, which they showed in smiling to us when we entered, were of dazzling whiteness. I recollected the Spanish words used in salutation, viz.: "A los fies di usted mi senorita," and on hearing it in the foreign accent it was great amusement to them, as they repeated it from one to the other. We conversed on various subjects relative to the town, the scenery, the approaching feasts, the bull fights, and after a little time took our leave, charmed with their agreeable and pleasing conversation. All the halls, corridors, and chambers of this palace were adorned with pictures, but the rooms were furnished rather scantily, as seems the Spanish custom. In the evening we went to the Alameda, where we saw numerous groups of Spanish beauties promenading. Certainly no female figures which I have ever met with look better than the Spanish women. Their walk has been often noticed by different writers, and yet I have never read any description that does it justice. It is not the least like the affected wriggling gait of the French women or the frigid stride of the English, but a light, graceful step combining elegance and ease. They all seem to walk in the same way, and as it forms a great part of their daily occupation, it is no wonder that they should excel in it. Their language of the fans is another peculiarity of the country. I was shown it by a lady; it is a series of signs by which a lady lets the man who looks at her know what her wishes are, either of disdain, reproof, or encouragement, and is well known and recognized. I should recommend every gentleman who wishes to stay in the country to learn it. We met our two charming friends, the Spanish Marquis's daughters, and walked with them on the Alameda until it was dark. The grounds are prettily laid out, and the view from the western height which overlooks the precipitous descent which I spoke of, viewed from a distance, is truly superb. There the winding stream and the country which bounds it embrace the foot of the perpendicular declivity. The next day we heard nothing but preparations for the grand show, which was to take place in a circus exactly opposite the lodging we had got into. The Spanish cavalry, dressed in yellow coats and large jack-boots, lined the streets and played their band in front of our windows. All orders and classes, young and old, dressed in their gayest costume, were seen going about the town. The persons who lived in our house, who were a Spanish officer and his family, all got tickets of admission which we paid for. The box or partition which we hired, we took in common with the officers of another regiment, who had also ridden over from Gibraltar to witness the bull fights. The arena when we entered was surrounded by a concourse of about 1,500 people, many of whom were ladies, but the majority of the meaner orders. The amphitheatre or plaza, as it is called by the Spaniards, was about the same size as that at Milan. The architecture had, however, no resemblance to that of the Italian city. The diameter was about 200 feet. Various writers have noticed the interest which the Spaniards take in these sights; and the multitude which surrounded the amphitheatre, seated either in the boxes or standing in the tiers, which were level with the arena of combat, all seemed eagerly expectant of the arrival of the different actors in the scene. About a quarter past four in the afternoon, a trumpet sounded, and on the opening of the side doors, five picadors entered, followed at a few paces by three mules abreast, drawing a pole like a swingle tree, with a chain attached to it. They were mounted each on a sorry, miserable hack-horse. They were dressed in yellow jackets, covered with beads of silver and all sorts of ornaments; broad white sombreros, decked all round with ribbons, yellow chamois leather trowsers, stuffed out with cork and cotton, and coated inside the leather with iron plates. After the mules with their car, came the three matadors, in order. Their dress was perfectly superb; it was a close fitting majos dress, ornamented with silver lacing and beading. The names of these matadors were Montes, Espesa, and Ximenes. The first wore a beautiful rose-colored tunic, and his hair tied behind with ribbons, and crimson-colored leggings, &c. The dress of the second was of the same form, only varying in color, being all pink. The dress of the third was also the same in cut, but of a black color. These three, as well as the chulos, wore silk stockings. The chulos followed next in succession, and were dressed similar to the matadors, but not so grandly. They, as well as the matadors, all carried a large cloth, of silk texture, which was either red, blue, or yellow. The chulos were about five in number. They all advanced across the arena to where the Alcalde was seated, whilst the trumpets sounded, and as soon as these ceased to blow, the mules with their car left the arena by the same door as that by which they arrived, and the remainder of the procession dispersed to the different parts of the circus. After a lapse of two or three minutes, the centre door opened, and a furious black bull rushed in the most impetuous manner into the circus, and charged the different picadors. The first was not hurt, but the second and third picador had their horses ripped open. This was really a most revolting sight, for even after these cruel inflictions upon the poor horses, and when their entrails were hanging out, the picadors who rode them goaded them still onwards. The attendants in the circus joined in this act of cruelty. I do not think that Byron was far wrong in saying of these sights-- "Such the ungentle sport that oft invites The Spanish maid and cheers the Spanish swain. Nurtured in blood, betimes, his heart delights In vengeance, gloating on another's pain." The fourth picador broke his spear in meeting the rushing of this bull. The bull bled much from this, and at the fifth charge he ripped up another horse. I watched every turn of the "hearty fight," and noted it in my tablet. Though not quite what I considered in my English ideas as _sport_, yet it was altogether so novel that I question if I ever joined in a hunt which gave me greater interest. It would, however, be extremely unjust to make any comparison between our manly sport and this cruel spectacle, or even to mention them in the same breath. The chulos now began at intervals to provoke the bull by advancing towards him with their colored cloaks spread, and urging him to follow them. Their activity was most remarkable. Whenever the bull approached them close, they left their cloaks, and vaulted up the partition. One of them, whom I saw pressed quite close, jumped clean over the bull's head, and many such feats of agility we saw, both at this time and during the whole of the exhibition. After several efforts made to provoke him, the bull jumped over the wooden partition which separated the amphitheatre from the arena, a height of about five feet, called by the Spaniards the barrero. Of course this caused much terror and sensation, as many were standing quite close, and the rush was quite awful: however, after running half round, he jumped into the circus again. He then struck a picador, leaped the inclosure, and stayed a shorter time than at first, when he again jumped out, after several attempts on the part of the chulos to provoke him, and when he appeared wearied and fainter from his exertions and from the loss of blood. On this the Alcalde caused the trumpets to sound and the banderilleros came in, each carrying two stakes about a yard long and fringed with short flags. They ran close to the animal, and plunged these stakes, called banderillos, into the bull's shoulders. Four of these were let fly and plunged into his flesh, and the trumpets again sounded for the matadors to stick him with a sword. Montes undertook this bull, and drawing a long sword, he stood before him until the bull got near enough, when he stuck him between the shoulders. The chulos provoked him a second time, and Montes again wounded him. The attack of the chulos was repeated, when Montes planted his sword in the animal's shoulder, but instantly withdrew it. Twice more the chulos came to the attack, and on each occasion the bull's shoulder was laid open by Montes, but at the sixth onslaught, the matador plunged his sword up to the hilt in the mangled flesh, and the bull fell. Then entered a man dressed like a chulo, with a dagger called a puntilla, and which gave to its owner the designation of a puntillero, and struck it in the neck of the prostrate animal, which immediately expired. When this was ascertained, the mules who had formed part of the opening procession, and had then withdrawn, reappeared, and the carcase of the bull was tied to the swingle tree, and dragged out of the arena. Seven other bulls were brought out in succession, and attacked in the same manner, with a little variation in the details. The second bull charged two picadors, and did them no damage, but in a third charge he lamed a picador's horse, and received himself a serious gash in the neck. At a fourth charge he ripped open a horse's bowels, and coming on for the fifth and sixth time, threw the horse of another picador prostrate, and when he was on the ground, dug his horns into the bowels of the horse in a most frightful manner. I was never more forcibly reminded of Homer's description of the wolves, who in their charge upon the flock, seize with such fiendish fierceness #"kai enkata panta laphyssei."# The matador who undertook the third bull had but one eye, and, to render the combat equal, one of the bull's eyes was blinded, an expedient worthy of its cruel inventors. I remarked nothing extraordinary about the baiting or slaughter of this bull, except that one of the chulos, in flying from him, had his clothes torn off, and narrowly escaped being gored. The sixth bull was a very strong one. In his charges he disabled two picadors, both of whom were obliged to be removed from the arena, and one was perfectly senseless. The infuriated animal then charged a horse, which he killed instantaneously. The mules which I spoke of before, came in, and bore away the horse's carcase. Meanwhile the third matador, Ximenes, struck the bull with a sword up to the hilt, and killed him. He got his ear as a trophy, which he held up in triumph, and was saluted with innumerable vivas from the boxes of the Spanish Senoritas, some of whom wore black, and some white lace mantillas. "Lesa lo dey," also was shouted loudly, meaning, let him have the bull for his courage. As one of the classic writers has it, it turned out "Vox populi vox Dei," for the hero was awarded the prize. The seventh bull was considered a slow one by the audience, and they commenced shouting out "fuego, fuego." So when the banderilleros were directed to throw their arrows, they fastened squibs and crackers in various parts of the arrow or banderillo, and, on their exploding, the frantic animal went racing round the arena, goaded to madness by the crackers, which continued to go off at every step. This bull was given over to Montes to kill, as a very difficult subject, and the intrepid matador made one or two attempts before he succeeded in closing with him. The last time he plunged his sword between his shoulders, and the bull dropped dead. The eighth bull was killed after two thrusts, and then the large concourse of people flocked into the circus, and shortly afterwards, it being 7 o'clock, almost every one proceeded on to the Alameda. Next morning, the bull fights were resumed, and the sport, if I may call it by so mild a name, was considered superior. The matadors were differently dressed, and I remarked that all the picadors' horses were blindfolded. Montes, the first time of their contact, drove his sword into the neck of the first bull, a remarkably fine and very fierce animal, and it died in a few seconds afterwards. Four other bulls followed in order, and were all overcome. But the contest of the day was with the sixth bull. This savage animal killed a horse at his first charge. He then flew at another, and gored its sides in a frightful manner, completely lifting the rider off its back. The unfortunate picador was carried out, apparently dead. The bull then broke a horse's forearm, and charging another, ripped it open, though its rider escaped, and, being mounted afresh, behaved in the most heroic way, proving, himself, in fact, quite the lion of the day, whose feats excited the wonder and the applause of the multitude. He approached the box where we were seated, and threw his hat down. Showers of gold and dollars, amounting I should think to about 80, rewarded his compliments "a los Engless." He acknowledged this, by saying that our kindness should be always remembered. This bull was tormented a long time, and certainly the cruelty exhibited was most repulsive. The people quite exulted in the way they drew out the barbed darts from the creature's back, and thrust them in again, in every way that could torture him most. He was, however, at last killed by Montes, after a number of thrusts. After he had been struck the third time by Montes, the blood gushed out from his mouth in torrents, and in about seven seconds he died. In the baiting of the eighth bull, the same picador showed his dexterity. In the third charge which he made, he killed a horse. At first he brought the horse to the ground, and rolled him over as he would a cat; then, having dug his horns into his bowels for some time, at last left him for dead. Two other bulls followed, and with the death of the last, the spectacle terminated. The third day was appropriated to the exhibition of the first rudiments of bull-fighting, and was a regular gala for the more youthful portion of the community. There is no parallel to this practice at present existing in any part of Europe. The prize-fighting which till lately prevailed in England, independent of the heartiness, and emulative courage of the combatants, was a barbarism of quite another kind, the excitement of which was enhanced by the scope it allowed for gambling. But in bull-fighting there is no chance of making money, nor are wagers ever laid upon the combatants. The spectacle, in fact, is more like the games that took place in imperial Rome, which argue a brutality of feeling worthy of those degraded and sensual times. The third day there were no matadors, picadors, or chulos, but to the youthful part of the populace, it was one of the most pleasant. The bulls were allowed to enter, and were chased here and there by the populace with sticks. There was a good deal of childish folly and mountebank frivolity in these exhibitions. After the bull had been tormented for about twenty minutes, he was allowed to leave the circus, and they brought in a large tame one, with a bell round his neck, who was followed immediately by the young ones. One of the small bulls who was baited in this way, jumped over the barrier; but being much worried, soon jumped back. The people moved about the circus, laughing and running, and seemed like schoolboys just allowed out to play, after the hours of study were finished. It seemed to me that the reputed gravity of the Spaniards did not at all extend to the lower orders, or to the women, whose mirth, animation, and playfulness of manner are very striking. The third bull was killed, and this one was the only sacrifice to the sanguinary tastes of the people. Two large, high, basket-like gabions were afterwards brought in, when two men entered them up to the arms, and it was great diversion to the people to see the bulls, who were successively led into the arena, and whose horns were covered with leather, tossing these baskets about. The men who were inside had got banderillos, which they stuck in the bull's back when he came up to them. This lasted for some time, but at last the crowd grew weary of it, and dispersed. On this day, Charpur (who certainly was the hero of the play), exhibited his dexterity as a chulos in the scene where the bull killing took place. One of the novices, who was being educated as a matador, drove his sword through the bull's neck, up to the hilt, transfixing a portion of the flesh, and leaving the blade dangling from it. Charpur went up to the bull, and, partly by his cloak and partly by his menaces, led him towards the barrera, when he seized hold of his tail, and holding on by his back, approached his neck, and coolly took the sword out, which he threw on the ground. Such is the recreation, and such the feats, which are the theme of praise and topic of conversation amongst the Spanish people, who discourse of it as we do of the races at Ascot or Newmarket, or any other resort of the men on the turf. But I certainly did not see one English lady there, notwithstanding the numbers of Spanish mantillas which might have kept them in countenance. "Yet are Spain's maids no race of Amazons, But formed for all the witching arts of love; In softness and in firmness far above Remoter females, famed for sickening prate." This, by what I can learn, is the only remnant of the ancient fights which the Goths must have learned from the Romans; cruel and barbarous exhibitions, much "more honored in the breach than in the observance." The next day we passed in walking about the town. We entered a church, which was built of soft granite, and the internal structure of which reminded me of some that I had seen in Florence and Milan. The arches were Gothic; the columns that supported the cupolas inside, and the different domes into which the aisle was divided, were massive and grand. The paintings seemed not to be from the hands of masters; and the altars, which at a distance seemed so gorgeous, had rather a tinsel glittering sort of appearance on near approach, such as would be called familiarly "gingerbread shows"--but it was very lofty and extensive. We went next to see the old Moorish palace. Here a staircase, very much dilapidated, led from the interior to the edge of the small river which runs through the whole of Ronda. The town being divided by a very deep ravine, at the bottom of which the river flows, and which is crossed by three bridges. Down this staircase, damp, gloomy, and intricate as it was, we descended, and a guide preceded us with a candle, which, however, scarcely gave us light enough to see our way down the dark and slippery descent. It was constructed, according to the instruction of our cicerone, in the year 800, by one of the Moorish kings, who had it built for the purpose of supplying his palace with water. At the foot of it we came to a sort of window, which going through, we stepped out by the river's side. I ought to mention that at intervals we passed the remains of large chambers and other vaulted apartments, which must evidently have been prisons as dark and loathsome as any which Mrs. Radcliffe, or any other horror-loving romancer, could draw from a morbid imagination. We had to return the same way. Quitting the palace, we passed through the part of the town which leads by the Marquis of Salvatierras' house, and went on to the fountain, which springs from the solid rock in the midst of the ravine. We then returned homewards. In the evening our fair hostess amused us with singing, dancing, and conversation. One night we had a party of Gipsies, or, as they are called, Rectanos, to dance. They are a curious set of beings, and their habits are as strange as their appearance. They, to me, were very plain, and of a brown color; the men very dark, with long matted beards. They danced the fandangoe, in which a man and woman get up, and moving castanets with their hands, performed such evolutions as, to speak in the mildest way, would greatly astonish English spectators. I was much disappointed with it, as I saw nothing graceful in their movements. All the time they were figuring and lifting their limbs, the party seated kept time with their castanets. At intervals they sang when they were dancing, which reminded me of the nautch-girls in India. They would drink nothing except Rosaria, a sort of stuff distilled from limes, partaking, however, of sweetmeats which were handed round to them, and which they relished so much, that they had a scramble for them. The dress of the women was very gaudy, and of various colors. I did not think much of these people, but I like what I have seen of the Spanish ladies very much. Their manners are lively, unaffected, and pleasing. The night after this, we went to a party which was given by some officers of another regiment. Here again I had an opportunity of seeing the manners of the Spanish ladies, which were certainly very pleasing. The next day at 11, we once more mounted our horses, and bidding adieu to our fair hostess, we left the town, the beauties of which have been amply dilated upon by different writers. We pursued the same route as that by which we came, and arrived at Gibraltar a few minutes after the evening gun gave notice of the time to shut the gates of the fortress. From Chamber's Edinburgh Journal. VAGARIES OF THE IMAGINATION. "Fancy it burgundy," said Boniface of his ale--"only fancy it, and it is worth a guinea a quart!" Boniface was a philosopher: fancy can do much more than that. Those who fancy themselves laboring under an affection of the heart are not slow in verifying the apprehension: the uneasy and constant watching of its pulsations soon disturbs the circulation, and malady may ensue beyond the power of medicine. Some physicians believe that inflammation can be induced in any part of the body by a fearful attention being continually directed towards it; indeed it has been a question with some whether the stigmata (the marks of the wounds of our Saviour) may not have been produced on the devotee by the influences of an excited imagination. The hypochondriac has been known to expire when forced to pass through a door which he fancied too narrow to admit his person. The story of the criminal who, unconscious of the arrival of the reprieve, died under the stroke of a wet handkerchief, believing it to be the axe, is well known. Paracelsus held, "that there is in man an imagination which really affects and brings to pass the things that did not before exist; for a man by imagination willing to move his body moves it in fact, and by his imagination and the commerce of invisible powers he may also move another body." Paracelsus would not have been surprised at the feats of electro-biology. He exhorts his patients to have "a good faith, a strong imagination, and they shall find the effects." "All doubt," he says, "destroys work, and leaves it imperfect in the wise designs of nature: it is from faith that imagination draws its strength, it is by faith it becomes complete and realized; he who believeth in nature will obtain from nature to the extent of his faith, and let the object of this faith be real or imaginary, he nevertheless reaps similar results--and hence the cause of superstition." So early as 1462 Pomponatus of Mantua came to the conclusion, in his work on incantation, that all the arts of sorcery and witchcraft were the result of natural operations. He conceived that it was not improbable that external means, called into action by the soul, might relieve our sufferings, and that there did, moreover, exist individuals endowed with salutary properties; so it might, therefore, be easily conceived that marvellous effects should be produced by the imagination and by confidence, more especially when these are reciprocal between the patient and the person who assists his recovery. Two years after, the same opinion was advanced by Agrippa in Cologne. "The soul," he said, "if inflamed by a fervent imagination, could dispense health and disease, not only in the individual himself, but in other bodies." However absurd these opinions may have been considered, or looked on as enthusiastic, the time has come when they will be gravely examined. That medical professors have at all times believed the imagination to possess a strange and powerful influence over mind and body is proved by their writings, by some of their prescriptions, and by their oft-repeated direction in the sick-chamber to divert the patient's mind from dwelling on his own state and from attending to the symptoms of his complaint. They consider the reading of medical books which accurately describe the symptoms of various complaints as likely to have an injurious effect, not only on the delicate but on persons in full health; and they are conscious how many died during the time of the plague and the cholera, not only of these diseases but from the dread of them, which brought on all the fatal symptoms. So evident was the effect produced by the detailed accounts of the cholera in the public papers in the year 1849, that it was found absolutely necessary to restrain the publications on the subject. The illusions under which vast numbers acted and suffered have gone, indeed, to the most extravagant extent; individuals, not merely single but in communities, have actually believed in their own transformation. A nobleman of the court of Louis XIV. fancied himself a dog, and would pop his head out of the window to bark at the passengers; while the barking disease at the camp-meetings of the Methodists of North America has been described as "extravagant beyond belief." Rollin and Hecquet have recorded a malady by which the inmates of an extensive convent near Paris were attacked simultaneously every day at the same hour, when they believed themselves transformed into cats, and a universal mewing was kept up throughout the convent for some hours. But of all dreadful forms which this strange hallucination took, none was so terrible as that of the lycanthropy, which at one period spread through Europe; in which the unhappy sufferers, believing themselves wolves, went prowling round the forests uttering the most terrific howlings, carrying off lambs from the flocks, and gnawing dead bodies in their graves. While every day's experience adds some new proof of the influence possessed by the imagination over the body, the supposed effect of contagion has become a question of doubt. Lately, at a meeting in Edinburgh, Professor Dick gave it as his opinion that there was no such thing as hydrophobia in the lower animals: "what went properly by that name was simply an inflammation of the brain; and the disease, in the case of human beings, was caused by an over-excited imagination, worked upon by the popular delusion on the effects of a bite by rabid animals." The following paragraph from the "Curiosities of Medicine" appears to justify this now common enough opinion:--"Several persons had been bitten by a rabid dog in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and three of them had died in our hospital. A report, however, was prevalent that we kept a mixture which would effectually prevent their fatal termination; and no less than six applicants who had been bitten were served with a draught of colored water, and in no one instance did hydrophobia ensue." A remarkable cure through a similar aid of the imagination took place in a patient of Dr. Beddoes, who was at that time very sanguine about the effect of nitrous acid gas in paralytic cases. Anxious that it should be imbibed by one of his patients, he sent an invalid to Sir Humphry Davy, with a request that he would administer the gas. Sir Humphry put the bulb of the thermometer under the tongue of the paralytic, to ascertain the temperature of the body, that he might be sure whether it would be affected at all by the inhalation of the gas. The patient, full of faith from what the enthusiastic physician had assured him would be the result, and believing that the thermometer was what was to effect the cure, exclaimed at once that he felt better. Sir Humphry, anxious to see what imagination would do in such a case, did not attempt to undeceive the man, but saying that he had done enough for him that day, desired him to be with him the next morning. The thermometer was then applied as it had been the day before, and for every day during a fortnight--at the end of which time the patient was perfectly cured. Perhaps there is nothing on record more curious of this kind than the cures unwittingly performed by Chief-Justice Holt. It seems that for a youthful frolic he and his companions had put up at a country inn; they, however, found themselves without the means of defraying their expenses, and were at a loss to know what they should do in such an emergency. Holt, however, perceived that the innkeeper's daughter looked very ill, and on inquiring what was the matter, learned that she had the ague; when, passing himself off for a medical student, he said that he had an infallible cure for the complaint. He then collected a number of plants, mixed them up with various ceremonies, and inclosed them in parchment, on which he scrawled divers cabalistic characters. When all was completed, he suspended the amulet round the neck of the young woman, and, strange to say, the ague left her and never returned. The landlord, grateful for the restoration of his daughter, not only declined receiving any payment from the youths, but pressed them to remain as long as they pleased. Many years after, when Holt was on the bench, a woman was brought before him, charged with witchcraft: she was accused of curing the ague by charms. All she said in defence was, that she did possess a ball which was a sovereign remedy in the complaint. The charm was produced and handed to the judge, who recognized the very ball which he had himself compounded in his boyish days, when out of mere fun he had assumed the character of a medical practitioner. Many distinguished physicians have candidly confessed that they preferred confidence to art. Faith in the remedy is often not only half the cure, but the whole cure. Madame de Genlis tells of a girl who had lost the use of her leg for five years, and could only move with the help of crutches, while her back had to be supported: she was in such a pitiable state of weakness, the physicians had pronounced her case incurable. She, however, took it into her head that if she was taken to Notre Dame de Liesse she would certainly recover. It was fifteen leagues from Carlepont where she lived. She was placed in the cart which her father drove, while her sister sat by her supporting her back. The moment the steeple of Notre Dame de Liesse was in sight she uttered an exclamation, and said that her leg was getting well. She alighted from the car without assistance, and no longer requiring the help of crutches, she ran into the church. When she returned home the villagers gathered about her, scarcely believing that it was indeed the girl who had left them in such a wretched state, now they saw her running and bounding along, no longer a cripple, but as active as any among them. Not less extraordinary are the cures which are effected by some sudden agitation. An alarm of fire has been known to restore a patient entirely, or for a time, from a tedious illness: it is no uncommon thing to hear of the victim of a severe fit of the gout, whose feet have been utterly powerless, running nimbly away from some approaching danger. Poor Grimaldi in his declining years had almost quite lost the use of his limbs owing to the most hopeless debility. As he sat one day by the bedside of his wife, who was ill, word was brought to him that a friend waited below to see him. He got down to the parlor with extreme difficulty. His friend was the bearer of heavy news which he dreaded to communicate: it was the death of Grimaldi's son, who, though reckless and worthless, was fondly loved by the poor father. The intelligence was broken as gently as such a sad event could be: but in an instant Grimaldi sprung from his chair--his lassitude and debility were gone, his breathing, which had for a long time been difficult, became perfectly easy--he was hardly a moment in bounding up the stairs which but a quarter of an hour before he had passed with extreme difficulty in ten minutes; he reached the bedside, and told his wife that their son was dead; and as she burst into an agony of grief he flung himself into a chair, and became instantaneously, as it has been touchingly described, "an enfeebled and crippled old man." The imagination, which is remarkable for its ungovernable influence, comes into action on some occasions periodically with the most precise regularity. A friend once told us of a young relation who was subject to nervous attacks: she was spending some time at the seaside for change of air, but the evening-gun, fired from the vessel in the bay at eight o'clock, was always the signal for a nervous attack: the instant the report was heard she fell back insensible, as if she had been shot. Those about her endeavored if possible to withdraw her thoughts from the expected moment: at length one evening they succeeded, and while she was engaged in an interesting conversation the evening-gun was unnoticed. By and by she asked the hour, and appeared uneasy when she found the time had passed. The next evening it was evident that she would not let her attention be withdrawn: the gun fired, and she swooned away; and when revived, another fainting fit succeeded, as if it were to make up for the omission of the preceding evening! It is told of the great tragic actress Clairon, who had been the innocent cause of the suicide of a man who destroyed himself by a pistol-shot, that ever after, at the exact moment when the fatal deed had been perpetrated--one o'clock in the morning--she heard the shot. If asleep, it awakened her; if engaged in conversation, it interrupted her; in solitude or in company, at home or travelling, in the midst of revelry or at her devotions, she was sure to hear it to the very moment. The same indelible impression has been made in hundreds of cases, and on persons of every variety of temperament and every pursuit, whether engaged in business, science or art, or rapt in holy contemplation. On one occasion Pascal had been thrown down on a bridge which had no parapet, and his imagination was so haunted for ever after by the danger, that he always fancied himself on the brink of a steep precipice overhanging an abyss ready to ingulf him. This illusion had taken such possession of his mind that the friends who came to converse with him were obliged to place the chairs on which they seated themselves between him and the fancied danger. But the effects of terror are the best known of all the vagaries of the imagination. A very remarkable case of the influence of imagination occurred between sixty and seventy years since in Dublin, connected with the celebrated frolics of Dalkey Island. It is said Curran and his gay companions delighted to spend a day there, and that with them originated the frolic of electing "a king of Dalkey and the adjacent islands," and appointing his chancellor and all the officers of state. A man in the middle rank of life, universally respected, and remarkable alike for kindly and generous feelings and a convivial spirit, was unanimously elected to fill the throne. He entered with his whole heart into all the humors of the pastime, in which the citizens of Dublin so long delighted. A journal was kept, called the "Dalkey Gazette," in which all public proceedings were inserted, and it afforded great amusement to its conductors. But the mock pageantry, the affected loyalty, and the pretended homage of his subjects, at length began to excite the imagination of "King John," as he was called. Fiction at length became with him reality, and he fancied himself "every inch a king." His family and friends perceived with dismay and deep sorrow the strange delusion which nothing could shake: he would speak on no subject save the kingdom of Dalkey and its government, and he loved to dwell on the various projects he had in contemplation for the benefit of his people, and boasted of his high prerogative: he never could conceive himself divested for one moment of his royal powers, and exacted the most profound deference to his kingly authority. The last year and a half of his life were spent in Swift's hospital for lunatics. He felt his last hours approaching, but no gleam of returning reason marked the parting scene: to the very last instant he believed himself a king, and all his cares and anxieties were for his people. He spoke in high terms of his chancellor, his attorney-general, and all his officers of state, and of the dignitaries of the church: he recommended them to his kingdom, and trusted they might all retain the high offices which they now held. He spoke on the subject with a dignified calmness well becoming the solemn leave-taking of a monarch; but when he came to speak of the crown he was about to relinquish for ever, his feelings were quite overcome, and the tears rolled down his cheeks: "I leave it," said he, "to my people, and to him whom they may elect as my successor!" This remarkable scene is recorded in some of the notices of deaths for the year 1788. The delusion, though most painful to his friends, was far from an unhappy one to its victim: his feelings were gratified to the last while thinking he was occupied with the good of his fellow-creatures--an occupation best suited to his benevolent disposition. From Household Words. THE FRENCH FLOWER GIRL. I was lingering listlessly over a cup of coffee on the Boulevard des Italiens, in June. At that moment I had neither profound nor useful resources of thought. I sat simply conscious of the cool air, the blue sky, the white houses, the lights, and the lions, which combine to render that universally pleasant period known as "after dinner," so peculiarly agreeable in Paris. In this mood my eyes fell upon a pair of orbs fixed intently upon me. Whether the process was effected by the eyes, or by some pretty little fingers, simply, I cannot say; but, at the same moment, a rose was insinuated into my button-hole, a gentle voice addressed me, and I beheld, in connection with the eyes, the fingers, and the voice, a girl. She carried on her arm a basket of flowers, and was, literally, nothing more nor less than one of the _Bouquetières_ who fly along the Boulevards like butterflies, with the difference that they turn their favorite flowers to a more practical account. Following the example of some other distracted _décorés_, who I found were sharing my honors, I placed a piece of money--I believe, in my case, it was silver--in the hand of the girl; and, receiving about five hundred times its value, in the shape of a smile and a "_Merci bien Monsieur!_" was again left alone--("desolate," a Frenchman would have said)--in the crowded and carousing Boulevard. To meet a perambulating and persuasive _Bouquetière_ who places a flower in your coat and waits for a pecuniary acknowledgment, is scarcely a rare adventure in Paris; but I was interested--unaccountably so--in this young girl: her whole manner and bearing was so different and distinct from all others of her calling. Without any of that appearance which, in England, we are accustomed to call "theatrical," she was such a being as we can scarcely believe in out of a ballet. Not, however, that her attire departed--except, perhaps, in a certain coquettish simplicity--from the conventional mode: its only decorations seemed to be ribbons, which also gave a character to the little cap that perched itself with such apparent insecurity upon her head. Living a life that seemed one long summer's day--one floral _fête_--with a means of existence that seemed so frail and immaterial--she conveyed an impression of _unreality_. She might be likened to a Nymph, or a Naiad, but for the certain something that brought you back to the theatre, intoxicating the senses, at once, with the strange, indescribable fascinations of hot chandeliers--close and perfumed air--footlights, and fiddlers. Evening after evening I saw the same girl--generally at the same place--and, it may be readily imagined, became one of the most constant of her _clientelle_. I learned, too, as many facts relating to her as could be learned where most was mystery. Her peculiar and persuasive mode of disposing of her flowers (a mode which has since become worse than vulgarized by bad imitators) was originally her own graceful instinct--or whim, if you will. It was something new and natural, and amused many, while it displeased none. The sternest of stockbrokers, even, could not choose but be decorated. Accordingly, this new Nydia of Thessaly went out with her basket one day, awoke next morning, and found herself famous. Meantime there was much discussion, and more mystification, as to who this Queen of Flowers could be--where she lived--and so forth. Nothing was known of her except her name--Hermance. More than one adventurous student--you may guess I am stating the number within bounds--traced her steps for hour after hour, till night set in--in vain. Her flowers disposed of, she was generally joined by an old man, respectably clad, whose arm she took with a certain confidence, that sufficiently marked him as a parent or protector; and the two always contrived sooner or later, in some mysterious manner, to disappear. After all stratagems have failed, it generally occurs to people to ask a direct question. But this in the present case was impossible. Hermance was never seen except in very public places--often in crowds--and to exchange twenty consecutive words with her, was considered a most fortunate feat. Notwithstanding, too, her strange, wild way of gaining her livelihood, there was a certain dignity in her manner which sufficed to cool the too curious. As for the directors of the theatres, they exhibited a most appropriate amount of madness on her account; and I believe that at several of the theatres, Hermance might have commanded her own terms. But only one of these miserable men succeeded in making a tangible proposal, and he was treated with most glorious contempt. There was, indeed, something doubly dramatic in the _Bouquetière's_ disdain of the drama. She who _lived_ a romance could never descend to act one. She would rather be Rosalind than Rachel. She refused the part of Cerito, and chose to be an Alma on her own account. It may be supposed that where there was so much mystery, imagination would not be idle. To have believed all the conflicting stories about Hermance, would be to come to the conclusion that she was the stolen child of noble parents, brought up by an _ouvrier_; but that somehow her father was a tailor of dissolute habits, who lived a contented life of continual drunkenness, on the profits of his daughter's industry;--that her mother was a deceased duchess--but, on the other hand, as alive, and carried on the flourishing business of a _blanchisseuse_. As for the private life of the young lady herself, it was reflected in such a magic mirror of such contradictory impossibilities, in the delicate discussion held upon the subject, that one had no choice but disbelieve every thing. One day a new impulse was given to this gossip by the appearance of the _Bouquetière_ in a startling hat of some expensive straw, and of a make bordering on the ostentatious. It could not be doubted that the profits of her light labors were sufficient to enable her to multiply such finery to almost any extent, had she chosen; but in Paris the adoption of a bonnet or a hat, in contradistinction to the little cap of the _grisette_, is considered an assumption of a superior grade, and unless warranted by the "position" of the wearer, is resented as an impertinence. In Paris, indeed, there are only two classes of women--those with bonnets and those without; and these stand in the same relation to one another, as the two great classes into which the world may be divided--the powers that be, and the powers that want to be. Under these circumstances, it may be supposed that the surmises were many and marvellous. The little _Bouquetière_ was becoming proud--becoming a lady;--but how? why? and above all--where? Curiosity was never more rampant, and scandal never more inventive. For my part, I saw nothing in any of these appearances worthy, in themselves, of a second thought; nothing could have destroyed the strong and strange interest which I had taken in the girl; and it would have required something more potent than a straw hat--however coquettish in crown, and audacious in brim--to have shaken my belief in her truth and goodness. Her presence, for the accustomed few minutes, in the afternoon or evening, became to me--I will not say a necessity, but certainly a habit; and a habit is sufficiently despotic when "A fair face and a tender voice have made me"-- I will not say "mad and blind," as the remainder of the line would insinuate--but most deliciously in my senses, and most luxuriously wide awake! But to come to the catastrophe-- "One morn we missed _her_ in the accustomed spot"-- Not only, indeed, from "accustomed" and probable spots, but from unaccustomed, improbable, and even impossible spots--all of which were duly searched--was she missed. In short, she was not to be found at all. All was amazement on the Boulevards. Hardened old _flaneurs_ turned pale under their rouge, and some of the younger ones went about with drooping moustaches, which, for want of the _cire_, had fallen into the "yellow leaf." A few days sufficed, however, for the cure of these sentimentalists. A clever little monkey at the Hippodrome, and a gentleman who stood on his head while he ate his dinner, became the immediate objects of interest, and Hermance seemed to be forgotten. I was one of the few who retained any hope of finding her, and my wanderings for that purpose, without any guide, clue, information, or indication, seem to me now something absurd. In the course of my walks, I met an old man, who was pointed out to me as her father--met him frequently, alone. The expression of his face was quite sufficient to assure me that he was on the same mission--and with about as much chance of success as myself. Once I tried to speak to him; but he turned aside, and avoided me with a manner that there could be no mistaking. This surprised me, for I had no reason to suppose that he had ever seen my face before. A paragraph in one of the newspapers at last threw some light on the matter. The _Bouquetière_ had never been so friendless or unprotected as people had supposed. In all her wanderings she was accompanied, or rather followed, by her father; whenever she stopped, then he stopped also; and never was he distant more than a dozen yards. I wonder that he was not recognised by hundreds, but I conclude he made some change in his attire or appearance, from time to time. One morning this strange pair were proceeding on their ramble as usual, when passing through a rather secluded street, the _Bouquetière_ made a sudden bound from the pavement, sprung into a post-chaise, the door of which stood open, and was immediately whirled away, as fast as four horses could tear--leaving the old man alone with his despair, and the basket of flowers. Three months have passed away since the disappearance of the _Bouquetière_; but only a few days since I found myself one evening very dull at one of those "brilliant receptions," for which Paris is so famous. I was making for the door, with a view to an early departure, when my hostess detained me, for the purpose of presenting to me a lady who was monopolizing all the admiration of the evening--she was the newly-married bride of a young German Baron of great wealth, and noted for a certain wild kind of genius, and utter scorn of conventionalities. The next instant I found myself introduced to a pair of eyes that could never be mistaken. I dropped into a vacant chair by their side, and entered into conversation. The Baronne observed that she had met me before, but could not remember where, and in the same breath asked me if I was a lover of flowers. I muttered something about loving beauty in any shape, and admired a bouquet which she held in her hand. The Baronne selected a flower, and asked me if it was not a peculiarly fine specimen. I assented; and the flower, not being redemanded, I did not return it. The conversation changed to other subjects, and shortly afterwards the Baronne took her leave with her husband. They left Paris next day for the Baron's family estate, and I have never seen them since. I learned subsequently that some strange stories had obtained circulation respecting the previous life of the Baronne. Whatever they were, it is very certain that this or some other reason has made the profession of _Bouquetière_ most inconveniently popular in Paris. Young ladies of all ages that can, with any degree of courtesy, be included in that category, and of all degrees of beauty short of the hunch-back, may be seen in all directions intruding their flowers with fatal pertinacity upon inoffensive loungers, and making war upon button-holes that never did them any harm. The youngest of young girls, I find, are being trained to the calling, who are all destined, I suppose, to marry distinguished foreigners from some distant and facetious country. I should have mentioned before, that a friend calling upon me the morning after my meeting with the Baronne, saw the flower which she had placed in my hand standing in a glass of water on the table. An idea struck me: "Do you know anything of the language of flowers?" I asked. "Something," was the reply. "What, then, is the meaning of this?" "SECRECY." From the Antheneum THE THREE ERAS OF OTTOMAN HISTORY[6] So much has been said and written of late respecting the decline and decrepitude of the Ottoman Empire, that most persons believe that there is nothing to prevent a Russian army from marching up to the gates of Constantinople, and taking possession of the city, except the resistance which might be offered by the other powers of Europe to such an extension of the Russian dominions. Many of our readers will therefore be surprised to learn that the army of the Sultan is at present in a more efficient state than it has been for the last two centuries; and that in the event of a war breaking out between Russia and Turkey, the latter would probably be able to resist, single-handed, the attacks of her formidable and ambitions neighbor. This is the view which Mr. Skene endeavors to establish in the pamphlet before us; and from information which we have ourselves received from other quarters, we entirely agree with the conclusion to which Mr. Skene has come,--that "the power of conquest, possessed by the only state with which there appears the slightest possibility of a rupture taking place, is in general as notoriously exaggerated as that of defence on the part of Turkey is commonly undervalued." To enable the reader to obtain an accurate idea of the present condition of the Ottoman army, Mr. Skene gives a brief but able review of its history. He divides his narrative into three eras: the first contains an account of the military history of Turkey till the destruction of the Janissaries in 1825; the second comprises the period of transition, which followed the destruction of the Janissaries; and the third comprehends the formation of the Nizam, or the regular army of the present day. The annals of the first of these eras are, in fact, the history of the Turkish conquests, and of the decline of the empire. [6] _The Three Eras of Ottoman History; a Political Essay on the late Reforms of Turkey, considered principally as affecting her Position in the event of a War taking place._ By J. H. SKENE, Esq. Chapman & Hall. "Through the Janissaries Turkey rose--by them she was about to fall; and without the Nizam, or regular army of Sultan Abdul Medjid, which exists as a consequence of the destruction of the Janissaries, she would never have had any chance of rising again, or even of saving her political independence." The Janissaries were organized by Sultan Orkhan in the fourteenth century. They bore the title of _Yenitsheri_, or New Troops, in contradistinction to the previous armies, which had been raised by levies of irregular troops, as occasion required. They were a well-disciplined body of troops, and they constituted the principal force of the empire. It was to their valor and efficiency that the Turkish empire owed its existence; and they were almost uniformly successful in all the great battles which they fought till their defeat by Montecuculi at St. Gothard, in 1664. This defeat was the forerunner of a long series of disasters. "Their career of conquest was over, and it was a career altogether without a parallel in history. Generation after generation had advanced without ever retrograding a single step. A vast empire had arisen out of the hereditary valor and systematic discipline of a portion of the army. It was not the creation of the military genius of an individual like that of Alexander the Great or Napoleon Buonaparte, but it was the result of a successful organization, assisted by the inherent bravery of the Turkish race, which enabled their sultans to follow up from father to son the ambitious scheme of the founder of the dynasty. But, at the close of that era of conquest, the organization of the Janissaries had become corrupt, the prestige of almost invariable good fortune had disappeared, and their internal discipline was declining fast, while their indomitable valor had degenerated into overweening pride, seditious turbulence towards the government, and cruel tyranny over the population." Towards the end of last century the insubordination and tyranny of the Janissaries had reached their highest point. The dispersion of this formidable body had become absolutely necessary for the salvation of the Ottoman empire; and it was at length effected by Sultan Mahmoud II.. "The value of the Janissaries as a regular army had been sufficiently tested, and the time had now arrived when Sultan Mahmoud II. judged it expedient to cut the Gordian knot. He issued a proclamation, obliging all his troops to submit anew to the discipline which they had cast off for more than a century and a half. The Janissaries refused obedience. The Sultan unfolded the Sacred Standard of the Empire, and placing himself, with his only son and heir, beside it, he appealed to the patriotism of those around him. He drew his dagger, and said, in a loud voice, "'Do my subjects wish to save the Empire from the humiliation of yielding to a band of seditious miscreants, or do they prefer that I should put an end to that Empire by here stabbing my son and myself in order to rescue it from the disgrace of being trampled upon by traitors?' "He then ordered that the standard should be planted on the Atmeidan, or Hippodrome; crowds of people, from the highest to the lowest class of society, headed by the _Ullema_, or magistrates, and the _Softa_, or students, assembled round the standard, and, having heard what the Sultan had said from those whom he had addressed, the mob, excited by enthusiasm, hurried away to carry the alarm through the town. All who possessed or could procure arms prepared them, and rushed to attack the barracks of the Janissaries. The corps of artillery, having torn off the badges, which were also worn by those abhorred regiments, that all appearance of fellowship with them might at once be destroyed, commenced the onslaught. Three hours, with 4000 artillerymen and students, incited by that resolute will, which had foreseen and provided for every possible casualty during eighteen years of apparent submission to the tyranny of a _caste_, sufficed to annihilate the military ascendancy which had once made the sovereigns of Europe tremble abroad, as it had the sultans at home. The attack, however, was directed against only one side of the square, and the other three, as well as the neighboring gate of the town, were purposely left open, with the view that those of the Janissaries who did not wish to resist the Sultan's order might escape unharmed; and quarter was given to all who chose to submit. Similar orders having been simultaneously sent to every part of the empire where Janissaries were stationed, the same conditions were offered to 150,000 individuals affiliated to the corps. Of these only 3600 refused them, and they were the most incorrigible of the chiefs. Having been made prisoners they were tried by a regular court of justice, and it was only necessary to prove their identity in order to condemn them, as the Sultan had carefully compiled the proofs of their respective crimes during many years. Eighteen hundred of them were executed, of whom 600 at Constantinople, 1200 being put to death in the provinces; and the remainder were exiled. Although it must have been an appalling sight to behold those 600 corpses lying on the Atmeidan, one cannot help admiring the patriotism elicited on that occasion; when the Janissaries perceived it, they were stupified by the unexpected excitement of the people; and many fled, fully convinced of the impossibility of resisting those over whom they had hitherto domineered with impunity." The Sultan now set himself to replace the Janissaries by other regular troops; but Russian ambition did not give him time to organize a new army, and he was obliged to fight with his young and undisciplined recruits against the "veteran warrior-slaves of the Czar." The Ottoman army was accordingly defeated; and the war was brought to a close by the disastrous treaty of Adrianople. His successor, the present sultan, Abdul Medjid, has been more fortunate. He has enjoyed several years of peace, which have enabled him to form a powerful and well-disciplined army, of which Mr. Skene gives us a valuable and interesting account. It was established at the beginning of the year 1842: "It is divided into six separate armies, called _Ordu_ in Turkish. Each of these consists of two services, the Active, or _Nizamia_, and the Reserve, or _Rédiff_. The former contains two corps, under the command of their respective lieutenant-generals (_Férik_); and the latter, also two corps, commanded in time of peace by a brigadier (_Liva_); the whole _Ordu_ being under the orders of a field-marshal (_Mushir_). The general staff of each army is composed of a commander-in-chief, two lieutenant-generals, three brigadiers of infantry, one of whom commands the reserve, two brigadiers of cavalry, and one brigadier of artillery. In each corps there are three regiments of infantry, two of cavalry, and one of artillery, with thirty-three guns. The total strength of these twelve regiments of the active force is 30,000 men, but it is diminished in time of peace by furlough to an effective strength of about 25,000 men in three of the six armies, and of 15,000 in the other three, in consequence of the recruiting system being as yet incomplete in its application all over the Turkish Empire. The whole establishment of this branch amounts, therefore, to 180,000 men, belonging to the active service, but its effective strength is at present 123,000. The reserve of four of the six armies consists in eleven regiments--six of infantry, four of cavalry, and one of artillery; composing a force of 212,000 effective soldiers, while the other two armies have not yet their reserve of soldiers who have served five years. In time of war, however, the reserve would form two corps of 25,000 men in each army; giving a total of 300,000 when this establishment shall have been completed. The two services, therefore, as they now stand, form an effective force of 335,000 men; and when their full strength shall have been filled up it will amount to 480,000. Besides these six armies there are four detached corps; one in the Island of Crete, consisting of three regiments of infantry and one of cavalry, in all 11,000 men; another in the pashalik of Tripoli in Africa, composed of one regiment of infantry and one of cavalry, about 5,000 strong; a third at Tunis of the same strength; and a fourth, which is the central artillery corps, formed of a brigade of sappers and miners with engineer officers, the veteran artillery brigade, and the permanent artillery garrisons of the fortresses on the Hellespont, the Bosphorus, the Danube, in Serbia, on the Adriatic, the coast of Asia Minor, in the islands of the Archipelago, and on the southern shores of the Black Sea; in all 9,000 men. These four corps raise the effective strength of the standing army to 365,000 men. Besides this addition, another augmentation of 32,000 men will be realized by the submission of Bosnia and Northern Albania to the new system; and a further increase of 40,000 men, whom Serbia has engaged to furnish, may be calculated, as well as 18,000 men serving in Egypt, who are destined to reinforce the reserve of the fifth army. The marines, sailors, and workmen, enrolled in brigades, amount to 34,000 men; and the police force, picketed all over the Empire, is nearly 30,000 strong. The grand total of armed men at the disposal of Turkey, in the event of her existing resources being called into play, may, therefore, be quoted at no less than 664,000 men, without having recourse to occasional levies, which are more easily and efficiently realized in Turkey than in any other country." The service is popular; the troops are well paid, and their material comforts are well provided for: "The rations consist of meat, bread, rice, and vegetables in abundance every day, besides butter or oil to cook them with.... The military hospitals might serve as a pattern of cleanliness to the first armies of the world, and the medical officers are now perfectly efficient, some of them having studied at European universities, others having become proficients in their art at the medical college of Constantinople, and a few being foreigners. The health of the troops is consequently excellent; so much so, that on one occasion when 50 men out of 3450 were in hospital, it appeared so alarming to the staff of the garrison that a general consultation was held to decide on what steps should be taken to oppose the progress of the sickness. One man in every seventy is no unusual occurrence in the hospitals of the British army; and as for the Russians, they thought little of 12,000 who died at Bucharest in 1829, 10,000 at Varna, and 6000 at Adrianople. The Turkish clothing is excellent; it is strong and warm." Respecting their probable efficiency in the field, Mr. Skene remarks: "In their evolutions the Turkish soldiers are rapid, especially the cavalry and artillery, whose horses are excellent; but there may perhaps be some room for improvement in their steadiness. It has been remarked of late at Bucharest, where the Turkish and Russian armies of occupations have their head-quarters, and are consequently often reviewed, that the latter were infinitely slower than the former, and that their light infantry drill was far inferior to that of the Turks, but when moving in line or open column, the Russians, stiff as planks and dreading the lash, kept their distances and dressing somewhat better than the Turks. It may be added in illustration of the respective solicitude of the two armies for the health of the men, that, after one of these field days, three hundred Russians went to the hospital in consequence of exposure to the sun, and one hundred and sixty of them died, while there has not been a single instance of the kind amongst the Turkish troops. "With such an army as this, formed by a nation whose inherent bravery has never been impugned even by its most prejudiced detractors, it will readily be allowed that, were the campaign of 1829 against the Russians to be fought over again now, the result would be very different, considering how many years the regular troops of the Sultan have been in training, and also how undeniably the Russian army has been falling off, for it was not then to be compared with what it had been in 1815, and it is not now equal to what it was in 1829." The reserve of the army is organized in the following manner: "The reserve of the Turkish army is organized in a peculiar manner. It is composed of soldiers who have already served five years in the active force, and who are allowed to remain in their native provinces on furlough, and without pay, for seven years more, during which they assemble for one month of each year at the local head-quarters of their regiment, for the purpose of being drilled; and they then receive their pay, as well as when they are called into active service in time of war. This measure, which was dictated by a spirit of economy, has been eminently successful, inasmuch as a considerable additional force is thus placed at the Sultan's command, without its being a continual burden to the State; and the efficiency of that force has been fully demonstrated of late, when an army of 62,000 men was assembled by Turkey in the space of six weeks, on the occasion of the interruption of her amicable relations with Russia and Austria on account of the Hungarian refugees. In another month, 200,000 men of the _Rédiff_ might have been collected at Constantinople had they been required; and it furnished matter for astonishment to the many foreigners in that capital to behold a thoroughly drilled and disciplined army thus extemporized in a camp, to which a number of mere peasants in appearance had been seen flocking from their villages. "This system is rendered still more complete by the practice of recruiting regiments from the same districts, in order that, when their five years of active service shall have elapsed, the soldiers may remain together: and the confusion occasioned by embodying pensioners in other countries is avoided in Turkey, where the officers, non-commissioned officers, staff, and rank and file of a regiment continue united, whether on active service or as forming a part of the reserve. They are engaged in agricultural pursuits, or in trade, during their seven years of furlough, being periodically mustered for military exercise, and always ready to move in a body on any point where reinforcements may be necessary, while a salutary feeling of _esprit de corps_ is maintained by making such regiment a separate and distinct body of men, raised in the same locality, and most of its members being personally known to each other." Mr. Skene does not give us any information respecting the skill and ability of the superior officers. On this point we must confess we are not without apprehensions; for however excellent and efficient the troops of the line may be, their valor and discipline will be thrown away, if the higher officers--which we suspect to be the case--are inferior to those in the Russian service. The threats of Austria give all this subject importance. Honest Christendom for the first time cries, God for the Turk! From "The Adventures of a Soldier in Mexico," in the United Service Magazine. THE CAPTAIN AND THE NEGRO. A rather ludicrous circumstance, which occurred while we lay at Newport, helped to enliven the usual monotony of a ship's deck while in harbor. A comical sort of a fellow, of the name of Morris, belonging to one of the companies on board, who used to sing Nigger songs, and who, being a very good mimic, could act the Nigger admirably, resolved to turn his talents to account by assuming the character while in harbor, and passing himself off among his comrades, except a few who were in his confidence, as a black cook belonging to the ship--his twofold motive for thus "working the dodge," as he styled it, being partly the fun he expected from the mystification of the men and officers, and partly that he might be allowed to bring whisky into the ship, there being no hindrance to the ship's crew bringing goods on board, as our sentries could not interfere with them. Borrowing, therefore, an old pair of canvas trousers, a Guernsey shirt, and tarpaulin hat from a sailor, and thoroughly engraining his face and hands with the sooty composition requisite to give him the true Ethiopian complexion, he became quite invulnerable to detection by his coat of darkness. In this disguise, he rolled about the deck during the whole forenoon in a partial state of intoxication, and came and went between the vessel and shore, carrying baskets and parcels of suspicious import with the most perfect impunity. Towards evening, he began to sing snatches of Nigger songs, varying the exhibition with a "flare-up" jawing match with some of the soldiers, in the sort of gibberish and broken English so peculiar to the woolly-headed sons of Ham. This comedy afforded considerable amusement, especially to those of his comrades in the secret of his disguise. As he was dexterous in the tongue fence of those encounters of rude wit, and knowing the chinks in the armor of his opponents, he was sometimes able, by a seemingly careless though cunning thrust, to administer a sickener to their vanity, which was the more galling as seeming to come from a dirty and half-drunken Nigger. "Ah, soger," he would say to some poor fellow whom he saw casting a longing eye towards the busy thoroughfares of the city; "captain not let you go ashore, eh? Too bad, eh? much sooner be black ship's cook than soger." "What's that you say, you Nigger?" would most probably be the reply of the soldier, not being in the best temper, and rather indignant at the idea of being an object of commiseration to a Nigger. "Who you call Nigger, eh? Nigger yourself, sar, more Nigger, a good sight, than ship's cook, sar; ship's cook go shore when he please, and get drunk like gentleman, sar; you a white soger Nigger, me black ship's cook Nigger--dat all de difference." Then, as if in soliloquy, in a deprecatory tone, "Eh! by Jorze, boff poor Niggers; soger mos' as 'specable as colored Nigger when he keep heself sober and behave 'screetly, like color gemman." Stung and irritated by the mock sympathy of the Nigger, the soldier would now be for taking a summary revenge out of his ignoble carcase, when some of the darkey's friends would interpose, declaring that he was a good fellow, and they would not see him ill-used. In the mean time, Morris was supposed by the orderly-sergeant of his company to be absent in town, and as such reported to the captain. Thus far, all had gone on swimmingly; but there was a bit of a rather unpleasant surprise preparing for him as the _denouement_ to this farce, which he had acted with so much success, which had probably not entered into his conception of the character, but mightily increased the dramatic effect of the representation as a whole. The captain of his company, who was a bit of a humorist, either having detected the masquerader himself, or having been informed by some busy person of the strange metamorphosis which one of his men had undergone, it occurred to him that he had an opportunity of giving him a taste of Nigger discipline, that might make him feel more vividly the character he had been representing with so much applause. Sauntering, accordingly, along the deck, with his hands behind him, until he arrived opposite the circle where Morris was exhibiting his antics, he deliberately stepped forward and seized him by the collar, and, pulling out a raw cowhide from behind his back, he began to vigorously belabor poor darkey's shoulders. "O Lor, massa! O Golly! What you trike poor debil for? What hell dis?" shouted Morris, who had no idea that he was discovered, and was willing to submit to a moderate degree of chastisement rather than drop his disguise at that particular juncture. "You infernal grinning scoundrel," cries the captain, still vigorously applying the cowhide, "I have been watching you quarrelling with and aggravating my men all this afternoon; what do you mean, you black rascal, eh? Curse your ugly black countenance, I'll beat you to a jelly, you scoundrel." As he still continued his discipline with the cowhide, showing no symptoms of speedily leaving off, Morris, who was smarting with pain, at last began to think more of preserving his skin than his incognito, and called out lustily, "Captain! I say--stop! I am no Nigger--I am a soldier!" At this there was a general burst of laughter from the soldiers, who crowded round, and seemed to enjoy the scene amazingly; those who did not know that Morris was actually a soldier laughing still more obstreperously at the seeming absurdity of the Nigger's assertion. The captain, though evidently tickled, seemed in no hurry to let him go. "Do you hear the impudence of the black rascal? he says he is a soldier!" said the captain, addressing the men who were standing round. "There, does he look like a soldier!" he continued, as he turned him round for inspection. "Go along, you black rascal, and don't let me catch you among my men again, or I will certainly serve you out with a few more of the same sort." So saying, and administering a few parting salutations of the cowhide as he released him, the captain walked off, chuckling to himself at the joke, which I saw him relating afterwards to some of his brother officers, to their infinite mirth, if one might judge from the peals of laughter which his story elicited. In the mean time, Morris was fain to get rid of his Nigger character as quickly as possible: and having, with the aid of warm water and soap, effected this, he made his appearance on deck, and reported himself as having been asleep in the hold when the roll was called. This the sergeant reported to the captain, who, satisfied, it is probable, with the punishment he had administered with the cowhide, affected to believe his statement, and sent him word by the sergeant to take better care in future. * * * * * When Lord Holland was on his death-bed, his friend, George Selwyn, calling to inquire how his lordship was, left his card. This was taken to Lord Holland, who said, "If Mr. Selwyn calls again, show him into my room. If I am alive I shall be glad to see him: if I am dead, I am sure he will be delighted to see me." From the New Monthly Magazine. THE VEILED PICTURE. A TRAVELLER'S STORY. I. The dawn of a fine October morning, in 1817, was just breaking when the Paris diligence of Messrs. Lafitte and Co. took the opportunity of breaking also. That of the former, however, was as glorious as that of the latter was disastrous. I had been rambling during the summer months through that most interesting country; the volcanic district of Auvergne had laved both my inward and my outward man in most of the celebrated waters which abound in that neighborhood, and was on my return to Paris, where I expected to find the friends with whom I had travelled from England, and hoped to travel back again. It was then with a light heart that I had, on the preceding evening, jumped into the _coupée_ of the luckless vehicle at the little town of Gannât, congratulating myself, firstly, on my good luck in finding a vacant place at all, and secondly, on that place being in the _coupée_, and lastly, and most especially, on there being only one other passenger therein, whereby, as all travellers by diligence are aware, I was spared the uncomfortable task of performing bodkin all the way to Paris, and could take mine ease in mine own corner. When all prudential arrangements for the night, such as air cushion disposed at back, and cloak drawn over knees, were duly made, I began to take a survey of my fellow-traveller, who had greeted me on my entrance with much civility, but the light did not enable me to do more than perceive that he was a venerable-looking old gentleman, whose white locks escaped from under his travelling cap, and descended on his shoulders in great profusion. His manners, however, were so courteous and dignified, that I, at once, recognized in him a specimen of that now well-nigh obsolete race the _ancienne noblesse_. After sundry inquiries and observations on the country through which we were travelling, and divers speculations as to the period at which our journey might possibly end, my fellow-traveller turned to the topic of the battle of Waterloo, then a recent event. "Now," thought I, "for a quarrel." But no; though he felt for the tarnished glory of the French arms, he felt yet more for the old family, and bore me no ill-will for being one of that nation by whose efforts they had been restored, and the Corsican usurper expelled. From these he reverted to the "good old days" of Louis XV., to whose body of Gardes du Corps he had formerly, it seemed, had the honor of belonging, he related many anecdotes of that period, and was especially prosy about the ceremonies observed at the court of that dissolute and _bien-aimé_ monarch. It was during a long story of this sort that I fell into a sound sleep, from which I was awakened by a loud crash, a pretty considerable thump on the head, and a heavy weight pressing on my chest, for all which phenomena, though startling at first, I was quickly able satisfactorily to account. The crash was caused by the ponderous diligence coming into sudden and violent collision with the ground; the thump by the same sort of rude contact between my head and the roof thereof; whilst the weight which I felt so oppressive was the body of my fellow-traveller, lying upon me in a state of complete insensibility, and bleeding profusely. Freeing myself as gently as I could from the apparently lifeless mass, I managed to get the window down, and creep through the somewhat-narrow aperture, when the cause and full extent of the accident was intelligible enough. The iron arm of the axle of the near hind wheel had broken off short, and such was the weight of luggage and packages of all kinds and descriptions stowed away on the roof, that, going, as I understand we were, at, for a French diligence in those days, a rapid pace, the shock had been sufficient to completely capsize us. Sudden and severe, however, as the shock had been, the lives and limbs of the passengers had escaped without loss or material damage; those in the interior being too closely packed for any very violent collision with each other, and the three individuals in the cabriolet, of whom the _conducteur_ was one, being pitched clean, I do not mean any reference to their persons, but to their mode of projection, into a ploughed field by the roadside, where they lay sprawling, and _sacréing_ and _mondieuing_, in the most piteous and guttural tones imaginable, though none appeared to have sufficient excuse for the unearthly noises he made from any actual hurt he had sustained. I was, however, too anxious to afford help to my companion in the _coupée_, to ascertain very minutely their condition, even had I been able to obtain an answer to my inquiries, where all insisted on talking at once and at the top of their voices, and in a tone and with a vehemence which, in any other country, would have seemed a prelude to nothing short of a battle royal. Seeing, however, a peasant, _en blouse_, standing hard by, leaning on his spade, and looking quietly on, I concluded he was not one of the passengers, and might consequently be of some use. Accordingly I hailed him, and after some irresolute gestures, he came up to me, when I explained, rather by dragging him to the door of the carriage than by any verbal communications, which would probably have failed, for what purpose I wanted his assistance. Having opened the door of the carriage, I looked in. There lay my unfortunate companion, "his silver skin laced with his golden blood," still insensible and somewhat cramped, it is true, but not in so uncomfortable a position as might, under the circumstances, have been expected, seeing that I had propped him up as well as I could, before I made my own exit, with my air cushion, and that of the seat he had occupied. Being a tall and heavy man, to get him righted and out was a work of no small difficulty; however, our united efforts were at last successful, and the poor sufferer was laid on the turf by the roadside, on a couch formed of cushions, great-coats, &c., &c. My assistant, who, I must say, now exhibited all the alacrity I could wish, and more handiness than I had expected from him, ran for water, whilst I proceeded to examine my unlucky friend's wounds. He exhibited an ugly gash on the head, from which had flowed the stream of blood which had so disfigured his venerable locks. His left shoulder, too, I found was dislocated. By the plentiful application of cold water to his head and temples, and of some hartshorn, which I happened to have about me, to his nostrils, I at length succeeded in restoring him to consciousness, of which the first symptoms he gave was to glare upon me with an expression of terror and alarm, and exclaiming, in accents of deep despair, "Hah! blood!--more blood!" He uttered a piercing shriek, and again relapsed into syncope. Thus assured, however, that he still lived, the present moment seemed so favorable for the reduction of the dislocated limb, that I set to work forthwith, and, with the assistance of my friendly _paysan_, quickly divested him of his coat, and having placed him in a proper position, instantly slipped the joint into the socket, and bound it with my neckcloth. The snap recalled him to sense, and by the help of a little brandy from my travelling flask, he was completely restored. Still he surveyed me with a terrified look, for which I could not well account, until I discovered that my face and dress were stained with the blood which had flowed from his wound whilst he lay upon me in the carriage. I hastened to remove what I conceived to be the cause of his anxious looks, by assuring him I had received no injury whatever except a slight contusion not worth mentioning, and that the blood, which I washed off in his presence, was his own. The next consideration was--what was to be done? To stay where we were was out of the question; no sort of public conveyance would pass that way _en route_ to Paris until the second morning at the same hour. My companion's wound required dressing, and I wanted my breakfast, for the sharp air of the morning had so quickened my appetite, that the thoughts of my disaster were fast fading away before the vision of _café au lait_ and a _biftek_. The realization of this pleasing prospect became the more probable when I learnt that we were not more than a short league from the town of Moulins, whither I instantly dispatched my trusty _paysan_, whose faculties and movements were much quickened by the promise of a five-franc piece when he returned with some sort of vehicle to convey us into the town. During his absence, which lasted two mortal hours, I had abundant time to consider and contemplate the person and demeanor of the individuals whom chance had thus thrown in my way, and, as it were, upon my charity. The former still exhibited sufficient traces of manly beauty to show that, in his youth, he had been strikingly handsome, whilst the latter spoke the accomplished and high-bred gentleman in the truest and least hackneyed acceptation of the word. Being now perfectly himself again, he listened with much interest to such account of our accident as I was able to give, and, ascertaining from his bandaged head and shoulder the nature and extent of my services to him, his gratitude was expressed in the warmest terms. "I am the last of an ancient house," said he, "and but for you should have died on the road like a dog. I am the Marquis de Marigny, pray tell me to whom I am under so much obligation." "Why, sir," said I, "my name is D----, by profession a physician, and, at a pinch, a tolerable surgeon, and I never so congratulated myself on my slender knowledge of this branch of the healing art as on the present occasion." Further conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the _paysan_ with a sort of rickety cabriolet, drawn by so small a horse, decorated with so large a collar, and covered with such a profusion of trappings, that, until he drew up beside us, and I could clearly distinguish the animal's four legs, I was not quite sure that the vehicle did not progress by some locomotive power of its own. Having roused the _conducteur_, whom we found fast asleep amidst a pile of disorganized packages, we selected our respective baggage, and, having secured it as well as we could on and about the cabriolet, I took an affectionate leave of the good _paysan_, and, mounting by the side of my venerable companion, handled the ribbons and started. Our diminutive steed however required no great skill in coachmanship, nor any persuasion to get home again as quickly as the weight behind him would permit, so that we soon arrived at the town where, our arrival being expected, we found mine host of the Hôtel d'Allier and his _domestiques_ on the alert; and, by the time I had made a hasty toilette, a good breakfast, to which I did ample justice, was on the table. Our meal being ended, and my companion complaining of a good deal of pain, I set forth in search of an apothecary's shop, where I procured the necessary materials; and his hurts having been properly dressed and bandaged, I advised him to go to bed and seek the repose he so much needed till dinner time. In the mean time I amused myself by writing some letters and in strolling through and about the environs of this neat and lively town, which the pen of Sterne has rendered classic ground. The evening was spent in my friend's bedroom, as he was not well enough to join the party in the _salon_. Nevertheless he was in good spirits, and very communicative; informed me that he was the younger son of a noble family in Dauphiny, but that by the death of his elder brother, many years since, he had succeeded to the title and family estate, to which he had been paying a farewell visit when I joined him at Gannât. These family histories and sundry interesting anecdotes of the days of Louis XV. and XVI. so animated the old man, that I, fearing the excitement in his present condition, thought it prudent to plead fatigue and retire to rest. Before we parted, however, for the night, he made me promise that I would not desert him on the morrow if he should not be able to travel, but that I would accompany him to Paris, and take up my quarters with him during my stay in that capital. The next morning I found him, though much better, yet still unfit for a continuous journey of any length. With the assistance, therefore, of our host, we engaged a _voiturier_ who, for a certain sum, agreed to take us to Paris by such easy stages as we might direct and find agreeable. To describe the road from Moulins to Paris would be to write a guide-book; suffice it to say, that the weather was delightful, and my companion, who not only bore the journey well, but seemed to derive both health and spirits from this easy mode of travelling, was altogether the must amusing companion I had ever happened to meet with; insomuch, that I almost regretted, when we pulled up at the Barrière d'Italie on entering the gay capital of France, that our journey was at an end. We arrived about four o'clock P. M., and drove straight to the Place Beauveau, where, without his order to the driver to stop, I should not have failed to pitch upon his residence, so perfectly was it in keeping with the appearance and character of its venerable owner. There prevailed throughout the same air of antiquity; we were admitted by an ancient porter and received by another elderly domestic, well-nigh as venerable and aristocratic in his appearance as the master, who expressed in affectionate, yet respectful terms, the lively satisfaction he felt on again beholding his _cher marquis_, whose arrival he had been expecting for some days, and manifested the most touching anxiety when he saw the traces, and heard a brief account of the accident which had befallen him. My friend, having most courteously and cordially welcomed me to his house, consigned me to the care of Antoine, as this ancient serving man was called, and by whom I was conducted to a suite of apartments, _au seconde_ it is true, but most comfortably and tastefully furnished in the Louis-Quatorze style of decoration. The walls were hung with tapestry, relieved at intervals by splendid mirrors and tables of rare marbles, whilst a bed, with green silk hangings, worthy of, and apparently coeval with, Anne of Austria herself, promised me a night of luxurious repose. Having, with Antoine's assistance, unpacked and arranged my wardrobe, I proceeded to dress for dinner, and my operations were scarcely concluded ere he knocked at my door and announced that it was served. I immediately followed him down stairs to a spacious and well-lighted _salon_, where my friend awaited me. The repast to which we sat down gave me a very exalted opinion of the _savoir faire_ of my friend's _chef_. There was no _rosbif_, no _plomboudin_, no clumsy attempt at imitation of the English _cuisine_, out of compliment to me; all was French, and all was perfect--the soup pure and restoring--the _côtellettes magnifiques_, and the _vol au vent superbe_. The Champagne was _frappé_ to the minute, the Chambertin shed its _bouquet_, and the Bordeaux of rare quality. Mine host ate and drank sparingly, but he did the honors of his table in a manner so courteous, yet so jovial withal, that our dinner was a protracted one, and it was late ere we retired to coffee in his library, an oblong room of noble dimensions, and so furnished that it would have been called comfortable even in England, and elegant every where. The sides were covered with bookcases, whose shelves contained the best German, French, and Italian authors, and a much larger assortment of English works than is usually found in a foreigner's collection. The ends were hung with some choice specimens of the old masters, and one or two of the modern French school, whilst here and there on marble tables, or pedestals, stood some exquisite pieces of sculpture, which showed to the greatest advantage under the soft light of three lamps of the purest alabaster, which hung suspended from the ceiling; in short, the aspect of the whole apartment proclaimed the owner to be a man of wealth, taste and literature. Amongst the pictures, I observed that a large one, which hung alone over the mantlepiece, was covered by a black crape veil or curtain. This, of course, excited my curiosity; but as my friend, in describing the others, never in any way alluded to it, I felt that inquiry was impossible. In fact, he always contrived, or appeared to contrive, to divert my attention when he perceived me looking in that direction. "You see, sir," said he, "that I do in some measure cultivate English literature. I have read the works of most of your best writers, and flatter myself that I can almost taste and appreciate the beauties of your great poet Shakspeare. I have seen, too, your Siddons give vitality and form to the sublime conceptions of his genius. Her _Queen Katharine_ was noble, her _Constance_ touching, and her _Lady Macbeth_ terrible. I shall _never_," continued he, in a low tone, and as if talking to himself, "_never_ forget it; it recalled too _vividly_," and here, methought, his eye glanced at the veiled picture, when, suddenly starting up, he fetched from one of the shelves the volume containing that play, and read aloud some passages with a power and effect that quite surprised me. I was about to compliment him on the correctness of his conception and the force of his elocution, but he waived his hand, as if pained by the images produced on his mind by the scene he had just read, hastily restored the book to its shelf, and turned the conversation to some topic of the day, which, with other trivial matter, occupied us till I proposed to retire. Shaking my hand warmly, my friend jocularly expressed his hope that, "as I had less on my conscience than Lady Macbeth, so I should rest better," and we parted for the night. Sleep, however, I could not, though my body was weary and my couch soft. My mind had been strongly and strangely excited, as well by my host's impassioned recital of Macbeth, as by the crape-clad picture, and I could not help fancying that there was some mysterious connection between it and the play. Thus I lay watching the flickering light emitted by the embers of my wood-fire, which was now fast dying away on the hearth, until the pendule on the chimney-piece announced in silver tones that it was _three_ o'clock. "I can endure this no longer," exclaimed I, "see that picture I must and will. Every soul in the house is now buried in sleep; why should I not steal down to the library and gratify my indomitable curiosity? If it be a breach of hospitality, it is surely a venial one? What can the old gentleman expect, if he will thus tantalize his guests?" Whilst I thus reasoned with myself, I was busily employed in wrapping my _robe de chambre_ about my person and in lighting my candle, and in one minute, I stood before the object of my waking dreams, and in another the light was raised to its proper level and the crape thrown back; when, instead of some scene of blood, which my heated imagination had conjured up, there stood revealed before my wondering eyes the portrait of one of the loveliest women I ever beheld. The head, set gracefully on exquisitely turned shoulders, exhibited a countenance in which sweetness and intelligence were intimately blended. The features, though not what is termed regular, were most harmonious, and gave me a clearer idea of Lord Byron's "the mind, the music breathing from her face," than I had ever had before. Her dark chestnut hair, parted Madonnawise on her pale and thoughtful brow, fell in rich clusters down an ivory neck, and finally rested on a bosom "firm as a maiden's, as a matron's full." But it was the eyes that chiefly riveted my gaze. Deep and clear as one of Ruysdael's lakes, they seemed to reflect in their limpid mirror every surrounding object. At the first glance their expression was that of softness; but on fixing mine upon them as I did, in all the intensity of admiration, they seemed gradually to assume so stern an aspect, as if reproving my impertinent curiosity, that I fairly quailed beneath their glance. Whilst I thus stood, rooted as it were to the spot, and lost in mingled feelings of admiration and wonder, not unmixed with a certain sensation of awe, a hand laid gently on my shoulder caused me to start round, and I beheld my friend standing beside me. I was about to mutter some apology, but he stopped me, saying, "It was my fault, I do not blame you. I ought to have known that that veiled picture would excite your curiosity, and I ought not to have brought you here unless I was prepared to gratify it. But return to bed, and to-morrow you shall know my history and that of the picture now before you. I never yet imparted it to mortal ear, but as it will interest, and may possibly be useful to you in afterlife, you shall have it, as some return for the services you have rendered me. Good night." So saying he waived his hand in a friendly but somewhat authoritative manner, and I betook myself to my apartment, a good deal abashed and ashamed of my adventure. It was late the next morning when Antoine, presenting himself at my bedside, broke my slumbers, and with them the current of a dream of which the picture and the occurrences of the past night formed the basis. He informed me he had just dressed his master, and tendered me the like service, which, however, I declined, and proceeded, unaided and alone, to dress with all expedition. My friend received me in the _salon_, where we had dined the preceding day, with his usual benignant smile; but it was easy to perceive that his night had not been passed in sleep. He looked languid and out of spirits, and our breakfast was a somewhat silent one. When it was over, he sat awhile lost in deep thought, but at length, as if by sudden effort, he arose and took me by the arm, saying, "Allons, M.D., let us adjourn to the library, where I will unburden my mind, and perform the promise of last night." The picture was still uncovered, and we were no sooner seated than, as if fearing his resolution might give way, he immediately began thus: In the year 1770 I had, as I have already informed you, the honor of belonging to that distinguished body the Gardes du Corps, and though my duty required my almost constant presence at Versailles, I, nevertheless, had a lodging in this house, which is now mine. I had at that time but little prospect of ever possessing a house of my own, and could not always pay my rent for the room I then occupied therein. My family, of which I was the youngest, was rich, but I was poor, and have often gone without a dinner, because I had not wherewithal to pay for one. I fell into debt, which my brother promised, some day or other, to pay; or I might, perhaps, get a rich wife, for we men of fashion, whilst youth and good looks lasted, thought ourselves fairly entitled to use the folly of wealthy old dowagers as an instrument placed in our hands by Providence to enable us to revenge ourselves on Fortune for her cruelty in making us younger sons. "Remember," my father used to say to me, "that there is nothing on which our good or ill-fate in life so much depends as on women; we are in their hands; they manage us as they please; and it is the gentlest and the meekest who rule us the most effectually." I, however, led a gay and thoughtless life, and never troubled myself to inquire what influence, good or evil, women might have on my future life. I had three occupations which took up all my time--the ordinary routine of duty at Versailles; to pay assiduous court to the Prince de Beauveau, who honored me with his patronage, and for which reason I chose my lodgings as near as I could to his hotel; and last, though not least, there was Mademoiselle Zephirine, _première dansuese_ at the Theatre Audinet. You smile, Mr. D., but recollect that I am now speaking of more than forty years ago. Ah! it was then no slight affair to keep a mistress, I assure you; for, though not allowed to hear one's name, she was to be openly acknowledged and as openly fought for when there was occasion. I had, for instance, to call out an officer in the Swiss Guards, for presuming to say that Zephirine had failed in one of her favorite and most admired _pas_. The Princess de Beauveau knew of the connection, and did not disapprove; so I practiced all the fashionable dances of the day, that I might qualify myself to appear as the partner of Zephirine at the public balls in Paris and at the _fêtes champêtres_ at Versailles, where we danced on the verdant carpet of the mossy turf. Zephirine had all the accomplishments and tastes that take the fancy of a sprig of fashion of that period; she fenced and rode beautifully; loved champagne suppers, and doted on all the costly fineries of Madame Bertia's splendid show-room. In short, I ruined myself with so little thought and so much pleasure that I believed myself to be in love, and was quite sure that Mademoiselle was as warmly attached to me; when, one evening, she came into my room here,--this very room, my dear Mr. D., where we are now sitting, still attired in her theatrical costume, and with the stage paint not yet rubbed off her pretty face. "Chevalier," said she, "take care of yourself, your creditors are about to pounce upon you--yes, to arrest you. I learnt the fact not five minutes ago from an attorney's clerk, who makes love to my maid, and I came in to--" "How can I sufficiently thank you, dearest," said I; "and so for me you brave even a prison, and--" "Why, not exactly," replied she. "You see, Chevalier, you have no longer either cash or credit, and I should be a burden to you." "Well?" "Well, at first I had thoughts of sharing your fallen fortunes, but a Monsieur Edmond, the son of an East India Director, has advised me to abandon my intention and accompany him to England; 'twill be a saving to you, and we are going to start immediately; our travelling-carriage waits. Goodby, my dear chevalier,--_au revoir_!" With that she made a _pirouette_, and in three bounds was out of the room. I ran, I flew, but Zephirine was too nimble for me, and I reached the street just in time to see her jump lightly into the carriage of the rich Englishman, and drive off at a gallop. To follow them--to overtake the ravisher and force him to resign his prey, was my first impulse; but, alas! I had no money, nor the means of borrowing any, and stood, moreover, in need of the kind intervention of the Prince de Beauveau between me and my importunate creditors. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to digest the affront as well as I could. When my mind became somewhat calmer, and I had pretty well got over the jeers of my acquaintance, I began to ask myself if I had really loved Zephirine, and if there had not been more vanity than passion in all the follies she had led me to commit? The response was, that I had _not_ been in love with her, nor she with me. We both loved a jolly, rackety life--that was all; she was too flighty for affection, and I too dissipated for serious attachment. Besides, a man rarely allows his whole mind and thoughts to be entirely engrossed by any woman; he courts distraction in the variety of other occupations and tastes; all pursuits, all channels of employment, are open to him; and if he be a soldier, he is exposed to so many vicissitudes and dangers, and meets with so many adventures, that all the passions are brought into play, and each in its turn so blunts and weakens the influence of the other that none makes any durable impression. He abandons without scruple, a beloved mistress for a wealthy wife, and speaks of it openly without shame or reserve, whilst a woman would blush at the bare idea of such an act. Woman's love lives on self-denial, grows by sacrifices, and expands under the pressure of misfortune. I do not say that such is the love of all women, but it is of that chosen few with whose feelings it is dangerous to trifle, and who are not to be cast off with impunity. I have dwelt the more at length on my connection with Zephirine, because her name will re-appear in the course of the history of my first _real_ love. I was, however (continued M. de Marigny), more cut up by my misfortune than I cared to confess, and had thoughts of quitting my lodgings in the Place Beauveau, and of having no other residence than the barracks of the Gardes du Corps at Versailles, when one evening, at about eleven o'clock, as I was returning home, pondering upon the urgent importunities of my creditors, and my brother's slackness in carrying into effect his promises and good intention towards me, I heard piercing shrieks proceeding from the very place whither I was going, and from the spot where it is crossed by a narrow street which leads into the Champs Elysées, then, neither paved, nor, as now, ornamented by good houses on each side. I need hardly add that this street was as dark as pitch, whilst even the place itself was only dimly lighted by the flickering gleam of the one poor lamp which hung before the hotel of M. le Prince de Beauveau. I drew my sword, and ran towards the spot whence the cries proceeded, but had scarcely gone twenty yards before I stumbled over a lifeless body. I stretched out my hands, and caught by the arm a fainting female, who at the same moment, seemed to come to herself only to redouble her cries and lamentations. "Help! help!" cried she, in a voice choked by tears. "Here is help, madame," said I; "what is the matter--tell me?" "Help! they have slain this unhappy gentleman by my side." My lodging being close by I ran and shook the great gate by repeated knocking, until I roused the porter and my own servant, cried murder, and, as at that hour of the night many of the inmates were not yet gone to bed, a light was soon procured, and all hastened to the scene of the murder. There we found, stretched in a pool of blood, a young and handsome female, her face whiter than the kerchief which encircled her blood-stained neck, her ears torn, her hands wounded, and close beside her the dead body of a man, somewhat older than herself, and which the neighbors speedily recognized as that of M. de Fosseux, a gentleman of some distinction at the bar, and who lived in the Place Beauveau, right opposite to my house. A general cry of horror burst from us all. The victim had been stabbed to the heart by a strong and steady hand, and the dagger--the instrument with which the crime had been perpetrated--had dropt from the wound, and was bathed in blood. "There were two of them," cried the young lady, sobbing; "one seized my hands, tore the ear-rings from my ears, and snatched my necklace from my neck, whilst the other stabbed M. de Fosseux, who fell without a groan. Ah! if they had but been content only to rob us!" Then were the lamentations of the unhappy lady renewed, and she fell into repeated swoons, from which she was recalled only to weep more and more bitterly. We raised her up and carried her to her own house, or rather to that of M. de Fosseux, whither we also carried him, and sent for a surgeon; but his help was useless; M. de Fosseux had long ceased to breathe. On receiving information of the occurrence, a lieutenant of police came instantly, and very speedily and satisfactorily decided on a very evident fact, namely, that the sole object of the assassins had been plunder, for M. de Fosseux had been robbed of his watch, his purse, a valuable ring, the mark of which was still visible on one of his fingers, and a pair of diamond buckles. Having satisfied himself on this point, the officer next proceeded to the apartment of the young lady, whom he interrogated most strictly as to all the details and circumstances attending the commission of the deed. She replied to all his questions with much self-possession, and the most exact precision--"stated her name to be Eugenie d'Ermay, by birth a gentlewoman, and a native of Poitou; twenty-five years of age, and an orphan, without any private fortune; and," added she, casting her eyes on the ground, "I have lived for seven years with M. de Fosseux, without the sanction of the marriage tie." He, her sole protector, and the only friend to whom she could look on leaving the convent where she had been educated, had also been her seducer; but he introduced her to society and to the families of his friends, and that very evening they had been supping with Madame la Comtesse de T----, and were returning on foot, when, close to their own door, the above tragical event took place. As to the deed itself, all had been effected with the utmost rapidity. Two men whom they had for some time observed to be following them, suddenly rushed upon them--one of the two had seized her and held her fast, whilst he stripped her of her trinkets; the other laid hold of M. de Fosseux, had struck him a too sure and fatal blow, and robbed him with a dispatch and address which showed an experienced hand; all this had been but the work of an instant, and the two assassins had fled towards the Champs Elysées with such speed that they were already far beyond pursuit before the unhappy lady suspected that he whom she loved was at all hurt, much less that he was killed. "Did you observe," asked the police officer, "if one of the men was tall and strongly made and had red hair, and the other short and high-shouldered?" Mademoiselle d'Ermay could not answer these questions; she felt certain, however, that the man, who had killed M. de Fosseux was tall, and her impression was confirmed by the fact of the blow having evidently been struck from above downwards. There were at that time in Paris two highwaymen, one of whom was called Pierre le Mauvais, and the other Guillaume le Bossu. These worthies were the theme of market-places and wine-shops, and as every robbery and murder committed in the capital was attributed to them, this was of course laid at their door. Whilst listening attentively to this examination, and marking the profound grief of Eugenie--her deathlike paleness and her silent despair--I could not but pity M. de Fosseux, whom cruel fate had thus severed at the early age of thirty-two, not only from life, but from so young and lovely a companion. As Mademoiselle d'Ermay had mentioned the name of the Comtesse de T----, the officer of police called upon this lady in order to ascertain the truth of the statement as to her supper party, and found it to be perfectly correct. The comtesse, as soon as she heard of the sad event, hastened to assure Mademoiselle d'Ermay of her sympathy by every demonstration of kindness and affection, and, determined not to leave her in a house now become one of mourning, with the corpse of M. de Fosseux for her sole companion, insisted on taking her instantly to her own. Mademoiselle d'Ermay consented on one condition, namely, that she should be permitted once more to look on him who had been the only object she had loved on earth. I was present at this last scene of this sad drama. Mademoiselle d'Ermay said nothing, but throwing herself on her knees by the side of the bed on which they had laid M. de Fosseux, her hands convulsively clasped together and her head sunk on her breast, she was absorbed for some minutes in fervent prayer, when, suddenly rising and turning to Madame de T----, she said, "I am ready, madame." She then immediately quitted the house in that silence which is the surest sign of profound affliction, and having seen her safely conveyed to Madame de T---- 's, I took my leave. On reaching my own abode, I fell into a reverie in which I could not help contrasting the attachment of such a woman as Mademoiselle d'Ermay with the light and heartless nature of my connection with Zephirine. Yet all my feelings revolted at the odious comparison. What? could I for a moment, even in thought, place a young lady of good family, well educated, and whom the arts of a seducer, under the guise of a friend, had betrayed into her first and only error--could I for an instant allow myself to place her in the same class with an opera-dancer? I hated myself for the very thought, which could never have suggested itself but to one who had never known any other sort of tie than such as had bound me to Zephirine--who had never been loved, nor ever felt the genuine passion. I slept not that night, nor did I wish to sleep; my mind was too fully occupied in recalling every movement, every gesture, every word that fell from the lips of Mademoiselle d'Ermay; her gentle countenance, her angelic look, and that brow so fair and so open, whose polished surface even terror the most appalling had not been able to ruffle. Still I was not in love with her; I merely tried to recall her features, which the darkness of the night and the uncertain glimmer of candles had not enabled me to see and examine so perfectly as I could have wished. However, I promised myself better success the next day, when I resolved to observe her with the closest attention, although I felt that in so doing I was rashly exposing myself to that undefinable and seducing something which hung around her like a charm. II. It was, perhaps, the consciousness of the wish formed overnight that determined me to see Mademoiselle d'Ermay. Neither had I any desire to resist its power, but rather to feel it and succumb, for I was well assured, that if such a one could be won, she was worth winning. I shuddered when I reflected how few hours had elapsed since she had been exposed to the dagger of an assassin, and could not conceive how it had happened that till that time I had never seen Mademoiselle d'Ermay, though she was living close by me. In the mean time the family of M. de Fosseux caused seals to be placed on all the property of the deceased, and with some difficulty allowed the unfortunate lady to take away her clothes and some few trinkets, and a small sum of money, which beyond dispute was her own, it being found in a desk on which her name was engraved, and of which she had the key. That the family of M. de Fosseux should look upon her with no friendly eye was, perhaps, natural enough. However, in a few days, the heir-at-law of the deceased waited upon her, and said, "Mademoiselle, M. de Fosseux having been cut off thus suddenly, has left no will; had he been able to foresee his death, there can be no doubt that he would not have forgotten to make due provision for you; it therefore devolves on me, as a duty, to supply that defect, and to fulfil his intentions." "No, sir," replied Mademoiselle d'Ermay, "I never asked anything from M. de Fosseux, nor ever expected anything; our connection was free from all pecuniary considerations, present or future; excuse me from accepting any thing." In this refusal Mademoiselle d'Ermay was immovable. But to return to myself. The next day I ventured to call on Mademoiselle d'Ermay, was admitted, and became thoroughly aware how necessary was this second interview, and better light to a due conception of her beauty. I have said beauty, but she was, in fact, what might be called lovely rather than beautiful, sweetness being the leading characteristic of her countenance, across which, calm and innocent as it was, an expression of archness would occasionally flit and vanish again into one of softness and repose. An acute physiognomist, perhaps, might have been led to suspect, from the form of the mouth and the compression of the lips, that the repose of Mademoiselle d'Ermay's features was the result of a strong will and a haughty spirit rather than a natural quality. Be that as it may, to eyes untutored in that science this slight symptom was not visible, and had no existence; whilst the simplicity and modesty of her demeanor, and the perfect propriety of all her actions, won every heart. Her grief was sincere, and her tears unaffected, yet she did not wear mourning for M. de Fosseux; and whilst none doubted that she deeply regretted him, all applauded the good taste which restrained her from rendering her situation yet more remarked by assuming the outward trappings of woe. Some few days after the events of which I have just been speaking, Mademoiselle d'Ermay hired a small room on the sixth floor in this very house. When I heard (continued M. de Marigny) that the woman who for the last ten days had never been absent from my thoughts was living under the same roof with myself, I experienced a sensation of pleasure, which was only alloyed by the necessity I was under of setting out that very night for Versailles, whither my duty called me, and would detain me for some time. I was even on the point of resigning my commission; and but for the Prince de Beauveau, I really believe I should have added this to the already pretty long list of my follies. Mere chance, however, enabled me to make my stay at Versailles serviceable to my passion, for, I must confess it, I loved Mademoiselle d'Ermay. I happened one day to meet, in one of the ante-rooms of the palace, the Comtesse de T----, who having an intimate friend amongst the queen's ladies of honor, often came to Versailles. I seized the opportunity to ask her a multitude of questions about Mademoiselle d'Ermay, and ascertained the following facts: Mademoiselle d'Ermay, though originally of Poitou, was born at Noyou; her father, a man of rank, having spent his fortune at court, emigrated to America, leaving a young wife and his daughter Eugenie, then only six years old, with very slender means of support. Death, ere long, bereft the daughter of her mother's care, when an old aunt brought her desolate condition under the notice of the Archbishop of Paris, by whose recommendation and influence she was placed in a convent in this capital, and received the usual education of a nun, which, though it failed to stifle generous feelings in her bosom, it taught her to conceal them. Trained to keep the secrets of others she became impenetrable as to her own, and hid a proud and resolved spirit under the meekest possible exterior. Mistress of herself, her calmness and presence of mind never for an instant forsook her. "You have seen," continued Madame de T----, "how far Mademoiselle d'Ermay carries disinterestedness, and may thence infer how faithful and devoted a friend she is capable of being; but," added she, "I have a notion she _could_ be a most implacable foe. "The superior of the convent where she was educated was a relation of M. de Fosseux, who often visited her, and thus had opportunities of seeing her youthful charge, and of ascertaining how much she was neglected and even ill-treated. Touched with compassion for her forlorn condition, and smitten by her beauty, he found means of communicating with her, avowed his sentiments, and won her heart. Nothing was easier than to elope from the convent, as M. de Fosseux proposed; but the young lady at once rejected so romantic a mode of proceeding, and went to the superior and simply demanded her liberty. It might have been expected that she would be asked what she was about to do, and whether she was going; but as the old aunt had ceased to pay for her board, and Eugenie was therefore a burden on the establishment, they allowed her to depart unquestioned. She immediately repaired to the house of M. de Fosseux, and their connection was one of unmixed happiness until the late fatal accident dissolved it. I have now told you all I know." "Then, madame," said I, "your friend is, in fact, penniless?" "I cannot say," answered the comtesse; "it is a point on which Eugenie is obstinately silent; she has refused to stay with me, and I think she has had too much experience of convent life ever to go there again; but I believe she has some secret but honorable resource which affords her a decent maintenance. I have already told you that her father went to America, where he died, and his daughter probably got whatever he left behind him." As soon as I was off duty at Versailles I hastened back to Paris; and the first thing I did on reaching my old lodging was to mount to the sixth floor, and present myself to Mademoiselle d'Ermay. I found her occupying three small rooms, one of which served her for kitchen, and the one in which she received me was simply, and would have appeared poorly, furnished, but for the exquisite cleanliness and neatness, which gave it an air of elegance. After due inquiries concerning her health, I proceeded to congratulate myself on my good fortune in having the happiness to be under the same roof; begged she would command my services in any way in which they could be useful, and then hastened to change the subject, for I saw refusal trembling on her lips. "I am sorry," said I, "to see you in such apartments as these." "They are quite consistent, sir," said she, "with my slender means and the state of my mind." I cast my eyes towards the window; she understood me, and, bursting into tears, withdrew into the adjoining room to hide her emotion. In fact, from this window not only the Place de Beauveau and the house of M. de Fosseux, but even the windows of his apartments, were visible. In a few minutes she reappeared, perfectly calm, with a serene and even smiling countenance. Never have I known a woman who had so much command over herself, or whose composure lent her such a charm. To see her and resist her sway was beyond the powers of mortal man, and I quitted her presence deeply in love, and resolved to leave no means untried to gain her affections. At the same time I was quite aware that I could not hope for success under a considerable length of time, even if she had not really loved M. de Fosseux. To make a woman forget a faithless lover is an easy task; to render her fickle, under ordinary circumstances, is an enterprise in which many succeed; but to efface the recollection of so bloody a catastrophe, whilst pressing my suit in perhaps the self-same well-remembered words and expressions of its lamented victim, seemed so all but hopeless an undertaking, that it required the stimulus of the most ardent passion not to shrink from it in despair. I had, however, some chances in my favor; I was young, though some years older than Mademoiselle d'Ermay; and as time has now shorn me of personal attractions, I may perhaps be allowed to boast that I was considered a good-looking fellow; finally, in the eyes of such a woman as I then loved, I had one special recommendation--I was poor. Now Mademoiselle d'Ermay, though caring little for the conventional rules of society, was scrupulous to the last degree in all that related to sentiment, generosity and disinterestedness, insomuch that the only circumstance which annoyed her in her connexion with M. de Fosseux was, that he was rich. All she required was the like absolute devotion as that which she herself rendered. It was to such a woman as this that, three months after the death of, M. de Fosseux, I hazarded a declaration of my passion. That I really felt what I so warmly and so earnestly avowed, it required not a woman's sagacity to perceive. I had given up all my favorite amusements--no more riding and driving, no more evenings at the theatre, no more supper parties. I had become pale and thin, and felt assured that Mademoiselle d'Ermay was at no loss to what cause to attribute such a change in my person and pursuits; neither did she affect to doubt the reality of a passion of which the proofs were so evident, nor did she attempt to deny that the human heart was not made for eternal sorrow, or that time could not heal its deepest wounds, but she pleaded the very peculiar position in which her lot had placed her. "Chevalier," said she, "do not, I pray you, press me to return your passion. Love can no more find entrance into my bosom, and you know its dire consequences if it could: it is fatal--it is mortal." "Banish," said I, in return, "such sad recollections. Why regard yourself as the cause of an unhappy event to which you yourself had so nearly fallen a victim? I can understand your repugnance hereafter to wear, or to see worn by your friends, diamonds, or such valuables as tempt the plunderer, but to renounce love at your age, and with your beauty, that were indeed too much, especially when you have inspired such a passion as mine; and oh! consider the difficulties, the trials, the dangers inseparable from your present position, and tell me if, instead of rejecting, you ought not, on the contrary, to seek some one to whom you may look for assistance, and on whom you may rely for support?" Mademoiselle d'Ermay acknowledged all this to be true; nevertheless she hesitated. At length, however, by dint of love and perseverance, I succeeded in weakening her objections, and in satisfying her scruples, and she consented to receive my addresses. She even confessed that I was not indifferent to her; but when with expressions of love I mingled promises and oaths of eternal fidelity. "Have a care," said she. "I ask nothing; I require nothing; but promises are, in my eyes, sacred matters. You are lavish of oaths--if I accept them, I shall look on them as binding. Is there not some ancient poet who says that "Jove laughs at lovers' perjuries?" I am more severe than Jove. I give you fair warning, M. le Chevalier." "Where is the lover," added M. de Marigny, "who, under like circumstances, does not redouble all the oaths his mistress seems to doubt? Where is he who would hesitate to swear that he is the most truthful and constant of men? Who would not vow _eternal_ love to _such_ a woman?" My old friend here raised his hands and his eyes to the picture before us, and remained for some moments in an attitude of deep and silent admiration. At length he slowly withdrew both, and with a deep sigh resumed his narration. Mademoiselle d'Ermay consented, but reluctantly, and with the ill grace of a woman who yields in spite of herself; however she did yield, and quitted her apartments on the sixth floor for mine on the first. From that moment, my friend, I knew the bliss of being loved, and loved too without jealousy or quarrels, but with a sweet, constant, and equable flow of affection which I had not hitherto believed to be possible. No thought of the past, no anxiety for the future, seemed to have any place in Eugenie's mind; but happy in the conviction of my love, she manifested towards me as much attachment and even passion as she had exhibited hesitation and reserve on consenting to my wishes. Never, by any chance, did she allude to past events, nor did the name of M. de Fosseux ever escape her lips. I was proud of my conquest; prouder of the passion I had inspired--a passion which she did not feign, but feel. There was no pouting, no jealous freaks, none of those ebullitions of temper which so disturb the peace and harmony of even the most attached couples: she was always in the same mood; her countenance always serene, her words always sweet and soothing; nay, more, my circumstances were, as I have told you, embarrassed; and I was so deeply in debt, that I owed even the freedom of my person to the interposition of the Prince de Beauveau, when Mademoiselle d'Ermay undertook the management of my affairs, called on my creditors in person, examined their claims, obtained time for payment, struck out usurious demands; and, when my brother at length thought proper to come to my aid, paid the stipulated sums to each with such business-like accuracy, that my creditors gave me no further trouble, and in a very short space of time I was completely free from all claims and incumbrances. She held that a gentleman's word should be his bond, and that no other security ought to be necessary or required. When I reflected on the change which had taken place in the course of my life, and on the growing ascendancy which Eugenie exercised over me, and when I saw my foolish fancies and ill-formed plans give way, as they continually did, before the influence of her firm and well-regulated mind, I blushed to think how poor a figure I made, and what a mere puppet I was in the hands of a clever but imperious woman. Far from seeing love in all the care she bestowed upon me, I saw only a spirit of domination which hurt my pride. Even Zephirine, the opera-dancer, deceiving and abandoning me as she did at the very moment when I was harassed by debts contracted for and by her, had less deeply wounded my self-love than did Mademoiselle d'Ermay in thus devoting herself to my interests. Such is man! vain and ungrateful! Such, however, were her powers of fascination, that I could not help loving her, and whilst I thus yielded to her sway, I had, as you see, this one secret feeling in my bosom which I could not impart to her. How soon was I to be guilty of other wrongs towards her! My elder brother died, and I became the head of the family. I became rich, too, and might also lawfully claim the title of marquis instead of that of chevalier. Will you believe that I said nothing of all this to Mademoiselle d'Ermay? I sighed for liberty; I wanted to enjoy my accession of fortune without her privity, and to spend my money unrestrained by her good sense and unchecked by her prudence. I went secretly to my agent and gave him instruction as to my affairs, and all without saying one word to the woman who, till that moment, had known my most secret thoughts, and was accustomed to read my very looks. I thought of the figure my fortune would enable me to make at the gaming table, which Mademoiselle d'Ermay had prevailed on me to give up, and in all those pleasures which a Garde du Corps of fortune can enjoy with his comrades. For these purposes it was necessary that I should resume my duty, from which I had been absent on leave for nearly a whole year, and I announced my intention accordingly. "You choose your time ill," said Eugenie, in a quiet tone; "if you resume service you must be less with me, and it is not prudent to quit the citadel at the very time it is attacked." When I asked an explanation of these last words, this was (continued M. de Marigny), the substance of what she told me; and, that you may understand their import, I must tell you, that before the year 1789, the higher classes of our clergy were composed of the younger sons of noble families, who were in the receipt of large incomes from the Church; and the bishops and canons of those days, endowed as they were with fat livings and rich abbeys, did not think themselves at all called upon to reside on their several preferments, but lived in Paris and about the court, where their course of life was not always strictly evangelical. One of them, whose name I shall not mention, as it is not material to my story, had remarked Mademoiselle d'Ermay. What had particularly taken his fancy, as he said in a letter which Eugenie put into my hands, was her youthful and ingenuous countenance, her retiring manners, her love of seclusion, and her modest yet animated style of conversation. He made her splendid offers, to which he attached this one condition only, namely, that their intercourse should be a profound secret; and, he added, that in leaving me she would, moreover, silence the scandalous reports which had so long been circulated to her disadvantage. "It was Tartuffe," said M. de Marigny, with a bitter laugh; "trying to wean Elmire from the gallants of the court, by offering her love without scandal, and pleasure without danger." "You know," said Eugenie, when she showed me this letter, "that even if I were free to accept an offer, and this right reverend gentleman pleased me, I could never stoop to such a mere bargaining as this; but I love you, my friend, and you alone, and I show you this letter only because we have no secrets from each other." Thus, at the very moment when she was sacrificing for my sake an ample and secure provision, I, on my part, was concealing from her my new and altered position in life; yet at the same time I knew she had nothing, for her father was not dead, as Madame de T. supposed, and had never sent her a single _sou_. I was on the point of confessing all; but false shame restrained me, and I set off for Versailles. I was like a man who vainly endeavors to break his bonds. When I quitted Eugenie and galloped through the Champs Elysées and up to the quarters of my troop I breathed freely. I felt I was at liberty; but twenty-four hours had hardly elapsed ere I grew weary of this same liberty and longed to see Eugenie again, and to resume that yoke of which I was ashamed I knew not why, for it was easy, and had become necessary to me. What would have become of me if Eugenie had accepted the offers of that libertine priest and left me! So in the middle of the night I mounted my horse and went back to Paris. I found her, as usual, thinking of me, and hoping, if not expecting, my speedy return. I then took to play, but its chances failed to excite me. I suffered myself to be dragged out to those supper parties which I had once found so pleasant, but it was only to cast my eyes round the circle in search of _her_, and when they found her not, nor ever rested on a face so beaming as hers, weariness soon crept over me, and I found the dishes tasteless, the wine vapid, and the conversation dull. In the mean while, I had reached that period of life at which ambition becomes a ruling passion, and mine was to be rich. Without rendering me avaricious, Mademoiselle d'Ermay had taught me to know the value of money. I had known poverty and endured most of its attendant privations, and I was now in the possession of a large and unexpected fortune, but I wanted more. Just at this time I received a letter from my mother. M. de Marigny here paused for a moment and appeared lost in thought; he was like a man who hesitates to finish the story he has begun, and who, having disclosed one half of his secret, has some misgiving as to telling the other half, when, suddenly seizing my hand and looking me full in the face. "Sir!" said he, in a tone of voice so solemn that it sent the blood back to my heart, and caused my not very weak nerves to tremble; "I was considering whether I ought not to require you to swear that you will never reveal to any mortal ear what I am about to relate (the perspiration stood in large drops on his venerable forehead); but 'tis no matter--I have begun and I will finish--my story may be useful as a lesson and a warning to others." He went on. My mother suggested, that as the period of mourning for my brother was over (alas! wishing to conceal that event from Eugenie I had not worn any), it was time to look into the affairs of a family of which I was now become the head. She advised me to resign my commission in the Gardes du Corps as an idle sort of life without any chance of promotion, and, as if she had read my thoughts, added, that I had nothing to do but to enjoy my wealth and at the same time increase it, for which there was a ready mode and present opportunity. It was this. She had selected for my brother the best match in the county--the marriage was fixed, the settlements agreed upon, and the contract drawn, when his death deranged all; why should not I carry into effect so well-formed and advantageous a plan? The young lady in question had known but little of my brother; she had no attachment to him, and merely married him because her family wished it. She was, moreover, young, pretty, and very rich. My mother urged me to quit Paris without delay, and come and secure a match which would double my fortune. Being thirty years of age, and completely my own master, I did not consider obedience, especially in such a matter, a duty I owed to the commands even of a mother; but I saw in the proposal an opportunity which might never again offer of breaking bonds which every day became tighter, and more and more wounded my pride. Besides, the _money_, the _money_ tempted me. "Why," said I to myself, "should I not be able to love this pretty girl whom they propose I should marry? She is, perhaps, even handsomer than Mademoiselle d'Ermay; and who knows but she may love as well, and without subjecting me to that sort of sway I feel so onerous?" I reflected, too, on the false position in which I was placed. I lived with a mistress, of whom I was not the first lover, but only the second. Nevertheless, I knew Mademoiselle d'Ermay's character so well, was so fully assured of her inviolate fidelity, and still felt so much attached to her, that I could not make up my mind one way or the other, and was in a most lamentable state of indecision. I had without much difficulty thus far concealed from her the death of my brother; but if I absented myself and went into Dauphiné, though only just to look at the lady proposed for my wife, she would guess all, and, on my return, my contemplated abandonment would be repaid by her taking leave of me for ever. Some plausible pretext for leaving her was therefore necessary--a mission, or something of the sort, from government, on business in the north of France, whilst I hastened to the south, and tried to find in the love beaming from other eyes a release from that which had hitherto chained me to Paris. The absolute necessity of concealing this new secret made me a totally different man to what I was wont to be. I became moody and abstracted; and, whilst brooding in silence over my own thoughts, and fondly fancying that I never betrayed myself by even a gesture or hasty word, Mademoiselle d'Ermay had divined the whole, and was tracking with unerring sagacity, and into the inmost recesses of my soul, all my wavering resolves. She saw my timid spirit halting between herself and a rich wife, whilst harboring, perchance, some vague fancy for change. For so it is; we are never content with that which we have, but we want more, or we want something else, and are always wanting to be happy in some other way than that in which we are so. Eugenie, herself impenetrable, read my heart as if a book; yet she lavished upon me the same tokens of affection, and always received me with the same sweet and calm demeanor. At length, one day, when I was in my study, debating with myself how and where I should answer my mother's letter, Mademoiselle d'Ermay entered, every feature of her sweet round face elongated and sharpened and fixed in frightful rigidity; her soft eyes glared, her rosy lips were bloodless. I thought she was suddenly seized by illness, or that some cruel accident had affected her reason. She appeared to stagger, and I was rising from my seat to support her, when her hand, laid on my shoulder, pressed me back again into my chair. The skirt of her dress was turned up as high as her waist, and within its folds her clenched hands held something which, at each movement she made, sounded like the small stones in a child's rattle. "Is it you, Eugenie?" said I. "Yes, it is I. Do not you know me? _I_ am not changed; _I_ am still the same." So she said; but it was no longer the same woman. Her very voice was altered, a Gorgon, a Megæra stood before me. "Eugenie! Eugenie!" cried I. She looked at me steadfastly, and as though the innermost thoughts of my mind were written on my forehead; and the first words she uttered fully apprised me that she knew one of my secrets. "M. le Marquis," said she: she knew my brother was dead. "M. le Marquis," she continued, in hoarse accents; "listen to me. I have never mentioned M. de Fosseux to you, and you do not know his story. I must tell it you. I was the inmate of a convent, young and fair, unhappy it is true, but pure of heart and discreet in conduct. I might, like my companions, have taken the veil and passed my life in a cloister, without either pain or pleasure. M. de Fosseux saw me, and fell in love with me. You can never know what pains he took, what arts he practised to seduce me, for I was then a virtuous girl, and my reputation, was without spot; and though I do not reproach myself for what I have done--yet I well know that in the world I have judges more severe than my own conscience." I made a second attempt to rise; not that I at all foresaw what was coming, but merely for the purpose of saying a few words to calm her, but she promptly shut my mouth by fiercely commanding me to listen. "So pressing were his instances, so solemn his oaths, that they convinced me of the violence and sincerity of his passion. I listened and believed, and he prevailed. Yes, M. le Marquis, I believed his oaths of fidelity. I loved him; not so well as I love you; still I loved him. Alas, marquis! I ask you, for you know well, be it pride or be it self-devotion, what have I ever required in return for my love? Nothing but a steadfast observance of the faith pledged to me, and you have not now to learn how I have kept that which I myself plighted. I ask no contract; I demand no guarantee. I live upon the present without one thought of the past, or one anxiety for the future, confiding in the _honor_ of the man I love with a feeling of security, which is at once my joy and my pride; faithful, I never asked but for faith; and, poor as I am, have I not rejected offers to be rich? Thus much then have I done for you and for M. de Fosseux; but M. de Fosseux deceived me; he ceased to love me, he was in treaty for a wealthy bride, and, cowardly as perfidious, heaped upon me the outward signs and tokens of a love he no longer felt; and why? Because he wished not to abandon me till the last moment--because he wished to deceive me until he could no longer wear a mask. This, marquis, was what M. de Fosseux intended to do, and this was what he would have done had he lived one week longer. I knew the name of his betrothed; and I knew the amount of the dowry to which the cupidity of my lover was about to sacrifice me. Now, marquis, what did such perfidy deserve? What was a woman to do who had asked nothing, exacted nothing, and to whom so much had been promised? Her prospects blasted and her honor lost--a cherished inmate of your home, whilst the fancy lasts; but appetite once satiated, turned out without one----. This the return for all her constancy and devotion: disgrace, base desertion, and, as if injury were not enough, you add mockery and insult, by smiling in her face whilst you are preparing to pierce her to the heart." Whilst thus speaking (continued M. de Marigny), the looks of Mademoiselle d'Ermay assumed a yet more fierce expression, her voice became hoarser, her gestures more violent, and, with her increased agitation, whatever she had folded up in her dress returned a yet more alarming sound. As for me, frightened, appalled, my hands trembling, and my forehead bathed in a cold sweat, I attempted to mutter something, I knew not what. No, never did Clairon, nor Dusmenil, nor your Siddons, whom I had seen some years before in England, so freeze my blood in the deepest tragedy. Struck by the resemblance between my own conduct and that of M. de Fosseux, I at length exclaimed, "Eugenie! Eugenie! of whom are you speaking? What do you mean?" "Of whom am I speaking? Of M. de Fosseux to be sure. What other man could be capable of a similar crime--of such base perfidy? Do you imagine it to be possible that there can be in the world two men so heartless--so utterly devoid of honor?" "No, Eugenie," exclaimed I again; "No! I will never abandon you--_never_----" "And who is talking of _you_, marquis?" retorted she sharply; "I am speaking of M. de Fosseux." I could not believe my eyes; my ears, too, nay all my senses seemed in combination to deceive me. I would have given all I was worth for some of the servants to enter and dissolve the spell. "I am speaking to you of M. de Fosseux," repeated she. "Do you remember, marquis, the day--or rather the night--on which we met for the first time? _That_ man dead at my feet--myself stretched in the gory mire of the Place Beauveau--the dagger yet in the dead man's breast--the blood with which I was covered--my cries, my tears, my bruised neck, my torn ears, my story of two robbers, my swoons, my sobs.... Do you remember all this, marquis? Well, then, 'TWAS I--'TWAS I, I tell you!" At these last words I uttered a loud cry, and was about to rush out of the room, but she held me fast. "'Twas I, I tell you; _alone_ I struck the traitor, and here are my proofs." "Saying this, she opened her hands, and shook her dress, when brilliant buckles, a necklace of rubies, diamond rings, and a gold watch, rolled glittering on the floor, and seemed to hem me in on all sides with their sparkling points, whilst in the midst of these bloody relics lay a letter, which I instantly recognized as my mother's! "Mr. D----," said the old man to me--who was motionless, and scarcely dared to draw my breath--"I have been an old soldier, and, thank God! was never looked upon as a coward; many is the time I have boldly faced danger, and have, too, exposed my life through mere fool-hardiness; but a man may have courage, yet not all kinds of courage; I was frightened, Mr. D----; the blood rushed to my head, my hair stood on end, my temples throbbed audibly, and I fell senseless on the floor." When I came to myself (continued M. de Marigny) I found myself in bed; a copious bleeding had removed all immediate danger, and I seemed as though awaking out of a troubled sleep, in which I had been haunted by some fearful dream. Mademoiselle d'Ermay was at my side, with her sweet countenance, her words of love, and her tender and affectionate looks, and held both my hands in hers. Tears were stealing down her fair cheeks, and as soon as I opened my eyes she threw herself into my arms. "Oh! chevalier," said she, "what an alarm you have caused me! Cruel man! to go into your own room without saying you were ill, and remain there alone and without help! Oh, my friend! however troublesome you may think me, I will never leave you again--I will follow you even into your study; but, my dear chevalier, I hope you will believe me in future." Believe you! (exclaimed I) starting up. She laid me down again, and replaced my head on the pillow. Ah! said she to herself, there is still some delirium here; and then, addressing me. "Yes, my chevalier, _believe_ me. What has been my advice to you for these several days past? Has it not been to lose a little blood this spring time?--yet you would not be prevailed on to follow it. Your physician himself says that one bleeding would have saved you your illness, and me my fright. I do hope, chevalier, you will be more docile next spring." I shut my eyes, and essayed to retrace in thought all the circumstances of the scene under which I had so recently sunk. Though my head was confused, and my body weak, I recalled every thing present and past. My memory carried me back to the Place Beauveau--again I saw the features of M. de Fosseux pale in death, and Mademoiselle d'Ermay's look of despair. Moreover, as a principal witness in the unhappy business, having been the first person who arrived at the spot where the murder was committed, I was examined by the magistrate, and had read over Mademoiselle d'Ermay's deposition, in which she had described the several articles of the stolen jewelry with the greatest accuracy. I then mentally compared this careful and exact description, as given in the said deposition, with the articles which Eugenie had thrown down before me, and I seemed to see and recognize them all: a gold enamelled watch, a necklace of rubies, diamond ear-rings, rings set in brilliants, and ... my mother's letter! I had hidden that letter in a secret drawer in my desk, which the maker of it had shown me alone how to open, and he was dead before I knew Eugenie; yet that letter had fallen at my feet! I saw the black seal, and thought I read the address in my mother's handwriting. It was impossible I could have dreamt all this! Another idea dwelt painfully on my mind: I have already told you the murder of M. de Fosseux was generally attributed to two men of desperate character, Pierre le Mauvais and Guillaume le Bossu. The police had diligently followed this scent, and, after tracing them to various haunts, at last succeeded in capturing both; but they proved, most clearly and incontestably, that they were both at Ronen on the night of the murder, and all the other researches of the police had been in vain. Knowing all these circumstances as I did, they now recurred to my mind in such force as to bring on a fresh attack and another fit, which had obliged them again to call in my surgeon. What he found it necessary to do I know not; I only know that the result was long doubtful, and that nothing could equal the sorrow and assiduous care of Mademoiselle d'Ermay so long as that doubt lasted. At length I came to myself.... She was at the foot of my bed, and in that sort of half-sleep which will sometimes overtake even the most wakeful and indefatigable nurses. I but partly opened my eyes, and carefully avoided making the slightest noise or movement. Her head rested on one of her hands, leaving somewhat more than the side-face and her fair cheek, now blanched by anxiety and watching, and the beautiful hair that hung in clustering curls over her white forehead, open to my view. Sleep often betrays our most secret thoughts, and the stuff of which dreams are made is sometimes revealed by involuntary movements. I narrowly watched her countenance; but no, there was nothing--she slept as calmly as a child. "_She! she!_" said I to myself--"_she_ commit a murder! Could that white and delicate hand grasp a poniard, and strike the man she loved a deadly blow, and that too in the middle of the night, and in the open street? Why, the most practised villain, the commonest stabber, is not so sure of his aim as to be certain that his victim will fall without uttering one cry, and expire without knowing the hand that slays him; and that Eugenie should dare to feel more confidence in herself than such men do! and that she should never exhibit any symptoms of remorse! That I, who was so constantly with her, should never by any chance have detected any signs of a guilty conscience! never have found her low-spirited or absorbed in thought!" ... But I had seen her in my study--I had heard her terrible confession--the rattling of the jewelry as it fell from her dress on the floor, still sounded in my ears! Perhaps, however, I had dreamt all this--perhaps this cruel vision, this horrible phantasmagoria, instead of being the cause, had been the first symptom of my disorder? If so, from what source had my imagination drawn these bloody horrors? How had my heart and mind been able to engender such frightful calumnies against the best of women? True, I was thinking of emancipating myself from Eugenie's yoke, and of leaving her, in order to marry advantageously; but even whilst I was planning our separation I did justice to the angelic sweetness of her nature; and so far was I from supposing her capable of committing a crime, that I thought with regret of how many good and noble qualities I was about to deprive myself the contemplation and example in leaving her. Some days before the occurrence I have just narrated (added M. de Marigny), one of my servants cut himself in moving a piece of furniture, and Eugenie, who happened to be present, nearly fainted at the sight of the blood; and when I joked her about her weakness, the wound not being at all serious, "Chevalier," said she, "do not laugh at me; you know I cannot bear to see even a chicken killed." I had, indeed, remarked that, though in housekeeping affairs she was always active and vigilant, she never went into the kitchen. I was in a dreadful state of uncertainty, for, in spite of all my reasonings on the subject, there was still the fact--I _had_ seen her--I _had_ heard her; it was _herself_ beyond all doubt. Twice had her hand, pressing on my shoulder, pushed me back into my chair. The more I tried to banish these recollections, the more they crowded upon me; and whilst thus tortured by these anxious speculations, I made a hasty movement as she awoke. "You then, of course," said I, interrupting his narrative for a moment, "demanded an explanation of her terrible confession?" "Impossible, my good friend," replied he; "I was by no means sure of my own sanity, and Mademoiselle d'Ermay would have treated such a demand as the ravings of delirium." "You are very ill, my dearest chevalier," said she; "your mind has often wandered since yesterday, and as the dreams of a sick man commonly take their color from his waking thoughts, I have discovered, whilst listening to the indistinct mutterings which fell from you in sleep, that there is one sore place in your heart. You love me, chevalier, truly and sincerely. I know you do,--but you are jealous!" "Jealous!" cried I, in a feeble voice. "Yes--but of the past; you have no doubt of my feelings towards you now,--you do me that justice; but you are afraid that I loved M. de Fosseux yet better." "M. de Fosseux! M. de Fosseux! for God's sake, Eugenie, do not pronounce that name." "Why? Since yesterday it has been continually in your mouth, and you have scarcely ever ceased to utter it and speak of him with bitterness. Ah! my friend, let the dead rest in peace: you must have observed that from the first moment of our connection, I never mentioned or alluded to M. de Fosseux,--you must have made me forget him. Oh! believe me, my chevalier, I swear--and you know how sacred I hold an oath--I never loved M. de Fosseux as I love you. Do not then allow such painful fancies to harass you; think how happy we are--as happy as it is possible to be in this world,--so happy that every body envies us." In saying this, her lovely face lighted up with a heavenly smile, expressive of love and contentment; and if a small but almost imperceptible cloud did rest for an instant on her calm brow, it was easily accounted for by her anxiety for me. At length one morning I awoke, and, not without a certain degree of satisfaction, perceived that I was alone. She was not there. I rang the bell, and a servant came. "Your mistress?" "Mademoiselle?" "Yes, mademoiselle; where is she?" "Mademoiselle is at church; it is Sunday," answered the servant. She was attending divine service at the church of St. Roch, as she never failed to do both on Sundays and saints' days. I dismissed the servant, rose hastily, threw on my dressing-gown, and, with unsteady step, hurried to the desk in which I had locked up my mother's letter. The desk was untouched. At the very part of it where the drawer was so skilfully contrived, and of which I alone possessed the secret, there were some grains of dust, clearly proving that the mysterious spring had not been touched for a long time. I opened it, and there lay my mother's letter, exactly as I had, with my own hands, placed it! Astonished and confounded, I went to Mademoiselle d'Ermay's room. Her keys were on her dressing-table; _she_ had neither suspicions nor secrets! I searched every where, turned every thing topsy-turvy. Not a hole nor corner did I omit to rummage; and I shuddered the while, for I was every moment expecting to find the watch, the rubies, and the diamonds which I had seen, or fancied that I saw, scattered before me on the floor of my study. But no, there was nothing of the sort. Was it, then, a dream--a frightful illusion, and the mere forerunner of my illness? By some strange contradiction, or some magnetic power which a strong will exercises over a feeble one, I felt that I loved Eugenie a hundred times better than ever, and crawled back again to my bed, convinced that I had been mistaken, and the victim of a fearful dream. I then considered the case in another point of view, and asked myself whether, even supposing Mademoiselle d'Ermay to be guilty, she had not some excuse for her crime? What could be more base and dishonorable than to abandon so fond and devoted a woman? Had not M. de Fosseux deserved his fate? And I, who had entertained the same design, and had been on the point of committing the very same act of treachery, and for the very same vile motive of adding to an already large fortune, what was _I_, then? Had she meant to give me an awful warning of the fate which awaited me if I proved as faithless as M. de Fosseux? I was lost in conjectures. There was, perhaps, one way of extricating myself from this labyrinth, or, at least, of throwing some light on the darkness by which I was surrounded. I might ascertain from the family of M. de Fosseux if at the time of his death he was engaged to be married. I, however, rejected this idea; for, whether it proceeded from love or from infirmity of purpose, I preferred darkness to light, and blindness to perfect vision. "Yes," said I to myself, "I have dreamt it all; my imagination has mixed up M. de Fosseux with the wrong I was myself about to inflict, and, whilst meditating a crime, I have also imagined its cruel punishment. Truly, I have had a shocking dream!" My reflections had led me thus far, when Mademoiselle d'Ermay returned from church. She came and took her accustomed place at my bedside. "Eugenie," said I, "I have much to tell you." "Do not talk, chevalier; you are still too weak for conversation." "No, Eugenie, I am better. My head is clear, and my delirium past; so listen. In the first place, my brother is dead." "Accept my condolences, and allow me to congratulate you on your accession to wealth and a higher title." "My dear friend," said I again, "my mother has written to me. She requires me to do two things; one is to go for a time to my estate in Dauphiné, and the other to get married. Surely, then, this is the auspicious moment to obtain the sanction of the Church to our union?" "You are right, marquis," she answered, quietly, "for the king and queen" (Louis XV. was dead), "and especially the Princess Elizabeth, his majesty's sister, are very strait in their notions, and might otherwise possibly look coldly upon you when you are presented." Within a week we were married. "She became your wife?" exclaimed I. "Yes, and I am still in mourning for her, and shall continue to wear it to the end of my life." There was no change in our domestic arrangements; all went on as usual, except that my friends and acquaintance, and my people, instead of calling Eugenie Mademoiselle, addressed her as Madame la Marquise. In the world my marriage was not blamed; on the contrary, it was approved. It was an event which every body seemed to have expected, and, taking place, as it did as soon as I became rich, was voted to be alike honorable to Mademoiselle d'Ermay and myself. I must tell you a trait which will enable you to judge how my wife--for so I must now call her--interested herself in the events of my former life. A few days after our marriage she said to me, "My dear marquis, I used formerly to go sometimes to the theatre of Audinet--did you?" "Yes, marquise, often." "There was at that time a young _danseuse_ on those boards who attracted my attention: she was called, I believe, Zephirine; do you remember her?" "I had forgotten her, marquise, and but for your recalling her to my mind I should never have thought of her again." "She was a giddy girl, I understand," continued she, "and from mere love of change left Paris and France some years ago with a wealthy Englishman, through whose indulgence and her own indolence she neglected her dancing--a talent soon lost without constant practice--and she has grown fat and lost her agility. The Englishman has become tired of her and turned her off, and she cannot get an engagement even in London; would you now be so kind as to make her some small allowance?" I did so, and my wife would never listen to the confession I begged her to hear. I then took my wife into Dauphiné, and presented her to my mother, who at first received her very coldly, as I expected--for this marriage had marred all her plans--but she was soon so won by the unvarying sweetness of her temper, and the irresistible fascination of her manners, that she conceived the warmest affection for her, and no mother-in-law ever loved a daughter better. My good fortune excited some jealousy, and the beauty of my wife much admiration. A gentleman in the neighborhood fell in love with her, and was bold enough to declare his passion; she instantly, and without the smallest hesitation, informed me of the insult she had received, and I, as promptly, decided on calling him out; a resolution which Eugenie at first opposed, but on my insisting that as I had in former days fought for a mistress I could not do less for a wife, she said, "Go, then, and avenge me; if you fall, I will not survive you." My antagonist was severely wounded; and this proof of spirit obtained me the more credit in my neighborhood, as my cause was so just. The revolution broke out whilst we were in Dauphiné, and I wished to return without delay to Paris; but my wife dissuaded me. "You are no longer in the army," said she; "you left it when you married me, and you therefore owe no personal service to the king; stay here, where you may perhaps be useful to others, and certainly so to yourself." I followed counsels which had long since become the only guide of my will, and it was well I did so, for we passed in peace and retirement that period which was so fatal to our aristocracy; and when the storm was over, "Now," said she, "let us go to Paris." Here we lived in the enjoyment of happiness which nothing ever alloyed, and of a mutual affection which age neither cooled nor impaired. Thus, you see, my friend (continued M. de Marigny), I have been led through life by my wife; but she strewed the path with flowers, whilst the circumstance which, as it were, compelled me to marry her saved me from the commission of a base and unworthy act, for which I should never have ceased to reproach myself, and which would have rendered my life miserable. Yes, all has been for the best. "You mean by that," said I, "that you have had sufficient strength of mind to control your imagination and to become thoroughly convinced that preceding events were the mere dream of a delirious man?" Wait awhile (quietly pursued M. de Marigny). Two years ago, my wife was seized by sudden and severe illness; she had up to that moment enjoyed invariable good health, and though she was upwards of fifty, her smile retained all its sweetness, and her countenance was as serene as ever. When she found herself unable to leave her bed, she gave herself up for lost. "I feel that I shall die, my dear friend," said she to me one day, "and I have some few requests to make of you; you will not marry again--will you?" At these words I burst into tears, and poured forth again all my former oaths, and which, considering our long attachment and my advanced age, it was no longer difficult to keep. "I know," said she, "you will never give your name to another woman; I feel sure of that. What I wish is, that you should retire to your estate in Dauphiné, and there, in peace and tranquillity, end your days where your father and mother died and are buried; and, that you may have no inducement to remain in Paris or ever return to it, sell your house; and then, having no interest in the capital, you will find it the more easy to perform what I have now requested, and what I feel assured you will promise me to do." I promised all she required; and in so doing it appeared to me that I was adopting the wisest and most prudent course. There was, moreover, in the idea of going to die amidst the tombs of my ancestors and of mingling my ashes with theirs, a feeling of piety which melted me to tears. Eugenie, once feeling assured that her last wishes would be obeyed, asked for the attendance of a priest, and died with the same courage and composure as had marked her whole life. "Sir," said her confessor to me, "God is just and merciful. He pardons the repentant sinner--your wife is a saint in heaven." I will not attempt to describe my grief, my despair, and the state of utter loneliness into which this sad bereavement plunged me: I have other matters to talk of. When Eugenie was no more I had no longer any will but my own to consult; and though deeply regretting the absence of that sway I had been so long accustomed to, I nevertheless followed inclinations which were no longer controlled. It was a feeling of piety which had first made me promise to retire into Dauphiné, and it was now a similar feeling which determined me to remain where I was. Why should I go and die amidst ancestral tombs? Why make it a point of duty to mix my ashes with theirs? I lost my father when I was a mere child; I scarcely remembered him; and I had lived very little with my mother, whereas, my whole life had been spent with Eugenie. It was therefore near her that I ought to end my days, and in her grave that I ought to find my final resting place; nor could I understand how it was that she had not expressed a wish to that effect, and I persuaded myself that if she could now see me she would approve of the change in my resolution. When I had once made up my mind to remain in Paris, it was no longer requisite or convenient to sell my house; and to tell you the truth, I was very desirous to keep it. I had inhabited it from my youth; I had improved and embellished it, and it recalled to my remembrance the only woman that I had ever sincerely loved. My whole life had been spent in it; in it had been acted the whole drama of my existence, and there was not a corner nor a piece of furniture in it which did not awaken some thought or recollection. I resolved then to live and die in Paris. But, my friend, though our dwellings of brick and mortar are more durable than those of our own mortal clay, they, nevertheless, from time to time require repair, or they would fall into a state of utter dilapidation. Several months ago, my people told me that some tiling was wanted to the roof, and that the flooring of the rooms on the sixth story was sadly out of condition. These were the rooms of which Mademoiselle d'Ermay had been the last occupier; in fact, my wife had always taken to herself these three rooms which she had occupied in her poverty, and the keys of them remained in the hands of my people till after that my grief had somewhat subsided. I wished to revisit the scene of my wooing, and the hallowed spot where Eugenie had responded to my passion. My first visit was made alone, and I gave way without restraint to the feelings which the scene was calculated to excite. On this occasion, however, I went up with the workmen. Time, and the dampness of a room always kept closed, had almost entirely destroyed the flooring. They set to work in my presence, and scarcely had they raised up the mouldy boards and decayed joists, than I saw diamonds glitter, and rubies, and gold--those dreadful jewels which had caused me so much terror and such a severe illness--there they were, the very same.... "Great God!" cried I; "then she _had_ killed M. de Fosseux!!!" The old man NODDED. From Household Words. THE SPENDTHRIFT'S DAUGHTER. IN SIX CHAPTERS. CHAPTER THE FIRST. "Frugality is a virtue which will contribute continually and most essentially to your comfort. Without it, it is impossible that you should do well; and we know not how much, or how soon, it may be needed." So writes Southey to his son, Cuthbert, just then starting at Oxford. The proposition might have been expanded from the particular to the universal. Southey might have said, that in no condition of life, from that of her who sitteth upon the throne, to that of the handmaiden who grindeth behind the mill, can frugality--in other words, system and self-denial as regards the expenditure of money--be dispensed with. Self-denial and diligent attention in the management of this great talent are necessary in all. No one of the gifts of Providence appears to the casual observer to be bestowed with less regard to individual merit than wealth. It would almost seem, as an old divine has written, as if God would mark his contempt of mere material riches by the hands into which he suffers them to fall. Although, fall where they will, and on whom they will, one thing is certain;--that they will prove but a delusive snare to those who know not how to order them;--when to husband, and when to spare; when to spend, or when to bestow. These reflections arose from a story with which, not long ago, I became acquainted. A common tale enough--one among a thousand illustrations of what Butler affirms to be the indispensable condition upon which it has pleased our Creator that we should hold our being:--that of controlling our own actions; either by prudence to pass our days in ease and quiet; or, by rashness, ungoverned passion, wilfulness, or negligence, to make ourselves miserable. He is sitting on the bottom stone of a magnificent flight of steps, which lead up to a handsome door, situated in the centre of a large many-windowed house, which, fronted with handsome iron rails round the area, is built of fine brick, and ornamented with abundance of stone-work, in cornices and architraves. This house stands in one of the best streets in the neighborhood of Grosvenor Square. He is clothed in garments that once were fashionable; but now are discolored with much wear and long exposure to wind and weather; so much so, that, in several places, they are falling into tatters. His face--the features of which are very finely cut, and still bear the traces of a once very remarkable beauty--is wan, attenuated, and begrimed with dust, dirt, and neglect. His eyes are haggard; his hair dusty and dishevelled--his beard ragged and untrimmed. He is the picture of physical decay, and of the lowest depths of moral degradation. He sits there upon the stone, sometimes watching the street-sweeper--a little tattered boy cheerily whistling over his work--now and then casting up his eyes at the closed windows of the handsome house, upon which the beams of the rising sun are beginning to shine; but to shine in vain at present; for it is only about six o'clock in the morning, and life has not yet begun to stir within the mansion. His cheek rests upon his thin, withered, and unwashed hand, as he casts his eyes first upwards, then downwards, then slowly, and with a sort of gloomy indifference, around. He looks upward. Is it towards the sky; where the great lord of earthly light--type of that more Glorious Sun which should arise "with healing on its wings"--is diffusing the cheering effulgence of the dawn, calling forth the fresh and wholesome airs of the morning, and literally chasing away the noisome spirits of the night? Is he looking there? No; he is no seeker of the light; he feels not its blessed influence; he heeds not the sweet fresh rising of the morning as it breathes over the polluted city, and pours, for a few short moments, its fresh, crisp, cheering airs into the closest and most noisome of her quarters. He cares not for that delicious brightness which gives to the vast town a pure and peculiar clearness for a few half hours, whilst all the world are asleep, and the streets are yet guiltless of sin and sea-coal. What has light; the pure breath of the morning; the white rays of the early sun; and the soft, quiet, and refreshing stillness of the hour, to do with him? He only lifts up his eyes to examine a house: he only casts them around to observe what goes on in the streets; he is of the earth, earthy,--the sacred odor exists not for him. Yet, in the deep melancholy, the expression of harrowing regret with which he _did_ look up at that house--even in the very depths of his moral degradation and suffering--the seeds of better things might be germinating. Who shall say? He has sounded the very base-string of misery: he touches ground at last--that may be something. The sparrows chirped in the rays of the sun, and the little sweeper whistled away. Different figures began sparingly to appear, and one by one crept out; objects of strange aspect who seem to come, one knows not whence;--the old clothes-man, with his low and sullen croak; country carts; milk-men, rattling their cans against area rails; butcher-boys swinging their trays. Presently were heard, immediately below where the man was sitting, the sounds of awakening life;--unlocking of doors, opening of windows, the pert voices of the women servants, and the surly responses of the men; shutters above began to be unfolded, and the eyes of the large house gradually to open. The man watched them--his head resting still upon his hand, and his face turned upwards--until, at length, the hall-door opened, displaying a handsome vestibule, and a staircase gay with painting and guilding. A housemaid issued forth to shake the door-mat. Then he arose and slowly moved away; every now and then casting a wistful glance backwards at the house, until he turned the corner, and it was lost to his sight. Thus he left a place which once had been his own. With his head bent downwards, he walked slowly on; not properly pursuing his way--for he had no way nor object to pursue--but continuing his way, as if he had, like a ball once set in motion, no motive to stand still. He looked neither to the right nor to the left; yet seemed mechanically to direct his footsteps towards the north. At length, he slowly entered one of the larger streets in the neighborhood of Portland Place. His attention was excited by a bustle at the door of one of the houses, and he looked up. There was a funeral at a house which stood in this street a little detached from the others. The plumes were white. It was the funeral of an unmarried person. Why did his heart quiver? Why did he make a sudden pause? Had he never seen a funeral with white plumes before in his life? Was it by some mysterious sympathy of nature that this reckless, careless, fallen man--who had looked at the effigies of death, and at death itself, hundreds and hundreds of times, with negligent unconcern--shuddered and turned pale, as if smitten to the heart by some unanticipated horror? I cannot tell. All I know is, that, struck with a sudden invincible terror, impelled by a strange but dreadful curiosity, he staggered, rather than walked forward; supporting himself as he went against the iron rails, and thus reached the steps of the house just as the coffin was being carried down. Among the many many gifts once possessed, and all misused, was one of the longest, clearest, and quickest sights that I ever remember to have heard of. His forlorn eye glanced upon the coffin; it read: "ELLA WINSTANLEY, Died June 29, 18.. Aged Twenty-three." And he staggered. The rails could no longer support him. He sank down upon the flagstones. The men engaged about the funeral lifted the poor ragged creature up. A mere common beggar, they thought; and they were about to call a policeman, and bid him take charge of him; when a lady, who was standing at the dining-room window of the house, opened it, and asked what was the matter? "I don't know, Ma'am," said the undertaker's man; "but this here gent has fallen down, as I take it, in a fit, or something of the sort. Policeman, hadn't you best get a stretcher, and carry him to the workhouse or to the hospital?" "No," said the lady, "better bring him in here. Mr. Pearson is in the house, and can bleed him, or do what is necessary." Upon which the insensible man was carefully lifted and carried by two or three of the men up the steps. At the door of the hall they were met by the lady who had appeared at the window. She was evidently a gentlewoman by her dress and manners. She was arrayed very simply. Her gray hair was folded smoothly under her bonnet-cap; her black silk cloak still hung upon her shoulders; her bonnet rested upon a pole screen in the dining-room. It seemed by this that she was not a regular inhabitant of the house in which she exercised authority. Nothing could be more gentle and kind than the expression of her calm, but firm countenance; but upon it the lines of sorrow, or of years, were deeply traced. She was, evidently, one who had not passed through the world without her own portion of suffering; but she seemed to have suffered herself, only the more intimately to commiserate the suffering of others. They laid the stranger upon the sofa in the dining-room; and, at the lady's desire, sent for Mr. Pearson, who was the house apothecary. Whilst waiting for him, she stood with her eyes fixed upon the face of the stranger; and, as she did so, curiosity, wonder, doubt, conviction, and astonishment were painted in succession upon her face. Very soon Mr. Pearson appeared, and advised the usual remedy of bleeding. The lady walked to the window, and stood there, watching the proceedings of those without, until the arrangements of a very simple funeral were terminated, and the little procession, which attended the young Ella Winstanley to her untimely grave, gradually moved on, and disappeared at the turning of the street. The countenance of the lady, as she returned to the sofa, showed that she had been very much moved by the sight. Having been bled, the stranger opened his eyes; which now, as he lay there, extended upon the sofa, displayed a gloomy but remarkable beauty--a beauty, however, arising rather from their form and color, than from their expression, which was more painful than interesting. Again the lady fixed her eyes upon his face, and again she shuddered, and half turned away. Pity, disgust, and regret, were mingled in her gesture. The stranger's eyes followed her, with a dreamy and unsettled look. He seemed to be as mazed with wonder as she was. She turned again, as if to satisfy her doubts. His eyes met hers; and, as they did so, recollection seemed to be restored. "Where am I, and what is it?" he muttered. "You are where you will be taken good care of until you are able to be removed," said the lady. "Is there any one you would wish to have sent for?" The man did not speak. "Any one you would wish to be sent for?" she repeated. "No," he answered. "Any thing more you would wish to have done?" "Nothing." He lay silent for some time, with his eyes still fixed upon her. At last he said, "Tell me where I am?" "Where you are welcome to be until you can gather strength enough to proceed to the place to which you were going when this attack seized you. And that was--?" "Nowhere. But what house is this?" "A house only destined for the reception of ladies," she answered. "Ladies! what ladies?" "The sick who have no other home." "A house of charity, then?" "Partly." "And that one--that one--that young creature, whose funeral--Do you know her? any thing about _her_--?" "Yes," answered the lady, with gravity, approaching to severity, "I do know _much_ about her." "Why--why did she come here?" "Because she was friendless and deserted; poor, sick, and miserable. She had given up what little money she had to supply the wants--perhaps--who knows?--the vices of another. Happily there were found those who would befriend her." "And she accepted the charity; she received the alms?" "She had learned to submit herself to the will of God." He shut his teeth together with a something between bitterness and contempt at these last words, and turned his head away. "You are her father?" said the lady. "I am--" "Then you are a very wretched man," she added. "Yes," he replied, "I am most miserable." "You are one who have reaped from seeds, which might have produced a rich harvest of happiness, nothing but black and blighted misery." She spoke with unusual severity, for her soul recoiled at his aspect: she saw nothing in it to soften her feelings of indignation. "I have lived," he answered. "How?" "How! as others of my temper have lived. It was not my fault that I was born with an invincible passion for enjoyment. I did not make myself. If pleasure be but the forerunner of satiety--if life be but a cheat--if delight be but the precursor of misery--a delusion of flattering lies,--_I_ did not arrange the system. Why was virtue made so hard, and self-indulgence so enticing? I did not contrive the scheme." "Such excuses," the lady replied, "the honest consciousness within us rejects; such as your own inner conscience at the very moment you utter them disclaims. She who is gone--a broken-hearted victim of another's errors--hoped better things when she exhausted almost her last breath in prayers for you." "Prayers!" in a tone that spoke volumes. "Yes, prayers." "What is become of my other daughter?--I want to go to _her_." "She died, I believe, about twelve months ago." "Then I am alone in the world?" "You have no children now." "Are you going to turn me out into the street?" he suddenly asked, after a short silence. "The rules of this house--which is dedicated to the assistance of sick and helpless women--will not admit of your remaining." "I am going. You will hear of me next as one past recovery; picked up out of some kennel by the police. You would have done better not to have restored me. I should have died quietly." "But without repentance." "Repentance!" he said fiercely. "Repent while my whole soul is writhing with agony? Ella! Ella! if I could only have kept my Ella, she would have tended me--she would have soothed me--she would have worked for me." "Yes," said the lady, "she would have done this, and much more--but God has taken her; has rescued her from your heartless selfishness." To herself she added--for her heart was glowing with indignation--"Even in this supreme moment, he thinks of nothing but of himself." "She would have been more gentle with me than you are," he said, with a half-reproachful sigh. "Yes, yes--she would have felt only for you--_I_ happen to feel for her." "Which I never did." "Never--" "You say true," said he, musing. CHAPTER THE SECOND. "Julian Winstanley----" "He who won the steeple-chase yesterday? Who, in the name of goodness, is Julian Winstanley? A name of some pretension; yet nobody seems to know where he came from." "Oh dear, that is quite a mistake. I beg your pardon--_everybody_ knows where he came from. This bird of gay plumage was hatched in a dusky hole and corner of the city; where his grandfather made a fabulous fortune by gambling in the funds." "He is as handsome a young fellow as ever was hatched from a muckworm." "He is a careless, dashing prodigal, whatever else; and I never look at him without thinking of Hogarth's picture of the 'Miser's Heir.' What say you to him, Blake, with your considering face? Come, out with your wisdom! You can make a sermon out of a stone, you know." "May be so. A stone might furnish matter for discourse, as well as other things; but I am not in the humor for preaching to-day. I can't help being sorry for the scapegrace." "So like you, Contradiction! Sorry for him! And, pray, what for?--_because_ he is the handsomest, most aristocratical-looking person one almost ever met with--_because_ he is really clever, and can do whatever he pleases in no time (might have taken a double-first at Oxford easily, Penrose says, if he would)--or _because_ he has got countless heaps of gold at his banker's; and nobody to ask him a why or a wherefore; may do, in all things, just what he likes--or _because_ he can drink like a fish, dance like Vestris, ride like Chiffney; be up all night and about all day, and never tire, be never out of spirits, never dull? Harry Blake! Who'll come and hear Harry Blake? He is going to give his reasons, why a man who has every good thing of the world is most especially to be pitied." "I am going to do no such thing. The reasons are too obvious. I deal not in truisms." "Well, all I know is, that he won the steeple-chase yesterday, and to-day he beat Pincent, the champion, at billiards. To-morrow he goes to the ball at Bicester; and see if he does not beat us all at dancing there, and bear away the belle, whoever the belle may be--though the blood of a stockbroker does run in his veins." "His blood may be as good as another's, for aught I know," said the philosopher; "but I doubt whether the rearing be." "It is the blood, depend upon it. Blake, you are quite right," said a pale, affected young man, who stood by, and was grandson to an earl; "the blood--these upstarts are vulgar, irremediably, do what they will." "That not quite," said Harry Blake. "I have seen as great cubs as ever walked behind a plough-tail who would call cousins with the Conqueror, Warndale. But a something there is of difference after all; and, in my opinion, it lies in the tradition. Wealth and distinction are like old wine, the better for keeping. Time adds a value, mellows, gives a certain body--an inappreciable something. Newly-acquired wealth and distinction is like new wine--trashy. I rather pity the man who possesses them, _therefore_." "And I do not"--"And I do not,"--and "A fig for your philosophy!" resounded from all sides of the table. The philosopher looked on with his quiet smile, and added: "I do not mean to say that I should pity any of those here present in such a case, for we all know, by experience, that new wine, in any quantity, has no effect upon them; never renders their heads unsteady--was never known to do so. But you must allow me to pity Julian Winstanley; for I think his wits are somewhat straying, and I fear that he has already mounted upon that high horse which gallops down the road to ruin." And so away they all went to the ball at Bicester that night. Most of them were somewhat more elaborately dressed than the occasion required. Julian Winstanley was, undoubtedly. It had been his mother's injunction, never to spare expense in any thing that regarded his toilette; and dutifully he obeyed it. I am not going to give you a description of his dress. Fancy every thing most expensive; fancy, as far as a natural good taste would allow, every habiliment chosen with reference to its costliness; and behold him waltzing with a very pretty girl, who is, upon her side, exquisitely dressed also. She wears the fairest of white tulles, and the richest of white satins, and has a bouquet of the flowers from the choicest of French artists in her bosom, and another negligently thrown across her robe. Hair of remarkable beauty, arranged in a way to display its profusion, and the very expensive ornaments with which it is adorned. Although the young lady--who is the daughter of a very fashionable and extravagant man, celebrated in the hunting and racing world--is well known to be portionless, yet she is the object of general attraction;--a thing to be noted as not what usually happens to young ladies without sixpences, in these expensive times. But it is the caprice of fashion, and fashion is all-powerful. So Julian, who is only starting in the career of extravagance, and in its golden age of restless profusion, and far removed, as yet, from that iron age which usually succeeds it--namely, that of selfish covetousness--is quite prepared to cast himself at her feet--which with a little good management of her and her mother's, he soon actually did. Having, as yet, more money in his pocket than he knew how to get through, he was exceedingly pleased with what he had done, and not a little proud in due time to incarcerate this fair creature in solitary grandeur within his carriage, whilst he and his boon companions rejoiced outside. The connections formed by his marriage occasioned additional incentives to expense. Introduced into a more elevated circle than he had as yet moved in, and impelled by the evil ambition of outshining every one with whom he associated, Winstanley soon found innumerable new opportunities for spending money. He became a prey to imaginary necessities. His carriages, his horses, his villas and their furniture, his dinners, his wines, his yachts;--her _fêtes_ in the morning and her balls in the evening, her gardens (which were for ever changing), her delicate health, which required the constant excitement of continental travel, and yachting excursions;--the dress of both; the wild extravagance of every thing,--I leave you to picture to yourselves. CHAPTER THE THIRD. What is five thousand a year, when a man spends six? Make it ten, and he will spend twelve. There is an old story I have heard my mother tell:-- A man had a legacy left him, so large, that upon the strength of it he was enabled to change his plan of life. He sat down and calculated the style in which it would henceforward become him to live. His arrangement of income and expenditure would have been perfect, only that the income fell short a certain, not very large, sum. This was a sad business. A few hundreds more, and he would have been quite at ease--he had them not--he began to feel rather poor. A letter arrives from his man of business. There has been a mistake; the legacy is of twice the amount it had been at first stated at. How will it become him to live now? That is easily settled--he has only to double all his expenses. Alas! And he remains twice as poor as he was before. There is no limit to extravagance--it is a bottomless chasm which is not to be filled. The income does not exactly suffice--and no man ought to exceed his income. True, but there are unexpected expenses--things that perhaps may never recur. The prudent man economizes something else; the imprudent man goes to his capital. He unlocks that sacred door of which he holds the enchanted key in his hand--and ruin rushes out upon him as a flood. Julian soon began to touch upon his capital. It was but in small sums at first, and yet it is astonishing how rich and easy (for the time) it made him feel. A thousand or two thus added to a man's income makes all mighty smooth, and the consequent diminution of his future revenue is a trifle, not felt, and not worth thinking of. Desires increase with the means to gratify them. He who takes a thousand or two from his capital, soon finds it necessary to take more. Income diminishes as desires gain strength; the habit of indulgence grows as the means to gratify it decline. What with borrowing, and giving bills, and drawing larger bills to pay the former bills when they became due, Julian and his wife had, by the nineteenth year of their marriage, eaten out the whole core and marrow of their fortunes. The edifice now stood, to all appearance, as splendid as ever--but it had become a house of cards over a bottomless pit. And yet they had children; they had not wanted those best incentives to a better course. Their possessions in this way were not very numerous; people of this description have seldom overflowing nurseries; the mother is usually too fine a lady to look after her children herself. She is contented with hiring some head nurse, taking her on trust from some other young woman as heedless and negligent of her duties as herself; and to her tender mercies she leaves her babies. Such a nurse had lorded it in Mrs. Winstanley's family; an ill-governed family in every respect, where each servant, from the highest to the lowest, measured his or her consequence by the money which was spent or wasted. Under this nurse's care two lovely boys had died in their infancy. One little girl had tumbled somewhere or in some way--or had been made to stand too long in the corner when she was naughty, or to walk too far when she was tired, or what. I know not. All I know, is, there was some internal injury, the cause of which no medical man who was consulted could detect. The other, and only remaining child, was a fine, handsome, spirited girl, of whom Mrs. Nurse thought proper to be excessively proud and fond. And how were these little children educated? Educated is an inappropriate word. There was no capacity for education on the part of Nurse; but Mr. and Mrs. Winstanley, though their dinners were just as numerous and profuse as ever, saw not the slightest necessity, whilst the little girls were young, for the additional expense of any better governess; and Mrs. Nurse was left to give all the elementary instruction that was thought needful--a task which she undertook with alacrity; having become somewhat apprehensive, now the two little boys were dead and the two young ladies getting bigger, that she might be superseded. Her teaching consisted, first in shaking and scolding Miss Clementina, and keeping her, with her poor aching hip, prisoner in her chair till she had learned, a lesson--which, for want of comprehending the absurdly long words of which it seemed purposely composed, it was almost impossible she should learn; and secondly, in laughing at Miss Ella's odd blunders as she read, and telling her every word as it occurred, before she had time to pronounce it. As for religion, morality, or knowledge of right and wrong, Mrs. Nurse thought too little about such things herself to impart them to others. I suppose she taught the children to say their prayers; but I am sure I know no more than the mother did, whether it was so or no. Sometimes the children were taken to stare about them in church; but not often, for Mrs. Winstanley was in the habit of fulfilling the commandment very literally, and making Sunday a day of rest. Commonly she spent the forenoon in bed; only getting up in time to dress for a dinner party which Mr. Winstanley made an especial point of having on that day. He, as yet, paid this trifling respect to it; he abstained from going on Sunday evening to a certain club which he frequented, to play cards, or roulette, for unknown sums. The elder of these children grew up, suffering, and spiritless; the younger was proud, insolent, overbearing, and tyrannical--as much so as such a little creature could be. They were fast growing up into all this, and would have been confirmed in it, had not an accident arrested the fearful progress. Spoiled, flattered, allowed to indulge every evil temper with impunity, Ella's faults were numberless; more especially to her helpless sister, whose languid health and feeble spirits excited little sympathy, and whose complaints seemed to irritate her. "I declare you _are_ the most tiresome, tormenting thing, sitting there looking as miserable as ever you can, and with that whining voice of yours, enough to drive one mad. Why _can't_ you brighten up a little, and come and play? You really _shall_ come and play, I want to play! Nurse! O! she's not there! Do _make_ Clementina come and play." "Don't, Ella! don't tease me so; pray don't! My hip hurts me; I can't. Do let me alone, pray." "Nonsense. You make such a fuss about your hip! I don't believe any thing's the matter with it; only you're so ill-natured, you _never_ will do any thing I ask. Nurse, I say," as the door opened, "do make her.--O, it's only Matty! Matty, where's Nurse?" "She's just stepped out, Miss, and told me to come, and stay in the day-room with you till she was back." And Matty, the new maid, hired but a day or two before, came in with her sewing in her hand, and sat down quietly to her work at the window. "Matty!" cried Ella, imperiously, "don't sit there, looking so stupid; but come and make this tiresome girl play with me. There she sits, mooning over the fire. If Nurse were here, she'd soon have her up." "Don't, pray, Matty," as Matty was rising from her chair. "Pray, don't. I'll go and play; but indeed, indeed, it hurts me very much to move to-day." "Nonsense! Make her get up, Matty, You must mind me, Matty; you came here to mind me; so do as you are bid, you ugly thing." Matty indeed merited the title of ugly. She was rather tall, but of a most ungainly figure, with long bony limbs, ill put together. It was difficult to say what the features of her face might have been: they were so crumpled, and scarred, and seamed. Not a feature had been left uninjured, except her eyes: and they were remarkable both for intelligence and softness. She put down her work and went up to Clementina, saying, "What ails you, Miss? I hope it isn't true that you feign sickness not to play with your sister?" The poor girl looked up, and her eyes were filled with tears. "Feign! I wish I did!" "Then your hip _does_ hurt you?" "To be sure it does. So badly! At night, sometimes, when I'm in bed--so, so badly." "And do you know that, Miss Ella?" "Know it! Why, who does not know it? She's always talking of it; but, for my part, I don't believe it's half so bad as she pretends." "I don't pretend, Ella; you are always saying that. How cruel you are to set Nurse against me, by always saying I pretend." Thus it went on for a minute or two, whilst Matty stood silently by, her eyes wandering from one sister to the other. At last she sighed, and said, "If it had pleased God to spare me my sister, I wouldn't have served _her_ so." Ella turned at this, and lifting up her eyes, measured Matty from head to foot with indignant contempt. It would seem as if she thought it almost too great a presumption in one so humble to have more care for a sister than she had. "Who cares how such as _you_ serve their sisters?" "There is One who cares!" said Matty. Clementina looked at Matty with puzzled wonder as she spoke. Ella haughtily turned away, saying, "I should like, for my part, to hear who this important _one_ is, that you mention with such a strange emphasis. Some mighty fine personage, no doubt." "Miss Clementina! Miss Clementina! only hear how shocking your sister talks. Do stop her!" "Stop me! I should like to see her, or any one, attempting to stop me. And why, pray--and what, pray, am I saying so mighty bad, Mrs. Matty? You? A charity girl? I heard Nurse say, but yesterday, that she wondered her mistress would put up with such rubbish, and that she loathed the very look of you, for you put her in mind of the Blue Coat." "I thank God," returned Matty, mildly, "that he raised up that great charity for me, and many perishing like me, and saved us from wickedness, and taught us to know His holy name. For He looks alike on rich and poor, and will judge both you and me, young lady." Both girls were a little awe-stricken at this speech. But Ella soon recovered herself, and said, "she hated to hear people talk like Methodists." "What _are_ you talking about, Matty?" asked Clementina, gently; "I don't quite understand." "Not understand!--why, sure--heart alive!--it can't be as you are ignorant of who made and keeps you and all of us! Sure! Sure!" Matty kept repeating in a tone of much distress, "I can't believe my own ears." "I suppose we know about all that," said Ella, haughtily. _She_ to teach her!--the child of charity to presume to insinuate a want in her! The idea was intolerable. She went and sat down at a table at some little distance, and pretended to be busy playing with her bird, whose golden cage stood upon it; but, as she did so, she listened in spite of herself to the following conversation, passing between Clementina and Matty. "I am so uncomfortable," the young girl was saying, rather fretfully; "I don't know what to do with myself. I try this thing and try that thing, and nothing gives me any ease or amusement; and I think it very hard--I can't help thinking it hard--that I should have to suffer every thing, and Ella, there, nothing; and then, Nurse makes such a favorite of _her_, and nobody in the wide world cares for me. Oh, I am so miserable, sometimes!" "I used to be like you, once, Miss," said Matty. At which Ella gave a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. But Matty did not regard it; and she went on and said, "Look at my face, Miss Clementina; it's very horrid and ugly, I know, and I don't wonder as Nurse calls me rubbish, and hates to see me in her nice nursery. Many can't help feeling like that. Do you know how this was done?" "No. I suppose small-pox; but it's not like that, for your face is all cut to pieces. I don't know how it was done." "It was done by the dreadful agony of fire. When I was but a little creature, living, O Miss! in such a place--five families of there were in one low, dark, nasty room, and, O Miss! it was like the bad place, indeed it was--such swearing and blasphemy when the men come home drunk, and worse, worse, when the women did so too! Such quarrelling, and fighting, and cursing, and abusing--and the poor children, knocked about at such times anyhow. But my mother never got drunk. She was a poor feeble creature, and mostly sat at home all day crooning, as they call it, by the fire--for they kept a good big fire in winter in the room. And then, when father come home he was generally very bad in liquor, and seeking a quarrel with anything--for something he must have to quarrel with. Well! One evening--O! I shall never forget it--a cold, sleety, winter day it was, and the wind rushing up our court, and the snow falling thick, and the blackened drops, and great lumps of snow coming splashing down, and the foul water oozing in under the doorsill, and all such a mess; and the poor, tired, or half-drunk creatures coming in splashed and dripping, and quarrelling for the nighest places to the fire, and swearing all the time to make one's hair stand on end; and father coming in, all wet and bedabbled, and his hat stuck at the top of his head, and his cheeks red, and his eyes staring, though he was chattering with the cold. Mother was at her place by the fire, and he comes up in a rage, like, to turn her out; and she sitting sulky and wouldn't move; and then there was a quarrel; and he begun to beat her, and she begun to shriek out and cry, and the women to scream and screech. O Miss! in the scuffle--I was but a little thing--somebody knocks me right into the fire, and my frock was all in a blaze. It was but a moment, but it seemed to me such a time!--all in a blaze of fire! And I remember nothing more of it, hardly, but a great noise, and pouring water over me, and running this way and that. When I come to myself, where was I?" Ella turned from her bird, and her attention seemed riveted upon the story. She forgot her pride and her insolence in the pleasure of listening. Clementina seemed hardly to breathe. "It was very bad being burned," she said, at last. "Horrible, Miss!" "Go on," cried Ella, impatiently; "what became of you?" "When I got out of my daze--for I believe it was some time before I came to myself--I was lying on father's knee, and he had made a cradle for me, like, of his great strong arms: and his head was bent down, and he was a looking at me, and great big hot scalding tears were dropping fast upon my poor face. "'My poor--poor little woman,' I heard him say." "Then--for my eyes had escaped--I was aware that there was a beautiful young lady--at least, I thought her more beautiful than the angels of heaven--standing on the other side of me, right opposite my father, and doing something to my poor arms." "The lady was very young--seemed scarcely more than a child herself, though she was a young married lady. She was beautiful dressed, all in snow-white muslin, with white satin sash, and bows to her sleeves, and a white rose in her hair. She had thrown a large bonnet over it--but now it was tossed off, and lay with her shawl upon the floor. Bad as I was--O! in such horrid pain--the sight of that beautiful dear angel was like a charm to me; it seemed to chase away the pain. And then she touched me so delicately, and spoke so soft and kind! It was music; heaven's own music was her voice." "Who was she? who could she be?" cried Ella. "Why, Miss, who should she be, but Mr. Stringer, the apothecary's young bride, as he had just brought home, and all ready dressed to go out to her first dinner." Ella turned away contemptuously, with a gesture that expressed "was that all?" Clementina said,-- "How nice of her to come to a poor little burnt child like you! and into such a dreadful place too! But I wonder she came in her best gown!" "As I heard afterwards, it happened that Mr. Stringer had been sent for out, and was not come back; and when they ran screeching and screaming to the shop, crying a child was burnt in the court hard by, and Mr. Stringer was wanted, as there was no one to go but a little mite of a shop-boy--for Mr. Stringer had but just begun business--what does she do, but catches up a bottle of stuff for burns, claps her bonnet over her pretty white rose, throws her shawl on, and, dressed in her beautiful new wedding-gown, comes to this horrid den of dirt and wickedness. She did me up as best she could, and then seeing my poor father crying too, and all the people standing round, and yet not a word to comfort him, she said, very gently and kindly, to him,-- "'Pray don't grieve so: she will be better by-and-by, poor dear. Don't groan so badly, poor child! You are very sorry for her, poor man--but don't take on so.' "But the more she spoke in this kind way, all the more he cried, till at last he seemed as if he could contain himself no longer, and he groaned, and almost roared out. "'Are you the father?' said the young lady. 'Where is the mother?' "'Oh! here--here--here--my precious child, my sweet baby!' cried my poor mother--and then went on, 'It was all of you--you big brute--you--you pushed your own baby into the red-hot flames, as you were atrying to get at me!--yes, my baby--my poor--' "'Don't speak so loud, good woman,' said the young lady, gently. 'Lay the child upon the bed,' turning round--'Bless me!--why, there is not a bed!' "'We are very poor people, ma'am,' a woman began; 'not a penny to bless ourselves with. If you'd please to--' "I remember my father's voice to this day-- "'Silence!' he called out, in such a passion, 'would you beg money from the lady to spend in more gin? Give 'em nothing, ma'am--give none of us nothing--only tell me what's to be done to save the poor little thing's life.' "She hesitated, turned, and looked round the miserable apartment. Too true, there was not an apology for a bed; there was not even clean straw. "'Take her up in your arms,' said she to my father, 'and follow me.' And she stooped and picked up her bonnet, and gathered her great shawl around her, and stepped out into the rainy, sleety, windy night; and my father--for some poor creature had lent an old shawl to throw over me--took me and carried me after her: and a turn of the alley which led into the court, brought us out into the street, where the apothecary's shop stood. I was carried through, and up two pair of stairs, and into a little mite of a room--but all so clean and nice--and laid, oh! in such a delicious bed--and oh! it felt so comfortable--it soothed me, like--and I fell fast asleep." The two girls were silent for some time. Ella spoke first. "What a good woman!" was the remark she made; "but was she only an apothecary's wife," she went on; "and was her name Stringer? What a horrid ugly name! Are you sure it was Stringer?" "Yes, Miss--Stringer and Bullem--that was the name over the shop-door." "What! did they keep a shop?" "To be sure they did." "How long did you stay there?" "I never went away no more, Miss. When I got better, the lady began to talk to me. I was a little mite of a thing, but I was quick enough. She found what bad ways I was bringing up in; that I had never once heard of Our Saviour--not even of my Maker--far from ever hearing of the Bible--or having it read, or being taught to pray, or--" The two young girls looked at each other, but said nothing. Matty, in broken and interrupted sentences, went on: "So she kept me; for she could not bear to send me back to that pit of iniquity in which she had found me. And as I lay in my bed, one day, and they thought I was asleep, I heard her arguing the point with her young husband-- "'Why, child, you cannot pretend to adopt all the poor neglected children in this bad town?' he said. "'Oh no! I know one can do little--little enough: it is but one drop of water in the vast ocean--only one little, little drop; but the oyster took it into its shell, and it became a pearl. Let me keep this poor little one. I don't mean to be foolish--indeed I don't--I will only clothe her, and feed her, and send her to the charity school: indeed, they will half clothe her there. Do--do, dear John--she is such a miserable object! What is she to do? Let her be taught her duty--let her not be a poor ruined wretch, body and soul at once.'" "The young lady would have moved a stone with her talking. Her husband was not very persuadable; he was not like her. He was rather a cold-hearted, selfish young man, but he couldn't refuse her; and so, when I got better, I was sent to one of the great charity schools in the city, where I learned a deal; but my sweet Mrs. Stringer took a pleasure in teaching me herself, and so I learned a deal more." Enough of Matty's tale. Mrs. Stringer, when she devoted such means as she could command to the rescue of one poor child from the misery in which she was living, and raised her from deplorable ignorance, as regarded all higher things, to a knowledge of the supreme and only real good, little thought how extensive her good deed would prove; and that in providing for the religious and moral education of this wretched child, she was preparing the means of a religious education--imperfect, yet still in some sort a sound religious education--for two children of wealth and luxury, as to such things, most entirely destitute. But so it proved--and this was the only religious education they either of them could be said ever to receive; so utterly, so entirely, were all relations of this nature forgotten and neglected in this house of profusion, where not one single thing, but the one thing needful could be said to be wanting. The story first beguiled the attention, and then awakened the deep interest of the two girls. From this day, a sort of acquaintance arose with Matty, which ripened into true affection; for Matty was, in fact, a woman of no common order. She gradually awakened their sympathies with regard to subjects to her the most deeply interesting. She led them, not unwilling, in those paths which are indeed paths of pleasantness and peace. She read the Bible with them, and to them, and she taught them the vital principle of effectual religion--the need and the faith to pray. I want space to follow the course of these influences upon the soul. Imperfect they were. Such a teacher could not lead them very far; but she brought them on Our Saviour's way. And though much remained of wrong, inexperienced and unconverted--the change was as from darkness to light. CHAPTER THE FOURTH. And now several years have elapsed, and these two girls are grown up to be two beautiful young women. They had been taken out of the nursery when it was time to be thinking seriously of accomplishments; and the reign of Mrs. Nurse had closed. She was superseded by a regular governess--a foreigner. A French lady was chosen to undertake the task of forming two English girls to become English wives and mothers. The French lady did well all that she was required to do; for neither Mr. nor Mrs. Winstanley desired that their beautiful daughters should receive any thing approaching to what is usually called a solid education. Mrs. Winstanley had not ten ideas beyond the arrangement of a party, and the keeping of good society. As for Julian Winstanley himself, he detested reflection, abhorred every thing approaching to seriousness, only desired to get through life as brilliantly and as thoughtlessly as he could. He was not much at home; but when at home he required to be constantly amused, or he found home intolerable. It was not long before his daughters discovered this. Till they were what is called introduced, these fair girls passed their time secluded in the school-room, and saw very little of their parents; but when they were once brought out, and when Mademoiselle was dismissed and they lived in the drawing-room, they were soon initiated. The plan of life was one not unusual among married people of a certain class. A large and splendidly furnished house, in a fashionable square in London, was _home_--at which about six months of every year were passed; the remaining six being spent either in travelling, or at watering-places, or at some hired house in the country. They lived as a privileged order, severed, as by a gulf impassable, from the lowest orders around them, and in little communication with the highest. The last condition was not of much importance, but the other was fatal. What can grow out of such a life, that is really wholesome and good? Many, many residents in London, escape this mischief. They have broken down the wall of separation which used to hide the very existence of want and misery and sin from the happier and the better; and the obscure dwellings of the London poor have their visiting angels, as well as those in the country. But a great many families still neglect this weighty duty, and live without thought of such things. Mrs. Winstanley had led the regular party-going London life for the last sixteen or seventeen years. She was beginning to get rather tired of it, when the new excitement arose of having to "bring out" her daughters. This bringing out of her daughters became an excuse for all kinds of amusing changes and improvements. Her receiving-rooms had to be newly furnished, a new open carriage to be bought, the Queen's drawing-rooms to be attended with more assiduity than ever. The girls were two lovely creatures; they seemed to excuse, if any thing could, the expenses thus incurred on their behalf. So said the mother, and so thought the father. The love he felt for his daughters was perhaps the only tender feeling he had ever experienced in his life; for, in general, he might be said to love nothing, not even himself. It might have been the dawn of a better life, this well-spring of pure affections, could he have worthily indulged them. But neither his own nor his wife's habits admitted of that. Mrs. Winstanley would have thought it a disgrace if she had been one single evening disengaged whilst they were in London. Even in the dead winter she managed to keep up the ball; what with little parties and concerts, the opera, the French plays, and so forth, she contrived to escape the horror of a domestic evening. As for Mr. Winstanley, he seldom or never dined at home; except when there was a dinner-party. He spent his evenings at his clubs, engaged--he too well knew how. The two girls presented a striking contrast to each other. Clementina was fair and delicate, with soft hair, and those tender blue eyes, which to me are the most charming of all eyes. Ella was a noble creature; a figure and form the most perfect that I ever beheld--features of matchless symmetry--eyes dark, large, and lustrous--hair in floods of rich brown waves--a hand that was a model, from which statuaries contested to be allowed to copy--and a spirit, energy, and feeling in her gestures and countenance, that won your heart before you were aware. It was upon her that Julian Winstanley doted. The other girl he thought, and called, a sweet girl, but his Ella was his darling. Nothing was too good for Ella; nothing was to be spared that could please or adorn Ella. To ride with her in the Park; to visit the box where she sat at the opera; sometimes in a party to hear her sing; seemed to give him a new pleasure. Yet there was nothing in all this, unhappily, to rouse him to a better life; to break the chain of evil habits in which he was involved. Ella was a child of this world; an impetuous, proud, haughty beauty; a contemptuous disregarder of the weak, the wanting, and, above all, the low, or the ugly;--living for the day, as her father lived for the day--she for the day of vanity and pleasure; he for the day of vanity and sin. There was that difference, indeed, and it was a vast one; but he did not feel it. There was no pure and holy influence of a higher and nobler life, diffused from the beautiful being. She was no angel of light. She was merely, to all appearance, a very fine, fashionable girl. And Clementina, in her gentleness and softness, was little more. The good seed which Matty had sown, had fructified at first, but the briars and thorns were gathering fast around it. The pleasures of life were choking it up. It was in danger of being altogether lost. Matty had long been gone. She had married a respectable tradesman, and was in a flourishing, though small, way of business. She would have been altogether forgotten long ago, only that she would not suffer this. She found herself still welcomed when she did come; for both the girls loved her, and she perfectly adored them. So she came, bringing her little offerings, from time to time--little matters such as she dealt in, in her shop--humble, but, for her sake, welcome. These two girls had both hearts. Where they got them I don't know. CHAPTER THE FIFTH. "Oh, Ella! Ella!--what's the use of your turning your head from me?--Why, I can see you are coloring crimson--as if I had no eyes! Oh! he _is_ charming, is not he?" "How tiresome you can be, Clementina! I am sure I don't care. No, not.... Besides, he's your flirt, not mine." "Is he? I wish he were! But I know better. He loves you, Ella; and what's more, you love him. And if _you_ don't know it--which perhaps you don't--_I_ do, and _he_ does." "_He_ does!--I like that!--_he_ does!--Upon my word! _I_ like him, and _he_ knows it! I do no such thing." "Take care what you say. Walls have ears." "Pooh!--nonsense! And if they have, I tell you I don't care." "You don't?--you are sure you don't? Oh, very well! If that be really so, then I had better keep my message to myself." "Message!--what message?" "You know a man does not like to be refused; and so, if you really do _not_ care for him, why, I had better hold my peace. He is young, and he is volatile enough.... And, indeed, I have wondered, Ella, sometimes, how you ever came to take a fancy to him; but I am forgetting. It was my mistake. You never _have_ taken a fancy to him." "How you do run on!" she said, taking the last rose out of her hair; for she was standing before the glass, undoing her braids; the sisters, having dismissed their attendant, that they might have a comfortable chat together. And then the hair came all tumbling over her shoulders, and upon her white muslin dressing-gown, and she looked most beautiful--half pleasant, half angry--as she turned round; and, trying to frown with her eyes, whilst her lips smiled, said-- "Cle., you _are_ the most intolerable girl in the world." Cle. smiled, looked down, and said nothing. "You may as well tell me, though." "No, I won't, unless you will be a true girl--own what you ought to own--say what you ought to say--that you do not _quite_ hate him. You really may say that--and then we will see about it." "Hate him! Did I say I hated him?" "Or, pretended you did. Or, that he was indifferent to you." "Well, well; I don't hate him, then." "Then come here, and sit down by me, and I will tell you that Lionel loves you, and adores you--and all that. Very easily said. But far more than that--and with great difficulty said--he wishes to make you his wife!" "Ah me!"--and again the color flashed into her face, and such an expression was visible in her eyes! Suddenly she threw her arms around her sister, and embraced her tenderly. "You dear, dear girl," she whispered--"Oh, I am so--so happy! But tell me--tell me--all, from the beginning. Lionel!--is it possible?" "You thought we were very busy talking together to-night, at Mrs. White's ball, didn't you?--You were a little jealous, were you not, you silly thing? Ah, my Ella! My proud--proud Ella! To have made such a tumble into love!" "Nonsense!--how you talk! But tell me all he said. Every single word of it!" "He said he loved you more than his life, and all that sort of thing; and that I must tell you so to-night; and, if you would give him the least atom of encouragement, I was to take no notice, and he would speak to papa and mamma immediately; but, if you hated him as much as I said I was sure you did...." "How could you say such a stupid thing?" "I thought that was what I ought to say." "How foolish you are, Cle.! Well?" "Well, in _that_ case, I was to write. Shall I write?" She did not write. And from this time the existence of Ella was changed. She loved, with all the fervor and energy of her nature; and life took at once a new color. True love is of the infinite. None can have deeply loved--when or how in other respects it may have been--but they have entered into the unseen world; have breathed a new breath of life; have tasted of the true existence. What is often called love, may do nothing of all this--but I am speaking of _true_ love. Lionel seemed at that time scarcely worthy of the passion he had inspired. Yet he had many excellent qualities. He was warm-hearted, generous to excess, had good parts, a brilliant way of talking, and was a favorite with all the world. He had not the splendid gifts which nature had bestowed upon Julian Winstanley. By the side of her father, even in the eyes of Ella, the bright halo which surrounded her lover would seem somewhat to pale. The young man even appeared to feel this, in some degree, himself. He always, yet with a certain grace, took the second place, when in her father's presence. Ella loved her father, and seemed to like that it should be so. "Oh, my sister! oh, my friend! what--what shall we do? Oh, misery! misery! what is to become of us all?" Clementina's eyes were swimming with tears; but she would not give way. In passive endurance she excelled her sister. She held her arms clapped closely round her; whilst Ella poured a torrent of tears upon her bosom. "My father! my beautiful, clever, indulgent father, that I was so proud of--that I loved so--who spared nothing upon either of us--alas! alas! how little, little did I guess whence the money came!" Clementina trembled and shivered as her sister poured forth these passionate lamentations; but she neither wept nor spoke for some time. At last she said: "Ella, I have been uneasy about things for some time. We are young, and we have not much experience in the ways of the world; but since our poor mother died, and I have had in some degree to manage the house, I have been every day becoming more uncomfortable." "You have?" said Ella, lifting up her head: "and you never told me!" "Why should I have told you? why should I have disturbed your dream of happiness, my dear Ella? Besides, I hoped that it concerned me alone--that things might hold on a little while longer--at least, till you were provided for, and safe." "Safe! and what was to become of you?" "I did not much think of that. I had a firm friend, I knew, in you, Ella; and then, lately, since mamma's death; since you have been engaged to dear Lionel, and I have been much alone, I have thought of old things--old things that good Matty used to talk about. I have been endeavoring to look beyond myself, and this world; and it has strengthened me." "You are an excellent creature, Cle.!" She shook her head. "But, my father! what is to be done? Can any thing be done?" "No, my love. I fear nothing can be done." "He loves me!" said Ella, raising up her head again, her eyes beaming with a new hope. "I will try--I will venture. It is perhaps great presumption in a child; but my father loves me, and I love him...." Again Clementina shook her head. "You are so faint-hearted--you are so discouraging. You give up every thing without an attempt to save yourself or others. That is your way!" cried Ella, with her own impetuosity, and some of her old injustice. Then, seeing sorrow and pain working upon her sister's face as she spoke thus, she stopped herself, and cried--"Oh! I am a brute--worse than a brute--to say this. Dear Cle., forgive me; but don't, pray don't discourage me, when I want all my courage. I will go--I will go this moment, and speak to my father...." Clementina pressed her sister's hand as she started up to go. She feared the effort would be vain,--vain as those she had herself made; yet there was no knowing. Ella was so beautiful, so correct, so eloquent, so prevailing! She followed her with her eyes, to the door, with feelings of mingled hope and apprehension. Down the splendid stairs, with their gilded balustrades, and carpets of the richest hue and texture, rushed the impetuous Ella. Through the hall--all marbles and guilding--and her hand was upon the lock of the library door. She was about to turn it, without reflection: but a sudden fear of intruding came over her--she paused and knocked. "Who is there?" exclaimed an irritated voice from within; "go away--I can see no one just now." "It is I, papa--Ella; pray let me come in." And she opened the door. He was standing in the middle of the lofty and magnificent apartment, which was adorned on every side with pictures in gorgeous frames; with busts, vases, and highly ornamented bookcases fitted with splendidly bound books--seldom, if ever, opened. His pale, wan, haggard face and degraded figure, formed a fearful contrast to the splendid scene around him, showing like a mockery of his misery. A small table, richly inlaid, stood beside him; in one hand he held a delicate cup of fine china; in the other, a small chemist's phial. He started as she entered, and turned to her an angry and confused countenance, now rapidly suffused with a deep crimson flush; but, as if electrified by a sudden and horrid suspicion, she rushed forward, and impetuously seized his shaking arm. The cup fell to the floor, and was broken to atoms; but he clenched the phial still faster in his trembling hand, as he angrily uttered the words: "How dare you come in here?" "Oh! papa--papa!"--she had lost all other terror before that of horrible suspicion which had seized her--"what are you about? what is that?" stretching out her arms passionately, and endeavouring to wrench the phial from his fingers. "What are you about? what do you mean?" he cried, endeavouring to extricate his hand. "Let me alone--leave me alone! what are you about? Be quiet, I say, or by...." And with the disengaged hand he tore her fingers from his, and thrust her violently away. She staggered, and fell, but caught herself upon her knees, and flinging her arms round his, lifted up her earnest imploring face, crying, "Father--father! papa-papa! for my sake--for your sake--for all our sakes; oh, give it me! give it to me!" "Give you what? what do you mean? what are you thinking about?" endeavouring to escape from her clasping arms. "Have done, and let me alone. Will you have done? will you let me alone?" fiercely, angrily endeavoring again to push her away. "No! never--never--never! till you give me--" "What?" "That!" "That!" he cried. Then as if recollecting himself, he endeavored, as it seemed, to master his agitation, and said more calmly, "Let me be, Ella! and if it will be any satisfaction to you, I will thrust the bottle into the fire. But, you foolish girl, what do you gain by closing one exit, when there are open ten thousand as good?" Disengaging himself from her relaxing arms, he walked up to the fire-place, and thrust the phial between the bars. It broke as he did so, and there was a strong smell of bitter almonds. She had risen from her knees. She followed him, and again laid that hand upon his arm--that soft, fair hand, of whose beauty he was wont to be so proud. It trembled violently now; but as if impelled with unwonted courage, and an energy inspired by the occasion, she ventured upon that which it was long since anyone ever had presumed to offer to Julian Winstanley--upon a plain-spoken remonstrance. "Papa," she said, "promise me that you will never--never--never again----" "Do what?" "Make an attempt upon your life--if I must speak out," she said, with a spirit that astonished him. "Attempt my life? What should I attempt my life for?" said he, and he glanced round the scene of luxury which surrounded him. He was continuing, in a tone of irony--but it would not do. He sank upon a sofa, and covering his face with his hands, groaned--"Yes--yes, Ella! all you say is true. I am a wretch who is unworthy to--and more--who _will_ not live." He burst forth at last with a loud voice; and his hands falling from his face, displayed a countenance dark with a sort of resolute despair. "No--no--no!--death, death!--annihilation--and forgetfulness! Why did you come in to interrupt me, girl?" he added, roughly seizing her by the arm. "Because--I know not--something--Oh! it was the good God, surely, who impelled me," she cried, bursting into tears. "Oh, papa! papa! Do not! do not! Think of us all--your girls--Cle. and I. You used to love us, papa----" "Do you know what has happened?" "Yes--no. I believe you have lost a great deal of money at cards." "Cards--was it? Let it be. It may as well be cards. Yes, child, I _have_ lost a large sum of money at cards--and more," he added, setting his teeth, and speaking in a sort of hissing whisper--"more than I can exactly pay." "Oh, papa! don't say so. Consider--only look round you. Surely you have the means to pay! We can sell--we can make any sacrifice--any sacrifice on earth to pay. Only think, there are all these things. There is all the plate--my mother's diamonds--there is----" He let her run on a little while; then, in a cool, almost mocking tone, he said-- "I have given a bill of sale for all that, long ago." "A bill of sale! What is a bill of sale?" "Well! It's a thing which passes one man's property into the hands of another man, to make what he can of it. And the poor dupe who took my bill of sale, took it for twice as much as the things would really bring; but the rascal thought he had no alternative. I was a fool to give it to him, for the dice were loaded. If it were the last word I had to speak, I would say it--the dice were loaded----" "But--but----" "What! you want to hear all about it, do you? Well it's a bad business. I thought I had a right to a run of luck--after all my ill fortune. I calculated the chances; they were overwhelmingly in my favor. I staked my zero against another man's thousands--never mind how many--and I lost, and have only my zero to offer in payment. That is to say, my note of hand; and how much do you think that is worth, my girl? I would rather--I would rather," he added, passionately, changing his tone of levity for one of the bitterest despair--"I would rather be dead--dead, dead--than----" "Oh, papa! papa! say it not! say it not! It is real. Such things are not mere words. They are real, father, father!--Die! You must not die." "I have little cause to wish to die," he said, relapsing again into a sort of gloomy carelessness; "so that I could see any other way out of it. To be sure, one might run--one might play the part of a cowardly, dishonorable rascal, and run for it, Ella, if you like that better. Between suicide and the escapade of a defaulter, there is not much to choose; but I will do as you like." "I would not willingly choose your dishonor," said she, shuddering; "but between the dishonor of the one course or the other, there seems little to choose. Only--only--if you lived, in time you might be able to pay. Men have lived, and labored, until they have paid all." "Live and labor--very like me! Live, and labor, until I have paid all--extremely like me! Lower a mountain by spadefuls." "Even spadefuls," she said; her understanding and her heart seemed both suddenly ripened in this fearful extremity--"even spadefuls at a time have done something--have lowered mountains, where there was determination and perseverance. "But suppose there was neither. Suppose there was neither courage, nor goodness, nor determination, nor perseverance. Suppose the man had lived a life of indolent self-indulgence, until, squeeze him as you would, there was not one drop of virtue left in him. Crush him, as fate is crushing me at this moment; and I tell you, you will get nothing out of him. Nothing--nothing. He is more worthless than the most degraded beast. Better to die as a beast, and go where the beasts go." She turned ghastly pale at this terrible speech--but, "No," she faltered out--"no--no!" "You will not have me die, then?" he said, pursuing the same heartless tone; but it was forced, if that were any excuse for him. "Then you prefer the other scheme? I thought, he went on, "to have supped with Pluto to-night; but you prefer that it should be on board an American steamer." "I do," she gasped, rather than uttered. "You do--you are sure you do?" said he, suddenly assuming a tone of greater seriousness. "You wish, Ella, to preserve this worthless life? Have you considered at what expense?" "Expense! How! Who could think of that?" she answered. "Oh! not the expense of money, child--at the expense of the little thing called 'honor.' Listen to me, Ella,"--and again he took her arm, and turned her poor distracted face, to his. "You see I am ready to die--at least, was ready to die--but I have no wish to die. Worthless as this wretched life of mine it, it has its excitements, and its enjoyments, to me. When I made up my mind to end it, I assure you, child, I did the one only generous thing I ever was guilty of in my life; for I did it for you girls' sakes, as much or more than for my own. Suicide, some think a wicked thing--I don't. How I got my life, I don't know; the power of getting rid of it is mine, and I hold myself at liberty to make use of it or not, at my own good pleasure. As for my ever living to pay my debt, it's folly to talk of it. I have not, and never shall acquire, the means. I have neither the virtue nor the industry. I tell you, I am utterly good for nothing. I am a rascal--a scoundrel, and a despicable knave. I played for a large sum--meaning to take it if I won it--and not being able to pay, I lost it--and that, I have still sense of honor enough left to call a rascally proceeding. Now there is one way, and one way only, of cancelling all this in the eye of the world. When a man destroys himself, the world is sorry for him--half inclined to forgive him--to say the least of it, absolves his family. But--if he turn tail--and sneak away to America, and has so little sense"--he went on, passionately and earnestly--"of all that is noble, and faithful, and honorable, that he can bear to drag on a disgraced, contemptible existence, like a mean, pitiful, cowardly, selfish wretch, as he is--why, then--then--he is utterly blasted, and blackened over with infamy! Nobody feels for him, nobody pities him--the world speaks out, and curses the rascal as heartily as he deserves--and all his family perish with him. Now, Ella, choose which you will." "I choose America," she said with firmness. "And how am I to got to America? and how am I to live there when I am there? To be sure, there are your mother's diamonds," he added. "Those are included in the bill of sale. Did you not say so?" she asked. "Well, perhaps I did. But if a man is to live, he must have something to live upon. If he is to take flight, he must have wings to fly with." "I will provide both." "You will?" "I am of age. What I have--which was not your gift--is at least my own. Lionel has been generous; I have the means to pay your passage." "Aye, aye--Lionel! But afterwards, how am I to live? He will not like--no man would like--to have to maintain a wife's father, and that man a defaulter too. You should think of that, Ella." "I do! I will never ask him." "Then who is to maintain me? I tell you, I shall never manage to do it myself." "I will." "My poor child!" he cried--one short touch of nature had reached him at last--"what are you talking of?" "I hope, and believe, that I shall be able to do it." "I stood with my household gods shattered around me," is the energetic expression of that erring man, who had brought the fell catastrophe upon himself. And so stood Ella now--in the centre of her own sitting-room, like some noble figure of ruin and despair; yet with a light, the light divine, kindling in an eye cast upward. Yes! all her household gods--all the idols she had too dearly loved and cherished, were shattered around her, and she felt that she stood alone, to confront the dreadful fate which had involved all she loved. What a spectacle presented itself to her imagination, as drearily she looked round! On one side, defaced and disfigured, soiled, degraded, was the once beautiful and animated figure of her father,--the man so brilliant, and to her so splendid a specimen of what human nature, in the full affluence of nature's finest gifts, might be. Upon another side her lover!--her husband! who was to have been her heart's best treasure! who never was to be hers now. No! upon that her high spirit had at once resolved; never. Impoverished and degraded, as she felt herself to be, never would she be Lionel's wife. The name which would, in a few hours' time, be blackened by irremediable dishonor, should never be linked to his. One swell of tender feeling, and it was over! All that is wrong, and all that is right, in woman's pride, had risen in arms at once against this. The last figure that presented itself, was that of her delicate and gentle sister. But here there was comfort. Clementina was of a most frail and susceptible temperament, and eminently formed to suffer severely from adverse external circumstances; but she had a true and faithful heart; and if to Ella she would be obliged to cling for support, she would give consolation in return. Ella looked upward--she looked up to God! That holy name was not a stranger to her lips. It had been once, until the child of charity had taught the rich man's daughter some little knowledge of it. But such ideas had never been thoroughly realized by her mind; and now, when in the extremity of her destitution, she looked up--when, "out of the depths she cried unto Him,"--alas! He seemed so far, far off, and her distresses were so terribly near! Yet even then, imperfect as all was, a beginning was made. The thick darkness of her soul seemed a little broken,--communion with the better and higher world was at least begun. There was a light--dim and shadowy--but still a light. There was a strength, vacillating and uncertain, but still a strength, coming over her soul. CHAPTER THE SIXTH. And now that wretched man, broken with disease and misery, sat there, with the lady, who, patient and pitying even to the worst of her fellow-creatures, had been moved by the sincerity of his distress. The extremity of his misery had raised so much compassion in her heart, as to overcome the resentment and indignation which she had at first felt, on recognizing him. He had entreated her to tell him every thing she knew of the fate of one whom he had that morning followed to the grave. For wretched as was his attire, defiled with dirt, and worn with travel, he had left the house, and had followed, a tearless, but heartbroken mourner, the simple procession which attended the once lovely and glorious creature whom he had called daughter to her resting-place. He had stood by, at her funeral, whilst ill-taught children stared and scoffed, until the busy mercenaries had pushed and elbowed him aside. He had seen his best and loveliest one consigned, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; he had waited quietly until all had dispersed, and every one was gone home. He had no home--and he yet stood by, and watched the sexton completing his work and cheerfully whistling as he proceeded with it. For it was now a gleaming bright day, and the sun had burst forth, and beamed upon the lofty tower of the church-steeple. It gilded the church-vane and weathercock; it sparkled from the windows of the houses around the graveyard; it glistened on the lowly graves. Cheerfulness was around him, for the bright sun of heaven cheers and ennobles every thing upon which his beams fall. And there was a soft wind, too, which stirred among the leaves of a few poplars, that stood hard by, whispering sweet secrets of nature, even in that dismal spot. He stood there, motionless and tearless, until the sexton had finished his task, had shouldered his spade, and, still whistling, had walked away. Then he sat down upon the little mound, and hid his face in his hands. He sat there for some time--for a long, long time--and then slowly arose, and with feeble and uncertain steps retraced the way he had come, and found himself at the door of the handsome house, whence he had followed the funeral in the morning. He made his way to the lady, who happened to be still there, and who now (as I have said), indignation having yielded to compassion, was prepared to satisfy the yearning anxiety he had expressed to hear all she could tell him of his once proud and beautiful child. "You know where you are, and what I am, and what I and the other ladies whom you have seen with me employ ourselves upon when we come here." "No," he said, looking round. "It never struck me to inquire, or even to reflect upon what I saw." "This house is a kind of hospital." He started--and a faint flush passed over his face. "Yes," he said, "it was natural--as things had gone on--a consequence inevitable. Then she died at last in the hospital?" "Not exactly that--as you would interpret the word. This house is, indeed, a species of hospital; it is intended as a refuge for the sick and dying, who have nowhere else to go; but it does not exactly resemble an ordinary hospital. In the first place, the services performed are not altogether gratuitous; in the second, every patient has a room to herself. We are only women, except the medical attendants: and we admit none but women--and those women of a higher class, of gentle breeding, and refined habits, who have fallen into poverty, and yet who have not been hardened in their sensations by habits, so as that the edge of privation is blunted; or what, perhaps, is still more difficult to bear, that painful sense of publicity unfelt, which renders shelter in an ordinary hospital a source of suffering to them--which--God be thanked!--it does not necessarily prove to those for whom such places of refuge were intended. This house would have been more justly called an asylum than a hospital, for it is intended as a shelter for the sick and destitute; but yet those who are received into it are expected to contribute to their own support." He made no answer to this explanation. After all, it, interested him little now to know that his Ella had not been a mere object of the charity which is extended to paupers. His pride had died within him, for his nature had been much changed; but, only as such natures change. His faults had withered away, but no good qualities seemed as yet to burst forth to flourish in their stead. The soul had been so utterly ruined and devastated, the portion of living waters had been so completely dried up, that he seemed merely to have lost the inclination to do wrong--that was all. "We are a small party of friends," the lady went on; "some of us in the heyday of prosperity, but who, amid all the triumphs of youth, wealth, and beauty, have not quite forgotten the poor, the sick, and the miserable: others, who, like myself, are fallen into the yellow leaf of life--whose years cannot of necessity be many--may be very few--and who would fain do something in the great vineyard before they are called away. It is our practice for some of us to visit this place every day, to see our patients, attend to their wants and comforts, and, where it is desired, administer by our conversation such helps and solace as we can. I come here pretty often, for I am not one who is very much occupied upon this earth; and, as I love to sit with the sufferers, and am more aged than the majority of them, they seem to lean upon me a good deal. They love to have me with them; and many of the younger ones have treated me with a confidence, which has excited, I can scarcely say whether more satisfaction or pain." He still spoke not, but listened with deep attention. "A few months ago," she continued, "the matron of the establishment came to me one morning, and said that a young lady had been received here some days ago, whom she wished me very much to visit. I had but the day before returned from an excursion into the country, and had been absent from my post about a fortnight. I asked, at whose recommendation the patient had been received. She said--that of Lady R., but that Lady R. knew nothing about her. It was at the earnest solicitation of the wife of the baker who supplied her family with bread, that Lady R. had given the order; the woman, who was a very plain sort of person, but highly respectable in her way, having assured her that it was a case of the most urgent necessity: that the young lady was utterly penniless and destitute, and in an almost hopeless state of health. She had brought on a decline by over-exertion to maintain a sick sister, and pay some debts of that sister's, which she thought herself bound in honor to discharge--'and other expenses,' she added, somewhat mysteriously,--promising that she would advance the required guinea a week; for, as for the young lady, she did not believe that she had five shillings left in the world." He struck his hand flat at the top of his head, and held it there, leaning his elbow upon the table, so that his arm covered in part his face, which was painfully contracted; but he neither spoke, nor groaned, nor even sighed. "I went up to the young lady's room immediately. Our rooms are each provided with a single bed, a sofa, an easy chair, a table, and such other requisites as make a chamber at once a bedroom and a sitting-room. "The matron knocked gently at the door; but no one answered it; she therefore gently turned the handle of the lock, and we went in. "The window was open. Hers looked upon those green trees you see at the back of the house, and the fresh air came pleasantly in: but it seemed unheeded by the sufferer. She was clothed in a long white sleeping-gown. One arm was thrown above her head; her hair had gotten from her comb, and fell in waves and curls of the utmost beauty and luxuriance almost to her feet. She lay with her face upward, resting upon the back of her head, almost as motionless as a corpse: her features were fixed; her eyes rested upon the top of the bed. She seemed lost in thought. Never in my life have I seen any thing so supremely beautiful." "Ella--Ella!" he just muttered. "When we approached the side of the bed, she first perceived us, gave a little start, glanced at the matron, and then, with a look of rather displeased surprise at me-- "'I beg your pardon if I intrude upon you,' I said. 'Mrs. Penrose asked me to pay you a visit. I am but just returned from the country. I spend a good deal of my time when in town with the sick ladies here, and they seem to like to have me; but if you do not I will go away directly.' "She made an impatient and half-contemptuous motion of the head as I used the words 'sick ladies;' but she fixed her large, lustrous eyes upon me as I went on speaking--saying nothing, however, when I concluded, but keeping those large dark eyes fixed upon my face. "'Shall I go?' I said, after a little time thus spent. "She made a gesture as if to stop me--but without moving those large mournful eyes, in which I could see that tears were slowly gathering. "Mrs. Penrose had already left the room. I said no more; but took a chair, sat down by the bedside, and laid mine upon her thin, fevered, but most exquisitely-formed hand. "I gave a gentle, gentle pressure; it was faintly, very faintly returned; and then the tears, which had so slowly gathered into her eyes, fell in a few large drops over her faded cheeks. "'This is lonely, desolate work, do what we will,' I said, as a sort of answer to these few large tears, falling so quietly and still, and without convulsion of features--the tears of a strong but softened mind. 'To be sick, and without familiar faces--to be sick and among strangers--is a sorrowful, sorrowful thing--but we do our best.' "'O, you are good--very good,' she said. "'There is nothing _I_ feel so much myself as this destitution of the heart; solitude in sickness is to me almost more than I can bear; and, therefore, it is, perhaps, that I am almost troublesome in offering my society to those here who have not many friends and visitors--especially to the young. I can bear solitude myself better now, badly as I do bear it, than when I was young. Society seems, to the young, like the vital air upon which they exist.' "'Yes, perhaps so,' she said, after musing a little--'yes. So long as there was one near me whom I loved, I could get on--better or worse--but I could get on. But she is gone. Others whom I have loved are far--far away. The solitude of the heart! yes, that kills one at last.' "'Then will you try to make a friend of me? A new friend can never be like an old friend. Yet, when the old wine is drawn down to the dregs, we accept the new, although we still say the old is better.' "'How very kindly you speak to me! You have none of the pride of compassion,' she said, fixing her lovely eyes, filled with an earnest, intelligent expression, full upon mine. 'You will not humble me, whilst you serve me.' "'Humble you! My dear young lady! That, I hope, indeed, would be far from me--from every one of us.' "'I dare say so--as you say it. I have seen none of the ladies, only the matron, Mrs. Penrose, and a friend of mine, to whom I owe much; but they are both so inferior to myself in habits and education, that I don't think they could humble me if they tried. The insolence of my inferiors, I can defy--the condescensions of my superiors, are what I dread.' "I saw in this little speech something that opened to me, as I thought, one side of her character. All the notice of it, however, which I took, was to say, 'We must not exact too much from each other. A person may have a very single-hearted and sincere desire to serve us, and yet be somewhat awkward in conferring benefits. We must not be unreasonable. Where people do their best to be kind, we must accept the will for the deed, and besides....' "'You mean to say that benefits may be _accepted_ ungraciously,'--and she laid her hand upon mine, and pressed it with some fervor. Yes, that is true. We may, in the pride of our unsubdued and unregulated hearts, be captious, exacting and unjust. We may be very, very ungrateful.' "Do I tire you with relating these things?" said the lady, breaking off, and addressing the fallen man. "Shall I pass on to others? Yet there are few events to relate. The history of this life of a few months is comprised in conversations. I thought you would probably like to hear them. "I _do_ like to hear them. I adjure you, solemnly, to omit nothing that you can remember of them. She was a noble creature." And he burst forth with a bitter cry. "She _was_ a noble creature! "I sat with her some time that day, and learned some little of her history; but she was very reserved as to details and explanations. She told me that she had once lived in great affluence; but that a sudden reverse of fortune had ruined her father, who had been obliged to quit the country; and that she and her sister had found it necessary immediately to set about getting their own livelihood. Only one course was open to either of them--that of becoming governesses in private families, or teachers at schools. They had wished to adopt the latter course, which would have enabled them to keep together, but had not been able to provide themselves with situations; so they had been compelled to separate. "'My sister,' she said, 'took a situation in London; I was obliged to accept one that offered in a distant county, so that we were entirely parted; but in such cases one cannot choose. My dear Clementina's accomplishments were such as the family in London wanted; mine suited those who offered me the place in the country, or I would have exchanged with her. But it was not to be. Things in this miserable world are strangely ordered.' "'For the _best_,' I said, 'when the issues are known.' "'Who shall assure us of that? and when are their issues known?' she asked, with some bitterness. 'It would need great faith when one receives a heavy injury, to believe it was fraught with good, and well intended.' "'It would, indeed! Yet, we must have that faith. We ought to have that faith in Him, the All-wise, Merciful, and Good. We should have it,--should we not?--whatever appearances might be, in an earthly friend of this description.' "'Ah! but we see and know such a friend.' "'We ought to _know_, though we cannot see, that other friend.' "'Ah! well--it is so, I dare say. But, oh, there are moments in life when the cruel blow is so real, and the consolation so illusory!' "'Seems so real--seems so illusory! Ah! my dear young lady, have you drank so deep of the cup of sorrow? And have you not found the great, the only true reality, at the bottom?' "She had loosed her hold of my hand, and turned her head coldly away, as I uttered the last speech. "I asked her why she did so. "'Because you talk like all the rest. At ease yourselves, religious faith is an easy matter to you. It is easy to give these every-day religious consolations, when we have nothing else to give. But they are things of a peculiar character. If the soul does not put them within itself, none upon earth can bestow them. They are only given of God; and it has not pleased Him to give them to me. No,' she went on, with much emotion. 'If there be light in darkness, it shines not for me. If out of the depths they call, and He listens, He has not listened to me. My prayers have been vain, and I have wearied myself with offering them. There was no help in them.' "I was grieved and shocked to hear her speak thus. I, however, ventured to urge my point a little further. "'But you did find help, somewhere?' "'Not such as I wanted; not health and strength to my poor darkened spirit.' "'And why? Because they sought it not in faith ...' "'Ah! faith! but who can command this faith?' "'Everybody.' "'Everybody! If it has pleased God to darken our understandings so that we do not know him at all, it may be as you say. But if we know him--not to trust in him--_that_ worst of faith must be our own fault.' "She was silent, and seemed to sink into a reverie, which I would not disturb. At last she shook it off, and turning suddenly to me, said, 'Clementina had got nearer this truth than I had, or have. Yes, that it was--that it must have been--which supported her in circumstances far worse than mine. She was patient, composed, resigned, and, in spite of her natural feebleness, showed a strength which I ever wanted. She endured better than I do, when she lay low as I do now, and suffered worse, far worse. How was it?' "'My strength is made perfect in weakness'--'Is not that said?' "Again she fixed her eyes with a searching, earnest expression upon mine. "'But, tell me,' I continued, 'how it fared with you? I fear badly.' "'Perhaps you are not aware, Madam, how much strength, both of body and spirit, it requires to make a governess.' "'I think I am aware of it, in good measure.' "'There seems nothing very onerous in the task of teaching children during a certain number of hours every day, and living with them during the rest. But those who have tried it alone know how irksome, how exhausting is the wearisome routine of ungrateful labor. My situation was tiresome enough. They were a family of high-spirited children, as wild as the hills in which they had been bred, and whose greatest pleasure was to torment their young governess; though I was rather excited than depressed by our frequent struggles for mastery. Then the mother, when she did interfere, was sensible and just; and she supported me when she thought me right, through every thing. If she disapproved, too, I could be hot and unreasonable in my turn, and she gently told me of my fault in private, so as to never impair my authority. She was a wise and excellent woman. A good mother, and a true friend, even to her governess. But it was different with Clementina. Shut up in London, with a family of cold-hearted, proud children, already spoiled by the world, and never finding it possible to satisfy an exacting mother, do what she would, the task was soon too hard for her. The more languid her health and spirits became, the feebler her voice, the paler her cheek, the greater was the dissatisfaction of the lady whom she served. When the family doctor was at last called in, he pronounced her to be in so critical a state of health, that rest and change of air were indispensable. So she left, with fifteen pounds--a half-year's salary. "'Consumption had set in when I saw her. What was to become of her? We knew of no such place as this, then. "'The lady whom I served was kind and considerate. When I came to her in tears, she bade me fly to my sister, and not return until I had settled her somewhere in comfort. But where was that to be? We had not a friend in the world except one. She had been our under nursery-maid. She was now a baker's wife; but she had always loved us. She had such a heart! And she did not fail us now. "'She took my sister home, and insisted upon keeping her. We could not allow this to be done without offering what compensation we could. My sister's little purse was reserved for extraordinary expenses; and I contrived out of my own salary to pay a little weekly stipend to our good Matty. She would not have taken it; but she had a husband, and upon this point we were resolved.' "Here she paused, and raising her head from her pillow, rested it upon her hand, and looked round the room with an expression of satisfaction which it gave me great pleasure to see. The little apartment was plainly furnished enough; but the walls were of a cheerful color, and the whole furniture was scrupulously clean. The windows stood open, looking upon a space in which a few green trees were growing. The scene was more open, airy, and quiet than one can usually obtain in London. The air came in fresh and pleasant; the green trees waved and bowed their heads lovingly and soothingly. "'It is not until we are sick that we know the value, that we feel the necessity, of these things,' she began again. 'This I may venture to say for us both. We had been cradled in luxury and elegancies, surrounded by every thing that the most lavish expenditure could bestow. We gave them all up without a sigh. So much unhappiness had attended this unblest profusion, that it seemed almost a relief--something like an emancipation--to have done with it, and be restored at once to simplicity and nature. Whilst our health and spirits lasted, we both of us took a pleasure in defying superfluity, in being easy and content upon a pallet bed, and with a crust of bread and a glass of water; but, oh! when sickness comes--deadly sickness! The fever, and the languor, and, above all, the frightful susceptibility to external influences. When upon the hard bed you cannot sleep, though sleep is life to the exhausted frame. When the coarse food you cannot touch--though your body is sinking for want of nourishment--when the aching limbs get sore with the rugged unyieldingness of that on which they lie--when you languish and sicken for fresh air, and are shut up in a little close room in some back street--when you want medicine and care, and can command no services at all--or of the lowest and most inefficient description--then--O then! we feel what it is to want--then we feel what it is to have such an asylum prepared for us as this. Poor thing! she was not so fortunate as I have been.'" Here, the broken man who had until now sat listening in what might almost be called a sullen attention, suddenly lifted up his head, looked round the room where he sat, and through the large cheerful window upon the branches of the trees and the blue unclouded sky; and, suddenly, even his heart seemed reached. He rose from his chair, he sat down again, he looked conscious, uneasy, abashed. It was so long since he had felt or expressed any grateful or amiable sentiment, that he was almost ashamed of what he now experienced, as if it had been a weakness. "Pray have the kindness to go on," he said at last. "It was some days before I learned much more of the history of my poor young invalid, but one day when I came to see her, I found a very respectable looking woman, though evidently not belonging to the higher class, sitting with her. She was a person whose appearance would have been almost repulsive from the deep injuries her face had received--burned when a child, I believe--if it had not been for the sense and goodness that pervaded her expression. Her eyes were singularly intelligent, sweet, and kind. "I found she was the wife of the baker--she, who had once been nursery-maid in your family. The only friend the poor young creature seemed to have left in the world, and the only person from whom she could bear, as it afterwards appeared, to receive an obligation. This excellent person it was, who advanced the guinea a-week, which the laws of the institution required should be contributed by a patient. "When she took her leave I followed her, to inquire further particulars about my patient. She then told me, that the sister had died about three years before, leaving a heavy debt to be discharged by the one remaining; consisting of her funeral expenses, which were considerable, though every thing was conducted with all the simplicity compatible with decency; and of the charges of the medical man who had attended her: a low unprincipled person, who had sent in an enormous bill, which there were no means of checking, and which, nevertheless, the high-spirited sister resolved to pay. But the first thing she did, was to insure her own life for a certain sum, so as to guard against the burden under which she herself labored, being in its turn imposed upon others. "'So, madam,' said the good Mrs. Lacy, with simplicity, 'you must not think that the guinea a-week is any thing more than an advance on our part--there will be money enough to repay us--or my dear Miss Ella would never, never have taken it. She would die in the street first, she has such a noble spirit of her own. She told me to provide for her sister's debts,--she had made an arrangement with a publisher to be a regular contributor to a certain periodical,--she had likewise produced a few rather popular novels. To effect this she had indeed labored night and day,--the day with her pupils, half the night with her pen. She was strong, but human nature could not support this long; and yet labor as she did, she proceeded slowly in clearing away the debt. I cannot quite account for that,' said Mrs. Lacy, 'she dressed plainly, she allowed herself no expense, she made no savings, she paid the debt very slowly by small instalments, yet she worked herself into a decline. There seemed to be some hidden, insatiable call for money....'" If the lady who was recounting all this, had looked at her listener at that moment, she would have been moved, little as she liked him. A wild horror took possession of his countenance--his lips became livid--his cheek ghastly--he muttered a few inarticulate words between his teeth. But she was occupied with her own reflections, and noticed him not. "This could not go on for ever," said the lady, presently. "She was obliged to throw up her situation; soon afterwards the possibility of writing left her; and she was brought here, where I found her." "And that it was--that it was, then!" cried the wretched man. 'O Ella, my child!--my child! I was living, in indolence and indifference, upon her hard-earned labors! I was eating into her life! And when the supply ceased, I--I never knew what it was to have a heart!--I thought she was tired of ministering to her father's wants, and I came to England to upbraid her!" "It was too late. She was gone where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest," said the lady. "You need not--you need not--my heart is hard, but the dagger has pierced it at last. You need not drive in the steel: it has done its work," he rather gasped than said. The lady felt that she had been too severe. His apparent insensibility had, it is true, irritated her almost beyond bearing, after all he had done, and after all that had been suffered for his sake. "I am sorry if I give you pain. I ought to be sorry for you, not angry." "Did she never mention me?" he asked, in a tone of agony. "And there was another, on whom her young heart doted, only too fondly. Did she never speak of either of us?" "She spoke of both." "Tell me what she said." The lady hesitated. "I pray tell me--I can bear it." "I am afraid I have given you too much pain already. It is over now. Let it be over. Go home; and may God give you grace at the eleventh hour, and bring you and yours together again at last!" she said fervently, and the tears starting in her eyes. "I have no home but one; and to that I shall shortly go. But let me not depart tormented with a yearning desire to hear all. Tell me; I ask it of you as a favor. What was her state of mind as regarded her mother--her father--and her lover?" "God gave her grace to find him at last. The darkness and the doubts that had distressed her, gradually disappeared. That grace took possession of her heart which the world can neither give nor understand; and all was hope and tranquillity at the last hour. "As she grew worse, her spirit became more and more composed. She told me so one day. Then she asked me whether I thought she could recover. "I was silent. "She turned pale. Her lips moved as she said, 'Do I understand your silence rightly?' "'I am afraid you do.' "She was silent herself for a short time; then she said, "'And so young!' "'It is not for us to know the times and seasons which the Father hath kept in his own power,' said I. "'But must I--must I die? I am not ashamed to own it,--I did so wish to live. Did you never hear that I had a father living?' she asked in so low a voice, that it was almost a whisper. "'Yes,' I answered. "'Then, you have heard his most unhappy history?' "'Most of it, I believe, I have.' "'He seems to you, I fear, a very--very erring man.' "I was silent. "'There is good in him still,' she cried; 'believe it or not who may, there is good in him still.' "And now her tears began to flow fast, as she went on, "'The will of God be done! The will of God be done! But if it had been His pleasure, I hoped to have lived! to have had that father home; to have joined our two desolate hearts together; to have brought him to the knowledge of One whose yoke is easy, and whose burden is light. O, was that wish wrong, that it was not granted! O, my father! who shall seek you out now!' "'Remember,' I said, gently, 'we are in the hands of One, wiser and more merciful than ourselves. He would spare, surely, where we would spare, if it were good it should be so. If means would avail, He would provide the means. His work will not stand still because the instruments (as we regard things) seem taken away. Your death, dear girl, may do more for your father's soul than your life could ever have done.'" And now, he bowed his head--humbly--and he covered his face with his hands, and the tears ran through his fingers. "Thus," the lady went on, "I comforted her, as I could; and she died: with her last breath commending her father to the mercy of God. "Her lover was dear--but not dearer than her father. She told me that history one day. How she had loved; how devotedly, how passionately. But that when her name was disgraced, she had resolved never to unite it with his. She had withdrawn herself; she had done it in a way such as she believed would displease him. 'I thought he would feel it less if he were angry,' she said. 'I often wished in my desolation _I_ could feel angry.' She told me his name; and I promised to make inquiries. I had fortunately the opportunity. I had the pleasure to tell her, that he had made the greatest efforts to find her out, but in vain; that he had remained unmarried and constant to her memory: that what had happened had given a new turn to his character. Habits of dissipation, which had been gradually acquiring power over him, had been entirely broken through. He had accepted an office in a distant colony, where he was leading a most useful and meritorious life. Never shall I forget the glow of joy that illuminated her face when I told her so. She looked already as if she had entered into the higher and more glorious existence! "'I shall not see him again,' said she; 'but you will write to him and tell him all. You will say that I died true and blest, because he was what he was; and that I bade him a fond adieu, until we should meet again in a better world. For, O! we shall meet again; I have a testimony within, which shall not deceive me!' "She then reverted to her father. "'He will come back,' she said; 'you will see that he will come back, and he will inquire what is become of me--why his child has forgotten him and is silent. It will be the silence and forgetfulness of the grave. Perhaps he will come back as he went; his heart yet unchanged: defying and despairing. Tell him _not_--be patient, with him, good kind friend, for my sake. There is good in him:--good he knows not of, himself; that nobody knows of, but his loving child, and the God who made him--weak and erring as he is. Tell him, he must no more be weak and erring; tell him there is forgiveness for all who will return at last, but that forgiveness supposes newness of life. Tell him--" The sentence was unfinished by the lady, for he who listened fell prostrate on his face upon the floor. They raised him up; but his heart seemed broken. He neither moved nor spoke. Life, however, was not extinct; for in this condition he remained many days. They could not keep him where he was, for this benevolent institution was strictly devoted to women of the more refined orders. He was carried to a Hospital. There was nowhere else to carry him. Seven days he lay without speaking; but not absolutely senseless. The spirit within him was at work. In his worst days he had never wanted energy. His heart was ever strong for good or for bad. What passed within him, in those seven days, was between his soul and the Highest. He came out of his death-trance an altered creature. The once handsome, dashing, profane, luxurious Julian Winstanley, looked now a very old, old man. Quite gray, very thin, and stooping much. From that time, he continued to earn his bread honestly, as an attendant in the very hospital where he had been recovered. He had a little room to himself, and it was filled with certain simple treasures, hallowed by his recollections. His patient and tender attendance upon the sick, his assiduous discharge of all his duties, was beyond praise. One day, a man who had risen to a very high post in one of our colonies, came to visit him. The two were long together. When, they parted, it was evident that both had wept much. The old man, after that, faded rapidly. One morning they found him dead in bed. His hands were clasped together, as if he had departed in the act of prayer. He lies buried in a neighboring churchyard, under a simple mound of earth, such as covers the humblest and the poorest. He had left behind him a scrap of paper, earnestly imploring that so it might be. So it was. May God forgive us all! MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[7] BY SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. BOOK VIII.--INITIAL CHAPTER.--THE ABUSE OF INTELLECT. There is at present so vehement a flourish of trumpets, and so prodigious a roll of the drum, whenever we are called upon to throw up our hats, and cry "Huzza" to the "March of Enlightenment," that, out of that very spirit of contradiction natural to all rational animals, one is tempted to stop one's ears, and say, "Gently, gently; LIGHT is noiseless; how comes 'Enlightenment' to make such a clatter? Meanwhile if it be not impertinent, pray, where is enlightenment marching to?" Ask that question of any six of the loudest bawlers in the procession, and I'll wager ten-pence to California that you get six very unsatisfactory answers. One respectable gentleman, who, to our great astonishment, insists upon calling himself a "slave," but has a remarkably free way of expressing his opinions, will reply--"Enlightenment is marching towards the nine points of the Charter." Another with his hair _à la jeune France_, who has taken a fancy to his friend's wife, and is rather embarrassed with his own, asserts that Enlightenment is proceeding towards the Rights of Women, the reign of Social Love, and the annihilation of Tyrannical Prejudice. A third, who has the air of a man well to do in the middle class, more modest in his hopes, because he neither wishes to have his head broken by his errand-boy, nor his wife carried off to an Agapemone by his apprentice, does not take Enlightenment a step farther than a siege on Debrett, and a cannonade on the Budget. Illiberal man! the march that he swells will soon trample _him_ under foot. No one fares so ill in a crowd, as the man who is wedged in the middle. A fourth, looking wild and dreamy, as if he had come out of the cave of Trophonius, and who is a mesmerizer and a mystic, thinks Enlightenment is in full career towards the good old days of alchemists and necromancers. A fifth, whom one might take for a Quaker, asserts that the march of Enlightenment is a crusade for universal philanthropy, vegetable diet, and the perpetuation of peace, by means of speeches, which certainly do produce a very contrary effect from the Philippics of Demosthenes! The sixth--(good fellow, without a rag on his back)--does not care a straw where the march goes. He can't be worse off than he is; and it is quite immaterial to him whether he goes to the dog-star above, or the bottomless pit below. I say nothing, however, against the march, while we take it altogether. Whatever happens, one is in good company; and though I am somewhat indolent by nature, and would rather stay at home with Locke and Burke, (dull dogs though they were,) than have my thoughts set off helter-skelter with those cursed trumpets and drums, blown and dub-a-dubbed by fellows that I vow to heaven I would not trust with a five-pound note--still, if I must march, I must; and so deuce take the hindmost. But when it comes to individual marchers upon their own account--privateers and condottieri of Enlightenment--who have filled their pockets with lucifer-matches, and have a sublime contempt for their neighbours' barns and hay-ricks, I don't see why I should throw myself into the seventh heaven of admiration and ecstasy. [7] Continued from page 550. If those who are eternally rhapsodizing on the celestial blessings that are to follow Enlightenment, Universal Knowledge, and so forth, would just take their eyes out of their pockets, and look about them, I would respectfully inquire if they have never met any very knowing and enlightened gentleman, whose acquaintance is by no means desirable. If not, they are monstrous lucky. Every man must judge by his own experience; and the worst rogues I have ever encountered were amazingly well-informed, clever fellows! From dunderheads and dunces we can protect ourselves; but from your sharp-witted gentleman, all enlightenment and no prejudice, we have but to cry, "Heaven defend us!" It is true, that the rogue (let him be ever so enlightened) usually comes to no good himself, (though not before he has done harm enough to his neighbors.) But that only shows that the world wants something else in those it rewards, besides intelligence _per se_ and in the abstract; and is much too old a world to allow any Jack Horner to pick out its plums for his own personal gratification. Hence a man of very moderate intelligence, who believes in God, suffers his heart to beat with human sympathies, and keeps his eyes off your strong-box, will perhaps gain a vast deal more power than knowledge ever gives to a rogue. Wherefore, though I anticipate an outcry against me on the part of the blockheads, who, strange to say, are the most credulous idolaters of enlightenment, and, if knowledge were power, would rot on a dunghill; yet, nevertheless, I think all really enlightened men will agree with me, that when one falls in with detached sharpshooters from the general march of enlightenment, it is no reason to make ourselves a target, because enlightenment has furnished them with a gun. It has, doubtless, been already remarked by the judicious reader, that of the numerous characters introduced into this work, the larger portion belong to that species which we call INTELLECTUAL--that through them are analyzed and developed human intellect, in various forms and directions. So that this History, rightly considered, is a kind of humble, familiar Epic, or, if you prefer it, a long Serio-Comedy, upon the varieties of English Life in this our Century, set in movement by the intelligences most prevalent. And where more ordinary and less refined types of the species round and complete the survey of our passing generation, they will often suggest, by contrast, the deficiencies which mere intellectual culture leaves in the human being. Certainly I have no spite against intellect and enlightenment. Heaven forbid I should be such a Goth. I am only the advocate for common sense and fair play. I don't think an able man necessarily an angel; but I think if his heart match his head, and both proceed in the Great March under the divine Oriflamme, he goes as near to the angel as humanity will permit; if not, if he has but a penn'orth of heart to a pound of brains, I say, "_Bon jour, mon ange?_ I see not the starry upward wings, but the grovelling cloven-hoof." I'd rather be obfuscated by the Squire of Hazeldean, than enlightened by Randal Leslie. Every man to his taste. But intellect itself (not in the philosophical, but the ordinary sense of the term) is rarely, if ever, one completed harmonious agency; it is not one faculty, but a compound of many, some of which are often at war with each other, and mar the concord of the whole. Few of us but have some predominant faculty, in itself a strength; but which (usurping unseasonably dominion over the rest) shares the lot of all tyranny, however brilliant, and leaves the empire weak against disaffection within, and invasion from without. Hence intellect maybe perverted in a man of evil disposition, and sometimes merely wasted in a man of excellent impulses, for want of the necessary discipline, or of a strong ruling motive. I doubt if there be one person in the world, who has attained a high reputation for talent, who has not met somebody much cleverer than himself, which said somebody has never obtained any reputation at all! Men, like Audley Egerton, are constantly seen in the great positions of life; while men, like Harley l'Estrange, who could have beaten them hollow in any thing equally striven for by both, float away down the stream, and, unless some sudden stimulant arouse the dreamy energies, vanish out of sight into silent graves. If Hamlet and Polonius were living now, Polonius would have a much better chance of being Chancellor of the Exchequer, though Hamlet would unquestionably be a much more intellectual character. What would become of Hamlet? Heaven knows! Dr. Arnold said, from his experience of a school, that the difference between one man and another was not mere ability--it was energy. There is a great deal of truth in that saying. Submitting these hints to the judgment and penetration of the sagacious, I enter on the fresh division of this work, and see already Randal Leslie gnawing his lip on the back ground. The German poet observes, that the Cow of Isis is to some the divine symbol of knowledge, to others but the milch cow, only regarded for the pounds of butter she will yield. O tendency of our age, to look on Isis as the milch cow! O prostitution of the grandest desires to the basest uses! Gaze on the goddess, Randal Leslie, and get ready thy churn and thy scales. Let us see what the butter will fetch in the market. CHAPTER II. A new reign has commenced. There has been a general election; the unpopularity of the Administration has been apparent at the hustings. Audley Egerton, hitherto returned by vast majorities, has barely escaped defeat--thanks to a majority of five. The expenses of his election are said to have been prodigious. "But who can stand against such wealth as Egerton's--no doubt backed, too, by the Treasury purse?" said the defeated candidate. It is towards the close of October; London is already full; Parliament will meet in less than a fortnight. In one of the principal apartments of that hotel in which foreigners may discover what is meant by English comfort, and the price which foreigners must pay for it, there sat two persons, side by side, engaged in close conversation. The one was a female, in whose pale clear complexion and raven hair--in whose eyes, vivid with a power of expression rarely bestowed on the beauties of the north, we recognize Beatrice, Marchesa di Negra. Undeniably handsome as was the Italian lady, her companion, though a man, and far advanced into middle age, was yet more remarkable for personal advantages. There was a strong family likeness between the two; but there was also a striking contrast in air, manner, and all that stamps on the physiognomy the idiosyncrasies of character. There was something of gravity, of earnestness and passion, in Beatrice's countenance when carefully examined; her smile at times might be false, but it was rarely ironical, never cynical. Her gestures, though graceful, were unrestrained and frequent. You could see she was a daughter of the south. Her companion, on the contrary, preserved on the fair smooth face, to which years had given scarcely a line or wrinkle, something that might have passed, at first glance for the levity and thoughtlessness of a gay and youthful nature; but the smile, though exquisitely polished, took at times the derision of a sneer. In his manners he was as composed and as free from gesture as an Englishman. His hair was of that red brown with which the Italian painters produce such marvellous effects of color; and if here and there a silver thread gleamed through the locks it was lost at once amidst their luxuriance. His eyes were light, and his complexion though without much color, was singularly transparent. His beauty, indeed, would have been rather womanly than masculine, but for the height and sinewy spareness of a frame in which muscular strength was rather adorned than concealed by an admirable elegance of proportion. You would never have guessed this man to be an Italian; more likely you would have supposed him a Parisian. He conversed in French, his dress was of French fashion, his mode of thought seemed French. Not that he was like the Frenchmen of the present day--an animal, either rude or reserved; but your ideal of the _Marquis_ of the old _régime_--the _roué_ of the Regency. Italian, however, he was, and of a race renowned in Italian history. But as if ashamed of his country and his birth, he affected to be a citizen of the world. Heaven help the world if it hold only such citizens! "But, Giulio," said Beatrice di Negra, speaking in Italian, "even granting that you discover this girl, can you suppose that her father will ever consent to your alliance? Surely you know too well the nature of your kinsman?" "_Tu te trompes, ma soeur_," replied Giulio Franzini, Count di Peschiera, in French as usual--"_tu te trompes_; I knew it before he had gone through exile and penury. How can I know it now? But comfort yourself, my too anxious Beatrice, I shall not care for his consent till I have made sure of his daughter's." "But how win that in despite of the father?" "_Eh, mordieu?_" interrupted the Count, with true French gayety; "what would become of all the comedies ever written, if marriages were not made in despite of the father? Look you," he resumed, with a very slight compression of his lip, and a still slighter movement in his chair; "look you, this is no question of ifs and buts--it is a question of must and shall--a question of existence to you and to me. When Danton was condemned to the guillotine, he said, flinging a pellet of bread at the nose of his respectable judge--'_Mon individu sera bientôt dans le néant_'--My patrimony is there already! I am loaded with debts. I see before me, on the one side, ruin or suicide; on the other side, wedlock and wealth." "But from those vast possessions which you have been permitted to enjoy so long, have you really saved nothing against the time when they might be reclaimed at your hands?" "My sister," replied the Count, "do I look like a man who saved? Besides, when the Austrian Emperor, unwilling to raise from his Lombard domains a name and a house so illustrious as our kinsman's, and desirous, while punishing that kinsman's rebellion, to reward my adherence, forbore the peremptory confiscation of those vast possessions at which my mouth waters while we speak, but, annexing them to the Crown during pleasure, allowed me, as the next of male kin, to retain the revenues of one-half for the same very indefinite period--had I not every reason to suppose, that, before long, I could so influence his Majesty or his minister, as to obtain a decree that might transfer the whole, unconditionally and absolutely, to myself? And methinks I should have done so, but for this accursed, intermeddling English Milord, who has never ceased to besiege the court or the minister with alleged extenuations of our cousin's rebellion, and proofless assertions that I shared it in order to entangle my kinsman, and betrayed it in order to profit by his spoils. So that, at last, in return for all my services, and in answer to all my claims, I received from the minister himself this cold reply: 'Count of Peschiera, your aid was important, and your reward has been large. That reward, it would not be for your honor to extend, and justify the ill opinion of your Italian countrymen by formally appropriating to yourself all that was forfeited by the treason you denounced. A name so noble as yours should be dearer to you than fortune itself.'" "Ah, Giulio," cried Beatrice, her face lighting up, changed in its whole character; "those were words that might make the demon that tempts to avarice fly from your breast in shame." The Count opened his eyes in great amaze; then he glanced round the room and said, quietly: "Nobody else hears you, my dear Beatrice, talk common sense. Heroics sound well in mixed society; but there is nothing less suited to the tone of a family conversation." Madame di Negra bent down her head abashed, and that sudden change in the expression of her countenance, which had seemed to betray susceptibility to generous emotion, faded as suddenly away. "But still," she said coldly, "you enjoy one-half of those ample revenues--why talk, then, of suicide and ruin?" "I enjoy them at the pleasure of the crown; and what if it be the pleasure of the crown to recall our cousin, and reinstate him in his possessions?" "There is a _probability_, then, of that pardon? When you first employed me in your researches, you only thought there was a _possibility_." "There is a great probability of it, and therefore I am here. I learned some little time since that the question of such recall had been suggested by the Emperor, and discussed in Council. The danger to the State, which might arise from our cousin's wealth, his alleged abilities--(abilities! bah!)--and his popular name, deferred any decision on the point; and, indeed, the difficulty of dealing with myself must have embarrassed the ministry. But it is a mere question of time. He cannot long remain excluded from the general amnesty, already extended to the other refugees. The person who gave me this information is high in power, and friendly to myself; and he added a piece of advice, on which I acted. 'It was intimated,' said he, 'by one of the partisans of your kinsman, that the exile could give a hostage for his loyalty in the person of his daughter and heiress; that she had arrived at marriageable age; that if she were to wed, with the Emperor's consent, some one whose attachment to the Austrian crown was unquestionable, there would be a guarantee both for the faith of the father, and for the transmission of so important a heritage to safe and loyal hands. Why not' (continued my friend) 'apply to the Emperor for his consent to that alliance for yourself?--you, on whom he can depend;--you who, if the daughter should die, would be the legal heir to those lands?' On that hint I spoke." "You saw the Emperor?" "And after combating the unjust prepossessions against me, I stated, that so far from my cousin having any fair cause of resentment against me, when all was duly explained to him, I did not doubt that he would willingly give me the hand of his child." "You did?" cried the Marchesa, amazed. "And," continued the Count imperturbably, as he smoothed, with careless hand, the snowy plaits of his shirt front--"and that I should thus have the happiness of becoming myself the guarantee of my kinsman's loyalty--the agent for the restoration of his honors, while, in the eyes of the envious and malignant, I should clear up my own name from all suspicion that I had wronged him." "And the Emperor consented?" "_Pardieu_, my dear sister. What else could his majesty do? My proposition smoothed every obstacle, and reconciled policy with mercy. It remains, therefore, only to find out, what has hitherto baffled all our researches, the retreat of our dear kinsfolk, and to make myself a welcome lover to the demoiselle. There is some disparity of years, I own; but--unless your sex and my glass flatter me overmuch--I am still a match for many a gallant of five-and-twenty." The Count said this with so charming a smile, and looked so pre-eminently handsome, that he carried off the coxcombry of the words as gracefully as if they had been spoken by some dazzling hero of the grand old comedy of Parisian life. Then interlacing his fingers, and lightly leaning his hands, thus clasped, upon his sister's shoulder, he looked into her face, and said slowly--"And now, my sister, for some gentle but deserved reproach. Have you not sadly failed me in the task I imposed on your regard for my interests? Is it not some years since you first came to England on the mission of discovering these worthy relatives of ours? Did I not entreat you to seduce into your toils the man whom I knew to be my enemy, and was indubitably acquainted with our cousin's retreat--a secret he has hitherto locked within his bosom? Did you not tell me, that though he was then in England, you could find no occasion even to meet him, but that you had obtained the friendship of the statesman to whom I directed your attention, as his most intimate associate? And yet you, whose charms are usually so irresistible, learn nothing from the statesman, as you see nothing of _Milord_. Nay, baffled and misled, you actually supposed that the quarry has taken refuge in France. You go thither--you pretend to search the capital--the provinces, Switzerland, _que sais-je_?--all in vain,--though--_foi de gentilhomme_--your police cost me dearly,--you return to England--the same chase, and the same result. _Palsambleu, ma soeur_, I do too much credit to your talents not to question your zeal. In a word have you been in earnest--or have you not had some womanly pleasure in amusing yourself and abusing my trust?" "Giulio," answered Beatrice sadly, "you know the influence you have exercised over my character and my fate. Your reproaches are not just. I made such inquiries as were in my power, and I have now cause to believe that I know one who is possessed of this secret, and can guide us to it." "Ah, you do!" exclaimed the Count. Beatrice did not heed the exclamation, but hurried on. "But grant that my heart shrunk from the task you imposed on me, would it not have been natural? When I first came to England, you informed me that your object in discovering the exiles was one which I could honestly aid. You naturally desired first to know if the daughter lived; if not, you were the heir. If she did, you assured me you desired to effect, through my mediation, some liberal compromise with Alphonso, by which you would have sought to obtain his restoration, provided he would leave you for life in possession of the grant you hold from the crown. While these were your objects, I did my best, ineffectual as it was, to obtain the information required." "And what made me lose so important though so ineffectual an ally?" asked the Count, still smiling; but a gleam that belied the smile shot from his eye. "What! when you bade me receive and co-operate with the miserable spies--the false Italians--whom you sent over, and seek to entangle this poor exile, when found in some rash correspondence, to be revealed to the court; when you sought to seduce the daughter of the Count of Peschiera, the descendant of those who had ruled in Italy, into the informer, the corrupter, and the traitress! No, Giulio--then I recoiled; and then, fearful of your own sway over me, I retreated into France. I have answered you frankly." The Count removed his hands from the shoulders on which they had reclined so cordially. "And this," said he, "is your wisdom, and this your gratitude. You, whose fortunes are bound up in mine--you, who subsist on my bounty--you, who--" "Hold," cried the Marchesa, rising, and with a burst of emotion, as if stung to the utmost, and breaking into revolt from the tyranny of years--"Hold--gratitude! bounty! Brother, brother--what, indeed, do I owe to you? The shame and the misery of a life. While yet a child, you condemned me to marry against my will--against my heart--against my prayers--and laughed at my tears when I knelt to you for mercy. I was pure then, Giulio--pure and innocent as the flowers in my virgin crown. And now--now--" Beatrice stopped abruptly, and clasped her hands before her face. "Now you upbraid me," said the Count, unruffled by her sudden passion, "because I gave you in marriage to a man young and noble?" "Old in vices and mean of soul! The marriage I forgave you. You had the right, according to the customs of our country, to dispose of my hand. But I forgave you not the consolations that you whispered in the ear of a wretched and insulted wife." "Pardon me the remark," replied the Count, with a courtly bend of his head, "but those consolations were also conformable to the customs of our country, and I was not aware till now that you had wholly disdained them. And," continued the Count, "you were not so long a wife that the gall of the chain should smart still. You were soon left a widow--free, childless, young, beautiful." "And penniless." "True, Di Negra was a gambler, and very unlucky; no fault of mine. I could neither keep the cards from his hands, nor advise him how to play them." "And my own portion? Oh, Giulio, I knew but at his death why you had condemned me to that renegade Genoese. He owed you money, and, against honor, and I believe against law, you had accepted my fortune in discharge of the debt." "He had no other way to discharge it--a debt of honor must be paid--old stories these. "What matters? Since then my purse has been open to you." "Yes, not as your sister, but your instrument--your spy! Yes, your purse has been open--with a niggard hand." "_Un peu de conscience, ma chère_, you are so extravagant. But come, be plain. What would you?" "I would be free from you." "That is, you would form some second marriage with one of these rich island lords. _Ma foi_, I respect your ambition." "It is not so high. I aim but to escape from slavery--to be placed beyond dishonorable temptation. I desire," cried Beatrice with increased emotion, "I desire to re-enter the life of woman." "Eno'!" said the Count with a visible impatience, "is there anything in the attainment of your object that should render you indifferent to mine? You desire to marry, if I comprehend you right. And to marry, as becomes you, you should bring to your husband not debts, but a dowry. Be it so. I will restore the portion that I saved from the spendthrift clutch of the Genoese--the moment that it is mine to bestow--- the moment that I am husband to my kinsman's heiress. And now, Beatrice, you imply that my former notions revolted your conscience; my present plan should content it; for by this marriage shall our kinsman regain his country, and repossess, at least, half his lands. And if I am not an excellent husband to the demoiselle, it will be her own fault. I have sown my wild oats. _Je suis bon prince_, when I have things a little my own way. It is my hope and my intention, and certainly it will be my interest, to become _digne époux et irréproachable pire de famille_. I speak lightly--'tis my way. I mean seriously. The little girl will be very happy with me, and I shall succeed in soothing all resentment her father may retain. Will you aid me then--yes or no? Aid me, and you shall indeed be free. The magician will release the fair spirit he has bound to his will. Aid me not, _ma chère_, and mark, I do not threaten--I do but warn--aid me not; grant that I become a beggar, and ask yourself what is to become of you--still young, still beautiful, and still penniless? Nay, worse than penniless; you have done me the honor (and here the Count, looking on the table, drew a letter from a portfolio, emblazoned with his arms and coronet), you have done me the honor to consult me as to your debts." "You will restore my fortune?" said the Marchesa, irresolutely--and averting her head from an odious schedule of figures. "When my own, with your aid, is secured." "But do you not overrate the value of my aid?" "Possibly," said the Count, with a caressing suavity--and he kissed his sister's forehead. "Possibly; but by my honor, I wish to repair to you any wrong, real or supposed, I may have done you in past times. I wish to find again my own dear sister. I may overvalue your aid, but not the affection from which it comes. Let us be friends, _cara Beatrice Mia_," added the Count, for the first time employing Italian words. The Marchesa laid her head on his shoulder, and her tears flowed softly. Evidently this man had great influence over her--and evidently, whatever her cause for complaint, her affection for him was still sisterly and strong. A nature with fine flashes of generosity, spirit, honor, and passion, was hers--but uncultured, unguided--spoilt by the worst social examples--easily led into wrong--not always aware where the wrong was--letting affections good or bad whisper away her conscience or blind her reason. Such women are often far more dangerous when induced to wrong, than those who are thoroughly abandoned--such women are the accomplices men like the Count of Peschiera most desire to obtain. "Ah, Giulio," said Beatrice, after a pause, and looking up at him through her tears, "when you speak to me thus, you know you can do with me what you will. Fatherless and motherless, whom had my childhood to love and obey but you?" "Dear Beatrice," murmured the Count tenderly--and he again kissed her forehead. "So," he continued more carelessly--"so the reconciliation is effected, and our interests and our hearts re-allied. Now, alas! to descend to business. You say that you know some one whom you believe to be acquainted with the lurking-place of my father-in-law--that is to be!" "I think so. You remind me that I have an appointment with him this day: it is near the hour--I must leave you." "To learn the secret?--Quick--quick. I have no fear of your success, if it is by his heart that you lead him." "You mistake; on his heart I have no hold. But he has a friend who loves me, and honorably, and whose cause he pleads. I think here that I have some means to control or persuade him. If not--ah, he is of a character that perplexes me in all but his worldly ambition; and how can we foreigners influence him through _that_?" "Is he poor, or is he extravagant?" "Not extravagant, and not positively poor, but dependent." "Then we have him," said the Count composedly. "If his assistance he worth buying, we can bid high for it. _Sur mon âme_, I never yet knew money fail with any man who was both worldly and dependent. I put him and myself in your hands." Thus saying, the Count opened the door, and conducted his sister with formal politeness to her carriage. He then returned, reseated himself, and mused in silence. As he did so, the muscles of his countenance relaxed. The levity of the Frenchman fled from his visage, and in his eye, as it gazed abstractedly into space, there was that steady depth so remarkable in the old portraits of Florentine diplomatist or Venetian oligarch. Thus seen, there was in that face, despite all its beauty, something that would have awed back even the fond gaze of love; something hard, collected, inscrutable, remorseless; but this change of countenance did not last long. Evidently thought, though intense for the moment, was not habitual to the man. Evidently he had lived the life which takes all things lightly--so he rose with a look of fatigue, shook and stretched himself, as if to cast off, or grow out of, an unwelcome and irksome mood. An hour afterwards, the Count of Peschiera was charming all eyes, and pleasing all ears, in the saloon of a high-born beauty, whose acquaintance he had made at Vienna, and whose charms, according to that old and never-truth-speaking oracle, Polite Scandal, were now said to have attracted to London the brilliant foreigner. CHAPTER III. The Marchesa regained her house, which was in Curzon street, and withdrew to her own room, to readjust her dress, and remove from her countenance all traces of the tears she had shed. Half-an-hour afterwards she was seated in her drawing-room, composed and calm; nor, seeing her then, could you have guessed that she was capable of so much emotion and so much weakness. In that stately exterior, in that quiet attitude, in that elaborate and finished elegance which comes alike from the arts of the toilet and the conventional repose of rank, you could see but the woman of the world and the great lady. A knock at the door was heard, and in a few moments there entered a visitor, with the easy familiarity of intimate acquaintance--a young man, but with none of the bloom of youth. His hair, fine as a woman's, was thin and scanty, but it fell low over the forehead, and concealed that noblest of our human features. "A gentleman," says Apuleius, "ought, if he can, to wear his whole mind on his forehead."[8] The young visitor would never have committed so frank an imprudence. His cheek was pale, and in his step and in his movements there was a languor that spoke of fatigued nerves or delicate health. But the light of the eye and the tone of the voice were those of a mental temperament controlling the bodily--vigorous and energetic. For the rest, his general appearance was distinguished by a refinement alike intellectual and social. Once seen, you would not easily forget him. And the reader no doubt already recognizes Randal Leslie. His salutation, as I before said, was that of intimate familiarity; yet it was given and replied to with that unreserved openness which denotes the absence of a more tender sentiment. [8] I must be pardoned for annexing the original, since it loses much by translation:--"Hominem liberum et magnificum debere, si queat, in primori fronte, animum gestare." Seating himself by the Marchesa's side, Randal began first to converse on the fashionable topics and gossip of the day; but it was observable, that, while he extracted from her the current anecdote and scandal of the great world, neither anecdote nor scandal did he communicate in return. Randal Leslie had already learned the art not to commit himself, nor to have quoted against him one ill-natured remark upon the eminent. Nothing more injures the man who would rise beyond the fame of the _salons_, than to be considered backbiter and gossip; "yet it is always useful," thought Randal Leslie, "to know the foibles--the small social and private springs by which the great are moved. Critical occasions may arise in which such knowledge may be power." And hence, perhaps, (besides a more private motive, soon to be perceived,) Randal did not consider his time thrown away in cultivating Madame di Negra's friendship. For despite much that was whispered against her, she had succeeded in dispelling the coldness with which she had at first been received in the London circles. Her beauty, her grace, and her high birth, had raised her into fashion, and the homage of men of the first station, while it perhaps injured her reputation as a woman, added to her celebrity as fine lady. So much do we cold English, prudes though we be, forgive to the foreigner what we avenge on the native. Sliding at last from these general topics into very well-bred and elegant personal compliment, and reciting various eulogies, which Lord this and the Duke of that had passed on the Marchesa's charms, Randal laid his hand on hers, with the license of admitted friendship, and said-- "But since you have deigned to confide in me, since when (happily for me, and with a generosity which no coquette could have been capable) you, in good time, repressed into friendship feelings that might else have ripened into those you are formed to inspire and disdain to return, you told me with your charming smile, 'Let no one speak to me of love who does not offer me his hand, and with it the means to supply tastes that I fear are terribly extravagant;'--since thus you allowed me to divine your natural objects, and upon that understanding our intimacy has been founded, you will pardon me for saying that the admiration you excite amongst the _grands seigneurs_ I have named, only serves to defeat your own purpose, and scare away admirers less brilliant, but more in earnest. Most of these gentlemen are unfortunately married; and they who are not belong to those members of our aristocracy who, in marriage, seek more than beauty and wit--namely, connections to strengthen their political station, or wealth to redeem a mortgage and sustain a title." "My dear Mr. Leslie," replied the Marchesa--and a certain sadness might be detected in the tone of the voice and the droop of the eye--"I have lived long enough in the real world to appreciate the baseness and the falsehood of most of those sentiments which take the noblest names. I see through the hearts of the admirers you parade before me, and know that not one of them would shelter with his ermine the woman to whom he talks of his heart. Ah," continued Beatrice, with a softness of which she was unconscious, but which might have been extremely dangerous to youth less steeled and self-guarded than was Randal Leslie's--"ah, I am less ambitious than you suppose. I have dreamed of a friend, a companion, a protector, with feelings still fresh, undebased by the low round of vulgar dissipation and mean pleasures--of a heart so new, that it might restore my own to what it was in its happy spring. I have seen in your country some marriages, the mere contemplation of which has filled my eyes with delicious tears. I have learned in England to know the value of home. And with such a heart as I describe, and such a home, I could forget that I ever knew a less pure ambition." "This language does not surprise me," said Randal; "yet it does not harmonize with your former answer to me." "To you," repeated Beatrice smiling, and regaining her lighter manner; "to you--true. But I never had the vanity to think that your affection for me could bear the sacrifices it would cost you in marriage; that you, with your ambition, could bound your dreams of happiness to home. And then, too," said she, raising her head, and with a certain grave pride in her air--"and _then_, I could not have consented to share my fate with one whom my poverty would cripple. I could not listen to my heart, if it had beat for a lover without fortune, for to him I could then have brought but a burden, and betrayed him into a union with poverty and debt. Now it may be different. Now I may have the dowry that befits my birth. And now I may be free to choose according to my heart as woman, not according to my necessities, as one poor, harassed, and despairing." "Ah," said Randal, interested and drawing still closer towards his fair companion--"ah, I congratulate you sincerely; you have cause, then, to think that you shall be--rich?" The Marchesa paused before she answered, and during that pause Randal relaxed the web of the scheme which he had been secretly weaving, and rapidly considered whether, if Beatrice di Negra would indeed be rich, she might answer to himself as a wife; and in what way, if so, he had best change his tone from that of friendship into that of love. While thus reflecting, Beatrice answered-- "Not rich for an Englishwoman; for an Italian, yes. My fortune should be half a million--" "Half a million!" cried Randal, and with difficulty he restrained himself from falling at her feet in adoration. "Of francs!" continued the Marchesa. "Francs! Ah," said Randal, with a long-drawn breath, and recovering from his sudden enthusiasm, "about twenty thousand pounds!--eight hundred a-year at four per cent. A very handsome portion, certainly--(Genteel poverty! he murmured to himself. What an escape I have had! but I see--I see. This will smooth all difficulties in the way of my better and earlier project. I see)--a very handsome portion," he repeated aloud--"not for a _grand seigneur_, indeed, but still for a gentleman of birth and expectations worthy of your choice, if ambition be not your first object. Ah, while you spoke with such endearing eloquence of feelings that were fresh, of a heart that was new, of the happy English home, you might guess that my thoughts ran to my friend who loves you so devotedly, and who so realizes your ideal. Providentially, with us, happy marriages and happy homes are found not in the gay circles of London fashion, but at the hearths of our rural nobility--our untitled country gentlemen. And who, amongst all your adorers, can offer you a lot so really enviable as the one whom, I see by your blush, you already guess that I refer to?" "Did I blush?" said the Marchesa, with a silvery laugh. "Nay, I think that your zeal for your friend misled you. But I will own frankly, I have been touched by his honest ingenuous love--so evident, yet rather looked than spoken. I have contrasted the love that honors me with the suitors that seek to degrade; more I cannot say. For though I grant that your friend is handsome, high-spirited, and generous, still he is not what--" "You mistake, believe me," interrupted Randal. "You shall not finish your sentence. He is all that you do not yet suppose him; for his shyness, and his very love, his very respect for your superiority, do not allow his mind and his nature to appear to advantage. You, it is true, have a taste for letters and poetry rare among your countrywomen. He has not at present--few men have. But what Cimon would not be refined by so fair an Iphigenia? Such frivolities as he now shows belong but to youth and inexperience of life. Happy the brother who could see his sister the wife of Frank Hazeldean." The Marchesa leant her cheek on her hand in silence. To her, marriage was more than it usually seems to dreaming maiden or to disconsolate widow. So had the strong desire to escape from the control of her unprincipled and remorseless brother grown a part of her very soul--so had whatever was best and highest in her very mixed and complex character been galled and outraged by her friendless and exposed position, the equivocal worship rendered to her beauty, the various debasements to which pecuniary embarrassments had subjected her--(not without design on the part of the count, who, though grasping, was not miserly, and who by precarious and seemingly capricious gifts at one time, and refusals of all aid at another, had involved her in debt in order to retain his hold on her)--so utterly painful and humiliating to a woman of her pride and her birth was the station that she held in the world--that in marriage she saw liberty, life, honor, self-redemption; and these thoughts, while they compelled her to co-operate with the schemes, by which the count, on securing to himself a bride, was to bestow on herself a dower, also disposed her now to receive with favour Randal Leslie's pleadings on behalf of his friend. The advocate saw that he had made an impression, and with the marvellous skill which his knowledge of those natures that engaged his study bestowed on his intelligence, he continued to improve his cause by such representations as were likely to be most effective. With what admirable tact he avoided panegyric of Frank as the mere individual, and drew him rather as the type, the ideal of what a woman in Beatrice's position might desire, in the safety, peace, and honor of a home, in the trust, and constancy, and honest confiding love of its partner! He did not paint an Elysium; he described a haven; he did not glowingly delineate a hero of romance--he soberly portrayed that Representative of the Respectable and the Real which a woman turns to when romance begins to seem to her but delusion. Verily, if you could have looked into the heart of the person he addressed, and heard him speak, you would have cried admiringly, "Knowledge _is_ power; and this man, if as able on a larger field of action, should play no mean part in the history of his time." Slowly Beatrice roused herself from the reveries which crept over her as he spoke--slowly, and with a deep sigh, and said-- "Well, well, grant all you say; at least before I can listen to so honorable a love, I must be relieved from the base and sordid pressure that weighs on me. I cannot say to the man who woos me, 'Will you pay the debts of the daughter of Franzini, and the widow of di Negra?'" "Nay, your debts, surely, make so slight a portion of your dowry." "But the dowry has to be secured;" and here, turning the tables upon her companion, as the apt proverb expresses it, Madame di Negra extended her hand to Randal, and said in her most winning accents, "You are, then, truly and sincerely my friend?" "Can you doubt it?" "I prove that I do not, for I ask your assistance." "Mine? How?" "Listen; my brother has arrived in London--" "I see that arrival announced in the papers." "And he comes, empowered by the consent of the Emperor, to ask the hand of a relation and countrywoman of his; an alliance that will heal long family dissensions, and add to his own fortunes those of an heiress. My brother, like myself, has been extravagant. The dowry which by law he still owes me it would distress him to pay till this marriage be assured." "I understand," said Randal. "But how can I aid this marriage?" "By assisting us to discover the bride. She, with her father, sought refuge and concealment in England." "The father had, then, taken part in some political disaffections, and was proscribed?" "Exactly so; and so well has he concealed himself that he has baffled all our efforts to discover his retreat. My brother can obtain him his pardon in cementing this alliance--" "Proceed." "Ah Randal, Randal, is this the frankness of friendship? You know that I have before sought to obtain the secret of our relation's retreat--sought in vain to obtain it from Mr. Egerton, who assuredly knows it--" "But who communicates no secrets to living man," said Randal, almost bitterly; "who, close and compact as iron, is as little malleable to me as to you." "Pardon me. I know you so well that I believe you could attain to any secret you sought earnestly to acquire. Nay, more, I believe that you know already that secret which I ask you to share with me." "What on earth makes you think so?" "When, some weeks ago you asked me to describe the personal appearance and manners of the exile, which I did partly from the recollections of my childhood, partly from the description given to me by others, I could not but notice your countenance, and remark its change; in spite," said the Marchesa, smiling, and watching Randal while she spoke--"in spite of your habitual self-command. And when I pressed you to own that you had actually seen some one who tallied with that description, your denial did not deceive me. Still more, when returning recently, of your own accord, to the subject, you questioned me so shrewdly as to my motives in seeking the clue to our refugees, and I did not then answer you satisfactorily, I could detect--" "Ha, ha," interrupted Randal, with the low soft laugh by which occasionally he infringed upon Lord Chesterfield's recommendations to shun a merriment so natural as to be ill-bred,--"ha, ha, you have the fault of all observers too minute and refined. But even granting that I may have seen some Italian exiles, (which is likely enough,) what could be more simple than my seeking to compare your description with their appearance; and granting that I might suspect some one amongst them to be the man you search for, what more simple, also, than that I should desire to know if you meant him harm or good in discovering his 'whereabout?' For ill," added Randal, with an air of prudery, "ill would it become me to betray, even to friendship, the retreat of one who would hide from persecution; and even if I did so--for honor itself is a weak safeguard against your fascinations--such indiscretion might be fatal to my future career." "How?" "Do you not say that Egerton knows the secret, yet will not communicate?--and is he a man who would ever forgive in me an imprudence that committed himself? My dear friend, I will tell you more. When Audley Egerton first noticed my growing intimacy with you, he said, with his usual dryness of counsel, 'Randal, I do not ask you to discontinue acquaintance with Madame di Negra--for an acquaintance with women like her forms the manners and refines the intellect; but charming women are dangerous, and Madame di Negra is--a charming woman." The Marchesa's face flushed. Randal resumed: "'Your fair acquaintance' (I am still quoting Egerton) 'seeks to discover the home of a countryman of hers. She suspects that I know it. She may try to learn it through you. Accident may possibly give you the information she requires. Beware how you betray it. By one such weakness I should judge of your general character. He from whom a woman can extract a secret will never be fit for public life.' Therefore, my dear Marchesa, even supposing that I possess this secret, you would be no true friend of mine to ask me to reveal what would imperil all my prospects. For as yet," added Randal, with a gloomy shade on his brow,--"as yet I do not stand alone and erect--I _lean_;--I am dependent." "There may be a way," replied Madame di Negra, persisting, "to communicate this intelligence, without the possibility of Mr. Egerton's tracing our discovery to yourself; and, though I will not press you further, I add this--you urge me to accept your friend's hand; you seem interested in the success of his suit, and you plead it with a warmth that shows how much you regard what you suppose is his happiness; I will never accept his hand till I can do so without blush for my penury--till my dowry is secured, and that can only be by my brother's union with the exile's daughter. For your friend's sake, therefore, think well how you can aid me in the first step to that alliance. The young lady once discovered, and my brother has no fear for the success of his suit." "And you would marry Frank if the dower was secured?" "Your arguments in his favor seem irresistible," replied Beatrice, looking down. A flash went from Randal's eyes, and he mused a few moments. Then slowly rising, and drawing on his gloves, he said-- "Well, at least you so far reconcile my honor towards aiding your research, that you now inform me that you mean no ill to the exile." "Ill!--the restoration to fortune, honors, his native land." "And you so far enlist my heart on your side, that you inspire me with the hope to contribute to the happiness of two friends whom I dearly love. I will therefore diligently seek to ascertain if, among the refugees I have met with, lurk those whom you seek; and if so I will thoughtfully consider how to give you the clue. Meanwhile, not one incautious word to Egerton." "Trust me--I am a woman of the world." Randal now had gained the door. He paused, and renewed carelessly-- "This young lady must be heiress to great wealth, to induce a young man of your brother's rank to take so much pains to discover her." "Her wealth _will_ be vast," replied the Marchesa; "and if any thing from wealth or influence in a foreign state could be permitted to prove my brother's gratitude--" "Ah, fie," interrupted Randal, and approaching Madame di Negra, he lifted her hand to his lips, and said gallantly. "This is reward enough to your _preux chevalier_." With those words he took his leave. * * * * * It is always safe to call an assailer of morality licentious, though many of its defenders be not virtuous. Authors and Books. A pendant to Professor Creasy's _Decisive Battles_ has been issued at Stuttgart, under the title of _Grundzüge einer Einleitung zum Studium der Kriegsgeschichte_ (Outlines of an Introduction to the History of War). The author divides his work into two parts: the first extending from 550 B.C. to A.D. 1350; the second, from 1350 to 1850; and each of these parts he arranges in three periods. In the first period (550 to 250 B.C.), he finds that the controlling part in war must be attributed to distinguished and leading individualities; in the second (250 to 50 B.C.), that the dominant element was the political and national, especially the peculiar constitution and nationality of the Romans; the third (50 B.C. to 1350 A.D.), is remarkable for the number and variety of warlike events, and the gradual decline of the system used in prosecuting wars; in the fourth (A.D. 1350 to 1650), the art of war was greatly advanced, especially in respect to technical science, fortifications, &c.; in the fifth (1650 to 1790), this progress continued, and tactics were greatly improved as well as strategy; the sixth period (1790 to 1850), is remarkable for the rapid development of every branch of warlike art and science, both theoretical and practical. These conclusions are arrived at after a spirited historical review of the different periods. This introduction the author promises to follow up with a complete work. * * * * * An interesting correspondence of the period of the thirty years' war has been discovered by M. Welchoff, Councillor of State, in an old travelling trunk in the archives of the Aulic chamber of Celle, in Hanover, that did not appear to have been opened since the papers were deposited. It comes down to the date of the battle of Breitenfeld, and includes letters from Pappenheim, Gustavus Adolphus, and other leaders of the time, with the rough draughts of the letters of Duke George of Brunswick, Luneberg, to whom the whole collection probably belonged. A similar discovery was lately made by M. Dudik, commissioned by the government of Austria to search the libraries of Sweden for material of this kind, in Stockholm and Upsal. The history of the thirty years' war has therefore to be rewritten. * * * * * _Albion and Erin_, is the title of a little volume, containing the choicest songs of Moore, Byron, Burns, Shelley, Campbell, and Thompson, with selections from Percy's Reliques, each piece being accompanied by a faithful and elegant translation into German, printed on the opposite page. For American students of German, or German students of English, nothing better could be desired. (Sold by Rudolph Garrigue, Astor House.) * * * * * The thirteenth meeting of the Association of German Philologists, Teachers and Orientalists, was opened at Erlangen on the 1st of October, and continued four days, about one hundred and eighty members being present. Böckh of Berlin, Thiersch, Halm and Spengel of Munich, Gerlach of Basle, Grotefend of Hanover, Krüger of Brunswick, were among the most distinguished _gelehrten_. There was even one member from Russia in the person of Prof. Vater of Kasan. Austria and Electoral Hesse were not represented. Professor Döderlein was president, and Professor Nagelsbach vice-president. The president opened the general session with a discourse upon the position and value of modern philology. In the meeting of October 2d, Wocher of Ehrinegn read an essay on phonology, or the essential significance of sounds; and Beyer of Erlangen, another on an antique statue in the Munich collection which had been supposed to represent Leukothea, but which he demonstrated to be Charitas. In the exercises of the third and fourth day were included an essay by Böckh on a Greek inscription, one by Döderlein on an ode of Horace, one by Nagelsbach on a passage of the Iliad, and one by Gerlach on a subject from Roman antiquities. The whole, however interesting to advanced scholars, had little to attract or satisfy the mass of intelligent persons. * * * * * The third volume of G. WEIL'S _Geschichte der Chalifen_ (History of the Califs), has appeared in Germany, where the second was published three years since. This volume brings the history down into the period of the crusades, and gives us the exact life of men of such proportions as Haroun Alrashid, and Saladin. In ordinary cases when history enters the field where romance has achieved its most brilliant successes, it must be written with the utmost power not to seem pale and lifeless by contrast, but here the simplest narrative would have all the charm of fancy. For the rest Mr. Weil is fully equal to his subject; and throws a flood of light upon its more recondite features. His work is an invaluable addition to our means of knowing the history and natives of the Orient. * * * * * _Die Deutschen in Böhmen_ (The Germans in Bohemia), is pleasant reading for those who like to study the manners and peculiarities of foreign countries in some detail. It also has its value for the political student who would make himself acquainted with the intermixtures and relations of the different races in Central Europe. It treats the subject in its geographical, statistical, economical and historical bearings, as well as in respect to manners, customs, and modes of life. (Prague, 1851.) We are indebted to the Messrs. Westermann, of this city, for the ninth and tenth parts of Dr. ANDREE'S admirable work, entitled, _Amerika_, of which we have before spoken at length. These parts conclude the first volume, of 810 octavo pages, printed with an elegance which, among us, is not generally attributed to German books. This volume is devoted to North America, and these two parts, are divided into chapters upon:--the New England States; the Middle States; the Southern Atlantic States; the South on the Gulf of Mexico; the Western Slave States; the Non-slaveholding, West and North; the Far West, and the Pacific Coast. Each state and territory is treated with extreme clearness and comprehensiveness, and with a correctness that seems astonishing, when we consider that the book was written in Germany. This volume is dedicated to Dr. Hermann E. Ludewig, of this city, in three or four pages, giving an account of the motives which induced Dr. Andree to write the work; we translate the dedicatory paragraph: "This book, honored sir, I dedicate to you. The literature of North American history is greatly indebted to your valuable labors; for these ten years no small part of your time has been devotedly spent in disinterestedly aiding, by advice and assistance, our emigrating countrymen on their arrival in New-York. In your new country, which you understand so keenly and so profoundly, you are still a cultivator of German science, holding your old fatherland in appropriate honor. You are in America a worthy and most estimable representative of German culture and German integrity. Receive friendly this inscription, and the cordial greetings I send you beyond the sea!" We trust the other volumes of this work may speedily appear: the second will be upon Mexico and Central America, and the third upon South America. * * * * * SPINOZA'S _Tractatus Politicus_ is the subject of a work recently published at Dessau, by J. E. HORN. The author defends Spinoza's political ideas as of a practical nature, and not at all connected with the analogous theories of modern German metaphysicians. The work is the result of much thought, and of all the industry which seems to belong to every scholar of Germany. Another work on Spinoza, is by Professor ZIMMERMANN of Olmütz, and is entitled, _Uber einige logische Fehler der spinozistischen Ethik_. It attempts to prove at length that the syllogistic method of the great Jew can only be correct on the supposition that in substance the idea and the reality are coincident, which supposition Spinoza himself expressly affirms. The radical fault of this method, according to the Professor, is the application of mathematical demonstration to things not susceptible thereof. On the whole this publication adds little to the treasures of philosophy. Another, and a valuable contribution, to the almost infinite Goethean literature, has appeared in Germany, in the second volume of J. W. SCHAFER'S life of the great poet. It begins with the year 1786, and comes down to the death of the modern Shakespeare. Its materials are drawn from the writings of Goethe himself, and from the published letters and memoirs upon separate portions of his life. The Italian Journey is the subject of a special disquisition. Goethe's political opinions are also discussed in connection with his behavior during the war of independence. Finally, we have the man in his old age, when his leading feature of character is said to be universality of mental activity. The style of the book is clear and condensed, and its fairness and impartiality a subject of laudation. A third volume of GOETHE'S _Correspondence with Madame von Stein_ has been published in Germany. It is no less interesting than the preceding, whether as a collection of letters, or as a revelation of the character and private history of the greatest man in German literature. The assertion that Goethe was really a man of cold and heartless nature, and that the warmth of feeling and freshness of sentiment displayed in his poems was merely fictitious, is entirely refuted by this correspondence. A collection of poems, by WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, the son of the great poet, was published by Cotta, of Stuttgart, in October last. We have not seen the book, but the publisher's advertisement is quite apologetic, and indicates that the name of the father has not insured the inheritance of his genius. * * * * * A new work entitled _Das Brittische Reich in Europe_ (The British Empire in Europe), has just appeared at Leipzig, in which the progress and power of England are compared with those of the United States. The author, Herr MEIDINGER, is an admirer of the present policy of England, and exhibits at length the statistics of the advance made by the country under that policy. A statistical survey of the religious and moral condition of Ireland, which forms a part of the work, has also been printed as a separate book. * * * * * Students of middle-age antiquities may find a bone to gnaw in _Dat Spil fan der Upstandinge_ (The Play of the Resurrection), just published with annotations by Herr ETTMULLER at Quedlinburg. This is said to be greatly superior to the mass of the religious dramas of the time; it has a genuine unity and is not disfigured by the admixture of buffoonery with the awful realities of New Testament history. It is in the Low German dialect, and dates from the fifteenth century. * * * * * A good history of French literature has been published in German by Professor KREYSIG of Elbing. It is designed for a schoolbook, and evinces both learning and fairness. A valuable contribution to German history has been brought out at Berlin, by KURD VON SCHÖZER, under the title of _Die Hansa und der Deutsche Ritterorden in den Ostseeländen_ (The Hanseatic League and the German Knighthood in the Baltic provinces). The author has not merely exhausted the old chronicles of his subject in the archives and libraries of Germany, but has wrought up his materials into a living narrative, full of romantic interest as well as historical instruction. * * * * * A Catholic writer, Count EICHENDORFF, has published, at Leipzig, _Der Deutsche Roman des 18ten Jahrhunderts_ (German Romance in the 18th century), in which the subject of romance literature is treated in its relation to Christianity, but not in a thorough or profound manner, and with too much dogmatism, and apparent prejudice. His idea is, that there is no Christianity outside of the Catholic Church, and that all novels which are not Catholic are unchristian. * * * * * MADAME BLAZE DE BURY has just published at Bremen, in Germany, a novel, entitled, _Falkenburg_, which was issued at the same time in English by Colburn, in London. The German copy is the work of the authoress herself. She resides, at Paris, as the wife of the well-known _littérateur_, Henri Blaze. This novel is certainly a cosmopolitan production--written as it is, in German, by an Englishwoman, married to a Frenchman, and residing at Paris. * * * * * The history of religious organizations is enriched by Professor RICHTER'S _Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirchenverfassung in Deutschland_ (History of the Constitution of the Evangelical Church in Germany), which has just appeared at Leipzig. The work is highly, and, we doubt not, very justly commended. * * * * * An elaborate _Life of Sir Robert Peel_, with a collection of his speeches, has been published in German, by Herr KUNZEL. It is a warm tribute of admiration for the English statesman, and for that process of very gradual reform by which England is distinguished. (Brunswick, 2 vols.) * * * * * Dr. ZIMMERMANN, whose excellent history of the Peasants' War deserves to be better known to English readers, has just published, at Darmstadt, a history of the English Revolution, which he dedicates to all parties of the German people, and which we doubt not all parties may profitably study. * * * * * A history of Norway has been published at Leipzig, in a neat little volume. It brings the narrative of that country down to the present time, dividing it into seven periods, and giving a succinct account of each. The history of Andreas Faye serves as the basis of this work. We gave in these pages, a few months since, an account of the labors and sufferings of the Hungarian traveller and ethnographer REGULY, who spent ten painful years among the Finnish tribes of Northern Europe and Asia, with a view to ascertain the ancient of the Magyars. Reguly is now hard at work at Pesth arranging for publication the immense mass of materials gathered on this long expedition, and meanwhile another savan, John Jerney, has just published in two heavy quartos the result of a journey he made for the same purpose during 1844 and '45, in Southern Russia. His work is interesting rather from its information on collateral subjects than because he has cleared up the main problem which his explorations had in view. His conclusion is that the Magyars are of Parthian origin. * * * * * In the present attention to recent Magyar history, a useful aid may be found in _Ungarn's Politische Charaktere_ (The Political Notabilities of Hungary), just published at Mayence. It contains the biography of forty-eight different persons. Its author is a warm admirer of Kossuth and his policy. * * * * * A collection of the speeches, proclamations, &c., of that sentimental tyrant, Frederick William IV. of Prussia, has just been published at Berlin. It includes all the productions of his Majesty from March 6, 1848, to May 31, 1851, and will be useful to trunk-makers and future historians. * * * * * In the present interest attaching to Arctic voyages, SCHUNDT'S _Bilder aus dem Norden_ (Pictures from the North), collected in a journey toward the North Pole, in the year 1850, is worth looking into. (Jena, 1851.) * * * * * Prof. J. E. KOPP has published, at Vienna, a volume of documents on the history of the Swiss Confederation. * * * * * The success in Europe of General BEM'S plan of teaching history and an exact chronology, attracted the attention of intelligent friends of education in Massachusetts, at whose suggestion Miss E. P. PEABODY has prepared a system of the same sort for American schools. The plan was not one superseding the necessity of study, but guiding it, and rendering it effective. It requires a very careful attention, which may be slighted either by scholar or teacher. It saves time, indeed, by rewarding labor, and by making the everlasting review of the ground unnecessary, fostering by means of the senses what is attained. Miss Peabody, in the appendix to the tables of chronology which form the manual of this system, has aimed to give some general hints to teachers, opening out before them a more generous method of studying history than has been usual in our schools and colleges. The French democrats and socialists bring out this year the usual variety of Almanacs for the propagation of their doctrines among the people. The _Almanach du Travail_ contains articles by Agricole Perdiguier, cabinet-maker and representative in the National Assembly; M. Perdiguier is understood to be the original hero of George Sand's _Compagnons du Tour de France_; several other well-known literary and political characters also contribute; the publication of the work is the enterprise of an association of printers and engravers. The _Almanach du Village_ is published by the _Propagande Démocratique Européene_; its editor is M. Joigneaux, a representative, and Pierre Dupont, the democratic poet, is among the contributors. The _Almanach Populaire de la France_ is a more elaborate publication, and boasts a larger circle of writers; Pascal Duprat, Alphonse Esquiros, André Cochut, Fr. Arago, and Victor Schoelcher, are among them. The _Almanach des Opprimés_, by Hippolyte Magen, is a Voltairian production, devoted to ridiculing the Catholic clergy and the saints of the calender in a style of utter irreverence for their sacred character, and even for their integrity and respectability as individuals. The _Répubilique du Peuple_ is simply a democratic almanac, but its ability is remarkable. Arago, the astronomer Carnot, who possibly will be the candidate of the democratic party for President, Colonel Charras, Michel (de Bourges), Alphonse Karr, and others of the old moderate republican party are contributors. It is adorned with neat engravings; among them is a portrait of Dupont, the poet. * * * * * A well-known publicist, M. CROCE-SPINELLI, has just issued at Paris an essay on popular government, under the title of _L'Arche Populaire_. It treats principally of the French constitution, whose faults are said to be--1st, that it confides too much in aristocracy and too little in democracy; 2d, that the legislature may render itself independent of the people by whom it is elected, and betray their interests: 3d, that the authority of the President is too great, and is even dangerous to the development of democratic ideas and forces. The author concludes his work with the plan of a constitution which he thinks will be free from these defects. * * * * * The ASIATIC SOCIETY of Paris announces the publication of a collection of Oriental works, with French translations, without commentaries, but with very copious indexes. The majority will be Arabic, and, with few exceptions, hitherto unknown to Occidental students generally. The prices will be made very low, it is hoped not higher than those of ordinary French books. This will be accomplished by introducing them as text-books into the schools in Algiers, Egypt, and Constantinople, where French is taught, and thus securing a large sale. A publication worthy of the utmost praise is the _Revue de l'Architecture et des Travaux Publiques_, published at Paris, under the editorial care of M. CESAR DALY, one of the most learned and accomplished architects in Europe. This review, which is now in its ninth year, is issued monthly, with the utmost elegance both of typography and engravings. The number for October contains articles on the following subjects:--the preservation and restoration of the Cathedrals of France, the Church of St. Paul at Nismes, Stereochromy, the Museum at St. Petersburg, Chinese Monuments discovered in Ireland, the Public Garden and Swimming School at Bordeaux, &c., &c.; it has four large engravings. The work treats every branch, historic and practical, of architecture and engineering, and should be in the hands of every architect and engineer, and in the library of every man of taste whose leisure and meditations lead him to the study of the beautiful and useful arts. It may be procured in Paris at the low rate of 40 francs a-year. * * * * * A book well suited to the times is Dr. FIGUIER'S _Exposition et Histoire des principales Découvertes Modernes_, which has just appeared at Paris in two small volumes. It treats of photography, the serial and magnetic telegraphs, etherization, galvanoplasty and chemical gilding, aërostatics, lighting by gas, Leverrier's planet, gunpowder, and gun-cotton. With respect to the glory of discovering photography, Dr. Figuier restores it to M. Niepce, of Chalon-sur-Saone, proving that he originated the conception, and that Daguerre did nothing more than perfect the process. Singularly enough, M. Figuier omits the steamboat and railroad from the discoveries whose history he so carefully and conscientiously records, but even with these omissions his work is valuable and interesting both to the savan and the ordinary reader. * * * * * The editors of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, at Paris, have made up a very useful manual of the history of the year 1850, under the title of _Annuaire des Deux Mondes_, which is sold by Balliére, in Broadway. It contains an account of the political events, the international relations and diplomacy, the administration, commerce, and finances, and the periodical press and literature of every country which possesses those products of civilization. The constitutions and affairs of Italy, Denmark, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, England, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Turkey, Greece, United States, Mexico, the South American Republics, and even of the African and Asiatic races, are discussed with moderation and an effort for impartiality, which is laudable, if not always successful. The most recent statistics are given with reference to every country; and, as a book of reference, it will be found very useful. The _Calvin Translation Society_, which for the last ten years has been issuing, at irregular intervals, a complete and very handsome edition of CALVIN'S works, in English--to make about fifty octavo volumes--will have to add to them a new collection of his _Letters_. It appears that the government of Louis Philippe committed the preparation of the Unpublished Letters of the great Reformer to Professor BONNETT, who had been dismissed from the College of Nismes for speaking too highly of Luther. He travelled in France and Switzerland, at the expense of the Government, in order to collect the letters. After the revolution, the influence of the Catholic clergy was such that the new minister of Public Instruction found a thousand difficulties in the way of accepting the labor of M. Bonnett, and the subject was finally referred to a committee, who reported in favor of the publication; yet, to split the difference with the clergy, they, on pretence of a saving of expenses, ordered that some of the less important letters should be omitted, and that the Latin and French letters should be published together in the same volume. The number of Calvin's unpublished letters in the collection is 497; of these 190 are in French, and 307 in Latin. * * * * * The aged LACRETELLE, who of late years has lived in retirement near Macon, reposing upon his fame as an historian, appeared recently at the Academy in that city, on the day when the prizes of the Agricultural Society were distributed, and delivered an oration, marked by the energy and force of youth, but not by its hopefulness. He is now eighty-five years old; and on this occasion, was particularly severe against the communists and socialists, who, he thought, were bent on destroying every thing good, and upsetting the world. This was uttered with a point and bitterness that did no discredit to the censor of the press under both the Empire and the Restoration. * * * * * M. ROMAIN CORUNT has commenced, in _La Presse_, a series of Critical Studies on Socialism, which M. Girardin introduces with a special editorial, and which promises to be valuable. It was not originally designed for publication, but to satisfy its author's curiosity as to the ideas and aims of the revolution of 1848. He has accordingly gone analytically through the writings of all the socialist schools. He commences his exposition with Auguste Comte. * * * * * A FRENCH publisher advertises the memoirs of the celebrated actress Mademoiselle MARS, who died at a great age some half dozen years ago. Like those of Pompadour, Crequi, Dubarri, Fouche, Robespierre, and many others, they will undoubtedly turn out to be a fabrication by some ingenious literary trickster, yet it is probable that they will be amusing. * * * * * The five academies of the Institute of France held their annual meeting on the 25th of October. M. de Tocqueville presiding. In opening the meeting, the chairman delivered a discourse, which is praised as possessing "a great conciseness and an exquisite sense." Its topic was the aim of this annual reunion of the five divisions of the Institute. The Volney prize, which had been competed for by ten different works, was awarded to Dr. STEINTHAL, for a manuscript treatise, written in German, called _A Comparative Exposition of a Family of Negro Languages, in its Phonetic and Psychological Aspects_. This family of languages is that spoken by the Yoloffs and Bambaras. This prize is simply 1200 francs; it was established by the famous Volney, with a view to aid in the formation of a universal language. An equal prize was also awarded by the Institute to Dr. M. S. MUNK, for his work on _Sundry Hebrew Grammarians of the Tenth Century_; and an honorable mention to Dr. LORENZ DIEFFENBACH, for his _Comparative Dictionary of the Gothic Language_. These three gentlemen are Germans, and it is not surprising that they should thus carry off the honors where the field of competition is philology. After the prizes had been announced, a memoir on the Physical Constitution of the Sun and the Stars, by M. Arago, of the Academy of Sciences, was read; then a biographical notice of Denon, by M. de Pastoret, of the Academy of Fine Arts. M. Wallon next read a fragment on the right of asylum awarded to runaway slaves in antiquity, and attempted to prove that a similar disposition to help such fugitives exists in the United States at the present day. Finally, a poem, sent by M. Ampere, was read, and received with a great deal of applause. * * * * * An interesting work on the war in the Vendée, in 1793, is now published at Paris, by M. FRANÇOIS GRILLE, himself a native of the region, and an eye-witness of some of the most terrible scenes of that sanguinary struggle. He is a republican, and naturally takes a somewhat different view from that of Madame de la Rochejaquelin's Memoirs. Indeed, he corrects explicitly several geographical and historical errors into which she has fallen. He writes with vivacity and clearness, and has made a conscientious study of a great variety of materials hitherto unused. The first volume of the book has alone appeared: the others will follow with all possible expedition. * * * * * M. FRANCIS LACOMBE is the author of a newly-published _Histoire de la Bourgeoisie de Paris_, from its origin to the present day. The subject is one of great interest, and M. Lacombe has well employed the most extensive materials in treating it. His work extends to three pretty large octavo volumes. (Paris, 1851.) * * * * * During the autumn of 1849, the French government formed from among the members of the Institute, a commission whose duty was to select from the reports and communications made to the government by scientific travellers, what should appear of value to the world at large, for publication at the public expense, in monthly parts, under the title of _Archives des Missions Scientifiques et Littéraires_. The work was at once commenced and the volume for 1850 is completed; of the volume for 1851, not more than three or four parts have yet appeared. In this volume are reports by Emil Burnouf on the Propylae, the Pnyx and the Copaic Lake; by M. Bendit of a Journey among the Grecian Islands; by Lottin de Leval of an expedition to the Peninsula of Sinai to take impressions of the inscriptions in the valleys of Sinai and Serval; by M.H. Revier of an excursion in Algeria to collect Roman inscriptions; M. Battier de Bourville has an interesting account of the result of an expedition from Benghazi on the coast of Tripoli, to Cyrene, where he made some excavations and dug up several fine statues and remarkable inscriptions; M. Ducouret repeats at length the story of tailed men in the interior of Africa, but his veracity is uncommonly doubtful, and his previous travels in countries more familiar have been utterly fruitless; Mariette's report of his journey to Egypt, in which he discovered the Serapeum of Memphis, is particularly interesting. He is a man of uncommon energy and persistence, and almost lost his life in the affair. He was sick four weeks with fevers and ophthalmia, in the desert, where the Egyptian officials refused him water and provisions, so that the wonder is he did not die. The Assembly has voted 30,000 francs to dig out the Serapeum, which was covered with sand in Pliny's time, and will now be found exactly in its antique condition. Mariette is now there, and at the last advices had excavated five hundred different objects in bronze besides twelve sphinxes in granite. Very many travellers have been sent out to collect documents bearing upon the history of France, and a full account of their labors is contained in this volume. M. de Maslatire has been twice to Cyprus to obtain materials for the history of French rule in that island, and the result will presently appear in two quarto volumes at the cost of the treasury. Several travellers have been sent to England for documents on French history, where it seems they are almost inexhaustibly abundant, especially those that relate to the middle ages. The reports of M. Descloiseaux, who was sent to Iceland to study its geological formation; of M. Visquenel who went to Asiatic Turkey to examine the soil and products; of MM. Milne, Edwards and Quatrefages, who went to Sicily to examine the molluscs and annelids of the neighboring seas; and of Dr. Grange, who was sent throughout Europe to study cretinism and goitre, are very valuable scientifically. Dr. Grange finds the cause of those diseases in water containing magnesia, but no iodine. These travels are undertaken by means of a fund provided for that purpose by the government. The plan of each expedition is first submitted to the Institute and approved. In case of very expensive undertakings, like the excavation of the Serapeum, or the expedition lately sent to Babylon, a special appropriation is obtained from the Assembly. The _Archives_ are published neatly, with the necessary engravings, at twelve francs a year. * * * * * The mystery hanging over the interior of Africa is rapidly dissipating before the zeal of the many explorers whose efforts are now devoted to traversing the centre of that continent, and, before many years have passed, there is reason to suppose, this sole remaining geographical and ethnographic problem will be fully solved. The English expeditions from the Cape of Good Hope, the German missionaries on the eastern coast, with their journeys into the highlands in the south of Abyssinia, the explorations of the English on the gold coast and up the Niger, those of the French starting from Senegal and Algiers, the travels of Knoblecher and others on the upper Nile, with the journeys of Richardson, Barth, and Overweg, must soon make us acquainted with the principal facts that have so long been the object of general curiosity, if not of exaggerated expectation. Something is also to be anticipated from the aid of Mohammedan travellers, of whom there are a great number scattered over the interior of the continent in search of adventures or with a view to make fortunes. One of these has published, in Arabic, two works containing his experiences and observations in Darfur and Waday, both of which have been translated into French by M. Perron. The second has just appeared at Paris under the title of _Voyage au Ouaday par Cheykh Mohammed Ibn Omar al Tunisi_, and is especially valuable, as Waday is a country about which we have before had little, if any, positive information. It lies south of the great desert between Timbuctoo and Darfur, and is an extensive country. It is so far advanced out of the merely savage state, as to have a sort of administration, an army, and a kind of general regulations for commerce, which it owes to the influence of Islamism, and to a great man called Sabun, who lived quite recently, or yet lives, as the chief ruler of the land. The principal trade is in slaves, who are stolen in forays among the neighboring tribes on the south, and sold to caravans going north to Fezzan, or east to Darfur; the other articles of commerce are ivory, skins, and ostrich feathers. The introduction of Islamism has put an end to human sacrifices, and rendered the tyranny of the rulers less bloody, but in other respects it has produced little social improvement. The Roman Catholic writers are generally, in Continental Europe, demanding the suppression of the liberty of discussion, and a re-establishment of the Inquisition. Mr. BLANC ST. BONNET, one of the most conspicuous writers of his party, demands that every species of free thought be discountenanced, and M. BARBEY D'AUREVILLY, in _Les Prophètes du Passé_, declares that the evil corrupting society is the pest Liberty; that the church made a fatal error in not burning Luther in lieu of burning his books; and he concludes that the Inquisition is a "logical necessity" in every well-constituted state. * * * * * The _Journal des Débats_ publishes a long review from the pen of M. GARDIN DE TASSY, of the _Translation of two unpublished Arabic Documents_, issued last year by our countryman EDWARD E. SALISBURY, of Boston. M. de Tassy says: "We must not suppose that in the United States every body is so absorbed in commerce that nothing else can possibly be attended to. Science and letters are cultivated with success, and there are learned men there who rival those of Europe." The _Translation_ and its author are warmly praised. * * * * * M. DE SAULCY is about to publish at Paris his travels in Palestine, with thirty large engravings of the ancient monuments about Jerusalem, and thirty of those about the Dead Sea. The so-called Graves of the Kings will be the subject of thorough discussion. It is also said that one of them will be reconstructed in the Louvre upon his plan, and a sarcophagus cover, which he brought with him, used for the purpose. He has also a Moabitic bas-relief in black basalt: he bought it of the Arabs on the Dead Sea. If it be indeed what he supposes, it is the only relic of the sort existing in Europe. * * * * * ABBADIE, one of the Ethiopian travellers of that name, who has lately been so much assailed by other savants as a narrator of his adventures, is superintending the cutting of a complete font of Ethiopic letters, at Paris, to be used in printing some two hundred and fifty Ethiopian manuscripts. They will form four printed volumes, and are said to be among the most beautiful specimens of chirography ever seen. The other brother has gone back to Abyssinia again, to resume his geographical and scientific researches. * * * * * There are a great number of French missionaries in Asia and Africa, but their contributions to literature are trifling, compared with those of the English, American, and German. Bishop PALLEGOIX, in Siam, has lately published a Siamese grammar, in Latin, and promises a Lexicon of the same language. This, and the Cochin-Chinese Lexicon of Bishop Tabert, are the only works of the kind, by French missionaries, which we can recall for several years. * * * * * The _Westminster Review_, as we have before intimated, has passed into the hands of the infidel party of England, and it becomes necessary to warn the public who subscribe for it in the series of republications by Mr Scott, of its character, and to urge Mr. Scott to select some other periodical in its place, if it is necessary for the completion of his contracts to reprint a certain number of such works. There are a considerable number of charlatans in England and in this country who, without the natural capacities or the learning necessary to distinction in any legitimate intellectual pursuits, clothe themselves in the cast-off and forgotten draperies of French scepticism, and challenge admiration for the bravery displayed in mocking God, and ridiculing the most profoundly reasoned and firmly settled convictions of mankind. It is becoming fashionable among our young and imperfectly educated magazine and newspaper writers to "pity the weakness" which receives the Christian religion as it was held by our fathers. The drivel of which the veriest fools were made ashamed half a century ago, is revived as if it were a new and immortal flowering of philosophy. By the wise and thoughtful this sort of stuff is regarded with just contempt, and with confidence that though it may exist for a while as scum upon the surface, it will before long sink with kindred filth to the bottom of the stream. The _Westminster Review_, failing of an adequate support, was about to be discontinued, when John Chapman, the infidel publisher, bought it, and John Stuart Mill was engaged to be its editor. We hope the respectable portion of the American journals will make haste to disclose its present character; that Christian parents will no longer receive it into their houses; and that the characteristic dishonesty of attempting to smuggle writings of philosophical quacks and mountebanks under a once reputable name, will have its appropriate reward. * * * * * Of ROBERT BURNS, a grandson of the great poet, who has recently had some difficulties with the Rajah Sir James Brooke, the London _Examiner_ says, that he is an adventurous traveller; that he has mastered two of the languages of Borneo; that he has penetrated farther into that great and little-known island than any other European; that he has written by far the best and most authentic account of it in the _Journal of the Archipelago_, that has ever been given to the public. * * * * * The several volumes of essays, entitled, _Companions of my Solitude, Friends in Council, Essays Written during the Intervals of Business_, &c., are now announced to be by a Mr. HELPS. Most of them have been republished in this country, and much read here. They are agreeable and sensible, but without any very original or striking qualities to give them a permanent place in literature. Among the English announcements made in the last month are, _Personal Recollections of Mary Russell Mitford_ and _Anecdotes of Her Literary Acquaintances; Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham_, from original letters and documents, by the Earl of ALBEMARLE; several new books on the war in Affghanistan; _The Convent and the Harem_, by the Countess PISANI; _Pictures of Life in Mexico_, by R. H. MASON; _Women of Early Christianity_, by Miss KAVANAGH; _Hippolytus and his Age, or, Doctrine and Practice of the Church of Rome under Commodus and Alexander Severus_, by the Chevalier BUNSEN; _China during the War and since the Peace_, including Translations of Secret State Papers, by Sir J. F. DAVIS; _Sketches of English Literature_, by Mrs. C. L. BALFOUR; _Symbols and Emblems of Early and Midiæval Christian Art_, by LOUISA TWINING; a new work by Dr. LAYARD, entitled _Fresh Discoveries at Nineveh, and Researches at Babylon_; a new work by Sir FRANCIS HEAD, with the facetious title, _All my Eye; Some Account of the Danes and Northmen, in England, Scotland, and Ireland_, by J. J. A. WORSAAE, of Copenhagen; _An Illustrated Classical Mythology and Biography_, by Dr. WILLIAM SMITH; _Buenos Ayres and the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata_, by Sir WOODBINE PARISH; and two new volumes of GROTE'S _History of Greece_. * * * * * The English Dissenters have recently established a new college. It is the result of a union of three existing similar institutions, at present belonging to the Independents--namely, Coward, Homerton, and Cheshunt Colleges; and it is anticipated, from such a concentration of Nonconformist resources and energies, that the standard of learning among them will be raised still higher than it is at present, though it is not now below that in the established church, which, controlling the great universities, is pleased not to admit that a man may understand Greek or Mathematics unless he subscribes to the thirty-nine articles. * * * * * SIR CHARLES LYELL, lately, in an _Address to the Geological Society_, demolished again the paltry affair which for some time has constituted the main artillery of the atheists, _The Vestiges of Creation_; and _The Leader_ thereupon declares that, "In proportion as any branch of inquiry rises out of mere _details_ into the _higher generalizations_ which alone constitute science, we find our scientific men, with rare exceptions, _pitiably incompetent_." * * * * * "CHRISTOPHER NORTH" (Professor Wilson), has been compelled by ill health to make arrangements for dispensing with the delivery of his lectures on moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, at the ensuing session. The great poet, philosopher, critic, sportsman, and humorist, is in the sixty-third year of his age. * * * * * The _Evening Book_, by Mrs. KIRKLAND (Charles Scribner), is a very tasteful volume, consisting of some of the cleverest compositions of one of our very cleverest literary women, well known as Mrs. Mary Clavers, the prose poetess, and pen-painter of Western life. From our first acquaintance with Mary Clavers, in the world of print, we have admired, almost equally, her frank independence of word and thought, her free and fearless love of truth, her facility in vivid and life-like portraiture, and her natural strain of good-natured humor. But most of all we have admired her, for that she is "an 'author,' _yet a woman too_!" a consummation indeed devoutly to be wished; inasmuch as it seems to us, that we are fast falling upon days which will induce the grave spectator, looking upon the ladies and gentlemen of _Young New-York_, the former in the rostrum, the latter in the ball-room, to exclaim with the Persian King at Salamis, "All our men have become women, and our women _men_." This, however, can never be predicated of our friend of "the New Home;" and yet, shall we confess it, we like her better far in the broad west than on the Broad _pavé_; better in the solitude of the great woods than on the society of great cities; better in the log school-house, than in the tumultuous streets--in a word, better as the chronicler of the doings of the west, than as the critic of the goings-on in the east! So long as she adheres to the former, she is ever entertaining, ever instructive, ever humorous, ever lively, ever true; but when she comes to deal with the problems of society, when she dives into the mysteries of _caste_, and tempts the difficulties which lie in the way of those who would reconcile political equality with social intercourse, we fear that she will not only be found herself going astray, but--what is far worse--becoming a blind guide to others. We are led to these remarks especially by a certain article on "Streets and Servants, at home and abroad," the tendency of which we fully believe--though we are sure it was honestly written, and beneficently intended--to be positively dangerous and injurious to the very class for whose advantage it is intended. Herein we find our fair friend discoursing thus of the female servants of America: "Perhaps, if we could make up our minds to treat our servants as fellow-citizens now, the time when they would be disposed to shake off our service might be deferred." And again-- "Would it be dangerous to recognize the soul of a chambermaid? Would it not be apt to make her a better one, and longer content with the broom and duster, if we consulted her feelings, expressed an interest in her welfare, and saved her pride as much as possible? At present, it seems to be supposed that in the agreement as to wages, a certain amount of contumely is bargained for," &c., &c. Now this is quite unworthy of Mrs. Kirkland's good sense; it is very objectionable and injurious at this moment--when tens of thousands of American girls are daily all but starving on the wretched pittance which they can earn at the literally starving prices of the shops; daily falling into vice and infamy in order to avoid actual starvation; who might be comfortably lodged, comfortably clad, comfortably fed, and well paid, in as many kindly and Christian families, if they could but condescend from their ruinous false pride, and brook to become servants. Worst of all, it is not _true_. In no country on earth are servants so well looked to, not only as to wants but as to comforts, as in this. In no other are their labors so light, their liberties so large, their remuneration so liberal, their feelings so freely consulted--nay, in many cases, their whims so foolishly indulged. To no contumely, that we can perceive, are they subjected; but we suppose that Mrs. Kirkland regards their non-admission to our tables, our conversational _reunions_, or our ballrooms, as the crowning contumely--quite forgetful that the restraint of what to refined, educated, and highly-bred persons are habits, would be to the servant-girl bonds and fetters of intolerable restraint--that her inability to mix in our conversation, to see with our eyes, taste with our tastes, and understand with our cultivated intellects, would render our society far more insufferable and annoying to her than her presence could be to us; in a word, that, but for the false pride of being _one of the company_, our drawing-room would be far more a place of punishment to her, than her kitchen to us. For the rest, in these United States, all this talk about independence and servitude is absurd. No man on earth is, or ever will be, independent of some other man. Every man is, in some sort or other, the servant of some other man. The rich man is dependent on his colored barber, or his colored _boots_, for his comfort, as the barber or the boots is on him for his wages; and perhaps the rich man would be worse put to it by the absence of the boots, than the boots by the absence of the rich man. Generally, we believe, the higher we are in position, the more masters we have to serve, and the less considerate; and we have little doubt that even our brilliant and gentle authoress herself has more and less amiable behests to obey, than ever fell to the lot of the independent help, who "_thought she heard her yell_." We have dwelt longer on this point than its weight or merit, as regards the volume, of which it occupies but a page, would seem to justify; and we have done so not ill-naturedly, to pick out the one tare from the load of wheat, but merely to controvert what we consider a dangerous social fallacy, which is growing and gaining virulence and vigor under false treatment, and producing serious detriment to a large class of our population. The volume itself is, as we have observed, an entertaining, an instructive, emphatically a good one; and its getting up and embellishment reflect as much credit on the publishers, as its contents on the author. It is one of the most beautiful, and deserves to be one of the most popular, gift-books of the season. * * * * * Among the most agreeable republications of the season we may cite Mrs. LEE'S _Luther and his Times_, the _Life and Times of Cranmer_, and the _Historical Sketches of the Old Painters_, recently issued in the Family Library of Willis Hazard, of Philadelphia. _Luther and his Times_ appears at an appropriate period, considering the great number of works relating to the Reformer which have been written in England and on the continent: scarce any of which, however, are superior to this, either in accuracy or general interest. As an appropriate companion to it we have Cranmer--a plain, straightforward, and withal extremely attractive account of the Reformation in England. With regard to the relative excellence of these, we incline to the Luther. The simplicity and singleness of style which characterize Mrs. Lee's biography of Cranmer, would render it peculiarly the property of the young, were it not that the great amount of valuable historical information which it contains, as well as the fact that so little is generally known relative to the early history of the English Reformation, commend it equally to the perusal of older and graver students. But in the Luther, we have, in the best sense, a _literary_ work, one in which ease of style, an almost romantic interest and accurate research, combine to invest it with that variety of excellence which the public taste at the present day requires of the historian and biographer. The works are neatly got up, with fair illustrations. In the same series we also find an illustrated edition of _The Vicar of Wakefield_. A curious proof of the exquisite simplicity and beauty of style which characterize this work, may be found in the fact, that throughout Germany, Scandinavia, and Italy, no English work is so well known or so extensively used in the study of our language. Few American works have conferred on their writers a more respectable reputation than Mrs. LEE'S _Historical Sketches of the Old Painters_. When we reflect on the important _rôle_ which a knowledge of Art plays in a modern education, and that the time is evidently not distant when the _Æsthetics_ will form as essential a portion of school courses as French or Algebra, we cannot be too grateful to one who has prepared such an eminently practical yet agreeable introduction to such studies. To the general reader who lacks the time or patience to work his way through the interminable works of Vasari, Kugler, or Lanzi, and who can be satisfied with an account of the most eminent painters, narrated in a concise yet highly interesting manner, this work must be invaluable. We have looked over an edition of YOUNG'S _Night Thoughts_, edited by JAMES ROBERT BOYD, and published by Mr. Scribner. It reminds us of that edition of Milton, by some eastern gentleman (there is a copy in the Harvard College library), in which "the versification is somewhat improved, and for better effect a few new figures are put in here and there." Except that memorable specimen of editorial silliness and sacrilege, we must confess--nay, we gladly confess--that we have never seen or heard of any thing worse than this very handsomely printed edition of Young's _Night Thoughts_. As the respectable publisher of it must have supposed Mr. Boyd possessed of some qualifications for the task undertaken by him, we will be a little more particular than is our wont, and convince him, and convince that part of the public which reads this magazine, that Mr. Boyd's edition of Young is an unendurable imposition. Dr. Young was a writer of singular naturalness of feeling and simplicity of style. As has frequently been observed of his works, lacking the romantic passion and fiery impulse which would commend them most to the tastes of middle life, they are the chosen companions of youth and age. There has scarcely ever been a poet who so little needed annotation; his "great argument," indeed, sometimes might be more easily apprehended if a little simplified by a clear-headed schoolman, but his verbal transparency is such that he needs, in this respect, no tinkering whatever. Yet Mr. Boyd makes nearly half his book of notes, and of notes, too, in which the great purpose of the poem is never touched--notes composed of mere platitudes, as useless, meaningless, and ridiculous, as would be the repetition of Swift's "nonsense verses" in the margin of every page. We copy at random a few examples: I wake: how happy they who wake no more! NOTE. "_I wake._" This expression suggested to the poet the expressive contrast, "How happy they who wake no more." A mind that fain would wander from its woe. NOTE. _Fain_: gladly. Teach my best reason, reason; my best will Teach rectitude. NOTE. _Teach_, &c. Teach my best reason what is reasonable: cause the best actings of my intellectual powers to be more strictly conformed to what is reasonable, true, and fit. We take no note of Time But from its loss: to give it then a tongue. NOTE. _To give it then a tongue._ To cause time to speak to us! Here teems with revolutions every hour. NOTE. _Here_, &c. On this earth every hour teems with revolutions! I would not damp, but to secure, thy joys. NOTE. _But to secure_, &c. But with a view to secure thy joys! No moment, but in purchase of its worth. NOTE. _Of its worth_: Of something equally valuable! Nature, in zeal for human amity. NOTE. _In zeal for human amity_: In the exercise of zeal for encouraging human friendship! And so on through all the book--scarcely any thing but these miserable puerilities. There cannot be a child in the world to whom the poet's meaning would not be as plain from the text, as from such notes. In other cases, where the author is perfectly plain to nearly the meanest apprehensions, Mr. Boyd himself cannot understand him; for instance: While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread, What though my soul fantastic measures trod O'er fairy fields, or mourned along the gloom Of pathless woods, or, down the craggy steep Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled flood. The obvious idea in these last lines is, that, hurled down into a pool, battlemented, or _mantled_ about, he swam with pain, seeing no egress up the craggy or precipitous rocks: a use of the word "mantled," which is justified by instances in many of the best ancient and modern writers. But Mr. Boyd reduces the lines to the poorest stuff by the following NOTE. _Mantled_: Expanded, spread out, as a mantle. An instance of his prosaic feebleness occurs on page 86. Thought, busy thought, too busy for my peace. Through the dark postern of long time elapsed, Led softly, by the stillness of the night.... In quest of wretchedness perversely strays, And finds all desert now, and meets the ghosts Of my departed joys, a numerous train. NOTE. _Ghosts of my departed days_: The bare recollection of them! This is a new exhibition of the "art of sinking." The whole commentary suggests the idea of making a noble poem contemptible, by covering it over with diminutive conceits and bungling impertinences. * * * * * "INJUSTICE TO THE SOUTH," is everywhere a fruitful subject of discussion. In politics, in religion, in letters, our friends beyond Washington will not believe us in the North capable of treating them with fairness. In literature we have constantly heard it alleged that success should never be dreamed of by an author who had the misfortune to be born the wrong side of Mason and Dixon's line. The superstition is not without its uses. It affords abundant consolation to a vast number of young gentleman whose books produce no profits. Yet we are inclined to believe it is altogether without any foundation in reason; that _The Scarlet Letter_ would have been as popular from Charleston as from Concord. We have an amusing illustration of the feeling on this point, in the last _Southern Literary Messenger_. The amiable and eminently accomplished editor of that work counts among his personal friends as many northern gentlemen as have had ever opportunity to know him, yet he honestly believes us incapable of appreciating the genius of a poet from one of the tobacco, sugar, or cotton states. Introducing some pretty verses entitled _The Marriage of the Sun and Moon_, "by the late H. S. Ellenwood, of North Carolina," into his last number, he says: "Had the gifted author been a native of Massachusetts, his name would be familiar as household words; as it is, we doubt whether one in ten of our readers has ever heard of it." He _was_ a native of Massachusetts. His original name was Small, and he was born in Salem, in the year of grace 1790; at sixteen apprenticed to J. T. Buckingham, of Boston; at twenty-one had his name changed to H. S. Ellenwood; in 1820 emigrated to North Carolina; and on the 2d of April, 1843, he died, in Wilmington, in that state, having just established there the _Daily Advertiser_. We suspect that, in literature at least, all charges of "injustice to the South," are as ill founded as this. The _American Gift Books_ for the present season surpass any hitherto published, both as regards literature and art. The _Home Book of the Picturesque_, published by Mr. Putnam, is the finest combination of all needful qualities for such a work, that has ever appeared in the English language. The late Fenimore Cooper (of whose admirable article we publish a large portion in preceding pages), Miss Susan Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, W. C. Bryant, N. P. Willis, Alfred B. Street, Bayard Taylor, and Dr. Bethune, are among the contributors, and Durand, Huntington, Cole, Cropsey, &c., furnish pictures, from the most striking, beautiful, and least-known scenery in America. The publishers of the world do not this year furnish a volume more admirable. The _Book of Home Beauty_, containing exquisitely engraved portraits of some of the most distinguished women in American society, by Charles Martin, with letter-press by Mrs. Kirkland, is another fine quarto; and _The Memorial_, an octavo, written by Nathanael Hawthorne, N. P. Willis, G. P. R. James, R. B. Kimball, Dr. Mayo, W. G. Simms, Mrs. Hewitt, Mrs. Oakes Smith, and others, is very much above any "Keepsake" or "Souvenir" ever before printed in England or in America. * * * * * We have new volumes of Poems, by Messrs. LONGFELLOW, BAYARD TAYLOR, and R. H. STODDARD, from the press of Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, of which appropriate notices are deferred until the next month. * * * * * MESSRS. APPLETON have a series of works, equally remarkable for typographical and pictorial magnificence and literary interest. _Christmas with the Poets_ is admitted to be, on the whole, the most admirably executed production of the printing press; _The Women of Early Christianity_, written by eminent authors, and edited by the Rev. Mr. Spencer, presents attractively the domestic romance of religious history, with seventeen very excellent engravings, making an imperial octavo, in the style of that remarkably popular series, the _Women of the Bible_, the _Women of the Old and New Testament_, and _Our Saviour with Prophets and Apostles_, all of which are now published in styles to suit the cabinet of art, the drawing-room table, or the library. Another very interesting and richly illustrated work from this house is _The Land of Bondage_, by Dr. Wainwright, corresponding with the same author's splendid volume, _The Pathways and Abiding Places of Our Lord_. The Appletons also publish for the coming holidays Mrs. Jameson's most successful work, the _Beauties of the Court of Charles the Second_, with twenty-one finely engraved portraits, and _The Queens of England_, by Agnes Strickland, with eighteen portraits--a work of which the fame is as extensive as a love of art or an admiration of woman; and _Lyrics of the Heart_, a very finely illustrated collection of the poems of Alaric A. Watts. The other illustrated works from this house are enumerated in the advertising pages at the end of this magazine, to which we ask attention. The Fine Arts. A series of four compositions representing the Seasons, by CALAME, a Swiss artist, is highly praised in the _Grenzboten_, as something altogether original and superior to the technical traditions of the schools. They were painted for a Russian gentleman, and were exhibited for a short time in Berlin. Spring is an Italian or Grecian landscape of the antique world, and the time is morning; Summer is a German scene and the time noon; Autumn is from the lake country of Switzerland and the time late afternoon; Winter is a late evening scene with moonlight. * * * * * MR. HARDING'S noble full-length of _Daniel Webster_--the best work of its class ever engraved in this country--may now be purchased at two dollars and a half per copy, of Sherman & Adriance, Astor House. * * * * * The celebrated _Portrait of Bishop White_, painted by Henry Inman, and engraved in London, by Wagstaff, is now published from the original plate, by Andrews and Meeser, of Philadelphia, at three dollars per copy. The impressions are quite as good as those first taken, which were sold for four times as large a price. * * * * * NORWEGIAN Peasant Life, is the subject of ten pictures by ADOLPH TIEDEMANN, which a year since excited very general admiration at Düsseldorf. They have now been lithographed and published in that place, with explanatory text in German and Norwegian. * * * * * LEUTZE'S _Washington Crossing the Delaware_, is universally conceded to be the best painting in the world, illustrating American history. Its production marks an era in American art. The exhibition of it, at the Stuyvesant Institute, is, of course, successful. * * * * * KAULBACH'S frescoes in the New Museum at Berlin are to be engraved. The Prussian bookseller Duncker has undertaken the speculation, and intends that the engravings shall exceed everything yet done in Germany; not merely the pictures, but all the ornamental designs will be included. * * * * * The German papers announce that a colossal statue of Washington is casting at Munich. It is to be twenty feet higher than the famous Bavaria, and is destined for this country. Several other historical sculptures are in preparation for the United States. Historical Review of the Month. On the 4th of November the state election in New York resulted in the choice of all but two of the democratic candidates, and the defeat of the whigs on the great question respecting the canals. The closeness of the vote may be inferred from the majorities: For _Controller_, Wright over Patterson 527; _Secretary of State_, Randall over Forsyth 1420; _Treasurer_, Cook (whig) over Welch, 64; _Attorney General_, Chatfield over Ullmann, 294; _Canal Commissioner_, Fitzhugh (whig) over Wheaton, 745; _State Engineer_, McAlpine over Seymour, 2390. In New Jersey, on the same day, a large majority of the legislature was elected by the democrats. In Delaware, on the same day, it was determined to hold a convention for revising the constitution of the state, by 2,129 majority. In Louisiana, on the 3d, the whigs carried the legislature, and gained one member of Congress (Moore over Morse). In Wisconsin the whigs have elected Farwell, their candidate for Governor, and a majority of the legislature. Maryland, on the 5th, the entire democratic ticket, for comptroller, register, &c., was elected, with a majority of the legislature. In Michigan, the same day, the democrats, as usual, carried nearly every thing. In Massachusetts, on the 10th, there was a failure to elect a governor, but numerous vacancies to be filled in the legislature, it is supposed at this time (20th), will enable the whigs to succeed in that body. The vote was the largest ever thrown in the State. In Mississippi, Mr. Foote's majority is about 1500. In Tennessee, ex-Governor James C. Jones (whig), was elected to the United States Senate on the 14th. In Georgia, the new legislature assembled on the 3d, Governor Cobb was inaugurated on the 5th, and Mr. Toombs, now representative in Congress, was chosen United States Senator on the 10th. He is a Southern Rights Whig Unionist, and succeeds Mr. Burrien. A correspondence has taken place between the Spanish minister at Washington and the Secretary of State, which, it is understood, assures a settlement of the difficulties arising from the invasion of Cuba; but additional discontent has been occasioned by the arrest, imprisonment, trial, and sentence (on the 12th of November), at Havana, of an American citizen, John G. Thrasher, for "disloyalty," to eight years hard labor in a Spanish fortress. Mr. Thrasher is a native of Maine, and had been for several years editor of the _Faro Industrial_, at Havana. Judge Kane, in the Circuit Court of Pennsylvania, has given his decision in the Telegraph Case, sustaining Morse's pretensions throughout, and against Bain. The decision is in favor of Morse on all points, and establishes that he is solely entitled to the art of instantaneously recording messages at a distance. The case will now go to the Supreme Court, with probably the same result. The great Methodist Episcopal Church case was decided on the 11th of November, in the United States District Court, in favor of the Southern claimants. The sum in dispute was $750,000--being the amount at which the Book Concern of the Society is estimated--and the decision gives to the Methodist Church South its proportion of this property. In the United States District Court, at Philadelphia, on the 7th November, the Grand Jury presented seventy-eight indictments against thirty-nine of the participants in the riot at Christiana. Each of the accused is charged with high treason. Efforts for the separation of California into new states are vigorously prosecuted. The latest intelligence from the mines is favorable. Oregon will probably come into the Union as two states. There have been a great number of fatal accidents in the last few weeks, of which we can give but the results in loss of lives: _Lives._ Propeller Henry Clay, lost on Lake Erie, October 23, 30 Steamer Buckeye run into a sloop, Lake Erie, same day, 3 Steamer William Penn, off Cape Cod, struck sloop, same day, 4 Ship Oregon, sunk at sea lat. 36-1/2, long. 69-1/2, October 27, 3 Schooner Christiana, capsized, Lake Ontario, about the same time, 9 Schooner William Penn, lost about the same time, _Entire crew._ Embankment fell in at Spencerport, N. Y., November 11, 3 Accident at the Pyrotechnic establishment, Flatbush, November 3, 2 Cotton Factory, Philadelphia, burned November 12, 6 Small boat run down by a schooner, Boston Harbor, November 5, 3 Railroad engine-boiler, burst at Aiken, S.C., November 14, 3 Collision on the New-York and New Haven Railroad, October 25, 2 Alarm of fire, in Public School, No. 26, in New-York, causing a rush of children toward the great stairway, of which the railing gave way, November 20, 46 On the 21st October, a serious difficulty broke out at Chagres, between the American and native boatmen, and a battle ensued, which resulted in the death of two Americans, and as many natives. After two days' disturbance, the affair was adjusted, and order restored. In Mexico, for the present, the insurrection of Caravajal has failed, and the siege of Matamoras has been abandoned. In New Grenada the Jesuit revolt under Borrero has been put down and Borrero captured. From Buenos Ayres we learn that General Oribe has been overthrown, and that Rosas is in the utmost danger, but the results of recent important events there are not yet well understood. Little has occurred in Great Britain, of much importance, except the demonstrations occasioned by the arrival of Kossuth, at Southampton, on the 23d of October. The Hungarian chief has been received with unparalleled enthusiasm in Southampton, London, Manchester, and elsewhere, and in many long and powerful speeches has vindicated his great reputation for wisdom and for honest devotion to the liberties of his country. He was to leave England in the steamer Washington, for New-York, on the 14th November, and will probably have arrived here before this paragraph is published. In the United States a triumph even more enthusiastic than that in England awaits him. The Caffre war in South Africa is still extending, and the British forces have obtained, in no case, decided or important advantages. The attention of Europe is more than ever concentrated on France. Louis Napoleon, who had deprived the nation of the right of suffrage, in despair of reëlection by any other means finally determined on the abrogation of the restricting law of the 31st of May; his ministers resigned; after a considerable period a new ministry, with little weight of personal character, was formed; and on the 4th of November the new session of the French Legislative Assembly was opened in Paris, to receive the President's Message, and at once to vote down its cardinal recommendations. The world watching with deep interest that conflict of the factions in France which must be brought to a close with the present term of her unscrupulous ruler. Recent Deaths. ARCHIBALD ALEXANDER, D.D., LL. D., late Professor of Theology in the Seminary of the Presbyterian Church at Princeton, in New Jersey, was born on the 17th of April, 1772, on the banks of a small tributary of the James River, called South River, and near the western foot of the Blue Ridge, in that part of Augusta County, Virginia, which has since, from the great natural curiosity it contains, been named Rockbridge. He was descended by both parents from Presbyterians of Scotland, who emigrated first to Ireland, and thence to America. He was educated at Liberty Hall Academy, which has since become Washington College, under the instructions of the founder of that institution, Rev. William Graham, an able and eminent preacher and professor. Besides Mr. Graham, his classical teachers were James Priestly, afterward President of Cumberland College, Tennessee, and Archibald Roane, afterward Governor of Tennessee. In the summer of 1789, he joined in the full communion of the church, and commenced the study of theology under Mr. Graham, who had a class of six or eight students. He was licensed to preach by this Presbytery of Lexington, October 1, 1791, and was ordained on the 5th of May, 1795. Part of the intervening years he spent in itinerant labors in Virginia, and in that region which is now Ohio. In the spring of 1797 he became President of Hampden Sydney College, in the County of Prince Edward, at the same time being pastor of the churches of Briery and Cumberland. He was now but twenty-five years old, and it may safely be alleged that there was never won in this country, at so early an age, a more brilliant or a purer reputation. His arduous and responsible duties were discharged with industry and energy, equal to his abilities, until health gave way, and, in the spring of 1801, he resigned these charges, in well-grounded apprehension of a settled pulmonary consumption. The summer of 1802 was spent by Mr. Alexander in travelling on horseback through New England, and by this means he so far recovered his health as to resume the Presidency of the College and the charge of his parishes. About the same time he was married to Janette Waddell, second daughter of Rev. Jonas Waddell, D.D., that remarkable preacher whose blindness and eloquence have been celebrated by Mr. Wirt in _The British Spy_. In the Autumn of 1806 he received a call from the Third Presbyterian Church, at the corner of Pine and Fourth-sts., in Philadelphia. Though he had declined an invitation to the same church ten years before, he accepted this, and thus became a second time the successor of the Rev. John Blair Smith, D.D. He continued at this post until, in the spring of 1812, he was summoned by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church to be the first Professor in the Theological Seminary then just founded at Princeton. This chair, we believe, he occupied until his death--until within a few weeks, at least, discharging all its honorable duties. It is a pleasing fact that the first two Professors in this Institution were associated in its service nearly forty years. During this period a large number of clergymen have proceeded from the seminary, and it has now not far from one hundred and fifty students. It is important to observe that it has no connection with the College of New Jersey, at the same place. The eminent usefulness of Dr. Alexander is not to be measured by the long and wise discharge of his duties as a professor. He was a voluminous, very able and popular writer. In addition to occasional sermons and discourses, and numerous smaller treatises, he wrote constantly for _The Princeton Review_, a quarterly miscellany of literature, and theological and general learning, of the highest character, which is now in the twenty-seventh year of its publication. His work on _The Evidences of the Christian Religion_ has passed through numerous editions in Great Britain as well as in America, and this, as well as his _Treatise on the Canon of Scripture_, which has also been republished abroad, we believe, has appeared in two or three other languages. The substance of the latter has, however, been incorporated with more recent editions of the former, under the title of _Evidences of the Authenticity, Inspiration and Canonical Authority of the Holy Scriptures_, of which a fifth edition--the last we have seen--was published in Philadelphia in 1847. Among his other works are _Thoughts on Religion; a Compend of Bible Truth_; and a _History of Colonization on the Western Coast of Africa_--the last an octavo volume of more than six hundred pages, published in Philadelphia in 1846. His principal writings, however, have been on practical religion and on the History and Biography of the Church, and these for the most part have been published anonymously. Dr. Alexander was the father of six sons, of whom three are clergymen. The eldest, James W. Alexander, D.D., for several years Professor in the College of New Jersey, and sometime Pastor of the Duane-street Church in this city, is a fine scholar and an able preacher, and has enrolled himself among the benefactors of the people by many writings of the highest practical value designed to elevate the condition of the laboring classes to the true dignity of citizenship and a Christian life. Another is Rev. Joseph Addison Alexander, D.D., Professor of Oriental Literature in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, and author of the well-known works on the Earlier and the Later Prophecies of Isaiah. He is generally regarded as one of the most profound and sagacious scholars of the present age. The late venerable Professor was undoubtedly one of those who, by the union of a most Christian spirit and a faultless life to great abilities, have been deserving of the praise of doing most for the advancement of true religion. * * * * * DR. J. KEARNEY ROGERS, for a long time one of the most able and respected physicians and surgeons of New-York, died on the 9th of November. He was born in New-York in 1793, graduated at Princeton in 1811, studied medicine in Edinburgh, London, and Paris, and returning to New York was the friend and associate of Dr. Post, Dr. Hossack, Dr. Francis, Dr. Delafield, and other eminent members of his profession, in establishing medical and surgical institutions, &c. He has left no writings in print or MS. for the public. * * * * * The Rev. WILLIAM CROSWELL, D.D., Rector of the Church of the Advent, in Boston, died in that city very suddenly, on the evening of Sunday, November 9, having preached and administered the sacrament of baptism during the day. Dr. Croswell was born in New-Haven, Connecticut, on the 7th of November, 1804, was the son of the Rev. Dr. Croswell of that city, and was educated at Yale College, where he was graduated in the summer of 1824. He was subsequently, for two years, associated with Dr. DOANE, now Bishop of New Jersey, in the editorship of the _Episcopal Watchman_ at Hartford, after which he removed to Boston, and was for several years minister of Christ's Church, in that city. He then became rector of St. Peter's, in Auburn, New York, and at length returned to Boston, where his numerous warm friends gladly welcomed his settlement as minister of the Church of the Advent. Dr. Croswell was a scholar, and possessed a fine taste in literature, with very unusual powers as a writer. Among his poems, are many of remarkable grace and sweetness, and a few evincing a happy vein of satire. His poems are nearly all religious, and Bishop DOANE, in a note to his edition of Keble's "Christian Year," remarks that "he has more unwritten poetry in him" than any man he knows. We hope Bishop Doane will commemorate his friendship, and the genius and virtues of Dr. Croswell, in a memoir, and collection of his works. * * * * * DR. GRANVILLE SHARPE PATTISON, an eminent teacher of anatomy, died in New York, after a short illness, on the 12th of November, in the sixty-first year of his age. He was born near Glasgow, in Scotland, where his father was a cotton spinner, and was educated in that city, studying surgery under the late eminent Professor John Burns. On obtaining his degree, he commenced the practice of his profession in Glasgow, with prospects of eminent success, and soon became one of the surgeons of the Andersonian Institution, and a lecturer on anatomy. An unfortunate domestic affair, of which the details may be learned from the report of a trial which resulted in the divorce of Prof. Andrew Ure from his wife, in 1819, caused Dr. Pattison to come to the United States. He settled in Baltimore, where he resumed his profession as a lecturer on anatomy; and, going afterwards to England, he became a professor in the medical school connected with the London University. He continued but a short time in England, and on returning to this country he accepted the place of Professor of Anatomy in the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, which he filled successfully until 1840, when he was made Professor of Anatomy in the Medical School connected with the New-York University--an office which he held until his death, having delivered his last lecture but a week before that event. Dr. Pattison was a man of fine social qualities, and was one of the best lecturers in this country. His published writings display the best capacities for his vocation--are shrewd, judicious, and happily delivered--but for the most part fragmentary. His editions of Cruveilhier's _Anatomy of the Human Body_, Mase's _Anatomical Atlas_, and other works, are well known, and he wrote many important papers in the American Medical Recorder, besides several pamphlets of a personal character. * * * * * MR. STEPHENS, the author of "Martinuzzi," and the "Manuscripts of Erdely," died on the 8th of October, in Camden-town. He was in his fifty-first year, and, in early life, had produced several tragic dramas that commanded the attention of critics, both foreign and native. Schlegel abroad, and "minor Beddoes" at home, praised his tragedies of "Montezuma" and the "Vampire;" and, at a later period, his "Gertrude and Beatrice" excited, among the few who take an interest in dramatic poetry, great admiration. His last work consisted of "Dramas for the Stage," in two volumes, but it was only privately circulated. Mr. Stephens' dramatic poetry was distinguished by intense passion and fervor; but at the early part of his career, he lacked the constructive power. Finding that the stage monopoly, so long existing, was an effectual bar to the higher original drama being produced, he joined, about the year 1841, a guild of zealous literary young men, who were bent on doing something towards theatrical reform. Mrs. Warner and Mr. Phelps united themselves to these dramatic aspirants; and the result was, that the Lyceum Theatre was taken for a month, for the performance of a new five-act tragedy, notwithstanding the existing law to the contrary. The tragedy was licensed as an opera in three acts, and was at length acted with some of the songs retained. This retention of musical irrelevancies, in obedience to the law, while it made the law itself absurd, could not fail of injuring the drama in which they were introduced; and, had its merits not been extraordinary, "Martinuzzi," under such circumstances, could not have lived a single night. As it was, it struggled through the month, making partisans to the experiment, though at the sacrifice of the author's means and feelings. Mr. Stephens accepted the martyrdom freely, and went through it nobly, for the sake of the cause which to his death he held sacred. Moreover, he would have continued the contest, but that he was strongly advised to the contrary by Mr. Sheridan Knowles, and Mr. John A. Heraud, the latter of whom had been actively engaged in getting up "Martinuzzi," but thought that sufficient demonstration had been made. In this he was right, as it subsequently proved; for, shortly after, in conjunction with Mr. Edward Mayhew and some other gentlemen, he was a party to the drawing up, in committee, of a bill for the liberation of the stage, the draft of which was forwarded to Sir Robert Peel, who placed it in the hands of Lord Mahon, by whom it was carried through Parliament; and thus every theatre was enabled legally to perform the Shakspearian and five-act drama. Mr. George Stephens himself, sick of dramatic disappointment, turned his ardent mind into a new channel, and became involved in railway speculations, and in them lost his fortune. His latter days were accordingly passed in narrow circumstances, accompanied with physical prostration quite deplorable. They who had benefited by his exertions, neglected him. His love for the drama and power of composition remained uninjured, but encouragement attached itself to younger candidates. His high principle, determined courage, personal pride and fortitude, however, continued with him to the last; and as he was a pious and religious man, he bore suffering and neglect not only with patience, but with confidence that the good cause in which he had labored would ultimately prosper. * * * * * The celebrated missionary CHARLES GUTZLAFF, of whom we gave an interesting account in the _International_ last year (vol. i. 317), died at Canton on the 9th of August, in the forty-eighth year of his age. He was born on the 8th of July, 1803, at Pyritz, in the Prussian province of Pomerania, of parents whose very moderate circumstances prevented them from affording him the education requisite for a Christian missionary, to become which was his most anxious desire. After attending for some time the schools of his native town, he was sent to Stettin as an apprentice to a belt-maker. There he composed a short poem, in which he expressed his strong religious feelings, with his hitherto unavailing wishes respecting his career in life, and which he presented to the king of Prussia, on occasion of a visit paid by the latter to Stettin, in 1821. The effect of this step was to procure his admission as a pupil into the missionary institution at Berlin. Such was the progress which he made in his studies, that only two years afterwards, in the spring of the year 1823, he was judged to be sufficiently qualified for the object he had in view. He was sent to the Dutch Missionary Society at Rotterdam, which appointed him to be one of their missionaries to the East. But becoming more than ever sensible of the arduousness of the functions he had undertaken to perform, he did not venture to embark for his destination until the month of August, 1826, having devoted himself, in the mean time, to a further diligent preparation for future usefulness. The first missionary ground assigned him was in the island of Java. He took up his residence at Batavia, where he married an English woman who was possessed of considerable property, and where, by mingling with the Chinese inhabitants, in the course of two years he acquired so skilful a use of their language, and became so intimately acquainted with their modes of life and intercourse with each other, as to be adopted by them into one of their families, and to have a Chinese name assigned to him. The circumstances just mentioned produced an important change in his plans. In the possession, as he now was, of a pecuniary independence, he resolved to break off his connection with the Dutch missionary society, and to proceed to China, to preach the gospel to the Chinese in their own country, to the extent that he might be allowed to do so. In the first place, however, he accompanied an English missionary, named Tomlin, to Siam, in the summer of 1828. This journey occupied Gutzlaff for a period of upwards of three years. Besides laboring diligently in his vocation as a Christian minister, he composed, while residing at Bankok, a Siamese grammar, and, in conjunction with Tomlin, translated the New Testament into the Siamese language. He next proceeded to China, where, associating himself with Morrison, Medhurst, and other European missionaries, he selected Macao for his principal station. He established schools, distributed religious tracts among the people, assisted in a new translation of the Bible into Chinese, co-operated with Morrison in founding a society for the diffusion of useful knowledge in China, published a Chinese Monthly Magazine, and yet did not neglect, at Macao, and in various excursions made from that place, the preaching of Christianity to the inhabitants. All this went on without any hindrance, until Gutzlaff excited the suspicion of the Chinese authorities of his labors being in some way connected with the interested views of the English traders; and, in consequence, an attempt made by him in May, 1835, to penetrate into the province of Fokien, proved altogether unsuccessful. The printing of Chinese books of a Christian character was now forbidden; the distribution of such books was obliged to be suspended; and it became necessary to remove the printing presses from Macao to Singapore. Thus restricted in his missionary sphere, Gutzlaff felt himself the more at liberty to accompany the British expedition against China, and to be exceedingly serviceable to it by his intimate acquaintance with the language and customs of the Chinese. He was also an active agent in bringing about the treaty of peace, concluded between the contending parties in 1842. His literary labors have had an almost incredible extent and variety. He himself gives the following enumeration of his writings: "In Dutch I have written: a History of our Mission and of Distinguished Missionaries, and an appeal for support of the Missionary Work; in German: Sketches of the Minor Prophets; in Latin: the Life of our Savior; in English: Sketches of Chinese History; China Opened; Life of Kanghe, together with a great number of articles on the Religion, History, Philosophy, Literature and Laws of the Chinese; in Siamese: a Translation of the New Testament, with the Psalms, and an English-Siamese Dictionary, English Cambodian Dictionary and English-Laos Dictionary. These works I left to my successors to finish, but with the exception of the Siamese Dictionary they have added nothing to them. In Cochin-Chinese: a Complete Dictionary of Cochin-Chinese-English and English-Cochin-Chinese; this work is not yet printed. In Chinese: Forty Tracts, along with three editions of the Life of our Savior; a Translation of the New Testament, the third edition of which I have carried through the press. Of the Translations of the Old Testament, the Prophets and the two first books of Moses are completed. In this language I have also written The Chinese Scientific Monthly Review, a History of England, a History of the Jews, a Universal History and Geography, on Commerce, a Short Account of the British Empire and its Inhabitants, as well as a number of smaller articles. In Japanese: a Translation of the New Testament, and of the first book of Moses, two tracts, and several scientific pamphlets. The only paper to which I now send communications is the Hong-Kong Gazette, the whole Chinese department of which I have undertaken. Till 1842 I wrote for the Chinese Archives." The last year Mr. Gutzlaff spent in Europe, and he had recently completed some important works, to be added to the above list, respecting Chinese affairs and civilization, one of which is a life of the late Chinese Emperor, with whom the missionary appears to have had a more intimate personal acquaintance than was ever yielded to any other European. The family of Mr. Gutzlaff lately travelled some time in the United States, where they were well received in religious circles, and Mr. Gutzlaff himself felt some disappointment that unlooked-for duties in Germany prevented him from extending his tour to the Churches and Universities of this country. A careful investigation will show that his long and faithful labors have had a powerful influence in favor of Christianity in China. * * * * * The once powerful and celebrated Don MANUEL GODOY, Prince of the Peace, Duke of Alcudia, &c., died in Paris on the 4th of October. He was born at Badejoz, of a noble family, in 1767, at seventeen years of age he entered the Royal Guards, and being soon after taken into high favor by the queen Maria Louisa, of Parma, he became at the end of the last and beginning of the present century, a prominent actor in the most important political events of Spain, of which country, for a time, he was Minister and absolute ruler. His conduct was the proximate cause of the Spanish war with Napoleon. Prince Ferdinand (afterwards Ferdinand VII.), tired of the thraldom in which he was kept by his mother and her Minister, applied for protection to Napoleon; and Godoy, discovering that he had done so, accused him of a conspiracy to dethrone his father. This led to the most scandalous scenes. A revolt broke out at Aranjuez, and Godoy nearly lost his life. Charles IV. abdicated, and Ferdinand assumed the sceptre, but the Imperial ruler of France would not permit him to hold it. Napoleon took the crown of Spain for his own family, and the terrible Peninsular war was the result. The consequence, meanwhile, to Godoy, was the loss of his wealth and honors, and his residence in foreign lands for nearly the remainder of his life. In 1847 the Spanish Minister published a decree, authorizing Godoy, by his inferior title of Duke of Alcudia, to return to Spain; and ordering that a certain portion of his once vast property should be restored. The latter part of the decree was acted upon, however, in the same manner as such restitution's are generally made in Spain. The only income of Godoy continued to be an allowance by one of his children. Whatever may have been the conduct of this singular politician half a century ago, those who knew him in his old age could not but admire in him a fine specimen of the Castilian gentleman. To the very last he was remarkable for the elegance of his manners, and high-bred courtesy. In conversation he was most agreeable. The world, too, should be charitable to his memory. Years of embarrassment, exile, poverty, and obscurity, have done much to atone for the faults committed in a time of sudden and intoxicating exaltation, and of unbounded power by him who was then a Prince, Prime Minister, and despot of Spain, but who has died, with the weight of eighty-seven years upon him, a quiet, inoffensive, and forgotten man, in a retired lodging at Paris. * * * * * GEORGE BAKER, the historian of Northamptonshire, was born and brought up at Northampton. To him and his gifted sister, Miss Baker, his native country is deeply indebted. Mr. Baker produced his learned and comprehensive _History of Northamptonshire_, at great expense of money and time, and at great loss to himself. The book ranks in the very first grade of topographical literature, and is remarkable for the perfection of its genealogical details. Unfortunately, the work is left unfinished, owing to the ill health of its author and his want of funds. This amiable and excellent author and man died at Northampton, on the 12th of October, in his seventy-first year. * * * * * M. DE SAVIGNY, member of the Academy of Sciences, and known for his works on zoology, died in October, at Versailles, at an advanced age. * * * * * DR. THOMAS WINGARD, Archbishop of Upsal and Primate of Sweden, died at Upsal, on the 24th September, aged seventy. He had for nine years occupied the chair of Sacred Philology at Lund, when in 1819 he succeeded his father in the see of Götheborg. In 1839, he was promoted to the archbishopric of Upsal. In 1835, he assisted in the establishment of the Swedish Missionary Society, on which occasion he fraternized with the Methodists at Stockholm. He also addressed a letter to the Evangelical Alliance, at its last meeting, regretting his inability to attend. He has left to the University of Upsal his library, consisting of upwards of 34,000 volumes, and his rich collection of coins and medals, and of Scandinavian antiquities. This is the fourth library bequeathed to the University of Upsal within the space of a year, adding to its book-shelves no fewer than 115,000 volumes. The entire number of volumes possessed by the University is now said to be 288,000, 11,000 of these being in manuscript. * * * * * The theatrical architect, dramatic writer, and novelist, SAMUEL BEASELEY, died suddenly, on the 23d of October, at his residence, Tonbridge Castle, Kent, in his sixty-sixth year, of apoplexy. He was born in London, and early attached himself to art, letters, and the stage. The private and public buildings which he was the architect of are numerous. Among his productions as an author may be mentioned his novels _The Roué_ and _The Oxonians_, and his farces of _Old Customs_, _Bachelors' Wives_, _Jealous on all Sides_, and _Is he Jealous?_ Mr. Beaseley's merits as an architect were generally acknowledged; and, although he lived with great generosity, his talents and industry enabled him to realize a considerable fortune. * * * * * MR. H. P. BORRELL, a numismatist of great practical experience and profound judgment, enjoyed for the last quarter of a century, deserved celebrity as a distinguished collector of medals and cultivator of the knowledge of them. He was the author of many of the most important contributions on unedited autonomous and imperial Greek coins which have appeared during his time in the transactions of most of the antiquarian societies in Europe, and especially in Great Britain. Many of Mr. Borrell's important coins have passed, at different times, into the collections of our British Museum, and of eminent private individuals. Mr. Borrell's work on the coins of the Kings of Cyprus affords an example of his laborious numismatical researches. Mr. Borrell died at Smyrna, on the 2d of October. * * * * * REV. JAMES ENDELL TYLER, B. D., of London, was a native of Monmouth, and became a distinguished student and a fellow of of Oriel College, Oxford. On a particular occasion, he happened to attract the attention of Lord Liverpool, then Premier, who, after inquiring, presented him with the living of St. Giles-in-the-fields. This cure he filled actively and ably. To the stall in St. Paul's he was, without his asking, presented by the late Sir Robert Peel, "to mark," as the Minister said, "his sense of Mr. Tyler's exertions in the cause of education at Oxford, and of his exemplary discharge of his onerous duties at St. Giles's." As an author, Mr. Tyler gained some celebrity. His _Life of King Henry V._ attracted much attention. * * * * * EMMA MARTIN, a woman well known as a writer, and as an exemplar of Socialism, died on the 8th of October, at Finchley Common, near London, in the 39th year of her age. The London _Leader_, the organ of the British Socialists, says, that, "allied to a husband (found in the religious circle in which she was reared in Bristol) whose company it was a humiliation to endure, she ultimately, even when she was the mother of three children, refused to continue to submit to it. This, though afterwards made a reproach to her, was so justifiable, that even her religious friends found no fault with it. After much struggling to support her children unaided, she was united to another husband (Mr. Joshua Hopkins), her former one yet living. Though no marriage ceremony was performed, or could be performed (such is the moral state of our law, which denies divorce to all who are wronged, if they happen to be also indigent), yet no affection was ever purer, no union ever more honorable to both parties, and the whole range of priest-made marriages never included one to which happiness belonged more surely, and upon which respect could dwell more truly. Our first knowledge of Mrs. Martin," continues the _Leader_, "was as an opponent of Socialism, against which she delivered public lectures. But as soon as she saw intellectual truth in it, she paused in her opposition to it. Long and serious was the conflict the change in her convictions caused her; but her native love of truth prevailed, and she came over to the advocacy of that she had so resolutely and ably assailed. And none who ever offered us alliance, rendered us greater service, or did it at greater cost. Beautiful in expression, quick in wit, strong in will, eloquent in speech, coherent in conviction, and of stainless character, she was incomparable among public women. She was one of the few among the early advocates of English Socialism who saw _that the conflict against religion_ could not be confined to an attack on forms of faith--to a mere comparison of creeds; and she attached only secondary importance to the _abuses_ of Christianity, where she saw that _the whole_ was an abuse of history, of reason, and of morality. Thus she was cut off from all hope or sympathy from her former connections, and she met with but limited friendships among her new allies. She saw further than any around her what the new communism would end in. She saw that it would establish the healthy despotism of the affections, in lieu of the factitious tyrannies of custom and Parliament. The nature of her opinions, which arose in conviction and not in antagonism, will best be seen in two passages from her writings, at two remarkable periods of her life. In 1835, she wrote in the _Bristol Literary Magazine_, which she edited:-- "'Infidelity is the effusion of weak minds, and the resource of guilty ones. Like the desolating Simoom of the desert, it withers every thing within its reach; and as soon as it has prostrated the morality of the individual, it invades the civil rights of society.' "In 1844, in the seventh of her _Weekly Addresses to the Inhabitants of London_, of which it was the thirty-sixth thousand issued, she said:-- "'When Christianity arose, it gathered to its standard the polished Greek, the restless Roman, the barbarous Saxon; but it was suited only to the age in which it grew. It had anathemas for the bitter-hearted to hurl at those they chose to designate God's enemies. It had promises for the hopeful, cautions for the prudent, charity for the good. It was all things to all men. It became the grand leader of the ascetic to the convent--of the chivalrous to the crusade--of the cruel to the Star Chamber--of the scholar to the secret midnight cell, there to feed on knowledge, but not to impart it. But at length its contentional doctrines bade men look elsewhere for _peace_--for some less equivocal morality, some clearer doctrines, some surer truth.' "In this belief she lived, worked, taught, and in this belief she died. And in passing to the kingdom of the inscrutable future, whose credentials could she better take than those she had won by her courage and truthfulness? Could she take Pagan, Buddhist, Mahommedan, Christian, or some morose sectarian shade; credentials soiled with age, torn in strifes, stained with blood?... Will any who calumniate the last hours of Freethinkers utter the pious fraud over this narrow bed, and the memory of Emma Martin be distorted, as have been those of Voltaire and our own Paine? Does the apparition of these outrages glare upon this grave--outrages too ignoble to notice, too painful to recognize? Heed them not--believe them not. Let not the Christian insult her whom only the grave has vanquished. Let him not utter the word of triumph over the dead, before whom living his coward tongue would falter. Let his manliness teach him truth if his creed has failed to teach him courtesy. As a worker for human improvement, Mrs. Martin was as indefatigable as efficient. From the time when she published her _Exiles of Piedmont_, to the issue of her essay on _God's Gifts and Man's Duties_, and later still, she wrote with ardor, always manifesting force of personal thought, and what is more unusual in the writings of women--strength and brevity of expression. Her lectures were always distinguished by the _instruction_ they conveyed, and the earnestness with which they were delivered. In courage of advocacy and thoroughness of view, no woman except Frances Wright is to be compared with her; and only one, whose name is an affectionate household word in our land (greater, indeed, in order of power), resembles Mrs. Martin in largeness and sameness of speculation, and the capacity to treat womanly and social questions. Mrs. Martin had a strength of will which rules in all spheres, but ever chastened by womanly feeling. Her affectionate nature as much astonished those who knew her in private, as her resolution often astonished those who knew her in public. Indeed, she was the most womanly woman of all the advocates of "Woman's Rights." Her assertion of her claim to interfere in public affairs was but a means of winning security from outrage for the domestic affections. She would send the mother into the world--not in the desertion of motherly duties, but to learn there what motherly duties are--not to submit in ignorance to suckle slaves, but to learn how to rear free men and intelligent and pure women." We have copied thus much of the _Leader's_ obituary of Mrs. Martin, because a certain unpremeditated boldness in it admits the reader to instructive facts in the theory and practice of the party to which she belonged. * * * * * YAR MOHAMMED, the celebrated Vizier of Herat, is reported to have died on the 4th June last. He was one of the most intriguing princes in Asia. Everybody must remember him during the few years which preceded the occupation of Affghanistan by the English. He always managed to keep on the friendliest terms with them and more than one mission was sent to his court from India. * * * * * The well-known composer of ballads, &c., ALEXANDER LEE, died near London, suddenly on the 8th of October. He was a son of the once notorious boxer, Henry Lee, and was married to the late popular singer, Mrs. Waylett. He at one period was lessee of Drury Lane Theatre, in partnership with Captain Polhill. He had been Musical Director of the Olympic and Strand Theatres, of Vauxhall Gardens, &c. He wrote the music for the _Invincibles_, which had such a run, with Madame Vestris in the chief part, at Covent Garden, and afterwards at the American Theatres. To name his ballads would occupy a large space, for a more prolific song-writer never existed. We may mention, however, amongst his works, _The Soldier's Tear_; _Away, away to the mountain's brow_; _Come where the aspens quiver_; _I'll be no submissive wife_; _Rise, gentle moon_; _Kate Kearney_; _Come dwell with me_; _Pretty star of night_; _I've plucked the fairest flower_; _Bird of love_; _Meet me in the willow glen_; _I'm o'er young to marry yet_; _Wha wad na fight for Charlie_; _When the dew is on the grass_; _Down where the blue bells_, &c. Many of these compositions will perpetuate the name of Alexander Lee as a composer of the English school of simple and unaffected melody. We are inclined to believe, more of his songs than those of any other composer are known in the United States. * * * * * PRINCE FREDERICK WILLIAM CHARLES, OF PRUSSIA, died at Berlin on the 28th September. He was a brother of the late Frederick William the Third, uncle of the present King, and the youngest legitimate son of Frederick William the Second. He was born at Potsdam on the 3d of July, 1783. He served actively in the army during the war with France, which terminated so disastrously at the battle of Jena. He was also present at the battles of Katzbach and Leipsic, and subsequently at Waterloo commanded the reserve cavalry of the fourth corps of the Prussians. Gentlemen's and Ladies' Fashions for December. In the fashionable world of this country we have at length the long-expected "hat of the future," from the ingenious artist GENIN, who appears to be the only American who brings to the manufacture of hats an inventive faculty. It is likely that these hats will gradually take the place of the funnel and stove-pipe styles which have been so long in vogue. They are made of fine material, are light, pliable, durable, and have the more important merit of elegant and picturesque appearance. They are indifferently styled the _Union Hat_, and the _Grandison Hat_--the last name referring to the ideal of Queen Anne's days. [Illustration] It is much doubted whether any of the changes made in gentlemen's costume in the last half century are improvements, and there are very few persons of taste who will approve the hat of the last few years more than that worn in the good old times of General Washington, when the three-cornered chapeau began to give place to such hats its are represented in our illustration. [Illustration] The next is somewhat more in vogue, at least for younger men, and for the opera and the theatre. It sets off a fine-looking face advantageously. [Illustration] The last is better suited for travelling or hunting. In Ladies' Fashions, there are some novelties, though comparatively few of a kind to attract a large degree of attention. We select for illustration in the first place-- [Illustration] _Close Under-sleeve._--This sleeve will be found to be of a very desirable form by ladies who object to the open sleeves, as it combines the elegant effect of the latter with the comfort of the close sleeve. It may be made either in muslin or net, and is cut as a bishop's sleeve, the fulness being confined on a band at the wrist. Two broad frills of lace or needlework are attached to the lower part of the sleeve. These frills are open in front of the arm. [Illustration] _Under-sleeve of Lace._--This sleeve is intended to be worn for evening dress. The double row of vandyked lace forming the trimming should drop below the sleeve of the dress, under which the lace sleeve is to be worn. Among the most striking and beautiful articles in the way of Mantillas, is the _Talma_, represented in the following engraving. The capuche is formed on the model of those worn by the celebrated monks of St. Francis, and the _tout ensemble_ is very graceful and beautiful. The entire design is very well exhibited in the illustration. The Talmas are made of velvet, silk, satin, and fine cloth. They have been introduced in New-York by Mr. Bulpin, of Broadway. [Illustration] [Illustration] The jacket and waistcoat described in our last have a certain currency, but are not likely to be universally adopted. The above costumes, from the latest _modes_ received from Paris, are in the main conservative, and the engraving is so distinctive that the figures scarcely need description. Black now becomes indispensable in the toilettes of ladies of fashion; formerly it was exclusively reserved for days of mourning, A black dress does not interfere with the robes of varied colors, and the materials are rich and in good taste. Jet, in fringes or lace, is worn with all materials. Upon moire or satin, deep flounces of chantilly or _ruches_ of lace, placed _en tablier_, are much worn; taffetas flounces are cut and stamped in patterns, or covered with narrow velvets imitating embroidery. For mantelets, and every species of outside garments, black will more generally perhaps than ever before prevail; and rich furs will have their old prominence for trimming, particularly for garments of velvet. Fine and heavy plushes are also being rather largely manufactured for such purposes. There is scarcely any change perceptible in the shape of bonnets, most of the new ones being of the form which has been generally worn for some time; yet there is a slight modification of that shape in bonnets made expressly for the winter. The front is somewhat less wide and open, and the bavolet, being rather narrower, droops less at the back of the head. Of the various materials likely to be employed for bonnets during the coming winter, none will be more fashionable than velvet. Among the velvet bonnets we notice one of violet-colored velvet trimmed with bows of the same, intermingled with black lace and jet beads. The inside trimming consists of velvet pansies, of the natural color of the flowers, having yellow centres. With the flowers are combined a few loops of velvet ribbon of a rich yellow tint, matching the centre of the flowers. Another bonnet, composed of dark blue therry velvet, is trimmed with ribbon, striped with blue and orange. This bonnet is ornamented in the inside with white flowers. A Russian winter riding habit is described as very simple but costly, having a bonnet or hat of sables or other furs, setting on the head very much like a chancellor's full wig, and secured by a richly gemmed bracelet under the chin. The close coat, and light and flowing mantle nearly concealing it, are of black or other dark-colored velvet. This will be in vogue probably only in the intensest severity of the cold season. Black cloth, embroidered, is used for the same purpose. Transcriber's Notes: Simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors were corrected. Italics markup is enclosed in _underscores_. Greek text has been transliterated and enclosed in #number signs#. On p. 683 the author's name is given as Pisistratus Caxton. However, the contents list the author as Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. The table of contents was correct so changed the reference on p. 683. P. 636 corrected typo in Greek text. 
37872	----	file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections) THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE Of Literature, Science, and Art. VOLUME II. DECEMBER TO MARCH, 1850-51. NEW-YORK: STRINGER & TOWNSEND, 222 BROADWAY. FOR SALE BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. BY THE NUMBER, 25 CTS.; THE VOLUME, $1; THE YEAR, $3. PREFACE. On completing the second volume of the International Magazine, the publishers appeal to its pages with confidence for confirmation of all the promises that have been made with regard to its character. They believe the verdict of the American journals has been unanimous upon the point that the _International_ has been the best journal of literary intelligence in the world, keeping its readers constantly advised of the intellectual activity of Great Britain, Germany, France, the other European nations, and our own country. As a journal of the fine arts, it has been the aim of the editor to render it in all respects just, and as particular as the space allotted to this department would allow. And its reproductions of the best contemporary foreign literature bear the names of Walter Savage Landor, Mazzini, Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, Barry Cornwall, Alfred Tennyson, R.M. Milnes, Charles Mackay, Mrs. Browning, Miss Mitford, Miss Martineau, Mrs. Hall, and others; its original translations the names of several of the leading authors of the Continent, and its anonymous selections the titles of the great Reviews, Magazines, and Journals, as well as of many of the most important new books in all departments of literature. But the _International_ is not merely a compilation; it has embraced in the two volumes already issued, original papers, by Bishop Spencer of Jamaica, Henry Austen Layard, LL.D., the most illustrious of living travellers and antiquaries, G.P.R. James, Alfred B. Street, Bayard Taylor, A.O. Hall, R.H. Stoddard, Richard B. Kimball, Parke Godwin, William C. Richards, John E. Warren, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Mary E. Hewitt, Alice Carey, and other authors of eminence, whose compositions have entitled it to a place in the first class of original literary periodicals. Besides the writers hitherto engaged for the _International_, many of distinguished reputations are pledged to contribute to its pages hereafter; and the publishers have taken measures for securing at the earliest possible day the chief productions of the European press, so that to American readers the entire Magazine will be as new and fresh as if it were all composed expressly for their pleasure. The style of illustration which has thus far been so much approved by the readers of the _International_, will be continued, and among the attractions of future numbers will be admirable portraits of Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Halleck, Prescott, Ticknor, Francis, Hawthorne, Willis, Kennedy, Mitchell, Mayo, Melville, Whipple, Taylor, Dewey, Stoddard, and other authors, accompanied as frequently as may be with views of their residences, and sketches of their literary and personal character. Indeed, every means possible will be used to render the _International Magazine_ to every description of persons the most valuable as well as the most entertaining miscellany in the English language. CONTENTS: VOLUME II. DECEMBER TO MARCH, 1850-51. Adams, John, upon Riches, 426 Ambitious Brooklet, The.--_By A.O. Hall_, 477 Accidents will Happen.--_By C. Astor Bristed_, 81 Anima Mundi.--_By R.M. Milnes_, 393 Astor Library, The. (Illustrated,) 436 Attempts to Discover the Northwest Passage, On the, 166 Audubon, John James.--_By Rufus W. Griswold_, 469 Age, Old.--_By Alfred B. Street_, 474 _Arts, The Fine._--Munich and Schwanthaler's "Bavaria," 26.--Art in Florence, 27.--W.W. Story's Return from Italy, 27.--Les Beautes de la France, 27.--History of Art Exhibitions, 28.--Enamel Painting at Berlin, 28.--Portrait of Sir Francis Drake, 28.--The Vernets, 28.--Leutze, Powers, &c., 28.--Kaulbach, 28.--Illustrations of Homer, 28.--Old Pictures, 29.--Michael Angelo, 29.--Conversations by the Academy of Design, 29.--David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps, 29.--Gift from the Bavarian Artists to the King, 190.--Charles Eastlake, 190.--New Picture by Kaulbach, 190.--Russian Porcelain, 190.--Mr. Healey, 191.--Von Kestner on Art, 191.--Russian Music in Paris, 191.--The Goethe Inheritance, 191.--Art Unions; their True Character Considered, 191.--Waagner's "Art in the Future," 313.--Thorwaldsen, 313.--Heidel's "Illustrations of Goethe," 313.--A New Art, 313.--Albert Durer's Illustrations of the Prayer Book, 313.--Moritz Rugendus, and his Sketches of American Scenery, 314.--An Art Union in Vienna, 314.--New Picture by Kaulbach, 314.--Powers's "America," 314.--Dr. Baun's Essay on the two Chief Groups of the Friese of the Parthenon, 314.--Victor Orsel's Paintings in the Church of Notre Dame de Lorelle, 314.--Ehninger's Illustrations of Irving, 314.--Wolff's Paris, 314.--M. Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware," 460.--Discovery of a Picture by Michael Angelo, 460.--The Munich Art Union, 460. _Authors and Books._--A Visit to Henry Heine, 15.--Dr. Zirckel's "Sketches from and concerning the United States," 16.--Aerostation, 17.--New Works by M. Guizot, 17.--Works on the German Revolution, 18.--Dr. Zimmer's Universal History, 18.--Schlosser, 18.--MS. of Le Bel Discovered, 19.--M. Bastiat alive, and plagiarizing, 19.--Cæsarism, 19.--Songs of Carinthia, 20.--Mr. Bryant, 20.--Dr. Laing, 20.--French Reviewal of Mr. Elliot's History of Liberty, 20.--Dr. Bowring, 21.--Henry Rogers and Reviews, 21.--Rabbi Schwartz on the Holy Land, 21.--Mr. John R. Thompson, 21.--German Reviewal of "Fashion," 22.--Ruskin's New Work, 21.--Oehlenschlager's Memoirs, 22.--Planche on Lamartine, 22.--Prosper Mérimée, his Book on America, &c., 22.--Hawthorne, 22.--Matthews, the American Traveller, 23.--Professor Adler's Translation of the Iphigenia in Taurus, 23.--The Pekin Gazette, 23.--New Book by the author of "Shakespeare and his Friends," 23.--Vaulabelle's French History, 23.--Sir Edward Belcher, 23.--Guizot an Editor again, 23.--Life of Southey, 23.--Bulwer's _Ears_, 23.--The Count de Castelnau on South America, 23.--Diplomatic and Literary Studies of Alexis de Saint Priest, 24.--Mrs. Putnam's Review of Bowen, 24.--Herr Thaer, 24.--New Work announced in England, 24.--"Sir Roger de Coverley; by the Spectator," 25.--Memoir of Judge Story, 25.--Garland's Life of John Randolph, 25.--Sir Edgerton Brydges's edition of Milton's Poems, 25.--The Keepsake, 25.--Gray's Poems, 25.--Rev. Professor Weir, 25.--Douglas Jerrold's Complete Works, 25.--Memoirs of the Poet Wordsworth, by his Nephew, 25.--New German books on Hungary, 173.--"Polish Population in Galicia," 173.--Travels and Ethnological works of Professor Reguly, 174.--Works on Ethnology, published by the Austrian Government, 174.--Karl Gutzlow, 174.--Neandar's Library, 174.--Karl Simrock's Popular Songs, 175.--Belgian Literature, 175.--Prof. Johnston's Work on America, 175.--Literary and Scientific Works at Giessen, 175.--Beranger, 175.--The House of the "Wandering Jew," 176.--The Count de Tocqueville upon Dr. Franklin, &c., 176.--Audubon's Last Work, 176.--Book Fair at Leipsic, 176.--Baroness von Beck, 177.--Berghaus's Magazine, Albert Gallatin, &c., 177.--Auerback's Tales, 177.--Baron Sternberg, 177.--"The New Faith Taught in Art," 177.--Freiligrath, 177.--New Adventure and Discovery in Africa, 178.--French Almanacs, 178.--The _Algemeine Zeitung_ on Literary Women, 178.--Cormenin on War, 178.--Writers of "Young France," 179.--George Sand's Last Works, 179.--New Books on the French Revolution, Mirabeau, Massena, &c., 179.--Cousin, 179.--Tomb of Godfrey of Bouillon, 179.--Maxims of Frederic the Great, 179.--New Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 180.--Rectorship of Glasgow University, 180.--Tennyson, 180.--Mayhew, D'Israeli, Leigh Hunt, The Earl of Carlisle, &c., 180.--New Work by Joseph Balmes, 180.--The late Mrs. Bell Martin, 181.--The _Athenæum_ on Mrs. Mowatt's Novels, 181.--New work by Mrs. Southworth, 181.--Charles Mackay, sent to India, 182.--Pensions to Literary Men, 182.--German Translation of Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature, 182.--David Copperfield, 183.--D.D. Field and the English Lawyers, 183.--Louisiana Historical Collections, 183.--Elihu Burritt's Absurdities, 184.--John Mills, 184.--Dr. Latham's "Races of Men," 184.--Homoeopathic Review, 184.--Bohn's Publications, 184.--Professor Reed's Rhetoric, 185.--Mr. Bancroft's forthcoming History, 185.--Dr. Schoolcraft, 185.--MS. of Dr. Johnson's Memoirs, 185.--Literary "Discoveries," 185.--M. Girardin, 185.--Vulgar Lying of the last English Traveller in America, 186.--The Real Peace Congress, 186.--Milton, Burke, Mazzini, Webster, 187.--Sir Francis Head, 187.--Dr. Bloomfield, 187.--New Book by Mr. Cooper, 187.--Mr. Judd's "Richard Edney," 187.--E.G. Squier, Hawthorne, &c., 187.--The Author of "Olive," on the Sphere of Woman, 188.--Flemish Poems, 188.--"Lives of the Queens of Scotland," 188.--John S. Dwight, 188.--History of the Greek Revolution, 188.--New Edition of the Works of Goethe, 188.--W.G. Simms, Dr. Holmes, &c., 188.--The Songs of Pierre Dupont, 189.--Arago and Prudhon, 189.--Charles Sumner, 189.--"The Manhattaner in New Orleans," 189.--"Reveries of a Bachelor," "Vala," &c., 189.--Of Personalities, 297.--Last Work of Oersted, 298.--New Dramas, 299.--German Novels, 300.--Hungarian Literature, 301.--New German Book on America, 301.--Ruckert's "Annals of German History," 301.--Zschokke's Private Letters, 301.--Works by Bender and Burmeister, 301.--The Countess Hahn-Hahn, 302.--"Value of Goethe as a Poet," 302.--Hagen's History of Recent Times, 302.--Cotta's Illustrated Bible, 302.--Wallon's History of Slavery, 302.--Translation of the Journal of the U.S. Exploring Expedition into German, 302.--Richter's Translation of Mrs. Barbauld, 302.--Bodenstet's New Book on the East, 302.--Third Part of Humboldt's "Cosmos," &c., 303.--Dr. Espe, 303.--The Works of Neander, 303.--Works of Luther, 303.--_L'Universe Pittoresque_, 303.--M. Nisard, 303.--French Documentary Publications, 303.--M. Ginoux, 303.--M. Veron, 304.--Eugene Sue's New Books, 304.--George Sand in the Theatre, 304.--Alphonse Karr, 304.--Various new Publications in Paris, 304.--The Catholic Church and Pius IX., 305.--Notices of Hayti, 305.--Work on Architecture, by Gailhabaud, 305.--Italian Monthly Review, 305.--Discovery of Letters by Pope, 305.--Lord Brougham, 305.--Alice Carey, 305.--Mrs. Robinson ("Talvi"), 306.--New Life of Hannah More, 306.--Professor Hackett on the Alps, 306.--Mrs. Anita George, 307.--Life and Works of Henry Wheaton, 308.--R.R. Madden, 308.--Rev. E.H. Chapin on "Woman," 308.--Discovery of Historical Documents of Quebec, 308.--Professor Andrews's Latin Lexicon, 309.--"Salander," by Mr. Shelton, 309.--Prof. Bush on Pneumatology, 309.--Satire on the Rappers, by J.R. Lowell, 309.--Henry C. Phillips on the Scenery of the Central Regions of America, 310.--Sam. Adams no Defaulter, 310.--Mr. Willis, 310.--Life of Calvin, 310.--Notes of a Howadje, 310.--Mr. Putnam's "World's Progress," 310.--Mr. Whittier, 310.--New Volume of Hildreth's History of the United States, 311.--The Memorial of Mrs. Osgood, 311.--Fortune Telling in Paris, 311.--Writings of Hartley Coleridge, 311.--New Books forthcoming in London, 312.--Mr. Cheever's "Island World of the Pacific," 312.--Works of Bishop Onderdonk, 312.--Moreau's _Imitatio Christi_, 312.--New German Poems, 312.--Schröder on the Jews, 312.--Arago on Ballooning, 312.--Books prohibited at Naples, 312.--Notices of Mazzini, 313.--Charles Augustus Murray, 313.--New History of Woman, 313.--Letters on Humboldt's Cosmos, 446.--German Version of the "Vestiges of Creation," 447.--Hegel's _Aesthetik_, 447.--New Work in France on the Origin of the Human Race, 448.--Lelewel on the Geography of the Middle Ages, 448.--More German Novels, 448.--"Man in the Mirror of Nature," 449.--Herr Kielhau, on Geology, 449.--Proposed Prize for a Defence of Absolutism, 449.--Werner's Christian Ethics, 449.--William Meinhold, 449.--Prize History of the Jews, 449.--English Version of Mrs. Robinson's Work on America, 449.--Poems by Jeanne Marie, 449.--General Gordon's Memoirs, 449.--George Sand's New Drama, 449.--Other New French Plays, 451.--M. Cobet's History of France, 451.--Rev. G.R. Gleig, 451.--Ranke's Discovery of MSS. by Richelieu, 451.--George Sand on Bad Spelling, 451.--Lola Montes, 451.--Montalembert, 451.--Glossary of the Middle Ages, 451.--A Coptic Grammar, 451.--The Italian Revolution, 452.--Italian Archæological Society, 452.--Abaddie, the French Traveller, 452.--The Vatican Library, 452.--New Ode by Piron, 452.--Posthumous Works of Rossi, 452.--Bailey, the Author of "Festus," 453.--Clinton's _Fasti_, 453.--Captain Cunningham, 453.--Dixon's Life of Penn, 453.--Literary Women in England, 453.--Miss Martineau's History of the Last Half Century, 453.--The Lexington Papers, 453.--Captain Medwin, 453.--John Clare, 454.--De Quincy's Writings, 454.--Bulwer's Poems, 454.--Episodes of Insect Life, 454.--Dr. Achilli, 454.--Samuel Bailey, 454.--Major Poussin, and his Work on the United States, 454.--French Collections in Political Economy, 455.--Joseph Gales, 456.--Rev. Henry T. Cheever, 456.--Job R. Tyson on Colonial History, 456.--Henry James, 456.--Torrey and Neander, 457.--Works of John C. Calhoun, 457.--Historic Certainties respecting Early America, 457.--Mr. Schoolcraft, 457.--Dr. Robert Knox, 458.--Mr. Boker's Plays, 458.--The _Literary World_ upon a supposed Letter of Washington, 458.--Dr. Ducachet's Dictionary of the Church, 458.--Edith May's Poems, 458.--The American Philosophical Society, 458.--Professor Hows, 458.--Mr. Redfield's Publications, 458.--Rev. William W. Lord's New Poem, 450. Battle of the Churches in England, 327 Ballad of Jessie Carol.--_By Alice Carey_, 230 Barry Cornwall's Last Song, 392 Bereaved Mother, To a.--_By Hermann_, 476 Biographies, Memoirs, &c., 425 Black Pocket-Book, The, 89 Bombay, A View of.--_By Peter Leicester_, 130 Boswell, The Killing of Sir Alexander, 329 Brontë and her Sisters, Sketches of Miss, 315 Burke, Edmund, His Residences and Grave.--_By Mrs. S.C. Hall._ (Illustrated.) 145 Bunjaras, The, 377 Burlesques and Parodies, 426 Byron, Scott, and Carlyle, Goethe's Opinions of, 461 Camille Desmoulins, 326 Carey, Henry C.--_By Rufus W. Griswold_, 402 Castle in the Air, The.--_By R.H. Stoddard_, 474 Chatterton, Thomas. (Illustrated.) 289 Classical Novels, 161 Count Monte-Leone. Book Second, 45 " " " Third, 216 " " " Third, concluded, 349 " " " Fourth, 495 Cow-Tree of South America, The, 128 Correspondence, Original: A Letter from Paris, 170 Cyprus and the Life Led There, 216 Davis on the Half Century: Etherization, 317 Dacier, Madame, 332 Dante.--_By Walter Savage Landor_, 421 Death, Phenomena of, 425 _Deaths, Recent._--Hon. Samuel Young, 141.--Robinson, the Caricaturist, 141.--The Duke of Palmella, 142.--Carl Rottmann, 142.--The Marquis de Trans, 142.--Ch. Schorn, 142.--Hon. Richard M. Johnson, 142.--Wm. Blacker, 142.--Mrs. Martin Bell, 142.--Signor Baptistide, 142.--Gen. Chastel, 142.--Dr. Medicus, and others, 142.--Rev. Dr. Dwight, 195.--Count Brandenburgh, 196.--Lord Nugent, 196.--M. Fragonard, 196.--M. Droz, 197.--Professor Schorn, 197.--Gustave Schwab, 197.--Francis Xavier Michael Tomie, 427.--Governors Bell and Plumer, 427.--Birch, the Painter, 427.--Professor Sverdrup, W. Seguin, Mrs. Ogilvy, 427.--W. Howison, 428.--H. Royer-Collard, 428.--Col. Williams, 428.--William Sturgeon, 428.--J.B. Anthony, 428.--Mr. Osbaldiston, 428.--Professor Mau, 428.--Madame Junot, Mrs. Wallack, &c., 428.--Herman Kriege, 429.--Madame Schmalz, 429.--George Spence, 429.--General Lumley, 429.--Robert Roscoe, 429.--Richie, the Sculptor, 429.--Martin d'Auch, 429.--Rev. Walter Colton, 568.--Major d'Avezac, 569.--M. Asser, 569.--M. Lapie, 569.--Professor Link, 569.--General St. Martin, 570.--Frederick Bastiat, 570.--Benjamin W. Crowninshield, 571.--Professor Anstey, 571.--Donald McKenzie, 572.--Horace Everett, LL.D., 572.--James Harfield, 572.--Wm. Wilson, 572.--Professor James Wallace, 572.--Joshua Milne, 572.--General Bem, 573.--T.S. Davies, F.R.S., 573.--H.C. Schumacher, 573.--W.H. Maxwell, 573.--Alexander McDonald, 573. Dickens, To Charles.--_By Walter Savage Landor_, 75 Drive Round our Neighborhood, in 1850, A.--_By Miss Milford_, 270 Duty.--_By Alfred B. Street_, 332 Duchess, A Peasant, 169 Edward Layton's Reward.--_By Mrs. S.C. Hall_, 201 Editorial Visit, An, 421 Egypt under the Pharaohs.--_By John Kinrick_, 322 Encouragement of Literature by Governments, 160 Exclusion of Love from the Greek Drama, 123 Fountain in the Wood, The, 129 French Generals of To-Day, 334 Gateway of the Oceans, 124 Ghetto of Rome, 393 Gleanings from the Journals, 285 Grief of the Weeping Willow, 31 Haddock, Charles B., Charge d'Affaires to Portugal. (With a Portrait on steel.) 1 Hecker, Herr, described by Madame Blaze de Bury, 30 _Historical Review._--The United States, 560.--Europe, 564.--Mexico, 565.--British America, 566.--The West Indies, 566.--Central America, the Isthmus, 566.--South America, 567.--Africa, 567. Hunt, Leigh, upon G.P.R. James, 30 Ireland in the Last Age: Curran, 519 Journals of Louis Philippe, 377 Kellogg's, Mr., Exploration of Mt. Sinai, 462 Kimball, Richard B., the Author of "St. Leger." (Illustrated.) 156 Layard's Recent Gifts from Nimroud. (Illustrated.) 4 Layard, Austen Henry, LL.D. (With a Portrait,) 433 Lafayette, Talleyrand, Metternich, and Napoleon.--_Sketched by Lord Holland_, 465 Last Case of the Supernatural, 481 Lectures, Popular, 319 Life at a Watering Place.--_By C. Astor Bristed_, 240 Lionne at a Watering Place, The, 533 Lost Letter, The, 522 Mazzini on Italy, 265 Mackay, Charles, Last Poems by, 348 Marvel, Andrew. (Illustrated.) 438 Mother's Last Song, The.--_By Barry Cornwall_, 270 _Music and the Drama.--The Astor Place Opera, Parodi, 29.--Mrs. Oake Smith's New Tragedy, 30. Mystic Vial, The, Part i. 61 " " Part ii. 249 " " Part iii. 378 My Novel, Or Varieties in English Life.--_By Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton_, Book II. Chapters i. to vi. 109 Book II. Chapters vii. to xii. 273 Book III. Chapters i. to xii. 407 Book III. Chapters xiii. to xxvii. 542 Murder Market, The, 126 New Tales by Miss Martineau--The Old Governess, 163 Novelist's Appeal for the Canadas, A, 443 Old Times in New-York, 320 Osgood, The late Mrs.--_By Rufus W. Griswold_, 131 Paris Fashions for December. (Illustrated.) 144 " " January. (Illustrated.) 286 " " February. (Illustrated.) 431 " " March. (Illustrated.) 567 Peace Society, The First, 321 Penn, (William,) and Macaulay, 336 Pleasant Story of a Swallow, 123 Poet's Lot, The.--_By the author of "Festus,"_ 45 Power's, Hiram, Greek Slave.--_By Elizabeth Barret Browning_, 88 Poems by S.G. Goodrich, A Biographical Review. (Illustrated.) 153 Public Libraries, Ancient and Modern, 359 Recent Deaths in the Family of Orleans, 122 Reminiscences of Paganini, 167 Responsibility of Statesmen, 127 Rossini in the Kitchen, 321 Scandalous French Dances in American Parlors, 333 _Scientific Miscellany._--Hydraulic Experiments in Paris, 430.--French Populations, 430.--African Exploring Expedition, 430.--The Hungarian Academy, 430.--Gas from Water, &c., 430.--The French "Annuaire," 573.--Sittings of the Academy of Sciences, 573.--New Scientific Publications, 574.--Sir David Brewster, 574. Sir Nicholas at Marston Moor.--_By Winthrop M. Praed_, 80 Sliding Scale of Inconsolables. From the French, 162 Smiths, The Two Miss.--_By Mrs. Crowe_, 76 Song of the Season.--_By Charles Mackay_, 128 Sounds from Home.--_By Alice G. Neal_, 332 Spencer, Aubrey George, LL.D., Bishop of Jamaica, 157 Spirit of the English Annuals for 1851, 197 Stanzas.--_By Alfred Tennyson_, 273 Statues.--_By Walter Savage Landor_, 126 Story Without a Name, A.--_By G.P.R. James_, 32 " " Chapters vi. to ix. 205 " " Chapters x. to xiii. 337 " " Chapters xiv. to xvii. 482 Story of Calais, A.--_By Richard B. Kimball_, 231 Story of a Poet, 88 Swift, Dean, and his Amours. (Illustrated.) 7 Temper of Women, 437 Theatrical Criticism in the Last Age, 334 To a Celebrated Singer.--_By R.H. Stoddard_, 86 To one in Affliction.--_By G.R. Thompson_, 541 Troost, of Tennessee, The Late Dr. 332 Twickenham Ghost, The, 60 Valetudinarian, The Confirmed.--_By Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton_, 203 Vampire, The Last.--_By Mrs. Crowe_, 107 Voltigeur.--_By W.H. Thackeray_, 197 Voisenen, The Abbé de, and his Times, 511 Wane of the Year, The, 129 Webster, LL.D., Horace, and the Free Academy. (Portrait.) 444 Wearing the Beard.--_Dr. Marcy_, 130 Wiseman, Dr., Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster (Illustrated.) 143 Wild Sports in Algeria.--_By Jules Gerard_, 121 Wolf Chase, The.--_By C. Whitehead_, 86 [Illustration: _C.B. Haddock_] THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE of Literature, Art, and Science. Vol. II. NEW YORK, DECEMBER 1, 1850. No. I. OUR DIPLOMATIC SERVANTS. CHARLES B. HADDOCK, CHARGE D'AFFAIRES FOR PORTUGAL. [With a Portrait, Engraved by J. Andrews.] Old notions of diplomacy are obsolete. The plain, straightforward, and masterly manner in which Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton managed the difficult affairs which a few years ago threatened war between this country and England have taught mankind a useful lesson on this subject. We perceive that the London _Times_ has been engaged in a controversy whether there should be diplomatists or no diplomatists, whether, in fact, the profession should survive; arguing from this case conducted by our illustrious Secretary and Lord Ashburton, that negotiation in foreign countries is plain sailing for great men, and that common agents would do the necessary business on ordinary occasions. We are not prepared to accept the doctrine of the _Times_, though ready enough to admit that it is to be preferred to the employment of such persons as many whom we have sent abroad in the last twenty years--many who now in various capacities represent the United States in foreign countries. Upon this question however we do not propose now to enter. It is one which may be deferred still a long time--until the means of intercommunication shall be greater than steam and electricity have yet made them, or until the evils of unworthy representation shall have driven people to the possible dangers of an abandonment of the system without such a reason. We design in this and future numbers of the _International_ simply to give a few brief personal sketches of the most honorably distinguished of the diplomatic servants of the United States now abroad, and we commence with the newly-appointed _Charge d'Affaires_ to Lisbon. Charles Brickett Haddock was born at Salisbury (now Franklin), New Hampshire, on the 20th of June, 1796. His father, William Haddock, was a native of Haverhill, Massachusetts. His paternal grandfather removed from Boston to Haverhill, and married a sister of Dr. Charles Brickett, an eminent physician of that town. The family, according to a tradition among them, are descended from Admiral Sir Richard Haddocke, one of ten sons and eleven daughters of Mr. Haddocke, of Lee, in England. Richard Haddocke was an eminent officer in the Royal Navy. He was knighted before 1678, and returned a member of Parliament the same year, and again in 1685. He died in 1713, and was buried in the family vault at Lee, where there is a gravestone, with brass plates on which are engraved portraits of his father, his father's three wives, and thirteen sons and eleven daughters. The mother of Dr. Haddock was Abigail Webster, a favorite sister of Ezekiel and Daniel Webster, who, with Sarah, were the only children of the Hon. Ebenezer Webster by his second wife, Abigail Eastman, who survived her husband and all her daughters. Mrs. Haddock was a woman of strong character, and greatly beloved in society. She died in December, 1805, at the age of twenty-seven, leaving two sons, Charles and William, one about nine and the other seven years of age. Her last words to her husband were, "I leave you two beautiful boys: my wish is that you should educate them both." The injunction was not forgotten; both were in due time placed at a preparatory school in Salisbury, both entered Dartmouth College, and without an academic censure or reproof graduated with distinction. The younger, having studied the profession of the law, married a daughter of Mills Olcott, of Hanover, and after a few years, rich in promise of professional eminence, died of consumption at Hanover, in 1835. The elder, Charles B. Haddock, was born in the house in which his grandfather first lived, after he removed to the river, in Franklin; though his childhood was chiefly spent at Elms Farms, in the mansion built by his father, and now the favorite residence of his uncle, Daniel Webster,--a spot hardly equaled for picturesque and tranquil beauty in that part of New England. How much of his rural tastes and gentle feelings the professor owes to the place of his nativity it is not for us to determine. It is certain that a fitter scene to inspire the sentiments for which he is distinguished, and which he delights to refresh by frequent visits to these scenes, could not well be imagined. Every hill and valley, every rock and eddy, seem to be familiar to him, and to have a legend for his heart. His earliest distinct recollections, he has often been heard to say, are the burial of a sister younger than himself, his own baptism at the bedside of his dying mother, and the death of his grandfather; and the first things that awakened a romantic emotion were the flight of the night-hawk and the note of the whippoorwill, both uncommonly numerous and noticeable there in summer evenings. From 1807 he was in the academy during the summer months, and attended the common school in winter, until 1811, when, in his sixteenth year, he taught his own first winter school. It had been his fortune to have as instructors persons destined to unusual eminence: Mr. Richard Fletcher, now one of the justices of the Superior Court of Massachusetts; Justice Willard, of Springfield; the Rev. Edward L. Parker, of Londonderry; and Nathaniel H. Carter, the well-known poet and general writer. It was under Mr. Carter that he first felt a genuine love of learning; and he has always ascribed more of his literary tastes, to his insensible influence, as he read to him Virgil and Cicero, than to any other living teacher. His earliest Latin book was the Æneid, over the first half of which he had, summer after summer, fatigued and vexed himself, before the idea occurred to him that it was an epic poem; and that idea came to him at length not from his teachers, but from a question of his uncle, Daniel Webster, about the descent of the hero into the infernal regions. When a proper impression of its design was once formed, and some familiarity with the language was acquired, Virgil was run through with great rapidity: half a book in a day. So also with Cicero: an oration at a lesson. There was no verbal accuracy acquired or attempted; but a ready mastery of the current of discourse--a familiarity with the point and spirit of the work. In August, 1812, he was admitted a freshman in Dartmouth College. It was a small class, but remarkable from having produced a large number of eminent men, among whom we may mention George A. Simmons, a distinguished lawyer in northern New York, and one of the profoundest philosophers in this country; Dr. Absalom Peters; President Wheeler, of the University of Vermont; Governor Hubbard, of Maine; and Professor Joseph Torrey, of the University of Vermont, since so honorably known as the learned translator of Neander, and as being without a superior among American scholars in a knowledge of the profounder German literature. The late illustrious and venerated Dr. James Marsh, the editor of Coleridge, and the only pupil of that great metaphysician who was the peer of his master, was of the class below his, and was an intimate companion in study. From the beginning of his college life it was his ambition to distinguish himself. By the general consent of his classmates, and by the appointment of the faculty, he held the first place at each public exhibition through the four years in which he was a student, and at the last commencement was complimented with having the order of the parts, according to which the Latin salutatory had hitherto been first, so changed that he might still have precedence and yet have the English valedictory. During his junior year, his mind was first decidedly turned toward religion, and with Wheeler, Torrey, Marsh, and some forty others, he made a public profession. The two years after he left college were spent at Andover, in the study of divinity. While here, with Torrey, Wheeler, Marsh, and one or two more, he joined in a critical reading of Virgil--an exercise of great value in enlarging a command of his own language, as well as his knowledge of Latin. At the close of the second year he was attacked with hemorrhage of the lungs, and advised to try a southern climate for the winter. He sailed in October, 1818, for Charleston, and spent the winter in that city and in Savannah, with occasional visits into the surrounding country. The following summer he traveled, chiefly on horseback, and in company with the Rev. Pliny Fisk, from Charleston home. To this tour he ascribes his recovery. He soon after took his master's degree, and was appointed the first Professor of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres in Dartmouth College. From that time a change was obvious in the literary spirit of the instruction given at the institution. The department to which he was called became very soon the most attractive in the college, and some of the most distinguished orators of our country are pleased to admit that they obtained their first impressions of true eloquence and a correct style from the youthful professor. He introduced readings in the Scriptures, and in Shakspeare, Milton, and Young, with original criticisms by his pupils on particular features of the principal works of genius, as the hell of Virgil, Dante, and Milton; and the prominent characters of the best tragedies, as the Jew of Cumberland and of Shakspeare; and extemporaneous discussions of æsthetical and political questions, as upon the authenticity of Ossian, the authorship of Homer, the sincerity of Cromwell, or the expediency of the execution of Charles. He also exerted his influence in founding an association for familiar written and oral discussions in literature, in which Dr. Edward Oliver, Dr. James Marsh, Professor Fiske, Mr. Rufus Choate, Professor Chamberlain, and others, acted a prominent part. He retained this chair until August, 1838, when he was appointed to that of Intellectual Philosophy and Political Economy, which he now holds, but, which, of course, will be occupied by another during his absence in the public service--the faculty having declined on any account to accept his resignation or to appoint a successor. Dr. Haddock has been invited to the professorship of rhetoric in Hamilton College, and to the presidency of that institution, the presidency and a professorship in the Auburn Theological Seminary, the presidency of Bowdoin College, and, less formally, to that of several other colleges in New England. In public affairs, he has for four successive years been a representative in the New Hampshire Legislature, and in this period was active in introducing the present common school system of the State, and was the first commissioner of common schools, originating the course of action in that important office which has since been pursued. He was one of the fathers of the railroad system in New Hampshire, and his various speeches had the effect to change the policy of the State on this subject. He addressed the first convention called at Lebanon to consider the practicability of a road across the State, and afterward a similar convention at Montpelier. For two years he lectured every Sabbath evening to the students and to the people of the village, on the historical portions of the New Testament. For several years he held weekly meetings for the interpretation of Scripture, in which the ladies of the village met at his house. And for twenty years he has constantly preached to vacant parishes in the vicinity. He has delivered anniversary orations before the Phi Beta Kappa Societies of Dartmouth and Yale, the Rhetorical Societies of Andover and Bangor, the Religious Society of the University of Vermont, the New Hampshire Historical Society, and the New England Society of New York; numerous lyceum lectures, in Boston, Lowell, Salem, Portsmouth, Manchester, New Bedford, and other places; and of the New Hampshire Education Society he was twelve or fifteen years secretary, publishing annual reports. The principal periodicals to which he has contributed are the _Biblical Repository_ and the _Bibliotheca Sacra_. A volume of his _Addresses and Miscellaneous Writings_ was published in 1846, and he has now a work on rhetoric in preparation. He has been twice married--the last time to a sister of Mr. Kimball, the author of "St. Leger," &c. He has three children living, and has buried seven. In agriculture, gardening, and public improvements of all kinds, he has taken a lively interest. The rural ornaments of the town in which he lives owe much to him. He may be said to have introduced the fruit and horticulture which are now becoming so abundant as luxuries, and so remarkable as ornaments of the village. In 1843 he received the degree of D.D. from Bowdoin College. Of Dartmouth College nearly half the graduates are his pupils. While commissioner of common schools, he published a series of letters to teachers and students which were more generally republished in the various papers of the country than anything else of the kind ever before written. Perhaps no one in this country has discussed so great a variety of subjects. His essays upon the proper standard of education for the pulpit, addresses on the utility of certain proposed lines of railway, orations on the duties of the citizen to the state, lectures before various medical societies, speeches in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, letters written while commissioner of common schools, contributions to periodicals, addresses before a great variety of literary associations, writings on agriculture and gardening, yearly reports on education, lectures on classical learning, rhetoric and belles-lettres, and sermons, delivered weekly for more than twenty years, illustrate a life of remarkable activity, and dedicated to the best interests of mankind. Unmoved by the calls of ambition, which might have tempted him to some one great and engrossing effort, his aim has been the general good of the people. The following extract from the dedication, to his pupils, of his _Addresses and Miscellaneous Writings_, evinces something of his purpose: "It is now five-and-twenty years since I adopted the resolution never to refuse to attempt anything consistent with my professional duties, in the cause of learning, or religion, which I might be invited to do. This resolution I have not at any time regretted, and perhaps I may say, I have not essentially violated it. However this may be, I have never suffered from want of something to do." Professor Haddock's style is remarkable for purity and correctness. His sentences are all finished sentences, never subject to an injurious verbal criticism, without a mistake of any kind, or a grammatical error. We have not written of Dr. Haddock as a politician; but he is a thoroughly informed statesman, profoundly versed in public law, and familiar with all the policy and aims of the American government. He is of course a Whig. He has been educated, politically, in the school of his illustrious uncle, and probably no man living is more thoroughly acquainted with Mr. Webster's views, or more capable of their application in affairs. It is therefore eminently suitable that he should be on the list of our representatives abroad, while the foreign department is under Mr. Webster's administration. The Whig party in New Hampshire have not been insensible of Dr. Haddock's surpassing abilities, of his sagacity, or his merits. Could they have done so, they would have made him Governor, or a senator in Congress, on any of the occasions in many years in which such officers have been chosen. Considered without reference to party, we can think of no gentleman in the country who would be likely to represent the United States more worthily at foreign courts, or who by his capacities, suavity of manner, or honorable nature, would make a more pleasing and desirable impression upon the most highly cultivated society. Those who know him well will assent to the justness of a classification which places him in the same list of intellectual diplomats which embraces Bunsen, Guizot, and our own Everett, Irving, Bancroft and Marsh. [Illustration: No. I.--WINGED HUMAN-HEADED BULL.] DR. LAYARD'S RECENT GIFTS FROM NIMROUD. The researches of no antiquary or traveler in modern times have excited so profound an interest as those of Austen Henry Layard, who has summoned the kings and people of Nineveh through three thousand years to give their testimony against the skeptics of our age in support of the divine revelation. In a former number of _The International_ we presented an original and very interesting letter from Dr. Layard himself, upon the nature and bearing of his discoveries. Since then he has sent to London, where they have arrived in safety, several of the most important sculptures described in his work republished here last year by Mr. Putnam. Among them are the massive and imposing statues of a human-headed bull and a human-headed lion, of which we have engravings in some of the London journals. The _Illustrated London News_ describes these specimens of ancient art as follows: "No. I. is the Human-Headed and Eagle-Winged Bull. This animal would seem to bear some analogy to the Egyptian sphynx, which represents the head of the King upon the body of the lion, and is held by some to be typical of the union of intellectual power with physical strength. The sphynx of the Egyptians, however, is invariably sitting, whereas the Nimroud figure is always represented standing. The apparent resemblance being so great, it is at least worthy of consideration whether the head on the winged animals of the Ninevites may not be that of the King, and the intention identical with that of the sphynx; though we think it more probable that there is no such connection, and that the intention of the Ninevites was to typify their god under the common emblems of intelligence, strength and swiftness, as signified by the additional attributes of the bird. The specimen immediately before us is of gypsum, and of colossal dimensions, the slab being ten feet square by two feet in thickness. It was situated at the entrance of a chamber, being built into the side of the door, so that one side and a front view only could be seen by the spectator. Accordingly, the Ninevite sculptor, in order to make both views perfect, has given the animal five legs. The four seen in the side view show the animal in the act of walking; while, to render the representation complete in the front view, he has repeated the right fore leg again, but in the act of standing motionless. The countenance is noble and benevolent in expression; the features are of true Persian type; he wears an egg-shaped cap, with three horns and a cord round the base of it. The hair at the back of the head has seven ranges of curls; and the beard, as in the portraits of the King, is divided into three ranges of curls, with intervals of wavy hair. In the ears, which are those of a bull, are pendent ear-rings. The whole of the dewlap is covered with tiers of curls, and four rows are continued beneath the ribs along the whole flank; on the back are six rows of curls, and upon the haunch a square bunch, ranged successively, and down the back of the thigh four rows. The hair at the end of the tail is curled like the beard, with intervals of wavy hair. The hair at the knee joints is likewise curled, terminating in the profile views of the limbs in a single curl of the kind (if we may use the term) called _croche coeur_. The elaborately sculptured wings extend over the back of the animal to the very verge of the slab. All the flat surface of the slab is covered with cuneiform inscription; there being twenty-two lines between the fore legs, twenty-one lines in the middle, nineteen lines between the hind legs, and forty-seven lines between the tail and the edge of the slab. The whole of this slab is unbroken, with the exception of the fore-feet, which arrived in a former importation, but which are now restored to their proper place. [Illustration: No. II.--WINGED HUMAN-HEADED LION.] "No. II. represents the Human-Headed and Winged Lion--nine feet long, and the same in height; and in purpose and position the same as the preceding, which, however, it does not quite equal in execution. In this relievo we have the same head, with the egg-shaped three-horned head-dress, exactly like that of the bull; but the ear is human, and not that of a lion. The beard and hair of the head are even yet more elaborately curled than the last; but the hair on the legs and sides of the animal represents that shaggy appendage of the animal. Round the loins is a succession of numerous cords, which are drawn into four separate knots; at the extremities are fringes, forming as many distinct tassels. At the end of the tail, the claw--on which we commented in a former article--is distinctly visible. The strength of both animals is admirably and characteristically conveyed. Upon the flat surface of this slab, as in the last, is a cuneiform inscription; twenty lines being between the fore legs, twenty-six in the middle, eighteen between the hind legs, and seventy-one at the back." On the subject of Eastern languages, an understanding of which is necessary to the just apprehension of these inscriptions, that most acute antiquary, Major Rawlinson, remarks: "My own impression is that hundreds of the languages at one time current through Asia are now utterly lost; and it is not, therefore, to be expected that philologists or ethnologists will ever succeed in making out a genealogical table of language, and in affiliating all the various dialects. Coming to the Assyrian and Babylonian languages, we were first made acquainted with them as translations of the Persian and Parthian documents in the trilingual inscriptions of Persia; but lately we have had an enormous amount of historical matter brought to light in tablets of stone written in these languages alone. The languages in question I certainly consider to be Semitic. I doubt whether we could trace at present in any of the buildings or inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia the original primitive civilization of man--that civilization which took place in the very earliest ages. I am of opinion that civilization first showed itself in Egypt after the immigration of the early tribes from Asia. I think that the human intellect first germinated on the Nile, and that then there was, in a later age, a reflux of civilization from the Nile back to Asia. I am quite satisfied that the system of writing in use on the Tigris and Euphrates was taken from the Nile; but I admit that it was carried to a much higher state of perfection in Assyria than it had ever reached in Egypt. The earliest Assyrian inscriptions were those lately discovered by Mr. Layard in the north-west Palace at Nimroud, being much earlier than anything found at Babylon. Now, the great question is the date of these inscriptions. Mr. Layard himself, when he published his book on Nineveh, believed them to be 2500 years before the Christian era; but others, and Dr. Hincks among the number, brought them down to a much later date, supposing the historical tablets to refer to the Assyrian kings mentioned in Scripture--(Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, &c.). I do not agree with either one of these calculations or the other. I am inclined to place the earliest inscriptions from Nimroud between 1350 and 1200 before the Christian era; because, in the first place, they had a limit to antiquity; for in the earliest inscriptions there was a notice of the seaports of Phoenicia, of Tyre and Sidon, of Byblus, Arcidus, &c.; and it was well known that these cities were not founded more than 1500 years before the Christian era. We have every prospect of a most important accession to our materials, for every letter I get from the countries now being explored announces fresh discoveries of the utmost importance. In Lower Chaldea, Mr. Loftus, the geologist to the commission appointed to fix the boundaries between Turkey and Persia, has visited many cities which no European had ever reached before, and has everywhere found the most extraordinary remains. At one place (Senkereh) he had come on a pavement, extending from half an acre to an acre, entirely covered with writing, which was engraved upon baked tiles, &c. At Wurka (or Ur of the Chaldees), whence Abraham came out, he had found innumerable inscriptions; they were of no great extent, but they were exceedingly interesting, giving many royal names previously unknown. Wurka (Ur or Orchoe) seemed to be a holy city, for the whole country, for miles upon miles, was nothing but a huge necropolis. In none of the excavations of Assyria had coffins ever been found, but in this city of Chaldea there were thousands upon thousands. The story of Abraham's birth at Wurka did not originate with the Arabs, as had sometimes been conjectured, but with the Jews; and the Orientals had numberless fables about Abraham and Nimroud. Mr. Layard in excavating beneath the great pyramid at Nimroud, had penetrated a mass of masonry, within which he _had discovered the tomb and statue of_ Sardanapalus, accompanied by full annals of the monarch's reign engraved on the walls! He had also found tablets of all sorts, all of them being historical; but the crowning discovery he had yet to describe. The palace at Nineveh, or Koynupih, had evidently been destroyed by fire, but one portion of the building seemed to have escaped its influence; and Mr. Layard, in excavating in this part of the palace, had found a large room filled with what appeared to be the archives of the empire, ranged in successive tablets of terra cotta, the writings being as perfect as when the tablets were first stamped. They were piled in huge heaps from the floor to the ceiling. From the progress already made in reading the inscriptions, I believe we shall be able pretty well to understand the contents of these tablets; at all events, we shall ascertain their general purport, and thus gain much valuable information. A passage might be remembered in the book of Ezra where the Jews, having been disturbed in building the Temple, prayed that search might be made in the house of records for the edict of Cyrus permitting them to return to Jerusalem. The chamber recently found there might be presumed to be the house of records of the Assyrian kings, where copies of the royal edicts were duly deposited. When these tablets have been examined and deciphered, I believe that we shall have a better acquaintance with the history, the religion, the philosophy, and the jurisprudence of Assyria, 1500 years before the Christian era, than we have of Greece or Rome during any period of their respective histories." Besides the gigantic figures of which we have copied engravings in the preceding pages, Dr. Layard has sent to the British Museum a large number of other sculptures, some of which are still more interesting for the light they reflect upon ancient Assyrian history. For these, as for the Grecian marbles and Egyptian antiquities, a special gallery is being fitted up. [Illustration: JONATHAN SWIFT.] DEAN SWIFT'S CHARACTER AND HIS AMOURS. The name of Swift is one of the most familiar in English history. Of the twenty octavo volumes in which his works are printed, only a part of one volume is read; but this part of a volume is read by everybody, and admired by everybody, though singularly enough not one in a thousand ever thinks of its real import, or appreciates it for what are and what were meant to be its highest excellences. As the author of "Gulliver's Travels," Swift is a subject of general interest; and this interest is deepened, but scarcely diffused, by the chain of enigmas which has puzzled so many of his biographers. The most popular life of Dean Swift is Mr. Roscoe's, but since that was written several works have appeared, either upon his whole history or in elucidation of particular portions of it: one of which was a careful investigation and discussion of his madness, published about two years ago. In the last number of _The International_ we mentioned the curious novel of "Stella and Vanessa," in which a Frenchman has this year essayed his defense against the common judgment in the matter of his amours, and we copy in the following pages an article from the London _Times_, which was suggested by this performance. M. De Wailly's "Stella and Vanessa" is unquestionably a very ingenious and brilliant fiction--in every sense only a fiction--for its hypotheses are all entirely erroneous. Even Mr. Roscoe, whose Memoir has been called an elaborate apology, and who, as might have been expected from a man of so amiable and charitable a character, labors to put the best construction upon all Swift's actions,--even he shrinks from the vindication of the Dean's conduct toward Miss Vanhomrigh and Mrs. Johnson. In treating of the charges which are brought against Swift while he was alive, or that have since been urged against his reputation, the elegant historian calls to his aid every palliating circumstance; and where no palliating circumstances are to be found, seeks to enlist our benevolent feelings in behalf of a man deeply unfortunate, persecuted by his enemies, neglected by his friends, and haunted all his life by the presentiment of a fearful calamity, by which at length in his extreme old age he was assaulted and overwhelmed. On some points Mr. Roscoe must be said to have succeeded in this advocacy, so honorable alike to him and to its subject; but the more serious charges against Swift remain untouched, and probably will forever remain so, by whatever ability, or eloquence, or generous partiality, combated. To speak plainly, Swift was an irredeemably bad man, devoured by vanity and selfishness, and so completely dead to every elevated and manly feeling, that he was always ready to sacrifice those most devotedly attached to him for the gratification of his unworthy passion for power and notoriety. Swift's life, though dark and turbulent, was nevertheless romantic. He concealed the repulsive odiousness of an unfeeling heart under manners peculiarly fascinating, which conciliated not only the admiration and attachment of more than one woman, but likewise the friendship of several eminent men, who were too much dazzled by the splendor of his conversation to detect the base qualities which existed in the background. But these circumstances only enhance the interest of his life. At every page there is some discussion which strongly interests our feelings: some difficulty to be removed, some mystery to keep alive curiosity. We neither know, strictly speaking, who Swift was, what were the influences which raised him to the position he occupied, by what intricate ties he was connected with Stella, or what was the nature of that singular grief, which, in addition to the sources of sorrow to which we have alluded, preyed on him continually, and at last contributed largely to the overthrow of his reason. On this account it is not possible to proceed with indifference through the circumstances of his life, though very few careful examiners will be able to interpret them in a lenient and charitable spirit. Mr. Roscoe appears to believe that everybody who regards unfavorably Swift's genius and morals, must be actuated by envy or party spirit, but very few of the later or earlier critics are of his opinion. In the first place, most honorable men would rather remain unknown through eternity than accept the Dean's reputation. As Savage Landor says, he was "irreverential to the great and to God: an ill-tempered, sour, supercilious man, who flattered some of the worst and maligned some of the best men that ever lived." Whatever services he performed for the party from which he apostatized, there is nothing in his more permanent writings which can be of the slightest advantage to English toryism. Indeed, in politics and in morals, he appears never to have had any fixed principles. He served the party which he thought most likely to make him a bishop, and deserted it when he discovered that it was losing ground. He studied government not as a statesman but as a partisan, as a hardy, active, and unscrupulous Swiss, who could and would do much dirty work for a minister, if he saw reason to anticipate a liberal compensation. He however always extravagantly exaggerated his own powers, and so have his biographers, and so has the writer of the following article from _The Times_, who seems to have accepted with too little scrutiny the estimate he made of himself. The complacency with which he frequently refers to his supposed influence over the ministers is simply ludicrous. He entirely loses sight of both his own position and theirs. Shrewd as he shows himself under other circumstances, he is here as verdant as the greenest peasant from the forest. "I use the ministers like dogs," he says in a letter to Stella, but in reality the ministers made a dog of him, employing him to fetch and carry, and bark, and growl, and show his sharp teeth to their enemies; and when the noise he had made had served their purpose,--when he had frightened away many of their assailants, and by the dirt and stench he had raised had compelled even their friends to stand aloof, they cashiered him, as they would a mastiff grown toothless and incapable of barking. With no more dirty work for him to do, they sent him over to Dublin, to be rid of his presence. When fairly settled down in a country which he had always hitherto affected at least to detest, he began to feel perhaps some genuine attachment for its people, and on many occasions he exerted himself vigorously for their advantage; though it is possible that the real impulse was a desire to vex and embarrass the administration, which had so galled his self-conceit. Whatever the motive, however, he undoubtedly worked industriously and with great effect, for the benefit of Ireland. His style was calculated to be popular: it was simple, transparent, and though copious, pointed and energetic. His pamphlets, in the midst of their reasoning, sarcasm, and solemn banter, displayed an extent, a variety and profundity of knowledge altogether unequaled in the case of any other writer of that time. But the action of his extraordinary powers was never guided by a spark of honorable principle. The giant was as unscrupulous as the puniest and basest demagogue who coined and scattered lies for our own last election. He would seem to be the model whom half a dozen of our city editors were striving with weaker wing to imitate. He never acknowledged any merit in his antagonists, he scattered his libels right and left without mercy, threw out of sight all the charities and even decencies of private life, and affirmed the most monstrous propositions with so cool, calm and solemn an air, that in nine cases out of ten they were sure to be believed. Without further observation we proceed with the interesting article of _The Times_, occasioned by M. Leon de Wailly's curious and very clever romance of "Stella and Vanessa." [Illustration: "VANESSA." (MISS VANHOMRIGH.)] [From the London Times.] THE AMOURS OF DEAN SWIFT. Greater men than Dean Swift may have lived. A more remarkable man never left his impress upon the age immortalized by his genius. To say that English history supplies no narrative more singular and original than the career of Jonathan Swift is to assert little. We doubt whether the histories of the world can furnish, for example and instruction, for wonder and pity, for admiration and scorn, for approval and condemnation, a specimen of humanity at once so illustrious and so small. Before the eyes of his contemporaries Swift stood a living enigma. To posterity he must continue forever a distressing puzzle. One hypothesis--and one alone--gathered from a close and candid perusal of all that has been transmitted to us upon this interesting subject, helps us to account for a whole life of anomaly, but not to clear up the mystery in which it is shrouded. From the beginning to the end of his days Jonathan Swift was more or less MAD. Intellectually and morally, physically and religiously, Dean Swift was a mass of contradictions. His career yields ample materials both for the biographer who would pronounce a panegyric over his tomb and for the censor whose business it is to improve one generation at the expense of another. Look at Swift with the light of intelligence shining on his brow, and you note qualities that might become an angel. Survey him under the dark cloud, and every feature is distorted into that of a fiend. If we tell the reader what he was, in the same breath we shall communicate all that he was not. His virtues were exaggerated into vices, and his vices were not without the savour of virtue. The originality of his writings is of a piece with the singularity of his character. He copied no man who preceded him. He has not been successfully imitated by any who have followed him. The compositions of Swift reveal the brilliancy of sharpened wit, yet it is recorded of the man that he was never known to laugh. His friendships were strong and his antipathies vehement and unrelenting, yet he illustrated friendship by roundly abusing his familiars and expressed hatred by bantering his foes. He was economical and saving to a fault, yet he made sacrifices to the indigent and poor sternly denied to himself. He could begrudge the food and wine consumed by a guest, yet throughout his life refuse to derive the smallest pecuniary advantage from his published works, and at his death bequeath the whole of his fortune to a charitable institution. From his youth Swift was a sufferer in body, yet his frame was vigorous, capable of great endurance, and maintained its power and vitality from the time of Charles II. until far on in the reign of the second George. No man hated Ireland more than Swift, yet he was Ireland's first and greatest patriot, bravely standing up for the rights of that kingdom when his chivalry might have cost him his head. He was eager for reward, yet he refused payment with disdain. Impatient of advancement, he preferred to the highest honors the State could confer the obscurity and ignominy of the political associates with whom he had affectionately labored until they fell disgraced. None knew better than he the stinging force of a successful lampoon, yet such missiles were hurled by hundreds at his head without in any way disturbing his bodily tranquillity. Sincerely religious, scrupulously attentive to the duties of his holy office, vigorously defending the position and privileges of his order, he positively played into the hands of infidelity by the steps he took, both in his conduct and writings, to expose the cant and hypocrisy which he detested as heartily as he admired and practiced unaffected piety. To say that Swift lacked tenderness would be to forget many passages of his unaccountable history that overflow with gentleness of spirit and mild humanity; but to deny that he exhibited inexcusable brutality where the softness of his nature ought to have been chiefly evoked--where the want of tenderness, indeed, left him a naked and irreclaimable savage--is equally impossible. If we decline to pursue the contradictory series further, it is in pity to the reader, not for want of materials at command. There is, in truth, no end to such materials. Swift was born in the year 1667. His father, who was steward to the Society of the King's Inn, Dublin, died before his birth and left his widow penniless. The child, named Jonathan after his father, was brought up on charity. The obligation due to an uncle was one that Swift would never forget, or remember without inexcusable indignation. Because he had not been left to starve by his relatives, or because his uncle would not do more than he could, Swift conceived an eternal dislike to all who bore his name and a haughty contempt for all who partook of his nature. He struggled into active life and presented himself to his fellow-men in the temper of a foe. At the age of fourteen he was admitted into Trinity College, Dublin, and four years afterward as _a special grace_--for his acquisitions apparently failed to earn the distinction--the degree of Bachelor of Arts was conferred upon him. In 1688, the year in which the war broke out in Ireland, Swift, in his twenty-first year, and without a sixpence in his pocket, left college. Fortunately for him, the wife of Sir William Temple was related to his mother, and upon her application to that statesman the friendless youth was provided with a home. He took up his abode with Sir William in England, and for the space of two years labored hard at his own improvement and for the amusement of his patron. How far Swift succeeded in winning the good opinion of Sir William may be learnt from the fact that when King William honored Moor Park with his presence he was permitted to take part in the interviews, and that when Sir William was unable to visit the King his _protégé_ was commissioned to wait upon His Majesty, and to speak on the patron's authority and behalf. The lad's future promised better things than his beginning. He resolved to go into the church, since preferment stared him in the face. In 1692 he proceeded to Oxford, where he obtained his Master's degree, and in 1694, quarreling with Sir William Temple, who coldly offered him a situation worth £100 a year, he quitted his patron in disgust and went at once to Ireland to take holy orders. He was ordained, and almost immediately afterward received the living of Kilroot in the diocese of Connor, the value of the living being about equal to that of the appointment offered by Sir William Temple. Swift, miserable in his exile, sighed for the advantages he had abandoned. Sir William Temple, lonely without his clever and keen-witted companion, pined for his return. The prebend of Kilroot was speedily resigned in favor of a poor curate for whom Swift had taken great pains to procure the presentation; and with £80 in his purse the independent clergyman proceeded once more to Moor Park. Sir William welcomed him with open arms. They resided together until 1699, when the great statesman died, leaving to Swift, in testimony of his regard, the sum of £100 and his literary remains. The remains were duly published and humbly dedicated to the King. They might have been inscribed to His Majesty's cook for any advantage that accrued to the editor. Swift was a Whig, but his politics suffered severely by the neglect of His Majesty, who derived no particular advantage from Sir William Temple's "remains." Weary with long and vain attendance upon Court, Swift finally accepted at the hands of Lord Berkeley, one of the Lords Justices of Ireland, the rectory of Agher and the vicarages of Laracor and Rathbeggan. In the year 1700 he took possession of the living at Laracor, and his mode of entering upon his duty was thoroughly characteristic of the man. He walked down to Laracor, entered the curate's house, and announced himself "as his master." In his usual style he affected brutality, and having sufficiently alarmed his victims, gradually soothed and consoled them by evidences of undoubted friendliness and good will. "This," says Sir Walter Scott, "was the ruling trait of Swift's character to others; his praise assumed the appearance and language of complaint; his benefits were often prefaced by a prologue of a threatening nature." "The ruling trait" of Swift's character was morbid eccentricity. Much less eccentricity has saved many a murderer in our days from the gallows. We approach a period of Swift's history when we must accept this conclusion or revolt from the cold-blooded doings of a monster. During Swift's second residence with Sir William Temple he had become acquainted with an inmate of Moor Park very different to the accomplished man to whose intellectual pleasures he so largely ministered. A young and lovely girl--half ward, half dependent in the establishment--engaged the attention and commanded the untiring services of the newly-made minister. Esther Johnson had need of education, and Swift became her tutor. He entered upon his task with avidity, condescended to the humblest instruction, and inspired his pupil with unbounded gratitude and regard. Swift was not more insensible to the simplicity and beauty of the lady than she to the kind offices of her master; but Swift would not have been Swift had he, like other men, returned everyday love with ordinary affection. Swift had felt tender impressions in his own fashion before. Once in Leicestershire he was accused by a friend of having formed an imprudent attachment, on which occasion he returned for answer, that his "cold temper and unconfined humor" would prevent all serious consequences, even if it were not true that the conduct which his friend had mistaken for gallantry had been merely the evidence "of an active and restless temper, incapable of enduring idleness, and catching at such opportunities of amusement as most readily occurred." Upon another occasion, and within four years of the Leicestershire pastime, Swift made an absolute offer of his hand to one Miss Waryng, vowing in his declaratory epistle that he would forego every prospect of interest for the sake of his "Varina," and that "the lady's love was far more fatal than her cruelty." After much and long consideration Varina consented to the suit. That was enough for Swift. He met the capitulation by charging his Varina with want of affection, by stipulating for unheard-of sacrifices, and concluding with an expression of his willingness to wed, "_though she had neither fortune_ _nor beauty_," provided every article of his letter was ungrudgingly agreed to. We may well tremble for Esther Johnson, with her young heart given into such wild keeping. [Illustration: "STELLA." (ESTHER JOHNSON.)] As soon as Swift was established at Laracor it was arranged that Esther, who possessed a small property in Ireland, should take up her abode near to her old preceptor. She came, and scandal was silenced by a stipulation insisted upon by Swift, that his lovely charge should have a matron for a constant companion, and never see him except in the presence of a third party. Esther was in her seventeenth year. The vicar of Laracor was on his road to forty. What wonder that even in Laracor the former should receive an offer of marriage, and that the latter, wayward and inconsistent from first to last, should deny another the happiness he had resolved never to enjoy himself? Esther found a lover whom Swift repulsed, to the infinite joy of the devoted girl, whose fate was already linked for good or evil to that of her teacher and friend. Obscurity and idleness were not for Swift. Love, that gradually consumed the unoccupied girl, was not even this man's recreation. Impatient of banishment, he went to London and mixed with the wits of the age. Addison, Steele, and Arbuthnot became his friends, and he quickly proved himself worthy of their intimacy by the publication in 1704 of his _Tale of a Tub_. The success of the work, given to the world anonymously, was decisive. Its singular merit obtained for its author everlasting renown, and effectually prevented his rising to the highest dignity in the very church which his book labored to exalt. None but an inspired madman would have attempted to do honor to religion in a spirit which none but the infidel could heartily approve. Politicians are not squeamish. The Whigs could see no fault in raillery and wit that might serve temporal interests with greater advantage than they had advanced interests ecclesiastical; and the friends of the Revolution welcomed so rare an adherent to their principles. With an affected ardor that subsequent events proved to be as premature as it was hollow, Swift's pen was put in harness for his allies, and worked vigorously enough until 1709, when, having assisted Steele in the establishment of the _Tatler_, the vicar of Laracor returned to Ireland and to the duties of a rural pastor. Not to remain, however! A change suddenly came over the spirit of the nation. Sacheverell was about to pull down by a single sermon all the popularity that Marlborough and his friends had built up by their glorious campaigns. Swift had waited in vain for promotion from the Whigs, and his suspicions were roused when the Lord-Lieutenant unexpectedly began to caress him. Escaping the damage which the marked attentions of the old Government might do him with the new, Swift started for England in 1710, in order to survey the turning of the political wheel with his own eyes, and to try his fortune in the game. The progress of events was rapid. Swift reached London on the 9th of September; on the 1st of October he had already written a lampoon upon an ancient associate; and on the 4th he was presented to Harley, the new Minister. The career of Swift from this moment, and so long as the government of Harley lasted, was magnificent and mighty. Had he not been crotchety from his very boyhood, his head would have been turned now. Swift reigned; Swift was the Government; Swift was Queen, Lords, and Commons. There was tremendous work to do, and Swift did it all. The Tories had thrown out the Whigs and had brought in a Government in their place quite as Whiggish to do Tory work. To moderate the wishes of the people, if not to blind their eyes, was the preliminary and essential work of the Ministry. They could not perform it themselves. Swift undertook the task and accomplished it. He had intellect and courage enough for that, and more. Moreover, he had vehement passions to gratify, and they might all partake of the glory of his success; he was proud, and his pride reveled in authority; he was ambitious, and his ambition could attain no higher pitch than it found at the right hand of the Prime Minister; he was revengeful, and revenge could wish no sweeter gratification than the contortions of the great who had neglected genius and desert, when they looked to them for advancement and obtained nothing but cold neglect. Swift, single-handed, fought the Whigs. For seven months he conducted a periodical paper, in which he mercilessly assailed, as none but himself could attack, all who were odious to the Government and distasteful to himself. Not an individual was spared whose sufferings could add to the tranquillity and permanence of the Government. Resistance was in vain; it was attempted, but invariably with one effect--the first wound grazed, the second killed. The public were in ecstasies. The laughers were all on the side of the satirist, and how vast a portion of the community these are, needs not be said. But it was not in the _Examiner_ alone that Swift offered up his victims at the shrine of universal mirth. He could write verses for the rough heart of a nation to chuckle over and delight in. Personalities to-day fly wide of the mark; then they went right home. The habits, the foibles, the moral and physical imperfections of humanity, were all fair game, provided the shaft were tipped with gall as well as venom. Short poems, longer pamphlets--whatever could help the Government and cover their foes with ridicule and scorn, Swift poured upon the town with an industry and skill that set eulogy at defiance. And because they did defy praise, Jonathan Swift never asked, and was ever too grand to accept it. But he claimed much more. His disordered yet exquisite intellect acknowledged no superiority. He asked no thanks for his labor, he disdained pecuniary reward for his matchless and incalculable services--he did not care for fame, but he imperiously demanded to be treated by the greatest as an equal. Mr. Harley offered him money, and he quarreled with the Minister for his boldness. "If we let these great Ministers," he said, "pretend too much, _there will be no governing them_." The same Minister desired to make Swift his chaplain. One mistake was as great as the other. "My Lord Oxford, by a second hand, proposed my being his chaplain, which I, by a second hand, refused. I will be no man's chaplain alive." The assumption of the man was more than regal. At a later period of his life he drew up a list of his friends, ranking them respectively under the heads "Ungrateful," "Grateful," "Indifferent," and "Doubtful." Pope appears among the grateful. Queen Caroline among the ungrateful. The audacity of these distinctions is very edifying. What autocrat is here for whose mere countenance the whole world is to bow down and be "grateful!" It is due to Swift's imperiousness, however, to state that, once acknowledged as an equal, he was prepared to make every sacrifice that could be looked for in a friend. Concede his position, and for fortune or disgrace he was equally prepared. Harley and Bolingbroke, quick to discern the weakness, called their invulnerable ally by his Christian name, but stopped short of conferring upon him any benefit whatever. The neglect made no difference to the haughty scribe, who contented himself with pulling down the barriers that had been impertinently set up to separate him from rank and worldly greatness. But, if Swift shrank from the treatment of a client, he performed no part so willingly as that of a patron. He took literature under his wing and compelled the Government to do it homage. He quarreled with Steele when he deserted the Whigs, and pursued his former friend with unflinching sarcasm and banter, but at his request Steele was maintained by the Government in an office of which he was about to be deprived. Congreve was a Whig, but Swift insisted that he should find honor at the hands of the Tories, and Harley honored him accordingly. Swift introduced Gay to Lord Bolingbroke, and secured that nobleman's weighty patronage for the poet. Rowe was recommended for office, Pope for aid. The well-to-do, by Swift's personal interest, found respect, the indigent, money for the mitigation of their pains. At Court, at Swift's instigation, the Lord Treasurer made the first advances to men of letters, and by the act made tacit confession of the power which Swift so liberally exercised, for the advantage of everybody but himself. But what worldly distinction, in truth, could add to the importance of a personage who made it a point for a Duke to pay him the first visit, and who, on one occasion, publicly sent the Prime Minister into the House of Commons to call out the First Secretary of State, whom Swift wished to inform that he would not dine with him if he meant to dine late? A lampoon directed against the Queen's favorite, upon whose red hair Swift had been facetious, prevented the satirist's advancement in England. The see of Hereford fell vacant in 1712. Bolingbroke would now have paid the debt due from his Government to Swift, but the Duchess of Somerset, upon her knees, implored the Queen to withhold her consent from the appointment, and Swift was pronounced by Her Majesty as "too violent in party" for promotion. The most important man in the kingdom found himself in a moment the most feeble. The fountain of so much honor could not retain a drop of the precious waters for itself. Swift, it is said, laid the foundations of fortune for upward of forty families who rose to distinction by a word from his lips. What a satire upon power was the satirist's own fate! He could not advance himself in England one inch. Promotion in Ireland began and ended with his appointment to the Deanery of St. Patrick, of which he took possession, much to his disgust and vexation, in the summer of 1713. The summer, however, was not over before Swift was in England again. The wheels of government had come to a dead lock, and of course none but he could right them. The Ministry was at sixes and sevens. Its very existence depended upon the good understanding of the chiefs, Bolingbroke and Harley, and the wily ambition of the latter, jarring against the vehement desires of the former, had produced jealousy, suspicion, and now threatened immediate disorganization. A thousand voices called the Dean to the scene of action, and he came full of the importance of his mission. He plunged at once into the vexed sea of political controversy, and whilst straining every effort to court his friends, let no opportunity slip of galling their foes. His pen was as damaging and industrious as ever. It set the town in a fever. It caused Richard Steele to be expelled from the House of Commons, and it sent the whole body of Scotch peers, headed by the Duke of Argyle, to the Queen, with the prayer that a proclamation might be issued for the discovery of their libeller. Swift was more successful in his assaults than in its mediation. The Ministers were irreconcilable. Vexed at heart with disappointment, the Dean, after his manner, suddenly quitted London, and shut himself up in Berkshire. One attempt he made in his strict seclusion to uphold the Government and save the country, and the composition is a curiosity in its way. He published a proposition for the exclusion of all Dissenters from power of every kind, for disqualifying Whigs and Low Churchmen for every possible office, and for compelling the presumptive heir to the throne to declare his abomination of Whigs, and his perfect satisfaction with Her Majesty's present advisers. Matters must have been near a crisis when this modest pamphlet was put forth; and so they were. By his intrigues Bolingbroke had triumphed over his colleagues, and Oxford was disgraced. The latter, about to retire into obscurity, addressed a letter to Swift, entreating him, if he were not tired of his former prosperous friend, "to throw away so much time on one who loved him as to attend him upon his melancholy journey." The same post brought him word that his own victory was won. Bolingbroke triumphant besought his Jonathan, as he loved his Queen, to stand by her Minister, and to aid him in his perilous adventure. Nothing should be wanting to do justice to his loyalty. The Duchess of Somerset would be reconciled, the Queen would be gracious, the path of honor should lie broad, open, and unimpeded before him. Bolingbroke and Harley were equally the friends of Swift. What could he do in his extremity? What would a million men, taken at random from the multitude, have done, had they been so situated, so tempted? Not that upon which Swift in his chivalrous magnanimity, at once decided. He abandoned the prosperous to follow and console the unfortunate. "I meddle not with Lord Oxford's faults," is his noble language, "as he was a Minister of State, but his personal kindness to me was excessive. He distinguished and chose me above all men when he was great." Within a few days of Swift's self-denying decision Queen Anne was a corpse, Bolingbroke and Oxford both flying for their lives, and Swift himself hiding his unprotected head in Ireland amidst a people who at once feared and hated him. During Swift's visit to London in 1710 he had regularly transmitted to Stella, by which name Esther Johnson is made known to posterity, an account of his daily doings with the new Government. The journal exhibits the view of the writer that his conduct invariably presents. It is full of tenderness and confidence, and not without coarseness that startles and shocks. It contains a detailed and minute account, not only of all that passed between Swift and the Government, but of his changeful feelings as they arose from day to day, and of his physical infirmities, that are commonly whispered into the ear of a physician. If Swift loved Stella in the ordinary acceptation of the term, he took small pains in his diary to elevate the sentiments with which she regarded her hero. The journal is not in harmony throughout. Toward the close it lacks the tenderness and warmth, the minuteness and confidential utterance, that are so visible at the beginning. We are enabled to account for the difference. Swift had enlarged the circle of his female acquaintance whilst fighting for his friends in London. He had become a constant visitor, especially, at the house of a Mrs. Vanhomrigh, who had two daughters, the eldest of whom was about twenty years of age, and had the same Christian name as Stella. Esther Vanhomrigh had great taste for reading, and Swift, who seems to have delighted in such occupation, condescended, for the second time in his life, to become a young lady's instructor. The great man's tuition had always one effect upon his pupils. Before Miss Vanhomrigh had made much progress in her studies she was over head and ears in love, and, to the astonishment of her master, she one day declared the passionate and undying character of her attachment. Swift met the confession with a weapon far more potent when opposed to a political foe than when directed against the weak heart of a doting woman. He had recourse to raillery, but, finding his banter of no avail, endeavored to appease the unhappy girl by "an offer of devoted and everlasting friendship, founded on the basis of virtuous esteem." He might with equal success have attempted to put out a conflagration with a bucket of cold water. There was no help for the miserable man. He returned to his deanery at the death of Queen Anne with two love affairs upon his hands, but with the stern resolution of encouraging neither, and overcoming both. Before quitting England he wrote to Esther Vanhomrigh, or Vanessa, as he styles her in his correspondence, intimating his intention to forget everything in England and to write to her as seldom as possible. So far the claims of Vanessa were disposed of. As soon as he reached his deanery he secured lodgings for Stella and her companion, and reiterated his determination to pursue his intercourse with the young lady upon the prudent terms originally established. So far his mind was set at rest in respect of Stella. But Swift had scarcely time to congratulate himself upon his plans before Vanessa presented herself in Dublin, and made known to the Dean her resolution to take up her abode permanently in Ireland. Her mother was dead, so were her two brothers; she and her sister were alone in the world, and they had a small property near Dublin, to which it suited them to retire. Swift, alarmed by the proceeding, remonstrated, threatened, denounced--all in vain. Vanessa met his reproaches with complaints of cruelty and neglect, and warned him of the consequences of leaving her without the solace of his friendship and presence. Perplexed and distressed, the Dean had no other resource than to leave events to their own development. He trusted that time would mitigate and show the hopelessness of Vanessa's passion, and in the meanwhile he sought, by occasional communication with her, to prevent any catastrophe that might result from actual despair. But his thoughts for Vanessa's safety were inimical to Stella's repose. She pined and gradually sunk under the alteration that had taken place in Swift's deportment toward her since his acquaintance with Vanessa. Swift, really anxious for the safety of his ward, requested a friend to ascertain the cause of her malady. It was not difficult to ascertain it. His indifference and public scandal, which spoke freely of their unaccountable connection, were alone to blame for her sufferings. It was enough for Swift. He had passed the age at which he had resolved to marry, but he was ready to wed Stella provided the marriage were kept secret and she was content to live apart. Poor Stella was more than content, but she overestimated her strength. The marriage took place, and immediately afterward the husband withdrew himself in a fit of madness, which threw him into gloom and misery for days. What the motives may have been for the inexplicable stipulations of this wayward man it is impossible to ascertain. That they were the motives of a diseased, and at times utterly irresponsible, judgment, we think cannot be questioned. Of love, as a tender passion, Swift had no conception. His writings prove it. The coarseness that pervades his compositions has nothing in common with the susceptibility that shrinks from disgusting and loathsome images in which Swift reveled. In all his prose and poetical addresses to his mistresses there is not one expression to prove the weakness of his heart. He writes as a guardian--he writes as a friend--he writes as a father, but not a syllable escapes him that can be attributed to the pangs and delights of the lover. Married to Stella, Swift proved himself more eager than ever to give to his intercourse with Vanessa the character of mere friendship. He went so far as to endeavor to engage her affections for another man, but his attempts were rejected with indignation and scorn. In the August of the year 1717 Vanessa retired from Dublin to her house and property near Cellbridge. Swift exhorted her to leave Ireland altogether, but she was not to be persuaded. In 1720 it would appear that the Dean frequently visited the recluse in her retirement, and upon such occasions Vanessa would plant a laurel or two in honor of her guest, who passed his time with the lady reading and writing verses in a rural bower built in a sequestered part of her garden. Some of the verses composed by Vanessa have been preserved. They breathe the fond ardor of the suffering maid, and testify to the imperturbable coldness of the man. Of the innocence of their intercourse there cannot be a doubt. In 1720 Vanessa lost her last remaining relative--her sister died in her arms. Thrown back upon herself by this bereavement, the intensity of her love for the Dean became insupportable. Jealous and suspicious, and eager to put an end to a terror that possessed her, she resolved to address herself to Stella, and to ascertain from her own lips the exact nature of her relations with her so-called guardian. The momentous question was asked in a letter, to which Stella calmly replied by informing her interrogator that she was the Dean's wife. Vanessa's letter was forwarded by Stella to Swift himself, and it roused him to fury. He rode off at once to Cellbridge, he entered the apartment in which Vanessa was seated, and glared upon her like a tiger. The trembling creature asked her visitor to sit down. He answered the invitation by flinging a packet on the table, and riding instantly away. The packet was opened; it contained nothing but Vanessa's letter to Stella. Her doom was pronounced. The fond heart snapped. In a few weeks the hopeless, desolate Vanessa was in her grave. Swift, agonized, rushed from the world. For two months subsequently to the death of Vanessa his place of abode was unknown. But at the end of that period he returned to Dublin calmer for the conflict he had undergone. He devoted himself industriously again to affairs of State. His pen had now a nobler office than to sustain unworthy men in unmerited power. We can but indicate the course of his labors. Ireland, the country not of his love, but of his birth and adoption, treated as a conquered province, owed her rescue from absolute thraldom to Swift's great and unconquerable exertions on her behalf. He resisted the English Government with his single hand, and overcame them in the fight. His popularity in Ireland was unparalleled even in that excited and generous-hearted land. Rewards were offered to betray him, but a million lives would have been sacrificed in his place before one would have profited by the patriot's downfall. He was worshiped, and every hair of his head was precious and sacred to the people who adored him. In 1726 Swift revisited England, for the first time since the death of Queen Anne, and published, anonymously as usual, the famous satire of _Gulliver's Travels_. Its immediate success heralded the universal fame that masterly and singular work has since achieved. Swift mingled once more with his literary friends, and lived almost entirely with Pope. Yet courted on all sides he was doomed again to bitter sorrow. News reached him that Stella was ill. Alarmed and full of self-reproaches, he hastened home to be received by the people of Ireland in triumph, and to meet--and he was grateful for the sight--the improved and welcoming looks of the woman for whose dissolution he had been prepared. In March, 1727, Stella being sufficiently recovered, the Dean ventured once more to England, but soon to be resummoned to the hapless couch of his exhausted and most miserable wife. Afflicted in body and soul, Swift suddenly quitted Pope, with whom he was residing at Twickenham, and reaching his home, was doomed to find his Stella upon the verge of the grave. Till the last moment he continued at her bedside, evincing the tenderest consideration, and performing what consolatory tasks he might in the sick chamber. Shortly before her death part of a conversation between the melancholy pair was overheard. "Well, my dear," said the Dean, "if you wish it, it shall be owned." Stella's reply was given in fewer words. "_It is too late._" "On the 28th of January," writes one of the biographers of Swift, "Mrs. Johnson closed her weary pilgrimage, and passed to that land where they neither marry nor are given in marriage," the second victim of one and the same hopeless and consuming passion. Swift stood alone in the world, and for his punishment was doomed to endure the crushing solitude for the space of seventeen years. The interval was gloomy indeed. From his youth the Dean had been subject to painful fits of giddiness and deafness. From 1736 these fits became more frequent and severe. In 1740 he went raving mad, and frenzy ceased only to leave him a more pitiable idiot. During the space of three years the poor creature was unconscious of all that passed around him, and spoke but twice. Upon the 19th of October, 1745, God mercifully removed the terrible spectacle from the sight of man, and released the sufferer from his misery, degradation, and shame. The volumes, whose title is found below,[1] and which have given occasion to these remarks, are a singular comment upon a singular history. It is the work of a Frenchman who has ventured to deduce a theory from the _data_ we have submitted to the reader's notice. With that theory we cannot agree: it may be reconcilable to the romance which M. de Wailly has invented, but it is altogether opposed to veritable records that cannot be impugned. M. de Wailly would have it that Swift's marriage with Stella was a deliberate and rational sacrifice of love to principle, and that Swift compensated his sacrificed love by granting his principle no human indulgences; that his love for Vanessa, in fact, was sincere and ardent, and that his duty to Stella alone prevented a union with Vanessa. To prove his case M. de Wailly widely departs from history, and makes his hypothesis of no value whatever, except to the novel reader. As a romance, written by a Frenchman, _Stella and Vanessa_ is worthy of great commendation. It indicates a familiar knowledge of English manners and character, and never betrays, except here and there in the construction of the plot, the hand of a foreigner. It is quite free from exaggeration, and inasmuch as it exhibits no glaring anachronism or absurd caricature, is a literary curiosity. We accept it as such, though bound to reject its higher claims. The mystery of Swift's amours has yet to be cleared up. We explain his otherwise unaccountable behavior by attributing his cruelty to prevailing insanity. The career of Swift was brilliant, but not less wild than dazzling. The sickly hue of a distempered brain gave a color to his acts in all the relations of life. The storm was brewing from his childhood; it burst forth terribly in his age, and only a moment before all was wreck and devastation, the half-distracted man sat down and made a will, by which he left the whole of his worldly possessions for the foundation of a lunatic asylum. [1: _Stella and Vanessa: A Romance from the French. By Lady Duff Gordon. In two vols. Bentley. 1850.] AUTHORS AND BOOKS. We find in the _Deutsche Zeitung aus Böhmen_, an account of a visit to the great German satirist and poet Henry Heine, who lives at Paris, where, as is known, he has long been confined to his bed with a lingering illness. We translate the following for the _International_:-- "It is indeed a painful or rather a terrible condition in which Heine now is and has been for the past year; though the paralysis has made no progress, it has at least experienced no alleviation. He has now lain near two years in bed, and during that time has not seen a tree nor a speck of the blue sky. He cannot raise himself, and scarcely moves. His left eye is blind, his right can just perceive objects, but cannot bear the light of day. His nights are disturbed by fearful torments, and only morphine can produce him the least repose. Hope of recovery has long been given up, and he himself entertains no illusions on that subject. He knows that his sufferings can end only with death. He speaks of this with the utmost composure." The writer goes on to contradict, as calumnious, the report that Heine had become religious, saying, that he bears his tortures without "the assistance of saints of any color, and by the inward power of the free man." He does not regard himself as a sinner, and has nothing to repent of, since he has but rejoiced like a child, in everything beautiful--chasing butterflies, finding flowers by the way-side, and making a holiday of his whole life. He has, however, often called himself religious, by way of contradiction, and from antipathy to a certain clique who openly proclaim themselves atheists, and under that sonorous title seek to exercise a certain terror on others. It seems that Heine has lost a great deal of property through various speculators who have persuaded him to join in their schemes. The writer says: "Heine's friends are enraged at many of these individuals, and urge him to attack them publicly, and show them up in their true light. He owes this satisfaction to himself and to us; at the same time it would conciliate many who have not pardoned him the cavalier air with which he has turned off the most respectable notabilities of literature and patriotism, in order to amuse himself in the company of some adventurer." By this love for out-of-the-way characters, the writer thinks that Heine must have collected the materials for a humorous novel, which could equal the best productions of Mendoza, Smollett, or Dickens; his experiences in this line have cost him a great deal of money. We translate the conclusion of the article:-- "We shall be asked if Heine really continues to write? Yes; he writes, he works, he dictates poems without cessation; perhaps he was never in his whole life as active as now. Several hours a day he devotes to the composition of his memoirs which are rapidly advancing under the hand of his secretary. His mind still resembles, in its wonderful fullness and vigor, those fantastic ball-nights of Paris, which, under the open sky, unfold an endless life and variety. There rings the music, there rushes the dance, and the loveliest and grotesquest forms flit hither and thither. There are silent arbors for tears of happiness and sorrow, and places for dancing, with light, full of loud bold laughter. Rockets after rockets mount skyward, scattering millions of stars, and endless extravagance of art, fire, poesy, passion, flames up, showing the world now in green, now in purple light, till at last the clear silver stars come out, and fill us with infinite delight, and the still consciousness of life's beauty. Yes, Heine lives and writes incessantly. His body is broken, but not his mind, which, on the sick bed rises to Promethean power and courage. His arm is impotent; not so his satire, which still in its velvet covering bears the fearful knife that has flayed alive so many a Maryas. Yes, his frame is worn away, but not the grace in every movement of his youthful spirit. Along with his memoirs, a complete volume of poems has been written in these two years. They will not appear till after the death of the poet; but I can say of them that they unite in full perfection all the admirable gifts which have rendered his former poems so brilliant. So struggles this extraordinary man against a terrible destiny, with all the weapons of the soul, never despairing in this vehement suffering, never descending to tears--bidding defiance to the worst. As I stood before that sick bed, it seemed as if I saw the sufferer of the Caucasus bound in iron chains, tortured by the vulture, but still confronting fate unappalled, and there alone on the sea-shore caressed by sea-nymphs. Yes, this is the sick-bed and the death-bed of a great and free man; and to have come near him is not only a great happiness but a great instruction." Heine has never been well known in this country. The only work by him we have seen in English is his _Beitrage zur Deutschen Literatur-Geschichte_, translated by Mr. G.W. Haven, and published in Boston, in 1846. It is remarkably clever, and audacious, as the productions of this German-Frenchman generally are. He is now fifty-three years of age, having been born at Dusseldorff, in 1797. As several wealthy bankers, and other persons of substance, in Paris, are related to him, and he has a pension from the French Government, he is not likely to suffer very much from the losses of property referred to in the _Zeitung aus Böhmen_. * * * * * Dr. Otto Zirckel has just published at Berlin a volume called "Sketches from and concerning the United States," which has some curious peculiarities to the eyes of an American. It is intended as a guide for Germans who wish either to emigrate to this country or to send their money here for investment. It begins with a description of the voyage to America and of the East, West and South of the Union; next it describes the position of the farmer, physician, clergyman, teacher, jurist, merchant, and editor, and the chance of the emigrant in each of these professions. It is written with spirit and humor, and a good deal of practical judgment and wisdom are concisely and clearly expressed. The curious part is the advice given to speculators who wish to invest their money here at a high rate of interest. The author seems to think America a perfect Eldorado for money lenders, and his book cannot fail to produce a considerable increase in the amount of German capital employed in this country. The various state and national loans are described correctly, showing that Dr. Zirckel might venture safely into the mazes of Wall Street. The history of repudiation he has studied with care, and the necessity of final resumption of payments even in Mississippi he estimates with justice. He suggests as the safest means of managing matters, that a number of wealthy families should combine their funds and send over a special agent in whom they can confide, to manage the same in shaving notes, speculating in land, lending on bond and mortgage, and making money generally. Thus they can get a high return and live comfortably in Europe on the toil of Americans, all of which will be much more grateful to the capitalists than useful to this country. Better for us to have no foreign capital at all than to have the interest thereon carried away and consumed in Europe. * * * * * Emile Silvestre has sent forth a new volume, _Un Philosophe sous les Toits_. * * * * * The work on Aerostation, by Mr. Green, recently published in Philadelphia, has been much noticed in Europe, where--particularly in France--the subject has attracted large attention, in consequence of the death of Gale, (formerly a player at our Bowery Theater,) near Bordeaux, and the recent wicked and ridiculous ascents with horses, ostriches, &c. from the Hippodrome in Paris, and some experiments in ballooning at Madrid. In an interesting paper in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for the fifteenth of October, we have an account of numerous theories, experiments, and accidents, constituting an entertaining _resumé_ of the whole matter. Few instances of intrepidity, danger, and escape, excite livelier emotion than the crossing from England to France by Blanchard, and Dr. Jeffries, an American, on the seventh of January, 1785. When, by the loss of gas, the balloon descended rapidly over the channel, and approached near the surface of the sea, after everything had been thrown out, even to their clothes, Jeffries offered to leap into the sea, and by thus lightening the balloon further, afford Blanchard a chance of safety. "We must both be lost as the case is," said he; "if you think your preservation is possible, I am ready to sacrifice my life." The French military ascents are particularly described. Companies of aeronauts were formed and trained, and Bonaparte took one of them with him to Egypt, but the British captured all the apparatus for the generation of gas. The First Consul caused ascents in picturesque balloons to be made on occasions of public rejoicing for victories, in order to strike the imaginations of the Egyptians, and an aerostatic academy was established near Paris. The writer mentions that Lieutenant Gale, like poor Sam Patch, so famous for a similar absurdity, and for a similar and not less miserable end, had drank too much brandy for self-possession in a dangerous predicament. He thinks that the problem of the direction or government of balloons cannot possibly be solved with the mechanical means which science now commands; and that, as they may be usefully employed for the study of the great physical laws of the globe, all experiments should be restricted to the object of advancing science. He dwells on what might be accomplished toward ascertaining the true laws of the decrease of temperature in the elevated regions of the air, of the decrease of density of the atmosphere, of the decrease of humidity according to atmospheric heights, and of the celerity of sound. After all the experiments, and all that has been written upon the subject, we are confident that the direction of a balloon is quite impossible, except by a process which we have never yet seen suggested; that is, by the rapid decomposition of the air in its way, so that a tube extended in the direction in which it is desired to move, shall open continually a vacuum into which the pressure of the common atmosphere shall impel the carriage. * * * * * The _Journal des Debats_ announces for publication two works from the pen of Guizot. The hero of the first is General Monk. Its title is _The Downfall of the Republic in England in 1660, and the Reestablishment of the Monarchy: A Historic Study_. It may be regarded as new, though part has been published before in the form of articles in the _Revue Française_. These articles appeared in 1837. M. Guizot has carefully revised them, and added a great deal of new matter. The work is also to be enriched with a number of curious documents never before published, such as a letter from Richard Cromwell to General Monk, and seventy dispatches from M. de Bordeaux, then French Ambassador at London, to Cardinal Mazarin. These dispatches have been found in the archives of the Foreign Office at Paris. The work has a new preface, which the _Debats_ says will prove to be no less important in a political than a historical point of view. The second book is that so well known in this country upon Washington. We do not understand that anything new is added to it. It was in the first place issued as the introduction of the translation into French of Sparks's _Life of Washington_, which the French journalist says is the most exact and complete work yet published on the war of independence and the foundation of the United States. "Monk and Washington," adds the _Debats_: "on the one side a republic falling and a monarchy rising again into existence, on the other a monarchy giving birth to a republic; and M. Guizot, formerly the prime minister of our monarchy, now amid the perplexities of our own republic the historian of these two great men and these two great events! Were contrasts ever seen more striking, and more likely to excite a powerful interest?" This is very well for the _Debats_. But the omissions by Mr. Sparks--sometimes from carelessness, sometimes from ignorance, and sometimes from an indisposition to revive memories of old feuds, or to cover with disgrace names which should be dishonored; and his occasional verbal alterations of Washington's letters prevent that general satisfaction with which his edition of Washington would otherwise be regarded. We are soon to have histories of the Revolution, from both Sparks and Bancroft, in proper form. The best documentary history is not, as the _Debats_ fancies, this collection of Washington's letters, but Mr. Force's "Archives,"--of which, with its usual want of sagacity or regard for duty, Congress is publishing but one tenth of the edition necessary, since every statesman in our own country, and every writer on American history at home or abroad, needs a copy of it, and from its extent and costliness it will never be reprinted. * * * * * The Rabbi Cahen has published at Paris the Book of Job, which concludes his learned version of the Hebrew Bible. * * * * * Works on the German Revolution and German Politics.--An excellent book on the Prussian revolution is now being published at Oldenburg. It is from the pen of Adolf Stahr, a writer of remarkable force and clearness. He belongs to the party most bitterly disappointed by the turn affairs have taken in Germany. We mean the democratic monarchists, who labored under the illusion that they might see Prussia converted into a sort of republic with a hereditary chief, like Belgium. They desired a monarchy, with a parliament elected by universal suffrage, and democratic institutions of every kind. Stahr's book breathes all the bitterness of their rage at the success of absolutism in snatching from them every slightest vestige of hope. His book is published serially, four parts having already been issued. As a record of facts it deserves the praise of great industry and lucidity in collection and arrangement, while on every page there glows in suppressed eloquence the indignation of a generous and manly heart. Of course Stahr cannot be called a historian in the usual sense of the term. He is rather a political pamphleteer, maintaining at length the ideas and chastising the foes of his party. Another and a more permanently valuable work on this subject is the _Revolutions-Chronik_ (Revolutionary Chronicle) of Dr. Adolf Wolff, published by Hempel of Berlin. This is a collection of authentic documents, such as proclamations, placards, letters, legislative acts, &c., connected with the revolution. They are not only arranged in due order, but are combined with a clear and succinct narrative of the events and circumstances to which they relate. We know of no man more competent than Dr. Wolff to the successful execution of so important an undertaking. Without being a partisan, his sympathies are decidedly on the popular side, and the clearness of his judgment cannot be blinded by any of the feints and stratagems in which the period abounded. He is now engaged upon the revolution in Prussia, but intends to treat all the manifestations of the time throughout Germany in the same thorough and reliable manner. His work will be invaluable to future historians of this eventful period; at the same time it reads like a romance, not only from the nature of the events, but from the spirit and keenness of the style. Two other striking contributions to the history of this stormy epoch have been made by Bruno Bauer, the well known rationalist. Bauer treats the political and religious parties of modern Germany with the same scornful satire and destructive analysis which appear in his theological writings. He delights in pitting one side against the other and making them consume each other. His first book is called the _Bürgerliche Revolution in Deutschland_, (the Burghers' Revolution in Germany); it was published above a year ago, and attracted a great deal of attention from the fact that it took neither side, but with a sort of Mephistophelian superiority, showed that every party had been alike weak, timid, hesitating, short-sighted, and useless. The New-Catholics of Ronge's school were especially treated with unsparing severity. Bauer has now just brought out his second book, which is particularly devoted to the Frankfort Parliament. In this also the Hegelian Logic is applied with the same result. The author proves that all that was done in that body was worth nothing and produced nothing. There is not a particle of sympathetic feeling in the whole book; but only cold and contemptuous analysis. It has not made very much of an impression in Germany. Both these works, and, indeed, the whole school of ultra-Hegelian skeptics generally, are a singular reaction upon the usual warmth and sentimentality of German character and literature. They are the very opposite extreme, and so a very natural product of the times. For our part we like them quite as well as the other side of the contrast. * * * * * Germany is the richest of all countries in historical literature. Nowhere have all the events of human experience been so variously, profoundly, or industriously investigated. Ancient history especially has been most exhaustively treated by the Germans. One of the best and most comprehensive works in this category is that of Dr. Zimmer, the seventh edition of which, revised and enlarged, has just been published at Leipzic. Dr. Zimmer does not proceed upon the hypotheses of Niebuhr and others, but conceives that the writing of history and romance ought to be essentially different. The whole work is in one volume of some 450 pages, and of course greatly condensed. It discusses the history of India, China, and Japan; the western Asiatic States, Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, Phoenicia, India, down to the fall of Jerusalem; the other parts of Asia; Egypt to the battle of Actium, with a dissertation on Egyptian culture; Carthage; Greece to the fall of Corinth; Rome under the emperors down to the year 476; and concludes with an account of the literature of classical antiquity. As we have no manual of this sort in English, that is written up to the latest results of scholarship, we hope to see some American undertaking a version of Dr. Zimmer's book. There is considerable learning and talent in the two octavos on the same subject by Dr. Hebbe, and published last year by Dewitt & Davenport; but we strongly dislike some of the doctrines of the work, which are _not_ derived from a thorough study. * * * * * The seventh volume of Professor Schlosser's History of the Eighteenth Century, and of the Nineteenth till the overthrow of the French Empire, appeared, in translation, in London, on the first of November. Volume eighth, completing the work, with a copious index, is preparing for early publication. * * * * * The Discovery of a lost MS. of Jean Le Bel is mentioned in the Paris papers, as having been made by M. Polain, keeper of the Archives at Liège, among the MSS. in the _Bibliothèque de Bourgogne_, at Brussels. It is on the eve of publication, and will be comprised in an octavo volume, in black letter. This work was supposed to be irretrievably lost. It was found by M. Polain, transcribed and incorporated into a prose _Chronicle de Liège_, by Jean des Pres, dit _d'Ontremeuse_. It comprises a period between 1325 and 1340, which are embraced in one hundred and forty-six chapters of the first book of _Froissart_. It therefore contains only the first part of Le Bel's Chronicle: nevertheless it is a fragment of much importance. Froissart cannot be considered as a contemporary historian of the events recorded in his first book, but Le Bel was connected with the greater portion of them, and was acquainted with them either from personal knowledge or through those who had authentic sources of information. * * * * * Monsieur Bastiat, the political economist, (who has shown more economy in the matter of credit for the best ideas in his books, than in anything else we know of,) is not dead, as in the last _International_ was stated. The _Courier and Enquirer_ correspondent says: "I am glad to say that the report which reached Paris from Italy, of the death of F. Bastiat, a noted writer on political economy, is unfounded. That gentleman is recovering his health, and it is now believed will be able, at the opening of the session, to resume his seat in the Assembly." Since his return from Italy he has published at Paris a new edition of his latest production, the _Harmonies Economiques_, in which he has availed himself in so large a degree and in so discreditable a manner of the ideas of Mr. Henry C. Carey, of New Jersey, who, since he first gave to the public the essentials of M. Bastiat's performance, has himself, in a volume, entitled _The Harmony of Interests_, published some three or four months ago in Philadelphia, largely and forcibly illustrated his just and admirable doctrines. In the _Harmonies Economiques_ M. Bastiat seeks to prove that the interests of classes and individuals in society, as now constituted, are harmonious, and not antagonistic as certain schools of thinkers maintain. Commercial freedom he avers, instead of urging society toward a state of general misery, tends constantly to the progressive increase of the general abundance and well being. In sustaining this proposition M. Bastiat teaches the optimism of the socialists, and holds that injustice is not a necessary thing in human relations, that monopoly and pauperism are only temporary, and that things must come right at last. The powers of nature, the soil, vegetation, gravitation, heat, electricity, chemical forces, waters, seas, in short the globe and all the endowments with which God has enriched it, are the common property of the entire race of man, and in proportion as society advances this common property is more equally distributed and enjoyed. Capital assists men in their efforts to improve this magnificent inheritance; competition is a powerful lever with which they set in movement and render useful the gratuitous gifts of God; the social instinct leads them to make a continual exchange of services; and even now, though the powers of nature enter into these services, those who receive them pay only for the labor of their fellows, not for natural products; and the accumulation of capital constantly diminishes the rate of interest and enables the laborer to derive a greater return from his toil. M. Bastiat also gives a new definition of value, which he says is _the relation of two services exchanged_. This is all, we believe, that he _claims_ to offer as perfectly new,--the main part of his book appearing as a clearer exposition of the doctrine of Adam Smith. It will be seen that the theory of the book is infinitely superior to that of Ricardo or Malthus; it has borrowed truths from the advanced thinkers of the age; but he would be a bold critic who should affirm that it had not mingled far-reaching errors with them. * * * * * M. Romieu's book in defense of despotism, (lately published in France,) sounds as if it had been written for the _North American Review_, but it never could have been sent to its editor, or it would have been adopted and published by him. It is entitled "The Era of the Cæsars," and its argument is, that history, ancient and modern, and the situation of the contemporary world, prove that force, the sword, or _Cæsarism_, has ultimately decided, and will prevail, in the affairs of the nations. Representative assemblies, Monsieur Romieu considers ridiculous, and mischievous, and in the end fatal: such, at least, he contends, is the experience of France; and as for the liberty of the press, it means a form of tyranny which destroys all other liberty. At the beginning of the century, M. de Fontanes said what (he thinks) multitudes of the soundest minds would reecho, "I shall never deem myself free in a country where freedom of the press exists." He would convert all journals into mere chronicles, and have them strictly watched. Force, he says, is the only principle, even in governments styled free. He includes Switzerland and the United States. The condition and destinies of France he handles with special hardihood. Cæsarism is here already desired and inaugurated--not monarchy, which requires faith in it, nor constitutional government, which is an expedient and an illusion, but a supreme authority capable of maintaining itself, and _commanding_ respect and submission. Mr. Walsh reviews the work in one of his letters to the _Journal of Commerce_; and judging from Mr. Walsh's correspondence on the recent attempts to establish free institutions in Europe, we might suspect him of a hearty sympathy with M. Romieu, whom he describes as an erudite, conscientious personage, formerly a prefect of a department, and a member of the Assembly. * * * * * The German poet, Anastasius Grün, has just published, at Leipzic a collection of the _popular songs of Carinthia_, translated from the original. Carinthia, as, perhaps, all our readers are not aware, is one of the southerly provinces of the Austrian empire, on the borders of Turkey; and, during all the wars of Austria with the Moslems, had to bear the brunt of the fighting. And even after peace was concluded the Carinthians kept up a sort of minor war on their own account, being constantly exposed to incursions from the other side of the frontier. Thus for centuries their country was one extended fortification, and the whole population in constant readiness to rush to arms when the signal fires blazed upon the hills. Then every house was a fortress, and even the churches were surrounded with palisades and ditches, behind which the women and children sought refuge with their movables when the alarm came too near. From this period of constant and savage warfare the popular songs of the country date their origin. Curious to say, many of their heroes are borrowed from the traditions and history of neighboring lands. Thus the Servian champion Marko figures a good deal in this poetry, while the figure which has more importance than all the others is a foreign and almost fabulous being, called King Mathias; wherever this mystic personage can be laid hold of and historically identified, he appears to be Mathias Corvin, king of Hungary. The Carinthians attribute to him not only all the exploits of a variety of notable characters, but also the vices of some celebrated illustrations of immorality. Nor is his career accomplished; according to the tradition of the southern Slavonians, King Mathias is not yet dead, but sleeps in a grotto in the interior of Hungary, waiting for the hour of waking, like Frederick the Redbeard in the Kyffhäuser, Charlemagne in the Untersberg at Salzburg, Holger the Dane near Kronburg, and King Arthur in a mountain of his native country. There sits King Mathias with his warriors, by a table under a linden tree. Another song makes him, like Orpheus with Eurydice, go down to hell with his fiddle in his hand to bring thence his departed bride. But he has no better luck than Orpheus; on the way out she breaks the commanded silence by saying a word to her companion, and so is lost forever. These songs are still sung by the Carinthian soldiers at night, around their watch-fires. There are others of more modern origin, but they are weak and colorless compared with these relics of the old heroic time. * * * * * Mr. Bryant's delightful "Letters of a Traveler," of which we have heretofore spoken, has been issued by Mr. Putnam in a new and very beautiful edition, enriched with many exquisite engravings, under the title of "The Picturesque Souvenir." It is a work of permanent value, and in the style of its publication is hardly surpassed by any of the splendid volumes of the season. * * * * * Dr. Laing, one of those restless English travelers who have printed books about the United States, is now a prominent personage in Australia, where he has been elected a member of the newly instituted Legislature, for the city of Sidney. Upon the conclusion of the canvass he made a speech, after which he was dragged home in his carriage by some of the more energetic of his partisans, the horses having been removed by them for that purpose. He is opposed to the Government. * * * * * The History of Liberty, by Mr. Samuel Elliot, of Boston, is examined at considerable length and in a very genial spirit, in the last number of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_--a review, by the way, in which much more attention appears to be paid to our literature than it receives in the _North American_. The writer observes, in the beginning, that the two initial volumes of Mr. Elliot's great work, now published, in which the _Liberty of Rome_ is treated, would be a superhuman performance, if Niebuhr, Muller, Heeren, Grote, and Thirlwall, had not written, and compares the work of our countryman with the poem on the same subject by Thomson, the author of "The Seasons." He says: "Mr. Elliot's work breathes a lofty morality; a grave and masculine reserve; a deep and constant fear of not having done the best. He may be subject,--like other Americans more or less _ideologists_ and system-mongers,--to illusions; but he has the true remedy: his _ideal_ is well placed; he can sympathize fervently with all the pursuits and employments of human activity; he cherishes a profound respect for prudence, and moderation; for an enlarging survey and indulgence of human necessities; for that generosity and virtue which is tender above all of what has life, and seeks to conciliate a complete transformation in the ideas of men. Until now, it would have been difficult to find a thinker who, in judging the Romans, would not have celebrated their inordinate patriotism, as their chief glory. Their heroes were admired precisely for the ardor with which they sacrificed everything--even their children or their conscience--to the interests of country or party. Mr. Elliot, on the contrary, discovers in this heroism only a lamentable deficiency of true virtue and honor; of a sound moral sense and equitable liberality. To our apprehension, a great reform--an historical event--is to be recognized in this new moral repugnance--this new tendency to deem the spirit of _party_ an evil and a danger. Formerly, nothing was conceived to be nobler than to serve your party, without stint or reservation;--nothing more disgraceful than to abandon it even when you could not entertain the same opinions. The condemnation and reversal of this doctrine would be a moral advancement more important for human futurity, than many of the occurrences or the revolutions of the last sixty years, that have made the most noise." We believe Mr. Elliot's leisure is not to be seriously interrupted by public employments, and trust, therefore, that he will proceed, with as much rapidity as possible, with his grand survey of the advance of Liberty, down even to our own day--which it is not unlikely will conclude a very important era of his subject. * * * * * Dr. Bowring, who is now, we believe, British Consul at Canton, was the editor of the last and only complete edition of Jeremy Bentham's works; he has been one of the most voluminous contributors to the Westminster Review, and he is eminent as a linguist, though if we may judge by some of his performances, not very justly so. He translated and edited specimens of the poetry of several northern nations, and it has often been charged as an illustration of his dishonesty, that he omitted a stanza of the sublime hymn of Derzhaven, a Russian, to the Deity, because it recognized the divinity of Christ, as it is held by Trinitarians--the Doctor being a Unitarian. He is sharply satirized, and treated frequently with extreme and probably quite undeserved contempt, in the Diaries and Correspondence of the late Hugh Swinton Legaré. * * * * * Mr. Henry Rogers, of Birmingham, has published in London two stout volumes of his contributions to the _Edinburgh Review_. They are not the best things that ever appeared under the old "buff and blue," though they are neat and very readable. Hitherto Professor Rogers has not been known in literature, except by an edition of the works of Burke. The reviewals or essays in this collection are divided into biographical, critical, theological, and political. The first volume consists principally of a series of sketches of great minds,--in the style, half-biographical, half-critical, of which so many admirable specimens have adorned the literature of this age. Indeed, such _demonstrations_ in mental anatomy have been a favorite study in all ages. Among Mr. Rogers's subjects, are Pascal, Luther, Leibnitz, and Plato, and he promises sketches of Descartes, Malabranche, Hobbes, Berkeley, and Locke. The first article, on Thomas Fuller, may look rather dry at first; but the interest increases, we admire the quaintness of old Fuller, and not less the fine, accurate, and complete picture given of his life, character, and works. In this, as in the other biographical articles, Mr. Rogers tells his story fluently. If he has not the wit of Sydney Smith, nor the brilliance of Macaulay, he has not the prosiness of Alison, nor the bitterness of Gifford. He is witty with Fuller, sarcastic with Marvell, energetic with Luther, philosophical and precise with Leibnitz, quietly satirical with Pascal, and reflective and intellectual with Plato. "Dead as a last year's reviewal" is no longer among the proverbs. Books are too numerous to be read, and people make libraries of the quarterlies,--thanks to the facilities afforded by Mr. Leonard Scott! And reviews, properly written,--evincing some knowledge of the books which furnish their titles, are very delightful and useful reading, frequently more so than the productions which suggest them, of which they ought always to give an intelligible description. And this condition is fulfilled almost always by the reviews published in London and Edinburgh. Our _North American_ sometimes gives us tolerably faithful abstracts, and its readers would be glad if its writers would confine themselves to such labors. But we read an article in it not long ago, under the title of Mr. Carey's "Past and Present," which contained no further allusion to this book, nor the slightest evidence that the "reviewer" had ever seen it. On the other hand, the last number contains a paper on the Homeric question, purporting to have been occasioned by Mr. Grote's History of Greece, but deriving its learning, we understand, altogether from Mr. Mure's History of Greek Literature, a work so extensive that it is not likely to be reprinted, or largely imported. This custom which now obtains, of reprinting reviewals, we believe was begun in this country, where Mr. Emerson brought out a collection of Carlyle's Essays, Andrews Norton one of Macaulay's, Dr. Furness one of Professor Wilson's, Mr. Edward Carey one of Lord Jeffrey's, &c. several years before any such collections appeared in England. * * * * * Respecting the Holy Land, no work of so much absolute value has appeared since Dr. Robinson's, as the Historical and Geographical Sketch by Rabbi Joseph Schwartz, in a large and thick octavo, with numerous illustrations, lately published in Philadelphia by Mr. Hart. Rabbi Schwartz resided in Palestine sixteen years, and he is the only Jew of eminence who has written of the country from actual observation, since the time of Benjamin of Tudela. The learned author wrote his work in Hebrew, and it has been translated by Rabbi Isaac Leeser, one of the ablest divines in Philadelphia. It is addressed particularly to Jewish readers, to whom the translator remarks in his preface, "It is hoped that it may contribute to extend the knowledge of Palestine, and rouse many to study the rich treasures which our ancient literature affords, and also to enkindle sympathy and kind acts for those of our brothers who still cling to the soil of our ancestors and love the dust in which many of our saints sleep in death, awaiting a glorious resurrection and immortality." * * * * * Mr. John R. Thompson, the accomplished and much esteemed editor of the _Southern Literary Messenger_, whose genuine and intelligent love of literature is illustrated in every number of his excellent magazine, has just published a wise and eloquent address on the present state of education in Virginia, which was delivered before the literary societies of Washington College, at Lexington. It discloses the causes of the ignorance of reading and writing by seventy thousand adults in Virginia, and forcibly and impressively urges the necessity of a thorough literary culture to the common prosperity. * * * * * A New Play by Mr. Marston, founded on the story of Philip Augustus of France and Marie de Méranie, has been put into rehearsal at the Olympic Theater in London. * * * * * The Leipzic _Grenzboten_ notices Mrs. Maberly's new romance of "Fashion" (which we believe has not yet been republished in America) with great praise, as a work of striking power and artistic management. Nevertheless, says the critic, this romance has excited in England as much anger as attention, and this he attributes to the truth with which the authoress has depicted the aristocratic world. He then makes the following remarks, which are curious enough to be translated: "The meaning of the word 'fashion' cannot be rendered in a foreign language. _La mode_ and its tyranny approach somewhat to the sense, but still it remains unintelligible to us Germans, because we have no idea of the capricious, silly, and despotic laws of fashion in England. They do not relate, as with us, to mere outward things, as clothes and furniture, but especially to position and estimation in high society. In order to play a part on that stage it is necessary to understand the mysterious conditions and requirements which the goddess Fashion prescribes. High birth and riches, wit and beauty, find no mercy with her if her whimsical laws are not obeyed. In what these laws consist no living soul can say: they are double, yes three-fold, the _je ne sais quoi_ of the French. The exclusiveness of English society is well known, a peculiarity in which it is only excelled by its copyist the American society of New York and Boston. But it is not enough to have obtained admission into the magic circle: there, too, fashion implacably demands its victims, and to her as to Moloch earthly and heavenly goods, wealth, and peace of soul, are offered up." * * * * * John Ruskin, who has written of painting, sculpture and architecture, in a manner more attractive to mere amateurs than any other author, will soon publish his elaborate work, "The Authors of Venice." Notwithstanding his almost blind idolatry of Turner, and his other heresies, Ruskin is one of the few writers on art who open new vistas to the mind; vehement, paradoxical, and one-sided he may be, but no other writer _clears_ the subject in the same masterly manner--no other writer suggests more even to those of opposite opinions. * * * * * The first two volumes of Oehlenschlager's _Lebens Erinnerungen_ have appeared at Vienna, and attract more observation than anything else in the late movements in the German literature. The poet's early struggles give one kind of interest to this work, and his friendship with illustrious litterateurs another. Madame de Stael, Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegels, Steffens, Hegel, and other representatives of German thought, pass in succession through these pages, mingled with pictures of Danish life, and criticisms on the Danish drama. Like most German biographies, this deals as much with German literature as with German life. * * * * * Gustave Planche, a clever Parisian critic, has in the last number of _La Revue des Deux Mondes_, an article on Lamartine's novels and Confessions, issued within the year. He spares neither the prose nor poetry of the romantic statesman. He classes the _History of the Girondists_ with the novels. On the whole he thinks there is less of fact, or more of transmutation of fact, than in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley series: as in Scott's Life of Napoleon there was less of veracity than in any even of his professed fictions founded upon history. These romancists are never to be trusted, except in their own domains. * * * * * Prosper Mérimée, known among the poets by his _Theatre de Clara Gazul_, and who by his _Chronique du Temps de Charles IX._ and _Colomba_, was entitled to honorable mention in literature, has written a very clever book about the United States--the fruit of a visit to this country last year--which an accomplished New-Yorker is engaged in translating. His last previous performance was a Life of Pedro the Cruel, which has been translated and published in London, and is thus spoken of in the _Literary Gazette_:-- "The subject hardly yields in romantic variety, strange turns of fortune, characters of strong expression, and tragedies of the deepest pathos, to anything created by the imagination. Within the period and in the land which was marked by the fortunes of Pedro of Castile, the scene is crowded with figures over which both history and song have thrown a lasting interest. The names of Planche of France, Inez de Castro of Portugal, Du Guesclin,--the Black Prince, the White Company--belong alike to romance and to reality. The very 'Don Juan' of Mozart and Byron plays his part for an hour as no fabulous gallant at the court of Seville; Moors and Christians join in the council or in the field here, as well as in the strains of the Romancero; and the desperate game played for a crown by the rival brothers whose more than Theban strife was surrounded by such various objects of pity, admiration or terror, wants no incident, from its commencement to its climax, to fill the just measure of a tragic theme. One more striking could scarcely have been desired by a poet; yet M. Mérimée, who claims that character, has handled it with the judgment and diligence of an historian." * * * * * Nathaniel Hawthorne, the greatest living American writer born in the present century, has just published, through Ticknor, Reed and Fields, a volume for juvenile readers, in the preface to which he says: "It has not been composed without a deep sense of responsibility. The author regards children as sacred, and would not for the world cast anything into the fountain of a young heart that might embitter and pollute its waters. And even in point of the literary reputation to be aimed at, juvenile literature is as well worth cultivating as any other. The writer, if he succeed in pleasing his little readers, may hope to be remembered by them till their own old age--a far longer period of literary existence than is generally attained by those who seek immortality from the judgments of full grown men." * * * * * An attentive correspondent of the _International_, at Vienna, mentions that letters have been received there from the eccentric but daring and intelligent American, Dr. Mathews, formerly of Baltimore, who, some years since, assumed the style of the Arabs, with a view to discovery in Northern and Central Africa. We hope to obtain further information of Dr. Mathews, respecting whose adventures there has not hitherto been anything in the journals for several years. * * * * * Professor G.J. Adler, of the New York University, the learned author of the German and English Dictionary, is now printing a translation which he has just completed, of the _Iphigenia in Taurus_, by Goethe. Of the eighteen that remain of the sixty to ninety plays of Euripides, the _Iphigenia at Tauri_ is one of the most remarkable. When Goethe returned from Italy, his spirit was infused with the love of ancient art, and his ambition tempting him to a rivalry of its masters, he selected this subject, to which he brought, if not his finest powers, his severest labor; and the drama of Iphigenia--which is in many respects very different from that of Euripides,--is, next to Faust, perhaps the noblest of his works. We are not aware that it has hitherto appeared in English. The forthcoming translation, (which is in the press of the Appletons,) strikes us very favorably. It is exact, and is generally flowing and elegant. * * * * * The Official Paper of China has a name which means the _Pekin Gazette_. It is impossible to ascertain when its publication was first commenced, but it seems to be the oldest newspaper in the world. There is a tradition that it began under the Sung dynasty in the latter part of the tenth century. It is originally a sort of handbill, containing official notices, posted up on the walls of the Capital and sent in manuscript to provincial officers. At Canton it is printed for the public at large and sold. It appears every other day in the form of a pamphlet of ten or twelve pages. It consists of three parts; the first is devoted to Court news, such as the health and other doings of the Imperial family; the second gives the decrees of the Sovereign; the third contains the reports and memorials of public functionaries made to the imperial government on all subjects concerning the interests of the country. The decrees are concise in style; the reports and memorials are the perfection of verbiage. The former have the force of laws, the Emperor being both legislative and executive. As a record of materials for history the _Gazette_ is of little value, for a little study shows that lies are abundant in it, and that its statements are designed as much to conceal as to make known the facts. Since the English war the number of documents published relating to affairs with foreign nations is very small. Something is given respecting the finances, but that too, is of very little value. * * * * * Mr. Williams, who wrote "Shakspeare and his Friends," &c., has just published a novel entitled "The Luttrells." It was very high praise of his earlier works that they were by many sagacious critics attributed to Savage Landor. His novels on the literature of the Elizabethan age evince taste and feeling, and his sketches of the Chesterfield and Walpole period in "Maids of Honor," are happily and gracefully done. "The Luttrells" has passages occasionally more powerful but hardly so pleasing as some in the books we have named. In mere style it is an improvement on his former efforts. In the early passages of the story there is nice handling of character, and frequent touches of genuine feeling. * * * * * The fifth volume of Vaulabelle's _Histoire de la Restauration_, a conscientious and carefully written history of France and the Bourbon family, from the restoration in 1815 down to the overthrow of Charles X., has just been published at Paris. It receives the same praise as the preceding volumes. M. Vaulabelle it may be remembered was for a brief period, in 1848, General Cavaignac's Minister of Education and Public Worship. * * * * * Captain Sir Edward Belcher, C.B., R.N., &c., whose presence in New York we noted recently, is now in Texas, superintending the settlement of a large party of first class English emigrants. A volume supplemental to his "Voyage of H.M.S. Samarang," illustrative of the zoology of the expedition, has been published in London by Arthur Adams, F.L.S. * * * * * M. Guizot, it is said, is going back to his old profession of editor. He is to participate in the conduct of the _Journal des Debats_, in which, of course, he will sign his articles. We do not always agree with M. Guizot, but we cannot help thinking him, upon the whole, the most respectable man who for a long time has been conspicuous in affairs in France. * * * * * The sixth and concluding volume of the life and correspondence of Robert Southey, edited by C.C. Southey--illustrated with a view of Southey's Monument in Crosthwaite Church, and a view of Crosthwaite, from Greta Hill--was published in London, early in November, and will soon be reissued by Harpers. * * * * * Somebody having said that Bulwer had lost his hearing, and was in a very desponding way in consequence, he has written to the _Morning Post_ to say he is by no means deaf, but that if he were he should not much despond on that account, "for the quality and material of the talk that's going is not calculated to cause any great regret for the deprivation of one's ears." * * * * * The second volume of the Count de Castelnau's Expedition into the Central Regions of South America, under the auspices of the French government, has just been published in Paris. * * * * * An eminent diplomatist of France has just published two volumes of most interesting revelations drawn from his own note-books and personal knowledge. We allude to the _Etudes Diplomatiques et Litteraires_ of Count Alexis de Saint Priest. On the partition of Poland especially, it casts an entirely new and conclusive light. M. Saint Priest shows that apart from the internal anarchy and weakness of Poland, the catastrophe was the work not of Russia as has been commonly supposed, but of Frederic the Great of Prussia. Russia had no interest in dividing Poland; in fact she was already supreme in that country; and besides, her policy has never been that of an active initiative,--she waits for the fruit to fall, and does not take the trouble of shaking the tree herself. The great criminal then in this Polish affair was Prussia, and the cause was the historic antagonism between Germany and Poland. M. Saint Priest sketches the character of Frederic with the hand of a master. "We shall see him," he says in approaching that part of his subject, "we shall see him as he was, both adventurous and patient, ardent and calm, full of passion yet perfectly self-possessed, capable of embracing the vastest horizon and of shutting himself up for the moment in the most limited detail, his eyes reaching to the farthest distance, his hand active in the nearest vicinity, approaching his aim step by step through by-paths, but always gaining it at last by a single bound. We shall see him employing the most indefatigable, the most tenacious, the most persevering will in the service of his idea, preparing it, maturing it by long and skillful reparation, and imposing it on Europe not by sudden violence, but by the successive and cunning employment of flattery and intimidation. And finally, when all is consummated, we shall see him succeed in avoiding the responsibility and throwing it altogether upon his coadjutors, with an art all the more profound for the simplicity under which its hardihood was concealed, and the indifference which masked its avidity. To crown so audacious a maneuver, he will not hesitate to declare, that "since he has never deceived any one, he will still less deceive posterity! And in fact he has treated them with a perfect equality: he made a mock of posterity as well as of his contemporaries." With regard to the part of France in the division of Poland, M. Saint Priest attempts to prove that the French monarchy could not prevent the catastrophe; but that it was in the revolutionary elements then fermenting in France and opposed to the monarchy, that Frederic found his most powerful allies. Of course he defends the monarchy from blame in the matter, and we shall not undertake to say that he is wrong in so doing. Certainly the downfall of Poland cannot be regarded as an isolated event, but as a part of the great series of movements belonging to the age, in which causes the most antagonistic in their nature often cooperated in producing the same effect. M. Saint Priest further reasons that the providential mission of Poland was to oppose Turkey and Islamism, and when the latter ceased to rise the former necessarily declined. But our space will not permit us to follow this interesting work any farther. The careful students of history will not fail to consult it for themselves. * * * * * Mary Lowell Putnam, a daughter of the Rev. Dr. Lowell of Boston, and sister of James Russell Lowell, the poet, is the author of an annihilating reviewal, in the last _Christian Examiner_, of Mr. Bowen on the Hungarian Struggle for Independence. The _Tribune_ contains a _resumé_ of the controversy, in which it had itself been honorably distinguished, and furnishes the following sketch of Professor Bowen's antagonist: "Without any ambition for literary distinction, leading a life of domestic duties and retirement, and pursuing the most profound and various studies from an insatiate thirst for knowledge, this admirable person has shown herself qualified to cope with the difficulties of a complicated historical question, and to vanquish a notorious Professor on his own ground. The manner in which she has executed her task (and her victim) is as remarkable for its unpretending modesty as for its singular acuteness and logical ability. She writes with the graceful facility of one who is entirely at home on the subject, conversant from long familiarity with its leading points, and possessing a large surplus of information in regard to it for which she has no present use. If she exhibits a generous sympathy with the cause of the oppressed, she does not permit the warmth of her feelings to cloud the serenity of her judgment. She conducts the argument with an almost legal precision, and compels her opponent to submit to the force of her intellect." Harvard would certainly be a large gainer if Mrs. Putnam could succeed Mr. Bowen as professor of _History_, or,--as the libeller of Kossuth _fills_ so small a portion of the chair,--if she could be made associate professor; but to this she would have objections. * * * * * In Leipsic a monument has been erected by the German agriculturists to Herr Thaer, who has done so much amongst them for agricultural science. It consists of a marble column nine feet high, on which stands the statue of Thaer, life size. It is surrounded by granite steps and an iron balustrade. The column bears the inscription, "To their respected teacher, Albert Thaer, the German Agriculturists--1850." * * * * * A New Novel by Bulwer Lytton is announced by Bentley, to appear in three volumes. Dickens, having completed his "David Copperfield," will immediately commence a new serial story. Thackeray, it is rumored, has a new work in preparation altogether different from anything he has yet published. The Lives of Shakspeare's Heroines are announced to appear in a series of volumes. * * * * * "Sir Roger de Coverly: By the Spectator," is one of the newest and most beautiful books from the English press. It is illustrated by Thompson, from designs by Frederick Tayler, and edited with much judgment by Mr. Henry Wills. The idea of the book is an extremely happy one. It is not always easy to pick out of the eight volumes of the _Spectator_ the papers which relate to _Sir Roger de Coverley_, when we happen to want them. Here we have them all, following close upon each other, forming so many chapters of the Coverley Chronicle, telling a succinct and charming story, with just so much pleasing extract from other papers as to throw light upon the doings of Sir Roger, and enough graceful talk about the London of Queen Anne's time (by way of annotation) to adapt one's mind completely to the de Coverley tone of sentiment. The _Spectator_--we mean the modern gazette of that name--says of it:-- "The character of Sir Roger de Coverley is a creation which, in its way, has never been surpassed; never perhaps equaled except by the _Vicar of Wakefield_. The de Coverley establishment and the Vicar's family have a strong general likeness. They are the same simple-minded, kind-hearted English souls, in different spheres of society. The thirty papers of the _Spectator_ devoted to Sir Roger and his associates, now that we have them together, form a perfect little novel in themselves, from the reading of which we rise as we rise from that of Goldsmith, healthier and happier. There never was so beautiful an illustration of how far mere genuine heartiness of disposition and rectitude of purpose can impart true dignity to a character, as Sir Roger de Coverley. He is rather beloved than esteemed. He talks all the way up stairs on a visit. He is a walking epitome of as many vulgar errors as Sir Thomas Browne collected in his book. He has grave doubts as to the propriety of not having an old woman indicted for a witch. He is brimful of the prejudices of his caste. He has grown old with the simplicity of a child. Captain Sentry must keep him in talk lest he expose himself at the play. And yet about all he does there is an unassuming dignity that commands respect; and for strength and consistency in the tender passion Petrarch himself does not excel him. Sir Roger's unvarying devotion to his widow, his incessant recurrence to the memory of his affection to her, the remarks relating to her which the character of Andromache elicits from him at the play, and the little incident of her message to him on his death-bed, form as choice a record of passionate fidelity as the sonnets of the Italian. How beautiful, too, is that death-scene--how quietly sublime! Let us add that the good Sir Roger is surrounded by people worthy of him. Will. Wimble, with his good-natured, useless services; Captain Sentry, brave and stainless as his own sword, and nearly as taciturn; the servant who saved him from drowning; the good clergyman who is contented to read the sermons of others; the innkeeper who must needs have his landlord's head for a sign; the _Spectator_ and his cronies: and then, and still, the Widow!" * * * * * Mr. William W. Story, to whose sculptures we have referred elsewhere, is engaged in the preparation of a memoir of his father, the great jurist. * * * * * The Life of John Randolph, by Hugh A. Garland, has been published by the Appletons in two octavos. It is interesting--as much so perhaps as any political biography ever written in this country--but the subject was so remarkable, and the materiel so rich and various, that it might have been made very much more attractive than it is. Mr. Garland's style is decidedly bad--ambitious, meretricious and vulgar--but it was impossible to make a dull work upon John Randolph's history and character. * * * * * The Best Edition of Milton's Poems ever published in America--a reprint of the best ever published in England--that of Sir Edgerton Brydges, has just been printed by George S. Appleton of Philadelphia, and the Appletons of New York. It is everything that can be desired in an edition of the great poet, and must take the place, we think, of all others that have been in the market. We are also indebted to the same publishers for an admirable edition of Burns, which if not as judiciously edited as the Milton of Sir Edgerton Brydges, is certainly very much better than any we have hitherto possessed. * * * * * The Keepsake: a Gift for the Holidays, is one of the most splendid--indeed is the _most_ richly executed annual of the season. We have not had leisure to examine its literary contents, but they are for the most part by eminent writers. In unique and variously beautiful bindings, "The Keepsake" is desirable to all the lovers of fine art. * * * * * Gray's Poems, with a Life of the author by Professor Henry Reed, has been published by Mr. Henry C. Baird, of Philadelphia, in a volume the most elegant that has been issued this year from the press of that city. The engravings are specimens of genuine art, and the typography is as perfect as we have ever seen from the printers of Paris or London. * * * * * The Rev. Duncan Harkness Weir, a distinguished _alumnus_ of the university and author of an essay "On the tenses of the Hebrew verb," which appeared in "Kitto's Journal of Sacred Literature" for October last, has been elected Professor of Oriental Languages, in the College and University of Glasgow, in room of the late Dr. Gray. * * * * * Douglass Jerrold announces a republication of all his writings for the last fifteen years, in weekly numbers, commencing on the first of January next--"a most becoming contribution to the Industry of Nations Congress of 1851." * * * * * The Rev. Christopher Wordsworth, a nephew of William Wordsworth, has nearly completed the memoirs of the poet, which will be reprinted, with a preface by Professor Henry Reed, by Ticknor, Reed and Fields, of Boston. The Fine Arts. Schwanthaler's Bavaria, and the Theresienwiese at Munich.--On the western side of Munich several streets converge in a plain which is the arena of the great popular festival that takes place every October. Around this plain, which is called the Theresienwiese, as well as around the whole district in which the city is placed, the land rises some thirty or forty feet. Near the spot where the green waters of the Iser break through this ridge, King Louis founded the Hall of Fame, which is to transmit to posterity the busts of renowned natives of the country. This edifice is in Doric style, and with its two wings forms a court-yard, opening toward the city. In the center of this court is placed upon a granite pedestal, thirty feet high, a colossal statue of bronze, fifty-four feet high, representing Bavaria, to which we have several times referred in _The International_--our European correspondence enabling us to anticipate in regard to subjects of literature and art generally even the best-informed foreign journals. The Hall of Fame will not be completed for some years, but the statue is finished, and was first exposed to view on the 9th of October. The execution of this statue was committed by King Louis to Schwanthaler, who began by making a model of thirteen feet in height. In order to carry out the work a wooden house was erected at the royal foundry, and a skeleton was built by masons, carpenters, and smiths, to sustain the earth used in the mould for the full-sized model. This was begun in 1838, and ere long the figure stood erect. The subsequent work on the model occupied two years. The result was greatly praised by the critics, who wondered at the skill which had been able to give beauty as well as dignity to a statue of so large dimensions. It holds up a crown of oak-leaves in the left hand, while the right, resting upon the hip, grasps an unsheathed sword twined with laurel, beneath which rests a lion. The breast is covered with a lion's skin which falls as low as the hips; under it is a simple but admirably managed robe extending to the feet. The hair is wreathed with oak-leaves, and is disposed in rich masses about the forehead and temples, giving spirit to the face and dignity to the form. Such was the model, and such is the now finished statue. But the subsequent steps in its completion are worthy of a particular description. The model was in gypsum, and the first thing done was to take a mould from it in earth peculiarly prepared for the reception of the melted metal. The first piece, the head, was cast September 11th, 1844. It weighs one hundred and twenty hundred-weight, and is five or six feet in diameter: the remainder was cast at five separate times. When the head was brought successful out of the mould, King Louis and many of the magnates of Germany were present. The occasion was in fact a festival, which Müller, the inspector of the royal bronze foundry and probably the first living master of the art of casting in bronze, rendered still more brilliant by illuminations and garlands of flowers. Vocal music also was not wanting, as the artists of Munich were present in force, and their singing is noted throughout Germany. Since last July workmen have been constantly engaged in transporting the pieces of bronze weighing from 200 to 300 cwt. to the place where the statue was to be erected. For this purpose a wagon of peculiar construction was used, with from sixteen to twenty horses to draw it. On the 7th of August the last piece, the head, was conveyed; it was attended by a festal procession. The space within the head is so great that some twenty-eight men can stand together in it. The body, the main portions of which were made in five castings, weighs from 1300 to 1500 cwt., and has a diameter of twelve feet; the left arm, which is extended to hold the wreaths, from 125 to 130 cwt.; its diameter is five feet, and the diameter of its index finger six inches. The nail of the great toe can hardly be covered with both a man's hands. A door in the pedestal leads to a cast-iron winding stairway which ascends to the head, within which benches have been arranged for the comfort of visitors, several of whom can sit there together with ease. The light enters through openings arranged in the hair, whence also the eye can enjoy the view of the city and the surrounding country with the magical Alps in the background. The entire mass of bronze, weighing about 2600 cwt., was obtained from Turkish cannon lost in the sea at Navarino and recovered by Greek divers. The value of the bronze is about sixty thousand dollars. The sitting lion has a height of near thirty feet. It was cast in three pieces, and completes the composition in the most felicitous manner. The statue having been completed, the final removing of the scaffolding around it and its full exposure to the public took place on the 9th of October. This was a day of great festivity at Munich and its vicinity. A platform had been erected directly in front of the statue for the accommodation of King Maximilian and his suite. The festivities began with an enormous procession of carriages, led by bands of music and bearing the representatives of the different industrial and agricultural trades, with symbols of their respective occupations. As they passed before the King's platform each carriage stopped, saluted his majesty, and received a few kindly words in reply. The procession was closed by the artists of Munich. The carriages took their station in a half circle around the platform. Soon after, accompanied by the thunder of cannon, the board walls surrounding the scaffold were gradually lowered to the ground. The admiration of the statue (which by the way is exactly fifty-four feet high), was universal and enthusiastic. All beholders were delighted with the harmony of its parts and the loveliness of its expression notwithstanding its colossal size. The ceremonies of the day were closed with speeches and music; the painter Tischlein made a speech lauding King Louis as the creator of a new era for German art. A very numerous chorus sung several festive hymns composed for the occasion, after which the multitude dispersed. * * * * * The Dominican Monastery of San Marco at Florence has for centuries been regarded with special interest by the lovers of art for the share it has had in the history of their favorite pursuit. Nor has its part been of less importance in the sphere of politics. The wanderer through its halls is reminded not only of Fra Angelico da Fièsole and Fra Bartolommeo, to whose artistic genius the monastery is indebted for the treasures which adorn its halls, refectory, corridors, and cells, but of Cosimo de Medici, Lorenzo his great descendant, of Savonarola, and the long series of contests here waged against temporal and spiritual tyranny. The works of Giotto and Domenico Ghirlandajo are likewise to be found in the monastery, and there also miniature pictures of the most flourishing period of art may be seen ornamenting the books of the choir. Every historian who has written upon Florence has taken care not to omit San Marco and its inhabitants. We are glad to announce that a society of artists at Florence has undertaken to give as wide a publicity as possible to the noblest productions of art in this monastery. A former work by the same men is a good indication of what may now be expected from them. Some years since they published copies of the most important pictures from the collection of the Florentine Academy of Art. They gave sixty prints with explanations. Among engravings from galleries this was one of the best, containing in moderate compass a history of Tuscan art from Cimabue to Andrea del Sarto. The new work, which has long been in preparation but has been delayed by unfavorable circumstances, will now be carried through the press without delay. Its title is, _San Marco Convento dei Padri Predicatori in Firenze illustrato e inciso principalmente nei dipinti del B. Giovanni Angelico_. Antonio Parfetti, the successor of Morghen and Garavaglia as professor of the art of engraving on copper at the Florentine Academy, has the artistic supervision of the enterprise. Father Vincenzo Marchese, to whom the public are indebted for the work well known to all students, on the artists of the Dominican order, is to furnish a history of the monastery, a biography of Fra Angelico, together with explanations of the engravings. Everything is thus in the most capable hands. The execution of the copperplates leaves nothing to be desired. The draughtsmen and engravers having had the best preparatory practice in the above-mentioned series from the Academy, have fully entered into the spirit of the originals; both outlines and shading are said by the best critics to combine the greatest delicacy with exactness, and to reproduce the expression of feeling which is the difficulty in these Florentine works, with tact and truth. As yet they have finished only the smaller frescoes which adorn almost every cell; but they will soon have ready the larger ones, which will show how this painter, whose sphere was mainly the pious emotions of the soul, was also master of the most thrilling effects. The same is proved by the powerful picture of the Crucifixion in the chapter hall, with its heads so full of expression, a selection from which has just been published by G.B. Nocchi, who some years since issued the well-known collection of drawings from the Life of Jesus in the Academy. The impression of the frescoes on Chinese paper has been done with the greatest care. Forty plates and forty printed folio sheets will complete the work, which is to be put at a moderate price. These illustrations of San Marco will be universally welcomed with delight by the admirers of the beautiful, for there the painter who most purely represented Christian art passed the greater part of his life, leaving behind him an incomparable mass of the most characteristic and charming creations. * * * * * Mr. William W. Story, who some time since abandoned a lucrative profession to devote himself to art, has recently returned from Rome, where he had been practicing sculpture during the past three years. Mr. Story, we understand, has brought home with him to Boston several models of classical subjects, the fruits of his labors abroad, which are spoken of in the highest terms by those who have had the privilege of inspecting them. Mr. Story is the only son of the late Justice Story of Massachusetts. Before going abroad he had distinguished himself by some of his attempts at sculpture, one of which was a bust of his father, which he executed in marble. A copy of this work has been purchased or ordered by some of his father's admirers in London, to be placed in one of the Inns of Court. Mr. Story also made himself known by a volume of miscellaneous poems, published in 1845. It is his intention, we learn, to return to Italy in the spring. * * * * * Les Beautes de la France is the title of a splendid new work now publishing at Paris. It consists of a collection of engravings on steel, representing the principal cities, cathedrals, public monuments, chateaux, and picturesque landscapes of France. Each engraving is accompanied by four pages of text, giving the complete history of the edifice or locality represented. What is curious about it is that the engravings are made in London, for what reason we are not informed. * * * * * The first exhibition of paintings, such as is now given annually by our academies, was at Paris in the year 1699. In September of that year, at the suggestion of Mansart, the first was held in the Louvre. It consisted of two hundred and fifty-three paintings, twenty-four pieces of sculpture, and twenty-nine engravings. The second and last during the reign of Louis XIV. was opened in 1704. That was composed of five hundred and twenty specimens. During the reign of Louis XV., from 1737, there were held twenty-four expositions. That of 1767 was remarkable for the presence of several of the marine pieces of Claude Joseph Vernet. During the reign of Louis XVI., from 1775 to 1791 there were nine expositions. The _Horatii_, one of the master pieces of David, figured in that of 1785. His first pieces had appeared in that of 1782. The former Republic, too, upon stated occasions "exposed the works of the artists forming the general commune of the arts." It was in these that David acquired his celebrity as a painter which alone saved his head from the revolutionary axe. The Paris exhibition will this year commence on the fifteenth of December. * * * * * The largest specimen of Enamel Painting probably in the world, has recently been completed by Klöber and Martens at Berlin. It is four and a half feet high, and eight feet broad, and it is intended for the castle church at Wittenberg. The subject is Christ on the Cross, and at his feet, on the right, stands Luther holding an open bible and looking up to the Savior; and, on the left, Melancthon, the faithful cooperator of the great reformer. The tombs of both are in this church, and it is known that to those who, after the capture of the town, desired to destroy these tombs, the emperor, Charles V., answered, "I war against the living, not against the dead!" It was to the portal of this church that Luther affixed the famous protest against indulgences which occasioned the first movement of the Reformation. The king has caused two doors to be cast in bronze, with this protest inscribed on them, so that it will now be seen there in imperishable characters. * * * * * The original portrait of Sir Francis Drake wearing the jewel around his neck which Queen Elizabeth gave him, is now in London for the purpose of being copied for the United Service Club. Sir T.T.F.E. Drake, to whom it belongs, carried to London at the same time, for the inspection of the curious in such matters, the original jewel, which, beyond the interest of its associations with Elizabeth and Drake, is valuable as a work of art. On the outer case is a carving by Valerio Belli, called Valerio Vincentino, of a black man kneeling to a white. This is not mentioned by Walpole in his account of Vincentino. Within is a capital and well-preserved miniature of Queen Elizabeth, by Isaac Oliver, set round with diamonds and pearls. * * * * * The Family of Vernet--the "astonishing family of Vernet"--is thus referred to by a Paris correspondent of the _Courier and Enquirer_: "History, probably, does not show another instance of so remarkable a descent from father to son, through four generations, of the possession, in an eminent degree, of a special and rare talent. Claude Joseph was born in 1714, and was the son of a distinguished painter of his day, Antoine Vernet. He excelled all his contemporaries in sea pieces. His son, Antoine Charles Horace Vernet, was, after David, one of the first painters of the empire, excelling especially in battle scenes. His Rivoli, Marengo, Austerlitz, Wagram, and his twenty-eight plates illustrative of the campaign of Bonaparte in Italy, have secured a very high reputation for A.C.H. Vernet. The greatest living French painter--perhaps it may be truly said, the greatest painter of the day--is Horace Vernet, son of the last named. He was born in 1789 _in the Louvre_. He, like his father, excels in battle scenes and is remarkable for the vivacity and boldness of his conceptions. He is now covering the walls of the historic gallery at Versailles with canvas, which will cause him to descend to posterity as the greatest of his family. None of your readers who have visited Versailles, but have stood before and admired till the picture seemed almost reality, his living representations of recent military events in Africa. His last admirable picture of Louis Napoleon on _horseback_ will, it is stated, be one of the greatest attractions of the approaching exposition." * * * * * M. Leutze is expected home from Germany in the spring. He left Philadelphia, the last time, nearly ten years ago. He will accompany his great picture of "Washington crossing the Delaware." Powers's statue of Calhoun, with the left arm broken off by the incompetent persons who at various times were engaged in attempting to recover it, upon being removed from the sea under which it had lain nearly three months was found as fresh in tone as when it came from the chisel of the sculptor. It has been placed in the temple prepared for it in Charleston. Mr. Ranney has completed a large picture representing Marion and his Men crossing the Pedee. * * * * * Kaulbach, according to a letter from Berlin in the November _Art Journal_, was to leave that city about the middle of October, in order to resume for the winter his duties as Director of the Academy of Munich. The sum which he will receive for his six great frescoes and the ornamental frieze, will be 80,000 thalers (12,000_l._ sterling) and this is secured to him, as the contract was made before the existence of a constitutional budget. * * * * * Homer's Odyssey furnishes the subjects for a series of frescoes now being executed in one of the royal palaces at Munich. Six halls are devoted to the work; four of them are already finished, sixteen cantos of the poem being illustrated on their walls. The designs are by Schwanthaler, and executed by Hiltensperger. Between the different frescoes are small landscapes representing natural scenes from the same poem. * * * * * If we credit all the accounts of pictures by the old masters, we must believe that they produced as many works as with ordinary energy they could have printed had they lived till 1850. The _Journal de Lot et Garonne_ states that in the church of the Mas-d'Agenais, Count Eugène de Lonley has discovered, in the sacristy, concealed beneath dust and spiders' webs, the 'Dying Christ,' painted by Rubens in 1631. The head of Christ is said to be remarkable for the large style in which it is painted, for drawing, color, and vigorous expression. * * * * * A picture painted on wood, and purchased in 1848 at a public sale in London, where it was sold as the portrait of an Abbess by Le Brozino, has been examined by the Academy of St. Luke at Rome, to whose judgment it was submitted by the purchaser, and unanimously recognized as the work of Michael Angelo, and as representing the illustrious Marchesa de Pescara, Victoria Colonna. * * * * * The National Academy of Design has resolved, that the entire body of artists in this city should be invited to assemble for social intercourse, in the saloons of the Academy, on the first Wednesday evening of every month, commencing in December, and continuing until the season of the annual exhibition. * * * * * The French President has presented to the Museum of the Louvre David's celebrated painting of Napoleon Bonaparte crossing the Alps. This work was for many years at Bordentown, New Jersey, in possession of Joseph Bonaparte. * * * * * The _Art Journal_ for November contains an engraving on steel of the marble bust by Mr. Dunham of Jenny Lind. This bust, we believe, was recently sold in New York, by Mr. Putnam, for four hundred dollars. * * * * * Herman's series of pictures called Illustrations of German History, which gained great praise in Southern Germany some two years since, are now being engraved on steel at Munich, and will soon be published. Music and the Drama. THE ASTOR PLACE OPERA We have watched with interest the attempts which have been made for several years to establish permanently the Italian opera in New York. Although we disapprove of some of the means which have been used to accomplish this object, yet, upon the whole, those who have been efficient in the matter, both amateurs and artists, are entitled to the hearty commendation of our musical world. To the enterprising Maretzek belongs the palm, for his energy, liberality, and discrimination, in bringing forward, in succession, so many great works, and so many artists of superior excellence. No man could have accomplished what has been accomplished by Maretzek, without a combination of very rare endowments. Let the public then see to it that one who has done so much for the cultivation and gratification of a taste for the most refining and delightful of the arts, does not remain unappreciated and unrewarded. Of the last star which has been brought forward by M. Maretzek, the musical critic of _The International_ (who has been many years familiar with the performances of the most celebrated artists in London, Paris, St. Petersburgh and Vienna, and who, it is pertinent to mention, never saw M. Maretzek or Mlle. Parodi except in the orchestra or upon the stage) gives these opinions. As an artist, Parodi ranks among the very best of Europe. Notwithstanding so few years have elapsed since her first appearance upon the stage, she has attained a reputation second only to that of Grisi and Persiani. We have often had the pleasure of listening to both of these last-named celebrities, in their principal rôles, and have dwelt with rapture upon their soul-stirring representations. We have also listened to the Norma and the Lucrezia Borgia of Parodi, and have been equally delighted and astonished. Her excellences may be briefly summed up as follows: With an organ of very great compass and of perfect register, she combines immense power and endurance, and a variety and perfection of intonation unsurpassed by any living artist. When she portrays the softer emotions--affection, love, or benevolence--nothing can be more sweet, pure, and melodious, than her tones; when rage, despair, hate, or jealousy, seize upon her, still is she true to nature, and her notes thrill us to the very soul, by their perfect truthfulness, power, and intensity of expression. If gayety is the theme, no bird carols more blithely than the Italian warbler. What singer can sustain a high or a low tone, or execute a prolonged and varied shake, with more power and accuracy than Parodi? What prima donna can run through the chromatic scale, or dally with difficult cadenzas, full of unique intervals, with more ease and precision than our charming Italian? Who can execute a musical tour de force with more effect than she has so recently done in Norma and Lucrezia? Persiani has acquired her great reputation by husbanding her powers for the purpose of making frequent points, and on this account she is not uniform, but by turn electrifies and tires her audience. She passes through the minor passages, undistinguished from those around her, but in the concerted pieces, and wherever she can introduce a cadenza or a _tour de force_, she carries all before her. Parodi is good _everywhere_--in the dull recitative, and in the secondary and unimportant passages. Her magnificent acting, combined with her superb vocalization, enchain through the entire opera. Grisi, like Parodi, is always uniform and accurate in her representations, and upon the whole should be regarded as the queen of song; but with these exceptions we know of no person who deserves a higher rank as a true artist than Parodi. As yet she is not sufficiently understood. She electrifies her hearers, and secures their entire sympathies, but they have still to learn that silvery and melodious tones, and cool mechanical execution, do not alone constitute a genuine artist or a faultless prima donna. When the public understand how perfectly Parodi identifies herself with the emotions and passions she has to portray,--when they appreciate the immense variety of intonations with which she illustrates her characters, and the earnestness and intensity with which she throws her whole nature into all she does--then she will be hailed as the greatest artist ever on this continent, and one of the greatest in the world. * * * * * Mrs. E. Oakes Smith's new tragedy called "The Roman Tribute," has been produced in Philadelphia for several nights in succession, with very decided success. The leading character in this play, a noble old Roman, is quite an original creation. He is represented as a mixture of antique patriotism, heroic valor, sublime fidelity, and stern resolution, tinged with a beautiful coloring of romance which softens and relieves his more commanding virtues. Several feminine characters of singular loveliness are introduced. The play abounds in scenes of deep passion and thrilling pathos, while its chaste elegance of language equally adapts it for the closet or the stage. It was brought out with great splendor of costume, scenery, proscenium, and the other usual accessories of stage effect, and presented one of the most gorgeous spectacles of the season. We are gratified to learn that the dramatic talent of this richly-gifted lady, concerning which we have before expressed ourselves in terms of high encomium, has received such a brilliant illustration from the test of stage experiment. Mrs. Oakes Smith's admirable play of "Jacob Leisler" will probably be acted in New York during the season. * * * * * LEIGH HUNT UPON G.P.R. JAMES. I hail every fresh publication of James, though I half know what he is going to do with his lady, and his gentleman, and his landscape, and his mystery, and his orthodoxy, and his criminal trial. But I am charmed with the new amusement which he brings out of old materials. I look on him as I look on a musician famous for "variations." I am grateful for his vein of cheerfulness, for his singularly varied and vivid landscapes, for his power of painting women at once lady-like and loving (a rare talent,) for making lovers to match, at once beautiful and well-bred, and for the solace which all this has afforded me, sometimes over and over again, in illness and in convalescence, when I required interest without violence, and entertainment at once animated and mild. * * * * * HERR HECKER DESCRIBED BY MADAME BLAZE DE BURY. We have heretofore given in the _International_ some account of Madame Blaze de Bury, and have made some extracts from her piquant and otherwise remarkable book, "Germania."[2] Looking it over we find considerable information respecting Herr Hecker, who, since his unfortunate attempt to revolutionize Germany, has lived in the United States, being now, we believe, a farmer somewhere in the West. According to the adventurous Baroness, Hecker was the first man in Germany to declare for revolution. He was born, near Mannheim, in 1811; he took a doctor's degree in the University of Heidelberg, followed the profession of the law, and was elected a member of the Lower House in his 31st year. Thenceforth he was active in opposition. He possessed all the chief attributes of a popular leader, and his person was graceful and commanding, his temperament ardent, his eloquence impassioned. Although the Grand Duke Leopold was the "gentlest and most paternal of sovereigns," according to Madame de Bury, still there were many radical defects in the constitution of Baden. Against these defects Hecker waged war, and with some success, which instigated him to further efforts against the government. At length he was beaten on a motion to stop the supplies, and he retired into France disgusted with his countrymen. After some time he returned impregnated with the reddest republicanism. He found sympathy in Baden, and when the revolution broke out in Paris, he resolved to raise the standard of Republicism in Germany. In April, 1848, he set out for Constance, with four drummers and eight hundred Badeners. He and they, extravagantly dressed and armed, proceeded unopposed, singing "Hecker-songs," and comparing their progress to the march of the French over the Simplon! They arrived at Constance, and called the people to arms, but the people would not come. The slouched hats and huge sabers of the patriots did not produce the desired impression, and then _it rained_. In short, the movement failed. Finally, having beaten up all the most disaffected parts of the country for recruits, Hecker arrived at Kandern with twelve hundred men. Here Gagern met him with a few hundred regular troops. Hecker attempted to gain them over with the cry of "German brotherhood," but Gagern kept them steady until he fell, mortally wounded, on the bridge. Then there was a slight skirmish; both parties retreated, and act the first of the drama closed. Meanwhile the _Vor Parlament_ had been summoned, and the National Assembly of Frankfort had met in the Paulskircke, to the number of four hundred deputies; their self-constituted task was simply to reform all Germany. Frankfort was stirring and joyous upon this occasion, as it had used to be in former days, when within its walls was elected the Head of the Holy Roman Empire. Bells were rung, cannon fired, triumphal arches raised, green boughs and rainbow-colored banners waved, flowers strewn in the streets, tapestries hung from windows and balconies, hands stretched forth in greeting, voices strained to call down blessings; all that popular enthusiasm could invent was there, and one immense cry of rejoicing saluted what was fondly termed the "Regeneration of Germany." The tumults, the misery, the bloodshed, and the disappointment that followed, until the Rump of this "magniloquent Parliament" sought shelter at Stuttgardt, are fresh in our memory. [2: Germania: its Courts, Camps, and People. By the Baroness Blaze de Bury. London: Colburn.] Hecker, having done his utmost to "agitate" his country, and having failed "to inspire a dastard populace with the spirit of the ancient Roman people," as Madame expresses it, he fled to America. But his name was still a tower of strength to his Red brethren and the _Freicorps_ of the Schwartzwald and the Rhine. In Western Germany a year ago last summer his return was enthusiastically expected by the revolutionary army. "When Hecker comes," said they, "we shall be invincible." He came: his followers crowded round him and implored him at once to lead them on to victory! "Victory be d--d," was the reply of the returned exile; "go home to your plows and your vines and your wives and children, and leave me to attend to mine." Hecker had only come to Europe for his family, and he returned almost immediately to America. Meanwhile the war blazed up for a little while and then expired, leaving behind it the _Deutsche Verwirrung_[3] as it now presents itself in Germania.[4] [3: Literally, the _German entanglement_.] [4: Hecker seems to have been a sincere enthusiast; and it is always observed by his friends that he renounced ease and comfort for the cause that he espoused. We append a single verse from one of the "Hecker songs" that were in 1849 in the mouth of every Badish republican:-- "Look at Hecker wealth-renouncing, O'er his head the red plume waves, Th' awakening people's will announcing, For the tyrant's blood he craves! Mud boots thick and solid wears he, All round Hecker's banner come, And march at sound of Hecker's drum."] Original Poetry. THE GRIEF OF THE WEEPING WILLOW. Round my cottage porch are wreathing Creeping vines, their perfume breathing To the balmy breeze of Spring. Near it is a streamlet flowing, Where old shady trees are growing; But of _one alone_ I sing. O'er the water sadly bending, With the wave its leaflets blending, Stands a lonely willow tree. And the shadow seems e'erlasting, That its boughs are always casting O'er the tiny wavelets' glee. Oft I've wondered what the sorrow, That ne'er know a gladsome morrow, In the mourner's heart was sealed; But no bitter wail of sadness, Nor low tone of chastened gladness, Had the willow tree revealed. When the breeze its leaves was lifting; When the snows were round it drifting, Seemed it still to grieve the same. Round its trunk a vine is twining, But its tendrils too seem pining For a hand to tend and claim. Type of love that bears life's testing, They earth's rudest storms are breasting; Harmed not--so together borne; And like girl to lover clinging, Passing time is only bringing Strength for every coming morn. Of one summer eve I ponder, When I musing chanced to wander By the streamlet's margin bright. Moonbeams thro' the leaves were streaming, And each leaping wave was gleaming With a paly, astral light. O'er me hung the weeping willow; Mossy bank was balmy pillow, And in slumber sweet I dreamed: Dreamed of music round me gushing, That as winds o'er harp-strings rushing, E'er like angel's whisper seemed. Oh, those low-breathed tones of sorrow; Would that mortal tongue could borrow Power to sing their sweetness o'er; Here and there a sentence gleaming, Soon my spirit caught the meaning That the mournful numbers bore. Sleeper, who beneath my shade, Hath thy couch of dreaming made; Listen as I breathe to thee All my mournful history. Childhood, youth, and womanhood, Have beneath my branches stood; And of each as pass thy slumbers, Speak my melancholy numbers. Of a fair-haired child I tell, Who, one evening shadows fell, Many a bright and gladsome hour Passed mid haunt of bird and flower; O'er the grassy meadow straying, By the streamlet's margin playing, Free from thoughts of care and sadness, Full of life, and joy, and gladness. Where my branches lowly hung Oft her fairy form hath swung, And methinks her laugh I hear, Gaily ringing sweet and clear, As with fading light of day, Tripped her dancing feet away, With many smiles and fewer tears, Thus flew childhood's sunny years. Soon she in my shadow stood, On the verge of womanhood: O'er her pale and thoughtful brow Sunny tress was braided now; Softer tones her lips were breathing, Calmer smiles around them wreathing, Than in childhood's gayer day, Sported from those lips away. Often with her came another; But more tender than a brother Seemed he in the care of her Who was his perfect worshiper. His the hand that trained the vine Round my mossy trunk to twine; 'Twas the parting gift of one, Whom no more I looked upon. Memories of bygone hours Seemed to her its fragile flowers. And each bursting, fragrant blossom Wore she on her gentle bosom, 'Till like them in sad decay, Passed her maiden life away. Once, and only once again, To the trysting place she came: Sad and tearful was her eye, And I heard a mournful sigh, Breathed from out the parted lips, Whose smile seemed quenched by grief's eclipse. Leaf and flower were fading fast, 'Neath the autumn's chilling blast. And all nature seemed to be Kindred with her misery. Winter passed--but spring's warm sun Brought not back the long-missed one. And though vainly, still I yearn For that stricken one's return. HERMANN _Riverside, Nov. 10, 1850._ A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[5] WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY G.P.R. JAMES, ESQ. [5: Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by G.P.R. James, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.] CHAPTER I. Let me take you into an old-fashioned country house, built by architects of the early reign of James the First. It had all the peculiarities--I might almost say the oddities--of that particular epoch in the building art. Chimneys innumerable had it. Heaven only knows what rooms they ventilated; but their name must have been legion. The windows were not fewer in number, and much more irregular: for the chimneys were gathered together in some sort of symmetrical arrangement, while the windows were scattered all over the various faces of the building, with no apparent arrangement at all. Heaven knows, also, what rooms they lighted, or were intended to light, for they very little served the purpose, being narrow, and obstructed by the stone mullions of the Elizabethan age. Each too had its label of stone superincumbent, and projecting from the brick-work, which might leave the period of construction somewhat doubtful--but the gables decided the fact. They, too, were manifold; for although the house had been built all at once, it seemed, nevertheless, to have been erected in detached masses, and joined together as best the builder could; so that there were no less than six gables, turning north, south, east, and west, with four right angles, and flat walls between them. These gables were surmounted--topped, as it were, by a triangular wall, somewhat higher than the acute roof, and this wall was constructed with a row of steps, coped with freestone, on either side of the ascent, as if the architect had fancied that some man or statue would, one day or another, have to climb up to the top of the pyramid, and take his place upon the crowning stone. It was a gloomy old edifice: the bricks had become discolored; the livery of age, yellow and gray lichen, was upon it; daws hovered round the chimney tops; rooks passed cawing over it, on the way to their conventicle hard by; no swallow built under the eaves; and the trees, as if repelled by its stern, cold aspect, retreated from it on three sides, leaving it alone on its own flat ground, like a moody man amidst a gay society. On the fourth side, indeed, an avenue--that is to say, two rows of old elms--crept cautiously up to it in a winding and sinuous course, as if afraid of approaching too rapidly; and at the distance of some five or six hundred yards, clumps of old trees, beeches and evergreen oaks, and things of somber foliage, dotted the park, only enlivened by here and there a herd of deer. Now and then, a milk-maid, a country woman going to church or market, a peasant, or a game-keeper, might be seen traversing the dry brown expanse of grass, and but rarely deviating from a beaten path, which led from one stile over the path wall to another. It was all somber and monotonous: the very spirit of dullness seemed to hang over it; and the clouds themselves--the rapid sportive clouds, free denizens of the sky, and playmates of the wind and sunbeam--appeared to grow dull and tardy, as they passed across the wide space open to the view, and to proceed with awe and gravity, like timid youth in the presence of stern old age. Enough of the outside of the house. Let me take you into the interior, reader, and into one particular room--not the largest and the finest; but one of the highest. It was a little oblong chamber, with one window, which was ornamented--the only ornament the chamber had--with a decent curtain of red and white checked linen. On the side next the door, and between it and the western wall, was a small bed. A walnut-tree table and two or three chairs were near the window. In one corner stood a washing-stand, not very tidily arranged, in another a chest of drawers; and opposite the fire-place, hung from nails driven into the wall, two or three shelves of the same material as the table, each supporting a row of books, which by the dark black covers, brown edges, and thumbed corners, seemed to have a right to boast of some antiquity and much use. At the table, as you perceive, there is seated a boy of some fifteen years of age, with pen and ink and paper, and an open book. If you look over his shoulder, you will perceive that the words are Latin. Yet he reads it with ease and facility, and seeks no aid from the dictionary. It is the "Cato Major" of Cicero. Heaven! what a book for a child like that to read! Boyhood studying old age! But let us turn from the book, and examine the lad himself more closely. See that pale face, with a manlike unnatural gravity upon it. Look at that high broad brow, towering as a monument above the eyes. Remark those eyes themselves, with their deep eager thought; and then the gleam in them--something more than earnestness, and less than wildness--a thirsty sort of expression, as if they drank in that they rested on, and yet were unsated. The brow rests upon the pale fair hand, as if requiring something to support the heavy weight of thought with which the brain is burdened. He marks nothing but the lines of that old book. His whole soul is in the eloquent words. He hears not the door open; he sees not that tall, venerable, but somewhat stiff and gaunt figure, enter and approach him. He reads on, till the old man's Geneva cloak brushes his arm, and his hand is upon his shoulder. Then he starts up--looks around--but says nothing. A faint smile, pleasant yet grave, crosses his finely cut lip; but that is the only welcome, as he raises his eyes to the face that bends over him. Can that boy in years be already aged in heart? It is clear that the old man--the old clergyman, for so he evidently is--has no very tender nature. Every line of his face forbids the supposition. The expression itself is grave, not to say stern. There is powerful thought about it, but small gentleness. He seems one of those who have been tried and hardened in some one of the many fiery furnaces which the world provides for the test of men of strong minds and strong hearts. There has been much persecution in the land; there have been changes, from the rigid and severe to the light and frivolous--from the light and frivolous to the bitter and cruel. There have been tyrants of all shapes and all characters within the last forty years, and fools, and knaves, and madmen, to cry them on in every course of evil. In all these chances and changes, what fixed and rigid mind could escape the fangs of persecution and wrong? He had known both; but they had changed him little. His was originally an unbending spirit: it grew more tough and stubborn by the habit of resistance; but its original bent was still the same. Fortune--heaven's will--or his own inclination, had denied him wife or child; and near relation he had none. A friend he had: that boy's father, who had sheltered him in evil times, protected him as far as possible against the rage of enemies, and bestowed upon him the small living which afforded him support. He did his duty therein conscientiously, but with a firm unyielding spirit, adhering to the Calvinistic tenets which he had early received, in spite of the universal falling off of companions and neighbors. He would not have yielded an iota to have saved his head. With all his hardness, he had one object of affection, to which all that was gentle in his nature was bent. That object was the boy by whom he now stood, and for whom he had a great--an almost parental regard. Perhaps it was that he thought the lad not very well treated; and, as such had been his own case, there was sympathy in the matter. But besides, he had been intrusted with his education from a very early period, had taken a pleasure in the task, had found his scholar apt, willing, and affectionate, with a sufficient touch of his own character in the boy to make the sympathy strong, and yet sufficient diversity to interest and to excite. The old man was tenderer toward him than toward any other being upon earth; and he sometimes feared that his early injunctions to study and perseverance were somewhat too strictly followed--even to the detriment of health. He often looked with some anxiety at the increasing paleness of the cheek, at the too vivid gleam of the eye, at the eager nervous quivering of the lip, and said within himself, "This is overdone." He did not like to check, after he had encouraged--to draw the rein where he had been using the spur. There is something of vanity in us all, and the sternest is not without that share which makes man shrink from the imputation of error, even when made by his own heart. He did not choose to think that the lad had needed no urging forward; and yet he would fain have had him relax a little more, and strove at times to make him do so. But the impulse had been given: it had carried the youth over the difficulties and obstacles in the way to knowledge, and now he went on to acquire it, with an eagerness, a thirst, that had something fearful in it. A bent, too, had been given to his mind--nay, to his character, partly by the stern uncompromising character of him to whom his education had been solely intrusted, partly by his own peculiar situation, and partly by the subjects on which his reading had chiefly turned. The stern old Roman of the early republic; the deeds of heroic virtue--as virtue was understood by the Romans; the sacrifice of all tender affections, all the sensibilities of our nature to the rigid thought of what is right; the remorseless disregard of feelings implanted by God, when opposed to the notion of duties of man's creation, excited his wonder and his admiration, and would have hardened and perverted his heart, had not that heart been naturally full of kindlier affections. As it was, there often existed a struggle--a sort of hypothetical struggle--in his bosom, between the mind and the heart. He asked himself sometimes, if he could sacrifice any of those he knew and loved--his father, his mother, his brother, to the good of his country, to some grave duty; and he felt pained and roused to resistance of his own affections when he perceived what a pang it would cost him. Yet his home was not a very happy one; the kindlier things of domestic life had not gathered green around him. His father was varying and uneven in temper, especially toward his second son; sometimes stern and gloomy, sometimes irascible almost to a degree of insanity. Generous, brave, and upright, he was; but every one said, that a wound he had received on the head in the wars, had marvelously increased the infirmities of his temper. The mother, indeed, was full of tenderness and gentleness; and doubtless it was through her veins that the milk of human kindness had found its way into that strange boy's heart. But yet she loved her eldest son best, and unfortunately showed it. The brother was a wild, rash, reckless young man, some three years older; fond of the other, yet often pleased to irritate--or at least to try, for he seldom succeeded. He was the favorite, however, somewhat spoiled, much indulged; and whatever was done, was done for him. He was the person most considered in the house; his were the parties of pleasure; his the advantages. Even now the family was absent, in order to let him see the capital of his native land, to open his mind to the general world, to show him life on a more extended scale than could be done in the country; and his younger brother was left at home, to pursue his studies in dull solitude. Yet he did not complain; there was not even a murmur at his heart. He thought it all quite right. His destiny was before him. He was to form his fortune for himself, by his own abilities, his own learning, his own exertions. It was needful he should study, and his greatest ambition for the time was to enter with distinction at the University; his brightest thoughts of pleasure, the comparative freedom and independence of a collegiate life. Not that he did not find it dull; that gloomy old house, inhabited by none but himself and a few servants. Sometimes it seemed to oppress him with a sense of terrible loneliness; sometimes it drove him to think of the strange difference of human destinies, and why it should be that--because it had pleased Heaven one man should be born a little sooner or a little later than another, or in some other place--such a wide interval should be placed between the different degrees of happiness and fortune. He felt, however, that such speculations were not good; they led him beyond his depth; he involved himself in subtilties more common in those days than in ours; he lost his way; and with passionate eagerness flew to his books, to drive the mists and shadows from his mind. Such had been the case even now; and there he sat, unconscious that a complete and total change was coming over his destiny. Oh, the dark workshop of Fate! what strange things go on therein, affecting human misery and joy, repairing or breaking shackles for the mind, the means of carrying us forward in a glorious cause, the relentless weights which hurry us down to destruction! While you sit there and read--while I sit here and write, who can say what strange alterations, what combinations in the most discrepant things may be going on around--without our will, without our knowledge--to alter the whole course of our future existence? Doubtless, could man make his own fate, he would mar it; and the impossibility of doing so is good. The freedom of his own actions is sufficient, nay, somewhat too much; and it is well for the world, aye, and for himself--that there is an overruling Providence which so shapes circumstances around him, that he cannot go beyond his limit, flutter as he will. There is something in that old man's face more than is common with him--a deeper gravity even than ordinary, yet mingled with a tenderness that is rare. There is something like hesitation, too--ay, hesitation even in him who during a stormy life has seldom known what it is to doubt or to deliberate: a man of strict and ready preparation, whose fixed, clear, definite mind was always prompt and competent to act. "Come, Philip, my son," he said, laying his hand, as I have stated, on the lad's shoulder, "enough of study for to-day. You read too hard. You run before my precepts. The body must have thought as well as the mind; and if you let the whole summer day pass without exercise, you will soon find that under the weight of corporeal sickness the intellect will flag and the spirit droop. I am going for a walk. Come with me; and we will converse of high things by the way." "Study is my task and my duty, sir," replied the boy; "my father tells me so, you have told me so often, and as for health I fear not. I seem refreshed when I get up from reading, especially such books as this. It is only when I have been out long, riding or walking, that I feel tired." "A proof that you should ride and walk the more," replied the old man. "Come, put on your hat and cloak. You shall read no more to-day. There are other thoughts before you; you know, Philip," he continued, "that by reading we get but materials, which we must use to build up an edifice in our own minds. If all our thoughts are derived from others gone before us, we are but robbers of the dead, and live upon labors not our own." "Elder sons," replied the boy, with a laugh, "who take an inheritance for which they toiled not." "Something worse than that," replied the clergyman, "for we gather what we do not employ rightly--what we have every right to possess, but upon the sole condition of using well. Each man possessed of intellect is bound to make his own mind, not to have it made for him; to adapt it to the times and circumstances in which he lives, squaring it by just rules, and employing the best materials he can find." "Well, sir, I am ready," replied the youth, after a moment of deep thought; and he and his old preceptor issued forth together down the long staircase, with the slant sunshine pouring through the windows upon the unequal steps, and illuminating the motes in the thick atmosphere we breathe, like fancy brightening the idle floating things which surround us in this world of vanity. They walked across the park toward the stile. The youth was silent, for the old man's last words seemed to have awakened a train of thought altogether new. His companion was silent also; for there was something working within him which embarrassed and distressed him. He had something to tell that young man, and he knew not how to tell it. For the first time in his life he perceived, from the difficulty he experienced in deciding upon his course, how little he really knew of his pupil's character. He had dealt much with his mind, and that he comprehended well--its depth, its clearness, its powers; but his heart and disposition he had not scanned so accurately. He had a surmise, indeed, that there were feelings strong and intense within; but he thought that the mind ruled them with habitual sway that nothing could shake. Yet he paused and pondered; and once he stopped, as if about to speak, but went on again and said nothing. At length, as they approached the park wall, he laid his finger on his temple, muttering to himself, "Yes, the quicker the better. 'Tis well to mingle two passions. Surprise will share with grief--if much grief there be." Then turning to the young man, he said, "Philip, I think you loved your brother Arthur?" He spoke loudly, and in plain distinct tones; but the lad did not seem to remark the past tense he used. "Certainly, sir," he said, "I love him dearly. What of that?" "Then you will be very happy to hear," replied the old man, "that he has been singularly fortunate--I mean that he has been removed from earth and all its allurements--the vanities, the sins, the follies of the world in which he seemed destined to move, before he could be corrupted by its evils, or his spirit receive a taint from its vices." The young man turned and gazed on him with inquiring eyes, as if still he did not comprehend what he meant. "He was drowned," said the clergyman, "on Saturday last, while sailing with a party of pleasure on the Thames;" and Philip fell at his feet as senseless as if he had shot him. CHAPTER II. I must not dwell long upon the youthful scenes of the lad I have just introduced to the reader; but as it is absolutely needful that his peculiar character should be clearly understood, I must suffer it to display itself a little farther before I step from his boyhood to his maturity. We left Philip Hastings senseless upon the ground, at the feet of his old preceptor, struck down by the sudden intelligence he had received, without warning or preparation. The old man was immeasurably shocked at what he had done, and he reproached himself bitterly; but he had been a man of action all his life, who never suffered thought, whether pleasant or painful, to impede him. He could think while he acted, and as he was a strong man too, he had no great difficulty in taking the slight, pale youth up in his arms, and carrying him over the park stile, which was close at hand, as the reader may remember. He had made up his mind at once to bear his young charge to a small cottage belonging to a laborer on the other side of the road which ran under the park wall; but on reaching it, he found that the whole family were out walking in the fields, and both doors and windows were closed. This was a great disappointment to him, although there was a very handsome house, in modern taste, not two hundred yards off. But there were circumstances which made him unwilling to bear the son of Sir John Hastings to the dwelling of his next neighbor. Next neighbors are not always friends; and even the clergyman of the parish may have his likings and dislikings. Colonel Marshal and Sir John Hastings were political opponents. The latter was of the Calvinistic branch of the Church of England--not absolutely a non-juror, but suspected even of having a tendency that way. He was sturdy and stiff in his political opinions, too, and had but small consideration for the conscientious views and sincere opinions of others. To say the truth, he was but little inclined to believe that any one who differed from him had conscientious views or sincere opinions at all; and certainly the demeanor, if not the conduct, of the worthy Colonel did not betoken any fixed notion or strong principles. He was a man of the Court--gay, lively, even witty, making a jest of most things, however grave and worthy of reverence. He played high, generally won, was shrewd, complaisant, and particular in his deference to kings and prime ministers. Moreover, he was of the very highest of the High Church party--so high, indeed, that those who belonged to the Low Church party, fancied he must soon topple over into Catholicism. In truth, I believe, had the heart of the Colonel been very strictly examined, it would have been found very empty of anything like real religion. But then the king was a Roman Catholic, and it was pleasant to be as near him as possible. It may be asked, why then did not the Colonel go the same length as his Majesty? The answer is very simple. Colonel Marshal was a shrewd observer of the signs of the times. At the card table, after the three first cards were played, he could tell where every other card in the pack was placed. Now in politics he was nearly as discerning; and he perceived that, although King James had a great number of honors in his hand, he did not hold the trumps, and would eventually lose the game. Had it been otherwise, there is no saying what sort of religion he might have adopted. There is no reason to think that Transubstantiation would have stood in the way at all; and as for the Council of Trent, he would have swallowed it like a roll for his breakfast. For this man, then, Sir John Hastings had both a thorough hatred and a profound contempt, and he extended the same sensations to every member of the family. In the estimation of the worthy old clergyman the Colonel did not stand much higher; but he was more liberal toward the Colonel's family. Lady Annabella Marshal, his wife, was, when in the country, a very regular attendant at his church. She had been exceedingly beautiful, was still handsome, and she had, moreover, a sweet, saint-like, placid expression, not untouched by melancholy, which was very winning, even in an old man's eyes. She was known, too, to have made a very good wife to a not very good husband; and, to say the truth, Dr. Paulding both pitied and esteemed her. He went but little to the house, indeed, for Colonel Marshal was odious to him; and the Colonel returned the compliment by never going to the church. Such were the reasons which rendered the thought of carrying young Philip Hastings up to The Court--as Colonel Marshal's house was called--anything but agreeable to the good clergyman. But then, what could he do? He looked in the boy's face. It was like that of a corpse. Not a sign of returning animation showed itself. He had heard of persons dying under such sudden affections of the mind; and so still, so death-like, was the form and countenance before him, as he laid the lad down for a moment on the bench at the cottage door, that his heart misgave him, and a trembling feeling of dread came over his old frame. He hesitated no longer, but after a moment's pause to gain breath, caught young Hastings up in his arms again, and hurried away with him toward Colonel Marshal's house. I have said that it was a modern mansion; that is to imply, that it was modern in that day. Heaven only knows what has become of it now; but Louis Quatorze, though he had no hand in the building of it, had many of its sins to answer for--and the rest belonged to Mansard. It was the strangest possible contrast to the old-fashioned country seat of Sir John Hastings, who had his joke at it, and at the owner too--for he, too, could jest in a bitter way--and he used to say that he wondered his neighbor had not added his own name to the building, to distinguish it from all other courts; and then it would have been Court Marshal. Many were the windows of the house; many the ornaments; pilasters running up between the casements, with sunken panels, covered over with quaint wreaths of flowers, as if each had an embroidered waistcoat on; and a large flight of steps running down from the great doorway, decorated with Cupids and cornucopias running over with this most indigestible kind of stone-fruit. The path from the gates up to the house was well graveled, and ran in and out amongst sundry parterres, and basins of water, with the Tritons, &c., of the age, all spouting away as hard as a large reservoir on the top of the neighboring slope could make them. But for serviceable purposes these basins were vain, as the water was never suffered to rise nearly to the brim; and good Dr. Paulding gazed on them without hope, as he passed on toward the broad flight of steps. There, however, he found something of a more comfortable aspect. The path he had been obliged to take had one convenience to the dwellers in the mansion. Every window in that side of the house commanded a view of it, and the Doctor and his burden were seen by one pair of eyes at least. Running down the steps without any of the frightful appendages of the day upon her head, but her own bright beautiful hair curling wild like the tendrils of a vine, came a lovely girl of fourteen or fifteen, just past the ugly age, and blushing in the spring of womanhood. There was eagerness and some alarm in her face: for the air and haste of the worthy clergyman, as well as the form he carried in his arms, spoke as plainly as words could have done that some accident had happened; and she called to him, at some distance, to ask what was the matter. "Matter, child! matter!" cried the clergyman, "I believe I have half killed this poor boy." "Killed him!" exclaimed the girl, with a look of doubt as well as surprise. "Ay, Mistress Rachael," replied the old man, "killed him by unkindly and rashly telling him of his brother's death, without preparation." "You intended it for kind, I am sure," murmured the girl in a sweet low tone, coming down the steps, and gazing on his pale face, while the clergyman carried the lad up the steps. "There, Miss Marshal, do not stay staring," said Dr. Paulding; "but pray call some of the lackeys, and bid them bring water or hartshorn, or something. Your lady-mother must have some essences to bring folks out of swoons. There is nothing but swooning at Court, I am told--except gaming, and drinking, and profanity." The girl was already on her way, but she looked back, saying, "My father and mother are both out; but I will soon find help." When the lad opened his eyes, there was something very near, which seemed to him exceedingly beautiful--rich, warm coloring, like that of a sunny landscape; a pair of liquid, tender eyes, deeply fringed and full of sympathy; and the while some sunny curls of bright brown hair played about his cheek, moved by the hay-field breath of the sweet lips that bent close over him. "Where am I?" he said. "What is the matter? What has happened? Ah! now I recollect. My brother--my poor brother! Was it a dream?" "Hush, hush!" said a musical voice. "Talk to him, sir. Talk to him, and make him still." "It is but too true, my dear Philip," said the old clergyman; "your brother is lost to us. But recollect yourself, my son. It is weak to give way in this manner. I announced your misfortune somewhat suddenly, it is true, trusting that your philosophy was stronger than it is--your Christian fortitude. Remember, all these dispensations are from the hand of the most merciful God. He who gives the sunshine, shall he not bring the clouds? Doubt not that all is merciful; and suffer not the manifestations of His will to find you unprepared or unsubmissive." "I have been very weak," said the young man, "but it was so sudden! Heaven! how full of health and strength he looked when he went away! He was the picture of life--almost of immortality. I was but as a reed beside him--a weak, feeble reed, beside a sapling oak." "'One shall be taken, and the other left,'" said the sweet voice of the young girl; and the eyes both of the youth and the old clergyman turned suddenly upon her. Philip Hastings raised himself upon his arm, and seemed to meditate for a moment or two. His thoughts were confused and indistinct. He knew not well where he was. The impression of what had happened was vague and indefinite. As eyes which have been seared by the lightning, his mind, which had lost the too vivid impression, now perceived everything in mist and confusion. "I have been very weak," he said, "too weak. It is strange. I thought myself firmer. What is the use of thought and example, if the mind remains thus feeble? But I am better now. I will never yield thus again;" and flinging himself off the sofa on which they had laid him, he stood for a moment on his feet, gazing round upon the old clergyman and that beautiful young girl, and two or three servants who had been called to minister to him. We all know--at least, all who have dealt with the fiery things of life--all who have felt and suffered, and struggled and conquered, and yielded and grieved, and triumphed in the end--we all know how short-lived are the first conquests of mind over body, and how much strength and experience it requires to make the victory complete. To render the soul the despot, the tyranny must be habitual. Philip Hastings rose, as I have said, and gazed around him. He struggled against the shock which his mere animal nature had received, shattered as it had been by long and intense study, and neglect of all that contributes to corporeal power. But everything grew hazy to his eyes again. He felt his limbs weak and powerless; even his mind feeble, and his thoughts confused. Before he knew what was coming, he sunk fainting on the sofa again, and when he woke from the dull sort of trance into which he had fallen, there were other faces around him; he was stretched quietly in bed in a strange room, a physician and a beautiful lady of mature years were standing by his bedside, and he felt the oppressive lassitude of fever in every nerve and in every limb. But we must turn to good Doctor Paulding. He went back to his rectory discontented with himself, leaving the lad in the care of Lady Annabella Marshal and her family. The ordinary--as the man who carried the letters was frequently called in those days--was to depart in an hour, and he knew that Sir John Hastings expected his only remaining son in London to attend the body of his brother down to the family burying place. It was impossible that the lad could go, and the old clergyman had to sit down and write an account of what had occurred. There was nothing upon earth, or beyond the earth, which would have induced him to tell a lie. True, his mind might be subject to such self-deceptions as the mind of all other men. He might be induced to find excuses to his own conscience for anything he did that was wrong--for any mistake or error in judgment; for, willfully, he never did what was wrong; and it was only by the results that he knew it. But yet he was eagerly, painfully upon his guard against himself. He knew the weakness of human nature--he had dealt with it often, and observed it shrewdly, and applied the lesson with bitter severity to his own heart, detecting its shrinking from candor, its hankering after self-defense, its misty prejudices, its turnings and windings to escape conviction; and he dealt with it as hardly as he would have done with a spoiled child. Calmly and deliberately he sat down to write to Sir John Hastings a full account of what had occurred, taking more blame to himself than was really his due. I have called it a full account, though it occupied but one page of paper, for the good doctor was anything but profuse of words; and there are some men who can say much in small space. He blamed himself greatly, anticipating reproach; but the thing which he feared the most to communicate was the fact that the lad was left ill at the house of Colonel Marshal, and at the house of a man so very much disliked by Sir John Hastings. There are some men--men of strong mind and great abilities--who go through life learning some of its lessons, and totally neglecting others--pre-occupied by one branch of the great study, and seeing nothing in the course of scholarship but that. Dr. Paulding had no conception of the change which the loss of their eldest son had wrought in the heart of Sir John and Lady Hastings. The second--the neglected one--had now become not only the eldest, but the only one. His illness, painfully as it affected them, was a blessing to them. It withdrew their thoughts from their late bereavement. It occupied their mind with a new anxiety. It withdrew it from grief and from disappointment. They thought little or nothing of whose house he was at, or whose care he was under; but leaving the body of their dead child to be brought down by slow and solemn procession to the country, they hurried on before, to watch over the one that was left. Sir John Hastings utterly forgot his ancient feelings toward Colonel Marshal. He was at the house every day, and almost all day long, and Lady Hastings was there day and night. Wonderful how--when barriers are broken down--we see the objects brought into proximity under a totally different point of view from that in which we beheld them at a distance. There might be some stiffness in the first meeting of Colonel Marshal and Sir John Hastings, but it wore off with exceeding rapidity. The Colonel's kindness and attention to the sick youth were marked. Lady Annabella devoted herself to him as to one of her own children. Rachael Marshal made herself a mere nurse. Hard hearts could only withstand such things. Philip was now an only child, and the parents were filled with gratitude and affection. CHAPTER III. The stone which covered the vault of the Hastings family had been raised, and light and air let into the cold, damp interior. A ray of sunshine, streaming through the church window, found its way across the mouldy velvet of the old coffins as they stood ranged along in solemn order, containing the dust of many ancestors of the present possessors of the manor. There, too, apart from the rest were the coffins of those who had died childless; the small narrow resting-place of childhood, where the guileless infant, the father's and mother's joy and hope, slept its last sleep, leaving tearful eyes and sorrowing hearts behind, with naught to comfort but the blessed thought that by calling such from earth, God peoples heaven with angels; the coffins, too, of those cut off in the early spring of manhood, whom the fell mower had struck down in the flower before the fruit was ripe. Oh, how his scythe levels the blossoming fields of hope! There, too, lay the stern old soldier, whose life had been given up to his country's service, and who would not spare one thought or moment to soften domestic joys; and many another who had lived, perhaps and loved, and passed away without receiving love's reward. Amongst these, close at the end of the line, stood two tressels, ready for a fresh occupant of the tomb, and the church bell tolled heavily above, while the old sexton looked forth from the door of the church toward the gates of the park, and the heavy clouded sky seemed to menace rain. "Happy the bride the sun shines upon; happy the corpse the heaven rains upon!" said the old man to himself. But the rain did not come down; and presently, from the spot where he stood, which overlooked the park-wall, he saw come on in slow and solemn procession along the great road to the gates, the funeral train of him who had been lately heir to all the fine property around. The body had been brought from London after the career of youth had been cut short in a moment of giddy pleasure, and father and mother, as was then customary, with a long line of friends, relations, and dependents, now conveyed the remains of him once so dearly loved, to the cold grave. Only one of all the numerous connections of the family was wanting on this occasion, and that was the brother of the dead; but he lay slowly recovering from the shock he had received, and every one had been told that it was impossible for him to attend. All the rest of the family had hastened to the hall in answer to the summons they had received, for though Sir John Hastings was not much loved, he was much respected and somewhat feared--at least, the deference which was paid to him, no one well knew why, savored somewhat of dread. It is a strange propensity in many old persons to hang about the grave to which they are rapidly tending, when it is opened for another, and to comment--sometimes even with a bitter pleasantry--upon an event which must soon overtake themselves. As soon as it was known that the funeral procession had set out from the hall door, a number of aged people, principally women, but comprising one or two shriveled men, tottered forth from the cottages, which lay scattered about the church, and made their way into the churchyard, there to hold conference upon the dead and upon the living. "Ay, ay!" said one old woman, "he has been taken at an early time; but he was a fine lad, and better than most of those hard people." "Ay, Peggy would praise the devil himself if he were dead," said an old man, leaning on a stick, "though she has never a good word for the living. The boy is taken away from mischief, that is the truth of it. If he had lived to come down here again, he would have broken the heart of my niece's daughter Jane, or made a public shame of her. What business had a gentleman's son like that to be always hanging about a poor cottage girl, following her into the corn-fields, and luring her out in the evenings?" "Faith! she might have been proud enough of his notice," said an old crone; "and I dare say she was, too, in spite of all your conceit, Matthew. She is not so dainty as you pretend to be; and we may see something come of it yet." "At all events," said another, "he was better than this white-faced, spiritless boy that is left, who is likely enough to be taken earlier than his brother, for he looks as if breath would blow him away." "He will live to do something yet, that will make people talk of him;" said a woman older than any of the rest, but taller and straighter; "there is a spirit in him, be it angel or devil, that is not for death so soon." "Ay! they're making a pomp of it I warrant," said another old woman, fixing her eyes on the high road under the park wall, upon which the procession now entered. "Marry, there are escutcheons enough, and coats of arms! One would think he was a lord's son, with all this to do! But there is a curse upon the race anyhow; this man was the last of eleven brothers, and I have heard say, his father died a bad death. Now his eldest son must die by drowning--saved the hangman something, perchance--we shall see what comes of the one that is left. 'Tis a curse upon them ever since Worcester fight, when the old man, who is dead and gone, advised to send the poor fellows who were taken, to work as slaves in the colonies." As she spoke, the funeral procession advanced up the road, and approached that curious sort of gate with a penthouse over it, erected probably to shelter the clergyman of the church while receiving the corpse at the gate of the burial-ground, which was then universally to be found at the entrance to all cemeteries. She broke off abruptly, as if there was something still on her mind which she had not spoken, and ranging themselves on each side of the church-yard path, the old men and women formed a lane down which good Dr. Paulding speedily moved with book in hand. The people assembled, whose numbers had been increased by the arrival of some thirty or forty young and middle-aged, said not a word as the clergymen marched on, but when the body had passed up between them, and the bereaved father followed as chief-mourner, with a fixed, stern, but tearless eye, betokening more intense affliction perhaps, in a man of his character, than if his cheeks had been covered with drops of womanly sorrow, several voices were heard saying aloud, "God bless and comfort you, Sir John." Strange, marvelously strange it was, that these words should come from tongues, and from those alone, which had been so busily engaged in carping censure and unfeeling sneers but the moment before. It was the old men and women alone who had just been commenting bitterly upon the fate, history, and character of the family, who now uttered the unfelt expressions of sympathy in a beggar-like, whining tone. It was those who really felt compassion who said nothing. The coffin had been carried into the church, and the solemn rites, the beautiful service of the Church of England, had proceeded some way, when another person was added to the congregation who had not at first been there. All eyes but those of the father of the dead and the lady who sat weeping by his side, turned upon the new-comer, as with a face as pale as death, and a faltering step, he took his place on one of the benches somewhat remote from the rest. There was an expression of feeble lassitude in the young man's countenance, but of strong resolution, which overcame the weakness of the frame. He looked as if each moment he would have fainted, but yet he sat out the whole service of the Church, mingled with the crowd when the body was lowered into the vault, and saw the handful of earth hurled out upon the velvet coffin, as if in mockery of the empty pride of all the pomp and circumstance which attended the burial of the rich and high. No tear came into his eyes--no sob escaped from his bosom; a slight quivering of the lip alone betrayed that there was strong agitation within. When all was over, and the father still gazing down into the vault, the young lad crept quietly back into a pew, covered his face with his hand, and wept. The last rite was over. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust were committed. Sir John Hastings drew his wife's arm through his own, and walked with a heavy, steadfast, and unwavering step down the aisle. Everybody drew back respectfully as he passed; for generally, even in the hardest hearts, true sorrow finds reverence. He had descended the steps from the church into the burying ground, and had passed half way along the path toward his carriage, when suddenly the tall upright old woman whom I have mentioned thrust herself into his way, and addressed him with a cold look and somewhat menacing tone-- "Now, Sir John Hastings," she said, "will you do me justice about that bit of land? By your son's grave I ask it. The hand of heaven has smitten you. It may, perhaps, have touched your heart. You know the land is mine. It was taken from my husband by the usurper because he fought for the king to whom he had pledged his faith. It was given to your father because he broke his faith to his king and brought evil days upon his country. Will you give me back the land, I say? Out man! It is but a garden of herbs, but it is mine, and in God's sight I claim it." "Away out of my path," replied Sir John Hastings angrily. "Is this a time to talk of such things? Get you gone, I say, and choose some better hour. Do you suppose I can listen to you now?" "You have never listened, and you never will," replied the old woman, and suffering him to pass without further opposition, she remained upon the path behind him muttering to herself what seemed curses bitter and deep, but the words of which were audible only to herself. The little crowd gathered round her, and listened eagerly to catch the sense of what she said, but the moment after the old sexton laid his hand upon her shoulder and pushed her from the path, saying, "Get along with you, get along with you, Popish Beldam. What business have you here scandalizing the congregation, and brawling at the church door? You should be put in the stocks!" "I pity you, old worm," replied the old woman, "you will be soon among those you feed upon," and with a hanging head and dejected air she quitted the church-yard. In the meanwhile Dr. Paulding had remained gazing down into the vault, while the stout young men who had come to assist the sexton withdrew the broad hempen bands by which the coffin had been lowered, from beneath it, arranged it properly upon the tressels in its orderly place among the dead, and then mounted by a ladder into the body of the church, again preparing to replace the stone over the mouth of the vault. He then turned to the church door and looked out, and then quietly approached a pew in the side aisle. "Philip, this is very wrong," he said; "your father never wished or intended you should be here." "He did not forbid me," replied the young man. "Why should I only be absent from my brother's funeral?" "Because you are sick. Because, by coming, you may have risked your life," replied the old clergyman. "What is life to a duty?" replied the lad. "Have you not taught me, sir, that there is no earthly thing--no interest of this life, no pleasure, no happiness, no hope, that ought not to be sacrificed at once to that which the heart says is right?" "True--true," replied the old clergyman, almost impatiently; "but in following precept so severely, boy, you should use some discrimination. You have a duty to a living father, which is of more weight than a mere imaginary one to a dead brother. You could do no good to the latter; as the Psalmist wisely said, 'You must go to him, but he can never come back to you.' To your father, on the contrary, you have high duties to perform; to console and cheer him in his present affliction; to comfort and support his declining years. When a real duty presents itself, Philip, to yourself, to your fellow men, to your country, or to your God--I say again, as I have often said, do it in spite of every possible affection. Let it cut through everything, break through every tie, thrust aside every consideration. There, indeed, I would fain see you act the old Roman, whom you are so fond of studying, and be a Cato or a Brutus, if you will. But you must make very sure that you do not make your fancy create unreal duties, and make them of greater importance in your eyes than the true ones. But now I must get you back as speedily as possible, for your mother, ere long, will be up to see you, and your father, and they must not find you absent on this errand." The lad made no reply, but readily walked back toward the court with Dr. Paulding, though his steps were slow and feeble. He took the old man's arm, too, and leaned heavily upon it; for, to say the truth, he felt already the consequences of the foolish act he had committed; and the first excitement past, lassitude and fever took possession once more of every limb, and his feet would hardly bear him to the gates. The beautiful girl who had been the first to receive him at that house, met the eyes both of the young man and the old one, the moment they entered the gardens. She looked wild and anxious, and was wandering about with her head uncovered; but as soon as she beheld the youth, she ran toward him, exclaiming, "Oh, Philip, Philip, this is very wrong and cruel of you. I have been looking for you everywhere. You should not have done this. How could you let him, Dr. Paulding?" "I did not let him, my dear child," replied the old man, "he came of his own will, and would not be let. But take him in with you; send him to bed as speedily as may be; give him a large glass of the fever-water he was taking, and say as little as possible of this rash act to any one." The girl made the sick boy lean upon her rounded arm, led him away into the house, and tended him like a sister. She kept the secret of his rashness, too, from every one; and there were feelings sprang up in his bosom toward her during the next few hours which were never to be obliterated. She was so beautiful, so tender, so gentle, so full of all womanly graces, that he fancied, with his strong imagination, that no one perfection of body or mind could be wanting; and he continued to think so for many a long year after. CHAPTER IV. Enough of boyhood and its faults and follies. I sought but to show the reader, as in a glass, the back of a pageant that has past. Oh, how I sometimes laugh at the fools--the critics. God save the mark! who see no more in the slight sketch I choose to give, than a mere daub of paint across the canvas, when that one touch gives effect to the whole picture. Let them stand back, and view it as a whole; and if they can find aught in it to make them say "Well done," let them look at the frame. That is enough for them; their wits are only fitted to deal with "leather and prunella." I have given you, reader--kind and judicious reader--a sketch of the boy, that you may be enabled to judge rightly of the man. Now, take the lad as I have moulded him--bake him well in the fiery furnace of strong passion, remembering still that the form is of hard iron--quench and harden him in the cold waters of opposition, and disappointment, and anxiety--and bring him forth tempered, but too highly tempered for the world he has to live in--not pliable--not elastic; no watchspring, but like a graver's tool, which must cut into everything opposed to it, or break under the pressure. Let us start upon our new course some fifteen years after the period at which our tale began, and view Philip Hastings as that which he had now become. Dr. Paulding had passed from this working day world to another and a better--where we hope the virtues of the heart may be weighed against vices of the head--a mode of dealing rare here below. Sir John Hastings and his wife had gone whither their eldest son had gone before them; and Philip Hastings was no longer the boy. Manhood had set its seal upon his brow only too early; but what a change had come with manhood!--a change not in the substance, but in its mode. Oh, Time! thy province is not only to destroy! Thou worker-out of human destinies--thou new-fashioner of all things earthly--thou blender of races--thou changer of institutions--thou discoverer--thou concealer--thou builder up--thou dark destroyer; thy waters as they flow have sometimes a petrifying, sometimes a solvent power, hardening the soft, melting the strong, accumulating the sand, undermining the rock! What had been thine effect upon Philip Hastings? All the thoughts had grown manly as well as the body. The slight youth had been developed into the hardy and powerful man; somewhat inactive--at least so it seemed to common eyes--more thoughtful than brilliant, steady in resolution, though calm in expression, giving way no more to bursts of boyish feeling, somewhat stern, men said somewhat hard, but yet extremely just, and resolute for justice. The poetry of life--I should have said the poetry of young life--the brilliancy of fancy and hope, seemed somewhat dimmed in him--mark, I say seemed, for that which seems too often is not; and he might perhaps have learnt to rule and conceal feelings which he could not altogether conquer or resist. Still there were many traces of his old self visible: the same love of study, the same choice of books and subjects of thought, the same subdued yet strong enthusiasms. The very fact of mingling with the world, which had taught him to repress those enthusiasms, seemed to have concentrated and rendered them more intense. The course of his studies; the habits of his mind; his fondness for the school of the stoics, it might have been supposed, would rather have disgusted him with the society in which he now habitually mingled, and made him look upon mankind--for it was a very corrupt age--with contempt, if not with horror. Such, however, was not the case. He had less of the cynic in him than his father--indeed he had nothing of the cynic in him at all. He loved mankind in his own peculiar way. He was a philanthropist of a certain sort; and would willingly have put a considerable portion of his fellow-creatures to death, in order to serve, and elevate, and improve the rest. His was a remarkable character--not altogether fitted for the times in which he lived; but one which in its wild and rugged strength, commanded much respect and admiration even then. Weak things clung to it, as ivy to an oak or a strong wall: and its power over them was increased by a certain sort of tenderness--a protecting pity, which mingled strangely with his harder and ruder qualities. He seemed to be sorry for everything that was weak, and to seek to console and comfort it, under the curse of feebleness. It seldom offended him--he rather loved it, it rarely came in his way; and his feeling toward it might approach contempt but never rose to anger. He was capable too of intense and strong affections, though he could not extend them to many objects. All that was vigorous and powerful in him concentrated itself in separate points here and there; and general things were viewed with much indifference. See him as he walks up and down there before the old house, which I have elsewhere described. He has grown tall and powerful in frame; and yet his gait is somewhat slovenly and negligent, although his step is firm and strong. He is not much more than thirty-one years of age; but he looks forty at the least; and his hair is even thickly sprinkled with gray. His face is pale, with some strong marked lines and indentations in it; yet, on the whole, it is handsome, and the slight habitual frown, thoughtful rather than stern, together with the massive jaw, and the slight drawing down of the corners of the mouth, give it an expression of resolute firmness, that is only contradicted by the frequent variation of the eye, which is sometimes full of deep thought, sometimes of tenderness; and sometimes is flashing with a wild and almost unearthly fire. But there is a lady hanging on his arm which supports her somewhat feeble steps. She seems recovering from illness; the rose in her cheek is faint and delicate; and an air of languor is in her whole face and form. Yet she is very beautiful, and seems fully ten years younger than her husband, although, in truth, she is of the same age--or perhaps a little older. It is Rachael Marshal, now become Lady Hastings. Their union did not take place without opposition; all Sir John Hastings' prejudices against the Marshal family revived as soon as his son's attachment to the daughter of the house became apparent. Like most fathers, he saw too late; and then sought to prevent that which had become inevitable. He sent his son to travel in foreign lands; he even laid out a scheme for marrying him to another, younger, and as he thought fairer. He contrived that the young man should fall into the society of the lady he had selected, and he fancied that would be quite sufficient; for he saw in her character, young as she was, traits, much more harmonious, as he fancied, with those of his son, than could be found in the softer, gentler, weaker Rachael Marshal. There was energy, perseverance, resolution, keen and quick perceptions--perhaps a little too much keenness. More, he did not stay to inquire; but, as is usual in matters of the heart, Philip Hastings loved best the converse of himself. The progress of the scheme was interrupted by the illness of Sir John Hastings, which recalled his son from Rome. Philip returned, found his father dead, and married Rachael Marshal. They had had several children; but only one remained; that gay, light, gossamer girl, like a gleam darting along the path from sunny rays piercing through wind-borne clouds. On she ran with a step of light and careless air, yet every now and then she paused suddenly, gazed earnestly at a flower, plucked it, pored into its very heart with her deep eyes, and, after seeming to labor under thought for a moment, sprang forward again as light as ever. The eyes of the father followed her with a look of grave, thoughtful, intense affection. The mother's eyes looked up to him, and then glanced onward to the child. She was between nine and ten years old--not very handsome, for it is not a handsome age. Yet there were indications of future beauty--fine and sparkling eyes, rich, waving, silky hair, long eyelashes, a fine complexion, a light and graceful figure, though deformed by the stiff fashions of the day. There was a sparkle too in her look--that bright outpouring of the heart upon the face which is one of the most powerful charms of youth and innocence. Ah! how soon gone by! How soon checked by the thousand loads which this heavy laboring world casts upon the buoyancy of youthful spirits--the chilling conventionality--the knowledge, and the fear of wrong--the first taste of sorrow--the anxieties, cares, fears--even the hopes of mature life, are all weights to bear down the pinions of young, lark-like joy. After twenty, does the heart ever rise up from her green sod and sing at Heaven's gate as in childhood? Never--ah, never! The dust of earth is upon the wing of the sky songster, and will never let her mount to her ancient pitch. That child was a strange combination of her father and her mother. She was destined to be their only one; and it seemed as if nature had taken a pleasure in blending the characters of both in one. Not that they were intimately mingled, but that they seemed like the twins of Laconia, to rise and set by turns. In her morning walk; in her hours of sportive play; when no subject of deep thought, no matter that affected the heart or the imagination was presented to her, she was light and gay as a butterfly; the child--the happy child was in every look, and word, and movement. But call her for a moment from this bright land of pleasantness--present something to her mind or to her fancy which rouses sympathies, or sets the energetic thoughts at work, and she was grave, meditative, studious, deep beyond her years. She was a subject of much contemplation, some anxiety, some wonder to her father. The brightness of her perceptions, her eagerness in the pursuit of knowledge, her vigorous resolution even as a child, when convinced that she was right, showed him his own mind reflected in hers. Even her tenderness, her strong affections, he could comprehend; for the same were in his own heart, and though he believed them to be weaknesses, he could well understand their existence in a child and in a woman. But that which he did not understand--that which made him marvel--was her lightness, her gayety, her wild vivacity--I might almost say, her trifling, when not moved by deep feeling or chained down by thought. This was beyond him. Yet strange! the same characteristics did not surprise nor shock him in her mother--never had surprised or shocked him; indeed he had rather loved her for those qualities, so unlike his own. Perhaps it was that he thought it strange, his child should, in any mood, be so unlike himself; or perhaps it was the contrast between the two sides of the same character that moved his wonder when he saw it in his child. He might forget that her mother was her parent as well as himself; and that she had an inheritance from each. In his thoughtful, considering, theoretical way, he determined studiously to seek a remedy for what he considered the defect in his child--to cultivate with all the zeal and perseverance of paternal affection, supported by his own force of character, those qualities which were most like his own--those, in short, which were the least womanly. But nature would not be baffled. You may divert her to a certain degree; but you cannot turn her aside from her course altogether. He found that he could not--by any means which his heart would let him employ--conquer what he called the frivolity of the child. Frivolity! Heaven save us! There were times when she showed no frivolity, but, on the contrary, a depth and intensity far, far beyond her years. Indeed, the ordinary current of her mind was calm and thoughtful. It was but when a breeze rippled it that it sparkled on the surface. Her father, too, saw that this was so; that the wild gayety was but occasional. But still it surprised and pained him--perhaps the more because it was occasional. It seemed to his eyes an anomaly in her nature. He would have had her altogether like himself. He could not conceive any one possessing so much of his own character, having room in heart and brain for aught else. It was a subject of constant wonder to him; of speculation, of anxious thought. He often asked himself if this was the only anomaly in his child--if there were not other traits, yet undiscovered, as discrepant as this light volatility with her general character: and he puzzled himself sorely. Still he pursued her education upon his own principles; taught her many things which women rarely learned in those days; imbued her mind with thoughts and feelings of his own; and often thought, when a season of peculiar gravity fell upon her, that he made progress in rendering her character all that he could wish it. This impression never lasted long, however; for sooner or later the bird-like spirit within her found the cage door open, and fluttered forth upon some gay excursion, leaving all his dreams vanished and his wishes disappointed. Nevertheless he loved her with all the strong affection of which his nature was capable; and still he persevered in the course which he thought for her benefit. At times, indeed, he would make efforts to unravel the mystery of her double nature, not perceiving that the only cause of mystery was in himself: that what seemed strange in his daughter depended more upon his own want of power to comprehend her variety than upon anything extraordinary in her. He would endeavor to go along with her in her sportive moods--to let his mind run free beside hers in its gay ramble; to find some motive for them which he could understand; to reduce them to a system; to discover the rule by which the problem was to be solved. But he made nothing of it, and wearied conjecture in vain. Lady Hastings sometimes interposed a little; for in unimportant things she had great influence with her husband. He let her have her own way wherever he thought it not worth while to oppose her; and that was very often. She perfectly comprehended the side of her daughter's character which was all darkness to the father; and strange to say, with greater penetration than his own, she comprehended the other side likewise. She recognized easily the traits in her child which she knew and admired in her husband, but wished them heartily away in her daughter's case, thinking such strength of mind, joined with whatever grace and sweetness, somewhat unfeminine. Though she was full of prejudices, and where her quickness of perception failed her, altogether unteachable by reason, yet she was naturally too virtuous and good to attempt even to thwart the objects of the father's efforts in the education of his child. I have said that she interfered at times, but it was only to remonstrate against too close study, to obtain frequent and healthful relaxation, and to add all those womanly accomplishments on which she set great value. In this she was not opposed. Music, singing, dancing, and a knowledge of modern languages, were added to other branches of education, and Lady Hastings was so far satisfied. CHAPTER V. The Italian singing-master was a peculiar man, and well worthy of a few words in description. He was tall and thin, but well built; and his face had probably once been very handsome, in that Italian style, which, by the exaggeration of age, grows so soon into ugliness. The nose was now large and conspicuous, the eyes bright, black, and twinkling, the mouth good in shape, but with an animal expression about it, the ear very voluminous. He was somewhat more than fifty years of age, and his hair was speckled with gray; but age was not apparent in wrinkles and furrows, and in gait he was firm and upright. At first Sir Philip Hastings did not like him at all. He did not like to have him there. It was against the grain he admitted him into the house. He did it, partly because he thought it right to yield in some degree to the wishes of his wife; partly from a grudging deference to the customs of society. But the Signor was a shrewd and world-taught man, accustomed to overcome prejudices, and to make his way against disadvantages; and he soon established himself well in the opinion of both father and mother. It was done by a peculiar process, which is well worth the consideration of all those who seek _les moyens de parvenir_. In his general and ordinary intercourse with his fellow-men, he had a happy middle tone,--a grave, reticent manner, which never compromised him to anything. A shrewd smile, without an elucidatory remark, served to harmonize him with the gay and vivacious; a serious tranquillity, unaccompanied by any public professions, was enough to make the sober and the decent rank him amongst themselves. Perhaps that class of men--whether pure at heart or not--have always overestimated decency of exterior. All this was in public however. In private, in a _tête-à-tête_, Signor Guardini was a very different man. Nay more, in each and every _tête-à-tête_ he was a different man from what he appeared in the other. Yet, with a marvelous art, he contrived to make both sides of his apparent character harmonize with his public and open appearance. Or rather perhaps I should say that his public demeanor was a middle tint which served to harmonize the opposite extremes of coloring displayed by his character. Nothing could exemplify this more strongly than the different impressions he produced on Sir Philip and Lady Hastings. The lady was soon won to his side. She was predisposed to favor him; and a few light gay sallies, a great deal of conventional talk about the fashionable life of London, and a cheerful bantering tone of persiflage, completely charmed her. Sir Philip was more difficult to win. Nevertheless, in a few short sentences, hardly longer than those which Sterne's mendicant whispered in the ear of the passengers, he succeeded in disarming many prejudices. With him, the Signor was a stoic; he had some tincture of letters, though a singer, and had read sufficient of the history of his own land, to have caught all the salient points of the glorious past. Perhaps he might even feel a certain interest in the antecedents of his decrepit land--not to influence his conduct, or to plant ambitious or nourish pure and high hopes for its regeneration--but to waken a sort of touch-wood enthusiasm, which glowed brightly when fanned by the stronger powers of others. Yet before Sir Philip had had time to communicate to him one spark of his own ardor, he had as I have said made great progress in his esteem. In five minutes' conversation he had established for himself the character of one of a higher and nobler character whose lot had fallen in evil days. "In other years," thought the English gentleman, "this might have been a great man--the defender unto death of his country's rights--the advocate of all that is ennobling, stern, and grand." What was the secret of all this? Simply that he, a man almost without character, had keen and well-nigh intuitive perceptions of the characters of others; and that without difficulty his pliable nature and easy principles would accommodate themselves to all. He made great progress then in the regard of Sir Philip, although their conversations seldom lasted above five minutes. He made greater progress still with the mother. But with the daughter he made none--worse than none. What was the cause, it may be asked. What did he do or say--how did he demean himself so as to produce in her bosom a feeling of horror and disgust toward him that nothing could remove? I cannot tell. He was a man of strong passions and no principles: that his after--perhaps his previous--life would evince. There is a touchstone for pure gold in the heart of an innocent and highminded woman that detects all baser metals: they are discovered in a moment: they cannot stand the test. Now, whether his heart-cankering corruption, his want of faith, honesty, and truth, made themselves felt, and were pointed out by the index of that fine barometer, without any overt act at all--or whether he gave actual cause of offense, I do not know--none has ever known. Suddenly, however, the gay, the apparently somewhat wayward girl, now between fifteen and sixteen, assumed a new character in her father's and mother's eyes. With a strange frank abruptness she told them she would take no more singing lessons of the Italian; but she added no explanation. Lady Hastings was angry, and expostulated warmly; but the girl was firm and resolute. She heard her mother's argument, and answered in soft and humble tones that she would not,--could not learn to sing any longer--that she was very sorry to grieve or to offend her mother; but she had learned long enough, and would learn no more. More angry than before, with the air of indignant pride in which weakness so often takes refuge, the mother quitted the room; and the father then, in a calmer spirit, inquired the cause of her resolution. She blushed like the early morning sky; but there was a sort of bewildered look upon her face as she replied, "I know no cause--I can give no reason, my dear father; but the man is hateful to me. I will never see him again." Her father sought for farther explanation, but he could obtain none. Guardini had not said anything nor done anything, she admitted, to give her offense; but yet she firmly refused to be his pupil any longer. There are instincts in fine and delicate minds, which, by signs and indications intangible to coarser natures, discover in others thoughts and feelings, wishes and designs, discordant--repugnant to themselves. They are instincts, I say, not amenable to reason, escaping analysis, incapable of explanation--the warning voice of God in the heart, bidding them beware of evil. Sir Philip Hastings was not a man to allow aught for such impulses--to conceive or understand them in the least. He had been accustomed to delude himself with reasons, some just, others very much the reverse, but he had never done a deed or entertained a thought for which he could not give some reason of convincing power to his own mind. He did not understand his daughter's conduct at all; but he would not press her any farther. She was in some degree a mysterious being to him. Indeed, as I have before shown, she had always been a mystery; for he had no key to her character in his own. It was written in the unknown language. Yet, did he love or cherish her the less? Oh no! Perhaps a deeper interest gathered round his heart for her, the chief object of his affections. More strongly than ever he determined to cultivate and form her mind on his own model, in consequence of what he called a strange caprice, although he could not but sometimes hope and fancy that her resolute rejection of any farther lessons from Signor Guardini arose from her distaste to what he himself considered one of the frivolous pursuits of fashion. Yet she showed no distaste for singing; for somehow every day she would practice eagerly, till her sweet voice, under a delicate taste, acquired a flexibility and power which charmed and captivated her father, notwithstanding his would-be cynicism. He was naturally fond of music; his nature was a vehement one, though curbed by such strong restraints; and all vehement natures are much moved by music. He would sit calmly, with his eyes fixed upon a book, but listening all the time to that sweet voice, with feelings working in him--emotions, thrilling, deep, intense, which he would have felt ashamed to expose to any human eye. All this however made her conduct toward Guardini the more mysterious; and her father often gazed upon her beautiful face with a look of doubting inquiry, as one may look on the surface of a bright lake, and ask, What is below? That face was now indeed becoming very beautiful. Every feature had been refined and softened by time. There was soul in the eyes, and a gleam of heaven upon the smile, besides the mere beauties of line and coloring. The form too had nearly reached perfection. It was full of symmetry and grace, and budding charms; and while the mother marked all these attractions, and thought how powerful they would prove in the world, the father felt their influence in a different manner: with a sort of abstract admiration of her loveliness, which went no further than a proud acknowledgment to his own heart that she was beautiful indeed. To him her beauty was as a gem, a picture, a beautiful possession, which he had no thought of ever parting with--something on which his eyes would rest well pleased until they closed forever. How blessed he might have been in the possession of such a child could he have comprehended her--could he have divested his mind of the idea that there was something strange and inharmonious in her character! Could he have made his heart a woman's heart for but one hour, all mystery would have been dispelled; but it was impossible, and it remained. No tangible effect did it produce at the time; but preconceptions of another's character are very dangerous things. Everything is seen through their medium, everything is colored and often distorted. That which produced no fruit at the time, had very important results at an after period. But I must turn now to other scenes and more stirring events, having I trust made the reader well enough acquainted with father, mother, and daughter, at least sufficiently for all the purposes of this tale. It is upon the characters of two of them that all the interest if there be any depends. Let them be marked then and remembered, if the reader would derive pleasure from what follows. TO BE CONTINUED. [From "The Album." Manchester, November, 1850.] THE POET'S LOT. BY PHILIP JAMES BAILEY, AUTHOR OF "FESTUS," ETC. Nature in the poet's heart is limned In little, as in landscape stones we see The swell of land, and groves, and running streams, Fresh from the wolds of Chaos; or perchance The imaged hint of antemundane life,-- A photograph of preexistent light,-- Or Paradisal sun. So, in his mind The broad conditions of the world are graven, Thoroughly and grandly; in accord wherewith His life is ruled to be, and eke to bear. Wisdom he wills not only for himself, But undergoes the sacred rites whereby The privilege he hath earned he may promulge, And all men make the partners of his light. Between the priestly and the laic powers The poet stands, a bright and living link; Now chanting odes divine and sacred spells-- Now with fine magic, holy and austere, Inviting angels or evoking fiends; And now, in festive guise arrayed, his brow With golden fillet bounden round--alone, Earnest to charm the throng that celebrates The games now--now the mysteries of life, With truths ornate and Pleasure's choicest plea. Thus he becomes the darling of mankind, Armed with the instinct both of rule and right, And the world's minion, privileged to speak When all beside, the medley mass, are mute: Distills his soul into a song--and dies. THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE: OR, THE SPY IN SOCIETY.[6] TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF H. DE ST. GEORGES. _Continued from Page 512._ [6: Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by Stringer & Townsend, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.] BOOK SECOND.--THE VIPER'S NEST. Rightly enough had the young girl been called "The White Rose of Sorrento." Monte-Leone had based on her his most ardent hopes and tenderest expectations. Nothing in fact could be more angelic than the expression of her face. She seemed the _virgo immaculata_ of Rubens, the _virgo_ of divine love. What would first attract attention at Aminta's appearance was a marble pallor, the paleness of that beautiful marble of Carara, in which when Canova had touched it the blood seemed to rush to the surface and circulate beneath the transparent flesh of the great master. We must however say that beneath the long lids of the young Neapolitan, the observer would have discovered an expression of firmness and decision rarely found in so young a girl. Any one who examined her quickly saw that in her frail and delicate frame there was a soul full of energy and courage, and that if it should ever be aroused, what she wished must be, _God willing_. Nothing in nature is more persevering and irresistible than woman's will, especially if the woman be an Italian. Antonia Rovero, the mother of Aminta and Taddeo, was the widow of a rich banker of Naples, devoted to the cause of Murat, and had been created by the late king one of his senators and then minister of finances. In this last office M. Rovero died, and his widow, after having received every kindness from Murat, retired to Sorrento. Taddeo then felt an interest in everything which had a tendency to overturn the government of Fernando IV. The restoration of the latter had crushed his ambition and broken his fortunes. On that account he had become one of the Pulcinelli whom we have described in the last book. While this well-beloved son of an affectionate mother, this brother so idolized by an affectionate sister, languished perhaps like Monte-Leone, Madame Rovero and her daughter in their quiet retreat fancied that Taddeo was enjoying at Naples all the pleasures of the Carnival and abandoning himself to all the follies of that day of pleasure. Sometimes, however, as the sun set on the hills of Sorrento, Aminta said to her mother, "Taddeo forgets us. It is not pleasant to enjoy this beautiful day without him. Were we three together, how delicious it would be!" Then Aminta would take a volume of Alfieri, her favorite author, and wander alone amid the fields. The day on which the scene we are about to describe happened was one of those burning ones, which make us even in winter fancy that an eternal spring exists in that heaven-protected land. We may add that the winter of 1816 was peculiar even in Italy, and that the sun was so warm and the heat so genial that nature under their influence put on the most luxuriant vegetation. The favorite haunt of Aminta was a green hill, behind which was a pretty and simple house, the cradle of one of the most wonderful geniuses of the world. This genius was Tasso. A bust of the poet in _terra cotta_ yet adorned the façade of the house, which though then in ruins has since been rebuilt. At that time the room of the divine yet unfortunate lover of Leonora did not exist--the sea had swept over it. Admirers of the poet yet however visited the remnants of his habitation. The tender heart of Aminta yet paid a pious worship to them, and "The White Rose of Sorrento" went toward "The House of Tasso." Aminta's mother was always offended when she indulged in such distant excursions. She did not however go alone. A singular being accompanied her. This being was at once a man and a reptile. His features would have denoted the age of sixteen. They were the most frightful imaginable. A forehead over which spread a few reddish hairs; a mouth almost without teeth; small eyes, sad and green, which were however insupportably bright when they were lit up by anger; long and bony arms; legs horribly thin; a short and square bust,--all united to make a being so utterly ungraceful, so inhuman, that the children of the village had nicknamed him _Scorpione_--so like that reptile's was his air. The _morale_ of Scorpione was worthy of his _physique_. The true name of this child was Tonio. Being the son of Aminta's nurse, he had never in his life been separated from her, and seemed to grow daily more ugly as she became more beautiful. He became so devoted to Aminta that he never left her. This whimsical intimacy was not that of children, the attachment of brother and sister, but that of the intellectual and brute being, of the master and dog. He was the dog of Aminta. He accompanied and watched over her in all her long walks. Did a dangerous pass occur, he took her up and carried her across the pool or torrent, so that not a drop of water touched her. If any one chanced to meet her and sought to speak to her, he first growled, and then having looked at Aminta, made the bold man understand that like a mastiff he would protect her against all assailants. During the winter evenings when Aminta read to her mother, Tonio lying at the fair reader's feet, warmed them in his bosom, where she suffered them to remain with as much carelessness as she would have let them rest on the back of a dog. She became so used to his horrid features, that she no longer thought them repulsive. No contrast was stronger than that these two presented. It was like the association of an angel and a devil. The young girl had in vain attempted to impart some knowledge to Scorpione: his nature did not admit of it. Had he been able to comprehend anything, if the simple idea of right and wrong could have reached his heart, Aminta would have accomplished much. This Cretin,[7] however, knew but three things in the world, to love, to serve, and to defend Aminta. Nothing more. [7: The Cretins are a miserable, feeble and almost idiotic race, found not infrequently in the south of France. They have sometimes been horribly persecuted.] Accompanied by her faithful dog one day, the fair creature had walked to the house of Tasso. She had perhaps twenty times gone through those magnificent ruins, and read over again and again the inscription every tourist fancies himself obliged to engrave with his dagger's point on the tesselated walls of the poet's home. One which seemed new attracted her attention. Thus it read: "One must have suffered as much as the lover of Leonora, to be unhappy in the paradise of Sorrento." These three lines were signed by the Marquis de Maulear. Aminta read the inscription two or three times, without fancying that it related to her. The simple style touched her heart, and with no slight emotion, she left the wall. At that moment the sun was at the height of its power, and shed its burning rays over nature. Aminta's straw hat sheltered her from the torrents of lava which seemed to fall from heaven and a few drops of perspiration stood on her marble forehead. While she was seeking in the ruined house for some shadowed nook, Scorpione amused himself behind a wall in torturing a gray lizard he had found, and which had taken refuge in a hole, from which it could not get out. The cruel child made numerous blows at the timid animal whenever it attempted to escape. He was perfectly delighted when he had beaten out the eyes of the animal, and the poor creature, rushing out, surrendered himself. One thrust completed the work, and it died in convulsions. Aminta found Scorpione thus engaged. "Fie, fie," said she, "you deserve to suffer as much pain as you have inflicted on this poor animal." "I am no lizard, but a scorpion, as the children of Sorrento say. I have a sting always ready for those who seek to injure me." He showed his dagger. Aminta left, and Tonio, glancing at his mistress like a dog which has been punished, placed his back against the wall and pretended to sleep. Before long he really did sleep. Not far from Tasso's house there was a grotto, beneath which ran a little stream, overgrown with aquatic herbs, and which beyond doubt in other days fed the fish-ponds of the house. It however had insensibly dried up, and only a feeble thread could henceforth be traced. This was the grotto which gave Aminta the refuge she sought. A mossy bench was placed by the side of a stream. She sat on it, took her book, and recited aloud the harmonious verses of her favorite bard. She gradually felt the influence of the heat. For a while she contended against the approach of sleep, which, however, ere long surrounded her with its leaden wings. The sight of Aminta became clouded, and shadowy mists passed before her eyes. Her brow bowed down, her head fell upon the rustic pillow. She was in oblivion. It was noon. All at this hour in Italy, and especially in Naples, slumber, "except," says the proverb, certainly not complimentary to my countrymen, "_Frenchmen and dogs_." The fact is, that Frenchmen, when they travel, pay no attention to the customs of the country. A Frenchman who travels unfortunately insists that everything should be done _a la Française_, in countries and climates where such a life as ours is impossible. A profound silence covered all nature. The indistinct humming of insects in the air for a while troubled him; then all was silent. The wind even was voiceless, and the wave which beat on the rock seemed to repress every sound to avoid interrupting the repose of earth and heaven. All at once, distant steps were heard. At first they were light, then more positive and distinct as they resounded on the calcined rock which led to Tasso's house. A young man of twenty-five approached. He was almost overcome by the sultriness. A whip and spurs showed that he had just dismounted. He had left his horse in an orange grove. Overcome, he had sought a shelter, and remembering the ruins he had seen a few days before, hoped to find freshness and repose there. The poet's mansion, the roof of which had fallen in, did not answer his expectations. He hurried toward the very place where Aminta slept. His eyes, dazzled by the brilliant light, did not at first distinguish the young girl in the darkness of the grotto. After a few moments, however, his sight became stronger, and he was amazed at the white form which lay on the mossy seat. Gradually the form became more distinct, and finally the young stranger was able to distinguish a beautiful girl. Just then a brilliant sunlight passed over the top of the crumbling wall and fell on her, enwrapping her in golden light, and, as it were, framing her angelic head like a glory round one of Raphael's pictures. Henri de Maulear, such was the young man's name, fancied that an angelic vision stood before him. Had the princess Leonora's ghost visited the scenes Tasso loved so well? Had a great sculptor, Canova, in one of his charming deliriums reproduced the features of Tasso's mistress and placed his work in the grotto where the great poet sighed? Marble alone could compete with Aminta's whiteness. Her round and waxen arms seemed to have been formed of the purest Carara marble. Aminta uttered a sigh and dissipated the illusion of the stranger. It was not an admirable statue exhibited to him, but a work of nature. It was such a woman as a poetic and tender heart dreams of--a woman not to be loved, but adored. Love is earthly; adoration belongs to heaven. Henri de Maulear, fascinated by increasing admiration, did not dare to advance. He held his breath and was afraid, so great was his excitement, that this wonderful beauty would faint away. Another sentiment, however, soon took possession of him. A mortal terror filled his soul--death and sleep were united. A fearful danger menaced the maiden, whence it seemed no human power could rescue her. In the folds of Aminta's dress, in her very bosom, Henri saw a strange object, whose whimsical colors contrasted strangely with the whiteness of her dress. It was one of those strange things known in Italy as _pointed-headed_ vipers. Their bite takes effect so rapidly, their poison becomes so soon infused in the blood, that victims die within a few minutes. Aminta had lain down near a nest of these dangerous reptiles. The warmth of her body had gradually attracted them to her, and while she slept they had nestled in her very bosom. She had been motionless. They had not as yet moved. Any change of posture however would bring on a terrible catastrophe, a compulsory witness of which Henri de Maulear would from necessity be. What assistance could he render her? How could he arouse her without awaking the reptiles also? With a pale face and icy sweat on his brow, he thought in vain to contrive a means to save her. What however was his terror as he saw her make a slight movement! She reached out one of her arms, held it in the air, and then let it fall on her breast which was covered with reptiles. Her motion aroused the vipers. For a moment they became agitated, then uncoiled themselves, and hid their heads in the folds of her dress. One of them again coiled himself up, passed his thin tongue through his lips like a _gourmand_ after a feast: the head was drawn back and the creature assumed the form of a spiral urn, exhibited all its rings of ruby and _malachete_, and then drawing back in a line full of grace, disappeared among its fellows, and sank to sleep as if it were exhausted with its own efforts. During this terrible scene, Maulear could not breathe. The very pulsation of his heart was stopped, his soul having left his body to protect Aminta. For the nonce she was safe. But a terrible death yet hung over her. Maulear did not lose sight of her. Ere long he saw her bosom heave; he saw her gasp, and her face gradually become flushed. She was dreaming. Should she make any motion, she would disturb the vipers. This idea excited him so much that for a while he thought they were awakened. Their hisses sounded in his ears, and he eagerly looked aside to avoid the terrible spectacle. His glance however fell on an object which as yet he had not perceived. So great was his joy that he could with difficulty refrain from crying aloud. He saw an earthen vase full of milk, in a dark portion of the cave, left there by some shepherd anxious to preserve his evening meal from the heat of the summer sun. He remembered what naturalists say of the passion entertained by reptiles for milk. The well-known stories of cows, the dugs of whom had been sucked dry by snakes, were recalled to his mind. Rushing toward the vase, he seized it and bore it to the mossy rock. Just then Aminta awoke. II.--SCORPIONE. Having looked around her, Aminta saw Maulear, pale and with an excited face. He could not restrain his terror and surprise. By a motion more rapid than thought, he pointed out to her the terrible beings that nestled in her bosom, and said earnestly and eagerly: "Do not move or you will die!" He could make no choice as to the means of saving her. It became necessary for him to rescue her at once, to confront her with danger, and rely on her strength of mind to brave it, by remaining motionless. He thought possibly she might succumb beneath its aspect. This was the result. She looked toward the terrible reptiles Maulear pointed out to her. Horror took possession of her. Her heart ceased to beat, and her blood curdled. She fainted. Luckily, however, this happened without any motion, without even a nervous vibration sufficient to awake the serpents. Henri uttered a sigh of happiness and delight, for beyond doubt Heaven protected Aminta and himself. Approaching the vase of milk, he placed it near her. Dipping his fingers in it, he scattered a few drops over the reptiles. They moved. The milk directly attracted their attention, and as soon as they had tasted it they became aware of its presence. Lifting up their pointed heads to receive what was offered them, they directed their eyes toward the vase. When they had once seen it, they began to untwine their coils and to crawl toward it, like young girls hurrying to the bath. The mossy bench was near the rock. To remove her from the grotto Henri had to displace the vase. He had courage enough to wait until the last viper had gone into it. Seizing it then, he placed it gently on the ground. Passing his arms under the inanimate body of the girl, he sought to carry her away. Just then she recovered from her fainting. Aware that she was in the arms of a strange man, she made a violent effort to get away, and cast herself from her bed on the ground to escape from this embrace. In her disorder and agitation, and contest with Maulear, who sought to restrain her, in the half obscurity of the grotto her foot touched the coil of vipers. She fell shrieking on his bosom. He left the grotto with his precious burden. Her cry had revealed to him the new misfortune, to which at first he paid no attention, but which now terrified him. The cry awoke Scorpione. His ear being familiarized with all the tones of his mistress, he would have recognized this amid a thousand. Quicker than the thunderbolt he rushed from the house, and stood at the door just when Maulear seized her. Scorpione fancied the stranger bore away his foster-sister, and rushed on him as furiously as he would have done on a midnight robber. He seized Maulear in the breast with his right hand, the nails of which were trenchant as a needle, while with the left he sought to thrust the dagger in his heart. Aminta herself was however a shield to his bosom, and he clasped her closely. In the appearance of the horrid monster, Maulear almost forgot the perilous situation from which he had just extricated himself. For a time he fancied he was under the spell of some terrible vision, being unable to believe one person could unite so many deformities. With terror then he saw Scorpione seize on him and seek to snatch the body of Aminta from him. A second cry of Aminta, less distinct however than the first, changed the scene and recalled two of the actors to their true interest. "Wretch!" said Maulear to Tonio, "if you wish gold I will give it you. Wait however till I resuscitate this girl." "Aminta needs the care of none, when I am by!" said Scorpione. "She is my mistress, my sister: I watch over her." "At all events you watch over her very badly," said Henri, placing Aminta on a broken stone. "I found her asleep here, with the vipers nestling in her bosom." A groan escaped from the throat of Scorpione as he heard these words. He fell at Aminta's feet, with such an expression of grief, such cruel despair, that Maulear despite of himself was moved. "Vipers! pointed-headed! Have they stung her? tell me," said Tonio to Maulear. "I will die if she does!" He sunk on the ground, mad with rage and terror. The eyes of Maulear glittered with somber horror. A nervous terror seized him, and, paralyzed by fright, he pointed out to Tonio the white leg of Aminta, around which a viper had coiled itself. Scorpione sprang forward and tore the reptile away, throwing it far from him. This took place in less than a second. Maulear would have done precisely what Scorpione had done, but thought was not more rapid than the movement of Aminta's foster-brother. Above the buskin of the girl a spot of blood appeared on her silk stocking. This came from the bite of the serpent. It was death. Maulear, kneeling before Aminta, reached forth his hand to touch the wound. Tonio rudely pushed him aside. "No one," said he in a sharp harsh voice, mingled with which was an accent of indignation, "may touch Aminta!" Tonio alone has that right, and Madame Rovero would drive him away if he permitted it!" "But she will die unless I aid her!" "And how can you?" said Scorpione, looking impudently at him. "What do you know about pointed-heads? You do not even know the only remedy. But I do, and will cure her." There was such conviction in the words, that Maulear almost began to entertain hope. What probability however was there that this kind of brute would find means energetic and sure enough to restore the warmth of life to one over whom the coldness of death had already begun to settle, to stop the flow of poison which already permeated her frame? Maulear doubted, trembled, and entertained again the most miserable ideas. "If you would save her," said he to Scorpione, "there is but one thing to do. Hurry to the nearest physician and bring him hither to cauterize the wound and burn out the poison." "Physicians are fools!" said Scorpione. "When my mother was thirty years of age, beautiful and full of life, they let her die. Though she was only my mother, I would have strangled them. If they were not to save Aminta, however, I would kill them as I would dogs!" Nothing can give an idea of his expression as he pronounced the words, "_though she was only my mother_." It betokened atrocious coldness and indifference. The glance however he threw on the maiden at the very idea of her death was full of intense affection. "Save her then!" said Maulear, seizing the idea that this half-savage creature was perhaps aware of some secret means furnished by nature to work a true miracle in favor of the victim. The features of Aminta began to be disturbed; a livid pallor took possession of her; light contractions agitated her features; her lids became convulsive, opening and shutting rapidly. Scorpione observed all these symptoms. "Well," said he, placing his hand on her heart, "it beats yet. The poison moves on: let us stop it." Kneeling before her, he grasped the wounded limb, and took off the light silk stocking. Then taking his dagger from his bosom, he made a slight incision with the sharp point where the reptile had bitten her. She uttered a cry of pain. "What are you about?" said Maulear, offended. "Do you not see," replied Scorpione, "that I am opening the door for the escape of the poison?" Without speaking a word, he leaned over the wound, applied his lips, and sucked the blood which ran from it. Twice or thrice he spat out the blood and resumed the occupation of sublime courage. The ugliness of Scorpione entirely disappeared from Maulear's eyes, and the monster seemed to him a saving angel descended from heaven to rescue another angel from death. A few seconds passed by in terrible and solemn silence. Scorpione supported Aminta's head, and attempted to read in her face the effect of his heroism. Henri de Maulear also knelt, and glanced from heaven to the girl, invoking aid from one, and feeling profound anxiety for the other. Aminta sighed, but not with pain. An internal relief was already experienced by her. Scorpione seized her hand in his, and feeling her pulse, laughed aloud. He said, "_The Scorpion has overcome the viper_: Aminta will live!" "But you? you?" said Maulear, as he saw Scorpione's strength give way. "Me? oh, I perhaps will die--that however is a different matter." Though he did not know it, Scorpione might have been right. Felix Fontana, the great Italian, one of the most distinguished physicians of the eighteenth century, in his celebrated _Riserche Chemiche Sopra il Veleno della Vipera_, affirms that to suck out the poison of the viper, even when it does not touch the vital organs, suffices to cause such an inflammation of the organs of the mouth that death always results from it. Boundless admiration and profound pity appeared in the heart of Maulear when he heard the answer of Tonio. He even forgot Aminta, and hurried to her generous liberator. He took him in his arms, and sustained his head, which in nervous spasms he beat violently against the rock. This deformed creature became really a friend and brother to Maulear; he had saved one whom even Heaven abandoned. He had accomplished the most admirable sacrifice, that equal almost to Christ, who gave his life to ransom that of his fellows. Just then steps were heard in the distance, and many persons approached the solitude where such terrible scenes were occurring. A woman of about fifty years of age, with dignified and beautiful features and distinguished tournure, advanced with an expression of intense terror. Looking all around, she seemed much terrified. She soon saw the three characters of our somber drama. Passing hurriedly and rapidly as if she had been a girl toward Aminta, who lay extended on the ground, she seized and convulsively clasped her to her heart, without however being able to utter a word. Her tearful eyes declared however that she was aware some great misfortune had befallen her child. This woman was Madame Rovero. Those who accompanied her were old servants of the family, and surrounded Aminta. They were ignorant as Madame Rovero was of the danger the young girl had undergone. Aminta however had begun to recover, and pointed to Tonio, who lay in convulsions in Maulear's arms. "What, monsieur, has happened?" said Madame de Rovero to Maulear. "Having become uneasy at my daughter's prolonged absence, I have come to her usual resort and find her dying and this lad writhing in your arms." "Madame, excuse me," said Maulear, "if I do not now make explanation in relation to the cruel events which have taken place. Time at present is too precious. Your daughter I trust will live. But this poor fellow demands all our care. He has sacrificed himself to rescue your child, and to him you owe now all your happiness. Near this place I have two horses. Suffer me to place your daughter on one, and do you return with her to your house. I will on the other hurry with Tonio as fast as possible to Sorrento." Henri took a silver whistle from his pocket and sounded it. A groom soon appeared with two horses. What he had proposed was soon executed, not however without difficulty, for Aminta was much enfeebled, and Scorpione contended violently with those who sought to place him in front of Maulear, who had already mounted. Madame Rovero went sadly toward Sorrento, bearing pale and bloody the young girl who had gone on that very morning from her mother's villa so joyous, happy, and beautiful. Maulear hurried to the house of the physician which had been pointed out to him. While they were bringing in Aminta's foster-brother, Henri told the doctor what had taken place. He examined the lad, and his brow became overcast. Scorpione was speechless, and but for the faint pulsations of his heart one might have thought him lifeless. No external symptom betrayed the effect of the poison except the head of the patient, which was terribly swollen. His mouth and especially the lower jaw appeared the seat of suffering, and with a sensation of horror Maulear saw between the violet lips of the patient a green and tense tongue, at the appearance of which the physician exhibited much emotion. "What do you think of his condition?" said Maulear. "The great Felix Fontana says, in such cases there is no safety. Lazarus Spallanzini, however, another savant of the eighteenth century, published at Venice, in 1767, in the Giornole D'Italia, an admirable dissertation on wounds caused by the bite of reptiles, especially on those of the vipers. Treating of suction and its consequences, he points out a means of cure for it. It is however so terrible and dangerous that I know not if I should use it." "Use it, sir. There is," said Maulear, "only the alternative of it and death." "The man will live, but in all probability will never speak again." He waited for Maulear's answer. "May I consult the family?" said the young man. "I will have returned in an hour." "In ten minutes," said the doctor, "he will be dead." "Act quickly, then, monsieur: all his friends would act as I do." The physician left: in a few minutes he returned with one of his assistants, bearing a red hot iron. Maulear shuddered. The physician placed the patient in a great arm-chair, to which he fastened him with strong straps of leather. Then, when he was satisfied that no spasm or motion of the unfortunate man would interrupt the operation, he placed a speculum in his mouth. The speculum in its expansion tore apart the jaws of Tonio, and kept them distended, so that the interior orifice of the throat could be seen. Seizing the hot iron, he plunged it into the throat of the unhappy man, turned back the palate from the tongue, and moved it several times about, while the agonizing guttural cries of the patient were mingled with the sharp hissing of the iron. Torrents of tears filled his eyes. At this terrible spectacle Maulear fainted. III.--THE CONCERT. Henri Marquis de Maulear was scarcely twenty-six, and was what all would have called a handsome man. A fine tall person, delicate features, and a profusion of rich blond hair, curling naturally, justified the appellation which the world, and especially the female portion of it, conferred on him. To these external advantages, was united a brilliant education, rather superficial than serious, and more graceful than solid. He had dipped without examination in everything. He, however, knew it to be essential to seem to understand all the subjects of French conversation, in the saloons of Paris: nothing more. The Prince Maulear, the only son of whom Henri was, had accompanied the Bourbons in their exile, and been one of the faithful at Mettau and Hartwell. After having undergone banishment with the Princes, his illustrious friends, he returned to France with Louis XVIII. and shared with Messieurs de Blacas, Vitrolles, d'Escars and others, the favor and confidence of the king. A widower, and the recipient of a large fortune from the restoration of the unsold portion of his estates, cold and harsh in behavior, the Prince returned from exile in 1815, with the same ideas he had borne away in 1788. The Prince de Maulear was the true type of those unchangeable prejudices which can neither learn nor forget. He was educated in France by a sister of his mother, the Countess of Grandnesnil, an ancient canoness, a noble lady, who was a second mother to the young Marquis after death had borne away his own. The Countess had not emigrated like her brother-in-law. The care demanded by the delicate health of the heir of the family could not admit of the fatigue of endless travel, made necessary by emigration. Therefore, the heir of the Maulears remained under the charge of the Countess. When he grew up, beneath the ægis of the Countess, he completed his education, and at a later day entered society. She exercised over his mind and heart that influence which affection and the usage of familiar intercourse confer. Watching over him with maternal care, seeking to ascertain his wishes that she might be able to gratify them, making him happy in every way in her power, she was beloved by the Marquis with all his heart. He could not have loved a mother more. The consequence of this education by a woman was that the moral had somewhat stifled the intellectual. Besides, this kind of fanaticism of the Countess for her nephew, her constant attention to gratify every caprice, her readiness to excuse his faults, even when she should have blamed them severely, made his education vicious as possible, and brought out two faults with peculiar prominence. His character was very weak; and he had great self-confidence. The Prince de Maulear found the son he had left a child in the cradle, a man of twenty-six, and was literally forced to make his acquaintance. The noble bearing and distinguished manners of the young man pleased him especially. He was also graceful, gallant and brave, and the Prince saw himself restored to youth in the person of his son. He did not make himself uneasy about his sentiments, being satisfied that his son was learned in stable lore, a good rider, skillful in the use of weapons, heroic and enterprising. He rejoiced at his fortune, as it would make Henri happy, and anticipated a brilliant and fortunate career for his son. Henri had no profession, and the Prince procured for him the appointment of secretary of legation to Naples. He had held this post six months when he appears in our history. Henri had never loved. Much ephemeral gallantry, and many easy conquests, which soon passed away, had occupied his time without touching his heart, and this was his situation when for the first time he saw the White Rose of Sorrento. As we have said, he became sick at the terrible surgical operation. He did not revive until all was over. The unfortunate Tonio had been placed in one of the rooms of the doctor's house, and the latter declared, that in consideration of the importance of the case, he would himself attend to the patient, and would not leave him until he should have been completely restored, unless, added he, death should remove the responsibility. The Marquis being satisfied that the savior of Aminta would not be neglected, hurried with the doctor to Madame Rovero's villa. Nothing could be more simple and charming, and nothing in Italy had struck him so forcibly. The very look of the house told how happy were its inhabitants. At the extremity of Sorrento, it was surrounded by large trees, and winter seemed never to inflict any severity upon it. An old servant admitted the strangers. He recognized Maulear, for he had been with Madame when she recovered her daughter. "Madame expects you, gentlemen," said he, when he saw the young Marquis and the Doctor. "I will accompany you to the room." He went before them to a pretty room on the ground floor, where he left them a short time. Maulear carefully examined it. All betokened elegant tastes in its occupants. In the middle was an elegant grand piano of Vienna; on the desk the Don Giovanna of Mozart; and on a pedestal near the window an exquisite model of Tasso's house. A round table of Florentine workmanship, of immense value, stood near one side of the apartment. The valuable Mosaics were, however, hidden by a collection of albums, keepsakes, and engravings. There were also on it vases of alabaster, filled with perfumed flowers, and the whole room was lit up by the rays of the setting sun, the brilliancy of which were softened as they passed across the park. Madame Rovero entered with a servant. "Take the Doctor," said she, "to my daughter's room, whither I will come immediately. You, sir," said she, pointing Maulear to a chair, "will please to tell me for what I am your debtor. I am sure your claims are large." He gave Madame Rovero a detailed account of what had happened since he met Aminta in the grotto, until the cruel devotion of Tonio. "Tonio has told you the truth, Monsieur," said Madame Rovero; "the terrible remedy he had the courage to employ is known in the country to be infallible, though, as yet, few examples of such heroism have occurred. The doctor alone can satisfy us of the safety of my daughter." Madame Rovero moved toward the door to satisfy herself in relation to this engrossing subject, when the doctor entered. She trembled before him like a criminal before a judge, when he seeks to divine the nature of a terrible sentence. "The young lady is in no danger. I have examined the wound carefully; no trace of poison remains. The poor lad has entirely exhausted it." The mother lifted her eyes to heaven in inexpressible gratitude. "What hopes have you, doctor, of the poor lad?" "He will live, but that is all science can do." "Do not neglect one who has so absolute a right to my gratitude." Turning then to Maulear, she said, "In a few days, Monsieur, my daughter and myself will expect you. She will soon be restored, and we will thank you for your services." Maulear bade adieu to Mme. Rovero, not as a stranger or acquaintance of a few minutes, but as a friend who leaves a family with whom he is intimate. He left them with regret, as persons to whom he was devoted, and with whom he was willing to pass his life. Within a few hours, a strange change had been wrought in him. Struck with admiration at Aminta, the danger with which he found her surrounded, the successive agitations of the scene, the sweet influence exerted by her on his heart, the alternations of hope and fear, everything combined to disturb the placidity of his withered and somewhat _blazé_ soul which scarcely seemed plastic enough to receive a profound and tender expression. He then experienced for Aminta what he had not amid all that terrible.... The features of the young girl he had borne in his memory, contracted as they were by pain, did not seem to him less charming, and excited a warmer interest than ever. Never before had the most beautiful in all the eclât of dress and manners appeared so attractive as the pale Aminta in her mortal agony. To sum up all, he was in love, and in love for the first time. Henri left Sorrento with a painful sensation, and returned to Naples, where pleasure and warm receptions awaited him, from the many beauties on whom he expended the "small change" of his heart. As he said himself, he never was ruined by sensitiveness, keeping all the wealth of his heart for a good opportunity. That opportunity was come. He returned to the palace of the embassy, far different in his condition from what he was when he left. With the most perfect _sang-froid_ therefore he read the following note which his valet had given him when he came in-- "The Duke de Palma, minister of police, requests the Marquis de Maulear to pass the evening with him." Lower down in another hand was written-- _"Do not fail. La Felina will sing, and at two o'clock we will have a supper of our intimate friends. You know whether or not you are one of the number."_ The Duke of Palma, minister of police of the kingdom of Naples, was one of the friends of Fernando IV. He was not a great minister, but was young and intellectual. His principal merit was that he amused his master, by recounting secret intrigues, whimsical adventures, and delicate affairs, a knowledge of which he acquired by means of his position. Thus he found favor with Fernando, who was not served, but amused and satisfied. Sovereigns who are amused are indulgent. Maulear hesitated a long time before he accepted the invitation. His soul was occupied by new and delicious emotions. It seemed to him to be profanity to transport them to such a different and dissipated scene. He however shrunk from solitude, and the idea of living apart from Aminta for whole days, made him desire the amusement and excitement promised by the invitation. The entertainment was superb. All the noble, elegant and rich of Naples were bidden. The concert began. The first pieces were scarcely listened to, in consequence of the studiously late entries of many distinguished personages, and of many pretty women, who would not on any account enter _incognito_ either a drawing-room or a theater, and were careful never to come thither until the moment when their presence would attract attention or produce interruption. Silence however pervaded in a short time all the assemblage. The crowd which a moment before had been so agitated became at once calm and mute. A fairy spell seemed to have transfixed them. A fairy was really come--that of music.... The Queen of the theater of Italy, _La Bella Felina_--that strange sibyl of the ball at San Carlo. The excitement to hear her was great, and the prima donna had immense success. The young woman, by coming to his soirée, did the minister of police a great favor: The singer had during the whole year refused the most brilliant invitations and the largest sums to sing any where but at San Carlo. Thrice she had appeared on the concert gallery, and thrice descended amid immense applause. Great is the triumph of song. Yet its success is fleeting and ephemeral, and may be annihilated by the merest accident. The glory is frail, the fortune uncertain, of all that emanates from the human throat. The concert was over and all left. Henri and the intimate friends alone, of whom the Duke spoke, passed into an elegant and retired room into which the minister led La Felina. "Messieurs," said he, "the Signora honors me by partaking of our collation. Let us bow before the Queen of Song and thank her for the honor she confers on us." The cantatrice exhibited no embarrassment at being alone amid so many of another sex, so notorious for the volatility of their manners. Her habitual calm and dignity did not hide a kind of restraint from the observation of Maulear. She replied by a few graceful words to the gallantries of which she was the object. They then all sat down. Many witty remarks were made by the guests. Champagne increased Neapolitan volubility, and heads were beginning to grow light, when the minister seeing that La Felina was ill at ease at the conversation, said, "The supper, Signora, of a minister of police should be unique as that of a banker or senator. Where else would one learn of piquant adventures, scandal, hidden crimes, but at my house, for I am the keeper of all records and the compulsory confessor of all. I wish then to give you another fruit and to tell you of a strange adventure, the hero of which is a person all of you know. That man is Count Monte-Leone." The name of Monte-Leone, so well known in Naples, created the greatest sensation. All were silent and listened to the Duke of Palma. La Felina became strangely pale. IV.--THE DUKE OF PALMA. "You know," said the Duke to his friends, "that the Count Monte-Leone has for a long time professed opinions entirely opposed to the government of our sovereign king Fernando. The heir of the political errors of his unfortunate father, he seems to travel fatally toward the same sad fate. The king long ago bade us close our eyes to the guilty conduct of the young Count. His Majesty was unwilling to continue on the son the rigors to which his father had been subjected. A revelation of great importance forced us to act, and we caused the offender to be arrested for an offence of which he must make a defence before the appointed tribunal. During many months the Count contrived to avoid all efforts made to arrest him. At last, however, in consequence of a youthful escapade in which he should by no means have indulged, his retreat was revealed to us. The house which concealed him and his accomplices was found out on the night of the last ball of San Carlo. The countersign of his associates had been revealed to us by a traitor, and our precautions were so skillfully taken, that the three friends of Monte-Leone were arrested one after the other, at the very door of his house, without in the least rendering the arrest of the Count doubtful. Two hours after, Monte-Leone, arrested by our agents, was borne to the _Castle del Uovo_, a safe and sure prison, whence as yet no prisoner ever escaped. The report of the chief of the expedition," continued the Duke, "states, that he saw a woman fainting on the floor. He adds, that he thought he had nothing to do with it, his orders relating entirely to the four of whom he obtained possession." During this preamble La Felina more than once inhaled the perfume of her _bouquet_. When, however, she looked up, her face expressed no trouble or change. "The three friends of Count Monte-Leone," said the Duke, "are a Frenchman, a German, and an Italian. The first is the Count of Harcourt, son of the Duke, one of the noblest and most powerful men of France. We cannot fancy how the heir of so noble a family has become involved in such a plot, where persons of his rank have all to lose and nothing to gain. He is a brilliant young madcap, amiable and adventurous, like almost all of his countrymen, and became a conspirator merely for recreation and to while away the time he cannot occupy with love and pleasure. The second is a graver character: the son of a Bohemian pastor, imbued with the philosophic and political opinions of his countrymen, Sand, Koerner, and the ideologists of his country, he dreams of leveling ideas which would set all Europe in a blaze. He has become a conspirator from conviction, is a madman full of genius, but one of those who must be shut up, before they become furious. The fanatical friendship of this young man to Monte-Leone involved him in the party of which he is the shadow and the reflection. He is a conspirator, _ex necessitate_, who will never act from his own motive, and who, consequently, is a subject of no apprehension to us, as long as he has no head, no chief to nerve his arm, and urge him onward. We have without any difficulty exonerated Italy from the reproach of containing these three men, without any scandal or violence.... The German on the very night of his arrest was sent to the city of Elbogen, his native city, with recommendations to the paternal care and surveillance of the friendly governments through which he was to pass. The Count of Harcourt has already seen the shores of France. When this brilliant gentleman placed his foot on the deck of the vessel, he was informed that henceforth he was forbidden ever to return to Naples, under penalty of perpetual imprisonment. Young Rovero was confined in this identical palace, until such time as the trial of Count Monte-Leone shall be terminated. I am informed that he does nothing but sigh after a mysterious beauty, the charms and voice of whom are incomparable." La Felina again put her bouquet to her face. "I am now come, Messieurs, to the true hero of this romance." Just then he was interrupted by the sudden entrance of one of his secretaries, who whispered briefly to him, and placed before him a box mysteriously sealed, with this superscription--_"To His Excellency Monsignore the Duke of Palma, minister of police, and to him alone."_ The countenance of the minister expressed surprise, as his secretary said, "Read, Monsignore, and verify the contents of the box." The Duke requested his guests' pardon, and unsealed the letter, which he rapidly read. He then opened the box, examined it with curiosity, and without taking out the objects it contained, said, "It is unheard of: it is almost miraculous." The minister's exclamations put an end to all private conversations, and every eye was turned upon him, "Messieurs," said he with emotion, "I thought I was about to tell you a strange thing, but all that I know has become complicated by so strange an accident, that I am myself amazed--used as I am to mysterious and criminal events." At a signal, the secretary left, and the Duke continued: "The trial of Count Monte-Leone was prepared. Vaguely accused of being the chief of the secret society, the object of which was the overturning of the monarchy, he might have been acquitted from want of proof of his participation in this dark and guilty work, when three witnesses came forward to charge him with having presided in their own sight over one of the assemblages which in secret discuss of the death of kings by the enemies of law and order. "On this formal declaration made by three well-known inhabitants of the town of _Torre del Greco_, devoted to king Fernando, the Count was sought for by the police, arrested as I have told you, and imprisoned in the _Castle del Uovo_. Every means was taken to make sure of the person of the prisoner. The garrison of the castle was increased, lest there should be some daring _coup de main_ to deliver him. The charge of him was intrusted to the most stern and incorruptible of the jailers, who was however carefully watched by the agents of the government. This excess of precaution had nearly cost the life of the prisoner, from the fact that he was placed in a dungeon into which the sea broke. Judge of my surprise when yesterday, two of the accusers of the Count, the Salvatori, came to my hotel insisting that two days before, just as the population of _Torre del Greco_ was leaving church, their eldest brother Stenio Salvatori had been poignarded at his door by Count Monte-Leone. "'This evidence,' continued they, 'will be confirmed by all the inhabitants of the town, in the presence of whom the affair happened.' I refused to believe anything so improbable. I told them the Count had been a prisoner several days, and assured them I would have been informed of his escape. Overcome by their persuasions, shaken in my conviction by their oaths, I determined to satisfy myself that the Count was at the prison, and went thither." The Duke had not deceived the auditors by his promises, for the interest had rapidly increased, and every one listened to his words with intense curiosity. A single person only seemed listless and uninterested. This was La Felina, whose eye never lost sight of the box which the secretary had given the Duke, and which he had shut, so that no one knew the nature of the contents. The Duke resumed his story: "The new governor of the Castle, whom I had appointed after the inundation, was not informed of my visit. No one expected me, yet all was calm and in good order. "'Signore,' said I to the governor, 'I am informed that the prisoner I have confided to your charge, the Count Monte-Leone, has escaped from the fortress. If this be so, you know the severity of military law, and must expect its utmost rigor.' As he heard this menace, the governor grew pale. I fancied his change of color came because he was aware of some error, and I awaited his answer with anxiety. 'If the Count has escaped, Monsignore,' he replied, 'it must have been within an hour, for it is not more than twice that time since I saw him.' "I was amazed. Unwilling as I was to be face to face with the Count, the violence and exasperation of whom I was aware of, I ordered myself to be led to his cell. The jailer threw back the door on its hinges, and far from finding the room unoccupied, I saw him stretched on a bed, and reading a book, which seemed very much to interest him. He appeared pale and thin. A year had passed since I had seen him, brilliantly and carefully dressed, giving tone to the saloons, the cynosure of which he was. Dignified and haughty, and always polite, even in the coarse dress he wore, the Count rose, recognized, and bowed to me. 'I did not,' said he, 'expect the honor of a visit from his excellency the minister of police, and would have wished to receive him in my palace. As the state of affairs is, however, he must be satisfied with the rude hospitality of the humble room I occupy.' He offered me his only stool. I said, 'Not I, Count, but yourself, have been the cause that you are thus situated. If you had chosen, you might have lived happy, free, and esteemed, as your rank and birth entitled you. Remember that all must be attributed to yourself, if you exchange all these advantages for the solitude of a prison and the dangers which your opinions have brought on you.' 'Shall I dare to ask, Monsignore, is the visit I receive an act of benevolence, or of official duty?' 'I am come hither, Count, from duty. The rumor of your escape is spread everywhere. A crime committed on the day before yesterday in the vicinity of Naples is attributed to you, and I am come to ascertain here if there be any foundation for the accusation.' The Count laughed. 'Monsignore,' said he, 'one never leaves this place except under the charge of keepers. As for the new crime of which I am accused, and of which I know nothing, I trust that the good sense of the judges will think me innocent as of the imaginary offenses which brought me hither.' "The calmness and sang-froid of Monte-Leone, the improbability of the story told me, excited a trouble and confusion which did not escape the observation of the prisoner. 'Monsignore,' said he, 'we have met under happier circumstances. I expect and ask a favor from no one. I can however ask an indulgence from so old an acquaintance as yourself. Hurry on my trial! The preliminary captivity I undergo is one of the greatest outrages of the law. While a man is uncondemned he should not be punished. God does not send any one to hell untried and uncondemned. My life is sad here. This book, the only one allowed me,' said he, presenting me with it open at the page where he had been reading when I entered, 'this great book, _De Consolatione Philosophiæ_ of Anicius Severinus Boethius, does not console but afflicts me; for in spite of myself I remember that the author, imprisoned by a tyrant at Pavia, terminated in torture a life of glory. If such be my fate, signore,--if I am guilty, the punishment is great enough: if I am not guilty, it is too great.' "I was touched by this logical reasoning. Far more influence however was exerted on me by his noble tranquillity and the natural dignity misfortune often kindles up in the noblest souls. 'Count,' said I, 'be assured that within a few days you will be placed on trial,' and I retired satisfied with the mistake or falsehood of Monte-Leone's accusers. "I found the Salvatori at my palace. I told them that they played a terrible game. I said, 'If you had brought a false charge against a young man at liberty, and on the head of whom there lay no accusation, your crime would be capital, and you would be vulgar calumniators, such as are too often made infamous by our criminal records. This matter is however so complicated by revenge that it will excite general horror, and draw on you all the severity of the law. Count Monte-Leone, whom you accused of having poignarded your brother, is now in the _Castle del Uovo_, which I left a few minutes ago, and where I saw him.' "Nothing can describe the singular expression of the faces of the two men as they listened. But they still persisted that they had spoken the truth, and were sternly dismissed by me, affirming that they would prove all they had said. They have kept their word, and here is the evidence," said the Duke, opening the box and exhibiting a glittering ring, on which was engraved the escutcheon of Monte-Leone. "This ring," said he, "is acknowledged to be one of the _chef d'oeuvres_ of Benvenuto Cellini. It has an historical fame, and is considered one of the most admirable works of that great artist. Twenty times the government has sought to buy it, but the Monte-Leoni have uniformly refused to part with it. This letter accompanied the precious jewel: "_Monsignore_: Heaven has come to our aid. Since our evidence, corroborated by that of all _Torre del Greco_, could not convince you of the truth of our accusation--since you refuse to believe that Count Monte-Leone, to avenge himself, wounded our brother, we send you this ring, engraved with his arms, which he lost in his contest with Stenio Salvatori, and which God has placed in our hands to confound and to punish him. "Raphael and Paolo Salvatori." "All is lost!" said La Felina. "What now shall we believe?" said the Duke to his guests. V.--THE VISIT. The story of the Duke of Palma was concluded by the last question. All seemed wrapped in doubt in relation to this singular incident. The night was far advanced, and the company separated. The Duke escorted La Felina to her carriage. Just however as the door was about to close on him, he said: "Would you not like, beautiful Felina, to know the name of the woman at Count Monte-Leone's on the night of the ball?" "Why ask that question?" said she. "Because," he said, "I know no one more beautiful or more attractive." "Her name?" said the singer, with emotion. "Is La Felina!" said the Duke. "What surprises you?" he added; "a minister of police, from his very office, knows everything." La Felina said to herself, "But he does not!" The spirited horses bore the carriage rapidly away. In the story of Monte-Leone the name of Taddeo Rovero had especially arrested the attention of Maulear. Was Taddeo a relation or connection of Aminta? During the few minutes he had passed at Sorrento he had learned nothing of the Roveri, and had asked no questions of Aminta. Allied however by the heart to this family already, he naturally enough took interest in the dangers its members incurred. He therefore determined to return at once and ascertain this fact from the minister, when a note handed to him drove the matter completely from his mind. Thus ran the note: "_Monsieur_: My daughter now knows how much she is indebted to you, and the efforts you made to rescue her from the fearful danger which menaced her. The heroic remedy employed by Tonio has luckily succeeded. Aminta is entirely recovered and is unwilling to delay any longer the tribute of gratitude. Let me also, Monsieur, again offer you mine. If you will deign to receive them in our poor villa, we will be delighted to see you there to-day. Your grateful, Antonia Rovero." The heart of Maulear quivered with joy at these words. He would in the course of a few hours see Aminta, the impression of whose beauty had so deeply impressed his heart, and from whom he had fancied he would yet be separated for days. He mounted his best horse and rapidly crossed the distance which separated him from Sorrento. Two hours after the receipt of the letter he knocked at the door of Signora Rovero. The old servant again admitted him. "The Signorina is in no danger," said he to Maulear, as soon as he saw him. Nothing is more graceful than this familiarity of old servants, who as it were are become from devotion a portion of the family of their masters. "We know," added the good man taking and kissing Maulear's hand respectfully, "that we owe all to your Excellency, who drove away the vipers which otherwise had stung her on the heart, and allowed Tonio no time to rescue her." There was such an expression of gratitude in the features of the old man, that Maulear was deeply moved. "The Signora and the Signorina expect you, Count, to thank you." The old man let tears drop on the hand of the Marquis. "What noble hearts must the mistresses of such servants have," thought Maulear as he stood in waiting. Signora Rovero hurried to meet him, but not with a cold ceremony. The stranger who had contributed to the salvation of her daughter henceforth was a friend to her. "Come, come," said Signora Rovero, "she expects you." The door was opened, and they were in the presence of Aminta. The White Rose of _Sorrento_ never vindicated more distinctly her right to the name. Half reclining on a sofa of pearl velvet, Aminta was wrapped in a large dressing-gown, the vaporous folds of which hung around her. Her face, become yet more pale from suffering, was, as it were, enframed in light clouds of gauze. One might have fancied her a beautiful alabaster statue, but for the two beautiful bandeaus of black and lustrous hair which were drawn around her charming face. "My child," said Signora Rovero, as she led Henri forward, "the Marquis of Maulear proves that he is not insensible of the value of our thanks, since he has come so promptly to receive them." "Alas! Signora," said Henri to the mother of Aminta, "the true savior of your daughter is not myself, but the generous lad who risked his own life for hers. God, however, is my witness, that had I been aware I could have thus saved her, I would not have hesitated to employ the means." The chivalric and impassioned tone with which these words were pronounced, made both mother and daughter look at Henri. The latter, however, immediately cast down her eyes, confused by the passionate expression of his. "Monsieur," said Aminta, with emotion, "I might doubt such devotion from you, to a person who was a stranger, were I not aware of the nobility and generosity of the French character." For the first time Maulear heard Aminta speak. She had one of those fresh and sweet voices, so full of melody and persuasion, that every word she spoke had the air of a caress--one of those delicious voices with which a few chosen natures alone are endowed, which are never heard without emotion, and are always remembered with pleasure. If the head and imagination of the Marquis were excited by her charms, his heart submitted to the influence of her angelic voice, for it emanated from her soul; and Maulear, as he heard her delicious notes, thought there was in this young girl something to love besides beauty. The physician had ordered the patient to repose. He feared the wound made by Tonio's dagger would re-open if she walked. By the side of her sofa, therefore, the hours of Maulear rolled by like seconds. The father, an educated and dignified man, had superintended, in person, the education of his two children. Wishing neither to separate nor to leave them, for he loved them both alike, his cares were equally divided between them, so that Aminta, profiting by the lessons given to her brother, shared in his masculine and profound education, and acquired information far surpassing that ordinarily received by her sex. The seeds of science had fallen on fertile ground. A studious mind had developed them in meditation and solitude, and this beautiful child concealed serious merit under a frail and delicate form. These treasures, vailed by modesty, revealed themselves by rare flashes, which soon disappeared, leaving those lucky enough to witness them, dazzled and amazed. A few brilliant remarks escaped the young girl during Maulear's visit. He could not restrain the expression of his admiration, and Signora Rovero, when she saw her daughter confused, told Maulear, who had been her teacher. In spite of this attractive conversation, one thought was ever present to the mind of Maulear, who was the Taddeo Rovero of whom the minister had spoken? The tranquillity the ladies seemed to enjoy, might be little consonant with the situation of the accomplice of Monte-Leone. Perhaps they did not know his fate. He resolved to satisfy himself. "Signora," said he to the mother, "there is in Naples a young man named Taddeo Rovero." "My son--the brother of my daughter; one of the pleasantest men of Naples, whom I regret that I cannot introduce to you. Though he loves us tenderly, our seclusion has little to attract him. City festivities and pleasures often take him from us. Naples is now very brilliant." The heart of Maulear beat when he heard the poor mother speak of her son's pleasures. "My brother is the soul of honor and courage," said Aminta, "but his head is easily turned. I fear he is too much under the influence of his best friends." "My daughter means his best friends," said Signora Rovero, gaily, "the brilliant Count Monte-Leone, one of the proudest nobles of Naples. Taddeo loves him as a brother. But my Aminta has no sympathy with him." The Marquis was glad to hear Signora Rovero speak thus--and he admired the quick perception of the young girl, who thus, almost by intuition, foresaw the danger into which Monte-Leone had tempted Taddeo. The dislike of Aminta to Monte-Leone, thus referred to by the Signora Rovero, brought the blood to her cheeks. She blushed to see one of her sentiments thus displayed before a stranger. In the impenetrable sanctuary of her soul, she wished to reserve for herself alone her impressions of pain and sorrow, her antipathies and affections. Besides, by means of one of those inspirations, the effect, but not the reason, of which is perceived by us, Aminta was aware that Maulear was the last man in the world before whom her internal thoughts should be referred to. Maulear comprehended the cause of her embarrassment. He again spoke of Taddeo. Once launched on this theme, Signora Rovero spoke of nothing else but her adored son, of his youth, prospects, and of the hopes she had formed of him. While she thus dreamed of glory and success for Taddeo, the latter was a captive in a secret prison. "I am astonished," said the Signora, "that my son is so long absent without suffering his sister and myself to hear from him. For fifteen days we have not heard, and I beg you, Marquis, on your return to Naples, to see him, and inform him of the accident which has befallen Aminta. Tell him to come hither as soon as possible." "I will see him, Signora, and if possible will return him to you." As he made this reply, Henri promised to use every effort and all his credit to restore the son and brother of these ladies. Just then a sigh was heard in the saloon, and Maulear looked around, surprised, and almost terrified at the agony expressed. Aminta arose, hurried toward the portico, and lifting up the curtain in front of it, cried out, "It is he--it is he! Mother, he calls me! I must go!" As soon, however, as her foot touched the floor, she uttered a cry of agony. "It is nothing," said she, immediately. "I thought myself strong enough, yet I suffer much; do not mind me, but attend to poor Tonio." Signora Rovero passed into the next room. "It is he," said Aminta to Maulear, with the greatest emotion. "It is my savior, my foster-brother, whom we have sent for hither, contrary even to the advice of the Doctor. We were, however, unwilling to confide the duty of attending on him to any one. Besides, he would die of despair did he think we forgot him." Signora Rovero returned. "The sufferings of the poor lad are terrible," said she; "his fever, however, is lessened, his delirium has passed away, and the physician assures me that he will live. Thanks for it are due to God, for if he died Aminta and I would die." The day was advancing, and Maulear would not leave without seeing Tonio. His eyes were bloodshot, his lips livid and pendent, his cheeks swollen by the cauterization he had undergone. All horror at his appearance, however, disappeared when Maulear remembered what he had done. He looked at him as the early Christians did at martyrs. His eyes were yet humid when he returned to Aminta. The latter perceived his trouble, and gave him her pretty hand with an expression of deep gratitude. "Thank you, Monsieur," said she, "for your compassion for Tonio. A heart like yours exhibits itself in tears, and I shall not forget those you have shed." These words, at once simple and affecting, touched the heart of Maulear. A great effort was necessary to keep him from falling at the feet of Aminta. Placing his lips respectfully on the hand offered to him, he bade adieu to Signora Rovero, and set out for Naples, bearing with him a precious treasury of memories, hope, anticipation, and wishes--of everything, in fine, which composes the first and most adorable pages of the history of our loves: the charming preface to the yet unread book. On the next day Maulear visited the Duke of Palma. "Monsignore," said he to the minister, "I am about to ask you a favor to which I attach immense value. The pardon of young Rovero, who has been, your Excellency tells me, rather imprudent than guilty." The Duke laughed. "His liberty! On my word, Marquis, I would be much obliged if he would accept it." "What does this mean, Monsignore?" said Maulear. "That Rovero refuses liberty. The king, fancying that mildness would cure his folly, ordered me to dismiss the _novice_ to his family. I told Rovero. He replied, 'I refuse a pardon--I ask for justice: I am innocent or guilty; if guilty, I deserve punishment; if innocent, let them acquit me. I will not leave this prison except by force, as I entered it.' Thus I have a prisoner in spite of my wish to release him." "I will see him," said the Marquis, "and will speak to him of his mother." VI.--THE PRISONER. The Hotel of the Minister of Police at Naples had been constructed on the site and on the foundation of the old palace of the Dukes of Palma, ancestors of the present Duke. Amid the vestiges of the old palace, which still existed, was an ancient chapel, connected with the new edifice. This chapel, abandoned long before, had been changed into a prison, for the reception of persons arrested secretly by the Minister of Police, into the offences of whom he wished to inquire personally, before he turned them over to justice. Of this kind was young Rovero. King Fernando wearied of foolish and ephemeral conspiracies which disturbed, without endangering his monarchy, combated with all his power the disposition of his ministers to be rigorous, and the Duke of Palma to please his master suppressed the various plots which arose everywhere. This indulgent and pacific system did not all comport with the revolutionary ideas of Count Monte-Leone, and the deposition of the brothers Salvatori, united to public rumor, made the arrest of the Count unavoidably necessary beyond all doubt, much to the annoyance of Fernando IV. and his minister. An example was needed. One criminal must be severely punished to terrify all the apostles of dark sedition. The more exalted the rank of the culprit, the greater the effect of the example would be. Young Rovero, by refusing his pardon, subjected the Duke of Palma to a new annoyance. His refusal made a trial necessary, or he would be forced to release him, contrary to his own protestations, and therefore subject the government to the odium of arbitrary injustice and a criminal attack on the liberties of the people. This would be a new theme of declamation for malcontents. The motives assigned by Taddeo for insisting on a trial were specious and dignified. We will however, soon see that they had no reality, and only masked the plans of the prisoner. A strange event had taken place in the old chapel we have mentioned, and in which Rovero was shut up. Before we relate what follows, we must acquaint the reader with the secret sentiments of young Rovero. All had done justice to the seductive grace, which attracted so many adorers to the feet of the singer. Rovero, the youngest of the band of four, felt far more than admiration for the prima donna. His soul, hitherto untouched by passion, became aware of an emotion of which it had not been cognisant, at the sight of the great artist, the fire and energetic bursts of whom gave so powerful expression to her glances. Rovero had hitherto thought of women only under ordinary conditions, adorned with that timid modesty and grace which seem to call on the ruder sex for protection,--as charming creatures whom God has formed to command in obeying, to triumph by weakness. The young and chaste girl, the seraphic reverie of lovers of twenty, was effaced by the radiant beauty presented him by chance. The native nobility of Felina, her elegant habits, the ardent imagination which had expanded the love of her art, the very practice of her profession which ceaselessly familiarized her with the works of the great masters, with the royal sovereigns she represented, had enhanced her natural dignity, with an almost theatrical majesty, which so perfectly harmonized with her person, so entirely consorted with her habits, form and queenly bearing, that she might have been fancied a Juno or a Semiramis disguised as a noble Neapolitan lady, rather than the reverse, which really was the case. Glittering with these attractions to which Taddeo had hitherto been insensible, she appeared to him: like an enchantress and the modern Circe, dragging an enthusiastic people in her train, and ruling in the morning in her boudoir, which glittered with velvet and gold, and in the evening making three thousand people fanatical with her voice and magic talent, it was not unnatural that she subdued him. The impression produced on Taddeo by La Felina on the evening they were at the Etruscan house, was so keen, so new, so full of surprise and passion, that the young man left the room, less to ascertain what had become of the two friends who had preceded him, than to avoid the fascination exerted on him by the eyes of La Felina. He had not seen her since. Like Von Apsberg and d'Harcourt, taken in the snare which had been set for him by the police of Naples, Taddeo was captured after a brief but violent contest. It seemed to him that his soul was torn from his body when he was separated from La Felina. He had however previously heard her at San Carlo. Though charmed by her talent and wonderful beauty, the illusion was so perfect that he fancied he saw the Juliet of Zingarelli or the Donna Anna of Mozart, but not a woman to be herself adored,--in one word, the magnificent Felina. The fancy of the Neapolitan was enkindled by the eyes of the Neapolitan. He did not love, but was consumed. In the cold and solitary cell he had occupied for some days, he forgot danger, his friends, and almost his mother and sister. Rovero thought only of his love. Concentrating all power in his devotion, he evoked La Felina, and in his mind contemplated her. Wild words wrested from him by delirium declared to the phantom all his hopes and fears. In his fancy he ran over all the perfections of this beautiful being. It seemed to him that his idol hovered around the prison, shedding its rays on him, and filling his heart and senses with an ardor the impotence of which he cursed. Religious exaltation, like the enthusiasm of love, assumes in solitude gigantic proportions unknown to the most pious man and most devoted lover living in the world. Long days and endless nights occupied with one idea, fixed and immutable, rising before us like the ghost of Banquo in our dreams, and when we wake, are a sufficient explanation of the martyrs of love, of the cloister, or of the Thebais. Many days had passed since the Duke of Palma had imprisoned young Rovero. We have already spoken of the ideas which occupied his mind. Ever under the influence of one thought, the life of the young prisoner was but one dream of love, which so excited his imagination that he could scarcely distinguish fiction from reality, and after a troubled sleep he asked if he had addressed his burning declarations to the phantom of the singer or to La Felina herself. Taddeo in his cell was not subjected to the malicious barbarities with which Monte-Leone had been annoyed. The Duke of Palma wished the inmates of his palace, though they might be prisoners, not to complain of their fare. Taddeo had a bed and not a pallet. He could read and write, it is true only by means of a doubtful light which reached him through the stained windows of the antique chapel. This light however was mottled by the blue cloak of St. Joseph and the purple robe of St. John. Sometimes it fell on the pavement in golden checkers, after having passed through the _glory_ of the Virgin. Still it was the light of day, which is half the sustenance of a prisoner. On the fourth night after Rovero's arrest, he reposed rather than rested on the only chair in his cell, soothed by the wind which beat on the windows. The rays of the moon passed through the high windows of the old chapel, and the long tresses of moss which overhung them assumed fantastic forms as they swung to and fro at the caprice of the wind. A faint murmur was heard. A white shadow which seemed to rush from the wall passed over the marble pavement toward the prisoner, looked at him carefully, and said, with an accent of joy, "It is either he, or I am mistaken." The shadow moved on. After the lapse of a few seconds it was about to disappear, when it was seized by a nervous arm which restrained it. A cry was heard. Rovero, who had at first seen it but vaguely as it approached him, and who had convulsively grasped it, was now thoroughly awakened, and seeing the visitant about to disappear, seized it forcibly. A dense cloud just at that moment vailed the moon, and the cell became as dark as night. "It is a woman!" said Taddeo, and his heart beat violently. A soft and delicate hand was placed on his lips. "If you are heard, I am lost!" said his visitor, in a trembling voice. "Who are you? and what do you want?" said Taddeo, suffering his voice to escape through the delicate fingers which sought to close his lips. "I am looking for you: what I wish you will know in four days: who I am is a secret, and I rely on your honor not to seek to penetrate it." Then by a rapid movement, the visitor pulled the vail again over her face. Just then the clouds passed away, and the moon shone brilliantly, lighting up the old chapel, and exhibiting to Taddeo the tall and lithe form of her who held him captive. One need not like Taddeo have retained the minutest peculiarities of La Felina to render it possible to distinguish her lithe stature and magnificent contour. But his reason could not be convinced, and had not the singer's hand been pressed on his lips he would have fancied that a new dream had evoked the phantom of one of whom he had never ceased to think. "Lift up your vail, Felina," said he. But at the evidence of terror which she exhibited, he resumed. "Do not attempt to deceive me. In your presence my heart could not be mistaken, for it meditates by day and dreams by night of you alone. I know not what good angel has guided you hither, in pity of the torment I have endured since I left you. An hour, Felina, in your presence, has sufficed to enslave my soul forever. Through you have I learned that I have a soul, and by you has the void in my heart been completely filled." "He loves me!" murmured Felina, with an accent of surprise and deep pity. This however was uttered in so low a tone that the prisoner did not hear her. "Hear me," said Rovero. "You told us at Monte-Leone's that you loved one of the four." "True," said the singer, in a feeble voice. "You said that for him you would sacrifice your life." "True." "That like an invisible providence you would watch over his life and fate: that this would be the sacred object of your life." "I also said," Felina answered, "that my love would ever be unknown, and that the secret would die with me." "Well," said Rovero, "I know him. This man, the ardent passion of whom you divined, to whom you are come as a minister of hope, is before you, is at your feet." "How know you that I would not have done as much for each of your friends?" Taddeo felt a hot iron pass through his soul. "Hear me," said she; "time is precious. Watched, and the object everywhere of espionage, from motives of which you must ever be ignorant I have penetrated hither, by means of a bold will and efforts which were seconded by chance. I wished to satisfy myself that you were really the person I sought for, and, hidden beneath this vail, and by a yet greater concealment, that of your honor, to remain unknown, and accomplish my purpose, with your cooperation, which otherwise must fail. I was ignorant then of what I know now. I knew not your sentiments, or I would have kept my secret." "Why fear my love?" said Rovero; "think you I sell my devotion? A love which hesitates is not love. Mine will obey for the pleasure of obeying you. But let your requests be great and difficult to be fulfilled, that you may estimate me by my deeds." "You have a noble heart, Rovero, and in it I have confidence. God grant your capacity fall not below your courage. In four days you will know what I expect from you." "And will you," said he, in a voice stifled with emotion, "tell me which of the four you love?" "You will then know. To you alone will I reveal the secret." "How can I live until then!" said Rovero, with a sigh. The sound of footsteps was heard. The sentinels were being relieved. It was growing late, and while Rovero, at a motion from La Felina, went to the door to listen to what was passing, she disappeared like a shadow behind a column. Rovero looked around, and was alone. He examined the walls, attempting to discover the secret issue. No fissure was visible, there was no sign of the smallest opening, and a dumb sound only replied to the blows of Rovero on the wall. He sunk on his chair, and covered his face with his hands, that his thoughts might be distracted by no external object. A few hours afterward the Duke of Palma caused him to be informed of his pardon. The presence of La Felina had changed everything. The dark walls of the chapel appeared more splendid than those of the palaces of the Doria, Cavalcante, Carafa, or of the Pignatelli. He would not have exchanged the humid walls of his cell for the rich mosaics of the _Museo Borbonico_, the rival of that of the Vatican. The pavement had been pressed by the feet of La Felina, and Rovero yet fancied that he saw the prints of her footsteps. Two days after the nocturnal scene we have described, a stranger appeared in the cell of the son of Signora Rovero. "Excuse me, sir," said he to the prisoner, "that I have thus intruded without an introduction. The motive, however, which conducts me hither will admit of no delay, and I am sure you will excuse me when you shall have learned it." Rovero bowed coldly, fancying that he had to do with some new police agent. "I am come to appeal to you in behalf of two ladies who worship you, and are inconsolable in your absence." "Two ladies!" said Rovero, with surprise. Yet, under the empire of passion, he added--"Signor, I love but one." He paused and was much confused by the avowal he had made. "At least," said the stranger, "you love three; for in a heart like yours family affections and a deeper passion exist together. The ladies of whom I speak, Signor, are your mother and sister." The prisoner blushed. His adored mother, his beautiful sister, were exiled from his memory! In the presence of a stranger, too, this filial crime was revealed; a despotic passion had made him thus guilty. "Signor," said he, "you have thought correctly. Notwithstanding the forgetfulness of my mind, with which though I protest my heart has nothing to do, their names are dear to me, and I pray you tell me what they expect from me." "They expect you to return," said the stranger. "A service I rendered them has made me almost a friend, and my interest in them has induced me to come without their consent to speak to you in their behalf." "Signor," said Rovero, "tell me to whom I have the honor to speak; not that a knowledge of your name will enhance my gratitude, but that I may know to whom I must utter it." "Signor, I am the Marquis de Maulear. Chance has revealed to me your strange rejection of the liberty which other prisoners would so eagerly grasp at. The minister has informed me of your motives, and, though honorable, permit me to suggest that you do not forget your duty. Did your mother know your condition, her life would be the sacrifice." Taddeo forgot all when he heard these words, admitting neither of discussion nor of reply. "Signor," continued Maulear, "what principle, what opinions can combat your desire to see your mother, and to rescue her from despair? Bid the logic of passion and political hatred be still, and hearken only to duty. Follow me, and by the side of your noble mother you will forget every scruple which now retains you." Rovero for some moments was silent. He then fixed his large black eyes on those of Maulear, and seemed to seek to read his thoughts. "Marquis," said he, "I scarcely know you, but there is such sincerity in your expression that I have confidence in you, and am about to prove it. Swear on your honor not to betray me, and I will tell you all." "I swear." "Well," said Taddeo, hurrying him as far as possible from the door that he might be sure he was not overheard; "I accept the liberty offered me; but for a reason which I can reveal to no one, I must remain a few days in this cell. Suffer the minister and all to think that I persist in this refusal. In two days I will have changed my plans, and before sunset on the third, _I will have returned with you to Sorrento_." Henri, surprised, could not help looking at Rovero. "Do not question me, Signor, for I cannot reply. I have told you all I can, and not one other word shall leave my mouth." "I may then tell Signora Rovero, that you will return." "Announce to her that in me you have found another friend, and that in three days, _you will place me in her arms_." Taking Maulear's hand he clasped it firmly. "Thanks, Signor," said Maulear, "I accept your friendship. With people like you, this fruit ripens quickly. Perhaps, however, you will discover that it has not on that account less flavor and value." Maulear tapped thrice at the door of the cell; the turnkey appeared, and Henri left, as he went out casting one last look of affection on Taddeo. Never did time appear so long to Aminta's brother as that which intervened between Maulear's departure and the night he was so anxious for. That night came at last. The keeper brought his evening meal. He did not wish to be asleep as he was on the first occasion, when La Felina visited him. He was unwilling to lose a single moment of her precious visit. Remembering that his preceding nights had been agitated and almost sleepless, apprehensive that he would be overcome by weariness, he resolved to stimulate himself. Like most of the Neapolitans, he was very temperate, and rarely drank wine; he preferred that icy water, flavored with the juice of the orange or lime, of which the people of that country are so fond. He now, however, needed something to keep him awake, and asked for wine. He approached the table on which his evening meal was placed, he took a flask of Massa wine, one of the best of Naples; he poured out a goblet and drank it, and felt immediately new strength course through his veins. He sat on his bed and listened anxiously for the slightest sound, to the low accents of the night, to those indescribable sounds which are drowned by the tumults of the day, and of whose existence, silence and night alone make us aware. The hours rolled on, and at every stroke of the clock his heart kept time with every blow of the iron hammer on the bell of bronze. At last the clock struck twelve. Midnight, the time for specters and crimes, was come. A few minutes before the clock sounded, he perceived that the sleep of which he had been so much afraid gradually made his eyelids grow heavy--and that though he sought to overcome the feeling, his drowsiness increased to such a degree that he was forced to sit down. I spoke in one of my preceding chapters of the tyrannical power exercised by sleep over all organizations, and especially in those situations when man is least disposed to yield to it. Never had this absolute master exercised a more despotic power; this pitiless god seemed to place his iron thumb on the eyes of the prisoner, and to close them by force. A strange oppression of his limbs, an increasing disturbance of his memory and thought, a kind of invincible torpor, rapidly took possession of the young man. Then commenced a painful contest between mind and body,--the latter succumbed. He felt his body powerless, his reason grow dim, and his strength pass away. In vain he sought to see, to hear, to watch, to live, to contend with an enemy which sought to make him senseless, inert and powerless. His head fell upon his bosom and he sank to sleep. Just then, he heard a light noise, the rustling of a silk dress, and a timid step. With a convulsive effort he opened his eyes, and saw La Felina within a few feet of his bed. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and fell upon the white hand of the singer. She touched Rovero's face to assure herself that he was in reality asleep. END OF PART II. [From the Gem.] "THE TWICKENHAM GHOST." Come to the casement to-night, And look out at the bright lady-moon; Come to the casement to-night, And I'll sing you your favorite tune! Where the stream glides beside the old tower, My boat shall be under the wall,-- Oh, dear one! be there in your bower, With Byron, a lamp, and your shawl. Oh! come where no troublesome eye Can look on the vigil love keeps; When there is not a cloud in the sky, What maid, _but an old maiden_, sleeps? And you know not how sweet is the tone Of a song from a lip we have press'd, When it breathes it "by moonlight alone," To the ear of _the one_ it loves best. Oh! daylight love's music but mars, (As it breaks up the dance of the elves!) The moon and the stream and the stars, Should hear it alone with ourselves: And who'd be content with "_I may_," If they only would think of "_I might_?" Or _who'd_ listen to music by day, That had listened to music by night? The Opera's over by one, Lady Jersey's grows stupid at two; I'll dance just one waltz, and have done, Then be off, on the pony, for Kew! My boat holds a cloak--a guitar, And it waits by that dark bridge for me: And I'll row, by the light of one star, Love's own, to the old tower, by three! I'll bring you that sweet canzonette, That we practiced together last year; And my own little miniature set Round with emeralds--tis _such_ a dear! You promised you'd love me as long As your heart felt me close to it, there; And, dear one! for that and the song, _Won't_ you give me the locket of hair? Farewell, sweet! be not in a fright, Should your grandmamma bid you beware Of a youth, who was murdered one night, And whose ghost haunts the dark waters there: For _you_ know, ever since his decease, Of a harmless young ghost that's allow'd To go, by the River Police, Serenading about in his shroud! [From the Dublin University Magazine.] THE MYSTIC VIAL: OR, THE LAST DEMOISELLE DE CHARREBOURG. I.--THE GAME OF BOWLS. More than a century ago--we know not whether the revolution has left a vestige of it--there stood an old chateau, backed by an ancient and funereal forest, and approached through an interminable straight avenue of frowning timber, somewhere about fifteen leagues from Paris, and visible from the great high road to Rouen. The appliances of comfort had once been collected around it upon a princely scale; extensive vineyards, a perfect wood of fruit-trees, fish-ponds, mills, still remained, and a vast park, abounding with cover for all manner of game, stretched away almost as far as the eye could reach. But the whole of this palatial residence was now in a state of decay and melancholy neglect. A dilapidated and half-tenanted village, the feudal dependency of the seignorial domain, seemed to have sunk with the fortunes of its haughty protector. The steep roofs of the Chateau de Charrebourg and its flanking towers, with their tall conical caps, were mournfully visible in the sun among the rich foliage that filled the blue hazy distance, and seemed to overlook with a sullen melancholy the village of Charrebourg that was decaying beneath it. The Visconte de Charrebourg, the last of a long line of ancient seigneurs, was still living, and though not under the ancestral roof of his chateau, within sight of its progressive ruin, and what was harder still to bear, of its profanation; for his creditors used it as a storehouse for the produce of the estate, which he thus saw collected and eventually carted away by strangers, without the power of so much as tasting a glass of its wine or arresting a single grain of its wheat himself. And to say the truth, he often wanted a pint of the one and a measure or two of the other badly enough. Let us now see for ourselves something of his circumstances a little more exactly. The Visconte was now about seventy, in the enjoyment of tolerable health, and of a pension of nine hundred francs (£36) per annum, paid by the Crown. His creditors permitted him to occupy, besides, a queer little domicile, little better than a cottage, which stood just under a wooded hillock in the vast wild park. To this were attached two or three Lilliputian paddocks, scarcely exceeding an English acre altogether. Part of it, before the door, a scanty bit we allow, was laid a little parterre of flowers, and behind the dwelling was a small bowling-green surrounded by cherry-trees. The rest was cultivated chiefly for the necessities of the family. In addition to these concessions his creditors permitted him to shoot rabbits and catch perch for the use of his household, and that household consisted of three individuals--the Visconte himself, his daughter Lucille (scarcely seventeen years of age), and Dame Marguerite, in better times her nurse--now cook, housemaid, and all the rest. Contrast with all this what he had once been, the wealthy Lord of Charrebourg, the husband of a rich and noble wife, one of the most splendid among the satellites of a splendid court. He had married rather late, and as his reverses had followed that event in point of time, it was his wont to attribute his misfortunes to the extravagance of his dear and sainted helpmate, "who never could resist play and jewelry." The worthy Visconte chose to forget how much of his fortune he had himself poured into the laps of mistresses, and squandered among the harpies of the gaming-table. The result however was indisputable, by whatever means it had been arrived at, the Visconte was absolutely beggared. Neither had he been very fortunate in his family. Two sons, who, together with Lucille, had been the fruit of his marriage, had both fallen, one in a duel, the other in a madcap adventure in Naples. And thus of course ended any hope of seeing his fortunes even moderately reconstructed. We must come now to the lonely dwelling which serves all that is left of the family of Charrebourg for a palace. It is about the hour of five o'clock in the afternoon of a summer's day. Dame Marguerite has already her preparations for supper in the kitchen. The Visconte has gone to the warren to shoot rabbits for to-morrow's dinner. Two village lads, who take a pleasure in obliging poor old Marguerite--of course neither ever thinks of Lucille--have just arrived at the kitchen door. Gabriel has brought fresh spring water, which, from love of the old cook, he carries to the cottage regularly every morning and evening. Jacque has brought mulberries for "the family," from a like motive. The old woman has pronounced Jacque's mulberries admirable; and with a smile tapped Gabriel on the smooth brown cheek, and called him her pretty little water carrier. They loiter there as long as they can; neither much likes the other; each understands what his rival is about perfectly well; neither chooses to go while the other remains. Jacque, sooth to say, is not very well favored, sallow, flat-faced, with lank black hair, small, black, cunning eyes, and a wide mouth; he has a broad square figure, and a saucy swagger. Gabriel is a slender lad, with brown curls about his shoulders, ruddy brown face, and altogether good-looking. These two rivals, you would say, were very unequally matched. Poor Gabriel! he has made knots to his knees of salmon-color and blue, the hues of the Charrebourg livery. It is by the mute eloquence of such traits of devotion that his passion humbly pleads. He wishes to belong to her. When first he appears before her in these tell-tale ribbons, the guilty knees that wear them tremble beneath him. He thinks that now she must indeed understand him--that the murder will out at last. But, alas! she, and all the stupid world beside, see nothing in them but some draggled ribbons. He might as well have worn buckles--nay, _better_; for he suspects that cursed Jacque understands them. But in this, indeed, he wrongs him; the mystery of the ribbons is comprehended by himself alone. He and Jacque passed round the corner of the quaint little cottage; they were crossing the bowling-green. "And so," sighed poor Gabriel, "I shall not see her to-day." "Hey! Gabriel! Jacque! has good Marguerite done with you?--then play a game of bowls together to amuse me." The silvery voice that spoke these words came from the coral lips of Lucille. Through the open casement, clustered round with wreaths of vine in the transparent shade, she was looking out like a portrait of Flora in a bowering frame of foliage. Could anything be prettier? Gabriel's heart beat so fast that he could hardly stammer forth a dutiful answer; he could scarcely see the bowls. The beautiful face among the vine-leaves seemed everywhere. It would have been worth one's while to look at that game of bowls. There was something in the scene at once comical and melancholy. Jacque was cool, but very clumsy. Gabriel, a better player, but all bewildered, agitated, trembling. While the little daughter of nobility, in drugget petticoat, her arms resting on the window-sill, looked out upon the combatants with such an air of unaffected and immense superiority as the queen of beauty in the gallery of a tilting-yard might wear while she watched the feats of humble yeomen and villein archers. Sometimes leaning forward with a grave and haughty interest; sometimes again showing her teeth, like little coronels of pearl, in ringing laughter, in its very unrestrainedness as haughty as her gravity. The spirit of the noblesse, along with its blood, was undoubtedly under that slender drugget bodice. Small suspicion had that commanding little damsel that the bipeds who were amusing her with their blunders were playing for love of her. Audacity like that was not indeed to be contemplated. "Well, Gabriel has won, and I am glad of it, for I think he is the better lad of the two," she said, with the prettiest dogmatism conceivable. "What shall we give you, Gabriel, now that you have won the game? let me see." "Nothing, Mademoiselle--nothing, I entreat," faltered poor Gabriel, trembling in a delightful panic. "Well, but you are hot and tired, and have won the game beside. Marguerite shall give you some pears and a piece of bread." "I wish nothing, Mademoiselle," said poor Gabriel, with a melancholy gush of courage, "but to die in your service." "Say you so?" she replied, with one of those provokingly unembarrassed smiles of good-nature which your true lovers find far more killing than the cruelest frown; "it is the speech of a good villager of Charrebourg. Well, then, you shall have them another time." "But, as your excellence is so good as to observe, I have won the game," said Gabriel, reassured by the sound of his own voice, "and to say I should have something as--as a token of victory, I would ask, if Mademoiselle will permit, for my poor old aunt at home, who is so very fond of those flowers, just one of the white roses which Mademoiselle has in her hand; it will give her so much pleasure." "The poor old woman! Surely you may pluck some fresh from the bush; but tell Marguerite, or she will be vexed." "But, Mademoiselle, pardon me, I have not time: one is enough, and I think there are none so fine upon the tree as that; besides, I know she would like it better for having been in Mademoiselle's hand." "Then let her have it by all means," said Lucille; and so saying, she placed the flower in Gabriel's trembling fingers. Had he yielded to his impulse, he would have received it kneeling. He was intoxicated with adoration and pride; he felt as if at that moment he was the sultan of the universe, but her slave. The unconscious author of all this tumult meanwhile had left the window. The rivals were _tête-à-tête_ upon the stage of their recent contest. Jacque stood with his hand in his breast, eyeing Gabriel with a sullen sneer. _He_ held the precious rose in his hand, and still gazed at the vacant window. "And so your aunt loves a white rose better than a slice of bread?" ejaculated Jacque. "Heaven! what a lie--ha, ha, ha!" "Well, I won the game and I won the rose," said Gabriel, tranquilly. "I can't wonder you are a little vexed." "Vexed?--bah! I thought she would have offered you a piece of money," retorted Jacque; "and if she _had_, I venture to say we should have heard very little about that nice old aunt with the _penchant_ for white roses." "I'm not sordid, Jacque," retorted his rival; "and I did not want to put Mademoiselle to any trouble." "How she laughed at you, Gabriel, your clumsiness and your ridiculous grimaces; but then you do make--ha, ha, ha!--such very comical faces while the bowls are rolling, I could not blame her." "She laughed more at you than at me," retorted Gabriel, evidently nettled. "_You_ talk of clumsiness and grimaces--upon my faith, a pretty notion." "Tut, man, you must have been deaf. You amused her so with your writhing, and ogling, and grinning, and sticking your tongue first in this cheek and then in that, according as the bowl rolled to one side or the other, that she laughed till the very tears came; and after all that, forsooth, she wanted to feed you like a pig on rotten pears; and then--ha, ha, ha!--the airs, the command, the magnificence. Ah, la! it was enough to make a cow laugh." "You are spited and jealous; but don't dare to speak disrespectfully of Mademoiselle in my presence, sirrah," said Gabriel, fiercely. "Sirrah me no sirrahs," cried Jacque giving way at last to an irrepressible explosion of rage and jealousy. "I'll say what I think, and call things by their names. You're an ass, I tell you--an ass; and as for her, she's a saucy, impertinent little minx, and you and she, and your precious white rose, may go in a bunch to the devil together." And so saying, he dealt a blow with his hat at the precious relic. A quick movement of Gabriel's, however, arrested the unspeakable sacrilege. In an instant Jacque was half frightened at his own audacity; for he knew of old that in some matters Gabriel was not to be trifled with, and more than made up in spirit for his disparity in strength. Snatching up a piece of fire-wood in one hand, and with the other holding the sacred flower behind him, Gabriel rushed at the miscreant Jacque, who, making a hideous grimace and a gesture of ridicule, did not choose to await the assault, but jumped over the low fence, and ran like a Paynim coward before a crusader of old. The stick flew whizzing by his ear. Gabriel, it was plain, was in earnest; so down the woody slope toward the stream the chase swept headlong; Jacque exerting his utmost speed, and Gabriel hurling stones, clods, and curses after him. When, however, he had reached the brook, it was plain the fugitive had distanced him. Pursuing his retreat with shouts of defiance, he here halted, hot, dusty, and breathless, inflamed with holy rage and chivalric love, like a Paladin after a victory. Jacque meanwhile pursued his retreat at a slackened pace, and now and then throwing a glance behind him. "The fiend catch him!" he prayed. "I'll break his bird-traps and smash his nets, and I'll get my big cousin, the blacksmith, to drub him to a jelly." But Gabriel was happy: he was sitting under a bush, lulled by the trickling of the stream, and alone with his visions and his rose. The noble demoiselle in the mean time took her little basket, intending to go into the wood and gather some wild strawberries, which the old Visconte liked; and as she never took a walk without first saluting her dear old Marguerite-- "Adieu, ma bonne petite maman," she said, running up to that lean and mahogany-complexioned dame, and kissing her heartily on both cheeks; "I am going to pick strawberries." "Ah, ma chere mignonne, I wish I could again see the time when the lackeys in the Charrebourg blue and salmon, and covered all over with silver lace, would have marched behind Mademoiselle whenever she walked into the park. Parbleu, that was magnificence!" "Eh bien, nurse," said the little lady, decisively and gravely, "we shall have all that again." "I hope so, my little pet--why not?" she replied, with a dreary shrug, as she prepared to skewer one of the eternal rabbits. "Ay, why not?" repeated the demoiselle, serenely. "You tell me, nurse, that I am beautiful, and I think I am." "Beautiful--indeed you are, my little princess," she replied, turning from the rabbit, and smiling upon the pretty questioner until her five thin fangs were all revealed. "They said your mother was the greatest beauty at court; but, _ma foi_! she was never like you." "Well, then, if that be true, some great man will surely fall in love with me, you know, and I will marry none that is not richer than ever my father, the Visconte, was--rely upon that, good Marguerite." "Well, my little pet, bear that in mind, and don't allow any one to steal your heart away, unless you know him to be worthy." At these words Lucille blushed--and what a brilliant vermilion--averted her eyes for a moment, and then looked full in her old nurse's face. "Why do you say that, Marguerite?" "Because I feel it, my pretty little child," she replied. "No, no, no, no," cried Lucille, still with a heightened color, and looking with her fine eyes full into the dim optics of the old woman; "you had some reason for saying that--you know you had!" "By my word of honor, no," retorted the old woman, in her turn surprised--"no, my dear; but what is the matter--why do you blush so?" "Well, I shall return in about an hour," said Lucille, abstractedly, and not heeding the question; and then with a gay air she tripped singing from the door, and so went gaily down the bosky slope to the edge of the wood. II.--THE GENTLEMAN IN BLUE AND SILVER. Lucille had no sooner got among the mossy roots of the trees, than her sylvan task commenced, and the fragrant crimson berries began to fill her basket. Her little head was very busy with all manner of marvelous projects; but this phantasmagoria was not gloomy; on the contrary, it was gorgeous and pleasant; for the transparent green shadow of the branches and the mellow singing of the birds toned her daydreams with their influence. In the midst of those airy pageants she was interrupted by a substantial and by no means unprepossessing reality. A gentleman of graceful form and mien, dressed in a suit of sky-blue and silver, with a fowling-piece in his hand, and followed closely by a bare-legged rustic, carrying a rude staff and a well-stored game-bag, suddenly emerged from behind a mass of underwood close by. It was plain that he and Lucille were acquainted, for he instantly stopped, signing to his attendant to pursue his way, and raising his three-cornered hat, bowed as the last century only could bow, with an inclination that was at once the expression of chivalry and ease. His features were singularly handsome, but almost too delicate for his sex, pale, and with a certain dash of melancholy in their noble intelligence. "You here, Monsieur Dubois!" exclaimed Lucille, in a tone that a little faltered, and with a blush that made her doubly beautiful. "What strange chance has conducted you to this spot?" "My kind star--my genius--my good angel, who thus procures me the honor of beholding Mademoiselle de Charrebourg--an honor than which fortune has none dearer to me--no--none _half_ so prized." "These are phrases, sir." "Yes; phrases that expound my heart. I beseech you bring them to the test." "Well, then," she said, gravely, "let us see. Kneel down and pick the strawberries that grow upon this bank; they are for the Visconte de Charrebourg." "I am too grateful to be employed." "You are much older, Monsieur, than I." "No doubt." "And have seen more of the world, too." "True, Mademoiselle," and he could not forbear smiling. "Well, then, you ought not to have tried to meet me in the park so often as you did--or indeed at all--you know very well you ought not." "But, Mademoiselle, what harm can the most ill-natured of human critics discover----" "Oh, but listen to me. I begin to fear I have been wrong in talking to you as I have done; and if so, you ought not to have presented yourself to me as you did. I have reflected on it since. In fact, I don't know who you are, Monsieur Dubois. The Charrebourgs do not use to make companions of everybody; and you may be a roturier, for anything I can tell." Monsieur Dubois smiled again. "I see you laugh because we are poor," she said, with a heightened color and a flashing glance. "Mademoiselle misunderstands me. I am incapable of that. There is no point at which ridicule can approach the family of Charrebourg." "That is true, sir," she said, haughtily; and she added, "and on that account I need not inquire wherefore people smile. But this seems plain to me--that I have done very wrong in conversing alone with a gentleman of whom I know nothing beyond his name. You must think so yourself, though you will not say it; and as you profess your willingness to oblige me, I have only to ask that all these foolish conversations may be quite forgotten between us. And now the _petit pannier_ is filled, and it is time that I should return. Good evening, Monsieur Dubois--farewell." "This is scarcely a kind farewell, considering that we have been good friends, Mademoiselle de Charrebourg, for so long." "Good friends--yes--for a long time; but you know," she continued, with a sad, wise shake of her pretty head, "I ought not to allow gentlemen whom I chance to meet here to be my friends--is it not so? This has only struck me recently, Monsieur Dubois; and I am sure you used to think me very strange. But I have no one to advise me; I have no mother--she is dead; and the Visconte seldom speaks to me; and so I fear I often do strange things without intending; and--and I have told you all this, because I should be sorry you thought ill of me, Monsieur Dubois." She dropped her eyes for a moment to the ground, with an expression at once very serious and regretful. "Then am I condemned to be henceforward a stranger to _dear_ Mademoiselle de Charrebourg?" "I have told you all my thoughts, Monsieur Dubois," she answered, in a tone whose melancholy made it nearly as tender as his own. But, perhaps, some idea crossed her mind that piqued her pride; for suddenly recollecting herself, she added, in a tone it may be a little more abrupt and haughty than her usual manner-- "And so, Monsieur Dubois, once for all, good evening. You will need to make haste to overtake your peasant attendant; and as for me, I must run home now--adieu." Dubois followed her hesitatingly a step or two, but stopped short. A slight flush of excitement--it might be of mortification--hovered on his usually pale cheek. It subsided, however, and a sudden and more tender character inspired his gaze, as he watched her receding figure, and followed its disappearance with a deep sigh. But Monsieur Dubois had not done with surprises. "Holloa! sir--a word with you," shouted an imperious voice, rendered more harsh by the peculiar huskiness of age. Dubois turned, and beheld a figure, which penetrated him with no small astonishment, advancing toward him with furious strides. We shall endeavor to describe it. It was that of a very tall, old man, lank and upright, with snow-white mustaches, beard, and eyebrows, all in a shaggy and neglected state. He wore an old coat of dark-gray serge, gathered at the waist by a belt of undressed leather, and a pair of gaiters, of the same material, reached fully to his knees. From his left hand dangled three rabbits, tied together by the feet, and in his right he grasped the butt of his antiquated fowling-piece, which rested upon his shoulder. This latter equipment, along with a tall cap of rabbit skins, which crowned his head, gave him a singular resemblance to the old prints of Robinson Crusoe; and as if the _tout ensemble_ was not grotesque enough without such an appendage, a singularly tall hound, apparently as old and feeble, as lank and as gray as his master, very much incommoded by the rapidity of his pace, hobbled behind him. A string scarce two yards long, knotted to his master's belt, was tied to the old collar, once plated with silver, that encircled his neck, and upon which a close scrutiny might have still deciphered the armorial bearings of the Charrebourgs. There was a certain ludicrous sympathy between the superannuated hound and his master. While the old man confronted the stranger, erect as Don Quixote, and glaring upon him in silent fury, as though his eyeballs would leap from their sockets, the decrepit dog raised his bloodshot, cowering eyes upon the self-same object, and showing the stumps of his few remaining fangs, approached him with a long, low growl, like distant thunder. The man and his dog understood one another perfectly. Conscious, however, that there might possibly be some vein of ridicule in this manifest harmony of sentiment, he bestowed a curse and a kick upon the brute, which sent it screeching behind him. "It seems, sir, that you have made the acquaintance of Mademoiselle de Charrebourg?" he demanded, in a tone scarcely less discordant than those of his canine attendant. "Sir, I don't mean to consult you upon the subject." Robinson Crusoe hitched his gun, as though he was about to "let fly" at the invader of his solitudes. "I demand your name, sir." "And _I_ don't mean to give it." "But give it you shall, sir, by ----." "It is plain you understand catching rabbits and dressing their skins better than conversing with gentlemen," said the stranger, as with a supercilious smile he turned away. "Stay, sir," cried the old gentleman, peremptorily, "or I shall slip my dog upon you." "If you do, I'll shoot him." "You have insulted me, sir. You wear a _couteau de chasse_--so do I. Destiny condemns the Visconte de Charrebourg to calamity, but not to insult. Draw your sword." "The Visconte de Charrebourg!" echoed Dubois, in amazement. "Yes, sir--the Visconte de Charrebourg, who will not pocket an affront because he happens to have lost his revenues." Who would have thought that any process could possibly have metamorphosed the gay and magnificent courtier, of whose splendid extravagance Dubois had heard so many traditions, into this grotesque old savage. "There are some houses, and foremost among the number that of Charrebourg," said the young man, with marked deference, raising his hat, "which no loss of revenue can possibly degrade, and which, associated with the early glories of France, gain but a profounder title to our respect, when their annals and descent are consecrated by the nobility of suffering." Nebuchadnezzar smiled. "I entreat that Monsieur le Visconte will pardon what has passed under a total ignorance of his presence." The Visconte bowed, and resumed, gravely but more placidly-- "I must then return to my question, and ask your name." "I am called Dubois, sir." "Dubois! hum! I don't recollect, Monsieur Dubois, that I ever had the honor of being acquainted with your family." "Possibly not, sir." "However, Monsieur Dubois, you appear to be a gentleman, and I ask you, as the father of the noble young lady who has just left you, whether you have established with her any understanding such as I ought not to approve--in short, any understanding whatsoever?" "None whatever, on the honor of a gentleman. I introduced myself to Mademoiselle de Charrebourg, but she has desired that our acquaintance shall cease, and _her_ resolution upon the subject is, of course, decisive. On the faith of a gentleman, you have there the entire truth frankly stated." "Well, Monsieur Dubois, I believe you," said the Visconte, after a steady gaze of a few seconds; "and I have to add a request, which is this--that, unless through me, the acquaintance may never be sought to be renewed. Farewell, sir. Come along, Jonquil!" he added, with an admonition of his foot, addressed to the ugly old brute who had laid himself down. And so, with a mutual obeisance, stiff and profound, Monsieur Dubois and the Visconte de Charrebourg departed upon their several ways. When the old Visconte entered his castle, he threw the three rabbits on the table before Marguerite, hung his fusil uncleaned upon the wall, released his limping dog, and stalked past Lucille, who was in the passage, with a stony aspect, and in total silence. This, however, was his habit, and he pursued his awful way into his little room of state, where seated upon his high-backed, clumsy throne of deal, with his rabbit-skin tiara on his head, he espied a letter, with a huge seal, addressed to him, lying on his homely table. "Ha! hum. From M. Le Prun. The ostentation of the Fermier-General! the vulgarity of the bourgeois, even in a letter!" Alone as he was, the Visconte affected a sneer of tranquil superiority; but his hand trembled as he took the packet and broke the seal. Its contents were evidently satisfactory: the old man elevated his eyebrows as he read, sniffed twice or thrice, and then yielded to a smile of irrepressible self-complacency. "So it will give him inexpressible pleasure, will it, to consult my wishes. Should he become the purchaser of the Charrebourg estate, he entreats--ay, that is the word--that I will not do him the injustice to suppose him capable of disturbing me in the possession of my present residence." The Visconte measured the distance between the tiled floor and the ceiling, with a bitter glance, and said, "So our bourgeois-gentilhomme will permit the Visconte de Charrebourg--ha, ha--to live in this stinking hovel for the few years that remain to him; but, _par bleu_, that is fortune's doing, not his. I ought not to blame this poor bourgeois--he is only doing what I asked him. He will also allow me whatever '_privileges_' I have hitherto enjoyed--that of killing roach in the old moat and rabbits in the warren; scarce worth the powder and shot I spend on them. _Eh, bien!_ after all what more have I asked for? He is also most desirous to mark, in every way in his power, the profound respect he entertains for the Visconte de Charrebourg. How these fellows grimace and caricature when they attempt to make a compliment! but he can't help that, and he is trying to be civil. And, see, here is a postscript I omitted to read." He readjusted his spectacles. It was thus conceived:-- "P.S.--I trust the Visconte de Charrebourg will permit me the honor of waiting upon him, to express in person my esteem and respect; and that he will also allow me to present my little niece to Mademoiselle de Charrebourg, as they are pretty nearly of the same age, and likely, moreover, to become neighbors." "Yes," he said, pursuing a train of self-gratulation, suggested by this postscript; "it was a _coup_ of diplomacy worthy of Richelieu himself, the sending Lucille in person with my letter. The girl has beauty; its magic has drawn all these flowers and figures from the pen of that dry old schemer. Ay, who knows, she may have fortune before her; were the king to see her----" But here he paused, and, with a slight shake of the head, muttered, "Apage sathanas!" III.--THE FERMIER-GENERAL. The Visconte ate his supper in solemn silence, which Lucille dared not interrupt, so that the meal was far from cheerful. Shortly after its conclusion, however, the old man announced in a few brief sentences, as much of the letter he had just received as in any wise concerned her to know. "See _you_ and Marguerite to the preparations; let everything, at least, be neat. He knows, as all the world does, that I am miserably poor; and we can't make this place look less beggarly than it is; but we must make the best of it. What can one do with a pension of eight hundred francs--bah!" The latter part of this speech was muttered in bitter abstraction. "The pension is too small, sir." He looked at her with something like a sneer. "It is too small, sir, and ought to be increased." "Who says so?" "Marguerite has often said so, sir, and I believe it. If you will petition the king, he will give you something worthy of your rank." "You are a pair of wiseheads, truly. It cost the exertions of powerful friends, while I still had some, to get that pittance; were I to move in the matter now, it is more like to lead to its curtailment than extension." "Yes, but the king admires beauty, and I am beautiful," she said, with a blush that was at once the prettiest, the boldest, and yet the purest thing imaginable; "and I will present your petition myself." Her father looked at her for a moment with a gaze of inquiring wonder, which changed into a faint, abstracted smile; but he rose abruptly from his seat with a sort of shrug, as if it were chill, and, muttering his favorite exorcism, "Apage sathanas!" walked with a flurried step up and down the room. His face was flushed, and there was something in its expression which forbade her hazarding another word. It was not until nearly half an hour had elapsed that the Visconte suddenly exclaimed, as if not a second had interposed-- "Well, Lucille, it is not _quite_ impossible; but you need not mention it to Marguerite." He then signed to her to leave him, intending, according to his wont, to find occupation for his solitary hours in the resources of his library. This library was contained in an old chest; consisted of some score of shabby volumes of all sizes, and was, in truth, a queer mixture. It comprised, among other tomes, a Latin Bible and a missal, in intimate proximity with two or three other volumes of that gay kind which even the Visconte de Charrebourg would have blushed and trembled to have seen in the hands of his child. It resembled thus the heterogeneous furniture of his own mind, with an incongruous ingredient of superinduced religion; but, on the whole, unpresentable and unclean. He took up the well-thumbed Vulgate, in which, of late years, he had read a good deal, but somehow, it did not interest him at that moment. He threw it back again, and suffered his fancy to run riot among schemes more exciting and, alas! less guiltless. His daughter's words had touched an evil chord in his heart--she had unwittingly uncaged the devil that lurked within him; and this guardian angel from the pit was playing, in truth, very ugly pranks with his ambitious imagination. Lucille called old Marguerite to her bedroom, and there made the astonishing disclosure of the promised visit; but the old woman, though herself very fussy in consequence, perceived no corresponding excitement in her young mistress; on the contrary, she was sad and abstracted. "Do you remember," said Lucille, after a long pause, "the story of the fair demoiselle of Alsace you used to tell me long ago? How true her lover was, and how bravely he fought through all the dangers of witchcraft and war to find her out again and wed her, although he was a noble knight, and she, as he believed, but a peasant's daughter. Marguerite, it is a pretty story. I wonder if gentlemen are as true of heart now?" "Ay, my dear, why not? love is love always; just the same as it was of old is it now, and will be while the world wags." And with this comforting assurance their conference ended. The very next day came the visit of Monsieur Le Prun and his niece. The Fermier-General was old and ugly, there is no denying it; he had a shrewd, penetrating eye, moreover, and in the lines of his mouth were certain unmistakable indications of habitual command. When his face was in repose, indeed, its character was on the whole forbidding. But in repose it seldom was, for he smiled and grimaced with an industry that was amazing. His niece was a pretty little fair-haired girl of sixteen, with something sad and even _funeste_ in her countenance. The fragile timidity of the little blonde contrasted well with the fire and energy that animated the handsome features of her new acquaintance. Julie St. Pierre, for that was her name, seemed just as unconscious of Lucille's deficient toilet as she was herself, and the two girls became, in the space of an hour's ramble among the brakes and bushes of the park, as intimate as if they had spent all their days together. Monsieur Le Prun, meanwhile, conversed affably with the Visconte, whom he seemed to take a pleasure in treating with a deference which secretly flattered alike his pride and his vanity. He told him, moreover, that the contract for the purchase of the Charrebourg estate was already completed, and pleased himself with projecting certain alterations in the Visconte's humble residence, which would certainly have made it a far more imposing piece of architecture than it ever had been. All his plans, however, were accompanied with so many submissions to the Visconte's superior taste, and so many solicitations of "permission," and so many delicate admissions of an ownership, which both parties knew to be imaginary, that the visitor appeared in the attitude rather of one suing for than conferring a favor. Add to all this that the Fermier-General had the good taste to leave his equipage at the park gate, and trudged on foot beside his little niece, who, in rustic fashion, was mounted on a donkey, to make his visit. No wonder, then, that when the Croesus and his little niece took their departure, they left upon the mind of the old Visconte an impression which (although, for the sake of consistency, he was still obliged to affect his airs of hauteur) was in the highest degree favorable. The acquaintance thus commenced was not suffered to languish. Scarce a day passed without either a visit or a _billet_, and thus some five or six weeks passed. Lucille and her new companion became more and more intimate; but there was one secret recorded in the innermost tablet of her heart which she was too proud to disclose even to her gentle friend. For a day--days--a week--a fortnight after her interview with Dubois, she lived in hope that every hour might present his handsome form at the cottage door to declare himself, and, with the Visconte's sanction, press his suit. Every morning broke with hope, every night brought disappointment with its chill and darkness, till hope expired, and feelings of bitterness, wounded pride, and passionate resentment succeeded. What galled her proud heart most was the fear that she had betrayed her fondness to him. To be forsaken was hard enough to bear, but to the desolation of such a loss the sting of humiliation superadded was terrible. One day the rumble of coach-wheels was heard upon the narrow, broken road which wound by the Visconte's cottage. A magnificent equipage, glittering with gold and gorgeous colors, drawn by four noble horses worthy of Cinderella's state-coach, came rolling and rocking along the track. The heart of Lucille beat fast under her little bodice as she beheld its approach. The powdered servants were of course to open the carriage-door, and Dubois himself, attired in the robes of a prince, was to spring from within and throw himself passionately at her feet. In short, she felt that the denouement of the fairy tale was at hand. The coach stopped--the door opened, and Monsieur Le Prun descended, and handed his little niece to the ground; Lucille wished him and Dubois both in the galleys. He was more richly dressed than usual, more ceremonious, and if possible more gracious. He saluted Lucille, and after a word or two of commonplace courtesy, joined the old Visconte, and they shortly entered the old gentleman's chamber of audience together, and there remained for more than an hour. At the end of that time they emerged together, both a little excited as it seemed. The Fermier-General was flushed like a scarlet withered apple, and his black eyes glowed and flashed with an unusual agitation. The Visconte too was also flushed, and he carried his head a little back, with an unwonted air of reserve and importance. The adieux were made with some little flurry, and the equipage swept away, leaving the spot where its magnificence had just been displayed as bleak and blank as the space on which the pageant of a phantasmagoria has been for a moment reflected. The old servant of all work was charmed with this souvenir of better days. Monsieur Le Prun had risen immensely in her regard in consequence of the display she had just gloated upon. In the estimation of the devoted Marguerite he was more than a Midas. His very eye seemed to gild everything it fell upon as naturally as the sun radiates his yellow splendor. The blue velvet liveries, the gold-studded harness, the embossed and emblazoned coach, the stately beasts with their tails tied up in great bows of broad blue ribbons, with silver fringe, like an Arcadian beauty's chevelure, the reverential solemnity of the gorgeous lacqueys, the _tout ensemble_ in short, was overpowering and delightful. "Well, child," said the Visconte, after he and Lucille had stood for a while in silence watching the retiring equipage, taking her hand in his at the same time, and leading her with a stately gravity along the narrow walk which environed the cottage, "Monsieur Le Prun, it must be admitted, has excellent taste; _par bleu_, his team would do honor to the royal stables. What a superb equipage! Happy the woman whom fortune will elect to share the splendor of which all that we have just seen is but as a sparkle from the furnace--fortunate she whom Monsieur Le Prun will make his wife." He spoke with so much emotion, directed a look of such triumphant significance upon his daughter, and pressed her hand so hard, that on a sudden a stupendous conviction, at once horrible and dazzling, burst upon her. "Monsieur!--for the love of God do you mean--do you mean----?" she said, and broke off abruptly. "Yes, my dear Lucille," he returned with elation, "I _do_ mean to tell you that you--_you_ are that fortunate person. It is true that you can bring him no wealth, but he already possesses more of that than he knows how to apply. You can, however, bring him what few other women possess, an ancient lineage, an exquisite beauty, and the simplicity of an education in which the seeds of finesse and dissipation have not been sown, in short, the very attributes and qualifications which he most esteems--which he has long sought, and which in conversation he has found irresistible in you. Monsieur Le Prun has entreated me to lay his proposals at your feet, and you of course convey through me the gratitude with which you accept them." Lucille was silent and pale; within her a war and chaos of emotions were struggling, like the tumult of the ocean. "I felicitate you, my child," said the Visconte, kissing her throbbing forehead; "in you the fortunes of your family will be restored--come with me." She accompanied him into the cottage; she was walking, as it were, in a wonderful dream; but amidst the confusion of her senses, her perplexity and irresolution, there was a dull sense of pain at her heart, there was a shadowy figure constantly before her; its presence agitated and reproached her, but she had little leisure to listen to the pleadings of a returning tenderness, even had they been likely to prevail with her ambitious heart. Her father rapidly sketched such a letter of complimentary acceptance as he conceived suitable to the occasion and the parties. "Read that," he said, placing it before Lucille. "Well, that I think will answer. What say you, child?" "Yes, sir," she replied with an effort; "it is true; he does me indeed great honor; and--and I accept him; and now, sir, I would wish to go and be for a while alone." "Do so," said her father, again kissing her, for he felt a sort of gratitude toward her as the prime cause of all those comforts and luxuries, whose long despaired-of return he now beheld in immediate and certain prospect. Not heeding this unwonted exuberance of tenderness, she hurried to her little bed-room, and sat down upon the side of her bed. At first she wept passionately, but her girlish volatility soon dried these tears. The magnificent equipage of Monsieur Le Prun swept before her imagination. Her curious and dazzled fancy then took flight in speculations as to the details of all the, as yet, undescribed splendors in reserve. Then she thought of herself married, and mistress of all this great fortune, and her heart beat thick, and she laughed aloud, and clapped her hands in an ecstasy of almost childish exultation. Next day she received a long visit from Monsieur Le Prun, as her accepted lover. Spite of all his splendor, he had never looked in her eyes half so old, and ugly and sinister, as now. The marriage, which was sometimes so delightfully full of promise to her vanity and ambition, in his presence most perversely lost all its enchantment, and terrified her, like some great but unascertained danger. It was however too late now to recede; and even were she free to do so, it is more than probable that she could not have endured the sacrifice involved in retracting her consent. The Visconte's little household kept early hours. He himself went to bed almost with the sun; and on the night after this decisive visit--for such Monsieur Le Prun's first appearance and acceptation in the character of an affianced bridegroom undoubtedly was--Lucille was lying awake, the prey of a thousand agitating thoughts, when, on a sudden, rising on the still night air came a little melody--alas! too well known--a gay and tender song, chanted sweetly. Had the voice of Fate called her, she could not have started more suddenly upright in her bed, with eyes straining, and parted lips--one hand pushing back the rich clusters of hair, and collecting the sound at her ear, and the other extended toward the distant songster, and softly marking the time of the air. She listened till the song died away, and covering her face with her hands, she threw herself down upon the pillow, and sobbing desolately, murmured--"too late!--too late!" IV.--THE STRANGE LADY IN WHITE. The visits of the happy Fermier-General occurred, of course, daily, and increased in duration. Meanwhile preparations went forward. The Visconte, supplied from some mysterious source, appeared to have an untold amount of cash. He made repeated excursions to the capital, which for twenty years he had not so much as seen; and handsome dresses, ornaments, &c., for Lucille, were accompanied by no less important improvements upon his own wardrobe, as well as various accessions to the comforts of their little dwelling--so numerous, indeed, as speedily to effect an almost complete transformation in its character and pretensions. Thus the time wore on, in a state of excitement, which, though checkered with many fears, was on the whole pleasurable. About ten days had passed since the peculiar and delicate relation we have described was established between Lucille and Monsieur Le Prun. Urgent business had called him away to the city, and kept him closely confined there, so that, for the first time since his declaration, his daily visit was omitted upon this occasion. Had the good Fermier-General but known all, he need not have offered so many apologies, nor labored so hard to console his lady-love for his involuntary absence. The truth, then, is, as the reader no doubt suspects, Lucille was charmed at finding herself, even for a day, once more her own absolute mistress. A gay party from Paris, with orders of admission from the creditors, that day visited the park. In a remote and bosky hollow they had seated themselves upon the turf, and, amid songs and laughter, were enjoying a cold repast. Far away these sounds of mirth were borne on the clear air to Lucille. Alas! when should she laugh as gaily as those ladies, who, with their young companions, were making merry?--when again should music speak as of old with her heart, and bear in its chords no tone of reproach and despair? This gay party broke up into groups, and began merrily to ramble toward the great gate, where, of course, their carriages were awaiting them. Attracted mournfully by their mirth, Lucille rambled onward as they retreated. It was evening, and the sunbeams slanted pleasantly among the trees and bushes, throwing long, soft shadows over the sward, and converting into gold every little turf, and weed, and knob, that broke the irregular sweep of the ground. She had reached a part of the park with which she was not so familiar. Here several gentle hollows were converging toward the stream, and trees and wild brushwood in fresh abundance clothed their sides, and spread upward along the plain in rich and shaggy exuberance. From among them, with a stick in his hand, and running lightly in the direction of her father's cottage, Gabriel suddenly emerged. On seeing her at the end of the irregular vista, which he had just entered, however, he slackened his pace, and doffing his hat he approached her. "A message, Gabriel?" she inquired. "Yes, if Mademoiselle pleases," said he, blushing all over, like the setting sun. "I was running to the Visconte's house to tell Mademoiselle." "Well, Gabriel, and what is it?" "Why, Mademoiselle, a strange lady in the glen desires me to tell Mademoiselle de Charrebourg that she wishes to see her." "But did she say why she desired it, and what she wished to speak to me about?" "No, Mademoiselle." "Then tell her that Mademoiselle de Charrebourg, knowing neither her name nor her business, declines obeying her summons," said she, haughtily. Gabriel bowed low, and was about to retire on his errand, when she added-- "It was very dull of you, Gabriel, not to ask her what she wanted of me." "Madame, without your permission, I dare not," he replied, with a deeper blush, and a tone at once so ardent and so humble, that Lucille could not forbear a smile of the prettiest good nature. "In truth, Gabriel, you are a dutiful boy. But how did you happen to meet her?" "I was returning, Mademoiselle, from the other side of the stream, and just when I got into the glen, on turning round the corner of the gray stone, I saw her standing close to me behind the bushes." "And I suppose you were frightened?" she said, archly. "No, Mademoiselle, indeed; though she was strangely dressed and very pale, but she spoke to me kindly. She asked me my name, and then she looked in my face very hard, as a fortune-teller does, and she told me many strange things, Mademoiselle, about myself; some of them I knew, and some of them I never heard before." "I suppose she _is_ a fortune-teller; and how did she come to ask for me?" "She inquired if the Visconte de Charrebourg still lived on the estate, and then she said, 'Has he not a beautiful daughter called Lucille?' and I, Mademoiselle, made bold to answer, 'O yes, madame, yes, in truth.'" Poor Gabriel blushed and faltered more than ever at this passage. "'Tell Mademoiselle,' she said, 'I have something that concerns her nearly to tell her. Let her know that I am waiting here; but I cannot stay long.' And so she beckoned me away impatiently, and I, expecting to find you near the house was running, when Mademoiselle saw me." "It is very strange; stay, Gabriel, I _will_ go and speak to her, it is only a step." The fact was that Lucille's curiosity (as might have been the case with a great many of her sex in a similar situation) was too strong for her, and her pride was forced to bend to its importunity. "Go you before," she said to Gabriel, who long remembered that evening walk in attendance upon Lucille, as a scene so enchanting and delightful as to be rather a mythic episode than an incident in his life; "and Gabriel," she added, as they entered the cold shadow of the thick evergreens, and felt she knew not why, a superstitious dread creep over her, "do you wait within call, but so as not to overhear our conversation; you understand me." They had now emerged from the dark cover into the glen, and looking downward toward the little stream, at a short distance from them, the figure of the mysterious lady was plainly discernible. She was sitting with her back toward them upon a fragment of rock, under the bough of an old gnarled oak. Her dress was a sort of loose white robe, it might be of flannel, such as invalids in hospitals wear, and a red cloak had slipped from her shoulders, and covered the ground at her feet. Thus, solitary and mysterious, she suggested the image of a priestess cowering over the blood of a victim in search of omens. Lucille approached her with some trepidation, and to avoid coming upon her wholly by surprise she made a little detour, and thus had an opportunity of seeing the features of the stranger, as well as of permitting her to become aware of her approach. Her appearance, upon a nearer approach, was not such as to reassure Lucille. She was tall, deadly pale, and marked with the smallpox. She had particularly black eyebrows, and awaited the young lady's approach with that ominous smile which ascends no higher than the lips, and leaves the eyes and forehead dark, threatening, and uncertain. Altogether, there was a character, it might be of insanity, it might be of guilt, in the face, which was formidable. Lucille wished herself at home, but there was that in the blood of the Charrebourgs which never turned away from danger, real or imaginary, when once confronted. "So you are Lucille de Charrebourg?" said the figure, looking at her with that expression of malice, which is all the more fearful that it appears causeless. "Yea, Madame, that is my name; will you be so good as to tell me, beside, the name of the lady who has been kind enough to desire an interview with me?" "For a name; my dear, suit yourself; call me Sycorax, Jezebel, or what you please, and I will answer to it." "But what are you?" "There again I give you a _carte blanche_; say I am a benevolent fairy; you don't seem to like that? or your guardian-angel? nor that neither! Well, a witch if you please, or a ghost, or a fortune-teller--ay, that will do, a fortune-teller--so that is settled." "Well, Madame, if I may not know either your name or occupation, will you be good enough at least to let me hear your business." "Surely, my charming demoiselle; you should have heard it immediately had you not pestered me with so many childish questions. Well, then, about this Monsieur Le Prun?" "Well, Madame?" said Lucille, not a little surprised. "Well, my dear, I'm not going to tell you whether this Monsieur Le Prun is an angel, for angels they say _have_ married women; or whether he is a Bluebeard--you have heard the story of Bluebeard, my little dear--but this I say, be he which he may, _you_ must not marry him." "And pray, who constrains my will?" exclaimed the girl, scornfully, but at the same time inwardly frightened. "_I_ do, my pretty pigeon; if you marry him, you do so forewarned, and if he don't punish you _I_ will." "How dare you speak in that tone to me?" said Lucille, to whose cheek the insolent threat of the stranger called a momentary flush of red; "_you_ punish me, indeed, if _he_ does not! I'll not permit you to address me so; besides I have help close by, if I please to call for it." All this time the woman was laughing inwardly, and fumbling under her white robe, as if in search of something. "I say he may be an angel, or he may be a bluebeard, I don't pretend to say which," she continued, with a perfectly genuine contempt of Lucille's vaunting, "but I have here an amulet that never fails in cases like this; it will detect and expel the devil better than blessed water, _vera crux_, or body of our Lord, for these things have sometimes failed, but this can never. With the aid of this you cannot be deceived. If he be a good man its influence will be ineffectual against him; but if, on the other hand, he be possessed of evil spirits, then test him with it, and you will behold him for a moment as he is." "Let me see it, then." "Here it is." She drew from under the white folds of her dress a small spiral bottle, enameled with some Chinese characters, and set in a base and capital of chased gold, with four little spiral pillars at the corners connecting the top and bottom, and leaving the porcelain visible between. It had, moreover, a stopper that closed with a spring, and altogether did not exceed two inches in length, and in thickness was about the size of a swan's quill. It looked like nothing earthly, but what she had described it. For a scent-bottle, indeed, it might possibly have been used; but there was something odd and knowing about this little curiosity, something mysterious, and which seemed as though it had a tale to tell. In short, Lucille looked on it with all the interest, and if the truth must be spoken, a good deal of the awe, which its pretensions demanded. "And what am I to do with this little bauble?" she asked, after she had examined it for some moments curiously. "When you want to make trial of its efficacy, take it forth, look steadily in his face, and say, 'I expect to receive the counterpart of this,' that is all. If he be a good man, as who can say, the talisman will leave him as it finds him. But if he be, as some men are, the slave of Satan, you will see, were it but for a second, the sufferings and passions of hell in his face. Fear not to make trial of it, for no harm can ensue; you will but know the character you have to deal with." "But this is a valuable bauble, its price must be considerable, and I have no money." "Well, suppose I make it a present to you." "I should like to have it--but--but----." "But I am too poor to part with it on such terms, and you too proud to take it--is that your meaning? Never mind, I can afford to give it, and, proud as you are, you can afford to take it. Hide it until the time to try him comes, and then speak as I told you." "Well, I will accept it," said Lucille, coldly, but her voice trembled and her face was pale; "and this I know, if there be any virtue of any sort in the toy, it can only prove Monsieur Le Prun's goodness. Yes, he is a very kind man, and all the world, I am told, speaks of his excellence." "Very probably," said the stranger, "but mark my words, don't marry him; if you do, you shall see me again." "Halloa, devil! are you deaf?" thundered a sneering voice from a crag at the opposite side. "Come, come, it's time we were moving." The summons came from a broad, short, swarthy fellow, with black mustaches and beard, arrayed in a suit of dusky red. He had one hand raised high above his head beckoning to her, and with the other he furiously shook the spreading branch of a tree beside him; the prominent whites of his eyes, and his grinning teeth, were, even at that distance, seen conspicuous; and so shaggy, furious, and unearthly did he seem, that he might well have represented some wild huntsman or demon of the wood. It seemed, indeed, as though a sort of witches' dance were to be held that night in the old park of Charrebourg, and that some of the preternatural company had reached the trysting-place before their time. The ill-omened woman in white hastily gathered up her mantle, without any gesture or word of farewell. With hurried strides her tall figure glided off toward the apparition in red, and both speedily disappeared among the hazy cover at the other side. The little hollow was now deserted, except for Lucille. It was not till they had quite vanished, and that she was left there alone, that she felt something akin to terror steal over her, and hurried from the scene of her strange interview as from a haunted spot. A little way up the rising bank Gabriel was awaiting her return, sorely disappointed that fortune had in no wise made her debtor to his valor. Long before she reached home the sun had gone down, and the long dusky shadows had given place to the thin, cold haze of approaching night. Often as she glided onward among rocks and bushes she felt an instinctive impulse, something between terror and aversion, prompting her to hurl the little spiral vial far from her among the wild weeds and misty brakes, where, till doomsday, it might never be found again. But other feelings, stranger in their kind, determined her at least to defer the sacrifice, and so she reached her chamber with the mysterious gift fast in her tiny grasp. Here she again examined it, more minutely than before; it contained neither fluid nor powder of any sort, and was free from any perfume or odor whatsoever; and excepting that the more closely she inspected it, the more she discovered in its workmanship to excite her admiration, her careful and curious investigation was without result. As she carefully folded up the curious souvenir, and secreted it in the safest corner of the safest drawer, she thought over the interview again and again, and always with the same result as respected the female who had bestowed it, namely, that if not actually a lady, she had at least the education and the manners of a person above the working classes. That night Lucille was haunted with ugly dreams. Voices were speaking to her in threats and blasphemies from the little vial. The mysterious lady in white would sit huddled up at the foot of her bed, and the more she smiled the more terrible became her scowl, until at last her countenance began to dilate, and she slowly advanced her face closer and closer, until, just as her smiling lips reached Lucille, she uttered a yell, whether of imprecation or terror she could not hear, but which scared her from her sleep like a peal of thunder. Then a great coffin was standing against the wall with Monsieur Le Prun in it dead and shrouded, and a troop of choristers began singing a requiem, when on a sudden the furious voice she had heard that evening screamed aloud, "To what purpose all this hymning, seeing the corpse is possessed by evil spirits;" and then such looks of rage and hatred flitted over the livid face in the coffin, as nothing but hell could have inspired. Then again she would see Monsieur Le Prun struggling, his face all bloody and distorted, with the man in red and the strange lady of the talisman, who screamed, laughing with a detestable glee, "Come bride, come, the bridegroom waits." Such horrid dreams as these haunted her all night, so much so that one might almost have fancied that an evil influence had entered her chamber with the little vial. But the songs of gay birds pruning their wings, and the rustle of the green leaves glittering in the early sun round her window, quickly dispelled the horrors which had possessed her little room in the hours of silence and darkness. It was, notwithstanding, with a sense of fear and dislike that she opened the drawer where the little vial lay, and unrolling all the paper envelopes in which it was carefully folded, beheld it once more in the clear light of day. "Nothing, nothing, but a grotesque little scent-bottle--why should I be afraid of it?--a poor little pretty toy." So she said, as she folded it up again, and deposited it once more where it had lain all night. But for all that she felt a mysterious sense of relief when she ran lightly from her chamber into the open air, conscious that the harmless little toy was no longer present. V.--THE CHATEAU DES ANGES. The next day Monsieur Le Prun returned. His vanity ascribed the manifest agitation of Lucille's manner to feelings very unlike the distrust, alarm, and aversion which, since her last night's adventure, had filled her mind. He came, however, armed with votive evidences of his passion, alike more substantial and more welcome than the gallant speeches in which he dealt. He brought her, among other jewels, a suit of brilliants which must have cost alone some fifteen or twenty thousand francs. He seemed to take a delight in overpowering her with the costly exuberance of his presents. Was there in this a latent distrust of his own personal resources, and an anxiety to astound and enslave by means of his magnificence--to overwhelm his proud but dowerless bride with the almost fabulous profusion and splendor of his wealth? Perhaps there was, and the very magnificence which dazzled her was prompted more by meanness than generosity. This time he came accompanied by a gentleman, the Sieur de Blassemare, who appeared pretty much what he actually was--a sort of general agent, adviser, companion, and hanger-on of the rich Fermier-General. The Sieur de Blassemare had his _titres de noblesse_, and started in life with a fair fortune. This, however, he had seriously damaged by play, and was now obliged to have recourse to that species of dexterity, to support his luxuries, which, employed by others, had been the main agent in his own ruin. The millionaire and the parvenu found him invaluable. He was always gay, always in good humor; a man of birth and breeding, well accepted, in spite of his suspected rogueries, in the world of fashion--an adept in all its ways, as well as in the mysteries of human nature; active, inquisitive, profligate; the very man to pick up intelligence when it was needed--to execute a delicate commission, or to advise and assist in any project of taste. In addition to all these gifts and perfections, his fund of good spirits and scandalous anecdote was inexhaustible, and so Monsieur Le Prun conceived him very cheaply retained at the expense of allowing him to cheat him quietly of a few score of crowns at an occasional game of picquet. This fashionable sharper and voluptuary was now somewhere about five-and-forty; but with the assistance of his dress, which was exquisite, and the mysteries of his toilet, which was artistic in a high degree, and above all, his gayety, which never failed him, he might easily have passed for at least six years younger. It was the wish of the benevolent Monsieur Le Prun to set the Viscount quite straight in money matters; and as there still remained, like the electric residuum in a Leyden vial after the main shock has been discharged, some few little affairs not quite dissipated in the explosion of his fortunes, and which, before his reappearance even in the background of society, must be arranged, he employed his agile aid-de-camp, the Sieur de Blassemare, to fish out these claims and settle them. It was not to be imagined that a young girl, perfectly conscious of her beauty, with a great deal of vanity and an immensity of ambition, could fail to be delighted at the magnificent presents with which her rich old lover had that day loaded her. She spread them upon the counterpane of her bed, and when she was tired of admiring them, she covered herself with her treasures, hung the flashing necklace about her neck, and clasped her little wrists in the massive bracelets, stuck a pin here and a brooch there, and covered her fingers with sparkling jewels; and though she had no looking-glass larger than a playing-card in which to reflect her splendor, she yet could judge in her own mind very satisfactorily of the effect. Then, after she had floated about her room, and courtesied, and waved her hands to her heart's content, she again strewed the bed with these delightful, intoxicating jewels, which flashed actual fascination upon her gaze. At that moment her gratitude effervesced, and she almost felt that, provided she were never to behold his face again, she could--_not love_, but _like_ Monsieur Le Prun very well; she half relented, she almost forgave him; she would have received with good-will, with thanks, and praises, anything and everything he pleased to give her, except his company. Meanwhile the old Visconte, somewhat civilized and modernized by recent restorations, was walking slowly to and fro in the little bowling-green, side by side with Blassemare. "Yes," he said, "with confidence I give my child into his hands. It is a great trust, Blassemare; but he is gifted with those qualities, which, more than wealth, conduce to married happiness. I confide in him a great trust, but I feel I risk no sacrifice." A comic smile, which he could not suppress, illuminated the dark features of Blassemare, and he looked away as if studying the landscape until it subsided. "He is the most disinterested and generous of men," resumed the old gentleman. "_Ma foi_, so he is," rejoined his companion; "but Mademoiselle de Charrebourg happened to be precisely the person he needed; birth, beauty, simplicity--a rare alliance. You underrate the merits of Mademoiselle de Charrebourg. He makes no such presents to the Sisters of Charity." "Pardon me, sir, I know her merits well; she is indeed a dutiful and dear child." And the Visconte's eyes filled with moisture, for his heart was softened by her prosperity, involving, as it did, his own. "And will make one of the handsomest as she will, no doubt, one of the most loving wives in France," said Blassemare, gravely. "And he will make, or I am no prophet, an admirable husband," resumed the Visconte; "he has so much good feeling and so much----" "So much money," suggested Blassemare, who was charmed at the Visconte's little hypocrisy; "ay, by my faith, that he has; and as to that little bit of scandal, those mysterious reports, you know," he added, with a malicious simplicity. "Yes, I know," said the Visconte, shortly. "All sheer fiction, my dear Visconte," continued Blassemare, with a shrug and a smile of disclaimer. "Of course, of course," said the Visconte, peremptorily. "It was talked about, you know," persisted his malicious companion, "about twenty years ago, but it is quite discredited now--scouted. You can't think how excellently our good friend the Fermier-General is established in society. But I need not tell you, for of course you satisfied yourself; the alliance on which I felicitate Le Prun proves it." The Visconte made a sort of wincing smile and a bow. He saw that Blassemare was making a little scene out of his insincerities for his own private entertainment. But there is a sort of conventional hypocrisy which had become habitual to them both. It was like a pair of blacklegs cheating one another for practice with their eyes open. So Blassemare presented his snuff-box, and the Visconte, with equal _bonhomie_, took a pinch, and the game was kept up pleasantly between them. Meanwhile Lucille, in her chamber, the window of which opened upon the bowling-green, caught a word or two of the conversation we have just sketched. What she heard was just sufficient to awaken the undefined but anxious train of ideas which had become connected with the image of Monsieur Le Prun. Something seemed all at once to sadden and quench the fire that blazed in her diamonds; they were disenchanted; her heart no longer danced in their light. With a heavy sigh she turned to the drawer where the charmed vial lay; she took it out; she weighed it in her hand. "After all," she said, "it _is_ but a toy. Why should it trouble me? What harm _can_ be in it?" She placed it among the golden store that lay spread upon her coverlet. But it would not assimilate with those ornaments; on the contrary, it looked only more quaint and queer, like a suspicious stranger among them. She hurriedly took it away, more dissatisfied, somehow, than ever. She inwardly felt that there was danger in it, but what could it be? what its purpose, significance, or power? Conjecture failed her. There it lay, harmless and pretty for the present, but pregnant with unknown mischief, like a painted egg, stolen from a serpent's nest, which time and temperature are sure to hatch at last. The strangest circumstance about it was, that she could not make up her mind to part with or destroy it. It exercised over her the fascination of a guilty companionship. She hated but could not give it up. And yet, after all, what a trifle to fret the spirits even of a girl! It is wonderful how rapidly impressions of pain or fear, if they be not renewed, lose their influence upon the conduct and even upon the spirits. The scene in the glen, the image of the unprepossessing and mysterious pythoness, and the substance and manner of the sinister warning she communicated, were indeed fixed in her memory ineffaceably. But every day that saw her marriage approach in security and peace, and her preparations proceed without molestation, served to dissipate her fears and to obliterate the force of that hated scene. It was, therefore, only now and then that the odd and menacing occurrence recurred to her memory with a depressing and startling effect. At such moments, it might be of weakness, the boding words, "Don't marry him; if you do you shall see me again," smote upon her heart like the voice of a specter, and she felt that chill, succeeded by vague and gloomy anxiety, which superstition ascribes to the passing presence of a spirit from the grave. "I don't think you are happy, dear Lucille, or may be you are offended with me," said Julie St. Pierre, turning her soft blue eyes full upon her handsome companion, and taking her hand timidly between her own. They were sitting together on a wild bank, shaded by a screen of brushwood, in the park. Lucille had been silent, abstracted, and, as it seemed, almost sullen during their walk, and poor little timid Julie, who cherished for her girlish friend that sort of devotion with which gentler and perhaps better natures are so often inspired by firmer wills, and more fiery tempers, was grieved and perplexed. "Tell me, Lucille, are you angry with me?" "_I_ angry! no, indeed; and angry with you, my dear, _dear_ little friend! I could not be, dear Julie, even were I to try." And so they kissed heartily again and again. "Then," said Julie, sitting down by her, and taking her hand more firmly in hers, and looking with such a loving interest as nothing could resist in her face, "you are unhappy. Why don't you tell me what it is that grieves you? I dare say I could give you very wise counsel, and, at all events, console you. At the convent the pensioners used all to come to me when they were in trouble, and, I assure you, I always gave them good advice." "But I am not unhappy." "Really?" "No, indeed." "Well, shall I tell you? I thought you were unhappy because you are going to be married to my uncle." "Folly, folly, my dear little prude. Your uncle is a very good man, and a very grand match. I ought to be delighted at a prospect so brilliant." Even while Lucille spoke, she felt a powerful impulse to tell her little companion _all_--her fondness for Dubois, her aversion for Monsieur Le Prun, the scene with the strange woman, and her own forebodings; but such a confession would have been difficult to reconcile with her fixed resolution to let the affair take its course, and at all hazards marry the man whom, it was vain to disguise it from herself, she disliked, distrusted, and feared. "I was going to give you comfort by my own story. I never told you before that _I_, too, am affianced." "Affianced! and to whom?" "To the Marquis de Secqville." "Hey! Why that is the very gentleman of whom Monsieur de Blassemare told us such wicked stories the other day." "Did he?" she said, with a sigh. "Well, I often feared he was a prodigal; but heaven, I trust, will reclaim him." "But you do not love him?" "No. I never saw him but once." "And are you happy?" "Yes, quite happy now; but, dear Lucille, I was very miserable once. You must know that shortly after we were betrothed, when I was placed in the convent at Rouen, there was a nice girl there, of whom I soon grew very fond. Her brother, Henri, used to come almost every day to see her. He was about three years older than I, and so brave and beautiful. I did not know that I loved him until his sister went away, and his visits, of course, ceased; and when I could not see him any more, I thought my heart would break." "Poor little Julie!" "I was afraid of being observed when I wept, but I used to cry to myself all night long, and wish to die, as my mother used to fear long ago I would do before I came to be as old as I am now; and I could not even hear of him, for my friend, his sister, had married, and was living near Caen, and so we were quite separated." "You were, _indeed_, very miserable, my poor little friend." "Yes; but at last, after a whole year, she was passing through Rouen, and so she came to the convent to see me. Oh, when I saw her my heart fluttered so that I thought I should have choked. I don't know why it was, but I was afraid to ask for him; but at last, finding she would not speak of him at all, which I thought was ill-natured, though indeed it was not, I _did_ succeed, and asked her how he was; then all at once she began to cry, for he was dead; and knowing _that_, I forgot everything--I lost sight of everything--they said I fainted. And when I awoke again there was a good many of the sisters and some of the pensioners round me, and my friend still weeping; and the superioress was there, too, but I did not heed them, but only said I would not believe he was dead. Then I was very ill for more than a month, and my uncle came to see me; but I don't think he knew what had made me so; and as soon as I grew better the superioress was very angry with me, and told me it was very wicked, which it may have been, but indeed I could not help it; and she gave me in charge to sister Eugenie to bring me to a sense of my sinfulness, seeing that I ought not to have loved any one but him to whom I was betrothed." "Alas! poor Julie, I suppose she was a harsh preceptress also." "No, indeed; on the contrary, she was very kind and gentle. She was so young--only twenty-three--dear sister Eugenie!--and so pretty, though she was very pale, and oh, so thin; and when we were both alone in her room she used to let me tell her all my story, and she used to draw her hand over her pretty face, and cry so bitterly in return, and kiss me, and shake me by the hands, that I often thought she must once have loved some one also herself, and was weeping because she could never see him again; so I grew to love her very much; but I did not know all that time that sister Eugenie was dying. The day I took leave of her she seemed as if she was going to tell me something about herself, and I think now if I had pressed her she would. I am very sorry I did not, for it would have been pleasant to me as long as I live to have given the dear sister any comfort, and shown how truly I loved her. But it was not so, and only four months after we parted she died; but I hope we may meet, where I am sure she is gone, in heaven, and then she will know how much I loved her, and how good, and gentle, and kind, I always thought her." Poor little Julie shed tears at these words. "Now I do not love the Marquis," she continued, "nor I am sure does he love me. It will be but a match of convenience. I suppose he will continue to follow his amusements and I will live quietly at home; so after all it will make but little change to me, and I will still be as I am now, the widow of poor Henri." "You are so tranquil, dear Julie, because he is dead. Happy is it for you that he is in his grave. Come, let us return." They began to walk toward the cottage. "And how would you spend your days, Julie, had you the choice of your own way of life?" "I would take the vail. I would like to be a nun, and to die early, like sister Eugenie." Lucille looked at her with undisguised astonishment. "Take the vail!" she exclaimed, "so young, so pretty. _Parbleu_, I would rather work in the fields or beg my bread on the high-roads. Take the vail--no, no, no. Marguerite told me I had a great-aunt who took the vail, and three years after died mad in a convent in Paris. Ah, it is a sad life, Julie, it is a sad life!" It was the wish of the Fermier-General that his nuptials should be celebrated with as much privacy as possible. The reader, therefore, will lose nothing by our dismissing the ceremony as rapidly as may be. Let it suffice to say, that it _did_ take place, and to describe the arrangements with which it was immediately succeeded. Though Monsieur Le Prun had become the purchaser of the Charrebourg estate, he did not choose to live upon it. About eight leagues from Paris he possessed a residence better suited to his tastes and plans. It was said to have once belonged to a scion of royalty, who had contrived it with a view to realizing upon earth a sort of Mahomedan paradise. Nothing indeed could have been better devised for luxury as well as seclusion. From some Romish legend attaching to its site, it had acquired the name of the Chateau des Anges, a title which unhappily did not harmonize with the traditions more directly connected with the building itself. It was a very spacious structure, some of its apartments were even magnificent, and the entire fabric bore overpowering evidences, alike in its costly materials and finish, and in the details of its design, of the prodigal and voluptuous magnificence to which it owed its existence. It was environed by lordly forests, circle within circle, which were pierced by long straight walks diverging from common centers, and almost losing themselves in the shadowy distance. Studded, too, with a series of interminable fishponds, encompassed by hedges of beech, yew, and evergreens of enormous height and impenetrable density, under whose emerald shadows water-fowl of all sorts, from the princely swan down to the humble water-hen, were sailing and gliding this way and that, like rival argosies upon the seas. The view of the chateau itself, when at last, through those dense and extensive cinctures of sylvan scenery, you had penetrated to its site, was, from almost every point, picturesque and even beautiful. Successive terraces of almost regal extent, from above whose marble balustrades and rows of urns the tufted green of rare and rich plants, in a long, gorgeous wreath of foliage, was peeping, ran, tier above tier, conducting the eye, among statues and graceful shrubs, to the gables and chimneys of the quaint but vast chateau itself. The forecourt upon which the great avenue debouched was large enough for the stately muster of a royal levee; and at intervals, upon the balustrade which surrounded it, were planted a long file of stone statues, each originally holding a lamp, which, however, the altered habits of the place had long since dismounted. If the place had been specially contrived, as it was said to have been, for privacy, it could not have been better planned. It was literally buried in an umbrageous labyrinth of tufted forest. Even the great avenue commanded no view of the chateau, but abutted upon a fountain, backed by a towering screen of foliage, where the approach divided, and led by a double road to the court we have described. In fact, except from the domain itself, the very chimneys of the chateau were invisible for a circuit of miles around, the nearest point from which a glance of its roof could be caught being the heights situated a full league away. If the truth must be told, then, Monsieur Le Prun was conscious of some disparity in point of years between himself and his beautiful wife; and although he affected the most joyous confidence upon the subject, he was nevertheless as ill at ease as most old fellows under similar circumstances. It soon became, therefore, perfectly plain, that the palace to which the wealthy bridegroom had transported his beautiful wife was, in truth, but one of those enchanted castles in which enamored genii in fairy legends are described as guarding their captive princesses--a gorgeous and luxurious prison, to which there was no access, from which no escape, and where amidst all the treasures and delights of a sensuous paradise, the captive beauty languished and saddened. END OF PART I. [From the Examiner.] TO CHARLES DICKENS. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. Call we for harp or song? Accordant numbers, measured out, belong Alone, we hear, to bard. Let him this badge, for ages worn, discard; Richer and nobler now Than when the close-trimm'd laurel mark'd his brow, And from one fount his thirst Was slaked, and from none other proudly burst Neighing, the winged steed. Gloriously fresh were those young days indeed! Clear, if confined, the view: The feet of giants swept that early dew; More graceful came behind, And golden tresses waved upon the wind. Pity and Love were seen In earnest converse on the humble green; Grief too was there, but Grief Sat down with them, nor struggled from relief. Strong Pity was, strong he, But little love was bravest of the three. At what the sad one said Often he smiled, though Pity shook her head. Descending from their clouds, The Muses mingled with admiring crowds: Each had her ear inclined, Each caught and spoke the language of mankind From choral thraldom free... Dickens! didst thou teach _them_, or they teach _thee_? _September, 1850._ [From "Light and Darkness," by Catharine Crowe, Author of "The Night Side of Nature," &c. &c.] THE TWO MISS SMITHS. In a certain town in the West of England, which shall be nameless, there dwelt two maiden ladies of the name of Smith; each possessing a small independence, each residing, with a single maid-servant, in a small house, the drawing-room floor of which was let, whenever lodgers could be found; each hovering somewhere about the age of fifty, and each hating the other with a restless and implacable enmity. The origin of this aversion was the similarity of their names; each was Miss C. Smith, the one being called Cecilia, the other Charlotte--a circumstance which gave rise to such innumerable mistakes and misunderstandings, as were sufficient to maintain these ladies in a constant state of irritability and warfare. Letters, messages, invitations, parcels, bills, were daily missent, and opened by the wrong person; thus exposing the private affairs of one to the other; and as their aversion had long ago extinguished everything like delicacy on either side, any information so acquired was used without scruple to their mutual annoyance. Presents, too, of fruit, vegetables, or other delicacies from the neighboring gentry, not unfrequently found their way to the wrong house; and if unaccompanied by a letter, which took away all excuse for mistake, they were appropriated without remorse, even when the appropriating party felt confident in her heart that the article was not intended for her; and this not from greediness or rapacity, but from the absolute delight they took in vexing each other. It must be admitted, also, that this well-known enmity was occasionally played upon by the frolic-loving part of the community, both high and low; so that over and above the genuine mistakes, which were of themselves quite enough to keep the poor ladies in hot water, every now and then some little hoax was got up and practiced upon them, such as fictitious love-letters, anonymous communications, and so forth. It might have been imagined, as they were not answerable for their names, and as they were mutual sufferers by the similarity--one having as much right to complain of this freak of fortune as the other, that they might have entered into a compact of forbearance, which would have been equally advantageous to either party; but their naturally acrimonious dispositions prevented this, and each continued as angry with the other as she could have been if she had a sole and indefeasible right to the appellation of _C. Smith_, and her rival had usurped it in a pure spirit of annoyance and opposition. To be quite just, however, we must observe that Miss Cecilia was much the worse of the two; by judicious management Miss Charlotte might have been tamed, but the malice of Miss Cecilia was altogether inexorable. By the passing of the Reform Bill, the little town wherein dwelt these belligerent powers received a very considerable accession of importance; it was elevated into a borough, and had a whole live member to itself, which, with infinite pride and gratification, it sent to parliament, after having extracted from him all manner of pledges, and loaded him with all manner of instructions as to how he should conduct himself under every conceivable circumstance; not to mention a variety of bills for the improvement of the roads and markets, the erection of a town-hall, and the reform of the systems of watching, paving, lighting, &c., the important and consequential little town of B----. A short time previous to the first election--an event which was anticipated by the inhabitants with the most vivid interest--one of the candidates, a country gentleman who resided some twenty miles off, took a lodging in the town, and came there with his wife and family, in order, by a little courtesy and a few entertainments, to win the hearts of the electors and their friends; and his first move was to send out invitations for a tea and card party, which, in due time, when the preparations were completed, was to be followed by a ball. There was but one milliner and dressmaker of any consideration in the town of B----, and it may be imagined that on so splendid an occasion her services were in great request--so much so, that in the matter of head-dresses, she not only found that it would be impossible, in so short a period, to fulfill the commands of her customers, but also that she had neither the material nor the skill to give them satisfaction. It was, therefore, settled that she should send off an order to a house in Exeter, which was the county town, for a cargo of caps, toquets, turbans, &c., fit for all ages and faces--"such as were not disposed of to be returned;" and the ladies consented to wait, with the best patience they could, for this interesting consignment, which was to arrive, without fail, on the Wednesday, Thursday being the day fixed for the party. But the last coach arrived on Wednesday night without the expected boxes; however, the coachman brought a message for Miss Gibbs, the milliner, assuring her that they would be there the next morning without fail. Accordingly, when the first Exeter coach rattled through the little street of B----, which was about half-past eleven, every head that was interested in the freight was to be seen looking anxiously out for the deal boxes; and, sure enough, there they were--three of them--large enough to contain caps for the whole town. Then there was a rush up stairs for their bonnets and shawls; and in a few minutes troops of ladies, young and old, were seen hurrying toward the market-place, where dwelt Miss Gibbs--the young in pursuit of artificial flowers, gold bands, and such like adornments--the elderly in search of a more mature order of decoration. Amongst the candidates for finery, nobody was more eager than the two Miss Smiths; and they had reason to be so, not only because they had neither of them anything at all fit to be worn at Mrs. Hanaway's party, which was in a style much above the entertainments they were usually invited to, but also because they both invariably wore turbans, and each was afraid that the other might carry off the identical turban that might be most desirable for herself. Urged by this feeling, so alert were they, that they were each standing at their several windows when the coach passed, with their bonnets and cloaks actually on--ready to start for the plate!--determined to reach Miss Gibbs's in time to witness the opening of the boxes. But "who shall control his fate?" Just as Miss Cecilia was stepping off her threshold, she was accosted by a very gentlemanly looking person, who, taking off his hat, with an air really irresistible, begged to know if he had "the honor of seeing Miss Smith"--a question which was of course answered in the affirmative. "I was not quite sure," said he, "whether I was right, for I had forgotten the number; but I thought it was sixty," and he looked at the figures on the door. "This _is_ sixty, sir," said Miss Cecilia; adding to herself, "I wonder if it was sixteen he was sent to?" for at number sixteen lived Miss Charlotte. "I was informed, madam," pursued the gentleman, "that I could be accommodated with apartments here--that you had a first floor to let." "That is quite true, sir," replied Miss Cecilia, delighted to let her rooms, which had been some time vacant, and doubly gratified when the stranger added, "I come from Bath, and was recommended by a friend of yours, indeed probably a relation, as she bears the same name--Miss Joanna Smith." "I know Miss Joanna very well, sir," replied Miss Cecilia; "pray, walk up stairs, and I'll show you the apartments directly. (For," thought she, "I must not let him go out of the house till he has taken them, for fear he should find out his mistake.) Very nice rooms, sir, you see--everything clean and comfortable--a pretty view of the canal in front--just between the baker's and the shoemaker's; you'll get a peep, sir, if you step to this window. Then it's uncommonly lively; the Exeter and Plymouth coaches, up and down, rattling through all day long, and indeed all night too, for the matter of that. A beautiful little bedroom, back, too, sir--Yes, as you observe, it certainly does look over a brick-kiln; but there's no dust--not the least in the world--for I never allow the windows to be opened: altogether, there can't be a pleasanter situation than it is." The stranger, it must be owned, seemed less sensible of all these advantages than he ought to have been; however he engaged the apartments: it was but for a short time, as he had come there about some business connected with the election; and as Miss Joanna had so particularly recommended him to the lodging, he did not like to disoblige her. So the bargain was struck: the maid received orders to provision the garrison with bread, butter, tea, sugar, &c., whilst the gentleman returned to the inn to dispatch Boots with his portmanteau and carpet-bag. "You were only just in time, sir," observed Miss Cecilia, as they descended the stairs, "for I expected a gentleman to call at twelve o'clock to-day, who, I am sure, would have taken the lodgings." "I should be sorry to stand in the way," responded the stranger, who would not have been at all sorry for an opportunity of backing out of the bargain. "Perhaps you had better let him have them--I can easily get accommodated elsewhere." "Oh dear, no, sir; dear me! I wouldn't do such a thing for the world!" exclaimed Miss Cecilia, who had only thrown out this little inuendo by way of binding her lodger to his bargain, lest, on discovering his mistake, he should think himself at liberty to annul the agreement. For well she knew that it _was_ a mistake: Miss Joanna of Bath was Miss Charlotte's first cousin, and, hating Miss Cecilia, as she was in duty bound to do, would rather have sent her a dose of arsenic than a lodger, any day. She had used every precaution to avoid the accident that had happened, by writing on a card, "Miss Charlotte Smith, No. 16, High street, B----, _opposite the linendrapers shop_," but the thoughtless traveler, never dreaming of the danger in which he stood, lost the card, and, trusting to his memory, fell into the snare. Miss Cecilia had been so engrossed by her anxiety to hook this fish before her rival could have a chance of throwing out a bait for him, that, for a time, she actually forgot Miss Gibbs and the turban; but now that point was gained, and she felt sure of her man, her former care revived with all its force, and she hurried along the street toward the market-place, in a fever of apprehension lest she should be too late. The matter certainly looked ill; for, as she arrived breathless at the door, she saw groups of self-satisfied faces issuing from it, and, amongst the rest, the obnoxious Miss Charlotte's physiognomy appeared, looking more pleased than anybody. "Odious creature!" thought Miss Cecilia; "as if she supposed that any turban in the world could make her look tolerable!" But Miss Charlotte did suppose it; and moreover she had just secured the very identical turban that of all the turbans that ever were made was most likely to accomplish this desideratum--at least so she opined. Poor Miss Cecilia! Up stairs she rushed, bouncing into Miss Gibbs's little room, now strewed with finery. "Well, Miss Gibbs, I hope you have something that will suit me?" "Dear me, mem," responded Miss Gibbs, "what a pity you did not come a little sooner. The only two turbans we had are just gone--Mrs. Gosling took one, and Miss Charlotte Smith the other--two of the beautifulest--here they are, indeed--you shall see them;" and she opened the boxes in which they were deposited, and presented them to the grieved eye of Miss Cecilia. She stood aghast! The turbans were very respectable turbans indeed; but to her disappointed and eager desires they appeared worthy of Mahomet the Prophet, or the grand Sultana, or any other body, mortal or immortal, that has ever been reputed to wear turbans. And this consummation of perfection she had lost! lost just by a neck! missed it by an accident, that, however gratifying she had thought it at the time, she now felt was but an inadequate compensation for her present disappointment. But there was no remedy. Miss Gibbs had nothing fit to make a turban of; besides, Miss Cecilia would have scorned to appear in any turban that Miss Gibbs could have compiled, when her rival was to be adorned with a construction of such superhuman excellence. No! the only consolation she had was to scold Miss Gibbs for not having kept the turbans till she had seen them, and for not having sent for a greater number of turbans. To which objurgations Miss Gibbs could only answer: "That she had been extremely sorry indeed, when she saw the ladies were bent upon having the turbans, as she had ordered two entirely with a view to Miss Cecilia's accommodation; and moreover that she was never more surprised in her life than when Mrs. Gosling desired one of them might be sent to her, because Mrs. Gosling never wore turbans; and if Miss Gibbs had only foreseen that she would have pounced upon it in that way, she, Miss Gibbs, would have taken care she should never have seen it at all," &c., &c., &c.,--all of which the reader may believe, if he or she choose. As for Miss Cecilia, she was implacable, and she flounced out of the house, and through the streets, to her own door, in a temper of mind that rendered it fortunate, as far as the peace of the town of B---- was concerned, that no accident brought her in contact with Miss Charlotte on the way. As soon as she got into her parlor she threw off her bonnet and shawl, and plunging into her arm-chair, she tried to compose her mind sufficiently to take a calm view of the dilemma, and determine on what line of conduct to pursue--whether to send an excuse to Mrs. Hanaway, or whether to go to the party in one of her old head-dresses. Either alternative was insupportable. To lose the party, the game at loo, the distinction of being seen in such good society--it was too provoking; besides, very likely people would suppose she had not been invited; Miss Charlotte, she had no doubt, would try to make them believe so. But then, on the other hand, to wear one of her old turbans was so mortifying--they were so very shabby, so unfashionable--on an occasion, too, when everybody would be so well-dressed! Oh, it was aggravating--vexatious in the extreme! She passed the day in reflection--chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancies; recalling to herself how well she looked in the turban--for she had tried it on; figuring what would have been Miss Charlotte's mortification if she had been the disappointed person--how triumphantly she, Miss Cecilia, would have marched into the room with the turban on her head--how crestfallen the other would have looked; and then she varied her occupation by resuscitating all her old turbans, buried in antique band-boxes deep in dust, and trying whether it were possible, out of their united materials, to concoct one of the present fashionable shape and dimensions. But the thing was impracticable: the new turban was composed of crimson satin and gold lace, hers of pieces of muslin and gauze. When the mind is very much engrossed, whether the subject of contemplation be pleasant or unpleasant, time flies with inconceivable rapidity; and Miss Cecilia was roused from her meditations by hearing the clock in the passage strike four, warning her that it was necessary to come to some decision, as the hour fixed for the party, according to the primitive customs of B----, was half-past seven, when the knell of the clock was followed by a single knock at the door, and the next moment her maid walked into the room with--what do you think?--the identical crimson and gold turban in her hand! "What a beauty!" cried Susan, turning it round, that she might get a complete view of it in all its phases. "Was there any message, Sue?" inquired Miss Cecilia, gasping with agitation, for her heart was in her throat. "No, ma'am," replied Sue; "Miss Gibbs's girl just left it; she said it should have come earlier, but she had so many places to go to." "And she's gone, is she, Susan?" "Yes, ma'am, she went directly--she said she hadn't got half through yet." "Very well, Susan, you may go; and remember, I'm not at home if anybody calls; and if any message comes here from Miss Gibbs, you'll say I'm gone out, and you don't expect me home till very late." "Very well, ma'am." "And I say, Susan, if they send here to make any inquiries about that turban, you'll say you know nothing about it, and send them away." "Very well, ma'am," said Susan, and down she dived to the regions below. Instead of four o'clock, how ardently did Miss Cecilia wish it was seven; for the danger of the next three hours was imminent. Well she understood how the turban had got there--it was a mistake of the girl--but the chance was great that, before seven o'clock arrived, Miss Charlotte would take fright at not receiving her head-dress, and would send to Miss Gibbs to demand it, when the whole thing would be found out. However no message came: at five o'clock, when the milk-boy rang, Miss Cecilia thought she should have fainted: but that was the only alarm. At six she began to dress, and at seven she stood before her glass in full array, with the turban on her head. She thought she had never looked so well; indeed, she was sure she had not. The magnitude of the thing gave her an air, and indeed a feeling of dignity and importance that she had never been sensible of before. The gold lace looked brilliant even by the light of her single tallow candle; what would it do in a well-illumined drawing-room! Then the color was strikingly becoming, and suited her hair exactly--Miss Cecilia, we must here observe, was quite gray; but she wore a frontlet of dark curls, and a little black silk skull-cap, fitted close to her head, which kept all neat and tight under the turban. She had not far to go; nevertheless, she thought it would be as well to set off at once, for fear of accidents, even though she lingered on the way to fill up the time, for every moment the danger augmented; so she called to Susan to bring her cloak, and her calash, and her overalls, and being well packed up by the admiring Sue, who declared the turban was "without exception the beautifulest thing she ever saw," she started; determined, however, not to take the direct way, but to make a little circuit by a back street, lest, by ill luck, she should fall foul of the enemy. "Susan," said she, pausing as she was stepping off the threshold, "if anybody calls you'll say I have been gone to Mrs. Hanaway's some time; and, Susan, just put a pin in this calash to keep it back, it falls over my eyes so that I can't see." And Susan pinned a fold in the calash, and away went the triumphant Miss Cecilia. She did not wish to be guilty of the vulgarity of arriving first at the party; so she lingered about till it wanted a quarter to eight, and then she knocked at Mrs. Hanaway's door, which a smart footman immediately opened, and, with the alertness for which many of his order are remarkable, proceeded to disengage the lady from her external coverings--the cloak, the overalls, the calash; and then, without giving her time to breathe, he rushed up the stairs, calling out "Miss Cecilia Smith;" whilst the butler, who stood at the drawing-room door, threw it open, reiterating, "Miss Cecilia Smith;" and in she went. But, O reader, little do you think, and little did she think, where the turban was that she imagined to be upon her head, and under the supposed shadow of which she walked into the room with so much dignity and complacence. It was below in the hall, lying on the floor, fast in the calash, to which Susan, ill-starred wench! had pinned it; and the footman, in his cruel haste, had dragged them both off together. With only some under-trappings on her cranium, and altogether unconscious of her calamity, smiling and bowing, Miss Cecilia advanced toward her host and hostess, who received her in the most gracious manner, thinking, certainly, that her taste in a head-dress was peculiar, and that she was about the most extraordinary figure they had ever beheld, but supposing that such was the fashion she chose to adopt--the less astonished or inclined to suspect the truth, from having heard a good deal of the eccentricities of the two spinsters of B----. But to the rest of the company, the appearance she made was inexplicable; they had been accustomed to see her ill dressed, and oddly dressed, but such a flight as this they were not prepared for. Some whispered that she had gone mad; others suspected that it must be accident--that somehow or other she had forgotten to put on her head-dress; but even if it were so, the joke was an excellent one, and nobody cared enough for her to sacrifice their amusement by setting her right. So Miss Cecilia, blessed in her delusion, triumphant and happy, took her place at the whist table, anxiously selecting a position which gave her a full view of the door, in order that she might have the indescribable satisfaction of seeing the expression of Miss Charlotte's countenance when she entered the room--that is, if she came; the probability was, that mortification would keep her away. But no such thing--Miss Charlotte had too much spirit to be beaten out of the field in that manner. She had waited with patience for her turban, because Miss Gibbs had told her, that, having many things to send out, it might be late before she got it; but when half-past six arrived, she became impatient, and dispatched her maid to fetch it. The maid returned, with "Miss Gibbs's respects, and the girl was still out with the things; she would be sure to call at Miss Charlotte's before she came back." At half-past seven there was another message, to say that the turban had not arrived; by this time the girl had done her errands, and Miss Gibbs, on questioning her, discovered the truth. But it was too late--the mischief was irreparable--Susan averring, with truth, that her mistress had gone to Mrs. Hanaway's party some time, with the turban on her head. We will not attempt to paint Miss Charlotte's feelings--that would be a vain endeavor. Rage took possession of her soul; her attire was already complete, all but the head-dress, for which she was waiting. She selected the best turban she had, threw on her cloak and calash, and in a condition of mind bordering upon frenzy, she rushed forth, determined, be the consequences what they might, to claim her turban, and expose Miss Cecilia's dishonorable conduct before the whole company. By the time she arrived at Mrs. Hanaway's door, owing to the delays that had intervened, it was nearly half-past eight; the company had all arrived; and whilst the butler and footmen were carrying up the refreshments, one of the female servants of the establishment had come into the hall, and was endeavoring to introduce some sort of order and classification amongst the mass of external coverings that had been hastily thrown off by the ladies; so, when Miss Charlotte knocked, she opened the door and let her in, and proceeded to relieve her of her wraps. "I suppose I'm very late," said Miss Charlotte, dropping into a chair to seize a moment's rest, whilst the woman drew off her boots; for she was out of breath with haste, and heated with fury. "I believe everybody's come, ma'am," said the woman. "I should have been here some time since," proceeded Miss Charlotte, "but the most shameful trick has been played me about my--my--Why--I declare--I really believe--" and she bent forward and picked up the turban--the identical turban, which, disturbed by the maid-servant's maneuvers, was lying upon the floor, still attached to the calash by Sukey's unlucky pin. Was there ever such a triumph? Quick as lightning, the old turban was off and the new one on, the maid with bursting sides assisting in the operation; and then, with a light step and a proud heart, up walked Miss Charlotte, and was ushered into the drawing-room. As the door opened, the eyes of the rivals met. Miss Cecilia's feelings were those of disappointment and surprise. "Then she has got a turban too! How could she have got it?"--and she was vexed that her triumph was not so complete as she had expected. But Miss Charlotte was in ecstasies. It may be supposed she was not slow to tell the story; it soon flew round the room, and the whole party were thrown into convulsions of laughter. Miss Cecilia alone was not in the secret; and as she was successful at cards, and therefore in good humor, she added to their mirth, by saying that she was glad to see everybody so merry, and by assuring Mrs. Hanaway, when she took her leave, that she had spent a delightful evening, and that her party was the gayest she had ever seen in B----. "I am really ashamed," said Mrs. Hanaway, "at allowing the poor woman to be the jest of my company; but I was afraid to tell her the cause of our laughter, from the apprehension of what might have followed her discovery of the truth." "And it must be admitted," said her husband, "that she well deserves the mortification that awaits her when she discovers the truth." Poor Miss Cecilia _did_ discover the truth, and never was herself again. She parted with her house, and went to live with a relation at Bristol; but her spirit was broken; and, after going through all the stages of a discontented old age, ill-temper, peevishness, and fatuity--she closed her existence, as usual with persons of her class, unloved and unlamented. SIR NICHOLAS AT MARSTON MOOR. BY THE AUTHOR OF LILLIAN. I. To horse, to horse, Sir Nicholas; the clarion's note is high; To horse, to horse, Sir Nicholas; the huge drum makes reply: Ere this hath Lucas marchéd with his gallant cavaliers, And the bray of Rupert's trumpets grows fainter on our ears; To horse, to horse, Sir Nicholas; white Guy is at the door; And the vulture whets his beak o'er the field of Marston Moor. Up rose the lady Alice from her brief and broken prayer; And she brought a silken standard down the narrow turret-stair: Oh, many were the tears those radiant eyes had shed, As she worked the bright word "Glory" in the gay and glancing thread; And mournful was the smile that o'er those beauteous features ran, As she said: "It is your lady's gift, unfurl it in the van." "It shall flutter, noble wench, where the best and boldest ride; Through the steel-clad files of Skippon, and the black dragoons of Pride; The recreant soul of Fairfax will feel a sicklier qualm, And the rebel lips of Oliver give out a louder psalm, When they see my lady's gew-gaw flaunt bravely on their wing, And hear her loyal soldier's shout, For God and for the king!" II. Tis noon; the ranks are broken along the royal line; They fly, the braggarts of the court, the bullies of the Rhine: Stout Langley's cheer is heard no more, and Astley's helm is down; And Rupert sheathes his rapier with a curse and with a frown: And cold Newcastle mutters, as he follows in the flight, "The German boar had better far have supped in York to-night." The knight is all alone, his steel cap cleft in twain, His good buff jerkin crimsoned o'er with many a gory stain; But still he waves the standard, and cries amid the rout, "For church and king, fair gentlemen, spur on, and fight it out!"-- And now he wards a roundhead's pike, and now he hums a stave, And here he quotes a stage-play, and there he fells a knave. Good speed to thee, Sir Nicholas! thou hast no thought of fear, Good speed to thee, Sir Nicholas! but fearful odds are here. The traitors ring thee round, and with every blow and thrust, "Down, down," they cry, "with Belial, down with him to the dust!" "I would," quoth grim old Oliver, "that Belial's trusty sword This day were doing battle for the saints and for the Lord!" III. The lady Alice sits with her maidens in her bower; The gray-haired warden watches on the castle's highest tower.-- "What news, what news, old Anthony?"--"The field is lost and won; The ranks of war are melting as the mists beneath the sun; And a wounded man speeds hither,--I am old and cannot see, Or sure I am that sturdy step my master's step should be." "I bring thee back the standard from as rude and red a fray As e'er was proof of soldier's thews, or theme for minstrel's lay: Bid Hubert fetch the silver bowl, and liquor quantum suff.; I'll make a shift to drain it, ere I part with boot and buff; Though Guy through many a gaping wound is breathing out his life, And I come to thee a landless man, my fond and faithful wife. Sweet, we will fill our money-bags, and freight a ship for France, And mourn in merry Paris for this poor realm's mischance: Or, if the worst betide me, why better ax or rope, Than life with Lenthal for a King, and Peters for a Pope! Alas, alas, my gallant Guy!--out on the crop-eared boor, That sent me with my standard on foot from Marston Moor." [From Fraser's Magazine.] LIFE AT A WATERING PLACE. ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN. "Hurrah, old fellow!" shouted Ashburner's host, on the seventh morning of his visit; "here's a letter from Carl. I have been expecting it, and he has been expecting us, some time. So prepare yourself to start to-morrow." "He can't have been expecting _me_, you know," suggested the guest, who, though remarkably domesticated for so short a time, hardly felt himself yet entitled to be considered one of the family. "Oh, _us_ means Clara, and myself, and baby, and any friends we choose to bring,--or, I should say, who will do us the honor to accompany us. We are hospitable people and the more the merrier. I know how much house-room Carl has; there is always a prophet's chamber, as the parsons call it, for such occasions. You _must_ come; there's no two ways about that. You will see two very fine women there,--_nice persons_, as you would say: my sisters-in-law, Miss Vanderlyn, and Mrs. Carl Benson." "But at any rate, would it not be better to write first, and apprise him of the additional visitor?" "We should be there a week before our letter. _Ecoutez!_ There is no post-office near us here, and my note would have to go to the city by a special messenger. Then the offices along the Hudson are perfectly antediluvian and barbarous, and mere mockery and delusion. Observe, I speak of the small local posts; on the main routes letters travel fast enough. You may send to Albany in nine hours; to Carl's place, which is about two-thirds of the distance to Albany, it would take more than half as many days,--if, indeed, it arrived at all. I remember once propounding this problem in the _Blunder and Bluster:--'If a letter sent from New York to Hastings, distance 22 miles, never gets there, how long will it take one to go from New York to Red Hook, distance 110 miles?'_ We are shockingly behind you in our postal arrangements; _there_ I give up the country. 'No, you musn't write, but come yourself,' as Penelope said to Ulysses." Ashburner made no further opposition, and they were off the next morning accordingly. Before four a cart had started with the baggage, and directions to take up Ashburner's trunks and man-servant on the way. Soon after the coachman and groom departed with the saddle-horses, trotters, and wagon; for Benson, meditating some months' absence, took with him the whole of his stud, except the black colt, who was strongly principled against going on the water, and had nearly succeeded in breaking his master's neck on one occasion, when Harry insisted on his embarking. The long-tailed bays were left harnessed to the _Rockaway_,--a sort of light omnibus open at the sides, very like a _char-à-banc_, except that the seats run crosswise, and capable of accommodating from six to nine persons: that morning it held six, including the maid and nurse. Benson took the reins at a quarter-past five, and as the steamboat dock was situated at the very southern extremity of the city, and they had three miles of terrible pavement to traverse, besides nearly twelve of road, he arrived there just seven minutes before seven; at which hour, to the second, the good boat Swallow was to take wing. In a twinkling the horses were unharnessed and embarked; the carriage instantly followed them; and Harry, after assuring himself that all his property, animate and inanimate, was safely shipped, had still time to purchase, for his own and his friend's edification, the _Jacobin_, the _Blunder and Bluster_, the _Inexpressible_, and other popular papers, which an infinity of dirty boys were crying at the top of their not very harmonious voices. "Our people do business pretty fast," said he, in a somewhat triumphant tone. "How this would astonish them on the Continent! See there!" as a family, still later than his own, arrived with a small mountain of trunks, all of which made their way on board as if they had wings. "When I traveled in Germany two years ago with Mrs. B. and her sister, we had eleven packages, and it used to take half-an-hour at every place to weigh and ticket them beforehand, not withstanding which one or two would get lost every now and then. In my own country I have traveled in all directions with large parties, never have been detained five minutes for baggage, and never lost anything except once--an umbrella. Now we are going." The mate cried, "All ashore!" the newsboys and apple-venders disappeared; the planks were drawn in; the long, spidery walking-beam began to play; and the Swallow had started with her five hundred passengers. "Let us stroll around the boat: I want to show you how we get up these things here." The ladies' cabin on deck and the two general cabins below were magnificently furnished with the most expensive material, and in the last Parisian style, and this display and luxury were the more remarkable as the fare was but twelve shillings for a hundred and sixty miles. Ashburner admitted that the furniture was very elegant, but thought it out of place, and altogether too fine for the purpose. "So you would say, probably, that the profuse and varied dinner we shall have is thrown away on the majority of the passengers, who bolt it in half-an-hour. But there are some who habitually appreciate the dinner and the furniture: it does them good, and it does the others no harm,--nay, it does _them_ good, too. The wild man from the West, who has but recently learned to walk on his hind legs, is dazzled with these sofas and mirrors, and respects them more than he would more ordinary furniture. At any rate, it's a fault on right side. The furniture of an English hotel is enough to give a traveler a fit of the blues, such an extreme state of fustiness it is sure to be in. Did it ever strike you, by the way, how behindhand your countrymen are in the matter of hotels? When a traveller passes from England into Belgium (putting France out of the question), it is like going from Purgatory into Paradise." "I don't think I ever stayed at a London hotel." "Of course not; when your governor was out of town, and you not with him, you had your club. This is exactly what all travelers in England complain of. Everything for the exclusive use of the natives is good--except the water, and of that you don't use much in the way of a beverage; everything particularly tending to the comfort of strangers and sojourners--as the hotels, for instance, is bad, dear, and uncomfortable. I don't think you like to have foreigners among you, for your arrangements are calculated to drive them out of the country as fast as possible!" "Perhaps we don't, as a general principle," said Ashburner, smiling. "Well, I won't say that it is not the wisest policy. We have suffered much by being too liberal to foreigners. But then you must not be surprised at what they say about you. However, it is not worth while to lose the view for our discussion. Come up-stairs and take a good look at the river of rivers." Ashburner felt no disposition to deny the beauty and grandeur of the Hudson. At first, the shore was lined with beetling ramparts of trap-rock. After many miles of this, the clear water spread out into a great lake, with apparently no egress. But on turning a promontory, the river stretched away nearly as wide as before, under wooded cliffs not dissimilar to those of the Rhine. Then came the picturesque Catskill mountains; and near these Harry was to stop, but Ashburner did not stop with him. At West Point the boat had taken up, among other passengers, two young officers of his acquaintance, then quartered in Canada. They were going to take the tour of the lakes, including, of course, Niagara, and offered Ashburner, if he would accompany them on this excursion first, to show him the lions of Canada afterward. On consulting with Benson, he found that the trip would not occupy more than a month or five weeks, and that after that time the watering-place season would be at its height. "And it will be an excuse for my staying with Carl till August," Harry continued. "The women are half crazy to be at Oldport already. I would rather stay at Ravenswood. We shall expect you there at the end of July. But," and here, for the first time since their acquaintance, Ashburner perceived a slight embarrassment in his manner, "don't bring your friends." "Oh, dear, no!" said Ashburner, not comprehending what could have put such a thing into the other's head, or what was coming next. "I don't mean to Ravenswood, but to Oldport; that is, if you can help their coming. To tell you the truth, your university men, and literary men generally, are popular enough here, but your army is in very bad odor. The young fellows who come down among us from Canada behave shockingly. They don't act like gentlemen or Christians." Ashburner hastened to assure him that Captain Blank and Lieutenant Dash were both gentlemen and Christians, in the ordinary acceptation of the terms, and had never been known to misconduct themselves in any way. "Doubtless, inasmuch as they are your friends, but the general principle remains the same. So many of your young officers have misconducted themselves that the _primâ facie_ evidence is always against one of them, and he stands a chance of being coolly treated." Ashburner wanted to know what the young officers had done. "Everything they could do to go counter to the habits and prejudices of the people among whom they were, and to show their contempt of American society; to act, in short, as if they were among uncivilized people. For instance, it is a custom at these watering-place hotels to dress for the _table-d'hôte_. Now, I do not think it altogether reasonable that a man should be expected to make his evening toilet by three in the afternoon, and, indeed, I do not strictly conform to the rule myself. But these men came in with flannel shirts and dirty shoes, and altogether in a state unfit for ladies' company. Perhaps, however, we were too fastidious in this. But what do you say to a youngster's seating himself upon a piano in the public parlor, while a lady is playing on it?" Ashburner allowed that it was rather unceremonious. "By various similar acts, trivial, perhaps, individually, but forming a very disagreeable aggregate, these young men made themselves so unpopular that one season the ladies, by common consent, refused to dance with any of them. But there is worse behind. These gentlemen, so stupid in a drawing-room, are sharp enough in borrowing money, and altogether oblivious of repaying it." Ashburner remembered the affair of Ensign Lawless, and made up his mind to undergo another repetition of it. "I don't speak of my individual case, the thing has happened fifty times. I could tell of a dozen friends who have been victimized in this way during the last three years. In fact, I believe that your _jeunes militaires_ have formed a league to avenge the Mississippi bondholders, and recover their lost money under the form of these nominal loans. You may think it poetic justice, but we New Yorkers have no fancy to pay the Mississippians' debts in this way." It would be foreign to our present purpose to accompany Ashburner in his Northwestern and Canadian tour. Suffice it to say, that he returned by the first of August, very much pleased, having seen many things well worth seeing, and experienced no particular annoyance, except the one predicted by Benson, that he sometimes _had to take care of his servant_. Neither shall we say much of his visit to Ravenswood, where, indeed, he only spent a few hours, arriving there in the morning and leaving it in the afternoon of the same day, and had merely time to partake of a capital lunch, and to remark that his entertainer had a beautiful place and a handsome wife, and was something like his younger brother, but more resembling an Englishman than any American he had yet seen. The party to Oldport was increased by the addition of Miss Vanderlyn, a tall, stylish girl, more striking than her sister, but less delicately beautiful. Though past twenty, she had been out only one season, having been kept back three years by various accidents. But though new to society, she had nothing of the book-muslin timidity about her; nor was she at all abashed by the presence of the titled foreigner. On the contrary, she addressed him with perfect ease of manner, in French, professing, as an apology for conversing in that language, a fear that he might not be able to understand her English,--_"Parceque chez vous, on dit que nous autres Americaines, ne parlons pas l'Anglais comme il faut."_ As we are not writing a handbook or geographical account of the Northern States, it will not be necessary to mention where the fashionable watering-place of Oldport Springs is situated--not even what State it is in--suffice it to say, that from Carl Benson's place thither was a day's journey, performed partly by steamboat, partly by rail, and the last forty miles by stage-coach, or, as the Americans say, "for shortness," by stage. The water portion of their journey was soon over, nor did Ashburner much regret it, for he had been over this part of the route before on his way to Canada, and the river is not remarkably beautiful above the Catskill range. On taking the cars, Benson seized the opportunity to enlighten his friend with a quantity of railroad statistics and gossip, such as, that the American trains averaged eighteen miles an hour, including stoppages,--about two miles short of the steamboat average; that they cost about one-fifth of an English road, or a dollar for a pound, which accounted for their deficiency in some respects; that there were more than three thousand miles of rail in the country; that there was no division of first, second, and third class, but that some lines had ladies cars--that is to say, cars for the gentlemen with ladies and the ladies without gentlemen--and some had separate cars for the ladies and gentlemen of color; that there had been some attempts to get up smoking-cars after the German fashion, but the public mind was not yet fully prepared for it; that one of the southern lines had tried the experiment of introducing a _restaurant_ and other conveniences, with tolerable success; and other facts of more or less interest. Ashburner for his part, on examining his ticket, found upon the back of it a list of all the stations on the route, with their times and distances--a very convenient arrangement; and he was also much amused at the odd names of some of the stations--Nineveh, Pompey, Africa, Cologne, and others equally incongruous. "Don't be afraid of laughing," said Benson, who guessed what he was smiling at. "Whenever I am detained at a country tavern, if there duly happens to be a good-sized map of the United States there, I have enough to amuse me in studying the different styles of names in the different sections of the Union--different in style, but alike in impropriety. In our State, as you know, the fashion is for classical and oriental names. In New England there is a goodly amount of old English appellations, but often sadly misapplied; for instance, an inland town will be called Falmouth, or Oldport, like the place we are going to. The aboriginal names, often very harmonious, had been generally displaced, except in Maine, where they are particularly long, and jaw-breaking, such as _Winnipiscoggir_ and _Chargogagog_. Still we have some very pretty Indian names left in New York; _Ontario_, for instance, and _Oneida_, and _Niagara_, which you who have been there know is Pronounced Niágara, To rhyme with _staggerer_, And not Niagára, To rhyme with _starer_." "What does _Niagara_ mean?" "_Broken water_, I believe; but one gets so many different meanings for these names, from those who profess to know more or less about the native dialects, that you can never be certain. For instance, a great many will tell you, on Chateaubriand's authority, that _Mississippi_ means _Father of the waters_. Some years ago one of our Indian scholars stated that this was an error; that the literal meaning of Mississippi was _old-big-strong_--not quite so poetic an appellation. I asked Albert Gallatin about it at the time--he was considered our best man on such subjects--and he told me that the word, or words, for the name is made up of two, signified _the entire river_. This is a fair specimen of the answers you get. I never had the same explanation of an Indian name given me by two men who pretended to understand the Indian languages." "What rule does a gentleman adopt in naming his country-seat when he acquires a new one, or is there any rule?" "There are two natural and proper expedients, one to take the nearest aboriginal name that is pretty and practicable, the other to adopt the name from some natural feature. Of this latter we have two very neat examples in the residences of our two greatest statesmen, Clay and Webster, which are called _Ashland_ and _Marshfield_--appellations exactly descriptive of the places. But very often mere fancy names are adopted, and frequently in the worst possible taste, by people too who have great taste in other respects. I wanted my brother to call his place Carlsruhe--that would have been literally appropriate, though sounding oddly at first. But as it belonged originally to his father-in-law, it seemed but fair that his wife should have the naming of it, and she was _so_ fond of the Bride of Lammermoor! Well, I hope Carl will set up a few crows some day, just to give a little color to the name. But, after all, what's in a name? We are to stop at Constantinople; if they give us a good supper and bed there (and they will unless the hotel is much altered for the worse within two years), they may call the town Beelzebub for me." But Benson reckoned without his host. They were fated to pass the night, not at Constantinople, but at the rising village of Hardscrabble, consisting of a large hotel and a small blacksmith's shop. The _contretemps_ happened in this wise. The weather was very hot--it always is from the middle of June to the middle of September--but this day had been particularly sultry, and toward evening oppressed nature found relief in a thunder-storm, and such a storm! Ashburner, though anything but a nervous man, was not without some anxiety, and the ladies were in a sad fright; particularly Mrs. Benson, who threatened hysterics, and required a large expenditure of Cologne and caresses to bring her round. At last the train came to a full stop at Hardscrabble, about thirty-six miles on the wrong side of Constantinople. Even before the usual three minutes' halt was over our travelers suspected some accident; their suspicions were confirmed when the three minutes extended to ten, and ultimately the conductor announced that just beyond this station half a mile of the road had been literally washed away, so that further progress was impossible. Fortunately by this time the rain had so far abated that the passengers were able to pass from the shelter of the cars (there was no covered way at the station) to that of the spacious hotel _stoop_ without being very much wetted. Benson recollected that there was a canal at no great distance, which, though comparatively disused since the establishment of the railroad, still had some boats on it, and he thought it probable that they might finish their journey in this way--not a very comfortable or expeditious one, but better than standing still. It appeared however on inquiry that the canal was also put _hors de combat_ by the weather, and nothing was to be done that way. Only two courses remained, either to go back to Clinton, or to remain for the night where they were. "This hotel ought to be able to accommodate us all," remarked a fellow-passenger near them. He might well say so. The portico under which they stood (built of the purest white pine, and modeled after that of a Grecian temple with eight columns) fronted at least eighty feet. The house was several stories high, and if the front were anything more than a mere shell, must contain rooms for two hundred persons. How the building came into its present situation was a mystery to Ashburner; it looked as if it had been transported bodily from some large town, and set down alone in the wilderness. The probability is, that some speculators, judging from certain signs that a town was likely to arise there soon, had built the hotel so as to be all ready for it. There was no need to question the landlord: he had already been diligently assuring every one that he could accommodate all the passengers, who indeed did not exceed a hundred in number. Logicians tell us, that a great deal of the trouble and misunderstanding which exists in this naughty world, arises from men not defining their terms in the outset. The landlord of Hardscrabble had evidently some peculiar ideas of his own as to the meaning of the term _accommodate_. The real state of the case was, that he had any quantity of rooms, and a tolerably liberal supply of bedsteads, but his stock of bedding was by no means in proportion; and he was, therefore, compelled to multiply it by process of division, giving the hair mattress to one, the feather bed to another, the straw bed to a third; and so with the pillows and bolsters as far as they would go. This was rather a long process, even with American activity, especially as some of the hands employed were temporarily called off to attend to the supper table. The meal, which was prepared and eaten with great promptitude, was a mixture of tea and supper. Very good milk, pretty good tea, and pretty bad coffee, represented the drinkables; and for solids, there was a plentiful provision of excellent bread and butter, new cheese, dried beef in very thin slices, or rather _chips_, gingerbread, dough-nuts, and other varieties of home-made cake, sundry preserves, and some pickles. The waiters were young women--some of them very pretty and lady-like. The Bensons kept up a conversation with each other and Ashburner in French, which he suspected to be a customary practice of "our set" when in public, as indeed it was, and one which tended not a little to make them unpopular. A well-dressed man opposite looked so fiercely at them that the Englishman thought he might have partially comprehended their discourse and taken offense at it, till he was in a measure reassured by seeing him eat poundcake and cheese together,--a singularity of taste about which he could not help making a remark to Benson. "Oh, that's nothing," said Harry. "Did you never, when you were on the lakes, see them eat ham and molasses? It is said to be a western practice: I never was there; but I'll tell you what I _have_ seen. A man with cake, cheese, smoked-beef, and preserves, all on his plate together, and paying attention to them all indiscriminately. He was not an American either, but a Creole Frenchman of New Orleans, who had traveled enough to know better." Soon after supper most of the company seemed inclined bedward; but there were no signs of beds for some time. Benson's party, who were more amused than fatigued by their evening's experience, spread the carpet of resignation, and lit the cigar of philosophy. All the passengers did not take it so quietly. One tall, melancholy-faced man, who looked as if he required twice the ordinary amount of sleep, was especially anxious to know "where they were going to put him." "Don't be afraid, sir," said the landlord, as he shot across the room on some errand; "we'll tell you before you go to bed." With which safe prediction the discontented one was fain to content himself. At length, about ten or half-past, the rooms began to be in readiness, and their occupants to be marched off to them in squads of six or eight at a time,--the long corridors and tall staircases of the hotel requiring considerable pioneering and guidance. Benson's party came among the last. Having examined the room assigned to the ladies, Harry reported it to contain one bed and half a washstand; from which he and Ashburner had some misgivings as to their own accommodation, but were not exactly prepared for what followed, when a small boy with a tallow candle and face escorted them up three flights of stairs into a room containing two small beds and a large spittoon, and not another single article of furniture. "I say, boy!" quoth Benson, in much dudgeon, turning to their chamberlain, "suppose we should want to wash in the morning, what are we to do?" "I don't know, sir," answered the boy; and depositing the candle on the floor, disappeared in the darkness. "By Jove!" ejaculated the fastidious youth, "there isn't as much as a hook in the wall to hang one's coat on. It's lucky we brought up our carpet-bags with us, else we should have to look out a clean spot on the floor for our clothes." Ashburner was not very much disconcerted. He had traveled in so many countries, notwithstanding his youth, that he could pass his nights anyhow. In fact, he had never been at a loss for sleep in his life, except on one occasion, when, in Galway, a sofa was assigned to him at one side of a small parlor, on the other side of which three Irish gentlemen were making a night of it. So they said their prayers, and went to bed, like good boys. But their slumbers were not unbroken. Ashburner dreamed that he was again in Venice, and that the musquitoes of that delightful city, of whose venomousness and assiduity he retained shuddering recollections, were making an onslaught upon him in great numbers; while Benson awoke toward morning with a great outcry; in apology for which he solemnly assured his friend, that two seconds before he was in South Africa, where a lion of remarkable size and ferocity had caught him by the leg. And on rising they discovered some spots of blood on the bed-clothes, showing that their visions had not been altogether without foundation in reality. The Hardscrabble hotel, grand in its general outlines, had overlooked the trifling details of wash-stands and chamber crockery. Such of these articles as it _did_ possess, were very properly devoted to the use of the ladies; and accordingly Ashburner and Benson, and forty-five more, performed their matutinal ablutions over a tin basin in the bar-room, where Harry astonished the natives by the production of his own particular towel and pocket comb. The weather had cleared up beautifully, the railroad was repaired, and the train ready to start as soon as breakfast was over. After this meal, as miscellaneous as their last night's supper, while the passengers were discharging their reckoning, Ashburner noticed that his friend was unusually fussy and consequential, asked several questions, and made several remarks in a loud tone, and altogether seemed desirous of attracting attention. When it came to his turn to pay, he told out the amount, not in the ordinary dirty bills, but in hard, ringing half-dollars, which had the effect of drawing still further notice upon him. "Five dollars and a quarter," said Benson, in a measured and audible tone; "and, Landlord, here's a quarter extra." The landlord looked up in surprise; so did the two or three men standing nearest Harry. "It's to buy beef with, to feed 'em. Feed 'em well now, don't forget!" "Feed 'em! feed who?" and the host looked as if he thought his customer crazy. "Feed _who_? Why look here!" and bending over the counter, Harry uttered a portentous monosyllable, in a pretended whisper, but really as audible to the bystanders as a stage aside. Three or four of those nearest exploded. "Yes, feed 'em _well_ before you put anybody into your beds again, or you'll have to answer for the death of a fellow-Christian some day, that's all. Good morning!" And taking his wife under his arm, Benson stalked off to the cars with a patronizing farewell nod, amid a sympathetic roar, leaving the host irresolute whether to throw a decanter after him, or to join in the general laugh. * * * * * Hook and one of his friends happened to come to a bridge. "Do you know who built this bridge?" said he to Hook. "No, but if you go over you'll be tolled." [From the December number of Graham's Magazine.] TO A CELEBRATED SINGER. BY R.H. STODDARD. Oft have I dreamed of music rare and fine, The wedded melody of lute and voice, Divinest strains that made my soul rejoice, And woke its inner harmonies divine. And where Sicilia smooths the ruffled seas, And Tempe hallows all its purple vales, Thrice have I heard the noble nightingales, All night entranced beneath the gloomy trees; But music, nightingales, and all that Thought Conceives of song is naught To thy rich voice, which echoes in my brain, And fills my longing heart with a melodious pain! A thousand lamps were lit--I saw them not-- Nor all the thousands round me like a sea, Life, Death and Time, and all things were forgot; I only thought of thee! Meanwhile the music rose sublime and strong, But sunk beneath thy voice which rose alone, Above its crumbled fragments to thy throne, Above the clouds of Song. Henceforth let Music seal her lips, and be The silent Ministrant of Poesy; For not the delicate reed that Pan did play To partial Midas at the match of old, Nor yet Apollo's lyre, with chords of gold, That more than won the crown he lost that day; Nor even the Orphean lute, that half set free-- Oh why not all?--the lost Eurydice-- Were fit to join with thee; Much less our instruments of meaner sound, That track thee slowly o'er enchanted ground, Unfit to lift the train thy music leaves, Or glean around its sheaves! I strive to disentangle in my mind Thy many-knotted threads of softest song, Whose memory haunts me like a voiceless wind, Whose silence does it wrong. No single tone thereof, no perfect sound Lingers, but dim remembrance of the whole; A sound which was a Soul. The Soul of sound diffused an atmosphere around So soft, so sweet, so mellow, rich and deep! So like a heavenly soul's ambrosial breath, It would not wake but only deepen Sleep Into diviner Death! Softer and sweeter than the jealous flute, Whose soft, sweet voice grew harsh before its own, It stole in mockery its every tone, And left it lone and mute; It flowed like liquid pearl through golden cells, It jangled like a string of golden bells, It trembled like a wind in golden strings, It dropped and rolled away in golden rings; Then it divided and became a shout, That Echo chased about, However wild and fleet, Until it trod upon its heels with flying feet! At last it sunk and sunk from deep to deep, Below the thinnest word, And sunk till naught was heard, But charméd Silence sighing in its sleep! Powerless and mute beneath thy mighty spell, My heart was lost within itself and thee, As when a pearl is melted in its shell, And sunken in the sea! I sunk, and sunk beneath thy song, but still I thirsted after more, the more I sank; A flower that drooped with all the dew it drank, But still upheld its cup for Heaven to fill; My inmost soul was drunk with melody, Which thou didst pour around, To crown the feast of sound, And lift to every lip, but chief to me, Whose spirit uncontrolled, Drained all the fiery wine and clutched its cup of gold! Would I could only hear thee once again, But once again, and pine into the air, And fade away with all this hopeless pain, This hope divine, and this divine despair! If we were only Voices, if our minds Were only voices, what a life were ours! My soul would woo thee in the vernal winds, And thine would answer me in summer showers, At morn and even, when the east and west Were bathed in floods of purple poured from Heaven, We would delay the Morn upon its nest, And fold the wings of Even! All day we'd fly with azure wings unfurled, And gird a belt of Song about the world; All night we'd teach the winds of night a tune, While charméd oceans slept beneath a yellow moon! And when aweary grown of earthly sport, We'd wind our devious flight from star to star, Till we beheld the palaces afar, Where Music holds her court. Entered and beckoned up the aisles of sound, Where starry melodies are marshaled round, We'd kneel before her throne with eager dread, And when she kissed us melt in trances deep, While angels bore us to her bridal bed, And sung our souls asleep! O Queen of Song! as peerless as thou art, As worthy as thou art to wear thy crown, Thou hast a deeper claim to thy renown, And a diviner music in thy heart; Simplicity and goodness walk with thee, Beneath the wings of watchful Seraphim: And Love is wed to whitest Chastity, And Pity sings its hymn. Nor is thy goodness passive in its end, But ever active as the sun and rain-- Unselfish, lavish of its golden gain-- Not want alone, but a whole nation's--Friend! This is thy glory, this thy noblest fame; And when thy glory fades, and fame departs, This will perpetuate a deathless name, Where names are deathless--deep in loving hearts! [From Miss McIntosh's "Christmas Gift."] THE WOLF-CHASE. BY C. WHITEHEAD. During the winter of 1844, being engaged in the northern part of Maine, I had much leisure to devote to the wild sports of a new country. To none of these was I more passionately addicted than to skating. The deep and sequestered lakes of this State, frozen by the intense cold of a northern winter, present a wide field to the lovers of this pastime. Often would I bind on my skates, and glide away up the glittering river, and wind each mazy streamlet that flowed beneath its fetters on toward the parent ocean, forgetting all the while time and distance in the luxurious sense of the gliding motion--thinking of nothing in the easy flight, but rather dreaming, as I looked through the transparent ice at the long weeds and cresses that nodded in the current beneath, and seemed wrestling with the waves to let them go; or I would follow on the track of some fox or otter, and run my skate along the mark he had left with his dragging tail until the trail would enter the woods. Sometimes these excursions were made by moonlight, and it was on one of these occasions that I had a rencounter, which even now, with kind faces around me, I cannot recall without a nervous looking-over-my-shoulder feeling. I had left my friend's house one evening just before dusk, with the intention of skating a short distance up the noble Kennebec, which glided directly before the door. The night was beautifully clear. A peerless moon rode through an occasional fleecy cloud, and stars twinkled from the sky and from every frost-covered tree in millions. Your mind would wonder at the light that came glinting from ice, and snow-wreath, and incrusted branches, as the eye followed for miles the broad gleam of the Kennebec, that like a jeweled zone swept between the mighty forests on its banks. And yet all was still. The cold seemed to have frozen tree, and air, and water, and every living thing that moved. Even the ringing of my skates on the ice echoed back from the Moccasin Hill with a startling clearness, and the crackle of the ice as I passed over it in my course seemed to follow the tide of the river with lightning speed. I had gone up the river nearly two miles when, coming to a little stream which empties into the larger, I turned in to explore its course. Fir and hemlock of a century's growth met overhead, and formed an archway radiant with frost-work. All was dark within, but I was young and fearless, and as I peered into an unbroken forest that reared itself on the borders of the stream, I laughed with very joyousness: my wild hurra rang through the silent woods, and I stood listening to the echo that reverberated again and again, until all was hushed. I thought how often the Indian hunter had concealed himself behind these very trees--how often his arrow had pierced the deer by this very stream, and his wild halloo had here rung for his victory. And then, turning from fancy to reality, I watched a couple of white owls, that sat in their hooded state, with ruffled pantalets and long ear-tabs, debating in silent conclave the affairs of their frozen realm, and wondering if they, "for all their feathers, were a-cold," when suddenly a sound arose--it seemed to me to come from beneath the ice; it sounded low and tremulous at first, until it ended in one wild yell. I was appalled. Never before had such a noise met my ears. I thought it more than mortal--so fierce, and amid such an unbroken solitude, it seemed as if a fiend had blown a blast from an infernal trumpet. Presently I heard the twigs on shore snap, as if from the tread of some animal, and the blood rushed back to my forehead with a bound that made my skin burn, and I felt relieved that I had to contend with things earthly, and not of spiritual nature--my energies returned, and I looked around me for some means of escape. The moon shone through the opening at the mouth of the creek by which I had entered the forest, and considering this the best means of escape, I darted toward it like an arrow. 'Twas hardly a hundred yards distant, and the swallow could scarcely excel my desperate flight; yet, as I turned my head to the shore, I could see two dark objects dashing through the underbrush at a pace nearly double in speed to my own. By this great speed, and the short yells which they occasionally gave, I knew at once that these were the much dreaded gray wolf. I had never met with these animals, but from the description given of them I had but little pleasure in making their acquaintance. Their untamable fierceness, and the untiring strength which seems part of their nature, render them objects of dread to every benighted traveler. "With their long gallop, which can tire The deer-hound's hate, the hunter's fire," they pursue their prey--never straying from the track of their victim--and as the wearied hunter thinks he has at last outstripped them, he finds that they but waited for the evening to seize their prey, and falls a prize to the tireless animals. The bushes that skirted the shore flew past with the velocity of lightning as I dashed on in my flight to pass the narrow opening. The outlet was nearly gained; one second more and I would be comparatively safe, when my pursuers appeared on the bank directly above me, which here rose to the height of ten feet. There was no time for thought, so I bent my head and dashed madly forward. The wolves sprang, but miscalculating my speed, sprang behind, while their intended prey glided out upon the river. Nature turned me toward home. The light flakes of snow spun from the iron of my skates, and I was some distance from my pursuers, when their fierce howl told me I was still their fugitive. I did not look back, I did not feel afraid, or sorry, or glad; one thought of home, of the bright faces awaiting my return, of their tears if they never should see me, and then every energy of body and mind was exerted for escape. I was perfectly at home on the ice. Many were the days that I spent on my good skates, never thinking that at one time they would be my only means of safety. Every half minute an alternate yelp from my fierce attendants made me but too certain that they were in close pursuit. Nearer and nearer they came; I heard their feet pattering on the ice nearer still, until I could feel their breath and hear their snuffing scent. Every nerve and muscle in my frame was stretched to the utmost tension. The trees along the shore seemed to dance in the uncertain light, and my brain turned with my own breathless speed, yet still they seemed to hiss forth their breath with a sound truly horrible, when an involuntary motion on my part turned me out of my course. The wolves close behind, unable to stop, and as unable to turn on the smooth ice, slipped and fell, still going on far ahead; their tongues were lolling out, their white tusks glaring from their bloody mouths, their dark, shaggy breasts were fleeced with foam, and as they passed me their eyes glared, and they howled with fury. The thought flashed on my mind, that by this means I could avoid them, viz., by turning aside whenever they came too near; for they, by the formation of their feet, are unable to run on ice except on a straight line. I immediately acted upon this plan. The wolves, having regained their feet, sprang directly toward me. The race was renewed for twenty yards up the stream; they were already close on my back, when I glided round and dashed directly past my pursuers. A fierce yell greeted my evolution, and the wolves, slipping upon their haunches, sailed onward, presenting a perfect picture of helplessness and baffled rage. Thus I gained nearly a hundred yards at each turning. This was repeated two or three times, every moment the animals getting more excited and baffled. At one time, by delaying my turning too long, my fierce antagonists came so near, that they threw the white foam over my dress as they sprang to seize me, and their teeth clashed together like the spring of a fox-trap. Had my skates failed for one instant, had I tripped on a stick, or caught my foot in a fissure in the ice, the story I am now telling would never have been told. I thought all the chances over; I knew where they would first take hold of me if I fell; I thought how long it would be before I died, and when there would be a search for the body that would already have its tomb; for oh! how fast man's mind traces out all the dead colors of death's picture, only those who have been near the grim original can tell. But soon I came opposite the house, and my hounds--I knew their deep voices--roused by the noise, bayed furiously from the kennels. I heard their chains rattle; how I wished they would break them, and then I would have protectors that would be peers to the fiercest denizens of the forest. The wolves, taking the hint conveyed by the dogs, stopped in their mad career, and after a moment's consideration, turned and fled. I watched them until their dusky forms disappeared over a neighboring hill. Then, taking off my skates, I wended my way to the house, with feelings which may be better imagined than described. But even yet, I never see a broad sheet of ice in the moonshine, without thinking of that snuffling breath and those fearful things that followed me so closely down the frozen Kennebec. [From Recollections and Anecdotes of the Bard of Glamorgan.] STORY OF A POET. During one of his perambulations in Cardiganshire, the Bard found himself, on a dreary winter evening, at too great a distance from the abode of any friend, for him to reach it at a reasonable hour: he was also more than commonly weary, and therefore turned into a roadside public house to take up his night's lodgings. He had been there only a short time, standing before the cheerful fire, when a poor peddler entered with a pack on his back, and evidently suffering from cold and fatigue. He addressed the landlord in humble tone, begging he might lodge there, but frankly avowing he had no money. Trade, he said, had of late been unfavorable to him--no one bought his goods, and he was making the best of his way to a more populous district. There were, however, articles of value in his pack, much more than sufficient to pay for his entertainment, and he tendered any part of them, in payment, or in pledge for the boon of shelter and refreshment. The landlord, however, was one of those sordid beings who regard money as the standard of worth in their fellow-men, and the want of it as a warrant for insult; he, therefore, sternly told the poor wayfarer there was no harbor for him under that roof, unless he had coin to pay for it. Again and again, the weary man, with pallid looks and feeble voice, entreated the heartless wretch, and was as often repulsed in a style of bulldog surliness, till at length he was roughly ordered to leave the house. The bard was not an unmoved witness of this revolting scene; and his heart had been sending forth its current, in rapid and yet more rapid pulsations to his now glowing extremities, as he listened and looked on. He had only one solitary shilling in his pocket, which he had destined to purchase his own accommodations for that wintry night; but its destination was now changed. Here was a needy man requiring it more than himself; and according to his generous views of the social compact, it became his duty to sacrifice his minor necessities to the greater ones of his fellow-creature. Snatching the shilling from its lurking place, he placed it in the hand of the peddler, telling him _that_ would pay for his lodging, and lodging he should have, in spite of the savage who had refused it. Then darting a withering look at the publican, he exclaimed, "Villain! do you call yourself a man? You, who would turn out a poor exhausted traveler from your house on a night like this, under any circumstances! But he has offered you ample payment for his quarters and you refused him. Did you mean to follow him and rob him--perhaps murder him? You have the heart of a murderer; you are a disgrace to humanity, and I will not stay under your roof another minute; but turn out this poor traveler at your peril--you dare not refuse the money he can now offer you." Having thus vented his indignant feeling with his usual heartiness, Iolo seized his staff and walked out into the inclement night, penniless indeed, and supperless too, but with a rich perception of the truth uttered by Him who "had not where to lay his head," though omnipotent as well as universal in his beneficence--"It is more blessed to give than to receive." A walk of many miles lay between him and his friend's house, to which he now directed his steps, and by the time he entered early on the following morning his powers had nearly sunk under cold and exhaustion. A fever was the sequel, keeping him stationary for several weeks. [From Dickens's Household Words.] HIRAM POWERS'S GREEK SLAVE. They say Ideal Beauty cannot enter The house of anguish. On the threshold stands This alien Image with the shackled hands, Called the Greek Slave: as if the artist meant her, (The passionless perfection which he lent her, Shadowed, not darkened, where the sill expands,) To, so, confront man's crimes in different lands, With man's ideal sense. Pierce to the centre, Art's fiery finger! and break up ere long The serfdom of this world. Appeal, fair stone, From God's pure heights of beauty, against man's wrong! Catch up, in thy divine face, not alone East griefs, but west, and strike and shame the strong, By thunders of white silence, overthrown. [From Papers for the People.] THE BLACK POCKET-BOOK. "What do you pay for peeping?" said a baker's boy with a tray on his shoulder to a young man in a drab-colored greatcoat, and with a cockade in his hat, who, on a cold December's night was standing with his face close to the parlor window of a mean house, in a suburb of one of our largest seaport towns in the south of England. Tracy Walkingham, which was the name of the peeper, might have answered that he paid _dear enough_; for in proportion as he indulged himself with these surreptitious glances, he found his heart stealing away from him, till he literally had not a corner of it left that he could fairly call his own. Tracy was a soldier; but being in the service of one of his officers, named D'Arcy, was relieved from wearing his uniform. At sixteen years of age he had run away from a harsh schoolmaster, and enlisted in an infantry regiment; and about three weeks previous to the period at which our story opens, being sent on an early errand to his master's laundress, his attention had been arrested by a young girl, who, coming hastily out of an apothecary's shop with a phial in her hand, was rushing across the street, unmindful of the London coach and its four horses, which were close upon her, and by which she would assuredly have been knocked down, had not Tracy seized her by the arm and snatched her from the danger. "You'll be killed if you don't look sharper," said he carelessly; but as he spoke, she turned her face toward him. "I hope my roughness has not hurt you?" he continued in a very different tone: "I'm afraid I gripped your arm too hard?" "I'm very much obliged to you," she said; "you did not hurt me at all. Thank you," she added, looking back to him as she opened the door of the opposite house with a key which she held in her hand. The door closed, and she was gone ere Tracy could find words to detain her; but if ever there was a case of love at first sight, this was one. Short as had been the interview, she carried his heart with her. For some minutes he stood staring at the house, too much surprised and absorbed in his own feelings to be aware that, as is always the case if a man stops to look at anything in the street, he was beginning to collect a little knot of people about him, who all stared in the same direction too, and were asking each other what was the matter. Warned by this discovery, the young soldier proceeded on his way; but so engrossed and absent was he, that he had strode nearly a quarter of a mile beyond the laundress' cottage before he discovered his error. On his return, he contrived to walk twice past the house; but he saw nothing of the girl. He had a mind to go into the apothecary's and make some inquiry about her; but that consciousness which so often arrests such inquiries arrested his, and he went home, knowing no more than his eyes and ears had told him--namely, that this young damsel had the loveliest face and the sweetest voice that fortune had yet made him acquainted with, and, moreover, that the possessor of these charms was apparently a person in a condition of life not superior to his own. Her dress and the house in which she lived both denoted humble circumstances, if not absolute poverty, although he felt that her countenance and speech indicated a degree of refinement somewhat inconsistent with this last conjecture. She might be a reduced gentlewoman. Tracy hoped not, for if so, poor as she was, she would look down upon him; she might, on the contrary, be one of those natural aristocrats, born Graces, that nature sometimes pleases herself with sending into the world; as in her humorous moments she not unfrequently does the reverse, bestowing on a princess the figure and port of a market-woman. Whichever it was, the desire uppermost in his mind was to see her again; and accordingly, after his master was dressed, and gone to dinner, he directed his steps to the same quarter. It was now evening, and he had an opportunity of more conveniently surveying the house and its neighborhood without exciting observation himself. For this purpose he crossed over to the apothecary's door, and looked around him. It was a mean street, evidently inhabited by poor people, chiefly small retail dealers; almost every house in it being used as a shop, as appeared from the lights and the merchandise in the windows, except the one inhabited by the unknown beauty. They were all low buildings of only two stories; and that particular house was dark from top to bottom, with the exception of a faint stripe of light which gleamed from one of the lower windows, of which there were only two, apparently from a rent or seam in the shutter, which was closed within. On crossing over to take a nearer survey, Tracy perceived that just above a green curtain which guarded the lower half of the window from the intrusions of curiosity, the shutters were divided into upper and lower, and that there was a sufficient separation between them to enable a person who was tall enough to place his eye on a level with the opening, to see into the room. Few people, however, were tall enough to do this, had they thought it worth their while to try; but Tracy, who was not far from six feet high, found he could accomplish the feat quite easily. So, after looking round to make sure nobody was watching him, he ventured on a peep; and there indeed he saw the object of all this interest sitting on one side of a table, whilst a man, apparently old enough to be her father, sat on the other. He was reading, and she was working, with the rich curls of her dark-brown hair tucked carelessly behind her small ears, disclosing the whole of her young and lovely face, which was turned toward the window. The features of the man he could not see, but his head was bald, and his figure lank; and Tracy fancied there was something in his attitude that indicated ill health. Sometimes she looked up and spoke to her companion, but when she did so, it was always with a serious, anxious expression of countenance, which seemed to imply that her communications were on no very cheerful subject. The room was lighted by a single tallow candle, and its whole aspect denoted poverty and privation, while the young girl's quick and eager fingers led the spectator to conclude she was working for her bread. It must not be supposed that all these discoveries were the result of one enterprise. Tracy could only venture on a peep now and then when nobody was nigh; and many a time he had his walk for nothing. Sometimes, too, his sense of propriety revolted, and he forebore from a consciousness that it was not a delicate proceeding thus to spy into the interior of this poor family at moments when they thought no human eye was upon them: but his impulse was too powerful to be always thus resisted, and fortifying himself with the consideration that his purpose was not evil, he generally rewarded one instance of self-denial by two or three of self-indulgence. And yet the scene that met his view was so little varied, that it might have been supposed to afford but a poor compensation for so much perseverance. The actors and their occupation continued always the same; and the only novelty offered was, that Tracy sometimes caught a glimpse of the man's features, which, though they betrayed evidence of sickness and suffering, bore a strong resemblance to those of the girl. All this, however, to make the most of it, was but scanty fare for a lover; nor was Tracy at all disposed to content himself with such cold comfort. He tried what walking through the street by day would do, but the door was always closed, and the tall green curtain presented an effectual obstacle to those casual glances on which alone he could venture by sunlight. Once only he had the good fortune again to meet this "bright particular star" out of doors, and that was one morning about eight o'clock, when he had been again sent on an early embassy to the laundress. She appeared to have been out executing her small marketings, for she was hastening home with a basket on her arm. Tracy had formed a hundred different plans for addressing her--one, in short, suited to every possible contingency--whenever the fortunate opportunity should present itself; but, as is usual in similar cases, now that it did come, she flashed upon him so suddenly, that in his surprise and agitation he missed the occasion altogether. The fact was that she stepped out of a shop just as he was passing it; and her attention being directed to some small change which she held in her hand, and which she appeared to be anxiously counting, she never even saw him, and had reentered her own door before he could make up his mind what to do. He learned, however, by this circumstance, that the best hope of success lay in his going to Thomas Street at eight o'clock; but alas! this was the very hour that his services could not be dispensed with at home; and although he made several desperate efforts, he did not succeed in hitting the lucky moment again. Of course he did not neglect inquiry; but the result of his perquisitions afforded little encouragement to his hopes of obtaining the young girl's acquaintance. All that was known of the family was, that they had lately taken the house, that their name was Lane, that they lived quite alone, and were supposed to be very poor. Where they came from, and what their condition in life might be, nobody knew or seemed desirous to know, since they lived so quietly, that they had hitherto awakened no curiosity in the neighborhood. The Scotsman at the provision shop out of which she had been seen to come, pronounced her a _wise-like girl_; and the apothecary's lad said that she was uncommon _comely and genteel-like_, adding that her father was in very bad health. This was the whole amount of information he could obtain, but to the correctness of it, as regarded the bad health and the poverty, his own eyes bore witness. Nearly three weeks had elapsed since Tracy's first meeting with the girl, when one evening he thought he perceived symptoms of more than ordinary trouble in this humble ménage. Just as he placed his eye to the window, he saw the daughter entering the room with an old blanket, which she wrapped round her father, whilst she threw her arms about his neck, and tenderly caressed him; at the same time he remarked that there was no fire in the grate, and that she frequently applied her apron to her eyes. As these symptoms denoted an unusual extremity of distress, Tracy felt the strongest desire to administer some relief to the sufferers; but by what stratagem to accomplish his purpose it was not easy to discover. He thought of making the apothecary or the grocer his agent, requesting them not to name who had employed them; but he shrank from the attention and curiosity such a proceeding would awaken, and the evil interpretations that might be put upon it. Then he thought of the ribald jests and jeers to which he might subject the object of his admiration, and he resolved to employ no intervention, but to find some means or other of conveying his bounty himself; and having with this view inclosed a sovereign in half a sheet of paper, he set out upon his nightly expedition. He was rather later than usual, and the neighboring church clock struck nine just as he turned into Thomas Street; he was almost afraid that the light would be extinguished, and the father and daughter retired to their chambers, as had been the case on some previous evenings; but it was not so: the faint gleam showed that they were still there, and after waiting some minutes for a clear coast, Tracy approached the window--but the scene within was strangely changed. The father was alone--at least except himself there was no living being in the room--but there lay a corpse on the floor; at the table stood the man with a large black notebook in his hand, out of which he was taking what appeared to the spectator, so far as he could discern, to be bank notes. To see this was the work of an instant; to conclude that a crime had been committed was as sudden! and under the impulse of fear and horror that seized him, Tracy turned to fly, but in his haste and confusion, less cautious than usual, he struck the window with his elbow. The sound must have been heard within; and he could not resist the temptation of flinging an instantaneous glance into the room to observe what effect it had produced. It was exactly such as might have been expected; like one interrupted in a crime, the man stood transfixed, his pale face glaring at the window, and his hands, from which the notes had dropped suspended in the attitude in which they had been surprised; with an involuntary exclamation of grief and terror, Tracy turned again and fled. But he had scarcely gone two hundred yards when he met the girl walking calmly along the street with her basket on her arm. She did not observe him, but he recognized her; and urged by love and curiosity, he could not forbear turning back, and following her to the door. On reaching it, she, as usual, put her key into the lock; but it did not open as usual; it was evidently fastened on the inside. She lifted the knocker, and let it fall once, just loud enough to be heard within; there was a little delay, and then the door was opened--no more, however, than was sufficient to allow her to pass in--and immediately closed. Tracy felt an eager desire to pursue this strange drama further, and was standing still, hesitating whether to venture a glance into the room, when the door was again opened, and the girl rushed out, leaving it unclosed, and ran across the street into the apothecary's shop. "She is fetching a doctor to the murdered man," thought Tracy. And so it appeared, for a minute had scarcely elapsed, when she returned, accompanied by the apothecary and his assistant; they all three entered the house; and upon the impulse of the moment, without pausing to reflect on the impropriety of the intrusion, the young soldier entered with them. The girl, who walked first with a hasty step, preceded them into that room on the right of the door which, but a few minutes before, Tracy had been surveying through the window. The sensations with which he now entered it formed a singular contrast to his anticipations, and furnished a striking instance of what we have all occasion to remark as we pass through life--namely, that the thing we have most earnestly desired, frequently when it does come, arrives in a guise so different to our hopes, and so distasteful to the sentiments or affections which have given birth to the wish, that what we looked forward to as the summit of bliss, proves, when we reach it, no more than a barren peak strewn with dust and ashes. Fortunate, indeed, may we esteem ourselves if we find nothing worse to greet us. How often had Tracy fancied that if he could only obtain entrance into that room he should be happy! As long as he was excluded from it, it was _his_ summit, for he could see no further, and looked no further, sought no further: it seemed to him that, once there, all that he desired must inevitably follow. Now he _was_ there, but under what different circumstances to those he had counted on! with what different feelings to those his imagination had painted! "What's the matter?" inquired Mr. Adams the apothecary, as he approached the body, which still lay on the floor. "I hope it's only a fit!" exclaimed the girl, taking the candle off the table, and holding it in such a manner as to enable the apothecary to examine the features. "He's dead, I fancy," said the latter, applying his fingers to the wrist. "Unloose his neckcloth, Robert, and raise the head." This was said to the assistant, who, having done as he was told, and no sign of life appearing, Mr. Adams felt for his lancet, and prepared to bleed the patient. The lancet, however, had been left in the pocket of another coat, and Robert being sent over to fetch it, Tracy stepped forward and took his place at the head of the corpse; the consequence of which was, that, when the boy returned, Mr. Adams bade him go back and mind the shop, as they could do very well without him; and thus Tracy's intrusion was, as it were, legitimized, and all awkwardness removed from it. Not, however, that he had been sensible of any: he was too much absorbed with the interest of the scene to be disturbed by such minor considerations. Neither did anybody else appear discomposed or surprised at his presence: the apothecary did not know but he had a right to be there; the boy, who remembered the inquiries Tracy had made with regard to the girl, concluded they had since formed an acquaintance; the girl herself was apparently too much absorbed in the distressing event that had occurred to have any thoughts to spare on minor interests; and as for the man, he appeared to be scarcely conscious of what was going on around him. Pale as death, and with all the symptoms of extreme sickness and debility, he sat bending somewhat forward in an old arm-chair, with his eyes fixed on the spot where the body lay; but there was "no speculation" in those eyes, and it was evident that what he seemed to be looking at he did not see. To every thoughtful mind the corporeal investiture from which an immortal spirit has lately fled must present a strange and painful interest; but Tracy felt now a more absorbing interest in the mystery of the living than the dead; and as strange questionings arose in his mind with regard to the pale occupant of the old arm-chair as concerning the corpse that was stretched upon the ground. Who was this stranger, and how came he there lying dead on the floor of that poor house? And where was the pocket-book and the notes? Not on the table, not in the room, so far as he could discern. They must have been placed out of sight; and the question occurred to him, was _she_ a party to the concealment? But both his heart and his judgment answered _no_. Not only her pure and innocent countenance, but her whole demeanor acquitted her of crime. It was evident that her attention was entirely engrossed by the surgeon's efforts to recall life to the inanimate body; there was no _arrière pensée_, no painful consciousness plucking at her sleeve; her mind was anxious, but not more so than the ostensible cause justified, and there was no expression of mystery or fear about her. How different to the father, who seemed terror-struck! No anxiety for the recovery of the stranger, no grief for his death, appeared in him; and it occurred to Tracy that he looked more like one condemned and waiting for execution than the interested spectator of another's misfortune. No blood flowed, and the apothecary having pronounced the stranger dead, proposed, with the aid of Tracy, to remove him to a bed; and as there was none below, they had to carry him up stairs, the girl preceding them with a light, and leading the way into a room where a small tent bedstead without curtains, two straw-bottomed chairs, with a rickety table, and cracked looking-glass, formed nearly all the furniture; but some articles of female attire lying about, betrayed to whom the apartment belonged, and lent it an interest for Tracy. Whilst making these arrangements for the dead but few words were spoken. The girl looked pale and serious, but said little; the young man would have liked to ask a hundred questions, but did not feel himself entitled to ask one; and the apothecary, who seemed a quiet, taciturn person, only observed that the stranger appeared to have died of disease of the heart, and inquired whether he was a relation of the family. "No," replied the girl; "he's no relation of ours--his name is Aldridge." "Not Ephraim Aldridge?" said the apothecary. "Yes; Mr. Ephraim Aldridge," returned she: "my father was one of his clerks formerly." "You had better send to his house immediately," said Mr. Adams. "I forget whether he has any family?" "None but his nephew, Mr. Jonas," returned the girl. "I'll go there directly, and tell him." "Your father seems in bad health?" observed Mr. Adams, as he quitted the room, and proceeded to descend the stairs. "Yes; he has been ill a long time," she replied, with a sad countenance; "and nobody seems to know what's the matter with him." "Have you had any advice for him," inquired the apothecary. "Oh, yes, a great deal, when first he was ill; but nobody did him any good." By this time they had reached the bottom of the stairs; and Mr. Adams, who now led the van, instead of going out of the street door, turned into the parlor again. "Well, sir," said he, addressing Lane, "this poor gentleman is dead. I should have called in somebody else had I earlier known who he was; but it would have been useless, life must have been extinct half an hour before I was summoned. Why did you not send for me sooner?" "I was out," replied the girl, answering the question that had been addressed to her father. "Mr. Aldridge had sent me away for something, and when I returned I found him on the floor, and my father almost fainting. It was a dreadful shock for him, being so ill." "How did it happen?" inquired Mr. Adams, again addressing Lane. A convulsion passed over the sick man's face, and his lip quivered as he answered in a low sepulchral tone. "He was sitting on that chair, talking about--about his nephews, when he suddenly stopped speaking, and fell forward. I started up, and placed my hands against his breast to save him, and then he fell backward upon the floor." "Heart, no doubt. Probably a disease of long standing," said Mr. Adams. "But it has given you a shock: you had better take something, and go to bed." "What should he take?" inquired the daughter. "I'll send over a draught," replied the apothecary, moving toward the door; "and you won't neglect to give notice of what has happened--it must be done to-night." "It is late for you to go out," observed Tracy, speaking almost for the first time since he entered the house. "Couldn't I carry the message for you?" "Yes: if you will, I shall be much obliged," said she; "for I do not like to leave my father again to-night. The house is No. 4, West Street." Death is a great leveler, and strong emotions banish formalities. The offer was as frankly accepted as made; and his inquiry whether he could be further useful being answered by "No, thank you--not to-night," the young man took his leave and proceeded on his mission to West Street in a state of mind difficult to describe--pleased and alarmed, happy and distressed. He had not only accomplished his object by making the acquaintance of Mary Lane, but the near view he had had of her, both as regarded her person and behavior, confirmed his admiration and gratified his affection; but, as he might have told the boy who interrupted him, he had paid dear for peeping. He had seen what he would have given the world not to have seen; and whilst he eagerly desired to prosecute his suit to this young woman, and make her his wife, he shrank with horror from the idea of having a thief and assassin for his father-in-law. Engrossed with these reflections he reached West Street before he was aware of being half-way there, and rang the bell of No. 4. It was now past eleven o'clock, but he had scarcely touched the wire, before he heard a foot in the passage, and the door opened. The person who presented himself had no light, neither was there any in the hall, and Tracy could not distinguish to whom he spoke when he said, "is this the house of Mr. Ephraim Aldridge?" "It is: what do you want?" answered a man's voice, at the same time that he drew back, and made a movement toward closing the door. "I have been requested to call here to say that Mr. Aldridge is"--And here the recollection that the intelligence he bore would probably be deeply afflicting to the nephew he had heard mentioned as the deceased man's only relation, and to whom he was now possibly speaking, arrested the words in his throat, and after a slight hesitation he added--"is taken ill." "Ill!" said the person who held the door in his hand, which he now opened wider. "Where? What's the matter with him? Is he very ill? Is it any thing serious?" The tone in which these questions were put relieved Tracy from any apprehension of inflicting pain, and he rejoined at once, "I'm afraid he is dead." "Dead!" reiterated the other, throwing the door wide. "Step in if you please. Dead! how should that be? He was very well this afternoon. Where is he?" And so saying, he closed the street door, and led the young soldier into a small parlor, where a lamp with a shade over it, and several old ledgers, were lying on the table. "He's at Mr. Lane's in Thomas Street," replied Tracy. "But are you sure he's dead?" inquired the gentleman, who was indeed no other than Mr. Jonas Aldridge himself. "How did he die? Who says he's dead?" "I don't know how he died. The apothecary seemed to think it was disease of the heart," replied Tracy; "but he is certainly dead." At this crisis of the conversation a new thought seemed to strike the mind of Jonas, who, exhibiting no symptoms of affliction, had hitherto appeared only curious and surprised. "My uncle Ephraim dead!" said he. "No, no, I can't believe it. It is impossible--it cannot be! My dear uncle! My only friend! Dead! Impossible!--you must be mistaken." "You had better go and see yourself," replied Tracy, who did not feel at all disposed to sympathize with this sudden effusion of sentiment. "I happened to be by, by mere chance, and know nothing more than I heard the apothecary say." And with these words he turned toward the door. "You are an officer's servant, I see?" rejoined Jonas. "I live with Captain D'Arcy of the 32d," answered Tracy; and wishing Mr. Jonas a good-evening, he walked away with a very unfavorable impression of that gentleman's character. The door was no sooner closed on Tracy than Mr. Jonas Aldridge returned into the parlor, and lighted a candle which stood on a side-table, by the aid of which he ascended to the second floor, and entered a back-room wherein stood a heavy four-post bed, the curtains of which were closely drawn together. The apartment, which also contained an old-fashioned mahogany set of drawers, and a large arm-chair, was well carpeted, and wore an aspect of considerable comfort. The shutters were closed, and a moreen curtain was let down to keep out the draught from the window. Mr. Jonas had mounted the stairs three at a time; but no sooner did he enter the room, and his eye fall upon the bed, then he suddenly paused, and stepping on the points of his toes toward it, he gently drew back one of the side curtains, and looked in. It was turned down, and ready for the expected master, but it was tenantless: he who should have lain there lay elsewhere that night. Mr. Jonas folded in his lips, and nodded his head with an expression that seemed to say _all's right_. And then having drawn the bolt across the door, he took two keys out of his waistcoat pocket; with one he opened a cupboard in the wainscot, and with the other a large tin-box which stood therein, into which he thrust his hand, and brought out a packet of papers, which not proving to be the thing he sought, he made another dive; but this second attempt turned out equally unsuccessful with the first; whereupon he fetched the candle from the table, and held it over the box, in hopes of espying what he wished. But his countenance clouded, and an oath escaped him, on discovering it was not there. "He has taken it with him!" said he. And having replaced the papers he had disturbed, and closed the box, he hastily descended the stairs. In the hall hung his greatcoat and hat. These he put on, tying a comforter round his throat to defend him from the chill night-air; and then leaving the candle burning in the passage, he put the key of the house-door in his pocket, and went out. Dead men wait patiently; but the haste with which Mr. Jonas Aldrich strode over the ground seemed rather like one in chase of a fugitive; and yet, fast as he went, the time seemed long to him till he reached Thomas Street. "Is my uncle here!" said he to Mary, who immediately answered to his knock. "Yes, sir," replied she. "And what's the matter? I hope it is nothing serious?" added he. "He's dead, sir, the doctor says," returned she. "Then you had a doctor?" "Oh yes, sir; I fetched Mr. Adams over the way immediately; but he said he was dead the moment he saw him. Will you please to walk up stairs, and see him yourself?" "Impossible! It cannot be that my uncle is dead!" exclaimed Mr. Jonas, who yet suspected some _ruse_. "You should have had the best advice--you should have called in Dr. Sykes. Let him be sent for immediately!" he added, speaking at the top of his voice, as he entered the little room above: "no means must be neglected to recover him. Depend on it, it is only a fit." But the first glance satisfied him that all these ingenious precautions were quite unnecessary. There lay Mr. Ephraim Aldridge dead unmistakably; and while Mary was inquiring where the celebrated Dr. Sykes lived, in order that she might immediately go in search of him, Mr. Jonas was thinking on what pretense he might get her out of the room without sending for anybody at all. Designing people often give themselves an enormous deal of useless trouble; and after searching his brain in vain for an expedient to get rid of the girl, Mr. Jonas suddenly recollected that the simplest was the best. There was no necessity, in short, for saying anything more than that he wished to be alone; and this he did say, at the same time drawing his handkerchief from his pocket, and applying it to his eyes, a little pantomime that was intended to aid the gentle Mary in putting a kind construction on the wish. She accordingly quitted the room, and descended to the parlor; whereupon Mr. Jonas, finding himself alone, lost no time in addressing himself to his purpose, which was to search the pockets of the deceased, wherein he found a purse containing gold and silver, various keys, and several other articles, but not the article he sought; and as he gradually convinced himself that his search was vain, his brow became overcast, angry ejaculations escaped his lips, and after taking a cursory survey of the room, he snatched up the candle, and hastily descended the stairs. "When did my uncle come here? What did he come about?" he inquired abruptly as he entered the parlor where Mary, weary and sad, was resting her head upon the table. "He came this evening, sir; but I don't know what he came about. He said he wanted to have some conversation with my father, and I went into the kitchen to leave them alone." "Then you were not in the room when the accident happened?" "What accident, sir?" "I mean, when he died." "No, sir; I had gone out to buy something for supper." "What made you go out so late for that purpose?" "My father called me in, sir, and Mr. Aldridge gave me some money." "Then nobody was present but your father?" "No, sir." "And where is he now?" "My father is very ill, sir; and it gave him such a shock, that he was obliged to go to bed." "Had my uncle nothing with him but what I have found in his pockets?" "Nothing that I know of, sir." "No papers?" "No, sir." "Go and ask your father if he saw any papers." "I'm sure he didn't, sir, or else they would be here." "Well, I'll thank you to go and ask him, however." Whereupon Mary quitted the room; and stepping up stairs, she opened, and then presently shut again, the door of her own bedroom. "It is no use disturbing my poor father," said she to herself; "I'm sure he knows nothing about any papers; and if I wake him, he will not get to sleep again all night. If he saw them, he'll say so in the morning." "My father knows nothing of the papers, sir," said she, reentering the room; "and if they're not in the pocket, I'm sure Mr. Aldridge never brought them here." "Perhaps he did not, after all," thought Jonas; "he has maybe removed it out of the tin-box, and put it into the bureau." A suggestion which made him desire to get home again as fast as he had left it. So, promising to send the undertakers in the morning to remove the body, Mr. Jonas took his leave, and hastened back to West Street, where he immediately set about ransacking every drawer, cupboard, and press, some of which he could only open with the keys he had just extracted from the dead man's pocket. But the morning's dawn found him unsuccessful: it appeared almost certain that the important paper was not in the house; and weary, haggard, and angry, he stretched himself on his bed till the hour admitted of further proceedings. And we will avail ourselves of this interval to explain more particularly the relative position of the parties concerned in our story. Ephraim Aldridge, a younger member of a large and poor family, had been early in life apprenticed to a hosier; and being one of the most steady, cautious, saving boys that ever found his bread amongst gloves and stockings, had early grown into great favor with his master, who, as soon as he was out of his apprenticeship, elevated him to the post of book-keeper; and in this situation, as he had a liberal salary, and was too prudent to marry, he contrived to save such a sum of money as, together with his good character, enabled him to obtain the reversion of the business when his master retired from it. The prudence which had raised him adhered to him still; his business flourished, and he grew rich; but the more money he got, the fonder he became of it; and the more he had, the less he spent; while the cautious steadiness of the boy shrank into a dry reserve as he grew older, till he became an austere, silent, inaccessible man, for whom the world in general entertained a certain degree of respect, but whom nobody liked, with the exception perhaps of one person, and that was Maurice Lane, who had formerly been his fellow-apprentice, and was now his shopman. And yet a more marked contrast of character could scarcely exist than between these two young men; but, somehow or other, everybody liked Lane; even the frigid heart of Ephraim could not defend itself from the charm of the boy's beautiful countenance and open disposition; and when he placed his former comrade in a situation of responsibility, it was not because he thought him the best or the steadiest servant he could possibly find, but because he wished to have one person about him that he liked, and that liked him. But no sooner did Lane find himself with a salary which would have maintained himself comfortably, than he fell in love with a beautiful girl whom he saw trimming caps and bonnets in an opposite shop-window, and straightway married her. Then came a family, and with it a train of calamities which kept them always steeped in distress, till the wife, worn out with hard work and anxiety, died; the children that survived were then dispersed about the world to earn their bread, and Lane found himself alone with his youngest daughter Mary. Had he retained his health, he might now have done better; but a severe rheumatic fever, after reducing him to the brink of the grave, had left him in such infirm health, that he was no longer able to maintain his situation; so he resigned it, and retired to an obscure lodging, with a few pounds in his pocket, and the affection and industry of his daughter for his only dependence. During all this succession of calamities, Mr. Aldrich had looked on with a severe eye. Had it been anybody but Lane, he would have dismissed him as soon as he married; as it was, he allowed him to retain his place, and to take the consequences of his folly. He had carved his own destiny, and must accept it; it was not for want of knowing better, for Ephraim had warned him over and over again of the folly of poor men falling in love and marrying. Entertaining this view of the case, he justified his natural parsimony with the reflection, that by encouraging such imprudence he should be doing an injury to other young men. He made use of Lane as a beacon, and left him in his distress, lest assistance should destroy his usefulness. The old house in Thomas Street, however, which belonged to him, happening to fall vacant, he so far relented as to send word to his old clerk that he might inhabit it if he pleased. Some few years, however, before these latter circumstances, Mr. Aldridge, who had determined against matrimony, had nevertheless been seized with that desire so prevalent in the old especially, to have an heir of his own name and blood for his property. He had but two relations that he remembered, a brother and a sister. The latter, when Ephraim was a boy, had married a handsome sergeant of a marching regiment, and gone away with it; and her family never saw her afterward, though for some years she had kept up an occasional correspondence with her parents, by which they learned that she was happy and prosperous; that her husband had been promoted to an ensigncy for his good conduct; that she had one child; and finally, that they were about to embark for the West Indies. His brother, with whom he had always maintained some degree of intercourse, had early settled in London as a harness-maker, and was tolerably well off; on which account Ephraim respected him, and now that he wanted an heir, it was in this quarter he resolved to look for one. So he went to London, inspected the family, and finally selected young Jonas, who everybody said was a facsimile of himself in person and character. He was certainly a cautious, careful, steady boy who was guilty of no indiscretions, and looked very sharp after his halfpence. Ephraim, who thought he had hit upon the exact desideratum, carried him to the country, put him to school, and became exceedingly proud and fond of him. His character, indeed, as regarded his relations with the boy, seemed to have undergone a complete change, and the tenderness he had all through life denied to everybody else, he now in his decline lavished to an injudicious excess on this child of his adoption. When he retired from business he took Jonas home; and as the lad had some talent for portrait-painting, he believed him destined to be a great artist, and forbore to give him a profession. Thus they lived together harmoniously enough for some time, till the factitious virtues of the boy ripened into the real vices of the man; and Ephraim discovered that the cautious, economical, discreet child was, at five-and-twenty, an odious specimen of avarice, selfishness, and cunning; and what made the matter worse was, that the uncle and nephew somehow appeared to have insensibly changed places--the latter being the governor, and the former the governed; and that while Mr. Jonas professed the warmest affection for the old man, and exhibited the tenderest anxiety for his health, he contrived to make him a prisoner in his own house, and destroy all the comfort of his existence--and everybody knows how hard it is to break free from a domestic despotism of this description, which, like the arms of a gigantic cuttle-fish, has wound itself inextricably around its victim. To leave Jonas, or to make Jonas leave him, was equally difficult; but at length the declining state of his health, together with his ever-augmenting hatred of his chosen heir, rendering the case more urgent, he determined to make a vigorous effort for freedom; and now it first occurred to him that his old friend Maurice Lane might help him to attain his object. In the mean time, while waiting for an opportunity to get possession of the will by which he had appointed Jonas heir to all his fortune, he privately drew up another, in favor of his sister's eldest son or his descendants, on condition of their taking the name of Aldridge; and this he secured in a tin-box, of which he kept the key always about him, the box itself being deposited in a cupboard in his own chamber. In spite of all these precautions, however, Jonas penetrated the secret, and by means of false keys, obtained a sight of the document which was to cut him out of all he had been accustomed to consider his own; but it was at least some comfort to observe that the will was neither signed nor witnessed, and therefore at present perfectly invalid. This being the case, he thought it advisable to replace the papers, and content himself with narrowly watching his uncle's future proceedings, since stronger measures at so critical a juncture might possibly provoke the old man to more decisive ones of his own. In a remote quarter of the town resided two young men, commonly called Jock and Joe Wantage, who had formerly served Mr. Aldridge as errand boys, but who had since managed to set up in a humble way of business for themselves; and having at length contrived one evening to elude the vigilance of his nephew, he stepped into a coach, and without entering into any explanation of his reasons, he, in the presence of those persons, produced and signed his will, which they witnessed, desiring them at the same time never to mention the circumstance to anybody, unless called upon to do so. After making them a little present of money, for adversity had now somewhat softened his heart, he proceeded to the house of his old clerk. It was by this time getting late, and the father and daughter were sitting in their almost fireless room, anxious and sad, for, as Tracy had conjectured, they were reduced to the last extremity of distress, when they were startled at a double knock at the door. It was long since those old walls had reverberated to such a sound. "Who can that be?" exclaimed Lane, looking suddenly up from his book, which was a tattered volume of Shakspeare, the only one he possessed. "I heard a coach stop." "It can be nobody here," returned Mary: "it must be a mistake." However, she rose and opened the door, at which by this time stood Mr. Aldridge, whose features it was too dark to distinguish. "Bring a light here!" said he. "No; stay; I'll send you out the money," he added to the coachman, and with that he stepped forward to the little parlor. But the scene that there presented itself struck heavily upon his heart, and perhaps upon his conscience, for instead of advancing, he stood still in the doorway. Here was poverty indeed! He and Lane had begun life together, but what a contrast in their ultimate fortunes! The one with much more money than he knew what to do with; the other without a shilling to purchase a bushel of coals to warm his shivering limbs; and yet the rich man was probably the more miserable of the two! "Mr. Aldridge!" exclaimed Lane, rising from his seat in amazement. "Take this, and pay the man his fare," said the visitor to Mary, handing her some silver. "And have you no coals?" "No, sir." "Then buy some directly, and make up the fire. Get plenty; here's the money to pay for them;" and as the coals were to be had next door, there was soon a cheerful fire in the grate. Lane drew his chair close to the fender, and spread his thin fingers to the welcome blaze. "I did not know you were so badly off as this," Mr. Aldridge remarked. "We have nothing but what Mary earns, and needlework is poorly paid," returned Lane; "and often not to be had. I hope Mr. Jonas is well?" Mr. Aldridge did not answer, but sat silently looking into the fire. The corners of his mouth were drawn down, his lip quivered, and the tears rose to his eyes as he thought of all he had lavished on that ungrateful nephew, that serpent he had nourished in his bosom, while the only friend he ever had was starving. "Mary's an excellent girl," pursued the father, "and has more sense than years. She nursed me through all my illness night and day; and though she has had a hard life of it, she's as patient as a lamb, poor thing! I sometimes wish I was dead, and out of her way, for then she might do better for herself." Mr. Aldridge retained his attitude and his silence, but a tear or two escaped from their channels, and flowed down the wan and hollow cheek: he did not dare to speak, lest the convulsion within his breast should burst forth into sobs and outward demonstrations, from which his close and reserved nature shrunk. Lane made two or three attempts at conversation, and then, finding them ineffectual, sank into silence himself. If the poor clerk could have penetrated the thoughts of his visitor during that interval, he would have read there pity for the sufferings of his old friend, remorse for having treated him with harshness under the name of justice, and the best resolutions to make him amends for the future. "Justice!" thought he; "how can man, who sees only the surface of things, ever hope to be just?" "You have no food either, I suppose?" said he abruptly breaking the silence. "There's part of a loaf in the house, I believe," returned Lane. "Call the girl, and bid her fetch some food! Plenty and the best! Do you hear, Mary?" he added as she appeared at the door. "Here's money." "I have enough left from what you gave me for the coals," said Mary, withholding her hand. "Take it!--take it!" said Mr. Aldridge, who was now for the first time in his life beginning to comprehend that the real value of money depends wholly on the way in which it is used, and that that which purchases happiness neither for its possessor nor anybody else is not wealth, but dross. "Take it, and buy whatever you want. When did _he_ ever withhold his hand when I offered him money?" thought he as his mind recurred to his adopted nephew. Mary accordingly departed, and having supplied the table with provisions, was sent out again to purchase a warm shawl and some other articles for herself, which it was too evident she was much in need of. It was not till after she had departed that Mr. Aldridge entered into the subject that sat heavy on his soul. He now first communicated to Lane that which the reserve of his nature had hitherto induced him to conceal from everybody--namely, the disappointment he had experienced in the character of his adopted son, the ill-treatment he had received from him, and the mixture of fear, hatred, and disgust with which the conduct of Jonas had inspired him. "He has contrived, under the pretense of taking care of my health, to make me a prisoner in my own house. I haven't a friend nor an acquaintance; he has bought over the servants to his interest, and his confidential associate is Holland, _my_ solicitor, who drew up the will I made in that rascal's favor, and has it in his possession. Jonas is to marry his daughter too; but I have something in my pocket that will break off that match. I should never sleep in my grave if he inherited my money! The fact is," continued he, after a pause, "I never mean to go back to the fellow. I won't trust myself in his keeping; for I see he has scarcely patience to wait till nature removes me out of the way. I'll tell you what, Lane," continued he, his hollow cheek flushing with excited feelings, "I'll come and live with you, and Mary shall be my nurse." Lane, who sat listening to all this in a state of bewilderment, half-doubting whether his old master had not been seized with a sudden fit of insanity, here cast a glance round the miserable whitewashed walls begrimed with smoke and dirt. "Not here--not here!" added Mr. Aldridge, interpreting the look aright; we'll take a house in the country, and Mary shall manage everything for us, whilst we sit together, with our knees to the fire, and talk over old times. Thank God, my money is my own still! and with country air and good nursing I should not wonder if I recover my health; for I can safely say I have never known what it is to enjoy a happy hour these five years--never since I found out that fellow's real character--and that is enough to kill any man! Look here," said he, drawing from his pocket a large black leathern note-case. "Here is a good round sum in Bank of England notes, which I have kept concealed until I could get clear of Mr. Jonas; for though he cannot touch the principal, thank God! he got a power of attorney from me some time ago, entitling him to receive my dividends; but now I'm out of his clutches, I'll put a drag on his wheel, he may rely on it. With this we can remove into the country and take lodgings, while we look out for a place to suit us permanently. We'll have a cow in a paddock close to the house; the new milk and the smell of the hay will make us young again. Many an hour, as I have lain in my wearisome bed lately, I have thought of you and our Sunday afternoons in the country when we were boys. In the eagerness of money-getting, these things had passed away from my memory; but they return to me now as the only pleasant recollection of my life." "And yet I never thought you enjoyed them much at the time," observed Lane, who was gradually getting more at ease with the rich man that had once been his equal, but between whom and himself all equality had ceased as the one grew richer and the other poorer. "Perhaps I did not," returned Ephraim. "I was too eager to get on in the world to take much pleasure in anything that did not help to fill my pockets. Money--money, was all I thought of! and when I got it, what did it bring me? Jonas--and a precious bargain he has turned out! But I'll be even with him yet." Here there was a sob and a convulsion of the breast, as the wounded heart swelled with its bitter sense of injury. "I have not told you half yet," continued he; "but I'll be even with him, little as he thinks it." As a pause now ensued, Lane felt it was his turn to say something, and he began with, "I am surprised at Mr. Jonas;" for so cleverly had the nephew managed, that the alienation of the uncle was unsuspected by everybody, and Lane could hardly bring himself to comment freely on this once-cherished nephew. "I could not have believed, after all you've done for him, that he would turn out ungrateful. Perhaps," continued he; but here the words were arrested on his lips by a sudden movement on the part of Mr. Aldridge, which caused Lane, who had been staring vacantly into the fire, to turn his eyes toward his visitor, whom, to his surprise, he saw falling gradually forward. He stretched out his hand to arrest the fall; but his feeble arm only gave another direction to the body, which sank on its face to the ground. Lane, who naturally thought Mr. Aldridge had fainted from excess of emotion, fetched water, and endeavored to raise him from the floor; but he slipped heavily from his grasp; and the recollection that years ago, he had heard from the apothecary who attended Ephraim that the latter had disease of the heart, and would some day die suddenly, filled him with terror and dismay. He saw that the prophecy was fulfilled; his own weak nerves and enfeebled frame gave way under the shock, and dropping into the nearest chair, he was for some moments almost as insensible as his friend. When he revived, and was able to recall his scattered senses, the first thing that met his eye was the open pocket-book and the notes that lay on the table. But a moment before, how full of promise was that book to him! Now, where were his hopes? Alas, like his fortunes, in the dust! Never was a man less greedy of money than Lane; but he knew what it was to want bread, to want clothes, to want fire. He felt sure Jonas would never give him a sixpence to keep him from starving; and there was his poor Mary, so overworked, fading her fair young cheeks with toil. That money was to have made three persons comfortable: he to whom it belonged was gone, and could never need it; and he had paid quite enough before he departed to satisfy Lane, that could he lift up his voice from the grave to say who would have the contents of that book, it would not be Jonas. Where, then, could be the harm of helping himself to that which had been partly intended for him? Where too, could be the danger? Assuredly Jonas, the only person who had a right to inquire into Mr. Aldridge's affairs, knew nothing of this sum; and then the pocket-book might be burned, and so annihilate all trace. There blazed the fire so invitingly. Besides, Jonas would be so rich, and could so well afford to spare it. As these arguments hastily suggested themselves, Lane, trembling with emotion, arose from his seat, seized the book, and grasped a handful of the notes, when to his horror, at that moment he heard a tap at the window. Shaking like a leaf, his wan cheeks whiter than before, and his very breath suspended, he stood waiting for what was to follow; but nothing ensued--all was silent again. It was probably an accident: some one passing had touched the glass; but still an undefined fear made him totter to the street door, and draw the bolt. Then he returned into the room: there were the notes yet tempting him. But this interruption had answered him. He longed for them as much as before, but did not dare to satisfy his desire, lest he should hear that warning tap again. Yet if left there till Mary returned, they were lost to him forever; and he and she would be starving again, all the more wretched for this transitory gleam of hope that had relieved for a moment the darkness of their despair. But time pressed: every moment he expected to hear her at the door; and as unwilling to relinquish the prize as afraid to seize it, he took refuge in an expedient that avoided either extreme--he closed the book, and flung it beneath the table, over which there was spread an old green cloth, casting a sufficiently dark shadow around to render the object invisible, unless to a person stooping to search for it. Thus, if inquired for and sought, it would be found, and the natural conclusion be drawn that it had fallen there; if not, he would have time for deliberation, and circumstances should decide him what to do. There were but two beds in this poor house: in one slept Lane, on the other was stretched the dead guest. Mary, therefore, on this eventful night had none to go to. So she made up the fire, threw her new shawl over her head, and arranged herself to pass the hours till morning in the rickety old chair in which her father usually sat. The scenes in which she had been assisting formed a sad episode in her sad life; and although she knew too little of Mr. Aldridge to feel any particular interest in him, she had gathered enough from her father, and from the snatches of conversation she had heard, to be aware that this visit was to have been the dawn of better fortunes, and that the old man's sudden decease was probably a much heavier misfortune to themselves than to him. A girl more tenderly nurtured and accustomed to prosperity would have most likely given vent to her disappointment in tears; but tears are an idle luxury, in which the poor rarely indulge: they have no time for them. They must use their eyes for their work; and when night comes, their weary bodies constrain the mind to rest. Mary had had a fatiguing evening--it was late before she found herself alone; and tired and exhausted, unhappy as she felt, it was not long ere she was in a sound sleep. It appeared to her that she must have slept several hours, when she awoke with the consciousness that there was somebody stirring in the room. She felt sure that a person had passed close to where she was sitting; she heard the low breathing and the cautious foot, which sounded as if the intruder was without shoes. The small grate not holding much coal, the fire was already out, and the room perfectly dark, so that Mary had only her ear to guide her: she could see nothing. A strange feeling crept over her when she remembered their guest: but no--he was forever motionless; there could be no doubt of that. It could not surely be her father. His getting out of bed and coming down stairs in the middle of the night was to the last degree improbable. What could he come for? Besides, if he had done so, he would naturally have spoken to her. Then came the sudden recollection that she had not fastened the back-door, which opened upon a yard as accessible to their neighbors as to themselves--neighbors not always of the best character either; and the cold shiver of fear crept over her. Now she felt how fortunate it was that the room _was_ dark. How fortunate, too, that she had not spoken or stirred; for the intruder withdrew as silently as he came. Mary strained her ears to listen which way he went; but the shoeless feet gave no echo. It was some time before the poor girl's beating heart was stilled; and then suddenly recollecting that this mysterious visitor, whoever he was, might have gone to fetch a light and return, she started up, and turned the key in the door. During that night Mary had no more sleep. When the morning broke, she arose and looked around to see if any traces of her midnight visitor remained, but there were none. A sudden alarm now arose in her breast for her father's safety, and she hastily ascended the stairs to his chamber; but he appeared to be asleep, and she did not disturb him. Then she opened the door of her own room, and peeped in--all was still there, and just as it had been left on the preceding evening; and now, as is usual on such occasions, when the terrors of the night had passed away, and the broad daylight looked out upon the world, she began to doubt whether the whole affair had not been a dream betwixt sleeping and waking, the result of the agitating events of the preceding evening. After lighting the fire, and filling the kettle, Mary next set about arranging the room; and in so doing, she discovered a bit of folded paper under the table, which, on examination, proved to be a five-pound note. Of course this belonged to Mr. Aldridge, and must have fallen there by accident; so she put it aside for Jonas, and then ascended to her father's room again. He was now awake, but said he felt very unwell, and begged for some tea, a luxury they now possessed, through the liberality of their deceased guest. "Did anything disturb you in the night, father?" inquired Mary. "No," replied Lane, "I slept all night." He did not look as if he had, though; and Mary, seeing he was irritable and nervous, and did not wish to be questioned, made no allusion to what had disturbed herself. "If Mr. Jonas Aldridge comes here, say I am too ill to see him," added he, as she quitted the room. About eleven o'clock the undertakers came to remove the body; and presently afterward Tracy arrived. "I came to say that I delivered your message last night to Mr. Jonas Aldridge," said he, when she opened the door; "and he promised to come here directly." "He did come," returned Mary. "Will you please to walk in? I'm sorry my father is not down stairs. He's very poorly to-day." "I do not wonder at that," answered Tracy, as his thoughts recurred to the black pocket-book. "Mr. Jonas seemed very anxious about some papers he thought his uncle had about him; but I have found nothing but this five-pound note, which perhaps you would leave at Mr. Aldridge's for me?" "I will, with pleasure," answered Tracy, remembering that this commission would afford him an excuse for another visit; and he took his leave a great deal more in love than ever. "Humph!" said Mr. Jonas, taking the note that Tracy brought him; "and she has found no papers?" "No, sir, none. Miss Lane says that unless they were in his pocket, Mr. Aldridge could not have had any papers with him." "It's very extraordinary," said Mr. Jonas, answering his own reflections. "Will you give me a receipt for the note, sir?" asked Tracy. My name is"---- "It's all right. I'm going there directly myself, and I'll say you delivered it," answered Jonas, hastily interrupting him, and taking his hat off a peg in the passage. "I'm in a hurry just now;" whereupon Tracy departed without insisting farther. While poor Ephraim slept peaceably in his coffin above, Mr. Jonas, perplexed by all manner of doubts in regard to the missing will, sat below in the parlor, in a fever of restless anxiety. Every heel that resounded on the pavement made his heart sink till it had passed the door, while a ring or a knock shook his whole frame to the center; and though he longed to see Mr. Holland, his uncle's solicitor, whom he knew to be quite in his interest, he had not courage either to go to him or to send for him, for fear of hastening the catastrophe he dreaded. Time crept on; the day of the funeral came and passed; the will was read; and Mr. Jonas took possession as sole heir and executor, and no interruption occurred. Smoothly and favorably, however, as the stream of events appeared to flow, the long-expectant heir was not the less miserable. But when three months had elapsed he began to breathe more freely, and to hope that the alarm had been a false one. The property was indeed his own--he was a rich man, and now for the first time he felt in sufficient spirits to look into his affairs and review his possessions. A considerable share of these consisted in houses, which his uncle had seized opportunities of purchasing on advantageous terms; and as the value of some had increased, whilst that of others was diminishing for want of repair, he employed a surveyor to examine and pronounce on their condition. "Among the rest," said he, "there is a small house in Thomas Street, No. 7. My uncle allowed an old clerk of his to inhabit it, rent free; but he must turn out. I gave them notice three months ago; but they've not taken it. Root them up, will you? and get the house cleaned down and whitewashed for some other tenant." Having put these matters in train, Mr. Jonas resolved, while his own residence was set in order, to make a journey to London, and enjoy the gratification of presenting himself to his family in the character of a rich man; and so fascinating did he find the pleasures of wealth and independence, that nearly four months had elapsed since his departure before he summoned Mr. Reynolds to give an account of his proceedings. "So," said he, after they had run through the most important items--"so you have found a tenant for the house in Thomas Street? Had you much trouble in getting rid of the Lanes?" "They're in it still," answered Mr. Reynolds. "The man that has taken it has married Lane's daughter." "What is he?" inquired Jonas. "An officer's servant--a soldier in the regiment that is quartered in the citadel." "Oh, I've seen the man--a good-looking young fellow. But how is he to pay the rent?" "He says he has saved money, and he has set her up in a shop. However, I have taken care to secure the first quarter; there's the receipt for it." "That is all right," said Mr. Jonas, who was in a very complacent humor, for fortune seemed quite on his side at present. "How," said he, suddenly changing color as he glanced his eye over the slip of paper; "how! Tracy Walkingham!" "Yes; an odd name enough for a private soldier, isn't it?" "Tracy Walkingham!" he repeated. "Why how came he to know the Lanes? Where does he come from?" "I know nothing of him, except that he is in the barracks. But I can inquire, and find out his history and genealogy if you wish it," replied Mr. Reynolds. "Oh, no, no," said Jonas; "leave him alone. If I want to find out anything about him, I'll do it myself. Indeed it is nothing connected with himself, but the name struck me as being that of a person who owed my uncle some money; however, it cannot be him of course. And to return to matters of more consequence, I want to know what you've done with the tenements in Water Lane?" And having thus adroitly turned the conversation, the subject of the tenant with the odd name was referred to no more; but although it is true, that "out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh," it is also frequently true, that that which most occupies the mind is the farthest from the lips, and this was eminently the case on the present occasion; for during the ensuing half hour that Mr. Jonas appeared to be listening with composure to the surveyor's reports and suggestions, the name of Tracy Walkingham was burning itself into his brain in characters of fire. "Tracy Walkingham!" exclaimed he, as soon as Mr. Reynolds was gone, and he had turned the key in the lock to exclude interruptions; "here, and married to Lane's daughter! There's something in this more than meets the eye! The Lanes have got that will as sure as my name's Jonas Aldridge, and have been waiting to produce it till they had him fast noosed. But why do they withhold it now? Waiting till they hear of my return, I suppose." And as this conviction gained strength, he paced the room in a paroxysm of anguish. And there he was, so helpless, too! What could he do but wait till the blow came? He would have liked to turn them out of his house, but they had taken it for a year; and besides, what good would that do but to give them a greater triumph, and perhaps expedite the catastrophe? Sometimes he thought of consulting his friend Holland; but his pride shrank from the avowal that his uncle had disinherited him, and that the property he and everybody else had long considered so securely his, now in all probability justly belonged to another. Then he formed all sorts of impracticable schemes for getting the paper into his possession, or Tracy out of the way. Never was there a more miserable man; the sight of those two words, _Tracy Walkingham_, had blasted his sight, and changed the hue of everything he looked upon. Our readers will have little difficulty in guessing the reason: the young soldier, Mary's handsome husband, was the heir named in the missing will--the son of that sister of Ephraim who had married a sergeant, and had subsequently gone to the West Indies. Tracy Walkingham, the father, was not exactly in his right position as a private in the 9th regiment, for he was the offspring of a very respectable family; but some early extravagance and dissipation, together with a passion for a military life, which was denied gratification, had induced him to enlist. Good conduct and a tolerable education soon procured him the favorable notice of his superiors, took him out of the ranks, and finally procured him a commission. When both he and his wife died in Jamaica, their only son was sent home to the father's friends; but the boy met with but a cold reception; and after some years passed, far from happily, he, as we have said, ran away from school; and his early associations being all military, seized the first opportunity of enlisting, as his father had done before him. But of the history of his parents he knew nothing whatever, except that his father had risen from the ranks; and he had as little suspicion of his connection with Ephraim Aldridge as Mary had. Neither did the name of Tracy Walkingham suggest any reminiscences to Lane, who had either forgotten, or more probably had never heard it, Mr. Aldridge's sister having married prior to the acquaintance of the two lads. But Jonas had been enlightened by the will; and although the regiment now quartered at P---- was not the one therein mentioned, the name was too remarkable not to imply a probability, which his own terror naturally converted into a certainty. In the mean time, while the rich and conscious usurper was nightly lying on a bed of thorns, and daily eating the broad of bitterness, the poor and unconscious heir was in the enjoyment of a larger share of happiness than usually falls to the lot of mortals. The more intimately he became acquainted with Mary's character, the more reason he found to congratulate himself on his choice; and even Lane he had learned to love; while all the painful suspicions connected with Mr. Aldridge's death and the pocket-book had been entirely dissipated by the evident poverty of the family; since, after the expenditure of the little ready money Mr. Aldridge had given them, they had relapsed into their previous state of distress, having clearly no secret resources wherewith to avert it. Mary's shop was now beginning to get custom too, and she was by slow degrees augmenting her small stock, when the first interruption to their felicity occurred. This was the impending removal of the regiment, which, under present circumstances, was an almost inevitable sentence of separation; for even could they have resolved to make the sacrifice, and quit the home on which they had expended all their little funds, it was impossible for Mary to abandon her father, ever feeble, and declining in health. The money Tracy had saved toward purchasing his discharge was not only all gone, but, though doing very well, they were not yet quite clear of the debt incurred for their furniture. There was therefore no alternative but to submit to the separation, hard as it was; and all the harder, that they could not tell how long it might take to amass the needful sum to purchase Tracy's liberty. Lane, too, was very much affected, and very unwilling to part with his son-in-law. "What," said he, "only twenty pounds?" And when he saw his daughter's tears, he would exclaim, "Oh, Mary! and to think that twenty pounds would do it!" And more than once he said, "Tracy should not go; he was determined he should not leave them;" and bade Mary dry her tears, for he would prevent it. But nevertheless the route came; and early one morning the regiment marched through Thomas Street, the band playing the tune of "The girl I left behind me;" while poor Mary, choking with sobs, peeped through the half-open shutter, to which the young husband's eyes were directed as long as the house was in sight. That was a sad day, and very sad were many that followed. Neither was there any blessed Penny Post then, to ease the sick hearts and deferred hopes of the poor; and few and rare were the tidings that reached the loving wife--soon to become a mother. The only pleasure Mary had now was in the amassing money. How eager she was for it! How she counted over and over her daily gains! How she economized! What self-denial she practiced! Oh for twenty pounds to set her husband free, and bring him to her arms again! So passed two years, circumstances always improving, but still this object so near her heart was far from being attained, when there arrived a letter from Tracy, informing her that the regiment was ordered abroad, and that, as he could not procure a furlough, there was no possibility of their meeting unless she could go to him. What was to be done? If she went, all her little savings would be absorbed in the journey, and the hope of purchasing her husband's discharge indefinitely postponed. Besides, who was to take care of her father, and the lodger, and the shop? The former would perhaps die from neglect, she should lose her lodger, and the shop would go to destruction for want of the needful attention. But could she forbear? Her husband might never return--they might never meet again--then how she should reproach herself! Moreover, Tracy had not seen the child: that was decisive. At all risks she must go; and this being resolved, she determined to shut up her shop, and engage a girl to attend to her father and her lodger. These arrangements made, she started on her long journey with her baby in her arms. At the period of which we are treating, a humble traveler was not only subject to great inconveniences, but besides the actual sum disbursed, he paid a heavy per-centage from delay on every mile of his journey. Howbeit, "Time and the hour run through the roughest day," and poor Mary reached her destination at last; and in the joy of meeting with her husband, forgot all her difficulties and anxieties, till the necessity for parting recalled her to the sad reality that awaited them. If she stayed too long away from her shop, she feared her customers would forsake her altogether; and then how was the next rent-day to be provided for? So, with many a sigh and many a tear, the young couple bade each other farewell, and Mary recommenced her tedious journey. If tedious before, when such a bright star of hope lighted her on her way, how much more so now! While poor Tracy felt so wretched and depressed, that many a time vague thoughts of deserting glanced through his mind, and he was only withheld from it by the certainty that if they shot him--and deserters, when taken, were shot in those days--it would break his poor little wife's heart. Soon after Mary's departure, however, it happened that his master, Major D'Arcy, met with a severe accident while hunting; and as Tracy was his favorite servant, and very much attached to him, his time and thoughts were so much occupied with attendance on the invalid, that he was necessarily in some degree diverted from his own troubles. In the mean time Mary arrived at home, where she found her affairs in no worse condition than might be expected. Her father was in health much as she had left him, and her lodger still in the house, though both weary of her substitute; and the latter--that is, the lodger--threatening to quit if the mistress did not make haste back. All was right now again--except Mary's heart--and things resumed their former train; the only event she expected being a letter to inform her of her husband's departure, which he had promised to post on the day of his embarkation. Three months elapsed, however, before the postman stopped at her door with the dreaded letter. How her heart sank when she saw him enter the shop! "A letter for you, Mrs. Walkingham--one-and-two-pence, if you please." Mary opened her till, and handed him the money. "Poor thing!" thought the man, observing how her hand shook, and how pale she turned; "expects bad news, I suppose!" Mary dropped the letter into the money-drawer, for there was a customer in the shop waiting to be served--and then came in another. When the second was gone, she took it out and looked at it, turned it about, and examined it, and kissed it, and then put it away again. She felt that she dared not open it till night, when all her business was over, and her shop closed, and she might pour out her tears without interruption. She could scarcely tell whether she most longed or feared to open it; and when at length the quiet hour came, and her father was in bed, and her baby asleep in its cradle beside her, and she sat down to read it, she looked at it, and pressed it to her bosom, and kissed it again and again, before she broke the seal; and then when she had done so, the paper shook in her hand, and her eyes were obscured with tears, and the light seemed so dim that she could not at first decipher anything but "My darling Mary!" It was easy to read that, for he always called her _his darling Mary_--but what came next? "Joy! joy! dry your dear tears, for I know how fast they are falling, and be happy! I am not going abroad with the regiment, and I shall soon be a free man. Major D'Arcy has met with a sad accident, and cannot go to a foreign station; and as he wishes me not to leave him, he is going to purchase my discharge," &c. &c. Many a night had Mary lain awake from grief, but this night she could not sleep for joy. It was such a surprise, such an unlooked-for piece of good fortune. It might indeed be some time before she could see her husband, but he was free, and sooner or later they should be together. Everybody who came to the shop the next day wondered what had come over Mrs. Walkingham. She was not like the same woman. It was about eight months after the arrival of the above welcome intelligence, on a bright winter's morning, Mary as usual up betimes, her shop all in order, her child washed and dressed, and herself as neat and clean "as a new pin," as her neighbor, Mrs. Crump the laundress, used to say of her--her heart as usual full of Tracy, and more than commonly full of anxiety about him, for the usual period for his writing was some time passed. She was beginning to be uneasy at his prolonged silence, and to fear that he was ill. "No letter for me, Mr. Ewart?" she said, as she stood on the step with her child in her arms, watching for the postman. "None to-day, Mrs. Walkingham; better luck next time!" answered the functionary, as he trotted past. Mary, disappointed was turning in, resolving that night to write and upbraid her husband for causing her so much uneasiness, when she heard the horn that announced the approach of the London coach, and she stopped to see it pass; for there were pleasant memories connected with that coach: it was the occasion of her first acquaintance with Tracy--so had the driver sounded his horn, which she, absorbed in her troubles, had not heard; so had he cracked his whip; so had the wheels rattled over the stones; and so had the idle children in the street run hooting and hallooing after it; but not so had it dashed up to her door and stopped. It cannot be!--yes, it is--Tracy himself, in a drab great-coat and crape round his hat, jumping down from behind! The guard throws him a large portmanteau, and a paper parcel containing a new gown for Mary and a frock for the boy; and in a moment more they are in the little back parlor in each other's arms. Major D'Arcy was dead, and Tracy had returned to his wife to part no more--so we will shut the door, and leave them to their happiness, while we take a peep at Mr. Jonas Aldridge. We left him writhing under the painful discovery that the rightful heir of the property he was enjoying, at least so far as his uncle's intentions were concerned, was not only in existence, but was actually the husband of Lane's daughter; and although he sometimes hoped the fatal paper had been destroyed, since he could in no other way account for its non-production, still the galling apprehension that it might some day find its way to light was ever a thorn in his pillow; and the natural consequence of this irritating annoyance was, that while he hated both Tracy and his wife, he kept a vigilant eye on their proceedings, and had a restless curiosity about all that concerned them. He would have been not only glad to eject them from the house they occupied, and even to drive them out of the town altogether, but he had a vague fear of openly meddling with them; so that the departure of the regiment, and its being subsequently ordered abroad, afforded him the highest satisfaction; in proportion to which was his vexation at Tracy's release, and ultimate return as a free man, all which particulars he extracted from Mr. Reynolds as regularly as the payment of the quarter's rent. "And what does he mean to do now?" inquired Jonas. "To settle here, I fancy," returned Mr. Reynolds. "They seem to be doing very well in the little shop; and I believe they have some thoughts of extending their business." This was extremely unpleasant intelligence, and the more so, that it was not easy to discover any means of defeating these arrangements; for as Mr. Jonas justly observed, as he soliloquized on the subject, "In this cursed country there is no getting rid of such a fellow!" In the town of which we speak there are along the shore several houses of public resort of a very low description, chiefly frequented by soldiers and sailors; and in war-times it was not at all an uncommon thing for the hosts of these dens to be secretly connected with the pressgangs and recruiting companies, both of whom, at a period when men were so much needed for the public service, pursued their object after a somewhat unscrupulous fashion. Among the most notorious of these houses was one called the Britannia, kept by a man of the name of Gurney, who was reported to have furnished, by fair means or foul, a good many recruits to his Majesty's army and navy. Now it occurred to Mr. Jonas Aldridge that Gurney might be useful to him in his present strait; nor did he find any unwillingness on the part of that worthy person to serve his purposes. "A troublesome sort of fellow this Walkingham is," said Mr. Jonas; "and I wouldn't mind giving twenty pounds if you could get him to enlist again." The twenty pounds was quite argument enough to satisfy Gurney of the propriety of so doing; but success in the undertaking proved much less easy than desirable. Tracy, who spent his evenings quietly at home with his wife, never drank, and never frequented the houses on the quay, disappointed all the schemes laid for entrapping him; and Mr. Jonas had nearly given up the expectation of accomplishing his purpose, when a circumstance occurred that awakened new hopes. The house next to that inhabited by the young couple took fire in the night when everybody was asleep; the party-walls being thin, the flames soon extended to the adjoining ones; and the following morning saw poor Tracy and his wife and child homeless, and almost destitute, their best exertions having enabled them to save little more than their own lives and that of Mary's father, who was now bedridden. But for his infirm condition they might have saved more of their property; but not only was there much time necessarily consumed in removing him, but when Tracy rushed into his room, intending to carry him away in his arms, Lane would not allow him to lift him from his bed till he had first unlocked a large trunk with a key which was attached to a string hung round the sick man's neck. "Never mind--never mind trying to save anything but your life! You'll be burnt, sir; indeed you will; there's not a moment to lose," cried Tracy eagerly. But Lane would listen to nothing: the box must be opened, and one precious object secured. "Thrust your hand down to the bottom--the corner next the window--and you'll find a parcel in brown paper." "I have it, sir--I have it!" cried Tracy; and lifting the invalid from his bed with the strong arm of vigorous youth, he threw him on his back, and bore him safely into the street. "The parcel!" said Lane; "where is it?" Tracy flung it to him, and rushed back into the house. But too late: the flames drove him forth immediately; and finding he could do nothing there, he proceeded to seek a shelter for his houseless family. It was with no little satisfaction that Mr. Jonas Aldridge heard of this accident. These obnoxious individuals were dislodged now without any intervention of his, and the link was broken that so unpleasantly seemed to connect them with himself. Moreover, they were to all appearance ruined, and consequently helpless and defenseless. Now was the time to root them out of the town if possible, and prevent them making another settlement in it; and now was the time that Gurney might be useful; for Tracy, being no longer a householder, was liable to be pressed, if he could not be induced to reenlist. In the mean while, all unconscious of the irritation and anxiety they were innocently inflicting on the wealthy Mr. Jonas Aldridge, Tracy and his wife were struggling hard to keep their heads above water in this sudden wreck of all their hopes and comforts. It is so hard to rise again after such a plunge; for the destruction of the poor is their poverty; and _having_ nothing, they could undertake nothing, begin nothing. The only thing open seemed for Tracy to seek service, and for Mary to resume her needlework; but situations and custom are not found in a day, and they were all huddled together in a room, and wanting bread. The shock of the fire and the removal had seriously affected Lane too, and it was evident that his sorrows and sufferings were fast drawing to a close. He was aware of it himself, and one day when Mary was out he called Tracy to his bedside, and asked him if Mr. Adams did not think he was dying. "You have been very ill before, and recovered," said Tracy, unwilling to shock him with the sentence that the apothecary had pronounced against him. "I see," said Lane; "my time is come; and I am not unwilling to go, for I am a sore burthen to you and Mary, now you're in trouble. I know you're very kind," he added, seeing Tracy about to protest; "but it's high time I was under ground. God knows--God knows I have had a sore struggle, and it's not over yet! To see you so poor, in want of everything, and to know that I could help you. I sometimes think there could be no great harm in it either. The Lord have mercy upon me! What am I saying?" "You had better not talk any more, but try to sleep till Mary comes in," said Tracy, concluding his mind was beginning to wander. "No, no," said Lane; "that won't do: I must say it now. You remember that parcel we saved from the fire?" "Yes I do," answered Tracy, looking about. "Where is it? I've never seen it since." "It's here!" said Lane, drawing it from under his pillow. "Look there," he added: "_not to be opened till after my death_. You observe?" "Certainly, sir." "_Not to be opened till after my death._ But as soon as I am gone, take it to Mr. Jonas Aldridge: it belongs to him. There is a letter inside explaining everything; and I have asked him to be good to you and Mary for the sake of--for the sake of the hard, hard struggle I have had in poverty and sickness, when I saw her young cheek fading with want and work; and now again, when you are all suffering, and little Tracy too, with his thin pale face that used to be so round and rosy: but it will soon be over, thank God! You will be sure to deliver it into his own hands?" "I give you my word I will, sir." "Take it away then, and let me see it no more; but hide it from Mary, and tell her nothing about it." "I will not, sir. And now you must try to rest." "I feel more at peace now," said Lane; "and perhaps I may. Thank God the worst struggle is over--dying is easy." Mr. Adams was right in his prediction. In less than a week from the period of that solemn behest poor Lane was in his grave; and his last word, with a significant glance at Tracy, was--_remember_! Mary had loved her father tenderly--indeed there was a great deal in him to love; and he was doubly endeared to her by the trials they had gone through together, and the cares and anxieties she had lavished on him. But there was no bitterness in the tears she shed: she had never failed him in their hours of trial; she had been a dutiful and affectionate daughter, and he had expired peacefully in the arms of herself and her kind and beloved husband. It was on the evening of the day which had seen the remains of poor Maurice Lane deposited in the churchyard of St. Jude that Tracy, having placed the parcel in his bosom, and buttoned his coat over it, said to his wife--"Mary, I have occasion to go out on a little business; keep up your spirits till I return; I will not be away more than an hour;" and leaning over her chair he kissed her cheek, and left the room. As he stepped from his own door into the street, he observed two men leaning against the rails of the adjoining house, and he heard one say to the other, "Yes, by jingo!" "At last!" returned the other; whereupon they moved on, pursuing the same way he went himself, but keeping at some distance behind. Tracy could not quite say that he owed no man anything, for the fire had incapacitated them from paying some small accounts which they would otherwise have been able to discharge, and he even owed a month's rent; but this, considering the circumstances of the case, he did not expect would be claimed. Indeed Mr. Reynolds, who was quite ignorant of Mr. Jonas' enmity, had hinted as much. He had therefore no apprehension of being pursued for debt, nor, till he recollected that there was a very active pressgang in the town, did it occur to him that the movements of these men could be connected with himself. It is true that, as a discharged soldier, he was not strictly liable, but he was aware that immunities of this sort were not always available at the moment of need; and that, as these persons did not adhere very strictly to the terms of their warrant, once in their clutches, it was no easy matter to get out of them: so he quickened his pace, and kept his eyes and ears on the alert. His way lay along the shore, and shortly before he reached the Britannia, the two men suddenly advanced, and placed themselves one on each side of him. But for the suspicion we have named, Tracy would have either not observed their movements, or, if he had, would have stopped and inquired what they wanted. As it was, he thought it much wiser to escape the seizure at first, should such be their intention, than trust to the justice of his cause afterward; so, without giving them time to lay hands upon him, he took to his heels and ran, whereupon they sounded a whistle, and as he reached Joe Gurney's door, he found his flight impeded by that worthy himself, who came out of it, and tried to trip him up. But Tracy was active, and making a leap, he eluded the stratagem. The man, however, seized him, which gave time to the two others to come up; and there commenced a desperate struggle of three to one, in which, in spite of his strength and ability, Tracy would certainly have been worsted but for a very unexpected reinforcement which joined him from some of the neighboring houses, to whose inhabitants Gurney's proceedings had become to the last degree odious; more especially in the women, among whom there was scarcely one who had not the cause of a brother, a son, or a lover to avenge. Armed with pokers, brooms, or whatever they could lay their hands on, these Amazons issued from their doors, and fell foul of Gurney, whom they singled from the rest as their own peculiar prey. In the confusion Tracy contrived to make his escape; and without his hat, and his clothes almost torn off his back, he rushed in upon the astonished Mary in less than half an hour after he had left her. His story was soon told, and there was nothing sufficiently uncommon in such an incident in those days to excite much surprise, except as regarded the circumstance of the men lying in wait for him. Tracy was not ignorant that malice and jealousy had occasionally furnished victims to the press system; but they had no enemy they knew of, nor was there any one, as far as they were aware, that had an interest in getting him out of the way. It was, however, an unpleasant and alarming occurrence, and he resolved on consulting a lawyer, in order to ascertain how he might protect himself from any repetition of the annoyance. With this determination, the discussion between the husband and wife concluded for that night; but the former had a private source of uneasiness, which on the whole distressed him much more than the seizure itself, and which he could not have the relief of communicating to Mary--this was the loss of the parcel so sacredly committed to his care by his deceased father-in-law, and which he was on his way to deliver into the hands of Mr. Jonas Aldridge when he met with the interruption. It had either fallen or been torn from his bosom in the struggle, and considering the neighborhood and the sort of people that surrounded him, he could scarcely indulge the most remote hope of ever seeing it again. To what the papers contained Lane had furnished him no clew; but whether it was anything of intrinsic worth, or merely some article to which circumstances or association lent an arbitrary value, the impossibility of complying with the last and earnest request of Mary's father formed far the most painful feature in the accident of the evening; and while the wife lay awake, conjuring up images of she knew not what dangers and perils that threatened her husband, Tracy passed an equally sleepless night in vague conjectures as to what had become of the parcel, and in forming visionary schemes for its recovery. In the morning he even determined to face Gurney in his den; for it was only at night that he felt himself in any danger from the nefarious proceedings of himself and his associates. But his inquiries brought him no satisfaction. The people who resided in the neighborhood of Gurney's house, many of whom had engaged in the broil, declared they knew nothing of the parcel; "but," said they, "if any of Gurney's people have it, you need never hope to see it again." Tracy thought so too; however, he paid a visit to their den of iniquity, and declared his determination to have them summoned before the magistrates, to answer for his illegal seizure; but as all who were present denied any knowledge of the affair, and as he could not have sworn to the two ruffians who tracked him, he satisfied himself with this threat without proceeding further in the business. Having been equally unsuccessful at the police-office, he determined after waiting a few days in the hope of discovering some clew by which he might recover the parcel, to communicate the circumstance to Mr. Jonas Aldridge. He therefore took an early opportunity of presenting himself in West Street. "Here's a man wishes to see you, sir," said the servant. "Who is it? What does he want?" inquired Mr. Jonas, who, recumbent in his arm-chair, and his glass of port beside him, was leisurely perusing his newspaper after dinner. "Where is he?" "He's in the passage, sir." "Take care he's not a thief come to look after the greatcoats and hats." "He looks very respectable, sir." "Wants me to subscribe to something, I suppose. Go and ask him what's his business." "He says he can't tell his business except to you, sir, because it's something very partickler," said the maid, returning into the room. "He says he's been one of your tenants; his name's Walkingham." "Walkingham!" reiterated Mr. Jonas, dropping the newspaper, and starting erect out of his recumbent attitude. "Wants me! Business! What business can he possibly have with me? Say I'm engaged, and can't see him. No, stay! Yes; say I'm engaged and can't see him." "He wishes to know what time it will be convenient for you to see him, sir, as it's about something very partickler indeed," said the girl, again making her appearance. Mr. Jonas reflected a minute or two; he feared this visit portended him no good. He had often wondered that Tracy had not claimed relationship with him, for he felt no doubt of his being his cousin; probably he was now come to do it; or had he somehow got hold of that fatal will? One or the other surely was the subject of his errand; and if I refuse to see him, he will go and tell his story to somebody else. "Let him come in. Stay! Take the lamp off the table, and put it at the other end of the room." This done, Mr. Jonas having reseated himself in his arm-chair in such a position that he could conceal his features from his unwelcome visitor, bade the woman send him in. "I beg your pardon for intruding, sir," said Tracy, "but I thought it my duty to come to you," speaking in such a modest tone of voice, that Mr. Jonas began to feel somewhat reassured, and ventured to ask with a careless air, "What was his business?" "You have perhaps heard, sir, that Mr. Lane is dead?" "I believe I did," said Mr. Jonas. "Well, sir, shortly before his death he called me to his bedside and gave me a parcel, which he desired me to deliver to you as soon as he was laid in his grave." "To me?" said Mr. Jonas, by way of filling up the pause, and concealing his agitation, for he immediately jumped to the conclusion that the will was really forthcoming now. "Yes, sir, into your own hand; and accordingly the day he was buried I set out in the evening to bring it to you; but the pressgang got hold of me, and in the scuffle I lost it out of my bosom, where I had put it for safety, and though I have made every inquiry, I can hear nothing of it." "What was it? What did the parcel contain?" inquired Mr. Jonas, eagerly. "I don't know, I am sure, sir," answered Tracy. "It was sealed up in thick brown paper; but, from the anxiety Mr. Lane expressed about its delivery, I am afraid it was something of value. He said he should never rest in his grave if you did not get it." Mr. Jonas now seeing there was no immediate danger, found courage to ask a variety of questions with a view to further discoveries; but as Tracy had no clew to guide him with regard to the contents of the parcel except his own suspicions, which he did not feel himself called upon to communicate, he declared himself unable to give any information. All he could say was, that "he thought the parcel felt as if there was a book in it." "A book!" said Mr. Jonas. "What sized book?" "Not a large book, sir, but rather thick; it might be a pocket-book." "Very odd!" said Mr. Jonas, who was really puzzled; for if the book contained the will, surely it was not to him that Lane would have committed it. However, as nothing more could be elicited on the subject, he dismissed Tracy, bidding him neglect nothing to recover the parcel, and inexpressibly vexed that his own stratagem to get rid of this "discomfortable cousin," had prevented his receiving the important bequest. Whilst Tracy returned home, satisfied that he had fulfilled his duty as far as he was able, Mr. Jonas having well considered the matter, resolved on obtaining an interview with Joe Gurney himself; "for," thought he, "if the parcel contained neither money, nor anything that could be turned into money, he may possibly be able to get it for me." "Well, sir, I remembers the night very well," said Joe. "They'd ha' been watching for that 'ere young chap, off and on, for near a fortnight, when they got him, as luck would have it, close to my door; but he raised such a noise that the neighbors came out, and he got away." "But did you hear anything of the parcel?" inquired Mr. Jonas. "Well, sir, I'm not sure whether I did or no," answered Gurney; "but I think it was Tom Purcell as picked it up." "Then you saw it?" said Mr. Jonas. "What did it contain? Where is it?" "Well, I'm sure, sir, that is more than I can say," returned Gurney, who always spared himself the pain of telling more truth than he could avoid; "but Tom went away the next day to Lunnun." "And did he take the parcel with him? Was there no address on it?" "No, sir, not on the outside at least--there was something wrote, but it wasn't addressed to nobody." Although Mr. Jonas was perfectly aware that Gurney knew more than he chose to tell, not wishing to quarrel with him, he was obliged to relinquish the interrogative system, and content himself with a promise that he would endeavor to discover the whereabout of Tom Purcell, and do all he could to recover the lost article; and to a certain extent Gurney intended to fulfill the engagement. The fact of the matter was, that the parcel had been found by Tom Purcell, but not so exclusively as that he could secure the benefit of its contents to himself. They had been divided amongst those who put in their claim, the treasure consisting of a black pocket-book, containing £95 in bank-notes, and Lane's letter, sealed, and addressed to Mr. Jonas Aldridge. The profits being distributed, the pocket-book and letter were added to the share of the finder, and these, it was possible, might be recovered; and with that view Gurney dispatched a missive to their possessor. But persons who follow the profession of Tom Purcell have rarely any fixed address, and a considerable time elapsed ere an answer was received; and when it did come, it led to no result. The paper he had burnt, and the pocket-book he had thrown into a ditch. He described the spot, and it was searched, but nothing of the sort was found. Here, therefore, ended the matter to all appearance, especially as Mr. Jonas succeeded in extracting from Gurney that there was nothing in the book but that letter and some money. In the mean while, however, the pocket-book had strangely enough found its way back to Thomas Street. A poor woman that carried fish about the town for sale, and with whom Mary not unfrequently dealt, brought it to her one day, damp, tattered, and discolored, and inquired if it did not belong to her husband. "Not that I know of," said Mary. "Because," said the woman, "he came to our house one morning last winter asking for a parcel. Now, I know this pocket-book--at least I think it's the same--had been picked up by some of Gurney's folks the night afore, though it wasn't for me that lives next door to him to interfere in his matters. Hows'ever, my son's a hedger and ditcher, and when he came home last night he brought it: he says he found it in a field near by the Potteries." "I do not think it is Tracy's," said Mary; "but if you will leave it, I'll ask him." And the article being in too dilapidated a condition to have any value, the woman told her she was welcome to it, and went away. The consequence of this little event was, that when Tracy returned, Mary became a participator in the secret which had hitherto been withheld from her. "I see it all," said she. "No doubt Mr. Aldridge gave it to my father to take care of the night he came here; and when he died, my poor father, knowing we were to have shared with him had he lived, felt tempted to keep it; but he was too honest to do so; and in all our distresses he never touched what was not his own; but this explains many things I could not understand." And as the tears rose to her eyes at the recollection of the struggle she had witnessed, without comprehending it, betwixt want and integrity, she fell into a reverie, which prevented her observing that her child, a boy of four years old, had taken possession of the pocket-book, and, seated on the floor, was pulling it to pieces. "I tell you what, Mary," said Tracy, returning into the shop, which he had left for a few minutes, "I'll take the book as it is to Mr. Jonas Aldridge. I'm sorry the money's lost; but we are not to blame for that, and I suppose he has plenty. Put it into a bit of clean paper, will you, and I'll set off at once." "Oh, Tracy, Tracy," cried Mary, addressing her little boy, "what _are_ you doing with that book? Give it me, you naughty child! See, he has almost torn it in half!" Not a very difficult feat, for the leather was so rotten with damp that it scarcely held together. "Look here, Tracy: here's a paper in it," said Mary, as she took it from the child, and from the end of a secret pocket, which was unript, she drew a folded sheet of long writing-paper. "Dear me! look here!" said she, as she unfolded and cast her eye over it. "'In the name of God, amen! I, Ephraim Aldridge, residing at No. 4, West Street, being of sound mind, memory, and understanding'----Why, Tracy, it's a will, I declare! Only think, How odd! isn't it? 'Of sound mind, memory, and understanding, do make and publish this my last will and testament'"---- "I'll tell you what, Mary," said Tracy, attempting to take the paper from her, "I don't think we've any right to read it: give it me." "Stay," said Mary; "stay. Oh, Tracy, do but listen to this: 'I give, devise, and bequeath all property, of what nature or kind soever, real, freehold, or personal, of which I shall die seized or possessed'----Think what a deal Mr. Jonas must have!" "Mary, I'm surprised at you." "'Of which I shall die seized or possessed, to my nephew'"---- "It's merely the draft of a will. Give it me, and let me go." "'To my nephew, Tracy Walkingham, son of the late Tracy Walkingham, formerly a private, and subsequently a commissioned officer in his majesty's 96th Regiment of foot, and of my sister, Eleanor Aldridge, his wife.' Tracy, what can it mean? Can you be Mr. Ephraim Aldridge's nephew?" "It's very strange," said Tracy. "I never heard my mother's maiden name; for both she and my father died in the West Indies when I was a child; but certainly, as I have often told you, my father was a private in the 96th Regiment, and afterward got a commission." It would be useless to dwell on the surprise of the young couple, or to detail the measures that were taken to ascertain and prove, beyond a cavil, that Tracy was the right heir. There were relations yet alive who, when they heard that he was likely to turn out a rich man, were willing enough to identify him, and it was not till the solicitor he had employed was perfectly satisfied on this head that Mr. Jonas was waited on, with the astounding intelligence that a will had been discovered, made subsequent to the one by which he inherited. At the same time a letter was handed to him, which, sealed and addressed in Ephraim's hand, had been found in the same secret receptacle of the book as the larger paper. The contents of that letter none ever knew but Jonas himself. It seemed to have been a voice of reproach from the grave for the ill return he had made to the perhaps injudicious but well-meant generosity and indulgence of the old man. The lawyer related that when he opened it he turned deadly pale, and placing his hands before his face, sank into a chair quite overcome: let us hope his heart was touched. However that may be, he had no reason to complain of the treatment he received from the hands of his successors, who temperate in prosperity, as they had been patient in adversity, in consideration of the relationship and of the expectations in which he had been nurtured, made Jonas a present of a thousand pounds for the purpose of establishing him in any way of life he might select; while, carefully preserved in a leathern case, the old black pocket-book, to which they owed so much, is still extant in the family of Tracy Walkingham. [Abridged from "Light and Darkness," just published.] THE LAST VAMPIRE. BY MRS. CROWE. In the fifteenth century lycanthropy prevailed extensively amongst the Vaudois, and many persons suffered death for it; but as no similar case seems to have been heard of for a long while, lycanthropy and ghoulism were set down amongst the superstitions of the East, and the follies and fables of the dark ages. A circumstance however has just come to light in France that throws a strange and unexpected light upon this curious subject. The account we are going to give is drawn from a report of the investigation before a council of war, held on the 10th of the present month (July, 1849), Colonel Manselon, president. It is remarked that the court was extremely crowded, and that many ladies were present. The facts of this mysterious affair, as they came to light in the examinations, are as follows: For some months past the cemeteries in and around Paris have been the scenes of a frightful profanation, the authors of which had succeeded in eluding all the vigilance that was exerted to detect them. At one time the guardians or keepers of these places of burial were themselves suspected; at others the odium was thrown on the surviving relations of the dead. The cemetery of Père la Chaise was the first field of these horrible operations. It appears that for a considerable time the guardians had observed a mysterious figure flitting about by night amongst the tombs, on whom they never could lay their hands. As they approached, he disappeared like a phantom; and even the dogs that were let loose, and urged to seize him, stopped short, and ceased to bark, as if they were transfixed by a charm. When morning broke, the ravages of this strange visitant were but too visible--graves had been opened, coffins forced, and the remains of the dead, frightfully torn and mutilated, lay scattered upon the earth. Could the surgeons be the guilty parties? No. A member of the profession being brought to the spot declared that no scientific knife had been there; but certain parts of the human body might be required for anatomical studies, and the gravediggers might have violated the tombs to obtain money by the sale of them. The watch was doubled, but to no purpose. A young soldier was one night seized in a tomb, but he declared he had gone there to meet his sweetheart, and had fallen asleep; and as he evinced no trepidation they let him go. At length these profanations ceased in Père la Chaise, but it was not long before they were renewed in another quarter. A suburban cemetery was the new theater of operations. A little girl aged seven years, and much loved by her parents, died. With their own hands they laid her in her coffin, attired in the frock she delighted to wear on _fête_ days, and with her favorite playthings beside her; and accompanied by numerous relatives and friends they saw her laid in the earth. On the following morning it was discovered that the grave had been violated, the body torn from the coffin, frightfully mutilated, and the heart extracted. There was no robbery. The sensation in the neighborhood was tremendous; and in the general terror and perplexity suspicion fell on the broken-hearted father, whose innocence however was easily proved. Every means was taken to discover the criminal; but the only result of the increased surveillance was that the scene of profanation was removed to the cemetery of Mont Parnasse, where the exhumations were carried to such an extent that the authorities were at their wits' end. Considering, by the way, that all these cemeteries are surrounded by walls, and have iron gates, which are kept closed, it certainly seems very strange that any ghoul or vampire of solid flesh and blood should have been able to pursue his vocation so long undiscovered. However, so it was; and it was not till they bethought themselves of laying a snare for this mysterious visitor that he was detected. Having remarked a spot where the wall, though nine feet high, appeared to have been frequently scaled, an old officer contrived a sort of infernal machine, with a wire attached to it, which he so arranged that it should explode if any one attempted to enter the cemetery at that point. This done, and a watch being set, they thought themselves now secure of their purpose. Accordingly, at midnight an explosion roused the guardians, who perceived a man already in the cemetery; but before they could seize him he had leaped the wall with an agility that confounded them; and although they fired their pieces after him, he succeeded in making his escape. But his footsteps were marked with blood that had flowed from his wounds, and several scraps of military attire were picked up on the spot. Nevertheless, they seem to have been still uncertain where to seek the offender, till one of the gravediggers of Mont Parnasse, whilst preparing the last resting-place of two criminals about to be executed, chanced to overhear some sappers of the 74th regiment remarking that one of their sergeants had returned on the preceding night cruelly wounded, nobody knew how, and had been conveyed to Val de Grace, which is a military hospital. A little inquiry now soon cleared up the mystery; and it was ascertained that Sergeant Bertrand was the author of all these profanations, and of many others of the same description previous to his arrival in Paris. Supported on crutches, wrapped in a gray cloak, pale and feeble, Bertrand was now brought forward for examination; nor was there anything in the countenance or appearance of this young man indicative of the fearful monomania of which he is the victim; for the whole tenor of his confession proves that in no other light is his horrible propensity to be considered. In the first place, he freely acknowledged himself the author of these violations of the dead both in Paris and elsewhere. "What object did you propose to yourself in committing these acts?" "I cannot tell," replied Bertrand: "it was a horrible impulse. I was driven to it against my own will; nothing could stop or deter me. I cannot describe or understand myself what my sensations were in tearing and rending these bodies." President.--"And what did you do after one of these visits to a cemetery?" Bertrand.--"I withdrew, trembling convulsively, feeling a great desire for repose. I fell asleep, no matter where, and slept for several hours; but during this sleep I heard everything that passed around me! I have sometimes exhumed from ten to fifteen bodies in a night. I dug them up with my hands, which were often torn and bleeding with the labor I underwent; but I minded nothing, so that I could get at them. The guardians fired at me one night and wounded me, but that did not prevent my returning the next. This desire seized me generally about once a fortnight." Strange to say, the perpetrator of all these terrors was "gentle and kind to the living, and especially beloved in his regiment for his frankness and gayety." [From Blackwood's Magazine.] MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. _Continued from Page 582._ BOOK II.--INITIAL CHAPTER:--INFORMING THE READER HOW THIS WORK CAME TO HAVE INITIAL CHAPTERS. "There can't be a doubt," said my father, "that to each of the main divisions of your work--whether you call them Books or Parts--you should prefix an Initial or Introductory Chapter." _Pisistratus._--"Can't be a doubt, sir! Why so?" _Mr. Caxton._--"Fielding lays it down as an indispensable rule, which he supports by his example; and Fielding was an artistical writer, and knew what he was about." _Pisistratus._--"Do you remember any of his reasons, sir?" _Mr. Caxton._--"Why, indeed, Fielding says very justly that he is not bound to assign any reason; but he does assign a good many, here and there--to find which, I refer you to _Tom Jones_. I will only observe, that one of his reasons, which is unanswerable, runs to the effect that thus, in every Part or Book, the reader has the advantage of beginning at the fourth or fifth page instead of the first--'a matter by no means of trivial consequence,' saith Fielding, 'to persons who read books with no other view than to say they have read them--a more general motive to reading than is commonly imagined; and from which not only law books and good books, but the pages of Homer and Virgil, of Swift and Cervantes, have been often turned over.' There," cried my father triumphantly, "I will lay a shilling to twopence that I have quoted the very words." _Mrs. Caxton._--"Dear me, that only means skipping: I don't see any great advantage in writing a chapter, merely for people to skip it." _Pisistratus._--"Neither do I!" _Mr. Caxton_, dogmatically.--"It is the repose in the picture--Fielding calls it 'contrast'--(still more dogmatically) I say there can't be a doubt about it. Besides, (added my father after a pause,) besides, this usage gives you opportunities to explain what has gone before, or to prepare for what's coming; or, since Fielding contends with great truth, that some learning is necessary for this kind of historical composition, it allows you, naturally and easily, the introduction of light and pleasant ornaments of that nature. At each flight in the terrace, you may give the eye the relief of an urn or a statue. Moreover, when so inclined, you create proper pausing places for reflection; and complete, by a separate yet harmonious ethical department, the design of a work, which is but a mere Mother Goose's tale if it does not embrace a general view of the thoughts and actions of mankind." _Pisistratus._--"But then, in these initial chapters, the author thrusts himself forward; and just when you want to get on with the _dramatis personæ_, you find yourself face to face with the poet himself." _Mr. Caxton._--"Pooh! you can contrive to prevent that! Imitate the chorus of the Greek stage, who fill up the intervals between the action by saying what the author would otherwise say in his own person." _Pisistratus_, slily.--"That's a good idea, sir--and I have a chorus, and a chorægus too, already in my eye." _Mr. Caxton_, unsuspectingly.--"Aha! you are not so dull a fellow as you would make yourself out to be; and, even if an author did thrust himself forward, what objection is there to that?--I don't say a good poem, but a poem. It is a mere affectation to suppose that a book can come into the world without an author. Every child has a father, one father at least, as the great Condé says very well in his poem." _Pisistratus._--"The great Condé a poet!--I never heard that before." _Mr. Caxton._--"I don't say he was a poet, but he sent a poem to Madame de Montansier. Envious critics think that he must have paid somebody else to write it; but there is no reason why a great Captain should not write a poem. I wonder, Roland, if the Duke ever tried his hand at 'Stanzas to Mary,' or 'Lines to a sleeping babe.'" _Captain Roland._--"Austin, I'm ashamed of you. Of course the Duke could write poetry if he pleased--something, I dare say, in the way of the great Condé--that is something warlike and heroic, I'll be bound. Let's hear!" _Mr. Caxton_, reciting-- "Telle est du Ciel la loi sévère Qu'il faut qu'un enfant ait un père; On dit même quelque fois Tel enfant en a jusqu'à trois." _Captain Roland_, greatly disgusted.--"Condé write such stuff!--I don't believe it." _Pisistratus._--"I do, and accept the quotation--you and Roland shall be joint fathers to my child as well as myself." "Tel enfant en a jusqu'à trois." _Mr. Caxton_, solemnly.--"I refuse the proffered paternity; but so far as administering a little wholesome castigation, now and then, have no objection to join in the discharge of a father's duty." _Pisistratus._--"Agreed; have you anything to say against the infant hitherto?" _Mr. Caxton._--"He is in long clothes at present; let us wait till he can walk." _Blanche._--"But pray whom do you mean for a hero?--and is Miss Jemima your heroine?" _Captain Roland._--"There is some mystery about the--" _Pisistratus_, hastily.--"Hush, Uncle; no letting the cat out of the bag yet. Listen, all of you! I left Frank Hazeldean on his way to the Casino." CHAPTER II. "It is a sweet pretty place," thought Frank, as he opened the gate which led across the fields to the Casino, that smiled down upon him with its plaster pilasters. "I wonder, though, that my father, who is so particular in general, suffers the carriage road to be so full of holes and weeds. Mounseer does not receive many visits, I take it." But when Frank got into the ground immediately before the house, he saw no cause of complaint as to want of order and repair. Nothing could be kept more neatly. Frank was ashamed of the dint made by the pony's hoofs in the smooth gravel; he dismounted, tied the animal to the wicket, and went on foot toward the glass door in front. He rang the bell once, twice, but nobody came, for the old woman-servant, who was hard of hearing, was far away in the yard, searching for any eggs which the hen might have scandalously hidden from culinary purposes; and Jackeymo was fishing for the sticklebacks and minnows, which were, when caught, to assist the eggs, when found, in keeping together the bodies and souls of himself and his master. The old woman was on board wages,--lucky old woman! Frank rang a third time, and with the impetuosity of his age. A face peeped from the Belvidere on the terrace. "Diavolo!" said Dr. Riccabocca to himself. "Young cocks crow hard on their own dunghill; it must be a cock of a high race to crow so loud at another's." Therewith he shambled out of the summer-house, and appeared suddenly before Frank, in a very wizard-like dressing-robe of black serge, a red cap on his head, and a cloud of smoke coming rapidly from his lips, as a final consolatory whiff, before he removed the pipe from them. Frank had indeed seen the Doctor before, but never in so scholastic a costume, and he was a little startled by the apparition at his elbow, as he turned round. "Signorino--young gentleman," said the Italian, taking off his cap with his usual urbanity, "pardon the negligence of my people--I am too happy to receive your commands in person." "Dr. Rickeybockey?" stammered Frank, much confused by this polite address, and the low yet stately bow with which it was accompanied, "I--I have a note from the Hall. Mamma--that is, my mother,--and aunt Jemima beg their best compliments, and hope you will come, sir." The Doctor took the note with another bow, and, opening the glass door, invited Frank in. The young gentleman, with a school-boy's usual bluntness, was about to say that he was in a hurry, and had rather not; but Dr. Riccabocca's grand manner awed him, while a glimpse of the hall excited his curiosity--so he silently obeyed the invitation. The hall, which was of an octagon shape, had been originally paneled off into compartments, and in these the Italian had painted landscapes, rich with the warm sunny light of his native climate. Frank was no judge of the art displayed; but he was greatly struck with the scenes depicted: they were all views of some lake, real or imaginary--in all, dark-blue shining waters reflected dark-blue placid skies. In one, a flight of steps descended to the lake, and a gay group was seen feasting on the margin; in another, sunset threw its rose-hues over a vast villa or palace, backed by Alpine hills, and flanked by long arcades of vines, while pleasure-boats skimmed over the waves below. In short, throughout all the eight compartments, the scene, though it differed in details, preserved the same general character, as if illustrating some favorite locality. The Italian did not, however, evince any desire to do the honors to his own art, but, preceding Frank across the hall, opened the door of his usual sitting-room, and requested him to enter. Frank did so, rather reluctantly, and seated himself with unwonted bashfulness on the edge of a chair. But here new specimens of the Doctor's handicraft soon riveted attention. The room had been originally papered; but Riccabocca had stretched canvas over the walls, and painted thereon sundry satirical devices, each separated from the other by scroll-works of fantastic arabesques. Here a Cupid was trundling a wheel-barrow full of hearts which he appeared to be selling to an ugly old fellow, with a money-bag in his hand--probably Plutus. There Diogenes might be seen walking through a market-place, with his lantern in his hand, in search of an honest man, whilst the children jeered at him, and the curs snapped at his heels. In another place, a lion was seen half dressed in a fox's hide, while a wolf in a sheep's mask was conversing very amicably with a young lamb. Here again might be seen the geese stretching out their necks from the Roman Capitol in full cackle, while the stout invaders were beheld in the distance, running off as hard as they could. In short, in all these quaint entablatures some pithy sarcasm was symbolically conveyed; only over the mantlepiece was the design graver and more touching. It was the figure of a man in a pilgrim's garb, chained to the earth by small but innumerable ligaments, while a phantom likeness of himself, his shadow, was seen hastening down what seemed an interminable vista; and underneath were written the pathetic words of Horace-- "Patriæ quis exul Se quoque fugit?" --"What exile from his country can fly himself as well?" The furniture of the room was extremely simple, and somewhat scanty; yet it was arranged so as to impart an air of taste and elegance to the room. Even a few plaster busts and statues, though bought but of some humble itinerant, had their classical effect, glistening from out stands of flowers that were grouped around them, or backed by graceful screen-works formed from twisted osiers, which, by the simple contrivance of trays at the bottom, filled with earth, served for living parasitical plants, with gay flowers contrasting thick ivy leaves, and gave to the whole room the aspect of a bower. "May I ask your permission?" said the Italian, with his finger on the seal of the letter. "Oh yes," said Frank with _naïveté_. Riccabocca broke the seal, and a slight smile stole over his countenance. Then he turned a little aside from Frank, shaded his face with his hand, and seemed to muse. "Mrs. Hazeldean," said he at last, "does me very great honor. I hardly recognize her handwriting, or I should have been more impatient to open the letter." The dark eyes were lifted over the spectacles, and went right into Frank's unprotected and undiplomatic heart. The Doctor raised the note, and pointed to the characters with his forefinger. "Cousin Jemima's hand," said Frank, as directly as if the question had been put to him. The Italian smiled. "Mr. Hazeldean has company staying with him?" "No; that is, only Barney--the Captain. There's seldom much company before the shooting season," added Frank with a slight sigh; "and then you know the holidays are over. For my part, I think we ought to break up a month later." The Doctor seemed reassured by the first sentence in Frank's reply, and seating himself at the table, wrote his answer--not hastily, as we English write, but with care and precision, like one accustomed to weigh the nature of words--in that stiff Italian hand, which allows the writer so much time to think while he forms his letters. He did not therefore reply at once to Frank's remark about the holidays, but was silent till he had concluded his note, read it three times over, sealed it by the taper he slowly lighted, and then, giving it to Frank, he said-- "For your sake, young gentleman, I regret that your holidays are so early; for mine, I must rejoice, since I accept the kind invitation you have rendered doubly gratifying by bringing it yourself." "Deuce take the fellow and his fine speeches! One don't know which way to look," thought English Frank. The Italian smiled again, as if this time he had read the boy's heart, without need of those piercing black eyes, and said, less ceremoniously than before, "You don't care much for compliments, young gentleman?" "No, I don't indeed," said Frank heartily. "So much the better for you, since your way in the world is made: it would be so much the worse if you had to make it!" Frank looked puzzled: the thought was too deep for him--so he turned to the pictures. "Those are very funny," said he: "they seem capitally done--who did 'em?" "Signorino Hazeldean, you are giving me what you refused yourself." "Eh?" said Frank inquiringly. "Compliments!" "Oh--I--no; but they are well done, aren't they, sir?" "Not particularly: you speak to the artist." "What! you painted them?" "Yes." "And the pictures in the hall?" "Those too." "Taken from nature--eh?" "Nature," said the Italian sententiously, perhaps evasively, "let nothing be taken from her." "Oh!" said Frank, puzzled again. "Well, I must wish you good morning, sir; I am very glad you are coming." "Without compliment?" "Without compliment." "_A rivedersi_--good-by for the present, my young signorino. This way," observing Frank make a bolt toward the wrong door. "Can I offer you a glass of wine--it is pure, of our own making?" "No, thank you, indeed, sir," cried Frank, suddenly recollecting his father's admonition. "Good-by--don't trouble yourself, sir; I know my way now." But the bland Italian followed his guest to the wicket, where Frank had left the pony. The young gentleman, afraid lest so courteous a host should hold the stirrup for him, twitched off the bridle, and mounted in haste, not even staying to ask if the Italian could put him in the way to Rood Hall, of which way he was profoundly ignorant. The Italian's eye followed the boy as he rode up the ascent in the lane, and the Doctor sighed heavily. "The wiser we grow," said he to himself, "the more we regret the age of our follies: it is better to gallop with a light heart up the stony hill than sit in the summer-house and cry 'How true!' to the stony truths of Machiavelli!" With that he turned back into the Belvidere; but he could not resume his studies. He remained some minutes gazing on the prospect, till the prospect reminded him of the fields which Jackeymo was bent on his hiring, and the fields reminded him of Lenny Fairfield. He walked back to the house, and in a few moments reemerged in his out-of-door trim, with cloak and umbrella, relighted his pipe, and strolled toward Hazeldean village. Meanwhile Frank, after cantering on for some distance, stopped at a cottage, and there learned that there was a short cut across the fields to Rood Hall, by which he could save nearly three miles. Frank however missed the short cut, and came out into the highroad. A turnpike-keeper, after first taking his toll, put him back again into the short cut, and finally he got into some green lanes, where a dilapidated finger-post directed him to Rood. Late at noon, having ridden fifteen miles in the desire to reduce ten to seven, he came suddenly upon a wild and primitive piece of ground, that seemed half chase, half common, with slovenly tumble-down cottages of villainous aspect scattered about in odd nooks and corners; idle dirty children were making mud-pies on the road; slovenly-looking children were plaiting straw at the thresholds; a large but forlorn and decayed church, that seemed to say that the generation which saw it built was more pious than the generation which now resorted to it, stood boldly and nakedly out by the road-side. "Is this the village of Rood?" asked Frank of a stout young man breaking stones on the road--sad sign that no better labor could be found for him! The man sullenly nodded, and continued his work. "And where's the Hall--Mr. Leslie's?" The man looked up in stolid surprise, and this time touched his hat. "Be you going there?" "Yes, if I can find out where it is." "I'll show your honor," said the boor alertly. Frank reined in the pony, and the man walked by his side. Frank was much of his father's son, despite the difference of age, and that more fastidious change of manner which characterizes each succeeding race in the progress of civilization. Despite all his Eton finery, he was familiar with peasants, and had the quick eye of one country-born as to country matters. "You don't seem very well off in this village, my man," said he knowingly. "Noa; there be a deal of distress here in the winter time, and summer too, for that matter; and the parish ben't much help to a single man." "But the farmers want work here as well as elsewhere, I suppose?" "Deed, and there ben't much farming work here--most o' the parish be all wild ground loike." "The poor have a right of common, I suppose," said Frank, surveying a large assortment of vagabond birds and quadrupeds. "Yes; neighbor Timmins keeps his geese on the common, and some has a cow--and them be neighbor Jowlas's pigs. I don't know if there's a right, loike; but the folks at the Hall does all they can to help us, and that ben't much: they ben't as rich as some folks; but," added the peasant proudly, "they be as good blood as any in the shire." "I'm glad to see you like them, at all events." "Oh yes, I likes them well eno'; mayhap you are at school with the young gentleman?" "Yes," said Frank. "Ah! I heard the clergyman say as how Master Randal was a mighty clever lad, and would get rich some day. I'se sure I wish he would, for a poor squire makes a poor parish. There's the Hall, sir." CHAPTER III. Frank looked right ahead, and saw a square house, that in spite of modern sash-windows was evidently of remote antiquity--a high conical roof; a stack of tall quaint chimney-pots of red baked clay (like those at Sutton Place in Surrey) dominating over isolated vulgar smoke-conductors of the ignoble fashion of present times; a dilapidated groin-work, incasing within a Tudor arch a door of the comfortable date of George III., and the peculiarly dingy and weather-stained appearance of the small finely-finished bricks, of which the habitation was built,--all showed the abode of former generations adapted with tasteless irreverence to the habits of descendants unenlightened by Pugin, or indifferent to the poetry of the past. The house had emerged suddenly upon Frank out of the gloomy waste land, for it was placed in a hollow, and sheltered from sight by a disorderly group of ragged, dismal, valetudinarian fir-trees, until an abrupt turn of the road cleared that screen, and left the desolate abode bare to the discontented eye. Frank dismounted, the man held his pony, and after smoothing his cravat, the smart Etonian sauntered up to the door, and startled the solitude of the place with a loud peal from the modern brass knocker--a knock which instantly brought forth an astonished starling who had built under the eaves of the gable roof, and called up a cloud of sparrows, tomtits, and yellow-hammers, who had been regaling themselves amongst the litter of a slovenly farmyard that lay in full sight to the right of the house, fenced off by a primitive, paintless wooden rail. In process of time a sow, accompanied by a thriving and inquisitive family, strolled up to the gate of the fence, and leaning her nose on the lower bar of the gate, contemplated the visitor with much curiosity and some suspicion. While Frank is still without, impatiently swingeing his white trowsers with his whip, we will steal a hurried glance toward the respective members of the family within. Mr. Leslie, the _pater familias_, is in a little room called his "study," to which he regularly retires every morning after breakfast, rarely reappearing till one o'clock, which is his unfashionable hour for dinner. In what mysterious occupations Mr. Leslie passes those hours no one ever formed a conjecture. At the present moment he is seated before a little rickety bureau, one leg of which (being shorter than the other) is propped up by sundry old letters and scraps of newspapers; and the bureau is open, and reveals a great number of pigeon-holes and divisions, filled with various odds and ends, the collection of many years. In some of these compartments are bundles of letters, very yellow, and tied in packets with faded tape; in another, all by itself, is a fragment of plum-pudding stone, which Mr. Leslie has picked up in his walks and considered a rare mineral. It is neatly labeled, "Found in Hollow Lane, May 21st, 1824, by Maunder Slugge Leslie, Esq." The next division holds several bits of iron in the shape of nails, fragments of horse-shoes, &c., which Mr. Leslie had also met with in his rambles, and according to a harmless popular superstition, deemed it highly unlucky not to pick up, and once picked up, no less unlucky to throw away. _Item_, in the adjoining pigeon-hole a goodly collection of pebbles with holes in them, preserved for the same reason, in company with a crooked sixpence; _item_, neatly arranged in fanciful mosaics, several periwinkles, blackamoor's teeth, (I mean the shell so called,) and other specimens of the conchiferous ingenuity of nature, partly inherited from some ancestral spinster, partly amassed by Mr. Leslie himself in a youthful excursion to the sea-side. There were the farm-bailiff's accounts, several files of bills, an old stirrup, three sets of knee and shoe-buckles which had belonged to Mr. Leslie's father, a few seals tied together by a shoe-string, a shagreen toothpick case, a tortoiseshell magnifying glass to read with, his eldest son's first copy-books, his second son's ditto, his daughter's ditto, and a lock of his wife's hair arranged in a true lover's knot, framed and glazed. There were also a small mousetrap, a patent corkscrew, too good to be used in common; fragments of a silver teaspoon, that had by natural decay arrived at a dissolution of its parts; a small brown Holland bag, containing half-pence of various dates, as far back as Queen Anne, accompanied by two French _sous_ and a German _silber gros_; the which miscellany Mr. Leslie magniloquently called "his coins," and had left in his will as a family heirloom. There were many other curiosities of congenial nature and equal value--"_quæ nunc describere longum est_." Mr. Leslie was engaged at this time in what is termed "putting things to rights"--an occupation he performed with exemplary care once a week. This was his day; and he had just counted his coins, and was slowly tying them up again, when Frank's knock reached his ears. Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie paused, shook his head as if incredulously, and was about to resume his occupation, when he was seized with a fit of yawning which prevented the bag being tied for full two minutes. While such the employment of the study--let us turn to the recreations in the drawing-room, or rather parlor. A drawing-room there was on the first floor, with a charming look-out, not on the dreary fir-trees, but on the romantic undulating forest-land; but the drawing-room had not been used since the death of the last Mrs. Leslie. It was deemed too good to sit in, except when there was company; there never being company, it was never sat in. Indeed, now the paper was falling off the walls with the damp, and the rats, mice, and moths--those "_edaces rerum_"--had eaten, between them, most of the chair-bottoms and a considerable part of the floor. Therefore the parlor was the sole general sitting-room; and being breakfasted in, dined and supped in, and, after supper, smoked in by Mr. Leslie to the accompaniment of rum and water, it is impossible to deny that it had what is called "a smell"--a comfortable wholesome family smell--speaking of numbers, meals, and miscellaneous social habitation. There were two windows; one looked full on the fir-trees; the other on the farmyard with the pigsty closing the view. Near the fir-tree window sat Mrs. Leslie; before her on a high stool, was a basket of the children's clothes that wanted mending. A work-table of rosewood inlaid with brass, which had been a wedding present, and was a costly thing originally but in that peculiar taste which is vulgarly called "Brumagem," stood at hand: the brass had started in several places, and occasionally made great havoc on the childrens' fingers and Mrs. Leslie's gown; in fact, it was the liveliest piece of furniture in the house, thanks to that petulant brass-work, and could not have been more mischievous if it had been a monkey. Upon the work-table lay a housewife and thimble, and scissors and skeins of worsted and thread, and little scraps of linen and cloth for patches. But Mrs. Leslie was not actually working--she was preparing to work; she had been preparing to work for the last hour and a half. Upon her lap she supported a novel, by a lady who wrote much for a former generation, under the name of "Mrs. Bridget Blue Mantle." She had a small needle in her left hand, and a very thick piece of thread in her right; occasionally she applied the end of the said thread to her lips, and then--her eyes fixed on the novel--made a blind vacillating attack at the eye of the needle. But a camel would have gone through it with quite as much ease. Nor did the novel alone engage Mrs. Leslie's attention, for ever and anon she interrupted herself to scold the children; to inquire "what o'clock it was;" to observe that "Sarah would never suit," and to wonder why Mr. Leslie would not see that the work-table was mended. Mrs. Leslie had been rather a pretty woman. In spite of a dress at once slatternly and economical, she has still the air of a lady--rather too much so, the hard duties of her situation considered. She is proud of the antiquity of her family on both sides; her mother was of the venerable stock of the Daudlers of Daudle Place, a race that existed before the Conquest. Indeed, one has only to read our earliest chronicles, and to glance over some of those long-winded moralizing poems which delighted the thanes and ealdermen of old, in order to see that the Daudles must have been a very influential family before William the First turned the country topsy-turvy. While the mother's race was thus indubitably Saxon, the father's had not only the name but the peculiar idiosyncracy of the Normans, and went far to establish that crotchet of the brilliant author of _Sybil, or the Two Nations_, as to the continued distinction between the conquering and the conquered populations. Mrs. Leslie's father boasted the name of Montfydget; doubtless of the same kith and kin as those great barons Montfichet, who once owned such broad lands and such turbulent castles. A high-nosed, thin, nervous, excitable progeny, these same Montfydgets, as the most troublesome Norman could pretend to be. This fusion of race was notable to the most ordinary physiognomist in the _physique_ and in the _morale_ of Mrs. Leslie. She had the speculative blue eye of the Saxon, and the passionate high nose of the Norman; she had the musing donothingness of the Daudlers, and the reckless have-at-everythingness of the Montfydgets. At Mrs. Leslie's feet, a little girl with her hair about her ears, (and beautiful hair it was too) was amusing herself with a broken-nosed doll. At the far end of the room, before a high desk, sat Frank's Eton schoolfellow, the eldest son. A minute or two before Frank's alarum had disturbed the tranquillity of the household, he had raised his eyes from the books on the desk, to glance at a very tattered copy of the Greek Testament, in which his brother Oliver had found a difficulty that he came to Randal to solve. As the young Etonian's face was turned to the light, your first impression, on seeing it, would have been melancholy but respectful interest--for the face had already lost the joyous character of youth--there was a wrinkle between the brows; and the lines that speak of fatigue were already visible under the eyes and about the mouth; the complexion was sallow, the lips were pale. Years of study had already sown, in the delicate organization, the seeds of many an infirmity and many a pain; but if your look had rested longer on that countenance, gradually your compassion might have given place to some feeling uneasy and sinister, a feeling akin to fear. There was in the whole expression so much of cold calm force, that it belied the debility of the frame. You saw there the evidence of a mind that was cultivated, and you felt that in that cultivation there was something formidable. A notable contrast to this countenance, prematurely worn and eminently intelligent, was the round healthy face of Oliver, with slow blue eyes, fixed hard on the penetrating orbs of his brother, as if trying with might and main to catch from them a gleam of that knowledge with which they shone clear and frigid as a star. At Frank's knock, Oliver's slow blue eyes sparkled into animation, and he sprang from his brother's side. The little girl flung back the hair from her face, and stared at her mother with a look of wonder and fright. The young student knit his brows, and then turned wearily back to his books. "Dear me," cried Mrs. Leslie, "who can that possibly be? Oliver, come from the window, sir, this instant, you will be seen! Juliet, run--ring the bell--no, go to the stairs, and say, 'not at home.' Not at home on any account," repeated Mrs. Leslie nervously, for the Montfydget blood was now in full flow. In another minute or so, Frank's loud boyish voice was distinctly heard at the outer door. Randal slightly started. "Frank Hazeldean's voice," said he; "I should like to see him, mother." "See him," repeated Mrs. Leslie in amaze, "see him!--and the room in this state!" Randal might have replied that the room was in no worse state than usual; but he said nothing. A slight flush came and went over his pale face; and then he leaned his cheek on his hand, and compressed his lips firmly. The outer door closed with a sullen inhospitable jar, and a slipshod female servant entered with a card between her finger and thumb. "Who is that for?--give it to me, Jenny," cried Mrs. Leslie. But Jenny shook her head, laid the card on the desk beside Randal, and vanished without saying a word. "Oh look, Randal, look up," cried Oliver, who had again rushed to the window; "such a pretty gray pony!" Randal did look up; nay, he went deliberately to the window, and gazed a moment on the high-mettled pony, and the well-dressed, high-spirited rider. In that moment changes passed over Randal's countenance more rapidly than clouds over the sky in a gusty day. Now envy and discontent, with the curled lip and the gloomy scowl; now hope and proud self-esteem, with the clearing brow, and the lofty smile; and then all again became cold, firm, and close, as he walked back to his books, seated himself resolutely, and said half aloud,--"Well, KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!" CHAPTER IV. Mrs. Leslie came up in fidget and in fuss; she leant over Randal's shoulder and read the card. Written in pen and ink, with an attempt at imitation of printed Roman character, there appeared first, '_Mr. Frank Hazeldean_;' but just over these letters, and scribbled hastily and less legibly in pencil, was-- 'Dear Leslie,--sorry you are out--come and see us--_Do!_' "You will go, Randal?" said Mrs. Leslie after a pause. "I am not sure." "Yes, _you_ can go; _you_ have clothes like a gentleman; _you_ can go anywhere, not like those children;" and Mrs. Leslie glanced almost spitefully on poor Oliver's coarse threadbare jacket, and little Juliet's torn frock. "What I have I owe at present to Mr. Egerton, and I should consult his wishes; he is not on good terms with these Hazeldeans." Then glancing toward his brother, who looked mortified, he added with a strange sort of haughty kindness, "What I may have hereafter, Oliver, I shall owe to myself; and then, if I rise, I will raise my family." "Dear Randal," said Mrs. Leslie, fondly kissing him on the forehead, "what a good heart you have!" "No, mother; my books don't tell me that it is a good heart that gets on in the world: it is a hard head," replied Randal with a rude and scornful candor. "But I can read no more just now; come out, Oliver." So saying, he slid from his mother's hand and left the room. When Oliver joined him, Randal was already on the common; and, without seeming to notice his brother, he continued to walk quickly and with long strides in profound silence. At length he paused under the shade of an old oak, that, too old to be of value save for firewood, had escaped the axe. The tree stood on a knoll, and the spot commanded a view of the decayed house--the old dilapidated church--the dismal, dreary village. "Oliver," said Randal between his teeth, so that his voice had the sound of a hiss, "it was under this tree that I first resolved to--" He paused. "What, Randal?" "Read hard; knowledge is power!" "But you are so fond of reading." "I!" cried Randal. "Do you think, when Woolsey and Thomas-à-Becket became priests, they were fond of telling their beads and pattering Aves?--I fond of reading!" Oliver stared; the historical allusions were beyond his comprehension. "You know," continued Randal, "that we Leslies were not always the beggarly poor gentlemen we are now. You know that there is a man who lives in Grosvenor Square, and is very rich--very. His riches came to him from a Leslie; that man is my patron, Oliver, and he is very good to me." Randal's smile was withering as he spoke. "Come on," he said, after a pause--"come on." Again the walk was quicker, and the brothers were silent. They came at length to a little shallow brook, across which some large stones had been placed at short intervals, so that the boys walked over the ford dryshod. "Will you pull me down that bough, Oliver?" said Randal abruptly, pointing to a tree. Oliver obeyed mechanically; and Randal, stripping the leaves, and snapping off the twigs, left a fork at the end; with this he began to remove the stepping stones. "What are you about, Randal?" asked Oliver, wonderingly. "We are on the other side of the brook now; and we shall not come back this way. We don't want the stepping-stones anymore!--away with them!" CHAPTER V. The morning after this visit of Frank Hazeldean's to Rood Hall, the Right Honorable Audley Egerton, member of parliament, privy councillor, and minister of a high department in the state--just below the rank of the cabinet--was seated in his library, awaiting the delivery of the post, before he walked down to his office. In the meanwhile, he sipped his tea, and glanced over the newspapers with that quick and half disdainful eye with which your practical man in public life is wont to regard the abuse or the eulogium of the Fourth Estate. There is very little likeness between Mr. Egerton and his half-brother; none indeed, except that they are both of tall stature, and strong, sinewy, English build. But even in this last they do not resemble each other; for the Squire's athletic shape is already beginning to expand into that portly embonpoint which seems the natural development of contented men as they approach middle life. Audley, on the contrary, is inclined to be spare; and his figure, though the muscles are as firm as iron, has enough of the slender to satisfy metropolitan ideas of elegance. His dress--his look--his _tout ensemble_, are those of the London man. In the first, there is more attention to fashion than is usual amongst the busy members of the House of Commons; but then Audley Egerton had always been something more than a mere busy member of the House of Commons. He had always been a person of mark in the best society, and one secret of his success in life has been his high reputation as 'a gentleman.' As he now bends over the journals, there is an air of distinction in the turn of the well-shaped head, with the dark-brown hair--dark in spite of a reddish tinge--cut close behind, and worn away a little toward the crown, so as to give additional height to a commanding forehead. His profile is very handsome, and of that kind of beauty which imposes on men if it pleases women; and is therefore, unlike that of your mere pretty fellows, a positive advantage in public life. It is a profile with large features clearly cut, masculine, and somewhat severe. The expression of his face is not open, like the Squire's; nor has it the cold closeness which accompanies the intellectual character of young Leslie's; but it is reserved and dignified, and significant of self-control, as should be the physiognomy of a man accustomed to think before he speaks. When you look at him, you are not surprised to learn that he is not a florid orator nor a smart debater--he is a "weighty speaker." He is fairly read, but without any great range either of ornamental scholarship or constitutional lore. He has not much humor; but he has that kind of wit which is essential to grave and serious irony. He has not much imagination, nor remarkable subtilty in reasoning; but if he does not dazzle, he does not _bore_: he is too much the man of the world for that. He is considered to have sound sense and accurate judgment. Withal, as he now lays aside the journals, and his face relaxes its austerer lines, you will not be astonished to hear that he is a man who is said to have been greatly beloved by women, and still to exercise much influence in drawing-rooms and boudoirs. At least no one was surprised when the great heiress Clementina Leslie, kinswoman and ward to Lord Lansmere--a young lady who had refused three earls and the heir-apparent to a dukedom--was declared by her dearest friends to be dying of love for Audley Egerton. It had been the natural wish of the Lansmeres that this lady should marry their son, Lord L'Estrange. But that young gentleman, whose opinions on matrimony partook of the eccentricity of his general character, could never be induced to propose, and had, according to the _on-dits_ of town, been the principal party to make up the match between Clementina and his friend Audley; for the match required making-up, despite the predilections of the young heiress. Mr. Egerton had had scruples of delicacy. He avowed, for the first time, that his fortune was much less than had been generally supposed, and he did not like the idea of owing all to a wife, however much he might esteem and admire her. L'Estrange was with his regiment abroad during the existence of these scruples; but by letters to his father, and to his cousin Clementina, he contrived to open and conclude negotiations, while he argued away Mr. Egerton's objections; and before the year in which Audley was returned for Lansmere had expired, he received the hand of the great heiress. The settlement of her fortune, which was chiefly in the funds, had been unusually advantageous to the husband; for though the capital was tied up so long as both survived--for the benefit of any children they might have--yet, in the event of one of the parties dying without issue by the marriage, the whole passed without limitation to the survivor. In not only assenting to, but proposing this clause, Miss Leslie, if she showed a generous trust in Mr. Egerton, inflicted no positive wrong on her relations; for she had none sufficiently near to her to warrant their claim to the succession. Her nearest kinsman, and therefore her natural heir, was Harley L'Estrange; and if he was contented, no one had a right to complain. The tie of blood between herself and the Leslies of Rood Hall was, as we shall see presently, extremely distant. It was not till after his marriage that Mr. Egerton took an active part in the business of the House of Commons. He was then at the most advantageous starting-point for the career of ambition. His words on the state of the country took importance from his stake in it. His talents found accessories in the opulence of Grosvenor Square, the dignity of a princely establishment, the respectability of one firmly settled in life, the reputation of a fortune in reality very large, and which was magnified by popular report into the revenues of Croesus. Audley Egerton succeeded in Parliament beyond the early expectations formed of him. He took at first that station in the House which it requires tact to establish, and great knowledge of the world to free from the charge of impracticability and crotchet, but which, once established, is peculiarly imposing from the rarity of its independence; that is to say, the station of the moderate man, who belongs sufficiently to a party to obtain its support, but is yet sufficiently disengaged from a party to make his vote and word, on certain questions, matter of anxiety and speculation. Professing Toryism, (the word Conservative, which would have suited him better, was not then known,) he separated himself from the country party, and always avowed great respect for the opinions of the large towns. The epithet given to the views of Audley Egerton was "enlightened." Never too much in advance of the passion of the day, yet never behind its movement, he had that shrewd calculation of odds which a consummate mastery of the world sometimes bestows upon politicians--perceived the chances for and against a certain question being carried within a certain time, and nicked the question between wind and water. He was so good a barometer of that changeful weather called Public Opinion that he might have had a hand in the _Times_ newspaper. He soon quarreled, and purposely, with his Lansmere constituents--nor had he ever revisited that borough, perhaps because it was associated with unpleasant reminiscences in the shape of the Squire's epistolary trimmer, and in that of his own effigies which his agricultural constituents had burned in the corn-market. But the speeches which produced such indignation at Lansmere, had delighted one of the greatest of our commercial towns, which at the next general election honored him with its representation. In those days, before the Reform Bill, great commercial towns chose men of high mark for their members; and a proud station it was for him who was delegated to speak the voice of the princely merchants of England. Mrs. Egerton survived her marriage but a few years; she left no children; two had been born, but died in their first infancy. The property of the wife, therefore, passed without control or limit to the husband. Whatever might have been the grief of the widower, he disdained to betray it to the world. Indeed, Audley Egerton was a man who had early taught himself to conceal emotion. He buried himself in the country, none knew where, for some months: when he returned, there was a deep wrinkle on his brow; but no change in his habits and avocation, except that soon afterward he accepted office, and thus became busier than ever. Mr. Egerton had always been lavish and magnificent in money matters. A rich man in public life has many claims on his fortune, and no one yielded to those claims with an air so regal as Audley Egerton. But amongst his many liberal actions, there was none which seemed more worthy of panegyric than the generous favor he extended to the son of his wife's poor and distant kinsfolks, the Leslies of Rood Hall. Some four generations back, there had lived a certain Squire Leslie, a man of large acres and active mind. He had cause to be displeased with his elder son, and though he did not disinherit him, he left half his property to a younger. The younger had capacity and spirit, which justified the paternal provision. He increased his fortune; lifted himself into notice and consideration by public services and a noble alliance. His descendants followed his example, and took rank among the first commoners in England, till the last male, dying, left his sole heiress and representative in one daughter, Clementina, afterward married to Mr. Egerton. Meanwhile the elder son of the forementioned Squire had muddled and sotted away much of his share in the Leslie property; and, by low habits and mean society, lowered in repute his representation of the name. His successors imitated him, till nothing was left to Randal's father, Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie, but the decayed house which was what the Germans call the _stamm schloss_, or "stem hall" of the race, and the wretched lands immediately around it. Still, though all intercourse between the two branches of the family had ceased, the younger had always felt a respect for the elder, as the head of the house. And it was supposed that, on her deathbed, Mrs. Egerton had recommended her impoverished namesakes and kindred to the care of her husband. For, when he returned to town after Mrs. Egerton's death, Audley had sent to Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie the sum of £5000, which he said his wife, leaving no written will, had orally bequeathed as a legacy to that gentleman; and he requested permission to charge himself with the education of the eldest son. Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie might have done great things for his little property with those five thousand pounds, or even (kept in the three per cents) the interest would have afforded a material addition to his comforts. But a neighboring solicitor having caught scent of the legacy, hunted it down into his own hands, on pretense of having found a capital investment in a canal. And when the solicitor had got possession of the five thousand pounds, he went off with them to America. Meanwhile Randal, placed by Mr. Egerton at an excellent preparatory school, at first gave no signs of industry or talent; but just before he left it, there came to the school, as classical tutor, an ambitious young Oxford man; and his zeal, for he was a capital teacher, produced a great effect generally on the pupils, and especially on Randal Leslie. He talked to them much in private on the advantages of learning, and shortly afterward he exhibited those advantages in his own person; for, having edited a Greek play with much subtil scholarship, his college, which some slight irregularities of his had displeased, recalled him to its venerable bosom by the presentation of a fellowship. After this he took orders, became a college tutor, distinguished himself yet more by a treatise on the Greek accent, got a capital living, and was considered on the highroad to a bishopric. This young man, then, communicated to Randal the thirst for knowledge; and when the boy went afterward to Eton, he applied with such earnestness and resolve that his fame soon reached the ears of Audley; and that person, who had the sympathy for talent, and yet more for purpose, which often characterizes ambitious men, went to Eton to see him. From that time Audley evinced great and almost fatherly interest in the brilliant Etonian; and Randal always spent with him some days in each vacation. I have said that Egerton's conduct, with respect to this boy, was more praiseworthy than most of those generous actions for which he was renowned, since to this the world gave no applause. What a man does within the range of his family connections, does not carry with it that _éclat_ which invests a munificence exhibited on public occasions. Either people care nothing about it, or tacitly suppose it to be but his duty. It was true, too, as the Squire had observed, that Randal Leslie was even less distantly related to the Hazeldeans than to Mrs. Egerton, since Randal's grandfather had actually married a Miss Hazeldean, (the highest worldly connection that branch of the family had formed since the great split I have commemorated.) But Audley Egerton never appeared aware of that fact. As he was not himself descended from the Hazeldeans, he never troubled himself about their genealogy; and he took care to impress it upon the Leslies that his generosity on their behalf was solely to be ascribed to his respect for his wife's memory and kindred. Still the Squire had felt as if his "distant brother" implied a rebuke on his own neglect of these poor Leslies, by the liberality Audley evinced toward them; and this had made him doubly sore when the name of Randal Leslie was mentioned. But the fact really was, that the Leslies of Rood had so shrunk out of all notice that the Squire had actually forgotten their existence, until Randal became thus indebted to his brother; and then he felt a pang of remorse that any one save himself, the head of the Hazeldeans, should lend a helping hand to the grandson of a Hazeldean. But having thus, somewhat too tediously, explained the position of Audley Egerton, whether in the world or in the relation to his young _protégé_, I may now permit him to receive and to read his letters. CHAPTER VI. Mr. Egerton glanced over the pile of letters placed beside him, and first he tore up some, scarcely read, and threw them into the waste-basket. Public men have such odd out-of-the-way letters that their waste-baskets are never empty: letters from amateur financiers proposing new ways to pay off the National Debt; letters from America, (never free!) asking for autographs; letters from fond mothers in country villages, recommending some miracle of a son for a place in the king's service; letters from freethinkers in reproof of bigotry; letters from bigots in reproof of freethinking; letters signed Brutus Redivivus, containing the agreeable information that the writer has a dagger for tyrants, if the Danish claims are not forthwith adjusted; letters signed Matilda or Caroline, stating that Caroline or Matilda has seen the public man's portrait at the Exhibition, and that a heart sensible to its attractions may be found at No. ---- Piccadilly; letters from beggars, impostors, monomaniacs, speculators, jobbers--all food for the waste-basket. From the correspondence thus winnowed, Mr. Egerton first selected those on business, which he put methodically together in one division of his pocket-book; and secondly, those of a private nature, which he as carefully put into another. Of these last there were but three--one from his steward, one from Harley L'Estrange, one from Randal Leslie. It was his custom to answer his correspondence at his office; and to his office, a few minutes afterward, he slowly took his way. Many a passenger turned back to look again at the firm figure, which, despite the hot summer day, was buttoned up to the throat; and the black frock-coat thus worn, well became the erect air, and the deep full chest of the handsome senator. When he entered Parliament Street, Audley Egerton was joined by one of his colleagues, also on his way to the cares of office. After a few observations on the last debate, this gentleman said-- "By the way, can you dine with me next Saturday, to meet Lansmere? He comes up to town to vote for us on Monday." "I had asked some people to dine with me," answered Egerton, "but I will put them off. I see Lord Lansmere too seldom, to miss any occasion to meet a man whom I respect so much." "So seldom! True, he is very little in town; but why don't you go and see him in the country? Good shooting--pleasant old-fashioned house." "My dear Westbourne, his house is '_nimium vicina Cremonæ_,' close to a borough in which I have been burned in effigy." "Ha--ha--yes--I remember you first came into Parliament for that snug little place; but Lansmere himself never found fault with your votes, did he?" "He behaved very handsomely, and said he had not presumed to consider me his mouthpiece; and then, too, I am so intimate with L'Estrange." "Is that queer fellow ever coming back to England?" "He comes, generally every year, for a few days, just to see his father and mother, and then goes back to the Continent." "I never meet him." "He comes in September or October, when you, of course, are not in town, and it is in town that the Lansmeres meet him." "Why does he not go to them?" "A man in England but once a year, and for a few days, has so much to do in London, I suppose." "Is he as amusing as ever?" Egerton nodded. "So distinguished as he might be!" continued Lord Westbourne. "So distinguished as he is!" said Egerton formally; "an officer selected for praise, even in such fields as Quatre Bras and Waterloo; a scholar, too, of the finest taste; and as an accomplished gentleman, matchless!" "I like to hear one man praise another so warmly in these ill-natured days," answered Lord Westbourne. "But still, though L'Estrange is doubtless all you say, don't you think he rather wastes his life--living abroad?" "And trying to be happy, Westbourne? Are you sure it is not we who waste our lives? But I can't stay to hear your answer. Here we are at the door of my prison." "On Saturday, then?" "On Saturday. Good day." For the next hour, or more, Mr. Egerton was engaged on the affairs of the state. He then snatched an interval of leisure, (while awaiting a report, which he had instructed a clerk to make him,) in order to reply to his letters. Those on public business were soon dispatched; and throwing his replies aside, to be sealed by a subordinate hand, he drew out the letters which he had put apart as private. He attended first to that of his steward: the steward's letter was long, the reply was contained in three lines. Pitt himself was scarcely more negligent of his private interests and concerns than Audley Egerton--yet, withal, Audley Egerton was said by his enemies to be an egotist. The next letter he wrote was to Randal, and that, though longer, was far from prolix: it ran thus-- "Dear Mr. Leslie,--I appreciate your delicacy in consulting me, whether you should accept Frank Hazeldean's invitation to call at the Hall. Since you are asked, I can see no objection to it. I should be sorry if you appeared to force yourself there; and for the rest, as a general rule, I think a young man who has his own way to make in life had better avoid all intimacy with those of his own age who have no kindred objects nor congenial pursuits. "As soon as this visit is paid, I wish you to come to London. The report I receive of your progress at Eton renders it unnecessary, in my judgment, that you should return there. If your father has no objection, I propose that you should go to Oxford at the ensuing term. Meanwhile, I have engaged a gentleman who is a fellow of Baliol, to read with you; he is of opinion, judging only by your high repute at Eton, that you may at once obtain a scholarship in that college. If you do so, I shall look upon your career in life as assured. Your affectionate friend, and sincere well-wisher, A.E." The reader will remark that, in this letter, there is a certain tone of formality. Mr. Egerton does not call his _protegé_ "Dear Randal," as would seem natural, but coldly and stiffly, "Dear Mr. Leslie." He hints, also, that the boy has his own way to make in life. Is this meant to guard against too sanguine notions of inheritance, which his generosity may have excited? The letter to Lord L'Estrange was of a very different kind from the others. It was long, and full of such little scraps of news and gossip as may interest friends in a foreign land; it was written gaily, and as with a wish to cheer his friend; you could see that it was a reply to a melancholy letter; and in the whole tone and spirit there was an affection, even to tenderness, of which those who most liked Audley Egerton would have scarcely supposed him capable. Yet, notwithstanding, there was a kind of constraint in the letter, which perhaps only the fine tact of a woman would detect. It had not that _abandon_, that hearty self-outpouring, which you might expect would characterize the letters of two such friends, who had been boys at school together, and which did breathe indeed in all the abrupt rambling sentences of his correspondent. But where was the evidence of the constraint? Egerton is off-hand enough where his pen runs glibly through paragraphs that relate to others; it is simply that he says nothing about himself--that he avoids all reference to the inner world of sentiment and feeling. But perhaps, after all, the man has no sentiment and feeling! How can you expect that a steady personage in practical life, whose mornings are spent in Downing Street, and whose nights are consumed in watching government bills through committee, can write in the same style as an idle dreamer amidst the pines of Ravenna or on the banks of Como. Audley had just finished this epistle, such as it was, when the attendant in waiting announced the arrival of a deputation from a provincial trading town, the members of which deputation he had appointed to meet at two o'clock. There was no office in London at which deputations were kept waiting less than at that over which Mr. Egerton presided. The deputation entered--some score or so of middle-aged, comfortable-looking persons, who nevertheless had their grievance--and considered their own interests, and those of the country, menaced by a certain clause in a bill brought in by Mr. Egerton. The Mayor of the town was the chief spokesman, and he spoke well--but in a style to which the dignified official was not accustomed. It was a slap-dash style--unceremonious, free, and easy--an American style. And, indeed, there was something altogether in the appearance and bearing of the Mayor which savored of residence in the Great Republic. He was a very handsome man, but with a look sharp and domineering--the look of a man who did not care a straw for president or monarch, and who enjoyed the liberty to speak his mind, and "wallop his own nigger!" His fellow-burghers evidently regarded him with great respect; and Mr. Egerton had penetration enough to perceive that Mr. Mayor must be a rich man, as well as an eloquent one, to have overcome those impressions of soreness or jealousy which his tone was calculated to create in the self-love of his equals. Mr. Egerton was far too wise to be easily offended by mere manner; and, though he stared somewhat haughtily when he found his observations actually pooh-poohed, he was not above being convinced. There was much sense and much justice in Mr. Mayor's arguments, and the statesman civilly promised to take them into full consideration. He then bowed out the deputation; but scarcely had the door closed before it opened again, and Mr. Mayor presented himself alone, saying aloud to his companions in the passage, "I forgot something I had to say to Mr. Egerton; wait below for me." "Well, Mr. Mayor," said Audley, pointing to a seat, "what else would you suggest?" The Mayor looked round to see that the door was closed; and then, drawing his chair close to Mr. Egerton's, laid his forefinger on that gentleman's arm, and said, "I think I speak to a man of the world, sir." Mr. Egerton bowed, and made no reply by word, but he gently removed his arm from the touch of the forefinger. _Mr. Mayor._--"You observe, sir, that I did not ask the members whom we return to Parliament to accompany us. Do better without 'em. You know they are both in Opposition--out-and-outers." _Mr. Egerton._--"It is a misfortune which the Government cannot remember, when the question is whether the trade of the town itself is to be served or injured." _Mr. Mayor._--"Well, I guess you speak handsome, sir. But you'd be glad to have two members to support Ministers after the next election." _Mr. Egerton_, smilingly.--"Unquestionably, Mr. Mayor." _Mr. Mayor._--"And I can do it, Mr. Egerton. I may say I have the town in my pocket; so I ought, I spend a great deal of money in it. Now, you see, Mr. Egerton, I have passed a part of my life in a land of liberty--the United States--and I come to the point when I speak to a man of the world. I am a man of the world myself, sir. And if so be the Government will do something for me, why, I'll do something for the Government. Two votes for a free and independent town like ours--that's something, isn't it?" _Mr. Egerton_, taken by surprise--"Really I--" _Mr. Mayor_, advancing his chair still nearer, and interrupting the official.--"No nonsense, you see, on one side or the other. The fact is that I have taken it into my head that I should like to be knighted. You may well look surprised, Mr. Egerton--trumpery thing enough, I dare say; still every man has his weakness and I should like to be Sir Richard. Well, if you can get me made Sir Richard, you may just name your two members for the next election--that is, if they belong to your own set, enlightened men, up to the times. That's speaking fair and manful, isn't it?" _Mr. Egerton_, drawing himself up.--"I am at a loss to guess why you should select me, sir, for this very extraordinary proposition." _Mr. Mayor_, nodding good-humoredly.--"Why, you see, I don't go all along with the Government; you're the best of the bunch. And maybe you'd like to strengthen your own party. This is quite between you and me, you understand; honor's a jewel!" _Mr. Egerton_, with great gravity.--"Sir, I am obliged by your good opinion; but I agree with my colleagues in all the great questions affecting the government of the country, and--" _Mr. Mayor_, interrupting him.--"Ah, of course you must say so; very right. But I guess things would go differently if you were Prime Minister. However, I have another reason for speaking to you about my little job. You see you were member for Lansmere once, and I think you came in but by two majority, eh?" _Mr. Egerton._--"I know nothing of the particulars of that election; I was not present." _Mr. Mayor._--"No; but, luckily for you, two relatives of mine were, and they voted for you. Two votes, and you came in by two! Since then, you have got into very snug quarters here, and I think we have a claim on you--" _Mr. Egerton._--"Sir, I acknowledge no such claim; I was and am a stranger in Lansmere; and, if the electors did me the honor to return me to Parliament, it was in compliment rather to--" _Mr. Mayor_, again interrupting the official.--"Rather to Lord Lansmere, you were going to say; unconstitutional doctrine that, I fancy. Peer of the realm. But, never mind, I know the world; and I'd ask Lord Lansmere to do my affair for me, only I hear he is as proud as Lucifer." _Mr. Egerton_, in great disgust, and settling his papers before him.--"Sir, it is not in my department to recommend to his Majesty candidates for the honor of knighthood, and it is still less in my department to make bargains for seats in Parliament." _Mr. Mayor._--"Oh, if that's the case, you'll excuse me; I don't know much of the etiquette in these matters. But I thought that, if I put two seats in your hands, for your own friends, you might contrive to take the affair into your department, whatever it was. But since you say you agree with your colleagues, perhaps it comes to the same thing. Now you must not suppose I want to sell the town, and that I can change and chop my politics for my own purpose. No such thing! I don't like the sitting members; I'm all for progressing, but they go _too_ much ahead for me; and, since the Government is disposed to move a little, why I'd as lief support them as not. But, in common gratitude, you see, (added the Mayor, coaxingly,) I ought to be knighted! I can keep up the dignity, and do credit to his Majesty." _Mr. Egerton_, without looking up from his papers.--"I can only refer you, sir, to the proper quarter." _Mr. Mayor_, impatiently.--"Proper quarter! Well, since there is so much humbug in this old country of ours, that one must go through all the forms and get at the job regularly, just tell me whom I ought to go to." _Mr. Egerton_, beginning to be amused as well as indignant.--"If you want a knighthood, Mr. Mayor, you must ask the Prime Minister; if you want to give the Government information relative to seats in Parliament, you must introduce yourself to Mr. ----, the Secretary of the Treasury." _Mr. Mayor._--"And if I go to the last chap, what do you think he'll say?" _Mr. Egerton_, the amusement preponderating over the indignation.--"He will say, I suppose, that you must not put the thing in the light in which you have put it to me; that the Government will be very proud to have the confidence of yourself and your brother electors; and that a gentleman like you, in the proud position of Mayor, may well hope to be knighted on some fitting occasion. But that you must not talk about the knighthood just at present, and must confine yourself to converting the unfortunate political opinions of the town." _Mr. Mayor._--"Well, I guess that chap there would want to do me! Not quite so green, Mr. Egerton. Perhaps I'd better go at once to the fountain-head. How d'ye think the Premier would take it?" _Mr. Egerton_, the indignation preponderating over the amusement.--"Probably just as I am about to do." Mr. Egerton rang the bell; the attendant appeared. "Show Mr. Mayor the way out," said the Minister. The Mayor turned round sharply, and his face was purple. He walked straight to the door; but, suffering the attendant to precede him along the corridor, he came back with rapid stride, and clinching his hands, and with a voice thick with passion, cried, "Some day or other I will make you smart for this, as sure as my name's Dick Avenel!" "Avenel!" repeated Egerton, recoiling, "Avenel!" But the Mayor was gone. Audley fell into a deep and musing reverie which seemed gloomy, and lasted till the attendant announced that the horses were at the door. He then looked up, still abstractedly, and saw his letter to Harley L'Estrange open on the table. He drew it toward him, and wrote, "A man has just left me, who calls himself Aven--" in the middle of the name his pen stopped. "No, no," muttered the writer, "what folly to reopen the old wounds there," and he carefully erased the words. Audley Egerton did not ride in the park that day, as was his wont, but dismissed his groom; and, turning his horse's head toward Westminster Bridge, took his solitary way into the country. He rode at first slowly, as if in thought; then fast, as if trying to escape from thought. He was later than usual at the House that evening, and he looked pale and fatigued. But he had to speak, and he spoke well. TO BE CONTINUED. [From the Journal des Chasseurs.] WILD SPORTS IN ALGERIA. BY M. JULES GERARD. I knew of a large old lion in the Smauls country and betook myself in that direction. On arriving I heard that he was in the Bonarif, near Batnah. My tent was not yet pitched at the foot of the mountain, when I learned that he was at the Fed Jong, where, on my arrival, I found he had gained the Aures. After traveling one hundred leagues in ten days in the trace of my brute without catching a glimpse of anything but his footprints, I was gratified on the night of the 22d of August with the sound of my lord's voice. I had established my tent in the valley of Ousten. As there is only one path across this thickly covered valley, I found it an easy task to discover his track and follow it to his lair. At six o'clock in the evening I alighted upon a hillock commanding a prospect of the country around. I was accompanied by a native of the country and my spahi, one carrying my carbine, the other my old gun. As I had anticipated, the lion roared under cover at dawn of day; but instead of advancing toward me, he started off in a westerly direction at such a pace that it was impossible for me to come up with him. I retraced my steps at midnight and took up my quarters at the foot of a tree upon the path which the lion had taken. The country about this spot was cleared and cultivated. The moon being favorable, the approach of anything could be descried in every direction. I installed myself and waited. Weary after a ride of several hours over a very irregular country, and not expecting any chance that night, I enjoined my spahi to keep a good watch, and lay down. I was just about to fall asleep when I felt a gentle pull at my burnous. On getting up I was able to make out two lions, sitting one beside the other, about one hundred paces off, and exactly on the path in which I had taken up my position. At first I thought we had been perceived, and prepared to make the best of this discovery. The moon shed a light upon the entire ground which the lions would have to cross in order to reach the tree, close to which all within a circumference of ten paces was completely dark, both on account of the thickness of the tree and the shadow cast by the foliage. My spahi, like me, was in range of the shadow, while the Arab lay snoring ten paces off in the full light of the moon. There was no doubting the fact--it was this man who attracted the attention of the lions. I expressly forbade the spahi to wake up the Arab, as I was persuaded that when the action was over he would be proud of having served as a bait even without knowing it. I then prepared my arms and placed them against the tree and got up, in order the better to observe the movements of the enemy. They were not less than half an hour traversing a distance of one hundred metres. Although the ground was open, I could only see them when they raised their heads to make sure that the Arab was still there. They took advantage of every stone and every tuft of grass to render themselves almost invisible; at last the boldest of them came up crouching on his belly to within ten paces of me and fifteen of the Arab. His eye was fixed on the latter, and with such an expression that I was afraid I had waited too long. The second, who had stayed a few paces behind, came and placed himself on a level with and about four or five paces from the first. I then saw for the first time that they were full-grown lionesses. I took aim at the first, and she came rolling and roaring down to the foot of the tree. The Arab was scarcely awakened when a second ball stretched the animal dead upon the spot. The first bullet went in at the muzzle and came out at the tail; the second had gone through the heart. After making sure that my men were all right, I looked out for the second lioness. She was standing up within fifteen paces, looking at what was going on around her. I took my gun and leveled it at her. She squatted down. When I fired she fell down roaring, and disappeared in a field of maize on the edge of the road. On approaching I found by her moaning that she was still alive, and did not venture at night into the thick plantation which sheltered her. As soon as it was day I went to the spot where she had fallen, and all I found were bloodmarks showing her track in the direction of the wood. After sending the dead lioness to the neighboring garrison, who celebrated its arrival by a banquet, I returned to my post of the previous night. A little after sunset the lion roared for the first time, but instead of quitting his lair he remained there all night, roaring like a madman. Convinced that the wounded lioness was there, I sent on the morning of the 24th two Arabs to explore the cover. They returned without daring to approach it. On the night of the 24th there was the same roaring and complaining of the lion on the mountain and under cover. On the 25th, at five in the evening, I had a young goat muzzled, and proceeded with it to the mountain. The lair was exceedingly difficult of access. Nevertheless I succeeded at last by crawling now on my hands and now on my belly in reaching it. Having discovered certain indications of the presence of the inhabitants of this locality, I had the goat unmuzzled and tied to a tree. Then followed the most comical panic on the part of the Arabs, who were carrying my arms. Seeing themselves in the middle of the lion's lair, whom they could distinctly smell, and hearing the horrified goat calling them with all its might, was a position perfectly intolerable to them. After consulting together as to whether it were better to climb up a tree or clamber on a rock, they asked my permission to remain near the goat. This confidence pleased me and obtained them the privilege of a place by my side. I had not been there a quarter of an hour when the lioness appeared; she found herself suddenly beside the goat, and looked about her with an air of astonishment. I fired, and she fell without a struggle. The Arabs were already kissing my hands, and I myself believed her dead, when she got up again as though nothing was the matter and showed us all her teeth. One of the Arabs who had run toward her was within six paces of her. On seeing her get up he clung to the lower branches of the tree to which the goat was tied, and disappeared like a squirrel. The lioness fell dead at the foot of the tree, a second bullet piercing her heart. The first had passed out of the nape of the neck without breaking the skull bone. [From the Spectator.] RECENT DEATHS IN THE FAMILY OF ORLEANS. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin:" there is not one among the millions who read of the mortal sufferings endured by Queen Louise of Belgium that will not sympathize with the sorrowing relatives around her deathbed; especially with that aged lady who has seen so many changes, survived so many friends, mourned so many dear ones. To the world Queen Amélie is like a relative to whom we are endeared by report without having seen her; and as we read of her journey to pay the last sad offices to her daughter, we forget the "royal personage," in regard for that excellent lady who has been made known to us by so many sorrows. The Orleans family, in its triumphs and in its adversities, may be taken as a living and most striking illustration of "principle,"--of principle working to ends that are certain. Louis Philippe's character shone best in his personal and family relation. He was a shifty expedientist in politics: a great national crisis came to him as a fine opportunity to the commercial man for pushing some particular kind of traffic. He adopted the cant of the day, as mere traders adopt produce, ready made; taking the correctness of the earlier stages for granted. He adopted "the Monarchy surrounded by Republican institutions," as a Member of Parliament takes the oaths, for form's sake: it was the form of accepting the crown, its power and dignity; and he did what was suggested as the proper thing to be done: but did he ever trouble himself about the "Republican institutions?" He adopted the National Guard, as a useful instrument to act by way of breastwork, under cover of which his throne could repose secure, while the royal power could shoot as it pleased _over_ that respectable body at the people: but did he ever trouble himself with the purpose of a national guard?--No more than a beadle troubles his head with the church theology or parochial constitution. He never meddled with the stuff and vital working of politics; and when the time came that required him to maintain his post by having a hold on the nation of France, by acting with the forces then at work, wholly incompetent to the unsought task, he let go, and was drifted away by the flood of events. But still, though the most signal instance of opportunity wasted and success converted to failure before the eyes of Europe, he retained a considerable degree of respectability. First, the vitality of the man was strong, and had been tested by many vicissitudes; and the world sympathizes with that sort of leasehold immortality. Further, his family clung around him: the respectable, amiable paterfamilias, whose personal qualities had been somewhat obscured by the splendors of the throne, now again appeared unvailed, and that which was sterling in the man was once more known--again tried, again sound. Louis Philippe failed as a king, he succeeded as a father. Queen Amélie placed her faith less on mundane prosperity than on spiritual welfare; and she was so far imbued by faith as a living principle that it actuated her in her conduct as a daily practice. With the obedience of the true Catholic, she combined the spirit of active Christianity. While some part of her family has been inspired mainly by the paternal spirit, some took their spirit from the mother; and none, it would appear, more decidedly than Queen Louise. The accounts from Belgium liken her to our own Queen Adelaide, in whom was exhibited the same spirit of piety and practical Christianity; and we see the result in the kind of personal affection that she earned. Agree with these estimable women in their doctrine or not, you cannot but respect the firmness of their own faith or the spirit of self-sacrifice which remained uncorrupted through all the trials of temptations, so rife, so _devitalizing_ in the life of royalty. Death visits the palace and the cottage, and we expect his approach: we understand his aspect, and know how he affects the heart of mortality. Be they crowned or not, we understand what it is that mortal creatures are enduring under the affliction; and we well know what it means when parent and children, brothers and sisters, collect around the deathbed. King Leopold we have twice seen under the same trial, and again remember how much he has rested of his life on the personal relation. We note these things; we call to mind all that the family, illustrious not less by its vicissitudes and its adversities than by its exaltation, has endured; and while we sympathize with its sorrows, we feel how much it must be sustained by those reliances which endure more firmly than worldly fortune. But our regard does not stop with admiration; we notice with satisfaction this example to the family and personal relation--this proof that amid the splendors of royalty the firmest reliances and the sweetest consolations are those which are equally open to the humblest. [From "Leaves from the Journal of a Naturalist," in Fraser's Magazine.] PLEASANT STORY OF A SWALLOW. In September, 1800, the Rev. Walter Trevelyan wrote from Long-Wilton, Northumberland, in a letter to the editor of Bewick's "British Birds," the following narrative, which is so simply and beautifully written, and gives so clear an account of the process of taming, that it would be unjust to recite it in any words but his own for the edification of those who may wish to make the experiment:--"About nine weeks ago (writes the good clergyman), a swallow fell down one of our chimneys, nearly fledged, and was able to fly in two or three days. The children desired they might try to rear him, to which I agreed, fearing the old ones would desert him; and as he was not the least shy they succeeded without any difficulty, for he opened his mouth for flies as fast as they could supply them, and was regularly fed to a whistle. In a few days, perhaps a week, they used to take him into the fields with them, and as each child found a fly and whistled, the little bird flew for his prey from one to another; at other times he would fly round about them in the air, but always descended at the first call, in spite of the constant endeavors of the wild swallows to seduce him away; for which purpose several of them at once would fly about him in all directions, striving to drive him away when they saw him about to settle on one of the children's hands, extended with the food. He would very often alight on the children, uncalled, when they were walking several fields distant from home." What a charming sketch of innocence and benevolence, heightened by the anxiety of the pet's relations to win him away from beings whom they must have looked upon as so many young ogres! The poor flies, it is true, darken the picture a little; but to proceed with the narrative:--"Our little inmate was never made a prisoner by being put into a cage, but always ranged about the room at large wherever the children were, and they never went out of doors without taking him with them. Sometimes he would sit on their hands or heads and catch flies for himself, which he soon did with great dexterity. At length, finding it take up too much of their time to supply him with food enough to satisfy his appetite (for I have no doubt he ate from seven hundred to a thousand flies a day), they used to turn him out of the house, shutting the window to prevent his returning for two or three hours together, in hopes he would learn to cater for himself, which he soon did; but still was no less tame, always answering their call, and coming in at the window to them (of his own accord) frequently every day, and always roosting in their room, which he has regularly done from the first till within a week or ten days past. He constantly roosted on one of the children's heads till their bed-time; nor was he disturbed by the child moving about, or even walking, but would remain perfectly quiet with his head under his wing, till he was put away for the night in some warm corner, for he liked much warmth." The kind and considerate attempt to alienate the attached bird from its little friends had its effect. "It is now four days (writes worthy Mr. Trevelyan, in conclusion) since he came in to roost in the house, and though he then did not show any symptoms of shyness, yet he is evidently becoming less tame, as the whistle will not now bring him to the hand; nor does he visit us as formerly, but he always acknowledges it when within hearing by a chirp, and by flying near. Nothing could exceed his tameness for about six weeks; and I have no doubt it would have continued the same had we not left him to himself as much as we could, fearing he would be so perfectly domesticated that he would be left behind at the time of migration, and of course be starved in the winter from cold and hunger." And so ends this agreeable story: not, however, that it was "of course" that the confiding bird would be starved if it remained, for the Rev. W.F. Cornish, of Totness, kept two tame swallows, one for a year and a half, and the other for two years, as he informed Mr. Yarrell. [From Mure's Literature of Ancient Greece.] EXCLUSION OF LOVE FROM GREEK POETRY. One of the most prominent forms in which the native simplicity and purity of the Hellenic bard displays itself is the entire exclusion of sentimental or romantic love from his stock of poetical materials. This is a characteristic which, while inherited in a greater or less degree by the whole more flourishing age of Greek poetical literature, possesses also the additional source of interest to the modern scholar, of forming one of the most striking points of distinction between ancient and modern literary taste. So great an apparent contempt, on the part of so sensitive a race as the Hellenes, for an element of poetical pathos which has obtained so boundless an influence on the comparatively phlegmatic races of Western Europe, is a phenomenon which, although it has not escaped the notice of modern critics, has scarcely met with the attention which its importance demands. By some it has been explained as a consequence of the low estimation in which the female sex was held in Homer's age, as contrasted with the high honors conferred on it by the courtesy of medieval chivalry; by others as a natural effect of the restrictions placed on the free intercourse of the sexes among the Greeks. Neither explanation is satisfactory. The latter of the two is set aside by Homer's own descriptions, which abundantly prove that in his time, at least, women could have been subjected to no such jealous control as to interfere with the free course of amorous intrigue. Nor even, had such been the case, would the cause have been adequate to the effect. Experience seems rather to evince that the greater the difficulties to be surmounted the higher the poetical capabilities of such adventures. Erotic romance appears, in fact, to have been nowhere more popular than in the East, where the jealous separation of the sexes has, in all ages, been extreme. As little can it be said that Homer's poems exhibit a state of society in which females were lightly esteemed. The Trojan war itself originates in the susceptibility of an injured husband: and all Greece takes up arms to avenge his wrong. The plot of the Odyssey hinges mainly on the constant attachment of the hero to the spouse of his youth; and the whole action tends to illustrate the high degree of social and political influence consequent on the exemplary performance of the duties of wife and mother. Nor surely do the relations subsisting between Hector and Andromache, or Priam and Hecuba, convey a mean impression of the respect paid to the female sex in the heroic age. As little can the case be explained by a want of fit or popular subjects of amorous adventure. Many of the favorite Greek traditions are as well adapted to the plot of an epic poem or tragedy of the sentimental order, as any that modern history can supply. Still less can the exclusion be attributed to a want of sensibility, on the part of the Greek nation, to the power of the tender passions. The influence of those passions is at least as powerfully and brilliantly asserted in their own proper sphere of poetical treatment, in the lyric odes, for example, of Sappho or Mimnermus, as in any department of modern poetry. Nor must it be supposed that even the nobler Epic or Tragic Muse was insensible to the poetical value of the passion of love. But it was in the connection of that passion with others of a sterner nature to which it gives rise, jealousy, hatred, revenge, rather than in its own tender sensibilities, that the Greek poets sought to concentrate the higher interest of their public. Any excess of the amorous affections which tended to enslave the judgment or reason was considered as a weakness, not an honorable emotion; and hence was confined almost invariably to women. The nobler sex are represented as comparatively indifferent, often cruelly callous, to such influence; and, when subjected to it, are usually held up as objects of contempt rather than admiration. As examples may be cited the amours of Medea and Jason, of Phædra and Hippolytus, of Theseus and Ariadne, of Hercules and Omphale. The satire on the amorous weakness of the most illustrious of Greek heroes embodied in the last mentioned fable, with the glory acquired by Ulysses from his resistance to the fascinations of Circe and Calypso, may be jointly contrasted with the subjection by Tasso of Rinaldo and his comrades to the thraldom of Armida, and with the pride and pleasure which the Italian poet of chivalry appears to take in the sensual degradation of his heroes. The distinction here drawn by the ancients is the more obvious, that their warriors are least of all men described as indifferent to the pleasures of female intercourse. They are merely exempt from subjection to its unmanly seductions. Ulysses, as he sails from coast to coast, or island to island, willingly partakes of the favors which fair goddesses or enchantresses press on his acceptance. But their influence is never permitted permanently to blunt the more honorable affections of his bosom, or divert his attention from higher objects of ambition. [From the Spectator.] THE GATEWAY OF THE OCEANS. The forcing of the barrier which for three hundred years has defied and imperiled the commerce of the world seems now an event at hand. One half of the contract for the junction of the Atlantic and Pacific, obtained from the State of Nicaragua last year by the promptitude of the Americans, is to be held at the option of English capitalists; and an understanding is at length announced, that if the contemplated ship-canal can be constructed on conditions that shall leave no uncertainty as to the profitableness of the enterprise, it is to be carried forward with the influence of our highest mercantile firms. The necessary surveys have been actually commenced; and as a temporary route is at the same time being opened, an amount of information is likely soon to be collected which will familiarize us with each point regarding the capabilities of the entire region. It is understood, moreover, that when the canal-surveys shall be completed, they are to be submitted to the rigid scrutiny of Government engineers both in England and the United States; so that before the public can be called upon to consider the expediency of embarking in the undertaking, every doubt in connection with it, as far as practical minds are concerned, will have been removed. The immediate steps now in course of adoption may be explained in a few words. At present the transit across the Isthmus of Panama occupies four days, and its inconveniences and dangers are notorious. At Nicaragua, it is represented, the transit may possibly be effected in one day, and this by a continuous steam-route with the exception of fifteen miles by mule or omnibus. The passage would be up the San Juan, across Lake Nicaragua to the town of that name, and thence to the port of San Juan del Sur on the Pacific. On arriving at this terminus, (which is considerably south of the one contemplated for the permanent canal, namely Realejo,) the passenger would find himself some six or seven hundred miles nearer to California than if he had crossed at the Isthmus of Panama; and as the rate of speed of the American steamers on this service is upward of three hundred miles a day, his saving of three days in crossing, coupled with the saving in sea distance, would be equivalent to a total of fifteen hundred miles, measured in relation to what is accomplished by these vessels. A lower charge for the transit, and a comparatively healthy climate, are also additional inducements; and under these circumstances, anticipations are entertained that the great tide of traffic will be turned in the new direction. This tide, according to the last accounts from Panama, was kept up at the rate of 70,000 persons a year; and it was expected to increase. The navigability of the San Juan, however, in its present state, remains yet to be tested. The American company who have obtained the privilege of the route have sent down two vessels of light draught, the Nicaragua and the Director, for the purpose of forthwith placing the matter beyond doubt. At the last date, the Director had safely crossed the bar at its mouth, and was preparing to ascend; the Nicaragua had previously gone up the Colorado, a branch river, where, it is said, through the carelessness of her engineer, she had run aground upon a sand-bank, though without sustaining any damage. The next accounts will possess great interest. Whatever may be the real capabilities of the river, accidents and delays must be anticipated in the first trial of a new method of navigating it: even in our own river, the Thames, the first steamer could scarcely have been expected to make a trip from London Bridge to Richmond without some mishap. Should, therefore, the present experiment show any clear indications of success, there will be reasonable ground for congratulation; and it forms so important a chapter in the history of enterprise, that all must regard it with good wishes. If the results of this temporary transit should realize the expectations it seems to warrant, there can be little doubt the completion of the canal will soon be commenced with ardor. Supposing the surveys should show a cost not exceeding the sum estimated in 1837 by Lieutenant Baily, the prospect of the returns would, there is reason to believe, be much larger than the public have at any time been accustomed to suppose. There is also the fact that the increase of these returns can know no limit so long as the commerce of the world shall increase; and indeed, already the idea of the gains to accrue appears to have struck some minds with such force as to lead them to question if the privileges which have been granted are not of a kind so extraordinarily favorable that they will sooner or later be repudiated by the State of Nicaragua. No such danger however exists; as the company are guaranteed in the safe possession of all their rights by the treaty of protection which has been ratified between Great Britain and the United States. One most important sign in favor of the quick completion of the ship-canal is now furnished in the circumstance that there are no rival routes. At Panama, a cheap wooden railway is to be constructed, which will prove serviceable for much of the passenger-traffic to Peru and Chili; but the project for a canal at that point has been entirely given up. The same is the case at Tehuantepec, where the difficulties are far greater than at Panama. It is true, the question naturally arises, whether if an exploration were made of other parts of Central America or New Grenada, some route might not be discovered which might admit of the construction of a canal even at a less cost than will be necessary at Nicaragua. But in a matter which concerns the commerce of the whole world for ages, there are other points to be considered besides mere cheapness; and those who have studied the advantages of Nicaragua maintain that enough is known of the whole country both north and south of that State, to establish the fact that she possesses intrinsic capabilities essential to the perfectness of the entire work, which are not to be found in any other quarter, and for the absence of which no saving of any immediate sum would compensate. In the first place, it is nearer to California by several hundred miles than any other route that could be pointed out except Tehuantepec, while at the same time it is so central as duly to combine the interests both of the northern and southern countries of the Pacific; in the next place, it contains two magnificent natural docks, where all the vessels in the world might refresh and refit; thirdly, it abounds in natural products of all kinds, and is besides comparatively well-peopled; fourthly, it possesses a temperature which is relatively mild, while it is also in most parts undoubtedly healthy; and finally, it has a harbor on the Pacific, which, to use the words of Dunlop in his book on Central America, is as good as any port in the known world, and decidedly superior even to Portsmouth, Rio Janeiro, Port Jackson, Talcujana, Callao, and Guayaquil. The proximity to California moreover settles the question as to American cooperation; which, it may be believed, would certainly not be afforded to any route farther south, and without which it would be idle to contemplate the undertaking. At the same time, however, it must be admitted, that if any body of persons would adopt the example now set by the American company, and commence a survey of any new route at their own expense, they would be entitled to every consideration, and to rank as benefactors of the community, whatever might be the result of their endeavors. There are none who can help forward the enterprise, either directly or indirectly, upon whom it will not shed honor. That honor, too, will not be distant. The progress of the work will unite for the first time in a direct manner the two great nations upon whose mutual friendship the welfare of the world depends; and its completion will cause a revolution in commerce more extensive and beneficent than any that has yet occurred, and which may still be so rapid as to be witnessed by many who even now are old. [From the Spectator.] THE MURDER MARKET. "The Doddinghurst murder," "the Frimley murder," "the Regent's Park burglary," "the Birmingham burglary," "the Liverpool plate robberies,"--the plots thicken to such a degree that society turns still paler; and having last week asked for ideas on the subject of better security for life and property, asks this week, still more urgently, for _more_ security. We must then penetrate deeper into the causes. Yes, civilization is observable in nothing more than in the development of criminality. Whether it is that _pennyalining_ discloses it more, or that the instances really are more numerous, may be doubtful; but why, in spite of modern improvements to illumine, order, and guard society, does crime stalk abroad so signally unchecked?--_that_ is the question. We believe that the causes are various; and that to effect a thorough amendment, we must deal with _all_ the causes, radically. Let us reckon up some of them. One is, that the New Police, which at first acted as a scarecrow, has grown familiar to the ruffianly or roguish: it has been discovered that a Policeman is not ubiquitous, and if you know that he is walking toward Berkhamstead you are certain that he is not going toward Hemel Hempstead. In some counties the Policeman is the very reverse of ubiquitous, being altogether non-inventus, by reason of parsimony in the rate-payers. The disuse of arms and the general unfamiliarity with them help to embolden the audacious. The increase of wealth is a direct attraction: the more silver spoons and épergnes, the more gold-handled knives and dish-covers electro-gilt, are to be found in pantry, the more baits are there set for the wild animals of society; and if there be no trap with the bait, then the human vermin merely run off with it. But he will bite if you offer any let. With the general luxury grows the burglarious love of luxury: as peers and cits grow more curious in their appetites, so burglars and swell-mobsmen. The tasteful cruet which tempts Lady Juliana, and is gallantly purchased by her obliging husband Mr. Stubbs, has its claims also for Dick Stiles; and the champagne which is so relished by the guests round Mr. Stubbs's mahogany is pleasant tipple under a hedge. Another cause, most pregnant with inconvenience to the public, is the practice in which we persist in letting our known criminals go about at large, on constitutional scruples against shutting the door till the steed be gone. We are bound to treat a man as innocent until he be found guilty,--which means, that we must not hang him or pillory him without proof before a jury: but an innocent man may be suspected, and _ought_ to be suspected, if appearances are against him. So much for the suspected criminal, whom we will not take into custody until he has galloped off in our own saddle. But even the convicted ruffian is to be set at large, under the system of time sentences. Yes, "the liberty of the subject" demands the license of the burglar. A sixth cause is the mere increase of the population hereditarily given to crime,--a caste upon which we have made so little impression, either by prison discipline, ragged schools, or any other process. In education we rely upon book learning or theological scrap teaching, neither of which influences will reach certain minds; for there are many, and not the worst dispositions, that never can be brought under a very active influence of a studious or spiritual kind. But we omit the right kind of training, the physical and material, for that order of mind. Other causes are--the wide social separation in this country, by virtue of which our servants are strangers in the house, alien if not hostile to the family; the want of our present customs to give scope for such temperaments as need excitement; the state of the Poor-law, which makes the honest man desperate and relaxes the proper control over the vagrant. The remedies for these causes must go deeper than bells for shutters or snappish housedogs for the night: meanwhile, we must be content to read of murders, and to use the best palliatives we can--even shutter-bells and vigilant little dogs. [From the Examiner.] STATUES. Statues are now rising in every quarter of our metropolis, and mallet and chisel are the chief instruments in use. Whatever is conducive to the promotion of the arts ought undoubtedly to be encouraged; but love in this instance, quite as much as in any, ought neither to be precipitate nor blind. A true lover of his country should be exempted from the pain of blushes, when a foreigner inquires of him, "_Whom does this statue represent? and for what merits was it raised?_" The defenders of their country, not the dismemberers of it, should be first in honor; the maintainers of the laws, not the subverters of them, should follow next. I may be asked by the studious, the contemplative, the pacific, whether I would assign a higher station to any public man than to a Milton and a Newton. My answer is plainly and loudly, _Yes_. But the higher station should be in the streets, in squares, in houses of parliament: such are their places; our vestibules and our libraries are best adorned by poets, philosophers, and philanthropists. There is a feeling which street-walking and public-meeting men improperly call _loyalty_; a feeling intemperate and intolerant, smelling of dinner and wine and toasts, which raises their stomachs and their voices at the sound of certain names reverberated by the newspaper press. As little do they know about the proprietary of these names as pot-wallopers know about the candidates at a borough election, and are just as vociferous and violent. A few days ago, I received a most courteous invitation to be named on a Committee for erecting a statue to Jenner. It was impossible for me to decline it; and equally was it impossible to abstain from the observations which I am now about to state. I recommended that the statue should be placed before a public hospital, expressing my sense of impropriety in confounding so great a benefactor of mankind, in any street or square or avenue, with the Dismemberer of America and his worthless sons. Nor would I willingly see him among the worn-out steam-engines of parliamentary debates. The noblest parliamentary men who had nothing to distribute, not being ministers, are without statues. The illustrious Burke, the wisest, excepting Bacon, who at any time sat within the people's House; Romilly, the sincerest patriot; Huskisson, the most intelligent in commercial affairs, has none. Peel is become popular, not by his incomparable merits, but by his untimely death. Shall we never see the day when Oliver and William mount the chargers of Charles and George; and when a royal swindler is superseded by the purest and most exalted of our heroes, Blake? Walter Savage Landor. [From the last Edinburgh Review.] RESPONSIBILITY OF STATESMEN. It is of the last moment that all who are, or are likely to be, called to administer the affairs of a free state, should be deeply imbued with the statesmanlike virtues of modesty and caution, and should act under a profound sense of their personal responsibility. It is an awful thing to undertake the government of a great country; and no man can be any way worthy of that high calling who does not from his inmost soul feel it to be so. When we reflect upon the fearful consequences, both to the lives, the material interests, and the moral well-being of thousands, which may ensue from a hasty word, an erroneous judgment, a temporary carelessness, or a lapse of diligence; when we remember that every action of a statesman is pregnant with results which may last for generations after he is gathered to his fathers; that his decisions may, and probably must, affect for good or ill the destinies of future times; that peace or war, crime or virtue, prosperity or adversity, the honor or dishonor of his country, the right or wrong, wise or unwise solution of some of the mightiest problems in the progress of humanity, depend upon the course he may pursue at those critical moments which to ordinary men occur but rarely, but which crowd the daily life of a statesman; the marvel is that men should be forthcoming bold enough to venture on such a task. Now, among public men in England this sense of responsibility is in general adequately felt. It affords an honorable (and in most cases we believe a true) explanation of that singular discrepancy between public men when in and when out of office--that inconsistency between the promise and the performance,--between what the leader of the opposition urges the minister to do, and what the same leader, when minister himself, actually does,--which is so commonly attributed to less reputable motives. The independent member may speculate and criticise at his ease; may see, as he thinks, clearly, and with an undoubting and imperious conviction, what course on this or that question ought to be pursued; may feel so unboundedly confident in the soundness of his views, that he cannot comprehend or pardon the inability of ministers to see as he sees, and to act as he would wish; but as soon as the overwhelming responsibilities of office are his own, as soon as he finds no obstacle to the carrying out of his plans, except such as may arise from the sense that he does so at the risk of his country's welfare and his own reputation--he is seized with a strange diffidence, a new-born modesty, a mistrust of his own judgment which he never felt before; he re-examines, he hesitates, he delays; he brings to bear upon the investigation all the new light which official knowledge has revealed to him; and finds at last that he scruples to do himself what he had not scrupled to insist upon before. So deep-rooted is this sense of responsibility with our countrymen, that whatever parties a crisis of popular feeling might carry into power, we should have comparatively little dread of rash, and no dread of corrupt, conduct on their part; we scarcely know the public man who, when his country's destinies were committed to his charge, could for a moment dream of acting otherwise than with scrupulous integrity, and to the best of his utmost diligence and most cautious judgment,--at all events till the dullness of daily custom had laid his self-vigilance asleep. We are convinced that were Lord Stanhope and Mr. Disraeli to be borne into office by some grotesque freak of fortune, even they would become sobered as by magic, and would astonish all beholders, not by their vagaries, but by their steadiness and discretion. Now, of this wholesome sense of awful responsibility, we see no indications among public men in France. Dumont says, in his "Recollections of Mirabeau," "I have sometimes thought that if you were to stop a hundred men indiscriminately in the streets of Paris and London, and propose to each to undertake the government, ninety-nine of the Londoners would refuse, and ninety-nine of the Parisians would accept." In fact, we find it is only one or two of the more experienced _habitués_ of office who in France ever seem to feel any hesitation. Ordinary deputies, military men, journalists, men of science, accept, with a _naive_ and simple courage, posts for which, except that courage, they possess no single qualification. But this is not the worst; they never hesitate, at their country's risk and cost, to carry out their own favorite schemes to an experiment; in fact, they often seem to value office mainly for that purpose, and to regard their country chiefly as the _corpus vile_ on which the experiment is to be made. To make way for their theories, they relentlessly sweep out of sight the whole past, and never appear to contemplate either the possibility or the parricidal guilt of failure. [From the New Monthly Magazine.] THE COW TREE OF SOUTH AMERICA. Mr. Higson met with two species of cow tree, which he states to be abundant in the deep and humid woods of the provinces of Chocó and Popayán. In an extract from his diary, dated Ysconde, May 7, 1822, he gives an account of an excursion he made, about twelve miles up the river, in company with the alcaide and two other gentlemen, in quest of some of these milk trees, one species of which, known to the inhabitants by the name of Popa, yields, during the ascent of the sap, a redundance of a nutritive milky juice, obtained by incisions made into the thick bark which clothes the trunk, and which he describes as of an ash color externally, while the interior is of a clay red. Instinct, or some natural power closely approaching to the reasoning principle, has taught the jaguars, and other wild beasts of the forest, the value of this milk, which they obtain by lacerating the bark with their claws and catching the milk as it flows from the incisions. A similar instinct prevails amongst the hogs that have become wild in the forests of Jamaica, where a species of Rhus, the _Rhus Metopium_ of botanists, grows, the bark of which, on being wounded, yields a resinous juice, possessing many valuable medicinal properties, and among them that of rapidly cicatrizing wounds. How this valuable property was first discovered by the hogs, or by what peculiar interchange of ideas the knowledge of it was communicated by the happy individual who made it to his fellow hogs, is a problem which, in the absence of some porcine historiographer, we have little prospect of solving. But, however this may be, the fact is sufficiently notorious in Jamaica, where the wild hogs, when wounded, seek out one of these trees, which, from the first discoverers of its sanative properties, have been named "Hog Gum Trees," and, abrading the bark with their teeth, rub the wounded part of their bodies against it, so as to coat the wound with a covering of the gummy, or rather gum-resinous fluid, that exudes from the bark. In like manner, as Mr. Higson informs us, the jaguars, instructed in the nutritious properties of the potable juice of the Popa, jump up against the stem, and lacerating the bark with their claws greedily catch the liquid nectar as it issues from the wound. By a strange perverseness of his nature, man, in the pride of his heart and the intoxication of his vanity, spurns this delicious beverage, which speedily fattens all who feed on it, and contents himself with using it, when inspissated by the sun, as a bird-lime to catch parrots; or converting it into a glue, which withstands humidity, by boiling it with the gum of the mangle-tree (_Sapium aucuparium?_), tempered with wood ashes. Mr. Higson states that they caught plenty of the milk, which was of the consistence of cream, of a bland and sweetish taste, and a somewhat aromatic flavor, and so white as to communicate a tolerably permanent stain wherever it fell; it mixed with spirit, as readily as cow's milk, and made, with the addition of water, a very agreeable and refreshing beverage, of which they drank several tutumos full. They cut down a tree, one of the tallest of the forest, in order to procure specimens, and found the timber white, of a fine grain, and well adapted for boards or shingles. They were about a month too late to obtain the blossoms, which were said to be very showy, but found abundance of fruit, disposed on short foot-stalks in the alæ of the leaves; these were scabrous, and about the size of a nutmeg. The leaves he describes as having very short petioles, hearted at the base, and of a coriaceous consistence, and covered with large semi-globular glands. Besides the Popa, he speaks of another lactescent tree, called Sandé, the milk of which, though more abundant, is thinner, bluish, like skimmed milk, and not so palatable. This, inspissated in the sun, acquires the appearance of a black gum, and is so highly valued for its medicinal properties, especially as a topical application in inflammatory affections of the spleen, pleura, and liver, that it fetches a dollar the ounce in the Valle del Cauca. The leaves are described as resembling those of the _Chrysophyllum cainito_, or broad-leaved star apple, springing from short petioles, ten or twelve inches long, oblong, ovate, pointed, with alternate veins, and ferruginous on the under surface. The locality of the Sandé he does not point out, but says that a third kind of milk tree, the juice of which is potable, grows in the same forests, where it is known by the name of Lyria. This he regards as identical with the cow tree of Caracas, of which Humboldt has given so graphic a description. [From the Illustrated London News.] SONG OF THE SEASONS. BY CHARLES MACKAY. I heard the language of the trees, In the noons of the early summer; As the leaves were moved like rippling seas By the wind--a constant comer. It came and it went at its wanton will; And evermore loved to dally, With branch and flower, from the cope of the hill To the warm depths of the valley. The sunlight glow'd; the waters flow'd; The birds their music chanted, And the words of the trees on my senses fell-- By a spirit of Beauty haunted:-- Said each to each, in mystic speech:-- "The skies our branches nourish;-- The world is good,--the world is fair,-- Let us _enjoy_ and flourish!" Again I heard the steadfast trees; The wintry winds were blowing; There seem'd a roar as of stormy seas, And of ships to the depths down-going And ever a moan through the woods were blown, As the branches snapp'd asunder, And the long boughs swung like the frantic arms Of a crowd in affright and wonder. Heavily rattled the driving hail! And storm and flood combining, Laid bare the roots of mighty oaks Under the shingle twining. Said tree to tree, "These tempests free Our sap and strength shall nourish; Though the world be hard, though the world be cold, We can endure and flourish!" [From Eliza Cook's Journal.] THE WANE OF THE YEAR. But autumn wanes, and with it fade the golden tints, and burning hues, and the warm breezes; for winter, with chilling clasp and frosty breath, hurries like a destroyer over the fields to bury their beauties in his snow, and to blanch and wither up with his frozen breath, the remnants of the blooming year. The harvests are gathered, the seeds are sown, the meadow becomes once more green and velvet-like as in the days of spring: the weeds and flowers run to seed, and stand laden with cups, and urns, and bells, each containing the unborn germs of another summer's beauty, and only waiting for the winter winds to scatter them, and the spring sunshine to fall upon them, where they fall to break into bud and leaf and flower, and to whisper to the passing wind that the soul of beauty dies not. It is now upon the waning of the sunshine and the falling of the leaf that the bleak winds rise angrily, and the gloom of the dying year deepens in the woods and fields. We hear the plying of the constant flail mingling with the clatter of the farm-yard; we are visited by fogs and moving mists, and heavy rains that last for days together; upon the hill the horn of the hunter is heard, and in the mountain solitudes the eagle's scream; up among craggy rifts the red deer bound, and the waterfall keeps up its peals of thunder; and although the autumn, having ripened the fruits of summer, and gathered into the garnery the yellow fruitage of the field, must hie away to sunbright shores and islands in the glittering seas of fairy lands, she leaves the spirits of the flowers to hover hither and thither amid the leafless bowers to bewail in midnight dirges the loss of leaves and blossoms and the joyful tide of song. It is one of these of whom the poet speaks; for he, having been caught up by the divine ether into the regions of eternal beauty, has seen, as mortals seldom see, the shadows of created things, and has spoken with the angel spirits of the world:-- A spirit haunts the year's last hours, Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers; To himself he talks: For at eventide, listening earnestly, At his work you may hear him sob and sigh. In the walks Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks Of the mouldering flowers, Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chilly, Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. The air is damp, and hush'd and close, As a sick man's room when he taketh repose An hour before death; My very heart faints, and my whole soul grieves, At the rich moist smell of the rotting leaves, And the breath Of the fading edges of box beneath, And the year's last rose. Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chilly, Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.--_Tennyson._ The black clouds are even now gathering upon the fringes of the sky, and the mellow season of the fruitage ends. Thus all the changes of the earth pass round, each imprinting its semblance on the brow of man, and writing its lessons on his soul; that like the green earth beneath his feet, he may, through cold and heat, through storm and sun, be ever blossoming with fragrant flowers, and yielding refreshing fruit from the inexhaustible soil of a regenerated heart. [From Slack's Ministry of the Beautiful, just published by A. Hart, Philadelphia.] THE FOUNTAIN IN THE WOOD. A little way apart from a great city was a fountain in a wood. The water gushed from a rock and ran in a little crystal stream to a mossy basin below; the wildflowers nodded their heads to catch its tiny spray; tall trees overarched it; and through the interspaces of their moving leaves the sunlight came and danced with rainbow feet upon its sparkling surface. There was a young girl who managed every day to escape a little while from the turmoil of the city, and went like a pilgrim to the fountain in the wood. The water was sparkling, the moss and fern looked very lovely in the gentle moisture which the fountain cast upon them, and the trees waved their branches and rustled their green leaves in happy concert with the summer breeze. The girl loved the beauty of the scene and it grew upon her. Every day the fountain had a fresh tale to tell, and the whispering murmur of the leaves was ever new. By-and-by she came to know something of the language in which the fountain, the ferns, the mosses, and the trees held converse. She listened very patiently, full of wonder and of love. She heard them often regret that man would not learn their language, that they might tell him the beautiful things they had to say. At last the maiden ventured to tell them that she knew their tongue, and with what exquisite delight she heard them talk. The fountain flowed faster, more sunbeams danced on its waters, the leaves sang a new song, and the ferns and mosses grew greener before her eyes. They all told her what joy thrilled through them at her words. Human beings had passed them in abundance, they said, and as there was a tradition among the flowers that men once spoke, they hoped one day to hear them do so again. The maiden told them that all men spoke, at which they were astonished, but said that making articulate noises was not speaking, many such they had heard, but never till now real human speech; for that, they said, could come alone from the mind and heart. It was the voice of the body which men usually talked with, and that they did not understand, but only the voice of the soul, which was rare to hear. Then there was great joy through all the wood, and there went forth a report that at length a maiden was found whose soul could speak, and who knew the language of the flowers and the fountain. And the trees and the stream said one to another, "Even so did our old prophets teach, and now hath it been fulfilled." Then the maiden tried to tell her friends in the city what she had heard at the fountain, but could explain very little, for although they knew her words, they felt not her meaning. And certain young men came and begged her to take them to the wood that they might hear the voices. So she took one after another, but nothing came of it, for to them the fountain and the trees were mute. Many thought the maiden mad, and laughed at her belief, but they could not take the sweet voices away from her. Now the maidens wished her to take them also, and she did, but with little better success. A few thought they heard something, but knew not what, and on their return to the city its bustle obliterated the small remembrance they had carried away. At length a young man begged the maiden to give him a trial, and she did so. They went hand in hand to the fountain, and he heard the language, although not so well as the maiden; but she helped him, and found that when both heard the words together they were more beautiful than ever. She let go his hand, and much of the beauty was gone; the fountain told them to join hands and lips also, and they did it. Then arose sweeter sounds than they had ever heard, and soft voices encompassed them saying, "Henceforth be united; for the spirit of truth and beauty hath made you one." [From Dr. Marcy's Homeopathic Theory and Practice of Medicine.] WEARING THE BEARD. One great cause of the frequent occurrence of chronic bronchitis may be found in the reprehensible fashion of shaving the beard. That this ornament was given by the Creator for some useful purpose, there can be no doubt, for in fashioning the human body, he gave nothing unbecoming a perfect man, nothing useless, nothing superfluous. Hair being an imperfect conductor of caloric, is admirably calculated to retain the animal warmth of that part of the body which is so constantly and necessarily exposed to the weather, and thus to protect this important portion of the respiratory passage from the injurious effects of sudden checks of perspiration. When one exercises for hours his vocal organs, with the unremitted activity of a public declamation, the pores of the skin in the vicinity of the throat and chest become relaxed, so that when he enters the open air, the whole force of the atmosphere bears upon these parts, and he sooner or later contracts a bronchitis; while, had he the flowing beard with which his Maker has endowed him, uncut, to protect these important parts, he would escape any degree of exposure unharmed. The fact that Jews and other people who wear the beard long, are but rarely afflicted with bronchitis and analogous disorders, suggests a powerful argument in support of these views. [From "Ada Greville," by Peter Leicester.] A VIEW OF BOMBAY. They had soon reached the Apollo Bunder, where they were to land, and where Ada's attention was promptly engaged by the bustle awaiting her there; and where, from among numbers of carriages, and palanquins, and carts in waiting--many of them of such extraordinary shapes--some moved by horses, some by bullocks, and some by men, and all looking strange; from their odd commixture, Mr. McGregor's phaeton promptly drew up, and he placed the ladies in it, himself driving, and the two maids following in a palanquin carriage. This latter amused Ada exceedingly; a _vis-à-vis_, in fact, very long, and very low, drawn by bullocks, whose ungainly and uneven paces were very unlike any other motion to which, so far, her experience had been subjected; but they went well enough, and quickly too, and Ada soon forgot their eccentricities in her surprise at the many strange things she saw by the way. The airy appearance of the houses, full of windows and doors, and all cased round by verandahs; the native mud bazaars, so rude and uncouth in their shapes, and daubed over with all kinds of glaring colours; with the women sitting in the open verandahs, their broad brooms in hand, whisking off from their food-wares the flies, myriads of which seem to contend with them for ownership; the native women in the streets carrying water, in their graceful dress, their scanty little jackets and short garments exhibiting to advantage their beautiful limbs and elegant motion, the very poorest of them covered with jewels--the wonted mode, indeed, in which they keep what little property they have--the women, too, working with the men, and undertaking all kinds of labor; the black, naked coolies running here and there to snatch at any little employment that would bring them but an _anna_. Contrasting with these, and mixed up pell mell with them, the smart young officers cantering about, the carriages of every shape and grade, from the pompous hackery, with its gaudy, umbrella-like top, and no less pompous occupant, in his turban and jewels, his bullocks covered with bells making more noise than the jumbling vehicle itself, down to the meager bullock cart, at hire, for the merest trifle. Here and there, too, some other great native, on his sumptuously caparisoned horse, with arched neck and long flowing tail sweeping the ground, and feeling as important as his rider; and the popish priests, in their long, black gowns, and long beards; and the civilians, of almost every rank, in their light, white jackets; and the umbrellas; and the universal tomtoms, incessantly going; and above all, the numbers of palanquins, each with its eight bearers, running here, there, and everywhere; everything, indeed, so unlike dear old England; everything, even did not the burning sun of itself tell the fact, too sensibly to be mistaken, reminding the stranger that she was in the Indian land. From "The Memorial:" [The most brilliant and altogether attractive gift-book of the season, edited by Mrs. Hewitt, and published by Putnam.] FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. BY RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD. From the beginning of our intellectual history women have done far more than their share in both creation and construction. The worshipful Mrs. Bradstreet, who two hundred years ago held her court of wit among the classic groves of Harvard, was in her day--the day in which Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton sung--the finest poet of her sex whose verse was in the English language; and there was little extravagance in the title bestowed by her London admirers, when they printed her works as those "of the Tenth Muse, recently sprung up in America." In the beginning of the present century we had no bard to dispute the crown with Elizabeth Townsend, whose "Ode to Liberty" commanded the applause of Southey and Wordsworth in their best days; whose "Omnipresence of the Deity" is declared by Dr. Cheever to be worthy of those great poets or of Coleridge; and who still lives, beloved and reverenced, in venerable years, the last of one of the most distinguished families of New England. More recently, Maria Brooks, called in "The Doctor" _Maria del Occidente_, burst upon the world with "Zophiel," that splendid piece of imagination and passion which stands, the vindication of the subtlety, power and comprehension of the genius of woman, justifying by comparison, the skepticism of Lamb when he suggested, to the author of "The Excursion," whether the sex had "ever produced any thing so great." Of our living and more strictly contemporary female poets, we mention with unhesitating pride Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Oakes Smith, Mrs. Hewett, Mrs. Whitman, Mrs. Welby, Alice Carey, "Edith May," Miss Lynch, and Miss Clarke, as poets of a genuine inspiration, displaying native powers and capacities in art such as in all periods have been held sufficient to insure to their possessors lasting fame, and to the nations which they adorned, the most desirable glory. It is Longfellow who says, ----"What we admire in a woman, Is her affection, not her intellect." The sentiment is unworthy a poet, the mind as well as the heart claims sympathy, and there is no sympathy but in equality; we need in woman the completion of our own natures; that her finer, clearer, and purer vision should pierce for us the mysteries that are hidden from our own senses, strengthened, but dulled, in the rude shocks of the out-door world, from which she is screened, by her pursuits, to be the minister of God to us: to win us by the beautiful to whatever in the present life or the immortal is deserving a great ambition. We care little for any of the mathematicians, metaphysicians, or politicians, who, as shamelessly as Helen, quit their sphere. Intellect in woman, so directed, we do not admire, and of affection such women are incapable. There is something divine in woman, and she whose true vocation it is to write, has some sort of inspiration, which relieves her from the processes and accidents of knowledge, to display only wisdom in all the range of gentleness, and all the forms of grace. The equality of the sexes is one of the absurd questions which have arisen from a denial of the _distinctions_ of their faculties and duties--of the masculine energy from the feminine refinement. The ruder sort of women cannot comprehend that there is a distinction, not of dignity, but of kind; and so, casting aside their own eminence, for which they are too base, and seeking after ours, for which they are too weak, they are hermaphroditish disturbers of the peace of both. In the main our American women are free from this reproach; they have known their mission, and have carried on the threads of civility through the years, so strained that they have been melodiously vocal with every breath of passion from the common heart. We turn from the jar of senates, from politics, theologies, philosophies, and all forms of intellectual trial and conflict, to that portion of our literature which they have given us, coming like dews and flowers after glaciers and rocks, the hush of music after the tragedy, silence and rest after turmoil of action. The home where love is refined and elevated by intellect, and woman, by her separate and never-superfluous or clashing mental activity, sustains her part in the life-harmony, is the vestibule of heaven to us; and there we hear the poetesses repeat the songs to which they have listened, when wandering nearer than we may go to the world in which humanity shall be perfect again, by the union in all of all power and goodness and beauty. The finest intelligence that woman has in our time brought to the ministry of the beautiful, is no longer with us. Frances Sargent Osgood died in New-York, at fifteen minutes before three o'clock, in the afternoon of Sunday, the twelfth of May, 1850. These words swept like a surge of sadness wherever there was grace and gentleness, and sweet affections. All that was in her life was womanly, "pure womanly," and so is all in the undying words she left us. This is her distinction. Mrs. Osgood was of a family of poets. Mrs. Anna Maria Wells, whose abilities are illustrated in a volume of "Poems and Juvenile Sketches" published in 1830, is a daughter of her mother; Mrs. E.D. Harrington, the author of various graceful compositions in verse and prose, is her youngest sister; and Mr. A.A. Locke, a brilliant and elegant writer, for many years connected with the public journals, was her brother. She was a native of Boston, where her father, Mr. Joseph Locke, was a highly accomplished merchant. Her earlier life, however, was passed principally in Hingham, a village of peculiar beauty, well calculated to arouse the dormant poetry of the soul; and here, even in childhood, she became noted for her poetical powers. In their exercise she was rather aided than discouraged by her parents, who were proud of her genius and sympathized with all her aspirations. The unusual merit of some of her first productions attracted the notice of Mrs. Child, who was then editing a Juvenile Miscellany, and who foresaw the reputation which her young contributor afterwards acquired. Employing the _nomme de plume_ of "Florence," she made it widely familiar by her numerous contributions in the Miscellany, as well as, subsequently, for other periodicals. In 1834, she became acquainted with Mr. S.S. Osgood, the painter--a man of genius in his profession--whose life of various adventure is full of romantic interest; and while, soon after, she was sitting for a portrait, the artist told her his strange vicissitudes by sea and land; how as a sailor-boy he had climbed the dizzy maintop in the storm; how, in Europe he followed with his palette in the track of the flute-playing Goldsmith: and among the Antres vast and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven, of South America, had found in pictures of the crucifixion, and of the Liberator Bolivar--the rude productions of his untaught pencil--passports to the hearts of the peasant, the partizan, and the robber. She listened, like the fair Venetian; they were married, and soon after went to London, where Mr. Osgood had sometime before been a pupil of the Royal Academy. During this residence in the Great Metropolis, which lasted four years, Mr. Osgood was successful in his art--painting portraits of Lord Lyndhurst, Thomas Campbell, Mrs. Norton, and many other distinguished characters, which secured for him an enviable reputation--and Mrs. Osgood made herself known by her contributions to the magazines, by a miniature volume, entitled "The Casket of Fate," and by the collection of her poems published by Edward Churton, in 1839, under the title of "A Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England." She was now about twenty-seven years of age, and this volume contained all her early compositions which then met the approval of her judgment. Among them are many pieces of grace and beauty, such as belong to joyous and hopeful girlhood, and one, of a more ambitious character, under the name of "Elfrida"--a dramatic poem, founded upon incidents in early English history--in which there are signs of more strength and tenderness, and promise of greater achievement, though it is without the unity and proportion necessary to eminent success in this kind of writing. Among her attached friends here--a circle that included the Hon. Mrs. Norton, Mrs. Hofland, the Rev. Hobart Caunter, Archdeacon Wrangham, the late W. Cooke Taylor, LL.D., and many others known in the various departments of literature--was the most successful dramatist of the age, James Sheridan Knowles, who was so much pleased with "Elfrida," and so confident that her abilities in this line, if duly cultivated, would enable her to win distinction, that he urged upon her the composition of a comedy, promising himself to superintend its production on the stage. She accordingly wrote "The Happy Release, or The Triumphs of Love," a play in three acts, which was accepted, and was to have been brought out as soon as she could change slightly one of the scenes, to suit the views of the manager as to effect, when intelligence of the death of her father suddenly recalled her to the United States, and thoughts of writing for the stage were abandoned for new interests and new pursuits. Mr. and Mrs. Osgood arrived in Boston early in 1840, and they soon after came to New-York, where they afterward resided; though occasionally absent, as the pursuit of his profession, or ill health, called Mr. Osgood to other parts of the country. Mrs. Osgood was engaged in various literary occupations. She edited, among other books, "The Poetry of Flowers, and Flowers of Poetry," (New-York, 1841,) and "The Floral Offering," (Philadelphia, 1847,) two richly embellished souvenirs; and she was an industrious and very popular writer for the literary magazines and other miscellanies. She was always of a fragile constitution, easily acted upon by whatever affects health, and in her latter years, except in the more genial seasons of the spring and autumn, was frequently an invalid. In the winter of 1847-8, she suffered more than ever previously, but the next winter she was better, and her husband, who was advised by his physicians to discontinue, for a while, the practice of his profession, availed himself of the opportunity to go in pursuit of health and riches to the mines of the Pacific. He left New-York on the fifth of February, 1849, and was absent one year. Mrs. Osgood's health was variable during the summer, which she passed chiefly at Saratoga Springs, in the company of a family of intimate friends; and as the colder months came on, her strength decayed, so that before the close of November, she was confined to her apartments. She bore her sufferings with resignation, and her natural hopefulness cheered her all the while, with remembrances that she had before come out with the flowers and the embracing airs, and dreams that she would again be in the world with nature. Two or three weeks before her death, her husband carried her in his arms, like a child, to a new home, and she was happier than she had been for months, in the excitement of selecting its furniture, brought in specimens or patterns to her bedside. "_We shall be so happy!_" was her salutation to the few friends who were admitted to see her; but they saw, and her physicians saw, that her life was ebbing fast, and that she would never never again see the brooks and greens fields for which she pined, nor even any of the apartments but the one she occupied of her own house. I wrote the terrible truth to her, in studiously gentle words, reminding her that in heaven there is richer and more delicious beauty, that there is no discord in the sweet sounds there, no poison in the perfume of the flowers there, and that they know not any sorrow who are with Our Father. She read the brief note almost to the end silently, and then turned upon her pillow like a child, and wept the last tears that were in a fountain which had flowed for every grief but hers she ever knew. "I cannot leave my beautiful home," she said, looking about upon the souvenirs of many an affectionate recollection; "and my noble husband, and Lily and May!" These last are her children. But the sentence was confirmed by other friends, and she resigned herself to the will of God. The next evening but one, a young girl went to amuse her, by making paper flowers for her, and teaching her to make them: and she wrote to her these verses--her dying song: You've woven roses round my way, And gladdened all my being; How much I thank you none can say Save only the All-seeing.... _I'm going through the Eternal gates Ere June's sweet roses blow; Death's lovely angel leads me there-- And it is sweet to go._ May 7th, 1850. At the end of five days, in the afternoon of Sunday, the twelfth of May, as gently as one goes to sleep, she withdrew into a better world. On Tuesday, her remains were removed to Boston, to be interred in the cemetery of Mount Auburn. It was a beautiful day, in the fulness of the spring, mild and calm, and clouded to a solemn shadow. In the morning, as the company of the dead and living started, the birds were singing what seemed to her friends a sadder song than they were wont to sing; and, as the cars flew fast on the long way, the trees bowed their luxuriant foliage, and the flowers in the verdant fields were swung slowly on their stems, filling the air with the gentlest fragrance; and the streams, it was fancied, checked their turbulent speed to move in sympathy, as from the heart of Nature tears might flow for a dead worshipper. God was thanked that all the elements were ordered so, that sweetest incense, and such natural music, and reverent aspect of the silent world, should wait upon her, as so many hearts did, in this last journey. She slept all the while, nor waked when, in the evening, in her native city, a few familiar faces bent above her, with difficult looks through tears, and scarcely audible words, to bid farewell to her. On Wednesday she was buried, with some dear ones who had gone before her--beside her mother and her daughter--in that City of Rest, more sacred now than all before had made it, to those whose spirits are attuned to Beauty or to Sorrow--those twin sisters, so rarely parted, until the last has led the first to Heaven. The character of Mrs. Osgood, to those who were admitted to its more minute observance, illustrated the finest and highest qualities of intelligence and virtue. In her manners, there was an almost infantile gaiety and vivacity, with the utmost simplicity and gentleness, and an unfailing and indefectable grace, that seemed an especial gift of nature, unattainable, and possessed only by her and the creatures of our imaginations whom we call the angels. The delicacy of her organization was such that she had always the quick sensibility of childhood. The magnetism of life was round about her, and her astonishingly impressible faculties were vital in every part, with a polarity toward beauty, all the various and changing rays of which entered into her consciousness, and were refracted in her conversation and action. Though, from the generosity of her nature, exquisitely sensible to applause, she had none of those immoralities of the intellect, which impair the nobleness of impulse--no unworthy pride, or vanity, or selfishness--nor was her will ever swayed from the line of truth, except as the action of the judgment may sometimes have been irregular from the feverish play of feeling. Her friendships were quickly formed, but limited by the number of genial hearts brought within the sphere of her knowledge and sympathy. Probably there was never a woman of whom it might be said more truly that to her own sex she was an object almost of worship. She was looked upon for her simplicity, purity, and childlike want of worldly tact or feeling, with involuntary affection; listened to, for her freshness, grace, and brilliancy, with admiration; and remembered, for her unselfishness, quick sympathy, devotedness, capacity of suffering, and high aspirations, with a sentiment approaching reverence. This regard which she inspired in women was not only shown by the most constant and delicate attentions in society, where she was always the most loved and honored guest, but it is recorded in the letters and other writings of many of her most eminent contemporaries, who saw in her an angel, haply in exile, the sweetness and natural wisdom of whose life elevated her far above all jealousies, and made her the pride and boast and glory of womanhood. Many pages might be filled with their tributes, which seem surely the most heartfelt that mortal ever gave to mortal, but the limits of this sketch of her will suffer only a few and very brief quotations from her correspondence. Unquestionably one of the most brilliant literary women of our time is Miss Clarke, so well known as "Grace Greenwood." She wrote of Mrs. Osgood with no more earnestness than others wrote of her, yet in a letter to the "Home Journal," in 1846, she says: "And how are the critical Cæsars, one after another, 'giving in' to the graces, and fascinations, and soft enchantments of this Cleopatra of song. She charms _lions_ to sleep, with her silver lute, and then throws around them the delicate net-work of her exquisite fancy, and lo! when they wake, they are well content in their silken prison. 'From the tips of her pen a melody flows, Sweet as the nightingale sings to the rose.' "With her beautiful Italian soul--with her impulse, and wild energy, and exuberant fancy, and glowing passionateness--and with the wonderful facility with which, like an almond-tree casting off its blossoms, she flings abroad her heart-tinted and love-perfumed lays, she has, I must believe, more of the improvisatrice than has yet been revealed by any of our gifted countrywomen now before the people. Heaven bless her, and grant her ever, as now, to have laurels on her brows, and to browse on her laurels! Were I the President of these United States, I would immortalize my brief term of office by the crowning of our Corinna, at the Capitol." And about the same period, having been introduced to her, she referred to the event: "It seems like a 'pleasant vision of the night' that I have indeed seen 'the idol of my early dreams,' that I have been within the charmed circle of her real presence, sat by her very side, and lovingly watched the shadow of each feeling that moved her soul, glance o'er that radiant face!'" And writing to her: "Dear Mrs. Osgood, let me lay this sweet weight off my heart--look down into my eyes--believe me--long, long before we met, I loved you, with a strange, almost passionate love. You were my literary idol: I repeated some of your poems so often, that their echo never had time to die away; your earlier, bird-like warblings so chimed in with the joyous beatings of my heart, that it seemed it could not throb without them; and when you raised 'your lightning glance to heaven,' and sang your loftiest song, the liquid notes fell upon my soul like baptismal waters. With an 'intense and burning,' almost unwomanly ambition, I have still joyed in _your_ success, and gloried in your glory; and all because Love laid its reproving finger on the lip of Envy. I cannot tell you how much this romantic interest has deepened, Now I have looked upon thy face, Have felt thy twining arms' embrace, Thy very bosom's swell;-- One moment leaned this brow of mine On song's sweet source, and love's pure shrine, And music's 'magic cell!" Another friend of hers, Miss Hunter, whose pleasing contributions to our literature are well known, probably on account of some misapprehension, had not visited her for several months, but hearing of her illness she wrote: "Learning this, by chance, I have summoned courage once more to address you--overcoming my fear of being intrusive, and offering as my apology the simple assertion that it is my _heart_ prompts me. Till to-day pride has checked me: but you are 'very ill,' and I can no longer resist the impulse. With the assurance that I will never again trouble you, that now I neither ask nor expect the slightest response, suffer me thus to steal to your presence, to sit beside your bed, and for the last time to speak of a love that has followed you through months of separation, rejoicing when you have rejoiced, and mourning when you have mourned. You know how, from childhood, I have worshipped you, that since our first meeting you have been my idol, the realization of my dreams; and do not suppose that because I have failed to inspire you with a lasting interest, I shall ever feel for you a less deep or less fervent devotion. The blame or misfortune of our estrangement I have always regarded as only mine. I know I have seemed indifferent when I panted for expression. You have thought me unsympathizing when my every nerve thrilled to your words. I have lived in comparative seclusion; I have an unconquerable reserve, induced by such an experience; and when I have been with you my soul has had no voice. "The time has been when I could not bear the thought of never regaining your friendship in this world--when I would say 'The years! oh, the years of this earth-life, that must pass so slowly!' And when I saw any new poem of yours, I experienced the most sad emotions,--every word I read was so like you, it seemed as if you had passed through the room, speaking to others near me kindly, but regarding me coldly, or not seeing me. But one day I read in a book by Miss Bremer, 'It is a sad experience, who can describe its bitterness! when we see the friend, on whom we have built for eternity, grow cold, and become lost to us. But believe it not, thou loving, sorrowing soul--believe it not! continue thyself only, and the moment will come when thy friend will return to thee. Yes, _there_, where all delusions cease, thy friend will find thee gain, in a higher light,--will acknowledge thee and unite herself to thee forever.' And I took this assurance to my heart.... We may meet in heaven, if not here. I shall not go see you, though my heart is wrung by this intelligence of your illness. So good-bye, darling! May good angels who have power to bless you, linger around your pillow with as much love as I shall feel for you forever. "March 6, 1850." I have been permitted to transcribe this letter, and among Mrs. Osgood's papers that have been confided to me are very many such, evincing a devotion from women that could have been won only by the most angelic qualities of intellect and feeling. It was the custom in the last century, when there was among authors more of the _esprit du corps_ than now, for poets to greet each other's appearance in print with complimental verses, celebrating the qualities for which the seeker after bays was most distinguished. Thus in 1729, we find the _Omnium Opera_ of John Duke of Buckingham prefaced by "testimonials of authors concerning His Grace and his writings;" and the names of Garth, Roscommon, Dryden, and Prior, are among his endorsers. There have been a few instances of the kind in this country, of which the most noticeable is that of Cotton Mather, in whose _Magnalia_ there is a curious display of erudition and poetical ingenuity, in gratulatory odes. The literary journals of the last few years furnish many such tributes to Mrs. Osgood, which are interesting to her friends for their illustration of the personal regard in which she was held. I cannot quote them here; they alone would fill a volume, as others might be filled with the copies of verses privately addressed to her, all through her life, from the period when, like a lovely vision, she first beamed upon society, till that last season, in which the salutations in assemblies she had frequented were followed by saddest inquiries for the absent and dying poetess. They but repeat, with more or less felicity, the graceful praise of Mrs. Hewitt, in a poem upon her portrait: She dwells amid the world's dark ways Pure as in childhood's hours; And all her thoughts are poetry, And all her words are flowers. Or that of another, addressed to her: Thou wouldst be loved? then let thy heart From its present pathway part not! Being everything, which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace, thy more than beauty, Shall be an endless theme of praise, And love--a simple duty. Among men, generally, such gentleness and sweetness of temper, joined to such grace and wit, could not fail of making her equally beloved and admired. She was the keeper of secrets, the counsellor in difficulties, the ever wise missionary and industrious toiler, for all her friends. She would brave any privation to alleviate another's sufferings; she never spoke ill of any one; and when others assailed, she was the most prompt of all in generous argument. An eminent statesman having casually met her in Philadelphia, afterward described her to a niece of his who was visiting that city: "If you have opportunity do not fail to become acquainted with Mrs. Osgood. I have never known such a woman. She continually surprised me by the strength and subtlety of her understanding, in which I looked for only sportiveness and delicacy. She is entirely a child of nature and Mrs. ----, who introduced me to her, and who has known her many years I believe, very intimately, declares that she is an angel. Persuade her to Washington, and promise her everything you and all of us can do for her pleasure here." For her natural gaiety, her want of a certain worldly tact, and other reasons, the determinations she sometimes formed that she would be a housekeeper, were regarded as fit occasions of jesting, and among the letters sent to her when once she ventured upon the ambitious office, is one by her early and always devoted friend, Governor ----, in which we have glimpses of her domestic qualities: "It is not often that I waste fine paper in writing to people who do not think me worth answering. I generally reserve my 'ornamental hand' for those who return two letters for my one. But you are an exception to all rules,--and when I heard that you were about to commence _housekeeping_, I could not forbear sending a word of congratulation and encouragement. I have long thought that your eminently _practical_ turn of mind, my dear friend, would find congenial employment in superintending an 'establishment.' What a house you will keep! nothing out of place, from garret to cellar--dinner always on the table at the regular hour--everything like clock-work--and wo to the servant who attempts to steal anything from your store-room! wo to the butcher who attempts to impose upon you a bad joint, or the grocer who attempts to cheat you in the weight of sugar! Such things never will do with you! When I first heard of your project, I thought it must be Ellen or May going to play housekeeping with their baby-things, but on a moment's reflection I was convinced that you knew more about managing for a family than either of them--certainly more than May, and I think, upon the whole, more than even Ellen! Let Mr. Osgood paint you with a bunch of keys in your belt, and do send me a daguerreotype of yourself the day after you are installed." She was not indeed fitted for such cares, or for any routine, and ill health and the desire of freedom prevented her again making such an attempt until she finally entered "her own home" to die. There was a very intimate relation between Mrs. Osgood's personal and her literary characteristics. She has frequently failed of justice, from critics but superficially acquainted with her works, because they have not been able to understand how a mind capable of the sparkling and graceful trifles, illustrating an exhaustless fancy and a natural melody of language, with which she amused society in moments of half capricious gaiety or tenderness, could produce a class of compositions which demand imagination and passion. In considering this subject, it should not be forgotten that these attributes are here to be regarded as in their feminine development. Mrs. Osgood was, perhaps, as deserving as any one of whom we read in literary history, of the title of improvisatrice. Her beautiful songs, displaying so truly the most delicate lights and shadows of woman's heart, and surprising by their unity, completeness, and rhythmical perfection, were written with almost the fluency of conversation. The secret of this was in the wonderful sympathy between her emotions and faculties, both of exquisite sensibility, and subject to the influences of whatever has power upon the subtler and diviner qualities of human nature. Her facility in invention, in the use of poetical language, and in giving form to every airy dream or breath of passion, was astonishing. It is most true of men, that no one has ever attained to the highest reach of his capacities in any art--and least of all in poetry--without labor--without the application of the "second thought," after the frenzy of the divine afflatus is passed--in giving polish and shapely grace. The imagination is the servant of the reason; the creative faculties present their triumphs to the constructive--and the seal to the attainable is set, by every one, in repose and meditation. But this is scarcely a law of the feminine intelligence, which, when really endowed with genius, is apt to move spontaneously, and at once, with its greatest perfection. Certainly, Mrs. Osgood disclaimed the wrestling of thought with expression. For the most part her poems cost her as little effort or reflection, as the epigram or touching sentiment that summoned laughter or tears to the group about her in the drawing-room. She was indifferent to fame; she sung simply in conformity to a law of her existence; and perhaps this want of interest was the cause not only of the most striking faults in her compositions, but likewise of the common ignorance of their variety and extent. Accustomed from childhood to the use of the pen--resorting to it through a life continually exposed to the excitements of gaiety and change, or the depressions of affliction and care, she strewed along her way with a prodigality almost unexampled the choicest flowers of feeling: left them unconsidered and unclaimed in the repositories of friendship, or under fanciful names, which she herself had forgotten, in newspapers and magazines,--in which they were sure to be recognised by some one, and so the purpose of their creation fulfilled. It was therefore very difficult to make any such collection of her works as justly to display her powers and their activity; and the more so, that those effusions of hers which were likely to be most characteristic, and of the rarest excellence, were least liable to exposure in printed forms, by the friends, widely scattered in Europe and America, for whom they were written. But notwithstanding these disadvantages, the works of Mrs. Osgood with which we are acquainted, are more voluminous than those of Mrs. Hemans or Mrs. Norton.[8] Besides the "Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England," which appeared during her residence in London, a collection of her poems in one volume was published in New York in 1846; and in 1849, Mr. Hart, of Philadelphia, gave to the public, in a large octavo illustrated by our best artists and equalling or surpassing in its tasteful and costly style any work before issued from the press of this country, the most complete and judiciously edited collection of them that has appeared. This edition, however, contains less than half of her printed pieces which she acknowledged; and among those which are omitted are a tragedy, a comedy, a great number of piquant and ingenious _vers de societe_, and several sacred pieces, which strike us as among the best writings of their kind in our literature, which in this department, we may admit, is more distinguishable for the profusion than for the quality of its fruits. [8: Besides the books by her which have been referred to, she published _The Language of Gems_, (London); _The Snow Drop_, (Providence); _Puss in Boots_, (New York); _Cries of New York_, (New York); _The Flower Alphabet_, (Boston); _The Rose: Sketches in Verse_, (Providence); _A Letter About the Lions, addressed to Mabel in the Country_, (New York). The following list of her prose tales, sketches, and essays, is probably very incomplete: A Day in New England; A Crumpled Rose Leaf; Florence Howard; Ida Gray; Florence Errington; A Match for the Matchmaker; Mary Evelyn; Once More; Athenais; The Wife; The Little Lost Shoe; The Magic Lute; Feeling _vs._ Beauty; The Doom; The Flower and Gem; The Coquette; The Soul Awakened; Glimpses of a Soul, (in three parts); Lizzie Lincoln; Dora's Reward; Waste Paper; Newport Tableaux; Daguerreotype Pictures; Carry Carlisle; Valentine's Day; The Lady's Shadow; Truth; Virginia; The Waltz and the Wager; The Poet's Metamorphosis; Pride and Penitence; Mabel; Pictures from a Painter's Life; Georgiana Hazleton; A Sketch; Kate Melbourne; Life in New York; Leonora L'Estrange; The Magic Mirror; The Blue Belle; and Letters of Kate Carol, (a series of sketches of men, women and books;) contributed for the most part to Mr. Labree's _Illustrated Magazine_.] Mrs. Osgood's definition of poetry, that it is the rhythmical creation of beauty, is as old as Sydney; and though on some grounds objectionable, it is, perhaps, on the whole, as just as any that the critics have given us. An intelligent examination, in the light of this principle, of what she accomplished, will, it is believed, show that she was, in the general, of the first rank of female poets; while in her special domain, of the Poetry of the Affections, she had scarcely a rival among women or men. As Pinckney said, Affections were as thoughts to her, the measure of her hours-- Her feelings had the fragrancy and freshness of young flowers. Of love, she sung with tenderness and delicacy, a wonderful richness of fancy, and rhythms that echo all the cadences of feeling. From the arch mockery of the triumphant and careless conqueror, to the most passionate prayer of the despairing, every variety and height and depth of hope and fear and bliss and pain is sounded, in words that move us to a solitary lute or a full orchestra of a thousand voices; and with an _abandon_, as suggestive of genuineness as that which sometimes made the elder Kean seem "every inch a king." It is not to be supposed that all these caprices are illustrations of the experiences of the artist, in the case of the poet any more than in that of the actor: by an effort of the will, they pass with the liberties of genius into their selected realms, assume their guises, and discourse their language. If ever there were --Depths of tenderness which showed when woke, That _woman_ there as well as angel spoke, they are not to be looked for in the printed specimens of woman's genius. Mrs. Osgood guarded herself against such criticism, by a statement in her preface, that many of her songs and other verses were written to appear in prose sketches and stories, and were expressions of feeling suitable to the persons and incidents with which they were at first connected. In this last edition, to which only reference will be made in these paragraphs, her works are arranged under the divisions of _Miscellaneous Poems_--embracing, with such as do not readily admit another classification, her most ambitious and sustained compositions; _Sacred Poems_--among which, "The Daughter of Herodias," the longest, is remarkable for melodious versification and distinct painting: _Tales and Ballads_--all distinguished for a happy play of fancy, and two or three for the fruits of such creative energy as belongs to the first order of poetical intelligences; _Floral Fancies_--which display a gaiety and grace, an ingenuity of allegory, and elegant refinement of language, that illustrate her fairy-like delicacy of mind and purity of feeling; and _Songs_--of which we shall offer some particular observations in their appropriate order. Scattered through the book we have a few poems for children, so perfect in their way as to induce regret that she gave so little attention to a kind of writing in which few are really successful, and in which she is scarcely equalled. The volume opens with a brief voluntary, which is followed by a beautiful and touching address to The Spirit of Poetry, displaying the perfection of her powers, and her consciousness that they had been too much neglected while ministering more than all things else to her happiness. If ever from her heart she poured a passionate song, it was this, and these concluding lines of it admit us to the sacredest experiences of her life: Leave me not yet! Leave me not cold and lonely, Thou star of promise o'er my clouded path! Leave not the life that borrows from thee only All of delight and beauty that it hath! Thou that, when others knew not how to love me, Nor cared to fathom half my yearning soul, Didst wreathe thy flowers of light around, above me, To woo and win me from my grief's control: By all my dreams, the passionate and holy, When thou hast sung love's lullaby to me, By all the childlike worship, fond and lowly, Which I have lavish'd upon thine and thee: By all the lays my simple lute was learning To echo from thy voice, stay with me still! Once flown--alas! for thee there's no returning! The charm will die o'er valley, wood and hill. Tell me not Time, whose wing my brow has shaded, Has wither'd Spring's sweet bloom within my heart; Ah, no! the rose of love is yet unfaded, Though hope and joy, its sister flowers, depart. Well do I know that I have wrong'd thine altar, With the light offerings of an idler's mind, And thus, with shame, my pleading prayer I falter, Leave me not, spirit! deaf, and dumb, and blind! Deaf to the mystic harmony of nature, Blind to the beauty of her stars and flowers; Leave me not, heavenly yet human teacher, Lonely and lost in this cold world of ours; Heaven knows I need thy music and thy beauty Still to beguile me on my dreary way, To lighten to my soul the cares of duty, And bless with radiant dreams the darken'd day; To charm my wild heart in the worldly revel, Lest I, too, join the aimless, false and vain. Let me not lower to the soulless level Of those whom now I pity and disdain! Leave me not yet!--Leave me not cold and pining, Thou bird of Paradise, whose plumes of light, Where'er they rested, left a glory shining-- Fly not to heaven, or let me share thy flight! After this comes one of her most poetical compositions, "Ermengarde's Awakening," in which, with even more than her usual felicity of diction, she has invested with mortal passion a group from the Pantheon. It is too long to be quoted here, but as an example of her manner upon a similar subject, and in the same rhythm, we copy the poem of "Eurydice:" With heart that thrill'd to every earnest line, I had been reading o'er that antique story, Wherein the youth, half human, half divine, Of all love-lore the Eidolon and glory, Child of the Sun, with music's pleading spell, In Pluto's palace swept, for love, his golden shell! And in the wild, sweet legend, dimly traced, My own heart's history unfolded seem'd; Ah! lost one! by thy lover-minstrel graced With homage pure as ever woman dreamed, Too fondly worshipp'd, since such fate befell, Was it not sweet to die--because beloved too well! The scene is round me! Throned amid the gloom, As a flower smiles on Etna's fatal breast, Young Proserpine beside her lord doth bloom; And near--of Orpheus' soul, oh, idol blest!-- While low for thee he tunes his lyre of light, I see _thy_ meek, fair form dawn through that lurid night! I see the glorious boy--his dark locks wreathing Wildly the wan and spiritual brow; His sweet, curved lip the soul of music breathing; His blue Greek eyes, that speak Love's loyal vow; I see him bend on _thee_ that eloquent glance, The while those wondrous notes the realm of terror trance. I see his face with more than mortal beauty Kindling, as, armed with that sweet lyre alone, Pledged to a holy and heroic duty, He stands serene before the awful throne, And looks on Hades' horrors with clear eye, Since thou, his own adored Eurydice, art nigh. Now soft and low a prelude sweet uprings, As if a prison'd angel--pleading there For life and love--were fetter'd 'neath the strings, And poured his passionate soul upon the air! Anon it clangs with wild, exulting swell, Till the full pæan peals triumphantly through Hell. And thou, thy pale hands meekly lock'd before thee, Thy sad eyes drinking _life_ from _his_ dear gaze, Thy lips apart, thy hair a halo o'er thee Trailing around thy throat its golden maze; Thus, with all words in passionate silence dying, Within thy _soul_ I hear Love's eager voice replying: "Play on, mine Orpheus! Lo! while these are gazing, Charm'd into statues by the god-taught strain, I, I alone--to thy dear face upraising My tearful glance--the life of life regain! For every tone that steals into my heart Doth to its worn weak pulse a mighty power impart. "Play on, mine Orpheus! while thy music floats Through the dread realm, divine with truth and grace, See, dear one! how the chain of linked notes Has fetter'd every spirit in its place! Even Death, beside me, still and helpless lies, And strives in vain to chill my frame with his cold eyes. "Still, my own Orpheus, sweep the golden lyre! Ah! dost thou mark how gentle Proserpine, With clasped hands and eyes whose azure fire Gleams thro' quick tears, thrilled by thy lay, doth lean Her graceful head upon her stern lord's breast, Like an o'erwearied child, whom music lulls to rest! "Play, my proud minstrel! strike the chords again! Lo, Victory crowns at last thy heavenly skill! For Pluto turns relenting to the strain-- He waves his hand--he speaks his awful will! My glorious Greek, lead on! but ah, _still_ lend Thy soul to thy sweet lyre, lest yet thou lose thy friend! "Think not of me! Think rather of the time, When, moved by thy resistless melody To the strange magic of a song sublime, Thy argo grandly glided to the sea; And in the majesty Minerva gave, The graceful galley swept, with joy, the sounding wave. "Or see, in Fancy's dream, thy Thracian trees, Their proud heads bent submissive to the sound, Sway'd by a tuneful and enchanted breeze, March to slow music o'er the astonished ground; Grove after grove descending from the hills, While round thee weave their dance, the glad harmonious rills. "Think not of me! Ha! by thy mighty sire, My lord, my king, recall the dread behest! Turn not, ah! turn not back those eyes of fire! Oh! lost, forever lost! undone! unblest! I faint, I die!--the serpent's fang once more Is here!--nay, grieve not thus! Life, but _not Love_, is o'er!" This is a noble poem, with too many interjections, and occasional redundancies of imagery and epithet, betraying the author's customary haste: but with unquestionable signs of that genuineness which is the best attraction of the literature of sentiment. The longest and more sustained of Mrs. Osgood's compositions is one entitled "Fragments of an Unfinished Story" in which she has exhibited such a skill in blank verse--frequently regarded as the easiest, but really the most difficult of any--as induces regret that she so seldom made use of it. We have here a masterly contrast of character in the equally natural expressions of feeling by the two principal persons, both of whom are women: the haughty Ida, and the impulsive child of passion, Imogen. It displays in eminent perfection, that dramatic faculty which Sheridan Knowles and the late William Cooke Taylor recognised as the most striking in the composition of her genius. She had long meditated, and in her mind had perfectly arranged, a more extended poem than she has left to us, upon Music. It was to be in this measure, except some lyrical interludes, and she was so confident of succeeding in it, that she deemed all she had written of comparatively little worth. "These," she said to me one day, pointing to the proof-leaves of the new edition of her poems, "these are my 'Miscellaneous Verses:' let us get them out of the way, and never think of them again, as the public never will when they have MY POEM!" And her friends who heard the splendid scheme of her imagination, did not doubt that when it should be clothed with the rich tissues of her fancy, it would be all she dreamed of, and vindicate all that they themselves were fond of saying of her powers. It was while her life was fading; and no one else can grasp the shining threads, or weave them into song, such as she heard lips, touched with divinest fire, far along in the ages, repeating with her name. This was not vanity, or a low ambition. She lingered, with subdued and tearful joy, when all the living and the present seemed to fail her, upon the pages of the elect of genius, and was happiest when she thought some words of hers might lift a sad soul from a sea of sorrow. It was perhaps the key-note of that unwritten poem, which she sounded in these verses upon its subject, composed while the design most occupied her attention: The Father spake! In grand reverberations Through space roll'd on the mighty music-tide, While to its low, majestic modulations, The clouds of chaos slowly swept aside. The Father spake: a dream that had been lying Hush'd, from eternity, in silence there, Heard the pure melody, and low replying, Grew to that music in the wondering air-- Grew to that music--slowly, grandly waking-- Till, bathed in beauty, it became a world! Led by his voice, its spheric pathway taking, While glorious clouds their wings around it furl'd. Nor yet has ceased that sound, his love revealing, Though, in response, a universe moves by; Throughout eternity its echo pealing, World after world awakes in glad reply. And wheresoever, in his grand creation, Sweet music breathes--in wave, or bird, or soul-- 'Tis but the faint and far reverberation Of that great tune to which the planets roll. Mrs. Osgood produced something in almost every form of poetical composition, but the necessary limits of this article permit but few illustrations of the variety or perfectness of her capacities. The examples given here, even if familiar, will possess a new interest now; and no one will read them without a feeling of sadness that she who wrote them died so young, just as the fairest flowers of her genius were unfolding. One of the most exquisite pieces she had written in the last few years, is entitled "Calumny," and we know not where to turn for anything more delicately beautiful than the manner in which the subject is treated. A whisper woke the air, A soft, light tone, and low, Yet barbed with shame and wo. Ah! might it only perish there, Nor farther go! But no! a quick and eager ear Caught up the little, meaning sound; Another voice has breathed it clear; And so it wandered round From ear to lip, and lip to ear, Until it reached a gentle heart That throbbed from all the world apart, And that--it broke! It was the only _heart_ it found, The only heart 't was meant to find, When first its accents woke. It reached that gentle heart at last, And that--it broke! Low as it seemed to other ears, It came a thunder-crash to _hers_-- That fragile girl, so fair and gay. 'Tis said a lovely humming bird, That dreaming in a lily lay, Was killed but by the gun's _report_ Some idle boy had fired in sport-- So exquisitely frail its frame, The very _sound_ a death-blow came-- And thus her heart, unused to shame, Shrined in _its_ lily too, (For who the maid that knew, But owned the delicate, flower-like grace Of her young form and face!)-- Her light and happy heart, that beat With love and hope so fast and sweet, When first that cruel word it heard, It fluttered like a frightened bird-- Then shut its wings and sighed, And, with a silent shudder, died! In some countries this would, perhaps, be the most frequently quoted of the author's effusions; but here, the terse and forcible piece under the title of "Laborare est Orare," will be admitted to all collections of poetical specimens; and it deserves such popularity, for a combination as rare as it is successful of common sense with the form and spirit of poetry: Pause not to dream of the future before us; Pause not to weep the wild cares that come o'er us; Hark, how Creation's deep musical chorus, Unintermitting, goes up into heaven! Never the ocean-wave falters in flowing; Never the little seed stops in its growing; More and more richly the rose-heart keeps glowing, Till from its nourishing stem it is riven. "Labor is worship!"--the robin is singing; "Labor is worship!"--the wild bee is ringing; Listen! that eloquent whisper upspringing Speaks to thy soul from out nature's great heart. From the dark cloud flows the life-giving shower; From the rough sod blows the soft-breathing flower; From the small insect, the rich coral bower; Only man, in the plan, shrinks from his part. Labor is life! 'Tis the still water faileth; Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth; Keep the watch wound, for the dark rust assaileth; Flowers droop and die in the stillness of noon. Labor is glory!--the flying cloud lightens; Only the waving wing changes and brightens; Idle hearts only the dark future frightens; Play the sweet keys, wouldst thou keep them in tune! Labor is rest--from the sorrows that greet us; Rest from all petty vexations that meet us, Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us, Rest from world-syrens that lure us to ill. Work--and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow; Work--thou shalt ride over Care's coming billow; Lie not down wearied 'neath Woe's weeping willow; Work with a stout heart and resolute will! Labor is health! Lo! the husbandman reaping, How through his veins goes the life current leaping! How his strong arm, in its stalwart pride sweeping, True as a sunbeam the swift sickle guides. Labor is wealth--in the sea the pearl groweth; Rich the queen's robe from the frail cocoon floweth; From the fine acorn the strong forest bloweth; Temple and statue the marble block hides. Droop not, tho' shame, sin, and anguish are round thee! Bravely fling off the cold chain that hath bound thee; Look to yon pure heaven smiling beyond thee; Rest not content in they darkness--a clod! Work--for some good, be it ever so slowly; Cherish some flower, be it ever so lowly; Labor!--all labor is noble and holy; Let thy great deeds be thy prayer to thy God. In fine contrast with this is the description of a "Dancing Girl," written in a longer poem, addressed to her sister soon after her arrival in London, in the autumn of 1834. It is as graceful as the vision it brings so magically before us: She comes--the spirit of the dance! And but for those large, eloquent eyes, Where passion speaks in every glance, She'd seem a wanderer from the skies. So light that, gazing breathless there, Lest the celestial dream should go, You'd think the music in the air Waved the fair vision to and fro! Or that the melody's sweet flow Within the radiant creature play'd And those soft wreathing arms of snow And white sylph feet the music made. Now gliding slow with dreamy grace, Her eyes beneath their lashes lost; Now motionless, with lifted face, And small hands on her bosom cross'd. And now with flashing eyes she springs, Her whole bright figure raised in air, As if her soul had spread its wings And poised her one wild instant there! She spoke not; but, so richly fraught With language are her glance and smile, That, when the curtain fell, I thought She had been talking all the while. In illustration of what we have said of Mrs. Osgood's delineations of refined sentiment, we refer to the poems from pages one hundred and eleven to one hundred and thirty-one, willing to rest upon them our praises of her genius. It may be accidental, but they seem to have an epic relation, and to constitute one continuous history, finished with uncommon elegance and glowing with a beauty which has its inspiration in a deeper profound than was ever penetrated by messengers of the brain. The third of these glimpses of heart-life--all having the same air of sad reality--exhibits, with a fidelity and a peculiar power which is never attained in such descriptions by men, the struggle of a pure and passionate nature with a hopeless affection: Had we but met in life's delicious spring, When young romance made Eden of the world; When bird-like Hope was ever on the wing, (In _thy_ dear breast how soon had it been furled!) Had we but met when both our hearts were beating With the wild joy, the guileless love of youth-- Thou a proud boy, with frank and ardent greeting, And I a timid girl, all trust and truth!-- Ere yet my pulse's light, elastic play Had learn'd the weary weight of grief to know, Ere from these eyes had passed the morning ray, And from my cheek the early rose's glow;-- Had we but met in life's delicious spring, Ere wrong and falsehood taught me doubt and fear, Ere Hope came back with worn and wounded wing, To die upon the heart it could not cheer; Ere I love's precious pearl had vainly lavish'd, Pledging an idol deaf to my despair; Ere one by one the buds and blooms were ravish'd From life's rich garland by the clasp of Care. Ah! had we _then_ but met!--I dare not listen To the wild whispers of my fancy now! My full heart beats--my sad, droop'd lashes glisten-- I hear the music of thy _boyhood's_ vow! I see thy dark eyes lustrous with love's meaning, I feel thy dear hand softly clasp mine own-- Thy noble form is fondly o'er me leaning-- It is too much--but ah! the dream has flown. How had I pour'd this passionate heart's devotion In voiceless rapture on thy manly breast! How had I hush'd each sorrowful emotion, Lull'd by thy love to sweet, untroubled rest. How had I knelt hour after hour beside thee, When from thy lips the rare scholastic lore Fell on the soul that all but deified thee, While at each pause I, childlike, pray'd for more. How had I watch'd the shadow of each feeling, That mov'd thy soul-glance o'er that radiant face, "Taming my wild heart" to that dear revealing, And glorifying in thy genius and thy grace! Then hadst thou loved me with a love abiding, And I had now been less unworthy thee, For I was generous, guileless, and confiding, A frank enthusiast, buoyant, fresh, and free! But _now_--my loftiest aspirations perish'd, My holiest hopes a jest for lips profane, The tenderest yearnings of my soul uncherish'd, A soul-worn slave in Custom's iron chain: Check'd by these ties that make my lightest sigh, My faintest blush, at thought of thee, a crime-- How must I still my heart, and school my eye, And count in vain the slow dull steps of Time! Wilt thou come back? Ah! what avails to ask thee Since honor, faith, forbid thee to return! Yet to forgetfulness I dare not task thee, Lest thou too soon that _easy lesson_ learn! Ah! come not back, love! even through Memory's ear Thy tone's melodious murmur thrills my heart-- Come not with that fond smile, so frank, so dear; While yet we may, let us for ever part! The passages commencing, "Thank God, I glory in thy love;" "Ah, let our love be still a folded flower;" "Believe me, 'tis no pang of jealous pride;" "We part forever: silent be our parting;" are in the same measure, and in perfect keeping, but evince a still deeper emotion and greater pathos and power. We copy the closing cantatas, "To Sleep," and "A Weed"--a prayer and a prophecy--in which the profoundest sorrow is displayed with touching simplicity and unaffected earnestness. First, to Death's gentle sister: Come to me, angel of the weary hearted; Since they, my loved ones, breathed upon by thee, Unto thy realms unreal have departed, I, too, may rest--even I; ah! haste to me. I dare not bid thy darker, colder brother With his more welcome offering, appear, For these sweet lips, at morn, will murmur, "Mother," And who shall soothe them if I be not near? Bring me no dream, dear Sleep, though visions glowing With hues of heaven thy wand enchanted shows; I ask no glorious boon of thy bestowing, Save that most true, most beautiful--repose. I have no heart to rove in realms of Faery-- To follow Fancy at her elfin call; I am too wretched--too soul-worn and weary; Give me but rest, for rest to me is all. Paint not the future to my fainting spirit, Though it were starr'd with glory like the skies; There is no gift that mortals may inherit That could rekindle hope in these cold eyes. And for the Past--the fearful Past--ah! never Be Memory's downcast gaze unveil'd by thee; Would thou couldst bring oblivion forever Of all that is, that has been, and will be! And more mournful still, the dream of the after days: When from our northern woods pale summer flying, Breathes her last fragrant sigh--her low farewell-- While her sad wild flowers' dewy eyes, in dying, Plead for her stay, in every nook and dell. A heart that loved too tenderly and truly, Will break at last; and in some dim, sweet shade, They'll smooth the sod o'er her you prized unduly, And leave her to the rest for which she pray'd. Ah! trustfully, not mournfully, they'll leave her, Assured that deep repose is welcomed well; The pure, glad breeze can whisper naught to grieve her; The brook's low voice no wrongful tale can tell. They'll hide her where no false one's footsteps, stealing, Can mar the chasten'd meekness of her sleep; Only to Love and Grief her grave revealing, And they will hush their chiding _then_--to weep! And some, (for though too oft she err'd, too blindly, She was beloved--how fondly and how well!)-- Some few, with faltering feet, will linger kindly, And plant dear flowers within that silent dell. I know whose fragile hand will bring the bloom Best loved by both--the violet's--to that bower; And one will bid white lilies bless the gloom; And one, perchance, will plant the passion flower; Then do _thou_ come, when all the rest have parted-- Thou, who alone dost know her soul's deep gloom! And wreathe above the lost, the broken-hearted, Some idle _weed_, that _knew not how to bloom_. We pass from these painful but exquisitely beautiful displays of sensitive feeling and romantic fancy, to pieces exhibiting Mrs. Osgood's more habitual spirit of arch playfulness and graceful invention, scattered through the volume, and constituting a class of compositions in which she is scarcely approachable. The "Lover's List," is one of her shorter ballads: "Come sit on this bank so shady, Sweet Evelyn, sit with me! And count me your loves, fair lady-- How many may they be?" The maiden smiled on her lover, And traced with her dimpled hand, Of names a dozen and over Down in the shining sand. "And now," said Evelyn, rising, "Sir Knight! your own, if you please; And if there be no disguising, The list will outnumber these; "Then count me them truly, rover!" And the noble knight obeyed; And of names a dozen and over He traced within the shade. Fair Evelyn pouted proudly; She sighed "Will he never have done?" And at last she murmur'd loudly, "I thought he would write but _one_!" "Now read," said the gay youth, rising; "The scroll--it is fair and free; In truth, there is no disguising That list is the world to me!" She read it with joy and wonder, For the first was her own sweet name; And again and again written under, It was still--it was still the same! It began with--"My Evelyn fairest!" It ended with--"Evelyn best!" And epithets fondest and dearest Were lavished between on the rest. There were tears in the eyes of the lady As she swept with her delicate hand, On the river-bank cool and shady, The list she had traced in the sand. There were smiles on the lip of the maiden As she turned to her knight once more, And the heart was with joy o'erladen That was heavy with doubt before! And for its lively movement and buoyant feeling--equally characteristic of her genius--the following song, upon "Lady Jane," a favorite horse: Oh! saw ye e'er creature so queenly, so fine, As this dainty, aerial darling of mine! With a toss of her mane, that is glossy as jet, With a dance and a prance, and a frolic curvet, She is off! she is stepping superbly away! Her dark, speaking eye full of pride and of play. Oh! she spurns the dull earth with a graceful disdain, My fearless, my peerless, my loved Lady Jane! Her silken ears lifted when danger is nigh, How kindles the night in her resolute eye! Now stately she paces, as if to the sound Of a proud, martial melody playing around, Now pauses at once, 'mid a light caracole, To turn her mild glance on me beaming with soul; Now fleet as a fairy, she speeds o'er the plain, My darling, my treasure, my own Lady Jane! Give her rein! let her go! Like a shaft from a bow, Like a bird on the wing, she is speeding, I trow-- Light of heart, lithe of limb, with a spirit all fire, Yet sway'd and subdued by my idlest desire-- Though daring, yet docile, and sportive but true, Her nature's the noblest that ever I knew. How she flings back her head, in her dainty disdain! My beauty, my graceful, my gay Lady Jane! It is among the one hundred and thirteen songs, of which this is one, and which form the last division of her poems, that we have the greatest varieties of rhythm, cadence, and expression; and it is here too that we have, perhaps, the most clear and natural exhibitions of that class of emotions which she conceives with such wonderful truth. The prevailing characteristic of these pieces is a native and delicate raillery, piquant by wit, and poetical by the freshest and gracefullest fancies; but they are frequently marked by much tenderness of sentiment, and by boldness and beauty of imagination. They are in some instances without that singleness of purpose, that unity and completeness, which ought invariably to distinguish this sort of compositions, but upon the whole it must be considered that Mrs. Osgood was remarkably successful in the song. The fulness of our extracts from other parts of the volume will prevent that liberal illustration of her excellence in this which would be as gratifying to the reader as to us; and we shall transcribe but a few specimens, which, by various felicities of language, and a pleasing delicacy of sentiment, will detain the admiration: Oh! would I were only a spirit of song, I'd float forever around, above you: If I were a spirit, it wouldn't be wrong, It couldn't be wrong, to love you! I'd hide in the light of a moonbeam bright, I'd sing Love's lullaby softly o'er you, I'd bring rare visions of pure delight From the land of dreams before you. Oh! if I were only a spirit of song, I'd float forever around, above you, For a musical spirit could never do wrong, And it wouldn't be wrong to love you! The next, an exquisitely beautiful song, suggests its own music: She loves him yet! I know by the blush that rises Beneath the curls That shadow her soul-lit cheek; She loves him yet! Through all Love's sweet disguises In timid girls, A blush will be sure to speak. But deeper signs Than the radiant blush of beauty, The maiden finds, Whenever his name is heard; Her young heart thrills, Forgetting herself--her duty-- Her dark eye fills, And her pulse with hope is stirr'd. She loves him yet!-- The flower the false one gave her, When last he came, Is still with her wild tears wet. She'll ne'er forget, Howe'er his faith may waver, Through grief and shame, Believe it--she loves him yet. His favorite songs She will sing--she heeds no other; With all her wrongs Her life on his love is set. Oh! doubt no more! She never can wed another; Till life be o'er, She loves--she will love him yet! And this is not less remarkable for a happy adaptation of sentiment to the sound: Low, my lute--breathe low!--She sleeps!-- Eulalie! While his watch her lover keeps, Soft and dewy slumber steeps Golden tress and fringed lid With the blue heaven 'neath it hid-- Eulalie! Low my lute--breathe low!--She sleeps!-- Eulalie! Let thy music, light and low, Through her pure dream come and go. Lute on Love! with silver flow, All my passion, all my wo, Speak for me! Ask her in her balmy rest Whom her holy heart loves best! Ask her if she thinks of me!-- Eulalie! Low, my lute!--breathe low!--She sleeps!-- Eulalie! Slumber while thy lover keeps Fondest watch and ward for thee, Eulalie! The following evinces a deeper feeling, and has a corresponding force and dignity in its elegance:-- Yes, "lower to the level" Of those who laud thee now! Go, join the joyous revel, And pledge the heartless vow! Go, dim the soul-born beauty That lights that lofty brow! Fill, fill the bowl! let burning wine Drown in thy soul Love's dream divine! Yet when the laugh is lightest, When wildest goes the jest, When gleams the goblet brightest, And proudest heaves thy breast, And thou art madly pledging Each gay and jovial guest-- A ghost shall glide amid the flowers-- The shade of Love's departed hours! And thou shalt shrink in sadness From all the splendor there, And curse the revel's gladness, And hate the banquet's glare; And pine, 'mid Passion's madness For true love's purer air, And feel thou'dst give their wildest glee For one unsullied sigh from me! Yet deem not this my prayer, love, Ah! no, if I could keep Thy alter'd heart from care, love, And charm its griefs to sleep, Mine only should despair, love, I--I alone would weep! I--I alone would mourn the flowers That fade in Love's deserted bowers! Among her poems are many which admit us to the sacredest recesses of the mother's heart: "To a Child Playing with a Watch," "To Little May Vincent," "To Ellen, Learning to Walk," and many others, show the almost wild tenderness with which she loved her two surviving daughters--one thirteen, and the other eleven years of age now;--and a "Prayer in Illness," in which she besought God to "take them first," and suffer her to lie at their feet in death, lest, deprived of her love, they should be subjected to all the sorrow she herself had known in the world, is exquisitely beautiful and touching. Her parents, her brothers, her sisters, her husband, her children, were the deities of her tranquil and spiritual worship, and she turned to them in every vicissitude of feeling, for hope and strength and repose. "Lilly" and "May," were objects of a devotion too sacred for any idols beyond the threshold, and we witness it not as something obtruded upon the outer world, but as a display of beautified and dignified humanity which is among the ministries appointed to be received for the elevation of our natures. With these holy and beautiful songs is intertwined one, which under the title of "Ashes of Roses," breathes the solemnest requiem that ever was sung for a child, and in reading it we feel that in the subject was removed into the Unknown a portion of the mother's heart and life. The poems of Mrs. Osgood are not a laborious balancing of syllables, but a spontaneous gushing of thoughts, fancies and feelings, which fall naturally into harmonious measures; and so perfectly is the sense echoed in the sound, that it seems as if many of her compositions might be intelligibly written in the characters of music. It is a pervading excellence of her works, whether in prose or verse, that they are graceful beyond those of any other author who has written in this country; and the delicacy of her taste was such that it would probably be impossible to find in all of them a fancy, a thought, or a word offensive to that fine instinct in its highest cultivation or subtlest sensibility. It is one of her great merits that she attempted nothing foreign to her own affluent but not various genius. There is a stilted ambition, common lately to literary women, which is among the fatalest diseases to reputation. She was never betrayed into it; she was always simple and natural, singing in no falsetto key, even when she entered the temples of old mythologies. With an extraordinary susceptibility of impressions, she had not only the finest and quickest discernment of those peculiarities of character which give variety to the surface of society, but of certain kinds and conditions of life she perceived the slightest undulations and the deepest movements. She had no need to travel beyond the legitimate sphere of woman's observation, to seize upon the upturnings and overthrows which serve best for rounding periods in the senate or in courts of criminal justice--trying everything to see if poetry could be made of it. Nor did she ever demand audience for rude or ignoble passion, or admit the moral shade beyond the degree in which it must appear in all pictures of life. She lingered with her keen insight and quick sensibilities among the associations, influences, the fine sense, brave perseverance, earnest affectionateness, and unfailing truth, which, when seen from the romantic point of view, are suggestive of all the poetry which it is within the province of woman to write. I have not chosen to dwell upon the faults in her works; such labor is more fit for other hands, and other days; and so many who attempt criticism seem to think the whole art lies in the detection of blemishes, that one may sometimes be pardoned for lingering as fondly as I have done, upon an author's finer qualities. It must be confessed, that in her poems there is evinced a too unrestrained partiality for particular forms of expression, and that--it could scarcely be otherwise in a collection so composed--thoughts and fancies are occasionally repeated. In some instances too, her verse is diffuse, but generally, where this objection is made, it will be found that what seems most careless and redundant is only delicate shading: she but turns her diamonds to the various rays; she rings no changes till they are not music; she addresses an eye more sensitive to beauty and a finer ear than belong to her critics. The collection of her works is one of the most charming volumes that woman has contributed to literature; of all that we are acquainted with the most womanly; and destined, for that it addresses with truest sympathy and most natural eloquence the commonest and noblest affections, to be always among the most fondly cherished Books of the Heart. Reluctantly I bring to a close these paragraphs--a hasty and imperfect tribute, from my feelings and my judgment, to one whom many will remember long as an impersonation of the rarest intellectual and moral endowments, as one of the loveliest characters in literary or social history. Hereafter, unless the office fall to some one worthier, I may attempt from the records of our friendship, and my own and others' recollections, to do such justice to her life and nature, that a larger audience and other times shall feel how much of beauty with her spirit left us. This requiem she wrote for another, little thinking that her friends would so soon sing it with hearts saddened for her own departure. The hand that swept the sounding lyre With more than mortal skill, The lightning eye, the heart of fire, The fervent lip are still: No more in rapture or in wo, With melody to thrill, Ah! nevermore! Oh! bring the flowers she cherish'd so, With eager child-like care: For o'er her grave they'll love to grow, And sigh their sorrow there; Ah me! no more their balmy glow May soothe her heart's despair, No! nevermore! But angel hands shall bring her balm For every grief she knew, And Heaven's soft harps her soul shall calm With music sweet and true; And teach to her the holy charm Of Israfel anew. For evermore! Love's silver lyre she played so well, Lies shattered on her tomb; But still in air its music-spell Floats on through light and gloom, And in the hearts where soft they fell, Her words of beauty bloom For evermore! Recent Deaths. SAMUEL YOUNG. The Hon. Samuel Young, long one of the most eminent politicians of the democratic party in the State of New-York, died of apoplexy, at his home at Ballston Spa, on the night of the third of November. Col. Young was born in Berkshire county, Massachusetts, in 1778. Soon after he completed his legal studies he emigrated to Ballston Spa, in this State. The following facts respecting his subsequent career are condensed from the _Tribune_. "He was first chosen to the Legislature in 1814, and was reëlected next year on a split ticket, which for a time clouded his prospects. In 1824, he was again in the Assembly, was Speaker of the House in that memorable year, and helped remove De Witt Clinton from the office of Canal Commissioner. The Fall Election found him a candidate for Governor on the 'Caucus' interest opposed to the 'People's' demand that the choice of Presidential Electors be relinquished by the Legislature to the Voters of the State. Col. Young professed to be personally a 'Peoples' man, and in favor of Henry Clay for President; the 'Caucus' candidate being Wm. H. Crawford. De Witt Clinton was the opposing candidate for Governor, and was elected by 16,000 majority. Col. Young's political fortunes never recovered from the blow thus inflicted. He had already been chosen a Canal Commissioner by the Legislature, and he continued to hold the office till the Political revolution of 1838-9, when he was superseded by a Whig. He was afterwards twice a State Senator for four years, and for three years Secretary of State. He carried into all the stations he has filled signal ability and unquestioned rectitude. He was a man of strong prejudices, violent temper and implacable resentments, but a Patriot and a determined foe of time-serving, corruption, prodigality, and debt. He was a warm friend of Educational Improvement, and did the cause good service while Secretary of State. For the last three years he has held no office, but lived in that peaceful retirement to which his years and his services fairly entitled him. He leaves behind him many who have attained more exalted positions on a smaller capital of talent and aptitude for public service. We have passed lightly over his vehement denunciations of the Internal Improvement policy during the latter years of his public life. We attribute the earnestness of his hostility to a temper soured by disappointment, and especially to his great defeat in '24, at the hands of the illustrious champion of the Canals. But, though his vision was jaundiced, his purpose was honest. He thought he was struggling to save the State from imminent bankruptcy and ruin." * * * * * Henry T. Robinson, for many years an active maker of political and other caricatures, by which he made a fortune, here and in Washington, and of nude and other indecent prints, by the seizure of a large quantity of which, with other causes, he was impoverished, died at Newark, New-Jersey, on the third of November. He was born on Bethnal Common in England, in 1785, and about 1810 emigrated to this country, where he was one of the first to practise lithography. * * * * * Joseph Hardy died a few weeks ago at Rathmines, aged ninety-three years. When twenty years old he invented a machine for doubling and twisting cotton yarn, for which the Dublin Society awarded him a premium of twenty guineas. Four years after he invented a scribbling machine for carding wool, to be worked by horse or water power, for which the same society awarded him one hundred guineas. He next invented a machine for measuring and sealing linen, and was in consequence appointed by the linen board seals-master for all the linen markets in the county of Derry, but the slightest benefit from this he never derived, as the rebellion of '98 broke out about the time he had all his machines completed, and political opponents having represented by memorials to the board that by giving so much to one man, hundreds who then were employed would be thrown out of work, the board changed the seal from the spinning wheel to the harp and crown, thereby rendering his seals useless, merely giving him 100_l._ by way of remuneration for his loss. About the year 1810 he demonstrated by an apparatus attached to one of the boats of the Grand Canal Company at Portobello the practicability of propelling vessels on the water by paddle wheels; but having placed the paddles on the bow of the boat, the action of the backwater on the boat was so great as to prevent its movement at a higher speed than three miles per hour. This appearing not to answer, without further experiment he broke up the machinery, and allowed others to profit by the ideas he gave on the subject, and to complete on the open sea what he had attempted within the narrow limits of a canal. He also invented a machine for sawing timber; but the result of all his inventions during a long life was very considerable loss of time and property without the slightest recompense from Government, or the country benefited by his talents. * * * * * Major-General Slessor died at Sidmouth, Devonshire, on the 11th October, aged seventy-three. He entered the army in 1794, and served in Ireland during the rebellion, and subsequently against the French force commanded by General Humbert, on which last occasion he was wounded. In 1806 he accompanied his regiment (the 35th) to Sicily, and the next year he served in the second expedition to Egypt, and was wounded in the retreat from Rosetta to Alexandria. He then served with Sir J. Oswald against the Greek Islands, and was employed in the Mediterranean. He also served in the Austrian army, under Count Nugent, and in the Waterloo campaign. * * * * * Joseph Signay, Roman Catholic Archbishop of the Ecclesiastical Province of Quebec, died on the 3d of October. He was born at Quebec November 8, 1778, appointed Coadjutor of Quebec and Bishop of Fussala the 15th of December, 1826, and was consecrated under that title the 20th of May, 1827. He succeeded to the See of Quebec the 19th of February, 1833, and was elevated to the dignity of Archbishop by His Holiness Pope Gregory XVI., on the 12th of July, 1844, and received the "Pallium" during the ensuing month. * * * * * Dr. Fouquier, one of the most celebrated physicians of Paris, who was _le medecin_ of the ex-king Louis Philippe, and Professor of _clinique interne_ at the Academy, died on the 1st of October. His loss is much felt among the _savants_. * * * * * Lieut.-Colonel Cross, K.H., a distinguished Peninsular officer, died near London on the 27th of October. He served in the Peninsular war from 1808 until its close in 1814, and was at the battle of Waterloo, where he received a severe contusion. * * * * * Thomas Amyot, F.R.S., &c.--whose life, extended to the age of seventy-six, was passed in close intercourse with the literary and antiquarian circles of London, participating in their pursuits and aiding their exertions--died on the 28th of September. He was an active and respected member of almost every metropolitan association which had for its object the advancement of literature. He was a constant and valuable contributor to the _Archæologia_, the private secretary of Mr. Windham, the editor of Windham's speeches, and for many years treasurer to the Society of Antiquaries of London, and a director of the Camden Society. He was a native of Norwich, and obtained the friendship and patronage of Windham while actively engaged in canvassing in favor of an opponent of that gentleman for the representation of Norwich in the House of Commons. A Life of Windham was one of his long-promised and long-looked-for contributions to the biographies of English statesmen; but no such work has been published, and there is reason to believe that very little, if indeed any portion of it, was ever completed for publication. The journals of Mr. Windham were in the possession of Mr. Amyot; and if we may judge of the whole by the account of Johnson's conversation and last illness, printed by Croker in his edition of Boswell, we may assert that whenever they may be published they will constitute a work of real value in illustration of political events and private character,--a model in respect of fullness and yet succinctness, which future journalists may copy with advantage. Whatever Windham preserved of Johnson's conversation well merited preservation. Mr. Amyot's most valuable literary production is, his refutation of Mr. Tytler's supposition that Richard the Second was alive and in Scotland in the reign of Henry the Fourth. * * * * * Madame Branchu, so famous in the opera in the last century, is dead. The first distinct idea which many have entertained respecting the _Grande Opera_ of Paris may have been derived from a note in Moore's _Fudge Family_ in which the "shrill screams of Madame Branchu" were mentioned. She retired from the theater in 1826, after twenty-five years of _prima donna_ship--having succeeded to the scepter and crown of Mdlle. Maillard and Madame St. Huberty. She died at Passy, having almost entirely passed out of the memory of the present opera-going generation. She must have been a forcible and impassioned rather than an elegant or irreproachable vocalist--and will be best remembered perhaps as the original _Julia_ in "La Vestale" of Spontini. * * * * * Major-General Wingrove, of the Royal Marines, died on the 7th October, aged seventy years. He entered the Royal Marines in 1793, served at the surrender of the Cape of Good Hope in 1795, the battle of Trafalgar, the taking of Genoa in 1814, was on board the Boyne when that ship singly engaged three French ships of the line and three frigates, off Toulon, in 1814, and on board the Hercules in a single action, off Cape Nichola Mole. In 1841 he was promoted to the rank of a major-general. * * * * * The Duke of Palmella, long eminent in the affairs of Portugal, died at Lisbon on the 12th of October. He was born on the 8th of May, 1781, and had, consequently, completed his sixty ninth year. A very considerable part of his life was dedicated to the diplomatic service of Portugal, which he represented at the Congress of Vienna, in 1814; and he was one of the General Committee of the eight powers who signed the Peace of Paris. When the debate respecting the slave-trade took place in the Congress, he warmly opposed the immediate abolition by Portugal, which had been demanded by Lord Castlereagh. He was also one of the foreign ministers who signed the declaration of the 13th of March, 1815, against Napoleon; immediately after which he was nominated representative of Portugal at the British Court. In 1816, however, he was recalled to fill the office of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Brazil. In February, 1818, he visited Paris, for the purpose of making some arrangements relative to Monte Video, with the Spanish Ambassador, Count Fernan Nunez. After the Portuguese Revolution, he retired for a time from active life. He was next selected to attend at the coronation of Queen Victoria; and his great wealth enabled him to vie, on that occasion, with the representatives of the other courts of Europe. He was several times called to preside over the councils of his Sovereign, but only held office for a limited period. Though a member of the ancient nobility, all his titles were honorably acquired by his own exertions, and were the rewards of distinguished abilities and meritorious services. No Portuguese statesman acquired greater celebrity abroad, and no man acted a more consistent part in all the political vicissitudes of the last thirty years, throughout which he was a most prominent character. It is related of the Duke, when Count de Palmella, that during the contest in Spain and Portugal, Napoleon one day hastily addressed him with--"Well, are you Portuguese willing to become Spanish?" "No," replied the Count, in a firm tone. Far from being displeased with this frank and laconic reply, Napoleon said next day to one of his officers, "The Count de Palmella gave me yesterday a noble 'No.'" * * * * * Carl Rottmann, the distinguished Bavarian artist and painter to the King, died near the end of October. He had been sent by King Ludwig to Italy and to Greece to depict the scenery and monuments of those countries. His pictures of the Temple of Juno Lucina, Girgenti, the theater of Taormina, &c., have never been excelled, and the king had characterized them by illustrative poems. The Grecian monuments which Rottmann sketched in 1835 and 1836 are destined for the new Pinakothek; and the Battle-Field of Marathon is spoken of as a wonderful composition. The frescoes of Herr Rottmann adorn the ceiling of the upper story of the palace at Munich. * * * * * François de Villeneuve-Bargemont, Marquis de Trans, a member of the French Academy of Inscriptions of Belles-Lettres, and author, amongst other works, of the Histories of King Réné of Anjou, of St. Louis, and of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, is named in the late Paris obituaries. * * * * * The _Augsburg Gazette_ announces the death of the celebrated Bavarian painter Ch. Schorn, Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts at Munich, on the 7th October, aged forty-seven. * * * * * Richard M. Johnson, Ex-Vice-President of the United States, died at Frankfort, Ky., on the morning of November 19, having for some time been deprived of his reason. He was about seventy years of age. In 1807 he was chosen a member of the House of Representatives, which post he held twelve years. In 1813 he raised 1,000 men, to fight the British and Indians in the North-west. In the campaign which followed he served gallantly under Gen. Harrison as Colonel of his regiment. At the battle of the Thames he distinguished himself by breaking the line of the British infantry. The fame of killing Tecumseh, in this battle, has been given to Colonel J., but the act has other claimants. In 1819 he was transferred from the House of Representatives to the Senate, to serve out an unexpired term. When that expired he was re-chosen, and thus remained in the Senate till 1829. Then, another re-election being impossible, he went back into the House, where he remained till 1839, when he became Vice-President under Mr. Van Buren. In 1829 the Sunday Mail agitation being brought before the House, he, as Chairman of the Committee on Post-Offices and Post-Roads, presented a report against the suspension of mails on Sunday. It was able, though its ability was much exaggerated; it disposed of the subject, and Col. J. received what never belonged to him, the credit of having written it. From 1837 to 1841 he presided over the Senate. From that time he did not hold any office. * * * * * William Blacker, Esq., the distinguished agricultural writer and economist, died on the 20th of October, at his residence in Armagh, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. Engaged extensively, in early life, in mercantile pursuits, he devoted himself at a maturer period to the development of the agricultural and economic resources of Ireland. By his popularly-written "Hints to Small Farmers," annual reports of experimental results, essays, &c. he managed to spread, not only a spirit of inquiry into matters of such vital importance to his country, but to point out and urge into the best and most advantageous course of action, the well-inclined and the energetic. * * * * * Mrs. Bell Martin, the author of a very clever novel, lately reprinted by the Harpers, entitled "Julia Howard" and originally published under the name of Mrs. Martin Bell, died in this city on the 7th of November. Mrs. Martin was the daughter of one of the wealthiest commoners of England. She came to this country it is said entirely for purposes connected with literature. She was the author of several other works, most of which were written in French. * * * * * The _Patria_, of Corfu mentions the death by cholera of Signor Niccolo Delviniotti Baptistide, a distinguished literary character, and author of several very interesting works. * * * * * General du Chastel, one of the remains of the French Imperial Army, died at Saumur, in October, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. * * * * * Among the other recent deaths in Europe, we notice that of Mr. Watkyns, the son-in-law and biographer of Ebenezer Elliot; Dr. Medicus, Professor of Botany at Munich, and a member of the Academy of Sciences in that capital; M. Ferdinand Laloue, a dramatic author of some reputation in Paris; and Dr. C.F. Becker, eminent for his philosophical works on grammar and the structure of language. [Illustration] NICHOLAS WISEMAN, D.D., LL.D., CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER. The topic of the month in Europe has been the public and formal resumption of jurisdiction by the Pope in England, and the appointment of the ablest and most illustrious person in the Catholic Church to be Archbishop of Westminster. Dr. Wiseman is known and respected by all Christian scholars for his abilities, and their devotion to the vindication of our common faith. His admirable work on _The Connection between Science and Revealed Religion_ is a text-book in Protestant as well as in Roman Catholic seminaries. Cardinal Wiseman is now in his forty-ninth year, having been born at Seville, on the second of August, 1802. He is descended from an Irish family, long settled in Spain. At an early age he was carried to England, and sent for his education to St. Cuthbert's Catholic College, near Durham. Thence he was removed to the English College at Rome, where he distinguished himself by an extraordinary attachment to learning. At eighteen he published in Latin a work on the Oriental languages; and he bore off the gold medal at every competition of the colleges of Rome. His merit recommended him to his superiors; he obtained several honors, was ordained a priest, and made a Doctor of Divinity. He was several years a Professor in the Roman University, and then Rector of the English College, where he achieved his earliest success. He went to England in 1835, and immediately became a conspicuous teacher and writer on the side of the Catholics. In 1836 he vindicated in a course of lectures the doctrines of the Catholic Church, and gave so much satisfaction to his party that they presented him with a gold medal, to express their esteem and gratitude. He returned to Rome, and seems to have been instrumental in inducing Pope Gregory XVI. to increase the vicars apostolic in England. The number was doubled, and Dr. Wiseman went back as coadjutor to Bishop Walsh, of the Midland district. He was appointed President of St. Mary's College, Oscott, and contributed, by his teaching, his preaching, and his writings, very much to promote the spread of Catholicism in England. He was a contributor to the _Dublin Review_, and the author of some controversial pamphlets. In 1847 he again repaired to Rome on the affairs of the Catholics, and no doubt prepared the way for the present change. His second visit to Rome led to further preferment. He was made Pro-Vicar Apostolic of the London district; subsequently appointed coadjutor to Dr. Walsh, and in 1849, on the death of Dr. Walsh, Vicar Apostolic of the London district. Last August he went again to Rome, "not expecting," as he says, "to return;" but "delighted to be commissioned to come back" clothed in his new dignity. In a Consistory held September 30, Nicholas Wiseman was elected to the dignity of Cardinal, by the title of Saint Prudentiani, and appointed Archbishop of Westminster. Under the Pope, he is the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England, and a Prince of the Church of Rome. [Illustration] Ladies' Fashions for December. Fig. I. _Promenade Costume._--Robe of striped silk: the ground a richly shaded brown, and the stripes of the same color, but of darker hue. The skirt of the dress is quite plain, the corsage high, and the sleeves not very wide at the ends, showing white under-sleeves of very moderate size. Mantle of dark green satin. The upper part or body is shaped like a pardessus, with a small basque at the back. Attached to this body is a double skirt, both the upper and lower parts of which are set on in slight fullness, and nearly meeting in front. The body of the mantle, as well as the two skirts, is edged with quilling of satin ribbon of the color of the cloak. Loose Chinese sleeves, edged with the same trimming. Drawn bonnet of brown velvet; under trimming small red flowers; strings of brown therry velvet ribbon. Fig. II.--Back view of dress of claret-colored broché silk; the pattern large detached sprigs. Cloak of rich black satin. The upper part is a deep cape, cut so as to fit closely to the figure, and pointed at the back. By being fastened down at each side of the arms, this cape presents the effect of sleeves. Round the back, and on that part which falls over the arms, the cape is edged with a very broad and rich fringe, composed of twisted silk chenille, and headed by passementerie. The skirt of the cloak is cut bias way and nearly circular, so that it hangs round the figure in easy fullness. The fronts are trimmed with ornaments of passementerie in the form of large flowers. The bonnet is of green therry velvet, trimmed with black lace, two rows of which are laid across the front. Under trimming of pale pink roses. [Transcriber's Notes: Page vi: Transcribed "Bronte" as "Brontë". As originally printed: "Bronte and her Sisters". Transcribed "in" as "on". As originally printed: "Herr Kielhau, in Geology". Pages vi & 142: Transcribed "Charles Rottman" as "Carl Rottmann". Page vii: Transcribed "this" as "his". As originally printed: "Swift, Dean, and this Amours." Page 13: Supplied "from" in the following phrase (shown here in brackets): "It caused Richard Steele to be expelled [from] the House of Commons". Page 13: Transcribed "colleague's" as "colleagues". As originally printed: "triumphed over his colleague's". Page 16: Transcribed "Smollet" as "Smollett". As originally printed: "the best productions of Mendoza, Smollet, or Dickens" (presumably, Tobias Smollett). Page 20: Transcribed "Uniersberg" as "Untersberg". As originally printed: "Charlemagne in the Uniersberg at Salzburg". Pages 18-22: Alternate spellings of Leipzig/Leipzic have been left as printed in the original publication. Page 24: A closing quotation is missing in the original publication for material commencing: "we shall see him as he was, both adventurous and patient.... Page 27: Transcribed "Cosmo" as "Cosimo". As originally printed: "but of Cosmo de Medici, Lorenzo his great descendant". Page 28: Transcribed "Eoratii" as "Horatii". As originally printed: "The Eoratii, one of the master pieces of David". Page 73: Transcribed "bonhommie" as "bonhomie". As originally printed: "the Visconte, with equal _bonhommie_". Page 113: Transcribed "vacilliating" as "vacillating". As originally printed: "made a blind vacilliating attack". Page 127: A closing quotation is missing in the original publication for material commencing: "I have sometimes thought that if you were to stop a hundred men.... Transcribed "habituès" as "habitués". As originally printed: "the more experienced _habituès_ of office". Page 128: Transcribed "Chocò and Popayan" as "Chocó and Popayán". As originally printed: "deep and humid woods of the provinces of Chocò and Popayan". Transcribed "Caraccas" as "Caracas". As originally printed: "as identical with the cow tree of Caraccas". Page 129: "garnery" in "gathered into the garnery" has been left as printed in the original publication. Likely misspelling of "granary". Page 136: Transcribed "paen" as "pæan". As originally printed: "Till the full paen". Page 139: Transcribed "singleness that of purpose" as "that singleness of purpose". As originally printed: "They are in some instances without singleness that of purpose". Transcribed "waiver" as "waver". As originally printed: "Howe'er his faith may waiver". Page 142: Transcribed "Pinakotheka" as "Pinakothek". As originally printed: "destined for the new Pinakotheka". Transcribed "François de Villenueve-Bargemont" as "François de Villeneuve-Bargemont".] 
36124	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections.) THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE Of Literature, Science, and Art. VOLUME IV AUGUST TO DECEMBER, 1851. NEW-YORK: STRINGER & TOWNSEND, 222 BROADWAY. FOR SALE BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. BY THE NUMBER, 25 CTS.; THE VOLUME, $1; THE YEAR, $3. Transcriber's note: Contents for entire volume 4 in this text. However this text contains only issue Vol. 4, No. 1. Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article. PREFACE TO THE FOURTH VOLUME. The conclusion of the Fourth Volume of a periodical may be accepted as a sign of its permanent establishment. The proprietors of the INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE have the satisfaction of believing that, while there has been a steady increase of sales, ever since the publication of the first number of this work, there has likewise been as regular an augmentation of its interest, value, and adaptation to the wants of the reading portion of our community. While essentially an Eclectic, relying very much for success on a reproduction of judiciously selected and fairly acknowledged Foreign Literature, it has contained from month to month such an amount of New Articles as justified its claim to consideration as an Original Miscellany. And in choosing from European publications, articles to reprint or to translate for these pages, care has been taken not only to avoid that vein of licentiousness in morals, and skepticism in religion, which in so lamentable a degree characterize a large portion of the popular literature of this age, but also to extract from foreign periodicals that American element with which the rising importance of our country has caused so many of them to be infused; so that, notwithstanding the fact that more than half the contents of the INTERNATIONAL are from the minds of Europeans, the Magazine is essentially more _American_ than any other now published. For the future, the publishers have made arrangements that will insure very decided and desirable improvements, which will be more fully disclosed in the first number of the ensuing volume; eminent original writers will be added to our list of contributors; from Germany, France, and Great Britain, we have increased our literary resources; and more attention will be given to the pictorial illustration of such subjects as may be advantageously treated in engravings. Among those authors whose contributions have appeared in the INTERNATIONAL hitherto, we may mention: MISS FENIMORE COOPER, MISS ALICE CAREY, MRS. E. OAKES SMITH, MRS. M. E. HEWITT, MRS. ALICE B. NEAL, BISHOP SPENCER, HENRY AUSTIN LAYARD, PARKE GODWIN, JOHN R. THOMPSON, W. C. RICHARDS, W. GILMORE SIMMS, BAYARD TAYLOR, ROBERT HENRY STODDARD, ALFRED B. STREET, THOMAS EWBANK, E. W. ELLSWORTH, G. P. R. JAMES, DR. JOHN W. FRANCIS, MAUNSELL B. FIELD, DR. STARBUCK MAYO, JOHN E. WARREN, A. OAKEY HALL, HORACE GREELEY, RICHARD B. KIMBALL, THE AUTHOR OF "NILE NOTES," THE AUTHOR OF "HARRY FRANCO." REV. J. C. RICHMOND, REV. H. W. PARKER, JAMES T. FIELDS, R. S. CHILTON. The foreign writers, from whom we have selected, need not be enumerated; they embrace the principal living masters of literary art; and we shall continue to avail ourselves of their new productions as largely as justice to them and the advantage and pleasure of our readers may seem to justify. NEW-YORK, December 1, 1851. CONTENTS: VOLUME IV. AUGUST TO DECEMBER, 1851. Alred.--_By Elmina W. Carey_, 27 Alexander, Last days of the Emperor.--_A. Dumas_, 233 America, as Abused by a German, 448 American Intercommunication, 461 American Literature, Studies of.--_Philarete Chasles_, 163 American and European Scenery Compared.--_By the late J. F. Cooper_, 625 Anacreon. Twentieth Ode of.--_By Mary E. Hewitt_, 20 Animal Magnetism. Christopher North on, 27 Ariadne.--_By William C. Bennett_, 315 Autumn Ballad, An.--_By W. A. Sutliffe_, 598 August Reverie.--_By A. Oakey Hall_, 477 Art Expression. 401 Arts among the Aztecs and Indians.--_By Thomas Ewbank._ (Ten Engravings.) 307 _Arts, the Fine._--Monuments to Public Men in Europe and America, 130.--Mosaics for the Emperor of Russia, 130.--Tenarani, the Italian Sculptor, 131.--Group by Herr Kiss, 131.--English and American Portrait Painters, 131--Mr. Pyne's English Landscapes, 131.--Paintings by British Officers in Canada, 131.--Ovation to Rauch at Berlin, 131.--Healy's Picture of Webster's Reply to Hayne, 131.--Newly-discovered Raphael, 131.--Daguerreotypes, 131.--Letter from Hiram Powers, 279.--Monument to Wordsworth, 279.--Monument to Weber, 279.--Works of Cornelius, 279.--Greenonga's Group for the Capital, 279.--The Twelve Virgins of Raphael, 279.--Tributes by Greece to her Benefactors, 279.--Paul Delaroche, 417.--Winterhalter, 417.--New Scriptures in the Crystal Palace, 417.--London Art-Union, 417.--American Art-Union. 417.--Powers's Eve, 417.--Leutze, 417.--The London Art-Journal on the Engravings of the American Art-Union. 561.--The Philadelphia Art-Union, 561.--The Western Art-Union, 562.--Mr. Healy's Picture of Webster's Reply to Hayne, 562.--Mr. Lentze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, 562--Illustrations of Martin Luther, 562.--Lentze's Washington. 743.--Colossal Statue of Washington at Munich, 703.--Kaulbach's Frescoes, 703.--Cadame's Compositions of the Seasons, 703.--Portraits of Bishop White and Daniel Webster, 703. _Authors and Books._--The Story of Talns, and the Sardonic Laughter, by Merehlen, 122.--A German Treatise on Free Trade, 122.--Curious Medical Works in Germany, 122.--Weiseler on the Theatre, 122.--Woodcuts of celebrated Masters, 123.--Recent German Poetry, 123.--Venedy's Schleswig-Holstein in 1850, 123.--Souvenirs of Early Germans, 123.--Gutzkow, Reimer, and Gubitz. 123.--Mundi's Macchiavelli and the Course of European Policy, 123.--New German Novels, 124.--Baner's Documents respecting the Monastery of Arnsburg, 121.--Mss. of Peter Schlemil, 124.--Professor O. L. B. Wohl's Poetic and Prosaic Home Treasury, 124.--German opinion of Miss Weber, 124.--Professor Zahn at Pompeii, 124.--Barthohl's History of German Cities, 124.--Cornell on Feurebach, 125.--New Book of the Planets by Ernst, 125.--Waldmeister's Bridal Tour, 125.--German version of George Copyway's Book, 125.--German Survey of American Institutions, 125.--Russian Literature, 125.--Jewish Professors in Austria, 125.--Dumas's new Works, 125.--Madame Reybaud, 125.--New Volume of Thier's History of the Empire, 125.--Mignet's Life of Mary Queen of Scots, 126.--Cormenin on the Revision of the Constitution, 126.--Literary Episodes in the East, by Marcellus, 126.--Victor Hugo. 126.--Madame Bocarme, 126.--Signatures to Articles in the French Journals, 126.--Arago's loss of sight, 126.--George Sand to Dumas, 127.--Vacherot on the Philosophical School of Alexandria, 127.--Mss. of Rousseau, 127.--Unpublished works of Balzac, 127.--M. Nisard, 127.--M. Gautier, 127.--Guizot's History of Representative Government, 127.--Mademoiselle de Belle Isle, 127.--Rev. T. W. Shelton, in Sharpe's Magazine, 127.--Rev. Charles Kingsley, author of Alton Locke, 127.--Bowring's Translation of Schiller, 128.--New English Poems, 128.--New Novel by Warren, 128.--Judge Woodbury's Works, 128.--The North American Review, 128--Life of Judge Story, 123.--Contributions to the History of the West, by Lyman C. Draper, 129.--The Dublin University Magazine on Streets Frontenac, 129.--Mrs. Southworth in England. 129.--Return of Mrs. Mowatt, 129.--Miss Beecher's new Work on the Writings of Women, 129.--Ludwig Feuerback, 268.--August Kopish on the Monument to Frederic the Great, 269.--The _Janus_ Review, 269.--Franz Kugler on the Theatre, 269.--Von Muller's History of the Swiss Confederation, 269.--Memoir of Bretschneider, 269.--Dr. Worth, 269.--Herr Christern's Book Store, 269.--German Periodicals, 270.--The Hungarian Refugees in Turkey, 270.--The Youth of Thorwaldsen, 270.--Old and New Songs and Fables for Children, 270.--Convention of Sclavic Scholars, 270.--German Translation of Milton's Areopagitica, 270.--Eccentricities of German Medical Literature, 271.--German Poems, 271.--Shakspeare in Sweden, 271.--Neander's Lectures, 271.--George Sand and her Husband, 271.--New work by Comte, 271.--Lamartine's New History, 271.--Michelet's _Legendes de la Democratie_, 272.--Guizot's History of Representative Government, 272.--Prudhon's Idea of Revolution, 272.--Miss Martineau and her Master, 272.--Rumored Discoveries of Greek MSS, 272.--Bunsen on the supposed MS. of Origen, 272.--New English Poems, 272.--Herodotus and the Discoveries of Nineveh, 273.--Sir James Stephen's History of France, 273.--J. S. Buckingham, 273.--Mrs. Jamieson, 273.--New Books of Travels, 273.--Dr. Wilkinson and Henry James, 273.--New Novels, 273.--New Books on the Apocalypse, 274.--Finchman on Ship Building, 274.--The Grenville Papers, 274.--Sir W. Parish on Buenos Ayres, 274.--Works of Bishop Whately, 274.--Macaulay's New Volumes, 274.--Poems of Edith May, 274.--Ware's European Capitals, 274.--New Romance by Thomas H. Shreve, 274.--More about American Reviews, 275.--Poem on Woman, by J. W. Ward, 275.--Novellettes of Musicians, 275.--Dr. Huntington's Alban, 276.--Simms's Poetical Works, 276.--Dr. Tyng and Bickersteth, 276.--Mr. Putnam's forthcoming Souvenir Books, 276.--Kitto's Biblical Cyclopedia, 276.--Episodes of Insect Life, 276.--History of Oneida County, 276.--Mrs. Nichols's Poem's, 276.--New Translations of the Bible, 277.--Sale of Dr. Jarvis's Library, 277.--Ik Marvell's New Work, 277.--Mr. Longfellow's New Poem, 277.--Books on the Mechanic Arts, 278.--Dr. Wainwright's Work on Egypt, 278.--Mr. Jefferson's MSS. Work on Grammar, 278.--Dr. Williams on the Lord's Prayer, 278.--Works of John Adams, 278.--Publications of James Munroe, 278.--German Magazines, 403.--German Poets, 403, 405.--Freilegrath, 403.--New edition of Brockhaus' Lexicon, 403.--German View of Lamartine, 403.--Prutz in a Novel, 403.--Stahl on Paris, 404.--Kohler on Ancient Cameos, &c., 404.--Children's Picture Books, 404.--Latin Life of Zumpt, 404.--New work by Robert Remak, 405.--The German Element in English Language, 405.--Count Blumberg on the Higher Classes, 405.--Auerbach's German Evenings, 405.--Gailhabaud's Monuments of Architecture, 405.--A Life Spent in Studying Thrushes, 405.--Gust's Bibliotheca Biographia Lutherana, 405.--New work on Monarchy, 405.--New German Works on the Middle Ages, 406.--Konig and Gelzer on Luther, 406.--The Bible and the Almanac, 406.--Austrian Biographical Dictionary, 406.--New Book by Hans Andersen, 406--Zeise, the Danish Novelist, 407.--Poems of Tegner, 407.--Bohemian Songs, 407.--Italian Histories of To-day, 407.--Bible Plays by Wiese, 408.--Colins on Socialism, 408.--Memoirs by Captain Laconte, 408.--Villemarque's Breton Poems, 408.--Perrymond _vs._ Thiers, 408.--The French Orators, 408.--Histories of the Reformation in France, 408.--M. Guizot, 409.--Jules Janin, 409.--Montbeillard on Spinoza, 409.--Punishment of a Socialist Dramatist, 409.--Marriage of "Bon Gaultier," 409.--Visits to De Quincy and Burns's Sister, 410.--The "Baroness Von Beck," 410.--Thackeray's New Novel, 410.--Literary Pensions in England, 410.--Tributes to James Montgomery, 410.--New editor of the Westminster Review, 410.--New Lives of Mary, Queen of Scots, 411.--Publications of Moore & Co., of Cincinnati, 411.--Rivers of the Bible, 411.--Mexican Documents collected by the Abbé Bourbourg, 412.--Mr. Schoolcraft and the Publishers, 412.--Mr. Simms's New Tragedy, 412.--Dr. Albro's Life of Shepherd, the Puritan, 412.--New Edition of Fielding, 413.--Theory of Human Progression, 413.--The Nile Boat, 413.--Kitto's Bible Illustrations, 413.--Poore's Life of Napoleon, 413.--Indications of the Creator, by George Taylor, 413.--Parkman's History of Pontiac, 413.--De Quiney's Works, 413.--Mrs. Judson, 413.--Hart's Female Prose Writers of America, 414.--Mrs. Lee's Memoirs of Buckminster, 415.--Rochefoucauld, 415.--Dr. Huntington and his Novels, Letters, and Life, 415.--New Works in Press by the Harpers, 415.--By Redfield, do., 416.--New Work by Dr. Boardman, 416.--Carl Immerman's Letters on the Theatre, 551.--Kohl's last book of Travels, 551.--L'Eco d'Italia, 551.--Narcissa Zwichowska, 551.--Baron Baerst on Cooking, 551.--Brinckle's-Butterfly Book, 552.--Stein's History of the Social Movement in France, 552.--Dr. Schleiden's Work on Animalculæ, 552.--History of Education, by Kranse, 552.--Handbook of Catholic Pulpit Eloquence, 552.--Popular Songs of Southern Russia, 552.--Hogarth's Works in Germany, 552.--Dr. Andree's Work on America, 553.--Studies of German Lore, 553.--Hase's New Prophets, 553.--Wanderings in Slavonia, 553.--A reply to the Countess Hahn-Hahn's last book, 554.--A Review of Lamartine's Parasite History, 554.--Humboldt's Kosmos, 554.--History of Polish Literature, 554.--Russian Archaeology, 554.--Siegfried Weiss on German Trade Policy, 554.--Periodicals in Asia, 554.--German Translation of Hawthorne, 554.--The German Universities, 555.--New German Poems, 555.--Literary Statistics of Poland, 555.--Work on Russia by Tegoborski, 555.--Ritter's History of Philosophy, 555.--De Flotte on the Sovereignty of the People, 555.--Nineveh, 555.--New Series of Eugene Sue's Mysteries of the People, 556.--Second Part of Michelet's History of the French Revolution, 556.--Julian's History of Porcelain Manufacture, 556.--Felix de Verneihl on the Cologne Cathedral, 556.--Andre Cochat on French Workingmen's Associations, 556.--New edition of George Sand's Works, 556.--Letter from Alexander Dumas, 556.--Alfred de Musset, 557.--Translations of Comte's Philosophy, 557.--Jules Janin's new Romance, 557.--Ferdinand Hiller, 557.--James T. Fields, 557.--New Histories of the Mexican War, 557.--Horace Mann on the Sphere of Woman, 557.--General Morris not guilty of Plagiarism, 558.--Torrey's Translation of Neander, 558.--Translations of Dante, 559.--Alice Carey's Recollections of Our Neighborhood in the West, 559.--Modern Miracles, by Henry Ingalls, 559.--New Novel by Mr. James and Mr. Field, 559.--History of the German Reformed Church, 559.--Professor Hackett's Commentary on the Acts, 559.--The Whale, by Herman Melville, 559.--Mr. Herbert's work on Ancient Battles, &c., 560.--Glances at Europe, by H. Greeley, 560.--Hungary and Kossuth, 560.--Richard B. Kimball, 560.--Mr. Judd's Margaret, 560.--Pendant to Professor Creasy's _Decisive Battles of the World_, 693.--Correspondence respecting the Thirty Years' War, 693.--German collection of English Songs, 693.--German Philologists, 693.--Weil's History of the Califs, 693.--The Germans in Bohemia, 693.--Andree's Work on America, 694.--Works on Spinoza, 694.--New Goethean Literature, 694.--The British Empire in Europe, by Meidinger, 694.--The Play of the Resurrection, 694.--German History of French Literature, 694.--New work on German Knighthood, &c., 694.--German Romanee in the 18th Century, 695.--Madame Blaze de Bury's New Novel, 695.--Richter's History of the Evangelical German Churches, 695.--German Life of Sir Robert Peel, 695.--Zimmermann on the English Revolution, 695.--History of Norway, 695.--Reguly, the Hungarian Traveller, 695.--Political Notabililities of Hungary, 695.--Speeches, &c., by King William of Prussia, 695.--Pictures from the North, 695.--History of the Swiss Confederation, 695.--Bem's System of Chronology, by Miss Peabody, 695.--French Almanacs, 695.--M. Croce-Spinelli's Work on Popular Government, 696.--Works by the Paris Asiatic Society, 696.--Cæsar Daly on Parisian Architecture, 696.--Fignier's Modern Discoveries, 696.--The _Annuaire des Deux Mondes_, 696.--Calvin's Inedited Letters, 697.--Lacretelle, 697.--Critical Studies of Socialism, 697.--Memoirs of Mademoiselle Mars, 697.--The Institute of France, 697.--Grille on the War in La Vendee, 697.--History of the Bourgeoisie of Paris, 697.--_Archives des Missions Scientifiques_, &c., 697.--Travels in Africa, 698.--Spirit of New Roman Catholic Literature, 698.--Garcin de Tassy on Mr. Salisbury's Unpublished Arabic Documents, 699.--New Travels in Palestine, 698.--The Abaddie Travellers, 699.--French, English, and American Missionaries, as Scholars, 699.--The Westminster Review, 699.--A Grandson of Robert Burns, 699.--Friends in Council, &c., by Mr. Helps, 699.--New English Announcements, 700.--New Dissenters' College, 700.--Sir Charles Lyell and the "Free Thinkers," 700.--Prof. Wilson, 700.--Miss Kirkland's Evening Book, 700.--Works by Mrs. Lee, 701.--Mr. Boyd's edition of Young's Night Thoughts, 702.--"Injustice to the South," 702.--Splendid American Gift Books for 1852, 703.--New American Works in Press, 703, &c. British Humorists.--_By W. M. Thackeray_, 24 Boker, George II.--_By Bayard Taylor_. (Portrait.) 156 Bohemian Glass. (Six Engravings.) 291 Ballad of Sir John Franklin.--_By George H. Boker_, 473 Bryant, and his Works, William Cullen. (Portrait.) 588 Bull Fight at Ronda, 681 Calvin Colton, Rev., and his Works. (Portrait.) 1 Castle of Belvor: An Incident in the Life of Arago, 41 Count Monte-Leone. (Concluded), 42, 202, 327, 500 China, Our Phantom Ship, 67 Chest of Drawers.--_By an Attorney_, 73 Cicada, The.--_By H. J. Crate_, 164 Charlemagne, Times of.--_By Sir Francis Palgrave_, 169 Calhoun, Private Life of John C.--_By Miss M. Bates_, 173 Copenhagen, 238 Cooper, J. F., Portrait and View of his Residence, _Frontispiece_. Cooke, Sketch of Philip Pendleton. (Portrait.) 300 Chamois Hunting, 344 Cleopatra's Needle, 367 Cheap Postage System, 370 Country Gentleman at Home.--_By C. A. Bristed_, 389 Cooper, Reminiscences of J. Fenimore.--_By Dr. Francis_, 458 Cooper, Public Honors to the Memory of Mr., 456 Chimes, The.--_By E. W. Ellsworth_, 487 Carlyle's Life of John Sterling, 599 Calcutta: Social, Industrial, Political, 611 Captain and the Negro, The, 646 Crebillon, the French Æschylus, 520 Dramatic Fragments.--_By R. H. Stoddard_, 17 Decorative Arts in America, 171 Deserted Mansion, 227 Dirge for an Infant--_By R. S. Chilton_, 487 Death in Youth.--_By H. W. Parker_, 598 Dutch Governors of Niew Amsterdam.--_By J. R. Brodhead_, 597 Drinking Experiences: A Temperance Lecture by "Nimrod," 621 _Deaths, Recent._--General Arbuckle, 139.--Mrs. Thomas Sheridan, 139.--Bishop Carlson, 139.--Sir J. E. Dalzell, 139.--Chevalier Parisot de Guyrmont, 139.--General James Miller, 140.--General Uminski, 140.--Viscount Melville, 140.--Mr. Dyce Sombre, 140.--Bishop Medrano, 140.--The Earl of Shaftesbury, 141.--Mr. Thomas Wright Hill, 142.--Melchior Boisserée, 142.--Christian Tieck, the Sculptor, 142.--Rev. Stephen Olin, D.D., 282.--Baron de Leideni, 282.--Edward Quillinan, 282.--Harriet Lee, 282.--Dr. Julius, 282.--Rev. Azariah Smith, 282.--General Henry A. S. Dearborn, 283.--D. M. Mon, 228, 283.--General Sir Roger Sheafe, 283.--M. Daguerre, (Portrait), 283.--Rev. Dr. Lingard, (Portrait), 285.--Marshal Sebastian, 287.--J. Fenimore Cooper, 428.--Rev. T. H. Gallaudet, 428.--Judge Beverly Tucker, 428.--Levi Woodbury, 429.--General McClure, 429.--Lorenz Ocken, 429.--Count Killmansegge, 430.--H. E. G. Paulus, 430.--Joseph Rusiecki, 430.--John Gottfried Gruber, 430.--The Earl of Clare, 431.--Sir Henry Jardine, 431.--Mrs. Sherwood, 572.--Rev. James H. Hotchkiss, 572.--General Henry Whitney, 572.--Commodore Warrington, 572.--Professor Kidd, 573.--The Earl of Donoughmore, 573.--William Nicol, 574.--Mr. Freeman, the Missionary, 574.--James Richardson, 574.--William Willshire, 574.--J. R. Dubois, 575.--Gustav Carlin, 575.--Archibald Alexander, D. D., 705.--J. Kearney Rogers, M.D., 705.--Rev. Wm. Croswell, D.D., 706.--Granville Sharpe Pattison, M.D., 706.--Mr. Stephens, author of _The Manuscripts of Erdeley_, 706.--Mr. Gutzlaff, the Missionary, 707.--Don Manuel Godoy, the Prince of the Peace, 708.--George Baker, 708.--M. de Savigny, 708.--Archbishop Wingard, 708.--Samuel Beaseley, author of _The Roué_, 708.--H. P. Borrell, 708.--James Tyler, R. D., 708.--Emma Martin, 709.--Yar Mohammed, 709.--Alexander Lee, 710.--Prince Frederick of Prussia, 710. Exile's Sunset Song.--_By John R. Thompson_, 26 Egypt, The last Joseph in, 185 English in America.--_By the author of "Sam Slick,"_ 186 Egypt under Abbas Pasha,--_By Bayle St. John_, 259 Earthquake in Europe, The Last, 467 Fleischmann, Herr, on Life in America, 158 Fallen Genius.--_By Miss Alice Carey_, 288 Flying Artist, 398 Franklin, Inedited Letter of Dr., 472 Fragments from a New Volume of Poems.--_By Thomas L. Beddoes_, 550 French Flower Girl, The, 641 Fragments of a Poem.--_By H. W. Parker_, 189 Great Fair at Rochester. (Fifteen Engravings.) 438 Gold-Quartz and Society in California, 472 Greenwood.--_By Maunsell B. Field_, 476 Ghost Story of Normandy, 512 Gerard, and the Baron Munchausen, in Africa, M. Jules, 587 German Handbook of America, 598 Gondolettas: Two Songs.--_By Alice B. Neal_, 597 Hahn-Hahn, The Countess Ida, 17 History of a Rose, 117 Huntington, Dr., on Copyright, 308 Heroines of History: Laura.--_By Mary E. Hewitt_, 480 Habits of Frederick the Great, 528 Herman Melville's New Novel of "The Whale," 602 _Historical Review of the Month._--The United States: Elections, &c., 567.--Foreign Relations, 567.--Mexico, 568.--South American States, 568.--Great Britain, 568.--France, Italy, Russia, &c., 569.--The East, &c., 569.--The American Elections, 704.--Kossuth in England, 704.--Europe, and the East, 704. Imaginary Conversations at Warsaw.--_By Walter Savage Landor_, 98 In the Harem.--_By R. H. Stoddard_, 164 Illustrations of Motives, 280 International Copyright, 386 Jules Janin and the Paris Feuilletonistes, 18 Jungle Recollection.--_By Captain Hardbargain_, 110 Jews in China, 264 Jefferson, Mr., on the Study of the Anglo-Saxon Language, 468 Landscapes, Swedish.--_By Hans Christian Andersen_, 20 London, Paris, and New-York, 100 Ladies' Fashions. (Illustrated.) 142, 288, 431, 575, 710 Latham, on the People of the Mosketo Kingdom, 471 My Novel: or, Varieties in English Life.--_By Sir E. Bulwer Lytton_, 80, 243, 371, 534, 688 Moir, David Macbeth.--_By George Gilfillan_, 233 Music.--_By H. W. Parker_, 327 Meeting of the Vegetarians, 402 Newspaper Poets: Charles Weldon, 201 Nauvoo and Deseret: The Mormons. (Six Engravings.) 577 _Noctes Amicitiæ._--English Opinions of the "American Department" in the Crystal Palace, 563.--Ridiculous Convention of Women, at Worcester, 563.--Bloomerism in London, 563.--Defenders of the Catholic Practices, 563.--Anecdote of Tom Cook, 563.--Capital Anecdote of Charles XII, 564.--A Superfluous Amount of Name, 564.--G. P. R. James in the Law Courts, 564.--Nursery Rhymes, 564.--The London Printers, 564.--The Japanese and French Civilization, 565.--Extraordinary Suicides in Paris, 565, &c. October.--_By Alice Carey_, 371 Obelisks of Egypt, 469 Old Man's Death, The.--_By Alice Carey_, 529 Ottoman History, The Three Eras of, 643 Parodies, A Chapter of, 23 Passages in the Life of a Dutch Poet, 65 Phantasy, A.--_By R. H. Stoddard_, 169 Paris, Reminiscences of, from 1817 to 1851, 182 Poulailler, the Robber, 216 Questions from a worn-out Lorgnette.--_By O. A. Hall_, 187 Reminiscence, A.--_By Alice Carey_, 360 Remarkable Prophecy, 474 Revolutions in Russia.--_By Alexander Dumas_, 616 Story Without A Name.--_By G. P. R. James, Esq._, (Concluded), 28, 189, 316, 487, 604 Stuart of Dunleath, 119 Sailors, Institutions for, in New-York. (Six Engravings.) 145 Scenes in the Old Dominion (Six Engravings.) 151 Styles of Philosophies.--_By Rev. J. R. Morell_, 180 Shadow of Lucy Hutchinson, 239 Saxe, John G., and his Satires. (Portrait.) 289 Sandwich Islands To-Day. (Two Engravings.) 298 Shadow of Margery Paston, 363 Saint Escarpacio's Bones.--_From the French_, 483 Sonnets: Truth--The Future, 499 Sliding Scales of Despair, 592 Songs of the Cascade.--_By A. Oakey Hall_, 602 Spendthrift's Daughter: In Six Chapters, The, 664 _Scientific Discoveries and Proceedings of Learned Societies._--The British Association, 137.--Asiatic Society, 137.--Paris Geographical Society, 137.--Royal Society of Literature, 137.--Paris Academy of Sciences, 138.--London Royal Institution, 138.--Berlin Academy of Sciences, 138.--Improvements in Photographs, 138.--Colonel Rawlinson on the last Discoveries of Nineveh and Babylon, 426.--New attempts to discover Perpetual Motion, 426.--Document respecting the discovery of Steam Navigation at Venice, 427.--English Athletes, compared with Greek Statues, 427.--Discoveries at Memphis, 427.--Scientific Conventions, 427.--The Russian Academy, 571.--Scientific Congress in France, 571.--Paris Academy of Sciences, 571.--Ethnological Society, 571. Trot on the Island.--_By C. Astor Bristed_, 54 To the Author of Eothen.--_By Barry Cornwall_, 315 The King and the Outlaw.--_By an Old Contributor_, 482 Verses.--_By R. H. Stoddard_, 22 Visit to the "Maid of Athens," 116 Visit to the late Dr. Lingard.--_By Rev. J. C. Richmond_, 172 Veneer, Fraser's Magazine on English, 306 Visit to the Aberdeen Comb-Works, 856 Vagaries of the Imagination, 638 Veiled Picture: A Traveller's Story, The, 648 Watering Places, A Glance at the. (Fifteen Engravings.) 4 Webster, Noah, LL. D. (Portrait and birthplace.) 12 Waterloo, Tricks on Travellers at, 164 Wives of Southey, Coleridge, and Lovell, 241 Wallace, William Ross. (Portrait.) 444 Windsor Castle and its Associations. (Two Engravings.) 585 THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE _Of Literature, Art, and Science._ Vol. IV. NEW-YORK, AUGUST 1, 1851. No. I. REV. CALVIN COLTON. [Illustration] Mr. Colton is a man of very decided abilities, voluminous and various in their manifestation, and assiduously cultivated during a long life, in which he has never failed of the curiosity, ambition, and industry of a learner. The untiring freshness and hopefulness of his spirit is shown by his undertaking the study of the French language not more than three or four years ago, and obtaining such a mastery of it as to read with delight its most abstruse authors, and to preach in it with fluency and even with eloquence. It is characteristic of him that he is always earnest, and that he considers whatever he has to do worthy of his best abilities, so that in writing of theology, economy, polity, or manners, he arrays in order for each particular subject all the forces of his understanding, and makes its discussion their measure and illustration. He has been in an eminent degree devoted to literature as a profession, and although he has produced works which may be deemed unfortunate in design or defective in execution, it must be admitted that he is entitled to a highly respectable position as a thinker and as a writer, and that in opinion and in affairs he has exercised a steady and large influence. He was born in Long Meadow, Massachusetts, graduated at Yale College in 1812, studied divinity at Andover, and in 1815 took orders in the Presbyterian church. For several years he was settled in the village of Batavia in western New-York, but his voice failing in 1826, he became a contributor to several of the principal periodicals occupied with religion and learning, and in the summer of 1831, after an extended tour through the western states and territories, proceeded to London, as a correspondent of the New-York Observer. In England, he led a life of remarkable literary activity. In 1832 he published a _Manual for Emigrants to America_, which had a large sale among the middling classes; and _The History and Character of American Revivals of Religion_, of which there were two or three editions. In 1833, in a volume entitled _The Americans, by an American in London_, he replied, with an unanswerable display of facts, to the libels on this country by British travellers and reviewers; and published _The American Cottager_, a religious narrative. _A Tour of the American Lakes and among the Indians of the North-West Territory_, in two volumes, and _Church and State in America_, a vindication of the religious character of the country and the voluntary principle for the support of religion, in reply to the Bishop of London, who had endeavored to show that the United States were going back to paganism because the church was not here connected with the state. Returning to New-York, in 1835, he published _Four Years in Great Britain_, in two volumes, which were soon after reprinted, with some additions, in a more popular form. In 1836 he gave to the public anonymously, _Protestant Jesuitism_, a criticism of the constitution, extreme opinion, and unwise action of many of the benevolent and religious societies; and having taken orders in the Episcopal church, _Thoughts on the Religious State of the Country, and Reasons for preferring Episcopacy_, a work which was much read and the cause of much critical observation in Great Britain as well as in the United States. From that time Mr. Colton has written very little on any subject intimately connected with religion, but directing his attention to public affairs, has been as conspicuous in the state as he was previously in the church. In 1838 he published _Abolition a Sedition_, and _Abolition and Colonization Contrasted_, in which he contended with equal earnestness and ability that the entire subject of slavery is beyond the limits of the proper action of the national government, and that there is no justification of its discussion, except in the states where slavery is established, or for the wise and really philanthropic purpose of promoting African Colonization. In 1839 he again took up the argument of our social relations with Great Britain, in a work written in Philadelphia, but published in London, under the title of _A Voice from America to England, By an American Gentleman_. The plan was judicious: it was not so much to express opinions as to state facts which should compel opinions in the adverse audience he addressed. While mainly defensive, he was at the same time bravely critical. He contended that in its constitution our government was republican and not democratic, but that the extraordinary force of public opinion among us has made it democratic in fact. A large portion of the work was devoted to the several ecclesiastical polities existing here, which he treated with singular freedom and originality, so that the frequent impertinences of ignorant laymen and obtrusively-meddling women, in the affairs of churches, rendering the clerical profession humiliating and difficult to a person of manly character and cultivation, were stated without any hesitation or attempt at concealment. The entire performance is still attractive for frequent sound observation upon institutions, judicious criticism of manners, happy illustration, and good humor, and its opportune appearance was advantageous to the best fame of the country. In 1840 he made a more distinct and powerful impression than ever before, by the publication of _The Crisis of the Country, American Jacobinism_, and _One Presidential Term_, a series of tracts under the name of "Junius," which were circulated in all the states by thousands and hundreds of thousands, and were supposed to have had great influence in the overthrow of the democratic administration. In 1842 he edited at Washington a paper called _The True Whig_, and in 1843 and 1844 he brought out a second series, embracing ten publications, still more popular than the first, of the _Junius Tracts_. In the autumn of the latter year, when the fortunes of the whig party seemed to be entirely broken, when full half the nation felt a personal grief for the defeat of a leader, added to the mortification of political discomfiture, Mr. Colton determined to write the life of the chief he had followed with unwavering admiration and unfaltering activity. Casting aside all other cares, so that his every thought might be given to the work until its completion, he set out for Kentucky, where he was sure of the friendly assistance of Mr. Clay in whatever concerned the investigation of facts. In November, 1844, he reached Lexington, where Mr. Clay laid open to him the stores of his correspondence, and the documentary history of his career. The work was finished in the spring of 1846, and published in two large octavos; and so great was the demand for it, that the first impression of five thousand copies was sold in six months. It is unquestionably an able performance, and from the circumstances under which it was composed and the conclusiveness of some of its arguments it is probable that it will always be regarded as a valuable portion of the material for contemporary political history; but, it appears to me very unequal in execution, and signally unfortunate in design, if considered either as a biography or a history. For the subjective rather than the chronological arrangement of the facts in it there is however this defence, that it rendered the work much more easy of citation, and therefore more valuable as a magazine for partisan controversy. The influence it obtained may be illustrated by reference to a single point: for a quarter of a century the staple of declamation against Mr. Clay, the opposition which thrice cost him the presidency, was his supposed bargain with John Quincy Adams; but since the appearance of Mr. Colton's exposition of this subject any person in an intelligent society would forfeit the consideration given to a gentleman who should repeat the charge. For several years the attention of Mr. Colton had been more and more attracted to the literature and philosophy of political economy. In 1846 he printed his first work in which it is formally treated, _The Rights of Labor_, in which he asserted, illustrated, and with unanswerable logic vindicated the American doctrine of the privileges and dignity of Industry; and in 1848 he gave to the world his last and most important work, _Public Economy for the United States_. From the formation of the first system of society the subjects embraced in this production have employed the most powerful intellects of all nations. But though illustrated by the liveliest genius and the profoundest reflection, they have not until recently assumed even the forms of science. We cannot tell what formulæ of economical truth passed from existence in the lost books of Aristotle. The father of the peripatetic philosophy undoubtedly brought to public economics the severe method which enabled him to construct so much of the everlasting science of which the history goes back to his times; but whatever direction he gave to the subject, by the investigation of its ultimate principles and their phenomena, his successors, and the writers upon it since the revival of learning, have generally been guided by empirical laws, which in an especial degree have obtained in regard to the economy of commerce. Scarcely any of the literature or reflection upon the subject has gone behind the bold hypotheses of free trade theorists, which have been as unsubstantial as the fanciful systems of the universe swept from existence by the demonstrations of Newton. Not only have economical systems generally been made up of unproven hypotheses, but they have rarely evinced any such clear apprehension and constructive ability as are essential in the formation and statement of principles; and down to the chaos of Mr. Mills's last essay there is scarcely a volume on political economy which rewards the wearied attention with any more than a vague understanding of the shadowy design that existed in the author's brain. In the eminently original and scientific work of Mr. Colton we see economy subjected to fundamental and ultimate methods of investigation of which the results have a mathematical certainty. We have new facts, new reasonings, new deductions; and if the paramount ideas are not altogether original, they are discovered by original processes, and their previous existence is but an illustration of the truth that the instinctive perspicacity of the common mind often surpasses the logical faculty in recognizing laws before they are discovered from elements and relations. Mr. Colton has not rejected the title "_political_ economy" because he proposed to enter a different field, or because the subject and argument have no relation to politics, but chiefly because the term has been so much abused in the rude agitation of what are commonly called politics, that he does not think it comports with the dignity of the theme; and the second part of his title is adopted from a conviction that the economical principles of states _are to be deduced from their separate experience and adapted to their individual condition_. The task which he proposed to himself is, the exhibition of the merits of the protective and free trade systems as they apply to the United States. He expresses at the outset his opinion that the settlement of the question is one of the most desirable, and will be one of the most important results which remain to be achieved in the progress of the country; and we can assure him that the accomplishment of it will be rewarded by the best approval of these times, and an enduring name. The second chapter of his work is a statement of the new points which it embraces. By new points he does not mean that all thus described are entirely original, though many of them are so; but that on account of the importance of the places he has assigned them as compared with those they occupy in other works of the kind, they are entitled to be presented as new. Many of them involve fundamental and pervading principles that have not hitherto appeared in speculations on the subject, but which are destined to an important influence in its discussion. Some of the most prominent are, that public economy is the application of knowledge, derived from experience, to given positions, interests and institutions, for the increase of wealth; that it has never been reduced to a science, and that the propositions of which it has been for the most part composed, down to this time, are empirical; that protective duties in the United States are not taxes, and that a protective system rescues the country from a system of foreign taxation; that popular education is a fundamental element of public economy; that freedom is a thing of commercial value, and that the history of freedom for all time, shows it to be identical with protection. Recently the renewal of his voice has enabled Mr. Colton to devote more attention to the favorite pursuit of his life, and he is a very frequent preacher, in French or English. He resides in New-York. A GLANCE AT THE WATERING PLACES. [Illustration: THE YOUNG MARRIED GENTLEMAN WHO "COULD NOT POSSIBLY GO TO THE SPRINGS."] All the gay world of the cities, and even of the villages and country homes, who can do so, by the first of August are "going," or "gone," as Mr. John Keese says of a last invoice, to the watering places, and other summer resorts, which serve as fairs for the disposal of valueless time and "remainders" of marriageable daughters. With the crowds intent on speculation are a few invalids, a few students of human nature, and the common proportion of mere lookers-on, who have no purpose but to be amused. Times have changed, manners have changed, since Paulding gave us his _Mirror for Travellers_, though Saratoga still maintains the ascendency she was then acquiring, and for certain inalienable natural advantages is likely to do so for a part at least of every season. New-York is the grand rendezvous: once settled in our hotels, the splendid Astor, the comfortable American, the busy Irving, the gay New-York, or the quiet Union Place or Clarendon, the stranger has little desire to go further, until the last and imperative demands of Fashion compel him to abandon the study of those noble institutions we described in the last _International_, and to forego the observation of those great public works in which the energy of our rich men has flowered, or those appointments of Providence which render New-York a rival of Dublin, Naples, or Constantinople, in scenic magnificence. Many indeed who come from distant parts of the country, linger all summer in the vicinity of the city, in the hottest days quitting Broadway for a sail or drive, to the Bath House, Rockaway, Coney Island, New Brighton, Long Branch, or Fort Hamilton, where they dine, or perhaps stay over night. At Fort Hamilton, indeed, Mr. Clapp is apt to keep those who venture into his hotel, with its luxurious tables, pleasant rooms, cool breezes from the ocean, and fair sights in all directions, for a much longer time; and every one of these places, in the hot months, has attractions that would make a visitor at the Spas of France, Germany, or Italy, could he wake in them, think he had eluded the watchful guard St. Peter keeps at the gateway of another retirement, to the which, it may be feared, the gay world has far less anxiety to go. [Illustration: FORT HAMILTON HOUSE, LONG ISLAND.] [Illustration: PROPOSED SUMMER HOTEL AT THE HIGHLANDS OF NEVERSINK.] Ascending the Hudson, from the social metropolis of this continent, to which all "capitals" of states or nations, from Patagonia to Greenland, are in some way subject and tributary, the traveller finds the palace in which he rides, continually near embowered pavilions for the public, and clusters of private residences, which but add to their enjoyableness. Cozzens's Hotel at West Point, is perhaps as well known as any house of the same class in the world, and its picturesque situation, as well as the admirable manner in which it is kept, will preserve for it a place in the list of favorite resorts. The Catskill Mountain House, in the midst of grand and peculiar scenery, on the verge of a rock two thousand and five hundred feet above the Hudson--seen with its various fleets at a distance from the long colonnade--is thronged even more than West Point. There are other pleasant houses on the river, and many turn from its various points to visit newer or less crowded places than Saratoga along the lines of the western railroads, as Trenton Falls, Sharon Springs, or Avon, or further still, the towns by the borders of the great lakes. [Illustration: CATSKILL MOUNTAIN HOUSE.] [Illustration: HOTEL AT TRENTON FALLS.] Saratoga is now for several weeks the gayest scene of all. At the United States Hotel, with its fine grounds, are the leaders of fashion; at Congress Hall, with its clean and quiet rooms and unsurpassed _cuisine_, are representatives of the substantial families that have had grandfathers, and in the dozen or twenty smaller houses about the village are "all sorts and conditions of men," and eke of women. With drives, dinners, flirtations, drinking of drinks, and, once in a long while, imbibitions of a little congress water, all goes merry as a marriage bell--except with ladies of uncertain ages who are disappointed of that blessed music--until the Grand Ball gives signal for departure to other places. [Illustration: SARATOGA SPRINGS.] [Illustration] [Illustration: THE NOTCH HOUSE, WHITE MOUNTAINS.] From Saratoga parties go northward to Lake George, (for which region, of the most romantic beauty, they should be prepared by a perusal of Dudley Bean's admirable sketch of its revolutionary history;) and down the Champlain toward Montreal, whence they return by way of the Ontario and Niagara Falls (where our engraver Orr's _Pictorial Guide Book_ is indispensable to the best enjoyment), or go through the glorious hills of northern Vermont and New Hampshire to the White Mountains. All the last grand region has been most truthfully and effectively represented in a small folio volume of drawings from nature, by Isaac Sprague, described by William Oakes, and published in Boston by Crosby & Nichols. We commend the book to summer tourists. [Illustration: NIAGARA FALLS.] [Illustration: OCEAN HOUSE, NEWPORT.] A considerable proportion of the guests who are at Saratoga in the earlier part of the season, proceed to Newport in time for the Fancy Ball which every year closes the campaign there. Newport increases in attractions. Its historical associations, fine atmosphere, beautiful position, and facilities for sea-bathing, fishing, sailing, riding, and other amusements, are continually drawing to its neighborhood new families, whose cottages add much to the beauty of the town, as they themselves to the pleasantness of its society; and for transient visitors no place in the world has better hotels or boarding-houses. [Illustration] [Illustration: WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, VIRGINIA.] After the season closes at Newport, and from her Ocean House the last unwilling traveller has taken his way, strewn with regrets, many linger at the more quiet summer haunts scattered through New-England and New-York, particularly at the rural and luxurious hotel of Lebanon--a country palace which a king might covet--filled always with good society; or go southward to the Virginia Springs, which have many attractions peculiar to themselves, and with their unique pastimes, their tournaments, field sports, &c., happily vary a summer's life commenced at the more northern watering places. [Illustration: COLUMBIA HALL, LEBANON SPRINGS.] [Illustration: MOULTRIE HOUSE, SULLIVAN'S ISLAND, NEAR CHARLESTON.] The South Carolinians have this year seceded from the northern resorts, and those who do not go from Charleston to the up-country or to Georgia, may well be content with Captain Payne's spacious and splendid hotel on Sullivan's Island--the coolest and most agreeable place by the seaside we have visited, north or south, for years. From the south, and indeed from all parts of the country, parties go more and more every year to the Mammoth Cave, (of which we have in store a particular and profusely illustrated account), and up the great rivers and lakes of the west, all along which, first-class hotels, steamboats, &c., render travel as easy and delightful as on the old summer routes in the middle and eastern states. --Thus we have taken our readers--some of whom haply cannot this season go by other ways--the circuit of the principal scenes of enjoyment to which the denizens of the hot cities are intent to escape through July, August, and September. If any have till this time hesitated where to go, possibly we have aided them to an election: certainly, we have led them cheaply along the fashionable tour. [Illustration: MAMMOTH CAVE HOTEL.] NOAH WEBSTER. [Illustration] The above portrait of the author of _The American Spelling-Book_, of which there have been sold thirty millions of copies, and of the _American Dictionary_, of which his publishers have hopes of selling as great a number, is very life-like; it is from a painting by Professor Morse, and the last time we saw the veteran scholar and schoolmaster, he wore the very expression caught by that always successful artist. Noah Webster's is the most universally familiar name in our history; every body, from first to second childhood, from end to end and side to side of the continent, knows it as well as his own; and he who made it so famous was worthy of his reputation. Noah Webster was born in Hartford, Connecticut, October 16th, 1758. He was a descendant, in the fourth generation, of John Webster, one of the first settlers of Hartford, and afterwards governor of the colony. In 1774 he was admitted to Yale College. His studies were frequently interrupted during the Revolution, and for a time he himself served as a volunteer in the army, with his father and two brothers. He graduated, with honor, in 1778, in the same class with Joel Barlow, Oliver Wolcott, Uriah Tracy, and other distinguished men, and immediately opened a school, residing meanwhile in the family of Oliver Ellsworth, afterward chief justice of the United States. He soon commenced the study of the law, and was admitted to the bar in 1781; but the poverty and unsettled state of the country prevented any immediate success in the courts, and he resumed the business of instruction in 1782, at Goshen, Orange county, New-York. It was here that he began the preparation of books for the schools. He was led to do so in despondency of success in his profession; but it changed the course of his life. Having exhibited the rude sketch of his initial effort to Mr. Madison (afterwards President), and Dr. Stanhope Smith, Professor in Princeton college, he was encouraged by them to publish the "First Part of a Grammatical Institute of the English Language." The second and third parts of the series soon followed. A generation has not passed since some of these books were occasionally seen in New England. It may be that here and there a copy may still be lurking in the garret of some ancient family, or on the dusty shelves of a collector of antiquities. There is no more striking contrast than that suggested by a comparison of Webster's "Third Part," as it was familiarly styled, with the admirably printed school books now in every family. Webster's were the first school books published in the United States. In 1847 twenty-four million copies of the Spelling Book had been sold, and for several years the demand for it has been at the rate of a million a year. Dr. Webster did not confine his attention to his own publications; but having learned that a copy of Winthrop's Journal was in the possession of Governor Trumbull, he caused it to be transcribed and published at his own risk. In this way was given to the public one of the most important memorials of our early history, and the first example furnished of printing the documents, and other materials, illustrative of our original experience. Mr. Webster was poor, and the country had never yet evinced any disposition to encourage enterprises of this sort; but he had always a confidence that it was safe to do what was right and necessary, and therefore disregarded in this, as in many other cases, the opinions of his friends that he would incur inevitable loss. The peace of 1783 involved the whole country in political agitation, at certain points of which the calmest and wisest well nigh despaired of the republic. At that time the influence of the pen was greater than ever before. It seemed that the decision of principles which were to last for centuries was dependent on the force of a single argument, or the earnestness of one appeal. In this conflict the ambitious and self-relying spirit of Mr. Webster led him to take an active part, and from the peace till the close of Washington's administration, he was an industrious and efficient writer. No period in the history of this country was ever more critical; in none were so many principles subjected to experiment, in none was discussion more able, exhausting, and high-toned. The first topic which engaged Mr. Webster's attention was the decision of Congress to remunerate the army, then recently disbanded. This measure was violently opposed in all parts of the country. Meetings were held to organize resistance to the law, and two-thirds of the towns of Connecticut were represented in a convention for this purpose. Mr. Webster was then twenty-five years of age, but he contributed to the leading paper of the state a series of essays, signed HONORIUS, which induced a decisive change in the public feeling; and he received for his important services the thanks of Governor Trumbull. In the winter of 1784--5 he published a tract, _Sketches of American Policy_, in which he advanced the doctrine, that to meet the crisis and secure the prosperity of the whole country, a government should be organized that would act, not upon the states, but directly on the people, vesting in Congress full authority to execute its own acts. A copy of this essay was presented by the author to Washington, and it is believed that it contained the first distinct proposal of the new constitution. About the same time, he exerted himself successfully for what was then called an "International Copyright" law between the several sovereign states; and at a later period he spent a winter in Washington, to procure an extension of the period for which a copyright might be enjoyed. In 1785, he prepared a series of lectures on the English language, which he delivered in the larger towns, and in 1789 published, under the title of _Dissertations on the English Language_. In 1787-8, he spent the winter in Philadelphia, as a teacher. The convention called to frame the new constitution was in session during a part of the year, and after its labors were completed, Mr. Webster undertook to recommend the result to the then doubtful favor of the people. This he did in a tract, entitled _An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution_. In the next year he established in New-York _The American Magazine_, but it was unsuccessful. In 1789 he opened a law-office in Hartford, and his reputation, diligence, and abilities, insured business and profits. He was now married to Miss Greenleaf, of Boston, and enjoyed the advantage of one of the most brilliant literary circles of the country, consisting of Joel Barlow, Lemuel Hopkins, John Trumbull, and others who at that time were eminent for their capacities. But the political excitement of 1793, caused by the proclamation of neutrality, disturbed his plans, and brought him again into the arena of affairs. The sympathy for the new French republic, natural and pardonable as it was, overran all limits of reason. The popularity and influence of Washington were hardly sufficient for the repression of disorder and violence, and an armed espousal of the cause of the French. Mr. Webster was solicited to devote himself to the support of the administration, and means were furnished for the establishment by him of a daily paper in New-York. He accordingly commenced _The Minerva_, and soon after, a semi-weekly, _The Herald_, which ultimately received the names which they now retain, of _The Commercial Advertiser_, and _The New-York Spectator_. Another agitation soon followed, if possible, still more alarming--that which grew out of Jay's Treaty with England. The discussions to which this gave rise were earnest, often angry and vituperative, but always able, enlisting the most accomplished men of the country. In these discussions Mr. Webster was, as might have been anticipated, remarkably active. A series of papers by him, under the signature of CURTIUS, had an unquestionable influence on the whole nation. They were extensively reprinted and afterwards collected in a volume. Mr. Rufus King said to Mr. Jay, that they had done more than any others to allay the popular opposition to the treaty. During these conflicts, Mr. Webster often encountered as an antagonist the celebrated William Cobbett, at that time conducting a journal in Philadelphia, distinguished alike for ability and for unscrupulous violence. While Mr. Webster lived in New-York, the yellow fever prevailed in this city and in Philadelphia, and he wrote a minute and comprehensive _History of Pestilential Diseases_, in two volumes, which was published in New-York and in London. It attracted much attention in its time, and was referred to with interest during the subsequent prevalence of the cholera. He also published in 1802 an able treatise on _The Rights of Neutral Nations in time of War_, occasioned by the interference of the French government with the shipping of the world, and its seizure of American vessels, under the proclamation of a blockade. He also published _Historical Notices of the Origin and State of Banking Institutions and Insurance Offices_, a work of authority and popularity. In 1798 he removed to New Haven, but retained the direction of his paper at New-York for several years. After disposing of his interest in it he devoted the remainder of his life to literary pursuits. His first work was a _Philosophical and Practical English Grammar_, printed in 1807. It was in many respects original, acute, and excellently fitted for the purposes of instruction. It was, however, only one of the studies for his subsequent and far more important performance. For more than twenty years he had been a close student of the elements and sources of the English language; he had gradually, as his various occupations permitted, accumulated and arranged materials for its exposition, and he now felt himself at liberty to forego all other pursuits and ambitions to devote himself for the remainder of his life to the great labors which have made his name so honorably eminent in the history of the intellectual advances of his country and of the Saxon family. The preparation of a Dictionary, under any circumstances, must be regarded as a very formidable task, involving even for an enthusiast the most dry and wearying researches, unenlivened by any of the pleasing excitements which vary the monotony and relieve the tedium of ordinary literary pursuits. Mr. Webster from the beginning had a just conception of the duties and difficulties before him; he was assured that no superficial study or careless execution would command or in any degree deserve approval, in one who followed in the track of Johnson. He was not disposed to make the work of that great man a basis for his own; to be simply an editor, whose duties should be fulfilled by additions of the new words and new definitions introduced in seventy years; he determined to make a new and altogether original work; to study the English language in the writings of its most distinguished authors, to inquire into its actual usage in conversation and public discourse, not by loosely gathered and ill arranged groups of synonymes, but by a clear and precise statement of meanings, illustrated, whenever it should be necessary, by various instances. In this work, Johnson had made a beginning; he first conceived the plan of defining by descriptions, instead of synonymes; and he had introduced into his larger dictionary quotations from the best authors. But his work, valuable as it was, was imperfect, even in regard to the words current in his time, and which he succeeded in collecting. But, if Johnson had perfectly accomplished his design, the lapse of seventy years of such extraordinary and various activity in every department of human action and aspiration, would have rendered a New Dictionary indispensable. New sciences and arts had been discovered, which, in their manifold applications to industry, had changed or wonderfully augmented the technology and common speech of every class and description of workers. New experiments had been made in governments; new institutions had been introduced; literature had assumed new forms; and speculation, with perfect freedom and gigantic force, had forged new weapons for its new endeavors. The necessity for a new Dictionary of the English language, indeed is, demonstrated in the simple fact that the first edition of Webster's great work contained twelve thousand words not in Johnson; the second, thirty thousand. This statement does not, however, give a just impression of the difference between Johnson and Webster, or of the actual labor which Webster performed. The new definitions, many of which were fruits, not more of patient research than of nice discrimination, the arrangement of these definitions, so as to exhibit the history of words as it had been slowly developed, cost the author an amount of toil which can with difficulty be measured. We hazard little concerning the importance or difficulties of the work, when we quote the remark of Coleridge, that the history of a word is often more important than that of a campaign. The etymology of the language, was a subject to which he devoted much attention, and in which he made great advances. To qualify himself for tracing the derivations of English words, he studied some twenty languages, and wrote out a synopsis of the leading words of each, and incorporated the chief results of this extraordinary investigation in the very full and instructive statement of words of similar imports, which in the larger Dictionary is prefixed to English words, and which he prepared for the press also, as a separate work, of about half the size of the _American Dictionary_, entitled "_A Synopsis of Words in Twenty Languages_," which is still unpublished. In 1812, he removed to Amherst, in Massachusetts, where he devoted ten years entirely to these labors. He returned to New Haven in 1822; in the following year he received from Yale College the degree of LL. D., and in the spring of 1824 he proceeded to Paris to consult in the _Bibliothèque du Roi_ some works not accessible in this country, and then went to England and passed eight months in the libraries of the University of Cambridge. Returning to America, he made arrangements for the publication of his great work, and it finally appeared, near the end of 1826, in an edition of twenty-five hundred copies, in two quarto volumes, which were sold at twenty dollars per copy. An edition of three thousand copies was soon after printed in England. Dr. Webster was now seventy years of age, and he considered his life-task accomplished; but habits of literary occupation had become fixed and necessary, and after a few months he began to rewrite his _History of the United States for Schools_. In 1840 he published a second edition of the _Dictionary_, in two octavo volumes; in 1843, _A Collection of Papers, on Political, Literary and Moral Subjects_, selected from his various writings in early life; and in 1847 another edition of the _American Dictionary_ appeared, after a thorough revision of it by Professor Goodrich, of Yale College. In this edition very large additions were made, amounting to a fifth of the whole work. There were new words, and new definitions, when needed; careful attention was bestowed on technical terms of science and art; and it was made a general cyclopædia of knowledge. Yet by employing a finer type, and adopting a close yet clear style of printing, the original work, with all these copious additions, was brought within the compass of a single quarto, which has been styled the finest specimen of book-manufacture ever produced in America. A revised edition of the abridgement was issued at the same time, and both volumes have had a circulation which evinces the general appreciation of their value. Several of the New England states, we believe, have furnished a copy of the quarto Dictionary to every school district within their limits, and the legislature of New-York, during its recent session, passed a law for the distribution of some thousands of copies in the school districts of this state also. Whatever may be said of the Dictionary by Dr. WEBSTER, it will not be questioned by the disinterested scholar that it is one of the most extraordinary and honorable monuments of well-directed intellectual labor of which we have any account in the histories of literature or learning. It is as great an advance from the work of Dr. Johnson, as that was from the wretched vocabularies of the English language which existed before his time; and so accurate and exhausting has been the investigation which it displays that no rival work is likely to take its place until sufficient time has elapsed for the language itself to pass into a new condition. [Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF NOAH WEBSTER.] Much has been said of Dr. Webster's innovations, but for the most part, by persons altogether ignorant of the philosophy of languages in general, as well as of the character and condition of the English language. Dr. Webster attempted, and with eminent success, to reduce the English language to order, and to subject it to the operation of principles. The changes which he made, though in a few instances, necessary for consistency, striking, are much less numerous than is commonly supposed, and even to scholars, with whom the study of languages is not a _specialité_, they would not be very apparent but for the frequent attempts which are made to prejudice the public against the work. An amusing illustration of this fact occurred a few years ago, when, a concerted assault upon the Dictionary having been made, and sustained for some time, a distinguished author who had a new book in the press of the Harpers, was alarmed by intelligence that they intended to adopt for it Webster's orthography. He wrote to these publishers his apprehensions that the success of his performance and his own good reputation could not fail of exceeding injury, if their design should be executed, and begged them to adopt some other work as a medium for the display of the Websterian innovations. The Harpers replied that he might select his own standard; they believed he had, perhaps unconsciously, followed Webster in his _manuscript_, and that the several productions of his which they had published in previous years had all been printed according to Webster's Dictionary, which was the guide used in their printing offices. The incidents of Dr. Webster's life after the publication of the second edition of his Dictionary, in 1840, were few and unimportant. Indeed, with that effort he regarded his public life as brought to a close. He passed through a serene old age, which was terminated by a peaceful death, on the twenty-eighth of May, 1843, when he was in the eighty-fifth year of his age. DR. MERLE D'AUBIGNE AND THE ENGLISH CHURCH. The celebrated German historian, Dr. MERLE D'AUBIGNE, is now in England, and in consequence of certain proceedings growing out of his occupation of an Episcopal pulpit recently, he has published a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury concerning the general subject of the exclusion of continental Protestant ministers from the pulpits of English churches. He is aware that, in consequence of the Act of Uniformity, there are churches which cannot be opened to those ministers, but he hopes that this law of exclusion will be repealed. "It is no longer in harmony with the spirit and the wants of the church in the age in which we live." The Calvinistic historian expresses his conviction that the reëstablishment of the Annual Convocation would not reform the Church. The Convocation has been for more than a century deprived of its powers, and it is to Parliament that the question now belongs. He says: "Why should I not express to you, my lord, a desire which I have long had in my heart? This desire is, that being surrounded by ministers and members of the Church the most enlightened and most devoted to God and to his word, you should digest and present to Parliament a plan, not to _effect_ (_sic_) a reform of the Church, but to _establish the authority_ (_sic_) which should be charged with its reform and government. It seems to me that the best way would be to establish a body similar to that which governs the Episcopal church of America, composed of three chambers, that of the bishops, that of the presbyters, and that of the members of the Church, the two latter being ordinarily united in one. The Americans of the United States have received so much from you (they have received every thing, even their very existence), why should you not take something from them? I am convinced that sooner or later a reform _must_ take place in the government of the Church of England: it is important that it should be done well. I think that there would be some hope of its being accomplished in a good sense, if it were done while you, my lord, are Primate of the Church, and while Victoria is Queen of England." Every thing seems to tend to an entire revolution in the British ecclesiastical system, and the coöperation of Dr. Merle and other continental writers with those who are agitating the subject in England--demanding the separation of the church from the state--makes the prospect of such a separation more imminent than it has ever been hitherto. THE EXILE'S SUNSET SONG. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY J. R. THOMPSON. When from thy side, love, In silence and gloom, Half broken-hearted Fate tore me away, All humbled in pride, love, I thought in my doom, That Hope had departed For ever and aye! But Fate may not banish From memory's store, That blissful communion Of years that are flown, Nor make yet to vanish The lustre which o'er Our fond thoughts of union, So tenderly shone. And still o'er the ocean My fancy takes flight, Where oft I see gleaming Thy figure afar; And I think with emotion, That sometimes at night, We watch the same beaming And tremulous star. The sunsets so golden. That stream round me here, But call up thy shadow The landscape between: And when in the olden Dim season so dear, It tripped o'er the meadow With step of a queen. As the light of the moon, love, Like snow softly falls, And rests on the mountain, And silvers the sea, That midnight in June, love, My mem'ry recalls, When up to the fountain I clambered with thee. How sweetly the river Reflected the ray Of moon through the willows Or sun o'er the hill: Does the moonbeam there quiver, The sunset there play, Upon its gay billows As splendidly still? My spirit is weary-- An exile I grieve, When morn's early voices A glad song proclaim, And the faint Miserere Of nature at eve, To me but rejoices To murmer thy name. Yet Hope, reappearing, A vision unfolds, Of rapture together In joy's happy reign, When love all endearing The full eye beholds, We'll walk o'er the heather At sunset again. RICHMOND, Va. DRAMATIC FRAGMENTS. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE, BY R. H. STODDARD. THE GAME OF CHESS. We played at chess, Bianca and myself, One afternoon, but neither won the game, Both absent-minded, thinking of our hearts Moving the ivory pawns from black to white, Shifted to little purpose round the board; Sometimes we quite forgot it in a sigh And then remembered it, and moved again; Looking the while along the slopes beyond, Barred by blue peaks, the fountain, and the grove Where lovers sat in shadow, back again, With sideway glances in each other's eyes; Unknowingly I made a lucky move, Whereby I checked my mate, and gained a queen; My couch drew nearer hers, I took her hand-- A soft white hand that gave itself away-- Told o'er the simple story of my love, In simplest phrases which are always best, And prayed her if she loved me in return-- A fabled doubt--to give her heart to me; And then, and there, above that game of chess, Not finished yet, in maiden trustfulness, She gave me, what I knew was mine, her heart! FROM A PLAY. Alas! I think of you the live-long day, Plying my needle by the little stand, And wish that we had never, never met, Or I were dead, or you were married off, Though that would kill me; I lay down my work, And take the lute you gave me, but the strings Have grown so tuneless that I cannot play; I sing the favorite airs we used to sing, The sweet old tunes we love, and weep aloud! I sought forgetfulness, and tried to-day To read a chapter in the Holy Book; I could not see a line, I only read The solemn sonnets that you sent to me: Nor can I pray as I was wont to do, For you come in between me and the Lord, And when I strive to lift my soul above, My wits are wandering, and I sob your name! And nights, when I am lying on my bed, (I hope such thoughts are not unmaidenly,) I think of you, and fall asleep, and dream I am your own, your wedded, happy wife,-- But that can never, never be on earth! THE COUNTESS IDA HAHN-HAHN. We gave in the last _International_ a short notice of "_Von Babylon nach Jerusalem_" (A Journey from Babylon to Jerusalem), by Ida, Countess of Hahn-Hahn, in which she declares her conversion to Christianity and Catholicism. What the Germans themselves think of this work may be gathered from the following brief review, which has just fallen under our notice in the _Central Blatt_. The article is curious, from the "intensely German" style and spirit in which it is written, though we cannot very warmly commend either. "The above-mentioned work," which contains an account of the conversion of its celebrated authoress to the Catholic belief, says the critic, "presents a sad picture of the complete decay and dissolution of a _void subjectivity_ (a vacant mind). "The writer falls a sacrifice to her exclusive, aristocratic position in society. Without occupying any place in the world, won and maintained by personal ability, and consequently without a well-grounded moral standard, she wanders like a homeless being from land to land, every where influenced, 'as far as it agreed with her disposition,' by her momentary interests, and thus rendering apparent the barrenness of her soul. But this had been developed at an early period. 'That this feeling (that of joy) was occasionally accompanied by the deepest discontent, appearing as an unearthly _ennui_--and that over it swept the darkest melancholy, will be readily intelligible to every one, for they are the twin sisters of the fortune of this world.' 'And occasionally it was a kind of heroism, in that I sat myself down, and--wrote a romance. Was it finished, I travelled--did I return, I described the tour--was there a time when the book was complete and circumstances did not permit of travelling, I took with raging appetite to reading--and when I no longer wrote, no longer travelled, and could no longer read for any determined purpose--because I had none--I knew not what to do with my time. I could not create illusions, and say to myself, Try this! try that! perhaps the world hath yet somewhat hidden for thee--the call of Knowledge is incessant. No, no! she hath nothing. Well--what then? God? There stood the Word, the One, the Eternal.' Thereupon she reads the greater and lesser catechisms of Luther, the creeds of the evangelic reformed church, and the decrees and canons of the Council of Trent. 'But only the Catholic church hath under roof and proof brought her dogma-buildings to a tower, provided with the lightning-rod of authority.' Thereupon she determines, 'I asked no human being for explanation, information, or counsel--not even myself.' Three months after, on the first day of January, 1850, she wrote to the Cardinal Prince-Bishop of Breslau, to beg of him aid in her entrance to the church. "The moral vacancy displayed in these quotations corresponds with the shallow manner and half romantic, half French style of the book. Though the first part be written in a fresher and livelier style than the second, there is still not to be found in the whole a single well-determined and clearly-impressed thought, and whenever we imagine that we have hit upon such a thing, straightway we find whirling forth the dust-clouds of an obscure, phrase-laden, highly affected sentimental feeling, which, without any real energy, stirs itself up with repeated 'ohs!' and 'ahs!' and other forced sighs and artificial aids. In place of such thoughts we find a shallow and occasionally insupportably wearisome speech on the ideal of Catholicism, or 'the heathenish abomination in art and literature, which, after the fall of Byzantium was transported thence to Italy, and there received with that love which impels sensuous mortals to joyfully draw into the sphere of his life the new and glittering, because it promises fresh and shining pleasures.'(!) In another place she speaks of the reformers as 'miserable, narrow-minded heads, who should have chosen other ground whereon to exercise their love of quarrelling;' while the second half of her book is confined almost exclusively to the democrats, and the events which took place from 1847 to 1849. In this part the authoress displays the greatest want of intellect, and is sadly wearisome; but her frivolity of manners and morals appears most repulsive in her account of the Reformation. None of the Catholics--not even Cochlæus himself--has so far degraded himself as to interpret in such a vulgar manner the deeds of the reformers (more particularly Luther's) as is here done by--a lady! "If the Countess places at the conclusion of her work the words 'Soli Deo Gloria,' this is merely in accordance with a Catholic custom, and by no means meant in earnest, since the work is more particularly adapted to flatter the vanity and self-conceit of its composer, who cannot imagine why she should suffer the disgrace to belong to the German nation. A vain, coquettish self-regard, an affected, aristocratic-noble nonchalance, and a contradicting, heresy-accusing confidence of judgment, meet us on every side, and render us completely opposed to the pretence and moral vacancy of this book." These are bitter words, and bitterly spoken, when thus applied to a woman. The reader will in their perusal remember that the writer is evidently influenced by a deep feeling against all that savors of conservatism in politics, and shares in an unusual degree the popular German feeling against _emancipiste Frauen_, or women who strive against the bonds which the customs of society have imposed on the sex,--a feeling, which, however creditable it may be when applied to undue extravagances of manners or morals, should be carefully guarded against when it threatens an unconditional restraint of every exertion of feminine genius and talent. JULES JANIN, AND THE PARIS FEUILLETONISTES. Jules Janin, whose name, of so constant recurrence in the contemporary history of light literature, artistic criticism, and _feuilleton_, is the Prince Royal of the brilliant court of gifted, tasteful, witty and _spirituel_ writers, who compose the body of Parisian _feuilletonistes_. These are men who write, not because they have any thing especial to say--for their peculiar function is to say nothing, in a pointed and brilliant manner--but because they love leisure and luxury, the opera, pictures, and beautiful ballet girls, and must themselves make the golden lining to their purses, which they can do by the very simple process of weaving the similar lining of their brains into a _feuilleton_. They are often scholars, men of fine cultivation and genius, whose tastes however are so imperious, and who enjoy so much the ease thus facilely achieved, that they accomplish no great work, win no lasting name. Of course the _feuilletonist_ proper is to be distinguished from the author or novelist who publishes a work in the _Feuilleton_, as Lamartine his _Confidences_, and Sue and Dumas and George Sand, their romances. We propose now to follow briefly the sparkling career of JULES JANIN as the type of the life, character, and success of the _feuilletonistes_. He came to Paris, a Jew: as Meyerbeer, Heine, Grisi, Rachel, and the long luminous list of contemporary artists who have made fame in Paris, are Jews. He supported himself by teaching--doing nothing, but very conscious that he could do something--at all events he could lecture upon the Syrian language, if for a week he could prepare himself. Then he wrote in little theatrical papers, and received twenty-five francs a month. But in 1830 he happily succeeded to his present position in the _Journal des Debats_. He is now a rich man. He gives splendid soirees in his saloons glittering with oriental luxury, and artists and authors bow before him. Like Henry Heine, his contemporary, whom he as much resembles in talent as in manner, he declared now for the Republic and Freedom, now for the Church and King, until his connection with the _Debats_ impressed upon him the conservative seal. He since loudly declaims for public morality--against the prostitution of the press; but his early works were the most licentious of any that have swarmed from the fertile French genius of social protestantism. His first novel, published in 1829, _The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman_, is the history of a prostitute, from the brothel, to the murder of her child, and her execution, garnished with Byronic sentimentalities upon the transitoriness of things temporal. Jules Janin's next work was one of the most instructive illustrations of the character of French romance at that period when literary feeling and taste seemed to reach the artificial point that is artistically achieved by the melo-dramas of Chatham-street and the Strand. We record it as a literary curiosity, as the work of a "fast" Frenchman, a Parisian Vivian Grey, on a small scale. It is called _The Penitent_, and was published in 1830. It opens with a marriage. The bride, who has been violently dancing, retires, overcome with sleep, and the husband in his rage at her sleepiness smothers her. It is nominally supposed that she has been stricken with apoplexy, but a Jesuit, who meditates many mysteries, understands the whole matter, yet observes the most discreet silence. The young man, who is somewhat conscience-pricked, still persists in profligacy, until he is overwhelmed by remorse, and rushes to the church to receive absolution. He seeks a trusty confessor, and of course finds the old Jesuit; but as he finds it difficult to obtain access to him, makes the acquaintance of a girl, with whom the Jesuit has some kind of relation, and in order to win her to his will, seduces her! Then comes the Jesuit and begins to fulminate excommunications and damnations. But the youth bursts into a passionate strain of repentance, and is told by the old Jesuit, that the difficulty in his case, is a religious one, that in fact the murder was "a circumstance" arising from his irreligious state, and that by genuine repentance the matter will be arranged. _Presto_: The youth repents and enters the church, is made Bishop and proceeds through an endless course of fat capon and Château Margaux to an edifying end! The boldest efforts of young France and young Germany, are feeble by the side of this extraordinary effort. His earlier tales, which are somewhat in the style of Hoffmann, Jules Janin published in the year 1833, under the title of _Fantastic Tales_, and a series of works of less size and importance followed, until the series of papers, half fiction, half fact, which, in the novel form, treated a great variety of historico-literary subjects. His last romance is the _Nun of Toulouse_, written during the revolution of '48. It sparkles with the same sprightly skepticism and spiritual coquetry that distinguished his earlier works, yet he celebrates in it those beautiful times, the "old times," in which the serenity of faith was never ruffled by impertinent thought; and in his recent letters from the Great Exhibition, he indulges in the same strain, and sighs for the magnificence of the monarchy. But his weekly contributions to the _Debats_, the rapid dashing review of the dramatic novelties and incidents in a metropolis where alone a living drama survives, and which he serves up garnished with the most felicitous verbal graces and the most charming intellectual conceits, every Monday morning--these are the flowers whence the brilliant Jules Janin builds the honey hive of his reputation. He has decreed the fashion of the _Feuilleton_, and the other Parisian critics flash and snap and sparkle, as much like Jules Janin as possible. Their articles are the streak of _light_ in the dimness of the preponderating political literature of the week. They hold high holiday at the bottom of the page, although the history of revolutions, and woes, and the rumors of wars and impending millenniums may throw their sombre shadows along the columns above. They raise their banner of a butterfly's wing, emblazoned with _Vive la Bagatelle_, and march on to the tournament of wit and beauty. They belong to France; their game is the gambol of the exuberance of French genius. They are more than witty, they are _spirituel_; and they have more than talent, they have taste. In a day of such rapid and facile printing as ours, this department of literary labor was a necessity. Every man who has a conceit and can write, may parade it before the world. In the mass of pleasant common-place, what is _bizarre_ may supplant the symmetrically beautiful. To seize therefore what every man saw, and with nimble fingers to weave a transparent tissue of gorgeous words through which every man's impressions of what he saw look large and graceful and piquant--to sum up a vaudeville in a _bon mot_, and a ballet in a voluptuous trope,--_voila! c'est fait_, you have the recipe of a successful _feuilletoniste_. Hence, the influence of these writers, upon _words_, has been remarkable. The French language, long so precise, is now among the most dissolute of tongues. It reels through the columns of a _feuilleton_, drunk and dim-eyed with expletives and exaggerations and beatified adjectives, so that, fascinated with the casket, you quite forget the jewel. The language of dramatic and operatic criticism in Paris is now inexplicable to any one but an _habitué_. If you should tell John Bull, who wishes to go to the opera, that Alboni's singing is _pyramidale_, he would expect to see the fair and fat contralto sharpened to a point at top,--but, I grant, if you should call it "jolly" or "stunning," he would entirely comprehend that you meant to express your admiration in superlatives. I must not longer gossip as these gay gossips do, these fanciful _feuilletonistes_, nor seek more deeply to draw the outline of these rainbow bubbles upon the stream of the time, whether it flow turbid or transparent. One cannot live upon sugar and nutmeg, or even upon allspice. But our friends are a literary phenomenon not to be omitted, and if you love the Muses, you will not omit to snuff the azure incense offered weekly by the _feuilletonistes_. Jules Janin shall show us out of this article as he ushered us in. The Great Mogul of the _Feuilleton_ had purchased a carriage whose luxury, and taste of appointment, and perfection of footman, was unsurpassed in the Champs Elysée. But the gods are jealous and the _feuilletonistes_ have thus the highest authority for jealousy. So, on one evening when the exquisite equipage awaited its master at the grand opera, a crowd of lesser critical luminaries gathered around it, and both reviled and envied the fortunate owner. While they were thus engaged, the great critic came out of the opera house and saw his contemporaries engaged in longing and envious remark. Now tact is the sublimest secret of success--and smilingly Jules Janin advanced cheerily, greeted his friends cordially, and piled into the carriage all of them who lived in his neighborhood. They naturally reserved the seat of honor for the owner, but this great General seizing the most inimical of all the party who lived in a quarter of the city farthest from his own home, pushed him into the vacant seat, ordered his coachman to set him down first, and then humming the finale of the opera, lighted a cigar and sauntered leisurely down the street. It was like Jules Janin to make his own marriage the subject of a _Feuilleton_. In his case the man and the _feuilletoniste_ are the same. ODE XX. OF ANACREON. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF MADAME DACIER FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE, BY MARY E. HEWITT. Niobé, maddened by her woes, of yore. The gods in pity turned to marble fair; And wretched Progné, doomed for evermore, Changed to a swallow wings the upper air. But ah! would Love, whom I, enslaved, obey, By his sweet power transform me, I would be The mirror in thy hand, if thus, alway, Thy gentle eyes would fondly turn on me. Or, I would be the perfume that reveals Its fragrance 'mid the tresses of thy hair; Or, that soft veil which o'er thy bosom steals, And jealous, hides the ivory treasure there. Or I would be the robe that round thee flows, The zone that circles thee with fond caress; The rivulet that with thy beauty glows, And to its breast enclasps thy loveliness. Or I were blest those envied pearls to be That closely thus thy swan-white neck entwine; Or e'en to be the sandal, pressed by thee, Were, for thy lover, destiny divine. SWEDISH LANDSCAPES: BY HERR ANDERSEN. In the last _International_ we gave some characteristic historical sketches from Hans Christian Andersen's latest and most delightful book, the _Pictures of Sweden_; but the inspiration of nature is more powerful with him than that of history, and he is never so felicitous as when painting the scenery of his native country, though he has certainly indulged, to a greater extent than a sober taste can approve, in that passion for the fantastic and visionary, which has been but too visibly manifested in some of his later and slighter works. Our readers, however, shall judge for themselves. The forests of Sweden and its rivers give the most noticeable features to its landscape. This is how they appeared to Andersen--the forest first: "We are a long way over the elv. We have left the corn-fields behind, and have just come into the forest, where we halt at that small inn which is ornamented over the doors and windows with green branches for the midsummer festival. The whole kitchen is hung round with branches of birch and the berries of the mountain ash; the oat cakes hang on long poles under the ceiling; the berries are suspended above the head of the old woman who is just scouring her brass kettle bright. "The tap-room, where the peasants sit and carouse, is just as finely hung round with green. Midsummer raises its leafy arbor every where, yet it is most flush in the forest which extends for miles around. Our road goes for miles through that forest, without seeing a house, or the possibility of meeting travellers, driving, riding, or walking. Come! The ostler puts fresh horses to the carriage; come with us into the large woody desert: we have a regular trodden way to travel, the air is clear, here is summer's warmth and the fragrance of birch and lime. It is an up-and-downhill road, always bending, and so, ever changing, but yet always forest-scenery--the close, thick forest. We pass small lakes, which lie so still and deep, as if they concealed night and sleep under their dark, glassy surfaces. "We are now on a forest plain, where only charred stumps of trees are to be seen; this long tract is black, burnt, and deserted, not a bird flies over it. Tall, hanging birches now greet us again; a squirrel springs playfully across the road, and up into the tree; we cast our eyes searchingly over the wood-grown mountain side, which slopes so far, far forward, but not a trace of a house is to be seen: nowhere does that bluish smoke-cloud rise, that shows us, here are fellow-men. The sun shines warm; the flies dance around the horses, settle on them, fly off again, and dance as though it were to qualify themselves for resting and being still. They perhaps think, 'Nothing is going on without us: there is no life while we are doing nothing.' They think, as many persons think, and do not remember that time's horses always fly onward with us! "How solitary is it here! so delightfully solitary! one is so entirely alone with God and one's self. As the sunlight streams forth over the earth, and over the extensive solitary forests, so does God's Spirit stream over and into mankind; ideas and thoughts unfold themselves--endless, inexhaustible, as He is--as the magnet which apportions its powers to the steel, and itself loses nothing thereby. As our journey through the forest scenery here along the extended solitary road, so, travelling on the great high road of thought, ideas pass through our head. Strange, rich caravans pass by from the works of poets, from the home of memory, strange and novel; for capricious fancy gives birth to them at the moment. There comes a procession of pious children with waving flags and joyous songs; there come dancing Menades, the blood's wild Bacchantes. The sun pours down hot in the open forest; it is as if the Southern summer had laid itself up here to rest in Scandinavian forest solitude, and sought itself out a glade where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep; hence this stillness as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a pine tree moves. Of what does the Southern summer dream here in the North, amongst pines and fragrant birches? "In the writings of the olden time, from the classic soil of the South, are sagas of mighty fairies, who, in the skins of swans, flew towards the North, to the Hyperboreans' land, to the east of the north winds; up there, in the deep still lakes, they bathed themselves, and acquired a renewed form. We are in the forest by these deep lakes; we see swans in flocks fly over us, and swim upon the rapid elv and on the still waters...." "Woodland solitude! what images dost thou not present to our thoughts! Woodland solitude! through thy vaulted halls people now pass in the summer time with cattle and domestic utensils; children and old men go to the solitary pasture where echo dwells, where the national song springs forth with the wild mountain flower! Dost thou see the procession? Paint it if thou canst! The broad wooden cart, laden high with chests and barrels, with jars and with crockery. The bright copper kettle and the tin dish shine in the sun. The old grandmother sits at the top of the load, and holds her spinning wheel, which complete the pyramid. The father drives the horse, the mother carries the youngest child on her back, sewed up in a skin, and the procession moves on step by step. The cattle are driven by the half-grown children; they have stuck a birch branch between one of the cows' horns, but she does not appear to be proud of her finery; she goes the same quiet pace as the others, and lashes the saucy flies with her tail. If the night becomes cold on this solitary pasture, there is fuel enough; here the tree falls of itself from old age, and lies and rots. "But take especial care of the fire--fear the fire-spirit in the forest desert! He comes from the unextinguishable pile; he comes from the thunder-cloud, riding on the blue lightning's flame, which kindles the thick, dry moss of the earth: trees and bushes are kindled; the flames run from tree to tree, it is like a snow-storm of fire! the flames leap to the tops of the trees. What a crackling and roaring, as if it were the ocean in its course! The birds fly upward in flocks, and fall down suffocated by the smoke; the animals flee, or, encircled by the fire, are consumed in it! Hear their cries and roars of agony! The howling of the wolf and the bear, dost thou know it? A calm rainy day, and the forest-plains themselves alone are able to confine the fiery sea, and the burnt forest stands charred, with black trunks and black stumps of trees, as we saw them here in the forest by the broad high-road. On this road we continue to travel, but it becomes worse and worse; it is, properly speaking, no road at all, but it is about to become one. Large stones lie half dug up, and we drive past them; large trees are cast down, and obstruct our way, and therefore we must descend from the carriage. The horses are taken out, and the peasants help to lift and push the carriage forward over ditches and opened paths. The sun now ceases to shine; some few rain-drops fall, and now it is a steady rain. But how it causes the birch to shed its fragrance! At a distance there are huts erected of loose trunks of trees and fresh green boughs, and in each there is a large fire burning. See where the blue smoke curls through the green leafy roof; peasants are within at work, hammering and forging; here they have their meals. They are now laying a mine in order to blast a rock, and the pine and birch emit a finer fragrance. It is delightful in the forest." So say we. It is delightful in the forest; not less so on the torrent-river of Scandinavia: "Before Homer sang, there were heroes; but they are not known, no poet celebrated their fame. It is just so with the beauties of nature; they must be brought into notice by words and delineations, be brought before the eyes of the multitude; get a sort of world's patent for what they are. The elvs of the North have rushed and whirled along for thousands of years in unknown beauty. The world's great high-road does not take this direction; no steam-packet conveys the traveller comfortably along the streams of the Dal-elvs; fall on fall makes sluices indispensable and invaluable. Schubert is, as yet, the only stranger who has written about the magnificence and southern beauty of Dalecarlia, and spoken of its greatness. "Clear as the waves of the sea does the mighty elv stream in endless windings through forest deserts and varying plains, sometimes extending its deep bed, sometimes confining it, reflecting the bending trees and the red-painted block-houses of solitary towns, and sometimes rushing like a cataract over immense blocks of rock. "Miles apart from one another, out of the ridge of mountains between Sweden and Norway, come the east and west Dal-elvs, which first become confluent and have one bed above Balstad. They have taken up rivers and lakes in their waters. Do but visit this place! here are pictorial riches to be found: the most picturesque landscapes, dizzyingly grand, smilingly pastoral, idyllic; one is drawn onward up to the very source of the elv, the bubbling well above Finman's hut; one feels a desire to follow every branch of the stream that the river takes in. "The first mighty fall, Njupesker's Cataract, is seen by the Norwegian frontier in Semasog. The mountain stream rushes perpendicularly from the rock to a depth of seventy fathoms. "We pause in the dark forest, where the elv seems to collect within itself nature's whole deep gravity. The stream rolls its clear waters over a porphyry soil, where the mill-wheel is driven, and the gigantic porphyry bowls and sarcophagi are polished. "We follow the stream through Siljan's lake, where superstition sees the water-sprite swim like the sea-horse, with a mane of green seaweed; and where the aërial images present visions of witchcraft in the warm summer day. "We sail on the stream from Siljan's lake under the weeping willows of the parsonage, where the swans assemble in flocks; we glide along slowly with horses and carriages on the great ferry-boat, away over the rapid current under Balstad's picturesque shore. Here the elv widens and rolls its billows majestically in a woodland landscape, as large and extended as if it were in North America. "We see the rushing, rapid stream under Avista's yellow clay declivities; the yellow water falls, like fluid amber, in picturesque cataracts before the copper works, where rainbow-colored tongues of fire shoot themselves upwards, and the hammer's blow on the copper-plates resound to the monotonous, roaring rumble of the elv-fall." And so on, past the famous fall down which the waters gush, ere they lose themselves in the waters of the Baltic. One glimpse more ere they reach their resting-place. We take them up as they are circling the garden of a trim Swedish manor-house: "The garden itself was a piece of enchantment. There stood three transplanted beech trees, and they throve well. The sharp north wind had rounded off the tops of the wild chestnut trees of the avenue in a singular manner; they looked as if they had been under the gardener's shears. Golden yellow oranges hung in the conservatory; the splendid Southern exotics had to-day got the windows half open, so that the artificial warmth met the fresh, warm, sunny air of the Northern summer. "The branch of the Dal-elv which goes round the garden is strewn with small islands, where beautiful hanging birches and fir-trees grow in Scandinavian splendor. There are small islands with green, silent groves; there are small islands with rich grass, tall brakens, variegated bell flowers, and cowslips. No Turkey carpet has fresher colors. The stream between these islands and holmes is sometimes rapid, deep, and clear; sometimes like a broad rivulet with silky green rushes, water lilies, and brown feathered reeds; sometimes it is a brook with a stony ground, and now it spreads itself out in a large, still mill-dam. "Here is a landscape in midsummer for the games of the river-sprites, and the dancers of the elves and fairies! There, in the lustre of the full moon, the dryads can tell their tales, the water-sprites seize the golden harp, and believe that one can be blessed, at least for one single night, like this. "On the other side of Ens Bruck is the main stream--the full Dal-elv. Do you hear the monotonous rumble? It is not from Elvkarleby Fall that it reaches hither; it is close by; it is from Laa Foss in which lies Ash Island: the elv streams and rushes over the leaping salmon. "Let us sit here, between the fragments of rock by the shore, in the red evening sunlight, which sheds a golden lustre on the waters of the Dal-elv. "Glorious river! But a few seconds' work hast thou to do in the mills yonder, and thou rushest foaming on over Elvkarleby's rocks, down into the deep bed of the river, which leads thee to the Baltic--thy eternity." We could fill half our number with passages just as beautiful; but will leave the rest of the poet's landscapes till some American publisher brings out the book. We must nevertheless quote one picture of a different kind. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin;" and the sorrows of the palace and the cottage alike find their level and their rest in the grave. The "Mute Book" speaks with a moving eloquence to those who can read it aright: "By the high-road into the forest there stood a solitary farm-house. One way lay right through the farm-yard; the sun shone; all the windows were open; there was life and bustle within, but in the yard, in an arbor of flowering lilacs, there stood an open coffin. The corpse had been placed out here, and it was to be buried that forenoon. No one stood by, and wept over that dead man; no one hung sorrowfully over him. His face was covered with a white cloth, and under his head there lay a large, thick book, every leaf of which was a whole sheet of gray paper, and, between each, lay withered flowers, deposited and forgotten,--a whole herbarium, gathered in different places. He himself had requested that it should be laid in the grave with him. A chapter of his life was blended with every flower! 'Who is that dead man?' we asked, and the answer was, 'The old student from Upsala. They say he was once very clever; he knew the learned languages, could sing and write verses too; but then there was something that went wrong, and so he gave both his thoughts and himself up to drinking spirits, and, as his health suffered by it, he came out here into the country, where they paid for his board and lodging. He was as gentle as a child when the dark humor did not come over him, for then he was strong, and ran about in the forest like a hunted deer; but when we got him home, we persuaded him to look into the book with the dry plants. Then he would sit the whole day, and look at one plant, and then at another, and many a time the tears ran down his cheeks. God knows what he then thought! But he begged that he might have the book with him in his coffin; and now it lies there, and the lid will soon be fastened down, and then he will take his peaceful rest in the grave!' "They raised the winding sheet. There was peace in the face of the dead. A sunbeam fell on it; a swallow, in its arrow-flight, darted into the new-made arbor, and in its flight circled twittering over the dead man's head. "How strange it is!--we all assuredly know it--to take out old letters from the days of one's youth, and read them: a whole life, as it were, then rises up, with all its hopes and all its troubles. How many of those with whom we, in their time, lived so devotedly, are now even as the dead to us, and yet they still live! But we have not thought of them for many years--them whom we once thought we should always cling to, and share our mutual joys and sorrows with! "The withered oak-leaf in the book here, is a memorial of the friend--the friend of his school days--the friend for life. He fixed this leaf on the student's cap, in the greenwood, when the vow of friendship was concluded for the whole life. Where does he now live? The leaf is preserved; friendship forgotten. Here is a foreign conservatory plant, too fine for the gardens of the North. It looks as if there still were fragrance in it. _She_ gave it to him--she, the lady of that noble garden! "Here is the marsh-lotus, which, he himself has plucked and watered with salt tears--the marsh-lotus from the fresh waters! And here is a nettle; what do its leaves say! What did he think on plucking it?--on preserving it? Here are lilies of the valley, from the woodland solitudes; here are honeysuckles from the village ale-house flower-pot; and here the bare, sharp blade of grass. The flowering lilac bends its fresh, fragrant clusters over the dead man's head; the swallow again flies past--'qui-vit! qui-vit!' Now the men come with nails and hammer; the lid is placed over the corpse, whose head rests on the 'Mute Book'--preserved--forgotten!" The book, to those who are not repelled by a certain quaintness of manner from the enjoyment of a work of true genius, will form a permanent and delightful addition to those pictures of many lands which the enterprise and accomplishment of modern travellers is creating for the delight of those whose range of locomotion is bounded by the limits of their own country, or by the four walls of a sick chamber. Andersen has grown old in years, and with age he has increase of art, but he was never younger in spirit, and his genius never blossomed with more freshness and beauty. VERSES WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE, BY R. H. STODDARD. My desk is heaped with niceties From tropic lands divine, But this is braver far than all-- A flask of Chian wine! Brim up my golden drinking-cup, And reach a dish of fruit, And then unlock my cabinet, And hand me out my lute; For when these luxuries have fed And filled my brain with light, I must compose a nuptial song, To suit my bridal night! A CHAPTER OF PARODIES. Parodies have been much in vogue in almost every age; among the Greeks, Latins, Germans, French, and English, it has been among the commonest of literary pleasantries to turn verses into ridicule by applying them to a purpose never dreamed of by their authors, or to burlesque serious pieces by affecting to observe the same rhymes, words, and cadences. The wicked arts of Charles the Second's time thus made fun of the hymns of the Roundheads, and pious people have since turned the tables by adapting to good uses the profane airs and sensual songs of the opera house. Of the class of puns, parodies have in the scale of art a much higher rank, and occasionally they furnish specimens of genuine poetry. Among the best we have ever seen are a considerable number attributed to Miss Phebe Carey, of Ohio; they are rich in quaint and natural humor, and as a London critic describes them, "wonderfully American." In its way, we have seen nothing better than this reflex of Bayard Taylor's poem of "Manuela." MARTHA HOPKINS. A BALLAD OF INDIANA. From the kitchen, Martha Hopkins, as she stood there making pies, Southward looks along the turnpike, with her hand above her eyes; Where along the distant hill-side, her yearling heifer feeds, And a little grass is growing in a mighty sight of weeds. All the air is full of noises, for there isn't any school, And boys, with turned-up pantaloons, are wading in the pool; Blithely frisk, unnumbered chickens cackling for they cannot laugh, Where the airy summits brighten, nimbly leaps the little calf. Gentle eyes of Martha Hopkins! tell me wherefore do ye gaze On the ground that's being furrowed for the planting of the maize? Tell me wherefore down the valley, ye have traced the turnpike's way, Far beyond the cattle pasture, and the brick-yard with its clay? Ah! the dog-wood tree may blossom, and the door-yard grass may shine, With the tears of amber dropping from the washing on the line; And the morning's breath of balsam, lightly brush her freckled cheek,-- Little recketh Martha Hopkins of the tales of spring they speak. When the summer's burning solstice on the scanty harvest glowed, She had watched a man on horseback riding down the turnpike road; Many times she saw him turning, looking backward quite forlorn, Till amid her tears she lost him, in the shadow of the barn. Ere supper-time was over, he had passed the kiln of brick, Crossed the rushing Yellow River and had forded quite a creek, And his flat-boat load was taken, at the time for pork and beans, With the traders of the Wabash, to the wharf at New Orleans. Therefore watches Martha Hopkins--holding in her hands the pans, When the sound of distant footsteps seems exactly like a man's; Not a wind the stove-pipe rattles, nor a door behind her jars, But she seems to hear the rattle of his letting down the bars. Often sees she men on horseback, coming down the turnpike rough, But they come not as John Jackson, she can see it well enough; Well she knows the sober trotting of the sorrel horse he keeps, As he jogs along at leisure with his head down like a sheep's. She would know him 'mid a thousand, by his home-made coat and vest; By his socks, which were blue woollen, such as farmers wear out west; By the color of his trousers, and his saddle, which was spread By a blanket which was taken for that purpose from the bed. None like he the yoke of hickory, on the unbroke ox can throw, None amid his father's corn-fields use like him the spade and hoe; And at all the apple-cuttings, few indeed the men are seen, That can dance with him the polka, touch with him the violin. He has said to Martha Hopkins, and she thinks she hears him now, For she knows as well as can be, that he meant to keep his vow, When the buck-eye tree has blossomed, and your uncle plants his corn, Shall the bells of Indiana usher in the wedding morn. He has pictured his relations, each in Sunday hat and gown, And he thinks he'll get a carriage, and they'll spend a day in town; That their love will newly kindle, and what comfort it will give, To sit down to the first breakfast, in the cabin where they'll live. Tender eyes of Martha Hopkins! what has got you in such scrape, 'Tis a tear that falls to glitter on the ruffle of her cape, Ah! the eye of love may brighten, to be certain what it sees, One man looks much like another, when half hidden by the trees. But her eager eyes rekindle, she forgets the pies and bread, As she sees a man on horseback, round the corner of the shed. Now tie on another apron, get the comb and smooth your hair, 'Tis the sorrel horse that gallops, 'tis John Jackson's self that's there! Here is one scarcely less happy upon Mr. Willis's "Better Moments:" WORSER MOMENTS. That fellow's voice! how often steals Its cadence o'er my lonely days! Like something sent on wagon wheels, Or packed in an unconscious chaise. I might forget the words he said When all the children fret and cry, But when I get them off to bed, His gentle tone comes stealing by-- And years of matrimony flee, And leave me sitting on his knee. The times he came to court a spell, The tender things he said to me, Make me remember mighty well My hopes that he'd propose to me. My face is uglier, and perhaps Time and the comb have thinned my hair; And plain and common are the caps, And dresses that I have to wear-- But memory is ever yet With all that fellow's flat'ries writ. I have been out at milking-time Beneath a dull and rainy sky, When in the barn 'twas time to feed, And calves were bawling lustily-- When scattered hay, and sheaves of oats, And yellow corn-ears, sound and hard, And all that makes the cattle pass With wilder richness through the yard-- When all was hateful, then have I, With friends who had to help me milk, Talked of his wife most spitefully, And how he kept her dressed in silk; And when the cattle, running there, Threw over me a shower of mud, That fellow's voice came on the air, Like the light chewing of the cud-- And resting near some spreckled cow, The spirit of a woman's spite, I've poured a low and fervent vow, To make him, if I had the might, Live all his life-time just as hard, And milk his cows in such a yard. I have been out to pick up wood When night was stealing from the dawn, Before the fire was burning good, Or I had put the kettle on The little stove--when babes were waking With a low murmur in the beds, And melody by fits was breaking Above their little yellow heads-- And this when I was up perhaps From a few short and troubled naps-- And when the sun sprang scorchingly And freely up, and made us stifle, And fell upon each hill and tree The bullets from his subtle rifle-- I say a voice has thrilled me then, Hard by that solemn pile of wood, Or creeping from the silent glen, Like something on the unfledged brood, Hath stricken me, and I have pressed Close in my arms my load of chips, And pouring forth the hatefulest Of words that ever passed my lips, Have felt my woman's spirit rush On me, as on that milking night, And, yielding to the blessed gush Of my ungovernable spite, Have risen up, the wed, the old, Scolding as hard as I could scold. And in the same vein "The Annoyer," in which is imitated one of the most delicate pieces of sentiment and fancy which Willis has given us: THE ANNOYER. "Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever."--SHELLEY. Love knoweth every body's house, And every human haunt, And comes unbidden, every where, Like people we don't want. The turnpike roads and little creeks Are written with love's words, And you hear his voice like a thousand bricks In the lowing of the herds. He peeps into the teamster's heart, From his Buena Vista's rim, And the cracking whips of many men Can never frighten him. He'll come to his cart in the weary night, When he's dreaming of his craft; And he'll float to his eye in the morning light, Like a man on a river raft. He hears the sound of the cooper's adz, And makes him too his dupe, For he sighs in his ear from the shaving pile As he hammers on the hoop. The little girl, the beardless boy, The men that walk or stand, He will get them all in his mighty arms Like the grasp of your very hand. The shoemaker bangs above his bench, And ponders his shining awl, For love is under the lap-stone hid, And a spell is on the wall. It heaves the sole where he drives the pegs, And speaks in every blow, 'Till the last is dropped from his crafty hand, And his foot hangs bare below. He blurs the prints which the shopmen sell, And intrudes on the hatter's trade, And profanes the hostler's stable-yard In the shape of a chamber-maid. In the darkest night, and the bright daylight, Knowing that he can win, In every home of good-looking folks Will human love come in. The next is from Poe's "Annabel Lee:" SAMUEL BROWN. It was many and many a year ago, In a dwelling down in town, That a fellow there lived whom you may know By the name of Samuel Brown; And this fellow he lived with no other thought Than to our house to come down. I was a child and he was a child, In that dwelling down in town, But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Samuel Brown-- With a love that the ladies coveted, Me and Samuel Brown. And this was the reason that, long ago, To that dwelling down in town, A girl came out of her carriage, courting My beautiful Samuel Brown; So that her high-bred kinsman came And bore away Samuel Brown, And shut him up in a dwelling-house, In a street quite up in town. The ladies, not half so happy up there, Went envying me and Brown; Yes! that was the reason, (as all men know, In this dwelling down in town,) That the girl came out of the carriage by night Coquetting and getting my Samuel Brown. But our love is more artful by far than the love Of those who are older than we-- Of many far wiser than we-- And neither the girls that are living above, Nor the girls that are down in town, Can ever discover my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Samuel Brown. For the morn never shines without bringing me lines From my beautiful Samuel Brown; And the night is never dark, but I sit in the park With my beautiful Samuel Brown. And often by day, I walk down in Broadway, With my darling, my darling, my life, and my stay, To our dwelling down in town, To our house in the street down town. The two poems that have been most parodied in this country are the "Woodman spare that tree," of General Morris, and Poe's "Raven." There have been an incredible number of burlesques of the former, and of the latter we have seen a collection of seventeen, some of which are scarcely less clever than the original performance. THE BRITISH HUMORISTS: DESCRIBED BY MR. THACKERAY. In the last _International_, we gave sketches of the first and second of the series of lectures Mr. Thackeray is now delivering in London, a series which we may regard with more interest because it is to be repeated in Boston, New-York, and other American cities. The subjects of the lectures already noticed were SWIFT, CONGREVE, and ADDISON. The third lecture was upon SIR RICHARD STEELE. "Having," says the _Times_, "to deal with a personage whose character was any thing but perfection, Mr. Thackeray started with a good-humored declamation against perfection in general. A perfect man would be intolerable--he could not laugh and he could not cry, neither could he hate nor even love, for love itself implied an unjust preference of one person over another, which was so far an imperfection. The interest which a man takes in the progress of his own boy at school, while he is indifferent about other boys who are probably better and more clever, his choice that a death should occur in his neighbor's house rather than in his own, and various traits of a similar kind, are all so many manifestations of selfishness, and therefore so many removes from perfection. "After this preface, Mr. Thackeray discoursed upon Steele's career at school. At the Charter-house he distinguished himself as a good-natured _mauvais sujet_--idle beyond the average mark. By his scholastic acquisitions he gave little satisfaction to his masters, and was flogged more frequently than any boy in the school. Moreover, he was in debt to all the vendors of juvenile delicacies in the neighborhood; and, if any boy came to school with money to lend, Dick Steele was certain to appear as the person to borrow. These facts, given with much minuteness, were followed by an assertion on the part of the lecturer that he had no authority for them whatever. It was an admitted truth that 'the child is the father of the man,' and on this principle he felt he had a right, from his intimate knowledge of Captain Steele, to deduce what sort of a personage Master Dicky Steele was likely to be. "This bit of mock biography gave the key-note to the entire lecture. While Mr. Thackeray admitted that Steele was a far less brilliant man than any who had formed the subjects of the preceding discourses, and far less entitled to admiration than Addison, he spoke of him in a tone of warmer affection than he had displayed when talking of the great Joseph. He dilated with unction on Steele's many follies and vices--his strange medley of piety and debauchery, his inordinate love of dress, his insensibility as to the duty of meeting pecuniary obligations; he even read an ill-natured description by John Dennis, remarking that it was substantially true, but at the same time he constantly kept before the minds of his hearers the kindliness of Steele's heart. He did not call upon them to worship him as a moral being or as a talent, aware that many others much more deserved such honor, but he exhorted them to love him as a friend: 'If Steele is not a friend, he is nothing.' "The great number of letters which Steele wrote to his wife, and which are still extant, furnished Mr. Thackeray with much of the knowledge he possessed as to the character of his hero. With these he could pursue him through every variety of joy and sorrow, difficulty and triumph, and, as they were evidently written for none but her to whom they were addressed, he could be sure that the writer spoke from his own heart. On the literary productions of Steele, Mr. Thackeray dwelt very little, but he pointed out in them this peculiarity, that the author showed a reverence for woman unknown to his contemporaries. Swift hated women just as he hated men; Congreve regarded them as so many fortresses to be conquered by a superior general; even Addison sneered at them with a gentle sneer; but Steele really spoke of them in a tone of affectionate respect, and this gives a charm to his comedies not to be found in more brilliant productions. "Mr. Thackeray took occasion to illustrate by these extracts the characteristic differences of Swift, Addison, and Steele. He had already drawn a ludicrous picture of the relative positions of Steele and Addison, remarking that the latter had been through life to the former what a 'head boy' is to an inferior boy at school. Now by Swift's poem on the 'Day of Judgment'--an extract from the _Spectator_, containing Addison's reflections in Westminster Abbey--and a passage from Steele, he showed how the subject of Death was treated by the three writers. Swift's poem savagely treats as fools all who pretend to know any thing beyond the grave, including the teachers of the several sects. Addison's tone was kinder, but, while he was benevolent in his skepticism, he came to nearly the same result as the ferocious Dean. Steele, on the other hand, was content to remember, as his first grief, the death of his father, when he was five years old, and the dignified sorrow of his mother. "By way of an additional comical apology for the foibles of Steele, Mr. Thackeray concluded his lecture by remarking on the atrocities of the age when poor Dick lived,--an age when young ladies, at dinner, actually put their knives into their mouths. The social peculiarities of the period he illustrated by a sort of summary of Swift's _Polite Conversation_, which led up to an ironical praise of the nineteenth century, as a century whose anomalies are unknown." The fourth lecture on the humorists was of Prior, Gay, and Pope, Mr. Thackeray choosing to consider Pope, who was not a humorist, but a wit, the greatest humorist of all: MATHEW PRIOR. "Prior he characterizes as the foremost of lucky wits, abounding in good nature and acuteness. He loved--he drank--he sang. Some verses at Cambridge first rendered him an object of notice, and by the 'City Mouse and Country Mouse,' which, jointly with Montague, he wrote against Dryden, and which, Mr. Thackeray ironically asserted, all his hearers knew, of course, by heart, he gained the post of Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague, in accordance with the usage then prevalent of rewarding a talent for correct alcaics or biting epigrams with important diplomatic appointments. However, his fortune was but transient, since he fell with his patron Montague. As a poet, Mr. Thackeray praised Prior highly, calling him the most charming of English lyrists, and comparing him with Horace on one side and Moore on the other. At the same time he referred to a certain statement that Prior, after he had spent the evening with the first men of the day, would retire to Long-acre to smoke a pipe with two very intimate acquaintances--a soldier and his wife--adding that many of his writings seemed to be under the influence of his Long-acre friends." JOHN GAY. "Gay was pointed out as a remarkable instance of kindliness and good humor, gaining the love even of the most savage wits of the day, and incurring the hatred of none. The ferocious giant Swift loved him as the Brobdignag loved Gulliver, and was afraid to open the packet which contained the tidings of his death. This kindliness is an especial feature in Gay's writings, even in his _Beggars' Opera_, and as Rubini was said to have, 'une larme dans la voix,' so was there in all that Gay produced a tone of the gentlest pathos. This peculiarity he illustrated by reading the well known story of the two devoted lovers struck dead by lightning. As for Gay's life, it was easy enough. He failed, indeed, to make his fortune, but he led a comfortable existence with his noble patrons the Duke and Duchess of Queensbury, living like a little round French _abbé_, eating and drinking well and growing more melancholy as he increased in fat." ALEXANDER POPE. "For a guaranty of Pope's merits, Mr. Thackeray especially referred to the _Rape of the Lock_ and the _Dunciad_. He insisted on his claims to admiration as a great literary artist, always bent on the perfection of his work and gladly adopting the thoughts of others if they would serve to complete his own. This peculiarity of carefulness was early shown in the fact that Pope began by imitation. The five happiest years of his life were devoted to the study of the best authors, especially poets, and the intellectual enjoyment was heightened by the feeling that genius was throbbing in his heart and awakening within him dreams of future glory. He too should sing--he too should love. Of love, indeed, Pope did not make a great deal, and as his addresses to Lady Wortley Montague were a failure, so was his first amour a sham love for a sham mistress. A particular pleasure in reading the works of Pope consists in the fact that they bring the reader into the very best company--a company whose manners are, to be sure, a little stiff and stately, and whose voices are pitched somewhat beyond the ordinary conversation key, but there is something ennobling about them. _Apropos_ of this peculiarity, Mr. Thackeray took occasion to dwell with great unction on the advantages of high society, and said, for the benefit of any young hearer who might be present, 'Young hearer, keep company with your betters.' Addison, as we have seen, is Mr. Thackeray's moral hero. He considers, however, that he has one great blemish in his dislike of Alexander Pope. The young poet was too conscious of his own powers to be a mere attendant at the Court of King Joseph, and King Joseph did not like this independence. The support given by the Addison _clique_ to Tickell's translation of Homer might naturally enough be construed by the Pope faction as proceeding from an ungenerous wish to depreciate their chieftain's version, and they might easily suppose that what was emulation in Tickell was envy in Addison. The verses which Pope wrote on this occasion and sent to Addison, had the satisfactory effect that the great Joseph was civil ever afterwards. But still Mr. Thackeray surmised that their sting was never forgotten, and that the saintly Addison might be painted as a Sebastian, with this one arrow sticking in him. "The causes that led to the writing of the _Dunciad_ were laid down, chiefly with a view of justifying the author, though Mr. Thackeray admitted that Pope's arrows are so sharp, and his slaughter so wholesale, that the reader's sympathies are often enlisted on the side of the devoted inhabitants of Grub-street. The vile jokes and libels that were aimed against the illustrious poet, and the paltry allusions to his personal defects, were brought forward as sufficient motives; and the lecturer dwelt with admiration on the personal courage which the "gallant little cripple" displayed when the indignant dunces threatened him with corporeal chastisement. At the same time, he declared it his conviction that the _Dunciad_ had done the greatest possible harm to the literary profession. Prior to its publication there were great prizes for literary men in the shape of government appointments and the like; but Pope, a lover of high society--a man so refined that he kept thin while his friends grew fat--hated the rank and file of literature, and if there was one point in his assailants on which he dwelt with savage partiality, it was their abject poverty. He it was who brought the notion of a vile Grub-street before the minds of the general public; he it was who created such associations as author and rags--author and dirt--author and gin. The occupation of authorship became ignoble through his graphic descriptions of misery, and the literary profession was for a long time destroyed. "Pope's well known affection for his mother, on which Mr. Thackeray feelingly expatiated, and the love which his friends entertained for him, were introduced as a sentimental relief in describing the character of a man whose career Mr. Thackeray compared to that of a great general, obtaining his end by a series of brilliant conquests." HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. "In his fifth lecture," says the _Leader_, "Mr. Thackeray dwelt at great length on Hogarth, and pointed out how much of his success lay in the simple conventional morals of his works; gave a graphic analysis of the _Marriage à la Mode_ and the _Idle and Industrious Apprentices_; and humorously set forth Hogarth's pretensions to the sublime in historical painting. Smollett was dismissed in a few pleasant paragraphs. Fielding called out the hearty admiration of the author of _Vanity Fair_; and amidst the panegyric there were some admirable passages, notably one on the scorn and hatred Richardson and Fielding unaffectedly felt for each other, and the sincerity which may animate even the most contemptuous criticism. The opinions Thackeray stamps with his authority, we constantly find open to question; but it is not as a Course of Criticism that these Lectures have their inexpressible charm, and it would be possible for a man to dissent _in toto_ from the views put forth, while at the same time he held them to be among the most delightful lectures he ever listened to." STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. In the sixth and last lecture of the course, Mr. Thackeray's subjects were Sterne and Goldsmith. He stigmatized severely all Sterne's relations with women, showed up the sham sensibility which wept through his writings, dwelt on the perilous thing it was to make a market of one's sorrows, and sell the deepest experiences of one's life at so much per volume, and wound up with an emphatic condemnation of the pruriency of Sterne's writings, contrasting that pruriency with the purity of Dickens. All the generosity, sweetness, and improvidence of Goldsmith's Irish nature were earnestly and genially presented. This course of lectures has been described as "a review of the humorists, by their master," but Mr. Thackeray is not a humorist--at least humor is not his distinguishing quality; he is a cold satirist, sneering at humanity, and in all his writings never exhibiting a spark of the genial fire which should commend an author to the affections of his readers. Gentlemen may be amused by him--he may be even punctilious and sincere in the observance of all honorable conduct--but judging him by his works, he is one of the last men living whom any person with the instincts of a gentleman would admit to his friendship. Some of his books are amazingly clever, but others, as the _Kickleburys on the Rhine_, are but unredeemable vulgarity. He has been taken up very much by the snobs--a class somewhat remarkable for misapprehensions of their real relations--and we find the snobs of this country as well as of England lauding the satirist as an enemy of their own peculiar caste. This is a mistake: Mr. Thackeray has painted to the life the sentimental snob, indeed, but he is himself a chief of a different and far less endurable class in this division of the race--_the snob cynical and supercilious_. ALRED. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE, BY ELMINA WALDO CAREY. Do you remember, Alred dear, The peach-tree's cool and ample shade, Where first our hearts learned love and fear, And vows of constancy were made? The peach-tree stands there, now as then, Its shadow just as dim and mild, And over all the sacred glen The vines of strawberries run wild. Still all about the water's edge Beds of green flags in beauty lie, And, sloping towards the elder-hedge, Are fields of graceful waving rye. But, Alred dear, not by our feet Will the round clover-heads be pressed, For years must pass before we meet In that dear valley of the west. Sometimes my heart is filled with fear, Yet if not, Alred, in that land, 'Tis bliss to know, in some bright sphere You'll wait to take my trembling hand. CHRISTOPHER NORTH ON ANIMAL MAGNETISM. The July number of _Blackwood's Magazine_ has a long paper under the title of _What is Mesmerism?_ in which the question is discussed with ingenuity, apparent candor, and occasional eloquence. The editor, however, does not altogether agree with his contributor, and adds to the article the following postscript. Undoubtedly a large proportion of the "professors of magnetism" are mere mountebanks, and the pretenders to clairvoyance may in all cases probably be set down as knaves, or as very ignorant or feeble-minded persons. Nevertheless, we cannot quite agree with Professor Wilson in all his propositions: WHAT IS MESMERISM? "It must be admitted that our excellent correspondent has set forth the claims of 'Adolphe' and 'Alexis,' and similar interesting abstractions, to the powers of omnipresence and omniscience, with great candor and becoming gravity. We are sorry that we cannot follow what many of our readers may consider so excellent an example. We have no faith in those dear creatures without surnames: we have no faith in animal magnetism, either in its lesser or in its larger pretensions; but we have an unbounded faith in the imbecility, infatuation, vanity, credulity, and knavery of which human nature is capable. And we are of opinion that there is not a single well-authenticated mesmeric phenomenon which is not fully explicable by the operation of one or more of these causes, or of the whole of them taken in conjunction. "The question in regard to mesmerism is two-fold: _first_, how is the mesmeric prostration to be accounted for? and _secondly_, how is it to be disposed of? It may be accounted for, we conceive, by the natural tendencies just recited, without its being necessary to postulate any new or unknown agency; it may be disposed of by the influence of public opinion, which would very soon put a stop to these pitiable exhibitions, and very soon extinguish the magnetizer's power and the patient's susceptibility, if it were but to visit the performers with the contempt and reprobation they deserve. A few words on each of these heads may not be out of place, as a qualifying postscript to the foregoing letter, which, in our opinion, treats the mesmeric superstition with far too much indulgence. "I. The existence of any physical force or fluid in man or in nature, by which the mesmeric phenomena are induced, has been distinctly disproved by every carefully conducted experiment. _No person was ever magnetized when totally unsuspicious of the operation of which he was the subject._ This is conclusive; because a physical agent, which never does, _of itself_ and unheralded, produce any effect, is no physical agent at all. Then, again, let certain persons be prepared for the magnetic condition, and aware of what is expected of them, and the effects are equally produced, whether the intended influence be exerted or not. It seems simply ridiculous to postulate an _odylic_ (we should like to be favored with the derivation of this word) fluid to account for phenomena which show themselves just as conspicuously when no such fluid is or can be in operation. "But it is argued by some of the advocates of mesmeric influence, that their agent, though perhaps not physical, is at any rate moral--that the will, or some spiritual energy on the part of the mesmerist, is the power by which his victims are entranced and rendered obedient to his bidding. Here, too, all the well-authenticated cases establish a totally different conclusion. They prove that the will or spiritual power of the mesmerist has _of itself_ no ascendency or control whatsoever over the body or mind of his victim. Every well-guarded series of experiments has exhibited the mesmerist and his patient at cross-purposes with each other--the patient frequently doing those things which the mesmerist was desirous he should not do, and not doing those things which the operator was desirous he should do. As for the buffoonery begotten by mesmerism on phrenology, this exhibition can scarcely be expected to provoke much astonishment, or credence, or comment, except among professional artists themselves-- 'Like Katterfelto, with their hair on end, At their own wonders, _wondering for their bread_!' "The true explanation of mesmerism is to be found, as we have said, in the weakness or infatuation of human nature itself. No other causes are at all necessary to account for the mesmeric prostration. There is far more craziness, both physical and moral, in man than he usually gives himself credit for. The reservoir of human folly may be in a great measure occult, but it is always full; and all that silliness, whether of body or mind, at any time wants, is _to get its cue_. "These general remarks are of course more applicable to some individuals than they are to others. In soft and weak natures, where the nervous system is subject to cataleptic seizures, mental and bodily prostration is frequently almost the normal condition. Such of our readers as may have frequented mesmeric exhibitions must have observed a kind of _semi-humanity_ visible in the expression and demeanor of most of the subjects whom the professional operators carry about with them. These poor creatures are at all times ready to imbibe the magnetic stupefaction, because it is only by an effort that they are ever free from it. There is always at work within them an occult tendency to self-abandonment--an unintentional proclivity to aberration, imitation, and deceit, which only requires a signal to precipitate its morbid deposits. This constitutional infirmity of body and of mind furnishes to the mesmerist a basis for his operations, and is the source of all the wonders which he works. "It is only in the case of individuals who, without being fatuous, are hovering on the verge of fatuity, that the magnetic phenomena and the mesmeric prostration can be admitted to be in any considerable degree real. Real to a certain extent they may be; marvellous they certainly are not. Imbecility of the nervous system, a ready abandonment of the will, a facility in relinquishing every endowment which makes man _human_--these intelligible causes, eked out by a vanity and cunning which are always inherent in natures of an inferior type, are quite sufficient to account for the effects of the mesmeric manipulations on subjects of peculiar softness and pliancy. "In those persons of a better organized structure, who yield themselves up to the mesmeric degradation, the physical causes are less operative; but the moral causes are still more influential. In all cases the prostration is self-induced. But in the subjects of whom we have spoken, it is mainly induced by physical depravity, although moral frailties concur to bring about the condition. In persons of a superior type, the condition is mainly due to moral causes, although physical imbecility has some share in facilitating the result. These people have much vanity, much curiosity, and much credulity, together with a _weak_ imagination--that is to say, an imagination which is easily excited by circumstances which would produce no effect upon people of stronger imaginative powers. Their vanity shows itself in the desire _to astonish others_, and get themselves talked about. They think it rather creditable to be susceptible subjects. It is a point in their favor! Their credulity and curiosity take the form of a powerful wish _to be astonished themselves_. Why should they be excluded from a land of wonders which others are permitted to enter? The first step is now taken. They are ready for the sacrifice, which various motives concur to render agreeable. They resign themselves passively, mind and body, into the hands of the manipulator; and by his passes and grimaces, they are cowed pleasurably, bullied delightfully, into _so much_ of the condition which their inclinations are bent upon attaining, as justifies them, they think, in laying claim to the _whole_ condition, without bringing them under the imputation of being downright impostors. _Downright_ impostors they unquestionably are not. We believe that their condition is frequently, though to a very limited extent, _real_. We must also consider, that, in a matter of this kind, which is so deeply imbued with the ridiculous, a mesmeric patient may, and doubtless often does, justify to his own conscience a considerable deviation from the truth, on the ground of waggery or hoaxing. Why should an audience, which has the patience to put up with such spectacles, not be fooled to the top of its bent? "II. How, then, is the miserable nonsense to be disposed of? It can only be put a stop to by the force of public opinion, guided of course by reason and truth. Let it be announced from all authoritative quarters that the magnetic sensibility is only another name for an unsound condition of the mental and bodily functions--that it may be always accepted as an infallible index of the position which an individual occupies in the scale of humanity--that its manifestation (when real) invariably betokens a _physique_ and a _morale_ greatly below the average, and a character to which no respect can be attached. Let this announcement--which is the undoubted truth--be made by all respectable organs of public opinion, and by all who are in any way concerned in the diffusion of knowledge, or in the instruction of the rising generation, and the magnetic superstition will rapidly decline. Let this--the correct and scientific explanation of the phenomena--be understood and considered carefully by all young people of both sexes, and the mesmeric ranks will be speedily thinned of their recruits. Our young friends who may have been entrapped into this infatuation by want of due consideration, will be wiser for the future. If they allow themselves to be experimented upon, they will at any rate take care not to disgrace themselves by yielding to the follies to which they may be solicited both from within and from without; and we are much mistaken if, when they know what the penalty is, they will abandon themselves to a disgusting condition which is characteristic only of the most abject specimens of our species." A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[1] WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE, BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ. CHAPTER XXXIV. John Ayliffe, as we may now once more very righteously call him, was seated in the great hall of the old house of the Hastings family. Very different indeed was the appearance of that large chamber now from that which it had presented when Sir Philip Hastings was in possession. All the old, solid, gloomy-looking furniture, which formerly had given it an air of baronial dignity, and which Sir Philip had guarded as preciously as if every antique chair and knotted table had been an heir-loom, was now removed, and rich flaunting things of gaudy colors substituted. Damask, and silk, and velvet, and gilt ornaments in the style of France, were there in abundance, and had it not been for the arches overhead, and the stone walls and narrow windows around, the old hall might have passed for the saloon of some newly-enriched financier of Paris. The young man sat at table alone--not that he was by any means fond of solitude, for on the contrary he would have fain filled his house with company--but for some reason or another, which he could not divine, he found the old country gentlemen in the neighborhood somewhat shy of his society. His wealth, his ostentation, his luxury--for he had begun his new career with tremendous vehemence--had no effect upon them. They looked upon him as somewhat vulgar, and treated him with mere cold, supercilious civility as an upstart. There was one gentleman of good family, indeed, at some distance, who had hung a good deal about courts, had withered and impoverished himself, and reduced both his mind and his fortune in place-hunting, and who had a large family of daughters, to whom the society of John Ayliffe was the more acceptable, and who not unfrequently rode over and dined with him--nay, took a bed at the Hall. But that day he had not been over, and although upon the calculation of chances, one might have augured two to one John Ayliffe would ultimately marry one of the daughters, yet at this period he was not very much smitten with any of them, and was contemplating seriously a visit to London, where he thought his origin would be unknown, and his wealth would procure him every sort of enjoyment. Two servants were in the Hall, handing him the dishes. Well-cooked viands were on the table, and rich wine. Every thing which John Ayliffe in his sensual aspirations had anticipated from the possession of riches was there--except happiness, and that was wanting. To sit and feed, and feel one's self a scoundrel--to drink deep draughts, were it of nectar, for the purpose of drowning the thought of our own baseness--to lie upon the softest bed, and prop the head with the downiest pillow, with the knowledge that all we possess is the fruit of crime, can never give happiness--surely not, even to the most depraved. That eating and drinking, however, was now one of John Ayliffe's chief resources--drinking especially. He did not actually get intoxicated every night before he went to bed, but he always drank to a sufficient excess to cloud his faculties, to obfuscate his mind. He rather liked to feel himself in that sort of dizzy state where the outlines of all objects become indistinct, and thought itself puts on the same hazy aspect. The servants had learned his habits already, and were very willing to humor them; for they derived their own advantage therefrom. Thus, on the present occasion, as soon as the meal was over, and the dishes were removed, and the dessert put upon the table--a dessert consisting principally of sweetmeats, for which he had a great fondness, with stimulants to thirst. Added to these were two bottles of the most potent wine in his cellar, with a store of clean glasses, and a jug of water, destined to stand unmoved in the middle of the table. After this process it was customary never to disturb him, till, with a somewhat wavering step, he found his way up to his bedroom. But on the night of which I am speaking, John Ayliffe had not finished his fourth glass after dinner, and was in the unhappy stage, which, with some men, precedes the exhilarating stage of drunkenness, when the butler ventured to enter with a letter in his hand. "I beg pardon for intruding, sir," he said, "but Mr. Cherrydew has sent up a man on horseback from Hartwell with this letter, because there is marked upon it, 'to be delivered with the greatest possible haste.'" "Curse him!" exclaimed John Ayliffe, "I wish he would obey the orders I give him. Why the devil does he plague me with letters at this time of night?--there, give it to me, and go away," and taking the letter from the man's hand, he threw it down on the table beside him, as if it were not his intention to read it that night. Probably, indeed, it was not; for he muttered as he looked at the address, "She wants more money, I dare say, to pay for some trash or another. How greedy these women are. The parson preached the other day about the horse-leech's daughter. By ---- I think I have got the horse-leech's mother!" and he laughed stupidly, not perceiving that, the point of his sarcasm touched himself. He drank another glass of wine, and then looked at the letter again; but at length, after yet another glass, curiosity got the better of his moodiness, and he opened the epistle. The first sight of the contents dispelled not only his indifference but the effects of the wine he had taken, and he read the letter with an eager and a haggard eye. The substance was as follows: "MY DEAREST BOY: "All is lost and discovered. I can but write you a very short account of the things that have been happening here, for I am under what these people call the surveillance of the police. I have got a few minutes, however, and I will pay the maid secretly to give this to the post. Never was such a time as I have had this morning. Four men have been here, and among them Atkinson, who lived just down below at the cottage with the gray shutters. He knew me in a minute, and told everybody who I was. But that is not the worst of it, for they have got a commissioner of police with him--a terrible looking man, who took as much snuff as Mr. Jenkins, the justice of peace. They had got all sorts of information in England about me, and you, and every body, and they came to me to give them more, and cross-questioned me in a terrible manner; and that ugly old Commissioner, in his black coat and great wig, took my keys, and opened all the drawers and places. What could I do to stop them? So they got all your letters to me; because I could not bear to burn my dear boy's letters, and that letter from old Sir John to my poor father, which I once showed you. So when they got all these, there was no use of trying to conceal it any more, and, besides, they might have sent me to the Bastile or the Tower of London. So every thing has come out, and the best thing you can do is to take whatever money you have got, or can get, and run away as fast as possible, and come over here and take me away. One of them was as fine a man as ever I saw, and quite gentleman, though very severe. "Pray, my dear John, don't lose a moment's time, but run away before they catch you; for they know every thing now, depend upon it, and nothing will stop them from hanging you or sending you to the colonies that you can do; for they have got all the proofs, and I could see by their faces that they wanted nothing more; and if they do, my heart will be quite broken, that is, if they hang you or send you to the colonies, where you will have to work like a slave, and a man standing over you with a whip, beating your bare back very likely. So run away, and come to your afflicted mother." She did not seem to have been quite sure what name to sign, for she first put "Brown," but then changed the word to "Hastings," and then again to "Ayliffe." There were two or three postscripts, but they were of no great importance, and John Ayliffe did not take the trouble of reading them. The terms he bestowed upon his mother--not in the secrecy of his heart, but aloud and fiercely--were any thing but filial, and his burst of rage lasted full five minutes before it was succeeded by the natural fear and trepidation which the intelligence he had received might well excite. Then, however, his terror became extreme. The color, usually high, and now heightened both by rage and wine, left his cheeks, and, as he read over some parts of his mother's letter again, he trembled violently. "She has told all," he repeated to himself, "she has told all--and most likely has added from his own fancy. They have got all my letters too, which the fool did not burn. What did I say, I wonder? Too much--too much, I am sure. Heaven and earth, what will come of it! Would to God I had not listened to that rascal Shanks! Where should I go now for advice? It must not be to him. He would only betray and ruin me--make me the scape-goat--pretend that I had deceived him, I dare say. Oh, he is a precious villain, and Mrs. Hazleton knows that too well to trust him even with a pitiful mortgage--Mrs. Hazleton--I will go to her. She is always kind to me, and she is devilish clever too--knows a good deal more than Shanks if she did but understand the law--I will go to her--she will tell me how to manage." No time was to be lost. Ride as hard as he could it would take him more than an hour to reach Mrs. Hazleton's house, and it was already late. He ordered a horse to be saddled instantly, ran to his bedroom, drew on his boots, and then, descending to the hall, stood swearing at the slowness of the groom till the sound of hoofs made him run to the door. In a moment he was in the saddle and away, much to the astonishment of the servants, who puzzled themselves a little as to what intelligence their young master could have received, and then proceeded to console themselves according to the laws and ordinances of the servants' hall in such cases made and provided. The wine he had left upon the table disappeared with great celerity, and the butler, who was a man of precision, arrayed a good number of small silver articles and valuable trinkets in such a way as to be packed up and removed with great facility and secrecy. In the meanwhile John Ayliffe rode on at a furious pace, avoiding a road which would have led him close by Mr. Shanks's dwelling, and reached Mrs. Hazleton's door about nine o'clock. That lady was sitting in a small room behind the drawing-room, which I have already mentioned, where John Ayliffe was announced once more as Sir John Hastings. But Mrs. Hazleton, in personal appearance at least, was much changed since she was first introduced to the reader. She was still wonderfully handsome. She had still that indescribable air of calm, high-bred dignity which we are often foolishly inclined to ascribe to noble feelings and a high heart; but which--where it is not an art, an acquirement--only indicates, I am inclined to believe, when it has any moral reference at all, strength of character and great self-reliance. But Mrs. Hazleton was older--looked older a good deal--more so than the time which had passed would alone account for. The passions of the last two or three years had worn her sadly, and probably the struggle to conceal those passions had worn her as much. Nevertheless, she had grown somewhat fat under their influence, and a wrinkle here and there in the fair skin was contradicted by the plumpness of her figure. She rose with quiet, easy grace to meet her young guest, and held out her hand to him, saying, "Really, my dear Sir John, you must not pay me such late visits or I shall have scandal busying herself with my good name." But even as she spoke she perceived the traces of violent agitation which had not yet departed from John Ayliffe's visage, and she added, "What is the matter? Has any thing gone wrong?" "Every thing is going to the devil, I believe," said John Ayliffe, as soon as the servant had closed the door. "They have found out my mother at St. Germain." He paused there to see what effect this first intelligence would produce, and it was very great; for Mrs. Hazleton well knew that upon the concealment of his mother's existence had depended one of the principal points in his suit against Sir Philip Hastings. What was going on in her mind, however, appeared not in her countenance. She paused in silence, indeed, for a moment or two, and then said in her sweet musical voice, "Well, Sir John, is that all?" "Enough too, dear Mrs. Hazleton!" replied the young man. "Why you surely remember that it was judged absolutely necessary she should be supposed dead--you yourself said, when we were talking of it, 'Send her to France.' Don't you remember?" "No I do not," answered Mrs. Hazleton, thoughtfully; "and if I did it could only be intended to save the poor thing from all the torment of being cross-examined in a court of justice." "Ay, she has been cross-examined enough in France nevertheless," said the young man bitterly, "and she has told every thing, Mrs. Hazleton--all that she knew, and I dare say all that she guessed." This news was somewhat more interesting than even the former; it touched Mrs. Hazleton personally to a certain extent, for all that Jane Ayliffe knew and all that she guessed might comprise a great deal that Mrs. Hazleton would not have liked the world to know or guess either. She retained all her presence of mind however, and replied quite quietly "Really, Sir John, I cannot at all form a judgment of these things, or give you either assistance or advice, as I am anxious to do, unless you explain the whole matter fully and clearly. What has your mother done which seems to have affected you so much? Let me hear the whole details, then I can judge and speak with some show of reason. But calm yourself, calm yourself, my dear sir. We often at the first glance of any unpleasant intelligence take fright, and thinking the danger ten times greater than it really is, run into worse dangers in trying to avoid it. Let me hear all, I say, and then I will consider what is to be done." Now Mrs. Hazleton had already, from what she had just heard, determined precisely and entirely what she would do. She had divined in an instant that the artful game in which John Ayliffe had been engaged, and in which she herself had taken a hand, was played out, and that he was the loser; but it was a very important object with her to ascertain if possible how far she herself had been compromised by the revelations of Mrs. Ayliffe. This was the motive of her gentle questions; for at heart she did not feel the least gentle. On the other hand John Ayliffe was somewhat angry. All frightened people are angry when they find others a great deal less frightened than themselves. Drawing forth his mother's letter then, he thrust it towards Mrs. Hazleton, almost rudely, saying, "Read that, madam, and you'll soon see all the details that you could wish for." Mrs. Hazleton did read it from end to end, postscript and all, and she saw with infinite satisfaction and delight, that her own name was never once mentioned in the whole course of that delectable epistle. As she read that part of the letter, however, in which Mrs. Ayliffe referred to the very handsome gentlemanly man who had been one of her unwished for visitors, Mrs. Hazleton said within herself, "This is Marlow; Marlow has done this!" and tenfold bitterness took possession of her heart. She folded up the letter with neat propriety, however, and handed it back to John Ayliffe, saying, in her very sweetest tones, "Well, I do not think this so very bad as you seem to imagine. They have found out that your mother is still living, and that is all. They cannot make much of that." "Not much of that!" exclaimed John Ayliffe, now nearly driven to frenzy, "what if they convict me of perjury for swearing she was dead?" "Did you swear she was dead?" exclaimed Mrs. Hazleton with an exceedingly well assumed look of profound astonishment. "To be sure I did," he answered. "Why you proposed that she should be sent away yourself, and Shanks drew out the affidavit." A mingled look of consternation and indignation came into Mrs. Hazleton's beautiful face; but before she could make any reply he went on, thinking he had frightened her, which was in itself a satisfaction and a sort of triumph. "Ay, that you did," he said, "and not only that, but you advanced me all the money to carry on the suit, and I am told that that is punishable by law. Besides, you knew quite well of the leaf being torn out of the register, so we are in the same basket I can tell you, Mrs. Hazleton." "Sir, you insult me," said the lady, rising with an air of imperious dignity. "The charity which induced me to advance you different sums of money, without knowing what they were to be applied to--and I can prove that some of them were applied to very different purposes than a suit at law--has been misunderstood, I see. Had I advanced them to carry on this suit, they would have been paid to your and my lawyer, not to yourself. Not a word more, if you please! You have mistaken my character as well as my motives, if you suppose that I will suffer you to remain here one moment after you have insulted me by the very thought that I was any sharer in your nefarious transactions." She spoke in a loud shrill tone, knowing that the servants were in the hall hard by, and then she added, "Save me the pain, sir, of ordering some of the men to put you out of the house by quitting it directly." "Oh, yes, I will go, I will go," cried John Ayliffe, now quite maddened, "I will go to the devil, and you too, madam," and he burst out of the room, leaving the door open behind him. "I can compassionate misfortune," cried Mrs. Hazleton, raising her voice to the very highest pitch for the benefit of others, "but I will have nothing to do with roguery and fraud," and as she heard his horse's feet clatter over the terrace, she heartily wished he might break his neck before he passed the park gates. How far she was satisfied, and how far she was not, must be shown in another chapter. CHAPTER XXXV. John Ayliffe got out of the park gates quite safely, though he rode down the slope covered with loose stones, as if he had no consideration for his own neck or his horse's knees. He was in a state of desperation, however, and feared little at that moment what became of himself or any thing else. With fierce and angry eagerness he revolved in his own mind the circumstances of his situation, the conduct of Mrs. Hazleton, the folly, as he was pleased to term it, of his mother, the crimes which he had himself committed, and he found no place of refuge in all the dreary waste of thought. Every thing around looked menacing and terrible, and the world within was all dark and stormy. He pushed his horse some way on the road which he had come, but suddenly a new thought struck him. He resolved to seek advice and aid from one whom he had previously determined to avoid. "I will go to Shanks," he said to himself, "he at least is in the same basket with myself. He must work with me, for if my mother has been fool enough to keep my letters, I have been wise enough to keep his--perhaps something may be done after all. If not, he shall go along with me, and we will try if we cannot bring that woman in too. He can prove all her sayings and doings." Thus thinking, he turned his horse's head towards the lawyer's house, and rode as hard as he could go till he reached it. Mr. Shanks was enjoying life over a quiet comfortable bowl of punch in a little room which looked much more tidy and comfortable, than it had done twelve or eighteen months before. Mr. Shanks had been well paid. Mr. Shanks had taken care of himself. No small portion of back rents and costs had gone into the pockets of Mr. Shanks. Mr. Shanks was all that he had ever desired to be, an opulent man. Moreover, he was one of those happily constituted mortals who knew the true use of wealth--to make it a means of enjoyment. He had no scruples of conscience--not he. He little cared how the money came, so that it found its way into his pocket. He was not a man to let his mind be troubled by any unpleasant remembrances; for he had a maxim that every man's duty was to do the very best he could for his client, and that every man's first client was himself. He heard a horse stop at his door, and having made up his mind to end the night comfortably, to finish his punch and go to bed, he might perhaps have been a little annoyed, had he not consoled himself with the thought that the call must be upon business of importance, and he had no idea of business of importance unconnected with that of a large fee. "To draw a will, I'll bet any money," said Mr. Shanks to himself; "it is either old Sir Peter, dying of indigestion, and sent for me when he's no longer able to speak, or John Ayliffe broken his neck leaping over a five-barred gate--John Ayliffe, bless us all, Sir John Hastings I should have said." But the natural voice of John Ayliffe, asking for him in a loud impatient tone, dispelled these visions of his fancy, and in another moment the young man was in the room. "Ah, Sir John, very glad to see you, very glad to see you," said Mr. Shanks, shaking his visitor's hand, and knocking out the ashes of his pipe upon the hob; "just come in pudding time, my dear sir--just in time for a glass of punch--bring some more lemons and some sugar, Betty. A glass of punch will do you good. It is rather cold to-night." "As hot as h--l," answered John Ayliffe, sharply; "but I'll have the punch notwithstanding," and he seated himself while the maid proceeded to fulfil her master's orders. Mr. Shanks evidently saw that something had gone wrong with his young and distinguished client, but anticipating no evil, he was led to consider whether it was any thing referring to a litter of puppies, a favorite horse, a fire at the hall, a robbery, or a want of some more ready money. At length, however, the fresh lemons and sugar were brought, and the door closed, before which time John Ayliffe had helped himself to almost all the punch which he had found remaining in the bowl. It was not much, but it was strong, and Mr. Shanks applied himself to the preparation of some more medicine of the same sort. John Ayliffe suffered him to finish before he said any thing to disturb him, not from any abstract reverence for the office which Mr. Shanks was fulfilling, or for love of the beverage he was brewing, but simply because John Ayliffe began to find that he might as well consider his course a little. Consideration seldom served him very much, and in the present instance, after he had labored hard to find out the best way of breaking the matter, his impetuosity as usual got the better of him, and he thrust his mother's letter into Mr. Shanks's hand, out of which as a preliminary he took the ladle and helped himself to another glass of punch. The consternation of Mr. Shanks, as he read Mrs. Ayliffe's letter, stood out in strong opposition to Mrs. Hazleton's sweet calmness. He was evidently as much terrified as his client; for Mr. Shanks did not forget that he had written Mrs. Ayliffe two letters since she was abroad, and as she had kept her son's epistles, Mr. Shanks argued that it was very likely she had kept his also. Their contents, taken alone, might amount to very little, but looked at in conjunction with other circumstances might amount to a great deal. True, Mr. Shanks had avoided, as far as he could, any discussions in regard to the more delicate secrets of his profession in the presence of Mrs. Ayliffe, of whose discretion he was not as firmly convinced as he could have desired; but it was not always possible to do so, especially when he had been obliged to seek John Ayliffe in haste at her house; and now the memories of many long and dangerous conversations which had occurred in her presence, spread themselves out before his eyes in a regular row, like items on the leaves of a ledger. "Good God!" he cried, "what has she done?" "Every thing she ought not to have done, of course!" replied John Ayliffe, replenishing his glass, "but the question now is, Shanks, what are we to do? That is the great question just now." "It is indeed," answered Mr. Shanks, in great agitation; "this is very awkward, very awkward indeed." "I know that," answered John Ayliffe, laconically. "Well but, sir, what is to be done?" asked Mr. Shanks, fidgeting uneasily about the table. "That is what I come to ask you, not to tell you," answered the young man; "you see, Shanks, you and I are exactly in the same case, only I have more to lose than you have. But whatever happens to me will happen to you, depend upon it. I am not going to be the only one, whatever Mrs. Hazleton may think." Shanks caught at Mrs. Hazleton's name; "Ay, that's a good thought," he said, "we had better go and consult her. Let us put our three heads together, and we may beat them yet--perhaps." "No use of going to her," answered John Ayliffe, bitterly; "I have been to her, and she is a thorough vixen. She cried off having any thing to do with me, and when I just told her quietly that she ought to help me out of the scrape because she had a hand in getting me into it, she flew at my throat like a terrier bitch with a litter of puppies, barked me out of the house as if I had been a beggar, and called me almost rogue and swindler in the hearing of her own servants." Mr. Shanks smiled--he could not refrain from smiling with a feeling of admiration and respect, even in that moment of bitter apprehension, at the decision, skill, and wisdom of Mrs. Hazleton's conduct. He approved of her highly; but he perceived quite plainly that it would not do for him to play the same game. A hope--a feeble hope--light through a loop-hole, came in upon him in regard to the future, suggested by Mrs. Hazleton's conduct. He thought that if he could but clear away some difficulties, he too might throw all blame upon John Ayliffe, and shovel the load of infamy from his own shoulders to those of his client; but to effect this, it was not only necessary that he should soothe John Ayliffe, but that he should provide for his safety and escape. Recriminations he was aware were very dangerous things, and that unless a man takes care that it shall not be in the power or for the interest of a fellow rogue to say _tu quoque_, the effort to place the burden on his shoulders only injures him without making our own case a bit better. It was therefore requisite for his purposes that he should deprive John Ayliffe of all interest or object in criminating him; but foolish knaves are very often difficult to deal with, and he knew his young client to be eminent in that class. Wishing for a little time to consider, he took occasion to ask one or two meaningless questions, without at all attending to the replies. "When did this letter arrive here?" he inquired. "This very night," answered John Ayliffe, "not three hours ago." "Do you think she has really told all?" asked Mr. Shanks. "All, and a great deal more," replied the young man. "How long has she been at St. Germain?" said the lawyer. "What the devil does that signify?" said John Ayliffe, growing impatient. "A great deal, a great deal," replied Mr. Shanks, sagely. "Take some more punch. You see perhaps we can prove that you and I really thought her dead at the time the affidavit was made." "Devilish difficult that," said John Ayliffe, taking the punch. "She wrote to me about some more money just at that time, and I was obliged to answer her letter and send it, so that if they have got the letters that won't pass." "We'll try at least," said Mr. Shanks in a bolder tone. "Ay, but in trying we may burn our fingers worse than ever," said the young man. "I do not want to be tried for perjury and conspiracy, and sent to the colonies with the palm of my hand burnt out, whatever you may do, Shanks." "No, no, that would never do," replied the lawyer. "The first thing to be done, my dear Sir John, is to provide for your safety, and that can only be done by your getting out of the way for a time. It is very natural that a young gentleman of fortune like yourself should go to travel, and not at all unlikely that he should do so without letting any one know where he is for a few months. That will be the best plan for you--you must go and travel. They can't well be on the look-out for you yet, and you can get away quite safely to-morrow morning. You need not say where you are going, and by that means you will save both yourself and the property too; for they can't proceed against you in any way when you are absent." John Ayliffe was not sufficiently versed in the laws of the land to perceive that Mr. Shanks was telling him a falsehood. "That's a good thought," he said; "if I can live abroad and keep hold of the rents we shall be safe enough." "Certainly, certainly," said Mr. Shanks, "that is the only plan. Then let them file their bills, or bring their actions or what not. They cannot compel you to answer if you are not within the realm." Mr. Shanks was calling him all the time, in his own mind, a jolter-headed ass, but John Ayliffe did not perceive it, and replied with a touch of good feeling, perhaps inspired by the punch, "But what is to become of you, Shanks?" "Oh, I will stay and face it out," replied the lawyer, "with a bold front. If we do not peach of each other they cannot do much against us. Mrs. Hazleton dare not commit us, for by so doing she would commit herself; and your mother's story will not avail very much. As to the letters, which is the worst part of the business, we must try and explain those away; but clearly the first thing for you to do is to get out of England as soon as possible. You can go and see your mother secretly, and if you can but get her to prevaricate a little in her testimony it will knock it all up." "Oh, she'll prevaricate enough if they do but press her hard," said John Ayliffe. "She gets so frightened at the least thing she does'nt know what she says. But the worst of it is, Shanks, I have not got money enough to go. I have not got above a hundred guineas in the house." Mr. Shanks paused and hesitated. It was a very great object with him to get John Ayliffe out of the country, in order that he might say any thing he liked of John Ayliffe when his back was turned, but it was also a very great object with him to keep all the money he had got. He did not like to part with one sixpence of it. After a few moments' thought, however, he recollected that a thousand pounds' worth of plate had come down from London for the young man within the last two months, and he thought he might make a profitable arrangement. "I have got three hundred pounds in the house," he said, "all in good gold, but I can really hardly afford to part with it. However, rather than injure you, Sir John, I will let you have it if you will give me the custody of your plate till your return, just that I may have something to show if any one presses me for money." The predominant desire of John Ayliffe's mind, at that moment, was to get out of England as fast as possible, and he was too much blinded by fear and anxiety to perceive that the great desire of Mr. Shanks was to get him out. But there was one impediment. The sum of four hundred pounds thus placed at his command would, some years before, have appeared the Indies to him, but now, with vastly expanded ideas with regard to expense, it seemed a drop of water in the ocean. "Three hundred pounds. Shanks," he said, "what's the use of three hundred pounds? It would not keep me a month." "God bless my soul!" said Mr. Shanks, horrified at such a notion, "why it would keep me a whole year, and more too. Moreover, things are cheaper there than they are here; and besides you have got all those jewels, and knick-knacks, and things, which cost you at least a couple of thousand pounds. They would sell for a great deal." "Come, come, Shanks," said the young man, "you must make it five hundred guineas. I know you've got them in your strong box here." Shanks shook his head, and John Ayliffe added sullenly, "Then I'll stay and fight it out too. I won't go and be a beggar in a foreign land." Shanks did not like the idea of his staying, and after some farther discussion a compromise was effected. Mr. Shanks agreed to advance four hundred pounds. John Ayliffe was to make over to him, as a pledge, the whole of his plate, and not to object to a memorandum to that effect being drawn up immediately, and dated a month before. The young man was to set off the very next day, in the pleasant gray of the morning, driving his own carriage and horses, which he was to sell as soon as he got a convenient distance from his house, and Mr. Shanks was to take the very best possible care of his interests during his absence. John Ayliffe's spirits rose at the conclusion of this transaction. He calculated that with one thing or another he should have sufficient money to last him a year, and that was quite as far as his thoughts or expectations went. A long, long year! What does youth care for any thing beyond a year? It seems the very end of life to pant in expectation, and indeed, and in truth, it is very often too long for fate. "Next year I will"--Pause, young man! there is a deep pitfall in the way. Between you and another year may be death. Next year thou wilt do nothing--thou wilt be nothing. His spirits rose. He put the money into his pocket, and, with more wit than he thought, called it "light heaviness," and then he sat down and smoked a pipe, while Mr. Shanks drew up the paper; and then he drank punch, and made more, and drank that too, so that when the paper giving Mr. Shanks a lien upon the silver was completed, and when a dull neighbor had been called in to see him sign his name, it needed a witness indeed to prove that that name was John Ayliffe's writing. By this time he would very willingly have treated the company to a song, so complete had been the change which punch and new prospects had effected; but Mr. Shanks besought him to be quiet, hinting that the neighbor, though as deaf as a post and blind as a mole, would think him as the celebrated sow of the psalmist. Thereupon John Ayliffe went forth and got his horse out of the stable, mounted upon his back, and rode lolling at a sauntering pace through the end of the town in which Mr. Shanks's house was situated. When he got more into the country he began to trot, then let the horse fall into a walk again, and then he beat him for going slow. Thus alternately galloping, walking, and trotting, he rode on till he was two or three hundred yards past the gates of what was called the Court, where the family of Sir Philip Hastings now lived. It was rather a dark part of the road, and there was something white in the hedge--some linen put out to dry, or a milestone. John Ayliffe was going at a quick pace at that moment, and the horse suddenly shied at this white apparition--not only shied, but started, wheeled round, and ran back. John Ayliffe kept his seat, notwithstanding his tipsiness, but he struck the furious horse over the head, and pulled the rein violently. The animal plunged--reared--the young man gave the rein a furious tug, and over went the horse upon the road, with his driver under him. CHAPTER XXXVI. There was a man lay upon the road in the darkness of the night for some five or six minutes, and a horse galloped away snorting, with a broken bridle hanging at his head, on the way towards the park of Sir Philip Hastings. Had any carriage come along, the man who was lying there must have been run over; for the night was exceedingly dark, and the road narrow. All was still and silent, however. No one was seen moving--not a sound was heard except the distant clack of a water-mill which lay further down the valley. There was a candle in a cottage window at about a hundred yards' distance, which shot a dim and feeble ray athwart the road, but shed no light on the spot where the man lay. At the end of about six minutes, a sort of convulsive movement showed that life was not yet extinct in his frame--a sort of heave of the chest, and a sudden twitch of the arm; and a minute or two after, John Ayliffe raised himself on his elbow, and put his hand to his head. "Curse the brute," he said, in a wandering sort of way, "I wonder, Shanks, you don't--damn it, where am I?--what's the matter? My side and leg are cursed sore, and my head all running round." He remained in the same position for a moment or two more, and then got upon his feet; but the instant he did so he fell to the ground again with a deep groan, exclaiming, "By ----, my leg's broken, and I believe my ribs too. How the devil shall I get out of this scrape? Here I may lie and die, without any body ever coming near me. That is old Jenny Best's cottage, I believe. I wonder if I could make the old canting wretch hear," and he raised his voice to shout, but the pain was too great. His ribs were indeed broken, and pressing upon his lungs, and all that he could do was to lie still and groan. About a quarter of an hour after, however, a stout, middle-aged man--rather, perhaps, in the decline of life--came by, carrying a hand-basket, plodding at a slow and weary pace as if he had had a long walk. "Who's that? Is any one there?" said a feeble voice, as he approached; and he ran up, exclaiming, "Gracious me, what is the matter? Are you hurt, sir? What has happened?" "Is that you, Best?" said the feeble voice of John Ayliffe, "my horse has reared and fallen over with me. My leg is broken, and the bone poking through, and my ribs are broken too, I think." "Stay a minute, Sir John," said the good countryman, "and I'll get help, and we'll carry you up to the Hall." "No, no," answered John Ayliffe, who had now had time for thought, "get a mattress, or a door, or something, and carry me into your cottage. If your son is at home, he and you can carry me. Don't send for strangers." "I dare say he is at home, sir," replied the man. "He's a good lad, sir, and comes home as soon as his work's done. I will go and see. I won't be a minute." He was as good as his word, and in less than a minute returned with his son, bringing a lantern and a straw mattress. Not without inflicting great pain, and drawing forth many a heavy groan, the old man and the young one placed John Ayliffe on the paliasse, and carried him into the cottage, where he was laid upon young Best's bed in the back room. Good Jenny Best, as John Ayliffe had called her--an excellent creature as ever lived--was all kindness and attention, although to say truth the suffering man had not shown any great kindness to her and hers in his days of prosperity. She was eager to send off her son immediately for the surgeon, and did so in the end; but to the surprise of the whole of the little cottage party, it was not without a great deal of reluctance and hesitation that John Ayliffe suffered this to be done. They showed him, however, that he must die or lose his limb if surgical assistance was not immediately procured, and he ultimately consented, but told the young man repeatedly not to mention his name even to the surgeon on any account, but simply to say that a gentleman had been thrown by his horse, and brought into the cottage with his thigh broken. He cautioned father and mother too not to mention the accident to any one till he was well again, alluding vaguely to reasons that he had for wishing to conceal it. "But, Sir John," replied Best himself, "your horse will go home, depend upon it, and your servants will not know where you are, and there will be a fuss about you all over the country." "Well, then, let them make a fuss," said John Ayliffe, impatiently. "I don't care--I will not have it mentioned." All this seemed very strange to the good man and his wife, but they could only open their eyes and stare, without venturing farther to oppose the wishes of their guest. It seemed a very long time before the surgeon made his appearance, but at length the sound of a horse's feet coming fast, could be distinguished, and two minutes after the surgeon was in the room. He was a very good man, though not the most skilful of his profession, and he was really shocked and confounded when he saw the state of Sir John Hastings, as he called him. Wanting confidence in himself, he would fain have sent off immediately for farther assistance, but John Ayliffe would not hear of such a thing, and the good man went to work to set the broken limb as best he might, and relieve the anguish of the sufferer. So severe, however, were the injuries which had been received, that notwithstanding a strong constitution, as yet but little impaired by debauchery, the patient was given over by the surgeon in his own mind from the first. He remained with him, watching him all night, which passed nearly without sleep on the part of John Ayliffe; and in the course of the long waking hours he took an opportunity of enjoining secrecy upon the surgeon as to the accident which had happened to him, and the place where he was lying. Not less surprised was the worthy man than the cottager and his wife had been at the young gentleman's exceeding anxiety for concealment, and as his licentious habits were no secret in the country round, they all naturally concluded that the misfortune which had overtaken him had occurred in the course of some adventure more dangerous and disgraceful than usual. Towards morning John Ayliffe fell into a sort of semi-sleep, restless and perturbed, speaking often without reason having guidance of his words, and uttering many things which, though disjointed and often indistinct, showed the good man who had watched by him that the mind was as much affected as the body. He woke confused and wandering about eight o'clock, but speedily returned to consciousness of his situation, and insisted, notwithstanding the pain he was suffering, upon examining the money which was in his pockets to see that it was all right. Vain precaution! He was never destined to need it more. Shortly after the surgeon left him, but returned at night again to watch by his bedside. The bodily symptoms which he now perceived would have led him to believe that a cure was possible, but there was a deep depression of mind, a heavy irritable sombreness, from the result of which the surgeon augured much evil. He saw that there was some terrible weight upon the young man's heart, but whether it was fear or remorse or disappointment he could not tell, and more than once he repeated to himself, "He wants a priest as much as a physician." Again the surgeon would often argue with himself in regard to the propriety of telling him the very dangerous state in which he was. "He may at any time become delirious," he said, "and lose all power of making those dispositions and arrangements which, I dare say, have never been thought of in the time of health and prosperity. Then, again, his house and all that it contains is left entirely in the hands of servants--a bad set too, as ever existed, who are just as likely to plunder and destroy as not; but on the other hand, if I tell him it may only increase his dejection and cut off all hope of recovery. Really I do not know what to do. Perhaps it would be better to wait awhile, and if I should see more unfavorable symptoms and no chance left, it will then be time enough to tell him his true situation and prepare his mind for the result." Another restless, feverish night passed, another troubled sleep towards morning, and then John Ayliffe woke with a start, exclaiming, "You did not tell them I was here--lying here unable to stir, unable to move--I told you not, I told you not. By ----" and then he looked round, and seeing none but the surgeon in the room, relapsed into silence. The surgeon felt his pulse, examined the bandages, and saw that a considerable and unfavorable change had taken place; but yet he hesitated. He was one of those men who shrink from the task of telling unpleasant truths. He was of a gentle and a kindly disposition, which even the necessary cruelties of surgery had not been able to harden. "He may say what he likes," he said, "I must have some advice as to how I should act. I will go and talk with the parson about the matter. Though a little lacking in the knowledge of the world, yet Dixwell is a good man and a sincere Christian. I will see him as I go home, but make him promise secrecy in the first place, as this young baronet is so terribly afraid of the unfortunate affair being known. He will die, I am afraid, and that before very long, and I am sure he is not in a fit state for death." With this resolution he said some soothing words to his patient, gave him what he called a composing draught, and sent for his horse from a neighboring farm-house, where he had lodged it for the night. He then rode at a quiet, thoughtful pace to the parsonage house at the gates of the park, and quickly walked in. Mr. Dixwell was at breakfast, reading slowly one of the broad sheets of the day as an especial treat, for they seldom found their way into his quiet rectory; but he was very glad to see the surgeon, with whom he often contrived to have a pleasant little chat in regard to the affairs of the neighborhood. "Ah, Mr. Short, very glad to see you, my good friend. How go things in your part of the world? We are rather in a little bustle here, though I think it is no great matter." "What is it, Mr. Dixwell?" asked the surgeon. "Only that wild young man, Sir John Hastings," said the clergyman, "left his house suddenly on horseback the night before last, and has never returned. But he is accustomed to do all manner of strange things, and has often been out two or three nights before without any one knowing where he was. The butler came down and spoke to me about it, but I think there was a good deal of affectation in his alarm, for when I asked him he owned his master had once been away for a whole week." "Has his horse come back?" asked the surgeon. "Not that I know of," replied Mr. Dixwell. "I suppose the man would have mentioned it if such had been the case. But what is going on at Hartwell?" "Nothing particular," said the surgeon, "only Mrs. Harrison brought to bed of twins on Saturday night at twenty minutes past eleven. I think all those Harrisons have twins--but I have something to talk to you about, my good friend, a sort of case of conscience I want to put to you. Only you must promise me profound secrecy." Mr. Dixwell laughed--"What, under the seal of confession?" he said. "Well, well, I am no papist, as you know, Short, but I'll promise and do better than any papist does, keep my word when I have promised without mental reservation." "I know you will, my good friend," answered the surgeon, "and this is no jesting matter, I can assure you. Now listen, my good friend, listen. Not many evenings ago, I was sent for suddenly to attend a young man who had met with an accident, a very terrible accident too. He had a compound fracture of the thigh, three of his ribs broken, and his head a good deal knocked about, but the cranium uninjured. I had at first tolerable hope of his recovery; but he is getting much worse and I fear that he will die." "Well, you can't help that," said Mr. Dixwell, "men will die in spite of all you can do, Short, just as they will sin in spite of all I can say." "Ay, there's the rub," said the surgeon. "I fear he has sinned a very tolerably sufficient quantity, and I can see that there is something or another weighing very heavy on his mind, which is even doing great harm to his body." "I will go and see him, I will go and see him," said Mr. Dixwell, "it will do him good in all ways to unburden his conscience, and to hear the comfortable words of the gospel." "But the case is, Mr. Dixwell," said Short, "that he has positively forbidden me to let any of his friends know where he lies, or to speak of the accident to any one." "Pooh, nonsense," said the clergyman, "if a man has fractured his skull and you thought it fit to trepan him, would you ask him whether he liked it or not? If the young man is near death, and his conscience is burdened, I am the physician who should be sent for rather than you." "I fancy his conscience is burdened a good deal," said Mr. Short, thoughtfully; "nay, I cannot help thinking that he was engaged in some very bad act at the time this happened, both from his anxiety to conceal from every body where he now lies, and from various words he has dropped, sometimes in his sleep, sometimes when waking confused and half delirious. What puzzles me is, whether I should tell him his actual situation or not." "Tell him, tell him by all means," said Mr. Dixwell, "why should you not tell him?" "Simply because I think that it will depress his mind still more," replied the surgeon, "and that may tend to deprive him even of the very small chance that exists of recovery." "The soul is of more value than the body," replied the clergyman, earnestly; "if he be the man you depict, my friend, he should have as much time as possible to prepare--he should have time to repent--ay, and to atone. Tell him by all means, or let me know where he is to be found, and I will tell him." "That I must not do," said Mr. Short, "for I am under a sort of promise not to tell; but if you really think that I ought to tell him myself, I will go back and do it." "If I really think!" exclaimed Mr. Dixwell, "I have not the slightest doubt of it. It is your bounden duty if you be a Christian. Not only tell him, my good friend, but urge him strongly to send for some minister of religion. Though friends may fail him, and he may not wish to see them--though all worldly supports may give way beneath him, and he may find no strengthening--though all earthly hopes may pass away, and give him no mortal cheer, the gospel of Christ can never fail to support, and strengthen, and comfort, and elevate. The sooner he knows that his tenement of clay is falling to the dust of which it was raised, the better will be his readiness to quit it, and it is wise, most wise, to shake ourselves free altogether from the dust and crumbling ruins of this temporal state, ere they fall upon our heads and bear us down to the same destruction as themselves." "Well, well, I will go back and tell him," said Mr. Short, and bidding the good rector adieu, he once more mounted his horse and rode away. Now Mr. Dixwell was an excellent good man, but he was not without certain foibles, especially those that sometimes accompany considerable simplicity of character. "I will see which way he takes," said Mr. Dixwell, "and go and visit the young man myself if I can find him out;" and accordingly he marched up stairs to his bedroom, which commanded a somewhat extensive prospect of the country, and traced the surgeon, as he trotted slowly and thoughtfully along. He could not actually see the cottage of the Bests, but he perceived that the surgeon there passed over the brow of the hill, and after waiting for several minutes, he did not catch any horseman rising upon the opposite slope over which the road was continued. Now there was no cross road in the hollow and only three houses, and therefore Mr. Dixwell naturally concluded that to one of those three houses the surgeon had gone. In the mean while, Mr. Short rode on unconscious that his movements were observed, and meditating with a troubled mind upon the best means of conveying the terrible intelligence he had to communicate. He did not like the task at all; but yet he resolved to perform it manfully, and dismounting at the cottage door, he went in again. There was nobody within but the sick man and good old Jenny Best. The old woman was at the moment in the outer room, and when she saw the surgeon she shook her head, and said in a low voice, "Ah, dear, I am glad you have come back again, sir, he does not seem right at all." "Who's that?" said the voice of John Ayliffe; and going in, Mr. Short closed the doors between the two rooms. "There, don't shut that door," said John Ayliffe, "it is so infernally close--I don't feel at all well, Mr. Short--I don't know what's the matter with me. It's just as if I had got no heart. I think a glass of brandy would do me good." "It would kill you," said the surgeon. "Well," said the young man, "I'm not sure that would not be best for me--come," he continued sharply, "tell me how long I am to lie here on my back?" "That I cannot tell, Sir John," replied the surgeon, "but at all events, supposing that you do recover, and that every thing goes well, you could not hope to move for two or three months." "Supposing I was to recover!" repeated John Ayliffe in a low tone, as if the idea of approaching death had then, for the first time, struck him as something real and tangible, and not a mere name. He paused silently for an instant, and then asked almost fiercely, "what brought you back?" "Why, Sir John, I thought it might be better for us to have a little conversation," said the surgeon. "I can't help being afraid, Sir John, that you may have a great number of things to settle, and that not anticipating such a very severe accident, your affairs may want a good deal of arranging. Now the event of all sickness is uncertain, and an accident such as this especially. It is my duty to inform you," he continued, rising in resolution and energy as he proceeded, "that your case is by no means free from danger--very great danger indeed." "Do you mean to say that I am dying?" asked John Ayliffe, in a hoarse voice. "No, no, not exactly dying," said the surgeon, putting his hand upon his pulse, "not dying I trust just yet, but--" "But I shall die, you mean?" cried the other. "I think it not at all improbable," answered the surgeon, gravely, "that the case may have a fatal result." "Curse fatal results," cried John Ayliffe, giving way to a burst of fury; "why the devil do you come back to tell me such things and make me wretched? If I am to die, why can't you let me die quietly and know nothing about it?" "Why, Sir John, I thought that you might have many matters to settle," answered the surgeon somewhat irritated, "and that your temporal and your spiritual welfare also required you should know your real situation." "Spiritual d----d nonsense!" exclaimed John Ayliffe, furiously; "I dare say it's all by your folly and stupidity that I am likely to die at all. Why I hear of men breaking their legs and their ribs every day and being none the worse for it." "Why, Sir John, if you do not like my advice you need not have it," answered the surgeon; "I earnestly wished to send for other assistance, and you would not let me." "There, go away, go away and leave me," said John Ayliffe; but as the surgeon took up his hat and walked towards the door, he added, "come again at night. You shall be well paid for it, never fear." Mr. Short made no reply, but walked out of the room. CHAPTER XXXVII. Solitude and silence, and bitter thought are great tamers of the human heart. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap," says the Apostle, and John Ayliffe was now forced to put in the sickle. Death was before his eyes, looming large and dark and terrible, like the rock of adamant in the fairy tale, against which the bark of the adventurous mariner was sure to be dashed. Death for the first time presented itself to his mind in all its grim reality. Previously it had seemed with him a thing hardly worth considering--inevitable--appointed to all men--to every thing that lives and breathes--no more to man than to the sheep, or the ox, or any other of the beasts that perish. He had contemplated it merely as death--as the extinction of being--as the goal of a career--as the end of a chase where one might lie down and rest, and forget the labor and the clamor and the trouble of the course. He had never in thought looked beyond the boundary--he had hardly asked himself if there was aught beyond. He had satisfied himself by saying, as so many men do, "Every man must die some time or another," and had never asked his own heart, "What is it to die?" But now death presented itself under a new aspect; cold and stern, relentless and mysterious, saying in a low solemn tone, "I am the guide. Follow me there. Whither I lead thou knowest not, nor seest what shall befall thee. The earth-worm and the mole fret but the earthly garment of the man; the flesh, and the bones, and the beauty go down to dust, and ashes, and corruption. The man comes with me to a land undeclared--to a presence infinitely awful--to judgment and to fate; for on this side of the dark portal through which I am the guide, there is no such thing as fate. It lies beyond the grave, and thither thou must come without delay." He had heard of immortality, but he had never thought of it. He had been told of another world, but he had never rightly believed in it. The thought of a just judge, and of an eternal doom, had been presented to him in many shapes, but he had never received it; and he had lived and acted, and thought and felt, as if there were neither eternity, nor judgment, nor punishment. But in that dread hour the deep-rooted, inexplicable conviction of a God and immortality, implanted in the hearts of all men, and only crushed down in the breasts of any by the dust of vanity and the lumber of the world, rose up and bore its fruits according to the soil. They were all bitter. If there were another life, a judgment, an eternity of weal or woe, what was to be his fate? How should he meet the terrors of the judgment-seat--he who had never prayed from boyhood--he who through life had never sought God--he who had done in every act something that conscience reproved, and that religion forbade? Every moment as he lay there and thought, the terrors of the vast unbounded future grew greater and more awful. The contemplation almost drove him to frenzy, and he actually made an effort to rise from his bed, but fell back again with a deep groan. The sound caught the ear of good Jenny Best, and running in she asked if he wanted any thing. "Stay with me, stay with me," said the unhappy young man, "I cannot bear this--it is very terrible--I am dying, Mrs. Best, I am dying." Mrs. Best shook her head with a melancholy look; but whether from blunted feelings, from the hard and painful life which they endured, or from a sense that there is to be compensation somewhere, and that any change must be for the better, or cannot be much worse than the life of this earth, or from want of active imagination, the poorer and less educated classes I have generally remarked view death and all its accessories with less of awe, if not of dread, than those who have been surrounded by luxuries, and perhaps have used every effort to keep the contemplation of the last dread scene afar, till it is actually forced upon their notice. Her words were homely, and though intended to comfort did not give much consolation to the dying man. "Ah well, sir, it is very sad," she said, "to die so young; though every one must die sooner or later, and it makes but little difference whether it be now or then. Life is not so long to look back at, sir, as to look forward to, and when one dies young one is spared many a thing. I recollect my poor eldest son who is gone, when he lay dying just like you in that very bed, and I was taking on sadly, he said to me, 'Mother don't cry so. It's just as well for me to go now when I've not done much mischief or suffered much sorrow.' He was as good a young man as ever lived; and so Mr. Dixwell said; for the parson used to come and see him every day, and that was a great comfort and consolation to the poor boy." "Was it?" said John Ayliffe, thoughtfully. "How long did he know he was dying?" "Not much above a week, sir," said Mrs. Best; "for till Mr. Dixwell told him, he always thought he would get better. We knew it a long time however, for he had been in a decline a year, and his father had been laying by money for the funeral three months before he died. So when it was all over we put him by quite comfortable." "Put him by!" said John Ayliffe. "Yes, sir, we buried him, I mean," answered Mrs. Best. "That's our way of talking. But Mr. Dixwell had been to see him long before. He knew that he was dying, and he wouldn't tell him as long as there was any hope; for he said it was not necessary--that he had never seen any one better prepared to meet his Maker than poor Robert, and that it was no use to disturb him about the matter till it came very near." "Ah, Dixwell is a wise man and a good man," said John Ayliffe. "I should very much like to see him." "I can run for him in a minute sir," said Dame Best, but John Ayliffe replied, in a faint voice, "No, no, don't, don't on any account." In the mean while, the very person of whom they were speaking had descended from the up-stairs room, finished his breakfast in order to give the surgeon time to fulfil his errand, and then putting on his three-cornered hat had walked out to ascertain at what house Mr. Short had stopped. The first place at which he inquired was the farm-house at which the good surgeon had stabled his horse on the preceding night. Entering by the kitchen door, he found the good woman of the place bustling about amongst pots and pans and maidservants, and other utensils, and though she received him with much reverence, she did not for a moment cease her work. "Well, Dame," he said, "I hope you're all well here." "Quite well, your reverence--Betty, empty that pail." "Why, I've seen Mr. Short come down here," said the parson, "and I thought somebody might be ill." "Very kind, your reverence--mind you don't spill it.--No, it warn't here. It's some young man down at Jenny Best's, who's baddish, I fancy, for the Doctor stabled his horse here last night." "I am glad to hear none of you are ill," said Mr. Dixwell, and bidding her good morning, he walked away straight to the cottage where John Ayliffe lay. There was no one in the outer room, and the good clergyman, privileged by his cloth, walked straight on into the room beyond, and stood by the bedside of the dying man before any one was aware of his presence. Mr. Dixwell was not so much surprised to see there on that bed of death the face of him he called Sir John Hastings, as might be supposed. The character which the surgeon had given of his patient, the mysterious absence of the young man from the Hall, and the very circumstance of his unwillingness to have his name and the place where he was lying known, had all lent a suspicion of the truth. John Ayliffe's eyes were shut at the moment he entered, and he seemed dozing, though in truth sleep was far away. But the little movement of Mr. Dixwell towards his bedside, and of Mrs. Best giving place for the clergyman to sit down, caused him to open his eyes, and his first exclamation was, "Ah, Dixwell! so that damned fellow Short has betrayed me, and told when I ordered him not." "Swear not at all," said Mr. Dixwell. "Short has not betrayed you, Sir John. I came here by accident, merely hearing there was a young man lying ill here, but without knowing actually that it was you, although your absence from home has caused considerable uneasiness. I am very sorry to see you in such a state. How did all this happen?" "I will not tell you, nor answer a single word," replied John Ayliffe, "unless you promise not to say a word of my being here to any one. I know you will keep your word if you say so, and Jenny Best too--won't you, Jenny?--but I doubt that fellow Short." "You need not doubt him, Sir John," said the clergyman; "for he is very discreet. As for me, I will promise, and will keep my word; for I see not what good it could be to reveal it to any body if you dislike it. You will be more tenderly nursed here, I am sure, than you would be by unprincipled, dissolute servants, and since your poor mother's death--" John Ayliffe groaned heavily, and the clergyman stopped. The next moment, however, the young man said, "Then you do promise, do you?" "I do," replied Mr. Dixwell. "I will not at all reveal the facts without your consent." "Well, then, sit down, and let us be alone together for a bit," said John Ayliffe, and Mrs. Best quietly quitted the room and shut the door. John Ayliffe turned his languid eyes anxiously upon the clergyman, saying, "I think I am dying, Mr. Dixwell." He would fain have had a contradiction or even a ray of earthly hope; but he got none; for it was evident to the eyes of Mr. Dixwell, accustomed as he had been for many years to attend by the bed of sickness and see the last spark of life go out, that John Ayliffe was a dying man--that he might live hours, nay days; but that the irrevocable summons had been given, that he was within the shadow of the arch, and must pass through! "I am afraid you are, Sir John," he replied, "but I trust that God will still afford you time to make preparation for the great change about to take place, and by his grace I will help you to the utmost in my power." John Ayliffe was silent, and closed his eyes again. Nor was he the first to speak; for after having waited for several minutes, Mr. Dixwell resumed, saying in a grave but kindly tone, "I am afraid, Sir John, you have not hitherto given much thought to the subject which is now so sadly fixed upon you. We must make haste, my good sir; we must not lose a moment." "Then do you think I am going to die so soon?" asked the young man with a look of horror; for it cost him a hard and terrible struggle to bring his mind to grasp the thought of death being inevitable and nigh at hand. He could hardly conceive it--he could hardly believe it--that he who had so lately been full of life and health, who had been scheming schemes, and laying out plans, and had looked upon futurity as a certain possession--that he was to die in a few short hours; but whenever the wilful heart would have rebelled against the sentence, and struggle to resist it, sensations which he had never felt before, told him in a voice not to be mistaken, "It must be so!" "No one can tell," replied Mr. Dixwell, "how soon it may be, or how long God may spare you; but one thing is certain, Sir John, that years with you have now dwindled down into days, and that days may very likely be shortened to hours. But had you still years to live, I should say the same thing, that no time is to be lost; too much has been lost already." John Ayliffe did not comprehend him in the least. He could not grasp the idea as yet of a whole life being made a preparation for death, and looked vacantly in the clergyman's face, utterly confounded at the thought. Mr. Dixwell had a very difficult task before him--one of the most difficult he had ever undertaken; for he had not only to arouse the conscience, but to awaken the intellect to things importing all to the soul's salvation, which had never been either felt or believed, or comprehended before. At first too, there was the natural repugnance and resistance of a wilful, selfish, over-indulged heart to receive painful or terrible truths, and even when the obstacle was overcome, the young man's utter ignorance of religion and want of moral feeling proved another almost insurmountable. He found that the only access to John Ayliffe's heart was by the road of terror, and without scruple he painted in stern and fearful colors the awful state of the impenitent spirit called suddenly into the presence of its God. With an unpitying hand he stripped away all self-delusions from the young man's mind and laid his condition before him, and his future state in all their dark and terrible reality. This is not intended for what is called a religious book, and therefore I must pass over the arguments he used, and the course he proceeded in. Suffice it that he labored earnestly for two hours to awaken something like repentance in the bosom of John Ayliffe, and he succeeded in the end better than the beginning had promised. When thoroughly convinced of the moral danger of his situation, John Ayliffe began to listen more eagerly, to reply more humbly, and to seek earnestly for some consolation beyond the earth. His depression and despair, as terrible truths became known to him were just in proportion to his careless boldness and audacity while he had remained in wilful ignorance, and as soon as Mr. Dixwell saw that all the clinging to earthly expectations was gone--that every frail support of mortal thoughts was taken away, he began to give him gleams of hope from another world, and had the satisfaction of finding that the doubts and terrors which remained arose from the consciousness of his own sins and crimes, the heavy load of which he felt for the first time. He told him that repentance was never too late--he showed, him that Christ himself had stamped that great truth with a mark that could not be mistaken in his pardon of the dying thief upon the cross, and while he exhorted him to examine himself strictly, and to make sure that what he felt was real repentance, and not the mere fear of death which so many mistake for it in their last hours, he assured him that if he could feel certain of that fact, and trust in his Saviour, he might comfort himself and rest in good hope. That done, he resolved to leave the young man to himself for a few hours that he might meditate and try the great question he had propounded with his own heart. He called in Mistress Best, however, and told her that if during his absence Sir John wished her to read to him, it would be a great kindness to read certain passages of Scripture which he pointed out in the house Bible. The good woman very willingly undertook the task, and shortly after the clergyman was gone John Ayliffe applied to hear the words of that book against which he had previously shut his ears. He found comfort and consolation and guidance therein; for Mr. Dixwell, who, on the one subject which had been the study of his life was wise as well as learned, had selected judiciously such passages as tend to inspire hope without diminishing penitence. FOOTNOTES: [1] Continued from page 488, vol. iii. THE CASTLE OF BELVER. AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF ARAGO. The castle of Belver is the state prison of the island of Majorca. The Rev. Henry Christmas, F.R.S., has just published in London three volumes entitled _The Shores and Islands of the Mediterranean_, in which he gives the following account of the confinement within its walls of the illustrious Arago: "Charged by the Emperor Napoleon with the admeasurement of the meridian, Arago was in 1808 in Majorca, and occupying a cottage on the mountain called Clot de Galatzo, when the news came to the island of the recent events at Madrid, and the carrying away of the king. The populace of Palma, never very favorably disposed towards the French, and altogether incapable of comprehending either the merits or the mission of Arago, easily mistook the great astronomer for a political spy, and exasperated at the insult offered to their king and country, determined to take a signal vengeance on the only Frenchman within their power. They took their way in great numbers towards the mountain on which Arago had taken up his abode, fortified in their belief of his evil designs by the fact that he frequently made fires on the mountain-side, and which they took for signals to an imaginary French fleet just about to land an army for the reduction of the island. "The mountain rises just above the coast on which Don Jaime the Conqueror made his descent, and thus it will seem that the islanders were not destitute of some grounds for the suspicions which they entertained, nor without some palliating circumstances in the outrage which they contemplated. It was, however, happily only a design, for M. Arago, warned in time, left his mountain, and directed his steps towards Palma. The person who advertised him of his peril was a man named Damian, the pilot of the brig placed by the Spanish Government at the disposal of the philosopher. Himself a Majorcan, he was taken into the counsel of the plotters, and was thus enabled to save the life of his master. "Dressed in the clothes of a common seaman, with which Damian had provided him, he met on his way the mob, who were bent on his destruction, and who stopped him to inquire about that _maldito gabacho_, of whom they meant to rid the island. As he spoke the language of the country fluently, he gave them that kind of information which was most desirable both to him and to them, and as soon as he arrived at Palma, he made his way to the Spanish brig; but the captain, Don Manual de Vacaro, a Catalonian, (his name ought to be known, to his disgrace, as well as that of Damian to his credit,) absolutely refused to take the astronomer to Barcelona, alleging that he was at Palma for a specific purpose, and could not leave without orders from his Government. When Arago pointed out the danger which threatened his life, and of which the captain was as well aware as himself, the latter coolly pointed out a chest, in which he proposed that M. Arago should take refuge. To this Arago replied by measuring the chest, and showing that there was not room for him in the inside. The next day a frantic mob was assembled on the shore, and it became clear that it was their intention to board the brig. Alarmed now for himself as well as for his colleague, Don Manual assured Arago that he would not answer for his life, and recommended him to constitute himself a prisoner in the castle of Belver, offering to conduct him hither in one of the ship's boats. Seeing what kind of a man, as well as what kind of a mob, he had to do with, Arago accepted the proposal, and just arrived time enough to hear the castle gates closed against his furious pursuers. It seems that all the motions of those on board were watched from the shore, and as soon as the boat was seen to depart, and to take the direction of Belver, the populace poured forth, towards the castle, and had not Arago been a little in advance, his life would have been sacrificed.... He was there as a prisoner two months. "During that time he was told, and he seems to have believed the report, that the monks in the island had attempted to bribe the soldiers to poison him, but that the latter would not consent. It is likely enough that monks, considered as monks, would think it rather meritorious than otherwise to destroy a Frenchman, and a free-thinker, but it would be less probable of Majorcan monks than of any other, and poisoning is not the custom of the island. At the same time the very vehement feeling of the people against him, might put it into the minds of the monks to use monastic arts, and there is an additional probability given to the notion by the conduct of the Captain-general, who, after two months of captivity, sent a message to the prisoner that he would do well to make his escape, and that if he did, it would be winked at. Arago took this excellent advice, sent for M. Rodriguez, who had been appointed by the Spanish Government to aid him in his scientific labors, and by his aid opened a communication with Damian. This worthy man procured a fishing-boat, and took him to Algiers, not daring to land him in France or Spain, and absolutely refusing very large offers made to him for that purpose." THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE: OR, THE SPY IN SOCIETY.[2] TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF M. DE ST. GEORGES. XVI.--MADEMOISELLE CREPINEAU'S LOVER. About the end of May, 1819, on one of those bright sunny days which bring out the blossoms of the lilac, make invalids strong, and young girls healthy, the Duchess of Palma was sitting in the garden of her hotel, in the same place and under the same tree in which we saw her take refuge, to conceal her sorrow and tears, a few months before, on the evening of the brilliant festival when all the principal personages of our story met. A general languor and oppression with complete weakness, the ordinary consequences of her unhappy attempt to commit suicide, had ensued. The deep distress which gnawed at her heart added moral to physical tortures. The Duke of Palma at last perceived the deep indifference of La Felina towards him, and without divining the cause, said that having married without love, all his cares and tenderness had not sufficed to win her heart. He therefore said, that he should be a fool to devote himself any longer to her, and to consecrate his life to a woman to whom, notwithstanding the prejudices of the world, he had given his title and name, without having, as yet, received the most trifling acknowledgment in return! Yet young, immensely rich, volatile and handsome, it was probable that the Duke would not look in vain for some one to console him for the severity of his Duchess. Like many other persons in Paris, the Duke lived _en garçon_ with two houses, two establishments, and, morally speaking, two wives. His second wife was a celebrated _danseuse_ of the Royal Academy of Music, Mlle. G., known as a very agreeably thin woman, and arms rather larger than the true academic proportions--which, however, enabled her to entwine her partner, with an _undulous grace_ that highly excited the old _habitués_ of the opera. The reign of Louis XVIII. was also emphatically the reign of the _danseuses_. Princes, marshals, generals, and nobles, selected their mistresses in the _seraglio_ of the opera. The reign of these ladies was, however, almost _emphyteotic_, that is to say, permanent, and often resulted in the consecration of illegitimate pleasures. MM. de Lauraguais, de Conti, de Letoriers, and others, would have laughed at this. The external life of the Duke was full of attention to the Duchess, with whom he dined regularly. He never, however, breakfasted at the embassy, nor was he there except at his regular receptions. The pious people who had been so shocked at his marriage, took care to say that the Duchess's conduct was the sole cause of her husband's misbehavior. There was nothing, though, in the world to sustain this; for no one had the slightest idea of the secret _liaison_ of Monte-Leone and the embassadress. That was a transient affair, and the shores of the _Lago di Como_ alone had been witnesses of it. Some excuse, however, was indispensably necessary for him. La Felina, as isolated as ever, then sat in a beautiful garden which overlooked the _Champs Elysées_, on the morning we have described. Her face was pale and wearied, and her eyes red from want of sleep. With her head resting on her chest, she seemed a prey to the greatest sorrow. Just then they came to tell her of the visit of Taddeo Rovero. "At last," said she, gladly, "I will know all." Taddeo was close behind the servant who had announced him. He could not repress his surprise, when he saw how changed the Duchess was. The latter saw it and said, "You did not expect, signor, to see an old and ugly woman instead of her you once thought, so beautiful. I have, however, suffered a great deal during the three months you have been away. Without meaning to reproach you, let me say it is three months since I saw you." "Ah! Signora, to me you may assume any guise you please; for neither my eyes, nor heart, distinguish any alteration." "So much the better," said the Duchess with a smile, "for you are perhaps the only person who think me as beautiful as once was. It is something to be thought beautiful when we are not. What, though, is come over you? Why have you been so long in Italy?" "Alas! Signora, bad inducements took me from Paris and from yourself." "All they say, then, is true?" said the Duchess, making Taddeo sit by her; "the Marquise de Maulear has lost her husband? She is a widow?" said she, sadly, and with an effort. "The Marquis died three months since at Rome," said Taddeo. "It is terrible," said the ambassadress, "public rumor said so--I, though, live so much alone that I know nothing more. Excuse me, if I inquire into family secrets--were it not for the interest I entertain for your sister and yourself, I would not do so--" "The death of the Marquis," said Taddeo, "is really a family secret. There is no reason, however, why you should not know it. I am aware to whom I confide it, and have no hesitation in doing so. My story will be brief. The Marquis and I set out for Rome three months ago, to receive the estate of my uncle, Cardinal Felippo Justiniani. We met with many difficulties, but eventually received it. The total was a million of francs, in bonds of the principal bankers of Rome. The half of this sum was paid in cash. I was in mourning, and did not go into society. Besides," added Taddeo, looking tenderly at La Felina, "I had left my heart in Paris--and society and the Carnival pleasures had no charms for me. The Marquis seemed more anxious for amusement than propriety permitted. A few days after having received the half of our inheritance, of which the Marquis had possession, I was surprised to hear that he had not returned home at night. I did not, however, dare to question him; for I thought that he had been tempted by some pleasure party and might be unwilling to answer me. I pretended not to be aware that he was away. For several successive nights this occurred, and at last I ventured to speak to him, telling him what danger he exposed himself to, by straying thus in the streets of Rome. 'I am well armed,' said he, 'and can protect myself against robbers.' Day after day the Marquis seemed more and more engaged. He avoided me, and scarcely ever returned home. One day he was absent. Afraid lest he might have been attacked in the night, I went to the French minister's and caused a minute search to be made--and learned that my brother-in-law had put an end to his own life. He had been enticed by some of his French friends into a gaming house, which foreign speculators had obtained leave to open during the Carnival, and had there lost the five hundred thousand francs which belonged to his wife. In his despair he had drowned himself in the Tiber." "This is terrible," said the Duchess, "are you sure this is so?" "Too sure," said Taddeo, "for not long after, the discovery of the body put all beyond doubt. These, Signora, are the facts of the case; though to save the Marquise's honor we attribute his death to a natural cause." "I thank you, Signor, for your confidence; especially since it gives me a right to pity the sister you love so well, yet more--and also to console you for the death of M. de Maulear. But when did you return?" "A few days ago. I was forced to remain yet longer in Rome to get possession of the remnant of the Cardinal's fortune. My mother also came to Rome to tell Aminta of her misfortune." "How cruelly the young _Marquise_ must suffer," said the Duchess; "how she must need compassion and care!" "She will have ours; and her father-in-law, overcoming his own sorrow, is as tender and fond of her as ever." "Then," said the Duchess, concealing a distress she could not lay aside, "she yet has true and excellent friends--the Count Monte-Leone, for instance, who was so fond of her--" "The Count," said Taddeo, looking strangely at the Duchess, who did not meet his glance, "was received a few days ago by the Marquise." "He will make up for lost time," said La Felina, bitterly, "for now, or perhaps some day, his old hopes may again arise, and perhaps be realized." Taddeo understood why she spoke thus. For a long time his forbearance had been pushed to extremities, and this passion of the Duchess for his friend had given rise to new tortures, too severe to repress the idea of vengeance. He was cruel and barbarous; but he had too severely suffered from La Felina. By a violent course, also, he perhaps wished to crush the love which tortured him. He remarked: "Even though I afflict you, I must say your fancy is likely enough to be realized. The Count possesses rank and a spotless reputation--for without the latter--" "With but the latter," said the Duchess, "he could not enter our family." "Certainly, the Count prepares the Marquise for a future courtship by very constant visits now." "He comes every day to the Hotel to see the Prince and myself. My sister loves to hear him speak of Italy, of which you know he talks so well." La Felina could bear no more. She gave her hand to Taddeo, and with a voice trembling with emotion said: "For the present, adieu! You owe me some compensation for your long absence, and if the lonely life I lead does not afflict you, if you are not too much afraid of an anchorite, come to see me, and you will find me always glad to see you." Taddeo kissed her hand and left her, almost repenting in his generous mind that he had spoken as he did. He was fully avenged, for the Duchess's grief was so great that she felt her heart grow chilled, her limbs stiffen, and her eyes close. Her conversation with Taddeo soon returned to her mind, and she uttered a cry of agony. Her _femme de chambre_ bore her to the Hotel. When alone in her room she said to herself: "He swore to me that he would never be her lover. She may now be his wife. Ah!" continued she, "with cruel and sombre fury, it would have been better for both of us had he let me die." "Tell him who waits to come," said she to the servant. The woman left, and soon after came in with a man whom the Duchess made sit beside her. The woman left the room. We will leave the Duchess with the stranger and go to No. 13 _rue de Babylonne_, where one month after we shall find Mlle. Celestine Crepineau, a prey to the tenderest emotions. We must say for about two months the heart of that lady had been speaking. This lady's heart, like that of old thorough-bred horses, of whom we read every once in a while, had a return of ardor, and laid aside all its ascetic devotion to become intense living and burning, as it had been in youth. This was the sure premonition of old age. If anything could justify this resurrection, it is what we are about to tell. A new star shone in _la rue de Babylonne_. A beautiful stranger calling himself a Spaniard, a statement made probable by his dark complexion, sun-burnt brow, black hair, and brilliant eyes, established himself in a modest garret of No. 12, just opposite the house of the _hangman_, now occupied by Matheus. The charming Spaniard had no decided profession. His dress was that of an artisan in his Sunday best: and his velvet vest covered a prominent and Herculean _torso_. He was tall; and walked squarely on his large feet; a circumstance which made Mlle. Crepineau think him majestic. He said he was a bear-hunter from the Pyrenees, who had been forced to expatriate himself because _in a duel he had wounded the governor of his province_. It may be imagined that so rare a profession excited much admiration among the natives of _la rue Babylonne_, especially as the famous Nimrod passed his time at the door of No. 12, under the pretext that he was accustomed to the pure mountain air, and that he did not wish any of the neighbors anxious to make inquiries about his terrible profession, to have the trouble of asking for him. At one of these hall-door entertainments one summer night, the handsome Nuñez saw and captivated Mlle. Celestine Crepineau. Do not let any one fancy the modest girl had given any encouragement to the stranger. They had restricted themselves to glances, _double entendres_, and the countless amiable pioneers of the army of Cupid. Mlle. Crepineau saw the stranger come every day to assist her in opening the heavy door of No. 13. Nuñez took charge of the watering pot of which the commissaries are so fond, and dispersed an agreeable freshness in front of the house during the warm hours of the day, to protect, he said, the color and complexion of his mistress. Often Mlle. Celestine's nerves were refreshed by a delicate perfume which strayed through the bars of her lodge, and on inquiry saw a sprig of some sweet and odorous plant which had been placed there by the Spaniard. At last Mlle. Crepineau gave him permission to visit her. This was an important favor, and was the passage of the rubicon. By doing so, Celestine placed her reputation in the power of her evil-disposed neighbors. She was, however, in love. "Besides," said she, with noble pride, "my conscience sustains me, and envy will fall abashed before the sacred torch of hymen." This _respectable_ phrase was the last remnant of the romances of Ducray-Dumenil, the first books Celestine ever read when she was cook of the advocate her god-father. But this interesting love passion was suddenly brought to a close by a very painful circumstance for the vanity of the young lady. Whether Mlle. Crepineau had laced herself more tightly even than usual, or that in aspirations after sylphic grace, she had been rather too active when Señor Nuñez was by--she was seized one fine day with a pain in the small of her back, translatable only by the word rheumatism--a constant attendant of her delicate organization. A forced construction was put on the pain--which became a cold or a strain, but she had, in spite of the effort to get rid of it by an _euphonism_, to go to bed. Then the devotion of the Spaniard became heroic. He was unwilling that Mlle. Celestine should intrust any one else with her daily occupation, and undertook to replace her in the menage of Doctor Matheus. The proposition did not awaken much of the doctor's gratitude; and though he accepted the substitute, he promised to watch him very closely. One morning the doctor was forced to leave very suddenly, just as the Spaniard was cleaning and dusting the consultation room. Matheus had been sent for by the Duke d'Harcourt, and apprehending some new indisposition of his young patient, Von Apsberg, for the first time left the Señor Nuñez in his room. For a few moments, the Spaniard continued his occupation. When, however, he saw the doctor leave, and from the window saw him turn down the _rue de Bac_, he said, "Now what I have so long sought for is in my grasp." Looking on every side of the room, lifting up the papers, opening the portfolios and examining the furniture, he discovered a secret drawer in a bureau, within which he found a key. "Here," said he, "is the key of the laboratory--of the mysterious room in which I shall find all I need. This is it," said he, looking anxiously at the key, "I know it by its shape." Hurrying to the third floor of the house, he paused at the door. His hand trembled--the key entered--turned--the wards moved, and the stranger entered the laboratory. The table which, when we paid our first visit to Matheus, was covered with maps, pamphlets, etc., now had nothing on it. "All is locked up," said the man. "I have bad luck." He soon, however, aroused himself, and taking a ball of wax from his pocket, and pointing to a massive secretary, said, "There they are--there are their plans and papers, their lists and names." Approaching the secretary again, he took an exact impression of the lock, and also made a copy of the key of the laboratory. He then uttered a cry of joy. "I have them all," said he. "I am their master, and not one of the accursed Carbonari can escape me." He then left the room as expeditiously as he had entered, went to the first story, replaced the key where he had found it in the secret drawer, and hurried to find Mlle. Celestine Crepineau, who had become very uneasy about her lover. XVIII. RUIN. A few days after the pretended bear-hunter, the handsome Spaniard, adored by the amiable Mlle. Crepineau, had gone stealthily into the studio of Dr. Matheus to obtain possession of the secrets of the Carbonari, our three friends Taddeo Rovero, Von Apsberg, and the Vicomte d'Harcourt, were at the Count's hotel. The house of Monte-Leone was in Verneuil street. It was small, mysterious, and recherché. The court-yard was of modest size, with turf in the centre, and sanded walks around it. The steps had a balcony at the top and several marble vases, from which grew geraniums in summer and heath in the winter. It was a regular bachelor's house, having every thing demanded by the exigencies of a tenant of that condition. It had all the broad, tall, low, narrow, visible, and invisible doors, for troublesome cases and exits, for the actors and actresses of the every day drama of the life of a young, rich, and independent man. No love drama was ever performed, though, on this theatre. One of another and more brilliant kind was being prepared. He gave a dinner to young men, a regular one, without a single woman. Men alone were welcomed by the noble Amphytrion. The house was furnished as luxuriously as possible, for only recently have people conceived the happy idea of making dining-rooms comfortable. Of this our fathers were entirely ignorant. Once people eat much or little, well or badly; they breakfasted, dined, or took tea--that was all. They sat on straw or hair chairs; they were warmed by bad stoves, the smell of which was intolerable; the feet rested on marble blocks, bright, but cold as ice. Such was the gastronomical trilogy of Parisians. The large hotels, and even the smaller establishments of our renowned libertines had a more splendid refectory, which, however, was not more favorable to the comfort of the guests. The dark and rich tapestries which hung on the walls, the marble on the floor, the pictures, though by Boucher or Watteau, were artistic and costly, but nothing less than the eyes of La Guimard, the lips of Sophie Arnould, those of La Maupin or La Duthé, could warm those cold arenas, where Bernis, Larenaudie, Fronsac, Bouret, and Beaujon sacrificed to Comus in the company of the Loves. Now all is changed. Not only gastronomy, but the art of living well has been discovered not to exist alone in wines and cookery, and it has become a proverb, that "beans in china are better than truffles in earthenware." In 1819 Count Monte-Leone had a presentiment of our taste in 1848, and he was therefore spoken of as a foreign sybarite, whose extravagant tastes never would be imitated. Though people blamed, they envied, and _tried to imitate_. The dining-room of the Count, therefore, glittered with lights, and around a table filled with the rarest glass, from which was exhaled the perfume of a dinner fit for Lucullus, were about a dozen men, some of whom, Matheus, Taddeo, and d'Harcourt, we know already. The others, of whom we will hereafter speak more fully, were famous Carbonari, the founders of the French order, General A...., the banker H...., Count de Ch...., the merchant Ober, the _Avocat_ C...., and the illustrious Professor C.... Two of these gentlemen had come from Italy, and brought to Monte-Leone new orders from the central Venta of Naples, and also curious details about the progress or rather maturity of Carbonarism in the Two Sicilies and the neighboring countries. It had however been by common consent determined among the guests that none of the grave secrets of the order should be revealed at their joyous repast--that political questions should be postponed to more serious conferences: not that the members were not satisfied of the prudence of each other, but inquisitive ears hovered around this table, and with the exception of those of the prudent old Giacomo none could be trusted. There was especial reason for this, as vague rumors had for some time made the Carbonari distrustful. It was said that the Minister of Police had placed Count Monte-Leone under the strictest surveillance in consequence of his previous history. The objects of this dinner, which beyond doubt was subjected to some particular notice, was to prove that all the persons assembled were men of pleasure, and not agents of discord or conspirators. "To our host," said d'Harcourt, filling his glass, "to his loves and conquests!" "You will get drunk," said one of the guests, "if you drink to all of his conquests." "All calumny," said Matheus. "The conversion of St. Augustine is no miracle since that of Monte-Leone. The gallant Italian is now a fresh anchorite, avoiding the pomps of Satan and the opera in this _Thebais_. With his friends he atones for past errors." "The fact is, no one knows any thing about the Count's amours," said one of the guests. "Well, then," said another, "that for one in society, as Monte-Leone is, he makes bad use of his eyes. The very mention of his Neapolitan adventures would turn the heads of ten Parisian women." "You are wrong, my dear B....," said the Count. "The women of Paris are not so headlong as you think. They reason with their hearts, and pay attention to convenances without regard to inclination. Besides, the man they love occupies only the second place in their hearts. _They_ come first and _he_ afterwards. Often, too, the toilette occupies the second place with amusements and pleasures. They prefer the attention of one to the love of all. _Liasons_ in France are elegant, _recherché_, and refined. They never violate good taste, and even in their despair French women are charming. They quarrel behind a fan, tear a bouquet to pieces, and shred the lace of a handkerchief. They weep, and stop soon enough not to stain the eyes, and when they have fainting-fits, are very careful not to disturb their curls. Great suffering just stops short of a nervous attack, and fury never breaks either china bracelets or jewelry, though it is merciless on lovers' miniatures. Three months after, if the offended lady meet the gentleman in a drawing-room, she will ask the person next her, 'Pray tell me who that gentleman is, I think I have seen him somewhere.' In Spain and Italy they avenge themselves, and do not pardon men who are inconstant until they too are false. Woe to him whose love is the first to end. He henceforth has but the storm and the thunder-bolt. Hatred and vengeance--the first is found in France--women in Italy kill. I tell you your countrywomen are not romantic, and suffer themselves to be led astray only after due reflection." "Well, for my own part," said d'Harcourt to Monte-Leone, "I know a woman who adores you in secret, who never speaks of you without blushing, who looks down when your name is mentioned, and who looks up when she sees you." Taddeo looked at the Vicomte with surprise. Two names occurred to him, that of the Duchess, and yet of another person. Monte-Leone, like Taddeo, was afraid that the young fool, whose greatest virtue was not temperance, would be indiscreet. "Gentlemen," said he, "the Vicomte is about to be stupid. In the name of our friendship I beg him to be silent." "Bah, bah!" said d'Harcourt, becoming yet more excited, and draining his glass of champagne, _in vino veritas_. "The proof of what I say is that Monte-Leone is afraid. I shall name the victim of the passion he has inspired. I wish to reinstate him in your eyes, for he has represented himself as deserted and abandoned by the fair sex, when one of the fairest adores him, and would sacrifice name and rank for him." "Vicomte," said Monte-Leone, enraged and rising, "do not make me forget my intimacy with you of five years' duration." "You will not forget it--you will like me all the better for what I am about to say. Besides it is nothing but humanity. You would not let the poor woman die when you can save her?" "Again I ask you to stop," said Monte-Leone. "You are too late," said the Vicomte, taking another glass of wine. "I drink to the Attala, the Ariana, the Psyche of our illustrious host, to a charming widow we all admire, to _Madame de Bruneval_." One shout of joy burst from all. Monte-Leone felt a burden of trouble lifted from him, and Taddeo breathed more freely. "Gentlemen," said Monte-Leone, resuming his _sangfroid_, "I protest that I was not aware of the happiness with which I am menaced. Though I do justice to the precious qualities of Mme. de Bruneval--to her lofty virtue, with which all of you are familiar--I should be afraid of following in the footsteps of the illustrious dead. Since, however, the widow has been spoken of, I will propose a toast to the speedy cure of her heart, provided I am not expected to become its surgeon." All drank; and amid the sound of their laughter, Giacomo entered, and on a salver handed the Count a letter. "It is from Naples," said he; and having opened, he read it. As he did so he grew pale. "Any bad news?" said Matheus. "No," said Monte-Leone, with an effort to restrain himself; "no, my friends"--taking advantage of the temporary absence of the servants, who had placed the dessert on the table, and who then retired, as is the custom in all well regulated households--"No bad news to our cause. This letter is on private business. I have another toast," said he, in a lower tone. "To the brethren who are my guests to-day!" "To the absent!" said Taddeo. "Well, well," said Dr. Matheus, looking uneasily around; "let us have done with toasts. As a doctor, I may speak. Too many of this kind may endanger _our lives_," added he, emphasizing the last words. "Let us enjoy the pleasures heaven has granted us. Our first masters in good cheer, the Greeks and Romans, surrounded their tables with flowers and crowned their cups with roses. Let us laugh, then, my friends, at fools, intriguers, and apostates. Let us laugh at each other, and especially at unreasonable d'Harcourt, who can drown his own mind in a single bottle of champagne, and which makes him about as sensible as a fly." The sallies and follies of after dinner followed this pompous harangue of Matheus. Had any one witnessed this scene, they would have fancied the actors a party of young mousquetaires of the regency, rather than conspirators who aspired to convulse the world. When the guests of Monte-Leone were gone, and only d'Harcourt, Matheus, and Taddeo remained, the Count took his dispatch out of his bosom, and bade the latter read it. It was as follows: "NAPLES, September 10, 1819. "COUNT:--I am sorry to inform you that the banker Antonio Lamberti, to whom you had confided your fortune, and with whom you bade me deposit the price of your palace, sold for six hundred thousand francs, has failed, and fled with all your fortune. "Your respectful attorney, "GUISEPPE FARNUCCI." The three friends embraced Monte-Leone, and Von Apsberg said, "You knew this, yet could share our gayety. Did you not say yourself laughter is as necessary for digestion as it is to the heart?" "I fulfilled my duties of host to the letter. I needed all my courage, though, having lost more than my fortune--my happiness. The morning's papers will announce the failure of Antonio Lamberti, and all Paris will know of the ruin of the brilliant Count Monte-Leone." With fortune, the Count had also lost the hope of happiness. The widowhood of the Marquise de Maulear had revived all his hopes, as La Felina had foreseen, and his rank and title enabled him again to aspire to Aminta's hand. All this prospect his misfortune annihilated. What had he to offer now to Aminta? The name, the eclat of which he could sustain no longer--an existence endangered by a political plot, the triumph of which was far from certain--sumptuous tastes, which he would not be permitted to gratify--privations, especially cruel as they would follow closely on luxury and opulence, of which he had, so to say, built himself a temple. Ten months had passed by since the Marquis's death, and the grief of his widow had been most sincere. Though Aminta had never entertained a very profound love for her husband, she had been much attached to him from a reason common enough: she was strong and he unusually weak. When, therefore, a terrible vice had seized on him, and sought, as it were, to wrest him from her arms, not a reproach had been uttered by Aminta against the sacrifice of her money and his neglect to an ignoble propensity. She forgave the gamester who was faithful to her, and had wept over him when she would have had no tears for the unfaithful husband. This soul so full of love was not slumbering in the arms of marriage. The energetical character which Aminta had often exhibited would, had it found traits of manhood properly expanded in her husband, have possibly modified her feelings, if he had possessed that burning imagination, that secret imagination which creates deep love, and for which too she seemed to have been created. She might have said this. She was too chaste to do so. Yet sometimes, in her long and dreamy solitudes, an image rose before her, especially when her husband was away. She dreamed of an exalted love, full of ardor and devotion, indomitable courage, sacrifice of life to duty, a noble and generous soul, which divined her own, and linked itself to it. All this assumed the form of the man she had rejected, of whom she had been afraid, and for her ingratitude to whom she now blushed. The Count had been received by Aminta, in the early months of her widowhood, but he had refrained, from respectful motives, to allude to his feelings. His visits to the Marquise were short and ceremonious, feeling that love should not be veiled by the crape of mourning. Like the Prince de Maulear, and all Paris in fact, Aminta had heard of the Count's misfortune, and the blow made a deep impression on her. The absence of the Count became prolonged. He had not visited her since his misfortune, and she could not but feel a deep interest for him to whom fate reserved such severe trials. One evening, when she was more melancholy than usual, and sat in the saloon with her head leaning on her hand, and dreaming over the incidents of her life in which Monte-Leone had figured, she thought without remorse of scenes it had been once her duty to forget. A stifled sigh escaped from her bosom, and a kind of moan near her induced her to shake off her reverie. She saw Scorpione lying at her feet as he used to, and looking fixedly and sadly at her. Tonio, whom, like the children of Sorrento, we have often called Scorpione, after having wandered along the sea-shore at the time of Aminta's marriage, had been found exhausted on the sands, and been taken to Signora Rovero, on the very day that Aminta set out for France. Since then, vegetating rather than living with the mother of Aminta, Signora Rovero was unwilling to trust her daughter's preserver to servants, when she heard of the death of her son-in-law. Signora Rovero had such delicate health as to be unable to bear the climate of Paris, and had six months before returned to Italy; but Tonio was unwilling to leave her, and yielding to his mute prayers, Aminta had consented for him to remain, for his sufferings to save her had made a deep impression on her. Tonio was in fact but the shadow of himself, the soul alone seeming to support him. Even his soul was changed. Fearful and timid when with Aminta, the passion the unfortunate boy had once experienced for her became humble and respectful submission. His very mind became extinct; and the only glimmerings of it now seemed to be a kind of instinctive sympathy with his mistress. He smiled when the Marquise did, and that was but rarely. He wept when tears hung on her eyelids. When he looked as we have described at Aminta, her sadness was perfectly mirrored on his face. Scorpione was, in fact, less than man, and more than a brute--he was an idiot. "You suffer, because I suffer," said Aminta. He replied, "Yes." By one of those ideas which take possession of the time, but which it shrinks to confess, she said in a weak and almost tender voice to the idiot, as children do to toys, "If I were happy, would you be?" Scorpione looked fixedly at her, as if trying to understand her; and she added, "If any one loved me, and I loved him also, would you wish me to be happy?" blushing as she spoke. Heavy tears rolled down his cheeks, and he said, taking Aminta's hand, "Yes." "Poor child!" said she, with tears also, "once he loved me for his own sake--now he loves me for my own." "Yes," said the idiot, hiding his face with his hands. Just then the Prince de Maulear was announced. XVIII. THE KING. The Prince adored his daughter-in-law, and with tears in his eyes he besought Signora Rovero not to take her from him. "Remember," said he, "that I am old, and have but a few years more to live before I reach the end of my journey, to which the death of my unfortunate son has brought me years nearer. Do not, Signora, deprive me of the only being I love on earth. Make this sacrifice to Rovero's friend. In his name I ask you to do so. Have a little patience with the old man, and let Aminta close his eyes. I will soon restore her to you." The mother made this sacrifice to the broken-hearted father, who almost on his knees besought her to give him her daughter to replace his lost son. In his suffering the Prince seemed to become doubly fond of the young woman. Her own father could not have been more anxious to spare her pain and to satisfy her least desires. "She is my Antigone," said he, proudly, to all who met him leaning on the Marquise's arm. "I am, though, happier than Oedipus, for I can look at and admire her." "When the Prince came into the drawing-room of his daughter he seemed excited. The Marquise bade Scorpione leave her, and the idiot crawled rather than walked to the door, through which he disappeared; not, however, until he had cast one glance on the young woman, as if to become satisfied that her features expressed neither menace nor anger. "Good and kind as ever," said the Prince to Aminta; "you certainly appear to advantage with that hideous and deformed being. No one but a person generous as you are would keep so awful a being by you." "To do so, father, I need only appeal to memory, and that will aid me. I cannot forget that I am indebted to him for my life, and above all, for the boon of being loved by you." "Certainly," said the Prince, "I know all that; but you might take care of and watch over him, and make his life pleasant, without keeping him ever before you. I, who am not at all timid, assure you that I never see him without apprehension at your feet, hugging the fire like a serpent to quicken the icy blood in his veins." "I will send him away if you wish me to." "I wish you to do as you please. That you know well enough, my child. Keep the Scorpione, as you sometimes call him, and nurse up any horrible monster you please besides, and I will think it charming, or at least will not reproach you. My dear child, I have few amusements for you, and now your life must be sad indeed." "No, no! dear father, I do not complain. The hotel is only sad when you are not here." "Alas!" said the Prince, "there can be found but little interest in one as old as I am, and so unhappy too. Listen to me, Aminta, it is cruel to make children die before their parents. It reverses the order of nature to see the flower wither while the parent stem is green. I spoke to you of fate, because I was unwilling to mention God. Grief makes us pious. I dare not object to your decrees." "Have you not yet a daughter?" said Aminta, passing her arm around the Prince's neck; "have you not a daughter who loves you?" "Yes, yes, _my daughter_." The Prince laid an emphasis on the last word. "You are now my only child, and I wish to secure your happiness; and for that purpose will consecrate to you the remnant of my life. Yet I do not know what to do." The young woman blushed--for perhaps she could have made a suggestion. The Prince, though, did not remark it, and continued: "Our life is sadder even than it was. The friends of this world are like bees who hover only around flowers when they bloom, and scorn those which begin to wither. They avoid this house--" "All friends do not act thus," said Aminta, concealing her emotion; "one of them, one who pleases you most, whom you love, Signor Monte-Leone, often comes hither to see you alone--" "To see me?" said the Prince, looking shrewdly at his daughter-in-law; "perhaps he comes to see you. Since, however, his misfortune, the Count never comes near us. Perhaps he judges us incorrectly. He may have fancied the loss of fortune involved the sacrifice of our friendship. It is a bad judgment, and I say it with regret, of a bad heart." "Ah father," said Aminta, "the Count must have had another reason to keep him away." "Certainly," said M. de Maulear, "but these reasons have not kept him from seeing me. During the last fortnight, I have been ten times to his house. I am, however, glad he has acted thus, for his conduct will diminish my sorrow at his departure--" "His departure?" said Aminta, unable to restrain an expression of surprise. "His departure for Italy," said the Prince; "he was ordered this morning, by the French government, to leave France within twenty-four hours." "And why?" said Aminta. "He is accused," said Maulear, "of being concerned in some conspiracy contrary to the safety of the country." "Ah, my God!" said the young woman, "then he is exiled and expelled from the kingdom." "Decidedly; and he is forbidden ever to return." Aminta, as she heard these words, felt as if her heart would burst. The Prince saw her agitation. "What is the matter my child?" said he. "Why are you so sad?" "Nothing, nothing, but a nervous attack, to which I am used." Maulear looked at the Marquise for a few moments, and then said: "My child, there is no true love without confidence. My love gives me sacred rights over you. Do not be afraid to confide in me. Let not even the memory of the departed restrain you. You are twenty years of age; and your life has not approached its end. I am now about to tell you what I have often intended to: your happiness is the main object of my life, and never forget that, whatever may be your name, I shall always look on you as a daughter!" Aminta threw herself into the Prince's arms and hid there her tears of gratitude and her blushes. De Maulear took his beautiful daughter-in-law on his knee, as he would have taken a child, and then lifting up Aminta's head with exquisite kindness, said: "Does he love you?" "He did before I was married," said the young woman, looking down. "And since then?" "He has never spoken of love." "He should not have done so," said the Prince; "often, though, the eyes say such things; and his, probably, are not inexpressive." Aminta did not reply. "All is clear," said the Prince; "the Count avoids us from a sentiment of delicacy which does him honor. He has no longer reason to hope, being ruined, for what, when rich, he would have given his life and fortune." "He will go," said Aminta faintly. "He will not, he shall not go. This conspiracy is, after all, only one of the phantoms ever arising before a terrified government. If the really revolutionary mind of Count Monte-Leone has involved him, I will promise to make him listen to reason, especially if you will aid me--as for this order to leave so abruptly, I hope my arm is long enough to interpose." "What then will you do?" asked Aminta, anxiously. "_Parbleu!_ I will go to the King himself--not to the ministers, but to the KING--to GOD, not to the saints. Mind, for the proverb's sake alone I apply that word to those gentry. The King is an old friend, a brother in exile. I never asked a favor of him, though he has often asked me to do so. We will see if he will refuse me." "But," said Aminta, "time is short." "Then," said the Prince, "to-morrow morning I will go to the Tuileries, and we will see what the minister will say when he hears Louis XVIII. say, _I will!_" "Think you he will say so?" "He must," said the Prince, kissing her; "for you and I say, _we will_. What a woman wills----To-morrow you shall have good news." He went away.... At that time the appearance of the Tuileries was very imposing. To the forms of the empire had succeeded the more luxurious and aristocratic ones of the restoration. The stern military garb of the Imperial Guard, and of the Dragoons of the Empress, was replaced by the brilliant uniforms of the King's body-guards, of the _hundred Swiss_, an old name now replaced by the almost grotesque appellation of the _Gardes à pied ordinaires du corps du roi_, a species of giants, commanded by the Count of Tisseuil, a person only about four feet high, but an excellent soldier for all that. Then came the Swiss, the Royal guard, and on days of public ceremonies, the _Gardes de la Manche_, whose duty had special relation to the religious ceremonies of the chapel of the palace. The reception rooms, the great gallery, the hall of the marshals, glittered with embroidered dresses, _cordons_, collars and orders of every kind, both French and foreign. There were the stars of the empire--those of the monarchy--Russian, English, Austrian, Italian--the stars of all Europe. A large portion of the continent was in Paris. This portion was the most brilliant of all; for having tasted of Parisian refinement it was not at all anxious to return home. His majesty Louis XVIII., dressed in blue and wearing the royal cordon of the Saint Esprit, with his hair _a l'oisseu-royal_, and his legs hidden in broad pantaloons, which concealed their size, with his feet in shoes of buckskin, and pleasant and agreeable as ever, had been rolled by his footman from the room where he breakfasted, to his study. MM. de Blacas, d'Escars, and de Damas, his gentlemen in waiting, and many courtiers, had followed his majesty's chair to the very door of his study, where they paused. Then the human horses, who dragged the chair, having turned him around _on his own pivot_, bore him into the recesses of the room. The object of the manoeuvre we have described was to place the King vis-a-vis to his courtiers, to whom he bowed graciously. This was a signal for them to leave. The doors then closed with not a little noise, and this was all the public knew of royal life. Private matters, interviews with the ministers, audiences, had particular modes of entrance leading to the King's rooms and office. The latter was the sanctuary of royal thought, where great and petty acts were consummated, and where many confessions and audiences had been heard and given. There this literary King, better educated than half of his academy, had made commentaries on many learned Latins, especially on Horace. The King appropriated several hours of every day to study. To derange the distribution of this time, to take him from Juvenal, Tacitus, or Cicero, to discuss a plan of Villèle or Angles, was almost high treason. One person alone dared to do this, and this person was above law. The reason was, he was more powerful than the King, having even majesty in subjection. The name of this man was Father Elysée. It was his business to keep the King alive. This was, as will be seen, a very important matter. This man went into the King's room without notice, and without even tapping at his door. He did so, by virtue of the sovereign power of the patient over the invalid--by virtue of science over suffering humanity. The King, however, sometimes used to say, when Elysée made a very _brusque_ entrance: "_I only wish one thing, that disease may not break in on me brusquely as you do_." As a fine and acute courtier, as an old slouth-hound of the palace with a keen scent, the Prince de Maulear went to Father Elysée for the purpose of obtaining a speedy audience. "Is it you?" said the King, behind whom opened a door looking into the reception room. "Yes," said the doctor, "I wish your majesty would not pay too much attention to your Latin and study. Nothing injures the digestive organs like study, especially after meals. Mind and matter then contend, and the body is almost always overcome." "If I had to do only with my old friends, Horace and Petronius," said the King, "my digestion would be all right. Unfortunately I have found a few modern subjects well calculated to annoy Master Gaster--for the vermin of Juvenal and Persius would be honey of Hymethus compared with the bile of the books I speak of--" The King pointed out to the doctor a few open pamphlets which lay about the table. "_Norman Letters. The Man in the Grey Coat_--MINERVA," said the doctor, looking at them; "who dared to bring these books hither?" "My majesty dared. I am as good a doctor as you are, but I have more patients. I have a whole nation to cure, and to administer a tonic we must at least be aware of the debility. Look hither," said the King, "here is an antidote to poison. _The Conservative_, edited by the most learned doctors of the political faculty--by de Chateaubriand, de Bonald, de Villèle, Fiévée. Castelbajac, and a certain Abbé de Lamennais, an eloquent, sharp, and able man, I am sure, who has, though, one fault, he is a greater royalist than his King." "And may I venture to ask your majesty how the works of Etienne, Jay, Jony and company, came hither?" "Smuggled in," said Louis XVIII., with a smile; "F----, one of my _valets de chambre_, whom I have placed at the head of what I call my secret ministry, brings them to me. The fellow has taste. He said to me the other day: '_I have something devilish good here. The scoundrels do not spare your majesty_.' But," continued the King, "no man can be great to his valet or his physician, and I will therefore confess that the works of these liberal gentlemen trouble my digestion not a little, and I wish my good friend the Duke d'Escars to bring me back that _purée de cailles truffées_, of which he is the inventor. He is the Prince of Gourmands." "Then," said Père Elysée, glad to be able thus to pass to the principal object of his visit, "I am just in time to amuse your majesty, and to announce the visit of one of your best friends--the Prince de Maulear." "Just in time," said the King; "he is a gentleman of the old school, and has chosen _for fifty years_ to be such. He yet believes in a King of France, fully, perhaps more fully, than he does in God. He is a true enemy of the Jacobins and Revolutionists. Tell him to come in, doctor, and we will be able to bear up against the attacks of the authors of those books." The doctor soon brought the Prince de Maulear, and then left. "Come in, my dear Prince," said the King; "you do not spoil your friends, and I see you too rarely, as I see others too frequently, to be able to forget you." Kings, however unpleasant they may be, have this analogy with the sun, all come to warm themselves by his rays. "I thank your majesty for your kind reception." "You were my friend and shared my exile." "It was a sad season," said the Prince, sitting on the chair the King pushed towards him. "Not so, Prince; then we had no cares and no enemies, above all we had no court. We were independent, calm, and happy." "Perhaps you had health, but you had no crown." "Think you that a great misfortune?" "Perhaps not to your majesty, but it was to France." "How? Does our friend the Prince de Maulear, contrary to every expectation, become a flatterer in his old age? In what part of the Tuileries did he contract that disease? Listen, my dear de Maulear. You as well as I know that _love of France_ is but a word. Once in France, people loved the King--now, though, France above all other things loves itself. This love is, if you please, egotistical, but after all it is the only real positive good in this selfish age. Mind I speak only of the owners, and therefore conservatives of the kingdom. The other portion of the kingdom, anxious at any risk to acquire, estimates the country cheaply. A few faithful hearts who welcomed me as a Messiah expected for twenty years, true and noble believers, looked on my return as the realization of their long and secret hopes. To the majority of my people the Bourbon lily has been only the olive-branch of peace purchased by twenty years of war. This peace I would not have brought back by the bayonets of the Austrians and Russians. But God, Buonaparte, and the Allies, so willed it. You see, my dear Prince, that I am not mistaken in relation to my subjects' love, and that the gems of a crown do not conceal its thorns." "The King," said M. de Maulear, "at least deigns to reckon me among the faithful subjects of whom he spoke just now?" "Yes, yes," said the King, "among the most faithful and most disinterested. When I came back, there was established a very partition of offices and places, or honors, titles, crosses and stars, in which you took no part. Now you know you are one of those to whom I could refuse nothing." "Well," said the Prince, "your majesty gives me courage to make one request, to obtain which I come hither." "Bah!" said the King, "speak out my old friend, if the matter depends on me--" "Cannot the King do any thing?" said the Prince. "The King can do very little," said Louis XVIII. "When your majesty says 'I will--'" "Others say, 'We will not.'" "Who will dare to use such language?" "The true Kings of France--the ministers--for they are responsible while I am not. To tell the fact, though, I have credit with them and will use it--" "Yet the King is King," said the Prince. "Ah, Prince!" said Louis XVIII, "I see plainly enough that you do not read my books. What could you say worse to an author? Open the charter and look--here it is: '_He reigns, but does not govern_.' This is my Bible, my code--and I can accuse no one but myself, if I do sigh sometimes. For all this emanates from me, and was conceived and written by my own hand. Unfortunately," said he, with bitterness, "in France every thing is interpreted literally." "The favor I ask your majesty to grant me will I hope be within your reserved powers. Count Monte-Leone, a noble Neapolitan of my acquaintance, has been accused, beyond doubt unjustly, of political plots, and been abruptly ordered to leave France. I come to ask the king to remit this mortification." "Ah, ah!" said Louis XVIII, gravely, "an anarchist. This is serious, very serious. Perhaps the safety of the monarchy depends on this, as the _Timid_[3] say. My dear brother retails a conspiracy a day to me; perhaps, after all, he is not far wrong. I will see, Prince. I will examine and consult a very important personage, without whom I cannot act." "Will his Majesty," said the usher, who had just arrived, "receive the prime minister?" "Exactly," said the King, "that is the person of whom I spoke." "Go in there," said the King to the Prince, pointing to the waiting-room. "You shall have my, or rather his, answer, in a quarter of an hour. The result though will be the same." The Prince obeyed, and his excellency the prime minister was received. XIX. A REVELATION. The audience the King gave his prime minister lasted nearly an hour. M. de Maulear began to grow impatient at his long delay, when the usher came to tell him the King waited for him.... When the Prince entered, Louis XVIII. had a smile on his lips. A skilful observer of countenances would however have remarked a shade of malice. "You are then very fond of Count Monte-Leone?" said the King to the Prince, again telling him to be seated. "Very, Sire," said the Prince. "Signor Monte-Leone is really a nobleman, with old blood, a kind heart, brilliant mind, and elegant manners. One of a race now rare. If your Majesty would but permit me to present him to you--" "No, no," said the King; "I had rather not. Besides," continued he, "with his reputation as a dreamer and a revolutionist, as an enemy of our cousin Fernando of Naples--" "The Count is in the way of conversion, Sire; and if the important person to whom your Majesty yields will suffer us to keep the Count in Paris, I am sure we will soon be able to restore him to favor." "The _important person_," said Louis, with a smile, "was very much inclined to send your dear friend to his own country. New information in relation to this honorable and loyal noble," continued the King, "has completely changed the intentions entertained in relation to him." "Indeed," said the Prince, with delight; "and will your Majesty deign to tell me what this information is?" "No, no, my dear friend. This is strictly a political question, which cannot be divulged. One thing is certain, the Italian is no longer our enemy, but is devoted to us. He is a lamb in a lion's hide. Not only will we keep him in France, but will grant him immunity for all he may do in future and has done as yet. Thus you see," said the King, "I have done more than you asked." "Such kindness," said the Prince, "overwhelms me with pleasure and gratitude." "Ah, Prince," said the King, ironically, "how you love your friends! Yet distrust your heart in relation to these Italians. They are cunning, and sometimes treacherous, but always mild and winning, so as to lead astray our French honesty. They do not wear at their belt their most dangerous stiletto, but have another between their jaws which is often poisoned. God keep me from saying this of your dear Count. I would not hurt him at all, but on the other hand wish him to be well received and to be honored every where. This advice, however, I wish you to consider general, and not with reference to any particular case." "Count Monte-Leone," continued the Prince, "is worthy of your Majesty's kindest wishes. He has only the noble qualities of his nation, energy, enthusiasm, and courage. His is an exalted mind, which a cruel family sorrow may for a time have led astray, but I will answer for him as I would for myself." "Ah," said the King, "that is indeed saying much." "Not enough for his merit. I would be proud if I resembled him." At this the King could not repress his laughter, and the Prince looked at him with surprise, and almost with anger. The King soon resumed. "Excuse me, Prince, but you exhibited so extravagant an anxiety--no, no, virtuous as Monte-Leone may be, I like you as you are. Do not therefore envy his devotion, great as that may be to us. I like yours best." "I will then tell the Count," said the Prince, "the favor your Majesty has deigned to grant him." "No, no--not I. With affairs of that kind I have nothing to do. I leave that honor to the minister. Adieu, Prince," said he, "and come soon to see me again. Then ask something of me which may be worth granting." The Prince bowed respectfully, and left. "Excellent man," said Louis XVIII., as he left. "He would have been surprised had I told him.... That Italian has bewitched him...." On the evening before the day on which this scene took place, a man wrote in his office by the light of a shaded lamp, which made every thing but half visible. It was ten o'clock. A door opened, and an officer of one of the courts appeared. M. H...., the chief of the political police of whom we have already spoken, lifted up his head. "What is the matter? and who is now come to interrupt me?" said he, with marked ill-humor. The officer who had come in, and who was a _Huissier_, said, "'The Stranger,' and as Monsieur receives him always--" "Let him come in," said M. H...., eagerly. "You were right to announce him." The person whom we have previously seen with a mask at the house of M. H...., entered, and looked carefully around to see that he was with the Chief of Police alone. Many months had passed, and all we have described had taken place. For since then, we have gone, like a sound logician, backwards, in order to expose our _data_ distinctly before we proceed to define their consequences. Now the first appearance of the masked man in the cabinet of M. H.... coincided with the painful scene in which Taddeo Rovero had crushed the hopes of the Duchess of Palma by revealing to her the probability of the marriage of Monte-Leone and Aminta. "Monsieur," said the stranger to M. H...., "have I kept my promise?" "Yes," said H.... "Have I unfolded the plot of Carbonarism?" "You have satisfied me of the existence of the French Venta, and of their identity with those of Italy and Spain. We have written to the police of those nations, and all was discovered to be exact, so that in a few days the governments of those countries will have acted." "Have I named you the chief Carbonari in Paris?" "You have." "Have I given you their secret notes and books?" "In relation to that, I am but partially satisfied, but I do not need the copies but the documents themselves, in the handwriting of their authors." "You will have them--but there is an Italian proverb, _Chi va piano, va sano! e chi va sano, va lontano_. I told you the fruit was not yet ripe. I think, however, the time is approaching to gather it, and in a month I will--" "But," said H...., "does not this delay endanger all? May they not act, while we pause?" "Do you wish to know by your own observation who are the conspirators?" said the stranger. "I do," said H.... "Do you wish to see--to hear them?" "Yes, and to arrest them." "Not yet--it is too soon. While your fowlers entrapped a few fledgelings the rest of the covey would escape." "How can I see and hear them?" "I alone can enable you to do so, or rather not I, but the person whose agent I am." "And when?" said M. H...., impatiently. "In three days. It is, however, first necessary to repair a grave error which endangers all our hopes." "What fault?" "The Minister of the Interior," continued the man, "has ordered three foreigners, a German, a Spaniard, and an Italian, to leave France. Those persons are Dr. Spellman of Berlin, the Duke D.... of Madrid, and Count Monte-Leone of Naples." "True," said M. H.... "This is at the request of the ministers of those three nations." "Well," said the mysterious man, "it must be at once revoked." "Why?" "Because, if one of these men leave Paris, you have nothing to expect from me." "What say you?" asked H...., with surprise. "I am," said the stranger, in a low tone, "as I told you, the agent of one of those strangers. In his name alone I can tell you what you are so anxious to know--without him I can do nothing. The elevated position of this man, his rank, his connection with Carbonarism, enable him to hear and know all. Without him I am reduced to silence and inertness; for I repeat to you, that he is the thought of which I am the action. Destroy him, and the other is valueless, and you return to ignorance--become especially dangerous as the time approaches for the mine to explode beneath your feet and those of the French monarchy." "Why not name that man? why does he not name himself?" "Because he wishes to preserve his reputation--because he would rather die than avow his services." "Ah, indeed!" said H.... "The matter is difficult. The minister will not revoke these orders: for, while one of the men ceases to be an enemy of the country, the other two yet are." "More than two--twenty of the most powerful, and two hundred thousand others to follow them." "But what interest," asked M. H...., who hoped to arrive by a round about way at a discovery of the one of the three, the presence of whom was so necessary at Paris. "What reason can your _patron_ have to serve us, if he asks for neither gold, place, nor favor?" "A far deeper interest than any of them. That I can confide to you--revenge." "On whom?" "His associates--ungrateful men, who have humiliated him in his self-esteem." "How?" "That is my secret and his." "Well," said H...., "I can understand that. Hatred and revenge make as many informers as cupidity. Our criminal archives prove that." "Well, to the purpose." "All three will leave Paris to-morrow." "Then with one of them will go the safety of France. His name must be a mystery. Revoke the orders, so that our man may remain, unless you prefer by their departure to break the only thread to guide you in this inextricable labyrinth." "But you are here," said H...., unable to repress his anger, and wearied of the bravado and menaces of the man. "What can be obtained neither by money nor by persuasion, is often to be had by rigor." "Very well, Monsieur," said the stranger. "I forgot I was in a country of treason, and you forget that you swore to use neither violence nor trickery. You can act as you please. I will however tell you what will be the result of your investigations. I am an humble man, and belong to my employer as the body does to the soul, as the hand does to the arm. It will be useless to follow me, for I have no objection to tell you whither I go. You may inquire into my past life; that will be vain, for I will tell you all. You may inquire into my resources, but you will lose your time, for I will satisfy you myself. There, however, you will lose your guide--all else will be a mystery to you, my relations with this man being of such a nature that God alone knows them. They can be penetrated only by my consent." "Listen to me," said M. H...., changing his tone: "I was wrong--I was wrong to menace you, for I am weak, and you are strong. I have nothing, and you have every thing. I have only control of a few people whom I suspect, unauthenticated documents, and mere suspicions. In a time when party spirit runs as high as it does now, after the too frequent mistakes of our police, we must act on facts and evidence. I see that I need you. My power, however, gives way to that of another, and the minister alone can revoke the order of expulsion. Perhaps I may be able to cause him to revoke it, but I must enforce that demand by a serious motive, and must satisfy him of the necessity of resisting the demands of the allied sovereigns, and of keeping two dangerous men in Paris as the price of one useful one. I now understand the meaning of the mystery which surrounds your patron, and to prevent suspicion there must be three pardons. Give me then an argument which cannot be contradicted. Give me the name which you now keep secret. You know that I have kept my first oath with you, and I swear the minister alone shall be informed of the secret." As he listened to M. H..., the stranger thought profoundly. He then seemed to adopt an energetic resolution, and uttered these strange words--"True, the higher the eminence from which a body falls, the more crushing the blow." "What do you say?" said H... "That your idea is correct, and changes my plan. When I came hither, I thought your will alone could correct the mistake which has been made. I now see it cannot, and have made up my mind. Sit there," said he to H...., who was astonished at his unceremonious tone, "sit there." He pointed out an arm-chair before the desk. "What do you want now?" said H.... "What the favor you have asked from me authorizes me to demand. An arm," said he, "the blows of which cannot be parried. I wish you to sign me a letter of mark or a pass, as you please to call it, which permits those whom you employ to pass without disturbance." "Beautiful!" said M. H...., with a smile; "now I understand you." He wrote: "I recognize as a member of my police, employed by me, Monsieur...." He paused, and looked anxiously at the stranger. The latter leaned towards the Chief of Police, and in so low a tone that H.... could scarcely hear him, uttered a name which made the latter drop his pen. He however rallied himself, and wrote down the name. This document he afterwards authenticated by the seal of the police, and gave to the stranger. "This is well," said the latter, as he received it. "Now be quick, for time presses, and the three persons will in a few hours have left Paris."... When the man had left, and was alone, an atrocious smile appeared on his lips. This smile, however, was interrupted by an acute pain in his left arm. Then taking the paper which H.... had given him, he placed it on the wound, and said, "This is a cure for a wound I thought incurable--for steel and poison." FOOTNOTES: [2] Continued from page 504, vol. iii. [3] At this time one or the ultra-royalist factions, called _Les Timides_. From Fraser's Magazine. A TROT ON THE ISLAND. BY CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED. Ashburner did leave Oldport, after all, before the end of the season, being persuaded to accompany a countryman and schoolmate of his (whom he had last seen two years before in Connaught, and who now happened to pass a day at Oldport, on his way Canada-ward from the south) in a trip to the White Mountains of New-Hampshire; though his American acquaintances, especially the ladies, tried hard to dissuade him from starting before the grand fancy ball, with which the season terminated, assuring him that most of "our set" would come back, if only for that one night, and that it would be a very splendid affair, and so forth. Nature had more charms for him than art, and he went away to New Hampshire, making an appointment with Benson by letter to meet him at Ravenswood early in September. But a traveller cannot make sure of his movements a fortnight ahead. On his return from the White Mountains, Ashburner had his pocket picked at a railway station (these little incidents of highly civilized life are beginning to happen now and then in America. The inhabitants repudiate any native agency therein, and attribute them all to the swell-mob emigrants from England), and, in consequence, was obliged to retrace his steps as far as New-York to visit his banker. Almost the first person he ran against in the street was Harry Benson. "This _is_ an unexpected pleasure!" exclaimed the New-Yorker. "I never thought to see you here, and you, I presume didn't expect to see me." Ashburner explained his mishap. "Well, I meant to go straight over to Ravenswood after the ball, but we had to come home--all of us this time--on business. Lots of French furniture arrived for our town house. Mrs. B. couldn't rest till she had seen it all herself, and had it properly arranged. So here have I been five days, fussing, and paying, and swearing (legally, you understand, not profanely) at the custom-house, and then 'hazing'--what you call slanging upholsterers; and now that the work is all over, I mean to take a little play, and am just going over to see Lady Suffolk and Trustee trot on the island. Come along. It's a beautiful drive of eight miles, and I have a top-wagon. It is to meet me at the Park in a quarter of an hour." Ashburner assented. "I want to buy some cigars; you have no objection to accompany me a moment." So they turned down one of the cross-streets running out of the lower part of Broadway (which, it may be here mentioned, for the benefit of English readers and writers, is not called _the_ Broadway), and entered a store five or six stories high, with two or three different firms on each floor; and Benson led the way up something between a ladder and a staircase into a small office, with "Bleecker Brothers" dimly visible on a tin plate over the door. Three-fourths of the apartment were filled up with all manner of inviting samples, every wine, liquor, and liqueur under the sun, in every variety of bottle or vial, thick with the dust of years, or open for immediate tasting; and through the dingy panes of a half glass door a multitudinous array of bottles might be seen loading the numerous shelves of a large store-room beyond. In a small clearing at one corner, where a small desk was kept in countenance by a small table, and three or four old chairs, with a background of shelves groaning under the choicest brands of the fragrant weed, sat the presiding deities of the place--the two little Bleeckers--the dark brother of thirty-five, and the light brother of twenty, like two sketches of the same man in chalk and charcoal; both elegantly dressed--white trousers, patent leather shoes, exuberant cravats, massive chains, and all the usual paraphernalia of young New-York--altogether looking as much in place as a couple of butterflies in an ant-hill. "Good morning, gentlemen," said Benson. "Here's our friend Ashburner," and he pushed forward the Englishman. The brothers rose, laid down the morning journals over which they had been lounging, and welcomed the stranger to their place of business. "What's the news this morning?" "Nothing at all, I believe," replied the elder. "South Carolina has been threatening to dissolve the Union again--and that's no news. Stay, did you see this about Bishop Hughes and Sam Thunderbolt, the Native American member of Congress from Pennsylvania?" "I haven't seen even a newspaper for the last three days." "Well, '+ John of New-York,'--_cross John_, as your brother Carl used to call him--was in the same rail-car with Thunderbolt, coming from Philadelphia to New-York; and the Congressman didn't know who he was, but probably suspected he was a priest." "Yes, you can generally tell a priest by his looks. Even an intelligent horse will do that. Once I was riding with one of our bishops near Boston, and his nag shied suddenly at a man in a broad-brimmed hat. Says the right reverend (we don't call 'em 'my lord' in this country, you know, Ashburner), 'I shouldn't wonder if that was a Romish priest;' and we looked again, and it was. There was a Protestant horse for you! What a treasure he would have been to an Orangeman!" "So Thunderbolt began to abuse the Roman Catholics generally, and the priests particularly, and that brawling bigot Johnny Hughes most particularly. Hughes, who is a wary man, polite and self-possessed, sat through it all without saying a word; till another gentleman in the car asked Thunderbolt if he knew who that was opposite him. He didn't know. 'It's Bishop Hughes,' says the other, in a half whisper. 'Are you Bishop Hughes?' exclaims the native, quite off his guard. 'They call me so,' answered the other, with a quiet smile, expecting to enjoy the humiliating confusion of his denouncer; and the other passengers shared in the expectation, and were prepared for a titter at Thunderbolt's expense. But instead of attempting any apology, or showing any further embarrassment, he pulled out an eyeglass, and after looking at the Jesuit through it for some time, thus announced the result of his inspection--'Oh, you are, are you? Well, you're just the kind of looking loafer I should have expected Johnny Hughes to be.'" "I don't believe Hughes was much disconcerted either," said the elder brother; "he doesn't lose his balance easily. I never heard of his being put out but once, and that was when Governor Bouck met him. He was a jolly old Dutchman, Mr. Ashburner, who used to go about electioneering, and asking every man he came across--how he was, and how his wife and family were. When Bishop Hughes was introduced to him, they thought the governor would know enough to vary the usual question a little; but he didn't, and asked after the Romish bishop's wife and family with all possible innocence; and Hughes, for once in his life, was nonplussed what to answer." "Ah, but you haven't told the end of that," put in Benson. "When the governor's friends tried to explain to him the mistake he had made, and the category the Romish ecclesiastics were in, he said, 'O yas, I see, I should have asked after de children only, and said nossing about de woman.' As you say, Hughes generally has his wits about him, no doubt. He played our custom-house a trick that they will not forget in a hurry. Soon after General Harrison and the Whigs came in, and Curtis was made collector of our port, there arrived a great lot of what the French call _articles de religion_, robes, crucifixes, and various ornaments, for Hughes' cathedral. Now these were all French goods, and subject to duty, and a notification to that effect was sent to the proper quarter. Down comes Hughes in a great rage. 'Mr. Curtis, Mr. Curtis, we never had to do this before. Your predecessor, Mr. Hoyt, always let our articles of religion in free of duty.' 'Can't help what my predecessor, Mr. Hoyt, used to do,' says Curtis; 'the law is so and so, as I understand it, and these articles are subject to duty. If you like, you may pay the duties under protest, and bring a suit against Uncle Sam[4] to recover the money.' (You see, the Loco Focos had always favored the Romish priests to get the Irish vote. The Whigs didn't in those days--it was before our side had been corrupted by Seward, and such miserable demagogues; and Curtis wasn't sorry to see his political opponent the Bishop in a tight place.) After Hughes had blustered awhile, and found it did no good, he tried the other tack, and began to expostulate. 'Is there no way at all, Mr. Curtis,' says he, 'by which these articles may be passed, free of duty?' 'None at all,' says the other, 'unless'--and he paused, hardly knowing whether it would do to hint at such a thing, even in jest--'unless, bishop, you are willing to swear that these are _tools of your trade_.' 'And sure they are that!' quoth Hughes, snapping him up, 'bring on your book;' and he had the goods sworn through in less than no time, before Curtis could recover himself." "Not a bad hit," said the Englishman. "Tools of his trade! So they were, sure enough; but one would not have expected him to own it so coolly." "Unless there was something to be got by it," continued Benson. "Now this is true--every word of it, though it _has_ been in the newspapers; and the way I came to find it out was this. One day I saw in the advertising columns of the _Blunder and Bluster_, a circular from the _Secretary of the Treasury_, stating that 'crucifixes, whether of silver or copper, images, silk and velvet vestments, and theological books, did not come under the head of _tools of trade_, but were subject to duty.' It was a funny looking notice, and there was evidently something behind it; so I took the trouble to inquire, and found that the cause of the order was this clever stroke of Hughes. Going to the trot to-day?" The younger brother was going, and it was near the time when he expected his wagon. Dicky wasn't. He had given up trots ten years ago--thought them low. "Give me a few cigars before we go," said Benson. "What have you here that's first rate? Carbagal, Firmezas, Antiguëdad. H--m. I'll take a dozen Firmezas, and you may send me the rest of the box." "Don't you want some champagne--veritable Cordon Bleu--only fourteen dollars a dozen, and a discount if you take six cases?" "And if you wish to secure some tall Lafitte, we bought some odd bottles at old Van Zandt's sale the other day. You remember drinking that wine at Wilson's last summer?" Benson remembered it perfectly, and would take the Lafitte by all means. "Put that down, Mr. Snipes;" and for the first time, Ashburner was aware of the clerk--a very young gentleman, who appeared from behind the desk, and booked the order at it. "And how about the champagne?" "_J'y penserai._ Time to go. _Vamos._" And Benson carried off his friend. "You were a little taken aback, weren't you?" he asked, as they went in quest of the wagon. "When you saw these men figuring in the German cotillion, and helping to lead the fashion at Oldport, you hardly expected to encounter them in such a place. Well, now, let me tell you something that will astonish you yet more. So far from its being against these brothers in society that they are, what you would call in plain English a superior order of grocers, it is positively in their favor; that is to say, they are more respected, better received, and stand a better chance of marrying well, than if they did nothing. They might do nothing if they chose. They had enough to live very well on _en garçon_. The Bleeckers are of our best known and most thoroughly respectable families. The sons had no taste for books; they have a very good taste for wine and cigars, and have undertaken what they are best fit for. It's better than being nominal lawyers?" "Pecuniarily, no doubt; but is it as good for the whole development of the man? Was it you, or your friend Harrison, who instanced Richard Bleecker as a man who had made no progress in any thing manly for fifteen years?" "That is the fault of his natural disposition, which would not be bettered by his making believe to be a professional man, or being an avowedly idle one. He is frivolous and ornamental for a part of his time--during the rest, he has his business to occupy him. If he had not that, he would spend all his time in elegant idleness, and know no more than he does now. His pursuits bring him in money, which will be a comfort to his wife and family when he marries--though, to be sure, he is rather ancient for that; a single man at thirty-five is with us a confirmed old bachelor. But his brother is in a fair way to form a nice establishment." "Now tell me another thing. Suppose the Bleeckers had chosen to become jewellers, or merchant tailors--they might be good judges of either business, and make money by it--how would that affect their position?" "Unfavorably, I confess," replied Benson. "But we Gothamites have so thorough a respect for, and appreciation of, good wine and cigars, that the importation of them is considered particularly laudable." Any further discussion was stopped by their arrival at that dreary triangular square (_more hibernico loqui_) called the Park, where Benson's wagon awaited him--not the red-wheeled one; this vehicle was of a uniform dark green, furnished with a top (a desirable appendage when the thermometer stands 85° in the shade,) and lined throughout with drab. The ponies were carefully enveloped to the very tips of their ears in white fly-nets. As the groom saw Benson approaching, he put himself and the top through a series of queer evolutions, which ended in the latter being lowered--a very necessary operation, to allow any one to get in with comfort; and after Benson and Ashburner were in, he put it up again with some ado, and then went his way, the concern only holding two. Then Benson turned the wagon round by backing and locking, and making it undergo a series of contortions as if he wanted to double it up into itself, and run over himself with his own wheels, and drove to the Fulton Ferry; for to arrive at the Centreville Course on Long Island--familiarly designated as _the_ island--you first pass through Brooklyn, that trans-Hudsonian suburb of New York, which thirty years ago was a miserable little village, and now contains upwards of ninety thousand inhabitants. "And how did the ball go off?" asked Ashburner, as they rolled up the main avenue of Brooklyn, at the slowest possible trot, according to the well known rule, always to take a fast horse easy over pavement. On board the ferry-boat there had not been much conversation, the horses being so worried by the flies as to require all Benson's attention. "Oh, it was rather a _fiasco_, but we had some fun. Some predicted that the fashionables would come back, but they didn't, except a few of the young men; and all of our set that were there threatened to go out of costume; but then we recollected that would have been a very Irish way of serving out Mr. Grabster, as by the established regulation in such cases, we should have had to pay double for tickets; so most of us took sailors' or firemen's dresses--the cheapest and commonest disguises we could get; and the ladies made some trivial addition to their ordinary ball-dresses--a wreath or a few extra flowers--and called themselves brides, or Floras, and so on. And some of the crack Bostonians blasphemed the expense, and went in plain clothes. So we had the consolation of making fun of all the outsiders, and their attempts at costume--such supernumeraries as most of them were! And none of the _comme-il-faut_ people would serve on the committee, so Grabster had nobody to get up the room in proper style, and it looked like a 'Ripton' ball-room; and _The Sewer_ reporters were there, in all their glory. The Irishman had borrowed or stolen a uniform somewhere, and the Frenchman was appropriately arrayed in red as a devil, and he went about taking notes of all the people's dresses, especially the ladies'; and as our ladies were not in costume, he thought he must have something to do with them, and so presented some of them with bouquets, which they wouldn't take, of course; and the young men trod on his toes and elbowed him off till he swore he would put them all in his paper. And we danced away, notwithstanding _The Sewer_ and all its works. Tom Edwards was accoutred as Mose the fireman, and Sumner had an old French _débardeur_ dress of his, just the thing for the occasion, only his shoes were too big; and after tripping up himself and his partner four times, he kicked them off clean into the orchestra, and fearfully aggravated the fiddlers; and he took it as coolly as he does every thing--put on a pair of ordinary boots, and was polking away again in five minutes. And we kept it up till two in the morning, polka chiefly, with a sprinkling of _deuxtemps_, and then had a very bad supper, and some very bad wine, of Mr. Grabster's providing--genuine New Jersey champagne. How we looked after the dancing! Sumner's _débardeur_ shirt might have been wrung out, it was so wet; and Mrs. Harrison--she had got herself up as Undine--was dripping enough for half-a-dozen water-nymphs; and Miss Friskin had a shiny green silk dress; we had been polking together, and my white waistcoat, and pants, and cravat, were all stained green, as if I had been playing with a gigantic butterfly. And then after supper, when there was no one but our German cotillion set left, and just as we had put the chairs in order, the musicians struck work, and would not play any more (you know what an impracticable, conceited, obstinate brute a third-rate German musician is), saying they were only bound to play just so long; so I gave them a good slanging in their own tongue (I know German enough to blow up a man, and a fine strong language it is for the purpose); and White swore it was too bad, and Edwards tried to make them a conciliatory speech--only he was too tipsy to talk straight; and Sumner offered them fifty dollars to go on playing. Thereupon, up and spake the big bass-viol,--'We ton't want your money; we want to be dreated like chentlemens;' and then Frank lost his temper. 'I'll treat you,' says he; and with that he delivered right and left into the bass-viol, and knocked him through his own instrument; and then some one knocked Sumner over the head with a trombone;--then we all set to, and gave the musicians their change (we owed them a little before, for it wasn't the first time they had been saucy to us,) and we thrashed them essentially, and comminuted a few of their instruments. And half-a-dozen of the Irish waiters came out, with their sleeves rolled up, to fight for the honor of the house, and protect Mr. Grabster's property--meaning the musicians, I suppose;--and Haralson of Alabama, one of your regular six-feet-two-in-his-stockings South Western men, who had come North to learn the polka, and become civilized--Haralson pulled out a Bowie and swore he would whistle them up if they didn't make themselves scarce. By Jove! you should have seen the Paddies scud! And I caught _The Sewer_ reporter (the Irish one) in the _mêlée_, and let him have a kick that landed him in the middle of the floor, telling him he might put that into his next letter, and afterwards go to a place worse even than _The Sewer_ office. Then, after all the enemy were fairly routed, we adjourned to my parlor. I had some good champagne of my own, and a _pâté_ or two, and some Firmezas, and we held a jolly revel till four o'clock, and then the ladies retired, and we quiet married men did the same, and the boys went to fight the tiger, and Edwards lost 1400 dollars, and some of them took to running foot-races for a bet on the post-road. Haralson outran all the rest--and his senses too--and was found next evening about five miles up the road with no coat or hat, and one stocking off and the other stocking on, like my son John in the nursery rhyme, and his watch and purse gone. And _The Sewer_ and _Inexpressible_ said that it was the most brilliant ball that had occurred within the memory of the oldest inhabitants. And that's a pretty fair synopsis of the whole proceedings." By this time they were off the pavement,--a change very sensible and desirable to man and horse, for an American pavement is something beyond imagination or description, and must be experienced to be understood. The ponies, without waiting for the word, went off on their long steady stroke at three-quarters speed, and though the day was warm and the road heavy, stepped over the first three miles in twelve minutes, as Benson took care to show Ashburner by his watch. They challenged wagon after wagon, but no one seemed inclined to race at this stage of the proceedings, and they glided quietly by every thing. Only once was heard the sound of competing feet, when a black pacer swept up, with two tall wheels behind him, and a man mysteriously balanced between them. "After the sulky is manners," said Harry, slackening his speed, and giving the pacer a wide berth; and the man on the wheels whizzed by like a mammoth insect, and was soon lost to view amid a cloud of dust. And now they arrived at a tavern where the owners of "fast crabs" were wont to repose, to water their horses, and brandy-and-water themselves. The former operation is performed very sparingly, the supply of liquid afforded to the animals consisting merely of a spongeful passed through their mouths; the latter is usually conducted on more liberal principles. But as our friends felt no immediate desire to liquor, Benson amused himself while the horses rested by putting down his top, for the sky had slightly clouded over,--a favorable circumstance, he remarked, for the trot. Just as he was starting his ponies, with a chirrup, a tandem developed itself from under the shed, and its driver greeted him with a friendly nod. "Good afternoon, Mr. Losing," quoth Harry, raising his whip-hand in answer to the salute; then, _sotto voce_ to Ashburner, "a Long-Island fancy man: lots of money, and no end of fast horses." Mr. Losing had a thin hatchety face, and a very yellow complexion, with hair and beard to match. He wore a yellow straw-hat, and a yellowish-gray summer paletot, with yellowish-brown linen trousers. His light gig (of the kind technically called a double-sulky) was painted a dingy yellow-ochre; the horses were duns, the fly-nets drab, and what little harness there was, retained the original law-calf color of its leather; in short, the whole concern had a general pervading air of dun, which but for the known wealth of its owner might have been suggestive of unpleasant Joe-Millerisms. The only exception was his companion, a gay horse-dealer and jockey, who acted as amateur groom on this occasion. Mr. Van Eyck had sufficient diversity of color in his dress to relieve the monotony of a whole landscape,--blue coat and gilt buttons, lilac waistcoat and ditto, red cravat and red-striped check shirt, white hat and trousers. His apparel might have been a second-hand suit of Bird Simpson's. As the gig came out close at the wheels of the wagon, the two whips interchanged glances, as much as to say, "Here's at you!" and "Come on!" and Losing tightened his reins; then, as his leader ranged up alongside Benson's horses, the latter drew up his lines also, and the teams went off together. A good team race is more exciting to both the lookers-on and the performers than any contest of single horses; there is twice as much noise, twice as much skill in driving, and apparently greater speed, though in reality less. Neither had started at the top of their gait, but they kept gradually and proportionally crowding the pace, till they were going about seventeen miles an hour, and at that rate they kept for the first half-mile exactly in the same relative position as they had started. No one spoke a word; the close contact of horses in double harness excites them so, that they require checking rather than encouragement; but Benson with a rein in his hand was feeling every inch of his ponies, and watching every inch of the road. Losing sat like a statue, and his horses seemed to go of themselves. Then, as the ground began to rise, Losing drew gradually ahead, or rather Benson's team came back to him; still it was inch by inch; in the next quarter the wheeler instead of the leader was alongside the other team, and that was all Losing had gained. Then Harry, with some management, got both reins into one hand, and lifted his nags a little with the whip. At the same time Losing altered his hold for the first time, and shook up his horses. There was a corresponding increase of speed in both parties, which kept them in the same respective position, and so they struggled on for a little while longer, till just before the road descended again, Benson made another effort to recover his lost ground. In so doing, he imprudently loosened his hold too much, and his off horse went up. The moment Firefly lost his feet Benson threw his whole weight upon the horses, and hauled them across the road, close in behind Losing's gig, the break having lost him just a length, so that when they struck into their trot again they were at the Long-Islander's wheel. Down the hill they went, faster than ever; the wagon could not gain an inch on the gig, or the gig shake the wagon off. But Losing had manifestly the best of it, as all his dust went into the face of Benson and Ashburner, enveloping and powdering them and their equipage completely. Their only consolation was, that they were bestowing a similar one on every wagon that they passed. As both teams were footing their very best, Benson's only chance of getting by was in case one of the tandems should happen to break, a chance which he kept ready to take advantage of. By and by the leader went up, but Losing, who had his horses under perfect command, let him run a little way, and caught him again into his trot without losing any thing. Nevertheless Benson, who had seen the break, made a push to go by, and with a great shout crowded his team up to the wheeler, but there they broke,--this time both horses,--and before he could bring them down he was two lengths in the rear. Then Losing drew on one side, and slackened his speed, and Benson also pulled up almost to a walk. "His double sulky is lighter than my wagon," said Harry, "even without the top, and the top makes fifty pounds difference. The machine is built a little heavier than the average, purposely because it rides easier, and shakes the horses less when there are inequalities in the road, so that besides being pleasanter to go in, a team can take it along about as fast as any thing lighter for a short brush, but when the horses are so nearly equal, and you have some miles to go on a heavy road, the extra weight tells. However, it is no disgrace to be beaten by Losing, any way, for his horses are his study and _specialité_. Every fortnight the bolts and screws of his wagon are re-arranged; his collars fit like gloves; he has a particular kind of watering-pot made on purpose to water his horses' legs. Every trifle is rigorously attended to. You ought to visit his, or some other sporting man's stable here, just to note the difference between that sort of thing with us and with you. Instead of hunters and steeple-chasers, you will see fine trotters together that can all beat 2´ 50´´." The road happened just then to be pretty clear, so they proceeded leisurely for some miles further, till just as they were quitting the turnpike for a lane which led to the course, the rattle of wheels and the shouts of drivers came up behind them. Benson, not disposed to swallow any more of other people's dust if he could help it, waked up his horses at once, and they clattered along the lane, up hill and down, and over a railroad track, and past numerous wagons, at a faster rate than ever. "_Do_ get out of the way!" shouted Henry to one primitive gentleman, with a very tired horse, who was occupying exactly the centre of the road. "You go to ----." The individual addressed was probably about to say something very bad, when Benson, who was a moral man, and had the strongest wheels, cut short any possible profanity for the moment by driving slap into him, and knocking him into the ditch, with the loss of a spoke or two. This collision hardly delayed their speed an instant; and though some of the pursuers were evidently gaining, no one overhauled them for three-quarters of a mile, at the end of which Starlight and Firefly swept proudly up to the course, with a long train in their rear. All the vicinity of the Centreville Course--not the stables and sheds merely, but the lanes leading to it, the open ground about it, the whole adjacent country, one might almost say--was covered with wagons stowed together as closely as cattle in a market. If it had been raining wagons and trotters the night before just over the place, like showers of frogs that country editors short of copy fill a column with, or if they had grown up there ready harnessed, there could not have been a more plentiful supply. Wagons, wagons, wagons everywhere, of all weights, from a hundred and eighty pounds to four hundred, with here and there a sulky for variety--horses of all styles, colors, and merits--no sign of a servant or groom of any kind, but a number of boys, mostly blackies, about one to every ten horses, who earned a few shillings by looking after the animals, and watching the carpets, sheets, and fly-nets. The only other movables, the long-handled short-lashed whips, were invariably carried off by their proprietors. Whips and umbrellas are common property in America; they are an exception to the ordinary law of _meum_ and _tuum_, and strictly subject to socialist rules. Woe to the owner of either who lets his property go one second out of his sight! "Now then, Snowball!" quoth Benson, as a young gentleman of color rushed up on the full grin, stimulated to extra activity by the recollection of the past and the vision of prospective "quarters,"--"take care of the fliers, and don't let any one steal their tails! I ought to tell you," he continued to Ashburner, leading the way towards the big, dilapidated,[5] unpainted, barn-like structure, which appeared to be the rear of the grandstand, "you won't find any gentlemen here--that is, not above half-a-dozen at most." "I was just wondering whether we should see any ladies." Benson pointed over his left shoulder; and they planked their dollar a-piece at the entrance. Ashburner's first impression, when fairly inside, was that he had never seen such a collection of disreputable looking characters in broad daylight, and under the open sky. All up the rough broad steps, that were used indifferently to sit or stand upon; all around the oyster and liquor stands, that filled the recess under the steps; all over the ground between the stand and the track, was a throng of low, shabby, dirty men, different in their ages, sizes, and professions; for some were farmers, some country tavern-keepers, some city ditto, some horse-dealers, some gamblers, and some loafers in general; but alike in their slang and "rowdy" aspect. There is something peculiarly disagreeable in an American crowd, from the fact that no class has any distinctive dress. The gentleman and the working-man, or the "loafer," wear clothes of the same kind, only in one case they are new and clean, in the other, old and dirty. The ragged dress-coats and crownless beavers of the Irish peasants have long been the admiration of travellers; now, elevate these second-hand garments a stage or two in the scale of preservation--let the coats be not ragged, but shabby, worn in seam, and greasy in collar; the hats whole, but napless at edge, and bent in brim; supply them with old trousers of the last fashion but six, and you have the general costume of a crowd like the present. But ordinary collections of the [Greek: oi polloi] are relieved by the very superior appearance of the women; pretty in their youth, lady-like and stylish even when prematurely faded, always dressed respectably, and frequently dressed in good taste, they form a startling relief and contrast to their cavaliers; and not only the stranger, but the native gentleman, is continually surprised at the difference, and says to himself, "Where in the world could such nice women pick up those snobs?" Here, where there is not a woman within a mile (unless that suspicious carriage in the corner contains some gay friends of Tom Edwards'), the congregated male loaferism of these people, without even a decent looking dog among them, is enough to make a man button his pockets instinctively. Amid this wilderness of vagabonds may be seen grouped together at the further corner of the stand the representatives of the gentlemanly interest, numbering, as Benson had predicted, about half-a-dozen. Losing, with his yellow blouse and moustache to match; Tom Edwards, in a white hat and trousers, and black velvet coat; Harrison, slovenly in his attire, and looking almost as coarse as any of the rowdies about, till he raises his head, and shows his intelligent eyes; Bleecker, who had just arrived; and a few specimens of Young New-York like him. Benson carries his friend that way, and introduces him in due form to the Long Islander, who receives him with an elaborate bow. Ashburner offers a cigar to Losing, who accepts the weed with a nod of acknowledgment (for he rarely opens his mouth except to put something into it, or to make a bet), and offers one of his in return, which Ashburner trying, excoriates his lips at the first whiff, and is obliged to throw it away after the third, for Charley Losing has strong tastes, will rather drink brandy than wine, any day, and smokes tobacco that would knock an ordinary man down. The stranger glances his eye over the scene of action. A barouche and four does not differ more from a trotting wagon, or a blood courser from a Canadian pacer, than an English race-course from an American "track." It is an ellipse of hard ground, like a good and smooth piece of road, with some variations of ascent and descent. The distance round is calculated at a mile, according to the scope of turning requisite for a horse before a sulky--that being the most usual form of trotting; for a saddle-horse that has the pole,[6] it comes practically to a little less; for a harness-horse (especially if to a wagon) with an outside place, to a little, or sometimes a good deal more. Around the inclosure, within the track (which looks as if it were trying hard to grow grass and couldn't), a few wagons, which obtained entrance by special favor, are walking about; they belong to the few men who have brought their grooms with them. Harrison's pet trotter is there, a magnificent long-tailed bay, as big as a carriage-horse, equal to 2´ 50´´ on the road before that wagon, and worth fifteen hundred dollars, it is said. Just inside the track, and opposite the main stand outside, is a little shanty of a judge's stand, and marshalled in front of it are half a dozen notorious pugilists, and similar characters, who, doubtless on the good old principle of "set a thief," &c., are enrolled for the occasion as special constables, with very special and formidable white bludgeons to keep order, and precise suits of black cloth to augment their dignity. "To come off at three o'clock," said the handbills. It is now thirty-five minutes past three, and no signs of beginning. An American horse and an American woman always keep you waiting an hour at least. One of the judges comes forward, and raps on the front of the stand with a primitive bit of wood resembling a broken boot-jack. "Bring out your horses!" People look towards the yard on the left. Here is one of them just led out; they pull off his sheets, his driver climbs up into the little seat behind him. He comes down part of the stand at a moderate gait. Hurrah for old Twenty-miles-an-hour! Trustee! Trustee! The old chestnut is half-blood; but you would never guess it from his personal appearance, so chunky, and thick-limbed, and sober-looking is he. His action is uneven, and seemingly laborious; you would not think him capable of covering _one_ mile in three minutes, much less of performing twenty at the same rate. No wonder he hobbles a little behind, for his back sinews are swelled, and his legs scarred and disfigured--the traces of injuries received in his youth, when a cart ran into him, and cut him almost to pieces. Veterinary surgeons, who delight in such relics, will show you pieces of sinew taken from him after the accident. That was six or seven years ago: since then he has solved a problem for the trotting world. "There," says Benson, with a little touch of triumph, "is the only horse in the world that ever trotted twenty miles in an hour. I saw it done myself. He was driven nearly two miles before he started, to warm him up, and make him limber. When the word was given, he made a skip, and though his driver, not the same that he has now, caught him before he was fairly off his feet, he was more than three minutes doing the first mile, which looked well for the backers of time; but as the old fellow went on, he did every mile better than the preceding, and the last in the best time of all, winning with nearly half a minute to spare." "Has the experiment been often tried?" "Not more than two or three times, I believe; and the horses who attempted it broke down in the eighteenth or nineteenth mile. Nevertheless, I think that within the last twelve years we have had two or three horses beside Trustee who could have accomplished the feat; but as such a horse is worth two thousand dollars and upwards, a heavy bet would be required to tempt a man to risk killing or ruining his animal; and our sporting men, though they bet frequently, are not in the habit of betting largely. That is one reason why it has not been tried oftener; and I am inclined to think that there is another and a better motive. The owner of a splendid horse does not like to risk his life; and it is a risk of life to attempt to trot him twenty miles an hour." Pit, pat! pit, pat! The old mare is coming down to the score. A very ordinary looking animal in repose, the magnificence of her action converts her into a beauty when moving. How evenly her feet rise and fall, regularly as a machine, though she is nearly at the top of her speed! She carries her head down, and her neck stretched out, and from the tip of her nose to the end of her long white tail, that streams out in the breeze made by her own progress, you might draw a straight line, so true and right forward does she travel. Perched over her tail, between those two tall, slender wheels, sits her owner, David Bryan, the only man that ever handles her, in something like a jockey costume, blue velvet jacket and cap to match, and his white hair, whiter than his horse's tail, streaming in the wind--a respectable and almost venerable looking man; but a hard boy for all that, say the knowing ones. Great applause from the Long Island men, who swear by "the Lady," and are always ready to "stake their pile" on her, for her owner is a Long-Islander, and she is a Suffolk county, Long-Island mare. Some eight years ago Lady Suffolk was bought out of a baker's cart for 112 dollars, and since then she has won for "Dave" upwards of 30,000 dollars. That is what the possessor of a fast trotter most prides himself on--to have bought the animal for a song on the strength of his own eye for his points, and then developed him into a "flier." When a colt is bred from a trotting stallion, put into training at three or four years old, and sold the first time for a high price, if he turns out well there is no particular wonder or merit in it; if he does not, the disappointment is extreme. Ah, here comes Pelham at last--a clean little bay, stepping roundly, and lifting his legs well; you might call it a perfect action, if we had not just seen Lady Suffolk go by--but _so_ wicked about the head and eyes! Behind the little horse sits a big Irishman, in his shirt sleeves; and they are hauling away at each other, pull Pat, pull Pelham, as if the man wanted to jerk the horse's head off, and the horse to draw the man's arms out. You see the driver is holding by little loops fastened to the reins, to prevent his grasp from slipping. Pelham is a young horse for a trotter, say seven years old, and has already done the fastest mile ever made in harness; but his temper is terribly uncertain, and to-day he seems to be in a particularly bad humor. Trustee, who requires much warming up, goes all round the track, increasing his speed as he goes, till he has reached pretty nearly his limit. Pelham also completes the circuit, but more leisurely. The Lady trots about a quarter of a mile, then walks a little, and then brushes back. Her returning is even faster and prettier than her going. "2´ 33´´," says Losing, speaking for the first time, as she crosses the score (the line in front of the judge's stand). His eye is such that, given the horse and the track, he can tell the pace at a glance within half a second. The gentry about are beginning to bet on their respective favorites, and some upon time--trifling amounts generally--five, ten, or twenty dollars; and there is much pulling out, and counting, and depositing of greasy notes. Bang! goes the broken boot-jack again. This time it is not "Bring _out_ your horses!" but "Bring _up_ your horses!"--a requisition which the drivers comply with by turning _away_ from the stand. This is to get a start, a _flying start_ being the rule, which obviously favors the backers of time, and is, in some respects, fairer to the horses, but is very apt to create confusion and delay, especially when three or four horses are entered. So it happens in the present instance: half way up the quarter, the horses turn, not all together, but just as they happen to be; and off they go, some slower and some faster, trying to fall into line as they approach the score. "Come back!" It's no go, this time; Pelham has broken up, and is spreading himself all over the track. Trustee, too, is a length or more behind the gray mare, and evidently in no hurry. They all go back, the mare last, as she was half-way down the other quarter before the recall was understood. "What a beauty she is!" says Harry. "And she has the pole too." "Will you bet two to three on her against the field?" asks Edwards, who knew very well that Trustee is the favorite. Benson declines. "Then will you go on time? Will you bet on 7´ 42´´, or that they don't beat 7´ 47´´" (three mile heats, you will recollect, reader). No, Harry won't bet at all; so Edwards turns to Losing. "Will you bet three to five in hundreds on the Lady?" Losing will. They neither plank the money, nor book the bet, but the thing is understood. Pelham's driver has begged the judges to give the word, even if he is two lengths behind; he would rather do that than have his horse worried by false starts. So this time, perhaps, they will get off. Not yet! Bryan's mare breaks up just before they come to the score. Harrison hints that he broke her on purpose, because Trustee was likely to have about a neck advantage of him in the start. "Of course they never go the first time," says Benson, "and very seldom the second." "I saw nine false starts once, at Harlaem," says Bleecker, "where there were but three horses. Better luck next time." It is better luck. Pelham lays in the rear full two lengths, but Trustee and the mare come up nose and nose to the score, going at a great pace. "Go!" At the word Trustee breaks. "Bah! take him away! Where's Brydges?" The superior skill of his former driver, is painfully remembered by the horse's friends. But he soon recovers, and catches his trot about two lengths behind the mare, and as much in advance of Pelham; for the little bay is going very badly, seems to have no trot in him, and his driver dares not hurry him. In these respective positions they complete the first quarter. As they approach the half mile, the distance renders their movements indistinct, and their speed, positive or relative, difficult to determine. You can only make out their position. Pelham continues to lose, and Trustee has gained a little; but the gray mare keeps the lead gallantly. "I like a trot," says Benson, "because you can watch the horses so long. In a race they go by like a flash, once and again, and it's all over." In the next quarter they are almost lost to view, and then they appear again coming home, and you begin once more to appreciate the rate at which they are coming. Still it is not the very best pace; the Lady is taking it rather easy, as if conscious of having it all her own way; and her driver looks as careless and comfortable as if he were only taking her out to exercise, when she glides past the stand. "2´ 35´´," says Losing. He doesn't need to look at his watch; but there is great comparing of stop-watches among the other men for the time of the first mile. Hardly half a length behind is Trustee; he has been gradually creeping up without any signs of being hurried, and, clumsily as he goes, gets over the ground without heating himself. "John Case knows what he's about, after all," Edwards observes, "He takes his time, and so does the old horse; wait another round, and, at the third mile, they'll be _there_." "But where's Pelham? Is he lost? No, there he comes; and, Castor and Pollux, what a burst! Something has waked him up after the other horses have passed the stand, and while he is yet four or five lengths from it. There's a brush for you! Did you ever see a horse foot it so?--as if all the ideas of running that he may ever have had in his life were arrested, and fastened down into his trot. How he is closing up the gap! If he can hold to that stroke he will be ahead of the field before the first quarter of this second mile is out. A mighty clamor arises, shouts from his enemies, who want to break him, cheers from his injudicious friends. There, he has lapped Trustee--he has passed him; tearing at the bit harder than ever, he closes with Lady Suffolk. Bryan does not begin to thrash his mare yet, he only shows the whip over her; but yells like a madman at her, and at Pelham, whose driver holds on to him as a drowning man holds on to a rope. They are going side by side at a terrific pace. It can't last; one of them must go up. The bay horse does go up just at the quarter pole, having made that quarter, Benson says, in the remarkably short time of thirty-six seconds and a half." Pelham's driver can't jerk him across the track; by doing so, he would foul Trustee, who is just behind; so he has to let the chestnut go by, and then sets himself to work to bring down his unruly animal; no easy matter--for Pelham, frightened by the shouting, and excited by the noise of the wheels, plunges about in a manner that threatens to spill or break down the sulky; and twice, after being brought almost to a full stop, goes off again on a canter. Good bye, little horse! there's no more chance for you. By this time, the Lady is nearly a quarter of a mile ahead, and going faster than ever. Somehow or other, Trustee has increased his speed too, and is just where he was, a short half-length behind her. The way in which he hangs on to the mare begins to frighten the Long-Islanders a little, but they comfort themselves with the hope that she has something left, and can let out some spare foot in the third mile, or whenever it may be necessary. Some forty seconds more elapse; a period of time that goes like a flash when you are training your own flier, or "brushing" on the road, but seems long enough when you are waiting for horses to come round, and then they appear once more coming home. The mare is still leading, with her beautiful, steady, unfaltering stroke; but she is by no means so fresh-looking as when she started; many a dark line of sweat marks her white hide. Close behind her comes Trustee; the half-length gap has disappeared, and his nose is ready to touch Bryan's jacket. There is hardly a wet hair discernible on him; he goes perfectly at his ease, and seems to be in hand. "He has her now," is the general exclamation, "and can pass her when he pleases." As the mare crosses the score, (in 2´ 34´´, according to Edwards's stop-watch,) Bryan "looks over his left shoulder," like the knights in old ballads, and becomes aware for the first time that the horse at his wheel is not Pelham, as he had supposed, but Trustee. The old fellow is another man. His air of careless security has changed to one of intense excitement. Slash! slash! slash! falls the long whip, with half a dozen frantic cuts and an appropriate garnish of yells. Almost any other trotter would go off in a run at one such salute, to say nothing of five or six; but the old mare, who "has no break in her," merely understands them as gentle intimations to go faster--and she does go faster. How her legs double up, and what a rush she has made! There is a gap of three lengths between her and Trustee. He never hurries himself, but goes on steadily as ever. See, as he passes, how he straddles behind like an old cow, and yet how dexterously he paddles himself along, as it were, with one hind foot. What a mixture of ugliness and efficiency his action is! At the first quarter the Lady has come back to him. Three times during this, the last and decisive mile, is the performance repeated. You may hear Bryan's voice and whip completely across the course, as he hurries his mare away from the pursuer; but each succeeding time the temporary gap is shorter and sooner closed. Now they are coming down the straight stretch home. The mare leads yet. Case appears to be talking to his horse, and encouraging him; if it is so, you cannot hear him, for the tremendous row Lady Suffolk's driver is making. She had the pole at starting, has kept it throughout, and Trustee must pass her on the outside. This circumstance is her only hope of winning. All her owner's exertions, and all the encouraging shouts of her friends, which she now hears greeting her from the stand, cannot enable her to shake off Trustee, but if she can only maintain her lead for six or seven lengths more, it is enough. The chestnut is directly in her rear; every blow gets a little more out of her. Half the short interval to the goal is passed, when Trustee diverges from his straight course, and shows his head along side Bryan's wheel. Catching his horse short, Case puts his whip upon him for the first time, shakes him up with a great shout, and crowds him past the mare, winning the heat by a length. The little bay was so far behind at the end of the second mile, that no one took any notice of him, and he was supposed to have dropped out somewhere on the road. His position, however, was much improved on the third mile; still, as there was a strong probability of his being shut out, the judges dispatched one of their number to the distance-post with a flag; a very proper proceeding, only they thought of it rather late, for the judge arrived there only just before Pelham, and also just before Trustee crossed the score; in fact, the three events were all but simultaneous; the judge dropped the flag in Pelham's face, and Pelham in return nearly ran over the judge. This episode attracted no attention at the time of its occurrence, all eyes being directed to the leading horses; but now it affords materials for a nice little row, Pelham's driver protesting violently against the distance. There is much thronging, and vociferating, and swearing about the judge's stand, into which our burly Irishman endeavors to force his way. One of the specials favors him with a rap on the head, that would astonish a hippopotamus. Pat doesn't seem to mind it, but he understands it well enough (the argument is just suited to his capacity), and remains tolerably quiet. Finally, it is proclaimed that "Trustee wins the heat in 7´ 45´´, and Pelham is distanced." "Best three miles ever made in harness," says Harrison, "except when Dutchman did it in 7´ 41´´." Edwards doubts the fact, and they bet about it, and will write to the _Spirit of the Times_ (the American _Bell's Life_). Ashburner and Benson descended from the stand. The horses, panting and pouring with sweat, are rubbed and scraped by their attendants, three or four to each. Then they are clothed, and walked up and down quietly. They have a rest of nominally half-an-hour, and practically at least forty minutes. Some of the crowd are eating oysters, more drinking brandy and water, and a still greater number "loafing" about without any particular employment. There are two or three thimble-riggers on the ground, but they seem to be in a barren county; nobody there is green enough for them; the very small boys take sights at them. There is a tradition that Edwards once in his younger days tried his fortune with them. He looked so dandified, green, and innocent, that they let him win five dollars the first time, and then, on the rigger's proposing to bet a hundred, his supposed victim applied the finger of scorn to the nose of derision, and strutted off with his V.,[7] to the great amusement of the bystanders. Tom is very proud of this story, and likes to tell it himself. That, and his paying a French actress with a check when he had nothing at his banker's, are two of the great exploits of his life. "This _is_ rather a low assemblage, certainly," says Ashburner, after he has contemplated it from several points of view, and observed a great many different points of character. "Do they ever have races here?" "Yes, every spring and fall, here, or on the Union Course adjoining. They are rather more decently attended, but not over respectable, much less fashionable. At the South, it is different; there ladies go, and the club races are some of the most marked features of their city life. I recollect when I was a boy, that these trotting matches were nice things, and gentlemen used to enter their own horses; but gradually they have gone down hill to what they are now, and the names of the best trotters are associated with the hardest characters and the most disreputable species of balls." "And when they race, do the horses run on ground like _this_?" asked Ashburner, stamping on the track, which was as hard as Macadam. "Precisely on this, and run four-mile heats, too, and five of them sometimes." "_Five_ four-mile heats on ground like this?" The Englishman looked incredulous. "Exactly. It has happened that each of three has won a heat, and then there was one dead heat. You will remember, though, that we run old horses, not colts. There is no extra weight for age; they begin at four or five years old, and go on till twelve or fourteen." "But they must be very liable to accidents, going on such hard soil." "Yes, they do break their legs sometimes, but not often. Our horses are tougher than yours." As they stroll about, Benson points out several celebrated fliers that have gained admission inside of the stand, but prefer remaining outside the track; some pretty well worn-out and _emeriti_ like Ripton, an old rival of Lady Suffolk (the mare has outlasted most of her early contemporaries), some in their prime, like the trotting stallion, Black Hawk, beautifully formed as any blood-horse, but singularly marked, being white-stockinged all round to the knee. "There," says Harry, "is a fellow that belies the old horse-dealer's rhyme: 'Four white legs and a white nose, Take him away, and throw him to the crows.'"   Time is up, and they return to the stand. Edwards is bantering Losing, and asks him if he will repeat his bet on this heat. He will fast enough, and double it on the final result. Edwards wants nothing better. This time, for a wonder, the horses got off at the first start, and a tremendous pace they make, altogether too much for Trustee, who is carried off his feet in the first half-quarter, and the Lady goes ahead three, four, five lengths, and has taken the pole before he can recover. Bryan continues to crowd the pace. The mare comes round to the score in 2´ 33´´, leading by four lengths, and her driver threshing her already. "She can't stand it," say the knowing ones; "she must drop out soon." But she doesn't drop out in the second mile at least, for at the end of that, she is still three lengths in advance, and Trustee does not appear so fresh as he did last heat. The Long-Islanders are exultant, and the sporting men look shy. When they come home in the last quarter, the chestnut has only taken one length out of the gap; nevertheless, he goes for the outside, and makes the best rush he can. It's no use. He can't get near her; breaks up again, and crosses the score a long way behind. Much manifestation of boisterous joy among the farmers. Edwards looks sold, and something like a smile passes over Losing's unimpassioned countenance. It is plain sailing for the judges this time. "Lady Suffolk has the heat in 7' 49´´," and there is no mistake or dispute about it. Another long pause. Eight minutes' sport and three quarters of an hour intermission among such a company begins to be rather dull work. All the topics of interest afforded by the place have been exhausted. Harrison and Benson begin to talk stocks and investments; the juveniles are comparing their watering place experiences during the summer. Ashburner says nothing, and smokes an indefinite number of cigars; Losing says rather less, and smokes more. Edwards has disappeared; gone, possibly, to talk to the doubtful carriages. It is growing dark before they are ready for the third and decisive heat. One false start, and at the second trial they are off. The mare has the inside, in right of having won the preceding heat. She crowds the pace from the start, as usual; but Trustee is better handled this time, and does not break. Case allows the Lady to lead him by three lengths, and keeps his horse at a steady gait, in quiet pursuit of her. For two miles their positions are unaltered; Bryan's friends cheer him vociferously every time as he comes round; he replies by a flourish of his long whip and additional shouts to his mare. In the third mile, Trustee begins to creep up, and in the third quarter of it, just before he gets out of sight from the stand, is only a length and a half behind. When they appear again, there are plenty of anxious lookers-out; and men like our friend Edwards, who have a thousand or more at stake on the result, cannot altogether restrain their emotions. Here they come close enough together! Trustee has lapped the mare on the outside; his head is opposite the front rim of her wheel. Bryan shouts and whips like one possessed; Case's small voice is also lifted up to encourage Trustee. The chestnut is gaining, but only inch by inch, and they are nearly home. Now Case has lifted him with the whip, and he makes a rush and is at her shoulder. Now he will have her. Oh, dear, he has gone up! Hurrah for the old gray! Stay! Case has caught him beautifully; he is on his trot again opposite her wheel. One desperate effort on the part of man and horse, and Trustee shoots by the mare; but not till after she has crossed the score. Lady Suffolk is quite done up; she could not go another quarter; but she has held out long enough to win the heat and the money. And now, as it was somewhere in the neighborhood of seven, and neither Ashburner nor Benson had eaten any thing since eight in the morning, they began to feel very much inclined for dinner, or supper, or something of the sort; and the team travelled back quite as fast as it was safe to go by twilight; a little faster, the Englishman might have thought, if he had not been so hungry. Then, after crossing the Brooklyn ferry, Benson announced his intention of putting up his horses for the night at a livery stable, and himself at Ashburner's hotel, as it was still a long drive for that time of night to Devilshoof; which being agreed upon, they next dived into an oyster cellar, of which there are about two to a block all along Broadway, and ordered an unlimited supply of the agreeable shellfish, broiled;--_oyster chops_, Ashburner used to call them; and the term gives a stranger a pretty good idea of what these large oysters look like, cooked as they are with crumbs, exactly in the style of a _cotelette panée_. And they make very nice eating, too; only they promote thirst and induce the consumption of numerous glasses of champagne or brandy and water, as the case may be. Whether this be an objection to them or not, is matter of opinion. Then having adjourned to Ashburner's apartment in the fifth story of the Manhattan hotel (it was a room with an alcove, French fashion), and smoked numerous Firmezas there, the Englishman turned in for the night; and Benson, who had no notion of paying for a bed when he could get a sofa for nothing, disposed himself at full length upon Ashburner's, without taking off any thing except his hat, and was fast asleep in less time than it would take _The Sewer_ to tell a lie. FOOTNOTES: [4] The United States government, (U. S.) [5] A very critical friend wants to know if the term _dilapidated_ can, with strict propriety, be applied to a _wooden_ building. [6] A horse will "go the pole" in such a time, means that he will go in double harness. A horse "has the pole," means that he has drawn the place nearest the inside boundary fence of the track. [7] A five-dollar bill is so called from the designation in Roman numerals upon it. From Chamber's Edinburgh Journal. PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF A DUTCH POET. The name of Wilhelm Bilderdyk is scarcely known beyond the boundaries of his own country; and yet those who are conversant with the Dutch language place him in a very high rank as a poet. The publication of his first poem, _Elicus_, formed quite an era in the history of Dutch literature. It was speedily followed by a faithful and spirited translation of the _Oedipus_ of Sophocles, and versions of other Greek writers. Besides his imaginative pursuits, he engaged with ardor in the study of geology, and almost rivalled Cuvier in his acquaintance with natural history. War and invasion, however, interrupted the labors of Bilderdyk. He quitted Holland, travelled through Germany, crossed over to England, and finally spent some time amongst the Scottish Highlands, where he employed himself in translating Ossian's poems into Dutch verse. He then went to the principality of Brunswick, and there composed a very extraordinary work, _The Maladies of Wise Men_, a poem whose mild, lofty sublimity, unearthly interest, and grasp of gloomy thought, entitle it to rank with the Inferno of Dante. Bilderdyk at length was able to return to his country. Louis Napoleon, who then reigned at the Hague, chose him as his instructor in the Dutch language, and named him president of the second class in the Institute of Amsterdam. About this time he married a beautiful and clever girl, named Wilhelmina; and for several years they enjoyed together as perfect happiness as this world can give--she occupied in domestic and maternal duties, and he adding to his fame and fortune by the publication of several works. But at length death visited their dwelling, and removed within a brief space three lovely children. Their loss was commemorated in two poems--_Winter Flowers_, and _The Farewell_. Not long afterwards, public misfortune came to aggravate his private sorrows. Louis Napoleon left Holland, and Bilderdyk took refuge at Groningen, where he stayed for some time, and then, rejecting a liberal offer of employment made him by William of Orange, he set out for France, accompanied by his wife. When they entered the diligence, they found it occupied but by one person, a young female of mild and engaging appearance. No sooner did the heavy machine begin to move than she began to scream, and testified the most absurd degree of terror. Public carriages then were certainly far inferior, both in safety and accommodation, to those of modern times; yet the probable amount of danger to be apprehended did not by any means justify the excessive apprehension manifested by the fair traveller. On arriving at Brussels, the lady was so much overcome that she announced her intention of stopping some days in that city to recruit her strength before venturing again to encounter the perils of a diligence; and taking leave of Bilderdyk and his wife, she gratefully thanked the latter for the kind attention she had shown her during the journey. The two Hollanders proceeded on their way to Paris, laughing heartily from time to time at the foolish cowardice of a woman who saw a precipice in every rut, and a certain overturn in every jolt of the wheels. Arrived at their journey's end, the travellers took up their abode in a humble dwelling in the Rue Richelieu, and commenced with the utmost delight visiting all the wonderful things in Paris. Bilderdyk soon found himself completely in his element. He breakfasted with Cuvier at the Jardin des Plantes, passed his afternoon at the Bibliothèque Richelieu, dined in the Faubourg St. Germain with Dr. Alibert, and finished the evening at the play or the opera. One day he and his wife were given excellent places for witnessing the ascent in a balloon of a young woman, Mme. Blanchard, whose reckless courage enabled her to undertake aërial voyages, despite the sad fate which befell Pilastre de Rosiers, her own husband, and several other aëronauts. Our Hollanders amused themselves for some time with watching the process of inflating the balloon, and following with their eyes the course of the tiny messenger-balloons sent up to ascertain the direction of the upper currents of wind. At length all is ready, the band strikes up a lively air, and Mme. Blanchard, dressed in white and crowned with roses, appears, holding a small gay flag in her hand. With the most graceful composure she placed herself in the boat, the cords were loosed, and the courageous adventuress, borne rapidly upwards in her perilous vehicle, soon appeared like a dark spot in the sky. When he returned to his lodging, Bilderdyk composed a poem in honor of the brave woman who adventured her life so boldly, rivalling the free birds of heaven in her flight, and beholding the stars face to face. Next morning he hastened to get his production printed, and without considering that Mme. Blanchard most likely did not understand Dutch, he repaired to her lodgings with a copy of the poem in his hand, intending to ask permission to present it to her. He was courteously invited to enter the drawing-room, and there, to his great amazement, he found himself _tête-à-tête_ with the silly, frightened lady, whose nervous tremors in the Brussels diligence had afforded so much amusement to him and his wife. Surprised and disconcerted, he was beginning to apologize, when the lady interrupted him. "Monsieur," she said, "you are not mistaken. I am Mme. Blanchard. You see how possible it is for the same person to be cowardly in a coach, and courageous in a balloon." A good deal of conversation ensued, the poem was timidly offered, and graciously accepted; and the fair aëronaut accepted an invitation to dine that day with Bilderdyk and his wife. In the course of the evening Mme. Blanchard related to them some curious circumstances in her life. Her mother kept a humble wayside inn near La Rochelle, while her father worked in the fields. One day a balloon descended near their door, and out of it was taken a man, severely but not dangerously bruised. Her parents received him with the utmost hospitality, and supplied him with all the comforts they could give. He had no money wherewith to repay them, but as he was about to depart, he remarked that the mistress of the house was very near her confinement, and he said: "Listen, and mark my words. Fortune cannot always desert me. In sixteen years, if alive, I will return hither. If the child who will soon be born to you should be a boy, I will then adopt him; if a girl, I will marry her!" The worthy peasants laughed heartily at this strange method of paying a bill; and although they allowed their guest to depart, they certainly built very little on his promise. The aëronaut, however, kept his word, and at the end of sixteen years re-appeared at the inn, then inhabited by only a fair young girl, very lately left an orphan. She willingly accepted Jean Pierre Blanchard as a husband, and for a short time they lived happily together; but during an ascent which he made in Holland, he was seized with apoplexy, and fell to the ground from a height of sixty feet. The unhappy aëronaut was not killed on the spot, but lingered for some time in frightful torture, carefully and fondly attended by his wife, whom at length he left a young and penniless widow. Marie Madeleine Blanchard, despite her natural timidity, resolved to adopt her husband's perilous profession. Pride and necessity combined do wonders; and not only did she succeed in maintaining perfect composure while in the air, but she also displayed wonderful presence of mind during the time of danger. On one occasion she ascended in her balloon from Nantes, intending to come down at about four leagues from that town, in what she believed to be a large meadow. While rapidly descending, the cordage of the balloon became entangled in the branches of a tree, and she found herself suspended over a vast green marsh, whose treacherous mud would infallibly ingulf her. Drawn to the spot by her cries, several peasants came to her assistance, and with considerable difficulty and danger succeeded in placing her on terra firma. On the day following the one on which she dined with M. and Mme. Bilderdyk, Mme. Blanchard left Paris, promising her two friends, as she bade them farewell, that she would soon return. Time passed on, however, and they heard nothing of her. They were preparing to return to Holland, when some of Bilderdyk's countrymen residing in Paris resolved to give him a banquet on the eve of his departure. The entertainment took place at a celebrated restaurant, situated at the angle formed by the Rue Cauchat and the Rue de Provence. While enjoying themselves at table, the guests suddenly perceived the windows darkened by the passing of some large black object. With one accord they rose and ran out: a woman lay on the pavement, pale, crushed, and dead. Bilderdyk gave a cry--it was Mme. Blanchard! In what a guise to meet her again! Encouraged by the constant impunity of her perilous ascensions, the unhappy aëronaut (the word I believe has no feminine), finding a formidable rival in Mlle. Garnerin, resolved to surpass her in daring by augmenting the risk of her aërial voyages. For this purpose she lighted up her balloon car with colored lamps, and carried with her a supply of fireworks. On the sixth of July, 1819, she rose from amid a vast concourse of spectators. The balloon caught in one of the trees in the Champs-Elysées, but without regarding the augury, Mme. Blanchard threw out ballast, and as she rose rapidly in the air she spilled a quantity of lighting spirits of wine, and then sent off rockets and Roman candles. Suddenly, with horror, the mass of upturned eyes beheld the balloon take fire. One piercing shriek from above mingled with the affrighted cries of the crowd below, and then some object was seen to detach itself from the fiery globe. As it came near the earth, it was recognized as the body of the ill-fated Mme. Blanchard. Weeping and trembling, Bilderdyk aided in raising the disfigured corpse, and wrapped it up in the net-work of the balloon, which the hands still grasped firmly. The shock, acting on his excitable temperament, threw him into a dangerous illness, from which, however, he recovered, and returned to his native country. There he published an admirable treatise, "The Theory of Vegetable Organization," and a poem entitled, "The Destruction of the Primeval World." A French critic has placed this latter work in the same rank with "Paradise Lost," and says: "Old Milton has nothing finer, more energetic, or more vast, in his immortal work." An English critic, however, would probably scarcely concur in this judgment. Bilderdyk died in the town of Haarlem on the 18th of December, 1831. From Household Words. OUR PHANTOM SHIP: CHINA. Since a typhoon occurs not much oftener than once in about three years, it would be odd if we should sail immediately into one; but we are fairly in the China seas, which are the typhoon's own peculiar sporting ground, and it is desperately sultry, and those clouds are full of night and lightning, to say nothing of a fitful gale and angry sea. Look out! There is the coast of China. Now for a telescope to see the barren, dingy hills, with clay and granite peeping out, with a few miserable trees and stunted firs. That is our first sight of the flowery land, and we shall not get another yet, for the spray begins to blind us; it is quite as much as we can do to see each other. Now the wind howls and tears the water up, as if it would extract the great waves by their roots, like so many of old Ocean's teeth; but he kicks sadly at the operation. We are driven by the wild blast that snaps our voices short off at the lips and carries them away; no words are audible. We are among a mass of spars and men wild as the storm on drifting broken junks; a vessel founders in our sight, and we are cast, with dead and living, upon half a dozen wrecks entangled in a mass, upon the shore of Hong Kong;--ourselves safe, of course, for we have left at home whatever could be bruised upon the journey. How many houses have been blown away like hats, how many rivers have been driven back to swell canals and flood the fields, (whose harvest has been prematurely cropped on the first warning of the typhoon's intended visit,) we decline investigating. The evening sky is very wild, and we were all last night under the typhoon at sea; to-night we are in the new town of Victoria, and will be phantom bed-fellows to any Chinaman who has been eating pork for supper. The Chinese are very fond of pork, or any thing that causes oiliness in man. A lean man forfeits something in their estimation; for they say, "He must have foolishness; why has he wanted wisdom to eat more?" Hong Kong was one of the upshots of our cannonading in the pure and holy Chinese war; and as for the new town of Victoria, we shall walk out of it at once, for we have not travelled all this way to look at Englishmen. The island itself is eight or ten miles long, and sometimes two or sometimes six miles broad. It is the model of a grand mountain region on a scale of two inches to the foot. There are crags, ravines, wild torrents, fern-covered hills; but the highest mountain does not rise two thousand feet.--We stand upon it now. Quite contrary to usual experience, we found, in coming up, the richest flowers at the greatest elevation. The heat and dryness of the air below, where the sun's rays are reflected from bare surfaces, is said to be oppressive, and perhaps the flowers down there want a pleasant shade. From our elevation we can see few patches of cultivation, but leaping down the rocks are many picturesque cascades. Hong Kong is christened from its own waters, its name signifying in Chinese "the Island of Fragrant Streams." There is a goat upon the nearest rock; but look beyond. On one side is the bay, with shipping, and behind us the broad expanse of the ocean; and before us is the sea, studded as far as our eyes can reach with mountainous islands, among which we must sail to reach Canton. Now we float onward in the Phantom, and among these islands our sharp eyes discover craft that have more hands on board than usually man an honest vessel. In the holes and corners of the islands pirates lurk to prey upon the traffic of Canton. We pass Macao on our way into the Canton river. Portugal was a nation of quality once, with a strong constitution, and in those days, once upon a time, wrecked Portuguese gained leave to dry a cargo on the Island of Macao. They erected sheds a little stronger than were necessary for that temporary purpose; in fact, they turned the accident to good account, and established here an infant settlement, which soon grew to maintain itself, and sent money home occasionally to assist its mother. Twice the Emperor of China offered to make Macao an emporium for European trade; the Portuguese preferred to be exclusive. So the settlement fell sick, and since the English made Hong Kong a place of active trade, very few people trouble themselves to inquire whether Macao be dead yet, or only dying. The Portuguese town has a mournful aspect, marked as it is by strong lines of character that indicate departed power. Still sailing among islands, mountainous and barren, we soon reach the Bocca Tigris, or mouth of the Canton river, guarded now with very formidable forts. The Chinese, since their war with England, have been profiting by sore experience. If their gunnery be as completely mended as their fortifications, another war with them would not be quite so much like an attack of grown men upon children. The poor Chinese, in that war, were indefatigable in the endeavor to keep up appearances. Steam ships were scarcely worth attention--they had "plenty all the same inside:" and when the first encounter, near the spot on which we are now sailing, between junks and men-of-war, had exhibited the tragedy, in flesh and bone, of John Bull in a China-shop, the Chinese Symonds, at Ningpo, was ordered to build ships exactly like the British. He could not execute the order, and played, therefore, executioner upon himself. Cannon were next ordered, that should be large enough to destroy a ship at one burst. They were made, and the first monster tried, immediately burst and killed its three attendants; nobody could be induced to fire the others. One morning, a British fleet was very much surprised to see the shore look formidable with a line of cannon mouths. The telescope, which had formed no part of the Chinese calculations, discovered them to be a row of earthern pots. Forts, in the same way, often turned out to be dummies made of matting, with the portholes painted; and sometimes real cannon, mere three pounders, had their fronts turned to the sea, plugged with blocks of wood, cut and so painted as to resemble the mouths of thirty-two pounders shotted. However, we have passed real strong forts and veritable heavy cannon, to get through the Bocca Tigris. Nothing is barren now; the river widens, and looks like an inland sea; the flat land near the shores is richly cultivated; rice is there and upon the islands, all protected with embankments to admit or exclude the flood in its due season, or provided with wheels for raising water where the land is too high to be flooded in a simpler manner. The embankments, too, yield plantain crops. The water on each side is gay with water lilies, which are cultivated for their roots. Banyan and fig-trees, cypress, orange, water-pines, and weeping willows, grow beside the stream, with other trees; but China is not to be called a richly timbered country; most of its districts are deficient in large trees. There is the Whampoa Pagoda; there are more pagodas, towers, joss-houses; here are the European factories, and here are boats, boats, boats, literally, hundreds of thousands of boats--the sea-going junk, gorgeous with griffins, and with proverbs, and with painted eyes; the flower boat; boats of all shapes, and sizes, down to the barber's boat, which barely holds the barber and his razor. There is a city on the water, and the dwellers in these boats, who whether men or women, dive and swim so naturally that they may all be fishes, curiously claim their kindred with the earth. On every boat, a little soil and a few flowers, are as essential as the little joss-house and the little joss. Canals flow from the river through Canton; every where, over the mud, upon the water side are wooden houses built on piles. But here we will not go ashore; the suburbs of Canton are full of thieves, and little boys who shout _fan-qui_ (foreign devil) after all barbarians, and we should not be welcome in the city; so we will not go where we shall not be welcome. After floating up and down the streets and lanes of water made between the boats upon the Canton river, pleased with the strange music, the gongs, and the incessant chattering of women, (Chinese women are pre-eminent as chatterers,) we sail away. We do not wait even till night to wonder at the scene by lantern light; but returning by the way we came, repass the rice fields, the water lilies, and the forts, the islands, and Macao, and Hong Kong, and have again before us the expanse of ocean. Canton lies within the tropic; sugar-cane grown in its vicinity yields brown sugar and candy; but our lump sugar is a luxury to which the Chinese have not yet attained. Canton lying within the tropic, we shall change our climate on the journey northward. An empire that engrosses nearly a tenth part of the globe, and includes the largest population gathered under any single government, will have many climates in its eighteen provinces. Now we are sailing swiftly northward by a barren rocky coast, with sometimes hills of sand, and sometimes cultivated patches, and, except for the pagodas on the highest elevations, we might fancy we were off the coast of Scotland. Five ports are open to our trade upon the coast of China; one of these, Canton, we have merely looked at, and the next, Amoy, we pass unvisited in sailing up between the mainland and Formosa. Amoy produces the best Chinese sailors, and it is in this port that the native junks have most experience of foreign trade; it is a dirty, densely-peopled town, too distant from the tea and silk regions to be of prominent importance to the Europeans. As soon as we have passed through the Formosa channel, we direct our course towards the river Min, and steering safely among rocks and sand-banks, among which is a rock cleft into five pyramids, regarded with a sort of worship by the sailors, we float up the river to the third of the five cities, Foo-chow-foo. The river varies in width, sometimes a mile across, where it is flowing between plains, sometimes confined between the hills; a hilly country is about us, with some mountains nearly twice as high as those up which we clambered at Hong-Kong. We pass, after a few miles' sail, the little town and fort of Mingan; we sail among pagodas and temples, near which the priests plant dark spreading fig-trees, terraced hills, yielding earth-nuts and sweet potatoes; we see cultivation carried up some mountain sides beyond two thousand feet, and barren mountains, granite rocks, islands, and villages; here and there more wooded tracts than usually belong to a Chinese landscape, rills of water and cascades that tumble down into the Min. We have sailed up the river twenty miles, and here is Foo-chow-foo. We have met on our way a good many junks, having wood lashed to their sides; and here we see acres of wood (chiefly pine) afloat before the suburbs, for here wood is a main article of trade. We pass under the bridge Wanshow ("myriads of ages"), which connects the suburbs on each bank; it is a bridge of granite slabs, supported upon fifty pillars of strong masonry, the whole about two thousand feet in length. The suburbs happen just now to be flooded, and the large Tartar population here delights in mobbing a barbarian. This inhospitable character repels men, while the floods and rapids of the river and its tributaries, causes an uncertainty of transit, tend also to keep European traders out of Foo-chow-foo. True, the bohea tea hills are in the vicinity, but their bohea tea has not a first-rate character, and the great seat of the tea trade is yet farther north. The city walls are eight or nine miles in circumference; but we will not enter their gates for all Chinese cities have a close resemblance to each other; it is enough to visit one, and we can do better than visit this. We sail back to the sea again, and there resume our northward voyage. We have seen part of the mountainous or hilly half of China; farther north, between the two great rivers, and beyond them to the famous Wall, is a great plain studded in parts with lakes or swamps, and very fertile. Far westward, we might journey to the high central table-land of Asia, where there are extensive levels; but the seaward provinces are the most fertile; and as for the Chinese themselves, they are in all places very much alike--in body as in character. But sailing in our ship, and talking of those plains, we may naturally recall to our minds those ancient days when the Chinese, civilised then as now, guided their chariots across a pathless level on the land by the same instrument that guides our ship across a pathless level on the water. The coast by which we sail is studded with islands, and to reach Ningpo, the fourth of the five ports, we pass between the mainland and the island of Chusan. The water here is quite hemmed in with islands forming the Chusan Archipelago. Chusan is like a piece of the Scotch Highlands, twenty miles long, and ten or twelve broad, with rich vegetation added. Forty miles' sail from Chusan brings us to Ningpo. Amongst the numerous islands past which we have floated, we should have found, on many, characters not quite Chinese. One island, visited for water by one of our ships, was said to be an Eden for its innocence. Crime was unknown among the islanders: and at a grave look or a slight tap with a fan, the wrong-doer invariably desisted from his evil course. The simplicity of the natives here consisted in the fact, that they expected credit for the character they gave themselves. On another island, the natives entertained snug notions of a warm bed in the winter. Their bed was a stone trough; in winter they spread at the bottom of this trough hot embers, and over these a large stone, over that their bedding, and then tucked themselves comfortably in. Ningpo, with its bridge of boats and Chinese shipping and pagodas, has a picturesque appearance from the river. It is large, populous, and wealthy; a place to which the merchant may retire to spend his gains, more than a port for active and hard working commerce. That is the reason why we will not land at Ningpo. Where, then, shall we land? If you have no objection, at Shangae, the fifth and most important, although not the largest, of these ports. But sea life is monotonous, and therefore we will take five minutes' diversion ashore, after we have sailed some twenty miles up this canal. Here we will land under an avenue of pines, and walk up to a Buddhist temple. We are in the centre of the green-tea district. The priests, belonging, for a wonder, to a simple-minded class, receive us, of course hospitably. The stranger is at all times welcome to a lodging, and to his portion of the Buddhist vegetable dinner. These priests are like some of our monks in mendicancy charity, and superstition. In the pagodas they always have a meal prepared for the arrival of a hungry traveller. But hungry we are not; and we came hither to see the tea-plantations; these we now seek out. They are small farms upon the lower slopes of hills; the soil is rich; it must be rich, or the tea-plant would not long endure the frequent stripping of its leaves, which usage does of course sooner or later kill it. Each plant is at a distance of about four feet from its neighbors, and the plantations look like little shrubberies. The small proprietors inhabit wretched-looking cabins, in which each of them has fixed a flue and coppers for the drying of his tea. In the appearance of the people there is nothing wretched; old men sit at their doors like patriarchs, expecting and receiving reverence; young men, balancing bales across their shoulders, travel out, and some return with strings of copper money; the chief tea-harvest is over, and the merchants have come down now to the little inns about the district, that each husbandman may offer them his produce. There are three tea-making seasons. The first is in the middle of April, just before the rains, when the first leaves of spring are plucked; these make the choicest tea, but their removal tries the vigor of the plant. Then come the rains; the tea-plant pushes out new leaves, and already in May the plantation is again dark with foliage; that is the season of the second, the great gathering. A later gathering of coarse leaves yields an inferior tea, scarcely worth exporting. It should be understood that although black and green tea are both made from the same kind of leaf, there really are two tea-plants. The plant cultivated at Canton for black tea, and known in our gardens as _Thea Bohea_, differs from the _Thea viridis_, which yields the harvest here. The Canton plant, however, is not cultivated in the North; on the Bohea hills themselves, speaking botanically, there grows no Bohea tea; the plant there, also, is the _Thea viridis_. The difference between our green and black tea is produced entirely in the making. Green tea is more quickly and lightly dried, so that it contains more of the virtues of the leaf. Black tea is dried more slowly; exposed, while moist, on mats, when it ferments a little, and then subjected in drying to a greater heat, which makes it blacker in its color. The bright bloom on our green tea is added with a dye, to suit the gross taste of barbarians. The black tea will keep better, being better dried. There is a kind of tea called Hyson Pekoe made from the first young buds which keeps ill, being very little fired, but when good it is extremely costly. As for our names of teas,--of the first delicate harvest, the black tea is called Pekoe, and the green, Young Hyson; Hyson being the corruption of Chinese words, that mean "flourishing spring." The produce of the main or second harvest yields, in green tea, Hyson; out of which are picked the leaves that prove to be best rolled for Gunpowder, or as the Chinese call it, pearl-tea. Souchong ("small or scarce sort") is the best black tea of the second crop, followed by Congou (koong-foo, "assiduity"). Twankay is imported largely, a green tea from older leaves, which European retailers employ for mixing with the finer kinds. Bohea, named from the hills we talked of, is the lowest quality of black tea, though good Bohea is better than a middling quality of Congou. The botanical _Thea Bohea_ comes into our pots, with refuse Congou, as Canton Bohea. At Canton, however, Young Hyson and Gunpowder are manufactured out of these leaves, chopped and painted; and this branch of the fine arts is carried on extensively in Chinese manufactories established there. As the tea-merchants go out to collect their produce of the little farmers; so the mercers in the Nankeen districts leave their cities for the purchase, in the same way, of home-woven cloth. It is the same in the silk districts. If we look now into a larger Chinese farm on our way back to the Phantom, we shall find the tenants on a larger scale supplying their own wants, and making profit of the surplus. On such a farm we shall find also familiar friends, fowls, ducks, geese, pigs, goats, and dogs, bullocks, and buffaloes; indoors there will be a best parlor in the shape of a Hall of Ancestors, containing household gods and an ancestral picture, before which is a table or altar with its offerings. There is the head of the family, who built a room for each son as he married, and left each son to add other rooms as they were necessary, till a colony arose under the common roof about the common hall, in which rules, as a high priest and patriarch, the living ancestor. Respect for the past is the whole essence of Chinese religion and morality. The oldest emperors were fountain-heads of wisdom, and he who imitates the oldest doctrine is the wisest man. The tombs of ancestors are visited with pious care; respect and worship is their due. This had at all times been the Chinese principle, to which Confucius added the influence of a good man's support. No nation has been trained into this feeling so completely as the Chinese, and as long as they saw nothing beyond themselves, and were taught to look down upon barbarians out of the heights of their own ignorance concerning them, they were contented to stand still. But the Chinese are a people sharply stimulated by the love of gain; they despised what they had not seen, yet it is evident that they have not been slow to profit by experience of European arts. An emigrant Chinese became acquainted with a Prussian blue manufactory, secretly observed the process of the manufacture, took his secret home, and China now makes at home all the Prussian blue which was before imported. The Chinese emigrant is active, shrewd. In Batavia he ko-toos to the Dutch, and lets his tail down dutifully. In Singapore he readily assumes a freer spirit, keeps his tail curled, and walks upright among the Englishmen. We are now sailing towards Shangae, no very long way northward from Ningpo, to the last of the five ports we came out to visit. It is not necessary to return to the Yellow Sea, for all this part of China is so freely intersected with canals that we may sail to Shangae among farms and rice-grounds. While among the farmers, we may call to mind that the great lord of the Chinese manor is the Emperor, to whom this ground immediately belongs, and who receives as rent for it a tenth of all the produce. A large part of this tenth is paid in kind. The Emperor is the great father also; his whole care of his enormous family distinctly assumes the paternal form, and embodies a good deal of the maxim, that to spare the rod will spoil the child. To govern is expressed in Chinese by the symbols of bamboo and strike; and the bamboo does, in the way of striking a vast deal of business. The central legislation is as a rule beneficent, and based upon an earnest desire to do good; for the father is answerable for the welfare of his children. National calamities have, at all times, been ascribed by the Chinese directly to their Emperors; who must by personal humiliation appease the anger of the gods. So large a household as this father has to care for requires many stewards, mandarins, and others; all these officers of state are those sons who have proved themselves to be the wisest, on examination into their attainments. A grand system of education pervades China; and, above the first school, to which all are sent, there is a series of four examinations, through which every Chinese may graduate if he will study. Not to pass the first is to be vile, and the highest degrees qualify for all the offices of state; but Chinese education means, after reading and writing, and moral precepts of Confucius, little beside a knowledge of Chinese ancient history and literature. The Emperor, belonging to a Tartar dynasty, bestows an equal patronage on Tartars and Chinese. The officers throughout the provinces are, as a further precaution, obliged to serve in places distant from their own connections, in order that no private feelings may destroy their power to be just. They are scantily paid, however; and, as a Chinese likes profit with his honor, the minor officials drive a trade in bribery, which often nullifies the central edicts, and which very directly helped to bring about the Opium war. The Emperor himself is, of course, too sublime a person to be often seen; the Son of Heaven, he robes himself in the imperial yellow, because that is the hue of the sun's jacket; but, once a year, in enforcement of a main principle of the Chinese political economy--Honor to Agriculture--he drives the plough before a state procession; and the grain sown in those imperial furrows is afterwards bought up by courtiers, at a most flattering price. Where are we now?--we have shot out upon a grand expanse of water, like an inland sea. An horizon of water is before us--we cannot see the other bank of the Yang-tse-Kiang, the "child of the ocean," the great river of China; the greatest river in the old world, and surpassed only by two on the whole globe. Here, eighty miles above the sea, it is eight miles in breadth, and sixty feet deep, flowing five miles an hour; and far up, off the walls of Nankin, its breadth is three thousand six hundred feet, and its depth twenty-two fathoms, at a distance of fifty paces from either shore. Well, this is something like a river; from its source to its mouth, in a straight line, the distance is one thousand seven hundred and ninety-six miles; and the windings nearly double its real length, making three thousand three hundred and thirty-six English miles; of which two thousand, from the mouth upwards, are said to be quite free from all obstruction. At its mouth it is, comparatively, shallow; much of this vast body of water is diverted from its course and carried through the country in canals. We are not far, now, from the great canal which cuts across this river and the Hoang-Ho, another grand stream farther northward, with a course of two thousand six hundred and thirty miles. Between the Yang-tse-Kiang and Hoang-Ho the country is so flat that, if we may judge by the scene from the mast-head of the Phantom, not a hillock breaks the level waste of fertile land. In ancient times this country was subjected to desolating floods, which, in fact, caused the removal of the capital. The canal system was commenced, then, as a means of drainage, by a wise man, who was made an emperor for his sagacity. Now the canals serve the purposes of commerce, and agriculture also, since water, in abundance, is essential for the irrigation of the rice-fields. We are sailing up the Shangae river, a tributary of the Yang-tse-Kiang; this river, at Shangae, we perceive is about as broad as the Thames at London Bridge; for we are at Shangae. We sail through a water-gate into the centre of the town, and land beside a fleet of junks, into which heaps of rice are being shot; these are grain junks sent from Pekin to receive part of the imperial tribute. Narrow, dirty streets, low houses, brilliant open shops, painted with red and gold. Here is a fragrant fruit-shop, where a poor Chinese is buying an iced slice of pine-apple for less money than a farthing. Here is the chandler's, gay with candles of the tallow-tree coated with colored wax. The chandler deals in puffs; and what an un-English appeal is this from the candle-maker on behalf of his wares--"Late at night in the snow gallery they study the books." Study the books! Yes; through the crowd of Chinese, in their picturesque familiar dresses, look at that man, with books upon a tray, who dives into house after house. He lends books on hire to the poor people and servants. Who is the puffer here? "We issue and sell Hong Chow tobacco, the name and fame of which has galloped to the north of Kechow; and the flavor has pervaded Keangnan in the south." Here we have "Famous teas from every province;" and you see boiling water handy in the shop, wherewith the customer may test his purchases. Here, on the other side of this triumphal arch, we peep through a gateway hung with lanterns into a small paved paradise with gold fish, (China is the home of gold fish), and exotics, and trellis-work, and vines, and singing birds; that is a mercer's shop, affecting style in China as in England, only in another way. We will walk through the paradise into a grand apartment hung with lanterns, decorated also with gilded tickets, inscribed "Pekin satins and Canton crapes," "Hang-chow reeled silks," and so on. Here a courtly Chinese, skilled in the lubrication of a customer, produces the rich heavy silks for which his country is renowned, the velvets or the satins you desire, and shaves you skilfully. Talking of shaving, and we run against a barber as we come out of the silk shop. He carries a fire on his head, with water always boiling; on a pole over his shoulder he balances his water, basin, towels, razors. Will you be shaved like a Chinese? he picks you out a reasonably quiet doorway, shaves your head, cleans your ears, tickles your eyes, and cracks your joints in a twinkling. Where heads are shaved, the wipings of the razors are extensive; they are all bought up, and employed as manure. The Chinese have so many mouths to feed, that they can afford to lose nothing that will fertilize the ground. Instead of writing on their walls "Commit no nuisance," they place jars, and invite or even pay the pilgrim. The long tail that the barber leaves is to the Chinese his sign of manhood. Beards do not form a feature of Mongolian faces; a few stray coarse hairs are all they get, with their square face, high cheek bones, slanting eyes, and long dark hair upon the head. A plump body, long ears, and a long tail, are the respectabilities of a Chinese. The tail is magnified by working in false hair, and it generally ends with silk. There is a man using his tail to thrash a pig along; and one traveler records that he has seen a Chinese servant use the same instrument for polishing a table. It is, of course, the thing to pull at in a street fight. Here is a phrenologist, with a large figure of a human head mapped into regions, inviting Chinese bumpkins to submit to him their bumps. Here is a dentist showing his teeth. Here--we must stop here--with a gong for drum, but raised on the true pedestal, with a man inside, who knows the veritable squeak, are Punch and Judy, all alive. This is their native land. "Pun-tse," the Chinese call our friend, because he is a little puppet, after all--Puntse meaning in Chinese, "the son of an inch." Here is the very Chinese bridge that we have learned by heart along with the pagoda, from a willow-patterned soup-plate; steps up, steps down, and a set of Chinese lanterns. Here is a temple, flaming with red paint. Let us go in. Images, votive candles burning on an altar, and a woman on her face wrestling in prayer. After praying in a sort of agony for a few minutes, she has stopped to take a bit of stick, round on one side, for she purposes therewith to toss up and see whether her prayer is granted. Tails! She loses! She is wrestling on her knees again--praying, doubtless, for a "bull child." Girls are undesirable, because they are of no use except for what they fetch in marriage gifts, and to fetch much they must be good-looking. Poor woman--tails again! Never mind, she must persevere, and she will get heads presently. Here comes a grave man, who prays for half a minute, and pulls out one from a jar of scrolls. Having examined it, he takes one of the little books that hang against the wall, looks happy, and departs. He has been drawing lots to see whether the issue of some undertaking will be fortunate. Poor woman--tails again! We cannot stop for the result; but I have no doubt that if she persevere she will get heads up presently. Here is a man in the street with a whole bamboo kitchen on his head, nine feet long, by six broad, uttering all manner of good things. The poor fellow who drove the pig stops in the street to dine. What a Soyer that fellow is, with his herbs, and his peppers, and his magic stove, and what a magnificent stew he gives the pig driver! Do you know, I doubt whether the Chinese are fools. What place have we here steaming like a boiler? This, sir, is one of the public bath establishments, where a warm bath, towels, and a dressing closet are at the service of the pig driver after his dinner, for five _le_--less than a farthing. There, too, his wife may go and obtain boiling water for the day's tea, which is to that poor Chinaman his beer, and pay for it but a single _le_. It would cost far more to boil it for herself; fuel is dear, and except for cooking or for manufactures, is not used in China. There are neither grates nor stoves in any Chinese parlor. The continent of Asia, and with it China, has a climate of extremes, great summer heat and an excessive winter cold; so that even at Canton, within the tropic, snow falls. But the Chinaman warms not his toes at a fire; he accommodates his comfortable costume to the climate; puts on more clothes as the cold makes itself felt, and takes some off again if he should feel too warm. That building on the walls is the temple of Spring, to which ladies repair to dress their hair with flowers when the first buds open. This handsome structure is the temple of Confucius. Yonder is the hall of United Benevolence, which supports a free hospital, a foundling hospital, and makes other provision for the poor. The Chinese charities are supported generously; the Chinese are a liberal and kindly race. Here is a shoemaker's shop, with a huge boot hung over the door, and an inscription which might not suit lovers of a good fit, "All here are measured by one rule." "When favored by merchants who bestow their regards on us, please to notice our sign of the Double Phoenix on a board as a mark; then it will be all right." These signs are in common use on shops in China as they were formerly in England. In this shop there is a wild fellow, who is beating a gong fearfully, and who has rubbed himself with stinking filth, that he may be the greater nuisance. This is his way of extorting charity. That shopkeeper, not having compounded with the king of the beggars for immunity from customers of this kind, seldom lives a day without being compelled to pay as he is now paying for a little peace. The beggar takes his nuisance then into another shop. This is a vast improvement upon our street fiddle and organ practice. There is a pawnbroker's three-per-cent. per month shop. Here is a tea-house, surrounded with huge vases for rain-water which is kept to acquire virtue by age--of course imaginary virtue--for the making of celestial tea. In that house there is the oven for hatching eggs. Gateways are fitted at the end of the wide streets, locked at night to restrain thieves; and in the first house through the gateway here a girl is screaming dreadfully. Very likely it is a case of sore feet. The small feet of the Chinese women--about three inches long--are essential, for without them a girl cannot get a husband; as a wife, she is her husband's obedient, humble servant, but as a spinster she is her parents' plague. The operation on the feet takes place when the girl is seven or eight years old. A young naval surgeon, in his walks, heard screams (like those) proceeding from a cottage, and went in; he found a little girl in bed, with her feet bandaged; he removed the bandage, found the feet of course bent, and ulcerated. He dressed the wounds, and warned the mother. Passing, another day, he found the child still suffering torment, and in a hectic fever. He again removed the bandages, and warned the mother that her child's life would be sacrificed if she continued with the process. The next time he went by he saw a little coffin at the door. The tea-gardens are in the centre of the town; we will go thither and rest. We might have dined with a hospitable townsman, where we could have been present at a theatrical entertainment, in which the Chinese delight like children. But a dinner in this country is a work of many hours; the list is very long of things that we should have to touch or eat. Chinese eat almost any thing; their carte includes birds' nests, delicate meal-fed puppies, sea-slugs, sharks' fins and tails, frogs, snails, worms, lizards, tortoises, and water-snakes, with many things that we should better understand, and a great many disguised vegetables. A Chinese dinner is so tediously long that we escape it altogether. Milk is not used; it is thought improper to take it from the calves; and meat plays no very large part of the Chinese diet. During our late war it was seriously stated, by several advisers of the Emperor, that to forbid the English tea and rhubarb would go a great way to destroy the nation; "for it is well known that the barbarians feed grossly on the flesh of animals, by which their bodies are so bound and obstructed," that rhubarb and warm tea were necessary to be taken, daily, as correctives. Now we are in the tea-gardens, and have passed through a happy crowd, sipping tea, smoking, eating melon pips, walking or looking at the jugglers. Into a fairy-like house of bamboo, perched over water, we ascend. Here is an elegant apartment, which we claim as private. We recline, and take our cups of tea; the cups that have been used are wiped, not washed; for washing, say the people here, would spoil their capacity for preserving the pure flavor of this delicate young Hyson; upon a spoonful of which, placed in the cup, hot water is now poured. Opium pipes, bring us! Ha! a hollow cane, closed at one end, with a mouthpiece at the other; near the centre is the bowl, of ample size, but with an outward opening no bigger than a pin's head. We recline luxuriously--looking down on the gay colors of the Chinese crowd, we take our long stilettos, prick off a little pill of opium from its ivory reservoir, and burn it, dexterously, in the spirit lamp; then twist it, judiciously, about the pin's head orifice. Three whiffs, and it is out, and we are more than half deprived of active consciousness. Let us repeat the operation. Practised smokers will go on for hours; a few whiffs are enough for us. Another languid gaze at the pagodas, and the flowers, and the water, and the Chinamen; now some more opium to smoke! The Phantom finding us intoxicated, like a good servant may have brought us home; for, certainly, we are at home. From "Reminiscences of an Attorney" in Chambers's Edinburgh Miscellany. THE CHEST OF DRAWERS. I am about to relate a rather curious piece of domestic history, some of the incidents of which, revealed at the time of their occurrence in law reports, may be in the remembrance of many readers. It occurred in one of the midland counties, and at a place which I shall call Watley; the names of the chief actors who figured in it must also, to spare their modesty or their blushes, be changed; and should one of those persons, spite of these precautions, apprehend unpleasant recognition, he will be able to console himself with the reflection, that all I state beyond that which may be gathered from the records of the law courts will be generally ascribed to the fancy or invention of the writer. And it is as well, perhaps, that it should be so. Caleb Jennings, a shoemender, or cobbler, occupied, some twelve or thirteen years ago, a stall at Watley, which, according to the traditions of the place, had been hereditary in his family for several generations. He may also be said to have flourished there, after the manner of cobblers; for this, it must be remembered, was in the good old times, before the gutta-percha revolution had carried ruin and dismay into the stalls--those of cobblers--which in considerable numbers existed throughout the kingdom. Like all his fraternity whom I have ever fallen in with or heard of, Caleb was a sturdy Radical of the Major Cartwright and Henry Hunt school; and being withal industrious, tolerably skilful, not inordinately prone to the observance of Saint Mondays, possessed, moreover, of a neatly-furnished sleeping and eating apartment in the house of which the projecting first-floor, supported on stone pillars, overshadowed his humble work-place, he vaunted himself to be as really rich as an estated squire, and far more independent. There was some truth in this boast, as the case which procured us the honor of Mr. Jennings's acquaintance sufficiently proved. We were employed to bring an action against a wealthy gentleman of the vicinity of Watley for a brutal and unprovoked assault he had committed, when in a state of partial inebriety, upon a respectable London tradesman who had visited the place on business. On the day of trial our witness appeared to have become suddenly afflicted with an almost total loss of memory; and we were only saved from an adverse verdict by the plain, straight-forward evidence of Caleb, upon whose sturdy nature the various arts which soften or neutralize hostile evidence had been tried in vain. Mr. Flint, who personally superintended the case, took quite a liking to the man; and it thus happened that we were called upon some time afterwards to aid the said Caleb in extricating himself from the extraordinary and perplexing difficulty in which he suddenly and unwittingly found himself involved. The projecting first floor of the house beneath which the humble workshop of Caleb Jennings modestly disclosed itself, had been occupied for many years by an ailing and somewhat aged gentleman of the name of Lisle. This Mr. Ambrose Lisle was a native of Watley, and had been a prosperous merchant of the city of London. Since his return, after about twenty years' absence, he had shut himself up in almost total seclusion, nourishing a cynical bitterness and acrimony of temper which gradually withered up the sources of health and life, till at length it became as visible to himself as it had for some time been to others, that the oil of existence was expended, burnt up, and that but a few weak flickers more, and the ailing man's plaints and griefs would be hushed in the dark silence of the grave. Mr. Lisle had no relatives in Watley, and the only individual with whom he was on terms of personal intimacy was Mr. Peter Sowerby, an attorney of the place, who had for many years transacted all his business. This man visited Mr. Lisle most evenings, played at chess with him, and gradually acquired an influence over his client which that weak gentleman had once or twice feebly but vainly endeavoured to shake off. To this clever attorney, it was rumored, Mr. Lisle had bequeathed all his wealth. This piece of information had been put in circulation by Caleb Jennings, who was a sort of humble favorite of Mr. Lisle's, or, at all events, was regarded by the misanthrope with less dislike than he manifested toward others. Caleb cultivated a few flowers in a little plot of ground at the back of the house, and Mr. Lisle would sometimes accept a rose or a bunch of violets from him. Other slight services--especially since the recent death of his old and garrulous woman-servant, Esther May, who had accompanied him from London, and with whom Mr. Jennings had always been upon terms of gossiping intimacy--had led to certain familiarities of intercourse; and it thus happened that the inquisitive shoemender became partially acquainted with the history of the wrongs and griefs which preyed upon, and shortened the life of, the prematurely-aged man. The substance of this everyday, common-place story, as related to us by Jennings, and subsequently enlarged and colored from other sources, may be very briefly told. Ambrose Lisle, in consequence of an accident which occurred in his infancy, was slightly deformed. His right shoulder--as I understood, for I never saw him--grew out, giving an ungraceful and somewhat comical twist to his figure, which, in female eyes--youthful ones at least--sadly marred the effect of his intelligent and handsome countenance. This personal defect rendered him shy and awkward in the presence of women of his own class of society; and he had attained the ripe age of thirty-seven years, and was a rich and prosperous man, before he gave the slightest token of an inclination towards matrimony. About a twelvemonth previous to that period of his life, the deaths--quickly following each other--of a Mr. and Mrs. Stevens threw their eldest daughter, Lucy, upon Mr. Lisle's hands. Mr. Lisle had been left an orphan at a very early age, and Mrs. Stevens--his aunt, and then a maiden lady--had, in accordance with his father's will, taken charge of himself and brother till they severally attained their majority. Long, however, before that she married Mr. Stevens, by whom she had two children--Lucy and Emily. Her husband, whom she survived but two months, died insolvent; and in obedience to the dying wishes of his aunt, for whom he appears to have felt the tenderest esteem, he took the eldest of her orphan children into his home, intending to regard and provide for her as his own adopted child and heiress. Emily, the other sister found refuge in the house of a still more distant relative than himself. The Stevenses had gone to live at a remote part of England--Yorkshire, I believe--and it thus fell out, that till his cousin Lucy arrived at her new home he had not seen her for more than ten years. The pale, and somewhat plain child, as he had esteemed her, he was startled to find had become a charming woman; and her naturally gay and joyous temperament, quick talents, and fresh young beauty, rapidly acquired an overwhelming influence over him. Strenuously but vainly he struggled against the growing infatuation--argued, reasoned with himself--passed in review the insurmountable objections to such a union, the difference of age--he leading towards thirty-seven, she barely twenty-one; he crooked, deformed, of reserved, taciturn temper--she full of young life, and grace and beauty. It was useless; and nearly a year had passed in the bootless struggle when Lucy Stevens, who had vainly striven to blind herself to the nature of the emotions by which her cousin and guardian was animated towards her, intimated a wish to accept her sister Emily's invitation to pass two or three months with her. This brought the affair to a crisis. Buoying himself up with the illusions which people in such an unreasonable frame of mind create for themselves, he suddenly entered the sitting-room set apart for her private use, with the desperate purpose of making his beautiful cousin a formal offer of his hand. She was not in the apartment, but her opened writing-desk, and a partly-finished letter lying on it, showed that she had been recently there, and would probably soon return. Mr. Lisle took two or three agitated turns about the room, one of which brought him close to the writing-desk, and his glance involuntarily fell upon the unfinished letter. Had a deadly serpent leaped suddenly upon his throat, the shock could not have been greater. At the head of the sheet of paper was a clever pen-and-ink sketch of Lucy Stevens and himself; he, kneeling to her in a lovelorn ludicrous attitude, and she laughing immoderately at his lachrymose and pitiful aspect and speech. The letter was addressed to her sister Emily; and the enraged lover saw not only that his supposed secret was fully known, but that he himself was mocked, laughed at for his doting folly. At least this was his interpretation of the words which swam before his eyes. At the instant Lucy returned, and a torrent of imprecation burst from the furious man, in which wounded self-love, rageful pride, and long pent-up passion, found utterance in wild and bitter words. Half an hour afterwards Lucy Stevens had left the merchant's house--for ever, as it proved. She, indeed, on arriving at her sister's, sent a letter supplicating forgiveness at the thoughtless, and, as he deemed it, insulting sketch, intended only for Emily's eye; but he replied merely by a note written by one of his clerks, informing Miss Stevens that Mr. Lisle declined any further correspondence with her. The ire of the angered and vindictive man had, however, begun sensibly to abate, and old thoughts, memories, duties, suggested partly by the blank which Lucy's absence made in his house, partly by remembrance of the solemn promise he had made her mother, were strongly reviving in his mind, when he read the announcement of her marriage in a provincial journal, directed to him, as he believed, in the bride's handwriting; but this was an error, her sister having sent the newspaper. Mr. Lisle also construed this into a deliberate mockery and insult, and from that hour strove to banish all images and thoughts connected with his cousin from his heart and memory. He unfortunately adopted the very worst course possible for effecting this object. Had he remained amid the buzz and tumult of active life, a mere sentimental disappointment, such as thousands of us have sustained and afterwards forgotten, would, there can be little doubt, have soon ceased to afflict him. He chose to retire from business, visited Watley, and habits of miserliness growing rapidly upon his cankered mind, never afterwards removed from the lodgings he had hired on first arriving there. Thus madly hugging to himself sharp-pointed memories which a sensible man would have speedily cast off and forgotten, the sour misanthrope passed a useless, cheerless, weary existence, to which death must have been a welcome relief. Matters were in this state with the morose and aged man--aged mentally and corporeally, although his years were but fifty-eight--when Mr. Flint made Mr. Jennings's acquaintance. Another month or so had passed away when Caleb's attention was one day about noon claimed by a young man dressed in mourning, accompanied by a female similarly attired, and from their resemblance to each other he conjectured brother and sister. The stranger wished to know if that was the house in which Mr. Ambrose Lisle resided. Jennings said it was; and with civil alacrity left his stall and rang the front-door bell. The summons was answered by the landlady's servant, who, since Esther May's death, had waited on the first-floor lodger; and the visitors were invited to go up-stairs. Caleb, much wondering who they might be, returned to his stall, and thence passed into his eating and sleeping room just below Mr. Lisle's apartments. He was in the act of taking a pipe from the mantel-shelf in order to the more deliberate and satisfactory cogitation on such an unusual event, when he was startled by a loud shout, or scream rather, from above. The quivering and excited voice was that of Mr. Lisle, and the outcry was immediately followed by an explosion of unintelligible exclamations from several persons. Caleb was up stairs in an instant, and found himself in the midst of a strangely-perplexing and distracted scene. Mr. Lisle, pale as his shirt, shaking in every limb, and his eyes on fire with passion, was hurling forth a torrent of vituperation and reproach at the young woman, whom he evidently mistook for some one else; whilst she, extremely terrified, and unable to stand but for the assistance of her companion, was tendering a letter in her outstretched hand, and uttering broken sentences, which her own agitation and the fury of Mr. Lisle's invectives rendered totally incomprehensible. At last the fierce old man struck the letter from her hand, and with frantic rage ordered both the strangers to leave the room. Caleb urged them, to comply, and accompanied them down stairs. When they reached the street, he observed a woman on the other side of the way, dressed in mourning, and much older apparently--though he could not well see her face through the thick veil she wore--than she who had thrown Mr. Lisle into such an agony of rage, apparently waiting for them. To her the young people immediately hastened, and after a brief conference the three turned up the street, and Mr. Jennings saw no more of them. A quarter of an hour afterwards the house-servant informed Caleb that Mr. Lisle had retired to bed, and although still in great agitation, and, as she feared, seriously indisposed, would not permit Dr. Clarke to be sent for. So sudden and violent a hurricane in the usually dull and drowsy atmosphere in which Jennings lived, excited and disturbed him greatly: the hours, however, flew past without bringing any relief to his curiosity, and evening was falling, when a peculiar knocking on the floor overhead announced that Mr. Lisle desired his presence. That gentleman was sitting up in bed, and in the growing darkness his face could not be very distinctly seen; but Caleb instantly observed a vivid and unusual light in the old man's eyes. The letter so strangely delivered was lying open before him; and unless the shoemender was greatly mistaken, there were stains of recent tears upon Mr. Lisle's furrowed and hollow cheeks. The voice, too, it struck Caleb, though eager, was gentle and wavering. "It was a mistake, Jennings," he said; "I was mad for the moment. Are they gone?" he added in a yet more subdued and gentle tone. Caleb informed him of what he had seen; and as he did so, the strange light in the old man's eyes seemed to quiver and sparkle with a yet intenser emotion than before. Presently he shaded them with his hand, and remained several minutes silent. He then said with a firmer voice: "I shall be glad if you will step to Mr. Sowerby, and tell him I am too unwell to see him this evening. But be sure to say nothing else," he eagerly added, as Caleb turned away in compliance with his request; "and when you come back, let me see you again." When Jennings returned, he found to his great surprise Mr. Lisle up and nearly dressed; and his astonishment increased a hundred-fold upon hearing that gentleman say, in a quick but perfectly collected and decided manner, that he should set off for London by the mail-train. "For London--and by night!" exclaimed Caleb, scarcely sure that he heard aright. "Yes--yes, I shall not be observed in the dark," sharply rejoined Mr. Lisle; "and you, Caleb, must keep my secret from every body, especially from Sowerby. I shall be here in time to see him to-morrow night, and he will be none the wiser." This was said with a slight chuckle; and as soon as his simple preparations were complete, Mr. Lisle, well wrapped up, and his face almost hidden by shawls, locked his door, and assisted by Jennings, stole furtively down stairs, and reached unrecognized the railway station just in time for the train. It was quite dark the next evening when Mr. Lisle returned; and so well had he managed, that Mr. Sowerby, who paid his usual visit about half an hour afterwards, had evidently heard nothing of the suspicious absence of his esteemed client from Watley. The old man exulted over the success of his deception to Caleb the next morning, but dropped no hint as to the object of his sudden journey. Three days passed without the occurrence of any incident tending to the enlightenment of Mr. Jennings upon these mysterious events, which, however, he plainly saw had lamentably shaken the long-since failing man. On the afternoon of the fourth day, Mr. Lisle walked, or rather tottered, into Caleb's stall, and seated himself on the only vacant stool it contained. His manner was confused, and frequently purposeless, and there was an anxious, flurried expression in his face which Jennings did not at all like. He remained silent for some time, with the exception of partially inaudible snatches of comment or questionings, apparently addressed to himself. At last he said: "I shall take a longer journey to-morrow, Caleb--much longer: let me see--where did I say? Ah, yes! to Glasgow; to be sure to Glasgow!" "To Glasgow, and to-morrow!" exclaimed the astounded cobbler. "No, no--not Glasgow; they have removed," feebly rejoined Mr. Lisle. "But Lucy has written it down for me. True--true; and to-morrow I shall set out." The strange expression of Mr. Lisle's face became momentarily more strongly marked, and Jennings, greatly alarmed, said: "You are ill, Mr. Lisle; let me run for Dr. Clarke." "No--no," he murmured, at the same time striving to rise from his seat, which he could only accomplish by Caleb's assistance, and so supported, he staggered indoors. "I shall be better to-morrow," he said faintly, and then slowly added: "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow! Ah me! Yes, as I said, to-morrow, I"----He paused abruptly, and they gained his apartment. He seated himself, and then Jennings, at his mute solicitations, assisted him to bed. He lay some time with his eyes closed; and Caleb could feel--for Mr. Lisle held him firmly by the hand, as if to prevent his going away--a convulsive shudder pass over his frame. At last he slowly opened his eyes, and Caleb saw that he was indeed about to depart upon the long journey from which there is no return. The lips of the dying man worked inarticulately for some moments; and then, with a mighty effort, as it seemed, he said, whilst his trembling hand pointed feebly to a bureau chest of drawers that stood in the room: "There--there for Lucy; there, the secret place is"----Some inaudible words followed, and then, after a still mightier struggle than before, he gasped out: "No word--no word--to--to Sowerby--for her--Lucy." More was said, but undistinguishable by mortal ear; and after gazing with an expression of indescribable anxiety in the scared face of his awestruck listener, the wearied eyes slowly reclosed--the deep silence flowed past; then the convulsive shudder came again, and he was dead! Caleb Jennings tremblingly summoned the house-servant and the landlady, and was still confusedly pondering the broken sentences uttered by the dying man, when Mr. Sowerby hurriedly arrived. The attorney's first care was to assume the direction of affairs, and to place seals upon every article containing or likely to contain any thing of value belonging to the deceased. This done, he went away to give directions for the funeral, which took place a few days afterwards; and it was then formally announced that Mr. Sowerby succeeded by will to the large property of Ambrose Lisle; under trust, however, for the family, if any, of Robert Lisle, the deceased's brother, who had gone when very young to India, and had not been heard of for many years--a condition which did not at all mar the joy of the crafty lawyer, he having long since instituted private inquiries, which perfectly satisfied him that the said Robert Lisle had died, unmarried, at Calcutta. Mr. Jennings was in a state of great dubiety and consternation. Sowerby had emptied the chest of drawers of every valuable it contained; and unless he had missed the secret receptacle Mr. Lisle had spoken of, the deceased's intentions, whatever they might have been, were clearly defeated. And if he had _not_ discovered it, how could he, Jennings, get at the drawers to examine them? A fortunate chance brought some relief to his perplexities. Ambrose Lisle's furniture was advertised to be sold by auction, and Caleb resolved to purchase the bureau chest of drawers at almost any price, although to do so would oblige him to break into his rent-money, then nearly due. The day of sale came, and the important lot in its turn was put up. In one of the drawers there were a number of loose newspapers, and other valueless scraps; and Caleb, with a sly grin, asked the auctioneer if he sold the article with all its contents. "Oh yes," said Sowerby, who was watching the sale; "the buyer may have all it contains over his bargain, and much good may it do him." A laugh followed the attorney's sneering remark, and the biddings went on. "I want it," observed Caleb, "because it just fits a recess like this one in my room underneath." This he said to quiet a suspicion he thought he saw gathering upon the attorney's brow. It was finally knocked down to Caleb at £5, 10s., a sum considerably beyond its real value; and he had to borrow a sovereign in order to clear his speculative purchase. This done, he carried off his prize, and as soon as the closing of the house for the night secured him from interruption, he set eagerly to work in search of the secret drawer. A long and patient examination was richly rewarded. Behind one of the small drawers of the _secrétaire_ portion of the piece of furniture was another small one, curiously concealed, which contained Bank-of-England notes to the amount of £200, tied up with a letter, upon the back of which was written, in the deceased's handwriting, "To take with me." The letter which Caleb, although he read print with facility, had much difficulty in making out, was that which Mr. Lisle had struck from the young woman's hand a few weeks before, and proved to be a very affecting appeal from Lucy Stevens, now Lucy Warner, and a widow, with two grown-up children. Her husband had died in insolvent circumstances, and she and her sister Emily, who was still single, were endeavoring to carry on a school at Bristol, which promised to be sufficiently prosperous if the sum of about £150 could be raised, to save the furniture from her deceased husband's creditors. The claim was pressing, for Mr. Warner had been dead nearly a year, and Mr. Lisle being the only relative Mrs. Warner had in the world, she had ventured to entreat his assistance for her mother's sake. There could be no moral doubt, therefore, that this money was intended for Mrs. Warner's relief; and early in the morning Mr. Caleb Jennings dressed himself in his Sunday's suit, and with a brief announcement to his landlady that he was about to leave Watley for a day or two on a visit to a friend, set off for the railway station. He had not proceeded far when a difficulty struck him: the bank-notes were all twenties; and were he to change a twenty-pound note at the station, where he was well known, great would be the tattle and wonderment, if nothing worse, that would ensue. So Caleb tried his credit again, borrowed sufficient for his journey to London, and there changed one of the notes. He soon reached Bristol, and blessed was the relief which the sum of money he brought afforded Mrs. Warner. She expressed much sorrow for the death of Mr. Lisle, and great gratitude to Caleb. The worthy man accepted with some reluctance one of the notes, or at least as much as remained of that which he had changed; and after exchanging promises with the widow and her relatives to keep the matter secret, departed homewards. The young woman, Mrs. Warner's daughter, who had brought the letter to Watley, was, Caleb noticed, the very image of her mother, or rather of what her mother must have been when young. This remarkable resemblance it was, no doubt, which had for the moment so confounded and agitated Mr. Lisle. Nothing occurred for about a fortnight after Caleb's return to disquiet him, and he had begun to feel tolerably sure that his discovery of the notes would remain unsuspected, when, one afternoon, the sudden and impetuous entrance of Mr. Sowerby into his stall caused him to jump up from his seat with surprise and alarm. The attorney's face was deathly white, his eyes glared like a wild beast's, and his whole appearance exhibited uncontrollable agitation. "A word with you, Mr. Jennings," he gasped--"a word in private, and at once!" Caleb, in scarcely less consternation than his visitor, led the way into his inner room, and closed the door. "Restore--give back," screamed the attorney, vainly struggling to dissemble the agitation which convulsed him--"that--that which you have purloined from the chest of drawers!" The hot blood rushed to Caleb's face and temples; the wild vehemence and suddenness of the demand confounded him; and certain previous dim suspicions that the law might not only pronounce what he had done illegal, but possibly felonious, returned upon him with terrible force, and he quite lost his presence of mind. "I can't--I can't," he stammered. "It's gone--given away"---- "Gone!" shouted, or more correctly howled, Sowerby, at the same time flying at Caleb's throat as if he would throttle him. "Gone--given away! You lie--you want to drive a bargain with me--dog!--liar!--rascal!--thief!" This was a species of attack which Jennings was at no loss how to meet. He shook the attorney roughly off, and hurled him, in the midst of his vituperation, to the further end of the room. They then stood glaring at each other in silence, till the attorney, mastering himself as well as he could, essayed another and more rational mode of attaining his purpose. "Come, come, Jennings," he said, "don't be a fool. Let us understand each other. I have just discovered a paper, a memorandum of what you have found in the drawers, and to obtain which you bought them. I don't care for the money--keep it; only give me the papers--documents." "Papers--documents!" ejaculated Caleb in unfeigned surprise. "Yes--yes; of use to me only. You, I remember, cannot read writing; but they are of great consequence to me--to me only, I tell you." "You can't mean Mrs. Warner's letter?" "No--no; curse the letter! You are playing with a tiger! Keep the money, I tell you; but give up the papers--documents--or I'll transport you!" shouted Sowerby with reviving fury. Caleb, thoroughly bewildered, could only mechanically ejaculate that he had no papers or documents. The rage of the attorney when he found he could extract nothing from Jennings was frightful. He literally foamed with passion, uttered the wildest threats; and then suddenly changing his key, offered the astounded cobbler one--two--three thousand pounds--any sum he chose to name--for the papers--documents! This scene of alternate violence and cajolery lasted nearly an hour; and then Sowerby rushed from the house, as if pursued by the furies, and leaving his auditor in a state of thorough bewilderment and dismay. It occurred to Caleb, as soon as his mind had settled into something like order, that there might be another secret drawer; and the recollection of Mr. Lisle's journey to London returned suggestively to him. Another long and eager search, however, proved fruitless; and the suspicion was given up, or, more correctly, weakened. As soon as it was light the next morning, Mr. Sowerby was again with him. He was more guarded now, and was at length convinced that Jennings had no paper or document to give up. "It was only some important memoranda," observed the attorney carelessly, "that would save me a world of trouble in a lawsuit I shall have to bring against some heavy debtors to Mr. Lisle's estate; but I must do as well as I can without them. Good morning." Just as he reached the door, a sudden thought appeared to strike him. He stopped and said: "By the way, Jennings, in the hurry of business I forgot that Mr. Lisle had told me the chest of drawers you bought, and a few other articles, were family relics which he wished to be given to certain parties he named. The other things I have got: and you, I presume, will let me have the drawers for--say a pound profit on your bargain?" Caleb was not the acutest man in the world; but this sudden proposition, carelessly as it was made, suggested curious thoughts. "No," he answered; "I shall not part with it. I shall keep it as a memorial of Mr. Lisle." Sowerby's face assumed, as Caleb spoke, a ferocious expression. "Shall you?" said he. "Then, be sure, my fine fellow, that you shall also have something to remember me by as long as you live!" He then went away, and a few days afterwards Caleb was served with a writ for the recovery of the two hundred pounds. The affair made a great noise in the place; and Caleb's conduct being very generally approved, a subscription was set on foot to defray the cost of defending the action--one Hayling, a rival attorney to Sowerby, having asserted that the words used by the proprietor of the chest of drawers at the sale barred his claim to the money found in them. This wise gentleman was intrusted with the defence; and, strange to say, the jury, a common one--spite of the direction of the judge, returned a verdict for the defendant, upon the ground that Sowerby's jocular or sneering remark amounted to a serious, valid leave and license to sell two hundred pounds for five pounds ten shillings! Sowerby obtained, as a matter of course, a rule for a new trial; and a fresh action was brought. All at once Hayling refused to go on, alleging deficiency of funds. He told Jennings that in his opinion it would be better that he should give in to Sowerby's whim, who only wanted the drawers in order to comply with the testator's wishes. "Besides," remarked Hayling in conclusion, "he is sure to get the article, you know, when it comes to be sold under a writ of _fi. fa._" A few days after this conversation, it was ascertained that Hayling was to succeed to Sowerby's business, the latter gentleman being about to retire upon the fortune bequeathed him by Mr. Lisle. At last Caleb, driven nearly out of his senses, though still doggedly obstinate, by the harassing perplexities in which he found himself, thought of applying to us. "A very curious affair, upon my word," remarked Mr. Flint, as soon as Caleb had unburdened himself of the story of his woes and cares; "and in my opinion by no means explainable by Sowerby's anxiety to fulfil the testator's wishes. He cannot expect to get two hundred pence out of you; and Mrs. Warner, you say, is equally unable to pay. Very odd indeed. Perhaps if we could get time, something might turn up." With this view Flint looked over the papers Caleb had brought, and found the declaration was in _trover_--a manifest error--the notes never admittedly having been in Sowerby's actual possession. We accordingly demurred to the form of action, and the proceedings were set aside. This, however, proved of no ultimate benefit: Sowerby persevered, and a fresh action was instituted against the unhappy shoemender. So utterly overcrowed and disconsolate was poor Caleb, that, he determined to give up the drawers, which was all Sowerby even now required, and so wash his hands of the unfortunate business. Previous, however, to this being done, it was determined that another thorough and scientific examination of the mysterious piece of furniture should be made; and for this purpose, Mr. Flint obtained a workman skilled in the mysteries of secret contrivances, from the desk and dressing-case establishment in King-street, Holborn, and proceeded with him to Watley. The man performed his task with great care and skill: every depth and width was gauged and measured, in order to ascertain if there were any false bottoms or backs; and the workman finally pronounced that there was no concealed receptacle in the article. "I am sure there is," persisted Flint, whom disappointment as usual rendered but the more obstinate; "and so is Sowerby; and he knows, too, that it is so cunningly contrived as to be undiscoverable, except by a person in the secret, which he no doubt at first imagined Caleb to be. I'll tell you what we will do: you have the necessary tools with you. Split the confounded chest of drawers into shreds: I'll be answerable for the consequences." This was done carefully and methodically, but for some time without result. At length the large drawer next the floor had to be knocked to pieces; and as it fell apart, one section of the bottom, which, like all the others, was divided into two compartments, dropped asunder, and discovered a parchment laid flat between the two thin leaves, which, when pressed together in the grooves of the drawer, presented precisely the same appearance as the rest. Flint snatched up the parchment, and his eager eye scarcely rested an instant on the writing, when a shout of triumph burst from him. It was the last will and testament of Ambrose Lisle, dated August 21, 1838--the day of his last hurried visit to London. It revoked the former will, and bequeathed the whole of his property, in equal portions, to his cousins Lucy Warner and Emily Stevens, with succession to their children; but with reservation of one-half to his brother Robert or children, should he be alive, or have left offspring. Great, it may be supposed, was the jubilation of Caleb Jennings at this discovery; and all Watley, by his agency, was in a marvelously short space of time in a very similar state of excitement. It was very late that night when he reached his bed; and how he got there at all, and what precisely had happened, except, indeed, that he had somewhere picked up a splitting headache, was, for some time after he awoke the next morn, very confusedly remembered. Mr. Flint, upon reflection, was by no means so exultant as the worthy shoemender. The odd mode of packing away a deed of such importance, with no assignable motive for doing so, except the needless awe with which Sowerby was said to have inspired his feeble-spirited client, together with what Caleb had said of the shattered state of the deceased's mind after the interview with Mrs. Warner's daughter, suggested fears that Sowerby might dispute, and perhaps successfully, the validity of this last will. My excellent partner, however, determined, as was his wont, to put a bold face on the matter; and first clearly settling in his own mind what he should and what he should _not_ say, he waited upon Mr. Sowerby. The news had preceded him, and he was at once surprised and delighted to find that the nervous, crestfallen attorney was quite unaware of the advantages of his position. On condition of not being called to account for the moneys he had received and expended, about £1200, he destroyed the former will in Mr. Flint's presence, and gave up at once all the deceased's papers. From these we learned that Mr. Lisle had written a letter to Mrs. Warner, stating what he had done, where the will would be found, and that only herself and Jennings would know the secret. From infirmity of purpose, or from having subsequently determined on a personal interview, the letter was not posted; and Sowerby subsequently discovered it, together with a memorandum of the numbers of the bank-notes found by Caleb in the secret drawer--the eccentric gentleman appears to have had quite a mania for such hiding-places--of a writing-desk. The affair was thus happily terminated: Mrs. Warner, her children, and sister, were enriched, and Caleb Jennings was set up in a good way of business in his native place, where he still flourishes. Over the centre of his shop there is a large nondescript sign, surmounted by a golden boot, which, upon close inspection, is found to bear some resemblance to a huge bureau chest of drawers, all the circumstances connected with which may be heard, for the asking, and in much fuller detail than I have given, from the lips of the owner of the establishment, by any lady or gentleman who will take the trouble of a journey to Watley for that purpose. MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE,[8] BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. BOOK VI.--INITIAL CHAPTER. "Life," said my father, in his most dogmatical tone, "is a certain quantity in time, which may be regarded in two ways--first, as life _Integral_; second, as life _Fractional_. Life integral is that complete whole, expressive of a certain value, large or small, which each man possesses in himself. Life fractional is that same whole seized upon and invaded by other people, and subdivided amongst them. They who get a large slice of it say, 'a very valuable life this!'--those who get but a small handful say, 'so, so, nothing very great!'--those who get none of it in the scramble exclaim, 'Good for nothing!'" "I don't understand a word you are saying," growled Captain Roland. My father surveyed his brother with compassion--"I will make it all clear even to your understanding. When I sit down by myself in my study, having carefully locked the door on all of you, alone with my books and thoughts, I am in full possession of my integral life. I am _totus, teres, atque rotundus_--a whole human being--equivalent in value we will say, for the sake of illustration, to a fixed round sum--£100, for example. But when I come forth into the common apartment, each of those to whom I am of any worth whatsoever puts his fingers into the bag that contains me and takes out of me what he wants. Kitty requires me to pay a bill; Pisistratus to save him the time and trouble of looking into a score or two of books; the children to tell them stories; or play at hide-and-seek; the carp for breadcrumbs; and so on throughout the circle to which I have incautiously given myself up for plunder and subdivision. The £100 which I represented in my study is now parcelled out; I am worth £40 or £50 to Kitty, £20 to Pisistratus, and perhaps 30_s._ to the carp. This is life fractional. And I cease to be an integral till once more returning to my study, and again closing the door on all existence but my own. Meanwhile, it is perfectly clear that, to those who, whether I am in the study or whether I am in the common sitting-room, get nothing at all out of me, I am not worth a farthing. It must be wholly indifferent to a native of Kamschatka whether Austin Caxton be or be not rased out of the great account-book of human beings." "Hence," continued my father--"hence it follows that the more fractional a life be--_id est_, the greater the number of persons among whom it can be subdivided--why, the more there are to say, 'a very valuable life that!' Thus, the leader of a political party, a conqueror, a king, an author who is amusing hundreds or thousands, or millions, has a greater number of persons whom his worth interests and affects than a Saint Simon Stylites could have when he perched himself at the top of a column; although, regarded each in himself, Saint Simon, in his grand mortification of flesh, in the idea that he thereby pleased his Divine Benefactor, might represent a larger sum of moral value _per se_ than Bonaparte or Voltaire." _Pisistratus._--"Perfectly clear, sir, but I don't see what it has to do with My Novel." _Mr. Caxton._--"Every thing. Your novel, if it is to be a full and comprehensive survey of the '_Quicquid agunt homines_', (which it ought to be, considering the length and breadth to which I foresee, from the slow development of your story, you meditate extending and expanding it,) will embrace the two views of existence, the integral and the fractional. You have shown us the former in Leonard, when he is sitting in his mother's cottage, or resting from his work by the little fount in Riccabocca's garden. And in harmony with that view of his life, you have surrounded him with comparative integrals, only subdivided by the tender hands of their immediate families and neighbors--your Squires and Parsons, your Italian exile and his Jemima. With all these, life is more or less the life natural, and this is always more or less the life integral. Then comes the life artificial, which is always more or less the life fractional. In the life natural, wherein we are swayed but by our own native impulses and desires, subservient only to the great silent law of virtue, (which has pervaded the universe since it swung out of chaos,) a man is of worth from what he is in himself--Newton was as worthy before the apple fell from the tree as when all Europe applauded the discoverer of the principle of gravity. But in the life artificial we are only of worth in as much as we affect others. And, relative to that life, Newton rose in value more than a million per cent. when down fell the apple from which ultimately sprang up his discovery. In order to keep civilization going, and spread over the world the light of human intellect, we have certain desires within us, ever swelling beyond the ease and independence which belong to us as integrals. Cold man as Newton might be, (he once took a lady's hand in his own, Kitty, and used her forefinger for his tobacco-stopper; great philosopher!)--cold as he might be, he was yet moved into giving his discoveries to the world, and that from motives very little differing in their quality from the motives that make Dr. Squills communicate articles to the Phrenological Journal upon the skulls of Bushmen and wombats. For it is the _property of light to travel_. When a man has light in him, forth it must go. But the first passage of genius from its integral state (in which it has been reposing on its own wealth) into the fractional, is usually through a hard and vulgar pathway. It leaves behind it the reveries of solitude--that self-contemplating rest which may be called the Visionary, and enters suddenly into the state that may be called the Positive and Actual. There, it sees the operation of money on the outer life--sees all the ruder and commoner springs of action--sees ambition without nobleness--love without romance--is bustled about, and ordered, and trampled, and cowed--in short, it passes an apprenticeship with some Richard Avenel, and does not yet detect what good and what grandeur, what addition even to the true poetry of the social universe, fractional existences like Richard Avenel's bestow; for the pillars that support society are like those of the court of the Hebrew Tabernacle--they are of brass, it is true, but they are filleted with silver. From such intermediate state genius is expelled, and driven on in its way, and would have been so in this case, had Mrs. Fairfield (who is but the representative of the homely natural affections, strongest ever in true genius--for light is warm) never crushed Mr. Avenel's moss rose on her sisterly bosom. Now, forth from this passage and defile of transition into the larger world, must genius go on, working out its natural destiny amidst things and forms the most artificial. Passions that move and influence the world are at work around it. Often lost sight of itself, its very absence is a silent contrast to the agencies present. Merged and vanished for a while amidst the practical world, yet we ourselves feel all the while that it is _there_--is at work amidst the workings around it. This practical world that effaces it rose out of some genius that has gone before; and so each man of genius, though we never come across him, as his operations proceed, in places remote from our thoroughfares, is yet influencing the practical world that ignores him, for ever and ever. That is GENIUS! We can't describe it in books--we can only hint and suggest it, by the accessaries which we artfully heap about it. The entrance of a true probationer into the terrible ordeal of practical life is like that into the miraculous cavern, by which, legend informs us, St. Patrick converted Ireland." _Blanche._--"What is that legend? I never heard of it." _Mr. Caxton._--"My dear, you will find it in a thin folio at the right on entering my study, written by Thomas Messingham, and called 'Florilegium Insulæ Sanctorum,' &c. The account therein is confirmed by the relation of an honest soldier, one Louis Ennius, who had actually entered the cavern. In short, the truth of the legend is undeniable, unless you mean to say, which I can't for a moment suppose, that Louis Ennius was a liar. Thus it runs:--St. Patrick, finding that the Irish pagans were incredulous as to his pathetic assurances of the pains and torments destined to those who did not expiate their sins in this world, prayed for a miracle to convince them. His prayer was heard; and a certain cavern, so small that a man could not stand up therein at his ease, was suddenly converted into a Purgatory, comprehending tortures sufficient to convince the most incredulous. One unacquainted with human nature might conjecture that few would be disposed to venture voluntarily into such a place; on the contrary, pilgrims came in crowds. Now, all who entered from vain curiosity, or with souls unprepared, perished miserably; but those who entered with deep and earnest faith, conscious of their faults, and if bold, yet humble, not only came out safe and sound, but purified, as if from the waters of a second baptism. See Savage and Johnson at night in Fleet-street, and who shall doubt the truth of St. Patrick's Purgatory?" Therewith my father sighed--closed his Lucian, which had lain open on the table, and would read nothing but "good books" for the rest of the evening. CHAPTER II. On their escape from the prison to which Mr. Avenel had condemned them, Leonard and his mother found their way to a small public-house that lay at a little distance from the town, and on the outskirts of the high-road. With his arm round his mother's waist, Leonard supported her steps and soothed her excitement. In fact the poor woman's nerves were greatly shaken, and she felt an uneasy remorse at the injury her intrusion had inflicted on the young man's worldly prospects. As the shrewd reader has guessed already, that infamous Tinker was the prime agent of evil in this critical turn in the affairs of his quondam customer. For, on his return to his haunts around Hazeldean and the Casino, the Tinker had hastened to apprise Mrs. Fairfield of his interview with Leonard, and on finding that she was not aware that the boy was under the roof of his uncle, the pestilent vagabond (perhaps from spite against Mr. Avenel, or perhaps from that pure love of mischief by which metaphysical critics explain the character of Iago, and which certainly formed a main element in the idiosyncrasy of Mr. Sprott) had so impressed on the widow's mind the haughty demeanor of the uncle and the refined costume of the nephew, that Mrs. Fairfield had been seized with a bitter and insupportable jealousy. There was an intention to rob her of her boy!--he was to be made too fine for her. His silence was now accounted for. This sort of jealousy, always more or less a feminine quality, is often very strong amongst the poor; and it was the more strong in Mrs. Fairfield, because, lone woman as she was, the boy was all in all to her. And though she was reconciled to the loss of his presence, nothing could reconcile her to the thought that his affections should be weaned from her. Moreover, there were in her mind certain impressions, of the justice of which the reader may better judge hereafter, as to the gratitude, more than ordinarily filial, which Leonard owed to her. In short, she did not like, as she phrased it, "to be shaken off;" and after a sleepless night she resolved to judge for herself, much moved thereto by the malicious suggestions to that effect made by Mr. Sprott, who mightily enjoyed the idea of mortifying the gentleman by whom he had been so disrespectfully threatened with the treadmill. The widow felt angry with Parson Dale, and with the Riccaboccas; she thought they were in the plot against her; she communicated, therefore, her intention to none--and off she set, performing the journey partly on the top of the coach, partly on foot. No wonder that she was dusty, poor woman. "And, oh, boy!" said she, half sobbing, "when I got through the lodge gates, came on the lawn, and saw all that power o' fine folk--I said to myself, says I--(for I felt fritted)--I'll just have a look at him and go back. But ah, Lenny, when I saw thee, looking so handsome--and when thee turned and cried 'Mother!' my heart was just ready to leap out o' my mouth--and so I could not help hugging thee, if I had died for it. And thou wert so kind, that I forgot all Mr. Sprott had said about Dick's pride, or thought he had just told a fib about that, as he had wanted me to believe a fib about thee. Then Dick came up--and I had not seen him for so many years--and we come o' the same father and mother; and so--and so"--the widow's sobs here fairly choked her. "Ah," she said, after giving vent to her passion, and throwing her arms round Leonard's neck, as they sat in the little sanded parlor of the public-house--"Ah, and I've brought thee to this. Go back, go back, boy, and never mind me." With some difficulty Leonard pacified poor Mrs. Fairfield, and got her to retire to bed; for she was indeed thoroughly exhausted. He then stepped forth into the road, musingly. All the stars were out; and Youth, in its troubles, instinctively looks up to the stars. Folding his arms, Leonard gazed on the heavens, and his lips murmured. From this trance, for so it might be called, he was awakened by a voice in a decidedly London accent; and, turning hastily round, saw Mr. Avenel's very gentlemanlike butler. Leonard's first idea was that his uncle had repented, and sent in search of him. But the butler seemed as much surprised at the rencontre as himself; that personage, indeed, the fatigues of the day being over, was accompanying one of Mr. Gunter's waiters to the public-house, (at which the latter had secured his lodging,) having discovered an old friend in the waiter, and proposing to regale himself with a cheerful glass, and--_that_ of course--abuse of his present sitivation. "Mr. Fairfield!" exclaimed the butler, while the waiter walked discreetly on. Leonard looked, and said nothing. The butler began to think that some apology was due for leaving his plate and his pantry, and that he might as well secure Leonard's propitiatory influence with his master-- "Please, sir," said he, touching his hat, "I was just a-showing Mr. Giles the way to the Blue Bells, where he puts up for the night. I hope my master will not be offended. If you are a-going back, sir, would you kindly mention it?" "I am not going back, Jarvis," answered Leonard, after a pause; "I am leaving Mr. Avenel's house, to accompany my mother; rather suddenly. I should be very much obliged to you if you would bring some things of mine to me at the Blue Bells. I will give you the list, if you will step back with me to the inn." Without waiting for a reply, Leonard then turned towards the inn, and made his humble inventory: item, the clothes he had brought with him from the Casino; item, the knapsack that had contained them; item, a few books, ditto; item, Dr. Riccabocca's watch; item, sundry MSS., on which the young student now built all his hopes of fame and fortune. This list he put into Mr. Jarvis's hand. "Sir," said the butler, twirling the paper between his finger and thumb, "you are not a-going for long, I hope;" and as he thought of the scene on the lawn, the report of which had vaguely reached his ears, he looked on the face of the young man, who had always been "civil spoken to him," with as much, curiosity and as much compassion as so apathetic and princely a personage could experience in matters affecting a family less aristocratic than he had hitherto condescended to serve. "Yes," said Leonard, simply and briefly; "and your master will no doubt excuse you for rendering me this service." Mr. Jarvis postponed for the present his glass and chat with the waiter, and went back at once to Mr. Avenel. That gentleman, still seated in his library, had not been aware of the butler's absence; and when Mr. Jarvis entered and told him that he had met Mr. Fairfield, and, communicating the commission with which he was intrusted, asked leave to execute it, Mr. Avenel felt the man's inquisitive eye was on him, and conceived new wrath against Leonard for a new humiliation to his pride. It was awkward to give no explanation of his nephew's departure, still more awkward to explain. After a short pause, Mr. Avenel said sullenly, "My nephew is going away on business for some time--do what he tells you;" and then turned his back, and lighted his cigar. "That beast of a boy," said he, soliloquizing, "either means this as an affront, or an overture; if an affront, he is, indeed, well got rid of; if an overture, he will soon make a more respectful and proper one. After all, I can't have too little of relations till I have fairly secured Mrs. McCatchly. An Honorable! I wonder if that makes me an Honorable too? This cursed Debrett contains no practical information on these points." The next morning, the clothes and the watch with which Mr. Avenel had presented Leonard were returned, with a note meant to express gratitude, but certainly written with very little knowledge of the world, and so full of that somewhat over-resentful pride which had in earlier life made Leonard fly from Hazeldean, and refuse all apology to Randal, that it is not to be wondered at that Mr. Avenel's last remorseful feelings evaporated in ire. "I hope he will starve!" said the uncle, vindictively. CHAPTER III. "Listen to me, my dear mother," said Leonard the next morning, as with his knapsack on his shoulder and Mrs. Fairfield on his arm, he walked along the high road; "I do assure you, from my heart, that I do not regret the loss of favors which I see plainly would have crushed out of me the very sense of independence. But do not fear for me; I have education and energy--I shall do well for myself, trust me. No; I cannot, it is true, go back to our cottage--I cannot be a gardener again. Don't ask me--I should be discontented, miserable. But I will go up to London! That's the place to make a fortune and a name: I will make both. O yes, trust me, I will. You shall soon be proud of your Leonard; and then we will always live together--always! Don't cry." "But what can you do in London--such a big place, Lenny?" "What! Every year does not some lad leave our village, and go and seek his fortune, taking with him but health and strong hands? I have these, and I have more: I have brains, and thoughts, and hopes, that--again I say, No, no--never fear for me!" The boy threw back his head proudly; there was something sublime in his young trust in the future. "Well--but you will write to Mr. Dale, or to me? I will get Mr. Dale, or the good Mounseer (now I knew they were not agin me) to read your letters." "I will, indeed!" "And, boy, you have nothing in your pockets. We have paid Dick; these, at least, are my own, after paying the coach fare." And she would thrust a sovereign and some shillings into Leonard's waistcoat pocket. After some resistance, he was forced to consent. "And there's a sixpence with a hole in it. Don't part with that, Lenny; it will bring thee good luck." Thus talking, they gained the inn where the three roads met, and from which a coach went direct to the Casino. And here, without entering the inn, they sat on the green sward by the hedge-row, waiting the arrival of the coach. Mrs. Fairfield was much subdued in spirits, and there was evidently on her mind something uneasy--some struggle with her conscience. She not only upbraided herself for her rash visit; but she kept talking of her dead Mark. And what would he say of her, if he could see her in heaven? "It was so selfish in me, Lenny." "Pooh, pooh! Has not a mother a right to her child?" "Ay, ay, ay!" cried Mrs. Fairfield: "I do love you as a child--my own child. But if I was not your mother, after all, Lenny, and cost you all this--oh, what would you say of me then?" "Not my own mother!" said Leonard, laughing, as he kissed her. "Well, I don't know what I should say then differently from what I say now--that you who brought me up, and nursed and cherished me, had a right to my home and my heart, wherever I was." "Bless thee!" cried Mrs. Fairfield, as she pressed him to her heart. "But it weighs here--it weighs"--she said, starting up. At that instant the coach appeared, and Leonard ran forward to inquire if there was an outside place. Then there was a short bustle while the horses were being changed; and Mrs. Fairfield was lifted up to the roof of the vehicle. So all future private conversation between her and Leonard ceased. But as the coach whirled away, and she waved her hand to the boy, who stood on the road-side gazing after her, she still murmured--"It weighs here--it weighs!"---- CHAPTER IV. Leonard walked sturdily on in the high-road to the Great City. The day was calm and sunlit, but with a gentle breeze from gray hills at the distance; and with each mile that he passed, his step seemed to grow more firm, and his front more elate. Oh! it is such joy in youth to be alone with one's day dreams. And youth feels so glorious a vigor in the sense of its own strength, though the world be before and--against it! Removed from that chilling counting-house--from the imperious will of a patron and master--all friendless, but all independent--the young adventurer felt a new being--felt his grand nature as Man. And on the Man rushed the genius long interdicted--and thrust aside--rushing back, with the first breath of adversity to console--no! the Man needed not consolation,--to kindle, to animate, to rejoice! If there is a being in the world worthy of our envy, after we have grown wise philosophers of the fireside, it is not the palled voluptuary, nor the care-worn statesman, nor even the great prince of arts and letters, already crowned with the laurel, whose leaves are as fit for poison as for garlands; it is the young child of adventure and hope. Ay, and the emptier his purse, ten to one but the richer his heart, and the wider the domains which his fancy enjoys as he goes on with kingly step to the Future. Not till towards the evening did our adventurer slacken his pace, and think of rest and refreshment. There, then, lay before him, on either side the road, those wide patches of uninclosed land, which in England often denote the entrance to a village. Presently one or two neat cottages came in sight--then a small farm-house, with its yard and barns. And some way farther yet, he saw the sign swinging before an inn of some pretensions--the sort of inn often found on a long stage between two great towns, commonly called "The Half-way House." But the inn stood back from the road, having its own separate sward in front, whereon were a great beech tree (from which the sign extended) and a rustic arbor--so that, to gain the inn, the coaches that stopped there took a sweep from the main thoroughfare. Between our pedestrian and the inn there stood naked and alone, on the common land, a church; our ancestors never would have chosen that site for it; therefore it was a modern church--modern Gothic--handsome to an eye not versed in the attributes of ecclesiastical architecture--very barbarous to an eye that was. Somehow or other the church looked cold and raw and uninviting. It looked a church for show--much too big for the scattered hamlet--and void of all the venerable associations which give their peculiar and unspeakable atmosphere of piety to the churches in which succeeding generations have knelt and worshipped. Leonard paused and surveyed the edifice with an unlearned but poetical gaze--it dissatisfied him. And he was yet pondering why, when a young girl passed slowly before him, her eyes fixed on the ground, opened the little gate that led into the churchyard, and vanished. He did not see the child's face; but there was something in her movements so utterly listless, forlorn, and sad, that his heart was touched. What did she there? He approached the low wall with a noiseless step, and looked over it wistfully. There, by a grave evidently quite recent, with no wooden tomb nor tombstone like the rest, the little girl had thrown herself, and she was sobbing loud and passionately. Leonard opened the gate, and approached her with a soft step. Mingled with her sobs, he heard broken sentences, wild and vain, as all human sorrowings over graves must be. "Father!--oh, father! do you not really hear me? I am so lone--so lone! Take me to you--take me!" And she buried her face in the deep grass. "Poor child!" said Leonard, in a half whisper--"he is not there. Look above!" The girl did not heed him--he put his arm round her waist gently--she made a gesture of impatience and anger, but she would not turn her face--and she clung to the grave with her hands. After clear sunny days the dews fall more heavily; and now, as the sun set, the herbage was bathed in a vaporous haze--a dim mist rose around. The young man seated himself beside her, and tried to draw the child to his breast. Then she turned eagerly, indignantly, and pushed him aside with jealous arms. He profaned the grave! He understood her with his deep poet heart, and rose. There was a pause. Leonard was the first to break it. "Come to your home with me, my child, and we will talk of _him_ by the way." "Him! Who are you? You did not know him?" said the girl, still with anger. "Go away--why do you disturb me? I do no one harm. Go--go!" "You do yourself harm, and that will grieve him if he sees you yonder! Come!" The child looked at him through her blinding tears, and his face softened and soothed her. "Go!" she said very plaintively, and in subdued accents. "I will but stay a minute more. I--I have so much to say yet." Leonard left the churchyard, and waited without; and in a short time the child came forth, waved him aside as he approached her, and hurried away. He followed her at a distance, and saw her disappear within the inn. CHAPTER V. "Hip--hip--Hurrah!" Such was the sound that greeted our young traveller as he reached the inn door--a sound joyous in itself, but sadly out of harmony with the feelings which the child's sobbing on the tombless grave had left at his heart. The sound came from within, and was followed by thumps and stamps, and the jingle of glasses. A strong odor of tobacco was wafted to his olfactory sense. He hesitated a moment at the threshold. Before him on benches under the beech-tree and within the arbor, were grouped sundry athletic forms with "pipes in the liberal air." The landlady, as she passed across the passage to the tap-room, caught sight of his form at the doorway, and came forward. Leonard still stood irresolute. He would have gone on his way, but for the child; she had interested him strongly. "You seem full, ma'am," said he. "Can I have accommodation for the night?" "Why, indeed, sir," said the landlady, civilly, "I can give you a bedroom, but I don't know where to put you meanwhile. The two parlors and the tap-room and the kitchen are all chokeful. There has been a great cattle-fair in the neighborhood, and I suppose we have as many as fifty farmers and drovers stopping here." "As to that, ma'am, I can sit in the bedroom you are kind enough to give me; and if it does not cause you too much trouble to let me have some tea there, I should be glad; but I can wait your leisure. Do not put yourself out of the way for me." The landlady was touched by a consideration she was not much habituated to receive from her bluff customers. "You speak very handsome, sir, and we will do our best to serve you, if you will excuse all faults. This way, sir." Leonard lowered his knapsack, stepped in the passage, with some difficulty forced his way through a knot of sturdy giants in top-boots or leathern gaiters who were swarming in and out the tap-room, and followed his hostess up stairs to a little bedroom at the top of the house. "It is small, sir, and high," said the hostess apologetically. "But there be four gentlemen farmers that have come a great distance, and all the first floor is engaged; you will be more out of the noise here." "Nothing can suit me better. But, stay--pardon me;" and Leonard, glancing at the garb of the hostess, observed she was not in mourning. "A little girl whom I saw in the churchyard yonder, weeping very bitterly--is she a relation of yours? Poor child, she seems to have deeper feelings than are common at her age." "Ah, sir," said the landlady, putting the corner of her apron to her eyes, "it is a very sad story--I don't know what to do. Her father was taken ill on his way to Lunnun, and stopped here, and has been buried four days. And the poor little girl seems to have no relations--and where is she to go? Laryer Jones says we must pass her to Marybone parish, where her father lived last; and what's to become of her then? My heart bleeds to think on it." Here then rose such an uproar from below, that it was evident some quarrel had broken out; and the hostess, recalled to her duties, hastened to carry thither her propitiatory influences. Leonard seated himself pensively by the little lattice. Here was some one more alone in the world than he. And she, poor orphan, had no stout man's heart to grapple with fate, and no golden manuscripts that were to be as the "Open Sesame" to the treasures of Aladdin. By-and-by the hostess brought him up a tray with tea and other refreshments, and Leonard resumed his inquiries. "No relatives?" said he; "surely the child must have some kinsfolk in London? Did her father leave no directions, or was he in possession of his faculties?" "Yes, sir; he was quite reasonable-like to the last. And I asked him if he had not any thing on his mind, and he said, 'I have.' And I said, 'Your little girl, sir?' And he answered, 'Yes, ma'am;' and laying his head on his pillow, he wept very quietly. I could not say more myself, for it set me off to see him cry so meekly; but my husband is harder nor I, and he said, 'Cheer up, Mr. Digby; had not you better write to your friends?'" "'Friends!' said the gentleman, in such a voice! 'Friends I have but one, and I am going to Him! I cannot take her there!' Then he seemed suddenly to recollect hisself, and called for his clothes, and rummaged in the pockets as if looking for some address, and could not find it. He seemed a forgetful kind of gentleman, and his hands were what I call _helpless_ hands, sir! And then he gasped out, 'Stop--stop! I never had the address. Write to Lord Les--,' something like Lord Lester--but we could not make out the name. Indeed he did not finish it, for there was a rush of blood to his lips; and though he seemed sensible when he recovered, (and knew us and his little girl too, till he went off smiling,) he never spoke word more." "Poor man," said Leonard, wiping his eyes. "But his little girl surely remembers the name that he did not finish?" "No. She says, he must have meant a gentleman whom they had met in the Park not long ago, who was very kind to her father, and was Lord something; but she don't remember the name, for she never saw him before or since, and her father talked very little about any one lately, but thought he should find some kind friends at Screwstown, and travelled down there with her from Lunnon. But she supposes he was disappointed, for he went out, came back, and merely told her to put up the things, as they must go back to Lunnon. And on his way there he--died. Hush what's that? I hope she did not overhear us. No, we were talking low. She has the next room to your'n, sir. I thought I heard her sobbing. Hush!" "In the next room? I hear nothing. Well, with your leave, I will speak to her before I quit you. And had her father no money with him?" "Yes, a few sovereigns, sir; they paid for his funeral, and there is a little left still, enough to take her to town; for my husband said, says he, 'Hannah, the widow _gave_ her mite, and we must not _take_ the orphans;' and my husband is a hard man, too, sir. Bless him!" "Let me take your hand, ma'am. God reward you both." "La, sir!--why, even Dr. Dosewell said, rather grumpily though, 'Never mind my bill; but don't call me up at six o'clock in the morning again, without knowing a little more about people.' And I never afore knew Dr. Dosewell go without his bill being paid. He said it was a trick o' the other Doctor to spite him." "What other Doctor?" "Oh, a very good gentleman, who got out with Mr. Digby when he was taken ill, and stayed till the next morning; and our Doctor says his name is Morgan, and he lives in--Lunnon, and is a homy--something." "Homicide," suggested Leonard ignorantly. "Ah--homicide; something like that, only a deal longer and worse. But he left some of the tiniest little balls you ever see, sir, to give the child; but, bless you, they did her no good--how should they?" "Tiny balls, oh--homoeopathist--I understand. And the Doctor was kind to her; perhaps he may help her. Have you written to him?" "But we don't know his address, and Lunnon is a vast place, sir." "I am going to London, and will find it out." "Ah, sir, you seem very kind; and sin' she must go to Lunnon, (for what can we do with her here?--she's too genteel for service,) I wish she was going with you." "With me?" said Leonard startled; "with me! Well, why not?" "I am sure she comes of good blood, sir. You would have known her father was quite the gentleman, only to see him die, sir. He went off so kind and civil like, as if he was ashamed to give so much trouble--quite a gentleman, if ever there was one. And so are you, sir, I'm sure," said the landlady, curtseying; "I know what gentlefolk be. I've been a housekeeper, in the first of families in this very shire, sir, though I can't say I've served in Lunnon; and so, as gentlefolks know each other, I've no doubt you could find out her relations. Dear--dear! Coming, coming!" Here there were loud cries for the hostess, and she hurried away. The farmers and drovers were beginning to depart, and their bills were to be made out and paid. Leonard saw his hostess no more that night. The last hip-hip-hurrah, was heard; some toast, perhaps, to the health of the county members;--and the chamber of woe, beside Leonard's, rattled with the shout. By-and-by silence gradually succeeded the various dissonant sounds below. The carts and gigs rolled away; the clatter of hoofs on the road ceased; there was then a dumb dull sound as of locking-up, and low humming voices below and footsteps mounting the stairs to bed, with now and then a drunken hiccup or maudlin laugh, as some conquered votary of Bacchus was fairly carried up to his domicile. All, then, at last was silent, just as the clock from the church sounded the stroke of eleven. Leonard, meanwhile, had been looking over his MSS. There was first a project for an improvement on the steam-engine--a project that had long lain in his mind, begun with the first knowledge of mechanics that he had gleaned from his purchases of the Tinker. He put that aside now--it required too great an effort of the reasoning faculty to re-examine. He glanced less hastily over a collection of essays on various subjects, some that he thought indifferent, some that he thought good. He then lingered over a collection of verses, written in his best hand with loving care--verses first inspired by his perusal of Nora's melancholy memorials. These verses were as a diary of his heart and his fancy--those deep unwitnessed struggles which the boyhood of all more thoughtful natures has passed in its bright yet murky storm of the cloud and the lightning flash; though but few boys pause to record the crisis from which slowly emerges Man. And these first, desultory grapplings with the fugitive airy images that flit through the dim chambers of the brain, had become with each effort more sustained and vigorous, till the phantoms were spelled, the flying ones arrested, the immaterial seized, and clothed with Form. Gazing on his last effort, Leonard felt that there at length spoke forth a Poet. It was a work which, though as yet but half completed, came from a strong hand; not that shadow trembling on unsteady waters, which is but the pale reflex and imitation of some bright mind, sphered out of reach and afar; but an original substance--a life--a thing of the _Creative_ Faculty--breathing back already the breath it had received. This work had paused during Leonard's residence with Mr. Avenel, or had only now and then, in stealth, and at night, received a rare touch. Now, as with a fresh eye, he re-perused it; and with that strange, innocent admiration, not of self--(for a man's work is not, alas! himself--it is the beatified and idealized essence, extracted he knows not how from his own human elements of clay)--admiration known but to poets--their purest delight, often their sole reward. And then, with a warmer and more earthly beat of his full heart, he rushed in fancy to the Great City, where all rivers of Fame meet, but not to be merged and lost--sallying forth again, individualized and separate, to flow through that one vast thought of God which we call THE WORLD. He put up his papers; and opened his window, as was his ordinary custom, before he retired to rest--for he had many odd habits; and he loved to look out into the night when he prayed. His soul seemed to escape from the body--to mount on the air--to gain more rapid access to the far Throne in the Infinite--when his breath went forth among the winds, and his eyes rested fixed on the stars, of Heaven. So the boy prayed silently; and after his prayer he was about lingeringly to close the lattice, when he heard distinctly sobs close at hand. He paused, and held his breath; then gently looked out; the casement next his own was also open. Some one was also at watch by that casement--perhaps also praying. He listened yet more attentively, and caught, soft and low, the words. "Father--father--do you hear me _now_?" CHAPTER VI. Leonard opened his door and stole towards that of the room adjoining; for his first natural impulse had been to enter and console. But when his touch was on the handle, he drew back. Child, though the mourner was, her sorrows were rendered yet more sacred from intrusion by her sex. Something, he knew not what, in his young ignorance, withheld him from the threshold. To have crossed it then would have seemed to him profanation. So he returned, and for hours yet he occasionally heard the sobs, till they died away, and childhood wept itself to sleep. But the next morning, when he heard his neighbor astir, he knocked gently at her door: there was no answer. He entered softly, and saw her seated very listlessly in the centre of the room--as if it had no familiar nook or corner as the rooms of home have--her hands drooping on her lap, and her eyes gazing desolately on the floor. Then he approached and spoke to her. Helen was very subdued, and very silent. Her tears seemed dried up; and it was long before she gave sign or token that she heeded him. At length, however, he gradually succeeded in rousing her interest; and the first symptom of his success was in the quiver of her lip, and the overflow of the downcast eyes. By little and little he wormed himself into her confidence; and she told him, in broken whispers, her simple story. But what moved him the most was, that, beyond her sense of loneliness, she did not seem to feel her own unprotected state. She mourned the object she had nursed, and heeded, and cherished; for she had been rather the protectress than the protected to the helpless dead. He could not gain from her any more satisfactory information than the landlady had already imparted, as to her friends and prospects; but she permitted him passively to look among the effects her father had left--save only that if his hand touched something that seemed to her associations especially holy, she waved him back, or drew it quickly away. There were many bills receipted in the name of Captain Digby--old yellow faded music-scores for the flute--extracts of Parts from Prompt Books--gay parts of lively comedies, in which heroes have so noble a contempt for money--fit heroes for a Sheridan and a Farquhar; close by these were several pawnbroker's tickets; and, not arrayed smoothly, but crumpled up, as if with an indignant nervous clutch of the old helpless hands, some two or three letters. He asked Helen's permission to glance at these, for they might give a clue to friends. Helen gave the permission by a silent bend of the head. The letters, however, were but short and freezing answers from what appeared to be distant connections or former friends, or persons to whom the deceased had applied for some situation. They were all very disheartening in their tone. Leonard next endeavored to refresh Helen's memory as to the name of the nobleman which had been last on her father's lips, but there he failed wholly. For it may be remembered that Lord L'Estrange, when he pressed his loan on Mr. Digby, and subsequently told that gentleman to address him at Mr. Egerton's, had, from a natural delicacy, sent the child on, that she might not hear the charity bestowed on the father; and Helen said truly, that Mr. Digby had sunk into a habitual silence on all his affairs latterly. She might have heard her father mention the name, but she had not treasured it up; all she could say was, that she should know the stranger again if she met him, and his dog too. Seeing that the child had grown calm, Leonard was then going to leave the room, in order to confer with the hostess, when she rose suddenly, though noiselessly, and put her little hand in his, as if to detain him. She did not say a word--the action said all--said "Do not desert me." And Leonard's heart rushed to his lips, and he answered to the action as he bent down and kissed her cheek, "Orphan, will you go with me? We have one Father yet to both of us, and He will guide us on earth. I am fatherless like you." She raised her eyes to his--looked at him long--and then leant her head confidingly on his strong young shoulder. CHAPTER VII. At noon that same day, the young man and the child were on their road to London. The host had at first a little demurred at trusting Helen to so young a companion, but Leonard, in his happy ignorance, had talked so sanguinely of finding out this lord, or some adequate protection for the child, and in so grand a strain, though with all sincerity, had spoken of his own great prospects in the metropolis (he did not say what they were!) that had it been the craftiest imposter, he could not have more taken in the rustic host. And while the landlady still cherished the illusive fancy that all gentlefolks must know each other in London, as they did in a county, the landlord believed, at least, that a young man, so respectably dressed, although but a foot-traveller--who talked in so confident a tone, and who was so willing to undertake what might be rather a burdensome charge, unless he saw how to rid himself of it--would be sure to have friends, older and wiser than himself, who could judge what could best be done for the orphan. And what was the host to do with her? Better this volunteered escort, at least, than vaguely passing her on from parish to parish, and leaving her friendless at last in the streets of London. Helen, too, smiled for the first time on being asked her wishes, and again put her hand in Leonard's. In short, so it was settled. The little girl made up a bundle of the things she most prized or needed. Leonard did not feel the additional load, as he slung it to his knapsack. The rest of the luggage was to be sent to London as soon as Leonard wrote, (which he promised to do soon,) and gave an address. Helen paid her last visit to the churchyard; and she joined her companion as he stood on the road, without the solemn precincts. And now they had gone on some hours, and when he asked if she was tired, she still answered "No." But Leonard was merciful, and made their day's journey short; and it took them some days to reach London. By the long lonely way, they grew so intimate, at the end of the second day they called each other brother and sister; and Leonard, to his delight, found that as her grief, with the bodily movement and the change of scene, subsided from its first intenseness and its insensibility to other impressions, she developed a quickness of comprehension far beyond her years. Poor child! _that_ had been forced upon her by Necessity. And she understood him in his spiritual consolations,--half poetical, half religious; and she listened to his own tale, and the story of his self-education and solitary struggles--those, too, she understood. But when he burst out with his enthusiasm, his glorious hopes, his confidence in the fate before them, then she would shake her head very quietly and very sadly. Did she comprehend _them_? Alas! perhaps too well. She knew more as to real life than he did. Leonard was at first their joint treasurer, but before the second day was over, Helen seemed to discover that he was too lavish; and she told him so, with a prudent grave look, putting her hand on his arm, as he was about to enter an inn to dine; and the gravity would have been comic, but that the eyes through their moisture were so meek and grateful. She felt he was about to incur that ruinous extravagance on her account. Somehow or other, the purse found its way into her keeping, and then she looked proud, and in her natural element. Ah! what happy meals under her care were provided: so much more enjoyable than in dull, sanded inn parlors, swarming with flies, and reeking with stale tobacco. She would leave him at the entrance of a village, bound forward, and cater, and return with a little basket and a pretty blue jug--which she had bought on the road--the last filled with new milk, the first with new bread and some special dainty in radishes or water-cresses. And she had such a talent for finding out the prettiest spot whereon to halt and dine: sometimes in the heart of a wood--so still, it was like a forest in fairy tales, the hare stealing through the alleys, or the squirrel peeping at them from the boughs; sometimes by a little brawling stream, with the fishes seen under the clear wave, and shooting round the crumbs thrown to them. They made an Arcadia of the dull road up to their dread Thermopylæ--the war against the million that waited them on the other side of their pass through Tempe. "Shall we be as happy when we are _great_?" said Leonard, in his grand simplicity. Helen sighed, and the wise little head was shaken. CHAPTER VIII. At last they came within easy reach of London; but Leonard had resolved not to enter the metropolis fatigued and exhausted, as a wanderer needing refuge, but fresh and elate, as a conqueror coming in triumph to take possession of the capital. Therefore they halted early in the evening of the day preceding this imperial entry, about six miles from the metropolis, in the neighborhood of Ealing, (for by that route lay their way.) They were not tired on arriving at their inn. The weather was singularly lovely, with that combination of softness and brilliancy which is only known to the rare true summer days of England: all below so green, above so blue--days of which we have about six in the year, and recall vaguely when we read of Robin Hood and maid Marian, of Damsel and Knight, in Spenser's golden Summer Song, or of Jacques, dropped under the oak tree, watching the deer amidst the dells of Ardennes. So, after a little pause in their inn, they strolled forth, not for travel, but pleasure, towards the cool of sunset, passing by the grounds that once belonged to the Duke of Kent, and catching a glimpse of the shrubs and lawns of that beautiful domain through the lodge-gates; then they crossed into some fields, and came to a little rivulet called the Brent. Helen had been more sad that day than on any during their journey. Perhaps, because, on approaching London, the memory of her father became more vivid; perhaps from her precocious knowledge of life, and her foreboding of what was to befall them, children that they both were. But Leonard was selfish that day; he could not be influenced by his companion's sorrow, he was so full of his own sense of being, and he already caught from the atmosphere the fever that belongs to anxious capitals. "Sit here, sister," said he imperiously, throwing himself under the shade of a pollard tree that overhung the winding brook, "sit here and talk." He flung off his hat, tossed back his rich curls, and sprinkled his brow from the stream that eddied round the roots of the tree that bulged out, bald and gnarled, from the bank, and delved into the waves below. Helen quietly obeyed him, and nestled close to his side. "And so this London is very vast?--VERY?" he repeated inquisitively. "Very," answered Helen, as abstractedly she plucked the cowslips near her, and let them fall into the running waters. "See how the flowers are carried down the stream! They are lost now. London is to us what the river is to the flowers--very vast--very strong;" and she added, after a pause, "very cruel!" "Cruel! Ah, it _has_ been so to you; but _now_!--now I will take care of you!" he smiled triumphantly; and his smile was beautiful both in its pride and its kindness. It is astonishing how Leonard had altered since he had left his uncle's. He was both younger and older; for the sense of genius, when it snaps its shackles, makes us both older and wiser as to the world it soars to--younger and blinder as to the world it springs from. "And it is not a very handsome city either, you say?" "Very ugly, indeed," said Helen, with some fervor; "at least all I have seen of it." "But there must be parts that are prettier than others? You say there are parks; why should not we lodge near them, and look upon the green trees?" "That would be nice," said Helen, almost joyously; "but--" and here the head was shaken--"there are no lodgings for us except in courts and alleys." "Why?" "Why?" echoed Helen, with a smile, and she held up the purse. "Pooh! always that horrid purse; as if, too, we were not going to fill it. Did I not tell you the story of Fortunio? Well, at all events, we will go first to the neighborhood where you last lived, and learn there all we can; and then the day after to-morrow, I will see this Dr. Morgan, and find out the Lord--" The tears startled to Helen's soft eyes. "You want to get rid of me soon, brother." "I! ah, I feel so happy to have you with me, it seems to me as if I had pined for you all my life, and you had come at last; for I never had brother, nor sister, nor any one to love, that was not older than myself, except--" "Except the young lady you told me of," said Helen, turning away her face; for children are very jealous. "Yes, I loved her, love her still. But that was different," said Leonard, with a heightened color. "I could never have talked to her as to you, to you I open my whole heart; you are my little Muse, Helen, I confess to you my wild whims and fancies as frankly as if I were writing poetry." As he said this, a step was heard, and a shadow fell over the stream. A belated angler appeared on the margin, drawing his line impatiently across the water, as if to worry some dozing fish into a bite before it finally settled itself for the night. Absorbed in his occupation, the angler did not observe the young persons on the sward under the tree, and he halted there, close upon them. "Curse that perch!" said he aloud. "Take care, sir," cried Leonard; for the man, in stepping back, nearly trod upon Helen. The angler turned. "What's the matter? Hist! you have frightened my perch. Keep still, can't you?" Helen drew herself out of the way, and Leonard remained motionless. He remembered Jackeymo, and felt a sympathy for the angler. "It is the most extraordinary perch, that!" muttered the stranger, soliloquizing. "It has the devil's own luck. It must have been born with a silver spoon in its mouth, that damned perch! I shall never catch it--never! Ha!--no--only a weed. I give it up." With this, he indignantly jerked his rod from the water, and began to disjoint it. While leisurely engaged in this occupation, he turned to Leonard. "Humph! are you intimately acquainted with this stream, sir?" "No," answered Leonard. "I never saw it before." _Angler_, (solemnly.)--"Then, young man, take my advice, and do not give way to its fascinations. Sir, I am a martyr to this stream; it has been the Dalilah of my existence." _Leonard_, (interested, the last sentence seemed to him poetical.)--"The Dalilah! sir, the Dalilah!" _Angler._--"The Dalilah. Young man, listen, and be warned by example. When I was about your age, I first came to this stream to fish. Sir, on that fatal day, about 3 P.M., I hooked up a fish--such a big one, it must have weighed a pound and a half. Sir, it was that length;" and the angler put finger to wrist. "And just when I had got it nearly ashore, by the very place where you are sitting, on that shelving bank, young man, the line broke, and the perch twisted himself among those roots, and--caco dæmon that he was--ran off, hook and all. Well, that fish haunted me; never before had I seen such a fish. Minnows I had caught in the Thames and elsewhere, also gudgeons, and occasionally a dace. But a fish like that--a PERCH--all his fins up like the sails of a man-of-war--a monster perch--a whale of a perch!--No, never till then had I known what leviathans lie hid within the deeps. I could not sleep till I had returned; and again, sir,--I caught that perch. And this time I pulled him fairly out of the water. He escaped; and how did he escape? Sir, he left his eye behind him on the hook. Years, long years, have passed since then; but never shall I forget the agony of that moment." _Leonard._--"To the perch, sir?" _Angler._--"Perch! agony to him! He enjoyed it:--agony to me. I gazed on that eye, and the eye looked as sly and as wicked as if it was laughing in my face. Well, sir, I had heard that there is no better bait for a perch than a perch's eye. I adjusted that eye on the hook, and dropped in the line gently. The water was unusually clear; in two minutes I saw that perch return. He approached the hook; he recognized his eye--frisked his tail--made a plunge--and, as I live, carried off the eye, safe and sound; and I saw him digesting it by the side of that water-lily. The mocking fiend! Seven times since that day, in the course of a varied and eventful life, have I caught that perch, and seven times has that perch escaped." _Leonard_, (astonished.)--"It can't be the same perch; perches are very tender fish--a hook inside of it, and an eye hooked out of it--no perch could withstand such havoc in its constitution." _Angler_, (with an appearance of awe.)--"It does seem supernatural. But it _is_ that perch; for harkye, sir, there is ONLY ONE perch in the whole brook! All the years I have fished here, I have never caught another perch here; and this solitary inmate of the watery element I know by sight better than I know my own lost father. For each time that I have raised it out of the water, its profile has been turned to me, and I have seen, with a shudder, that it has had only--One Eye! It is a most mysterious and a most diabolical phenomenon that perch! It has been the ruin of my prospects in life. I was offered a situation in Jamaica; I could not go, with that perch left here in triumph. I might afterwards have had an appointment in India, but I could not put the ocean between myself and that perch: thus have I fritted away my existence in the fatal metropolis of my native land. And once a-week, from February to December, I come hither--Good Heavens! if I should catch the perch at last, the occupation of my existence will be gone." Leonard gazed curiously at the angler, as the last thus mournfully concluded. The ornate turn of his periods did not suit with his costume. He looked woefully threadbare and shabby--a genteel sort of shabbiness too--shabbiness in black. There was humor in the corners of his lip; and his hands, though they did not seem very clean--indeed his occupation was not friendly to such niceties--were those of a man who had not known manual labor. His face was pale and puffed, but the tip of his nose was red. He did not seem as if the watery element was as familiar to himself as to his Dalilah--the perch. "Such is life!" recommenced the angler in a moralizing tone, as he slid his rod into its canvas case. "If a man knew what it was to fish all one's life in a stream that has only one perch!--to catch that one perch nine times in all, and nine times to see it fall back into the water, plump;--if man knew what it was--why, then"--Here the angler looked over his shoulder full at Leonard--"why, then, young sir, he would know what human life is to vain ambition. Good evening." Away he went, treading over the daisies and king cups. Helen's eyes followed him wistfully. "What a strange person!" said Leonard, laughing. "I think he is a very wise one," murmured Helen; and she came close up to Leonard, and took his hand in both hers, as if she felt already that he was in need of the Comforter--the line broke, and the perch lost! CHAPTER IX. At noon the next day, London stole upon them, through a gloomy, thick, oppressive atmosphere. For where is it that we can say London _bursts_ on the sight? It stole on them through one of its fairest and most gracious avenues of approach--by the stately gardens of Kensington--along the side of Hyde Park, and so on towards Cumberland Gate. Leonard was not the least struck. And yet, with a little money, and a very little taste, it would be easy to render this entrance to London as grand and imposing as that to Paris from the _Champs Elysées_. As they came near the Edgeware Road, Helen took her new brother by the hand and guided him. For she knew all that neighborhood, and she was acquainted with a lodging near that occupied by her father (to _that_ lodging itself she could not have gone for the world), where they might be housed cheaply. But just then the sky, so dull and overcast since morning, seemed one mass of black cloud. There suddenly came on a violent storm of rain. The boy and girl took refuge in a covered mews, in a street running out of the Edgeware Road. The shelter soon became crowded; the two young pilgrims crept close to the wall, apart from the rest; Leonard's arm round Helen's waist, sheltering her from the rain that the strong wind contending with it beat in through the passage. Presently a young gentleman, of better mien and dress than the other refugees, entered, not hastily, but rather with a slow and proud step, as if, though he deigned to take shelter, he scorned to run to it. He glanced somewhat haughtily at the assembled group--passed on through the midst of it--came near Leonard--took off his hat, and shook the rain from its brim. His head thus uncovered, left all his features exposed; and the village youth recognized, at the first glance, his old victorious assailant on the green at Hazeldean. Yet Randal Leslie was altered. His dark cheek was as thin as in boyhood, and even yet more wasted by intense study and night vigils; but the expression of his face was at once more refined and manly, and there was a steady concentrated light in his large eye, like that of one who has been in the habit of bringing all his thoughts to one point. He looked older than he was. He was dressed simply in black, a color which became him; and altogether his aspect and figure were not showy indeed, but distinguished. He looked, to the common eye, a gentleman; and to the more observant, a scholar. Helter-skelter!--pell-mell! the group in the passage--now pressed each on each--now scattered on all sides--making way--rushing down the mews--against the walls--as a fiery horse darted under shelter; the rider, a young man, with a very handsome face, and dressed with that peculiar care which we commonly call dandyism, cried out, good humoredly,--"Don't be afraid; the horse shan't hurt any of you--a thousand pardons--so ho! so ho!" He patted the horse, and it stood as still as a statue, filling up the centre of the passage. The groups resettled--Randal approached the rider. "Frank Hazeldean!" "Ah--is it indeed Randal Leslie!" Frank was off his horse in a moment, and the bridle was consigned to the care of a slim 'prentice-boy holding a bundle. "My dear fellow, how glad I am to see you. How lucky it was that I should turn in here. Not like me either, for I don't much care for a ducking. Staying in town, Randal?" "Yes, at your uncle's, Mr. Egerton. I have left Oxford." "For good?" "For good." "But you have not taken your degree, I think? We Etonians all considered you booked for a double first. Oh! we have been so proud of you--you carried off all the prizes." "Not all; but some, certainly. Mr. Egerton offered me my choice--to stay for my degree, or to enter at once into the Foreign Office. I preferred the ends to the means. For, after all, what good are academical honors but as the entrance to life? To enter now is to save a step in a long way, Frank." "Ah! you were always ambitious, and you will make a great figure, I am sure." "Perhaps so--if I work for it. Knowledge is power." Leonard started. "And you," resumed Randal, looking with some curious attention at his old schoolfellow. "You never came to Oxford. I did hear you were going into the army." "I am in the Guards," said Frank, trying hard not to look too conceited as he made that acknowledgment. "The Governor pished a little, and would rather I had come to live with him in the old hall, and take to farming. Time enough for that--eh? By Jove, Randall, how pleasant a thing is life in London? Do you go to Almack's to-night?" "No; Wednesday is a holiday in the House! There is a great parliamentary dinner at Mr. Egerton's. He is in the Cabinet now, you know; but you don't see much of your uncle, I think." "Our sets are different," said the young gentleman, in a tone of voice worthy of Brummell. "All those parliamentary fellows are devilish dull. The rain's over. I don't know whether the Governor would like me to call at Grosvenor Square; but, pray come and see me; here's my card to remind you; you must dine at our mess. Such nice fellows. What day will you fix?" "I will call and let you know. Don't you find it rather expensive in the Guards? I remember that you thought the Governor, as you call him, used to chafe a little when you wrote for more pocket-money; and the only time I ever remember to have seen you with tears in your eyes, was when Mr. Hazeldean, in sending you £5, reminded you that his estates were not entailed--were at his own disposal, and they should never go to an extravagant spendthrift. It was not a pleasant threat, that, Frank." "Oh!" cried the young man, coloring deeply, "It was not the threat that pained me, it was that my father could think so meanly of me as to fancy that--well--well, but those were schoolboy days. And my father was always more generous than I deserved. We must see a good deal of each other, Randal. How good-natured you were at Eton, making my longs and shorts for me; I shall never forget it. Do call soon." Frank swung himself into his saddle, and rewarded the slim youth with half-a-crown; a largess four times more ample than his father would have deemed sufficient. A jerk of the reins and a touch of the heel--off bounded the fiery horse and the gay young rider. Randal mused; and as the rain had now ceased, the passengers under shelter dispersed and went their way. Only Randal, Leonard, and Helen remained behind. Then, as Randal, still musing, lifted his eyes, they fell full upon Leonard's face. He started, passed his hand quickly over his brow--looked again, hard and piercingly; and the change in his pale cheek to a shade still paler--a quick compression and nervous gnawing of his lip--showed that he too had recognized an old foe. Then his glance ran over Leonard's dress, which was somewhat dust-stained, but far above the class amongst which the peasant was born. Randal raised his brows in surprise, and with a smile slightly supercilious--the smile stung Leonard; and with a slow step Randal left the passage, and took his way towards Grosvenor Square. The Entrance of Ambition was clear to _him_. Then the little girl once more took Leonard by the hand, and led him through rows of humble, obscure, dreary streets. It seemed almost like an allegory personified, as the sad, silent child led on the penniless and low-born adventurer of genius by the squalid shops, and through the winding lanes, which grew meaner and meaner, till both their forms vanished from the view. CHAPTER X. "But do come; change your dress, return and dine with me; you will have just time, Harley. You will meet the most eminent men of our party; surely they are worth your study, philosopher that you affect to be." Thus said Audley Egerton to Lord L'Estrange, with whom he had been riding (after the toils of his office.) The two gentlemen were in Audley's library. Mr. Egerton, as usual, buttoned up, seated in his chair, in the erect posture of a man who scorns "inglorious ease." Harley, as usual, thrown at length on a sofa, his long hair in careless curls, his neckcloth loose, his habiliments flowing--_simplex munditiis_, indeed--his grace all his own; seemingly negligent, never slovenly; at ease every where and with every one, even with Mr. Audley Egerton, who chilled or awed the ease out of most people. "Nay, my dear Audley, forgive me. But your eminent men are all men of one idea, and that not a diverting one--politics! politics! politics! The storm in the saucer." "But what is your life, Harley?--the saucer without the storm?" "Do you know, that's very well said, Audley? I did not think you had so much liveliness of repartee. Life--life! it is insipid, it is shallow. No launching Argosies in the saucer. Audley, I have the oddest fancy--" "_That_ of course," said Audley drily; "you never have any other. What is the new one?" _Harley_, (with great gravity.)--"Do you believe in Mesmerism?" _Audley._--"Certainly not." _Harley._--"If it were in the power of an animal magnetizer to get me out of my own skin into somebody else's! _That's_ my fancy! I am so tired of myself--so tired! I have run through all my ideas--know every one of them by heart; when some pretentious imposter of an idea perks itself up and says, 'Look at me, I'm a new acquaintance'--I just give it a nod, and say, 'Not at all, you have only got a new coat on; you are the same old wretch that has bored me these last twenty years; get away.' But if one could be in a new skin! if I could be for half an hour your tall porter, or one of your eminent matter-of-fact men, I should then really travel into a new world.[9] Every man's brain must be a world in itself, eh? If I could but make a parochial settlement even in yours, Audley--run over all your thoughts and sensations. Upon my life, I'll go and talk to that French mesmerizer about it." _Audley_, (who does not seem to like the notion of having his thoughts and sensations rummaged even by his friend, and even in fancy.)--"Pooh, pooh, pooh! Do talk like a man of sense." _Harley._--"Man of sense! Where shall I find a model! I don't know a man of sense!--never met such a creature. Don't believe it ever existed. At one time I thought Socrates must have been a man of sense;--a delusion; he would stand gazing into the air, and talking to his Genius from sunrise to sunset. Is that like a man of sense? Poor Audley, how puzzled he looks! Well, I'll try and talk sense to oblige you. And first, (here Harley raised himself on his elbow)--first, is it true, as I have heard vaguely, that you are paying court to the sister of that infamous Italian traitor?" "Madame di Negra? No; I am not paying _court_ to her," answered Audley with a cold smile. "But she is very handsome; she is very clever; she is useful to me--I need not say how or why; that belongs to my _métier_ as politician. But, I think, if you will take my advice, or get your friend to take it, I could obtain from her brother, through my influence with her, some liberal concessions to your exile. She is very anxious to know where he is." "You have not told her?" "No; I promised you I would keep that secret." "Be sure you do; it is only for some mischief, some snare, that she could desire such information. Concessions! pooh! This is no question of concessions, but of rights." "I think you should leave your friend to judge of that." "Well, I will write to him. Meanwhile, beware of this woman. I have heard much of her abroad, and she has the character of her brother for duplicity and--" "Beauty," interrupted Audley, turning the conversation with practised adroitness. "I am told that the Count is one of the handsomest men in Europe, much handsomer than his sister still, though nearly twice her age. Tut--tut--Harley! fear not for me. I am proof against all feminine attractions. This heart is dead." "Nay, nay; it is not for you to speak thus--leave that to me. But even _I_ will not say it. The heart never dies. And you; what have you lost?--a wife; true: an excellent noble-hearted woman. But was it love that you felt for her? Enviable man, have you ever loved?" "Perhaps not, Harley," said Audley, with a sombre aspect, and in dejected accents; "very few men ever have loved, at least as you mean by the word. But there are other passions than love that kill the heart, and reduce us to mechanism." While Egerton spoke, Harley turned aside, and his breast heaved. There was a short silence. Audley was the first to break it. "Speaking of my lost wife, I am sorry that you do not approve what I have done for her young kinsman, Randal Leslie." _Harley_, (recovering himself with an effort.)--"Is it true kindness to bid him exchange manly independence for the protection of an official patron?" _Audley._--"I did not bid him. I gave him his choice. At his age I should have chosen as he has done." _Harley._--"I trust not; I think better of you. But answer me one question frankly, and then I will ask another. Do you mean to make this young man your heir?" _Audley_, (with a slight embarrassment.)--"Heir, pooh! I am young still. I may live as long as he--time enough to think of that." _Harley._--"Then now to my second question. Have you told this youth plainly that he may look to you for influence, but not for wealth?" _Audley_, (firmly.)--"I think I have; but I shall repeat it more emphatically." _Harley._--"Then I am satisfied as to your conduct, but not as to his. For he has too acute an intellect not to know what it is to forfeit independence; and, depend upon it, he has made his calculations, and would throw you into the bargain in any balance that he could strike in his favor. You go by your experience in judging men--I by my instincts. Nature warns us as it does the inferior animals--only we are too conceited, we bipeds, to heed her. My instincts of soldier and gentleman recoil from the old young man. He has the soul of the Jesuit. I see it in his eye--I hear it in the tread of his foot; _volto sciolto_, he has not; _i pensieri stretti_ he has. Hist! I hear now his step in the hall. I should know it from a thousand. That's his very touch on the handle of the door." Randal Leslie entered. Harley--who, despite his disregard for forms and his dislike to Randal, was too high-bred not to be polite to his junior in age or inferior in rank--rose and bowed. But his bright piercing eyes did not soften as they caught and bore down the deeper and more latent fire in Randal's. Harley then did not resume his seat, but moved to the mantel-piece, and leant against it. _Randal._--"I have fulfilled your commissions, Mr. Egerton. I went first to Maida Hill, and saw Mr. Burley. I gave him the check, but he said it was too much, and he should return half to the banker; he will write the article as you suggested. I then--" _Audley._--"Enough, Randal. We will not fatigue Lord L'Estrange with these little details of a life that displeases him--the life political." _Harley._--"But _these_ details do not displease me--they reconcile me to my own life. Go on, pray, Mr. Leslie." Randal had too much tact to need the cautioning glance of Mr. Egerton. He did not continue, but said, with a soft voice, "Do you think, Lord L'Estrange, that the contemplation of the mode of life pursued by others _can_ reconcile a man to his own, if he had before thought it needed a reconciler?" Harley looked pleased, for the question was ironical; and, if there was a thing in the world he abhorred, it was flattery. "Recollect your Lucretius, Mr. Leslie, _Suave mare_, &c., 'pleasant from the cliff to see the mariners tossed on the ocean.' Faith, I think that sight reconciles one to the cliff--though, before, one might have been teased by the splash from the spray, and deafened by the scream of the sea-gulls. But I leave you, Audley. Strange that I have heard no more of my soldier. Remember I have your promise when I come to claim it. Good-bye, Mr. Leslie, I hope that Mr. Burley's article will be worth the--check." Lord L'Estrange mounted his horse, which was still at the door, and rode through the Park. But he was no longer now unknown by sight. Bows and nods saluted him on every side. "Alas, I am found out, then," said he to himself. "That terrible Duchess of Knaresborough, too--I must fly my country." He pushed his horse into a canter, and was soon out of the Park. As he dismounted at his father's sequestered house, you would have hardly supposed him the same whimsical, fantastic, but deep and subtle humorist that delighted in perplexing the material Audley. For his expressive face was unutterably serious. But the moment he came into the presence of his parents, the countenance was again lighted and cheerful. It brightened the whole room like sunshine. CHAPTER XI. "Mr. Leslie," said Egerton, when Harley had left the library, "you did not act with your usual discretion in touching upon matters connected with politics in the presence of a third party." "I feel that already, sir. My excuse is, that I held Lord L'Estrange to be your most intimate friend." "A public man, Mr. Leslie, would ill serve his country if he were not especially reserved towards his private friends,--when they do not belong to his party." "But, pardon me my ignorance: Lord Lansmere is so well known to be one of your supporters that I fancied his son must share his sentiments, and be in your confidence." Egerton's brows slightly contracted, and gave a stern expression to a countenance always firm and decided. He however answered in a mild tone. "At the entrance into political life, Mr. Leslie, there is nothing in which a young man of your talents should be more on his guard than thinking for himself. He will nearly always think wrong. And I believe that is one reason why young men of talent disappoint their friends, and--remain so long out of office." A haughty flush passed over Randal's brow, and faded away quickly. He bowed in silence. Egerton resumed, as if in explanation, and even in kindly apology-- "Look at Lord L'Estrange himself. What young man could come into life with brighter auspices? Rank, wealth, high animal spirits, (a great advantage those same spirits, Mr. Leslie,) courage, self-possession, scholarship as brilliant perhaps as your own; and now see how his life is wasted! Why! He always thought fit to think for himself. He could never be broken into harness, and never will be. The state coach, Mr. Leslie, requires that all the horses should pull together." "With submission, sir," answered Randal, "I should think that there were other reasons why Lord L'Estrange, whatever be his talents--and indeed of these you must be an adequate judge--would never do any thing in public life." "Ay, and what?" said Egerton, quickly. "First," said Randal, shrewdly, "private life has done too much for him. What could public life give to one who needs nothing? Born at the top of the social ladder, why should he put himself voluntarily at the last step, for the sake of climbing up again! And secondly, Lord L'Estrange seems to me a man in whose organization _sentiment_ usurps too large a share for practical existence." "You have a keen eye," said Audley, with some admiration; "keen for one so young. Poor Harley!" Mr. Egerton's last words were said to himself. He resumed quickly-- "There is something on my mind, my young friend. Let us be frank with each other. I placed before you fairly the advantages and disadvantages of the choice I gave you. To take your degree with such honors as no doubt you would have won, to obtain your fellowship, to go to the bar, with those credentials in favor of your talents--this was one career. To come at once into public life, to profit by my experience, avail yourself of my interest, to take the chances of or fall with a party--this was another. You chose the last. But, in so doing, there was a consideration which might weigh with you; and on which, in stating your reasons for your option, you were silent." "What's that, sir?" "You might have counted on my fortune should the chances of party fail you;--speak--and without shame if so; it would be natural in a young man, who comes from the elder branch of the house whose heiress was my wife." "You wound me, Mr. Egerton," said Randal, turning away. Mr. Egerton's cold glance followed Randal's movement; the face was hid from the glance--it rested on the figure, which is often as self-betraying as the countenance itself. Randal baffled Mr. Egerton's penetration--the young man's emotion might be honest pride, and pained and generous feeling; or it might be something else. Egerton continued slowly. "Once for all then, distinctly and emphatically, I say--never count upon that; count upon all else that I can do for you, and forgive me, when I advise harshly or censure coldly; ascribe this to my interest in your career. Moreover, before decision becomes irrevocable, I wish you to know practically all that is disagreeable or even humiliating in the first subordinate steps of him who, without wealth or station, would rise in public life. I will not consider your choice settled, till the end of a year at least--your name will be kept on the college books till then; if, on experience, you should prefer to return to Oxford, and pursue the slower but surer path to independence and distinction, you can. And now give me your hand, Mr. Leslie, in sign that you forgive my bluntness;--it is time to dress." Randal, with his face still averted, extended his hand. Mr. Egerton held it a moment, then dropping it, left the room. Randal turned as the door closed. And there was in his dark face a power of sinister passion, that justified all Harley's warnings. His lips moved, but not audibly; then, as if struck by a sudden thought, he followed Egerton into the Hall. "Sir," said he, "I forgot to say that on returning from Maida Hill, I took shelter from the rain under a covered passage, and there I met unexpectedly with your nephew, Frank Hazeldean." "Ah!" said Egerton indifferently, "a fine young man; in the Guards. It is a pity that my brother has such antiquated political notions; he should put his son into parliament, and under my guidance; I could push him. Well, and what said Frank?" "He invited me to call on him. I remember that you once rather cautioned me against too intimate an acquaintance with those who have not got their fortune to make." "Because they are idle, and idleness is contagious. Right--better not be intimate with a young Guardsman." "Then you would not have me call on him, sir? We were rather friends at Eton; and if I wholly reject his overtures, might he not think that you--" "I!" interrupted Egerton. "Ah, true; my brother might think I bore him a grudge; absurd. Call then, and ask the young man here. Yet still, I do not advise intimacy." Egerton turned into his dressing-room. "Sir," said his valet, who was in waiting, "Mr. Levy is here--he says, by appointment; and Mr. Grinders is also just come from the country." "Tell Mr. Grinders to come in first," said Egerton, seating himself. "You need not wait; I can dress without you. Tell Mr. Levy I will see him in five minutes." Mr. Grinders was steward to Audley Egerton. Mr. Levy was a handsome man, who wore a camelia in his button-hole--drove, in his cabriolet, a high stepping horse that had cost £200: was well known to young men of fashion, and considered by their fathers a very dangerous acquaintance. CHAPTER XII. As the company assembled in the drawing-rooms, Mr. Egerton introduced Randal Leslie to his eminent friends in a way that greatly contrasted the distant and admonitory manner which he had exhibited to him in private. The presentation was made with that cordiality, and that gracious respect by which those who are in station command notice for those who have their station yet to win. "My dear Lord, let me introduce to you a kinsman of my late wife's (in a whisper)--the heir to the elder branch of her family. Stranmore, this is Mr. Leslie, of whom I spoke to you. You, who were so distinguished at Oxford, will not like him the worse for the prizes he gained there. Duke, let me present to you, Mr. Leslie. The duchess is angry with me for deserting her balls; I shall hope to make my peace, by providing myself with a younger and livelier substitute. Ah, Mr. Howard, here is a young gentleman just fresh from Oxford, who will tell us all about the new sect springing up there. He has not wasted his time on billiards and horses." Leslie was received with all that charming courtesy which is the _To Kalon_ of an aristocracy. After dinner, conversation settled on politics. Randal listened with attention and in silence, till Egerton drew him gently out; just enough, and no more--just enough to make his intelligence evident, without subjecting him to the charge of laying down the law. Egerton knew how to draw out young men--a difficult art. It was one reason why he was so peculiarly popular with the more rising members of his party. The party broke up early. "We are in time for Almack's," said Egerton, glancing at the clock, "and I have a voucher for you; come." Randal followed his patron into the carriage. By the way, Egerton thus addressed him-- "I shall introduce you to the principal leaders of society; know them and study them; I do not advise you to attempt to do more--that is, to attempt to become the fashion. It is a very expensive ambition; some men it helps, most men it ruins. On the whole, you have better cards in your hands. Dance or not, as it pleases you--don't flirt. If you flirt, people will inquire into your fortune--an inquiry that will do you little good; and flirting entangles a young man into marrying. That would never do. Here we are." In two minutes more they were in the great ball-room, and Randal's eyes were dazzled with the lights, the diamonds, the blaze of beauty. Audley presented him in quick succession to some dozen ladies, and then disappeared amidst the crowd. Randal was not at a loss; he was without shyness; or if he had that disabling infirmity, he concealed it. He answered the languid questions put to him, with a certain spirit that kept up talk, and left a favorable impression of his agreeable qualities. But the lady with whom he got on the best, was one who had no daughters out, a handsome and witty woman of the world--Lady Frederick Coniers. "It is your first ball at Almack's, then, Mr. Leslie?" "My first." "And you have not secured a partner? Shall I find you one? What do you think of that pretty girl in pink?" "I see her--but I cannot _think_ of her." "You are rather, perhaps, like a diplomatist in a new court, and your first object is to know who is who." "I confess that on beginning to study the history of my own day, I should like to distinguish the portraits that illustrate the memoir." "Give me your arm, then, and we will come into the next room. We shall see the different _notabilités_ enter one by one, and observe without being observed. This is the least I can do for a friend of Mr. Egerton's." "Mr. Egerton, then," said Randal,--(as they threaded their way through the space without the rope that protected the dancers)--"Mr. Egerton has had the good fortune to win your esteem, even for his friends, however obscure?" "Why, to say truth, I think no one whom Mr. Egerton calls his friend need long remain obscure, if he has the ambition to be otherwise. For Mr. Egerton holds it a maxim never to forget a friend, nor a service." "Ah, indeed!" said Randal, surprised. "And, therefore," continued Lady Frederick, "as he passes through life, friends gather round him. He will rise even higher yet. Gratitude, Mr. Leslie, is a very good policy." "Hem," muttered Mr. Leslie. They had now gained the room where tea and bread and butter were the homely refreshments to the _habitués_ of what at that day was the most exclusive assembly in London. They ensconced themselves in a corner by a window, and Lady Frederick performed her task of cicerone with lively ease, accompanying each notice of the various persons who passed panoramically before them with sketch and anecdote, sometimes good-natured, generally satirical, always graphic and amusing. By-and-by Frank Hazeldean, having on his arm a young lady of haughty air, and with high though delicate features, came to the tea-table. "The last new Guardsman," said Lady Frederick; "very handsome, and not yet quite spoiled. But he has got into a dangerous set." _Randal._--"The young lady with him is handsome enough to be dangerous." _Lady Frederick_, (laughing.)--"No danger for him there,--as yet at least. Lady Mary (the duke of Knaresborough's daughter) is only in her second. The first year, nothing under an earl; the second, nothing under a baron. It will be full four years before she comes down to a commoner. Mr. Hazeldean's danger is of another kind. He lives much with men who are not exactly _mauvais ton_, but certainly not of the best taste. Yet he is very young; he may extricate himself--leaving half his fortune behind him. What, he nods to you! You know him?" "Very well; he is nephew to Mr. Egerton." "Indeed! I did not know that. Hazeldean is a new name in London. I heard his father was a plain country gentleman, of good fortune, but not that he was related to Mr. Egerton." "Half-brother." "Will Mr. Egerton pay the young gentleman's debts? He has no sons himself." _Randal._--"Mr. Egerton's fortune comes from his wife, from my family--from a Leslie, not from a Hazeldean." Lady Frederick turned sharply, looked at Randal's countenance with more attention than she had yet vouchsafed to it, and tried to talk of the Leslies. Randal was very short there. An hour afterwards, Randal, who had not danced, was still in the refreshment room, but Lady Frederick had long quitted him. He was talking with some old Etonians who had recognized him, when there entered a lady of very remarkable appearance, and a murmur passed through the room as she appeared. She might be three or four and twenty. She was dressed in black velvet, which contrasted with the alabaster whiteness of her throat and the clear paleness of her complexion, while it set off the diamonds with which she was profusely covered. Her hair was of the deepest jet, and worn simply braided. Her eyes, too, were dark and brilliant, her features regular and striking; but their expression, when in repose, was not prepossessing to such as love modesty and softness in the looks of woman. But when she spoke and smiled, there was so much spirit and vivacity in the countenance, so much fascination in the smile, that all which might before have marred the effect of her beauty, strangely and suddenly disappeared. "Who is that very handsome woman?" asked Randal. "An Italian--a Marchesa something," said one of the Etonians. "Di Negra," suggested another, who had been abroad; "she is a widow; her husband was of the great Genoese family of Negra--a younger branch of it." Several men now gathered thickly around the fair Italian. A few ladies of the highest rank spoke to her, but with a more distant courtesy than ladies of high rank usually show to foreigners of such quality as Madame di Negra. Ladies of a rank less elevated seemed rather shy of her;--that might be from jealousy. As Randall gazed at the Marchesa with more admiration than any woman, perhaps, had before excited in him, he heard a voice near him say-- "Oh, Madame di Negra is resolved to settle amongst us, and marry an Englishman." "If she can find one sufficiently courageous," returned a female voice. "Well, she is trying hard for Egerton, and he has courage enough for any thing." The female voice replied with a laugh, "Mr. Egerton knows the world too well, and has resisted too many temptations, to be--" "Hush!--there he is." Egerton came into the room with his usual firm step and erect mien. Randal observed that a quick glance was exchanged between him and the Marchesa; but the Minister passed her by with a bow. Still Randal watched, and, ten minutes afterwards, Egerton and the Marchesa were seated apart in the very same convenient nook that Randal and Lady Frederick had occupied an hour or so before. "Is this the reason why Mr. Egerton so insultingly warns me against counting on his fortune?" muttered Randal. "Does he mean to marry again?" Unjust suspicion!--for, at that moment these were the words that Audley Egerton was dropping forth from his lips of bronze-- "Nay, dear Madam, do not ascribe to my frank admiration more gallantry that it merits. Your conversation charms me, your beauty delights me; your society is as a holiday that I look forward to in the fatigues of my life. But I have done with love, and I shall never marry again." "You almost pique me into trying to win, in order to reject you," said the Italian, with a flash from her bright eyes. "I defy even you," answered Audley, with his cold hard smile. "But to return to the point: You have more influence at least over this subtle Ambassador; and the secret we speak of I rely on you to obtain me. Ah, Madam, let us rest friends. You see I have conquered the unjust prejudice against you; you are received and _fêted_ every where, as becomes your birth and your attractions. Rely on me ever, as I on you. But I shall excite too much envy if I stay here longer, and am vain enough to think that I may injure you if I provoke the gossip of the ill-natured. As the avowed friend, I can serve you--as the supposed lover, No--" Audley rose, as he said this, and, standing by the chair, added carelessly, "Apropos, the sum you do me the honor to borrow will be paid to your bankers to-morrow." "A thousand thanks!--my brother will hasten to repay you." Audley bowed. "Your brother, I hope, will repay me in person, not before. When does he come?" "Oh, he has again postponed his visit _to_ London; he is so much needed in Vienna. But while we are talking of him, allow me to ask if Lord L'Estrange is indeed still so bitter against that poor brother of mine?" "Still the same!" "It is shameful," cried the Italian with warmth; "what has my brother ever done to him, that he should intrigue against the Count in his own court?" "Intrigue! I think you wrong Lord L'Estrange; he but represented what he believed to be the truth, in defence of a ruined exile." "And you will not tell me where that exile is, or if his daughter still lives?" "My dear Marchesa, I have called you friend, therefore, I will not aid L'Estrange to injure you or yours. But I call L'Estrange a friend also; and I cannot violate the trust that--" Audley stopped short, and bit his lip. "You understand me," he resumed, with a genial smile, and took his leave. The Italian's brows met as her eye followed him; then, as she too rose, that eye encountered Randal's. Each surveyed the other--each felt a certain strange fascination--a sympathy--not of affection, but of intellect. "That young man has the eye of an Italian," said the Marchesa to herself; and as she passed by him into the ball-room, she turned and smiled. FOOTNOTES: [8] Continued from page 557, vol. iii. [9] If, at the date in which Lord L'Estrange held this conversation with Mr. Egerton, Alfred de Musset had written his comedies, we should suspect that his lordship had plagiarized from one of them the whimsical idea that he here vents upon Audley. In repeating it, the author at least cannot escape from the charge of obligation to a writer whose humor, at least, is sufficiently opulent to justify the loan. From the London Examiner. IMAGINARY CONVERSATION AT WARSAW. NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. _Nicholas._--God fights for us visibly. You look grave, Nesselrode! is it not so? Speak, and plainly. _Nesselrode._--Sire, in my humble opinion, God never fights at all. _Nicholas._--Surely he fought for Israel, when he was invoked by prayer. _Nesselrode._--Sire, I am no theologian; and I fancy I must be a bad geographer, since I never knew of a nation which was not Israel when it had a mind to shed blood and to pray. To fight is an exertion, is violence; the Deity in His omnipotence needs none. He has devils and men always in readiness for fighting; and they are the instruments of their own punishment for their past misdeeds. _Nicholas._--The chariots of God are numbered by thousands in the volumes of the Psalmist. _Nesselrode._--No psalmist, or engineer, or commissary, or arithmetician, could enumerate the beasts that are harnessed to them, or the fiends that urge them on. _Nicholas._--Nesselrode! you grow more and more serious. _Nesselrode._--Age, sire, even without wisdom, makes men serious whether they are inclined or not. I could hardly have been so long conversant in the affairs of mankind (all which in all quarters your majesty superintends and directs) without much cause for seriousness. _Nicholas._--I feel the consciousness of Supreme Power, but I also feel the necessity of subordinate help. _Nesselrode._--Your majesty is the first monarch, since the earlier Cæsars of Imperial Rome, who could control, directly or indirectly, every country in our hemisphere, and thereby in both. _Nicholas._--There are some who do not see this. _Nesselrode._--There were some, and they indeed the most acute and politic of mankind, who could not see the power of the Macedonian king until he showed his full height upon the towers of Cheronoea. There are some at this moment in England who disregard the admonitions of the most wary and experienced general of modern times, and listen in preference to babblers holding forth on economy and peace from slippery sacks of cotton and wool. _Nicholas._--Hush! hush! these are our men; what should we do without them? A single one of them in the parliament or town-hall is worth to me a regiment of cuirassiers. These are the true bullets with conical heads which carry far and sure. Hush! hush! _Nesselrode._--They do not hear us: they do not hear Wellington: they would not hear Nelson were he living. _Nicholas._--No other man that ever lived, having the same power in his hands, would have endured with the same equanimity as Wellington, the indignities he suffered in Portugal; superseded in the hour of victory by two generals, one upon another, like marsh frogs; people of no experience, no ability. He might have become king of Portugal by compromise, and have added Gallicia and Biscay. _Nesselrode._--The English, out of parliament, are delicate and fastidious. He would have thought it dishonorable to profit by the indignation of his army in the field, and of his countrymen at home. Certainty that Bonaparte would attempt to violate any engagement with him might never enter into the computation; for Bonaparte could less easily drive him again out of Portugal than he could drive the usurper out of Spain. We ourselves should have assisted him actively; so would the Americans; for every naval power would be prompt at diminishing the preponderance of the English. Practicability was here with Wellington; but, endowed with it a keener and a longer foresight than any of his contemporaries, he held in prospective the glory that awaited him, and felt conscious that to be the greatest man in England is somewhat more than to be the greatest in Portugal. He is universally called _the_ duke; to the extinction or absorption of that dignity over all the surface of the earth: in Portugal he could only be called king of Portugal. _Nicholas._--Faith! that is little: it was not overmuch even before the last accession. I admire his judgment and moderation. The English are abstinent: they rein in their horses where the French make them fret and curvett. It displeases me to think it possible that a subject should ever become a sovran. We were angry with the Duke of Sudermania for raising a Frenchman to that dignity in Sweden, although we were willing that Gustavus, for offences and affronts to our family, should be chastized, and even expelled. Here was a bad precedent. Fortunately the boldest soldiers dismount from their chargers at some distance from the throne. What withholds them? _Nesselrode._--Spells are made of words. The word _service_ among the military has great latent negative power. All modern nations, even the free, employ it. _Nicholas._--An excellent word indeed! It shows the superiority of modern languages over ancient; Christian ideas over pagan; living similitudes of God over bronze and marble. What an escape had England from her folly, perversity, and injustice! Her admirals had the same wrongs to avenge: her fleets would have anchored in Ferrol and Coruna; thousands of volunteers from every part of both islands would have assembled round the same standard; and both Indies would have bowed before the conqueror. Who knows but that Spain herself might have turned to the same quarter, from the idiocy of Ferdinand, the immorality of Joseph, and the perfidy of Napoleon? _Nesselrode._--England seems to invite and incite, not only her colonies, but her commanders, to insurrection. Nelson was treated even more ignominiously than Wellington. A man equal in abilities and in energy to either met with every affront from the East India Company. After two such victories in succession as the Duke himself declared before the Lords that he had never known or read of, he was removed from the command of his army, and a general by whose rashness it was decimated was raised to the peerage. If Wellington could with safety have seized the supreme power in Portugal, Napier could with greater have accomplished it in India. The distance from home was farther; the army more confident; the allies more numerous, more unanimous. One avenger of _their_ wrongs would have found a million avengers of _his_. Affghanistan, Cabul, and Scinde, would have united their acclamations on the Ganges: songs of triumph, succeeded by songs of peace, would have been chanted at Delhi, and have re-echoed at Samarcand. _Nicholas._--I am desirous that Persia and India should pour their treasures into my dominions. The English are so credulous as to believe that I intend, or could accomplish, the conquest of Hindostan. I want only the commerce; and I hope to share it with the Americans; not I indeed, but my successors. The possession of California has opened the Pacific and the Indian seas to the Americans, who must, within the life-time of some now born, predominate in both. Supposing that emigrants to the amount of only a quarter of a million settle in the United States every year, within a century from the present day, their population must exceed three hundred millions. It will not extend from pole to pole, only because there will be room enough without it. _Nesselrode._--Religious wars, the most sanguinary of any, are stifled in the fields of agriculture; creeds are thrown overboard by commerce. _Nicholas._--Theological questions come at last to be decided by the broadsword; and the best artillery brings forward the best arguments. Montecuculi and Wallenstein were irrefragable doctors. Saint Peter was commanded to put up his sword; but the ear was cut off first. _Nesselrode._--The blessed saint's escape from capital punishment, after this violence, is among the greatest of miracles. Perhaps there may be a perplexity in the text. Had he committed so great a crime against a person so highly protected as one in the high-priest's household, he never would have lived long enough to be crucified at Rome, but would have carried his cross up to Calvary three days after the offence. The laws of no country would tolerate it. _Nicholas._--How did he ever get to Rome at all? He must have been conveyed by an angel, or have slipt on a sudden into a railroad train, purposely and for the nonce provided. There is a controversy at the present hour about his delegated authority, and it appears to be next to certain that he never was in the capital of the west. It is my interest to find it decided in the negative. Successors to the emperors of the east, who sanctioned and appointed the earliest popes, as the bishops of Rome are denominated, I may again at my own good time claim the privilege and prerogative. The cardinals and their subordinates are extending their claws in all directions: we must throw these crabs upon their backs again. _Nesselrode._--Some among the Italians, and chiefly among the Romans, are venturing to express an opinion that there would be less of false religion, and more of true, if no priest of any description were left upon earth. _Nicholas._--Horrible! unless are exempted those of the venerable Greek church. All others worship graven images: we stick to pictures. _Nesselrode._--One scholar mentioned, not without an air of derision, that a picture had descended from heaven recently on the coast of Italy. _Nicholas._--Framed? varnisht? under glass? on panel? on canvas? What like? _Nesselrode._--The Virgin Mary, whatever made of. _Nicholas._--She must be ours then. She missed her road: she never would have taken her place among stocks and stones and blind worshipers. Easterly winds must have blown her toward a pestilential city, where at every street-corner is very significantly inscribed its true name at full length, _Immondezzaio_. But I hope I am guilty of no profaneness or infidelity when I express a doubt if every picture of the Blessed Virgin is sentient; most are; perhaps not every one. If they want her in England, as they seem to do, let them have her ... unless it is the one that rolls the eyes: in that case I must claim her: she is too precious by half for papist or tractarian. I must order immediately these matters. No reasonable doubt can be entertained that I am the visible head of Christ's church. Theologians may be consulted in regard to St. Peter, and may discover a manuscript at Novgorod, stating his martyrdom there, and proving his will and signature. _Nesselrode._--Theologians may find perhaps in the _Revelations_ some Beast foreshadowing your Majesty. _Nicholas._--How? sir! how? _Nesselrode._--Emperors and kings, we are taught, are designated as great beasts in the Holy Scriptures ... (_Aside_) ... and elsewhere. SECOND CONVERSATION. _Nicholas._--We have disposed of our brother, his Prussian Majesty, who appeared to be imprest by the apprehension that a portion of his dominions was in jeopardy. _Nesselrode._--Possibly the scales of Europe are yet to be adjusted. _Nicholas._--When the winds blow high they must waver. Against the danger of contingencies, and in readiness to place my finger on the edge of one or other, it is my intention to spend in future a good part of my time at Warsaw, that city being so nearly central in my dominions. Good Nesselrode! there should have been a poet near you to celebrate the arching of your eyebrows. They suddenly dropt down again under the horizontal line of your Emperor's. Nobody ever stared in my presence; but I really do think you were upon the verge of it when I inadvertently said _dominions_ instead of _dependencies_. Well, well: dependencies are dominions; and of all dominions they require the least trouble. _Nesselrode._--Your Majesty has found no difficulty with any, excepting the Circassians. _Nicholas._--The Circassians are the Normans of Asia; equally brave, more generous, more chivalrous. I am no admirer of military trinkets; but I have been surprised at the beauty of their chain-armor, the temper of their swords, the richness of hilt, and the gracefulness of baldric. _Nesselrode._--It is a pity they are not Christians and subjects of your Majesty. _Nicholas._--If they would become my subjects, I would let them, as I have let other Mahometans, become Christians at their leisure. We must brigade them before baptism. _Nesselrode._--It is singular that this necessity never struck those religious men who are holding peace conferences in various parts of Europe. _Nicholas._--One of them, I remember, tried to persuade the people of England that if the bankers of London would negotiate no loan with me I could carry on no war. _Nesselrode._--Wonderful! how ignorant are monied men of money matters. Your Majesty was graciously pleased to listen to my advice when hostilities seemed inevitable. I was desirous of raising the largest loan possible, that none should be forthcoming to the urgency of others. At that very moment your Majesty had in your coffers more than sufficient for the additional expenditure of three campaigns. Well may your Majesty smile at this computation, and at the blindness that suggested it. For never will your Majesty send an army into any part of Europe which shall not maintain itself there by its own prowess. Your cavalry will seize all the provisions that are not stored up within the fortresses; and in every army those are to be found who for a few thousand roubles are ready to blow up their ammunition-wagons. We know by name almost every discontented man in Europe. _Nicholas._--To obtain this information, my yearly expenses do not exceed the revenues of half a dozen English bishops. Every _table-d'hôte_ on the continent, you tell me, has one daily guest sent by me. Ladies in the higher circles have taken my presents and compliments, part in diamonds and part in smiles. An emperor's smiles are as valuable to them as theirs are to a cornet of dragoons. Spare nothing in the boudoir and you spare much in the field. _Nesselrode._--Such appears to have been the invariable policy of the Empress Catharine, now with God. _Nicholas._--My father of glorious memory was less observant of it. He had prejudices and dislikes; he expected to find every body a gentleman, even kings and ministers. If they were so, how could he have hoped to sway them? and how to turn them from the strait road into his? _Nesselrode._--Your Majesty is far above the influence of antipathies; but I have often heard your Majesty express your hatred, and sometimes your contempt, of Bonaparte. _Nicholas._--I hated him for his insolence, and I despised him alike for his cowardice and falsehood. Shame is the surest criterion of humanity. When one is wanting, the other is. The beasts never indicate shame in a state of nature; in society some of them acquire it; Bonaparte not. He neither blushed at repudiating a modest woman, nor at supplanting her by an immodest one. Holding a pistol to the father's ear, he ordered him to dismount from his carriage; to deliver up his ring, his watch, his chain, his seal, his knee-buckle; stripping off galloon from trouser, and presently trouser too: caught, pinioned, sentenced, he fell on both knees in the mud, and implored this poor creature's intercession to save him from the hangman. He neither blushed at the robbery of a crown nor at the fabrication of twenty. He was equally ungrateful in public life and in private. He banished Barras, who promoted and protected him: he calumniated the French admiral, whose fleet for his own safety he detained on the shores of Egypt, and the English admiral who defeated him in Syria with a tenth of his force. Baffled as he often was, and at last fatally, and admirably as in many circumstances he knew how to be a general, never in any did he know how to be a gentleman. He was fond of displaying the picklock keys whereby he found entrance into our cabinets, and of twitching the ears of his accomplices. _Nesselrode._--Certainly he was less as an emperor than as a soldier. _Nicholas._--Great generals may commit grievous and disastrous mistakes, but never utterly ruinous. Charles V., Gustavus Adolphus, Peter the Great, Frederic of Prussia, Prince Eugene, Marlborough, William, Wellington, kept their winnings, and never hazarded the last crown-piece. Bonaparte, when he had swept the tables, cried _double or quits_. _Nesselrode._--The wheel of Fortune is apt to make men giddier, the higher it rises and the quicklier it turns: sometimes it drops them on a barren rock, and sometimes on a treadmill. The nephew is more prudent than the uncle. _Nicholas._--You were extremely wise, my dear Nesselrode, in suggesting our idea to the French President, and in persuading him to acknowledge in the face of the world that he had been justly imprisoned by Louis Philippe for attempting to subvert the existing powers. Frenchmen are taught by this declaration what they may expect for a similar crime against his own pretensions. We will show our impartiality by an equal countenance and favor toward all parties. In different directions all are working out the design of God, and producing unity of empire "on earth as it is in heaven." Until this consummation there can never be universal or indeed any lasting peace. _Nesselrode._--This, lying far remote, I await your Majesty's commands for what is now before us. Your Majesty was graciously pleased to express your satisfaction at the manner in which I executed them in regard to the President of the French Republic. _Nicholas._--Republic indeed! I have ordered it to be a crime in France to utter this odious name. President forsooth! we have directed him hitherto; let him now keep his way. Our object was to stifle the spirit of freedom: we tossed the handkerchief to him, and he found the chloroform. Every thing is going on in Europe exactly as I desire; we must throw nothing in the way to shake the machine off the rail. It is running at full speed where no whistle can stop it. Every prince is exasperating his subjects, and exhausting his treasury in order to keep them under due control. What nation on the continent, mine excepted, can maintain for two years longer its present war establishment? And without this engine of coercion what prince can be the master of his people? England is tranquil at home; can she continue so when a foreigner would place a tiara over her crown, telling her who shall teach and what shall be taught. Principally, that where masses are not said for departed souls, better it would be that there were no souls at all, since they certainly must be damned. The school which doubts it is denounced as godless. _Nesselrode._--England, sire, is indeed tranquil at home; but that home is a narrow one, and extends not across the Irish channel. Every colony is dissatisfied and disturbed. No faith has been kept with any of them by the secretary now in office. At the Cape of Good Hope, innumerable nations, warlike and well-armed, have risen up simultaneously against her; and, to say nothing of the massacres in Ceylon, your Majesty well knows what atrocities her Commissioner has long exercised in the Seven Isles. England looks on and applauds, taking a hearty draught of Lethe at every sound of the scourge. _Nicholas._--Nesselrode! You seem indignant. I see only the cheerful sparks of a fire at which our dinner is to be dressed; we shall soon sit down to it; Greece must not call me away until I rise from the dessert; I will then take my coffee at Constantinople. The crescent ere long will become the full harvest-moon. Our reapers have already the sickles in their hands. _Nesselrode._--England may grumble. _Nicholas._--So she will. She is as ready now to grumble as she formerly was to fight. She grumbles too early; she fights too late. Extraordinary men are the English. They raise the hustings higher than the throne; and, to make amends, being resolved to build a new palace, they push it under an old bridge. The Cardinal, in his way to the Abbey, may in part disrobe at it. Noble vestry-room! where many habiliments are changed. Capacious dovecote! where carrier-pigeons and fantails and croppers, intermingled with the more ordinary, bill and coo, ruffle and smoothen their feathers, and bend their versicolor necks to the same corn. From Bentley's Miscellany for July. LONDON, PARIS, AND NEW-YORK. Standing in the City Hall, New-York, and drawing from that point a circle whose radius shall be three miles, we embrace a population of three-quarters of a million. We say this at the outset, by way of securing respect for our theme. New-York is a mere Jonah's gourd or Jack the Giant-killer's beanstalk compared with London. London was London when St. Paul was a prisoner in Rome, ten years before the destruction of Jerusalem. Sixteen hundred years afterwards, when New-York was but just named, London lost some seventy thousand inhabitants by the plague, and more than thirteen thousand houses by the Great Fire, and hardly missed them. Before this period, however, the little Dutch town of Niew Amsterdam, called by the aborigines Manahatta, or Manhattan, had commenced a dozing existence, under the government of Walter the Doubter and Peter the Headstrong, celebrated by that great chronicler, Diedrich Knickerbocker. Some consider this a mythic period, and class the legends of Wilhelmus Van Kieft's wisdom, and Peter Stuyvesant's valor, with the stories of Romulus and Remus, and the Horatii and Curiatii. But to cast any doubt upon a historian like Knickerbocker--the Grote of colonial history--at once minute and philosophical, just and enthusiastic--is surely unwise. His picture of the portly burghers of Niew Amsterdam, their habits and manners, pursuits, politics, and laws, is verified by the impress left on their descendants. All the foreign floods that have swept over the city have not been able to wash out the footsteps of the original settlers; and Walter the Doubter and Peter the Headstrong still figure, it is said, in the Assembly of the City Fathers, though the voluminous nether habiliments, which characterized them of old, have dwindled to the modern pantaloon. Casting our eyes backward for a moment, let us imagine the condition of things before English innovation had interfered with the quiet current of Dutch ideas in the metropolis of the West. "The modern spectator," says our historian, "who wanders through the streets of this populous city, can scarcely form an idea of their appearance in the primitive days of the Doubter. The grass grew quietly in the highways; bleating sheep and frolicksome calves sported about that verdant ridge where now the Broadway loungers take their morning stroll. The cunning fox and ravenous wolf skulked in the woods where now are to be seen the dens of the righteous fraternity of money-brokers. The houses of the higher class were generally constructed of wood, excepting the gable end, which was of small black and yellow Dutch bricks, and always faced the street. The house was always furnished with abundance of large doors, and small windows on every floor; the date of its erection was curiously designated by iron figures on the front, and on the top of the roof was perched a fierce weathercock, to let the family know which way the wind blew. The front door was never opened, except on marriages, funerals, New Year's days, the festival of St. Nicholas, or some such great occasion * * *. A passion for cleanliness was the leading principle in domestic economy. The whole house was constantly in a state of inundation, under the discipline of mops and brooms, and scrubbing-brushes; and the good housewives of that day were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water; insomuch, that many of them grew to have webbed fingers like a duck. In those happy days a well-regulated family always rose with the dawn, dined at eleven, and went to bed at sundown. Fashionable parties were confined to the higher class, or _noblesse_; that is to say, such as kept their own cows or drove their own wagons. The company commonly assembled at three o'clock, and went away about six; unless it was winter-time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might get home before dark. At these tea-parties the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting or coquetting; no gambling of old ladies, nor chattering and romping of young ones; no self-satisfied strutting of wealthy gentlemen with their brains in their pockets," &c. Speaking further of the ladies, Mr. Knickerbocker says: "Their hair, untortured by the abominations of art, was scrupulously pomatumed back from their foreheads with a candle, and covered with a little cap of quilted calico. Their petticoats of linsey-woolsey, were striped with a variety of gorgeous dyes, and all of their own manufacture. These were the honest days, in which every woman stayed at home, read the Bible, and wore pockets, and that too of a goodly size, fashioned with patch-work of many curious devices, and ostentatiously worn on the outside. Every good housewife made the clothes of her husband and family," &c. Such and so homely was the germ of the present goodly town that sits, like a queen, throned between two mighty streams, with a magnificent bay at her feet. Marks of her Dutch origin were numerous a few years since, and are still to be found, though sparely. Of the national customs enumerated and described by the veracious Diedrich, we find at the present day but few. The last of the gable-fronted houses, with curious steps in the brickwork on the sides of the peak, disappeared some years since. Calves never frisk in Broadway now, though they sometimes pass through it tied in carts, in defiance of humanity and decency. The year of building is no longer written in iron on the fronts of the houses, for "Panting Time toils after us in vain," and chronology is out of date. Large doors have now large windows to keep them company, and weather-cocks are rendered unnecessary by the arrival of vessels from some part of the earth with every wind that blows. The front door is now opened to every body but the master of the house, who goes out of it in the morning not to see it again till evening. The practice of daily inundation is now nearly limited to the street, since Kidderminster, Brussels, and Wilton, conspire to cover every inch of floor; but the annual house-cleaning is still in full vogue, and no amount of slop, discomfort, destruction, and self-sacrifice, is considered too great in the accomplishment of this civic festival. As to rising with the dawn, the citizen of to-day considers breakfast-time daybreak; and the dinner-hour is as various as the fluctuations of business and pleasure. "Fashionable society" has, at present, no very decided limits, as few of the inhabitants keep a cow, and many of the highest pretenders to _bon ton_ do not drive their own wagons--getting home before dark! New-York ladies make a point of getting home before light; and if they assemble at three o'clock it is for a _déjeûner_, or a _matinée dansante_. As for Mr. Knickerbocker's further characterization of the genteel manners of the olden time, it would be unhandsome in us to pursue our counter-picture; but this we will say, in mere justice, and all joking aside, that there are no gambling ladies in New-York, either young or old. Thinking of New-York in her early life, we were about to say that from 1614 to 1674 she was a mere shuttlecock between the Dutch and English; but the recollection that neither of the contending parties ever tossed her towards the other, spoiled our figure, and we find her more like the unfortunate baby whom it took all Solomon's wisdom to save from utter destruction between rival mothers. The Dutch certainly had the prior claim; but that circumstance, though something in a case of maternity, seems far from conclusive in the matter of adoption. The little Dutch city had accumulated a thousand inhabitants, and wrenched from the home government leave to govern itself, by the aid of a schout, burgomasters, and schepens, when King Charles II., of pious memory, coolly gave a grant of the entire province to his brother James, Duke of York, who forthwith proved his right (that of the strongest), and put an English governor in place of Peter Stuyvesant, called by Knickerbocker, "a tough, valiant, sturdy, weather-beaten, mettlesome, obstinate, leathern-sided, lion-hearted, generous-spirited old governor," who nearly burst with rage when obliged to sign the capitulation, and who finished by dying of sheer mortification on hearing that the combined English and French fleets had beaten the Dutch under De Ruyter. Nine years after, the tables were turned, and Dutch rule once more brought in sour-krout and oly-koeks; but, in 1674, New-York became English by treaty, and so remained until November, 1783. Since that epoch, although growth and prosperity have been the general rule, yet the island city has had her ups and downs, by means of fire, pestilence, war, embargo, mobs, &c., quite enough to stimulate the energy of her sons and ripen the wisdom of her councils. In 1825, the completion of the Erie Canal, which united the Atlantic with the great lakes, gave a prodigious impulse to trade. In 1832 came the cholera, threatening utter desolation; and in 1835 a fire, which consumed property worth twenty millions of dollars. Yet, in 1842, the Great Aqueduct was finished, at a cost of thirteen million dollars. Thus much premised, let us look at New-York of to-day. "She has no time To looken backe, her eyne be fixed before." In describing American towns, if we would make our picture a likeness, we must "Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of the minute." The New-York of 1851 resembles her of fifty years ago scarcely more than the West End of London resembles Birmingham or Bristol. In 1800, one might easily believe the old story, that the streets were originally laid out by the cows, as they went out to pasture and returned at evening. Streets running in all sorts of curves crossed each other at all conceivable angles, making a maze without a plan, through which strangers needed to drop beans, like the children in the fairy-tale, to avoid being wholly lost. Fortunately, the city is not very wide, so that Broadway, which always ran lengthwise through the centre, has served as a tolerable clue from the beginning. Great sacrifices have been made for the sake of regularity, and there is now a tolerable degree of it, even in the old, or south part of the city, cross streets running from Broadway to either river with an approach to parallelism. In the early time, the town presented no bad resemblance in shape to the phenomenon called a "mackerel sky," Broadway representing the spine, and the streets running to either river the ribs, while northward and southward was a tapering off; on the south, where the Battery juts into the bay, and on the north, where the uppermost houses gradually narrowed till Broadway came to an end, with few buildings on either side of it. But in these later days, when Knickerbocker limits no longer confine the heterogeneous thousands that have pushed the old race from their stools, sixteen great avenues, each a hundred feet wide, run parallel with Broadway and the rivers, cut at right angles by wide streets, lined with costly dwellings, churches, schools, and other edifices. As is usual in great commercial towns, the lowest portion of the population haunt the neighborhood of the wharfs; and, in New-York, the eastern side of the city in particular attracts this class. But, perhaps, no city of the size has fewer streets of squalid poverty, although the encouragement given to immigration is such that there must necessarily be great numbers of wretched immigrants who have neither the will nor the power to live by honest industry. It is in truth for this class of persons that hospitals and penitentiaries are here built, foreigners supplying at least nine-tenths of the inmates of those institutions in New-York. As to clean and healthy streets, the upper and newer part of the city has, of course, the advantage. It is laid out with special attention to drainage, for which the ridged shape of the ground affords great facility; the island on which New-York is built being highest in the middle, and sloping off, east and west, towards the Hudson and East Rivers. Manhattan island is about fourteen miles long, with an average breadth of one mile and a half, the greatest width being two and a half miles. At the southerly point of the island, where the Hudson unites with the strait called the East River, lies one of the finest harbors in the world, affording anchorage for ships of the largest size, and surrounded by cultivated land and elegant residences. Several fortified islands diversify this bay, and numerous forts occupy the points and headlands on either side. The general appearance of the bay is that of great beauty, of the milder sort. The shores are rather low, but finely wooded, and the approach to the city from the ocean very striking. The battery, a promenade covered with fine old trees, offers a rural front, but the forests of masts stretching far up either river attract the stranger's attention much more forcibly. The _coup d'oeil_ is here magnificent. Brooklyn, on Long Island, a large city, whose white columned streets gleam along the heights, giving a palatial grandeur to the view, is just opposite New-York, on the south-east, and divided from it by so narrow a strait that it appears more truly to be a part of it than the Surrey side of the Thames to belong to London, although the rush of commerce forbids bridges. On the west side, the banks of the Hudson are lined with towns, an outcrop of the central metropolis. Entering the city from any quarter, we are sure to find ourselves in Broadway, long the pride of the inhabitants, though its glories are rather traditional than actual, as compared with the greatest thoroughfares of commerce in older cities. It extends, eighty feet in width, two miles and a half in a straight line, northward from the Battery; and then, making a slight deflection at Union Park, runs on, _ad infinitum_, though it is at present but sparely built after another mile or so. Nearly all the best shops in the retail trade are in this street, some of them comparable to the richest of London and Paris, and the whole affording means for every device of elegant decoration and boundless expenditure. Residences here are comparatively few, especially in the lower part, the din of business and the ceaseless thunder of omnibuses having driven far away every family that has the liberty of choice. Many churches still exist in Broadway, which, on Sunday, is as quiet as any other street. Other architectural decorations there are few. The City Hall, a costly building of white marble, too long and low to make a dignified appearance, but standing in a well-wooded park, of some eleven or twelve acres in extent, has a certain beauty, especially when seen gleaming through the spray of a fountain, which sends up a tall jet at some distance in front of the building. Farther on is a hospital, of rather ancient date for this western world--built in 1775, and now surrounded by venerable trees, and clothed in the richest ivy. After this, scarcely a break in the line of dazzling shops, until we reach the vicinity of Union Square, a pretty oval park, with a noble fountain in the midst, and lofty and handsome houses all round, situated on perhaps the highest ground on this part of the island. Half a mile beyond is Madison Square, a green expanse, about which wealthy citizens are now building elegant residences of brown freestone, with some attempt at architectural display. Near this, still northward, is the lower or distributing reservoir of the Croton Aqueduct, standing on high ground, and looking something like a fortress--no great ornament, perhaps, but an object of much interest. Fifth Avenue, on the west of Broadway, stretching north from Washington Square--an inclosure of about ten acres, well planted with elms and maples--it is the Belgravia of New-York--in the estimation of those who inhabit it; a paradise of marble, upholstery and cabinet work, at least; not much dignified, as yet, by works of high art, though the region boasts a few specimens, ancient and modern; but in luxury and extravagance emulating the repudiated aristocracy of the old world. This is, and is to be, a street of palaces and churches throughout its whole extent, always provided that the changeful current of Fashion do not set in some other direction too soon, carrying with it all the _millionaires_ that are yet to arise within the century. In that event, the costly mansions of Fifth Avenue will inevitably become hotels and boarding-houses,--a reverse which so many grandly intended houses of elder New-York have already experienced. The distinction of East and West is marked in New-York as in London, though for different reasons. In London, the prevalence of westerly winds drives the surge waves of coal-smoke eastward, blackening every thing; in New-York the western part of the town is cleaner, because newer and built on a better plan. Broadway is the dividing line; and it is a violent strain upon one's standing in fashionable life to live eastward of it, below Union Square, even in the most expensive style. But the eastward world has its own great thoroughfare, wider than Broadway, though not as long, running nearly parallel with the main artery of the grander world. The Bowery--so called when it was the high road leading through the public farms or _Boweries_--is a sort of exaggerated Bishopsgate-street and Shoreditch united; more trades and callings, more articles offered for sale in the open air, more noise, more people, and at least as much natural, undisguised, vulgar life. A railway for horse-carriages passes through it, and hundreds of omnibuses and stage coaches, not to speak of carts and country wagons without number. A "rowdy" theatre or two, a hay-market, great clothing-shops, and livery-stables, a riding-school, an anatomical museum--such are its ornaments. Not a church countenances its entire length, nor any other public building aiming at elegance or dignity. The goods displayed in the windows are of a secondary quality, at best; and the people who throng the pavements are people who want second-rate articles. Yet the Bowery is worth walking through by a stranger, little as it is known or valued by the native citizen, whose lot has been cast in choicer neighborhood. The common pulse of humanity beats audibly and visibly there, wrapped in no cloak of convention or pseudo-refinement. The fundamental business of life is carried on there as being confessedly the main business; not, as in Broadway, as if it were a thing to be huddled into a corner to make way for the carved-work and gilding, the drapery and color of the great panorama. There is another reason why the Bowery has a claim on our attention. Strange as it may seem, it is from the people who haunt the Bowery that the United States take their character abroad. Foreigners insist upon considering the "Bowery b'hoys,"--a class at once an enigma and a terror to the greater portion of their fellow-citizens,--as distinctive specimens of Americanism, much to the horror of their more fastidious countrymen. This we think a great mistake, though truly there are worse people in the world than the "Bowery b'hoys," who are noted for a sort of _bonhomie_, in the midst of all their coarseness. As to parks and public promenades, New-York is lamentably deficient--the whole space thus appropriated being hardly more than eighty acres, for the refreshment of a population which will soon cease to be counted by hundreds of thousands. "Eight million dollars worth of land," say the city fathers, "is as much as we can afford!" The penurious estimate which has resulted in this miserable deficiency has been long and ably combated by patriotic and clear-headed citizens, but their influence has as yet proved wholly unavailing. Public meetings have been now and then held, with a view of exciting a general interest in this important matter, but they invariably end in fruitless resolutions. The island still affords good sites for public gardens, but there is scarce a gleam of hope that any of them will be reserved. The few breathing spaces that now exist, are thronged, and by the very people who most need them--children and laboring people. The vicinity of the fountains is full of loiterers, quietly watching the play of the bright water, and growing, we may hope, milder and better by the gentle influence. At certain hours of the day whole troops of merry children, with their attendants, make the walks alive and resounding. The hoop, the ball, the velocipede, the skipping-rope, rejoice the grass and sunshine, and the eyes of the thoughtful spectator, who sees health in every bounding motion, and hears joy in every tiny shout. It is strange that the citizens do not, one and all, cry aloud for the easy and happy open-air extension of their too often crowded homes. London is the world's example in this thing. A park suited to riding and driving is especially needed because of the wretched pavement which still disgraces the greater portion of New-York. The first thing that strikes an American returning from Europe is the inferiority of the pavements of the Atlantic cities; and New-York, in particular, is, in this respect, hardly a whit before the far-famed corduroy roads of the wild West. In 1846 a great improvement was begun, called, after the inventor, the Russ pavement, and thus far seeming to meet all the difficulties of the case, including the severe frosts and sudden changes of the climate. The plan is, however, so expensive that it will probably be long before it is fully adopted. It requires square blocks of stone, about ten inches in depth, laid diagonally with the wheel-track, and resting on a substructure of concrete, which again rests upon a foundation of granite chips, the whole forming a consolidated mass, eighteen inches thick, so arranged as to be lifted in sections to afford access to the gas and water pipes. This has been largely tried in Broadway, and has stood the test for six years. Foreigners are apt to complain, not only, as they justly may, of the bad pavements of New-York, but, somewhat unreasonably, of the obstructions in the street, caused by incessant building, laying pipes, &c. They say, "Will the city never be finished?" Not very soon, we think. It is difficult to do in fifty years the work of five hundred, without a good deal of bustle and inconvenience. Rapid growth in population and wealth necessitates continual improvement in accommodation. We may, indeed, be allowed to fret a little, when the street is for weeks or months encumbered by the building materials of a merchant, who sees fit to pull down a very good house in order to erect one that shall cost a quarter of a million, merely because his neighbor has contrived to outshine him in that particular. But when sewers and gas, and Croton water, are in question, we must not grumble. These great public blessings are spreading into every quarter, carrying health and decency with them. The great sewers are arched canals of hard brick, from three to nine feet in diameter, and laid in mortar in the most durable manner. Above them are the gas-pipes, an immense net-work; and nearly on a level with these last are the huge veins and arteries, by means of which the Croton supplies life and health to the inhabitants, once half-poisoned by water which shared every salt that enters into the subsoil of a great city. Analysis shows the Croton water to be of great purity--holding in solution the salts of lime and magnesia in proportions hardly appreciable, only about two and eight-tenths of a grain to the gallon. The river springs from granitic hills, and flows through a clear upland region, free from marsh, and covered with grazing farms. When the Aqueduct was undertaken, New-York numbered but two hundred and eighty thousand inhabitants, so that the supply provided was a magnificent gift to the future. The work was completed within five years, years of great commercial difficulty; and what is more remarkable, the whole cost came _within_ the estimate of the chief engineer. The abundance of water may be guessed from the fact that two of the city fountains throw away more water than would suffice for the consumption of a large city. The solidity of the structure is such that none but slight repair can be needed for centuries to come.[10] This great work was opened, with appropriate ceremonies, and a splendid civic festival, on the 14th of October, 1842. The British consul, in accepting the invitation of the Common Council, to assist at this festival, justly remarked, "Tyrants have left monuments which call for admiration, but no similar work of a free people, for magnitude and utility, equals this great enterprise." Public feeling was very warm on this occasion. Of the procession of the trades, &c., which was three hours passing a given point, an enthusiastic citizen declared in print, that he "watched and scrutinized it closely, and could discover neither a drunkard nor a fool from first to last." It might be a difficult matter to decide on the moral and intellectual condition of the individuals composing such a procession, but we may concede that drunkards and fools are not the persons most likely to join in rejoicing for the introduction of pure water without stint or measure. The great Aqueduct is forty-one miles in length, commencing with a dam across the Croton river, six miles above its mouth. This raises the water one hundred and sixty-six feet above tide level, forming a lake or reservoir of four hundred acres in extent, containing five hundred million gallons, above the level that would allow the Aqueduct to discharge thirty-five million gallons per day. From the Croton Dam to Harlem River, something less than thirty-three miles, the Aqueduct is an uninterrupted conduit of hydraulic masonry, of stone and brick; the greatest interior width, seven feet five inches; the greatest height, eight feet five inches; the floor an inverted arch. The commissioners and chief engineers passed through its whole length on foot, as soon as it was completed; and, when the water was admitted, traversed it again in a boat built for the purpose. It crosses the Harlem River by a bridge of stone, fourteen hundred and fifty feet long, and one hundred and fourteen feet above high-water mark. At the Receiving Reservoir forty miles from the Dam, the masonry gives place to iron pipes, through which the water is conveyed two miles further, to the distributing reservoir, from which point it runs, by means of several hundred miles of pipes, to every corner of the city. On the line of the Aqueduct are one hundred and fourteen culverts, and sixteen tunnels, and ventilators occur at the distance of one mile apart throughout the route. The Receiving Reservoir covers thirty-five acres, and contains one hundred and fifty million imperial gallons. The Distributing Reservoir has walls forty-nine feet in height, and contains twenty million gallons. The supply to each citizen is at present almost unlimited, and afforded at a very moderate annual rate. The managers complain to the Common Council of the enormous waste during the summer, when "sixty imperial gallons each twenty-four hours to every inhabitant," are delivered. But even at this enormous rate the quantity is ample, and it can be increased at will by new reservoirs. No decent house is now constructed without a bath, an advantage to the health and comfort of the city, hardly to be over-rated. Fountains adorn almost all the public places of any importance, and although in few instances as yet dignified by sculpture, these tastes and glimpses of Nature are in themselves invaluable, offering to the people at large a continual reminder of beauty, tranquillity, and innocent pleasure in the open air. There remains yet to be added those public vats for the use of poor women in washing, that may be found in so many European towns. The facilities afforded by this abundance of water for the extinguishment of fires, are such as can hardly be over-rated. We have no space for details on this point, nor does it need. It will easily appear that, with an unlimited supply of water, and plenty of fire-plugs, a few moments suffice to bring into action whatever is needed in case of conflagration--a glorious contrast to the tardy succor of former days, when water was laboriously pumped from the rivers on either side the city, and conveyed by means of hose to the scene of danger. The perfection of the London Fire Brigade is yet to be accomplished for New-York; but promptness, or rather zeal of service, distinguishes the corps of firemen, who make their business a passion, and the perfection of their instruments their pride and glory. They receive no remuneration except exemption from military and jury duty. After these few words on the supply of pure and life-preserving water, we may turn, by no very violent transition, to the facilities extended by New-York to her children in the matter of education,--a point on which she is naturally and justly somewhat vainglorious. The number of public, and absolutely free schools, is one hundred and ninety-nine; embracing fifteen schools for the instruction of colored children. More than one hundred thousand scholars attend in the course of the year; though the average for each day is something less than forty thousand. All is gratuitous at these schools--instruction, books, stationery, washing-apparatus, fuel, &c. Besides these, there are fifteen evening schools, for those who cannot avail themselves of the other public schools, and whose only leisure time is after the close of the labors of the day. The ages of the scholars in these schools vary from twelve to forty-five years. This magnificent offer of instruction by the city to her children is confined to no class, country, sect, nor fortune. Every child, without exception, is received, taught, and furnished with all the requisites for a good school education. Not content with this, a free academy for the classics, modern languages, natural sciences, and drawing, was established in 1848, with fourteen professors, and proper appliances, including a handsome and commodious building. This academy receives male pupils from the common schools, after due examination; and retains them for a four years' course, or longer, if desirable. It is contemplated to establish a free high school for females, on a corresponding plan. It is not to be supposed that the benefit of the public school system is shared only by the necessitous. The children of respectable citizens, of the plainer sort, make up a large part of the attendance. It is computed that only about twenty thousand children of both sexes are found in private schools. There are many free schools of private charity, some of which receive by law a certain share of public money, as the school of the House of Refuge, various orphan asylums, &c., including, in all, about three thousand five hundred children. The Roman Catholics have some free schools of their own, but most Roman Catholic children are educated at the public schools. The prodigious amount of immigration (on the day on which we write, we happen to know that the number of steerage passengers arrived in the city is seventeen hundred and seventy-nine, and, on another, within a week, three thousand)--makes this provision for education doubly important; since a large portion of the hordes thus emptied on these hospitable shores are entirely unable to pay any thing for the instruction of their children. This fact gives added lustre to the no less munificent provision by the city for the gratuitous care of the sick and indigent--a care almost monopolized by foreigners, because comparatively few Americans are in a condition to need it. All accidental cases are provided for at the New-York Hospital; the attendant physicians and surgeons of which, selected from the most eminent of the profession, give their services without pecuniary remuneration. A branch of this institution is the Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane. The New-York Dispensary provides some thirty thousand patients annually with advice, medicines, and vaccination, gratis. The Almshouse Department maintains five establishments, which, together, support about seven thousand persons, and afford weekly aid to some three thousand others. The Nursery Branch of this department maintains and instructs more than a thousand children of paupers and convicts. The Institution for the care of deaf mutes has about two hundred and fifty pupils, of whom one hundred and sixty are supported at the expense of the State. The Asylum for the Blind, originally established by a few members of the Society of Friends, has about one hundred and fifty pupils. Besides these, private charity has opened refuges for almost every form of human misery and destitution, so that it may safely be said that no one of any age, sex, nation, or character _need_ suffer, in New York, for lack of Christian kindness in its ordinary manifestations. Among these beneficent offers of relief and aid, we may mention one in particular, whose worth is not as fully appreciated by the public as that of some others, though none is more needed. The Prison Association takes care of the interests of accused persons, whose poverty and ignorance make them the easy prey of the designing and heartless; attends to them while in prison, and after their release, holds out the helping hand, and provides relief, occupation, and countenance for all those who are willing to reform. A house with matrons is provided for discharged female convicts, who are instructed and initiated into various modes of employment until they have had time to prove themselves fit to be recommended to places. The success of this most benign and difficult charity has been very encouraging. It would be vain to attempt, in this desultory sketch, any account of the means of morals and religion in New-York. In these respects she differs but little from English commercial towns. The number of places of worship is something under three hundred, and each form of religious benevolence has its appropriate society, as elsewhere. Sabbath Schools are very popular, and attended by the children of the first citizens. An immense number of persons are associated as Sons and Daughters of Temperance, who present a strong front against that vice which turns the wise man into a fool. But as there is nothing distinctive in these and similar associations, we pass them by. A puritan tone of manners prevails; that is to say, with the mass of the well-to-do citizens, puritan manners are the beau-ideal of propriety and safety. Yet New-York is fast assuming a cosmopolitan tone which will make it difficult, before very long, to speak of any particular style of manners as prevailing. Representatives of every nation, and tongue, and kindred, and people, meeting on a footing of perfect equality of political advantages, must in time produce a social state, differing in some important particulars from any that the world has yet seen. The population of New-York will, at the past rate of increase, be in ten years greater than that of Paris, and in thirty equal to that of London. How can one speculate on a social state formed under such circumstances? The present aspect of what claims to be New-York society is certainly rather anomalous. An exceptional American--John Quincy Adams--in some patriotic speech, mentioned, among other occasions of thankfulness to Heaven, that excellent gift, "a heritable habitation;" but there is nothing which the prosperous citizen of New-York so much despises. If he read Ruskin, he thinks the man benighted when he utters such sentiments as these: "There must be a strange dissolution of natural affection; a strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents taught; a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our father's honor, or that our lives are not such as would make our dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only * * * *. Our God is a household god, as well as a heavenly one. He has an altar in every man's dwelling; let men look to it when they rend it lightly, and pour out its ashes!" If ever there were any substantial tenements of stone and brick on which might well be written the motto "Passing away!" it is those of the great commercial metropolis of the western world. The material substance is enduring enough to last many generations; their soul is a thing of the moment. After it has inhabited its proud apartments, and looked out of its beautiful windows for a few years, it departs, to return no more for ever, and its deserted home becomes at once the receptacle of a soul of lower grade, and its destiny is to pass down, and down, and down, in the scale, as time wears on, and "improvement" sanctifies new regions. One might suppose the pleasure and pride of building would be quite killed by the idea that as soon as one's head is laid in the dust, all the achievements of taste, all the devices of ingenious affection, all the personality, in short, of one's dwelling would be turned out to the gaze and comment of the curious world now so carefully shut out; exposed, depreciated, contemned, and sold to the highest bidder, under circumstances of inevitable degradation. But the ruling spirit of the New World progress seems to reconcile even the reflective to these things. They shrug their shoulders, and say it cannot be helped! Truly, these seem the days "when every man's aim is to be in some more elevated sphere than his natural one, and every man's past life is his habitual scorn; when men build in the hope of leaving the places they have built, and live in the hope of forgetting the years they have lived; when the comfort, the peace, and the religion of home have ceased to be felt." In these particulars, however, the severity of the New World is in a state of transition. Under circumstances so novel, it is not to be wondered at that no leisure has yet been found for the complete harmonization of the social theory in all its parts. Whether the universal and incessant subdivision of estates will ever be found to allow the addition of the charm of poetic associations to the possession of wealth is a question not yet determined. When all passes under the hammer, what becomes of heir-looms, and whatever else in which family life and interest are bound up? And why should splendor prepare for perpetuity when that which supports it is to be shared among half a dozen or a dozen descendants? Will a rich man be likely to collect works of art under the consciousness that, when "cutting up" time comes, not one of his children will probably be rich enough to retain possession of these treasures that bring no tangible income? Truly, republicans ought to be philosophers, caring only for things of highest moment, and capable of saying to all others--"Get ye behind me!" But the denizens of New-York Belgravia are not philosophers, at least not philosophers of this stamp. Content with the good things of to-day, they leave the morrow to take care of itself; and many of them live in a style which, even to those who have seen European splendor, seems no less than superb. Their dwellings are unsurpassed in convenience of arrangement and luxury of appliance; their entertainments are of regal magnificence, so far as regal magnificence is purchasable; and for dress and equipage they pour out money like water. In cultivation and accomplishments, they are of course very unequal; for, in a country where the great field of competition has a thousand gates, all opened wide to all comers, and moneyed magnates come from every class in society, and bring with them, to the new sphere, just what of a strictly personal kind they possessed in the old. He that was refined is refined still, and he that was sordid is sordid still. If the gentleman enjoys the power of indulging his tastes, and choosing his pursuits, so does the vulgarian; and, unhappily, no Belgravia, English or American, has yet been found capable of inspiring its inmates with dignified tastes or elevated aims. There is no permanent nucleus of elegant society in New-York; no reservoir of indisputable social grace, from which succeeding sets and advancing circles can draw rules and imbibe tastes. There is not, even at any one time, an acknowledged first circle, to whose standard others are willing to refer. This being so, the most incongruous manners often encounter in the social arena; and it is only in very limited association that any appreciable degree of congeniality is expected. Wealth always fraternizes with wealth to a certain extent. The maxim announced here on a certain public occasion, that "the possession of wealth is always to be received as evidence of the possession of merit of some kind," is conscientiously acted upon; but beyond this, social affinity is very limited as yet. Conversation has no recognized place among accomplishments, and of course only a doubtful one among pleasures. Coteries are unknown, and the continual shifting of circles precludes the pleasure of long-ripened intellectual intercourse. Many there are who regret this state of things in a society in which there is in reality so great a share of general good feeling; but they are found not among the rich, who possess some of the means of remedying the evil, but among those who, removed from the temptations which riches, suddenly acquired, array against intellectual pleasures, lack, on the other hand, the means of uniting with those pleasures, the _agrémens_ which are at the command of easy fortune. In Paris, intellect and cultivation can draw together those who value them, even though the place of meeting be a shabby house in the suburbs; in New-York it is not yet so, nor could it be expected. No social _posé_ has yet been attained; and each is too much absorbed in making good his general claims to consideration, to have leisure for the calmer enjoyments that might be snatched during the contest. Ostentation is, as yet, too prominent in the entertainments of the rich; and the not rich, with republican pride, will rather renounce the pleasures and advantages of society than receive company in an inexpensive way. Even public amusements are not fashionable. Large numbers, it is true, attend them, but not of the fashionable classes. The Opera, alone, has a sort of popularity with these, but it is as an elegant lounger, and a chance of distinction from the vulgar. A low-priced opera, like those of the Continent, with music as the main object, and magnificent costume put out of the question by twilight houses, is yet to be tried in New-York. In the opinion of some, this is one day to be the touchstone of American musical taste. A passion for popular music the Americans certainly have. The Negro Melodists, numerous as they are, draw throngs every night; and their music, whether gay or sad, has all the charm that could be desired for the popular heart. But the people of any pretensions enjoy this kind of music, as it were by stealth, not considering that the pleasure it gives is in fact a test of its excellence. Many of the negro airs are worthy of symphonies and accompaniments by Beethoven or Schubert, but until they have been endorsed by science the New-Yorker would rather not be caught enjoying them. If we should venture to suggest what it is that New-York society most lacks, we should say Courage--courage to enjoy and make the most of individual tastes and feelings. The spirit of imitation robs social life of all that is picturesque and poetical. Living for the eyes of our neighbors is stupefying and belittling. It gives an air of hollowness and tinsel to our homes, stealing even from the heartiness of affection, and sapping the disinterestedness of friendship. It tends to the general impoverishment of home-life, the privacy of which is the soil of originality and the nursery of accomplishments. It is hardly consistent with the pursuit of literature or art for its own sake, since a desire to do what others do, and avoid what others contemn, excludes private and independent choice, except where the natural bias is irresistibly strong. There is, in truth, very little relish for home accomplishments in New-York. Music is too much a thing of exhibition, and drawing is scarcely practised at all. Two or three of the modern languages are taught at every fashionable school; but the use of these is seldom kept up in after life, even by reading. No people are so poorly furnished with foreign tongues as the Americans, and New-York forms no exception to the general remark. We shall not venture to touch that most sensitive of all topics, native art, on which no opinion can be expressed with safety, Suffice it to say, that New-York has a National Academy of Design; the nucleus of a free gallery; an Art-Union, largely patronized; an Artists' Association, with a gallery of its own; and various exhibitions of European pictures. Lessing's Martyrdom of Huss has been for some time exhibiting in a collection of paintings of the Düsseldorf school. Statuary is as yet comparatively rare; for, although American art has sprung at once to high excellence in this direction, the sculptors generally reside abroad, for the sake of superior advantages for execution. The present year sees the _début_ of a young sculptor of New-York, named Palmer, who has just finished a work of great promise, for this spring's exhibition of the National Academy, an exhibition most cheering to the friends of American art, from its marked superiority in many respects to any that have gone before it. A Home-Book of Beauty is in progress, for which a young English artist, son of the celebrated Martin, is making the portraits. This promises to be very popular, since the reputation of American female beauty is world-wide. These slight notices of New-York as she is, are intended rather to give foreign visitors a hint what _not_ to expect, than to serve as any thing deserving the name of a description of one of the commercial centres of the world. It is quite possible to come to New-York with such letters of introduction as shall open to the stranger society as intelligent and well-bred as any in Europe; but as this is composed of people who never run after notabilities as such, it is often unknown and unsuspected by the visitor from abroad, who, consequently, returns home with such broad views as we have been attempting, quite satisfied that there is nothing more worth seeking. It is noticeable that the most favorable accounts of American manners have been given by the best-bred and highest-born foreign travellers; while disparagement and abuse have been the retaliation of those who have, to their surprise, found the Americans quite capable of distinguishing between snobs and gentlemen. The intelligent traveller must know how to take New-York for what she is, and he will not undervalue her for not being what she is not. She is a magnificent city--a city of unexampled growth and energy; of the noblest public works, of unbounded charity, of a most intelligent providence in the instruction of her children, of fearless liberality in the reception and treatment of foreigners, and of a growing interest in all the arts which adorn and harmonize society. Those who visit her prepared to find these traits will not be disappointed; those who will accept nothing in an American city of yesterday but the tranquil and delicate tone of an assured civilization, should not come westward. Yet in real, essential civilization, that city cannot be far behindhand, in which the duties of a street police are almost nominal, and where every ill that can afflict humanity is cared for gratuitously, and in the most humane spirit. Justly proud of these proofs of her preparation for the outward gloss of manners which is all in all to the superficial observer, New-York can well afford to invite the scrutiny of the intelligent citizen of the world. As we began our little sketch with some Knickerbocker reminiscences, so we feel bound, before we close, to say a word or two of the traces that still remain of the honored origin of much of the wealth and respectability of New-York. Whatever we may allow for our English superstructure, we cannot forget that the Dutch foundation was most excellent. "The Batavians," says Tacitus, "are distinguished among the neighboring nations for their valor;" and in the seventeenth century the countrymen of Van Tromp and De Ruyter had not degenerated from their Batavian ancestors; and in the gentler qualities of peace, industry, perseverance, energy, honesty, and enterprise, the States-General were surpassed by no European community. For their notions of law, we may consult Grotius; for their taste for art, the exquisite works which constitute a school of their own. The Dutch masters of New-York were people of high tone and character, and to this day there lingers a flavor of nobility and dignity about the very names of Van Rensselaer, Van Cortlandt, Van Zandt, Brinkerhoff, Stuyvesant, Rutgers, Schermerhorn, &c., represented by families who still retain much of their ancient wealth, and a great deal of their ancient aristocratic feeling. Many jokes have been founded upon the unwillingness of these lords of the soil to be disturbed; one of the best of which is Washington Irving's story of Wolfert Webber, who thought he must inevitably die in the almshouse, because the Corporation ruined his cabbage-garden by running a street through it. But they make excellent citizens, and their aversion to change has been but a much needed balance to the wild go-ahead restlessness of the full-blooded Yankee, who sees nothing but the future. The Dutch have customs, and, of course, manners; while the tendency of modern New-York life is adverse to both. The citizen of to-day cannot help looking on the Dutch spirit as "slow," but he has an instinctive respect for it, notwithstanding. One single Dutch custom still maintains its ground triumphantly, in spite of the hurry of business, the selfishness of the commercial spirit, and the efforts of a few paltry fashionists, who would fain put down every thing in which a suspicion of heartiness can be detected. It is the custom of making New Year visits on the first day of January, when every lady is at home, and every gentleman goes the rounds of his entire acquaintance; flying in and flying out, it is true, but still with an expression of good-will and friendly feeling that is invaluable in a community where daily life is so much under the control of that cabalistic word--business. Ladies are in high party-trim, and refreshments of various kinds are offered; but the main point and recognized meaning of the whole is the interchange of friendly greetings. No one, not to the manor born, can estimate the glow of feeling that characterizes these flying visits. "As iron sharpeneth iron, so doth the countenance of a man his friend." The mere looking into each other's faces is good for human creatures; and when the sincere even though transient light of kindly feeling beams from the eyes that thus encounter, something is done against egotism, haughty disregard and blank oblivion. Many a coolness dies on New Year's Day, under a battery of smiles; many a hard thought is shamed away by the good wishes of the season. Old friends, who are inevitably separated most of the time, thus meet at least once a year, for the enthusiasm of the hour is potent enough to make the valetudinarian forsake his easy chair, and the cripple his crutches. Visiting hours are extended so as to include all the hours from ten in the morning until ten at night, and, in order to make the most of these, the gentlemen take carriages and scour the streets at the true American pace, so as to lose as little time as possible on the way. If a storm occur, it is considered quite a public misfortune, since it lessens, though it never altogether prevents the fulfilment of the annual ceremony. It is true that both ladies and gentlemen are death-weary when bed-time comes, but that for once a year is no great evil. It is true that some young men will take more whisky-punch, or champagne, than is becoming; but for one who does this, there are many who decline "all that can intoxicate," except smiles and kind words. In some houses the blinds are closed, the gas lighted, and a band of music in attendance; and each batch of visitors inveigled into polkas, or kedowas, for which the lady of the house has taken care to provide partners. But this is considered a degeneracy, and voted _mauvais ton_ by those who understand the thing. To "throw a perfume o'er the violet," bespeaks the French _coiffeur_ or the _parvenu_; the simplicity of the ancient Dutch custom of New Year visits is its dignity and glory. Long may it live unspotted by vulgar fashion! Well were it for the island city if she had kept a loving hold on many another quaint festivity of her ancestors on the other side of the water. Her prosperity would be none the worse of a respectful reference to the good things of the past. FOOTNOTES: [10] Among the causes of decay in the Roman aqueducts, was the strong concretion formed on the bottom and sides by matter deposited by the water. No such deposit is made by the water of the Croton. From Fraser's Magazine. A JUNGLE RECOLLECTION. BY CAPTAIN HARDBARGAIN. The hot season of 1849 was peculiarly oppressive, and the irksome garrison duty at Cherootabad, in the south of India, had for many months been unusually severe. The colonel of my regiment, the brigadier, and the general, having successively acceded to my application for three weeks' leave, and that welcome fact having been duly notified in orders, it was not long before I found myself on the Coimbatore road, snugly packed guns and all, in a country bullock-cart, lying at full length on a matress, with a thick layer of straw spread under it. All my preparations had been made beforehand; relays of bullocks were posted for me at convenient intervals, and I arrived at Goodaloor, a distance of a hundred and ten miles, in rather more than forty-eight hours. Goodaloor is a quiet little village, about eleven miles from Coimbatore;--but don't suppose I was going to spend my precious three weeks there. After breakfasting at the traveller's bungalow, we started off again. The bungalow is on the right hand side of the road; and when we had proceeded about two hundred yards, the bullock-cart turned into the fields to the left, and got along how it could across country, towards some low rocky hills, which ran parallel, and at about three miles distance from the Coimbatore road. After about two miles of this work, sometimes over fallow ground, sometimes through fields of growing grain, (taking awful liberties with the loose hedges of cut brambles, which, however, we had the conscience to build up again as we passed them,) sometimes over broken stony ground, and once or twice lumbering heavily through a rocky watercourse, we at last found ourselves on the grassy margin of a pretty little stream. Fifty yards beyond it, under the shade of a fine mango-tree, my little tent was already pitched; in five minutes I lay stretched on my bed, listening with ravished ears to the glorious accounts of my old Shikaree, who had just come in, hot and tired, from the jungle. He had much to tell,--how since he had been out, three days, he had tracked the tiger every morning up and down a certain nullah; how the brindled monster had been seen by different shepherds; and what was still more satisfactory, how he had but yesterday killed a cow near the spot where the hut had been built. It was now midday;--how to spend the long hours till sunset? After making the tired man draw innumerable sketch-maps in the sand, with reiterated descriptions of the hut, &c., I allowed the poor wretch to go to his dinner; and in anticipation of a weary night's watch, I squeezed my eyes together and tried to sleep. The sun begins to acquire his evening slant, and I joyfully leave my bed to prepare for my nocturnal expedition. The cook is boiling fowl and potatoes; they are ready; and now he pours his clear strong coffee into the three soda-water bottles by his side; everything is ready, in the little basket, not forgetting a bottle of good beer. Now then commences the pleasing task of carefully loading our battery. Come, big "Sam Nock," king of two-ouncers, what is to be the fate of these two great plumbs that you are now to swallow? Am I to cut them out of the tiger's ribs to-morrow?--or are they idly to be fired away into the trunk of a tree, or drawn again? All loaded, and pony saddled, let us start: the two white cows and their calves; the matress and blanket rolled up and carried on a Cooly's head: Shikaree, horsekeeper, and a village man with the three guns, while I myself bring up the rear. Over a few ploughed fields, and past that large banian-tree, the jungle begins. What is this black thing? and what are those people doing? That hideous black image is the jungle god, and to him the villagers look for protection for their flocks. How they stare at the man dressed in his mud-colored clothes, who has come so far, and sacrifices sleep and comfort, to sit and watch at night for the evil genius of their jungles. Children are held up to look at him--at the English jungle-wallah, who drinks brandy as they drink milk, and who is on his way to the deepest fastnesses of the wooded waste, to watch for the tiger alone--a man who laughs at gods and devils--a devil himself. The Shikaree, who had been earnestly engaged in conversation with the oldest looking man of the group, now ran up and informed me that the Gooroo had given him to understand that the Sahib would certainly kill the tiger this night, and that it was expected that he would subscribe fifteen rupees to the god, in the event of the prediction proving true. Come, we have no time for talking. Hurry on, cows and guns, hurry on! through the silent jungle, along the narrow path. How much farther yet. Not more than a quarter of a mile; we are close to it. And now the people who know the whereabouts stop and look smilingly on one another, and then at the Sahib, whose practised eye has but just discovered the well-built ambush. In a small clump of low jungle, on the sloping bank of a broad, sandy watercourse, the casual passer-by would not have perceived a snug and tolerably strong little hut,--the white ends of the small branches that were laid over it, and the mixture of foliage, alone revealing the fact to the observant eye of a practised woodman. No praise could be too strong to bestow on the faithful Shikaree; had I chosen the spot myself, after a week's survey of the country, it could not have been more happily selected. The watercourse wound its way through the thickest and most _tigerish_ section of the jungle, and had its origin at the very foot of the hills, where tigers were continually seen by the woodcutters and shepherds. There was little or no water within many miles, except the few gallons in a basin of rock, which I could almost reach from my little bower; and, to crown all, there were the broad, deep _puggs_ of a tiger, up and down the nullah, in the dry sand, near the water's edge, of all ages, from the week, perhaps, up to the unmistakable fresh puggs of last night. Let us get off the pony, and have a look at the hut. Pulling a few dry branches on one side, the small hurdle-door at the back is exposed to view, hardly big enough to admit a large dog; down on your knees and crawl in. Five feet long, four feet wide, and four feet high in the centre, is the extent of the little palace; a platform, a foot from the ground, occupies the whole extent to within a foot of the front end facing the bed of the watercourse. On this platform the matress is laid, and some big coats and the blankets make a very comfortable pillow. Remove that little screen of leaves, and you look through a window, ten inches square, that commands a view fifty paces up and down the sandy nullah. Sitting on the end of the bed-place, just behind the window, with your feet on the ground, nothing can be more comfortable; and when tired, you only have to draw up your legs, and curl yourself on the matress to enjoy a short nap, if your prudence cannot conquer sleep. Into this hut which I have endeavored to describe, did I now crawl; the matress was arranged, the handsome and carefully loaded battery was next handed in, and each gun placed ready for action; the cold fowl and bottle of Bass were in the mean while disposed of, and the soda-water bottles of cold coffee were stowed away in cunning corners. The sun is resting on the hill-tops, and will soon disappear behind them; the peafowl and jungle-cock are noisily challenging amongst themselves, and the latest party of woodcutters have just passed by, showing, by their brisk pace and loud talking, that they consider it high time for prudent men to quit the jungle. To the deeply-rooted stump of a young tree on the opposite bank, one of the white cows has been made fast by a double cord passed twice round her horns. Nothing remains to be done; the little door is fastened behind me, the prickly acacia boughs are piled up against it on the outside, and my people are anxious to be off. The old Shikaree makes his appearance in the nullah, and wishing me success through the window, asks if "all is right?" "Every thing; get home as fast as you can: if you should hear three shots in succession before dark, come back for me,--otherwise, bring the pony at six to-morrow morning,--and a cup of hot coffee, tell the cook." They are gone; I still hear them every now and then, as they shout to one another, and as the pony is scrambling through some loose stones in the bed of a [missing words/letters] through which the road lies. The poor cow, too, listens with dismay to the retreating footsteps of the party, and has already made some furious plunges to free herself and rejoin the rest of the kine, who have been driven off, nothing loth, towards home. Watch her: how intently she stares along the path by which the people have deserted her. Were it not for the occasional stamp of her fore leg, or the impatient side-toss of the head, to keep off the swarming flies, she might be carved out of marble. And now a fearful and anxious gaze up the bed of the nullah, and into the thick fringe of Mimoso, one ear pricked and the other back alternately, show that _instinct_ has already whispered the warning of impending danger. Another plunge to get loose, and a searching gaze up the path; see her sides heave. Now comes what we want--that deep low! it echoes again among the hills: another, and another. Poor wretch! you are hastening your doom; far or near the tiger hears you--under rock or thicket, where he has lain since morning sheltered from the scorching sun, his ears flutter as if they were tickled every time he hears that music: his huge green eyes, heretofore half-closed, are now wide open, and, alas! poor cow, gaze truly enough in thy direction; but he has not stirred yet, and nobody can say in which direction giant death will yet stalk forth. Which ever of my readers who has never had to wait in solitude, in a strange room of a strange house, has not indulged in that idle speculative curiosity peculiar to such a situation, gazing on the pictures, and counting perhaps tables and chairs with an absurd earnestness of purpose,--will not understand how I spent the first half hour of my solitude; how I idly counted the stakes that formed the framework of the hut, or watched with interest the artful tactics of another Shikaree, in the shape of a slippery-looking green lizard, who was cautiously "stalking" the insects among the rafters. The cow, tired with struggling and plunging, appears to have become tolerably resigned to her situation, and has lain down, her ears, however, in continual motion, and the jaw sometimes suddenly arrested, while in the act of chewing the cud, to listen, as some slight noise in the thicket attracts her attention. Gracious! what is that down the nullah to the left? A peacock only. How my heart beat at first! what a splendid train the fellow has. Here he comes, evidently for the water; and now his seraglio,--one, two, four, five, buff-breasted, modest-looking little quakeresses. What a contrast to his splendid blue and gold! All to the water--dive in your bills and toss back your heads with blinking eyes, as you quaff the delicious fluid; little do you dream that there is a gun within five paces, although you are quite safe. But stop! here are antics. The old boy is happy, and up goes his tail, to the admiration of his hens, and the extreme wonderment of the cow, who with open eyes is staring with all her might at the glories of the expanded fan; and now slowly goes he round and round, like a solemn Jack o' the Green, his spindle shanks looking disreputably thin in the waning light. They quit the water-side, and disappear; and I can hear their heavy wings as they one after another mount a tall tree for the night. The moon is up--all nature still; the cow, again on her legs, is restless, and evidently frightened. Oh! reader, even if you have the soul of a Shikaree, I despair of being able to convey in words a tithe of the sensations of that solitary vigil: a night like that is to be enjoyed but seldom--a red-letter day in one's existence. Where is the man who has never experienced the poetic influence of a moonlit scene! Fancy, then, such a one as here described; a crescent of low hills--craggy, steep, and thickly wooded--around you on three sides, and above them, again, at twenty miles' distance, the clear blue outline of the Neilgherry Hills; in your front the silver-sand bed of the dry watercourse divides the thick and sombre jungle with a stream of light, till you lose it in the deep shadows at the foot of the hills,--all quiet, all still, all bathed in the light of the moon, yourself the only man for miles to come; a solitary watcher, your only companion the poor cow, who, full of fears and suspicions at every leaf-fall, reminds you that a terrible struggle is about to take place within a few feet of your bed, and that there will be noise and confusion, when you must be cool and collected. Your little kennel would not be strong enough to resist a determined charge, and you are alone, if three good guns are not true friends. Let me, good reader, give way to the pleasures of memory,--let me fancy myself back again, seated in my dear little hut, full of hope and expectation, now drinking the ice-cold coffee from one of the soda-water bottles, re-corking it, and placing it slowly and noiselessly in its corner. Hark to the single ring of a silver bell, and its echo among the hills! a spotted deer--why does she call? has she seen any thing? Again, and again, and answered from a long distance! 'Tis very odd, that when one should be most wakeful, there should be always an inclination to sleep. A raw nip of aqua-vitæ, and a little of the same rubbed round the eyes, nostrils and behind the ears, make us wakeful again. Oh! that I could express sounds on paper as music is written in notes. No, reader, you must do as I have done--you must be placed in a similar situation, to hear and enjoy the terrible roar of a hungry tiger--not from afar off and listened for, but close at hand and unexpected. It was like an electric shock;--a moment ago, I was dozing off, and the cow, long since lain down, appeared asleep; that one roar had not died away among the hills when she had scrambled on her legs, and stood with elevated head, stiffened limbs, tail raised, and breath suspended, staring full of terror in the direction of the sound. As for the biped, with less noise and even more alacrity, he had grasped his "Sam Nock," whose polished barrels just rested on the lower ledge of the little peephole; perhaps his eyes were as round as saucers, and heart beating fast and strong. Now for the struggle;--pray heaven that I am cool and calm, and do not fire in a hurry, for one shot will either lose or secure my well-earned prize. There he is again! evidently in that rugged, stony watercourse which runs parallel, and about two hundred yards behind the hut. But what is that? Yes, lightning: two flashes in quick succession, and a cold stream of air is rustling through the half-withered leaves of my ambush. Taking a look to the rear through an accidental opening among the leaves, it was plain that a storm, or, as it would be called at sea, a squall, was brewing. An arch of black cloud was approaching from the westward, and the rain descending, gave it the appearance of a huge black comb, the teeth reaching to the earth. The moon, half obscured, showed a white mist as far as the rain had reached. Then was heard in the puffs of air the hissing of the distant but approaching down-pour: more lightning--then some large heavy drops plashed on the roof, and it was raining cats and dogs. How the scene was changed! Half-an-hour ago, solemn, and still, and wild, as nature rested, unpolluted, undefaced, unmarked by man--sleeping in the light of the moon, all was tranquillity; the civilized man lost his idiosyncrasy in its contemplation--forgot nation, pursuits, creed,--he felt that he was Nature's child, and adored the God of Nature. But the beautiful was now exchanged for the sublime, when that scene appeared lit up suddenly and awfully by lightning, which now momentarily exchanged a sheet of intensely dazzling blue light, with a darkness horrible to endure--a light which showed the many streams of water, which now appeared like ribbons over the smooth slabs of rock that lay on the slope of the hills, and gave a microscopic accuracy of outline to every object,--exchanged as suddenly for a darkness which for the moment might be supposed the darkness of extinction--of utter annihilation,--while the crash of thunder overhead rolled over the echoes of the hills, "I am the Lord thy God." The hut, made in a hurry, was not thatched (as it might have been), and the half-dried foliage which covered it collected drops only to pour down continuous streams from the stem of every twig. So much for sitting up for tigers! will most of my readers exclaim, and laugh at the monomaniac who would subject himself to such misery; but the thorough-bred Shikaree is game and stanch to the backbone, and will not be stopped by a night's wetting. For myself, I can only say in extenuation, that I was born on the 12th of August. A heavy and continuous down-pour soon showed its effects, and although I had lots of big coats, and was not altogether unprepared for such an emergency, an hour had not elapsed before I was obliged to confess myself tolerably wet through. The matress just collected the water and made a good hip-bath, for there was no other seat. The nullah, heretofore as I have described, was now a turbid stream of red water, which falling over a slab of rock into the small basin before mentioned, kept up an unceasing din. Tired and disgusted, I rolled a doubled blanket, although saturated with water, tight round me, and was soon warm and asleep. About two o'clock in the morning the clouds broke and the rain ceased; the boiling stream ran down to half its size, and a concert of thousands of frogs, bass, tenor, and treble, kept up a monotonous croaking enough to wake the dead. The moon appeared again, and I attacked both cold coffee and brandy, and made myself as comfortable as possible under existing circumstances--to wit, wringing the water out of my jacket and cap, and putting them on again warm and comparatively dry. The cow even shook herself, and appeared glad of the change of weather, and I had no doubt that she would go back with me to the tent in the morning to gladden the eyes of her young calf and all good Hindoos. The nullah had run dry again, and even the infernal frogs, as if despairing of more rain, had ceased their din: damp and sleepy, with arms folded and eyes sometimes open, but often shut, I kept an indifferent watch, when the cow struggling on her legs and a choking groan brought me to my senses! There they were! No dream! A huge tiger holding her just behind the ears, shaking her like a fighting dog! By the doubtful light of a watery moon did I calmly and noiselessly run out the muzzle of my single J. Lang rifle. I saw him, without quitting his grip of the cow's neck, leap over her back more than once--she sank to the earth, and he lifted her up again: at the first opportunity I pulled trigger--snick! The rifle was withdrawn, and big Sam Nock felt grateful to the touch. Left barrel--snick! Right barrel--snick, bang! Whether hanging fire is an excuse or not, the tiger relinquished his hold, and in one bound was out of sight. The cow staggered for two or three seconds, fell with a heavy groan, and ceased to move. Tiger gone!--cow dead!--was it a dream? Killed the cow within five paces and gone away scathless. For a long time I felt benumbed; I had missed many near shots, even many at tigers, and some like this at night, but never before under such favorable circumstances. Why, I almost dreaded the morning, when my Shikaree and people would come and find the cow killed, and I should have in fairness to account for the rest. The first streak of daylight did shortly appear, and every familiar sound of awaking nature succeeded each other, from the receding hooting of the huge horned owl, to the noisy crowing of the jungle cock and the call of the peafowl. The sun got up, and soon I heard, first doubtfully and then distinctively, the approach of my people. A sudden start, and stop, when they came in full view of the slaughtered cow; and then, a look up and down the nullah, as if they had not seen all. The reader must spare me the recollection of a scene that vexes me even at this distance of time, as if it had occurred but yesterday. The next half-hour was spent sitting on the carcass of the cow, staring at the enormous and deeply indented prints of the tiger's feet, and looking with sorrow and vexation and some compunction at the poor little calf which had been driven back to its mother, neither to see her alive nor her death avenged. It was quite evident that the tiger had not been hit, for there was neither hair nor blood to be seen, and one or two small branches in the jungle beyond the cow showed, either by being cut down or barked, that the ball had passed over the mark. So on the pony and back to the tent to sleep or sulk out the next twelve hours. Somehow or other that pony, generally so clever and pleasant, was inclined to kick his toes against every stone, and be perverse all the way home; at any rate I fancied so, and am ashamed to say that I gave him the spur, or jerked the curb rein on the slightest pretence. My people, like all Indians, read the case thoroughly, and trudged along without hazarding a remark on any subject. We passed under the identical banian-tree and by the disgusting little black image described in the commencement of the story, and never did I feel more indignant against all idolatry, or more inclined to smash a Hindoo god. We also had to pass a small jungle village, and, as if on purpose, it appeared that every man, woman, and child were posted to have a good look. Several of them who knew some of my party, asked a hurried question, and I could hear, though I would not look, that the answer was given--"Had a shot, but missed." "Yes," said I to myself, "quite true--why should I be angry?" "Here goes the man that missed an animal as big as a bullock at ten paces,--more power to his elbow!" The tent gained, I was soon lying on my back on the bed kicking out my heels, calling for breakfast, and appearing to be very hungry, or very sleepy, or very any thing but what I was--mortified and disgusted. Breakfast over, my good old Shikaree was sent for, and the whole affair gone over again. The rain, the unexpected time of night, and above all, the two first shots _snicking_, and the third hanging fire being considered, we two being judge and jury, it was decided that not the slightest blame attached to the defendant, who was too well known as a very fine shot to regard a mistake of this kind; and, moreover, that as it was certain that the tiger was not hurt, but only frightened, there was strong reason for hoping that he would return at nightfall to the carcass. Men were therefore sent out to watch that the place should not in any way be disturbed, or the dead cow touched or moved, and I resigned myself to a pleasant sleep. I awoke about three in the afternoon; the guns had, thanks to a good Shikaree, been washed, dried, and slightly oiled, and were all laid on the table, looking as if a month of rain would not make them miss fire. A bath, clean clothes, guns loaded, pony saddled--and once more off to try my luck. The pony was active and cheerful, and even the beastly image under the banian-tree did not look so grim. On our arrival at the ground, the half-wild fellows who had watched all day, dropped down from their trees, and reported that nothing had happened during the day, and that the place had been undisturbed. A few vultures appeared about midday and settled on the carcass, but had been driven off; further they had nothing to say. They were referred to the tent for payment for their day's work, and, in due course, took their departure with my people. Once more left alone!--this time quite alone, for my poor companion of last night lay stiff and stark in the position I saw her fall, when the tiger relinquished his hold. Alarmed by the already slightly smelling carrion, or finding water elsewhere, left by the down-pour of last night, no peaceful or other living thing paid me a visit, if I except some few crows, who with heavy wings swept past, or perched on neighboring trees, cawing, and winking their eyes, and peering cautiously and inquisitively at the dead cow. Only one among the crew hovered and lighted on the dead beast's head; but although he made several picks at the lips and eyes, opening and shutting his wings the while on his strong, sleek, wiry-looking body, and cawing lustily, nobody heeded him; so, appearing to be alarmed at being solus in the scene, he took his departure. Night succeeded day, and the moon, in unclouded beauty, made the dark jungle a fairy scene. There was but one drawback; the cow lay dead, the tiger had been fired at, and experience whispered, 'the opportunity has gone by.' By-and-by a jackal passed, like a shadow among the bushes, so small-looking, so much the color of all around, that it remained a doubt; more of these passed to and fro, and then a bolder ventured on the plain sand, and up to the rump of the dead beast, took two or three hard tugging bites, and was gone. As the night grew later, they became less fearful, and half-a-dozen of them together were tugging and tearing, till breaking the entrails, the gas escaped in a loud rumbling, which dispersed my friends among the bushes in a moment; but they were almost immediately back, and the confidence with which they went to work, convinced me that my hope was hopeless. It must have been eleven o'clock when my ears caught the echo among the rocks, and then the distant roar--nearer--nearer--nearer; and--oh, joy!--answered. Tiger and tigress!--above all hope!--coming to recompense me for hundreds of night-watchings--to balance a long account of weary nights in the silent jungle, in platforms on trees, in huts of leaf and bramble, and in damp pits on the water's edge--all bootless;--coming--coming--nearer, and nearer. Music nor words, dear reader, can stand me in any stead to convey the sound to you; the first note like the trumpet of a peacock, and the rest the deepest toned thunder. Stones and gravel rattled just behind the hut on the path by which we came and went, and a heavy stey passed and descended the slope into the nullah. I heard the sand crunching under his weight before I dared look. A little peep. Oh, heavens! looming in the moonlight, there he stood, long, sleek as satin, and lashing his tail--he stood stationary, smelling the slaughtered cow. No longer the cautious, creeping tiger, I felt how awful a brute he was to offend. I remembered how he had worried a strong cow in half a minute, and that with his weight alone my poor rickety little citadel would fall to pieces. As if the excitement of the moment was insufficient, the monster, gazing down the dry watercourse, caught sight of his companion, who, advancing up the bed of the nullah, stood irresolutely about twenty yards off. A terrific growl from him, answered not loud but deeply, and I was the strange and unsuspected witness to a catawauling which defies description--a monstrous burlesque on those concerts of tigers in miniature which are occasionally got up, on a cold, clear night, in some of the squares in London, when all the cats for half a mile around get by some queer accident into one area. Whether it is an axiom among tigers that possession is nine points of the law, or the other monster was the weaker vessel, I know not, but I soon perceived that as _my_ friend made more noise, the other became more subdued, and finally left the field, and retired growling among the bushes. The bully, who was evidently the male, after smelling at the head, came round the carcass, making a sort of complacent purring--"humming a kind of animal song," and to it he went tooth and nail. As he stood with his two fore feet on the haunch, while he tugged and tore out a beef-steak, I once more grasped old "Sam Nock," and ran the muzzle out of the little port. The white linen band marked a line behind his shoulders, and rather low, but, from the continued motion of his body, it was some moments before eye and finger agreed to pull trigger--bang! A shower of sand rattled on the dry leaves, and a roar of rage and pain satisfied me, even before the white smoke which hung in the still air had cleared away, to show the huge monster writhing and plunging where he had fallen. Either directed by the fire, or by some slight noise made in the agitation of the moment, he saw me, and with a hideous yell, scrambled up: the roaring thunder of his voice filled the valley, and the echoes among the hills answered it, with the hootings of tribes of monkeys, who, scared out of sleep, sought the highest branches, at the sound of the well-known voice of the tyrant of the jungle. I immediately perceived, to my great joy, that his hind-quarters were paralyzed and useless, and that all danger was out of the question. He sank down again on his elbows, and as he rested his now powerless limbs, I saw the blood welling out of a wound in the loins, as it shone in the moonlight, and trickled off his sleek-painted hide, like globules of quicksilver. As I looked into his countenance, I saw all the devil alive there. The will remained--the power only had gone. It was a sight never to be forgotten. With head raised to the full stretch of his neck, he glared at me with an expression of such malignity, that it almost made one quail. I thought of the native superstition of singing off the whiskers of the newly-killed tiger to lay his spirit, and no longer wondered at it. With ears back, and mouth bleeding, he growled and roared in fitful uncertainty, as if he were trying, but unable, to measure the extent of the force that had laid him low. Motionless myself, provocation ceased, and without further attempt to get on his legs, he continued to gaze on me; when I slowly lowered my head to the sight, and again pulled trigger. This time, true to the mark, the ball entered just above the breast-bone, and the smoke cleared off with his death groan. There he lay, foot to foot with his victim of last night, motionless--dead. My first impulse was to tear down the door behind, and get a thorough view of his proportions; but remembering that his companion, the tigress, had only vanished a short time ago close to the scene of action, I thought it as well to remain where I was; so, enlarging the windows with my hands, I took a long look, and then jovially attacked the coffee and brandy bottles, without reference to noise, and fell back on the mattress to sleep, or to think the night's work over. "At last, I have got him: his skin will be pegged out to-morrow, drying before the tent door." When my people came in the morning, they found me seated on the dead tiger. Coolies were sent for to carry the beast, and I gave the pony his reins all the way back to the tent. After breakfast, the sound of tomtoms and barbarous music greeted our ears; for the Gooroo and half the little village had turned out, and were bringing in the tiger like an Irish funeral. I had a chair brought out, and under the shade of a fine tree superintended the skinning of the tiger; and as I had had no sleep for the last two nights, I determined to make holiday. Dined at half-past six, and had a bottle of _Frederick Giesler_, and the fumes of his glorious champagne inspired me: "The first rainy day, I will put last night's adventure on paper, and send it home to my old friend Regina." From Bentley's Miscellany. A VISIT TO THE "MAID OF ATHENS." BY MRS. BUXTON WHALLEY. "_Buon giorno, signora! Vi è veramente una bella città! Mà, dov' è la Fenice?_" Such was the morning salutation of the Venetian captain in command of the Austrian Loyd steamer which had conveyed us up the Gulf of Corinth, as he pointed derisively to a collection of huts about a stone's throw from the shore, and wondered what could induce any one, voluntarily, to abandon his "sea Cybele" for such as these! So few were they in number, and so small in size, that they had hitherto eluded our notice; nevertheless, they constituted, insignificant as they appeared, the town of Lutraki. The captain's interruption, awakening us from a dream of "Gods and god-like men," was as disagreeable as all such interruptions must be, alike indicating ignorance, and that want of sympathy, which is its natural result. But to the English traveller, who now scarcely dares to hope to find a spot left on Europe where he may look on Nature, unseared by cockneyfied sights and sounds, it ought not to form a very serious subject for complaint. To such an one, sick of Italian cities, where his countrymen assemble but to parade their _ennui_ and their vices, as of German steamboats, on the decks of which they listlessly throng, dividing their glances pretty equally between castles and cutlets--a rock and a _ragout_--how invigorating is the first sight of Greece, in all its primitive and majestically tranquil simplicity! And what a strangely felicitous epithet does that seem of "voiceless" bestowed by Byron on those shores where nothing is heard, save occasionally the plaintive cry of a sea-gull, and the very gentlest murmur from the waves. There, may be observed in perfection the truth of Chateaubriand's remark, that, "_le paysage n'est creé que par le soleil; c' est la lumière qui fait le paysage_." However, our present purpose is to narrate a short episode in modern Athenian life, rather than to dwell on scenes with which genius even can but imperfectly familiarize the world, either by pen or pencil. Near the solitary palm-tree, which grows in the middle of the highway affecting to communicate[11] between Athens and the Piræus, a polygonal structure has been built, which is entered through a dark, narrow passage leading from the road in front to a yard at its rear. A ladder fixed against the wall forms the usual mode of ingress to a very small room, which on a certain carnival night, not long ago, was crowded by hats, cloaks, and Greeks, both male and female; the former busily occupied in smoking, the latter in concocting some indescribable liquid intended as a light refreshment to wearied dancers. For the Maid of Athens--the quondam Mariana Macri--the actual Mrs. Black, was about to give a ball. From the before-mentioned small entrance-room the guests passed into the principal saloon, exactly coinciding in its strange shape with the exterior of the house. At the upper end an open door revealed a bed, on which shortly afterwards the orchestra, consisting of two fiddlers, took up their position, with knees protruding into the ball-room. Every thing was of the rudest, the most unadorned, and Robinson Crusoe-like, description. At the first glance it became evident that the "geraniums and Grecian balms," which an enthusiastic traveller once endeavored to magnify into "waving aromatic plants," had long ago withered from the hostess's possession, never to be replaced. But she, the fairest flower of all, with her two sisters, still retain no inconsiderable remnants of beauty; which is the more remarkable in a country where good looks vanish, and age arrives, so speedily. Indeed, good looks at all are rare among the continental Greek women; the celebrated beauties being usually islanders, and chiefly Hydriotes. Mrs. Black was attired in her coquettish native costume, consisting of a red fez, profusely ornamented with gold embroidery, placed on one side of the head; a long flowing silk petticoat, and a close-fitting, dark velvet jacket. A similar dress was worn by her sister, Madame Pittakis, the wife of the celebrated antiquary, and _guardian of the Acropolis_; in virtue of which magnificent title he receives two drachmæ (about 1_s._ 7_d._) per head for admission to the Parthenon. The third Grace, being a widow, was dressed entirely in black. The company comprised a motley assemblage in Frank, and the varying provincial Greek costumes, diversified here and there by personages in King Otho's uniform. But the dancers of the _beau sexe_ were extremely few, and, to say the least of them, very indifferent performers. However, what they needed in skill and energy, was amply made up by the vivacity of their graceful and vainglorious lords; who, despite the clouds of dust from the dirty floor, and equally dirty shoes, continued an almost ceaseless round of their national dance, the Romaïka, only pausing at intervals to recruit their strength with glasses of burning rakee, the beverage most in demand. Those bowls of Samian wine which figure so charmingly in poetry, form, alas! but sorry items in prosaic matter-of-fact repasts; and one feels, indeed, disposed to dash them any where _but_ down one's throat. Of the dancers, one of the most active was Mrs. Black's son, a handsome youth, apparently about eighteen years of age; together with her husband, who, from being a Norfolk farmer, is now elevated to the somewhat anomalous position of English Professor at the Athenian University. The fair Mariana herself is quiet and retiring; and seemingly little anxious to profit by the factitious interest with which Byron's transient admiration continues to invest her; for, in reply that night to a blundering Englishman's point blank queries concerning the poet, she answered, "_Non mi ricordo più di lui_." Soon after midnight the guests departed, at the imminent hazard of breaking their necks, either down Mrs. Black's ladder, or in the numerous holes that intervened between her residence and their respective abodes. But we could not help thinking, that, uncouth as had been the entertainment, it was more in accordance with the social position of a people whose Ministers are not always competent to read or write, and whose legislators occasionally enforce their political arguments by flinging their shoes in the faces of the opposition, than the exotic civilization of the gaudy little court, presided over by that loveliest of royal ladies, Queen Amalia. FOOTNOTES: [11] At the period of which I write, this road, although the principal approach to the capital, was impassable, and passengers pursued, instead, a devious and uncertain track through corn-fields, ditches, and the rocky bed of the Cyphissus. From the French of Eugene de Mirecourt, THE HISTORY OF A ROSE The gallery parallel to the course of the Seine, and which joins the Palace of the Tuileries to the Louvre, was designed by Philibert de l'Orme, and finished towards the end of 1663. On the 15th of January, 1664, Louis the Fourteenth descended into the vast greenhouses, where his gardener, Le Nôtre, had collected from all parts of the world the rarest and most beautiful plants and flowers. The air was soft and balmy as that of spring-time in the south. At the right of the great monarch stood Colbert, silently revolving gigantic projects of state; at the left was Lauzun, that ambitious courtier, who, not possessing sufficient tact to discern royal hatred under the mask of court favor, was afterwards destined to expiate, at Pignerol, the crime of being more amiable and handsomer than the king. "Messieurs," said Louis, showing to his companions a long and richly-laden avenue of orange trees, "are not these a noble present from our ancient enemy, Philip the Fourth, now our father-in-law? He has rifled his own gardens to deck the Tuileries; and the Infanta, we hope, when walking beneath these trees, will cease to regret the shade of the Escurial." "Sire," said Colbert gravely, "the Queen mourns a much greater loss--that of your majesty's affections." "_Parbleu!_" exclaimed Lauzun, gayly; "in order to lose any thing, one must first have possessed it. Now, if I don't mistake,--" "Silence! M. le Duc. M. de Colbert, my marriage was the work of Mazarin--quite sufficient to guarantee that the _heart_ was not consulted." The minister bowed, without replying. "As to you, M. de Lauzun," continued the king, "beware, henceforward, how you forget that Maria Theresa is Queen of France, and that the nature of our feelings towards her is not to be made a subject of discussion." "Sire, forgive my--" "Enough!" interrupted Louis, approaching a man, who, unmindful of the king's presence, had taken off his coat, in order the more easily to prune a tall flowering shrub. This was the celebrated gardener, Le Nôtre. Absorbed in some unpleasant train of thought, he had not heeded the approach of visitors, and continued to mutter and grumble to himself, while diligently using the pruning-knife. "What! out of humor?" asked Louis. Without resuming his coat, the gardener cried eagerly--"Sire, justice! This morning, the Queen Dowager's maids of honor came hither, and, in spite of my remonstrances, did an infinity of mischief. See this American magnolia, the only one your Majesty possesses. Well, Sire, they cut off its finest blossoms: neither oranges nor roses could escape them. Happily I succeeded in hiding from them my favorite child--my beautiful rose-tree, which I have nursed with so much care, and which will live for fifty years, provided care be taken not to allow it to produce more than one rose in the season." Then pointing to the plant of which he spoke, Le Nôtre continued: "'Tis the hundred-leaved rose, Sire! Hitherto I have saved it from pillage; but I protest, if such conduct can be renewed. "Come, come!" interposed the monarch, "we must not be too hard on young girls. They are like butterflies, and love flowers." "_Morbleu!_ Sire, butterflies don't break boughs, and eat oranges!" Louis deigned to smile at this repartee. "Tell us," he said, "who were the culprits?" "All the ladies, Sire! Yet, no. I am wrong. There was one young creature, as fresh and lovely as this very rose, who did not imitate her companions. The poor child even tried to comfort me, while the others were tearing my flowers: they called her Louise." "It was Mademoiselle de la Vallière," said Lauzun, "the young person whom your Majesty remarked yesterday in attendance on Madame Henriette." "She shall have her reward," said Louis. "Let Mademoiselle de la Vallière be the only maid of honor invited to the ball to be given here to-night." "A ball! Ah, my poor flowers!" cried Le Nôtre, clasping his hands in despair. Colbert ventured to remind his Majesty that he had promised to give an audience that evening to two architects, Claude Perrault and Liberal Bruant; of whom, the first was to bring designs for the Observatory; the second, a plan for the Hôtel des Invalides. "Receive these gentlemen yourself," replied the king; "while we are dancing, M. de Colbert will labor for our glory; posterity will never be the wiser! Only, in order to decorate these bare walls, have the goodness to send to the manufactory of the Gobelins, which you have just established, for some of the beautiful tapestry you praise so highly." Accordingly, to the utter despair of Le Nôtre, the ball took place in the greenhouses, metamorphosed, as if by magic, into a vast gallery, illumined by a thousand lustres, sparkling amid flowers and precious stones. Each fragrant orange-tree bore wax-lights amid its branches, and many lovely faces gleamed amongst the flowery thickets; while bright eyes watched the footsteps of the mighty master of the revel. The cutting north-east wind blew outside; poor wretches shivered on the pavement; but what did that matter while the court danced and laughed amid trees and flowers, and breathed the soft sweet summer air? Maria Theresa did not mingle in the scene. Timid and retiring, the young Queen fled from the noisy gayety of the court, and usually remained with her aunt, the Queen Mother. On this occasion, therefore, the ball was presided over by Madame Henriette, and by Olympia Mancini, Countess of Soissons. The gentle La Vallière kept, modestly, in the background, until espied by the King, beneath the magnolia, which her companions had so recklessly despoiled of its flowers, and which had cost them exclusion from the _fête_. The next moment the hand of Louise trembled in that of her sovereign; for Louis the Fourteenth had chosen the maid of honor for his partner in the dance. At the close of the evening, Le Nôtre, who had received private orders, brought forward his favorite rose-tree, transplanted into a richly-gilded vase. The poor man looked like a criminal approaching the place of execution. He laid the flower on a raised step near the throne; and on the front of its vase every one read the words which had formerly set Olympus in a flame--"To the most beautiful!" Many rival belles grew pale when they heard the Duc de Lauzun ordered by Louis to convey the precious rose-tree into the apartment of Mademoiselle de la Vallière. But Le Nôtre rejoiced, for the fair one gave him leave to come each day and attend to the welfare of his beloved flower. The rose-tree soon became to the favorite a mysterious talisman by which she estimated the constancy of Louis the Fourteenth. She watched with anxiety all its changes of vegetation, trembling at the fall of a leaf, and weeping whenever a new bud failed to replace a withered blossom. Louise had yielded her erring heart to the dreams of love, not to the visions of ambition. "Tender, and ashamed of being so," as Madame de Sevigné has described her, the young girl mourned for her fault at the foot of the altar. Remorse punished her for her happiness; and more than once has the priest, who read first mass at the chapel of Versailles, turned at the sound of stifled sobs proceeding from the royal recess, and seen there a closely-veiled kneeling figure. The fallen angel still remembered heaven. Thus passed ten years. At their end, the rose-tree might be seen placed on a magnificent stand in the Palace of St. Germain; but despite of Le Nôtre's constant care, the flower bent sadly on its blighted stem. Near it the Duchess de la Vallière (for so she had just been created) was weeping bitterly. Her most intimate friend, Françoise Athenaïs de Montemar, Comtesse de Montespan, entered, and exclaimed, "What, weeping, Louise! Has not the King just given you the _tabouret_ as a fresh proof of his love?" Without replying, La Vallière pointed to her rose. "What an absurd superstition!" cried Madame de Montespan, seating herself near her friend. "'Tis really childish to fancy that the affections of a Monarch should follow the destiny of a flower. Come, child," she continued, playfully slapping the fair mourner's hands with her fan, "you know you are always adorable, and why should you not be always adored!" "Because another has had the art to supplant me." Athenaïs bit her lip. Louise had at length discovered that her pretended friend was seeking to undermine her. On the previous evening the King had conversed for a long time with Madame de Montespan in the Queen's apartments. He had greatly enjoyed her clever mimicry of certain court personages; and when La Vallière had ventured to reproach him tenderly, he had replied-- "Louise, you are silly; your rose-tree speaks untruly when it calumniates me." None but Athenaïs, to whom alone it had been confided, could have betrayed the secret. And now, at the entrance of her rival, la Vallière hastened to dry up her tears, but not so speedily as to prevent the other from perceiving them. Her feigned caresses, and ill-disguised tone of triumph, provoked Louise to let her see that she discerned her treachery. But Athenaïs pretended not to feel the shaft. "Supplant you, dear Louise!" she said in a tone of surprise; "it would be difficult to do that, I should think, when the King is wholly devoted to you!" Rising with a careless air, she approached the rose-tree, drew from her glove an almost invisible phial, and, with a rapid gesture, poured on its footstalk the corrosive liquid which the tiny flask contained. This was the third time that Madame de Montespan had practised this unworthy manoeuvre, unknown to the sorrowful favorite, who, as her insidious rival well knew, would believe the infidelity of the King, only on the testimony of his precious gift. Next morning, Le Nôtre found the rose-tree quite dead. The poor old man loved it as if it had been his child, and his eyes were filled with tears as he carried it to its mistress. Then Louise felt, indeed, that no hope remained. Pale and trembling, she took a pair of scissors, cut off the withered blossom, and placed it under a crystal vase. Afterwards she prayed to Heaven for strength to fulfil the resolution she had made. The age of Louis the Fourteenth passed away, with its glory and with its crimes. France had now reached that disastrous epoch, when famine and pestilence mowed down the peaceful inhabitants, and Marlborough and Prince Eugene cut the royal army to pieces on the frontiers. One day, the death-bell tolled from a convent tower in the Rue St. Jacques, and two long files of female Carmelites bore, to her last dwelling, one of the sisters of their strict and silent order. When the last offices were finished, and all the nuns had retired to their cells, an old man came and knelt beside the quiet grave. His trembling hand raised a crystal vase which had been placed on the stone; he took from beneath it a withered rose, which he pressed to his lips, and murmured, in a voice broken by sobs:-- "Poor heart! Poor flower!" The old man was Le Nôtre; and the Carmelite nun, buried that morning, was _Sister Louise de la Miséricorde_, formerly Duchesse de la Vallière. From the London Times. THE STORY OF STUART OF DUNLEATH.[12] The story is truthful, plaintive, and full of beauty. At a very early age Eleanor Raymond loses her father, who has held a high appointment in India, and news of his death is brought while she is still a child to her mother's house in England. The bearer of the sad intelligence is David Stuart, of Dunleath, the penniless representative of a ruined Scottish house. David had been secretary to Sir John Raymond, whose eyes he had closed, and he comes to the widow recommended to her sisterly love, and the appointed guardian of her youthful daughter. Lady Raymond, it must be added, had been previously married, and is the mother of a burly sailor, promoted by Sir John's interest, and at sea at the time of his stepfather's death. We need not stay to dwell upon the feeble helplessness, physical and mental, of her Ladyship, or to contrast it with the overbearing disposition of her son, whose strong attachment to his mother is the redeeming feature of his character. The young ex-secretary and present guardian proceeds to the fulfilment of his duty, as it seems, with a conscientious mind. His ward is an heiress, and will be surrounded with trials of many kinds. She is fair to behold, ingenuous, trustful, is neglected by her surviving parent,--less from want of affection than from lack of interest--who, then, so suited for monitor and instructor both, as the highly-disciplined and well-informed Stuart himself? David has been a great traveller, has read much, and observed more. His intellect is commanding, and he is noble in form. He notes the quickness of his ward, is captivated by her girlish enthusiasm and untiring zeal. He will engage no masters when he can teach so accurately himself. She requires no instructors but the master from whom she learns so willingly and so well. Perilous devotion of a teacher (it may be of twenty) with so fond a pupil, though her years number but ten! What man of twenty-eight ever thought himself old in the presence of a maiden of eighteen? What girl of eighteen ever deemed herself too young to be wooed and won by a man of twenty-eight? For eight years guardian and ward live under one roof, partaking of the same influences, the same pleasures, the same daily occupations, and divided from all around them by the superiority of their own minds and the congeniality of their pursuits. Pity the poor country girl in constant presence of that cultivated intellect, fine understanding, and beaming countenance, never weary of smiling on her life. What wonder that as the flower expands in beauty it gradually unfolds to blissful consciousness? Eleanor secretly loves her guardian, and glories in the passion. He is poor, but she is rich beyond her wishes, did her wishes comprehend aught else but the desire to make him happy. Dunleath has passed from David Stuart's family. Eleanor has listened a thousand times to her guardian's fond regrets for his lost inheritance, and to the descriptions of that once happy home, the memory of which Stuart carries about with him to darken his best and brightest hours. What privilege to restore the coveted possession to its natural owner, and to enrich herself by parting with the gift! What happiness for the wife of David Stuart to bring back the smile to his cheek, and to purchase a joy for him for ever! Sweet dreamer! She dreams on, until reality begins. Her education ends. She goes at the instance of her mother and half-brother to London. She takes up her abode with a friend of her guardian's, the Lady Margaret Fordyce, and enters upon London life. Lady Margaret is a widow, young, benevolent, and beautiful. The fame of Eleanor's wealth is soon known to fortune-hunters, and suitors crowd about her. One, Sir Stephen Penrhyn, a coarse, sensual, and brutal personage, captivated by her beauty, and sufficiently wealthy himself, proposes in proper form. Godfrey, the half-brother, explains to David Stuart that Eleanor's family approve the match, and require his formal consent to the union. Stuart sends for Eleanor. He points out to her the advantages of the marriage and the wishes of her friends. The child trembles. She cannot marry, she hurriedly says, a man whom she does not love, and moreover she has seen another whom she prefers. Stuart has only one question to ask. "Is that other rich?" "He has no more," replies Eleanor, "than my father bequeathed to you." Stuart's heart beats guiltily as she speaks of her father's bounty, and, with a meaning which the girl fails to interpret, he anxiously bids her mention the favored man's name. The effort is too intense--her heart is nigh to bursting--she faints, and her mother enters her apartment to find her senseless in the arms of her tutor. The last object Eleanor beholds from her window that night, is David Stuart, looking up, with folded arms, to her room. She rises the next morning to find that Stuart has suddenly quitted the house, having left a sealed letter for her perusal. She reads it. The whole brilliant fabric of her girlhood tumbles down to earth long before she reaches its close. David Stuart loves her not. He is ignorant of her strong affection. He has dissipated her whole vast fortune. With the hope of realizing a sum sufficient to win back Dunleath, he has been tempted to speculations which have beggared his confiding ward. He recommends marriage with Sir Stephen Penrhyn, and takes leave of her for ever, for he has resolved upon self-murder. He asks her to approach the adjacent river on some day of peace and sunshine hereafter--the river which they have so often visited together in sunshine before--to breathe out forgiveness for him there, if she will, and then to forget him. A search is made near the spot indicated. A torn handkerchief hangs on one of the leafless branches; the river is dragged, but the body is not found. Eleanor knows David Stuart is dead, and the knowledge gives color and shape to her remaining days. Ruin has overtaken the family of Eleanor Raymond, but Sir Stephen Penrhyn is still content with his bargain. He proposed for the person, not for the fortune of Eleanor, and he will take her, beggared as she is. Eleanor's mother needs a home. To give her a sanctuary, Eleanor consents to become Lady Penrhyn. What blessing can attend the union? She gives birth to twins, one a sickly boy, the other ruddy, strong, and full of health. They grow up to become the mother's last and best consolation, and then she loses both by a violent death at one and the same moment. Sir Stephen has a remedy for parental sorrow, which but increases the great woe of Eleanor. What need to refer to it? Eleanor passes the lodge gate on her estate one day to be made aware of her husband's gross infidelity, and to behold living evidences of his guilt. Is her cup of sorrow full? Not yet. She utters no complaint, but bears her yoke of suffering meekly and resignedly, waiting patiently and beseechingly, rather than with murmurs, for the hour of dismissal. Light, however, is to gleam upon the checkered path before the journey closes. Another eight years may have elapsed since David Stuart took his last leave of Eleanor, and a stranger presents himself with unexpected news. Sir Stephen is from home, and a traveller has arrived at his house, with a letter from a distant country. Wondrous disclosure! Stuart lives! Mercifully saved on the night on which he attempted suicide, he proceeded to America, where by dint of years of steady exertion and co-operation with the authors of his former great calamity he contrived to re-establish the affairs of the bankrupt house with which he had connected himself, and to recover the whole of Eleanor's sacrificed patrimony. The bearer of the letter, Mr. Stuart's confidential agent, is authorized to restore her fortune, and to communicate all particulars respecting his past history. Oh, to see the man who had lately seen him living and safe in far off America! She hurries to meet him, and grasps the hand of--David Stuart. When Sir Stephen comes home, at Mr. Stuart's earnest request and against the wish of Eleanor, the guardian is introduced as Mr. Lindsay. "Nothing," he says, "is to be gained by self-betrayal," the more especially as he intends shortly to return to his adopted home. But before Stuart can make up his mind to departure, he is made aware, first of a circumstance which it is much to be wondered has never occurred to him before, viz.: the former perfect uncalculating devotion of his ward; and then of the more poignant fact that misery, suffering, insult, and cruelty had attended her whole married life. Intolerable injury reaches its height! Sir Stephen brings his bastards into his house, and commands his wife to show them respect. Wild with sorrow and indignation, she is advised by Stuart of Dunleath to leave her home, to go to London, to seek a lawyer of eminence, and to sue for a divorce. That obtained, _then_ will come, after much delay, that "happier future," of which the counsellor dares not trust himself to speak. The resolve is taken, the journey is made. But time brings reflection, and reflection, reason. It is not her husband's sin that took her from his roof, but the visionary sin of her own love; it was "the desire to swear at the altar of God to be true to David Stuart till death, that prompted her to plan her breaking of her first vow." She will not undo that vow to indulge her own undying love. Still urged by David Stuart to the act, she resists the great temptation, and retires meekly into solitude, to pay the full penalty of her submission to the call of virtue. To return to the pollution of her husband's house is not to be thought of. To partake of sin with David Stuart is a suggestion not more to be tolerated in her pure and agitated soul. One other drop, and the cup is full indeed. We have spoken of Lady Margaret Fordyce, but we have thought it unnecessary to mingle the history of that admirable person with the main current of our narrative. Lady Margaret, as we have said, is an old friend of Mr. David Stuart. She has taken a sisterly interest in the career of Eleanor, but has never ascertained from her the secret of her early and pure affection for her guardian. Inheriting a goodly fortune, the first care of Lady Margaret is to purchase the estate of Dunleath. She is not long mistress of it before the recovered property is in the hands of the man who, in his youth, became a criminal in order to possess it. David Stuart marries Lady Margaret Fordyce. Eleanor receives the intelligence while she is languishing abroad under the care of her foster-brother and his wife. The news goes silently to her heart as a lancet might travel thither, giving no external indication of the mortal wound inflicted. But the blood flows unseen within, and life stops, as it needs must, from the cruel laceration. Eleanor dies--still without a murmur. She had borne daily outrage from her husband, and confined the knowledge of her wrongs to her own bosom. She owed her sufferings to the first great fault of her guardian, yet she would never listen to one unkind word against his memory when she deemed him lost, and her love for him suffered no tarnish at any time for his offence. Shall she complain now that he is happy, and is master of Dunleath? She dies indeed broken-hearted, but good, gentle, uncomplaining, and forgiving, to the last. The characters that move in the various scenes that make up this melancholy play are sketched out with a skilful and well disciplined hand, and are creditable to the authoress's creative powers. Great knowledge of human nature is indicated throughout the work. There is nothing overdrawn; the plot is natural, and the style fluent and poetical. A word or two are necessary before we close, with reference to one remarkable phenomenon in connection with a leading personage in the drama. By a singular coincidence, not only Mrs. Norton, but every person in the book, is in perfect ignorance of a fact that is present to our mind almost from the first page to the last. David Stuart, of Dunleath, we grieve to say, is not only a very selfish gentleman, but a most accomplished rascal, yet not a human creature, but the reader and ourselves, has the least idea of it. Just look at him! Appointed the guardian of a helpless girl, he makes away with her fortune in a fruitless endeavor to enrich himself. He hears from the maiden's own lips that her heart is irrevocably bestowed upon a man whom she adores, yet he coolly recommends her to form an alliance with a brute for whom she cares nothing at all, in order that she may recover the wealth of which he, the adviser, has deliberately robbed her. Returning to England, and taking up his residence with the husband of his ward, he places the poor girl in a cruelly false position, and all but blasts her reputation, by compelling her to keep a secret, the communicating which could at the worst only occasion him a very trifling inconvenience. Quitting the husband's house, and learning quite soon enough for the lady's happiness that he had been the object of Eleanor's early choice, he advises an action for divorce, promising his hand in the event of a triumphant verdict. Finding the wife more honest than himself, he smothers his affection and looks elsewhere for crumbs of comfort. He finds them at the table of Lady Margaret Fordyce, whom he condescendingly weds, because, we are compelled to suppose, she has Dunleath to throw into the bargain. That Stuart is unnaturally described we will not say; but that Mrs. Norton should be so profoundly ignorant of his faults--should take such pains to hold him up as a high-minded gentleman--that Lady Margaret should imagine him a paragon of perfection and positively adore him--that her brother, the Duke of Lanark, should be "fond of him,"--and that an incalculable amount of respect and love should be thrown away by all parties concerned upon so worthless an object is, we must confess, somewhat disgusting in an age when even the highest merit fails too often of securing its deserts. One good action alone saves David Stuart from utter detestation. He recovered and restored the fortune of Eleanor Raymond--but many a transported forger has been capable of heroism as lofty, with incitements to honesty about as pure. FOOTNOTES: [12] _Stuart of Dunleath_: by Mrs. Norton. New-York, Harpers, 1851. _Authors and Books._ The student of classic mythology, who loves with Hammer Purgstall and Kreutzer to dive into the oriental depths of ancient myths, will welcome the recent appearance of a work by LUDWIG MERCKLIN, entitled _Die Talos-Sage, und das Sardonische Lachen_. The story of Talus, and the Sardonic Laughter--a contribution to the history of Grecian legend and art--St. Petersburg and Leipsic, 1851. In this work we learn that the Cretan Talus was beyond doubt the Phoenician sun-god, and that he was identical with the Athenian of the same name. The Cretan Talus, according to the mythological account, was a brazen image, which Vulcan gave to Minos, or Jupiter to Europa. He defended the island by heating himself in the fire and embracing his enemies. More literal commentators have attempted to prove that Talus was a brazen statue or beacon, like the Colossus of Rhodes, placed by the Phoenicians on the Cretan promontory. The Athenian Talus, inventor of the compass and saw, was slain by his uncle Dædalus, who was envious of his talent. The gods changed him to a partridge. After identifying the twain, Mercklin attempts to prove that the elements of this myth are to be sought in the ancient dogmas of lustration, and that they may be still further referred to the worship of Apollo. In connection with this Talus legend, he closely scrutinizes the account of the so called Sardonic laughter, and its relation to the same religious rites. "In conclusion, he discusses those ancient works of art which illustrate this subject, namely, the medals of Phaistos and the celebrated vase of Ruvo, of which he gives a new, and on the whole certainly correct account." In connection with this work we may notice another which appeared in April, entitled _Bellerophon_, by HERMAN ALEX. FISCHER. From the subject we infer that this Fischer is identical with _Vischer_ who published three years ago one of the best _Æsthetics_ on philosophies of art, ever written even in Germany. We are told in a short notice, that the author attempts, by a study of the myth of Bellerophon and those works of art relating to it, including the etymological signification of the name, to establish the identity of Bellerophon with the sun-god. [Greek: Phontês] is by him derived or varied from [Greek: Thantês] and [Greek: Bellero], explained as identical with [Greek: Helios], [Greek: elê], [Greek: selas], and [Greek: selênê]. * * * * * Some anonymous scribbler in Berlin has recently put forth a treatise on free trade, entitled _Tempus omnia revelat_: of which a reviewer, in conjecturing the cause of its publication, remarks, that "as it treats generally of every thing else besides free trade, it is probable that the Free Trade Union have not deemed it worth while to hear him through." * * * * * Among the more recent curiosities of German medical literature, we find that JOS. HEINRICH BEISEN of Quedlinburg, has written a work on homoepathy as applicable to the diseases of swine. J. HOPPE of Magdeburg, has set forth another, entitled _Linen and cotton Garments considered in a medical light_, which is highly recommended by a competent judge. C. GEROLD, of Vienna, publishes for the Count (and physician--we know not which is the more honorable title)--VON FEUCHTERSLEBEN, a singular book, entitled _Zur Diätetik der Seele, Valere aude!_ which is not, however, as one might infer from the title, a theory of the method whereby the health of the soul itself may be preserved; but the art of regulating our physical well being by a correct management and strengthening of our mental powers. Count Feuchtersleben had already attained a reputation as a writer, and the work referred to, though in many particulars superficial, is not without merit. Last and least, Dr. GIDEON BRECHER, hospital physician at Pressnitz, publishes through Asher & Co., in Berlin, an octavo on _Transcendental Magic, and the supernatural methods of curing Disease, as given in the Talmud_, in which he enters largely into Theo-Dæmon and Angelology; as well as dreams, visions, biblical seraphims, cosmic and magic influences of the soul, with a scattering fire of amulets, spells and charms. We congratulate the medical faculty on this important addition to the literature of the healing art. * * * * * No department of ancient art is more interesting, or indeed more necessary to the student, than that relating to theatres and other aids to the practical illustration of dramatic art. No characteristic of modern continental life, is so striking to the traveller as the earnestness with which the opera is discussed by all classes, and its powerful influence upon social life in nearly every relation. But even the earnest attention which is directed at the present day in Naples or Vienna to some new incarnation of the all governing spirit of amusement, is nothing when compared with the same as it existed among the ancients, to whom it was literally _life_. '_Panem et circenses_'--bread and the public games--with these the Roman citizen of the later empire, like the modern lazzarone, with his maccaroni and San Carlino, could dream away life and be happy. Mindful of the importance of this branch of ancient art in its manifold relations, FRIED. WIESELER has recently set forth a book,[13] declared by competent authority to be the best in the world on this subject. He has chosen judiciously from the immense mass of material extant; and according to the prescribed limits conveyed all the information possible. "The first part of the work embraces a series of well executed plans and outlines of ancient theatres, of different countries and ages, with every requisite detail, followed by engravings and descriptions of every particular pertaining to the representation of plays. This is succeeded by an admirable collection of masks, scenes, figures and costumes, illustrative not only of the ancient drama, but also of its subdivisions of comedy, tragedy, the satyr-drama and the Italian phylace, with singing and music. The illustrations are admirably accurate--more particularly the colored plates of the Cyrenæan wall paintings, and the mosaics of the Vatican, by which the rare and costly work of MILLI is rendered unnecessary." More than one eminent German authority speaks in terms of high praise, of the accuracy and unwearied erudition which characterize the accompanying test. * * * * * The second and third parts of the _Holzschnitte Derühmter Meister_, or woodcuts of celebrated masters, have made their appearance, containing, 1st. smaller woodcuts by Hans Holbein the younger (A. D., 1498-1554), being selections from the Dance of Death, and the Peasants' and Children's Alphabets; 2d. a large engraving after Michael Wohlzemuth (1434-1519), being the Glorification of Christ, and a Madonna and child of Hans Bürkmayer's; also, from the Dutch school, after Dirk de Bray (ob. 1680), a portrait of the artist's father, and the celebrated engraving of Rembrandt's, known as the philosopher with the hour-glass. For the information of artists we mention that these copies are executed with exquisite accuracy, and that the work, though gotten up in every particular in the most elegant manner, is afforded at a very moderate price. * * * * * Recent German poetry offers little for remark. TELLKAMPF has published a poem in hexameters in the style of Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea, founded upon an incident in the battle of Leipsic, called _Irmengard_. It has passed into a second edition. EMIL LEONHARD, a poet not unknown, has written a poem upon Bürger, whose wild life had already furnished Müller subject for a romance and Mosenthal for a drama, and which is too unpleasant to be made attractive even by the poetic talent of Leonhard. We note, however an interesting work, entitled _Prussia's Mirror of Honor_, a collection of Prussian national songs, from the earliest period to the year 1840. They have much allusion to old Fritz, and are interesting as an indication of the popular feeling, which is always expressed in such songs, toward that national hero. * * * * * An interesting contribution to contemporary history is I. VENEDY'S _Schleswig-Holstein in 1850_. A diary. * * * * * HERMAN FRITSCHE, of Leipsig, has recently published a work by one SOHNLAND SCHUBAUER, entitled _Consecrated souvenirs of the virtues of our earliest ancestors: Collected with the aid of a Philologist_. This book we are told contains (though we should never have inferred it from the title), a collection and explanation of old German proper names, both masculine and feminine. The author in his preface gives it as his opinion that since the introduction of Christianity "a dreadful thousand-year-long night has brooded over Germany, and that the best method of dissipating this darkness, would be to revive the old German proper names!" "The poet discovers the sanctity of these primitive German names in the holy star-night, and he will, the higher these rise to the ideal, find in them a full accord with holy nature." His principal sources are the verbal assertions of Dr. ALEX. VOLLMER: for example in page 1st, where he questions whether "ANNO" signifies a year, and decides that it is originally German, from _an_, _un_ and _unst_; to which add a G, whence results _Gunst_, meaning good fortune, success, or favor!--a bit of ingenuity which reminds us of several scraps of Horne Tooke's comic philology, as well as the glove-maker's motto, _Kunst macht Gunst_--skill makes (or wins) success. Dr. Vollmer is an amiable and hard-working scholar of immense erudition, and possessed of a boundless enthusiasm on the subject of early German and Gothic dialects. We regret that his learning should be lent to the support of such singular vagaries. * * * * * CARL GUTZKOW, who seemed by his first literary failure, the _Walley_, in 1835, to have sunk irretrievably, but has since risen to a brilliant eminence by the publication of _Uriel Akasta_, the _Zopf und Schwert_, and other writings, has recently put forth another, noticed as the _Ritter von Geiste_. G. REIMER at Berlin, has published the first volume of a second edition of BÖCKH'S inestimable work, _Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener_--the political economy of the Athenians. Prof. ANT. GUBITZ, the celebrated wood engraver, publisher of an annual comic almanac, and in fact the father of all the popular German illustrated almanacs of the present day, has written and published three dramas, entitled _The Emperor Henry and his Sons_, _Sophonisba_, and _Johann der Ziegler_. * * * * * _Macchiavelli und der Gang der Europäischen Politik_ (Macchiavelli, and the Course of European Policy), by THEODORE MUNDT, is the last discussion of the political system of the "Regent of the Devil." The doctrines of _The Prince_ Herr Mundt supposes have influenced the late reactionary events in Germany, and he thinks that work will again be the favorite text-book of despots. His exposition of the character and doctrines of Machiavelli, and his influence on European policy, is an interesting historical study. The German press is no less prolific of novels than that of England and America. We observe the last month _Stories and Pictures from the Bohemian Forest_, by JOSEPH RANK, a romance of provincial life, not without interest; _The Children of God_, by MAX RING, a story of the court of Augustus the Strong, and of the origin of the sect of the Herrnhutters. Its sketches of character are called sprightly and successful. _The Castle of Ronceaux_, from an old manuscript, is an episode from the history of the Huguenot war. A piquant title is that of Madame IDA VON DURINGSFELD'S book, _A Pension_ (boarding-house) _upon the Lake of Geneva, two Romances in one house_, which recalls the stories of the Countess Hahn-Hahn before she ceased writing pleasant tales for us, and began histories of religious experience. But with less talent, the present author has more knowledge of men. The book is _sent la Politique_ a little too much. But German ladies who write books love to say a word in them about every thing. _A Pilgrim and his Companions_ is still another romance, by LORENZO DIEFFENBACH, not of a religions tone, as the title suggests, but purely political. It is a story of the German "March-Days," the days of Revolution. The author is bold and large in thought, but the want of sharp outline in his characters indicates the poor or unpractised artist. _The Oath_ is the appropriately melodramatic title of a romance of the Venetian Inquisition, by DAVID. It is well written, simple and natural. Remarkable qualities with so passionate a theme. * * * * * LUDWIG BAUER has published through G. Jonghaus of Darmstadt, a work which reminds us of the _Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda_, being the _Urkundenbuch des Klosters Arnsburg in d. Wetterau_, containing as yet unprinted documents of the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, relating to the history of the monastery. We are happy to observe that notwithstanding the check given to general literature by the recent political troubles in Germany, this department of mediæval antiquity is rapidly advancing. When we remember the immense amount of material as yet unavailable which is still requisite to form an accurate history of the middle ages, with _reliable_ accounts of its varied literature and customs, or when we reflect on the spoil and devastation which every day brings to the ancient hoard, we should feel grateful to those untiring antiquaries, who thus rescue a few literary gems from the flood of time. * * * * * The _Manuscripts of Peter Schlemil_, naturally awakens attention, but proves to be an extravaganza of LOUIS BECHSTEIN, humorous and intelligent withal. But the humor is not intelligible, and the intelligence is not humorous, says a sharp reviewer. * * * * * PROF. O. L. B. WOLFF, well known to every amateur German scholar in this country and England, as the publisher of the celebrated _Poetischer und Prosaischer Hausschatz_, or Poetic and Prosaic Home Treasury, has edited and published by Otto Wigand of Leipsic, that singular romance of _Caspar von Grimmelshausen_, first printed in 1669, which is, as a picture of German social life during the period of the thirty years' war, extremely interesting. We need, however, hardly caution our lady readers against its perusal. Its title is as follows: _Der abenteuerliche Simplicius Simplicissimus_. The adventurous Simplicius Simplicissimus. That is the true, copious, and very remarkable biography of an odd, wonderful and singular man, STERNFELS VON FUCHSHEIM, how he passed his youth in Spessart, of his varied and remarkable destinies in the thirty years' war, and of the numerous sufferings, sorrows and dangers which he experienced, with his ultimate good fortune. * * * * * A German critic, who of course belongs to the conservative party, writing under date of June 16, says of Miss HELEN WEBER, the inventor of the hybrid costume which _Punch_ satirizes as an _American_ absurdity, that "except in a certain disregard of public decencies there is nothing by which to distinguish her from the mass of vulgar women of the middling classes; she is about thirty-five years of age, and appears to be willing to do or say any thing that may be required for the attraction of observation; from her writings, throw out what is stolen or compiled, and there is nothing left to evince even a mediocrity of talent." This is less favorable than an account we published in an early number of the _International_ (vol. i. 463), but it may be quite as just. * * * * * When Professor ZAHN sojourned in Naples, he took an active part in the excavations of Pompeii--studies which eventually led to the publication of his meritorious work on this subject. At the same time he faithfully reported the progress of these operations to old Goethe. The poet's replies to these communications on the ancient paintings of Pompeii, its theatres, and other buildings, were replete with those sparks of genius he exhibited on every occasion. This rather voluminous correspondence, long laid up at Naples, has been lately discovered, and will be published by Professor Zahn. * * * * * _Geschichte der Deutschen Stadte und des Deutschen Burgerthums_ (History of the Cities of Germany, and of German Citizenship), by F. W. BARTHOLD, is the first of a series of painstaking and exhausting books of German historical materiel, in course of publication by Weizel, of Leipsic. The style of treatment resembles that adopted in _The Pictorial History of England_, which will make the work easy of reference. * * * * * DR. CORNILL publishes a dissertation upon Louis Feuerbach and his position toward the religion and philosophy of the present time. The author finds in every thing the famous professor does a farther religious development. But it is very doubtful if Feurbach has advanced at all since his memorable essay in the Halle _Book of the Year_, upon the relation of philosophy to theology. Since then he has only varied this theme, and his last work, upon the transcendental thesis _Man is what he eats_, in which the worthy Professor with Teutonic energy seeks to seduce the immorality of the age from the potato disease, the German critics declare to be totally devoid of that bold and thoughtful spirit which formerly fought so well for the emancipation of the understanding from its long scholastic thraldom. * * * * * A most mystical and metaphysical treatise is that of ERNST, _A new Book of the Planets, or Mikro and Makrokosmos_. It sings with Klopstock of the souls of the stars. It speculates with Jacob Böhme, with Retif de la Bretonne, with the Rabbins, and other mighty mystics, upon the origin of thought. The essential difference in speculative science between ether and thought, the unity of matter and spirit, the eternity and evanescence of matter, the thoughts, feelings, and sensations of God, and the final explication of the trinity. All this and more. In fine, says a German critic, it is a very jocose book, strongly to be commended for the consolation of political prisoners. * * * * * WALDMEISTER'S _Bridal-Tour_, a story of the Rhine, Wine, and Travel, is the pleasant and appropriate title of the last book of OTTO ROQUETTE. It is the story of a spring tour along the Rhine. The fire of its wine, the golden gleam of its vineyards, the faint, penetrant delicacy of the grape-blossom, the luring look of the Love-Lei, the mystery of ruins, the distant baying of the wild huntsman's pack,--they all breathe, and bloom, and sound through the little book. It is a genuine song of spring. The poet is young,--he feels, dreams, and sings--what needs poet more? * * * * * A German version of Copway the Indian's work is announced under the title of _Kah-ge-ga-gah-bouh, Hauptling d'Ojibway Nation: Die Ojibway Eroberung_: Translated from the English, by N. ADLER, and published at Frankfort-on-the-Main. This we presume is an after-shot from the Peace Convention. * * * * * Among the new books announced in Germany we see _The Institutions of the United States, and their Lessons of American Experience to Europe_. It appears to be anonymous. One or two other German works on this country we shall notice particularly in our next number. * * * * * Russian literature is gradually made accessible to the general student by German and French translations, and we shall soon begin to learn more of the mysterious despotism that towers like a fateful cloud along the eastern horizon of Europe, in its influence upon social and artistic life. The publisher Brockhaus of Leipsic has recently issued a collection in three volumes of the Russian novelists. Yet, whether from the want of tact in the selection or from the absence of characteristic qualities in the tales themselves, the authors are weakest in their delineation of popular life and manners, in this resembling fine society in Russia, which ignores _Russianism_, and believes in Parisian manners, language, and life, every thing but Parisian politics. Among the authors whose works are quoted we note ALEXANDER PUSHKIN, the pride of Russian literature, born in 1799, and died in a duel in 1837. HELENA HAHN, born in 1815, who, married at sixteen to a soldier, travelled through a large part of Russia, and died in 1832. Her novels were first published after her death, but seem to be not of the highest merit. ALEXANDER HERZEN, born in 1812, has zealously studied Hegel, and written a series of humorous tales, the best of which is called _Taras Bulwa_. Since 1847 he has been a wanderer, pursued as a democrat, and now proposes to visit the United States. * * * * * The Emperor of Austria has appointed AARON WOLFGANG MESSELEY, a Jew, Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Prague. M. Messeley had long filled the chair of the Hebrew Language and Literature in the same University. The numbers of Jews now attached as professors to the different universities and educational establishments in the Austrian states is seventeen; of whom fifteen were named by the late Emperor, and two by the present. * * * * * ALEXANDER DUMAS, who, as a simple story writer is perhaps deserving of the highest place in the temple of letters--whose _Three Guardsmen_, with its several continuations, making some twenty volumes, is the most entertaining, and in certain characteristics the best sustained novel written in our days,--announces in Paris a new tale, _Un Drame de '93_, and he occupies the _feuilleton_ of the _Presse_ every week with another, _Ange Pitou_, of which the scene and time are also France during the first revolution. * * * * * MADAME CHARLES REYBAUD, authoress of _The Cadet de Calobriéres_, has just published another story, _Faustine_, wherein provincial life in France is daguerreotyped. * * * * * Among the announcements in Paris we notice one of the tenth volume of THIERS'S _Histoire du Consulat_. The eleventh volume is also said to be nearly ready. * * * * * M. MIGNET has nearly completed his _Life and Times of Mary, Queen of Scots_, the third work on the subject produced in France within a year and a half. Mignet, however, is the most eminent person who has ever essayed this service, and he has had some peculiar and important advantages. He has made use of the collection of letters published by Prince Labanoff; of researches made in the State Paper Office of England by Mr. Tytler, and of other unpublished documents which he has himself collected, in order to form more correct opinions with regard to some of the darkest and most controverted events in the queen's life. These documents, chiefly from the archives of Spain, (to which M. Mignet was enabled to obtain access only at the express request of the French Government,) are of much importance, for they bring to light the negotiations carried on with Philip II. for the deliverance of Mary from her imprisonment--a part of her history to which previous biographers have paid little attention. * * * * * In the political literature of France a new pamphlet by CORMENIN is remarkable. It is entitled _Revision_, and its substance is this: Having recounted the history of the Republican Charter, elaborated during many months by men especially delegated to the work, and by a suffrage really universal, debated long and earnestly in the committee, amended by the eighteen delegates of the assembly, reviewed by the commission, deliberated by the chamber, discussed by the press,--M. Cormenin establishes that this constitution, so elaborately matured, if it has nothing which promises eternal duration, yet satisfies all the conditions essential to present permanence, and will well lead the nation to that moment, when, personal passion being somewhat allayed, it may be wisely and conscientiously reviewed. This is the pith of the pamphlet. It appeals to no passions, and justifies no excess, and is a notable and intelligent effort at the resolution of the question. * * * * * M. DE MARCELLUS, an old French ambassador, has published two volumes entitled _Literary Episodes in the East_. His oriental travel dates back as far as 1818, but the beautiful vision has pursued him ever since, and he knew no better way to lay it than by painting it, and making it real. The volume opens with a confession that all travel and all scenery have only reminded him most strongly of his eastern experiences, and that now, chilled with age, and hoping nothing of the future, he has especial pleasure in recurring to the past. It is a series of colloquial, familiar sketches and anecdotes, and will doubtless be a pleasant companion for the eastern tour. M. de Marcellus will follow this work with _A Collection of Popular Songs in Greece_. * * * * * VICTOR HUGO, who has always been opposed to the punishment of death, and whose _Last Days of Condemned_, one of his most powerful fictions, had a large influence every where against the death penalty, was lately before the Court of Assizes in Paris as an advocate in behalf of his son, who was on trial for publishing an article calculated to bring into disrespect the administrators of the law. The veteran poet was allowed to deliver an elaborate and characteristic harangue in defence of the article. He tasked himself for his most brilliant antithetical rhetoric, denouncing the scaffold, and the legislation of death. The son, however, was convicted, and sentenced to a fine of five hundred francs and imprisonment for six months. Victor Hugo has published a volume containing twelve speeches delivered on various occasions while he has been a _representant du peuple_. They are on the Bonaparte family, the punishment of death, universal suffrage, the liberty of the press, the affairs of Rome, &c., and are all written with the author's customary fine rhetoric; indeed in thought and style they are among his best performances. * * * * * MADAME BOCARME, who probably was a party to the late murder of her brother, for which her husband the Count de Bocarme is to be executed, was an intimate friend of Balzac. The great novelist dedicated one of his works to her, and another of them was written in the Château de Bitremont. Balzac, while on a visit to the château, was taken to see a farmer, and, as usual, interested himself so much in the cattle, that after an hour's conversation he was amused to find that, the farmer had taken him, H. de Balzac, the brilliant Parisian, for a cattle dealer! The forthcoming memoirs of Balzac will perhaps contain something about this woman, who seems to have won for herself the execration of all France. * * * * * The Paris correspondent of the _Literary Gazette_ affirms that, on the whole, the French press has gained by the regulation requiring signatures to original articles. The abler class of contributors have profited greatly, as they have obtained a position in popular esteem, and consequently a claim on their employers, which years of anonymous drudgery would not have secured. Nor have readers, it is remarked, any cause to complain; for "men, remembering that 'those who live to please must please to live,' take far greater pains with the articles to which they have to attach their names, than to those which are unsigned." * * * * * M. ARAGO, the great astronomer, who is passing the summer at the mineral springs of Vichy, is nearly blind, and probably will entirely lose his sight. His brother, who is likewise a man of extraordinary abilities, has been blind many years. * * * * * GEORGE SAND dedicates her last performance to DUMAS, "because," she says, "I wish to protest against the tendency that may be attributed to me of regarding the absence of action as a systematic reaction against the school of which you are the chief. Far from me such a blasphemy against movement and life! I am too fond of your works; I read them and listen to them with too much attention and emotion; I am too much an artist in feeling to wish the slightest lessening of your triumphs. Many believe that artists are necessarily jealous of each other. I pity those who believe it, pity them for having so little of the artist as not to understand that the idea of assassinating our rivals would be that of our own suicide." * * * * * _A Critical History of the Philosophical School of Alexandria_ is the title of a work of serious philosophical claims, by M. VACHEROT. He had already published two volumes analyzing and developing the doctrines of the Alexandrian philosophy. In the present volume he has traced its influence upon the subsequent schools, passing in review Plotinus and his successors. The scope of the work invites and permits a discussion of the profoundest problems that now agitate the world of thought, and M. Vacherot has the credit of acquitting himself adequately and admirably of his task. * * * * * ROUSSEAU, on his death, left several papers to his friend Moulton, and the heirs of that person, in 1794, caused them to be deposited in the public library of Neufchatel, in Switzerland. There they have remained unknown until a few weeks since, when M. Bovet, of that town, examined them, and found that they embraced an essay entitled _Avant-propos et Preface a mes Confessions_, which has just been printed. Of course it will appear with all future editions of the Confessions. * * * * * BALZAC, besides his _Memoirs_, which are soon to appear in Paris, it is now stated left two other works, one a romance called _Les Paysans_, finished only a short time before his death, the other a collection of confidential letters to a lady, in which, it is said, he took pleasure in laying bare the secrets of his heart, and his real opinion of men and things. * * * * * M. NISARD was a few weeks ago received into the _Academie Française_. He succeeds the late M. Feletz, and has written a history of French literature, a book of _études_ on the Latin poets, and superintended a translation of all the Latin writers. * * * * * M. GAUTIER, formerly a deputy from the Gironde, a peer of France, Minister of Finance, and sub-governor of the Bank of France, has published a volume _On the Causes which disturb Order in France, and the means of Reëstablishing it_. * * * * * GUIZOT is about to publish the _Histoire des Origines du Gouvernement Représentatif_. This is a new work, being the revised issue of his lectures from 1820 to 1822, which have never yet been printed, except in the imperfect _comptes rendus_ of the _Journal des Cours Public_. * * * * * _Le Drame de '93_, by ALEXANDRE DUMAS, turns out to be a narrative of the Revolution, in his rapid dramatic style. * * * * * M. PIERRE DUFOUR is publishing a work of great value entitled the _History of Prostitution among all Nations and at all Times_. * * * * * A cheap edition of the chief writings on affairs, by EMILIE DE GIRARDIN, is published in eleven volumes. * * * * * _Mademoiselle de Belle Isle_, written by Dumas for Mademoiselle Mars--a sprightly, dissolute comedy, full of the life which animates the _Mémoires_ of the time, and complicated in its construction with the skill of a Lope de Vega--was translated in New-York a year or two ago by Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler, and brought out at the Astor Place Opera House. Our theatre-going people, however, declined a piece so broadly licentious, and it was soon withdrawn. We see that another version of it has been made in London, and that it has been played there very successfully. * * * * * The London editors lack something of the honesty of the Americans: they never give credit for an article, but if making up an entire number of a periodical from American sources, would permit their readers to suppose it all original. _Sharpe's Magazine_ is particularly addicted to this infirmity, and the July issue of it contains our excellent friend the Rev. F. W. Shelton's paper on _Boswell, the Biographer_, which appeared originally in _The Knickerbocker_. * * * * * The REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY, Jr., rector of Eversley, best known to American readers as the author of the Chartist novel of _Alton Locke_, and _Yeast, a Problem_, has been an industrious writer. He is now about fifty years of age, and besides the above works and a vast number of papers in _Fraser's Magazine_, he has published _The Christian Socialist(!)_, _Politics for the People_, _Village Sermons_, and _The Saint's Tragedy_--in point of art the best of his performances. We see by the English papers that he preached a sermon lately in Fitzroy Square, London, on the "Gospel Message to the Poor." It was so full of "socialistic" thoughts, and so severe on the richer classes, that the rector of the church, when he had finished, arose in his pew, and protested vehemently against its doctrines. The congregation dispersed in great disorder. We doubt whether any living Englishman is capable of surpassing Sir Bulwer Lytton's version of the Ballads of Schiller, but Mr. EDGAR ALFRED BOWRING, a son of the well-known Dr. Bowring who has published translations from so many languages, has just published a volume entitled _The Poems of Schiller complete, including all his early Suppressed Pieces, attempted in English_. The word "complete" expresses its difference from the many Schillers in English that have previously appeared. An _Anthology_ edited by Schiller in 1782, when he had just commenced his career, contains several poems which the critics recognize as his. This remained unknown, however, except as a literary curiosity, till a few months ago; and several of the poems had been omitted in all the collections of Schiller's works. But the republication of the _Anthology_ has brought to light the suppressed poems (in number twenty-eight, comprising nearly twelve hundred verses), and those are translated for the first time by Mr. Bowring, whose versions are much commended. * * * * * Among the new books of English verse, some of the most noticeable are _The Fair Island, in Six Cantos_, by EDMUND PEEL: in the Spenserian measure, with passages of fair description; _Ballad Romances_, by R. H. HORNE, author of "Orion," &c.--a book containing genuine poetry; _The Reign of Avarice_, an allegorical satire, in four cantos; _Philosophy in the Fens_, in the style of Peter Pindar; and _Marican_, a Chilian tale, by HENRY INGLIS. * * * * * WARREN, the author of "Ten Thousand a Year," has just published a new novel under the title of _The Lily and the Bee, a Romance of the Crystal Palace_. The name savors of the huckster, and we shall look for a more melancholy failure than his last previous performance. * * * * * MR. LEVI WOODBURY'S _Miscellaneous Writings, Addresses, and Judicial Opinions_, will be published in four octavo volumes, by Little & Brown, of Boston. * * * * * The _North American Review_ for the July quarter is in many respects characteristic. Six months after every Review published in Great Britain had had its paper on Southey, and when the subject is quite worn out, the _North American_ furnishes us with a leading article upon it, in which there is neither an original thought nor a new combination of thoughts that are old. Colton's _Public Economy_ gives a title to an article, in which the book is treated superciliously, and some ideas by Henry C. Carey are presented as the original speculations of the reviewer. It is deserving of remark that the _Past and Present_, and more recent works of Mr. Carey, which among thinking men throughout the world have commanded more attention than any other writings in political philosophy during the last five years, have never been even referred to in this periodical, which arrogates to itself the leadership of American literature. The eighth article of the number is on the Unity of the Human Race, and considering the place it occupies in the _North American Review_, for July, 1851, it is contemptible. It is based on five publications made in England previous to 1847, and ignores all the research and discussion since that time, notwithstanding the facts that the subject never was so amply, so profoundly, or so luminously discussed as during the last year--that the very writers referred to in the article have for the chief part published their most important treatises upon it since 1847--that within six months its literature has received large accessions in France, Germany, and Italy,--and that in _our own country_, of whose intellectual advancement this Review is bound to give some sort of an index, the four years since Latham's "Present State and Recent Progress of Ethnological Philosophy" appeared, have furnished important works by Albert Gallatin, Mr. Hale of the Exploring Expedition, the Rev. Dr. Bachman, the Rev. Dr. Smyth, and several others, all of which should have been considered in any new, especially in any American _resume_ of the discussion. Johnston's _Notes on North America_ is treated with a spleen excited by the author's refusal to recognize the greatness assumed for certain persons connected with Harvard College, and Mr. Bowen is weak enough to say, or to permit a contributor to say, "we _understand_(!) Mr. Johnston has a high reputation," &c. Pish! And what does the reader suppose is the theme--the fresh, before unheard-of theme--of another paper? what new star, in the heaven of mind, demanded most the exploration and illustration of the _North American Review_, for this July quarter, in 1851? The best guesser of riddles would not in fifty years hit upon Mr. Gilfillan's book of rigmarole entitled _The Bards of the Bible_, but this performance, which had been criticised in every other quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily, in the English language, that would descend to it, crowds out the subjects of "great pith and moment" upon which a periodical of such claims should have spoken with wise authority. Our own country is full of suggestive topics for thoughtful, earnest, and learned men, and it is fit that the closet should send out its instruction to calm the turbulence awakened by tempests from the rostrum--that affairs should be subjected to the criticism of experience, and that what is new in discovery, in opinion, or in suggestion, should have quick and popular recognition and justice. We need--we must have--for this purpose a powerful and really national _Review_, to reflect and guide the life and aspirations of the country. * * * * * We mentioned some time ago that Mr. WILLIAM W. STORY, a son of the late Justice Story, was preparing for the press a life of his father, and we now understand that the work will soon be ready, in two large octavo volumes, to be published by Little & Brown. It will come too late. Such a memoir would have been very well received any time within a year after Judge Story's death: now the public mind is settled in an unalterable conviction that Judge Story was an over-rated man, and a consideration of the processes by which his fame was acquired is likely for a long time to sink it below its just level. We but echo the opinion of more than one eminent person connected with the very school in which he was a teacher, as well as the common judgment of the leading men of the profession in all the states, when we say that Judge Story was not a great lawyer; two or three of his books were good, but the rest were made for cash profits, and sold by means of ingenious advertising. Now they will answer for the country courts, and the inferior courts of the cities, where no opposing lawyer has enough wit and knowledge to oppose Story against Story, but they are no longer weighty authorities, and every term they are found to be of declining influence. As a man of letters, Judge Story's rank will be still lower. He has left nothing to carry his name into another age. Yet he was a man of much professional learning, of taste, sagacity, an extraordinary command of his resources, and a most amiable and pleasing character, and his memoirs and correspondence, if fitly presented, will constitute an attractive and valuable contribution to the history of American society. * * * * * For several years it has been known to many students of our early history, that Mr. LYMAN C. DRAPER was devoting his time and estate, and faculties admirably trained for such pursuits, to the collection of whatever materials still exist for the illustration of the lives of the Western Pioneers. He has carefully explored all the valley of the Mississippi, under the most favorable auspices--by his intelligence and enthusiasm and large acquaintance with the most conspicuous people, commended to every family which was the repository of special traditions or of written documents--and he has succeeded in amassing a collection of MS. letters, narratives, and other papers, and of printed books, pamphlets, magazines, and journals, more extensive than is possessed by many of the state historical societies, while in character it is altogether and necessarily unique. He proposes soon to publish his first work, _The Life and Times of General George Rogers Clarke_, (whose papers have been long in his possession, and whose surviving Indian fighters and other associates he has personally visited), in two octavo volumes, to be followed by shorter historical memoirs of Colonel Daniel Boone, General Simon Kenton, General John Sevier of East Tennessee, General James Robertson, Captain Samuel Brady, Colonel William Crawford, the Wetzells, &c., &c. The field of his researches, it will be seen, embraces the entire sweep of the Mississippi, every streamlet flowing into which has been crimsoned with the blood of sanguinary conflicts, every sentinel mountain looking down to whose waves has been a witness of more terrible and strange vicissitudes and adventures than have been invented by all the romancers. * * * * * The _Dublin University Magazine_ is not very kind in the matter of the American poem of _Frontenac_, but suggests that as the author's name is STREET, he cannot object to being "walked into." * * * * * MRS. SOUTHWORTH'S story of _Retribution_ is being republished in _Reynolds's Miscellany_, edited by G. W. M. Reynolds, the novelist. Those who are acquainted with the productions of Reynolds will perhaps recognize the fitness of the association. * * * * * MRS. MOWATT, who has just returned from a professional residence in England, we understand will soon give the public a collection of her miscellaneous writings, prefaced by Mary Howitt. The authoress of _The Fortune Hunter_, under various signatures, has been a very voluminous as well as a very clever writer. She will in a few weeks appear at the Broadway Theatre. * * * * * MISS BEECHER has published (through Phillips & Sampson of Boston), her _True Remedy for the Wrongs of Women_, and the book is much below her reputation. From a person of her character and unquestionable abilities, we looked for a rebuke of those females who have unsexed themselves, such a rebuke as should have brought to life all the latent shame in their natures, and for ever prevented any renewals of the melancholy displays they have made of an unfeminine passion for notoriety. The "wrongs of woman," in the state of New-York at least, are purely ideal; here woman has all the privileges and protections compatible with her destined offices in a civilized society. She undoubtedly has a share of the sufferings to which human nature is subject, but has literally nothing to complain of at the hands of man in the social organization. The individual wrongs of which she is the victim, are for the most part penalties of individual indiscretions, and the remedy for them is to be found in the education of woman for her proper sphere and duties, such education as shall develope her capacities for the relations of domestic life, most of all, for maternity. Miss Beecher treats parties with respect who are entitled to no respect, acknowledges evils which do not exist, and proposes for the elevation of female character plans of very questionable influence. FOOTNOTES: [13] WIESELER, FRIEDRICH. Theatergebäude und Denkmaler des Buhnenwesens, beiden Gricchen und Römern. Göttingen, 1851. Vandenhoeik und Ruprecht. _The Fine Arts._ All Europe abounds in memorials of illustrious men, and in the present time there is more than ever before a disposition manifested to consecrate art to the honor of the benefactors of mankind, or to those who have been most eminent for great qualities. From Munich, we learn by the latest journals, that two colossal statues--those of Gustavus Adolphus and of the Swedish poet Tegner--have just been cast at the royal foundry of that capital, with complete success. Both were modelled by Schwanthaler, and are destined for public places in the city of Stockholm. In France, the inhabitants of Andelys have been inaugurating a statue of Nicolas Poussin, with great ceremonial. On the same day a statue to Poisson, an eminent mathematician, was inaugurated with pomp, at his native place, Pithiviers, near Orleans. A little before, one was erected to Froissart, the quaint old chronicler of knightly deeds, at Valenciennes, where he was born. Jeanne Hachette is about to have one at Beauvais; Gresset, the author of '_Vert Vert_', at Amiens; and the village of Rollot, in Picardy, has just caused to be placed in its public square a bust of the translator into French of the _Thousand and One Nights_, Antony Galland. He was sent by Colbert to the East on account of his great knowledge of the Hebrew and other oriental languages, and on his return published the Arabian Nights, and a treatise on the origin of coffee. There is, in fact, scarcely a Frenchman of real eminence in poetry, literature, war, science, statesmanship, or the arts, who is not honored with a statue, either in his birthplace, or in the town made his own by adoption. Most of the statues are erected at the expense of the respective localities; the good people thinking it a duty to render every respect to their illustrious dead. And when they happen to be too poor to incur much cost, they erect a fountain, or some other useful work, which bears the great man's name. In the small and poor village of Chatenay, near Paris, where Voltaire was born, you see, for example, a small plaster bust of him, in an iron cage, and on the parish pump the words "à Voltaire." And, as the _Literary Gazette_ has it, very justly, "the man who should scoff at this simple tribute to genius would be an ass,--it is all that poor peasants can afford to pay." The names of distinguished men are also frequently given by the French to streets and squares. In Paris alone, Molière, Racine, Corneille, Voltaire, Boileau, Montaigne, and I know not how many others, together with men of science by the hundred, have streets named after them: so have Chateaubriand and Béranger; so have even the English Lord Byron and the Italian Rossini. The ships in the navy, too, receive also the names of distinguished men, foreign as well as native--there is a man-of-war named after Newton, and several public works have the name of our own Franklin. But in the United States, although we have sometimes named after soldiers and statesmen, we have scarce any monuments, and no statues at all, except a few of men distinguished in affairs. In Union Square, opposite the house in which he lived, there should be a statue of the great Chancellor Kent; in Richmond, one of Marshall, next to Washington, the greatest of Virginians; in Northampton, one to Jonathan Edwards; in New Haven, one to Timothy Dwight; before the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia, one to Franklin, one to Rittenhouse, and one to Alex. Wilson; at Cambridge, one to Allston; in Boston, one to Bowditch; and in New-York, memorials of some sort to Audubon, Gallatin, Hamilton, &c. In the new park which is to be reserved in the upper part of the city, we have an opportunity to commemorate the patriotism and misfortunes of the first magistrate chosen by the people of New-York, the first under whom municipal elections were held here, and the first martyr to Liberty in the New World--Governor Leisler. LEISLER PARK sounds well, and it has additional fitness from the fact, that the unfortunate governor was once proprietor of a part of the grounds to be so appropriated. If it shall not be called Leisler Park, there is another illustrious New-Yorker, whose name appears to have been forgotten by those who have given names to public places here,--Governor Colden, who wrote the _History of the Five Nations_. * * * * * When the Emperor of Russia was at Rome, four or five years ago, he engaged Barberi, the worker in mosaic, to undertake certain large works, and with the instruction of six Russian students with a view to the establishment of a great school of mosaic art in St. Petersburgh. Since that time Barberi and his pupils have been occupied with works for the imperial residence, the last of which, just completed, consists of an octagonal mosaic pavement, from the ancient design of the round hall in the Vatican Museum, with twenty-eight figures, a colossal head of Medusa in the centre, and a variety of ornaments, all inclosed in a brilliant wreath of fruits, flowers, and foliage. The series already executed consist of four scenic masques, each of which is valued at £5200 sterling. With these finished works Cavaliere Barberi is about to forward to St. Petersburgh a number of vitreous mosaic tablets of every shade and style of drawing and decoration, as models for younger students. * * * * * TENERANI, the most eminent of contemporary Italian sculptors, has finished a statue of Bolivar. The figure is standing, full draped, and holding a laurel crown in the left hand. The pediment is ornamented with three bas-reliefs, the three provinces, Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia. Two statues, Justice and Liberality, symbols of the hero's virtues, stand at the side of the monument, which will be erected in the cathedral of Caraccas. It is a fine instance of the beauty and delicate grace of Tenerani's treatment. The expressive head of "The Liberator," with the high, arched brow, the large, soft, and sagacious eyes, the sharply chiselled but agreeable features, beaming with intellectual radiance, are happily conceived and exquisitely executed. In the same kind we note an equestrian statue of Bernadotte by TOGELBERG, a Swede resident in Rome. The horseman's mantle has fallen aside, the staff of a commander is in his hand, and the able marshal, "king that shall be," looks graciously down from his horse. In his face there is the imperial force of military genius, with the genial grace of sensibility. The horse is finely done. * * * * * STEINHAUSER'S statue of Hahnemann, the father of homoeopathy, destined for Leipsic, is almost finished. The same artist has in hand the Goethe monument, designed by Bettina von Arnim. The sketch serves as the illuminated title-page to the second volume of the correspondence with a child. She describes it as follows: "Goethe sits upon a throne, within a semi-niche, his head reaches over the niche, which is not closed above, but is cut away, and seems, half seen, like the moon rising over the rim of a mountain. The mantle, tied round the neck, falls back over the shoulders, and is brought forward again under the arms into the lap. The left hand rests upon the lyre, supported upon the left knee. The right hand, which holds my flowers, is sunk negligently in the same way, and, forgetting fame, he holds the laurel wreath, and looks toward heaven. The young Psyche stands before him, as then I stood, raises herself upon tip-toe to touch the strings of the lyre, which he permits, lost in inspiration." The artist has appreciated this conception. He has represented Goethe not as an old man, but as a man of ideal expression, holding indeed the well-won laurel, but with the harp in hand, as if inspiration were exhaustless. * * * * * HERR KISS'S group in bronze of an Amazon encountering a lion has been purchased by the Prince of Prussia as a present for the Queen of England. A copy of the same work in zinc has been purchased by a gentleman from the United States for £2500. It is said that Kiss has received a commission for two other copies for persons in the United States. * * * * * The English critics complain that they have not any longer a great portrait painter. This branch of art is declining, and the walls of the Academy this year bear testimony to the fact. From the death of Lawrence to the present time, now more than twenty years, it has been gradually subsiding into the mere record of literal fact--ignoring those great principles which made it once a means of historical record. In America we have occasion for no such regrets. Elliot is equal to any man in the world for a masculine and noble head, and Hicks and several others would in any country or in any time command the applause due to great masters. * * * * * For three years Mr. PYNE, the landscape painter, has been taking a series of views in the lake counties of England. The pictures comprise all the important objects in a tour through the country they illustrate, treated under a variety of aspects, which renders the collection valuable in an artistic point of view. A feeling for atmospheric distance is one of Mr. Pyne's most important attributes, and in representing wide reaching views of mountains and lakes he has had full scope for his talent. The pictures are to be copied in a series of colored lithographs, and published in a volume. * * * * * Among the pictures in the Royal Academy this season are several by British army officers on foreign duty. By the Hon. Lieutenant Colonel Percy there are, _A Study of Niagara from the under Horse-Shoe Fall, The River St. Lawrence and Mouth of the Saguenay_, and a view on the same river _Near the Chaudiere Bridge, Quebec_. * * * * * RAUCH, the sculptor, whose statue of Frederic the Great has just been erected in Berlin, has been the object of an artistic ovation. The Academy of Sciences gave a banquet in his honor, the king, royal family, and ministers assisted, and Meyerbeer composed a _Cantata_ for the occasion. * * * * * Mr. HEALY'S picture of Mr. Webster replying to Colonel Hayne is completed, in Paris, and will be brought to New-York in the present month (of August). It is twenty-eight feet long. The painter has published proposals for engravings of it, at twenty dollars per copy. * * * * * An original painting by Raphael, _The Boar Hunt_, was destroyed in a recent fire at Downhill House, the family seat of Sir Hervey Bruce, in England. * * * * * The French and English journals mention several important improvements of the daguerreotype, some of which are of the same character as Mr. Hill's. Mr. Brady, of this city, has gone to London, to establish a branch of his house in that city. _Historical Review of the Month._ THE UNITED STATES. On the 4th of July the corner stone of the Capitol extension at Washington was laid, before the President of the United States, the Cabinet, army and navy officers, and a very large assemblage of citizens. Mr. Webster delivered on the occasion an address, in which he pointed out with his customary eloquent clearness the extraordinary advances of the country since General Washington, fifty-eight years before, had performed there a similar duty, and for the advantage of condensation and exactness he presented many important facts in the form of a comparative table, as follows: 1793. 1851. Number of States 15 31 Representatives and Senators in Congress 135 295 Population of the U. States, 1850 3,929,328 23,267,498 Do. Boston, do. 18,038 136,871 Do. Baltimore, do. 13,503 169,054 Do. Philadelphia, do. 42,520 409,045 Do. New-York (city), do. 33,121 515,507 Do. Washington, do. ---- 40,075 Amount of receipts into Treasury, do. $5,720,624 $43,774,848 Am't of expenditures of U.S., do. 7,529,575 39,355,268 Amount of imports, do. 31,000,000 178,138,318 Do. Exports, do. 26,109,000 151,898,720 Do. Tonnage, do. 525,764 3,535,454 Area of the United States, do. 805,461 3,314,365 Rank and file of the army 5,110 10,000 Militia (enrolled), ---- 2,006,456 Navy of the United States (vessels), None 76 Do. Armament (ordinance), -- 2,012 Number of treaties and conventions with foreign powers 9 90 Number of lighthouses and light-boats 7 372 Expenditures for do. $12,061 529,265 Area of the first capitol building in square feet ---- 14,641 Do. present capitol (including extension) ---- 4-1/3 acres Lines of railroads in miles ---- 8,500 Do. Telegraphs ---- 15,000 Number of post-offices 209 21,551 Number of miles of post route 5,642 178,671 Amount of revenue from post-offices $104,747 $5,552,971 Amount of expenditures in the Post-Office Department 72,040 5,212,953 Number of miles of mail transportation ---- 46,541,423 Miles of railroad ---- 8,500 Public libraries 35 694 Number of volumes in do. 75,000 2,201,632 School libraries ---- 10,000 Number of volumes in do. ---- $2,000,000 The recent anniversary--being three quarters of a century from the Declaration of Independence--was celebrated with unusual enthusiasm in nearly all parts of the United States. One small party of secessionists in a southern state chose the occasion for some farcical expressions of treason, and members of another party, equally insane or wicked, in the north, chose to violate the sacredness of the time by avowing a disregard of the Constitution; but on the whole the displays of feeling were such as to gratify a patriotic and hopeful spirit. The new constitution of Maryland went into effect on that day, and in obedience to one of its provisions all the persons confined in its several prisons for debt were then released. The correspondence between the British Minister and the Secretary of State respecting the long-pending difficulties in Central America is not yet concluded. It appears that Great Britain is ready to relinquish her peculiar relations with the so-called Mosquito Kingdom, and surrender her control over San Juan; but she refuses to make that surrender to Nicaragua, which claims an unconditional right in the case, and refuses to submit to any restrictions. There are other territorial difficulties between Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and the other states, which seem difficult of adjustment. On these subjects Sir Henry Bulwer has addressed to the American Government a communication urging its interference to produce an amicable settlement. Mr. Webster has left Washington for a temporary residence in the country, and it is probable that this correspondence will not be concluded until his return, and the return of the British Minister from a contemplated visit to London. It is supposed that an extensive fraud has been committed against the United States Government in the settlement of Mexican claims. The person accused, a Dr. Gardner, received a large sum from the Mexican Commission, but as is now stated, by fraudulent evidence. He is absent in Europe, but the grand jury of Washington has found a bill against him, and his brother and another party implicated in the transaction have been held to bail for perjury. The Tehuantepec Surveying Expedition has returned to New Orleans. Surveys, which show the practicability of the railroad route, are complete. A few parties have been left on the ground to survey a line for the construction of a carriage road. The Coatzacoatlcos River is reported navigable, for twenty-five miles above its mouth, for ships drawing eleven feet of water. The climate is believed to be healthy. The Mexican government having evinced some unfriendliness to the Tehuantepec project, the interference of the United States has been solicited, but declined. The balance of the fourth installment of the Mexican Indemnity, under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, was paid at the U.S. Treasury on the 28th of June--amounting to $1,815,400. The whole amount of the installment is $3,360,000. The Court Martial convened at Washington on the 23d June, for the trial of General Talcott, chief of the ordnance department, has closed its labors by the conviction of the accused of all the charges preferred against him, and his dismissal from the service. The charges were: a violation of the 132d article of the regulations for the government of the Ordnance Department; wilful disobedience of orders and instructions from the Secretary of War in relation to a contract for supplies; and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, among other things, in making a declaration which was positively and wilfully false, and intended to deceive the Secretary of War. Preparations for the next presidential canvass are being commenced in many of the States. General Scott has received the nomination of two state conventions--that of Ohio, and that of Pennsylvania--besides having been nominated at public meetings in Delaware, Indiana, and other places. Mr. Woodbury has been nominated in New Hampshire, and meetings of various degrees of importance have expressed preferences for other candidates in various parts of the country. The crops of all sorts are represented as being in a very prosperous condition throughout all sections: of wheat and potatoes more abundant than ever before, and of cotton and rice very much better than the drought in the early part of the season promised. The Extra Session of the New-York legislature adjourned on the 11th of July, after passing several important bills. That for the enlargement of the Erie Canal is a measure of great moment to the industry and commerce of the state. It provides for the complete enlargement of the Erie Canal within four years, thus securing the immense business which would else seek other avenues to the seaboard, and endowing the state with a large revenue independent of taxes. Chief Justice Bronson, whose political relations give to his opinions in this case a peculiar value, has published an elaborate vindication of the bill's constitutionality. The legislature of New Hampshire adjourned on the 5th of July. The legislature of Connecticut has also adjourned, having elected no Senator in the place of Mr. Baldwin. Resolutions approving of the Compromise Measures, _including the Fugitive Slave Law_, passed the House by a vote of 113 to 35, but in the Senate they were indefinitely postponed. The Virginia Reform Convention struck out the section of the Constitution prohibiting the legislature from passing a law to allow the emancipation of slaves, and inserted a provision that an emancipated slave remaining in the state over twelve months shall be sold. The legislature is allowed to impose restrictions on the owners of slaves who are disposed to emancipate, but the section giving the legislature power to remove free negroes from the state is stricken out. The murderers of the Cosden family, in Kent Co., Maryland, are sentenced to be hung on the first Friday of the present month. From California we have intelligence to the 15th of June. San Francisco and Stockton seem to have almost entirely recovered from the effects of the late conflagrations; the burnt districts were being restored with a rapidity surpassing all previous examples of Californian energy, and business, far from being prostrated, had resumed its former activity. The accounts from the mines continued to be encouraging, the yield of gold not having been diminished by the unusual dryness of the winter. The Indian Commissioners have met with great success in their work of pacification, although there were rumors of skirmishes in the northern part of the state. A man named Jennings was lately seized at San Francisco while attempting to escape with a bag of stolen money, and was, after being arrested and tried by a self-constituted Vigilance Committee, condemned, brought out into the plaza, and publicly hung in the presence of a large crowd. A crime so monstrous may well startle the world. If the persons composing the Vigilance Committee have respectable positions in society, this fact but increases the infamy of the transaction, and gives it a more fatal influence. Every member of the committee, consenting to its action, should be deemed guilty of murder, and punished as a murderer, though the magistracy of California should have to invoke for its support in enforcing the laws the whole force of the nation. There is no safety, nor true liberty, where there is not obedience; and it had been better that all the thieves in California in half a century escaped punishment than that one should be punished in this manner. In the Mormon territory of Utah ground was broken for the Great Salt Lake and Mountain Railway on the 1st of May. When this enterprise is completed, preparations will be more vigorously prosecuted for the erection of the Temple. The condition of affairs in the new settlements is represented as encouraging. The tide of emigration continues to flow into Texas from European ports. Milam District, on the Upper Brazos, seems at present to be the favorite point for the colonists. The new town of Kent has lately been erected at Kimball's Bend, and under the auspices of Captain Sir Edward Belcher, R.N., made up of hardy English and Scotch settlers. With the payment of its debt insured by the ten millions received from the United States, Texas must become one of the most flourishing states of the Union. MEXICO. Recent advices from Mexico lead to apprehensions that the unquiet and unsettled state of affairs may result in open attempts at a revolution in the government, and an effort by the partisans of General Santa Anna to recall him from exile, and place him at the head of the administration. It is understood that the President has abandoned the liberal party and allied himself with the clergy. A vigorous newspaper war is waged against the priests. The Mexican congress is engaged in devising ways and means to raise the necessary revenue to carry on the government. The proposition to impose an additional tax of eight per cent on all foreign merchandise imported into the Republic, has been adopted by the Chamber of Deputies. BRITISH AMERICA. The subject of the clergy reserves, which for a quarter of a century has almost been constantly debated in Upper Canada, has lately been agitated with unprecedented earnestness and bitterness. The popular and English party advocate the appropriation of the funds thus accruing to purposes of general education. The Board of Trade of Toronto has passed a vote of censure upon the Council, for having memorialized the government to impose differential duties against American manufactures. The census returns for 1850 give the population of Canada at nearly 800,000. The proceeds of clergy reserve sales, during the year, were $220,428. In the Legislative Assembly, a series of resolutions has been moved for the repeal of the union between Upper and Lower Canada. Efforts are being made to construct a railroad from Halifax to Hamilton, where it is to join the Great Western road, constituting a continuous line from Halifax to Detroit. WEST INDIES. We have dates of Port-au-Prince to the 30th of June. The coronation of the Emperor Soulouque will take place very soon. Should no bishop arrive from Rome, the Emperor may create a native bishop. At the coronation, a general amnesty is expected for all political exiles, whose return to Hayti will be beneficial, for among them are men of wealth and intelligence. The affairs of the country have assumed a more pacific aspect. Immediately after the recent proclamation of the Emperor to the Dominicans, several agents were sent to different points on the frontier, to induce the enemy to enter on amicable relations. With a single exception, these missions were successful, and a number of Dominicans were expected in Port-au-Prince, for purposes of trade. The universal desire of the Haytian people, as well as of the government, is said to be that the dispute may be honorably settled. The Emperor, however, has not relinquished the idea of effecting a reannexation of the territory of Dominica to Hayti. The excessive issues of Treasury bonds and paper currency are proving prejudicial to the true interests of the country. The number of negroes brought to Cuba from the coast of Africa, during the past fourteen months, is 14,500. Very heavy rains have fallen in the interior and in the neighborhood of Manzanilla. SOUTH AMERICA. In the number of the _Christian Review_ for the July quarter is a very comprehensive, intelligible, and apparently perfectly correct survey of the condition of the South American states, to which we refer readers who would possess more minute information on the subject than can be embraced in this summary. The condition of PERU appears favorable for the maintenance of peace and order. The laws relating to elections, municipal governments, and other topics connected with the internal affairs of the country, have been considered by Congress, in accordance with the recommendation of the President. The election of Gen. Vivanca, the unsuccessful candidate for the Presidency, as representative in Congress, has been pronounced invalid, on account of his not holding the rights of citizenship. The change of ministry was received with satisfaction in all the departments, except Arequipa, which continued in a state of disturbance. The Governor's proclamation, requiring that all arms should be surrendered to the government, was the occasion of a fresh outbreak. Arequipa was thrown into a state of siege: the streets were filled with barricades: trenches were constructed at all the avenues to the city: and every obstacle opposed to the entrance of the troops which were encamped in the vicinity. Gen. Vivanca, whose party have caused these disturbances, is in prison at Lima; but whether he is personally implicated is uncertain. The Government of BOLIVIA has issued the plan of a new Constitution, proposing among other measures, the preservation of the Roman Catholic religion as the religion of the state, the maintenance of amicable relations with American and European states, the liberty of the press, the independence of the judicial authority, the freedom of opinion on political subjects, and the protection of foreigners in the exercise of commercial pursuits. A National Convention has been convoked for the 16th of July. The number of deputies was to be 53. An insurrection has taken place in New-Grenada--the two southern provinces, Pasto and Tuquerres, having united in an attempt to overthrow the government, with the aid and encouragement of Ecuador. The President at once dispatched a military force to the scene of the revolt, but at the last advices it had not succeeded in its object, though two or three engagements had taken place. The government has issued proposals for a loan of $400,000 in specie, and unless this is effected soon, recourse must be had to forced contributions to defray the expenses of the war. Congress has abolished slavery, requiring only certain payments to the masters. No disturbance had arisen from the measure. GREAT BRITAIN. In the British Parliament important reforms in the Chancery system are still under discussion, and Lord Brougham is as ardent a reformer as he was thirty years ago. The census of Great Britain, taken on the 31st of March last, is a remarkable document. It shows that the small cluster of the British isles contains a larger population than the whole of this republic, exclusive of its slaves. The metropolis numbers upwards of two millions and a quarter, and added to its denizens during the last ten years about as many souls as New-York now reckons within its limits. But a more extraordinary and altogether different result appears in Ireland. It seems that the population of Ireland is at this moment very little more than six millions and a half. It is absolutely less than it was in 1821, and more than two millions short of the number that would have been reached in the natural order of things, but for the extraordinary occurrences of the last ten years. So startling a fact will of course become the subject of the closest inquiries. The Anti-Papal Bill finally passed the House of Commons, by a large majority, on the 4th of July. It had previously been amended on the motion of Sir F. Thesiger, and in spite of the opposition of the ministers, so as to be much more than the Government had designed. These amendments make provisions of the bill extend to all Papal bulls and rescripts, impose a penalty of one hundred pounds upon any who obtain or publish them, and make it the right of any individual to sue for the recovery of the fine. The law is stringent, and in America would be both impolitic and unnecessary. But there is no doubt that the Lords will adopt the bill, and that it will become the law of the land. The state of the Church and its abuses have been presented in the Commons by Mr. Horsman, Sir B. Hall, and Lord Blandford, who brought up various facts, and contended that a bishop need not have better pay than a prime minister, that the funds of the establishment were enough to support an efficient clergy and leave something for national schools, and that the Church does not supply the spiritual wants of the people. Such discussions must finally result in the overthrow of the establishment. Some excitement is caused by an appeal addressed to the Italians by the authorities at Rome asking for aid to Roman Catholic missions in London, in which "this great work is most earnestly recommended to the charity of Italian believers, and to the zeal of the bishops of Italy." Archbishop Minucci, of Florence, has also called on the people of his diocese for aid in constructing an Italian church in London, where "the spiritual wants of the faithful" may be cared for, and announcing _an indulgence of one hundred days_ for those who shall contribute for this object. An attempt has been made to prevent the adulteration of coffee with chicory. It was thought possible to do this by means of a government inspection, but the motion failed. The Exhibition is still prosperous. The gross receipts already amount to a million and a half of dollars. The number of troops in Ireland has, in consequence of the quiet and improved condition of that country, been reduced from about 26,000 to the present strength of 18,000 men. The decrees of the Thurles synod, condemning the Queen's colleges, as institutions "dangerous to faith and morals," have been sanctioned by the Pope, without any change or qualifications. Some slight alterations have been made in the statutes of the synod, respecting matters of ecclesiastical discipline in the various dioceses; but those which refer to the colleges have been approved without any modification. The _Cork Constitution_ says, "There is a great diminution in the number of emigrants proceeding to America. Only four or five vessels are now at the quays preparing to leave. It is with difficulty the requisite number of emigrants can be made up, many preferring to go by Liverpool." Nearly a hundred Hungarian refugees had arrived at Southampton, from Constantinople. Lord John Russell has intimated that the Government will defray the expense of their passage to New-York, and of their subsistence during the time they may remain in Southampton, waiting arrangements for this purpose. Amongst the refugees is the distinguished Hungarian Lieut. General Loisar Messaros. Preparations for another _Peace Congress_ have been made on a large scale. In one important particular the London Congress will be distinguished above all others; and that is, in the greater breadth of representative character which it will acquire; for associated bodies who have never hitherto manifested a direct interest in the peace question are preparing to send delegates on this occasion. The official returns of the _shipwrecks of the United Kingdom_ during the past year, show that the average is nearly two a day; and the amount, thus far, four vessels only propelled by steam, and six hundred and sixty-eight sailing vessels of every description. The difference in the number of steam and sailing vessels afloat is far from the proportion of disasters. Navigation by steam is thus demonstrated to be much the safest. The 4th of July was celebrated in London with appropriate honors by the American residents and others. Mr. George Peabody issued cards of invitation to meet the United States Minister and Mrs. Lawrence at a fête which he was to give in the evening, and about seven or eight hundred persons were present, including the American families in London, and a large proportion of the nobility and public persons in England, by whom the idea was received with the greatest satisfaction. The Duke of Wellington, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Lord Mayor, the Duke of Valencia, the Count and Countess Pulzki, Lord Glenelg, Viscount Canning, Miss Burdett Coutts, the American Ministers to London, St. Petersburg, and Brussels, and a great number of other eminent persons attended, besides Catharine Hayes, Lablache, Gardoni, and Cruvelli, who sang during the evening, and were received with more than usual applause. The affair was one of the grandest of the season. FRANCE. In France the chief events of importance are connected with the project for the revision of the Constitution. After a long struggle the subject was given to a committee, at the head of which was De Tocqueville. His report, as presented to the committee on the 4th of July, had not at the last dates received when this sheet goes to press, come before the public in an authentic form; but it is understood that it treats of three principal points. In the first place, M. de Tocqueville enters boldly into the question between the republicans and monarchists. He examines with skill the pretensions of the republic to Divine right put forward in the Commission itself by General Cavaignac, and sustained by him with impassioned energy and an accent of conviction which astonished the members. M. de Tocqueville denies this pretended Divine right, and maintains that of the nation to choose the form of government that may best suit it--a right which is absolute, superior, and indisputable. Secondly, he is said to oppose, by anticipation, any species of amendment which would have the effect of confining the next Constituent Assembly within any limits, or force on it the obligation of revising the constitution for the sole end of ameliorating and consolidating them, and to maintain that the Constituent Assembly should be invested with a general and unlimited mission, in order that it may act in the plenitude of a really constituent power; and thirdly, he is described as expressing hopes that the Assembly will adopt the proposition accepted by the majority of the commission; that a constituent assembly will be chosen; that the constitution will be revised or remodelled; and in such case that all will consider it their duty to conform to it; that if the proposition of revision be not admitted, the constitution of 1848 shall remain as the supreme and sovereign law for all; that the only alternative will be to maintain, until the term of a new period of three years, the provisional form of the actual government--it being of course understood, that, in such case, each person will feel it his duty to conform to the constitution, and to abstain from every act which would be tantamount to its violation. It is added that M. de Tocqueville developes this proposition in such a manner as to oppose _all unconstitutional candidateships_; that is, of the actual President, the Prince de Joinville, and Ledru Rollin. The friends of Louis Napoleon have favored the revision, in the hope that by it they might prolong his term. Several speeches lately made by the president have given a more favorable impression than that which he made at Dijon. One at Poitiers, on the occasion of the opening of a railroad, has given satisfaction to moderate men of all parties, who believe it honest. A bill to interdict clubs has been again adopted without any attempt at alteration. General Aupick is announced as the new ambassador to Spain. Count Colonna Walewski, an illegitimate son of the Emperor Napoleon, has reached the highest round of the diplomatic ladder by being sent as ambassador to the Court of St. James. The _Pays_ announces that the question of Abd-el-Kader's captivity is on the point of receiving a satisfactory solution. The committee charged to examine the bill for the ratification of the treaties of La Plata is disposed to propose simply the ratification of those treaties. At Charente, recently, thirty-two adult Roman Catholics of both sexes, in the presence of a numerous congregation, in the Protestant church, publicly abjured the Roman Catholic and embraced the Protestant faith. A measure introduced by M. de St. Beuve in the National Assembly for a commercial reform, by modifying the present restrictive tariff, so as to accomplish a gradual approach to free trade, had been rejected by a majority of 428 to 199. M. Thiers on this occasion made a great speech against free trade, which is much criticised by the English press. The London _Times_ calls Thiers the evil genius of France. The most recent commercial letters received from various parts of France represent affairs as somewhat recovering from the gloomy appearance they wore some days since. The manufacturers have received numerous orders for the great fair of Beaucaire, which will be held in July. The Bank of France has announced a dividend of fifty-five francs per share for the first half year of 1851. ITALY. On the evening of the 7th of May, the Count Piero Guicciardini, the descendant of the great historian, had met in a private house in Florence six persons whose names are given in a decree, and before the party broke up, Count Guicciardini read and expounded a chapter of the Gospel of St. John. At ten o'clock the house was entered by eight gendarmes; a perquisition began, in the style now customary in Tuscany; the depositions of the party assembled were taken down; and as it was fully proved by such depositions that a chapter of the Bible had been read by Count Guicciardini, the whole of the seven offenders were straightway led to the police delegation of Santa Maria Novella, where their arrest was signed by the delegate, and a little after midnight they were lodged in the Bargello, or public prison. For ten days Count Guicciardini and his companions were kept in confinement and subjected to repeated examinations, and finally the sentence of forced residence in different parts of the Tuscan Maremme was passed on each of the accused. This illustration of the liberality of the Roman Catholic Church--though in perfect keeping with its perpetual policy--has produced a profound sensation. It might have escaped without much observation but for the eminence of the parties, and the claims made lately in England, that the Roman Catholic authorities were as tolerant as they asked that others should be to them, in all matters of personal rights. The French military commandant in Rome has been exercising his authority with great, but probably requisite severity. Two Roman soldiers have been tried by French court martial, and executed for riotous conduct, and seven others have been doomed to the same fate. The Pope also has been threatened with expulsion from the Quirinal Palace, which the above-mentioned authority thought at one time would be essential as a military post. So far, the weak-minded holder of St. Peter's keys has not suffered the mortification of a second forced retreat, although, between his military guardians of France and Austria and his own discontented subjects, his position is scarcely an enviable one. The three young Englishmen arrested at Leghorn yet remain imprisoned; but their real names do not appear. GERMANY. The military authorities of Austria give as much offence in Germany as the French in Rome. At Hamburg, several citizens have been killed in a fray with the Austrian soldiers, begun by the insolence of the latter. In Hesse Cassel, the Government has been compelled to grant immunities to the Roman Catholic clergy, scarcely compatible with the institutions of a Protestant country, under the compulsion of Austrian bayonets. The Göttingen Professors have decided that the Government of Electoral Hesse was not required by the Constitution to procure the assent of the Chambers to the levy of taxes last year; this is the point on which the revolutionary manifestations turned. We have not the Constitution at hand, and cannot apprehend the grounds of this decision, but it is singular that all the magistrates and people of the country, who ought to have known something of their constitution, should have unanimously held a different opinion. The Prussian government have withdrawn the summons for the assembling of the provincial diets, no doubt on account of the universal condemnation excited by it. A decided schism has of late manifested itself in the commercial policy advocated by North and South Germany. Whilst the attempt to procure higher protective duties in the Zollverein has continually been defeated by the liberal principals supported by Prussia. South Germany, on the other hand, has come forward openly with the intention to assert an independent line of action. SPAIN. Accounts from Madrid of the 2d July, state that M. Jose Sanchez Ocana, director general of the public treasury, has been appointed under secretary of state of the finance department, in the place of M. Bordia, director general of the customs. M. Rudulfo, inspector of the finances at Madrid, succeeded M. Ocana in the direction of the public treasury. France, by her diplomatic agents at Madrid, strives to influence the Spanish government in regard to a more active repression of the slave trade in its colonies. Mr. Schoelcher adverted to the passage of the recent speech of the Emperor of Brazil, touching the abolition of the traffic, as meant simply to please England--"like all other speeches from thrones, in which the design is to give a sort of satisfaction to the foreign powers with whom friendly relations are desirable." The amendment was rejected by 339 nays to 230 ayes. RUSSIA. Letters from Posen allude to an ukase which had appeared, compelling all individuals throughout Russia and Poland to sell to the government, within a specified period, whatever uncoined silver they might have in their possession. An indemnity in paper money was authorized to be given on behalf of the treasury. A body of Belgian weavers and dyers has been engaged to go to St. Petersburg to set up their trade. In Circassia the Russian army has met with a serious defeat; in a battle where it had 25,000 men engaged, it lost 5,000. AUSTRIA AND TURKEY. The Emperor has appointed Count Rechburg Internuncio at the court of Constantinople. Accounts from Comorn state that violent shocks of an earthquake were felt there on the 1st. The shocks were accompanied by violent claps of thunder. The clocks in all the church towers struck; scarcely a single house remained uninjured; numerous chimneys fell in, and the furniture and utensils in the rooms were overthrown and broken. Many accidents had occurred, but providentially, not any of a fatal nature are yet known. _Scientific Discoveries and Proceedings of Learned Societies._ The BRITISH ASSOCIATION met this year on the second of July, at Ipswich. Among those present we notice the names of Prince Albert, the Prince of Canino, the Duke of Argyle, the Earl of Rosse, the Earl of Enniskillen, the Earl of Sheffield, Lord Monteagle, Lord Londesborough, Lord Stradbroke, Lord Rendlesham, Lord Abercorn, Lord Alfred Paget, Lord Wrottesley, the Bishop of Oxford, Sir Charles Lemon, Sir Roderick Murchison, Sir Charles Lyell, Sir Henry de la Beche, Sir Edward Cust, Sir William Jardine, Sir William Middleton, Sir W. J. Hooker, Sir J. T. Boileau, Professors Airy, Asa Gray, Harvey, Sedgwick, Henslow, Owen, Sylvester, Forbes, Bell, Anstead, Phillips, and Faraday, Dr. Lyon Playfair, Dr. Hooker, and many eminent scientific men. * * * * * At a recent meeting of the ASIATIC SOCIETY in London, a report of the Oriental Translation Committee mentioned the printing of the second volume of the _Travels of Evliva Effendi_, of the fifth volume of _Haji Khalfæ Lexicon_, and of the _Makamat_ of Hariri. The Committee had received from Col. Rawlinson the offer of a translation of the valuable and rare geographical work of Yakút, which it accepted, and is about to proceed with the printing of the third and concluding volume of M. Garcin de Tassy's _Histoire de la Littérature Hindoui et Hindoustani_, including a Memoir on Hindústani Songs, with numerous translations. The Report concluded with noticing the presentation of William the Fourth's gold medal to Prof. H. H. Wilson, in acknowledgment of his services to Oriental literature generally, and especially in testimony of the merits of his translation of the _Vishnu Purana_. The annual Report of the Council gave some notice of the progress of Babylonian and Assyrian decipherment as carried out by Colonel Rawlinson, and now in the course of communication to the world by the Society. The Babylonian version of the great Behistún inscription was exhibited on the table; and, in allusion to it, the Report contained a concise _résumé_ of what had been done from the information of Colonel Rawlinson himself, who is of opinion that the inscriptions read extend over a period of 1,000 years--from B.C. 2000 to 1000; that he has ascertained the religion of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians to have been strictly Astral or Sabæan; and as he finds among the gods the names of Belus, Ninus and Semiramis, he thinks that the dynasties given by the Greeks were, in fact, lists of mythological names. The geography of Western Asia as it was 4,000 years ago appears to be clearly made out. Col. Rawlinson finds a king of Cadytis, or Jerusalem, named Kanun, a tributary of the king who built the palace of Khursabad, warring with a Pharaoh of Egypt, and defeating his armies on the south frontier of Palestine. The Meshec and Tubal of Scripture were dwelling in North Syria, the Hittites held the centre of the province, and the commercial cities of Tyre and Sidon and Gaza and Acre flourished on the coasts. And so well does Colonel Rawlinson find the geography made out, that he is of opinion he can identify every province and city named in the inscriptions. * * * * * The last Bulletin of the GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY of Paris, opens with an appeal to the governments of Europe and America, for the adoption of a Common First Meridian. The author, M. Sedillor, is a high authority in geographical science, and would trace an imaginary line in the midst of the Ocean; designate it by some "systematic term," acceptable to all, and bring, thus, Europe and the new world into a community of views and interests apart from all national prejudices or pretension. The appeal followed by a letter of M. Jomard on the same subject, and another from the traveller Antony D'Abbadie, who prefers Mont Blanc, or Jerusalem--"against which the Christians of America can have no objection." Among the contents of the Bulletin, is a notice of Lieut. Com. MacArthur's report, eighteenth December, 1850, to Professor Bache, which has been translated entire for the _Hydrographical Annals_, a periodical work. Mr. Squier's Observations on the Route of the Proposed Canal across the Isthmus of Nicaragua, are also translated. There is a paper of some compass, on the various projects and undertakings for a communication between the Oceans and a like one on the services rendered to geography by the French and British missionaries. Those of the German and American, who have not been less zealous, will be duly credited and recorded, when materials can be obtained for the purpose. * * * * * At the meeting for the 22nd May, of the ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE, in London, a very interesting Greek MS. was exhibited. It is owned by a Mr. Arden, who purchased it of an Arab near Thebes. It is nearly four yards long, divided into pages or columns containing twenty-eight lines, the length of which exceeds six inches, and the breadth two inches; the whole is written in a large and clear hand, with great accuracy, since few corrections or interpolations are visible. Although it is difficult to assign to it the actual age, still there seems to be every reason to conjecture that it is of the commencement of the present era--or indeed, which is by no means improbable, that it was written a century or two before the birth of Christ. The delicacy of the texture of the papyrus will afford a strong presumption in favor of the latter period; for it is well known to Egyptologists that a coarseness and inferiority of papyrus indicate a more recent date. The first portion of the MS. is much broken, and presents many gaps and fragments; the end of it bears the title of an Apology, or Defence of Lycophron. The second, or larger portion of the MS., is much more perfect, as it contains only here and there an hiatus, which will probably be easily restored; at its termination we are informed that it is a Defence of the accusation of Euxenippus against Polyeuctus. The author of these orations will, in all likelihood, prove to be the great Athenian orator Hyperides, whose works have been long lost. Indeed, this appears to be almost certain, since some of the Greek lexicographers mention a speech of Hyperides 'for Lycophron,' and another 'against Polyeuctus concerning the accusation.' But who Lycophron was, and what was the nature of the defence for him, remain to be more amply detailed. The subject of this second oration, however, appears to be known,--for Polyeuctus, the Athenian orator, was accused, with Demosthenes, of receiving a bribe from Harpalus. Moreover, the fragments of a papyrus MS. procured a few years ago at Egyptian Thebes by Dr. Harris, lately ably edited by Mr. Babington, at Cambridge, and proved to be parts of the oration of Hyperides against Demosthenes, are so exceedingly similar, both in handwriting and the papyrus, to the present MS. belonging to Mr. Arden, that it is not improbable but that they may have been copied by the same Greek scribe and may originally have formed one entire MS. roll of the orations of Hyperides. A careful examination and comparison of these interesting MSS. will, after a time, decide these questions. * * * * * At a late sitting of the _Paris Academy of Medicine_, M. ORFILA, the celebrated toxicologist, read a paper on _Nicotine_--the poison used in the Bocarme murder. It is the essential principle of tobacco. Virginia tobacco yields the largest proportion of _nicotine_; from twenty pounds, were extracted four hundred _grammes_ of the poison; a gramme is equal to 15·444 grains troy. The Maryland leaf affords about a third of that quantity. Nicotine is nearly as powerful and rapid as prussic acid with the animal economy. Five or six drops applied to the tongue of a dog, killed in ten minutes. The progress which medical jurisconsults have made recently, is so great, that poisoning by morphine, strychnine, prussic acid, and other vegetable substances, hitherto regarded as inaccessible to our means of investigation, may now be detected and recognized in the most incontestable manner. M. Ortila, in closing his notice, says: "After these results of judicial medical investigation, the public need be under no apprehension. No doubt intelligent and clever criminals, with a view to thwart the surgeons, will sometimes have recourse to very active poisons little known by the mass, and difficult of detection, but science is on the alert, and soon overcomes all difficulty; penetrating into the utmost depths of our organs, it brings out the proof of the crime, and furnishes one of the greatest pieces of evidence against the guilty." * * * * * In the LONDON ROYAL INSTITUTION, May 23, M. Ebelman, of the Sèvres works, near Paris, being present with various specimens of the minerals which he has produced artificially,--Mr. Faraday stated the process and results generally. The process consists in employing a solvent, which shall first dissolve the mineral or its constituents; and shall further, either on its removal or on a diminution of its dissolving powers, permit the mineral to aggregate in a crystaline condition. Such solvents are boracic acid, borax, phosphate of soda, phosphoric acid, &c.:--the one chiefly employed by M. Ebelman is boracic acid. By putting together certain proportions of alumina and magnesia, with a little oxide of crome or other coloring matter, and fused boracic acid into a fit vessel, and inclosing that in another, so that the whole could be exposed to the high heat of a porcelain or other furnace, the materials became dissolved in the boracic acid; and then as the heat was continued the boracic acid evaporated, and the fixed materials were found combined and crystallized, and presenting new specimens of spinel. In this way crystals having the same form, hardness, color, specific gravity, composition, and effect on light as the true ruby, the cymophane, and other mineral bodies were prepared, and were in fact identical with them. Chromates were made, the emerald and corundum crystalized, the peridot formed, and many combinations as yet unknown to mineralogists produced. * * * * * At a meeting of the BERLIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, held on May 31 last, the venerable Alexander von Humboldt made an interesting communication upon some observations of singular _movements of fixed stars_. It seems that at Trieste, January 17, 1851, between 7 and 8 o'clock P.M., before the rising of the moon, when the star Sirius was not far from the horizon, it was seen to perform a remarkable series of eccentric movements. It rose and sank, moved left and right, and sometimes seemed to move in a curved line. The observers were Mr. Keune, a student in the upper class of the gymnasium, and Mr. Thugutt, a saddler, both certified to be reliable persons. The family of the latter also beheld the phenomena, Mr. Keune, with his head leaned immovably against a wall, saw Sirius rise in a right line above the roof of a neighboring house, and immediately again sink out of sight behind it, and then again appear. Its motions were so considerable that for some time the beholders thought it was a lantern suspended by a kite. It also varied in brilliancy, growing alternately brighter and fainter, and now and then being for moments quite invisible, though the sky was perfectly clear. As far as it is known, this phenomenon has been remarked but twice before, once in 1799 from the Peak of Teneriffe by Von Humboldt himself, and again nearly fifty years later, by a well-informed and careful observer, Prince Adalbert, of Prussia. * * * * * "In the great Exhibition," the _Athenæum_ says, "Daguerreotypes are largely displayed by the French,--as might have been expected, that country being proud of the discovery: but the examples exhibited by the Americans surpass in general beauty of effect any which we have examined from other countries. This has been attributed to difference in the character of the solar light as modified by atmospheric conditions; we are not, however, disposed to believe that to be the case. We have certain indications that an increased intensity of light is not of any advantage, but rather the contrary, for the production of daguerreotypes; the luminous rays appearing to act as balancing powers against the chemical rays. Now, this being the case, we know of no physical cause by which the superiority can be explained,--and we are quite disposed to be sufficiently honest to admit that the mode of manipulation has more to do with the result than any atmospheric influences. However this may be, the character of the daguerreotypes executed in America is very remarkable. There are a fulness of tone and an artistic modulation of light and shadow which in England we do not obtain. The striking contrasts of white and black are shown decidedly enough in the British examples exhibited in the gallery,--but here there are coldness and hardness of outline. Within the shadow of the eagle and the striped banner we find no lights too white and no shadows too dark: they dissolve, as in Nature, one into the other in the most harmonious and truthful manner,--and the result is, more perfect pictures. The Hyalotypes or glass pictures are of a remarkable character. They are but a modification of the processes of Mr. Talbot and of M. Evrard as applied to glass; but the idea of copying Nature on this material,--and, having obtained a fixed picture of the shadowed image, of magnifying it by means of the magic lantern, and thus producing a truthful representation of the original,--is certainly due to the artist of Philadelphia. Many beautiful views of the Smithsonian Institute, of the Custom-house at Philadelphia, and of churches in several cities in the United States, show the minuteness of the detail which can be obtained by the use of the albuminized glass. Amongst the professed improvements Mr. Beard exhibits some enamelled daguerreotypes, in which the permanence of the picture is secured by a lacquer." * * * * * In the ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, in London, the President, regretting the undignified controversies respecting the rise and course of the Nile which had taken place, unhesitatingly expressed his conviction that no European traveller, from Bruce downwards, had yet seen the source of the true White Nile. Concerning this, we may still exclaim "_Ignotum, plus notus, Nile, per ortum._" * * * * * Experiments with chloroform as a propelling power, in the place of steam, are now making in the port of L'Orient; and there is reason to hope, from the success which has already attended them, that they will result in causing a considerable saving to be effected in cost and in space. * * * * * THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF FRANCE will hold its annual meeting this year at Dijon. The Congress will commence on the 14th of September. _Recent Deaths._ GENERAL M. ARBUCKLE, U.S.A., died on the 11th of June, at Fort Smith. He was about 75 years of age, and had been nearly fifty years in the army, and twenty on the Arkansas frontier. At the time of his death, he was commander of the 7th Military Department of the United States Army, and had held that station for several years, and was peculiarly calculated for the office, being thoroughly acquainted with the Indians, and Indian character, he always had their confidence, and by that means, kept up and maintained friendly relations with them on behalf of the United States. The St. Louis _Republican_ remarks that, "as a man, Gen. ARBUCKLE was honest and humane, loved and respected by every person with whom he had intercourse. No one pursued a more straight-forward course in all transactions. He was strictly economical in expenditures for the Government. His whole mind was engrossed with the present expedition of the 5th Infantry to the Brazos, and on the frontier of Texas, and he gave orders and directions for conducting, it as long as he was able to converse." * * * * * The CHEVALIER PARISOT DE GUYMONT, who belonged to the family of Lavalette, the illustrious Grand Master of the Order of Malta, of which the chevalier was one of the few surviving knights, has just died in the convent of St. Jean de Catane, in Sicily, to which the directing chapter of that celebrated order had retired. He distinguished himself in the expedition which the last grand master sent against Algiers towards the end of the eighteenth century; and General Bonaparte, when he took possession of Malta, demanded to see M. de Guymont, and received him with marked distinction. He was in the seventy-seventh year of his age. * * * * * SIR J. GRAHAM DALZELL, BART., died on the seventeenth of June in Edinburgh, aged seventy-seven years. He was president of the Society for promoting Useful Arts in Scotland, vice-president of the African institute of Paris, and author of several works on science and history, and of various articles in the 'Encyclopædia Britannica. * * * * * The widow of THOMAS SHERIDAN, died in London on the ninth of June. She was the author of _Carwell_, a very striking story illustrating the inequalities of punishment in the laws against forgery. In a later novel, _Aims and Ends_, the same feminine and truthful spirit showed itself in lighter scenes of social life, observing keenly, and satirizing kindly. Mrs. Sheridan wrote always with ease, unaffectedness, and good-breeding, her books every where giving evidence of the place she might have taken in society if she had not rather desired to refrain from mingling with it, and keep herself comparatively unknown. After her husband's early death she had devoted herself in retirement to the education of her orphan children; when she re-appeared in society it seemed to be solely for the sake of her daughters, on whose marriages she again withdrew from it; and to none of her writings did she ever attach her name. Into the private sphere where her virtues freely displayed themselves, and her patient yet energetic life was spent, it is not permitted us to enter; but we could not pass without this brief record what we know to have been a life as much marked by earnestness, energy, and self-sacrifice, as by those qualities of wit and genius which are for ever associated with the name of Sheridan. Three daughters survive her, and one son--Lady Dufferin, the Hon. Mrs. Norton, Lady Seymour, and Mr. Brinsley Sheridan, the member of Parliament for Shaftesbury. * * * * * From Stockholm we hear of the death of Mr. ANDRE CARLSSON, Bishop of Calmar, and author of numerous and important works on philology, theology and jurisprudence. He occupied at one time the chair of Greek language and literature at the University of Lund, and was, say the Swedish papers, in his place in the Diet, a champion of religious liberty and parliamentary reform. He has died at the great age of 94. * * * * * Poland has lost a writer of distinction, chiefly on geographical subjects, in the person of Count STANISLAUS PLATER. He had long been eminent both in society and in literature. * * * * * GENERAL JAMES MILLER died in Temple, New-Hampshire, on the 7th of July, of paralysis, aged 76 years. He was born in Peterboro, N. H., and bred to the profession of the law. In 1810 he entered the Army, and served with distinction throughout the last war with Great Britain. He rose rapidly from the rank of captain to that of major general. He was present at Tippecanoe, under Gen. Harrison, but was prevented by sickness from taking part in the battle. He rendered eminent services in the battles of Chippeway, Bridgewater, and Lundy's Lane, making himself conspicuous by his courageous and intrepid conduct. It was at the last named battle that he is said to have uttered the renowned declaration, "I'll try, sir," when asked if he could storm an important and nearly impregnable position of the enemy. Gen. Miller was subsequently made Governor of the Territory of Arkansas. Afterwards he was collector of the port of Salem, which post he resigned in 1840. He is the "old soldier collector" referred to in the introduction to Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_. * * * * * The celebrated Polish General UMINSKI died at Wiesbaden on the 16th of June. He was one of the most prominent actors in the last Polish Revolution, but for several years had lived in great retirement at Wiesbaden. He was born in the year 1780, in the Grand Duchy of Posen. As early as 1794 he commenced his military career, as a volunteer under Kosciusko. When the Poles were summoned to new efforts for freedom by Dombrowski, in 1806, Uminski was among the first to take up arms. He formed a Polish Guard of Honor for Napoleon, fought at Dantzick, received a wound at Dirschau, where he was taken prisoner and sentenced to death by a Prussian Court Martial. His sentence was not executed, however, as Napoleon threatened reprisals. In the war against Austria he commanded Dombrowski's advanced guard, was made Colonel, and formed the 10th. hussar-regiment, which signalized itself at Masaisk, in 1812, and at whose head he was the first to enter Moscow. In the retreat, he saved the life of Poniatowski. At the battle of Leipsic, where he acted as Brigadier General, he was again wounded and taken prisoner. After the dissolution of the national army of Poland, he entered into the Polish-Russian service but soon obtained his discharge, and lived in retirement in Posen, though without intermitting his efforts for the freedom of Poland. In the year 1821 he helped to found a patriotic union, was arrested after accession of Nicholas I, and in the year 1826 sentenced to six years' imprisonment in the fortress of Glogau. Escaping from this in 1831, he went to Warsaw, and took part as a common soldier in the battle of Wawre. The next day he was made General of Division. On the 25th of February he beat Diebitsch at Grodno, and distinguished himself in several other battles. Outlawed and hung in effigy at Kosen, he found an asylum in France. The remainder of his subsequent life he passed in Wiesbaden. Uminski was also known as a writer on military affairs. Those who knew him in the latter years of his exile, are loud in their praises of the sweetness, benevolence, and dignity of his character. He will be remembered for his devotion to Polish liberty, and the people, who in future times shall struggle for the same boon, will gain new encouragement from his glorious example. * * * * * VISCOUNT MELVILLE died on the tenth of June. He was in his eightieth year, having been born in 1771. In 1809, he (then the Right Honorable Robert Dundas), was President of the Board of Trade under the Perceval administration. He succeeded his father in 1811, and, in 1812, when Lord Liverpool assumed the reins, he became first Lord of the Admiralty, which office he held during that long administration which ceased in April, 1827, by the death of the Premier. Mr. Canning having been called to power, Lord Melville retired with the majority of his former colleagues, which caused some surprise at the time, as he was favorable to the claims of the Catholics, which was understood to constitute the bond of the new administration. The Canning administration had a brief career, and that of Lord Goderich, the present Earl of Ripon, which attempted to carry on affairs after the death of Canning, was still more brief. On the Duke of Wellington becoming Prime Minister, early in 1822, Lord Melville resumed his former office, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and continued until the breaking up of the Tory Administration, and the advent of the Reform Ministry of Earl Grey, in November, 1830. He then ended his official career, but for several years attended occasionally in the House of Lords, but he chiefly resided at the family seat. * * * * * Mr. DYCE SOMBRE died in London, July 1. His history is very generally known. He was understood to be the son of a German adventurer in India, of the name of Summer, who espoused the late Begum Oomroo. All manner of wild and scandalous stories are afloat as to the life of this woman and the death of her husband. After her death, Mr. Dyce Sombre came to Europe, and first made himself remarkable, in Italy, by the extraordinary black marble monument which he caused to be executed and sent to India in memory of his benefactress. His arrival in England, with a reputation of almost fabulous wealth, attracted much notice. He became one of the fêted lions of the season, and ultimately married, in 1840, Mary Anne, daughter of the Earl St. Vincent. A separation soon took place, and the legal proceedings consequent on this ill-starred marriage, followed by those adopted for the purpose of establishing Mr. Dyce Sombre's lunacy--were long matters of public talk and universal notoriety. His attempt to enter public life was seconded by the "worthy and enlightened" electors of Sudbury, who sent him to Parliament, from whence he was speedily ejected on petition--the borough being soon afterwards disfranchised. For the last few years Mr. Sombre has resided on the Continent, to escape the effects of the decision of the Court of Chancery in his case--a decision against which he had come over to petition when he was seized with his fatal illness. In consequence of his death in a state of lunacy, his money in the funds, railway shares, and other property, of the annual value of £11,000, will become divisible between Captain Troup and General Soldoli, the husbands of his two sisters, who are next of kin. An additional sum, producing £4,000 a year, will also fall to their families on the death of Mrs. Dyce Sombre. * * * * * BISHOP MEDANO, of Buenos Ayres, died in the second week of April. He was 83 years old. * * * * * The EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, one of the most notable of the members of the House of Lords, died at his country residence in Dorsetshire, on the 2d of June, aged eighty-four years. Though neither an orator nor a statesman, he was one of the most remarkable personages of the age in which he lived. His position as a public servant was quite peculiar; and his character, though it could not be called eccentric, had little in common with the world around him. CROPLY ASHLEY COOPER, was the second son of the fourth Lord Shaftesbury. That Lord Shaftesbury who became Chancellor in the reign of Charles II. was the first peer in the Cooper family, and under the title of Lord Ashley was a member of the Cabinet well known by the name of "the Cabal" To him we are indebted for the Habeas Corpus Act, at least for being its chief promoter; and he is likewise entitled to the gratitude of posterity for having introduced a measure to render the Judges independent of the crown. The third Earl--grandson of the first--was the celebrated author of the _Characteristics_. The fourth was his son; the fifth and sixth Earls were his grandsons; the former of these dying without male issue in 1811, the earldom devolved on the deceased, who was born in London on the 21st of December, 1768. From Winchester, where he was contemporaneous with Sidney Smith, and Archbishop Howley, he in due course went to Christchurch, where he passed his time as most young men of rank do at college, and graduated with quite as much credit as was then usually attained by the son of an Earl; after which he made those excursions on the continent of Europe that our ancestors were accustomed to call "the grand tour;" and all these operations he brought to a close before he had completed his twenty-second year. His next step was to get into Parliament, and a seat in the House of Commons was obtained for him in the usual way by family influence, Dorchester having had the advantage of calling him its member from the thirtieth of January, 1790, for a period exceeding twenty-one years. This was pretty good experience in the more active branch of the Legislature, though the body that elected him was of that small and quiet order of constituencies that do not greatly overburden their members with the labors of representation. Mr. Cropley Ashley Cooper had, therefore, had a long apprenticeship to political life, when, by the death of his elder brother, on the fourteenth of May, 1811, he succeeded to the peerage as sixth Earl of Shaftesbury. The Earl was nearly forty years of age when, upon the death of Fox, the Tories recovered their long possession of office, and among their good deeds may be reckoned their appointment of Lord Shaftesbury, then Mr. Cooper, to the office of Clerk of the Ordnance. To the duties of his department he applied himself with marvellous zeal, and it was always his own opinion that he there first acquired those habits of industry and method which rendered him one of the most efficient members of the Upper House. When, on the death of his elder brother, he reached the dignity of the peerage, he thought it necessary to resign the clerkship of the Ordnance, though his private fortune was scarcely sufficient for a man encumbered with an earldom and a large family. He took his seat as a peer in June, 1811, and it was not until November, 1814, that he became permanently the Chairman of Committees; the duties of which place were well done for nearly forty years by "old" Lord Shaftesbury, who was never old when business pressed. Strong common sense, knowledge of the statute law, and above all, uncompromising impartiality, made him an autocrat in his department. When once he heard a case, and deliberately pronounced judgment, submission almost invariably followed. A man of the largest experience as a Parliamentary agent has been heard to say that he remembered only one case in which the House reversed a decision of Lord Shaftesbury; and on that occasion it became necessary to prevail on the Duke of Wellington to speak in order to overcome the "old Earl." It would not be easy to cite many instances of men who have taken as active part in the business of a deliberative assembly after the age of 75; but the labors of Lord Shaftesbury were continued beyond that of fourscore. To all outward seeming he was nearly as efficient at one period of his life as at another. By the time he had reached the age of fifty,--which was about half-way through the fifteen years that Lord Liverpool's Ministry held the government,--Lord Shaftesbury's knowledge of his duties as chairman to the Lords was complete, and then he appeared to settle down in life with the air, the habits, the modes of thought and action, natural to old age. Although there are few men now alive whose experience would enable them to contrast his performance of official duties with the manner in which they were discharged by his predecessor, yet, even in the absence of any thing like _data_, there seems to be a general impression that the House of Lords never could have had a more efficient chairman. He was certainly a man of undignified presence, of indistinct and hurried speech, of hasty and brusque manner, the last person whom a superficial observer would think of placing in the chair of the greatest senate that the world has ever seen; yet it cannot be said that their lordships were ever wrong in their repeated elections of Lord Shaftesbury; for in the formal business of committees he rarely allowed them to make a mistake, while he was prompt as well as safe in devising the most convenient mode of carrying any principle into practical effect. He was no theorist; there was nothing of the speculative philosopher in the constitution of his mind; and he therefore readily gained credit for being what he really was, an excellent man of business. It is well known that the Lords, sitting in committee, are less prone to run riot than the other House; still it required no small ability to keep them always in the right path, as was the happy practice of Lord Shaftesbury. In dealing with minute distinctions and mere verbal emendations, a deliberative assembly occasionally loses its way, and members sometimes ask, "What is it we are about?" This was a question which Lord Shaftesbury usually answered with great promptitude and perspicuity, rarely failing to put the questions before their Lordships in an unmistakable form. Another valuable quality of Lord Shaftesbury as a chairman consisted in his impatience of prosy, unprofitable talk, of which, doubtless, there is comparatively little in the Upper House; but even that little he labored to make less by occasionally reviving attention to the exact points at issue, and sometimes, by an excusable manoeuvre, shutting out opportunity for useless discussion. When he sat on the woolsack as speaker, in the absence of the Lord Chancellor, he deported himself after the manner of Chancellors; but when he got into his proper element at the table of the house, nothing could be more rapid than his evolutions; no hesitation, no dubiety, nor would he allow any one else to pause or doubt. Often has he been heard to say, in no very gentle tones, "Give me in that clause _now_;"--"That's enough;"--"It will do very well as it is;"--"If you have anything further to propose, move at once;"--"Get through the bill now, and bring up that on the third reading." He always made their Lordships feel that, come what might, it was their duty to "get through the bill;" and so expeditious was the old Earl, that he would get out of the chair, bring up his report, and move the House into another committee in the short time that sufficed for the Chancellor to transfer himself from the woolsack to the Treasury bench and back again. * * * * * Mr. THOMAS WRIGHT HILL, eminent in England for some of the most important improvements that have been made in the means of education during this century, died on the 9th of June, at the age of eighty-eight. Hazelwood School, near Birmingham, established by Mr. Hill, was the most successful, as it was the first large experiment as to the practicability of governing boys by other principles than that of terror, of extending the range of scholastic acquirements beyond a superficial knowledge of the learned languages, and of making the acquisition of sound knowledge not only a duty but a delight. The views of Mr. Hill were set forth in _Plans for the Government and Liberal Instruction of Boys in large numbers, drawn from Experience_, first published in 1823; and a very elaborate paper in the _Edinburgh Review_ of Jan. 1825, brought the system into general notice. * * * * * The _London Builder_ contains a brief notice of MELCHIOR BOISSERÉE, brother to Sulpize Boisserée, whose death is much regretted throughout Germany. It was so far back as the year 1804, that three young men, citizens of Cologne, conceived the idea of collecting and resuscitating the mediæval art-relics of the Rhine-lands. But what was, probably, but contemplated as a provincial undertaking, soon attracted the eyes of Europe, and became a great fact of modern art-history. When, about 1808, Sulpize Boisserée determined to devote himself entirely to the work on the Cologne Cathedral, Melchior and his brother Bertram continued the research and collection of ancient paintings. But already in 1810, the old pictures had outgrown the scanty spaces appropriable to them at Cologne. They were transferred first to Heidelberg, and in 1819 the three brothers migrated with them to Stuttgardt, where the king afforded room to this unique gathering of mediæval art. It was Melchior who chiefly attended to the restoration of the pictures, and enriched the collection during his travels in the Netherlands, in 1812 and 1813. Having found some of the pictures of Hemling and Memling, it was he who first attracted notice to these excellent, hitherto hardly known artists. In 1827 the collection was sold to Ludwig of Bavaria, and as the Pinakotheka (where they were to be placed) was not ready, the pictures were conveyed to Schleissheim. In this retirement, Melchior Boisserée devoted his whole attention to the art of glass painting, which at that time was nigh considered as lost. If now such great things are accomplished at Munich in this department of Art, it was Melchior (conjointly with his brother Bertram) who paved the way by this collection of old specimens, seen with astonishment by travellers from the whole of Europe. When Bertram had died (about 1830), Melchior joined his brother Sulpize at Bonn, where Melchior, in the prosecution of his favored Art-studies, concluded his life in serene quiet and contentment. * * * * * In the death of CHRISTIAN TIECK, German sculpture has lost one of its most illustrious ornaments, a man of rare intelligence, of long experience, and of profound artistic cultivation. He was born in Berlin, on the 14th of August, 1776, and early destined for a sculptor. The poetic genius and rare qualities of his brother Lewis Tieck, the poet, his elder by three years, and the graceful artistic and literary accomplishments of a sister, afterward the Baroness Knooring, inspired the young sculptor with the warmest interest in the then young and hopeful German literature and art. This taste he never lost. Perhaps no artist, so distinguished as an artist, was ever so devoted to various study, to the last moment of his life. In 1797, he went to Paris as Royal Pensioner, and although a sculptor, entered David's studio, and in the year 1800 took the prize for sculpture. In 1801 he returned to Berlin, and his distinguished talent was acknowledged. Goethe immediately summoned him to Weimar, and employed him in the adorning of the Ducal palace, and in the moulding of a series of busts. Of this latter an idealized head of Goethe and of the philologist Frederic August Wolf, are the best. The young Tieck continued in the closest correspondence with his brother, who was then pursuing his poetical studies at Jena and Dresden, and they went with Rumohr to Italy, in the year 1805, and there by his beautiful busts, won the friendship of William Von Humboldt, a man of the most delicate and accurate artistic taste, as well as of the noblest character and intellectual ability. Madame de Staël invited Tieck to execute sculptures at Coppet, for the Neckar family, and in 1809 the Prince Royal of Bavaria, Louis, selected Tieck to mould the busts for the projected Walhalla. He did them, and in 1812 passed into Switzerland. He lived in Zurich, where Rauch was then engaged upon his noble work, the reclining statue of Queen Louisa, now at Charlottenburg, and a warm friendship was formed between the sculptors. In 1819 he returned to Berlin, was elected into the Senate of the Academy, and appointed Professor by the Grand Duke of Weimar. He then quietly devoted himself to his art, and Berlin is beautiful with Tieck's sculptures. Named, in 1830 director of the Gallery of Sculpture, he did not relax his artistic activity, and after a long illness he died gently in the spring of his year, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. His elder brother Lewis, the most deservedly famous of the living illustrations of German literature, the only worthy translator of Shakspeare, the most genial friend, the most single-hearted of poets, whom the King honors and who loved Novalis--now seventy-eight years old, awaits in continued and patiently endured illness the gentle guiding of death to his best friend and brother. _Ladies' Summer Fashions._ [Illustration] The strong and superb stuffs of winter are quite superseded by ball dresses, at the various watering places. The _élégantes_ seek _toilettes_ which, without being rich, are remarkable for lightness and tasteful patterns. We commend a white mousseline dress, with three flounces, simply hemmed; a long sash of ribbon of colored taffeta; natural flowers in the hair and on the front of the dress; a dress of colored taffeta, white or straw ground, or blue or pink ground; these stuffs are striped, or running and small patterns, or great branches with detached bouquets. Barèges are also much worn, with white ground sprinkled with little rose-buds; silk barège, with wreaths of flowers, are newer. The shape of the bodies of evening dresses has not undergone much change. _Berthes_ are still worn, forming a point in front, only varying in the disposition of the ornaments, interspersed with small ribbons or lace and mousseline. Natural flowers will be worn for headdresses and bouquets. Walking dresses are much in vogue of barèges and mousseline, the body skirted, open in front, and lower down than in winter. We must mention a new dress, named _Albanaise_, made of barège. It is of several shades, but the most _recherché_ are _gris poussière_, or dust gray. Five dull silk stripes begin from the bottom of the dress; then an intervening space and four other stripes; another space and, to finish, three more stripes ending right in the belt, always diminishing in size. We have also seen a jaconet dress, embroidered _à l'Anglaise_ as an apron to the waist; the body embroidered at the edge flat, as well as in the skirts and sleeves; and three knots of blue taffeta fastened the bodice. For the country, dresses of Chinese nankeen and Persian jaconet are worn; and to protect from the sun, a kind of hood, of similar stuff. There are a great many black lace _schales_, embroidered muslins, printed barège, square or long, with cashmere patterns. The scarf _mantelet_ is also much in fashion, and the article which permits of the most frequent change; a point scarcely perceptible in the middle of the back makes it still more graceful. It is made in all shades, but the most _comme-il-faut_ are black; it is more suitable, and sets off the freshness of the dress. It is trimmed with lace, fringe, or net, covered with small velvet dots. We have seen some quite covered with common embroidery; others embroidered with arabesques intermingled with braid and silk, and black jet. For the seaside there are also worn many _mantelets_, which remind us of the winter by their shape; but the materials are somewhat lighter, chiefly of thin summer cloth, or felt of gray shades. The _Promenade Dress_, on the preceding page, is of a rich plain chocolate-colored silk, made perfectly simple. Pardessus of a damson-colored brocaded silk, the lower part of which, as well as the large sleeves, being decorated with a magnificent double fringe, the under and deepest being of black, and the upper composed of long silk tassels, put at equal distances. Leghorn bonnet, trimmed with pink silk, cut the width of a broad ribbon, and pinked at the edge; the interior having a fulling of the pink silk encircling the face, with brides to match. Coarse straw _chapeaux_, though principally intended for the country, are employed, though not much, for morning _neglige_, in town, and will be very much in request for the watering-places; they are of the _capote_ form, in open-work, and lined with taffeta, of one of the colors of the ribbon that trims them. The ribbon is always plaided, and the most fashionable has a great variety of colors; the knots are large, and formed of several _coques_, divided in the middle by a torsade of ribbons; some are decorated with ribbons only, but small flowers and foliage may be employed to trim the interior of the brim. Fancy _chapeaux_ are composed of bands of _paille dentelle_, alternating with rose-colored taffeta _biais_, &c. Rice straw is also employed a good deal for fancy _chapeaux_ that are formed of more than one material. The following figures are copied from Parisian fashion plates for 1811. The shortness of the frocks should certainly satisfy the most extreme innovators of the present time. [Illustration: LADIES' FASHIONS IN PARIS FORTY YEARS AGO.] 
26196	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections.) THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE Of Literature, Art, and Science. Vol. II. NEW-YORK, FEBRUARY 1, 1851. No. III Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article. THOMAS CHATTERTON. [Illustration] In the history of English literature there is no name that inspires a profounder melancholy than that of the "marvellous boy" Chatterton, of whom it must be said that in genius he surpassed any one who ever died so young, and that in suffering he had larger experience than almost any one who has lived to old age. Shelley says of him: "'Mid others of less note came one frail form, A phantom among men; companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm, Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, Aclæon-like, and now he fled astray, With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, And his own thoughts along that rugged way Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey." And Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, Southey, Scott, Kirke White, Landor, Montgomery, and others, have laid immortal flowers upon his tomb, to make the heart ache that we did not live in time to save the "sleepless soul" from "perishing in his pride." Of the genius of poor Chatterton, Campbell says, "I would rather lean to the utmost enthusiasm of his admirers, than to the cold opinion of those who are afraid of being blinded to the defects of the poems attributed to Rowley, by the veil of obsolete phraseology which is thrown over them. If we look to the ballad of Sir Charles Bawdin, and translate it into modern English, we shall find its strength and interest to have no dependence on obsolete words. The inequality of his various productions may be compared to the disproportions of the ungrown giant. His works had nothing of the definite neatness of that precocious talent which stops short in early maturity. His thirst for knowledge was that of a being taught by instinct to lay up materials for the exercise of great and undeveloped powers. Even in his favorite maxim, that a man by abstinence and perseverance might accomplish whatever he pleased, may be traced the indications of a genius which nature had meant to achieve immortality. Tasso alone can be compared to him as a juvenile prodigy." Mrs. S. C. HALL gives us, in her "Pilgrimages to English Shrines," in the _Art Journal_, the following interesting sketches of scenes connected with his history:-- THOMAS CHATTERTON. CHATTERTON--poor Chatterton! We had been brooding sadly over his fragment of a life, ending at seventeen--when ordinary lives begin--and turning page after page of Horace Walpole's literary fooleries, to find his explanations and apologies for want of feeling and sympathy, which his flippant style, and heartless commentaries, illustrate to perfection; and we closed, with an aching heart, the volumes of both the parasite of genius, and him who was its mightiest creation and most miserable victim:-- "The marvellous boy who perished in his pride." It was only natural for us to recall the many instances we have ourselves known, during the past twenty years, or more, of sorrow and distress among those who sought distinction in the thorny labyrinths of literature;--those who ----"waged with Fortune an eternal war, Checked by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown, And Poverty's unconquerable bar;" and those who, after a brief struggle with untoward fate, left the battle-field, to die, "unpitied and unknown!" We have seen the career of a young literary man commenced with the first grand requisite of all excellence worth achieving--ENTHUSIASM; high notions of moral honor, and a warm devotedness to that "calling" which lifts units to a pinnacle formed by the dry bones of hundreds slain. We have seen that enthusiasm frozen by disappointment--that honor corrupted by the contamination of dissipated men--that devotedness to THE CAUSE fade away before the great want of nature--want of bread--which it had failed to bestow. We have seen, ay, in one little year, the flashing eye dimmed--the round cheek flattened--the bright, hopeful creature, who went forth into the world--rejoicing like the sun to run his course--dragged from the waters of our leaden Thames, a discolored remnant of mortality--recognized only by the mother who looked to him for all the world could give! This is horrible--but it is a tragedy soon played out. There are hundreds at this moment possessed of the _consciousness_ of power without the _strength_ to use it. To such, a little help might lead to a life of successful toil--perhaps the happiest life a man can lead. A heritage of usefulness is one of peace to the last. We knew another youth, of a more patient nature than he of whom we have just spoken. He seemed never weary. We have witnessed his nightly toil; his daily labor; the smiling patience with which he endured the sneers levelled, _only_ in English society, against "_mere_ literary men." We remember when, on the first day of every month, he used to haunt the booksellers' shops to look over the magazines, cast his eyes down the table of contents, just to see if "his poem" or "his paper" had been inserted--then lay them down one after another with a pale sickly smile, expressive of disappointment, and turn away with a look of gentle endurance. The insertion of a sonnet, for which perhaps he might receive seven shillings, would set him dreaming again of literary immortality; and at last the dream was realized by an accident, or rather, to speak advisedly, by a good Providence. He became known--known at once--blazed forth; something he had written attracted the town's attention, and ladies in crowded drawing-rooms stood upon chairs to see that poor, worn, pale man of letters: and magazines, and grave reviews, and gayly-bound albums, all waited for his contributions--charge what he pleased; and flushed with fame, and weighed down with money--money paid for the very articles that had been rejected without one civil line of courtesy--the great sustaining hope of his life was realized; he married one as worn and pale with the world's toil, as himself--married--and died within a month! The tide was too tardy in turning! Who shall say how many men of genius have walked, like unhappy Chatterton, through the valley of the shadow of death, and found no guide, no consolation--no hope; if, the one GREAT HOPE had not been most mercifully planted early in their hearts and minds? It was with melancholy pleasure that, during the past summer, our Pilgrimage was made to the places connected with the boy's memory, in Bristol; first to Colston's school, in which he was educated;[1] next to the dull district in which he was either born or passed his boyhood; then to the Institution, where his "Will," a mad document, and other memoranda connected with his memory, are preserved with a degree of care, that seems--or is--a mockery, when contrasted with the worse than indifference of the city to all that concerned him when alive; next to the house of Master Canynge, and next to the monument (Redcliffe Church) with which his name will be associated as long as one of its stones remains upon another; chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancies through its long-drawn aisles; pondering sadly in the muniment-room, where the cofres that suggested the forgeries, still lie rotting; and gazing with mingled sorrow and surprise on the "Cenotaph to Chatterton," which now, taken to pieces, occupies the corner of a damp vault-- "A solemn cenotaph to thee, Sweet Harper of time-shrouded minstrelsy!" Ah! such books as we have been reading, and such memories as we have been recalling, are, after all, unprofitable--a darkness without light. We closed our eyes upon the world, which, in our momentary bitterness, we likened to one great charnel-house, entombing all things glorious and bright. We walked to the window; the rain was descending in torrents--pour, pour; pattens clattered in the areas, and a solitary postman made the street echo with his impatient knocks. A poor organ-boy, whom we have long known, was moving, rather than walking, in the centre; his hat flapped over his eyes by the rain, yet still he turned the handle, and the damp music crawled forth: he paused opposite our door, turned up the leaf of his hat, and looked upward; we missed the family of white mice which usually crawled on the top of his organ: poor child, he had sheltered them in his bosom; it was nothing more than natural that he should do so, and the act was commonplace enough--but it pleased us--it diminished our gloom. And we thought, if the great ones of the land would but foster the talent that needs, and deserves, protection from the storms of life, as that lonely boy sheltered the creatures intrusted to his care, the world would be all the better. We do not mean to insult the memory of such a genius as Chatterton by saying that he required a PATRON--the very sound is linked with a servility that degrades a noble nature; but we do say he sadly wanted a FRIEND--some one who could have understood and appreciated his wonderful intellectual gifts; and whose strength of mind and position in society would have given power to direct and control the overleaping and indomitable pride which ultimately destroyed "the Boy." His career teaches a lesson of such rare value to all who seek distinction in any sphere of life, that we would have it considered well--as a beacon to warn from ruin. "Oh! what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!" Despite his marvellous talents, his industry, his knowledge, his magnitude of mind, his glorious imagination, his bold satire, his independence, his devotional love of his mother and sister--if he had lived through a long age of prosperity, Chatterton could never have been trusted, nor esteemed, _from his total want of truth_. His is the most striking example upon record of the necessity for uprightness in word and deed. Where a great end is to be achieved--there must be consistency, a union between noble daring and noble deeds--there must be Truth! No man has ever deviated from it without losing not only the respect of the thinking, but even the confidence of the unwise. Chatterton's earliest idea seems to have been how to deceive; and, were it possible to laugh at youthful fraud, there would be something irresistibly ludicrous in the lad bewildering the old pewterer, Burgum. Imagine the fair-haired rosy boy, the brightness of his extraordinary eyes increased by the covert mischief which urged him forward--fancy his presenting himself to Master Burgum, who, dull as his own pewter, had the ambition, which the cunning youth fostered, of being thought of an "ancient family"--fancy Chatterton in his poor-school dress presenting himself to this man, whose business, Chatterton's biographer, Mr. Dix, tells us, was carried on in the house now occupied by Messrs. Sander, Bristol Bridge,[2] and informing him that he had made a discovery--presenting to him various documents, with a parchment painting of the De Burgham arms, in proof of his royal descent from the Conqueror. [Illustration: BRISTOL BRIDGE.] Mr. Dix assures us, "that never once doubting the validity of the record, in which his own honors were so deeply implicated, he presented the poor bluecoat-boy, who had been so fortunate in _finding_ so much, and so assiduous in his endeavors to collect the remainder, with _five shillings_!" Blush, Bristol, blush at this record of a citizen's meanness; the paltry remuneration could have hardly tempted even so poor a lad as Thomas Chatterton to continue his labors for the love of gain; yet he furnished Burgum with further information, loving the indulgence of his mystifying powers, and secretly satirizing the folly he duped. It is quite impossible to trace back any circumstance which could, to speak advisedly, have led to such a course of deception as was practised by this boy; born of obscure parents, his father, a man of dissolute habits, was sub-chanter of the Cathedral, and also master of the free school in Pyle-street; this clever, but harsh, and dissolute man died in August, 1752, and the poet was born on the 20th of the following November.[3] Such a parent could not be a loss; he would have been, in all human probability, as careless of his son as he was of his wife; and, at all events, Chatterton had not the misery of early cruelty to complain of, for he had a mother, tender and affectionate, although totally unfit to guide and manage his wayward nature. Her first grief with him arose, strange as it may seem, from his inaptitude for learning--as a child he disdained A B C, and indulged himself with his own thoughts. When nearly seven years old he "fell in love," to use his mother's phrase, "with an illuminated French manuscript," and thus learned his letters from the very sort of thing he spent his early days in counterfeiting. His progress was wonderful, both as to rapidity and extent, and his pride kept pace therewith. A friend, wishing to give the boy and his sister a present of china-ware, asked him what device he would choose to ornament his with. "Paint me," he said, "an angel with wings and a trumpet, to trumpet my name over the world." Here was a proof of innate ambition; if his mother had had an understanding mind, this observation would have taught her to read his character. Such ambition could have been directed,--and directed to noble deeds. [Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF CHATTERTON.] [Illustration: CHATTERTON AS DOORKEEPER.] He was admitted into the Blue Coat School, commonly called "Colston's School,"[4] before he was eight years old, and his enthusiastic joy at the prospect of learning so much, was damped by finding that, to quench his thirst for knowledge, "there were not books enough." When he took in rotation the post of doorkeeper at the school, he used to indulge himself in making verses,[5] and his sister, who loved him tenderly, presented him with a pocket-book, in which he wrote verses, and gave it back to her the following year. There was nothing in this species of tuition or companionship to create or foster either the imitations or the satire he indulged in, he had neither correction nor assistance from any one. Even before his apprenticeship to Mr. John Lambert, he felt he was not appreciated or understood; perhaps no one ever _acted_ a greater satire upon his own profession than this harsh attorney, who deemed his apprentice on a level with his footboy. He must have been a man utterly devoid of perception and feeling; his insulting contempt of what he could not understand added considerably to the sarcastic bitterness of Chatterton's nature, and it is easy to picture the boy's feelings when his productions were torn by this tyrant and scattered on the office floor! He has his reward. John Lambert, the scrivener, is only remembered as the insulter of Thomas Chatterton![6] [Illustration: TOMB OF CANYNGE.] It is impossible not to pause at every page of this boy's brief but eventful life, and lament that he had no friend; reading, as we do, by the light of other days, we can see so many passages where judicious counsel, given with the intelligent affection that would at once have opened his heart, _must_ have saved him; his heart, once laid bare to friendship, would have been purified by the air of truth; it was its _closeness_ which infected his nature. And yet the scrivener considered him a good apprentice. His industry was amazing; his frequent employment was to copy precedents, and one volume, in his handwriting, which is still extant, consists of three hundred and forty-four closely-written folio pages. There was in that gloomy office an edition of Camden's "Britannia," and, having borrowed from Mr. Green, a bookseller, Speight's "Chaucer," he compiled therefrom an ingenious glossary, for his own use, in two parts. "The first," Mr. Dix says, "contained old words, with the modern English--the second, the modern English, with the old words; this enabled him to turn modern English into old, as an English and Latin dictionary enables the student to turn English into Latin." How miserable it is, amongst these evidences of his industry and genius, to find that all his ingenuity turned to the furtherance of a fraud. He seems to have been morally dead to every thing like the disgrace attending falsehood; for, when struggling afterwards in London to appear prosperous while starving, he wrote home to Mr. Catcott, and concludes his letter by stating that he intended going abroad as a _surgeon_, adding, "Mr. Barrett has it in his power to assist me greatly, by _his giving me a physical character_; I hope he will." He seems to have had no idea that he was asking Mr. Barrett to do a dishonest action. But the grand fraud of his short life was boldly dared by this boy in his sixteenth year. Why he should have ever descended to forge when he felt the high pressure of genius so strong within him, is inexplicable. Why, with his daring pride, he should have submitted to be considered a transcriber, where he originated, is more than marvellous. The spell of a benighting antiquity seemed around him; it might lead one to a belief in "Gramarie"--that some fake spirit had issued forth from the "cofre of Mr. Canynge,"[7] so long preserved in the room over the north porch of this Bristol church of Redcliffe--a "_cofre_" secured by six keys, all of which being lost or mislaid, the vestry ordered the "_cofre_" to be opened; and not only "Canynge's _cofre_," but all the "_cofres_," in the mysterious chamber: not from any love of antiquity, but because of the hope of obtaining certain title-deeds supposed to be contained therein. Well, these intelligent worthies, having found what concerned themselves, took them away, leaving behind, _and open_, parchments and documents which might have enriched our antiquarian literature beyond all calculation.[8] Chatterton's father used to carry these parchments away wholesale, and covered with the precious relics, bibles, and school-books: most likely other officers of the church did the same. After his death, his widow conveyed many of them, with her children and furniture, to her new residence, and, woman-like, formed them into dolls and thread-papers. In process of time, the child's attention being aroused by the illuminated manuscripts, he conveyed every bit of parchment he could find to a small den of a room in his mother's house, which he called his own: and, when he grew a little older, set forth, with considerable tact, in answer to all questions asked of him as to how he obtained the poems and information, that he himself had searched the old "_cofres_,"[9] and discovered the poems of the Monk Rowley. Certainly he could not have had a better person to trumpet his discovery than "a talkative fool" like Burgum, who was so proud of his pedigree as to torment the officers of the Herald's College about his ancestors; and he was not the only one imposed on by Chatterton's talent. His simple-minded mother bore testimony to his joy at discovering those "written parchments upon the covered books:" and, of course, each discovery added to his antiquarian knowledge; for, though no trace exists of the Monk Rowley's originals, there is little doubt that on some of those parchments he found enough to set him thinking, and with him to think and act was the same thing; indeed, there is one passage in his poems bearing so fully upon the fraud, that we transcribe it. He is writing of having discharged all his obligations to Mr. Catcott:-- "If ever obligated to thy purse, _Rowley discharges all, my first chief curse!_ For had I never known the antique lore, I ne'er had ventured from my peaceful shore, But, happy in my humble sphere, had moved Untroubled, unsuspected, unbeloved."[10] [Illustration: MUNIMENT ROOM.] A Mr. Rudhall[11] said that, when Chatterton wrote on a parchment, he held it over a candle to give it the appearance of antiquity; and a Mr. Gardener has recorded, that he once saw Chatterton rub a parchment over with ochre, and afterwards rub it on the ground, saying, "that was the way to antiquate it." This _exposé_ of Chatterton's craft is so at variance with his usual caution that we can hardly credit it. A humble woman, Mrs. Edkins, speaks of his spending all his holidays in the little den of a room we have mentioned, where he _locked_ himself in, and would remain the entire day without meals, returning with his hands and face completely begrimed with dirt and charcoal; and she well remembers his having a charcoal pounce-bag and parchment and letters on a little deal table, and all over the ground was a litter of parchments; and she and his mother at one time fancied he intended to discolor himself and run away to the gipsies; but afterwards Mrs. Edkins believed that he was laboring at the Rowley manuscripts, and she thought he got himself bound to a lawyer that he might get at old law books. The testimony she bears to his affectionate tenderness towards his mother and sister is touching: while his pride led him to seek for notoriety for himself, it was only to render his mother and sister comfortable that he coveted wealth. It is not our province to enter into the controversy as to whether the MSS. were originals or forgeries: it would seem to be as undecided to-day as it was three quarters of a century ago; the boy "died and made no sign:" and the world has not been put in possession of any additional facts by which the question might be determined: the balance of proof appears in favor of those who contend they were the sole offspring of his mind, suggested merely by ancient documents from which he could have borrowed no idea except that of rude spelling; yet it is by no means impossible that poems did actually exist, and came into his hands, which he altered and interpolated, but which he did not create. In aid of his plans, Chatterton first addressed himself to Dodsley, the Pall Mall bookseller, once with smaller poems, and afterwards on behalf of the greatest production of his genius--the tragedy of "Ella;" but the booksellers of those days were not more intellectual than those at the present: they devoured the small forgery of the great Horace Walpole, "The Castle of Otranto," and rejected the magnificence of a nameless composition. This man's neglect drove the young poet to the "Autocrat of Strawberry Hill." In reply he at first received a polished letter. The literary trifler was not aware of the poverty and low station of his correspondent, and so was courteous; he is "grateful" and "singularly obliged;" bowing, and perfumed, and polite. Other communications followed. Walpole inquired--discovered the poet's situation; and _then_ he changed! The poor fond boy! how hard and bitter was the rebuff. How little had he imagined that _the_ Walpole's soul was not, _by five shillings_, as large as the Bristol pewterer's!--that he who was an adept at literary imposition could have been so harsh to a fellow-sinner! The volume of his works containing "Miscellanies of Chatterton" is now before us. Hear to his indignant honesty! He declares that "all the house of forgery are relations; and that though it be but just to Chatterton's memory to say his poverty never made him claim kindred with the richest, or more enriching branches, yet that his ingenuity in counterfeiting styles, and I believe hands, might easily have led him to those more facile imitations of prose--promissory notes." The literal meaning of this paragraph stamps the littleness of the man's mind. A slight--a very slight effort on his part might have turned the current of the boy's thoughts, and saved him from misery and death. We do not call Chatterton "his victim," because we do not think him so; but he, or any one in his position, might have turned him from the love of an unworthy notoriety to the pursuit of a laudable ambition. Following in the world's track (which he was ever careful not to outstep), when the boy was dead, Walpole bore eloquent testimony to his genius. The words of praise he gives his memory are like golden grains amid the chaffy _verbiage_ with which he defends himself. If he perceived this at first, why not have come forward hand and heart, and shouted him on to honest fortune? But, like all _clique kings_, he made no general cause with literature; he only smiled on his individual worshippers, who could applaud when he said, with cruel playfulness, "that singing birds should not be too well fed!" His master, Lambert, dismissed the youth from his service, because he had reason to suppose he meditated self-destruction; and then he proceeded to London. How buoyant and full of hope he was during his probationary days there, his letters to his mother and sister testify; his gifts, also, extracted from his necessities, are evidences of the bent of his mind--fans and china--luxuries rather than necessaries; but in this, it must be remembered, his judgment was in fault, not his affections. In all things he was swayed and guided by his pride,--his indomitable pride. The period, brief as it was, of his sojourn in the great metropolis proved that Walpole, while he neglected him so cruelly, understood him perfectly, when he said that "nothing in Chatterton could be separated from Chatterton--that all he did was the effervescence of ungovernable impulse, which, chameleon-like, imbibed the colours of all it looked on it was Ossian, or a Saxon monk, or Gray, or Smollett, or Junius." His first letter to his mother is dated, April the 26th, 1770. He terminated his own existence on the 24th of August in the same year. He battled with the crowded world of London, and, what was in his case a more dire enemy than the world, his overwhelming pride, for nearly four months. Alas! how terrible are the reflections which these few weeks suggest! Now borne aloft upon the billows of hope, sparkling in the fitful brightness of a feverish sun, and then plunged into the slough of despair, his proud, dark soul disclaiming all human participation in a misery exaggerated by his own unbending pride. Let us not talk of denying sympathy to persons who create their own miseries; they endure agonies thrice told. The paltry remuneration he received for his productions is recorded by himself. Among the items is one as extraordinary as the indignant emotion it excites:-- Received from Mr. Hamilton, for 16 songs, 10s. 6d. Of Mr. Hamilton, for "Candidus" and Foreign Journal 2s.!! We are wearied for him of the world's dark sight: yet in the same book is recorded that the same publisher owed him £10 19s. 6d.! This sum might have saved him, but he was too proud to ask for money; too proud to complain; too proud to accept the invitation of his acquaintances, or his landlady, to dine or sup with them; and all too proud to hint, even to his mother and sister, that he was any thing but prosperous. Ardent as if he had been a son of the hot south, he had learned nothing of patience or expediency. His first residence was at Mrs. Walmsley's, in Shoreditch, but, doubtless, finding the lodging too expensive, he removed to a Mr. Angell's, sac (or dress) maker, 4, Brook Street, Holborn. This woman, who seems to have been of a gentle nature, finding that for two days he had confined himself to his room, and gone without sustenance, invited him to dine with her; but he was offended, and assured her he was not hungry. It is quite impossible to account for this uncalled for pride. It was his nature. Lord Byron said he was mad: according to _his_ view of the case, all eccentricity is madness; but in the case of unhappy Chatterton, that madness which arises from "hope deferred," was unquestionably endured. Three days before his death, pursuing, with a friend, the melancholy and speculative employment of reading epitaphs in the churchyard of St. Pancras, absorbed by his own reflections, he fell into a new-made grave. There was something akin to the raven's croak, the death-fetch, the fading spectre, in this foreboding accident: he smiled at it, and told his friend he felt the sting of speedy dissolution:-- "Then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the earth on which he moved alone." At the age of seventeen years and nine months, his career ended; it was shown that he had swallowed arsenic in water, and so-- "perished in his pride!" An inquest was held, and yet though Englishmen--men who could read and write, and hear--who must have heard of the boy's talents, either as a poet, a satirist, or a political writer--though these men were guided by a coroner, one, of course, in a more elevated sphere than those who usually determine the intentions of the departed soul--yet was there not one--NOT ONE of them all--with sufficient veneration for the casket which had contained the diamond--not one with enough of sympathy for the widow's son--to wrap his body in a decent shroud, and kneel in Christian piety by his grave!--not one to pause and think that, between genius and madness, "What thin partitions do their bounds divide!" In a letter from Southey to Mr. Britton (dated in 1810, to which we have already referred, and which Mr. Britton kindly submitted to us with various other correspondence on the subject), he says, "there can now be no impropriety in mentioning what could not be said when the collected edition of Chatterton's works was published,--that there was a taint of insanity in his family. His sister was once confined; and this is a key to the eccentricities of his life, and the deplorable rashness of his death." Of this unhappy predisposition, indeed, he seems to have been himself conscious, for "in his last will and testament," written in April, 1770, before he quitted Bristol, when he seems to have meditated suicide--although, from the mock-heroic style of the document his serious design may be questioned,--he writes, "If I do a mad action, it is conformable to every action of my life, which all savored of insanity." His "sudden fits of weeping, for which no reason could be assigned," when a mere child, were but the preludes to those gloomy forebodings which haunted him when a boy. His mother had said, "she was often apprehensive of his going mad." And so,--the verdict having been pronounced, he was cast into the burying-ground of Shoe Lane work-house--the paupers' burying-ground,--the end, as far as his clayey tabernacle was concerned, of all his dreamy greatness. When the ear was deaf to the worship of the charmer, he received his meed of posthumous praise. Malone, Croft, Dr. Knox, Wharton, Sherwin, Pye, Mrs. Cowley, Walter Scott, Haley, Coleridge, Dermody, Wordsworth, Shelley, William Howitt, Keats, who dedicated his "Endymion" to the memory of his fellow-genius; the burly Johnson, whose praise seemed unintentional; the gentle and most Christian poet, James Montgomery,--have each and all offered tributes to his memory. Robert Southey, whose polished, strong and long unclouded mind was a treasure-house of noble-thoughts, assisted Mr. Cottle in providing for the poet's family by a collection of his works; and, though last, not least, excellent John Britton has labored all his long life to render justice to the poor boy's memory. To him, indeed, it was mainly owing, that the cenotaph to which we have referred (and which now lies mouldering in the Church vault), was erected in the graveyard of Redcliffe Church, by subscription, of which the contributions of Bristol were very small.[12] Chatterton was another warning, not only "Against self-slaughter There is a prohibition so divine--" but that no mortal should ever abandon Hope! for a reverend gentleman,--who was, in all things, what, unhappily, Horace Walpole was not,--had actually visited Bristol, to seek out and aid the boy while he lay dead in London. "Beware of desperate steps; the darkest day, Live till to-morrow, will have passed away." [Illustration: CHATTERTON'S MONUMENT.] The knowledge of these facts cheered us as we set forth to the neighborhood of Shoe-Lane to see the spot where he had been laid. Alas, it is very hard to keep pace with the progress of London changes. After various inquiries, we were told that Mr. Bentley's printing office stands upon the ground of Shoe-Lane Workhouse. We ascended the steps leading to this shifting emporium of letters, and found ourselves face to face with a kind gentleman, who told us all he knew upon the subject, which was, that the printing office stands--not upon the burying-ground of Shoe-Lane Workhouse, where he had always understood Chatterton was buried--but upon the church burial-ground. He showed us a very curious basso-relievo, in cut-stone, of the Resurrection, which he assured us had been "time out of mind" above the entrance to the Shoe-Lane burying-place "over the way," and which is now the site of Farrington Market. This, when "all the bones" were moved to the old graveyard in Gray's Inn Road, had come "somehow" into Mr. Bentley's possession. We were told also that Mr. Taylor, another printer, had lived, before the workhouse was pulled down, where his office-window looked upon the spot pointed out as the grave of Chatterton, and that a stone, "a rough white stone," was remembered to have been "set in a wall" near the grave with "Thomas Chatterton" and something else "scratched" into it. We strayed back through the damp chill of the city's evening fog to the market-place, hoping, even unconsciously, to stand beside the pit into which the marvellous boy had been thrust; but we grew bewildered. And as we stood upon the steps looking down upon the market--alone in feeling, and unconscious of every thing but our own thoughts--St. Paul's bell struck, full, loud, and clear; and, casting our eyes upward, we saw its mighty dome through the murky atmosphere. We became still more "mazed," and fancied we were gazing upon the monument of Thomas Chatterton! FOOTNOTES: [1] Of Edward Colston, well and beautifully has William Howitt said, "You cannot help feeling the grand beneficence of those wealthy merchants, who, like Edward Colston, make their riches do their generous will for ever; who become thereby the actual fathers of their native cities to all generations; who roll off, every year of the world's progress, some huge stone of anxiety from the hearts of poor widows; who clear the way before the unfriended, but active and worthy lad; who put forth their invisible hands from the heaven of their rest, and become the genuine guardian angels of the orphan race for ever and ever: raising from those who would otherwise have been outcasts and ignorant laborers, aspiring and useful men; tradesmen of substance; merchants the true enrichers of their country, and fathers of happy families. How glorious is such a lot! how noble is such an appropriation of wealth! how enviable is such a fame! And amongst such men there were few more truly admirable than Edward Colston! He was worthy to have been lifted by Chatterton, to the side of the magnificent Canynge, and one cannot help wondering that he says so little about this great benefactor of his city." [2] Our engraving shows this house, and Bristol Bridge, both memorable as being connected with the earliest of Chatterton's fabrications. Bristol Bridge was finished in September, 1768, and in the October following Chatterton sent to "Felix Farley's Bristol Journal," the curiously detailed account of the ceremonial observances on opening the ancient bridge at Bristol, 'taken from an Old Manuscript,' and which, being his first printed forgery, led, by the attention it excited, to the production of other work, and among them the Rowley Poems. At this time he was in his 16th year; but some years before he had fabricated Burgum's pedigree, and some poetry by a pretended ancestor of his, of the alleged date of 1320, called "The Romaunte of the Knyghte." The house where Burgum lived, and where Chatterton first tried his powers of deception, is the central one of the three seen above the bridge in our cut. [3] The place of Chatterton's birth has been variously stated: Mr. Dix, in his "Life of Chatterton," has mentioned _three_. His first being that "he was born on the 29th of November, in the year 1752, in a house situated on Redcliff Hill, behind the shop now (1837) occupied by Mr. Hasell, grocer," and which has since been destroyed. But in the appendix to his volume is a communication stating that Mrs. Newton (Chatterton's married sister) left a daughter who "died in 1807, in the house where Chatterton was born; I believe in the arch at Cathay," a street leading from the church-yard to the river-side. But the most certain account seems to be that of Mrs. Edkins (also printed by Dix) who "went to school to Chatterton's father, and was present when the son was born, at the Pyle School." Now, as Chatterton was born about three months after his father's death, and he had been for some years master of the school, it is unlikely that his wife would be removed from the house she inhabited until after her confinement, "when," says Mrs. Edkins, "she went to a house opposite the upper gate on Redcliff Hill." The house appropriated to the master of Pyle Street School is shown in our engraving, it is at the back of the school, which faces the street, and is approached by an open passage on one side of it leading into a small court-yard, beyond which is a little garden. Over the door is inserted a stone, inscribed, "This house was erected by Giles Malpas, of St. Thomas Parish, Gent., for the use of the master of this School, A. D. 1749." The house has but two sitting rooms, one on each side of the door, that to the right being the kitchen; and in one of them the dissolute father of the Poet is said by Dix to have "often passed the whole night roaring out catches, with some of the lowest rabble of the parish." He was succeeded in the office of Schoolmaster by Edmond Chard, who held it for five years; and he was followed in 1757 by Stephen Love, who was master twenty-one years, and to whom Mrs. Chatterton first sent her son for education; and who, "after exhausting the patience of his schoolmaster, was sent back to his mother with the character of a stupid boy, and one who was absolutely incapable of receiving instruction." [4] This School, founded in 1708 by Edward Colston, Esq., is situated in a street called St. Augustine's Back, behind the houses facing the drawbridge. It is the mansion in which Queen Elizabeth was entertained when she visited the city; and was purchased by Colston, because of its applicability to his charitable purposes. Here the scholars are boarded, lodged, and clothed, and are never permitted to be absent--except on Saturdays and Saints' days, from one till seven. They are simply taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. The school-room is on the first floor, and runs along the entire front of the building; the bed-rooms are the large airy rooms above. Behind the house is a paved yard for exercise. Chatterton remained here about seven years. [5] The gate seen at the side of Colston's School in our cut, is that by which the school is entered; a narrow paved passage beside the house conducts to the angle of the building, when you turn to the left, and so reach the house by an open court-yard. In the corner of this angle, commanding a view of the entrance to the school, and also of the outer gate, is placed the doorkeeper's lodge delineated in our cut. It is a small building of brick, covered with lead, about six feet in height. It has within an iron seat, and an iron ledge for books. The windows are unglazed; and in winter it must be singularly uncomfortable, particularly as the occupant must traverse the length of the yard in all weathers. It is said to be the intention of the authorities to remove this little building; this is to be regretted, as it is almost the only unchanged memorial of her poet-boy which Bristol possesses. It was customary for the boys to take the office of doorkeeper in rotation for the term of one week; and it was in Chatterton's twelfth year, when he was doorkeeper, that he wrote here his first poem "On the Last Epiphany, or Christ coming to Judgment." [6] Lambert's first office was on St. John's Steps; but the unceasing spirit of change, which has more or less destroyed all the Bristol localities connected with Chatterton, has swept this one away; "the Steps" have now been turned into a sloping ascent, and the old houses removed or renovated. Shortly after he had entered Lambert's service, his office was removed to Corn Street, and here, from the house delineated in our cut, he dated his first communication to Horace Walpole. It is immediately in front of the Exchange, and although the lower part has been altered frequently within remembrance, the upper part remains as when Lambert rented it. It may be noted, that the upper floors of the adjacent houses are still devoted to lawyers' and merchants' offices. [7] The great Bristol merchant, William Canynge, jun., is buried in Redcliffe Church, to which he was a great benefactor, as he was to the city of Bristol generally. He entered the church to avoid a second marriage, and was made Dean of the College of Westbury, which he had rebuilt. There are two monuments to his memory in Redcliffe Church, both of which are seen in our engraving. One is a raised altar tomb with an enriched canopy; and upon the tomb lie the effigies of Canynge and his wife in the costume of the fifteenth century. The other tomb is of similar construction, and is believed to have been brought here from Westbury College; it represents Canynge in his clerical robes, his head supported by angels, and resting his feet on the figure of a Saracen. Here Chatterton frequently ruminated; indeed, the whole church abounds with memorials which call to mind the sources of his inspiration; near the door is an effigy inscribed "Johannes Lamyngton," which gave name to one of his forgeries. He was never weary of rambling in and about the church, and all his early works originated here. [8] The muniment-room is a large low-roofed apartment over the beautiful north porch of Redcliffe Church, which was constructed by Canynge. It is hexagonal, and lighted by narrow unglazed windows. The floor rests on the groined stones of the porch, strong beams of oak forming its roof. It is secured by two massive doors in the narrow passage leading from the stairs into it. Here were preserved several large chests, and among them _Canynge's cofre_; from which Chatterton assured the world he had obtained the Rowley MSS.; and from which MSS. were carried away and destroyed, but the old chests still remain. There are seven in all, and they bear traces of great antiquity. Many have been strongly bound with iron, but all are now in a state of decay. This lonely cheerless room, strewn with antique fragments and suggestive of the boy-poet's day-dreams, is certainly the most interesting relic in Bristol. Its comfortless neglect is a true epitome of the life of him who first shaped his course from his reveries within it. [9] The house said to be that of Canynge is situated in Redcliffe Street, not very far from the church. It is now occupied by a bookseller, who uses the fine hall seen in our cut, as a storehouse for his volumes. Chatterton frequently mentions this "house nempte the rodde lodge;" and in Skelton's "Etchings of Bristol Antiquities" is an engraving of this building, there called "Canynge's chapel or Masonic Hall," showing the painting in the arch at the back, representing the first person of the Trinity, supporting the crucified Saviour, angels at each side censing, and others bearing shields. This was "the Rood" with which Chatterton was familiar, and which induced him to give the name to Canynge's house in his fabrications. This painting is now destroyed, but we have restored it from Skelton's plate in our engraving. [10] The monk Rowley was altogether an imaginary person conjured up by Chatterton as a vehicle for his wonderful forgeries. He was described by him as the intimate friend of Canynge, his constant companion, and a collector of books and drawings for him. It has been well remarked, that although it was _extraordinary_ for a lad to have written them in the 18th century, it was _impossible_ for a monk to have written them in the 15th. Indeed, it seems now both curious and amusing that his forgeries should have deceived the learned. When Rowley talks of purchasing his house "on a repayring lease for ninety-nine years." We at once smile, and remember his fellow-forger Ireland's Shaksperian _Promissory_ note, before such things were invented. Our fac-simile of the pretended Rowley's writing is obtained from the very curious collection of Chatterton's manuscripts in the British Museum. It is written at the bottom of some drawings of monumental slabs and notes, stated to have been "collected ande gotten for Mr. William Canynge, by mee, Thomas Rowley." There are, however, other autographs of Rowley in the collection, so entirely dissimilar in the formation of the letters, that it might be expected to have induced a conviction of forgery. Many of the manuscripts too are still more dissimilar; and the construction of the letters totally unlike any of the period. Some are written on little fragments not more than three inches square, the writing sometimes neat and clean, at other times bad, rambling and unintelligible. The best is the account of Canynge's feast, which has been engraved in fac-simile by Strutt, to the edition of Rowley's Poems, 1777. The writing is generally bolder than Barrett's fac-simile; and that gentleman, in endeavoring to revive the faded ink, has greatly injured the originals, which are now in some cases almost indistinguishable. The drawings of pretended ancient coins and heraldry are absurdly inventive: and the representations of buildings exactly such as a boy without knowledge of drawing or architecture would fabricate; yet they imposed on Barrett who engraved them for his history of Bristol. Many of his transcripts show the shifts the poor boy was put to for paper; torn fragments and backs of law bills are frequently employed. Among the rest is a collection of extracts from Chaucer to aid him in the fabrication of his MSS. The whole is exceedingly instructive and curious. [11] This gentleman was the proprietor of the "Bristol Journal," to which Chatterton sent his first forgery; and with whom he afterwards became intimate. [12] The cenotaph erected to Chatterton, in 1838, from a design by S. C. Fripp, has now been removed; it stood close to the north porch, beside the steps leading into it. One of the inscriptions, which he directs in his will to be placed on his tomb, has been adopted. "To the Memory of Thomas Chatterton. Reader, judge not, if thou art a Christian. Believe that he shall be judged by a superior Power. To that Power alone is he now answerable." Authors and Books. Of personalities, &c. a few words: Every man or woman coming before the public voluntarily--especially every man or woman placing his or her name upon the title of a book--submits so much of his or her being and character to the general criticism. It is crime to make public use of private conversation; it is crime, under most circumstances, to disclose the secret of an anonymous authorship; it is crime in all cases to invade any privacy, or comment on any purely personal matter, that has not by the interested party been offered for the world's examination. If any one publish a work of pure art, it is entirely inexcusable to suggest any illustrations of it from his life or condition, unless by his own express or implied permission. For example, if "The Princess," by Tennyson, had been printed anonymously by some notorious thief, burglar, forger, or murderer, he would be as great a villain as the author, who, in reviewing the poem, should in any manner whatever allude to the author's sins. The extent to which this law may be applied can easily be understood. To a gentleman the law itself is an instinct. Personal rights are frequently violated by praise as well as by censure, and sometimes applause is not in any degree less offensive than denunciation, though commonly men will forgive even the most unskilful and injudicious commendation. In both ways the writers of this country are apt to err. While we agree with the most fastidious, in asserting that inviolability of one's individualism, not by himself submitted for public observation, we contend for the right and duty of the utmost freedom in the dissection of what is thus submitted. Public speech, public action, public character, are adventures upon the sea of the world's opinion, and they must brave its winds or be sunk or wrecked by them,--the person, so far as he is not involved, meanwhile safely watching from the shore for results. In the most careful applications of this principle, it is inevitable that wrong is done sometimes; but when the wrong is not personal, it is for the most part susceptible of remedy. The author may challenge investigation of his book, the artist of his picture, the officer of his administration. If there has been unfair severity of criticism, they are likely to gain by it in the end, for every critic must justify upon challenge. There is a distinction in the cases of the dead. The world in an especial manner becomes the heir of a life which is abandoned by its master. This has been held by the wise in all ages and all states of society. The justice of the distinction is very apparent: An invasion of the individualism of the living destroys, or to a greater or less extent affects, the freedom, and so the right and wrong, of his conduct, while the secrets of the dead are to the living only as logic. There are very few men who are not more willing to praise than to blame. The better portion of men prefer to hear the praises even of strangers. Therefore censors are held to stricter account than eulogists. But a natural love of justice is continually at war with feelings of personal kindness. It is impossible to see insolent and vulgar pretension in noisy triumph, while real and unobtrusive merit is neglected. When we see a creature strutting in laurels that have been won by another, human nature--much as it has been abused--prompts us to grasp them from undeserving brows and place them where they will have a natural grace. For trite examples, who would not rather elect Columbus than Americus to the place of Name-Giver for this continent? who does not rejoice that finally Hadley is proved a swindler of the fame of Godfrey, in the matter of the quadrant? How many such wrongs do men daily hope to see righted! The writer of these paragraphs will never willingly violate the just conditions of criticism. If he offers, as often is necessary, conclusions rather than arguments, he will in no case withhold arguments when conclusions are held to be unjust. The true value of every sort of journalism, and of discussion also, is in its integrity much more than in its ability. Integrity is violated as much by the suppression of truth as by the suggestion of falsehood. In all cases that interest us sufficiently, and which are legitimately before the public, we shall write precisely as we think, without the slightest regard for consequences. * * * * * OERSTED, the great natural philosopher, has lately published at Leipzic, under the title of _Der in Geist in der Natur_ (Spirit in Nature), a collection of remarkable essays which he has written, at various times, during a series of years. The purpose he has followed through his entire scientific career, has, perhaps, its most complete expression in this book. It is the demonstration of the same laws in physical nature as in the higher spheres of the reason and intelligence. On the principle of the essential unity of all things, he seeks not only to lay the foundation of a universal science, but to afford some views of the superstructure. The work contains eight distinct essays: the first, "The Spiritual in the Corporeal," is in the form of a Dialogue, and aims at a reconciliation of the conflicting modes of thought, by which the universe is assumed to be essentially material, or essentially spiritual; the second, "The Fountain," treats of the impressions of beauty produced by the great, sublime, and powerful; the third considers the relation to the imagination, of the apprehension of nature by the understanding, and shows that it is only imperfect culture and ignorance which can suppose any dissonance between the two. He shows that the progress of science enriches, aggrandizes, and elevates the imagination. The fourth essay is, perhaps, the most interesting of all. Its theme is, "Superstition and Skepticism in their relation to Natural Science." The notion that superstition is favorable to poesy, he dissipates with masterly conclusiveness. The true realm of beauty is the realm of reason. It is true that science deprives the poet of the use of sundry unnatural conceptions, but while it more than compensates him by the substitution of nobler ideas, it opens to him a new, affluent, and little explored poetic world. "It can," he says, "not be charged as a crime upon natural science, that it has destroyed materials hitherto used by the poets. Such losses are of small consequence to the true poet, but may, indeed, be painful to the many dabblers in the poetic art, who think they have rendered the insignificant poetic by tricking it out in gewgaws from the poetic armory of a vanished era." The fifth, entitled, "The Existence of all things in the Domain of Reason," is the profoundest and most significant of these essays, and more than the others brings out in form as simple and popular as could be expected, the fundamental idea of the author's system of thought. It asserts that there is, throughout the universe, a radical unity between the laws of beauty, and man's moral nature and intellectual powers, and that there must therefore exist for the mind, a perfect community of nature and analogy between different worlds, and a rational connection between all thinking beings, not only of the earth, but of other planets and systems. The final essay is on "The Culture of Science as the Exercise of Religion," and is mainly an attempt to show that the very nature of science requires its culture to be made a religion, and that _the good which we ought to seek must be that which is imperishable in its truth_. This work has been rapidly followed by two other publications of the same author, intended to explain or defend the positions of their predecessor. The first is called, "Natural Science in its Connection with Poetic Art and Religion." It was written in reply to the criticism of a learned and respected friend of the author, Bishop Mynster of Seeland. The second has for its title, "Natural Science and the Formation of the Intellect." Oersted is now seventy-three years old. It is admirable to see a man of such years and distinction in the world, putting forth the same grand and elevated ideas that marked the generous enthusiasm of his youth. It is only in the genial and unselfish pursuits of science that such freshness of mind can be thus preserved. * * * * * NEW DRAMAS.--Among the new dramas of any value, produced in Germany, _Herodes und Mariamne_, a five act tragedy, by Hebbel, deserves particular mention. The persons are too numerous, and the action too complicated, but there is great fire and energy in the general treatment, and the gradual development of the interest of the story is managed with skill. Herod, the ruler of Judea, is a tyrant by both nature and position. He was appointed to his office by the Roman triumvir Antony, who can turn him out or cut his head off at any moment, and who is strongly inclined to follow the urgent solicitations of Herod's many enemies. In order to secure himself, Herod has married Mariamne, a descendant of the Jewish royal family, and is deeply in love with her. The chief of his foes is Mariamne's mother; the Pharisees also hate him for his notorious disregard of the Jewish religion. A conspiracy is formed against him, at the head of which is the brother of Mariamne. This brother is killed in consequence, and Herod is summoned before the triumvir. Meanwhile, as soon as the murder was known, Mariamne had refused to see her husband. But the evidences of his attachment are still so convincing, and her admiration for the force of his character so great, that she becomes reconciled to him. He is about to leave her to appear before Antony, and asks if her love is great enough for her to commit suicide, in case he should not return. Finally he asks her to take an oath to that effect. But she refuses, saying that such an oath would give him no pledge that he might not have already from insight into her heart. He is not content with this, and before he leaves, engages an assassin to kill her in case Antony should put him to death. After his departure, Mariamne declares to her mother that in case Herod perishes, she has determined to kill herself. The report arrives that he has been executed; and the assassin appears; from his bearing Mariamne guesses the truth, and draws from him a confession. Just as she is in the deepest agitation at this discovery, the king appears, having been acquitted by Antony. She meets him with coldness, and at once lets him know that she has learned all. He puts to death the man, but at the same time a suspicion arises in his mind that Mariamne has discovered the secret by betraying her honor. Against this her pride will not allow her to defend herself. A second trial soon arrives. Herod receives the order--shortly before the battle of Actium--to go on a dangerous military expedition for Antony. He now requires no oath, at which she rejoices; for she still loves him, and forgives him for the past. But she does not reveal herself to him. He misunderstands the joy which she cannot conceal, as satisfaction at his departure, and charges a faithful servant to put her to death in case he shall fall. The report of his death is renewed, but the appointed assassin, revolted at his office, discloses all to Mariamne. This drives her to despair. She is confident that her husband will soon return, and determines that he shall be led to put her to death unjustly. Accordingly she gives a splendid feast, as she says, to celebrate the death of her husband. He comes and brings her before a court, not for having rejoiced at his death, but for infidelity, supposing that to be the only way in which she could have discovered the secret of the assassin. She is condemned and executed, but before dying, she reveals the whole mystery to a friend, who afterwards informs Herod. The king devoured by rage and remorse and driven to desperation, becomes merciless as a fury. It is at that moment, that the three wise men from the East arrive, and inform him of the birth of Christ; whereupon he orders the slaughter of the children. One of the peculiarities of this tragedy, is the introduction of a character, who takes no part in the action, but observes and philosophizes upon it, somewhat after the manner of the old Greek chorus. This innovation cannot be said to be successful; moreover there is generally too much philosophizing and moralizing in the piece. Another new German tragedy is called _Francisco da Rimini_, by Cornelius Von der Heyse, but we know nothing more respecting it than is communicated by the publisher's advertisement. The title is promising. The French dramatists produce more comedies than tragedies. Indeed, in the weekly notices which for the last few weeks our Parisian papers have given of the new works brought out at the various theatres of Paris, we have not observed one tragedy of importance enough for us to remark upon it. But in the lighter range of comedy, the French playwrights are unequalled and inexhaustible, as is proved by the constant transfer of their productions into both the English and German languages. They do not think it necessary to have a plot of much intricacy, or even of great interest. The point and brilliancy of the dialogue, and the perfection of the actors, render that a matter of subordinate consequence. _The Two Eagles_, by Bayard and Bieville (these partnerships are frequent among the dramatists of Paris), was brought out at the _Théâtre Montansier_. Hippolyte Vidoux, clerk in a cap store and lieutenant in the National Guards, is a charming fellow, and the idol of the women in the whole quarter. He sings, jokes, and dances the polka in every style. He is introduced into the salons of his superior officer, Count Chamaral, but meets with no sort of success among the marchionesses and duchesses. On the other hand, these ladies are dying for the young Baron Albert, who dances the contra-dance with a mien of languishing resignation worthy of a funeral. The Baron falls in love with the daughter of a rich baker, but in vain. Here Hippolyte carries off the honors and the heiress according to the French proverb, _the eagle of one house is a turkey in another_. At the _Opera Comique_, a piece in one act, _The Peasant_, by Alboize, music by Poisat is one of the latest novelties. A proud and obstinate German Baron refuses his daughter's hand to her lover, whose great merit nevertheless causes him to be ennobled. Still the Baron refuses his daughter. "What!" he says, "shall I marry my child to a new-baked nobleman?" But as good luck would have it, the Emperor Joseph happens along in disguise, on one of his excursions for relieving virtue and unmasking vice. The Baron receives him, but has nothing to set before him. Hereupon a gardener furnishes a deer, which saves the honor of the house. The Emperor is delighted with the venison, and makes the donor sit down at the table. He is the father of the suitor, and as he has thus had the honor to eat with the Emperor, the Baron can say nothing more against the marriage. The good Emperor blesses the happy pair, and sets off again to see if there are no more comic operas in his dominions to which he can contribute a happy denouement. At the _Théâtre des Variétés_ has been produced the _Ring of Solomon_, in one act, by Henry Berthoud. The scene is laid in Holland, in the winter, which affords an excellent opportunity to the scene-painter and property-man. Threa, a poor and silly girl, is so passionately in love with Hans, who has saved her from death, that she climbs a wall to see him as he is going by. The wall tumbles down with her, and among the fragments she finds the ring of Solomon, and puts it on. At once she is surrounded by fairies, in the well-known ballet costume, who carry her off into a Dutch paradise, where she also becomes a fairy, and undergoes a remarkable improvement in her wits. But this does not bring any change in her passion for Hans, and she prefers to be unhappy with him to floating for ever through the aerial joys of fairydom without him. Accordingly, she renounces the privilege conferred on her by the ring, and is rewarded for so much virtue by passing through a new transformation, after which she appears as a most lovely peasantess, and marries Hans to the universal satisfaction. * * * * * GERMAN NOVELS.--The bookstores of Germany now swarm with new novels, some of which we have already noticed. _Modern Titans: Little People in a Great Epoch_, from the press of Bookhaus, seems to be written with the express purpose of introducing all the notabilities of Berlin, Breslau and Vienna, and is not successful. The name of the author is not given. _Der Tannhausen_ treats of suicide, republicanism, the identity of God and the universe, faith, skepticism, Christ, marriage, the emancipation of woman, and whatsoever new-fangled and startling ideas and phrases the author has met with in the activity of this busy age. This book is also charged with outrageous personalities. _George Volker_, a Romance of the year 1848, by Otto Müller, 3 vols., is of course, a revolutionary story. The hero is so unfortunate as to be in love with two women at a time, the one a country, and the other a peasant girl. He engages in the Badian insurrection, is about to be arrested, and thereupon gets out of all his difficulties by shooting himself. _Der Sohn des Volkes_, by Leoni Schucking, takes its subject and plot from the French Revolution and its influence on Germany. It is written with talent, and is altogether in the interest of the aristocracy. _Der Bettler von James's Park_ (the Beggar of James's Park), by Alexander Jung, is not revolutionary but tragic and sentimental. At the same time, it is didactic, and sets forth sundry ideas with reference to love, God, and liberty. But the story deserves more than a line in these columns, were it only as a literary curiosity. The hero is haunted by the notion that a great misfortune will fall upon his family, whenever a travelling dealer shall offer an _ecce homo_ for sale to any one of its members. Unluckily, such a picture is offered to himself, and he almost loses his wits at it. Hereupon he goes to see the young lady with whom he is in love, and finds her dying. This quite upsets him, and he goes crazy, and, in this condition, becomes a beggar in the London streets. At the beginning, he is very lean, and is so well suited to this trade, that he is even made a member of the beggars' guild. But ill luck still pursues him; he becomes excessively fat, and gains a belly of most aldermanic proportions. Here a lord takes him up as an object at once of study and philanthropy, but not with sufficient interest in him to provide for his support. Alms he gets none; next, he is turned out of the guild, and, at last, is taken to a hospital, where he loses his flesh, and regains his reason. Finally, after passing through a variety of other strange experiences, he dies in tranquillity, wept by the same lord, and by the lady he had himself supposed to be dead; but who, instead of this, had become a nun in France. _Schnock_, a picture of life in the Netherlands, is by Frederich Hebbel, a man of some distinction, as a dramatic writer, as we have noticed elsewhere. The general idea of this book is borrowed from Jean Paul's _Journey of the Chaplain Schmelzle_. The hero is a man of weak and timid character, married to a woman of unsparing energy and resolution. The style and execution of the work are clumsy, exaggerated and abominable. _Handel und Wandel_ (Doings and Viewings), by Hackländer, is worthy of all praise, as a faithful and vivid picture of German rural and domestic life. The characters are all human, the action simple and direct, and the tone healthy and agreeable. Hackländer is an exception to the mass of modern German novelists, of whom, taking them together, as may be judged from the brief remarks above, no great good can be said. _Ein Dunkles Loss_ (A Dark Destiny), by L. Bechstein, is a socialist book, which, in the form of a novel, discusses questions relating to art, not without genuine insight and original power of thought. * * * * * THE COUNTESS HAHN-HAHN, the bravest and decidedly the cleverest of the women who have written books of Oriental travel, and whose "latitudinarian" novels constitute a remarkable portion of the recent romantic literature of Germany, we perceive has entered a convent. The _Ladies' Companion_ exclaims hereof:-- "When will the wild and the restless learn self-distrust from the histories of kindred spirits? And, observing how the pendulum must vibrate (as in Madame Hahn-Hahn's case) from utter disdain of social laws, to the most superstitious form of association under authority--how, almost always, to defiance must succeed a desire for reconciliation. When will they become chary of pouring out their laments, their attacks, their complaints, seeing that similar protestations are almost certainly followed by after repentance and recantation!" The Countess Hahn-Hahn unfortunately has but one eye, and she is otherwise astonishingly ugly. So we may account for a very large proportion of the eccentricities of the sex. Had she been in this country she would have presided at the late Woman's Rights Convention. * * * * * No modern man has been more written about than GOETHE, and the end of books concerning him seems to be still distant. The last that we hear of is called _Goethe's Dichterwerth_ (Value of Goethe as a Poet), written by O. L. Hoffman, and published in the quaint old city of Nuremberg. It treats first of the poet's relation to natural science, art and society: next takes up the complaints of his antagonists; his poetic character; his youthful productions; his lyrics; Götz von Berlichingen; the Sorrows of Werter; the influence of Italy on his mature mind; Egmont; Iphigenia at Tauris; Tasso; the influence of the French Revolution; his relations with Schiller; his Ballads; Hermann and Dorothea; the Natural Daughter; Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship; and finally the productions of his mature years, as Wilhelm Meister's Wander-years, the Elective Affinities, and Faust. The work forms a complete commentary on the works of Goethe, and is written in the warmest spirit of admiration for his genius and influence. * * * * * HAGEN'S _Geschichte der Neuesten Zeit_ (History of Recent Times) is worthy a place in the library of every historical student. It begins with the downfall of Napoleon and is to come down to the present day. The first volume has been published; it exhibits thorough mastery of the materials, and great calmness and judgment in their use. The style is clear, terse and graphic. The author, who is a professor of the University of Heidelberg, is a decided republican. * * * * * COTTA'S splendid illustrated edition of the Bible (Luther's version) is now finished. It is perhaps the best Illustrated Bible ever published. The typography and woodcuts are admirable. Of the latter there are eighty, after original designs by Jäger, Overbeck, Schnorr, and others. * * * * * FALLERMAYER, the distinguished German traveller, is about abandoning the fruitless polemics which have gained him so many foes, to devote himself to more useful labors. He himself desires to be at peace with all the world, and the antagonists which his trenchant pen has so often unsparingly scarified, need fear him no longer. He is about to complete and print the third volume of his Oriental Impressions of Travel. This is reason for rejoicing. Fallermayer is one of the most charming and instructive of travel-writers. * * * * * WALLON'S _Histoire de l'Esclavage dans l'Antiquite_, just published at Paris, is a work of high value to those who wish to look into a branch of history hitherto comparatively little cultivated, but destined to attract the most profound attention. M. Wallon, who is one of the candidates for the vacant seat in the French Academy, discusses in an exhaustive manner the origin of slavery in the antique world, the condition of bondmen in the various nations, and the gradual development of the institution under all circumstances and in all countries. His book is excellent for its manner, while in respect of matter the author has drawn information from all accessible sources, and digested it with judgment and impartiality. Thus he has produced a worthy contribution to that great but yet unwritten work, so full of both tragic and epic elements, the Annals of Labor. What a noble book might be made by some competent writer who should grapple with the whole subject. * * * * * THE NARRATIVE of the United States South Sea Exploring Expedition, is being translated into German, and published by Cotta of Stuttgard. The second volume is just completed. Probably all the supplementary volumes, as Hale's "Ethnology," and Pickering's "Races of Men," will follow. * * * * * MISS BARBAULD'S "God in Nature" has been translated into German by Thecla von Gaupert, and illustrated by that most fertile and charming of designers, Louis Richter. The translation is made from the thirtieth English edition, and the price put within the reach of the poorer classes, at fifty cents. * * * * * FREDERIC BODENSTEDT, the author of the successful book on the Wars of the Circassians, has just published the conclusion of a new work, called "A Thousand and One Days in the Orient." * * * * * A COLLECTION OF HUNGARIAN MYTHICAL TRADITIONS AND FAIRY TALES, has lately been published in German at Berlin, translated from the Magyar of Erdily, by G. Stier. * * * * * The first part of the third and last volume of HUMBOLDT'S Cosmos has been published at Stuttgart. It is on the Fixed Stars, and makes a pretty stout book. * * * * * HUMBOLDT, having furnished for his friend, Dr. Klencke, materials for a memoir of his life, such a work was announced at Berlin, and so great was the interest excited by its advertisement, that before the first edition was all printed a second one was commenced. * * * * * DR. KARL AUGUST ESPE, who for many years has filled the post of editor to Brockhaus's _Conversations-Lexicon_, the work which forms the basis of the Encyclopedia Americana, died near Leipzic on the 25th November last. He was a man of great acquirements and unwearied industry, and was well known and esteemed in the literary and scientific circles of the continent. He was born at Kühren, in 1804, and went to Leipzic in 1832. Beside the great work above alluded to, he had charge of the annual memoirs of the German Society for the study of the native language and antiquities. Nearly two years ago he was attacked by a fit of apoplexy, from the effect of which his mind did not recover. He has since been in a lunatic asylum. * * * * * NEANDER'S Church History is printed as far as the year 1294. He had continued the work in manuscript up to the beginning of the fifteenth century, so that Wiclif, Huss, and other important precursors of the Reformation have found a place in it. This last volume of this great work will shortly be printed. Neander's various posthumous works are of remarkable value, though very few of them are in a finished state. According to the _Methodist Quarterly_, always well informed upon such matters, his exegetical Lectures upon the New Testament are of even greater merit than his compositions in history. They are soon to be published at Berlin, from notes taken by his students. * * * * * NEANDER'S Practical Expositions of St. James and of St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians, are in process of translation by Mrs. H. C. Conant, the wife of Professor Conant, of Hamilton, and one of the most accomplished women in this country. A translation of Hagenbach's _Kirchengeschichte des 18 und 19 Jahrhunderte_, may also be expected from the same hand, and so will be done admirably. * * * * * SCHLEIERMACHER'S "_Brief Outline of the Study of Theology_" has been translated by Rev. W. Farrar, and published by Clark, of Edinburgh, in a single duodecimo. * * * * * DR. KARL ZIMMERMANN has edited and published, at Darmstadt, "The Reformatory Writings of Martin Luther, in chronological order, with a Biography of Luther," in four volumes. * * * * * Two new volumes of _L'Encyclopédie du Dixneuvième Siècle_ have just appeared at Paris. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Becquerel, Buchez, Delescluze, Michel Chevalier, Philarete Chasles, and other literary and scientific notabilities are among the contributors. * * * * * THE HOUSE OF DIDOT, at Paris, have just issued a most interesting volume of the great work they have for some time been publishing under the title of _L'Univers Pittoresque_. This volume is occupied with Japan, the Burman Empire, Siam, Anam, the Malay peninsula, and Ceylon. The letter-press is furnished by Col. Jancigny, who was formerly aid-de-camp to the King of Oude, and has a thorough personal acquaintance with the countries in question. To show how great is the multitude of elephants in Ceylon, Col. J. speaks of an English officer who resided there, and who had with his own hand killed above two thousand of these monsters. The book, like all the rest of the series, is illustrated by numerous engravings. The series is to consist of forty-five volumes. Only one or two are now wanting to complete it. It is intended to afford a complete description of all the countries, nations, religions, customs, manners, &c. of the world. * * * * * M. NISARD has been elected a member of the Académie Française, in the room of the late M. Droz. He is known to the public chiefly by his translations of the Roman writers, poetical and prose, and by sundry able critical papers in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Opposing candidates were Beranger, Alfred Musset, Jules Janin, Dumas, and others. Another vacancy was to be filled in January, and among the candidates were President Bonaparte, and the Count Montalembert, who are certainly more conspicuous in politics than in letters, though one did write a book on gunnery, and the other one on Elizabeth of Hungary. * * * * * Two collections of interesting and valuable official documents have just been given to the Parisian public. One is called _Archives des Missions Scientifiques et Littéraires_, and consists of the most remarkable reports sent to the Government by travellers charged with scientific and literary missions. The other is the _Bulletin des Comités Historiques_, and embraces articles relative to history, science, literature, archæology, and the fine arts. It is issued by the Committee of the written Monuments of the History of France, and the Committee of Arts and Monuments. The most eminent names of French science and literature are among the contributors to these works. * * * * * M. GINOUX, who was sent by Guizot on a scientific mission which required him to traverse the globe, but who was recalled by the government of General Cavaignac, has returned to Paris, having been absent several years. He will soon publish the narrative of his travels, which have been in Oceanica, Polynesia, Brazil, Patagonia, Chili, Bolivia, Peru, Equador, New Grenada, Jamaica, Cuba, and the United States. * * * * * BERANGER, at the last dates was, and for several weeks had been, dangerously ill, at his house at Passy. * * * * * VERON, the editor of the Paris _Constitutionnel_, is a transcendent specimen of the voluptuary. He is a large, fleshy, sensual, though by no means coarse-looking man, with the marks of high living and animal enjoyment on all his features. He first made a fortune by selling a quack medicine, after which he became proprietor of the _Constitutionnel_. His paper is conducted on the quack medicine principle, with a shrewd view to the profits, and represents the ultra-conservative side on all public questions. Latterly Veron has made an arrangement with Louis Napoleon, by which it has become in some sort the special organ of that functionary. This has made the editor doubly famous, and in consequence of the crowd desiring to see him which surrounded the Café de Paris, where he had long dined regularly every day, he has been compelled to abandon that elegant establishment, and set up a table for himself. He has done this in a princely manner, and from his position, and the Apicius-like dinners which he gives, finds no difficulty in assembling at his daily banquets the élite of Parisian _viveurs_. Among his guests are M. Roqueplan, of the opera; M. Scribe, the dramatist; Jules Janin; M. Bertin, editor of the _Journal des Débats_; M. Romieu, Mlle. Rachel, and Mlle. Brohan. In all some fifty persons have a standing invitation, and come when they choose. Covers are laid every day for twelve, and those who are there at the time, which is six o'clock, take their places. At half-past eight the host puts on his hat and departs, but the guests remain, and prolong the festival at their pleasure. It is said that these dinners not only combine every thing in the perfections of gastronomy, but that they are equally piquant for the wit and brilliancy of the conversation that attends them. * * * * * EUGENE SUE is now a member of the French Assembly; but he still finds time to labor for democracy and socialism with his pen. He has commenced the publication in one of the journals of a new romance, called _La bonne Aventure_. From a few chapters, it is evident that it will possess the enthralling interest of most of his works, and will display his varied and vast talent in the portraiture of character and the invention of incident. He is as intent as ever Mr. Cooper was, upon making the novel a teacher and illustrator of opinions. * * * * * GEORGE SAND has completed a new drama, which, from the title, _Le Famille du Charpentier_, we suspect to be taken out of her delightful _Compagnon du Tour de France_. She appears to be following in the footsteps of Dumas, in arranging her novels into plays. She has met with a severe check in the refusal of the authorities to allow a play from her pen to be produced at the Théâtre St. Martin, entitled "Claudia." Every thing had been prepared for it, and considerable expense incurred, when the Censor refused to grant a license. * * * * * ALPHONSE KARR, the French novelist, published for the late holidays a very successful book called _Voyage autour de mon jardin_ (Journey around my garden). It is a prose poem in honor of nature and the joys which nature gives to the heart. Prince SOLTIKOFF has also brought out his travels in India and Prussia in a splendid style. One of the most elegant and universally admired works of the season at Paris, is _Aix-les-Bains_, by Amédée Achard, illustrated by Eugene Ginain. Aix-les-Bains is a favorite watering place in Savoy, and this book is an account of a summer passed there. * * * * * In the number for the first of December, of the Paris _Revue des Deux Mondes_, a writer introduces and dissects poems, unedited until now in the _Romance_ tongue, of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Two new publications from their collection of manuscripts, by the Toulouse Academy of Floral Games, perfectly exhibit the state of the Romaunt tongue and poetry from 1324 to 1496. * * * * * In the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ is an amusing paper by HENRI BLAZE, on _Verona and Marshal Radetzky_, where, among other matters, he touches upon _Romeo and Juliet_. The house where Juliet was born, lived, and loved, is now turned into a vast warehouse for merchandize by the pitiless prosaism of Time. * * * * * In Paris we see advertised _Lettres d'Amour_. The Author, M. Julien Lemer, has the idea of collecting in one volume the most celebrated love matters--the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of tender correspondence--a style of composition in which France has always been eminent. * * * * * EDMOND TEXIER has written at Paris _L'Histoire des Jeraux, ou Biographie des Journalistes,_ described as very piquant. Such a book would do in this country. * * * * * IDA VON DUERINGSFELD has published a new novel, _Antonio Foscarini_, said to be entertaining, and to contain a good picture of Venetian life in the fifteenth century. * * * * * LAMARTINE has commenced in the _Siècle_ newspaper a new novel entitled _Le Tailleur de Saint Pierre et Saint Point_. * * * * * GARNIER DE CASSAGNAC has taken ground against Lamartine and his history, in a work entitled _Histoire du Directoire_. * * * * * A NEW POET, John Charles Bristow, of whom no one ever heard before, has come out in London with five thick volumes of his "Works." * * * * * A NEW HISTORY OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS has just been issued at Paris. * * * * * The first volume of Sir Francis Palgrave's History of England, has just been published in London. * * * * * THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND PIUS IX.--The Jesuits' printing establishment at Naples has lately issued a quarto volume of 773 pages, consisting of the addresses and letters sent to the Sovereign Pontiff, from Catholic prelates and eminent laymen within the past two years. There are 297 different letters. Among the names of lay writers may be mentioned Montalembert, Charles Dupin, D'Arlincourt, Poujoulat and De Falloux. The country which furnishes relatively the fewest documents to this collection, strange to say, is Italy, owing no doubt to the confused state of the country politically. Asia, America, and even Oceanica here give proofs that the Church has a hold among their populations, and that they have sympathies ready in her behalf. It is well known, too, that their sympathies do not end in words merely, but were often, as in the case of Mexico, splendidly and solidly evinced in behalf of the fugitive Pius. Nothing could give a more striking idea of the great extent of Catholicism and the influence of the Church, than this book. From the Turkish empire it gives a letter of the Archbishop Primate of Constantinople, one from the Armenian Church in the same city, one from the Apostolic Vicar of Bosnia, the Armenian Patriarch of Celicia, resident in Lebanon, the Archbishop of Laodicea, at Gazir in Lebanon, the Syrian Patriarch of Aleppo, the Patriarch of the Melchitian Greeks, and the Patriarch of Antioch. From distant Asia the Apostolic Vicars of Pondicherry and Bombay, the Apostolic Vicar of Japan, resident on the island of Hong Kong, and the Superior of the Catholic community of Agra, in the Presidency of Calcutta, all have letters. North America furnishes a good many; in the United States, the Archbishop of Baltimore leads the list, in which the Bishops of Oregon and Natchez are included with others. From Canada, the Archbishop of Quebec furnishes the principal letter. Mexico is remarkable for the number of its addresses; besides the Metropolitan Chapter of the Capital, the Bishops of Guadalaxara, Michoacan, Yucatan, Sonora, Oaxaca and many others, are represented in the book. The contributions from South America are few. The Archbishops of Lima and Santiago, in Peru and Chili, and the Monastery of Merzé del Cuzco alone furnish letters. From Brazil there is a letter of the Archbishop of Bahia only. The addresses from Australia and Oceanica are from the Archbishop of Sidney, and the Bishops of Melbourne and Auckland. * * * * * The History, Condition and Prospects of Hayti, have been largely and ably discussed lately in the Paris _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and in the New York _Tribune_. Of an article in the former publication, the first thirty-three pages form an able survey of the history of Hayti since its independence, and of the rule of Emperor Soulouque. Nowhere is there, in the same compass, more of authentic information and acute remark upon the subject. * * * * * UNDER the title of _L'Architecture du Cinquieme au Seizieme Siècle et les Arts qui en dependent_, M. JULES GAILHABAUD is now producing at Paris a work of high value to the architect and antiquary. Many years spent in travels and special studies, and an extensive collection of interesting documents, qualify him beyond all contemporaries for such an undertaking. He treats not merely the architecture of the middle ages, but sculpture, mural painting, painting on glass, mosaic work, bronzes, iron work, the furniture of churches, &c. The book is to be published in fifteen parts, quarto, with engravings on steel, or colored lithographs. Eight parts are already published, containing remarkable specimens of the Carlovingian, Roman, and _Renaissance_ architecture, a Templars' church, Moorish buildings, &c. The whole, when finished, will cost, at Paris, from sixty to one hundred dollars, according to the kind of paper on which the engravings are printed. * * * * * AMONG the periodical publications of Italy, the _Rivista Italiana_, a monthly review issued at Turin, occupies a high place. Its list of writers includes Mancini, Balbo, d'Ayala, Carracciolo, Farini, &c. Subjects of the first importance are treated with marked ability in its pages. Its political tendencies are toward constitutional monarchy. * * * * * A correspondent of the _Athenæum_ says that an extraordinary and valuable collection of letters illustrative of the life, writings and character of the poet Pope has just "turned unexpectedly up,"--and has been secured by Mr. John Wilson Croker for his new edition of the poet's works. The collection consists of a series of letters addressed by Pope to his coadjutor Broome--of copies of Broome's replies--and of many original letters from Fenton (Pope's other coadjutor in the Odyssey), also addressed to Broome. * * * * * LORD BROUGHAM gave notice some six months ago, of his intention to visit the United States, during the present month of February, but if it is true, as stated in the Liverpool _Albion_, that he has lost his sight (partly in consequence of some painful bodily infirmity with which he has some time been afflicted), he of course will not come. * * * * * OF ALICE CAREY'S ballad entitled "Jessie Carol," printed in the last number of the _International_, J. G. Whittier says, in the _Era_, that "it has the rich tone and coloring and heart-reaching pathos and tenderness of the fine old ballads of the early days of English literature." Miss Carey is passing the winter in New-York, where a poem by her is in press, which one of the most eminent and time-honored literary men in America has declared to be, in all the best elements of poetry, decidedly superior to any work yet published from the hand of a woman. * * * * * MRS. THERESE ADOLPHINE LOUISE ROBINSON, the wife of the distinguished Professor and traveller, is best known in the literary world under the name of _Talvi_, and is indisputably one of the most prominent of the few profoundly learned and intellectual women of the age. She is the daughter of the German savan, L. H. Jacob, who was long a Professor at Halle, where she was born on the 26th of January, 1797. In 1806, her father was called to a professorship at the Russian University of Charkow. Here the family remained for five years, and the daughter, though deprived of the advantages of a regular education, laid the foundation of that acquaintance with the Slavonic languages and literature, which she has since so profitably and honorably cultivated. During this time she wrote her first poems, songs full of the girl's longing for her German home, which the strange half Asiatic environment of Southern Russia rendered by contrast only dearer and more attractive. In 1811 her father was transferred to St. Petersburg, and there her studies were necessarily confined to the modern languages. But her own industry was intense and incessant; she devoted a great deal of time to historical reading, and privately cultivated her poetic talent. Her mind pursued the same direction, when, in 1816, her father returned to Halle, where she first made herself mistress of the Latin. Though her friends beset her to give some of her productions to the public, she long resisted. Meanwhile she wrote several tales, which were published at Halle in 1825, under the title of _Psyche_, with Talvi as the name of the author. This pseudonym is composed of the initials of Mrs. Robinson's maiden name. In 1822, she translated Walter Scott's _Covenanters_ and _Black Dwarf_, under the name of Ernst Berthold. About this time there fell into her hands a review, by Jacob Grimm, of the collection of Servian popular songs, published by Mark Stephanowich. This increased her interest in that literature to such a degree, that she determined to learn the Servian language. Hence arose the translation of _Popular Songs of the Servians_, which, with the aid of some Servian friends, she brought out at Halle, in 1825-6, in two volumes. In 1828, she became the wife of Professor Robinson, and after a long journey with him in different parts of the old world, came to America. Here she was for some time engaged in the study of the aboriginal languages, and prepared a translation into German of Pickering's Work on the Indian tongues of North America, which was published at Leipzic, in 1834. At the same time, she wrote in English a work entitled _Historical View of the Slavic Languages_, which was published in this country, in 1834, and translated into German, by Karl von Olberg, in 1837. This work gives evidence of most remarkable literary attainments. In 1837 she again visited Europe with her husband and children, and remained in Germany till 1840. During this time she wrote and published at Leipzic, in German, an _Attempt at a Historical Characterization of the Popular Songs of the Germanic Nations, with a Review of the Songs of the extra-European Races_. This is a work of a most comprehensive character, and fills up a deficiency which was constantly becoming more apparent, in the direction opened by Herder. It evinces an unprejudiced and catholic mind, a just, poetic, sensible, clear and secure understanding, as well as the most extensive and thorough acquirements. Before her return to America she also published, in German, a small work on _The Falseness of the Songs of Ossian_. An article from her pen, entitled _From the History of the First Settlements in the United States_, published in 1845 in Rumei's _Historiches Taschenbuch_, is also worthy of notice. In 1847 she brought out at Leipzic, a historical work on the _Colonization of New England_, which has received the deserved applause of all the German critics, and which abundantly merits a translation into English. An elaborate reviewal of it appeared lately in the "Bibliotheca Sacra," in which justice was rendered to its character for research and judicious handling. In 1849 she published in New-York, with a preface by Dr. Robinson, a _Historical Review of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations; with a Sketch of their Popular Poetry_. It is in one volume, from the press of Mr. Putnam, and it has been generally admitted that there is not in any language so complete and attractive an epitome of the literature and various idioms of the great Sclavonic Nations, north and south. Last year Mrs. Robinson gave to the world (through the Appletons) a novel, entitled _Heloise_, in which there are admirable pictures of social life in one of the minor capitals of Germany, and a very able one of the administration of the Russian government in the Caucasian provinces, and of the nature of Caucasian warfare. The last work (just published by the same house), is _Life's Discipline, a Tale of the Civil Wars of Hungary_. As a tale it is to us more interesting than _Heloise_, and it has no less freshness of incident, scenery and character. Though Mrs. Robinson's distinction is for scholarship and judgment, rather than for invention, these works entitle her to a very high rank among the female novel writers. * * * * * MRS. H. C. KNIGHT (we believe of Portsmouth in New-Hampshire) has just given to the public a very interesting "New Memoir of Hannah More, or Life in Hall and Cottage." It is a book of genuine merit, displaying in a pleasing style the most striking scenes in the history of one of the noblest of the women of England. (Published by M. W. Dodd.) * * * * * PROFESSOR H. B. HACKETT, of the Trenton Theological Institution, has in press a "Philological and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles," which will be published in the spring. It will embrace various critical discussions in an appendix. * * * * * MADAME ANITA GEORGE, the authoress of the very clever books entitled "Memoirs of the Queens of Spain" (recently published by Baker & Scribner), is not, as some suppose, an American, though she began and has thus far advanced upon her literary life in this country. She is a native of Spain, and is the daughter of a French gentleman--an officer of the Empire--who married there. Her early life was passed in Cuba, where her father settled when she was about three years of age. In her seventeenth year she was married to Mr. George, who is an Englishman. When Mr. FENIMORE COOPER published his Life of Commodore Perry, which the sober second thought of the people endorses as entirely candid and just, we remember that it was urged by the Philadelphia critics (who constitute a class, as much as the Philadelphia lawyers do), that even if every thing he advanced were _true_, Mr. Cooper had no right to disregard the "settled and satisfactory opinions of the country upon the subject." We could never so appreciate as perfectly to admit the truth of the canon in criticism here involved, and to this day we cannot help agreeing with Gibbon, that "Truth is the first virtue of history." Mrs. George seems to concur with Gibbon and Cooper, and disregarding the poetry and romance woven about the name of Isabella the Catholic, has painted her according to the documents, which by no means warranted the common good report of her. Queen Isabella, according to Mrs. George, owes to some agreeable qualities, but most of all to her patronage of Columbus, oblivion of remarkable faults, which were prolific of evil to Spain. She escaped at the expense of her husband Ferdinand, who has been charged with her sins as well as his own. She was not a person to yield to any one where her power and rights were in question, so that in all matters concerning home policy, she is at least entitled to an equal share of the discredit; and in the establishment of the Inquisition, and the persecution of the Jews and Moors, she stands alone. Ferdinand was always disposed to put his religion behind his interest, and was urged by his wife into measures of which he disapproved; sometimes, indeed, she ordered or permitted persecutions of which he was altogether ignorant. Beside the wickedness of these things, their impolicy was not less conspicuous. The oppression of the Moors, and the expulsion of both Moors and Jews, destroyed the mechanical and commercial industry of Spain; the overthrow of the feudal power and privileges of the nobility, and the establishment of despotism in the crown, checked the growth of civil freedom, as the introduction of the Inquisition induced religious bigotry, and withered mental independence and intellectual cultivation. Nor is Mrs. George disposed to allow weight to the excuse, urged in favor of Isabella upon such facts as undeniably tell against her. The Spaniards of the age, she says, were not so bigoted; the Kings of Aragon, supported by their subjects, had set the Popes at defiance; the Cortes of Aragon and of Valencia resisted the introduction of the Inquisition; some of the clergy, with Fray Francisco de Talavera Archbishop of Granada at their head, were opposed to all persecution; even the Pope remonstrated against some wholesale slaughter; and when persecution had provoked an insurrection, Ferdinand himself was wroth. Nor does the biographer even see an excuse in the Queen's conscience. When religion or churchmen stood in the way of her power or interests, they were blown aside. There is in these conclusions, something of the woman and of the Spaniard, anxious to excuse in any way the historical degradation and present weakness of Spain. If the Spaniards were really enterprising and industrious, there seems no reason why they might not have engaged in commerce, agriculture, and the useful arts, although the Jews and Moors were expelled: the Jews were ousted from England long before they were driven from Spain, yet the English got on in the absence of the house of Israel. The destruction of the enormous power of the nobility was absolutely necessary, not only to the establishment of order, but almost to the existence of society itself. It could only be brought about by throwing the power of the common people into the scale of the crown; and so far as Ferdinand and Isabella were concerned, it seems to have been a wise and politic measure. The real despotism of the crown was established by Charles the Fifth, and he might not have been able to effect it, had he been only King of Spain. For the religious tyranny, cruelty, and want of faith of Isabella in violating stipulations, Mrs. George is sparing in the quotation of authorities, and she often rather asserts than narrates in the account of facts that would prove the case. A strict analysis might also show that temporal power was the object aimed at, and religion a disguise for ambition. We think, however, that the case of relentless and cruel persecution is established against Isabella the Catholic; and that it was aggravated by the power which the priesthood exercised over her mind in things indifferent or which agreed with her inclination. In the graces of person and manner, and in suavity of temper towards her own party, or those whom she wished to gain, Isabella of Castile far excelled her granddaughter Mary of England. In tenacity of purpose, in obstinacy, and in indifference to the misery arising from their orders, it is possible they were more alike than the world has supposed. And Isabella might have had a similar cognomen, had not the Spaniards continued as bloody as her age and as bigoted as herself. The style of Mrs. George is in the main very good; but occasional defects in diction and in the structure of sentences, are matters of course in a woman who writes in a foreign language. There are some points in the Queen's history passed over too lightly, and the narrative is not always continuous. Isabella's relations with Columbus, are barely noticed, on the ground that they had already been so largely illustrated by Irving and Prescott. Miss Pardoe, who has edited an English impression of the book, has supplied its most obvious defects induced by this consideration. Mrs. George has just left this country for Madrid, and we have reasons for believing that she will devote the remainder of her life to literature. She has in contemplation two works, both relating to Spain, which can hardly fail under her spirited and ingenious treatment of being eminently attractive. Since she is no longer in America, we may gratify curiosity by remarking that she is some years under thirty, and is one of the most beautiful and brilliantly-talking women of the present day. * * * * * WE are gratified to learn that there is a prospect of the appearance of the Memoirs and Inedited Works of our late eminent countryman HENRY WHEATON, the ablest and faithfulest and worst-used diplomatic servant of the United States in the present century. The last time this great man visited New-York he passed several hours in our study, and we remember that he said then that his Letters to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, his various Tracts, Reviews, Historical Essays, &c., which he would wish to collect, would make some three or four volumes as large as his work on "The Law of Nations." He had also nearly or quite finished a new work on the History of the Northmen, being a translation and improvement of his _Histoire des Peuples du Nord_, published in Paris, which was an extension of the volume he contributed originally to the Family Library, in 1831, upon the same subject. This important work was advertised, we believe, before the death of Mr. Wheaton, to be published in two octavos, by the Appletons, but it has not yet been printed. * * * * * R. R. MADDEN'S "Infirmities of Genius," a very pleasant book, is in the press of Mr. J. S. Redfield. Madden is an Irishman, and he first became known to the public by his "Travels in Turkey," published about twenty-five years ago. The "Infirmities of Genius" appeared in 1833, and two American editions of the work have heretofore been printed. In 1835 Mr. Madden came to the United States, and in 1836-7-8-9, he filled the office of Superintendent of Liberated Africans, and Commissioner of Arbitration in the Mixed Court of Justice at Havana. His various experiences and observations, during eight years of official and private life in America, the West Indies, and Africa, led to the composition of several tracts on the slave-trade, and a volume printed we think some two years ago on "the Island of Cuba, its Resources, Progress, and Prospects." The "Infirmities of Genius" is, in a literary point of view, his best production; and it is likely to retain a place among the contributions of the age to standard English literature. * * * * * THE REV. E. H. CHAPIN, whose effective elocution and brilliant rhetoric attract crowds to his ordinary discourses at the Universalist Church in Murray-street, has in the press of Mr. J. S. Redfield, a volume upon "Womanhood, Illustrated by the Women of the New Testament"--not treating of these characters in the offensive style of the small rhetoricians, but rather in that of Emerson's Representative Men, presenting Martha as a type of the women of society, &c. We believe we have not before referred in these pages to the fact, that Mr. Chapin was commonly regarded as by far the finest orator in the recent Peace Congress at Frankfort, in which were a large number of men from several nations eminent for eloquence. * * * * * A DISCOVERY OF IMPORTANT HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS, according to a Chicago paper, has recently been made among the manuscripts which were saved from the pillage of the Jesuits' College in Quebec. "It is well known by those familiar with the resources of early American history, that the publication of the Jesuit Relations, which furnish so much of interest in regard to the discovery and early exploration of the region bordering on our northern lakes, was discontinued after the year 1672. Some were known to have been written, but the manuscripts were supposed to be lost. The Relations from 1672 to 1679 inclusive, have lately been discovered, and among them a manuscript containing a full account of the voyages of Father Marquette, and of the discovery by him of the Mississippi river. It was undoubtedly this manuscript which furnished Thevenot the text of his publication in 1687, of 'The voyages and discoveries of Father Marquette and of the Sieur Joliet.' The latter kept a journal and drew a map of their route, but his canoe was upset in the falls of St. Louis, as he was descending the St. Lawrence in sight of Montreal, and he lost them with the rest of his effects. What increases the value of the present discovery is, that the original narrative goes much more into detail than the one published by Thevenot. The motive which prompted and the preparations which were made for the expedition are fully described, and no difficulty is found in tracing its route. There is also among the papers an autograph journal by Marquette, of his last voyage from the 25th of October, 1674, to the 6th of April, 1675, a month before his singular death, which occurred on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Also, a chart of the Mississippi drawn by himself, illustrating his travels. The one annexed to Thevenot's account, above referred to, a copy of which is contained in the third volume of Bancroft's History of the United States, is manifestly incorrect, as there is a variance between the route of the Jesuit as traced on his map, and that detailed in his text. The manuscript chart now rescued from oblivion, reconciles all discrepancies, and constitutes a most interesting historical relic." * * * * * AMONG the publications of the past month, _A copious and critical Latin-English Lexicon_, royal octavo, pp. 1663, from the press of the Harpers, is especially deserving of praise. We congratulate Professors Andrews and Turner on the honorable close to their long and arduous labors. They have earned thanks of all beginning students and riper scholars in the Latin tongue. These, and the advancement of sound learning, are the only adequate rewards for labors so untiring and long continued; so wearisome and beneficial. The highest and only just praise of this admirable volume, would be given by a plain statement of its merits, but these are too extensive and varied to be even catalogued within brief limits--we can only touch upon a few of them. For a year past we have had opportunity and occasion to examine parts of the work as it was going on to completion, and to compare it with others of similar design. We speak then advisedly when we say that it far surpasses any such Lexicon hitherto in use among us, and should supersede them all. Since the works of Forcellini, and Facciolati, and Gesner, very great advances have been made in all departments of classical Philology; many of the best results of these advances were embodied in Freund's great Lexicon, the first volume of which was published in 1834. But since then, and even since 1845, the date of the last volume, the thirst for antiquarian research has slaked itself at newly discovered sources. The present editors, to a discriminating selection from all that the zeal and activity of others have gathered, up to the latest time, have added valuable knowledge from their own varied stores, and at last furnished to American students a work superior in its kind to any that has preceded it here or abroad. It combines in a remarkable degree the copiousness of a Thesaurus with the brevity and convenience for ready reference of a school-dictionary. Citations abundantly sufficient to meet the wants of ordinary readers are given in full, while distinct references guide the more exacting scholar over a much wider field of original authority. In this way space is economized, and the book is made cheap without a sacrifice of learning. Its first general merit is its singular correctness. In a verification of the almost numberless passages quoted, and a correction of time-honored blunders, committed by subordinates, but sanctioned by names of great writers employing them; in a distrust of authority at second-hand, and persistent fidelity to the cause of learning, we recognize the diligence of Prof. W. W. Turner. Those who have never tried this kind of work have but an inadequate idea of its demands on the brain, and on the conscience too. _Reading through_ a dictionary is an after-dinner pastime in comparison. The vocabulary is more extended than in other lexicons. But the peculiar and highest merit of this work appears in definitions, remarkable for clearness, fulness, and distinction of the subtle shades of meaning. Colloquial, technical, and other special uses of words, here receive their share of attention, and are felicitously rendered or illustrated by corresponding English terms. The arrangement is admirable. The words of the vocabulary are distinguished by an appropriate type. The etymology, the primitive and derivative, the general and special, the proper and tropical significations of a word; its meaning before the courts, in the temples, at the games, among the Roman mob or the Roman exquisites; its anti-classical, golden-augustan, neo-degenerate or patristic use--all this is given in a regular order, by changes of type and an ingenious system of abbreviations, so that the whole origin, history, value and application of any Latin word may be taken in, almost at a glance. The amount of archaeological learning--compressed indeed but never obscured by abridgment--scattered through these pages is immense. Finally there is an appendix, containing the XII. Tables, and other specimens of Archaic Latin; and another, giving a list of Italian and French words, varied by euphonic changes from the Latin origin. There are also a translation of Freund's original preface by Prof. Woolsey, and a modest preface by Prof. Andrews, the editor in chief. * * * * * THE REV. F. W. SHELTON, minister of an out-of-the-way parish on Long Island, and known in literature hitherto only by two or three wise lectures which he addressed to the young men of his village, (though his intimate friends have guessed all the while that his hand was in some of the wittiest and most unique contributions to the _Knickerbocker_,) has published during the last month one of the best specimens of allegory furnished by this age. It is entitled "Salander," and has for its subject the backbiting dragon sometimes called by similar name. It makes a neat duodecimo, illustrated with wood cuts, and is published by Samuel Hueston. * * * * * PROFESSOR BUSH is editing and will soon publish (through J. S. Redfield), the pious and ingenious Heinrich Stilling's celebrated "Theory of Pneumatology." It is a remarkable book, and in this sea of silliness about knocking spirits, &c., which in so remarkable a degree has shown that the infidels who cannot receive the Bible, because it is "incredible," are the most credulous fools in the world, the German psychologist will command attention. Dr. Bush adds to the work a preface and notes. * * * * * MISS MARTINEAU and a Mr. Atkinson have just published a volume entitled "Letters on Man's Nature and Development," in which they handle very boldly the subjects of Mesmerism, Clairvoyance, Phrenology, &c. It is altogether and avowedly materialistic. * * * * * JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL has written a satire upon "The Rappers,"--a humorous and witty poem of a thousand lines or so, which will be out, we believe in _Graham's Magazine_, during the month. * * * * * MR. HENRY C. PHILLIPS, once, we understand, a companion of the traveller Catlin, proposes to publish from his note-book and portfolio, "Sites for Cities, and Scenes of Beauty and Grandeur, to be made famous by the Poets and Painters of Coming Ages: observed in a Pedestrian Journey across the middle of the North American Continent, in 1850." This is a good title, and such a book will be interesting a thousand years hence, for its prophecies. Surveying the vast chain of mountains, which rises midway between the oceans, a poetical Jesuit said, "They are in labor with nations." Mr. Phillips might easily have fancied, as he pursued his summer journey through the wilderness from Oregon and California, among regions more lovely and magnificent than any that were seen by the fathers of art, that of such sights should be born nobler works than have yet been addressed to the senses or to the imagination; and it is not improbable that many a London, and Moscow, and Berlin, and Paris, will some time have their busy populations, where now the ground is hidden by the falling leaves of forests, and trampled by wild horses and buffaloes. * * * * * ONE of the most eminent of the living English historians, lately discovered, as he thought, that "Old Sam Adams" was a _defaulter_, and that he was opposed to Washington; and not choosing to wait until the exposure could be made in his forthcoming work, he communicated it to a very distinguished American, by letter. Now this is all sheer nonsense. It is not necessary to deny the justice of the suspicion that Samuel Adams was unfriendly to Washington, and all the facts as to his conduct as collector for his Majesty's port of Boston, are perfectly familiar to our historical students. He did not indeed pay into the exchequer every shilling with which he was _charged_: well understood circumstances prevented the _collection_ of a large amount of duties; but whatever he received was paid over, and his accounts were squared to a farthing. * * * * * MR. WILLIS--the best artist in words, we have now, perhaps--is preparing a new volume for Baker & Scribner. His "People I have Met," "Life Here and There," and other books published by that house, have sold remarkably well--better, we are inclined to think, than any literary works reprinted in America for a long time--though the public was previously familiar with them under other forms and titles. This proves that the popularity of Willis is genuine and _permanent_. In his way, he is unrivalled,--in any way, he has among the authors of this country but some half dozen peers. * * * * * J. G. WHITTIER has commenced in _The National Era_ the publication of a new prose work, entitled "My Summer with Dr. Singleterry." It will probably be about as long as his admirable "Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal," which appeared first in the same paper. * * * * * OF CHRISTMAS STORIES, the last season has been unusually prolific. Thackeray published one called "The Kickleburys upon the Rhine;" illustrated with fifteen of his own designs. Both the illustrations and the story are liberally praised by the journals. The authoress of "Mary Barton" published another, under the title of "Moreland Cottage," not, like her former work, a story of social wrong, but of gentle domestic life. At the same time it is, if we may judge by extracts in the papers, marked by the admirable peculiarities of her writing. There were some dozen others, most of which were by less distinguished writers. * * * * * THE LIFE OF CALVIN, from the German of Henry, by the Rev. Henry Stebbing, is to be republished in this city immediately by Messrs. Carter, and we purpose making its appearance an occasion for some observations upon that extraordinary person, whose various and astonishing learning and genius, exhibited in speculation, and affairs, and wit--the small arms of his controversy, as terrible as the artillery of his logic--and really gentle and altogether noble nature, present a spectacle which, redeemed from sectarian prejudice and perverse historical misrepresentation, challenges in the most eminent degree the admiration of mankind. * * * * * THE pleasantest book of travels forthcoming from an American press is "Nile Notes of a Howadje," an anonymous record of a voyage upon the Nile--not at all statistical or learned, but a diary, and sketches of personal impressions, aiming to give the _picturesque_ of the country, and not vexing the reader with the mooted Egyptian questions. We have glanced over a few sheets of it, and are confident that if success depends upon quality, it will prove one of the most successful books yet published, upon a region which is illustrated by a larger amount of literature than any other in the world. (Harpers, publishers.) * * * * * MR. PUTNAM has just published a third and very much improved edition of his excellent work, "The World's Progress." We have already expressed in this magazine the opinion that "The World's Progress" is the most interesting, valuable, and altogether indispensable manual of reference, for the student or general reader, that has been published in this country. It is a hand-book of facts, so perspicuously classified and arranged, as to suit the necessities of persons of every degree of intelligence, and so full, upon almost every sort of subjects, as to serve the purposes of a universal manual. The new edition is augmented by a supplement embracing the most recent statistics, etc. * * * * * THREE eminent scholars and authors, Dr. Lushington, Mr. Falconer, and Dr. Twiss, are appointed by the British government, arbitrators to determine the boundary between the provinces of Canada and Nova Scotia, which has for some years been in dispute. * * * * * THE FOURTH VOLUME OF MR. HILDRETH'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, being the first volume of the post-revolutionary history, will be published immediately, we believe, by the Harpers. We look for an exceedingly interesting book. Of the earlier volumes of the History, the London _Spectator_ observes:-- "The distinguishing literary characteristic of this history is a careful succinctness. The convenience of a summary notice of the gradual discovery of America, and the necessity of singly narrating the foundation of each separate colony, render any substantial novelty of plan in a history of the United States impossible, except upon some scheme where fitness should be sacrificed to fanciful strangeness. Mr. Hildreth has judiciously refrained from attempting any thing of the kind: but perhaps he has pushed the mere chronological arrangement to an excess, and given undue prominence to the discoveries and settlement of North America by foreigners, in proportion to the scale of his work. In the execution, Mr. Hildreth has carefully read and as carefully digested his various authorities, and presented the results of his studies succinctly, closely, and comprehensively. In many cases the compendious style is apt to fall into a vague generality, or the pith of the matter is liable to be missed; but such is not the case with Mr. Hildreth's. He states all that he sees, though he would see more if he possessed a loftier and imaginative mind. We know not his profession, but there is something lawyerlike in his work. One subject seems the same to him as another: it is not so much that he wants variety of power; as that he does not seem to feel the variety in nature. His book is as much a digest as a history. The parts in which Mr. Hildreth succeeds best are those that relate to the social and religious opinions and practices of the colonists. In fact, it is as a social history that it possesses character and value. The author's quiet unimpassioned style presents the strange peculiarities that obtained among the New England colonists till within little more than a generation of the Revolutionary war, and some traces of which still remain." * * * * * "THE MEMORIAL, _written by friends of the late Mrs. Osgood_," to which we have heretofore referred in these pages, is the most beautiful book published in America during the season, and as an original literary miscellany it surpasses any volume that ever appeared in the English language. The _Albion_ says of it: "Seldom has a more graceful compliment been paid to the memory of departed worth, than is exhibited in this handsome volume, which is edited by Mrs. Mary E. Hewitt. It originated at a chance meeting of a literary coterie, soon after the death of the gifted and amiable woman in whose honor it has been put together. When the conversation turned upon the many claims which she possessed on the affections and the esteem of those present, it was resolved that a souvenir volume should be made up from their voluntary contributions, and that the profits arising from the sale should be devoted to erecting a monument over her grave, in the Cemetery of Mount Auburn, near Boston. Many writers of distinguished merit have engraved their names upon this preparatory tablet, not all being numbered amongst her friends and acquaintances, but all appreciating the many virtues of the deceased lady, and the kindly motives of her sorrowing friends. The table of contents shows indeed such a list of names as should insure the speedy attainment of the object in view. We can but mention half-a-dozen--Hawthorne, Willis, G. P. R. James, the Bishop of Jamaica, John Neal, Stoddard, Boker, G. P. Morris and Bayard Taylor, amongst the men, and Miss Lynch, Mrs. Whitman, Mrs. Oaksmith, Mrs. Sigourney, and the Editress to represent the sisterhood of authorship. An admirable likeness of Mrs. Osgood, from a portrait by her husband, serves as a frontispiece, and, with some charming vignettes on steel and other illustrations, enhances the value of this choice and creditable book." (Putnam, publisher.) * * * * * FORTUNE-TELLING is as much in vogue as ever in Paris. A book, which is said to have caused much observation, appeared there lately, which is thus described in the correspondence of the London _Literary Gazette_:-- "It consists of extracts from the voluminous writings of a poor _gentilhomme_ of Brittany, during a period of upwards of sixty years, and each extract is a prediction of some one of the great political convulsions which have occurred in this country during that time. Never was there a more correct _Vates_; but Cassandra herself was not more disregarded than he. The downfall and execution of Louis XVI., the horrors of the Terror, the power and overthrow of Napoleon, the revolution of 1830, and the republic of 1848, were all predicted years before they came to pass; but the poor prophet was set down as a madman by all his literary contemporaries, and during his lifetime not a single newspaper would consent to say any thing about his predictions. What is the most singular thing of all is, that he foretold (years ago, remember--when Louis Philippe was at the height of his power), that the proclamation of the republic would lead to the domination of a member of Napoleon's family, and so it has; though if any one only six months before Louis Napoleon's election had predicted the same thing, he would certainly have been set down as a lunatic. In consequence of this extraordinary foresight of our prophet, people have looked with no little concern to what he says for the future. And alas! they have met with nothing very consolatory. We are, it seems, on the brink of a fearful social crisis, the consequence of which will be the complete destruction of European society as at present constituted; and this destruction is only to be effected by the shedding of rivers of blood, and the weeping of oceans of tears!" * * * * * WE are pleased to perceive that the writings of Hartley Coleridge are soon to be collected and suitably published. Mr. Moxon advertises as in press, his _Poems_, with a Memoir of his life, by his brother, the Rev. Derwent Coleridge; _Essays and Marginalia_, in two volumes; and _Lives of Distinguished Northerns_, a new edition, in two volumes. * * * * * LAMARTINE receives for his _Histoire du Directoire_--the sequel of _The Girondists_--at which he works from fourteen to sixteen hours every day, only 12,000 francs, equal to about $2,400. * * * * * AMONG the "books in press" advertised in London at the beginning of the year, by Bentley, are _The Correspondence of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, and the Rev. William Mason_, now first published from the original MSS., and edited, with notes, by the Rev. J. Mitford, author of "The Life of Gray." This work will contain the last series of Walpole's unpublished letters. A _History of Greek and Roman Classical Literature_, with an introduction on each of the languages, biographical notices, and an account of the periods in which each principal author lived and wrote, so far as literature was affected by such history, and observations on the works themselves, by R. W. Browne, one of the professors in King's College, London. And _The Literary Veteran_, including sketches and anecdotes of the most distinguished literary characters, from 1794 to 1849, by R. P. Gilles. * * * * * THE REV. HENRY T. CHEEVER has just published a volume entitled "The Island World of the Pacific," (Harpers,) which for various personal interest, fulness and accuracy of information, and right feeling, is to be preferred to any book on the subject since the appearance of Cook's Voyages. We know of no traveller in Polynesia who has had better opportunities for observation than Mr. Cheever. His abilities as a writer were illustrated by "The Whale and his Captors," published two or three years ago. The style of the present performance is not at all inferior, and it is especially commendable for a perspicuous compactness. So much misrepresentation of the Sandwich and other Islands has appeared lately, that we are glad of an opportunity to commend a book so authoritative and satisfactory upon the whole subject. * * * * * M. J. MOREAU of Paris, has completed a new version into French of the _Imitatio Christi_, and has accompanied it with select passages from the Fathers and other pious authors. The same writer has also published under the title of _Le Philosophe Inconnu_, an essay on the ideas and writings of the celebrated theosophist Saint-Martin. This remarkable mystic, who in his lifetime was surrounded by so many disciples and admirers, is now known only to the curious seekers among the dusty shelves of libraries. M. Moreau attempts to show that his heresies contained a spice of orthodoxy, and this he endeavors to develop for the benefit of whom it may concern. * * * * * BISHOP ONDERDONK of Pennsylvania is a person of large abilities; he is one of the strongest writers of the Episcopal Church in the country; and it is unjust that the unfortunate circumstances of his ecclesiastical position should prevent the recognition of his merits as a scholar and dialectician. We are pleased, therefore, that his friends have taken measures for the publication of a collection of his _Theological Works_, including sermons and Episcopal charges. * * * * * NEW GERMAN POEMS.--Louise von Plönnies has published two new books of poetry, one under the title of _Neue Gedichte_ (New Poems), the other _Oskar und Giaunetta_. They are spoken of as superior to her former productions, and worthy of a most honorable place among the productions of German poetesses. Oscar and Giaunetta is a love story in verse. The purpose of the writer is to exhibit the masculine and feminine principles, Thought and Beauty, as mutually completing each other in the passion of love. The _Monates-Mährchen_ (Tales of the Month), by Gustar von Mayem, are poems of another sort. Instead of sentimentality, the stock in trade of this writer is patriotism and politics. His inspiring thought is the unity of Germany and the national greatness which must result therefrom. Unfortunately this thought does not find so welcome a reception with statesmen as with poets. * * * * * A PRODUCTION of the most indisputable German plodding and erudition is the _Satzungen und Gebräuche des talmudisch-rabbinischen Judenthums_, by Dr. I. F. Schröder, lately issued at Bremen. It gives a complete account of the religious notions, doctrines, and usages of the Jews. To theologians it is of high value for the light which it casts upon the formation and institutions of the Christian Church. The author has employed in its composition the writings of every sect, and has condensed in it the result of a thorough study of the entire literature relating to the Old Testament and the rabbinical writings. He writes with the greatest impartiality, and in the interest of no particular creed or tendency. * * * * * M. ARAGO said lately in the Academy of Sciences, upon the suggestion of some possibilities in aerostation, that a long time since the whole subject had been treated in a masterly manner by Mousnier, a celebrated member of the Academy of Sciences. His treatise had remained in manuscript in the public library of Metz, and if it should be committed to the press, it would prove to those who think they have discovered new methods of aerial locomotion, that what is plausible and rational in their ideas was already perfectly well known, expounded and appreciated, in the last century. * * * * * THE government of Naples constantly increases its list of prohibited books. Among the works now excluded, Humboldt's Cosmos, Shakspeare, Goldsmith, Heeren's Historical Treatises, Ovid, Lucian, Lucretius, Sophocles, Suetonius, Paul de Kock, Victor Hugo, E. Girardin, G. Sand, Lamartine, Valery's L'Italie, Goethe, Schiller, Thiers, A. Dumas, Molière, all the German philosophers, and Henry Stephens's Greek Dictionary. * * * * * THE ABBÉ LACORDAIRE has published an introduction to a work entitled _Le Monde Occulte_--an exposition of the mysteries of magnetism, by means of somnambulism. * * * * * A BOOK which contains some excellent sketches relative to MAZZINI and the Roman Republic, has been published at Bremen, with the title, _Des Republikaner's Schwerdfahrt_, (The Republican's Sword-Pilgrimage). The author is a German, Ernst Hang, who held a high post in the Roman army. He is now in Asia Minor, where his work was written. It is eloquent sometimes, and entertaining and sensible always. His remarks on the mutual relations of Germany and Italy, are admitted to be sound and judicious. * * * * * THE HON. CHARLES A. MURRAY, author of a volume of Travels in America, and of three or four novels, is now the British Consul-General in Egypt, and with his newly-married wife was to depart for Alexandria, to resume his consular duties, towards the close of January. * * * * * THE first volume of a most valuable and interesting work has just made its appearance at Frankfort-on-the-Main. It is called _Geschichte der Frauen_ (History of Woman), and is from the pen of G. Jung. The volume now issued contains the history of the oppression of woman, and her gradual self-emancipation down to the Christian era. It is written with great talent, and comprehensive learning, but without pedantry. The author believes that the emancipation of woman is not yet completed, and she has a right to a free development of her faculties, and a perfectly independent position in society. Two more volumes will complete the work. The Fine Arts. RICHARD WAGNER, well known as an artist, has brought out at Leipzic a book called _Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft_ (Art in the Future), which excites a good deal of attention, and is soundly assailed by those who dislike it. Wagner adopts the philosophical ideas of Feuerbach, and treats his subject from that stand-point. Into modern art he pitches with all the force of a genuine iconoclast. He says it is a sexless, sterile product of dreams, not art, but merely manner, &c. With him art must come out of the people, and be the apotheosis of the people. The people are immortal and ever young. With the poets and novel-writers of the day, Wagner has no more patience than with the artists. They are, he thinks, dilettanti, sentimentalists, who coquet with the misery of the masses, in order to serve the same up well spiced and warmed to their luxurious and fashionable readers. The ideal and absolute in art he finds in the drama, which is the sum and type of all other artistic creations. But no drama yet produced satisfies him, and he tells the reasons why without hesitation. Those who wish to be entertained and set thinking by an author who is in earnest even when most paradoxical, may look at Wagner's book with advantage. * * * * * THORWALDSEN.--The Danish Government some time since sent Mr. Thiele, a competent person, to Rome, for the purpose of collecting every thing that could be obtained toward a history of the life and works of this illustrious sculptor, whose early life is so obscure that even the date and place of his birth are unknown, as well as the employment he made of the first years that he was in Italy. Mr. Thiele has found a number of casks in the cellars of the Tomati Palace at Rome, filled with letters, addressed to Thorwaldsen, and among them a long and constant correspondence between him and his mother, who lived part of the time in Denmark and part of the time in Iceland, her native country. It seems that Thorwaldsen had the habit of preserving his papers, even to the most trifling, by flinging them confusedly into a cedar box in his room; when that was full they were emptied into the casks where they have now been found; these casks were not noticed when all the other contents of the palace were removed to Copenhagen. Whatever is interesting in these papers will, of course, be published. Mr. Thiele has also discovered in the same cellar the model of a bas-relief by the same great artist, representing the Muses dancing by Helicon. It will be added to the collection of his works at Copenhagen. * * * * * THE artist HEIDEL has published at Berlin a series of Eight Illustrations to Goethe's Iphigenia. He aims in them to preserve unmixed the spirit of antique art, and thus to prove that the Germans are the true successors of the Greeks. The subjects of his designs are:--The Fall of Tantalus; the Departure of Agamemnon; the Sacrifice of Iphigenia; the Death of Agamemnon; the Death of Clytemnestræ; the Flight of Orestes; the Meeting of Orestes and Iphigenia; and the Return of Iphigenia. The designs are praised by the German critics. They say that in beholding the Flight of Orestes, pursued by the Furies, who dare not enter the sacred temple of Apollo where he seeks refuge, one imagines that he hears the fearful chanting of a chorus of Æschylus. * * * * * A NEW ART called _Metallography_ has been discovered by Nicholas Zack, a lithographer at Munich, by means of which designs that have hitherto been engraved on wood can be put directly upon metal, and in such a manner as to be printed from. The plate is prepared beforehand, and the artist draws his design upon it with a pencil or a needle. Without any further labor, by means of the preparation alone, the plate will be ready for printing. Worn-out plates may be restored with very little expense. * * * * * A BOOKSELLER of Munich has published Albert Dürer's sketches from the prayer-book of Emperor Maximilian I., with the original text, colored initials, and an introduction. Price eight thalers, about $6,00. * * * * * MORITZ RUGENDAS, a German artist, who has lately spent a considerable time in Mexico and the countries of South America, is now engaged at Munich, in arranging the pictures for which his journeys in those countries furnished him the materials. A work of such magnitude has never before been undertaken by any artist. He intends to treat each country in a continuous series of views. The Mexican series is now nearly completed, consisting of about 100 landscapes, in oil. It begins with Vera Cruz, where the artist landed, and goes through the whole country to the Pacific. First is the coast seen from the sea; next we behold the coast with the sea as it appears inland; then we mount to the plains, noticing the gradual change of the mountain formations, and the vegetation, with views in every direction from each interesting point; we pass through the great plateau, ascend the volcanoes and survey their craters, and admire the beauty of the region about the city of Mexico. From the city there are sketches of journeys in every direction, and at last we traverse the palm forest of St. Jago, and stand upon the heights whence the eye reaches to the Pacific. Every picturesque scene is finished with the greatest care and with special regard to the natural features of the landscape. Buildings and human figures are either avoided altogether or used as merely subordinate. When Mexico is completed, Rugendas will use in a similar manner the sketches he has taken in other countries. It is not known whether his pictures will be engraved or not. They will, we believe, become the property of the Royal Pinakothek, at Munich. * * * * * The painters at Vienna have formed an Art-Union, which is succeeding in its first exhibition, which is now open. Some well-known artists of Germany have sent pictures. Foltz, of Munich, has a landscape with a flock of sheep; Zimmerman a landscape with effect of sunlight; Hülner, of Düsseldorf, a boy reading the Bible to his mother, Vienna. Koeckoeck, of Holland, has two landscapes. The artists of Vienna have also not been backward. Among the names of the exhibitors we notice that of Waldmüller, who is known in this country for his picture of the Children leaving School, which was drawn a year since by one of the subscribers to the International Art-Union, and was regarded as one of the chief attractions of its collection. * * * * * We hear from Berlin that KAULBACH has painted in miniature the Four Evangelists, in a copy of Luther's translation of the New Testament, which is destined for the World's Fair. The book is a folio; the leaves are of vellum, and the printing is done in Gothic letters and in various colored inks by four accomplished masters of calligraphy. These artists have also ornamented their work with numerous vignettes. The book is now being exhibited at the Royal Library in Berlin. * * * * * MR. PRESCOTT, Mr. Ticknor, and other Boston gentlemen of high cultivation and artistic taste, have prepared a memorial to Congress that POWERS should be commissioned by government to put into marble his statue of America. For less than twenty-five thousand dollars, probably--for a sum not larger than that which was paid by the government for the two specimens of commonplace by Mr. Persico, this admirable production might be obtained in colossal size for the capitol. * * * * * The GERMAN _Arch[=a]ologische Institut_, at Rome, celebrated the birth-day of Winckelmann on the 13th of December. Dr. Emil Braun read an essay on the two chief groups of the frieze of the Parthenon. These groups have hitherto been supposed to represent the twelve gods of Olympus; Dr. Braun attempted to show that they represent, in a double point of view, the native heroes of Attica. The physical development of the country is expressed in the genealogy of a royal race, beginning with Cecrops and his wife Agraulia, continued in Cranaus and Amphictyon, and finally passing into Erichthonius, the son of Atthis, and foster son of Pandrosos. The social organization of the state begins with Erechtheus, who is aided by his wife Praxithea, and his daughter Creusa. He annexes Eleusis to Athens, the former being here represented by Demeter and Triptolemus; finally Theseus with his friend Pirithous completes the civil organization of Athens, and establishes it upon a firm basis. Essays on subjects connected with antique art and history were also read by Dr. L. Schmidt, Dr. H. Brunn, and Dr. W. Heuzen. * * * * * The paintings of the Chapel of the Virgin in the Church of Nôtre Dame de Lorette, a vast work, which has hitherto remained unknown to the public, and which has been interrupted by the recent death of the painter, M. Victor Orsel, are now attracting attention. M. Perrin, intrusted with the execution of a similar chapel in the same edifice, will undertake the pious task of terminating the work of a friend, with whom he had lived on terms of the closest friendship, cemented by a community of ideas and talent. Orsel was making rapid strides towards a great reputation. * * * * * We had occasion lately to notice in the _International_ the illustrations of Hood's "Bridge of Sighs," by Mr. Ehninger. This young artist has just published in a large quarto (through Putnam) a series of Outline Illustrations of Washington Irving's "Dolph Heyliger," which are an improvement upon his first performance. Many of the scenes are admirably rendered. We believe Mr. Ehninger is now pursuing the study of art abroad. * * * * * The German sculptor, WOLFF, has added to, his many admirable works a figure of _Paris_, which is much praised. THE AUTHORESS OF "JANE EYRE," AND HER SISTERS.[13] Miss Bronte has just published in London the literary remains of her sisters, "Ellis" and "Acton Bell," with interesting sketches of their histories, including some glimpses of her own. We copy a portion of the reviewal of the work in the _Athenæum_: The lifting of that veil which for a while concealed the authorship of 'Jane Eyre' and its sister-novels, excites in us no surprise. It seemed evident from the first prose pages bearing the signatures of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, that these were _Rosalinds_--or a _Rosalind_--in masquerade:--some doubt as to the plurality of persons being engendered by a certain uniformity of local color and resemblance in choice of subject, which might have arisen either from identity, or from joint peculiarities of situation and of circumstance. It seemed no less evident that the writers described from personal experience the wild and rugged scenery of the northern parts of this kingdom; and no assertion or disproval, no hypothesis or rumor, which obtained circulation after the success of 'Jane Eyre,' could shake convictions that had been gathered out of the books themselves. In similar cases, guessers are too apt to raise plausible arguments on some point of detail,--forgetting that this may have been thrown in _ex proposito_ to mislead the bystander; and hence the most ingenious discoverers become so pertinaciously deluded as to lose eye and ear for those less obvious indications of general tone of style, color of incident, and form of fable, on which more phlegmatic persons base measurement and comparison. Whatever of truth there may or may not be generally in the above remarks,--certain it is, that in the novels now in question instinct or divination directed us aright. In the prefaces and notices before us, we find that the Bells were three sisters:--two of whom are no longer amongst the living. The survivor describes their home as-- "A village parsonage, amongst the hills bordering Yorkshire and Lancashire. The scenery of these hills is not grand--it is not romantic; it is scarcely striking. Long low moors, dark with heath, shut in little valleys, where a stream waters, here and there, a fringe of stunted copse. Mills and scattered cottages chase romance from these valleys; it is only higher up, deep in amongst the ridges of the moors, that Imagination can find rest for the sole of her foot: and even if she finds it there, she must be a solitude-loving raven,--no gentle dove. If she demand beauty to inspire her, she must bring it inborn: these moors are too stern to yield any product so delicate. The eye of the gazer must itself brim with a 'purple light,' intense enough to perpetuate the brief flower-flush of August on the heather, or the rare sunset-smile of June; out of his heart must well the freshness that in later spring and early summer brightens the bracken, nurtures the moss, and cherishes the starry flowers that spangle for a few weeks the pasture of the moor-sheep. Unless that light and freshness are innate and self-sustained, the drear prospect of a Yorkshire moor will be found as barren of poetic as of agricultural interest: where the love of wild nature is strong, the locality will perhaps be clung to with the more passionate constancy, because from the hill-lover's self comes half its charm." Thus much of the scene:--now as to the story of the authorship of these singular books:-- "About five years ago, my two sisters and myself, after a somewhat prolonged period of separation, found ourselves reunited and at home. Resident in a remote district where education had made little progress, and where, consequently, there was no inducement to seek social intercourse beyond our own domestic circle, we were wholly dependent on ourselves and each other, on books and study, for the enjoyments and occupations of life. * * One day, in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on a MS. volume of verse in my sister Emily's handwriting. Of course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse; I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me,--a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. * * Meantime, my younger sister quietly produced some of her own compositions, intimating that since Emily's had given me pleasure, I might like to look at hers. I could not be a partial judge, yet I thought that these verses too had a sweet sincere pathos of their own. We had very early cherished the dream of one day becoming authors. This dream, never relinquished even when distance divided and absorbing tasks occupied us, now suddenly acquired strength and consistency: it took the character of a resolve. We agreed to arrange a small selection of our poems, and, if possible, get them printed. Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because--without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called 'feminine'--we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise. The bringing out of our little book was hard work. * * Ill-success failed to crush us: the mere effort to succeed had given a wonderful zest to existence; it must be pursued. We each set to work on a prose tale: Ellis Bell produced 'Wuthering Heights,' Acton Bell 'Agnes Grey,' and Currer Bell also wrote a narrative in one volume. These MSS. were perseveringly obtruded upon various publishers for the space of a year and a half; usually, their fate was an ignominious and abrupt dismissal. At last 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Agnes Grey,' were accepted on terms somewhat impoverishing to the two authors." The MS. of a one-volume tale by Currer Bell had been thought by Messrs. Smith & Elder so full of promise, that its writer was asked for a longer story in a more saleable form.-- "I was then just completing 'Jane Eyre,' at which I had been working while the one-volume tale was plodding its weary round in London: in three weeks I sent it off; friendly and skillful hands took it in. This was in the commencement of September, 1847; it came out before the close of October following, while 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Agnes Grey,' my sisters' works, which had already been in the press for months, still lingered under a different management. They appeared at last. Critics failed to do them justice." The narrative may be best concluded in the writer's own words. "Neither Ellis nor Acton allowed herself for one moment to sink under want of encouragement; energy nerved the one, and endurance upheld the other. They were both prepared to try again; I would fain think that hope and the sense of power was yet strong within them. But a great change approached: affliction came in that shape which to anticipate, is dread; to look back on, grief. In the very heat and burden of the day, the laborers failed over their work. My sister Emily first declined. The details of her illness are deep-branded in my memory, but to dwell on them, either in thought or narrative, is not in my power. Never in all her life had she lingered over any task that lay before her, and she did not linger now. She sank rapidly. She made haste to leave us. Yet, while physically she perished, mentally she grew stronger than we had yet known her. Day by day, when I saw with what a front she met suffering, I looked on her with an anguish of wonder and love. I have seen nothing like it; but, indeed, I have never seen her parallel in any thing. Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone. The awful point was, that, while full of ruth for others, on herself she had no pity; the spirit was inexorable to the flesh; from the trembling hand, the unnerved limbs, the faded eyes, the same service was exacted as they had rendered in health. To stand by and witness this, and not dare to remonstrate, was a pain no words can render. Two cruel months of hope and fear passed painfully by, and the day came at last when the terrors and pains of death were to be undergone by this treasure, which had grown dearer and dearer to our hearts as it wasted before our eyes. Towards the decline of that day, we had nothing of Emily but her mortal remains as consumption left them. She died December 19, 1848. We thought this enough; but we were utterly and presumptuously wrong. She was not buried ere Anne fell ill. She had not been committed to the grave a fortnight, before we received distinct intimation that it was necessary to prepare our minds to see the younger sister go after the elder. Accordingly, she followed in the same path with slower step, and with a patience that equalled the other's fortitude. I have said that she was religious, and it was by leaning on those Christian doctrines in which she firmly believed that she found support through her most painful journey. I witnessed their efficacy in her latest hour and greatest trial, and must bear my testimony to the calm triumph with which they brought her through. She died May 28, 1849. What more shall I say about them? I cannot and need not say much more. In externals, they were two unobtrusive women; a perfectly secluded life gave them retiring manners and habits." Though the above particulars be little more than the filling-up of an outline already clearly traced and constantly present whenever those characteristic tales recurred to us,--by those who have held other ideas with regard to the authorship of "Jane Eyre" they will be found at once curious and interesting from the plain and earnest sincerity of the writer. She subsequently enters on an analysis and discussion of "Wuthering Heights" as a work of art;--in the closing paragraph of her preface to that novel, insinuating an argument, if not a defence, the urgency of which is not sufficiently admitted by the bulk of the world of readers. Speaking of the fiendlike hero of her sister's work, she says:-- "Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master--something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent 'to harrow the valleys, or be bound with a band in the furrow'--when it 'laughs at the multitude of the city, and regards not the crying of the driver'--when, refusing absolutely to make ropes out of sea-sand any longer, it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you have a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as fate or inspiration directs. Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you--the nominal artist--your share in it has been to work passively under dictates you neither delivered nor could question--that would not be uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor changed at your caprice." It might have been added, that to those whose experience of men and manners is neither extensive nor various, the construction of a self-consistent monster is easier than the delineation of an imperfect or inconsistent reality--with all its fallings-short, its fitful aspirations, its mixed enterprises, and its interrupted dreams. But we must refrain from further speculation and illustration:--enough having been given to justify our characterizing this volume, with its preface, as a more than usually interesting contribution to the history of female authorship in England. Pertinently of these biographies, the _Athenæum_ remarks that "some of the most daring and original have owed their parentage, not to defying _Britomarts_, at war with society, who choose to make their literature match with their lives,--not to brilliant women figuring in the world, in whom every gift and faculty has been enriched, and whetted sharp, and encouraged into creative utterance, by perpetual communication with the most distinguished men of the time,--but to writers living retired lives in retired places, stimulated to activity by no outward influence, driven to confession by no history that demands apologetic parable or subtle plea." FOOTNOTES: [13] _Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey._ By Ellis and Acton Bell. A new Edition Revised, with a Biographical Notice of the Authors, a Selection from their Literary Remains, and a Preface. By Currer Bell. Smith, Elder & Co. DAVIS ON THE LAST HALF CENTURY.[14] ETHERIZATION. In 1802, the late reverend and venerable DR. MILLER of New Jersey, then an active minister of the Presbyterian church in this city, published here, in two large octavo volumes, the First Part of _A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century, containing a Sketch of the Revolutions and Improvements in Science, Arts and Literature, during that Period_. Six other volumes were contemplated, to cover grounds since occupied by the great work upon the Eighteenth Century, by Dr. Schlosser, but they never appeared. The facts embraced in Dr. Miller's Retrospect illustrated an extraordinary and successful intellectual activity in the preceding hundred years; but the fruits of investigation and reflection in that time were less remarkable and important than those which have marked the first half of the Nineteenth Century, of which the Rev. EMERSON DAVIS, D.D., has attempted to give us a survey in a single duodecimo. Within such brief limits completeness and fulness were out of the question, but we had a right to ask a judicious selection of topics, and--however brief and imperfect,--a careful and an honest statement of facts. We are sorry to perceive that brevity is the only redeeming quality of Dr. Davis's performance. It is altogether worthless, in almost every respect, and unless it tempt some competent person to the composition of an Account of the Progress of Society from 1800 to 1851, its appearance will be a public misfortune, as well as a private disgrace. Perfectly to justify this condemnation we will copy a single section--the one treating of the discovery of "LETHEON, OR SULPHURIC ETHER, &c. "In the autumn of 1846, it was announced in the public journals that a dentist in Boston, W. T. G. Morton, had discovered a method of extracting teeth without pain. Dr. Morton, it seems, was satisfied that he could increase his business to any extent he pleased, if he could only discover a method by which he could extract and insert teeth without any pain to the patient. Having some knowledge of the fact that, by inhaling the vapor of ether, a state of insensibility could be produced, he applied to Dr. Charles T. Jackson to know if it could be done with safety. It occurred to him that it might produce such a degree of stupor that a tooth might be extracted without a consciousness of what was doing [_meaning_ being done]. On the 30th of September, 1846, he inhaled the vapor himself, and found that he remained in an unconscious state eight minutes. On the same day, he administered it with success to a man who called to have a tooth extracted. The man, on recovering his consciousness, did not know that any instrument had been applied to his tooth. On the 16th and 17th of October, at the suggestion of Dr. Morton, ether was administered to two patients at the hospital, who were to have surgical operations performed. The experiment was successful. As soon as the fact was known, it was generally applauded by the newspapers as a wonderful discovery, and the question came up, To whom belongs the honor, and who shall reap the reward? Dr. Jackson, in a letter to M. Beaumont, published in Galignani's Messenger, in Paris, January, 1847, says, 'I request permission to communicate to the Academy, through you, a discovery which I have made, and which I regard as important to suffering humanity.' It appears that the idea of using ether to render a person insensible _to pain_, was original with Dr. Morton, and that Dr. Jackson did no more than give Dr. Morton some information respecting the nature of ether, and the best mode of inhaling it. But as Dr. Jackson was better known as a man of science, Dr. Morton consented to take the patent in the name of both, and Dr. Jackson sold out his share to Dr. Morton for ten per cent. of the income that might be derived from the sale of rights to use the discovery. "In February, 1847, another letter appeared in Galignani's Messenger, from Dr. H. Wells, of Hartford, Connecticut, in which he claimed to be the discoverer of the fact that the respiring of gas would produce insensibility to pain. Dr. Wells had been about the country for a few years previous, _lecturing upon gases_, and had often administered the exhilarating, or nitrous oxide, gas. There is _no evidence_ that he ever administered ether. He might, in his experiments, have found that persons under the influence of the nitrous gas were insensible to pain, but he had no right to claim that he discovered that the vapor of ether would produce that effect. The French Academy, however, conferred rewards of merit upon both Jackson and Wells, and, in 1848, the American Congress awarded to Morton the honor of the discovery. "In 1847, several sharp articles appeared in the Boston papers, some favorable to Morton, and others to Jackson. Wells committed suicide that year, and nothing more was said respecting his claims. Some spicy pamphlets were written. The result has been that, under the shelter of the smoke of controversy, every one that chose has made use of the discovery without paying Morton for the right, and that he has been actually impoverished by the attention he gave to the subject." This statement is a tissue of falsehood and absurdity. To deny to Dr. Wells the _entire_ credit of this discovery, argues simply gross ignorance or insolence. Whenever any matter deserving of historical commemoration is submitted to controversy, and the evidence is not full and absolute, and the decision is not unanimous or nearly so, the historian must _himself_ enter into the investigation, and in his own person pronounce judgment. Therefore Dr. Davis has no excuse for so scandalous a misrepresentation of these events, in any communications or suggestions by unknown parties. It was easy to be rightly informed, and under such circumstances, ignorance is scarcely less criminal than designed falsehood. In this case, the decision has plainly been in favor of Dr. Wells, wherever there was authority of action. By means which we do not care to state, but which are well known to us, Drs. Jackson and Morton did indeed procure of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, a recognition of their joint claims to be regarded as the discoverers of etherization. The Academy of Sciences is not a fit tribunal. The Paris Medical Society (of which the celebrated Chevalier Ricord is President) is; and this society, after an elaborate investigation of the whole subject, during which it listened to a speech of several hours by Mr. Warren, the agent of Drs. Jackson and Morton, decided with the utmost unanimity that Dr. Wells made the discovery, and awarded him therefor the sum of 25,000 francs. The statement that Dr. Wells "went about the country lecturing upon gases," is characteristically false. He never delivered even one lecture, upon any subject whatever, in his life. It is equally false that "the American Congress awarded to Morton the credit of the discovery." Congress has never made any decision or award at all in the premises. A committee was hastily appointed, and it presented a report, probably prepared in Boston. The friends of Dr. Wells were not advised of any such attempt, and it was thought this report, with agreeing resolutions, could be smuggled through the House. But a counter report was immediately offered, nevertheless, and so the game stopped. We cannot, in these pages, enter into any detail of the history of this important discovery; but those who wish to investigate it, are referred to a pamphlet lately issued at Hartford, entitled, "_Discovery by the late Dr. Horace Wells of the Applicability of Nitrous Oxide Gas, Sulphuric Ether, and other Vapors, in Surgical Operations, nearly two years before the Patented Discovery of Drs. Charles T. Jackson and W. T. G. Morton_." This pamphlet was prepared by Mr. Toucey, recently Attorney General of the United States, and nothing can be more conclusive and satisfactory, to a fair inquirer, than the evidence contained in it, that Drs. Jackson and Morton had never even the slightest thought of any thing like etherization, until Dr. Wells, some time after the discovery, proceeded to Boston, in the hope that Dr. Morton (who was under especial private obligations to him, and therefore was regarded by him as a friend) would assist him in procuring for it larger publicity and recognition. Poor Wells was only laughed at by these gentlemen, who, two years afterward, claimed the discovery as their own! How complete the discovery, and how successful the application of it, will appear from the affidavit of Dr. Marcy. Mr. Toucey says: "Dr. E. E. Marcy, formerly of Hartford, now of the city of New-York, was present at the rooms of Dr. Wells, by his special request, to witness the operation upon Mr. F. C. Goodrich, and witnessed it with the strong sensations produced by a new and wonderful discovery upon a scientific observer. He says, not only was the extraction accomplished without pain, but the inhalation of the gas was effected without any of those indications of excitement, or attempts at muscular exertion, which do commonly obtain when the gas is administered _without a definite object or previous mental preparation_. 'By this experiment,' says Dr. Marcy, 'two important, and, to myself, _entirely new facts_ were demonstrated: 1st. That the body could be rendered insensible to pain by the inhalation of a gas or vapor, capable of producing certain effects upon the organism. And 2d. When such agents were administered, to a sufficient extent, for a definite object, and with a suitable impression being previously produced upon the mind, that no unusual mental excitement, or attempts at physical effort would follow the inhalation. "'Witnessing these wonderful phenomena, these new and astounding facts, the idea at once occurred to me whether there were not other substances analogous in effect to the gas, and which might be employed with more convenience and with equal efficacy and safety. Knowing that the inhalation of sulphuric-ether vapor gave rise to precisely the same effects as those of the gas, from numerous former trials with both these substances, I suggested to Dr. Wells, the employment of the vapor of rectified sulphuric ether--at the same time detailing to him its ordinary effects upon the economy, and the method of preparing the articles for use. Our first impression was, that it possessed all the anæsthetic properties of the nitrous oxyd, was equally safe, and could be prepared with less trouble, thus affording an article which was not expensive, and could always be kept at hand. At the same time, I told Dr. Wells that I would prepare some ether, and furnish him some of it to administer, and also make a trial of it myself, in a surgical case which I expected to operate upon in a few days. Not long after this conversation (to which allusion is made by Mr. Goodrich, in his affidavit) I administered the vapor of rectified sulphuric ether, in my office, to the young man above alluded to, and after he had been rendered insensible to pain, cut from his head an encysted tumor of about the size of an English walnut. The operation was entirely unattended with pain, and demonstrated to Dr. Wells and myself, in the most conclusive manner, the anæsthetic properties of ether vapor.' "We have narrated this important experiment in the language of Dr. Marcy, to whose affidavit we take leave to refer, as no part of it can, with any propriety or justice, be overlooked by any one who proposes to subject this matter to a searching examination. It shows the progress and the successful result of these inquiries and experiments of Dr. Wells, and of those skilful and liberal professional gentlemen who co-operated with him. It shows that the opinion was then entertained by Dr. Marcy, that the constituents of the gas were more nearly allied to the atmospheric air than were those of ether vapor--that the former was more agreeable and easy to inhale than the latter, and upon the whole was more safe and equally efficacious as an anæsthetic agent--and that this opinion was fully confirmed by numerous experiments subsequently made by Drs. Ellsworth, Beresford, Riggs, Terry, Wells and himself. It shows further, that _Dr. Wells visited Boston in 1844, for the purpose of communicating his discovery to the faculty of that city, and that, on his return, he informed Dr. Marcy that he had communicated it to Dr. C. T. Jackson, and to Dr. Morton, and received from the former, and from other medical gentlemen of Boston, nothing but ridicule for his pains_." We have no room for testimony. Mr. Toucey concludes his statement in the following manner:-- "More than a year and a half after Dr. Wells had personally made known to Dr. Jackson, and to Dr. Morton, his former pupil, the result of his experiments, more than one year after the announcement in the Boston _Medical and Surgical Journal_, published at their doors, we find Dr. Jackson and Dr. Morton confederating together, taking out a patent for this principle, and attempting ineffectually to appropriate it to their joint pecuniary benefit! Dr. Jackson as the philosopher, Dr. Morton as the operator! And shortly afterwards, differing in almost every thing else, agreeing nevertheless in one thing--each affirming of the other that he was not entitled to the merit of the discovery! "Such is a brief statement of the proof, by which the mere matter of fact is established, which induced the Legislature of Connecticut to hail the late Dr. Horace Wells as a public benefactor. With this accumulation of evidence on one side, bearing directly upon the point, and _nothing to countervail it on the other_, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that he was the fortunate author of this great discovery, unless one or the other of two propositions can be established, namely, either that such a paralysis of the nervous system as would render the subject insensible to pain during the process of extracting teeth, would not embrace the principle of it, or on the other hand, that nitrous oxyd gas is arbitrarily to be excluded from its proper place in a class of agents, all of which are nearly identical in their operation. And even if this difficult task could be accomplished, there would still remain another equally difficult to be encountered; because it has already been shown that Dr. Wells went beyond these limits, and that Dr. Marcy, in conjunction with him, subjected the use of sulphuric ether in a larger surgical operation, to the test of successful experiment. But either of the foregoing propositions would be too absurd to require a moment's consideration. The principle is as fully developed by the painless extraction of teeth, as by the painless amputation of a limb; by the successful use of nitrous oxyd gas, as of rectified sulphuric ether. In the language of Dr. Marcy: 'The man who first discovered the fact that the inhalation of a gaseous substance would render the body insensible to pain under surgical operations, should be entitled to all the credit or emolument which may accrue from the use of any substances of this nature. This is the _principle_--this is the _fact_--this is the _discovery_. The mere substitution of ether vapor or any other article for the gas, no more entitles one to the claim of a _discovery_, than the substitution of coal for wood in generating steam, would entitle one to be called the discoverer of the powers of steam.' "It is unnecessary to pursue the subject further. It would be one of the greatest marvels of this wonderful age, if the world, with these facts before it, did not confirm the decision which it has already pronounced, and award to Dr. Wells the merit of a discovery, which will be remembered and appreciated as long as mankind shall be exposed to suffering, or have occasion to apply an antidote." The section upon etherization, we presume, will serve as a specimen of Dr. Davis's _History_ of the First Half of the Eighteenth Century. FOOTNOTES: [14] _The Half Century; or a History of changes that have taken place, and events that have transpired, chiefly in the United States, between 1800 and 1850_; with an introduction by Mark Hopkins, D.D. By Emerson Davis. D.D. Boston: Tappan & Whittenmore. POPULAR LECTURES. Thus far this season, there has been even more than the usual amount of lecturing in our principal cities. The mania lasts longer than was thought possible. The "phenomenon" has really become a feature of the times. It absorbs a great share of the current literary enthusiasm--much of which it has created, and will, it is to be feared, entirely satisfy. Professor Pease, of the University of Vermont, in an essay upon the subject, seeks to determine its import and value; to trace the feeling which gives it birth to its source, and to determine as accurately as possible the grounds of promise or of fear which it affords. "These interpretations," he says, "vary between the widest extremes. On the one side is heard the exulting shout of those who whirl unresistingly in the vortex--'Does not wisdom cry and understanding put forth her voice?' behold the 'progress of the species' and the 'march of mind!' And, on the other side, the contemptuous murmur of those who will be overwhelmed rather than gyrate against their will, they know not whither--'What meaneth this bleating of the sheep in mine ears?'" This mania for lectures, taken in connection with the prevailing literary taste (of which it is in some sort an index), is regarded as pointing, more or less directly, to a want of the human spirit--to its cry--strong and importunate, though often stifled and but dimly felt, for light--the light of science and of truth. Many feel this want only as a _traditional_ need--one which their fathers before them have felt and have taught them to feel--and _they_ are apt to be satisfied with a traditional supply. Others ask for science because it will help them make, or work, and perchance _become_ machines, whereby they may earn bread: and oftentimes, says the writer, "does this mere irritability of the coating of the stomach pass itself off as the waking up the life of the soul, and the sublime and pure aspirations of the spirit, for high and ultimate truths, pure as itself." Then, it is the fashion to be learned, and the fops of literature, who must "follow the fashion," of course, get wisdom as quickly and easily as possible. These are the main features of that demand for science, which is now so clamorous. Mr. Pease divides the lectures of the day into three classes; first those of which the object is instruction, then those designed to amuse, and last, those which profess to serve both these purposes; and he thinks it may be said of all, that they have no _vital, form-giving, organific principle_, running through them, developing properly each separate part, and uniting them all by its own power. In these discourses he says: "The carpenter is the actual model; for like him the discourser cuts and fits his timber according to rules the grounds of which it concerns not him to understand, with little labor beyond that of hacking and hewing--materials being ever ready at his hand: for the world is full of books as the forest is of trees and the market of lumber. And this is done to instruct us; to build us up inwardly; to administer food to our intellect; to nourish our souls; to kindle the imagination and awaken to energetic action the living but slumbering world within. But, alas! this inner world cannot be kindled like a smouldering fire, by a basket of chips and a puff of wind! This inner world is a world of spirits, which feed on thoughts full of truth and living energy. And thought alone can kindle thought: and truth alone can waken truth: not veracity, not fact, but truth vital, 'Truth that wakes To perish never.' This is the bread for which the soul is pining, and such are the husks with which its calls are answered." There is in this statement of the predominant character of our popular lectures much that is true, as we could easily show by a definite examination of the most popular discourses to which our audiences listen. Every one can see that their aim is, not to announce great truths, which are essential to the well-being of society, and the instruction of the soul, but so to shape their sentences, so to point their paragraphs, and to give such a turn to their expressions, as to tickle most effectually the fancy of those who hear them, and to call down that round of applause which tells them they have made a _hit_. Now just so far as this is the case, popular lecturing not only seeks to supply the place of the theatre, but actually becomes theatrical; and lacking the essential worth and dignity of the drama, assumes its tricks and shallow vanities. Nevertheless, the author whom we have quoted sees in this fashion signs of promise, for it signifies the existence and the struggling toward the light, of the absolute want of the soul--which will soon rectify the public taste, and teach men that pleasure lies only in the life-giving and the true. "In this," he says, "lives an abiding ground of hope and cheerful confidence; for it teaches us that every human heart has those depths and living powers in it, the healthful action of which is the true life and well-being of the soul--and in none, we hope, are they forever dormant; and no heart, we hope, is wholly closed. Light, though in rays feeble and scattered, may shine in upon it, and it shall awake--for it is not dead, but sleepeth.... The feeling of wants that lie deeper and farther inward than the sensual appetites, must be supplied or suppressed; and hence arise a struggle and conflict between the antagonist principles of our being. Firm peace, and healthful, quiet energy of soul, are the fruit of victory, and of victory only. Therefore, though attended with a 'troubled sea of noises, and hoarse disputes,' the contest, with its hubbub and vain clamor, is the door to quietness and clear intelligence. Pedantry and pretension, quackery and imposture, shall, in spite of themselves, conduct to their own exposure and extinction; for a higher sway than ours guides all affairs, causing even the wrath of man to praise Him, and making folly itself the guide to wisdom. Hooker characterized his own times as 'full of tongue, and weak of brain;' and Luther said to the same effect, of the preachers and scholars of his day: 'If they were not permitted to prate and clatter about it, they would burst with the greatness of their art and science, so hot and eager are they to teach.' But the noise and dust having subsided, there is left us, of those very times, works which men will not willingly let die. Noise and smoke causeless do not come. There is a force at bottom which will ultimately work itself clear, and produce good and substantial fruits. There is a force somewhere, or no foam and dust would rise: but there is little force in the foam and dust themselves. And the immediate instruments are _only_ instruments, working without knowledge what they do, like puppets, dancing and swinging their arms, while far behind resides the force that works the wires. All wonder bestowed upon _them_ is, most certainly, foolish wonder. But there is no ground for discouragement, or for any but good hopes, although ignorance and pretension stand in high places, and vainly babble concerning things beautiful and profound. This uproar comes only from the troubling of the stream--the foam and roar will not continue always; the smooth plain lies below, along which it shall soon flow, quietly, but strongly, murmuring sweet music. And for the ambitious rainbows painted in the mists above, there shall be the sweet reflection of earth and heaven from its calm bosom." OLD TIMES IN NEW-YORK. Governor William Livingston, of New Jersey, "poet, philosopher and sage," in a letter written November 17th, 1744, gives the following insight into life, as it then was, in New-York. He is describing a "party:" "The feast as usual was preceded by cards, and the company so numerous that they filled two tables; after a few games, a magnificent supper appeared in grand order and decorum--the frolic was closed up by ten sunburnt virgins lately come from Columbus's Newfoundland, and sundry other female exercises; besides a play of my own invention, which I have not room enough to describe at present; however, kissing constitutes a great part of its entertainment." In 1759, Livingston's father died, and his funeral obsequies were performed in all the pomp and attended with all the expense customary in colonial times. These took place in New-York. The lower apartments of most of the stores in Broad-street, where he resided, were thrown open--a pipe of wine was spiced--there were eight pall-bearers, and to each was presented a pair of gloves, a mourning ring, scarf and handkerchief, and a spoon. These services were repeated at the manor, his country-seat, and a handkerchief and pair of black gloves presented to each of the tenants. ROSSINI IN THE KITCHEN. The last accounts of Rossini, if we are to credit the pleasant stories told of him by the Parisian wit, Louis Huart, are highly characteristic of the great _maestro_. The following _canard_ is one of the most _veritable_ and amusing:-- "The newspapers announce that Rossini has shut himself up at Bologna with the celebrated tenor Donzelli, and that they pass their days in rehearsing a new opera, of which Rossini is finishing the score. After the sea-serpent, I know of no story which returns more periodically than the announcement of a new opera by Rossini. It is now fifteen years since this pleasantry began to be invariably reproduced at the commencement of every winter, and always with the same success. One begins to meet in society a few Parisians who shrug their shoulders with an air of incredulity when you speak to them of the sea-serpent, but no one dares to evince the least skepticism touching the new opera of Rossini. We received this morning a letter from our correspondent at Bologna, and he furnishes us with details which explain the announcements in the newspapers. "Rossini is living in rather a retired way just now; and only receives the regular visits of one person; there is an error, however, in the orthography of the appellation of this visitor. Instead of Donzelli, he is named Pastafrollo. He is no tenor! he is a cook! Rossini, in company with Pastafrollo, is now busily occupied in endeavoring to discover a new way of dressing turbot. Rossini has invented, up to the present day, sixty-two different ways of dressing this fish, but he repeats to whoever will listen to him, that he will not die content until he has discovered a sixty-third method, which will satisfy him completely--then he will divulge his secret, and have inscribed on the _cartes_ of all the _restaurants_ in Europe--_turbot à la Rossini_. On that day, but that day only, Rossini will make up his mind to open his piano and compose a _cantata_ in honor of fish in general, and turbot in particular. The passion of Rossini for cooking has been rendered more ardent from the fact that the family of this illustrious personage do all they can to cross him in it. The relatives and friends of Rossini wish to make him believe that it is unworthy of a musician, and more especially of a musician of his genius, to occupy himself with turbot; but Rossini replies, history in hand, that a whole senate once devoted a long sitting to find out what sauce would eat best with this fish. Rossini's family do not consider themselves beaten as yet, and they have organized a sort of _cordon sanitaire_ round the house of the composer, to prevent the cooks from getting to him. Before this determination was arrived at, Bologna overflowed with _chefs_, who arrived from every part of Italy, to consult Rossini on the best methods to be employed in dressing salmon, skate, carp, eels, and gudgeons. "This furnishes us with an explanation of the reason why Pastafrollo was forced to employ a stratagem in order to prevent his being stopped in the hall by the family of Rossini. Pastafrollo arrived at Bologna, under the name of Donzelli, and took care to have inscribed on his passport _tenor_ instead of _cook_. "We cannot conclude without giving expression to an earnest hope, that the conferences established between Rossini and Pastafrollo may give birth to the sixty-third mode of dressing turbot." THE FIRST PEACE SOCIETY. In an entertaining article on "The Abbé de Saint-Pierre," in the last _Gentleman's Magazine_, there is this curious account of a "Peace Society." "The Abbé de Polignac took Saint Pierre with him to the Congress of Utrecht. Witnessing all the difficulties which stood in the way of reconciliation between the contending parties, Saint-Pierre conceived that the truest benefit which could be conferred on mankind would be the abolition of war. He at once proceeded to embody his idea, and published in 1713, the year in which peace was concluded, his 'Projet de Paix Perpetuelle,' in three volumes. The means by which he proposed that this perpetual peace should be preserved was the formation of a senate to be composed of all nations, and to be called _The European Diet_, and before which princes should be bound to state their grievances and demand redress. The Bishop of Fréjus, afterwards Cardinal de Fleury, to whom Saint-Pierre communicated his plan, replied to him, 'You have forgotten the most essential article, that of sending forth a troop of missionaries to persuade the hearts of princes, and induce them to adopt your views.' D'Alembert has made one or two just remarks on Saint-Pierre's dream of universal peace, which are as applicable now as they were a hundred years ago: 'The misfortune of those metaphysical projects for the benefit of nations consists in supposing all princes equitable and moderate, in attributing to men whose power is absolute, and who have the perfect consciousness of their power, who are often exceedingly unenlightened, and who live always in an atmosphere of adulation and falsehood, dispositions which the force of law and the fear of censure so rarely inspire even in private persons. Whosoever, in forming enterprises for the happiness of humanity, does not take into calculation the passions and vices of men, has imagined only a beautiful chimera.' Rousseau thought that, even if Saint Pierre's project were practicable, it would cause more evil all at once than it would prevent during many ages." The writer of this memoir of Saint Pierre presents the character of that remarkable person in a more favorable light than that in which we have been accustomed to regard it. The author of "Paul and Virginia" was very likely a far better man than has been supposed. EGYPT UNDER THE PHARAOHS. MR. KENRICK'S HISTORY.[15] All nations turn to Egypt, as to the mother of civility, and the Christian sees there the prison where are detained, until the end of the world, the witnesses of truths which vindicate his religion. How much the Holy Land is our country, appears from this, that to all Christians, however remote the places where they live, the scenes about Jerusalem are more familiar than those about the capital of his own nation; and with Egypt we are scarcely less intimately, though much less perfectly, acquainted. Within the last half century, great researches have been made, by individual or national enterprise, into the poetry and antiquities of Egypt, by the enterprise of travellers and the diligence of archæologists, among whom England claims the names of Young, Wilkinson, and Vyse. But comparatively few know what has been the result of these researches. They lie scattered over a number of works in different languages, beyond the reach even of the ordinary student, much more of the general reader. Mr. Kenrick (of whose "Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs" we copy below the main portion of a reviewal in the London _Times_) has undertaken the task of supplying a synopsis, and this task he appears to us to have accomplished excellently well. Mr. Kenrick is a very estimable as well as a very accomplished man. Like the great majority of the abler historical, philosophical and religious writers of England at this time, he is a _Dissenter_, which perhaps lessens somewhat the warmth of the critic's commendations. We hope to see his work, as well as that of Mr. Sharpe, relating to Egypt under the Ptolemies, reproduced, by some of our own publishers. Of Mr. Kenrick, the _Times_ says:-- "He commences with the land of Egypt. In the East great rivers are the parents of civilized nations. A great river, which by its deposit forms a long valley and a broad delta of rich alluvial soil in the midst of deserts, was the parent, the nourisher, and the god of the oldest civilized nation of the earth. The Nile is Egypt; the Egyptians were those who lived below the cataracts and drank of the Nile. Above the cataracts they pushed their arms into Ethiopia, and left there the monuments of their dominion. To the west they were at once defended and confined by a desert impassable to armies, but which the oasis rendered passable to the caravan. On the north was an almost harborless sea. On the east was another desert, through which roads led to the ports of the Red Sea and the mines of Sinai. On the north-east the Arabian desert formed an imperfect barrier. It was traversed by the hosts of Sesostris and Sheshonk, of Nebuchadnezzar and Cambyses, and across its sands Egypt communicated commercially and politically with the other seats of ancient civilization which, broken by the recurring desert, formed an irregular chain from Philistia to China. "Of the singular productions of Egypt, the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the ibis, the papyrus, we need not speak. There were few beasts of chase, and the Egyptian conquerors did not begin like those of central Asia by being mighty hunters. It was a land of corn, and of the vine, of fruit trees, and all herbs. The nations sought its granaries in famine; the Israelites in the wilderness thirsted for the cooling vegetables of its gardens. Fish abounded in the Nile, waterfowl in the marshes. Nature yielded freely, but perhaps for that very reason the mind of man was less exercised and less active. And the unvarying landscape, the unchanging sky, the small number and unpoetic or even grotesque forms of the plants and animals, may partly account for the lack of imagination evinced by the most formal and most stationary of nations, scarcely excepting the Chinese. "Who and whence were the Egyptians? This question Mr. Kenrick has to ask, and, like others, to leave unanswered. This is the secret which the grave of the Pharaohs will not yield. Physiology supplies no clue. The mummy cases, the paintings and sculptures, depict a race short, slight, with low foreheads, high cheek bones, long eyes, hair now crisp now curled, and a complexion which the conventionality of the painter's art makes to differ in men and women, but which probably was brown with a tinge of red, dark compared with that of the Syrian, black compared with that of the Greek. Thick lips are frequently seen, but they are supposed to indicate intermarriage with Ethiopians. From the negro the Egyptians were far removed, nor can they be connected with any other known race. If we turn to language, a surer guide perhaps than physiology, we are again completely baffled. The Coptic has been identified through many etymologies with the old Egyptian; and of the Coptic, though it became a dead language in the twelfth century, much literature remains. It is an uncultivated and formal tongue, with monosyllabic roots and rude inflexions totally different from the neighboring languages of Syria and Arabia, totally opposite to the copious and polished Sanscrit. The last fact at once severs Egypt from India, and destroys every presumption of affinity that may arise from the presence in both countries of caste, of animal worship, and of a religion derivable from a primitive adoration of the powers of nature. The hypothesis of an Ethiopian origin sprang from the notion, natural but untrue, that population would follow the course of the descending river. And no tradition among the Egyptians themselves told of a parent stock or of another land. "Respecting the mighty works of Egypt, little mystery remains. The great Pyramids had been rifled by the Caliphs, if not by earlier hands, and no inscriptions have been found. But no doubt exists that they were the sepulchres of the Kings of Memphis. The Queens and the "princes of Noph" reposed in smaller pyramids beside the Kings. These mountains of wasted masonry belong to the earliest ages of the Pharaonic monarchy, before the time of the Sesostrian conquests, and therefore they bespeak the toil and suffering, not of captives, but of native slaves. Before them couches the Sphinx, hewn from the rock, to spare, as a Greek inscription says, each spot of cultivable land. His riddle--for it is _a male_--is read. He represents, perhaps portrays, the reigning King, and the thick lips may indicate Ethiopian blood. The lion's body represents the monarch's might--the human head his wisdom. The rock, from which the figure is cut, broke the view of the Pyramids, and to convert it into the Sphinx was a stroke of Egyptian genius. Pyramids were, in the Pharaonic times, peculiar to Memphis. The countless tombs of Thebes are excavated in the rocky face of the Libyan hills. Those of the Theban Pharaohs stand apart, and we approach through a narrow gorge called the "Gate of Kings." The paintings, sculptures, and inscriptions on these tombs, literally the eternal _houses_ of the dead, are the Pompeii of the Egyptian antiquary. At Thebes are the magnificent and temple-like palaces of the greatest of the Pharaohs, the halls of their assemblies and their counsels, the records of their wars and conquests. At Thebes, too, is the Memnon, a mutilated statue of Amnoph, which never was vocal except by trick or in imagination, and the Obelisks, whose form is sufficiently explained, without obscenity or mystery, by the fancy for monolithic monuments and the possession of large blocks of granite. The remains of the Labyrinth do not enable us to pronounce whether its twenty-seven halls were a burial-place for kings or crocodiles, or a place of assembly for the provinces of Egypt. "Very various and very extravagant notions have been formed of the population of ancient Egypt. That it was dense may well be inferred from the length of time through which it multiplied in a limited space, and from that evident parsimony of land which drove tombs and monuments to the rocks, and cities to the edge of the desert. Calculations based on the number of cities, and on the number of men of military age, have plausibly placed the sum at about five millions. "Agriculture was the chief business of the Egyptians, and the chief business of agriculture consisted in distributing and detaining, by canals and dams, the precious waters of the Nile. The sheep and cattle were numerous. A grandee of Eilytheia possessed one hundred and twenty two cows and oxen, three hundred rams, twelve hundred goats, and fifteen hundred swine. Lower Egypt contained the great pasture lands, and was the abode of the herdsmen--a lawless race, and, _therefore_, an abomination to their more civilized countrymen. The ass was the beast of burden. The horse was bred for the war-chariot--that great attribute of ancient power. The breed was small but fine and peculiar to the country. They were kept in stables along the Nile, and hence they do not appear in the landscapes. Horticulture was extensively and elaborately practised, both for use and pleasure; and the Pharaohs, like Solomon, 'made them gardens and orchards, planted trees in them of all kinds of fruit, and made them pools of water to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees.' "When forced to serve on shipboard by the enterprise of their own Monarchs or by their Persian conquerors, the Egyptians appear not to have made bad sailors. They fought well at Salamis. But their natural tendency was to shun the sea, which they regarded as the element of the Destroyer Typhon. Their navigation was on the Nile, which formed the highway of their commerce, the path of their processions and their pilgrimages, and their passage to the tomb. The river being thus the universal road, and being moreover without bridges, must have swarmed with boats of all descriptions--the heavy bari of the merchant, the light papyrus or earthenware skiffs of the common people, and the sumptuous barge of Royalty, whose golden pavilion, masts, and rudder, fringed and embroidered sails, and sculptured prow, remind us of the galley of Cleopatra. The caravans of surrounding nations visited Egypt with their precious and fragrant merchandise to exchange for her corn and manufactures. But the Egyptian trader appears seldom to have visited other countries either by land or sea. "The army was a warrior caste. Its might consisted in its chariots. No mounted cavalry appear in any of the monuments. With this exception they had every kind of force and every weapon known to ancient warfare. They used the long bow and drew the arrow, like the English archers, to the ear. Their armor was imperfect, and more often of quilting than of mail. They had regular divisions, with standards, and regular camps. Their sieges were unscientific, and their means of assault scaling ladders, sapping hatchets, and long pikes brought up to the walls under a sort of shed. Of their battles no definite notion can be formed. All is lost in the King, whose gigantic figure, drawn by gigantic horses, crushes, massacres, or grasps by the hair scores of his pigmy enemies, whose hands after the victory are laid in heaps before him and counted by attendant scribes. Thus it is that Rameses the Great and the other Pharaohs are seen warring against the Assyrian, and Chaldean against the Jew, the Edomite, the Ethiopian, and the 'nine bows' of Libya, and assailing the 'fenced cities' of strange races that have long passed away. "In the lower parts of civilization and the mechanical arts, the Egyptians had attained high perfection. Their machinery and tools appear to have been defective, but the defect was supplied by skill of hand, traditional and acquired, as it is among the Chinese. They were cunning workmen in metals, in jewelry, in engravings, in enamel, in glass, in porcelain, and in pottery. Their fine linen and embroidery were famous. For their chariots Solomon gave 600 shekels of silver; and they fashioned into a hundred articles of luxury the ivory of Africa, the mahogany of India, and the cedar of Lebanon. As no specimens remain of their domestic architecture, it is supposed rather than ascertained that their houses were of a single story with a terraced roof. The rooms of great men at least were richly and elegantly painted, and furnished with tables, chairs, and couches, which have supplied models for the upholstery of modern times. "Architecture is the most material of the arts. It was the art in which the Egyptians most excelled. They seem to have understood in some degree the grandeur which results from proportion and arrangement, as well as that which results from size. The profuse and elaborate sculpture with which their temples are covered, does not mar their majesty. Their heaviness is relieved by the glowing sun and the deep sky. But the impression produced must always have been that of cost and power rather than of art. Some changes of style are noticed. The golden age was that of the Pharaohs of the 19th dynasty, when the power and greatness of the nation were at the highest. More florid and less majestic forms mark the era of the Ptolemies. But in this respect, as in others, the Egyptians seem to have maintained their stationary character, and the remains of Meroe, which are now known to be among the latest, have been taken for the earliest of all the monuments. "In sculpture the summit of manual skill was reached. But religion, the mistress and tyrant of Egyptian art, prescribed for the images of the gods her unalterable and often hideous forms, and the rules of an hereditary craft, which fixed certain proportions for each part of the statue, and gave the execution of the several parts to several workmen, laid another chain on the genius of the artist. Painting seems not to have advanced beyond the barbarous excellence of brilliant colors. Drawing and design were monstrous, and the laws of perspective and even of vision unknown or disregarded. Of music, we learn from Plato that it was restricted to certain established tunes of approved moral tendency, and the wayward Athenian thought all restraint wholesome as he saw that some license was pernicious. "If we pass to science, we shall find no reason for supposing that the advances of modern times were anticipated by the mysterious wisdom of the Egyptians. Something they must have known of astronomy to practise astrology, to divide the ecliptic, and to effect the exact orientation of the Pyramids. Some knowledge of chemistry is implied in their manufacture of porcelain; some knowledge of physiology, pathology, pharmaceutics and surgery, in their division of the medical art; something of geometry in their measurement of land; and something of mechanics in their enormous buildings and monuments. But their great engines were multitudes of laborers, aided by such natural expedients as the lever, the roller, and the inclined plane, which can scarcely be called machines. In other sciences there is evidence of long and careful observation, but nothing to prove an acquaintance with the _laws_ of nature. Progress in the medical art was precluded by the necessity of adhering to the precepts of the sacred books. Science was monopolized by the priests; and it is said that by them the King was regularly sworn to retain the old and unintercalated year. The want of decimal notation, and the consequent clumsiness of the system of numeration, would go far to preclude the improvement of arithmetic, or any science into which calculation entered. "Literature the Egyptians appear to have had none, except of the monumental or sacred kind, including under the latter head the sacred books of science. But the art of writing was practised by them, or at least by the learned part of them, more extensively than by any contemporary nation. Mr. Kenrick gives us a full history of the interpretation of hieroglyphics, the key to which was first given by the parallel inscriptions in hieroglyphic and Greek found on the famous Rosetta stone, and metes to Young and Champollion their due shares in that discovery, of which each uncandidly claimed the whole. The hieroglyphics are now known to be of three kinds, all of which are generally mingled in the same inscription--the pictorial, the symbolical, and the phonetic. The pictorial hieroglyphic is the simple picture of the thing signified. Symbolical hieroglyphics are, among others, a crescent for a month, the maternal vulture for _maternity_, the filial vulpanser for _son_, the bee for _a people obedient to their king_, the bull for _strength_, the ostrich feather with its equal filaments for _truth_, the lotus for Upper and the papyrus for Lower Egypt. To these we may add the bird, which denotes a cycle of time (in Coptic _phanech_), and about which such wild fables were received by the credulity of Herodotus and by that of the Fathers. But the greater part of the hieroglyphics are phonetic like our alphabet, and are being slowly and precariously deciphered into the words of a language which is identified with the ancient form of Coptic. "The religion of the Egyptians must be gathered chiefly from the sculptures and paintings. The religious inscriptions and funeral papyri remain undeciphered. The account of Herodotus is rendered suspicious by his solicitude to force the Pantheon of Egypt into a conformity with that of Greece. The accounts of the later Greeks are tainted by their philosophizing and mysticizing spirit. That the Egyptian theology embodied no profound physical or metaphysical system is evident from the fact that it was not formed at once, but by gradual addition and development, and that it was to the last partly local. It appears to have been, like the other religions of the Pagan world--of Greece and Italy, of Phoenicia and India--a worship of the powers of nature represented by great natural objects, such as the sun and moon, or by forms bestial or human, which were selected as symbolical of their attributes. "On this groundwork imagination wrought, as among the Greeks, though to a less extent and in a different way. We cannot tell how far the more reflective minds may have advanced towards the conception of a single God, either independent of or permeating the material world; but contact with the philosophic Greeks in the age of the Ptolemies can hardly have failed to lead to some speculations of this kind, and the accounts derived from Greek sources of Egyptian mysticism, though false of early, were no doubt, in part at least, true of later times. Amuna or Ammon appears to have been nominally the chief of the gods. His attributes are to some extent identified with those of the sun; but they are not easily distinguished from the attributes of several subordinate deities. His ram's head is still a mystery. Thoth was the god of intellect and learning. His representatives were the ape and the ibis: the former, it is supposed, because it approaches nearest in intellect to man; the latter, because its black and white feather resemble, or may be imagined to resemble, writing. The _popular_ divinity was Osiris, the god at once of the Nile and the realms below. Typhon, the scorching wind of the desert which dries up the waters of the Nile, was the antagonist and the murderer of Osiris; and at a more advanced stage of religious speculation the two may have represented the conflicting powers of Good and Evil. Sacrifices were offered for the ordinary purposes--to conciliate the favor of the gods, to requite their benefits, and to avert their wrath. Typhonian, that is, red-haired men, were immolated when they fell into the hands of the natives in honor of Osiris, whose name is concealed in that of the fabled Busiris. That the practice of offering human sacrifices is compatible with a high degree of civilization we know from the examples of Greece, of Rome, and Mexico. There were great gatherings in honor of the gods, in the nature of pilgrimages or holy fairs, which were celebrated with festivity, with noisy music, with illuminations, and with license. There were mysteries, which were not, in Egypt at least, initiations into any thing different from the popular religion; but merely representations--celebrated amidst nocturnal gloom--of the sufferings of Osiris. If strangers in Egypt underwent painful initiation, it was an initiation into the knowledge of the priests, and not into their mysteries. The Egyptians believed in the existence of the soul after death; they believed that it would be judged in Amenthe by Osiris and his forty-two assessors, before whom it was brought by Analis; they had an Elysium, surrounded by waters, where the Osirian--that is, the happy dead--ploughed, sowed, reaped, and threshed, as on earth--a singular want of fancy. Retributive pains, by fire and steel, are also supposed to have been detected among the paintings. At the same time they held and taught to the Greeks the doctrine of metempsychosis. It is difficult to reconcile with either of these notions their belief that the spirit dwelt in the body so long as the body could be rescued from decay, and the reason which they give for bestowing such prodigality of labor on their sepulchres--that the tomb was man's eternal home. The darkness of uninterpreted hieroglyphics still rests to a great extent on the religious creed and practices of the Egyptians. But three things we think we can discern from the information which Mr. Kenrick has collected:--1. That the Egyptian religion was in all essential respects like the other religions of Paganism, and traceable to the same sources; and consequently that whatever may be Egypt's 'place in universal history,' she is not likely to assume an extraordinarily important place in the history of theology, or to affect, in any material respect, our views as to the origin of religion. 2. That no connection is to be traced between the religion of the Egyptians and the religion of the Hebrews. A more decided polytheism than that of Egypt cannot be imagined. So far from recognizing any thing like the _supremacy_ of a single Divine Being in their theological system, we can scarcely even trace any thing answering to that primacy of Jupiter which preserves at least a vestige of monotheism in the religion of the Greeks. The rite of circumcision, which is supposed to have been borrowed by one nation from the other, was not practised by the Egyptians as a religious ceremony, nor upon infants, nor universally. And it is remarkable that the belief in the conscious existence of the soul and a retributive state after death--a doctrine hardly to be lost when once imparted--seems to have been so prominent in the one faith while it was so much the reverse of prominent in the other. 3. That there was no connection between the mythology of Egypt and that of Greece. Subtract what is common to all polytheistic systems, and what is common to all systems of natural religions, and absolutely no similarity remains. On the one side are forms of human beauty, majesty, and passion, in which the original groundwork of nature-worship is as much as possible concealed by the working of a plastic imagination; on the other side are forms bestial or grotesque, featureless and passionless, exhibiting nature-worship in one of its lowest stages. But in every respect, in language, in physiognomy, in mind, in political tendencies, in manners, as well as in religion, the contrariety between the Egyptian and the Athenian is complete. There is nothing on the other side except the vain pretensions of the priests of Thebes, the credulity of Herodotus, and the wildest legends of the mythical age; and we are surprised that so strict an ethnologist as Mr. Kenrick should be inclined to admit even the general fact of an Egyptian colonization. "The most degrading part of the religion of the Egyptians was their animal worship, which they carried to a higher pitch than any other people, not excepting the Hindoos. Almost the whole animal and some part of the vegetable kingdom enjoyed either a national or a local sanctity. Gods it was said grew in the gardens. The most cogent reasons of policy and the terrible name of Rome failed to save from death the Roman who had killed a cat. Fancy had first assigned to each god his favorites or symbols among beasts or plants. Then the beasts and plants themselves were reverenced, and at last worshipped. Stately avenues of colossal statues, magnificent porticoes and columned courts ushered the awe-stricken devotee into the sacred presence of an ibis or an ape. The highest object of this superstition, the bull Apis, was regarded as an actual incarnation of Osiris. No rational account of such a system can be given. The serpent cannot have been respected for its utility. The ibis cannot have been honored as the destroyer of the sacred serpent. Nothing divine can have been perceived in the beetle or the ape. The connection between the god and the beast was originally the offspring of a grotesque imagination, and priestcraft and the superstitious tendency of the people did the rest. "The political constitution of Egypt was based on caste. The privileged castes were those of the warriors and the priests, who, with the Pharaoh, held in fee all the land of Egypt. The Government was an hereditary monarchy. When election was necessary the two privileged castes chose from among their own numbers; the people enjoyed only the right of acclamation. If the choice fell on a warrior, he was at once received into the order and initiated into the wisdom of the priests. Legislation was the prerogative of the King; but he was bound to rule and judge according to the law. He was much in the hands of the priests, who imposed strict rules upon his life, and by a daily homily made the duties and virtues of sovereignty familiar, perhaps too familiar, to the royal ear. The priests, in fact, were the lords of Egypt. Exclusively possessed of science, and even of letters, numerous, wealthy, united, in a single polity, a confined territory and an isolated people, unchecked by any literary, philosophical, or foreign influence, they must have exercised a dominion unrivalled by any priesthood in the history of the world. The result was a land of temples, of deified apes and consecrated onions, a literature of religious inscriptions and funeral scrolls, a Government apparently mild and humane, an enduring polity and long internal peace, and intense and stubborn nationality, a civilization wonderful but low, which in every department, from the act of government to the art of writing, appears to have remained as nearly as possible at a fixed point for about two thousand years. The mummy, as it is the characteristic product, is the fit emblem of ancient Egypt. Yet material happiness appears to have been enjoyed. From sports, from caricatures, from the fanciful decorations of their houses, from their use of music as a daily recreation, we should judge that the Egyptians were not a gloomy people; and that their social and political system aimed, though imperfectly, at a high standard, may be inferred from the reverence, however exaggerated, which was entertained for it by the Greeks. "Egyptian history is the 'dynasties' of Manetho partly filled up and illustrated, and in time it is to be hoped to be filled up and illustrated still more from the monuments, paintings, and inscriptions. For this, with its thirty dynasties, its twenty centuries, and its chronological difficulties, still formidable though much reduced, we must refer the reader entirely to Mr. Kenrick's second volume, of which it occupies nearly the whole. The slight sketch above given indicates the contents of what will be to the general reader the more interesting part of the work. In conclusion, we once more cordially commend the book. It displays not only the ordinary merits of a good synopsis, such as clearness of style and of arrangement, but also a high power of combination, and, where the author treats of philosophical questions, a sound and sensible philosophy. On some points, perhaps, Mr. Kenrick might have spoken with more authority had he personally visited Egypt, and the imagination of his reader would be assisted by a well selected volume of plates. We are glad to see that Syria and Phoenicia are to form the subject of another publication by the same hand." FOOTNOTES: [15] _Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs._ By John Kenrick, M. A. In two volumes. London: B. Fellows. CAMILLE DESMOULINS. In an admirable life of Camille Desmoulins, recently published in Paris, by M. Edmond Fleury, his summing up of the character of the _Vieux Cordelier_, presents a type of some of the heroes of the revolution of 1848:-- "Such was Camille Desmoulins. I have traced his portrait without pity, without hatred, I dare not say without passion. In him I wished to mark the truest and most finished type of those _enfans perdus_ of anarchy who, without ever attaining illustration in history, or serious influence in a government, thirst after distinction and renown; ambitious of credit and importance, scourges of their country, torment of their relatives, traitors to their friends, their own executioners, flambeaux that burn without light, vain and mediocre spirits consumed by the most intense jealousy--presumptuous fools, irritated by their own impotence, intrepid in a pamphlet and pusillanimous in action, they, nevertheless, carried away by the flood which they have let loose, stake, in this terrible game of revolutions, not only their lives, but the honor of their posthumous fame." How different the aspect of these fiends, as they are presented to us "sicklied o'er" with the sentiment of a Lamartine! THE BATTLE OF THE CHURCHES IN ENGLAND. The _Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review_, for January, 1851, contains a great article on the controversies occasioned by the recent movements of the Roman Catholics in Great Britain. It is very long (making sixty pages), and very able. Reviewing the battle, from an unusual, and to most people perhaps a not very accessible, point of view, it throws a startling light on many matters forgotten or ignored by the more immediate combatants. It may, therefore, be perused with interest and advantage by partisans of every shade. Protestant and Catholic will find their account in it, especially as helping them to information of which they are greatly deficient--a knowledge of each other's strong points, as well as their weak ones. There is much in the views of the writer, with which we cannot ourselves concur; but we are not insensible of the force and precision with which he has mapped out a large part of the field, and given saliency to some of the great principles at stake; which it is the natural tendency of discussions, involving so much of the conventional and formulistic, calamitously to obscure. The battle in the foreground may be about candlesticks, surplices, and genuflexions. But there are involved many things infinitely more vital, as the author of this "Battle of the Churches" will be admitted to have illustrated with great success. Many ponderous volumes might be named, which have not contributed a tenth part as much to a clear understanding of the question, as this one article in the _Westminster_. We have not space for a complete _résumé_ of it. We can only present an extract or two. The following brings forward tendencies too little noticed by the antagonists of the papacy: "A true British Protestant, whose notions of "Popery" are limited to what he hears from an evangelical curate or has seen at the opening of a Jesuit church, looks on the whole system as an obsolete mummery; and no more believes that men of sense can seriously adopt it, than that they will be converted to the practice of eating their dinner with a Chinaman's chop-sticks instead of the knife and fork. He pictures to himself a number of celibate gentlemen, who glide through a sort of minuet by candle-light around the altar, and worship the creature instead of the Creator, and keep the Bible out of every body's way, and make people easy about their sins: and he is positive that no one above a "poor Irishman," can fail to see through such nonsense. Few even of educated Englishmen have any suspicion of the depth and solidity of the Catholic dogma, its wide and various adaptation to wants ineffaceable from the human heart, its wonderful fusion of the supernatural into the natural life, its vast resources for a powerful hold upon the conscience. We doubt whether any single reformed church can present a theory of religion comparable with it in comprehensiveness, in logical coherence, in the well-guarded disposition of its parts. Into this interior view, however, the popular polemics neither give nor have the slightest insight: and hence it is a common error both to underrate the natural power of the Romish scheme, and to mistake the quarter in which it is most likely to be felt. It is not among the ignorant and vulgar, but among the intellectual and imaginative--not by appeals to the senses in worship, but by consistency and subtlety of thought--that in our days converts will be made to the ancient church. We have receded far from the Reformation by length of time; the management of the controversy has degenerated: it has been debased by political passions, and turned upon the grossest external features of the case; and when a thoughtful man, accustomed to defer to historical authority, and competent to estimate moral theories as a whole, is led to penetrate beneath the surface, he is unprepared for the sight of so much speculative grandeur, and, if he have been a mere Anglican or Lutheran, is perhaps astonished into the conclusion, that the elder system has the advantage in philosophy and antiquity alike. From this, among other causes, we incline to think that the Roman Catholic reaction may proceed considerably further in this country ere it receives any effectual check. The academical training and the clerical teaching of the upper classes have not qualified them to resist it. At the other end of society there are large masses who cannot be considered inaccessible to any missionary influence, affectionately and perseveringly applied. Not all men, in a crowded community, are capable of the independence, the self-subsistence, without which Protestantism sinks into personal anarchy. The class of weak, dependent characters, that cannot stand alone in the struggle of life, are unprovided for in the modern system of the world. The coöperative theorist tries to take them up. But somehow or other he is usually a man with whom, by a strange fatality, coöperation is impossible; intent on uniting all men, yet himself not agreeing with any; with individuality so intense and exclusive, that it produces all the effect of intolerant self-will; and thus the very plans which by his hypothesis are inevitable, are by his temper made impracticable. He appeals, however, and successfully, to the uneasiness felt by the feeble in the strife and pressure of the world; he fills the imagination with visions of repose and sympathy; he awakens the craving for unity and incorporation in some vast and sustaining society. And whence is this desire, disappointed of its first promise, to obtain its satisfaction? Is it impossible that it may accept proposals from the most ancient, the most august, the most gigantic organization which the world has ever seen?--that it may take refuge in a body which invests indigence with sanctity--which cares for its members one by one--which has a real past instead of a fancied future, and warms the mind with the coloring of rich traditions--which, in providing for the poorest want of the moment, enrolls the disciple in a commonwealth spread through all ages and both worlds! Whatever socialistic tendency may be diffused through the English mind is not unlikely, in spite of a promise diametrically opposite, to turn to the advantage of the Catholic cause." Here is another valuable contribution to the philosophy of this controversy. There are few positions more relied on by Roman Catholics, or more thoroughly unsound and fallacious, than the assertion that there are no essential differences between the position of Roman Catholics and of Protestants as regards the state and the English established church. "If we had to deal simply with a form of worship and theology, there would be no ground for distinguishing between the case of the Catholics and that of the Dissenters." And practically perhaps, in the actual condition of Europe, the question now in agitation might be permitted to rest there. But, in fairness to the Protestant feeling, it should never be forgotten that the Roman Catholic system presents a feature absent from every other variety of nonconformity. It is not a religion only, but a polity; and this in a very peculiar sense. Other systems also--as the Presbyterian--include among their doctrines an opinion in favor of some particular church government; which opinion, however, professing to be derived from Scripture by use of private judgment, stands, in their case, on the same footing with every other article of their creed. You might differ from John Knox about synods, without prejudice to your agreement in all else. But with the Romish church it is different. It is not that her religion contains a polity; but that her polity contains the whole religion. The truths she publishes exist only as in its keeping, and rest only on its guarantee; and if you invalidate it, they would vanish, like the promissory notes of a corporation whose charter was proved false. Christianity, in her view, is not a doctrine, productive of institutions through spontaneous action on individual minds; but an institution, the perpetual source of doctrine for individual obedience and trust. Revelation is not a mere communication of truth, not a transitory visit from heaven to earth, ascertained by human testimony, and fixed in historical records; but a continuous incarnation of Deity, a permanent real presence of the Infinite in certain selected persons and consecrated objects. The same divine epiphany which began with the person of the Saviour has never since abandoned the world: it exists, in all its awfulness and power, only embodied no longer in a redeeming individual, but in a redeeming church. The word of inspiration, the deed of miracle, the authority to condemn and to forgive, remain as when Christ taught in the temple, walked on the sea, denounced the Pharisee, and accepted the penitent. These functions, as exercised by him, were only in their incipient stage; he came,--to exemplify them indeed, but chiefly to incorporate them in a body which should hold and transmit them to the end of time. From his person they passed to the College of the Twelve, under the headship of Peter; and thence, in perpetual apostleship, to the bishops and pastors, ordained through legitimate hands, for the governance of disciples. These officers are the sole depositaries, the authorized trustees of divine grace; whose decision, whether they open or shut the gate of mercy, is registered in heaven and is without appeal. Not that they can play with this power, and dispose of it by arbitrary will. The media through which it is to flow have been divinely appointed: its channels are limited to certain physical substances and bodily acts or postures, selected at first hand for the purpose:--water at one time, bread at another, oil at a third, handling of the head at a fourth. But the infusion of the supernatural efficacy into these "alvei" depends on an act of the appointed official; through whom alone the divine matter--no longer choked up--can have free currency into the persons of believers. To this inheritance of miracle is added a stewardship of inspiration. The episcopate is keeper of the Christian records: and as those records are only the first germ of an undeveloped revelation, with the same body is left the exclusive power of unfolding their significance, and directing the growth and expansion of their ever fertile principles. Whatever interpretation the hierarchy may put upon the Scriptures, whatever doctrine or discipline they may announce as agreeable with the mind of God, must be accepted as infallible and authoritative. The same spirit of absolute truth which spoke in the living voice of Christ, which guided the pen of evangelists, still prolongs itself in the thought and counsels of bishops, and renders their collective decisions binding as divine oracles. The people who form the obedient mass of the Catholic body are not without a share of this miraculous light in the soul; not indeed for the discernment of any new truth, but for the apprehension of the old. The moment the disciple is incorporated in the church, faith bursts into sight; he passes from opinion into knowledge; he perceives the objects of his worship, and the truth of his creed, with more than the certainty of sense; and as he bows before the altar, or commits himself to the "Mother of God," the real presence and the invisible world are as immediately with him as the breviary and the crucifix. Through the whole Catholic atmosphere is diffused a preternatural medium of _clairvoyance_, which at every touch of its ritual vibrates into activity, and opens to adoring view mysteries hid from minds without.[16] "Now, with the spiritual aspects of this theory we are not here concerned. Reason has no jurisdiction over the inspiration that transcends it. But there is a humbler task to which the common intellect is not incompetent. We may plant this system in a political community, set it down beside the state, imagine it surrounded by families, and schools, and municipalities, and parliaments, by the prison and the court of justice; within the shadow of law and in the presence of sovereignty; and we may ask how it will work amid these august symbols of a nation's life, and how adjust itself in relation to them? Will it leave them to their free development? Can it tranquilly coexist with them, and be content to see them occupy the scope which English traditions and English usage have secured for them? We are convinced it cannot; that every step it may make is an encroachment upon wholesome liberty; that it is innocent only where it is insignificant, and where it is ascendant will neither part with power, nor use it well; and that it must needs raise to the highest pitch the common vice of tyrannies and of democracies--the relentless crushing of minorities." The above are only two paragraphs out of a dozen we had marked, but they will suffice to show the value of this very able and impartial essay. FOOTNOTES: [16] Adequate authority for these statements will be found in Dr. Mochler's Symbolism, part i. chap. v., and in Newman's Lectures, iii. p. 66, and Lecture ix. passim. KILLING OF SIR ALEXANDER BOSWELL. Among the new books in England is one entitled "Modern State Trials" by William C. Townsend, in two octavos. In the _Times_ of the second of January we find a reviewal of it, characteristically pungent. "Why Mr. Townsend conceived it necessary to dignify his collection with the above solemn title," says the critic, "we are at a loss to conjecture. Madame Tussaud does not invite a curiosity-seeking public to her museum of horrors by disguising the naked hideousness of her groups, or by lending them a factitious grace which it is hardly their interest to borrow. The publication is essentially popular, was meant for general perusal, is made up of any thing but technical details, and gives nothing to, as it receives nothing from, purely professional lore. A batch of interesting trials is very commendable, and need not be afraid of occupying its own ground. That of Courvoisier for the murder of Lord William Russel, of the Wakefields for the abduction of Miss Turner, of Lord Cardigan for shooting in a duel, and of John Ambrose Williams for a libel on the Durham clergy, cannot by any stretch of fancy be converted into _state_ prosecutions, though they fairly enough find admittance into a book which treats of our _causes celèbres_. The 'state' trials of the volume before us are the ha'porth of bread to the gallons of sack. The legitimate is paraded to call attention from the spurious, the vulgar is to find respectability by walking arm in arm with the classical. There was really no necessity for the 'sham.' A crooked stick on a heath has its picturesqueness as well as the Corinthian column. We may be very interesting rascals though we do not poke our walking-canes into the face of majesty, or go out on a fool's errand against the Queen's lieges with Mr. John Frost." The author's style is described as very unsatisfactory, though full of pretension. He is "very bombastic, very inexact, and strangely independent in the current of his thoughts and in the arrangement of his words." But the _Times_ admits nevertheless the interesting quality of the work, and in its own better language gives the following _résumé_ of one of the most celebrated cases stated in it:-- "Of all the trials contained in these volumes none have a more melancholy interest, perhaps, than that of Mr. Stuart, who was tried on the tenth of June, 1822, before the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh, for killing Sir Alexander Boswell in a duel. Mr. Stuart was, of course, acquitted. He had been the aggrieved party; he had found it necessary to the vindication of his honor to call his unfortunate antagonist to account; he had been forced, by the cruel exaction of public opinion, to expose his life to the weapon of a man he had never offended, and who, indeed, in his heart, bore his involuntary murderer no malice; and public opinion, expressed in the verdict of a jury, knew better than to sentence to death the wretched victim of its own brutal and unwarrantable edicts. Fortunately for the interests of humanity, we have at length reached a period when it becomes unnecessary to protest vehemently against the iron rule of an authority more despotic than that of absolute kings, and far more cruel and oppressive than the laws which but a few years ago attached the penalty of death to the commission of almost pardonable offences. Society, with the acquirement of other useful knowledge, has learned to appreciate the iniquitous folly of murder perpetrated in cold blood, without the slightest excuse. The nation which above all the countries of the world takes credit for adapting its laws to the requirements of a rapidly advancing civilization, has had courage to inquire why the savage vestige of an exploded system should still dishonor its history and interfere with its social progress. Duelling, as part and parcel of the national manners, has ceased in England. No doubt random shots will yet from time to time be heard, and weakness in its despair will occasionally seek refuge in cowardice, which it mistakes for valor; but the mind of the majority is made up. Duelling henceforth must be the exception, not the rule. Public opinion will harmonize with the law, and honor it. It will protect the injured, and hand over the offenders to the legitimate consequences of their own misdeeds. It will not call upon a man first to endure wrong, and then to lay bare his breast to the bullet of his aggressors. "Our fathers were less fortunate than ourselves in this respect. Their dilemma was fearful. The law took no account of those delicate injuries under which sensitive honor pines, though no bruise or wound appears to indicate the mischief; and, in self-defence, refinement set up the bloodiest code brutality under the guise of chivalry could imagine or invent. A quiet gentleman, sitting from morning till night in his library, interfering with the pleasures and pursuits of none, amiable in every relation of life, a stanch friend, a fond husband, a devoted father, as useful a member of society as you might find in a day's journey, and obnoxious only to political opponents, who fear him more than he dislikes them, is called a 'liar,' a 'coward,' and a 'heartless ruffian.' He is nothing of the kind; he is proudly conscious of this fact; his accusers do not even believe it; the world--that portion of it in which he moves--is satisfied that he is a remarkable instance of truth, of courage, and extreme tenderness of spirit. The revilers have made a great mistake or committed a disgraceful outrage. In either case, since they are not amenable to law, you would think they might safely be left to acquire better information and improve their manners. Not a bit of it. The quiet gentleman's enemies have aimed a blow at his reputation. They are good shots--which unfortunately he is not--and now they must aim another at his life; society 'allows it,' and society 'awards it.' The quiet gentleman makes his will, kisses his children, shuts up his books, sighs, and 'goes out.' The quiet gentleman is killed; a million men could not restore the life one man has taken. Society is distressed beyond expression; so is the murderer, who is all sorrow and tenderness for the departed. There is general weeping, and great unavailing regret, and much commiseration for the widow: and then a mock trial, and no end of speechifying, beautiful remorse on the part of the survivor, lovelier tributes to the memory of deceased, a verdict of not guilty, and a dismissal of the murderer and his accomplices into the world, which is worthy of them as they are worthy of it. The picture represents a common event of the time of George the Third. Let us confess that, degenerate as we are, we have changed, in some respects, for the better since those 'good old days!'" "Let us also bear in mind the main cause of our improvement! It is due to the majesty of law, to state that, had she been less faithful, society would have grown more reckless. Public opinion and the law of the country have had a hard fight for the mastery, and had the latter given way but an inch, the former would have found us to-day in the hands and at the mercy of the bullies. Judges have never hesitated to declare that murder which juries by their verdicts have as perseveringly regarded as justifiable homicide. In vain have eloquent counsel risen to prove that the prisoner bore his antagonist no ill-will; that he did not 'wickedly and maliciously' challenge his victim to fight; that he had recourse to the sole means within his power to right himself with the world; that society would have branded him eternally for a coward had he held back; that he took up his weapon in self-defence precisely as a man levels his gun at the house-breaker or the midnight assassin;--the expounder of the law has still been proof against sophistry which, once accepted, must tend inevitably to social disorganization. The _deliberate resolution_ to kill a fellow-creature has nothing to do with self-defence. To destroy another in cold blood is murder in the sight of the law, and can assume no other aspect. But what availed it that the judge stood firm by the statute, when juries as pertinaciously backed the sentiment of the world and refused the law permission to take its course? It availed much. The unseemly conflict has been carried on until at length civilization has become shocked by the spectacle. The effect of the ever-recurring encounter is something worse than ridiculous. It has taken years to bring us to our senses, but we are rational at last. Public opinion exercises its good sense, and since it cannot bring the law into harmony with its desperate folly, deems it expedient to shape its own views in conformity with unbending law. To slay in a duel is to commit murder, though men do not hang for the crime. To be a murderer with benefit of clergy is but an odious and irksome privilege after all! "Sir Alexander was the eldest son of Dr. Johnson's Boswell. The inimitable biographer was fortunate in his offspring. His sons inherited all the virtues of their father, and none of his foibles. The social good humor, the cleverness, the appreciation of learning, the joviality,--every good quality, in fact, of Bozzy was reflected in his children, who had the sense to discern and avoid the frailties that had rendered the sire ridiculous in his own day, and illustrious for all time. James Boswell, the youngest son of the biographer, an accomplished scholar, superintended several editions of his father's great work, and was held in high esteem by his contemporaries. He was a Commissioner of Bankrupts when he suddenly died in London, in the prime of life, on the 24th day of February, 1822. Sir Alexander, who had been created a baronet in 1821, attended his brother's funeral in London, and returned to Scotland to meet his own death immediately afterwards. Sir Walter Scott, warmly attached to both, was, we are informed, much affected by the unexpected death of the baronet, who had dined with the novelist only two or three days before the catastrophe, and, as usual, had been the life and soul of the party assembled. 'That evening,' writes Mr. Lockhart, 'was, I think, the gayest I ever spent in Castle-street; and though Charles Matthews was present and in his best force, poor Boswell's songs, jokes and anecdotes had exhibited no symptom of eclipse.' Four years afterwards Sir Walter dined in company with Charles Matthews again. The event is commemorated by a singular and characteristic entry in Scott's Diary. 'There have been odd associations,' he writes, 'attending my two last meetings with Matthews. The last time I saw him before yesterday evening, he dined with me in company with poor Sir Alexander Boswell, who was killed within a week. I never saw Sir Alexander more. The time before was in 1815, when John Scott, of Gala, and I, were returning from France, and passed through London, when we brought Matthews down as far as Leamington. Poor Byron lunched, or rather made an early dinner with us at Long's, and a most brilliant day we had of it. I never saw Byron so full of fun, frolic, wit, and whim; he was as playful as a kitten. Well, I never saw him again. So this man of mirth has brought me no luck.' "Sir Alexander had made the final arrangements for his duel the very day he dined with Sir Walter. The circumstance in no way interfered with the flow of spirits of a man who had, indeed, invited a violent death by nothing more criminal than an over indulgence of ill-directed mirth. The details of the duel are of the usual kind. In the early part of 1821, a newspaper called the _Beacon_, destined not to survive the year, was set up in Edinburgh in the Tory interest. The object of the publication was to counteract the effect of Radical doctrines, which were making great way in the northern metropolis under favor of the agitation that had been set up on behalf of Queen Caroline. Sir Walter Scott himself had been consulted upon the propriety of establishing the journal, and had offered with others to help it by a gift of money at starting. The _Beacon_ served any purpose but that of directing the public mind in the path desired. The management of the paper, with which by the way the law officers of the Crown foolishly connected themselves, was in all respects disastrous. The proprietors shrank from the responsibility which the bitter invective and satire of the more youthful and unscrupulous editors hourly accumulated on their shoulders; the articles of the paper were made the subject of Parliamentary discussion; and to avoid consequences which it was not difficult to anticipate, the concern, which had opened with flying colors in January, was suddenly and ignominiously shut up for ever in August. "Glasgow took up the weapon which Edinburgh dropped. A newspaper appeared in the former city as the avowed defender of the cause and assailant of the persons previously upheld and attacked by the defunct Edinburgh journal. The _Sentinel_, as the Glasgow paper was called, would hold his ground though the _Beacon_ was put out. It is much easier to bequeath hatred and rancor than to communicate talent and genius. The _Sentinel_ was abusive and licentious enough, but it had little to recommend it on the score of ability. The _Beacon_ had made a personal attack upon Mr. Stuart, a gentleman connected with some leading Whig families, and the _Sentinel_, in pursuance of its vocation, fastened upon the same luckless gentleman. The libel of the Edinburgh journalist had been arranged. Mr. Stuart found out its author, and libeller and libelled were prevented from doing further mischief by being bound over to keep the peace. To keep the peace, however, in those days was to be wanting in the very first element of chivalry, and, accordingly, Mr. Stuart was pronounced by the _Sentinel_ a 'bully,' a 'coward,' a 'dastard,' and a 'sulky poltroon.' Furthermore, he was 'a heartless ruffian,' 'a white feather,' and 'afraid of lead.' To vindicate his character Mr. Stuart raised an action of damages, and, curiously enough, he was twitted in the very court of justice to which he appealed for protection, for not having recourse to the hostile measure which in his despair he at last adopted, and for pursuing which he was tried for his life. Abuse went on in spite of the action of damages; Mr. Stuart finally addressed himself to the agent for the printer of the newspaper, and the agent gave up the manuscripts from which the libels had been printed. Mr. Stuart went to Glasgow to inspect them. He discovered his assailant. The author of the worst calumnies against him was Sir Alexander Boswell, 'a gentleman with whom he was somewhat related, and with whom he had never been but upon good terms.' Mr. Stuart appealed to a friend. He called in the advice of the Earl of Roslyn, who obtained an interview with Sir Alexander Boswell, to whom he submitted two propositions. One was, that the baronet should deny that the calumnies were his; the other, that Sir Alexander should confess that the libel was but a poor joke, for which he was sorry. 'I will neither deny nor make apology,' answered Sir Alexander. "A duel was now a matter of course. Sir Alexander left a paper behind him, confessing that the meeting was inevitable, and Mr. Stuart made all his preparations for death. One stands amazed in the presence of such horrible play, such terrific childishness. The parties met; they fired together, and Sir Alexander fell. Boswell, who would not allow that he had written a squib, proudly fired in the air; Mr. Stuart took no aim, and yet killed his man. When the deed was done, the murderer, frantic, and 'dissolved in all the tenderness of an infant,' reproached himself with exquisite simplicity that he had not taken aim, '_for if he had, he was certain he would have missed him!_' whilst the dying man expressed a corresponding anxiety lest 'he had not made his fire in the air appear so decided as he could have wished.' So men speak and act who take leave of their reason to play the fool in the high court of honor! A line tells the rest of the history. Sir Alexander is removed from the field and taken to the house of a friend. Mr. Stuart flies to the house of his friend, runs into a room, shuts the door, sits down in agony of mind, and bursts into tears. In due time he is put on his trial for murder, the jury unanimously find him _Not Guilty_, and Lord Chief Justice Clerk congratulates him on the verdict, although five minutes before he had deliberately stated that 'duels are but illustrious murders,' and that 'no false punctilio or notion of honor can vindicate an act which terminates fatally to another fellow-creature.'" THE LATE DR. TROOST. We recently noticed the death of the excentric German professor, Dr. Troost, of Tennessee. His passion for all animals of the serpent kind was well known, and we find it illustrated in this anecdote, related by Sir Charles Lyell: "Every thing of the serpent kind he has a particular fancy for, and has always a number of them--that he has tamed--in his pockets or under his waistcoat. To loll back in his rocking-chair, to talk about geology, and pat the head of a large snake, when twining itself about his neck, is to him supreme felicity. Every year in the vacation he makes an excursion to the hills, and I was told that, upon one of these occasions, being taken up by the stage-coach, which had several members of Congress in it going to Washington, the learned Doctor took his seat on the top with a large basket, the lid of which was not over and above well secured. Near to this basket sat a Baptist preacher on his way to a great public immersion. His reverence, awakening from a reverie he had fallen into, beheld to his unutterable horror two rattlesnakes raise their fearful heads out of the basket, and immediately precipitated himself upon the driver, who, almost knocked off his seat, no sooner became apprised of the character of his ophidian outside passengers, than he jumped upon the ground with the reins in his hands, and was followed instanter by the preacher. The 'insides,' as soon as they learned what was going on, immediately became outsides, and nobody was left but the Doctor and his rattlesnakes on the top. But the Doctor, not entering into the general alarm, quietly placed his greatcoat over the basket, and tied it down with his handkerchief, which, when he had done, he said, 'Gendlemen, only don't let dese poor dings pite you, and day won't hoort you.'" MADAME DACIER. The husband of this celebrated woman (Andre Dacier) was born at Castres in 1651, and studied at Saumur, under Tanneguy le Fèvre, whose daughter Anne he married in 1683. Both the husband and wife became eminent among the classical scholars of the seventeenth century. They were employed with others to comment upon and edit a series of the ancient authors, for the Dauphin, which form the collection "Ad usum Delphini." Madame Dacier's commentaries are considered as superior to those of her husband. She edited "Callimachus," "Florus," "Aurelius Victor," "Etropius," and the history which goes by the name of "Dictys Cretensis," all of which have been repeatedly reprinted, with her notes. She published French translations of the "Amphitryon," "Rudens," and "Lepidicus," of Plautus, with a good preface, of the comedies of Terence, of the "Plutus," and "The Clouds," of Aristophanes, and of Anacreon and Sappho. She also translated the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," with a preface and notes. This led to a controversy between her and La Motte, who had spoken slightingly of Homer. Madame Dacier wrote, in 1714, "Considérations sur les Causes de la Corruption du Goût," in which she defended the cause of Homer with great vivacity, as she did also against Father Hardouin, who had written an "Apology of Homer," which was more a censure than an apology. The warmth, however, with which both the Daciers resented any thing that was said against the ancient writers was carried to the extreme, and had, at times, something ludicrous in it. But Madame Dacier's enthusiasm was real, and unaccompanied by pedantry or conceit. She died in 1820. Original Poetry. DUTY. BY ALFRED B. STREET. In changeless green, and grasping close the rock, Up towers the mountain pine. The Winter blast May like an ocean surge be on it cast; Proud doth it stand, and stern defy the shock, Unchanged in verdure and unbroke in crest, Although wild throes may agitate its breast, And clinging closer when the storm is gone, Tired, but unbent upon its granite throne, Not always doth it wrestle with the storm! Skies smile; spring flowers make soft its iron roots; Its sturdy boughs are kissed by breezes warm; And birds gleam in and out with joyous flutes. Duty proves not its strength unless defied, But pleasure has it, too, bright as have hearts untried. "SOUNDS FROM HOME." BY ALICE B. NEAL. Last night I dreamed of thee, beloved! I held that tiny hand,-- Encircled by my clasping arm Once more I saw thee stand,-- The blush so faint, yet fairly traced, Rose to thy changing cheek-- As when upon thy brows were placed Farewells I could not speak. Thine eyes were filled with softened light, But welcomes now I read, As to my heart, by love's fond sight. I gently drew thy head; And oh, so eloquent were they-- So full of earnest truth,-- I knew what fain thy heart would say, The promise of thy youth. I knew that thou hadst faithful been To vows of long ago: That speeding time, and changing scene, No change in thee could show, That absence had but bound thy love More firmly to its choice-- It needed not one word to prove, One sound of thy loved voice. Yes, silent was that long embrace, Though tears flowed fast and free. As gazing down in that dear face, I read thy love for me; And thought of all the lonely hours When I had wildly yearned To press thee thus unto my heart, And feel my kiss returned. Those midnight hours! by sea and land! How heavily they sped! Sometimes upon a surf-beat strand My weary feet would tread, And when the stars looked calmly down From cloudless foreign skies-- Their soft light seemed a radiance thrown From these pure, earnest eyes. 'Twas but a dream! the light breeze swept Soft touches o'er my brow; The spray's cold kiss my lips had met, Oh, still afar art thou! 'Twas but a dream! and yet I heard Thy murmured--"_Art_ thou come!"-- Then woke, to feel my spirit stirred With these dear "sounds from home." SCANDALOUS DANCES. BROUGHT FROM FRENCH CASINOS TO AMERICAN PARLORS. We have constantly reflected in our "good society" and "fashionable world" every baseness and vulgarity that is invented _outre mer_, particularly in Paris. One woman returns to smoke cigars, in a magnificent home erected by a lucky mechanic or shopkeeper, as if such an indecency had ever been tolerated among the well-born and well-bred people of the social metropolis. Others, copying from their probable associates abroad, introduce obscene dances, and other licentious amusements, which for a season have baffled the police of foreign cities, and boast of their superiority to "low prejudices." All the travelled readers of the _International_, except clerks, agents, _chevaliers d'industrie_, and fugitives from justice, know very well that in all the world there is a show at least of moral where there is real social elevation; that these abuses are not anywhere tolerated among families which have kept their carriages for three generations. But we proposed an introduction to a passage written from Paris to the most aristocratic of the London magazines:-- "A new species of dancing, unknown to the Alberts, the Anatoles, the Brocards, the Hullins, the Pauls, and the Noblets, has come into vogue at the Jardin Mabille, and at the Grande Chaumière, situated on the Boulevard du Mont Parnasse, not far from the Barrière d'Enfer. This dance is called the _Cancan_ and the _Chahut_. It is unlike the waltz, the gavotte, the country dance, the Scotch reel, the Spanish Cachucha, the Hungarian mazurka; is far worse than jota Arragonese, or the most lascivious of Spanish dances of Andalusia. You may remember that in the early days of Charles X. the police of Paris attempted and succeeded in putting down gross and immodest dances; but under the reign of Louis Philippe the spirit of libertinage and _dégíngandage_, to use a French term, again broke out among the class of _débardeurs_, and towards the close of 1845 became terrific to behold. You, who know me well, are aware that I am the last person in the world who would seek to put an end to any innocent amusement, or who would contend that the French people should not dance. They have always danced, and will always dance, to the end of time. They danced under Saint Louis, under Henry IV., under Louis XIV., under Napoleon, and why should not they dance now? There is no reason in the world why they should not dance, if in dancing they do not shock public modesty, and offend against public decorum. In the time of Louis XIV. there were public dances at the Moulin de Javelle; in the time of Napoleon there were dances in the Rue Coquenard, and at the Porcherons, near the Rue St. Lazar. In the time of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. there were dances at the Jardin de Tivoli. But at none of these were decency outraged or morality shocked. At Tivoli, the national pastime was indulged with decency and decorum, and although the price on entering was so low as fifteen sous with a ticket, and thirty sous without a ticket, and albeit the dancers were chiefly of the humbler classes, yet, I repeat, in 1827, 1828, and 1829, public decency was not shocked. But from the _bal masqué_ of the Théâtre des Variétés in 1831, when, towards the close of the evening the lights were put out, and the _ronde infernale_ was commenced, obscene and disgusting dances were becoming more and more common in Paris, and continued to make progress till February, 1848. They had attained the most unenviable notoriety in 1845, when at the Bal Mabille a dance was introduced called "La Reine Pomare." Then there was the "Cancan Eccentrique," introduced by a personage called "La Princesse de Mogador," a feigned name, as you may suppose, assumed by some _fille perdue_. These dances, commenced at the Chaumière and the Bal Mabille, were also introduced at the Bal Montesquieu, at the Bal de la Cité d'Antin, and, if I mistake not, at the Bal Valentino. The principal performers were students in law, in medicine, in pharmacy, clerks, commis voyageurs, profligate tradesmen, and lorettes, grisettes, _et filles de basse condition_. "I must do the Provisional Government, so much abused, the justice to say, that towards the close of 1848, when these disgusting dances were again revived, the Gardiens de Paris interfered, and proceeded to clear the room if they were persevered in. If this had been done in 1845 and 1846 by that austere minister, who so much boasted of his independence and morality, events might have taken a different turn. But it is now too late to speculate, and it is easy to be wise after the event. But M. Guizot, his préfet de police, and the members of the Government, were warned long before 1845-6 of the profound immorality and indecency of these dances, and they made no effort to put a stop to them. It is because these scandals are now in a course of revival that I advert to this matter at such length. The subject is worthy the attention of M. Carlier, the Préfet of Police, and of wiser heads than M. Carlier. "_Selon qu'il est conduit_," said Richelieu, and he knew his nation well; "_Selon qu'il est conduit le peuple Français est capable de tout._" I am no enemy of innocent recreation, as you are well aware, or of harmless, convivial, social, or saltatory enjoyment. But if lasciviousness, obscenity, or _des saletés_ be tolerated in public places, a blow is struck at the very foundations of society. I may not, even in a letter, enter into a minute description of these dances. Suffice it to say, they would not be endured in England, even by women who had fallen from the paths of virtue, unless their minds and hearts were wholly debauched. You see, after so much light gossip, I end with a sermon--a sermon which the least strait-laced would preach under the circumstances." THEATRICAL CRITICISM. The following dramatic bulletin which appeared in a Dublin newspaper on the first appearance of the celebrated Mrs. Siddons in that city, is quite as good a critique and as free from blunders, as some which have appeared in our own journals more recently:-- "On Saturday, May 30, 1784, Mrs. Siddons, about whom all the world has been talking, exposed her beautiful, adamantine, soft and lovely person for the first time, at the Smock Alley Theatre, in the bewitching, tearful, and all melting character of Isabella. From the repeated panegyrics in the impartial London newspapers, we were taught to expect the sight of a heavenly angel; but how were we supernaturally surprised into the most awful joy at beholding a mortal goddess. The house was crowded with hundreds more than it could hold--with thousands of admiring spectators who went away without obtaining a sight. This extraordinary phenomenon of tragic excellence! this star of Melpomene! this comet of the stage! this sun in the firmament of the muses! this moon of blank verse! this queen and princess of tears! this Donellan of the poisoned bowl! this empress of the pistol and dagger! this chaos of Shakspeare! this world of weeping clouds! this Terpsichore of the curtains and scenes! this Proserpine of fire and earthquake! this Katterfelto of wonders! exceeded expectation, went beyond belief, and soared above all the natural powers of description! she was nature itself! she was the most exquisite work of art! she was the very daisy, primrose, tube rose, sweet-briar, furze blossom, gilliflower, wall-flower, cauliflower and rosemary! in short she was a bouquet of Parnassus. Where expectation was raised so high, it was thought she would be injured by her appearance; but it was the audience who were injured--several of them fainted before the curtain was drawn up. "When she came to the scene of parting with her wedding ring, ah! what a sight was there! The very fiddlers in the orchestra, albeit unused to the melting mood, blubbered like hungry children crying for their bread and butter; and when the bell rang for music between the acts, the tears fell from the bassoon player's eyes in such plentiful showers that they choked the finger stops; and making a spout of that instrument, poured in such torrents on the first fiddler's book, that, not seeing the overture was in two sharps, the leader of the band actually played in one flat. But the sobs and sighs of the groaning audience, and the noise of cork drawing from the smelling bottles, prevented the mistakes between flats and sharps being discovered. "One hundred and nine ladies fainted, forty-six went into fits, and ninety-five had strong hysterics! The world will hardly credit the truth, when they are told that fourteen children, five women, one hundred tailors and six common councilmen were actually drowned in the inundation of tears that flowed from the galleries, the slips and the boxes, to increase the briny pond in the pit; the water was three feet deep, and the people that were obliged to stand upon the benches, were, in that position, up to their ankles in tears! "An act of parliament against her playing any more, will certainly pass." THE FRENCH GENERALS OF TO-DAY. A clever writer in _Fraser's Magazine_, dating at Paris, writes:-- "Of Changarnier I shall not say much. He is as taciturn as M. L. N. Bonaparte, _et possede un grand talent pour le silence_. Changarnier is a man of great nerve and energy, and is perfectly up to street warfare and to the management of the unruly Parisian population. He is popular with the soldiery and with the higher officers. As to his having any decided political opinions to which he would become a martyr, I don't believe a word of it. He wishes to preserve order, and to save France from anarchy; but, apart from this, would be guided by his personal interests. If royalty, hereditary or elective, become the order of the day--not a very likely occurrence within two or three years--he would adjust himself to the national arrangement on the best terms, and throw his sword into the scale that kicked the beam. But if the game of a president is to be played for in 1852 and 1856, Changarnier may put forward his own pretensions, as, at heart, he has neither love nor reverence for the Tenth of December. In the event of a war, however, Changarnier is more likely to look to the highest command, in which he might win the marshal's bâton, and thus become still more important, personally, professionally, and politically. Military men, more especially of the African school, seem to allow that Changarnier possesses a rare combination of military qualities. Decision, energy, bravery, and the _coup d'oeil_, he exhibits in the highest degree; but he is, on the other hand, wholly without civil talents. He is no orator, no speaker even, and seems to entertain as great a contempt for _ideologues_ and deliberative assemblies as Napoleon himself. If Changarnier were ever invested with supreme power, it would go hard, so far as he was concerned, with the constitution and liberties of France." There is in no country a more honorable, high-principled, and conscientious soldier than Cavaignac. Of all the men produced by the Revolution of 1848 (Lamartine and Dufaure were known as political men before), Cavaignac appears the most single-minded, honorable, and conscientious. Though a Republican _pur sang_, he yet rendered more important services to order in June, 1848, than any one of the Moderates, Royalists, or Burgraves, or generals of order, or than all of them together. It is significant that Cavaignac has openly declared to his friends--indeed, under his hand, that he will not support the candidature of Louis Napoleon, should he present himself in 1852, or become a party to any head of the Constitution. Lamoricière is, as a man and as a general, of infinite talent, and of brilliant courage. He is a good man of business, a brilliant speaker, and certainly has carried himself as a public character with independence and honor. Bedeau is a general of very considerable literary and scientific talents, and perhaps of higher attainments in his profession than any other of the generals of the African school; but he is said to be deficient in energy, and unresolved, and of late he seems to be less thought of as a man of action than as an organizer and administrator. In the event of a war, it is likely the four men I speak of will play brilliant parts; and in civil affairs, it is possible, if not certain, that a great part may be reserved for Cavaignac. WILLIAM PENN AND MACAULAY. We find in the London _Times_ a reviewal of Mr. Forster's "Observations on the Charges made in Mr. Macaulay's History of England against the Character of William Penn," and transfer it to these pages, as likely to be not less interesting to Americans than to Englishmen, since Penn's name is most intimately connected with the history of this country. The book reviewed has been republished in New-York by Mr. John Wiley. "Mr. Macaulay will not be likely to take offence at a comparison of his history with Burnet's, and certainly in one particular point the two productions have been attended with remarkably similar effects. The number of historical writers and pamphleteers who were called into being by the honest Bishop's account of his own times was astonishing. Every chapter in his narrative created a literary antagonist, and the spirit thus called into being was really instrumental, to a very considerable extent, in changing the whole style and tone of English history. It is too early to predict a precisely similar issue of Mr. Macaulay's labors; but things are certainly tending that way. There have been more discussions upon points of English history within the last twelve months than have usually occurred in as many years. The social and political condition of our ancestors, the motives of great acts, the characters of great men, and the general course of our national life for the last century and a half, have of late been perpetually brought before the public, and seldom without instructive results. It is not, of course, every joust which yields a respectable show, but Mr. Macaulay's shield has been once or twice struck by antagonists who have shown a title to the encounter, and one of these is now in the lists with the pamphlet specified below. "Mr. Forster's challenge is on behalf of the personal character and political conduct of the famous William Penn--"the arch-Quaker," whom he conceives Mr. Macaulay to have treated with an injustice which, if it did not result from deliberate prejudice, was at all events chargeable to unbecoming negligence of inquiry. The cause thus asserted he defends in fifty pages of not unreasonable argument, and supports by the liberal quotation of accepted authorities. Unfortunately, the character of the controversy is such that it is almost impossible either to arbitrate conclusively between the parties or to convey an adequate idea of their respective positions. Mr. Macaulay's fashion of writing, too, makes sadly against any minute or critical investigation of his resources or his deductions. His habit is to throw off a single complete sketch of a character or a transaction, and at the foot of it to quote altogether the various authorities, from certain passages of which he derived the warrant for his own several touches. By this means we are incapacitated from closely following his observations, and we can only infer, with greater or less probability, what particular portion of a particular authority served for the foundation of any particular statement. To some extent this method of proceeding is inseparable from Mr. Macaulay's style, and its obvious disadvantage must be set off against that brilliancy and effect of the general picture which commands such universal admiration. Mr. Macaulay writes as it were from impressions. He consults and peruses the original records of the times he is describing, and out of the general deductions thus instinctively drawn his conception is formed. We believe this to be the best way of arriving at general truths, but it is a practice which greatly limits the application of ordinary tests of accuracy. Indeed, in many portions of Mr. Macaulay's history, a reader can do little more than compare his own previous impressions of the facts and scenes described with the impression of the writer who is describing them. Many of his descriptions are compounded of such numerous and minute ingredients, picked here and there from such a variety of quarters, that they can only be verified by a similar process to that in which they originated. A signal exemplification of our meaning will be found in his delineation of the character and position of the English clergy before the Revolution. We not only believe ourselves that this sketch is substantially correct, but we would even venture to say that the impressions of well-informed and unprejudiced minds as to the general truth would, in a majority of cases, coincide with our own. Yet of this we are perfectly certain--that it would not only be possible but easy to collect so many particular examples of a contrary tendency as would wholly bewilder the judgment of an ordinary reader. Mr. Macaulay, in fact, can too frequently only be judged by those who have followed, at however humble a distance, his own track of study. The temptations to this kind of writing will be considerably weaker in the case of the volumes which are yet to come, and we may there, perhaps, hope for a little more severity of quotation. Yet in the portraitures of individual characters these inducements will still remain, nor can they be very easily, or indeed very properly, overlooked. "It is not enough to say that the character of an historical personage is to be drawn from the authentic record of his actions. No doubt it is so; but there are a thousand minute and almost indefinable suggestions, arising from the perusal of these actions with all their circumstances, which will exercise a most material influence upon the judgment. The motives, for instance, of an action, must be almost always matter of surmise, and yet upon these surmises the conclusion will mainly depend. It is to this cause we must attribute the contradiction which such conclusions occasionally exhibit, as in the conflicting characters drawn by various hands of Archbishop Cranmer, of General Monk, of James II., or, as in the case before us, of William Penn. Nevertheless, Mr. Forster does supply us with some means of estimating the justice and accuracy of Mr. Macaulay's decision; but as our limits preclude any thing like a comparison of the two theories in detail, we must confine ourselves to communicating a general idea of the disputed points in continuation and illustration of what we have already premised. "William Penn, the Quaker, as we need hardly state, passed the early part of his life under heavy persecutions on account of his religious opinions. In the resolute spirit of fortitude with which he sustained these sufferings he gave utterance to many rigid and uncompromising doctrines. Things then took a turn with him, and from a poor persecuted pietist he became a close client of Royalty, and almost the chief of court favorites in an age of favoritism. That some of his sayings and doings in these two strangely-contrasted scenes of his life should be a little contradictory is, to say the least, no matter of wonder. Mr. Macaulay, accordingly, giving him full credit for religious principle, but not much for strength of mind, depicts the stubborn and fanatical Quaker of former days as having become in the reign of King James the compliant and, though well-meaning, not over-scrupulous agent of a monarch, whose designs were directed against the civil and religious liberty of his people. Mr. Forster, on the other hand, would ascribe Penn's appearance in these scenes exclusively to his good and charitable intentions. He would represent him solely as a peacemaker (which is, perhaps, not far from the truth), and he would exculpate him from all motives except those of charity; attributing to him a thorough and undisguised repugnance to the king's evil designs, and a resolution simply to realize out of these evil doings the great and permanent blessing of religious liberty for his countrymen at large. "The first bone of contention is the participation of Penn in that nefarious transaction by which the Royal Maids of Honor extorted ransoms from the poor Taunton girls who had welcomed the arrival of Monmouth. It seems that the chief, if not the sole authority for Mr. Macaulay's remarks on this head is contained in a letter of Sunderland's, preserved in the State-Paper office, and addressed to "Mr. Penne." Mr. Forster, therefore, disputes the identity of the two persons. Now, we think that very few people, after a careful exercise of their judgment, would doubt either that this letter was addressed to Penn, or that another, subsequently alluded to, was written by him. Still we admit that its phraseology does not bear out all Mr. Macaulay's circumstantial details of the transaction, and it certainly cannot be denied that his conduct was, to say the least, _susceptible_ of an interpretation which should have called rather for the approval than the censure of the historian. The principal subject, however, of the controversy is the share taken by William Penn in the dealings of James with the Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford. We feel it very difficult to give any sufficient statement of this case, not only by reason of our narrow limits, but for want of words so to express ourselves as not to assume what one or other of the disputants deny. Yet Mr. Forster must not complain if we assert that William Penn, in this as in other questionable transactions, was, if not an agent of the king, at least a kind of go-between, and generally with an inclination towards that conclusion which James desired. Perhaps he often interfered because nobody else could interfere so beneficially--this we are very willing to allow, but, to take the case now before us, it surely cannot be gainsayed that in his mediation, if Mr. Forster will accept the term, between the king and the college, he really did wish that, with as little unpleasantness as might be, the college should submit to the king. And even if we accept as not proved the allegation that he directly tempted the Fellows to perjury, yet Mr. Forster must not ask us to believe that Penn would not have been a great deal better pleased if the Fellows had quietly dropped the consideration of their oaths, and surrendered their foundation to the Papists without further struggle. "We suspect the truth to be, that Mr. Macaulay has somewhat exceeded his specified warrants, not in the design, but in the coloring. We believe that many of Penn's acts were strangely inconsistent, if rigorously noted, with his principles as previously professed, but we doubt whether they will bear quite such hard words as Mr. Macaulay has given them. Nevertheless, to recur to an expression which we employed before, we are persuaded that in a majority of cases the _general impression_ of an unbiassed inquirer would be more nearly in accordance with Mr. Macaulay's sketch than with that flattering and stainless portrait which Mr. Forster, at the conclusion of his remarks, would fain have drawn. Mr. Macaulay may have painted his story a little too highly. His faults are less in his verbs and substantives than in his adjectives and his adverbs. Penn never in all probability became such an obsequious and pliant-principled courtier as he is represented in this history, but the simple facts which are authentically recorded of his court-life preclude any notion of the high-souled and spotless character which Mr. Forster would fain depict." The subjects discussed in this volume have been much handled by our own writers, and in several cases with very decided ability. We incline to the side of Mr. Forster, throughout. An attentive study of the life of William Penn reveals to our view a character of singular purity, and in nearly all respects admirably composed. The judgment of Macaulay we hold in very little esteem. It was said of Voltaire that he would sacrifice Christ for an epigram; it may be said of Macaulay that he would sacrifice as liberally for an antithesis. He labors always for effect, and it must be admitted that he has evinced very extraordinary abilities for this end; he never fails in variety, contrast, or grouping; hence his popularity, and the absence from his pictures of the highest elements of history. Although in State Papers and in the Transactions of Societies in this country, there is a large amount of important historical material in relation to Penn, we have no creditable memoir of him; which is remarkable, considering the attractive interest of the subject, and the jealousy which has been displayed in various quarters respecting every thing affecting his reputation. A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[17] WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ. _Continued from Page 216._ CHAPTER X. The two horsemen rode on their way. Neither spoke for several minutes. Sir Philip Hastings pondering sternly on all that had passed, and his younger companion gazing upon the scene around flooded with the delicious rays of sunset, as if nothing had passed at all. Sir Philip, as I have shown the reader, had a habit of brooding over any thing which excited much interest in his breast--nay more, of extracting from it, by a curious sort of alchemy, essence very different from its apparent nature, sometimes bright, fine, and beneficial, and others dark and maleficient. The whole of the transaction just past disturbed him much; it puzzled him; it set his imagination running upon a thousand tracks, and most of them wrong ones; and thought was not willing to be called from her vagaries to deal with any other subject than that which preoccupied her. The young stranger, on the other hand, seemed one of those characters which take all things much more lightly. In the moment of action, he had shown skill, resolution, and energy enough, but as he sat there on his horse's back, looking round at every point of any interest to an admirer of nature with an easy, calm and unconcerned air, no one who saw him could have conceived that he had been engaged the moment before in so fierce though short a struggle. There was none of the heat of the combatant or the triumph of the victor in his air or countenance, and his placid and equable expression of face contrasted strongly with the cloud which sat upon the brow of his companion. "I beg your pardon, sir, for my gloomy silence," said Sir Philip Hastings, at length, conscious that his demeanor was not very courteous, "but this affair troubles me. Besides certain relations which it bears to matters of private concernment, I am not satisfied as to how I should deal with the ruffian we have suffered to depart so easily. His assault upon myself I do not choose to treat harshly; but the man is a terror to the country round, committing many an act to which the law awards a very insufficient punishment, but with cunning sufficient to keep within that line, the passage beyond which would enable society to purge itself of such a stain upon it; how to deal with him, I say, embarrasses me greatly. I have committed him two or three times to prison already; and I am inclined to regret that I did not, on this occasion, when he was in the very act of breaking the law, send my sword through him, and I should have been well justified in doing so." "Nay, sir, methinks that would have been too much," replied his companion; "he has had a fall, which, if I judge rightly, will be a sufficient punishment for his assault upon you. According to the very _lex talionis_, he has had what he deserves. If he has nearly broke your arm, I think I have nearly broken his back." "It is not his punishment for any offence to myself, sir, I seek," replied the baronet; "it is a duty to society to free it from the load of such a man whenever he himself affords the opportunity of doing so. Herein the law would have justified me, but even had it not been so, I can conceive many cases where it may be necessary for the benefit of our country and society to go beyond what the law will justify, and to make the law for the necessity." "Brutus, and a few of his friends, did so," replied the young stranger with a smile, "and we admire them very much for so doing, but I am afraid we should hang them, nevertheless, if they were in a position to try the thing over again. The illustration of the gibbet and the statue might have more applications than one, for I sincerely believe, if we could revive historical characters, we should almost in all cases erect a gallows for those to whom we now raise a monument." Sir Philip Hastings turned and looked at him attentively, and saw his face was gay and smiling. "You take all these things very lightly, sir," he said. "With a safe lightness," replied the stranger. "Nay, with something more," rejoined his companion; "in your short struggle with that ruffian, you sprang upon him, and overthrew him like a lion, with a fierce activity which I can hardly imagine really calmed down so soon." "O yes it is, my dear sir," replied the stranger, "I am somewhat of a stoic in all things. It is not necessary that rapidity of thought and action, in a moment of emergency, should go one line beyond the occasion, or sink one line deeper than the mere reason. The man who suffers his heart to be fluttered, or his passions to be roused, by any just action he is called upon to do, is not a philosopher. Understand me, however; I do not at all pretend to be quite perfect in my philosophy; but, at all events, I trust I schooled myself well enough not to suffer a wrestling match with a contemptible animal like that, to make my pulse beat a stroke quicker after the momentary effort is over." Sir Philip Hastings was charmed with the reply; for though it was a view of philosophy which he could not and did not follow, however much he might agree to it, yet the course of reasoning and the sources of argument were so much akin to those he usually sought, that he fancied he had at length found a man quite after his own heart. He chose to express no farther opinion upon the subject, however, till he had seen more of his young companion; but that more he determined to see. In the mean time he easily changed the conversation, saying, "You seemed to be a very skilful and practised wrestler, sir." "I was brought up in Cornwall," replied the other, "though not a Cornish man, and having no affinity even with the Terse and the Tees--an Anglo Saxon, I am proud to believe, for I look upon that race as the greatest which the world has yet produced." "What, superior to the Roman?" asked Sir Philip. "Ay, even so," answered the stranger, "with as much energy, as much resolution, less mobility, more perseverance, with many a quality which the Roman did not possess. The Romans have left us many a fine lesson which we are capable of practising as well as they, while we can add much of which they had no notion." "I should like much to discuss the subject with you more at large," said Sir Philip Hastings, in reply; "but I know not whether we have time sufficient to render it worth while to begin." "I really hardly know, either," answered the young stranger; "for, in the first place, I am unacquainted with the country, and in the next place, I know not how far you are going. My course tends towards a small town called Hartwell--or, as I suspect it ought to be, Hartswell, probably from some fountain at which hart and hind used to come and drink." "I am going a little beyond it," replied Sir Philip Hastings, "so that our journey will be for the next ten miles together;" and with this good space of time before him, the baronet endeavored to bring his young companion back to the subject which had been started, a very favorite one with him at all times. But the stranger seemed to have his hobbies as well as Sir Philip, and having dashed into etymology in regard to Hartwell, he pursued it with an avidity which excluded all other topics. "I believe," he said, not in the least noticing Sir Philip's dissertation on Roman virtues--"my own belief is, that there is not a proper name in England, except a few intruded upon us by the Normans, which might not easily be traced to accidental circumstances in the history of the family or the place. Thus, in the case of Aylesbury, or Eaglestown, from which it is derived, depend upon it the place has been noted as a resort for eagles in old times, coming thither probably for the ducks peculiar to that place. Bristol, in Anglo Saxon, meaning the place of a bridge, is very easily traceable; and Costa, or Costaford, meaning in Anglo Saxon the tempter's ford, evidently derives its name from monk or maiden having met the enemy of man or womankind at that place, and having had cause to rue the encounter. All the Hams, all the Tons, and all the Sons, lead us at once to the origin of the name, to say nothing of all the points of the compass, all the colors of the rainbow, and every trade that the ingenuity of man has contrived to invent." In vain Sir Philip Hastings for the next half hour endeavored to bring him back to what he considered more important questions. He had evidently had enough of the Romans for the time being, and indulged himself in a thousand fanciful speculations upon every other subject but that, till Sir Philip, who at one time had rated his intellect very highly, began to think him little better than a fool. Suddenly, however, as if from a sense of courtesy rather than inclination, the young man let his older companion have his way in the choice of subject, and in his replies showed such depth of thought, such a thorough acquaintance with history, and such precise and definite views, that once more the baronet changed his opinion, and said to himself, "This is a fine and noble intellect indeed, nearly spoiled by the infection of a corrupt and frivolous world, but which might be reclaimed, if fortune would throw him in the way of those whose principles have been fixed and tried." He pondered upon the matter for some short time. It was now completely dark, and the town to which the stranger was going distant not a quarter of a mile. The little stars were looking out in the heavens, peering at man's actions like bright-eyed spies at night; but the moon had not risen, and the only light upon the path was reflected from the flashing, dancing stream that ran along beside the road, seeming to gather up all the strong rays from the air, and give them back again with interest. "You are coming very near Hartwell," said Sir Philip, at length; "but it is somewhat difficult to find from this road, and being but little out of my way, I will accompany you thither, and follow the high road onwards." The stranger was about to express his thanks, but the Baronet stopped him, saying, "Not in the least, my young friend. I am pleased with your conversation, and should be glad to cultivate your acquaintance if opportunity should serve. I am called Sir Philip Hastings, and shall be glad to see you at any time, if you are passing near my house." "I shall certainly wait upon you, Sir Philip, if I stay any time in this county," replied the other. "That, however, is uncertain, for I come here merely on a matter of business, which may be settled in a few hours--indeed it ought to be so, for it seems to me very simple. However, it may detain me much longer, and then I shall not fail to take advantage of your kind permission." He spoke gravely, and little more was said till they entered the small town of Hartwell, about half through which a large gibbet-like bar was seen projecting from the front of a house, suspending a large board, upon which was painted a star. The light shining from the windows of an opposite house fell upon the symbol, and the stranger, drawing in his rein, said, "Here is my inn, and I will now wish you good night, with many thanks, Sir Philip." "Methinks it is I should thank you," replied the Baronet, "both for a pleasant journey, and for the punishment you inflicted on the ruffian Cutter." "As for the first," said the stranger, "that has been more than repaid, if indeed it deserved thanks at all; and as for the other, that was a pleasure in itself. There is a great satisfaction to me in breaking down the self-confidence of one of these burly bruisers." As he spoke, he dismounted, again wishing Sir Philip good night, and the latter rode on upon his way. His meditations, as he went, were altogether upon the subject of the young stranger; for, as I have shown, Sir Philip rarely suffered two ideas to get any strong grasp of his mind at the same time. He revolved, and weighed, and dissected every thing the young man had said, and the conclusion that he came to was even more favorable than at first. He seemed a man after his own heart, with just sufficient differences of opinion and diversities of character to make the Baronet feel a hankering for some opportunity of moulding and modelling him to his own standard of perfection. Who he could be, he could not by any means divine. That he was a gentleman in manners and character, there could be no doubt. That he was not rich, Sir Philip argued from the fact of his not having chosen the best inn in the little town, and he might also conclude that he was of no very distinguished family, as he had not thought fit to mention his own name in return for the Baronet's frank invitation. Busy with these thoughts Sir Philip rode on but slowly, and took nearly half an hour to reach the gates of Mrs. Hazleton's park, though they stood only two miles' distance from the town. He arrived before them at length, however, and rang the bell. The lodge-keeper opened them but slowly, and putting his horse to a quicker pace, Sir Philip trotted up the avenue towards the house. He had not reached it, however, when he heard the sound of horses feet behind him, and, as he was dismounting at the door, his companion of the way rode quickly up and sprang to the ground, saying, with a laugh-- "I find, Sir Philip, that we are both to enjoy the same quarters to-night, for, on my arrival at Hartwell, I did not expect to visit this house till to-morrow morning. Mrs. Hazelton, however, has very kindly had my baggage brought up from the inn, and therefore I have no choice but to intrude upon her to-night." As he spoke the doors of the house were thrown open, servants came forth to take the horses, and the two gentlemen were ushered at once into Mrs. Hazleton's receiving-room. CHAPTER XI. Mrs. Hazleton was looking as beautiful as she had been at twenty--perhaps more so; for the few last years before the process of decay commences, sometimes adds rather than detracts from woman's loveliness. She was dressed with great skill and taste too; nay, even with peculiar care. The hair, which had not yet even one silver thread in its wavy mass, was so arranged as to hide, in some degree, that height and width of forehead which gave almost too intellectual an expression to her countenance--which, upon some occasions, rendered the expression (for the features were all feminine) more that of a man than that of a woman. Her dress was very simple in appearance though costly in material; but it had been chosen and fitted by the nicest art, of colors which best harmonized with her complexion, and in forms rather to indicate beauties than to display them. Thus attired, with grace and dignity in every motion, she advanced to meet Sir Philip Hastings, frankly holding out her hand to him, and beaming on him one of her most lustrous smiles. It was all thrown away upon him indeed; but that did not matter. It had its effect in another quarter. She then turned to the younger gentleman with a greater degree of reserve in manner, but yet, as she spoke to him and welcomed him to her house, the color deepened on her cheek with a blush that would not have been lost to Sir Philip if he had been at all in the custom of making use of them. They had evidently met before, but not often; and her words, "Good evening, Mr. Marlow, I am glad to see you at my house at length," were said in the tone of one who was really glad, but did not wish to show it too plainly. "You have come with my friend, Sir Philip Hastings," she added; "I did not know you were acquainted." "Nor were we, my dear madam, till this evening," replied the Baronet, speaking for himself and his companion of the road, "till we met by accident on the hill-side on our way hither. We had a somewhat unpleasant encounter with a notorious personage of the name of Tom Cutter, which brought us first into acquaintance; though, till you uttered it, my young friend's name was unknown to me." "Tom Cutter! is that the man who poaches all my game?" said the lady, in a musing tone. Nor was she musing of Tom Cutter, or the lost game, or of the sins and iniquities of poaching; neither one or the other. The exclamation and inquiry taken together were only one of those little half-unconscious stratagems of human nature, by which we often seek to amuse the other parties in conversation--and sometimes amuse our own outward man too--while the little spirit within is busily occupied with some question which we do not wish our interlocutors to have any thing to do with. She was asking herself, in fact, what had been the conversation with which Sir Philip Hastings and Mr. Marlow had beguiled the way--whether they had talked of her--whether they had talked of her affairs--and how she could best get some information on the subject without seeming to seek it. She soon had an opportunity of considering the matter more at leisure, for Sir Philip Hastings, with some remark as to "dusty dresses not being fit for ladies' drawing-rooms," retired for a time to the chamber prepared for him. The fair lady of the house detained Mr. Marlow indeed for a few minutes, talking with him in a pleasant and gentle tone, and making her bright eyes do their best in the way of captivating. She expressed regret that she had not seen him more frequently, and expressed a hope, in very graceful terms, that even the painful question, which those troublesome men of law had started between them, might be a means of ripening their acquaintance into friendship. The young gentleman replied with all gallantry, but with due discretion, and then retired to his room to change his dress. He certainly was a very good-looking young man; finely formed, and with a pleasing though not regularly handsome countenance; and perhaps he left Mrs. Hazleton other matters to meditate of than the topics of his conversation with Sir Philip Hastings. Certain it is, that when the baronet returned very shortly after, he found his beautiful hostess in a profound reverie, from which his sudden entrance made her start with a bewildered look not common to her. "I am very glad to talk to you for a few moments alone, my dear friend," said Mrs. Hazleton, after a moment's pause. "This Mr. Marlow is the gentleman who claims the very property on which you now stand;" and she proceeded to give her hearer, partly by spontaneous explanations, partly by answers to his questions, her own view of the case between herself and Mr. Marlow; laboring hard and skilfully to prepossess the mind of Sir Philip Hastings with a conviction of her rights as opposed to that of her young guest. "Do you mean to say, my dear madam," asked Sir Philip, "that he claims the whole of this large property? That would be a heavy blow indeed." "Oh, dear, no," replied the lady; "the great bulk of the property is mine beyond all doubt, but the land on which this house stands, and rather more than a thousand acres round it, was bought by my poor father before I was born, I believe, as affording the most eligible site for a mansion. He never liked the old house near your place, and built this for himself. Mr. Marlow's lawyers now declare that his grand-uncle, who sold the land to my father, had no power to sell it; that the property was strictly entailed." "That will be easily ascertained," said Sir Philip Hastings; "and I am afraid, my dear madam, if that should prove the case, you will have no remedy but to give up the property." "But is not that very hard?" asked Mrs. Hazleton, "the Marlows certainly had the money." "That will make no difference," replied Sir Philip, musing; "this young man's grand-uncle may have wronged your father; but he is not responsible for the act, and I am very much afraid, moreover, that his claim may not be limited to the property itself. Back rents, I suspect, might be claimed." "Ay, that is what my lawyer, Mr. Shanks, says," replied Mrs. Hazleton, with a bewildered look; "he tells me that if Mr. Marlow is successful in the suit, I shall have to pay the whole of the rents of the land. But Shanks added that he was quite certain of beating him if we could retain for our counsel Sargeant Tutham and Mr. Doubledo." "Shanks is a rogue," said Sir Philip Hastings, in a calm, equable tone; "and the two lawyers you have named bear the reputation of being learned and unscrupulous men. The first point, my dear madam, is to ascertain whether this young gentleman's claim is just, and then to deal with him equitably, which, in the sense I affix to the term, may be somewhat different from legal." "I really do not know what to do," cried Mrs. Hazleton, with a slight laugh, as if at her own perplexity. "I was never in such a situation in my life;" and then she added, very rapidly and in a jocular tone, as if she were afraid of pausing upon or giving force to any one word, "if my poor father had been alive, he would have settled it all after his own way soon enough. He was a great match-maker you know, Sir Philip, and he would have proposed, in spite of all obstacles, a marriage between the two parties, to settle the affair by matrimony instead of by law," and she laughed again as if the very idea was ridiculous. Unlearned Sir Philip thought so too, and most improperly replied, "The difference of age would of course put that out of the question;" nor when he had committed the indiscretion, did he perceive the red spot which came upon Mrs. Hazleton's fair brow, and indicated sufficiently enough the effect his words had produced. There was an ominous silent pause, however, for a minute, and then the Baronet was the person to resume the discourse in his usual calm, argumentative tone. "I do not think," he said, "from Mr. Marlow's demeanor or conversation, that he is likely to be very exacting in this matter. His claim, however, must be looked to in the first place, before we admit any thing on your part. If the property was really entailed, he has undoubtedly a right to it, both in honesty and in law; but methinks there he might limit his claim if his sense of real equity be strong; but the entail must be made perfectly clear before you can admit so much as that." "Well, well, sir," said Mrs. Hazleton, hastily, for she heard a step on the outer stairs, "I will leave it entirely to you, Sir Philip, I am sure you will take good care of my interests." Sir Philip did not altogether like the word interests, and bowing his head somewhat stiffly, he added, "and of your honor, my dear madam." Mrs. Hazleton liked his words as little as he did hers, and she colored highly. She made no reply, indeed, but his words that night were never forgotten. The next moment Mr. Marlow entered the room with a quiet, easy air, evidently quite unconscious of having been the subject of conversation. During the evening he paid every sort of polite attention to his fair hostess, and undoubtedly showed signs and symptoms of thinking her a very beautiful and charming woman. Whatever was her game, take my word for it, reader, she played it skilfully, and the very fact of her retiring early, at the very moment when she had made the most favorable impression, leaving Sir Philip Hastings to entertain Mr. Marlow at supper, was not without its calculation. As soon as the lady was gone, Sir Philip turned to the topic of Mrs. Hazleton's business with his young companion, and managed the matter more skilfully than might have been expected. He simply told him that Mrs. Hazleton had mentioned a claim made upon her estate by his lawyers, and had thought it better to leave the investigation of the affair to her friend, rather than to professional persons. A frank good-humored smile came upon Mr. Marlow's face at once. "I am not a rich man, Sir Philip," he said, "and make no professions of generosity, but, at the same time, as my grand-uncle undoubtedly had this money from Mrs. Hazleton's father, I should most likely never have troubled her on the subject, but that this very estate is the original seat of our family, on which we can trace our ancestors back through many centuries. The property was undoubtedly entailed, my father and my uncle were still living when it was sold, and performed no disentailing act whatever. This is perfectly susceptible of proof, and though my claim may put Mrs. Hazleton to some inconvenience, I am anxious to avoid putting her to any pain. Now I have come down with a proposal which I confidently trust you will think reasonable. Indeed, I expected to find her lawyer here rather than an independent friend, and I was assured that my proposal would be accepted immediately, by persons who judged of my rights more sanely perhaps than I could." "May I hear what the proposal is?" asked Sir Philip. "Assuredly," replied Mr. Marlow, "it is this: that in the first place Mrs. Hazleton should appoint some gentleman of honor, either at the bar or not, as she may think fit, to investigate my claim, with myself or some other gentleman on my part, with right to call in a third as umpire between them. I then propose that if my claim should be distinctly proved, Mrs. Hazleton should surrender to me the lands in question, I repaying her the sum which my grand-uncle received, and--" "Stay," said Sir Philip Hastings, "are you aware that the law would not oblige you to do that?" "Perfectly," replied Mr. Marlow, "and indeed I am not very sure that equity would require it either, for I do not know that my father ever received any benefit from the money paid to his uncle. He may have received a part however, without my knowing it, for I would rather err on the right side than on the wrong. I then propose that the rents of the estate, as shown by the leases, and fair interest upon the value of the ground surrounding this house, should be computed during the time that it has been out of our possession, while on the other hand the legal interest of the money paid for the property should be calculated for the same period, the smaller sum deducted from the larger, and the balance paid by me to Mrs. Hazleton or by Mrs. Hazleton to me, so as to replace every thing in the same state as if this unfortunate sale had never taken place." Sir Philip Hastings mused without reply for more than one minute. That is a long time to muse, and many may be the thoughts and feelings which pass through the breast of man during that space. They were many in the present instance; and it would not be very easy to separate or define them. Sir Philip thought of all the law would have granted to the young claimant under the circumstances of the case: the whole property, all the back rents, every improvement that had been made, the splendid mansion in which they were then standing, without the payment on his part of a penny: he compared these legal rights with what he now proposed, and he saw that he had indeed gone a great way on the generous side of equity. There was something very fine and noble in this conduct, something that harmonized well with his own heart and feelings. There was no exaggeration, no romance about it: he spoke in the tone of a man of business doing a right thing well considered, and the Baronet was satisfied in every respect but one. Mrs. Hazleton's words I must not say had created a suspicion, but had suggested the idea that other feelings might be acting between her and his young companion, notwithstanding the difference of age which he had so bluntly pointed out, and he resolved to inquire farther. In the mean time, however, Mr. Marlow somewhat misinterpreted his silence, and he added, after waiting longer than was pleasant, "Of course you understand, Sir Philip, that if two or three honest men decide that my case is unfounded--although I know that cannot be the case--I agree to drop it at once and renounce it for ever. My solicitors and counsel in London judged the offer a fair one at least." "And so do I," said Sir Philip Hastings, emphatically; "however, I must speak with Mrs. Hazleton upon the subject, and express my opinion to her. Pray, have you the papers regarding your claim with you?" "I have attested copies," replied Mr. Marlow, "and I can bring them to you in a moment. They are so unusually clear, and seem to put the matter so completely beyond all doubt, that I brought them down to satisfy Mrs. Hazleton and her solicitor, without farther trouble, that my demand at least had some foundation in justice." The papers were immediately brought, and sitting down deliberately, Sir Philip Hastings went through them with his young friend, carefully weighing every word. They left not even a doubt on his mind; they seemed not to leave a chance even for the chicanery of the law, they were clear, precise, and definite. And the generosity of the young man's offer stood out even more conspicuously than before. "For my part, I am completely satisfied," said Sir Philip Hastings, when he had done the examination, "and I have no doubt that Mrs. Hazleton will be so likewise. She is an excellent and amiable person, as well as a very beautiful woman. Have you known her long? have you seen her often?" "Only once, and that about a year ago," replied Mr. Marlow; "she is indeed very beautiful as you say--for a woman of her period of life remarkably so; she puts me very much in mind of my mother, whom I in the confidence of youthful affection used to call 'my everlasting.' I recollect doing so only three days before the hand of death wrote upon her brow the vanity of all such earthly thoughts." Sir Philip Hastings was satisfied. There was nothing like passion there. Unobservant as he was in most things, he was more clear-sighted in regard to matters of love, than any other affection of the human mind. He had himself loved deeply and intensely, and he had not forgotten it. It was necessary, before any thing could be concluded, to wait for Mrs. Hazleton's rising on the following morning; and, bidding Mr. Marlow good night with a warm grasp of the hand, Sir Philip Hastings retired to his room and passed nearly an hour in thought, pondering the character of his new acquaintance, recalling every trait he had remarked, and every word he had heard. It was a very satisfactory contemplation. He never remembered to have met with one who seemed so entirely a being after his own heart. There might be little flaws, little weaknesses perhaps, but the confirming power of time and experience would, he thought, strengthen all that was good, and counsel and example remedy all that was weak or light. "At all events," thought the Baronet, "his conduct on this occasion shows a noble and equitable spirit. We shall see how Mrs. Hazleton meets it to-morrow." When that morrow came, he had to see the reverse of the picture, but it must be reserved for another chapter. CHAPTER XII. Mrs. Hazleton was up in the morning early. She was at all times an early riser, for she well knew what a special conservator of beauty is the morning dew, but on this occasion certain feelings of impatience made her a little earlier than usual. Besides, she knew that Sir Philip Hastings was always a matutinal man, and would certainly be in the library before she was down. Nor was she disappointed. There she found the Baronet reaching up his hand to take down Livy, after having just replaced Tacitus. "It is a most extraordinary thing, my dear madam," said Sir Philip, after the salutation of the morning, "and puzzles me more than I can explain." Mrs. Hazleton fancied that her friend had discovered some very knotty point in the case with Mr. Marlow, and she rejoiced, for her object was not to emulate but to entangle. Sir Philip, however, went on to put her out of all patience by saying, "How the Romans, so sublimely virtuous at one period of their history, could fall into so debased and corrupt a state as we find described even by Sallust, and depicted in more frightful colors still by the latter historians of the empire." Mrs. Hazleton, as I have said, was out of all patience, and ladies in that state sometimes have recourse to homely illustration. "Their virtue got addled, I suppose," she replied, "by too long keeping. Virtue is an egg that won't bear sitting upon--but now do tell me, Sir Philip, had you any conversation with Mr. Marlow last night upon this troublesome affair of mine?" "I had, my dear madam," replied Sir Philip, with a very faint smile, for Sir Philip could not well bear any jesting on the Romans. "I did not only converse with Mr. Marlow on the subject, but I examined carefully the papers he brought down with him, and perceived at once that you have not the shadow of a title to the property in question." Mrs. Hazleton's brow grew dark, and she replied in a somewhat sullen tone, "You decided against me very rapidly, Sir Philip. I hope you did not let Mr. Marlow see your strong prepossession--opinion I mean to say--in his favor." "Entirely," replied Sir Philip Hastings. Mrs. Hazleton was silent, and gazed down upon the carpet as if she were counting the threads of which it was composed, and finding the calculation by no means satisfactory. Sir Philip let her gaze on for some time, for he was not very easily moved to compassion in cases where he saw dishonesty of purpose as well as suffering. At length, however, he said, "My judgment is not binding upon you in the least; I tell you simply, my dear madam, what is my conclusion, and the law will tell you the same." "We shall see," muttered Mrs. Hazleton between her teeth; but then putting on a softer air she asked, "Tell me, Sir Philip, would you, if you were in my situation, tamely give up a property which was honestly bought and paid for, without making one struggle to retain it?" "The moment I was convinced I had no legal right to it," replied Sir Philip. "However, the law is still open to you, if you think it better to resist; but before you take your determination, you had better hear what Mr. Marlow proposes, and you will pardon me for expressing to you what I did not express to him: an opinion that his proposal is founded upon the noblest view of equity." "Indeed," said Mrs. Hazleton, with her eyes brightening, "pray let me hear this proposal." Sir Philip explained it to her most distinctly, expecting that she would be both surprised and pleased, and never doubted that she would accept it instantly. Whether she was surprised or not, did not appear, but pleased she certainly was not to any great extent, for she did not wish the matter to be so soon concluded. She began to make objections immediately. "The enormous expense of building this house has not been taken into consideration at all, and it will be very necessary to have the original papers examined before any thing is decided. There are two sides to every question, my dear Sir Philip, and we cannot tell that other papers may not be found, disentailing this estate before the sale took place." "This is impossible," answered Sir Philip Hastings, "if the papers exhibited to me are genuine, for this young gentleman, on whom, as his father's eldest son, the estate devolved by the entail, was not born when the sale took place. By his act only could it be disentailed, and as he was not born, he could perform no such act." He pressed her hard in his cold way, and it galled her sorely. "Perhaps they are not genuine," she said at length. "They are all attested," replied Sir Philip, "and he himself proposes that the originals should be examined as the basis of the whole transaction." "That is absolutely necessary," said Mrs. Hazleton, well satisfied to put off decision even for a time. But Sir Philip would not leave her even that advantage. "I think," he said, "you must at once decide whether you accept his proposal, on condition that the examination of the papers proves the justice of his claim to the satisfaction of those you may appoint to examine it. If there are any doubts and difficulties to be raised afterwards, he might as well proceed by law at once." "Then let him go to law," exclaimed Mrs. Hazleton with a flashing eye. "If he do, I will defend every step to the utmost of my power." "Incur enormous expense, give yourself infinite pain and mortification, and ruin a fine estate by a spirit of unnecessary and unjust resistance," added Sir Philip, in a calm and somewhat contemptuous tone. "Really, Sir Philip, you press me too hard," exclaimed Mrs. Hazleton in a tone of angry mortification, and, sitting down to the table, she actually wept. "I only press you for your own good," answered the Baronet, not at all moved, "you are perhaps not aware that if this gentleman's claim is just, and you resist it, the whole costs will fall upon you. All that could be expected of him was to submit his claim to arbitration, but he now does more; he proposes, if arbitration pronounce it just, to make sacrifices of his legal rights to the amount of many thousand pounds. He is not bound to refund one penny paid for this estate, he is entitled to back rents for a considerable number of years, and yet he offers to repay the money, and far from demanding the back rents, to make compensation for any loss of interest that may have been sustained by this investment. There are few men in England, let me tell you, who would have made such a proposal, and if you refuse it you will never have such another." "Do not you think, Sir Philip," asked Mrs. Hazleton sharply, "that he never would have made such a proposal if he had not known there was something wrong about his title?" Now there was something in this question which doubly provoked Sir Philip Hastings. He never could endure a habit which some ladies have of recurring continually to points previously disposed of, and covering the reiteration by merely putting objections in a new form. Now the question as to the validity of Mr. Marlow's title, he looked upon as entirely disposed of by the proposal of investigation and arbitration. But there was something more than this; the very question which the lady put showed an incapacity for conceiving any generous motive, which thoroughly disgusted him, and, turning with a quiet step to the window, he looked down upon the lawn which spread far away between two ranges of tall fine wood, glowing in the yellow sunshine of a dewy autumnal morning. It was the most favorable thing he could have done for Mrs. Hazleton. Even the finest and the strongest and the stoutest minds are more frequently affected unconsciously by external things than any one is aware of. The sweet influences or the irritating effects of fine or bad weather, of beautiful or tame scenery, of small cares and petty disappointments, of pleasant associations or unpleasant memories, nay of a thousand accidental circumstances, and even fancies themselves, will affect considerations totally distinct and apart, as the blue or yellow panes of a stained glass window cast a melancholy hue or a yellow splendor upon the statue and carvings of the cold gray stone. As Sir Philip gazed forth upon the fair scene before his eyes, and thought what a lovely spot it was, how calm, how peaceful, how refreshing in its influence, he said to himself, "No wonder she is unwilling to part with it." Then again, there was a hare gambolling upon the lawn, at a distance of about a hundred yards from the house, now scampering along and beating up the dew from the morning grass, now crouched nearly flat so as hardly to be seen among the tall green blades, then hopping quietly along with an awkward, shuffling gait, or sitting up on its hind legs, with raised ears, listening to some distant sound; but still as it resumed its gambols, again going round and round, tracing upon the green sward a labyrinth of meandering lines. Sir Philip watched it for several moments with a faint smile, and then said to himself, "It is the beast's nature--why not a woman's?" Turning himself round he saw Mrs. Hazleton, sitting at the table with her head leaning in a melancholy attitude upon her hand, and he replied to her last words, though he had before fully made up his mind to give them no answer whatever. "The question in regard to title, my dear madam," he said, "is one which is to be decided by others. Employ a competent person, and he will insure, by full investigation, that your rights are maintained entire. Your acceptance of Mr. Marlow's proposals contingent on the full recognition of his claim, will be far from prejudicing your case, should any flaw in your title be discovered. On the contrary, should the decision of a point of law be required, it will put you well with the court. By frankly doing so, you also meet him in the same spirit in which I am sure he comes to you; and as I am certain he has a very high sense of equity, I think he will be well inclined to enter into any arrangement which may be for your convenience. From what he has said himself, I do not believe he can afford to keep such an establishment as is necessary for this house, and if you cling to it, as you may well do, doubtless it may remain your habitation as long as you please at a very moderate rent. Every other particular I think may be settled in the same manner, if you will but show a spirit of conciliation, and----" "I am sure I have done that," said Mrs. Hazleton, interrupting him. "However, Sir Philip, I will leave it all to you. You must act for me in this business. If you think it right, I will accept the proposal conditionally as you mention, and the title can be examined fully whenever we can fix upon the time and the person. All this is very hard upon me, I do think; but I suppose I must submit with a good grace." "It is certainly the best plan," replied Sir Philip; and while Mrs. Hazleton retired to efface the traces of tears from her eyelids, the Baronet walked into the drawing-room, where he was soon after joined by Mr. Marlow. He merely told him, however, that he had conversed with the lady of the house, and that she would give him her answer in person. Now, whatever were Mrs. Hazleton's wishes or intentions, she certainly was not well satisfied with the precise and rapid manner in which Sir Philip brought matters of business to an end. His last words, however, had afforded her a glimmering prospect of somewhat lengthy and frequent communication between herself and Mr. Marlow, and one thing is certain, that she did not at all desire the transaction between them to be concluded too briefly. At the same time, it was not her object to appear otherwise than in the most favorable light to his eyes; and consequently, when she entered the drawing-room she held out her hand to him with a gracious though somewhat melancholy smile, saying, "I have had a long conversation with Sir Philip this morning, Mr. Marlow, concerning the very painful business which brought you here. I agree at once to your proposal in regard to the arbitration and the rest;" and she then went on to speak of the whole business as if she had made not the slightest resistance whatever, but had been struck at once by the liberality of his proposals, and by the sense of equity which they displayed. Sir Philip took little notice of all this; for he had fallen into one of his fits of musing, and Mr. Marlow had quitted the room to bring some of the papers for the purpose of showing them to Mrs. Hazleton, before the Baronet awoke out of his reverie. The younger gentleman returned a moment after, and he and Sir Philip and Mrs. Hazleton were busily looking at a long list of certificates of births, deaths and marriages, when the door opened, and Mr. Shanks, the attorney, entered the room, booted, spurred, and dusty as if from a long ride. He was a man to whom Sir Philip had a great objection; but he said nothing, and the attorney with a tripping step advanced towards Mrs. Hazleton. The lady looked confused and annoyed, and in a hasty manner put back the papers into Mr. Marlow's hand. But Mr. Shanks was one of the keen and observing men of the world. He saw every thing about him as if he had been one of those insects which have I do not know how many thousand pair of lenses in each eye. He had no scruples or hesitation either; he was all sight and all remark, and a lady of any kind was not at all the person to inspire him with reverence. He was, in short, all law, and loved nothing, respected nothing, but law. "Dear me, Mrs. Hazleton," he exclaimed, "I did not expect to find you so engaged. These seem to be law papers--very dangerous, indeed, madam, for unprofessional persons to meddle with such things. Permit me to look at them;" and he held out his hand towards Mr. Marlow, as if expecting to receive the papers without a word of remonstrance. But Mr. Marlow held them back, saying, in a very calm, civil tone, "Excuse me, sir! We are conversing over the matter in a friendly manner; and I shall show them to a lawyer only at Mrs. Hazleton's request." "Very improper--that is, I mean to say very unprofessional!" exclaimed Mr. Shanks, "and let me say very hazardous too," rejoined the lawyer abruptly; but Mrs. Hazleton herself interposed, saying in a marked tone and with an air of dignity which did not always characterize her demeanor towards her "right hand man," as she was accustomed sometimes to designate Mr. Shanks, "We do not desire any interference at this moment, my good sir. I appointed you at twelve o'clock. It is not yet nine." "O I can see, I can see," replied Mr. Shanks, while Sir Philip Hastings advanced a step or two, "his worship here never was a friend of mine, and has no objection to take a job or two out of my hands at any time." "We have nothing to do with jobs, sir," said Sir Philip Hastings, in his usual dry tone, "but at all events we do not wish you to make a job where there is none." "I must take the liberty, however, of warning that lady, sir," said Mr. Shanks, with the pertinacity of a parrot, which he so greatly resembled, "as her legal adviser, sir, that if----" "That if she sends for an attorney, she wants him at the time she appoints," interposed Sir Philip; "that was what you were about to say, I suppose." "Not at all, sir, not at all," exclaimed the lawyer; for very shrewd and very oily lawyers will occasionally forget their caution and their coolness when they see the prospect of a loss of fees before them. "I was going to say no such thing. I was going to warn her not to meddle with matters of business of which she can understand nothing, by the advice of those who know less, and who may have jobs of their own to settle while they are meddling with hers." "And I warn you to quit this room, sir," said Sir Philip Hastings, a bright spot coming into his usually pale cheek; "the lady has already expressed her opinion upon your intrusion, and depend upon it, I will enforce mine." "I shall do no such thing, sir, till I have fully----" He said no more, for before he could conclude the sentence, the hand of Sir Philip Hastings was upon his collar with the grasp of a giant, and although he was a tall and somewhat powerful man, the Baronet dragged him to the door in despite of his half-choking struggles, as a nurse would haul along a baby, pulled him across the stone hall, and opening the outer door with his left hand, shot him down the steps without any ceremony; leaving him with his hands and knees upon the terrace. This done, the Baronet returned into the house again, closing the door behind him. He then paused in the hall for an instant, reproaching himself for certain over-quick beatings of the heart, tranquillized his whole look and demeanor, and then returning to the drawing-room, resumed the conversation with Mrs. Hazleton, as if nothing had ever occurred to interrupt it. CHAPTER XIII. Mrs. Hazleton was or affected to be a good deal flustered by the event which had just taken place, but after a number of certain graceful attitudes, assumed without the slightest appearance of affectation, she recovered her calmness, and proceeded with the business in hand. That business was soon terminated, so far as the full and entire acceptance of Mr. Marlow's proposal went, and immediately after the conclusion of breakfast, Sir Philip Hastings ordered his horses to depart. Mrs. Hazleton fain would have detained him, for she foresaw that his going might be a signal for Mr. Marlow's going also, and it was not a part of her policy to assume the matronly character so distinctly as to invite him to remain in her house alone. Sir Philip however was inexorable, and returned to his own dwelling, renewing his invitation to his new acquaintance. Mrs. Hazleton bade him adieu, with the greatest appearance of cordiality; but I am very much afraid, if one had possessed the power of looking into her heart, one would have a picture very different from that presented by her face. Sir Philip Hastings had said and done things since he had entered her dwelling the night before, which Mrs. Hazleton was not a woman to forget or forgive. He had thwarted her schemes, he had mortified her vanity, he had wounded her pride; and she was one of those women who bide their time, but have a strong tenacity of resentments. When he was gone, however, she played a new game with Mr. Marlow. She insisted upon his remaining for the day, but with a fine sense of external proprieties, she informed him that she expected a charming elderly lady of her acquaintance to pass a few days with her, to whom she should particularly like to introduce him. This was false, be it remarked; but she immediately took measures to make it true. Now, there is in every neighborhood more than one of that class called good creatures. For this office, an abundant store of real or assumed soft stupidity is required; but it is a somewhat difficult part to play, for with this stupidity there must also be a considerable portion of fine tact, to guard the performer against any of those blunders into which good-natured people are continually plunging. Drill and discipline are also necessary, in order to be always on the look out for hints, to appreciate them properly, to comprehend that friends may say one thing and mean another, and to ask no questions of any kind. There were no less than three of these good creatures in this Mrs. Hazleton's immediate neighborhood; and during a few moments' retreat to her own little writing-room, she laid her finger upon her fair temple, and thought them well over. Mrs. Winifred Edgeby was the first who suggested herself to the mind of the fair lady. She had many of the requisites. She dressed well, talked well, and had an air of style and fashion about her; was perfectly innocuous, and skilful in divining the purposes and wishes of a friend or patron; but there was an occasional touch of subacrid humor about her which Mrs. Hazleton did not half like. It gave an impression of seeing too clearly, of perceiving much more than she pretended to perceive. The second was Mrs. Warmington, a widow, not very rich, and not indeed very refined; gay, talkative, somewhat boisterous, yet full of a sound discretion in never committing herself or a friend. She had also much experience, for she had been twice married, and twice a widow, and thus had had her misfortunes. The third was a Miss Goodenough, the most silent, quiet, stilly person in the world, moving about the house with the step of a cat, and a face of infinite good nature to the whole human race. She was to all appearance the pink of gentleness and weak good nature; but her silence was invaluable. After some consideration Mrs. Hazleton decided upon the widow, and instantly dispatched a note with her own carriage, begging Mrs. Warmington to come over immediately and spend a few days with her, as a young gentleman had arrived upon a visit, and it would be indecorous to entertain him alone. Mrs. Warmington understood it all in an instant. She said to herself, "Ho, ho! a young gentleman come to stay!--wanted a duenna! Matrimony in the wind! Heigho! she must be six and thirty--six and thirty from two and fifty leave sixteen points against me, and long odds. Well, well,--I have had my share;" and Mrs. Warmington laughed aloud. However, she would neither keep Mrs. Hazleton's carriage waiting, nor Mrs. Hazleton herself in suspense, for there were various little comforts and conveniences in the good will of that lady which Mrs. Warmington was eager to cultivate. She had, too, a shrewd suspicion that the enmity of Mrs. Hazleton might become a thing to be seriously dreaded; and therefore, whichever side of the question she looked at, she saw reasons for seeking the beautiful widow's good graces. Her maid was called, her clothes packed up, and she entered the carriage and drove away, while in the mean time Mrs. Hazleton had been expatiating to Mr. Marlow upon all the high qualities and points of excellence in her friend Mrs. Warmington. She was too skilful, moreover, to bring her good taste and judgment into question with her young friend, by raising expectations which might be disappointed. She therefore threw in insinuations of a few faults and failings in dear Madam Warmington's manner and demeanor. But then she said she was such a good creature at heart, that although the very fastidious affected to censure, she herself forgot all little blemishes in the inherent excellence of the person. Moreover, upon the plea of looking at the ground which was the subject of Mr. Marlow's claim, she led him out for a long, pleasant ramble through the park. She took him amongst old hawthorn trees, through groves of chestnuts by the banks of the stream, and along paths where the warm sunshine played through the brown and yellow leaves above, gilding their companions which had fallen earlier than themselves to the sward below. It was a very lover-like walk indeed--one where nature speaks to the heart, wakening sweet influences, and charming the spirit up from hard and cold indifference. Mrs. Hazleton felt sure that Mr. Marlow would not forget that walk, and she took care to impress it as deeply as possible upon his memory. Nor did she want any of the means to do so. Her mind was highly cultivated for the age in which she lived, her taste fine, her information extensive. She could discourse of foreign lands, of objects and scenes of deep interest, great beauty, and rich associations,--of courts and cities far away, of music, painting, flowers in other lands, of climates rich in sunshine and of genial warmth; and through the whole she had the art to throw a sort of magic glow from her own mind which brightened all she spoke of. She was very charming that day, indeed, and Mr. Marlow felt the spell, but he did not fall in love. Now what was the object of using all these powers upon him? Was Mrs. Hazleton a person very susceptible, or very covetous of the tender passion? Since her return to England she had refused some half-dozen very eligible offers from handsome, agreeable, estimable men, and the world in general had set her down for a person as cold as a stone. It might be so, but there are some stones which, when you heat them, acquire intense fervor, and retain it longer than any other substance. Every body in the world has his peculiarities, his whims, caprices, crochets if you will. Mrs. Hazleton had gazed over the handsome, the glittering and the gay, with the most perfect indifference. She had listened to professions of love with a tranquil, easy balance power, which weighed to a grain the advantages of matrimony and widowhood, without suffering the dust of passion to give even a shake to the scale. Before the preceding night she had only seen Mr. Marlow once, but the moment she set eyes upon him--the moment she heard his voice, she had said to herself, "If ever I marry again, that is the man." There is no explaining these sympathetic attractions, impulses, or whatever they may be called; but I think, from some observation of human nature, it will be found that in those persons where they are the least frequent, they are the most powerful and persevering when they do exist. Not long after their first meeting, some intimation occurred of a claim on the part of Mr. Marlow to a portion of the lady's property--that portion that she loved best. The very idea of parting with it at all, of being forced to give it up, was most painful and distressing to her. Yet that made no difference whatever in her feelings towards Mr. Marlow. Communications of various kinds took place between lawyers, and the opposite counsel were as firm as a rock. Mrs. Hazleton thought it very hard, very unjust, very wrong; but that changed not in the least her feelings towards Mr. Marlow. Nay more, with that delicate art of combination in which ladies are formed to excel, she conceived and manipulated with great dexterity a scheme for bringing herself and Mr. Marlow into frequent personal communication, and for causing somebody to suggest to him a marriage with her own beautiful self, as the best mode of settling the disputed claim. O those fine and delicate threads of intrigue, how frail they are, and how much depends upon every one of them, be it in the warp or the woof of a scheme! We have seen that in this case, one of them gave way under the rough handling of Sir Philip Hastings, and the whole fabric was in imminent danger of running down and becoming nothing but a raveled skein. Mrs. Hazleton was resolved that it should not be so, and now she was busily engaged in the attempt to knot together the broken thread, and to lay all the others straight and in right order again. This was the secret of the whole matter. She exerted all her charms, and could Waller but have seen her we should have had such an account of the artillery of her eyes, the insidious attack of her smile, and the whole host of powerful adversaries brought to bear against the object of her assault in her gracefully moving form and heaving bosom, that Saccharissa would have melted away like a wet lump of sugar in the comparison. Then again when she had produced an effect, and saw clear and distinctly that he thought her lovely, and very charming too, she seemed to fall into a pleasant sort of languid melancholy, which was even more charming still. The brook was bubbling and murmuring at their feet, dashing clear and bright over its stony bed, and changing the brown rock, the water weed, or the leaf beneath, into gems by the magic of its own brightness. The boughs were waving over head, covered with many-colored foliage, and the sun, glancing through, not only enriched the tints above, but checkered the mossy path along which they wandered like a chess-board of brown and gold. Some of the late autumn birds uttered their short sweet songs from the copse hard by, and the musical wind came sighing up from the valley, as if nature had furnished Eolus with a harp. It was in short quite a scene, and a moment for a widow to make love to a young man. They were silent for some little time, and then Mrs. Hazleton said, with her soft, sweet, round voice, "Is not all this very charming, Mr. Marlow?" Her tone was quite a sad one, but not with that sort of pleasant sadness which often mingles with our happiest moments, giving them even a higher zest, like the flattened notes when a fine piece of music passes gently from the major into the minor key, but really sad, profoundly sad. "Very charming, indeed," replied her young companion, looking round to her face with some surprise. "And what am I to do without it, when you turn me out of my house?" said the lady, answering his glance with a melancholy smile. "Turn you out of your house!" exclaimed Mr. Marlow; "I hope you do not suppose, my dear madam, that I could dream of such a thing. Oh, no! I would not for the world deprive such a scene of its brightest ornament. Some arrangement can be easily effected, even if my claim should prove satisfactory to those you appoint to investigate it, by which the neighborhood will not be deprived of the happiness of your presence." Mrs. Hazleton felt that she had made a great step, and as she well knew that there was no chance of his proposing then and there, she resolved not to risk losing ground by any farther advance, even while she secured some present benefits from that which was gained. "Well, well," she said, "Mr. Marlow, I am quite sure you are very kind and very generous, and we can talk of that matter hereafter. Only there is one thing you must promise me, which is, that in regard to any arrangements respecting the house you will not leave them to be settled by cold lawyers or colder friends, who cannot enter into my feelings in regard to this place, or your own liberal and kindly feelings either. Let us settle it some day between ourselves," she added, with a light laugh, "in a tête-à-tête like this. I do not suppose you are afraid of being overreached by me in a bargain. But now let us turn our steps back towards the house, for I expect Mrs. Warmington early, and I must not be absent when she arrives." Mrs. Warmington was there already; for the tête-à-tête had lasted longer than Mrs. Hazleton knew. However, Mrs. Hazleton's first task was to inform her fair friend and counsellor of the cause of Mr. Marlow's being there; her next to tell her that all had been settled as to the claim, by that tiresome man Sir Philip Hastings, without what she considered due deliberation, and that the only thing which remained to be arranged was in regard to the house, respecting which Mrs. Hazleton communicated a certain portion of her own inclinations, and of Mr. Marlow's kind view of the matter. Now, strange to say, this was the turning point of fate for Mrs. Hazleton, Mr. Marlow, and most of the persons mentioned in this history. It was then that Mrs. Warmington suggested a scheme which she thought would suit her friend well. "Why do you not offer him in exchange--for the time at all events--your fine old house on the side of Hartwell--Hartwell Place? It is only seven miles off. It is ready furnished to his hand, and must be worth a great deal more than the bare walls of this. Besides it would be pleasant to have him in the neighborhood." Pause, Mrs. Hazleton! pause and meditate over all the consequences; for be assured much depends upon these few simple words. Mrs. Hazleton did pause--Mrs. Hazleton did meditate. She ran over in her head the list of all the families in the neighborhood. In none of them could she see a probable rival. There were plenty of married women, old maids, young girls; but she saw nobody to fear, and with a proud consciousness of her own beauty and worth, she took her resolution. That very evening she proposed to Mr. Marlow what her friend had suggested. It was accepted. Mrs. Hazleton had made one miscalculation, and her fate and Mr. Marlow's were decided. FOOTNOTES: [17] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by G. P. R. James, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. CHARLES MACKAY'S LAST POEMS. We always read the poems of Charles Mackay, who, though not of the highest class, even of the living poets of England, is yet earnest, sensible, and good-hearted, and has always a point, and generally some happy fancies, in his least considered pieces. He has published two collections of short poems, one entitled "Voices from the Crowd," and the other and last, "Egeria, or the Spirit of Nature," &c. from which we take the following specimens: WHY THIS LONGING? Why this longing, clay-clad spirit? Why this fluttering of thy wings? Why this striving to discover Hidden and transcendent things? Be contented in thy prison, Thy captivity shall cease-- Taste the good that smiles before thee; Restless spirit, be at peace! With the roar of wintry forests, With the thunder's crash and roll, With the rush of stormy water, Thou wouldst sympathize, O soul! Thou wouldst ask them mighty questions In a language of their own, Untranslatable to mortals, Yet not utterly unknown. Thou wouldst fathom Life and Being, Thou wouldst see through Birth and Death, Thou wouldst solve the eternal riddle-- Thou a speck, a ray, a breath, Thou wouldst look at stars and systems, As if _thou_ couldst understand All the harmonies of Nature, Struck by an Almighty hand. With thy feeble logic, tracing Upward from effect to cause, Thou art foiled by Nature's barriers, And the limits of her laws. Be at peace, thou struggling spirit! Great Eternity denies The unfolding of its secrets In the circle of thine eyes. Be contented with thy freedom-- Dawning is not perfect day; There are truths thou canst not fathom, Swaddled in thy robes of clay. Rest in hope that if thy circle Grow not wider here in Time, God's Eternity shall give thee Power of vision more sublime. Clogged and bedded in the darkness, Little germ abide thine hour, Thoul't expand in proper season, Into blossom, into flower. Humble faith alone becomes thee In the glooms where thou art lain: Bright is the appointed future; Wait--thou shalt not wait in vain. Cease thy struggling, feeble spirit! Fret not at thy prison bars; Never shall thy mortal pinions Make the circuit of the stars. Here on Earth are duties for thee, Suited to thine earthly scope; Seek them, thou Immortal Spirit-- God is with thee--work in hope. YOU AND I. Who would scorn his humble fellow For the coat he wears? For the poverty he suffers? For his daily cares? Who would pass him in the footway With averted eye? Would you, brother? No--you would not. If you would--not _I_. Who, when vice or crime repentant, With a grief sincere Asked for pardon, would refuse it-- More than heaven severe? Who to erring woman's sorrow Would with taunts reply? Would you, brother? No--you would not. If you would--not _I_. Who would say that all who differ From his sect must be Wicked sinners, heaven-rejected, Sunk in Error's sea, And consign them to perdition With a holy sigh? Would you, brother? No--you would not. If you would--not _I_. Who would say that six days' cheating, In the shop or mart, Might be rubbed by Sunday praying From the tainted heart, If the Sunday face were solemn, And the credit high? Would you, brother? No--you would not. If you would--not _I_. Who would say that Vice is Virtue In a hall of State? Or that rogues are not dishonest If they dine off plate? Who would say Success and Merit Ne'er part company? Would you, brother? No--you would not. If you would--not _I_. Who would give a cause his efforts When the cause is strong, But desert it on its failure, Whether right or wrong? Ever siding with the upmost, Letting downmost lie? Would you, brother? No--you would not. If you would--not _I_. Who would lend his arm to strengthen Warfare with the right? Who would give his pen to blacken Freedom's page of light? Who would lend his tongue to utter Praise of tyranny? Would you, brother? No--you would not. If you would--not _I_. "A people among whom Charles Mackay is a popular writer," says the Dublin University Magazine, "must possess largely the elements of greatness and the reality of goodness." THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE, OR, THE SPY IN SOCIETY.[18] TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF H. DE ST. GEORGES. _Continued from page 229._ Second crime: A cold and deliberate attempt upon the life of Stenio Salvatori, on the public square of _Torre-del-Greco_. The Count listened to this harangue without emotion. "Bring in," said the judge, "both the witnesses and the plaintiffs, for they have a double quality." At this summons, a man of stern and moody aspect appeared, with his hair and dress in great disorder. He was sustained by two others, and the group paused at the foot of the balcony, where the judges sat. "Your name?" said the Grand Judge, to the eldest of the three. "Stenio Salvatori," said one. "Your names?" asked the Grand Judge, of the other two. "Raphael Salvatori--" "Francesco Salvatori." "You swear before God to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." "I swear," said each of them. "Do you persist in your accusation against Count Monte-Leone?" "I do," said they. "The Count," continued Francesco, "presided over the _Venta_ at Pompeia, where he was seen by my brothers and myself. In our presence he administered the oath to two of the neophytes of the society. They promised to contribute by every means in their power to the dethronement of our well-beloved sovereign Fernando IV., and to destroy monarchy forever in our country. The associates of the Count," added Raphael and Francesco, "discovered us listening to them, and our energy and strength alone preserved us from their poniards." "And my energy and strength," said Stenio, with an accent of rage, as he sprang unexpectedly from the bench on which he sat and pointed to Monte-Leone, "were able to contend with difficulty against the iron hand and poniard of this man." Then tearing up the cuff which hid his wound, he showed the judges a deep and blood-stained stab. A feeling of horror took possession of all the assembly. Every eye was fixed on Monte-Leone, who seemed unconscious of the sentiment he inspired. "The Count avenged himself on one of us, because we did our duty in denouncing him," said Francesco Salvatori. "He would have murdered us all had he been able," said Raphael. "Stenio," resumed Francesco, "has atoned for all the family." "And we ask," said Stenio, with a terrible voice, "we ask justice on the assassin! We demand it of God, the king, and the judges." The tall stature of Stenio, his pallor heightened by anger, and the bloody arm he intentionally exposed, made such an impression on the spectators that a murmur of approbation ran round the room. More numerous voices, however, soon drowned it. "Count Monte-Leone, have you prepared yourself to reply to these accusations, or have you chosen a defender?" "I have." "Name him," said the Grand Judge. "My defender is Stenio Salvatori, my accuser." Nothing could exceed the surprise caused by these words, not only in the minds of the three witnesses, but of the court and public. "Count," said the Grand Judge, solemnly, "you must remember this accusation is a solemn one; that you are accused of two crimes, the punishment of which is known to you. Such an answer testifies your small respect to this court, and must injure a cause which needs to be ably defended." "Signor," replied Monte-Leone, "it is because I recognize the great importance of the cause, that I confide to this man the duty of exonerating me from it. He alone can do so: his mouth alone, his lips, will demonstrate my innocence. Stenio Salvatori says, he saw me preside at the Venta of Pompeia." "I did," said Stenio, rising again. "He says I stabbed him at his threshold in the town of _Torre-del-Greco_." "I do," said Stenio. "You see clearly, Signori," continued the Count, speaking to the court, "that this man is establishing my case distinctly, as he saw me neither at Pompeia nor at _Torre-del-Greco_. The day on which he, his brothers, and the people of the latter town, say they saw me, I was imprisoned in a cell of the Castle _Del Uovo_, an impenetrable prison whence it is impossible for any human creature to escape, and whence none saw me go." Bravos filled the hall. The Count was triumphing. "Signori," said the Grand Judge, rising, "such applause is an insult to the court, and if it be renewed, the trial will be continued with closed doors." Silence was restored. "Do not believe him," said Stenio, turning towards the auditors and showing his bloody arm. "He was the person who wounded me." "Justice shall be done," said the Grand Judge. "Signori, a series of secret and minute inquiries instituted in the Castle _Del Uovo_, the examination of the employers of the fortress and the confronting of the gate-keeper, a man of known piety, and the head jailer, one of the most severe and incorruptible of Naples, have been unable to show how the Count Monte-Leone contrived to escape from prison. In the face of such complete evidence of his having remained in the prison, in the face of the report of the minister of police who visited the prison a few hours after the commission of the crime at _Torre-del-Greco_, we could not but recognize the innocence of the Count, and fancy that something had led to a mistake in his person. A strange and providential circumstance makes us doubt the innocence of the Count, and though the means of his escape from the castle be unknown to us, we persist in thinking him guilty as accused." The interest and emotion of the audience was as great as it could be; and the words of the Grand Judge were listened to with the most intense anxiety. At that moment three hearts almost ceased to beat--that of the veiled woman, that of the young man who had replied to her signal, and that of Count Monte-Leone, though his features were unmoved. "The Count," resumed the Grand Judge, "possesses a family jewel, a ring of immense price, one of the _chef-d'oeuvres_ of Benvenuto Cellini. This ring he rarely lays aside, as we learn from many witnesses, and a secret superstition induces him always to wear it. Did he hide it from the jailers at the time of his incarceration, or did he obtain possession of it on his way to _Torre-del-Greco_? This has not as yet been demonstrated: one thing, however, is certain, he lost this jewel in his contest with Stenio Salvatori, who, having obtained possession of it, placed it in the hands of his Excellency the Duke of Palma, as a positive and incontestable evidence of the criminality of the Count. This mute witness is here," said the Grand Judge, who as he spoke exhibited a sparkling brilliant to the audience. The judges took the emerald, and silently looked at it. When the Grand Judge first spoke of the emerald, the Count was satisfied that he was lost, and drops of icy sweat coursed down his cheeks. But yet his courage and energy, even when he saw the emerald in the hands of the judges, did not desert him, and he struggled against the new danger which had beset him in so strange and unexpected a manner. "This ring," said he, pointing to the emerald, "is a fortune in itself, and may have been stolen from me." The Grand Judge arose to reply, when an old man advanced toward the tribunal, pushing aside all who opposed his passage, and in spite of the resistance of the ushers and guards, reached the foot of the balcony on which the judges sat. With tears and an excited voice he said: "The ring has not been stolen! It has not left our jewel closet, and I have brought it to the judges." "Do not believe him," said the Salvatori, "he deceives you. This is the Count's ring." "Silence, impostors!" said the old man. "I learned yesterday, from public rumor, the story of our ring being lost by Count Monte-Leone, the intendant of whom I am, and I have brought the precious jewel hither to confound our accusers." Nothing could equal the effect produced by Giacomo's words. The court itself participated in the surprise, and the Grand Judge, making the old servant approach, took the jewel from his hand. "Two rings!" said he, amazed; "two similar emeralds! Signori," said he, speaking to the court, "this event again changes the face of this trial. One of these jewels is evidently a copy of the other, such as the hand of a great artist alone can produce. There was, however, never but one Benvenuto in the world, and it will be easy to distinguish his work." The words of the Grand Judge increased the agitation of the crowd. The Count, whom his friends thought saved, lost by the discovery of the emerald, and again restored by the testimony of Giacomo, became every moment an object of new interest and more intense curiosity. If we must use the word, pity for him increased. Every step taken seemed to bring his head nearer to or to remove it farther from the executioner. Just here this event interrupted the session of the court. The judges retired to their room, the Salvatori to the witness chamber, until the experts, whom the president had sent for, should come. The interval between the acts, however, was filled by a touching episode which deeply excited the audience. Giacomo, taking advantage of the departure of the judges, hurried to his master, fell at his knees, and covered his hand with kisses. "Go back!--go back!" said the chief of the officers to Giacomo. "No one is permitted to communicate with the accused." Adding action to words, they seized the old man by the arm, and bore him from his master. Giacomo however found time to whisper to the Count, "You are saved." The crowd was so touched by the affection of the old servant, that it was near taking sides with him against the officers who had interfered. The veiled lady stood motionless as a statue and watched the scene. So abstracted and calm did she appear, that it might have been supposed her eyes looked on while her mind was far away. Her eyes, animated by a thousand sentiments, glittered beneath her veil. The young man to whom she had made signals did not lose sight of her, and his whole soul seemed enchained to the life presence and breath of this woman. The experts came; the court resumed its sessions; the Salvatori entered. The experts were three of the most skilful lapidaries of Naples, where the art of engraving on stone had reached the greatest excellence. They approached the bar. The president said: "On your soul and conscience, and by Christ your Saviour, you swear to tell the truth." "We swear." "Tell us which of these two rings is the work of Benvenuto Cellini." "On my soul and conscience, and by Christ," said the first expert, after a careful scrutiny, "this is the work of Benvenuto Cellini." "And you, sir?" said the judge to the second. "On my soul and conscience, and by Christ, this is the work of the great master." "And this ring," said the judge, "what is it?" "This is but a copy, compared with the original, of trifling value and fineness." "Very well, Signori," said the Grand Judge, rising, and with a ring in each hand. "This ring given me yesterday by the Duke of Palma, and by him received from the Salvatori, is an imitation of Benvenuto Cellini's great work. The real ring of the Monte-Leoni, the chef-d'oeuvre, an heir-loom of the family, has just been brought us by an old servant of that noble house." The effect of the words of the Grand Judge was immense. He was silent, and with the other judges consulted about the decree. A few moments after, with his hand on his heart, the Grand Judge said: "After having carefully sought for traces of the double crime of which Count Monte-Leone is accused--after having heard the public accuser, the proof is found most incomplete. It appears that all the facts are based on the resemblance of Count Monte-Leone with some unknown person, in relation to whose identity the Salvatori were mistaken. The court declares the Count Monte-Leone innocent of the double crime imputed to him, and orders that he be immediately released. As for you, the brothers Salvatori," continued the Grand Judge, sternly, "your hatred to the Count Monte-Leone is well known. We interpret your conduct in the most favorable light, attributing it to mistake, and not to cowardly revenge. If the counterfeit ring was fabricated at your instance, to corroborate the accusations made against the Count, and justice should become possessed of proofs of it, you would have to fear its rigor and punishment. If there be severe laws for calumniators, those for assassins are yet more stern. You would in that case have murdered Count Monte-Leone." The Salvatori were amazed. The rage of Stenio was irrepressible. "Beautiful justice! Do we serve the king so faithfully for his justices to treat us thus! I repeat again," said he with an accent so terrible that it reached even Monte-Leone's heart, "the Count was at Pompeia. He stabbed me. He is an assassin!" He then left as he had entered, walking painfully, and leaning on the arms of his brothers. When Stenio Salvatori, spoke thus, the Count had withdrawn, and the noise in the hall prevented the judges from hearing him. The tumult was as great as possible in the hall, which hitherto had been so calm and silent. The public seemed to move, shout, and become clamorous, as a recompense for the constraint which had been so long enforced. The beautiful woman in the recess, who had been so long impassible and motionless, seemed to sympathize with the excited crowd, and lifting up her noble form to its full height, as the Grand Judge spoke the last words, she threw aside her veil, and lifted to heaven her eyes, full of gratitude and joy. She then looked toward Monte-Leone with an expression of the most passionate love, and immediately letting fall her veil, as if to enwrap her sentiments in night, left the room. Quickly, however, as she left, the first of the young men, whose conversation was detailed in the early part of this chapter, had time to see her, and said to his companion: "Signor, indeed you are fortunate. The lady of whom we spoke not long since, and whom you know so well, is the very spirit of beauty incarnate, she is the most magnificent woman in the world. It is _La Felina_." "You think so?" said Taddeo Rovero, who had become yet paler when the singer threw up her veil. "Yes, I think so," said the first speaker, with a smile, "and I am also sure you know so." He left. In the mean time the friends and partisans of the Count surrounded him. Among them were the chief nobles of Naples, for, as has been said before, the cause of one of the order became that of all, and Monte-Leone's success was a triumph to all the class. Amid a proud and gallant escort, the Count left the _Castello Capuano_. Scarcely had he left the door when enthusiastic cries were heard on all sides. The people, who had been in the street since dawn, waited impatiently for the result of the trial, for Monte-Leone was immensely popular. The crowd from time to time heard the various incidents of the trial from persons who had contrived to get into the hall. The rumors in favor of Monte-Leone were received with shouts of joy, and those injurious to him with cries and curses. The sentence was hailed as a priceless boon by the crowd around the _Chateau Capuano_. The people are everywhere, it is said, the same. The people of every country are doubtless impressionable and easily excited. A kind of electricity pervades large bodies, and the subtle fluid certainly is found everywhere. But among people of the south, under the burning sun which scorches their brains, the Italians, and especially the Neapolitans, in their public assemblies, attain a degree of fanaticism and exaltation, of which the people of the north have no idea. The eruptions of their own Vesuvius are the only things to which the passions of their populace can be compared. When the Count and his escort left the court-room, the people literally rushed upon them. A thousand hands, not half so seemly as those which already had clasped his own, were extended towards his. These strong and sturdy hands seemed to promise him protection in case it should be needful for him at any future time to seek it. From this crowd of men with sternly marked features, shaded by hats of gray felt, there fell on the Count's ear such words as, "_Two hands pledged in friendship are but one!_" Venta of Castel la Marc. "_A dagger for ten enemies!_" Venta of Capua. "_Our right, silence, or death!_" Venta of Annunziata. "_Eyes to watch, and a hand to strike!_" Venta of Pompeia. To which the Count replied, by the word _Speranza_, accompanied by a clasp of the hand and a significative glance. "My friends," said a penetrating voice, "for heaven's sake give him air. The poor man has need of air. We know you love him. He is the friend of the people of Naples, all know, but he should not on that account be stifled. By the miracle of San Januarius restore him to me, restore my master to me, you may have him soon, but now he needs the care of old Giacomo." Giacomo took the Count's arm, and sought to remove him from the crowd which surrounded him. The Count paid no attention to the old intendant. For a time, he strove almost to cast him off, and stood looking anxiously at a person he saw in the crowd, and whom like a swimmer he sought to approach. This person was his friend Taddeo Rovero. The young man sought in vain to approach the Count. The tide of living beings seconded their wishes, and at last they rushed into the arms of each other, forgetting, while thus enlocked, the world, their secret thoughts, the past, and the present, and mingling together the tears of friendship. "Air, day, sunlight, motion, life, life itself I have found. They woke up our existence; a dungeon is death--" Again he threw himself into the arms of Taddeo, with an expression of tenderness and happiness. "Adieu, my friends," said he to the crowd. "Count Monte-Leone will never forget these proofs of your sympathy, and you may rely on him, his arm, his heart, his fortune, as he does on you." Taking Taddeo by the arm, he hurried into a neighboring street, accompanied at a little distance by Giacomo, who, as he panted after them, cried out, "Too fast, too fast--what the devil can I do? My legs are worn out--remember I came from the villa to _la Vicaria_ on foot to bring your ring to the Grand Judge." "My ring!"--then looking anxiously at Giacomo, and in a low tone, he said: "Are you sure it is my ring?" "Yes, I swear to it by the blood of Christ and by your life." "My friends," said the Count, "we have strange secrets to talk of when we are in a safe place. And there the ear and lip must be close together, so that not even the walls of the room in which we are shall be struck by the sound of our accents. Wait for me at the Etruscan villa. In two hours I will rejoin you." "Why not go thither now?" asked Taddeo. "Two hours hence I will tell you." Without speaking a word, and without listening to Rovero's reply, Monte-Leone put on a cloak the old intendant had brought and passed into a labyrinth of passages, with the intricate windings of which his political associations had made him familiar. An hour after the Count so brusquely left Taddeo and the old intendant, he paused at the door of one of the most ancient churches in Naples, an old pile, built in 1284, and called _San Domenico Maggiore_. It is of vast size, built in the Gothic style, and has a magnificent picture of Titiano, the Flagellation of Caravaggio, and in the sacristy a glory by Solimené. But not to contemplate them had Monte-Leone come to the church. A deeply-rooted sentiment forced him, for a few moments, to pause beneath the old portico before he entered the sanctuary. Nothing is more touching, more poetical, and more mysterious, than the old Christian temples, which like giants of stone have braved the ravages of time and the hands of men. Generations, as they pass away, worship beneath their arches, and the prayers of many centuries have echoed in their walls, which are yet open to coming time. The deep notes of the organ attracted the attention of Monte-Leone and increased his excitement. He crossed the church, went down the nave, and approached a lateral chapel where a taper was burning with a flickering light. The Count entered the chapel. Those who had seen him amid the brilliant society of Naples, or amid the awful judicial ordeal to which he had just been subjected, and which he had undergone with such coolness and audacity, would not have recognized the humble and trembling man, who knelt before a sarcophagus of black marble surmounted with the coronet and arms of the Monte-Leoni. The Count knelt at the tomb of his father--his father, who was his religion and his faith. He would have thought himself unworthy of his protection had he not gone immediately on his release to worship those consecrated relics. Prostrate at the monument he prayed with fervor. All the recent events of his life occurred to him. And in the kind of hallucination caused by prolonged meditation, awake as he was, he entered the realm of dreams. He seemed to see two genii seeking, the one to drag him towards heaven and the other towards the abyss. The genii were two females. They recalled the features of two charming and beautiful women, whom he remembered. One had the gentle and pale expression of Aminta; the other, the more masculine and stately air of La Felina. The one which led him heavenward was Aminta. The sound of the organ, the mysterious light which pervaded the chapel, the religious effect of the whole scene, exaggerated the excitement of the Count, and contributed to add to his nervousness. Two mild melancholy voices, like those of angels praying for the guilty, mingled with the organ's notes, and Monte-Leone fancied that he heard in the distance the voices of departed souls. The blood of Monte-Leone became chilled, for at that moment he asked his father to reveal to him the future, and guide him in his perilous path. The song of the dead seemed to reply to him. The Count, like other energetic and brave men, like Cæsar and Napoleon, was very superstitious. We have seen him brave death without trembling, though it came in the most terrible form. He who had struggled against the waves of the sea, and confronted the Grand Judge of Naples, grew pale when he heard the _de profundis_ chanted in an obscure church and by the side of a tomb. By a strange fatality, nothing seemed wanting which could increase the sadness of Monte-Leone. Just as he was about to leave the church the solitary light was extinguished. The young man fancied this accident a declaration of the will of God. Terror-stricken, he left the church, and did not regain his consciousness until he stood in the portico of the old temple. In a few moments he shook off his idle apprehensions, but the sombre scene perpetually reacted upon him, as we shall see hereafter. It left a deep trace upon his mind, and materially influenced his subsequent life. Two hours after he left the church, the Count rode on the horse of one of his friends to the Etruscan villa, which, as we have said, was on the road to Castel la Marc. Giacomo was waiting at the door for him, and taking a resinous torch, lighted his master to the strange room which we described in the first part of this book. Things remained precisely as they were on the night of the ball of San Carlo. The lights were burning, the hangings displayed their richness, the Greek and Roman couches were arrayed, and a magnificent supper was prepared. There were, however, but two covers, one for the Count and the other for young Rovero. By the side of the Count's plate lay the emerald of Benvenuto, of which he had so miraculously regained possession. "It is the emerald," said the Count. "Who brought it hither?" "An officer of the court, from Signor San Angelo, the Grand Judge of Naples." Monte-Leone looked at it again, and said, "It is one of God's own miracles." "Not so," said Rovero, "it is one of Love's own;" and he gave the Count the letter of La Felina. VI.--DRAMA. While the trial of Count Monte-Leone thus excited the whole city of Naples, while Rovero under the influence of a thousand emotions heard all its details, let us look back to what is going on in the villa at Sorrento. The reader will excuse us, for thus transporting him from place to place, for attempting to interest him in behalf of various personages, joining or deserting them, as the plan of our story requires. The novelist is like the weaver, who keeps in his hand the various threads of his woof, brings them together and apart, until the time when his finished work rewards his toil. Like the weaver, we shall unite, day by day, our threads, and gather them finally into one knot. We left the Marquis of Maulear about to return to the villa, in search of assistance for Scorpione, who had fainted. When people came to the hut, the mute had regained his senses. He knelt before Aminta, who spoke to him with vivacity. What she said we cannot tell, for when she was interrupted she ceased. The eyes of Tonio were red, and he seemed to have been shedding tears. The invalid was taken to the villa, and so the matter seemed to end. Maulear was not much engrossed by the suspicions he had previously conceived of Tonio, because love for Aminta, supposing that such he bore, did not seem formidable. His apprehensions found something far more serious. Was the heart of her he loved unoccupied? The strange episode of the lost veil had not yet been explained. Yielding to the influence of passion, he had, when he saw the young girl, forgotten every thing, and the sudden appearance of Scorpione, by rendering it impossible for Aminta to answer him, complicated the matter yet more. Just as Signora Rovero went towards the hut, where the Marquis had left the mute in a state of insensibility, Aminta went to the villa, preceding those who bore Tonio. "I will not again trust you with our patient," said Aminta's mother. "He always returns worse than when he goes." "Right mother," said Aminta, "henceforth I will not take charge of Tonio, for his new sufferings have, I am sure, taken away the little sense he previously had." Tonio, who heard what Aminta said, looked down and returned to his room, glooming angrily at the Marquis as he passed. "You are already one of us, Marquis, on account of the indiscreet request of my son. But neither my daughter nor myself will complain of the pleasure he has thus procured us. Now," continued she, "permit me to show you the most precious treasure in our house." Leading Maulear to a little boudoir, next her chamber, she drew aside a curtain of black velvet, and exposed a noble portrait of a man the size of life. "That is the portrait of my husband, of Aminta's father; of a loyal and respected man, of an honest and influential minister." Maulear was amazed at the appearance of the picture. The more he examined it the more the features seemed to recall some one he had seen before. His memory, however, was at fault, and left him in uncertainty. "Strange," said he, to the widow of the minister. "It seems that I have seen these features before. How can it be, though, that I ever met Signor Rovero?" "My husband has been dead two years, and was never in France." "And I have been but six months in Italy. It is then impossible that we ever met. The matter is surprising." They returned to the drawing-room, where Maulear found the White Rose of Sorrento either drawing or pretending to draw, as a means of concealing her annoyance. "Excuse me," said Signora Rovero to Maulear, "if I leave you for a time with my daughter. I have some domestic matters to attend to, for Aminta's birthday will in a few days be here, when we purpose a ball." "A ball?" said Maulear. "A ball; and Aminta and some of her young companions will compose the orchestra. You, Marquis, will not, however, be forced to be present, for my son had no intention to annoy you thus. It is enough for you to protect us, but to dance would be too great a requisition." "Is it, then, the Signorina's birthday?" "Yes, or rather it is the birthday of my happiness. Thus it ever is with mothers." "It will then be mine also," said Maulear. "I am sorry her brother cannot be present." "Taddeo is fond of us," said the young girl in a low tone, with her eyes downcast on her embroidery. "But he does not love us alone." Aminta sighed with jealousy--and Signora Rovero left the room. Maulear drew near Aminta. "Signorina," said he, with emotion, "just now I opened my heart to you. Will you punish me by silence, and not deign to tell me what I may fear or hope?" "Signor," said Aminta, "perhaps I am wrong to reply to you. Perhaps I should ask you, in the first place, to speak to my mother of the sentiments you entertain for me. But I will be frank with you. Our first interview, my gratitude, my sincere esteem, control me. Besides, as you have been informed, my education has not been that usual to my sex. I will therefore describe to you my girlish ideas such us they are, such as my early education inspired me with, such as reflection has developed." Maulear looked at her with great wonder. Where he had expected surprise and embarrassment, he found calmness and reason. Still, the voice in which these serious words were pronounced had, however, so great an attraction and such melody, that the Marquis began again to hope. "Different from most young persons of my age," said Aminta, "I am happy in my present condition, contented with my mother and brother. I have often inquired what qualities I would expect in my husband, and," said she with a smile, "I have found them. Perhaps those qualities are defects; for they must be my own I assure you. I have been so petted that I can conceive of no happiness except in finding myself, with my imperfections, ideas, and sentiments, mirrored in another." "Then," said the Marquis, "no one can expect to please you, for who can be like you, and be as precious as you are?" "That may be an easier thing than you fancy," said Aminta, gayly. "Hitherto I have, however, been unfortunate, for my suitors have been so superior that their merit terrified me. I was afraid of the talents of one, and of the mind of another. Besides, Marquis, let me tell you, that I am a little foolish and exaggerated. I think there are two existences in me, the one awake, and the other asleep. In the latter, there pass such fancies before me, that I am often frightened at them. I sometimes see the drama of life unrolled before me.--I am married and unhappy--strange scenes take place around me, and he to whom my fate has been confided, makes it sad and dreary as possible;--I am humiliated, outraged, and betrayed, and am, too, so much afraid of marriage, that I think I would refuse the hand of an angel were it offered me." As she spoke, Aminta's features became sad, and her eyes glittered with a sombre fire, like that of the Pythoness announcing the Delphic oracle. Maulear was silent, and for a few moments said nothing. In the mean time the young girl regained her presence of mind, and, ashamed of her enthusiasm, sought to apologize for it. "You will," said she, "laugh at my ridiculous whims. What, however, do you expect of a poor child, raised like myself in solitude, uncultivated, and from character and taste a dreamer? Such a creature must indeed be strange to a Parisian. Perhaps, though you do not wish me thus to speak to you, such a creature has made a deeper impression on your imagination than on your heart. The terrible circumstances of our meeting also, the romantic origin of our acquaintance, may lead you into error in relation to sentiments which perhaps would be impotent, both against the enticements of the world and against absence." "Ah!" said Maulear, with chagrin, "if those sentiments were shared--if he who experiences them were not indifferent to you, you, Signorina, would have confidence in them." "I desire nothing better than to be satisfied that such is the case," said she, with charming naïvete. "Time, however, is required for that, and we have been acquainted only for a few days." "Are years then required for us to love?" said Maulear. "For that a word, a look, suffice." "In France, perhaps," replied Aminta; "in your brilliant saloons, with your gay countrymen, where all is so lively and spontaneous. Here though, in a modest villa, hidden by the orange trees of Sorrento, a young girl's heart is not disposed of so easily." "Yes!" said Maulear, "our hearts are lost when we behold you." "Marquis," said Aminta, "I do not know what the future reserves for us; I however repeat that I will always be sincere with you. Do not to-day ask me what I cannot give." "What can you give me?" said Maulear in despair. "Hope," said Aminta, with a blush, "that is all--" Signora Rovero entered. Rejection and obstacles could not but surprise a man used as Maulear was to rapid triumphs and easy conquests. He was now seriously in love, and passion had become a link of his life. Suffering as he was from the uncertainty to which the reply of Aminta subjected him, he could not but admire her prudence and modest reserve, which, as it were, placed her heart beneath the ægis of reason. Besides, if, as Madame de Stael says, the last idea of a woman is always centred in the last word she utters, Aminta, by what she had last said, had delighted Maulear. She had said "_Hope_." During the next day and the next day after, Signora Rovero and her daughter increased their attention to Maulear, lest he should become weary of their solitude. This solitude to Maulear was elysium. A pleasant intimacy grew up between Aminta and the Marquis, every hour revealing a new grace to him, as he fancied the hour drew near when the ice of her heart would melt, and she would find an image of her sentiments in him. One circumstance, however, troubled Maulear, and aroused his jealousy. Towards the end of the second day, he sat in the saloon, leaning on his elbow, and looking with admiration through one of the windows at the purple and magnificent Italian sun. Aminta did not know that Maulear was in the saloon, and when she came in did not see him. She had a letter in her hand. "_From him_," said she, as she hastily unsealed it; "what does he say? _Dear_ Gaetano, he has not forgotten me." At the name Gaetano, Maulear turned around quickly, and under the influence of much emotion, stood before her. She seemed a little surprised and disconcerted, and hid the letter in her bosom. The words died away on the Marquis's lips, and he asked no question. His original distrust returned, and he resolved to watch. On that evening Maulear was less gay and less entertaining than he had been on the previous one. He observed that Aminta too was thoughtful. She has been unable, said he, to read her letter, and that is the cause of her uneasiness. For a few moments the young girl left the room, in which her mother and Maulear were. She is reading the mysterious letter, said he to himself. Just then it chanced that Signora Rovero spoke of Gaetano Brignoli, to whom she paid the greatest compliments. Aminta returned with an expression altogether changed. Her face was lit up with joy, as expressive and animated as the tedium and thoughtfulness which marked it had been profound. Maulear did not sympathize with her gayety, and she became every moment more moody and sombre. Under the pretext of a headache, he retired to his room. New thoughts assailed him. He looked out on the terrace where he had seen the unknown form. He took the lace veil and examined it as if he now saw it for the first time. Men are often cruel to themselves, and find a secret pleasure in turning the knife in the wound, and making their suffering severe as possible. To tell the truth, when he thought of his conversation with Aminta, and analyzed its phases, he was led by its elevation and frankness to blush at his suspicions. After all, said he, the letter she received from Gaetano is perhaps only a child's-play between them. It is but a secret between brother and sister, such as often exists, and to which it is foolish to attach any importance. Amid this excitement, sleep overtook him, harassed as he was between hope and fear, good and evil. The next day was Aminta's birthday. All in Signora Rovero's villa were joyous. The gates of the garden were opened, and all were gathering flowers. The young girls of Sorrento soon came to the villa, and offered a magnificent chaplet of roses to _the White Rose_ of Sorrento. The Marquis of Maulear added his congratulations to the others offered to Aminta. An air of embarrassment, however, was evident in every remark, and he could not forget the letter. Suddenly he saw Tonio. He was approaching Aminta, who, when she saw him, hurried to meet him. "Tonio, poor Tonio," said she, "my faithful companion and generous preserver, have you also come to congratulate me on my birthday? You have not forgotten me, but are come to say how you love me. You know how grateful I am." Two tears fell on the mute's brow which was humbled before her. Tonio looked up, and his eyes expressed the languishing tenderness of which we have hitherto spoken. One might read, in his glance, the effect of that magnetic fascination exercised over him by Aminta. He seized her hand, and kissed it so passionately that Aminta withdrew it at once. She however veiled her action with a smile. "Since," said she, "you are so well, my mother and I wish you henceforth to be at liberty, and that you should have no domestic duty. You shall be our chasseur, and supply us with game--for that is the only thing in which you take pleasure." A feeling of pride was legible on Tonio's features. He took Aminta's hand again, and, as a token of gratitude, placed it on his heart. He then looked proudly around on the peasants and servants, and finally mingled with the crowd. The day advanced, and the guests of Signora Rovero came to the villa. Count Brignoli and Gaetano were not the last. Maulear could not restrain an expression of mortification when he saw the latter, who, however, looking on him as a family friend, treated him most cordially and affectionately. Maulear at dinner sat next to the Signora Rovero. He would have preferred the one usually given him, next to Aminta. He had, however, one consolation. Aminta, seated at a distance from Gaetano, could not maintain one of those private conversations with young Brignoli, which made him so unhappy. Often during the meal he fancied that he saw certain signals of intelligence between the young people, who had not yet been able to speak together alone. What however had been a doubt became a certainty when he saw Gaetano point to the garden, and Aminta by a gesture of assent reply to him. He had no doubt there was an understanding between Gaetano and Aminta. He knew their rendezvous. From that time Maulear did not lose sight of them, and he suffered every torture jealousy can inflict. The shock he received at the discovery was so great, that he was unable even to reflect. He did not become offended at the perfidy of Aminta, but was rather distressed by suffering, which was as great in the physical point of view as it was in the moral. Reason only returned with reflection. About nine o'clock the ball commenced. At the instance of Aminta, two of her young friends went to the piano, and Aminta, taking advantage of certain orders she had to give, left the room. Gaetano had already gone. The Marquis followed her. For a second he heard the light step, which passed down the gallery, pause. The door of the vestibule however was opened, and pointed out the route she had taken. He was afraid by opening the door of betraying his presence, and therefore went into the garden by another direction, and making a short detour, soon was able to follow the direction he had seen Aminta take. Passing beneath a group of trees which was near the house, Maulear, with an attentive ear, followed stealthily as a deer the steps of the couple he tracked--though he could not see. A demon had taken possession of Maulear's heart, and enkindled it with rage. Certainly, within a few paces from him he heard a voice. It was Aminta's. Another voice answered. It was Gaetano's. "How I love you, dear Gaetano, for what you have told me." "And how happy I am in your pleasure--" "All then is understood?" said Aminta. "All." "We understand each other, and you will hide nothing from me?" "Nothing." "Your letter," said the young girl, "made me mad with joy." "Dear Aminta--" "Unless, indeed, my mother find out our secrets--" "Fear not--the secret will be kept--tonight--" "Yes, yes, to-night, certainly--" "Rely then on me," said Gaetano. Maulear heard a kiss. It struck on his ear like a dagger, and gave him such pain, that a sigh burst from his lips. "Some one overheard us," said Gaetano, "Go, go." Aminta immediately disappeared. Before Gaetano had time to distinguish Maulear in his place of concealment, the latter, become aware of the ridiculous part he was playing, hid himself in the thicket, and with his hair dishevelled, his features distorted, and his heart distressed, hurried to the house and shut himself up in his own room. His despair was indeed great; he fancied he had been laughed at by a coquette, while he thought he had been the suitor of an innocent girl. Why did she not tell me the truth yesterday, when I asked her? said he. Why did she not avow her love of young Brignoli? She dared not confide it to me; because she makes a mystery of it to her own mother. Why did she encourage me? Why did she speak of hope? What unworthy plan, what improper calculation influenced her? What part did she intend me to play in this drama of treason? The old idea of Maulear--that sad fancy that women are only to be despised, and which he had conceived from women only worthy of that estimate--took possession of him. He could not believe he was a victim of mistake, or that the scene he had witnessed had any other motives than guilty ones. Of what else could Gaetano and Aminta speak, than love? An hour afterwards, Maulear returned to the drawing-room. His toilette was irreproachable, and his face, though pale, was calm. One would never have recognized in this elegant gentleman, so calm and dignified, the person who, an hour before, had heard with such excitement the conversation we have just described. Maulear had reflected, and as soon as his first anger had passed away, had nearly conceived an aversion for the young girl, whom he had almost adored the evening before. Revenge, too, would be sweet. To accomplish this, calmness, coldness, deliberation were required. The excitement of the evening prevented the absence of the actors in this scene from having been remarked; besides it was a ball for young people, at which men of Maulear's age even were not expected to dance. Gaetano, who was only eighteen, was the true Coryphoeus. Maulear approached Aminta in the interval between two waltzes. "You have a pleasant anniversary of your birthday," said he. "A delicious one, Signor, I was never so happy." At any other time the answer of Aminta would have delighted Maulear; now he fancied she alluded to her love for Gaetano. This idea increased his anger. Midnight came, and those of the guests who lived at a distance remained at the villa: the others left. All soon became calm, and the house quiet. One man alone watched, for his bosom was irritated by the most exciting thoughts; by anger, despair, and jealousy. He was awake, and wept bitterly over a passion, which it is true had existed but a few days, but yet had taken deep root in his heart. He was awake, and was indignant at the affront put on him. He was awake, for he had sworn to be avenged. Thinking that he understood the meaning of Gaetano's words, he did not doubt but that they had made a _rendezvous_ for that very night. This rendezvous was not the first, for Maulear knew the secret of the veil he had found on the terrace on the first night he had passed at Sorrento. The veil belonged to Aminta, and the flitting shadow he had seen was the lady's self. Her accomplice was Gaetano. How could he doubt? Interrupted in their first intercourse by Maulear, they expected on another occasion to be more fortunate. No, cried he, that shall not be, they will find me between themselves and happiness. I wish them to at least learn, that I am not their dupe. I will cover her snowy brow with a blush, and avenge myself by disclosing to her my knowledge of her secret. But how could he surprise them? Would they dare to cross the terrace again? Perhaps, though, they can meet nowhere else. If so, they will brave every thing, and in that case I must not alarm them. The Marquis took the taper, which lighted his chamber, and placed it in a back room, which opened on the interior corridor of the house. Carefully opening the terrace window, he took refuge behind a group of trees, exactly opposite his room. The clock of Sorrento struck three--the night was clear and brilliant, and the sky was strewn with diamond stars--the air was soft and warm. It was a night for love and lovers. To Maulear it was a night of agony and torture. All around was so calm and tranquil that the slightest noise fell on his ear,--he soon heard a door open. Maulear fixed his eyes on the point of the terrace from which the sound proceeded--his whole existence seemed concentrated in the single sense of sight. Something cloudlike, vapory and undefinable, which seemed too ethereal for earth, gradually appeared at the extreme end of the terrace. This mysterious figure seemed to glide, rather than walk, towards the place where Maulear was concealed; it approached him slowly, without motion or sound to betray its steps. Wrapped in long white drapery, like a mantle of vapor, resembling those creations of Ossian which formed often the clouds of evening; in short, one might have believed that she had risen from the earth, and had come to dissolve under the first rays of the sun, or of the moon. The phantom disappeared for a few seconds, amidst a dark grove, which projected on the terrace the lofty trunks of large forest trees--but when she emerged from their shade, and re-entered that portion of the terrace light and brilliant, she approached so near to Maulear, that he was enabled to examine and recognize her. This graceful and vapory phantom was Aminta. Maulear expected it, but he felt not the less a distressing grief, in thus recognizing her. It seemed to him that the last plank of the wreck had broken under his feet, and that he had fallen into the depth of despair. But soon anger smothered the last cry of a love now no longer felt--and Maulear rushed in pursuit of Aminta, when he saw her, to his great surprise, stop before the window of his apartment. Then reaching out her hand she pushed open the door and entered the room, which was partially lighted by the moon. "What is she doing," said Maulear, with amazement, "what business has she in this room?" An idea struck him. My presentiment did not deceive me. The first time she appeared on this terrace, she was coming to this room which was once occupied by her lover Gaetano. Crossing the terrace rapidly, he glided near the window with rage in his heart and his mind excited--for a guilty project, which he would had he been cooler have repelled, attacked him, with all its seductions. Without longer hesitation he returned to his room, shut the terrace door, and looked in the dark for Aminta. Aminta, however, sat at a window which the moon did not light, and which opened on the court of the villa. She seemed to listen anxiously to some distant noise, perceptible only to her ear. So great was her preoccupation that she paid no attention to Maulear's entrance. Surprised at this statue-like immobility, Maulear approached the young girl. "Silence, Marietta," said she, without looking around, "I promised to see him go. He has kept his word, for I yet hear, in the distance, the gallop of his horse. Bring the light and place it in the window. He knows my room, in which we played so often when we were children, and far down the road he will see it burning. My remembering him will please him. He will see that, if he watches over me, I pray for him to bring me good news to-morrow--Gaetano is so kind." "Gaetano!" said Maulear, in spite of himself. "Yes--yes, Gaetano," continued the young girl, "will watch over Taddeo during this unfortunate trial, for I know all. But say nothing, Marietta. Poor Taddeo--Gaetano has told me. His letter, yesterday, comforted me. Taddeo is no longer compromised. Gaetano assured me. But this evening in the park he confirmed all, and has promised to go to Naples to be present at the trial." Aminta at once became silent, and sitting in an arm-chair near the window, appeared to sleep soundly, for the noise of her breathing was alone heard. Maulear, erect, motionless, with an icy brow, neither saw nor heard. A thousand confused ideas filled his mind. A revelation, strange and unforeseen, put an end to his suffering and dissipated his fears, by exhibiting the incomprehensible mystery under which he had been. Aminta was sleeping. Her sleep was of that somnambulist character, so common in this country of moral and physical excitement. While dreaming, Aminta had told and taught him every thing. She was innocent and pure. Yet in doubt, hesitating as the victim does, who when he marches to punishment receives a pardon, wishing to convince himself of the reality of all that passed, he went into the next room and came out with the light. Directing the rays obliquely so that they fell on the downcast lids of Aminta, he placed the lamp at some distance from her, and saw what till then no man had ever seen. He saw this beautiful creature in a night _negligé_, enveloped by clouds of white drapery, which a troubled sleep had gracefully disarranged. He saw a charming childlike foot half out of the slipper, glistening silvery in the light. A prey at once to the greatest agitation and repentance at having suspected her, Maulear fell on his knees. The motion thus made or some other circumstance aroused her. "Where am I?" said she, looking uncertainly around her; seeing Maulear at her feet, she continued: "A man here--with me--in my room--" She sought to rise, but being yet under the influence of the half sleep, sank again on her chair. "Be silent, Signorina!" said Maulear, in a low tone. "You! you! Signor," said Aminta, recognizing him and drawing back with terror. "You at my feet, at night, for all is dark around us, and the light is burning. But where am I? this room--it is the one in which I promised Gaetano to place the light." Passing her hand across her brow, to collect her ideas and wipe away her doubts, she said: "But this is not my room. I occupy one next to my mother.... Ah, I remember; it was mine once, but it was given to the Marquis, to you," said she, blushing. She arose. "And this night-dress," said she, looking at her disordered toilette, "in your presence--Signor," added she, clasping her hands, "by your honor, I beseech you, tell me how I came hither." "When you slept," said the Marquis, seeking to calm her. "As I slept?" repeated the young girl, "as I dreamed.--Ah, I see, this sleep, this waking sleep to which I am often liable. Ah! mother, mother, why did you not watch me?" Concealing her face in her hands, she began to shed tears. "Of what, Signorina, are you afraid? You are under the protection of my faith, honor, and love." "Signor, I am lost if any one finds me here. Let me return," said she, attempting to go. Just then a horrible cry was uttered out of doors. A mingling of the lion's roar and wolf's howl, a very jackal's yell. It echoed through the villa, and was repeated by all the groves and dells of Sorrento. It was uttered on the terrace. Thither Aminta and Maulear looked, and saw a hideous spectacle. The face of Scorpione, pale, and denoting both ill-temper and sickness, was pressed against the closed window. He moved to and fro, now rising up and then descending, as if he sought some means to open the window and enter the room. His eyes, rendered more glittering by hatred, cast glances of vengeance on Aminta and Maulear. His long wiry fingers passed rapidly across the glass, which was the only object that separated them. Aminta yielding to terror, caused by the sight of the monster, without any calculation or regard of any thing except the violence of Scorpione, rushed into Maulear's arms in search of protection and aid. "Right, right," said Maulear, "no danger shall befall you while enfolded in these arms." Taking her then towards the door of the corridor, he said: "Come, come, no danger can befall you here." Scorpione, however, perceiving what Maulear was about to do, and seeing him going towards the door, uttered a second cry more terrible than the first. He broke the glass, and sought to reach the clasp which made the window fast. In the mean time, Maulear had reached the other door, and was about to escape. He, however, heard steps hurrying from every direction down the corridor. The cries of Scorpione had awakened all the house, and just as the wretch tore open the window and precipitated himself into the chamber, relations, friends and guests of the house, who had collected on the terrace and corridor, rushed in with him. Signora Rovero was the last to come. "My daughter!" cried she, running towards Aminta. The poor tearful mother, not accusing that child whom her heart told her was innocent, without anger on her lip or reproach in her eye, sought only to shroud Aminta's form in the garments which scarcely sufficed to cover it, and in a calm and confiding voice listened to the explanations of Maulear. The collection of all of these people, aroused from their sleep and grouped in the half-lighted room, was a strange picture;--Signora Rovero holding her daughter in her arms, Maulear with his hand lifted to heaven and protesting that Aminta was innocent, Scorpione with his hands blood-stained by the broken glass, his hair disheveled, his looks haggard, and his violence restrained by the servants, who kept the beast from rushing on the Marquis. "Signora," said Maulear, speaking to Aminta's mother, "on my life and honor, I declare to you that this young woman came hither without her own consent, and led by a blind chance." Maulear was about to continue, when Aminta recovering her energy, said with a voice full of emotion, but in a tone instinct with a pure and chaste heart: "You need not defend me, Marquis; it is useless to repel suspicion from me. A young woman of my character and name, the daughter of the Rovero, need not justify herself from the imputation of a crime, which she would die rather than commit." She could say no more, for her strength was exhausted, and the power of her mind had consumed the artificial and nervous capacity of her body, which was greatly overtasked. Aminta was ill. With her beautiful head resting on her mother's shoulder, she was taken to her room. All withdrew in silence. On the features of some, however, especially of the young men whom Aminta had rejected, an incredulousness of such virtue might have been read. It was hard to conceive how she came to be at midnight in the room of the Marquis of Maulear. END OF BOOK III. FOOTNOTES: [18] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by Stringer & Townsend, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. From Chambers' Papers for the People. PUBLIC LIBRARIES. We welcome the indications, now crowding upon us from every quarter, that the people of this country are beginning to feel the importance of taking active measures for the establishment and increase of public libraries. Large collections of books, open for common use, are at once the storehouses and the manufactories of learning and science; they bring together the accumulated fruits of the experience, the research, and the genius of other ages and distant nations, as well as of our own time and land; and they create the taste, as well as furnish the indispensable aids for the prosecution of literary and scientific effort in every department. In great cities they qualify the exclusive spirit of commercial and professional avocations, and encourage men to steal an hour from the pursuit of gain, and devote it to the attempt to satisfy a natural curiosity and to cultivate an elegant taste. Connected with literary and academical institutions, they supply the means and multiply the objects of study, and keep alive that enthusiasm in the cause of letters without which nothing great or permanent can ever be accomplished. Their establishment is a boon to all classes of society, and all may find in them both recreation and employment; for as the poet Crabbe says:-- "Here come the grieved, a change of thought to find;-- The curious here to feed a craving mind; Here the devout their peaceful temple choose; And here the poet meets his favoring muse." The origin of libraries is involved in obscurity. According to some, the distinction of having first made collections of writings belongs to the Hebrews; but others ascribe this honor to the Egyptians. Osymandyas, one of the ancient kings of Egypt, who flourished some 600 years after the deluge, is said to have been the first who founded a library. The temple in which he kept his books was dedicated at once to religion and literature, and placed under the especial protection of the divinities, with whose statues it was magnificently adorned. It was still further embellished by a well-known inscription, for ever grateful to the votary of literature: on the entrance was engraven, "The nourishment of the soul," or, according to Diodorus, "The medicine of the mind." It probably contained works of very remote antiquity, and also the books accounted sacred by the Egyptians, all of which perished amidst the destructive ravages which accompanied and followed the Persian invasion under Cambyses. There was also, according to Eustathius and other ancient authors, a fine library at Memphis, deposited in the Temple of Phtha, from which Homer has been accused of having stolen both the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," and afterwards published them as his own. From this charge, however, the bard has been vindicated by various writers, and by different arguments. But the most superb library of Egypt, perhaps of the ancient world, was that of Alexandria. About the year 290 B. C., Ptolemy Soter, a learned prince, founded an academy at Alexandria called the Museum, where there assembled a society of learned men, devoted to the study of philosophy and the sciences, and for whose use he formed a collection of books, the number of which has been variously computed--by Epiphanius at 54,000, and by Josephus at 200,000. His son, Ptolemy Philadelphus, an equally liberal and enlightened prince, collected great numbers of books in the Temple of Serapis, in addition to those accumulated by his father, and at his death left in it upwards of 100,000 volumes. He had agents in every part of Asia and of Greece, commissioned to search out and purchase the rarest and most valuable writings; and among those he procured were the works of Aristotle, and the Septuagint version of the Jewish Scriptures, which was undertaken at the suggestion of Demetrius Phalerius, his first librarian. The measures adopted by this monarch for augmenting the Alexandrian Library were pursued by his successor, Ptolemy Euergetes, with unscrupulous vigor. He caused all books imported into Egypt by Greeks or other foreigners to be seized and sent to the Museum, where they were transcribed by persons employed for the purpose; and when this was done, the copies were delivered to the proprietors, and the originals deposited in the library. He refused to supply the famished Athenians with corn until they presented him with the original manuscripts of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and in returning elegant copies of these autographs, he allowed the owners to retain the fifteen talents (more than £3000 sterling) which he had pledged with them as a princely security. As the Museum, where the library was originally founded, stood near the royal palace, in that quarter of the city called Brucheion, all writings were at first deposited there; but when this building had been completely occupied with books, to the number of 400,000, a supplemental library was erected within the Serapeion, or Temple of Serapis, and this gradually increased till it contained about 300,000 volumes--making in both libraries a grand total of 700,000 volumes. The Alexandrian Library continued in all its splendor until the first Alexandrian war, when, during the plunder of the city, the Brucheion portion of the collection was accidentally destroyed by fire, owing to the recklessness in the auxiliary troops. But the library of the Serapeion still remained, and was augmented by subsequent donations, particularly by that of the Pergamean Library of 200,000 volumes,[19] presented by Mark Antony to Cleopatra, so that it soon equalled the former, both in the number and in the value of its contents. At length, after various revolutions under the Roman Emperors, during which the collection was sometimes plundered and sometimes reëstablished, it was utterly destroyed by the Saracens at the command of the Caliph Omar, when they acquired possession of Alexandria in A. D. 642. Amrou, the victorious general, was himself inclined to spare this inestimable treasury of ancient science and learning, but the ignorant and fanatical caliph, to whom he applied for instructions, ordered it to be destroyed. "If," said he, "these writings of the Greeks agree with the Koran, they are useless, and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed." The sentence of destruction was executed with blind obedience. The volumes of parchment or papyrus were distributed as fuel among the five thousand baths of the city; but such was their incredible number, that it took six months to consume them. This act of barbarism, recorded by Abulpharagius, is considered somewhat doubtful by Gibbon, in consequence of its not being mentioned by Eutychius and Almacin, two of the most ancient chroniclers. It seems inconsistent, too, with the character of Amrou, as a poet and a man of superior intelligence; but that the Alexandrian Library was thus destroyed is a fact generally credited, and deeply deplored by historians. Amrou, as a man of genius and learning, may have grieved at the order of the caliph, while, as a loyal subject and faithful soldier, he felt bound to obey. Among the Greeks, as among other nations, the first library consisted merely of archives, deposited, for the sake of preservation, in the temples of the gods. Pisistratus, the tyrant of Athens, was the first who established a public library in his native city, which, we need not say, always took the lead in every thing relating to science and literature in Greece. Here he deposited the works of Homer, which he had collected together with great difficulty and at a very considerable expense; and the Athenians themselves were at much pains to increase the collection. The fortunes of this library were various and singular. It was transported to Persia by Xerxes, brought back by Seleucus Nicator, plundered by Sylla, and at last restored by the Emperor Hadrian. On the invasion of the Roman Empire by the Goths, Greece was ravaged; and on the sack of Athens, they had collected all the libraries, and were upon the point of setting fire to this funeral pile of ancient learning, when one of their chiefs interposed, and dissuaded them from their design, observing, at the same time, that as long as the Greeks were addicted to the study of books, they would never apply themselves to that of arms. The first library established at Rome was that founded by Paulus Emilius, in the year B. C. 167. Having subdued Perses, king of Macedonia, he enriched the city of Rome with the library of the conquered monarch, which was subsequently augmented by Sylla. On his return from Asia, where he had successfully terminated the first war against Mithridates, Sylla visited Athens, whence he took with him the library of Apellicon the Teian, in which were the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus. Lucullus, another conqueror of Mithridates, was not less distinguished by his taste for books. The number of volumes in his library was immense, and they were written in the most distinct and elegant manner. But the use which he made of his collection was still more honorable to that princely Roman than the acquisition or possession of it. "It was a library," says Plutarch, "whose walls, galleries, and cabinets were open to all visitors; and the ingenious Greeks, when at leisure, resorted to this abode of the Muses, to hold literary conversations, in which Lucullus himself loved to join." But although both Sylla and Lucullus liberally gave public access to their literary treasures, still their libraries can, in strictness, be considered as only _private_ collections. Among the various projects which Julius Cæsar had formed for the embellishment of Rome, was that of a _public_ library, which should contain the largest possible collection of Greek and Latin works; and he had assigned to Varro the duty of selecting and arranging them. But this design was frustrated by the assassination of the dictator, and the establishment of public libraries did not take place in Rome until the reign of Augustus. The honor of having first established these valuable institutions is ascribed by the elder Pliny to Asinius Pollio, who erected a public library in the Court of Liberty, on the Aventine Hill. The credit which he gained thereby was so great, that the emperors became ambitious to illustrate their reigns by the foundation of libraries, many of which they called after their own names. Augustus was himself an author, and in one of those sumptuous buildings called _Thermoe_, ornamented with porticoes, galleries, and statues, with shady walks and refreshing baths, he testified his love of literature by adding a magnificent library, which he fondly called by the name of his sister Octavia. The Palatine Library, formed by the same emperor, in the Temple of Apollo, became the haunt of the poets, as Horace, Juvenal, and Perseus have commemorated. There were deposited the corrected books of the Sibyls; and from two ancient inscriptions, quoted by Lipsius and Pitiscus, it would seem that it consisted of two distinct collections--one Greek, and the other Latin. This library having survived the various revolutions of the Roman Empire, existed until the time of Gregory the Great, whose mistaken zeal led him to order all the writings of the ancients to be destroyed. The successors of Augustus, though they did not equally encourage learning, were not altogether neglectful of its interests. Suetonius informs us that Tiberius founded a library in the new Temple of Apollo; and we learn from some incidental notices that he instituted another, called the Tiberian, in his own house, consisting chiefly of works relating to the empire and the acts of its sovereigns. Vespasian, following the example of his predecessors, established a library in the Temple of Peace, which he erected after the burning of the city by order of Nero; and even Domitian, in the commencement of his reign, restored at great expense the libraries which had been destroyed by the conflagration, collecting copies of books from every quarter, and sending persons to Alexandria to transcribe volumes in that celebrated collection, or to correct copies which had been made elsewhere. But the most magnificent of all the libraries founded by the sovereigns of imperial Rome was that of the Emperor Ulpius Trajanus, from whom it was denominated the Ulpian Library. It was erected in Trajan's Forum, but afterwards removed to the Viminal Hill, to ornament the baths of Diocletian. In this library were deposited the elephantine books, written upon tablets of ivory, wherein were recorded the transactions of the emperors, the proceedings of the senate and Roman magistrates, and the affairs of the provinces. It has been conjectured that the Ulpian Library consisted of both Greek and Latin works; and some authors affirm, that Trajan commanded that all the books found in the cities he had conquered should be immediately conveyed to Rome, in order to increase his collection. The library of Domitian having been consumed by lightning in the reign of Commodus, was not restored until the time of Gordian, who rebuilt the edifice, and founded a new library, adding thereto the collection of books bequeathed to him by Quintus Serenus Samonicus, the physician, and amounting, it is said, to no fewer than 72,000 volumes. In addition to the imperial libraries, there were others to which the public had access in the principal cities and colonies of the empire. Pliny mentions one which he had founded for the use of his countrymen; and Vopiscus informs us that the Emperor Tacitus caused the historical writings of his illustrious namesake to be deposited in the libraries. The number of calcined volumes which have been excavated from the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii would also seem to indicate that collections of books were common in those cities. But the irruptions of the barbarians, who overran and desolated the Western Empire, proved more destructive to the interests of literature than either volcanoes or earthquakes, and soon caused the disappearance of those libraries which, during several centuries, had been multiplied in Italy. Those of the East, however, escaped this devastating torrent; and both Alexandria and Constantinople preserved their literary treasures, until their capture by the Saracens and the Turks, who finally subverted the Eastern Empire. When Constantine the Great made Byzantium the seat of his empire, he decorated that city with splendid edifices, and called it after his own name. Desirous to make reparation to the Christians for the injuries they had suffered during the reign of his predecessor, he commanded the most diligent search to be made after those books which Diocletian had doomed to destruction; he caused transcripts to be made of such as had escaped the fury of the pagan persecutor; and, having collected others from various quarters, he formed the whole into a library at Constantinople. At the death of Constantine, however, the number of books in the imperial library was only 6900; but it was successively enlarged by the Emperors Julian and Theodosius the younger, who augmented it to 120,000 volumes. Of these more than half were burned during the seventh century, by command of the Emperor Leo III., who thus sought to destroy all the monuments that might be quoted in proof respecting his opposition to the worship of images. In this library was deposited the only authentic copy of the proceedings at the Council at Nice; and it is also said to have contained the poems of Homer written in gold letters, together with a magnificent copy of the Four Gospels, bound in plates of gold, enriched with precious stones, all of which perished in the conflagration. The convulsions which distracted the lower empire were by no means favorable to the interests of literature. In the eleventh century learning flourished for a short time during the reign of Constantine Porphyrogennetus; and this emperor is said to have employed many learned Greeks in collecting books, and forming a library, the arrangement of which he himself superintended. But the final subversion of the Eastern Empire, and the capture of Constantinople in 1453, dispersed the literati of Greece over western Europe, and placed the literary remains of that capital at the mercy of the conqueror. The imperial library, however, was preserved by the express command of Mohammed, and continued, it is said, to be kept in some apartments of the seraglio; but whether it was sacrificed in a fit of devotion by Amurath IV., as is commonly supposed, or whether it was suffered to fall into decay from ignorance and neglect, it is now certain that the library of the sultan contains only Turkish and Arabic writings, and not a single Greek or Latin manuscript of any importance. Such is a brief survey of the most celebrated libraries of ancient times. Before we proceed to describe those of modern days, we shall offer a few remarks on the extent of ancient as compared with modern collections of books. The National Library of Paris contains upwards of 824,000 volumes, and is the largest in existence. It will be easy to prove that it is the largest that ever has existed. The number of writers, and consequently of books, in the bright days of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, could not have been very great. It must, on the contrary, have been limited by various causes, which contributed powerfully to retard the composition of new works, and prevent the multiplication of new editions. In fact, the histories of cities and of nations, together with descriptions of the earth, which have become exhaustless sources for the writers of modern times, must have been but sterile themes at a period in which history was confined within the limits of a few centuries, and hardly a sixth part of the world now known had been discovered. Add to these considerations the difficulties of communication, by which the inhabitants of different countries, and often those of different sections of the same country, were kept apart, together with the number of arts and sciences which were either wholly unknown, or confined within very narrow bounds, and it will become evident, that for every thirty or forty authors of the present day, ancient Europe could hardly have supported one or two. Another circumstance which may be adduced in support of our proposition, is the fact, that an increase in the number of readers leads to a proportionate augmentation in the number of works prepared for their gratification. We have every reason to suppose that the reading class of the ancient world was small in comparison with that of the modern. Even setting aside the circumstance of the narrow limits by which the creative literature of ancient Europe was bounded--Greece and Rome being almost the only nations whence new productions were derived--we shall still be constrained to acknowledge the vast distance which separates the creative literary power of modern from that of ancient times. Our schools, which abound with such a variety of class-books upon every subject, bear little or no resemblance to those of Greece and Rome; nor can the text-books prepared for our universities be brought into comparison with the oral instructions of the old philosophers. Passing by, also, the subjects which have been opened to our research by the discoveries of modern science, and confining our attention to the single branch of philosophy, in the old sense of the word, which has always been more or less studied and disputed upon since the days of the earliest Greeks, we shall probably find that the productions of any one modern school outnumber those of the whole body of Greek philosophers. How much more would the balance lean towards the moderns were we to add all the varieties of the French, German, English, and Scottish schools, to say nothing of those whose tenacious subtleties have procured them the name of schoolmen! If, going a step further, we consider that reading, which the peculiar cast of modern civilization has classed among the luxuries of life, is one of those luxuries, in the enjoyment of which all classes come in for a share, we shall find here also a wide distinction between ancient times and our own. During that epoch of splendid decay, in which the immense wealth of the Roman senators was found insufficient to satisfy the longings for new forms of stimulant and of pleasure, their reading, as we are told by Ammianus Marcellinus, a contemporary historian, was confined to the writings of Marius Maximus and Juvenal. What would they not have given for a modern novel, or to what unlimited extent would the imagination have poured forth its fantastic creations, had the art of printing been at hand to keep pace with the productive powers of the mind, and the cravings of a morbid intellect? On every score, therefore, the numerical difference between the intellectual wealth of ancient and of modern Europe must have been decidedly in favor of the latter. The high price of the materials for writing, and the difficulty of procuring them, must also have been a great obstacle to the multiplication of books. When copies could only be procured by the slow and expensive process of transcription, it seems impossible to suppose that a large number could have been usually prepared of any ordinary work. Those of our readers who are aware that only about four hundred and fifty copies of the celebrated _Princeps_ editions were struck off, will readily assent to the correctness of this opinion. The barbarous system of ancient warfare must have also caused the destruction of a great many works, raised the price of others, and rendered extremely difficult--not to say impossible--the accumulation of a very large number in any one place. The difficulties which the bibliomaniacs of our own times encounter in procuring copies of the editions of the fifteenth century, and the extravagant prices at which some of them have been sold, are enough to show how small a part of an entire edition has been able to pass safely through the short space of four centuries. How few copies, then, of a work written in the time of Alexander, could have reached the age of Augustus or of Trajan! With facts like these before us, how can we talk of libraries of 700,000 or 800,000 volumes in the ancient world? When we find it so difficult at the present day, in spite of the testimony of intelligent travellers, and of all the advantages we possess for making our estimates, to ascertain the truth with regard to the great libraries of modern Europe, how can we give credit to the contradictory and exaggerated statements which were promulgated in ages of the darkest ignorance concerning ancient Rome and Alexandria? "After an attentive examination of this subject," says that eminent bibliographer M. Balbi, "it seems to me improbable, if I should not rather say impossible, that any library of ancient Europe, or of the middle ages, could have contained more than 300,000 or 400,000 volumes." But even allowing 700,000 volumes to the largest of the Alexandrian libraries--that, namely, of which a great part was accidentally destroyed during the wars of Julius Cæsar--allowing the same number to the library of Tripoli, and to that of Cairo; and admitting that the third library of Alexandria contained 600,000 volumes, and the Ulpian of Rome, and the Cordovan founded by Al-Hakem, an equal number--it will still be easy to show that the whole amount of one of these was not equal to even a fifth part of a library composed of printed books. Every one who has had any thing to do with publication, is well aware of the great difference between the space occupied by the written and that filled by the printed letters. It is well known that the volumes of ancient libraries consisted of rolls, which generally were written only on one side. Thus the written surface of one of these volumes would correspond to but half the written surface of one of our books, of which every page is covered with letters. A library, then, composed of 100,000 rolls, would contain no more matter than one of our libraries composed of 50,000 manuscripts. It is well known, also, that a work was divided into as many rolls as the books which it contained. Thus the Natural History of Pliny, which in the _Princeps_ edition of Venice forms but one folio volume, would, since it is divided into thirty-seven books, have formed thirty-seven rolls or volumes. If it were possible to compare elements of so different a nature, we should say that these rolls might be compared to the sheets of our newspapers, or to the numbers of our weekly serials. What would become of the great library of Paris were we to suppose its 824,000 volumes in folio, quarto, &c., to be but so many numbers of five or six sheets each? Yet this is the rule by which we ought to estimate the literary wealth of the great libraries of ancient times; and "hence," says M. Balbi, "notwithstanding the imposing array of authorities which can be brought against us, we must persist in believing that no library of antiquity, or of the middle ages, can be considered as equivalent to a modern one of 100,000 or 110,000 volumes." No one of the libraries of the first class now in existence dates beyond the fifteenth century. The Vatican, the origin of which has been frequently carried back to the days of St. Hilarius in 465, cannot with any propriety be said to have deserved the name of library before the reign of Pope Martin V., by whose order it was removed in 1417 from Avignon to Rome. And even then a strict attention to exactitude would require us to withhold from it this title until the period of its final organization by Nicholas V. in 1447. It is difficult to speak with certainty concerning the libraries, whether public or private, supposed to have existed previous to the fifteenth century, both on account of the doubtful authority and indefiniteness of the passages in which they are mentioned, and the custom which so readily obtained in those dark ages of dignifying with the name of library every petty collection of insignificant codices. But many libraries of the fifteenth century being in existence, and others having been preserved long enough to make them the subject of historical inquiry before their dissolution, it becomes easier to fix with satisfactory accuracy the date of their foundation. We find, accordingly, that during the fifteenth century ten libraries were formed: the Vatican at Rome, the Laurentian at Florence, the Imperial of Vienna and Ratisbon, the University at Turin, the Malatestiana at Cesena, the Marciana at Venice, the Bodleian at Oxford, the University at Copenhagen, and the City at Frankfort on the Maine. The Palatine of Heidelberg was founded in 1390, dispersed in 1623, restored in 1652, and augmented in 1816. The increase of the libraries of Europe has generally been slowly progressive, although there have been periods of sudden augmentation in nearly all of them. They began with a small number of manuscripts; sometimes with a few, and often without any printed works. To these gradual accessions were made from the different sources which have always been more or less at the command of sovereigns and nobles. In 1455 the Vatican contained 5000 manuscripts. In 1685, after an interval of more than two centuries, the number of its manuscripts had only risen to 16,000, and that of the printed volumes did not exceed 25,000. In 1789, but little more than a century later, the number of manuscripts had been doubled, and the printed volumes amounted to 40,000. Far different was the progress of the Royal, or as it is now called, the National Library of Paris. The origin of this institution is placed in the year 1595--the date of its removal from Fontainebleau to Paris by order of Henry IV. In 1660 it contained only 1435 printed volumes. In the course of the following year this number was raised to 16,746, both printed volumes and manuscripts. During the ensuing eight years the library was nearly doubled; and before the close of the subsequent century, it was supposed to have been augmented by upwards of 100,000 volumes. In most cases the chief sources of these augmentations have been individual legacies and the purchase of private collections. Private libraries, as our readers are doubtless well aware, began to be formed long before public ones were thought of. Like these, they have their origin in the taste, or caprice, or necessities of their founders, and are of more or less value, as one or the other of these motives has presided over their formation. But when formed by private students with a view to bring together all that has been written upon some single branch of science, or by amateurs skilled in the principles of bibliography, they become more satisfactory and complete than they could possibly be made under any other circumstances. Few of them, however, are preserved long after the death of the original collector; but falling into the hands of heirs possessed of different tastes and feelings, are either sold off by auction, or restored to the shelves of the bookseller. It was by availing themselves of such opportunities that the directors of the public libraries of Europe made their most important acquisitions. This is, in short, the history of the Imperial Library of Vienna; and it can hardly be necessary to add, that it was thus that the rarest and most valuable portions of that collection were brought together.[20] It was thus, also, that the Vatican acquired, some twenty years ago, by the purchase of the library of Count Cicognara, a body of materials illustrative of the history of the arts, which leaves comparatively little to be wished for by the most diligent historian. It can hardly be necessary to enlarge upon this subject. Every one who has engaged, even in a small degree, in historical researches, must have observed how soon he gets out of the track of common readers, and how dark and difficult his way becomes, unless he chance to meet with some guide among those who, confining their attention to a single branch of study, have become familiar with, and gathered around them almost every thing which can serve to throw light upon it. And when a public institution has gone on through a long course of years adding to the works derived from other sources these carefully chosen stores of the learned, it is easy to conceive how much it must contribute, not merely towards the gratification of literary curiosity, but to the actual progress of literature. From these general considerations respecting modern libraries, we proceed to give some particulars which may serve to convey an idea of the history, character, and contents of the principal book-collections now in existence; and with this view, as well as for convenient reference, we shall arrange them under the respective heads of British Libraries, and Foreign Libraries. BRITISH LIBRARIES. 1. _British Museum Library, London._--There is probably no other public institution in Great Britain which is regarded with so great and general interest as the British Museum. By the variety of its departments, this splendid national depository of literature, and objects of natural history and antiquities, meets in some way the particular taste of almost every class of society. The department of Natural History, in its three divisions of Zoology, Botany, and Mineralogy, contains a collection of specimens unsurpassed, probably unequalled, in the world. The department of antiquities is in some particulars unrivalled for the number and value of the articles it contains. But the library is the crowning glory of the whole. If, in respect to the number of volumes it contains, it does not yet equal the National Library of Paris, the Royal Library of Munich, or the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg--in almost every other respect, such as the value and usefulness of the books, the arrangements for their convenient and safe keeping, and, in fact, in every matter pertaining to its internal arrangements, the library of the British Museum, by the concurrent testimony of competent witnesses from various countries, must take rank above all similar institutions in the world. Well may the people of this country regard the Museum with pride and pleasure. The liberal grants of parliament, and the munificent bequests of individuals, are sure indications of a strong desire and purpose to continue and extend its advantages. Some idea of the magnitude of the Museum, and of its vast resources, may be formed by considering that the buildings alone in which this great collection is deposited have cost, since the year 1823, nearly £700,000; and the whole expenditure for purchases, exclusive of the cost of the buildings just named, is considerably more than £1,100,000. Besides this liberal outlay by the British Government, there have been numerous magnificent bequests from individuals. The acquisitions from private munificence were estimated, for the twelve years preceding 1835, at not less than £400,000. The latest considerable bequest was that of the Right Hon. Thomas Grenville: his library, which he gave to the Museum entire, was valued at £50,000. The annual receipts of the institution of late years, from parliamentary grants and the interest of private legacies, have been about £50,000. The number of visitors to the Museum is immense. In the year 1848 they amounted to 897,985, being an average of about 3000 visitors per day for every day the Museum is open. On special occasions there have been as many as thirty thousand visitors on a single day. This noble institution may be said to have originated in the bequest of Sir Hans Sloane, who, dying in 1752, left his immense collections of every kind to the nation, on the condition of paying £20,000 in legacies to different individuals; a sum considerably less than the intrinsic value of the medals, coins, gems, and precious metals of his museum. This bequest included a library of 50,000 volumes, among which were 3566 volumes of manuscripts in different languages; a herbarium of 334 volumes; other objects of natural history, to the number of six-and-thirty or forty thousand, and the house at Chiswick, in which the whole was deposited. The Harleian collection of manuscripts, amounting to 7600 volumes, chiefly relating to the history of England, and including, among many other curious documents, 40,000 ancient charters and rolls, being about the same time offered for sale, parliament voted a sum of £30,000, to be raised by lottery, and vested in trustees, for the establishment of a National Museum. Of this money, £20,000 were paid to the legatees of Sir Hans Sloane, £10,000 were given for the Harleian Manuscripts, and £10,000 for Montague House as a receptacle for the whole. Sloane's Museum was removed thither with the consent of his trustees. In 1757, George II., by an instrument under the great seal, added the library of the kings of England, the printed books of which had been collected from the time of Henry VII., the manuscripts from a much earlier date. This collection was very rich in the prevailing literature of different periods, and it included, amongst others, the libraries of Archbishop Cranmer, and of the celebrated scholar Isaac Casaubon. His majesty annexed to his gift the privilege which the royal library had acquired in the reign of Queen Anne, of being supplied with a copy of every publication entered at Stationers' Hall; and in 1759 the British Museum was opened to the public.[21] The value of the library has been greatly enhanced by magnificent donations, and by immense parliamentary purchases. In 1763, George III. enriched it with a collection of pamphlets and periodical papers, published in England between 1640 and 1660, and chiefly illustrative of the civil wars in the time of Charles I., by whom the collection was commenced. Among other valuable acquisitions may be mentioned Garrick's collection of old English plays, Mr. Thomas Tyrwhitt's library, Sir William Musgrave's collection of biography, the general library of the Rev. C. M. Cracherode, the libraries of M. Ginguené, Baron de Moll, Dr. Burney, and Sir R. C. Hoare; and above all, the bequest of Major Arthur Edwards, who left to it his noble library, and £7000 as a fund for the purchase of books. Four separate collections of tracts, illustrative of the revolutionary history of France, have been purchased at different times by the trustees, in the exercise of the powers with which they are invested. One of these was the collection formed by the last president of the parliament at Bretagne, at the commencement of the revolution; two others extended generally throughout the whole revolutionary period; and the fourth consisted of a collection of tracts, published during the reign of the Hundred Days in 1815--forming altogether a body of materials for the history of the revolution as complete in regard to France as the collection of pamphlets and tracts already mentioned is with respect to the civil wars of England in the time of Charles I. Another feature of the Museum Library is its progressive collection of newspapers, from the appearance of the first of these publications in 1588. Sir Hans Sloane had formed a great collection for his day. But to this was added, in 1818, the Burney collection, purchased at the estimated value of £1000; and since that period the Commissioners of Stamps have continued regularly to forward to the Museum, copies of all newspapers deposited by the publishers in their office. In 1823, the Royal Library collected by George III. was presented to the British nation by his successor George IV., and ordered by parliament to be added to the library of the British Museum, but to be kept for ever separate from the other books in that institution. The general plan of its formation appears to have been determined on by George III., soon after his accession to the throne; and the first extensive purchase made for it was that of the library of Mr. Joseph Smith, British consul at Venice, in 1762, for which his majesty paid about £10,000. In 1768 Mr. (afterwards Sir Frederick) Barnard, the librarian, was despatched to the continent by his majesty; and as the Jesuits' houses were then being suppressed and their libraries sold throughout Europe, he was enabled to purchase, upon the most advantageous terms, a great number of very valuable books, including some very remarkable rarities, in France, Italy, and Germany. Under the judicious directions of Mr. Barnard, the entire collection was formed and arranged; it was enlarged during a period of sixty years, by an annual expenditure of about £2000, and it is in itself, perhaps, one of the most complete libraries of its extent that was ever formed. It contains selections of the rarest kind, particularly of scarce books which appeared in the first ages of the art of printing. It is rich in early editions of the classics, in books from the press of Caxton, in English history, and in Italian, French, and Spanish literature; and there is likewise a very extensive collection of geography and topography, and of the transactions of learned academies. The number of books in this library is 65,250, exclusively of a very numerous assortment of pamphlets; and it appears to have cost, in direct outlay, about £130,000, but it is estimated as worth at least £200,000. The nucleus of the department of manuscripts at the British Museum was formed by the Harleian, Sloanean, and Cottonian collections. To these George II. added, in 1757, the manuscripts of the ancient royal library of England. Of these, one of the most remarkable is the "Codex Alexandrinus;" a present from Cyril, patriarch of Constantinople, to King Charles I. It is in four quarto volumes, written upon fine vellum, probably between the fourth and sixth centuries, and is believed to be the most ancient manuscript of the Greek Bible now extant. Many of the other manuscripts came into the royal collection at the time when the monastic institutions of Britain were destroyed; and some of them still retain upon their spare leaves the honest and hearty anathemas which the donors denounced against those who should alienate or remove the respective volumes from the places in which they had been originally deposited. This collection abounds in old scholastic divinity, and possesses many volumes, embellished by the most expert illuminators of different countries, in a succession of periods down to the sixteenth century. In it are also preserved an assemblage of the domestic music-books of Henry VIII., and the "Basilicon Doron" of James I. in his own handwriting. The Cottonian collection, which was purchased for the use of the public in 1701, and annexed by statute to the British Museum in 1753, consists of 861 manuscript volumes, including "Madox's Collections on the Exchequer," in ninety-four volumes, besides many precious documents connected with our domestic and foreign history, about the time of Elizabeth and James. It likewise contains numerous registers of English monasteries; a rich collection of royal and other original letters; and the manuscript called the "Durham Book," being a copy of the Latin Gospels, with an interlinear Saxon gloss, written about the year 800, illuminated in the most elaborate style of the Anglo-Saxons, and believed to have once belonged to the venerable Bede. The Harleian collection is still more miscellaneous, though historical literature in all its branches forms one of its principal features. It is particularly rich in heraldic and genealogical manuscripts; in parliamentary and legal proceedings; in ancient records and abbey registers; in manuscripts of the classics, amongst which is one of the earliest known of Homer's "Odyssey;" in missals, antiphonars, and other service-books of the Catholic Church; and in ancient English poetry. It possesses two very early copies of the Latin Gospels, written in gold letters; and also contains a large number of splendidly illuminated manuscripts, besides an extensive mass of correspondence. It further includes about three hundred manuscript Bibles or Biblical books, in Hebrew, Chaldaic, Greek, Arabic, and Latin; nearly two hundred volumes of writings of the fathers of the church; and a number of works on the arts and sciences, among which is a tract on the steam-engine, with plans, diagrams, and calculations by Sir Samuel Morland. The Sloanean collection consists principally of manuscripts on natural history, voyages and travels, on the arts, and especially on medicine. In 1807 the collection of manuscripts formed by the first Marquis of Lansdowne was added to these libraries, having been purchased by parliament for £4925. It consists of 1352 volumes, of which 114 are Lord Burleigh's state papers, 46 Sir Julius Cæsar's collections respecting the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., and 108 the historical collections of Bishop Kennet. Other valuable collections are the classical manuscripts of Dr. Charles Burney, the Oriental manuscripts collected by Messrs. Rich and Hull, and the Egyptian papyri presented by Sir J. G. Wilkinson. It would be endless, however, to enumerate these treasures; we have indicated enough to convince our readers that the library of the British Museum is worthy of the nation to which it belongs. 2. _Bodleian Library, Oxford._--This institution, so called from the name of its illustrious founder, was established towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth by Sir Thomas Bodley, who, having become disgusted with some court intrigues, resigned all his employments about the year 1597, and resolved to spend the remainder of his life in a private station. Having thought of various plans to render himself useful, he says, "I concluded at the last to set up my staff at the library door in Oxon, being thoroughly persuaded that in my solitude and surcease from the commonwealth affairs, I could not busy myself to better purpose than by reducing that place, which then in every part lay ruined and waste, to the public use of students. For the effecting whereof I found myself furnished in a competent proportion of such four kinds of aids, as, unless I had them all, there was no hope of good success. For without some kind of knowledge, as well in the learned and modern tongues as in sundry other sorts of scholastical literature; without some purse-ability to go through with the charge; without great store of honorable friends to further the design; and without special good leisure to follow such a work, it could but have proved a vain attempt and inconsiderate." Having set himself this task--"a task," as his friend Camden justly says, "that would have suited the character of a crowned head"--Bodley despatched from London a letter to the vice-chancellor, offering not only to restore the building, but to provide a fund for the purchase of books, and the maintenance of proper officers. This offer being thankfully accepted, he commenced his undertaking by presenting to the library a large collection of books purchased on the continent, and valued at £10,000. He also collected 1294 rare manuscripts, which were afterwards increased to 6818, independently of 1898 in the Ashmolean Museum. Other collections and contributions were also, by his example and persuasion, presented to the new library; and the additions thus made soon swelled to such an amount that the old building was no longer sufficient to contain them. The edifice was accordingly enlarged; and Bodley thus had the proud satisfaction of seeing Oxford possessed, by his means, of such a library as might well bear comparison with the proudest in continental Europe. It would require a volume to contain an enumeration of the many important additions which have been made to this library by its numerous benefactors, or to admit even a sketch of its ample contents in almost every branch of literature and science. The Oriental manuscripts are the rarest and most beautiful to be found in any European collection; and the first editions of the classics, procured from the Pinelli and Crevenna libraries, rival those of Vienna. In a word, it is exceedingly rich in many departments in which most other libraries are deficient, and it forms altogether one of the noblest collections of which any university can boast. 3. _University Library, Cambridge._--This is a library of considerable extent, and contains much that is valuable or curious both in the department of printed books and in that of manuscripts. The printed books comprise a fine series of _editiones principes_ of the classics, and a very large proportion of the productions of Caxton's press. Among the manuscripts contained in it are the celebrated manuscript of the four Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, known by the name of the _Codex Bezæ_, which was presented to the university by that distinguished reformer; Magna Charta, written on vellum; and a Koran upon cotton paper superbly executed. In the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, there are several exceedingly interesting literary curiosities; amongst others, some manuscripts in the handwriting of Milton, consisting of the original copy of the "Masque of Comus," several plans of "Paradise Lost," and the poems of "Lycidas," "Arcades," and others; and also Sir Isaac Newton's copy of his "Principia," with his manuscript notes, and his letters to Roger Coles. 4. _Advocates' Library, Edinburgh._--This library was founded in 1682, at the instance of Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, who was at that time Dean of Faculty, and the plan was carried into execution on a small scale, by a fund which had been formed out of the fines of members. It was originally intended that it should consist merely of the works of lawyers, and of such other books as were calculated to advance the study of jurisprudence; it now comprehends, in a greater or less degree, almost every branch of science, philosophy, jurisprudence, literature, and the arts. Its collection of historical works is very complete. Among the curiosities shown to visitors are a manuscript Bible of St. Jerome's translation, believed to have been written in the eleventh century, and known to have been used as the conventual copy of the Scriptures in the Abbey of Dunfermline; a copy of the first printed Bible, in two volumes, from the press of Faust and Guttenberg; the original Solemn League and Covenant, drawn up in 1580; and six copies of the Covenant of 1638. Among other manuscripts in the collection are the whole of the celebrated Wodrow Manuscripts, relating to the ecclesiastical history of Scotland, and the chartularies of many of the ancient religious houses. For its extent, no less than for the liberal principles upon which it is conducted, this deserves the name of the National Library of Scotland. 5. _Trinity College Library, Dublin._--This library owed its establishment to a very curious incident. In the year 1603, the Spaniards were defeated by the English at the battle of Kinsale; determined to commemorate their victory by some permanent monument, the soldiers collected among themselves the sum of £1800, which they agreed to apply to the purchase of books for a public library, to be founded in the then infant institution of Trinity College. This sum was placed in the hands of the celebrated Dr. Usher, who immediately proceeded to London, and there purchased the books necessary for the purpose. It is a remarkable coincidence, that Usher, while occupied in purchasing these books, met in London Sir Thomas Bodley engaged in similar business, with a view to the establishment of his famous library at Oxford. From this commencement, the library of Trinity College was, at different periods, increased by many valuable donations, including that of Usher's own collection, consisting of 10,000 volumes, until at length its growing magnitude requiring a corresponding increase of accommodation, the present library-hall, a magnificent apartment of stately dimensions, was erected in the year 1732. Since that time numerous additions have been made to the library: amongst others, that of the library of the Pensionary Fagel, in 20,000 volumes, and the valuable classical and Italian books which had belonged to Mr. Quin; so that, altogether, the library of Trinity College now forms one of the first order, at least in this country. The five libraries thus briefly described are the principal ones in the United Kingdom, and they are all entitled to receive a copy of every new work on its publication; so that they are continually on the increase, and enabled to keep pace with the activity of the press. Of the numerous other libraries in this country we have no space to give a detailed account, and must therefore content ourselves with merely indicating the names of the more extensive ones. In London are the libraries of the Royal Society and the Royal Institution; Sion College Library; Archbishop Tenison's Library; and Dr. Williams's Library, belonging to the Dissenters. The Lambeth Library of the Archbishop of Canterbury is exceedingly rich in ecclesiastical history and biblical literature. At Oxford and Cambridge, all the different colleges have libraries more or less extensive and valuable. Chetham's Library at Manchester is also worthy of mention. The library of the Writers to the Signet at Edinburgh is an excellent and valuable miscellaneous collection of books in science, law, history, geography, statistics, antiquities, literature, and the arts. Finally, the Scotch universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews, and Aberdeen, all possess academical libraries of considerable size, and which are steadily on the increase. Many of the above receive an annual grant of money from government, as a compensation for the withdrawal of the privilege of receiving copies of every book published in the kingdom. All such, at least, ought to be thrown open to the public, and doubtless soon will be. FOREIGN LIBRARIES. 1. _National Library, Paris._--This library is justly considered as the finest in Europe. It was commenced under the reign of King John, who possessed only _ten_ volumes, to which 900 were added by Charles V., many of them superbly illuminated by John of Bruges, the best artist in miniatures of that time. Under Francis I. it had increased to 1890 volumes, and under Louis XIII. to 16,746. In 1684 it possessed 50,542 volumes; in 1775 it amounted to above 150,000; and by 1790 it had increased to about 200,000. At present it contains 824,000 volumes of printed books, and 80,000 manuscripts. It is divided into four departments:--1. Printed books; 2. Manuscripts, charters, and diplomas; 3. Coins, medals, engraved stones, and other antique monuments; and 4. Engravings, including geographical charts and plans. Of the contents of this magnificent, nay, matchless collection, it would far exceed our limits to give any details, or even to enumerate its choicest articles. It is rich in every branch and department, unique in some, scarcely surpassed in any, and unrivalled in all taken together. Of books printed on vellum it contains at once the finest and most extensive collection in the world. 2. _Arsenal Library, Paris._--This library, founded by the Marquis de Paulmy, formerly ambassador of France in Poland, was in 1781 acquired by the Count d'Artois, who united to it nearly the whole of the library of the Duke de la Valliere. It possesses the most complete collection extant of romances, since their origin in modern literature; of theatrical pieces or dramas, from the epoch of the Moralities and Mysteries; and of French poetry since the commencement of the sixteenth century. It is less rich in other branches, but it has all works of importance, and in particular contains historical collections which are not to be found elsewhere. 3. _Library of Ste Genevieve, Paris._--The foundation of this library dates as early as the year 1624, when Cardinal de Rochefoucauld, having reformed the Abbey of Sainte-Genevieve, made it a present of 600 volumes. At present it contains 160,000 printed volumes and 2000 manuscripts. In it may be found all the academical collections, and a complete set of Aldines; it is particularly rich in historical works; and its most remarkable manuscripts are Greek and Oriental. Its typographical collections of the fifteenth century are not more valuable for their number than the high state of preservation in which they are found. This library is open of an evening, and is much resorted to by students, and men of the operative classes. 4. _Mazarin Library, Paris._--This library, as its name denotes, was instituted by Cardinal Mazarin. The formation of it was intrusted to the learned Gabriel Naudé, who, having first selected all that suited his purpose in the booksellers' shops in Paris, travelled into Holland, Italy, Germany, and England, where the letters of recommendation of which he was the bearer enabled him to collect many very rare and curious works. Cardinal Mazarin, by his will, bequeathed it to the college which he founded, and in 1688 it was made public. It is remarkable for a great number of collections containing detached pieces and small treatises, which date as far back as the fifteenth century, and exist nowhere else; nor has any other library so complete a body of the ancient books of law, theology, medicine, and the physical and mathematical sciences. It also possesses a most precious collection of the Lutheran or Protestant authors. In one of the halls are placed models in relief of the Pelasgic monuments of Italy and Greece; in another is a terrestrial globe, eighteen feet in diameter, formed of plates of copper, and executed by order of Louis XVI.; but this instrument, which is unique in Europe, is unfortunately unfinished, being destitute of several requisite circles. 5. _National Library, Madrid._--This "is one of the many institutions which awaken the admiration of the stranger in Spain, as being at variance with the pervading decay." According to Mr. Ford, "it is rich in Spanish literature, especially theology and topography, and has been much increased numerically since the suppression of the convents; but good modern books are needed." It contains many valuable Greek, Latin, and Arabic manuscripts, and unedited works, chiefly Spanish. _The Monetario_, or cabinet of medals, is arranged in an elegant and beautiful apartment, and contains an unrivalled collection of Celtic, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Gothic, Arabic, and modern coins and medals, in excellent preservation. The library is open to all, at least as far as the printed books are concerned. 6. _Vatican Library, Rome._--Among the libraries of Italy, that of the Vatican at Rome stands preëminent, not more for its grandeur and magnificence, than for the inestimable treasures with which it is enriched. It was originated about the year 465 by Pope Hilary, and has been augmented by succeeding pontiffs, and by various princes, until it reached its present extent and value. Our space will not permit us to give any thing like a detailed account of its treasures; but we condense from Sir George Head's admirable work on Rome the following description of the grand saloon of the library:--"The principal chamber of the library appears to be 179 feet long by 51 broad. The ceiling is remarkable for presenting to the eye the appearance of a uniform extensive surface, as if it were a beautifully broad elliptical vault, though in fact it consists of a double range of groined arches that, springing on each side from the walls, and blending together in the middle, are supported on a row of six pillars planted in a line on the ground. These pillars are contrived, accordingly, of an oblong shape, so extremely narrow that, planted as they are longitudinally, and encompassed by large rectangular mahogany bookcases to serve as pedestals, they occupy but an inconsiderable space in the apartment when viewed edgewise by a spectator standing at the entrance, and from their form effectually counteract the appearance of weight, that would certainly otherwise be produced by the double vaulting. Moreover, while the lines of curvature slide as it were thus gently and harmoniously into the outline of the pillars, the transition of surface is the less perceptible, owing to the whole of the vault and pillars being painted in a uniform delicate pattern of arabesque, by Zuccari, as it is affirmed; but at all events, in figures of plants and flowers, almost as light and exquisite as the paintings on a china teacup, and thrown into relief by the prevalence of a clear white ground; so that an appearance is produced of airiness and space to all intents and purposes as effective as if the ceiling were really contained within the span of a single elliptical arch. Along the base of the ceiling is a cornice of stucco, ornamented with a light pattern in white and gold; and underneath, upon the upper portion of the walls, are six windows on each side; and the remainder of the surface is covered with paintings by several different artists, one of which represents Sixtus V. receiving from his architect, Dominico Fontana, the plan of the present library. The lower portion of the walls is entirely occupied by closed bookcases, composed of panels of wood painted in arabesque on a ground of white and slate color, and surrounded by gilded mouldings; which receptacles bear no sort of affinity in appearance to ordinary library furniture, and thoroughly conceal from public view the valuable manuscripts they contain. No books, in fact, are to be seen in the whole chamber, and particularly the rectangular bookcases above referred to, that serve the purpose of pedestals, from the middle of which each pillar supporting the ceiling and resting on the ground below rise, as the pier of a bridge from its ceisson, rather resemble ornamental buffets upon whose tabular surface vases and other splendid objects of art and antiquity are arranged in order. "With regard to the principal objects worthy of observation there are, in the first place, two very magnificent tables, both alike, placed in the middle of the room in a corresponding position to one another, between the first and second pillar at each extremity. Each is composed of an enormously thick and very highly polished slab of red Oriental granite, supported by six bronze figures of slaves as large as life. Such being the appropriation of two of the intercolumnial spaces, a third is occupied by a low column of Cipollino marble, serving as a pedestal to support a splendid and very large vase of Sevres china, which was presented by the Emperor Napoleon to Pius VII. In a fourth intercolumnial space is to be seen, supported on a pedestal of Cipollino, whose base appears to be a sort of alabaster marked with different shades of olive-green, a square tazza of malachite, presented to Gregory XVI. by the Crown-Prince of Russia, after his visit to Rome in 1838. In the fifth intercolumnial space are a magnificent pair of candelabra of Sevres china, brought by Pius VII. from Paris, and also a splendid vase of the same material presented to his holiness by Charles X. There is also to be observed, placed at the extremity of the room, on the right-hand side near the wall, a spirally fluted column of Oriental alabaster, which was discovered near the church of St. Eusebio, on the Esquiline; and suspended against the wall, not far distant, is a curious old Russian calendar painted on wood. "The bookcases being continually locked, as above stated, permission is nevertheless granted to those visitors who may be desirous of consulting the books and manuscripts, on making application to the cardinal-librarian or his assistants; but the privilege is merely nominal, in consequence of the extremely imperfect state of the catalogue; and in point of fact the multitudinous volumes on the shelves may be compared to a mine, unexplored and unexplorable; whence only a few particular objects, considered the staple curiosities of the region, and consequently continually had recourse to by the visitors, are extracted. The volumes in question consist principally of a splendidly-illuminated Bible of the sixth century; the most ancient version of the Septuagint; the earliest Greek version of the New Testament; the 'Assertio Septem Sacramentorum,' written by Henry VIII.--a royal literary effort in defence of the seven Roman Catholic sacraments that procured the title of Defender of the Faith for the author, which descended to the Protestant monarchs of England; and a most curious and authentic collection of original correspondence between Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn. The 'Assertio Septem Sacramentorum' is a good thick octavo volume, written in Latin, and printed in the year 1501, in London, on vellum. The type is clear, with a broad margin, and at the beginning is the original presentation addressed to Leo X., as follows, subscribed by the royal autograph-- 'Anglorum Rex Henricus Leo Decime mittit Hoc opus, et fidei testis et amicitiæ.' The whole work--in the preface of which the writer descants on his humble talents and his modesty--would seem, as far as I was able to judge by turning over the pages hastily, to be composed in a remarkably clear style, and to abound with naïve phrases and genuine expressions of the king himself, wrought into the mass and substance of a prolix theological dissertation, that no doubt was prepared and digested for the purpose by the divines of the period. With regard to the correspondence with Anne Boleyn, which places the royal author altogether in a different point of view before the public, the latter consists of a considerable number of original letters, of which those written by the king are for the most part in French and the remainder in English, and those of Anne Boleyn written all in French. The documents are all in excellent preservation, and the handwriting perfectly legible; from the difference of the character at the period in question, and owing to the abbreviations, somewhat difficult to decipher; not so much so, however, but that even an unpractised person, with sufficient time and leisure, might make them out without much difficulty. Visitors are relieved from the labor of the experiment; and fair copies, made in a clear round hand, are placed, each copy side by side with the original, and all are stitched together in a portfolio, where they may be perused with the utmost facility. The letters, which to those inclined to ponder on the anatomy of the human heart afford a melancholy moral, are chiefly remarkable for the boisterous eager tone of the king's passion towards his lady-love, which, expressed in terms that would hardly be considered proper now-a-days, verges on the grotesque." 7. _Casanata Library, Rome._--This library, founded by Cardinal Girolamo Casanata in the year 1700, is said to contain a greater number of printed books exclusively, in contradistinction to manuscripts, than any other in Rome, not excepting the Vatican. "The library," says Sir George Head, "is a very beautifully-proportioned chamber, upwards of fifty feet in breadth, and long in proportion, with an elliptically-vaulted ceiling, along the base of which are a series of acute-angled arched spaces containing windows that throw an admirable light on the apartment, which is whitewashed most brilliantly. The books are ranged all round the room on open shelves, with a communication to those of the upper row by a pensile gallery that surrounds the whole periphery. At the extremity of the room is a white marble statue, by Le Gros, of Cardinal Casanata, the founder, elevated with remarkably good effect on a pedestal of dark-colored Brazil-wood, very highly polished, and surmounted by a splendid frontispiece, supported on two pair of fluted Corinthian columns, all of the same material. The door of the room at the entrance is also surmounted by a frontispiece and columns of Brazil-wood, similar to the preceding. The librarian, a Dominican friar, dressed in the habit of his order, and seated in an easy-chair in the middle of the room at his desk of office, attends there continually, and is exceedingly kind and attentive to the applications of strangers who wish to read books in the library, though his good intentions are of little avail, from the want of a proper catalogue." 8. _Laurentian Library, Florence._--This institution was commenced by Cosmo de Medici, the father of a line of princes whose name and age are almost synonymous with the restoration of learning. Naturally fond of literature, and anxious to save from destruction the precious remains of classical antiquity, he laid injunctions on all his friends and correspondents, as well as on the missionaries who travelled into remote countries, to search for and procure ancient manuscripts in every language and on every subject. He availed himself of the services of all the learned men of his time; and the situation of the Eastern empire, then daily falling into ruins by the repeated attacks of the Turks, afforded him an opportunity of obtaining many inestimable works in the Hebrew, Greek, Chaldaic, Arabic, and Indian languages. From these beginnings arose the celebrated library of the Medici, which, after having been the constant object of the solicitude of its founder, was after his death further enriched by the attention of his descendants, and particularly of his grandson Lorenzo; and after various vicissitudes of fortune, and frequent and considerable additions, has been preserved to the present day--the noblest monument which its princely founders have left of the glory of their line. 9. _Magliabecchian Library, Florence._--Antonio Magliabecchi, from being a servant to a dealer in vegetables, raised himself to the honorable office of librarian to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and became one of the most eminent literary characters of his time. The force of natural talent overcame all the disadvantages of the humble condition in which he had been born, and placed him in a situation to make his name known and respected. But he endeavored to deserve still better of his countrymen, by presenting them, shortly before his death in 1714, with his large and valuable collection of books, together with the remainder of his fortune, as a fund for its support. This constituted the foundation of the Magliabecchian Library, which, by the subsequent donations of several benefactors, and the bounty of some of the grand dukes of Florence, has been so much increased both in number and value that it may now vie with some of the most considerable collections in Europe. 10. _Imperial Library, Vienna._--This collection is perhaps inferior only to that of the Vatican, and the National Library at Paris, for the rarity and value of its contents. It was founded by the Emperor Frederick III., who spared no expense to enrich it with printed books as well as manuscripts in every language. By the munificence of succeeding emperors, numerous important and valuable accessions were made to the collection; amongst which may be mentioned the large and interesting library of Prince Eugene, and a considerable portion of the Buda Library, founded by Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary. The Imperial Library occupies eight spacious apartments, and a ninth is appropriated to a very valuable collection of medals and other curiosities. Besides the cabinet of medals, there is also attached to the library a superb collection of engravings, consisting of 473 large folio volumes, 510 volumes of different sizes, and 215 folio cartoons. The collection of music contains upwards of 6000 volumes, theoretical and practical; and that of autographs exceeds 8000 pieces, classed under the heads of monarchs and princes, ministers and statesmen, poets, philosophers, and men of learning or science, generals and renowned warriors, artists, musicians, and others. 11. _Royal Library, Munich._--This is the most extensive collection in Germany. It was founded in 1550, and is very complete in all its departments. The ancient manuscripts relative to the art of music amount to a great number, and are exceedingly curious. 12. _University Library, Gottingen._--The library attached to the University of Gottingen contains 360,000 printed volumes, and 3000 volumes of manuscripts. But its extent is its least recommendation, for it is not only the most complete among those of the universities, but there are very few royal or public collections in Germany which can rival it in real utility; and if not in Germany, where else? It is not rich in manuscripts, and many libraries surpass it in typographical rarities, but none contains so great a number of really useful books in almost every branch of human knowledge. This library is mainly indebted for the preëminence it has obtained to the labors and exertions of the illustrious Heyne. In the year in which he came to Gottingen as second librarian, the entire control of the library was committed to him, and he became chief. From this moment commenced at once its extension and its improvement. When Heyne went to Gottingen, it already possessed a library of from 50,000 to 60,000 volumes; at his decease it had increased, according to the most moderate computation, to upwards of 200,000 volumes. Nor was this all. At the commencement of his librarianship entire departments of learning were wholly wanting; at its close, not only were these deficiencies supplied, but the library had become proportionally rich in every department, and, in point of completeness, unrivalled. Fortunately, Heyne's place has been filled by worthy successors, and the reputation of the collection is still as great as ever. 13. _Royal Library, Dresden._--The king of Saxony's library at Dresden contains 300,000 volumes of printed books, and 2800 volumes of manuscripts. The valuable library that formerly belonged to Count Beurau forms part of this noble collection, which is most complete in general history, and in Greek and Latin classic authors. Amongst the printed books are some of the rarest specimens of early typography, including 600 of the Aldine editions, and many on vellum, besides a copy of the first edition of the "Orlando Furioso," printed by Mazocco, "coll' assistenza dell'autore," in 1516, and other rarities. In the department of manuscripts are a Mexican manuscript, written on human skin, containing, according to Thevenot, a calendar, with some fragments of the history of the Incas; the original manuscript of the "Reveries" of Marshal Saxe, bearing at the end that he had composed this work in thirteen nights during a fever, and completed it in December 1733; a fine copy of the Koran, taken from a Turk by a Saxon officer at the last siege of Vienna, and said to have formerly belonged to Bajazet II.; and a Greek manuscript of the Epistles of St. Paul of the eleventh century. An extensive collection of antiquities is preserved in twelve apartments under the library, below which are eighteen vaulted cellars, stored with a vast quantity of valuable porcelain, partly of foreign and partly of Dresden manufacture. 14. _Royal Library, Berlin._--This collection includes works upon almost all the sciences, and in nearly all languages. Among the manuscripts are several Egyptian deeds, written on papyrus, in the demotic or enchorial character. These are very curious, and _fac similes_ of some of them have been published by Professor Kosegarten in his valuable work on the "Ancient Literature of the Egyptians." 15. _University Library, Leyden._--This library was founded by William I., Prince of Orange, and is justly celebrated throughout Europe for the many valuable specimens of Greek and Oriental literature with which it abounds. To it Joseph Scaliger bequeathed his fine collection of Hebrew books; and it was further enriched by the learned Golius, on his return from the East, with many Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Chaldaic manuscripts. In addition to these it received the collections of Holmanns, and particularly those of Isaac Vossius and Ruhuken--the former containing a number of valuable manuscripts, supposed to have once belonged to Christina, queen of Sweden; and the latter an almost entire series of classical authors, with a collection of manuscripts, perhaps unique, amongst which are copies of several that were consumed by fire in the Abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés. 16. _Imperial Library, St. Petersburg._--Russia is indebted for this splendid collection to an act of robbery and spoliation. In 1795, when Russia triumphed over the independence of Poland, the victorious general, Suwaroff, unceremoniously seized the Zaluski Library, of nearly 300,000 volumes, had it packed up in all haste and dispatched to St. Petersburg. There it formed the basis of the present Imperial Library, which, but for that stolen collection, instead of now ranking in the first class of European libraries, would scarcely have been entitled to a place in the third. 17. _Libraries of Constantinople._--This city possesses thirty-two public libraries, all varying in extent, but more or less celebrated for the number and value of their manuscripts, which are neatly bound in red, green, or black morocco. The Mohammedans have a peculiar method of indorsing, placing, and preserving their books. Each volume, besides being bound in morocco, is preserved from dust in a case of the same material; and on it, as well as on the edges of the leaves, the title is written in large and legible characters. The books are placed, one upon another, in presses ornamented with trellis-work, and are disposed along the wall, or in the four corners of the library. All these collections are open to the public throughout the year, excepting on Tuesdays and Fridays: the librarians are as polite and attentive as Turks can be to those whom curiosity or love of study attract thither: and every one is at liberty not merely to peruse, but to make extracts from the books, and even to transcribe them entirely, provided this be done within the walls of the library. Theology, including the Koran and commentators thereon, jurisprudence, medicine, ethics, and history, are the sciences chiefly cultivated by the Osmanlis. The books are all written with the greatest care on the finest vellum, the text of each page is inclosed in a highly-ornamented and gilt framework, the beginning of each chapter or section is splendidly illuminated, and the value of the manuscripts varies in proportion to the beauty of the characters. We here terminate our rapid survey of the principal libraries of Europe. Small, however, would be the interest which one should feel for these magnificent establishments were they designed solely for the benefit of a few individuals, or of any favored class. They would still be splendid monuments of the productive powers of the human mind, and of the taste or learning of their founders; but they would have no claims to that unbounded admiration with which we now regard them. There is a republican liberality in the management of the great libraries of the continent of Europe which is well worthy of our imitation. In these alone is the great invention of printing carried out to its full extent, by the free communication of all its productions to every class of society. No introduction, no recommendation, no securities are required; but the stranger and the native are admitted, upon equal terms, to the full enjoyment of all the advantages which the uncontrolled use of books can afford. As this mode of accommodating, or rather of meeting the wants of the public, is the real object of these institutions, they are provided with librarians, who, under different titles corresponding to the duties imposed upon them, receive from government regular salaries proportioned to their rank and to the services which they perform. To these the immediate superintendence of the library is wholly intrusted, and at a stated hour of every day in the week, except of such as are set apart for public or religious festivals, they open the library to the public. There, undisturbed, and supplied with every thing the collection contains that can aid him in his studies, the scholar may pass several hours of every day without any expense, and with no other care than that natural attention to the books he uses, which every one capable of appreciating the full value of such privileges will readily give. Nor do his facilities cease here. The time during which the libraries remain open may be insufficient for profound and extensive researches, and the writer who has to trace his facts through a great variety of works, and to examine the unpublished documents to be found in public libraries alone, would be obliged to sacrifice a large portion of every day if his studies were regulated by the usual hours of these institutions. For such persons, a proper recommendation can hardly fail to procure the use, at their own houses, of the works they may need. In this manner the door is thrown open to every one who wishes to enter, and science placed within reach of all who court her favors. This is as it should be; and it is therefore with great pleasure that we have observed symptoms of improvement in this respect originating in our legislature. In March, 1849, a select committee was appointed by the House of Commons, on the motion of Mr. William Ewart, to report on the best means of "extending the establishment of libraries freely open to the public, especially in large towns, in Great Britain and Ireland." This committee consisted of fifteen members--namely, Mr. Ewart, Viscount Ebrington, Mr. D'Israeli, Sir Harry Verney, Mr. Charteris, Mr. Bunbury, Mr. G. A. Hamilton, Mr. Brotherton, Mr. Monckton Milnes, the Lord Advocate (Mr. Rutherford), Mr. Thicknesse, Sir John Walsh, Mr. Mackinnon, Mr. Kershaw, and Mr. Wyld. These gentlemen seem to have entered upon their labors with zeal, and to have performed their duty with thoroughness and fidelity. They held numerous sessions, and examined a large number of witnesses. The particulars of these examinations have been printed in full, and form a rather bulky blue-book, in which the report of the committee occupies only twelve pages, while the minutes of evidence, tables, &c., fill over three hundred. The committee appear to have felt that it was only necessary to lay before parliament and the public the facts concerning the present condition and wants of the public libraries of this country, in order to insure the supply of all deficiencies. After presenting a brief view of the principal libraries in the various countries of Europe, with a more particular account of the present condition of those in Great Britain, showing that the English are far behind their continental brethren in this respect, the committee thus express their conviction--"Whatever may be our disappointment at the rarity of public libraries in the United Kingdom, we feel satisfaction in stating that the uniform current of the evidence tends to prove the increased qualifications of the people to appreciate and enjoy such institutions. Testimony, showing a great improvement in the national habits and manners, is abundantly given in the evidence taken by the committee. That they would be still further improved by the establishment of public libraries, it needs not even the high authority and ample evidence of the witnesses who appeared before the committee to demonstrate." Frequent and favorable allusions are made in the report and the minutes of evidence to the numerous popular libraries in this country for district schools, factories, &c. These, we are aware, are of the greatest value; but these alone are not sufficient. The establishment of even a hundred thousand small village or district-school libraries would not supersede the necessity of a certain number of large and comprehensive ones. These little collections are much alike, each containing nearly the same books as every other. The committee of parliament appear to understand this. "It is evident," they say, "that there should be in all countries libraries of two sorts; libraries of deposit and research, and libraries devoted to the general reading and circulation of books. Libraries of deposit should contain, if possible, almost every book that ever has existed. The most insignificant tract, the most trifling essay, a sermon, a newspaper, or a song, may afford an illustration of manners or opinions elucidatory of the past, and throw a faithful though feeble light on the pathway of the future historian. In such libraries nothing should be rejected. Not but that libraries of deposit and of general reading may (as in the case of the British Museum) be combined. But though such combination is possible, and may be desirable, the distinction which we have drawn should never be forgotten." The first, and apparently, in the estimation of the committee, the most important witness, was Edward Edwards, Esq., an assistant in the department of printed books in the British Museum. The minutes of his evidence alone cover between sixty and seventy of the closely-printed folio pages accompanying the report; and besides this, he has furnished various statistical tables, occupying fifty pages, and a series of twelve maps. In one of these maps it is his purpose to exhibit, by various shades, the relative provision of books in public libraries in the principal states of Europe, as compared with their respective populations; and in the others, the local situation of the public libraries in some of the principal cities is indicated. The evidence of Mr. Edwards has been severely commented upon in the London papers and elsewhere, and some inaccuracies in his tables, of greater or less magnitude, have been pointed out. We might, perhaps, by a particular examination of every word and figure, add something to the list of errata. But we think that those persons who are most familiar with the difficulty of obtaining exact statistical details, will not wonder that an error should here and there be found. We have looked over the evidence and the tables with considerable care, and think them, on the whole, highly creditable to the author. It is evident, however, from the general tenor of his testimony, that Mr. Edwards presses rather too strongly the point respecting the condition of England, compared with that of the countries on the continent, as to the number and accessibility of their public libraries. His enthusiasm on the subject, arising probably from a laudable desire to have his own country take a higher rank in respect to libraries than she now holds, has led him, we think, to overlook or undervalue some of the advantages which she already possesses. But his facts and figures are in the main to be relied upon; and we shall make use of them as sufficiently accurate to give our readers a general view of the present bibliothecal condition of the principal countries of Europe. On Mr. Edwards's map of Europe we find the smaller German states to be represented with the lightest lines, indicating the highest rank, and Great Britain with the darkest or lowest. He states the provision of books in libraries publicly accessible, as compared with the population, to be as follows:--In Saxony, for every 100 inhabitants there are 417 books; in Denmark, 412; in Bavaria, 339; in Tuscany, 261; in Prussia, 200; in Austria, 167; in France, 129; in Belgium, 95; whilst in Great Britain there are only 53 to every 100 inhabitants. In the following tables, the libraries containing fewer than 10,000 volumes each (of which there are, in France alone, at least seventy or eighty) are not taken into the account:-- France has 107 public libraries, containing 4,000,000 vols. Prussia " 44 " " 2,400,000 " Austria " 48 " " 2,400,000 " Great Britain " 33 " " 1,771,000 " Bavaria " 17 " " 1,267,000 " Denmark " 5 " " 645,000 " Saxony " 6 " " 554,000 " Belgium " 14 " " 538,000 " Tuscany " 9 " " 411,000 " Taking the capital cities, we find the following results:-- Paris has 9 public libraries, containing 1,474,000 vols. Munich " 2 " " 800,000 " Copenhagen " 3 " " 557,000 " Berlin " 2 " " 530,000 " London " 4 " " 490,500 " Vienna " 3 " " 453,000 " Dresden " 4 " " 340,500 " Florence " 6 " " 318,000 " Milan " 2 " " 230,000 " Brussels " 2 " " 143,500 " Arranging these libraries according to their extent, or number of printed books, they would stand as follows:-- Printed Books. Manuscripts. Paris (1), National Library, 824,000 80,000 vols. Munich, Royal Library, 600,000 22,000 " St. Petersburg, Imperial Library, 446,000 20,650 " London, British Museum, 435,000 31,000 " Copenhagen, Royal Library, 412,000 3,000 " Berlin, Royal Library, 410,000 5,000 " Vienna, Imperial Library, 313,000 16,000 " Dresden, Royal Library, 300,000 2,800 " Wolfenbuttel, Ducal Library, 200,000 4,580 " Madrid, National Library, 200,000 2,500 " Stuttgard, Royal Library, 187,000 3,300 " Paris (2), Arsenal Library, 180,000 6,000 " Milan, Brera Library, 170,000 1,000 " Darmstadt, Grand Ducal Library, 150,000 4,000 " Paris (3), St. Genevieve Library, 150,000 2,000 " Florence, Magliabecchian Library, 150,000 12,000 " Naples, Royal Library, 150,000 3,000 " Edinburgh, Advocates' Library, 148,000 2,000 " Brussels, Royal Library, 133,500 18,000 " Rome (1), Casanata Library, 120,000 4,500 " Hague, Royal Library, 100,000 2,000 " Paris (4), Mazarin Library, 100,000 4,000 " Rome (2), Vatican Library, 100,000 24,000 " Parma, Ducal Library, 100,000 " The chief university libraries may be ranked in the following order:-- Printed Books. Manuscripts. Gottingen, University Library, 360,000 3,000 vols. Breslau, University Library, 250,000 2,300 " Oxford, Bodleian Library, 220,000 21,000 " Tubingen, University Library, 200,000 1,900 " Munich, University Library, 200,000 2,000 " Heidelberg, University Library, 200,000 1,800 " Cambridge, University Library, 166,000 3,163 " Bologna, University Library, 150,000 400 " Prague, University Library, 130,000 4,000 " Vienna, University Library, 115,000 " Leipsic, University Library, 112,000 2,500 " Copenhagen, University Library, 110,000 " Turin, University Library, 110,000 2,000 " Louvain, University Library, 105,000 246 " Dublin, Trinity College Library, 104,239 1,512 " Upsal, University Library, 100,000 5,000 " Erlangen, University Library, 100,000 1,000 " Edinburgh, University Library, 90,354 310 " The largest libraries in Great Britain are those of the Printed Books. Manuscripts. British Museum, London, 435,000 31,000 " Bodleian, Oxford, 220,000 21,000 " University, Cambridge, 166,724 3,163 " Advocates', Edinburgh, 148,000 2,000 " Trinity College, Dublin, 104,239 1,512 " There are in the United States of America at least 81 libraries of 5000 volumes and upwards each, to which the public, more or less restrictedly, have access, and of these 49 are immediately connected with colleges or public schools. The aggregate number of volumes in these collections is about 980,413. We subjoin the contents of a few of the largest:-- Harvard College Library, 72,000 vols. Philadelphia and Loganian Library, 60,000 " Boston Athenæum, 50,000 " Library of Congress, 50,000 " New York Society Library, 32,000 " Mercantile Library, New-York, 32,000 " Georgetown College, 25,000 " Brown University, 24,000 " New-York State Library, 24,000 " Yale College, 21,000 " America will, however, soon possess a library worthy of its character as a great nation. The Astor Library, now in the course of formation, owes its existence to the munificence of John Jacob Astor, who died on the 29th of March, 1848, leaving by his will the sum of 400,000 dollars for the establishment of a public library in the city of New-York. Seventy-five thousand dollars were to be appropriated to the erection of a suitable building, and 120,000 dollars to the purchase of books as a nucleus. The smallest number of books which the trustees consider it safe to estimate as a basis for enlargement is 100,000 volumes. The Astor Library will probably, when first formed, contain a larger number and a better selection of books than any other in the United States. With the generous provision which the founder has made for its increase, together with the liberal donations which will undoubtedly be made to this as the chief library in the country, it is likely to grow rapidly, till it will take rank with the large libraries of the old world. Under the direction of an enlightened and judicious Board of Trustees, with Washington Irving for president, and Dr. Cogswell for superintendent of the institution, there is every reason to believe that the desire so warmly expressed at the conclusion of their report will be fulfilled: "That the Astor Library may soon become, as a depository of the treasures of literature and science, what the city possessing it is rapidly becoming in commerce and wealth." The second witness examined by the committee was M. Guizot. In the distinguished positions which he has filled as minister of public instruction and prime minister in France, his attention has been turned to the public libraries of that country. While in office he ordered an inspection of those institutions, and the French government now has complete and exact documents relative to the number of public libraries, and the number of books in each. These institutions are accessible to the public in every way for reading, and to a great extent for borrowing books. Some of them receive direct grants from the government towards their support; while others, in the provincial towns, are supported by municipal funds; and to the latter the government distributes copies of costly works, for the publication of which it in general subscribes liberally. M. Guizot attributes the happiest results to this system. He says--"There are two good results: the first is, a general regard in the mind of the public for learning, for literature, and for books. That complete accessibility to the libraries gives to every one, learned or unlearned, a general feeling of good-will for learning and for knowledge; and then the second result is, that the means for acquiring knowledge are given to those persons who are able to employ them." His Excellency M. Van de Weyer, the Belgian ambassador, was next examined. He testified that the public libraries in his own country were numerous, large, and easily accessible to all who desire to make use of them. He attributes the best results to the literary character of his country from this privilege of free access to their large collections of books. He thinks the people are better prepared than is generally supposed to appreciate works of a high character. He seems to think it unwise to attempt to popularize science and literature by printing inferior books, written expressly for common and uneducated people. The government subscribe for a number of copies of nearly every valuable work published, by which means they encourage the progress of literature, and are enabled to enrich many of the public collections. "The government have sometimes, within a space of twenty years, spent some £10,000 or £12,000 in favor of libraries. I take this opportunity of stating also, that though the Chamber only votes a grant of 65,000 or 70,000 francs for the Royal Public Library of Brussels, whenever there is some large sale going on, there is always a special grant made to the library. Lately one of the most curious private libraries had been advertised for sale; a catalogue had been printed in six volumes; the government immediately came forward, bought the whole of the collection for £13,000 or £14,000, and made it an addition to the Royal Library in Brussels; they did the same thing at Ghent; I believe that the library that they bought at Ghent consisted of about 20,000 volumes, and in Brussels about 60,000 or 70,000 volumes." Our own government would do well to imitate this example more frequently than it has hitherto done. Passing by several witnesses whose evidence we should be glad to notice did our limits permit, we come to George Dawson, Esquire, who as a lecturer, has had opportunities of becoming acquainted with the condition, the feelings and the wants of the working-classes in the manufacturing towns both in England and Scotland. He testifies that libraries to some extent have already been formed in those places, and that there is a very general desire among the working-people to avail themselves of more and better books. They can appreciate the best authors. Political and historical subjects interest them most, but the higher class of poetry is also read by them. Milton is much read. Mr. Dawson says, "Shakspeare is known by heart almost. I could produce men who could be cross-examined upon any play." The contrast between the manufacturing and the farming districts in respect to the intelligence of the people and their desire for improvement is very great. Speaking of one of the agricultural districts, Mr. Dawson says, "I have heard of a parish in Norfolk where a woman was the parish clerk, because there was not a man in the parish who could read or write!" Henry Stevens, Esq., formerly librarian of one of the libraries connected with Yale College, gave some valuable information respecting the present state of public libraries in the United States. He says: "The public libraries of the United States are small but very numerous. We have but two containing above 50,000 volumes, while there are nine above 20,000, forty-three above 10,000, more than a hundred above 5000 volumes, and thousands of smaller ones. The want of large public consulting libraries, like those of Europe, is much felt." The chief readers in these libraries are the working-classes, and persons who are engaged in active business through the day. Works on physical science, history, biography, and of a superior class, are those chiefly read by them; and Mr. Stevens stated, that when he came to England, he could not help being struck by the "little reading that there is among the laboring and business classes" of this country as compared with the United States. This is succinctly explained by Mr. Dawson, who says: "The quantity of people who cannot read and write in this country is a very great hinderance to the demand for books. We have _eight millions_ who cannot write yet!" Mr. Edwards, in his evidence, also points to the same deficiency of elementary education, "In addition," he says, "to the positive want of schooling on the part of large numbers of the population who are now growing up, those who do get some partial education, habitually neglect to improve what they get from the want of cultivating a taste for reading. Unless good books are made accessible to the people, this is very likely to continue to be a cause--even where education by Sunday schools, and other efforts of that kind, have been brought within the reach of a considerable number of the population--why the good effects of education have not been continued in after life." The committee very justly place much value on the opinions and suggestions of M. Libri. The thorough knowledge which that eminent bibliographer possesses of all matters pertaining to the condition and wants of public libraries, as well as of the needs of literary men, renders his remarks worthy of careful consideration. In a letter addressed to Mr. Ewart, the chairman of the committee, he develops his views at some length, and shows the necessity of having in great countries libraries "in which one may expect to find, as far as it is possible, all books which learned men--men who occupy themselves upon any subject whatever, and who cultivate one of the branches of human knowledge--may require to consult. Of these there is nothing useless, nothing ought to be neglected; the most insignificant in appearance, those which on their publication have attracted the least attention, sometimes become the source of valuable and unexpected information." It is in the fragments, now so rare and precious, of some alphabets--of some small grammars published for the use of schools about the middle of the fifteenth century--or in the letters distributed in Germany by the religious bodies commissioned to collect alms, that bibliographers now seek to discover the first processes employed by the inventors of xylography and typography. It is in a forgotten collection of indifferent plates, published at Venice by Faush Verantio towards the end of the sixteenth century, that an engineer, who interests himself in the history of the mechanical arts, might find the first diagrams of iron suspension-bridges. Nothing should be neglected; nothing is useless to whoever wishes thoroughly to study a subject. An astronomer, who desires to study the motions peculiar to certain stars, requires to consult all the old books of astronomy, and even of astrology, which appear the most replete with error. A chemist, a man who is engaged in the industrial arts, may still consult with profit certain works on alchemy, and even on magic. A legislator, a jurisconsult, needs sometimes to be acquainted with the laws, the ordinances, which derive their origin from the most barbarous ages; but it is particularly for the biographer, for the historian, that it is necessary to prepare the largest field of inquiry, to amass the greatest quantity of materials. This is not only true as regards past times, but we ought to prepare the materials for future students. Historical facts which appear the least important, the most insignificant anecdotes, registered in a pamphlet, mentioned in a placard or in a song, nay be connected at a later period in an unforeseen manner with events which acquire great importance, or with men who are distinguished in history by their genius, by their sudden elevation, or even by their crimes. We are not born celebrated--men become so; and when we desire to trace the history of those who have attained it, the inquirer is often obliged to pursue his researches in their most humble beginnings. Who would have imagined that the obscure author of a small pamphlet, "Le Souper de Beaucaire," would subsequently become the Emperor Napoleon? and that to write fully the life of the execrable Marat, one ought to have the very insignificant essays on physics that he published before the Revolution? Nothing is too unimportant for whoever wishes thoroughly to study the literary or scientific history of a country, or for one who undertakes to trace the intellectual progress of eminent minds, or to inform himself in detail of the changes which have taken place in the institutions and in the manners of a nation. Without speaking of the commentaries or considerable additions which have been introduced in the various reprints of an author, the successive editions of the same work which appear to resemble each other the most, are often distinguished from each other by peculiarities worthy of much attention. It has been well said, that a public library should contain all those works which are too costly, too voluminous, or of _too little value_ in the common estimation to be found elsewhere, down even to the smallest tracts. An old almanac, or a forgotten street-ballad, has sometimes enabled the historian to verify or correct some important point which would otherwise have remained in dispute. With a brief extract from the evidence of one other witness we must close our notice of the Report on Public Libraries. Charles Meyer, Esq., German secretary to his Royal Highness Prince Albert, had given attention to the public libraries of Germany, having resided several years in Gotha, Hamburg, Leipsic, and Munich. He had perused the principal part of the evidence which had been given by Mr. Edwards upon this subject, and found all that he stated to be quite correct. Dr. Meyer thinks the existence of the numerous and valuable libraries of Germany has given the literary men of that country an advantage over the literary men of England. "It has saved a great number of our German learned men," he says, "from the danger of becoming _autodidactoi_--self-taught. I think that is one essential point of difference that is visible in comparing the general character of the instruction in this country with that on the continent: there are in this country a great number of self-taught people, who think according to their own views, without any reference to previous scientific works. They make sometimes very great discoveries; but sometimes they find that they have wasted their labor upon subjects already known, which have been written upon by a great number of people before them; but as they have no access to libraries, it is impossible for them to get acquainted with the literature of that branch upon which they treat." From the preceding quotations, it is evident that, in the opinion of the Parliamentary Committee, and of the witnesses examined by it, there exists in this country at once a great deficiency of public libraries and a pressing necessity for their establishment. Our people are and will be readers. They are generally prepared to make a good use of books of a higher order than those offered to them in so cheap and attractive a form by our enterprising publishers. Now, either their energies will be wasted in a desultory course of reading, by which they will gain only a superficial knowledge of almost every conceivable subject, or they must be furnished with the means, which they are so well prepared to use to advantage, of going to the bottom of whatever subject interests them, and having exhausted the wisdom of past generations, of adding to the stock of general knowledge from the results of their own thoughts and experience. The necessity for the establishment of large collections of books, freely open to the public--of institutions in which, as Ovid well expresses it, "Quæque viri docto veteres cepere novique Pectore, lecturis inspicienda patent"-- is, we imagine, unquestioned and unquestionable. The question now arises, How are these libraries to be constituted? On this point it will not be expected that we should dilate at length. At the present time the best books on all subjects are to be purchased at a moderate rate; and in the formation of new libraries, attention should first be paid to the supply of works most generally in demand. It will neither be wise nor just to the public to purchase, at the outset, rare and curious works: when a sufficient supply of really useful and generally read publications has been obtained, it will be quite time enough to think of indulging the bibliomania. But there is one subject on which this taste may advantageously be indulged--and that is, every town in which a public library is established should take care to collect all works relating to its local or municipal history. A selection of the best books on bibliography should also be possessed by each. These are to the librarian and the literary man what the compass is to the mariner, or the tools of his trade to the artisan. But we must hasten to a conclusion. As a pendent to the Report of the Parliamentary Committee, Mr. Ewart brought forward a bill for the establishment of libraries and museums in country towns. This bill has now received the sanction of the legislature; its operation is, however, limited to boroughs whose population exceeds 10,000; and before it can be carried into effect, a public meeting of rate-payers must be called, and the consent of two-thirds of those present obtained. Liverpool was the first to profit by this act: other towns have followed her example; and we trust that ere long, in all the considerable towns throughout the length and breadth of this land, public libraries and museums will be established. The subject is one that cannot be long neglected. It will go on gaining upon public attention, until seen by all in its true light, and in all its bearings. Then the connection between a sound literature and the means used for its formation will be felt; then the numerous and immediate advantages of such a form of encouragement, as the establishment of these institutions, will be clearly seen and fully understood; and the rich harvest of glory which our future scholars will reap in every branch of study must convince even the most incredulous, that literature asks no favors and seeks no aid for which she does not repay the giver with a tenfold increase. FOOTNOTES: [19] The library of Pergamos was founded by King Eumenes, and enlarged by his successor Attalus. It soon became so extensive that the Ptolemies, afraid that it would speedily rival their own collection at Alexandria, issued an edict forbidding the exportation of papyrus; but this prohibition, so far from attaining the unworthy object for which it was destined, proved rather beneficial; for the Pergameans, having exhausted their stock of papyrus, set their wits to work, and invented parchment (_charta Pergamena_) as a substitute. [20] One of the most remarkable of these purchases was that made of the private library of the Prince Eugene, for a life-income of 10,000 florins. It was composed of 15,000 printed volumes, 337 manuscripts, 290 folio volumes of prints, and 215 portfolios or boxes. [21] For a detailed account of, and guide-book to, the treasures of this great national collection, see "The British Museum, Historical and Descriptive, with Numerous Engravings," recently published by W. & R. Chambers. THE JOURNALS OF LOUIS PHILIPPE. Our readers know that one of the points of the singular but admirable education that Madame de Genlis gave Louis Philippe and his brothers, was to teach them to examine and regulate their mind and conduct by the keeping of a journal; and this Louis Philippe has done, not, we suppose, continuously, nor even, perhaps, for the greater part of his busy life, but for particular periods--during seasons either of peculiar interest or of unusual leisure. A fragment of his early journal, extending from the autumn of 1790 to the summer of 1791, was lost or stolen in the tumults and pillage of the first Revolution, as the memoirs of 1815 have been in the late one, and like these, published by an illegitimate possessor. That most curious little tract had become very rare--so rare, indeed, that Louis Philippe himself had not a copy, till a friend of ours lately presented him the copy from which we ourselves had made a translation, which we published _in extenso_ in our article on "The Personal History of Louis Philippe." The King had also written and printed the "Journal of the Hundred Days," just mentioned; and we were permitted to see and make extracts in our last March number from his Journal of February and March, 1848. It is known, too, that during his residence at Claremont, as at former intervals of repose, he amused himself in recording his recollections; but no information has yet transpired of the extent (either as to bulk or time) of what he may have left--beyond the conjecture (which is, however, only founded on an accidental expression of his which was repeated to us some months ago) that the portion which he was so anxious to complete related to his return to France in 1814. * * But whatever Louis Philippe may have left, it will be curious and valuable, as the production of so powerful a mind, always engaged in, and for a long period actually directing, the most extraordinary series of events in the history of the modern world. Its publication, however, must be, of course, a matter of great delicacy, and of mature deliberation, and we have not as yet heard even a rumor on the subject. These facts are from an interesting paper in the last number of the Quarterly Review. THE BUNJARAS. This most interesting race, the travelling grain merchants of western India (who lead a life wholly nomadic, and have done so earlier than is recorded), have their best interests opposed to the introduction of foreign innovation in the matter of transit. The Bunjaras have no sympathy with civilized life; from the people of India they move, think, live apart, varying in dress, language, religion, from all about them. Rajpoots by origin, they can follow no trade; the Bunjara may _serve_ only as a soldier; in all other callings he must be free and independent. For hundreds of years we find them, as hordes, encamping in the open air, and living by the exchange of merchandise. They are owners of great droves of bullocks, which, laden with grain in the upper country, they drive to the coast, exchanging their burthens for salt, at a favorable market, but sedulously avoiding all intercourse with strangers and their cities. The Bunjaras are a stout, sturdy race; sturdy and stout in action and resolve as they are in body and form, Spartan-like in their sense of honor, free in their opinion as the mountain breeze, keeping apart from men and their cabals, and existing by their own energies. A short time since, I journeyed on horseback over the very line of this proposed railway, from the city of Nassiek to Bombay, and encountered several hundreds of bullocks heavily laden, and attended by Bunjara families; the men armed with sword and matchlock, the children propped up among the bullock furniture, and each younger woman of the tribe looking much as one fancies the Jewish maiden must have looked when she obtained grace and favor in the sight of King Ahasuerus, who "made her queen instead of Vashti." It is worthy of remark, that the choice of colors among the Bunjara women is altogether opposed to general taste among the Hindoos. Red and yellow among the latter are always favorite tints, and blue is never worn by any but the common people, to whom it is recommended by the cheapness of the indigo used in dyeing. The Bunjara women, on the contrary, select the richest imaginable Tyrian purple, a sort of rosy smalt, as the ground of their attire, which is bordered by a deep phylactery of divers colors in curious needlework, wrought in with small mirrors, beads, and sparkling crystals. Their saree has a fringe of shells, and their handsome arms and delicate ankles are laden with rich ornaments The Bunjara women plaid their hair with crimson silk, and suffer it to fall on either side of the face, the ends secured with silver tassels, and on the summit of the head they wear a small tiara studded with silver stars. The reader may think this a fanciful and exaggerated dress for the wife of a drover; but these costumes are heir-looms, and though they are often seen faded, torn, travel-stained, and grim, the materials are always as I have described them, differing in freshness, but never in character.--_Sharpe._ From the Dublin University Magazine. THE MYSTIC VIAL: OR, THE LAST DEMOISELLE DE CHARREBOURG _Concluded from page 264._ XI.--JONQUIL. Blassemare, meanwhile, made his toilet elaborately, and by ten o'clock was in Paris. He stopped at the Hotel Secqville. "Is the marquis yet risen?" he asked. "No;" he was in his bed; he had not retired until very late, and must not be disturbed. "But I _must_ see him, my good friend; his happiness, indeed his safety, depends upon my seeing him immediately." Blassemare was so very urgent, that at length the servant consented to deliver a note to his master. Rubbing his eyes, and more asleep than awake, the marquis took the billet, and read-- "The Sieur de Blassemare, who had the honor of meeting the Marquis de Secqville last night at the Chateau des Anges, implores a few minutes conversation without one moment's delay; by granting which the marquis may possibly avert consequences the most deplorable." Certain shocks are strong enough to restore a drunken man to sobriety in an instant, and, _a fortiori_, to dispel in a moment the fumes of sleep. In a few seconds the marquis, in slippers, and morning-gown, received Blassemare, with many apologies, in his dressing-room. "A very slight acquaintance will justify a _friendly_ interposition," said Blassemare, after a few little speeches of ceremony at each side; "and my visit is inspired by a friendly and charitable motive. The fact is--the fact is--my dear friend, that--your coat is torn." "My coat torn!" repeated the marquis in surprise, visibly disconcerted, while he affected surprise. "Yes, the coat you wore last night. Ah! there it is--this blue velvet, with diamond button. La! Yes, there is the place. It was caught--ha, ha, ha!--in that cursed door; and, egad, as one of Le Prun's confidential advisers has got the piece in his possession----" "Psha! you are jesting. Why, there are more blue coats than one in the world." "I know; but there is only _one_ Marquis de Secqville. And as I happened, purely accidentally, upon my honor, to witness with my own eyes no inconsiderable part of his last night's adventure, it may be as well if he reverses his clever points of evidence for Monsieur Le Prun, should his suspicions chance to take an unfortunate direction." "What adventure pray, sir, do you speak of?" "Your interview with Madame Le Prun, your unfortunate descent from the balcony, your flight through the park-door, and the disastrous severance of a button and a specimen-bit of velvet from your coat--in short, my dear marquis, you may, if you please, affect a reserve, which, indeed, _I_ should prefer to a frank confession, by which, although I have nothing to learn, I should, in some sort, be compelled to regard your secret as one of honor; as it is, you know, I am free----" "No gentleman is free to compromise a lady's character by his insinuations." "Nor by his _conduct_, my dear marquis. But should he be so unfortunate as to have done so, he ought, in prudence and generosity, to seal as many lips as he possibly can." "It seems, sir, to me that you have come to me with a cock-and-a-bull story, to establish an imaginary connection between me and some stupid adventure, which occurred at the Chateau des Anges." "And such being your belief, my dear marquis, I have, of course, only to make my adieux, and relieve you from so impertinent an intrusion." "Stay, sir. You are a gentleman; there are, perhaps, circumstances of suspicion. It is very embarrassing to have a lady's name involved; and--and--in short, sir, I----" He hesitated. "_What_, sir?" "I throw myself upon your honor!" said the marquis, with an effort, and extending his hand. "You are right, my dear marquis," said Blassemare, accepting his proffered hand. "You know I am Le Prun's friend; and as there was no obligation of secrecy, till your own confidence imposed it, I should have been in a difficult position as respected him. I have now learned your secret from yourself--honor seals my lips; and so, having put you upon your guard, and enjoined the extremest caution, at least for the present, I commend you to your presiding planets, Mercury and Venus. But you had better burn that tell-tale coat; for here is not a shrewder fellow in all France than Le Prun, and 'gad you are not safe till it is in ashes." "My dear Blassemare, be my friend; quiet his suspicions. I shall one day tell you all; only avert his suspicions from her." "By my faith, that is more than I _can_ do. Give me a line to her; _I_ must direct her conduct, or she will ruin herself. I know Le Prun; it needs a skilful player to hide one's cards from him. I am a man of my word; and I pledge my honor that Le Prun shall not have hint of your secret." "You are right, Blassemare. _I_ can't see her without exposing her to risk; do all you can to protect her from jealousy." "Well, give me my credentials." Secqville wrote:--"_Blassemare is the friend of Dubois; Lucille may trust him._" "She knew me first by that name; be careful not to risk losing the paper." Again they bid farewell, and Blassemare departed. Blassemare's head was as full of strange images as the steam of a witch's caldron. He had his own notions of honor--somewhat fantastic and inconsistent, but still strong enough to prevent his betraying to Le Prun the secret of which he had just made himself completely master. He was mortified intensely by the discovery of a successful rival where he had so coolly and confidently flattered himself with a solitary conquest. He looked upon himself as the _dupe_ of a young girl and her melancholy lover. His vanity, his spleen, and his guilty fancy, which, with the discovery of his difficulties, expanded almost into a passion, all stimulated him to continue the pursuit, and his brain teemed with schemes for outwitting them both, supplanting his rival, and gaining his point. Full of these, he reached the Chateau des Anges--a sage, trustworthy, and virtuous counsellor for old Le Prun to lean on in his difficulties! "You did wrong, in my opinion, to unmask your suspicions to old Charrebourg," said Blassemare, after he and Le Prun had talked over the affair. "But he has not seen my wife since, and she, therefore, knows nothing of them." "Were I in your place, notwithstanding, I should see him again, undo the effect of what I had said, and so prevent his putting Madame Le Prun on her guard." "You are right for once. I thought of doing so myself." Le Prun generally acted promptly; and so he left Blassemare to his meditations. Framing his little speech of apology as he went along, he traversed several passages, descended a stair in one of the towers, and found himself at last at the lobby of the Visconte's suite of rooms. It was now night--and these apartments lying in the oldest part of the chateau, and little frequented, were but very dimly lighted. There was nobody waiting in the anteroom--the servant had probably taken advantage of his master's repose, or reverie, to steal away to the gay society of his brother domestics; and these sombre and magnificently constructed rooms were as deserted as they were dim. Having called in vain, the Fermier-General lighted a candle at the murky lamp, and entered the Visconte's apartment. His step was arrested by a howling from the inner chambers that might have spoken the despair of an evil spirit. "Charrebourg! Visconte! Charrebourg!" No answer--There was a silence--then another swelling howl. "Psha!--it is that cursed old cur. I had forgotten him. Jonquil, Jonquil! come here, boy." The old dog came scrambling along, and looking up into Le Prun's face, yelped strangely. "What!--hungry? They have forgotten you, I dare say. What! not a scrap, not a bone! But where is your master?" Le Prun entered the inner room, and the dog, preceding him, ran behind the fauteuil that stood at the table; and then running a step or two towards Le Prun, raised a howl that made him jump. "Hey! what's the matter? But, sacre! there _is_ something--what is this?" There was a candle burning on the table, and writing materials. The Visconte de Charrebourg, who had evidently been writing, had fallen forward upon the table--dead. Le Prun touched him, he was quite cold. He raised the tall lank figure as well as he could, so that it leaned back in the chair; a little blood came from the corner of the mouth, the eyes were glazed, but the features wore, even in death, a character of sternness and dignity. He had fallen forward upon the fingers that held the pen, and the hand came stiffly back along with the body, still holding the pen in the attitude in which the chill of death had stiffened them. In this attitude he looked as if he only awaited a phrase or a thought of which he was in search to resume his writing. "Dead--dead--a long time dead! how the devil has all this happened?" And he looked for a moment at the old hound that was sniffing and whimpering in his master's ears, as if he could answer him. Poor Jonquil! he has shared his master's fortune fairly--the better and the worse; for years his humble comrade in the sylvan solitudes of Charrebourg, and here the solitary witness of his parting moment. Who can say with what more than human grief that dumb heart is swelling! He will not outlive his old friend many days--Jonquil is past the age for making new ones. Le Prun glanced at the letter, a few lines of which the dead man had traced when he was thus awfully interrupted. "Sir," it began, "the family of Charrebourg, of which I am the unworthy representative, have been remarkable at all times for a chivalric and honorable spirit. They have maintained their dignity in prosperity by great deeds and princely munificence--in adversity, by encountering grief with patience, and insolence with defiance. Insult has never approached them unexpiated by blood; and I, old as I am, in consequence of what this morning----" here the summons had interrupted him. "Intended for me!" said Le Prun, with an ugly sneer. "Well, he can't now put his daughter on her guard, or inflame her with the magnificent spirit of the beggarly Charrebourgs." And so saying, he surrendered the chamber to the dead Visconte and his canine watcher. XII.--ISOLATION. Blassemare kept his counsel and his word. He dropped no hint to Le Prun of his interview with the Marquis de Secqville. His own vanity was at once mortified and excited by the discovery he had made. He was resolved to obliterate the disgrace of having been duped, by the reality of his meditated triumph. Love and war have much in common, a truth perhaps embodied in the allegoric loves of Mars and Venus. Certain, at least, it is, that in each pursuit all authorities agree that every stratagem is fair. Blassemare was not the man to rob this canon of its force by any morbid scruples of conscience; and having the courage of a lion, associated with some of the vulpine attributes, and a certain prankish love of mischief, he was tolerably qualified by nature for the enterprises of rivalry and intrigue. Le Prun brooded savagely over his suspected wrongs. He awaited with affected contempt, but a real and malignant anxiety, the verdict of Blassemare, who insisted upon deferring his interview with Madame Le Prun until some weeks had passed over the grave of that "high and puissant signer, the Visconte de Charrebourg." It was nearly a month after the death of that old gentleman, when Blassemare, happening to meet Madame Le Prun as she walked upon one of the terraces, dressed in so exquisite a suit of mourning, and looking altogether so irresistibly handsome, that, for the life of him, he could not forbear saluting, approaching, and addressing her. He was affably received, and the conversation, at first slight and indifferent, turned gradually, without premeditation on his part, but, as it were, by a sort of irresistible fatality, into that sombre and troubled channel whither, sooner or later, though not exactly then, he had determined to direct it. "Monsieur Le Prun is unaccountably out of spirits, madame--I should say morose, ill-tempered. I almost fear to approach him." "Is there any thing to surprise one in that?" "Why, no, considering his provocations." "Provocations! what do you mean, sir?" "Madame must pardon me. I happen to be in possession of some secrets." There was a short pause, during which Madame Le Prun's color came and went more than once. "Will Madame Le Prun be so kind as to sit down here for a few minutes, and I will convince her that I have kept those secrets well, and that I am--I dare not say her friend--but the most devoted of her servants?" Madame Le Prun sat down upon the marble couch that stood there, carved with doves and Cupids, and embowered, in the transparent shadows of myrtle, like a throne of Venus. Blassemare fancied that he had never beheld so beautiful and piquante an image as Lucille at that moment presented: her cheeks glowing, her long lashes half dropped over the quenched fires of her proud dark eyes; her countenance full of a confusion that was at once beautiful and sinister; one hand laid upon her heart, as if to quell its beatings, and shut with an expression half defiant, half irresolute--and the pretty fingers of the other unconsciously playing with the tendrils of a pavenche. Blassemare enjoyed this pretty picture too much to disturb it by a word. Perhaps, too, there was comfort to his vanity in the spectacle of her humiliation; at all events he suffered some time to pass before he spoke to her. When he did, it was with a great deal of respect; for Blassemare, notwithstanding his coarseness, had a sufficiency of tact. "Madame perceives that I am not without discretion and zeal in her service." "Sir, you speak enigmas; you talk of secrets and provocation; and while you affect an air of deference, your meaning is full of insolence." It was plain her pride was mastering her fears, Blassemare thought it high time to lower his key. He therefore said, with a confident smile and an easy air-- "My meaning may be disagreeable, but that is chargeable not upon _me_, but on the _circumstances_ of our retrospect; and if I am enigmatical rather than explicit, I am so from respect, not insolence. My dear madame, on the honor of a gentleman, I saw Monsieur le Marquis de Secqville take his abrupt departure from your window--you understand. I not only saw him, but found and retained proofs of his identity, armed with which, I taxed him with the fact, and obtained his full confession. _Now_, madame, perhaps you will give me credit for something better than hypocrisy and insolence." Lucille looked thunderstruck for a moment, then rising, she darted on him a glance of rage and defiance, and overpowered by the tumult within her, she burst into a flood of tears, and covering her face with her hands, sobbed in silence, almost hysterically. Blassemare waited patiently while she wept on. Suddenly she looked full and fiercely on him, and cried-- "Perhaps you have told me falsehoods, and dared thus to trifle with me." "I swear, madame, on the honor of a nobleman of France, I have told you the simple truth. De Secqville did not venture to deny the fact; on the contrary, he confessed it frankly." "Yes--I see you tell me the truth; it was base of De Secqville!" "Well, to say truth, I did think he might have kept a lady's secret better." Blassemare was ready and unscrupulous; but all is fair in love. "I am innocent!" she cried, with abrupt vehemence, and fixing her fiery gaze upon him. "Of course, madame." "I say I am innocent, sir. Why do you say _of course_!" "Because _I_ never knew a lady yet, who was otherwise than innocent." She looked at him with a lowering contempt--he thought it _guilt_--for a few moments, then dropping her gaze gloomily, she murmured, in bitter abstraction-- "Yes, it was base of De Secqville; he ought to have perished rather." "Egad," thought Blassemare, "my project prospers--she is at my mercy--and disgusted with the Marquis. I'm no general or she surrenders at discretion." "De Secqville, madame, is a handsome fellow; but he admires nobody but himself. He has been all his life--and trust me, he is not quite so young as he pretends--a man of intrigue. He is not content with his _bonnes fortunes_, but he boasts of his conquests, and sacrifices reputations to his vanity. Such men are not to be trusted with impunity, or loved without disgrace. It is best never to have favored them, and next best to discard them promptly." He fancied his speech had hit the fierce temper of his auditor. He paused for a time, to let it work, and then, in a tone of profound humility, said-- "As for me, madame, if one so unworthy dare invite a passing thought of yours, I have but to ask your forgiveness; if I have said one word that gave you pain, I implore your forgiveness." Here he sank upon his knee. Lucille was by no means as experienced in the ways of the wicked gender as many younger women. Blassemare looked very humble, and she took his humility in good faith. She looked on him then with a softened aspect, and the heart of the profligate beat thick with anticipated triumph. "You have had, madame, in these recent transactions, signal proofs of my fidelity. The secret so lightly esteemed by De Secqville, _I_ would rather lose my last drop of blood than reveal to a living mortal. I am secrecy itself. Judge what I have endured. I have striven--how vainly my own heart tells me--to hide the sentiments of my soul from you, madame. I could see with comparative indifference the happiness of that rival whom the forms of law, and not the preference of the heart, had elevated; but judge how I could endure the fortune of an unworthy and faithless competitor. Imagine, if you can, my despair. Compassionate, I conjure you, my misery, and with one relenting word or look of pity, raise me from the abyss, and see at your feet the happiest, as he is the most devoted, of mortals." At the same moment Blassemare attempted to take Lucille's hand; it was, however, instantly withdrawn, and the back of it, instead, struck him in the face, with all the force of enraged and insulted pride. "How dare you, sirrah, hold such language to me--how _dare_ you? Another word, and I denounce you to my husband--ay, sir, _I_--to Monsieur Le Prun. I defy you." Blassemare had started to his feet, very much astonished; his cheek tingling, his self-love stung to the quick. But he was too experienced in such affairs to indulge any tragical emotions on the occasion. He stared at her for a minute, with an expression of absurd bewilderment. There was no very graceful _exit_ from the undignified predicament to which he had, like a simpleton, reduced himself. Recovering his self-possession, however, he broke into a cold laugh, and said-- "Madame, I have misunderstood you with a vengeance; I pray you believe that you have misunderstood _me_. We now, however, thoroughly understand one another. I keep your little secret on condition that you keep mine." Lucille deigned no answer; but the compact had, it seemed, been silently ratified by her, for Le Prun and Blassemare continued to be the best friends imaginable. Blassemare was not vindictive, but he _was_ exquisitely vain. He had a good-humored turn for mischief, too; and, notwithstanding the repulse he had experienced, or perhaps, such is human perversity--_in consequence_ of it--he was more than ever resolved to pursue his guilty designs upon the heart of Madame Le Prun. His hands were, therefore, tolerably full; for he had not only this little affair to attend to, but to exercise his vigilance to prevent De Secqville's hearing of his breach of faith, and at the same time to confirm and exasperate, in furtherance of his own schemes, the suspicions of Monsieur Le Prun. This latter task circumstances rendered an easy one, and Blassemare executed it without giving any definite direction to Le Prun's inflamed jealousy. So far, indeed, was he from suspecting the identity of the criminal, that he brought De Secqville two or three times to sup at the Chateau des Anges, an act of temerity which excited Blassemare's anxiety and vigilance. That gentleman had therefore kept so close and constant a watch upon the handsome Marquis, that he had not, upon any of these occasions, an opportunity of exchanging a single sentence with Madame Le Prun. The occasional appearance of De Secqville at the Chateau des Anges was a sufficient proof that Blassemare had kept the secret with fidelity. Madame Le Prun, therefore, was far from suspecting that _he_ was in secret the inspiring cause of that ominous restraint, the pressure of which she began to feel every day more and more severely. One by one her personal attendants were removed. Gradually she felt the process of isolation shrouding her from the eyes of her fellow-creatures. Her walks were prescribed and restricted; and with bitter resentment she perceived that she was subjected to the outrage of a systematic espionage. The face of M. Le Prun was always darkened with hatred and menace. Every day made his power more directly felt, and more nearly reduced her to his solitary, rare, and sinister companionship. At last a note, in M. Le Prun's hand, upon her table, announced in a few barbarous and insulting words that his niece Julie had been removed, by his orders, from the contagion of a companionship unfit for innocence. This was to Lucille a frightful blow. Her solitude was now virtually complete. Her own old faithful servant, Marguerite, had been withdrawn; and a tall pale Norman matron, taciturn and sardonic, was now her sole attendant. It was plain, too, that M. Le Prun had gradually removed his establishment from the Chateau des Anges. The gay and gorgeous staff of servants and grooms had disappeared. The salons, halls, and lobbies of the vast mansion were silent as the chambers of a mausoleum--the outer courts still and deserted. She was becoming the prisoner of an enraged tyrant, alone, in the midst of an impenetrable and funereal solitude. In fact, many prisoners of state enjoyed a great deal more liberty than she; for not only was she restricted to her own apartment, but confined to the range of the small court which lay immediately under her own windows. The indignation and fury which these outrages inspired, by degrees gave place to something like despair and panic. With the exception of her ill-looking handmaid, and the no less sinister-visaged sentinel who stealthily watched her movements, and between both of whom a sort of ominous correspondence seemed to be carried on by signals, she had latterly seen no one, but at rare intervals the hated and dreaded apparition of Le Prun at a distance, and Blassemare once or twice. XIII.--THE ROSE-TREE. One day Lucille was walking in the little court we have described, when the door of the park, which we have had occasion to signalize, opened, and Blassemare stood within a yard or two of her. "Good-day, madame." "Good-day, sir." A glance at the attendant, who seemed to regard Blassemare as Le Prun's vicegerent, was sufficient to cause her to withdraw to some distance, and affecting a light and easy air, which might well mislead the more distant observers as to the serious purport of his discourse, he continued-- "I am afraid madame is very unhappy." "Truly, I am so." "I fear she is also _in danger_." She started as if a bolt of ice had pierced her heart. He had spoken in that word the secret fears of many a long night. How inexpressibly more terrible do our untold terrors become, when they are spoken in our ears by the lips of strangers! "Yes, madame, I say in danger. There are odd stories afloat about Monsieur Le Prun--they may be all lies, I don't pretend to say; for in truth I don't very well _comprehend_ my friend Le Prun. But it cannot be hidden from madame, that when one wants to make away with an individual, the first step is to conceal them--to cut them off from all intercourse with the world, and cause them to be forgotten. Madame understands me?" "Yes, yes--oh, my God!" "Madame must learn to command herself, if she wishes to prolong our conversation. We must _appear_, at least, indifferent. There are _spies_ watching our gestures and countenances, though they can't hear our words." "I will--thank you, thank you: but for the mercy of God, monsieur, will you suffer me to perish?" "No, madame, if you will aid in your own deliverance. Will you fly with me to-morrow night?" "If monsieur, for the charity of heaven, will undertake to act only as my brother and protector." "By my faith, madame, I'll put myself under no conditions." "Monsieur de Blassemare, have you no honor, no pity, no manhood? Will you be accessory to a _murder_? I will go with you on no other terms." "I accept none, madame." "You are a coward, sir, and a criminal." "Madame might command, at least, her countenance and her gestures; imitate me. You call me hard names; I'm prepared for them. Now listen: I won't accept your condition, because, if I did, I should keep my word; and, I tell you frankly, I won't despair, and I don't despair. But, madame, you shan't perish. What do you say to leaving the chateau with De Secqville?" "Yes, _he_ will agree to whatever I propose." "I dare say." "But when--how?" "To-morrow night, at ten o'clock, through that door; a coach shall wait in the park. You know the well under the two chestnut-trees; there he will await you; don't fail--a moment late, and all may be lost." "But--but how to evade the woman who watches me?" "She shall be perfectly drunk." "And the man?" "Drunker still. Leave all details to me. There are more than one Argus besides these; but a man of resource is at home among difficulties. Watch at ten o'clock. When you see a light in the window of the small pavilion, all is prepared: you will find the door open." Blassemare signed to the woman to approach, and said, as he bowed his adieu, in a louder key-- "I shall not fail, madame, to report to Monsieur Le Prun the unfortunate temper in which I have the honor to find you." "And have the goodness to add, that I only regret my inability to repeat the same sentiments in his presence." "Madame shall be obeyed." So, with an air of affected defiance on the one side, and of sarcastic levity on the other, the two conspirators parted. Her protracted residence in the Chateau des Anges, gloomy and anxious before, had become absolutely terrifying since she had heard the dark and menacing insinuations used by Blassemare. The evening that followed that scene, the night, and the ensuing morning, seemed endless, filled with horrid images, and haunted by the hideous thought that the catastrophe might possibly anticipate the hour of escape, or that some one untoward chance might defeat the entire scheme, and leave her at the mercy of a more than ever exasperated tyrant. As the day wore on, every incident appeared to her overstrained mind an omen of good or ill-success. Towards evening the sky became overcast, and finally an awful thunder-storm swept over the Chateau des Anges. Her heart sank within her at the inauspicious augury; but as the same tempest, an hour later, rolled over other regions, it left one trifling token of its passage, which, by a mysterious stroke of fate, was nearly connected with her destiny. Poor Gabriel, his head full of chimeras, his heart of true love, was slowly walking through the woodlands of the Parcq de Charrebourg, towards that haunted spot, the cottage in which the beautiful demoiselle had passed her happiest days, when the storm began to mutter over the rising grounds, and before he had made much way, the thunder burst above his head with fury, and in a little time the rain descended with such tropical violence as to arrest his further progress, under the dense canopy of a chestnut-tree. Here he waited until the thunder-clouds had quite passed away; and then, amid red glances of western sunshine, he resumed that pilgrimage, to him so full of melancholy, of ambition, and of tenderness. "And now, dear, _dear_ Mademoiselle de Charrebourg, I come into your presence, to learn how it fares with you." He took off his hat, as if expecting to see her looking, as of old, from the window of her little room. From the plants that hung from the walls, and from the struggling bushes, the big rain-drops were trickling, in the merry sunlight, like tears of joy. His heart was full as he turned the corner of the cottage, and entered the little bowling-green. But, alas! what a sight awaited him! The rose-tree, the emblem of his adored mistress, was shivered: the casement, and the wall, and roof, were shattered, and reduced to a mass of rubbish, by a stroke of lightning. Gabriel had never felt real desolation before. He rushed to the wide chasm which now admitted the winds and rains of heaven to the shrine which his adoration and reverence had consecrated with a tenderness so absorbing. Oh! what ruin--what profanation--what an irreparable havoc of all his treasure! And the tree, too--gone, blasted. Tears of passionate despair rained from his eyes: he wrung his hands, he stamped, raved, and "cursed his day." In a little while, however, his thoughts took a different turn. From the material wreck they passed on to the dire significance which such portent might indicate. "Yes, I came to see how she fares, and behold what I find--torn by storms--ruined--dead." He stooped, and took up a fragment of the rose-tree and kissed it. "But the Chateau des Anges is not five leagues away. I will go there. I will go now. I will learn what all this means." With this resolution he ran fleetly down the slopes of the park, now wreathed in the rising mists of night, towards the feudal village of Charrebourg, through which his path lay. Breathless and eager, as if heaven were before him and all the fiends of hell at his heels, he sped through the darkening town, and did not slacken his speed until he was a full mile beyond it. He had been so absorbed with the single idea that had seized upon his mind, that he was scarcely conscious of the objects he had passed or the speed at which he ran. As he looked round upon the moonlit scenery among which he found himself, he felt for a moment stunned and perplexed; he slackened his pace and thought over his expedition. It lost none of its romantic fascination; he only wondered that he had not made a journey to the Chateau des Anges at least once in every week. How beautiful the moonlight was! how soft the air! how enchanting the scenery! and oh, what vague possibilities of glory and rapture might not be unfolded in the undeveloped future of this wild excursion! It was fully a quarter past twelve when Gabriel reached the point, at which the road directly leading to the Chateau des Anges diverged from that which he had been hitherto travelling. Just as he did so, a carriage and four, with two postillions and two mounted servants beside, came to a sudden stop within a few score paces of the pedestrian, and one of the men dismounting secured some part of the harness which had given way, and was getting into the saddle again when Gabriel arrived at the side of the carriage. He then made a momentary pause. In the brilliant moonlight every detail of the equipage was visible; the coach was dingy and battered, its principal color blue, and covered, according to the fashion, with gilded arabesques in cumbrous relief, in which a curious dragon, with a barbed tongue and tail, was contending in a hundred repetitions with as many little cupids. Just as these details seized upon his imagination, the window was suddenly opened, and a lady put out her head and in thrilling tones cried-- "Gabriel, Gabriel--save me, save me." He saw Lucille's face; it was her voice that rang in his ears. He felt his strength multiplied a hundred fold. He would have, single-handed, fought an army in such a quarrel. With a cry of delight, that burst from his very soul, he sprang to the side of the carriage and grasped the door. Before he reached it, however, some one from within had drawn her away and shut the window close, and the horses being again in motion, and rapidly quickening their pace to a gallop, Gabriel ran by the side, tugging vainly at the door, until one of the mounted attendants, spurring beside, seized him by the collar, and flung him headlong upon the road. Stunned and giddy, he got upon his feet again, and staggered blindly after the whirling carriage, uttering threats and defiances as huge as ever were thundered from the lips of the renowned knight of La Mancha. All would not do, however; the cortège held on its way with whirlwind speed. Vainly Gabriel strained every sinew to overtake the coach. The fell enchanters rapt his peerless mistress from his eyes, and every moment the distance between him and them became wider and more hopeless. At last, breathless, exhausted, enraged, he was forced to give over the pursuit, after having maintained it for nearly three miles over the pavements of the long straight road. It was on the highway to Paris; thither he assumed they were bound, and there he resolved that night should behold him also. Sometimes running, sometimes walking with hurried strides, he steadily and rapidly pursued his way; his imagination every moment filled with images of the strange golden dragons and cupids, and the pale, beautiful face of Lucille shrieking from among them for help. "What then had befallen Lucille?" The reader shall hear. The first symptom which assured her that Blassemare was at work in the realization of this plot, was that her Norman woman, having stayed away longer than usual at her suppertime, returned with a very flushed face and dancing eyes, and altogether in a very hilarious and impertinent mood. For a long time, however, it appeared that the woman was only "pleasantly intoxicated," a state in which she would probably prove a more effectual check upon her plans of escape than in her ordinary condition. Spite of the seriousness of the issue, there was something inconceivably absurd in this distress. The woman was noisy, familiar, and sometimes indulged in a vein of menacing jocularity, the principal material of which was supplied from scraps of old Norman ditties. There was one in particular which had a specially grisly sound in the ears of the friendless and frightened young wife. It was about a _belle demoiselle_-- "Who lived all alone in a castle of brick, And all in the night-time this lady fell sick; She had eat of a berry that grew by the well, And black grow her features--her members they swell; This lady is poisoned and so she must lie, All stark in her bower with nobody nigh." In the midst of this sinister merriment the woman suddenly became drowsy, and after a few ineffectual efforts to shake off the torpor that was overpowering her, sank into a profound sleep. This occurred in the anteroom, and, leaving the snoring amazon to the sole occupation of the apartment, Lucille hastened to the bedchamber, from which she commanded a view of the little pavilion, in the window of which she was to expect the signal of escape. It was quite dark; and with a heart palpitating so violently that she felt at times almost suffocating, she watched the hardly discernible outline of the building from which the signal was to be displayed. The wicked Norman was snoring under the influence of her narcotics; but to the accompaniment of her abominable drone what a hell of suspense did poor Lucille endure! At length, and not until considerably past ten o'clock, a light gleamed faintly and for an instant in the appointed spot, and then disappeared. It returned, however, and now shone steadily. The decisive moment which was to commence the adventure had arrived. She murmured an imploring prayer, and turned the bolt of the window which opened on the balcony. Horror of horrors! it was fast locked; a strong wire grating covered the outside, so that even had she ventured upon so much noise as would have been necessary in order to break the glass, she would in that have encountered a further obstacle, to _her_ strength absolutely insurmountable. She made up her mind to escape by the outer door of her suite of rooms, and to risk all on being able undetected to make her exit in that way from the house. But that door was also locked. She wrung her hands in an agony of distraction; but she did not abandon the enterprise. Encouraged by the lusty snoring of the woman, she approached the fauteuil, where she lay rather than sat. She slid her hand into the sleeper's pocket, scarcely daring to breathe while she did so. The keys were not in it; and the woman turned with something like a start in the chair. Lucille recoiled on tiptoe, holding her breath, until she seemed again soundly asleep. She might have concealed them in her bosom; and with an effort of resolution Madame Le Prun stepped noiselessly beside her and tried there. She was successful, but in drawing out the key her hand brushed slightly on the slumbering woman's face, and to her unutterable terror she started bolt upright in the chair, and stared with a wild and glassy gaze in her face. Lucille's heart died within her; she froze with terror; but the action was purely physical, the woman's senses were still slumbering; there was no trace of meaning in her face; and in a few moments she fell back again in the same profound sleep. XIV.--THE PALACE OF TERROR. With this key Lucille opened the window of the balcony softly. The descent from this would at another time have appeared to her a matter of peril, if not impossibility; nerved, however, by the stake and the emergency, it was nothing; she was upon the ground. The park door she found, as Blassemare had promised, open. She was now amidst the misty shadows of the solemn wood. She knew the path to the well by which the two chestnut-trees grew, and, with light and trembling steps, ran toward the trysting place. The moon had just begun to rise, and afforded a wan light, as she reached the appointed spot. She stood beside the well, almost frightened at the success of her adventure. A figure emerged from a thicket close by. It was that of a man in a huge red cloak, and with a great cocked hat, like that of a _gens-d'armes_. Could this possibly be De Secqville? He whistled a shrill summons as he approached, and she heard the sound of steps hurrying to the spot. She was full of fear, apprehensive of treason and danger. The gentleman in the cocked hat was now close to her. He had long black hair, descending upon his shoulders, a pair of shaggy eyebrows, and a preposterous pair of black moustaches. She asked, in a faltering voice-- "Who are you, sir?" "An officer, madame, of the police; and you are Madame Lucille Le Prun, _nèe_ de Charrebourg, wife of Etienne Le Prun; and I arrest you in the King's name." "Arrest me!--why?--upon what charge?--who is my accuser?" "By my faith, madame, I know not. My duty is, simply to arrest you, in the name of his Majesty, and to convey you to Paris. It is nothing very bad, I fancy. Perhaps you have made monsieur a little jealous, or so; but you know best." He spoke in a harsh, gruff voice, and his hand rested upon her arm, so as to render escape impossible, while he addressed her. "By what authority do you arrest me?--by what order?" "By virtue of this _lettre-de-cachet_; you see, madame, signed by the minister of police." "I cannot read it; there is not light sufficient." "_Ma foi_, madame, there is little sunshine at half-past eleven o'clock at night. I can't help that. Madame will please to come with us." Two men by this time had appeared close at hand; and Madame Le Prun, who much preferred one of the King's prisons to that in which her husband was absolute, accompanied her captors with a far better grace than under other circumstances she would have done. Distant a few score steps, upon a sort of grass-grown road, which traversed the park, stood the equipage which we have already described; and in a few seconds Lucille found herself seated beside the red cloak and mighty moustache, that held her in durance, jolting and rolling at a rapid pace along the moonlit scenery of the park. "Where am I going?--to the Bastile?" asked Lucille, when a few minutes had a little recovered her from the stun and confusion of this adventure. "Hum!--why, no, madame--not the Bastile; you are going to a convent." "A convent!--how strange! What convent?" "That of the Sisters of Love and Our Lady of the Sparkling Eyes--an ancient foundation of royalty in the city." "I dare say; I never heard of it before;" and Lucille sank into profound silence. After a considerable interval, she asked, with a tremulousness she in vain tried to conceal-- "There were some friends who were to have arranged my departure from the place where you arrested me to-night--did you see them?" "Oh, yes; there was the atribilious Marquis de Secqville and the handsome Conte de Blassemare. St. Imay arrested them about half-an-hour ago; _they_ are gone to the Bastile." Lucille sighed profoundly. She did not observe that the farouche officer in the corner of the coach was shaking with suppressed laughter. After a time he ejaculated, in a sepulchral tone-- "I strongly suspect their punishment will be dreadful. It is bad enough to conspire to steal away the wife of a respectable curmudgeon, madame, but to draw one's sword on the king's police!--_ma foi_, madame, that is another affair. If his majesty's clemency be enlisted, notwithstanding, in their behoof, they may chance to get off with the galleys. It will be a dreadful sight to see that solemn De Secqville and that jovial Blassemare pulling one of those cursed long oars together, in red serge shirts, cursing Cupid and Monsieur Le Prun." Lucille shrunk back into the obscurity of her corner. The officer could not discern how his brusque communication had affected her; but, after a short silence, he burst into an unrestrained peal of laughter. This unseasonable insolence incensed his prisoner. She felt, however, that she was at his mercy, and commanded herself; but she could not avoid saying-- "If the calamities of other people afford you entertainment, monsieur, I can congratulate you upon possessing an inexhaustible fund of amusement in the discharge of your odious and melancholy office." "Amusement! entertainment!" he ejaculated, with another eclat of laughter, still more obstreperous. "I can't help laughing; but it is merely hysterical, on the faith of a gentleman. I laugh in proportion to my desolation. I could at this moment tear out my beard by handfuls through sheer despair. _Par exemple_, madame, _par exemple_!" And, with a frantic gesture and a roar of laughter, he literally tore off his huge moustache with both his hands, at a single pluck. "And my chevelure also, madame. See, here it goes--all for despair--hurra, hurra, hurrah! And my eyebrows--ay, they, too--pa ma foi--the eyebrows--there, presto--hurra, hurra!" He shook and roared with laughter as he made these successive sacrifices, and, shifting his seat, so that the moonlight fell full upon him, cried, panting from exhaustion-- "Does not madame know me?--is it possible? Here I am--cloak, cocked hat, wig, all gone--in the proper costume of madame's fortunate and adoring deliverer." So saying, Blassemare, for it was he, descended, as well as he could, upon one knee, and seizing Lucille's hand, pressed it to his lips. "Monsieur Blassemare, you insult me, sir; you forget the conditions upon which I trusted myself to your care." "Pardon me, there are _no_ conditions. Madame will please to remember I would accept none." At this moment the carriage stopped at the point where Gabriel was at that instant about to pass. "Let me go, sir--I will descend. Open the door, I am free--I insist, I desire to leave the carriage." "No, no--pray be tranquil--it is impossible." "I _will_ descend, monsieur." "Madame, _you shall not_." He spoke with a good-humored and emphatic impudence which implied the most perfect resolution. A vague terror took possession of her. She rushed to the window, and Blassemare, with a gentle force, drew her back. It was at that moment she saw Gabriel, and shrieked to him for help. The coach was again thundering at a gallop along the highway. Lucille sank back in the corner, and wept with mingled anger and despair. Blassemare was not a ruffian, so he said, "Madame, calm yourself, I wish to treat you with respect; your suspicions wound me as much as your ingratitude. I hope, however, that both will vanish on reflection. In the meantime, I cannot consent to so insane a measure as your leaving the carriage. Your return to the Chateau des Anges is not to be thought of; you dare not go back; and pardon me, madame, I will not permit you to leave this carriage except for a place of safety and temporary concealment." Lucille's haughty and fiery temper could hardly brook this hoity-toity assumption of authority. There was, however, an obvious vein of reason in what he said; and she saw, besides, the futility of contending with one whose will was probably as strong as her own, and backed with power to make it effectual. She therefore maintained a moody silence, and Blassemarre, deeming it best to suffer her ill-humor to expend itself harmlessly, awaited better moments in congenial taciturnity. Having got a relay of fresh horses upon the way, they continued their journey at the same furious pace, and at last they entered Paris. Passing through streets which hemmed her in, or opened in long vistas like the fantastic scenery of a dream, hurrying onward, she knew not whither, under swinging lamps, amidst silence and desertion, the carriage at last drove under a narrow archway into a sort of fore-court, over which a dark mass of building was looming, and through a second gateway in this, into an inclosed quadrangle, surrounded by the same black pile of buildings. Here the carriage stopped, and one of the attendants, dismounting, rang a hall bell, whose deep sudden peal through empty vastness gave a character of profound desolation to the silence in which it was swallowed. More than once the summons was repeated, and at last a faint light gleamed upon the windows, and the door was timorously unbarred and opened. A hard-featured hag, in a faded suit of an obsolete fashion--the _genius loci_--received the party. She scrutinized Lucille with a protracted stare of audacious inquisitiveness, and when she had quite satisfied her curiosity, she led the way through several halls and lobbies up the great staircase, along a corridor, through a suite of rooms, upon another lobby up a second staircase, into a great dreary passage, through half a dozen waste and desolate chambers, and so at last into a room which had a few pieces of furniture at one end of it, and a log of wood smouldering and smoking on the hearth. In truth it was a melancholy place, haunted by dismal reverberations and a deathlike atmosphere--everywhere mildewed, faded, and half rotten with decay. It was a place where crimes might be committed, unrecorded and unsuspected--where screams would lose themselves in vacancy, and desolation and solitude would swallow up the ghastly evidences of outrage. Here was the fitting scenery for tales of preternatural terror or fiendish crime. Lucille felt her heart sink within her as she entered this vast and awful labyrinth. But she felt that, be her destiny what it might, she had herself no power to mend it. What resource was left to her? Necessity retained her amidst the menacing solitudes of this half-ruined mansion. Blassemare left her to the care of the old crone, who, to judge from appearances, was hardly an improvement upon the ungracious attendant she had left at the Chateau des Anges. This hag had evidently the worst possible opinion of her guest, and took no pains to affect a respect which she was far from feeling. She contented herself with offering Lucille some supper, and this declined, showed her the bedroom that was prepared for her--a room of the same depressing vastness, and offering, in its shabby and niggard furniture, a contrast to its majestic dimensions. Such as it was, however, it was welcome. Lucille was exhausted with the anxieties and agitations of the day, as well as with her late and rapid journey. Having examined the room with a fearful scrutiny, she succeeded in bolting one of the doors, and placed the only chair the room contained against the other; so that she might, at least, be warned by the noise, in the event of any persons forcing an entrance. She lay down without taking off her clothes, and leaving the candle unextinguished. For a long time the excitement of her strange situation, and the alarms that environed her, chased sleep away, worn and exhausted as she was. After a while, however, fatigue began to confuse her thoughts with interposing visions. The dreary chamber faded from her view; her heavy eyelids closed; fantastic scenes and images chased one another through her wearied brain, and slumber stole gradually upon her, overpowering spirit and body with a sweet torpor. From this profound sleep Lucille was disturbed by a peremptory knocking at the door of the room, which she had bolted. This was accompanied by violent and reiterated attempts to force it open. At first, these sounds had mingled with her dreams; but the noise of a struggle, the suppressed tones of a man's voice, speaking rapidly and fiercely, followed by one thrilling maniacal scream, which hurried away through the remote passages, until it either subsided, or was lost in distance, called her up from her slumbers, trembling with terror. Sleep was effectually dispelled, and, overcome with the horror of her situation, she wept, and prayed, and watched through the remainder of the night. In the morning she heard the old woman arranging the next room, and soon the voice of Blassemare. Emboldened by the daylight, and confident that Blassemare, however insulting his designs, would at all events protect her from actual violence, she opened the door, and entered the outer chamber, looking so pale, haggard, and fear-stricken, that the _roué_ himself felt a momentary emotion of compassion. XV.--THE GRATED WINDOW. "Monsieur de Blassemare," she said, abruptly, "I cannot remain here!" "And why not, madame?" "I have passed a night of terror." "I should be happy to protect madame." The significance of his tone, made her eyes flash and her cheeks tingle; but she controlled her indignation, and said-- "I last night heard the sounds of violence and agony at my very door--in this apartment. Who was the woman that screamed? What have they done?" "Shall I tell you?" asked Blassemare, with an odd smile. "Yes, monsieur, who was she?" she persisted, her curiosity aroused by the pointed question of Blassemare. "Well, madame, the person whom you heard scream at your door last night is Madame Le Prun, wife of the Fermier-General--the wealthy and benevolent owner of the Chateau des Anges, and your successful--_lover_!" "Wife--_wife_ of Monsieur Le Prun!" she faltered, nearly stupefied. "Ay, madame, his wife." "Then, thank God, he has no control over me. I am free!--that, at least, is a happiness." "Nay, madame, you will not find it so easy to satisfy our tribunals--you seem to have forgotten the necessity of _proofs_. In the mean time, you are _de facto_ the wife of Monsieur Le Prun, and he will exert, according to law, the rights and authority of a husband over you." "Monsieur de Blassemare, for God's sake, help me--help me in this frightful extremity!" "Madame, the fact is, I must be plain with you. If I mix myself further in this frightful affair, as you justly term it, I must lay my account with serious perils. Men do not run their heads into mischief for nothing; and, therefore, if I act as your champion, I must be accepted as your lover also." "Oh, Monsieur de Blassemare, you cannot be serious!--you will not be so inhuman as to desert me!" "By my faith, madame, the age of knight-errantry is over--nothing for nothing is the ruling principle of our own prosaic day. To be plain with you, I can't afford to quarrel with Le Prun for nothing; and, if you persist in refusing my services, I must only make it up with him as best I can; and of course you return to the Chateau des Anges." "I can't believe you, Monsieur de Blassemare; I won't believe you. You are a gentleman--kind, honorable, humane." "Gad!--so I am, madame; but I am no professed redresser of wrongs. I never interpose between husband and wife--or those who pass for such--without a sufficient motive. Now, Monsieur Le Prun believes I have gone down to his estate at Lyons, but he will have intelligence of your flight to-day, and he will learn, in a few days more, that _I_ have also disappeared. The fact is, my complicity can't remain a secret long. You see, madame, I must take my course promptly. It altogether rests with you to decide what it shall be. But you are fatigued and excited: don't pronounce in too much haste. Consider your position, and I shall have the honor to present myself again in the course of the afternoon." She did not attempt to detain him, or, indeed, to reply. Her thoughts were too distracted. Lucille, alone once more, became a prey to the terror of another visit from the so-called Madame Le Prun, whose ill-omened approaches had inspired her with so much terror on the night preceding. The chambers looked, if possible, more decayed and dilapidated by daylight than they had upon the preceding night. She went to the windows, but they afforded no more cheering prospect--looking out upon a dark courtyard, round which the vast hotel rose in sombre altitude--dreary, inauspicious, and colossal. The court was utterly deserted, and the gate leading from it into the fore-court was closed and barred. The Bastile itself would have been cheerful compared with this vast and fearful castle of solitude, or, as it might be, _worse_. The sense of absolute defencelessness added poignancy to her fears of a renewed visit from some ill-disposed denizen of the mansion; and her fears at last became so strong, that she ventured to leave the rooms where she had been established, intending to retreat to some part of the house where her presence might at all events be less certainly expected than where she was. Accordingly she was soon wending among all the intricacies and solemn grandeur of a huge and half-ruinous hotel. Descending, at last, a turret stair, she came to a small stone chamber, in which was a little grated window. Standing upon a block of stone, she looked through the strong bars of this little aperture, and perceived that it was but some six or seven feet above the pavè of a dark and narrow lane. She would have given worlds to escape from the prison in which she found herself, but the close, thick bars rendered all chance of making that a passage of escape wholly desperate. As she looked wistfully through, a little ragged urchin came whistling carelessly along the lane, kicking a turnip before him. She called the gamin: he was a shrewd monkey-faced fellow, with an insolent crafty eye. "My good boy, here is a louis-d'or, as earnest of twenty more which I will give you, if you bring this safely to Monsieur le Marquis de Secqville, at the Hotel de Secqville, Rue St. Etienne, and conduct him hither." "Hey, mademoiselle! it is a bargain. But how shall I know you again?--what is your name?" "I am Madame Le Prun; but the marquis will tell you where I am to be found. See, here is the note!" She had written a few lines upon a leaf of her tablet. She tore it off, directed it, and then threw it out to the boy, together with the promised coin. He ran away, chuckling and singing upon his errand, believing his fortune made, and in an instant was out of sight. Let us now see how he fared. As the demon of contrariety would have it, Monsieur Le Prun, almost insane with rage and spite, had, not five minutes before, dismounted at the Hotel de Secqville, to consult the marquis respecting the flight of Madame Le Prun. He had certainly chosen his advisers well. The marquis, as it happened, was out, and Le Prun, who, of course, had access under all circumstances to the interior of the hotel, established himself in the private apartment of De Secqville, awaiting his return. While there, the servant brought in the pencil-note on which so much depended. "It must be intended for monsieur," said the man presenting it upon his salver, "for the messenger says it comes from Madame Le Prun." "Hey!--ha!--let us see! Ten thousand devils, what is this?" He read-- "Relying upon your professions of devotion, I implore of you to deliver me from a prison as terrifying as that of which my husband was the jailer. The messenger, a little boy whom fortune has sent to me, will conduct you to this spot. I know not the name of the street, nor of the hotel. In the name of heaven lose not a moment! "LUCILLE." Monsieur Le Prun descended the stairs, and was in the street in a second. "Well, garçon, here I am--I've got the note--conduct me to the place." "Ha, ha! then you are--the marquis?" "To be sure I am. Here, boy, take this, and lead on." He gave him a piece of money, and, following his little guide, Le Prun, in less than half an hour, reached the spot from which he had started. "Bon jour, madame. I hope you have recovered the fatigue of your night's journey. You see I lose no time in hastening to bid you welcome." So cried Monsieur Le Prun, with a sardonic grin upon his pale face, as he bowed to the horror-stricken girl, who still occupied the little window, where she expected so different an image. She fled from this spectre as if she had seen the Evil One incarnate. Flying wildly through the passages and chambers of the deserted house, she found herself on a sudden in an apartment furnished like an office, with shelves, desks, &c., and here Blassemare was sitting among a pile of papers. He started on seeing her, and she exclaimed: "Monsieur Le Prun has seen me--he will be here in a moment." "_Here!_--where is he?" "He saw me in the window, and spoke to me with furious irony from the street. For God's sake, hide me. I feel that he will kill me." "Hum!--so. Gad, he _will_ be here in a moment. I must meet him boldly--I have nothing for it but impudence. A few fibs, and, if the worst should come, my sword. But don't be frightened, madame, he shan't hurt _you_." Blassemare proceeded to the court, awaiting the advent of his incensed patron. XVI.--THE WOMAN IN FLANNEL. We must now, with the reader's leave, follow Gabriel to Paris, where he arrived fully three hours later than the fugitive cortège. He wandered for more than an hour among the streets, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the coach with the blue panels, and the golden cupids and dragons so curiously interlaced; but we need not say how vainly. Worn out with fatigue, hungry and cold--for the nights were now very chill--and without a sou in his pocket, poor Gabriel, having wandered for some hours among the streets of this great city, now emptied of all but its crime and destitution, at last found shelter for the night in an empty cask, which had served probably as a dog-kennel in an open workyard into which he strayed. In this he made his bed with a few armfuls of shavings, and, spite of the cold, slept soundly till morning. Had it not been for the charity of a poor woman, who gave him a piece of black bread, he might have starved. Refreshed, however, with this dainty, he prosecuted his rambles. Among other wonderful sights, he saw the splendid equipages of many of the nobility, drawn up in the street before the mansion of the minister, who was holding a levee. Fortune seemed to have directed his steps thither, for he saw a familiar face among the splendid throng who glided in and out at the great man's portals. This was no other than the Marquis de Secqville, who was passing to his carriage. "Oh, pray, Monsieur Dubois, monsieur, don't you know me?" So cried poor Gabriel in his eagerness, forcing himself to the front rank of the crowd. "No, my good friend, no," answered the marquis, hesitating and surprised; "I do not recollect you." "Don't you recollect the park of Charrebourg, monsieur, and the boy who sometimes carried your game, Gabriel, who was so frequently your attendant?" "Hey! by my faith, so it is." "Well, but monsieur, I want to consult you about a lady who, I fear, is in distress." "Well, let us hear," continued the marquis, feeling in his pocket for his purse, and smiling. "It is Mademoiselle Lucille--that is, I mean, Madame Le Prun. You have heard of her, perhaps?" The marquis could not restrain a start at the name; but affecting haste, he desired one of his servants to give the boy a cloak, and directing him to roll himself up in it, and jump into the carriage, he followed him thither, amidst the wonder and gibes of the crowd, and in a few minutes they were at the Hotel de Secqville. The marquis, having learned all that Gabriel had to disclose, was utterly at fault as to what steps it was prudent for him to take. It was just possible that the removal of the lady from the Chateau des Anges might be a measure of Monsieur Le Prun's. This seemed to him more than probable, and the hypothesis prevented his having recourse to the minister of police. He, however, lost not a moment in adopting such measures as the resources of his wealth enabled him to command. In the course of the afternoon he had nearly a score of paid agents, excellently qualified for the task, pushing their sagacious inquiries in every quarter. He had promised to sup with some of the officers of his regiment, in the quartier de St. Thomas du Louvre, and he had there appointed his emissaries to meet him, having also directed Gabriel, whom he retained in his service, to call for him there, with a flambeau, at twelve o'clock. Gabriel was destined to another adventure in executing these directions, simple as they were. As he was on his way, he was suddenly set upon, in a deserted spot at the end of the Pont St. Michel, by four robbers. He brandished his flambeau, and shouted for help; but he was instantly disarmed, and a sword at his throat reduced him to silence. Disappointed of money, they proceeded to undress him with a running accompaniment of threats and curses, and in a trice had left poor Gabriel standing in his shirt, while they made good their retreat. It was bitter cold, and, what made it worse still, rather windy; and after a few moments of hesitation, he began to retrace his steps towards the Hotel de Secqville at the top of his speed. As ill luck would have it, however, this course led him unconsciously upon the track of the four brethren of the road, who, convinced that he was dogging them, turned about, and, with awful menaces and drawn swords, recommenced the pursuit with the most murderous designs. Of course Gabriel had nothing for it but his fleetness of limb. He ran as fast as he could toward the Quai des Augustins. At that moment a coach was passing at a furious speed, and thinking of nothing but his safety, he jumped nimbly up behind. He had distanced the thieves, and the sound of pursuit was no longer heard. The wind often whirled his shirt, his only covering, over his head, and he could not control its vagaries, for both his hands were engaged in retaining his position; and, indeed, so numbing was the cold, hardly sufficed for the purpose. Could any thing more undignified or uncomfortable be imagined? His teeth were chattering, his hands numb, his shirt sporting cruelly in the blast, yet, spite of his misery, he did not fail to observe, in the dull moonlight, that the carriage was blue, and decorated with gilded dragons and cupids in relief. It was, in short, he could have no doubt, the very carriage which had conveyed away Lucille. Forgetting his nakedness, and even his cold, in the astonishment of this discovery, he awaited, with the intensest interest, the conclusion of an adventure which promised to furnish him with a clue to the present habitation of the concealed lady. The carriage continued to drive at a furious rate, and having passed the College des Quatre Nations, it took the line of the Pont Rouge (now perfectly deserted), in the middle of which it came to a full stop. Two gentlemen descended; they looked up and down the bridge to ascertain that all was quiet. One of them came so close that the plumed fringe of his cocked hat almost touched Gabriel, who was cowering as close as possible to escape notice. His surprise at their stopping at a place where there was no house or dwelling of any sort was soon changed to horror, when he saw these gentlemen carry a corpse out of the carriage, which, by its long hair, he perceived to be that of a female, and project it over the battlements of the bridge into the river. They then re-entered the carriage, which again turning toward the Louvre, retraced its way. Was that pale corpse, with its long tresses, the murdered body of the fair and beloved Lucille? Were her assassins unconsciously hurrying through the dark in company with him? Torture, despair, vengeance! At the same mad pace this carriage drove through deserted streets, scarce encountering a human being--Gabriel still clinging to his position, and exciting many a strange surmise, as, half seen, he was whirled beside such stray passengers as were still abroad. At length it turned abruptly--thundered through a narrow archway into a fore-court, and then through a second, into the dark quadrangle of the half ruinous and vast hotel, to which we conducted Lucille. Gabriel jumped nimbly to the ground, and, unperceived, glided into the shadow of the archway, intending to escape through the outer gate, and spread the alarm of murder. This door was, however, already secured, and hearing steps, he glided along under the shadow until he reached the open door of a stable, and climbing to the loft, found some hay there, in which, nearly dead with cold, he buried himself. Let us now follow Monsieur Le Prun, whom we left in a high state of malignant frenzy, approaching the entrance of the desolate building. "Ha!--Blassemare," he said, with a livid smile, the meaning of which was obvious, in reply to that gentleman's fearless salutation, "you have made good speed from the south. How goes all at Lyons? Come, come, the particulars?" "I have not been there at all; I altered my plans; not without just reason. I have removed Madame Le Prun here; the fact is, I had reason to suspect a design to escape. It was nearly ripe; the _eclat_ of such a thing would have been scandalous. I disorganized the whole affair, and have placed her here under your own roof; I had to use stratagem for the purpose, but I succeeded; she is still safe--the plot has failed." "More than one plot, perhaps, has failed, sir," said Le Prun, with a look of lowering scrutiny; "I have exploded one myself. Let me see Madame Le Prun." "Do you wish to see her?" "Certainly--conduct me to her at once." Blassemare, with a malicious smile and shrug, exclaimed-- "Well, monsieur, you shall be obeyed; let us proceed to Madame Le Prun, by all means." He led the way; they ascended a staircase, Le Prun growing gloomier and gloomier at every step. Smothering his malicious laughter, Blassemare glided past him, and opening a door exclaimed-- "Madame, a gentleman desires the honor of an interview; Monsieur Le Prun attends you." Le Prun entered; a step was heard in a recess opening from the room, and a form entered, before which he recoiled as from a malignant spectre. "Is it _this_ one or the other?" asked Blassemare, with much simplicity. Le Prun did not hear him; he was astounded and overpowered in the presence of the phantom-like form that stood in its strange draperies of flannel at the other end of the chamber, eyeing him askance, with a look of more than mortal hate. "It is not fair to disturb such a meeting; the domestic affections, eh? had best be indulged in private." So saying, Blassemare abruptly withdrew, and shut the door sharply upon the pair. Roused by the sound, Le Prun attempted to follow him, but his agitation prevented his being able to open the door, and he cursed Blassemare from the bottom of his soul, in the belief that he had bolted it. "So, face to face at last," she said; "for years you have escaped me; for years your agents have persecuted and imprisoned me. I heard of your courtship--aye, and your marriage, and rejoiced at it, for I knew it could bring you nothing but grief; accursed monster, murderer of my sister, attempted murderer of myself, seducer and betrayer of the girl you call your wife." "I say, she is my wife," stammered Le Prun, recovering his voice. "No, miscreant! that she cannot be; well you know that _I_ am your wife." "It is a lie; I have that under your own hand; it is a lie, a lie." "And do you fancy that, because intimidated by a murderer, I signed the paper you speak of, the document has lost its force, and I ceased to be your wife? No, no; adulterer and poisoner that you are, I retain the right to blast you; you shall yet taste retribution; you shall perish by a bloody end." XVII.--CONCLUSION. Blassemare read in Le Prun's countenance that there was an end of their connection. He was, however, a man of resource, and whatever the loss involved in the severance, he was not dismayed. He made up his mind to quarrel with _eclat_, and sitting himself down upon the window-sill, laughed with a sardonic glee at the rencontre he had just brought about. In a little while, however, he began to wonder at its length, and after a while he was startled by Le Prun's voice calling him by name, and at the same time by a furious knocking at the door. "Hey!--why don't you come here if you want me?" cried Blassemare. "I can't--you _know_ I can't--you have locked the door." "I've _not_--try it," replied Blassemare, coolly. In a moment more Le Prun entered, trembling like a man in an ague, his face livid and covered with a cold sweat. "That, that accursed fiend, she has--the murderess--she attempted my life--upon my soul she did." There was some blood upon his hand, and more upon his lace cravat. "What do you mean?" said Blassemare, growing very pale. "Why, why, you have not, great God, you have not hurt the wretched woman?" and he grasped him by the collar with a hand that trembled with mingled fury and horror. "It was _she_, I tell you--let me go--it was she--she that tried--by ----, she had a knife at my throat--I could not help it--I'm ruined--help me, Blassemare--for God's sake, help me--what--what is to be done?" Blassemare gave him a look of contemptuous fury, turned from him, and entered the chamber. Le Prun stood like one stupefied, stammering excuses and oaths, and trembling as if it were the day of judgment. Blassemare reëntered, paler than before, and said-- "You cowardly, barbarous miscreant, you will answer for it here and hereafter." "Blassemare, my friend--my dear friend--in the name of God, don't denounce me. You would not; no, you could not. I have been a good friend to you. For the love of God, help me, Blassemare--save me. You shall have half my fortune; I'll stick at no terms; I'll make you, by ---- the richest man in Paris. You shall have what you like--every thing, any thing--only help me in this accursed extremity." For a long time, Blassemare met his abject and agonized entreaties with a stoical scorn; at last, however, he relented. The body was removed that night; and it is well known to the readers of old French trials, how wonderfully Providence supplied by a chain of apparent accidents, an important witness in our friend Gabriel. We left him buried in the hay of the stable-loft. We must pursue his adventure to its conclusion. As soon as he had a little recovered the heat which was nearly extinguished, he got up, and finding an old piece of drugget, he wrapped it about him in the fashion of a cloak; and having looked in vain for any window opening upon the street, he climbed, by the aid of the joists, to an aperture in the half-rotten roof, and passing through it, crept like a cat along, until he reached the spout, down which, at the risk of his neck, he climbed. He was now safe in the public street. Picking up a sharp stone, he scratched some marks, such as he could easily recognize again, upon the gateway. He then knocked at a barber's shop, nearly opposite, where he saw a light, and asked the name of the street, and his route to the Hotel de Secqville. The marquis had arrived before him; and his amazement at the strange attire of his retainer was changed to horror, when he learned the particulars of his adventure. Not a moment was lost by De Secqville in applying to the police, and, with an officer and a party of archers, he proceeded at once to the Hotel St. Maurice--for such was the name of the nearly ruinous building we have described. There they arrested Monsieur Le Prun, who was just emerging from the gate as they arrived; as also Blassemare, whom they surprised in his room. No definite suspicion, beyond the conjectures of De Secqville, had as yet attached to either of these gentlemen; but some expressions which escaped Le Prun, upon his arrest, were of a character to excite the profoundest suspicions of his guilt. Blassemare instantly tendered his evidence, and in the course of it was forced to make disclosures very little creditable to himself. The old woman, Gertrude Peltier, who resided in the house, and had attended upon Lucille, was also examined, and a servant named St. Jean, a sort of groom, who had been a long time in Le Prun's service, also deposed to some important facts. This evidence, collected and reduced to a narrative form, was to the following effect:-- It seemed that, about twenty-four years before, Le Prun had privately married an actress of the Théâtre ----, named Emilie Guadin. They had lived together--not very happily--by reason, as was supposed, of her violent temper. Her sister, Marie Guadin, resided with them. After about four years it began to be rumored that Monsieur Le Prun was about to be married to the widow of an immensely rich merchant of Bourdeaux. The strict privacy and isolation in which his wife and her sister were compelled by him to live, prevented the rumor from reaching them, and the circumstance of his existing marriage had been kept so strict a secret, that it was not suspected by any but the immediate parties to the ceremony. Monsieur Le Prun, about this time, visited the country-seat where he had placed his wife and sister-in-law. He affected an unusual kindness towards the former; but he had not been there a week, when she became ill. A physician was called in, and appeared perplexed by the nature of her disease, which, notwithstanding his treatment, seemed to be rapidly gaining ground. As matters were in this state, one night Le Prun entered his wife's bedroom; her sister Marie was sitting at the further side of the bed, in the shadow of the curtains, which, as well as the unusual hour, prevented Le Prun's suspecting her presence. He looked stealthily round the room. His wife was sleeping, and with her face away from him, and a draught ordered by the physician was upon the table waiting her awaking. From a small vial he dropped some fluid into this, and was about to replace it, when Marie, nerved with terror, glided swiftly to his side, snatched the vial from his hand, and cried, in a thrilling voice-- "Emilie, awake! he is poisoning you!" The sleeping girl started up, and at the same moment the vial, which in her horror Marie had flung from her hand, fell beside her, on the pillow. Le Prun was first confounded and speechless--then furious. He broke the glass that contained the medicine, and pursuing the girl to the further end of the room, seemed on the point of wreaking his fury upon her. He restrained himself, however, and having demanded the vial repeatedly in vain, went to his own room. The next day the physician did not attend, and in the dead of night the house was entered by thieves, some valuables were stolen, and Mademoiselle Marie Guadin was found murdered in her bed in the morning. The occurrence made a great _eclat_, and suspicions, from the taint of which he had never quite recovered, began to environ Monsieur Le Prun. His unhappy wife was now put under the severest restraint--from which, and, as was supposed, the partial effects of the poison, she became subject to temporary fits of insanity. By sheer terror, Le Prun extorted from her a written declaration, to the effect that she lived with him merely as his mistress, and that no marriage ceremony, or any contract of marriage, had ever been performed between them. It was about three months after these terrible occurrences that she gave birth to a male child. This child, it appeared, was removed after a few weeks from its mother, and placed in the care of a poor woman in the village of Charrebourg, where, under the name of Gabriel, he, as we know, lived unrecognized, and himself unsuspecting his origin. His mother had been a heartless, as she was a vicious and a miserable woman. Instead of the yearnings of maternal love, she regarded her innocent child merely as the offspring of that monster, whom she execrated and feared with a preternatural hate. If she looked upon him with any feeling more lively than that of indifference, it was with one of positive malice and antipathy. Among his other employments of a delicate kind, Blassemare had charge of all arrangements affecting this person, of whom, for every reason, Le Prun hated even to hear. He paid, therefore, whatever was demanded on this account, with the sole proviso that her name should never be mentioned. On her removal, about a year since, from the country-house where she had been for so long a scarcely unwilling prisoner, to the vast and melancholy Hotel St. Maurice, which had lately fallen into the hands of M. Le Prun, an accident to the carriage obliged them to arrest their progress for an hour at the village of Charrebourg. She was brought into the park meanwhile, and there met with Gabriel, and subsequently, as the reader may recollect, with Lucille. Her she had armed with the hateful relic of her husband's uncompleted crime, conscious that its exhibition would sow between her and Le Prun suspicion, fear, and enmity enough to embitter their lives. She had at first intended declaring all the truth, but feared the explosion of Le Prun's fury, and doubted, too, whether the girl would believe her. The rest the reader knows. As there was no reason to doubt Blassemare's statement, and no actual suspicion attached to him, he was merely examined as witness. Le Prun is, we need scarcely remind the student of old French criminal cases, a celebrated name in the annals of guilt. Suspicion, by a strange coincidence, fell upon the servant whom we have mentioned, and this man having been, according to the atrocious practice of the civil law, put to the torture confessed his having, at the instigation of Le Prun, murdered the unfortunate Marie Guadin, so contriving as to make it appear that the house had been entered and plundered by thieves. A full confession, after condemnation, was extorted by the question, that dreadful ordeal, from Le Prun, who ultimately suffered the extreme penalty of the law, as every body knows, upon the Place de Greve. That portion of Le Prun's immense property which was not appropriated by the crown, went, of course, to Gabriel, the peasant boy of Charrebourg. He purchased an estate near it, and was ultimately ennobled. His grandson, the Count de St. M----, distinguished himself in the Austrian service, and after the Restoration, obtained a distinguished position in the court of Louis XVIII. The king remitted a large portion of the line in favor of Julie and of Lucille. As, however, some grave suspicions were entertained by the advisers of his majesty both as to Lucille's avowed, and, as we know, _real_ ignorance of the existence of Le Prun's first wife when she consented to marry him, and also as to her subsequent conduct in relation to De Secqville, the remission in her favor was coupled with a condition that she should take the veil. This was in effect a command; and Lucille entered a convent with a cheerful acquiescence in this condition which astonished all who knew the facts of her story. Julie, of course, on learning the pre-engagement of De Secqville's affections, and being relieved from the influence which had hitherto held her to her involuntary engagement, demanded her freedom, and De Secqville, as may be supposed, offered no vexatious resistance to her request. Julie, indeed, had never loved him, and consequently had little difficulty in forgiving Lucille her treason. Inspired by the example of her companion, she proved the sincerity of those professions which so few had believed in, by taking the veil on the same day with Lucille. The astounding and mysterious adventure which, under these melancholy circumstances, closed the hazardous romance of Lucille's existence, would form in itself a story, too long, however, to be told in a single page. BARRY CORNWALL'S LAST SONG. Mr. Proctor does not write very often now-a-days, but he has contributed several songs lately to the _Ladies' Companion_, which remind us of his best performances. Here is one:-- Sit near! sit near! I kiss thy lips, Ripe, richer than the crimson cherry. Girl, canst thou love me in eclipse? Tell me, and bid my soul be merry. My light is dim, my fortune fled; I've nothing save the love I bear thee. Give back _thy_ love, or I am dead;-- A word--a look--whilst I can hear thee. Sit nearer! near! I kiss thine eyes; There,--where the white lids part asunder. I love thee--dost thou hear my sighs? Love thee beyond the world, thou wonder! My life is spent. I've nothing left To tender now, save love's soft duty; Yet, gaze I,--of all else bereft,-- And feed till death upon thy beauty. From the London Keepsake ANIMA MUNDI. BY RICHARD MONCTON MILNES. "Anima Mundi"--of thyself existing, Without diversity or change to fear, Say, has this life to which we cling persisting, Part in communion with thy steadfast sphere? Does thy serene eternity sublime Embrace the slaves of Circumstance and Time? Could we remain continually content To heap fresh pleasure on the coming day, Could we rest happy in the sole intent To make the hours more graceful or more gay, Then must the essence of our nature be That of the beasts that perish, not of Thee. But if we mourn, not because time is fleeting, Not because life is short and some die young, But because parting ever follows meeting; And, while our hearts with constant loss are wrung, Our minds are tossed in doubt from sea to sea, Then may we claim community with thee. We cannot live by instincts--forced to let To-morrow's wave obliterate our to-day-- See faces only once--read and forget-- Behold Truth's rays prismatically play About our mortal eye and never shine In one white daylight, simple and divine. We would erect some thought the world above, And dwell in it for ever--we make Some moment of young Friendship or First-love Into a dream, from which we would not wake; We would contrast our action with repose, Like the deep stream that widens as it flows. We would be somewise as Thou art, Not sprig, and bud, and flower, and fade and fall; Not fix our intellects on some scant part Of Nature, but enjoy or feel it all. We would assert the privilege of a soul, In that it knows--to understand the Whole. If such things are within us--God is good-- And flight is destined for the callow wing, And the high appetite implies the food, And souls must reach the level whence they spring; O Life of very Life! set free our Powers, Hasten the travail of the yearning hours. Thou! to whom old Philosophy bent low, To the wise few mysteriously revealed; Thou! whom each humble Christian worships now, In the poor hamlet and the open field; Once an Idea--new Comforter and Friend, Hope of the human Heart! Descend! Descend! From Frazer's Magazine. THE GHETTO OF ROME. The Church of Rome has never been famed for her tolerance; her energy and indomitable will have been too frequently manifested by the stern behests of imperious authority. The sovereign pontiffs, with their claims of infallibility, have left the Pagan far behind in the ardor of persecution and the more than imperial character of their governments. Julian published edicts of universal toleration; from time to time he assumed the garb of each different sect, and claimed affinity with the gods of each conquered race. At one moment the zealous supporter of Christianity, then the ablest advocate of the Platonic philosophy: at another, initiated into all the arcana of the Theurgic science and the Eleusinian mysteries, terminating his checkered religious career by that great edict of universal toleration which astonished the whole Roman world, when all classes of all religions, Pagan and Christian, received alike an express command to open the portals of their temples. Paganism could afford to be tolerant, not so Christianity. One god, more or less, in the Heathen Pantheon makes very little difference, but the worship of the Christian Church is one and exclusive. The very ardor of its belief renders it essentially intolerant. How is it possible to be indulgent to error, when we are firmly persuaded that such error must lead to eternal condemnation? But whatever apology may be made for intolerance by those who do not suffer from its severities, it will not be approved of by the thousands who find themselves deprived of their most prized social rights for the sake of their faith. None suffer more from this Christian spirit than the favored and exclusive race in Rome. While other nations have been constantly relieving the Jews from the pains and penalties which have been attached to their absence of faith, the Church of Rome has stood over them stern, proud, and uncompromising. To be a Jew in the Holy City, is at once to be deprived of half the social privileges of citizenship. Among other grievances under which they suffer, they are confined to a small district of the town called the Ghetto, where formerly the gates were locked from sunset to sunrise, during which period no one was permitted to pass out; on the slightest pretences they used to be persecuted for any the least expression of irritation into which they may have been betrayed: the poor people bear impressed on their countenances the downcast dogged look of persecution. Confined to such a small space, they have crowded their houses together until, in some of the streets, or rather lanes, it is easy to step across from one roof to another. The dark eye, the luxurious black hair, and a sensual expression produced by a fulness of the lower lip are the characteristics of the women. Long, dirty, scanty beards--thin, lank, gray hair--frames which have grown decrepit through long persecution--eyes piercing and crafty--sickly, wrinkled features, are the characteristics of the men. Although, as I have remarked, the gates and the pales of the Ghetto are now removed, a stranger can easily tell when he enters what Catholic Rome considers its tainted circle, by the miserable, poverty-stricken appearance of the whole district. The people crowd around him, losing all sense of manly dignity or mental degradation in the anxiety for gain. Skinny shrivelled hands touch his clothes in the hope of arresting his progress; worn-out tawdry finery is thrust before him, in the hope of tempting him to purchase. No shop, or rather store, is devoted to any particular object of gain. Butter, dates, olives, broken and pawned articles, are mixed up in the most absurd confusion. With brocaded coats, valuable lace, and Eastern silks, Jewish trade resembles the Jewish character and the Jewish faith,--much that is low, mean, and sordid, combined with some elements of the beautiful, the prized, and the good. And yet this strange, fantastic, rococo district, if beyond the pale of Christianity, is far from being without the pale of fashion. Ladies, exhibiting the height of Parisian fashions, with dainty footsteps and soft movement, may be seen of an afternoon endeavoring to thread their way through the greasy throng, which jostle, elbow, and abuse each other in these narrow lanes. The cunning Israelites must have scouts to tell them whenever any particular connoisseur is approaching; for, strange enough, the article which each is in search of is precisely that which is displayed in all the shops. If the lady come to purchase lace, the most valuable specimens of the _pointe du roi_ are forced upon her; if she require silks, by the strangest magnetism the finest dyes and richest fabrics are unrolled as she draws near. From the constant and invaluable habit of concealing their own impressions, the Jews appear to be better enabled to read the sensations of others. They know, almost to a nicety, the extent of their customers' means and intentions. Go disguised as you choose, they will discover you. The Jewish origin, grafted on the Roman craft, has produced a progeny which would astonish the adroitness of our own peculiar tribe of Levis and Fagans. I had, on two or three different occasions, visited the Ghetto in search of old lace, and on each occasion had turned to admire perhaps one of the most beautiful faces which could at that time have been found in Rome. It was that of a young Jewish girl, who was always sitting at the same corner of the street at the entrance of the Ghetto, where she kept a fruit-stall. Hers was one of those faces in which the features, from their strongly marked development, become at once impressed upon the memory. She was tall, of a commanding appearance, her cheek was very pale, but lit up by the blackest eyes. She wore a thick Indian-striped handkerchief, tied cunningly round her head; and a large pair of massive gold ear-rings, which fell almost to her neck. Even if plain, she would have been most remarkable, from the perfect indifference which she evinced as to whether she sold her goods or not. While all the rest of her tribe were fawning, cringing, flattering, and importuning, she sat there like a statue, but a statue of a most perfect order. Nor was this indifference and apathy of her manner thrown away on the purchasers who crowded towards the Ghetto. It stood her in better stead than the most manifest anxiety could have done; it placed her apart from that detestable crowd. I observed many persons stop and make purchases of her on whom all importunity would have been thrown away. There was not one of the buyers who did not look back with hurried gaze at that pale and glorious face, which did not even glow with the least tinge of animation at the admiration which she excited. She sold her stock in trade, changed her money, with the same entire absence of interest in her occupation. Carriages turning the corner suddenly where her fruit-stall was placed, sometimes almost grazed it and overthrew all its contents; but even this circumstance did not appear to awaken any interest in her mind; she only stooped down to pick up one or two of the peaches which had been shaken off by the jar, quietly moved her stall a little nearer the wall, and then folded her arms again in the same contemptuous manner. Strange, indeed, but it ever is so; the world cares most for those who appear to treat it with contempt and to be indifferent to its petty interests. Be a slave to the world, and it will impose the heaviest burdens upon you; it will be the hardest of all taskmasters; but, on the other hand, drive it before you, and it will obey almost every impulse of the determined. In this country, where individualism and idiosyncracy are now so rare, the very deference which the whole of constituted society pays to the requirements of the majority, only renders the exceptional case more rare and prized. We unconsciously admire those who, instead of seeking to be guided by the opinions of others, endeavor to direct them, and who, forming their own standard of judgment, keep themselves aloof from all fluctuations of indecision and weakness. I had been commissioned to purchase two flounces of the handsomest lace, and had made two unsuccessful expeditions to the Ghetto in search of it, ransacking all the shops and listening to an immeasurable amount of falsehood; but as I was soon to leave Rome, I did not wish to do so with my commission unfulfilled, and resolved to make another search: besides, that beautiful pale statuette deeply interested me, without ever having addressed a single word to her. I felt well assured that her mind must be one of no ordinary stamp. One day I stopped near her for some time, without attracting her observation, and then it was that I so greatly admired and marvelled at the total absence of the two qualifications for which her nation are remarkable--cunning and obtrusiveness. I reached the stall, and turned after I had passed it a little way to take a passing glance at her. To my astonishment, and almost sorrow, I observed that her cheeks, and even her figure, had lost their admirable fulness: there was a strange and wild expression in her eye. I turned back involuntarily and stood for a moment opposite her stall. She beckoned me towards her. "I know what you want," she said, with a rapid utterance, as if anxious to get rid of the subject; "you want to purchase some lace. I have a piece which I am sure will suit you, and you shall have it very cheap. It belonged to--." Here she hesitated, looked down, and, as I fixed my eye on her countenance for the first time, the blood rose to the very temples, and she appeared lovely. "No matter who it belonged to; some great man, of course; but I have the lace, that is sufficient for you to know. Tell me what sum you are willing to give, and then I shall know whether mine is too expensive." I named the amount which I was desired to lay out for the finest quality of old lace. It was, I knew, a small sum for such an object, unless in the case of some fortunate hit; but to my surprise she told me that her piece of lace was much within that mark; and then I began to imagine that it must be of inferior quality, but she assured me of the contrary. She commissioned a boy to keep her stall for her for a few minutes, and then walked on at a rapid pace, desiring me to follow her. It was not until she rose from her seat that I had an opportunity of observing the beautiful symmetry of her figure. Her footstep was firm, like that of one who possesses a strong will. To have seen her as she swept along the streets, you would have imagined that she was on a mission, in which high resolve and great self-sacrifices were required, so compressed was the lip and haughty the glance,-- Moving through the throng, Like one who does, not suffers wrong. No one would have imagined that it was the question of the sale of a piece of lace as she passed down the streets, with the folds of her dress almost sweeping the ground; while, with a scarf of beautiful texture fastened round her waist, she resembled one of those maidens of the sun which we see in Egyptian frescoes. "Let me pass, Emmanuel," she said to a broken-backed, stunted broker, who was hanging some filthy rags on a string which stretched across a narrow lane. "Pass! so you shall, my love, my own bright eyes: but you shall give me a kiss first," said the cadaverous-looking wretch; and he put his thin, bleared, and hairy lips near her face; but in the act he turned his head half round, and, for the first time, he saw me. "Oh, I ask your pardon, Rachel!" he said; "the Christian, of course, before one of our own tribe. I know you well, my darling, you never deceived me in your brightest days. You are a great lady; but, after all, we are both more or less in the same line. I sell old clothes, you sell old kisses; the difference is, that I cannot get rid of my wares as fast as you can of your kisses." Suddenly she turned round in all her beauty; flushed with indignation and trembling with anger, contempt, bitterness, and hatred, could not have been more gloriously expressed. The sallow, sickly, hollow-eyed impertinent was looking up at her face when, with one push, she hurled him over a heap of rubbish, which in the centre of the street supplied the place of a gutter; and shouts of laughter saluted him as he slunk, downcast and defeated, back into his shop. When I looked at him, I observed that his eyes, which before had only expressed lust and sordid avarice, now gleamed wildly with a look of intense and bitter hatred. There are none whom we are so disposed to punish as the mean and sordid, and yet there are none whom it is more dangerous to offend; they feel, with tenfold virulence, the disgust which they engender; they go about bearing with them a curse, which they are ever ready to transfer to any who offend them. No man is ignorant of his possessing the lower qualities; and no one, not even he who suffers from their action, can so intensely hate and despise them as their possessor. They are the chains on the galley-slaves, which clank at every step, but which they cannot shake off, allowing them only that amount of liberty of action which incessantly recalls their restraint. My guide turned sharp round to the left, and the next moment we were at the foot of the broken stair. Two or three dogs, which as usual had taken possession of the small space allotted for the passage to the primo piano, rushed, with frantic yells, down stairs. It could scarcely be properly called a house; it was rather a collection of planks nailed together, supporting the most rickety description of roof. It was quite wonderful how the whole fabric held together at all; for between the chinks of the rotten and creaking floor we could look into the shop below, where, amid immense piles of bales and casks, children were riotously playing. There was a curious expression of doubt and uneasiness in Rachel's countenance, when, with some slight degree of impatience, I begged her to be quick and show me the lace. She looked carefully round the room, as though fearful of being observed. At last, after some hesitation, she ransacked an old drawer, and drew forth the lace from beneath a heap of rags and rubbish. It was certainly the most magnificent specimen of old lace which I had seen in Italy. A large and deep flounce of the _pointe du roi_; that lace which was made solely for the Grand Monarque, and subsequently sold at immense prices, a great portion of it coming into the possession of the cardinals. It was in a most perfect state, and the only thing that surprised me in the transaction was the excessively low price which she asked for it: but, of course, it was not my business to tell her the real value of her own property; so I eagerly wrote a check on Torlonia, and requested her to pack it up. My attention had latterly been so absorbed by the beauty of the fabric, that it was not until I placed the check in her hand I observed how she trembled. She endeavored, when she saw me observing her, to conceal her agitation, but it soon defied even her dissimulation. She leant against a small chest of drawers, and had barely strength enough to point to a cup, which was half full of spirits, which I handed to her. She drank it off with the energy of apparent despair, and then it was that she commenced to revive slowly; but her forehead was still damp from agitation, and her lips were as pale and colorless as her cheeks. "What is the matter?" I asked. "Are you ill, Rachel?" She clutched hold of my arm mechanically. "Do not show the lace," she exclaimed, "to any one in Rome; at least promise me solemnly that you will not allow a single person to know from whom you purchased it." "Just as you like," I answered, "but you ought, on the contrary, to be very proud of having such a beautiful piece in your possession. I should have thought that you would have wished me to tell every one of my friends, so as to extend the reputation of your shop; but, of course, I will do as you like, and lock it up until I leave Rome." She seemed greatly relieved by this assurance; it must have restored or confirmed her confidence in me, for after a long pause she said,-- "I will tell you the truth, for you are a friend. You saw that man," she continued; "that miserable wretch, Emmanuel? Well, although I treated him in so bold and harsh a manner, I must tell you that I am at heart bitterly afraid of him. He is at once a coward to the strong, and a tyrant to the weak; one of those despicable characters which get our nation unjustly aspersed. He really does possess all those vices and meannesses which are attributed to many who are as noble, true, and good as you of the Christian race. You will consider me as unmerciful as my faith, from the manner in which I speak of this abandoned villain; but the truth is, that I am in the power of a guardian, who, if he knew that I had this money, would be the first to take it from me; and Emmanuel, who finds every thing out, will be certain to inform him. You saw the look he gave when I pushed the foul creature from me. I know that he is only waiting his opportunity to be revenged upon me. He had the insolence to ask me to marry him two years since; and upon my refusing to accept him, he swore that his hatred should some day or another find me out; so I quite tremble when I see him, however bold I may pretend to be. But, oh, my heart! Hush! he is standing there below." She knelt down on the floor, and touched me gently to make me draw back so as not to be seen by him; but it was too late, he had caught a glimpse of her through the crevices of the floor. He did not attempt to come up the stair, but he stood at the foot of it, heaping upon her the coarsest and most brutal expressions. For a moment, all the fear that had shortly before marked her countenance had given way to the most intense hatred. It flashed from her eyes and dilated her nostrils. My first impulse was to rush forward and turn the man out of the shop; but the girl saw the movement, and placed her hand on my arm with a significant look. The color had left her cheeks, and she was again pale as star-light. We waited there some minutes, when Emmanuel, after muttering sundry curses, withdrew. We looked at him as he passed down the lane, with his hands clenched and the muscles of his countenance trembling with excitement. We heard him, as he passed by, telling every one of his friends that Rachel was shut up in the room with a Christian. Some treated the information with indifference, others only called him jealous; but sundry boys crowded round the door, waiting for my departure. I took the lace and left the shop with her. The children in the street, excited by that rascal, made use of some insulting expressions towards her; but ran away whenever I made an attempt to approach them. I could, however, see that the poor girl was, if not alarmed, very unhappy; for, now that Emmanuel was no longer present, the tears ran down her cheeks. I took her hand kindly and parted from her, but not without a vague and uncomfortable feeling of doubt and mistrust. "Ah, me!" I thought, when alone, "is this the freedom, the liberty, the charity which suffereth long, the consideration for others, which the gospel teaches? It is well for the great poet to write of the freedom of the Roman citizen:-- But Rome, 'tis thine alone, with awful sway, To rule mankind, and make the world obey; Disposing peace and war, thine own majestic sway. To tame the proud, the fettered slave to free: These are imperial acts, and worthy thee. The fettered slave is set free, but the citizen is enthralled; not because he now proclaims another king than Cæsar, but simply because the tenets of his faith are not precisely the same as our own. And this beautiful girl, brought up in that worst of suffering--mental suffering--keenly feeling the persecution to which her race is exposed, however, she could bear children who would, in those moments of tribulation to which Imperial Rome of all empires is most subject, stand forth to defend her walls!" I went away, however, well pleased with my purchase. Notwithstanding my promise to the contrary, I could not avoid showing it to one or two particular friends. Even in so slight a matter it is very easy to find food for vanity. It gratified me to have purchased it so cheaply. When it was pronounced quite beautiful, I accepted the expression as an indirect tribute to my judgment, taste, and ability. It was, of course, not the lace that I cared for, although most anxious to gratify her who had charged me with the commission. What, to judge myself truly, I delighted in, was the circumstance of my having gained a victory over those who possess hereditary claims for depth and cunning. Ah, it does not do to cast the lead too frequently into the depths of the heart in search of motives. I was at dinner the same day when a card was sent in to me; it had the name of M. Narelli, the head of the police, printed upon it. I was at a loss to imagine what business he could have with me; but as my servant told me that it was a matter of the last moment, with some misgivings I desired that he might be shown in. The moment he appeared, I could detect at one glance that he was a man of official eminence, and also of great ability. The eye always catches the resolution or indecision of the mind. To judge from his expression, he must have been a man of the coolest courage and most determined character. His manner was deferential, without being obsequious; his voice, clear, sonorous, and distinct, rang on the ear like a well-toned bell. He commenced by apologizing for the intrusion, and then at once asked me whether it was true that I had that morning purchased some lace of a young Jewish girl in the Ghetto. No sooner had he uttered the word lace, than the whole tragedy burst upon me. I remembered Rachel's hesitation, her fears, her tremblings, and excitement: all was explained. For one moment I felt tempted to deny the whole transaction, and to refuse to show the lace: a second consideration, however, proved to me that it would be at once absurd and unjustifiable: but that moment showed me the poor girl, pale, broken-hearted, and trembling under the weight of a terrible accusation. I bitterly lamented the innocent part which I had taken in this transaction, and regretted that I had ever visited the Ghetto in search of lace. I thought of her as I first saw her standing at the fruit-stall, with that haughty, contemptuous glance, that resolute and open countenance; and it was bitter to picture her sinking in jail, in such a prison as Italy boasts of in these enlightened days: but there was not much time for reflection and consideration. M. Narelli, who saw that I was hesitating, told me at once that the whole truth was known, and that he must require the piece of lace to be given over to him; he then suggested that it would be a kindness to the woman herself if I would accompany him at once to St. Angelo, to be confronted with her. As we drove rapidly down the streets, he told me that the lace had been stolen some months since from one of the cardinals. The police had suspected for a long time that it was concealed somewhere in the Ghetto; but in consequence of the hostile feeling which had been apparent there for many months, they did not like to commence an official search in that district without sufficient evidence; this evidence had been obtained that very day through one of those ill-conditioned, ill-omened spies, who are to be found connected with the police of every country. From the description which he gave of the man, I could not for a moment doubt that it was Emmanuel. He told me very frankly the precise hour at which the informer came to him, and I found that it was soon after I had left the shop. There was a slight stoppage caused by the carriages which were driving up to the Teatro d'Apolion, the present Opera. People looked curiously into ours, which was well-known as that of the chief of the police. How wonderful are the circles into which the interests of society are divided; how many currents are eddying and bubbling in their course before the mighty river of human existence is formed; each stream so perfect in itself, so separate from every other, yet ever flowing towards the same wide fathomless sea. Of the gay and the happy whom I passed, how few cared for this poor girl, or how few would have cared had they even heard the tale! I felt myself almost criminal from the circumstance of having been the cause of this misery to another. My whole thoughts were fixed on this one object. Before the fulness of my imagination the prison-walls disappeared, and I saw nothing but the cells, and listened to the voices of the many to whom the voice of the comforter is never heard. We were passing over the yellow Tiber, but I heeded not its associations, either with history or with my early schoolboy days, their studies and their struggles. When the mind is full of one object, all others become invisible, even to the senses. The light of the mind is greater than the light of the body. We arrived at last at the gates of St. Angelo, the tomb of the dead Pagan and of the living Christian. After certain stern, painful formalities were gone through, in the most matter-of-fact way, between my companion and the commander of the strong post which was on guard, we entered the mighty precincts, and the gates closed behind us. I had then time to marvel at the massiveness of the structure--the immense blocks of stone, so typical of the colossal empire under which it was constructed. Passing through a long series of narrow passages, gloomy and sad, impervious to all sound, save that of low sighs and groans from dungeons below and around us, we arrived at an open space in the centre, above which the winged angel is poised in the act of sheathing his sword. The moon shone around it, and the expanded wings, edged with a silvery light, seemed almost to move in the light breeze: there were guards on the battlements, who marched with solemn, measured tread; and high above all floated the Pontifical banner, with the keys of St. Peter in its huge folds flapping in the breeze,--the emblem of sovereignty, spiritual and temporal. No one can judge of the immense extent of St. Angelo from the interior. The ashes of the great Emperor, how small a space could they have occupied in that vast circumference--the tomb of the one day, the citadel of the morrow--the grave of the Pagan, the fortress of Christianity! During the recent revolution at Rome the people broke down the viaduct which connects it with the Vatican, and the ruined wall still remains;--we may hope, as a good omen, to show that the palace and the prison are no longer closely connected together, and that safety does not depend on the battlements and armaments of that stern old tower of other days, which stands surrounded with the memorials and memories of imperial Rome. In one of the darkest of these cells the poor girl had been thrown. When the door was opened gently, we saw what seemed to be a heap of clothes piled together in one corner; but the light from a small lamp suspended from the ceiling was so weak that it was quite impossible to distinguish any object distinctly. The cell, as far as I could judge from a hasty glance, resembled those abodes of misery which have been so frequently described, and which it would require the energies of ten Howards to improve. There was a disagreeable, close, damp smell; the pavement of the floor was sadly out of repair; there was a bracket placed against the wall, with a few necessary articles of furniture for ordinary use; but when my eyes became more accustomed to the light, I discovered that what had appeared a mere heap of clothes was the poor girl, almost rolled up in the corner. For some moments she continued to lie there, apparently quite insensible; but at last, with a sharp cry, she raised her head suddenly, and then I could not mistake the beautiful countenance that had so struck me on that morning. But, sad to say, even these few hours had made great ravages: sorrow, anxiety, and misery are the most zealous accessories of age. She really looked years older: this might have been partly the effect of the lurid, flickering light, and the disorder of her dress; but sure I am that no one could have recognized the haughty, dignified, imposing woman, who but a few hours since had swept almost contemptuously through the streets. "You are come to accuse me," she exclaimed, falling with both her hands on the pavement, and striking it with violence; "now you come to accuse me. It is like a Christian," she continued, with increased bitterness in her voice and vehemence in her action. And then she sobbed violently, and looked into my face with a piteous expression. The police prevented the necessity of my reply, for one of the men seized her at once by the arm, and dragged her up rudely, desiring her to stand. And she did stand there--a picture of utter prostration, mental and physical, to have melted any heart, save the stony, arid ones of those men who were with me. Stand alone she could not, but she leaned against the wall, and her head fell on her shoulder, her fingers were intertwined together, and she moved them about with a kind of galvanic agitation. All the anger and impetuosity of her character had passed away: she was no longer the ideal of ruined greatness, but the simple, broken-hearted woman. Violence in a woman is at all times so painful to witness, even in moments of extreme sorrow, that it rather offends than interests. "You know this woman?" said the abrupt, uncouth examiner, in a voice which echoed to the vaulted roof. I scarcely dared look at her; but I felt that those large black eyes were fixed supplicatingly upon me, and I, too, trembled. The question was repeated in the same harsh manner, and this time I nodded in the affirmative. "She sold you this piece of lace?" was the next question. He took the lace of exquisite texture, and unrolled it so roughly that it tore in his hand. M. Narelli had left us for some minutes, or this miserable subordinate would not have dared to behave in so rude a manner; but I scarcely thought it worth while to notice it,--or rather, I scarcely did notice it at the time, my attention was so absorbed by the poor girl, whose happiness, whose every prospect, depended on my evidence. I could not but repeat the affirmation; but how strange a thing is justice, that it is sometimes difficult to reconcile it to humanity, generosity, and all the nobler qualities of the heart! At the moment that I was telling the truth my heart, and almost my conscience, reproached me; it was impossible for me to deny the fact; even had it been possible by a denial to have destroyed all the links of evidence, could I so violate every received principle? But, nevertheless, however irreconcilable with honor, dignity, and religion such a course would have been, the features of that poor girl have frequently since appeared to me wearing such a reproachful glance, that I have seemed to stand before her abashed and self-convicted. "And this piece of lace you stole?" continued the inquisitor, turning sharply to Rachel,--a style of examination which would scarcely be understood in England. She made no reply, but looked at him with a calm, steady glance. Then a sudden thought seemed to strike her. "I ask you but one favor," she said, speaking to M. Narelli, who had just returned. "Order these men away, and leave me alone for ten minutes with this gentleman: if you mistrust me, you will, at least, have confidence in an English gentleman. Besides, what chance is there of my escaping from this place?" And she cast a melancholy glance around the cell. "You can watch at the door, if you choose," she continued, with additional animation; "do this, and I will give him some most important information; if you remain, I will tell nothing at all." The men whispered together, and appeared to hesitate about granting her request. I looked on in great anxiety. I was most desirous of being of some use to the poor girl, more especially as I felt myself to have been the innocent, but still the original cause, of all her sufferings. "Do this," she continued, with a heightened tone,--"do this, and I will tell you much more: I will put you upon the track of a man who has stolen countless wealth--who has done worse than steal, who has stained his hands with blood. You know Flavio. Well, I know him also; and at the present moment I can tell you where he is to be found. Do you believe me now?" Flavio had been well known some two years previously as one of those bandits who was the terror of a whole province. He was accused of several daring crimes, and a few months before these events a person had been murdered in one of the narrow streets which skirt the city, and the strongest circumstantial evidence pointed him out as the criminal. Since then the police had been vigorously on the alert to discover his hiding-place, but all their efforts up to this period had been fruitless. I had often heard him spoken of, more especially in connection with the republican movement then in progress in Italy; but I was quite at a loss to imagine what connection could have subsisted between this man and Rachel, or where she had had the opportunity of seeing him. The men left the cell, M. Narelli whispering me to curtail the interview as much as possible, as they were anxious to terminate the first inquiry. So soon as the door was closed, she threw herself at my feet, took from her bosom a small packet, which I opened, and there I saw the picture of a fair child--she might have been seven years of age; and packed up with the picture was a lock of hair, and an address. "As you are the cause of my misery," she said, "be also the source of my happiness, even in this infliction. Give this to my child at the inclosed address, and tell her to love me." "Your child!" I exclaimed, with astonishment. "My child, and by a man who you heard me mention so recently--Flavio!" "And Flavio?" I said. "I shall denounce him," she exclaimed,--"denounce him, as the one great duty which I owe to society, as an atonement for my own sins. And does he not deserve it? Is it but a light thing for a man to ruin me, in the first instance,--to leave me afterwards to starve, and compel me to keep a fruit-stall to gain the shadow of a subsistence,--condemning me to misery and to humiliations which my soul abhorred and loathed? And was that all? I said that you were the cause of my being here in this wretched dungeon; you are the innocent cause, but the man who betrayed me was----" "Was Emmanuel," I interrupted. "Yes, Emmanuel, it is true," she continued; "but there was a traitor prior to him, and greater than him; it was Flavio." "Flavio?" "It is scarcely credible, but true. He insisted upon my giving him all my earnings; when I refused to do so,--not for my own sake, for I could live just as happily on bread-and-water as you could surrounded by all your luxuries, but for the sake of my child, who, at that time, was almost starving, for I had to bestow all the pittance I could scrape together to procure it a nurse and a lodging. It was Flavio induced me to steal the lace. I did so in a moment of desperation, when I fully believed he would have murdered me if I had refused to obey him. I had it by me so long; for, in the first instance, I did not venture to offer it for sale; and latterly, I thought it would be difficult to procure the full price. At last I heard that you were searching for old lace, and thought I was safe in your hands. Circumstances have turned out differently. I sent to Flavio to tell him that I had found a customer for it, and till the very moment I was arrested I was perfectly ignorant that he and that scoundrel Emmanuel were in close communion together; but when I was dragged out of my small, miserable lodging, like a condemned criminal, rather than as a person only accused of a crime, Emmanuel, who stood by, with a glow of triumph over his pale, miserable, withered countenance, whispered to me, 'Thank Flavio for this; he denounced you for the reward.'" "He will escape you," I said; "of course he will imagine that you intend to be revenged upon him." "He will not escape me long, for I know that he imagines me ignorant of the woman with whom he is now living, and who hates him with a bitterness second only to my own. She will give him up to justice, and deservedly so. A greater villain does not exist. I cannot tell you what his whole conduct has been to me--his acts of barbarous cruelty. Even my child, whom I dote on, cannot make me forgive the father all his iniquity." "And this poor child?" I said. "Ah, that is the thought that lays next my heart with a weight which I can scarce sustain!" And she clasped her hands to her bosom, as though to express the greatness of her affliction. "What I ask you is to see the child, to give her this lock of hair and likeness. And may I venture one thing more,--may I ask you to take care that she is not left utterly destitute?" And so saying, she put a small purse in my hand, saying, "It is very light, but it contains all that I possess." I returned her the purse, as she required every baiocchi to add to her comforts in the prison; but I set her mind at rest by promising to see her child the next morning, and to do all that lay in my power for its support and protection. She fell at my feet, bathing my hands with her tears. In her beauty, as she knelt before me, I for the moment forgot in what spot we were standing, and looked upon her with an interest which was only broken, rudely enough, by the clanging of the chains of the door, and its creaking movement on its rusty hinges. M. Narelli entered, and with the rough, straightforward, practical conduct of a man in his position, he came at once to the point. "You confess, then, that you stole the lace?" "I do," she answered, with a firm voice, which surprised me after the scene I had just witnessed; "I do confess that I stole the lace; but it was not for myself, but for one far greater, and far better capable of making a defence--for that man Flavio." I noticed the gleam of satisfaction that passed over M. Narelli's countenance at the mention of his name; and when he felt well assured that he was, at last, fairly on the track of the man who had evaded all his efforts, and in pursuit of whom, as I afterwards learned, he was, on one occasion, nearly losing his situation, on account of a robbery which it was quite evident that Flavio had committed, but of which he could not obtain the least trace, at once his whole manner changed towards the unfortunate girl; he asked her to sit down, to be quite calm, and to tell him all that she knew of the man's career. I thought, for one moment, that even then she would have relented, but it was far otherwise; she began at once, with the calmest voice, to give a sketch of Flavio's life from the time when she first met him. The story was one of intense interest. It seems that at one time he was engaged in gaining an honest livelihood; but one unlucky day he quarrelled with a man--struck him; this led to a tussle, and, in a fit of exasperation, he took out a knife and killed him on the spot. From that moment he was lost. The dead man's family vowed vengeance against him. He had to take to the woods, where, for self-defence, and really for his subsistence, he took to the brigand's life. His extreme courage, and even generosity, soon brought a large number of followers together; and, as I have already remarked, he became the terror of the whole Neapolitan frontier. At one time two or three regiments were sent in pursuit of him; and then it was he undertook the last and boldest step of coming to Rome itself. He got into the city at night, and for a long time nothing more was heard of Flavio. At last his old habits returned. Some robberies committed with wondrous skill, and a murder of extraordinary atrocity, made the police suspect that the man who thus braved their vigilance was a criminal of no ordinary description; but do what they would, they were baffled in every scheme which they planned for his arrest. At one moment his extraordinary nerve saved him,--for instance, when chased by the police, he sought shelter in one of the very tribunals, which they might naturally imagine was about the last place where he would have been found. Mingled with this wild and savage character were some generous qualities; he had been known to assist people in misfortune, and a vague kind of interest attached to him on account of traits of self-denial that were attributed to him. But now, when Rachel told me of his heartless conduct to her, I learned how entirely visionary are all those tales of nobility of character among men who are leading an abandoned and vicious life. From her story it could not be doubted for a moment that he it was who had instigated her to commit the act which had brought her to despair. Nothing could equal the bitterness with which she inveighed against him. She told all his hiding-places--the secret passages by which he evaded all pursuit; and when the story was finished, and her vengeance accomplished, she wept like a child. Even the stern M. Narelli was touched at the painful tale. He gave orders that every comfort should be shown her, and after some minutes further delay, we left the prison. We had been there almost three hours, but the time had seemed very short. When we crossed the Ponte St. Angelo the people were leaving the Opera, after three hours of fictitious sorrow, while I had been passing that time in the presence of real affliction--side by side, as it were, in the face of each other, the mockery of woe and its solemn reality. And how often is it so! Unthought of--not, indeed, uncared for--but unthought of by the happy, the carriage rolls along, passing the hospital and the prison in its rapid progress; the golden youth, listlessly reclining in happy indolence, hears not the voice of pain, sees not the hectic glow of suffering on the cheek; nursed in the sweet sorrows of romance, dreams not of living agonies more fearful than those which the greatest actor can portray, and of death as a reality. I determined to lose no time in fulfilling my mission. The directions of the house where the child lived had been very carefully written, so I had no difficulty in discovering it; but I had to pass through a labyrinth of dirty streets, until at last, in a small, narrow lane, next the Farnese Palace, I found the house. Evidently something had occurred to excite the inmates, for people were bustling about the door, and there was unusual excitement for that late hour of the night. I stood aside for a few moments to learn, if possible, what was the cause of all this movement; and then I overheard expressions which made me tremble for the safety of the poor child, if it was quite certain that she lived there. "Who did it? Where is the man? Poor child, how beautiful she was!" At last, unable to restrain my feelings, I rushed through the group, and asked whether a young girl of eight or ten years lived there. "She did live here," said an old woman, with the tears trickling down her cheek,--"she did live here, but she is dead." "Dead!" I exclaimed; for however indifferent a person may be to us, perhaps in the circle of events nothing is more fearful than to seek the living and find the corpse; to expect joy, and tremble before despair. "Dead! When did she die? How did she die?" "Come up, and see for yourself," said the woman; "the room will explain every thing." And the men made way for me, and I followed up a rickety staircase to the third flat,--it was scarcely worth the name of a floor. As we drew near the top I saw two or three myrmidons of the police; they all, I observed, looked pale--almost alarmed: evidently some great catastrophe had occurred, but I had yet to learn the worst. The light which the old woman held in her hand shone upon something sparkling on the ground. I touched her arm to point it out to her, and then she threw the full blaze of light upon it, and I saw at once that it was blood. A cold, creeping sensation passed over me; that terrible conviction that in one moment we are going to be witnesses of the effects of a great crime almost paralyzed my senses; but, strange to say, at this moment of horror I felt as if I had witnessed the whole scene before. When we entered the room, and I saw the body of a young and lovely child lying on the floor, bathed in blood, I did not shrink even then, although destitution and crime were both presented to me in their most fearful aspect. My nerves appeared to have been braced for some great necessity. The police were standing by perfectly irresolute, and incapable of taking any decided course, when one of them picked up a handkerchief from the floor. "Rachel!" he exclaimed, looking at the corner. I started at the name, and then a sudden idea flashed across me: it was Flavio who had been here, and with that devilish spirit of revenge to which Rachel alluded, he had killed his own child. I took the chief of the police to one side, and asked him if he knew Flavio. "Well," he replied. "I was one of the band who were sent in pursuit of him for two or three months. We fell in with him several times, but never were able to take him." "You had better inquire about him," I said; "for I strongly suspect him of having committed this murder." He took my suggestion, and it appeared that a man, precisely resembling Flavio, had been seen leaving the house at the time of the murder. When once suspicion was directed into the right channel, numerous corroborative circumstances were cited. It appeared that Flavio came constantly to see the child: the only strange part of the case was that he appeared very fond of it, and as tender and considerate towards it as a man of his brutal nature could be. There clearly must have been some ground for this sudden and unprovoked attack,--if, indeed, he committed it; after exhausting every possible motive, we could not arrive at any definite conclusion. After a while the horror of the spectacle grew upon me: it presented itself no longer as a picture to my imagination, but as a fearful fact. The crowd of people who forced their way into the room--the blasphemous and terrible expressions--the coarse jokes--the vulgar, obscene language--the poor child, not fashioned tenderly, but lying like a confused mass of clothes and gore upon the floor, perfectly sickened my heart. And when I thought that I could not be of any further use, I was too happy to turn away. I returned home, but could not sleep. All the events of the day crowded upon my mind. My dream had been dreamt before I laid my head upon the pillow: it now filled my brain like a horrible vision. I rose early, wearied with restlessness, and went immediately in search of M. Narelli. To my great surprise I found that he was up, and in close communication with the chief of the police, whom I had seen on the preceding night at the poor child's room. I was immediately shown into his office, and I observed that his countenance betrayed an anxiety and annoyance unusual in persons of his nature under any circumstances. I was beginning to tell him my story, when he interrupted me. "My dear sir," he said, "pardon me, but we have no time to lose, and I know it all. A murder has been committed, and there is no question that Flavio is the murderer: and I will tell you something more that will surprise you. I know the cause of the murder--the motives that influenced him. What do you think?--he was present at the examination of that girl, yesterday!" "He!" I exclaimed, with an expression of astonishment. "It is surprising what he can do," he said: "he was disguised like a soldier on guard; and, if you remember, two or three of them were listening when the door was opened, when I returned after your interview with Rachel." The whole mystery was now explained: he had murdered the child to revenge himself on Rachel. "What I fear is," continued M. Narelli, "that we are three hours too late, and the fellow has escaped; but we have sent off in all directions, and all that can be will be done. I am now going to see the poor girl, will you come with me?" A strange fascination made me do so; besides, I wished to restore the objects which she had given into my charge. When we arrived we found her asleep: the jailer awoke her more gently and with more consideration than before, for her sorrow had touched even his heart. When she saw me she gave an exclamation of joy. "And my child?" she said. I could not answer a word, but put the packet into her hand. She looked up with a kind of vague, incredulous smile, and passed her hand across her forehead, as though to reflect more clearly. "You have seen her, and you have not given it to her," she said. "What does it mean?" "It means," said M. Narelli, "that your child is the victim of an act of fearful treachery, of a dreadful crime." "My child! my child!" she shrieked aloud. "There is but one man who could hurt a child, a sweet child like that--its own father!" She bowed her head for a time, and raised it again only to utter the most fearful ravings. Fit followed fit; her whole frame was convulsed, and I withdrew in horror and anguish. The result may be shortly stated. She went mad, and was confined in an asylum,--one of those glorious charitable establishments of which modern Rome can boast. Flavio escaped to the Campo Morto, where he is now living,--an asylum for men guilty of the blackest crimes, where they gradually fall victims to the pestilential vapors which they inhale, and perish beneath the brightest sun while cultivating the soil so soon to become their graves. From the American Whig Review for January. HENRY C. CAREY, AND HIS POLITICAL ECONOMY. BY RUFUS W. GRISWOLD. Henry C. Carey has been recognized through continental Europe as one of the master thinkers of our generation. It is time for him to be known in his own country. In Political Economy he has applied the methods of the Positive Philosophy, and his works exhibit the chief advances the science has made since Adam Smith published his "Wealth of Nations." They are text-books in the colleges even of Sweden and Norway, while at the University in the street next to that in which the author has his residence, books are adopted composed of ideas from empirical and nearly obsolete systems: Say and Ricardo are regarded as expositors of the last and ultimate discoveries. Let us see if this law respecting prophets cannot be changed; or if not changed, confirmed, by an exception in the case of our philosopher. Mr. Carey was born in Philadelphia, in December, 1793. His father was the late eminent Matthew Carey, memories of whose virtues preserve about his name a thousand delightful associations. Matthew Carey was a political economist also. He wrote much, and he wrote effectively, because he taught that which was in accordance with the feelings and interests of his readers; but he was of the old school, dead now, with its professors. He disliked abstract ideas or principles, and did not trouble himself much with their investigation. The consequence was, that he made no addition to politico-economical knowledge, and left nothing by which he should be remembered except the fact that he was a consistent and ardent friend of Protection. Ricardo left his doctrine of Rents; Malthus his principle of Population; their books are little read now, and they themselves would have been long since forgotten, but that they taught what had been taught by no others. Of the hundreds of their countrymen who have since written, scarcely one has furnished a new idea; or if such an idea can be found in the books of any one, it will not bear investigation. Many have collected facts, that are useful, and all of them have talked and written about their facts and theories; but only as empirics. One man contended on one side and another on another, and there was no standard by which to judge them. Ricardo and Malthus gave laws that would not fit the facts, and the facts were altered and suppressed to suit the laws.[22] McCulloch taught that transportation and exchange were more advantageous than production,[23] and Cobden that it was better to go to colonies in which _rich_ lands were to be had cheap, than to stay at home where landlords charged high rents for the _poor_ ones that were necessarily cultivated: and therefore that imported food would be cheaper than that which was grown at home. The result has proved that he was wrong. Food is now obtained with more difficulty than before; emigration is necessary, and the late decision in Parliament shows that Protection will be restored: as the ministry could command only the mean majority of 21. A few years hence McCulloch will be remembered only as the compiler of a few indifferent books of reference, and Cobden as the author of much ill to the people of England. Many of these men have ideas that are sound; but they know nothing of the principles of the science they undertake to teach; and so they are continually making blunders. Of all the French writers of the first forty years of this century, only one, Jean Baptiste Say, has lived to the middle of it, and his work is only a mass of error in an imposing form. This may be called sweeping criticism; but time will prove that it is just. We need principles, as the astronomers did before Copernicus, Kepler and Newton, gave them the laws which govern the movements of the universe. Others observed facts and wrote treatises, but only these names have lived. Ricardo and Malthus furnished what they believed to be the great natural laws in regard to land and the sources of its value; the relation of the laborer and the capitalist; and of population. Their names are still familiar, but their theories are shattered by the assaults of critics; they will be forgotten, and their places will be occupied by those of the great author of whose works we propose to write. Ricardo and Malthus will be to Carey as Ptolemy to Copernicus. From 1803, a period of almost fifty years, since Ricardo published his doctrine of Rent, there has not been even an attempt, except Carey's, to add any thing to political economy. Senior, Whateley, and a thousand others, have been disputing about words, while as many others have been attacking Malthus and Ricardo; but no one has attempted to discover laws, to take the place of those which were assailed. Of the supporters of these writers, every one has been compelled to admit that their laws did not cover the facts, and to interpolate accommodating passages. John Stuart Mill, in his recent work, has done this even more largely than his predecessors, and so furnished additional proof that their laws were _not_ laws, but mere anarchy. Ricardo had to leave a place of escape for difficult facts[24] and his successors have since found themselves obliged to open so many new ones, that his laws are now like sieves. The period was propitious for a discoverer. The opinion of D'Alembert that the steps of Civilization were to be taken in the middle of each century, was to be confirmed by a new illustration. Mr. Carey's father was a practical man; all his children were trained to affairs; thus they became observers. The students of books are rarely creators in science. Truth is most likely to be evolved in the school of experience. From the age of seven years until he was twenty-one, Mr. Carey was in his father's bookstore. From 1821 to 1838, he was a partner in the important publishing house of Carey, Lea & Carey, and Carey & Lea; but in this period he passed one season abroad, we believe immediately after his marriage with a sister of Leslie the painter. The determination of his mind was already fixed, when his retirement from business enabled him to devote his faculties entirely to the science with which his name will for ever be associated. Mr. Carey's first book--_An Essay on the Rate of Wages_--was published in 1836, and was soon after expanded into _The Principles of Political Economy_, which appeared in three octavo volumes in 1837--1840. Before proceeding to give an account of this performance, we will more particularly show what was, at the date of its publication, the condition of the science it was designed to illustrate. Mr. Malthus had taught that population tended to increase faster than food, and that so irresistible was this tendency, that all human efforts to restrain the number of men within the limits of subsistence were vain. It was a great "law of nature," and it was of little consequence, therefore, how fast food might be increased, since the only effect must be to stimulate population, which, in the end, was sure to outrun the means of living. The impression which this work produced has been briefly noticed in what we have written in connection with Mr. Alexander H. Everett's reply to it, printed in London and Boston in 1822. The doctrine was a convenient one, for it relieved the directors of affairs from the charge of causing, or suffering, the poverty and wretchedness by which they were surrounded. Soon after this, Mr. Ricardo attempted to explain by what means the supply of food was limited. He taught that men always commenced the work of cultivation on the most fertile soils, capable of yielding, say, one hundred quarters for a given quantity of labor; but that as population increased, it became necessary to resort to poorer soils, yielding but ninety quarters, and that then the owner of the first could command as rent ten quarters. With a further increase, lands of a third quality, yielding but eighty quarters, were brought into use, and then the first and second would command as rent the whole difference, say, twenty quarters for the first, and ten quarters for the second. The payment of rent is thus regarded, in this school, as an evidence of constantly diminishing reward of labor, resulting from the increase of population in consequence of which it is necessary to extend the area of cultivation. With each step of its progress, the owner of the land takes a larger proportion of this constantly decreasing product, leaving a smaller one to be divided among those who apply either labor or capital to cultivation, thus producing a constant increase in the _inequality_ of human condition. The interests of the landlord are in this manner shown to be for ever opposed to those of all the other portions of society. Rent is supposed to be paid because land has been occupied in virtue of an exercise of power and not because the owners have done any thing to entitle them to it. Here we see the germ of that discord which everywhere in Europe exists between the payers and receivers of rent. The annual fund from which savings can be made is held to be continually diminishing, the poor becoming poorer as the rich grow richer. The tendency to increase is more powerful in population than in capital, and the natural result must be that "wages will be reduced so low that a portion of the population will regularly die of want."[25] The effect of the promulgation of these principles, upon the science of which they were asserted to be the basis, was curious. It was clear that increase of population led to famine. It was equally clear that increase of wealth tended to the extension of cultivation over inferior soils, with constantly decreasing returns to labor. Nevertheless, the political economist was everywhere surrounded by facts showing that the condition of man improved as numbers increased, and as cultivation was extended. With lessened rewards of toil there should be deterioration of moral condition, and abridged facilities for intellectual cultivation, but it was incontestable that men were more moral and better instructed than in any previous centuries. The increasing disproportion between the share of the landlord and that of the laborer was calculated to increase the inequality of condition, and yet it was not to be doubted that the two were nearer together than they were in the days of Elizabeth or of Henry VIII. The fact and the theory were always at variance with each other, and hence resulted a determination to limit the science to the consideration of wealth alone, excluding all reference to social condition. Mr. McCulloch therefore defined Political Economy as the Science of Values, and Archbishop Whately desired to change the name to Catallactics, or the Science of Exchanges. The whole duty of the teacher of this new science was held to be that of explaining how wealth might be increased, allowing "neither sympathy with indigence, nor disgust at profusion nor at avarice; neither reverence for existing institutions, nor detestation of existing abuses; neither love of popularity, nor of paradox, nor of system, to deter him from stating what he believed to be the facts, or from drawing from those facts what appeared to him to be the legitimate conclusions."[26] Such was the Political Economy then, and such is that which is now, taught in the schools of England. The consequences are seen in the manner in which the poor people of every part of the United Kingdom are being expelled from the little holdings to which they have been reduced by a system of unbounded public expenditure, and the contemptuous tone in which the common people are spoken of in all their journals. Charity is denounced as tending to promote the growth of population. Marriage among the poor is regarded as a crime, and farmers are regarded as participant in crime for giving employment to men with families in preference to single men. But the system itself was an enormous wrong against nature. Mr. Carey entered the lists against it, with the earnestness and confidence inspired by a conviction that he contended for humanity. His book commences with a single elementary proposition, that man desires to maintain and improve his condition, whether physical, moral, intellectual, or political: and the object of it is to show, that the theories of Mr. Malthus and Mr. Ricardo are in direct opposition to the universal fact, and therefore cannot be regarded as natural laws. On the contrary, he shows that food has always grown faster than population, and that the power to obtain subsistence has always increased most rapidly in those countries, and at those times, in which population has most rapidly increased, and in which cultivation has most rapidly extended over those soils denominated by Mr. Ricardo inferior. The error of all these writers is shown to be in taking _quantities_ instead of _proportions_, and it is the law of proportions that constitutes the novel feature of this work. Ricardo and Malthus assert that land, labor, and capital are the agents of production, and are subject to different laws, all tending to produce contrariety of interests, and that the reason why such is the case is that land owes its value--or power to command rent for its use--to _monopoly_, while capital is the accumulated product of labor. Mr. Carey, on the contrary, shows, by a vast variety of facts, that land owes its value to labor alone, and that its selling price is _invariably_ less than would purchase the quantity of labor required to induce its present condition were it restored to a state of nature. It is, therefore, like steam-engines, mills, or ships, to be considered as capital, the interest upon which is called rent, and it is subject to the same laws as capital in any other form. With the growth of wealth and population, the landlord is shown to be receiving a constantly decreasing _proportion_ of the product of labor applied to cultivation, but a constantly increasing _quantity_, because of the rapid increase in the amount of the return as cultivation is improved and extended.[27] So it is with the capitalist. The _rate_ of interest falls as cultivation is improved, and capital is accumulated with greater facility, and the capitalist receives a smaller _proportion_; but the _quantity_ of commodities obtainable in return for the use of a given amount of capital increases, and with every change in that direction there is shown to be an increasing tendency to equality and to improvement of condition, physical, moral, intellectual, and political. According to the system of Mr. Ricardo, the interests of the land owner and laborer, the capitalist and the employer of capital, are always opposed to each other. Mr. Carey, on the contrary, proves, and we think most conclusively, that "the interests of the capitalist and of the employer of capital are thus in perfect harmony with each other, as each derives advantage from every measure that tends to facilitate the growth of capital, and to render labor productive; while every measure that tends to produce the opposite effect is injurious to both."[28] The entire novelty of these views rendered it necessary that they should be supported by a great body of facts, and Mr. Carey therefore furnished an examination of the causes which have in various countries, particularly India, France, Great Britain, and the United States, retarded the growth of wealth--demonstrating that they were to be found in the great public expenditure for the support of fleets and armies, and the prosecution of wars, the natural results of a state of things in which the few govern the many, taxing them at their will; and that the remedy was to be found in that improvement of political condition which should enable men to govern and to tax themselves, doing which they would be disposed to remain at peace. That man may be enabled to improve his physical condition, combination of effort is shown to be necessary, and that tends to increase with the increase in the density of population. Therewith comes increased security of person and property, and increased respect for the rights of others, tending to promote the further increase of wealth, and to enable men to devote more time to the cultivation of mind. Improved mental condition enables men to apply their labors more productively, and thus obtain better subsistence from a diminished surface, facilitates combination of action, and increases the growth of wealth. With its growth the proportion of the laborer increases, and that of the landlord or other capitalist decreases, and the power of the former to govern himself, and to tax himself, grows steadily with the growth of wealth and population; and thus we have physical, moral, intellectual and political improvement, each aiding, and aided by, the other. It will be seen from this brief summary that the field occupied is a most extensive one, more so than that of any similar work that has been written. The views are presented with great distinctness and force, and illustrated throughout by numerous facts drawn not only from the four countries principally referred to, but from Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, &c. It is one of the chief distinguishing merits of the work, that each part of it, while complete in itself, has that relation to the other which belongs to the divisions of a whole, in which all things are so interblended and harmonious as to produce a cumulative and finally perfect effect; while in the various systems presented to us by Europe, every part is in conflict with every other. In denying Mr. Ricardo's _theory of the occupation of the earth_, Mr. Carey did not undertake to present any by himself, but this he has done in his more recent performance, The Past, the Present and the Future, published in Philadelphia in 1848. In this original and masterly composition, he has shown that the law is in direct opposition to the principle announced by Mr. Ricardo, and since adopted in the English school, and to some extent in France and in this country. In the infancy of civilization, man is poor and works with poor machinery, and must take the high and poor soils requiring little clearing and no drainage; and it is only as population and wealth increase, that the richer soils are brought into cultivation. The consequence is, that in obedience to a great law of nature, _food tends to increase more rapidly than population_, and it is only by that combination of effort which results from increasing density of population that the richer soils can be brought into activity. The truth of this is shown by a careful and particular account of the settlement of this country, followed by a rapid sketch of the occupation of Mexico, the West Indies, South America, Great Britain, France, Italy, Greece, India, and the Islands of the Pacific, illustrating and confirming the position that the poor lands at the heads of streams, or the small and rocky islands, are first chosen for cultivation, while the lower and richer soils are left unimproved for want of the means which come with growing wealth and population. Mr. Ricardo's theory is then examined in all its parts, and shown to be entirely opposed to the whole mass of facts presented in a rapid review of the course of events in the different portions of the world, while the exceptions made by him for the purpose of providing for the infinite number that could not be brought under his general law, are shown to be _themselves the law_; and that such is the case is now admitted by some of the most eminent economists of Europe. With the downfall of Mr. Ricardo's hypothesis of the occupation of land, disappears the base on which rests the celebrated theory of Mr. Malthus--a theory which has been largely discussed in this country by Mr. Everett and others, and which is examined at length from his point of view by Mr. Carey, who shows that everywhere increase of population has led to the cultivation of the lower and richer soils, followed by increase in the facility of obtaining food, while depopulation has everywhere been marked by the retreat of cultivation to the hills; a truth which he illustrates by numerous instances. He next surveys the circumstances attending the progress of wealth. It is held by the English economists that capital, applied to land, must necessarily bring diminishing profits, because applied to a machine of constantly decreasing powers; and that, therefore, manufactures and trade, steam-engines and ships, are more profitable than agriculture; whereas, Mr. Carey shows that land is a machine of constantly _increasing_ capacities, and that the only manner in which machinery of any description is beneficial, is by diminishing the labor required for converting and transporting the products of the earth, and permitting a larger quantity to be given to the work of production. The earth is the sole producer, says Mr. Carey, and man merely fashions and exchanges her products, adding nothing to the quantity to be converted or exchanged, and the growth of wealth everywhere is shown to be in the ratio of the quantity of labor that can be given to the cultivation of the great machine bestowed on man for the production of food and wool. This leads to an examination of the British system, the object of which is shown to have been that of compelling the people of every part of the world to bring to her their raw products to be converted and exchanged, thus wasting on the road a large portion of them, and all the manure that would result from their home consumption, the consequence of which is shown to be the exhaustion of the land and its owner. The broad ground is then taken that the products of the land should be consumed upon the land, and that nations grow rich or remain poor precisely as they act in accordance with, or in opposition to, that view. Mr. Carey is a free-trader. In his first book he advocated the British doctrine of diminished duties, as the means of bringing about free trade. In his _Past and Present_ he admits his error, and shows that the protective system was the result of an instinctive effort at the correction of a great evil inflicted upon the world by British legislation, and that _the only course towards perfect freedom of trade is to be found in perfect protection_. The effect of increasing wealth and population resulting from the power to cultivate the richer soils, in bringing about the division of land and the union of man is then shown, and illustrated by examples drawn from the history of the principal nations of the world, ancient and modern; and here the European system of primogeniture is examined, with a view to show that it is purely artificial, and tends to disappear with the growth of wealth and population. This leads to the discussion of the relations of man to his fellow-men, which are shown to tend to the establishment of equality wherever peace is maintained, and wealth and population are allowed to grow; and to inequality, with every step in the progress of war and devastation. Man himself next appears on the scene. Mr. Malthus, Mr. Ricardo, and all others of the English School, represent him as the slave of his necessities, working because he fears starvation. Mr. Carey, on the contrary, shows him to be animated by hope, and improving in all his moral qualities, precisely as by the growth of wealth and population--the results of peace--he is enabled to clear and cultivate the rich soils of the earth. Thence we pass to the relations of man and his helpmate, which are shown to improve precisely as do those of man to his fellow-man, as the rich soils are brought into cultivation. Man and his family follow, and the same improvement, under the same circumstances, is shown to take place in the relations of parent and child. Concentration, or the habit of local self-government, so strikingly illustrated in New-England, is next examined in contrast with centralization, as exhibited in England and France, and its admirable effects in tending to the maintenance of peace are fully exhibited. The various systems of colonization next pass in review, and give occasion for an examination of the various causes that brought negro slavery into this country, and the reason why it is here alone that the race has increased in numbers. India and Ireland, and the devastating effects of the colonial system, Annexation, and Civilization, furnish the materials for the succeeding chapters, and give occasion--the last particularly--for the expression of opinions much at variance with those taught by Guizot and others of the most distinguished men of our day. Such are the Past and Present. The closing chapter is the Future, and contains an examination of many remarkable facts now presented to our view by our own country, produced by the existence of the unnatural system fastened upon the world by England, and to be remedied by the adoption of an American policy, having for its object that of enabling men to live together and combine their exertions, instead of flying from each other, leaving behind rich lands uncultivated, and going to Texas or Oregon to begin the work of cultivation on the poorer ones. "With each step in the progress of concentration his physical condition would improve, because he would cultivate more fertile lands, and obtain increased power over the treasures of the earth. His moral condition would improve, because he would have greater inducements to steady and regular labor, and the reward of good conduct would steadily increase. His intellectual condition would improve, because he would have more leisure for study, and more power to mix with his fellow-men at home or abroad; to learn what they knew, and to see what they possessed; while the reward of talent would steadily increase, and that of mere brute wealth would steadily decline. His political condition would improve, because he would acquire an increased power over the application of his labor and of its proceeds. He would be less governed, better governed, and more cheaply governed, and all because more perfectly self-governed." The field surveyed by Mr. Carey in the _Past and Present_ is a broad one--broader than that of any other book of our time--for it discusses every interest of man. The ideas are original--whether true or not, they are both new and bold. They are based upon a great law of Nature, and it is the first time that any system of political economy has been offered to the world that was so based. The consequence is, that all the facts place themselves, as completely as did the planets when Copernicus had satisfied himself that the earth revolved around the sun.[29] More recently, in his _Harmony of Interests_, Mr. Carey has published a full examination of the great question of commercial policy, with a view to show that protection, as it exists in this country, is the true and _only_ road to free trade. He has brought to the illustration of this important doctrine a mass of facts, greater, probably, than was ever before displayed in support of any position in political economy. It commences with an examination of our whole commercial policy for the last thirty years, and shows the effect of protection in increasing the sum of production and consumption, the means of transportation, internal and external, and the influx of population from abroad, always an evidence of the increased productiveness of labor. In this work it is shown conclusively, that shipping grows with protection, because protection tends to promote immigration, or the import of men, the most valuable of commodities, and thus to diminish the cost of _sending_ to market the less valuable ones, grain, tobacco, and cotton. The question is examined in every point of view--material, moral, intellectual, and political; and the result arrived at is, "that between the interests of the treasury and the people, the farmer, planter, manufacturer and merchant, the great and little trader and the ship-owner, the slave and his master, the land-owners and laborers of the Union and the world, the free-trader and the advocate of protection, there is perfect harmony of interests, and that the way to the establishment of universal peace and universal free trade, is to be found in the adoption of measures tending to the destruction of the _monopoly of machinery_, and the location of the loom and the anvil in the vicinity of the plough and the harrow." In addition to the works I have named, Mr. Carey has published two others, on the Currency--the larger of which is entitled _Credit System in France, England, and the United States_. Their object is to show, that there is a very simple law which lies at the root of the whole currency question, and that by its aid the revulsions so frequently experienced may be perfectly accounted for. That law is perfect freedom of trade in money, whether by individuals or associations, leaving the latter to make their own terms with their customers, and to assume limited or unlimited liability, as they themselves may think most expedient. In a detailed review of the operations of several of the principal nations, and of all the States of this Union, it is shown that the tendency to steadiness in the quantity, and uniformity in the quality, of currency, is in the exact ratio of freedom, while with every increase in the number or extent of restrictions, steadiness diminishes and insecurity increases. The views contained in this work are now adopted by some of the most eminent writers in France. They constitute the basis of a recent and excellent work[30] by M. Coquelin, who quotes largely from that of Mr. Carey, declaring that our countryman has, "in the investigation of causes and effects, succeeded better than the English inquirers," and had, as early as 1838, "clearly shown the primary causes of the perturbations recurring almost periodically in commerce and currency."[31] Since these paragraphs were written, Mr. Carey has commenced the publication of a series of Letters to Mr. Walker, the late Secretary of the Treasury, in which he promises more largely and satisfactorily than heretofore to indicate and vindicate his opinions upon the subject of Trade. They are likely to have a powerful influence upon affairs, being of that class of compositions which the mind receives with astonishment that it had not anticipated their truth. FOOTNOTES: [22] Thus we see by a correspondence published in the London papers that Mr. Horace Mayhew, author of the metropolitan "Labor and the Poor" articles, has ceased to write for the London _Morning Chronicle_, the conductors of that journal wishing him to _suppress_, in his reports on the condition of the working classes, _facts opposed to free trade_. [23] See Carey's Past, Present and Future, p. 128. [24] The Past, the Present and the Future, pp. 70, 71. [25] Mr. Mill, quoted by Mr. Carey. [26] Mr. Senior, quoted by Mr. Carey. [27] By the following passages, which we take from M. Bastiat's new work, _Harmonies Economiques_, it will be seen that he adopts these views as the basis of his political economy: "_A mesure que les capitaux s'accroissent, la part_ absolue _des capitalistes dans les produits totaux augmente et leur part_ relative _diminue. Au contraire, les travailleurs voient augmenter leur part dans les deux sens._ (p. 280).... Ainsi le partage se fera de la manière suivante. Produit total. Part du capital. Part du travail. Première periode, 1000 500 500 Deuxième periode, 2000 800 1200 Troisième periode, 3000 1050 1950 Quatrième periode, 4000 1200 2800 "Telle est la grande, admirable, consolante, nècessaire, et _inflexible_ loi du capital."--(p. 281.) "Ainsi la grande loi du capital et du travail, en ce qui concerne le partage du produit de la collaboration, est determinèe. Chacun d'eux a une part _absolue_ de plus en plus grand, mais la part _proportionnelle_ du capital diminue sans cesse comparativement à celle du travail."--(p. 284.) _Cause of value in Land._--"Cette valeur, comme tous les autres, est de création humaine et social."--p. 362. After reciting the various modes of applying labor to the improvement of land, he says: "La valeur c'est incorporée, confondue dans le sol, et c'est pourquoi on poura très bien dire par métonymie: _le sol vaut_."--(p. 363.) Land not changeable for as much labor as it has cost. "J'ose affirmer qu'il n'est pas un champ en France qui _vaille_ ce qu'il a couté, qui puisse s'echanger contre autant de travail qu'il en a exigé pour étre mis à l'état de productivité oú il se trouve."--(p. 398.) _Cause of this._--"Vous avez employée mille journées à mettre votre domaine dans l'état oú il est; je ne vous en restituerai que huit cents, et ma raison est qu'avec huit cents journées je puis faire aujourd'hui sur la terre à coté ce qu'avec mille vous avez fait autrefois sur la votre. Veuillez considerer que depuis quinze ans l'art de dessécher, de détricher, de batir, de creuser des puits, de disposer les étables, d'executer les transports a fait des progrès. Chaque resultat donné exige moins du travail, et je ne veux me soumettre à vous donner dix de ce que je puis avoir pour huit, d'autant que le prix du blé a diminue dans la proportion de ce progrès, que ne profite ni à vous ni à moi, mais à l'humanité tout entiére."--(p. 368.) The reader who may desire to see the perfect correspondence of these views with those published by Mr. Carey, as far back as 1837, may do so by a glance at Chapters II., III., IV., and VII. of his first volume, where he gives a great number of facts in support of ideas then so new, and of course so heretical. A remarkable fact, to which we now desire to call the attention of our readers, is, that which M. Bastiat has thus adopted the views of Mr. Carey, without, so far as we have been able to see, alteration or addition. His name never occurs in the work, except as authority for one of his quotations, which M. Bastiat has copied, while the names of Ricardo, Malthus, Senior, Scrope, Considerant, and a host of others, are found in almost every chapter. It must be highly gratifying to Mr. Carey to see his views obtain so entirely the approbation of a man of the reputation of M. Bastiat, that he should be willing to give them to the world as his own. [28] Vol. I., p. 339. [29] This work has been much read abroad, and we perceive that it has recently been translated into Swedish, and published at Stockholm. From Blackwood's Magazine. MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. _Continued from page 285._ BOOK III.--INITIAL CHAPTER, SHOWING HOW MY NOVEL CAME TO BE CALLED "MY NOVEL." "I am not displeased with your novel, so far as it has gone," said my father graciously; "though as for The Sermon--" Here I trembled; but the ladies, Heaven bless them! had taken Parson Dale under their special protection; and observing that my father was puckering up his brows critically, they rushed boldly forward in defence of The Sermon, and Mr. Caxton was forced to beat a retreat. However, like a skillful general, he renewed the assault upon outposts less gallantly guarded. But as it is not my business to betray my weak points, I leave it to the ingenuity of cavillers to discover the places at which the Author of _Human Error_ directed his great guns. "But," said the Captain, "you are a lad of too much spirit, Pisistratus, to keep us always in the obscure country quarters of Hazeldean--you will march us out into open service before you have done with us?" _Pisistratus_, magisterially, for he has been somewhat nettled by Mr. Caxton's remarks--and he puts on an air of dignity, in order to awe away minor assailants.--"Yes, Captain Roland--not yet awhile, but all in good time. I have not stinted myself in canvas, and behind my foreground of the Hall and the Parsonage I propose, hereafter, to open some lengthened perspective of the varieties of English life--" _Mr. Caxton._--"Hum!" _Blanche_, putting her hand on my father's lip.--"We shall know better the design, perhaps, when we know the title. Pray, Mr. Author, what is the title?" _My Mother_, with more animation than usual.--"Ay, Sisty--the title?" _Pisistratus_, startled,--"The title! By the soul of Cervantes! I have never yet thought of a title!" _Captain Roland_, solemnly.--"There is a great deal in a good title. As a novel-reader, I know that by experience." _Mr. Squills._--"Certainly; there is not a catchpenny in the world but what goes down, if the title be apt and seductive. Witness 'Old Parr's Life Pills.' Sell by the thousand, sir, when my 'Pills for Weak Stomachs,' which I believe to be just the same compound, never paid for the advertising." _Mr. Caxton._--"Parr's Life Pills! a fine stroke of genius! It is not every one who has a weak stomach, or time to attend to it, if he have. But who would not swallow a pill to live to a hundred and fifty-two?" _Pisistratus_, stirring the fire in great excitement.--"My title! my title!--what shall be my title!" _Mr. Caxton_, thrusting his hand into his waistcoat, and in his most didactic of tones.--"From a remote period, the choice of a title has perplexed the scribbling portion of mankind. We may guess how their invention has been racked by the strange contortions it has produced. To begin with the Hebrews. 'The Lips of the Sleeping,' (_Labia Dormientium_)--what book do you suppose that title to designate?--A Catalogue of Rabbinical writers! Again, imagine some young lady of old captivated by the sentimental title of 'The Pomegranate with its Flower,' and opening on a treatise on the Jewish Ceremonials! Let us turn to the Romans. Aulus Gellius commences his pleasant gossiping 'Noctes' with a list of the titles in fashion in his day. For instance, '_The Muses_' and '_The Veil_,' '_The Cornucopia_,' '_The Beehive_,' and '_The Meadow_.' Some titles, indeed, were more truculent, and promised food to those who love to sup upon horrors--such as '_The Torch_,' '_The Poniard_,' '_The Stiletto_'--" _Pisistratus_, impatiently.--"Yes, sir; but to come to My Novel." _Mr. Caxton_, unheeding the interruption.--"You see, you have a fine choice here, and of a nature pleasing, and not unfamiliar to a classical reader; or you may borrow a hint from the early Dramatic Writers." _Pisistratus_, more hopefully.--"Ay! there is something in the Drama akin to the Novel. Now, perhaps, I may catch an idea." _Mr. Caxton._--"For instance, the author of the _Curiosities of Literature_ (from whom, by the way, I am plagiarizing much of the information I bestow upon you), tells us of a Spanish gentleman who wrote a Comedy, by which he intended to serve what he took for Moral Philosophy." _Pisistratus_, eagerly.--"Well, sir?" _Mr. Caxton._--"And called it 'The Pain of the Sleep of the World.'" _Pisistratus._--"Very comic indeed, sir!" _Mr. Caxton._--"Grave things were then called Comedies, as old things are now called Novels. Then there are all the titles of early Romance itself at your disposal--'Theagenes and Chariclea,' or 'The Ass' of Longus, or 'The Golden Ass' of Apuleius, or the titles of Gothic Romance, such as 'The most elegant, delicious, mellifluous, and delightful History of Perceforest, King of Great Britain.'"--And therewith my father ran over a list of names as long as the Directory, and about as amusing. "Well, to my taste," said my mother, "the novels I used to read when a girl (for I have not read many since, I am ashamed to say),--" _Mr. Caxton._--"No, you need not be at all ashamed of it, Kitty." _My Mother_, proceeding.--"Were much more inviting than any you mention, Austin." _The Captain._--"True." _Mr. Squills._--"Certainly. Nothing like them now-a-days!" _My Mother._--"_'Says she to her Neighbor, What?'_" _The Captain._-"_'The Unknown, or the Northern Gallery'_--" _Mr. Squills._--"_'There is a Secret; Find it Out!'_" _Pisistratus_, pushed to the verge of human endurance, and upsetting tongs, poker, and fire-shovel.--"What nonsense you are talking, all of you! For heaven's sake, consider what an important matter we are called upon to decide. It is not now the titles of those very respectable works which issued from the Minerva Press that I ask you to remember--it is to invent a title for mine--My Novel!" _Mr. Caxton_, clapping his hands gently.--"Excellent--capital! Nothing can be better; simple, natural, pertinent, concise--" _Pisistratus._--"What is it, sir--what is it! Have you really thought of a title to My Novel?" _Mr. Caxton._--"You have hit it yourself--'My Novel.' It is your Novel--people will know it is your Novel. Turn and twist the English language as you will--be as allegorical as Hebrew, Greek, Roman--Fabulist or Puritan--still, after all, it is your Novel, and nothing more nor less than your Novel." _Pisistratus_, thoughtfully, and sounding the words various ways.--"'My Novel'--um--um! 'My Novel!' rather bald--and curt, eh?" _Mr. Caxton._--"Add what you say you intend it to depict--Varieties in English Life." _My Mother._--"_'My Novel; or, Varieties in English Life'_--I don't think it sounds amiss. What say you, Roland? Would it attract you in a catalogue?" My Uncle hesitates, when Mr. Caxton exclaims imperiously: "The thing is settled! Don't disturb Camarina." _Squills._--"If it be not too great a liberty, pray who or what is Camarina?" _Mr. Caxton._--"Camarina, Mr. Squills, was a lake, apt to be low, and then liable to be muddy; and 'Don't disturb Camarina' was a Greek proverb derived from an Oracle of Apollo; and from that Greek proverb, no doubt, comes the origin of the injunction, '_Quieta non movere_,' which became the favorite maxim of Sir Robert Walpole and Parson Dale. The Greek line, Mr. Squills (here my father's memory began to warm), is preserved by _Stephanus Byzantinus_, de _Urbibus_-- [Greek: 'Mê kinei Kamarinan akinêtos gar ameinôn.'] _Zenobius_ explains it in his Proverbs; _Suidas_ repeats _Zenobius_; _Lucian_ alludes to it; so does _Virgil_ in the Third Book of the _Æneid_; and _Silius Italicus_ imitates Virgil-- 'Et cui non licitum fatis Camarina moveri.' Parson Dale, as a clergyman and a scholar, had, no doubt, these authorities at his fingers' end. And I wonder he did not quote them," quoth my father; "but, to be sure, he is represented as a mild man, and so might not wish to humble the Squire over much in the presence of his family. Meanwhile, My Novel is My Novel; and now that that matter is settled, perhaps the tongs, poker, and shovel may be picked up, the children may go to bed, Blanche and Kitty may speculate apart upon the future dignities of the Neogilos, taking care, nevertheless, to finish the new pinbefores he requires for the present; Roland may cast up his account-book, Mr. Squills have his brandy and water, and all the world be comfortable, each in his own way. Blanche, come away from the screen, get me my slippers, and leave Pisistratus to himself. [Greek: Mê kinei Kamarinan]--don't disturb Camarina. You see, my dear," added my father kindly, as, after settling himself into his slippers, he detained Blanche's hand in his own--"you see, my dear, every house has its Camarina. Man, who is a lazy animal, is quite content to let it alone; but woman, being the more active, bustling, curious creature, is always for giving it a sly stir." _Blanche_, with female dignity.--"I assure you, that if Pisistratus had not called me, I should not have--" _Mr. Caxton_, interrupting her, without lifting his eyes from the book he has already taken.--"Certainly you would not. I am now in the midst of the great Puseyite Controversy. [Greek: Mê kinei Kamarinan]--don't disturb Camarina." A dead silence for half an hour, at the end of which _Pisistratus_, from behind the screen.--"Blanche, my dear, I want to consult you." Blanche does not stir. _Pisistratus._--"Blanche, I say." Blanche glances in triumph towards Mr. Caxton. _Mr. Caxton_, laying down his theological tract, and rubbing his spectacles mournfully.--"I hear him, child: I hear him. I retract my vindication of Man. Oracles warn in vain: so long as there is a woman on the other side of the screen,--it is all up with Camarina!" CHAPTER II. It is greatly to be regretted that Mr. Stirn was not present at the Parson's Discourse--but that valuable functionary was far otherwise engaged--indeed, during the summer months he was rarely seen at the afternoon service. Not that he cared for being preached at--not he: Mr. Stirn would have snapped his finger at the thunders of the Vatican. But the fact was, that Mr. Stirn chose to do a great deal of gratuitous business upon the day of rest. The Squire allowed all persons, who chose, to walk about the park on a Sunday; and many came from a distance to stroll by the lake, or recline under the elms. These visitors were objects of great suspicion, nay, of positive annoyance, to Mr. Stirn--and, indeed, not altogether without reason, for we English have a natural love of liberty, which we are even more apt to display in the grounds of other people than in those which we cultivate ourselves. Sometimes, to his inexpressible and fierce satisfaction, Mr. Stirn fell upon a knot of boys pelting the swans; sometimes he missed a young sapling, and found it in felonious hands, converted into a walking-stick: sometimes he caught a hulking fellow scrambling up the ha-ha! to gather a nosegay for his sweetheart from one of poor Mrs. Hazeldean's pet parterres; not unfrequently, indeed, when all the family were fairly at church, some curious impertinents forced or sneaked their way into the gardens, in order to peep in at the windows. For these, and various other offences of like magnitude, Mr. Stirn had long, but vainly, sought to induce the Squire to withdraw a permission so villanously abused. But though there were times when Mr. Hazeldean grunted and growled, and swore "that he would shut up the park, and fill it (illegally) with man-traps and spring-guns," his anger always evaporated in words. The park was still open to all the world on a Sunday; and that blessed day was therefore converted into a day of travail and wrath to Mr. Stirn. But it was from the last chime of the afternoon service bell until dusk that the spirit of this vigilant functionary was most perturbed; for, amidst the flocks that gathered from the little hamlets round to the voice of the Pastor, there were always some stray sheep, or rather climbing desultory vagabond goats, who struck off in all perverse directions, as if for the special purpose of distracting the energetic watchfulness of Mr. Stirn. As soon as church was over, if the day were fine, the whole park became a scene animated with red cloaks, or lively shawls, Sunday waistcoats, and hats stuck full of wildflowers--which last Mr. Stirn often stoutly maintained to be Mrs. Hazeldean's newest geraniums. Now, on this Sunday especially, there was an imperative call upon an extra exertion of vigilance on the part of the superintendent--he had not only to detect ordinary depredators and trespassers; but, first, to discover the authors of the conspiracy against the stocks; and secondly, to "make an example." He had begun his rounds, therefore, from early in the morning; and just as the afternoon bell was sounding its final peal, he emerged upon the village green from a hedgerow, behind which he had been at watch to observe who had the most suspiciously gathered round the stocks. At that moment the palace was deserted. At a distance, the superintendent saw the fast disappearing forms of some belated groups hastening towards the church; in front, the stocks stood staring at him mournfully from its four great eyes, which had been cleansed from the mud, but still looked bleared and stained with the marks of the recent outrage. Here Mr. Stirn paused, took off his hat, and wiped his brows. "If I had sum un, to watch here," thought he, "while I takes a turn by the water-side, praps summat might come out; praps them as did it ben't gone to church, but will come sneaking round to look on their willainy! as they says murderers are alway led back to the place where they ha' left the body. But in this here willage there ben't a man, woman, nor child, as has any consarn for Squire or Parish, barring myself." It was just as he arrived at that misanthropical conclusion that Mr. Stirn beheld Leonard Fairfield walking very fast from his own home. The superintendent clapped on his hat, and stuck his right arm akimbo. "Hollo, you sir," said he, as Lenny now came in hearing, "where be you going at that rate?" "Please, sir, I be going to church." "Stop, sir--stop, Master Lenny. Going to church!--why, the bell's done; and you knows the Parson is very angry at them as comes in late, disturbing the congregation. You can't go to church now!" "Please, sir"-- "I says you can't go to church now. You must learn to think a little of others, lad. You sees how I sweats to serve the Squire! and you must serve him too. Why, your mother's got the house and premishes almost rent-free: you ought to have a grateful heart, Leonard Fairfield, and feel for his honor! Poor man! _his_ heart is well-nigh bruk, I'm sure, with the goings on." Leonard opened his innocent blue eyes, while Mr. Stirn dolorously wiped his own. "Look at that ere dumb cretur," said Stirn, suddenly, pointing to the stocks--"look at it. If it could speak, what would it say, Leonard Fairfield? Answer me that!--'Damn the stocks, indeed!'" "It was very bad in them to write such naughty words," said Lenny, gravely. "Mother was quite shocked when she heard of it, this morning." _Mr. Stirn._--"I dare say she was, considering what she pays for the premishes: (insinuatingly,) you does not know who did it--eh, Lenny?" _Lenny._--"No, sir: indeed I does not!" _Mr. Stirn._--"Well, you see, you can't go to church--prayers half over by this time. You recollex that I put them stocks under your 'sponsibility,' and see the way you's done your duty by 'em. I've half a mind to"-- Mr. Stirn cast his eyes on the eyes of the stocks. "Please, sir," began Lenny again, rather frightened. "No, I won't please; it ben't pleasing at all. But I forgives you this time, only keep a sharp look-out, lad, in future. Now you just stay here--no, there--under the hedge, and you watches if any person comes to loiter about or looks at the stocks, or laughs to hisself, while I go my rounds. I shall be back either afore church is over or just arter; so you stay till I comes, and give me your report. Be sharp, boy, or it will be worse for you and your mother; I can let the premishes for four pounds a year more, to-morrow." Concluding with that somewhat menacing and very significant remark, and not staying for an answer, Mr. Stirn waved his hand, and walked off. Poor Lenny remained by the stocks, very much dejected, and greatly disliking the neighborhood to which he was consigned. At length he slowly crept off to the hedge, and sat himself down in the place of espionage pointed out to him. Now, philosophers tell us that what is called the point of honor is a barbarous feudal prejudice. Amongst the higher classes, wherein those feudal prejudices may be supposed to prevail, Lenny Fairfield's occupation would not have been considered peculiarly honorable; neither would it have seemed so to the more turbulent spirits among the humbler orders, who have a point of honor of their own, which consists in the adherence to each other in defiance of all lawful authority. But to Lenny Fairfield, brought up much apart from other boys, and with a profound and grateful reverence for the Squire instilled into all his habits of thought, notions of honor bounded themselves to simple honesty and straightforward truth; and as he cherished an unquestioning awe of order and constitutional authority, so it did not appear to him that there was any thing derogatory and debasing in being thus set to watch for an offender. On the contrary, as he began to reconcile himself to the loss of the church service, and to enjoy the cool of the summer shade, and the occasional chirp of the birds, he got to look on the bright side of the commission to which he was deputed. In youth, at least, every thing has its bright side--even the appointment of Protector to the Parish Stocks. For the stocks, themselves, Leonard had no affection, it is true; but he had no sympathy with their aggressors, and he could well conceive that the Squire would be very much hurt at the revolutionary event of the night. "So," thought poor Leonard in his simple heart--"so if I can serve his honor, by keeping off mischievous boys, or letting him know who did the thing, I'm sure it would be a proud day for mother." Then he began to consider that, however ungraciously Mr. Stirn had bestowed on him the appointment, still it was a compliment to him--showed trust and confidence in him, picked him out from his contemporaries as the sober moral pattern boy; and Lenny had a great deal of pride in him, especially in matters of repute and character. All these things considered, I say, Leonard Fairfield reclined in his lurking-place, if not with positive delight and intoxicating rapture, at least with tolerable content and some complacency. Mr. Stirn might have been gone a quarter of an hour, when a boy came through a little gate in the park, just opposite to Lenny's retreat in the hedge, and, as if fatigued with walking, or oppressed by the heat of the day, paused on the green for a moment or so, and then advanced under the shade of the great tree which overhung the stocks. Lenny pricked up his ears, and peeped out jealously. He had never seen the boy before: it was a strange face to him. Leonard Fairfield was not fond of strangers; moreover, he had a vague belief that strangers were at the bottom of that desecration of the stocks. The boy, then, was a stranger; but what was his rank? Was he of that grade in society in which the natural offences are or are not consonant to, or harmonious with, outrages upon stocks? On that Lenny Fairfield did not feel quite assured. According to all the experience of the villager, the boy was not dressed like a young gentleman. Leonard's notions of such aristocratic costume were naturally fashioned upon the model of Frank Hazeldean. They represented to him a dazzling vision of snow-white trowsers, and beautiful blue coats, and incomparable cravats. Now the dress of this stranger, though not that of a peasant nor of a farmer, did not in any way correspond with Lenny's notions of the costume of a young gentleman: it looked to him highly disreputable; the coat was covered with mud, and the hat was all manner of shapes, with a gap between the side and crown. Lenny was puzzled, till it suddenly occurred to him that the gate through which the boy had passed was in the direct path across the park from a small town, the inhabitants of which were in very bad odor at the Hall--they had immemorially furnished the most daring poachers to the preserves, the most troublesome trespassers on the park, the most unprincipled orchard-robbers, and the most disputatious assertors of various problematical rights of way, which, according to the town, were public, and, according to the Hall, had been private since the Conquest. It was true that the same path led also directly from the Squire's house, but it was not probable that the wearer of attire so equivocal had been visiting there. All things considered, Lenny had no doubt in his mind but that the stranger was a shopboy or 'prentice from the town of Thorndyke; and the notorious repute of that town, coupled with this presumption, made it probable that Lenny now saw before him one of the midnight desecrators of the stocks. As if to confirm the suspicion, which passed through Lenny's mind with a rapidity wholly disproportionate to the number of lines it costs me to convey it, the boy, now standing right before the stocks, bent down and read that pithy anathema with which it was defaced. And having read it, he repeated it aloud, and Lenny actually saw him smile--such a smile!--so disagreeable and sinister! Lenny had never before seen the smile sardonic. But what were Lenny's pious horror and dismay when this ominous stranger fairly seated himself on the stocks, rested his heels profanely on the lids of two of the four round eyes, and, taking out a pencil and a pocketbook, began to write. Was this audacious unknown taking an inventory of the church and the Hall for the purposes of conflagration? He looked at one, and at the other, with a strange, fixed stare, as he wrote--not keeping his eyes on the paper, as Lenny had been taught to do when he sat down to his copybook. The fact is, that Randal Leslie was tired and faint, and he felt the shock of his fall the more, after the few paces he had walked, so that he was glad to rest himself a few moments; and he took that opportunity to write a line to Frank, to excuse himself for not calling again, intending to tear the leaf on which he wrote out of his pocketbook, and leave it at the first cottage he passed, with instructions to take it to the Hall. While Randal was thus innocently engaged, Lenny came up to him with the firm and measured pace of one who has resolved, cost what it may, to do his duty. And as Lenny, though brave, was not ferocious, so the anger he felt, and the suspicions he entertained, only exhibited themselves in the following solemn appeal to the offender's sense of propriety,-- "Ben't you ashamed of yourself? Sitting on the Squire's new stocks! Do get up, and go along with you!" Randal turned round sharply; and though, at any other moment, he would have had sense enough to extricate himself very easily from his false position, yet, _Nemo mortalium_, &c. No one is always wise. And Randal was in an exceedingly bad humor. The affability towards his inferiors, for which I lately praised him, was entirely lost in the contempt for impertinent snobs natural to an insulted Etonian. Therefore, eyeing Lenny with great disdain, Randal answered briefly,-- "You are an insolent young blackguard." So curt a rejoinder made Lenny's blood fly to his face. Persuaded before that the intruder was some lawless apprentice or shop lad, he was now more confirmed in that judgment, not only by language so uncivil, but by the truculent glance which accompanied it, and which certainly did not derive any imposing dignity from the mutilated, rakish, hang-dog, ruinous hat, under which it shot its sullen and menacing fire. Of all the various articles of which our male attire is composed, there is perhaps not one which has so much character and expression as the top-covering. A neat, well-brushed, short-napped, gentlemanlike hat, put on with a certain air, gives a distinction and respectability to the whole exterior; whereas, a broken, squashed, higgledy-piggledy sort of a hat, such as Randal Leslie had on, would go far towards transforming the stateliest gentleman that ever walked down St. James's Street into the ideal of a ruffianly scamp. Now, it is well known that there is nothing more antipathetic to your peasant-boy than your shopboy. Even on grand political occasions, the rural working-class can rarely be coaxed into sympathy with the trading town-class. Your true English peasant is always an aristocrat. Moreover, and irrespectively of this immemorial grudge of class, there is something peculiarly hostile in the relationship between boy and boy when their backs are once up, and they are alone on a quiet bit of green. Something of the game-cock feeling--something that tends to keep alive, in the population of this island, (otherwise so lamblike and peaceful,) the martial propensity to double the thumb tightly over the four fingers, and make what is called "a fist of it." Dangerous symptoms of these mingled and aggressive sentiments were visible in Lenny Fairfield at the words and the look of the unprepossessing stranger. And the stranger seemed aware of them; for his pale face grew more pale, and his sullen eye more fixed and more vigilant. "You get off them stocks," said Lenny, disdaining to reply to the coarse expressions bestowed on him; and, suiting the action to the word, he gave the intruder what he meant for a shove, but which Randal took for a blow. The Etonian sprang up, and the quickness of his movement, aided but by a slight touch of his hand, made Lenny lose his balance, and sent him neck-and-crop over the stocks. Burning with rage, the young villager rose alertly, and, flying at Randal, struck out right and left. CHAPTER III. Aid me, O ye Nine! whom the incomparable Persius satirized his contemporaries for invoking, and then, all of a sudden, invoked on his own behalf--aid me to describe that famous battle by the stocks, and in defence of the stocks, which was waged by the two representatives of Saxon and Norman England. Here, sober support of law and duty and delegated trust--_pro aris et focis_; there, haughty invasion, and bellicose spirit of knighthood, and that respect for name and person, which we call honor. Here, too, hardy physical force--there, skilful discipline. Here----the Nine are as deaf as a post, and as cold as a stone! Plague take the jades!--I can do better without them. Randal was a year older than Lenny, but he was not so tall nor so strong, nor even so active; and after the first blind rush, when the two boys paused, and drew back to breathe, Lenny, eyeing the slight form and hueless cheek of his opponent, and seeing blood trickling from Randal's lip, was seized with an instantaneous and generous remorse. "It was not fair," he thought, "to fight one whom he could beat so easily." So, retreating still farther, and letting his arms fall to his side, he said mildly--"There, let's have no more of it; but go home, and be good." Randal Leslie had no remarkable degree of that constitutional quality called physical courage; but he had all those moral qualities which supply its place. He was proud--he was vindictive--he had high self-esteem--he had the destructive organ more than the combative;--what had once provoked his wrath it became his instinct to sweep away. Therefore, though all his nerves were quivering, and hot tears were in his eyes, he approached Lenny with the sternness of a gladiator, and said between his teeth, which he set hard, choking back the sob of rage and pain-- "You have struck me--and you shall not stir from this ground--till I have made you repent it. Put up your hands--I will not strike you so--defend yourself." Lenny mechanically obeyed; and he had good need of the admonition; for if before he had had the advantage, now that Randal had recovered the surprise to his nerves, the battle was not to the strong. Though Leslie had not been a fighting boy at Eton, still his temper had involved him in some conflicts when he was in the lower forms, and he had learned something of the art as well as the practice in pugilism--an excellent thing, too, I am barbarous enough to believe, and which I hope will never quite die out of our public schools. Ah, many a young duke has been a better fellow for life from a fair set-to with a trader's son; and many a trader's son has learned to look a lord more manfully in the face on the hustings, from the recollection of the sound thrashing he once gave to some little Lord Leopold Dawdle. So Randal now brought his experience and art to bear; put aside those heavy roundabout blows, and darted in his own, quick and sharp--supplying the due momentum of pugilistic mechanics to the natural feebleness of his arm. Ay, and the arm, too, was no longer so feeble: so strange is the strength that comes from passion and pluck! Poor Lenny, who had never fought before, was bewildered; his sensations grew so entangled that he could never recall them distinctly: he had a dim reminiscence of some breathless impotent rush--of a sudden blindness followed by quick flashes of intolerable light--of a deadly faintness, from which he was roused by sharp pangs--here--there--everywhere; and then all he could remember was, that he was lying on the ground, huddled up and panting hard, while his adversary bent over him with a countenance as dark and livid as Lara himself might have bent over the fallen Otho. For Randal Leslie was not one who, by impulse and nature, subscribed to the noble English maxim--"Never hit a foe when he is down;" and it cost him a strong if brief self-struggle, not to set his heel on that prostrate form. It was the mind, not the heart that subdued the savage within him, as, muttering something inwardly--certainly not Christian forgiveness--the victor turned gloomily away. CHAPTER IV. Just at that precise moment, who should appear but Mr. Stirn! For, in fact, being extremely anxious to get Lenny into disgrace, he had hoped that he should have found the young villager had shirked the commission intrusted to him; and the Right-hand Man had slily come back, to see if that amiable expectation were realized. He now beheld Lenny rising with some difficulty--still panting hard--and with hysterical sounds akin to what is vulgarly called blubbering--his fine new waistcoat sprinkled with his own blood which flowed from his nose--nose that seemed to Lenny Fairfield's feelings to be a nose no more, but a swollen, gigantic, mountainous Slawkenbergian excrescence,--in fact, he felt all nose! Turning aghast from this spectacle, Mr. Stirn surveyed, with no more respect than Lenny had manifested, the stranger boy, who had again seated himself on the stocks (whether to recover his breath, or whether to show that his victory was consummated, and that he was in his rights of possession). "Hollo," said Mr. Stirn, "what is all this?--what's the matter, Lenny, you blockhead?" "He _will_ sit there," answered Lenny, in broken gasps, "and he has beat me because I would not let him; but I doesn't mind that," added the villager, trying hard to suppress his tears, "and I'm ready again for him--that I am." "And what do you do, lolloping there on them blessed stocks?" "Looking at the landscape; out of my light, man." This tone instantly inspired Mr. Stirn with misgivings: it was a tone so disrespectful to him that he was seized with involuntary respect: who but a gentleman could speak so to Mr. Stirn? "And may I ask who you be?" said Stirn, falteringly, and half inclined to touch his hat. "What's your name, pray, and what's your bizness?" "My name is Randal Leslie, and my business was to visit your master's family--that is, if you are, as I guess from your manner, Mr. Hazeldean's ploughman!" So saying, Randal rose; and moving on a few paces, turned, and throwing half-a-crown on the road, said to Lenny,--"Let that pay you for your bruises, and remember another time how you speak to a gentleman. As for you, fellow,"--and he pointed his scornful hand towards Mr. Stirn, who, with his mouth open, and his hat now fairly off, stood bowing to the earth--"as for you, give my compliment to Mr. Hazeldean, and say that, when he does us the honor to visit us at Rood Hall, I trust that the manners of our villagers will make him ashamed of Hazeldean." O my poor Squire! Rood Hall ashamed of Hazeldean! If that message had ever been delivered to you, you would never have looked up again! With those bitter words, Randal swung himself over the stile that led into the parson's glebe, and left Lenny Fairfield still feeling his nose, and Mr. Stirn still bowing to the earth. CHAPTER V. Randal Leslie had a very long walk home: he was bruised: and sore from head to foot, and his mind was still more sore and more bruised than his body. But if Randal Leslie had rested himself in the Squire's gardens, without walking backwards, and indulging in speculations suggested by Marat, and warranted by my Lord Bacon, he would have passed a most agreeable evening, and really availed himself of the Squire's wealth by going home in the Squire's carriage. But because he chose to take so intellectual a view of property, he tumbled into a ditch; because he tumbled into a ditch, he spoiled his clothes; because he spoiled his clothes, he gave up his visit; because he gave up his visit, he got into the village green, and sat on the stocks with a hat that gave him the air of a fugitive from the treadmill; because he sat on the stocks--with that hat, and a cross face under it--he had been forced into the most discreditable squabble with a clodhopper, and was now limping home, at war with gods and men;--_ergo_, (this is a moral that will bear repetition)--_ergo_, when you walk in a rich man's grounds, be contented to enjoy what is yours, namely, the prospect;--I dare say you will enjoy it more than he does. CHAPTER VI. If, in the simplicity of his heart, and the crudeness of his experience, Lenny Fairfield had conceived it probable that Mr. Stirn would address to him some words in approbation of his gallantly, and in sympathy for his bruises, he soon found himself wofully mistaken. That truly great man, worthy prime-minister of Hazeldean, might, perhaps, pardon a dereliction from his orders, if such dereliction proved advantageous to the interests of the service, or redounded to the credit of the chief; but he was inexorable to that worst of diplomatic offences--an ill-timed, stupid, over-zealous obedience to orders, which, if it established the devotion of the _employé_, got the employer into what is popularly called a scrape! And though, by those unversed in the intricacies of the human heart, and unacquainted with the especial hearts of prime-ministers and right-hand men, it might have seemed natural that Mr. Stirn, as he stood still, hat in hand, in the middle of the road, stung, humbled, and exasperated by the mortification he had received from the lips of Randal Leslie, would have felt that that young gentleman was the proper object of his resentment; yet such a breach of all the etiquette of diplomatic life as resentment towards a superior power was the last idea that would have suggested itself to the profound intellect of the Premier of Hazeldean. Still, as rage, like steam, must escape somewhere, Mr. Stirn, on feeling--as he afterwards expressed it to his wife--that his "buzzom was a burstin," turned with the natural instinct of self-preservation to the safety-valve provided for the explosion; and the vapors within him rushed into vent upon Lenny Fairfield. He clapped his hat on his head fiercely, and thus relieved his "buzzom." "You young willain! you howdacious wiper! and so all this blessed Sabbath afternoon, when you ought to have been in church on your marrow bones, a-praying for your betters, you has been a-fitting with a young gentleman, and a wisiter to your master, on the werry place of the parridge hinstitution that you was to guard and pertect; and a-bloodying it all over, I declares, with your blaggard little nose!" Thus saying, and as if to mend the matter, Mr. Stirn aimed an additional stroke at the offending member; but, Lenny mechanically putting up both his arms to defend his face, Mr. Stirn struck his knuckles against the large brass buttons that adorned the cuff of the boy's coat-sleeve--an incident which greatly aggravated his indignation. And Lenny, whose spirit was fairly roused at what the narrowness of his education conceived to be a signal injustice, placing the trunk of the tree between Mr. Stirn and himself, began that task of self-justification which it was equally impolitic to conceive and imprudent to execute, since, in such a case, to justify was to recriminate. "I wonder at you, Master Stirn,--if mother could hear you! You know it was you who would not let me go to church; it was you who told me to--" "Fit a young gentleman, and break the Sabbath," said Mr. Stirn, interrupting him with a withering sneer. "O yes! I told you to disgrace his honor the Squire, and me, and the parridge, and bring us all into trouble. But the Squire told me to make an example, and I will!" With those words, quick as lightning flashed upon Mr. Stirn's mind the luminous idea of setting Lenny in the very stocks which he had too faithfully guarded. Eureka! the "example" was before him! Here, he could gratify his long grudge against the pattern boy; here, by such a selection of the very best lad in the parish, he could strike terror into the worst; here, he could appease the offended dignity of Randal Leslie; here was a practical apology to the Squire for the affront put upon his young visitor; here, too, there was prompt obedience to the Squire's own wish that the stocks should be provided as soon as possible with a tenant. Suiting the action to the thought, Mr. Stirn made a rapid plunge at his victim, caught him by the skirt of his jacket, and, in a few seconds more, the jaws of the stocks had opened, and Lenny Fairfield was thrust therein--a sad spectacle of the reverses of fortune. This done, and while the boy was too astounded, too stupefied by the suddenness of the calamity for the resistance he might otherwise have made--nay, for more than a few inaudible words--Mr. Stirn hurried from the spot, but not without first picking up and pocketing the half-crown designed for Lenny, and which, so great had been his first emotions, he had hitherto even almost forgotten. He then made his way towards the church, with the intention to place himself close by the door, catch the Squire as he came out, whisper to him what had passed, and lead him, with the whole congregation at his heels, to gaze upon the sacrifice offered up to the joint powers of Nemesis and Themis. CHAPTER VII. Unaffectedly I say it--upon the honor of a gentleman, and the reputation of an author, unaffectedly I say it--no words of mine can do justice to the sensations experienced by Lenny Fairfield, as he sat alone in that place of penance. He felt no more the physical pain of his bruises; the anguish of his mind stifled and overbore all corporeal suffering--an anguish as great as the childish breast is capable of holding. For first and deepest of all, and earliest felt, was the burning sense of injustice. He had, it might be with erring judgment, but with all honesty, earnestness, and zeal, executed the commission intrusted to him; he had stood forth manfully in discharge of his duty; he had fought for it, suffered for it, bled for it. This was his reward! Now, in Lenny's mind there was preëminently that quality which distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon race--the sense of justice. It was perhaps the strongest principle in his moral constitution; and the principle had never lost its virgin bloom and freshness by any of the minor acts of oppression and iniquity which boys of higher birth often suffer from harsh parents, or in tyrannical schools. So that it was for the first time that that iron entered into his soul, and with it came its attendant feeling--the wrathful, galling sense of impotence. He had been wronged, and he had no means to right himself. Then came another sensation, if not so deep, yet more smarting and envenomed for the time--shame! He, the good boy of all good boys--he, the pattern of the school, and the pride of the Parson--he, whom the Squire, in sight of all his contemporaries, had often singled out to slap on the back, and the grand Squire's lady to pat on the head, with a smiling gratulation on his young and fair repute--he, who had already learned so dearly to prize the sweets of an honorable name--he, to be made, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye, a mark for opprobrium, a butt of scorn, a jeer, and a byword! The streams of his life were poisoned at the fountain. And then came a tenderer thought of his mother! of the shock this would be to her--she who had already begun to look up to him as her stay and support: he bowed his head, and the tears, long suppressed, rolled down. Then he wrestled and struggled, and strove to wrench his limbs from that hateful bondage;--for he heard steps approaching. And he began to picture to himself the arrival of all the villagers from church, the sad gaze of the Parson, the bent brow of the Squire, the idle, ill-suppressed titter of all the boys, jealous of his unblotted character--character of which the original whiteness could never, never be restored! He would always be the boy who had sat in the stocks! And the words uttered by the Squire came back on his soul, like the voice of conscience in the ears of some doomed Macbeth. "A sad disgrace, Lenny--you'll never be in such a quandary." "Quandary," the word was unfamiliar to him; it must mean something awfully discreditable. The poor boy could have prayed for the earth to swallow him. CHAPTER VIII. "Kettles and frying-pans! what has us here?" cried the tinker. This time Mr. Sprott was without his donkey; for, it being Sunday, it is to be presumed that the donkey was enjoying his Sabbath on the common. The tinker was in his Sunday's best, clean and smart, about to take his lounge in the park. Lenny Fairfield made no answer to the appeal. "You in the wood, my baby! Well, that's the last sight I should ha' thought to see. But we all lives to larn," said the tinker sententiously. "Who gave you them leggins? Can't you speak, lad?" "Nick Stirn." "Nick Stirn! Ay, I'd ha' ta'en my davy on that: and cos vy?" "'Cause I did as he told me, and fought a boy as was trespassing on these very stocks; and he beat me--but I don't care for that; and that boy was a young gentleman, and going to visit the Squire; and so Nick Stirn--" Lenny stopped short, choked by rage and humiliation. "Augh," said the tinker, staring, "you fit with a young gentleman, did you? Sorry to hear you confess that, my lad! Sit there, and be thankful you ha' got off so cheap. 'Tis salt and battery to fit with your betters, and a Lunnon justice o' peace would have given you two months o' the treadmill. But vy should you fit 'cause he trespassed on the stocks? It ben't your natural side for fitting, I takes it." Lenny murmured something not very distinguishable about serving the Squire, and doing as he was bid. "Oh, I sees, Lenny," interrupted the tinker, in a tone of great contempt, "you be one o' those who would rayther 'unt with the 'ounds than run with the 'are! You be's the good pattern boy, and would peach agin your own horder to curry favor with the grand folks. Fie, lad! you be sarved right: stick by your horder, then you'll be 'spected when you gets into trouble, and not be 'varsally 'espised--as you'll be arter church time! Vell, I can't be seen 'sorting with you, now you are in this here drogatory fix; it might hurt my cracter, both with them as built the stocks, and them as wants to pull 'em down. Old kettles to mend! Vy, you makes me forgit the Sabbath. Sarvent, my lad, and wish you well out of it; 'spects to your mother, and say we can deal for the pan and shovel all the same for your misfortin." The tinker went his way. Lenny's eye followed him with the sullenness of despair. The tinker, like all the tribe of human comforters, had only watered the brambles to invigorate the prick of the thorns. Yes, if Lenny had been caught breaking the stocks, some at least would have pitied him; but to be incarcerated for defending them, you might as well have expected that the widows and orphans of the Reign of Terror would have pitied Dr. Guillotin when he slid through the grooves of his own deadly machine. And even the tinker, itinerant, ragamuffin vagabond as he was, felt ashamed to be found with the pattern boy! Lenny's head sank again on his breast, heavily as if it had been of lead. Some few minutes thus passed, when the unhappy prisoner became aware of the presence of another spectator to his shame: he heard no step, but he saw a shadow thrown over the sward. He held his breath, and would not look up, with some vague idea that if he refused to see he might escape being seen. CHAPTER IX. "_Per Bacco!_" said Dr. Riccabocca, putting his hand on Lenny's shoulder, and bending down to look into his face--"_Per Bacco!_ my young friend, do you sit here from choice or necessity?" Lenny slightly shuddered, and winced under the touch of one whom he had hitherto regarded with a sort of superstitious abhorrence. "I fear," resumed Riccabocca, after waiting in vain for an answer to his question, "that, though the situation is charming, you did not select it yourself. What is this,"--and the irony of the tone vanished--"what is this, my poor boy? You have been bleeding, and I see that those tears which you try to check come from a deep well. Tell me, _povero fanciullo mio_, (the sweet Italian vowels, though Lenny did not understand them, sounded softly and soothingly,)--tell me, my child, how all this happened. Perhaps I can help you--we have all erred; we should all help each other." Lenny's heart, that just before had seemed bound in brass, found itself a way as the Italian spoke thus kindly, and the tears rushed down; but he again stopped them, and gulped out sturdily,-- "I have not done no wrong; it ben't my fault--and 'tis that which kills me!" concluded Lenny, with a burst of energy. "You have not done wrong? Then," said the philosopher, drawing out his pocket handkerchief with great composure, and spreading it on the ground--"then I may sit beside you. I could only stoop pityingly over sin, but can lie down on equal terms with misfortune." Lenny Fairfield did not quite comprehend the words, but enough of their general meaning was apparent to make him cast a grateful glance on the Italian. Riccabocca resumed, as he adjusted the pocket-handkerchief, "I have a right to your confidence, my child, for I have been afflicted in my day; yet I too say with thee, 'I have not done wrong.' _Cospetto!_ (and here the Doctor seated himself deliberately, resting one arm on the side column of the stocks, in familiar contact with the captive's shoulder, while his eye wandered over the lovely scene around)--_Cospetto!_ my prison, if they had caught me, would not have had so fair a look-out as this. But, to be sure, it is all one: there are no ugly loves, and no handsome prisons!" With that sententious maxim, which, indeed, he uttered in his native Italian, Riccabocca turned round, and renewed his soothing invitations to confidence. A friend in need is a friend indeed, even if he come in the guise of a Papist and wizard. All Lenny's ancient dislike to the foreigner had gone, and he told him his little tale. Dr. Riccabocca was much too shrewd a man not to see exactly the motives which had induced Mr. Stirn to incarcerate his agent, (barring only that of personal grudge, to which Lenny's account gave him no clue.) That a man high in office should make a scape-goat of his own watch-dog for an unlucky snap, or even an indiscreet bark, was nothing strange to the wisdom of the student of Machiavelli. However, he set himself to the task of consolation with equal philosophy and tenderness. He began by reminding, or rather informing, Lenny Fairfield of all the instances of illustrious men afflicted by the injustice of others that occurred to his own excellent memory. He told him how the great Epictetus, when in slavery, had a master whose favorite amusement was pinching his leg, which, as the amusement ended in breaking that limb, was worse than the stocks. He also told him the anecdote of Lenny's own gallant countryman, Admiral Byng, whose execution gave rise to Voltaire's celebrated witticism, "_En Angleterre on tue un amiral pour encourager les autres._" ("In England they execute one admiral in order to encourage the others.") Many more illustrations, still more pertinent to the case in point, his erudition supplied from the stores of history. But on seeing that Lenny did not seem in the slightest degree consoled by these memorable examples, he shifted his ground, and, reducing his logic to the strict _argumentum ad rem_, began to prove, 1st, that there was no disgrace at all in Lenny's present position, that every equitable person would recognize the tyranny of Stirn and the innocence of its victim; 2dly, that if even here he were mistaken, for public opinion was not always righteous, what was public opinion after all?--"A breath--a puff," cried Dr. Riccabocca--"a thing without matter--without length, breadth, or substance--a shadow--a goblin of our own creating. A man's own conscience is his sole tribunal, and he should care no more for that phantom 'opinion' than he should fear meeting a ghost if he cross the churchyard at dark." Now, as Lenny did very much fear meeting a ghost if he crossed the churchyard at dark, the simile spoiled the argument, and he shook his head very mournfully. Dr. Riccabocca was about to enter into a third course of reasoning, which, had it come to an end, would doubtless have settled the matter, and reconciled Lenny to sitting in the stocks till doomsday, when the captive, with the quick ear and eye of terror and calamity, became conscious that church was over, that the congregation in a few seconds more would be flocking thitherwards. He saw visionary hats and bonnets through the trees, which Riccabocca saw not, despite all the excellence of his spectacles--heard phantasmal rustlings and murmurings which Riccabocca heard not, despite all that theoretical experience in plots, stratagems, and treasons, which should have made the Italian's ear as fine as a conspirator's or a mole's. And, with another violent but vain effort at escape, the prisoner exclaimed: "Oh, if I could but get out before they come! Let me out--let me out. O, kind sir, have pity--let me out!" "_Diavolo!_" said the philosopher, startled, "I wonder that never occurred to me before. After all, I believe he has hit the right nail on the head;" and looking close, he perceived that though the partition wood had hitched firmly into a sort of spring-clasp, which defied Lenny's unaided struggles, still it was not locked, (for, indeed, the padlock and key were snug in the justice-room of the Squire, who never dreamt that his orders would be executed so literally and summarily as to dispense with all formal appeal to himself.) As soon as Dr. Riccabocca made that discovery, it occurred to him that all the wisdom of all the schools that ever existed can't reconcile man or boy to a bad position, the moment there is a fair opportunity of letting him out of it. Accordingly, without more ado, he lifted up the creaking board, and Lenny Fairfield darted forth like a bird from a cage--halted a moment as if for breath, or in joy; and then, taking at once to his heels, fled, fast as a hare to its form--fast to his mother's home. Dr. Riccabocca dropped the yawning wood into its place, picked up his handkerchief and restored it to his pocket; and then, with some curiosity, began to examine the nature of that place of duresse which had caused so much painful emotion to its rescued victim. "Man is a very irrational animal at best," quoth the sage, soliloquizing, "and is frightened by strange buggaboos! 'Tis but a piece of wood! how little it really injures; and, after all, the holes are but rests to the legs, and keep the feet out of the dirt. And this green bank to sit upon--under the shade of the elm-tree--verily the position must be more pleasant than otherwise! I've a great mind--" Here the Doctor looked around, and, seeing the coast still clear, the oddest notion imaginable took possession of him; yet not indeed a notion so odd, considered philosophically--for all philosophy is based on practical experiment--and Dr. Riccabocca felt an irresistible desire practically to experience what manner of thing that punishment of the stocks really was. "I can but try!--only for a moment," said he apologetically to his own expostulating sense of dignity. "I have time to do it, before any one comes." He lifted up the partition again; but stocks are built on the true principle of English law, and don't easily allow a man to criminate himself--it was hard to get into them without the help of a friend. However, as we before noticed, obstacles only whetted Dr. Riccabocca's invention. He looked round and saw a withered bit of stick under the tree--this he inserted in the division of the stocks, somewhat in the manner in which boys place a stick under a sieve for the purpose of ensnaring sparrows: the fatal wood thus propped, Dr. Riccabocca sat gravely down on the bank, and thrust his feet through the apertures. "Nothing in it!" cried he triumphantly, after a moment's deliberation. "The evil is only in idea. Such is the boasted reason of mortals!" With that reflection, nevertheless, he was about to withdraw his feet from their voluntary dilemma, when the crazy stick suddenly gave way, and the partition fell back into its clasp. Doctor Riccabocca was fairly caught--"_Facitis descensus--sed revocare gradum!_" True, his hands were at liberty, but his legs were so long that, being thus fixed, they kept the hands from the rescue; and as Dr. Riccabocca's form was by no means supple, and the twin parts of the wood stuck together with that firmness of adhesion which things newly painted possess, so, after some vain twists and contortions, in which he succeeded at length (not without a stretch of the sinews that made them crack again) in finding the clasp and breaking his nails thereon, the victim of his own rash experiment resigned himself to his fate. Dr. Riccabocca was one of those men who never do things by halves. When I say he resigned himself, I mean not only Christian but philosophical resignation. The position was not quite so pleasant as, theoretically, he had deemed it; but he resolved to make himself as comfortable as he could. And first, as is natural in all troubles to men who have grown familiar with that odoriferous comforter which Sir Walter Raleigh is said first to have bestowed upon the Caucasian races, the Doctor made use of his hands to extract from his pocket his pipe, match-box, and tobacco-pouch. After a few whiffs he would have been quite reconciled to his situation, but for the discovery that the sun had shifted its place in the heavens, and was no longer shaded from his face by the elm-tree. The Doctor again looked round, and perceived that his red silk umbrella, which he had laid aside when he had seated himself by Lenny, was within arm's reach. Possessing himself of this treasure, he soon expanded its friendly folds. And thus doubly fortified within and without, under shade of the umbrella, and his pipe composedly between his lips, Dr. Riccabocca gazed on his own incarcerated legs, even with complacency. "'He who can despise all things,'" said he, in one of his native proverbs, "'possesses all things'--if one despise freedom, one is free! This seat is as soft as a sofa! I am not sure," he resumed, soliloquizing, after a pause--"I am not sure that there is not something more witty than manly and philosophical in that national proverb of mine, which I quoted to the _fanciullo_, that there are no handsome prisons! Did not the son of that celebrated Frenchman, surnamed _Bras de Fer_, write a book not only to prove that adversities are more necessary than prosperities, but that among all adversities a prison is the most pleasant and profitable?[32] But is not this condition of mine, voluntarily and experimentally incurred, a type of my life? Is it the first time that I have thrust myself into a hobble?--and if in a hobble of mine own choosing, why should I blame the gods?" Upon this Dr. Riccabocca fell into a train of musing so remote from time and place, that in a few minutes he no more remembered that he was in the parish stocks, than a lover remembers that flesh is grass, a miser that mammon is perishable, a philosopher that wisdom is vanity.--Dr. Riccabocca was in the clouds. CHAPTER X. The dullest dog that ever wrote a novel (and, _entre nous_, reader--but let it go no farther--we have a good many dogs among the fraternity that are not Munitos[33]) might have seen with half an eye that the Parson's discourse had produced a very genial and humanizing effect upon his audience. When all was over, and the congregation stood up to let Mr. Hazeldean and his family walk first down the aisle (for that was the custom at Hazeldean), moistened eyes glanced at the Squire's sunburned, manly face, with a kindness that bespoke revived memory of many a generous benefit and ready service. The head might be wrong now and then--the heart was in the right place after all. And the lady, leaning on his arm, came in for a large share of that gracious good feeling. True, she now and then gave a little offence when the cottages were not so clean as she fancied they ought to be--and poor folks don't like a liberty taken with their houses any more than the rich do; true, that she was not quite so popular with the women as the Squire was, for, if the husband went too often to the alehouse, she always laid the fault on the wife, and said, "No man would go out of doors for his comforts, if he had a smiling face and a clean hearth at his home;" whereas the Squire maintained the more gallant opinion, that "if Gill was a shrew, it was because Jack did not, as in duty bound, stop her mouth with a kiss." Still, notwithstanding these more obnoxious notions on her part, and a certain awe inspired by the stiff silk gown and the handsome aquiline nose, it was impossible, especially in the softened tempers of that Sunday afternoon, not to associate the honest, comely, beaming countenance of Mrs. Hazeldean with comfortable recollections of soups, jellies, and wine in sickness, loaves and blankets in winter, cheering words and ready visits in every little distress, and pretexts afforded by improvement in the grounds and gardens (improvements which, as the Squire, who preferred productive labor, justly complained, "would never finish") for little timely jobs of work to some veteran grandsire, who still liked to earn a penny, or some ruddy urchin in a family that "came too fast." Nor was Frank, as he walked a little behind, in the whitest of trousers and the stiffest of neckcloths--with a look of suppressed roguery in his bright hazel eye, that contrasted his assumed stateliness of mien--without his portion of the silent blessing. Not that he had done any thing yet to deserve it; but we all give youth so large a credit in the future. As for Miss Jemima, her trifling foibles only rose from too soft and feminine a susceptibility, too ivy-like a yearning for some masculine oak, whereon to entwine her tendrils; and so little confined to self was the natural lovingness of her disposition, that she had helped many a village lass to find a husband, by the bribe of a marriage gift from her own privy purse; notwithstanding the assurances with which she accompanied the marriage gift,--viz., that "the bridegroom would turn out like the rest of his ungrateful sex; but that it was a comfort to think that it would be all one in the approaching crash." So that she had her warm partisans, especially amongst the young; while the slim Captain, on whose arm she rested her forefinger, was at least a civilspoken gentleman, who had never done any harm, and who would doubtless do a deal of good if he belonged to the parish. Nay, even the fat footman, who came last with the family Prayer-book, had his due share in the general association of neighborly kindness between hall and hamlet. Few were there present to whom he had not extended the right-hand of fellowship, with a full horn of October in the clasp of it: and he was a Hazeldean man, too, born and bred, as two-thirds of the Squire's household (now letting themselves out from their large pew under the gallery) were. On his part, too, you could see that the Squire was "moved withal," and a little humbled moreover. Instead of walking erect, and taking bow and courtesy as matter of course, and of no meaning, he hung his head somewhat, and there was a slight blush on his cheek; and as he glanced upward and round him--shyly, as it were--and his eye met those friendly looks, it returned them with an earnestness that had in it something touching as well as cordial--an eye that said, as well as eye could say, "I don't quite deserve it, I fear, neighbors; but I thank you for your good-will with my whole heart." And so readily was that glance of the eye understood, that I think, if that scene had taken place out of doors instead of in the church, there would have been an hurrah as the Squire passed out of sight. Scarcely had Mr. Hazeldean got well out of the churchyard, ere Mr. Stirn was whispering in his ear. As Stirn whispered, the Squire's face grew long, and his color changed. The congregation, now flocking out of the church, exchanged looks with each other; that ominous conjunction between Squire and man chilled back all the effects of the Parson's sermon. The Squire struck his cane violently into the ground. "I would rather you had told me Black Bess had got the glanders. A young gentleman, coming to visit my son, struck and insulted in Hazeldean; a young gentleman--'sdeath, sir, a relation--his grandmother was a Hazeldean. I do believe Jemima's right, and the world's coming to an end! But Leonard Fairfield in the stocks! What will the Parson say? and after such a sermon! 'Rich man, respect the poor!' And the good widow, too; and poor Mark, who almost died in my arms. Stirn, you have a heart of stone! You confounded, lawless, merciless miscreant, who the deuce gave you the right to imprison man or boy in my parish of Hazeldean without trial, sentence, or warrant? Run and let the boy out before any one sees him: run, or I shall"--The Squire elevated his cane, and his eyes shot fire. Mr. Stirn did not run, but he walked off very fast. The Squire drew back a few paces, and again took his wife's arm. "Just wait a bit for the Parson, while I talk to the congregation. I want to stop 'em all, if I can, from going into the village; but how?" Frank heard, and replied readily-- "Give 'em some beer, sir." "Beer! on a Sunday! For shame, Frank!" cried Mrs. Hazeldean. "Hold your tongue, Harry. Thank you Frank," said the Squire, and his brow grew as clear as the blue sky above him. I doubt if Riccabocca could have got him out of his dilemma with the same ease as Frank had done. "Halt there, my men--lads and lasses too--there, halt a bit. Mrs. Fairfield, do you hear?--halt! I think his reverence has given us a capital sermon. Go up to the Great House all of you, and drink a glass to his health. Frank, go with them; and tell Spruce to tap one of the casks kept for the hay-makers. Harry, [this in whisper,] catch the Parson, and tell him to come to me instantly." "My dear Hazeldean, what has happened? you are mad." "Don't bother--do what I tell you." "But where is the Parson to find you?" "Where, gad zooks, Mrs. H.--at the stocks to be sure!" CHAPTER XI. Dr. Riccabocca, awakened out of his reverie by the sound of footsteps, was still so little sensible of the indignity of his position, that he enjoyed exceedingly, and with all the malice of his natural humor, the astonishment and stupor manifested by Stirn, when that functionary beheld the extraordinary substitute which fate and philosophy had found for Lenny Fairfield. Instead of the weeping, crushed, broken-hearted captive whom he had reluctantly come to deliver, he stared, speechless and aghast, upon the grotesque but tranquil figure of the Doctor, enjoying his pipe and cooling himself under his umbrella, with a _sang-froid_ that was truly appalling and diabolical. Indeed, considering that Stirn always suspected the Papisher of having had a hand in the whole of that black and midnight business, in which the stocks had been broken, bunged up, and consigned to perdition, and that the Papisher had the evil reputation of dabbling in the Black Art, the hocus-pocus way in which the Lenny he had incarcerated was transformed into the Doctor he found, conjoined with the peculiarly strange, eldritch, and Mephistophelean physiognomy and person of Riccabocca, could not but strike a thrill of superstitious dismay into the breast of the parochial tyrant. While to his first confused and stammered exclamations and interrogatories, Riccabocca replied with so tragic an air, such ominous shakes of the head, such mysterious, equivocating, long-worded sentences, that Stirn every moment felt more and more convinced that the boy had sold himself to the Powers of Darkness; and that he himself, prematurely, and in the flesh, stood face to face with the Arch-Enemy. Mr. Stirn had not yet recovered his wonted intelligence, which, to do him justice, was usually prompt enough--when the Squire, followed hard by the Parson, arrived at the spot. Indeed, Mrs. Hazeldean's report of the Squire's urgent message, disturbed manner, and most unparalleled invitation to the parishioners, had given wings to Parson Dale's ordinarily slow and sedate movements. And while the Squire, sharing Stirn's amazement, beheld indeed a great pair of feet projecting from the stocks, and saw behind them the grave face of Doctor Riccabocca, under the majestic shade of the umbrella, but not a vestige of the only being his mind could identify with the tenancy of the stocks, Mr. Dale, catching him by the arm, and panting hard, exclaimed with a petulance he had never before been known to display--except at the whist-table:-- "Mr. Hazeldean, Mr. Hazeldean, I am scandalized--I am shocked at you. I can bear a great deal from you, sir, as I ought to do; but to ask my whole congregation, the moment after divine service, to go up and guzzle ale at the Hall, and drink my health, as if a clergyman's sermon had been a speech at a cattle-fair! I am ashamed of you, and of the parish! What on earth has come to you all?" "That's the very question I wish to heaven I could answer," groaned the Squire, quite mildly and pathetically--"What on earth has come to us all? Ask Stirn:" (then bursting out) "Stirn, you infernal rascal, don't you hear?--what on earth has come to us all?" "The Papisher is at the bottom of it, sir," said Stirn, provoked out of all temper. "I does my duty, but I is but a mortal man, arter all." "A mortal fiddlestick--where's Leonard Fairfield, I say?" "_Him_ knows best," answered Stirn, retreating mechanically, for safety's sake, behind the Parson, and pointing to Dr. Riccabocca. Hitherto, though both the Squire and Parson had indeed recognized the Italian, they had merely supposed him to be seated on the bank. It never entered their heads that so respectable and dignified a man could by any possibility be an inmate, compelled or voluntary, of the parish stocks. No, not even though, as I before said, the Squire had seen, just under his nose, a very long pair of soles inserted in the apertures--that sight had only confused and bewildered him, unaccompanied as it ought to have been with the trunk and face of Lenny Fairfield. Those soles seemed to him optical delusions, phantoms of the overheated brain; but now, catching hold of Stirn, while the Parson in equal astonishment caught hold of him--the Squire faltered out, "Well, this beats cock-fighting! The man's as mad as a March hare, and has taken Dr. Rickeybockey for little Lenny!" "Perhaps," said the Doctor, breaking silence, with a bland smile, and attempting an inclination of the head as courteous as his position would permit--"perhaps, if it be quite the same to you, before you proceed to explanations,--you will just help me out of the stocks." The Parson, despite his perplexity and anger, could not repress a smile, as he approached his learned friend, and bent down for the purpose of extricating him. "Lord love your reverence, you'd better not!" cried Mr. Stirn. "Don't be tempted--he only wants to get you into his claws. I would not go a-near him for all the--" The speech was interrupted by Dr. Riccabocca himself, who now, thanks to the Parson, had risen into his full height, and half a head taller than all present--even than the tall Squire--approached Mr. Stirn, with a gracious wave of the hand. Mr. Stirn retreated rapidly towards the hedge, amidst the brambles of which he plunged himself incontinently. "I guess whom you take me for, Mr. Stirn," said the Italian, lifting his hat with his characteristic politeness. "It is certainly a great honor: but you will know better one of these days, when the gentleman in question admits you to a personal interview in another and--a hotter world." CHAPTER XII. "But how on earth did you get into my new stocks?" asked the Squire, scratching his head. "My dear sir, Pliny the elder got into the crater of Mount Etna." "Did he, and what for?" "To try what it was like, I suppose," answered Riccabocca. The Squire burst out a-laughing. "And so you got into the stocks to try what it was like. Well, I can't wonder--it is a very handsome pair of stocks," continued the Squire, with a loving look at the object of his praise. "Nobody need be ashamed of being seen in those stocks--I should not mind it myself." "We had better move on," said the Parson dryly, "or we shall be having the whole village here presently, gazing on the lord of the manor in the same predicament as that from which we have just extricated the Doctor. Now pray, what is the matter with Lenny Fairfield? I can't understand a word of what has passed. You don't mean to say that good Lenny Fairfield (who was absent from church by the by) can have done any thing to get into disgrace?" "Yes, he has though," cried the Squire. "Stirn, I say--Stirn." But Stirn had forced his way through the hedge and vanished. Thus left to his own powers of narrative at second-hand, Mr. Hazeldean now told all he had to communicate: the assault upon Randal Leslie, and the prompt punishment inflicted by Stirn; his own indignation at the affront to his young kinsman, and his good-natured merciful desire to save the culprit from the addition of public humiliation. The Parson, mollified towards the rude and hasty invention of the beer-drinking, took the Squire by the hand. "Ah, Mr. Hazeldean, forgive me," he said repentantly; "I ought to have known at once that it was only some ebullition of your heart that could stifle your sense of decorum. But this is a sad story about Lenny, brawling and fighting on the Sabbath-day. So unlike him, too--I don't know what to make of it." "Like or unlike," said the Squire, "it has been a gross insult to young Leslie; and looks all the worse because I and Audley are not just the best friends in the world. I can't think what it is," continued Mr. Hazeldean, musingly, "but it seems that there must be always some association of fighting connected with that prim half-brother of mine. There was I, son of his own mother--who might have been shot through the lungs, only the ball lodged in the shoulder--and now his wife's kinsman--my kinsman, too--grandmother of a Hazeldean--a hard-reading sober lad, as I am given to understand, can't set his foot into the quietest parish in the three kingdoms, but what the mildest boy that ever was seen--makes a rush at him like a mad bull. It is FATALITY!" cried the Squire solemnly. "Ancient legend records similar instances of fatality in certain houses," observed Riccabocca. "There was the House of Pelops--and Polynices and Eteocles--the sons of Oedipus!" "Pshaw," said the Parson; "but what's to be done?" "Done?" said the Squire; "why, reparation must be made to young Leslie. And though I wished to spare Lenny, the young ruffian, a public disgrace--for your sake, Parson Dale, and Mrs. Fairfield's;--yet a good caning in private--" "Stop, sir!" said Riccabocca mildly, "and hear me." The Italian then, with much feeling and considerable tact, pleaded the cause of his poor protégé, and explained how Lenny's error arose only from mistaken zeal for the Squire's service, and in the execution of the orders received from Mr. Stirn. "That alters the matter," said the Squire, softened; "and all that is necessary now will be for him to make a proper apology to my kinsman." "Yes, that is just," rejoined the Parson; "but I still don't learn how he got out of the stocks." Riccabocca then resumed his tale; and, after confessing his own principal share in Lenny's escape, drew a moving picture of the boy's shame and honest mortification. "Let us march against Philip!" cried the Athenians when they heard Demosthenes-- "Let us go at once and comfort the child!" cried the Parson, before Riccabocca could finish. With that benevolent intention, all three quickened their pace, and soon arrived at the widow's cottage. But Lenny had caught sight of their approach through the window; and not doubting that, in spite of Riccabocca's intercession, the Parson was come to upbraid, and the Squire to re-imprison, he darted out by the back way, got amongst the woods, and lay there _perdu_ all the evening. Nay, it was not till after dark that his mother--who sat wringing her hands in the little kitchen and trying in vain to listen to the Parson and Mrs. Dale, who (after sending in search of the fugitive) had kindly come to console the mother--heard a timid knock at the door and a nervous fumble at the latch. She started up, opened the door, and Lenny sprang to her bosom, and there buried his face, sobbing loud. "No harm, my boy," said the Parson tenderly; "you have nothing to fear--all is explained and forgiven." Lenny looked up, and the veins on his forehead were much swollen. "Sir," said he sturdily, "I don't want to be forgiven--I ain't done no wrong. And--I've been disgraced--and I won't go to school, never no more." "Hush, Carry!" said the Parson to his wife, who, with the usual liveliness of her little temper, was about to expostulate. "Good night, Mrs. Fairfield. I shall come and talk to you to-morrow, Lenny; by that time you will think better of it." The Parson then conducted his wife home, and went up to the Hall to report Lenny's safe return; for the Squire was very uneasy about him, and had even in person shared the search. As soon as he heard Lenny was safe--"Well," said the Squire, "let him go the first thing in the morning to Rood Hall, to ask Master Leslie's pardon, and all will be right and smooth again." "A young villain!" cried Frank, with his cheeks the color of scarlet; "to strike a gentleman and an Etonian, who had just been to call on _me_! But I wonder Randal let him off so well--any other boy in the sixth form would have killed him!" "Frank," said the Parson sternly, "if we all had our deserts, what should be done to him who not only lets the sun go down on his own wrath, but strives with uncharitable breath to fan the dying embers of another's?" The clergyman here turned away from Frank, who bit his lip, and seemed abashed--while even his mother said not a word in his exculpation; for when the Parson did reprove in that stern tone, the majesty of the Hall stood awed before the rebuke of the Church. Catching Riccabocca's inquisitive eye, Mr. Dale drew aside the philosopher, and whispered to him his fears that it would be a very hard matter to induce Lenny to beg Randal Leslie's pardon, and that the proud stomach of the pattern-boy would not digest the stocks with as much ease as a long regimen of philosophy had enabled the sage to do. This conference Miss Jemima soon interrupted by a direct appeal to the Doctor respecting the number of years (even without any previous and more violent incident) that the world could possibly withstand its own wear and tear. "Ma'am," said the Doctor, reluctantly summoned away to look at a passage in some prophetic periodical upon that interesting subject--"ma'am, it is very hard that you should make one remember the end of the world, since, in conversing with you, one's natural temptation is to forget its existence." Miss Jemima blushed scarlet. Certainly that deceitful heartless compliment justified all her contempt for the male sex; and yet--such is human blindness--it went far to redeem all mankind in her credulous and too confiding soul. "He is about to propose," sighed Miss Jemima. "Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he drew on his nightcap, and stepped majestically into the four-posted bed, "I think we shall get that boy for the garden now!" Thus each spurred his hobby, or drove her car, round the Hazeldean whirligig. * * * * * CONDITIONS OF IMMORTALITY. Hume, the historian, was a competitor with Burke for the professorship of logic in the University of Glasgow, made vacant by the appointment of Adam Smith to the chair of moral philosophy. The place was given to a Mr. Clow, who owes the perpetuation of his name thus long to the distinguished rivals whom he distanced, and the illustrious professor whom he succeeded. FOOTNOTES: [30] _Du Credit et des Banques, Paris, 1848._ [31] Un des plus beaux ouvrages assurément qu'on ait publiés sur le credit.--_Journal des Economistes._ [32] _"Entre tout, l'état d'une prison est le plus doux, et le plus profitable!"_ [33] Munito was the name of a dog famous for his learning (a Porson of a dog) at the date of my childhood. There are no such dogs now-a-days. From Frazer's Magazine DANTE. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. Ere blasts from northern lands Had covered Italy with barren sands, Rome's Genius, smitten sore, Wail'd on the Danube, and was heard no more. Centuries twice seven had past And crush'd Etruria rais'd her head at last. A mightier Power she saw, Poet and prophet, give three worlds the law. When Dante's strength arose Fraud met aghast the boldest of her foes; Religion, sick to death, Look'd doubtful up, and drew in pain her breath. Both to one grave are gone; Alters still smoke, still is the God unknown. Haste, whoso from above Comest with purer fire and larger love, Quenchest the Stygian torch, And leadest from the _Garden_ and the _Porch_, Where gales breathe fresh and free, And where a Grace is call'd a Charity, To Him, the God of peace, Who bids all discord in his household cease-- Bids it, and bids again, But to the purple-vested speaks in vain. Crying, 'Can this be borne?' The consecrated wine-skins creak with scorn; While, leaving tumult there, To quiet idols young and old repair, In places where is light To lighten day--and dark to darken night. From Sharpe's Magazine AN EDITORIAL VISIT. BY THEODORE S. FAY. I was passing from my office one day, to indulge myself with a walk, when a little hard-faced old man, with a black coat, broad-brimmed hat, velvet breeches, shoes and buckles, and gold-headed cane, stopped me, standing directly in my path. I looked at him. He looked at me. I crossed my hands before me patiently, forced my features into a civil smile, and waited the development of his intentions; not being distinctly certain, from his firm, determined expression, whether he was "a spirit of health or goblin damned," and whether his intents were "wicked or charitable"--that is, whether he came to discontinue or to subscribe, to pay a bill or present one, to offer a communication or a pistol, to shake me by the hand, or pull me by the nose. Editors now-a-days must always be on their guard. For my part, I am peaceable, and much attached to life, and should esteem it exceedingly disagreeable to be either shot, or horsewhipped. I am not built for action, but love to sail in quiet waters; cordially eschewing gales, waves, water-spouts, sea-serpents, earthquakes, tornadoes, and all such matters, both on sea and land. My antipathy to a horsewhip is an inheritance from boyhood. It carried me across Cæsar's bridge, and through Virgil and Horace. I am indebted to it for a tolerable understanding of grammar, arithmetic, geography, and other occult sciences. It enlightened me not a little upon many algebraic processes, which, to speak truth, presented, otherwise, but slender claims to my consideration. It disciplined me into a uniform propriety of manners, and instilled into my bosom early rudiments of wisdom, and principles of virtue. In my maturer years, the contingencies of life have thrust me rather abruptly, if not reluctantly, into the editorial fraternity (heaven bless them, I mean them no disrespect), and in the same candor which distinguishes my former acknowledgments, I confess that visions of this instrument have occasionally obtruded themselves somewhat forcibly upon my fancy, in the paroxysms of an article, dampening the glow of composition, and causing certain qualifying interlineations and prudent erasures, prompted by the representations of memory or the whispers of prudence. The reader must not fancy, from the form of my expression, that I have ever been horsewhipped. I have hitherto escaped, (for which Heaven be praised!) although my horizon has been darkened by many a cloudy threat, and thundering denunciation. Nose-pulling is another disagreeable branch of the editorial business. To have any part of one pulled is annoying; but there is a dignity about the nose impatient even of observation or remark: while the act of taking hold of it with the thumb and finger is worse than murder, and can only be washed out with blood. Kicking, cuffing, being turned out of doors, being abused in the papers, &c., are bad, but these are mere minor considerations. Indeed, many of my brother editors rather pique themselves upon some of them, as a soldier does on the scars obtained in fighting the battles of his country; they fancy that, thereby, they are invested with claims upon their party, and suffer indefinite dreams of political eminence to be awakened in their bosoms. I have seen a fellow draw his hat fiercely down over his brow, and strut about, with insufferable importance, on the strength of having been thoroughly kicked by the enemy. This is a long digression, but it passed rapidly through my mind as the little, hard-faced old gentleman stood before me, looking at me with a piercing glance, and a resolute air. At length, unlike a ghost, he spoke first. "You are the editor?"--&c. "A slight motion of acquiescence with my head, and an affirmative wave of my hand, a little leaning toward the majestic, announced to my unknown friend the accuracy of his conjecture." The little old gentleman's face relaxed--he took off his broad-brimmed hat, and laid it down with his cane carefully on the table, then seized my hand and shook it heartily. People are so polite and friendly when about to ask a favor. "My dear air," said he, "this is a pleasure I have long sought vainly. You must know, sir. I am the editor of a theatrical weekly--a neat thing in its way--here's the last number." He fumbled about in his pocket, and produced a red-covered pamphlet. "I have been some time publishing it, and though it is admitted by all acquainted with its merits to be clearly the best thing of the kind ever started this side of the Atlantic, yet people do not seem to take much notice of it. Indeed, my friends tell me that the public are not fully aware of its existence. Pray let me be indebted to you for a notice. I wish to get fairly afloat. You see I have been too diffident about it. We modest fellows allow our inferiors to pass us often. I will leave this number with you. Pray, pray give it a good notice." He placed in my hands the eleventh number of the "North American Thespian Magazine," devoted to the drama, and also to literature, science, history, and the arts. On reading over the prospectus, I found it vastly comprehensive, embracing pretty much every subject in the world. If so extensive a plan were decently filled up in the details, the "North American Thespian Magazine" was certainly worth the annual subscription money, which was only one dollar. I said so under my "literary notices" in the next impression of my journal; and, although I had not actually read the work, yet it sparkled so with asterisks, dashes, and notes of admiration, that it looked interesting. I added in my critique, that it was elegantly got up, that its typographical execution reflected credit on the publishers, that its failure would be a grievous reproach to the city, that its editor was a scholar, a writer, and a gentleman, and was favorably known to the literary circles by the eloquence, wit, and feeling of his former productions. What those productions were, I should have been rather puzzled to say, never having read, or even heard of them. This, however, was the cant criticism of the day, which is so exorbitant and unmeaning, and so universally cast in one mould, that I was in some tribulation, on reading over the article in print, to find that I had omitted the words, "native genius," which possesses a kind of common-law right to a place in all articles on American literary productions. Forth, however, it went to the world, and I experienced a philanthropic emotion in fancying how pleased the little, hard-faced old gentleman would be with these flattering encomiums on his "Thespian Magazine." The very day my paper was out, as I was sitting "full fathom five" deep in an article on "The Advantages of Virtue" (an interesting theme, upon my views of which I rather flattered myself), I was startled by three knocks at the door, and my "Come in" exhibited to view the broad-brimmed hat of the hard-faced gentleman, with his breeches, buckles, gold-headed cane and all. He laid aside his hat and cane with the air of a man who has walked a great way, and means to rest himself a while. I was very busy. It was one of my inspired moments. Half of a brilliant idea was already committed to paper. There it lay--a fragment--a flower cut off in the bud--a mere outline--an embryo; and my imagination cooling like a piece of red-hot iron in the open air. I raised my eyes to the old gentleman, with a look of solemn silence, retaining my pen ready for action, with my little finger extended, and hinting, in every way, that I was "not i' the vein." I kept my lips closed. I dipped the pen in the inkstand several times, and held it hovering over the sheet. It would not do. The old gentleman was not to be driven off his ground by shakes of the pen, ink-drops, or little fingers. He fumbled about in his pockets, and drew forth the red-covered "North American Thespian Magazine," devoted to the drama, &c., number twelve. He wanted "a _good_ notice." The last was rather general. I had not specified its peculiar claims upon the public. I had _copied_ nothing. That sort of critique did no good. He begged me to _read_ this _carefully_--to _analyze_ it--to give it a _candid_ examination. I was borne down by his emphatic manner; and being naturally of a civil deportment, as well as, at that particular moment, in an impatient, feverish hurry to get on with my treatise on the "Advantages of Virtue," which I felt now oozing out of my subsiding brain with an alarming rapidity, I promised to read, notice, investigate, analyze, to the uttermost extent of his wishes, or at least of my ability. I could scarcely keep myself screwed down to common courtesy till the moment of his departure; a proceeding which he accomplished with a most commendable self-possession and deliberate politeness. When he was fairly gone, I poked my head out, and called my boy. "Peter." "Sir." "Did you see that little old gentleman, Peter?" "Yes, sir." "Should you know him again, Peter?" "Yes, sir." "Well, if he ever come here again, Peter, tell him I am not in." "Yes, sir." I reëntered my little study, and closed the door after me with a slam, which could only have been perceptible to those who knew my ordinary still and mild manner. There might have been also a slight accent in my way of turning the key, and (candor is a merit!) I could not repress a brief exclamation of displeasure at the little old gentleman with his magazine, who had broken in so provokingly upon my "essay on virtue." "Virtue or no virtue," thought I, "I wish him to the d----." My room is on the ground-floor, and a window adjoining the street lets in upon me the light and air through a heavy crimson curtain, near which I sit and scribble. I was just enlarging upon the necessity of resignation, while the frown yet lingered on my brow, and was writing myself into a more calm and complacent mood, when--another knock at the door. As I opened it, I heard Peter's voice asserting sturdily that I had "gone out." Never dreaming of my old enemy, I betrayed too much of my person to withdraw, and I was recognized and pounced upon by the little old gentleman who had come back to inform me that he intended, as soon as the increase of his subscription would permit, to enlarge and improve the "North American Thespian Magazine," and to employ all the writers in town. "I intend also," said he, and he was in the act of again laying aside that everlasting hat and cane, when a cry of fire in the neighborhood, and the smell of the burning rafters attracted him into the street, where, as I feared, he escaped unhurt. In many respects fires are calamities; but I never saw a more forcible exemplification of Shakspeare's remark, "There is some spirit of good in things evil," than in the relief afforded me on the present occasion. I wrote, after that, with my door locked. This I knew was, from the confined air, prejudicial to my health; but what was dyspepsy or consumption to that little hard-faced old gentleman--to those breeches--to that broad-brimmed hat--to those buckles--to that gold-headed cane? "Remember, Peter," said I, the second morning after the foregoing, "I have gone out." "Where have you gone?" inquired Peter, with grave simplicity. "They always ask me where you have gone, sir. The little man with the hat was here last night, and wanted to go after you." "Forbid it Heaven! I have gone to Albany, Peter, on business." I can hear in my room pretty much what passes in the adjoining one, where visitors first enter from the street. I had scarcely got comfortably seated, in a rare mood for poetry, giving the last touches to a poem, which, whatever might be the merits of Byron and Moore, I did not think altogether indifferent, when I heard the little old gentleman's voice inquiring for me. "I _must_ see him; I have important business," it said. "He has gone out," replied Peter, in an undertone, in which I could detect the consciousness that he was uttering a bouncer. "But I _must_ see him," said the voice. "The scoundrel!" muttered I. "He is not in town, sir," said Peter. "I will not detain him a single minute. It is of the greatest importance. He would be very sorry, _very_, should he miss me." I held my breath--there was a pause--I gave myself up for lost--when Peter replied firmly, "He is in Albany, sir. Went off at five o'clock this morning." "Be back soon?" "Don't know." "Where does he stay?" "Don't know." "I'll call tomorrow." I heard his retreating footsteps, and inwardly resolved to give Peter a half-dollar, although he deserved to be horsewhipped for his readiness at deception. I laughed aloud triumphantly, and slapped my hand down upon my knee with the feelings of a fugitive debtor, who, hotly pursued by a sheriff's officer, escapes over the line into another county, and snaps his fingers at Monsieur Bailiff. I was aroused from my merry mood of reverie by a touch on my shoulder. I turned suddenly. It was the hard-faced little old gentleman, peeping in from the street. His broad-brimmed hat and two-thirds of his face were just lifted above the window-sill. He was evidently standing on tiptoe; and the window being open, he had put aside the curtain, and was soliciting my attention with the end of his cane. "Ah!" said he, "is it you? Well, I _thought_ it was you, though I wasn't sure. I won't interrupt you. Here are the proofs of number thirteen; you'll find something glorious in that--just the thing for you--don't forget me next week--good-bye. I'll see you again in a day or two." I shall not cast a gloom over my readers by dwelling upon my feelings. Surely, surely, there are sympathetic bosoms among them. To them I appeal. I said nothing. Few could have detected any thing violent or extraordinary in my manner, as I took the proofs from the end of the little old gentleman's cane, and laid them calmly on the table. I did not write any more about "virtue" that morning. It was out of the question. Indeed, my mind scarcely recovered from the shock for several days. When my nerves are in any way irritated, I find a walk in the woods a soothing and agreeable sedative. Accordingly, the next afternoon, I wound up the affairs of the day earlier than usual, and set out for a ramble through the groves and along the shore of Hoboken. I was soon on one of the abrupt acclivities, where, through the deep rich foliage of the intertwining branches, I overlooked the Hudson, the wide bay, and the superb, steepled city, stretching in a level line of magnificence upon the shining waters, softened with an overhanging canopy of thin haze. I gazed at the picture, and contemplated the rivalry of nature with art, striving which could most delight. As my eye moved from ship to ship, from island to island, and from shore to shore--now reposing on the distant blue, then revelling in the nearer luxuriance of the forest green, I heard a step in the grass, and a little ragged fellow came up and asked me if I was the editor of the ----. I was about replying to him affirmatively, when his words arrested my attention. "A little gentleman with a hat and cane," he said, "had been inquiring for the editor, &c., at the adjoining hotel, and had given him sixpence to run up into the woods and find him." I rushed precipitately, as I thought, into the thickest recesses of the wood. The path, however, being very circuitous, I suddenly came into it, and nearly ran against a person whom it needed no second glance to recognize, although his back was luckily toward me. The hat, the breeches, the cane, were enough. If not, part of a red-covered pamphlet, sticking out of the coat-pocket, was. "It must be number thirteen!" I exclaimed; and as the little old gentleman was sauntering north, I shaped my course with all possible celerity in a southerly direction. In order to protect myself for the future, I took precautionary measures; and in addition to having myself denied, I kept the window down, and made my egress and ingress through a door round the corner, as Peter told me he had several times seen the little old gentleman, with a package in his hand, standing opposite the one through which we usually entered, and looking at the office wistfully. By means of these arrangements, I succeeded in preserving my solitude inviolate, when, to my indignation, I received several letters from different parts of the country, written by my friends, and pressing upon me, at the solicitation of the little old gentleman, the propriety of giving the "Thespian Magazine" a good notice. I tore the letters, each one as I read them, into three pieces, and dropped them under the table. Business calling me, soon after, to Philadelphia, I stepped on board the steamboat, exhilarated with the idea that I was to have at least two or three weeks' respite. I reached the place of my destination about five o'clock in the afternoon. It was lovely weather. The water spread out like unrippled glass, and the sky was painted with a thousand varying shadows of crimson and gold. The boat touched the shore, and while I was watching the change of a lovely cloud, I heard the splash of a heavy body plunged into the water. A sudden sensation ran along the crowd, which rushed from all quarters towards the spot; the ladies shrieked and turned away their heads: and I perceived that a man had fallen from the deck, and was struggling in the tide, with only one hand held convulsively above the surface. Being a practised swimmer, I hesitated not a moment, but flung off my hat and coat, and sprang to his rescue. With some difficulty I succeeded in bearing him to a boat and dragging him from the stream. I had no sooner done so, than to my horror and astonishment I found I had saved the little hard-faced old gentleman. His snuff-colored breeches were dripping before me--his broad-brimmed hat floated on the current--but his cane (thank Heaven!) had sunk forever. He suffered no other ill consequences from the catastrophe than some injury to his garments and the loss of his cane. His gratitude for my exertions knew no bounds. He assured me of his conviction that the slight acquaintance previously existing between us would now be ripened into intimacy, and informed me of his intention to lodge at the same hotel with me. He had come to Philadelphia to see about a plate for his sixteenth number, which was to surpass all its predecessors, and of which he would let me have an early copy, that I might _notice_ it as it deserved. * * * * * "Never," said Southey, writing to his friend Bedford, "shall child of mine enter a school or a university. Perhaps I may not be able so well to instruct him in logic or languages, but I can at least preserve him from vice." From the Kings's College Magazine. BIOGRAPHIES, LIVES, MEMOIRS, AND RECOLLECTIONS. Innumerable biographies, innumerable traces of human life that is now life no longer, may be met with in every walk. One lovely day, now some time ago, we had been taking a walk in a part of England of which we had little knowledge, and we came up to the gate of what appeared to be a large hospital. It was covered with trees, and the beauty of summer was luxuriantly displayed. The grayheaded porter at the gate, a very communicative and happy old man, aged eighty-eight years, soon gave us a history of the institution. This hospital had been built by a man who was much renowned. He had been once a poor shopboy, but he wandered to London, was very industrious, and at length became one of the greatest merchants of the imperial city. He realized the visions of Whittington; for he was twice Lord Mayor, was exceedingly wealthy, was honored with the friendship of King William the Third, and was universally respected. Age coming on, he retired to his native place, built and endowed this hospital, became famous for his deeds of kindness and charity, always kept with reverence the day on which the Prince of Orange landed on English ground, and, full of years and honors, sunk into his long repose. The charitable institution was situated amid the most beautiful scenery. No place could be more fitting for the old men who sat basking in the sun to spend the quiet evening of their lives. This was the biography of the great city merchant. It was not written in many volumes; his good deeds were not ostentatiously displayed, and he now sleeps peacefully and well. But this was not all. On returning through a magnificent park, as the sun was setting, the haymakers returning from their labor, and all nature breathing peace, and happiness, and love, our attention was attracted to an old oak tree. It was indeed very old. It had seen all its brethren of the park rise and fall, seasons had come and gone, generations had reposed beneath its branches, and now they were reposing under the shadow of the old church, the clock of which had just struck the hour of six. On examining the tree closely, we were astonished to find carved in immense letters, and in quaint language, the following words:-- "This tree witnesse beare, That two lovers did walke heare." Under the influence of the feelings which the sights we had just seen had excited, and enraptured as we were with the beautiful evening, this simple inscription seemed more touching than the noblest verses. Knowing something of botany, it was not difficult to form some idea of the period when the inscription was written. It was not merely the external bark, but the deep woody layer also that had been cut by the carver's knife. It must have been cut while the tree was very young, for the bark had very much expanded, and the letters were now more than a foot in length. We stood contemplating the rude verse. In the distance the sun was placidly reflecting the last golden rays, every thing was fresh and green, not a sound was heard. It must have been on such another lovely eve that the two lovers had plighted their faith together, and commemorated it on the young oak tree; and this was all we knew of them, all that we would ever know. This was their biography; this was their ten volumes. Were they rich and noble, or poor and obscure? Did their lives pass in peace and content, or were their hearts pierced by the poisoned arrows of the world? Did they also feel how little real happiness there was here, and did they also look forward to the time when they should rest from their labors in a place where there was no suffering and no sorrow? Were they really happy in each other's love, or were their young and pure affections chilled by the winds of adversity? In vain we question the old oak tree. They are gone; the tree is silent; all that we know is that they walked here. And the world with its noise and folly is still going on, and publishing its biographies of ten volumes. From the Quarterly Review. PHENOMENA OF DEATH. To be shot dead is one of the easiest modes of terminating life; yet, rapid as it is, the body has leisure to feel and time to reflect. On the first attempt by one of the frantic adherents of Spain to assassinate William, Prince of Orange, who took the lead in the revolt of the Netherlands, the ball passed through the bones of his face, and brought him to the ground. In the instant that preceded stupefaction, he was able to frame the notion that the ceiling of the room had fallen and crushed him. The cannon shot which plunged into the brain of Charles XII. did not prevent him from seizing his sword by the hilt. The idea of an attack and the necessity for defence was impressed upon him by a blow which we should have supposed too tremendous to leave an interval for thought. But it by no means follows that the infliction of fatal violence is accompanied by a pang. From what is known of the first effect of gunshot wounds, it is probable that the impression is rather stunning than acute. Unless death be immediate, the pain is as varied as the nature of the injuries, and these are past counting up. But there is nothing singular in the dying sensations, though Lord Byron remarked the physiological peculiarity, that the expression is invariably that of languor, while in death from a stab the countenance reflects the traits of natural character--of gentleness or ferocity--to the last breath. Some of these cases are of interest, to show with what slight disturbance life may go on under mortal wound till it suddenly comes to a final stop. A foot-soldier at Waterloo, pierced by a musket ball in the hip, begged water from a trooper who chanced to possess a canteen of beer. The wounded man drank, returned his heartiest thanks, mentioned that his regiment was nearly exterminated, and having proceeded a dozen yards in his way to the rear, fell to the earth, and with one convulsive movement of his limbs concluded his career. "Yet his voice," says the trooper, who himself tells the story, "gave scarcely the smallest sign of weakness." Captain Basil Hall, who in his early youth was present at the Battle of Corunna, has singled out from the confusion which consigns to oblivion the woes and gallantry of war, another instance extremely similar, which occurred on that occasion. An old officer, who was shot in the head, arrived pale and faint at the temporary hospital, and begged the surgeon to look at his wound, which was pronounced to be mortal. "Indeed I feared so," he responded with impeded utterance, "and yet I should like very much to live a little longer, if it were possible." He laid his sword upon a stone at his side, "as gently," says Hall, "as if its steel had been turned to glass, and almost immediately sunk dead upon the turf." From the "Leader." BURLESQUES AND PARODIES. Among the signs of intellectual barrenness and the vicious pandering to lower appetites, consequent upon the _trading_ spirit of literature, we note with regret the growing tendency to desecrate beautiful subjects by using them as materials for burlesque. We have had a _Comic History of England_--one of the dreariest and least excusable of jokes, and capable of for ever vulgarizing in the young mind the great deeds and noble life of our forefathers--and we have had burlesques in which the loved fairy tales that have charmed the imaginations of thousands, or subjects of mythology that belong to the religious history of the greatest people on record, are turned into coarse pot-house jests, with slang for wit, but _without_ the playful elegance by which Planché justifies his sport. It is a sign of intellectual barrenness in the writers; for what is easier than parody? what means of raising a laugh so certain and so cheap as to roll a statue from its pedestal and stick some vulgar utensil in its place? Laughter always follows the incongruous; and to make a Grecian Deity call for a pot of half-and-half, or to ask a Fairy Princess if her mother has parted with her mangle, is to secure the laugh, though contempt may follow it. To our minds there is something melancholy in such spectacles. Degrading lofty images by ignoble associations must operate maleficiently on the spectator. And if it be absolutely necessary to appeal to the coarse tastes and vulgar appetites of the crowd, let it be done without at the same time dragging beautiful objects through the mire. We can understand the ribald buffoonery of LUCIAN, who first invented this species of burlesque. His _object_ was to make the gods ridiculous. Whether the spirit which moved him was a mocking, skeptical spirit, like that of Voltaire, or whether, as we think more probable, he was a bitter satirist made bitter by the earnestness of his conviction, and ridiculing the gods only as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of their pretensions, the fact is indubitable, that he ridiculed them in a polemical spirit, and not to excite the vulgar laughter of the vulgar crowd. But we, who do not believe in those gods, need no such warfare. To us they are beautiful images associated only with high thoughts, until the burlesque writer, in his beggary of wit and invention, takes them as the facile material out of which he can raise a laugh. Our complaint is twofold: first, that these subjects are soiled in our imaginations; secondly, that there is no compensating pleasure in the burlesque itself. The tendency is earthward, coarse, vulgarizing. It spoils a whole world of fancy, and it keeps down the creation of comic subjects by supplying writers with an easy and certain success. Surely, there is folly and humbug enough living and lying in the open day to supply the satirist with material. Surely, these imitators of LUCIAN (unconscious imitators, no doubt, for many of them never read a line of his dialogues) would be better employed in imitating the _spirit_ of his works as well as the mere contrivance for producing the ludicrous, than in devastating Fairy Land for materials. It would be more difficult, no doubt, but is _that_ a sufficient reason for abstaining? Music may be parodied with success, and without evil consequences. That lies in the nature of music, which cannot be degraded. Let a hoarse, beery voice, chant slang words to a melody of Mozart, and the next time you hear the melody, it is as fresh and beautiful as if it had never been turned "to such vile purpose;" but it is not so with the beautiful creations of impassioned fancy. Fancy is a Butterfly which must be delicately handled; if rude fingers tamper with it, the flower-dust is rubbed off and the gay insect perishes. JOHN ADAMS UPON RICHES. In the thirty-sixth year of his age, John Adams made the following entry in his Diary. He was then practising law in Boston, though living in Braintree. "It has been my fate to be acquainted in the way of business with a number of very rich men--Gardiner, Bowdoin, Pitts, Hancock, Rowe, Lee, Sargent, Hooper, Doane. Hooper, Gardiner, Rowe, Lee and Doane, have all acquired their wealth by their own industry; Bowdoin and Hancock received theirs by succession, descent, or devise; Pitts by marriage. But there is not one of all these who derives more pleasure from his property than I do from mine; my little farm and stock and cash afford me as much satisfaction as all their immense tracts, extensive navigation, sumptuous buildings, their vast sums at interest and stocks in trade yield to them. The pleasures of property arise from acquisition more than possession, from what is to come rather than what is. The rich are seldom remarkable for modesty, ingenuity or humanity. Their wealth has rather a tendency to make them penurious and selfish." RECENT DEATHS. FRANCIS XAVIER MICHAEL TOMIE, S.J., died on the tenth of December, 1850. We find in the _Truth-Teller_ the following account of this excellent person, with whom we had the pleasure of such acquaintance as assures us of its justice. He was born in 1792, in Tivoli, of the most respectable family in the place. He made his studies at home, under a private tutor; pursued them in the Roman Seminary until the reëstablishment of the Society in 1814; that year he entered the novitiate, and immediately began to teach literature. He terminated with great distinction his course of theology, and as soon as the Roman College was restored to the Society, in 1825, was appointed Professor. In the twelve following years he was successively Rector of the Colleges of Spoleto, Fermo, Forli, and Reggio di Modena. At Spoleto he was an intimate friend of Pius the Ninth, then Cardinal Archbishop Mastai. While Rector of the College of Fermo, he was chosen by Cardinal Ferretti, its founder, his theologian, and never did this Cardinal, even when in Rome, cease to place confidence in his advice. In 1837 he was designated Professor of Moral Theology, and Prefect of Studies in the Roman College, where he lived till the Revolution of 1848. Gregory XVI. had appointed him Examinator of the Roman Clergy, during which time he had prepared several dissertations, treatises, &c., on theology and philosophy, which may some day be published. On the breaking out of the Revolution he retired some time to Monseigneur Morini, of Florence, until this learned and devout man was stabbed in the streets for his opposition to the revolutionists. Thus cast upon the world without a protector, he wished to take refuge in the Sanctuary of the Virgin, at Genezzano, which according to tradition was transported thither from Albania, and is still kept by the Hermits of St. Augustine. His superior's wish however sent him to England, where he lived six months in the mansion of Lord Waterton. In 1849 he came to America, and taught moral theology in Georgetown College. In 1850 he began to fill the same office (i.e., Professor of Moral Theology) in St. Joseph's Seminary, in the diocese of New-York. He was endeared to the Church for his mildness, cheerfulness, and charity, insomuch that among the younger students of St. John's College he was known as the "Good Father, who is always smiling." On the 6th of December he fell ill; on the 8th, the President of St. John's College, in presence of the Fathers and Religious of the Society, administered the viaticum. The following night he was anointed; and on the 10th, towards ten o'clock in the afternoon, he breathed his last. On the evening of the 11th, at six o'clock, according to the custom of the Society, a solemn service was celebrated by all the members of St. John's College and Seminary. On the 12th, at six o'clock A. M., he was buried in the cemetery attached to the College. * * * * * WILLIAM PLUMER, formerly governor of New-Hampshire, died at his home in Epping, Rockingham county, in that State, on the 23d of December, at the advanced age of ninety-three, and SAMUEL BELL, another ex-governor of New-Hampshire, died at his home in the neighboring town of Chester, on the same day. His age could not have been less than eighty. Both were men of solid though not brilliant abilities; both were leaders of the Democratic party in its struggles in support of Jefferson and Madison; both ardent supporters of John Quincy Adams's election and administration, and adverse to Jacksonism in all its phases; and each has acted constantly and zealously with the Whig party through all its changing fortunes. Mr. Plumer was first elected to the Chief Magistracy in 1812, and continued to be the Democratic candidate, with alternate success and defeat, until 1819, when he declined, and Mr. Bell was nominated by the party, and chosen to succeed him. Mr. Bell was of a tall, graceful, commanding person. It was stated at the time of his inauguration that he seemed to be about a head taller than any other of the thousands present at the ceremony. He was chosen a senator in Congress in 1823, and served through a full term; and would have been reëlected in 1829, had not Isaac Hill meantime invented and given currency to a new style of Democracy, of which Bell had not been able to discern the excellence; so he retired to private life, in which he ever afterward continued. He cherished an especial affection for and confidence in the great statesman of the west, Henry Clay, with whom it had been his fortune to sympathize through his whole political life, and whom he hoped yet to see elevated to the Presidency. His brother, John Bell, who was governor some years after him, and beaten in 1829 by the first successful foray of Jacksonism, removed soon after to Massachusetts, where he died. Governor Plumer, it is understood, has left important historical memoirs, which will probably be published. * * * * * THOMAS BIRCH, the well-known painter, died in Philadelphia on the 14th of January, at the ripe age of seventy-two, after a life of quiet and laborious devotion to his profession. He was distinguished in a particular department of landscape and marine painting, delighting in the treatment of coast and river scenes in their simpler and homelier aspects, which he treated in his peculiar way, frequently with the best effect, and always with great fidelity to nature. He produced a very large number of pictures. * * * * * CHRISTIAN LAURITZ SVERDRUP, the celebrated Norwegian philologist, died at the University of Christiana, in which he had been a professor more than forty-five years. * * * * * MR. W. SEGUIN, the eminent singer, died in London, on the 30th December, after a short illness. * * * * * MRS. OGILVY, of Corrimony, who died at Edinburgh on the 14th of December, was a daughter of W. Fraser Tytler, Esq., and as "Margaret Fraser Tytler," was well known as the authoress of a very popular series of works for the young--"Tales of the Great and Brave," "Tales of Good and Great Kings," "Lives of Celebrated Admirals," &c. * * * * * WILLIAM HOWISON, A.R.S.A., a well-known line engraver, died in Edinburgh, on the 20th December. He was born at Edinburgh, in 1798. He was educated in George Heriot's Hospital; and on leaving that institution was apprenticed to an engraver, of the name of Wilson. Even as a boy he was remarkable for industry, perseverance, and punctuality. He never received any instructions in drawing, beyond what he acquired for himself during the period of his apprenticeship. He was, in every way, truly a self-made man. Mr. Harvey was the first to appreciate Mr. Howison's talents, and to afford scope for their display, by employing him to engrave the well-known picture of "The Curlers;" and it is no detraction from the merits of that painting to say, that the admirable skill displayed in transferring it to copper contributed in no small degree to the reputation of the painter. On the completion of "The Curlers," Mr. Howison was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy--the only instance, we believe, of such an honor being conferred upon an engraver. Mr. Howison afterwards engraved the "Polish Exiles," by Sir William Allan; the "Covenanters' Communion," and the "Schule Skailing," by Harvey; and at the period of his death he was engaged upon the "First Letter from the Emigrants," after Thomas Faed, for the Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland. * * * * * HYPPOLITE ROYER-COLLARD, nephew of the eminent philosopher of that name, died at Paris on the 15th of December, at the age of 48, after having been for five years afflicted by a paralysis, which did not however affect his mental powers. He was Professor of Public Hygiene, at the School of Medicine, and drew crowded audiences to his lectures. To a mind of rare scientific acuteness and endowments, he added an active and fertile imagination, and great youthfulness of spirit. He inherited the intellectual tendencies of his uncle, and was an intimate friend of Guizot. * * * * * COL. WILLIAMS, formerly M.P. for Ashton, died at Wootton, near Liverpool, on the 19th December, aged eighty-seven. At twelve years of age, he joined General Burgoyne's army in America, and carried the flag of truce upon the memorable occasion of the surrender at Saratoga. It is supposed that he was the last survivor of that army. After twenty-five years of active service in Nova Scotia, St. Domingo, and Jamaica, in Holland and in Ireland, he quitted the army in 1800, at which period the career of most of the military men of the present day commenced. * * * * * MR. WILLIAM STURGEON, well known for scientific attainments, died on the 15th December, at Manchester, where he had for some years filled the office of lecturer on science to the Royal Victoria Gallery of Practical Science. He was born at Whittington, in Lancashire, in 1783, and was apprenticed by his parents to a shoemaker. In 1802, he entered the Westmoreland militia, and two years later he enlisted as a private soldier in the Royal Artillery. While in this corps he devoted his leisure to scientific studies, and appears to have made himself familiar with all the great facts of electricity and magnetism which were then opening to the world. His subsequent career created for him a name in the annals of scientific discovery. * * * * * JOSEPH B. ANTHONY, President Judge of the Eighth Judicial District of Pennsylvania, died at his residence in Williamsport on the 11th January. He was born in Philadelphia, on the 19th day of June, 1795. While young, he for a time taught school in Milton, Northumberland county, at which place he studied law. He went to Ohio, and after an absence of about one year returned to Pennsylvania. In 1818 he was admitted to the bar at Williamsport, where he continued to reside until his death. In 1830 he was elected by the Democratic party to the Senate of Pennsylvania. In the year 1831 he was elected to Congress, and two years after was reëlected by an unprecedented majority. During the early part of the administration of Governor Porter he was appointed Judge of the Nicholson Court of Pennsylvania, and in March, 1844, was appointed President Judge of the Eighth Judicial District. * * * * * MR. OSBALDISTON, the well-known tragedian and theatrical manager, died at his residence, near London, on the 29th December. He was fifty-six or fifty-seven years of age, and besides sustaining tragic characters at most of the London and provincial theatres, he has held the reins of management at the Surrey, Sadler's Wells, Covent-Garden, and City of London theatres. * * * * * THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE, says the _Methodist Quarterly Review_, has sustained another blow in the loss of Professor MAU, of Kiel, who died some weeks ago. His studies lay mostly in the line of New-Testament Theology; and he is known especially by his treatise _Of Death, the Wages of Sin, and of Salvation_ (Vom Tode, des Sünden Solde, u. von d. Erlösung). The work, which is distinguished for its acute and vigorous thought, was written in reply to one on the same subject by Professor Krabbe, of Rostock. Its chief peculiarity is the doctrine that the death of the body is inherent in its constitution, not the effect of sin; and therefore that redemption has regard only to spiritual death. * * * * * MRS. WALLACK, the wife of Mr. James W. Wallack the comedian, and the daughter of the celebrated "Irish Johnstone," died on Christmas day, aged fifty-eight years. * * * * * MADAME CAROLINE JUNOT, the eldest daughter of Schiller, died suddenly on the 19th December, at Wurtzburg, in Bavaria. GENERAL SIR PHINEAS RIALL, K.C.H., died in Paris, early in November. He entered the British Army in 1792, and served in the West Indies, receiving a medal and clasp for his services at Martinique, and Guadaloupe, in 1809 and 1810. In 1813, he served in the American war, and was severely wounded at the battle of Chippewa. * * * * * LIEUT. GENERAL SEWIGHT MAWBY, who served during the wars of Napoleon, and since in India, died lately in London. * * * * * M. MARVY, eminent as a landscape painter and as an engraver; and M. DUBOIS, a distinguished architect, are noticed in the recent Paris obituaries. * * * * * GENERAL ETIENNE JOLY died at Villiers-les-Bel, on the 2d of January. * * * * * HERMANN KRIEGE died at Hoboken on the last day of December. He was of German birth, but spoke the English and the French language with fluency. A Democrat and Socialist by constitution, he devoted all the resources of an ardent nature and ready talents to the triumph of his principles. It is now some eight years since he first removed to this country, and established in New-York a weekly paper called the _Volks-Tribun_, in which he advocated the most radical ideas upon the relations of capital and labor, with as much ability as earnestness. In his views of American politics he inclined to the so-called democratic party, and when the Mexican War commenced gave it a hearty support--not because he had carefully inquired into its justice, but because he regarded the absorption of Mexico, and indeed the entire continent, by the United States, and the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race in the western world, as absolutely essential to the progress of humanity. Though not originally a land reformer, he adopted and vigorously defended not only the doctrine that the earth belongs to the human race and cannot rightfully be trafficked in any more than can the air or the sunlight, but the measures which American reformers have deduced therefrom, namely, land limitation, freedom of the public domain, homestead exemption, &c. During this time he wrote and published in German a history of the United States, as well as a series of translations from the writings of our revolutionary patriots, works of the highest value to our German citizens. The _Volks-Tribun_ ceased to be published in 1847, and for some time after Mr. Kriege gained a livelihood by teaching German. He also gave here, in his native tongue, a course of lectures on German Literature, which were greatly enjoyed by those who attended them. On the breaking out of the Revolution of 1848, he returned to Germany, and took an active share in the democratic movements. He was one of the Supreme Executive Committee, consisting of three members, if we remember rightly, which had its seat at Berlin, and thence conducted a revolutionary propaganda throughout the country. In the spring of 1849 he returned to the United States again, and took editorial charge of the _Illinois Staats Zeitung_ at Chicago. But the reaction which now followed the intense excitement of the previous year in Europe, proved too much for his physical powers, which were far from robust. His health compelled him to resign his connection with that paper and come back to the city. He fell into a sort of apathy which resulted in a partial derangement of his mind, and finally in the complete prostration of his system. After lingering for some months he at last expired with tranquillity, in the thirtieth year of his age. He was a man of extensive acquirements. His knowledge of history was very comprehensive and accurate. His intellect, though not remarkably original or brilliant, was clear and vigorous. His heart was of the manly and noble kind. There is encouragement in the recollection of such a man.--_Tribune._ * * * * * MME. LOUISA HENRIETTA SCHMALZ, the most famous German _Cantatrice_ of the last century, and who for more than thirty years was the Queen of the German Lyrical Stage, has just died in Berlin, aged seventy-nine years. In her youth she was beautiful and she was always remarkable for fascination of manners. * * * * * GEORGE SPENCE, an eminent lawyer, and lecturer on Equity Jurisprudence at Lincoln's Inn, committed suicide in London, on the 12th December. He was born in 1786, educated at a Scotch University, called to the bar in London in 1811, and made a Bencher in 1834. As a writer upon law, Mr. Spence had a high and deserved reputation. His work on "The Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery," is founded partly on Maddock's "Treatise on the Principles and Practice of the High Court of Chancery;" yet it is, in many important particulars, essentially an original work. This able production, the second volume of which appeared in 1849, has been generally commended. * * * * * GENERAL SIR WM. LUMLEY, G. C. B., a distinguished cavalry officer, died in London on the 15th December. He entered the army at the age of eighteen, in 1787, and continued in service through the greater part of his life. In the Irish Rebellion, in 1798, he commanded the 22nd Light Dragoons, and was wounded at Antrim. He was afterwards in Egypt, at the Cape of Good Hope, and in South America, at the capture of Monte Video in 1807. After commanding the advanced force at the taking of Ischia, and after attaining the rank of Major-General, Lumley joined the British army in the Peninsula. He there won great distinction at the first siege of Badajoz, and he led the whole allied cavalry at the battle of Albuera; few, indeed, were more useful during the Peninsular war. * * * * * ROBERT ROSCOE, third son of the historian, died during the early part of December, in his sixty-first year. For some time he followed the profession of the law, in partnership with the late Mr. Edgar Taylor; but he retired from active life, in consequence of infirm health, many years ago. Like all the members of the Roscoe family, he had literary powers, which an unusual amount of self-distrust prevented his exercising largely. The completion of Mr. Fitchett's huge epic of "Alfred" was done by him in fulfilment of a promise, and he wrote other poems, and some small works in prose, not unworthy of a son of William Roscoe. * * * * * MR. RICHIE, a sculptor of some reputation, from Edinburgh, went lately to Rome, where he died during the month of September. His death is mainly attributable to an excursion he made with some friends to Ostio, where, ignorant of the effects of the climate, and of the precautions necessary to be taken in it, he caught the malaria fever, and expired after his return to Rome. He was followed to the English cemetery by most of the English and American artists resident there. His journey to Rome had been for some years the object of his most ardent hopes and wishes. * * * * * M. MARTIN D'AUCH, the only surviving member of the first Constituent Assembly of the First French Republic, and the only one who, at the oath of the Jeu de Paume, refused to sign the declaration of the Tiers-Parti, has just died at Castlenaudary. In David's well-known picture, M. d'Auch is represented with his arms folded on his breast, and refusing to join his colleagues. * * * * * The well-known Dutch painter, MORITZ, died lately at the Hague, aged seventy-seven years. Scientific Miscellany. A Report by five eminent members has been made to the Paris Academy of Sciences, on a paper from Colonel Lesbros, entitled _Hydraulic Experiments relative to the Laws of the Flowing of Water_. Two thousand experiments, carried through four years, are detailed in three hundred and twelve pages of text, with thirty-seven large plates. The work was recommended to the Academy by the Minister of War. The Committee say, at the end of their report:--"Considering the high utility of these experimental researches, prosecuted to the end in the most satisfactory and complete manner; and being convinced of the beneficial effect which the publication of them may have in the promotion of science, and its application to public works,--to navigation, agriculture, hydraulic establishments, and the various branches of industry connected with them,--the Committee are of opinion that the Academy should accord full approbation to the work, and direct the early insertion of it in the Transactions." All parts of the report show that the publication will be of importance to both sides of the Atlantic. * * * * * Of the December number of the _Comte Rendu_ of the Paris Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, nearly twenty pages are occupied by one of the Reports of Blanqui, the Political Economist, on the Rural Populations of France. He made his personal survey, this year, as Commissioner of the Academy. He is preparing a work, in several volumes, on the state, in every particular, of the inhabitants of France, in every part. His abstract of his recent survey of the Departments of the centre, including the basin of the Loire, abounds with curious details, especially as to the diversity of the manner in which the Revolution of February, 1848, affected the rural and city populations in their minds and interests. He speaks of the city of _Saint Etienne_ as _extemporized_ after the American fashion. * * * * * THE AFRICAN EXPLORING EXPEDITION.--Intelligence has been received from the Saharan African Expedition up to the 29th of August last. The expedition had literally fought its way up to Selonfeet in Aheer, near to the territory of the Kaillouee Prince, En-Nour, to whom it is recommended. Mr. Richardson had been obliged to ransom his life and those of his fellow-travellers twice. The whole population of the northern districts of Aheer had been raised against the expedition, joined by all the bandits and robbers who infest that region of the Sahara. The travellers are now in comparative security. The great Soudan route, from Ghat to Aheer, is explored. Of the expedition of Von Muller we have a few days later but not important news. * * * * * The Royal Society of London, at the last annual meeting, awarded "the Royal Medal" to Mr. Benjamin Brodie, F.R.S. (eldest son of Sir B. Brodie, Bart.) for his papers on the chemical nature of wax. It is nearly forty years since the Royal Society awarded the "Copley medal" to Sir Benjamin Brodie for his paper "on poisons;" the only instance of father and son receiving the same distinction. * * * * * Of an Hungarian Academy, Mr. Walsh writes to the _Journal of Commerce_, "Last month Mr. Kenigswater transmitted to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, a very interesting communication relative to the National Academy of Hungary, with the existence of which few of the French savants were acquainted. The idea of establishing a National Society for universal knowledge, dates from the end of the last century. Its accomplishment was delayed by political causes, and the want of adequate funds. But a Magyar Count succeeded, in 1827, in obtaining an act of the Diet for the creation of such an institute. He presented it with a sum of thirty thousand dollars; another magnate gave twenty thousand dollars; many others ten thousand; so that the fund from voluntary contributions, amounts to nearly two hundred thousand dollars--a million of francs. The Academy was inaugurated in 1830, and divided into six sections--Philology, Philosophy, History, Jurisprudence, Mathematics, and the Natural Sciences. Its only President since that period has been Count Joseph Teleki, deemed an excellent historian, to whom and his brothers it is indebted for a sum of twenty-five thousand francs, and a library of fifty thousand volumes. It consists now of nineteen honorary members; thirty-eight active or resident; and of a hundred and twenty-five corresponding members for the several sections. Each section has a weekly meeting; there are monthly and annual sittings of all. Papers on erudite and scientific subjects are read; the Magyar language is alone permitted in its business and transactions, except as to the communications of its foreign correspondents. It has published, at its own expense, a very large number of works; among them a series of critical Commentaries on the ancient monuments of the Magyar language, "which bears no affinity to the European tongues, and differs as much from the Sclavonic as from the Teutonic and the Latin idioms." There is a very important and very rich collection of Hungarian translations of the Latin and Greek classics; another of translations of the principal modern dramatic authors. The Hungarian mind has been prolific for its stage, in original pieces. The Academy awards prizes, confers distinctions, &c., &c." * * * * * An important discovery has been made by M. NICHOLAS ZACH, a lithographer of Munich. He has invented a process by which, by means of a preparation applied to designs traced by a pointed instrument on a plate of any sort of metal, the drawing reproduces itself in relief, in less than an hour, on the plate. M. Zach has given to his discovery the title of _Metallography_. * * * * * GAS FROM WATER.--Mr. Paine's alleged discovery of a new process of procuring gas _from water_, after some months of discredit and ridicule, is acquiring fresh interest and importance. Mr. Elizur Wright, editor of the Boston _Chronotype_, and other gentlemen of ability and intelligence, have visited Worcester, and examined the whole process and the apparatus employed in it, and are perfectly convinced of the reality and importance of the discovery. A similar discovery is said to have been made recently in Paris. Mr. Paine has received from England letters patent for his discovery. [Illustration] Ladies Fashions for February. I. _Ladies' Equestrian Costume._--Riding-habit of green cloth or cashmere; the skirt very long and full, and the corsage fastened from the waist to the throat by a row of fancy silk buttons of the color of the habit. A pardessus or polka jacket of cinnamon-colored cloth or merino. It has rather a deep basquine, and the corsage, which has a turning over collar and lappels, is open in front of the bosom. It is edged with a narrow band of black velvet. The sleeves are long, close to the arms, and slit open at the lower part, showing under sleeves of white cambric of moderate fulness, gathered on bands at the wrists. The pardessus is confined in front (not quite so low as the waist) by a gilt agrafe. Round the throat a small collar of worked muslin or a necktie of plaided ribbon. Round riding-hat of black beaver, with a small cock's-tail plume on one side. Veil of a very thin green or black tulle. Under the habit a jupon of cambric muslin with a deep border of needlework. Pale yellow riding gloves, and black boots. II. _Boy's Dress._--Jacket of bright blue cloth, trimmed on the two fronts with broad silk braid of the same color, placed in rows of three and three together. The sleeves are close at the ends, and the wristbands of the shirt are turned up just sufficiently to cover the edges of the jacket sleeves. Waistcoat of white piqué. Trousers of white and blue stripe. A plain square shirt collar, turned down, and a red silk necktie. Cap of black velvet. Glazed leather boots. [Illustration] III. _An Evening Costume_, of pale lavender silk; the waist and point of a moderate length; the corsage is low, and _à la Grecque_; the short sleeves are open the front of the arm, and trimmed with a looped silk fringe; the skirt is long and full, and has five pieces, _en bias_, set on plain, and edged with fringe corresponding to that on the sleeves. IV. _An elegant Visiting Dress_ of pale stone-colored _taffetas_, the skirt handsomely trimmed with three distinct rows of flounces, each row consisting of four rows of narrow flounces, pinked and waved at the edge, the upper row reaching to a little below the waist; plain high corsage, made open in the front, and trimmed with four narrow frills, put on nearly plain upon the front, where they meet in a point at the waist, and forming a kind of cape over the back and shoulders; half-long sleeves, trimmed to match; under-sleeves and chemisette of fine lawn. Bonnet of pink _velours épinglé_, the exterior decorated with a cluster of pink flowers on the right, a pink blond encircling the edge, being turned back plain over the front, the interior fulled with pink _tulle_, and half wreaths of green heath. _The skirts of ball dresses_ still continue to be very highly trimmed. Flounces are the favorite style of trimming, and not unfrequently as many as ten are put on. Sometimes rows of lace are disposed alternately with flounces of the same material as the dress. For this purpose either black or white lace may be employed; the choice being determined by the tint of the dress. A novel style of trimming for the skirts of evening dresses consists of rows of broad fringe instead of flounces. Another description of _trimming_ resembling fringe, but made of marabout feathers, is employed for ball dresses. Tulle dresses of two or three jupes have the lowest one edged simply with a hem, and the upper ones edged with a row of marabout fringe. The sleeves and berthe should be edged with corresponding trimming. _Manteau Andriana_, of violet velvet, having a small _capuchon_, or hood, decorated with a rich fancy trimming in _passementerie_, to which are attached at regular distances long soft tassels; very wide sleeves, in the Oriental form, decorated to match the _capuchon_; the lower part of the cloak is ornamented with a kind of shell-work in _passementerie_, which forms _galerie_; upon the fronts are placed _brandebourgs_ in Spanish points. _Caps_ intended for morning toilette are very novel in their form and appearance, the most favorite style being a little _coiffe Bretonne_, having _papillons_ of lace turned back, and _chutes_ of lilac and violet velvet; then, again, those the crown of which is formed of _torsades_ of ribbon, over which fall two rows of English lace, and having two half-wreaths of _vapeur_ ribbon encircling the back part. 
31162	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections.) THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE Of Literature, Art, and Science. Vol. V.--NEW-YORK, MARCH 1, 1852--No. III. [Illustration] THE AZTECS AT THE SOCIETY LIBRARY. For several weeks the attention of the curious has been more and more attracted to a remarkable ethnological exhibition at the Society Library. Two persons, scarcely larger than the fabled gentlemen of Lilliput, (though one is twelve or thirteen and the other eighteen years of age), of just and even elegant proportions, and physiognomies striking and peculiar, but not deficient in intellect or refinement, have been visited by throngs of idlers in quest of amusement, wonder-seekers, and the profoundest inquirers into human history. Until very recently, Mexico was properly described as _Terra Incognita_. The remains of nations are there shrouded in oblivion, and cities, in their time surpassing Tadmor and Thebes, untrodden except by the jaguar and the ocelot. A few persons, indeed, attracted by uncertain rumors of ancient grandeur in Palenque, have visited her temples and tombs-- There to track Fallen states and empires o'er a land Which was the mightiest in her high command, And is the loveliest-- but no one has been found to read the hieroglyphics of Tolteca, to disclose the history of the dwellers in Anahuac, to make known the annals of the rise and fall of Tlascala, Otumba, Copan, or Papantla. In the great work of Lord Kingsborough are collected many important remains of Mexican and Aztec art and learning; Mr. Prescott has combined with a masterly hand the traditions of the country; and Mr. Stevens and Mr. Squier have done much in the last few years to render us familiar with the more accessible and probably most significant ruins which illustrate the civilization of the race subdued by the Spaniards; but still Central America is unexplored. In the second volume of the work of Mr. Stevens, he mentions that a Roman Catholic priest of Santa Cruz del Quiche told him marvellous stories of a "large city, with turrets white and glittering in the sun," beyond the Cordilleras, where a people still existed in the condition of the subjects of Montezuma. He proceeds: "The interest awakened in us, was the most thrilling I ever experienced. One look at that city, was worth ten years of an every-day life. If he is right, a place is left where Indians and a city exist, as Cortez and Alvarado found them; there are living men who can solve the mystery that hangs over the ruined cities of America; who can, perhaps, go to Copan and read the inscription on its monuments. No subject more exciting and attractive presents itself to any mind, and the deep impression in my mind will never be effaced. Can it be true? Being now in my sober senses, I do verily believe there is much ground to suppose that what the Padre told us is authentic. That the region referred to does not acknowledge the government of Gautamala, and has never been explored, and that no white man has ever pretended to have entered it; I am satisfied. From other sources we heard that a large _ruined_ city was visible; and we were told of another person who had climbed to the top of the sierra, but on account of the dense clouds rising upon it, he had not been able to see any thing. At all events, the belief at the village of Chajul is general, and a curiosity is aroused that burns to be satisfied. We had a craving desire to reach the mysterious city. No man if so willing to peril his life, could undertake the enterprise, with any hope of success, without hovering for one or two years on the borders of the country, studying the language and character of the adjoining Indians, and making acquaintance with some of the natives. Five hundred men could probably march directly to the city, and the invasion would be more justifiable than any made by Spaniards; but the government is too much occupied with its own wars, and the knowledge could not be procured except at the price of blood. Two young men of good constitution, and who could afford to spend five years, might succeed. If the object of search prove a phantom, in the wild scenes of a new and unexplored country, there are other objects of interest; but, if real, besides the glorious excitement of such a novelty, they will have something to look back upon through life. As to the dangers, they are always magnified, and, in general, peril is discovered soon enough for escape. But, in all probability, if any discovery is made, it will be made by the Padres. As for ourselves, to attempt it alone, ignorant of the language, and with the mozos who were a constant annoyance to us, was out of the question. The most we thought of, was to climb to the top of the sierra, thence to look down upon the mysterious city; but we had difficulties enough in the road before us; it would add ten days to a journey already almost appalling in the perspective; for days the sierra might be covered with clouds; in attempting too much, we might lose all; Palenque was our great point, and we determined not to be diverted from the course we had marked out."--_Vol. ii., p. 193-196._ Mr. Stevens appears to have had some confidence in the Padre's statement, and expresses a belief that the race of the aboriginal inhabitants of Central America is not extinct, but that, scattered perhaps and retired, like our own Indians, into wildernesses which have never been penetrated by white men--erecting buildings of "lime and stone," "with ornaments of sculpture, and plastered," "large courts," and "lofty towers, with high ranges of steps," and carving on tablets of stone mysterious hieroglyphs, there are still in secluded cities "unconquered, unvisited, and unsought aborigines." It is stated in a pamphlet before us, that such a city was discovered in 1849 by three adventurous travellers, and that one of them succeeded in bringing to New York two specimens of its diminutive and peculiar inhabitants--the persons now being exhibited in Broadway. Of the credibility of this account we express no opinion, but the "Aztec Children" have the phrenological and general appearance of the ancient Mexican sculptures, and may well be regarded for their probable origin, their physical structure, or their mere appearance, as among the "most wonderful specimens of humanity." We assent to the following paragraph by Mr. Horace Greeley, whose testimony agrees with the common impressions they have produced: "I hate monstrosities, however remarkable, and am rather repelled than attracted by the idea of their truthfulness. Assuming that there is a propensity in human nature--an 'organ,' as the phrenologists would phrase it--that finds gratification in the inspection and scrutiny of Joice Heths, Woolly Horses, and six-legged Swine, I would rather have it gratified by fabricated and factitious than by natural and veritable productions, and would rather not share in the process from which that gratification is extracted. There is a superabundance of ugliness and deformity which one is obliged to see, without running after and nosing any out. It was, therefore, with some reluctance that I obeyed a polite invitation to visit the Aztec children, and ratify or dispute the commendations hitherto bestowed on them, in these columns and elsewhere. I did not expect to find ogres nor any thing hideous, but, among all similar exhibitions, remembering with pleasure only Tom Thumb, I could not hope to find gratification in the sight of two dwarf Indians. But I was disappointed. These children are simply abridgements or pocket editions of Humanity--bright-eyed, delicate-featured, olive-complexioned little elves, with dark, straight, glossy hair, well-proportioned heads, and animated, pleasing countenances. That their ages are honestly given, and that the boy weighs just about as many pounds as he is years old (twenty), while the girl is about half his age and three pounds lighter, I see no reason at all for doubting. That they are human beings, though of a low grade morally and intellectually, as well as diminutive physically, there can be no doubt; and they are not freaks of Nature, but specimens of a dwindled, minnikin race, who almost realize in bodily form our ideas of the 'brownies,' 'bogles,' and other fanciful creations of a more superstitious age. Their heads, unlike those of dwarfs, are small and not ill-looking, but with very low foreheads and a general conformation strongly confirmatory of certain fundamental assertions of Phrenology. Idiotic they are not; but their intellect and language are those of children of three or four years, to whom their gait also assimilates them; but they have none of childhood's reserve or shyness, are inquisitive and restless, and articulate with manifest efforts and difficulty. To children of three to six or eight years, their incessant pranks and gambols must be a source of intense and unfailing delight. The story that they were procured from an unknown, scarcely approachable Aboriginal City of Central America called _Iximaya_, situated high among the mountains and rarely visited by civilized man, may be true or false; but that they are natives of that part of the world, I cannot doubt. To the moralist, the student, the physiologist, they are subjects deserving of careful scrutiny and thoughtful observation; while to those whose highest motive is the gratification of curiosity, but especially to children, they must be objects of vivid interest." A DAY AT CHATSWORTH. THE PRISON OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, AND PALACE OF THE DUKES OF DEVONSHIRE. [Illustration: THE ENTRANCE GATES.] Among the most magnificent of the palatial homes of England--indeed one of the most rich and splendid residences occupied in all the world by an uncrowned master--is Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, the most beautiful district in the British islands. With some abridgment we transfer to the _International_ an account of a recent visit to Chatsworth, by Mrs. S. C. HALL, with the illustrations by Mr. FINHALT, from the January number of the London _Art-Journal_. Our agreeable authoress, after some general observations respecting the attractions of the neighborhood, proceeds: "We are so little proud of the beauties of England, that the foreigner only hears of Derbyshire as the casket which contains the rich jewel of CHATSWORTH. The setting is worthy of the gem. It ranks foremost among proudly beautiful English mansions; and merits its familiar title of the Palace of the Peak. It was the object of our pilgrimage; and we recalled the history of the nobles of its House. The family of Cavendish is one of our oldest descents; it may be traced lineally from Robert de Gernon, who entered England with the Conqueror, and whose descendant, Roger Gernon, of Grimston, in Suffolk, marrying the daughter and sole heiress of Lord Cavendish in that county, in the reign of Edward II., gave the name of that estate as a surname to his children, which they ever after bore. The study of the law seems to have been for a long period the means of according position and celebrity to the family, Sir William Cavendish, in whose person all the estates conjoined, was Privy Councillor to Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Mary; he had been Gentleman-Usher to Wolsey; and after the fall of the great Cardinal, was retained in the service of Henry VIII. He accumulated much wealth, but chiefly by his third marriage, with Elizabeth, the wealthy widow of Robert Barley, at whose instigation he sold his estates in other parts of England, to purchase lands in Derbyshire, where her great property lay. Hardwick Hall was her paternal residence, but Sir William began to build another at Chatsworth, which he did not live to finish. Ultimately, Elizabeth became the wife of George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury; she was one of the most remarkable women of her time, and the foundress of the two houses of Devonshire and Newcastle. Her second son, William, by the death of his elder brother in 1616, after being created Baron Cavendish, of Hardwick, was in 1618 created Earl of Devonshire. It was happily said of him, 'his learning operated on his conduct, but was seldom shown in his discourse.' His son, the third Earl, was a zealous loyalist; like his father, remarkable for his cultivated taste and learning, perfected under the superintendence of the famous Hobbes of Malmesbury. His eldest son, William, was the first Duke of Devonshire; the friend of Lord Russell, and one of the few who fearlessly testified to his honor on his memorable trial. Wearied of courts, he retired to Chatsworth, which at that time was a quadrangular building, with turrets in the Elizabethan taste; and then, 'as if his mind rose upon the depression of his fortune,' says Kennett, 'he first projected the now glorious pile of Chatsworth;' he pulled down the south side of 'that good old seat,' and rebuilt it on a plan 'so fair an august, that it looked like a model only of what might be done in after ages.' After seven years, he added the other sides, 'yet the building was his least charge, if regard be had to his gardens, water-works, statues, pictures, and other the finest pieces of Art and Nature that could be obtained abroad or at home.' He was highly honored with the favor and confidence of William III. and his successor Anne. Dying in 1707, his son William, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, spent the latter part of his life at Chatsworth, dying there in 1755. It is now the favorite country residence of his great grandson, the sixth Duke and ninth Earl of Devonshire. "The Duke's tastes, as evinced at Chatsworth, are of the purest and happiest order;--and are to be found in the adornments of his rooms, the shelves of his library, the riches of his galleries of art, and the rare and beautiful exotic marvels of his gardens and conservatories. Charles Cotton, in his poem, the _Wonders of the Peak_, wrote, two centuries ago, of the then Earl of Devonshire--and no language can apply with greater truth to the Duke who is now master of Chatsworth: "But that which crowns all this, and does impart A lustre far beyond the pow'r of Art, Is the great Owner; He, whose noble mind For such a Fortune only was design'd. Whose bounties, as the Ocean's bosom wide, Flow in a constant, unexhausted tide Of Hospitality, and free access, Liberal Condescension, cheerfulness, Honor and Truth, as ev'ry of them strove At once to captivate Respect and Love: And with such order all perform'd, and grace, As rivet wonder to the stately place." [Illustration: THE EMPEROR FOUNTAIN.] "Although carriages are permitted to drive from the railway terminus at Rowsley, to the pretty and pleasant inn at Edenson, by a road which passes directly under the house, the stranger should receive his first impressions of Chatsworth from one of the surrounding heights. It is impossible to convey a just idea of its breadth and dignity; the platform upon which it stands is a fitting base for such a structure; the trees, that at intervals relieve and enliven the vast space, are of every rich variety, the terraces nearly twelve hundred feet in extent--'the emperor fountain' throwing its jet two hundred and seventy feet into the air, far overtopping the avenue of majestic trees, of which it forms the centre. The dancing fountain, the great cascade, even the smaller fountains (wonderful objects any where, except here, where there are so many more wonderful) sparkle through the foliage; while all is backed by magnificent hanging woods, and the high lands of Derbyshire, extending from the hills of Matlock to Stony Middleton. And the foreground of the picture is, in its way, equally beautiful; the expansive view, the meadows now broken into green hills and mimic valleys, the groups of fallow deer, and herds of cattle, reposing beneath the shade of wide-spreading chestnuts, or the stately beech--all is harmony to perfection; nothing is wanting to complete the fascination of the whole. The enlarged and cultivated minds which conceived these vast yet minute arrangements, did not consider minor details as unimportant; every tree, and brake, and bush; every ornament, every path, is exactly in its right place, and seems to have ever been there. Nothing, however great, or however small, has escaped consideration; there are no bewildering effects, such as are frequently seen in large domains, and which render it difficult to recall what at the time may have been much admired; all is arranged with the dignity of order; all, however graceful, is substantial; the ornaments sometimes elaborate, never descend into prettiness; the character of the scenery has been borne in mind, and its beauty never outraged by extravagance. All is in harmony with the character which nature in her most generous mood gave to the hills and valleys; God has been gracious to the land, and man has followed in the pathway He has made. [Illustration: THE TEMPLE CASCADE.] [Illustration: THE WELLINGTON ROCK AND CASCADE.] "A month at Chatsworth would hardly suffice to count its beauties; but much may be done in a day, when eyes and ears are open, and the heart beats in sympathy with the beauties of Nature and of Art. It is, perhaps, best to visit the gardens of Chatsworth first; they are little more than half a mile to the north of the park; and there Sir Joseph Paxton is building his new dwelling, or rather adding considerably to the beauty and convenience of the old. In the Kitchen-Gardens, containing twelve acres, there are houses for every species of plant, but the grand attraction is the house which contains the Royal Lily (Victoria Regia), and other lilies and water-plants from various countries. It will be readily believed that the flower-gardens are among the most exquisitely beautiful in Europe; they have been arranged by one of the master minds of the age, and bear evidence of matured knowledge, skill, and taste; the nicest judgment seems to have been exercised over even the smallest matter of detail, while the whole is as perfect a combination as can be conceived of grandeur and loveliness. The walks, lawns, and parterres are lavishly, but unobtrusively, decorated with vases and statues; terraces occur here and there, from which are to be obtained the best views of the adjacent country; 'Patrician trees' at intervals form umbrageous alleys; water is made contributory from a hundred mountain streams and rivulets, to form jets, cascades, and fountains, which, infinitely varied in their 'play,' ramble among lilies, or--it is scarcely an exaggeration to say--fling their spray into the clouds, and descend to refresh the topmost leaves of trees that were in their prime three centuries ago. The most striking and original of the walks is that which leads through mimic Alpine scenery to the great conservatory; here Art has been most triumphant; the rocks, which, have been all brought hither, are so skilfully combined, so richly clad in mosses, so luxuriantly covered with heather, so judiciously based with ferns and water-plants, that you move among or beside them in rare delight at the sudden change which transports you from trim parterres to the utmost wildness of natural beauty. From these again you pass into a garden, in the centre of which is the conservatory, always renowned, but now more than ever, as the prototype of the famous Palace of Glass, which, in this _Annus Mirabilis_, received under its roof six millions of the people of all nations, tongues, and creeds. In extent, the conservatory at Chatsworth is but a pigmy compared with that which glorifies Hyde Park: but it is filled with the rarest Exotics from all parts of the globe--from 'farthest Ind,' from China, from the Himalayas, from Mexico; here you see the rich banana, Eschol's grape hanging in ripe profusion beneath the shadow of immense paper-like leaves; the feathery cocoa-palm, with its head peering almost to the lofty arched roof; the far-famed silk cotton-tree, supplying a sheet of cream-colored blossoms, at a season when all outward vegetable gayety is on the wane: the singular milk-tree of the Caraccas--the fragrant cinnamon and cassia--with thousands of other rare and little-known species of both flowers and fruits. The Italian Garden--opposite the library windows, with its richly colored parterres, and its clustered foliage wreathed around the pillars which support the statues and busts scattered among them, and hanging from one to the other with a luxurious verdure which seems to belong to the south--is a relief to the eye sated with the splendors of the palatial edifice. [Illustration: THE ROCK-WORK.] "The water-works, which were constructed under the direction of M. Grillet, a French artist, were begun in 1690, when a pipe for what was then called 'the great fountain' was laid down; the height of twenty feet to which it threw water being, at that time, considered sufficiently wonderful to justify the hyperbolical language of Cotton: '--should it break or fall, I doubt we should Begin to reckon from the second flood.' It was afterward elevated to fifty feet, and then to ninety-four feet; but it is now celebrated as the most remarkable fountain in the world; it rises to the height of two hundred and sixty-seven feet, and has been named the _Emperor Fountain_, in honor of the visit of the Emperor of Russia to Chatsworth in 1844. Such is the velocity with which the water is ejected, that it is shown to escape at the rate of one hundred miles per minute; for the purpose of supplying it, a reservoir, or immense artificial lake, has been constructed on the hills, above Chatsworth, which is fed by the streams around and the springs on the moors drains being cut for this purpose, commencing at Humberly Brook, on the Chesterfield Road, two miles and a half from the reservoir, which covers eight acres; a pipe winds down the hill side, through which the water passes; and such is its waste, that a diminution of a foot may be perceived when the water-works have been played for three hours. Nothing can exceed the stupendous effect of this column, which may be seen for many miles around, shooting upwards to the sky in varied and graceful evolutions. From this upper lake the waterfalls are also supplied, which are constructed with so natural an effect on the hill side, behind the water-temple, which reminds the spectator of the glories of St. Cloud. From the dome of this temple bursts forth a gush of water that covers its surface, pours through the urns at its sides, and springs up in fountains underneath, thence descending in a long series of step-like falls, until it sinks beneath the rocks at the base, and--after rising again to play as 'the dancing fountain' is conveyed by drains under the garden and park,--being emptied into the Derwent.[1] But we may not forget that our space is limited: to describe the gardens and conservatories of Chatsworth would occupy more pages than we can give to the whole theme; suffice it that the taste and liberality of the Duke of Devonshire, and the skill and judgment of Sir Joseph Paxton, have so combined Nature and Art in this delicious region, as to supply all the enjoyment that may be desired or is attainable, from trees, shrubs, and flowers seen under the happiest arrangement of countries, classes, and colors. [Illustration: THE GREAT CONSERVATORY.] [Illustration: THE ITALIAN GARDEN.] "The erection of the present house is narrated by Lysons, who says, the south front was begun to be rebuilt on the 12th of April, 1687, and the great hall and staircase covered in about the middle of April, 1690; the east front was begun in 1693, and finished in 1700; the south gallery was pulled down and rebuilt in 1703; in 1704, the north front was pulled down; the west front was finished in 1706; and the whole of the building not long afterwards completed, being about twenty years from the time of its commencement. The architect was Mr. William Talman, but in May, 1692, the works were surveyed by Sir Christopher Wren. "On entering--the Lower Hall or Western Lodge contains some very fine antique statuary, and fragments which deserve the especial attention of the connoisseur. Among them are several which were the treasured relics of Canova and Sir Henry Englefield, and others found in Herculaneum, and presented by the King of Naples to 'the beautiful' Duchess of Devonshire. A corridor leads thence to the Great Hall, which is decorated with paintings by the hand of a famous artist in his day--Verrio--celebrated by Pope for his proficiency in ceiling-painting. The effect of the hall is singularly good, with its grand stair and triple arches opening to the principal rooms. The sub-hall, behind, is embellished by a graceful fountain, with the story of Diana and Actæon, and the abundance of water at Chatsworth is sufficient for it to be constantly playing, producing an effect seldom attempted within doors. A long gallery leads to the various rooms inhabited by the Duke, the walls being decorated with a large number of fine pictures by the older masters of the Flemish and Italian schools. In the billiard-room are Landseer's famed picture of Bolton Abbey in the Olden Time, with charming specimens of Collins, and other British painters. [Illustration: THE ENTRANCE HALL] "The chapel is richly decorated with foliage in carved woodwork, which has been erroneously attributed to Grinling Gibbons. It was executed by Thomas Young, who was engaged as the principal carver in wood in 1689, and by a pupil of his, Samuel Watson, a native of Heanor, in Derbyshire, whose claim to the principal ornamental woodcarving at Chatsworth is set forth in verses on his tomb in Heanor Church. "Over the Colonnade on the north side of the quadrangle, is a gallery nearly one hundred feet long in which have been hung a numerous and valuable collection of drawings by the old masters, arranged according to the schools of art of which they are examples. There is no school unrepresented, and as the eye wanders over the thickly-covered wall, it is arrested by sketches from the hands of Raffaelle, Da Vinci, Claude Poussin, Paul Veronese, Salvator Rosa, and the other great men who have made Art immortal. To describe these works would occupy a volume; to study them a life; it is a glorious collection fitly displayed. [Illustration: THE SCULPTURE GALLERY.] "The old state-rooms, which form the upper floors of the south front, occupy the same position as those which were appropriated to the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots during her long residence here. There is, however, but little to see of her period; if we except some needlework at the back of a canopy representing hunting scenes, worked by the hand of the famous Countess of Shrewsbury, popularly known as 'Bess of Hardwick.' "The gallery, ninety feet by twenty-two, originally constructed for dancing, has been fitted up by the present Duke as a library. Among the books which formed the original library at Chatsworth, are several which belonged to the celebrated Hobbes, who was many years a resident at the old hall. The library of Henry Cavendish, and the extensive and valuable collection at Devonshire House have aided to swell its stores. Thin quartos of the rarest order, unique volumes of old poetry, scarce and curious pamphlets by the early printers, first editions of Shakspeare, early pageants, and the rarest dramatic and other popular literature of the Elizabethan era, may be found in this well-ordered room--not to speak of its great treasure, the _Liber Veritalus_ of Claude. [Illustration: QUEEN MARY'S BOWER.] "The statue gallery, a noble room erected by the present Duke, contains a judiciously-selected series of sculptures. The gem of the collection is the famous seated statue of Madame Bonaparte, mother of Napoleon, by Canova. The same style characterizes that of Pauline Borghese, by Campbell. Other works of Canova are here--his statue of Hebe, and Endymion sleeping; a bust of Petrarch's Laura, and the famous Lions, copied by Benaglia from the colossal originals on the monument of Clement XIV., at Rome. Thorwaldsen is abundantly represented by his Night and Morning, and his bas-reliefs of Priam Petitioning for the Body of Hector, and Briseis, taken from Achilles by the Heralds. Schadow's Filatrice, or Spinning Girl, and his classic bas-reliefs are worthy of all admiration. The English school of sculpture appears to advantage in Gibson's fine group, Mars and Cupid, and his bas-relief of Hero and Leander--Chantry's busts of George IV. and Canning--Westmacott's Cymbal Plaery--Wyatt's Musidora, and many others. "Our visit to the mansion may conclude with a brief notice of one of its most interesting relics. Queen Mary's Bower is a sad memorial of the unhappy Queen's fourteen years' imprisonment here. It has been quaintly described as 'an island plat, on the top of a square tower, built in a large pool.' It is reached by a bridge, and in this lonely island-garden did Mary pass many days of a captivity, rendered doubly painful by the jealous bickerings of the Countess of Shrewsbury, who openly complained to Elizabeth of the Queen's intimacy with her husband; an unfounded aspersion, which Mary's urgent solicitations to Elizabeth obliged the Countess to retract, but which led to Mary's removal from the Earl's custody to that of Sir Amias Pawlet. [Illustration: THE HUNTING TOWER.] "To the Hunting-Tower on the hill above the house, the ascent is by a road winding gracefully among venerable trees, planted 'when Elizabeth was Queen,' and occasionally passing beside a fall of water, which dashes among rocks from the moors above. The tower stands on the edge of the steep and thickly-wooded hill; it is built on a platform of stone, reached by a few steps; it is one of the relics of old Chatsworth, and is a characteristic and curious feature of the scene. Such towers were frequently placed near lordly residences in the olden time, for the purpose 'of giving the ladies of those days an opportunity of enjoying the sport of hunting,' which, from the heights above, they saw in the vales beneath. The view from the tower is one of the finest in England. The house and grounds below, embosomed in foliage, peep through the umbrage far beneath your feet; the rapid Derwent courses along through the level valley. The wood opposite crowns the rising ground, above Edensor--the picturesque and beautiful village within whose humble church many members of the noble family are buried. The village itself may be considered as a model of taste; it resembles a group of Italian and Gothic villas, the utmost variety and the most picturesque styles of architecture being adopted for their construction, while the little flower-gardens before them are as carefully tended as those at Chatsworth itself. Upon the hills above are traces of Roman encampments, and from the summit you look down upon the beautiful village of Bakewell, and far-famed Haddon Hall--the antique residence of the dukes of Rutland, an unspoiled relic of the sixteenth century. Looking toward the north, the eye traverses the fertile and beautiful valley of the Derwent, with the quiet little villages of Pilsley, Hassop, and Baslow, consisting of groups of cottages and quiet homesteads, speaking of pastoral life in its most favorable aspect. The eye, following the direction of the stream, is carried over the village of Calver, beyond which the rocks of Stony Middleton converge and shut in the prospect, with their gates of stone; amid distant trees, the village of Eyam, celebrated for its mournful story of the plague, and the heroism of its pastor, is embosomed. The ridge of rock stretches around the plain to the right, and upon the moors are traces of the early Britons in circles of stones and tumuli, with various other singular and deeply-interesting relics of 'the far off past.' Turning to the south, the prospect is bounded by the hills of Matlock; the villages of Darley-le-Dale, and Rowsley, reposing in mid-distance; the entire prospect comprising a series of picturesque mountains, fertile plains, wood, water, and rock, which cannot be surpassed in the world for variety and beauty. The noble domain in the foreground forming the grand centre of the whole: "'This palace, with wild prospects girded round, Where the scorn'd Peak rivals proud Italy.' "It was evening when we ascended this charming hill, and stood beneath the shadow of its famous Hunting Tower. The sun had just set, leaving a landscape of immense extent sleeping beneath rose-colored clouds; the air was balmy and fragrant with the peculiar odor of the pine-trees which topped the summit of the promontory on which we stood. We were told of Taddington Hill--of Beeley Edge--of Brampton Moor--of Robin Hood's bar--of Froggat Edge--until our eyes ached from the desire to distinguish the one from the other. There was Tor this, and Dale that, and such a hall and such a hamlet; but the stillness by which we were surrounded had become so delicious that we longed to enjoy it in solitude. [Illustration: THE BRIDGE ACROSS THE DERWENT.] "What pen can tell of the beams of light that played on the highlands, when, after the fading of that gorgeous sunset, the valley became steeped in a soft blue-gray color, so tender, and clear and pure, that it conveyed the idea of 'atmosphere' to perfection. Then, as the shadows, the soothing shadows of evening, increased around us, the woods seemed to melt into the mountains; the rivers veiled their course by their misty incense to the heavens--wreath after wreath of vapor creeping upwards; and as the distances faded into indistinctness, the bold headlands seemed to grow and prop the clouds; the heavens let down the pall of mystery and darkness with a tender, not terrific, power; earth and sky blended together, softly and gently; the coolness of the air refreshed us, and yet the stillness on that high point was so intense as to become almost painful. As we looked into the valley, lights sprung up in cottage dwellings; and then, softly on a wandering breeze, came at intervals the tolling of a deep bell from the venerable church at Edensor, a token that some one had been summoned to another home--perhaps in one of those pale stars that at first singly, but then in troops, were beaming on us from the pale blue sky. "While slowly descending from our eyrie, amid the varied shadows of a most lustrous moonlight, our eyes fell upon the distant wood which surrounded Haddon Hall; its massive walls, its mouldering tapestries, its stately terrace, its quaint rooms and closets, its protected though decayed records of the olden time, its minstrel gallery--were again present to our minds; and it was a natural and most pleasing contrast--that of the deserted and half-ruined house, with the mansion happily inhabited, filled with so many art-treasures, and presided over by one of the best gentlemen a monarch ever ennobled and a people ever loved." [Illustration: THE MOORISH SUMMER HOUSE.] FOOTNOTES: [1] A quaint whim of the olden time is constructed near one of the walks; it is the model of a willow-tree in copper, which has all the appearance of a living one, situated on a raised mound of earth. From each branch, however, water suddenly bursts, and also small jets from the grassy borders around. It was considered a good jest some years ago to delude novices to examine this tree, and wet them thoroughly by suddenly turning on the water above and around them. This tree was originally made by a London plumber in 1693; but it has been recently repaired by a plumber in the neighborhood of Chesterfield, under the direction of Sir Joseph Paxton. MEN AND WOMEN OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. We have _Louis Quinze_ chairs in our parlors, Louis Quinze carving and gilding about our mirrors, our ladies (in a double sense, of grace and utility), sweep past us in the streets or rustle in the ball-room in Louis Quinze brocades, with the boddice, if not the train, of pattern identical with that of Madame de Pompadour, as depicted in the excellent portrait before us in Mr. Redfield's elegant volumes, and we are, if scandal does not lie more than usual, making very practical acquaintance with Louis Quinze morals. It may be as well, therefore, to become more familiar with a period we find it so convenient to imitate. The great events of French history since 1789, their rapid sequence and ever varying character, have thrown into the shade the previous annals of the kingdom. Especially has this been the case with the period immediately preceding the days of terror. This period has been dispatched in a few sentences, in the opening chapters of works on the French Revolution--in some vague generalities on its profligacy and chaotic infamy. We have had glimpses, through the _Oeil de Boeuf_, at groups of exquisite gentlemen and gay ladies; abbés who wrote every thing but sermons, and were free from the censure of not practising what they preached since they did not preach at all; generals who fought a campaign as deliberately and ceremoniously as they danced a minuet; statesmen whose diplomacy was more of the seraglio than the council; painters who improved on nature, applying the same tricks of art to the landscape as with powders to their curls; and simpering lips of the Marquise, and poets whose highest flights were a sonnet to Pompadour, or a pastoral to a sheep-tending Phillis. Our casual observations of all these people, however, have been vague and slight, for few have probably had patience to follow these worthies to their retirement, and look over their shoulders at the memoirs which every mother's son and daughter of the set, from the prime minister to the cook, found--it is impossible to tell how--time to scribble down for the edification of posterity. In the volumes of Arsene Houssaye before us, these gay but unsubstantial shadows take flesh and blood, and become the _Men and Women_--the living realities of the Eighteenth Century. We have here the most piquant adventures of the _Memoirs_ and the choicest _mots_ of the _Anas_, culled from the hundreds of volumes which weigh down the shelves of the French public libraries. Not only indeed have we the run of the _petites soupers_ of Versailles, but we may wander at will in the coulisses of the Grand Opera, picking up the latest gossip of Camargo or Sophie Arnold, enter the foyer of the classic Theatre Française, or adjourn to the Café Procope to hear the last joke of Piron, or the latest news from Fernay. And better than all these, we may mount, _au cinquième, au sexième_, to the lofty yet humble garret of the author or the artist, and there find, in an age of sickening heartlessness, refreshing scenes of household sincerity, patient endurance of hardship, showing that even that depraved age was not utterly devoid of the heroic and the pure. M. Houssaye is no rigid moralist, he employs no historic pillory, and often displays the painful flippancy of the modern French school on religious points, but he does honor to these better traits of humanity when he meets them. And we are not sure but that the morality of the work is the more impressive for the absence of the didactic. Here is little danger of our falling in love with vice, seductive as she appears in the annals of Louis XV., for we see the rotten canvas as well as the brilliant scene. We remember with the gaudy blossoms of 1740-60, the ashen fruit of 1789-'95. It is as hard to select extracts from M. Houssaye's volumes on account of the _embarras des richesses_, as it would be to choose a gem or two for our drawing-room from a gallery of Watteau and Greuze, or a row of Laucret's _passets_. Much as the reader, we doubt not, will enjoy those we have picked for him, he will still find equal or greater pleasure in those we have left untouched. Here are the first steps in the ascent of Madame de Pompadour to that "bad eminence" she attained of virtual though virtueless Queen of France. The entire sketch is the best life of this celebrated woman with which we are acquainted: "Madame de Pompadour was born in Paris, in 1720. She always said it was 1722. It is affirmed, that Poisson, her father, at least the husband of her mother, was a sutler in the army; some historians state that he was the butcher of the Hospital of the Invalides, and was condemned to be hung; according to Voltaire, she was the daughter of a farmer of Ferté-sous-Jouarre. What matters it, since he who was truly a father to her was the farmer-general, Lenormant de Tourneheim. This gentleman, thinking her worthy of his fortune, took her to his home, and brought her up, as if she had been his own daughter. He gave her the name of Jeanne-Antoinette. She bore till she was sixteen years of age this sweet name of Jeanne. From her infancy, she exhibited a passion for music and drawing. All the first masters of the day were summoned to the hotel of Lenormant de Tourneheim. Her masters did not disgust Jeanne with the fine arts of which she was so fond. Her talent was soon widely known. Fontenelle, Duclos, and Crébillon, who were received at the hotel as men of wit, went about every where, talking of her beauty, her grace, and talent. "Madame de Pompadour was an example of a woman that was both handsome and pretty; the lines of her face possessed all the harmony and elevation of a creation of Raphael's; but instead of the elevated sentiment with which that great master animated his faces, there was the smiling expression of a Parisian woman. She possessed in the highest degree all that gives to the face brilliancy, charm, and sportive gayety. No lady at court had then so noble and coquettish a bearing, such delicate and attractive features, so elegant and graceful a figure. Her mother used always to say, 'A king alone is worthy of my daughter.' Jeanne had an early presentiment of a throne! at first, from the ambitious longings of her mother; afterward, because she believed that she was in love with the king. 'She confessed to me,' says Voltaire, in his memoirs, 'that she had a secret presentiment that the king would fall in love with her, and that she had a violent inclination for him.' There is a time in life when destiny reveals itself. All those who have succeeded in climbing the rugged mountain of human vanity relate that, from their earliest youth, dazzling visions revealed to them their future glory. "Well, how was the throne of France to be reached, the very idea of which made her head turn? In the mean time, full of genius, always admired, and always listened to, she familiarized herself with the life of a beautiful queen; she saw at her feet all the worshippers of the fortune of her father; she gathered about her poets, artists, and philosophers, over whom she already threw a royal protection. "The farmer-general had a nephew, Lenormant d'Etioles. He was an amiable young man, and had the character and manners of a gentleman; he was heir to the immense fortune of the farmer-general, at least, according to law. Jeanne, on her side, had some claim to a share of this fortune. It was a very simple way of making all agreed, by marrying the young people. Jeanne, as we have seen, was already in love with the king; she married D'Etioles without shifting her point in view: Versailles, Versailles, that was her only horizon. Her young husband became desperately enamored of her; but this passion of his, which amounted almost to madness, she never felt in the least. She received it with resignation, as a misfortune that could not last long. "The hotel of the newly-married couple, _Rue-Croix-des-Petits-Champs_, was established on a lordly footing; the best company in Paris left the fashionable _salons_ for that of Madame D'Etioles until that time, there had never been such a gorgeous display of luxury in France. The young bride hoped by this means to make something of a noise at court, and thus excite the curiosity of the king. Day after day passed away in feasts and brilliant entertainments. Celebrated actors, poets, artists, and foreigners, all made their rendezvous at this hotel, the mistress of which was its life and ornament; all the world went there, in one word, except the king." The painters are among the pleasantest personages of Mr. Houssaye's book, as they generally are in whatever society or whatever time we find them, all the world over. Watteau is familiar to us all, if not from his works, at second-hand in engravings, or those dainty little china shepherdesses and shepherds which we have seen on our grandmothers' mantel-pieces, and which are again emerging from the glass corner cupboard to the rosewood and mirrored étagère. The following passages descriptive of his early life, are full of animation: "He was born in 1684, at the time the king of France was bombarding Luxembourg. His family was poor, as a matter of course. He was put to school just long enough not to learn any thing. He was never able to read and write without great difficulty, but it was not in that his strength lay. He learned early to discover genius in a picture, to copy with a happy touch the gay face of Nature. There had been painters in his family, among others, a great uncle, who had died at Antwerp, without leaving any property. The father of Watteau had little leaning toward painting; but he was one of those who let men and things here below take their course. Watteau, therefore, was permitted to take his. Now Watteau was born a painter. God had given him the fire of genius, if not genius. His first master was chance, the greatest of all masters after God. His father lived in the upper story of a house with its gable-end to the street. Watteau had his nose out of the window oftener than over a book; he loved to amuse himself with the varied spectacle of the street. Sometimes it was the fresh-looking Flemish peasant-girl, driving her donkey through the market-place, sometimes the little girls of the neighborhood, playing at shuttlecock during the fine evenings. Peasant-maid and little child were traced in original lines in the memory of the scholar; he already admired the indolent _naïveté_ of the one, the prattling grace of the other. He had his eye also on some smiling female neighbor, such as are to be found every where; but the most attractive spectacle to him was that of some strolling troop of dancers or country-players. On fête-days sellers of elixirs, fortune-tellers, keepers of bears and rattlesnakes, halted under his window. They were sure of a spectator. Watteau suddenly fell into a profound revery at the sight of Gilles and Margot upon the stage; nothing could divert his attention from this amusement, not even the smile of his female neighbor: he smiled at the grotesque coquetries of Margot; he laughed till out of breath at the quips of Gilles. He was frequently seen seated in the window, his legs out, his head bent, holding on with difficulty, but not losing a word or a gesture. What would he not have given to have been the companion of Margot, to kiss the rusty spangles of her robe, to live with her the happy life of careless adventure? Alas! this happiness was not for him. Margot descended from the boards, Gilles became a man as before, the theatre was taken down, Watteau still on the watch; but by degrees he became sad; his friends were departing, departing without him, with their gauze dresses, their scarfs fringed with gold, their silver lace, their silk breeches, and their jokes.--"Those people are truly happy," said he, "they are going to wander gayly about the world, to play comedy wherever they may be, without cares and without tears!"--Watteau, with his twelve-year-old eyes, saw only the fair side of life. He did not guess, be it understood, that beneath every smile of Margot there was a stifled tear. Watteau seems to have always seen with the same eyes; his glance, diverted by the expression and the color, did not descend as far down as the soul. It was somewhat the fault of his times. What had he to do while painting queens of comedy, or dryads of the opera, with the heart, tears, or divine sentiment? "After the strollers had departed, he sketched on the margins of the 'Lives of the Saints,' the profile of Gilles, a gaping clown, or some grotesque scene from the booth. As he often shut himself up in his room with this book, his father, having frequently surprised him in a dreamy and melancholy mood, imagined that he was becoming religious. He, however, soon discovered that Watteau's attachment to the folio was on account of the margin, and not of the text. He carried the book to a painter in the city. This painter, bad as he was, was struck with the original grace of certain of Watteau's figures, and solicited the honor of being his master. In the studio of this worthy man, Watteau did not unlearn all that he had acquired, although he painted for pedlers, male and female saints by the dozen. From this studio he passed to another, which was more profane and more to his taste. Mythology was the great book of the place. Instead of St. Peter, with his eternal keys, or the Magdalen, with her infinite tears, he found a dance of fauns and naiads, Venus, issuing from the waves, or from the net of Vulcan. Watteau bowed amorously before the gods and demigods of Olympus; he had found the gate to his Eden. He progressed daily, thanks to the profane gods, in the religion of art. He was already seen to grow pale under that love of beauty and of glory which swallows up all other loves. On his return from a journey to Antwerp, his friends were astonished at the enthusiasm with which he spoke of the wonders of art. He had beheld the masterpieces of Rubens and Vandyke, the ineffable grace of Murillo's _Virgins_, the ingenuously-grotesque pieces of Teniers and Van Ostade, the beautiful landscapes of Ruysdael. He returned with head bent and eyes fatigued, and his mind filled with lasting recollections. "He was not twenty when he set out for Paris with his master. The opera, in its best days, enlisted the aid of all painters of gracefulness. At the opera, Watteau threw the lightning flashes of his pencil right and left: mountains, lakes, cascades, forests, nothing dismayed him, not even the Camargos, whom he had for models. He ended by taming himself down to this cage of gayly-singing and fluttering birds. A dancing-girl, who had not much to do, deigned to grant the little Flemish dauber, the favor of sitting for her portrait. Fleming as he was, Watteau made the progress of the portrait last longer than the scornfulness of Mademoiselle la Montagne. This was not all: the portrait was considered so graceful in the dancing-world, that sitters came to him every day, on the same terms. "He left the opera with his master, as soon as the new decorations were finished. Besides Gillot, the great designer of fauns and naiads had returned there more flourishing than ever. The master returned to Valenciennes, Watteau remained at Paris, desiring to depend upon his fortune, good or bad. He passed from the opera into the studio of a painter of devotional subjects, who manufactured St. Nicholases for Paris and the provinces, to suit to the price. So Watteau manufactured St. Nicholases, 'My pencil,' he said, 'did penance.' The opera always attracted him; there he could give free scope to all the extravagance of his fancy, to all the charming caprices of his pencil; but at the opera, his master and himself had given way to Gillot; and the latter was not disposed to give way to any body." An allegro morceau from the life of Grétry: A MONK OF A BAD PATTERN. "Other adventures also occurred, to convince Remacle that his fellow-travellers were worthy of him. Ever in dread of the before-mentioned officers, the old smuggler forced them to make a _detour_ of some leagues, to see, as he said with a disinterested air, a superb monastery, where alms were bestowed once a week on all the poor of the country. On entering the great hall, in the midst of a noisy crowd, Grétry saw a fat monk, mounted on a platform, who was angrily superintending this Christian charity. He looked as if he would like rather to exterminate his fellow-creatures than aid them to live; he was just bullying a poor French vagabond who implored his aid. When he suddenly saw the noble face of Grétry he approached the young musician.--'It is curiosity which brings you here,' he remarked with vexation.--'It is true,' said Grétry, bowing; 'the beauty of your monastery, the sublimity of the scenery, and the desire of contemplating the asylum where the unfortunate traveller is received with so much humanity, have drawn us from our route. In beholding you, I have seen the angel of mercy. All the victims of sorrow should bless your edifying gentleness. Tell me, father, do you make as many happy every day as I have just witnessed?' "The monk, irritated by this bantering, begged Grétry to return whence he came.--'Father,' retorted Grétry, 'have the evangelists taught you this mode of bestowing alms, giving with one hand and striking with the other?'--A low murmur was heard through the hall; the monk not knowing what to say, complained of the toothache; the cunning student lost no time, but running up to him with an air of touching compassion, 'I am a surgeon,' he said, as he forced him down on the bench. The monk tried to push him off, but he held on well. 'It is Heaven which has directed me to you, father.' Willing or not, the monk had to open his mouth. 'Courage, father, the great saints were all martyrs! the Saviour was crucified; and you may at least let me pull out a tooth.' The monk struggled: 'Never, never!' he exclaimed. The student turned with great coolness toward the bystanders, who were all laughing in their sleeves. 'My friends,' (he addressed crippled travellers, mountain-brigands, and poor people of every class,) 'my friends, for the love of God, who suffered, come and hold this good father: I do not want him to suffer any longer!' "The beggars understood the joke; four of them separated from the group, and came to the surgeon's aid. The monk struggled furiously, but it was no use to kick and scream; he had to submit, Grétry was not the last to come to his friend's aid; the malicious student seized the first tooth he got hold of, and wrenched the head of the monk by a turn of his elbow, to the great joy of the beggars, who saw themselves revenged in a most opportune manner. 'Well, father, what do you think of it?' asked Grétry, after the operation; 'I am sure you do not now suffer at all!'--The monk shook with rage; the other monks attracted by his cries, soon arrived, but it was too late." The following is among the most touching of narratives. It is exquisitely delivered: GR�TRY'S THREE DAUGHTERS "Grétry was therefore happy. Happy in his wife and children, in his old mother, who had come to sanctify his house, with her sweet and venerable face. Happy in fortune, happy in reputation. The years passed quickly away! He was one day very much astonished to learn that his daughter Jenny was fifteen. Alas! a year afterward the poor child was no longer in the family, neither was happiness. But for this sad history we must return to the past. Grétry, during his sojourn at Rome, in the spring-time of his life, was fond of seeking religious inspiration in the garden of an almost deserted convent. He observed one day, in the summer-house, an old monk of venerable form, who was separating seeds with a meditative air, and at the same time observing them with a microscope. The absent-minded musician approached him in silence. 'Do you like flowers?' the monk asked him. 'Very much,' 'At your age, however, we only cultivate the flowers of life; the culture of the flowers of earth is pleasing only to the man who has fulfilled his task. It is then almost like cultivating his recollection. The flowers recall the birth, the natal land, the garden of the family, and what more? You know better than I who have thrown to forgetfulness all worldly enjoyments!' 'I do not see, father,' replied Grétry, 'why you separate these seeds which seem to me to be all alike. 'Look through this microscope, and see this black speck on those which I place aside; but I wish to carry the horticultural lesson still further.' He took a flower-pot, made six holes in the earth, and planted three of the good seeds, and three of the spotted ones. 'Recollect that the bad ones are on the side of the crack, and when you come and take a walk, do not forget to watch the stalks as they grow.' "Grétry found a melancholy charm in returning frequently to the garden of the convent. As he passed, he each time cast a glance on the old flower-pot. The six stems at first shot up, each equally verdant. The spotted seeds soon grew the longest, to his great surprise. He was about to accuse the old monk of having lost his wits; but what was afterwards his sorrow, when he saw his three plants gradually fading away in their spring-time! With each setting sun a leaf fell and dried up, while the leaves of the other stems thrived more and more with every breeze, every ray of the sun, every drop of dew. He went to dream every day before his dear plants, with exceeding sadness. He soon saw them wither away, even to the last leaf. On the same day the others were in flower. "This accident of nature was a cruel horoscope. Thirty years afterward poor Grétry saw three other flowers alike fated, fade and fall under the wintry wind of death. He had forgotten the name of the flowers of the Roman convent, but in dying he still repeated the names of the others. They were his three daughters, Jenny, Lucile, and Antoinette. 'Ah!' exclaimed the poor musician, in relating the death of his three daughters, 'I have violated the laws of nature to obtain genius. I have watered with my blood the most frivolous of my operas, I have nourished my old mother, I have seized on reputation by exhausting my heart and my soul; Nature has avenged herself on my children! My poor children, I foredoomed them to death!' "Grétry's daughters all died at the age of sixteen. There is something strange in their life and in their death, which strikes the dreamer and the poet. This sport of destiny, this freak of death, this vengeance of Nature, appears here invested with all the charms of romance. You will see. "Jenny had the pale, sweet countenance of a virgin. On seeing her, Greuze said one day, 'If I ever paint Purity, I shall paint Jenny.' 'Make haste!' murmured Grétry, already a prey to sad presentiments. 'Then she is going to be married?' said Greuze. Grétry did not answer. Soon, however, seeking to blind himself, he continued: 'She will be the staff of my old age; like Antigone, she will lead her father into the sun at the decline of life.' "The next day Grétry came unexpectedly upon Jenny, looking more pale and depressed than ever. She was playing on the harpischord, but sweetly and slowly. As she was playing an air from _Richard Coeur-de-Lion_, in a melancholy strain, the poor father fancied that he was listening to the music of angels. One of her friends entered. 'Well, Jenny, you are going to-night to the ball?' 'Yes, yes, to the ball,' answered poor Jenny, looking toward heaven; and suddenly resuming, 'No, I shall not go, my dance is ended.' Grétry pressed his daughter to his heart, 'Jenny, are you suffering?' 'It is over!' said she. "She bent her head and died instantly, without a struggle! Poor Grétry asked if she was asleep. She slept with the angels. "Lucile was a contrast to Jenny; she was a beautiful girl, gay, enthusiastic, and frolicksome, with all the caprices of such a disposition. She was almost a portrait of her father, and possessed, besides, the same heart and the same mind. 'Who knows,' said poor Grétry, 'but that her gayety may save her.' She was unfortunately one of those precocious geniuses who devour their youth. At thirteen she had composed an opera which was played every where, _Le Marriage d'Antonio_. A journalist, a friend of Grétry, who one day found himself in Lucile's apartment, without her being aware of it, so much was she engrossed with her harp, has related the rage and madness which transported her during her contests with inspiration, that was often rebellious. 'She wept, she sang, she struck the harp with incredible energy. She either did not see me, or took no notice of me; for my own part, I wept with joy, in beholding this little girl transported with so glorious a zeal, and so noble an enthusiasm for music.' "Lucile had learned to read music before she knew her alphabet. She had been so long lulled to sleep with Grétry's airs, that at the age when so many other young girls think only of hoops and dolls, she had found sufficient music in her soul for the whole of a charming opera. She was a prodigy. Had it not been for death, who came to seize her at sixteen like her sister, the greatest musician of the eighteenth century would, perhaps, have been a woman. But the twig, scarcely green, snapped at the moment when the poor bird commenced her song. Grétry had Lucile married at the solicitation of his friends. 'Marry her, marry her,' they incessantly repeated; 'if Love has the start of Death, Lucile is safe.' Lucile suffered herself to be married with the resignation of an angel, foreseeing that the marriage would not be of long duration. She suffered herself to be married to one of those artists of the worst order, who have neither the religion of art nor the fire of genius, and who have still less heart, for the heart is the home of genius. The poor Lucile saw at a glance the desert to which her family had exiled her. She consoled herself with a harp and a harpsichord; but her husband, who had been brought up like a slave, cruelly took delight, with a coward's vengeance, in making her feel all the chains of Hymen. She would have died, like Jenny, on her father's bosom, amidst her loving family, after having sung her farewell song; but thanks to this barbarous fellow, she died in his presence, that is to say, alone. At the hour of her death, 'Bring me my harp!' said she, raising herself a little. 'The doctor has forbidden it,' said this savage. She cast a bitter, yet a suppliant look upon him. 'But as I am dying!' said she. 'You will die very well without that.' She fell back on her pillow. 'My poor father,' murmured she, 'I wished to bid you adieu on my harp; but here I am not free except to die!' Lucile, it is the nurse who related the scene, suddenly extended her arms, called Jenny with a broken voice, and fell asleep like her for ever. "Antoinette was sixteen. She was fair and smiling like the morn, but she was fated to die like the others. Grétry prayed and wept, as he saw her growing pale; but death was not stopped so easily. _Cruel that he is, he stops his ears, there is no use to pray to him!_ Grétry, however, still hoped. 'God,' said he, 'will be touched by my thrice bitter tears.' He almost abandoned music, in order to have more time to consecrate to his dear Antoinette. He anticipated all her fancies, dresses, and ornaments, books and excursions,--in a word, she enjoyed to her heart's desire every pleasure the world could afford. At each new toy she smiled with that divine smile which seems formed for heaven. Grétry succeeded in deceiving himself; but she one day revealed to him all her ill-fortune in these words, which accidentally escaped from her: 'My godmother died on the scaffold: she was a godmother of bad augury, Jenny died at sixteen, Lucile died at sixteen, and I am now sixteen myself.' The godmother of Antoinette was the queen Maria Antoinette. "Another day, Antoinette was meditating over a pink at the window. On seeing her with this flower in her hand, Grétry imagined that the poor girl was suffering herself to be carried away by a dream of love. It was the dream of death! He soon heard Antoinette murmur; '_I shall die this spring, this summer, this autumn, this winter!_' She was at the last leaf. 'So much the worse,' she said; 'I should like the autumn better.' 'What do you say, my dear angel?' said Grétry, pressing her to his heart. 'Nothing, nothing! I was playing with death; why do you not let the children play?' "Grétry thought that a southern journey would be a beneficial change; he took his daughter to Lyons, where she had friends. For a short time she returned to her gay and careless manner. Grétry went to work again, and finished _Guillaume Tell_. He went every morning, in search of inspiration, to the chamber of his daughter, who said to him one day, on awaking: 'Your music has always the odor of a poem; this will have that of wild thyme.' "Towards autumn, she again lost her natural gayety. Grétry took his wife aside--'You see your daughter,' said he to her. At this single word, an icy shudder seized both. They shed a torrent of tears. The same day they thought of returning to Paris. 'So we are to go back to Paris', said Antoinette; 'it is well. I shall rejoin there those whom I love.' She spoke of her sisters. After reaching Paris, the poor, fated girl concealed all the ravages of death with care; her heart was sad, but her lips were smiling. She wished to conceal the truth from her father to the end. One day, while she was weeping and hiding her tears, she said to him with an air of gayety: 'You know that I am going to the ball to-morrow, and I want to appear well-dressed there. I want a pearl necklace, and shall look for it when I wake up to-morrow morning.' "She went to the ball. As she set out with her mother, Rouget Delisle, a musician more celebrated at that time than Grétry, said rapturously: 'Ah, Grétry, you are a happy man! What a charming girl! what sweetness and grace!' 'Yes,' said Grétry, in a whisper, 'she is beautiful and still more amiable; she is going to the ball, but in a few weeks we shall follow her together to the cemetery!' 'What a horrible idea! You are losing your senses!' 'Would I were not losing my heart! I had three daughters; she is the only left to me, but already I must weep for her!' "A few days after this ball, she took to her bed, and fell into a sad but beautiful delirium. She had found her sisters again in this world; she walked with them hand in hand; she waltzed in the same saloon; she danced in the same quadrille; she took them to the play: all the while recounting to them her imaginary loves. What a picture for Grétry! 'She had,' he says in his _Memoirs_, some serene moments before death.--She took my hand, and that of her mother, and with a sweet smile, 'I see well,' she murmured, 'that we must bear our destiny; I do not fear death; but what is to become of you two?' She was propped up by her pillow while she spoke with us for the last time. She was laid back, then closed her beautiful eyes, and went to join her sisters! "Grétry is very eloquent in his grief. There Is in this part of his Memoirs a cry which came from his heart, and wrings our own. 'Oh, my friends,' he exclaims, throwing down the pen, 'a tear, a tear upon the beloved tomb of my three lovely flowers, predestined to die, like those of the good Italian monk.'" A MODEL TRAVELLER. One of the most readable of living travellers is certainly our own BAYARD TAYLOR, who is now somewhere in the interior of the African continent, and whose letters in the _Tribune_ are every where perused with the greatest satisfaction. Worthy to be named along with him is the German, FREDERICK GERST�CKER, whose adventures form one of the most interesting features in that cyclopediac journal, the Augsburg _Allgemeine Zeitung_. It is now some two years since Gerstäcker set out upon his present explorations. The backwoods of the United States furnished a broad field for his love of a wild and changeful life, and gave full play to his passion for the study of human character in all its out of the way phases. His accounts of these regions were touched with the most vivid colors; not Cooper nor Irving has more truly reproduced the grand and savage features of American scenery, or the reckless generous daring of the rude backwoodsman, than Gerstäcker, writing, from some chance hut, his nocturnal landing place on the shore of some mighty river in Nebraska or Arkansas. Next we hear of him in South America, and then in California, passing a winter among the miners of the remotest districts, digging gold, hunting, trafficking, fighting in case of need like the rest, and every where sending home the most lively daguerreotypes of the country, the people, and his own adventures among them. Finally, having seen all that was in California, he takes passage for the Sandwich Islands, where he remains long enough to exhaust all the romance remaining, and to gather every sort of useful information. From there he set out upon an indefinite voyage on board of a whaler going to the Southern seas in search of oil. Chance, however, brings him up at Australia: and he at once sets about travelling through the settled portions of the Continent, taking the luck of the day every where with exhaustless good humour, and never getting low spirited, no matter how untoward the mishaps encountered. Less elegant and poetic than Taylor, he dashes ahead with a more perfect indifference to consequences, and a more utter reliance on coming out all right in the end. In his last letter, he gives an account of a voyage in a canoe from Albury, on the upper waters of Hume River, down to Melbourne, at its mouth. He had got out of funds, and was thus obliged to set out on this route contrary to the advice of the settlers at Albury, who represented to him that the danger of being killed and eaten by the natives along shore, who had never come in contact with whites, was inevitable, and that they would be sure to destroy him before he reached his destination. This was, however, only an additional inducement to the trip. While making preparations for it, he fell in with a young fellow-countryman in the settlement, who desired to make the same journey, and who was willing to encounter the risks of the river rather than pay the heavy expenses of the trip by land. They accordingly proceeded to dig a canoe out of a caoutchouc tree, furnished themselves with paddles, a frying-pan, blankets, some crackers, sugar, salt, tea, and powder, and embarked. The river was shallow, and full of windings and sandbanks, sunken caoutchouc trees had planted the stream with frequent snags, and often heavy masses of fallen timber, still adhering to the earth at its roots, and thus preserving its vitality, and flourishing with all the luxuriance of a primitive tropical forest, covered the only part of the channel where the water was deep enough to admit of the passage of their canoe. Thus they toiled on day by day, often getting out into the water to help their vessel over shallows, or to pick up the ducks that Gerstäcker shot, which furnished the only meat for their daily meals. Cloudy or fair, cold or warm, rain or sunshine, found Gerstäcker still in the same flow of spirits, and the notes of his daily experiences show him bearing ill-luck almost as gaily as good. After they had gone some 400 miles, however, their journey by the river came to a sudden end by the oversetting of their canoe, and the loss of almost all their equipments. Gerstäcker saved his rifle and the ammunition that was upon his person; but the remaining powder was spoiled, and the provisions and part of the blankets and clothing were carried away by the current. The canoe sunk, but by holding upon the rope as they jumped out upon the overhanging trunks of trees, the voyagers succeeded in dragging it up again, and freeing it from water. Then one of them dived to the bottom, and managed to bring up the frying-pan and tea-canister. They also recovered part of their blankets, and then, with the frying-pan for their sole paddle, renewed their voyage till they found a good camping-place, where they built a roaring fire to dry themselves, and finally discovered that in the operations of the day each had utterly ruined his shoes, so that they were afterwards forced to go barefoot. In this way they continued for some days, paddling with their frying-pan, and going ashore to get a duck occasionally shot by Gerstäcker. This was often exceedingly painful, from the stubble of the grass along the banks, burnt over by fires accidentally set by the natives. Luckily, through the whole they did not come in contact with the savages at all. At last they reached a settlement, where they swapped their canoe for a couple pair of shoes, and started on foot for the rest of the way. Gerstäcker had for some time desired to get rid of his companion, who was wilful, and by no means a helper in their difficulties. They now came to Woolshed, a place 180 miles distant from Melbourne, whence there were two roads to their destination; the one was perfectly free from the savages, the other was dangerous. Here Gerstäcker separated from his companion, giving him the safe road, and, with his rifle on his arm and his knapsack slung upon his shoulders, struck off alone into the forest-path light-hearted as a boy, and sure, whatever might happen, of enjoying a fresher and healthier excitement in that journey through the woods of Australia than the dwellers in crowded cities enjoy in all their lives. A MYSTERIOUS HISTORY. Paris, says the _Independence Belge_, the leading journal of Brussels, is now occupied not with politics so much as with ghost stories. At the theatres, the _Vampyre_ and the _Imagier de Harlaem_, feed this appetite for supernatural horrors. Among other incidents of that kind, says the _Independance_, the following narrative was told to the company in the _salon_ of an aristocratic Polish lady by the Comte de R----. He had promised to tell a recent adventure with an inhabitant of the other world, and when the clock struck midnight he began, while his auditors gathered around him in breathless attention. His story we translate for the _International_:-- At the beginning of last December, one of his friends, the Marquis de N., came to see him. "You know, Count," said the Marquis, "what an invincible repugnance I feel against returning to my chateau in Normandy, where I had last summer the misfortune to lose my wife. But I left there in a writing desk some important papers, which now happen to be indispensable in a matter of family business. Here is the key; do me the kindness to go and get the papers, for so delicate a mission I can only intrust to you." M. de R. agreed to the request of his friend, and set out the following day. He stopped at a station on the Rouen railroad, whence a drive of two hours brought him to his friend's house. He stopped before it, and a gardener came out and spoke with him through the latticed iron gate, which he did not open. The Count was surprised at this distrust, which even a card of admission from the proprietor of the chateau did not overcome. Finally, after a brief absence, which seemed to have been employed in seeking the advice of some one within, the gardener came back and opened the gate. When the Count entered the court-yard he saw that the blinds on the hundred windows of the chateau were all closed, with one exception, where the blind had fallen off and lay upon the ground. As he afterwards discovered, this window was exactly in the middle of the chamber where his commission was to be executed. The Count's attention had been excited by his singular reception, and he carefully observed every thing. He noticed a small stove-pipe leading into a chimney. "Is the house inhabited?" he inquired. "No," replied the gardener, gruffly, as he opened a door upon a side stairway, which he mounted before the Count, opening at each story the little apertures for light in the queer old fashioned front of the chateau. In the third story, the gardener stopped, and pointing to a door, said, "There." And without adding a word he turned about and went down stairs. The Count opened the door and found himself in a dark ante-chamber. The light from the stairway was sufficient, however, for him to distinguish a second door, which he opened, and through which he went into the apartment lighted from the window whence the blind had fallen. The appearance of the room was cold, bare, and deserted. On the floor stood a vacant bird-cage. The writing-desk indicated to the Count by his friend, stood directly opposite the window. Without further delay, the Count went directly up to the desk and opened it. As he turned the key, the lock creaked very loudly, but at the same moment he was aware of another and a different sound--that of a door opening. The Count turns, and in the centre of an obscure side-room, whose door was open, he sees a white figure, with its arms stretched toward him. "Count!" exclaims a low but most expressive voice, "you come to rob me of Theodore's letters? Why?" (Theodore is not the name of the proprietor of the chateau, at whose request the Count had come.) "Madame!" exclaims M. de R., "who are you?" "Do you not know me, much as I must be altered?" "The Marchioness!" exclaims the Count, astounded and even terrified. "Yes, it is me. We were friends once, and now you come to add terribly to my sufferings! Who sends you? My husband? What does he yet desire? In mercy leave me the letters!" While she said this, the figure made signs to the Count to come nearer. He obeyed, forcing from his mind every suggestion that the apparition was supernatural, and finally convinced that the Marchioness stood before him living, under some strange mystery. He followed her into the second room. She was dressed in a robe, or more properly, a shroud of a gray color. Her beautiful hair, which had for years been the envy of all other women, fell in disorder upon her shoulders. The vague light, which came in from the adjoining room, was just enough for the Count to remark the extraordinary thinness and deathly pallor of the Marchioness. Hardly had he come near her, when she said to him, quickly, almost with vehemence: "I suffer from incredible pains in my head. The cause is in my hair,--for eight months it has not been combed. Count, do me this service--comb it!" After she had sat down, she reached a comb to M. de R., who involuntarily obeyed her. She did not speak again, and he did not dare to. As he confesses, he was greatly agitated. Without doubt he performed his office of waiting-maid badly, for from time to time the lady uttered a slight murmur of complaint. Suddenly she rose, said "Merci!" and vanished in the gloom at the end of the chamber. The Count waited a few moments, vainly stretching his senses, but saw and heard nothing more. Then he resolved to return into the first room. When his eyes fell upon the writing-desk, he perceived that its contents were in the greatest confusion. However, he found the family papers that he had been sent for. After he had closed the desk again he waited a few moments; he called, but there was no answer. Finally he went down stairs, and as he said himself, with steps that did not linger. There was no one in the court-yard. Before the iron gate was the coachman ready to start. M. de R. saw no reason for tarrying longer. On the returning way, as he was seeking to collect his thoughts upon the strange event in the chateau, he perceived that his clothes were covered with the Marchioness's hair. He stopped at Rouen, and two days after returned to Paris. It was the third of December. He sought for the Marquis, but could not find him. It is now thought he must have fallen in the firing on the Boulevard Montmartre, where his club is situated. Such is the narrative which M. de R. had promised to tell in the _salon_ of the old Polish lady, where he was waited for till midnight. He came just as the company were about separating, and showed the hairs of the Marchioness. One of them lies on the table before me. EDWARD EVERETT AND DANIEL WEBSTER. The some time expected new edition of _The Speeches, Forensic Arguments, and Diplomatic Papers_ of DANIEL WEBSTER, has just appeared, in six large and beautifully printed volumes, from the press of Little & Brown, of Boston. The editorial supervision of the work was undertaken by EDWARD EVERETT, who has prefixed to the first volume a brief memoir of the illustrious statesman, orator, and author, from the beginning and the end of which we copy a few important paragraphs. Respecting the past and present collections of these great compositions, Mr. Everett says: "The first collection of Mr. Webster's speeches in the Congress of the United States and on various public occasions, was published in Boston in one volume octavo, in 1830. This volume was more than once reprinted, and in 1835 a second volume was published, containing the speeches made up to that time, and not included in the first collection. Several impressions of these two volumes were called for by the public. In 1843 a third volume was prepared, containing a selection from the speeches of Mr. Webster from the year 1835 till his entrance into the cabinet of General Harrison. In the year 1848 appeared a fourth volume of diplomatic papers, containing a portion of Mr. Webster's official correspondence as Secretary of State. The great favor with which these volumes' have been received throughout the country, and the importance of the subjects discussed in the Senate of the United States after Mr. Webster's return to that body in 1845, have led his friends to think that a valuable service would be rendered to the community by bringing together his speeches of a later date than those contained in the third volume of the former collection, and on political subjects arising since that time. Few periods of our history will be entitled to be remembered by events of greater moment, such as the admission of Texas to the Union, the settlement of the Oregon controversy, the Mexican war, the acquisition of California and other Mexican provinces, and the exciting questions which have grown out of the sudden extension of the territory of the United States. Rarely have public discussions been carried on with greater earnestness, with more important consequences visibly at stake, or with greater ability. The speeches made by Mr. Webster in the Senate, and on public occasions of various kinds, during the progress of these controversies, are more than sufficient to fill two new volumes. The opportunity of their collection has been taken by the enterprising publishers, in compliance with opinions often expressed by the most respectable individuals, and with a manifest public demand, to bring out a new edition of Mr. Webster's speeches in uniform style. Such is the object of the present publication. The first two volumes contain the speeches delivered by him on a great variety of public occasions, commencing with his discourse at Plymouth in December, 1820. Three succeeding volumes embrace the greater part of the speeches delivered in the Massachusetts Convention and in the two houses of Congress, beginning with the speech on the Bank of the United States in 1816. The sixth and last volume contains the legal arguments and addresses to the jury, the diplomatic papers, and letters addressed to various persons on important political questions. "The collection does not embrace the entire series of Mr. Webster's writings. Such a series would have required a larger number of volumes than was deemed advisable with reference to the general circulation of the work. A few juvenile performances have accordingly been omitted, as not of sufficient importance or maturity to be included in the collection. Of the earlier speeches in Congress, some were either not reported at all, or in a manner too imperfect to be preserved without doing injustice to the author. No attempt has been made to collect from the cotemporaneous newspapers or Congressional registers, the short conversational speeches and remarks made by Mr. Webster, as by other members of Congress, in the progress of debate, and sometimes exercising greater influence on the result than the set speeches. Of the addresses to public meetings it has been found impossible to embrace more than a selection, without swelling the work to an unreasonable size. It is believed, however, that the contents of these volumes furnish a fair specimen of Mr. Webster's opinions and sentiments on all the subjects treated, and of his manner of discussing them. The responsibility of deciding what should be omitted and what included, has been left by Mr. Webster to the friends having the charge of the publication, and his own opinion on details of this kind has rarely been taken." This incompleteness, we think, will be regretted by all the parties most deeply interested, as well as by the public generally. Mr. Webster does not often repeat himself, and no man who has said or written so much has said or written so little that is undeserving a place in literature or in history. The next paragraph introduces us to Mr. Webster's birthplace, and to his father: "The interval between the peace of 1763 and the breaking out of the war of the Revolution, was one of excitement and anxiety throughout the Colonies. The great political questions of the day were not only discussed in the towns and cities, but in the villages and hamlets. Captain Webster took a deep interest in those discussions. Like so many of the officers and soldiers of the former war, he obeyed the first call to arms in the new struggle. He commanded a company chiefly composed of his own townspeople, friends, and kindred, who followed him through the greater portion of the war. He was at the battle of White Plains, and was at West Point when the treason of Arnold was discovered. He acted as a Major under Stark at Bennington, and contributed his share to the success of that eventful day. In the last year of the Revolutionary war on the 18th of January, 1782, Daniel Webster was born, in the home which his father had established on the outskirts of civilization. If the character and situation of the place, and the circumstances under which he passed the first year of his life, might seem adverse to the early cultivation of his extraordinary talent, it still cannot be doubted that they possessed influences favorable to elevation and strength of character. The hardships of an infant settlement and border life, the traditions of a long series of Indian wars, and of two mighty national contests, in which an honored parent had borne his part, the anecdotes of Fort William Henry, of Quebec, of Bennington, of West Point, of Wolfe, and Stark, and Washington, the great Iliad and Odyssey of American Independence,--this was the fireside entertainment of the long winter evenings of the secluded village home. Abroad, the uninviting landscape, the harsh and craggy outlines of the hills broken and relieved only by the funereal hemlock and the 'cloud-seeking' pine, the lowlands traversed in every direction by unbridged streams, the tall, charred trunks in the cornfields, that told how stern had been the struggle with the boundless woods, and, at the close of the year, the dismal scene which presents itself in high latitudes in a thinly settled region, when 'The snows descend; and, foul and fierce, All winter drives along the darkened air'-- these are circumstances to leave an abiding impression on the mind of a thoughtful child, and induce an early maturity of character." Of his early professional life, and of some of his contemporaries, Mr. Everett says: "Immediately on his admission to the bar, Mr. Webster went to Amherst, in New Hampshire, where his father's court was in session; from that place he went home with his father. He had intended to establish himself at Portsmouth, which, as the largest town and the seat of the foreign commerce of the State, opened the widest field for practice. But filial duty kept him nearer home. His father was now infirm from the advance of years, and had no other son at home. Under these circumstances Mr. Webster opened an office at Boscawen not far from his father's residence, and commenced the practice of the law in this retired spot. Judge Webster lived but a year after his son's entrance upon the practice of his profession; long enough, however, to hear his first argument in court, and to be gratified with the confident predictions of his future success. "In May, 1807, Mr. Webster was admitted an attorney and counsellor of the Superior Court in New Hampshire, and in September of that year, relinquishing his office in Boscawen to his Brother Ezekiel, he removed to Portsmouth, in conformity with his original intention. Here he remained in the practice of his profession for nine successive years. They were years of assiduous labor, and of unremitted devotion to the study and practice of the law. He was associated with several persons of great eminence, citizens of New Hampshire or of Massachusetts, occasionally practising at the Portsmouth bar. Among the latter were Samuel Dexter and Joseph Storey; of the residents of New Hampshire, Jeremiah Mason was the most distinguished. "During the greater part of Mr. Webster's practice of the law in New Hampshire, Jeremiah Smith was Chief Justice of the state, a learned and excellent judge, whose biography has been written by the Rev. John H. Morrison, and will well repay perusal. Judge Smith was an early and warm friend of Judge Webster, and this friendship descended to the son, and glowed in his breast with fervor till he went to his grave. Although dividing with Mr. Mason the best of the business of Portsmouth, and indeed of all the eastern portion of the State, Mr. Webster's practice was mostly on the circuit. He followed the Superior Court through the principal counties of the state, and was retained in nearly every important cause. It is mentioned by Mr. March, as a somewhat singular fact in his professional life, that, with the exception of the occasions on which he has been associated with the Attorney-General of the United States for the time being, he has hardly appeared ten times as junior counsel. Within the sphere in which he was placed, he may be said to have risen at once to the head of his profession; not, however, like Erskine and some other celebrated British lawyers, by one and the same bound, at once to fame and fortune. The American bar holds forth no such golden prizes, certainly not in the smaller states. Mr. Webster's practice in New Hampshire, though probably as good as that of any of his contemporaries, was never lucrative. Clients were not very rich, nor the concerns litigated such as would carry heavy fees. Although exclusively devoted to his profession, it afforded him no more than a bare livelihood. But the time for which he practised at the New Hampshire bar was probably not lost with reference to his future professional and political eminence. His own standard of legal attainment was high. He was associated with professional brethren fully competent to put his powers to their best proof, and to prevent him from settling down in early life into an easy routine of ordinary professional practice. It was no disadvantage under these circumstances (except in reference to immediate pecuniary benefit), to enjoy some portion of that leisure for general reading, which is almost wholly denied to the lawyer of commanding talents, who steps immediately into full practice in a large city." The memoir, which extends through nine chapters, comprising a survey of the intellectual and political life of Mr. Webster, down to the last year, ends as follows: "Such, in a brief and imperfect narrative, is the public life of Mr. Webster, extending over a period of forty years, marked by the occurrence of events of great importance. It has been the aim of the writer to prevent the pen of the biographer from being too much influenced by the partiality of the friend. Should he seem to the candid not wholly to have escaped that error, (which, however, he trusts will not be the case,) he ventures to hope that it will be forgiven to an intimacy which commenced in the youth of one of the parties and the boyhood of the other, and which has subsisted for nearly half a century. It will be admitted, he thinks, by every one, that this career, however inadequately delineated, has been one of singular eminence and brilliancy. Entering upon public life at the close of the first epoch in the political history of the United States under the present Constitution, Mr. Webster has stood below none of the distinguished men who have impressed their character on the second. "There is a class of public questions in reference to which the opinions of most men are greatly influenced by prejudices founded in natural temperament, early associations, and real or supposed local interest. As far as such questions are concerned, it is too much to hope that, in times of high party excitement, full justice will be done to prominent statesmen by those of their contemporaries who differ from them. We greatly err, however, if candid men of all parties, and in all parts of the country, do not accord to Mr. Webster the praise of having formed to himself a large and generous view of the character of an American statesman, and of having adopted the loftiest standard of public conduct. They will agree that he has conceived, in all its importance, the position of the country as a member of the great family of nations, and as the leading republican government. In reference to domestic politics it will be as generally conceded, that, reposing less than most public men on a party basis, it has been the main object of his life to confirm and perpetuate the great work of the constitutional fathers of the last generation. By their wisdom and patriotic forethought we are blessed with a system in which the several states are brought into a union so admirably composed and balanced,--both complicated and kept distinct with such skill,--as to seem less a work of human prudence than of Providential interposition. Mr. Webster has at all times been fully aware of the evils of anarchy, discord, and civil war at home, and of utter national insignificance abroad, from which the formation of the Union saved us. He has been not less sensible to the obstacles to be overcome, the perils to be encountered, and the sufferings to be borne, before this wonderful framework of government could be established. And he has been persuaded that, if destroyed, it can never be reconstructed. With these views, his life has been consecrated to the maintenance in all their strength of the principles on which the Constitution rests, and to the support of the system created by it. "The key to his whole political course is the belief that, when the Union is dissolved, the internal peace, the vigorous growth, and the prosperity of the states, and the welfare of their inhabitants, are blighted for ever, and that, while the Union endures, all else of trial and calamity which can befall a nation may be remedied or borne. So believing, he has pursued a course which has earned for him an honored name among those who have discharged the duty of good citizens with the most distinguished ability, zeal, and benefit to the country. In the relations of civilized life, there is no higher service which man can render to man, than thus to preserve a wise constitution of government in healthful action. Nor does the most eloquent of the statesmen of antiquity content himself with pronouncing this the highest human merit. In that admirable treatise on the Republic, of which some precious chapters have been restored to us after having been lost for ages, he does not hesitate to affirm, that there is nothing in which human virtue approaches nearer the divine, than in establishing and preserving states." ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. Miss Mitford, in her pleasant _Reminiscences of a Literary Life_, gives the following sketch of this charming poetess: "My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen years ago. She was certainly one of the most interesting persons that I had ever seen. Every body who then saw her said the same; so that it is not merely the impression of my partiality or my enthusiasm. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick, that the translatress of the 'Prometheus' of �schylus, the authoress of the 'Essay on Mind,' was old enough to be introduced into company, in technical language, 'was out.' Through the kindness of another invaluable friend, to whom I owe many obligations, but none so great as this, I saw much of her during my stay in town. We met so constantly and so familiarly that, in spite of the difference of age, intimacy ripened into friendship, and after my return into the country, we corresponded freely and frequently, her letters being just what letters ought to be--her own talk put upon paper. "The next year was a painful one to herself and to all who loved her. She broke a blood-vessel upon the lungs, which did not heal. If there had been consumption in the family, that disease would have intervened. There were no seeds of the fatal English malady in her constitution, and she escaped. Still, however, the vessel did not heal, and after attending her for above a twelvemonth at her father's house in Wimpole street, Dr. Chambers, on the approach of winter, ordered her to a milder climate. Her eldest brother, a brother in heart and talent worthy of such a sister, together with other devoted relatives, accompanied her to Torquay, and there occurred the fatal event which saddened her bloom of youth, and gave a deeper hue of thought and feeling, especially of devotional feeling, to her poetry. I have so often been asked what could be the shadow that had passed over that young heart, that, now that time has softened the first agony, it seems to me right that the world should hear the story of an accident in which there much sorrow, but no blame. "Nearly a twelvemonth had passed, and the invalid, still attended by her affectionate companions, had derived much benefit from the mild sea-breezes of Devonshire. One fine summer morning, her favorite brother, together with two other fine young men, his friends, embarked on board a small sailing-vessel for a trip of a few hours. Excellent sailors all, and familiar with the coast, they sent back the boatmen, and undertook themselves the management of the little craft. Danger was not dreamt of by any one; after the catastrophe, no one could divine the cause, but, in a few minutes after their embarkation, and in sight of their very windows, just as they were crossing the bar, the boat went down, and all who were in her perished. Even the bodies were never found. I was told by a party who were travelling that year in Devonshire and Cornwall, that it was most affecting to see on the corner houses of every village street, on every church door, and almost on every cliff for miles and miles along the coast, handbills, offering large rewards for linen cast ashore, marked with the initials of the beloved dead; for it so chanced that all the three were of the dearest and the best; one, I believe, an only son, the other the son of a widow. "This tragedy nearly killed Elizabeth Barrett. She was utterly prostrated by the horror and the grief, and by a natural but a most unjust feeling that she had been, in some sort, the cause of this great misery. It was not until the following year that she could be removed, in an invalid carriage, and by journeys of twenty miles a day, to her afflicted family and her London home. The house that she occupied at Torquay had been chosen as one of the most sheltered in the place. It stood at the bottom of the cliffs, almost close to the sea; and she told me herself that during that whole winter the sound of the waves rang in her ears like the moans of one dying. Still she clung to literature and to Greek; in all probability she would have died without that wholesome diversion of her thoughts. Her medical attendant did not always understand this. To prevent the remonstrances of her friendly physician, Dr. Barry, she caused a small edition of Plato to be so bound as to resemble a novel. He did not know, skilful and kind though he were, that to her, such books were not an arduous and painful study, but a consolation and a delight. Returned to London, she began the life which she continued for so many years, confined to one large and commodious but darkened chamber, admitting only her own affectionate family and a few devoted friends (I, myself, have often joyfully travelled five-and-forty miles to see her, and returned the same evening without entering another house), reading almost every book worth reading in almost every language, and giving herself, heart and soul, to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess. Gradually her health improved. About four years ago she married Mr. Browning, and immediately accompanied him to Pisa. They then settled at Florence; and this summer I have had the exquisite pleasure of seeing her once more in London with a lovely boy at her knee, almost as well as ever, and telling tales of Italian rambles, of losing herself in chestnut forests, and scrambling on mule-back up the sources of extinct volcanoes. May Heaven continue to her such health and such happiness!" THE HAPPINESS OF OYSTERS. The last _Westminster Review_ contains a pleasant scientific article under the title of "Shell Fish, their Ways and Works," in which the subject so much debated lately, whether the lower orders of animals are capable of reason, has some new and amusing illustrations. Generous and honestly disposed lovers of good dinners will be gratified with the notion that _oysters_ receive as well as communicate a degree of happiness. The reviewer treats the subject in the following luminous manner: "And then the oyster itself--the soul and body of the shell--is there no philosophy in him or her? For now we know that oysters are really he and she, and that Bishop Sprat, when he gravely proposed the study of oyster-beds as a pursuit worthy of the sages who, under the guidance of his co-Bishop, Wilkins, and Sir Christopher Wren, were laying the foundation stones of the Royal Society, was not so far wrong when he discriminated between lady and gentleman oysters. The worthy suggester, it is true, knew no better than to separate them according to the color of their beards; as great a fallacy, as if, in these days of Bloomerism, we should propose to distinguish between males and females by the fashion of their waistcoats or color of their pantaloons; or, before this last great innovation of dress, to, diagnose between a dignitary episcopal and an ancient dame by the comparative length of their respective aprons. In that soft and gelatinous body lies a whole world of vitality and quiet enjoyment. Somebody has styled fossiliferous rocks 'monuments of the felicity of past ages.' An undisturbed oyster-bed is a concentration of happiness in the present. Dormant though the several creatures there congregated seem, each individual is leading the beatified existence of an epicurean god. The world without--its cares and joys, its storms and calms, its passions, evil and good--all are indifferent to the unheeding oyster. Unobservant even of what passes in its immediate vicinity, its whole soul is concentrated in itself; yet not sluggishly and apathetically, for its body is throbbing with life and enjoyment. The mighty ocean is subservient to its pleasures. The rolling waves waft fresh and choice food within its reach, and the flow of the current feeds it without requiring an effort. Each atom of water that comes in contact with its delicate gills involves its imprisoned air to freshen and invigorate the creature's pellucid blood. Invisible to human eye, unless aided by the wonderful inventions of human science, countless millions of vibrating cilia are moving incessantly with synchronic beat on every fibre of each fringing leaflet. Well might old Leeuwenhoek exclaim, when he looked through his microscope at the beard of a shell-fish, 'The motion I saw in the small component parts of it was so incredibly great, that I could not be satisfied with the spectacle; and it is not in the mind of conceive all the motions which I beheld within the compass of a grain of sand.' And yet the Dutch naturalist, unaided by the finer instruments of our time, beheld but a dim and misty indication of the exquisite cilliary apparatus by which these motions are effected. How strange to reflect that all this elaborate and inimitable contrivance has been devised for the well-being of a despised shell-fish? Nor is it merely in the working members of the creature that we find its wonders comprised. There are portions of its frame which seem to serve no essential purpose in its economy: which might be omitted without disturbing the course of its daily duties, and yet so constant in their presence and position, that we cannot doubt their having had their places in the original plan according to which the organization of the mollusk was first put together. These are symbols of organs to be developed in creatures higher in the scale of being; antitypes, it may be, of limbs, and anticipations of undeveloped senses. These are the first draughts of parts to be made out in their details elsewhere; serving, however, an end by their presence, for they are badges of relationship and affinity between one creature and another. In them the oyster-eater and the oyster may find some common bond of sympathy and distant cousinhood. "Had the disputatious and needle-witted schoolmen known of these most curious mysteries of vitality, how vainly subtle would have been their speculations concerning the solution of such enigmas?" THE RECLAIMING OF THE ANGEL. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY ALICE CAREY. Oh smiling land of the sunset, How my heart to thy beauty thrills-- Veiled dimly to-day with the shadow Of the greenest of all thy hills! Where daisies lean to the sunshine, And the winds a plowing go, And break into shining furrows The mists in the vale below; Where the willows hang out their tassels, With the dews, all white and cold, Strung over their wands so limber, Like pearls upon chords of gold; Where in milky hedges of hawthorn The red-winged thrushes sing, And the wild vine, bright and flaunting, Twines many a scarlet ring; Where, under the ripened billows Of the silver-flowing rye, We ran in and out with the zephyrs-- My sunny-haired brother and I. Oh, when the green kirtle of May time, Again o'er the hill-tops is blown, I shall walk the wild paths of the forest, And climb the steep headlands alone-- Pausing not where the slopes of the meadows Are yellow with cowslip beds, Nor where, by the wall of the garden, The hollyhocks lift their bright heads. In hollows that dimple the hill-sides, Our feet till the sunset had been, Where pinks with their spikes of red blossoms, Hedged beds of blue violets in, While to the warm lip of the sunbeam The check of the blush rose inclined, And the pansy's white bosom was flushed with The murmurous love of the wind. But when 'neath the heavy tresses That swept o'er the dying day, The star of the eve like a lover Was hiding his blushes away, As we came to a mournful river That flowed to a lovely shore, "Oh, sister," he said, "I am weary-- I cannot go back any more!" And seeing that round about him The wings of the angels shone-- I parted the locks from his forehead And kissed him and left him alone. But a shadow comes over my spirit Whenever I think of the hours I trusted his feet to the pathway That winds through eternity's flowers. THE ENEMY OF VIRGINIA. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY ASA SMITH, M. D. The London _Examiner_, in reviewing Mr. McCulloch's new work on Wages, etc., seems to be displeased that the author should have expressed himself against the cultivation and use of tobacco, using the following language in its defence: "We quarrel," says the _Examiner_, "with Mr. McCulloch, for bestowing offensive epithets on tobacco, which he is pleased to call 'this filthy and offensive stimulant.' Why it should be more filthy to take a pinch of snuff or a whiff of tobacco smoke, than to swallow a quart of port wine, is not to us intelligible. Of all the stimulants that men have had recourse to, tea and coffee excepted, tobacco is the least pernicious. For the life of you, you cannot get drunk on it, however well disposed, and no man or woman has ever been charged with committing a crime under its influence--save only the factitious crime created by an irrational and excessive duty. For the best part of three centuries, all the nations of the earth have been using tobacco--saint, savage, and sage, being among the consumers." The _Examiner_ may quarrel with Mr. McCulloch for abusing the "weed," if it pleases, but it is a weak argument, if argument it can be called, to say that because taking a pinch of snuff, or a whiff of tobacco, is no worse than taking a quart of port wine, therefore the use of tobacco is good; or because tobacco is the least pernicious of all the stimulants, therefore it is not objectionable; or because one cannot get drunk on it, (which, by the way, is a great mistake,) or because for the best part of three centuries all the nations of the earth have been using tobacco--saint, savage and sage--therefore it is not a "filthy and offensive stimulant." The real object of the _Examiner_, however, in defending the cultivation and use of tobacco, will appear by reading a little further. "Of all people," says the reviewer, "we ourselves are the most moderate consumers; yet the 'filthy and offensive stimulant' _puts four millions and a half a year into our exchequer_. An old financier, like Mr. McCulloch, ought, _on this account alone_, to have treated the weed with more respect." Here then is the true reason why the London _Examiner_ is disposed to quarrel with that author. Nor can it be a "filthy and offensive stimulant," because, forsooth, it puts four millions and a half a year into England's exchequer! Upon this mode of reasoning, what an inestimable blessing must opium be to the world, and especially to the Chinese! We have only to say, that if tobacco yields this immense revenue annually to England, any one who passes through Eastern Virginia and sees the poverty stricken appearance of the thousands of acres of exhausted useless land which present themselves in every direction, will be able to determine at whose expense this has been, in a great measure. If England has been enriched by the traffic in tobacco, its cultivation has been the ruin of Eastern Virginia, by far the larger portion of which now lies in open uncultivated sterile commons, bleaching in the sun. Virginia, we are glad to know, is at last awaking to her true condition and interests; the rapid increase of population in the northern and western states, and the proportionate improvement in their arts, sciences and agricultural industry, have excited in the minds of our people, no inconsiderable attention. While it is true of Western Virginia, that if not advancing with a rapidity equalling that of many of the states, she is nevertheless improving, and with her almost inexhaustible mineral wealth, and productiveness of soil, must continue to improve, if the inhabitants persist in declining to cultivate tobacco. It is painfully true of Eastern Virginia--if we except the cities--that if not just at this time retrograding, the change from a retrograde to a stationary condition has been but recent, and some time must necessarily elapse before any marked evidence of an advance will be perceptible. There are even yet to be found, on the borders of James River and in other parts of Virginia, the wealthy, intelligent, and hospitable planter, living in style and entertaining with liberality scarcely unequal to that which distinguished Virginia in bygone days. Such are still to be encountered, though not often. The Virginia gentleman has been elbowed out. Like the Knickerbockers of New York--most of whom have shaken the ashes from their pipes, and gone off--the old Virginia gentleman has disappeared--but been displaced by a different enemy from that which disturbed the cogitations of the honest Dutchman. While _Mein Herr_, happy and contented, sat in the door of his simple dwelling, enjoying the pleasure of his pipe, he little thought, or if he thought, he little cared perhaps, that the weed which afforded so much comfort to his constitutionally comfortable frame, was drawing forth the substance and exhausting the soil of one of the richest, fairest and most attractive portions of the earth, and would in time cover its surface with a stunted sickly growth of pine, through which the wind might pour her low sad requiem for departed life. The honest Hollander and his good vrow have gone on their journey, exiled by the enterprising Yankee, or by the needy foreigner. The old Virginia gentleman has gone, or is going--finding that his "old fields" are rapidly increasing, and his crop of tobacco year by year diminishing--where no hopes to find a richer soil and a better market. For some years past, most of the counties in Eastern Virginia have produced very little tobacco--some of them none at all. When we recall to mind that this section of Virginia was once by far the richest part of the state, and not to be surpassed by any soil in the country--that it was celebrated for the large crops and excellent quality of its tobacco--we naturally look for the reasons of this change. Now, although our good friends down below, are very sensitive upon the subject, we have no hesitation in saying that the cause generally assigned is the true one, viz., that the soil is exhausted, worn out, and therefore cannot produce tobacco, or any thing else of consequence. And here let me encroach upon established rules and digress for a few moments, leaving tobacco, to give my reader a little advice to aid him should he ever visit the "Old Dominion." In the first place, if you stop at any point along the shore, and especially should you reach Hampton, never speak of "crabs." If you are fond of them, get them the best way you can; you will have no difficulty in finding them; have them cooked, and eat them; but don't ask for them--don't speak of them. The people of Virginia, like those of most other places, are sensitive on some points; and it would be no less impolite to speak of crabs in Hampton, than it would be to speak of "persimmons" in Fluvanna County. In the second place, never speak of the ague and fever, especially if you visit on the rivers, unless it be to say, that the place from which you came is very subject to this complaint. If you take this position you are safe, for should you be attacked (cases have been known even in Virginia), why you have only to say you were so unfortunate as not to leave home quite soon enough to avoid the disease. Mind what I, an M.D. of the calomel and quinine school--no Homoeopathist, but one of the regular troop--say upon this matter. No false charges, either direct or indirect, no inuendos by look, word, or deed, that you might possibly have taken the ague and fever after your arrival! It would be absurd, at least, in you to say so. Not that the people would lay violent hands upon you--and yet on sober second thoughts I am not so sure of this, if we are to judge from the toast given by a young gentleman who attended the Printers' anniversary celebration of the birth of Benjamin Franklin, at the City Hotel, Richmond, on the night of Saturday, 17th of January: "A [symbol: hand] to our friends, and a [symbol: dagger] for our enemies." This, perhaps, might have been simply to vary the entertainment of the evening. We ought not be hasty in drawing conclusions, for another young citizen, on the same occasion, gave the following: "The first families of Virginia--like stars seen in the ocean, they would not be there but for their bright originals in heaven." It is evident from this, although there is no roundabout tedious effort to prove the thing, that the "first families" of Virginia are not only as the stars of heaven in number--not only as thick as stars, but that like the stars they are absolutely in heaven, and, having carried their family dignity thither, are emitting their light to the benighted angels--occasional sparks sometimes dropping down from them to their numberless descendants, living here upon the shadows of their grandfathers. It may not be amiss, in order to save future digression, to say that the Smith in my name is on the paternal side. Should you come to Virginia, you will hear of the Smiths. You have already beard of Pocahontas. Well, the land on which her father lived was famous for its tobacco: it would now be dear at three dollars per acre. A short time since, while on a visit to and in conversation with one of the most distinguished men of Virginia, who owns and resides on a plantation on the James River, a few miles above Richmond--observing the neatness of every thing around, the superiority of his land and the largeness of his wheat and corn crops, I inquired about his tobacco. "I never cultivate tobacco," said he, "I detest it, for it has been the ruin of the state." This is the testimony of one of Virginia's most prominent and most enlightened sons, a graduate of William and Mary College, and the friend of Bishop Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and most of Virginia's other distinguished men, living in his day--one who, in age, has passed the threescore and ten allotted to mankind, and whose dignified yet gentle bearing tells that he is one of the survivors of a class now nearly extinct, "the Virginia gentleman of the old school." Pass through almost any part of Eastern Virginia, and wherever you go will be found immense tracts of land, barren and useless, which were once rich and productive, but which have been exhausted in the cultivation of tobacco. And yet--notwithstanding this, and strange as it may appear--there are still to be found among the people of lower Virginia men who deny that the raising of this crop impoverishes the soil, and who on the contrary insist that the culture of tobacco enriches it. They are ready to acknowledge that the land has been exhausted, but contend that it is owing to the cultivation of corn, and not of tobacco. This, it need hardly be said, is maintained only by those who are engaged in raising tobacco. Facts however are stubborn things, and it may be well to present, just at this time, one or two in point. Virginia, when first settled, possessed a soil far superior to that of any of the Eastern or Middle States. Little or no tobacco has ever been raised in those states, while corn has been one of the chief products. In Virginia, where tobacco has been the principal crop, the land has deteriorated, the rich soil has been exhausted, and become more sterile than were the bleak hills of New England when the Pilgrim reached her shores; while in New England, where corn has been produced in abundance, and but very little tobacco, the soil has been improved until it has become almost or quite as rich as that of Virginia was at any time since its settlement. In this day the most unproductive of the New England states has soil superior to that of Eastern Virginia. Another fact that cannot be denied is, that wherever tobacco has been raised for any length of time, the result has been invariably the same--without a single exception, the land has been exhausted, and abandoned as useless. A particular portion of a plantation, it is true, has been, and may be again for a time, kept very rich by concentrating upon it all the fertilizing substance produced; but this must of course be at the expense of all other parts of the plantation, and operate eventually to the disadvantage of the small part kept rich at the expense of the whole; for unless there be considerable attention paid to other parts of the land, besides those appropriated to the raising of tobacco, the manure will no longer be found on the plantation, and general exhaustion and sterility must follow. From what has been said about tobacco the reader will imagine, perhaps, that I am an enemy to the noxious weed. Not altogether so; but the reason, if not precisely similar to that which calls forth the article in the London _Examiner_, springs from the same impulse: I love a good cigar, and have been in my day an inveterate smoker, but hope, and am now endeavoring, to overcome the useless and enervating habit, more especially since I have seen the poverty and desolation occasioned in Virginia from the cultivation of tobacco. Still I must confess, that even now, like an old war horse when he smells powder, am I, when I come in contact with the odoriferous exhalation of a good cigar. If he with delight snuffs in his expanded nostrils the fumes of saltpetre and charcoal, I, with no less pleasure, inhale the odor of a good Havana. If he chafes and prances to rush into the battle, in me rises an elate spirit, when, in the midst of a band of smokers, I see through the fog, slowly curling and ascending, a miniature gallery of "long nines" issuing from their port-holes, and hear the puffs, and see the smoke. At such a time it is not safe to offer me a cigar, for then I feel like him of the _Examiner_, that it is not well to be too hard upon an enemy. Snuff I detest, and always have detested, notwithstanding the fact that I once bought a gold snuff-box, upon the lid of which I had my family coat-of-arms engraved. "Off again! Why don't you keep to the point?" doubtless exclaims the reader. The truth is, my position as an assailant of tobacco is somewhat peculiar, such as may be appreciated by one who, having had a friend to whom he is under obligation, has been led, upon meeting that friend, and finding him in discredit, to give him the "cold shoulder." It goes hard with my feeling, if not with my conscience, to speak against tobacco. Yet whatever virtue the weed itself may possess, it is now almost universally conceded, that the cultivation of tobacco will ruin a country. Let any one take a survey of lower Virginia, and he cannot help coming to the conclusion, that it not only impoverishes the land, but if followed up for a number of years, will be very apt to impoverish the children of those who engage in its cultivation. Tobacco, say its advocates, is a very profitable crop,--if by profit is meant a large return in money, without reference to any thing else--granted. Much money has been and will be made by cultivating it, and if the parent, as the money is received, would safely invest it for the benefit of himself and children, so that provision would be made for the time when he grows old and they advance, and the land becomes exhausted and useless, they will do very well. But few are sufficiently considerate to make this provision, since it is naturally supposed that a plantation which for a number of years has yielded a superabundance will not be likely to fail in the future. They cannot see that year after year, slowly but surely, the substance of their land is being taken away in the form of tobacco, and that in the end their plantations will be barren and useless. Estates comprising thousands of acres of good land yield annually large incomes, upon which their owners live, with their families, in great affluence. Surrounded by servants who stand ready to attend to every want, the children are reared from their infancy with scarcely a wish ungratified--thereby contracting most expensive habits, and becoming, through the mistaken kindness and indulgence of their parents, altogether unfitted for the hardships of life when adversity comes upon them. It is not, in fact, often the case that parents so situated remember that a change may take place by which they or their children may be thrown upon the world and compelled to rely upon their own exertions for a living. But experience shows that the cultivation of tobacco tends almost inevitably to this. As year after year passes on, section after section of productive land is taken up, and that which has become already exhausted is left to put forth stunted pines, and await the recuperative powers of nature. Thus men live on, with an increasing family and a large and rapidly increasing number of servants to support, until perhaps the head of the house is called away by death, and the estate, if free from incumbrance, is divided among the children. Another generation succeeds, and another division takes place--the soil all this time becoming poor and poorer, and the quantity of land at each subdivision becoming less for every member,--until a general exhaustion is perceived, the land is left a wilderness, and the family scattered over the country; the females, sensitive, well-educated, and spirited, unfitted for contact with the world, and the sons too often branded as spendthrifts because they cannot manage to live upon the land that supported their fathers and their grandfathers. A WORD ABOUT THE ARMY-PRIVATE. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE. We cannot make up our mind to look on this member of the universal Yankee nation with quite as much distrust as is often evinced; with that distrust which lies most where he is least known. Scarce one-sixth of the lookers-on--as the liveried gentleman with a straight knee and stiff upper-lip keeps up the ninety to a minute down the sunny side of Greenwich-street--know aught of the animal, save that every day he struts up and down at about the same hour. Mothers have nothing to say for him, while fathers pass him with quite a look of contempt. Betty, perhaps, is the least timid, and is foolish enough to let spurs and cock-feathers tinge her dreams all night long, beside thinking of them a dozen times next day. If she is from the old country, she has seen them all her life, and has many friends "as went a soldiering." The little boys are more of the Betty order, and always show him the greatest admiration and respect: as may be seen, any day, in the miniature evolutions to the public squares, which always display enthusiasm, if not the accuracy of strategical art. If there is but one private, you will always be sure to find a captain and a drummer, and the army is complete. Why the senior and more intellectual world and his wife are more wary of the Greenwich dragoon, is a question not easy of solution. Perhaps they have read in books that he is apt to commit sundry excesses, not approved of in the Scriptures, after the siege is over; or that, like Captain Dalgetty, he will sometimes fight for plunder; or that his profession tends to "solitude and calling it peace." In a measure these charges are certainly true; partly because poor human nature is frail, and partly that there are tricks in all trades; not, however, we think, to the extent that he should suffer excommunication without a hearing, and while his own or adopted flag waves tranquilly over the land. Give him credit when he deserves it, for it is his especial lot, when down, to have no friends. In stirring times, however, when death is within the walls and the enemy hard pressing at the gates, he has advocates and admirers without number; then he has virtues worthy of notice; and while his body receives the ball, his heart is praised for its devotion. Women have embroidered silken banners for him, to strengthen his courage in their defence, and put fine words thereon to serve him as a rallying cry. In our revolutionary days, when the old continental spirit was abroad, he was respected to a degree unknown perhaps at the present time. The mistress entertained him with a hearty will, and the respectable dame, who, when there was no flannel for making cartridges, dropped something in the street that would make a dozen or more, enjoyed the joke all her life, besides receiving a pension from Congress. That he really receives now so much distrust, it is either because we know nothing about him, or because the lightning age is so far advanced as to leave his humble merits out of sight in the rear. He is rarely noisy--never insults you--and passes well to the right in the street. He is often polite, too; and if he does not, like Jack, offer to carry a lady's muff, it is because his land-service has taught him the big thing is not as heavy as it looks. If a mob defies the law, he will stand the stones until one has knocked him out of the ranks. In short, he is a complete protector and servitor of laws, of mothers, daughters, wives, and property,--and, at the end of all, receiving his pittance with a "Good luck to those who live better and get more." It is not our intention, be it known, to attempt doing away with any prejudice good society may entertain for one of its "sworn defenders;" for, as we have hinted, the soldier is not presumptuous, and never curses his unlucky stars. Our only object is, to give a brief pen-and-ink sketch of the man in his bonded condition; in fine, say so much, or so little, about him, that the uninitiated, sitting by the warm fire-side, and reading of the great cold in latitude 49°, or of the hot pursuit in the Camanche country, may know something of poor Tobin, who is made to suit every climate and every emergency. It has often been a wonder with the curious, why enlistments take place in times of profound peace; and the probable causes that lead to such steps are, of course, much debated. We remember seeing, not long ago, in the newspapers, a brief table of such causes, purporting to come from an army surgeon who examined each recruit on the subject. It was funny, and so startling withal, that while some laughed or stood aghast, others hardly knew which to admire most, the doctor's eccentricity, or his fertile fancy. We know not if in the world's vast library there is any reliable exhibition of such causes. Sir Walter Scott's imaginary Clutterbuck, after some prefatory doubts, leaves the following as perhaps his principal reason: "This happy vacuity of all employment appeared to me so delicious, that it became the primary hint, which, according to the system of Helvetius, as the minister says, determined my infant talents towards the profession I was destined to illustrate." Such may be the idea of some at the present day, though Clutterbuck's declaration is by no means sacred authority. He confesses he was unmilitary enough to damn _reveillé_, and also, to a significant rebuke from his old colonel. "I am no friend to extravagance, Ensign Clutterbuck," said he, "but on the day when we are to pass before the sovereign of the kingdom, in the name of God, I would have at least shown him an inch of clean linen." The truth is, the causes are about as various as the trades they subscribe to, or, if one more than another be predominant, it is "the love of the thing." In the old countries, the drum and fife mingled their music with the first pleasant scenes he ever saw; and, in the new world, the same enlivening sounds also awoke the spirit of childhood. Early associations had merely lain dormant for a season, but those connected with the bright musket and sabre were stronger than those of the spade and figure-maker's mould. Having before us the roll of a company now in service, we will take from it such information as may be pertinent, premising that the record is so nearly like that of every other, that the little difference, as mathematicians say, may be disregarded without affecting the general result. Of the whole number (fifty), thirty-eight are between twenty and thirty years of age, ten between thirty and forty, and two between forty and forty-five. Five were born in England, three in Scotland, twenty-one in Ireland, five in Germany, thirteen in the United States, two in Prussia, and one in Italy. They subscribed, at the time of enlistment, the following trades: five farmers, one spinner, twelve laborers, one weaver, one tinsmith, one painter, two gardeners, three bakers, two shoemakers, two tailors, one carpenter, one printer, one cigar-maker, nine soldiers, four clerks, one turner, and one figure-maker (the Italian); and one pretends to be a lawyer, though, as he may be an imposter, we will have due regard for the sensitive feelings of our legal friends, and set him down as only a pettifogger. Sixteen cannot read or write, and of these, three are of the United States, and the remainder nearly all from Ireland. It is quite a treat in chirography to see the signatures of the residue of the fifty, as they stand in the column. They are not so imposing as John Hancock's on the Declaration, nor as small as a schoolmistress's copy; but assume all shapes and styles, from the "clerkly fist," to the genuine "crow-track," or Chinese characters on a tea-chest. Be it as it may, after he swears to serve well and faithfully the United States against all her enemies and opposers whatsoever, he is sent to New-York harbor, if he is to do foot-work, or to Carlisle Barracks, if a horse is to do it for him; and in one of these places the transformation from civil to military life begins. In two hours after his arrival you would hardly know him. With hair cut close, and a complete revolution in his dress, he looks nothing like the "sovereign" of this mighty Republic you have just seen. He feels the change, too; and as he struts up and down, peacock-like, admiring himself, he realizes that hitherto, for many years perhaps, he has not had a new suit from tip to toe all for nothing. It has saved him weary days of toil, and the little personal liberty he has given in exchange is but dust in the balance. As soon as "the vapors melt into morn," the drum sounds the _reveillé_, and up he rises to receive instructions, which are repeated and repeated until he has them at his tongue's and fingers' ends. At all times, if well-behaved, he receives the necessary recreations and indulgences. To follow him closely throughout his tuition, would be to extend this article more than is intended, besides outraging the military knowledge of many by a recital of elementary instruction. Suffice it to say, after a certain period, he is sent to some post on the sea-board, or to active service on the frontier. The term of enlistment varies in different countries. In England, formerly, it extended to twenty-one years; but the law has lately reduced it to ten. In our service it is for five years only, with the privilege of re-enlisting, if at the end of that time the applicant is still sound in body and mind. He then becomes an "old soldier;" a term which, for some reason or other, is used in civil life with no complimentary import. It has a better meaning in service, however, which is well exemplified in the French proverb, "_Il n'est chasse que de vieux chiens_" (old dogs are staunch hunters). The pay also varies, and it is a feather in the cap of our Government that we may say she is in this respect more liberal than any other. In France, Prussia, Germany, Austria, and Russia, a private, with all economy, cannot save more than six cents a-day; yet when we consider the vast number each is obliged to keep under arms, we cannot suppose them able to pay more. England, whose "public debt is a public blessing," also looms up largely in the battle array, and pays better than her neighbors. With her artillery-private (or gunner as he is more properly called), we will compare a private of the United States artillery, or infantry, since both are on a par in this respect. The former receives one shilling fourpence farthing, or thirty-three and one-half cents, per day, from which, deducting his rations and clothing, there will be left thirteen and one-half cents, or about four dollars per month. The latter receives seven dollars per month, beside his rations and clothing. In the British infantry regiments, the private has but one shilling per day, and the Queen graciously allows him one penny of "beer-money." The artillery-company of England is perhaps the best organized and most efficient in the world; while ours is merely nominal, and a sore subject to the accomplished officers attached to it. It is called artillery, but infantry is more appropriate. At nearly all the forts, the siege pieces and implements of the artillerist are packed away in storehouses, without a particle of benefit to those for whom they are intended. In Mexico, on the march to Orizaba, it had the mortification to trudge along on foot, while midshipmen commanded sections of a light battery, marines were cannoneers, and sailors rode the horses, using, in their amphibious state, the oddest medley of sea-terms and military jargon that ever grated on professional ears. It would have been equally proper to put an artillery captain in command of the frigate Cumberland then lying in the harbor of Vera Cruz, with no less a prospect of brilliant manoeuvres in the hour of battle. The English company is really what it purports to be, and is one hundred and twenty strong, including eight corporals and four bombardiers; besides, it has eight serjeants, three buglers, one second and one first lieutenant, one second captain (brevet-captain in our service), and one first captain. The aggregate here is fifty-eight, not quite one-half of the British company. It will be seen, from what has been said, that the Greenwich dragoon, or foot soldier, is, in five cases out of six, either a Dutchman, Irishman, or American; and an observer can easily perceive in each his national characteristic and temperament. Karl is dull and heavy, generally sober, always ready to lend his pipe, or sing a song. Pat is merry, loves a glass at any time, is handy with the spade, and uses his mother-wit in rounding off a capital story. Jonathan is all these, and something more. He astonishes his trans-atlantic comrades by the incomprehensible manner in which the knave will turn up when he deals the "pictures;" and the neat manner in which he mends the rent in his coat sleeve; is one short of funds, he will generously lend him a safe amount until "next pay day," provided, at that time, fifty per cent. be added thereto; and, if some doubt arises in the mean time, he disposes of his stock to some other speculator; so that Wall-street-like panics are not unfrequent--sometimes among the bulls, sometimes among the bears. If he chooses, he will do more work in less time, or less work in more time, than Karl or Patrick, and he often manages to make a cats-paw of them to scratch out his delinquencies. He knows well how to make use of the technicalities of the limited monarchy under which he is governed, and bewilders dull Karl by his manifold risks and little punishment. It matters not whether our man is cooped up at Eastport, or bivouacked on the Rio-Grande--he is every where essentially the same. With scarce a thought beyond the morrow, he awaits it without impatience. In all places, and at all times, he has great respect for his officer; the gracefully touching his cap being no idle ceremony. At the close of a weary day's march, he will leave his own to put up his tent; build a fire near it, and do every favor he can, freely and willingly. Officers will recognize this fact, and attribute the secret to the strict non-familiarity between them. He has three festivals during the year, when he sets a splendid table and enjoys himself--the two wintry holidays, and the anniversary of our national independence. There are songs and speeches in abundance, and the oratory is genuine. If he lingers long at the table--or under it--there is so much power in the "star spangled banner," or "Erin is my home," that he must become a martyr to their glorious enthusiasm. On one of these occasions, a little lady friend christened an aldermanic German by a patriotic name which since has taken the place of his own. "He was a man of an unbounded stomach," seemingly, with the French maxim ever uppermost in his mind: _Quand la cornemuse est pleine on en chant mieux_ (when the belly is full, the music goes better). An escopette ball at Molino-del-Rey struck him on the head, and the ponderous mass rolling over and over on the ground, he was left for dead, but his time had not yet come. It was a heavy blow, and though alive, yet his reason, at times, is gone: predicting something novel in the history of man to happen on the 4th of April next. Another joyful day is the visit of the paymaster, which happens six times a year. His last supply is gone--hence his anxiety to replenish. He is very happy to see this financial individual--as much so as any body was with the arrival of the first California steamer with two millions in gold. His only drawback is, that his mortal enemy, the sutler, is then invariably ready to face him with a small bill for sundry articles, such as cheese, whiting, and "some drinks." He had no idea it was so large! Generally he pays to a fraction; sometimes, like broken banks, he compromises for a certain per centum; sometimes he repudiates _in toto_. He is often economical, spending nothing, and transmitting his savings to destitute relations at home or abroad. A thousand hearts were gladdened, and a thousand mouths fed, in the poor Emerald Isle during her starving days, by five pound drafts from "the bold soldier-boy" over the water. These substantial tokens from the home of his adoption have a secret but visible effect. The military roads he lays out are found and followed by the recipients of his bounty, and gardens flourish where but yesterday were seen the poles of his old camping ground; new states rise out the wilderness, where he planted the early seed, and watched the glittering things as they grew to the strength and beauty of their starry sisters. He has no enmity or prejudice against any person, sect, or society--loving Broadbrim even more than could reasonably be expected. There is, however, a proverbial enmity between him and Jack the sailor, though it is generally of that Pickwickian nature, that--like Micawber's griefs--easily dissolves over a bowl of punch, and both become as jolly as Friar Tuck and Richard. He is not generally religious; but during divine service is as orderly as a deacon. Sometimes he pleads conscience against Protestant worship, but those interested may be assured that, in five cases out of six, it is only Pat's cunning: true piety can worship God under any form. He is generally a bachelor, and rarely goes beyond the walls for a wife: if Abigail comes inside, he snaps her up as you would a hotcake on a frosty morning. If he dies prematurely, some comrade is ready to console the widow in her affliction; the courtship being a fine exemplification of-- "For you must know a widow's won With brisk attempt and putting on: With ent'ring manfully and urging-- Not slow approaches like a virgin." Should she fail, however, she trips off to another post, where, "her case being duly represented at the mess," she generally manages to get reinstated in the army. It is for the good of the service that marriage is in some degree restricted, and the reasons therefor, none will fail to perceive. The soldier's history and accounts are posted up regularly every two months at Washington--that great ledger of the United States--so that if he has been sentenced to a money stoppage, or broken a tumbler-screw, it is there accurately recorded. He is kept well supplied, where it is practicable, with the news of the day, contained in two dailies, one of which, generally, is from New-York, and the other from Washington. At nearly all the principal posts neat little chapels have been built, and chaplains provided, so that he can worship God, if he desires, morning and evening, and without expense. The discipline governing him is severe; so much so that it is sometimes made ground of complaint. This severity is necessary for the creation and preservation of prompt obedience and clock-like regularity. Severe laws are necessary in every body--civil, religious, and military--and in no one, it is fair to say, are they more strictly enforced than in the army of the United States. The sad penalty of death is rarely, if ever, decreed, except in a regularly constituted war. A fearful instance of it occurred in the valley of Mexico during our late contest with that crumbling republic. Fifty deserters were condemned, but their execution temporarily delayed by the officer in charge, that they might see the stars and stripes run up over the falling castle of Chapultepec, and their last gaze on earth be fixed, as well on the faithful valor of their comrades, as on the flag they had shamelessly forsaken. As their bodies swung to and fro, well relieved against the sky, and the setting sun cast its lurid beams over countenances yet warm in death, many felt the extreme severity yet justice of military law, particularly in an enemy's country. In time of peace the punishment varies from a dishonorable discharge to little temporary deprivations and confinements, except for insubordination and desertion, when the law again permits of considerable severity. The stories about long confinements in dreary holes, starvation, &c., which we sometimes see in the "newspapers of little circulation," are about as true as the nursery tales in children's primers. Of the minor punishments, those which combine an appeal to his pride are the most dreaded, and often have a salutary effect. A mounted trooper would rather perform picket duty all night, in any weather, than once take a stationary gallop on the wooden "bob-tailed nag," facing the other way. The soldier's crimes--nearly all--are criminal only in that they offend against military laws; and if once in a while he has a hearing before Justice M., "you should not," as he contends, "expect all the cardinal virtues for seven dollars a month." Wherever the pioneer has laid his axe, there you will find the soldier, a ready watch-dog between the settler and the savage; and it is a great misnomer for any one "in Congress assembled," to call him one of a "peace establishment," as three-fifths of his number are now on active service. In Florida--encamped in hammocks, or on the banks of some unhealthy stream--he is parleying with the Seminole; while in New Mexico, and over the vast frontier of Texas, he is engaged in deadly war with other tribes: the war seeming to be without a beginning, as well as without an end. In the back grounds of California, he escorts the treaty-making powers, while with his axe he lays out military roads, and measures them as he goes along. After a long march over the Rocky Mountains, or a sea-voyage of twenty thousand miles round the "stormy cape"--we find him, again, constructing block-houses along the Columbia river in Oregon; as much to protect him against the winter's cold, as to serve as means of future defence. The United States constitute a large patch of ground on the map of nations, with much work to do on her extensive frontier; and he is the pack-horse that tugs faithfully at the burden. Far away from the many comforts and conveniences that surround you--in prairie or wilderness--often without clothes, oftener without food--in sunshine and storm--winter and summer--in the midst of sickness and death--relentless foes on the hill-tops and in the valleys--he toils on, with no help from Congress to do what ought to be, but what cannot be done: certainly, cannot be done! for there are well known "treaty stipulations," and the lawmakers expect him, generally on foot, to pursue, overtake, and severely punish the well-mounted savage. Fatal error! every southerly wind brings with it a wail of the dying border man, and Mexico will yet, ere the present "long parliament" closes, present her wrongs before the proper source, the master--not the man. But we have digressed once or twice into extraneous topics: they germinated from the subject, and as they can do no harm, let them stand as written. Do not suppose, then, because the Greenwich recruit is well-clothed, and somewhat proud withal, that his life is one of comparative ease. In virtue of all he does for you and your children's children, while plenty is on your right and on your left hand, rank him far above the hireling in its corrupted sense. He does much for the mite given him in return, and never murmurs at the task. At early dawn he rises, slings his knapsack, fills his canteen from the brook, and, with a scant ration in his haversack, marches a long Texan summer's day, recounting to his comrade some adventure in the old country, or the last news from the white settlements. At night, he spreads his blanket on the ground, his knapsack serves as pillow, and with no covering but the stars, he awaits the coming day to renew the fruitless scout. Perhaps, as he faces the sky, he pictures in the clouds heavily rolling o'er the moon, a mimic battle, in which his company is in the thickest of the fight; perhaps he is dreaming of--what? It is hard to tell: it may be of Betty in return; it may be of a wee sister or dear old mother far away over the seas--whom, since many years he has not seen, and then, God help his sad and weary heart! the prospect is a dreary one indeed of ever beholding "sacred home" again. He has fought well for you in the days of the Knickerbockers and in the valley of Mexico, and the same brave spirit adorns the homely bosom still. If it is charge, he charges; stand, he stands; and should there at any time occur a suspicious retrograde movement, he'll punch you with his bayonet if you call it by any other name than that of masterly retreat. Congress, during its last session, provided a Military Asylum, so that when age or wounds have taken away his once hardy strength, he will have a peaceful refuge, until-- "Hark! the muffled drum sounds the last march of the brave, The soldier retreats to his quarters--the grave-- Under Death, whom he owns his commander-in-chief-- And no more he'll turn out with the ready relief." As we cannot charge Uncle Sam with any extravagant degree of nepotism, we will commend Tobin to a bit more of the spare regard of the people of the United States--the "smartest nation in all creation"--a fact which John Bull pretends to disregard, and, like a traveller lost in the woods, whistles every now and then, to keep his courage up. In these days, when his great captains glide into the affections of the people, and thence into the chair of state, it were well to remember the Italian proverb, _Il sangue del soldato fa grande il capitano_, which, being interpreted, means, "The blood of the soldier makes the glory of the general!" TO SUNDRY CRITICS. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE. BY R. H. STODDARD. He _steals and imitates_, with wiry note The critics squeak, _from Keats, and Tennyson, Shelly, and Hunt, and Wordsworth, every one, And many more whose works we know--by rote!_ But how, good sirs, if God created him Like unto these, though in their radiance dim? Nothing in Nature's round is infinite; The moulds of every kind are similar: A flower is like a flower; a star a star; And all the suns are lit with self-same light. How can he help, since Nature points the way, Following, if so he does, their noble school? Or you, by birth and habit, knave and fool, How can you help the trash you write--for pay? THE "RED FEATHER." AN INDIAN STORY. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY ISAAC M'LELLAN. A century ago, the deep shadows of the untrimmed wilderness overspread the broad valleys and wild hills of western New-York. The sound of the squatter's axe had not then aroused the echoes of those remote solitudes; nor the smoke of the frontiersman's cabin curled above the tall branching oaks and the solemn hemlocks of the primeval forest. The ploughshare had not then turned the fertile glebe, nor the cattle browsed upon the tender herbage of that region, now so populous and cultivated. The red stag there shook his branching antlers, and bounded fearlessly through the open glades of the wood, or led the dappled doe or fawn, at rosy dawn, or mellow eventide, to drink at the ice-cold water-course, or the pellucid surface of the lake. The shaggy bear prowled in the briery thicket, or fed on the acorns that autumn shook down from the oak; and the tawny panther ranged unmolested in the rocky fastnesses of the hills, or lay in the leafy covert for its prey. The Indian hunter was then lord of the land. The Mohawk and the Oneida held the region from the waters of the Hudson to the shores where Erie and Ontario rolled upon the beach; and the smoke of the wigwam ascended by many a quiet stream and wood. The hunter's rifle echoed among the hills, and his arrow whistled in the glade--the war-dance and battle-song resounded in every valley; and the sharp canoe, urged by the flashing paddle, skimmed every stream and lake. Many years since, a small band of marksmen of the Mohawk tribe, having wandered far from their hunting-ground, were ambushed by a war-party of the Oneidas, and their chief, Owaka, was slain in the contest. Wauchee, or the Red-Feather, the only son of the old chief, and now the head of the nation of the Mohawks, had been deeply distressed at his father's loss, and had sworn that he would take the scalp of an Oneida, before the flowers of another spring should bloom over his father's grave. In the leafy month of June, the young chief wandered afar from the lovely valley of his native river in pursuit of a small hunting-party of the Oneidas who were said to be prowling in the neighborhood. He had followed for many days the trail of the fugitives, and had often come upon their deserted camp-fires, but had not yet overtaken them. They were on their return to their village, which was situated on the shores of the Ontario, where the Niagara river, after its mighty plunge at the Falls, empties into its frothy abyss. On a pleasant evening of summer-time, he paused to encamp for the night in a place where a transparent streamlet poured its crystal tribute into the bosom of the Genessee. A dense and lofty grove of pines advanced their ranks to the very edge of the stream, and afforded him a faithful shelter from the dews and breezes of night. The hunter soon enkindled a roaring fire from the decayed and fallen branches of trees, and while his supper of venison broiled upon its embers, he flung himself upon the turf, wearied with his march. The Indian was a noble specimen of his race. His shapely limbs indicated the presence of extraordinary strength and activity. He was clad in a buckskin hunting-frock, handsomely ornamented with quills and feathers. His deer-skin leggins were fringed with the red-stained hair of some wild animal, and his neat moccasons were adorned in the extreme of savage fashion. On his head was placed a bunch of eagle-feathers, which fluttered gayly in the wind. A heavy rifle lay at his side, with its ornamented pouch and horn. In his belt were thrust the fatal knife and hatchet. A huge wolf-hound, the only companion of his expedition, stretched its limbs before the blaze, watching with hungry eyes the progress of the evening meal. But the night passed not away without adventure. A thick darkness had now fallen upon the woods, and the ruddy flames of the fire but partially illuminated the rough black shafts of the pines, whose plumed branches sighed mournfully overhead. Suddenly the hound sprang to his feet, with a fierce growl, at the same time glaring upward into the thick recesses of a towering pine-tree. For a moment the sharp eye of the hunter could discern no object of alarm; but he soon heard the branches creak, as with the movements of some wild creature. He presently heard a growl among the tree-tops, and discerned two flaming globes of fire, which he knew to be the eyeballs of some animal, illuminated by the flashes of his camp-fire. In an instant his rifle was poised at his shoulder, and its glittering sight brought in range with the shining objects of its alarm. For an instant the heavy tube was held motionless at its aim, and then the sharp crack of the weapon sounded on the air. Before the smoke of the discharge had dissolved in the breeze, a dark object tumbled headlong among the boughs, and at length plunged headlong in the midst of the flames, scattering the flashing sparks in all directions. With a furious yell the hound fastened upon the prey, and soon dragged forth from the flames the lifeless body of an immense panther, from one of whose perforated eyes the life-blood flowed in a copious stream. The Indian was greatly elated at his successful shot, and after removing with his knife one of its sharp claws as a trophy, and heaping fresh logs on the flames, he spread out his blanket and resigned himself to slumber. The morning sun had not drank up the dew-drops that sparkled like gems on herb and foliage before the young hunter had again resumed his march. He followed with unerring precision the trail of the fugitives through thorny thicket and quaking morass, and ere the evening sun had dropped behind the hills, he came upon the encampment of his foe. The party had flung themselves upon the soft turf, beneath the drooping branches of a grove of cedars, and were enjoying their evening pipe, while a huge side of venison smoked upon the embers. The group consisted of tall and stalwart warriors, whose brawny limbs seemed well able to triumph in any act of savage barbarity they might be called upon to undertake. Some of them wore frocks of buckskin, and leggins of bright-colored cloth, ornamented with strings of wampum, tin trinkets and glass beads, that jingled with every motion of the wearer. Some wore feathers from the eagle's wing on their heads, as marks of rank. At the side of most of them rested an ornamented gun, while pouches and horns were suspended from the branches around. Each warrior was encircled with a belt of hide, in which glittered the usual implements of the chase and war. Some of the inferior ones carried only a stout ash bow, a sheaf of feathered arrows, and a weighty club of bone, adorned with quills and colored feathers. The cunning Wauchee crept cautiously within a short distance of the camp, trusting that during the drowsy hours of the night he should be able to strike a blow; but to his chagrin he perceived that the party was on the alert, and that two wakeful sentinels constantly kept watch, while the others slept. On the following morning the party resumed their march, still followed by their pursuer, who hoped to cut off some straggler during the retreat; but no such victim fell in his way. In the course of a day or two the roar of waters, and the ascending mist of the cataract, warned them of their approach to the mighty falls of Niagara; and soon the Oneida party had encamped among the gloomy pines and hemlocks opposite the torrent. Wauchee, though he had often heard among the dim traditions of his race, of the existence of an awful torrent of water, that poured for ever with a voice of thunder, among the remote woods of the wilderness, had never yet gazed on this stupendous spectacle, and now, as he listened to its earthquake voice with wonder, some such thoughts as the following may have agitated his mind: 'Tis pouring, 'tis pouring With a wild eternal roar; Like a sea, that's burst its barriers Resounding evermore: Like an ocean lash'd to fury, And toiling to o'erwhelm With its devastating billows The earth's extended realm. It falleth, still it falleth, A deluge o'er the rocks; It calleth, still it calleth, With tones likes earthquake shocks: For ever and for ever, It sounds its mighty hymn; Like a thousand anthems pealing In some cathedral dim. The dark pines shrink and tremble As o'er the abyss they lean, And falling are ingulf'd like reeds With all their branches green; And oaks from northern mountains, O'erwhelm'd by some fierce blast, Are rent like autumn flowerets, In that vast caldron cast. A thousand years ago the tribes In wonder trod its side: Those tribes have vanish'd, but the Fall Still pours as full a tide; A thousand more may pass away-- A future race of men May view the awful cataract Unchang'd dash down its glen. How passing vain doth mortal pride Beside this torrent seem! An army doth not march to war With half its sound and gleam; While o'er it, like a banner, The rainbow spreads its fold, Colored with prismy glories Of purple and of gold. The wild deer of the forest At the river stoop to drink, But from the rush of waters All panic-stricken shrink; And the mountain eagles sailing O'er the cataract's foaming brim Alarmed, on soaring pinions, Away, o'er Heaven's clouds skim. O! who that views the wonders Of Nature o'er the earth; The high o'erhanging mountains Where thunders have their birth: And this eternal torrent, Majestically grand-- Can doubt the Spirit's presence, And a Creating Hand? On the following day the Oneidas resumed their march, and at nightfall reached an American military post, then just established at the entrance of the Niagara river, on the shore of Lake Ontario, called the Fort Niagara. The Oneidas entered within the barriers of the little stockade fortress, and there established their camp, and were soon busily engaged in arranging a treaty with the commandant of the place. Wauchee followed closely after, like a bloodhound on the trail, and selected his camp in a little grove just without the gates of the fortress. He then boldly sauntered within the walls, and mingled with cool indifference among the groups of soldiery, and the armed warriors of his foe. But under the semblance of friendship, lurked the fire of a spirit burning with hatred; and he could scarce restrain himself from plunging among them, and immolating numbers on the spot. Still the wary prudence of the savage restrained his hand, and he continued for a day or two to mingle in peace among them. The crafty Oneidas soon suspected the designs of the stranger, and they conferred among themselves, as to the surest mode of guarding against the meditated blow of Wauchee. They well recognized by his paint and garb the Mohawk warrior, and they resolved to baffle his assault, and for ever prevent his return to the people of his tribe. But the designs of a bold and resolute man are not easily fathomed or thwarted, and the rude walls of the frontier fortress were unable to shut out so brave and active a warrior as the Mohawk chief. He was trained to stratagem, and sworn to vengeance; and now that his wild blood boiled with fury, no ramparts of mere wood and stone could effectually interpose between the avenger and the destroyers of his sire. During the silence and gloom of night he succeeded in scaling the palings of the walls, and secretly and successfully made his way into the very heart of the fortress. He was surrounded with numbers of armed men slumbering upon their weapons; and many a pacing sentinel was stationed upon the breast-works, to guard against an open or a secret foe: yet the soft step and the gliding figure of the Mohawk passed along in the darkness unheard and undetected. After moving about swiftly among the sleepers for some time, he at length came upon the prostrate group of the Oneidas. Trusting to the vigilance of the garrison, the savages were all buried in slumber, and were outspread along the grassy floor, enwrapped in their blankets. The wily Mohawk went in like a serpent among them, and having recognized their sleeping chief by the eagle plume upon his head, he drew his scalp-knife, and with one mortal blow drove the weapon to the very heart of the dreamer. He then in an instant severed the bleeding scalp from the head, and sprang away to make good his escape, but was followed as instantly by a dozen dark forms, which bounded after him like so many leaping panthers. Still the daring young brave would have successfully effected his escape but for an unfortunate accident. With one quick bound he overleaped the barriers of the fort, but in alighting heavily on the sod he severely sprained his ankle, which so disabled him, that he fell an easy prey into the hands of his pursuers. He was instantly firmly bound with cords, and dragged back, amidst savage jeers and menaces, into the fortress. On the following day the luckless captive was led away by his enemies to their neighboring village, which was situated at Messessaga Point, near the fortress. The warriors sadly bore, on a litter of branches, the body of their slain chieftain, leading beside it their pinioned captive. As they approached to the little rude hamlet where they dwelt, a motley crowd of old men, women, and children, came forth to welcome their return; but when they beheld the ghastly body of their late chief, and the drooping looks of the warriors, their joyful cries were exchanged for wails of lamentation, and they tore their hair, and expressed the most violent emotions of grief. They wept over the bleeding corpse of the victim, while they derided and buffeted the helpless prisoner. But the stout-hearted Wauchee moved onwards with a firm and erect gait, disturbed neither by the blows nor the menaces that were directed against him. He only exclaimed, "You have slain my chief and father, and lo! I have also struck down the head of your nation. It is well. Slay me--torture me, if you will. I can bear unmoved any torments you may inflict." The captive, still bound securely with thongs of deer-hide, was thrust into a cabin; and two stout warriors were appointed to watch over him by day and night, and were charged to use the utmost vigilance in preventing his escape. A few dried bunches of fern were spread for his couch; and he was supplied with a wooden bowl of water and a handful of pounded corn to satisfy his appetite; and it was ordered that Monega, the most skilful mediciner of the tribe, should apply her most healing salves and balsams to his hurts, that he might the sooner be ready to run the gauntlet, and endure the torture of fire, which was the destiny awaiting him. Monega was the daughter of a chief, and as it chanced, was as distinguished for the gentleness of her heart, as for her exceeding loveliness, and her great medical skill. No one could look upon her slight and well-rounded limbs, and upon her sweet countenance, without a feeling of admiration, if not of love; and no sooner did our Mohawk gaze upon her features, and listen to the soft tones of her voice, than he was completely fascinated with her charms. Nor did the Indian damsel gaze upon the noble captive with less favorable emotions. With a blushing cheek and trembling hand she produced from a number of gourds, the most potent herbs that constituted her remedies, and tenderly applied them to the wounded limbs of the Mohawk. "How is the sweet daughter of the Oneida named?" inquired the young chief, as the damsel proceeded to bathe the bruised places with sweet-smelling medicines. A blush suffused the modest cheek of Monega as she replied, "I am called among my people Monega, or the Wild-rose, and am the daughter of a chief." "Monega," exclaimed he, "is fairer than any honeyed wild-rose that is kissed by the red lip of the morning, or than the pearly lily that droops by the brink of the running water. There is no maiden among the fair daughters of the Mohawk, so lovely in the eyes of Wauchee. Will not the Wild-rose return again the fondness that blooms in the breast of the strange warrior, though he lies like a wounded panther at the feet of his mistress?" "The captive warrior," returned the maiden, "has a bold heart, and is more stately and noble than any of the young chiefs of her own people, yet Monega must not yield her heart to a chief of an enemy." And, so saying, she hastily gathered her herbs and unguents together, and withdrew beneath the suspended buffalo-hide that formed the door of the wigwam. As the shades of evening began to settle on the deep woods that drooped around, the captive continued to listen intently for the returning step of the damsel; and presently the heavy drapery at the entrance was drawn aside, and the yellow flood of the setting sun streamed upon the figure of Monega. "The hours of the day," said the youth, "have been dark and weary to the heart of the captive, since the Wild-rose withdrew from the side of Wauchee, but now that she has returned, the light again shines in his heart, and his soul is filled with brightness and joy." The maiden in silence produced her herbs and bandages, and after applying them to his hurts, thus replied to his words: "Wauchee is noble, and brave, but his days are now few and numbered. Let us speak with a low voice, for the two warriors are watchful at the door, and their jealous ears may catch the friendly word that may pass between us. Would the fettered chieftain desire to be freed from his bonds, and breathe once more the free breath of the woods, and again return to his distant people?" "Gentle Monega!" cried he, "I pray thee, free these limbs from the hateful thongs that eat into the flesh, and so cramp his benumbed members, and Wauchee will fly like a deer to his own people, and also bear away with him the sweet Wild-rose of the Oneidas, to bloom afresh in the gardens of the Mohawks. Will Monega free the bondsman? and will she fly with him to be the bride of his heart, and the queen of the Mohawk people? "Monega cannot refuse," said the maiden, after a little hesitation; "Monega cannot refuse to save the life of the brave and handsome young warrior; and if he asks it, neither can she refuse to depart with him, and cast her lot with his people." "Monega speaks well," cried the captive, "and her words gladden my darkened spirit. Quick then, sever these bonds from my wrists and limbs, that I may stand forth once more a free man. I will then escape to the forest, and await you at the great fall of waters." "I gladly free you from your thongs," said she, "and will not fail to join you where you appoint; but remember that two brave warriors guard with their weapons at the door, and that they will spare him not if he but offer to depart. Yet one of them, the young Thaygea, has vowed to me his love, and him will I entice away from his post of guard, and the captive must fain deal with the other as he may. Is Wauchee content to make the trial?" "Sever these thongs, and free these crippled limbs, bright maiden, and I would not shrink from an armed host. Do you entice away one of my guards, and I will manage to escape from the other; and I shall then impatiently await your coming at the Falls." The bold girl with a trembling hand cut away the gyves that held the prisoner, and then, departing, exchanged a few words with one of the young men who guarded the hut, and who instantly forsook his post to follow her footsteps. Wauchee hurriedly glanced around, to discover some article that might serve as a weapon, and, snatching up a small billet of wood that lay on the hearth, sprang to the door, and with one furious blow felled the solitary sentinel to the earth, and then stretched swiftly away in flight. But numbers of warriors, aroused by the sound of the blow, were instantly after him in hot pursuit. The flying Wauchee was most remarkable for his fleetness of foot, and could easily have distanced his pursuers, but for his wounded ankle, which greatly impeded his motions; and in a short time, after a desperate struggle, he was overpowered, and roughly dragged back to the place of his captivity. Again did the fair Monega, whose agency in his attempted flight had not been suspected, attend upon her wounded lover; but so vigilant were his guards, that an attempt at escape seemed now impossible. In the lapse of a few days, the prisoner, under her skilful treatment, had entirely recovered from his injuries, and a day was appointed for his death. He was doomed to "run the gauntlet" of the tribe; that is, he was required to run between two lines of warriors and of women and children, armed with thongs of hide and small rods, which each one was to use upon his person as the fugitive passed them in full career. On a bright and cheerful morning the luckless prisoner was loosened from his bonds, and led forth to run his race; after which he was doomed to perish at the stake. But the brave youth stepped forth with an undaunted eye, and a firm tread, to the place of torment. He eyed with a fearless and contemptuous glance the fearful preparations made for punishment; the long lines of his enemies ready with their rods to strike at him; and the blackened pole of sacrifice surrounded with its pile of faggots. He took his post at the head of the arranged lines, ready to plunge through the thicket of rods that were menacing him. For a moment before the start, he glanced his eye along the dark faces that scowled upon him, to discern the fair form of Monega, but he observed her not. At length the two men that held him loosened their grasp, and he was directed to use his utmost speed. And well did the most famous runner of the Mohawks maintain that day the fame that he had won in so many a hard-contested race. He sprang forth with the strength and activity of the wild stag, and scarcely a blow from the multitude alighted upon his shoulders. When he had passed unharmed through the whole line, he would have succeeded in making his escape altogether, had not several Oneidas, posted for that purpose, flung themselves upon him, and securely pinioned his limbs. Thus firmly bound, the Mohawk was led to the fatal stake, and secured with thongs to the upright posts, while large bundles of dried saplings were heaped around him by his persecutors. The whole party of the Oneidas then assembled around him in a circle, to enjoy his dying agonies. The brave youth now gave himself up for lost, and threw a hasty glance on the blue sky that bent its dome above him, and over the green woods that nestled with all their leaves in the summer breeze, as on lovely objects which his eyes were never more destined to look upon again. The torch was lighted, and a grim chief was advancing to apply it to the pile, when the light step of Monega anticipated his approach. As she issued from the crowd, she implored the privilege of whispering a few words to him who was about to die. So highly was she held in the estimation of the tribe, that leave was readily granted her, and, thrusting aside the dry heap of the sacrifice, she stood beside the captive. She spoke not a word, however, but hastily passed a sharp knife over the thongs that secured him, and instantly freed his limbs in liberty. "Now, fly, fly, I beseech thee," she whispered; "you are free--once more free! Fly with the speed of the wind." "I will do my best endeavor," said he, hurriedly; "and if I escape, shall await you at the great Waterfall; and so, farewell." And, with one vigorous bound, he sprang through the ring of his foes, overthrowing some three or four of them to the earth. And bravely did he stretch away his sinewy limbs in the flight for life and liberty; and though fifty active runners followed in pursuit, yet soon did he outstrip them all, and effected his escape. He was shortly rejoined at the foot of the great falls by his faithful Monega, who accompanied her lover in his flight, and became his bride, and the chief woman of the Mohawk nation. THRENODIA. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE, BY MRS. KIMBALL. Dear one, mine own! art gone From young life's happy places, To the dark grave and lone-- Death's cold and drear embraces! Loosed are the silver strings Of thy heart's ringing lyre-- Are broken thy wild wings, Spirit of love and fire! No, I feel hovering near, Thy presence mild and tender, My heart looks in thine eyes so dear, And thrills at their soft splendor. The dreams I dream are thine When come my sweetest slumbers; No melody is so divine As memories of thy numbers. Why art thou near my soul Yet flying my fond vision? Eluding yet love's sweet control, Yet raining dreams elysian? Oh angel, who before us Art summoned home to heaven, Still, still, oh linger o'er us, Till we too are forgiven; 'Till we in holiest songs Repeat each sweetest duty, In that pure air where Heaven prolongs Thy gentle life of beauty. MR. ASHBURNER IN NEW-YORK. BY FRANK MANHATTAN, JUN. _To the Editor of the International._ The very graphic and interesting pictures of American society with which my respected progenitor has recently favored the English public having been received with unusual favor, and the series having been suddenly terminated, to the great regret of the literary public, it becomes, I conceive, my duty to carry on the work so nobly begun, even though the superstructure be far inferior in beauty and solidity to the foundation. In pursuing these, my filial labors, I shall always keep in view the two pole stars which ever guided the senior Mr. Ashburner--first, that these letters are designed for English and not American readers, and second, that I am portraying a class, and not individuals. As I shall thus address myself to a foreign audience, it will of course be my duty to describe the frivolities of American manners--the faults of American ladies, the imbecilities of American gentlemen, the scurrilities of the American press, the weakness of American magazines, the degeneracy of American literature, the roguery of the American public, the want of taste of American engineers, the ignorance of American professors, and to discuss any questions of strictly local interest which may happen to present themselves. I shall studiously avoid stating that education or intelligence or usefulness are ever encountered here; and if occasionally some little sketch of domestic happiness or private worth should be given, you will attribute it to my own inadvertence, or set it down as a result of English education. As I shall be describing a class, and not individuals, it will of course be perfectly proper for me to narrate any little incidents of private life which I may have heard; and persons interested will (or at least ought to) bear in mind, if my letters are ever read by themselves or talked of by their acquaintances, that I am not alluding to them in the slightest degree, but merely to the class to which they belong. They therefore (it is to be hoped) will not arrogate to themselves any little passages of private histories they may happen to find in these pages; for, if they do, I shall assuredly hold them up to public ridicule, by saying, "as the shoe fits them they are welcome to wear it." I doubt not that these humble efforts of mine will commend themselves to your favorable notice. They are (as you will perceive from this letter) an unpretending mite given to aid in elevating us in the eyes of the foreign literary world. "_Pulchrum est bene facere reipublicae; etiam bene dicere haud absurdum est._" Deeming it to be the duty of every American thus to give his aid to so patriotic a cause, I have the honor to be your most obedient servant, FRANK MANHATTAN, Jun. MR. ASHBURNER IN NEW-YORK. The philosophy of Mr. Harry Benson (on the occasion when Mr. Harry Benson was last before the public), like the philosophy of many other eminent men, silenced his auditors if it did not convince them. Karl Benson growled out something about its being well enough to say so now, and seemed rather annoyed that Harry should have been more philosophical than he was himself; while Ashburner laughed good-naturedly, and said that _that_ was very good philosophy, and he liked to hear it. The reader will remember that the occasion and philosophy to which we allude were, respectively, the dinner at Mr. Karl Benson's, and a conversation in which Mr. Harry Benson expressed it as his decided opinion that living in a country where one could eat woodcock and drink claret without having to pay very high taxes or do any hard work, was much better than some other things which he then and there suggested. But in the silence which often falls over a small dinner circle, and over a circle where there are good talkers and gay fellows to be found, Karl Benson thought that woodcock and claret, though essential to his comfortable existence, were not the only things he wanted; and Ashburner made up his mind, and more rapidly than was his custom, that the pleasures and comforts which Harry had so glowingly described were not sufficient to engross the mind of an intelligent man, even though parliamentary fame required the sacrifice of twelve hours per day amid red tape and blue books, and the management of a government carried with it responsibility and care. Some other things which Harry had dropped in his rattling dissertation about living in one of the two great abodes of freedom, had struck Ashburner's youthful mind, and, without well knowing why, he determined that neither of the brothers were right, and that he would look a little deeper into matters and things for himself before utterly condemning either politics or politicians, or public men or public measures, in the model republic. When the silence we have just alluded to had continued a few moments, Karl suddenly rose from the table, and said, "Come, boys, since you are not drinking your wine, and since Harry has talked himself out, I move that we go over the river, as we agreed to before dinner." "Pshaw," said Harry, slowly rising, and following his brother and Ashburner, who led the way, "what an uneasy mortal you are, Karl! just as Ashburner had begun his wine, and we were about enjoying ourselves, you haul us off on your confounded expedition." "Never mind," rejoined Karl, quietly, "it's a pleasant evening, and I want to show Ashburner what a plain American country gentleman is: that's a thing you have not shown him yet; and then, there's a pretty girl to be seen, too--you forget that Ashburner isn't married." "What do you suppose Ashburner wants to see a country belle for?" said Harry; "you know he's been in society these two or three years." "I don't care whether he has or not," Karl replied, "we will show him as pretty a lass as any he has seen; and besides, I saw old Edwards this morning, and told him I was coming over, and, as I am not going alone, you fellows must go along. By the by, shall we have up the waggon, or walk down?" Both gentlemen voted in favor of walking, so the three took their hats, lit fresh cigars, and slowly sauntered towards the river. Karl turned back for a moment, to order the waggon to be at the dock by ten o'clock; and, after sending forward two of his men who were to act as boatmen, joined his friends. The dinner hour of Karl Benson was the hour at which the leading members of New-York society, in the ordinary routine of life, sat down to their respective tables--that is, three o'clock. It is singular how this important period recedes from the meridian as people grow more refined in their own opinions, or more fashionable in those of their neighbors. The hard-working farmer or mechanic has his dinner at the matin hour of twelve; the country doctor or village lawyer stands upon his dignity and dines at one; in country towns, of twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, the "good society" feels obliged to dine at two; when you reach the great metropolis ("which is American penny-a-liner for" New-York), you find the dinner postponed to three; and some gentlemen, with English education and English habits, dine in New-York at five; while others, whose business keeps them at the bank, or court, or counting-house till three, have the witching time adjourned to four. These are, however, only exceptions to the rule, and as lawyers say, _exceptio probat regulam_; the legitimate, healthy, fashionable hour for dining--that in which the Knickerbockers, who know no banks or counting-houses, or dusty courts, save through checks, friends, and lawyers, dine, is three. Modern degeneracy or refinement, or both, it is whispered, have lately carried it to half-past, but on the day of which we write it was precisely three. To return from this digression to our history--which, as the reader has doubtless observed, is not a vulgar description of fictitious persons and imaginary circumstances, but a veracious chronicle of facts, and much above the level of ordinary romances, inasmuch as truth is always stranger than fiction--the early dining hour of the aristocratic Benson (early in an English sense, of course we mean), enabled the three gentlemen to step out on the lawn just as the sun was sinking behind the Kaatskills. After a good dinner, most intellectual men become, or are apt to become, sentimental; and as Ashburner and the Bensons were to the best of their belief eminently intellectual, they of course became so, as in duty bound; for every one is under obligations to conform to the settled usages of good society. "What a charming picture," said Harry Benson; "I swear it is sublime!" "Yes," said Ashburner, poetically, "such a scene as that disgusts one with the noise and bustle and confounded nonsense of city life." "True," said Karl, who suddenly imagined himself for some reason a very wise and exemplary individual, a sort of martyr for principle; "you fellows have no idea of the happiness of a plain country gentleman, living without care or ceremony--having none of the restraints of society, none of your artificial wants--everything simple and unsophisticated. Why, if you knew what it was, you'd give up all thoughts of town, and be living in the country before another month is past." This speech of Karl was all very fine, but unfortunately it was rather long, and before Ashburner and Harry Benson could promise the simple, unsophisticated, contented, happy country gentleman before them, that they would follow his wise example, they had time to remember, one, that about three hours before he had heard the same gentleman complain of the difficulty of getting servants, shops, &c., in the (American) country; and the other, that, "to tell the truth, the country was all very well about sundown, but was deuced dull and uncomfortable on rainy days." Ashburner, however, felt that the remarks of his host should not be thrown away, at least before his face; so he looked around for a subject, and politely began to talk of farming. On their right lay a newly-ploughed field, over which a workman was passing with measured stride, sowing some kind of grain on the fresh-turned soil, and close behind him, anxious to cover the seed before finishing his day's work, came another laborer with the harrow. Ashburner noticed this, and it struck him that it was just the topic he wanted; so, turning to Karl, he said, pointing to the workman, "You do not follow the classical rule of agriculture, Mr. Benson; you remember Plautus: "_Nam semper occant, prius, quam sarriunt, rustici._" "Very good," said Karl, "but I did not remember it--where is it from?" "From the Captives," replied Ashburner; "don't you remember the slave Tyndavas uses it, when old Hegio tells him he is a sower and harvester of crime?" "Oh yes, I believe you are right; but to tell the truth, I'm not much of an admirer of Plautus." "Indeed," replied Ashburner; "why I thought you would admire him extremely; for my part I like his bold unpolished comedies; if it was not heresy for an Englishman to say so, I should say the _Maenuhm_ was equal to the Comedy of Errors; and Shakspeare certainly must have borrowed the idea of his play from Plautus--the resemblance between them is too close to be accidental." Karl said "Yes," in that cool sort of tone by which people show they assent to admiration without participating in it, and added something of there being no language but Greek; at which Harry Benson laughed and asked him if he was still reviewing his Homer. Though this was said in raillery, Ashburner remarked that Karl looked quite pleased, and seemed to take the allusion to Greek and Reviews as a special compliment. The fact was that Mr. Karl Benson had just been through a gentle controversy upon the question whether the Greek word [Greek: kadestêchnia] should be rendered _constitut_ING or constitut_ed_,--which had redounded very much to the credit of himself or his antagonist--a point not yet decided, and which it is very much feared never will be. The particulars of this important contest were these: Karl had been classical editor of one of the leading magazines of Gotham, known to the literary public of that literary metropolis as the _Zuyderzee_. The Zuyderzee when first organized, had not boasted a classical editor among its managers; and as it was devoted to what is vulgarly called "light literature," was supposed by the initiated portion of the public not to want one. Suddenly, however, certain short pieces appeared in the Editor's table (which was printed in small type at the end of each number, and never read), containing severe criticisms on such classical scholars of the nineteenth century as ventured to publish works in the dead languages with notes attached, for the benefit of young England, or more particularly, young America. Though these criticisms were always after the Edinburgh Review model, and finished up in the severest style of the month, and though the Zuyderzee had a classical editor to do them (which we would here explain to be an editor devoted to the review of classical works and subjects, and nothing else), they were to the Zuyderzee a cheap and harmless luxury. Mr. Karl Benson being a gentleman of fortune, was not particular about compensation, but limited his desires to the very worthy object of seeing himself in print. At that time, too, Mr. Benson had not "been up" to works of _fiction_; or else had restrained his powers and devoted them to the inferior task of "portraying" individuals, and abusing other men's works. The editor of the Zuyderzee, though not particularly anxious for a classical sub (who, to tell the truth, was no more wanted than a Scandinavian critic for the _Blunder and Bluster_), had no objection to the gratuitous aid of Mr. Benson; and so it came that Karl was installed as classical editor of the Zuyderzee, with full power to annihilate the classics, and with no restraint set upon him except that he was to do it briefly. While acting in this useful capacity, Karl had once had occasion to examine an edition of Agamemnon, published by an eminent Greek scholar. In the course of his review, he had pointed out no less than ninety errors, eighty of which had been of omission in not having the notes sufficiently full to be obscure; five in referring to editions with which Mr. Benson's private tutor had not been on reading terms, three of punctuation, and the remainder of a trivial nature. The classical editor had, however, smiled upon the professor, by saying that the work, though faulty, contained no very outrageous blunders, nothing for example like Relyat Siwel's "constitut_ing_," in place of constitutED. Had the sentence been passed upon the ordinary publishers of classical works (a humble race of men who are happy when they can publish books which will bring home neither pay nor abuse), it would probably have been thought extremely flattering to all the parties--a sort of beacon light, to gladden the hearts of the watchmen of �schylus. As it was, Professor Weston bore his honors meekly, but Mr. or rather Professor Relyat Siwel, was unfortunately a fiery little man, who was thought by a large circle of admirers to be the first Greek scholar in the great Republic; who had expended years of severe toil on his favorite work, which he thought tended strongly to sustain the character of Christianity, by showing that Plato was not opposed to it; and who, moreover, had a cordial dislike to the Gotham school of classical critics, and had resolved to have a crack at Mr. Benson the first favorable opportunity. Accordingly, in the next number of the Zuyderzee, appeared an "original article," sandwiched between the first part of "A Thrilling Romance of the Second Century," and a "Tale of the Flower Girl of the Fejee Islands," entitled "An Essay on the Greek Language, by Professor Relyat Siwel, LL.D." In this interesting essay, Professor Relyat Siwel had attacked Mr. Karl Benson on a variety of subjects: first he had exposed him by showing that the initials "K. B.," at the foot of the editorial, did not mean "K. B.," but Karl Benson; and hence he ingeniously argued that Mr. Benson's signing himself "K. B.," when he was not "K. B.," was a fraud on the community. Having thus exposed the malice prepense of the unfortunate Benson, he intimated that the English participle in "_ing_" often had the meaning of the perfect; and hence that translating a Greek verb in the perfect by the participle aforesaid, was not such a very heinous offence after all. This bomb-shell was not, however, thrown into Mr. Benson's magazine without an immense amount of smoke and noise. He adopted the celebrated ironical Congressional style: "This eminent Greek scholar," "this pattern of classical criticism," "this prodigy of the English universities, who has had his own private tutor, must now be informed that the English participle in 'ing,'" &c., &c. Nor did the essay on the Greek language stop here. It savagely sneered at "K. B.'s" vanity at having been educated in an English university, and made the most cutting remarks on his criticisms in general. Such flowers of rhetoric as "literary scavenger," "purse-proud fop," "half-educated boy," &c., were thrown around as thickly as though the Flower Girl of the Fejee Islands herself had crossed the path of clerical criticism. Great interest was excited by these little love passages in the different colleges in the country. The studious young citizens read the "criticism" and the "essay" with the most praiseworthy avidity. Karl had replied to the essay in a few majestic sentences in the _Editor's Table_, the effect of which was somewhat impaired by the real editor's saying in a note at the foot, that he wasn't going to have any more of this sort of thing in his magazine; and that as both parties had had their hearing, it must stop now. In his reply, Karl had offered to do something or other to the Greek language against Professor Relyat Siwel (President Blank being the judge), for a thousand dollars a side. Great was the enthusiasm produced by this offer. Several college periodicals announced it as a renovation of the art of criticism, and an innumerable quantity of young orators hinted it as the beacon blaze mentioned in Agamemnon, shining on Clytemnestra's battlements, and bringing joy to Argos. Some discussion was also induced necessarily as to how the classic contest was to "come off." A great many young gentlemen insisted that it was in the nature of a "set-to," and, for that reason, that Professor Relyat Siwel, being the smallest man, should be allowed to "choose his corner." Many, however, thought that it was in the nature of a steeple chase, and that as the Professor was the lightest weight, he ought to go it "leaded." This vexed question was at length put at rest by an inquisitive Sophomore's reading the foot-note referred to, in which it was discovered that the fun was over. This blow was followed by another, viz., a rumor that Professor Relyat Siwel felt it his duty to decline, for the reason that it was by no means certain that _Plato_ had ever put up a thousand dollars, or any other amount whatever. Karl hailed this decision of the Professor as a "back out," and after reading his reply to the essay several times in manuscript, and innumerable times in print, he came to a conclusion that the controversy contained the two great desiderata of all controversies, those for which ignorant men study, lazy men work, ministers quarrel, quiet old gentlemen write newspaper articles, ladies set their caps, and nations go to war--namely triumph and defeat. As he had had the "last word," of course his last arguments were unanswered--he was triumphant, and Professor Relyat Siwel beaten. This comforting reflection did not reach so far as the colleges and universities, and within their peaceful walls was heard a voice of anger and regret. The quiet portion of the undergraduates (who intended to be clergymen and physicians) mourned the loss of the anticipated contest as a defeat of the cause of learning--one which it would probably survive, but still one in which it had been floored. The unquiet portion (who intended to be lawyers or statesmen) heard the news with virtuous indignation; by them the senior editor, with even the _Zuyderzee_ itself, was anathematized. In the literary societies, where embryo lawyers are always largely in the majority, for the reason that fifteen-sixteenths of the young men of the United States intend, in early life, to be Cokes and Littletons, there were passed, by acclamation, most severe resolutions, expressive of deep regret, that in the nineteenth century, in a free country, in the empire state, in a city devoted to literature, an editor--one conducting a magazine professing to be favorable to the development of the nation's resources--should take upon himself, in defiance of public opinion, of the wishes of his patrons, of the interests of humanity, to stifle free discussion and the fame of the Attic sages. These resolutions were generally prefaced by a preamble setting forth that whereas the editor of a magazine known, as _The Zuyderzee_, had done so and so, therefore it was resolved, &c. In some cases, the societies resolved that they would not pay their subscriptions for _The Zuyderzee_ (resolutions which it is due to them to say they religiously stood by), and in others they sent copies of the resolutions to the senior editor, who, however, survived the several shocks. We left Ashburner and his host talking about Plautus and agriculture. The conversation lasted until they reached the river, and took their seats in a plainly painted and rather ordinary kind of skiff. Ashburner noticed it, and also remarked that instead of the picturesque boat-house of an English gentleman, Karl used a small wharf at which sloops loaded and unloaded their cargoes. Ashburner said something of this to Karl, and Karl said something of ice in the spring, freshets in the fall, and low water in the summer; but Harry Benson, as usual, put in his oar, and explained the matter more fully, and no doubt more truly: "You see, Ashburner," said he, "the fact is, we are not a sporting people; our gentlemen rarely ride, and our ladies never walk. In England, every one knows, or pretends to know, something of field sports, or riding, or yachting, or something or other of that sort; and then, too, your English girl thinks nothing of walking three or four miles; but it is not so here. The reason is, partly, that our rich men are business men, and our poor ones always engaged, and partly because our climate is so different from yours. I think the climate is the most effective cause of the two; you see the year begins (here at the north, I mean) with deep snows; at the south they have rain and mud; then, when spring and mild weather come, they last but a very little while, and we have the melting red-hot sort of days that you've been through already. To be sure our Indian-summer is the finest weather for exercise in the world, but then it only lasts a little while, and after it come the fall rains. It can't be denied, though," pursued Harry, after pausing a moment, "that we might all exercise a great deal more than we do, if we really wanted to. In Virginia, they ride and shoot a great deal more than we do here. But our girls' heads are busy with polkas rather than walks, and then the weather makes a good excuse for them. It can't be denied, though, Ashburner, that your countrymen, after being here a short time, exercise as little as we do ourselves; yet it's hard to say which has the most to do with their degeneracy--example or weather." "But," said Ashburner, "I should not think that hot or cold weather could prevent a gentleman from having a light and handsome boat." "Yes, it does," rejoined Harry, "not directly, but indirectly. The weather, business, and amusements, turn attention into other channels, and consequently our country gentleman does not keep his light skiff and picturesque boat-house, because there's nobody to row the one or admire the other. Now, here's Karl, who lives in the country, and continually talks about country air and country exercise, why, bless you! if I hadn't taught him to ride, he wouldn't exercise at all: he does not walk a mile a day; hasn't rowed across the river since he's lived here; wouldn't join in a cricket-match to save himself from apoplexy; in short, is as lazy a fellow as can possibly be found. Then our country girls are just the same. Once in a while they ride, but there are hundreds of them living in the country who have never been on horseback; and when they do know how, they ride rarely, because they've no one to ride with them,--a young lady's dashing off ten or twelve miles with only a servant after her would be thought highly improper. Then, the way we dress is perfectly ridiculous: nothing substantial--nothing useful; a girl's walking shoes are as thin as paper; an English nobleman wears heavier boots than one of our laborers. The truth is, we have a great deal too much of Paris refinement; we must get England to come over and _uncivilize_ us. If we do live in a new country, we want to learn a few of the barbarous arts of riding, driving, walking, hunting, &c. It's a pity, too, that our young men, instead of being hale, hearty fellows, such as you have at the English universities, are generally a thin, hollow-chested, dyspeptic, consumptive-looking set--children at twenty, and old men at thirty." Ashburner had noticed this before, and it had surprised him that in a land where, less than a century ago, the inhabitants were literally denizens of the wilderness, he should find fewer field sports and less attention paid to that class of amusements than in the oldest counties of England. As Harry said, the weather and business were probably chief causes of the evil, while the inundation of French fashions and ideas had helped to sustain it. By the time Harry had concluded his lecture, and Karl had got in a general and particular remonstrance, the one on behalf of all country gentlemen, and the other on behalf of himself, they had nearly crossed the broad river, and the boat was rapidly gliding into a small bay surrounded by high wooded banks. The sun had gone down, and the stillness of a summer evening had settled upon the scene; the swallows skimmed along the smooth water, which the breeze no longer ruffled, and from the distant sloops that now seemed sleeping on the calm surface, Ashburner could plainly hear the voices of their crews. In a few moments the men stopped rowing, and in another moment the boat grated on the gravelly beach, and the party jumped out. Karl told the men when they would return, and then they began clambering up a narrow path which wound up the hill. Ashburner noticed a light skiff lying in the bay, painted and fitted up with more than ordinary taste, and with light oars that looked as though they were meant for a lady's hand. Soon the path brought the little party to the top of the hill, which opened on clear meadows, across which could be seen a plain white house, half hidden by the old trees that were grouped around it. The Bensons seemed well acquainted with every thing, for they led the way without hesitation, till they reached what seemed to be a carriage-way from the house to the public road, that could be seen not a great way off. Ashburner saw at a glance, as they approached the house, that there was a mingling of old things with new in a great deal that concerned it. While the edifice itself was old, and among old trees that told its age far better than the modern verandah which ran around it, or the white paint which covered it, the approach to it had been laid out with more modern taste. There could be seen the remnants of an old fence that had recently bounded a road, innocent of windings, and regardful only of distance. The trees along the carriage-way had not been set out long, and the clumps scattered here and there, with a good deal of taste, were but saplings, and more closely around the house were tall elms that had been growing many a long year, and told plainly of ancient times and ideas. Karl Benson led the way to the front door, and, after answering Harry's inquiries as to dogs, by saying that no one else need be afraid, as they (the dogs) always bit him (Karl), he raised an antiquated brass knocker, and gave two or three taps, which seemed to echo through an immense number of empty rooms. "Take care," said Harry, "or you'll frighten Miss Mary into something or other." "There's no fear of that," replied Karl; "she's not so nervous as you." Harry was proceeding to rap back; but he was interrupted by hearing some one coming to the door, which was the next moment thrown open, and Ashburner saw a fine-looking, plainly-dressed old man, or thought he saw such an one, for it was too dark to distinguish clearly. "How are you, Judge?" said Karl, stepping forward, and shaking the old gentleman's hand. "Hullo, Benson! my fine fellow! is this you? Why, who have you got with you?" "This is my brother Harry," said Karl, "and this is my friend Mr. Ashburner. Mr. Ashburner, allow me to introduce you to my friend Judge Edwards." "How do you do, sir?" said the Judge, stepping forward, and shaking Ashburner by the hand; "very happy to make your acquaintance, sir." Ashburner bowed his acknowledgments and intimated, according to custom, that he was very happy, and then, after slapping Harry on the back, and asking why he hadn't been over before, the Judge asked every body to walk in. They did so--the Judge leading the way--and calling to several individuals of the female gender, as Miss Squires would say, for light. The call was a necessary one, for the day had been as hot and sultry as though it were August; and on a summer evening, in both town and country, it is a frequent custom to sit in the dark by the open windows, and enjoy the cool air which these times always bring. The excellence of the custom did not, however, prevent Ashburner from falling over a chair, or Harry from running against a centre table, with a crash that left the party in some doubt whether he or the table was upset. "Bless me," said the Judge, who noticed these mishaps, "they ought to have had lights here," and then he added, in explanation, "that in hot weather _they_ liked to sit in the dark, as it seemed cooler and kept the musquitoes out; which excuse for a very proper, pleasant and sensible custom, is invariably given in the United States, in all houses, rich or poor, high or low, whenever a stranger happens to find the parlor unlighted." In a few moments, however, a girl made her appearance with the usual inquiry, "Did you call, sir?" "Yes, yes, Susan, bring some lights here as soon as you can!" A pause ensued, which was broken by the Judge's remarking that it had been a very hot day, and Harry Benson's assenting, "Yes, very hot, really wonderful weather for the time of year." Ashburner tried to say something, but it is hard talking in the dark, to a gentleman you have never seen, especially when you are in his own house; so Ashburner gave it up after one or two attempts, and another pause ensued, fortunately broken by Susan's return with a couple of lighted candles, in old-fashioned silver candlesticks. Ashburner now looked at the Judge with some interest, which was rather cooled down by observing that he was looking with an equal curiosity at himself. This scrutiny, though brief, seemed, however, satisfactory, for the Judge told Susan to tell Miss Mary that Mr. Benson and one or two other gentlemen were there. Ashburner's glance showed him that the Judge was a large and intelligent-looking man apparently about fifty, and though dressed carelessly, bearing the marks of a gentleman. But Ashburner also saw that though the Judge was a gentleman, he was by no means a fashionable or even a polished one. He was simply one of those well-bred men in whom simplicity is more perceptible than refinement, while good sense and good feelings prevent any gross breaches of etiquette. From looking at its owner, Ashburner turned to look at the room they were seated in. It was a parlor of medium size, with a low ceiling and plainly papered walls. On the latter hung several old-fashioned portraits, one of which was evidently the Judge's, another his wife's, and two more his parents'. Besides, there were one or two drawings, and their pleasing gracefulness and ease formed an agreeable contrast to the prim and starched old relics they hung beside. In the middle of the room was a centre table of the same old-fashioned cast as the pictures, but covered with those little articles of taste that none but a lady can select and arrange. "Mr. Ashburner is an Englishman, Judge," said Karl, after some other remarks, "and I am showing him how simply we American farmers live." "Is it possible?" said the Judge, looking intently at Ashburner; "well, now, I should never have thought so if you had not told me. He looks more like an American than a foreigner: it's very singular, quite unusual. Do you know," pursued the Judge, talking to Karl, but keeping his eyes intently fixed on Ashburner, "do you know that I can almost always tell a foreigner as soon I see him? Why it was only yesterday a couple of fellows came into the field where I was, and wanted work, and before they said a word, just as soon as I saw them I knew they were Englishmen, and told Mary so." Ashburner colored a little at this implied comparison, and felt annoyed on seeing that Harry Benson was enjoying the joke. To turn the conversation, he said something about the Judge's having a pretty place, and inquired whether his judicial duties allowed him to be there a good deal of the time. At this inquiry all three gentlemen laughed, and his honor explained that once upon a time he had been appointed judge by the governor, and had acted as such for four or five years, but that for the last fifteen years he had merely enjoyed the title, and was but a plain country gentleman, as he had been all his life. Ashburner inquired if he had not been educated for the bar. "Oh, no," said the Judge, smiling, "that was not at all necessary for a judge of the Common Pleas, though for that matter, as Edmund Burke said in his speech on American affairs, 'in America every man's something of a lawyer.' You see, Mr. Ashburner, there used to be five of us. Some were farmers and some were lawyers, always one or the other, for the pay was not very high, and nobody but farmers and lawyers have time to work for nothing in this country. By the bye," said the Judge, "I never knew any one yet a judge of the Common Pleas, unless he was either a lawyer or a farmer: did you, Benson?" Karl answered in the negative, and the Judge continued: "If there were any cases before us that were of importance, the lawyers would carry them up to the Supreme Court. But I never could discover that it made much difference who were judges in the Common Pleas, for the judges who were lawyers would have their opinions reversed just about as often as we farmers. I suppose you English gentlemen would think it a great piece of nonsense, taking three or four men for judges who had never practised at the bar; but the truth is, that such men look closely at the real justice of the matter, and pay very little attention to technicalities, while your second-rate lawyers if they are made judges in an inferior court, study nothing but technicalities, and misapply them half the time besides. Then you see we want cheap expeditious courts for the trial of small cases--whether the court is wrong or right is not so much matter--law is a lottery anyhow, and the fact is, the sooner a case is decided and out of the way, the better for both parties. I never knew myself of any man's making a fortune by going to law, though I have heard of such things. But I suppose, Mr. Ashburner, that you much prefer the old-fashioned English courts, with the judges in gowns and wigs, and every thing done in the most solemn manner. Now, to tell the truth, Mr. Ashburner, don't you think it great nonsense for us to have one or two plain business men like me, hoisted on to the bench to administer laws which Coke and Blackstone studied for a lifetime, and which in your own country no one is thought fit to administer them till he has spent years in practising, and has raised himself up by his own labors?" Ashburner became interested in all this, and was struck with the intelligence of the speaker, who, notwithstanding his plainness and his remarks about foreigners, seemed still to have the tastes and delicate perceptions of the educated man. He asked several questions as to the American judiciary, and informed the Judge that the works of some of the American luminaries of the law occupied a high place in the estimation of English lawyers, were noticed in English reviews, and quoted in English courts. The young Englishman could see, as he said this, that the Judge's face lit up with an expression very different from that of either of the Bensons, and he felt pleased when he heard him say with some exultation, "Your countrymen are not such bad fellows after all, sir; I really believe they always do us justice, and there are no national confessions to be made." Ashburner was proceeding to state that in England the old feeling of contempt had entirely disappeared, when the door opened, and a girl of about eighteen entered. She threw a quick but calm glance around the room, seemed a little confused at the number of gentlemen, and then, recognizing Karl, went up to him, and shaking hands, asked after his wife. "Mary," said the Judge, as soon as the inquiry was answered, "this is your old friend, Mr. Harry Benson, and this is Mr. Ashburner, an English gentleman; Mr. Ashburner, my daughter, sir." The young lady shook hands with Harry, and bowed with more reserve to the stranger, who contrived to hand her his chair, and place himself quietly in the next one. The first thought of Ashburner as he looked at his companion was, "How sweetly pretty she is!" the next, "She is certainly very different from any girl I have seen yet in this country;" and a few moments' conversation confirmed each opinion. She was in truth a very pretty girl, not strictly handsome, but of that bright and good-natured winning beauty that always indicates a warm, kind heart, and always insures its owner friends as well as admirers. She was below the average height, with a girlish, though pretty, rounded figure; her dark brown hair fell smoothly over a white, clear brow, and came down so as partially to hide a rosy cheek; her dress was simple, but the taste and neatness it displayed showed that its wearer was a person of refinement. Ashburner opened the conversation by saying that he supposed Miss Edwards was a resident of the country, and inquiring how she liked it. She answered that she far preferred it to the city, and a little argument ensued, in the course of which she assured Ashburner that the country was always the pleasantest--one always had so many little things to be interested in, and so much more time for reading. "There was nothing," she said, "of the formality and coldness of city life, nor of its frivolities." It amused Ashburner to hear this philosophy from a girl of eighteen, one who was pretty enough to command more than her share of attention, and who was evidently not of those young ladies who, sincerely desiring to pursue the strict path of duty, make the great mistake of deriding gayety or pleasure whereever they may happen to find it. In the meanwhile the other gentlemen became engrossed in the probable profits of the railroad which was to adorn the other side of the river, and occasional allusions to the tariff, and chances of the various candidates for the presidency, in all of which the Bensons joined as warmly, and laid down their positions as dogmatically (their contempt for their country, its laws, and affairs, to the contrary notwithstanding), as though they had not been expressing, an hour or two before, the most entire ignorance and thorough disdain of and for railroads, politics, and politicians, and particularly the railroad just mentioned, and the politics and politicians of the United States. If Ashburner had listened to this, he would have learned that it is very often the custom among American gentlemen to sneer at and contemn political measures, among strangers (no matter whether foreigners or not), as though the elective franchise, and every thing connected with it, was an immoral sort of vulgarity that no gentleman was expected to know any thing about; a thing to be abandoned to the _canaille_ and an interesting set of patriots known as the Hemispherical Club, who varied their patriotic duties by breaking their opponents' heads and their country's ballot-boxes, and who, moreover, were so modest that they never could be induced to exercise the glorious right of depositing their suffrages, until the candidates on their side had "planked up" for the benefit of the Club; whilst among their friends and neighbors, these same gentlemen talk politics in the most furious and excited manner, each person insisting that he knows all about them, and that every body else will see he's right before the year's out. But unfortunately Ashburner had got so deeply engrossed with the lessons in philosophy he was receiving that he entirely forgot all about his friends. He had discovered that Miss Edwards had been among the "Upper Ten" of New-York, and knew many of the acquaintances he had made. She spoke of them with so much correctness that he was convinced of her excellent judgment in character, while the artlessness with which she spoke, and the almost amusing simplicity of some of her remarks, indicated that she had not studied human nature, as too many of us do, by experience. Ashburner, like most young men, thought himself a shrewd observer, particularly female character (which, by the bye, is what young men know least about), but the subject he was studying puzzled him; Miss Edwards evinced such a mixture of penetration and simplicity that he could not understand how both could exist together. This sort of character has baffled many wiser persons than Mr. Ashburner, who have investigated it with the same interest. The study of young ladies is dangerous at all times to a young man, and most particularly when he does it from philosophical motives; and if any caste of character is more dangerous than another, it is that which blends penetration and simplicity; the one interests while the other charms. Not knowing these truths, Mr. Ashburner had mentally resolved to enter upon this field of philosophical research. The simplicity, the humor, the acuteness of observation, the intelligence, and perhaps the pretty face of his companion, tended to interest him in an unusual manner. And she, too, seemed attracted by the young Englishman, whose education and intelligence rendered him an agreeable companion to any educated and intelligent person. It was pleasant for Ashburner to find a young lady who could talk about something else than the polka or the last party,--who, in short, had read his favorite authors, and could join in admiring them without affectation; and he felt quite annoyed when Karl Benson interrupted the _tête-à-tête_. As they all rose, the Judge approached Ashburner and said, "I shall be happy to see you again, Mr. Ashburner; if you stay at Mr. Benson's, and have nothing better to do, come over whenever you please; you must excuse my calling on you, for we old fellows are privileged, you know." Ashburner said he would be very happy to do so, and was "desirous of learning something more about American jurisprudence, if Judge Edwards would allow the trouble it would occasion him." The Judge of course said he would bestow all the information in his power, and added, that he had a high regard for England and Englishmen. "I like a great many of your customs," said the Judge, "much better than I do our own. Your girls have a physical education which preserves their health and freshness, while ours sit still and waste their time and ruin their health. Now here's Mary, who is a country girl, and yet hardly exercises from one week's end to another." The Judge said this in a reproving sort of way, but he looked down on his daughter with a smile as he said it; and she smiled back in the same way as she said, "Oh no, father, you forget that _now_ I ride to the post-office every day." It was plain that such reproofs as this was all that Mary ever knew (and as Ashburner marked the affectionate look that passed between father and daughter, he thought all that she ever needed). "How pretty she looks (he thought to himself) standing there by her rough old father, looking up to him with that pleased, confiding look; how much prettier than a fashionable belle who is ashamed of her father because he is plain, and shows it whenever there is some one by, I think"-- "It is time we were over the river," said Karl, interrupting Mr. Ashburner in his contemplations. "I think," said Mr. Ashburner to himself, as they were crossing the water on their way home, "I think I will call to-morrow and see if she really is as artless as she seems;" and a moment after to his companions, "I believe I will practice rowing a few hours a day for the next few days; physicians say it's a capital exercise." "I think," said Karl, "you had better not. Exercise on horseback." Said Harry, "Its precious little rowing you'll do." "Yes," Ashburner rejoined, "I will, and to convince you, I mean to go alone." We will say with one Virgil-- "Felix qui protuit rerum cognoscere causas." LEONORA TO TASSO. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY MRS. M. E. HEWITT. Ah, bliss! I dreamed or thee last night! Thee, whom my heart so deifies-- Again I met the thrilling light Of thy serene and earnest eyes. I dreamed of thee! Ah, gracious boon, That gladdens thus my waking hours! Above us bent Italia's noon, Around us breathed the scent of flowers: My hand lay gently clasped in thine. No sound disturbed our joy's excess; And soft thine eyes poured down on mine, Their wildering rays of tenderness: "My Leonora!" 'Twas thy same Low voice that o'er my memory broke; But even while thine accents came I murmured "Tasso!" and awoke. Ah, me! awoke! Yet all the day Thy presence hath been round me still-- The airs that through my lattice play, And toss the vines at their sweet will, Repeat thy tones--and every where I meet thine eyes still bent on me-- Ah, blessed dream! that gilds my care, And brightens this reality. HUNGARIAN POPULAR SONGS. TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM WOLFF'S VOLKSPOESIE. BY CHARLES G. LELAND. I. _Szeretlek, galambom._ Better far I love thee Than a dove the barley; Ever dreaming of thee, Night and morning early. Of no woman born, Such fays spring from the Rose; When on Whitsun morn, Her dewy breasts unclose! II. _Kocsmárosné, gyuijts világot!_ Hostess, quick! the light goes out, Have you no pretty girl about? But if no pretty girl there be The light may soon so out, for me Why should the candle burn and beam Unless bright eyes reflect its gleam? And if no pretty girl there be, The light may soon go out for me! And if you have a maiden fair, Then be its light extinguished there! For when its gleaming rays we miss, 'Tis easier far, a girl to kiss. III. _Duna, duna, szeles duna!_ Gladly will they make me think, They who of the Danube drink; That in its tide the pickerel swims, And maidens bathe their snowy limbs. Great and Small-Comorn afar! Oh how sweet three maidens are! To the one I'll wedded be, And the fairest of the three! IV. _Széles a dunaviz._ The Danube's stream is broad, The bridge is weak I know; Take heed my own dear love, Or else thou fall'st below! I shall not fall below, No fear my soul alarms; But soon my love I'll fall, Into thy burning arms! V. _Gólya, gólya, de messze mégy!_ Far, far the Stork now flies!--ah me! And far am I, true love from thee! My captive chains me and I cannot move, That he may win from me my love. Deep in the grave my parents lie, My land's a broad heath waste and dry; Great suffering and sorrow still are mine, Yet I can drown them all in wine! VI. _Micsoda csárdaez? be csinos?_ What inn is this which here I see? Therein a pretty girl may be! And if no lovely damsel, Be in the tavern now; Then let us hang its landlord, Upon the nearest bough. But see! a goat is grazing nigh, A dark-brown maiden is standing by. Then hey my jolly comrade! There's milk I trow for both; The maiden too will kiss us. She shall, I'll take my oath! VII. _Cserebogár, sárga cserebogár._ May-beetle--gay little bird--fly near! I ask not if summer will soon by here, And I ask not if long my life shall be; I ask--if I'm loved by my Rosalie? And I ask thee not by a song or sign, If another summer may yet be mine; One summer has worn me with many a smart, Since Rosa--fair Rosa--has won my heart. Thou flittest away from flower to flower, And thy wifie flies after through forest and bower; I seek in them too for my Rosalie, But never find her--she loves not me! Thou drinkest from flowers their honey dew, And callest with joy to thy wifie true! But joy afar from my soul hath flown, No love with its pleasure my heart hath known. VIII. _Nincsen nekem semmi bajorn._ Naught in the wide-world troubles me, Save this alone--my poverty; A merry companion too am I, Though my coat be ragged, my throat a-dry. Bread I have none, but tatters enough, And Fortune gives me many a cuff; When I reckon together the money I've got, There's never a farthing in all the lot. So naught in the wide world troubles me, Save this alone--my poverty; And a merry companion too am I, Though my coat be ragged, my throat a-dry. IX. _A faluban muzikálnak._ Let the sergeant sing or drum-- Soldier I will ne'er become; He whose heart a maiden charms, Is a fool to carry arms. Swords may dazzle with their beam, But--the devil take the gleam! By my true love's eyes so bright, Sword gleams seem as dark as night. X. _Most élem gyöngyéletem._ I'm a hussar so free from care, A cap of blood-red silk I wear; And wreath with ribbons flut'ring free; Which once my true love wove for me. And for the garland which she wove I gave a kiss to her my love. Oh weave another!--for thy pain I'll kiss a hundred times again! XI. _Falu mogött van egy malom._ Behind our hamlet stands a mill Where pain is ground, they say And to that mill in haste will I To grind my grief away! Oh miller's maiden ask no more! Disturb me not too soon, Through all the morn I think with joy Upon the afternoon! A SONG FOR THIS DAY AND GENERATION. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE. BY CHARLES G. EASTMAN. Come, let us be merry! The day's growing fair-- And drooping-eyed Patience Looks up from despair. Truth, like the glory Of old times, in story, Mellows the shadows that darken the land, Wrongs, grim and hoary, Crimes, black and gory, Naked and scoffed in the market-place stand. Come, let us be merry! The sundown is near-- And Error is shivering And shrinking with fear. Power unmolested For centuries, vested In impotent sinew and imbecile brain, Altars that rested On mummeries ilested, Tatters to ruin and not in the rain. Come, let us be merry! The sun shines at last-- The light fills the valleys-- The darkness has passed. Names are neglected, Blood is rejected, Men bow no more to the accident Birth, Mind, long dejected, Her temple erected, Waits from the Nations the homage of Worth. Come, let us be merry! All hearts that with scoff And derision have waited This day afar off; Abuses are shaking Old Errors are quaking, That cramped the free life of our manhood so long, Hail to the waking! The daylight is breaking For Truths that are mighty and men that are strong. FEATHERTOP: A MORALIZED LEGEND.[2] WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. "With that brass alone," quoth Mother Rigby, "thou canst pay thy way all over the earth. Kiss me, pretty darling! I have done my best for thee." Furthermore, that the adventurer might lack no possible advantage towards a fair start in life, this excellent old dame gave him a token, by which he was to introduce himself to a certain magistrate, member of the council, merchant, and elder of the church (the four capacities constituting but one man), who stood at the head of society in the neighboring metropolis. The token was neither more nor less than a single word, which Mother Rigby whispered to the scarecrow, and which the scarecrow was to whisper to the merchant. "Gouty as the old fellow is, he'll run thy errands for thee, when once thou hast given him that word in his ear," said the old witch. "Mother Rigby knows the worshipful Justice Gookin, and the worshipful Justice knows Mother Rigby!" Here the witch thrust her wrinkled face close to the puppet's, chuckling irrepressibly, and fidgeting all through her system, with delight at the idea which she meant to communicate. "The worshipful Master Gookin," whispered she, "hath a comely maiden to his daughter! And hark ye, my pet! Thou hast a fair outside, and a pretty wit enough of thine own. Yea; a pretty wit enough! Thou wilt think better of it when thou hast seen more of other people's wits. Now, with thy outside and thy inside, thou art the very man to win a young girl's heart. Never doubt it! I tell thee it shall be so. Put but a bold face on the matter, sigh, smile, flourish thy hat, thrust forth thy leg like a dancing-master, put thy right hand to the left side of thy waistcoat, and pretty Polly Gookin is thine own!" All this while, the new creature had been sucking in and exhaling the vapory fragrance of his pipe, and seemed now to continue this occupation as much for the enjoyment it afforded, as because it was an essential condition of his existence. It was wonderful to see how exceedingly like a human being it behaved. Its eyes (for it appeared to possess a pair) were bent on Mother Rigby, and at suitable junctures, it nodded or shook its head. Neither did it lack words proper for the occasion.--"Really! Indeed! Pray tell me! Is it possible! Upon my word! By no means! Oh! Ah! Hem!"--and other such weighty utterances as imply attention, inquiry, acquiescence, or dissent, on the part of the auditor. Even had you stood by, and seen the scarecrow made, you could scarcely have resisted the conviction that it perfectly understood the cunning counsels which the old witch poured into its counterfeit of an ear. The more earnestly it applied its lips to the pipe, the more distinctly was its human likeness stamped among visible realities; the more sagacious grew its expression; the more lifelike its gestures and movements; and the more intelligibly audible its voice. Its garments, too, glistened so much the brighter with an illusory magnificence. The very pipe, in which burned the spell of all this wonderwork, ceased to appear as a smoke-blackened earthen stump, and became a meerschaum, with painted bowl and amber mouthpiece. It might be apprehended, however, that as the life of the illusion seemed identical with the vapor of the pipe, it would terminate simultaneously with the reduction of the tobacco to ashes. But the beldam foresaw the difficulty. "Hold thou the pipe, my precious one," said she, "while I fill it for thee again." It was sorrowful to behold how the fine gentleman began to fade back into a scarecrow, while Mother Rigby shook the ashes out of the pipe, and proceeded to replenish it from her tobacco-box. "Dickon," cried she, in her high, sharp tone, "another coal for this pipe." No sooner said, than the intensely red speck of fire was glowing within the pipe-bowl; and the scarecrow, without waiting for the witch's bidding, applied the tube to his lips, and drew in a few short, convulsive whiffs, which soon, however, became regular and equable. "Now, mine own heart's darling," quoth Mother Rigby, "whatever may happen to thee, thou must stick to thy pipe. Thy life is in it; and that, at least, thou knowest well, if thou knowest naught besides. Stick to thy pipe, I say! Smoke, puff, blow thy cloud; and tell the people, if any question be made, that it is for thy health, and that so the physician orders thee to do. And, sweet one, when thou shalt find thy pipe getting low, go apart into some corner, and (first filling thyself with smoke) cry sharply,--'Dickon, a fresh pipe of tobacco!'--and--'Dickon, another coal for my pipe!'--and have it into thy pretty mouth as speedily as may be. Else, instead of a gallant gentleman, in a gold-laced coat, thou wilt be but a jumble of sticks and tattered clothes, and a bag of straw, and a withered pumpkin! Now depart, my treasure, and good luck go with thee!" "Never fear, mother!" said the figure, in a stout voice, and sending forth a courageous whiff of smoke. "I will thrive if an honest man and a gentleman may!" "Oh, thou wilt be the death of me!" cried the old witch, convulsed with laughter. "That was well said. If an honest man and a gentleman may! Thou playest thy part to perfection. Get along with thee for a smart fellow; and I will wager on thy head, as a man of pith and substance, with a brain, and what they call a heart, and all else that a man should have, against any other thing on two legs. I hold myself a better witch than yesterday, for thy sake. Did not I make thee? And I defy any witch in New England to make such another! Here; take my staff along with thee!" The staff, though it was but a plain oaken stick, immediately took the aspect of a gold-headed cane. "That gold head has as much sense in it as thine own," said Mother Rigby, "and it will guide thee straight to worshipful Master Gookin's door. Get thee gone, my pretty pet, my darling, my precious one, my treasure; and if any ask thy name, it is Feathertop. For thou hast a feather in thy hat, and I have thrust a handful of feathers into the hollow of thy head, and thy wig, too, is of the fashion they call Feathertop,--so be Feathertop thy name!" And, issuing from the cottage, Feathertop strode manfully towards town. Mother Rigby stood at the threshold, well pleased to see how the sunbeams glistened on him, as if all his magnificence were real, and how diligently and lovingly he smoked his pipe, and how handsomely he walked, in spite of a little stiffness of his legs. She watched him, until out of sight, and threw a witch-benediction after her darling, when a turn of the road snatched him from her view. Betimes in the forenoon, when the principal street of the neighboring town was just at its acme of life and bustle, a stranger of very distinguished figure was seen on the side-walk. His port, as well as his garments, betokened nothing short of nobility. He wore a richly-embroidered plum-colored coat, a waistcoat of costly velvet, magnificently adorned with golden foliage, a pair of splendid scarlet breeches, and the finest and glossiest of white silk stockings. His head was covered with a peruque, so daintily powdered and adjusted that it would have been sacrilege to disorder it with a hat; which, therefore (and it was a gold-laced hat, set off with a snowy feather), he carried beneath his arm. On the breast of his coat glistened a star. He managed his gold-headed cane with an airy grace, peculiar to the fine gentleman of the period; and to give the highest possible finish to his equipment, he had lace ruffles at his wrist, of a most ethereal delicacy, sufficiently avouching how idle and aristocratic must be the hands which they half concealed. It was a remarkable point in the accoutrement of this brilliant personage, that he held in his left hand a fantastic kind of a pipe, with an exquisitely painted bowl, and an amber mouthpiece. This he applied to his lips, as often as every five or six paces, and inhaled a deep whiff of smoke, which, after being retained a moment in his lungs, might be seen to eddy gracefully from his mouth and nostrils. As may well be supposed, the street was all a-stir to find out the stranger's name. "It is some great nobleman, beyond question," said one of the town's people. "Do you see the star at his breast?" "Nay; it is too bright to be seen," said another. "Yes; he must needs be a nobleman, as you say. But, by what conveyance, think you, can his lordship have voyaged or travelled hither? There has been no vessel from the old country for a month past; and if he have arrived overland from the southward, pray where are his attendants and equipage?" "He needs no equipage to set off his rank," remarked a third. "If he came among us in rags, nobility would shine through a hole in his elbow. I never saw such dignity of aspect. He has the old Norman blood in his veins, I warrant him." "I rather take him to be a Dutchman, or one of your high Germans," said another citizen. "The men of those countries have always the pipe at their mouths." "And so has a Turk," answered his companion. "But, in my judgment, this stranger hath been bred at the French court, and hath there learned politeness and grace of manner, which none understand so well as the nobility of France. That gait, now! A vulgar spectator might deem it stiff--he might call it a hitch and jerk--but, to my eye, it hath an unspeakable majesty, and must have been acquired by constant observation of the department of the Grand Monarque. The stranger's character and office are evident enough. He is a French Ambassador, come to treat with our rulers about the cession of Canada." "More probably a Spaniard," said another, "and hence his yellow complexion. Or, most likely, he is from the Havana, or from some port on the Spanish Main, and comes to make investigation about the piracies which our Governor is thought to connive at. Those settlers in Peru and Mexico have skins as yellow as the gold which they dig out of their mines." "Yellow, or not," cried a lady, "he is a beautiful man!--so tall, so slender!--such a fine, noble face, with so well-shaped a nose, and all that delicacy of expression about the mouth! And, bless me, how bright his star is! It positively shoots out flames!" "So do your eyes, fair lady," said the stranger with a bow, and a flourish of his pipe; for he was just passing at the instant. "Upon my honor, they have quite dazzled me!" "Was ever so original and exquisite a compliment?" murmured the lady, in an ecstasy of delight. Amid the general admiration excited by the stranger's appearance, there were only two dissenting voices. One was that of an impertinent cur, which, after snuffing at the heels of the glistening figure, put its tail between its legs, and skulked into its master's back-yard, vociferating an execrable howl. The other dissentient was a young child, who squalled at the fullest stretch of his lungs, and babbled some unintelligible nonsense about a pumpkin. Feathertop, meanwhile, pursued his way along the street. Except for the few complimentary words to the lady, and, now and then, a slight inclination of the head, in requital of the profound reverences of the bystanders, he seemed wholly absorbed in his pipe. There needed no other proof of his rank and consequence, than the perfect equanimity with which he comported himself, while the curiosity and admiration of the town swelled almost into clamor around him. With a crowd gathering behind his footsteps, he finally reached the mansion-house of the worshipful Justice Gookin, entered the gate, ascended the steps of the front door, and knocked. In the interim, before his summons was answered, the stranger was observed to shake the ashes out of his pipe. "What did he say, in that sharp voice?" inquired one of the spectators. "Nay, I know not," answered his friend. "But the sun dazzles my eyes strangely. How dim and faded his lordship looks, all of a sudden! Bless my wits, what is the matter with me?" "The wonder is," said the other, "that his pipe, which was out only an instant ago, should be all alight again, and with the reddest coal I ever saw. There is something mysterious about this stranger. What a whiff of smoke was that! Dim and faded, did you call him? Why, as he turns about, the star on his breast is all a blaze." "It is, indeed," said his companion; "and it will go near to dazzle pretty Polly Gookin, whom I see peeping at it, out of the chamber window." The door being now opened, Feathertop turned to the crowd, made a stately bend of his body, like a great man acknowledging the reverence of the meaner sort, and vanished into the house. There was a mysterious kind of a smile, if it might not better be called a grin or grimace, upon his visage; but of all the throng that beheld him, not an individual appears to have possessed insight enough to detect the illusive character of the stranger, except a little child and a cur-dog. Our legend here loses somewhat of its continuity, and, passing over the preliminary explanation between Feathertop and the merchant, goes in quest of the pretty Polly Gookin. She was a damsel of a soft, round figure, with light hair and blue eyes, and a fair rosy face, which seemed neither very shrewd nor very simple. This young lady had caught a glimpse of the glistening stranger, while standing at the threshold, and had forthwith put on a laced cap, a string of beads, her finest kerchief, and her stiffest damask petticoat, in preparation for the interview. Hurrying from her chamber to the parlor, she had ever since been viewing herself in the large looking-glass, and practising pretty airs--now a smile, now a ceremonious dignity of aspect, and now a softer smile than the former--kissing her hand, likewise, tossing her head, and managing her fan; while, within the mirror, an unsubstantial little maid repeated every gesture, and did all the foolish things that Polly did, but without making her ashamed of them. In short, it was the fault of pretty Polly's ability, rather than her will, if she failed to be as complete an artifice as the illustrious Feathertop himself; and, when she thus tampered with her own simplicity, the witch's phantom might well hope to win her. No sooner did Polly hear her father's gouty footsteps approaching the parlor door, accompanied with the stiff clatter of Feathertop's high-heeled shoes, than she seated herself bolt upright, and innocently began warbling a song. "Polly! daughter Polly!" cried the old merchant. "Come hither, child." Master Gookin's aspect, as he opened the door, was doubtful and troubled. "This gentleman," continued he, presenting the stranger, "is the Chevalier Feathertop--nay, I beg his pardon, my Lord Feathertop,--who hath brought me a token of remembrance from an ancient friend of mine. Pay your duty to his lordship, child, and honor him as his quality deserves." After these few words of introduction, the worshipful magistrate immediately quitted the room. But, even in that brief moment, had the fair Polly glanced aside at her father, instead of devoting herself wholly to the brilliant guest, she might have taken warning of some mischief nigh at hand. The old man was nervous, fidgety, and very pale. Purposing a smile of courtesy, he had deformed his face with a sort of galvanic grin, which, when Feathertop's back was turned, he exchanged for a scowl; at the same time shaking his fist, and stamping his gouty foot--an incivility which brought its retribution along with it. The truth appears to have been, that Mother Rigby's word of introduction, whatever it might be, had operated far more on the rich merchant's fears, than on his good-will. Moreover, being a man of wonderfully acute observation, he had noticed that the painted figures on the bowl of Feathertop's pipe were in motion. Looking more closely, he became convinced that these figures were a party of little demons, each duly provided with horns and a tail, and dancing hand in hand, with gestures of diabolical merriment, round the circumference of the pipe-bowl. As if to confirm his suspicions, while Master Gookin ushered his guest along a dusky passage, from his private room to the parlor, the star on Feathertop's breast had scintillated actual flames, and threw a flickering gleam upon the wall, the ceiling, and the floor. With such sinister prognostics manifesting themselves on all hands, it is not to be marvelled at that the merchant should have felt that he was committing his daughter to a very questionable acquaintance. He cursed, in his secret soul, the insinuating elegance of Feathertop's manners, as this brilliant personage bowed, smiled, put his hand on his heart, inhaled a long whiff from his pipe, and enriched the atmosphere with the smoky vapor of a fragrant and visible sigh. Gladly would poor Master Gookin have thrust his dangerous guest into the street. But there was a constraint and terror within him. This respectable old gentleman, we fear, at an earlier period of life, had given some pledge or other to the Evil Principle, and perhaps was now to redeem it by the sacrifice of his daughter. It so happened that the parlor-door was partly of glass, shaded by a silken curtain, the folds of which hung a little awry. So strong was the merchant's interest in witnessing what was to ensue between the fair Polly and the gallant Feathertop, that after quitting the room, he could by no means refrain from peeping through the crevice of the curtain. But there was nothing very miraculous to be seen; nothing--except the trifles previously noticed--to confirm the idea of a supernatural peril, environing the pretty Polly. The stranger, it is true, was evidently a thorough and practised man of the world, systematic and self-possessed, and therefore the sort of person to whom a parent ought not to confide a simple young girl, without due watchfulness for the result. The worthy magistrate, who had been conversant with all degrees and qualities of mankind, could not but perceive every motion and gesture of the distinguished Feathertop came in its proper place; nothing had been left rude or native in him; a well-digested conventionalism had incorporated itself thoroughly with his substance, and transformed him into a work of art. Perhaps it was this peculiarity that invested him with a species of ghastliness and awe. It is the effect of any thing completely and consummately artificial, in human shape, that the person impresses us as an unreality, and as having hardly pith enough to cast a shadow upon the floor. As regarded Feathertop, all this resulted in a wild, extravagant, and fantastical impression, as if his life and being were akin to the smoke that curled upward from his pipe. But pretty Polly Gookin felt not thus. The pair were now promenading the room; Feathertop with his dainty stride, and no less dainty grimace; the girl with a native maidenly grace, just touched, not spoiled, by a slightly affected manner, which seemed caught from the perfect artifice of her companion. The longer the interview continued, the more charmed was pretty Polly, until, within the first quarter of an hour (as the old magistrate noted by his watch), she was evidently beginning to be in love. Nor need it have been witchcraft that subdued her in such a hurry; the poor child's heart, it may be, was so very fervent, that it melted her with its own warmth, as reflected from the hollow semblance of a lover. No matter what Feathertop said, his words found depth and reverberation in her ear; no matter what he did, his action was heroic to her eye. And, by this time, it is to be supposed, there was a blush on Polly's cheek, a tender smile about her mouth, and a liquid softness in her glance; while the star kept coruscating on Feathertop's breast, and the little demons careered, with more frantic merriment than ever, about the circumference of his pipe-bowl. Oh, pretty Polly Gookin, why should these imps rejoice so madly that a silly maiden's heart was about to be given to a shadow! Is it so unusual a misfortune?--so rare a triumph? By and by, Feathertop paused, and throwing himself into an imposing attitude, seemed to summon the fair girl to survey his figure, and resist him longer, if she could. His star, his embroidery, his buckles, glowed, at that instant, with unutterable splendor; the picturesque hues of his attire took a richer depth of coloring; there was a gleam and polish over his whole presence, betokening the perfect witchery of well-ordered manners. The maiden raised her eyes, and suffered them to linger upon her companion with a bashful and admiring gaze. Then, as if desirous of judging what value her own simple comeliness might have, side by side with so much brilliancy, she cast a glance towards the full-length looking-glass, in front of which they happened to be standing. It was one of the truest plates in the world, and incapable of flattery. No sooner did the images, therein reflected, meet Polly's eye, than she shrieked, shrank from the stranger's side, gazed at him for a moment, in the wildest dismay, and sank insensible upon the floor. Feathertop, likewise, had looked towards the mirror, and there beheld, not the glittering mockery of his outside show, but a picture of the sordid patchwork of his real composition, stript of all witchcraft. The wretched simulacrum! We almost pity him! He threw up his arms with an expression of despair, that went farther than any of his previous manifestations, towards vindicating his claims to be reckoned human. For perchance the only time, since this so often empty and deceptive life of mortals began its course, an illusion had seen and fully recognized itself. Mother Rigby was seated by her kitchen hearth, in the twilight of this eventful day, and had just shaken the ashes out of a new pipe, when she heard a hurried tramp along the road. Yet it did not seem so much the tramp of human footsteps, as the clatter of sticks or the rattling of dry bones. "Ha!" thought the old witch, "what step is that? Whose skeleton is out of its grave now, I wonder!" A figure burst headlong into the cottage-door. It was Feathertop! His pipe was still alight; the star still flamed upon his breast; the embroidery still glowed upon his garments; nor had he lost, in any degree or manner that could be estimated, the aspect that assimilated him with our mortal brotherhood. But yet, in some indescribable way (as is the case with all that has deluded us, when once found out), the poor reality was felt beneath the cunning artifice. "What has gone wrong?" demanded the witch; "did yonder sniffling hypocrite thrust my darling from his door? The villain! I'll set twenty fiends to torment him, till he offer thee his daughter on his bended knees!" "No, mother," said Feathertop, despondingly, "it was not that!" "Did the girl scorn my precious one?" asked Mother Rigby, her fierce eyes glowing like two coals of Tophet; "I'll cover her face with pimples! Her nose shall be as red as the coal in thy pipe! Her front teeth shall drop out! In a week hence, she shall not be worth thy having!" "Let her alone, mother!" answered poor Feathertop; "the girl was half won; and methinks a kiss from her sweet lips might have made me altogether human! But," he added, after a brief pause, and then a howl of self-contempt; "I've seen myself, mother! I've seen myself for the wretched, ragged, empty thing I am! I'll exist no longer!" Snatching the pipe from his mouth, he flung it with all his might against the chimney, and, at the same instant, sank upon the floor, a medley of straw and tattered garments, with some sticks protruding from the heap, and a shrivelled pumpkin in the midst. The eyeholes were now lustreless; but the rudely-carved gap, that just before had been a mouth, still seemed to twist itself into a despairing grin, and was so far human. "Poor fellow!" quoth Mother Rigby, with a rueful glance at the relics of her ill-fated contrivance; "my poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world, made up of just such a jumble of worn-out, forgotten, and good-for-nothing trash, as he was! Yet they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they are! And why should my poor puppet be the only one to know himself, and perish for it?" While thus muttering, the witch had filled a fresh pipe of tobacco, and held the stem between her fingers, as doubtful whether to thrust it into her own mouth or Feathertop's. "Poor Feathertop!" she continued, "I could easily give him another chance, and send him forth again to-morrow. But, no! his feelings are too tender; his sensibilities too deep. He seems to have too much heart to bustle for his own advantage, in such an empty and heartless world. Well, well! I'll make a scarecrow of him, after all. 'Tis an innocent and a useful vocation, and will suit my darling well; and if each of his human brethren had as fit a one, 'twould be the better for mankind; and as for this pipe of tobacco, I need it more than he!" So saying. Mother Rigby put the stem between her lips. "Dickon!" cried she, in her high, sharp tone, "another coal for my pipe!" FOOTNOTES: [2] Concluded from page 186. From Colburn's New Monthly Magazine A CHAPTER ON GAMBLING. Very little doubt can be entertained that gambling is rapidly falling from its pristine eminence in the fashionable world: we seldom or never hear of thousands being now lost at a sitting; and those of the present generation can scarcely credit all that is said or written of the doings of their forefathers, or that whole estates were set on the hazard of a game of picquet, as a certain Irish writer voraciously informs us. Railway coupons have usurped the place of the cue and the dice-box, and the greedy passion finds an outlet in Capel Court. We do not for a moment mean to assert that gambling is dying away--the countless betting-lists in town and country furnish a melancholy proof of the widely-extended contagion--but still we do say that its very universality has brought it out of fashion, and that it is not regarded with that indulgence it formerly claimed, but is rather looked upon as the "dernier resort" of the hard-up man about town. Such being the case, it may cause our readers some surprise, on referring to the heading of this paper, to find it termed a chapter on gambling. Let them not expect any piquant details of English folly, or a peep behind the scenes of Club life. We have no wish to lay bare the secrets of our own land; and, indeed, too much has already been written on the subject; be it our task to give an account of the doings in foreign countries, and for this purpose we must ask them to accompany us across the Channel. After the villanous dens in the Palais Royal were rooted out, the proprietors, who found the business much too profitable to be tamely resigned, turned their gaze beyond the Rhine, where a fair field for their exertions in the pursuit of a livelihood presented itself. After many weary negotiations with the several governments, a company of banquiers, with M. Chabert at their head, simultaneously opened their establishments at Baden-Baden, Wisbaden, and Ems. It was a very hard contest between the Regents and the Frenchmen before the terms were finally settled, and they had to expend much money and many promises in getting a footing. But they eventually succeeded, and a few years saw their efforts richly rewarded. As they had a monopoly, they could do pretty much as they pleased, and made very stringent and profitable regulations relative to the "aprés" and other methods of gaining a pull. On the retirement of M. Chabert with an immense fortune, the company was dissolved, and M. Benazet became ostensibly sole proprietor of the rooms at Baden-Baden. The terms to which he had to subscribe were sufficient to frighten any one less enterprising than the general of an army of croupiers: he was compelled to expend 150,000 florins in decorating the rooms and embellishing the walks round the town; and an annual sum of 50,000 florins was furthermore demanded, for permission to keep the establishment open for six months in the year. The company, which leased Wisbaden and Ems, was treated much in the same manner, but still they progressed most successfully, till they were frightened from their propriety by Monsieur le Blanc. This gentleman, after struggling against immense opposition on the part of the Frankfort merchants, who were naturally alarmed at the danger to which their "commis" and cash-boxes were exposed by the proximity of a gambling-table, obtained a concession from the Elector of Hessen to establish a bank at Homburg-an-der-Höhe, which he speedily promulgated to the world, with the additional attraction of being open all the year round, and only a "trente et un aprés" for the players to contend against. Some time after, Wilhelmsbad was opened as a rival to Homburg, with no "aprés" at all, and the above mentioned, with the addition of Aix-la-Chapelle and Cöthen, form the principal establishments where "strangers are taken in and done for" through Germany. The games universally played are "rouge et noir" and "roulette," the former also denominated "trente et quarante," though both titles insufficiently explain the tendency of the game, especially as "noir" never has any part or parcel in the affair, all being regulated by "rouge" winning or losing. The appointments are simple in the extreme: a long table, covered with green cloth, divided into alternate squares marked with red and black "carreaux," and two divisions for betting on or against the "couleur," three packs of cards, half a dozen croupiers armed with rakes, and a quantity of rouleaus and smaller coin constituting the whole _matériel_. A croupier commences the pleasing game by dealing a quantity of cards till he arrives at any number above thirty (court-cards counting as ten), when he begins a second row, the first representing "noir," the other "rouge." The "couleur" is determined by the first card turned up. The two great pulls in favor of the bank are, first, the "aprés"--that is, when the two rows amount to the same number, and the croupier calls out, "Et trente trois," or any other number "aprés,"--the stakes are impounded, and can only be released by paying half the money down, or else by the same color winning; and secondly--the chief thing--_the bank never loses its temper_. As a martingale, or continual doubling of the stakes after losing, would infallibly cause a player to win in the end, there is a law in force that no stake can exceed three hundred louis-d'or without the permission of the banque: a permission it very rarely grants, except in extreme cases, as for instance, at Homburg, when the Belgians so nearly broke the bank; but then it was "conquer or die." The lowest amount allowed to be staked is a two florin piece. The expression, "V'la banque!" which we so frequently hear quoted, has its origin from this game. After a player has passed, that is, won, on the same color two or three times consecutively, the croupier, to prevent any possible dispute, asks whether he wishes to risk the whole of the money down; if he intends to do so he employs the above cabalistic formula. Roulette is a very much more complicated affair; for this, a table is required with a basin in the centre, containing a spiral tube with an orifice at the top, through which the ball passes, and falls into one of the thirty-eight holes in the basin, which are respectively marked with figures, and alternately painted red and black. There are four projecting pieces of iron, one of which the croupier twirls, crying, "Faites votre jeu, messieurs;" when he says, "Le jeu est fait, rien n'va plus," no more money can be put down. In the middle of the table are the numbers, from one to thirty-six, going regularly downwards, in three rows, while at the head of them are the two "zeros"--rouge single and noir double. On either side of the numbers are three divisions; on one hand, marked "rouge, impair et passe," on the other, "noir, pair et manque." Besides these, there are three compartments at the end of the columns, for the purpose of backing the numbers contained in the column; and three others on each side of the numbers, in which to bet on the first, second, or third series of twelve. The odds are regulated in the following fashion. If a player back a single number, he receives thirty-five times the amount of his stake, in the event of its coming up; if he back three at once, he only gets eleven times; if six, only five times the amount. For either of the other compartments he receives, if he gain, the simple amount of his stake, with the exception of the divisions at the end of the columns, and the series of twelve, when he receives double if he win, as the odds are two to one against him. The banque has a most iniquitous advantage in the two zeros, which are calculated to recur once in nineteen times; if the single rouge turn up, they sack all the money, except that placed on the red; if double zero, they take all. The amount of the stakes at roulette is limited to two hundred louis d'or on a color, and six on a single number; the lowest stake allowed is a florin. Though it may be supposed that a run at "trente et quarante" would be a much more likely occurrence than at roulette--and, indeed, we can remember at the former game the "noir" passing two-and-twenty times, though no one had the courage to take advantage of such an extraordinary circumstance--yet it is a very frequent thing at roulette for the ball to have a predilection for a certain series of numbers--probably through the croupier twisting the machine with the same force each time--and on such occasions a good deal of money may be won by a careful observer. One young Englishman, who was perfectly ignorant of the game, we saw at Wisbaden place a five-franc piece on the last series of twelve, and he left his money down six times, winning double the amount of his stake every turn. He then discovered the money was his, by the croupier asking him if he wished to stand on the whole sum; but he never gave the banque another chance, for he picked it up, and quickly went off with it. Every player at roulette seems to have a different system: some powder the numbers with florins or five-franc pieces, in the hope of one coming up out of them; others speculate merely on the rouge or noir. One Spaniard at Ems, we remember, made a very comfortable living at it by a method of playing he had invented. He placed three louis-d'or on the manque, which contains all the numbers to eighteen, and two louis on the last series of twelve; that is, from twenty-four to thirty-six. Thus he had only six numbers and two zeros against him. If manque gained, he won three louis and lost two; if a number in the last twelve came up, he won four and lost three; but a continuation of zeros would have ruined his calculation. Some, again, back the run, others play against it; a very favorite scheme, and one generally successful, being to bet against a color after it has passed three times; but then, again, there is no law on the subject, and a man may lose heavily in spite of the utmost caution. In short, the best plan by far would be, if play one must, to stick to "rouge et noir," which bears some semblance of fairness. The _habitués_ of the rooms are well known to the croupiers. At Baden-Baden we had for many years the old ex-Elector of Hesse, who made his money by selling his soldiers to England at so much a head, like cattle, during the American war, and who was easily to be recognized by the gold-headed and coroneted rake he always had in his hand. He was, indeed, a most profitable customer to Monsieur Benazet. But, alas! the superior attractions of Homburg led him away, and we never saw him again in Baden; the revolution of 1848 frightened, or angered, him to death. Wisbaden boasts of a banker from Amsterdam, who usually plays on credit--that is to say, he pockets his winnings, but, if he loses, borrows money of the banquier, squaring his account, which is generally a heavy one, at the end of the week: and an English baronet, who always brings a lozenge box with him, which, when he has filled, he retires with; and this he frequently contrives to accomplish, for he possesses his own luck and that of some one else in the bargain. Ems is the principal resort of Russians, who play fearfully high, and a good deal of private gambling is done there on the quiet; while Aix-la-Chapelle appears only destined as a trap for incautious travellers, many of whom, in consequence, never see the Rhine, and return to England with very misty ideas about Germany. Aix-la-Chapelle will never be erased from our memory, on account of a most ludicrous scene which happened on our first visit to Germany. Being unacquainted with German at the time, and our French being of the sort which Chaucer calls "French of Bow," we had selected one of our party, who boasted of his knowledge of most foreign tongues, and installed himself as "Dolmetscher." His first experiment was in ordering supper, which he proceeded to do in something he was pleased to call German. "Plait-il, M'nsieu?" said the waiter. The order was repeated. "Would you have the kindness to spik Angleesh?" remarked the garçon. Though this raised some doubts in our minds as to our friend's capacity, yet one of our party, feeling indisposed, invoked his intercession for the sake of procuring some Seidlitz powders. However, in his indignation, he refused to have any thing to do with it. In this dilemma, the sick man called in the English-conversing waiter to his aid, who readily offered to help him, and soon returned with a bottle of Seidlitz _water_, which he persuaded our unwary friend to make trial of. Now this water happens to be the strongest of all the mineral springs in Germany, and the consequence was, the poor young man became very shortly alarmingly unwell. In his anxiety, he fancied himself poisoned, and summoned the waiter once more. On his reappearance, he compelled him to finish the whole of the bottle, which contained nearly a quart, to prove it was not of a dangerous nature; but, in point of fact, it proved to be so, by nearly killing the wretched garçon. The company to be seen round the table consists usually of Russians and French, both male and female, with a sprinkling of Germans, who escape from their own police in order to satisfy their itching for play. Thus, for instance, we have Nassau and Darmstadt people at Baden-Baden, while the Badese and Suabese rush to Homburg and Wisbaden. There is a very salutary law in every land where gambling is permitted, that no inhabitant of that land be allowed to play at the public table, and if any one is caught red-handed, he is usually imprisoned, and his winnings, if any, confiscated. We can call to mind a laughable instance of this at Wisbaden. Two old peasants, who had probably come for a day's pleasure and to see the sights, managed to find their way into the Kursaal, and stood all entranced before the roulette-table. One of them, imagining it a right royal way of making money, and much better fun than ploughing, lugged out his leathern purse, and began by staking a modest florin on the rouge. In the course of about half an hour he had contrived to win a very decent sum, and was walking away in great glee, when a gendarme, who had been watching him all the while, quietly collared him and dragged him off to the Polizei, where, as we afterwards learned, he was incarcerated for three weeks, and his "addlings" employed for the good of the state. It may naturally be supposed that the presence of so much circulating medium in one place, and the _prestige_ attaching to the banquier's coffers, which are currently supposed to contain a sum More precious far Than that accumulated store of wealth And orient gems, which, for a day of need, The sultan hides in his ancestral tombs, would induce many depredators to make an attempt on them, but we generally find that cunning is much more in favor than any open attack. Thus, for instance, Monsieur le Blanc, who, we may add, has been more assailed than any other banquier, was nearly made the victim of a stratagem, which might have entailed serious results. A fellow contrived to get into the "Conversation Haus" by night, and blocked up all the low numbers in the roulette machine in such a manner that the ball, on falling in, must inevitably leap out again. On the next day he and his accomplices played, and netted a large sum by backing the high numbers. They carried on the game for two or three days, but were fortunately overheard by a detective while quarrelling about the division of their plunder, in the gardens behind the establishment. They were arrested, and the money recovered. A very dangerous design was also formed against him by one of his croupiers, who, being discontented with his lot, determined to make his fortune at one _coup_: and the plan he contrived was this. He procured a pack of pre-arranged cards, which he concealed in his hat, and when it came to his turn to deal, he intended to drop the bank cards into his _chapeau_ and cleverly substitute the others; but this artfully-concocted scheme was disconcerted, by one of his confederates considering he might make a better and safer thing of it by telling Le Blanc beforehand. His most imminent peril, and the occasion when his very existence as a banquier was at stake, was the affair with the Belgian company, of which Thackeray has given us a detailed account in his "Kickleburys up the Rhine." The "propriétaires," besides, suffer considerable losses by the dishonesty of the croupiers; for, although there is a person expressly employed to watch them, who sits in a high-backed chair behind the dealer, yet they are such practised escamoteurs, that they will secrete a piece of gold without his seeing it. One fellow was detected at Baden-Baden, who had carried on a system of plunder for a long time with security. He used to slip a louis-d'or into his snuff-box whenever it came to his turn to preside over the money department; he was found out by another _employé_ asking him casually for a pinch of snuff, and seeing the money gleam in the gaslight. These croupiers are the most extraordinary race of men it is possible to conceive. They seem to unite the stoicism of the American Indian to the politeness of the Frenchman of the _ancien régime_. They are never seen to smile, and wear the same impassive countenance whether the banque is gaining or losing. In fact, what do they care as long as their salary is regularly paid? They seem to fear neither God nor man: for when a shock of the earthquake was felt at Wisbaden, in 1847, though all the company fled in terror, they remained grimly at their posts, preferring to go down to their patron saints with their rouleaux, as an evidence of their fidelity to their employer. Perhaps, though, they regarded the earthquake as a preconcerted scheme to rob the banque, the only danger they are apprehensive of. You may beat them, and yet they smite not again; for when a young Englishman, bearing an honorable name, vented his rage at losing by breaking a rake at Baden-Baden over the croupier's head, he merely turned round and beckoned to the attendant gendarme to remove him and the pieces, and then went on with his parrot-like "rouge gagne--couleur perd." The most amusing thing to any philosophical frequenter of the rooms, is to see the sudden gyrations of fortune's wheel. One gentleman at Baden-Baden, a Russian, was so elated after an unparalleled run of good fortune, that he went out and ordered a glorious feed for himself and friends at the restauration; but during the interval, while dinner was preparing, he thought he would go back and win a little more. His good fortune, however, had deserted him, and he lost not only all his winnings, but every florin he was possessed of, so he was compelled to countermand the dinner. On the arrival of his remittances, determined not to be balked of his repast this time by want of funds, he paid for a spread for twelve beforehand; but his luck was very bad, and he actually went back to the restaurateur, and, after some negotiation, sold him back the dinner at half-price. The money he received was, of course, very speedily lost. Another, a student of Heidelberg, won at a sitting 970 florins, but disdaining to retire without a round thousand, he tempted fortune too long, and lost it all back, as well as his own money. The most absurd thing was, that not having any friends in Baden, he was driven to return "per pedes" to his university, a distance of more than one hundred miles. It is a very rare occurrence for the bank to be broken, though the newspapers state that such a thing happened three times at Baden-Baden during the present season,--a statement which we are inclined to place in the same category with the wonderful showers of frogs and gigantic cabbages which happen so opportunely to fill any vacant corner. When, however, it really takes place, the rooms are only closed for an hour or two, and the play soon commences again. The most painful incident is, the frequency of suicides during the season, any account of which Monsieur Benazet, for obvious reasons, prevents reaching the public. When any thing of the sort occurs, the place most commonly selected for the tragedy is a summer-house a little way out of the town, on the road to the Alt Schloss, whence the poor victim can take a last lingering look on the scene of his ruin. One young man, in our time, attempted to blow out his brains at the roulette-table, but was fortunately prevented, and a fortnight's detention in the House of Correction very much cooled his ardor for making a "dem'd disgusting body" of himself. Indeed, it has ever been a passion with your Frenchmen to cause a scene when dying: they would not give a "thank you" to cut their throats in private. On the 31st of October, the day on which the rooms close for the season, an immense quantity of players throng to the Kursaal; for though they have withstood temptation for so long a time, they cannot possibly suffer the season to go past without making one trial. On the 1st of November, those birds of ill-omen, the croupiers, set out to hybernize in Paris, and the rooms are closed, not to be reopened till the 1st of May. It has long been a question most difficult of decision whether, leaving morality entirely out of sight, the watering-places of Germany are benefited or injured by the continuance of gambling. We are inclined to the latter opinion; for, though it may be said that it brings a deal of money into circulation, yet your true gambler is a most unsocial and inhospitable fellow, and one of the worst visitors an hotel-keeper can have. Besides encouraging, as they do, all the riffraff of Europe to pay periodical visits to Germany, they thereby prevent many respectable persons from settling in that country; for any wife or mother who has the interests of her family at heart, would fly from a place where gambling is allowed, as from a pest-house. At the same time, a very lax tone prevails in these towns, and every finer feeling is blunted--in many cases irreparably--by constant association with hard-hearted, callous, and unscrupulous gamblers. That this was a view taken by the more enlightened of the Germans, is proved by the fact that the parliament of Frankfort decided on the abolition of all gambling-houses by a considerable majority, but unfortunately there was no time to carry such a salutary measure into effect. Had it been otherwise, the Regents in all probability would, through very shame, have hesitated in giving their assent to the re-establishment of such a crying evil. From Fraser's Magazine. AN ELECTION ROW IN NEW-YORK. BY C. ASTOR BRISTED. An election in England is a very exciting affair; in America, from its frequency, it becomes a mere matter of every-day business. Almost every citizen has the opportunity of voting twice a year, and elections are continually going on in some part or other of the country, so that they form a standard topic of conversation, much as the weather does in England. No wonder, then, that they usually fail to awaken any great or general interest. But to this rule there are important exceptions. A presidential[3] or a congressional campaign sometimes involves the fate of most important measures of policy, and creates a corresponding excitement. At such periods, the country is flooded with "extra" newspapers and political lecturers, the walls groan with placards, bar-room politicians talk themselves hoarse, and steamboat passengers amuse themselves with holding meetings and sham-balloting for the respective candidates. Still the enthusiasm of the parties generally spends itself in words; they seldom come into actual personal collision. Even in the West, there are not _more_ rows on election days than at other times. But here again we have a notorious exception in the case of New-York. Many thousands of the "finest pisantry" have located themselves in that city, and they have not lost an iota of their belligerent propensities, affording a beautiful illustration of _coelum non animum_, &c. Entirely under the influence of their priests, they are almost invariably to be found on the agrarian side, and are ready at any time to attack a whig (conservative) meeting, storm the polls, or engage in any other act of violence to which their wily leaders may prompt them. In the spring of 1840, the Whigs of the State of New York (the _city_ still inclined the other way) had been in power nearly two years, with a decided majority in both houses of the legislature, and a governor who "went the entire animal" with them. Washington Irving says that the best men of a party propose to themselves three ends: first, to get their opponents out; secondly, to get themselves in; thirdly, to do some good to the country; but the majority are satisfied with attaining the first two objects. Now the Whigs had accomplished these as thoroughly as they could have desired, and had made such use of their victory as to put it out of the power of any one to charge them with being worse than infidels. They, therefore, like good patriots, set about the third proposed point, and their first step was to take some measures for improving the election laws, so far as concerned the city of New-York. That city had more than 300,000 inhabitants,[4] at least 26,000 voters, and no registry law whatever. The consequence may be easily imagined. If a man chose to take the responsibility of perjuring himself, he could always pass a false vote, and was frequently able to do it without that unpleasant necessity. To prove _residence_, it was only requisite to have slept the previous night in the ward where he voted; this gave rise to an extensive system of colonization just before the election. In short, it was evident that the ballot _alone_ would not secure a fair vote, while the experience of Philadelphia showed that _with a good system of registry_ it answered every required purpose. A registry law was accordingly reported and read the first time. Great was the wrath of the Loco-Focos[5] when they found this measure on the _tapis_. The strength of the two parties in the city was very nearly balanced, the mercantile influence of the Whigs, and the papist influence of the Locos, being about a match for each other. Indeed, the same side seldom carried its candidates for mayor and aldermen more than two years successively. But the Locos had good reason to fear that a strict registry law would knock on the head nearly a thousand of their voters, without making corresponding havoc in the Whig ranks. They were therefore naturally anxious to prevent, if possible, the passage of this law; every effort was put forth to make it appear unpopular, by calling meetings, and getting up petitions against it. Most of the Whigs cared nothing for this; but some men, whose good feeling outran their discretion, and who had the fatuity to suppose that Loco-Focos were capable of being influenced by reason, called a meeting (it was about a week previous to the charter election) "of citizens, without distinction of party," to express their approval of the registry law. Such calls, emanating professedly from neutrals, but really from partisans, are not uncommon; and the result of them usually is, that the speakers meet with no opposition, and the resolutions are carried unanimously; none of the other party, except perhaps, a reporter or two, attending. But on the present occasion, the opponents of the measure were determined that its friends should _not_ have it all their own way; so some thirty or forty of the Locos attended, and did their best to impede the proceedings. First, they objected to the gentleman proposed for chairman; then they interrupted the speakers; and, finally, kicked up such a row as effectually to drown the voice of the secretary, who was trying to read the first resolution offered. Now of all the offences against good manners that can be committed in America, disturbing the harmony of a public meeting is about the most flagrant. It may be supposed, then, that the conduct of these intruders excited no small indignation on the part of the majority. There were not enough constables present to eject them, so the "citizens, without distinction of party," took the law into their own hands; such Whigs as were nearest incontinently laid hands on the rioters, and "passed them out." Reader, have you a clear idea of what this "passing out" is? I believe the operation is occasionally practised in England, at theatres and other places of public resort, when young gentlemen have got elevated, and won't behave themselves. But, lest you should not be familiar with it, I will endeavor to give you as much as I remember of a description by one of our authors,[6] of the style in which the thing is managed. The occasion represented is a public dinner, given to the Honorable Mr. So-and-So, by his admirers; and the victim, a too daring-dun, who has spoiled a fine period of the orator's--"If, fellow-citizens, I should be doomed to retirement, I shall at least carry with me the proud conviction that I have always acted as becomes an honest man,"--by impertinently suggesting that "his small account for groceries has been running four years." "This was too much for the admirers of the honorable gentleman. 'Turn him out!' 'Throw him over!' 'Hustle him out!' "Pass him down!! "Now when it is remembered that the unhappy man had established himself at the very upper end of the room, in which five hundred of his fellow-creatures were packed like damaged goods, it will be easily imagined what a pleasant prospect he had before him. "An assemblage of human beings has often been compared to a sea. Dreadful, indeed, poor Muzzy, was the ocean on which thou wert doomed to embark. "PASS HIM DOWN! "The call was answered by the elevation of Mr. Muzzy six feet in the air. From this altitude he was let down into a vortex of strong-handed fellows, who whirled him about horribly, and then transmitted him to a more equable current, which pitched him forward at a steady rate towards the door. Sometimes he landed among a party of quiet elderly gentlemen over their wine, and the torrent seemed to be lulled; then again it would return upon him with renewed violence, and bear him helplessly along. At last he was caught up by two mighty billows in the shape of a master butcher and baker, and impelled with fearful velocity through the narrow straits of the door. On recovering his senses sufficiently to take an observation, he found himself stranded keel uppermost, in the gutter, with his rigging considerably damaged, and his timbers somewhat shaken." Such was the discipline to which the obstreperous Locos were subjected, and neither their general disposition, nor their particular temper of mind at the time, was such as to induce them to bear the infliction with Christian resignation. Accordingly, they repaired in a body to the head-quarters of their party (at Tammany Hall, about half a mile distant), and there reported the indignity they had suffered. The thing was not to be endured, and steps were instantly taken to exact a terrible retribution. The more belligerent of the Locos had formed themselves into various associations for purposes of offence, rejoicing in the classic names of "Spartans," "Ring-tailed Roarers," "Huge Paws," and "Butt-enders." Some two hundred of this last body chanced to be in attendance, all armed with bludgeons, and they instantly started off to make an assault upon the Masonic Hall, where the friends of the registry law were assembled. The surprise bid fair to be a complete one, and so doubtless it would have been, but for a circumstance, to explain which it will be necessary for us to go back to the morning of this eventful day. Bill Travis, as his friends familiarly called him--or W. Thompson Travis, Esq., as his tradesmen used to address him on the back of their frequently-sent-in and occasionally-paid bills--was a senior at Columbia College; not precisely the first of his class in Latin and Greek, but decidedly the best waltzer and billiard-player in it, and _the_ exquisite, _par excellence_, of his juvenile contemporaries. He never went down Broadway, even to go to College, without light French kids and a gold-headed cane; and his stock of enamelled chains, opal studs, diamond pins, and the like vanities, would nearly have fitted up a bride's _corbeille_. To see him fully got up--polished boots, palm-leaf waistcoat, gorgeous cravat, and all--mincing over the gutter, you would take him for a regular man-milliner, and say that the greatest exertion he was capable of, would be holding a trotter, and that only with the aid of a pair of pulleys. But scrutinize him more closely, and you would see that, for all his slim waist and delicate extremities, he had a good full natural chest of his own, and powerful limbs. Put him into action, and you would find that he could hit straight from the shoulder, and "split himself well," as the French phrase it, when he gave point, or went back in guard. He was, in fact, a crack boxer, fencer, and gymnast. Pugilism was the fashion with the young bloods of Gotham at that time, especially such of them as had any tendency to politics: and among these boys of nineteen, there were not a few who would have tackled a fancy man in his prime, and at no great odds either, their great agility making up for their want of downright strength. Travis's friend and senior by one year, George Purcell (who afterwards served with credit as a volunteer in the Mexican war, and ultimately became a judge in California), had on one occasion, when threatened with the vengeance of a stalwart Bowery boy, sought out the democratic champion in the very midst of his personal and political friends, and challenged him to single combat; which challenge being promptly accepted, he polished off the young butcher in good style and short order--the other b'hoys, with that love of fair play which honorably distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon race all over the world, remaining impartial spectators of the fight. Travis had never equalled this feat, but he _had_ seen a good deal of low life and hard knocks on the sly, proper and fashionable as he always appeared in public by daylight. Now, on the morning of this very day, as we were saying, Travis, while lounging up Broadway, suddenly encountered a youth of about his own age, but a very different style and type. He was short and thickset, swaggering, and almost sailor-like in his gait, and wore the usual dress of the American snob playing gentleman--that is to say, a black dress-coat and trousers, and a black satin vest. His ungloved right hand sustained a walking-stick, which might, on a pinch, have done duty as a bed-post; his left was buried in his trousers' pocket. It was Travis's cousin, Lefferts Lloyd. Half Knickerbocker, half Welsh in his extraction, he descended directly from some of the oldest settlers of the island, and by rights, his should have been the fashionable, and the Travises (who were altogether _novi homines_) the unfashionable branch of the family. But fortune, or the taste of the Lloyds themselves, had willed it otherwise; with equal means, they resided in a region east of the Bowery, well nigh _terra incognita_ to the set in which the Travises moved. Lefferts himself was very much one of the people; he eschewed all vanities of patent leather and kid gloves, preferred ten-pins to billiards, and running after a fire-engine to waltzing. The cousins, who had been at school together, were on very amicable terms with each other, but their tastes and pursuits not exactly coinciding, they seldom met except for a few minutes in the street, or a few days at a watering-place. "By Jove! Lefferts, that's a delicate cane of yours," said Travis, glancing from the other's stupendous bludgeon to his own gold-headed Malacca, which, as he would have expressed it himself, had knocked a big hole in a fifty dollar bill. "Preparing for the meeting to-night, you see," answered Lloyd, with a significant waggle of the big stick, that would have gladdened an Irishman's heart. Nothing more was said on the subject, and they separated, after a few trivial remarks; but Travis took good heed of the allusion, which he seemed not to notice at the time. On the look-out for mischief, he set himself to reconnoitre that evening in the vicinity of Tammany Hall, fearless of detection, for no one could have recognized the Broadway exquisite in his assumed garb. His upper garment was an old great coat razeed into a frock; his feet were cased in heavy fireman's boots, which, with their impermeable uppers and ponderous soles, were equally serviceable for keeping out snow-water and kicking niggers' shins; his head was protected by a stout leather cap, and in his hand he carried a hickory, not so ponderous as Lloyd's stick, but none the less capable of doing worthy execution in a row. Seeing the Butt-enders proceed up Broadway in a body, he at once suspected that the Masonic Hall was the object of their attack, and accordingly put on all his disposable quantity of steam, that their coming might not be unannounced. There was no time for ceremonious entry, or oratorical delivery, but bursting impetuously into the room, he informed his friends in straightforward terms that the enemy were at hand in great force. The Whigs were somewhat taken aback, most of them being unarmed; but it was not an occasion to stand upon trifles. _Furor arma ministrat_; the meeting was broken up into a committee of the whole, and the benches into their component timbers, the fragments of which were distributed among the company, while a long plank, under the particular supervision of Travis himself, was suspended over the banisters, so as to sweep the staircase. Hardly were these preparations completed, when the hall below was flooded with the advancing Loco-Focos. Stealthily but swiftly they advanced, little dreaming of the reception that awaited them. The staircase was certainly a very defensible position; it was not wide, and made a sharp bend near the top, so that the assailants could not see the danger that threatened them. The foremost pressed eagerly up-stairs, and just as they arrived at this turn, their leader could no longer contain himself. "Now, boys," he exclaimed, with a flourish of his bludgeon, "we'll give the Whigs their gruel!" "_No you don't!_" And as Travis spoke, slam-bang came the big plank above mentioned, which shot out with startling suddenness, and worked with commendable dexterity, made a clean sweep of the whole first column. The leader and five or six more were hurled bodily into the air, and tumbled upon the heads of their followers, while fifteen or twenty others were pitched down the upper flight of ten steps. The mass on the main staircase below recoiled with the shock, and as those in the hall still pressed onward, a dense body was wedged together in woful confusion. "Tippecanoe and Tyler too!" shouted Travis, and the Whigs poured forth from the room, and mustered thickly at the head of the staircase, exulting in the disaster of their opponents, while the end of the plank, which had been reset for action, peered over the banisters, as if saying, "Come on, if you dare!" The foremost enemies were evidently unwilling to encounter this formidable engine of defence, but the pressure from behind drove them forward. Their first leader was _hors du combat_, and they were now headed by a young man of tolerably respectable appearance, clearly not one of the regular Butt-enders. "Let go!" cried Travis, and the primitive ram was again shot forward, but not with equal success. Several of the Locos were knocked down, but others threw themselves desperately on the plank, and their general, by a dexterous movement, placed himself within it. Travis recognized his cousin Lloyd! It was a fine bit of romance, but there was no time to fabricate reflections corresponding, for even as he made the discovery, the amateur Spartan was springing up the stairs, and the man who had been most active in managing the plank went down before his hickory. The fallen Whig upset the board with him, and it lay upon the stairs, useless as a weapon, but still impeding the enemy's advance. At the same moment, a stalwart Irishman, who had climbed up the banisters, levelled his shillelah at Travis's head; but our friend anticipated the blow by giving Pat point in the breast with such strength and dexterity, that he tumbled helplessly into the mass beneath, causing much inconvenience and more panic. This done, Travis darted at his relative, who was knocking down the Whigs right and left, and had nearly gained a footing on the landing-place. Both were adepts in single-stick practice, and the contest bid fair to be of long duration; but they were not to have it all to themselves, for as other Loco-Focos gained the top of the stairs, the _mêlée_ became general. It would require the pen of an Irving or a Fielding to do full justice to the scene. Black eyes, bloody noses, and broken heads were lavishly distributed in all directions; Irish yells and Tippecanoe war-cries swelled the uproar; while from the front windows of the room within some elderly gentlemen kept insanely crying "Watch!" The Whigs had greatly the advantage over their opponents in point of position and numbers, but the assailants were more practised belligerents, and provided with better weapons. Moreover, many friends of the registry law had as yet taken no part in the affray, vainly hoping that the city authorities (at that time Loco-Focos) would interfere. Inch by inch the Butt-enders fought their way forward. The Whigs were visibly giving ground. A panic seized their ranks, and those who were still in the room began to look about them for means of escape. There was a small back-window, with a shed five or six feet below it, whence the ground could be reached by a ladder. Out of this window dropped, and down this ladder rattled the president, vice-presidents, secretaries, and, in short, the most quiet and respectable men of the meeting. Their exit was as undignified as their entry had been pompous. At length the shed, being rather ancient, gave way under the weight of a very fat man, who was snugly deposited in a pigsty beneath, so that hope was cut off. The Whigs now became desperate: they saw that they must fight in earnest, and advanced to a man. The Butt-enders were stopped in their advance. Both parties wavered. Travis perceived that the decisive blow was now to be struck. Closing up to Lloyd, he came down on him "with an awk stroke," as the old romancers say, that fairly broke down his guard, and beat him back upon three or four of his followers, who all went over together. The Whigs raised a shout, made a rush forward, and by sheer weight hurled the Butt-enders down the staircase. After them poured the victors, with Travis at their head. The Irish shillelahs were nothing before his hickory: he knocked down or disabled a man at every blow. Still the Locos made a vigorous attempt to rally in the lower entry, but at that moment a reinforcement arrived for the Whigs, which completed their defeat. A band of _Unionists_ (a Whig association formed in opposition to the Butt-enders) had been parading the streets with music and banners, and they now arrived in time to fall furiously on the rear of their antagonists. The Loco-Focos, thus hemmed in between two fires, were gloriously pommelled for about five minutes. At length, with a desperate charge, they broke through the Unionists, and fled precipitately down Broadway, while the band accompanied their retreat with the complimentary air of the "Rogue's March." The victors re-assembled in the big room, somewhat diminished in numbers (even after the accession of the Unionists) and dilapidated in attire. Travis, who had been foremost throughout the whole row, bore especial marks of it on his person. His coat was slit down the back, and _minus_ several buttons in front; his cravat utterly missing, and his shirt, so much of it as was visible, might possibly have made patches for a rifle, but was of no particular value as an article of dress. But such little incidents only served to increase the general hilarity of triumph. The meeting was reconstructed, the resolutions passed, and they wound off with a Harrison song--in fact, with two or three. It was near midnight before the walls of the Masonic Hall ceased to echo to such strains as these:-- To turn out the administration Is the very best thing we can do; 'Twill be for the good of the nation To put in old Tippecanoe. _Chorus all._ Hurrah for old Tippecanoe--oo--oo! Hurrah for old Tippecanoe! 'Twill be for the good of the nation To put in old Tippecanoe! Notwithstanding the very demonstrative character of the row, no lives were lost or bones broken. Even Lloyd, though sadly trodden on by both parties after his fall, sustained no serious injury, nor did the combat of the cousins give rise to any permanent difficulty between them. The registry law was passed some weeks after, to the great disgust of the Loco-Focos, eight or nine hundred of whose voters were thereby placed on the list of unavailables. FOOTNOTES: [3] It is a mistake to suppose that the presidential election is _always_ attended with great excitement. Monroe literally walked over the course for his second term. Martin Van Buren's election passed off very quietly; and General Taylor's, being taken almost as a matter of course, was accompanied by no extraordinary demonstrations. [4] Now more than 600,000. [5] This _sobriquet_, at first applied to a small fraction of the New-York democrats, which fraction afterwards absorbed the whole party, had its origin in the following incident: A quarrel occurring at Tammany Hall (the head-quarters of the democracy), the majority moved an adjournment, and, to make sure of it, put out the lights. The recusants, in anticipation of some such step, had provided themselves with _lucifer matches_, and, by their aid, re-lit the lamps, and continued the meeting. Lucifers were then called loco-focos--why, no one knows; the name was probably invented by some imaginative popular manufacturer of the article; and the appellation of _Loco-Foco party_ was proposed in derision, for this small band of seceders; who, however, in time, brought over the original majority to their views. Hence the Whigs continued to apply the contemptuous designation to the whole democratic or radical party. [6] Cornelius Matthews, to whom this quotation from memory may possibly do injustice, but the work in which it occurs is now out of print. From Bentley's Miscellany. THE JEWISH HEROINE: A STORY OF TANGIER.[7] In the latter part of the year 1834, there resided in Tangier a Jew, Haim Hachuel, who employed himself, as well as his wife, Simla, in commercial pursuits. They had two children; the eldest, Ysajar, followed the trade of his father; the second was a daughter, Sol, who had just completed her seventeenth year, and whose rare and surpassing beauty was the admiration of all who saw her. Though Fortune lavished not her smiles on Haim Hachuel, he lacked not the means of living in comfort with his small family, by his own and Simla's unassisted efforts, the latter taking charge not only of the education of her daughter, but of the whole management of the domestic affairs, and even the common work of the house. The careful mother, however, provided that her daughter's employments should be limited as much as possible to household cares, so that the entire arrangement of them gradually devolved on the fair Sol as she grew up. In the earlier years of the young Jewess's life, she submitted passively enough to the restraint imposed upon her by her mother, and was almost always to be found busied in the toils suited to her sex; but as she advanced towards womanhood, the tastes and passions natural to her age began to develope themselves, and the lovely Sol, becoming conscious of the many charms with which Nature had endowed her, chafed at the rigor of her seclusion. Her mother, hitherto her chief and only friend, now deemed it prudent to assume towards the young maiden a severity of demeanor, which so exasperated her, that, not finding within her home those innocent recreations suitable to her age, and which her heart so greatly desired, she was tempted to seek abroad for sympathy and participation in her griefs. Near the dwelling of Hachuel lived a Moorish woman, by name Tâhra Mesmudi. With this person the young Jewess formed an acquaintance, which soon grew into friendship. Her mother occasionally gave her permission to visit her; and on these occasions she would spend the time in relating domestic occurrences,--and at other times, eluding her mother's vigilant eye, she would slip out of the house to impart her sorrows to Tâhra, and receive her sympathy. Simla endeavored on more than one occasion to check the growing intimacy of the young girl with their Mahometan neighbor; but, little able to foresee its deplorable results, and secure in her daughter's confidence, she was unwilling to deprive her altogether of this slight indulgence. In this state, therefore, things remained for awhile, Sol taking a reluctant part in the labors allotted to her by her mother, and but rarely appearing in the streets, though when she did so, her surpassing charms gained her the homage of crowds of admirers, who thought themselves happy in obtaining even a passing sight of this prodigy of Nature's work, usually secluded from all eyes but those of the proud and happy authors of her existence. But, however the high spirit of the enchanting Sol rebelled against her fate, deeply and violently as she resented her bondage, no murmur ever escaped her lips, and her false neighbor was the only confidant of her sorrow; and already (so various are the disguises of seeming friendship) even now did Tâhra meditate a project destined to be the ruin of the fair Jewess. Amongst the Arabs, the conversion of an infidel (by which name they designate all those who do not conform to their creed), is esteemed an action in the highest degree meritorious. This conquest to their faith, therefore, they make wherever an opportunity is open to them, by the most indiscriminate and unscrupulous means, according to the teaching of the Alcôran, which allows the lawfulness of all means, and the most unbounded license in their choice, for the attainment of a lawful object. Tâhra, the Moor, failed not, accordingly, in her intercourse with the youthful Sol, to extol, as it were incidentally, the excellence of her religion, the many advantages enjoined by its adherents, and the unbounded esteem awarded by the true believers to those who consented to embrace it. But the lovely and innocent-minded Jewess, quite unconscious of the malignant purpose of her neighbor, heeded none of her exhortations, but rather listened to them with a degree of compassion. Being herself certain of her faith, and feeling an enthusiastic interest in the law under which she was born, she regarded merely as an excess of religious sentiment, the zeal which prompted the Mahometan to persevere in these encomiums of her religious tenets. The dawn gleamed forth one day amid a thousand clouds, which hung in thick masses below the sky, and covered it with an opaque and gloomy screen; the mournful twittering of the warbling birds bespoke anxiety and alarm; the hoarse rushing of the wind threatened destruction to the woods; the flowers of the fields began to droop; the sun withdrew his light from the world beneath, and all seemed to presage a day of grief and bitterness--save in the home where the fair Sol arose, like another Circe, from her couch, and sallied forth, seeming to temper by her enchanting presence the angry frowns of the elements without. In the house of Hachuel was a chamber, set apart for devotional purposes. Thither she directed her earliest steps, having previously (after the manner of the Hebrews) cleansed her hands from all impurity. On quitting this oratory, she occupied herself in the various works of the house; but, as noon drew on, her mother, with her wonted asperity, reproved her for not having already completed her household task. Sol replied with a degree of warmth which aroused the anger of her mother, who angrily reproached and even threatened her with chastisement; when, in a fatal moment, the young girl, fearing lest she should be scourged, ran with precipitation to the house of the neighbor Tâhra for refuge. Throwing herself into the arms of her from whom she expected some alleviation of her sorrow, the beautiful Sol again and again lamented the hardness of her fate, and wished for deliverance from the state of oppression in which she felt herself overwhelmed, betraying by her tears and profound agitation the excitement of her feelings and the disorder of her imagination; while the crafty Mahometan, perceiving the confusion into which her mind was thrown by the mingled feelings of resentment and grief to which she was giving way, listened with delight to her complaints, well knowing that the moment was now at hand when she might best execute her project. "My daughter," said she, "thou art unhappy only because thou wilt be so. Thy mother enslaves thee, and thy passiveness meets only with hardships and abuse. Thy neighbors and acquaintance compassionate thee; all are scandalized at thy mother's treatment, and blame thee for not seeking a remedy for thy sorrows, when it is in thy power to do so. No moment more propitious than the present could offer itself to thee; I will be thy protector--I will be thy friend. To my care intrust thy salvation, and be comforted. Sweet Sol, dost thou not understand me?" "I do not understand you, Tâhra," the sorrowful girl replied. "There can be no sufficient reason why I should withdraw myself from the control of my mother; yet, though it is true that she sometimes scolds me with reason, at other times her anger is kindled against me without any cause, or for the most trifling neglect. O! were she to treat me with more kindness, I should not be so unhappy!" "Hope not, dear child," said the Mahometan, "that thy mother will treat thee better at any future time than now. She will sacrifice thee, on the contrary, to her caprice and fanatism. Dost thou wish to be freed from her power this very day? Listen, then! Often hast thou heard of the excellence of our religion. Embrace the Moorish faith; cast off thy trammels, and be free!" "Alas! Tâhra," replied the young maiden, "what a fearful, what a horrible proposition you make me! Never could I learn to be a true Mahometan. I listen to you, and hear you speak, as though I were in a dream. I long for repose; let me enjoy it for a while, I pray you." Such was the conversation between the two friends. At its close, the youthful Jewess departed to seek the rest she so greatly needed, in a solitary apartment; and the Mahometan flew, with the speed of the wind, to execute her meditated project. The Moorish Governor of Tangier, who exercises both civil and military power, was at this time Arbi Esid, a man of a stern and capricious character. To him Tâhra, the Moor, repaired, soliciting an audience. She told him that her home had afforded refuge to a young maiden of the Hebrews, who was fairer than the spring, and whom she had led by her arguments to the verge of Mahometanism; but that should she remain beneath her roof, her resolutions would certainly be frustrated by her mother, since the contiguity of their abodes rendered communication so easy, that it would be impossible to carry out the work of conversion, or to annul the maternal influence. This audacious dissembler failed not to enlarge on the difficulty and importance of her conquest, and the governor, without further demur, commanded a soldier[8] to bring the unhappy Jewess into his presence. The thunderbolt that rends the airy region, travels not with more fatal celerity than did the mandate of the Moorish governor. Sol was yet listening to the announcement of Tâhra Mesmudi, when, at one and the same moment, entered Simla, demanding her lost daughter, and the soldier bearing the order of Arbi Esid. Words are unequal to depict the scene that ensued. The innocent Sol, ignorant as she was of the whole plot, in vain endeavored to ascertain the cause of this abrupt and alarming summons. Her mother, Simla, equally amazed, embraced her repeatedly, and sought by the most passionate efforts to detain her in her arms, from whence she was forced away by the soldier, impatient to fulfil his mission--and those hearts, never more destined to beat one against the other, were torn asunder and separated for ever. Tâhra alone, the fanatical and reckless Moor, understood this mystery, while she assumed the most profound ignorance, lest her participation in the act should be suspected; and in this moment of anguish, as in all ages of the world, force triumphed over right and justice. The soldier roughly disengaged the arms of the two unhappy Hebrews, which were entwined in each other, and held them apart by main strength: and the fair Sol pressed her coral lips on the wet cheek of her mother, Simla, and bade her a last farewell. "Mother," she said, "calm your sorrow. I know not the views of the governor in thus summoning me before him, but conscience tells me I have no cause for fear. Trust, then, in my innocence, and think upon my love till I return to your arms, innocent and uninjured as I now leave them." The impatient threats of the soldier allowed no more time for these filial protestations. The victim was carried off, and her mother, following with her eyes the retreating steps of her trembling daughter, wept unconsoled at the prospect of the bitter future. When Arbi Esid was apprised of the arrival of the lovely prisoner, he ordered that she should be at once brought into his private hall of audience.[9] He was, on her entrance, so captivated by the sight of her, that feelings arose in his heart greatly at variance with the outward gravity of his demeanor. "Enter," said he, "and divest yourself of all fear. I am he who, in the name of the Prophet, will protect your resolution, and promote your happiness. The great Allah has sent forth a ray from his transcendent light to win you to his religion, and to turn you from the errors of your own. This hour gives birth to your happiness." The Hebrew maiden heard with amazement the words of the governor; and without removing her eyes from the ground, where they had remained fixed ever since her first entrance, she preserved the deepest silence. "Answerest thou not, bewitching Sol?" continued Arbi Esid; "fair as the Houris of the Prophet's Paradise, canst thou refuse to embrace his faith? What then have I heard from thy friend and neighbor Tâhra." "You have been deceived, sir," replied the Jewess; "never did I express such a wish; never did I yield to the entreaties and proposals of Tâhra Mesmundi. I was born a Hebrew, and a Hebrew I desire to die." These words, uttered with inimitable sweetness and modesty, so far from raising the anger of the governor, rendered him only the more anxious to convert her. He commanded that Tâhra, the Moor, should be brought into his presence, that she might ratify her deposition; and, before long, she arrived, perfidy and deceit depicted in her countenance. "Enter," said Arbi Esid, "and recapitulate, in the presence of the prisoner, the important deposition you urged upon me this morning."[10] "Sir," replied the false witness, "this young Jewess, who took refuge in my house to escape the rigorous treatment of her mother, declared to me this morning her desire of embracing our religion; and it was by her consent I gave your excellency notice of this resolution, that you might extend your protection to her. This is what I affirmed, and this I now repeat. Does any one deny it?" "Yes, my Tâhra!" exclaimed the lovely Sol, with vehemence. "I cannot accuse you of any treachery; yet the very words you bring against me show that you have misunderstood my meaning, and hence the mistake which has caused the imprudent step you have taken." The affectionate words of Sol were contradicted by Tâhra, with a degree of asperity and roughness, that cruelly wounded the gentle heart of the enchanting Jewess. "Hearest thou all this, stubborn girl?" said the governor to her. "By the deposition of this Moor, you are convicted of a crime that death itself could scarce atone for, were you even on the instant to retract, and embrace the truth." The conference here closed. Tâhra departed, and the governor himself conducted the fair Sol to the apartments of his wife and daughter-in-law, on whom he urged his wish that she should be treated with the utmost kindness, and that no pains might be spared to win over her heart. Here we must for a while leave the afflicted Sol, to contemplate the state in which her parents remained during her absence. Her hapless mother, as we have related, watched her with anxious eyes till she had entered the governor's palace with the Moorish soldier; and, utterly unable to form a conjecture as to the cause of her sudden abduction, she hastened full of grief and consternation to find her husband Haim, to whom she gave a scarcely coherent relation of all that had occurred. The astonished Hebrew broke forth into vehement exclamations; in this confusion of doubt and suspicion, Simla became the first object of his anger, and the frenzied disorder of his gestures threatened her with the most fatal consequences; a deadly fear seized upon his faculties, and agitated him well-nigh to insanity, and he sought a clue to the terrible mystery in vain. Accompanied by Simla, he hastened to the dwelling of the artful Tâhra, and put to her a thousand questions, to some of which she evasively replied, while in answering others she assumed a threatening and reckless tone, which disclosed to Haim some portion of the truth. For an instant he remained silent, then, burning with the most violent rage, he grasped the hand of his wife, and rushed back to their desolate home in a state akin to that of the wounded prey of the hunter, seeking its forest lair. "You," exclaimed he, frantically, "you only are the cause of this misfortune! my daughter Sol, the daughter whose sight lightened my cares, and gave joy to my existence, God knows if ever again she will return to my arms; this Moor, this Tâhra Mesmudi, this treacherous and perverse infidel, has turned aside her heart, and she has thrown herself into the trammels of impiety; to gain a refuge from your rigor she has sought compassion in the tiger's breast." "My daughter, my daughter!" cried the affrighted Simla, "let not mine eyes behold a ruin so great!" and she fell senseless into the arms of Haim Hachuel. Thus did these unhappy parents lament their loss, losing sight of their sorrow only in the vain hope of devising some plan for the salvation of their daughter. The prisoner remained in the residence of the governor, surrounded by its female inhabitants, and the women of the highest rank residing in the place,--all vying with one another to dazzle the fair Jewess by showing her the riches and splendor of the edifice. "Far more," they said to her, "far more than this array of wealth and grandeur shall one day be the portion of thy loveliness and virtue. A gallant Moor, rich, powerful, and ardent for thy love, shall join his hand with thine, and a thousand slaves shall bow down at thy behest. All the precious things of Asia and Arabia shall be brought to delight thine eyes, the rarest birds of distant regions shall warble in unison with the lays of thy fancy." These and other persuasions clothed in the glowing language of their nation, did the Moorish women lavish on her for three days, during which time she remained in the palace. But the beautiful Jewess wept on, and thought only of her parents and brother. "Never," said she, "will I exchange the humble _toca_ of my brethren for the rich turban you offer: never will I abandon my God." This decision Sol pronounced with such fervor and animation before the whole of the Moorish ladies, that, stung by her perseverance, they ran in anger to the Hall of Audience, and apprised the governor of her refusal. Arbi Esid immediately ordered her to be led into his presence, and reproving her for her haughtiness and obstinacy, he pointed out the peril in which she was involving herself, and repeated his determination of subduing her resolution. But the young Hebrew rejected his allurements, depreciated his gifts, and defied his power, even to death. "I will load thee with chains," said the governor; "thou shalt be torn by wild beasts, and see no more the light of day; thou shalt lie, perishing with hunger, and lamenting the rigor of my anger and indignation, for thou hast provoked the wrath of the Prophet and slighted his laws." "I will submit tranquilly," replied Sol, "to the weight of your chains; I will allow my limbs to be torn asunder by wild beasts; I will renounce for ever the light of day; I will die of hunger; and when every torture you can command has been endured, I will scorn your anger and the wrath of the Prophet, since they are unable to conquer even a weak woman, and do but show your impotence in the sight of Heaven, whose strength you boast, to gain one proselyte to your creed." "Atrocious blasphemy!" exclaimed the enraged governor; "thus dost thou profane the most sacred names, thus dost thou reject all consideration? I will bury thee in dark dungeons, where thou shalt drink the cup of bitterness. Take this Hebrew," continued the governor, "to prison; let her suffer in the most loathsome dungeon--let her there feel the effect of my displeasure." Then turning his back upon her, his eyes flashing with ire, he abandoned the victim, who was immediately conducted to the prison. The Alcazaba is a castle situate on a little eminence at the extremity of the town, where prisoners are confined. Thither was the beautiful Jewess conducted, in the first instance, though the soldiers subsequently removed her to a place destined for the female prisoners only, where was a small cell, dirty and fetid, with one narrow window looking into the street. In this dungeon, where she was unable to stand erect, was the young Hebrew confined. During the three days that she had remained in the governor's palace, her parents had not failed to inform themselves of every thing that befell her--even to her removal to the Alcazaba, and subsequent confinement in this dungeon. It was night before Haim Hachuel and Simla his wife directed their anxious steps towards the prison. Haim's searching eye ran over the whole edifice at a glance, and soon discovered the beloved object of their attachment. There was the beautiful Sol, in truth, holding the iron bars that secured the small window, her snow-white hands shining amid the gloom, whiter than the pure linen on the dusky skin of the African. All around reigned the silence of the grave, save when at intervals it was interrupted by the sound of oppressed sighs, as of one who could scarce breathe. "It is she!" said Simla, in great emotion: "let us draw near, and press her hands to our heart." These last words reached the ears of the unhappy prisoner, and forgetful of the many watchful eyes and ears around her, she exclaimed in a sad and piercing voice: "Mother, O mother! come, and witness my repentance!" Haim Hachuel and his wife flew instantly to the dismal grating of the dungeon. They grasped the hands of their unhappy daughter, and she also seizing those of her parents, bathed them with her tears, so that for a moment neither could utter a word. "Dear daughter," said they at length to her, "what do you propose to do? Are you resolved to embrace the law of Mahomet?" "Never, my parents!" she answered, "I regard these sufferings as chastenings from Heaven for my sins; when I meditate upon them, methinks I hear a voice within me, saying, 'Thou didst fail in the duty of an obedient child; behold now, and suffer the consequence of thy transgression.'" Scarcely had Sol concluded, when the clashing of iron bolts apprised her parents that some one was approaching this abode of bitterness. Quickly, therefore, did they disengage their hands, and promising to return the following evening, plunged in the deepest grief they reluctantly quitted the place, lest they should be discovered, and deprived of what was now their only consolation. They were not mistaken; the person that opened the door of the cell proved to be the woman in charge of the prison, who came to acquaint the beautiful Sol of the governor's order, that she should be cut off from all intercourse with her friends, and treated with yet greater severity and harshness. Unmoved, she listened to this cruel mandate of the tyrannical governor, and, raising her eyes to heaven, only uttered these words, "I revere, O Lord, thy heavenly decrees!" The Mahometan departed in some emotion, and the young Jewess, kneeling, addressed herself to loftier contemplations. Haim Hachuel and his wife spent a night of most torturing suspense. On their return from the Mazmorra, they told every thing to their son, Ysajar; who, going immediately to the prison, with some difficulty gained over the jailer, a Moorish woman, by offering her gifts,--and at length succeeded in obtaining her good offices for his unfortunate sister, and permission to communicate with her through the narrow grating of her cell, under cover of the night. Having obtained this by a heavy golden bribe, he hastened to report what he had done to his parents. Scarcely less than the pain that agitated the prostrate Sol, in her loathsome dungeon, was the heart-rending emotion endured by her unhappy parents; all were anxious for the morning, and longed for dawn to dispel the gloom of this terrible night. Never did the glorious sun describe his orbit so slowly as on that weary day--never did human hearts so long for its termination--hours seemed like years--the day like an endless century; at length, for all things below must end, the day closed and the night set in, when the afflicted parents and brother a second time repaired to receive the consolation of gazing on the pallid countenance of the imprisoned Sol. Who shall describe these afflicting interviews? tears, sighs, broken words, every emotion of love and pity succeeded each other in quick succession; but the night vanished as rapidly as the day had wearily withdrawn, and the moment of separation arrived--the Mahometan prison-keeper admonishing them to depart. They did so, torn with emotions that none but those who have loved, none but those who have suffered, none but those who are parents, can comprehend, and this night, and the day that followed, were spent in grief and agony. Haim Hachuel sought by various means to discover the intentions of the governor, but learnt only that the mere recollection of the Hebrew captive sufficed to excite him to fury, and to call forth resolutions of the most barbarous character. The agonized father, well nigh heart-broken at such information, harassed his imagination to find a way to save his child. The governor, Arbi Esid, forgot not for a moment the Jewish captive; for each day information was brought to him respecting the state of apparent dejection in which she was; and, at the expiration of the third day of her imprisonment, he sent to inquire whether she would now consent to embrace the Law of the Prophet? The bearer of this message was one of his secretaries, who, on entering the dungeon, was astonished at the beauty of the maiden he beheld. He put to her several inquiries respecting her condition, which were answered with amiability and modesty: but upon his telling her that he was secretary to the governor, Arbi Esid, and that he had come, in his name, to know whether she had yet decided to become a Mahometan, the prisoner's countenance and attitude suddenly changed, and assumed an expression of imposing dignity, as she addressed him in these terms: "Tell the governor, on my part, that if he be not already content with all I have suffered, let him invent new torments, which the Hebrew Sol will accept as Heaven's chastening for her sins; but become a Mahomedan--never!" So, turning away from him, she knelt, and addressed herself to prayer. Pale as death, fearing the anger of the governor, and his self-love wounded at the failure of his embassy, the secretary left the dungeon, and returned with all speed to the palace. The governor, on becoming acquainted with the determination of the youthful Jewess, raved with the ferocity of a tiger, and commanded that she should be loaded with chains. And so greatly did the satellites of his despotism delight in the works of cruelty, that not much time elapsed ere the savage mandate was put into execution. The beautiful Sol was taken from her dungeon, and placed in a cold, humid, subterranean cell--without air, and darker than the night; on her white and chiselled throat was clasped a ring of iron, to which were linked four chains that bound her hands and feet; the weight of the heavy metal prevented her standing erect; the damp ground was her only couch, and the only rest for her tortured limbs. Sad, and full of anguish, was the solitude that now awaited this angel of virtue; but nothing could discourage, nothing could daunt her. The young Hebrew occupied herself in thoughts full of courage, and reflections full of moral fortitude; whilst her parents, who had been duly apprised of her removal to the subterranean cell, spent their time in lamenting the sad change, and in seeking out persons whose influence might soften the obdurate heart of the governor. In this search did Haim Hachuel renew his diligence, every day that the unfortunate maiden continued to groan beneath her chains, till at length his paternal lamentations reached the compassionate ears of Don Jose Rico, vice-consul of Spain, at that time, in Tangier. The voice of complaining humanity never failed to touch the feeling heart of this good man; nor could he rest till his benevolent work was begun. He respectfully, therefore, petitioned the governor to mitigate the sufferings of the young Jewess, or even, if possible, to liberate her altogether; public sympathy being, as he represented, already excited in her behalf to a powerful degree. These representations he urged with so much force and effect, that, had the matter rested in the hands of Arbi Esid alone, he would have set her at liberty at once. However, he replied with considerable courtesy, that the whole circumstances of the affair had been referred to the emperor, of whose imperial commands he was in momentary expectation. This answer placed the matter in a less favorable light, in the eyes of Don Jose--obstructing, as it did, any means of bringing comfort to the helpless Sol, while she, still immured in the dungeon, looked forward to death as the only escape from her accumulating woes. Many days did not elapse, however, before the expected dispatches arrived from the emperor, bearing his orders that the captive Jewess should be conducted immediately to Fez. This unexpected and unlooked-for result caused the utmost consternation among all acquainted with the circumstances. Both Moors and Hebrews evinced an almost equal desire to preserve the life of the beautiful Sol; but the fatal order admitted no delay, and there was no choice but to comply with it with the utmost promptitude. The governor, therefore, summoned Haim Hachuel, and after communicating to him the commands of the emperor, he informed him that his daughter must begin her journey to Fez on the following day, and required of him the necessary sum (amounting to forty dollars)[11] to defray the expenses of the transit. This he demanded within two hours' time. The Jew returned with several friends to his own home, and secretly arranged that one of them should follow his daughter at a distance, so as not to lose sight of her altogether. It was no easy matter to find one able and willing to undertake a mission of so much difficulty and danger, in defiance of the express commands of the governor; but at length a Jew, but little known in the town, was found to accept the charge, and having provided himself with money, he was sent on the way. Whilst Haim and his son were busied in these preparations, the unhappy Simla lay on her bed in a state of utter prostration. When the tidings of her beloved Sol's intended departure reached her, she prepared to see her pass from a secure hiding-place, and thence to bid her farewell, as though she were to see her no more for ever. Not only, indeed, to the parents and brother of Sol were the hours of the night laden with tribulation and anguish, all their friends and neighbors shared their griefs. The unhappy victim alone, to whom the dreadful tidings were communicated at midnight, heard them with an unaltered countenance, though a deep sigh sufficiently proved her feelings in the terrible situation in which she was placed. An hour before dawn was the time appointed for Sol's departure. At the moment fixed, a Moor, of a countenance most savage and repulsive, presented himself at the dungeon-gate, leading by their bridles two active mules. He was shortly followed by five soldiers, who were to form the escort, and when all were assembled, the muleteer, who was charged with the conduct of the affair, knocked at the door of the prison, and on its being opened, entered to bring the captive forth. Meanwhile, her parents, her brother, and many of her friends, had concealed themselves at a certain distance, where they could remain undiscovered, to witness this sad scene, and compelled themselves to silence the groans and sighs by which their hearts were torn, so as to escape detection. The eyes of all were riveted on that spot where the victim was to emerge from the prison. Every thing was distinctly visible in the clear morning air; and in a little time the object of their hopes came forth, and at sight of her, Simla fell fainting into the arms of her husband and son. Sol came forth with a slow and tremulous step, supported by the horrible muleteer, the pallor of her countenance contrasting with the ebony blackness of her bright and speaking eyes, whose glances fell searchingly around. Her hair was gathered up beneath the humble white "toco," which formed the graceful covering of her head, and her dark blue dress accorded well with the interesting cast of her fair features, giving a grave and imposing character to her whole figure. Her delicate feet were bound with heavy fetters, which scarce permitted her to move; and her whole appearance was so pathetic and interesting, that it is scarcely possible for the pen to describe the scene. All passed in silence; and the echo of sighs was the only language of this fearful drama. The muleteer threw some cords over his beast's trappings, the better to secure his victim. Meanwhile, the beautiful Jewess, turning--as though instinctively--towards the spot where her mourning parents stood, asked one of the soldiers who guarded her, to assist her to kneel. This being permitted, she folded her hands upon her breast, and looking up to heaven, exclaimed, in broken accents: "God of Abraham! Thou who knowest the innocence of my heart, receive the sacrifice which I have made in abandoning the spot where I was born. Console my parents and brother for my loss. Strengthen my spirit, and abandon not this, Thy unhappy creature, who always trusted in Thee--make her one day happy in the mansions of the just, with those blessed souls whom Thou electest for Thy greater glory and adoration." After she had remained a few moments longer in silent devotion, the muleteer, being apprised that it was time to start, rudely tore her from her knees, and with a brutal and reckless violence, capable of revolting the hardest hearts, placed her on the saddle. Lashing her already fettered feet with a thick cord, he bound it also around her wrists, bruising her delicate flesh; and tying a rope in numerous coils round her body, he lashed it to the harness of the mule. The savage Moor having made all secure, tightened the lashings, and seemed to delight above measure in the excruciating torture he thus inflicted upon his patient victim. Not a word, not a complaint escaped her; nor did her grave and composed demeanor forsake her for an instant, though she regarded her tormentor with a look of suffering patience, unspeakably affecting. The soldiers, who had looked on in silence during this scene, now shouldered their arms; the muleteer mounting the baggage mule, and leading, by his right hand, that which carried the youthful prisoner, from which the soldiers never for an instant withdrew their eyes, soon set the animals in motion by the well-known touch of the spur, and the journey commenced--when, for the first time, a piercing cry escaped the lips of the fair Sol:--"Adieu! adieu!" exclaimed she; "adieu for ever, my native land!" And soon they entered on the road to Fez. If the unconcerned spectators were moved even to tears on witnessing this scene, what were the feelings of the parents who were eye-witnesses of all that passed! Love, tenderness, and sorrow, every emotion that could agitate them, struggled for utterance within their breasts. Haim and Simla and the young Ysajar, fell on their knees, and sent up to Heaven their hearts' supplications; they followed with their eyes the departing cavalcade, their gaze riveted like those of a spectre; no need was there now to enjoin them to keep silence, for their utterance was stifled on their lips; a red-hot iron seemed to weigh upon their breasts; they raised their eyes to the heavens, to that beautiful African sky, pure and transparent as an arch of azure crystal, and it seemed to them like a roof of lead, in which the bright sun appeared a rolling ball of blood-red hue; their hands, with a convulsive grasp, tore the hair from their heads, and rending their garments in despair, they fell senseless to the earth. Their relatives and friends conveyed them, still insensible, to their homes, and applied restoratives to recall animation. But, alas! to what a consciousness were they restored! to the keener and keener sense of that grief which must follow them to the latest hour of their existence! The beautiful Sol, meanwhile, travelled on, in the manner already described, silently enduring the separation from her native soil. About three miles of the journey were completed, when there encountered them, as though by accident, a man, who joined himself to the travellers. This was the Jew already mentioned, who being almost a stranger to the Moors, had engaged himself to the friends of Sol not to lose sight of her during her journey. He entered into conversation with the soldiers, and feigning ignorance of the circumstances of the case, soon obtained from them an account both of their destination, and of the recent occurrences at Tangier. The sagacious Hebrew, having thus gained the confidence of the escort, addressed a few words to the prisoner, giving her to understand that she ought to embrace the law of the Prophet, and become a Mahometan, as he himself had done. The beautiful Sol heard him with much tranquillity, but without giving any answer; but at a moment when the escort were off their guard, he succeeded in attracting her attention by signs, and in making known to her that he was there for her protection. The poor victim comprehended his meaning, and they were thus more than once enabled to communicate by stealth. The journey to Fez occupied six days, the nights being spent at the different halting-places. All who saw the prisoner on the road, and were made acquainted with the particulars of her situation, earnestly exhorted, and even implored her to become a proselyte to their faith; she heard them with quiet diffidence, and replied modestly to all the arguments directed to her, that she would rather sacrifice her life than change her religion. So much courageous perseverance was the admiration of all who conversed with her, and her situation excited the greatest interest and sympathy wherever she passed. The friendly Jew, who still associated himself with the escort, and protested that he was on his road to Fez for the purposes of commerce, obtained permission to speak with and exhort the prisoner, when, in the Hebrew tongue, of which the Moors were ignorant, he took occasion to tell the young Jewess the object of his commission; he communicated to her the prohibition of the Governor of Tangier to her parents to leave the city, and the trust reposed in him; for the better fulfilment of which he had assumed the language and disguise under which he appeared. Sol replied in the same manner, by requesting him to be the bearer of a message to her parents, assuring them that she had not for a single instant forgotten them, and that the thoughts of their sufferings were more cruel to her than any that she herself experienced. I would not unnecessarily dwell upon this melancholy history by a minute description of the various trials and sufferings endured by the youthful Sol upon the road; they can but too readily be inferred from the previous recital. At length, however, the day arrived on which the travellers reached Fez, the residence of the Emperor of Morocco. One of the soldiers of the escort was sent forward to give notice of their approach to the Emperor, who issued immediate orders that his son should go out upon the road, attended by a splendid retinue, to meet the young captive. Accordingly about evening, the Imperial Prince, escorted by more than three hundred of his court, went out on horseback, displaying, as they went, their skill in the feats of horsemanship by which the Moors do honor to the person they are escorting, and meeting the young prisoner on the road, he conducted her to his palace. FOOTNOTES: [7] The following well-authenticated story, it is believed, has never yet appeared in English. It is almost a literal translation of a work published in Spanish a few years since, and now rarely to be met with.--_El Martirio de la Joven Hachuel, or la Heroina Hebrea. Por D. E. M. Romero, 1837._ [8] The entire administration of justice in Tangier is intrusted to the military. [9] In the usual mode of administering justice in Tangier, the governor sits, with his secretaries, in the portico of his house, surrounded by the soldiers (who act as police, and are charged with the execution of the governor's mandate), armed with swords, and carrying staves in their hands; while those who are to be tried kneel in the street in front of the place occupied by the governor, to await judgment. In the present case, however, an exception was made to the general form, the governor receiving the young Jewess in his inner hall of audience. [10] In the barbarous legislation of the Moors, the evidence of one witness alone affords ground sufficient for passing sentence of death; and in cases relating to the Mahometan religion this is most frequently carried out. [11] It is the Moorish custom, that all those who are convicted as guilty, or their families, should pay all costs of the lawsuit, and every other contingent expense. Thus, one condemned to suffer the penalty of one hundred bastinadoes, after he has received them, is compelled to pay the executioner the whole sum required for the work of inflicting them. From Fraser's Magazine LAMAS AND LAMAISM. FRENCH MISSIONARIES IN TARTARY AND THIBET.[12] Few persons in England are aware of the amount of information which has been obtained through the medium of priestly literature in France; not to speak of the early Jesuit travellers, whose wonderful adventures first familiarized their readers with China and South America, and more than one of whom has been cleared, Herodotus-like, of the charge of exaggeration by the testimony of subsequent writers; not to speak even of those _Lettres édifiantes et curieuses_, which the Parisian wits and philosophers of the eighteenth century did not disdain to read, and which were merely extracts from missionary correspondence; a patient reader might even in the present day gather from publications of the same kind--_Les Annales de la Propagation de la Foi_ for example--many curious details respecting savage tribes and distant lands rarely visited by learned or worldly travellers. Unfortunately, such books are, for the most part, written in a style at once so wearisome and so full of religious affectation, that only a particular class of readers can digest them. The volumes before us--though recalling by their origin, and certain peculiar views of the writer, the class of works we have described--are very superior both in form and matter. We doubt if any publications, at once so diverting and so instructive, has appeared in France for a very long while. There is a vein of good humored raillery and natural fun running throughout them, which, joined to a total absence of book-making, carries one pleasantly on: to these are added good faith and earnestness of purpose, that command respect. It is always a pleasant surprise, as Pascal truly said, to find a man where one expected to meet with an author; and M. Huc not only appears a very good man, but shows himself a very clever one. The countries he has visited are comparatively unknown, but are daily becoming more important to us. Recent events have brought China within the sphere of our interests, political and commercial; and her policy towards her Tartar dependencies, and the nominally independent state of Thibet, are beginning to excite attention in this part of the world. Those who have studied the subject, will be deeply interested by M. Huc's narrative; and the general reader must be amused by his graphic account of one of the most arduous journeys ever effected. A few words will explain under what circumstances it was undertaken. At the beginning of the present century, the French missionary establishment at Pekin, which had been at one time so flourishing, was almost destroyed by successive persecutions, and the scattered members of the little church, which had been founded at the cost of so many perils, had taken refuge beyond the Great Wall, in the deserts of Mongolia. There they contrived to live on the patches of land which the Tartars allowed them to cultivate; and a few priests of the Lazarist order were appointed to keep up the faith of the dispersed flock. MM. Huc and Gabet were, in 1842, employed in visiting these Chinese Christians, settled in Mongolia; and the acquaintance formed during these visits with the wandering Tartar tribes inspired them with a great desire to convert them to Christianity. Indeed, throughout these volumes we trace an evident partiality to the Tartars as compared with the Chinese; and they furnish a fresh instance of the invariable absence of congeniality between Europeans of all nations and the natives of the Celestial Empire. The missionaries were hard at work, studying the dialects of Tartary, when a circumstance occurred which gave their plans of proselytism a more definite shape. The Papal See, with that magnificent contempt for the realities of dominion which has ever distinguished it, and in virtue, we suppose, of that undefined tenth point of the law which is not involved in the word possession, appointed a Vicar Apostolic of Mongolia. The pope might, with equal impunity, have divided it into bishoprics--no meetings would have been hold to protest against the usurpation; and the mandarins of Pekin would certainly have proposed no law to prevent the Lamas of the western world from assuming what titles they pleased. But even in that case, the interests of the church would not have been much forwarded. The very extent and limits of the vicariate were, as yet, unknown; and MM. Huc and Gabet were, to their great satisfaction, appointed, in the year 1844, to ascertain these first essential points. The undertaking was one of no common difficulty: the country they had to traverse was untrodden even by the feet of former missionaries, inhabited by wild, roving tribes, beggared by Chinese extortions, rendered barren by long misgovernment, and lastly, infested in many parts by bands of armed robbers. These latter are, it is true, far different, in manner at least, from what their name would lead most of our readers to expect, and exercise their uncourteous trade with the utmost urbanity: They do not rudely clap a pistol to your head, and uncivilly demand your money, or your life; they present themselves humbly, and say: "Good elder brother, I am weary of walking; please to lend me thy horse?... I am without money; be so good as to lend me thy purse?... It is very cold to-day; wilt thou give me thy coat?" If the old elder brother is charitable enough to lend all this, he receives in return a "thank you, brother;" if not, the humble request is immediately supported by a few blows; if that does not suffice, the sabre is brought into play. The preparations for the journey were admirably simple--a single attendant and a dog formed the escort; a tent, an iron kettle, a few cups, and sheep-skins, completed the baggage. There were, however, other precautions taken prior to departure, highly characteristic of the church to which our travellers belonged, and which may serve to explain the comparative success that, in the East, has generally attended the efforts of its missionaries. Sir James Emerson Tennent, in his work on Ceylon, has given a curious account of the compliance of the Jesuit missionaries with the customs and external rites of the people they sought to convert, as opposed to the rigid discipline and unbending orthodoxy of their Dutch successors, who would not stoop, and who, perhaps, on that account, did not conquer. Our Lazarists, though not practising, in all its latitude, the Jesuit doctrine, were nevertheless determined that nothing in the outward man should repel the sympathy of those whom they sought to persuade. On the frontiers of Mongolia, the Chinese dress, which they had hitherto worn, was laid aside; the long tress of hair, that had been cherished since they left France, was pitilessly sacrificed, to the infinite despair of their Chinese congregation; and they assumed the habit generally worn by the Lamas, or priests of Thibet. In the opinion of the Tartars, Lamas are alone privileged to speak on religious matters; and a layman, or "black man"[13] (to use their own expression), who should presume to converse on things spiritual, would excite laughter and contempt. It was, therefore, good policy to adopt a dress which insured the respect and attention of their hearers. The costume was one which would have been rather startling to a priest who, without transition should have exchanged for it the black _soutaine_ of the Romish church. It consisted in a yellow robe, fastened on one side with five gilt buttons and confined at the waist by a long red sash, a red jacket with a violet collar, and a yellow cap with red tuft. Nor was this all. The same conciliatory spirit which had dictated the change of costume, presided over the whole conduct of the travellers; and we find them heroically declining the hot wine offered by their Chinese host of the frontier inn, saying, good humoredly, that good Lamas must abstain from wine and tobacco. We dwell purposely on these details, because they show the spirit in which the journey was undertaken, and explain the confidence with which the travellers were received beneath the Mogul tents, and initiated into all the details of life in the wilderness. We find them associating without repugnance with the Tsao-Ta-Dze, or stinking Tartars (so called by the Chinese, who are themselves far from irreproachable on the score of cleanliness), purchasing second-hand clothes well besmeared with mutton fat, and enjoying their Tartar tea as though it had been the _café au lait_ of their native land. This tea, by the bye, deserves a few words of notice. It differs materially from the tea of the Chinese; for whereas the latter use only the young and tender leaves of the plant, the Tartar tea is composed of the coarse leaves, and even some of the branches, which are pressed into moulds of about the size and thickness of a brick. When it is to be used, a piece of the brick is broken off, pulverized, and boiled, a handful of salt is then thrown in, and the liquid continues to boil until it is almost black; the mixture is then poured into a large vessel, and invariably offered to every guest on his arrival. The Russians also consume a large quantity of this article, and in the north of Tartary it serves as the only medium of exchange. A house, a camel, or a horse, is sold for so many teas--five teas being worth an ounce of silver. Life in the desert is monotonous enough; and yet, though half of the first volume is devoted to the pilgrimage through the plains of Mongolia, the interest never flags. The little incidents of travel are told good-humoredly, and sometimes are most amusing. Let us take, for instance, the following account given by a Tartar hero of the war against the English. The narrator was a native of the Tchakar country, and had with his countrymen been called out to march against the "rebels of the south"--as the Tartars usually call us. The Tchakar (literally border-country) is, in fact, an immense camp, of which all the inhabitants are bound to military service, and are divided into different tribes, or "banners." The pastures of the Tchakar serve to feed the innumerable flocks of the Emperor of China, and the natives are almost exclusively employed in tending them. They are not allowed to cultivate the soil, or to sell any portion of it to their Chinese neighbors. As may be imagined, these shepherd-soldiers are only called upon on great occasions, but they are then supposed to be irresistible. "So you were engaged in that famous war of the south! How could you shepherds have the courage of soldiers? Accustomed to a peaceful life, you are strangers to that rude trade, which consists in killing, or being killed." "Yes, we are shepherds, it is true; but we do not forget that we are soldiers also, and that the eight banners compose the body of reserve of the "Great Master" (the Emperor). You know the rules of the Empire. When the enemy appears, the militia of the Kitat (Chinese) is first sent; then the banners of the Solon district are brought forward; if the war is not ended, then a signal is made to the banners of Tchakar; and the very sound of their steps is always sufficient to reduce the rebels to order."... "Did you fight?--did you see the enemy?" inquired Samdadchiemba. "No, they dared not make their appearance. The Kitat kept on saying that we were marching to certain and needless death. What can you do, they said, against sea-monsters? They live in the water, like fishes; and when one least expects it, they rise to the surface, and throw their inflamed Si-Koua.[14] As soon as one makes ready to shoot one's arrows at them, they plunge back into the water like frogs! Thus, they sought to frighten us; but we, the soldiers of the eight banners, were not afraid. Before we set out, the chief Lamas had opened the book of celestial secrets, and had assured us that the affair would have a happy issue. The Emperor had given to each Tchouanda, a Lama learned in medicine, and initiated into the holy mysteries, who was to cure us of all the diseases of the climate, and protect us against the magic of the sea-monsters. What had we then to fear? The rebels having heard that the invincible militia of the Tchakar was approaching, trembled, and sued for peace. The "Holy Master," in his infinite mercy granted their prayer; and we were permitted to return to our pastures and the care of our flocks." But such meetings were rare, and in general, a passing salutation in the metaphorical style of the East, was all that was exchanged with fellow-travellers. It would seem, however, that a desert life has charms which we, poor slaves of civilization, can scarcely appreciate, but which never fail to captivate after a short experience. Would any of our readers have fancied, for instance, that a search after _argols_ could be an exciting employment? _Argol_, let it be understood, is a rather pretty Tartar word for a very ugly thing, which can scarcely be gracefully described. It means, in fact, the dung of the innumerable animals that feed in the plains of Tartary, and which, in a dry state, is carefully collected by the natives, and is their only fuel. No argols, no breakfast; and in consequence, M. Huc tells us that the first care of M. Gabet and himself, in the morning, after devoting a short time to prayer, was to seek after argols--with what zest our readers shall see: The occupation that followed these meditations, was certainly not of a mystical character; it was, however, a most necessary one, and not without its attractions. Each of us threw a bag over his shoulder, and set out in different directions in quest of argols. Those who have never led a roving life will scarcely believe that such an occupation can be productive of enjoyment; and yet, when one of us had the good fortune to discover, hidden among the grass, an argol remarkable for its size and siccity, he felt at his heart a thrill of pleasure, a sudden emotion, that gave a moment's happiness. The delight caused by the discovery of a fine argol may be compared to that of a sportsman finding the trace of his game--of a child contemplating the long sought for bird's nest--of an angler, who sees a fish quivering at the end of his line; or, if we may be allowed to liken great things to small, we would compare it to the enthusiasm of a Leverrier finding a planet at the tip of his pen. We are not at liberty, unfortunately, to dwell as we would on these details of Tartar life, however humorously related, for we must reserve space for those descriptions of Buddhistic customs in which the chief interest of these volumes consists. It suffices to say that, during the eighteen months of incredible fatigue and privations, which elapsed before the travellers reached Lha-Ssa, their courage never flagged, nor did their good-humored and hopeful resignation ever forsake them. Every morning the tent was struck, and the encampment of the previous night, however well situated, abandoned without regret. Indeed, as long as the missionaries remained in the plains of Mongolia, surrounded by friendly tribes, they seem, to a certain degree, to have enjoyed this roving life. On one occasion, after an unusually protracted stay of two days, M. Huc writes: We quitted this encampment without regret, as we had left the others, with this difference, that in the spot where we had spread our tent, there was a greater quantity of ashes than usual, and that the surrounding grass was more trodden down. This is the true spirit for Tartar travelling, which it is not given to every one to possess in the same degree. In the choice of their attendant, too, the missionaries appear to have been fortunate. "On the countenance of Samdadchiemba," says M. Huc, "one could not trace the sly cunning of the Chinese, nor the good-natured frankness of the Tartar, nor the courageous energy of the native of Thibet, but there was a mixture of all three. He was a Dchiahour." His countenance appears to have been a faithful index to his character. Such as he was, Samdadchiemba is what would be termed, in a work of fiction, an excellent character. In this truthful narrative, he forms an admirable portrait. He was a convert of M. Gabet, and had imbibed a sort of hazy notion of Christianity, which was often curiously mingled with reminiscences of his early creed. Strange scruples would sometimes assail him; as on one occasion, when his "spiritual fathers" had, to their great satisfaction, succeeded in getting some fish: We took the fishes, and went to the edge of the little lake that lay close to our tent. We were no sooner there, than we saw Samdadchiemba running towards us in great haste. He quickly untied the handkerchief that held the fish. "What are you going to do?" he inquired, anxiously. "We are going to scale and clean the fish." "Oh! take care, my spiritual fathers; wait a little--we must not commit sin." "Who is committing sin?" "Look at the fish--see, many are still moving; you must let them die quietly. Is it not a sin to kill any living thing?" "Go and bake your bread," we replied, "and leave us alone. Have you not got rid of your ideas of metempsychosis yet, eh? Do you still believe that men are turned into beasts, and beasts into men?" The features of our Dchiahour relaxed into a broad grin. "_Ho-le! Ho-le!_" said he, slapping his forehead; "what a blockhead I am--what was I thinking about? I had forgotten the doctrine,"... and he turned off quite abashed at having given his ridiculous warning. The fish was fried in mutton fat, and proved excellent. We hope we shall not be accused of Buddhistic tendencies if we say that there appears to us something more amiable in the Dchiahour's misgivings than in the unpitying orthodoxy of his spiritual fathers. Be that as it may, the anecdote shows that the practices of a religion will often cling to a man long after its tenets appear to have been totally eradicated from his mind. We must add, however, that when the day of trial came, Samdadchiemba boldly confessed his faith as a Christian, and even stood a very fair chance of becoming a martyr, in spite of his backslidings, on the subject of metempsychosis. Well might the missionaries value their neophyte, for (with one doubtful exception) no new convert was added to their church during their long and perilous journey. Although hospitably, and even courteously received every where--under the humblest Mogul tent and in the wealthiest Lama-houses--though listened to with deference as men of prayer and piety by every class of Tartars, (perhaps of all nations the most inclined to religious feelings,) they made no proselytes. After reading their own account of their efforts, one remains convinced of the difficulties which must stand in the way of conversions from Buddhism. Idolatry, as it is represented in story books for children, under its grossest form of fetichism, may be easily conquered, but the vast spirit of Pantheism is more difficult to grapple with. That Buddhism, as understood by the more enlightened Lamas, is Pantheism, there can be no doubt. All created beings emanate from, and return to, Buddha--the one eternal and universal soul--the principle and end of all things, and of whom all things are the partial and temporary manifestations. All animated beings are divided into classes, that have each of them in their power the means of sanctification, so as to obtain, after death, transmigration into a higher class, until, at last, they enjoy plenitude of being by absorption into the eternal soul of Buddha. This doctrine, simple enough when explained by the superior class of Buddhists, is overlaid with superstitions for the vulgar; and it is this double character of Buddhism, varying according to the mind of the believer, that, in our opinion, constitutes the great difficulty in the path of proselytism. Every Buddhist is provided for the defence of his faith with the very armor best fitted to protect him in his particular social and intellectual sphere. The enlightened Lamas of Thibet take refuge in the vastness and antiquity of their system, which we ought, perhaps, rather to term a philosophy than a religion. Their comprehensive creed can tolerate all others which appear but as subdivisions of itself--partial and limited views of the great universal law, of which it has been given to them alone to embrace the whole. They boast with reason that no precepts, not even those of the Gospel, are more noble; no practices more tolerant than those of Buddhism. Even the doctrine of equality among men, which has rendered Christianity so attractive to the oppressed of all other creeds, was preached by Buddhists centuries before our era. The belief in the progressive enlightenment of mankind, and the perfectibility of our nature, which are the very essence of Buddhism, has seduced many philosophical minds in all ages and in all countries, and will not easily be abandoned by the Lamas--the dispensers of knowledge, whose mission is that of teachers--for the levelling doctrine of original sin. On the other hand, in Mongolia and Tartary, among a more ignorant race, MM. Huc and Gabet had to cope with another sort of opposition. The lower orders of Buddhists know nothing of the abstract doctrine, but are hedged in by petty customs and daily observances, which are the most powerful defence for narrow minds. In vain did the missionaries endeavor to gain an insight into the creed of these simple tribes, who believed firmly they knew not exactly what. When questioned on this subject, they would refer the inquirer to the Lamas, who in their turn would avow their ignorance as compared to the "saints." All agreed in one point, that the doctrine came from the West, and that there alone it would be found pure and undefiled. When we had expounded to them the truths of Christianity, they never argued with us, but merely answered with great coolness, "We have not all the prayers here. The Lamas of the West will explain all--will account for every thing; we believe in the traditions from the West." These expressions only served to corroborate a remark we had had occasion to make during our journey through Tartary; namely, that there is not a single Lama-house of any importance, of which the chief Lama does not come from Thibet. A Lama who has travelled to Lha-Ssa is sure on his return to obtain the confidence of every Tartar. He is considered as a superior being--a seer, before whose eyes the mysteries of lives past and to come have been unveiled in the very heart of the "eternal sanctuary" in the "land of spirits."[15] It appears just possible to us, that this obscurity in speaking of things spiritual, which, after all, can at best be seen but as through a glass darkly, is not so peculiar to Buddhism as M. Huc and his companion suppose; and that the dogmas of any religion are more difficult of comprehension to minds who have not been prepared from infancy for their reception than is generally imagined. When we are told, for instance, by our author, that in a "few plain words" he exposed the doctrines of his church, we confess that we have our doubts as to any lucidity of expression being sufficient to convey to untrained hearers a clear idea of the doctrine of transubstantiation among others. Be that as it may, westward our travellers determined to bend their steps, in search of knowledge at the fountain-head; resolved to visit Thibet, and to attack Buddhism in its very stronghold, Lha-Ssa. To this change in their original plan, we owe the most interesting portion of these travels. Although they made no secret of their intentions of proselytism, they were received in all the Lama-houses as fellow-laborers in the field of religious instruction, and as such became initiated into all the habits of Lamanist life. One cannot help reflecting how different would be the reception of Lamas, who should visit Rome, with the avowed purpose of converting the subjects of His Holiness to Buddhism. The details given by M. Huc on Lamanism in general are more complete than any we remember to have read, and are given with a natural piquancy rarely to be met with in writers on such grave subjects. Tartary is, perhaps, of all the countries in the world, the most priest-ridden; the Lamas forming, it is said, one-third of the entire population. In most families, with the exception of the eldest son, who remains "a black man," all the sons are Lamas. Their future destiny is decided from the very cradle, by the fact of their parents causing their heads to be shaved. As they are vowed to celibacy, it is probable that Chinese policy has favored the natural bias of the people towards a religious life, in order to arrest the progress of population. Certain it is, that while the government of Pekin suffers its own bonzes and priests to remain in the most abject condition, it has always honored and encouraged Lamaism in Tartary and Thibet. The remembrance of the exploits of their ancestors is not yet extinct beneath the tents of the Moguls, and legends of conquest and traditions of empire still serve to wile away the long leisure hours of their roving life. Notwithstanding two centuries of peace, and the enervating influence of Chinese misgovernment, if an appeal were made to Tartar fanaticism, hordes might yet pour down from the vast country, extending from the frontiers of Siberia to the farthest limits of Thibet, which would make the Celestial Emperor tremble on his throne in Pekin. The spread of Lamaism is the best safeguard against such a contingency, and the empty honors paid by the sceptic and worldly Chinese to the different Grand Lamas, have no other motive than a desire to appease the susceptibility of the Tartar tribes. The Lamas are divided into three classes: those that remain under the tent, and whose mode of life differs little from that of the other members of their family; the travelling Lamas--a migratory kind of animals--who, with staff in hand, and wallet at their backs, wander from place to place, trusting to Tartar hospitality for their maintenance; and lastly, the Lamas who live in communities, or convents, and devote themselves more especially to study and prayer. Most of the Lama-houses enjoy large revenues, the result of imperial foundations, or the liberality of native princes. These are distributed at certain periods among the Lamas, according to their rank in the hierarchy. Some religious communities, or aggregations of Lama-houses, such as that of Grand Kouren, number 30,000 Lamas, and its head, the Guison-Tomba, is powerful enough to give umbrage to the Chinese Emperor himself. But the chief of the humblest Lama-house may be an important personage, if he happen to be a Chaberon, that is to say, an incarnation of Buddha--one whose death is but a transformation. The Buddhists firmly believe in these transmigrations of their living Buddhas, and the ceremonies which attend the election--we ought to say the recognition--of these undying sovereigns, are curiously related by M. Huc. When a Grand Lama takes his departure, that is to say when he dies, the event is no subject for mourning to the community. There is no giving way to tears or regrets, for every one is convinced that the Chaberon will soon reappear. His apparent death is only the beginning of a new existence--a link added to an endless and uninterrupted chain of successive lives--a mere palingenesia. So long as the saint remains in the chrysalis state, his disciples are in the greatest anxiety, for their great affair is to find out in what spot their master is to resume his life. If a rainbow appears in the clouds, it is considered as a token sent them by their former Grand Lama, to aid them in their researches. Every one then falls to praying, and while the community, thus bereaved of its Lama, redoubles its feasts and orisons, a chosen band sets out to consult the _Tchurtchun_, or soothsayer, versed in the knowledge of all things hidden from ordinary men. He is informed that on such a day of such a month, the rainbow of the Chaberon was seen in the heavens; that it appeared in a certain direction; was more or less luminous; was visible during a certain lapse of time, and then disappeared under such and such circumstances. When the _Tchurtchun_ has obtained all the necessary information, he recites a few prayers, opens his book of divination, and finally pronounces his oracle, while the Tartars, who have come to consult him, listen to his words, kneeling, and rapt in profound devotion. Your Grand Lama, he says, is come to life again, in Thibet, at such a distance from your house; you will find him in such a family. When the poor creatures have heard the oracle, they return rejoicing, to announce the good tidings at the Lama-house. It frequently occurs that the disciples of the defunct Lama have no need to take all this trouble to discover his new birthplace. He often condescends so far as to reveal, in person, the secret of his transformation. As soon as he has performed his metamorphosis in Thibet, he declares himself at his birthplace, at an age at which ordinary children cannot articulate a word. "I," he says, with a tone of authority, "am the Grand Lama, the living Buddha of such a temple; let me be conducted to the Lama-house, of which I am the immortal superior."... The Tartars are always delighted at the discovery of their Grand Lama, by whatever means it may be effected. Preparations are joyfully made for the journey; the ministers and some members of the royal family join the caravan, which is to bring back the saint in triumph. High and low contribute to the expense, and are eager to share the dangers of the journey. These are not in general trifling; for the Lama is frequently inconsiderate enough towards his followers to transmigrate in a part of the country at once distant and difficult of access. If one expedition fails, or falls into the hands of robbers, another is sent, and there is no instance of these devotees faltering in their faith. When at last the Chaberon is discovered, it must not be supposed that he is accepted and proclaimed at once, without proper precautions being taken to ascertain his identity. A solemn sitting is held, at which the living Buddha is examined in public, with the most scrupulous attention. He is questioned as to the name of the Lama-house of which he pretends to be the chief, its distance and situation, and the number of its resident Lamas. He is moreover interrogated concerning the habits of the defunct Grand Lama, and the principal particulars of his death. After all these questions, prayer-books, tea-pots, cups, utensils, and things of all kinds, are placed before him, and he is expected to designate those which belonged to him during his preceding life. In general, the child, who is rarely more than five or six years old, comes out triumphant from all these trials; replies correctly to all the questions that are put to him; and makes, without hesitation, the inventory of his former furniture. "This," he says, "is the prayer-book I was in the habit of using; here is the painted cup in which I used to drink tea," and so on through the whole list. The Tartars are, undoubtedly, often the dupes of those who are interested in making a Grand Lama of the brat. We think, however, that often the affair is conducted on both sides with perfect simplicity and good faith. From all we gathered from persons most worthy of belief, it appears certain that the wonders related of the Chaberons cannot be attributed to juggling or delusion. A purely human philosophy would, doubtless, reject such facts, or unhesitatingly lay them to the charge of Lamaist imposture. We--catholic missionaries--think that the great liar who deceived our first parents in Paradise, prosecutes on earth his system of falsehood. He who was potent enough to sustain Simon Magus in the air, may well speak in the present day by the mouth of a child, in order to confirm the belief of his worshippers. As our duties are those of the critic, and not those of the inquisitor, we will not stop to inquire how far the slightly Manichean doctrine implied in the concluding remark of M. Huc is received as orthodox by the Gallican Church; but, as a general observation, we may say, that there seems no reason why, with such a method of accounting for miracles, any should be disbelieved; nor do we understand how, under this system, any miracles can be adduced as a proof of the truth of any religion. Surely, since the days of the Scribes and Pharisees, no enemy of Christianity ever attacked it more radically than by attributing the power of miracles to Beelzebub, the prince of the devils! M. Huc reminds us of a preacher whom we once heard, in an enlightened capital, explaining the miracle of speech in Balaam's ass, by reminding his congregation that parrots--nay, even bull-finches, have been made to speak, and therefore why not an ass? It never occurred to him, that in the impossibility of the thing the miracle consisted. There is a little of the same kind of oversight in the explanations of our missionaries. They are, however, too earnest and single-hearted in their credulity to be laughed at; and, on other occasions, when their powers of belief were still further tested, they displayed a courageous resolution which disarms ridicule, and is not the less admirable because shown on an absurd occasion. Among the inferior class of Lamas there are many who pretend to possess preternatural gifts, which are exorcised publicly on solemn occasions, and greatly increase the fame of the saint who exhibits them, and the revenues of the community of which he is a member. M. Huc and his companion being in the neighborhood of a large Lama-house, heard that one of these festivals was to be held, at which a Lama was to perform the unpleasant but wonderful feat of disembowelling himself for the gratification of the public, and after remaining in that state for a certain time, during which he would answer any questions respecting futurity, he would replace things in _statu quo_ by means of a short prayer. According to their views of such matters, this could, of course, be easily effected by the agency of the Evil One, and they were confirmed in the idea by the wording of an invocation used on similar occasions, and which certainly appears to indicate some infernal bargain. Instead, therefore, of suspecting trickery, they only considered how they could best prove the superiority of prayer over incantations, and neutralize the power of the devil. They determined to be present at the ceremony, and, in the midst of the diabolical invocation, to stand forward, and in the name of the true God to arrest the charm. An unforeseen accident fortunately prevented their reaching the scene of action in time, or it is very possible that their journey might have terminated then and there in martyrdom, in spite of Buddhistic toleration. Faith and courage are, however, no subjects for sarcasm, wherever they may be exhibited, and it seems to us that there was a good deal of both in the above plan. Our readers will see that these volumes are interesting, not only by the facts they contain, but also from the peculiar manner in which the writer judges them. Not the least amusing feature in the case is, that we find him continually noting as absurd Buddhistic abuses many customs which are common to his own Church. On the very outset of their journey, the missionaries took advantage of their stay at Tolon-Noor, a town famous for its foundries, to have a large crucifix cast. M. Huc mentions that the large statues of Buddha almost all come from thence, but these he calls idols, whereas the crucifix was an image. The pilgrimages, genuflexions, and vows of the Buddhist devotees surprise him, as though there were no steps at Rome worn bare by thousands of knees--no shrines in France visited by bare-footed pilgrims--no children dressed in white from their birth to please the Virgin Mary! In one description of a Lama seminary, he remarks that the canonical books of Buddhism being all written in the language of Thibet, the Lamas of Mongolia pass their lives in studying their religion in a foreign idiom, while they scarcely know their own language. Let us see what improvement the introduction of Catholicism would effect, in this state of things. We open a recent work[16] on French missions in Cochin-China and Corea; and in a description of the Catholic seminary of Pulo-Ticoux, near Pinang, we read: "Both teachers and pupils speak only Latin in their class--not the barbarous Latin of our schools, but a pure, harmonious tongue, such as I never heard spoken before. With the exception of a few elementary notions of geography, modern history, and arithmetic, the children receive an exclusively religious education." There is one invention, however, in which Buddhism has no rival, and which throws the Roman Catholic idea of praying by proxy quite into shade. We never heard of a prayer-mill before. A piece of pasteboard, of a cylindrical form, is covered with prayers of the most approved sort; once set in motion, this machine will turn for a long while, and so long as it does turn, the prayers inscribed on it are placed to the credit of the person who first set it going. Sometimes these mills are set up in a stream, and pray everlastingly for their founders. We must now hurry on to Lha-Ssa, foregoing many tempting pictures of Chinese life which occur by the way, for our travellers were obliged to pass on Chinese territory before reaching their destination. A Chinese landlord is a curious character, as curious often as the sign of his own inn; and whether he lodged at the "Hotel of Justice and Mercy," or at that of the "Three Perfections," or the "Five Felicities," or put up at the "Temperate Climate" inn, M. Huc finds matter for amusing description. On these occasions the great fear of the missionaries was, that they should be taken for English, seeing that these latter were not in favor just then: At Tchoang-Long we lodged at the hotel of the "Three Social Relations," where we had the pleasantest landlord imaginable to deal with. He was a true Chinese: and, to give us a proof of his perspicacity, asked us point blank if we were not English--adding, to make the question clearer, that he meant by Ing-kie-li, the sea-devils (Yang-koueï-Dze,) who were making war at Canton. "No, we are not English, and we are neither sea nor land-devils, nor devils of any sort." A lounger who stood by luckily counteracted the bad effect of the interpellation. "Why," said he to the innkeeper, "don't you know how to look at men's faces? How can you fancy that these men can be Yang-koueï-Dze? Don't you know that their eyes are always blue, and their hair quite red?" "True," said the innkeeper, "I had not thought of that." "No, indeed," we added; "you cannot have reflected. Do you think that sea-monsters could live on land, and ride on horseback, as we do?" "True, true, the Ing-kie-li, it is said, never dare to leave the sea: as soon as they come ashore, they tremble, and die, like fish out of water." A great deal more was said of the manners and customs of the sea-monsters--the result of which was, that we could not possibly be of the same race. In the beginning of 1846, after incredible trials and fatigues, M. Huc and his companion reached Lha-Ssa, the capital of Thibet--the Rome of Buddhism. The perils of the road were at an end; but dangers of another sort were to be expected. It was not to be supposed that the ostensible object of their journey--the propagation of a new religion--could fail to give umbrage to a purely ecclesiastical government, such as that of the Talé-Lama. For persecutions they were, therefore, prepared; but certainly did not expect it from the quarter in which it was destined to originate. Strange to say, the opposition they met with, and which finally achieved their expulsion from Thibet, was political, and not religious--the result of Chinese susceptibility, rather than of any religious hostility. At the period of their arrival at Lha-Ssa, the Chinese resident at the Court of Pekin was no less a personage than the famous Ki-Chan (or Keshen, as he is often called by the English)--the same who played so conspicuous a part as Imperial Commissary during the negotiations with England, in 1839. On that occasion, Ki-Chan showed, in one respect at least, greater discrimination than most of his countrymen, for he perceived at once the impossibility of holding out against European forces, and made the best terms he could. The necessity for concessions was not, however, so well understood at the court of Pekin. The unfortunate Commissary was accused of having allowed himself to be corrupted by English gold, and to have sold a portion of the Celestial territory to the sea-devils. He was, in consequence, declared "worthy of death," deprived of his titles, goods, and honors, and sent into exile in Tartary: his houses were razed to the ground, and his wives put up to auction! But Fortune and the emperors of China are capricious; and events in Thibet having, towards the year 1844, assumed an aspect which appeared to offer a favorable opportunity of extending Chinese influence in that quarter, the "Holy Master" bethought him of the talents of his discarded servant, Ki-Chan, and sent him to Lha-Ssa, with extraordinary powers. The events we allude to are narrated by M. Huc with clearness, and, we have reason to believe, with great accuracy; but we cannot make room for any account of them, and must content ourselves with a rapid sketch of the ruling powers at Lha-Ssa in 1846, so as to render the situation of our travellers intelligible. The government of Thibet is a complete theocracy, and the authority of the Talé-Lama is unbounded, as that of a divinity deigning to reign on earth must naturally be over his worshippers. But as he often transmigrates into the body of a mere child, and that, moreover, his very divinity makes it derogatory in him to meddle with worldly affairs, he is supplied with a grosser colleague, who, under the name of Nomekhan, or spiritual emperor, transacts all the business of the state. He is nominated for life by the Talé-Lama, and in his turn chooses four kalons, or ministers, whose power, like that of ministers elsewhere, is of uncertain duration. At the time we speak of, thanks to Chinese intrigue, both the Talé-Lama and the Nomekhan were minors; and the regency was intrusted to the first kalon, or minister, whose one-absorbing object was to endeavor to resist the daily interference and encroachments of Ki-Chan, and to emancipate Thibet from the oppressive friendship of the court of Pekin. No pope, protected by an army of occupation, was ever more hampered. But the Celestial Emperor had declared himself the "protector" of the Talé-Lama; and as such was he not bound to interfere on every occasion where his dignity or interests were concerned? The arrival of two Europeans at Lha-Ssa, was a circumstance well calculated to excite the suspicions of Ki-Chan, who, in the true spirit of Chinese policy, considered the total exclusion of Europeans as the only safeguard against foreign invasion. In consequence, the missionaries had to undergo more than one minute interrogatory, and a most searching domiciliary visit. The object of this latter seems especially to have been, to ascertain whether they possessed any maps. Although convicted of having in their possession several of these prohibited articles, they managed, by their guarded replies, and a little adroit flattery, to lull the suspicions of the Chinese envoy, and even to obtain the favor of the Regent. This latter, indeed, repeatedly assured them, with that self-deceit by which the oppressed often seek to delude themselves into a belief of their own independence, that they had nothing to fear as long as _he_ supported them, for that it was he "who governed the country." For a little while things went on smoothly enough: the missionaries followed their religion openly, and even worked hard at making converts--not very successfully, it seems to us; but still, so long as they were allowed to sow, they might hope one day to reap. The Regent himself would frequently discourse with them on religious topics: The Regent was fond of talking on religious matters, and they formed the principal subject of our conversations with him. In the beginning of our intercourse, he said to us the following remarkable words: "All your long journeys have been undertaken solely with a religious object.... You are right, for religion is the great business of life. I see that the French and the people of Thibet think alike in that respect. We are not like the Chinese, who take no account of the care of their souls. Nevertheless, your religion is not the same as ours.... It is of importance to know which is the true one. Let us examine both sincerely and attentively; if yours is the best, we will adopt it; how could we refuse to do so? If, on the other hand, ours is the best, I suppose that you will be rational enough to follow it." Of course, the tolerant Regent thought that he was not promising much; and, as usual on such occasions, each party made sure of converting the other. Still, one sees so many people who defend what they are convinced is the truth with as little temper and good faith as though they were maintaining what they know to be a falsehood, that we must allow that he had some merit. The controversy then began; the Regent, with great courtesy, allowing the Christians, as his guests, to expound their doctrine first. But our controversialists soon found out what so many other disputants would do well to remember--viz., that in order to give or receive a clear definition, it is essential that both antagonists should be agreed as to the value of its terms. The argument was carried on in Chinese, and neither M. Huc nor M. Gabet were sufficiently conversant with the language to be able to convey metaphysical ideas by its means. The truth-seeking Regent, therefore, proposed that the theological conversations should be suspended until his adversaries should have learned the language of Thibet; and he himself furnished them with a master. Ki-Chan, on his part, was equally curious, but on other matters: During the short period of our prosperity at Lha-Ssa, we had some familiar intercourse with the Chinese ambassador, Ki-Chan. He sent for us two or three times, to talk politics, or to use the Chinese expression, to speak "idle words." He talked much of the English, and of Queen Victoria. "It seems," said he, "that she is a woman of great understanding; but her husband, in my opinion, plays a very foolish part. She does not let him meddle with any thing. She has had magnificent gardens laid out for him, with fruit-trees and all kinds of flowers; and there he is always shut up, and spends his life in walking about.... They say there are other countries in Europe where women govern--is it true? Are their husbands also shut up in gardens? Is that, too, the custom in France?" "No; in France the women are in the gardens, and the men direct public affairs." "That's right--any other plan produces disorder."... Ki-Chan then inquired after Palmerston, and asked if he was still intrusted with foreign affairs?... "And Ilu,[17] what has become of him--do you know?" "He has been recalled; your fall caused his." "I am sorry for it. He had an excellent heart, but he knew not how to take a resolution. Has he been put to death, or exiled?" "Neither; in Europe we do not make such short work of these things as at Pekin." "True, true; your Mandarins are much better off than we are. Your government is much better than ours: our Emperor cannot know every thing, and yet he judges every thing, and no one may find fault with his acts. Our Emperor says to us, This is white.... We fall down and answer, Yes, this is white. He then shows us the same object, and says, This is black.... We fall down and answer, Yes, this is black." "But, after all, suppose you were to say that the same thing could not be black and white?" "The Emperor would, perhaps, say to any one courageous enough to do it, Thou art right; but at the same time he would have him strangled or beheaded."... He then added, that for his own part he was convinced that the Chinese could never cope with Europeans, unless they altered their arms, and changed their old habits; but that he would take good care never to say so, seeing that the counsel, besides being useless, would probably cost him his life. At other times, the whole court would assist at some exhibition of European wonders: One day when we were speaking of observatories and astronomical instruments, the Regent asked us if we would allow him to examine the curious, strange-looking machine that we kept in a box. He meant the microscope.... One of us ran home, and returned with the wonderful instrument. While we were putting it together, we attempted to give, as well as we could, some notion of optics to our auditory; but as we perceived that the theory excited but little interest, we proceeded at once to experiments. We asked if any person in the company would favor us with a louse. The thing was far easier to obtain than a butterfly. A noble Lama, who was secretary to his Excellency the first Kalon, had only to slip his hand beneath his silk robe to produce a fully developed specimen. We seized it immediately with our tweezers; seeing which, the Lama objected to the experiment, alleging that we were going to cause the death of a living being. "Never fear," we said, "we have only got hold of him by his skin; and besides, he seems sufficiently sturdy to get over the trial." The Regent, whose creed, as we before said, was more spiritualized than that of the vulgar, told the Lama to hold his tongue, and let us alone. We therefore proceeded with the experiment, and fixed into the object-glass the little animal, who was struggling in our tweezers. We then requested the Regent to apply his eye to the glass at the top of the machine. "Tsong-Kaba!" said he; "the louse is as big as a rat."... Having viewed it for an instant, he hid his face in his hands, saying, that it was a horrible sight. He tried to prevent the others from looking, but his expostulations were unavailing. Every body in turn bent over the microscope, and started back with cries of horror. The Secretary-Lama perceiving that his little animal scarcely moved, put in a word in its behalf. We raised the tweezers and restored the louse to its owner. Alas! the unfortunate victim was lifeless. The Regent said, laughingly to his secretary, "I fear your louse is unwell; go and see if you can physic him, or he'll never recover." All this pleasantness and good fellowship was not to last long, and little more than a month elapsed before the blow came. The suspicions of Ki-Chan had been lulled--not dispelled. It was contrary to the invariable policy of the Chinese to brook the presence of strangers, and especially of preachers of Christianity, at Lha-Ssa; and the very favor shown them by the native government was an additional motive for desiring their expulsion. One day, the two Frenchmen were summoned to the presence of Ki-Chan, who, with the usual forms of Chinese politeness, informed them that Thibet was too poor and miserable a country to suit them, and that they had best think of returning to France. In vain did they, after thanking him for his friendly interest, assure him with firmness, that, notwithstanding his advice, they intended to remain; in vain did the poor Regent promise his support, and affirm that he it was "who governed the country;" there was no combating the all-powerful influence of the Chinese ambassador. At last, finding all opposition fruitless, they determined to quit Lha-Ssa, but not before the good-natured Regent had fought hard in the cause of tolerance. We cannot refrain from quoting some of the arguments of this poor, benighted Buddhist, and commending them to the attention of some of the Lamas of the Western world: The Regent could not be made to share the apprehensions which Ki-Chan sought to instil into his mind. He maintained that our presence at Lha-Ssa could in no manner endanger the safety of the state. "If," said he, "the doctrine that these men teach be false, the people of Thibet will not embrace it; if, on the contrary, it be true, what have we to fear? How can truth be hurtful to mankind? These two Lamas from the kingdom of France," he added, "have done no harm; their intentions towards us are most friendly. Can we, without reason, deprive them of that liberty and protection which we grant here to all men, and especially to men of prayer? Are we justified in rendering ourselves guilty of present and positive injustice, from the imaginary dread of evils to come?" The two missionaries had made up their minds to leave Thibet; but they had fancied that the manner of doing so would be left to their option, and that they would be allowed to take the route towards British India. Great, therefore, was their surprise when they discovered that they were to be conducted, under escort, to the frontiers of China--a journey of nearly eight months' duration. Expostulation was useless; and with a heavy heart they were obliged to leave Lha-Ssa, in company of fifteen Chinese soldiers, under the command of the Mandarin Ly-Kouo-Ngan--alias, Ly, the Pacifier of kingdoms! His Excellency Ly was an admirable specimen of a Chinese skeptic, scoffing alike at Bonzes and Lamas; but having, like many other _esprits forts_, a pet superstition for his private use, and professing an ardent devotion to--the Great Bear! For the details of this homeward journey, we must, however, refer our readers to the book itself; we will merely say, that its dangers and fatigues were so great that the travellers must, more than once, have suspected the treacherous Ki-Chan of having plotted their destruction. M. Huc, in the first moment of indignation, seems to have hoped that his government would have remonstrated, but we have not heard that such has been the case, and Thibet is likely to remain, for some time to come, forbidden ground to European settlers. We have already given our opinion respecting the probability of missionaries of any Christian sect succeeding in the main object of the undertaking in which our heroes (they deserve the name) failed; and M. Huc himself seems to insinuate, towards the close of his work, that those who in future may seek to Christianize Thibet, would do well to try the potency of physical benefits. We have always thought, and experience has proved beyond dispute, that a certain degree of material civilization should precede, or at least accompany, the introduction of Christianity. The starving Singhalese of low caste, keenly alive to the comforts of rice and social equality, proclaims himself of the religion of the East India Company; the knowledge-loving Buddhist of Thibet may one day adopt the religion of railways, microscopes, and electric telegraphs; and it is just possible, as M. Huc observes, that the missionary who should introduce vaccination at Lha-Ssa, would at one stroke extirpate small-pox and Buddhism. FOOTNOTES: [12] _Souvenirs d'un Voyage dans la Tartarie, le Thibet, et la Chine pendant les années 1844, 1845, et 1846._ Par M. Huc, prêtre missionnaire de la Congrégation de St. Lazare. Paris. [13] The Tartars call laymen _hara-houmon_ (black men), most probably on account of the color of their hair, in contradistinction to the white shaved crowns of their Lamas. [14] Si-koua means pumpkin of the West, and is the name given to the watermelon. The Chinese called the European bombs Si-koua-pao. [15] H'Lassa (land of spirits), called by the Moguls _Monhe-Dhot_ (eternal sanctuary). Although averse to any unnecessary change in the received orthography of proper names, we have adopted M. Huc's mode of spelling, in the case of the capital of Thibet, as there appear to be etymological reasons for it. [16] _Scènes de la Vie Apostolique_, par le Dr. Yvan, published in _La Politique Nouvelle_. [17] Ilu, the Chinese way of pronouncing the name of Elliott. From Chamber's Edinburgh Journal. STORY OF GASPAR MENDEZ. BY CATHERINE CROWE. The extraordinary motives under which people occasionally act, and the strange things they do under the influence of these motives, frequently so far transcend the bounds of probability, that we romance-writers, with the wholesome fear of the critics before our eyes, would not dare to venture on them. Only the other day we read in the newspapers that a Frenchman who had been guilty of embezzlement, and was afraid of being found out, went into a theatre in Lyons, and stabbed a young woman whom he had never seen before in his life, in order that he might die by the hands of the executioner, and so escape the inconvenience of rushing into the other world without having time to make his peace with Heaven. He desired death as a refuge from the anguish of mind he was suffering; but instead of killing himself be killed somebody else, because the law would allow him leisure for repentance before it inflicted the penalty of his crime. It will be said the man was mad--I suppose he was; and so is every body whilst under the influence of an absorbing passion, whether the mania be love, jealousy, fanaticism, or revenge. The following tale will illustrate one phase of such a madness. In the year 1789, there resided in Italy, not far from Aquila in the Abruzzo, a man called Gaspar Mendez. He appears to have been a Spaniard, if not actually by birth, at least by descent, and to have possessed a small estate, which he rendered valuable by pasturing cattle. Not far from where he resided there lived with her parents a remarkably handsome girl, of the name of Bianca Venoni, and on this fair damsel Mendez fixed his affections. As he was by many degrees the best match about the neighborhood, he never doubted that his addresses would be received with a warm welcome, and intoxicated with this security, he seems to have made his advances so abruptly, that the girl felt herself entitled to give him an equally abrupt refusal. To aggravate his mortification, he discovered that a young man, called Giuseppe Ripa, had been a secret witness to the rejection, which took place in an orchard; and as he walked away with rage in his heart, he heard echoing behind him the merry laugh of the two thoughtless young people. Proud and revengeful by nature, this affront seems to have rankled dreadfully in the mind of Gaspar; although, in accordance with that pride, he endeavored to conceal his feelings under a show of indifference. Those who knew the parties well, however, were not deceived; and when, after an interval, it was discovered that Giuseppe himself was the favored lover of Bianca, the enmity, though not more open, became more intense than ever. In the mean time, Old Venoni, Bianca's father, had become aware of the fine match his daughter had missed, and was extremely angry about it; more particularly as he was poor, and would have been very much pleased to have a rich son-in-law. Nor was he disposed to relinquish the chance so easily. After first trying his influence on Bianca, upon whom he expended a great deal of persuasion and cajolery in vain, he went so far as to call upon Gaspar, apologizing for his daughter's ignorance and folly in refusing so desirable a proposal, and expressing a hope that Mendez would not relinquish the pursuit, but try his fortune again; when he hoped to have brought her to a better state of mind. Gaspar received the old man with civility, but answered coldly, that any further advances on his own part were out of the question, unless he had reason to believe the young lady was inclined to retract her refusal; in which case he should be happy to wait upon her. With this response Venoni returned to make another attack upon his daughter, whom, however, fortified by her strong attachment to Ripa, he found quite immovable; and there for several months the affair seems to have rested, till the old man, urged by the embarrassment of his circumstances, renewed the persecution, coupling it with certain calumnies against Giuseppe, founded on the accidental loss of a sum of money which had been intrusted to him by a friend, who wanted it conveyed to a neighboring village, whither the young man had occasion to go. This loss, which seems to have arisen out of some youthful imprudence, appears to have occasioned Ripa a great deal of distress; and he not only did his utmost to repair it by giving up every thing he had, which was indeed very little, but he also engaged to pay regularly a portion of his weekly earnings, till the whole sum was replaced. His behavior, in short, was so satisfactory, that the person to whom the money had belonged does not seem to have borne him any ill-will on the subject; but Venoni took advantage of the circumstance to fling aspersions on the young man's character, whilst it strengthened his argument against the connection with his daughter; for how was Giuseppe to maintain a wife and family with this millstone of debt round his neck? Bianca, however, continued faithful to her lover, and for some time nothing happened to advance the suit of either party. In that interval a sister of Gasper's had married a man called Alessandro Malfi, who, being a friend of Giuseppe's, endeavored to bring about a reconciliation betwixt the rivals, or, rather, to produce a more cordial feeling, for there had never been a quarrel; and as far as Ripa was concerned, as he had no cause for jealousy, there was no reason why he should bear ill-will to the unsuccessful candidate. With Gaspar it was different: he hated Ripa; but as it hurt his pride that this enmity to one whom he considered so far beneath him should be known, he made no open demonstration of dislike, and when Malfi expressed a wish to invite his friend to supper, hoping that Mendez would not refuse to meet him, the Spaniard made no objection whatever. "Why not?" he said: "he knew of no reason why he should not meet Giuseppe Ripa, or any other person his brother-in-law chose to invite." Accordingly the party was made; and on the night appointed Giuseppe, after a private interview in the orchard with his mistress, started for Malfi's house, which was situated about three miles off, in the same direction as Gaspar's, which, indeed, he had to pass; on which account he deterred his departure to a later hour than he otherwise would have done, wishing not to come in contact with his rival till they met under Malfi's roof. Mendez had a servant called Antonio Guerra, who worked on his farm, and who appears to have been much in his confidence, and just as Ripa passed the Spaniard's door, he met Guerra coming in an opposite direction, and asked him if Mendez had gone to the supper yet; to which Guerra answered that he supposed he had, but he did not know. Guerra then took a key out of his pocket, and unlocking the door, entered the house, whilst Ripa walked on. In the mean while the little party had assembled in Malfi's parlor, all but the two principal personages, Gaspar and Giuseppe; and as time advanced without their appearing, some jests were passed amongst the men present, who wished they might not have fallen foul of each other on the way. At length, however, Ripa arrived, and the first question that was put to him was: "What had he done with his rival?" which he answered by inquiring if the Spaniard was not come. But although he endeavored to appear unconcerned, there was a tremor in his voice and a confusion of manner that excited general observation. He made violent efforts, however, to appear at his ease, but these efforts were too manifest to be successful; whilst the continued absence of Mendez became so unaccountable, that a cloud seems to have settled on the spirits of the company, which made the expected festivity pass very heavily off. "Where could Mendez be? What could have detained him? It was to be hoped no harm had happened to him!" Such was the burden of the conversation till--when at about an hour before midnight the party broke up--Alessandro Malfi said, that to allay the anxiety of his wife, who was getting extremely alarmed about her brother, he would walk as far as Forni--which was the name of Gaspar's farm--to inquire what had become of him. As Ripa's way lay in the same direction, they naturally started together; and after what appears to have been a very silent walk--for the spirits of Giuseppe were so depressed that the other found it impossible to draw him into conversation--they reached Forni, when, having rung the bell, they were presently answered by Antonio Guerra, who put his head out of an upper window to inquire who they were, and what they wanted. "It is I, Alessandro Malfi. I want to know where your master is, and why he has not been to my house this evening as he promised?" "I thought he was there," said Antonio; "he set off from here to go soon after seven o'clock." "That is most extraordinary!" returned Malfi; "what in the world can have become of him?" "It is very strange, certainly," answered the servant; "he has never come home; and when you rang I thought it was he returned from the party." As there was no more to be learned, the two friends now parted; Malfi expressing considerable surprise and some uneasiness at the non-appearance of his brother-in-law: whilst of Giuseppe we hear nothing more till the following afternoon, when, whilst at work in his vineyard, he was accosted by two officers of justice from Aquila, and he found himself arrested, under an accusation of having waylaid Mendez in a mountain-pass on the preceding evening, and wounded him, with the design of taking his life. The first words Ripa uttered on hearing this impeachment--words that, like all the rest of his behavior, told dreadfully against him--were: "Isn't he dead, then?" "No thanks to you that he's not," replied the officer; "but he's alive, and likely to recover to give evidence against his assassin." "_Dio!_" cried Giuseppe, "I wish I'd known he wasn't dead!" "You confess, then, that you wounded him with the intent to kill?" "No," answered Ripa; "I confess no such thing. As I was going through the pass last night I observed a man's hat lying a little off the road, and on lifting it, I saw it belonged to Señor Mendez. Whilst I was wondering how it came there without the owner, and was looking about for him, I spied him lying behind a boulder. At first I thought he was asleep, but on looking again, I saw he didn't lie like a sleeping man, and I concluded he was dead. Had it been any one but he, I should have lifted him up; but it being very well known that we were no friends, I own I was afraid to do so. I thought it better not to meddle with him at all. However, if he is alive, as you say, perhaps he can tell himself who wounded him." "To be sure he can," returned the officer; "he says it's you!" "_Perduto son' io!_--Then I am lost!" exclaimed Ripa; who, on being brought before the authorities, persisted in the same story; adding, that so far from seeking Mendez, he had particularly wished to avoid him, and that that was the reason he had started so late; for he had been warned that the Spaniard was his enemy, and he apprehended that if they met alone some collision might ensue. It appeared, however, that he had consumed much more time on the road than could be fairly accounted for; for two or three people had met him on the way before he reached Forni; and then Antonio Guerra could speak as to the exact hour of his passing. This discrepancy he attempted to explain by saying, that after seeing Mendez on the ground, dead--as he believed--he had been so agitated and alarmed that he did not like to present himself at Malfi's house, lest he should excite observation. He had also spent some time in deliberating whether or not he should mention what he had seen; and he had made up his mind to do so on his arrival, but was deterred by every body's asking him, when he entered the room, what he had done with Mendez--a question that seemed to imply a suspicion against himself. This tale, of course, was not believed: indeed his whole demeanor on the night in question tended strongly to his condemnation; added to which, Malfi, who had been his friend, testified that not only had Ripa betrayed all the confusion of guilt during the walk from his house to Forni, but that having hold of his arm, he had distinctly felt him tremble as they passed the spot where Mendez was subsequently discovered. With regard to Mendez himself, it appeared that when found he was in a state of insensibility, and he was still too weak to give evidence or enter into any particulars; but when, under proper remedies, he had recovered his senses, Faustina Malfi, his sister--to whose house he had been carried--asked him if Giuseppe Ripa was not the assassin; and he answered in the affirmative. Giuseppe was thrown into prison to await his trial; and having public opinion, as well as that of the authorities against him, he was universally considered a dead man. The only person that adhered to him was Bianca, who visited him in the jail, and refused to believe him guilty. But if he was innocent, who was the criminal? It appeared afterwards that Ripa himself had his own suspicions on that subject, but as they were founded only on two slight indications, he felt it was useless to advance them. In the mean time Gaspar Mendez was slowly recovering the injuries he had received, and was of course expected to give a more explanatory account of what had happened to him after he left Forni on his way to Alessandro Malfi's. That he had been robbed as well as wounded was already known--his brother and sister having found his pockets empty and his watch gone. The explanation he could give, however, proved to be very scanty. Indeed, he seemed to know very little about the matter, but he still adhered to his first assertion, that Ripa was the assassin. With regard to the money he had lost, there was necessarily less mystery, since it consisted of a sum that he was carrying to his sister, and was indeed her property, being the half share of some rents which he had received on that morning, the produce of two houses in the town of Aquila which had been bequeathed to them conjointly by their mother. The money was in a canvas bag, and the other half which belonged to himself he had left locked in his strong box at home, where, on searching for it, it was found. As Ripa was known to be poor, and very much straitened by his endeavors to make good the sum he had lost, that he should add robbery to assassination was not to be wondered at. On the contrary, it strengthened the conviction of his guilt, by supplying an additional motive for the crime. The injuries having been severe, it was some time before Mendez recovered sufficiently to return home; and when he was well enough to move, instead of going to Forni, he discharged his servant Antonio Guerra, and went himself to Florence, where he remained several months. All this time Giuseppe Ripa was in prison, condemned to die, but not executed; because after his trial and sentence, a letter had been received by the chief person in authority, warning him against shedding the blood of the innocent. "Señor Mendez is mistaken," the letter said; "he did not see the assassin, who attacked him from behind, and Giuseppe Ripa is not guilty." This judge, whose name was Marino, appears to have been a just man, and to have felt some dissatisfaction with the evidence against Ripa; inasmuch as Mendez, who, when first questioned, had spoken confidently as to his identity, had since faltered when he came to give his evidence in public, and seemed unable to afford any positive testimony on the subject. The presumption against the prisoner, without the evidence of the Spaniard, was considered by the other judges strong enough to convict him; but Marino had objected that since the attack was made by daylight--for it was in the summer, and the evenings were quite light--it seemed extraordinary that Mendez could give no more certain indications of his assailant. Added to this, although every means had been used to obtain a confession--such means as are permitted on the continent, but illegal in this country--Giuseppe persisted in his innocence. Moreover, as no money had been found about him, and Faustina Malfi was exceedingly desirous of recovering what had been lost, she exerted herself to obtain mercy to at least the extent, that hopes of a commutation of his sentence should be held out to the prisoner, provided he would reveal where he had concealed the bagful of silver he had taken from her brother. But in vain. Ripa was either guiltless or obstinate, for nothing could be extracted from him but repeated declarations of his innocence. In the mean time Bianca had been undergoing a terrible persecution from her father on the subject of Mendez, who had returned from Florence, and taken up his abode as formerly at Forni. Her former lover was a condemned man, and altogether _hors de combat_; she might regret him as she would, and lament his fate to her heart's content, but he could never be her husband; and there was the Spaniard, rich and ready; whilst the increasing age and poverty of her parent rendered a good match of the greatest importance. In short, under the circumstances of the case, it was urged upon her on all hands, that she was bound both by her duty to her father and to evince her abhorrence of Ripa's crime--which otherwise it might be supposed she had instigated--to marry Mendez without delay. Persuaded of Giuseppe's innocence, and half believing that the accusation was prompted by jealousy, it may be imagined how unwelcome these importunities were, and for a considerable time she resisted them; indeed she seems only to have been overcome at last by a ruse. A rumor being set afloat that the day was about to be appointed for Ripa's execution, a hint was thrown out that it lay in her power to save his life: she had only to become the wife of Mendez, and her lover's sentence should be commuted from death to banishment. This last argument prevailed, and poor Bianca, with a heavy heart, consented to become the mistress of Forni. The Malfis, however, do not seem to have been amongst those who desired the match; and it would appear that they even made some attempts to prevent its taking place, by circulating a report that she had been privy to the assault and robbery. Perhaps they hoped, if Gaspar remained unmarried, to inherit his property themselves; but however that may be, their opposition was of no avail, and an early period was fixed for the wedding. The year had now come round to the summer season again, and it happened, by mere accident, that the day appointed for the marriage was the anniversary of that on which Mendez had been robbed and wounded. Nobody, however, appears to have thought of this coincidence, till Mendez himself, observing the day of the month, requested that the ceremony might be postponed till the day after: "Because," said he, "I have business which will take me to Aquila on the 7th, so the marriage had better take place on the 8th." And thus it was arranged. This alteration was made about ten days before the appointed period, and nothing seems to have occurred in the interval worth recording, except that as the hour of sacrifice drew near, the unwillingness of the victim became more evident. We must conclude, however, that Mendez, whose object in marrying her appears to have been fully as much the soothing of his pride as the gratification of his love, was not influenced by her disinclination, for when he started for Aquila on the 7th, every preparation had been made for the wedding on the following day. The object of his journey was to receive the rents before named, which became due at this period, and also to purchase a wedding-present for his bride. On this occasion Alessandro Malfi was to have accompanied him; but when Mendez stopped at his door to inquire if he was ready, Malfi came down stairs half dressed, saying that he had been up all night with his wife, who was ill, and that as she had now fallen asleep, he was going to lie down himself, and try to get a little rest. This occurred early in the morning; and Mendez rode on, saying that he should call as he came back in the evening, to inquire how his sister was. Upon this Malfi went to bed, where he remained some hours--indeed, till he received a message from his wife, begging him to go to her. When he entered the room, the first question she asked was whether Gaspar was gone to Aquila; and on being told that he was, she said she was very sorry for it, for that she had dreamed she saw a man with a mask lying in wait to rob him. "I saw the man as distinctly as possible," she said, "but I could not see his face for the mask; and I saw the place, so that I'm sure if I were taken there I should recognize it." Her husband told her not to mind her dreams, and that this one was doubtless suggested by the circumstance that had occurred the year before. "But," said he, "Ripa is safely locked up in jail now, and there's no danger." Nevertheless, the dream appears to have made so deep an impression on the sick woman's fancy, that she never let her husband rest till he promised to go with his own farm-servant to meet her brother--a compliance which was at length won from him by her saying that she had seen the man crouching behind a low wall that surrounded a half-built church; "and close by," she added, "there was a direction-post with something written on it, but I could not read what it was." Now it happened that on the horse-road to Aquila, which Faustina herself had never travelled, there was exactly such a spot as that she described. Malfi knew it well. Struck by the circumstance, he desired to have his dinner immediately, and then, accompanied by his hind, he set off to meet Gaspar. In the meanwhile the Spaniard had got his money and made his purchases in good time, not wishing to be late on the road, so that they had scarcely got a mile beyond the church when they met him; and in answer to his inquiries what had brought them there, Malfi related his wife's dream, adding that he might have spared himself the ride, for he had looked over the wall, and saw nobody there. "I told her it was nonsense," he said, "whilst we know your enemy's under such good keeping at Aquila; but she wouldn't be satisfied till I came." Mendez, however, appeared exceedingly struck with the dream, inquired the particulars more in detail, and asked if they were sure there was nobody concealed in the place Faustina indicated. Malfi answered that he did not alight, but he looked over the wall and saw nobody. During the course of this conversation they had turned their horses' heads, and were riding back towards the church, Malfi talking about Ripa's affair, remarking on the impropriety of deferring his execution so long; Mendez more than usually silent and serious, and the servant riding beside them, when, as they approached the spot, they saw coming towards them on foot a man, whom they all three recognized as Antonio Guerra, the Spaniard's late servant. As this person was supposed to have gone to another part of the country after quitting Gaspar's service, Malfi expressed some surprise at seeing him; whilst Mendez turned very pale, making at the same time some exclamation that attracted the attention of his brother-in-law, who, however, drew up his horse to ask Guerra what had brought him back, and if he was out of a situation, adding that a neighbor of his, whom he named, was in want of a servant. Guerra, who looked poorly dressed, and by no means in such good case as formerly, answered that he should be very glad if Malfi would recommend him. "You had better turn about, then, and come on with us," said Malfi, as he rode forward. During this conversation Mendez had sat by saying nothing; and if he was grave and silent before, he was still more so now, insomuch that his behavior drew the attention of his brother-in-law, who asked him if there was any thing wrong with him. "Surely it's not Faustina's dream you are thinking of?" he said; adding, "that the meeting with Guerra had put it out of his head, or he would have examined the place more narrowly." Mendez entered into no explanation; and as the servant, who was acquainted with Guerra, took him up behind him, they all arrived at their journey's end nearly together; Mendez, instead of proceeding homewards, turning off with the others to Malfi's house, where the first thing he did after his arrival was to visit his sister, whom he found better; whilst she, on the contrary, was struck with the pallor of his features and the agitation of his manner--a disorder which, like her husband, she attributed to the shock of her dream, acting upon a mind prepared by the affair of the preceding year to take alarm. In order to remove the impression, she laughed at the fright she had been in; but it was evident he could not share her merriment, and he quickly left her, saying he had a message to send to Rocca, which was the village where Bianca and her father resided, and that he must go below and write a note, which he did, giving it to Malfi's servant to take. It appeared afterwards that this man, having other work in hand, gave the note to Guerra, who willingly undertook the commission, and who, to satisfy his own curiosity, broke the seal on the way, and possessed himself of its contents before he delivered it. These were, however, only a request that Bianca and her father would come over to Malfi's house that evening and bring the notary of the village with them, he (Mendez) being too tired to go to Rocca to sign the contract, as had been arranged. It being between six and seven o'clock when this dispatch arrived, Bianca, who was very little inclined to sign the contract at all, objected to going; but her father insisting on her compliance, they set off in company with Guerra and the notary, who, according to appointment, was already in waiting. They had nearly three miles to go, and as Venoni had no horse, the notary gave Bianca a seat on his, and the old man rode double with Guerra. When they arrived Mendez was standing at the door waiting for them, accompanied by Malfi, his servant, a priest, and two or three other persons of the neighborhood; some of whom advanced to assist Bianca and her father to alight, whilst the others surrounded Guerra as he set his foot on the ground, pinioning his arms and plunging their hands into his pockets, from whence they drew two small pistols and a black mask, such as was worn at the carnivals; besides these weapons, he carried a stiletto in his bosom. Whilst the last comers were gaping with amazement at this unexpected scene, the new-made prisoner was led away to a place of security, and the company proceeded into the house, where the notary produced the contract and laid it on the table, inquiring at the same time what Guerra had done to be so treated. Then Mendez rose, and taking hold of the contract, he tore it in two, and flung it on the ground; at which sight Venoni started up with a cry, or rather a howl--an expression of rage and disappointment truly Italian, and of which no Englishman who has not heard it can have an idea. "_Peccato!_ I have sinned!" said the Spaniard, haughtily; "but I have made my confession to the padre; and why I have torn that paper my brother-in-law, Alessandro, will presently tell you!" He then offered his hand to Bianca, who, no less pleased than astonished to see the contract destroyed, willingly responded to this token of good-will by giving him hers, which he kissed, asking her pardon for any pain he had occasioned her; after which, bowing to the company, he quitted the room, mounted his horse, and rode off to Forni. When the sound of the animal's feet had died away, and the parties concerned were sufficiently composed to listen to him, Malfi proceeded to make the communication he had been charged with; whereby it appeared that Ripa had been unjustly accused, and that Antonio Guerra was the real criminal. Mendez knew this very well, and would not have thought of accusing his rival had not his brother and sister, and indeed everybody else, assumed Ripa's guilt as an unquestionable fact. The temptation was too strong for him, and after he had once admitted it, pride would not allow him to retract. At the same time he declared that he would never have permitted the execution to take place, and that after the marriage with Bianca he intended to procure the innocent man's liberation, on the condition of his quitting that part of the country. Of course it was he who wrote the letter to Marino, and he had used the precaution of placing a sealed packet, containing a confession of the truth, in the hands of a notary at Aquila, with strict directions to deliver it to Ripa if the authorities should appear disposed to carry his sentence into execution. He had nevertheless suffered considerable qualms of conscience about the whole affair; and the moment he saw Guerra on the road that night, he felt certain that he had come with the intention of waylaying him as before--the man being well aware that it was on that day he usually received his rents. He perceived that he should never be safe as long as this villain was free, and that he must either henceforth live in continual terror of assassination, or confront the mortification of a confession whilst the fellow was in his power. With respect to Guerra himself, he made but feeble resistance when he was seized. He had, in the first instance, left Mendez for dead; and he would have immediately fled when he heard he was alive, had not the news been accompanied with the further information that the Spaniard had pointed out Ripa as his assailant. He was exceedingly surprised, for he could scarcely believe that he had not been recognized. Nevertheless, it was possible; and whether it were so or not, he did not doubt that what Mendez had once asserted he would adhere to. On receiving his dismissal, he had gone to some distance from the scene of his crime; but having, whilst the money lasted, acquired habits of idleness and dissipation that could not be maintained without a further supply, these necessities had provoked this last enterprise. He had really been concealed behind the wall when Malfi and his servant passed; but concluding that they were going to meet Mendez, and that his scheme was defeated, he had thought it both useless and dangerous to remain, and was intending to make off in another direction, when their sudden return surprised him. A few hours more saw Antonio Guerra in Guiseppe Ripa's cell; and whilst the first paid the penalty of his crimes, the latter was rewarded for his sufferings by the hand of Bianca, to whom the Spaniard gave a small marriage-portion before finally quitting the country, which he did immediately after Antonio's trial. Ripa said he had always had a strong persuasion that Guerra was the real criminal from two circumstances: the first was the hurried manner in which he was walking on the evening he met him at the gate of Forni, and some strange expression of countenance which he had afterwards recalled. The second was his answering them from the window when he and Malfi went to inquire for Mendez. If he thought it was his master, as he said, why had he not come down at once to admit him? It is remarkable that the enmity of the Spaniard was not directed against the man that had aimed at his life, but against him who had wounded his pride. From the Eclectic Review JOHN ROBINSON, THE PASTOR OF THE PILGRIMS.[18] There was in John Robinson a rare union of many admirable and noble qualities; and the meekness of his wisdom was rewarded by his becoming, in no figurative or trivial sense, the father, intellectually, morally, spiritually, of a great nation. Like Moses, he was not permitted to enter the land of promise; yet, like Moses, his memory was sacred to thousands who had derived through him those principles, institutions, and manners, which fitted them in so large a measure for their novel position in a strange land. To this day the name of Robinson is a household word in New England; and, instead of dying out, is rising in reputation throughout the United States generally, wherever pure and undefiled religion prevails, and wherever the enterprising citizens of the greatest republic the world ever saw, have leisure to trace the first beginnings of their nation's glory. The fact mentioned in the preface of this first collected edition of his works, that "a large body of subscribers" have been obtained "in Great Britain and in the United States," while it is no measure of the reverence with which the memory of Robinson is regarded, affords nevertheless good augury for the future. Another hopeful circumstance is the announcement of a new Life of Robinson, from the pen of the Editor of the "American Biographical Dictionary," Dr. Allen, of Northampton, Massachusetts. This rivalry, or rather co-operation of the two countries, in reviving the memory of the dead, is gratifying evidence that the seed which Robinson sowed so diligently was living seed, and reproductive in both hemispheres; and is, possibly, an indication at the same time--for the providence of God prepares the way for great events by raising up the means auxiliary to their accomplishment--that the time is drawing near, when, in the conflict of opinion, such principles as those which the pastor of the pilgrim fathers so nobly vindicated, both by his life and his writings, will be greatly in request. We have no space to enter at length into the various incidents in the life of this truly great and good man--a life, which, notwithstanding the carefully compiled memoir prefixed to these volumes, and many briefer or larger notices in other publications, still remains to be written. A few particulars, however, will assist the reader in forming a proper opinion of the man and his times. John Robinson was born, probably, in Lincolnshire, in 1575. At the early age of seventeen he entered upon his studies at Cambridge, matriculating and taking his degree as master of arts at _Corpus Christi_ College, of which he became a fellow in 1598. He resigned his fellowship in 1604, on account of the new views he had embraced in relation to ecclesiastical matters. In one of his works he has given some details respecting his conversion to Separatism. It is regretted that such incidental references are so rare. At the same time, we are convinced that the future biographer may gather more from this source than has hitherto been done. But this by the way. In his reply to Bernard, in justification of his separation from the church of England, he informs us, that "a long time" before he left the church, he had read several of the treatises of the Brownists and Barrowists, and was convinced by them that the constitution and working of the church were unscriptural. He also mentions, as he says, to his "own shame," that the reverence he had for many of the pious clergy, was the only reason why he did not sooner follow out his own conviction of duty. Every one who knows how difficult a thing it is even now, when dissent presents so different an aspect from what it had in the days of Elizabeth and James, for a clergyman to relinquish his position in connection with an establishment in which he has been brought up, will readily appreciate the difficulties under which Robinson labored. It is true the Independents, both baptist and pædobaptist, are still in a minority; but how different the minority of this day from that of the early part of the seventeenth century! To _be_ in a minority then was to _feel_ it--at every turn--and in one's nearest and most cherished interests. It involved more than the loss of _caste_--reputation--respectability. It was to become an outcast and an outlaw, and to put one's self at the mercy of the bishop and his agents, in a day when even the "tender mercies" of bishops were cruelty itself. Robinson had the courage to join the minority of that day. He left Norwich, where he had officiated for a short period, resigned his fellowship at Cambridge, as we have already stated, and became an avowed separatist. After stating that Robinson proceeded to Lincolnshire, where he found a considerable number of separatists, with Smyth and Clifton at their head, who had constituted themselves into a church, by solemn covenant with the Lord, "to walk in all his ways made known, or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavors, WHATEVER IT SHOULD COST THEM,"--the Memoir proceeds: "The location of this first [?] separatist church has long been an object of investigation and doubt. The difficulty appears to be solved by Joseph Hunter, Esq., in his valuable "Collections" concerning the first colonists of New England. The following is a summary of Mr. Hunter's proofs, identifying Scrooby, Notts, as the village, and Mr. Brewster's house as the manor, in which, when practicable, they worshipped. Governor Bradford, who was originally one of the church, and whose birthplace and residence were at Austerfield, in the vicinity, states distinctly, that Mr. Brewster's house was a "manor of the bishop's." This description of the house furnished the key to the difficulty. Scrooby is about one mile and a half south of Bawtry, in Yorkshire, and from which Austerfield is about the same distance northeast, and both not far distant from the adjacent county of Lincoln. Mr. Hunter says, "I can speak with confidence to the fact, that there is no other episcopal manor but this, which at all satisfies the condition of being near the borders of the three counties." The Brewsters were residents of Scrooby: the manor place which they occupied originally belonged to the Archbishops of York, and had been leased to Sir Samuel Sandys, son of Dr. Sandys, the archbishop, in 1586. The Brewster family were now tenants of Sir Samuel, and were occupants of the mansion of the Sandys. This fact serves both as an identification of the place, and as an explanation of the circumstance that the Sandys took great interest, at a subsequent period, in promoting the settlement of the pilgrims, under the direction of Mr. Brewster, on the shores of the Atlantic. Scrooby must henceforth be regarded as the cradle of Massachusetts. Here the choice and noble spirits, at the head of whom were Brewster and Bradford, first learnt the lessons of truth and freedom. Here, under the faithful ministration of the pastors, they were nourished and strengthened to that vigorous and manly fortitude which braved all dangers; and here, too, they acquired that moral and spiritual courage which enabled them to sacrifice their homes, property, and friends, and expatriate themselves to distant lands, rather than abandon their principles and yield to attempted usurpations on the liberty of their consciences." This information is interesting, and supplies a great _hiatus_ in the history, not of Robinson merely, but of the exiles and pilgrims generally. Perhaps further research may lead to the discovery of papers relating to this obscure portion of English history, similar to those that have thrown so much light on the times of Cromwell, and William and Mary. The letters recently published by Lord Mahon and Mr. Manners Sutton, are probably specimens only of the literary treasures stored in the old manorial and other houses of England. We would have learned from the editor of these volumes whether any inquiries have been made at Scrooby and its neighborhood for confirming Mr. Hunter's conjectures. Be this as it may, it is pleasant to believe, and on such good evidence, that Robinson found a retreat in the home of his college-fellow and after-associate Brewster, there to mature his views, and lay the foundation of that religious life the fruits of which have have been so enduring. But neither Scrooby, nor any other place, was secure from the inquisitorial interference of the high church functionaries. The spy and the informer were abroad. No place of meeting could long remain a secret--whether manorial halls, shopkeepers' storerooms, barns, hay-lofts, or the broad shadows of copse and forest. Go where they would, the conscientious worshippers were sooner or later detected, and dragged as culprits before bishop or magistrate. But the chief objects of vengeance at this period were the Separatists. The Nonconformists (for, contrary to the opinion sometimes expressed on this subject, there were Nonconformists, known by that name, long before there were Separatists and Independents) were at first dealt with in a comparatively gentle manner. They were censured, suspended, and, in some cases, imprisoned. Afterwards, as they multiplied and became more bold, greater severity was exercised towards them. But never were they regarded in the same light, or treated in the same spirit, as the Separatists. To object to the vestments and the ceremonies of the church, as the livery of Antichrist, was held to be extremely censurable and worthy of punishment; but to separate from the church altogether, and renounce all ecclesiastical allegiance, was an unpardonable offence. The Nonconformists generally agreed in this latter judgment, and frequently compounded for their own sins of omission by speaking and writing against their brethren of the separation. There are many proofs of this, as may be seen in Stillingfleet's elaborate treatise on _The Unreasonableness of Separation_ published in 1681. The first part of that work is devoted to an "Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Controversie about Separation," and contains many references to persons, events, and writings that have been too much overlooked. As might be expected, there is much in Stillingfleet's account that requires correction. His prejudices against the Separatists were strong, and led him into several errors. But it is no very difficult task to winnow the chaff from the wheat, and the result will amply repay the labor. So far from having the sympathy of the Nonconformists or Puritans, the Separatists were pursued by them with greater virulence, in tracts, pamphlets, and larger publications, than by the bishops themselves. The circumstance is not inexplicable. It has had its parallel in every succeeding period, to the present day. The Nonconformists of modern times--the evangelical clergy of the church of England (for the _old_ word described those who remained _in_ the church, but did not conform in all respects to its prescribed ceremonies)--the men who put their own construction on the Prayer Book, and explain away the plain meaning of the baptismal and other offices,--have always been found the most bitter opponents of a conscientious and consistent dissent. There are tendencies in human nature, not of a very recondite order, on which the fact may easily be accounted for. This fact, in relation to the actual position of the exiles and pilgrims, is too important to be overlooked. It is an additional justification of their conduct. If the Nonconformists had sympathized with them to any extent, on the ground of their agreement respecting evangelical doctrine, they might have been induced to remain at home, enduring the violence of the storm which beat upon their devoted heads, in the hope that it might abate in time through their influence. But when they found their bitterest foes were these very men, it seemed time for them to seek a home elsewhere. The remainder of the story of Robinson's life must be briefly told. He passed to Amsterdam, with the third and last portion of the Scrooby Separatists, in 1608; Smyth and Clyfton having preceded him with the two other companies about two years before. Mr. Ashton narrated the event in the following words:-- "Mr. Robinson was now left with the remnant of the flock. Month after month rolled away, and no abatement of the fury of the dominant party was visible. His church, with himself, resolved on following their companions to the United Provinces, where toleration, if not perfect freedom, was allowed to all natives and foreigners. Thrice was the attempt made at expatriation before they could succeed. They first resolved to sail from Boston. They formed a common fund and hired a vessel. To avoid suspicion they embarked at night, and at the moment when they expected the vessel to be loosed from her moorings, they were betrayed by the captain and seized by the officers of the town. They were plundered of their goods and money, arraigned before the magistrates, and committed to prison till the pleasure of the lords in council should be known. They were dismissed at the expiration of a month, seven of the leading persons being bound over to appear at the assizes. The following spring a second attempt was made. They hired a small Dutch vessel, and agreed to meet the captain at a given point on the banks of the Humber, near Grimsby, Lincolnshire. After a delay of some hours, a part of the company, chiefly men, were conveyed to the vessel in a boat. When the sailors were about to return for another portion of the passengers, the captain saw a great company of horse and foot, with bills and guns, in full pursuit of the fugitives on shore. He immediately hoisted sail, and departed with the men he had on board, leaving their wives and children, and the remainder of the pilgrim company, with Mr. Robinson, to the tender mercies of their pursuers. A few of the party escaped, the others were seized and hurried from one magistrate to another, till the officers, not knowing what to do with so large a company, and ashamed of their occupation in seizing helpless, homeless, and innocent persons, they suffered them to depart and go whither they pleased. Other attempts at expatriation were subsequently and successfully made. The persecuted Separatists at length reached the hospitable shores of Holland, and rejoined their families and friends in the land of strangers, thankful to their Almighty Father that they had escaped in safety, from the 'fury of the oppressor,' and the perils of the deep." In 1609, Robinson with his people removed to Leyden, where he spent the remainder of his days, building up the church in the truth, laying broad and deep in the minds of the Pilgrim fathers the principles which fitted them to become the founders of America's future greatness, and writing those works which constitute his noblest memorial, and have yet a mission to fulfil in our own and succeeding ages. The fame of Robinson rests principally on three things: first, his relation to the pilgrims; secondly, his personal and public character; and lastly, the force--we had almost said genius--displayed in his various publications. The peculiarity of Robinson's character may be described by one word, completeness--_totus atque teres rotundus_. The united testimony of admirers and opponents witnesses his integrity, purity, courtesy, prudence, and charity. But he possessed other qualities. He was chiefly distinguished by what we venture to call a very rare characteristic, in the sense in which we understand it,--an intense love of truth, which ever stimulated him to search after it as the chief part of his being's aim and end, and which never permitted him to swerve a hair's breath from it in practice. This made him a nonconformist, a separatist, an exile, an independent; a growing Christian, a profound theologian, an able controversialist; a student at Leyden University, although he had previously graduated and held a fellowship at Cambridge; a diligent attendant on the lectures of both Polyander and Episcopus, at the time when all Leyden was agitated by the rival theories of the two professors on the subject of Arminianism; and an avowed advocate of the principle, that though Christian men were confirmed in their own doctrinal and ecclesiastical principles, it was their duty to hear what their opponents had to say, even if it should lead them to the parish church. This love of truth was both a principle and a passion. It grew with his growth, strengthened with his strength, and was the chief source of all his excellence. It made him learned in a learned age, and wise in the knowledge of human nature and the experience of the world, at a period when such wisdom was rare. It fitted him to be the counsellor of his fellow-exiles in the emergencies of their strange position, and the statesman-like adviser of the pilgrims when they went forth to clear the wilderness, and lay the foundations of civil life afresh in a new world. In a word, he may be said to have lived in the spirit of his own aphorism;--"He that knows not in his measure, what he ought to know, especially in the matters of God, is but a beast amongst men; he that knows what is simply needful and no more, is a man amongst men; _but he who knows according to the help vouchsafed him of God, what may well be known, and so far as to direct himself and others aright, is as a God amongst men_." It is impossible to do justice to the writings of Robinson in a brief notice like the present: yet it is on these writings that we are disposed chiefly to rest his claims to future regard. They are not like those of Milton, "one perfect field of cloth of gold;" nor like those of Taylor, enlivened by figures and images that captivate the fancy and impress the heart; but they have what to some possesses an equal charm, in the full orbed light they cast on some of the most abstruse doctrines, and on some of the most controverted questions of revealed and practical religion. Excepting a few obsolete expressions here and there, the language is perfectly clear and comprehensible after more than two centuries; indeed, more clear and comprehensible to ordinary readers than that which pervades a large portion of the so-called elegant literature of the past and present age. It is the language of Shakspeare and Bacon, without the measure of the one, or the involution of the other--that language which has ever been the vernacular of the people of this country, and to which our best writers are coming back--clear, terse, good old English. Some may take exception to the _form_ of these writings, because they are chiefly controversial; but no objection can be more futile. England is glorious through controversy, and nowhere has her mind put on more of might than on the battle-field of truth. Her greatest works are in this very form. What were left to us of the Hookers and Barrows, Taylors and Miltons, if their controversial writings were excepted? and, indeed, what would become of our Nonconformist literature itself, if this objection were allowed a practical weight. Whosoever would have knowledge respecting doctrines and principles still unsettled, in religion or in science, must seek it in such debate or be altogether disappointed. Nowhere will the nonconformists and dissenters find more of truth--and in some particulars of _new_ truth--in relation to their own principles and duties, than in these volumes. Even the independents have still much to learn from this master in Israel. While on some points we hold Robinson to have been altogether wrong; on others--and these not trivial, but important points--we hold that he is nearly as much in advance of the present age as he was of his own, because he adheres more closely than even religious men are ordinarily wont to do, to the spirit and genius of those older Scriptures which have yet to liberate a world from all but invulnerable superstitions. Besides the Memoir, the first of the volumes before us contains an account of the descendants of Robinson, from the pen of Dr. Allen, of Northampton, Massachusetts, from which it appears that they are "very numerous, scattered over New England and other States of the Union, and occupying respectable and useful stations in life." Then come "New Essays; or Observations, Divine and Moral, collected out of the Holy Scriptures, ancient and modern writers, both divine and human; as also out of the great volume of men's manners; tending to the furtherance of knowledge and virtue." We give the title in full, because it is the best and briefest description we can give of the work itself. The most cursory perusal is sufficient to show the erudition of the author, and a comparatively slight examination raises our estimation of his sagacity and wisdom. These essays, the last productions of his pen, are not unworthy of circulation with those of Lord Bacon, of which they frequently remind us by apt allusions, sententious definitions, clear-headed distinctions, and sharp antitheses, no less than by profound insight into the workings of human nature. We had marked passages for quotation, which our limits will not permit. One, however, we must cite, for the incidental light it throws on the character of Robinson as a speaker and preacher. We are not aware that any of his contemporaries have remarked upon the peculiarity thus disclosed; but it accords with the judgment otherwise formed of the man. In an essay entitled, "Of Speech and Silence," containing the pith and marrow of all Carlyle has written on the subject, without any of his exaggeration, we have: "Both length and shortness of speech may be used commendably in their time; as mariners sometimes sail with larger spread, and sometimes with narrower-gathered sails. But as some are large in speech out of abundance of matter, and upon due consideration; so the most multiply words, either from weakness or vanity. Wise men suspect and examine their words ere they suffer them to pass from them, and to speak the more sparingly; but fools pour out theirs by talents, without fear or wit. Besides, wise men speak to purpose, and so have but something to say: the others speak every thing of every thing, and, therefore, take liberty to use long wanderings. Lastly, they think to make up that in number, or repetition of words, which is wanting in weight. But above all other motives, some better, some worse, too many love to hear themselves speak; and imagining vainly that they please others, because they please themselves, make long orations when a little were too much. Some excuse their tediousness, saying, that they cannot speak shorter; wherein they both say untruly, and shame themselves also; for it is all one as if they said that they have unbridled tongues, and inordinate passions setting them a-work. _I have been many times drawn so dry, that I could not well speak any longer for want of matter: but I ever could speak as short as I would._" The remainder of this volume is occupied by "A Defence of the Doctrine propounded by the Synod at Dort", able, full of close reasoning and Scripture exposition, and worthy of careful perusal, whether the conclusions be admitted or not. The second volume is occupied with Robinson's greatest controversial work, "A Justification of Separation from the Church of England," &c. It is elaborate and complete; and, besides vindicating the separatists of that day, pronounces on many questions on which dissenters have yet to make up their minds. In this work he classes himself with the Brownists; from which it may be inferred, that his advice to the pilgrims, to "shake off the name of Brownist," is not to be interpreted very largely, as has sometimes been the case. It is the _name_ that he chiefly abjures. The following passage from the introduction to this performance will illustrate the manner in which Robinson vindicated his co-religionists from the misrepresentations of that age: "The difference you lay down touching the proper subject of the power of Christ, is true in itself, and only yours wherein it is corruptly related, and especially in the particular concerning us, as, that where 'the Papists plant the ruling power of Christ in the Pope; the Protestants in the Bishops; the Puritans,' as you term the reformed churches and those of their mind 'in the Presbytery;' we whom you name 'Brownists,' put it in the 'body of the congregation, the multitude called the church:' odiously insinuating against us that we do exclude the elders in the case of government, where, on the contrary, we profess the bishops or elders to be the only ordinary governors in the church, as in all other actions of the church's communion, so also in the censures. Only we may not acknowledge them for lords over God's heritage, (1 Pet. v. 3,) as you would make them, controlling all, but to be controlled by none; much less essential unto the church, as though it could not be without them; least of all the church itself, as you and others expound. (Matt. xviii.)" The third volume contains four treatises and some shorter pieces, chiefly letters. The first treatise is the celebrated "Apology," originally published in Latin, in 1619, and afterwards translated into English by Robinson himself, although not published in the last form until 1625. It is to the use of the word "independently," in the first chapter, that some have attributed the origin of the name Independent, as the designation of the party of which Robinson was so eminent a member. It appears, however, that Jacob had used the same term, for the same purpose, as early as 1612; and the denominational title had become fixed before 1622, since Bishop Hall speaks of the "anarchical fashion of independent congregations" in one of his publications of that year. The principle of congregationalism, as opposed to nationalism and catholicism, is nowhere more fully established than in this admirable work. The remaining treatises are on Religious Communion, Exercise of Prophecy, and the Lawfulness of Hearing Ministers of the Church of England. The first discriminates between personal and public fellowship, and lays down the position that the former is allowable between all Christians, recognizing one another as such, whatever their differences respecting minor points and church polity. The second is a scriptural exposition of the subject of lay-preaching, as it is now termed. The third is a defence of those who occasionally, and merely for the sake of hearing, attend upon the ministrations of the established clergy. An appendix to this volume contains an interesting account of the congregational church in Southwark, of which Henry Jacob was the first pastor; by the present pastor, the Rev. John Waddington; a sketch of the exiles and their churches in Holland, by the editor; and an index of subjects and authors. We cannot conclude this notice without congratulating the editor and his numerous coadjutors, on the satisfactory manner in which these volumes have been prepared for publication, and on the success that has attended the undertaking. [The life of John Robinson of Leyden is more strictly a portion of American than of English history, and its suitable exhibition demands the best abilities that can be summoned to such service in this country, where, hitherto, the popular declamation of Puritan celebrations, it must be confessed, has evinced but a superficial acquaintance with Puritan intelligence, doctrine, or character.] FOOTNOTES: [18] The works of John Robinson, Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers; with a Memoir and Annotations. By Robert Ashton, Secretary of the Congregational Board, London. Three volumes. London; 1851. From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. A CHAPTER ON CATS. The newspapers have recently been chronicling, as a fact provocative of especial wonder, the enterprise of some speculative merchant of New-York, who has just been dispatching a cargo of one hundred cats to the republic of New Granada, in which it would appear the race, owing, as we may believe, to the frequently disturbed state of the country, has become almost extinct. Your cat is a domestic animal, and naturally conservative in its tastes--averse, therefore, to uproar, and to all those given to change. Its propensities are to meditation and contemplative tranquillity, for which reason it has been held in reverence by nations of a similar staid and composed disposition, and has been the favorite companion and constant friend of grave philosophers and thoughtful students. By the ancient Egyptians cats were held in the highest esteem; and we learn from Diodorus Siculus, their "lives and safeties" were tendered more dearly than those of any other animal, whether biped or quadruped. "He who has voluntarily killed a consecrated animal," says this writer, "is punished with death; but if any one has even involuntarily killed a cat or an ibis, it is impossible for him to escape death: the mob drags him to it, treating him with every cruelty, and sometimes without waiting for judgment to be passed. This treatment inspires such terror, that, if any person happen to find one of these animals dead, he goes to a distance from it, and by his cries and groans indicates that he has found the animal dead. This superstition is so deeply rooted in the minds of the Egyptians, and the respect they bear these animals is so profound, that at the time when their king, Ptolemy, was not yet declared the friend of the Roman people--when they were paying all possible court to travellers from Italy, and their fears made them avoid every ground of accusation and every pretext for making war upon them--yet a Roman having killed a cat, the people rushed to his house, and neither the entreaties of the grandees, whom the king sent for the purpose, nor the terror of the Roman name, could protect this man from punishment, although the act was involuntary. I do not relate this anecdote," adds the historian, "on the authority of another, for I was an eye-witness of it during my stay in Egypt."[19] During their lives, the consecrated cats were fed upon fish, kept for the purpose in tanks; and "when one of them happened to die," says the veracious writer just cited, "it was wrapped in linen, and after the bystanders had beaten themselves on the breast, it was carried to the Tarichoea, where it was embalmed with coedria and other substances which have the virtue of embalming bodies, after which it was interred in the sacred monument." It has puzzled not a little the learned archæologists, who have endeavored to discover a profound philosophy figured and symbolized in the singular mythology of the Egyptians, to explain how it is that in Thebes, where the sacred character of the cat was held in the highest reverence, and cherished with the greatest devotion, not only embalmed cats have been found, but also the bodies of rats and mice, which had been subjected to the same anti-putrescent process. If, however, Herodotus is to be credited, the Egyptians owed a deep debt of gratitude to the mice; for the venerable historian assures us, and on the unquestionable authority of the Egyptian priests, that when Sennacherib and his army lay at Pelusium, a mighty corps of field-mice entered the camp by night, and eating up the quivers, bowstrings, and buckler-leathers of the Assyrian troops, in this summary fashion liberated Egypt from the terror of the threatened invasion. Probably the existence of mice-mummies may be accounted for in this way, and if--resorting to no violent supposition--we presume in the good work which the tiny patriots so sagaciously accomplished that their cousins-german the rats were assistant, the whole matter receives a satisfactory explanation. The hypothesis, it is submitted, is not without plausible recommendations on its behalf. There is extant a fragment of a comedy, entitled "The Cities," written by the Rhodian poet Anaxandrides, in which the Egyptian worship of animals is amusingly enough quizzed. A translation will be found in Dr. Prichard's _Analysis of Egyptian Mythology_. The lines referring to cat-worship are as follows: "You cry and wail whene'er ye spy a cat, Starving or sick; I count it not a sin To hang it up, and flay it for its skin;" from which it appears this gay free-thinker was not only somewhat skeptical in his religious notions, but, moreover, a hard-hearted, good-for-nothing fellow--one who, had he lived in our time, would unquestionably have brought himself within the sweep of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Duke of Beaufort's Humanity Act. We learn from Herodotus that in his days it was customary, whenever a cat died, for the whole household at once to go into mourning, and this although the lamented decease might have been the result of old age, or other causes purely natural. In the case of a cat's death, however, the eyebrows only were required to be shaved off; but when a dog, a beast of more distinguished reputation, departed this life, every inmate of the house was expected to shave his head and whole body all over. Both cats and dogs are watched and attended to with the greatest solicitude during illness. Indeed by the ancient Egyptians the cat was treated much in the same way as are dogs amongst us: we find them even accompanying their masters on their aquatic shooting-excursions; and, if the testimony of ancient monuments is to be relied on, often catching the game for them, although it may be permitted to doubt whether they ever actually took to the water for this purpose. In modern Egypt the cat, although more docile and companionable than its European sister, has much degenerated; but still, on account of its usefulness in destroying scorpions and other reptiles, it is treated with some consideration--suffered to eat out of the same dish with the children, to join with them in their sports, and to be their constant companion and daily friend. A modern Egyptian would esteem it a heinous sin, indeed, to destroy or even maltreat a cat; and we are told by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, that benevolent individuals have bequeathed funds by which a certain number of these animals are daily fed at Cairo at the Cadi's court, and the bazaar of Khan Khaleel. But a tender regard for the inferior animals is a prevailing characteristic of the Oriental races, and is inculcated as a duty by their various religions. At Fez there was, and perhaps is at this day, a wealthily-endowed hospital, the greater part of the funds of which was devoted to the support and medical treatment of invalid cranes and storks, and procuring them a decent sepulture whenever they chanced to die. The founders are said to have entertained the poetical notion that these birds are, in truth, human beings, natives of distant islands, who at certain periods assume a foreign shape, and after they have satisfied their curiosity with visiting other lands, return to their own, and resume their original form. To return, however, not to our sheep, but our cats, we must remark that, in modern times, in spite of the kindness the cat habitually receives in Egypt, his _morale_ is not in that country rated very high--the universal impression being that, although, like Snug the joiner's lion, he is by nature "a very gentle beast," still he is by no means "of a good conscience;" that he is, in short, a most ungrateful beast; and that when, in a future state, it is asked of him how he has been treated by man in this, he will obstinately deny all the benefits he has received at his hand, and give him such a character for cruelty and hardness of heart as is shocking to think of. The dog, however, it is understood, will conduct himself more discreetly, and readily acknowledge the good offices for which he is indebted to the family of mankind. Singular anecdotes have been related of the intense repugnance persons have been found to entertain to these, at worst, harmless animals. One shall be given in the very words of the Rev. Nicholas Wanley, who, in his authentic _Wonders of the Little World_, has recorded a number of other facts quite as marvellous, and sustained by testimony not one whit more exceptionable: "Mathiolus tells of a German, who coming in wintertime into an inn to sup with him and some other of his friends, the woman of the house being acquainted with his temper (lest he should depart at the sight of a young cat which she kept to breed up), had beforehand hid her kitling in a chest in the same room where we sat at supper. But though he had neither seen nor heard it, yet after some time that he had sucked in the air infected by the cat's breath, that quality of his temperament that had antipathy to that creature being provoked, he sweat, and, of a sudden, paleness came over his face, and to the wonder of us all that were present, he cried out that in some corner of the room there was a cat that lay hid." Not long after the battle of Wagram and the second occupation of Vienna by the French, an aide-de-camp of Napoleon, who at the time occupied, together with his suite, the Palace of Schönbrunn, was proceeding to bed at an unusually late hour, when, on passing the door of Napoleon's bedroom, he was surprised by a most singular noise, and repeated calls from the Emperor for assistance. Opening the door hastily, and rushing into the room, a singular spectacle presented itself--the great soldier of the age, half undressed, his countenance agitated, the beaded drops of perspiration standing on his brow, in his hand his victorious sword, with which he was making frequent and convulsive lunges at some invisible enemy through the tapestry that lined the walls. It was a cat that had secreted herself in this place; and Napoleon held cats not so much in abhorrence as in terror. "A feather," says the poet, "daunts the brave;" and a greater poet, through the mouth of his Shylock, remarks that "there are some that are mad if they behold a cat--a harmless, necessary cat." Count Bertram would seem to have shared in this unaccountable aversion. When "Monsieur Parolles, the gallant militarist, that had the whole theory of war in the knot of his scarf, and the practice in the shape of his dagger," was convicted of mendacity and cowardice, Bertram exclaimed, "I could endure any thing before this but a cat, and now he's a cat to me." The fores of censure could no further go. If Napoleon, however, held cats, as has been averred, in positive fear, there have been others, and some of them illustrious captains, that have regarded them with other feelings. Marshall Turenne could amuse himself for hours in playing with his kittens; and the great general, Lord Heathfield, would often appear on the walls of Gibraltar, at the time of the famous siege, attended by his favorite cat. Cardinal Richelieu was also fond of cats; and when we have enumerated the names of Cowper and Dr. Johnson, of Thomas Gray and Isaac Newton, and, above all, of the tender-hearted and meditative Montaigne, the list is far from complete of those who have bestowed on the feline race some portion of their affections. Butler, in his _Hudibras_, observes in an oft-quoted passage, that "Montaigne, playing with his cat, Complains she thought him but an ass." And the annotator on this passage, in explanation, adds, that "Montaigne in his Essays supposes his cat thought him a fool for losing his time in playing with her;" but, under favor, this is a misinterpretation of the essayist's sentiments, and something like a libel on the capacity of both himself and cat. Montaigne's words are: "When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? We mutually divert each other with our play. If I have my hour to begin or refuse, so also has she hers." Nobody who has read the striking essay in which these words appear could a moment misconceive their author's meaning. He is vindicating natural theology from the objections of some of its opponents, and in the course of his argument he takes occasion to dwell on the wonderful instincts, and almost rational sagacity of the inferior animals. We must, however, lament that, although he does full justice to the "half-reasoning elephant," to the aptitude and fidelity of the dog, to the marvellous economical arrangements of the bees, and even to the imitative capacity of the magpie, he pays no higher tribute to the merits of the cat than that she is as capable of being amused as himself, and like himself, too, has her periods of gravity when recreative sports are distasteful. Her social qualities he does not allude to, though he, so eminently social himself, could scarcely have failed to appreciate them. In this country, at this time, cats have superseded parlor favorites decidedly less agreeable in their appearance, and infinitely more mischievous in their habits. Writing in the seventeenth century, Burton in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, remarks that "Turkey gentlewomen, that are perpetual prisoners, still mewed up according to the custom of the place, have little else, beside their household business or to play with their children, to drive away time but to dally with their cats, which they have _in delitiis_, as many of our ladies and gentlewomen use monkeys and little dogs." It is not the least merit of the cat that it has banished from our sitting-rooms those frightful mimicries of humanity--the monkey tribe; and as to the little dogs Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, although we are not insensible to their many virtues and utilities, we care not to see them sleeping on our hearth-rugs, or reposing beside our work-tables. FOOTNOTES: [19] In the matter of fanaticism, the modern Egyptians, or rather the inhabitants of Alexandria, seem hardly to have degenerated from their ethnic "forbears" as we read in Mr. J. A. St. John's travels the account of a serious insurrection which broke out some years ago in that city, in consequence of certain Jews having taken up the butchers' trade, and having slain the meat with a knife having _three_ instead of _five nails_ in the handle! From the Dublin University Magazine. THE HEIRS OF RANDOLPH ABBEY. I. THE MEETING IN THE STORM. There was a wild storm out at sea--a storm by night--the winds and the waves had begun to lift up their voices just when the tumult of the world was hushed in the silent darkness, so that on the earth all was tranquillity, while the ocean raged in fury: it was as though that spirit of unrest which haunts the hearts of men, having been driven out of them by the charm of sleep, had taken refuge here among the boiling waters, and prepared to hold a frantic revel. The mad sea was a fitting field for such a guest, and the fierce sport they made together seemed designed for a mocking imitation of the stormy human passions, which convulsed the land by day. There was a mimic war in heaven--the thunder, for artillery, and the shock of the electric clouds, like the meeting armies when fellow-mortals do battle for destruction; then the beautiful lightning was as the flashing hopes that gleam in at times on the darkness of the soul, and often blast it in the passing of their fatal brightness. The waves leapt, and rose, and sunk to rise no more, like men wrestling for happiness and finding a grave, and over as the tempest swept by the rain went with it, wildly weeping, as though its big, bursting drops were the frantic tears of an earthly despair. In the midst of all this senseless strife, a ship went struggling helplessly. It was a piteous thing to see it, for it was so like a human being, straining every nerve to keep above whelming waves; strong as fate the billows bore it up towards the very heaven, then dashed it down, and trampled on it like a fallen enemy; but the stout old oak stood the shock, and as yet the good planks held together, though the danger was imminent, and not one on board expected to see the light of another day. The scene on deck was very striking, for human nature was there stripped of all disguise and all self-deceit before the presence of death. Pride and ambition, ostentation and avarice--the fallacies of the world, the complacent lies of society, the hopes and griefs that were of earth alone--all unrealities, in short, had passed for these shivering, helpless beings, with the life that seemed receding from them--that hour of horror revealed them to themselves and to others: there would be no more smiling lips over blackest hearts; no more bold looks over craven spirits; those murderous waters, as they dashed them to and fro, wrung from them the very secrets of their souls. There were some there who carried a fair name through the world, and won honor and praise for their virtuous living, that now shrieked out to the pitiless winds, the detail of crimes which had deformed their soul unseen. There were others who had seemed full of love to the beings who cherished them, and now stole the rope or the spar from their straining hands, that they might save themselves therewith whilst they left these to perish; but still, whatever shape the frenzy of that perishing crew might take, whether their cries were of remorse, or prayer, or impotent rage, but one desire and instinct seemed to animate them all--the desire into which every energy of their soul was gathered up and concentrated--for the mortal life that was being rent from their passionate grasp. Life! life! it had been to many of them a torturer, full of anguish and disappointments--a hard taskmaster, driving them on from day to day with weary feet and heavy heart, as over arid deserts where no sweet waters were springing from the wells of human love, or friendship, to slake their thirst for sympathy; they had prayed for death, they had writhed in the power of this life, and sought to be rid of it, as a prisoner of his bonds,--and now, when the bubbling waves came sweeping over the deck to their very throat, there uprose in each heart such an intensity of love for it, that all other thoughts were swallowed up in this one burning wish. They cared not who perished round them, the dearest and the best; they cared not what torments it might bring them in the future, only let them not feel its warm breath departing from their lips, its throbbing from their heart. Now, in the midst of all these beings hanging between life and death--maddened by their terror for the one, and their passion for the other--there were two who maintained a perfect serenity, and looked with quiet eye and smiling face, upon the boiling surge which threatened to ingulf them. The first of these was a young girl, who had been lashed to a mast, against which she leant quite motionless; she was one of those sweet spring flowers, whose bright and joyous aspect shows, that they have known only the sunshine of life's early day; no sorrow as yet had checked those bounding feet, that loved to spring so lightly over woodland paths, nor hushed the carol of that gladsome voice, which rivalled the summer bird in melody; cloudless and pure were her eyes as the sky at dawn--fresh the soul within her as the morning dew; the beauty of guilelessness, and of a heart at rest, shed a light around her which had an indescribable charm. It was a strange thing to see her there, looking out so serenely on the war of the elements; whilst others wept and raved, no sound was heard from her, and though strong men lay writhing at her feet in a paroxysm of terror, no thrill of fear shook her tender frame; calmly she stood, her white garments shining in the night, like the pure robes of some angel of peace; her sweet face shaded by the golden glory of her long flowing hair, her fair hands folded over her tranquil bosom, and a faint smile lingering on her parted lips, like the soft light of a reflected moonbeam, on the still waters of a lucid lake. There was one there who, even in that hour of tumult and distress, could not choose but look on her in her marvellous tranquillity; he, like herself, was calm--the only other in all that trembling crew who faced death with indifference. But it was sufficient to look upon his countenance to read the secret of his silent courage; strange it was, indeed, that she--so young, so fair, so like a snow-white lily--should be ready to fall without a sigh into the embrace of the deadly corruption; but it was no marvel that this man should be well content to feel on his strong, passionate heart, the iron grasp which alone would still its beating. A noble face was his, bearing the marked evidence of a powerful mind, a resolute spirit, and a generous heart; but it was so sorrowfully stern, so deeply shadowed with the gloom of some great darkness which lay upon his soul, that it was plain the bitterness of life alone had engendered this recklessness of death. They had never met before, these two. She was so young, and he already well-nigh past his prime, for he had numbered some forty years; yet now the attraction of a common sentiment drew them towards one another as though they had been kindred spirits. He was gazing intently upon her, when she turned her bright, candid eyes towards him, and smiled. She seemed willing to answer the question his looks were asking, concerning the reason of her fearlessness in this great peril. There was a momentary lull in the storm, and he suddenly walked towards her. It was no time for the courtesies of the world, and he did not hesitate to address her. "How is it that you alone can meet this appalling danger in such perfect calm?" She answered him at once, as frankly as he spoke, with a confiding, childlike smile upon her lips. "Because life, so far as I have known it, has been so happy and so beautiful, that I believe death must be more beautiful and happy still." "What a marvellous doctrine; where can you have learned such untenable philosophy?" "I do not know what philosophy means. I have but said what I have been taught by one who was my master. Life, which is a mystery, came to me unasked, and I found it a most joyful thing; if death, a deeper mystery, come alike unsought, why should I doubt it will be a yet more precious gift? But look!" she continued eagerly, "is it not true that the storm is abating?--the sailors are working cheerfully. Surely there is hope. Oh! say that it is so; for, though I do not dread death, because I believe that its gloom conceals some glorious joy, I do fear such passage to it as this--the actual pain, the horror of drowning, the sinking, choked and struggling, into that dark sea. Tell me, shall we live?" "Yes," he answered slowly, as he looked around the scene, where all gave token that the tempest's wrath was spent. "I think, indeed, that the danger is over; I think that we are saved. You may hear it in the exulting of these trembling wretches who, but a few minutes since, were crawling on the deck in abject supplication. Well, they have what they asked, and soon they will curse the hour when their request was granted." She looked at him with an innocent surprise in her large, clear eyes. She seemed to think him a being of a different nature from herself. At last she spoke. "And now, since we two alone seemed well content to die, when all others raved and shrieked for life, will you tell me why it was that you were thus willing to be done of earth; for I can see it was not because you believe, as I do, beauty, and goodness, and love in all things, however dark and strange they seem as yet?" "And did your master teach you," he said, with a bitter smile, "that there is beauty in suffering?" "Yes! in suffering, in pain, and death; for he said that beneath their stern aspect there lay hidden treasures that were immortal, blessings crowning us with stingless joy; but if you fear suffering, why do you not fear to die: they say there is a pang in dying?" "You answered my question, and I must answer yours; but it were better for you not to know that such things can be in this world. I did not fear, or rather I courted, the last struggle, because I have found the agony of life sharper than the agony of death can be." He turned away abruptly, as he spoke, and seemed desirous to close the interview; and truly it was a strange conversation which had taken place between those two, in the midst of that fierce, stormy night, with the waters gaping open-mouthed for both their lives. It could not have occurred at all under other circumstances. Two strangers could not thus have told out their secret thoughts, had they not been driven by uncontrollable impulse to a close companionship, because of the communion of feeling which seemed to inspire both in that tremendous hour; but now that it was past, that they must re-enter on the ordinary routine of life, the words they had not scrupled to say to one another appeared to them both as some strange, wild dream. When they met again, it was as though they never had departed from the ordinary customs of society. Yet this brief conversation was destined to have a weighty influence on the lives of both of them. Their next meeting was in the morning, when all traces of the midnight storm had passed away--when, brighter and more beautiful than ever before, the earth, and the sky, and the daylight seemed to the eyes that had looked on death so near. The passengers were all collected on deck once more, as they had been when the tempest was raging; but now it was that they might weep fears of delight as they felt the glow of the sunshine--that they might revel in the very throbbing of their pulses, which told how the warm life-blood was careering, unchecked, through their hearts. Soon, however, the memory of their danger passed away, like a hateful dream, and they began, according to the nature of men, to occupy themselves, with a sort of unconscious interest, in the actual circumstances passing before them. The ship in which they were embarked was bound, from the coast of Ireland to that of England. Her ultimate destination was a seaport town in Devon; but at present she had suddenly swerved from her course, and was making for the land just where a tract of richly-wooded country attracted the eye by the luxuriance of its vegetation, and the evident traces of that care and cultivation which are usually bestowed on the estate of a wealthy proprietor. The vessel hove-to within a short distance of the shore, and a boat was lowered. The captain informed any curious inquirers that it was for the accommodation of some of the passengers who were to disembark at the little fishing village now visible on the coast. He was still speaking, when the noble-looking man already mentioned came to take leave of him, and to thank him for his efforts in the storm of the previous night. He then passed with a quiet, stately step through the crowd of passengers, and went down into the boat which was to convey him to the shore. He did not fail, however, to look round anxiously for her, with whom he had become so strangely acquainted; and it was with evident regret that he quitted the ship without having seen her again. He had observed, during their short voyage, that she was under the protection of an elderly lady, who seemed, from a certain stiffness in her manners and appearance, to have occupied, at some time, the post of governess; but during the storm she had been so utterly prostrated by fear and bodily ailment, that she had abandoned all care of her charge. Even in the morning, when all danger was over, she appeared still too much stupefied to be of much service to the young girl; and both ladies were evidently fortunate in having a most efficient attendant in the old gray-haired man, whose primitive appearance and manner seemed to indicate that he was a country servant. The stranger was scarcely placed in the boat when, somewhat to his surprise and pleasure, he saw this old man carefully depositing the duenna of his young friend in a seat near him; and in another moment there was a light footfall on the ladder, a waving of white garments, and she was herself placed beside him, whilst the sailors, pushing off from the side of the vessel, made all speed towards the shore. Both turned round hastily, and their eyes met in a glance of recognition. "It would seem our destination is the same," said he, with a smile; "at least so far as the fishing village. After that, I cannot, indeed, hope it, for the path which leads to my abode is not one that many would seek to travel." "Is your home near this?" she said eagerly. "I am so glad to hear it; for perhaps you can tell me something of this country, which is quite new to me." "Most certainly I can," he answered. "I think I know every tree in the wood, and every flower in the valleys; my whole life, so to speak, has been passed in these localities." "Then tell me, do you know Randolph Abbey?" He started with a movement of the most uncontrollable agitation, and looked at her almost fiercely, as though he suspected the intention of her words; but her candid gaze disarmed him; he compressed his lips firmly, which had grown deadly white, and answered composedly: "I do know it well, most intimately; not only the Abbey, but its inhabitants; they have been my friends these many years." "Then you must be mine also," she said gayly; "for I am myself a Randolph." "I might have guessed it;" and he looked thoughtfully upon her. "And you know them all--all the party I am going to meet?--for I was told I should find so many relations there." "I think I am acquainted with every one who ever crossed the threshold of Randolph Abbey," he said with a faint smile; "from old Sir Michael himself down to the great wolfdog Philax, who guards the outer gate; and you are his niece, no doubt--the only child of his brother Edward." "Yes, I am Lilias Randolph; did you know, then, that I was expected?" "I have not been at the Abbey for some time," he answered, while an expression of deep pain passed across his face; "but I know that Sir Michael is collecting round him all his nearest heirs, that he may choose amongst them one to whom he shall leave the Abbey and estate, which he has the power of willing away to whom he pleases. I knew that he sent for you to complete the number." "Very true, and that alone damps my pleasure in going to see my new relations, that this visit to my uncle is for such a purpose; however," she continued, laughing merrily, "with so many charming cousins as I believe I have to dispute the prize with me, I think I need not fear that it will fall to my share." "Nevertheless, it were a fair possession," he said, turning round, and pointing to the beautiful shore they were rapidly approaching. "All those magnificent woods and green luxuriant fields, as far as your eye can reach, belong to Randolph Abbey." She looked with some interest on the lands which had been the heritage of her ancestors; but soon withdrawing her eyes to gaze fixedly at him, she said with some earnestness: "You seem to know so much more of my family than I do myself, I should be thankful if you would give me some information respecting those I am about to meet. I do not even know how many cousins I have there. I have heard that I had several uncles, all of whom died, except Sir Michael, but I have never seen any of their children." "Sir Michael had four brothers, of whom your father was the youngest, and his favorite. They all died, each leaving a child. The heirs of the three eldest have already been summoned to the Abbey, and now you will complete the party." "But will you not describe them to me, and my uncle and aunt?--they are quite strangers to me." "Describe them! I! impossible;" and his features, which had relaxed from their habitual sternness while he spoke to her, suddenly assumed an expression of severity which almost terrified her; the color mounted to her fair face, as she felt that, perhaps, her request had been unwarrantable to a perfect stranger. He saw her embarrassment, and instantly the smile of singular sweetness, which at times rendered his countenance almost beautiful, dispersed the passing shadow. "You must excuse my abruptness," he said; "I have been so little accustomed of late to the society of such as you are; but, indeed, it were better you should go unbiased to receive your first impression of your relations. Did you say you had never seen any of them?" "None. I have lived all my life with my old dear grandfather in Ireland, far from any town in the old house, among the wild green hills, which was my poor mother's home. I never saw either of my parents, but I have heard so much of her I seem quite to know her; my heart and spirit know her; whereas of my father, and his family, I know literally nothing." "The time is at hand, then," he said, pointing to the beach; "there stands Sir Michael's carriage to convey you to the Abbey." She turned her sweet countenance with a timid, anxious look to the shore, and he gazed at her evidently with deep interest; suddenly he addressed her: "You wished me to describe your cousins to you, and I could not; but now, when I think that you are going quite alone amongst them all, I feel strangely tempted to give you one caution: think what you will of the others, and be as friendly with them as your heart prompts you, but beware of----." A name seemed trembling on his lips; he plainly struggled to utter it, and then some thought checked him. "No," he said, speaking more to himself than to her, "it were an act of blind, human policy to seek to shield her by any earthly scheming from the approach of evil; let her go, powerful in her own innocence and purity of heart; what better safeguard can she have than that deep guilelessness?" He saw that she gazed at him in astonishment as he spoke--"You will scarce regret," he continued, smiling, "that our acquaintance is drawing to a close; I must seem to have dealt very strangely by you; and I have yet a request to make before we part, which will, I fear, yet astonish you still more. Will you promise me not to mention to any individual whatever at Randolph Abbey that you have met me? you do not know my name, but they would recognize me by your description, and I earnestly desire I should not be spoken of amongst them." The fair, candid eyes assumed an expression of gravity. "Pray do not ask me this, for I cannot endure concealments." "That I can well believe," he answered. "I would fancy your young mind clear and limpid as the purest waters; but trust me, that I do not make the request without a reason you would yourself approve of; you would not wish to give pain to any one I know." "Indeed I would not." "Then you will not speak of me at Randolph Abbey, for by so doing you would cause acute suffering--not to me, but to another." "That is quite enough; I will promise you to be silent, unless some unforeseen circumstance should compel me to speak of what has passed between us." "I thank you much," he said; "and now here we part. You will excuse my not accompanying you to the carriage, as you have your servants, and I do not wish to be seen by Sir Michael's people." The boat had reached the shore; he leaped out and assisted her to disembark; then, still holding her hand for a moment, he looked at her with the strange, sweet smile which so beautified his face, and said--"I need scarcely say, all good be with you, for I feel it must be so. There are many stern natures in this world, but none cruel enough, I am sure, to betray so trusting a heart, or cause such cloudless eyes to grow dim in tears; you never will deceive or injure any, and, therefore, will deceits and wrong fall harmless round you. Your own frank and unsuspecting goodness will be as invincible armor upon you, and fear not, therefore, when you find yourself in the midst of the toils which crafty human nature spreads over life; walk on in truth and guilelessness, according as your own generous impulse dictates, and I do not doubt that the pure and gentle spirit of the woman will come forth unscathed, where many a stronger has been scorched and withered; for you will soon learn that the dangerous paths of this world are over hidden fires and by treacherous pitfalls." With these strange words he left her before she had time to answer him; it seemed to her that what he had said was not intended as a mere general remark, but that it applied directly to herself, from some secret knowledge he possessed of her future prospects. She remained looking after him in astonishment, not unmixed with interest in one who seemed so strangely to have assumed the position of friend and counsellor towards her; the echo of his voice still ringing in her ears, so full of mournful sweetness, and the haunting melancholy of the eyes which had read her inmost soul, oppressed her with a feeling of sadness very new to her light heart. She saw him mount a horse which his servant held in readiness for him, and, in another instant, he had disappeared in the woods. With him, however, passed the cloud he had raised; a thousand new objects of interest were before her, and her eyes seemed to catch the very sunbeams as they passed, while her light feet bounded eagerly to the spot where Sir Michael's servants awaited her. II. THE OLD MAN'S REVENGE ON THE DEAD. In a small room, darkened by the deepening shadows of the twilight, sat a withered old man--looking infinitely more like a necromancer of some centuries back than an English baronet of the present day. The species of cell in which he sat was placed in the loftiest turret of Randolph Abbey, as far separated as possible from the apartments inhabited by the family. It was entirely filled with a variety of scientific instruments, which seemed to be in constant requisition; the quaint, old latticed window was thrown wide open, and a telescope fixed at it, in the proper position for a contemplation of the heavenly bodies by night. At the other end of the room was fixed an apparatus for chemical experiments, and here Sir Michael was seated, poring over some liquid which he was subjecting to the influence of a spirit-lamp. He wore a black velvet cap, which contrasted forcibly with the fixed livid color of his face, and his person was enveloped in an ample dressing-gown of the same material, in which the shrivelled, meagre form seemed almost lost. It seemed incredible that a living frame should be so wasted and shrunken as his was--the skin had literally dried on his hands, till they were like those of a skeleton. There was nothing lifelike in his whole appearance, except the small, piercing eyes, which glittered with a startling brightness. Who could have imagined, to look upon him, that within this withered body there glowed the most intense and ardent passions it can be given to a human being to feel on earth! No young man, in the strength and energy of his prime, ever loved with so fierce a love, or hated with so bitter a hate, as did this worn, attenuated being; in truth, it was the fire, undiminished still, of the strong, passionate heart that throbbed in so frail a tenement, which had sapped the very springs of life within him, and dried up the blood in his veins. Even now, the ceaseless activity with which he busied himself in his chemical experiments, the convulsive twitching of his mouth from excessive eagerness, was but the result of the one burning thought that consumed him, and from which he sought relief in physical action. He cared nothing at all for these things about which he occupied himself, but long practice, systematically undertaken, and his own great ability, had rendered him a wonderful adept in science; he had resolutely become so, because he knew that these subtle experiments, and the singular combinations they produced, must, to a certain degree, prove an aliment to the intolerable restlessness produced by the one strong passion that lay feeding at his heart, like a serpent coiled around it. It was a glorious summer day, and outside the thick walls of the turret the sunlight was glancing, and the green trees waving in the wind; but he dared not go out to the free air and the smiling nature, for, if released from the occupation he had created for himself, because it demanded such incessant attention, the current of thought, undiverted from its natural course, would too surely ebb back upon his soul with its waters of exceeding bitterness; and therefore had many years of this old man's wretched life been spent as he was spending this present hour--bending over the glowing crucible, that he might avert the shock of the antagonistic properties which he had purposely combined, in order that his mind might be engaged in preventing the collision. None knew better than himself how profitless and miserable was this existence he had made, but except he fed, even with this food of ashes, the serpent thought that haunted him, it would have preyed on him to madness. Truly that dark fluid, beneath which his withered fingers were even now so busily turning the powerful flame, was an apt symbol of his own life--wasting away before the hidden fire which himself was goaded on to foster hour by hour. Absorbed as he seemed to be in his strange employment, he nevertheless heard with great acuteness the approach of some person, who knocked softly at the door and then opened it. Sir Michael turned round eagerly; the new comer was a servant, who said quickly, "My lady wishes to speak to you, Sir," and disappeared at once, as though the locality was one in which he by no means desired to find himself. But the old man had heard the message, and through all the red glow cast by the flaming lamp, his livid face grew ghastlier still with strong emotion. He leant back in his chair, breathing quick and hard, and with his hand pressed to his side; then rising hastily, he gathered the long black garment round him, and left the room, heedless of the boiling liquid, whose ingredients it had required days to combine, and which now, overflowing in the crucible, was lost entirely. Through the vaulted passages of the noble old building the Lord of Randolph Abbey took his way, stealing along within the shadow of the wall, the shrivelled hands still clasped over his bosom, and trembling with agitation. One might have fancied him the spectre of some old miser, creeping back to visit the beloved gold which had turned, as it were, to molten lead, crushing him within his grave; but it was, indeed, hard to believe that this was the possessor of as noble an estate as ever came to a man from the dead hands of a long line of ancestors, and that wealth well nigh untold was at his command. He crossed the great hall, a magnificent room, lighted by an immense Gothic window at the one end, whilst the other was occupied by a large organ, whence he went through various passages, covered with the softest carpets and lined with silken hangings. It was plain that he was on the outskirts of a region where luxury was systematically studied. At length he reached a door, which was closed only by heavy curtains, and there paused for a moment. A voice was heard within, a clear, full-toned voice, talking, as it would seem, in terms of endearment to some animal; and as it came murmuring on his ear, there stole a light into that old man's eyes, a light reflected from the bright, spring-time of life, when first he had heard those tones, and vowed to follow their sweet sound the wide world over, little dreaming they would lure him through a labyrinth of such varied agonies; his whole countenance was softened by the gleaming of that pure affection from his eyes, for it was the memory of the young fresh love that still held unalterable dominion over him. This was his misery, that it was as young as ever in his aged heart, strong and lusty beyond what the withered frame could bear; but no longer fresh and true, no longer guiltless, for it will be seen how this deep love had engendered a deeper hate. With the beauty of that tenderness still lingering on his face, he drew back the curtain and passed into the room; and straight-way was he met by the glance of stinging, cold disdain that all these many years had, hour by hour, and day by day, tortured his love to madness, and lashed his very soul to fiercest irritability. A most beautiful woman was Lady Randolph, though now in the ripe autumn of her days; stately and magnificent in dress and appearance, with pride in every gesture and movement, and a haughty self-love filling that swelling breast, and curling the finely chiselled lips. She was surrounded by the utmost refinement of luxury, and lay extended on a chaise lounge, with a delicate little Italian greyhound nestling beside her, to whom she continued to talk in fondling accents, even when her husband stood before her. Yet there was no symptom of an indolent disposition in her appearance; there was, on the contrary, a flashing gleam in the proud eyes, which seemed to tell of fiery energy. These met him, as we have said, with a glance of withering contempt, which caused the shrivelled frame to shake and quiver. Yet memory had been busy at his heart, when he heard her voice come softly through the curtain, as once through the green shade of the whispering woods, in his summer time of love and hope. There was a tremulous softness in his tone, a sad deprecating of her disdain, when he spoke to her. "You wished to see me, Catherine." "Only that I might give you a piece of intelligence, no doubt most gratifying to you; another of your heirs has obeyed your summons; I am told that Lilias Randolph is arrived." She spoke as if she could have wished that every word should cut to his very heart; it was plain that the fact thus announced had somehow touched a wound of rankling bitterness in her own. She went on, gazing fixedly at him with the most frigid coldness, "This Lilias is the daughter of your favorite brother, is she not? I presume she will be the fortunate individual on whom your choice will probably fall. Henceforward, then, it may be a pleasant subject of speculation for me, whether this girl, whom you have never so much as seen, will vouchsafe a crust of bread to your widow, and a garret to shelter her in the home she shared with you." He writhed under these bitter words, and wrung his withered hands. He spoke with moaning voice, like that of a child in pain--"Catherine, Catherine, it is yourself who have forced me to it. You know how, living, all that I have is yours,--my whole wealth utterly at your command; dying, as soon I must, how thankful would I leave all I possess to you; yes, thankful should I be to think that from the very grave my love had still the power to benefit and bless you--if you would but give me the pledge I ask. You know how from this overwhelming affection which I have given you these long, interminable years, there has been born a hate deeper, deeper even than its parent love, for it constrains me rather to endure the bitterness of your reproaches, the agony of leaving you destitute on earth, than consent that even one inch of my property, one penny of my wealth, should pass from your hands to the offspring of the man I have abhorred." "Yes! and to have so abhorred him, the best and noblest of his kind--and now to hate his helpless child--I tell you, you can have no heart of man within you, but the very nature of a tiger, cruel and crafty. A deadly hate it must be, truly, which can pursue a man into his very rest of death, and wound the poor corpse in the person of his son. Oh! how could you abhor him--you who have seen him in his living grace and goodness?" "Because he loved you," almost shrieked the old man; "and oh, Catherine, my wife, so long and vainly dear, because you loved him also." "I did, and do," she exclaimed, weeping passionate tears; "oh! how I love him still, my first, my only choice, the husband of my youth, the father of my child. You thought I should forget him, did you, in the midst of all this luxury? I tell you I love his green and narrow grave, with the dead ashes it contains, ten thousandfold better than this palace home and the living husband within it." The withering scorn with which she uttered these last words seemed to madden him. "What, you doat on his very grave," he said, stamping his foot, "and by the side of it you would have starved, a penniless widow, had I not taken you." Her breast heaved with anger--"And should I not have been well content to starve, rather than eat that bitter bread which I bought with the title of your wife: but the child, his child and mine, would have perished, or lived in misery; and for his sake, for my lost husband's sake, I married you, that I might the better cherish the poor son he left me." "Oh! why will you torture me? It is true, that, from the days of our first meeting, you have fostered within me the unconquerable hate which, for my agony and yours, has grown mightier than the mighty love I bear you. It is by this wanton lavishing upon him, and now upon his son, of the tenderness I sought with a life's idolatry to gain, which has curdled the very blood within my heart, and makes me feel that I would rather leave you to languish in the worst of poverty than furnish you the means of blessing him with all life's treasures, and dwelling with him in delight, when I can no longer claim your presence, by the wife's obedience, if not alas! alas! by the woman's love. No, though my resolution has made our life a miserable struggle, yet am I immovable in this--I never will go down into the dungeon of the grave, and know that over my impotent dust the son of my rival is revelling in all my wealth, dwelling in my home, making you happy, as you never were when at my side, because he has the likeness of his father in his face. Already is it torture to me to know he is within these walls; and often I have thought that, madly as I love you, it was a dear-bought pleasure to have you as my wife, when the condition on which you came to me was the presence of this hateful boy. Oh, Catherine, be advised, give him up--strange object of affection, truly!"--and he laughed bitterly--"not to starve--he is your son--I do not ask it; but to go and live upon a pittance somewhere out of my sight and thoughts. Then give me this easy pledge, that he never shall inherit Randolph Abbey, and I will have no other heir but you. With your own hands, if you will, you then may drive out all these children of my brothers; I care not what becomes of them; and here you shall be a very queen, possessor of the whole fair lands for ever." He had given her time to quell her emotion in this earnest speech, and he shuddered as he met the look of impassible and contemptuous determination with which she answered him--"Why will you weary me with proposals which I have a hundred times rejected, and will reject again, as often as it shall please you to amuse yourself by making them. I require no more of these detailed assurances that you design to be, as you have ever been, my bitter enemy." "Catherine, is it to be an enemy to worship you as I have done?" "Yes! a remorseless enemy, and this selfish worship my sorest persecution. What other name were fitting for you, who, in your jealous hate, have struck blow after blow upon my miserable heart, in the persons of those most dear to me? Did you not, by your machinations, deprive my noble husband of the employment by which he lived, and then, rolling in riches as you were, did you ever stretch one finger to save him from the wasting poverty which brought him to the grave? Are you not his murderer?" and she grew fearfully excited. "Did you not hide all from me, till I discovered it long after I was your wretched wife, when, had I known it, you never should have so much as touched this hand of mine?" "But, remember, remember; he had done me a deadly wrong--he stole you from me. What injury I ever did him was like to this?" "It might have been an injury," she said, with a bitter smile, "had he stolen my love from you; but this you never had, Sir Michael Randolph--not even before I knew him. I loved luxury and greatness, as I do now, and I had agreed to marry the Lord of Randolph Abbey, as such, and nothing more. Then I met your gentle cousin Lyle, and the sweet power of affection overcame ambition. My first love was, if you will, your fair estate; but he was my second, and my last, for ever!" "Do you not fear to speak such words to me?" he said, his face growing white with anger, "and to irritate me thus bitterly, when you know I have no power to control the fierceness of my passions? Do you not dread my vengeance?" "No; for whilst you live you can never injure me; your own heart would resist your efforts so to do; and besides, the bonds that unite us would prevent it. You never can take from me the right to share your home, and find my chief pleasure in its luxury; nor can you, by the oath which I made you take as the condition of our marriage, in any way deprive my child of the shelter of this roof." "It is true, I cannot; though I would give my right hand to do it!" "That may be," said the scornful voice, "but you cannot escape your vow any more than I can the marriage oath. And now, we have had enough of these odious scenes of mutual reproach. You have fully instructed me in your resolve, to punish a dead man for the love I bear his ashes, by depriving myself and my son, after your death, of the estate I have shared with you. I am fully aware of your intentions, and I congratulate you on the pleasant task you have prepared for yourself, of choosing an heir amongst half-a-dozen needy relations; and, now, if you have any doubt as to my plans, I will tell you them, once for all, and let there be an end to this childish struggling between us. I married you in order to procure a home for my son, and for myself the luxury in which my nature delights; both of these you are bound to give us in your lifetime, and you are decided to dispossess us of them hereafter. If, then, your belief that you have an incurable malady be true, we have not long to enjoy these benefits, for which I sacrificed that which is dearest to a woman's heart--the faithfulness of her worship to one alone; and, therefore, since the price I paid for them has proved so tremendous, I will, at least, make the most of them while they are left to me. My son shall not stir one hour from this house; I will not descend one step from my place, as mistress of the Abbey and all your wealth; and, if we survive you, as you predict, I will promise you not to curse your memory, because I should lose my self-respect in so doing, since, be you what you may, I have given you the title of my husband." And the haughty woman turned from him as she spoke, sweeping her gorgeous robes after her with so dignified a movement, so stately a curve of the proud neck, that his anger was almost quelled in admiration of her queen-like beauty. Lady Randolph had reached the door, when she paused and looked back, "We have forgotten Lilias Randolph: is it your pleasure to receive her here in my presence?" "Yes, send for her at once," he answered, eagerly seizing a pretext to keep her in his sight; for, despite her bitter words--despite the age which sent the blood so sluggishly through his veins--he ever felt, when she left the room, that going forth of strength from the soul with the departing of one beloved, which is the penalty of a deep affection. She rung a little silver hand-bell, and desired that the new-comer should be conducted to this room; and then she sat down immovably to await her, without glancing at her husband. She was, to all appearance, calm; but the heaving chest showed how the proud heart was still beating fast, whilst he shook in every limb, like an aged tree, over which a storm had passed. He gazed intently upon her, as in her presence he ever did, and at last, seeming irritated at her silence, he said, in a voice tremulous with passion--"Remember, Lady Randolph, that however bitterly you hate me, I will have none of it reflected back upon my niece. Lilias Randolph must find here a home, and a happy one. I will have it so: and no unkind treatment of yours must render it otherwise." "I do not wonder you should fear that I may have learned in _this_ house the exercise of petty tyranny, and the punishing of the innocent for the crimes of others; but we do not easily learn that which is against our nature, and I think experience may tell you that your lessons have failed. Is there one of the Randolphs now located in this house who can complain of me, in any way whatsoever?" He was glad that the sound of approaching footsteps prevented the necessity of an answer. Both turned to the door to greet Lilias Randolph. She came in like a very sunbeam, all light and peace, dispersing, as it were, by her presence, the storm of angry passions that had been raging there. Both of them were disposed to meet her with preconceived animosity, but they were at once disarmed by the serene purity of her aspect. The large candid eyes, with their timid glance, half shy, half free, so like a young fawn; the sweet face, glowing beneath the soft hair, with a faint blush of diffidence; the whole atmosphere of innocence, and hope, and loving kindness towards all men, which seemed to be around her, had power to stir long silent depths in both those seared and angry hearts; the bitter strife, whose cause and results had become magnified to their distorted vision, to an importance which nothing on this fleeting earth could really merit, almost melted away before _her_ presence, who seemed prepared to walk through life in such joyousness and singleness of heart, with eyes that could see nothing but beauty, and a mind that could perceive only goodness. Lady Randolph came forward, and took her hand with a degree of politeness which Sir Michael knew to be a most unwonted act of condescension, but which to the sunny-hearted Lilias seemed to be a very cold, repulsive welcome. She looked up with her clear eyes to the proud, handsome face that bent over her and wondered if it was of this stately lady that she was to beware, for the half-uttered words of the stranger had impressed her strangely, and the one thought, that there was to be for her a hidden enemy within these walls, had appeared to haunt her very footsteps ever since she entered Randolph Abbey. Sir Michael approached, and Lady Randolph at once let fall the little hand that fluttered in her own. Lilias timidly advanced towards her uncle; involuntarily he put his arm round her, and stroked down the soft brown hair: "Poor Edward," he murmured, "how wonderfully you resemble him." "Then you will love me for his sake, will you not?" and she looked coaxingly up to him. "Dear child, would that you could be like what he was, to me, the only creature who ever loved me." "And now I will be another; only let me try to take his place." She put her arms round his neck and nestled close to him, till the old man felt, as it were, the warmth of a new life creep into his breast from the beating of the pure young heart beside him. He pressed her fondly to him; it was so long since any one had seemed to consider him as a being for whom it was possible to feel the least affection, that her gentle words were strangely soothing to him. Suddenly she started in his arms, for the door was closed with great violence; it was Lady Randolph, who had left the room, and she wondered at the strange gleam of pleasure which lit up the livid face of her uncle. Unconsciously she shrunk from him as from something evil; but little indeed could that innocent mind conceive of the feeling which made him exalt in having thus drawn forth an indication of jealous anger from the wife who so long had crushed him with her cold contempt. Lilias remained with her uncle, and told him the brief history of her untroubled life; all things connected with her seemed gentle, pure, and happy, even where images of death forced their way amongst them. He listened as to some melodious poem, whilst she told him of her mother, the sweet Irish girl, who had lured his brother Edward, in early youth, from all the grandeur of Randolph Abbey, to come and dwell with her among the Connaught hills; and how, as Lilias had heard from her old nurse, they had been the fairest couple ever seen, living for one another only, and thinking earth a paradise, because they walked upon it hand in hand. "And then, dear uncle," continued Lilias, "it seemed as though they feared that time or change should make them less beloved one to another; or since that could never be, that any evil should rise up to separate them even for one day; and so they went and lay down side by side in the green churchyard, where none could seek them out, to trouble the silent love they knew would live beyond the grave. My father died the first, and my mother laid her head upon his heart, when it ceased to beat, and never lifted it again; and so they buried them just as they were, and she lies there still, most sweetly sleeping. She said, just before she expired, that his heart had been her resting-place in life, and should be so in death; and so it was, and is even yet, a blessed rest.--Is it not, dear uncle?" He almost crushed her hand in his, and said, "Tell me no more of them, Lilias, I cannot bear it;" he was thinking how the proud feet of his disdainful wife would spurn the turf from his unhappy grave. Lilias thought it pained him to hear of the brother's death whom he had so loved, and therefore gently changing the subject, she began to tell him of her own happy childhood and youth--how she had lived with her good old grandfather, the pastor of a country village, roaming the hills all day a free and joyous child, and in the evening sitting by his side, gaining from him all needful learning, and many tender counsels to smooth her path in life: and how the one bright lesson he had ever taught her was to have deep faith in the love and goodness pervading all things inwardly, even as beauty clothes the world outwardly; to believe that however dark, and bitter, and mysterious might seem the destinies of man, yet all has a merciful purpose, and shall have a joyous ending, if only we will have patience, and hope, and loving-kindness one towards another; and how she was to fear nothing on this earth, not pain, nor sorrow, nor death, for that all these were tender messengers working their work of mercy; and how she never was to suspect evil or to look for it in others, but ever to seek only that which was good and pure in them, for that there is not in the world a soul, however stained, but has some fair spot lingering from the brightness with which it was clothed when it came forth--a new-created spirit, bright as a star. So she spoke, telling her gentle, happy ideas in a sweet murmuring voice, and Sir Michael felt, with every word she uttered, that from this wise and beautiful teaching she had come out the sweetest, purest, most loving of human beings, ever ready to cast back all thought or shadow of evil, and seek only that which is lovely and of good report--the germ of which is every where to be found, even in the blackest heart that ever weighed down the breast of man; and so, bending over her, Sir Michael kissed the spotless forehead, and internally resolved that she, and none other, should be his heiress, the possessor of Randolph Abbey: but he said nothing, for when he had summoned the children of his four brothers to come and reside with him, that he might make choice of an heir, he had announced to them that they were to have a probation of six months, during which time he designed to judge of their merits, without making any announcement of his decision, till the period had expired. III.-THE ASSEMBLING OF THE HEIRS IN PRESENCE OF THE JUDGE. Through the dark old hall, from which the lingering twilight was excluded, came Lilias Randolph towards the room where she was to meet the assembled family, and make acquaintance with her competitors. It was a fairer sight than these grim walls had witnessed for many a day, to see her wandering down, with her sunny hair and snowy garments, among the suits of armor and warlike relics of ancient times which lay around on all sides: there was a grace in all her movements, a softness and purity in her aspect, which made her ever seem like a moving light, and now, in that shadowy expanse, her glancing form was almost the flitting of moon-beams along the wall. She paused one moment at the door, and though her thoughts were busy with the recollection that amongst those she was about to meet there was to be found, she knew not where, a dangerous foe, yet did not her heart beat one stroke the faster beneath the gentle hands so calmly crossed upon her breast. She felt that she had injured none, she knew that never would she desire aught but the well-being of all around her, and therefore she feared nothing that man could do, for she was well convinced that there are limits set to the unprovoked wrong. In another moment she stood within the room--a lofty saloon, magnificently furnished, and of great size; there were two fireplaces, but the whole group were collected round one, for although the summer was just bursting over the earth, the evenings were still chilly. She distinguished at first only Sir Michael and Lady Randolph--the former crouching down in a huge arm-chair, the latter standing so as to display her majestic height, with an arm laden with jewels leaning on the mantelpiece. She saw the young girl come in; but the other persons present were turned from the door, and none heard the light footfall on the thick carpet till the childlike form, all fair and white, stood close to her aunt, contrasting strangely with the haughty lady in her dark velvet robes. Lilias looked up; so strange is the power of a few brief human words, that, as she gazed from face to face, it was with the question in her heart, "Which of you is to be my enemy?" Before her stood two young men, both strikingly handsome, but most unlike: one, who appeared to be the eldest, was a noble specimen of joyous, hardy youth--a fine open countenance, from which the dark had been dashed away as with a free hand, a gay smile, a bold, clear eye, a mellow voice--these were all indications of what he truly was--a frank, generous-hearted man, with great nobility of sentiment and a rare sincerity. The other were less easily described, and seemed of a very different stamp; slighter of make, and with a fairer face, he seemed the very embodiment of meekness and gentleness, and his large, almond-shaped blue eyes were seldom raised when he spoke; and yet there was a refined intelligence beaming in every line of his countenance: the soft silken hair and delicate hands might have graced a woman, and Lilias inwardly decided, as she looked on him, that he must be a gentle spirit, easily broken; little fitted to battle with the rough world. He, at least, could never be one of whom any should beware, nor yet could the beaming countenance of that bolder man hide aught but a noble heart; where then was her future enemy? it must be the third of her unknown cousins. Lady Randolph now named these to her: Walter was the elder, son to Sir Michael's soldier brother, who died heroically on the field of battle; Gabriel, the child of one who had disgraced his family by a concealed marriage with a woman of low rank. She stated these circumstances as calmly as though the offspring of this person had not been standing before her: he listened to the contemptuous allusion to his mother without a word or movement; but Lilias saw the slight hands tremble violently and the chest heave. Was it with anger or shame? "This is not all," said Sir Michael, who had watched the scene; he turned to Lady Randolph--"Will she come?" His wife made no answer, but walked towards a small door which seemed to open into some inner apartment: she opened it, pronounced the name of "Aletheia," and returned to her place. There was a pause. Lilias had heard no sound of steps, but suddenly Walter and Gabriel moved aside, she looked up, and Sir Michael himself placing a hand within hers, said--"This is your cousin Aletheia; her father, my third brother, died only last year." The hand she held sent a chill through Lilias's whole frame, for it was cold as marble, and when she fixed her eyes on the face that bent over her, a feeling of awe and distress, for which she could not account, seemed to take possession of her. It was not a beautiful countenance, far from it, yet most remarkable; the features were fixed and still as a statue, rigid, with a calm so passionless, that one might have thought the very soul had fled from that form, the more so as the whole of the marble face was overspread with the most extraordinary paleness. There was not a tinge of color in the cheek, scarce even on the lips, and the dead white of the forehead contrasted quite unnaturally with the line of hair, which was of a soft brown, and gathered simply round the head; it was as though some intense and awful thought lay so heavy at her heart that it had curdled the very blood within it, and drawn it away from the veins that it might be traced distinctly under the pure skin. It was singular that the immovable stillness of that face whispered no thought of soothing rest, for it was a stillness as of death--a death to natural joys and feelings; and mournfully from under their heavy lids, the eyes looked out with a deep, earnest gaze, which seemed to ignore all existing sights and things, and to be fixed on vacancy alone. Aletheia wore a dress of some dark material, clasped round the throat, and falling in heavy folds from the braid which confined it at the waist; she stood motionless, holding the little warm hand Sir Michael had placed in hers, without seeming almost to perceive the girlish form that stood before her. There could not have been a greater contrast than between that pale statue and the bright, glowing Lilias, the play of whose features, ever smiling or blushing, was fitful as waters sparkling beneath the sunbeam. "Do you not welcome your cousin, Aletheia," said Sir Michael, with a frown. She started fearfully, as if she had been roused by a blow, from the state in which she was absorbed. She looked down at Lilias, who felt as if the deeply mournful eyes sent a chill to her very soul. Then the mouth relaxed to an expression of indescribable sweetness, which gave, for one second, a touching beauty to the rigid face; a few words, gentle, but without the slightest warmth, passed from her pale lips. Then they closed as if in deep weariness. She let fall the hand of Lilias, and glided back to a seat within the shadow of the wall, where she remained, leaning her head on the cushions, as though in a death-like swoon. Lilias looked inquiringly at her aunt, almost fearing her new-found cousin might be ill. But Lady Randolph merely answered, "It is always so;" and no further notice was taken of her. They went to dinner shortly after, and Lilias thought there could not be a more complete picture of comfort and happiness than the luxurious room, with its blazing fire, and warm crimson hangings, and the large family party met round the table, where every imaginable luxury was collected. Little did her guilelessness conceive of the deep drama working beneath that fair outward show. Her very ignorance of the world and its ways, prevented her feeling any embarrassment amongst those who, she concluded, must be her friends, because they were her relations, and she talked gayly and happily with Walter, who was seated next to her, and who seemed to think he had found in her a more congenial spirit than any other within the walls of Randolph Abbey. All the rest of the party, excepting one, joined in the conversation: Lady Randolph, with a few coldly sarcastic remarks, stripped every subject she touched upon of all poetry or softness of coloring; she seemed to be one whom life had handled so roughly that it could no longer wear any disguise for her, and at once, in all things, she ever grasped the bitterness of truth, and wished to hold its unpalatable draught to the shrinking lips of others. Sir Michael listened with interest to every word which Lilias uttered, and encouraged her to talk of her Irish life; whilst Gabriel, with the sweetest of voices, displayed so much talent and brilliancy in every word he said, that he might well have excited the envy of his competitors, but for the extraordinary humility which he manifested in every look and gesture. There was one only who did not speak, and to that one Lilias's attention was irresistibly drawn. She could not refrain from gazing, almost in awe, on Aletheia, with her deadly pale face and her fixed, mournful eyes, who had not uttered a word, nor appeared conscious of any thing that was passing around her; and her appearance, as she sat amongst them, was as though she was for ever hearing a voice they could not hear, and seeing a face they could not see. Lilias had yet to learn that "things are not what they seem" in this strange world, and that mostly we may expect to find the hidden matter below the surface directly opposite to that which appears above. She therefore simply concluded that this deep insensibility resulted from coldness of heart and deadness of feeling, and gradually the conviction deepened in her mind, that Aletheia Randolph was the name which had trembled on the lips of her unknown friend, when he warned her to beware of some one of her new relatives. It seemed to her most likely that one so dead and cold should be wholly indifferent to the feelings of others, and disposed only to work out her own ends as best she might; and thus, by a few unfortunate words, the seeds of mistrust were sown in that innocent heart against one most unoffending, and a deep gulf was fixed between those two, who might have found in each other's friendship a staff and support whereon to lean, when for either of them the winds blew too roughly from the storms of life. Once only that evening did Lilias hear the sound of Aletheia's voice, and then the words she uttered seemed so unnatural, so incomprehensible, to that light heart in its passionless ignorance, that they did but tend to increase the germ of dislike, and even fear, that was, as we have said, already planted there against this singular person. It was after they had returned to the drawing-room that some mention was made of the storm of the preceding evening, to which Lilias had been exposed. Walter was questioning her as to its details, with all the ardor of a bold nature, to whom danger is intoxicating. "But, I suppose," he continued, smiling, "you were like all women, too much terrified to think of any thing but your own safety?" "No," said Lilias, lifting up her large eyes to his with a peculiar look of brightness, which reminded him of the dawning of morning, "the appearance of the tempest was so glorious that its beauty filled the mind, and left no room for fear. I wish you could have seen it. It was as though some fierce spirit were imprisoned behind the deep black veil that hung over the western heavens, to whom freedom and power were granted for a little season; for suddenly one vivid, tremendous flash of lightning seemed to cleave asunder that dark wall, and then the wild, liberated storm came thundering forth, shrieking and raging through the sky, and tearing up the breast of the sea with its cruel footsteps. It was the grandest sight I ever saw." "I think there must have been another yet more interesting displayed on board the vessel itself," said the sweet, low voice of Gabriel. "I should have loved rather to watch the storms and struggles of the human soul in such an hour of peril as you describe." "Ah! that was very fearful," said Lilias, shuddering. "I cannot bear to think of it. That danger showed me such things in the nature of man as I never dreamt of. I think if the whirlwind had utterly laid bare the depths of the sea, as it seemed striving to do, it could not have displayed more monstrous and hideous sights than when its powers stripped those souls around me of all disguise." "Pray give us some details," said Gabriel, earnestly. He seemed to long for an anatomy of human nature in agony, as an epicure would for a feast. Lilias was of too complying a disposition to refuse, though she evidently disliked the task. "One instance may be a sufficient example of what I mean," she said. "There was a man and his wife, whom, previous to the storm, I had observed as seeming so entirely devoted to one another; he guarded her so carefully from the cold winds of evening, and appeared to live only in her answering affection. Now, when the moment of greatest peril came--when the ship was reeling over, till the great mountains of waves threatened to sweep every living soul from the deck, and the only safety was in being bound with ropes to the masts--I saw this man, who had fixed himself to one with a cord that was not very strong, and who held his wife clasped in his arms, that the waters might not carry her away. At last there came one gigantic billow, whose power it seemed impossible to withstand; then I saw this man withdraw the support of his arm from the poor creature, who seemed anxious only to die with him, and use both his hands to clasp the pole which sustained him. She gave a piteous cry, more for his cruelty, I feel sure, than her own great peril; but with the impulse of self-preservation, she suddenly grasped the frail cord which bound him. Then he, uttering an impious curse, lifted up his hand--I can scarcely bear to tell it." And Lilias shivered, and grew pale. "Go on," said Walter, breathlessly. "He lifted up his hand, and struck her with a hard, fierce blow, which sent her reeling away to death in the boiling sea; for death it would have been, had not a sailor caught her dress and upheld her till the wave was passed." "How horrible!" exclaimed Walter. "Oh, miserable to be thus rescued! Happy--thrice happy had she died," said a deep-toned, mournful voice behind her. Lilias started uncontrollably, and looked round. The words had been spoken very low, and as if unconsciously, like a soul holding converse with some other soul, rather than a human being communicating with those of her own kind; yet she felt that they came from Aletheia, who had been sitting for the last hour like an immovable statue, in a high-backed oaken chair, where the shadow of the heavy curtain fell upon her. She had remained there pale and still as marble, her head laid back in the attitude that seemed habitual to her; the white cheek seeming yet whiter contrasted with the crimson velvet against which it lay; and the hand folded as in dumb, passive resignation on her breast. But now, as she uttered these strange words, a sudden glow passed over her face, like the setting sun beaming out upon snow; the eyes, so seldom raised, filled with a liquid light, the chest heaved, the lips grew tremulous. "What! Aletheia," exclaimed Walter, "happy, did you say--happy to die by that cruel blow?" "Most happy--oh! most blessed to die by a blow so sweet from the hand she loved." Her voice died into a broken whisper; a few large tears trembled in her mournful eyes, but they did not fall; the unwonted color faded from her face, and in another moment she was as statue-like as ever, and with the same impenetrable look, which made Lilias feel as if she never should have either the wish or the courage to address her. Her astonishment and utter horror at Aletheia's strange remark were, however, speedily forgotten in the stronger emotion caused her by an incident which occurred immediately after. Sir Michael had not been in the room since dinner-time, and now he suddenly entered. He came forward with a rapid step towards Lady Randolph, and even she seemed to quail beneath the steady gaze of his angry eye. He stood before her for a moment, as if the rage that swelled his bosom were too great for utterance; and his face became of the color of iron white with heat. "Lady Randolph, he has again presumed to cross my path; I have met him, I have seen him, I stumbled against him, as he came with his noiseless step, like a viper; I should have fallen if _his_ arm had not upheld me. How has he dared--how have you dared to molest me thus?" "It was not intentional, I am sure," said Lady Randolph, evidently annoyed; "certainly he did not expect to meet you there; you know how careful he is." "But am I to be exposed to the possibility of such a meeting? Was it not a distinct stipulation that he should avoid even the risk of encountering me? Lady Randolph, is it or is it not a part of the agreement by which I permit him to dwell in this house, that I am never to be tormented with the sight of him?" "It is, it is," she answered impatiently; "and for that reason I am vexed this should have occurred. I admit that you are justified in your complaint, since such was our contract, however cruel this condition; but I will take care that it does not happen again; and at all events, Sir Michael, it seems to me that this is a most unfit discussion to be heard by your nephews and nieces." "There I differ from you," he said, with a bitter smile, for he loved to humble the proud woman who had trampled on his heart these many years; "as they have various motives for seeking to please me, it is as well they should know my peculiar tastes; let me tell you then," he said, turning towards them, "that there is one man in the world whom I hate as I would hate the vilest reptile, and that man is under this roof; whoever wishes my favor, therefore, will avoid him as they would a pestilence." "Let us go," said Lady Randolph, hastily rising, "it is quite late; come Lilias, you look pale with fatigue; I will show you the way to your room, in case you lose yourself in the long passages." This produced an immediate dispersion of the party; Aletheia glided away whilst her aunt was speaking, and Gabriel followed her with his eyes till the door closed on the dark figure; then he came with many expressions of kindly interest to hope that Lilias would rest well, whilst Walter warmly shook hands with her, and seemed, in his simple "good-night," very fervently spoken, to express far more than his cousin had done. But it was not fatigue that had chased for a moment the color from the sweet face of Lilias: it the blighting breath of that deadly thing, the hate of a human heart. Never before had this innocent child come in contact with such a passion. Of love, she knew enough; its fragrant atmosphere had been around her from her cradle, it had come to her night by night in the fond kiss of her grandfather, and well nigh hour by hour in the endearing words and caressing arms of her kind old nurse, who cherished her as such sweet blossoms of life's early spring are ever cherished by those who have attained its winter: but of hate she knew nothing; it was the first time that this accursed thing had crept into her presence, which steals about this world, poisoning the well-springs of friendship and affection, that rise to refresh us out of the desert sands, of this our pilgrimage, and turning their sweet waters into blood. The first touch of this vile passion sickened the young heart of Lilias, and filled it with the most intense compassion for him, unknown as he was, who had become the victim of such a fierce aversion. How she wondered who he was, and what he had done, to be so detested; and it seemed to her gentle nature that no man, not the worst criminal, could, with justice, be so dealt with by a fellow-creature; but a kind of instinct told her that the hate was causeless, and therefore did it seem to wound her, as if herself had been injured. She followed Lady Randolph through the long galleries, and she whose step had been so fearless on the dangerous mountains, now shrank from the shadows on the wall; for it seemed to her as if this house, and every heart within it, were full of dark, strange, spectres; bad thoughts haunting these souls like ghosts; evil passions lurking beneath fair outward appearances; and words full of meaning which she could not fathom floating on her ear. But for the deep peace of her own innocence, the clear cool waters of perfect truth in which her own soul lay steeped, so fresh and pure, Lilias would have trembled to remain an inhabitant of this place, where she felt instinctively there was so much that was mysterious and dark. But she resolved to hold firm her own sweet faith and practice, that there was mercy in all events and good in every heart, and that she had nought to do but to love all mankind with an active, charitable love; and so she trusted to be as safe and happy here as in her Irish home, where simplicity of life was the natural result of simplicity of heart. From Dickens's Household Words. NEW DISCOVERIES IN GHOSTS. Eclipses have been ascribed sometimes to the hunger of a great dragon, who eats the sun, and leaves us in the dark until the blazing orb has been mended. Numerous instances are ready to the memory of any one of us, in illustration of the tendency existing among men to ascribe to supernatural, fantastic causes, events wonderful only by their rarity. All that we daily see differs from these things no more than inasmuch as it is at the same time marvellous and common. We know very well that the moon, seen once by all, would be regarded as an awful spectre: open only to the occasional vision of a few men, no doubt she would be scouted by a large party as a creation of their fancy altogether. The list of facts that have been scouted in this way, corresponds pretty exactly to the list of human discoveries, down to the recent improvements in street lighting and steam locomotion. The knowledge of the best of us is but a little light which shines in a great deal of darkness. We are all of us more ignorant than wise. The proportion of knowledge yet lying beyond the confines of our explorations, is as a continent against a cabbage garden. Yet many thousands are contented to believe, that in this little bit of garden lies our all, and to laugh at every report made to the world by people who have ventured just to peep over the paling. It is urged against inquiries into matters yet mysterious--mysterious as all things look under the light of the first dawn of knowledge--why should we pry into them, until we know that we shall be benefited by the information we desire? All information is a benefit. All knowledge is good. Is it for man to say, "What is the use of seeing?" We are in the present day upon the trace of a great many important facts relating to the imponderable agencies employed in nature. Light, heat, and electricity are no longer the simple matters, or effects of matter, that they have aforetime seemed to be. New wonders point to more beyond. In magnetism, the researches of Faraday, and others, are beginning to open, in our own day, the Book of Nature, at a page of the very first importance to the naturalist; but the contents of which until this time have been wholly unsuspected. Behind a cloudy mass of fraud and folly, while the clouds shift, we perceive a few dim stars, to guide us towards the discovery of wondrous truths. There are such truths which will hereafter illustrate the connection, in many ways still mysteries, between the body of man and the surrounding world. Wonderful things have yet to be revealed, on subjects of a delicate and subtle texture. It behooves us in the present day, therefore, to learn how we may keep our tempers free from prejudice, and not discredit statements simply because they are new and strange, nor, on the other hand, accept them hastily without sufficient proof. On questionable points, which are decided by research and weight of evidence, it would be well if it were widely understood that it is by no means requisite for every man to form an Aye or Nay opinion. Let those who have no leisure for a fair inquiry play a neutral part. There are hundreds of subjects which we have never examined, nor ever could or can examine, upon which we are all, nevertheless, expressing every day stubborn opinions. We all have to acquire some measure of the philosophic mind, and be content to retain a large army of thoughts, equipped each thought with its crooked bayonet, a note of interrogation. In reasoning, also, when we do reason, we have to remember fairly that "not proven" does not always mean untrue. And in accepting matters of testimony, we must rigidly preserve in view the fact, that, except upon gross subjects of sense, very few of us are qualified by training as observers. In drawing delicate conclusions from the complex and most dimly comprehended operations of the human frame observed in men and women, the sources of fallacy are very numerous. To detect and acknowledge these, to get rid of them experimentally, is very difficult, even to the most candid and enlightened mind. I have no faith in ghosts, according to the old sense of the word, and I could grope with comfort through any amount of dark old rooms, or midnight aisles, or over churchyards, between sunset and cock-crow. I can face a spectre. Being at one time troubled with illusions, I have myself crushed a hobgoblin by sitting on its lap. Nevertheless, I do believe that the great mass of "ghost stories," of which the world is full, has not been built entirely upon the inventions of the ignorant and superstitious. In plain words, while I, of course, throw aside a million of idle fictions, or exaggerated facts, I do believe in ghosts--or, rather, spectres--only I do not believe them to be supernatural. That, in certain states of the body, many of us in our waking hours picture as vividly as we habitually do in dreams, and seem to see or hear in fair reality that which is in our minds, is an old fact, and requires no confirmation. An ignorant or superstitious man fallen into this state, may find good reason to tell ghost stories to his neighbors. Disease, and the debility preceding death, make people on their death-beds very liable to plays of this kind on their failing faculties; and one solemnity or cause of dread, thus being added to another, seems to give the strength of reason to a superstitious feeling. Concerning my own experience, which comes under the class of natural ghost-seeing above mentioned, I may mention in good faith, that, if such phantoms were worth recalling, I could fill up an hour with the narration of those spectral sights and sounds which were most prominent among the illusions of my childhood. Sights and sounds were equally distinct and lifelike. I have run up-stairs obedient to a spectral call. Every successive night for a fortnight, my childish breath was stilled by the proceedings of a spectral rat, audible, never visible. It nightly, at the same hour, burst open a cupboard door, scampered across the floor, and shook the chair by my bedside. Wide awake and alone in the broad daylight, I have heard the voices of two nobodies gravely conversing, after the absurd dream fashion, in my room. Then as for spectral sights:--During the cholera of 1832, I, then a boy, walking in Holborn, saw in the sky the veritable flaming sword which I had learnt by heart out of a picture in an old folio of "Paradise Lost." And round the fiery sword there was a regular oval of blue sky to be seen through parted clouds. It was a fact not unimportant, that this phantom sword did not move with my eye, but remained for some time, apparently, only in one part of the heavens. I looked aside and lost it. When I looked back, there was the image still. These are hallucinations which arise from a disordered condition of the nervous system; they are the seeing or the hearing of what is not, and they are not by any means uncommon. Out of these there must, undoubtedly, arise a large number of well-attested stories of ghosts, seen by one person only. Such ghosts ought to excite no more terror than a twinge of rheumatism, or a nervous headache. There can be no doubt, however, that, in our minds or bodies, there are powers latent, or nearly latent, in the ordinary healthy man, which, in some peculiar constitutions, or under the influence of certain agents, or certain classes of disease, become active, and develope themselves in an extraordinary way. It is not very uncommon to find people who have acquired intuitive perception of each others' current thoughts, beyond what can be ascribed to community of interests, or comprehension of character. Zschokke, the German writer and teacher, is a peculiarly honorable and unimpeachable witness. What he affirms, as of his own knowledge, we have no right to disbelieve. Many of us have read the marvellous account given by him, of his sudden discovery that he possessed the power in regard to a few people--by no means in regard to all--of knowing, when he came near to them, not only their present thoughts, but much of what was in their memories. The details will be found in his Autobiography, which, being translated, has become a common book among us. When, for the first time, while conversing with some person, he acquired a sense of power over the secrets of that person's past life, he gave, of course, but little heed to his sensation. Afterwards, as from time to time the sense recurred, he tested the accuracy of his impressions, and was alarmed to find that, at certain times, and in regard to certain persons, the mysterious knowledge was undoubtedly acquired. Once when a young man at the table with him was dismissing very flippantly all manner of unexplained phenomena as the gross food of ignorance and credulity, Zschokke requested to know what he would say if he, a stranger, by aid of an unexplained power, should be able to tell him secrets out of his past life. Zschokke was defied to do that; but he did it. Among other things he described a certain upper room, in which there was a certain strong box, and from which certain moneys, the property of his master, had been abstracted by that young man; who, overwhelmed with astonishment, confessed the theft. Many glimmerings of intuition, which at certain times occur in the experience of all of us, and seem to be something more than shrewd or lucky guesses, may be referred to the same power which we find, in the case just quoted, more perfectly developed. Nothing supernatural, but a natural gift, imperceptible to us in its familiar, moderate, and healthy exercise, brought first under our notice when some deranged adjustment of the mind has suffered it to grow into excess--to be, if we may call it so, a mental tumor. We may now come to a new class of mysteries--which are receiving for the first time, in our own day, a rational solution. The blind poet, Pfeffel, had engaged, as amanuensis, a young Protestant clergyman, named Billing. When the blind poet walked abroad, Billing also acted as his guide. One day, as they were walking in the garden, which was situated at a distance from the town, Pfeffel observed a trembling of his guide's arm whenever they passed over a certain spot. He asked the cause of this, and extracted from his companion the unwilling confession, that over that spot he was attacked by certain uncontrollable sensations, which he always felt where human bodies had been buried. At night, he added, over such spots he saw uncanny things. "This is great folly," Pfeffel thought, "and I will cure him of it." The poet went, therefore, that very night, into the garden. When they approached the place of dread, Billing perceived a feeble light, which hovered over it. When they came nearer, he saw the delicate appearance of a fiery, ghost-like form. He described it as the figure of a female, with one arm across her body, and the other hanging down, hovering upright and motionless over the spot, her feet being a few hand-breadths above the soil. The young man would not approach the vision, but the poet beat about it with his stick, walked through it, and seemed to the eyes of Billing like a man who beats about a light flame, which always returns to its old shape. For months, experiments were continued, company was brought to the spot, the spectre remained visible always in the dark, but to the young man only, who adhered firmly to his statement, and to his conviction that a body lay beneath. Pfeffel at last had the place dug up, and, at a considerable depth, covered with lime, there was a skeleton discovered. The bones and the lime were dispersed, the hole was filled up, Billing was again brought to the spot by night, but never again saw the spectre. This ghost story, being well attested, created a great sensation. In the curious book by Baron Reichenbach, translated by Dr. Gregory, it is quoted as an example of a large class of ghost stories which admit of explanation upon principles developed by his own experiments. The experiments of Baron Reichenbach do not, indeed, establish a new science, though it is quite certain that they go far to point out a new line of investigation, which promises to yield valuable results. So much of them as concerns our subject, may be very briefly stated. It would appear that certain persons with disordered nervous systems, liable to catalepsy, or to such affections, and also some healthy persons who are of a peculiar nervous temperament, are more sensitive to magnetism than their neighbors. They are peculiarly acted upon by the magnet, and are, moreover, very much under the influence of the great magnetic currents of the earth. Such people sleep tranquilly when they are reposing with their bodies in the earth's magnetic line, and are restless, in some cases seriously affected, if they lie across that line, on beds with the head and foot turned east and west, matters of complete indifference to the healthy animal. These "sensitives" are not only affected by the magnet, but they are able to detect, by their sharpened sense, what we may reasonably suppose to exist, a faint magnetic light: they see it streaming from the poles of a magnet shown to them in a room absolutely dark; and if the sensibility be great, and the darkness perfect, they see it streaming also from the points of fingers, and bathing in a faint halo the whole magnet or the whole hand. Furthermore, it would appear that the affection by the magnet of these sensitives does not depend upon that quality by which iron filings are attracted; that, perfectly independent of the attractive force, there streams from magnets, from the poles of crystals, from the sun and moon, another influence, to which the discoverer assigns the name of Odyle. The manifestation of Odyle is accompanied by a light too faint for healthy vision, but perceptible at night by "sensitives." Odyle is generated, among other things, by heat and by chemical action. It is generated, therefore, in the decomposition of the human body. I may now quote from Reichenbach, who, having given a scientific explanation, upon his own principles, of the phenomena perceived by Billing, thus continues:-- "The desire to inflict a mortal wound on the monster, Superstition, which, from a similar origin, a few centuries ago, inflicted on European society so vast an amount of misery, and by whose influence, not hundreds, but thousands of innocent persons died in tortures, on the rack and at the stake;--this desire made me wish to make the experiment, if possible, of bringing a highly sensitive person, by night, to a churchyard. I thought it possible that they might see, over graves where mouldering bodies lay, something like that which Billing had seen. Mademoiselle Reichel had the courage, unusual in her sex, to agree to my request. She allowed me, on two very dark nights, to take her from the Castle of Reisenberg, where she was residing with my family, to the cemetery of the neighboring village of Grünzing. "The result justified my expectation in the fullest measure. She saw, very soon, a light, and perceived, on one of the grave mounds, along its whole extent, a delicate, fiery, as it were a breathing flame. The same thing was seen on another grave, in a less degree. But she met neither witches nor ghosts. She described the flame as playing over the graves in the form of a luminous vapor, from one to two spans in height. "Some time afterwards I took her to two great cemeteries, near Vienna, where several interments occur daily, and the grave mounds lie all about in thousands. Here she saw numerous graves, which exhibited the lights above described. Wherever she looked, she saw masses of fire lying about; but it was chiefly seen over all new graves, while there was no appearance of it over very old ones. She described it less as a clear flame than as a dense, vaporous mass of fire, holding a middle place between mist and flame. On many graves this light was about four feet high, so that when she stood on the grave it reached to her neck. When she thrust her hand into it, it was as if putting it into a dense, fiery cloud. She betrayed not the slightest uneasiness, as she was, from her childhood, accustomed to such emanations, and had seen, in my experiments, similar lights produced by natural means, and made to assume endless varieties of form. I am convinced that all who are, to a certain degree, sensitive, will see the same phenomena in cemeteries, and very abundantly in the crowded cemeteries of large cities; and that my observations may be easily repeated and confirmed." These experiments were tried in 1844. A postscript was added in 1847. Reichenbach had taken five other sensitive persons, in the dark, to cemeteries. Of these, two were sickly, three quite healthy. All of them confirmed the statements of Mademoiselle Reichel, and saw the lights over all new graves, more or less distinctly; "so that," says the philosopher, "the fact can no longer admit of the slightest doubt, and may be every where controlled. "Thousands of ghost stories," he continues, "will now receive a natural explanation, and will thus cease to be marvellous. We shall even see that it was not so erroneous or absurd as has been supposed, when our old women asserted, as every one knows they did, that not every one was privileged to see the spirits of the departed wandering over their graves. In fact, it was at all times only the sensitive who could see the imponderable emanations from the chemical change going on in corpses, luminous in the dark. And thus I have, I trust, succeeded in tearing down one of the densest veils of darkened ignorance and human error." So far speaks Reichenbach; and for myself, reverting to the few comments with which we set out, I would suggest, that Reichenbach's book, though it is very likely to push things too far--to fancy the tree by looking at the seed--is yet not such a book as men of sense are justified in scouting. The repetition of his experiments is very easy if they be correct. There are plenty of "sensitives" to be found in our London hospitals and streets and lanes. Unluckily, however, though we live in an age which produces, every day, new marvels, the old spirit of bigotry, which used to make inquiry dangerous in science and religion, still prevails in the minds of too many scientific men. To be incredulous of what is new and strange, until it has been rigidly examined and proved true, is one essential element of a mind seeking enlightenment. But, to test and try new things is equally essential. Because of doubting, to refuse inquiry, is because of hunger to refuse our food. For my own part, I put these matters into the livery of that large body of thoughts already mentioned, which walk about the human mind, armed each with a note of interrogation. This only I see, that, in addition to the well-known explanations of phenomena, which produce some among the many stories of ghosts and of mysterious forebodings, new explanations are at hand, which will reduce into a natural and credible position many other tales by which we have till recently been puzzled. From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. THE WOLF-GATHERING. One winter evening, some years ago, I sat with a small circle of friends round the fire, in the house of a Polish gentleman, whom his acquaintance agreed in calling Mr. Charles, as the most pronounceable of his names. He had fought in all his country's battles of the unsuccessful revolution of 1831; and being one of the many who sought life and liberty in the British dominions, on the failure of that last national effort, he had, with the spirit worthy of an exiled patriot, made the best of his unchosen fortunes, and worked his way up, through a thousand difficulties and privations, to a respectable standing in the mercantile profession. At the period mentioned, Mr. Charles had become almost naturalized in one of our great commercial towns, was a member of a British church, and the head of a British household; but when the conversation happened to turn on sporting matters round his own fireside, he related in perfect seriousness the following wild and legend-like story of his early life in Poland:-- The year before the rising, I went from my native place in Samogitia (Szamaït), to spend Christmas at the house of my uncle, situated in the wooded country of Upper Lithuania. He was a nobleman who boasted his descent from one of the oldest houses in Poland, and still held the estate which his ancestors had defended for themselves through many a Tartar invasion--as much land as a hunting-train could course over in a summer's day. But ample as his domain appeared, my uncle was by no means rich upon it. The greater portion had been forest-land for ages; elsewhere it was occupied by poor peasants and their fields; and in the centre he lived, after the fashion of his forefathers, in a huge timber house with antiquated fortifications, where he exercised liberal hospitality, especially at Christmas times. My uncle was a widower, but he had three sons--Armand, Henrique, and Constantine--brave, handsome young men, who kept close intimacy and right merry companionship with their nearest neighbors, a family named Lorenski. Their property bordered on my uncle's land, and there was not a family of their station within leagues; but independently of that circumstance, the household must have had attractions for my cousins, for it consisted of the young Count Emerich, his sister Constanza, and two orphan cousins, Marcella and Eustachia, who had been brought up with them from childhood. The count's parents had died in his early youth, leaving him not only his own guardian, but that of his sister and cousins; and the young people had grown up safely and happily together in that forest-land. The cousins were like most of our Polish girls in the provinces, dark-eyed and comely, gay and fearless, and ready alike for the dance or the chase; but Count Emerich and his sister had the praise of the whole province for their noble carriage, their wise and virtuous lives, and the great affection that was between them. Both had strange courage, and were said to fear neither ghost nor goblin--which, I must remark, was not a common case in Lithuania. Constanza was the oldest by two years, and by far the most discreet and calm of temper, by which it was believed she rather ruled the household, though her brother had a high and fiery spirit. But they were never known to disagree, and, though still young, neither seemed to think of marrying. Fortunately, it was not so with all their neighbors. My stay at my uncle's house had not been long when I found out that Armand was as good as engaged to Marcella, and Henrique to Eustachia, while Constantine, the youngest and handsomest of the three brothers, paid vain though deferential court to Constanza. The rising was not then publicly talked of, though known to be in full preparation throughout the country. All the young and brave hearts among us were pledged to it, and my cousins did not hesitate to tell me in confidence that Count Emerich and his sister were its chief promoters in that district. They had a devoted assistant in Father Cassimer. He had been their mother's confessor, and lived in the house for five-and-thirty years, saying mass regularly in the parish church, a pine-built edifice on the edge of the forest. Father Cassimer's hair was like snow, but he was still erect, strong, and active. He said the church could not spare him, and he would live to a hundred. In some respects, the man did deserve a century, being a good Pole and a worthy priest, notwithstanding one weakness which beset him, for Father Cassimer took special delight in hunting. It was said that once, when robed for mass, a wild boar chanced to stray past; whereon the good priest mounted his horse, which was usually fastened to the church-door, and started after the game in full canonicals. That was in his youth; but Father Cassimer never denied the tale, and the peasants who remembered it had no less confidence in his prayers, for they knew he loved his country, and looked after the sick and poor. The priest was my cousin's instructor in wood-craft, and the boon-companion of my uncle; but scarcely had I got well acquainted with him and the Lorenskis, when two Christmas visitors arrived at their house. They were a brother and sister, Russian nobles, known as Count Theodore and Countess Juana. Their native place was St. Petersburg, but they had spent years in travelling over Europe; and though nobody knew the extent of their estates, it was supposed to be great, for they spared no expense, and always kept the best society. Latterly they had been somehow attracted to Poland, and became so popular among our country nobles, that they were invited from house to house, making new friends wherever they went, for Russians though they were, they wished well to our country, and, among their intimates, spoke of liberty and justice with singular eloquence. Considering this, their popularity was no wonder. A handsomer or more accomplished pair I never saw. Both were tall, fair, and graceful, with hair of a light golden shade--the sister's descending almost to her feet when unbraided, and the brother's clustering in rich curls about the brow. They knew the dances of all nations, could play any thing that was ever invented, whether game or instrument, and talked in every tongue of Europe, from Romaic to Swedish. Both could ride like Arabs. Count Theodore was a splendid shot, his sister was matchless in singing, and neither was ever tired of fun or frolic. They seemed of the Lorenskis' years, but had seen more of the world; and though scarcely so dignified, most people preferred the frank familiarity and lively converse of the travelled Russians. The Lorenskis themselves could not but applaud that general preference. They and the travellers had become fast friends almost on their first acquaintance, which took place in the previous winter; and Count Theodore and his sister had performed a long wintry journey from St. Petersburg to celebrate the Christmas time with them. Peasants and servants rejoiced at their coming, for they were known to be liberal. The old priest said it had never been his luck to see any thing decent out of Russia before, and my uncle's entire household were delighted, with the exception of Constantine. By and by, I guessed the cause of his half-concealed displeasure. The brother of each pair took wonderfully to the sister of the other. Count Theodore talked of buying an estate in Lithuania; and the young cousins predicted, that though Emerich and Constanza might be near neighbors, they would not live all their days free and single. After the Russians' arrival, there was nothing but sport among us. We had dances and concerts, plays, and all manner of games; but the deep snow of our Polish winter had not hardened to the usual strong ice, over marsh, river, and forest land. It continued falling day after day, shutting all our amusements within doors, and preventing, to our general regret, the wonted wolf-hunt, always kept up in Lithuania from the middle of December till Christmas-eve. It was a custom, time immemorial, in the province, and followed as much for the amusement it afforded the young people, as for the destruction of the deadly prowler. The mode of conducting it was this: Every two or three families who chanced to be intimate, when the ice was sufficiently strong and smooth for sledge-travelling, sent forth a party of young hunters, with their sisters and sweethearts, in a sledge covered at the one end, which was also well cushioned and gayly painted; the ladies in their best winter dresses took possession of it, while the hunters occupied the exposed part, with guns, shot-pouches, and hunting-knives, in complete readiness. Beside the driver, who was generally an old experienced hand, there was placed a young hog, or a leg of pork, occasionally roasted to make the odor more inviting, and packed up with cords and straw in a pretty tight parcel, which was fastened to the sledge by a long rope twisted to almost iron hardness. Away they drove at full speed, and when fairly in the forest, the pork was thrown down, and allowed to drag after the sledge, the smell of it bringing wolves from every quarter, while the hunters fired at them as they advanced. I have seen a score of skins collected in this manner, not to speak of the fun, the excitement, and the opportunities for exhibiting one's markmanship and courage where one would most wish to have seen them. The peasants said it was never lucky when Christmas came without a wolf-hunt; but that year it was like to be so; for, as I have said, the snow kept falling at intervals, with days of fog and thaw between, till the night before the vigil. In my youth, the Lithuanians kept Christmas, after the fashion of old northern times. It began with great devotion, and ended in greater feasting. The eve was considered particularly sacred: many traditional ceremonies and strange beliefs hung about it, and the more pious held that no one should engage in any profane occupation, or think of going to sleep after sunset. When it came, our disappointment concerning the wolf-hunt lay heavy on many a mind as well as mine; but a strong frost had set in before daybreak, and at the early nightfall a finer prospect for sledging could not be desired--over the broad plain, and far between the forest pines, the ice stretched away as smooth and bright as a mirror. The moon was full, and the stars were out by thousands: you could have read large print by the cold, clear light, as my cousins and I stood at my uncle's door, fervently wishing it had been any other evening. Suddenly, our ears caught the sound of bells and laughing voices, and in a few minutes up drove the Lorenski sledge in its gayest trappings, with Constanza, the Russian countess, and the young cousins, all looking blithe and rosy in the frosty air, while Emerich and Theodore sat in true hunter's trim, and Father Cassimer himself in charge of the reins, with the well-covered pork beside him. They had two noble horses of the best Tartar blood, unequalled in the province, as we knew, for speed and strength; and Emerich's cheerful voice first saluted us with: "Ho! friends, it is seven hours yet till midnight: won't you come with us?--it is a shame to let Christmas in without a wolf-skin!" That was enough for us: we flew in for our equipments. My uncle was not at first willing that we should go; but the merry company now at his door, the unequivocal countenance which Father Cassimer gave to the proceeding, and the high spirits of the young Russians, who were, as usual, wild for the sport, made him think that, after all, there was no harm in the young people taking an hour or two in the woods before mass, which on Christmas-eve begins always at midnight. Our hunting-gear was donned in a trice; and with my uncle's most trusty man, Metski, to assist in driving, away we went at full speed to the forest. Father Cassimer was an experienced general in expeditions of the kind; he knew the turns of the woods where the wolves scented best; and when we had got fairly among the tall oaks, down went his pork. For some time it dragged on without a single wolf appearing, though the odor came strong and savory through cords and straw. "If I were a wolf myself, I would come for that," said old Metski. The priest quickened his speed, vowing he would not say mass without a skin that night; and we got deeper into the wilderness of oak and pine. Like most of our Lithuanian forests, it had no underwood. There was ample space for our sledge among the great trees, and the moonlight fell in a flood of brightness upon their huge white trunks, and through the frost-covered branches. We could see the long icicles gleaming like pendants of diamond for miles through the wide woods, but never a wolf. The priest began to look disappointed; Metski sympathized with him, for he relished a hunt almost as well as his reverence; but all the rest, with the help of the Russians, amused themselves with _making_ game. I have said they were in great spirits, particularly Count Theodore; indeed he was generally the gayer of the pair--his sister being evidently the more prudent--and in this respect they resembled the Lorenskis. Many a jest, however, on the non-appearance of the wolves went round our sledge, of which I remember nothing now, except that we all laughed till the old wood rang. "Be quiet, good children," said the priest, turning in his seat of command: "you make noise enough to frighten all the wolves in creation." "They won't come to-night, father; they are preparing for mass," cried Count Theodore. "Juana, if the old Finn were here now, wouldn't he be useful?" "Perhaps he might," said the countess, with a forced laugh; but she cast a look of strange warning and reproof on her brother. "What Finn?" said the priest, catching the count's words. "Oh, he is talking of an old nursery-tale we had in St. Petersburg," hastily interposed the lady, though I thought her face had no memory of the nursery in it. "About the Finns I'll warrant," said Father Cassimer. "They are a strange people. My brother the merchant told me that he knew one of them at Abo who said he had a charm for the wolves; but somebody informed against him for smuggling, and the Russian government sent him to the lead mines in Siberia. By Saint Sigismund, there's the first of them!" As the priest spoke, a large wolf appeared, and half the guns in the sledge were raised. "Not yet, not yet," said our experienced commander, artfully turning away as another and another came in sight. "There are more coming," and he gradually slackened our pace; but far off through the moonlit woods and the frozen night we could hear a strange murmur, which grew and swelled on all sides to a chorus of mingled howlings, and the wolves came on by troops. "Fire now, friends!" cried Father Cassimer. "We are like to have skins enough for Christmas;" and bang went all our barrels. I saw five fall: but, contrary to expectation, the wolves did not retire--they stood for an instant snarling at us. The distant howlings continued and came nearer; and then from every glade and alley, down the frozen stream, and through the wide openings of the forest, came by scores and hundreds such a multitude of wolves as we could not have believed to exist in all Lithuania. "Hand me my gun, and take the reins, Metski," cried Father Cassimer. "Drive for your life!" he added in an under tone; but every one in the sledge heard him. Heaven knows how many we killed; but it seemed of no use. Our pork was swallowed, straw and all. The creatures were pressing upon us on every side, as if trying to surround the sledge; and it was fearful to see the leaps that some gray old fellows among them would take at Metski and the horses. Our driver did his part like a man, making a thousand winds and turns through the woods; but still the wolves pursued us. Fortunately, the firing kept them off, and, thanks to our noble horses, they were never able to get ahead of us; but as far as we could see behind us in the moonlight, came the howling packs, as if rising from the ground of the forest. We had seen nothing like it, and all did their best in firing, especially Count Theodore; but his shots had little effect, for his hand shook, and I know not if any but myself saw the looks of terrified intelligence which he exchanged with his sister. Still, she and the Lady Constanza kept up their courage, though the young cousins were as white as snow, and our ammunition was fast decreasing. "Yonder is a light," said Constanza at last, as the poor horses became unmanageable, from fright and weariness. "It is from the cottage of old Wenzel, the woodman." "If we could reach that," said Father Cassimer, "and leave the horses to their fate: it is our only chance." No one contradicted the priest's arrangement, for his last words were felt to be true--though a pang passed over Constanza's face at the thought of leaving our brave and faithful horses to the wolves; but louder rose the howls behind us, as Metski urged on with all his might, and far above all went the shout of Father Cassimer (he had the best lungs in that province): "Ho Wenzel! open the door to us for God's sake!" We heard the old man reply, sent one well-aimed volley among the wolves, and as they recoiled, man and woman leaped from the sledge--for our Polish girls are active--and rushed into the cottage, when old Wenzel instantly double-barred the door. It was woful to hear the cry of pain and terror from our poor horses as we deserted them; the next instant the wolves were upon them. We saw them from the window, as thick as ever flies stuck on sugar. How we fired upon them, and with what good-will old Wenzel helped us, praying all the time to every saint in the calendar, you may imagine! But still their numbers were increasing; and as a pause came in the fearful din, we plainly heard through the still air the boom of our own great bell, ringing for the midnight mass. At that sound, Father Cassimer's countenance fell for the first time. He knew the bellman was a poor half-witted fellow, who would not be sensible of his absence; and then he turned to have another shot at the wolves. Shots were by this time getting scarce among us. There was not a man that had a charge left but old Wenzel, who had supplied us as long as he could; but at length, loading his own gun with his last charge, he laid it quietly in the corner, saying one didn't know what use might be for it, and he never liked an empty gun. Wenzel was the son of a small innkeeper at Grodno, but after his father's decease, which occurred when he was a child, his mother had married a Russian trader, who, when she died, carried the boy to Moscow. There Wenzel bade fair to be brought up a Russian; but when a stepmother came home, which took place while he was still a youth, he had returned to his native country, built himself a hut in the woods of Lithuania, and lived a lonely hunter till the time of my story, when he was still a robust, though gray-haired man. Some said his Muscovite parents had not been to his liking; some that he had found cause to shoot a master to whom they apprenticed him at Moscow; but be that as it might, Wenzel hated the Russians with all his heart, and never scrupled to say that the gun which had served him so long would serve the country too if it ever came to a rising. So much for Wenzel's story, by way of explaining what followed; but as I stood beside him that night at the hut's single crevice of a window, I could have given Poland itself for ammunition enough to do service on the wolves. They had now left nothing but the bones of our horses, which they dragged round and round the cottage, with a din of howlings that almost drowned our voices within. Then they seized on the bodies of their own slain companions, which were devoured to the very skins; and still the gathering was going on. We could see them coming in troops through the open glades of the forest, as if aware that some human prey was in reserve. The hut was strongly built of great pine-logs, but it was fearful to bear them tearing at the door and scratching up the foundations. The bravest among us got terrified at these sounds. Metski loudly avowed his belief that the wolves were sent upon us as a punishment for hunting on Christmas-eve, and fell instantly to his prayers. Wenzel flung a blazing brand among them from the window, but they did not seem to care for fire; and three of them were so near leaping in, that he drove to the log-shutter and gave up that method of defence. None of the party appeared so far overcome with terror as Count Theodore: his spirit and prudence both seemed to forsake him. When the wolves began to scratch, he threw himself almost on his face in the corner, and kept moaning and praying in Russian, of which none of us understood a syllable but old Wenzel. Emerich and I would have spoken to him, but the woodman stopped us with a strange sign. Count Theodore had taken the relic of some saint from a pocket-book which he carried in his breast, and was, in Russian fashion as I think, confessing his sins over it; while his sister sat silent and motionless by the fire, with livid face and clasped hands. It was burning low, but I saw the woodman's face darken. He stepped to the corner and took down his gun, as I believed, to take the last shot at the wolves; but Count Theodore was in his way. He levelled it for an instant at the prostrate man, and before I could speak or interpose, the report, followed by a faint shrill shriek from the Russian, rang through the hut. We rushed to him, but the Count was dead. A bullet had gone right through the heart. "My gun has shot the count, and the wolves will leave us now," said Wenzel coolly. "I heard him say in his prayers that a Finn, now in the Siberian mines, had vowed to send them on him and his company wherever he went." As the woodman spoke, he handed to Count Emerich, with a hoarse whisper, a bloody pocket-book, taken from the dead body, and turning to Juana, said something loud and threatening to her in the Russian tongue; at which the lady only bowed her head, seeming of all in the hut to be the least surprised or concerned at the death of her brother. As for us, the complicated horrors of the night had left us stunned and stupefied till the rapid diminution of the wolfish din, the sounds of shots and voices, and the glare of flambeaux lighting up the forest, brought most of us to the window. The wolves were scouring away in all directions, there was a grayness in the eastern sky, for Christmas-day was breaking; and from all sides the count and my uncle's tenantry, with skates and sledges, guns and torches, were pouring to the rescue as we shouted to them from the cottage. They had searched for us almost since midnight, tearing that something terrible had detained Father Cassimer and his company from mass. There were wonderfully few wolves shot in the retreat, and we all went home to Count Emerich's house, but not in triumph, for with us went the body of the Russian, of which old Wenzel was one of the bearers. The unanimous determination we expressed to bring him to justice as a murderer, was silenced when Emerich showed us in confidence a letter from the Russian minister, and a paper with all our names in a list of the disaffected in Upper Lithuania, which he had found in Theodore's pocket-book. After that, we all affirmed that Wenzel's gun had gone off by accident; and on the same good Christmas-day, Count Emerich, with a body of his retainers, escorted the Lady Juana to a convent at the other end of the province, the superior of which was his aunt. There she became a true Catholic, professed, and, as I was told, turned to a great saint. There is a wooden cross with his name, and a Latin inscription on it, marking Count Theodore's grave, by our old church on the edge of the forest. No one ever inquired after him, and the company of that terrible night are far scattered. My uncle and his sons all died for the poor country. The young cousins are married to German doctors in Berlin. Constanza and her brother are still single, for aught I know, but they have been exiles in America these fifteen years. Father Cassimer went with them, after being colonel of a regiment which saw hard service on the banks of the Vistula; and it may be that he is still saying mass or hunting occasionally in the Far West. The last time I saw Wenzel and Metski was in the trenches at Minsk, where they had a tough debate regarding our adventure in the forest: the woodman insisting it was the Finn's spell that brought the wolves in such unheard-of numbers, and the peasant maintaining that it was a judgment on our desecration of Christmas-eve. For my own part, I think the long storm, and a great scarcity of food had something to do with it, for tales of the kind were never wanting in our province. The wolf-gathering, however, saved us a journey to Siberia: thanks to old Wenzel. And sometimes yet, when any strange noise breaks in upon my sleep even here in England, I dream of being in his wild hut in the forest and listening to the wolfish voices at the door. MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[20] BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. BOOK IX. CONTINUED--CHAPTER IX. With a slow step and an abstracted air, Harley L'Estrange bent his way towards Egerton's house, after his eventful interview with Helen. He had just entered one of the streets leading into Grosvenor Square, when a young man, walking quickly from the opposite direction, came full against him, and drawing back with a brief apology, recognized him, and exclaimed, "What! you in England, Lord L'Estrange! Accept my congratulations on your return. But you seem scarcely to remember me." "I beg your pardon, Mr. Leslie. I remember you now, by your smile; but you are of an age in which it is permitted me to say that you look older than when I saw you last." "And yet, Lord L'Estrange, it seems to me that you look younger." Indeed this reply was so far true that there appeared less difference of years than before between Leslie and L'Estrange; for the wrinkles in the schemer's mind were visible in his visage, while Harley's dreamy worship of Truth and Beauty seemed to have preserved to the votary the enduring youth of the divinities. Harley received the compliment with a supreme indifference, which might have been suitable to a Stoic, but which seemed scarcely natural to a gentleman who had just proposed to a lady many years younger than himself. Leslie renewed--"Perhaps you are on your way to Mr. Egerton's. If so, you will not find him at home; he is at his office." "Thank you. Then to his office I must re-direct my steps." "I am going to him myself," said Randal hesitatingly. L'Estrange had no prepossessions in favor of Leslie, from the little he had seen of that young gentleman; but Randal's remark was an appeal to his habitual urbanity, and he replied with well-bred readiness, "Let us be companions so far." Randal accepted the arm proffered to him; and Lord L'Estrange, as is usual with one long absent from his native land, bore part as a questioner in the dialogue that ensued. "Egerton is always the same man, I suppose--too busy for illness, and too firm for sorrow?" "If he ever feel either he will never stoop to complain. But indeed, my dear lord, I should like much to know what you think of his health." "How? You alarm me!" "Nay, I did not mean to do that; and pray, do not let him know that I went so far. But I have fancied that he looks a little worn, and suffering." "Poor Audley!" said L'Estrange, in a tone of deep affection. "I will sound him, and, be assured, without naming you; for I know well how little he likes to be supposed capable of human infirmity. I am obliged to you for your hint--obliged to you for your interest in one so dear to me." And Harley's voice was more cordial to Randal than it had ever been before. He then begged to inquire what Randal thought of the rumors that had reached himself as to the probable defeat of the government, and how far Audley's spirits were affected by such risks. But Randal here, seeing that Harley could communicate nothing, was reserved and guarded. "Loss of office could not, I think, affect a man like Audley," observed Lord L'Estrange. "He would be as great in opposition, perhaps greater; and as to emoluments"---- "The emoluments are good," interposed Randal, with a half sigh. "Good enough, I suppose, to pay him back about a tenth of what his place costs our magnificent friend. No, I will say one thing for English statesmen, no man amongst them ever yet was the richer for place." "And Mr. Egerton's private fortune must be large, I take for granted," said Randal carelessly. "It ought to be, if he has time to look to it." Here they passed by the hotel in which lodged the Count di Peschiera. Randal stopped. "Will you excuse me for an instant? As we are passing this hotel, I will just leave my card here." So saying, he gave his card to a waiter lounging by the door. "For the Count di Peschiera," said he aloud. L'Estrange started; and as Randal again took his arm, said-- "So that Italian lodges here? and you know him?" "I know him but slightly, as one knows any foreigner who makes a sensation." "He makes a sensation?" "Naturally; for he is handsome, witty, and said to be very rich--that is, as long as he receives the revenues of his exiled kinsman." "I see you are well informed, Mr. Leslie. And what is supposed to bring hither the Count di Peschiera?" "I did hear something, which I did not quite understand, about a bet of his that he would marry his kinsman's daughter; and so, I conclude, secure to himself all the inheritance; and that he is therefore here to discover the kinsman and win the heiress. But probably you know the rights of the story, and can tell me what credit to give to such gossip." "I know this at least, that if he did lay such a wager, I would advise you to take any odds against him that his backers may give," said L'Estrange, dryly; and while his lip quivered with anger, his eye gleamed with arch ironical humor. "You think, then, that this poor kinsman will not need such an alliance in order to regain his estates?" "Yes; for I never yet knew a rogue whom I would not bet against, when he backed his own luck as a rogue against Justice and Providence." Randal winced, and felt as if an arrow had grazed his heart; but he soon recovered. "And indeed there is another vague rumor that the young lady in question is married already--to some Englishman." This time it was Harley who winced. "Good Heavens! that cannot be true--that would undo all! An Englishman just at this moment! But some Englishman of correspondent rank, I trust, or at least one known for opinions opposed to what an Austrian would call revolutionary doctrines?" "I know nothing. But it was supposed, merely a private gentleman of good family. Would not that suffice? Can the Austrian Count dictate a marriage to the daughter as a condition of grace to the father?" "No, not that!" said Harley, greatly disturbed. "But put yourself in the position of any minister to one of the greatest European monarchies. Suppose a political insurgent, formidable for station and wealth, had been proscribed, much interest made on his behalf, a powerful party striving against it, and just when the minister is disposed to relent, he hears that the heiress to this wealth and this station is married to the native of a country in which sentiments friendly to the very opinions for which the insurgent was proscribed are popularly entertained, and thus that the fortune to be restored may be so employed as to disturb the national security--the existing order of things; this, too, at the very time when a popular revolution has just occurred in France,[21] and its effects are felt most in the very land of the exile;--suppose all this, and then say if any thing could be more untoward for the hopes of the banished man, or furnish his adversaries with stronger arguments against the restoration of his fortune? But pshaw! this must be a chimera! If true, I should have known of it." "I quite agree with your lordship--there can be no truth in such a rumor. Some Englishman hearing, perhaps, of the probable pardon of the exile, may have counted on an heiress, and spread the report in order to keep off other candidates. By your account, if successful in his suit, he might fail to find an heiress in the bride?" "No doubt of that. Whatever might be arranged, I can't conceive that he would be allowed to get at the fortune, though it might be held in suspense for his children. But indeed it so rarely happens that an Italian girl of high name marries a foreigner, that we must dismiss this notion with a smile at the long face of the hypothetical fortune-hunter. Heaven help him, if he exist!" "Amen," echoed Randal, devoutly. "I hear that Peschiara's sister is returned to England. Do you know her too?" "A little." "My dear Mr. Leslie, pardon me if I take a liberty not warranted by our acquaintance. Against the lady I say nothing. Indeed, I have heard some things which appear to entitle her to compassion and respect. But as to Peschiera, all who prize honor suspect him to be a knave--I know him to be one. Now, I think that the longer we preserve that abhorrence for knavery which is the generous instinct of youth, why, the fairer will be our manhood, and the more reverend our age. You agree with me?" And Harley suddenly turning, his eyes fell like a flood of light upon Randal's pale and secret countenance. "To be sure," murmured the schemer. Harley surveying him, mechanically recoiled, and withdrew his arm. Fortunately for Randal, who somehow or other felt himself slipped into a false position, he scarce knew how or why, he was here seized by the arm; and a clear, open, manly voice cried, "My dear fellow, how are you? I see you are engaged now; but look into my rooms when you can, in the course of the day." And, with a bow of excuse for his interruption, to Lord L'Estrange, the speaker was then turning away, when Harley said: "No, don't let me take you from your friend, Mr. Leslie. And you need not be in a hurry to see Egerton; for I shall claim the privilege of older friendship for the first interview." "It is Mr. Egerton's nephew, Frank Hazeldean." "Pray, call him back, and present me to him. He has a face that would have gone far to reconcile Timon to Athens." Randal obeyed; and after a few kindly words to Frank, Harley insisted on leaving the two young men together, and walked on to Downing-street with a brisker step. CHAPTER X. "That Lord L'Estrange seems a very good fellow." "So-so; an effeminate humorist; says the most absurd things, and fancies them wise. Never mind him. You wanted to speak to me, Frank?" "Yes; I am so obliged to you for introducing me to Levy. I must tell you how handsomely he has behaved." "Stop; allow me to remind you that I did not introduce you to Levy; you had met him before at Borrowell's, if I recollect right, and he dined with us at the Clarendon--that is all I had to do with bringing you together. Indeed, I rather cautioned you against him than not. Pray, don't think I introduced you to a man who, however pleasant, and perhaps honest, is still a money-lender. Your father would be justly angry with me if I had done so." "Oh, pooh! you are prejudiced against poor Levy. But just hear: I was sitting very ruefully, thinking over those cursed bills, and how the deuce I should renew them, when Levy walked into my rooms; and after telling me of his long friendship for my uncle Egerton, and his admiration for yourself, and (give me your hand, Randal) saying how touched he felt by your kind sympathy in my troubles, he opened his pocket-book, and showed me the bills safe and sound in his own possession." "How?" "He had bought them up. 'It must be so disagreeable to me,' he said, 'to have them flying about the London money-market, and these Jews would be sure sooner or later to apply to my father. And now,' added Levy, 'I am in no immediate hurry for the money, and we must put the interest upon fairer terms.' In short, nothing could be more liberal than his tone. And he says, 'he is thinking on a way to relieve me altogether, and will call about it in a few days, when his plan is matured.' After all, I must owe this to you, Randal. I dare swear you put it into his head." "O no, indeed! On the contrary, I still say, 'Be cautious in all your dealings with Levy.' I don't know, I am sure, what he means to propose. Have you heard from the Hall lately?" "Yes--to-day. Only think--the Riccaboccas have disappeared. My mother writes me word of it--a very odd letter. She seems to suspect that I know where they are, and reproaches me for 'mystery'--quite enigmatical. But there is one sentence in her letter--see, here it is in the postscript--which seems to refer to Beatrice: 'I don't ask you to tell me your secrets, Frank, but Randal will no doubt have assured you that my first consideration will be for your own happiness, in any matter in which your heart is really engaged.'" "Yes," said Randal, slowly; "no doubt, this refers to Beatrice; but, as I told you, your mother will not interfere one way or the other,--such interference would weaken her influence with the Squire. Besides, as she said, she can't _wish_ you to marry a foreigner; though once married, she would----But how do you stand now with the Marchesa? Has she consented to accept you?" "Not quite: indeed, I have not actually proposed. Her manner, though much softened, has not so far emboldened me; and, besides, before a positive declaration, I certainly must go down to the Hall, and speak at least to my mother." "You must judge for yourself, but don't do any thing rash: talk first to me. Here we are at my office. Good bye; and--and pray believe that, in whatever you do with Levy, I have no hand in it." CHAPTER XI. Towards the evening, Randal was riding fast on the road to Norwood. The arrival of Harley, and the conversation that had passed between that nobleman and Randal, made the latter anxious to ascertain how far Riccabocca was likely to learn L'Estrange's return to England, and to meet with him. For he felt that, should the latter come to know that Riccabocca, in his movements, had gone by Randal's advice, Harley would find that Randal had spoken to him disingenuously; and, on the other hand, Riccabocca, placed under the friendly protection of Lord L'Estrange, would no longer need Randal Leslie to defend him from the machinations of Peschiera. To a reader happily unaccustomed to dive into the deep and mazy recesses of a schemer's mind, it might seem that Randal's interest, in retaining a hold over the exile's confidence, would terminate with the assurances that had reached him, from more than one quarter, that Violante might cease to be an heiress if she married himself. "But, perhaps," suggests some candid and youthful conjecturer--"perhaps Randal Leslie is in love with this fair creature?" Randal in love!--no! He was too absorbed by harder passions for that blissful folly. Nor, if he could have fallen in love, was Violante the one to attract that sullen, secret heart; her instinctive nobleness, the very stateliness of her beauty, womanlike though it was, awed him. Men of that kind may love some soft slave--they cannot lift their eyes to a queen. They may look down--they cannot look up. But, on the one hand, Randal, could not resign altogether the _chance_ of securing a fortune that would realize his most dazzling dreams, upon the mere assurance, however probable, which had so dismayed him; and, on the other hand, should he be compelled to relinquish all idea of such alliance, though he did not contemplate the base perfidy of actually assisting Peschiera's avowed designs, still, if Frank's marriage with Beatrice should absolutely depend upon her brother's obtaining the knowledge of Violante's retreat, and that marriage should be as conducive to his interests as he thought he could make it, why,--he did not then push his deductions farther, even to himself--they seemed too black; but he sighed heavily, and that sigh foreboded how weak would be honor and virtue against avarice and ambition. Therefore, on all accounts, Riccabocca was one of those cards in a sequence, which so calculating a player would not throw out of his hand: it _might_ serve for repique at the worst--it might score well in the game. Intimacy with the Italian was still part and parcel in that knowledge which was the synonym of power. While the young man was thus meditating, on his road to Norwood, Riccabocca and his Jemima were close conferring in their drawing-room. And if you could have there seen them, reader, you would have been seized with equal surprise and curiosity; for some extraordinary communication had certainly passed between them. Riccabocca was evidently much agitated, and with emotions not familiar to him. The tears stood in his eyes at the same time that a smile, the reverse of cynical or sardonic, curved his lips; while his wife was leaning her head on his shoulder, her hand clasped in his, and, by the expression of her face, you might guess that he had paid her some very gratifying compliments, of a nature more genuine and sincere than those which characterized his habitual hollow and dissimulating gallantry. But just at this moment Giacomo entered, and Jemima, with her native English modesty, withdrew in haste from Riccabocca's sheltering side. "Padrone," said Giacomo, who, whatever his astonishment at the connubial position he had disturbed, was much too discreet to betray it--"Padrone, I see the young Englishman riding towards the house, and I hope, when he arrives, you will not forget the alarming information I gave you this morning." "Ah--ah!" said Riccabocca, his face falling. "If the Signorina were but married!" "My very thought--my constant thought!" exclaimed Riccabocca. "And you really believe the young Englishman loves her?" "Why else should he come, Excellency?" asked Giacomo, with great _naiveté_. "Very true; why, indeed?" said Riccabocca. "Jemima, I cannot endure the terrors I suffer on that poor child's account. I will open myself frankly to Randal Leslie. And now, too, that which might have been a serious consideration, in case I return to Italy, will no longer stand in our way, Jemima." Jemima smiled faintly, and whispered something to Riccabocca, to which he replied-- "Nonsense, _anima mia_. I know it _will_ be--have not a doubt of it. I tell you it is as nine to four, according to the nicest calculations. I will speak at once to Randal. He is too young--too timid to speak himself." "Certainly," interposed Giacomo; "how could he dare to speak, let him love ever so well?" Jemima shook her head. "O, never fear," said Riccabocca, observing this gesture; "I will give him the trial. If he entertain but mercenary views, I shall soon detect them. I know human nature pretty well, I think, my love; and, Giacomo--just give me my Machiavel;--that's right. Now, leave me, my dear; I must reflect and prepare myself." When Randal entered the house, Giacomo, with a smile of peculiar suavity, ushered him into the drawing-room. He found Riccabocca alone, and seated before the fireplace, leaning his face on his hand, with the great folio of Machiavel lying open upon the table. The Italian received him as courteously as usual; but there was in his manner a certain serious and thoughtful dignity, which was perhaps the more imposing, because but rarely assumed. After a few preliminary observations, Randal remarked that Frank Hazeldean had informed him of the curiosity which the disappearance of the Riccaboccas had excited at the Hall, and inquired carelessly if the Doctor had left instructions as to the forwarding of any letters that might be directed to him at the Casino. "Letters," said Riccabocca, simply--"I never receive any; or, at least, so rarely, that it was not worth while to take an event so little to be expected into consideration. No; if any letters do reach the Casina, there they will wait." "Then I can see no possibility of indiscretion; no chance of a clue to your address." "Nor I either." Satisfied so far, and knowing that it was not in Riccabocca's habits to read the newspapers, by which he might otherwise have learnt of L'Estrange's arrival in London, Randal then proceeded to inquire, with much seeming interest, into the health of Violante--hoped it did not suffer by confinement, &c. Riccabocca eyed him gravely while he spoke, and then suddenly rising, that air of dignity to which I have before referred, became yet more striking. "My young friend," said he, "hear me attentively, and answer me frankly. I know human nature"--Here a slight smile of proud complacency passed the sage's lips, and his eye glanced towards his Machiavel. "I know human nature, at least I have studied it," he renewed more earnestly, and with less evident self-conceit, "and I believe that when a perfect stranger to me exhibits an interest in my affairs, which occasions him no small trouble--an interest (continued the wise man, laying his hand upon Randal's shoulder) which scarcely a son could exceed, he must be under the influence of some strong personal motive." "Oh, sir!" cried Randal, turning a shade more pale, and with a faltering tone. Riccabocca surveyed him with the tenderness of a superior being, and pursued his deductive theories. "In your case, what is that motive? Not political; for I conclude you share the opinions of your government, and those opinions have not favored mine. Not that of pecuniary or ambitious calculations; for how can such calculations enlist you on behalf of a ruined exile? What remains? Why, the motive which at your age is ever the most natural, and the strongest. I don't blame you. Machiavel himself allows that such a motive has swayed the wisest minds, and overturned the most solid states. In a word, young man, you are in love, and with my daughter Violante." Randal was so startled by this direct and unexpected charge upon his own masked batteries, that he did not even attempt his defence. His head drooped on his breast, and he remained speechless. "I do not doubt," resumed the penetrating judge of human nature, "that you would have been withheld by the laudable and generous scruples which characterize your happy age, from voluntarily disclosing to me the state of your heart. You might suppose that, proud of the position I once held, or sanguine in the hope of regaining my inheritance, I might be over-ambitious in my matrimonial views for Violante; or that you, anticipating my restoration to honors and fortune, might seem actuated by the last motives which influence love and youth; and, therefore, my dear young friend, I have departed from the ordinary custom in England, and adopted a very common one in my own country. With us, a suitor seldom presents himself till he is assured of the consent of a father. I have only to say this--If I am right, and you love my daughter, my first object in life is to see her safe and secure; and, in a word--you understand me." Now, mightily may it comfort and console us ordinary mortals, who advance no pretence to superior wisdom and ability, to see the huge mistakes made by both these very sagacious personages--Dr. Riccabocca, valuing himself on his profound acquaintance with character, and Randal Leslie, accustomed to grope into every hole and corner of thought and action, wherefrom to extract that knowledge which is power! For whereas the sage, judging not only by his own heart in youth, but by the general influence of the master passion on the young, had ascribed to Randal sentiments wholly foreign to that able diplomatist's nature, so no sooner had Riccabocca brought his speech to a close, than Randal, judging also by his own heart, and by the general laws which influence men of the mature age and boasted worldly wisdom of the pupil of Machiavel, instantly decided that Riccabocca presumed upon his youth and inexperience, and meant most nefariously to take him in. "The poor youth!" thought Riccabocca, "how unprepared he is for the happiness I give him!" "The cunning old Jesuit!" thought Randal; "he has certainly learned, since we met last, that he has no chance of regaining his patrimony, and so he wants to impose on me the hand of a girl without a shilling. What other motive can he possibly have? Had his daughter the remotest probability of becoming the greatest heiress in Italy, would he dream of bestowing her on me in this off-hand way? The thing stands to reason." Actuated by his resentment at the trap thus laid for him, Randal was about to disclaim altogether the disinterested and absurd affection laid to his charge, when it occurred to him that, by so doing, he might mortally offend the Italian--since the cunning never forgive those who refuse to be duped by them--and it might still be conducive to his interest to preserve intimate and familiar terms with Riccabocca; therefore, subduing his first impulse, he exclaimed, "O too generous man! pardon me if I have so long been unable to express my amaze, my gratitude; but I cannot--no, I cannot, while your prospects remain thus uncertain, avail myself of your--of your inconsiderate magnanimity. Your rare conduct can only redouble my own scruples, if you, as I firmly hope and believe, are restored to your great possessions,--you would naturally look so much higher than me. Should those hopes fail, then, indeed, it may be different; yet even then, what position, what fortune, have I to offer to your daughter worthy of her?" "You are well born: all gentlemen are equals," said Riccabocca, with a sort of easy nobleness. "You have youth, information, talent--sources of certain wealth in this happy country--powerful connections; and, in fine, if you are satisfied with marrying for love, I shall be contented;--if not, speak openly. As to the restoration to my possessions, I can scarcely think that probable while my enemy lives. And even in that case, since I saw you last, something has occurred (added Riccabocca with a strange smile, which seemed to Randal singularly sinister and malignant) that may remove all difficulties.--Meanwhile, do not think me so extravagantly magnanimous--do not underrate the satisfaction I must feel at knowing Violante safe from the designs of Peschiera--safe, and for ever, under a husband's roof. I will tell you an Italian proverb--it contains a truth full of wisdom and terror:-- "'Hai cinquanta Amici?--non basta.--Hai un Nemico?--è troppo.'"[22] "Something has occurred!" echoed Randal, not heeding the conclusion of this speech, and scarcely hearing the proverb which the sage delivered in his most emphatic and tragic tone. "Something has occurred! My dear friend, be plainer. What has occurred?" Riccabocca remained silent. "Something that induces you to bestow your daughter on me?" Riccabocca nodded, and emitted a low chuckle. "The very laugh of a fiend," muttered Randal. "Something that makes her not worth bestowing. He betrays himself. Cunning people always do." "Pardon me," said the Italian at last, "if I don't answer your question; you will know later; but, at present, this is a family secret. And now I must turn to another and more alarming cause for my frankness to you." Here Riccabocca's face changed, and assumed an expression of mingled rage and fear. "You must know," he added, sinking his voice, "that Giacomo has seen a strange person loitering about the house, and looking up at the windows; and he has no doubt--nor have I--that this is some spy or emissary of Peschiera's." "Impossible; how could he discover you?" "I know not; but no one else has any interest in doing so. The man kept at a distance, and Giacomo could not see his face." "It may be but a mere idler. Is this all?" "No; the old woman who serves us said that she was asked at a shop 'if we were not Italians?'" "And she answered?" "'No;' but owned that 'we had a foreign servant, Giacomo.'" "I will see to this. Rely on it that if Peschiera has discovered you, I will learn it. Nay, I will hasten from you in order to commence inquiry." "I cannot detain you. May I think that we have now an interest in common?" "O, indeed yes; but--but--your daughter! how can I dream that one so beautiful, so peerless, will confirm the hope you have extended to me?" "The daughter of an Italian is brought up to consider that it is a father's right to dispose of her hand." "But the heart?" "_Cospetto!_" said the Italian, true to his infamous notions as to the sex, "the heart of a girl is like a convent--the holier the cloister, the more charitable the door." * * * * * Randal had scarcely left the house, before Mrs. Riccabocca, who was affectionately anxious in all that concerned Violante, rejoined her husband. "I like the young man very well," said the sage--"very well indeed. I find him just what I expected from my general knowledge of human nature; for as love ordinarily goes with youth, so modesty usually accompanies talent. He is young, _ergo_ he is in love; he has talent, _ergo_ he is modest--modest and ingenuous." "And you think not in any way swayed by interest in his affections?" "Quite the contrary; and to prove him the more, I have not said a word as to the worldly advantages which, in any case, would accrue to him from an alliance with my daughter. In any case; for if I regain my country, her fortune is assured; and if not, I trust (said the poor exile, lifting his brow with stately and becoming pride) that I am too well aware of my child's dignity as well as my own, to ask any one to marry her to his own worldly injury." "Eh! I don't quite understand you, Alphonso. To be sure, your dear life is insured for her marriage portion; but--" "_Pazzie_--stuff!" said Riccabocca petulantly; "her marriage portion would be as nothing to a young man of Randal's birth and prospects. I think not of that. But listen; I have never consented to profit by Harley L'Estrange's friendship for me; my scruples would not extend to my son-in-law. This noble friend has not only high rank, but considerable influence--influence with the government--influence with Randal's patron--who, between ourselves, does not seem to push the young man as he might do; I judge by what Randal says. I should write, therefore, before any thing was settled, to L'Estrange, and I should say to him simply, 'I never asked you to save me from penury, but I do ask you to save a daughter of my house from humiliation. I can give to her no dowry; can her husband owe to my friend that advance in an honorable career--that opening to energy and talent--which is more than a dowry to generous ambition?'" "Oh, it is in vain you would disguise your rank," cried Jemima with enthusiasm, "it speaks in all you utter, when your passions are moved." The Italian did not seem flattered by this eulogy. "Pish," said he, "there you are! rank again!" But Jemima was right. There was something about her husband that was grandiose and princely, whenever he escaped from his accursed Machiavel, and gave fair play to his heart. And he spent the next hour or so in thinking over all that he could do for Randal, and devising for his intended son-in-law the agreeable surprises, which Randal was at that very time racking his yet cleverer brains to disappoint. These plans conned sufficiently, Riccabocca shut up his Machiavel, and hunted out of his scanty collection of books Buffon on Man, and various other psychological volumes, in which he soon became deeply absorbed. Why were these works the object of the sage's study? Perhaps he will let us know soon, for it is clearly a secret known to his wife; and though she has hitherto kept one secret, that is precisely the reason why Riccabocca would not wish long to overburthen her discretion with another. CHAPTER XIII. Randal reached home in time to dress for a late dinner at Baron Levy's. The Baron's style of living was of that character especially affected both by the most acknowledged exquisites of that day, and, it must be owned, also, by the most egregious _parvenus_. For it is noticeable that it is your _parvenu_ who always comes nearest in fashion (so far as externals are concerned) to your genuine exquisite. It is your _parvenu_ who is most particular as to the cut of his coat, and the precision of his equipage, and the minutiæ of his _ménage_. Those between the _parvenu_ and the exquisite, who know their own consequence, and have something solid to rest upon, are slow in following all the caprices of fashion, and obtuse in observation as to those niceties which neither give them another ancestor, nor add another thousand to the account at their banker's;--as to the last, rather indeed the contrary! There was a decided elegance about the Baron's house and his dinner. If he had been one of the lawful kings of the dandies, you would have cried, "What perfect taste!"--but such is human nature, that the dandies who dined with him said to each other, "He pretend to imitate D----! vulgar dog!" There was little affectation of your more showy opulence. The furniture in the rooms was apparently simple, but, in truth, costly, from its luxurious comfort--the ornaments and china scattered about the commodes were of curious rarity and great value; and the pictures on the walls were gems. At dinner, no plate was admitted on the table. The Russian fashion, then uncommon, now more prevalent, was adopted--fruits and flowers in old Sevre dishes of priceless _vertu_, and in sparkling glass, of Bohemian fabric. No livery servant was permitted to wait; behind each guest stood a gentleman dressed so like the guest himself, in fine linen and simple black, that guest and lacquey seemed stereotypes from one plate. The viands were exquisite; the wine came from the cellars of deceased archbishops and ambassadors. The company was select; the party did not exceed eight. Four were the eldest sons of peers (from a baron to a duke); one was a professed wit, never to be got without a month's notice, and, where a _parvenu_ was host, a certainty of green pease and peaches--out of season; the sixth, to Randal's astonishment, was Mr. Richard Avenel; himself and the Baron made up the complement. The eldest sons recognized each other with a meaning smile; the most juvenile of them, indeed, (it was his first year in London,) had the grace to blush and look sheepish. The others were more hardened; but they all united in regarding with surprise both Randal and Dick Avenel. The former was known most of them personally; and to all, by repute, as a grave, clever, promising young man, rather prudent than lavish, and never suspected to have got into a scrape. What the deuce did he do there? Mr. Avenel puzzled them yet more. A middle-aged man, said to be in business, whom they had observed "about town" (for he had a noticeable face and figure)--that is, seen riding in the park, or lounging in the pit at the opera, but never set eyes on at a recognized club, or in the coteries of their 'set';--a man whose wife gave horrid third-rate parties, that took up half a column in the _Morning Post_ with a list of "The Company Present,"--in which a sprinkling of dowagers out of fashion, and a foreign title or two, made the darkness of the obscurer names doubly dark. Why this man should be asked to meet _them_, by Baron Levy, too--a decided tuft-hunter and would-be exclusive--called all their faculties into exercise. The wit, who, being the son of a small tradesman, but in the very best society, gave himself far greater airs than the young lords, impertinently solved the mystery. "Depend on it," whispered he to Spendquick--"depend on it the man is the X. Y. of the _Times_, who offers to lend any sums of money from £10 to half-a-million. He's the man who has all your bills; Levy is only his jackall." "'Pon my soul," said Spendquick, rather alarmed, "if that's the case, one may as well be civil to him." "_You_, certainly," said the wit. "But I never yet found an X. Y. who would advance me the L. s.; and, therefore, I shall not be more respectful to X. Y. than to any other unknown quantity." By degrees, as the wine circulated, the party grew gay and sociable. Levy was really an entertaining fellow; had all the gossip of the town at his fingers' ends; and possessed, moreover, that pleasant art of saying ill-natured things of the absent, which those present always enjoy. By degrees, too, Mr. Richard Avenel came out; and as the whisper had circulated round the table that he was X. Y., he was listened to with a profound respect, which greatly elevated his spirits. Nay, when the wit tried once to show him up or mystify him, Dick answered with a bluff spirit, that, though very coarse, was found so humorous by Lord Spendquick and other gentlemen similarly situated in the money-market, that they turned the laugh against the wit, and silenced him for the rest of the night--a circumstance which made the party go off much more pleasantly. After dinner, the conversation, quite that of single men, easy and _débonnair_, glanced from the turf, and the ballet, and the last scandal, towards politics; for the times were such that politics were discussed everywhere, and three of the young lords were county members. Randal said little, but, as was his wont, listened attentively; and he was aghast to find how general was the belief that the government was doomed. Out of regard to him, and with that delicacy of breeding which belongs to a certain society, nothing personal to Egerton was said, except by Avenel, who, however, on blurting out some rude expressions respecting that minister, was instantly checked by the Baron. "Spare my friend, and Mr. Leslie's near connection," said he, with a polite but grave smile. "Oh," said Avenel, "public men, whom we pay, are public property--aren't they, my lord?" appealing to Spendquick. "Certainly," said Spendquick, with great spirit--"public property, or why should we pay them? There must be a very strong motive to induce us to do that! I hate paying people. In fact," he subjoined in an aside, "I never do!" "However," resumed Mr. Avenel, graciously, "I don't want to hurt your feelings, Mr. Leslie. As to the feelings of our host, the Baron, I calculate that they have got tolerably tough by the exercise they have gone through." "Nevertheless," said the Baron, joining in the laugh which any lively saying by the supposed X. Y. was sure to excite--"nevertheless, 'love me, love my dog,' love me, love my Egerton." Randal started, for his quick ear and subtle intelligence caught something sinister and hostile in the tone with which Levy uttered this equivocal comparison, and his eye darted towards the Baron. But the Baron had bent down his face, and was regaling himself upon an olive. By and by the party rose from table. The four young noblemen had their engagements elsewhere, and proposed to separate without re-entering the drawing-room. As, in Goethe's theory, monads which have affinities with each other are irresistibly drawn together, so these gay children of pleasure had, by a common impulse, on rising from table, moved each to each, and formed a group round the fireplace. Randal stood a little apart, musing; the wit examined the pictures through his eye-glass; and Mr. Avenel drew the Baron towards the sideboard, and there held him in whispered conference. This colloquy did not escape the young gentlemen round the fireplace: they glanced towards each other. "Settling the percentage on renewal," said one, _sotto voce_. "X. Y. does not seem such a very bad fellow," said another. "He looks rich, and talks rich," said a third. "A decided, independent way of expressing his sentiments; those moneyed men generally have." "Good heavens!" ejaculated Spendquick, who had been keeping his eye anxiously fixed on the pair, "do look; X. Y. is actually taking out his pocket-book; he is coming this way. Depend on it, he has got our bills--mine is due to-morrow." "And mine too," said another, edging off. "Why, it is a perfect _guetapens_." Meanwhile, breaking away from the Baron, who appeared anxious to detain him, and, failing in that attempt, turned aside, as if not to see Dick's movements--a circumstance which did not escape the notice of the group, and confirmed all their suspicions, Mr. Avenel, with a serious, thoughtful air, and a slow step, approached the group. Nor did the great Roman general more nervously "flutter the dove-cotes in Corioli," than did the advance of the supposed X. Y. agitate the bosoms of Lord Spendquick and his sympathizing friends. Pocket-book in hand, and apparently feeling for something formidable within its mystic recesses, step by step came Dick Avenel towards the fireplace. The group stood still, fascinated by horror. "Hum," said Mr. Avenel, clearing his throat. "I don't like that hum, at all," muttered Spendquick. "Proud to have made your acquaintance, gentlemen," said Dick, bowing. The gentlemen, thus addressed, bowed low in return. "My friend the Baron thought this not exactly the time to"--Dick stopped a moment; you might have knocked down those four young gentlemen, though four finer specimens of humanity no aristocracy in Europe could produce--you might have knocked them down with a feather! "But," renewed Avenel, not finishing his sentence, "I have made it a rule in life never to lose securing a good opportunity; in short, to make the most of the present moment. And," added he with a smile which froze the blood in Lord Spendquick's veins, "the rule has made me a very warm man! Therefore, gentlemen, allow me to present you each with one of these"--every hand retreated behind the back of its well-born owner--when, to the inexpressible relief of all, Dick concluded with--"a little _soirée dansante_," and extended four cards of invitation. "Most happy!" exclaimed Spendquick. "I don't dance in general; but to oblige X---- I mean to have a better acquaintance, sir, with _you_--I would dance on the tight-rope." There was a good-humored, pleasant laugh at Lord Spendquick's enthusiasm, and a general shaking of hands and pocketing of the invitation cards. "You don't look like a dancing man," said Avenel, turning to the wit, who was plump and somewhat gouty--as wits who dine out five days in the week generally are; "but we shall have supper at one o'clock." Infinitely offended and disgusted, the wit replied dryly, "that every hour of his time was engaged for the rest of the season," and, with a stiff salutation to the Baron, took his departure. The rest, in good spirits, hurried away to their respective cabriolets, and Leslie was following them into the hall, when the Baron, catching bold of him, said, "Stay, I want to talk to you." CHAPTER XIV. The Baron turned into his drawing-room, and Leslie followed. "Pleasant young men, those," said Levy, with a slight sneer, as he threw himself into an easy-chair and stirred the fire. "And not at all proud; but, to be sure, they are--under great obligations to me. Yes; they owe me a great deal. _Apropos_, I have had a long talk with Frank Hazeldean--fine young man--remarkable capacities for business. I can arrange his affairs for him. I find, on reference to the Will Office, that you were quite right, the Casino property is entailed on Frank. He will have the fee simple. He can dispose of the reversion entirely. So that there will be no difficulty in our arrangements." "But I told you also that Frank had scruples about borrowing on the event of his father's death." "Ay--you did so. Filial affection! I never take that into account in matters of business. Such little scruples, though they are highly honorable to human nature, soon vanish before the prospect of the King's Bench. And, too, as you so judiciously remarked, our clever young friend is in love with Madame di Negra." "Did he tell you that?" "No; but Madame di Negra did!" "I know most people in good society, who now and then require a friend in the management of their affairs. And having made sure of the fact you stated, as to Hazeldean's contingent property (excuse my prudence). I have accommodated Madame di Negra, and bought up her debts." "You have--you surprise me!" "The surprise will vanish on reflection. But you are very new to the world yet, my dear Leslie. By the way, I have had an interview with Peschiera--" "About his sister's debts?" "Partly. A man of the nicest honor is Peschiera." Aware of Levy's habit of praising people for the qualities in which, according to the judgment of less penetrating mortals, they were most deficient, Randal only smiled at this eulogy, and waited for Levy to resume. But the Baron sate silent and thoughtful for a minute or two, and then wholly changed the subject. "I think your father has some property in ----shire, and you probably can give me a little information as to certain estates of a Mr. Thornhill--estates which, on examination of the title-deeds, I find once, indeed, belonged to your family." The Baron glanced at a very elegant memorandum-book--"The manors of Rood and Dulmonsberry, with sundry farms thereon. Mr. Thornhill wants to sell them as soon as his son is of age--an old client of mine, Thornhill. He has applied to me on the matter. Do you think it an improvable property?" Randal listened with a livid cheek and a throbbing heart. We have seen that, if there was one ambitious scheme in his calculation which, though not absolutely generous and heroic, still might win its way to a certain sympathy in the undebased human mind, it was the hope to restore the fallen fortunes of his ancient house, and repossess himself of the long alienated lands that surrounded the dismal wastes of the mouldering hall. And now to hear that those lands were getting into the inexorable gripe of Levy--tears of bitterness stood in his eyes. "Thornhill," continued Levy, who watched the young man's countenance--"Thornhill tells me that that part of his property--the old Leslie lands--produces £2000 a-year, and that the rental could be raised. He would take £50,000 for it--£20,000 down, and suffer the remaining £30,000 to lie on mortgage at four per cent. It seems a very good purchase. What do you say?" "Don't ask me," said Randal, stung into rare honesty; "for I had hoped I might live to repossess myself of that property." "Ah! indeed. It would be a very great addition to your consequence in the world--not from the mere size of the estate, but from its hereditary associations. And if you have any idea of the purchase--believe me, I'll not stand in your way." "How can I have any idea of it?" "But I thought you said you had." "I understood that these lands could not be sold till Mr. Thornhill's son came of age, and joined in getting rid of the entail." "Yes, so Thornhill himself supposed, till, on examining the title-deeds, I found he was under a mistake. These lands are not comprised in the settlement made by old Jasper Thornhill, which ties up the rest of the property. The title will be perfect. Thornhill wants to settle the matter at once--losses on the turf, you understand; an immediate purchaser would get still better terms. A Sir John Spratt would give the money; but the addition of these lands would make the Spratt property of more consequence in the county than the Thornhill. So my client would rather take a few thousands less from a man who don't set up to be his rival. Balance of power in counties as well as nations." Randal was silent. "Well," said Levy, with great kindness of manner, "I see I pain you; and though I am what my very pleasant guests will call a _parvenu_, I comprehend your natural feelings as a gentleman of ancient birth. _Parvenu!_ Ah! is it not strange, Leslie, that no wealth, no fashion, no fame can wipe out that blot? They call me a _parvenu_, and borrow my money. They call our friend, the wit, a _parvenu_, and submit to all his insolence--if they condescend to regard his birth at all--provided they can but get him to dinner. They call the best debater in the Parliament of England a parvenu, and will entreat him, some day or other, to be prime minister, and ask him for stars and garters. A droll world, and no wonder the _parvenus_ want to upset it!" Randal had hitherto supposed that this notorious tuft-hunter--this dandy capitalist--this money-lender, whose whole fortune had been wrung from the wants and follies of an aristocracy, was naturally a firm supporter of things as they are--how could things be better for men like Baron Levy? But the usurer's burst of democratic spleen did not surprise his precocious and acute faculty of observation. He had before remarked, that it is the persons who fawn most upon an aristocracy, and profit the most by the fawning, who are ever at heart its bitterest disparagers. Why is this? Because one full half of democratic opinion is made up of envy; and we can only envy what is brought before our eyes, and what, while very near to us, is still unattainable. No man envies an archangel. "But," said Levy, throwing himself back in his chair, "a new order of things is commencing; we shall see. Leslie, it is lucky for you that you did not enter Parliament under the government; it would be your political ruin for life." "You think, then, that the ministry really cannot last?" "Of course, I do; and what is more, I think that a ministry of the same principles cannot be restored. You are a young man of talent and spirit; your birth is nothing compared to the rank of the reigning party; it would tell, to a certain degree, in a democratic one. I say, you should be more civil to Avenel; he could return you to Parliament at the next election." "The next election! In six years! We have just had a general election." "There will be another before this year, or half of it, or perhaps a quarter of it, is out." "What makes you think so?" "Leslie, let there be confidence between us; we can help each other. Shall we be friends?" "With all my heart. But, though you may help me, how can I help you?" "You have helped me already to Frank Hazeldean and the Casino estate. All clever men can help me. Come, then, we are friends; and what I say is secret. You ask me why I think there will be a general election so soon? I will answer you frankly. Of all the public men I ever met with, there is no one who has so clear a vision of things immediately before him as Audley Egerton." "He has that character. Not _far_-seeing, but _clear_-sighted to a certain limit." "Exactly so. No one better, therefore, knows public opinion, and its immediate ebb and flow." "Granted." "Egerton, then, counts on a general election within three months; and I have lent him the money for it." "Lent him the money! Egerton borrow money of you--the rich Audley Egerton!" "Rich!" repeated Levy in a tone impossible to describe, and accompanying the word with that movement of the middle finger and thumb, commonly called a "snap," which indicates profound contempt. He said no more. Randal sat stupified. At length the latter muttered, "But if Egerton is really not rich--if he lose office, and without the hope of return to it----" "If so, he is ruined!" said Levy coldly; "and, therefore, from regard to you, and feeling interest in your future fate, I say--Rest no hopes of fortune or career upon Audley Egerton. Keep your place for the present, but be prepared at the next election to stand upon popular principles. Avenel shall return you to parliament; and the rest is with luck and energy. And now, I'll not detain you longer," said Levy, rising and ringing the bell. The servant entered. "Is my carriage here?" "Yes, Baron." "Can I set you down any where?" "No, thank you; I prefer walking." "Adieu, then. And mind you remember the _soirée dansante_ at Mrs. Avenel's." Randal mechanically shook the hand extended to him, and went down the stairs. The fresh frosty air roused his intellectual faculties, which Levy's ominous words had almost paralyzed. And the first thing the clever schemer said to himself was this:-- "But what can be the man's motive in what he said to me?" The next was:-- "Egerton ruined? What am I, then?" And the third was:-- "And that fair remnant of the old Leslie property! £20,000 down--how to get the sum? Why should Levy have spoken, to me of this?" And lastly, the soliloquy rounded back:-- "The man's motives! His motives?" Meanwhile, the baron, threw himself into his chariot--the most comfortable, easy chariot, you can possibly conceive--single man's chariot--perfect taste--no married man ever has such a chariot; and in a few minutes he was at ----'s hotel, and in the presence of Giulio Franzini, Count di Peschiera. "_Mon cher_," said the baron in very good French, and in a tone of the most familiar equality with the descendant of the princes and heroes of grand mediæval Italy--"_Mon cher_, give me one of your excellent cigars. I think I have put all matters in train." "You have found out--" "No; not so fast yet," said the baron, lighting the cigar extended to him. "But you said that you should be perfectly contented if it only cost you £20,000 to marry off your sister (to whom that sum is legally due), and to marry yourself to the heiress." "I did indeed." "Then I have no doubt I shall manage both objects for that sum, if Randal Leslie really knows where the young lady is, and can assist you. Most promising, able man is Randal Leslie, but innocent as a babe just born." "Ha, ha! Innocent? _Que diable!_" "Innocent as this cigar, _mon cher_--strong, certainly, but smoked very easily. _Soyez tranquille!_" CHAPTER XV. Who has not seen--who not admired, that noble picture by Daniel Maclise, which refreshes the immortal name of my ancestor Caxton! For myself, while with national pride I heard the admiring murmurs of the foreigners who grouped around it (nothing, indeed, of which our nation may be more proud had they seen in the Crystal Palace)--heard, with no less a pride in the generous nature of fellow artists, the warm applause of living and deathless masters, sanctioning the enthusiasm of the popular crowd;--what struck me more than the precision of drawing, for which the artist has been always renowned, and the just though gorgeous affluence of color which he has more recently acquired, was the profound depth of conception, out of which this great work had so elaborately arisen. That monk, with his scowl towards the printer and his back on the Bible, over which _his form casts a shadow_--the whole transition between the mediæval Christianity of cell and cloister, and the modern Christianity that rejoices in the daylight, is depicted there, in the shadow that obscures the Book--in the scowl that is fixed upon the Book-diffuser;--that sombre musing face of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, with the beauty of Napoleon, darkened to the expression of a Fiend, looking far and anxiously into futurity, as if foreseeing there what antagonism was about to be created to the schemes of secret crime and unrelenting force;--the chivalrous head of the accomplished Rivers, seen but in profile, under his helmet, as if the age when Chivalry must defend its noble attributes, in steel, was already half passed away: and, not least grand of all, the rude thews and sinews of the artisan forced into service on the type, and the ray of intellect, fierce, and menacing revolutions yet to be, struggling through his rugged features, and across his low knitted brow;--all this, which showed how deeply the idea of the discovery in its good and its evil its saving light and its perilous storms, had sunk into the artist's soul, charmed me as effecting the exact union between sentiment and execution, which is the true and rare consummation of the Ideal in Art. But observe, while in these personages of the group are depicted the deeper and graver agencies implicated in the bright but terrible invention--observe how little the light epicures of the hour heed the scowl of the monk, or the restless gesture of Richard, or the troubled gleam in the eyes of the artisan--King Edward, handsome _Poco curante_, delighted, in the surprise of a child, with a new toy; and Clarence, with his curious yet careless glance--all the while Caxton himself, calm, serene, untroubled, intent solely upon the manifestation of his discovery, and no doubt supremely indifferent whether the first proofs of it shall be dedicated to a Rivers or an Edward, a Richard or a Henry, Plantagenet or Tudor--'tis all the same to that comely, gentle-looking man. So is it ever with your Abstract Science!--not a jot cares its passionless logic for the woe or weal of a generation or two. The stream, once emerged from its source, passes on into the Great Intellectual Sea, smiling over the wretch that it drowns, or under the keel of this ship which it serves as a slave. Now, when about to commence the present chapter on the Varieties of Life, this masterpiece of thoughtful art forced itself on my recollection, and illustrated what I designed to say. In the surface of every age, it is often that which but amuses, for the moment, the ordinary children of pleasant existence, the Edwards and the Clarences (be they kings and dukes, or simplest of simple subjects), which afterwards towers out as the great serious epoch of the time. When we look back upon human records, how the eye settles upon Writers as the main landmarks of the past! We talk of the age of Augustus, of Elizabeth, of Louis XIV., of Anne, as the notable eras of the world. Why? Because it is their writers who have made them so. Intervals between one age of authors and another lie unnoticed, as the flats and common lands of uncultured history. And yet, strange to say, when these authors are living amongst us, they occupy a very small portion of our thoughts, and fill up but desultory interstices in the bitumen and tufo wherefrom we build up the Babylon of our lives! So it is, and perhaps so it should be, whether it pleases the conceit of penmen or not. Life is meant to be active; and books, though they give the action to future generations, administer but to the holiday of the present. And so, with this long preface, I turn suddenly from the Randals and the Egertons, and the Levys, Avenels, and Peschieras--from the plots and passions of practical life, and drop the reader suddenly into one of those obscure retreats wherein Thought weaves, from unnoticed moments, a new link to the chain that unites the ages. Within a small room, the single window of which opened on a fanciful and fairy-like garden, that has been before described, sat a young man alone. He had been writing: the ink was not dry on his manuscript, but his thoughts had been suddenly interrupted from his work, and his eyes now lifted from the letter which had occasioned that interruption, sparkled with delight. "He will come," exclaimed the young man; "come here--to the home which I owe to him. I have not been unworthy of his friendship. And she"--his breast heaved, but the joy faded from his face. "Oh strange, strange, that I feel sad at the thought to see her again. See _her_--ah, no!--my own comforting Helen--my own Child-angel! _Her_ I can never see again! The grown woman--that is not my Helen. And yet--and yet (he resumed, after a pause), if ever she read the pages, in which thought flowed and trembled under her distant starry light--if ever she see how her image has rested with me, and feel that, while others believe that I invent, I have but remembered--will she not, for a moment, be my own Helen again! Again, in heart and in fancy, stand by my side on the desolate bridge--hand in hand--orphans both, as we stood in the days so sorrowful, yet, as I recall them, so sweet--Helen in England, it is a dream!" He rose, half consciously, and went to the window. The fountain played merrily before his eyes, and the birds in the aviary carolled loud to his ear. "And in this house," he murmured, "I saw her last! And there, where the fountain now throws its stream on high--there her benefactor and mine told me that I was to lose _her_, and that I might win--fame. Alas!" At this time a woman, whose dress was somewhat above her mien and air, which, though not without a certain air of respectability, were very homely, entered the room; and, seeing the young man standing thus thoughtful by the window, paused. She was used to his habits; and since his success in life, had learned to respect them. So she did not disturb his reverie, but began softly to arrange the room--dusting, with the corner of her apron, the various articles of furniture, putting a stray chair or two in its right place, but not touching a single paper. Virtuous woman, and rare as virtuous! The young man turned at last, with a deep, yet not altogether painful sigh-- "My dear mother, good day to you. Ah, you do well to make the room look its best. Happy news! I expect a visitor!" "Dear me, Leonard, will he want? lunch--or what?" "Nay, I think not, mother. It is he to whom we owe all--'_Hoec otia fecit_.' Pardon my Latin; it is Lord L'Estrange." The face of Mrs. Fairfield (the reader has long since divined the name) changed instantly, and betrayed a nervous twitch of all the muscles, which gave her a family likeness to old Mrs. Avenel. "Do not be alarmed, mother. He is the kindest--" "Don't talk so; I can't bear it!" cried Mrs. Fairfield. "No wonder you are affected by the recollection of all his benefits. But when once you have seen him, you will find yourself ever after at your ease. And so, pray, smile and look as good as you are; for I am proud of your open honest look when you are pleased, mother. And he must see your heart in your face as I do." With this, Leonard put his arm round the widow's neck and kissed her. She clung to him fondly for a moment, and he felt her tremble from head to foot. Then she broke from his embrace, and hurried out of the room. Leonard thought perhaps she had gone to improve her dress, or to carry her housewife energies to the decoration of the other rooms; for "the house" was Mrs. Fairfield's hobby and passion; and now that she worked no more, save for her amusement, it was her main occupation. The hours she contrived to spend daily in bustling about those little rooms, and leaving every thing therein to all appearance precisely the same, were among the marvels in life which the genius of Leonard had never comprehended. But she was always so delighted when Mr. Norreys or some rare visitor came, and said (Mr. Norreys never failed to do so,) "How neatly all is kept here. What could Leonard do without you, Mrs. Fairfield?" And to Norrey's infinite amusement, Mrs. Fairfield always returned the same answer. "'Deed, sir, and thank you kindly, but 'tis my belief that the drawin'-room would be awful dusty." Once more left alone, Leonard's mind returned to the state of reverie, and his face assumed the expression that had now become to it habitual. Thus seen, he was changed much since we last beheld him. His cheek was more pale and thin, his lips more firmly compressed, his eye more fixed and abstract. You could detect, if I may borrow a touching French expression, that "sorrow had passed by there." But the melancholy on his countenance was ineffably sweet and serene, and on his ample forehead there was that power, so rarely seen in early youth--the power that has conquered, and betrays its conquests but in calm. The period of doubt, of struggle, of defiance, was gone for ever; genius and soul were reconciled to human life. It was a face most loveable; so gentle and peaceful in its character. No want of fire; on the contrary, the fire was so clear and so steadfast, that it conveyed but the impression of light. The candor of boyhood, the simplicity of the villager were still there--refined by intelligence, but intelligence that seemed to have traversed through knowledge--not with the footstep, but the wing--unsullied by the mire--tending towards the star--seeking through the various grades of being but the lovelier forms of truth and goodness; at home as should be the Art that consummates the Beautiful-- "In den heitern Regionen Wo die reinen Formen wohnen."[23] From this reverie Leonard did not seek to rouse himself, till the bell at the garden gate rang loud and shrill; and then starting up and hurrying into the hall, his hand was grasped in Harley's. CHAPTER XVI. A full and happy hour passed away in Harley's questions and Leonard's answers; the dialogue that naturally ensued between the two, on the first interview after an absence of years so eventful to the younger man. The history of Leonard during this interval was almost solely internal, the struggle of intellect with its own difficulties, the wanderings of imagination through its own adventurous worlds. The first aim of Norreys, in preparing the mind of his pupil for its vocation, had been to establish the equilibrium of its powers, to calm into harmony the elements rudely shaken by the trials and passions of the old hard outer life. The theory of Norreys was briefly this: The education of a superior human being is but the development of ideas in one for the benefit of others. To this end, attention should be directed--1st, To the value of the ideas collected; 2dly, To their discipline; 3dly, To their expression. For the first, acquirement is necessary; for the second, discipline; for the third, art. The first comprehends knowledge, purely intellectual, whether derived from observation, memory, reflection, books or men, Aristotle or Fleet Street. The second demands _training_, not only intellectual, but moral; the purifying and exaltation of motives; the formation of habits; in which method is but a part of a divine and harmonious symmetry--a union of intellect and conscience. Ideas of value, stored by the first process; marshalled into force, and placed under guidance, by the second; it is the result of the third, to place them before the world in the most attractive or commanding form. This may be done by actions no less than words; but the adaptation of means to end, the passage of ideas from the brain of one man into the lives and souls of all, no less in action than in books, requires study. Action has its art as well as literature. Here Norreys had but to deal with the calling of the scholar, the formation of the writer, and so to guide the perceptions towards those varieties in the sublime and beautiful, the just combination of which is at once CREATION. Man himself is but a combination of elements. He who combines in nature, creates in art. Such, very succinctly and inadequately expressed, was the system upon which Norreys proceeded to regulate and perfect the great native powers of his pupil; and though the reader may perhaps say that no system laid down by another can either form genius or dictate to its results, yet probably nine-tenths at least of those in whom we recognize the luminaries of our race, have passed unconsciously to themselves (for self-education is rarely conscious of its phases), through each of these processes. And no one who pauses to reflect will deny, that according to this theory, illustrated by a man of vast experience, profound knowledge, and exquisite taste, the struggles of genius would be infinitely lessened; its vision cleared and strengthened, and the distance between effort and success notably abridged. Norreys, however, was far too deep a reasoner to fall into the error of modern teachers, who suppose that education can dispense with labor. No mind becomes muscular without rude and early exercise. Labor should be strenuous, but in right directions. All that we can do for it is to save the waste of time in blundering into needless toils. The master had thus first employed his neophyte in arranging and compiling materials for a great critical work in which Norreys himself was engaged. In this stage of scholastic preparation, Leonard was necessarily led to the acquisition of languages, for which he had great aptitude--the foundations of a large and comprehensive erudition were solidly constructed. He traced by the ploughshare the walls of the destined city. Habits of accuracy and of generalization became formed insensibly; and that precious faculty which seizes, amidst accumulated materials, those that serve the object for which they are explored,--(that faculty which quadruples all force, by concentrating it on one point)--once roused into action, gave purpose to every toil and quickness to each perception. But Norreys did not confine his pupil solely to the mute world of a library; he introduced him to some of the first minds in arts, science, and letters--and active life. "These," said he, "are the living ideas of the present, out of which books for the future will be written: study them; and here, as in the volumes of the past, diligently amass and deliberately compile." By degrees Norreys led on that young ardent mind from the selection of ideas to their æsthetic analysis--from compilation to criticism; but criticism severe, close, and logical--a reason for each word of praise or of blame. Led in this stage of his career to examine into the laws of beauty, a new light broke upon his mind; from amidst the masses of marble he had piled around him, rose the vision of the statue. And so, suddenly one day Norreys said to him, "I need a compiler no longer--maintain yourself, by your own creations." And Leonard wrote, and a work flowered up from the seed deep buried, and the soil well cleared to the rays of the sun and the healthful influence of expanded air. That first work did not penetrate to a very wide circle of readers, not from any perceptible fault of its own--there is luck in these things; the first anonymous work of an original genius is rarely at once eminently successful. But the more experienced recognized the promise of the book. Publishers who have an instinct in the discovery of available talent, which often forestalls the appreciation of the public, volunteered liberal offers. "Be fully successful this time," said Norreys; "think not of models nor of style. Strike at once at the common human heart--throw away the corks--swim out boldly. One word more--never write a page till you have walked from your room to Temple Bar, and, mingling with men, and reading the human face, learn why great poets have mostly passed their lives in cities." Thus Leonard wrote again, and woke one morning to find himself famous. So far as the chances of all professions dependent on health will permit, present independence, and, with foresight and economy, the prospects of future confidence were secured. "And, indeed," said Leonard, concluding a longer but a simpler narrative than is here told--"indeed, there is some chance that I may obtain at once a sum that will leave me free for the rest of my life to select my own subjects and write without care for remuneration. This is what I call the true (and, perhaps, alas! the rare) independence of him who devotes himself to letters. Norreys, having seen my boyish plan for the improvement of certain machinery in the steam-engine, insisted on my giving much time to mechanics. The study that once pleased me so greatly, now seemed dull; but I went into it with a good heart; and the result is, that I have improved so far on my original idea, that my scheme has met the approbation of one of our most scientific engineers; and I am assured that the patent for it will be purchased of me upon terms which I am ashamed to name to you, so disproportioned do they seem to the value of so simple a discovery. Meanwhile, I am already rich enough to have realized the two dreams of my heart--to make a home in the cottage where I had last seen you and Helen--I mean Miss Digby; and to invite to that home her who had sheltered my infancy." "Your mother, where is she? Let me see her." Leonard ran out to call the widow, but to his surprise and vexation, learned that she had quitted the house before L'Estrange arrived. He came back perplexed how to explain what seemed ungracious and ungrateful, and spoke with hesitating lip and flushed cheek of the widow's natural timidity and sense of her own homely station. "And so overpowered is she," added Leonard, "by the recollection of all that we owe to you, that she never hears your name without agitation or tears, and trembled like a leaf at the thought of seeing you." "Ha!" said Harley, with visible emotion, "Is it so?" and he bent down, shading his face with his hand. "And," he renewed, after a pause, but not looking up--"and you ascribe this fear of seeing me, this agitation at my name, solely to an exaggerated sense of--of the circumstances attending my acquaintance with yourself?" "And, perhaps, to a sort of shame that the mother of one you have made her proud of is a peasant." "That is all," said Harley, earnestly, now looking up and fixing eyes in which stood tears, upon Leonard's ingenuous brow. "Oh, my dear lord, what else can it be? Do not judge her harshly." L'Estrange rose abruptly, pressed Leonard's hand, muttered something not audible, and then drawing his young friend's arm in his, led him into the garden, and turned the conversation back to its former topics. Leonard's heart yearned to ask after Helen, and yet something withheld him from doing so, till, seeing Harley did not volunteer to speak of her, he could not resist his impulse. "And Helen--Miss Digby--is she much changed?" "Changed, no--yes; very much." "Very much!" Leonard sighed. "I shall see her again?" "Certainly," said Harley, in a tone of surprise. "How can you doubt it? And I reserve to you the pleasure of saying that you are renowned. You blush; well, I will say that for you. But you shall give her your books." "She has not yet read them, then?--not the last? The first was not worthy of her attention," said Leonard, disappointed. "She has only just arrived in England; and, though your books reached me in Germany, she was not then with me. When I have settled some business that will take me from town, I shall present you to her and my mother." There was a certain embarrassment in Harley's voice as he spoke; and, turning round abruptly, he exclaimed, "But you have shown poetry even here. I could not have conceived that so much beauty could be drawn from what appeared to me the most commonplace of all suburban gardens. Why, surely where that charming fountain now plays stood the rude bench in which I read your verses." "It is true; I wished to unite all together my happiest associations. I think I told you, my lord, in one of my letters, that I had owed a very happy, yet very struggling time in my boyhood to the singular kindness and generous instructions of a foreigner whom I served. This fountain is copied from one that I made in his garden, and by the margin of which many a summer day I have sat and dreamt of fame and knowledge." "True, you told me of that; and your foreigner will be pleased to hear of your success, and no less so of your graceful recollections. By the way, you did not mention his name." "Riccabocca." "Riccabocca! My own dear and noble friend!--is it possible? One of my reasons for returning to England is connected with him. You shall go down with me and see him. I meant to start this evening." "My dear lord," said Leonard, "I think that you may spare yourself so long a journey. I have reason to suspect that Signor Riccabocca is my nearest neighbor. Two days ago I was in the garden, when suddenly lifting my eyes to yon hillock I perceived the form of a man seated amongst the bushwood; and, though I could not see his features, there was something in the very outline of his figure and his peculiar position, that irresistibly reminded me of Riccabocca. I hastened out of the garden and ascended the hill, but he was gone. My suspicions were so strong that I caused inquiry to be made at the different shops scattered about, and learned that a family, consisting of a gentleman, his wife, and daughter, had lately come to live in a house that you must have passed in your way hither, standing a little back from the road, surrounded by high walls; and though they were said to be English, yet from the description given to me of the gentleman's person by one who had noticed it, by the fact of a foreign servant in their employ, and by the very name 'Richmouth,' assigned to the new comers, I can scarcely doubt that it is the family you seek." "And you have not called to ascertain?" "Pardon me, but the family so evidently shunning observation (no one but the master himself ever seen without the walls), the adoption of another name, too--lead me to infer that Signor Riccabocca has some strong motive for concealment; and now, with my improved knowledge of life, I cannot, recalling all the past, but suppose that Riccabocca was not what he appeared. Hence, I have hesitated on formally obtruding myself upon his secrets, whatever they may be, and have rather watched for some chance occasion to meet him in his walks." "You did right, my dear Leonard; but my reasons for seeing my old friend forbid all scruples of delicacy, and I will go at once to his house." "You will tell me, my lord, if I am right." "I hope to be allowed to do so. Pray, stay at home till I return. And now, ere I go, one question more: You indulge conjectures as to Riccabocca, because he has changed his name--why have you dropped your own?" "I wished to have no name," said Leonard, coloring, deeply, "but that which I could make myself." "Proud poet, this I can comprehend. But from what reason did you assume the strange and fantastic name of Oran?" The flush on Leonard's face became deeper. "My lord," said he, in a low voice, "it is a childish fancy of mine; it is an anagram." "Ah!" "At a time when my cravings after knowledge were likely much to mislead, and perhaps undo me, I chanced on some poems that suddenly affected my whole mind, and led me up into purer air; and I was told that these poems were written in youth, by one who had beauty and genius--one who was in her grave--a relation of my own, and her familiar name was Nora--" "Ah!" again ejaculated Lord L'Estrange, and his arm pressed heavily upon Leonard's. "So, somehow or other," continued the young author, falteringly, "I wished that if ever I won to a poet's fame, it might be, to my own heart, at least, associated with this name of Nora--with her whom death had robbed of the fame that she might otherwise have won--with her who--" He paused, greatly agitated. Harley was no less so. But as if by a sudden impulse, the soldier bent down his manly head, and kissed the poet's brow; then he hastened to the gate, flung himself on his horse, and rode away. CHAPTER XVII. Lord L'Estrange did not proceed at once to Riccabocca's house. He was under the influence of a remembrance too deep and too strong to yield easily to the lukewarm claim of friendship. He rode fast and far; and impossible it would be to define the feelings that passed through a mind so acutely sensitive, and so rootedly tenacious of all affections. When he once more, recalling his duty to the Italian, retraced his road to Norwood, the slow pace of his horse was significant of his own exhausted spirits; a deep dejection had succeeded to feverish excitement. "Vain task," he murmured, "to wean myself from the dead! Yet I am now betrothed to another; and she, with all her virtues, is not the one to--" He stopped short in generous self-rebuke. "Too late to think of that! Now, all that should remain to me is to insure the happiness of the life to which I have pledged my own. But--" He sighed as he so murmured. On reaching the vicinity of Riccabocca's house, he put up his horse at a little inn, and proceeded on foot across the heath-land towards the dull square building, which Leonard's description had sufficed to indicate as the exile's new home. It was long before any one answered his summons at the gate. Not till he had thrice rung did he hear a heavy step on the gravel walk within; then the wicket within the gate was partially drawn aside, a dark eye gleamed out, and a voice in imperfect English asked who was there. "Lord L'Estrange; and if I am right as to the person I seek, that name will at once admit me." The door flew open as did that of the mystic cavern at the sound of "Open Sesame;" and Giacomo, almost weeping with joyous emotion, exclaimed in Italian, "The good Lord! Holy San Giacomo! thou hast heard me at last! We are safe now." And dropping the blunderbuss with which he had taken the precaution to arm himself, he lifted Harley's hand to his lips, in the affectionate greeting familiar to his countrymen. "And the Padrone?" asked Harley, as he entered the jealous precincts. "Oh, he is just gone out; but he will not be long. You will wait for him?" "Certainly. What lady is that I see at the far end of the garden?" "Bless her, it is our Signorina. I will run and tell her that you are come." "That I am come; but she cannot know me even by name." "Ah, Excellency, can you think so? Many and many a time has she talked to me of you, and I have heard her pray to the holy Madonna to bless you, and in a voice so sweet--" "Stay, I will present myself to her. Go into the house, and we will wait without for the Padrone. Nay, I need the air, my friend." Harley, as he said this, broke from Giacomo, and approached Violante. The poor child, in her solitary walk in the obscurer parts of the dull garden, had escaped the eye of Giacomo when he had gone forth to answer the bell; and she, unconscious of the fears of which she was the object, had felt something of youthful curiosity at the summons at the gate, and the sight of a stranger in close and friendly conference with the unsocial Giacomo. As Harley now neared her with that singular grace of movement which belonged to him, a thrill shot through her heart--she knew not why. She did not recognize his likeness to the sketch taken by her father, from his recollections of Harley's early youth. She did not guess who he was; and yet she felt herself color, and, naturally fearless though she was, turned away with a vague alarm. "Pardon my want of ceremony, Signorina," said Harley, in Italian; "but I am so old a friend of your father's that I cannot feel as a stranger to yourself." Then Violante lifted to him her dark eyes, so intelligent and so innocent--eyes full of surprise, but not displeased surprise. And Harley himself stood amazed, and almost abashed, by the rich and marvellous beauty that beamed upon him. "My father's friend," she said hesitatingly, "and I never to have seen you!" "Ah, Signorina," said Harley (and something of his native humor, half arch, half sad, played round his lip,) "you are mistaken there; you have seen me before, and you received me much more kindly then--" "Signor!" said Violante, more and more surprised, and with a yet richer color on her cheeks. Harley, who had now recovered from the first effect of her beauty, and who regarded her as men of his years and character are apt to regard ladies in their teens, as more child than woman, suffered himself to be amused by her perplexity; for it was in his nature, that the graver and more mournful he felt at heart, the more he sought to give play and whim to his spirits. "Indeed Signorina," said he demurely, "you insisted then on placing one of those fair hands in mine; the other (forgive me the fidelity of my recollections) was affectionately thrown around my neck." "Signor!" again exclaimed Violante; but this time there was anger in her voice as well as surprise, and nothing could be more charming than her look of pride and resentment. Harley smiled again, but with so much kindly sweetness, that the anger vanished at once, or rather Violante felt angry with herself that she was no longer angry with him. But she had looked so beautiful in her anger, that Harley wished, perhaps, to see her angry again. So, composing his lips from their propitiatory smile he resumed, gravely-- "Your flatterers will tell you, Signorina, that you are much improved since then, but I liked you better as you were; not but what I hope to return some day what you then so generously pressed upon me." "Pressed upon you!--I? Signor, you are under some strange mistake." "Alas! no; but the female heart is so capricious and fickle! You pressed it upon me, I assure you. I own that I was not loth to accept it." "Pressed it? Pressed what?" "Your kiss, my child," said Harley; and then added with a serious tenderness, "And I again say that I hope to return it some day--when I see you, by the side of father and of husband, in your native land--the fairest bride on whom the skies of Italy ever smiled! And now, pardon a hermit and a soldier for his rude jests, and give your hand, in token of that pardon, to--Harley L'Estrange." Violante, who at the first words of this address had recoiled, with a vague belief that the stranger was out of his mind, sprang forward as it closed, and in all the vivid enthusiasm of her nature, pressed the hand held out to her, with both her own. "Harley L'Estrange--the preserver of my father's life!" she cried, and her eyes were fixed on his with such evident gratitude and reverence, that Harley felt at once confused and delighted. She did not think at that instant of the hero of her dreams--she thought but of him who had saved her father. But, as his eyes sank before her own, and his head, uncovered, bowed over the hand he held, she recognized the likeness to the features on which she had so often gazed. The first bloom of youth was gone, but enough of youth still remained to soften the lapse of years, and to leave to manhood the attractions which charm the eye. Instinctively she withdrew her hands from his clasp, and, in her turn looked down. In this pause of embarrassment to both, Riccabocca let himself into the garden by his own latch-key, and, startled to see a man by the side of Violante, sprang forward with an abrupt and angry cry. Harley heard and turned. As if restored to courage and self-possession by the sense of her father's presence, Violante again took the hand of the visitor. "Father," she said simply, "it is he--_he_ is come at last." And then, retiring a few steps, she contemplated them both; and her face was radiant with happiness--as if something, long silently missed and looked for, was as silently found, and life had no more a want, nor the heart a void. FOOTNOTES: [20] Continued from page 253. [21] As there have been so many revolutions in France, it may be convenient to suggest that, according to the dates of this story, Harley, no doubt, alludes to that revolution which exiled Charles X. and placed Louis Philippe on the throne. [22] Have you fifty friends?--it is not enough. Have you one enemy?--it is too much. [23] At home--"In the serene regions Where dwell the pure forms." THE WHITE LAMB. A STORY FOR THE YOUNG FOLKS. BY R. H. STODDARD. Once in a far country, for which you might search all the geographies of the world in vain, there lived a poor woman who had a little daughter named Agnes. That she was poor, and had a child, was by no means wonderful; for poor people are common in all parts of the earth; and so for the matter of that, are children too; for which the good God cannot be enough thanked. But this poor woman and child were not altogether like the thousands who surrounded them, as I shall show you in the course of my little story. For the mother was exceeding goodly, and the child was exceeding fair; and goodly too, so far as a child could be. Not that children cannot be as good, aye, and better than most grown people; but in that country they were very bad and ignorant. It is true that there were schools and academies there, and great colleges time-honored and world-renowned; but somehow or other the people were no better, but on the contrary rather worse for all these blessings. Whether they neglected good, or good neglected them, is not for us to inquire now; but certain it is that the greater part of them grew up in ignorance and vice. Now they need not have grown up in vice unless they had preferred it to virtue; though they could hardly have escaped a life of ignorance. There were many priests there to teach them the folly of sin in this world, and its eternal punishment in the next. They were very energetic in picturing the misery of sinners; but in spite of all they could say, and do, they preached to thin and careless congregations: in consequence of which many of their salaries were unpaid from one year's end to another. Most of the men spent their Sabbaths in bull-baiting and dog-fighting; most of the women in gadding from house to house with budgets of scandal; while the children ran off to the woods to snare birds and gather berries, and oftentimes to fight out a match made up the day before. Black eyes were by no means uncommon, with plenty more in perspective when those were healed. This was the life of the mass of people, though I am happy to say there were many exceptions, in men, women, and children, who went to the chapel, as all good Christians should; and lived up to the precepts of the Good Book, as all good Christians do; among whom was the mother and child that I began to tell you about. And not only did the good woman go to church on the Sabbath, and on all the appointed holidays and feasts, but she endeavored to make her life a perpetual sabbath unto the Lord. But the child, because she was of a tender age, could not always accompany her, nor understand why she must always clasp her hands, and kneel down in the pew, when the vicar did the same in his little pulpit. But she was a good child for all that, as the story will show, and loved her mother with an exceeding love. When she was about three years of age, her mother died. Her death, however, was by no means unexpected. The only wonder was that she had lived so long, she was so thin and sickly. Her husband had been dead a little over a year. He left her nothing but his child and poverty; a common legacy among the poorer sort of people in that country. After his death she toiled late and early to maintain herself and babe. Many a dawn she rose before the sun, and the sun rose there very early. Many a night she saw the moon set, and it sets very late at certain seasons of the year; but her labors were never done. The labors of the poor never are until death comes. When death came to her, she rested from her work, and her work followed her. It was a fine day in spring when they buried her. The fresh green earth was full of dew, the soft blue sky without a cloud. It was a day to make one certain of immortality. Few and unconcerned were those who bore her to the grave; they would rather have gone to a merry-making; mere neighbors and nothing more: the dead woman left no friends, or relatives; only her child. When they reached the churchyard, they found the old sexton beside the grave, leaning on his spade, ready to fill it again at the shortest notice. The vicar put on his bands, and read the funeral service. "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, but the spirit to God who gave it." The coffin was lowered into its narrow house and the earth thrown upon it, while the minister of Christ exhorted the people around. Little Agnes being left to herself by those who had charge of her, strayed down the winding paths, and was soon hidden among the grave-stones, which were very thick; for the dead of ages were buried in that little churchyard. At first she wondered why she had been brought there; but the sky was so blue above her, and the earth so beautiful around, that she soon forgot it. The shadow of Death, which falls heavily on the hearts of men, passes like a light mist over the soul of a child. Large butterflies with crimson and golden wings were flying to and fro in the air, and the wild bee pursued its honey-making in the buttercups. She sat down in the long grass, and began to weave the blue violets, as she had seen the basket-maker weave his rushes. Not a month before, a little girl of her own age was laid with many tears in the mound at her feet; but the dew hung there as brightly as in the deep meadows, and the sunshine filled the place, like the smile of God. Nature mourns not like man for the dead whom she has gathered to her bosom in peace. By and by little Agnes began to grow drowsy, and in spite of all she could do to keep awake, she found her eyes closing and her head nodding on her breast; so she repeated the prayer that her good mother had taught her to say before going to bed, and committed herself to the care of her Heavenly Father, and in a moment was fast asleep, and walking in a dream with the Angels. In the mean time the good vicar, having finished his exhortation, and the people having departed, began to wonder at her absence, and searched for her down the path which he remembered to have seen her take. Looking right and left among the grave-stones, and calling "Agnes," with a sweet, low voice, he came to the spot where she had fallen asleep. She was sleeping still, and beside her stood a little lamb, innocent and beautiful. Its fleece was whiter than the driven snow, and glistened in the sunlight like gold. There was a golden collar around its neck, with an inscription in an unknown tongue; and its eyes were exceeding tender and beautiful. There were no folds in that country, and how it could have come there was a mystery which the vicar could not explain; nor could the child when she awoke. She only remembered to have seen it in her dream, following a Shepherd in the pastures of Paradise. As the vicar stood lost in amazement, it drew near him, and looked up in his face with its tender and beautiful eyes, and then at the child, and then in his face again, as much as to say--Here is a poor motherless one; she has no friends in the wide world; who will take care of her, if you do not? Indeed, he fancied that it did say so; and that a voice softer than silence whispered to him, "Feed my Lambs." His heart was touched with pity, and he lifted her up in his arms and bore her to the vicarage. It was not long before the news spread through the neighboring towns, and many of their dwellers came to see the White Lamb and the young child, who grew daily more beautiful and good. The pious seemed to grow better the moment they beheld the loving pair; and the wicked, who had sat for years under the droppings of the sanctuary, or mocked at the goodness of Heaven afar off, grew thoughtful and penitent, and were soon numbered among the people of God. The lamb and child were seldom separated. Little Agnes was very unhappy when parted from it, and it seemed equally unhappy in its turn when parted from her. Sometimes they used to sit for hours together; she poring over the vicar's antique missal, which by this time she had learned to read, and the lamb at her feet, looking up in her face with its tender and beautiful eyes. Sometimes in the warm summer days they went off together to the woods and lanes; sometimes, to the meadows where the daises grew in tufted grass; and little Agnes was wont to braid them in a wreath around her brow. She said one day on returning that she would soon wear a wreath of stars. As regularly as the Sabbath came, they went to the chapel together, side by side. The sexton made a path for them, as they walked up the broad aisle which was now crowded with earnest and devout listeners. Their accustomed place was on the cushioned seat that ran around the altar. When the choir sang their anthems, the voice of the child was heard above the deep bass singers, and the full-toned organ; yet it was softer and sweeter than the voice of a dove. When the vicar read the morning and evening service, her responses fell on the hearts of all like dew; and a halo seemed to encircle her as she listened to the words of life. The people began to consider it a miracle. Cock-fighting and bull-baiting fell into disrepute; drinking and gaming, to which the greater part of them had been bred from childhood, lost _caste_ as amusements, and other vices declined in proportion. It was evident that a great change was going on in the hearts and habits of all. Profane oaths and light jests, which even the gentry condescended to indulge in (as they did in other things better left to their inferiors), were banished from all society, even that of travelling tinkers, time out of mind a coarse set of fellows. Feuds handed down from father to son were dropped at once, and old enemies met with kind greetings, and parted friends. Every body seemed to prosper, and nobody was the worse for it. Beggars began to lay aside their tatters, and wear good substantial garments. There was no longer any need to beg, for work was plentiful. Cottage windows, once stuffed with old hats, rejoiced in the possession of new panes of glass; and new cottages were being builded every where, and every body declared it was the work of the White Lamb. Spring melted into summer, and summer was now on the verge of autumn. The fields were full of harvesters, reaping and binding up yellow sheaves, and barns were open all day, and boys might be seen within, storing up fruit for the winter. Every day added some new grace to the child; but those who were experienced in such matters, mostly mothers who had lost children, said she was dying. Her bloom was too unearthly, her eye too spiritual to last. She was no longer able to run to the woods and fields: a walk to the little summer house at the end of the vicar's garden, only a stone's throw from the door, was sufficient to make her very weary. Nor could she visit the chapel unless carried thither, which was a source of great grief to all the villagers. Day by day she grew more lovely and feeble; and the lamb grew more fond of her: they could not for a moment separate them. It clung to her days as she sat in her little chair leaning on pillows; and nights it crept to her feet as she lay upon her couch dreaming of the angels. Its white fleece seemed to grow more white, and its eyes more tender and beautiful. And it often looked at the fading child, and at the far blue sky, shining through the lattice, and its glance seemed to say--Heaven is waiting for this little slip of earth, and it must soon go. Autumn came at last, and the child was dying. It was morning, and she lay on her couch, with half the village around her. Her eyes were fixed upon the sky, and her arms were entwined about the lamb, who lay with its head in her bosom. The vicar knelt down, and prayed. He could not bear to lose the light of his household, though he knew that the angels were waiting for her on the threshold of heaven. When he arose she slept. Ages have passed since then, and she still sleeps; and will sleep till the heavens and the earth shall have passed away. The next day was the Sabbath, and they bore her to the little churchyard where her mother was buried. Their graves were dug side by side. All the children and maidens, dressed in white, followed her bier; and half the mothers in the village wept as if she had been their own child; and the Lamb, looking whiter than ever, walked in their midst. But when the services were over and the coffin lowered into the grave, it looked once at the far blue sky, and then turned away, and walked down the path which little Agnes had taken at her mother's funeral. No one dared to stop it; but all watched it with breathless attention until it disappeared among the grave-stones. Some of the boldest, and the vicar among the rest, followed to where it seemed to disappear, but could find no further traces. Nobody was ever able to account for it, but every body believed it to have been a miracle, manifested for their salvation, notwithstanding a wise philosopher who wrote a large folio to prove that it never existed at all. Its memory is still preserved with veneration in that country, and from that day to this, the people have continued godly and pious. --And so ends the story of the White Lamb. * * * * * M. Romieu, an ultramontane writer, quoted with much parade by the _Tablet_, says of France:--"The most exact picture of our epoch is drawn in the phrase, 'that not a woman is brought to bed in France who does not give birth to a Socialist.'" On this the _Nation_ remarks:--"In what a dissolute condition _la jeune France_, with all its bibs and tuckers, must certainly be! Only imagine Madame de Montalembert brought to bed of twin Phalansteriens! The lady of M. Jules Gondou, _redacteur de l'Univers_, of a horrid little Fourierist! The nursery of M. de Falloux in red pinafores, squalling out _Soc.-de-moc._ canticles! Never before such danger in swaddling clothes!" Authors and Books. A curious work, which will not be devoid of interest to the historian or _belles-lettres_ antiquary, has recently been published at Leipzig, under the title of _Die Alexandersage bei den Orientalern_ (or the Legend of Alexander as it exists in the East), by Dr. FREDERICK SPIEGEL. With the exception of King Arthur, no personage plays a more extended rôle in the romantic European legends of the middle ages, than Alexander; but our readers may not be generally aware that the feats of this great conqueror are still perpetuated under a thousand strange forms even on the remote East, generally under the name of Iskander. "No historic material has ever been more widely extended than this history of Alexander, and there are even yet races in the interior of Central Asia who declare themselves directly descended from him;"--precisely, no doubt, as certain very respectable families extant at the present day in Hungary and Italy prove themselves lineal descendants of Julius Cæsar, �neas, and even Noah. "In the earliest times, even in the very scene of his exploits, Alexander became a hero of legend-like and exaggerated histories, a collection of which, bearing the name of _Pseudo-Callisthenes_, as editor, is yet preserved; and from this came the innumerable Alexanderine romances of the middle ages, which at length totally obscured the true accounts of the conqueror. In the East, also, and particularly in Persia, he has been made the subject of many great epic poems. The relation existing between all these legends, which have sprung up at such different times, and under such extremely varied circumstances, is an interesting problem for the literary historian, and the book we have mentioned is valuable, since in it every thing relating to the Persian portion thereof, is given in full." From the index, an admirable analysis of its contents, and a somewhat extended abridgment, which we have perused, we may assert that few works more curiously interesting have for a long time been published. * * * * * Of great interest to antiquaries and positive utility to artists, is the _Trachten des Christlichen Mittelalters_ (or Dresses of the Christian Middle Age), by J. VON HOFNER. As they are all taken from _contemporary_ works of art, they may be relied on for correctness. The part last published consists of the second division, embracing guises of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Among others, the reader may find Armour of the sixteenth century, the Dress of a lady of rank in the middle of the same century, a French dress of the fifteenth century, and a tournament helmet of the same period. Such books serve better than any reading to impress on the minds of the young correct ideas of past manners and times. * * * * * We observe a German version of _The Popular Nomenclature of American Plants_, under the title of _Die Volksnamen der Amerikan. Pflanzen_, by BERTHOLD SEEMANN, published at Hanover, by Rümpler. Of this book a German reviewer remarks, that "the knowledge of the popular local names in systematic botany has hitherto been neglected in such an unaccountable manner, that the appearance of the above-cited work has awakened a joyful surprise among all who are capable of appreciating its value. This well-deserving traveller, whose name at present is in every mouth, has in a great measure by his own exertions, and partly from the works and indications of Aublet, Bridges, Cruickshanks, De Candolle, Gardner, Gilles, Hooker, Humboldt and Bonpland, Lindley, la Llave and Lergarga, Martius, Miers, Pursch, Ruaz and Pavon, Torrey and Gray, Cervantes and Bustamente, carefully and scientifically collected above two thousand of the names with which the different races of the American Continent designate the most important of their plants. Moreover, he has fully succeeded in conforming these names, almost without exception, to the systematic scientific terminology by which they are known, or at least has given their family. With this work a path has been opened which will prove servicable not only to the botanist but also to the philologist, and which we trust will in future be trodden frequently by the author and other travellers." * * * * * Of the interesting historical compositions lately published, we may cite by FR. GERLACH _Die Geschichte der Römer_ (or History of the Romans), and _Die Geschichtschreiber der Deutschen Vorzeit_ (or The Historians of the early German Times), the fifth volume of which has just appeared, containing the Chronicle of Herimann, according to the edition of the _Monumenta Germaniæ_. We have also, with a colossal title which we in part omit, three volumes of the _Fontes Rerum Austriacarum_ (or Austrian Sources of History), published by the historical commission of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Vienna. This is spoken of as a really wonderful collection of curious documents. The sources of Austrian history have been at all times sadly neglected, and this work may in a great measure supply the deficiency. In the same department we have also the second volume of MIGNET'S _History of Mary Stuart_, from an English version of which we have already quoted somewhat largely in this magazine. * * * * * To the historian and geographer COUNT KARL FREDERIC VON HUGEL'S account of _Karbul-Becken and the Mountains between the Hindu Kosch and the Sutlej_, will be found fresh and interesting. * * * * * The third continuation of the third year of the _Historisches Taschenbuch_ (or Historical Pocket-book), of FREDERICK VON RAUMER published by Brochkaus of Leipzig, has just made its appearance. The most interesting article which it contains is entitled, "The Sikhs and their Kingdom," by Karl Friederich Neumann. "Such an account by so well-informed a writer," says a German review, "is of no little interest." As every eminent European scholar, who has distinguished himself by manifesting an interest in American affairs, deserves to be particularly known in this country, we translate for the _International_ a short account of Professor Neumann, which we partially extract from a MS. sketch written by himself in the summer of 1847. Carl Friederich Neumann, Professor of Oriental Languages and History at the University of Munich, and one of the most learned sinologists of modern times, was resident in China during the years 1829 and 1830. In Canton, he became possessor of a large library of Chinese books, from which he has since drawn the materials for works distinguished by their originality, erudition, and untiring industry. Previous to this visit to China, and to better qualify himself for it, he had, after finishing his studies at the Universities of Heidelberg and Göttingen, remained for a long time at Venice, Paris, and London, occupied exclusively in the studies of Oriental languages and history. After his return from China, he was appointed in 1838 Professor of the Chinese and Armenian tongues at the University of Munich. Professor Neumann has ever been remarkably unprejudiced with regard to America, and we were first induced to seek his acquaintance on hearing his frequent praises of our country, while attending these lectures. He is the author of a number of works in the Latin, French, German, and English languages, all of which he writes with facility. He also ranks high as a mathematician and student of natural philosophy. His most curious work is contained in a small pamphlet, entitled _The Chinese in California and Mexico in the Fifth Century_, proving from ancient Chinese chronicles, whose accounts are substantiated by our subsequent knowledge of natural phenomena therein described, that those countries were, in the fifth century, visited by Buddhist priests at the time mentioned. * * * * * A late number of the _Europa_ contains a notice of the _London Art Journal_. We have not time to read the article, but suggest that the least which a Leipzig reviewer _should_ say of this periodical, is, that it contains infinitely more news relative to the present condition of art in Germany, than the _Kunst Blatt_, or Munich _Art Journal_ itself. There is hardly any magazine of which we make more use in the _International_, than the London _Art Journal_. * * * * * One of the most practical handbooks of a higher order for the use of the learned, in _Roman Antiquities_, is that by W. BEEKER, ex-Professor at Leipzig--the third part of which has just made its appearance. The parts already published contain the first part of the State Government of ancient Italy; the Provinces ('of which we have here for the first time a complete statistical account'); and the State Constitution. The publisher promises that in the coming volumes there will be given the departments of Finance and War, Jurisprudence, Religion and Private Antiquities. In connection with this we may cite the _Legis Rubriæ pars superstes_, a beautifully lithographed _fac-simile_ of this classic curiosity, and also by Dr. ADAM ZINZOW _De Pelasgicis Romanorum Sacris_, which is a treatise on those oldest of the Roman local legends which the author considers as Pelasgic. * * * * * In our forgetfulness of such "opium reading" we are oft apt to imagine the days of mysticism and the supernaturalism gone by. Germany, however, occasionally reminds us that the world is ever prone to return to the spectre-haunted paths trodden by its forefathers. One of the latest _recallers_ of this description, is a second and very considerably enlarged edition of Dr. JOSEPH ENNEMOSER'S _Historio-Physiological Inquiries into the Origin and Existence of the Human Soul_. Of a somewhat similar school, we have the second volume of the collected works of FRANZ VON BAADER, and separate from these, by Dr. FRANZ HOFFMANN, _Franz Baader in his relations to Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Jacobi, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Herbart_. Six groschens worth of stout and vivid abuse of the atheist FEUERBACH has also been published by Bläsing of Erlangen. * * * * * We have already called attention to the tenth edition of BROCKHAUS'S _Conversations-Lexikon_, now publishing serially at Leipzig. The twenty-first part is before us, and we again take occasion to commend the work to our readers. We know no other encyclopædia which compares with it in universal excellence and utility, and this edition is a great improvement upon its predecessors. In the biography of living personages of distinction it is especially rich; in this respect alone it deserves to be found in the libraries even of those who own the earlier editions. The biographies of American statesmen and scholars are given with detail and correctness. * * * * * A work which may be of some interest to the belles-lettres antiquarian, has just been published by Schmidt, of Halle: _The Sources of Popular Songs in German Literature_. Such a performance is more necessary for the songs of Germany than for those of any other nation, since no where else is there so much which really requires explanation to the moderns. * * * * * A most agreeable book is _Schiller and his Paternal House_, lately published at Stuttgart, by Herr SAUPE. The great poet is here depicted in the midst of his father's family, all of whom loved him dearly, and respected as much as they loved. A Hamburg journal says a good and sharp word about the mania of the Germans for hunting up the literary remains of Goethe and Schiller. The volumes of memoirs, correspondence, diaries, and other relics of these great men, would make a library far exceeding in quantity all the volumes they published themselves. Nothing so much proves the absence of great and significant persons in the literature of the present day as this almost convulsive clinging to the immortal deceased, and the endless endeavor to talk and write about them, and publish every thing that can be twisted into a connection with their history or writings. Presently we shall hear of the republication of the school-books they studied, with all the thumb-marks and pot-hooks then scribbled by the future great men. This is said on occasion of D�RING'S _Schiller and Goethe_, which the writer thinks might as well have been unwritten. * * * * * The number of books on military subjects published in Germany, must astonish the American not accustomed to see at every corner a _gendarme_, or behold his bayonet protruding occasionally from behind the scene-paintings of a theatre, where he is posted to preserve order. In two numbers of a weekly review, we find notices of no less than fourteen books on strictly military matters. For readers who take an interest in such subjects, we translate the titles of few: _The Battles of Frederic the Great; The Armies of the Present Day and their Future Destiny; Military Fireworks in the Royal Prussian Army; The Organization and Formation of the Bavarian Army and the Military Budget;_ and _A Short Abridgment of Naval Artillery_. With these works we may also cite De GUSTAV SIMON'S new essay On _Gunshot Wounds_, which is said to contain valuable contributions to this branch of surgery. * * * * * The thirtieth volume of _The Library of Collected German Literature_, contains _Der Wälsche Gast_ (or the Italian Guest), by THOMASIN VON ZIRELARIA: an old German poem of the Middle Ages, now published the first time, with philologic and historical remarks by Dr. HEINRICH RUCKERT; and by K. A. HAHN we have _Die Echten Lieder von den Niebelungen_ (or The True Songs of the Niebelungen), according to LECKMANN'S criticisms. * * * * * A biography of the late eminent philologist, KARL LACHMANN, written by his pupil, MARTIN HERTZ, has recently been published by W. Herz of Leipsic. With the Life itself are given several important posthumous literary relics of the great scholar. * * * * * The _History of German Literature_ now publishing at Leipsic by Dr. HENRY KURZ, seems to be one of the most perfect and admirable works of the kind ever undertaken. It will contain in all 1600 octavo pages with portraits, fac-similes, monuments, residences of authors, and every sort of pictorial illustration that can increase the value and interest of the work. Copious extracts will be given from the writers spoken of, and from the whole range of German literature. Two parts have already been published; the first goes back to the earliest times and comes down to the middle of the twelfth century, and the second to the middle of the fourteenth. Though printed in elegant style, and adorned with so many fine wood cuts, the parts are sold at about twenty-two cents: twenty-five parts complete the work. * * * * * J. E. HORN has published, by Wigand of Leipsic, two volumes on LUDWIG KOSSUTH--the first volume treating of Kossuth as agitator, and the second of Kossuth as minister. "We have in the author a most determined admirer of the Hungarian chief; one whose respect for the hero is not however expressed in enthusiastic encomiums; but he attempts by a clear and sensible analysis of his deeds, of the circumstances upon which they depended, and the consequences to which they have led, to excite in the reader a corresponding conviction." * * * * * The reader who likes to take history in an entertaining form is recommended to BEHSE'S _History of the Austrian Court, Nobility, and Diplomacy_, of which two volumes are just published in Germany. They can make no just claim to philosophical thoroughness, but are full of readable anecdotes and interesting glimpses of character. * * * * * Among recent curious translations of Oriental literature published in Germany, we observe the _Quarante Questions Addressées par les doct Juifs au Prophéte Mahomet_ (or The Forty Questions addressed by the learned Jews to the prophet Mahomet.) The work is accompanied with a Turkish text and glossary, for the use of Orientalists. * * * * * The second volume of the second edition of B�CKH'S celebrated _Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener_ (or Political Economy of the Athenians), has just been published by G. Reimer, of Berlin. So thoroughly has this edition and particularly this volume been revised, and so materially increased, that it may be regarded as almost a new work. * * * * * Among artistic philosophic works, we see mention of one entitled _Aesthetic Inquiries into the Modern Drama_, by HENMAN HETTNER. With its merits we are not acquainted, but the subject, if properly treated, might serve for an extremely interesting and useful work. * * * * * Almost every writer on Egyptian theology, from Jablonsky to Bunsen, has endeavored to identify, among the manifold gods of their Pantheon, the eight older deities mentioned by Herodotus, in the 145th chapter of the _Euterpe_. In a note to his _Chronologie der Aegypter_, Lepsius announced the discovery, that this series originally consisted only of seven, and was subsequently enlarged to eight. In a quarto volume, first issued at Berlin, _Uber den ersten Aegyptischen Götterkries und seine geschichtlich-mythologische Entetchung_. (On the First Series of Egyptian Gods, and its Historico-Mythological Origin,) a dissertation read before the Royal Academy of Berlin, he supplies the monumental and other evidence of this discovery, and gives the names of these deities _majoram gentium_. * * * * * SMIRDIN, a publisher of St. Petersburg, who some time since commenced the issue of a uniform edition of the more prominent authors of Russia, of which he has already published thirty volumes, has now begun a new edition of Karamsin's _History of the Russian Empire_. It will be completed in ten volumes; the first is already published. This is regarded as the best history of Russia extant, though it notoriously misstates many facts in order to flatter the imperial house and sustain its absolute authority. It has previously passed through five editions, and it is estimated that twenty-four thousand copies of it are in Russian public libraries and the hands of private persons. * * * * * The traditional literature of Germany, already very rich, has received an important addition in the _Sagenbuch der Bairischen Lande_ (Book of Traditions of the Bavarian Provinces), of which the first volume has just been published at Munich. These sagas are collected by the editor, Mr. A. SCH�PPNER, from the mouth of the people, from out-of-the-way old chronicles, and from the ballads of the poets. They are full of natural humor and poetic beauty. * * * * * S. DIDUNG has lately written _The Fundamental Laws of Art, and the German Art-Language, with Poems dedicated to the German Spirit_. This singular mixture of subjects under one title seems peculiar to Germany, where authors occasionally have recourse to curious expedients in book-making. * * * * * PROF. WILHELM ZAHN has printed the fourth part of the third continuation of _The most Beautiful Ornaments and most Remarkable Pictures from Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiæ, with several Sketches and Views_, and a new German edition of HAGMANN'S _Sketches_, got up in excellent style. * * * * * MISS BREMER'S records of her visit to the United States will appear as _Homes of the New World_. * * * * * One HERR FROST, who flourishes as Director of the Institution for the Blind at Prague, has published a novel under the title of the _Wandering Jew_. It is intended to counteract the bad influence of Eugene Sue's romance of that name. The hero is a great believer in Sue's socialist theories, and attempts to instruct a rural community in them, but is repelled and put to shame by their sturdy good sense. * * * * * By the learned and celebrated jurist MITTERMAIER, of Heidelberg, we have _The English, Scottish, and North-American systems of Punishment, in connection with their Political, Moral, and Social Circumstances, and the particulars of Practical Law_. The work is represented by a reviewer as fully indicating, by the singular copiousness of its contents, "its author's wonderful and greatly celebrated industry in collecting (_sammelfleiss_)." * * * * * MITTERMAIER, the eminent German jurist, has just published at Erlangen an elaborate work upon _The English, Scotch, and American Criminal Practice_, in its relations with the political, moral, and social situation of those countries. The work goes into the minute details of the subject. It is calculated to exercise a profound influence upon criminal practice in Germany. * * * * * Mr. HERMANN WEISS is about to publish in Germany _A History of the Costumes of all Ages and Nations_. * * * * * A very valuable and interesting chapter of French literary history, is M. DE BLIGNIERE'S _Essay on Amyot and on the French Translators of the Sixteenth Century_, lately published at Paris in an octavo volume. Amyot was the first to render Heliodorus, Plutarch, and Lenginus into French, and his excellence consists in a naive sincerity, which, while it seeks only the true version of his author, lends to it unconsciously the most pleasing impression of the translator himself. * * * * * A new French translation of the works of _Silvio Pellico_ has appeared at Paris, from the pen of M. LEZAUD. It includes the Memoirs of the celebrated Italian, and his _Discourses upon Duties_. The translation is praised by no less a critic than Saint Marc Girardin. * * * * * A FRENCH translation of the _Rig-Veda_, that is, of the most ancient of all the _Vedas_, is just finished at Paris, where the fourth and last volume appeared about the middle of January. The translator is M. LANGLOIS of the Institute. * * * * * In the year 1851 there were published in France 7,350 works in different languages; the average yearly product of the previous ten years was only 6,456; of musical works in 1851, there were 485. * * * * * There is now appearing serially at Paris a _History of the Bastille_, from its foundation in 1374, to its destruction in 1789. It is to contain a full narrative of its mysteries, its prisoners, its governors, its archives, the tortures and punishments inflicted upon prisoners, with revelations of the whole internal management of this great prison, and also a great variety of adventures, dramatic, tragical and scandalous. The dish is to be completed and spiced with some rich glimpses of the mysteries of the French police during the period referred to. The authors of this publication are Messrs. ARNOULD, ALBIOZE, and MAGNET. The last named has sometimes been employed to help Alexander Dumas as a playwright. These writers also announce that when they have got through with the Bastille, they shall attack the Castle of Vincennes, and give the history of the same from its foundation to the present day. They propose first to consider it as a royal palace, under which head they will narrate a variety of orgies and debauchery; next as a fortress, when they will narrate sieges and battles; and finally as a state prison, when they will give the history of the leading prisoners there confined, with an account of the dungeons, the torture chambers, &c., and kindred particulars. This work will be illustrated with steel engravings. * * * * * COUNT MONTALEMBERT is engaged upon a work whose materials has been fifteen years in collecting. It is to be entitled _Historie de la Renaissance du Paganism, depuis Philip-le-Bel jusq'à Robespierre_ (History of the Revival of Paganism, from Philip the Handsome to Robespierre.) Mr. Montalembert, who is universally known as an ultra Catholic, holds that the noblest era in history was that part of the middle ages, when the Catholic faith was at the climax of its influence and splendor. What distinguishes modern times is paganism, and the essence of paganism is modern education and science. Classical education is especially a bad thing. One great hope of this age lies in the reëstablishment of the jesuits and the religious education they will confer. * * * * * Several eminent scholars are in the list of candidates for the Greek Professorship of Edinburgh, but the struggle is considered to be between Dr. William Smith, whose classical dictionaries have gained him a high reputation, Mr. Price, for many years a successful teacher at Rugby, Professor M'Dowell, of Queen's College, Belfast, and Professor Blackie, of Aberdeen. The election occurs March 2d. * * * * * DR. J. V. C. SMITH has just published (Gould & Lincoln, Boston) _A Pilgrimage to Palestine, Embracing a Journal of Explorations in Syria, Turkey, and the Kingdom of Greece_. * * * * * In illustration of the advancement of learning in Turkey, the London _Literary Gazette_ mentions, that when the department of the Ministry of Public Instruction was created four or five years ago in Constantinople, it became apparent that there existed a desideratum of Moslem civilization necessary to be supplied as soon as possible--a _Turkish Vocabulary_ and a _Turkish Grammar_, compiled according to the development of modern philology. The Grammar has now been published, compiled by Fuad Effendi, _mustesher_ of the Grand Vizier, assisted by Ahmed Djesvid Effendi, another member of the Council of Instruction. Translations will be made into several languages, the French edition being now in preparation by two gentlemen belonging to the Foreign Office of the Sublime Porte, who have obtained a privilege of ten years for its sale. * * * * * SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON has just brought out a complete collection of his _Poems_, except only, we believe, the once pretty famous book of _The Siamese Twins_. His _My Novel, or Varieties of English Life_, is nearly finished, and he will give to the world a new three volume novel in the course of the spring. He is also bringing out, with final revisions, notes, &c., all his prose writings, in a neat and cheap edition. In the new preface to _Alice, or the Mysteries_, he says: "So far as an author may presume to judge of his own writings, no narrative fiction by the same hand (with the exception of the poem of _King Arthur_) deserves to be classed before this work in such merit as may be thought to belong to harmony between a premeditated conception, and the various incidents and agencies employed in the development of plot." * * * * * LADY BULWER LYTTON has written two extraordinary letters to the _Morning Post_, of a review in that paper, of her _School for Husbands_, hinting at what _might_ have been said about some of the minor faults, had the book been written by any body else, and going out of her way, to remind us that her husband is a plagiarist. Repeating one of Mr. Joseph Miller's anecdotes of a larceny of brooms, ready made, she says. "And so it is with the great _Bombastes_ of the Press--Sir E. Bulwer Lytton. Truly, therefore, may he exclaim:-- "----Non ulla laborum: O Virgo nova ni facies inopinaque surgit, Omnia percipi atque animo mecum ante peregi." And well may a _sapient, moral_, and _impartial_ press uphold so great an empiric." * * * * * LORD COCKBURN, one of the Scottish judges, is preparing a _Memoir of Lord Jeffrey_, with selections from his correspondence. "The ability, judgment, and taste of Henry Cockburn, as well as political sympathy and personal friendship," the _Athenæum_ says, "give him every fitness for being the biographer of Francis Jeffrey." * * * * * The last number of the London _Quarterly Review_ presents a new candidate for the honor of the authorship of JUNIUS, in the person of the second Lord LYTTLETON--best known in his lifetime for profligacy, and since, for the curious circumstances attending his death, which are well related in Sir Walter Scott's _Demonology and Witchcraft_. The reviewer proves Lord Lyttleton capable of writing the letters; that he had motives to write them; that his conduct on other occasions is consistent with Junius's anxiety to preserve his incognito; and that there are curious coincidences between his character and conduct, and many characteristic passages in the letters. This directs research to a new quarter; but though a good _prima facie_ case of suspicion is made out, that is all. Positive evidence is wanted. A writer in the London _Athenæum_, who long ago demolished the claims of Sir Philip Francis to be considered Junius (Lord Mahon's judgment to the contrary notwithstanding), and who has since pretty satisfactorily disposed of the dozen or more other prominent claimants, has, we think, conclusively answered the _Quarterly's_ claim in behalf of Lord Lyttleton. We should like to know who the critic of the _Athenæum_ supposes to be the Great Unknown. In one of the volumes of the _Grenville Papers_, just published in London, the author says: "With respect to the letters addressed to Mr. Grenville by the author of 'Junius,' which will be printed in the concluding volumes of this correspondence, it will be sufficient to say for the present, that there is not a particle of truth in all the absurd tales that have been invented, as to their preservation or discovery. In the proper place I shall have an opportunity of explaining that there was no mystery attaching to them, beyond the anonymous nature of the author's communication." This is rather unfavorable, as far as it goes, to the hypothesis of Lyttelton's having been the author. It throws us back upon Sir David Brewster's claim in behalf of Mr. Maclean. Upon that theory, probably, the archives of London House could throw some light. It may be mentioned, with reference to this subject that the _Grenville Papers_ go far to substantiate Lord Shelburne's title to the designation of _Malagrida_. * * * * * We find in the _Athenæum_ an account of a curious case, having considerable interest for the lovers of old Italian literature, which has just been decided by the Sacred Council in Rome. "About seventeen years ago the Count Alberti, then a sub-lieutenant in the Roman army, announced to the world, that he had in his possession, many of the unpublished papers of TORQUATO TASSO, written with the poet's own hand; and also a large collection of documents, throwing new light on certain passages of his career,--particularly on those, which up to that time, had been considered the most mysterious and disputable--his first connection with Alphonse d'Este, the proud Duke of Ferrara, and the real causes of his imprisonment and liberation. Of course, the world was somewhat skeptical as to the truth of this announcement; and Alberti either could not or would not satisfy the doubts of the unbelieving by a plain statement of how, when, and by what means these precious papers came into his possession. Four years later, however, Candido Mazzaroni, a bookseller of Ancona, purchased a portion of them for publication,--and they were given to the world under the title of _Interesting Documents on the Entrance of Torquato Tasso into the service of Alphonse d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, and on the Presents he received at that memorable Period_. In the following year--that is, in 1839--Count Alberti sold the remainder of his manuscripts to Signor Giusta, a bookseller of Lucca, who published them under the title of _The real Causes of the Imprisonment and Liberation of Torquato Tasso proved by History and authentic Documents_. Now came the unpleasant part of the affair to the noble owner of the mysterious manuscripts. No sooner was this second book announced in the papers, than Signor Mazzaroni brought an action against the count for having sold him forged documents and autographs. On this charge Alberti was arrested, and in due time a commission was named by the tribunal to examine the documents in question. In consequence of the slowness which characterizes all judicial proceedings beyond the Alps, it was not until September, 1844, that this commission gave its opinion, declaring the said documents to be forgeries. Alberti was accordingly condemned to seven years' imprisonment. He appealed against the sentence, and demanded that the whole case might be re-examined from the beginning. Thereupon, a second commission was named, with larger powers; and before this body the count laid the proofs of authenticity which he possessed. He proved to their satisfaction that the manuscripts in question had been left by the Abbé Maranetonio to Prince Ottavio Falconieri, from whose library they had come to him. The Court admitted his evidence, quashed the former sentence, and ordered the prisoner to be set at liberty. The cream, however, of the affair is, that the second Commission took nearly seven years to arrive at this conclusion,--so that the Count's imprisonment had about expired by efflux of time when the Sacra Consulta declared it to be unmerited." * * * * * MR. BANCROFT is about publishing a history of the American Revolution in three volumes. It is announced by Bentley in London, and will be brought out here by Little & Brown, of Boston, the publishers of his History of the United States. The present book is altogether distinct from that history, upon which the author is still busily engaged. During the years of his foreign residence, MR. BANCROFT has been storing the richest materials for his great work; and the public, which in the broad perception and brilliant style of the first volumes of his History recognized the master, awaits with eagerness the conclusion. After the long silence of Mr. BANCROFT, the present volumes will be doubly welcome. The first volume, which will appear before the others, treats of the causes of the Revolution. * * * * * The Hon. JOHN G. PALFREY, L.L.D., has just published (by Crosby and Nichols, of Boston) the third and fourth volumes of his very able work on the _Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities_. It is about ten years, we believe, since the first and second volumes appeared. Without finding fault with Dr. Palfrey's politics, we are glad to chronicle his return to the pursuits of scholarship. * * * * * MR. GEORGE W. CURTIS has in press another volume of Eastern travel, in which the public will welcome the sequel to his very successful _Nile Notes of a Howadji_, one of the most brilliant books the last year added to English literature. We understand, from those who have been favored with a sight of the manuscript, that the _Howwadji in Syria_ will be somewhat graver in its tone than its predecessor, as befits a book which records the impressions of Palestine and the Arabian desert, but, that it will breathe the same Oriental atmosphere, and abound in the same graceful humor and flowing imagination which lent so great a charm to that work. No traveller so truly reproduces the soul and sentiment of these ancient and mysterious countries of the Orient as Mr. Curtis, and this makes him as much preferable, for our reading, to the collectors of dry statistics and the jotters down of petty daily adventures, as the artist who paints a lovely person in the full glow of beauty is to a tedious gossip who describes the color of her gloves or the material of her bonnet. The one gives you a living reality; the other mere accidents and circumstances. * * * * * The poems of WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED are in press, by Redfield. Miss Mitford, in her _Recollections of a Literary Life_, just published in London, says of these writings: "That they are the most finished and graceful verses of society that can be found in our language, it is impossible to doubt. At present they are so scarce that the volume from which I transcribe the greater part of the following extracts is an American collection, procured with considerable difficulty and delay from the United States." The collection referred to was made by the editor of the _International_, for the same love Miss Mitford feels for its delightful contents, and was published many years ago by Langley, a bookseller in the Astor House. It is the only volume by Praed ever printed, and it has been long out of the market. Mr. Redfield's new edition will be much more complete. * * * * * MR. R. H. STODDARD, the poet, is preparing a volume of fairy tales for children. Poets were always the friends of fairies; they it is who bring them within the sphere of human sympathies. That Mr. STODDARD is the very Laureate of Titania, to sing her summer revels, the rare delicacy of perception and graceful music of the volume of poems published by him in the autumn, is the certificate. * * * * * Rev. H. N. HUDSON continues his admirable edition of Shakspeare. Early drawn to the study of the poet, and pursuing that study against every disadvantage, until he had embodied, in a series of lectures, his views of Shakspeare and impressions of his plays, we well remember the excitement which greeted his public reading of them in Boston, before the literary aristocracy of the Athens of Massachusetts. A shimmering brilliancy played along his analysis, rather of fancy than of imagination,--almost rather of conceit than thought; but they approved him a most competent critic, and this edition shows his admirable editorial qualities. * * * * * The _History of Classical Literature_, by R. W. BROWNE, which has lately been much praised by London critics, has been republished by Blanchard & Lea, of Philadelphia. The volume commences with Homer and closes with Aristotle; and the plan pursued is to give a biography of each author, an account of the period in which he flourished, and then a criticism on the character of his works. All the chapters are written with a careful remembrance that the general, and not the strictly scholarly, reader, is being addressed; and hence a comprehensive historical air most desirable in a book assuming to be a history rather than an analysis of a literature. The _Iliad_ is examined as a poem, but also as affording evidences of the manners, customs, and civilization of the east at the time at which the poem was composed. The philosophers are enumerated; but their philosophy is examined more with reference to its indications as to society than for its bearings on the schools. Demosthenes is dealt with as the orator than as the politician. The story of Socrates is told, not for the individual, but for the universal model. In every respect, the work is ably executed. * * * * * A survey of the literature of the Southern States is in preparation by JOHN R. THOMPSON, editor of the _Southern Literary Messenger_. It will make an ample volume in octavo, comprising biographical and critical notices of the chief writers of that part of the Union, with liberal extracts from their characteristic productions. Mr. Thompson is a fine scholar, and has taste, and a thorough acquaintance with the intellectual resources of the South, and his work will be interesting and valuable, in many ways, though we suspect that it will fail of the accomplished editor's intent to show a general unfairness toward southern writing by northern cities. We have nothing to offer here as to the causes, but we hold it to be a maintainable fact that the south has not contributed her part to the intellectual riches of the country. We may, perhaps, discuss the subject fully on the appearance of Mr. Thompson's volume, with which, we are sure, the south will have abundant reason to be satisfied. Historical Review of the Month. American diplomacy is pushing on into the Orient. A treaty has been negotiated with Persia, by Mr. Marsh, our ambassador at Constantinople, which guarantees to our commerce all the advantages enjoyed by the most favored nations. The overtures for this treaty came from the Shah himself, through his envoy at Constantinople, and were promptly met by Mr. Marsh, acting under the instructions of Secretary Clayton. It now remains to be seen whether our trade with the Persian kingdom will grow to much under the favorable influence of the new compact. Up to the present day Persia does not figure very largely in the annual returns of the treasury department. The idea of renewing the search for Sir John Franklin, by American vessels, has been set on foot again by a letter of Commodore WILKES, who advises the dispatching of ships to Wellington Channel, and explorations from there by sledges, especially in a westerly direction. Mr. HENRY GRINNELL has also addressed a memorial to Congress, supported by the petition of a large number of citizens of New-York, asking that the Government will again fit out and man his two vessels, the Advance and Rescue, which he offers for the purpose, and send them out, accompanied by a store ship and a propeller. The Maryland Institute, and a large number of the citizens of Baltimore, have also addressed a similar petition to Congress. It is certain that, what with the efforts of our own countrymen and those of the British government, the subject will not be abandoned till something positive has been ascertained with regard to the fate of Franklin and his companions. Congress has continued in session, but has accomplished little or no useful legislation within the month. The time has been mainly occupied with debates on foreign intervention, on giving the job of printing the census to the publishers of the _Union_ newspaper, and on the abolition of the law giving the delegate from Oregon only $2500 mileage. The census printing question occasioned a rencontre between Senator Borland, of Arkansas, and Mr. Kennedy, the Superintendent of the Census, in which Senator Borland got into a passion and knocked Mr. Kennedy down, breaking his nose, at the same time that he vehemently expressed a desire, to the bystanders who interfered to prevent further violence, to get at Mr. Kennedy in order that he might "cut the d----d rascal's throat." Mr. Stanly, of North Carolina, and Mr. Giddings, of Ohio, have had a passage of personalities in the House, which has been quite universally condemned by the press and public. Kossuth has continued his career of triumph in the west, and besides the ovations of the people, has received a large amount of the material aid, which he especially seeks. Wherever he goes, he receives contributions of money and offerings of arms. A good deal of attention has been excited by a letter from Mr. Bartholomew Szemere, one of Kossuth's former friends, and even a minister in the Hungarian revolutionary cabinet, charging him with cowardice, weakness, and a fatally irresolute and vacillating policy in the administration of affairs. Szemere also denies that Kossuth has any just right to call himself the Governor of Hungary, or even the leader of the Hungarian people. On the other hand, Mr. Vukovitch, who was also a minister in the same cabinet, who is now in Paris, has published a letter on Kossuth's side. To Szemere's letter Mr. Pulszky has replied from Cincinnati, repelling the charge of cowardice against Kossuth, and showing that Szemere himself had fled from Hungary some months before the termination of the war, and when there was still reason to hope that it might be brought to a favorable issue; and Count Bethlen, another of Kossuth's suite, also states that Szemere is a man of exceeding vanity, an intriguer against every body that is above him, and that no man is more unpopular in Hungary than he. Therefore, it is argued, his opinion is valueless, and he is utterly in the wrong when he says that Kossuth is no longer beloved and accepted by the Hungarians as their chosen leader. The revolutionary disturbances in Northern Mexico have been renewed, the government having unwisely returned to the old tariff of import duties, which was the pretext for the first outbreak. Accordingly, Caravajal has got his men together again and has resumed operations, of course with considerable assistance from the Texan side of the line. Mexico is generally in great trouble, not only from insurrections in this and other parts of the republic, but from the fact that the entire political organization is in a state of decay approaching dissolution. The revenue is insufficient for the ordinary wants of the government, which is unable to pay its civil officers or the army with the exception of the troops in the field, to whom something has had to be paid, though not all they have been entitled to. The deficit for the last year, exceeds a million of dollars, exclusive of the interest on the debt. Congress met on the first of January, when President Arista addressed the two Houses in a speech, exposing the dangers of their situation, and calling on them to come up to the sublime task of saving the country from the destruction which menaces it. From South America we have the details of the progress of the revolution which begun in Chili in the last autumn, and is not yet finished. It commenced with a revolt of the provinces of Coquimbo and Concepcion, against Gen. Montt, the President, elected by a large majority in the other ten provinces of the republic. The election took place in June last, and the insurrection broke out on the 6th and 8th of September, under the leading of Gen. Cruz. The government forces were commanded by Gen. Bulnes, the retiring President, who put his antagonists to route in a battle at Longomilla. The contest was a most furious and bloody one; the armies on the two sides were nearly equal, eight thousand men being engaged in all. Two thousand, or one quarter of the whole, were left dead upon the field. After his defeat, Cruz signed an agreement recognizing Montt as the legitimate President, and promising to disband all his forces, and make no farther attempt to disturb the peace of the country, on condition that his offence and that of his associates should be pardoned. It was thought that this event would insure the tranquillity of the country for many years; and Bulnes was received at Valparaiso with great rejoicing on his return from the campaign. But the agreement of the insurgents was not kept. On the 30th of December they rose again, and got possession of the city of Copiapo, and prepared from there to resume their march against the capital. Should Bulnes again defeat them, as is probable, he will be sure to show them no mercy. From the Rio de la Plata we have intelligence which seems to leave no doubt that Rosas, the tyrant of Buenos Ayres, is on the verge of destruction. Urquiza, the general who has just freed the republic of Uruguay from the presence of Rosas's satraps, and restored to the important city of Montevideo the enjoyment of its liberty and the advantages belonging to its commercial position, has now completed his preparations, and is about to march against the dictator himself. Besides the troops of Entre Rios, his own State, he has under his command the forces of Corrientes, and is aided by the Brazilian fleet and army, and some 2,000 men from Uruguay. The entire force about to move against Rosas cannot be less than 30,000 troops, including some of the best soldiers in South America, and a full complement of artillery. Rosas, on his part, by extraordinary efforts, has got together some 20,000 men, many of whom are raw recruits, and none of whom retain that faith in the invincibility of their leader which has been an important element in his previous successes. The supple legislature of Buenos Ayres has, in these circumstances, outdone itself, and has not only made him absolute and irresponsible dictator during the war, but for three years after the victory. That victory, however, we opine he will never see. As Urquiza approaches, the army of the dictator will diminish. Large bodies of his soldiers will go over to the enemy; and he will either be shot or allowed to escape to England, to live there upon the revenues of his enormous and ill-got fortune. In England all the world has been agog for the approaching opening of Parliament, which was to take place on the 3d of February. The highest expectations of entertainment were cherished from the set-to then expected to take place between Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston, the dismissed Foreign Secretary. It will be piquant to see these former allies converted into antagonists, and cutting and slashing at each other with all the greater effect from the intimate knowledge of each as to the concerns of the other. As a ready and efficient public debater Lord Palmerston is the superior of the two. All possibility of trouble between the United States and England on account of the brig Express firing into the steamer Prometheus at San Juan de Niacaragua, has been prevented by a manly apology made by the new British Minister for Foreign Affairs, Lord Granville. The act is as creditable to his lordship, as it is grateful to all who would not have the friendly relations between the two countries disturbed. It is authoritatively stated that the new reform bill, which will be brought forward shortly after the opening of Parliament, will not so much extend the suffrage as vary the present apportionment of representatives. The boroughs, which are notoriously small, are to be enlarged by copious annexations, but there will be no new boroughs, nor will the large towns, such as Manchester and Liverpool, get any more representatives than they have now. If this be the nature of the bill, it cannot give satisfaction to either the Radicals or the Tories, nor extricate the Cabinet from its present difficulties. The cabinet has been further weakened by the resignation of Lord de Broughton--better known as Sir John Cam Hobhouse--as President of the Board of Control for the affairs of India, and of Lord Normanby as Minister at Paris. It is surmised that Lord Normanby retires to take his chance for coming into power again as a member of a new cabinet, with his friend, Lord Palmerston, at its head--not an improbable thing, by the way. He is succeeded at Paris by Lord Cowley. The troubles at the Cape of Good Hope still continue, with no advantage gained on the British side. The Caffres seem even harder to beat than was our own Florida Indians. The Government is loudly blamed for not acting more promptly in despatching forces to that colony; and the opinion is expressed that the Duke of Wellington, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, has, by great age, lost the energy of his powers and character. In his younger days, it is said, he would either have had the required reinforcements at once sent forward, or would have resigned his office. The Government and its agents have also been blamed for not more promptly despatching vessels to search for the passengers who got off in boats from the steamer Amazon, destroyed by fire off Scilly. It is possible that by timely action many lives might have been saved. The danger of a French invasion is much dwelt upon by the British press, and there have been rumors of a great increase in the army with a view to such a contingency. These rumors do not seem to be well founded, nor can we believe the danger very imminent. Certain parties regard the whole as rather a fetch of the Ministry, to strengthen them at the opening of Parliament, by removing attention from home matters, and by uniting the nation in a common burst of patriotism. If this be so, the trick is a poor one, for if there was real danger of a war, the present ministry would not be likely to be trusted with carrying it on. Is France, the march of despotism continues, with rapidity, and apparent safety. On the 15th of January Louis Napoleon published his new "constitution," of which the chief provisions are, that the President reserves to himself to designate, by a sealed will, the citizen to be recommended to the nation as his successor in the event of his death. He commands the land and sea forces; he alone can propose new laws; he can at any time declare the state of siege. His Ministers responsible to none but him, and each for his respective duties only; they may be "the honored auxiliaries of his thought," but they are not allowed to be "a daily obstacle to the special influence of the chief." The Council of State, whose members the President is to nominate and dismiss at his pleasure, is to put into shape the laws he intends to propose to the mock Legislature. The Senate, nominated for life by the President, and to any of whose members he may grant a salary of 30,000 francs, "may propose modifications of the Constitution:" its deliberations are secret. The Legislature is to consist of a deputy for every 35,000 electors, elected by universal suffrage, for six years. The President convokes, adjourns, prorogues, and dissolves this body at his pleasure; he nominates its President and Vice-President; the official minute of its proceedings, drawn up by the Bureau, is all that is allowed to be published; it cannot initiate any law; amendments on laws submitted to it by the President cannot even be discussed until they have received the sanction of the Council of State. All these bodies are mere instruments of the despotic will and selfish egotism of M. Bonaparte. The same week witnessed other measures of very important character also. The principal of these are, the suppression and reorganization of the National Guard, and the banishment of those public men who were either considered likely to thwart the success of the President's schemes, or on account of their Socialist and extreme democratic doctrines, were regarded as dangerous to the well-being of the State. Of the expelled representatives, M. Thiers has gone to England: General Changarnier and Lamoricière, it is thought, will fix their abode in Belgium; and Emile de Girardin, in the United States. The most important movement in administration, yet taken by the President, is in a decree that the members of the Orleans family, their husbands and consorts, and descendants, cannot possess any property (movable or immovable), in France. They are bound to sell them within the year, and in default they will be sold by the domain. Another decree cancels the donation of his private property, made by Louis Philippe on the 7th August to his children, and enacts that their properties, of about two hundred millions of francs, shall be employed as follows: Ten millions to societies of _secours mutuels_. Ten millions to the improvement of the lodgings for the working classes. Ten millions to the establishment of a fund for granting loans on mortgage in the departments. Five millions to a benefit fund for the poorer clergy. All the officers, sub-officers, and soldiers on active service will receive, according to their rank in the Legion of Honor, as follows: The Legionary, 250 francs; the Officers, 500 francs; Commanders, 1000 francs; Grand Officers, 2000 francs; Grand Crosses, 3000 francs. De Morny, Fould, and others of the Ministers, having refused to concur in this confiscation of the Orleans property, resigned, and the Ministry, which had been re-modelled and re-organized (a new "Ministry of State" and a "Ministry of Police" having been created), now consists of the following members, viz.: MM. Abbatucci, Justice; de Persigny, Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce; Bineau, Finances; de Saint Arnaud, War; Ducos, Marine; Turgot, Foreign Affairs; Fortoul, Public Instruction and Worship; De Maupas, Police; Casabianca, State; Lefebre Duruflé, Public Works. The confiscation decree called forth spirited protests from Montalembert and Dupin, the eminent lawyer and President of the late Legislative Assembly. The former, together with Merode, Mortemart, Moustier, Giraud, André Mathieu, Baudet, Desrobert, and Hallez Chapared, refused to countenance a Government which could be guilty of such a measure, and accordingly tendered their resignations as members of the Consultative Commission. Dupin, also, resigned his post of Procureur-General of the Court of Cassation, which high office he has filled for twenty-two years. The enormous property of the House of Orleans was divided into two main portions: the hereditary domains, consisting of the estates settled in 1692 by Louis XIV., upon his brother, the revenues arising from which amounted latterly to nearly $500,000 a year; and what may be called the acquired property, consisting of possessions gradually purchased in a long course of years out of the accumulated savings of a wealthy, and, on the whole, prudent, succession of princes. It is this last species of property alone which has been made the subject of absolute confiscation. The decree reduces the Orleans princes to absolute poverty. The Comte de Paris and the Duke de Chartres are at the present moment utterly destitute of resources. The only property now remaining to the family, is that derived from Madame Adelaide, the only sister of Louis Philippe. This, not having belonged to Louis Philippe in 1830, does not fall within the operation of the decree of confiscation which affects the rest, and it is now all that remains to the family in France. Louis Napoleon, it is intimated, will shortly make another step towards monarchy, by forming a matrimonial alliance with a Swedish princess, and by restoring titles in France. At present, there seems to be no check to his advancement--a large majority of the people are evidently on his side--the army is with him--Russia, Austria, Prussia, Spain, and nearly all the other monarchies have resolved to support him--and it is probable that he will shortly assume the title and state of Emperor, as well as the Imperial authority. In Austria, the constitution of 1848 has at last been formally and finally rescinded by an Imperial rescript. The reign of secret tribunals is restored; the proceedings of the law courts are no longer to be public. Along with the constitution of the revolutionary epoch, some few privileges and securities previously enjoyed by the subjects of the house of Hapsburg have also been swept away. The powers of the municipalities have, wherever they existed, been curtailed, and in some instances abolished entirely. It is not the _status quo ante_ that has been restored in the Austrian dominions; the condition of the people has been rendered _more_ servile. A very important movement has been going on in Germany. We refer to the attempt of Austria to combine her dominions with the Prussian Zollverein, by means of a treaty of commercial reciprocity for five years, with complete union afterward. A conference of delegates from all the important states, except Prussia, was sitting at Vienna during the month of January, but the results have not definitely transpired. Such a union would be beneficial to the people of the states involved, by favoring industry and giving new activity to trade, as well as by dispensing with a large proportion of the armies they are now obliged to support. The railway between St. Petersburg and Moscow is now in regular use. The first train, on the 13th of last month, took from Moscow to the capital 792 passengers. The line was eight years in constructing. The line from St. Petersburgh to Warsaw has been commenced, under the direction of General Gersfeldt, who assisted General Klenmichel in the former line. Through the representations of Lord Palmerston to the Turkish Government, all difficulties have been removed with regard to the Egyptian railway, the works of which are to proceed without delay. Mr. Stephenson has surveyed the line. The two branches of the Nile are to be crossed by a pontoon bridge. The Pasha has given orders for 18,000 laborers to be put upon the works. The Fine Arts KAULBACH has just finished the cartoon of his Homer. This is the second in the series of great frescoes with which he is to adorn the new Museum at Berlin. The first, the Dispersion, at Babel, and the third, the Destruction of Jerusalem, are completed upon the walls, and have already been described in these pages. The Homer possesses the same richness of artistic combinations, and the same daring sweep of thought and imagination, which undeniably place Kaulbach at the head of the artists of this age. He represents in Homer the culture and the religion of Greece; the idea he depicts is, that Homer gave Greece her gods, and the peculiar tendency of her intellectual development. The poet is, of course, the central figure in the picture. The Ionic bard sits upon the prow of a ship that is just approaching the Grecian shore. His right arm is raised in the excitement of poetic inspiration; a lyre rests upon his left. Behind him, partly veiled, lost in profound revery, sits a female form, in whose lofty, intellectual features we recognise the impersonation of the traditional source of all early poetry; it is the impersonation of the Saga or Myth. She recalls those sybils who came from Asia to Greece to proclaim the oracles of the gods. In her hand the helm is still resting, in token that her guidance has brought Homer to Greece. A group of unclad nymphs, mingled with swans, swim around the vessel; one of them rises wholly from the water to listen to the strains of the singer. This is Thetis; she knows that he is chanting the praise of her son Achilles, and has left her crystal abode with the Nereids to follow him. At the left of the picture, on the land, stand groups of grave, manly forms, the representatives of Greece, assembled to receive the poet and his teachings. There are three of these groups, connected by subordinate figures. In front is a lofty figure, crowned with laurel, a beaker in his hand, and a charming cup-bearer at his side; this is the poet Alcaeus. Behind him stands Mnesicles, the architect of the Propylæ, with a plan of that work in his hand; next him is Solon, the lawgiver. On the other side stand Herodotus, Pindar, Sophocles, �schylus, and Pythagoras, their features all marked with attention and interest; while a priest of a more ancient faith looks on in gloomy displeasure at the new singer and the impression he produces; and Bakis, the old soothsayer, hides his Golden Proverbs beneath the rocks. A second group, more toward the centre of the picture, is composed of country people, shepherds, huntsmen, and cultivators, with here and there a warrior, hearkening eagerly to the bard; among them a faun, with pointed ears and mocking mein, listens to the unaccustomed tones. On an elevation at the left, this division of the picture is completed by a group which represents the atelier of a sculptor--the master, with two youths and a maiden about him, is at work on a statue of Achilles--but the songs of Homer call his attention to other and grander subjects of his art. These are the Olympian gods themselves, who sit, some of them aloft in the clouds, over a sacrificial altar, around which warriors are dancing a martial dance, while others are moving along a rainbow to enter temples just dedicated to them--Eros leading with the Graces, and Apollo, with the Muses, following. A temple, in process of erection, and distant mountains, occupy the background. It will be noticed that the artist has omitted many very important elements of Greek history and culture from this composition. It contains no hint of Thermopylæ or Marathon, nor any allusion to Plato or Pericles. No doubt the learned artist has designedly avoided making his work too exact and didactic, but it certainly would seem that these were too prominent in themselves not to be wholly overlooked. It will also be observed that there is no action and no dramatic effect in the whole; but those who have seen the cartoon lack words to describe the noble beauty of the figures. Nearly all are men, but such majesty and harmony of form and feature, of outline and movement, well befit an age and people that produced the very ideal of manly beauty. The nymphs in the foreground are also said to be unspeakably lovely, and endowed with the most intimate charm of maidenly innocence. Of course it is impossible to appreciate the full effect of the picture, until it is executed in colors; but in that respect Kaulbach is certain of a perfection in nowise behind the other departments of his work. * * * * * A picture by the Belgian artist, Gallait, has produced a great excitement at Vienna, where it formed the most prominent feature in the January exhibition of the Art Union. The subject is the Last Moments of Egmont. The Count is represented in prison, standing upon a bench to look out of the grated window upon the place where his own execution is about to happen. On the bench beside him sits a priest, who seeks to recall him from earthly contemplations. * * * * * The Emperor of Austria has ordered a monument of Metastasio to be erected in Vienna,--where the poet passed the greatest part of his life, and composed all his works. Metastasio, it will be remembered, was attached to the court of Austria in quality of Imperial poet. The monument is to be executed by Lucciardi, a young German. * * * * * The _Bulletin of the New-England Art Union_ contains an etching of Allston's _Witch of Endor_, in anticipation of the large engraving of it, which is to be distributed among the subscribers. This is expected to be of a much higher order than any thing that has yet appeared from any Art Union in the world. The American Art Union is to have its drawing at the end of the present month, having received a sufficient number of subscriptions, at length, to make this step seem advisable in the opinion of its directors. The Philadelphia Art Union is taking vigorous steps to retrieve its recent losses by fire. Scientific Discoveries and Proceedings of Learned Societies. Our countryman, Mr. E. E. SQUIER, is now in London, where he has just brought out an edition of his work on Nicaragua, and he recently addressed the _Royal Society of Literature_ on the Mexican Hieroglyphics, as exhibited in the publication of Lord Kingsborough. The MSS. engraved in this splendid work are chiefly rituals--a few only being historical. Of the events referred to, some occurred 600 years B. C., and one reference appears to be to an eclipse that happened 900 years B. C. The dualistic principle runs through the Mexican Pantheon; it consists, _i. e._, of male and female divinities, representing the active and passive principles in nature. We find also in this mythology a trinity, corresponding to Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva--the productive, preserving, and destroying powers--in the Indian. Inferior deities represent attributes; each name denoting an attribute; hence, the gods of the Mexicans were far from being so numerous as they appear to be. The supreme divinity had about fifty names: several of which agree in signification with those applied in the Old Testament to Jehovah. He is represented wearing a mask, to intimate that he cannot be looked upon. For each character or attribute there was a different mask, frequently representing animals; particular animals being dedicated to particular deities. The different deities were likewise symbolized by different colors--the water-god by blue--the god of fire by red--the inferior divinities by a dark tint, &c. Peculiar symbols likewise appear as crests, or head ornaments. The lecturer stated that the Mexican records unquestionably refer to an Eastern origin of the nation. * * * * * Respecting experiments in _Photography_, the London _Literary Gazette_ says "the preparation of albumenized glass plates promised much, and in some hands, as in those of Ross and Thomson of Edinburgh, and Langhenheim of Philadelphia,--the best results have been obtained. Essentially, their processes consist respectively of separating the fluid portion of the white of egg, and adding thereto a weak solution of the iodide of potassium. This is floated over a clean glass plate, so as to cover it with a very thin film, and carefully dried. When this is completed, the prepared surface is dipped into a solution of nitrate of silver, and thus an iodide of silver is formed on the surface. This iodide of silver being washed, as in the calotype process, with gallo-nitrate of silver, is very sensitive to the solar radiations, and being placed in the camera-obscura, is speedily impressed with a dormant image, which is developed by the deoxidizing action of gallic acid." A good steam gauge has long been a desideratum. All kinds of portable gauges are, either not to be depended upon, or subject to frequent repairs; so much so, that by law every steam-engine used in France is provided with a gauge on the barometer principle, that is 10 feet, 15 feet, 20 feet high for a steam pressure of 60 pounds, 90 pounds or 120 pounds to the square inch. Mr. Bourdon, chief engineer at the Creusot works, where the engines of the frigate Mogador, were built, has devised a gauge, which has obtained for him a medal at the London Fair, and is highly spoken of. It is based upon the fact, that a thin metal tube, coiled up and subjected to internal pressure, will tend to uncoil itself in proportion to the amount of the pressure. The tube used is first flattened preparatory to the coiling up, so as to render this operation more easy. One of the extremities communicates with the boiler, the other is pointed and turned up so as to serve as an index on a circular scale. The apparatus is fixed in a case, in the shape of a hair medallion, and closed with a glass. Experiment must show if the effects of temperature be insignificant compared with those of pressure, and if the internal working of metallic atoms will not in time make this gauge give wrong indications.--If the instrument can bear the test of practical use, it will soon supersede every other already known. The inventor has already been rewarded by a council medal at the London Exhibition, and the cross of the Legion of Honor in France. In the last named country, the Government has made provision to try it on all the railways. * * * * * Experiments have been made on the Paris and Lyons Railway for the application of electromagnetism to locomotives. The report goes on to say that the apparatus prepared for the purpose was applied to an exceedingly large locomotive, and succeeded perfectly, first on a level, and then on an ascent of thirteen millièmes, the steepest in fact of the line. It was feared that difficulties would arise from the smoothness of the wheels on the rails,--but no inconvenience was perceptible from that circumstance. * * * * * LORD BROUGHAM has been passing a few weeks in Paris, and the papers dwell upon the marvellous preservation of his powers, which seem to baffle the attacks of time. _Galignani_ says he "read at the _Academy of Sciences_, before a most crowded auditory, a paper on the optical and mathematical inquiries which have occupied his time during his late residence at Cannes. His lordship accompanied the reading of this memoir with numerous demonstrations on the board, and for upwards of an hour captivated the attention of his hearers. MM. Arago, Biot, Ténard, and other eminent scientific men were present, and appeared deeply interested in the explanations of their learned _confrére_. His lordship spoke the whole time with great animation, and his numerous friends present were delighted to perceive that he was in such excellent health." * * * * * Mr. ISAAC LEA, of Philadelphia, since his retirement from the house of Lea & Blanchard, is devoting himself more assiduously than before, to those scientific pursuits in which he has attained to such well-deserved eminence. The London _Athenæum_ has the following notice of his most recent publication:-- "_Observations on the Genus Unio, &c._ Vol. IV: by ISAAC LEA. It is pleasant, amidst all the material activity of the United States, to find ourselves ever and anon called on to bear testimony to the love of nature, truth, and beauty which there developes itself. In Mr. Lea's book we have descriptions and drawings of shells, originally published in the 'Transactions of the American Philosophical Society,' which would have done honor to any of the scientific societies of Europe. Such works can be of interest only to the professed conchologist; but in his hands they become treasuries of facts by which he works out the great laws of morphology regulating the animal forms that he more particularly studies. The shells described in this volume are for the most part American, and from fresh water; and indicate how large a field for natural history inquiry the vast continent of America still presents." * * * * * Mr. GEORGE CATLIN, the well-known American traveller, has brought forward in London a plan for a _Museum of Mankind_, "to contain and perpetuate the familiar looks, the manufactures, history, and records of all the vanishing races of man." A report on the subject was read by him at one of the scientific societies; and on the 9th of January he delivered an address on the subject at his American-Indian Collection. He opened by a general review of his past labors in the study of the native tribes of America, illustrated by a reference to some of the numerous records he has collected, and by the appearance of various natives themselves in full costume. He then proceeded to enforce the comprehensive scheme which now occupies him. After pointing out the urgent necessity of at once engaging in the formation of a museum of the kind proposed by him, if it is to be gathered together at all--for the in-roads of civilization are rapidly extirpating the native races of the world--he went on to develope his plan in its practical details. He proposes, as the first step, the purchase and fitting-up of a steamer "as a floating museum," in which the seaport towns of all countries should be visited; considering that this mode of exhibition would possess great advantages through "the facility of its visiting the chief cities of the world, stopping no longer in any than a lucrative excitement could be kept up;" and in the great immediate saving of time, as well as in other respects. Mr. Catlin's present collection would form the basis of such a museum. Mr. Catlin defines the word "mankind," for his purpose, as meaning no more than the expiring members of the great human family--the Red Indian, the native Australian, the Greenlander, the Peruvian,--and so forth. Measures, no doubt, might be taken for obtaining and preserving such memorials as exist of these and similar races; and it is a reflection on the governments of England and of the United States that they have hitherto remained so indifferent in the matter,--that being severally custodians of certain interesting and rapidly obliterating pages of the book of human history, they should suffer the final extinction of the record to take place before their eyes without any attempt to preserve its lessons for futurity. MAJENDIE, LOUIS and LONDE--appointed by the _French Academy of Medicine_ to examine a work by Dr. James Gillkrest, entitled, _Is Yellow Fever contagious or not?_ have made a report in which they speak highly of the industry and skill displayed by Dr. Gillkrest, and adopt the conclusion at which he arrives with regard to the non-contagiousness of this disease. "The author," say they, establishes by numerous well-selected and incontrovertible proofs that yellow fever is not contagious under any circumstances,--not even in the case of crowding in this disease, whether of the dead or of the living; that the removal of the individuals from the influence of the local causes which produce this affection is the fittest means of preventing its extension; and, lastly, that the cordons called "sanitary and quarantine measures, far from arresting yellow fever, on the contrary favor its extension by combining the population within the influence of the local causes which give it birth." It may be hoped that with valuable testimony like this before them, governments will lose no time in abandoning oppressive quarantine regulations, at least as far as yellow fever is concerned. * * * * * From Holland, we hear that the dissolution of the _Royal Institute of the Netherlands_, which was ordered by royal decree to take place on the 1st of this month, has caused great dissatisfaction in the literary and scientific circles, and has called forth a rather indignant remonstrance from the Dutch Literary Association. The Institute held its last meeting on the 15th December; and it drew up a series of resolutions, expressing, in dignified terms, its sense of the injustice done it, and declaring that its dissolution will be "a heavy blow and a great discouragement" to Dutch science. The want of funds is the pretext put forth by the government for breaking up the learned body. * * * * * The _Society of Antiquaries_ of Copenhagen is about to publish an _Archæological Atlas of the North_, accompanied by explanatory matter in French and Danish. It will be a valuable addition to the memoirs, papers, and documents, already published by the Society. This scientific association is one of the most important in Northern Europe, and its members include many of the most distinguished _savans_ of Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. It possesses an excellent library, which contains, amongst other things of great value, about 2000 Icelandic manuscripts, very ancient, and written in the old Scandinavian tongue. Recent Deaths. AUGUSTUS SIDNEY DOANE was born, of a highly respectable family, in Boston, on the second day of April, 1808. He was educated at Harvard College, from which he received the degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor of Medicine, in 1828, a few months before attaining his majority. He soon after went to Europe, where he passed two years in travel, and in attendance upon medical and surgical lectures, in Paris; and returning, in 1830, was married to Miss Gordon, the daughter of an eminent merchant of Boston, and settled in the city of New-York, where he continued to reside until his death, at Staten Island, on the morning of the 27th of January. Although at all times an earnest student and successful practitioner in his profession, Dr. Doane, for several years after his settlement in New-York, devoted considerable attention to political, historical and general, literature, and from the first, he was an industrious writer on medicine and surgery. When the cholera first broke out in this country, in 1832, he was the earliest to address the profession in a scientific and practical discussion of its character, and the ability, untiring industry, bravery and benevolence which he exhibited during that melancholy season, established his popularity with the people, and secured for him a degree of respect from his class which they have seldom bestowed on one so young. Among his earliest contributions to medical literature, was his edition of Dr. GOOD'S _Study of Medicine_, in which he embodied, not only very important discussions and notes of fact by himself, but the best views of the medical writers of the United States on the various subjects treated in that celebrated performance. He inscribed his edition of the _Study of Medicine_ to the common friend of the author and himself, the learned and excellent Dr. JOHN W. FRANCIS. He also translated MAYGRIER'S great work on _Midwifery_, and several standard authorities on Anatomy and Surgery; among which are DUPUYTREN'S _Surgery_, LUGOL'S _Researches on Scrofulous Diseases_, BAYLE'S _Descriptive Anatomy_, BLANDIN'S _Topographical Anatomy_, MECKEL'S _Anatomy_, SCOUTETTEN on _Cholera_, RICORD on _Syphilis_, and CHAUSSIER _on the Arteries_. His editorial contributions to _Surgery Illustrated_, and many occasional papers in the medical journals also increased his fame and usefulness. It was, perhaps, his chief distinction as an author, that, being familiar with the languages of France, Germany and Italy, and personally acquainted with the living lights of medical science in those countries, and with the practice which obtained in the chief foreign hospitals, he was among the first, as he was the most diligent and successful, in translating the chief works of the European physicians into our language, and adapting them to our habits and necessities. In 1839, he was appointed Professor of Physiology in the University of New-York, but he soon resigned, with his colleagues. In 1840, he received from Governor Seward, the place of Health Officer and Physician in Chief to the Marine Hospital, and, with Dr. TURNER, Health Commissioner, and Dr. MCNEVIN, Resident Physician, constituted the Board of Commissioners of Health, which then exercised all the functions of the present Commissioners of Emigration. Fearless and energetic in the discharge of his official duties, (which he always attended to in person, and not, as the custom of some is, by deputies), he protected the city from unnecessary fear, as well as from disease, and presented bills of mortality scarcely paralleled in the hospitals of the country--averaging but seven per cent. The Commissioners in general superintendence of the Quarantine, in reports to the Legislature, awarded to him the highest praise for his administration, and when, in consequence of a change in the political character of the government, he was superseded, in 1843, both the Irish and German Emigrant Societies tendered him expressions of gratitude for his unwearying zeal and humanity in behalf of the class most dependent upon his services. In 1848, he was appointed one of the consulting physicians of the Bellevue Hospital, but declined the office, in consequence of holding the agreeable and profitable post of physician to the Astor House. During the prevalence of the cholera in New-York in 1849, he was one of the ward cholera physicians, and devoted himself with his customary earnestness, to practise among the poor of his district. In 1850, he was again appointed Health Officer by Governor Fish, and he discharged his duties until he followed Drs. Treat, Ledyard, Baily, De Witt, and others, in the sacrifice of his life to them. He was seized with the ship-fever on the 14th of January, while inspecting the packet Great Western, which arrived from Liverpool early on the morning of that day, with nearly seven hundred immigrants, of whom a large proportion were sick. He spent several hours in examination and the supervision of removals to the hospital, during which several deaths occurred, and was soon after, with Mr. Lewis B. Butler, the humane and efficient steward, who had been honorably associated with him in both terms of his administration as Health Officer, attacked with the fever in its most malignant form. Dr. Doane died on the 27th of January, and Mr. Butler on the 6th of February. These deaths were public as well as private calamities. Dr. Doane must be ranked among the most generous, wise, and active citizens--the most warm-hearted and respectable men--as well as among the most eminent physicians, of our time, in New-York. On the 15th of February, an eloquent discourse upon his life and character was delivered by his friend, the Rev. E. H. Chapin, in his church in Murray-street, of which Dr. Doane was a member. Since the above notice of Dr. Doane was written, we have received from one of the most eminent physicians of the United States the following estimate of his character and abilities: "The character of Dr. Doane commends itself to our consideration for many striking traits. His whole life, from his boyhood, was marked by a devotion to the acquisition of knowledge. His attainments enabled him to enter Harvard University at an early age, and he was recognized in that admirable school as a young man of splendid abilities and thorough scholarship. His medical theses there were exhibitions of knowledge such as is but rarely possessed by the students, whose aim is chiefly for the doctorate. He received the highest medical honors of his Alma Mater, with the warmest approbation of the professors. By that rigid economy of time which through life distinguished him in all his pursuits, he found leisure, amidst multiplied cares and responsibilities, to become an excellent satirist and Grecian, and to this he added a knowledge of the French, German, and Italian languages. From his literary labors we might infer that his chief excellence was in the promptitude and ability which he evinced in the preparation of so many works of writers abroad, in translations for the American public. But this view of the case would hardly do justice to the stature of his mind, and his talents for original observation. Struggling with many difficulties and urged by the necessities of a family, it became his imperative duty to give his best efforts to those occasions which might prove most available for his wants; and hence we find him more busily employed in the promulgation of the doctrines and opinions of others, than in recording the results of his immediate practical wisdom. His most labored effort is unquestionably his translation from the German of the large work by Professor Meckel, on _Human Anatomy_. In his admirable edition of Good's _Study of Medicine_, we notice more of the immediate observer, and the man of extensive medical and physiological reading. This great treatise by the learned Good found in Dr. Doane a worthy editor. His edition is enlarged by numerous notes by the cis-atlantic scholar, and as they embrace the theoretical and practical views of the physicians and writers of the United States, it has always held a conspicuous place among books referred to for the doctrines, in theory and in practice, of a large number of the best original observers our country has occasion to boast of. This contribution to the science of healing has met with an extensive sale with the profession, and like other efforts of Dr. Doane in the departments of physical science, been productive of great benefit to the noble calling of which he was so conspicuous a member." * * * * * R. A. DAVENPORT, an English writer, whose histories of America and India, and some of whose poems, were formerly well known, died in Camberwell, on the 21st of January, at the age of seventy-five. The attention of a police officer was attracted by moans issuing from Brunswick-cottage, Park-street, the residence of the deceased. He broke into the front parlor, and found Mr. Davenport lying in the passage, nearly dead, with a bottle that had contained laudanum in his hand. A surgeon was sent for, but a few minutes after his arrival, he expired. Several bottles containing laudanum were found in his bedroom, of which he was in the habit of taking large quantities while writing. The house presented an extraordinary appearance; the rooms were literally crammed with books, manuscripts, pictures, ancient coins, and antiques of various descriptions. Mr. Davenport has resided in it more than eleven years, during which time it had never been cleansed, and the books, beds, and furniture were rapidly decaying, every thing being covered with dust. The windows were all broken, the whole place presenting a most dilapidated appearance. Verdict was "That the deceased died from inadvertently taking an overdose of opium." * * * * * The eminent Italian poet, GIOVANNI BERCHET, died near the first of January. Born, says the _Athenæum_, at Milan, in 1788, he imbibed at an early age that hatred of the rule of Austria which a few years afterwards inspired his muse. It was when the well-known political events of 1821 forced him to leave his country, that his active mind, fervently devoted to the principles of rational liberty, burst forth in those powerful and touching strains which are to this day deeply graven on the heart of every Italian patriot, and which, during the sanguinary contest of 1848, beguiled the weary march of the troops, and animated the combatants in the conflict. He was the first who had the courage to forsake the old beaten track of insipid sonnet-making. His poems stand alone, unrivalled in the novelty of their language and conception, and in the noble spirit which pervades every line. Few Italians can repeat his _Clarina_, his _Matilde_, or the _Hermit of Mont Cenis_, without feeling strong emotion. But by far the best of his productions, which unfortunately are not numerous, are the _Fantasie_. The language and versification are beautiful and varied, and we strongly recommend all Italian students to leave, with all due respect, Tasso and Petrarch for a while, and read a page of Giovanni Berchet. This distinguished patriot-poet was for some time member of the Sardinian parliament, and his loss is deeply mourned in all Italy. * * * * * The death of the younger of the celebrated Misses BERRY, is mentioned in the London _Times_. She died, after a short illness, at the advanced age of nearly eighty-eight, in the unimpaired vigor of all her faculties. Her varied talents and incomparable amiability threw light and life around the graver and loftier powers of her sister, and their union, unbroken for an hour through the greatest portion of a century, made them the charm of the most brilliant circles in Europe. Her sister, in her eighty-ninth year, equally unfaded in her great intellectual gifts, still lingers for a while on the scene. * * * * * The Paris papers report the death, in that city, in his eighty-fifth year, of M. LOUIS BERTIN PARANT, a painter on ivory and porcelain of great eminence. As early as the days of the First Consulship he was distinguished by Napoleon; and his works on ivory executed by sovereign order during the Empire found their way as Imperial gifts into the collections of various princes of Europe. The _Journal des Débats_ refers particularly to his Table representing the great generals of antiquity, as having been presented by Louis the Eighteenth to the Prince Regent of England, and as being now in the possession of Queen Victoria. * * * * * The Paris _Journal des Débats_ reports the death, in his fifty-fifth year, of M. BENJAMIN LAROCHE, a translator into French of some of the works of Shakspeare and of Byron, and an original poet of some traditional reputation--having been popularly known in early life for attempts which gave false promise of greatness. * * * * * EUGENE LEVESQUE, author of two volumes on the United States, and of a large work on the State of Russia died in Paris, Jan. 4, aged 81. * * * * * MR. THOMAS WILLIAMS, a well-known and much respected man of letters, for several years the consul of the government of Venezuela, for New-York, died suddenly, of disease of the heart, in this city, on the night of the second of February. We had known Mr. Williams a great many years, and shared in the general regard inspired by his amiability, and the quiet bravery of his life, of which many illustrations are known to his more intimate acquaintances. He was an Englishman, of good family, born in London in 1790, and educated we believe at one of the great universities. We have heard him say, that in early life he was as thin almost as Calvin Edson, but for the last fifteen or twenty years he was the most obese and plethoric-looking person in New-York--a sort of Lewis, or Lambert, of astonishing breadth and rotundity. We must not enter into details respecting his domestic life, but it may be mentioned that he was a party to a clandestine marriage, that his wife was an invalid for very many years, and that he toiled with his pen incessantly to promote her happiness. He was best known as a translator, and gave to the press a vast number of the novels of Dumas and other Frenchmen. He slept little, and it was his habit to sit by his table, in his chamber, from eight o'clock in the evening until nearly morning, plying his pen with neatness and rapidity, and with an unusual command of good English, though his style was sometimes defective in finish, and he never acquired much skill in punctuation. His original compositions, chiefly in magazines and newspapers, were very numerous, and on a vast variety of subjects, indicating a rarely equalled mastery of curious intelligence. * * * * * COLONEL WOLFGANG BARON KEM�NYI belonged to the ancient family of Johan of Keményi, in former times sovereign of Transylvania. He was born in 1789, in Torda (Transylvania), and received his first education at the University of Nagy-Enyor. At seventeen he entered the Austrian army. He commenced his military career in the times of Napoleon, and took an active part in the French campaign from 1813 to 1815. After the termination of the war, he still continued, during a few years, in the same regiment, when, tired of the idle life in garrison, he left the army in 1824 as captain. From that moment he retired to his estates at Torda, where soon after he married the daughter of an Austrian general, and led, in this retirement until 1834, the quiet life of an agriculturist. The complexion of the times did not permit him to spend his whole time in solitude, and being a patriot, he soon entered the political field, became a zealous visitor of congress and the diets, and one of the most decided adversaries of Austria. He next became a member of the Transylvanian Diet, and through his participation in the discussions and struggles of that time, the storms of 1848 did not find him unprepared to brave them. He was one of those, who the first declared openly in favor of the unions question; at Torda, surrounded by Wallachian fanatics, he unfolded the banner of union. When it became Keményi's conviction that the crisis could not be removed in a peaceable way, he drew again his sword, and his heroic exploits during the memorable winter campaign under Bem, in Transylvania, contributed highly to the glory of the Hungarian arms. Having been appointed, by the Archduke Stephen, of Austria, Major of the Transylvanian National Guard, he distinguished himself eminently in the victorious battles at Szibo, Besstritz, and others; and afterwards he was nominated Lieutenant-Colonel in the Active Army, and at the same time charged by Bem with the command of a portion of his division. His most heroic deed was the battle of Ploki. Bem, at the head of a very small but audacious band, arrived victorious before Herrmannstadt, capital of the province; but there, surrounded and pressed by an overpowering number of enemies, he commissioned Keményi to march to the frontier, and take up a reinforcement. He immediately undertook that march, pierced the lines of the enemy, drew on the reinforcements, and a few days after, delivered that memorable battle in which, with 2,000 men and seven guns, he beat the whole Austrian force, consisting of 15,000 men and thirty cannons, out of the field. By this victory he not only averted the destruction of Transylvania, which a day before still appeared inevitable, but he also gave to Bem opportunity to establish that grand line of offensive operations which, in less than a month, swept Transylvania clear of the enemy. For the valor displayed in this decisive action, he was made Colonel, and received the order of valor, second class, having been decorated some time before with the same order of the third class. He took also a glorious part in all the important battles of the summer campaign. He was one of those superior officers of the Transylvanian army to whom Bem was mostly attached, and, possessing his entire confidence, were steadfast till the last moment. On the termination of the war, although proscribed, he lived for some time at his native place; but, searched for every where, he at last was obliged to fly to England. After Kossuth's arrival in London he became president of the administration of the Hungarian emigration. When he took the management, it was already in bad circumstances, but on the departure of Kossuth he had to overcome greater difficulties, because his solicitude extended itself not only to the emigrants residing in England, but to those who languished in France and Belgium. Notwithstanding the loss of his estates by sequestration, he still possessed some pecuniary means, and assisted, as far as he could, his distressed countrymen; and during the short time of his administration, he was always acting, with paternal care, for the good of his unhappy companions. Baron Keményi died suddenly in London, on Monday, the 5th of January, while listening to the reading of a letter respecting the management of his committee, addressed to the _Daily News_, by Mr. Toulmin Smith. He was sixty-three years of age. * * * * * HEBERT RODWELL, for many years known in musical and literary circles as a composer and author died in London early in January. He possessed considerable taste and feeling, and produced ballads and concerted pieces of much sweetness. As a dramatic author, his efforts were principally confined to performances of a light and humorous cast, including burlesques and the openings of pantomimes. He produced two serial works of fiction, each of which had a fair success--_Old London Bridge_ and _The Memoirs of an Umbrella_, Some scenes from the latter were dramatized, and had a run at the Adelphi. * * * * * GENERAL SIR FREDERICK PHILIPSE ROBINSON, G.C.B., Colonel of the thirty-ninth Regiment, died at Brighton on the 1st instant, in his eighty-eighth year. He was the oldest soldier in the British army, having been within a month of seventy-five years in the service. He was a native of New-York, and a son of the well known royalist, Colonel Beverly Robinson, whose name is associated with that of Andre in the treason of Benedict Arnold, by a daughter of Frederick Philipse. He entered the British army as an ensign, in February, 1777, and for five years he was in the first American war, and was present in the principal battles fought during that period. Subsequently, in 1794, he went to the West Indies, and shared in the capture of Martinique, St. Lucia, and Guadaloupe; he was also at the storming of Fleur d'Epée and the Heights of Palmiste. In 1812 Philipse Robinson joined the army in the Peninsula. At the battle of Vittoria he commanded the brigade which carried the village of Gamazza Mayo, without firing one shot. He also was present at the first and second assaults on San Sebastian, and was severely wounded at the second attack. He took part in the passage of the Bidassoa, the grand reconnaissance before Bayonne, the battle of the Nive (being there again severely wounded), in the blockade of Bayonne, and in the repulse of the sortie from that place, when he succeeded to the command of the fifth division of the army. In June, 1814, Major-General Robinson went to North America in command of a brigade, and he led the forces intended for the attack on Plattsburg, but received orders to retire, after having forced the passage of the Saranac. After the end of hostilities, he came from Canada to this city to embark for England, and on his way stopped at the old family mansion where he was born--two or three miles above West Point--and as he walked through the house (now owned by Mr. Richard D. Arden), he is said to have "wept like a child." Soon after the conclusion of the war he was appointed commander-in-chief and provisional governor of the Upper Provinces, which appointment he held until June, 1816. He had received the gold medal with two clasps for Vittoria, San Sebastian, and the Nive. * * * * * The Rev. JOHN TAYLOR JONES, D.D., of the Baptist Mission in Siam, died in Bangkok, on the 13th of September, 1851, after an illness of about one week. He was one of the best scholars and most uniformly successful translators in the missionary service of the American churches. He had been in Siam nearly twenty years, and, with the exception of the book of Genesis, had rendered the entire Bible into the Siamese language. He was well known and much respected by the best classes of the people of that country, and the king of Siam (who fluently speaks and writes English) marked his sense of the public bereavement by a letter of condolence to his widow. * * * * * The English West Indian steam-ship _Amazon_, left Southampton for a first voyage on Friday the 2d of January, and at a quarter before one o'clock on Sunday morning was discovered to be on fire; the flames had soon complete mastery of the vessel, and so swift was its destruction that many perished in their berths by suffocation, and many of those who, half naked, made their way to the deck, were burnt in ascending the ladders, and several passengers are described as having rushed up with their clothes in flames. In twenty minutes all was over but the last cruel agony. So rapid was the ravage, that it seems to have been more like an explosion than the ordinary progress of fire. The alarm and despair were almost simultaneous. The number of persons destroyed in this most pitiable and frightful catastrophe was 115, and among them was the accomplished author, Mr. ELIOT WARBURTON. His career in literature had been unusually brief. It is only a few years since _The Crescent and the Cross_ attracted general applause; _Hochelaga, or, The Conquest of Canada_, followed soon after; and last year gave us his _Memoirs of Horace Walpole_, and the story of _Darien, or, The Merchant Prince_. Mr. Warburton had been deputed by the Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company, to come to a friendly understanding with the tribes of Indians who inhabit the Isthmus of Darien. It was also the intention of Mr. Warburton to make himself perfectly acquainted with every part of these districts, and with whatever referred to their topography, climate, and resources, and he undoubtedly would have given the results of his visit in an interesting and valuable work on the subject, if he had lived. * * * * * FREDERIC RICCI, the composer, lately died in the prime of life and talent. He was stricken by apoplexy in the post-carriage between Warsaw and St. Petersburg. Ricci was the author of many operas, more successful in Italy than elsewhere, but whose names are well known to the musical public every where. The _Prigioni d'Edimburgo_ is the most famous of his operas, among which _Rolla_, _Estella_, and _Griselda_ are not unknown. His _Corrado d'Altamura_ failed in Paris in 1844. He had recently produced at Venice _I due Ritratti_, an opera of which he composed both words and music, and last May was summoned to Russia, under the especial patronage of Field Marshal Paskewitch, and saw before him the promise of that brilliant career which the great wealth and cultivation of the Russian aristocracy secure to a few fortunate artists of every kind. On the 2d December he wrote to the distinguished tenor, Moriani, that, for the first time, fortune smiled upon him. He quotes from his own opera of _Rolla_, of which the tenor part was written for Moriani--"_A nameless stone shall cover my grave_"--smiles at the thought; says that it will be his own fault if it is so, and within a few weeks reaches the scene of his anticipated triumphs, a corpse. * * * * * BARON D'OHSON, a distinguished oriental scholar of Sweden, died at Stockholm early in January, at the age of seventy-two. He was of Armenian origin, and was born at Constantinople, November 26, 1779. His father, Ignace Muradgi, the author of a work on Turkish history, was first dragoman of the Swedish embassy in that city. He was educated at Paris, and among the manuscripts of the National Library, gathered the material for two works published in French, which gained him an enviable reputation. One was _The Peoples of the Caucasus_, by Abdul-Cassim, the traveller; the other _The History of Mongolia, from Dschingis Khan to Timour_; the second appeared at the Hague in 1835. M. D'Ohson served his country as ambassador for considerable periods at Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and London. * * * * * MRS. HARLOWE, at the advanced age of eighty-seven, expired at her lodgings at Gravesend, near London, on New-Year's-day. She was a very popular actress in her time, principally attached to Drury-Lane Theatre. Many years since she retired from the stage, and had since received a pension from the Drury-Lane Fund, to which she was one of the original subscribers. Her annuity for the first ten years amounted to £140 per annum, but since was reduced to £112, the claimants on the fund having considerably increased. Mrs. Harlowe was the last of the old school of actresses. * * * * * Mr. ACHESON MAXWELL died in London, near the beginning of January, at the advanced age of ninety-one. He was a very early friend of the late Earl of Macartney, under whom he held various confidential employments at Madras, in the memorable embassy to China, and at the Cape of Good Hope. He also accompanied him in 1795, on a confidential mission to Louis XVIII., then residing at Verona. He afterward held for several years a place in the office of the auditor of public accounts, but in his last days he was in the enjoyment of a pension. [Illustration] Ladies' Fashions for March. There are apt to be few novelties in this part of the season. The modes for the winter, with no important variations, generally prevail until the beginning of the spring. Whatever changes occur are likely to be found in details, or in articles of comparatively slight importance. In our next we shall probably be able to present the designs adopted by the fashionable worlds of Paris and London for the approaching warmer months. In the above group we have a white double-breasted waistcoat, high _chemisette_ of lace, and collar of English embroidery; cap of silk stuff, forming a _calotte_, trimmed with lace of Alençon point; and ribbon for the wrist. At the top of the first trimming is fastened a slight silk fringe under several bunches of silk or velvet ribbon. For indoors, and for dress parties, the lace lappets are replaced by ribbon like the bunches. A little ribbon ornament is used round the gloves, fastened by a gold chain; and the ribbon is confined to the wrist by a small elastic cord. In _head-dresses_, feathers form the most elegant and fashionable coiffure for full evening dress. They should be mounted on a spring or wire, which passes over the upper part of the head, leaving the feathers to droop on each side. White ostrich feathers mounted in this style are frequently tipped with gold or silver. An elegant fancy head-dress, is composed of feathers, blonde, and gold. On one side, a small tuft of white marabouts, intermingled with bunches of grapes in gold; on the other, instead of feathers, puffs of gold blonde, intermingled with grapes--the back part of the coiffure of a small point or half handkerchief of gold blonde, edged with gold fringe or passementerie. Time was, when a milliner would have made three separate head-dresses of materials composing the one here described; the feathers, the grapes, and the gold blonde would each have been separately employed, and it would have been deemed impossible to venture on their combination. But such is the change in taste, that this head-dress is admitted to be one of the most becoming productions of the season. A wreath, in the style called the _guirlande pompadour_, is composed of roses of several shades of pink, fastened on one side by a bow of azure-blue ribbon, lamé with silver--a bouquet of the same ribbon to fasten up the jupe of the dress, of white moire antique, trimmed with blonde. A head-dress, in the style called the coiffure Italleone, is of bows of cerulean blue velvet mingled with strings of pearls: on each side, ends of blue velvet edged with aiguillettes of pearls. Pearls and beads of other kinds, especially those of gold, silver, or coral, are very generally employed in ornamenting head-dresses. They are twisted with bows of ribbon or velvet, and are arranged in loops at each side. Loops of coral beads or of artificial Christmas berries, combined with bouquets of scarlet geranium, have a pretty effect. Flowers are, as they always have been, and are likely to continue to be, the favorite coiffures for ball costume. For young ladies, no other ornaments are admissible. [Illustration] In the first of the above figures we have an _Opera Dress_ of white organdi; the skirt extremely long and full, and with five flounces, each edged with two rows of narrow lace set on a little full; _Sortie de Bal_ of white cashmere wadded throughout, and lined with satin, couleur de rose, the form loose, with extremely wide sleeves, and trimmed with velvet the same color as the lining. When the hood is not drawn over the head, the tasselled ends hang over it very gracefully, as in the costume given, tying, and preserving the throat from cold in passing to or from the carriage. In the other figure is presented a walking dress of silver gray silk with a darker large plaid--skirt very full, and five flounces. Among _Ball Dresses_ the Paris _Modes_ describes a robe of white tulle, with three flounces, over a slip of white glacé--the flounces each edged with a row of blonde of about a nail in width, and attached to the skirt on one side by white roses, forming a sort of wreath at the upper part, one end of which is attached to the waist, and descends to the first or uppermost flounce, the roses being of graduated sizes, enlarging from the waist downward. A bouquet of white roses is attached to the second flounce. The corsage has a shawl berthe opening in a point in front of the bosom. The berthe is formed of three falls of tulle, each edged with a row of narrow blonde. The opening formed by the berthe in front of the corsage is filled up by horizontal rows of blonde. The sleeves, which are extremely short, are covered by falls of tulle, edged with rows of blonde. The wreath on the head corresponds with the bouquets. It is very light, with a bouquet on one side, where it is fixed, and is then twisted round the plait, so as almost entirely to cover the back part of the head-dress. On the arms, bracelets of gold and hair. Hand-bouquet of white and red roses. _Jewelry_ appears to be more in vogue than in recent years. Pins are extremely fashionable, and are made in the Italian style, with large heads, and pendent ornaments attached by small gold chains. Jewels, mounted for bandeaux or necklaces, are made to detach into separate portions, which may be worn as bracelets, pins for the hair, &c. In Paris a book has appeared on the laws of taste applicable in the wearing of jewelry--a sort of Ethics of Taste in Stones, or Institutes of Ornament. It should by all means be translated.